Ann Windicombe Makes Men (and Whinging Women) Self-Conscious

Men* have the absolute and  exclusive claim to Rights of Ownership over their reputation as one of the non-material fruits of their works and their labour in accordance with Natural Law.

That means that your Good Name and Standing within the community or locality you currently reside in, such as it is

(Assuming you even have a good reputation...) 

constitutes a significant  non-redeemable, non-physical, non-transferable asset which therefore constitutes  part of your property, one which cannot merely be strippped away from you or removed,

You own it (wholesale), nobody, not one single other person has the right to touch it, with or without your prior consent, 

Nor Inflict deliberate harm or injury upon it, in any way, even with your permission orders  or instructions to demolish the whole outter edifice

 —-

And Anybody that might want to give that a try — 

You Will Not End Well, 

if that is how things are expected to be in your cites, now...

Consent is the deliberate agreement required of those concerned in legal transactions in order to legalize such actions. Words, deeds, writing, or silence hear witness to the existence of this consent. Completeness of consent is gauged not so much by the preliminaries of transactions as by their ratification, which is the psychological development of incipient consent, and gives consistency to legal transactions. The consent necessary to constitute contracts must be internal, external, mutual, and deliberate. Some authorities claim that contracts formed without any intention on the part of the contracting parties to oblige themselves are valid; others more rightly maintain the contrary, since the very essence of contracts embodies obligation. Consequently, whoever is unprepared to admit this obligation is in no position to make a contract. Two possible suppositions here present themselves. In the first the promise and intention of not assuming any obligation concern the same object under the same respect. Promises made in this way are utterly meaningless. In the second supposition the promise and intention of waiving the obligation refer to the same object under different respects. In such cases it is necessary to ascertain which of these two contrary tendencies of the will is dominant. If the intention of making a contract possess greater efficacy, the obligation thereunto corresponding unquestionably holds good. On the contrary, if the intention of accepting no obligation prevail, no contract can be formed. Finally, if one intention is just as efficacious as another, the formation of a contract would then involve quest for an unattainable result. Contracts made by individuals having absolutely no intention of abiding by the obligation connected therewith are altogether invalid, and the parties thus fictitiously contracting are bound to indemnify those whose interests thereby suffer. The contract in question must always be capable of begetting an obligation. It is not impossible to find genuine consent which is worthless for giving consistency to contracts either because it is nullified beforehand by positive law or because it is the result of error, fraud, or fear (see CONTRACT).

Error affecting the very nature of the contract, or concerning the substance of the object in question or a naturally substantial quality of the object, or one considered indispensable by the contracting parties, vitiates consent and invalidates contracts. Error regarding an accidental quality of the contract, or pertaining to the motive underlying the contract, or to its material object, is insufficient to vitiate consent or nullify contracts. In like manner fraud, whether introduced by one of the contracting parties or by an extern, for the sake of provoking consent in the other party, counteracts consent as often as such fraud circumscribes the nature of the contract, the substance of the object at stake, or a quality naturally substantiated in that object or esteemed as substantial by the one upon whom the fraud is perpetrated. As often as accidental fraud induces another, in some measure, to consent, he is at liberty to rescind the contract, provided it is naturally dissoluble. In general, grave fear lawfully superinduced does not militate against consent in the will, and therefore renders contracts neither invalid nor rescindable. On the other hand, while fear unlawfully superinduced to extort consent does not invalidate contracts, it gives the intimidated party the liberty of rescinding them. According to the civil law of the United States, no contract is binding without the mutual assent of both parties. They must assent at the same time and to the same thing. This mutual assent consists of an offer by one party and its acceptance by another. When the offer is verbal, and the time allowed for acceptance is not mentioned, the offer must be immediately accepted to constitute a contract. In case the offer and acceptance are written and pass through the mail, the contract is complete when the acceptance is mailed, provided the party accepting has received no notice of the withdrawal of the offer before mailing his letter. As far as the validity of matrimony is concerned, genuine, internal, personal consent of both parties, covering the present and indicated by external signs, is unquestionably required. While internal consent must be complemented by some external manifestation, words are by no means necessary. The Congregation of the Inquisition (22 August, 1860) decided that marriages are entirely valid when the ceremony takes place in the presence of witnesses and according to the custom of the country in a manner which indicates that the contracting parties here and now mutually agree to enter wedlock. At the same time, if one or both contracting parties have no present intention of marrying in circumstances such as those outlined, they can make no marriage contract. The required matrimonial consent signified by proxy does not militate against the validity of the marriage contract. This consent must include the material object of the matrimonial contract, which material object is the mutual right of one party to the body of the other, a right that carries with it every prerogative vested therein by the laws of nature. It is not necessary, however, that the intention of parties to a marriage contract should be explicitly directed to all its conditions or circumstances. On the contrary, an intention implicitly thereunto directed is entirely sufficient for all practical intents and purposes. Hence, as often as marriageable parties intend to contract marriage in the way in which men and women ordinarily understand that agreement, or according to the way in which it was instituted by the Author of this sacrament, they exhibit consent sufficient to render their marriage contract entirely valid, provided nothing essential is positively excluded by a counter intention usurping the place of the chief, indispensable intention in entering matrimony. While marriage contracts are null unless based on the consent of those concerned, it is usually very difficult to establish the actual absence of this consent so as to satisfy the judge in a matrimonial court, once the marriage ceremony has really taken place. (For the renewal of consent in the case of invalid marriages, see REVALIDATION, and for the consent requisite for espousals, see ESPOUSALS.) While in canon law the consent of parents is not necessary to validate the marriages of their children, it is usually required to render such marriages legitimate. [For the civil law concerning the consent of parents in France (modified 1907), Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Canada, etc., see MARRIAGE.]

