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43 - Centaur by Algernon Blackwood · Centaur

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  Speaker 1: Chapter forty three of The Centaur by Alginnon Blackwood. This
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  Speaker 1: liberyvox recording is in the public domain. Read by organand
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  Speaker 1: The Centaur, Chapter forty three. And then at length there
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  Speaker 1: came a change of voice across the cabin. The Irishman
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  Speaker 1: had finished. He sank back in the deep leather chair,
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  Speaker 1: exhausted physically, but with the exultation of his mighty hope
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  Speaker 1: still pouring at full strength through his heart. For he
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  Speaker 1: had ventured further than ever before, and had spoken of
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  Speaker 1: a possible crusade, a crusade that should preach peace and
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  Speaker 1: happiness to every living creature. And Doctor Stall, in a
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  Speaker 1: voice that showed how deeply he was mood, asked quietly,
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  Speaker 1: by leading the nations back to nature, you think they
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  Speaker 1: will advance to truth at last, with time, was he reply.
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  Speaker 1: The first tip lies there in changing the direction of
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  Speaker 1: the world's activities, changing it from the transient outer to
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  Speaker 1: the eternal inner. In the simple life, external possessions unnecessary
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  Speaker 1: and recognized as vein, the soul would turn within and
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  Speaker 1: seek reality, while your tiny section of humanity has time
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  Speaker 1: to do it now. There is no leisure. Civilization means
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  Speaker 1: acquirement for the body it ought to mean development for
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  Speaker 1: the soul. Once sweep aside the trash and rubbish, men
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  Speaker 1: seek outside themselves to day, and the wings of their
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  Speaker 1: smathered souls would stir again. Consciousness would expand nature would
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  Speaker 1: draw them. First, they would come to feel the earth
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  Speaker 1: as I did. Self would disappear, and with it this
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  Speaker 1: false sense of separateness. The greater consciousness would waken in them.
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  Speaker 1: The peace and joy and blessedness of inner growth would
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  Speaker 1: fill their lives. But first, this childish battling to death
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  Speaker 1: for external things must cease, and civilization stand revealed. For
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  Speaker 1: the bleak and empty, desolate things it really is. It
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  Speaker 1: leads away from God and from the things that are eternal.
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  Speaker 1: The German made no answer. O'Malley ceased speak. A long
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  Speaker 1: silence fell between them. Then presently Stall relighted his cigar, and,
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  Speaker 1: lapsing into his native tongue, always a sign with him
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  Speaker 1: of deepest seriousness, she began to talk. You have honored me,
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  Speaker 1: he said, with a great confidence, And I am deeply,
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  Speaker 1: deeply grateful. You have told your innermost dream, the thing
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  Speaker 1: men find it hardest of all to speak about, he
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  Speaker 1: felt in the darkness, for his companion's hand and held
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  Speaker 1: it tightly for a moment. He made no other comment
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  Speaker 1: upon what he had heard, and in return, in some
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  Speaker 1: small way of return, he continued, I may ask you
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  Speaker 1: to listen to something of my own, something of possible interest.
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  Speaker 1: No one has ever known it from my lips. While
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  Speaker 1: he in our earlier conversation on the outward voyage, I
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  Speaker 1: hinted at it once or twice. I sometimes warned you.
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  Speaker 1: I remember you said he'd get me win me over.
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  Speaker 1: Appropriation was the word you used. I suggested, caution, yes,
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  Speaker 1: urged to you not to let yourself go too completely,
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  Speaker 1: told you he represented danger to yourself and to humanity
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  Speaker 1: as it is organized to day and all the rest.
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  Speaker 1: Button o'malleya shad impatiently. I remember perfectly, because I knew
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  Speaker 1: what I was talking about. Doctor's voice came across the
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  Speaker 1: darkness somewhat ominously, and then he added, in a louder tone,
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  Speaker 1: evidently sitting forward, as he said it, for the thing
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  Speaker 1: that has happened to yourself, as I foresaw it, what
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  Speaker 1: had already almost happened to me too, to you, doctor too,
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  Speaker 1: exclaimed the irishman in the moment's pause that followed I
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  Speaker 1: saved myself just in time by getting rid of the course.
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  Speaker 1: You discharged him from the hospital because you were afraid.
