第27章 THE FIFTH - THE FIRST VISION(2)

Burton water, for example, is radioactive by Beetham's standards up to the ninth degree.But that is by the way.My theory about your case is that this produced a change in your blood, that quickened your sensibilities and your critical faculties just at a time when a good many bothers--I don't of course know what they were, but I can, so to speak, see the marks all over you--came into your life."

The bishop nodded.

"You were uprooted.You moved from house to house, and failed to get that curled up safe feeling one has in a real home in any of them.""If you saw the fireplaces and the general decoration of the new palace!" admitted the bishop."I had practically no control.""That confirms me," said Dr.Dale."Insomnia followed, and increased the feeling of physical strangeness by increasing the bodily disturbance.I suspect an intellectual disturbance."He paused.

"There was," said the bishop.

"You were no longer at home anywhere.You were no longer at home in your diocese, in your palace, in your body, in your convictions.And then came the war.Quite apart from everything else the mind of the whole world is suffering profoundly from the shock of this war--much more than is generally admitted.One thing you did that you probably did not observe yourself doing, you drank rather more at your meals, you smoked a lot more.That was your natural and proper response to the shock.""Ah!" said the bishop, and brightened up.

"It was remarked by Tolstoy, I think, that few intellectual men would really tolerate the world as it is if it were not for smoking and drinking.Even novelists have their moments of lucidity.Certainly these things soothe the restlessness in men's minds, deaden their sceptical sensibilities.And just at the time when you were getting most dislodged--you gave them up.""And the sooner I go back to them the better," said the bishop brightly."I quite see that.""I wouldn't say that," said Dr.Dale....

(3)

"That," said Dr.Dale, "is just where my treatment of this case differs from the treatment of "--he spoke the name reluctantly as if he disliked the mere sound of it--"Dr.Brighton-Pomfrey.""Hitherto, of course," said the bishop, "I've been in his hands.""He," said Dr.Dale, "would certainly set about trying to restore your old sphere of illusion, your old familiar sensations and ideas and confidences.He would in fact turn you back.He would restore all your habits.He would order you a rest.He would send you off to some holiday resort, fresh in fact but familiar in character, the High lands, North Italy, or Switzerland for example.He would forbid you newspapers and order you to botanize and prescribe tranquillizing reading; Trollope's novels, the Life of Gladstone, the works of Mr.A.C.Benson, memoirs and so on.You'd go somewhere where there was a good Anglican chaplain, and you'd take some of the services yourself.

And we'd wash out the effects of the Princhester water with Contrexeville, and afterwards put you on Salutaris or Perrier.Idon't know whether I shouldn't have inclined to some such treatment before the war began.Only--"He paused.

"You think--?"

Dr.Dale's face betrayed a sudden sombre passion."It won't do now," he said in a voice of quiet intensity."It won't do now."He remained darkly silent for so long that at last the bishop spoke."Then what," he asked, "do you suggest?

"Suppose we don't try to go back," said Dr.Dale."Suppose we go on and go through.""Where?"

"To reality.

"I know it's doubtful, I know it's dangerous," he went on, "but I am convinced that now we can no longer keep men's minds and souls in these feathered nests, these spheres of illusion.Behind these veils there is either God or the Darkness....Why should we not go on?"The bishop was profoundly perplexed.He heard himself speaking.

"It would be unworthy of my cloth," he was saying.

Dr.Dale completed the sentence: "to go back.""Let me explain a little more," he said, "what I mean by 'going on.' I think that this loosening of the ties of association that bind a man to his everyday life and his everyday self is in nine cases out of ten a loosening of the ties that bind him to everyday sanity.One common form of this detachment is the form you have in those cases of people who are found wandering unaware of their names, unaware of their places of residence, lost altogether from themselves.They have not only lost their sense of identity with themselves, but all the circumstances of their lives have faded out of their minds like an idle story in a book that has been read and put aside.I have looked into hundreds of such cases.I don't think that loss of identity is a necessary thing; it's just another side of the general weakening of the grip upon reality, a kind of anaemia of the brain so that interest fades and fails.There is no reason why you should forget a story because you do not believe it--if your brain is strong enough to hold it.But if your brain is tired and weak, then so soon as you lose faith in your records, your mind is glad to let them go.When you see these lost identity people that is always your first impression, a tired brain that has let go."The bishop felt extremely like letting go.

"But how does this apply to my case?"

"I come to that," said Dr.Dale, holding up a long large hand.

"What if we treat this case of yours in a new way? What if we give you not narcotics but stimulants and tonics? What if we so touch the blood that we increase your sense of physical detachment while at the same time feeding up your senses to a new and more vivid apprehension of things about you?" He looked at his patient's hesitation and added: "You'd lose all that craving feeling, that you fancy at present is just the need of a smoke.

The world might grow a trifle--transparent, but you'd keep real.Instead of drugging oneself back to the old contentment--""You'd drug me on to the new," said the bishop.