Though I felt reasonably confident that this message would reach my
brother, I was by no means certain. I was sure, however, that, should
he receive it, under no circumstances would he turn it over to anyone
hostile to myself. When I wrote the words: "Dear George," my feeling
was much like that of a child who sends a letter to Santa Claus after
his childish faith has been shaken. Like the skeptical child, I felt
there was nothing to lose, but everything to gain. "Yours" fully
expressed such affection for relatives as I was then capable of--for
the belief that I had disgraced, perhaps destroyed, my family prompted
me to forbear to use the family name in the signature.
The thought that I might soon get in touch with my old world did not
excite me. I had not much faith anyway that I was to re-establish
former relations with it, and what little faith I had was all but
destroyed on the morning of August 30th, 1902, when a short message,
written on a slip of paper, reached me by the hand of an attendant. It
informed me that my conservator would call that afternoon. I thought it
a lie. I felt that any brother of mine would have taken the pains to
send a letter in reply to the first I had written him in over two
years. The thought that there had not been time for him to do so and
that this message must have arrived by telephone did not then occur to
me. What I believed was that my own letter had been confiscated. I
asked one of the doctors to swear on his honor that it really was my
own brother who was coming to see me. This he did. But abnormal
suspicion robbed all men in my sight of whatever honor they may have
had, and I was not fully reassured.
In the afternoon, as usual, the patients were taken out of doors, I
among them. I wandered about the lawn and cast frequent and expectant
glances toward the gate, through which I believed my anticipated
visitor would soon pass. In less than an hour he appeared. I first
caught sight of him about three hundred feet away, and, impelled more
by curiosity than hope, I advanced to meet him. "I wonder what the lie
will be this time," was the gist of my thoughts.
The person approaching me was indeed the counterpart of my brother as I
remembered him. Yet he was no more my brother than he had been at any
time during the preceding two years. He was still a detective. Such he
was when I shook his hand. As soon as that ceremony was over, he drew
forth a leather pocketbook. I instantly recognized it as one I myself
had carried for several years prior to the time I was taken ill in
1900. It was from this that he took my recent letter.
"Here's my passport," he said.
"It's a good thing you brought it," I replied, as I glanced at it and
again shook his hand--this time the hand of my own brother.
"Don't you want to read it?" he asked.
"There is no need of that. I am convinced."
After my long journey of exploration in the jungle of a tangled
imagination, a journey which finally ended in my finding the person for
whom I had long searched, my behavior differed very little from that of
a great explorer who, full of doubt after a long and perilous trip
through real jungles, found the man he sought and, grasping his hand,
greeted him with the simple and historic words, "Dr. Livingstone, I
presume?"
The very instant I caught sight of my letter in the hands of my
brother, all was changed. The thousands of false impressions recorded
during the seven hundred and ninety-eight days of my depression seemed
at once to correct themselves. Untruth became Truth. A large part of
what was once my old world was again mine. To me, at last my mind
seemed to have found itself, for the gigantic web of false beliefs in
which it had been all but hopelessly enmeshed I now immediately
recognized as a snare of delusions. That the Gordian knot of mental
torture should be cut and swept away by the mere glance of a willing
eye is like a miracle. Not a few patients, however, suffering from
certain forms of mental disorder, regain a high degree of insight into
their mental condition in what might be termed a flash of divine
enlightenment. Though insight regained seemingly in an instant is a
most encouraging symptom, power to reason normally on all subjects
cannot, of course, be so promptly recovered. My new power to reason
correctly on some subjects simply marked the transition from
depression, one phase of my disorder, to elation, another phase of it.
Medically speaking, I was as mentally disordered as before--yet I was
happy!
My memory during depression may be likened to a photographic film,
seven hundred and ninety-eight days long. Each impression seems to have
been made in a negative way and then, in a fraction of a second,
miraculously developed and made positive. Of hundreds of impressions
made during that depressed period I had not before been conscious, but
from the moment my mind, if not my full reason, found itself, they
stood out vividly. Not only so, but other impressions registered during
earlier years became clearer. Since that August 30th, which I regard as
my second birthday (my first was on the 30th of another month), my mind
has exhibited qualities which, prior to that time, were so latent as to
be scarcely distinguishable. As a result, I find myself able to do
desirable things I never before dreamed of doing--the writing of this
book is one of them.
Yet had I failed to convince myself on August 30th, when my brother
came to see me, that he was no spy, I am almost sure that I should have
compassed my own destruction within the following ten days, for the
next month, I believed, was the fatal one of opening courts. You will
recall that it was death by drowning that impended. I liken my
salvation itself to a prolonged process of drowning. Thousands of
minutes of the seven hundred and ninety-eight days--and there were over
one million of them, during which I had been borne down by intolerably
burdensome delusions--were, I imagine, much like the last minutes of
consciousness experienced by persons who drown. Many who have narrowly
escaped that fate can testify to the vividness with which good and bad
impressions of their entire life rush through their confused minds, and
hold them in a grip of terror until a kind unconsciousness envelops
them. Such had been many of my moments. But the only unconsciousness
which had deadened my sensibilities during these two despondent years
was that of sleep itself. Though I slept fairly well most of the time,
mine was seldom a dreamless sleep. Many of my dreams were, if anything,
harder to bear than my delusions of the day, for what little reason I
had was absolutely suspended in sleep. Almost every night my brain was
at battledore and shuttlecock with weird thoughts. And if not all my
dreams were terrifying, this fact seemed to be only because a perverted
and perverse Reason, in order that its possessor might not lose the
capacity for suffering, knew how to keep Hope alive with visions which
supplied the contrast necessary for keen appreciation.
No man can be born again, but I believe I came as near it as ever a man
did. To leave behind what was in reality a hell, and immediately have
this good green earth revealed in more glory than most men ever see it,
was one of the compensating privileges which make me feel that my
suffering was worth while.
I have already described the peculiar sensation which assailed me when,
in June, 1900, I lost my reason. At that time my brain felt as though
pricked by a million needles at white heat. On this August 30th, 1902,
shortly after largely regaining my reason, I had another most distinct
sensation in the brain. It started under my brow and gradually spread
until the entire surface was affected. The throes of a dying Reason had
been torture. The sensations felt as my dead Reason was reborn were
delightful. It seemed as though the refreshing breath of some kind
Goddess of Wisdom were being gently blown against the surface of my
brain. It was a sensation not unlike that produced by a menthol pencil
rubbed ever so gently over a fevered brow. So delicate, so crisp and
exhilarating was it that words fail me in my attempt to describe it.
Few, if any, experiences can be more delightful. If the exaltation
produced by some drugs is anything like it, I can easily understand how
and why certain pernicious habits enslave those who contract them. For
me, however, this experience was liberation, not enslavement.