And yet--a few
drinks of brandy, of stimulants, and you have drawn me back, my
heart beats strongly, for an hour. By means of drugs you have
infused a new life--which of course is the old--and driven the
material components of my body into correlation. You are
successful for a time; so long as nature is with you; but all the
while you are held aghast by the knowledge that the least flaw,
the least disarrangement, and you are beaten.
"It is your business to hold this life or what you may. When it
has gone your structures, your anatomy, your wonderful human
machine is worthless. Where has it come from? Where has it gone? I
have drunk four glasses of brandy; I have a lease of four short
hours. Ordinarily it would bring reaction; it is poison, to be
sure; but it is driving back my spirit, giving me life and
strength enough to tell my story--in the morning I shall be no
more. By sequence I am a dead man already. Four glasses of brandy;
they are speaking. Whence comes this affinity of substance and of
shadow?"
We all of us listened, the doctor most of all. "Go on," he said.
"Can't you see?" repeated Watson. "There is affinity between
substance and shadow; and therefore your spirit or shadow or what
you will is concrete, is in itself a substance. It is material
just as much as you are. Because you do not see it is no proof
that it is not substance. That pot palm yonder does not see you;
it is not blessed with eyes.
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