A Mind That Found Itself An Autobiography
This story is derived from as human a document as ever existed; and, because of its uncommon nature, perhaps no one thing contributes so much to its value as its authenticity. It is an autobiography, and more: in part it is a biography; for, in telling the story of my life, I must relate the history of another self--a self which was dominant from my twenty-fourth to my twenty-sixth year. During that period I was unlike what I had been, or what I have been since. The biographical part of my autobiography might be called the history of a mental civil war, which I fought single-handed on a battlefield that lay within the compass of my skull. An Army of Unreason, composed of the cunning and treacherous thoughts of an unfair foe, attacked my bewildered consciousness with cruel persistency, and would have destroyed me, had not a triumphant Reason finally interposed a superior strategy that saved me from my unnatural self. I am not telling the story of my life just to write a book. I tell it because it seems my plain duty to do so. A narrow escape from death and a seemingly miraculous return to health after an apparently fatal illness are enough to make a man ask himself: For what purpose was my life spared? That question I have asked myself, and this book is, in part, an answer.
oak, and then hurried away that he might not hear its cries.
"But the nymphs who haunt the woods and groves, saw the babe, and
pitied its helplessness, and cared for it so that it did not die. Some
brought it yellow honey from the stores of the wild bees; some fed it
with milk from the white goats that pastured on the mountain side; and
others stood as sentinels around it, guarding it from the wolves and
bears.
"Thus five days passed, and then the shepherd, who could not forget the
babe, came cautiously to the spot to see if, mayhap, even its broidered
cloak had been spared by the beasts. Sorrowful and shuddering he
glanced toward the foot of the tree. To his surprise, the babe was
still there; it looked up and smiled, and stretched its fat hands
toward him. The shepherd's heart would not let him turn away the
second time. He took the child in his arms, and carried it to his own
humble home in the valley, where he cared for it and brought it up as
his own son.
"The boy grew to be very tall and very handsome; and he was so brave,
and so helpful to the shepherds around Mount Ida, that they called him
Alexandros, or the helper of men; but his foster-father named him
Paris. As he tended his sheep in the mountain dells, he met Oenone,
the fairest of the river maidens, guileless and pure as the waters of
the stream by whose banks she loved to wander. Day after day he sat
with her in the shadow of her woodland home, and talked of innocence
This story is derived from as human a document as ever existed; and, because of its uncommon nature, perhaps no one thing contributes so much to its value as its authenticity. It is an autobiography, and more: in part it is a biography; for, in telling the story of my life, I must relate the history of another self--a self which was dominant from my twenty-fourth to my twenty-sixth year. During that period I was unlike what I had been, or what I have been since. The biographical part of my autobiography might be called the history of a mental civil war, which I fought single-handed on a battlefield that lay within the compass of my skull. An Army of Unreason, composed of the cunning and treacherous thoughts of an unfair foe, attacked my bewildered consciousness with cruel persistency, and would have destroyed me, had not a triumphant Reason finally interposed a superior strategy that saved me from my unnatural self. I am not telling the story of my life just to write a book. I tell it because it seems my plain duty to do so. A narrow escape from death and a seemingly miraculous return to health after an apparently fatal illness are enough to make a man ask himself: For what purpose was my life spared? That question I have asked myself, and this book is, in part, an answer.