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- 1473
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- 1412
- text
- These men are true madmen, and of the most dangerous sort, for their
lunacy is not continuous, but occasional; evoked by some special object;
it is secretive and self-contained, so that when most active it is to
the average mind not distinguished from sanity, and for the reason above
suggested that whatever its aim may be, and the aim is never disclosed,
the method and the outward proceeding is always perfectly rational.
Now something such was Claggart, in whom was the mania of an evil
nature, not engendered by vicious training or corrupting books or
licentious living, but born with him and innate, in short, ‘a depravity
according to nature.’
Can it be this phenomenon, disowned or not acknowledged, that in some
criminal cases puzzles the courts? For this cause have our juries at
times not only to endure the prolonged contentions of lawyers with their
fees, but also the yet more perplexing strife of the medical experts
with theirs? But why leave it to them? Why not subpœna as well the
clerical proficients? Their vocation bringing them into peculiar contact
with so many human beings, and sometimes in their least guarded hour, in
interviews very much more confidential than those of physician and
patient; this would seem to qualify them to know something about those
intricacies involved in the question of moral responsibility; whether in
a given case, say, the crime proceeded from mania in the brain or rabies
of the heart. As to any differences among themselves these clerical
proficients might develop on the stand, these could hardly be greater
than the direct contradictions exchanged between the remunerated medical
experts.
Dark sayings are these, some will say. But why? It is because they
somewhat savour of Holy Writ in its phrase ‘mysteries of iniquity.’
The point of the story turning on the hidden nature of the
master-at-arms has necessitated this chapter. With an added hint or two
in connection with the accident of the mess, the resumed narrative must
be left to vindicate as it may its own credibility.
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XI
Pale ire, envy and despair.
That Claggart’s figure was not amiss, and his face, save the chin, well
moulded, has already been said. Of these favourable points he seemed not
insensible, for he was not only neat but careful in his dress. But the
form of Billy Budd was heroic; and if his face was without the
intellectual look of the pallid Claggart’s, not the less was it lit,
like his, from within, though from a different source. The bonfire in
his heart made luminous the rose-tan in his cheek.
In view of the marked contrast between the persons of the twain, it is
more than probable that when the master-at-arms in the scene last given
applied to the sailor the proverb ‘_Handsome is as handsome does_,’ he
there let escape an ironic inkling, not caught by the young sailors who
heard it, as to what it was that had first moved him against Billy,
namely, his significant personal beauty.
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