“The disease from which you are suffering is disgust for all activity and contempt for all mankind. This disease usually attacks the children or grand-children of writers, scientists, artists, sometimes also of State officials, the kind that have spent all their lives in pouring over State archives or other papers. Their mental overwork, at the expense of physical strength, leaves indelible traces, and has to be paid for by their children, who always have morbid desires for some fantastic existence invented by their own imaginations, and find real life dull and colourless. As soon as they are over the borders of childhood, they begin, like ancient Israel, to dispute and struggle with God. They refuse to accept the humanity He has created, with all its faults and failings; they invent their own fanciful heroes, and demand of God that He should give these imaginary creatures life. It is principally women in whom this morbid contempt for human nature manifests itself. The girl, indeed, is rare who does not, on getting married, attempt to remodel her husband according to her own ideas. She tries to turn a passionate worldling into a monk, prepares to metamorphose a pensive lover of solitude into a brilliant society dandy, or forces a pleasure-loving social lion into the narrow circle of her domestic interests. And the poor deluded creature never for a moment doubts the success of her efforts. ‘I shall only have to be insistent, and to give him no peace,’ she thinks, ‘and all will be as I wish.’
“Some women, indeed, shatter their happiness in this way, and to the end of their lives never realize their mistake. Of course, this ridiculous feature of their characters proves the profound depths of ignorance in which women are still groping, in spite of their superficial, if sometimes apparently brilliant, intellectual attainments. Were their mental development less shallow, they would understand that God cannot for their pleasure entirely remodel a completed creation. This seems, indeed, a very simple fact, but it is surprising how few women can grasp it. Most of my morbid types try to escape from the prose of life by means of operas, novels, dreams, and in this way they only broaden the gulf that separates them from their more reasonable fellow-creatures. They feel that happiness is their birthright, and they torment themselves because they cannot attain it. Time passes, and brings disillusionment, since the world refuses to conform itself to vain fancies. And then begins the quarrel with God.
“‘Send me a man after my own heart,’ cry the poor deluded ones to the Almighty, often with bitter tears. ‘Then I shall be happy, will believe in Thy might, and will bless and praise Thy name. I despise the low, sinful people by whom I am surrounded, and I suffer through this very fact. I long to bow my head before some nobler being, some man who has only virtues, and to whom I could all my life look up in adoration.’
“What answer can God give to such prayers, however sincere and agonized they may be? They remain ungranted, and little by little they turn into murmurs, discontent, and finally, unbelief.
“‘Were there a God,’ think these unfortunates, with a burning sense of injustice, ‘He would pay attention to my sufferings. Once He remains silent, this proves that He does not exist.’
“The only result is a wrecked life, void of happiness, and without benefit to anybody.
“Such diseased characters ought to be treated and cured in childhood. Their interest in life should be artificially educated. Novels and operas should be strictly forbidden. They should be taught history and medical science, and they should be made to work in hospitals, in order to overcome that unnatural disgust for mere physical life, which is one of their chief characteristics. They should be trained to observe their surroundings, even to express in writing their impressions of people with whom they come in contact, and to make logical deductions on the subject of the probable futures of these people. In a word, to attach these sick creatures to earth, one must convince them that there exists nothing so interesting as humanity. Only when observation and interest in their fellow-creatures becomes a habit, will they understand the object of life. Instead of contempt, their hearts will be filled with profound pity. It is themselves, indeed, that one cannot at present regard without pity, these hapless sufferers from a deep-seated moral disease. Rancour, greed, envy, voluptuousness, cruelty, these are all spiritual ailments, needing special doctors and special medicines.”
“But—” stammered Irene, “these are sins, and not diseases. You are preaching some entirely new theory.”
“No; it only seems new to you, but it is actually as old as the hills. Shakespeare already described, in Othello, the symptoms of the disease of jealousy, and in Hamlet, again, he showed us a soul paralyzed by excessive self-analysis. Read the monologue of Pouschkin’s ‘Avaricious Knight,’ and you will agree that this is the monologue of a madman. Compare him with Molière’s ‘Miser,’ and you will notice that both the writers have emphasized the characteristic feature of all misers: hatred of their children. Ask any doctor, and he will tell you that mental patients, in almost every case, lose the capacity to love or take an interest in their relations and friends, sometimes, indeed, manifesting a violent animosity towards them.