Such of his classmates, therefore, as were inclined to quarrel with
him because of his unpopular ways soon learned that he kept up his
muscle with the best of them, and that, when at last roused, his anger
struck like lightning from a cloud.

During the latter part of his college course he gradually formed a
strong friendship for a young man of a different type, an ardent
sunny-natured youth, who proved an antidote to his morbid tendencies.
They went abroad together and studied for two years at a German
university, and then Warren Hilland, Graham's friend, having inherited
large wealth, returned to his home. Graham, left to himself, delved
more and more deeply in certain phases of sceptical philosophy. It
appeared to him that in the past men had believed almost everything,
and that the heavier the drafts made on credulity the more largely had
they been honored. The two friends had long since resolved that the
actual and the proved should be the base from which they would advance
into the unknown, and they discarded with equal indifference
unsubstantiated theories of science and what they were pleased to term
the illusions of faith. "From the verge of the known explore the
unknown," was their motto, and it had been their hope to spend their
lives in extending the outposts of accurate knowledge, in some one or
two directions, a little beyond the points already reached. Since the
scalpel and microscope revealed no soul in the human mechanism they
regarded all theories and beliefs concerning a separate spiritual
existence as mere assumption. They accepted the materialistic view. To
them each generation was a link in an endless chain, and man himself
wholly the product of an evolution which had no relations to a
creative mind, for they had no belief in the existence of such a mind.
They held that one had only to live wisely and well, and thus transmit
the principle of life, not only unvitiated, but strengthened and