Dr.
Seward's Diary(Kept in phonograph) 25 May Ebb tide in appetite
today. Cannot eat, cannot rest, so diary instead. Since my rebuff of yesterday
I have a sort of empty feeling. Nothing in the world seems of sufficient importance
to be worth the doing. As I knew that the only cure for this sort of thing was
work, I went amongst the patients. I picked out one who has afforded me a study
of much interest. He is so quaint that I am determined to understand him as well
as I can. Today I seemed to get nearer than ever before to the heart of his mystery. I
questioned him more fully than I had ever done, with a view to making myself master
of the facts of his hallucination. In my manner of doing it there was, I now see,
something of cruelty. I seemed to wish to keep him to the point of his madness,
a thing which I avoid with the patients as I would the mouth of hell. (Mem.,
Under what circumstances would I not avoid the pit of hell?) Omnia Romae venalia
sunt. Hell has its price! Verb. Sap. If there be anything behind this instinct
it will be valuable to trace it afterwards accurately, so I had better commence
to do so, therefore . . . R. M, Renfield, aetat 59. Sanguine temperament,
great physical strength, morbidly excitable, periods of gloom, ending in some
fixed idea which I cannot make out. I presume that the sanguine temperament itself
and the disturbing influence end in a mentally-accomplished finish, a possibly
dangerous man, probably dangerous if unselfish. In selfish men caution is as secure
an armour for their foes as for themselves. What I think of on this point is,
when self is the fixed point the centripetal force is balanced with the centrifugal.
When duty, a cause, etc., is the fixed point, the latter force is paramount, and
only accident of a series of accidents can balance it. |
