Once he was fully convinced of the futility of his efforts and the persistence of his bad luck, he resolved to put an abrupt end to his miserable existence.
By what road should he return to oblivion? Victor Psuquet did not hesitate for long. One morning he unbuckled his belt and hanged himself high and short from the principal branch of a tree by the roadside.
Either by virtue of haste, or lack of practice, the belt did not run smoothly through the knot, and our man remained suspended by the chin, striving in vain to tighten the noose with his hands.
An obliging passer-by came to his aid, but had no better success in hanging him. “This is ridiculous,” the latter declared, opening the buckle that retained Victor Psuquet between heaven and earth with a thrust of his knife. “One doesn’t hang oneself with a belt! How the devil can you expect that to slide?”
The failed hanged man fell at the foot of the tree, only slightly suffocated.
“Wait for me there,” said the other. “I’ll go fetch a stronger rope, which we’ll soap, and you’ll see how smoothly it will run!”
He did, indeed, come back, carrying a very long rope, and set about knotting it conscientiously, while the despairing Victor apologized for the trouble to which he was putting the excellent Yankee.
“Why, only too happy to render you this small service, my dear Monsieur,” the man replied. “You have, I suppose, a conscience burdened with a few vile misdeeds and want to acquit yourself with regard to society. I approve—it’s always necessary to pay one’s debts.”
“No!” exclaimed Psuquet, sharply. “I haven’t committed any crime; I’ve never wronged anyone. I’m an honest man!”
“You’ve doubtless contracted an incurable and exceedingly painful disease?”
“Not at all!”
“You’re convinced at least, that you’re going to a better world?”
“I don’t believe in God or the Devil, and I’ve always considered the afterlife as a sinister joke.”
“Then you’re an imbecile, my friend,” the hangman went on, while fitting the rope to the branch, “and in that case, you’re absolutely right to leave us; your disappearance won’t be any loss to anyone.”
Victor protested, spoke about his misfortunes and bad luck, and described his misery, his destitution, his confusion and his distress.
“And you’re despairing over so little?” said the unknown. “I’ve gone through worse myself! You see, comrade, as long as one is healthy, nothing is lost. Those who get discouraged are mystics or imbeciles. Only ask of life that which it can give us, and struggle until the end; something trivial can sometimes turn a life upside down! Would you be so kind as to put your head into this noose—I’m in a hurry!”
Psuquet, however, no longer was. Life suddenly appeared to him in a new light. He was in much less haste to quit it, and confessed that to his interlocutor, who went red with annoyance and cried indignantly:
“What! I’ve gone to all the trouble of hanging you, going in search of a rope, soaping it, knotting it, attaching it, and you don’t want to hang anymore? No, you wouldn’t do that. You assured me that you were honest; you wouldn’t do me such a grave injury. Just think—after the operation, my rope, cut into little pieces for the Italians who pass by here in considerable numbers, would have brought me at least twenty-five thousand dollars!”
“I admit, honestly,” Psuquet said, “that I owe you some compensation. Employ me as you will, until my debt is completely paid off.”
The American protested forcefully, but Victor would not change his mind.
That is how he entered employment as a laborer in a mill, of which he eventually became the owner. Later, he bought neighboring mills, rival mills, distant mills, and finally founded the Psuquet Company, whose innumerable mills turn over the entire extent of the Union, and bring him millions.
As one can imagine, Victor Psuquet did not forget the incident of the hanging. He told the story gladly, and cited it as an example to those gripped by discouragement. In order to increase the good effects of his advice, he wondered whether it might not be a good idea to create veritable hospitals, with consultations and treatments for moral suffering, as there were for physical suffering. A puritan to whom he communicated that idea suggested to him that hospitals for sick souls had been functioning for a long time, churches and temples being nothing else, and that their ministers could be considered as spiritual physicians par excellence.
“No, no,” Psuquet replied, “they’re nothing but charlatans. Their remedies are sovereign for another world, to which none of us plausibly go, but for the one in which we live, they’re absolutely worthless. I’d like bewildered unfortunates suffering from pain, grief, ennui and misery to be able to find something other than banal consolations, an appeal to stupid resignation or the fallacious illusion of chimerical hopes. I’d like a meeting of businessmen and thinkers, scientists and lawyers, manufacturers, tradesmen and philosophers to be able, every day, to give them the practical and disinterested advice that their condition demands, and, if necessary, to undertake complete moral cures.
On his death, which occurred inopportunely in 1901, a voluminous file was found among his papers bearing the title, in capital letters: Psuquet House. It was the plan of an asylum for the desperate, worked out in great detail; not only had he determined the construction of the buildings and their interior dispositions but, in a long memoir, had scrupulously described its organization and functioning. As he bequeathed a considerable sum to permit the execution of the project and provide for its maintenance, the architects and entrepreneurs set to work immediately, and notable individuals identified by him are preparing to exercise their new functions.
