I WAS born in the year 18\u2014 to a large fortune, endowed besides\u00a0with excellent parts, inclined by nature to industry, fond of the\u00a0respect of the wise and good among my fellow-men, and thus, as\u00a0might have been supposed, with every guarantee of an honourable\u00a0and distinguished future. And indeed the worst of my faults was a\u00a0certain impatient gaiety of disposition, such as has made the\u00a0happiness of many, but such as I found it hard to reconcile with\u00a0my imperious desire to carry my head high, and wear a more than\u00a0commonly grave countenance before the public. Hence it came about\u00a0that I concealed my pleasures; and that when I reached years of\u00a0reflection, and began to look round me and take stock of my\u00a0progress and position in the world, I stood already committed to\u00a0a profound duplicity of life. Many a man would have even blazoned\u00a0such irregularities as I was guilty of; but from the high views\u00a0that I had set before me, I regarded and hid them with an almost\u00a0morbid sense of shame. It was thus rather the exacting\u00a0nature of my aspirations than any particular degradation in my\u00a0faults, that made me what I was and, with even a deeper trench\u00a0than in the majority of men, severed in me those provinces of\u00a0good and ill which divide and compound man's dual nature. In this\u00a0case, I was driven to reflect deeply and inveterately on that\u00a0hard law of life, which lies at the root of religion and is one\u00a0of the most plentiful springs of distress. Though so profound a\u00a0double-dealer, I was in no sense a hypocrite; both sides of me\u00a0were in dead earnest; I was no more myself when I laid aside\u00a0restraint and plunged in shame, than when I laboured, in the eye\u00a0of day, at the furtherance of knowledge or the relief of sorrow\u00a0and suffering. And it chanced that the direction of my scientific\u00a0studies, which led wholly toward the mystic and the\u00a0transcendental, re-acted and shed a strong light on this\u00a0consciousness of the perennial war among my members. With every\u00a0day, and from both sides of my intelligence, the moral and the\u00a0intellectual, I thus drew steadily nearer to that truth, by whose\u00a0partial discovery I have been doomed to such a dreadful\u00a0shipwreck: that man is not truly one, but truly two. I say two,\u00a0because the state of my own knowledge does not pass beyond that\u00a0point. Others will follow, others will outstrip me on the same\u00a0lines; and I hazard the guess that man will be ultimately known\u00a0for a mere polity of multifarious, incongruous, and independent\u00a0denizens. I, for my\u00a0part, from the nature of my life, advanced infallibly in one\u00a0direction and in one direction only. It was on the moral side,\u00a0and in my own person, that I learned to recognise the thorough\u00a0and primitive duality of man; I saw that, of the two natures that\u00a0contended in the field of my consciousness, even if I could\u00a0rightly be said to be either, it was only because I was radically\u00a0both; and from an early date, even before the course of my\u00a0scientific discoveries had begun to suggest the most naked\u00a0possibility of such a miracle, I had learned to dwell with\u00a0pleasure, as a beloved day-dream, on the thought of the\u00a0separation of these elements. If each, I told myself, could but\u00a0be housed in separate identities, life would be relieved of all\u00a0that was unbearable; the unjust delivered from the aspirations\u00a0might go his way, and remorse of his more upright twin; and the\u00a0just could walk steadfastly and securely on his upward path,\u00a0doing the good things in which he found his pleasure, and no\u00a0longer exposed to disgrace and penitence by the hands of this\u00a0extraneous evil. It was the curse of mankind that these\u00a0incongruous fagots were thus bound together that in the agonised\u00a0womb of consciousness, these polar twins should be continuously\u00a0struggling. How, then, were they dissociated?<\/p>\r\n
I was so far in my reflections when, as I have said, a side-light\u00a0began to shine upon the subject from the laboratory table. I\u00a0began to perceive\u00a0more deeply than it has ever yet been stated, the trembling\u00a0immateriality, the mist-like transience of this \u00a0seemingly so\u00a0solid body in which we walk attired. Certain agents I found to\u00a0have the power to shake and to pluck back that fleshly vestment,\u00a0even as a wind might toss the curtains of a pavilion. For two\u00a0good reasons, I will not enter deeply into this scientific branch\u00a0of my confession. First, because I have been made to learn that\u00a0the doom and burthen of our life is bound for ever on man's\u00a0shoulders, and when the attempt is made to cast it off, it but\u00a0returns upon us with more unfamiliar and more awful pressure.\u00a0Second, because, as my narrative will make, alas! too evident, my\u00a0discoveries were incomplete. Enough, then, that I not only\u00a0recognised my natural body for the mere aura and effulgence of\u00a0certain of the powers that made up my spirit, but managed to\u00a0compound a drug by which these powers should be dethroned from\u00a0their supremacy, and a second form and countenance substituted,\u00a0none the less natural to me because they were the expression, and\u00a0bore the stamp, of lower elements in my soul.<\/p>\r\n
I hesitated long before I put this theory to the test of\u00a0practice. I knew well that I risked death; for any drug that so\u00a0potently controlled and shook the very fortress of identity,\u00a0might by the least scruple of an overdose or at the least\u00a0inopportunity in the moment of exhibition, utterly blot out that\u00a0immaterial tabernacle which I\u00a0looked to it to change. But the temptation of a discovery so\u00a0singular and profound, at last overcame the suggestions of alarm.\u00a0I had long since prepared my tincture; I purchased at once, from\u00a0a firm of wholesale chemists, a large quantity of a particular\u00a0salt which I knew, from my experiments, to be the last ingredient\u00a0required; and late one accursed night, I compounded the elements,\u00a0watched them boil and smoke together in the glass, and when the\u00a0ebullition had subsided, with a strong glow of courage, drank off\u00a0the potion.<\/p>\r\n
The most racking pangs succeeded: a grinding in the bones, deadly\u00a0nausea, and a horror of the spirit that cannot be exceeded at the\u00a0hour of birth or death. Then these agonies began swiftly to\u00a0subside, and I came to myself as if out of a great sickness.\u00a0There was something strange in my sensations, something\u00a0indescribably new and, from its very novelty, incredibly sweet. I\u00a0felt younger, lighter, happier in body; within I was conscious of\u00a0a heady recklessness, a current of disordered sensual images\u00a0running like a mill-race in my fancy, a solution of the bonds of\u00a0obligation, an unknown but not an innocent freedom of the soul. I\u00a0knew myself, at the first breath of this new life, to be more\u00a0wicked, tenfold more wicked, sold a slave to my original evil;\u00a0and the thought, in that moment, braced and delighted me like\u00a0wine. I stretched out my hands, exulting in the freshness of\u00a0these\u00a0sensations; and in the act, I was suddenly aware that I had lost\r\nin stature.<\/p>\r\n
There was no mirror, at that date, in my room; that which stands\u00a0beside me as I write, was brought there later on and for the very\u00a0purpose of these transformations. The night, however, was far\u00a0gone into the morning\u2014the morning, black as it was, was nearly\u00a0ripe for the conception of the day\u2014the inmates of my house\u00a0were locked in the most rigorous hours of slumber; and I\u00a0determined, flushed as I was with hope and triumph, to venture in\u00a0my new shape as far as to my bedroom. I crossed the yard, wherein\u00a0the constellations looked down upon me, I could have thought,\u00a0with wonder, the first creature of that sort that their\u00a0unsleeping vigilance had yet disclosed to them; I stole through\u00a0the corridors, a stranger in my own house; and coming to my room,\u00a0I saw for the first time the appearance of Edward Hyde.<\/p>\r\n
I must here speak by theory alone, saying not that which I know,\u00a0but that which I suppose to be most probable. The evil side of my\u00a0nature, to which I had now transferred the stamping efficacy, was\u00a0less robust and less developed than the good which I had just\u00a0deposed. Again, in the course of my life, which had been, after\u00a0all, nine-tenths a life of effort, virtue, and control, it had\u00a0been much less exercised and much less exhausted. And hence, as I\u00a0think, it came about that Edward Hyde was so much smaller,\u00a0slighter, and younger than Henry Jekyll. Even as good shone upon\u00a0the countenance of the one, evil was written broadly and plainly\u00a0on the face of the other. Evil besides (which I must still\u00a0believe to be the lethal side of man) had left on that body an\u00a0imprint of deformity and decay. And yet when I looked upon that\u00a0ugly idol in the glass, I was conscious of no repugnance, rather\u00a0of a leap of welcome. This, too, was myself. It seemed natural\u00a0and human. In my eyes it bore a livelier image of the spirit, it\u00a0seemed more express and single, than the imperfect and divided\u00a0countenance I had been hitherto accustomed to call mine. And in\u00a0so far I was doubtless right. I have observed that when I wore\u00a0the semblance of Edward Hyde, none could come near to me at first\u00a0without a visible misgiving of the flesh. This, as I take it, was\u00a0because all human beings, as we meet them, are commingled out of\u00a0good and evil: and Edward Hyde, alone in the ranks of mankind,\u00a0was pure evil.<\/p>\r\n
