|I confess my heart leapt into my throat, and I gasped for breath. She,
witnessing my stupefaction, laughed, as if in cynical enjoyment of it.
After a little: “I think now you will permit me to bid you good
evening,” she said with mock ceremoniousness.
“You--you have escaped from prison!” I faltered out.
“Yes, from the Penitentiary across the river. You see, though we have
never met until to-night, we have been neighbours, living within sight
each of the other's residence, for some time. Two years already I have
spent, somewhat monotonously, upon Deadlock Island; and, to employ
technical language, I was 'in' for a term of which that was but an
insignificant fraction. I had, however, certain business to transact
here in town--a little matter to arrange with the gentleman who was
the principal witness for the prosecution at my trial--and I seized,
therefore, upon the first opportunity that presented itself to come
hither incognito. But when I arrived I found that Fate, with her usual
perversity, had put it out of my power to transact that business, the
party of the second part having died from natural causes. Thus the
one last only purpose I had left to live for had become impossible of
accomplishment. And now I wish for nothing except death. At last even
you must see the absurdity of my staying longer here in your house. Let
me _go_.”
“You say,” I rejoined, having by this time recovered somewhat of my
equanimity; “you say that you wish for nothing except death. Say what
you will, I do not believe that you wish for death at all.”
“To that I can only answer that you deceive yourself.”
“No, it is you who deceive yourself. What you wish for is not death,
but change--a change of condition. No truer words were ever spoken than
those of Tennyson's:--
Whatever crazy sorrow saith,
No life that breathes with human breath
Has ever truly longed for death.
What you crave under the name of death is forgetfulness. You yourself
compressed the whole truth into five words when you said: 'To live is
to remember.' Your inference was that to die is to forget. It is memory
that agonizes you; it is the past which lives in memory that handicaps
you, that hangs like a mill-stone round your neck, and goads you to
despair. If you could forget, if you could erase the entire past from
your consciousness, you would cease to suffer. Is not that true?”
“True enough, perhaps. But without pertinence. A quibble. Forgetfulness
is what I wish for, yes. But there is no forgetfulness except in
death--no Lethe save the Styx.”
“No forgetfulness _except_ in death? You assume, then, that there
_is_ forgetfulness in death; a bold assumption. Have you no dread of
something after death, the undiscovered country? Do you ignore the
possibility of a future life? Suppose, beyond the grave, you preserve
your identity--that is to say, your memory: in what respect will you
have gained by the change?”
“I must take my risks. This much I know for certain: there is no
forgetfulness in life. In death there may be. I will take my chances.
Am I not in hell now? Any change must be a change for the better. I will
take the risks.”
“You say there is no forgetfulness in life. But suppose there were?
Suppose it were possible for you to obtain total and permanent
forgetfulness without dying, without taking those risks, without taking
any risks at all? Suppose some one should come to you and say: 'See!
I have it in my power to bestow upon you total and permanent
obliviousness, so that the entire past, with all its events and
circumstances, shall be perfectly effaced from your mind; so that you
shall not even recall your name, nor your language; but, with unimpaired
bodily health and mental capacities, shall begin life afresh, like the
new-born infant, speechless, innocent, regenerated; another person, and
yet the same:--suppose some one should come to you and offer that?”
“It is an idle supposition! The age of miracles has passed.”
“An idle supposition? You deem it such? Let us see, let us consider.
To begin with, answer me this: Have you never heard or read--in
conversation, newspaper, medical report, or novel--have you never heard
or read, I say, of a case where, through an accident, a human being has
had befall him exactly the experience which I have just described? A
case where a lesion of the cerebral tissues, caused perhaps by disease,
perhaps by a concussion of the brain, or by a fracture of the skull,
has resulted in the total annihilation of memory, without injury to
the other intellectual faculties, so that the patient, upon recovering
health and consciousness, could remember absolutely nothing of the
past--neither his name, nor his nationality, nor the face of his father
or mother, nor even how to speak, walk, eat--but was literally _born
anew_, and had to begin life over again from the start? Surely,
everybody who has ears has heard, everybody who can read has read, of
cases of that nature?”
“Oh, yes; I have read of such cases, certainly.”
“Very well. You have read of such cases. So!--Now, then, suppose an
accident of that sort should befall _you?_ Everything you can hope for
from death would come to pass, and yet you would live. What better could
you desire?
“And yet _I_ would live? Hardly. My body would live, true. But _I_, my
personality, my identity, would have vanished. For is not the very pith
and marrow of one's identity, remembrance? Is not memory the birthmark,
so to speak, by which one recognises one's-self? Is it not the cord
upon which one's experiences are strung, which holds them together, and
establishes their unity? My body would live, true enough. But it would
be inhabited and animated by another spirit, another mind.”
“Well, even so? It is the extinction of your identity which you seek to
bring about by means of death. But you have no ground for supposing that
death involves any such extinction. Atheist, agnostic, what you will,
you must always acknowledge and allow for that possibility of a future
life. Whereas, the man or woman to whom the accident happens which
we have assumed, obtains for a surety that which he or she can only
dubiously hope for from death.”
“Ah, but there is a mighty difference. It is not within my power to
cause such an accident. It _is_ within my power to die.”
“Not within your power to cause such an accident? Not within _your_
power, I grant. But will you say that it is not within human power, not
within any man's power? Imagine whatever human circumstance you like,
which can come to pass by accident. Then, speaking _à priori_, tell me
of any conclusive reason why that circumstance should not be brought to
pass by design? Why man, investigating the causes of it, enlightened
by his science, employing his cunning, should not be able at will to
occasion it? Take this very case in hand--the total obliteration of a
human being memory of the past. A blow upon the head, the result of an
accident, can occasion it. Why not a blow upon the head, the result of
man's deliberate purpose? Insanity, small-pox, consumption, paralysis,
deafness, blindness--each of these it would be entirely possible for man
voluntarily to induce. Why not oblivion?”
“I have never heard of its being done. I once read a novel in which
something of the kind was related--'Dr. Heidenhoff's Process'--but even
in that novel, the author had not the audacity to pretend that his story
was possible; it turned out to be a dream. But then, after all, that
was quite a different thing. It was the obliteration not of the whole
memory, but simply the memory of one particular fact or group of facts.
The memory in respect of other facts remained intact.”
“Ah, that indeed! That, of course, it may not as yet be within the power
of science to accomplish. That, as yet, I will grant you, is only the
material for a romancer's fancy. I cannot cause you to forget any one
fact or train of facts, while leaving your memory unaffected regarding
other facts. But the obliteration of the whole memory is a very
different matter. It has happened frequently by accident. You have never
heard of its being effected by design, though you will acknowledge the
theoretical possibility of its being so effected. Well and good. Now
the truth is this: not only is it theoretically possible, but it is
practically feasible.. It can be done; and I, even I, can do it. That
same obliviousness which, as the case-books of physicians bear abundant
testimony, Nature often produces through the medium of disease or
violence, I--I who speak to you--I can produce by means of a surgical
operation.”
“It is incredible,” said she.
“Incredible or not, it is a fact,” said I. “What a stone striking you
upon the head may accomplish, I can accomplish with my instruments. I
can cause a depression of one of the bones of your skull, at a certain
point upon the tissues of the brain, so that, when you recover from the
influence of the anaesthetic which I administer, you are returned to the
mental and moral condition of infancy. You remember nothing. You know
nothing. Your mind is as a blank sheet of paper. The past is abolished.
The future is before you.”
“If what you say is true, you possess a terrible power. Are surgeons
generally able to do this?”
“Every intelligent surgeon must recognise the antecedent possibility of
the operation. But when you ask me whether surgeons generally know how
to perform it, I suppose that they do not. It is a discovery which
I have made, by the examination of a large number of skulls, and the
dissection of a large number of brains. I have never communicated it to
anybody else. Others, for all I know, may have made the same discovery
independently.”
“But why have you kept it a secret? It would have made you famous.”
“I have had many reasons for keeping it a secret. You yourself have
named one of them: it is a terrible power. I have not thought it prudent
as yet to put it into the hands of the faculty at large; but it will be
published after, if not before, my death.”
“You say you _can_ do this. _Have_ you ever done it?”
“Upon a human being--no. Upon animals--upon dogs, monkeys, and
horses--yes; often, and with unvarying success.”