In the United States the common law exacts no solemnity to validate matrimonial consent. In many of the States, however, special statutes carrying a penalty require certain conditions for the legitimacy of such consent. Common law regards marriage as a civil contract for which consent alone is essential. It demands no legal forms, nor religious solemnities, nor special mode of proof. According to common law, consent indicated by words covering the present, whether consummation follows or not, or by words pertaining to the future together with consummation, constitutes a valid marriage. In New York, Illinois, and Rhode Island words pertaining to the future, even with subsequent consummation, no longer render a marriage valid. Even without explicit proof of words implying consent, cohabitation, acknowledgment of a marriage by the parties concerned, reception of such parties as husband and wife by relatives, friends, or society, are sufficient to establish a valid marriage.

Canon law requires the consent of cathedral chapters to lend validity to certain official acts of bishops. In general, this consent is necessary in such matters as usually involve a serious obligation or the possibility of a notable damage, or in matters which simultaneously pertain to bishops and their chapters. Nevertheless, unwritten law can narrow the rights of chapters and widen the liberty of bishops in these matters unless circumstances conspire to stamp particular measures as unreasonable. In like manner, unwritten law may exact the consent of chapters in matters of secondary importance, a requirement sometimes enjoined by special statutes. When immediate action is necessary, and it is impossible to convoke their chapters, bishops may proceed validly without the chapters' consent. Inasmuch as there are no cathedral chapters in the United States, diocesan consultors constitute the advisory board of the bishops. The Third Plenary Council of Baltimore specifies several instances in which the bishops, though not obliged to abide by the advice of their consultors, are bound to seek such advice, else their acts in such cases are liable to nullification.

For consent in its relation to sinful acts, see SIN, and for the consent of the legislative authority in the formation of consuetudinary law, see CUSTOM.

OJETTI, Synopsis rerum moralium et juris pontificii (Prato, 1904); Instructio Pastoralis Eyestettensis (Freiburg, 1902), index, s. v. Consensus;HEINER, Grundriss des kath. Eherechts (Münster, 1905), index, s. v. Konsens; HERGENRÖTHER-HOLLWECK, Lehrbuck des kath. Kirchenrechts (Freiburg, 1905), index, s. v. Consensus; PERMANEDER in Kirchenlex., III, 956 sqq., and in general all manuals and dictionaries of canon, civil (Roman), and national legislations. For the history of consent in all that pertains to the marriage contract, ESMEIN, Le Mariage en droit canonique (Paris, 1891), II, in index s. v. Consentement.

J. D. O'NEILL.

PAY ATTENTION

The Mesopotamian Emperor  
acted out Marduk. 

He was ALLOWED to be Emperor 
insofar as he was 
A Good Marduk. 

That meant that,
He had eyes all the way around his head, 
and
He could speak magick.

He could speak properly.

Conan: 
What gods do you pray to?

Subotai:
I pray to the four winds... and you?

Conan: 
To Crom...
but I seldom pray to Him -- 

He doesn't listen.

Subotai: 
[chuckles] 
What good is he then?
Ah, it's just as I've always said.

Conan:
He is strong!
If I die, I have to go before him, and he will ask me,
   "What is the riddle of steel?"
If I don't know it, he will cast me out of Valhalla and laugh at me.

That's Crom — 

Strong on his mountain!

Subotai:
Ah, my god is greater.

Conan: 
[chuckles]
Crom laughs at your Four Winds.
He laughs from his mountain.

Subotai:
My God is Stronger.
He is  
The Everlasting Sky!
Your god lives underneath him.

[Conan shoots Subotai a skeptical look. Subotai laughs]

" The ancient Mesopotamians and the ancient Egyptians had some very interesting, dramatic ideas about that. 

For example
—Very Briefly—
There was a deity known as Marduk. 

Marduk was a Mesopotamian deity, and imagine this is sort of what happened. 
As an empire grew out of the post-ice age

—15,000 years ago, 10,000 years ago—

All these tribes came together. 

