I returned, therefore, to France, and settled down in a remote corner of the provinces, to exercise my profession as a country physician. After the accumulated anguish of the last few months, the quiet dulness of the place was infinitely grateful to me. I was like a bruised swimmer, tossed upon a monotonous sandbank, who only asks to be left there in peace, until long repose has rested the aching limbs, and blunted the harrowing recollections of the shipwreck. The incessant excitement of Paris was intolerable to me, and scarcely less so the idea of revisiting its troops of sympathetic friends. They would proffer venal consolation for the loss of my wife and children; they would congratulate me maliciously on my conversion from ultra-montanism. I shrank from their curious eyes and voluble tongues, as a wounded man from the glittering apparatus of the surgeon, and like him turned over my face to the wall, to sleep.
Two years thus passed away—two years of mornings and evenings, following one another in calm succession, like a row of stolid peasant gleaners going to the fields. I became inexpressibly soothed by their calm, and by the nice tact and exquisite courtesy of Nature, with whom I had done well to take refuge. She is never astonished, she asks no impertinent questions, but welcomes her guests with even suavity, like a liberal host, throwing open to them drawing-room or garret, as may best please their fancy. The growing trees had no time to turn round to look at me; the contended hills embraced me in their arms, and let me pass without a word; the grain ripened in the mellow autumn days, unheeding the little shadow that I threw across its sunshine. This preoccupied indifference of all living things, which would initiate a mere vexation, clamorous for sympathy, is like blessed balm to the sufferer from a profound grief or mortification. Counsel is good, friendliness precious, while anything remains to be done to avert an impending calamity. But pitying words over an accomplished and irremediable misfortune, serve only to revive useless pain, and blunder, like a man who should try to force open the eyelids of a corpse. Nature, wiser than officious human tenderness, takes the sorrow coolly, as a matter of course, and in silence buries it out of sight among a million others, already thickly strewn with withered leaves. And, in presence of her imperturbable serenity during the blackest days of frost and winter, the sufferer becomes insensibly inspired with her unspoken confidence in the final return of spring. The people of the village and the farms, rooted as their own beeches, reflected back upon Nature the same immovable calm. They did not disturb themselves about me, because my rôle in society was so evident, respectable, and satisfactory, that I offered no foothold for either curiosity or scandal. I had been sent by Providence and the Faculty of Medicine to cure their not too frequent rheumatisms and catarrhs; I acquitted myself not ill of my business,—they asked no more,—and neither offered nor expected personal interest or friendship.
As the months rolled on, I became more interested than formerly in medical reading. Absorbed entirely in my books, I even fancied that the healing apathy which sheltered my life was growing more profound. This was a mistake; the thickening of the vapors that shut out the external world, really denoted that they were about to condense and precipitate themselves into a new creation. New interests were preparing, that should presently claim from my nature all the energy, enthusiasm, and passion which had once been devoted to the old. Of this I became aware in the following manner. One day, among a package of books sent to me from Paris, arrived a pamphlet just written in defence of a new theory concerning the movements of the human heart. My curiosity was excited by the idea of a new theory on such a famous subject, and my interest was by no means abated after perusal of the pamphlet. Exposition of this theory would demand a crowd of technical details, unintelligible to the general reader, and therefore inappropriate in this place. But let such an one take the trouble to listen for a moment to the ticking of a heart, seemingly so monotonous, simple, and easy to understand, and then reflect that the slight elements discoverable in this little sound, have been forced by human intellect into at least twenty different combinations, and afforded ground for as many theories, each defended with impassioned earnestness by a different observer. He may then realize something of the interest which attaches to the explanation of this phenomenon—may even experience a sort of mental vertigo, as if he had witnessed the evolution of a world out of nothing. Owing to the paucity of the facts to be observed, the finesse requisite for the observation, and the intellectual dexterity needed to retain such minute circumstances before the mind long enough to think about them, the problem is one of the most delicate and intricate offered by physiological science. Once engaged in its discussion, the mind becomes hopelessly fascinated, and continues to pirouette about an invisible point, that is neither a thought nor a material phenomenon, but, as it were, a refined essence of both.