I lingered but a moment at the mirror: the second and conclusive\u00a0experiment had yet to be attempted; it yet remained to be seen if\u00a0I had lost my identity beyond redemption and must flee before\u00a0daylight from a house that was no longer mine; and hurrying back\u00a0to my cabinet, I once more prepared and drank the cup, once more\u00a0suffered the pangs of dissolution, and came to myself once more\u00a0with the character, the stature, and the face of Henry Jekyll.<\/p>\r\n
That night I had come to the fatal cross-roads. Had I approached\u00a0my discovery in a more noble spirit, had I risked the experiment\u00a0while under the empire of generous or pious aspirations, all must\u00a0have been otherwise, and from these agonies of death and birth, I\u00a0had come forth an angel instead of a fiend. The drug had no\u00a0discriminating action; it was neither diabolical nor divine; it\u00a0but shook the doors of the prison-house of my disposition; and\u00a0like the captives of Philippi, that which stood within ran forth.\u00a0At that time my virtue slumbered; my evil, kept awake by\u00a0ambition, was alert and swift to seize the occasion; and the\u00a0thing that was projected was Edward Hyde. Hence, although I had\u00a0now two characters as well as two appearances, one was wholly\u00a0evil, and the other was still the old Henry Jekyll, that\u00a0incongruous compound of whose reformation and improvement I had\u00a0already learned to despair. The movement was thus wholly toward\u00a0the worse.<\/p>\r\n
Even at that time, I had not yet conquered my aversion to the\u00a0dryness of a life of study. I would still be merrily disposed at\r\ntimes; and as my pleasures were (to say the least) undignified,\u00a0and I was not only well known and highly considered, but growing\u00a0toward the elderly man, this incoherency of my life was daily\u00a0growing more unwelcome. It was on this side that my new power\u00a0tempted me until I fell in slavery. I had but to drink the cup,\u00a0to doff at once the body\u00a0of the noted professor, and to assume, like a thick cloak, that\u00a0of Edward Hyde. I smiled at the notion; it seemed to me at the\u00a0time to be humorous; and I made my preparations with the most\u00a0studious care. I took and furnished that house in Soho, to which\u00a0Hyde was tracked by the police; and engaged as housekeeper a\u00a0creature whom I well knew to be silent and unscrupulous. On the\u00a0other side, I announced to my servants that a Mr. Hyde (whom I\u00a0described) was to have full liberty and power about my house in\u00a0the square; and to parry mishaps, I even called and made myself a\u00a0familiar object, in my second character. I next drew up that will\u00a0to which you so much objected; so that if anything befell me in\u00a0the person of Dr. Jekyll, I could enter on that of Edward Hyde\u00a0without pecuniary loss. And thus fortified, as I supposed, on\u00a0every side, I began to profit by the strange immunities of my\u00a0position.<\/p>\r\n
Men have before hired bravos to transact their crimes, while\u00a0their own person and reputation sat under shelter. I was the\u00a0first that ever did so for his pleasures. I was the first that\u00a0could thus plod in the public eye with a load of genial\u00a0respectability, and in a moment, like a schoolboy, strip off\u00a0these lendings and spring headlong into the sea of liberty. But\u00a0for me, in my impenetrable mantle, the safety was complete. Think\u00a0of it\u2014I did not even exist! Let me but escape into my\u00a0laboratory door, give me but a second or\u00a0two to mix and swallow the draught that I had always standing\u00a0ready; and whatever he had done, Edward Hyde would pass away like\u00a0the stain of breath upon a mirror; and there in his stead,\u00a0quietly at home, trimming the midnight lamp in his study, a man\u00a0who could afford to laugh at suspicion, would be Henry Jekyll.<\/p>\r\n
The pleasures which I made haste to seek in my disguise were, as\u00a0I have said, undignified; I would scarce use a harder term. But\u00a0in the hands of Edward Hyde, they soon began to turn toward the\u00a0monstrous. When I would come back from these excursions, I was\u00a0often plunged into a kind of wonder at my vicarious depravity.\u00a0This familiar that I called out of my own soul, and sent forth\u00a0alone to do his good pleasure, was a being inherently malign and\u00a0villainous; his every act and thought centred on self; drinking\u00a0pleasure with bestial avidity from any degree of torture to\u00a0another; relentless like a man of stone. Henry Jekyll stood at\u00a0times aghast before the acts of Edward Hyde; but the situation\u00a0was apart from ordinary laws, and insidiously relaxed the grasp\u00a0of conscience. It was Hyde, after all, and Hyde alone, that was\u00a0guilty. Jekyll was no worse; he woke again to his good qualities\u00a0seemingly unimpaired; he would even make haste, where it was\u00a0possible, to undo the evil done by Hyde. And thus his conscience\u00a0slumbered.<\/p>\r\n
Into the details of the infamy at which I thus\u00a0connived (for even now I can scarce grant that I committed it) I\u00a0have no design of entering; I mean but to point out the warnings\u00a0and the successive steps with which my chastisement approached. I\u00a0met with one accident which, as it brought on no consequence, I\u00a0shall no more than mention. An act of cruelty to a child aroused\u00a0against me the anger of a passer-by, whom I recognised the other\u00a0day in the person of your kinsman; the doctor and the child's\u00a0family joined him; there were moments when I feared for my life;\u00a0and at last, in order to pacify their too just resentment, Edward\u00a0Hyde had to bring them to the door, and pay them in a cheque\u00a0drawn in the name of Henry Jekyll. But this danger was easily\u00a0eliminated from the future, by opening an account at another bank\u00a0in the name of Edward Hyde himself; and when, by sloping my own\u00a0hand backward, I had supplied my double with a signature, I\u00a0thought I sat beyond the reach of fate.<\/p>\r\n
Some two months before the murder of Sir Danvers, I had been out\u00a0for one of my adventures, had returned at a late hour, and woke\u00a0the next day in bed with somewhat odd sensations. It was in vain\u00a0I looked about me; in vain I saw the decent furniture and tall\u00a0proportions of my room in the square; in vain that I recognised\u00a0the pattern of the bed-curtains and the design of the mahogany\u00a0frame; something still kept insisting that I was not where I was,\u00a0that I had not wakened where I seemed to be, but in the little\u00a0room in Soho where I was accustomed to sleep in the body of\u00a0Edward Hyde. I smiled to myself, and, in my psychological way\u00a0began lazily to inquire into the elements of this illusion,\u00a0occasionally, even as I did so, dropping back into a comfortable\u00a0morning doze. I was still so engaged when, in one of my more\u00a0wakeful moments, my eyes fell upon my hand. Now the hand of Henry\u00a0Jekyll (as you have often remarked) was professional in shape and\u00a0size: it was large, firm, white, and comely. But the hand which I\u00a0now saw, clearly enough, in the yellow light of a mid-London\u00a0morning, lying half shut on the bed-clothes, was lean, corded,\u00a0knuckly, of a dusky pallor and thickly shaded with a swart growth\u00a0of hair. It was the hand of Edward Hyde.<\/p>\r\n
I must have stared upon it for near half a minute, sunk as I was\u00a0in the mere stupidity of wonder, before terror woke up in my\u00a0breast as sudden and startling as the crash of cymbals; and\u00a0bounding from my bed, I rushed to the mirror. At the sight that\u00a0met my eyes, my blood was changed into something exquisitely thin\u00a0and icy. Yes, I had gone to bed Henry Jekyll, I had awakened\u00a0Edward Hyde. How was this to be explained? I asked myself, and\u00a0then, with another bound of terror\u2014how was it to be remedied?\u00a0It was well on in the morning; the servants were up; all my drugs\u00a0were in the\u00a0cabinet\u2014a long journey down two pairs of stairs, through the\u00a0back passage, across the open court and through the anatomical\u00a0theatre, from where I was then standing horror-struck. It might\u00a0indeed be possible to cover my face; but of what use was that,\u00a0when I was unable to conceal the alteration in my stature? And\u00a0then with an overpowering sweetness of relief, it came back upon\u00a0my mind that the servants were already used to the coming and\u00a0going of my second self. I had soon dressed, as well as I was\u00a0able, in clothes of my own size: had soon passed through the\u00a0house, where Bradshaw stared and drew back at seeing Mr. Hyde at\u00a0such an hour and in such a strange array; and ten minutes later,\u00a0Dr. Jekyll had returned to his own shape and was sitting down,\u00a0with a darkened brow, to make a feint of breakfasting.<\/p>\r\n