These tribes each had their own deity—their own image of the ideal. 
But then they started to occupy the same territory.

!! THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE !!

 One tribe had God A, and one tribe had God B,
and one could wipe the other one out, 
and then it would just be God A, who wins. 

That’s not so good, because maybe you want to trade with those people, or maybe you don’t want to lose half your population in a war. 

So then you have to have an argument about whose God is going to take priority—which ideal is going to take priority. 

What seems to happen is represented in mythology as a battle of the gods in celestial space. 

From a practical perspective, it’s more like an ongoing dialog :

' You believe this; I believe this. 
You believe that; I believe this. 
How are we going to meld that together? '

You take God A, and you take God B, and maybe what you do is extract God C from them, and you say,
 ‘God C now has the attributes of A and B.’ 

And then some other tribes come in, and C takes them over, too. 

Take Marduk, for example. 

He has 50 different names, at least in part, of the subordinate gods—that represented the tribes that came together to make the civilization. 

That’s part of the process by which that abstracted ideal is abstracted. 

You think, 
‘This is important, and it works, because your tribe is alive -

And so we’ll take the best of both, if we can manage it, 
and extract out something, that’s even more abstract, 
that covers both of us.’ 

I’ll give you a couple of Marduk’s interesting features. 

He has eyes all the way around his head. 

He’s elected by all the other gods to be King God. 

That’s the first thing. 
That’s quite cool. 

They elect him because they’re facing a terrible threat—sort of like a flood and a monster combined. 

Marduk basically says that, 

if they elect him top God,
he’ll go out and stop the flood monster, 
and they won’t all get wiped out. 

It’s a serious threat. 

It’s Chaos itself making its comeback. 

SALTWATER 

All the gods agree, 
and Marduk is the new manifestation. 

He’s got eyes all the way around His head, 
and
He speaks magic words. 

When he fights, he fights this deity called Tiamat. 

We need to know that, because the word 
‘Tiamat’ is associated with the word 'tehom.' 

Tehom is the Chaos that God makes Order out of at The Beginning of Time in Genesis, 
so it’s linked very tightly to this story. 

Marduk, with His eyes 
and 
His capacity to speak magic words, 
goes out and confronts Tiamat, 
who’s like this watery sea dragon. 

It’s a classic Saint George story: 
Go out and Wreak Havoc on The Dragon. 

He cuts Her into pieces, 
and 
He makes The World out of Her pieces. 

That’s The World that human beings live in. 

The Mesopotamian Emperor acted out Marduk. 

He was ALLOWED to be Emperor 
insofar as he was 
A Good Marduk. 

That meant that he had eyes all the way around his head, and he could speak magick; 
He could speak properly. 

We are starting to understand, at that point, 
The Essence of Leadership.

Because what’s Leadership? 
It’s the capacity to see what the hell’s in front of your face, and maybe in every direction, and maybe 

The Capacity to Use Your Language Properly to Transform Chaos into Order. 

God only knows how long it took the Mesopotamians to figure that out....

The best they could do was dramatize it, but it’s staggeringly brilliant. 

It’s by no means obvious, 
and this Chaos is a very strange thing. 

This is a Chaos that God wrestled with 
at The Beginning of Time. 

Chaos is Half-Psychological 
and 
Half-Real. 

There’s no other way to really describe it. 

Chaos is what you encounter when you’re blown into pieces and thrown into deep confusion—when your world falls apart, when your dreams die, when you’re betrayed. 

It’s The Chaos that emerges, 
and 
The Chaos is everything it wants, 
and 
It’s too much for you. 

That’s for sure. 

It pulls you down into 
The Underworld, 
and 
That’s Where The Dragons Are. 

All you’ve got at that point is your capacity to bloody well keep your eyes open, 
and 
To speak as carefully and as clearly as you can. 

Maybe, if you’re lucky, 
You’ll get through it that way 
and 
Come Out The Other Side. 

It’s taken people a very long time to figure that out, and it looks, to me, that the idea is erected on the platform of our ancient ancestors, maybe tens of millions of years ago, because we seem to represent that which disturbs us deeply  
using the same system that we used to represent  
Serpentile, or other, Carnivorous Predators. 

We’re biological creatures. 

When we formulated our strange capacity to abstract and use language, we still had all those underlying systems that were there when we were only animals. 

We have to use those systems that are there. 

Part of the emotional and motivational architecture of our thinking, part of the reason why we can
Demonize our Enemies 
who upset our axioms, 

Is Because We Perceive Them as if They’re Carnivorous Predators. 

We do it with the same system. 

That’s Chaos itself, 
The Thing That Always Threatens Us—

The Snakes That Came to The Trees 
 when we lived in them, like 60 million years ago. 

It’s the same damned systems. 

