University of Virginia Library

Mr. Langdon to the Professor.

You were kind enough to promise me that you
would assist me in any professional or scientific
investigations in which I might become engaged.
I have of late become deeply interested in a class
of subjects which present peculiar difficulty, and
I must exercise the privilege of questioning you
on some points upon which I desire information
I cannot otherwise obtain. I would not trouble
you, if I could find any person or books competent
to enlighten me on some of these singular
matters which have so excited me. The leading
doctor here is a shrewd, sensible man, but not
versed in the curiosities of medical literature.

I proceed, with your leave, to ask a considerable
number of questions, — hoping to get answers
to some of them, at least.

Is there any evidence that human beings can
be infected or wrought upon by poisons, or otherwise,
so that they shall manifest any of the peculiarities
belonging to beings of a lower nature?

Can such peculiarities be transmitted by inheritance?
Is there anything to countenance the
stories, long and widely current, about the “evil
eye”? or is it a mere fancy that such a power
belongs to any human being? Have you any
personal experience as to the power of fascination
said to be exercised by certain animals?
What can you make of those circumstantial
statements we have seen in the papers, of children
forming mysterious friendships with ophidians
of different species, sharing their food with
them, and seeming to be under some subtile influence
exercised by those creatures? Have you
read, critically, Coleridge's poem of “Christabel,”
and Keats's “Lamia”? If so, can you understand
them, or find any physiological foundation
for the story of either?

There is another set of questions of a different
nature I should like to ask, but it is hardly fair to
put so many on a single sheet. There is one,
however, you must answer. Do you think there
may be predispositions, inherited or ingrafted,
but at any rate constitutional, which shall take
out certain apparently voluntary determinations
from the control of the will, and leave them as
free from moral responsibility as the instincts of
the lower animals? Do you not think there may
be a crime which is not a sin?

Pardon me, my dear Sir, for troubling you with
such a list of notes of interrogation. There are
some very strange things going on here in this

place, country-town as it is. Country-life is apt
to be dull; but when it once gets going, it beats
the city hollow, because it gives its whole mind
to what it is about. These rural sinners make
terrible work with the middle of the Decalogue,
when they get started. However, I hope I shall
live through my year's school-keeping without
catastrophes, though there are queer doings about
me which puzzle me and might scare some people.
If anything should happen, you will be one
of the first to hear of it, no doubt. But I trust
not to help out the editors of the “Rockland
Weekly Universe” with an obituary of the late
lamented, who signed himself in life

The Professor to Mr. Langdon.

I do not wonder that you find no answer from
your country friends to the curious questions you
put. They belong to that middle region between
science and poetry which sensible men, as they
are called, are very shy of meddling with. Some
people think that truth and gold are always to be
washed for; but the wiser sort are of opinion,
that, unless there are so many grains to the peck
of sand or nonsense respectively, it does not pay
to wash for either, so long as one can find anything
else to do. I don't doubt there is some

truth in the phenomena of animal magnetism,
for instance; but when you ask me to cradle
for it, I tell you that the hysteric girls cheat so,
and the professionals are such a set of pickpockets,
that I can do something better than hunt for
the grains of truth among their tricks and lies.
Do you remember what I used to say in my
lectures? — or were you asleep just then, or cutting
your initials on the rail? (You see I can
ask questions, my young friend.) Leverage is
everything, — was what I used to say; — don't
begin to pry till you have got the long arm on
your side.

To please you, and satisfy your doubts as far
as possible, I have looked into the old books, —
into Schenckius and Turner and Kenelm Digby
and the rest, where I have found plenty of curious
stories which you must take for what they are
worth.

Your first question I can answer in the affirmative
upon pretty good authority. Mizaldus tells,
in his “Memorabilia,” the well-known story of the
girl fed on poisons, who was sent by the king of
the Indies to Alexander the Great. “When
Aristotle saw her eyes sparkling and snapping like
those of serpents, he said, `Look out for yourself,
Alexander! this is a dangerous companion for
you!'” — and sure enough, the young lady proved
to be a very unsafe person to her friends. Cardanus
gets a story from Avicenna, of a certain man
bit by a serpent, who recovered of his bite, the

snake dying thereform. This man afterwards had
a daughter whom venomous serpents could not
harm, though she had a fatal power over them.

I suppose you may remember the statements of
old authors about lycanthropy, the disease in which
men took on the nature and aspect of wolves.
Aëtius and Paulus, both men of authority, describe
it. Altomaris gives a horrid case; and
Fincelius mentions one occurring as late as 1541,
the subject of which was captured, still insisting
that he was a wolf, only that the hair of his hide
was turned in! Versipelles, it may be remembered,
was the Latin name for these “were-wolves.”

As for the cases where rabid persons have
barked and bit like dogs, there are plenty of such
on record.