Small indeed was my appetite. This inexplicable incident, this\u00a0reversal of my previous experience, seemed, like the Babylonian\u00a0finger on the wall, to be spelling out the letters of my\u00a0judgment; and I began to reflect more seriously than ever before\u00a0on the issues and possibilities of my double existence. That part\u00a0of me which I had the power of projecting, had lately been much\u00a0exercised and nourished; it had seemed to me of late as though\u00a0the body of Edward Hyde had grown in stature, as though (when I\u00a0wore that form) I were conscious of a more generous tide of\u00a0blood; and I began to spy a danger that,\u00a0if this were much prolonged, the balance of my nature might be\u00a0permanently overthrown, the power of voluntary change be\u00a0forfeited, and the character of Edward Hyde become irrevocably\u00a0mine. The power of the drug had not been always equally\u00a0displayed. Once, very early in my career, it had totally failed\u00a0me; since then I had been obliged on more than one occasion to\u00a0double, and once, with infinite risk of death, to treble the\u00a0amount; and these rare uncertainties had cast hitherto the sole\u00a0shadow on my contentment. Now, however, and in the light of that\u00a0morning's accident, I was led to remark that whereas, in the\u00a0beginning, the difficulty had been to throw off the body of\u00a0Jekyll, it had of late gradually but decidedly transferred itself\u00a0to the other side. All things therefore seemed to point to this:\u00a0that I was slowly losing hold of my original and better self, and\u00a0becoming slowly incorporated with my second and worse.<\/p>\r\n
Between these two, I now felt I had to choose. My two natures had\u00a0memory in common, but all other faculties were most unequally\u00a0shared between them. Jekyll (who was composite) now with the most\u00a0sensitive apprehensions, now with a greedy gusto, projected and\u00a0shared in the pleasures and adventures of Hyde; but Hyde was\u00a0indifferent to Jekyll, or but remembered him as the mountain\u00a0bandit remembers the cavern in which he conceals himself from\u00a0pursuit. Jekyll had more than a father's interest; Hyde\u00a0had more than a son's indifference. To cast in my lot with\u00a0Jekyll, was to die to those appetites which I had long secretly\u00a0indulged and had of late begun to pamper. To cast it in with\u00a0Hyde, was to die to a thousand interests and aspirations, and to\u00a0become, at a blow and for ever, despised and friendless. The\u00a0bargain might appear unequal; but there was still another\u00a0consideration in the scales; for while Jekyll would suffer\u00a0smartingly in the fires of abstinence, Hyde would be not even\u00a0conscious of all that he had lost. Strange as my circumstances\u00a0were, the terms of this debate are as old and commonplace as man;\u00a0much the same inducements and alarms cast the die for any tempted\u00a0and trembling sinner; and it fell out with me, as it falls with\u00a0so vast a majority of my fellows, that I chose the better part\u00a0and was found wanting in the strength to keep to it.<\/p>\r\n
Yes, I preferred the elderly and discontented doctor, surrounded\u00a0by friends and cherishing honest hopes; and bade a resolute\u00a0farewell to the liberty, the comparative youth, the light step,\u00a0leaping impulses and secret pleasures, that I had enjoyed in the\u00a0disguise of Hyde. I made this choice perhaps with some\u00a0unconscious reservation, for I neither gave up the house in Soho,\u00a0nor destroyed the clothes of Edward Hyde, which still lay ready\u00a0in my cabinet. For two months, however, I was true to my\u00a0determination; for two months I led a life of such\u00a0severity as I had never before attained to, and enjoyed the\r\ncompensations of an approving conscience. But time began at last\u00a0to obliterate the freshness of my alarm; the praises of\u00a0conscience began to grow into a thing of course; I began to be\u00a0tortured with throes and longings, as of Hyde struggling after\u00a0freedom; and at last, in an hour of moral weakness, I once again\u00a0compounded and swallowed the transforming draught.<\/p>\r\n
I do not suppose that, when a drunkard reasons with himself upon\u00a0his vice, he is once out of five hundred times affected by the\u00a0dangers that he runs through his brutish, physical insensibility;\u00a0neither had I, long as I had considered my position, made enough\u00a0allowance for the complete moral insensibility and insensate\u00a0readiness to evil, which were the leading characters of Edward\u00a0Hyde. Yet it was by these that I was punished. My devil had been\u00a0long caged, he came out roaring. I was conscious, even when I\u00a0took the draught, of a more unbridled, a more furious propensity\u00a0to ill. It must have been this, I suppose, that stirred in my\u00a0soul that tempest of impatience with which I listened to the\u00a0civilities of my unhappy victim; I declare, at least, before God,\u00a0no man morally sane could have been guilty of that crime upon so\u00a0pitiful a provocation; and that I struck in no more reasonable\u00a0spirit than that in which a sick child may break a plaything. But\u00a0I had voluntarily stripped myself of all those balancing\u00a0instincts\u00a0by which even the worst of us continues to walk with some degree\u00a0of steadiness among temptations; and in my case, to be tempted,\u00a0however slightly, was to fall.<\/p>\r\n
Instantly the spirit of hell awoke in me and raged. With a\u00a0transport of glee, I mauled the unresisting body, tasting delight\u00a0from every blow; and it was not till weariness had begun to\u00a0succeed, that I was suddenly, in the top fit of my delirium,\u00a0struck through the heart by a cold thrill of terror. A mist\u00a0dispersed; I saw my life to be forfeit; and fled from the scene\u00a0of these excesses, at once glorying and trembling, my lust of\u00a0evil gratified and stimulated, my love of life screwed to the\u00a0topmost peg. I ran to the house in Soho, and (to make assurance\u00a0doubly sure) destroyed my papers; thence I set out through the\u00a0lamplit streets, in the same divided ecstasy of mind, gloating on\u00a0my crime, light-headedly devising others in the future, and yet\u00a0still hastening and still hearkening in my wake for the steps of\u00a0the avenger. Hyde had a song upon his lips as he compounded the\u00a0draught, and as he drank it, pledged the dead man. The pangs of\u00a0transformation had not done tearing him, before Henry Jekyll,\u00a0with streaming tears of gratitude and remorse, had fallen upon\u00a0his knees and lifted his clasped hands to God. The veil of\u00a0self-indulgence was rent from head to foot, I saw my life as a\u00a0whole: I followed it up from the days of childhood, when I had\u00a0walked\u00a0with my father's hand, and through the self-denying toils of my\u00a0professional life, to arrive again and again, with the same sense\u00a0of unreality, at the damned horrors of the evening. I could have\u00a0screamed aloud; I sought with tears and prayers to smother down\u00a0the crowd of hideous images and sounds with which my memory\u00a0swarmed against me; and still, between the petitions, the ugly\u00a0face of my iniquity stared into my soul. As the acuteness of this remorse began to die away, it was succeeded by a sense of joy.\u00a0The problem of my conduct was solved. Hyde was thenceforth\u00a0impossible; whether I would or not, I was now confined to the\u00a0better part of my existence; and oh, how I rejoiced to think it!\u00a0with what willing humility, I embraced anew the restrictions of\u00a0natural life! with what sincere renunciation, I locked the door\u00a0by which I had so often gone and come, and ground the key under\u00a0my heel!<\/p>\r\n
The next day, came the news that the murder had been overlooked,\u00a0that the guilt of Hyde was patent to the world, and that the\u00a0victim was a man high in public estimation. It was not only a\u00a0crime, it had been a tragic folly. I think I was glad to know it;\u00a0I think I was glad to have my better impulses thus buttressed and\u00a0guarded by the terrors of the scaffold. Jekyll was now my city of\u00a0refuge; let but Hyde peep out an instant, and the hands of all\u00a0men would be raised to take and slay him.<\/p>\r\n
I resolved in my future conduct to redeem the past; and I can say\u00a0with honesty that my resolve was fruitful of some good You know\u00a0yourself how earnestly in the last months of last year, I\u00a0laboured to relieve suffering; you know that much was done for\u00a0others, and that the days passed quietly, almost happily for\u00a0myself. Nor can I truly say that I wearied of this beneficent and\u00a0innocent life; I think instead that I daily enjoyed it more\u00a0completely; but I was still cursed with my duality of purpose;\u00a0and as the first edge of my penitence wore off, the lower side of\u00a0me, so long indulged, so recently chained down, began to growl\u00a0for licence. Not that I dreamed of resuscitating Hyde; the bare\u00a0idea of that would startle me to frenzy: no, it was in my own\u00a0person, that I was once more tempted to trifle with my\u00a0conscience; and it was as an ordinary secret sinner, that I at\u00a0last fell before the assaults of temptation.<\/p>\r\n