The Marduk Story 
is partly 
The Story of Using Attention and Language to Confront Those Things That Most Threaten Us. 

Some of those things are Real World threats, but some of them are Psychological Threats, 
which are just as profound but far more abstract. 

But we use the same system to represent them.

 That’s why you freeze, if you're frightened. 

You’re a prey animal. 
You’re like a rabbit, and you’ve seen something that's going to eat you. 

You freeze, and you’re paralyzed. 

You’re turned to stone, which is what you do when you see a Medusa with a head full of snakes. 

You turn to stone. 
You’re paralyzed, and the reason you do that is because you’re using the predator detector system to protect yourself. 

Your Heart Rate Goes Way Up, 
and 
You Get Ready to Move. 

Things that upset us rely on that system. 

The Marduk Story, 
for example, is the idea that, 
 If there are 
 Things That Upset You

 —chaotic, terrible, serpentine, monstrous, underworld things that threaten you—

The Best Thing to Do 
is 
Open Your Eyes, 
Keep Your Speech Organized, 
and go out, 
Confront The Thing, 
and 
Make The World Out of It. 

It’s staggering. 
When I read that story and started to understand it, it just blew me away. 

It’s such a profound idea, and we know it’s true, too, because we know, in psychotherapy, that 
you’re much better off to confront your fears head-on than you are to wait and let them find you.

Partly what you do, 
if you’re a psychotherapist, 
is you help people 
Break Their Fears into Little Pieces
—The Things That Upset Them—
and then 
To Encounter Them One by One 
and Master Them. 

You’re teaching this process of 
Internal Mastery Over The Strange 
and 
Chaotic World.

Conan's Father:

Fire and Wind come from The Sky, 

from The Gods of The Sky. 

But Crom is Your God - 

Crom and he lives in The Earth. 

Once, Giants lived in The Earth, Conan. 

And in The Darkness of Chaos, They fooled Crom,

and They took from Him The Enigma of Steel.

Crom was angered. And The Earth shook. 

Fire and Wind struck down these Giants, 

and They threw Their bodies into The Waters, 

But in Their Rage, The Gods Forgot The Secret of Steel and left it on The Battlefield.

We who found it are just Men. 

Not Gods. Not Giants. Just Men.

The Secret of Steel has always carried with it a Mystery. 

You must learn its Riddle, Conan. 

You must learn its discipline. 

For No-One - No-One in This World can you trust. Not Men, Not Women, Not Beasts.

[Points to sword]

This You Can Trust.

"Sherlock Holmes vs. Dracula" - BBC Radio Drama [1981 HQ]

Modern Times: Camille Paglia & Jordan B Peterson

For The King

 Converting People to Monarchism

 

 How do you go about convincing people that monarchy is the best way to go in a population where the older generation cling and revere independence and the younger generation are very apathetic towards politics? Should It be done by a creation of a political party to expose those ideas? 

Charles explains how he became a monarchist. 

We later talk about how people in general arrive at monarchist positions, and why there are seemingly no lady monarchists.

45 minutes on a single paragraph of Nietzsche's Beyond Good & Evil

“It has gradually become clear to me what every great philosophy up till now has consisted of — namely, the confession of its originator, and a species of involuntary and unconscious auto-biography; and moreover that the moral (or immoral) purpose in every philosophy has constituted the true vital germ out of which the entire plant has always grown. 

Indeed, to understand how the abstrusest metaphysical assertions of a philosopher have been arrived at, it is always well (and wise) to first ask oneself: "What morality do they (or does he) aim at?" 

Accordingly, I do not believe that an "impulse to knowledge" is the father of philosophy; but that another impulse, here as elsewhere, has only made use of knowledge (and mistaken knowledge!) as an instrument. 

But whoever considers the fundamental impulses of man with a view to determining how far they may have here acted as INSPIRING GENII (or as demons and cobolds), will find that they have all practiced philosophy at one time or another, and that each one of them would have been only too glad to look upon itself as the ultimate end of existence and the legitimate LORD over all the other impulses. 

For every impulse is imperious, and as SUCH, attempts to philosophize. 

To be sure, in the case of scholars, in the case of really scientific men, it may be otherwise—" better," if you will; there there may really be such a thing as an "impulse to knowledge," some kind of small, independent clock-work, which, when well wound up, works away industriously to that end, WITHOUT the rest of the scholarly impulses taking any material part therein. 

The actual "interests" of the scholar, therefore, are generally in quite another direction—in the family, perhaps, or in money-making, or in politics; it is, in fact, almost indifferent at what point of research his little machine is placed, and whether the hopeful young worker becomes a good philologist, a mushroom specialist, or a chemist; he is not CHARACTERISED by becoming this or that. 

In the philosopher, on the contrary, there is absolutely nothing impersonal; and above all, his morality furnishes a decided and decisive testimony as to WHO HE IS, — that is to say, in what order the deepest impulses of his nature stand to each other.