More singular, or at least more rare, is the account
given by Andreas Baccius, of a man who
was struck in the hand by a cock, with his beak,
and who died on the third day thereafter, looking
for all the world like a fighting-cock, to the great
horror of the spectators.

As to impressions transmitted at a very early
period of existence, every one knows the story of
King James's fear of a naked sword, and the way
it is accounted for. Sir Kenelm Digby says, —
“I remember when he dubbed me Knight, in the
ceremony of putting the point of a naked sword
upon my shoulder, he could not endure to look
upon it, but turned his face another way, insomuch,
that, in lieu of touching my shoulder, he

had almost thrust the point into my eyes, had
not the Duke of Buckingham guided his hand
aright.” It is he, too, who tells the story of the
mulberry mark upon the neck of a certain lady of
high condition, which “every year, in mulberry
season, did swell, grow big, and itch.” And Gaffarel
mentions the case of a girl born with the
figure of a fish on one of her limbs, of which the
wonder was, that, when the girl did eat fish, this
mark put her to sensible pain. But there is no
end to cases of this kind, and I could give some
of recent date, if necessary, lending a certain
plausibility at least to the doctrine of transmitted
impressions.

I never saw a distinct case of evil eye, though I
have seen eyes so bad that they might produce
strange effects on very sensitive natures. But the
belief in it under various names, fascination, jettatura,
etc., is so permanent and universal, from
Egypt to Italy, and from the days of Solomon to
those of Ferdinand of Naples, that there must be
some peculiarity, to say the least, on which the
opinion is based. There is very strong evidence
that some such power is exercised by certain of
the lower animals. Thus, it is stated on good
authority that “almost every animal becomes
panic-struck at the sight of the rattlesnake, and
seems at once deprived of the power of motion,
or the exercise of its usual instinct of self-preservation.”
Other serpents seem to share this
power of fascination, as the Cobra and the Bu

cephalus Capensis. Some think that it is nothing
but fright; others attribute it to the
as Churchill said, speaking of Garrick.

You ask me about those mysterious and frightful
intimacies between children and serpents, of
which so many instances have been recorded. I
am sure I cannot tell what to make of them. I
have seen several such accounts in recent papers,
but here is one published in the seventeenth century,
which is as striking as any of the more modern
ones: —

“Mr. Herbert Jones of Monmouth, when he was
a little Boy, was used to eat his Milk in a Garden
in the Morning, and was no sooner there, but
a large Snake always came, and eat out of the
Dish with him, and did so for a considerable time,
till one Morning, he striking the Snake on the
Head, it hissed at him. Upon which he told his
Mother that the Baby (for so he call'd it) cry'd
Hiss at him. His Mother had it kill'd, which occasioned
him a great Fit of Sickness, and 'twas
thought would have dy'd, but did recover.”

There was likewise one “William Writtle, condemned
at Maidston Assizes for a double murder,
told a Minister that was with him after he was
condemned, that his mother told him, that when
he was a Child, there crept always to him a
Snake, wherever she laid him. Sometimes she

would convey him up Stairs, and leave him never
so little, she should be sure to find a Snake in the
Cradle with him, but never perceived it did him
any harm.”

One of the most striking alleged facts connected
with the mysterious relation existing between
the serpent and the human species is the
influence which the poison of the Crotalus, taken
internally, seemed to produce over the moral faculties,
in the experiments instituted by Dr. Hering
at Surinam. There is something frightful in the
disposition of certain ophidians, as the whip-snake,
which darts at the eyes of cattle without
any apparent provocation or other motive. It is
natural enough that the evil principle should have
been represented in the form of a serpent, but it
is strange to think of introducing it into a human
being like cow-pox by vaccination.

You know all about the Psylli, or ancient serpent-tamers,
I suppose. Savary gives an account
of the modern serpent-tamers in his “Letters on
Egypt.” These modern jugglers are in the habit
of making the venomous Naja counterfeit death,
lying out straight and stiff, changing it into a
rod, as the ancient magicians did with their serpents,
(probably the same animal,) in the time of
Moses.

I am afraid I cannot throw much light on
“Christabel” or “Lamia” by any criticism I can
offer. Geraldine, in the former, seems to be simply
a malignant witch-woman, with the evil eye,

but with no absolute ophidian relationship. Lamia
is a serpent transformed by magic into a
woman. The idea of both is mythological, and
not in any sense physiological. Some women
unquestionably suggest the image of serpents;
men rarely or never. I have been struck, like
many others, with the ophidian head and eye of
the famous Rachel.