There comes an end to all things; the most capacious measure is\u00a0filled at last; and this brief condescension to evil finally\u00a0destroyed the balance of my soul. And yet I was not alarmed; the\u00a0fall seemed natural, like a return to the old days before I had\u00a0made discovery. It was a fine, clear, January day, wet under foot\u00a0where the frost had melted, but cloudless overhead; and the\u00a0Regent's Park was full of winter chirrupings and sweet with\u00a0spring odours. I sat in the sun on a bench; the animal within me\u00a0licking the\u00a0chops of memory; the spiritual side a little drowsed, promising\u00a0subsequent penitence, but not yet moved to begin. After all, I\u00a0reflected, I was like my neighbours; and then I smiled, comparing\u00a0myself with other men, comparing my active goodwill with the lazy\u00a0cruelty of their neglect. And at the very moment of that\u00a0vain-glorious thought, a qualm came over me, a horrid nausea and\u00a0the most deadly shuddering. These passed away, and left me faint;\u00a0and then as in its turn the faintness subsided, I began to be\u00a0aware of a change in the temper of my thoughts, a greater\u00a0boldness, a contempt of danger, a solution of the bonds of\u00a0obligation. I looked down; my clothes hung formlessly on my\u00a0shrunken limbs; the hand that lay on my knee was corded and\u00a0hairy. I was once more Edward Hyde. A moment before I had been\u00a0safe of all men's respect, wealthy, beloved\u2014the cloth laying\u00a0for me in the dining-room at home; and now I was the common\u00a0quarry of mankind, hunted, houseless, a known murderer, thrall to\u00a0the gallows.<\/p>\r\n
My reason wavered, but it did not fail me utterly. I have more\u00a0than once observed that, in my second character, my faculties\u00a0seemed sharpened to a point and my spirits more tensely elastic;\u00a0thus it came about that, where Jekyll perhaps might have\u00a0succumbed, Hyde rose to the importance of the moment. My drugs\u00a0were in one of the presses of my cabinet; how was I\u00a0to reach them? That was the problem that (crushing my temples in my hands) I set myself to solve. The laboratory door I had closed. If I sought to enter by the house, my own servants would consign me to the gallows. I saw I must employ another hand, and thought of Lanyon. How was he to be reached? how persuaded? Supposing that I escaped capture in the streets, how was I to make my way into his presence? and how should I, an unknown and displeasing visitor, prevail on the famous physician to rifle the study of his colleague, Dr. Jekyll? Then I remembered that of my original character, one part remained to me: I could write my own hand; and once I had conceived that kindling spark, the way that I must follow became lighted up from end to end.<\/p>\r\nThereupon, I arranged my clothes as best I could, and summoning a passing hansom, drove to an hotel in Portland Street, the name of which I chanced to remember. At my appearance (which was indeed comical enough, however tragic a fate these garments covered) the driver could not conceal his mirth. I gnashed my teeth upon him\u00a0with a gust of devilish fury; and the smile withered from his face\u2014happily for him\u2014yet more happily for myself, for in another instant I had certainly dragged him from his perch. At the inn, as I entered, I looked about me with so black a countenance as made the attendants tremble; not a look did they exchange in my\u00a0presence; but obsequiously took my orders, led me to a private room, and brought me wherewithal to write. Hyde in danger of his life was a creature new to me; shaken with inordinate anger, strung to the pitch of murder, lusting to inflict pain. Yet the creature was astute; mastered his fury with a great effort of the will; composed his two important letters, one to Lanyon and one to Poole; and that he might receive actual evidence of their being posted, sent them out with directions that they should be registered.\r\n\r\nThenceforward, he sat all day over the fire in the private room, gnawing his nails; there he dined, sitting alone with his fears, the waiter visibly quailing before his eye; and thence, when the night was fully come, he set forth in the corner of a closed cab, and was driven to and fro about the streets of the city. He, I say\u2014I cannot say, I. That child of Hell had nothing human; nothing lived in him but fear and hatred. And when at last, thinking the driver had begun to grow suspicious, he discharged the cab and ventured on foot, attired in his misfitting clothes, an object marked out for observation, into the midst of the nocturnal passengers, these two base passions raged within him like a tempest. He walked fast, hunted by his fears, chattering to himself, skulking through the less-frequented thoroughfares, counting the minutes that still divided him from midnight. Once a\u00a0woman spoke to him, offering, I think, a box of lights. He smote her in the face, and she fled.\r\n\r\nWhen I came to myself at Lanyon's, the horror of my old friend perhaps affected me somewhat: I do not know; it was at least but a drop in the sea to the abhorrence with which I looked back upon these hours. A change had come over me. It was no longer the fear of the gallows, it was the horror of being Hyde that racked me. I received Lanyon's condemnation partly in a dream; it was partly in a dream that I came home to my own house and got into bed. I slept after the prostration of the day, with a stringent and profound slumber which not even the nightmares that wrung me could avail to break. I awoke in the morning shaken, weakened, but refreshed. I still hated and feared the thought of the brute that slept within me, and I had not of course forgotten the appalling dangers of the day before; but I was once more at home, in my own house and close to my drugs; and gratitude for my escape shone so strong in my soul that it almost rivalled the brightness of hope.\r\n\r\nI was stepping leisurely across the court after\u00a0breakfast, drinking the chill of the air with pleasure, when I was seized again with those indescribable sensations that heralded the change; and I had but the time to gain the shelter of my cabinet, before I was once again raging and freezing with the passions of Hyde. It took on this occasion a double dose to recall me to\u00a0myself; and alas! Six hours after, as I sat looking sadly in the fire, the pangs returned, and the drug had to be re-administered. In short, from that day forth it seemed only by a great effort as of gymnastics, and only under the immediate stimulation of the drug, that I was able to wear the countenance of Jekyll. At all hours of the day and night, I would be taken with the premonitory shudder; above all, if I slept, or even dozed for a moment in my chair, it was always as Hyde that I awakened. Under the strain of this continually-impending doom and by the sleeplessness to which I now condemned myself, ay, even beyond what I had thought possible to man, I became, in my own person, a creature eaten up and emptied by fever, languidly weak both in body and mind, and solely occupied by one\u00a0thought: the horror of my other self. But when I slept, or when the virtue of the medicine wore off, I would leap almost without transition (for the pangs of transformation grew daily less marked) into the possession of a fancy brimming with images of terror, a soul boiling with causeless hatreds, and a body that seemed not strong enough to contain the raging energies of life. The powers of Hyde seemed to have grown with the sickliness of Jekyll. And certainly the hate that now divided them was equal on each side. With Jekyll, it was a thing of vital instinct. He had now seen the full deformity of that creature that shared with him some of the phenomena of\u00a0consciousness, and was co-heir with him to death: and beyond these links of community, which in themselves made the most poignant part of his distress, he thought of Hyde, for all his energy of life, as of something not only hellish but inorganic.\u00a0This was the shocking thing; that the slime of the pit seemed to utter cries and voices; that the amorphous\u00a0dust gesticulated and sinned; that what was dead, and had no shape, should usurp the offices of life. And this again, that that insurgent horror was knit to him closer than a wife, closer than an eye; lay caged in his flesh, where he heard it mutter and felt it struggle to be born; and at every hour of weakness, and in the confidence of slumber, prevailed against him and deposed him out of life. The hatred of Hyde for Jekyll, was of a different order. His terror of the gallows drove him continually to commit temporary suicide, and return to his subordinate station of a part instead of a person; but he loathed the necessity, he loathed the despondency into which Jekyll was now fallen, and he resented the dislike with which he was himself regarded. Hence the ape-like tricks that he would play me, scrawling in my own hand blasphemies on the pages of my books, burning the letters and destroying the portrait of my father; and indeed, had it not been for his fear of death, he would long ago have ruined himself in order to involve me in the ruin. But his love of\u00a0life is wonderful; I go further: I, who sicken\u00a0and freeze at the mere thought of him, when I recall the abjection and passion of this attachment, and when I know how he fears my power to cut him off by suicide, I find it in my heart to pity him.\r\n\r\nIt is useless, and the time awfully fails me, to prolong this description; no one has ever suffered such torments, let that suffice; and yet even to these, habit brought\u2014no, not alleviation\u2014but a certain callousness of soul, a certain acquiescence of despair; and my punishment might have gone on for years, but for the last calamity which has now fallen, and which has finally severed me from my own face and nature. My provision of the salt, which had never been renewed since the date of the first experiment, began to run low. I sent out for a fresh supply, and mixed the draught; the ebullition followed, and the first change of colour, not the second; I drank it and it was without efficiency. You will learn from Poole how I have had London ransacked; it was in vain; and I am now persuaded that my first supply was impure, and that it was that\u00a0unknown impurity which lent efficacy to the draught.