“Consider the psychological aspects of the case. With the normal person, who takes his recreations daily, a balance is maintained between the conscious and the unconscious activities: the emotions, being constantly dispersed, are not allowed to accumulate. But with the abnormal person, who spends his entire time in intense mental concentration and who rigorously suppresses all his emotions, the loosening of the subconscious is apt to result in a violent manifestation. This long inhibition and protracted mental application, without recreation or outlet of any kind, causes an explosion which often assumes the form of deeds of unspeakable horror. No human being, however intellectual, can escape the results. The mathematician who repudiates nature’s laws is nevertheless amenable to those laws. Indeed, his rapt absorption in hyperphysical problems merely increases the pressure of his denied emotions. And outraged nature, in order to maintain her balance, produces the most grotesque fulminations—reactions which, in their terrible humor and perverted gaiety, are the exact reverse of the grim seriousness of abstruse mathematical theories. The fact that Sir William Crookes and Sir Oliver Lodge—both great mathematical physicists—became confirmed spiritists, constitutes a similar psychological phenomenon.”
Vance took several deep inhalations on his cigarette.
“Markham, there’s no escaping the fact: these fantastic and seemingly incredible murders were planned by a mathematician as forced outlets to a life of tense abstract speculation and emotional repression. They fulfil all the indicated requirements: they are neat and precise, beautifully worked out, with every minute factor fitting snugly in place. No loose ends, no remainders, apparently no motive. And aside from their highly imaginative precision, all their indications point unmistakably to an abstrusely conceptive intelligence on the loose—a devotee of pure science having his fling.”
“But why their grisly humor?” asked Markham. “How do you reconcile the Mother-Goose phase of them with your theory?”
“The existence of inhibited impulses,” explained Vance, “always produces a state favorable to humor. Dugas designates humor as a ‘détente’—a release from tension; and Bain, following Spencer, calls humor a relief from restraint. The most fertile field for a manifestation of humor lies in accumulated potential energy—what Freud calls Besetzungsenergie—which in time demands a free discharge. In these Mother-Goose crimes we have the mathematician reacting to the most fantastic of frivolous acts in order to balance his superserious logical speculations. It’s as if he were saying cynically: ‘Behold! This is the world that you take so seriously because you know nothing of the infinitely larger abstract world. Life on earth is a child’s game—hardly important enough to make a joke about.’ . . . And such an attitude would be wholly consistent with psychology; for after any great prolonged mental strain one’s reactions will take the form of reversals—that is to say, the most serious and dignified will seek an outlet in the most childish games. Here, incidentally, you have the explanation for the practical joker with his sadistic instincts. . . .
“Moreover, all sadists have an infantile complex. And the child is totally amoral. A man, therefore, who experiences these infantile psychological reversals is beyond good and evil. Many modern mathematicians even hold that all convention, duty, morality, good, and the like, could not exist except for the fiction of free will. To them the science of ethics is a field haunted by conceptual ghosts; and they even arrive at the disintegrating doubt as to whether truth itself is not merely a figment of the imagination. . . . Add to these considerations the sense of earthly distortion and the contempt for human life which might easily result from the speculations of higher mathematics, and you have a perfect set of conditions for the type of crimes with which we are dealing.”
When Vance had finished speaking Markham sat silent for a long time. Finally he moved restively.
“I can understand,” he said, “how these crimes might fit almost any of the persons involved. But, on the basis of your argument, how do you account for the notes to the press?”
“Humor must be imparted,” returned Vance. “ ‘A jest’s prosperity lies in the ear of him who hears it.’ Also, the impulse toward exhibitionism enters into the present case.”
“But the ‘Bishop’ alias?”