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- that, I think that to try and get into X----, enter his labyrinth, and
get out again, without a clue derived from some source other than what
is known as _knowledge of the world_, that were hardly possible, at
least for me.’
‘Why,’ said I, ‘X----, however singular a study to some, is yet human,
and knowledge of the world assuredly implies the knowledge of human
nature, and in most of its varieties.’
‘Yes, but a superficial knowledge of it, serving ordinary purposes. But
for anything deeper, I am not certain whether to know the world and to
know human nature be not two distinct branches of knowledge, which while
they may coexist in the same heart, yet either may exist with little or
nothing of the other. Nay, in an average man of the world, his constant
rubbing with it blunts that fine spiritual insight indispensable to the
understanding of the essential in certain exceptional characters,
whether evil ones or good. In a matter of some importance I have seen a
girl wind an old lawyer about her little finger. Nor was it the dotage
of senile love. Nothing of the sort. But he knew law better than he knew
the girl’s heart. Coke and Blackstone hardly shed so much light into
obscure spiritual places as the Hebrew prophets. And who were they?
Mostly recluses.’
At the time my inexperience was such that I did not quite see the drift
of all this. It may be that I see it now. And, indeed, if that lexicon
which is based on Holy Writ were any longer popular, one might with less
difficulty define and denominate certain phenomenal men. As it is, one
must turn to some authority not liable to the charge of being tinctured
with the Biblical element.
In a list of definitions included in the authentic translation of Plato,
a list attributed to him, occurs this: ‘Natural Depravity: a depravity
according to nature.’ A definition which though savouring of Calvinism,
by no means involves Calvin’s dogma as to total mankind. Evidently its
intent makes it applicable but to individuals. Not many are the examples
of this depravity which the gallows and jail supply. At any rate, for
notable instances,--since these have no vulgar alloy of the brute in
them, but invariably are dominated by intellectuality,--one must go
elsewhere. Civilisation, especially if of the austerer sort, is
auspicious to it. It folds itself in the mantle of respectability. It
has its certain negative virtues serving as silent auxiliaries. It is
not going too far to say that it is without vices or small sins. There
is a phenomenal pride in it that excludes them from anything--never
mercenary or avaricious. In short, the depravity here meant partakes
nothing of the sordid or sensual. It is serious, but free from acerbity.
Though no flatterer of mankind, it never speaks ill of it.
But the thing which in eminent instances signalises so exceptional a
nature is this: though the man’s even temper and discreet bearing would
seem to intimate a mind peculiarly subject to the law of reason, not the
less in his soul’s recesses he would seem to riot in complete exemption
from that law, having apparently little to do with reason further than
to employ it as an ambidexter implement for effecting the irrational.
That is to say: toward the accomplishment of an aim which in wantonness
of malignity would seem to partake of the insane, he will direct a cool
judgment sagacious and sound.
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,
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