\r\n\r\nAbout a week has passed, and I am now finishing this statement under the influence of the last of the old powders. This, then, is the last time, short of a miracle, that Henry Jekyll can think his own thoughts or see his own face (now how sadly altered!) in the glass. Nor must I delay\u00a0too long to bring my writing to an end; for if my narrative has hitherto escaped destruction, it has been by a combination of great prudence and great good luck. Should the throes of change take me in the act of writing it, Hyde will tear it in pieces; but if some time shall have elapsed after I have laid it by, his wonderful selfishness and Circumscription to the moment will probably save it once again from the action of his ape-like spite. And indeed the doom that is closing on us both, has already changed and crushed him. Half an hour from now, when I shall again and for ever re-indue that hated personality, I know how I shall sit shuddering and weeping in my chair, or continue, with the most\u00a0strained and fear-struck ecstasy of listening, to pace up and down this room (my last earthly refuge) and give ear to every sound of menace. Will Hyde die upon the scaffold? or will he find courage to release himself at the last moment? God knows; I am careless; this is my true hour of death, and what is to follow concerns another than myself. Here then, as I lay down the pen and proceed to seal up my confession, I bring the life of that unhappy Henry Jekyll to an end.","rendered":"
I WAS born in the year 18\u2014 to a large fortune, endowed besides\u00a0with excellent parts, inclined by nature to industry, fond of the\u00a0respect of the wise and good among my fellow-men, and thus, as\u00a0might have been supposed, with every guarantee of an honourable\u00a0and distinguished future. And indeed the worst of my faults was a\u00a0certain impatient gaiety of disposition, such as has made the\u00a0happiness of many, but such as I found it hard to reconcile with\u00a0my imperious desire to carry my head high, and wear a more than\u00a0commonly grave countenance before the public. Hence it came about\u00a0that I concealed my pleasures; and that when I reached years of\u00a0reflection, and began to look round me and take stock of my\u00a0progress and position in the world, I stood already committed to\u00a0a profound duplicity of life. Many a man would have even blazoned\u00a0such irregularities as I was guilty of; but from the high views\u00a0that I had set before me, I regarded and hid them with an almost\u00a0morbid sense of shame. It was thus rather the exacting\u00a0nature of my aspirations than any particular degradation in my\u00a0faults, that made me what I was and, with even a deeper trench\u00a0than in the majority of men, severed in me those provinces of\u00a0good and ill which divide and compound man’s dual nature. In this\u00a0case, I was driven to reflect deeply and inveterately on that\u00a0hard law of life, which lies at the root of religion and is one\u00a0of the most plentiful springs of distress. Though so profound a\u00a0double-dealer, I was in no sense a hypocrite; both sides of me\u00a0were in dead earnest; I was no more myself when I laid aside\u00a0restraint and plunged in shame, than when I laboured, in the eye\u00a0of day, at the furtherance of knowledge or the relief of sorrow\u00a0and suffering. And it chanced that the direction of my scientific\u00a0studies, which led wholly toward the mystic and the\u00a0transcendental, re-acted and shed a strong light on this\u00a0consciousness of the perennial war among my members. With every\u00a0day, and from both sides of my intelligence, the moral and the\u00a0intellectual, I thus drew steadily nearer to that truth, by whose\u00a0partial discovery I have been doomed to such a dreadful\u00a0shipwreck: that man is not truly one, but truly two. I say two,\u00a0because the state of my own knowledge does not pass beyond that\u00a0point. Others will follow, others will outstrip me on the same\u00a0lines; and I hazard the guess that man will be ultimately known\u00a0for a mere polity of multifarious, incongruous, and independent\u00a0denizens. I, for my\u00a0part, from the nature of my life, advanced infallibly in one\u00a0direction and in one direction only. It was on the moral side,\u00a0and in my own person, that I learned to recognise the thorough\u00a0and primitive duality of man; I saw that, of the two natures that\u00a0contended in the field of my consciousness, even if I could\u00a0rightly be said to be either, it was only because I was radically\u00a0both; and from an early date, even before the course of my\u00a0scientific discoveries had begun to suggest the most naked\u00a0possibility of such a miracle, I had learned to dwell with\u00a0pleasure, as a beloved day-dream, on the thought of the\u00a0separation of these elements. If each, I told myself, could but\u00a0be housed in separate identities, life would be relieved of all\u00a0that was unbearable; the unjust delivered from the aspirations\u00a0might go his way, and remorse of his more upright twin; and the\u00a0just could walk steadfastly and securely on his upward path,\u00a0doing the good things in which he found his pleasure, and no\u00a0longer exposed to disgrace and penitence by the hands of this\u00a0extraneous evil. It was the curse of mankind that these\u00a0incongruous fagots were thus bound together that in the agonised\u00a0womb of consciousness, these polar twins should be continuously\u00a0struggling. How, then, were they dissociated?<\/p>\n
I was so far in my reflections when, as I have said, a side-light\u00a0began to shine upon the subject from the laboratory table. I\u00a0began to perceive\u00a0more deeply than it has ever yet been stated, the trembling\u00a0immateriality, the mist-like transience of this \u00a0seemingly so\u00a0solid body in which we walk attired. Certain agents I found to\u00a0have the power to shake and to pluck back that fleshly vestment,\u00a0even as a wind might toss the curtains of a pavilion. For two\u00a0good reasons, I will not enter deeply into this scientific branch\u00a0of my confession. First, because I have been made to learn that\u00a0the doom and burthen of our life is bound for ever on man’s\u00a0shoulders, and when the attempt is made to cast it off, it but\u00a0returns upon us with more unfamiliar and more awful pressure.\u00a0Second, because, as my narrative will make, alas! too evident, my\u00a0discoveries were incomplete. Enough, then, that I not only\u00a0recognised my natural body for the mere aura and effulgence of\u00a0certain of the powers that made up my spirit, but managed to\u00a0compound a drug by which these powers should be dethroned from\u00a0their supremacy, and a second form and countenance substituted,\u00a0none the less natural to me because they were the expression, and\u00a0bore the stamp, of lower elements in my soul.<\/p>\n
I hesitated long before I put this theory to the test of\u00a0practice. I knew well that I risked death; for any drug that so\u00a0potently controlled and shook the very fortress of identity,\u00a0might by the least scruple of an overdose or at the least\u00a0inopportunity in the moment of exhibition, utterly blot out that\u00a0immaterial tabernacle which I\u00a0looked to it to change. But the temptation of a discovery so\u00a0singular and profound, at last overcame the suggestions of alarm.\u00a0I had long since prepared my tincture; I purchased at once, from\u00a0a firm of wholesale chemists, a large quantity of a particular\u00a0salt which I knew, from my experiments, to be the last ingredient\u00a0required; and late one accursed night, I compounded the elements,\u00a0watched them boil and smoke together in the glass, and when the\u00a0ebullition had subsided, with a strong glow of courage, drank off\u00a0the potion.<\/p>\n
The most racking pangs succeeded: a grinding in the bones, deadly\u00a0nausea, and a horror of the spirit that cannot be exceeded at the\u00a0hour of birth or death. Then these agonies began swiftly to\u00a0subside, and I came to myself as if out of a great sickness.\u00a0There was something strange in my sensations, something\u00a0indescribably new and, from its very novelty, incredibly sweet. I\u00a0felt younger, lighter, happier in body; within I was conscious of\u00a0a heady recklessness, a current of disordered sensual images\u00a0running like a mill-race in my fancy, a solution of the bonds of\u00a0obligation, an unknown but not an innocent freedom of the soul. I\u00a0knew myself, at the first breath of this new life, to be more\u00a0wicked, tenfold more wicked, sold a slave to my original evil;\u00a0and the thought, in that moment, braced and delighted me like\u00a0wine. I stretched out my hands, exulting in the freshness of\u00a0these\u00a0sensations; and in the act, I was suddenly aware that I had lost
\nin stature.<\/p>\n
There was no mirror, at that date, in my room; that which stands\u00a0beside me as I write, was brought there later on and for the very\u00a0purpose of these transformations. The night, however, was far\u00a0gone into the morning\u2014the morning, black as it was, was nearly\u00a0ripe for the conception of the day\u2014the inmates of my house\u00a0were locked in the most rigorous hours of slumber; and I\u00a0determined, flushed as I was with hope and triumph, to venture in\u00a0my new shape as far as to my bedroom. I crossed the yard, wherein\u00a0the constellations looked down upon me, I could have thought,\u00a0with wonder, the first creature of that sort that their\u00a0unsleeping vigilance had yet disclosed to them; I stole through\u00a0the corridors, a stranger in my own house; and coming to my room,\u00a0I saw for the first time the appearance of Edward Hyde.<\/p>\n