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  Speaker 1: He said it sharply, as though our instant of old
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  Speaker 1: resentment had flashed him. By way of answer, Stall rose
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  Speaker 1: from his chair and abruptly turned up the electric lamp
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  Speaker 1: upon the desk that faced them across a cabin. Evidently
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  Speaker 1: he preferred the light. O'Mally saw that his face was
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  Speaker 1: white and very grave. He grasped the first time that
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  Speaker 1: the man was speaking professionally. The truth came driving next
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  Speaker 1: behind him, that Stall regarded him as a patient. Please
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  Speaker 1: go on, doctor, he said, keenly on the watch, I
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  Speaker 1: am deeply interested. The wings of his great dream still
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  Speaker 1: bore him too far aloft for him to feel more
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  Speaker 1: than the merest passing annoyance at his discovery resentment had
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  Speaker 1: gone too Sadness and disappointment for an instant touched him, perhaps,
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  Speaker 1: but momentarily. In the end, he felt sure that Stall
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  Speaker 1: would stand at his side, completely worn over and convinced.
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  Speaker 1: You had a similar experience to my own, you say,
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  Speaker 1: he urged him. I'm all eagerness and sympathy to hear.
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  Speaker 1: We'll talk in the open air the doctor answered, and
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  Speaker 1: ringing the bell for the steward to clear away, he
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  Speaker 1: drew his companion out to the deserted texts. They moved
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  Speaker 1: towards the bows, past the sleeping pasens. The stars were
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  Speaker 1: mirrored in a glassy sea, and toward the north the
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  Speaker 1: hills of Corsica stood faintly outline in the sky. It
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  Speaker 1: was already long after midnight. Yes, a similar thing nearly
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  Speaker 1: happened to me, he resumed, as they settled themselves against
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  Speaker 1: a coil of rope, where only the murmur of the
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  Speaker 1: washing sea could reach them, and might have happened to
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  Speaker 1: others too. Inmates of that big branken horse were variously affected.
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  Speaker 1: My action, Toddy, I must admit, saved myself and them.
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  Speaker 1: And the German then told the story as a man
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  Speaker 1: might tell of his escape from some grave disaster, in
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  Speaker 1: the emphatic sentences of his native language. He told it,
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  Speaker 1: congratulating himself. All through the Russian had almost won him over,
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  Speaker 1: gained possession of his heart and mind, persuaded him, but
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  Speaker 1: in the inn had failed because the other ran away.
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  Speaker 1: It was like hearing a man describe an attempt to
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  Speaker 1: draw him into heaven. Then boast of his escape, His
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  Speaker 1: caution and his judgment, as he put it, saved him.
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  Speaker 1: But to the listening Pelter, it rather seemed that his
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  Speaker 1: compromise it was that damned him. The Kingdom of heaven
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  Speaker 1: is hard to enter for stolid possessions not of the
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  Speaker 1: wood and metal order, but possessions of the brain. In
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  Speaker 1: reson he was too proud to forego completely. They kept
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  Speaker 1: him out with increasing sadness. Too. He heard it, for here,
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  Speaker 1: he realized, was a mental attitude of an educated, highly
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  Speaker 1: civilized man today, a representative type regarded by the world
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  Speaker 1: as highest. It was this he had to face. Moreover,
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  Speaker 1: Stall was more than merely educated. He was understandingly sympathetic,
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  Speaker 1: meeting the great dream half way, seeing in it possibilities,
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  Speaker 1: admitting its high beauty, and even sometimes speaking of it
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  Speaker 1: with hope and a touch of enthusiasm. Its originator. Nonetheless,
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  Speaker 1: he regarded as a reactionary dreamer, an unsettling, disordered influence,
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  Speaker 1: a patient, if not even something verse. Stall's voice and
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  Speaker 1: manner were singular while he told it all, revealing one
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  Speaker 1: moment the critical mind that analyzed and judged, and the
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  Speaker 1: next an enthusiastm almost of the mistake alternately, like the
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  Speaker 1: man and woman of those quaint old weather glasses, each
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  Speaker 1: peered out and showed a face the reins of compromise,
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  Speaker 1: yet ever seeking to hold him well in leisure and
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  Speaker 1: drive them together hardly, it seems, had the strange Russian
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  Speaker 1: been under his care a week before he passed beneath
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  Speaker 1: the sway of his curious personality and experienced the attack
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  Speaker 1: of singular emotions upon his heart and mind. He described
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  Speaker 1: at first the man's arrival, telling it with the calm
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  Speaker 1: and balanced phrases a doctor uses when speaking merely of
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  Speaker 1: a patient who had stirred his interest. He first detailed
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  Speaker 1: the method of suggestion he had used to revive the
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  Speaker 1: lapsed memory, and its utter failure. Then he passed on
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  Speaker 1: to speak of him more generally, but briefly and condensed.
