, when you stole
your way through my unlocked door, you found me travelling on the road
to the grandest medical discovery of this century. You stupid ass,
do you think I cared about what _you_ could find out? I am in such
perpetual terror of being forestalled by my colleagues, that I am not
master of myself, even when such eyes as yours look at my work. In a
month or two more--perhaps in a week or two--I shall have solved the
grand problem. I labour at it all day. I think of it, I dream of it,
all night. It will kill me. Strong as I am, it will kill me. What do
you say? Am I working myself into my grave, in the medical interests of
humanity? _That_ for humanity! I am working for my own satisfaction--for
my own pride--for my own unutterable pleasure in beating other men--for
the fame that will keep my name living hundreds of years hence.
Humanity! I say with my foreign brethren--Knowledge for its own sake,
is the one god I worship. Knowledge is its own justification and its
own reward. The roaring mob follows us with its cry of Cruelty. We pity
their ignorance. Knowledge sanctifies cruelty. The old anatomist stole
dead bodies for Knowledge. In that sacred cause, if I could steal a
living man without being found out, I would tie him on my table, and
grasp my grand discovery in days, instead of months. Where are you
going? What? You're afraid to be in the same room with me? A man who can
talk as I do, is a man who would stick at nothing? Is that the light in
which you lower order of creatures look at us? Look a little higher--and
you will see that a man who talks as I do is a man set above you by
Knowledge. Exert yourself, and try to understand me. Have I no virtues,
even from your point of view? Am I not a good citizen? Don't I pay my
debts? Don't I serve my friends? You miserable creature, you have had
my money when you wanted it! Look at that letter on the floor. The man
mentioned in it is one of those colleagues whom I distrust. I did
my duty by him for all that. I gave him the information he wanted; I
introduced him to a friend in a land of strangers. Have I no feeling, as
you call it? My last experiments on a monkey horrified me. His cries of
suffering, his gestures of entreaty, were like the cries and gestures of
a child. I would have given the world to put him out of his misery. But
I went on. In the glorious cause I went on. My hands turned cold--my
heart ached--I thought of a child I sometimes play with--I suffered