“By sending for a psychological physician.”
“If I understand the doctor right, the two things are not opposed,” remarked Mr. Hardie.
Dr. Wycherley assented, and made a remarkable statement in confirmation: “One half of the aggregate of the genius of the country is at present under restraint; fortunately for the community; and still more fortunately for itself.”
He then put on his gloves, and, with much kindness but solemnity, warned Mr. Hardie not to neglect his son's case, nor to suppose that matters could go on like this without “disintegrating or disorganising the grey matter of the brain. I admit” said he, “that in some recorded cases of insanity the brain on dissection has revealed no signs of structural or functional derangement, and, that, on the other hand, considerable encephalic disorganisation has been shown to have existed in other cases without aberration or impairment of the reason: but such phenomena are to be considered as pathological curiosities, with which the empiric would fain endeavour to disturb the sound general conclusions of science. The only safe mode of reasoning on matters so delicate and profound is a priori: and, as it may safely be assumed as a self-evident proposition, that disturbed intelligence bears the same relation to the brain as disordered respiration does to the lungs, it is not logical, reasoning a priori, to assume the possibility that the studious or other mental habits of a Kephalalgic, and gifted youth, can be reversed, and erotic monomania germinate, with all the morbid phenomena of isolation, dejection of the spirits, and abnormal exaltation of the powers of wit and ratiocination, without some considerable impairment, derangement, disturbance, or modification, of the psychical, motorial, and sensorial functions of the great cerebral ganglion. But it would be equally absurd to presuppose that these several functions can be disarranged for months, without more or less disorganisation of the medullary, or even of the cineritious, matter of the encephialon. Therefore—dissection of your talented son would doubtless reveal at this moment either steatonatous or atheromatous deposits in the cerebral blood-vessels, or an encysted abscess, probably of no very recent origin, or, at the least, considerable inspissation, and opacity, of the membranes of the encephalon, or more or less pulpy disorganisation of one or other of the hemispheres of the brain: good morning!!”
“Good morning, sir: and a thousand thanks for your friemidly interest in my unhappy boy.”
The Psycho-cerebrals “took their departure” (Psycho-cerebral for “went away”), and left Jane Hardie brimful of anxiety. Alfred was not there to dispose of the tirade in two words “Petitio principii,” and so smoke on; and, not being an university woman, she could not keep her eye on the original assumption while following the series of inferences the learned doctor built so neatly, story by story, on the foundation of the quicksand of a loose conjecture.*
* So novices sitting at a conjuror see him take a wedding-
ring, and put it in a little box before a lady; then cross
the theatre with another little box, and put that before
another lady: “Hey! presto! pass!” in box 2 is discovered a
wedding-ring, which is instantly assumed to be the ring:
on this the green minds are fixed, and with this is sham
business done: Box 1, containing the real ring all the time,
is overlooked: and the confederate, in livery or not, does
what he likes with it; imprisons it in an orange—for the
good of its health.
So poor Argan, when Fleurant enumerates the consequences of his omitting a single—dose shall I say?—is terrified by the threatened disorders, which succeed to each other logically enough: all the absurdity being in the first link of the chain; and from that his mind is diverted.——
“Now not a word of this to Alfred,” said Mr. Hardie. “I shall propose him a little foreign tour, to amuse his mind.”
“Yes, but papa, if some serious change is really going on inside his poor head.”