leave the mind to our descendants.
No doubt I am a materialist. Agatha says that I am a rank one. I tell
her that is an excellent reason for shortening our engagement, since I
am in such urgent need of her spirituality. And yet I may claim to be
a curious example of the effect of education upon temperament, for by
nature I am, unless I deceive myself, a highly psychic man. I was a
nervous, sensitive boy, a dreamer, a somnambulist, full of impressions
and intuitions. My black hair, my dark eyes, my thin, olive face, my
tapering fingers, are all characteristic of my real temperament, and
cause experts like Wilson to claim me as their own. But my brain is
soaked with exact knowledge. I have trained myself to deal only with
fact and with proof. Surmise and fancy have no place in my scheme of
thought. Show me what I can see with my microscope, cut with my
scalpel, weigh in my balance, and I will devote a lifetime to its
investigation. But when you ask me to study feelings, impressions,
suggestions, you ask me to do what is distasteful and even
demoralizing. A departure from pure reason affects me like an evil
smell or a musical discord.
Which is a very sufficient reason why I am a little loath to go to
Professor Wilson's tonight. Still I feel that I could hardly get out
of the invitation without positive rudeness; and, now that Mrs. Marden
and Agatha are going, of course I would not if I could. But I had
rather meet them anywhere else. I know that Wilson would draw me into
this nebulous semi-science of his if he could. In his enthusiasm he is
perfectly impervious to hints or remonstrances. Nothing short of a
positive quarrel will make him realize my aversion to the whole
business. I have no doubt that he has some new mesmerist or
clairvoyant or medium or trickster of some sort whom he is going to
exhibit to us, for even his entertainments bear upon his hobby. Well,
it will be a treat for Agatha, at any rate. She is interested in it,
as woman usually is in whatever is vague and mystical and indefinite.
10.50 P. M. This diary-keeping of mine is, I fancy, the outcome of
that scientific habit of mind about which I wrote this morning. I like
to register impressions while they are fresh. Once a day at least I
endeavor to define my own mental position. It is a useful piece of
self-analysis, and has, I fancy, a steadying effect upon the character.
Frankly, I must confess that my own needs what stiffening I can give
it. I fear that, after all, much of my neurotic temperament survives,
and that I am far from that cool, calm precision which characterizes
Murdoch or Pratt-Haldane. Otherwise, why should the tomfoolery which I
have witnessed this evening have set my nerves thrilling so that even
now I am all unstrung? My only comfort is that neither Wilson nor Miss
Penclosa nor even Agatha could have possibly known my weakness.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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