Today, Psuquet House in Denver is a model establishment of assistance. Anyone can knock at the door, provided that he say that he is unfortunate. Whatever his nationality or religion, whatever his past, the newcomer is sure to find practical advice to get him out of difficulty or soothe his distress, and, if his case is serious, hospitalization for one or several days.
Is there any need to add that the success and fashionability of Psuquet House is increasing by the day, and that similar foundations are being created in the principal cities of the Union. It should be noted that, since it opened, crime has been reduced by sixty-five per cent in Colorado, and that suicide has completely disappeared there.
VII. The Doctor
A newspaper recently announced the creation of a Milner Institute in the vicinity of Paris—at Villemorin (Seine-et-Oise), to be precise, where a rich landowner has put his château and its grounds at the disposal of the organizers. I ought to say that this announcement passed virtually unnoticed; the immense majority of French readers have no idea of what Dr. James Milner’s treatment consists. As I was able, in the course of my investigation of the United States, to visit the prototype establishment, in all its details, I have made it my duty to inform my compatriots as to the functioning of a Milner Institute—or a Love Institute, as they say over there.
Let me permit myself, before introducing the man and his work to you, to enter into a few general considerations necessary to the full understanding of the great and noble ideas that presided over the elaboration and scientific organization of the new institution. Without these explanations, Dr. James Milner’s foundation might pass, in the eyes of Europeans, for one of those eccentricities to which certain Yankee lunatics devote themselves—and nothing could be further from the truth.
You are aware that, for a long time, the Americans have advantageously put into practice the great discoveries of the schools of Nancy and the Salpêtrière with regard to suggestion and hypnotism. A new path has thus been opened up to their “devouring activity,” and psychic industry—if I might label it thus—has been born. Starting from the principle, albeit eminently contestable, that the majority of miraculous cures are phenomena of hypnotism, and that the faith that saves is merely autosuggestion, they have sought to reproduce the same phenomena by creating religious exalta
tion scientifically.
The Christian Science movement, which has made such rapid and prodigious progress in the Union, has no other cause; and it is entirely natural that public favor should rally to that movement, which, by suppressing physicians and pharmacists, fully realizes the precepts of the Salerno School: cito, tuto et jucunde.57
As always, the ameliorations observed in some invalids, particularly predisposed by their nervous condition, have been celebrated with the help of loud advertisement—and you know how good Americans are at that—while numerous failures have been passed over in silence. In the same way, the names of a few believers escaped from tempest can be read on the walls of votive chapels, and one does not remember the multitudes of suppliants that were swallowed up. The infatuation with the new method was all the greater because people sensed the intervention of an occult power therein, and, while being quite natural, it seemed not to be. The marvelous has always seduced the crowd.
It is easily explicable, in fact, that very powerful wills impress weak or sensitive characters, and exercise such a powerful empire over them that they can cause them to act, even against certain instinctive tendencies. Such is the debilitated or depressed person who immediately reacts and makes an effort; or the person in despair who regains courage; the mental having as always, a considerable influence on the physical, health improves. In the presence of these excellent results, a commerce in will-power, so to speak, has been established between those who do not have enough and those who have it to spare. Then, these powerful wills no longer even needed to be exercised directly in order to achieve good results; absolute confidence in the practices they indicate sufficed. The new faith set out to save like the old; the psychic industry was created.
Until recently, all the efforts attempted on this path have converged on one single goal: to soothe, or to heal. In a word, it is the practice of psychotherapy. It is Dr. James Milner who has the honor of being the first to direct his efforts in a directly opposite direction. Instead of combating maladies, he provokes them. One can see immediately what an immense field, fertile in unsuspected discoveries, the scientist will open to science by means of this notion of veritable genius.
Good American as he is, though, the Doctor does not consider that an idea exists, however admirable it might be, so long as it remains in the realm of theoretical speculation and has not received the consecration of practicality.
A primary question arose: what malady was it preferable, from the humanitarian point of view—the doctor is a philanthropist—to suggest to his clients? After long calculations, which you will excuse me for not going into, and mature reflections, which I cannot summarize in such a brief article, James Milner succeeded in determining scientifically that the malady in question was love.
The scientist, in fact, considered love as form of mental alienation. “Observe,” he wrote in his introduction, “a subject afflicted with the malady in question; you will notice that all his psychic forces are applied to a single object, which takes on immeasurable proportions and ideal forms in his eyes. According to him, that object is of implausible perfection, sublimely beautiful, encapsulating the past, present and future, greater than the world, than life or death! It is all of happiness. Are those not the words of a lunatic? If that dementia sometimes leads to the most atrocious forfeits, it also produces superhuman feats, engenders immortal works of art, and, all things considered, the harm it can do is trivial by comparison with the enormous benefits that humankind may reap therefrom.”