Unalone in The Dark

Megan Paul is 26. Like Jack and Michelle, she's very sociable and lively. She is blind and looks back now on a very lonely time at school, set apart by her disability and even more so by others' reactions to it. 

"I went to a mainstream, all-girls secondary school," says Megan. "It was OK for the first couple of years and then when girls hit their teenage years they become interested in makeup, magazines and how boys look - all quite visual things. I loved my books and animals, so I didn't have the same interests. I couldn't talk about whether boys were cute, so there was that natural growing apart." 

In lessons pupils would often work in pairs. When the teacher asked the whole class who wanted to work with Megan, there would be an awkward silence until eventually the teacher paired up with her. Sometimes she felt the staff set a bad example. 

"I would put my hand up needing help from the teacher and the teacher would ignore me or make inappropriate comments about me. Pupils learn a lot from adult role models at that age and they saw that the teachers didn't know what to do with me," Megan says. 

"I felt awful. My mental health was the worst it's ever been. I wanted to die rather than be at school. Then in Year 11 they agreed that I could do a lot of my work at home. I found that was much better than being stressed out at school and it taught me great study skills." 

Now Megan is studying for a master's degree and life has become easier, but she says that there are still aspects of her disability which can make her feel lonely. 

"As a blind person we can't make eye contact or use body language. If someone who can see comes into a room they will gravitate towards someone who smiles at them. I'm not smiling until I know that they are there, so they don't get any feedback from me. 

"The frustration is that I am confident enough to go up to people and chat, but I have to wait for people to come to me. It does mean the friends I have are really special though, because they're the kind of people who persevered. I appreciate the friends I have so much more because I don't have many of them." 

When Megan first got an assistance dog, knowing how many people love dogs, she wondered whether the dog might draw people in to talk to her, but she's found that's not always the case. 

"Being an assistance dog owner brings its own type of loneliness - a lonely-in-a-crowd scenario," she says. "If people start stroking the dog I'll use that to start a conversation, but quite a lot of people just walk off. Sometimes I feel I'm overshadowed by my dog. I know I'm not cute and furry but I do have something to offer." 

I asked Megan whether she has tried joining any clubs or schemes designed to alleviate loneliness. She would like to, but finds access can be a problem. "Meetups are awkward because people don't know how to approach me. I recently tried to join a walking group with my dog, but they wrote back and said I needed to find a group that walks slowly. I'm a fast walker. They should decide how fast we walk together. If I do go to a group, I'm in the corner and everyone swirls around me. But the more groups I could join, the better." 

As time goes on Megan has found that one solution is to turn to her phone. "As you grow, you develop coping strategies. If I feel really bad, now I drop people a message. I don't tell them I'm feeling bad, I'm just making connections and reaching out, so I can work through that feeling." 

With the high levels of loneliness among young people, a blog Megan wrote might be particularly useful for those with disabilities at school today. She includes tips, such as holding the door open for people in order to start a conversation. 

"I was so bored at school. A lot of people walked through without noticing, but even if you got a 'Thank you' or a 'Hello' at least it was an interaction. I wasn't able to go up to people and say 'Hi' because I didn't know where they were. So it's one way of getting noticed. It's nice to be seen as helpful rather than 'Here's the weird blind girl again.'" 

Another of Megan's tips is to talk to teachers as if they're real people, and not just your teachers. 

"Even as a teenager, if you're that lonely you don't care who you talk to. I remember talking to a teacher who told me her cat had had kittens. Afterwards I thought, 'That's one less break time spent alone.'" 

Megan says she believes not being able to see has made her kinder to others. "People with vision judge people on appearances and I don't, because I can't." 

It's possible that loneliness has made her kinder too. We found that people who say they often feel lonely score higher on average for social empathy. They are better at spotting when someone else is feeling rejected or excluded, probably because they have experienced it themselves. 

But when it comes to trust, the findings are very different. Although they may be more understanding of other people's emotional pain, on average people who say they often feel lonely had lower levels of trust in others and higher levels of anxiety, both of which can make it harder to make friends. 

Michelle can relate to this. "I sometimes feel that people are just being pitying by wanting to spend time with me. I do have trust issues and I think they stem from my anxiety. I think when you become lonely you do start to look inward and question people's motives. You find yourself wondering whether people spend time with me because they want to, or because they feel guilty."

Paulie : 

Friends owe!

Rocky :
Friends don't  owe -- 

They Do Because They Wanna Do -

You Owe Yourself.

Cut to the halls. Buffy and Cordelia are walking.

Cordelia: 

So, how much the creepy is it that this Marcie's been at this for months? 

Spying on us? 

Learning our most guarded secrets? 

So, are you saying she's invisible because she's so unpopular?

Buffy: 

That about sums it up.

