Publisher's Synopsis
"BUT RICH AS WAS THE WAR for surgical science," ended Hawtry, "opening up through mutilation and torture unexplored regions which the genius of man was quick to enter, and, entering, found ways to checkmate suffering and death-for always, my friend, the distillate from the blood of sacrifice is progress-great as all this was, the world tragedy has opened up still another region wherein even greater knowledge will be found. It was the clinic unsurpassed for the psychologist even more than for the surgeon."Latour, the great little French doctor, drew himself out of the depths of the big chair; the light from the fireplace fell ruddily upon his keen face."That is true," he said. "Yes, that is true. There in the furnace the mind of man opened like a flower beneath a too glowing sun. Beaten about in that colossal tempest of primitive forces, caught in the chaos of energies both physical and psychical-which, although man himself was its creator, made of their maker a moth in a whirlwind-all those obscure, those mysterious factors of mind which men, for lack of knowledge, have named the soul, were stripped of their inhibitions and given power to appear."How could it have been otherwise-when men and women, gripped by one shattering sorrow or joy, will manifest the hidden depths of spirit-how could it have been otherwise in that steadily maintained crescendo of emotion?" McAndrews spoke."Just which psychological region do you mean, Hawtry?" he asked.There were four of us in front of the fireplace of the Science Club-Hawtry, who rules the chair of psychology in one of our greatest colleges, and whose name is an honored one throughout the world; Latour, an immortal of France; McAndrews, the famous American surgeon whose work during the war has written a new page in the shining book of science; and myself. These are not the names of the three, but they are as I have described them; and I am pledged to identify them no further."I mean the field of suggestion," replied the psychologist."The mental reactions which reveal themselves as visions-an accidental formation in the clouds that becomes to the over-wrought imaginations of the beholders the so-eagerly-prayed-for hosts of Joan of Arc marching out from heaven; moonlight in the cloud rift that becomes to the besieged a fiery cross held by the hands of archangels; the despair and hope that are transformed into such a legend as the bowmen of Mons, ghostly archers who with their phantom shafts overwhelm the conquering enemy; wisps of cloud over No Man's Land that are translated by the tired eyes of those who peer out into the shape of the Son of Man himself walking sorrowfully among the dead. Signs, portents, and miracles, the hosts of premonitions, of apparitions of loved ones-all dwellers in this land of suggestion; all born of the tearing loose of the veils of the subconscious. Here, when even a thousandth part is gathered, will be work for the psychological analyst for twenty years.""And the boundaries of this region?" asked McAndrews."Boundaries?" Hawtry plainly was perplexed.McAndrews for a moment was silent. Then he drew from his pocket a yellow slip of paper, a cablegram."Young Peter Laveller died today," he said, apparently irrelevantly.