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  Speaker 1: The man, he said, was so engaging, so docile, his
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  Speaker 1: personality altogether so attractive and mysterious, that I took the
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  Speaker 1: case myself instead of delegating it to my assistance. All
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  Speaker 1: efforts to trace his past collapsed. It was as if
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  Speaker 1: he had drifted into that little hotel out of the
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  Speaker 1: night of time of madness. There was no evidence whatever
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  Speaker 1: the association of ideas in his mind, though limited, was
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  Speaker 1: logical and rigid. His health was perfect, barring strange sudden fever.
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  Speaker 1: His vitality tremendous. Yet he ate most sparingly, and the
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  Speaker 1: only food he touched was fruit and milk and vegetables.
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  Speaker 1: Meat made him sick. The huge frame shuddered when he
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  Speaker 1: saw it, and from all the human beings in the
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  Speaker 1: place with whom he came in contact, he shrank with
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  Speaker 1: a kind of puzzled dismay. With animals, most oddly, it
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  Speaker 1: seemed he sought companionship. He would run to the window
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  Speaker 1: of a dog bart or to hear a horse's hoofs.
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  Speaker 1: A Persian cat belonging to one of the nurses never
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  Speaker 1: left his side. And I have seen the trees in
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  Speaker 1: the yard outside his window thick with birds, and even
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  Speaker 1: found them in the room and on the sill, flitting
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  Speaker 1: about his very person, unafraid and singing with me. As
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  Speaker 1: with the attendants. His speech was almost nil, laconic words
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  Speaker 1: in various languages, clipped phrases that sometimes combined Russian, French
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  Speaker 1: or German other tongues as well, But strangest of all,
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  Speaker 1: with animal life, he seemed to hold this kind of
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  Speaker 1: communication that was intelligible both to himself and them. Animals
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  Speaker 1: certainly were aware of him. It was not speech. It
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  Speaker 1: ran in a deep, continuous murmur, like a droning, humming
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  Speaker 1: sound of wind. I took the hint thus faintly offered.
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  Speaker 1: I gave him as freedom in the yards and gardens.
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  Speaker 1: The open air and intercourse with natural life was what
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  Speaker 1: he craved. The sadness and the air of puzzled fretting
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  Speaker 1: then left his face. His eyes grew bright, his whole
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  Speaker 1: presentment happier. He ran and laughed and even sank. The
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  Speaker 1: fever that had troubled him all vanished. Often myself I
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  Speaker 1: took the place of nurse or orderly to watch him.
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  Speaker 1: For the man's presence more than interested me. It gave
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  Speaker 1: me a renewed sense of life that was exhilarating, invigorating, delightful.
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  Speaker 1: And in his appearance meanwhile, something that was not size
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  Speaker 1: or physical measurement turned tremendous. A part of me that
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  Speaker 1: was not mind. I sort of forgotten instinct blindly groping
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  Speaker 1: came of its own accord to regard him as some
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  Speaker 1: loose fragment of unnatural cosmic life that had somehow blundered
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  Speaker 1: down into a human organism it sought to use. And
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  Speaker 1: then it was the first time I recognized the spell
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  Speaker 1: he had cast upon me. For when the committee decided
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  Speaker 1: there was no reason to keep him longer, I urged
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  Speaker 1: them that he should stay, making a special plea. I
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  Speaker 1: took him as a private patient of my own. I
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  Speaker 1: kept him under closer personal observation than ever before. I
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  Speaker 1: needed him. Something deep within me, something undivined, hitherto called
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  Speaker 1: out into life by his presence, could not do without him.
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  Speaker 1: This new craving, breakingly wild and sweet, awoke on my
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  Speaker 1: blood and cried for him. His presence nourished it in
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  Speaker 1: me most in seriously. It attacked me. It stirred deep
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  Speaker 1: down among the roots of my being. It threatened me personally,
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  Speaker 1: seems the best way I can put it. For turning
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  Speaker 1: a critical analysis upon it, I discovered that it was
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  Speaker 1: an undermining and revolutionary change going steadily forward in my character.
