preserves his own characteristics. There are vivid fights, vivid
and biting insults, vivid love-passages; there are tragedies and
comedies, there are griefs that go to one’s heart, there are
sayings and doings that make you laugh: indeed, the whole thing
is exactly like real life.
O.M. Your dreaming mind originates the scheme, consistently
and artistically develops it, and carries the little drama
creditably through–all without help or suggestion from you?
Y.M. Yes.
O.M. It is argument that it could do the like awake without help
or suggestion from you–and I think it does. It is argument that
it is the same old mind in both cases, and never needs your help.
I think the mind is purely a machine, a thoroughly independent
machine, an automatic machine. Have you tried the other
experiment which I suggested to you?
Y.M. Which one?
O.M. The one which was to determine how much influence you
have over your mind–if any.
Y.M. Yes, and got more or less entertainment out of it. I
did as you ordered: I placed two texts before my eyes–one a
dull one and barren of interest, the other one full of interest,
inflamed with it, white-hot with it. I commanded my mind to busy
itself solely with the dull one.
O.M. Did it obey?
Y.M. Well, no, it didn’t. It busied itself with the other one.
O.M. Did you try hard to make it obey?
Y.M. Yes, I did my honest best.
O.M. What was the text which it refused to be interested in
or think about?
Y.M. It was this question: If A owes B a dollar and a
half, and B owes C two and three-quarter, and C owes A thirty-
five cents, and D and A together owe E and B three-sixteenths of
–of–I don’t remember the rest, now, but anyway it was wholly
uninteresting, and I could not force my mind to stick to it even
half a minute at a time; it kept flying off to the other text.
O.M. What was the other text?
Y.M. It is no matter about that.
O.M. But what was it?
Y.M. A photograph.
O.M. Your own?
Y.M. No. It was hers.
O.M. You really made an honest good test. Did you make a
second trial?
Y.M. Yes. I commanded my mind to interest itself in the
morning paper’s report of the pork-market, and at the same time I
reminded it of an experience of mine of sixteen years ago. It
refused to consider the pork and gave its whole blazing interest
to that ancient incident.
O.M. What was the incident?
Y.M. An armed desperado slapped my face in the presence of
twenty spectators. It makes me wild and murderous every time I
think of it.
O.M. Good tests, both; very good tests. Did you try my
other suggestion?
Y.M. The one which was to prove to me that if I would leave
my mind to its own devices it would find things to think about
without any of my help, and thus convince me that it was a
machine, an automatic machine, set in motion by exterior
influences, and as independent of me as it could be if it were in
some one else’s skull. Is that the one?
O.M. Yes.
Y.M. I tried it. I was shaving. I had slept well, and my
mind was very lively, even gay and frisky. It was reveling in a
fantastic and joyful episode of my remote boyhood which had
suddenly flashed up in my memory–moved to this by the spectacle
of a yellow cat picking its way carefully along the top of the
garden wall. The color of this cat brought the bygone cat before
me, and I saw her walking along the side-step of the pulpit; saw
her walk on to a large sheet of sticky fly-paper and get all her
feet involved; saw her struggle and fall down, helpless and
dissatisfied, more and more urgent, more and more unreconciled,
more and more mutely profane; saw the silent congregation
quivering like jelly, and the tears running down their faces. I
saw it all. The sight of the tears whisked my mind to a far
distant and a sadder scene–in Terra del Fuego–and with Darwin’s