As in all series of vital actions, each item of the phenomenon in question is so interlinked with the rest, that an explanation of a part can never be considered final, so long as any problem remains unresolved. The latest experimentator, brooding over hitherto neglected details, may always hope to light upon some clue that shall unravel the entire entanglement in a different manner, and reform upon a new basis ideas now grouped in pretended fixity. The excitement caused by this possibility is amply sufficient to stimulate research. And there is no need to discover an immediate practical application for the theory in order to bait the interest of vulgar minds. These would always be incapable of such difficult investigations, while really competent students were supremely indifferent to all lesser advantages attached to the discovery of truth. As for me, I had been so long removed from active life and its necessities (for my professional career had as yet been too facile and commonplace to arouse me to them), that the impractical character of the subject constituted for me an additional charm. I recognized that it belonged, for the present at least, to the region of pure thought, pure science, accessible only to intelligences refined by nature, and enriched by superior culture. In addition, therefore, to the intrinsic interest of the problem, and the solid satisfaction arising from acute intellectual activity, I could, in pursuit of this theme, experience all the subtle pleasure derived from a consciousness of personal superiority—pleasure as attainable in solitude as elsewhere since the superiority was too real and unquestionable to require the confirmatory suffrage of the crowd.
I abandoned all other studies, and threw myself impetuously into the current of these newly-received ideas. I ransacked my library, from Herophilus to Haller, from Galen to Helmholtz. England, Germany, Italy, France yielded up their tribute to my excited curiosity. And the theme, shifted, refracted from intellect to intellect, multiplied itself to bewildering complexity.
Not content with reading, I performed experiments, repeating those of my predecessors, and inventing new to control their conclusions. “With my own hands I stirred the soil, fetid and palpitating with life,” and in this inmost intimacy with Nature felt myself grow strong, as Antæus by contact with the mother earth. Thus roused from my long torpor into the most intense activity,—for all activity is slack in comparison with that of thought,—I became dissatisfied with the facility of my present surroundings. I was anxious to pit myself against the world of Paris. I wanted opposition, contradiction, in order to vanquish them, and absorb their force into the glory of my triumph. Moreover, my studies had now reached a point where they required the assistance that could only be obtained in a great city: in a word, I resolved to return to the capital, for a longer or shorter time, as the sequel should prove desirable. My means rendered me independent of my clientèle, and I left my patients without regret to the care of an easily procured substitute. It is so rare to alight upon an interesting case in the country! Nothing but rheumatism and measles, measles and rheumatism, and never an autopsy,—it is as monotonous as the treatment of fever and ague. I longed for the vast metropolitan hospitals, containing specimens of every shade of disease, and affording unlimited opportunities for auscultation. Of these I stood especially in need, for the train of thought suggested by physiological experiment must be completed by pathological researches, which could only be carried on at Paris.