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  Speaker 1: Its growth had hitherto been secret. When I first recognized
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  Speaker 1: its presence, the thing was already strong. For a time
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  Speaker 1: it had been building. And the change, in a word
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  Speaker 1: you will grasp my meaning from the shortest description of essentials,
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  Speaker 1: was this that ambition left me. Ordinary desire crumbled. The
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  Speaker 1: outer world men value so began to fade, and in
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  Speaker 1: their place, cried O'Malley, breathlessly interrupting. For the first time,
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  Speaker 1: came a rushing, passionate desire to escape from cities and
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  Speaker 1: live for beauty and simplicity in the wilderness, to taste
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  Speaker 1: the life he seemed to know, to go out blindly
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  Speaker 1: with him into woods and desolate places, and be mixed
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  Speaker 1: and blended with the loveliness of earth and nature. This
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  Speaker 1: was the first thing I knew. It was like an
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  Speaker 1: expansion of my normal world, almost an extension of consciousness.
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  Speaker 1: It somehow threatened by sense of personal identity, and it
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  Speaker 1: made me hesitate. O'Malley caught the tremor in his voice
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  Speaker 1: even in the telling of it. The passion plucked at him,
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  Speaker 1: for here, as ever, he stood on the borderline of compromise,
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  Speaker 1: his heart tempting him toward salvation, his brain and reason
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  Speaker 1: tugging at the brake. The sham and emptiness of modern life,
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  Speaker 1: its trap, vulgarity, the unworthiness of its very ideal stood
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  Speaker 1: appallingly revealed before some inner eye just opening. I felt
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  Speaker 1: shaken to the core of what had seemed hitherto my
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  Speaker 1: very solid and estimable self. How the man thus so
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  Speaker 1: powerfully affected me lies beyond all intelligible explanation. To use
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  Speaker 1: the obvious catchword hypnotism is to use a toy and
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  Speaker 1: stop a leak with paper. For his influence was unconsciously exerted.
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  Speaker 1: He cast no net of clever persuasive words about my thought.
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  Speaker 1: Out of the deep, strained silence of the man, it
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  Speaker 1: somehow came his actions and his simple happiness of face
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  Speaker 1: and manner, both in some sense. The raw material of
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  Speaker 1: speech perhaps may have operated as potently suggestive agents, but
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  Speaker 1: no adequate causes to justify the results. Apart from the
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  Speaker 1: fantastic theories I have mentioned, have ever yet come within
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  Speaker 1: the range of my understanding. I can wellly give you
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  Speaker 1: the undeniable effects your sense of extend consciousness, asked his listener.
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  Speaker 1: Was his continuous Once it had begun, it came in patches,
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  Speaker 1: Saul continued, My normal everyday self was thus able to
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  Speaker 1: check it while it delighted commiserated this every day self.
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  Speaker 1: The latter stood in dread of it, and even all
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  Speaker 1: my training, you see, regarded it as symptom of disorder.
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  Speaker 1: A beginning of unbalance that might end in insanity, the
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  Speaker 1: thin wedge of a dissociation of the personality. Morton Prince
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  Speaker 1: and others have described his speech grew more and more jerky,
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  Speaker 1: even incoherent. Evidently the material had not even now been
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  Speaker 1: fully reduced to order in his mind. Among other curious symptoms,
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  Speaker 1: I soon established that the subtle springing of my consciousness
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  Speaker 1: grew upon me, especially during sleep. The business of the
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  Speaker 1: day distracted scattered it on waking the morning, as with
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  Speaker 1: the physical fatigue that comes toward the closing of the day,
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  Speaker 1: it was strongest, And so, in order to examine it
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  Speaker 1: closely when in fullest manifestation, I came to spend the
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  Speaker 1: nights with him. I while he slept and stayed till morning,
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  Speaker 1: alternately sleeping and waking myself. I watched the two of
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  Speaker 1: us together. I also watched the two in me, And
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  Speaker 1: thus it was I made the further strange discovery that
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  Speaker 1: the influence he exerted on me was strongest while he slept.
