While praising his conduct, he managed
at the same time to point out where, when, and how his mind had gone
astray. He made his nephew think himself finer than he was by judicious
praise, yet more foolish than he was by minimizing the value of the
evidence. Like many another materialist, that is, he lied cleverly on
the basis of insufficient knowledge, _because_ the knowledge supplied
seemed to his own particular intelligence inadmissible.
"The spell of these terrible solitudes," he said, "cannot leave any mind
untouched, any mind, that is, possessed of the higher imaginative
qualities. It has worked upon yours exactly as it worked upon my own
when I was your age. The animal that haunted your little camp was
undoubtedly a moose, for the 'belling' of a moose may have, sometimes, a
very peculiar quality of sound. The colored appearance of the big tracks
was obviously a defect of vision in your own eyes produced by
excitement. The size and stretch of the tracks we shall prove when we
come to them. But the hallucination of an audible voice, of course, is
one of the commonest forms of delusion due to mental excitement--an
excitement, my dear boy, perfectly excusable, and, let me add,
wonderfully controlled by you under the circumstances. For the rest, I
am bound to say, you have acted with a splendid courage, for the terror
of feeling oneself lost in this wilderness is nothing short of awful,
and, had I been in your place, I don't for a moment believe I could have
behaved with one quarter of your wisdom and decision.
Pages:
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62