• Author: Unknown
• Editor: B-7413
• Newspaper: The Umpire volume 5
• Page Number:
• Date: 10 18 1916
• Tags:
• advice
• opinion

OUR DUAL NATURE

It is said of Stevenson, that he awoke from an oppressive dream and wrote the story which he called his worst effort but which really made him famous, ‘‘Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.” Since its publication the subject of a dual nature has been frequently commented upon by many and some have said it was not an unfamiliar experience to feel that more than one personality inhabited their materialistic form. To just what extent this fact may be carried would be hard to surmise, but that we mortals are at times subject to an unusual impulse to do something out of the ordinary can not be denied.

Not so very long ago a college graduate confessed that after he had read Stevenson’s story of dual personality, he became obsessed with the thought to carry the fiction into actual fact. At last he became ‘‘possessed’’ and by day he was good, while at night he traveled about like a ghoul, with an over-powering desire to bring terror to those who approached him, and it appears that he did no harm other than to cause fright, though evidently he had a morbid delight in scaring his victims, and in watching their expressions of terror. In his declaration he compares his mental state to that of a person obsessed by the craving for opiates. Undoubtedly this is a clear case of the power of suggestion preying upon a weak will, and unfortunately there are many such. They often think they must do as they see or read or hear of others doing, and perhaps this will account for the influence of bad books, suggestive moving pictures, and evil communications that smothers or nullifies good breeding.

The vagaries of the human mind are many and varied, and there are but few who do not know times and occasions when the evil hand of Mr. Hyde within one’s self pushes at the back of Dr. Jekyll’s spotless integrity. The might of the struggle is not the same in all cases, though some sterling natures that may have continued their way to eminence appear to be unaware ‘‘that there ever was a conflict between virtue and appetite.” But with others the battle nearly rends in twain the being. The struggle to resist evil sometimes becomes an agony to the soul, and few are so well in control of themselves that they can avow the meeting of ‘‘evil in their flesh and blood forever dispelled.” Which is amplified by the lines of the poem which reads—

“We lead two lives, the outward seeming fair, And full of smiles that on the surface lie; The other spent in many a silent prayer, With thoughts and feelings hidden from the eye.”