CHAPTER IV.—THE DOCTOR SPEAKS.
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.