“Animals, indeed!” She smiled. “But never upon a human being. It is a
descent from the sublime to the grotesque. You are anxious to obtain a
subject?”
“I will not deny that I should be glad to obtain a subject, if it
pleases you to put it in that downright way. I have never performed the
operation upon a human being; but I can predict with absolute assurance
just what its consequences upon a human being would be.”
“Let me hear your prediction.”
“Well, to begin with, let me tell you the circumstances of an actual
case, which came under my observation, where the thing happened
accidentally. The patient was a Frenchman, thirty-two years old, in
robust health. I think, from the point of view of morals, he was the
most depraved wretch it was ever my bad fortune to encounter. He was a
brute, a sot, a liar, a thief--a bad lot all round. I chanced to know
a good deal about him, because he was the husband of a servant in my
family. The affair occurred more than thirty years ago. I say he was a
depraved wretch. What does that mean? It means that, like every mother's
son of us, he came into this world a bundle of potentialities, of
latent spiritual potentialities, inherited from his million or more of
ancestors, some of these potentialities being for good, others of them
for evil; and it means that his environment had been such, and had so
acted upon him, as to develop those that were for evil, and to leave
dormant those that were for good. That wants to be borne in mind. Very
well. He was the husband of a servant in my family, a most respectable
and virtuous woman, also French, who would have nothing to do with him;
but whom it was his pleasantest amusement to torment by hanging around
our house, seeking to waylay her when she went abroad, striving to gain
admittance when she was within doors. Late one evening we above stairs
were surprised by the noise of a disturbance in the kitchen: a man's
voice, a woman's voice, loud in altercation. I hurried down to learn the
occasion of it. Halfway there, my ears were startled by the sudden short
sound of a pistol-shot, followed by dead silence. I entered the kitchen,
but arrived a moment too late. Our woman servant stood in the centre
of the floor, holding a smoking revolver in her hand. Her husband
lay prostrate, unconscious, perhaps dead, at her feet. I demanded an
explanation. It appeared that he had stolen into the kitchen, where his
wife sat alone, and, coming upon her suddenly, had attempted to abduct
and carry her off by main force. The foolish woman confessed that some
days before she had bought herself a pistol, with a view to just such
an emergency as this; and now she had used it. Well, I examined the man,
and I found, to my great relief, that he was not dead, and that, she
being but an indifferent marks-woman, the ball had not even entered his
body. It had struck him on the head at an oblique angle, and had glanced
off. However, it had injured him quite seriously enough, having, indeed,
fractured his skull at a certain point. We carried him upstairs, and
put him to bed. For upwards of sixty hours--nearly three days--he lay
in total unconsciousness. For six weeks he lay in a stupor just a hair's
breadth removed from total unconsciousness; but by-and-by his wound
had healed, and he was convalescent. Now, however, what was his mental
condition? Precisely that of a new-born baby! His memory had been
utterly destroyed. He had forgotten the simplest primary functions of
life: how to speak, how to eat, how to walk, how to use his fingers. He
could not remember his name; he could not recognise his wife. He had all
the lessons of experience to learn anew. But you must recollect that,
being an adult, his brain, as an organ, was full-grown, was mature.
Therefore, he acquired knowledge with astonishing rapidity--learning
almost as much in a fortnight as a child learns in a year. At the end
of one month after we began his education, he could walk, feed himself,
dress himself, and was beginning to talk. At the end of six months he
spoke as fluently as I do--English, mind you, not French, which had been
his mother-tongue. At the end of a year he read without difficulty, and
wrote a good hand. What was most remarkable, however, though entirely
natural, his moral nature had undergone a complete transformation. In
a new environment, treated with kindness, surrounded by wholesome
influences, 'trained up in the way he should go,' and absolutely
oblivious of every fact, event, circumstance, and association of his
past, he became a new, another, an entirely different man. Now, of the
million spiritual potentialities, predispositions, that heredity had
implanted in him, those that made for good were vivified, those that
made for bad left dormant. He was as decent and as honest a fellow as
one could wish to meet, and he had plenty of intelligence and common
sense. I kept him in my service, as a sort of general factotum, for
more than twenty years; then he died. Before his death he made a will,
bequeathing to me the only thing of especial value that he had to leave
behind him. Here it is.”