After that exceedingly neat description, the doctor observes that in our epoch, especially in America, love is increasingly in decline. The relentless conflict of interests, the material cares of existence, egotism, flirtation, the thirst for brutal enjoyments and the vulgarization of rational and scientific ideas, have distanced individuals therefrom. People no longer have time for love; they no longer want to love; they are afraid of love. More often than not, people marry without love, and if, by chance they are afflicted by the malady, they seek to be cured of it more rapidly by means of separations, voyages and even deliverance by single or double suicide. James Milner therefore thought, with good reason, of taking his place among the benefactors of humanity by founding an institute designed to propagate among his contemporaries true, intense and durable love.
He is not one of those who imagine that, in order to attain that end, it is sufficient to write the word love in a code of behavior—as if one could love in the name of the law! Nor is he one of those bedroom moralists who lament the lack of sentimentality in our time, or one of those sociologists who make speeches about neo-Malthusianism or repopulation. James Milner is a man of action, who, having had an idea, makes haste to realize it. Today, the Institute exists, and is functioning; and it has already produced such fine results that institutes are under construction in various countries, and it is proposed to establish one near Paris. Will the obsolete and routine mores of the Old World permit this innovation to prosper here? I don’t know; all that I can affirm is that, thanks to the Love Institute, a complete transformation is now in progress in the American family.
Dr. Milner’s Institute is located a few miles outside Denver, Colorado, in the middle of a park in which vast lawns surrounding clusters of exceedingly old trees create cheerful views. The assembly of buildings, according to plan, affects the form of a heraldic fleur-de-lys. The administration and general services, a large hall with an elongated oval shape and a chapel design the median section, to which are attached, to the right and left, at the lower part of the convexity, two wings curved like palm-leaves.
At first glance, the sight is neither cheerful not severe, but surprising. On a stone foundation forming a terrace all the way around, various constructions are erected, made entirely of iron and glass. The effect of those vast windowless—or, if you prefer, entirely windowed—edifices is strange, for the walls are comprised of two mirrors between which warm air circulates in winter and air cooled by refrigerators in summer. Except that the architects have succeeded in relieving the iron of its rigidity and the glass of its flatness, and, in spite of the geometry, have made both so flexible that they come together in perfectly harmonious lines. One might think that Dr. Milner, by means of that mode of construction, wanted to symbolize love, which unites with so much grace the brutality of man and the fragility of woman.
As soon as I had climbed the steps of the perron and gone into the entrance hall, I experienced a singular impression; it seemed to me that I too was made of crystal and that all my thoughts, even my secret ones, were legible through my face. The iron and glass outside were complemented by oak and polished brass within, which gave the whole a complete beauty made of light, simplicity and…I might almost say honesty; which did not exclude either charm or comfort. The anticipations I had formed regarding the work of James Milner—and I must confess that I had imagined that the institute was not at all serious, and that it would be more reminiscent of a tea-shop—disappeared. My skepticism was vanquished; I was conquered, or perhaps hypnotized.
On the presentation of the letter granting an audience to the representative of the Universal Informer, an usher took me to the director’s office. At the precise minute that he had fixed, Dr. James Milner had me shown in.
Before I had time to greet him, he said volubly: “You’re at home here, Monsieur. You can go anywhere; we have nothing to hide. One of my secretaries will accompany you in the different services, and will give you all the explanations you desire. Goodbye.”
With those words, the tall clean-shaven old man, with a Benedictine face, rotated his armchair through ninety degrees and resumed work. Giving up on posing the questions that I had prepared in view of a sensational interview, I bowed, and was beginning to formulate vague thanks when a tall young man, very bond, very polite and also very clean-shaven, whom I had not heard approaching, said: “At your service!” And he added, as if handing me a card: “Mr. Steeg.”
Mr. Steeg might more accurately have said “at my service.�
�� In fact, he went out first and I followed him. We went back across the hall, and back down the front steps; he stopped in the grounds and showed me the ensemble of the buildings.
“The right wing, which you see here,” he told me, “is reserved for gentlemen, the left wing for ladies, and the central section, which contains the general services, is communal to both sexes. All the operations carried out in one wing are carried out in exactly the same fashion in the opposite wing; the locations are identical, the feminine personnel of one corresponding to the masculine personnel of the other, and the formalities are the same. Knowing one, you know the other. We shall, therefore, go into the building on the right, and you shall see, in order, the trials to which our clients must submit.”
It was necessary for me to speak English as well as I do to follow Mr. Steeg’s explanations. I thought, however, that I had not understood him very clearly when he spoke about the distinct affectations of the two wings. For the second time, in the United States, I saw an inviolable line of demarcation drawn between the two sexes. And while steering me toward the building reserved for male clients, I wondered whether love was not born of that separation, and whether we were still in the old story of the forbidden fruit.
In the vestibule, my guide took me to an enormous register in which the clients had to write this short sentence: I sincerely desire to get married, followed by the date and a signature.
“Dr. Milner,” Mr. Steeg explained to me, “deems that one cannot make people happy against their will, and the first condition he demands of his clients is to want to be happy, sincerely and reliably. He thus renders a signal service to young men and young women who either do not have the time to search, or to exhaust themselves in vain research; instead of wasting their time or languishing, they have only to write their names here.”
Investigations of the Future Page 19