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  Speaker 1: It is best described by saying that in his sleep
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  Speaker 1: I was conscious that he sought to draw me with
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  Speaker 1: him away someway into his own wonderful world. The state
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  Speaker 1: a region, that is where he manifested completely instead of partially,
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  Speaker 1: as I knew him. Here his personality was a channel
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  Speaker 1: somewhere out into a living conscious nature. Wally interrupted, O'Malley,
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  Speaker 1: you felt that to yield and to go involve some
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  Speaker 1: nameless inner catastrophe, and so resisted. He chose his phrase
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  Speaker 1: with purpose, because I discovered was a pregnant answer, given
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  Speaker 1: steadily while he watched his listener closely through the darkness,
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  Speaker 1: that the desire for escape the man awakened in me
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  Speaker 1: was nothing more or less than the desire to leave
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  Speaker 1: the world, to leave the conditions that p wented, in fact,
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  Speaker 1: to leave the body. My discontent with modern life had
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  Speaker 1: gone as far as that it was a birth of
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  Speaker 1: the suicidal mania. The pause that followed the words on
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  Speaker 1: the part of doctor Stall, at any rate, was intentional.
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  Speaker 1: O'Malley held his pace. The men shifted their places on
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  Speaker 1: the coil of rope, for both were cramped and stiff
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  Speaker 1: with the lengthy session. For a minute or two, they
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  Speaker 1: leaned over the bulwarks and watched the phosphoros and form
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  Speaker 1: in silence. The blue mountain's shaws slipped past and shadowy,
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  Speaker 1: lying against the starts but when they sat down again,
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  Speaker 1: their related positions were not what they had been before.
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  Speaker 1: Doctor Stall had placed himself between his listener and the sea,
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  Speaker 1: and O'Malley did not let the man over escape him.
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  Speaker 1: Smiling to himself, he noticed it, just as Shirley noticed, though,
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  Speaker 1: that the whole recital was being told him with the purpose.
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  Speaker 1: You really need not be afraid, he could not resist, saying,
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  Speaker 1: the idea of escape that way has never even come
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  Speaker 1: to me at all, And anyhow, I've far too much
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  Speaker 1: on hand. First in telling them well my message, he laughed.
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  Speaker 1: In the silence that took his words. Forestall said nothing
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  Speaker 1: and made as though he had not heard. But the
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  Speaker 1: Irish Man understood that it was in the spirit of
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  Speaker 1: feeble compromise that danger lay, if danger there was at all,
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  Speaker 1: And he himself was far beyond such weakness. His eye
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  Speaker 1: was single, and his body full of light, and the
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  Speaker 1: faith that placed with mountains had made him whole. Return
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  Speaker 1: to nature for him involved no denial of human life,
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  Speaker 1: nor depreciation of human interests, but fuly a revolutionary shifting
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  Speaker 1: of values. And it was one night while he slept,
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  Speaker 1: and I watched him in the little room resumed the
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  Speaker 1: German as though there had been no interruption. I noticed first,
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  Speaker 1: so decisively, this crowing of a singular size about him.
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  Speaker 1: I have already mentioned and grasped its meaning, for the
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  Speaker 1: bulk of the man while growing emerging. Rather, I should say,
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  Speaker 1: assume neither shade than his own. It was not my
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  Speaker 1: eyes that saw it. I saw him as he felt
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  Speaker 1: himself to be the creature's personality. His essential inner being
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  Speaker 1: was acting directly upon my own. His influence was at
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  Speaker 1: me from another point or wrangle, first the emotions, then
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  Speaker 1: the senses. You see, it was a finely organized attack.
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  Speaker 1: I definitely understood at last that my mind was affected,
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  Speaker 1: and proved it too, for the instant effort I made
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  Speaker 1: it recovery resulted in my seeing him normal again. The
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  Speaker 1: size and shape retreated the moment I denied them. O'Malley
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  Speaker 1: noticed how the speaker's voice lingered over the frase again.
