Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde creates a tension between the world of reason and science and the world of the supernatural, and seems to suggest the limits of reason in its inability to cope with the supernatural phenomena that take place. Jekyll confesses as the end of the novel that he has been fascinated by the duality of man and has taken to both chemical and mystical methods to try to get to the truth. This inclusion of a spiritual side to Jekyll's philosophy shows his to be a mind unlike those of the lawyers and doctors of his society, who restrict themselves to traditional reason. The result of Jekyll's explorations - Mr. Hyde - is something beyond reason, which shocks and overwhelms the sensitive intellectual dispositions of the other characters and leaves Dr. Jekyll permanently removed from his educated, medical self. The laboratory is the main setting of gthe mysterious events in the story, but far from being a place of science and medicine, the lab is deserted and strange, more Gothic than a place of science. In this setting the novel seems to hint at the insufficiency or even obsolescence of science. Jekyll, once a man of science, is leaving all that behind, leaving it unused, as he seeks new, unknown knowledge and truth. Jekyll's goals frighten and disgust the men of science, such as Lanyon, with whom he used to be friends. Lanyon, in fact, is so shocked, overwhelmed, and unable to process what Jekyll has done that he dies soon after learning of it. He can't bear the destruction of his stable, rational worldview. Utterson, meanwhile, is also unable to comprehend what is going on between Jekyll and Hyde - he thinks the relationship something criminal but comprehensible, such as blackmail - until the truth is revealed to him. Hyde is described, quite literally, as being beyond rational description - his most noticeable trait is an unexplainable air of evil or deformity, which can neither be described concretely nor ascribed to any medical cause. This idea of deformity, both of the body and the mind, fuels the power of the supernatural over the natural. And behind al the action of Jekyll and Hyde in the novel, a fear lurks for all the characters - the threat of madness and the threat of a new world, of new science, new traditions, new disorders that traditional science and reason can't comprehend or deal with