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Page 1 of 21929 · PDF PAGE 42
We all judge of the lapse of time in relation to our daily habits or some similar standard. The conviction of immortality must naturally destroy all values for this sense. If I am immortal, what is the difference between a long time and a short time? A thousand years and a day are obviously the same thing from the point of view of for ever. There is a subconscious clock in us, a clock wound up by the experience of the race to go for seventy years or so. Five minutes is a very long time to us if we are waiting for an omnibus, an age if we are …
1929 · PDF PAGE 50
…ny of the pang is not to be de- scribed; if alleviation there were, it was but the exulta- tion of feeling that this was final. Not only time, but all expansions of time, all mon- sters of time's womb were to be annihilated; even the ego might hope some end. The ego is the worm that dieth not, and existence the fire that is not quenched. Yet in this universal pyre, in this barathrum of liquid lava, jetted from the volca- noes of the infinite, this lake of fire that is reserved for the devil and his angels, might not one at last touch bott…
1929 · PDF PAGE 54
…anity. V. ENGLISH, M.D. NOTES: 1. It is one of the greatest cruelties of nature that all painful or depressing emotions seem to lengthen time; pleasant thoughts and exalted moods make time fly. Thus, in summing up a life from an outside standpoint, it would seem that, supposing pleasure and pain to have occupied equal periods, the impression would be that pain was enormously greater than pleasure. This may be controverted. Virgil writes: Fortisan haec olim memi- nisse juvabit, and there is at least one modern writer thoroughly conversant with…
1929 · PDF PAGE 24
… MAGDALEN BLAIR PART I I IN my third term at Newnham I was already Profes- sor Blair's favourite pupil. Later, he wasted a great deal of time praising my slight figure and my piquant face, with its big round grey eyes and their long black lashes; but the first attraction was my singular gift. Few men, and, I believe, no other women, could approach me in one of the most priceless qualifications for scientific study, the faculty of apprehending minute differences. My memory was poor, extraordinarily so; I had the ut- most trouble to enter Cambrid…
1929 · PDF PAGE 38
Time for your medicine, eh? No, I explained, he means that he is in the sev- enth circle of Dante's Hell. At that instant he entered on a period of noisy delir- ium. Wild and prolonged howls burst from his throat; he was being chewed unceasingly by Dis; each howl sig- nalled the meeting of the monster's teeth. I explained this to the doctor. No, said he, he is perfectly uncon- scious. Well, said I, he will howl about eighty times more. Doctor Kershaw looked at me curiously, but began to count. My calculation was correct. He turne…
1929 · PDF PAGE 48
… now arose in the destruction irrevocable and complete of that compensating mecha- nism of the brain, which is the basis of the sense of time. Hideously distorted and deformed as it had been in the derangement of the brain, like a shapeless jelly shooting out, of a sudden, vast, unsuspected tentacles, the destruction of it cut a thousandfold deeper. The sense of consecution itself was destroyed; things se- quent appeared as things superposed or concurrent spa- tially; a new dimension unfolded; a new destruction of all limitation exposed a new a…
1929 · PDF PAGE 5
narrative. He only remarked, Then you were not guillo- tined? I was not, sir, retorted the other passionately. At that time capital punishment was never inflicted in France, though not officially abrogated. I may say, he added, with the pride of a legislator, that my action lent considerable strength to the agitation which led to its reintroduction. No, sir, I was not guillotined. I was sentenced to perpetual imprisonment in Devils Island. He shud- dered. Can you imagine that accursed Isle? Can your fancy paint one tithe of its horro…
1929 · PDF PAGE 23
… has failed to surpass Degas and Manet and OConor, she has at least conquered the great pianist Wlody- wewsky, and it takes her all her time to manage him and keep the baby out of mischief. Theodore Bugg needs no help of hers in his moral sculpture of the destinies of England.
1929 · PDF PAGE 18
…it into his inner pocket, and, pressing a sovereign into the man's hand, dashed with- out looking behind him from the shop, eager to put time and space between himself and his compromising posi- tion. He hurried to his hotel, not without many a suspi- cious glance over his shoulder, and packed his bag. He had ten minutes to spare. He locked the door carefully, sat down with his back to the light, and pulling the pho- tograph from his pocket, indulged in a long voluptuous gloat. Then the boots knocked with the news of his cab, and Bugg, nobler t…
1929 · PDF PAGE 40
The sick man stirred feebly. A portion of his brain had shaken off the poison for the moment, and was working furiously against time. I am going to die. The consolation of death is Religion. There is no use for Religion in life. How many atheists have I not known sign the arti- cles the sake of fellowships and livings! Religion in life is either an amusement and a soporific or a sham and a swindle. I was brought up a Presbyterian How easily I drifted into the English Church! And now where is God? Where is the Lamb of God? Where is the …
1929 · PDF PAGE 41
…the one who knows are not radically one person. This double personality is enormously ac- centuated at death. Another point was that the time-sense, which with men is usually so reliableespecially in my own case was decidedly deranged, if not abrogated altogether.