I must here speak by theory alone, saying not that which I know,\u00a0but that which I suppose to be most probable. The evil side of my\u00a0nature, to which I had now transferred the stamping efficacy, was\u00a0less robust and less developed than the good which I had just\u00a0deposed. Again, in the course of my life, which had been, after\u00a0all, nine-tenths a life of effort, virtue, and control, it had\u00a0been much less exercised and much less exhausted. And hence, as I\u00a0think, it came about that Edward Hyde was so much smaller,\u00a0slighter, and younger than Henry Jekyll. Even as good shone upon\u00a0the countenance of the one, evil was written broadly and plainly\u00a0on the face of the other. Evil besides (which I must still\u00a0believe to be the lethal side of man) had left on that body an\u00a0imprint of deformity and decay. And yet when I looked upon that\u00a0ugly idol in the glass, I was conscious of no repugnance, rather\u00a0of a leap of welcome. This, too, was myself. It seemed natural\u00a0and human. In my eyes it bore a livelier image of the spirit, it\u00a0seemed more express and single, than the imperfect and divided\u00a0countenance I had been hitherto accustomed to call mine. And in\u00a0so far I was doubtless right. I have observed that when I wore\u00a0the semblance of Edward Hyde, none could come near to me at first\u00a0without a visible misgiving of the flesh. This, as I take it, was\u00a0because all human beings, as we meet them, are commingled out of\u00a0good and evil: and Edward Hyde, alone in the ranks of mankind,\u00a0was pure evil.<\/p>\n
I lingered but a moment at the mirror: the second and conclusive\u00a0experiment had yet to be attempted; it yet remained to be seen if\u00a0I had lost my identity beyond redemption and must flee before\u00a0daylight from a house that was no longer mine; and hurrying back\u00a0to my cabinet, I once more prepared and drank the cup, once more\u00a0suffered the pangs of dissolution, and came to myself once more\u00a0with the character, the stature, and the face of Henry Jekyll.<\/p>\n
That night I had come to the fatal cross-roads. Had I approached\u00a0my discovery in a more noble spirit, had I risked the experiment\u00a0while under the empire of generous or pious aspirations, all must\u00a0have been otherwise, and from these agonies of death and birth, I\u00a0had come forth an angel instead of a fiend. The drug had no\u00a0discriminating action; it was neither diabolical nor divine; it\u00a0but shook the doors of the prison-house of my disposition; and\u00a0like the captives of Philippi, that which stood within ran forth.\u00a0At that time my virtue slumbered; my evil, kept awake by\u00a0ambition, was alert and swift to seize the occasion; and the\u00a0thing that was projected was Edward Hyde. Hence, although I had\u00a0now two characters as well as two appearances, one was wholly\u00a0evil, and the other was still the old Henry Jekyll, that\u00a0incongruous compound of whose reformation and improvement I had\u00a0already learned to despair. The movement was thus wholly toward\u00a0the worse.<\/p>\n
Even at that time, I had not yet conquered my aversion to the\u00a0dryness of a life of study. I would still be merrily disposed at
\ntimes; and as my pleasures were (to say the least) undignified,\u00a0and I was not only well known and highly considered, but growing\u00a0toward the elderly man, this incoherency of my life was daily\u00a0growing more unwelcome. It was on this side that my new power\u00a0tempted me until I fell in slavery. I had but to drink the cup,\u00a0to doff at once the body\u00a0of the noted professor, and to assume, like a thick cloak, that\u00a0of Edward Hyde. I smiled at the notion; it seemed to me at the\u00a0time to be humorous; and I made my preparations with the most\u00a0studious care. I took and furnished that house in Soho, to which\u00a0Hyde was tracked by the police; and engaged as housekeeper a\u00a0creature whom I well knew to be silent and unscrupulous. On the\u00a0other side, I announced to my servants that a Mr. Hyde (whom I\u00a0described) was to have full liberty and power about my house in\u00a0the square; and to parry mishaps, I even called and made myself a\u00a0familiar object, in my second character. I next drew up that will\u00a0to which you so much objected; so that if anything befell me in\u00a0the person of Dr. Jekyll, I could enter on that of Edward Hyde\u00a0without pecuniary loss. And thus fortified, as I supposed, on\u00a0every side, I began to profit by the strange immunities of my\u00a0position.<\/p>\n
Men have before hired bravos to transact their crimes, while\u00a0their own person and reputation sat under shelter. I was the\u00a0first that ever did so for his pleasures. I was the first that\u00a0could thus plod in the public eye with a load of genial\u00a0respectability, and in a moment, like a schoolboy, strip off\u00a0these lendings and spring headlong into the sea of liberty. But\u00a0for me, in my impenetrable mantle, the safety was complete. Think\u00a0of it\u2014I did not even exist! Let me but escape into my\u00a0laboratory door, give me but a second or\u00a0two to mix and swallow the draught that I had always standing\u00a0ready; and whatever he had done, Edward Hyde would pass away like\u00a0the stain of breath upon a mirror; and there in his stead,\u00a0quietly at home, trimming the midnight lamp in his study, a man\u00a0who could afford to laugh at suspicion, would be Henry Jekyll.<\/p>\n
The pleasures which I made haste to seek in my disguise were, as\u00a0I have said, undignified; I would scarce use a harder term. But\u00a0in the hands of Edward Hyde, they soon began to turn toward the\u00a0monstrous. When I would come back from these excursions, I was\u00a0often plunged into a kind of wonder at my vicarious depravity.\u00a0This familiar that I called out of my own soul, and sent forth\u00a0alone to do his good pleasure, was a being inherently malign and\u00a0villainous; his every act and thought centred on self; drinking\u00a0pleasure with bestial avidity from any degree of torture to\u00a0another; relentless like a man of stone. Henry Jekyll stood at\u00a0times aghast before the acts of Edward Hyde; but the situation\u00a0was apart from ordinary laws, and insidiously relaxed the grasp\u00a0of conscience. It was Hyde, after all, and Hyde alone, that was\u00a0guilty. Jekyll was no worse; he woke again to his good qualities\u00a0seemingly unimpaired; he would even make haste, where it was\u00a0possible, to undo the evil done by Hyde. And thus his conscience\u00a0slumbered.<\/p>\n
Into the details of the infamy at which I thus\u00a0connived (for even now I can scarce grant that I committed it) I\u00a0have no design of entering; I mean but to point out the warnings\u00a0and the successive steps with which my chastisement approached. I\u00a0met with one accident which, as it brought on no consequence, I\u00a0shall no more than mention. An act of cruelty to a child aroused\u00a0against me the anger of a passer-by, whom I recognised the other\u00a0day in the person of your kinsman; the doctor and the child’s\u00a0family joined him; there were moments when I feared for my life;\u00a0and at last, in order to pacify their too just resentment, Edward\u00a0Hyde had to bring them to the door, and pay them in a cheque\u00a0drawn in the name of Henry Jekyll. But this danger was easily\u00a0eliminated from the future, by opening an account at another bank\u00a0in the name of Edward Hyde himself; and when, by sloping my own\u00a0hand backward, I had supplied my double with a signature, I\u00a0thought I sat beyond the reach of fate.<\/p>\n
Some two months before the murder of Sir Danvers, I had been out\u00a0for one of my adventures, had returned at a late hour, and woke\u00a0the next day in bed with somewhat odd sensations. It was in vain\u00a0I looked about me; in vain I saw the decent furniture and tall\u00a0proportions of my room in the square; in vain that I recognised\u00a0the pattern of the bed-curtains and the design of the mahogany\u00a0frame; something still kept insisting that I was not where I was,\u00a0that I had not wakened where I seemed to be, but in the little\u00a0room in Soho where I was accustomed to sleep in the body of\u00a0Edward Hyde. I smiled to myself, and, in my psychological way\u00a0began lazily to inquire into the elements of this illusion,\u00a0occasionally, even as I did so, dropping back into a comfortable\u00a0morning doze. I was still so engaged when, in one of my more\u00a0wakeful moments, my eyes fell upon my hand. Now the hand of Henry\u00a0Jekyll (as you have often remarked) was professional in shape and\u00a0size: it was large, firm, white, and comely. But the hand which I\u00a0now saw, clearly enough, in the yellow light of a mid-London\u00a0morning, lying half shut on the bed-clothes, was lean, corded,\u00a0knuckly, of a dusky pallor and thickly shaded with a swart growth\u00a0of hair. It was the hand of Edward Hyde.<\/p>\n
