Did he lose a limb, and a fine,
new, artificial one was at his disposal; get indigestion, and to
hand was artificial digestive fluid or bile or pancreatine, as
the case might be. Complexions, too, were replaceable, spectacles
superseded an inefficient eye-lens, and imperceptible false
diaphragms were thrust into the failing ear. So he went over our
anatomies, until, at last, he had conjured up a weird thing of
shreds and patches, a simulacrum, an artificial body of a man,
with but a doubtful germ of living flesh lurking somewhere in his
recesses. To that, he held, we were coming.
How far such odd substitution for the body is possible need not
concern us now. But the devil, speaking by the lips of Mr.
Rudyard Kipling, hath it that in the case of one Tomlinson, the
thing, so far as the soul is concerned, has already been
accomplished. Time was when men had simple souls, desires as
natural as their eyes, a little reasonable philanthropy, a little
reasonable philoprogenitiveness, hunger, and a taste for good
living, a decent, personal vanity, a healthy, satisfying
pugnacity, and so forth. But now we are taught and disciplined
for years and years, and thereafter we read and read for all the
time some strenuous, nerve-destroying business permits. Pedagogic
hypnotists, pulpit and platform hypnotists, book-writing
hypnotists, newspaper-writing hypnotists, are at us all. This
sugar you are eating, they tell us, is ink, and forthwith we
reject it with infinite disgust.
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