I might get Nancy yet,beat down her resistance,overcome her,if only Icould be near her and see her.But even in the midst of these surges of passion I was conscious of the birth of a new force I did not understand,and which I resented,that had arisen to give battle to my passions and desires.This struggle was not mentally reflected as a debate between right and wrong,as to whether I should or should not be justified in taking Nancy if I could get her:it seemed as though some new and small yet dogged intruder had forced an entrance into me,an insignificant pigmy who did not hesitate to bar the pathway of the reviving giant of my desires.These contests sapped my strength.It seemed as though in my isolation I loved Nancy,I missed her more than ever,and the flavour she gave to life.
Then Hermann Krebs began to press himself on me.I use the word as expressive of those early resentful feelings,--I rather pictured him then as the personification of an hostile element in the universe that had brought about my miseries and accomplished my downfall;I attributed the disagreeable thwarting of my impulses to his agency;I did not wish to think of him,for he stood somehow for a vague future I feared to contemplate.Yet the illusion of his presence,once begun,continued to grow upon me,and I find myself utterly unable to describe that struggle in which he seemed to be fighting as against myself for my confidence;that process whereby he gradually grew as real to me as though he still lived--until I could almost hear his voice and see his smile.At moments I resisted wildly,as though my survival depended on it;at other moments he seemed to bring me peace.One day I recalled as vividly as though it were taking place again that last time I had been with him;I seemed once more to be listening to the calm yet earnest talk ranging over so many topics,politics and government,economics and science and religion.Idid not yet grasp the synthesis he had made of them all,but I saw them now all focussed in him elements he had drawn from human lives and human experiences.I think it was then I first felt the quickenings of a new life to be born in travail and pain....Wearied,yet exalted,I sank down on a stone bench and gazed out at the little island of Santa Cruz afloat on the shimmering sea.
I have mentioned my inability to depict the terrible struggle that went on in my soul.It seems strange that Nietzsche--that most ruthless of philosophers to the romantic mind!--should express it for me."The genius of the heart,from contact with which every man goes away richer,not 'blessed'and overcome,....but richer himself,fresher to himself than before,opened up,breathed upon and sounded by a thawing wind;more uncertain,perhaps,more delicate,more bruised;but full of hopes which as yet lack names,full of a new will and striving,full of a new unwillingness and counterstriving."....
Such was my experience with Hermann Krebs.How keenly I remember that new unwillingness and counter-striving!In spite of the years it has not wholly died down,even to-day....
Almost coincident with these quickenings of which I have spoken was the consciousness of a hunger stronger than the craving for bread and meat,and I began to meditate on my ignorance,on the utter inadequacy and insufficiency of my early education,on my neglect of the new learning during the years that had passed since I left Harvard.And I remembered Krebs's words--that we must "reeducate ourselves."What did I know?Asystem of law,inherited from another social order,that was utterly unable to cope with the complexities and miseries and injustices of a modern industrial world.I had spent my days in mastering an inadequate and archaic code--why?in order that I might learn how to evade it?This in itself condemned it.What did I know of life?of the shining universe that surrounded me?What did I know of the insect and the flower,of the laws that moved the planets and made incandescent the suns?of the human body,of the human soul and its instincts?Was this knowledge acquired at such cost of labour and life and love by my fellow-men of so little worth to me that I could ignore it?declare that it had no significance for me?no bearing on my life and conduct?If I were to rise and go forward--and I now felt something like a continued impulse,in spite of relaxations and revolts--I must master this knowledge,it must be my guide,form the basis of my creed.I--who never had had a creed,never felt the need of one!For lack of one I had been rudely jolted out of the frail shell I had thought so secure,and stood,as it were,naked and shivering to the storms,staring at a world that was no function of me,after all.My problem,indeed,was how to become a function of it....
I resolved upon a course of reading,but it was a question what books to get.Krebs could have told me,if he had lived.I even thought once of writing Perry Blackwood to ask him to make a list of the volumes in Krebs's little library;but I was ashamed to do this.
Dr.Strafford still remained with me.Not many years out of the medical school,he had inspired me with a liking for him and a respect for his profession,and when he informed me one day that he could no longer conscientiously accept the sum I was paying him,I begged him to stay on.
He was a big and wholesome young man,companionable,yet quiet and unobtrusive,watchful without appearing to be so,with the innate as well as the cultivated knowledge of psychology characteristic of the best modern physicians.When I grew better I came to feel that he had given his whole mind to the study of my case,though he never betrayed it in his conversation.
"Strafford,"I said to him one morning with such an air of unconcern as Icould muster,"I've an idea I'd like to read a little science.Could you recommend a work on biology?"I chose biology because I thought he would know something about it.
"Popular biology,Mr.Paret?"