I must have stared upon it for near half a minute, sunk as I was\u00a0in the mere stupidity of wonder, before terror woke up in my\u00a0breast as sudden and startling as the crash of cymbals; and\u00a0bounding from my bed, I rushed to the mirror. At the sight that\u00a0met my eyes, my blood was changed into something exquisitely thin\u00a0and icy. Yes, I had gone to bed Henry Jekyll, I had awakened\u00a0Edward Hyde. How was this to be explained? I asked myself, and\u00a0then, with another bound of terror\u2014how was it to be remedied?\u00a0It was well on in the morning; the servants were up; all my drugs\u00a0were in the\u00a0cabinet\u2014a long journey down two pairs of stairs, through the\u00a0back passage, across the open court and through the anatomical\u00a0theatre, from where I was then standing horror-struck. It might\u00a0indeed be possible to cover my face; but of what use was that,\u00a0when I was unable to conceal the alteration in my stature? And\u00a0then with an overpowering sweetness of relief, it came back upon\u00a0my mind that the servants were already used to the coming and\u00a0going of my second self. I had soon dressed, as well as I was\u00a0able, in clothes of my own size: had soon passed through the\u00a0house, where Bradshaw stared and drew back at seeing Mr. Hyde at\u00a0such an hour and in such a strange array; and ten minutes later,\u00a0Dr. Jekyll had returned to his own shape and was sitting down,\u00a0with a darkened brow, to make a feint of breakfasting.<\/p>\n
Small indeed was my appetite. This inexplicable incident, this\u00a0reversal of my previous experience, seemed, like the Babylonian\u00a0finger on the wall, to be spelling out the letters of my\u00a0judgment; and I began to reflect more seriously than ever before\u00a0on the issues and possibilities of my double existence. That part\u00a0of me which I had the power of projecting, had lately been much\u00a0exercised and nourished; it had seemed to me of late as though\u00a0the body of Edward Hyde had grown in stature, as though (when I\u00a0wore that form) I were conscious of a more generous tide of\u00a0blood; and I began to spy a danger that,\u00a0if this were much prolonged, the balance of my nature might be\u00a0permanently overthrown, the power of voluntary change be\u00a0forfeited, and the character of Edward Hyde become irrevocably\u00a0mine. The power of the drug had not been always equally\u00a0displayed. Once, very early in my career, it had totally failed\u00a0me; since then I had been obliged on more than one occasion to\u00a0double, and once, with infinite risk of death, to treble the\u00a0amount; and these rare uncertainties had cast hitherto the sole\u00a0shadow on my contentment. Now, however, and in the light of that\u00a0morning’s accident, I was led to remark that whereas, in the\u00a0beginning, the difficulty had been to throw off the body of\u00a0Jekyll, it had of late gradually but decidedly transferred itself\u00a0to the other side. All things therefore seemed to point to this:\u00a0that I was slowly losing hold of my original and better self, and\u00a0becoming slowly incorporated with my second and worse.<\/p>\n
Between these two, I now felt I had to choose. My two natures had\u00a0memory in common, but all other faculties were most unequally\u00a0shared between them. Jekyll (who was composite) now with the most\u00a0sensitive apprehensions, now with a greedy gusto, projected and\u00a0shared in the pleasures and adventures of Hyde; but Hyde was\u00a0indifferent to Jekyll, or but remembered him as the mountain\u00a0bandit remembers the cavern in which he conceals himself from\u00a0pursuit. Jekyll had more than a father’s interest; Hyde\u00a0had more than a son’s indifference. To cast in my lot with\u00a0Jekyll, was to die to those appetites which I had long secretly\u00a0indulged and had of late begun to pamper. To cast it in with\u00a0Hyde, was to die to a thousand interests and aspirations, and to\u00a0become, at a blow and for ever, despised and friendless. The\u00a0bargain might appear unequal; but there was still another\u00a0consideration in the scales; for while Jekyll would suffer\u00a0smartingly in the fires of abstinence, Hyde would be not even\u00a0conscious of all that he had lost. Strange as my circumstances\u00a0were, the terms of this debate are as old and commonplace as man;\u00a0much the same inducements and alarms cast the die for any tempted\u00a0and trembling sinner; and it fell out with me, as it falls with\u00a0so vast a majority of my fellows, that I chose the better part\u00a0and was found wanting in the strength to keep to it.<\/p>\n
Yes, I preferred the elderly and discontented doctor, surrounded\u00a0by friends and cherishing honest hopes; and bade a resolute\u00a0farewell to the liberty, the comparative youth, the light step,\u00a0leaping impulses and secret pleasures, that I had enjoyed in the\u00a0disguise of Hyde. I made this choice perhaps with some\u00a0unconscious reservation, for I neither gave up the house in Soho,\u00a0nor destroyed the clothes of Edward Hyde, which still lay ready\u00a0in my cabinet. For two months, however, I was true to my\u00a0determination; for two months I led a life of such\u00a0severity as I had never before attained to, and enjoyed the
\ncompensations of an approving conscience. But time began at last\u00a0to obliterate the freshness of my alarm; the praises of\u00a0conscience began to grow into a thing of course; I began to be\u00a0tortured with throes and longings, as of Hyde struggling after\u00a0freedom; and at last, in an hour of moral weakness, I once again\u00a0compounded and swallowed the transforming draught.<\/p>\n
I do not suppose that, when a drunkard reasons with himself upon\u00a0his vice, he is once out of five hundred times affected by the\u00a0dangers that he runs through his brutish, physical insensibility;\u00a0neither had I, long as I had considered my position, made enough\u00a0allowance for the complete moral insensibility and insensate\u00a0readiness to evil, which were the leading characters of Edward\u00a0Hyde. Yet it was by these that I was punished. My devil had been\u00a0long caged, he came out roaring. I was conscious, even when I\u00a0took the draught, of a more unbridled, a more furious propensity\u00a0to ill. It must have been this, I suppose, that stirred in my\u00a0soul that tempest of impatience with which I listened to the\u00a0civilities of my unhappy victim; I declare, at least, before God,\u00a0no man morally sane could have been guilty of that crime upon so\u00a0pitiful a provocation; and that I struck in no more reasonable\u00a0spirit than that in which a sick child may break a plaything. But\u00a0I had voluntarily stripped myself of all those balancing\u00a0instincts\u00a0by which even the worst of us continues to walk with some degree\u00a0of steadiness among temptations; and in my case, to be tempted,\u00a0however slightly, was to fall.<\/p>\n
Instantly the spirit of hell awoke in me and raged. With a\u00a0transport of glee, I mauled the unresisting body, tasting delight\u00a0from every blow; and it was not till weariness had begun to\u00a0succeed, that I was suddenly, in the top fit of my delirium,\u00a0struck through the heart by a cold thrill of terror. A mist\u00a0dispersed; I saw my life to be forfeit; and fled from the scene\u00a0of these excesses, at once glorying and trembling, my lust of\u00a0evil gratified and stimulated, my love of life screwed to the\u00a0topmost peg. I ran to the house in Soho, and (to make assurance\u00a0doubly sure) destroyed my papers; thence I set out through the\u00a0lamplit streets, in the same divided ecstasy of mind, gloating on\u00a0my crime, light-headedly devising others in the future, and yet\u00a0still hastening and still hearkening in my wake for the steps of\u00a0the avenger. Hyde had a song upon his lips as he compounded the\u00a0draught, and as he drank it, pledged the dead man. The pangs of\u00a0transformation had not done tearing him, before Henry Jekyll,\u00a0with streaming tears of gratitude and remorse, had fallen upon\u00a0his knees and lifted his clasped hands to God. The veil of\u00a0self-indulgence was rent from head to foot, I saw my life as a\u00a0whole: I followed it up from the days of childhood, when I had\u00a0walked\u00a0with my father’s hand, and through the self-denying toils of my\u00a0professional life, to arrive again and again, with the same sense\u00a0of unreality, at the damned horrors of the evening. I could have\u00a0screamed aloud; I sought with tears and prayers to smother down\u00a0the crowd of hideous images and sounds with which my memory\u00a0swarmed against me; and still, between the petitions, the ugly\u00a0face of my iniquity stared into my soul. As the acuteness of this remorse began to die away, it was succeeded by a sense of joy.\u00a0The problem of my conduct was solved. Hyde was thenceforth\u00a0impossible; whether I would or not, I was now confined to the\u00a0better part of my existence; and oh, how I rejoiced to think it!\u00a0with what willing humility, I embraced anew the restrictions of\u00a0natural life! with what sincere renunciation, I locked the door\u00a0by which I had so often gone and come, and ground the key under\u00a0my heel!<\/p>\n
The next day, came the news that the murder had been overlooked,\u00a0that the guilt of Hyde was patent to the world, and that the\u00a0victim was a man high in public estimation. It was not only a\u00a0crime, it had been a tragic folly. I think I was glad to know it;\u00a0I think I was glad to have my better impulses thus buttressed and\u00a0guarded by the terrors of the scaffold. Jekyll was now my city of\u00a0refuge; let but Hyde peep out an instant, and the hands of all\u00a0men would be raised to take and slay him.<\/p>\n
