Those who are interested in what simple straightforward people call the
Pathology of Consciousness have gathered a great body of evidence upon
the various manias that affect men, and there is an especially
interesting department of this which concerns illusion upon matters
which in the sane are determinable by the senses and common experience.
Thus one man will believe himself to be the Emperor of China, another
to be William Shakespeare or some other impossible person, though one
would imagine that his every accident of daily life would convince him
to the contrary.
I had recently occasion to watch one of the most harmless and yet one
of the most striking of these illusions in a private asylum which has
specialized, if I may so express myself, upon men of letters. The case
was harmless and even benign, for the poor fellow was not of a
combative disposition to begin with, was of too careful and dignified a
temperament to show more than slight irritation if his delusion were
contradicted. This misfortune, however, very rarely overtook him, for
those who came to visit him were warned to humour his whim. This
eccentricity I will now describe.
He imagined, nay he was convinced, that he was existing fifty years in
the future, and that the interest of his conversation for others would
lie in his reminiscence of the state of society in which we are
actually living today. If anyone who had not been warned was imprudent
enough to suggest that the conversation was taking place in 1909 would
smile gently, nod, and say rather bitterly, “Yes, I know, I know,” as
though recognizing a universal plot against him which he was too weary
to combat. But when he had said this he would continue to talk on as
though both parties to the conversation were equally convinced that the
year was really 1960 or thereabouts. Whether to add zest to what he
said or from some part of his malady consonant with all the rest, my
poor friend (who had been a journalist and will very possibly be a
journalist again) presupposed that the whole structure of society as we
now know it had changed and that his reminiscences were those of a past
time which, on account of some great revolution or other, men
imperfectly comprehended, so that it must be of the highest interest
and advantage to listen to the testimony of an eye-witness upon them.
What especially delighted him (for he was a zealous admirer of the
society he described) was the method of government.
“There was no possibility of going wrong,” he said to me with curious
zeal, “not a shadow of danger! It would be difficult for you to
understand now how easily the system worked!” And here he sighed
profoundly. “And why on earth,” he continued, “men should have
destroyed such an instrument when they had it is more than I can
understand. There it was in every country in Europe; there were
elections; all the men voted. And mind you, the elections were not so
very far apart. Most people living at one election could remember the
last, so there was no time for abuses to spring up.... Well, everybody
voted. If a man wanted one thing he voted one way, and if he wanted
another thing he voted the other way. The people for whom he voted
would then meet, and with a sense of duty which I cannot exaggerate
they would work month after month exactly to reproduce the will of
those who had appointed them. It was a great time!”
“Yet,” said I, “even so there must have been occasional divergences
between what these people did and what the nation wanted.”
“I see what you mean,” he said, musing, “you mean that all the devotion
in the world, the purest of motives and the most devoted sense of duty,
could not keep the elected always in contact with the electors. You are
right. But you must remember that in every country there was a
machinery, with regard to the most important measures at least, which
could throw the matter before the electors to be re-decided. I can
remember no important occasion upon which the machinery was not brought
into use.”
“But, after all, the value of the decisions of the electorate you are
describing,” said I, continuing to humour him, “would depend upon the
information which the electorate had received as well as upon their
judgment.”
“As for their judgment,” he said, a little shortly, “it is not for our
time to criticize theirs. Human judgment is not infallible, but I can
well remember how in every nation of Europe it was the fixed conviction
of the citizens that judgment was their chief characteristic, and
especially judgment in national affairs. I cannot believe that so
universal an attitude of the mind could have arisen had it not been
justified. But as for information, they had the Press ... a free
Press!” Here he fell into a reverie, so powerfully did his supposed
memories affect him.
I was willing to lead him on, because this kind of illness is best met
by sympathy, and also because I was not uninterested to discover how
his own trade had affected him.
“You would hardly understand it,” he said sadly; “what you hear from me
is nothing but words.... I wish I could have shown you one of those
great houses with information pouring in as rapid, as light, and as
clear, from every hidden corner of the world, digested by master brains
into the most lucid and terse presentment of it possible, and then
whirled out on great wheels to be distributed by the thousand and the
hundred thousand, to the hungry intelligence of Europe. There was
nothing escaped it—nothing. In every capital were crowds of men
dispatched from the other capitals of our civilization, moving with
ease in the wealthiest houses, and exquisitely in touch with the most
delicate phases of national life everywhere. And these men were such
experts in selection that a picture of Europe as a whole was presented
every morning to each particular part of Europe; and nowhere was this
more successfully accomplished than in my own beloved town of London.”
“It must have been useful,” I said, “not only for the political
purposes you describe, but also for investors. Indeed, I should imagine
that the two things ran together.”
“You are right,” he said with interest, “the wide knowledge which even
the poorest of the people possessed upon foreign affairs, through the
action of the Press, was, further, of the utmost and most beneficent
effect in teaching even the smallest proprietor what he need do with
his capital. A discovery of metallic ore—especially of gold—a new
invention, anything which might require development, was at once
presented in its most exact aspect to the reader.”
“It was probably upon that account,” said I, “that property was so
equally distributed, and that so general a prosperity reigned as you
have often described to me.”
“You are right,” said he; “it was mainly this accurate and universal
daily information which produced such excellent results.”
“But it occurs to me,” said I, by way of stimulating his conversation
with an objection, “that if so passionate and tenacious a habit of
telling the exact truth upon innumerable things was present in this old
institution of which you speak, it cannot but have bred a certain
amount of dissension, and it must sometimes even have done definite
harm to individuals whose private actions were thus exposed.”
“You are right,” said he; “the danger of such misfortunes was always
present, and with the greatest desire in the world to support only what
was worthy the writers of the journals of which I speak would
occasionally blunder against private interests; but there was a
remedy.”
“What was that?” I asked.
“Why, the law provided that in this matter twelve men called a jury,
instructed by a judge, after the matter had been fully explained to
them by two other men whose business it was to examine the truth boldly
for the sake of justice—I say the law provided that the twelve men
after this process should decide whether the person injured should
receive money from the newspaper or no, and if so, in what amount. And,
lest there should still be any manner of doubt, the judge was permitted
to set aside their verdict if he thought it unjust. To secure his
absolute impartiality as between rich and poor he was paid somewhat
over £100 a week, a large salary in those days, and he was further
granted the right of imprisoning people at will or of taking away their
property if he believed them to obstruct his judgment. Nor were these
the only safeguards. For in the case of very rich men, to whom justice
might not be done on account of the natural envy of their poorer
fellow-citizens, it was arranged that the jury should consist only of
rich men. In this way it was absolutely certain that a complete
impartiality would reign. We shall never see those days again,” he
concluded.
“But do you not think,” I said before I left him, “that the social
perfection of the kind you have described must rather have been due to
some spirit of the time than to particular institutions? For after all
the zealous love of justice and the sense of duty which you describe
are not social elements to be produced by laws.”
“Possibly,” he said, wearily, “possibly, but we shall never see it
again!”
And I left him looking into the fire with infinite sadness and
reflecting upon his lost youth and the year 1909: a pathetic figure,
and one whose upkeep during the period of his deficiency was a very
serious drain upon the resources of his family.