Your question about inherited predispositions,
as limiting the sphere of the will, and, consequently,
of moral accountability, opens a very
wide range of speculation. I can give you only
a brief abstract of my own opinions on this delicate
and difficult subject. Crime and sin, being
the preserves of two great organized interests,
have been guarded against all reforming poachers
with as great jealousy as the Royal Forests. It
is so easy to hang a troublesome fellow! It is so
much simpler to consign a soul to perdition, or
say masses, for money, to save it, than to take
the blame on ourselves for letting it grow up in
neglect and run to ruin for want of humanizing
influences! They hung poor, crazy Bellingham
for shooting Mr. Perceval. The ordinary of Newgate
preached to women who were to swing at
Tyburn for a petty theft as if they were worse
than other people, — just as though he would not
have been a pickpocket or shoplifter, himself, if
he had been born in a den of thieves and bred up
to steal or starve! The English law never began
to get hold of the idea that a crime was not necessarily

a sin, till Hadfield, who thought he was the
Saviour of mankind, was tried for shooting at
George the Third; — lucky for him that he did
not hit his Majesty!

It is very singular that we recognize all the
bodily defects that unfit a man for military service,
and all the intellectual ones that limit his
range of thought, but always talk at him as if all
his moral powers were perfect. I suppose we
must punish evil-doers as we extirpate vermin;
but I don't know that we have any more right to
judge them than we have to judge rats and mice,
which are just as good as cats and weasels, though
we think it necessary to treat them as criminals.

The limitations of human responsibility have
never been properly studied, unless it be by the
phrenologists. You know from my lectures that
I consider phrenology, as taught, a pseudo-science,
and not a branch of positive knowledge; but, for
all that, we owe it an immense debt. It has
melted the world's conscience in its crucible, and
cast it in a new mould, with features less like
those of Moloch and more like those of humanity.
If it has failed to demonstrate its system of special
correspondences, it has proved that there are
fixed relations between organization and mind
and character. It has brought out that great
doctrine of moral insanity, which has done more
to make men charitable and soften legal and theological
barbarism than any one doctrine that I
can think of since the message of peace and
good-will to men.

Automatic action in the moral world; the reflex
movement which seems to be self-determination,
and has been hanged and howled at as such
(metaphorically) for nobody knows how many
centuries: until somebody shall study this as
Marshall Hall has studied reflex nervous action
in the bodily system, I would not give much for
men's judgments of each other characters. Shut
up the robber and the defaulter, we must. But
what if your oldest boy had been stolen from his
cradle and bred in a North-Street cellar? What
if you are drinking a little too much wine and
smoking a little too much tobacco, and your son
takes after you, and so your poor grandson's brain
being a little injured in physical texture, he loses
the fine moral sense on which you pride yourself,
and doesn't see the difference between signing
another man's name to a draft and his own?

I suppose the study of automatic action in the
moral world (you see what I mean through the
apparent contradiction of terms) may be a dangerous
one in the view of many people. It is liable
to abuse, no doubt. People are always glad to
get hold of anything which limits their responsibility.
But remember that our moral estimates
come down to us from ancestors who hanged
children for stealing forty shillings' worth, and
sent their souls to perdition for the sin of being
born, — who punished the unfortunate families
of suicides, and in their eagerness for justice executed
one innocent person every three years, on
the average, as Sir James Mackintosh tells us.

I do not know in what shape the practical
question may present itself to you; but I will
tell you my rule in life, and I think you will find
it a good one. Treat bad men exactly as if they
were insane. They are in-sane, out of health,
morally. Reason, which is food to sound minds,
is not tolerated, still less assimilated, unless administered
with the greatest caution; perhaps, not
at all. Avoid collision with them, so far as you
honorably can; keep your temper, if you can, —
for one angry man is as good as another; restrain
them from violence, promptly, completely, and
with the least possible injury, just as in the case
of maniacs, — and when you have got rid of them,
or got them tied hand and foot so that they can
do no mischief, sit down and contemplate them
charitably, remembering that nine tenths of their
perversity comes from outside influences, drunken
ancestors, abuse in childhood, bad company, from
which you have happily been preserved, and for
some of which you, as a member of society, may
be fractionally responsible. I think also that there
are special influences which work in the blood like
ferments, and I have a suspicion that some of
those curious old stories I cited may have more
recent parallels. Have you ever met with any
cases which admitted of a solution like that which
I have mentioned?

Bernard Langdon to Philip Staples.

I have been for some months established in
this place, turning the main crank of the machinery
for the manufactory of accomplishments
superintended by, or rather worked to the profit
of, a certain Mr. Silas Peckham. He is a poor
wretch, with a little thin fishy blood in his body,
lean and flat, long-armed and large-handed, thick-jointed
and thin-muscled, — you know those unwholesome,
weak-eyed, half-fed creatures, that
look not fit to be round among live folks, and
yet not quite dead enough to bury. If you ever
hear of my being in court to answer to a charge
of assault and battery, you may guess that I
have been giving him a thrashing to settle off old
scores; for he is a tyrant, and has come pretty
near killing his principal lady-assistant with overworking
her and keeping her out of all decent
privileges.

