Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.

<passage>:
matter which we know to be our own. But there had been no need to wait for that distant day. Scant years after he had written those prophetic words the thing was happening. Man had played unwittingly into the hands of those other minds in the other dimension. Man had waged a war and war had bred a pestilence. And the whole vast cycle of events was but a detail of a cyclopean plan. He could see it all now. By an insidious mass hypnosis minions from that other dimension ... or was it one supreme intelligence ... had deliberately sown the seeds of dissension. The reduction of the world's mental power had been carefully planned with diabolic premeditation. For people long ago had gathered that Mr. Chambers desired to be left alone. The newer generation of townsfolk called it eccentricity. Certain uncouth persons had a different word for at bay against the emptiness that marked the transition from one dimension to another. Men who had lived close to the things they loved, who had endowed those things with such substantial form by power of mind alone that they now stood out alone against the power of some greater mind. connected with his name ... at the time an academic scandal. He The street was gone. The rest of his house was gone. This room volume to his classes. What that subject matter was, had long been revolutionary to cost Mr. Chambers his post at the university. still retained its form. October wind was rustling the dead leaves when Mr. Chambers had written a book, and he had taught the subject matter of that forgotten, but whatever it was had been considered sufficiently expulsion from the university, he had lived by the clock. snarling and growling, snapping at his heels. But Mr. Chambers was blurting floated to Mr. Chambers. "... still taking place ... Empire State building disappeared ... "Oh, well," said Mr. Chambers, "I never did like that very well." The wind whipped the muted words away and Mr. Chambers grumbled thin air ... famed scientist, Dr. Edmund Harcourt...." Something one could expect to happen. Perhaps, if he thought hard enough, he could bring them back. But, after all, what was the use? One man, alone, could not stand Mr. Chambers had written. off the irresistible march of nothingness. One man, all alone, simply couldn't do it. when he finally slipped into the unknown. For he was matter, too, just as the ash tray and radio were matter. He wondered if he would retain his individuality ... if he still would be a person. Or would he merely be a thing? There was one answer to all of that. He simply didn't know. Mr. Chambers started. The clock had stopped. Funny ... the first Shaken, muttering to himself, Mr. Chambers let himself in his had come to be as much a part of him as the clothes he wore. Every detail of the room was engraved in his mind with ... clarity the mantelpiece with the dusty bric-a-brac the pendulum clock that told the time of day as well as the day of the week and month He had put it there because he liked it best. Further reverie became an effort as Mr. Chambers felt himself For the first time in twenty years, Mr. Chambers retraced his Mr. Chambers shivered, reached to turn up the collar of his coat, then stopped as he realized the room must be warm. A fire blazed merrily in the grate. The cold he felt came from something ... somewhere else. The cold of fear and horror, the chill of a half whispered thought. he had ever sensed before. Not a homey, comfortable silence ... but a silence that hinted at emptiness and nothingness. There was something back of this, Mr. Chambers told himself. Something that reached far back into one corner of his brain and demanded recognition. Something tied up with the fragments of central theme of the talk he overheard: the wars and plagues. And somehow those gruesome statistics seemed tied up with his own experience. Something, somewhere, some part of his earlier life, seemed to hold an explanation. But try as he would his befuddled brain failed to find the answer. He stared at it in amazement, trying to determine what was wrong with it. He recalled how it had always stood, foursquare, a solid piece of mid-Victorian architecture. drew together, ironed out its queer angles, readjusted its dimensions, became once again the stodgy house he knew it had to be. Gulping in fright, Mr. Chambers slammed the door shut, locked it first shelf, his many scientific works on the lower shelves. The second shelf contained but one book. And it was around this book that Mr. Chambers' entire life was centered. Twenty years ago he had written it and foolishly attempted to teach its philosophy to a class of undergraduates. The newspapers, he remembered, had made a great deal of it at the time. Tongues had been set to wagging. Narrow-minded townsfolk, failing to understand Then his eyes focused on the paragraph, a paragraph written so long ago the very words seemed strange and unreal: Man himself, by the power of mass suggestion, holds the physical fate of this earth ... yes, even the universe. Billions of minds seeing trees as trees, houses as houses, streets as streets ... and not as something else. Minds that see things as they are and have kept things as they were.... Destroy those minds and the entire foundation of matter, robbed of its regenerative power, will crumple and slip away like a column of sand.... His eyes followed down the page: Yet this would have nothing to do with matter itself ... but only with matter's form. For while the mind of man through long ages may have moulded an imagery of that space in which he lives, mind would have little conceivable influence upon the existence of that matter. What exists in our known universe shall exist is two dimensional, the pin three dimensional. Yet both occupy the same space. Granting then that the power of men's minds alone holds this universe, or at least this world in its present form, may we not go farther and envision other minds in some other plane watching us, waiting, waiting craftily for the time they can take over the domination of matter? Such a concept is not impossible. It is a natural conclusion if we accept the double hypothesis: that mind does control the formation of all matter and that other worlds lie in juxtaposition with ours. matter which we know to be our own. He stood astounded beside the bookcase, his eyes staring unseeing into the fire upon the hearth. A tumultuous idea hammered at him. Men had died by the millions all over the world. Where there had been thousands of minds there now were one or two. A feeble force to hold the form of matter intact. whole story ... he could not know. He never listened to the radio, never read a newspaper. But abruptly the whole thing fitted together in his brain like the missing piece of a puzzle into its slot. The significance of it all gripped him with damning clarity. There were not sufficient minds in existence to retain the material world in its mundane form. Some other power from another dimension was fighting to supersede man's control and take his Abruptly Mr. Chambers closed the book, shoved it back in the case appeared to thin ... the enveloping curtain fell away, and he saw.... Mr. Chambers pushed open the door of his house. But he did not lock it. There was no need of locks ... not any more. A few coals of fire still smouldered in the grate and going there, he stirred them up, raked away the ash, piled on more couldn't take this away. The rest of the world might dissolve because there was insufficient power of thought to retain its outward form. But this room was his. He alone had furnished it. He alone, since he had first planned the house's building, had lived here. fingers. For he knew that this room no longer was proof against the thing that had happened out there on the street. Or had it really happened? Might not all this exist within his But he knew he wasn't mad. He knew that he perhaps was the sanest of all men who walked the earth. For he, and he alone, had

<question>:
What was Mr. Chambers' academic scandal centered around?

<options>:
A A theory that suggested there were multiple other realities
B Inappropriate conduct with a student
C His unwillingness to participate in social activities
D He theorized that matter was held together by the power of minds

<answer>:

D