First and Last (Belloc)/The Lunatic

Those who are interested in what simple straightforward people call the Pathology of Consciousness have gathered a great body of evidence upon the various manias that affect men, and there is an especially interesting department of this which concerns illusion upon matters which in the sane are determinable by the senses and common experience. Thus one man will believe himself to be the Emperor of China, another to be William Shakespeare or some other impossible person, though one would imagine that his every accident of daily life would convince him to the contrary.

I had recently occasion to watch one of the most harmless and yet one of the most striking of these illusions in a private asylum which has specialized, if I may so express myself, upon men of letters. The case was harmless and even benign, for the poor fellow was not of a combative disposition to begin with, was of too careful and dignified a temperament to show more than slight irritation if his delusion were contradicted. This misfortune, however, very rarely overtook him, for those who came to visit him were warned to humour his whim. This eccentricity I will now describe.

He imagined, nay he was convinced, that he was existing fifty years in the future, and that the interest of his conversation for others would lie in his reminiscence of the state of society in which we are actually living today. If anyone who had not been warned was imprudent enough to suggest that the conversation was taking place in 1909 would smile gently, nod, and say rather bitterly, "Yes, I know, I know," as though recognizing a universal plot against him which he was too weary to combat. But when he had said this he would continue to talk on as though both parties to the conversation were equally convinced that the year was really 1960 or thereabouts. Whether to add zest to what he said or from some part of his malady consonant with all the rest, my poor friend (who had been a journalist and will very possibly be a journalist again) presupposed that the whole structure of society as we now know it had changed and that his reminiscences were those of a past time which, on account of some great revolution or other, men imperfectly comprehended, so that it must be of the highest interest and advantage to listen to the testimony of an eye-witness upon them.

What especially delighted him (for he was a zealous admirer of the society he described) was the method of government.

"There was no possibility of going wrong," he said to me with curious zeal, "not a shadow of danger! It would be difficult for you to understand now how easily the system worked!" And here he sighed profoundly. "And why on earth," he continued, "men should have destroyed such an instrument when they had it is more than I can understand. There it was in every country in Europe; there were elections; all the men voted. And mind you, the elections were not so very far apart. Most people living at one election could remember the last, so there was no time for abuses to spring up.... Well, everybody voted. If a man wanted one thing he voted one way, and if he wanted another thing he voted the other way. The people for whom he voted would then meet, and with a sense of duty which I cannot exaggerate they would work month after month exactly to reproduce the will of those who had appointed them. It was a great time!"

"Yet," said I, "even so there must have been occasional divergences between what these people did and what the nation wanted."

"I see what you mean," he said, musing, "you mean that all the devotion in the world, the purest of motives and the most devoted sense of duty, could not keep the elected always in contact with the electors. You are right. But you must remember that in every country there was a machinery, with regard to the most important measures at least, which could throw the matter before the electors to be re-decided. I can remember no important occasion upon which the machinery was not brought into use."

"But, after all, the value of the decisions of the electorate you are describing," said I, continuing to humour him, "would depend upon the information which the electorate had received as well as upon their judgment."

"As for their judgment," he said, a little shortly, "it is not for our time to criticize theirs. Human judgment is not infallible, but I can well remember how in every nation of Europe it was the fixed conviction of the citizens that judgment was their chief characteristic, and especially judgment in national affairs. I cannot believe that so universal an attitude of the mind could have arisen had it not been justified. But as for information, they had the Press ... a free Press!" Here he fell into a reverie, so powerfully did his supposed memories affect him.

I was willing to lead him on, because this kind of illness is best met by sympathy, and also because I was not uninterested to discover how his own trade had affected him.

"You would hardly understand it," he said sadly; "what you hear from me is nothing but words.... I wish I could have shown you one of those great houses with information pouring in as rapid, as light, and as clear, from every hidden corner of the world, digested by master brains into the most lucid and terse presentment of it possible, and then whirled out on great wheels to be distributed by the thousand and the hundred thousand, to the hungry intelligence of Europe. There was nothing escaped it - nothing. In every capital were crowds of men dispatched from the other capitals of our civilization, moving with ease in the wealthiest houses, and exquisitely in touch with the most delicate phases of national life everywhere. And these men were such experts in selection that a picture of Europe as a whole was presented every morning to each particular part of Europe; and nowhere was this more successfully accomplished than in my own beloved town of London."

"It must have been useful," I said, "not only for the political purposes you describe, but also for investors. Indeed, I should imagine that the two things ran together."

"You are right," he said with interest, "the wide knowledge which even the poorest of the people possessed upon foreign affairs, through the action of the Press, was, further, of the utmost and most beneficent effect in teaching even the smallest proprietor what he need do with his capital. A discovery of metallic ore - especially of gold - a new invention, anything which might require development, was at once presented in its most exact aspect to the reader."

"It was probably upon that account," said I, "that property was so equally distributed, and that so general a prosperity reigned as you have often described to me."

"You are right," said he; "it was mainly this accurate and universal daily information which produced such excellent results."

"But it occurs to me," said I, by way of stimulating his conversation with an objection, "that if so passionate and tenacious a habit of telling the exact truth upon innumerable things was present in this old institution of which you speak, it cannot but have bred a certain amount of dissension, and it must sometimes even have done definite harm to individuals whose private actions were thus exposed."

"You are right," said he; "the danger of such misfortunes was always present, and with the greatest desire in the world to support only what was worthy the writers of the journals of which I speak would occasionally blunder against private interests; but there was a remedy."

"What was that?" I asked.

"Why, the law provided that in this matter twelve men called a jury, instructed by a judge, after the matter had been fully explained to them by two other men whose business it was to examine the truth boldly for the sake of justice - I say the law provided that the twelve men after this process should decide whether the person injured should receive money from the newspaper or no, and if so, in what amount. And, lest there should still be any manner of doubt, the judge was permitted to set aside their verdict if he thought it unjust. To secure his absolute impartiality as between rich and poor he was paid somewhat over £100 a week, a large salary in those days, and he was further granted the right of imprisoning people at will or of taking away their property if he believed them to obstruct his judgment. Nor were these the only safeguards. For in the case of very rich men, to whom justice might not be done on account of the natural envy of their poorer fellow-citizens, it was arranged that the jury should consist only of rich men. In this way it was absolutely certain that a complete impartiality would reign. We shall never see those days again," he concluded.

"But do you not think," I said before I left him, "that the social perfection of the kind you have described must rather have been due to some spirit of the time than to particular institutions? For after all the zealous love of justice and the sense of duty which you describe are not social elements to be produced by laws."

"Possibly," he said, wearily, "possibly, but we shall never see it again!"

And I left him looking into the fire with infinite sadness and reflecting upon his lost youth and the year 1909: a pathetic figure, and one whose upkeep during the period of his deficiency was a very serious drain upon the resources of his family.