Cordelia:  (exhales) 

Bummer for her. 

It's awful to feel that lonely.

Buffy:  

Hmm.  So you've read something about the feeling?

Cordelia:  (stops Buffy) 

Hey! You think I'm never lonely because I'm so  cute and popular? 

I can be surrounded by people and be completely alone.

 It's not like any of them really know me. 

I don't even know if they like  me half the time. 

People just want to be in a popular zone.

Sometimes, when I talk, everyone's so busy agreeing with me, 

They don't hear a word I say.

Buffy: 

Well, if you feel so alone, then why do you work so hard at being popular?

Cordelia: 

Well, it beats being alone all by yourself.

She continues down the hall. After considering that for a moment Buffy 
quickly follows.

Surely The Game is hardly worth The Candle.

When Shall We3 Meet Again?

By Thunder, Lightening, or in Rain?

"The Seven Percent Solution is NOT a Sherlock Holmes Story — 

It's a Story About Sherlock Holmes."

— Nicholas Meyer

Sherlock Holmes took his bottle from the corner of the mantel-piece and his hypodermic syringe from its neat morocco case. With his long, white, nervous fingers he adjusted the delicate needle, and rolled back his left shirt-cuff. For some little time his eyes rested thoughtfully upon the sinewy forearm and wrist all dotted and scarred with innumerable puncture-marks. Finally he thrust the sharp point home, pressed down the tiny piston, and sank back into the velvet-lined arm-chair with a long sigh of satisfaction.

Three times a day for many months I had witnessed this performance, but custom had not reconciled my mind to it. On the contrary, from day to day I had become more irritable at the sight, and my conscience swelled nightly within me at the thought that I had lacked the courage to protest. Again and again I had registered a vow that I should deliver my soul upon the subject, but there was that in the cool, nonchalant air of my companion which made him the last man with whom one would care to take anything approaching to a liberty. His great powers, his masterly manner, and the experience which I had had of his many extraordinary qualities, all made me diffident and backward in crossing him.

Yet upon that afternoon, whether it was the Beaune which I had taken with my lunch, or the additional exasperation produced by the extreme deliberation of his manner, I suddenly felt that I could hold out no longer.

"Which is it to-day?" I asked,—"morphine or cocaine?"

He raised his eyes languidly from the old black-letter volume which he had opened. "It is cocaine," he said,—"a seven-per-cent. solution. Would you care to try it?"

"No, indeed," I answered, brusquely. "My constitution has not got over the Afghan campaign yet. I cannot afford to throw any extra strain upon it."

He smiled at my vehemence. "Perhaps you are right, Watson," he said. "I suppose that its influence is physically a bad one. I find it, however, so transcendently stimulating and clarifying to the mind that its secondary action is a matter of small moment."

"But consider!" I said, earnestly. "Count the cost! Your brain may, as you say, be roused and excited, but it is a pathological and morbid process, which involves increased tissue-change and may at last leave a permanent weakness. You know, too, what a black reaction comes upon you. Surely the game is hardly worth the candle. Why should you, for a mere passing pleasure, risk the loss of those great powers with which you have been endowed? Remember that I speak not only as one comrade to another, but as a medical man to one for whose constitution he is to some extent answerable."

He did not seem offended. On the contrary, he put his finger-tips together and leaned his elbows on the arms of his chair, like one who has a relish for conversation.

"My mind," he said, "rebels at stagnation. Give me problems, give me work, give me the most abstruse cryptogram or the most intricate analysis, and I am in my own proper atmosphere. I can dispense then with artificial stimulants. But I abhor the dull routine of existence. I crave for mental exaltation. That is why I have chosen my own particular profession,—or rather created it, for I am the only one in the world."

"The only unofficial detective?" I said, raising my eyebrows.

"The only unofficial consulting detective," he answered. "I am the last and highest court of appeal in detection. When Gregson or Lestrade or Athelney Jones are out of their depths—which, by the way, is their normal state—the matter is laid before me. I examine the data, as an expert, and pronounce a specialist's opinion. I claim no credit in such cases. My name figures in no newspaper. The work itself, the pleasure of finding a field for my peculiar powers, is my highest reward. But you have yourself had some experience of my methods of work in the Jefferson Hope case."

"Yes, indeed," said I, cordially. "I was never so struck by anything in my life. I even embodied it in a small brochure with the somewhat fantastic title of 'A Study in Scarlet.'"

He shook his head sadly. "I glanced over it," said he. "Honestly, I cannot congratulate you upon it. Detection is, or ought to be, an exact science, and should be treated in the same cold and unemotional manner. You have attempted to tinge it with romanticism, which produces much the same effect as if you worked a love-story or an elopement into the fifth proposition of Euclid."

"But the romance was there," I remonstrated. "I could not tamper with the facts."

