You and
I have put up too many thoughts together and chased them
where-ever{sic} they would double, Bertie; so just write
to me like a good fellow, and tell me that I am an ass.
Until I have that comforting assurance, I shall place a
quarantine upon everything which could conceivably be
offensive to you.
Does not lunacy strike you, Bertie, as being a very
eerie thing? It is a disease of the soul. To think that
you may have a man of noble mind, full of every lofty
aspiration, and that a gross physical cause, such as the
fall of a spicule of bone from the inner table of his
skull on to the surface of the membrane which covers his
brain, may have the ultimate effect of turning him into
an obscene creature with every bestial attribute! That
a man's individuality should swing round from pole to
pole, and yet that one life should contain these two
contradictory personalities--is it not a wondrous thing?
I ask myself, where is the man, the very, very inmost
essence of the man? See how much you may subtract from
him without touching it. It does not lie in the limbs
which serve him as tools, nor in the apparatus by which
he is to digest, nor in that by which he is to inhale
oxygen. All these are mere accessories, the slaves of
the lord within. Where, then, is he? He does not lie in
the features which are to express his emotions, nor in
the eyes and ears which can be dispensed with by the
blind and deaf.
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