Helen Darley is this lady's name, — twenty-two
or -three years old, I should think, — a very sweet,
pale woman, — daughter of the usual country-clergyman,
— thrown on her own resources from
an early age, and the rest: a common story, but
an uncommon person, — very. All conscience and
sensibility, I should say, — a cruel worker, — no
kind of regard for herself, — seems as fragile and
supple as a young willow-shoot, but try her and

you find she has the spring in her of a steel crossbow.
I am glad I happened to come to this
place, if it were only for her sake. I have saved
that girl's life; I am as sure of it as if I had pulled
her out of the fire or water.

Of course I'm in love with her, you say, — we
always love those whom we have benefited:
“saved her life, — her love was the reward of his
devotion,” etc., etc., as in a regular set novel. In
love, Philip? Well, about that, — I love Helen
Darley — very much: there is hardly anybody I
love so well. What a noble creature she is!
One of those that just go right on, do their own
work and everybody else's, killing themselves inch
by inch without ever thinking about it, — singing
and dancing at their toil when they begin, worn
and saddened after a while, but pressing steadily
on, tottering by-and-by, and catching at the rail
by the way-side to help them lift one foot before
the other, and at last falling, face down, arms
stretched forward —

Philip, my boy, do you know I am the sort
of man that locks his door sometimes and cries
his heart out of his eyes, — that can sob like a
woman and not be ashamed of it? I come of
fighting-blood on one side, you know; I think I
could be savage on occasion. But I am tender,
— more and more tender as I come into my fulness
of manhood. I don't like to strike a man,
(laugh, if you like, — I know I hit hard when I
do strike,) — but what I can't stand is the sight

of these poor, patient, toiling women, who never
find out in this life how good they are, and never
know what it is to be told they are angels while
they still wear the pleasing incumbrances of humanity.
I don't know what to make of these
cases. To think that a woman is never to be
a woman again, whatever she may come to as
an unsexed angel, — and that she should die
unloved! Why does not somebody come and
carry off this noble woman, waiting here all ready
to make a man happy? Philip, do you know the
pathos there is in the eyes of unsought women,
oppressed with the burden of an inner life unshared?
I can see into them now as I could not
in those earlier days. I sometimes think their
pupils dilate on purpose to let my consciousness
glide through them; indeed, I dread them, I come
so close to the nerve of the soul itself in these
momentary intimacies. You used to tell me I
was a Turk, — that my heart was full of pigeon-holes,
with accommodations inside for a whole
flock of doves. I don't know but I am still as
Youngish as ever in my ways, — Brigham-Youngish,
I mean; at any rate, I always want
to give a little love to all the poor things that
cannot have a whole man to themselves. If they
would only be contented with a little!

Here now are two girls in this school where I
am teaching. One of them, Rosa M., is not
more than sixteen years old, I think they say;
but Nature has forced her into a tropical luxuriance

of beauty, as if it were July with her, instead
of May. I suppose it is all natural enough
that this girl should like a young man's attention,
even if he were a grave school-master; but the
eloquence of this young thing's look is unmistakable,
— and yet she does not know the language
it is talking, — they none of them do; and
there is where a good many poor creatures of our
good-for-nothing sex are mistaken. There is no
danger of my being rash, but I think this girl
will cost somebody his life yet. She is one of
those women men make a quarrel about and
fight to the death for, — the old feral instinct, you
know.

Pray, don't think I am lost in conceit, but
there is another girl here who I begin to think
looks with a certain kindness on me. Her name
is Elsie V., and she is the only daughter and heiress
of an old family in this place. She is a portentous
and almost fearful creature. If I should
tell you all I know and half of what I fancy
about her, you would tell me to get my life insured
at once. Yet she is the most painfully
interesting being, — so handsome! so lonely! —
for she has no friends among the girls, and sits
apart from them, — with black hair like the flow
of a mountain-brook after a thaw, with a low-browed,
scowling beauty of face, and such eyes
as were never seen before, I really believe, in any
human creature.

Philip, I don't know what to say about this

Elsie. There is something about her I have not
fathomed. I have conjectures which I could not
utter to any living soul. I dare not even hint
the possibilities which have suggested themselves
to me. This I will say, — that I do take the most
intense interest in this young person, an interest
much more like pity than love in its common
sense. If what I guess at is true, of all the tragedies
of existence I ever knew this is the saddest,
and yet so full of meaning! Do not ask me any
questions, — I have said more than I meant to
already; but I am involved in strange doubts and
perplexities, — in dangers too, very possibly, —
and it is a relief just to speak ever so guardedly
of them to an early and faithful friend.