"Some facts should be suppressed, or at least a just sense of proportion should be observed in treating them. The only point in the case which deserved mention was the curious analytical reasoning from effects to causes by which I succeeded in unraveling it."

I was annoyed at this criticism of a work which had been specially designed to please him. I confess, too, that I was irritated by the egotism which seemed to demand that every line of my pamphlet should be devoted to his own special doings. More than once during the years that I had lived with him in Baker Street I had observed that a small vanity underlay my companion's quiet and didactic manner. I made no remark, however, but sat nursing my wounded leg. I had a Jezail bullet through it some time before, and, though it did not prevent me from walking, it ached wearily at every change of the weather.

"My practice has extended recently to the Continent," said Holmes, after a while, filling up his old brier-root pipe. "I was consulted last week by Francois Le Villard, who, as you probably know, has come rather to the front lately in the French detective service. He has all the Celtic power of quick intuition, but he is deficient in the wide range of exact knowledge which is essential to the higher developments of his art. The case was concerned with a will, and possessed some features of interest. I was able to refer him to two parallel cases, the one at Riga in 1857, and the other at St. Louis in 1871, which have suggested to him the true solution. Here is the letter which I had this morning acknowledging my assistance." He tossed over, as he spoke, a crumpled sheet of foreign notepaper. I glanced my eyes down it, catching a profusion of notes of admiration, with stray "magnifiques," "coup-de-maitres," and "tours-de-force," all testifying to the ardent admiration of the Frenchman.

"He speaks as a pupil to his master," said I.

"Oh, he rates my assistance too highly," said Sherlock Holmes, lightly. "He has considerable gifts himself. He possesses two out of the three qualities necessary for the ideal detective. He has the power of observation and that of deduction. He is only wanting in knowledge; and that may come in time. He is now translating my small works into French."

"Your works?"

"Oh, didn't you know?" he cried, laughing. "Yes, I have been guilty of several monographs. They are all upon technical subjects. Here, for example, is one 'Upon the Distinction between the Ashes of the Various Tobaccoes.' In it I enumerate a hundred and forty forms of cigar-, cigarette-, and pipe-tobacco, with colored plates illustrating the difference in the ash. It is a point which is continually turning up in criminal trials, and which is sometimes of supreme importance as a clue. If you can say definitely, for example, that some murder has been done by a man who was smoking an Indian lunkah, it obviously narrows your field of search. To the trained eye there is as much difference between the black ash of a Trichinopoly and the white fluff of bird's-eye as there is between a cabbage and a potato."

"You have an extraordinary genius for minutiae," I remarked.

"I appreciate their importance. Here is my monograph upon the tracing of footsteps, with some remarks upon the uses of plaster of Paris as a preserver of impresses. Here, too, is a curious little work upon the influence of a trade upon the form of the hand, with lithotypes of the hands of slaters, sailors, corkcutters, compositors, weavers, and diamond-polishers. That is a matter of great practical interest to the scientific detective,—especially in cases of unclaimed bodies, or in discovering the antecedents of criminals. But I weary you with my hobby."

"Not at all," I answered, earnestly. "It is of the greatest interest to me, especially since I have had the opportunity of observing your practical application of it. But you spoke just now of observation and deduction. Surely the one to some extent implies the other."

"Why, hardly," he answered, leaning back luxuriously in his arm-chair, and sending up thick blue wreaths from his pipe. "For example, observation shows me that you have been to the Wigmore Street Post-Office this morning, but deduction lets me know that when there you dispatched a telegram."

"Right!" said I. "Right on both points! But I confess that I don't see how you arrived at it. It was a sudden impulse upon my part, and I have mentioned it to no one."

"It is simplicity itself," he remarked, chuckling at my surprise,—"so absurdly simple that an explanation is superfluous; and yet it may serve to define the limits of observation and of deduction. Observation tells me that you have a little reddish mould adhering to your instep. Just opposite the Seymour Street Office they have taken up the pavement and thrown up some earth which lies in such a way that it is difficult to avoid treading in it in entering. The earth is of this peculiar reddish tint which is found, as far as I know, nowhere else in the neighborhood. So much is observation. The rest is deduction."

"How, then, did you deduce the telegram?"

"Why, of course I knew that you had not written a letter, since I sat opposite to you all morning. I see also in your open desk there that you have a sheet of stamps and a thick bundle of post-cards. What could you go into the post-office for, then, but to send a wire? Eliminate all other factors, and the one which remains must be the truth."

"In this case it certainly is so," I replied, after a little thought. "The thing, however, is, as you say, of the simplest. Would you think me impertinent if I were to put your theories to a more severe test?"

"On the contrary," he answered, "it would prevent me from taking a second dose of cocaine. I should be delighted to look into any problem which you might submit to me."

"I have heard you say that it is difficult for a man to have any object in daily use without leaving the impress of his individuality upon it in such a way that a trained observer might read it. Now, I have here a watch which has recently come into my possession. Would you have the kindness to let me have an opinion upon the character or habits of the late owner?"

I handed him over the watch with some slight feeling of amusement in my heart, for the test was, as I thought, an impossible one, and I intended it as a lesson against the somewhat dogmatic tone which he occasionally assumed. He balanced the watch in his hand, gazed hard at the dial, opened the back, and examined the works, first with his naked eyes and then with a powerful convex lens. I could hardly keep from smiling at his crestfallen face when he finally snapped the case to and handed it back.

"There are hardly any data," he remarked. "The watch has been recently cleaned, which robs me of my most suggestive facts."

"You are right," I answered. "It was cleaned before being sent to me." In my heart I accused my companion of putting forward a most lame and impotent excuse to cover his failure. What data could he expect from an uncleaned watch?

"Though unsatisfactory, my research has not been entirely barren," he observed, staring up at the ceiling with dreamy, lack-lustre eyes. "Subject to your correction, I should judge that the watch belonged to your elder brother, who inherited it from your father."

"That you gather, no doubt, from the H. W. upon the back?"

"Quite so. The W. suggests your own name. The date of the watch is nearly fifty years back, and the initials are as old as the watch: so it was made for the last generation. Jewelry usually descends to the eldest son, and he is most likely to have the same name as the father. Your father has, if I remember right, been dead many years. It has, therefore, been in the hands of your eldest brother."

"Right, so far," said I. "Anything else?"

"He was a man of untidy habits,—very untidy and careless. He was left with good prospects, but he threw away his chances, lived for some time in poverty with occasional short intervals of prosperity, and finally, taking to drink, he died. That is all I can gather."

I sprang from my chair and limped impatiently about the room with considerable bitterness in my heart.

"This is unworthy of you, Holmes," I said. "I could not have believed that you would have descended to this. You have made inquires into the history of my unhappy brother, and you now pretend to deduce this knowledge in some fanciful way. You cannot expect me to believe that you have read all this from his old watch! It is unkind, and, to speak plainly, has a touch of charlatanism in it."

"My dear doctor," said he, kindly, "pray accept my apologies. Viewing the matter as an abstract problem, I had forgotten how personal and painful a thing it might be to you. I assure you, however, that I never even knew that you had a brother until you handed me the watch."

"Then how in the name of all that is wonderful did you get these facts? They are absolutely correct in every particular."

"Ah, that is good luck. I could only say what was the balance of probability. I did not at all expect to be so accurate."

"But it was not mere guess-work?"

"No, no: I never guess. It is a shocking habit,—destructive to the logical faculty. What seems strange to you is only so because you do not follow my train of thought or observe the small facts upon which large inferences may depend. For example, I began by stating that your brother was careless. When you observe the lower part of that watch-case you notice that it is not only dinted in two places, but it is cut and marked all over from the habit of keeping other hard objects, such as coins or keys, in the same pocket. Surely it is no great feat to assume that a man who treats a fifty-guinea watch so cavalierly must be a careless man. Neither is it a very far-fetched inference that a man who inherits one article of such value is pretty well provided for in other respects."

I nodded, to show that I followed his reasoning.

"It is very customary for pawnbrokers in England, when they take a watch, to scratch the number of the ticket with a pin-point upon the inside of the case. It is more handy than a label, as there is no risk of the number being lost or transposed. There are no less than four such numbers visible to my lens on the inside of this case. Inference,—that your brother was often at low water. Secondary inference,—that he had occasional bursts of prosperity, or he could not have redeemed the pledge. Finally, I ask you to look at the inner plate, which contains the key-hole. Look at the thousands of scratches all round the hole,—marks where the key has slipped. What sober man's key could have scored those grooves? But you will never see a drunkard's watch without them. He winds it at night, and he leaves these traces of his unsteady hand. Where is the mystery in all this?"

"It is as clear as daylight," I answered. "I regret the injustice which I did you. I should have had more faith in your marvellous faculty. May I ask whether you have any professional inquiry on foot at present?"

"None. Hence the cocaine. I cannot live without brain-work. What else is there to live for? Stand at the window here. Was ever such a dreary, dismal, unprofitable world? See how the yellow fog swirls down the street and drifts across the dun-colored houses. What could be more hopelessly prosaic and material? What is the use of having powers, doctor, when one has no field upon which to exert them? Crime is commonplace, existence is commonplace, and no qualities save those which are commonplace have any function upon earth."

I had opened my mouth to reply to this tirade, when with a crisp knock our landlady entered, bearing a card upon the brass salver.

"A young lady for you, sir," she said, addressing my companion.

"Miss Mary Morstan," he read. "Hum! I have no recollection of the name. Ask the young lady to step up, Mrs. Hudson. Don't go, doctor. I should prefer that you remain."