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The First Vision3
"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. I don`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.
"But just one word more!" said Dr. Dale. "Hear why I would do this! It was easy and successful to rest and drug people back to their old states of mind when the world wasn`t changing, wasn`t spinning round in the wildest tornado of change that it has ever been in. But now--Where can I send you for a rest? Where can I send you to get you out of sight and hearing of the Catastrophe? Of course old Brighton-Pomfrey would go on sending people away for rest and a nice little soothing change if the Day of Judgment was coming in the sky and the earth was opening and the sea was giving up its dead. He`d send `em to the seaside. Such things as that wouldn`t shake his faith in the Channel crossing. My idea is that it`s not only right for you to go through with this, but that it`s the only thing to do. If you go right on and right through with these doubts and intimations--"
He paused.
"You may die like a madman," he said, "but you won`t die like a tame rabbit."
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