And now another question arose to my lips.
"Since you have clearly proved that the mad are capable of performing any kind of task, will you tell me why you give yourself the lie by placing at the head of The Open Door a man who appears to me in possession of all his faculties?"
"Yes; that is a weakness," replied the Doctor, laughing. "But, after all, what proof have you that I am not literally fulfilling all my own conditions? Did I not tell you that one of my patients, who may quite possibly be the most enlightened of us all, pronounced me a raving lunatic when I invited him to work? If he is right, then all is as it should be at The Open Door."
I did not wish to vex the kindly doctor, who is the architect of so admirable a monument, but there was still a doubt in my mind: Was it possible to give the illusion of freedom to these madmen by merely suppressing the walls? They offer no resistance when called to co-operate in all kinds of open-air labour, and find, if not a cure, at least relief from their malady in this simple treatment; but did they really believe themselves free? I did not ask the question, for the answer was given by an old French gardener, one of the inmates of The Open Door, who, over-excited by our presence there, suddenly began to rave.
"For twenty-five years," he shrieked, "you have kept me prisoner here!"
Here, then, was a man whose life was spent out of doors at the work with which he had been familiar all his life, and, although no sign of restraint was visible, he was conscious of imprisonment. It is true that modern determinism has reduced what we call our "liberty" to the rigorous fatality of an organism which leaves to us merely the illusion of free will, [13] while imposing on us the impulse of some superior energy that we are forced to obey. Oh, Madness! Oh, Wisdom! Oh, vacillating sisters! is it indeed true that you wander hand in hand through the world?
To whatever philosophic solution our own madness or reason may lead us, let us hasten to conclude the subject by stating that The Open Door is a model establishment, which, thanks to Dr. Cabred, enables the Argentine to give the lead to older peoples. I will only add that it is the rarest thing for a patient to escape (if I may use so unsuitable a word), since the natural conditions of the surrounding Pampas would render life therein impossible; and the lunatics on the way to recovery who are given leave of absence to stay a few days with their friends before being finally set at liberty invariably return punctually to the colony. Who can tell if some lunatic, restored to reason, might not secretly refuse to believe himself cured, and elect to pass the rest of his days happily at work under the glorious sky amongst these peaceful creatures, where the troubles and worries of the world, with the eternal competition and conflict which are the scourge of our "sane" existence, are unfelt and unknown? Such a case might lead Dr. Cabred to put up a similar establishment for the wise.
From the lunatic asylum to the prison is not such a leap as some of us may think. The asylum lifts out of the relative orderliness that we have managed to establish in the conditions of civilised life all those who, by lack of mental balance, might introduce unbearable disorder. And might not this elemental definition be equally applied to the one or the other class of unfortunates? I beg my reader not to be alarmed at the fearful gravity of the problem. If it be true that no philosopher has ever been able to find a solid foundation for the right that man has assumed to "punish" his fellows for transgressing his laws, at least all will readily admit that, notwithstanding some obvious imperfections, society has attained to manifest superiority over the state of barbarism in which brute force alone rules, and that it is therefore inadmissible that those who would transgress the general laws on which society has been based should be allowed to destroy the fabric so laboriously built up.
In moving out of its path those who would live within its pale in defiance of its laws, society but exercises its natural right. [14] The real question open to dispute is rather the treatment to be meted out to these rebels. In the primitive code of the talion nothing was more simple—an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth—thou hast killed; I kill thee. Thou hast inflicted injuries; I in my turn shall injure thee, and I expect to deter thee from future crimes by fear of the pain in store for thee. Such "justice" has the double advantage of being speedy and readily comprehended of a rudimentary intelligence as long as the temptation has been resisted. But when evil instincts, that none asks of Nature, have caused the fall of delinquents, the morbid moral sense, more or less distorted, which urged them on to violent deeds, makes them conscious solely of the violence of which they are now the object, and drives them to take sinister revenge. Thus they are prevented from exercising their calmer judgment, from which, by the mere force of reaction, there might spring a desire and hope for a new life within the pale of the established order of things.