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  Speaker 1: He knew the intention of the pause that followed. He
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  Speaker 1: held his peace, however, and waited. Nor was a sight
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  Speaker 1: the valley sense affected. Stall continued for smell and hearing
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  Speaker 1: also brought their testimony through all but touch. Indeed, the
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  Speaker 1: hallucination attacked me for sometimes at night while I sat
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  Speaker 1: up watching in the little room. There a rose outside
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  Speaker 1: the open window. In the yards and gardens, a sound
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  Speaker 1: of tramping, a distant roaring of voices in a rising wind,
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  Speaker 1: A rushing hollow murmur, confused and deep, like that of forest,
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  Speaker 1: or the swift passage of a host of big birds
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  Speaker 1: across the sky. I heard it both in the air
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  Speaker 1: and on the ground, This tramping on the lawns, this
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  Speaker 1: curious shaking of the atmosphere, and with it at the
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  Speaker 1: same time, a sharp and mingled perfume that made me
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  Speaker 1: think of earth and leaves of flowers, after rain of
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  Speaker 1: plains in open spaces, most singular of old, of animals
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  Speaker 1: and horses. Before the firm denial of my mind. They vanished,
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  Speaker 1: just as the change of form had vanished. But both
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  Speaker 1: left me weaker than they found me, more tender to attack. Moreover,
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: I understood most plainly that they emanated all from him.
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: These emanations came too, chiefly, as I mentioned, whilst he
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: slept in sleep. It seemed he set them free. The
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: slumber of the body disengaged them. And then the instinct
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: came to warn me, presenting itself with the authority of
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: an unanswerable intuition, the realization, namely that if for a
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: single moment in his presence I slept, the changes would
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: leap forward in my own being, and I should join
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: him escape. No freedom in a larger consciousness, cried the other.
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: And for a man of my point of view and
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: training to have permitted such a conviction at all, He
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: went on the interruption utterly ignored again, pruse, how far
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: along the road I had already traveled without knowing it?
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: Only at the time I was not aware of this.
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: It was a shock of full discovery later that brought
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: me to my senses. When seeking to withdraw, I found
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: I could not, And so you ran away. It came
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: out bluntly enough, with a touch of scorn, but ill concealed.
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: We discharged him, But before that came there was more after.
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: Tell you, if you still care to hear it, I'm
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: not tired. If that's what you mean, I could listen
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: all night, as far as that goes. He rose to
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: Stretcher's legs a moment and stalled rose too instantly. Together
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: they leaned over the bulwarks. The German's hat was off
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: an the air made by the steamer's passage drew his
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: beard out. The warm, soft wind brought odors of sea
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: and shore. It carries their faces, then passed on across
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: those sleeping peasants on the lower deck. The masts and
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: riggings swung steadily against the host of stars. Before I
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: thus knew myself half caught, continued the doctor, standing now
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: close enough beside him for actual contact, and found it
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: difficult to get away. Other things had happened, things that
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: confirmed the change so singularly begun in me. They happened everywhere.
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: Confirmation came from many quarters, though slight enough. They filled
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: in all the gaps and crevices, strengthened the joints, and
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: built the huge illusion round me, all complete, until it
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: held me like a prison. And they are difficult to tell.
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: Only indeed, to yourself, who underwent a similar experience up
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: there in the mountains, could they bring much meaning. You
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: are the same temptation, and you weather the same storm.
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: He caught O'Malley's arm a moment and held it. You
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: escaped this madness just as I did. And you will
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: realize what I mean when I say that the sensation
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: of losing my sense of personal identities became so dangerous,
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: so seductively strong. The feeling of extended consciousness became delicious,
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: too delicious to resist. A kind of page and joy
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: and exultation known to sum in early youth, but put
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: away with the things of youth, possessed me in the
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: presence of this other's soul, so strangely powerful, in the
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: silence and simplicity, I felt as though I touched new
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: sources of life. I tapped them. They poured down and
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: flooded me with dreams, dreams that could really haunt, with
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: unsettling thoughts of glory and delight. Beyond the body, I
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: got clean away into nature. I felt as though some
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: portion of me, just awakening, reached out across him into
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: rain and sunshine, far up into the sweet and sturdy sky,
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: as a tree growing out of a thicket that chokes
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: its lower part find light and freedom at the top.
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: It caught you badly, doctor o'mlly murmured. The cots came
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: close so badly that I loathed the prison darkness that
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: held me so thickly in the body. I longed to
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: know my being all dispersed through nature, scattered with dew
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: and wind, shining with the starlight and the sun and
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: the manner of escape. I hinted to you a little
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: while ago came to seem right and necessary, lawful. It
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: seemed in obvious. The mania literally obsessed me, though still
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: I tried to hide it even from myself, and struggled
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: in resistance. You spoke just now of other things that
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: came to confirm it, the irishman said, while the other
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: paused to take breath. All this he knew. He grew
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: weary of stalls, clever laboring the point that it was madness.
