"His first visit to the dissecting room was disagreeable. The odor of putrid flesh, the sight of the mutilated bodies repulsed him. When first his hand, warm in life, touched the clammy flesh of a corpse, he shuddered. Then when his fingers came in contact with the viscera of a cadaver, that of a little child, he cried out in horror. The demonstrator of anatomy urged him on; he finally was induced to dissect part of the infant. The reflex action on his sensitive mind first stunned, and then warped his senses. His companions had to lead him from the room. 'Wash it off, wash it off,' he repeated, trying to throw his hand from his person. 'Horrid, horrible, unclean. The child is yet before me,' he insisted. Then he went into a fever and raved. 'Some mother will meet me on the street and curse me,' he cried. "That hand is red with the blood of my darling; it has desecrated the innocent dead, and mutilated that which is most precious to a mother." Take the hand away, wash it,' he shouted. 'The mother curses me; she demands retribution. Better that a man be dead than cursed by a mother whose child has been desecrated.' So the unfortunate being raved, dreaming all manner of horrid imaginings. But at last he recovered, a different man. He returned voluntarily to the dissecting-room, and wrapped himself in the uncouth work. Nothing in connection with corpse-mutilation was now offensive or unclean. He threw aside his other studies, he became a slave possessed of one idea. He scarcely took time to dine respectably; indeed, he often ate his lunch in the dissecting-room. The blood of a child was again and again on his fingers; it mattered not, he did not take the trouble to wash it off. 'The liver of man is not more sacred than the liver of a hog,' he argued; 'the flesh of a man is the same as other forms of animal food. When a person dies the vital heat escapes, consciousness is dissipated, and the cold, rigid remains are only animal. Consciousness and life are all that is of man—one is force, the other matter; when man dies both perish and are dissipated.' His friends perceived his fondness for dissection, and argued with him again, endeavoring now to overcome his infatuation; he repelled them. 'I learned in my vision,' he said, referring to his fever, 'that Pope was right in saying that the "proper study of mankind is man"; I care nothing for your priestly superstitions concerning the dead. These fables are the invention of designing churchmen who live on the superstitions of the ignorant. I am an infidel, and believe in no spirit intangible; that which can be seen, felt, and weighed is, all else is not. Life is simply a sensation. All beyond is chimerical, less than fantastic, believed in only by dupes and weak-minded, credulous tools of knaves, or creatures of blind superstition.' He carried the finely articulated, bleached skull of a cadaver to his room, and placed it beside a marble statue that was a valued heirloom, the model of Venus of Milo. 'Both are lime compounds,' he cynically observed, 'neither is better than the other.' His friends protested. 'Your superstitious education is at fault,' he answered; 'you mentally clothe one of these objects in a quality it does not deserve, and the thought creates a pleasant emotion. The other, equally as pure, reminds you of the grave that you fear, and you shudder. These mental pulsations are artificial, both being either survivals of superstition, or creations of your own mind. The lime in the skull is now as inanimate as that of the statue; neither object is responsible for its form, neither is unclean. To me, the delicate configuration, the exact articulation, the perfect adaptation for the office it originally filled, makes each bone of this skull a thing of beauty, an object of admiration. As a whole, it gives me pleasure to think of this wonderful, exquisitely arranged piece of mechanism. The statue you admire is in every respect outrivaled by the skull, and I have placed the two together because it pleases me to demonstrate that man's most artistic creation is far inferior to material man. Throw aside your sentimental prejudices, and join with me in the admiration of this thing of beauty;' and he toyed with the skull as if it were a work of art. So he argued, and arguing passed from bone to bone, and from organ to organ. He filled his room with abnormal fragments of the human body, and surrounded himself with jars of preserved anatomical specimens. His friends fled in disgust, and he smiled, glad to be alone with his ghastly subjects. He was infatuated in one of the alcoves of science."
The old man paused.
"Shall I proceed?" he asked.
"Yes," I said, but involuntarily moved my chair back, for I began again to be afraid of the speaker.
"At last this scientific man had mastered all that was known concerning physiology and anatomy. He learned by heart the wording of great volumes devoted to these subjects. The human frame became to him as an open book. He knew the articulation of every muscle, could name a bone from a mere fragment. The microscope ceased to be an object of interest, the secrets of pathology and physiology had been mastered. Then, unconsciously, he was infected by another tendency; a new thought was destined to dominate his brain. 'What is it that animates this frame? What lies inside to give it life?' He became enthused again: 'The dead body, to which I have given my time, is not the conscious part of man,' he said to himself; 'I must find this thing of life within; I have been only a butcher of the dead. My knowledge is superficial.'"
Again the old man hesitated and looked at me inquiringly.
"Shall I proceed?" he repeated.
I was possessed by horror, but yet fascinated, and answered determinedly: "Go on."
"Beware," he added, "beware of the Science of Life."
Pleadingly he looked at me.