As those who have long leaned over a precipice, have at last felt a desire to plunge below, to relieve the intolerable temptation of their giddiness,* you will hear them laugh amid their wildest paroxysms; you will say, 'Doubtless those wretches have some consolation, but I have none; my sanity is my greatest curse in this abode of horrors.They greedily devour their miserable meals, while I loathe mine.They sleep sometimes soundly, while my sleep is--worse than their waking.They are revived every morning by some delicious illusion of cunning madness, soothing them with the hope of escaping, baffling or tormenting their keeper; my sanity precludes all such hope.I KNOW I NEVER CAN ESCAPE, and the preservation of my faculties is only an aggravation of my sufferings.I have all their miseries,--I have none of their consolations.They laugh,--I hear them; would I could laugh like them.' You will try, and the very effort will be an invocation to the demon of insanity to come and take full possession of you from that moment forever."* A fact, related to me by a person who was near committing suicide in a similar situation, to escape what he called "the excruciating torture of giddiness."(There were other details, both of the menaces and temptations employed by Melmoth, which are too horrible for insertion.One of them may serve for an instance.)"You think that the intellectual power is something distinct from the vitality of the soul, or, in other words, that if even your reason should be destroyed (which it nearly is), your soul might yet enjoy beatitude in the full exercise of its enlarged and exalted faculties, and all the clouds which obscured them be dispelled by the Sun of Righteousness, in whose beams you hope to bask forever and ever.Now, without going into any metaphysical subtleties about the distinction between mind and soul, experience must teach you, that there can be no crime into which madmen would not, and do not, precipitate themselves; mischief is their occupation, malice their habit, murder their sport, and blasphemy their delight.Whether a soul in this state can be in a hopeful one, it is for you to judge; but it seems to me, that with the loss of reason (and reason cannot long be retained in this place) you lose also the hope of immortality.--Listen," said the tempter, pausing, "listen to the wretch who is raving near you, and whose blasphemies might make a demon start.--He was once an eminent puritanical preacher.Half the day he imagines himself in a pulpit, denouncing damnation against Papists, Arminians, and even Sublapsarians (he being a Supra-lapsarian himself).He foams, he writhes, he gnashes his teeth; you would imagine him in the hell he was painting, and that the fire and brimstone he is so lavish of were actually exhaling from his jaws.At night his creed retaliates on him; he believes himself one of the reprobates he has been all day denouncing, and curses God for the very decree he has all day been glorifying Him for.
"He, whom he has for twelve hours been vociferating 'is the loveliest among ten thousand,' becomes the object of demoniac hostility and execration.He grapples with the iron posts of his bed, and says he is rooting out the cross from the very foundations of Calvary; and it is remarkable, that in proportion as his morning exercises are intense, vivid, and eloquent, his nightly blasphemies are outrageous and horrible.--Hark! Now he believes himself a demon; listen to his diabolical eloquence of horror!"Stanton listened, and shuddered..
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"Escape--escape for your life," cried the tempter; "break forth into life, liberty, and sanity.Your social happiness, your intellectual powers, your immortal interests, perhaps, depend on the choice of this moment.--There is the door, and the key is in my hand.--Choose--choose!"--"And how comes the key in your hand? and what is the condition of my liberation?" said Stanton.
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The explanation occupied several pages, which, to the torture of young Melmoth, were wholly illegible.It seemed, however, to have been rejected by Stanton with the utmost rage and horror, for Melmoth at last made out,--"Begone, monster, demon!--begone to your native place.Even this mansion of horror trembles to contain you;its walls sweat, and its floors quiver, while you tread them.".....