To Paris, therefore, I came, as to a new world, so completely had I been separated from it during the two last years. It was as if one of the spirits in the metempsychosis imagined by Fourier, had returned to the brilliant sphere from which death had driven him in temporary exile. I was at first enchanted, intoxicated. The mental activity which had seemed so intense in the sluggish province, needed to be quickened fourfold to keep abreast of the intellects with which I entered into relation, and the consciousness of the quickening affected me as with new wine. But, as I grew accustomed to my new medium, I became again subtly dissatisfied. It was not enough to be abreast of the world, I wanted to be a little ahead. In my solitude it was easy to cherish illusions concerning the value of my own work, to picture myself as a mighty and triumphant wrestler with Nature, capable, by his single strength, of forcing her reluctant secrets, to reveal them afterwards to an admiring world. But at Paris, with its enormous condensation of intellectual force, I could not flatter myself on the solitary greatness of my achievements, nor ignore the collective action of society. Whatever my attainment, I should be forced to share its fame with a hundred other workers, who had lent me, unasked, their aid. The distance between the person who uttered the last word, and him who said the next to the last, was infinitesimal, and this close proximity annoyed me. I longed for some brilliant occasion to surpass all my contemporaries in one great bound; an opportunity to bestow on science and humanity some unique benefit that could never be compared with those accumulated by lesser men. One day, revolving many things in my mind, I entered the Bibliothèque Impériale. Strolling idly past the grated bookcases, my attention was attracted by the title of a thin folio, wedged in between Lavater and Geoffroy St. Hilaire. An inexplicable impulse led me to demand this book, the “History of Vesalius and his Times.” I had no particular reason, that I knew of, to be interested in Vesalius; I merely followed an idle whim, suggested rather by the peculiar shape and position of the folio, than by any solid reason; and this whim did not hurry me out of my lounging mood. I settled myself in one of the windows, and leisurely turned over the leaves of my book, reading a line here and a phrase there, until I alighted and settled upon the following passage: “So the rumor spread abroad that Vesalius had opened the chest of a living man to see his heart beat. And upon that the people were in a fury and the court hissed with rage, and Vesalius was obliged to flee from Spain before the power of the Inquisition; and some say that he then made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. But on his return he was shipwrecked on a desolate island and perished miserably. Hubert, in his Vindiciæ contra tyrannus reports this history to the eternal shame of the Jesuits.”
The world often describes with minuteness the material framework of such noisy events as have impressed its coarse sensibilities. But it commonly neglects, because ignoring, the scenes wherein have taken place the crises of thought, or occurred the birth of new, indomitable ideas. To the thinker, however, such outer scenes remain inextricably associated with the thought that has sprung to life in their midst. To this day I preserve a vivid recollection of every item of the place where I read the story of Vesalius; the lofty reading-room, with its confused lining of many-colored books, the tables crowded by eager students, the broad, deep windows through which the sun streamed, and from which I, sitting with open folio on my lap, watched the shifting fountain and the swaying trees and the long, untrimmed grass in the courtyard below. For the story seemed to have laid hold of my inmost soul, and touched the spring of a long-hidden desire. Why I was so moved, I could not tell. What issue would open to this whirlpool of vague excitement in which I had fallen, I had no idea. But I was profoundly conscious both of the excitement and the emotion, and, with that refined epicureanism of which intellectual people alone are capable, I abandoned myself, for a time, to the subtle luxury of their enjoyment.
My reverie was interrupted by the clanging of the great clock and the scarcely less harsh voice of the gardien as he announced the hour for closing the library. Still wrapped in fantastic meditation, I descended the stairs to the street, and followed the rue Richelieu to the boulevard, there to mingle with the human stream that endlessly encircled the city like a new army of Gideon. Drifting in the current, I reached the Bastile, crossed the Pont d’Austerlitz, gained the Boulevard de l’Hôpital and continued walking to the Invalides, to the Avenues Jena and Wagram, and from the Place des Ternes, all along the exterior rampart. And as I walked, my entangled thoughts gradually disengaged themselves into clearness and precision.
The biographer of Vesalius, who evidently shared the prejudices of the people, had exerted himself strenuously to disprove the calumny attached to the name of the great anatomist. He, like the rest, was blinded by that vulgar egotism which clamorously prefers the interests of individuals to those of society,—egotism no less short-sighted than vulgar, for the large and abstract interests cared for by science are precisely those which shall ultimately affect the greatest number of individuals; and no less inconsequent than short-sighted, since no one hesitates to ruin entire hosts of individuals upon the faintest chance of promoting the material interests of society. A stock company may immolate hundreds during the construction of a Panama railroad—a sovereign sacrifice thousands in the contest for a Crimean peninsula; the hue and cry only begins when the savant modestly begs permission to utilize a single life for the advancement of science. He is execrated as a monster, and burned alive in expiation of his crime. Absurd inconsistency, trivial superstition! from which it is time that at least the scientific world were emancipated. Long enough has the ignorant rabble exercised brute tyranny over intellects towering above its comprehension. The time for concession is past, the moment has arrived for the savant to assume the sway that rightfully devolves upon him and declare the confiscation of all claims to the supreme interest of the search after truth.