GUIDANCE IN THE BUILDING UP OF THE
PERSONALITY. SUCCESS GUARANTEED
This seemed to me to be worth looking into and I went in at this door.
I found myself in a quiet twilit room where a man with something like a
large chess-board in front of him sat in Eastern fashion on the floor.
At the first glance I thought it was friend Pablo. He wore at any rate
a similar gorgeous silk jacket and had the same dark and shining eyes.
“Are you Pablo?” I asked.
“I am not anybody,” he replied amiably. “We have no names here and we
are not anybody. I am a chess-player. Do you wish for instruction in
the building up of the personality?”
“Yes, please.”
“Then be so kind as to place a few dozen of your pieces at my disposal.”
“My pieces--?”
“Of the pieces into which you saw your so-called personality broken up.
I can’t play without pieces.”
He held a glass up to me and again I saw the unity of my personality
broken up into many selves whose number seemed even to have increased.
The pieces were now, however, very small, about the size of chessmen.
The player took a dozen or so of them in his sure and quiet fingers
and placed them on the ground near the board. As he did so he began to
speak in the monotonous way of one who goes through a recitation or
reading that he has often gone through before.
“The mistaken and unhappy notion that a man is an enduring unity is
known to you. It is also known to you that man consists of a multitude
of souls, of numerous selves. The separation of the unity of the
personality into these numerous pieces passes for madness. Science
has invented the name Schizomania for it. Science is in this so far
right as no multiplicity may be dealt with unless there be a series, a
certain order and grouping. It is wrong in so far as it holds that one
only and binding and lifelong order is possible for the multiplicity
of subordinate selves. This error of science has many unpleasant
consequences, and the single advantage of simplifying the work of the
state-appointed pastors and masters and saving them the labours of
original thought. In consequence of this error many persons pass for
normal, and indeed for highly valuable members of society, who are
incurably mad; and many, on the other hand, are looked upon as mad who
are geniuses. Hence it is that we supplement the imperfect psychology
of science by the conception that we call the art of building up the
soul. We demonstrate to any one whose soul has fallen to pieces that he
can rearrange these pieces of a previous self in what order he pleases,
and so attain to an endless multiplicity of moves in the game of life.
As the playwright shapes a drama from a handful of characters, so do
we from the pieces of the disintegrated self build up ever new groups,
with ever new interplay and suspense, and new situations that are
eternally inexhaustible. Look!”
With the sure and silent touch of his clever fingers he took hold of my
pieces, all the old men and young men and children and women, cheerful
and sad, strong and weak, nimble and clumsy, and swiftly arranged them
on his board for a game. At once they formed themselves into groups and
families, games and battles, friendships and enmities, making a small
world. For a while he let this lively and yet orderly world go through
its evolutions before my enraptured eyes in play and strife, making
treaties and fighting battles, wooing, marrying and multiplying. It was
indeed a crowded stage, a moving breathless drama.
Then he passed his hand swiftly over the board and gently swept all the
pieces into a heap; and, meditatively with an artist’s skill, made up a
new game of the same pieces with quite other groupings, relationships
and entanglements. The second game had an affinity with the first,
it was the same world built of the same material, but the key was
different, the time changed, the motif was differently given out and
the situations differently presented.
And in this fashion the clever architect built up one game after
another out of the figures, each of which was a bit of myself, and
every game had a distant resemblance to every other. Each belonged
recognisably to the same world and acknowledged a common origin. Yet
each was entirely new.
“This is the art of life,” he said dreamily. “You may yourself as an
artist develop the game of your life and lend it animation. You may
complicate and enrich it as you please. It lies in your hands. Just
as madness, in a higher sense, is the beginning of all wisdom, so is
schizomania the beginning of all art and all fantasy. Even learned
men have come to a partial recognition of this, as may be gathered,
for example, from _Prince Wunderhorn_, that enchanting book, in
which the industry and pains of a man of learning, with the assistance
of the genius of a number of madmen and artists shut up as such,
are immortalised. Here, take your little pieces away with you. The
game will often give you pleasure. The piece that to-day grew to the
proportions of an intolerable bugbear, you will degrade to-morrow to a
mere lay figure. The luckless Cinderella will in the next game be the
princess. I wish you much pleasure, my dear sir.”
I bowed low in gratitude to the gifted chess-player, put the little
pieces in my pocket and withdrew through the narrow door.
My real intention was to seat myself at once on the floor in the
corridor and play the game for hours, for whole eternities; but I was
no sooner in the bright light of the circular theatre passage than
a new and irresistible current carried me along. A dazzling poster
flashed before my eyes: