by Karel Čapek
“But then my eyes run so,” complained the clairvoyant. “I can’t bear the light.”
“All right, my man,” said the specialist approvingly. “A perfect clinical picture, my friend. You are a complete diagnostic treasure and you can observe things nicely. I mean observe yourself. You would be a good patient. You wouldn’t believe how some people are incapable of explaining what hurts them.”
The clairvoyant was clearly flattered by this praise. “And here, doctor,” he pointed shyly, “I feel such a strange anxiety.”
“Epigastrium,” said the specialist, approvingly, as if he were examining a diligent medical student. “Excellent.”
“And in my mouth,” recalled the clairvoyant, “a feeling as if everything was swollen up.”
The old gentleman trumpeted victoriously and magnificently. “So you see,” he announced to the surgeon, “here we’ve got together all the symptoms of yellow fever. My diagnosis is being confirmed. And when I think,” he added sentimentally, “that for thirty years I haven’t seen a case of yellow fever … Thirty years is a long time.”
The surgeon felt less happy, and frowned at the clairvoyant, who was resting prostrate and exhausted. “But these experiments don’t do you any good,” he lectured severely. “I shall not let you stay here, off you go home. You might suggest for yourself illnesses from the whole hospital. In short, pack up your toothbrush and—” with his thumb he indicated the door.
The clairvoyant nodded gloomily in agreement. “I couldn’t stand it,” he admitted in a low voice. “I can’t imagine why it exhausts one mentally. If he … that one, that X case, were conscious, then everything would be recognized clearly, definitely, and … as if it were in black and white. But with such complete unconsciousness.” The clairvoyant shook his head. “A terrible, almost hopeless task. Nothing at all definite, no outline—” He made a gesture in the air with his thin fingers. “And besides those fevers of his, such a muddle even in the subconscious—all upside down, and incoherent. At the same time, everybody was—and is full of him here, everybody thinks about him, you, nurses, everyone.”
On the clairvoyant’s face the signs of a deep and intense agony appeared. “I must get away from here, or I shall go mad.”
The specialist listened with interest, with his head to one side. “And,” he inquired vaguely, “have you found out anything about him?”
The clairvoyant sat up and with trembling fingers began to light a cigarette. “Anything.” He blew out smoke with relief. “In anything I find there are always gaps and uncertainties.” He waved his hand. “To find out, that is to hit at some mystery. If you want to know if I have come across problems and uncertainties, then, yes; then I have found something out. I know you would like me to tell you, but you don’t like to ask.” He thought for a moment with closed eyes. “And I want to get rid of it. If I get it off my chest I shall be able to get away from it—to leave it alone as you would say. You never get rid of anything you keep silent.”
CHAPTER XII
THE CLAIRVOYANT’S STORY
THE clairvoyant sat up on the bed, with his thin knees drawn up to his chin, gaunt and grotesque in his striped pyjamas, and looked into the void as if he were squinting. “I’d better outline to you the method, and introduce some notions,” he began hesitatingly. “Let’s say, imagine a circle—a circle of brass wire.” Here he drew a circle in the air. “A circle is a visible thing. We can think of it abstracdy, we can define it mathematically, but psychologically a circle is something we SEE. If I blindfolded you you could touch that wire, and you would say that it is a circle. You would have the SENSATION of a circle. And there are people who with closed eyes can discern with the ear what form the body has that is vibrating. In our case they would HEAR a circle if we hit that wire with a mallet. And if an intelligent fly wandered over that wire it would also acquire an absolutely definite SENSATION OF A CIRCLE. You must understand what a small step it is from these physical sensations to the mental state of a man who in complete darkness would have a sensation that somewhere here there is a circle. Without the aid of eyes, ears, or touch. A perfecdy accurate sensation of a circle. I tell you that with the senses eliminated like this you would have a far stronger consciousness of the circle than of the material of which it is made; for form and not material is the spiritual medium. And if I say sensation, I don’t mean some intuition, or guess, but an extremely accurate, penetrating, I might say painfully definite consciousness of something; but to give this consciousness a name, and express it as a part of knowledge is difficult, extremely difficult.”
The clairvoyant stopped short. “Why,” he mumbled, “why, indeed, have I taken a circle for an example ? You see, I anticipated before I actually began. The feeling of a circle which closes in on itself. The shape of a tropic, and at the same time the shape of life.” He shook his head in negation. “No, in this way we should not get anywhere. I know you both have your doubts about telepathy. And quite rightly. Telepathy is nonsense, we can’t perceive things at a distance; we must approach them, approach the stars with number, matter with analysis, and the microscope; and when we have eliminated sensation and bodily presence we can approach anything by concentration. I admit that there may perhaps be premonitions, dreams, apparitions, and visions; I admit that, but on principle I do not want to have anything to do with it. I decline it, and reject it. I am no visionary, I am analytic; full reality does not disclose itself to us; it must be won with arduous labour, by means of analysis and concentration. You admit that the brain is the instrument of analysis, but you guard yourself from the conception that perhaps it is a lens which brings objects nearer to us, although we do not move from the spot, or open our eyes. A strange lens the power of which changes according to our attention and will. A strange bringing near which does not take place in space, or in time, and only manifests itself through the intensity of the sensations, and the scraps of knowledge that are in you. A strange will that brings to your consciousness objects independent of your will. You conceive ideas that did not arise in you, are not yours, and on which you have no influence. Yours is only the concentration. When you look, when you listen, you perceive through your sense-organs, in your nervous centres, objects and events which are external to you. In the same way you can have thoughts and feelings which are external to you, you can have recollections which are external to you, and are not in relation to yourself. It is as natural as seeing or hearing, but you do not possess the application and the practice.”
The surgeon shifted himself uneasily, but apparently the clairvoyant took no notice; he continued his lecture with relish, he moved his nose, and hands, and croaked with a deep and satisfied conviction that he was singing. “Look out,” he said, and put his finger on his nose, “I said, thoughts, recollections, images, feelings. That is a crude and inaccurate psychology, and I used these misleading ideas only because they are familiar to you. In reality, as far as I perceive in this way, I have the conception of a circle, and not of the material of which it is made; I have a sensation, I have a certain conception of a man, and not of his individual experiences, images and memory. Understand/’ he said, knitting his brows with the effort to express himself clearly, “of a man contracted in time, a man in whom it exists in the present, everything that ever he was, and what he ever did, but not as a sequence of events, but like—like—” With his hands he indicated in the air something comprehensive. “It is as if you made a film of a man’s life from the moment he was bom until now, and then placed all the pictures on the top of each other, and projected them all at once. You say, what a medley! Yes, for the present coalesces with the past, covers everything over, and only the form of the life remains as something indescribable, and immensely individual; something like a personal aura, in which everything is contained.” His nose was fixed and tragic. “Everything, THE FUTURE AS WELL,” he sighed. “That man won’t live.”
The surgeon snorted. He knew that, too. And for certain.
“I should like to te
ll it to you as objectively as I can,” essayed the clairvoyant. “Let’s suppose that a man came here highly gifted with the capacity of smell—there are such people. First he would detect a simultaneous, not very agreeable, and very complex odour; being capable of olfactory attention, he would begin to analyse it; he would recognize the smell of the hospital, of the surgery, tobacco, water, breakfast, of us three, and of our homes; perhaps he might even recognize that on this bed before me an old man died apparently after an operation on the kidneys.
The surgeon frowned. “Who told you that?”
“Nobody, but you don’t know the sensitivity of smell. With a certain amount of concentration it is possible to analyse a given simultaneous impression into an objective or a temporal sequence. If your sensation of a certain personality is acute enough and COMPLETE, you can with sufficient analytical and logical ability unravel it into an outspread picture of his life story. Out of the condensed form of his life you can deduce its individual events. If I told you that it is about the same kind of task as if you had been given the final sum of a long row of numbers, nothing but the sum, and you had to analyse it into its individual components, you would consider it to be quite hopeless. Yes, it is difficult, but not hopeless; for you must realize that in its inner character a four that has arisen from adding up two twos is not the same as a four that has arisen from the adding up of four ones, or of three and one.”
He was sitting all hunched up, the points of his vertebrae sticking out like a bristling crest. “Dreadful,” he groaned, “it was dreadful, that unconsciousness, and fever. Think of it, the more I concentrated on him, the more I became faint and delirious. That is, not me, I was awake, but I felt that unconsciousness and fever—in myself. Understand I must find it in myself, otherwise—otherwise it would not be, and I could not find out—” He shuddered, and his face was haggard with suffering, it was painful to watch him. “To make your way through that frightful unconsciousness, through that confused physical delirium in which bodily pains float like broken bits of ice—and at the same time to have always, always that supremely, definite, urgent, crushing feeling of the complete form of that life.” He pressed his closed fists to his temples, his eyes were staring out, and he moaned: “Oh God, oh God, that was like going mad.”
The specialist cleared his throat, and fished from his pocket a box of malted toffee. “Here you are, little man, have one,” he mumbled. It was a special treat that was only given to a few, in fact, only to specially serious patients with perfect clinical symptoms.
CHAPTER XIII
THE clairvoyant brightened up, sucked the sweet, and settled down comfortably with crossed legs like a Turk, or a tailor. “I shall describe it to you in another way,” he said, “but I warn you that even then it will be only a picture. When you strike a tuning-fork to give note A, the A string of a violin, or of a piano, also gives out a note, and everything begins to vibrate, even if it is inaudible to us, if it can vibrate at the A pitch. In much the same way we resound, wre sing as we listen; and the musically receptive are those who know better how to listen to themselves. Think of life as of some sort of resounding, that a man resounds, that his mind, memory, and subconscious self are resounding; and his past, too, is also vibrating at this and at any other moment; it is a tremendously complex and infinitely multiple sound, in which the past is also present in an eternal progressive pianissimo, and it gives the dominant and minor notes; the whole past colours the sound of the present. Realize that also in us through transference from outside the same waves begin to vibrate, at any rate to the extent that we are in some kind of relation with the man who is transmitting into space his number of periods—like every one of us, every one of us; this resonance is weaker or stronger depending on our tuning, our sensitiveness, and alertness, and on the intensity of the particular relation. That resonance may be so weak and indistinct that we do not perceive it; or it may be so deep and strong that we hear nothing but it, nothing but the vibration that is transmitted to us. But even if we are not conscious of the response we are conscious of its emotional echo in our sympathies and antipathies, in the vague and inexplicable reactions with which we instinctively respond to people otherwise unknown to us.”
The clairvoyant felt obviously pleased, and sucked energetically at his sweet, smacking his lips and gasping like a baby at the breast. “Yes, it is like that,” he added with emphasis as if for himself. “We must listen to ourselves; we must perfect our own inner being so as to discern that silent and multiple message that some other person is sending out. There is no other second sight but to watch oneself; what is called telepathy is not reception from a distance, but from close at hand, the very shortest distance, and the most difficult to attain—from one’s self. Just imagine that all at the same time you brought into action all the pipes, registers, and pedals of an organ, it would make a tremendous noise, but one in which you could recognize the breath, scope, strength, and perfection of that instrument. You would not be able by any kind of analysis to find out what had been played on that organ before, for (at least to your ears) the organ would have no memory to colour the sound. That first, that inarticulate resonance with which we respond to the life frequency of someone else, is also above all things the feeling of scope, life’s space, strength, and nobility … a feeling of an absolutely definite and uniqiie space formation, in which that life has evolved with its own particular atmosphere, and perspective—” The clairvoyant grew somewhat confused. “So you see what I am mixing up together: the organ and perspective, sight and hearing. It is frightfully difficult to express these things. Our words are the substitutes of sensations, they are derived from seeing, hearing, and touching; it is impossible to express with them ideas that are not accessible to these senses. Do be patient with me, gendemen.”
“It doesn’t matter,” said the specialist encouragingly. “This mixing of images, and interchange of the senses is a typical characteristic of certain mental disorders, akin to hallucinations. Go on, it gives a proper clinical picture.”
“It is characteristic,” the clairvoyant continued, “that through analysis of this complete sensation you get a picture of life completely different from what experience gives you. Experience synthesizes life out of individual moments; minutes and hours make up a day, days a year, hours and days are the masonry of life. A man is composed of his experiences, feelings, qualities, acts, and manifestations. Everything is made for us out of small pieces, which together give us something like a whole; but if we want to imagine this whole in some way or other we can only bring into present consciousness a bigger or smaller series of these pieces, only a sequence of episodes, only a pile of details. Let us say you,” he turned suddenly to the specialist, “you are a widower, aren’t you ? Think of your late wife, whom you loved dearly, and with whom you lived for a quarter of a century in devotion and harmony, and I will enumerate the parts of her life that float up into your mind: her death; her great struggle, over which you stuck fast, helpless, cursing your science; her habit of cutting pages of books with a needle, against which you fought in vain; the day when you first met her; a happy day when you were together somewhere picking up shells by the sea.”
“That was in Rimini,” said the old gentleman softly, making a motion with his hand. “She was a good wife.”
“She was. But if you tried to remember for hours nothing would come in your mind but a broken series of more and more episodes, a couple of phrases, a couple of tiny pictures—That’s all. That is how your imagination views the whole life of some person nearest to you.”
The old specialist removed his glasses, and cleaned them carefully; the surgeon made a strenuous effort to convey some sign to the clairvoyant with his eyes. “I say, not there, not there, turn round and follow another line.”
“Yes,” said the clairvoyant obediently turning, and driving at full speed in another direction. “Experience cannot give us another impression; we never comprehend through our senses a whole man, or a whole life, but only t
hose discontinuous pieces and moments, and yet, thank God, we lose most of them. Vain glory, from that you cannot create, or work out the totality of life. But turn it round, I say, turn it round, Try to begin, begin logically, at the conception of a condensed and complete life, undivided into past and present. That’s grand,” he began to shout, and he almost tore his hair with enthusiasm. “If you imagine a river, a complete river, not as a meandering line on the map, but concisely, and completely, with all the water which ever flowed between its banks, your image will comprise the flowing river and the sea, all the seas of the world, the clouds, the snow, and the water vapour, the breath of the dead, and the rainbow in the sky, all that, the whole circulation of all the water in the world will be that river. How fine it is,” he sobbed in ecstasy. “What a magnitude of reality it has! How beautiful and overwhelming it is to capture the conception of life, the sensation of life, the feeling of a man in his totality, and life’s greatness! No, no, no,” he waved his finger held erect, “you don’t break that magnitude down into days and hours, or tear it into die Utter of reminiscences; but you analyse it into essentials, into periods arching like vaults, into sequences which form the order of one’s life; there is no chance, everything is determined, awesome, and beautiful, all causality appears in the simultaneity of cause and effect. There are no qualities, no events; only moulding forces,” he gasped, “the interplay of which, and equilibrium, have determined the space of man.”