1929 · PDF PAGE 32
…sterical condition, but soon soothed me. Do you know, he said at dinner, I believe I have got a devilish bad chill? It was the first time I had known him to complain of his health. In six years he had not had as much as a headache. I told him my dream when we were in bed, and he seemed unusually grave, as if he understood where I had failed in its interpretation. In the morning he was feverish; I made him stay in bed and sent for the doctor. The same afternoon I learnt that Arthur was seriously ill, had been ill, indeed, for months. The d…
1929 · PDF PAGE 13
… this message; owh- momdvvtxskzvgcqxzllhtrejrgscpxjrmsgausrgwhbdxzldabe, which, when deciphered (and the spy would gnash his teeth every time Dodu signalled a W), only meant: The peaches of 1761 are luminous in the gardens of Ver- sailles. Or again: Hunt; the imprisoned Pope; the Pompa- dour; the Stag and Cross. The men of the fourth of September; their leader divided by the letters of the Vic- tim of the Eighth of Thermidor. Crillon was unfortunate that day, though braver than ever. Such were the indications from which I sought to pie…
1929 · PDF PAGE 29
…on the nurse's face that he was ill. This, farfetched as it may seem, at least avoids the shallow theories about telepathy. From this time my powers constantly increased. I could read my husband's thoughts from imperceptible movements of his face as easily as a trained deaf-mute can sometimes read the speech of a distant man from the movements of his lips. Gradually as we worked, day by day, I found my grasp of detail ever fuller. It is not only that I could read emotions; I could tell whether he was thinking 3465822 or 3456822. In the year …
1929 · PDF PAGE 46
…he putre- factive changes in the dead man's brain were setting in motion every memory of his, and smearing them with hell's own paint. I timed one thought: despite its myriad million de- tails, each one clear, vivid and prolonged, it occupied but three seconds of earthly time. I considered the incalculable array of the thoughts in his well-furnished mind; I saw that thousands of years would not exhaust them. But, perhaps, when the brain was destroyed beyond recognition of its component parts We have always casually assumed that conscious- nes…
1929 · PDF PAGE 31
…g in him that was not he! The indifference had appeared transitory; I now became aware of it as con- stant and increasing. I was at this time twenty-three years old. You wonder that I write with such serious atti- tude of mind. I sometimes think that I have never had any thoughts of my own; that I have always been read- ing the thoughts of another, or perhaps of Nature. I seem only to have been a woman in those first few months of marriage. VII The six months following held for me nothing out of the ordinary, save that six or seven times I had …
1929 · PDF PAGE 43
…not to be disturbed by the duties that menoh how foolishly!pay to the dead: and I took refuge in a cigarette. It was now for the first time, strangely enough, that I began to consider the possibility of helping him. I analysed the position. It must be his thought, or I could not read it. I had no reason to conjecture that any other thoughts could reach me. He must be alive in the true sense of the word; it was he and not another that
1929 · PDF PAGE 3
…e glared menacingly at Bevan, seemed to seek to read his soul. Are you a man to be trusted? he barked, and broke off short. At another time Bevan would most certainly have declined to become the confidant of a stranger; but here the solitude, the heat, not a little boredom induced by the previous manner of his companion, and even a cer- tain mistrust of how he might take a refusal, combined to elicit a favourable reply. Stately as an oak, Bevan answered, I was born an English gentleman, and I trust that I have never done anything to derogate…
1929 · PDF PAGE 21
…e! My little Gertie! There was a silence. Excuse me, father, said the girl at last, but I've just had a glimpse of you for the first time in my life, and it's a bit of a shock. I must think. And she stood motionless until her hapless father at- tracted her attention by backing into his wicker chair. Don't touch holy things, she snapped suddenly, taking the sketch from his nerveless hand, and replacing it rev- erently in the portfolio. The action seemed to decide her.
1929 · PDF PAGE 22
…s it? Ah! heredity. Heredity? His secret sin become her open infamy? Truly the sins of the fathers were visited on the children! By this time he was upstairs and in his bedroom. He must destroy the accursed thing; he must destroyAh! yes. He had contaminated Gertrude by having such a thing in his house. He must be the Roman father, and what would a Roman father do? He had the match alight, but he could not put it to the edge of the packet. Then the silence of the house hit him; he knew that his daughter would never return, and in a fit of rage…