TO GEORGE M. GOULD
New Orleans, 1887.
In reply to nearly all the questions about my near-sightedness, I might answer, “Yes.” Had the best advice in London. Observe all the rules you suggest. Glasses strain the eye too much—part of retina is gone. Other eye destroyed by a blow at college; or rather by inflammation consequent upon blow. Can tell you more about myself when I see you, but the result will be more curious than pleasing. Myopia is not aggravating.
I knew you were going to have thorough success;—you will do far better than you think. Wish I had the opportunity to study medicine, or rather, the ability to be a good physician. Ah! to have a profession is to be rich, to have international current-money, a gold that is cosmopolitan, passes everywhere. Then I think I would never settle down in any place; would visit all, wander about as long as I could. There is such a delightful pleasantness about the first relations with people in strange places—before you have made any rival, excited any ill will, incurred anybody’s displeasure. Stay long enough in any one place and the illusion is over: you have to sift this society through the meshes of your nerves, and find perhaps one good friendship too large to pass through. To be a physician, an architect, an engineer,—anything that makes one capable of supplying to a universal or cosmopolitan want, is a great capital. Next to this, a good tradesman is worthy of envy: he may feel as much at home in Valparaiso as in New York; in Bangkok as in Paris.
Apropos of a medical novel, again,—have you had occasion to remark the fact that among the French, every startling discovery in medicine or those sciences akin to medicine, is almost immediately popularized by a capital story? The best of those I have seen appeared in the Revue Politique et Littéraire and in the Revue des Deux Mondes. The evolution of electricity by the human body suggested a powerful but very Frenchy sketch in the former some years ago, which appeared concomitantly with those theatrical exhibitions of a famous “electrical woman.” Then there was one dealing with the super-refinement of the five senses, particularly vision and smell,—entitled “Un Fou.” The researches of Charcot and others into hypnotism and its phenomena, doubtless suggested “Une Tresse Blonde” in the Revue des Deux Mondes.
It is always a safe and encouraging thing to trace one’s ancestral history, supposing one be very philosophical. In your case it is. A fine physical and mental man can feel sure from the mere fact of his comparative superiority that he has something to thank his ancestors for. But suppose the man be small, puny, sickly, scrofulous,—the question of ancestry becomes unpleasant. We are far ahead of Tristram Shandy, nowadays; the inferiority of the homunculus is no mere matter of accident or interruption. How depressing some knowledge is, and how little philosophy betters the situation some discoveries bring about. Take such an example as this: a nice, sweet girl, full of physical attractiveness, grace, freshness, with a delicious disposition, fascinates you, you think of marriage. Somebody tells you the mother and grandmother both went mad. How much of a change in your admiration is produced by this simple fact. I saw this feeling put into practice. A Southern planter—splendid man!—was asked for his daughter’s hand by a gentleman of the neighbourhood, whose grandfather had committed a terrible crime. The young man was wealthy, accomplished, steady, brave, had the best of reputations and was liked by the girl. The father refused him frankly for the simple reason that he had in his veins some of the blood of a great criminal.
It must have struck you, if you have studied Buddhism—(not “esoteric Buddhism,” which is damnable charlatanism!)—how the tenets of that great faith are convertible into scientific truths in the transforming crucible of the new philosophy. The consequence of the crime or the sacrifice in the forming of the future personality; the heights attainable by discipline, of indifference to external things; the duty and holiness of the extinction of the Self; the monstrous allegory of the physical metempsychosis, which is the shadow of a tremendous truth; the supreme Buddha-hood which is the melting into the infinite life, light, knowledge, and the peace of the immensities: science gives an harmonious commentary upon all these, which it refuses to the more barbarous faith of the Occident. All that is noble in the Christianity, too much boasted of, belongs also to the older and vaster dream of the East—is perchance a dim reflection of it; the possibility of the invasion of the Oriental philosophy into the Occident seems to me worthy of consideration. In the meanwhile, it is unfortunate that such apes as the —— should parade their detestable macaqueries as Buddhism and obtain such hosts of hearers.
Speaking of the sexual sense being “such an infernal liar,” there are reasons that lead me to doubt whether it is all a liar. I think it never tells a physical lie. It only tells an ethical one. The physical memory of the most worthless woman that ever ensnared a man vibrates always afterward with a thrill of pleasure. But that is not really what I intended to say: I want to know if there be any scientific explanation of this fact. A woman wicked enough to tempt a man to cut his mother’s throat may have a peculiar physical magnetism. The touch of her hand in passing, the character of a look from her,—although she be ugly,—may be irresistible, damning. A good woman, beautiful, graceful, infinitely her physical superior, may have no such charm for the same man. Here is a mystery I cannot explain. This phenomenon is especially noticeable in the tropics, where differences of race and race mixture produce astounding sexual variations. Never was there a huger stupidity than the observation that “all women are in one respect alike.” On the contrary, in that one respect they differ infinitely, inexplicably, diabolically, fantastically.
L. H.