Page:Andreyev - A Dilemma (Brown, 1910).djvu/38

30 mother's side all were healthy; still a single drop of the poison of madness is sufficient to affect several generations. In physical health I resembled my mother, but I was possessed of some harmless eccentricities which could be depended upon to do me service. My relative unsociableness; which is simply an indication of a healthy mind, preferring to spend its time in solitude, with self and books, rather than upon idle and empty chatter could be misinterpreted as an unhealthy misanthropy; my soberness of temperament—non-seeking coarse, sensual pleasures—as a manifestation of degeneracy. My stubbornness itself in reaching a once resolved upon goal—plenty examples could be drawn upon in my rich life—would have received, in the language of the experts, the terrible name of monomania, the domination of fixed ideas.

The ground for simulation was, therefore, unusually favorable—the statics of madness were upon the face of things, it remained for dynamics to do the work. To the