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: A little knowledge is ever dangerous, and he saw so
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: clearly why the hesitation of the merely intellectual man had
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: led him into error. Did you mean that others acknowledged
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: this influence as well as yourself? You shall read that
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: for yourself to morrow? Came the answer in the detailed
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: report I drew up afterwards. It's far too long to
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: tell you now, but I may mention something of it,
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: that breaking out of patience was a curious thing. They
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: are trying to escape their dreams, and singing their efforts
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: sometimes to approach his room, their longing for the open
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: and the gardens, the deep, prolonged entrancing of a few
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: the sounds of rushing tramping that they two heard, the
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: violence of some, the silent ecstasy of others. The thing
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: may find its paral, perhaps in the collective mania that
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: sometimes afflicts religious communities in monasteries or convents. While he
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: here there was no preacher and eloquent leader to induce hysteria,
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: nothing but the silent anamo of power, gentle and winning
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: as a little child, A being who could not but
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: put a phrase together, exerting his potent, spelled unconsciously and
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: chiefly while he slept. For the phenomena, almost without exception,
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: came in the night, and often at their fullest strength,
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: as afterwards reported to me, while it dozed in his
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: room and watched beside its motionless and slumbering form. Oh
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: and they were more as well, much more, as you
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: shall read the stories my assistants brought me, the tales
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: of frightened nurse and wader, the amazing yarns of the
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: porter stammered out of strangers who had rung the bell
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: at dawn, trying to push past him through the doors,
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: saying they were messengers and had been summoned sent for
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: had to come large, curious, windy figures, or as he
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: sometimes called them with unconscious humor, like creatures out of
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: fairy books or circuses that always vanished as suddenly as
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: they came, making every elements for excitement and exaggeration. The
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: tales were strange enough, I can assure you, and the
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: way many of the patients knew their vision intensified the
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: illusions doubly strengthened the efforts even to destroy themselves, in
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: many cases, almost more than the staff could deal with.
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: All this brought the matter to a climax, and made
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: my duty very plain at last, and the effect upon
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: yourself at its worst, asked his listener quietly, stall sided
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: wearily a little, as he answered with a new phone
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: sadness in his tone. I've told you briefly that he said,
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: repetition cannot strengthen it. The worthlessness of the majority of
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: human aims today expresses it best what you have called yourself.
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: The horror of civilization, the vanity of all lives, modern
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: so called up to date tendencies, outer mechanical developments. A wild,
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: mad beauty streaming from that man's personality overran the whole
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: place and caught the lot of us, myself, especially with
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: a lust for simple natural things, and with a passion
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: for spiritual beauty to accompany them. Fame, wealth, positions seemed
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: the shadows. Then, and something else it's hard to name,
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: announced itself as his substance. I wanted to clear out
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: and lived with nature, to know simplicity, unselfish purposes, a
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: golden state of childlike existence, close to dawns and dew
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: and running water, cared for by woods and blessed by
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: all the winds. He paused again for breath, then added,
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: and that's just where the mania caught at me, so
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: cunningly till I saw it and called a halt ah
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: for the thing I sought. The thing he knew and
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: perhaps remembered, was not possible in the body. It was
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: a spiritual state, ought to be known subjectively. O'Malley checked him.
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: I'm no low to s eat of nature. He went
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: on with energy, and so I fought and conquered it.
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: But first I tell you it came upon me like
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: a tempest, a hurricane of wonder and delight. I've always held,
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: like yourself, perhaps that civilization brings its own army of diseases,
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: and that the few illnesses known to rude as savage
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: races can be cured by simple means, the earth herself's supplies.
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: And along this line of thought the things swept into
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: me the line of my own head. Learning this was
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: natural enough, natural enough too, that it thus at first
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: deceived me. For the quack cures of history came to
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: this herb simples and the rest. Only we know them
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: now as sun cure water, cure open air, cure old nape,
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: sea water, and a hundred others. Doctors have never sworn
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: before as they do now, And these artificial diseases civilization
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: brings in such quantities, seemed all at once to mean
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: the abeyance of some central life or power men, or
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: to share with nature. You shall read it all in
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: my written report. I'm merely wish to show you now
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: how the insidious thing got at me. Along the line
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: of my special knowledge, I saw the truth that priests
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: and doctors are the wellly possible and necessary professions in
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: the world, and that they should be really but a
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: single profession. The end of chapter forty three