one. To subjugate the free will of a fellow creature, to act upon her by suggestion, to compel her to do that which she must and not that which she would, was to attempt to uproot the moral law, to unseat religion, and to shake our trust in the supremacy of God himself.
It was in vain that I urged that it was no part of my present scheme to act upon Lucy by therapeutic suggestion, but that if I were driven to doing so as a last resource I should feel justified by the natural order of life.
“You talk,” I said, “about conscience, about moral responsibility, about free will. To ninety nine out of a hundred there is no such thing. Only the hundredth has a will that is free, and, for good or evil, he makes slaves of the wills of the ninety and nine. The orator swaying an assembly, the statesman directing affairs, the king controlling an empire, the pretty woman dictating fashion, the young bride winning to her own way the husband who loves her—what are they all doing but imposing the free will on the will that is not free? Every great man is great in degree as he dictates the wills of other men, and he is the greatest man whom the greatest men are doomed to obey.”
The Scots minister listened to me with a face of horror.
“Why call a man great,” he said, “because he paralyzes the souls of his fellow men? The basest and the worst of men do that, and it is by the power of the devil that they do it. The murderer who lures his victim to a lonely place that he may fall on him and kill him, the Judas who worms himself into the secret of his master that he may betray and sell him, the unjust steward who seeks the care of the widow and fatherless that he may rob them of their bread, the seducer who palters with the love of a weak woman that he may dishonor her and then fling her in the mud—these are the men who try to control the actions of their fellow men, and they are the real Lucifers, for they are in rebellion against God on his real throne—the hearts of his creatures.”
“In short, you mean,” I said, “that if I cause Miss Clousedale to be put under the hypnotic sleep in the hope of conquering the drink crave which is destroying her, I shall be acting the part of her worst enemy?”
"You will be attempting to break down the sanctuaries of her soul,” he answered, “and pretending to a power that can only come of the grace of God itself.”
I was losing my patience. “Nevertheless I intend to try.”
The minister flushed to the eyes. “You shall not do so.”
I set my teeth and went on. “She has no legal guardian, and I am shortly to be her husband. The moral right is mine, and I am going to exercise it.”
“Then, sir,” replied the Rev. Mr. McPherson, bringing his fist down on the table, “I wash my hands of your proceedings;” and with that and a flash of anger he rose and left us.
I had no better encouragement from the doctor. His steely eyes had glittered with amused contempt during my encounter with the minister, and now he spoke with the easy superiority of a man who believes himself to be above all feeble superstitions. His theories were the new ones; his methods the reverse of those who trust to moral suasion. Drink was a madness. The victims of it ought to be treated as mad people, and kept under restraint until the madness had been overcome.
The words stung me, and I suppose I colored deeply, for he looked into my face and said,
“This is no time for mock modesty. It is a time to face the truth . For my own part, I have done so from the first. Regarding Miss Clousedale as a subject of temporary insanity, I have, as you are aware, treated her accordingly.”
I bit my lip and asked, “With what results?”
“I am not responsible for results,” he answered. “I am only responsible for the treatment. To attempt to cure the drink crave by the machinery of the temperance pledge is a course discredited in the eyes of all scientific inquirers. In spite of the gigantic temperance organization of the last fifty years, drunkenness the world over is not less, but more. Its consequences are more serious, its special cases more acute. As a whole, taken in its broadest aspects, the temperance cause has failed. So far I am at one with you, but”—I was shaking my head; he paid no heed to my dissent—"but the method with which you now propose to supersede the effete one of temperance people like this Scots minister is not only ineffectual, it is beset with terrors. You say you are going to put the young lady under hypnotic sleep. There is no such thing as hypnotic sleep. What there is in actual fact is a phenomenon produced by imagination.”
“Very well,” I said; “if you prefer to call it imagination, let us do so; and if im-