I unlocked a cabinet, and produced from it a skull.
“Let me see it,” she said eagerly.
She took it in her hands, without the faintest show of repugnance, and
studied it intently.
“It is like a fairy-tale. It is marvellous,” she said at last.
“Science abounds in marvels no less stupendous,” said I. “It was my
observation of that man's case, and of the beneficent results of it,
that suggested to me the possibility of bringing such things to pass of
a set, purpose.”
“For years I have made the brain and the skull a study, with that
possibility in view. I am able to say now that I can perform the
operation with perfect certainty of success.”
“But,” she went on, after a pause, “it is scarcely inspiring to think
that the character, the morality, of a human being, can be influenced,
can be radically altered, by a mere physical condition like that--to
think that the character of the soul can be changed by a change in the
structure of the body. It is enough to establish materialism pure
and simple; the only logical consequences of which are cynicism and
pessimism.”
“It is certainly one of the many psychological facts which go to prove
that while it is the tenant of the body the soul must adapt itself to
its habitation.”
“It would seem to prove that the soul is not simply the tenant of the
body, but its slave, its victim, its creature. As the materialists
express it, that mind, thought, emotion, are but functions of the
brain.”
“It would perhaps lend colour to that hypothesis; but it does not prove
it. Nothing can be proved relative to the human soul. Like all elemental
things, it is in its very essence an insoluble mystery. All elemental
things? Nay, it is _the_ elemental thing, the ultimate thing, the only
thing we know at first hand. All other things we know only as they are
mirrored in it; we know them only by the impressions they produce upon
our souls. Ten thousand hypotheses concerning it--concerning its origin,
its nature, its meaning, its destiny--are equally plausible, equally
inadequate. It cannot by seeking be found out.”
She was silent now for a long while. At last, “Will you describe your
operation to me?” she inquired.
“You would need a medical education to follow such a description.”
“Is it anything like what they call trepanning, or trephining?”
“But very remotely. A partial fracture, and a depression, of the bone
are caused; but no particle of it is removed.”
“What is the worst that could happen, in case of the operation
miscarrying? What would be the chances of the subject's losing not only
his memory, but his reason--becoming an imbecile or a maniac?”
“There is no chance of that. The worst that could happen would be death.
It is as safe an operation as any in which the knife is employed. But,
of course, in all operations which involve the use of the knife there is
some danger. There is always the possibility of inflammation. But
that possibility is by no means a probability. The chances are largely
against it.”
“So that you are sure one of two things would happen either the
operation would prove a success, or the patient would die?”
“Exactly so.”
“How much time would have to elapse after the operation, before the
patient would be able to take care of himself again--before he would
have regained sufficient knowledge to act as a responsible and competent
human being?”
“I should say a year. Perhaps more, perhaps less. But I will say a
year.”
“And during that year? Suppose, for example, that I should offer myself
to you as a subject--how should I be provided for during the period of
my incompetence? And what education should I receive?”
“You would be provided for by me. You would be lodged and taken care of
here in this house. My sister, ten years younger than I, the kindest
and the gentlest of women, would be your nurse, your companion, and your
teacher. We would give you the same education that we would give a child
of our own.”
“I beg your pardon, but you have not told me your name.”
“My name is Benary--Leonard Benary.”
“Well, Dr. Benary, I am willing to submit to your operation. I make
no professions of gratitude, for--though, whether it kills me or
regenerates me, I shall be equally your debtor--I take it you are not
sorry to find a subject to experiment upon; and therefore it will be a
fair exchange, and no robbery. Will you proceed with the operation here,
now, to-night?”
“Oh, dear me, no. You must have some sleep first. I will call my sister.
She will show you to a room. Then, perhaps, to-morrow, after a good
night's rest, you will be in a favourable condition.”
“But your sister--what will she say to this?” She pointed to her
prison-garb.
“If you will wait here while I go to summon her, I can promise you a
kindly welcome from her. I shall explain all the circumstances to her;
and she will not mind your costume.”
And I went upstairs to rouse my sister, Miss Josephine Benary.