But having lost that, your very spirit has dissolved into these strange illuminations which you call thought, but which I fear are only the ghostly rays of a Nirvana intelligence. With you life is but a breath without form, a whisper out of your long eternity. And I confess that to me the impression of a man not being at home in his own body is nothing short of terrifying.
You were not expecting so fierce a criticism of your own book from one of your own reviewers, I suspect. Ah, but your “Three Commands” have laid me under a spell. I cannot say anything about them without saying too much; and I am a little rebellious.
X
JESSICA TO PHILIP
My dear Mr. Towers:
I have not replied earlier to your letter on the problem of consciousness, because I was waiting to read Dr. Minot’s article. At last I got hold of the magazine, and so far from finding your comments “a tangle of crude ideas,” they have even proved suggestive—perhaps not in the way you expected. For following your line of thought, I wondered if it could have been some violent death-rate among our own species that has produced that desperate phenomenon, the literary consciousness of the historical novelist I have been reviewing for you. And, come to think of it, I do not know any other class of people whose problem of consciousness could be so readily reduced to a “bionomical” platitude. They all write for the same slaying purpose. Did you ever observe how few of their characters survive the ordeals of art? Usually it is the long-lost heroine, and the hero, “wounded unto death” however, and one has the impression that even these would not have lived so long but for the necessity of the final page.
But I must not fail to tell you of a dramatic episode in connection with my first venture into the realm of biological thought. The Popular Science Monthly has long been proscribed at the parsonage on account of its heretical tendencies. And my purpose was to keep a profound secret the fact that I had purchased a copy containing Minot’s article. But some demon prompted me to inquire of my father the meaning of the term “epiphenomenon.” Now a long association with the idea of omniscience has rendered him wiser in consciousness than in fact, which is a joke the imagination often plays upon serious people. But he could neither give a definition nor find the word in his ancient Webster. This dictionary is his only unquestioned authority outside the Holy Scriptures, and he declines to accept any word not vouched for by this venerable authority. Therefore he reasoned that “epiphenomenon” had been built up to accommodate some modern theory of thought, some new leprosy of the mind never dreamed of by the noble lexicographer. And so, fixing me with a pair of accusing glasses, he inquired:
“My daughter, where did you see this remarkable word?”
I do not question that I am a direct descendant from my fictitious grandmother, Eve! I am always being tempted by apples of information, and I have often known the mortifying sensation of wishing to hide my guilty countenance in my more modern petticoat on that account.
He read the “blasphemous” article through, only pausing to point out heresies and perversions of the sacred truth as he went along. But when he reached the sentence in which the author calmly asserts the theory of monism, he actually gagged with indignation: “My child, do you know that this godless wretch claims that the same principle of life which makes the cabbage also vitalises man?” I looked horrified, but I could barely restrain my laughter; for, indeed, there are “flat-dutch”-headed gentlemen in his congregation who might as well have come up at the end of a cabbage stalk for all the thinking they do. But I need not tell you that the magazine containing the profane treatise on consciousness was burned, while a livid picture was drawn of my own future if I persisted in stealing forbidden fruit from this particular tree of knowledge.
But your last letter put me into a more serious frame of mind. And I am complimented that you entertain the hope that I may be of assistance in re-establishing the lost bond between you and real life. But do you know that you have appealed to the missionary instincts of a barbarian? The attributes of patience and indulgence do not belong to natures like mine. Never has any affliction worked out patience in me, never has my strongest affection taken the form of indulgence. In me Love and Friendship, Sorrow and Gladness, take fiercer forms of expression.
But I will not conceal from you the fact that from the first I have felt in our relationship a curious sensation of magic in one opposed to mystery in the other. I have felt the abandon and madness of a happy dancer, whirling around the dim edge of your shadow-land in the wild expectation of beholding the disembodied spirit of you come forth to join me. It is not that I wished to work a charm, but the shadow of your mysterious life draws me into the opposition of a counter-influence. The gift of power is not in me to set foot across the magic line into the dim land of your soul, any more than I could dissolve into a breath of moonlit air, or a wave of the sea. For, in you, I seem to perceive some strange phenomenon of a spirit changed to twilight gloom which covers all your hills and valleys with the mournful shadow of approaching night. Often this conception appalls me, but more frequently I conceive a wild energy from the idea, as of one sent to rim the shadows in close and closer till some star shall shine down and bless them into heroic form and substance. And I have been amazed to find within my mind a witch’s charm for working rainbow miracles upon your dim sky—but so it is. There have always been mad moments in my life when I have felt all-powerful, as if I had got hold of the ribbon ends of an incantation! This is another one of my limitations at which you must not laugh. For a juggler must be taken seriously, or he juggles in vain; he must have an opportunity to create the necessary illusion in you to insure the success of his performance. Meanwhile, I go to make the circle of my dance smaller; who knows but to-morrow I may be a snow-bunting on your tall cliffs, or a little homeless wren seeking shelter in your valley.
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