A Strange Story | Page 7

actions with those of the mind? Could they reduce it to the mere moral
sense, varying according to education, circumstances, and physical
constitution? But even the moral sense in the most virtuous of men may
be swept away by a fever. Such at the time I now speak of were the
views I held,--views certainly not original nor pleasing; but I cherished
them with as fond a tenacity as if they had been consolatory truths of
which I was the first discoverer. I was intolerant to those who
maintained opposite doctrines,--despised them as irrational, or disliked
them as insincere. Certainly if I had fulfilled the career which my
ambition predicted,--become the founder of a new school in pathology,
and summed up my theories in academical lectures,--I should have
added another authority, however feeble, to the sects which
circumscribe the interest of man to the life that has its close in his
grave.
Possibly that which I have called my intellectual pride was more
nourished than I should have been willing to grant by the self-reliance
which an unusual degree of physical power is apt to bestow. Nature had
blessed me with the thews of an athlete. Among the hardy youths of the
Northern Athens I had been preeminently distinguished for feats of
activity and strength. My mental labours, and the anxiety which is
inseparable from the conscientious responsibilities of the medical
profession, kept my health below the par of keen enjoyment, but had in
no way diminished my rare muscular force. I walked through the crowd

with the firm step and lofty crest of the mailed knight of old, who felt
himself, in his casement of iron, a match against numbers. Thus the
sense of a robust individuality, strong alike in disciplined reason and
animal vigour, habituated to aid others, needing no aid for itself,
contributed to render me imperious in will and arrogant in opinion. Nor
were such defects injurious to me in my profession; on the contrary,
aided as they were by a calm manner, and a presence not without that
kind of dignity which is the livery of self-esteem, they served to impose
respect and to inspire trust.
CHAPTER II.
I had been about six years at L---- when I became suddenly involved in
a controversy with Dr. Lloyd. Just as this ill-fated man appeared at the
culminating point of his professional fortunes, he had the imprudence
to proclaim himself not only an enthusiastic advocate of mesmerism as
a curative process, but an ardent believer of the reality of somnambular
clairvoyance as an invaluable gift of certain privileged organizations.
To these doctrines I sternly opposed myself,--the more sternly, perhaps,
because on these doctrines Dr. Lloyd founded an argument for the
existence of soul, independent of mind, as of matter, and built thereon a
superstructure of physiological fantasies, which, could it be
substantiated, would replace every system of metaphysics on which
recognized philosophy condescends to dispute.
About two years before he became a disciple rather of Puysegur than
Mesmer (for Mesmer hard little faith in that gift of clairvoyance of
which Puysegur was, I believe, at least in modern times, the first
audacious asserter), Dr. Lloyd had been afflicted with the loss of a wife
many years younger than himself, and to whom he had been tenderly
attached. And this bereavement, in directing the hopes that consoled
him to a world beyond the grave, had served perhaps to render him
more credulous of the phenomena in which he greeted additional proofs
of purely spiritual existence. Certainly, if, in controverting the notions
of another physiologist, I had restricted myself to that fair antagonism
which belongs to scientific disputants anxious only for the truth, I
should need no apology for sincere conviction and honest argument;

but when, with condescending good-nature, as if to a man much
younger than himself, who was ignorant of the phenomena which he
nevertheless denied, Dr. Lloyd invited me to attend his seances and
witness his cures, my amour propre became aroused and nettled, and it
seemed to me necessary to put down what I asserted to be too gross an
outrage on common-sense to justify the ceremony of examination. I
wrote, therefore, a small pamphlet on the subject, in which I exhausted
all the weapons that irony can lend to contempt. Dr. Lloyd replied; and
as he was no very skilful arguer, his reply injured him perhaps more
than my assault. Meanwhile, I had made some inquiries as to the moral
character of his favourite clairvoyants. I imagined that I had learned
enough to justify me in treating them as flagrant cheats, and himself as
their egregious dupe.
Low Town soon ranged itself, with very few exceptions, on my side.
The Hill at first seemed disposed to rally round its insulted physician,
and to make the dispute