I resolved in my future conduct to redeem the past; and I can say\u00a0with honesty that my resolve was fruitful of some good You know\u00a0yourself how earnestly in the last months of last year, I\u00a0laboured to relieve suffering; you know that much was done for\u00a0others, and that the days passed quietly, almost happily for\u00a0myself. Nor can I truly say that I wearied of this beneficent and\u00a0innocent life; I think instead that I daily enjoyed it more\u00a0completely; but I was still cursed with my duality of purpose;\u00a0and as the first edge of my penitence wore off, the lower side of\u00a0me, so long indulged, so recently chained down, began to growl\u00a0for licence. Not that I dreamed of resuscitating Hyde; the bare\u00a0idea of that would startle me to frenzy: no, it was in my own\u00a0person, that I was once more tempted to trifle with my\u00a0conscience; and it was as an ordinary secret sinner, that I at\u00a0last fell before the assaults of temptation.<\/p>\n
There comes an end to all things; the most capacious measure is\u00a0filled at last; and this brief condescension to evil finally\u00a0destroyed the balance of my soul. And yet I was not alarmed; the\u00a0fall seemed natural, like a return to the old days before I had\u00a0made discovery. It was a fine, clear, January day, wet under foot\u00a0where the frost had melted, but cloudless overhead; and the\u00a0Regent’s Park was full of winter chirrupings and sweet with\u00a0spring odours. I sat in the sun on a bench; the animal within me\u00a0licking the\u00a0chops of memory; the spiritual side a little drowsed, promising\u00a0subsequent penitence, but not yet moved to begin. After all, I\u00a0reflected, I was like my neighbours; and then I smiled, comparing\u00a0myself with other men, comparing my active goodwill with the lazy\u00a0cruelty of their neglect. And at the very moment of that\u00a0vain-glorious thought, a qualm came over me, a horrid nausea and\u00a0the most deadly shuddering. These passed away, and left me faint;\u00a0and then as in its turn the faintness subsided, I began to be\u00a0aware of a change in the temper of my thoughts, a greater\u00a0boldness, a contempt of danger, a solution of the bonds of\u00a0obligation. I looked down; my clothes hung formlessly on my\u00a0shrunken limbs; the hand that lay on my knee was corded and\u00a0hairy. I was once more Edward Hyde. A moment before I had been\u00a0safe of all men’s respect, wealthy, beloved\u2014the cloth laying\u00a0for me in the dining-room at home; and now I was the common\u00a0quarry of mankind, hunted, houseless, a known murderer, thrall to\u00a0the gallows.<\/p>\n
My reason wavered, but it did not fail me utterly. I have more\u00a0than once observed that, in my second character, my faculties\u00a0seemed sharpened to a point and my spirits more tensely elastic;\u00a0thus it came about that, where Jekyll perhaps might have\u00a0succumbed, Hyde rose to the importance of the moment. My drugs\u00a0were in one of the presses of my cabinet; how was I\u00a0to reach them? That was the problem that (crushing my temples in my hands) I set myself to solve. The laboratory door I had closed. If I sought to enter by the house, my own servants would consign me to the gallows. I saw I must employ another hand, and thought of Lanyon. How was he to be reached? how persuaded? Supposing that I escaped capture in the streets, how was I to make my way into his presence? and how should I, an unknown and displeasing visitor, prevail on the famous physician to rifle the study of his colleague, Dr. Jekyll? Then I remembered that of my original character, one part remained to me: I could write my own hand; and once I had conceived that kindling spark, the way that I must follow became lighted up from end to end.<\/p>\n
Thereupon, I arranged my clothes as best I could, and summoning a passing hansom, drove to an hotel in Portland Street, the name of which I chanced to remember. At my appearance (which was indeed comical enough, however tragic a fate these garments covered) the driver could not conceal his mirth. I gnashed my teeth upon him\u00a0with a gust of devilish fury; and the smile withered from his face\u2014happily for him\u2014yet more happily for myself, for in another instant I had certainly dragged him from his perch. At the inn, as I entered, I looked about me with so black a countenance as made the attendants tremble; not a look did they exchange in my\u00a0presence; but obsequiously took my orders, led me to a private room, and brought me wherewithal to write. Hyde in danger of his life was a creature new to me; shaken with inordinate anger, strung to the pitch of murder, lusting to inflict pain. Yet the creature was astute; mastered his fury with a great effort of the will; composed his two important letters, one to Lanyon and one to Poole; and that he might receive actual evidence of their being posted, sent them out with directions that they should be registered.<\/p>\n
Thenceforward, he sat all day over the fire in the private room, gnawing his nails; there he dined, sitting alone with his fears, the waiter visibly quailing before his eye; and thence, when the night was fully come, he set forth in the corner of a closed cab, and was driven to and fro about the streets of the city. He, I say\u2014I cannot say, I. That child of Hell had nothing human; nothing lived in him but fear and hatred. And when at last, thinking the driver had begun to grow suspicious, he discharged the cab and ventured on foot, attired in his misfitting clothes, an object marked out for observation, into the midst of the nocturnal passengers, these two base passions raged within him like a tempest. He walked fast, hunted by his fears, chattering to himself, skulking through the less-frequented thoroughfares, counting the minutes that still divided him from midnight. Once a\u00a0woman spoke to him, offering, I think, a box of lights. He smote her in the face, and she fled.<\/p>\n
When I came to myself at Lanyon’s, the horror of my old friend perhaps affected me somewhat: I do not know; it was at least but a drop in the sea to the abhorrence with which I looked back upon these hours. A change had come over me. It was no longer the fear of the gallows, it was the horror of being Hyde that racked me. I received Lanyon’s condemnation partly in a dream; it was partly in a dream that I came home to my own house and got into bed. I slept after the prostration of the day, with a stringent and profound slumber which not even the nightmares that wrung me could avail to break. I awoke in the morning shaken, weakened, but refreshed. I still hated and feared the thought of the brute that slept within me, and I had not of course forgotten the appalling dangers of the day before; but I was once more at home, in my own house and close to my drugs; and gratitude for my escape shone so strong in my soul that it almost rivalled the brightness of hope.<\/p>\n
I was stepping leisurely across the court after\u00a0breakfast, drinking the chill of the air with pleasure, when I was seized again with those indescribable sensations that heralded the change; and I had but the time to gain the shelter of my cabinet, before I was once again raging and freezing with the passions of Hyde. It took on this occasion a double dose to recall me to\u00a0myself; and alas! Six hours after, as I sat looking sadly in the fire, the pangs returned, and the drug had to be re-administered. In short, from that day forth it seemed only by a great effort as of gymnastics, and only under the immediate stimulation of the drug, that I was able to wear the countenance of Jekyll. At all hours of the day and night, I would be taken with the premonitory shudder; above all, if I slept, or even dozed for a moment in my chair, it was always as Hyde that I awakened. Under the strain of this continually-impending doom and by the sleeplessness to which I now condemned myself, ay, even beyond what I had thought possible to man, I became, in my own person, a creature eaten up and emptied by fever, languidly weak both in body and mind, and solely occupied by one\u00a0thought: the horror of my other self. But when I slept, or when the virtue of the medicine wore off, I would leap almost without transition (for the pangs of transformation grew daily less marked) into the possession of a fancy brimming with images of terror, a soul boiling with causeless hatreds, and a body that seemed not strong enough to contain the raging energies of life. The powers of Hyde seemed to have grown with the sickliness of Jekyll. And certainly the hate that now divided them was equal on each side. With Jekyll, it was a thing of vital instinct. He had now seen the full deformity of that creature that shared with him some of the phenomena of\u00a0consciousness, and was co-heir with him to death: and beyond these links of community, which in themselves made the most poignant part of his distress, he thought of Hyde, for all his energy of life, as of something not only hellish but inorganic.\u00a0This was the shocking thing; that the slime of the pit seemed to utter cries and voices; that the amorphous\u00a0dust gesticulated and sinned; that what was dead, and had no shape, should usurp the offices of life. And this again, that that insurgent horror was knit to him closer than a wife, closer than an eye; lay caged in his flesh, where he heard it mutter and felt it struggle to be born; and at every hour of weakness, and in the confidence of slumber, prevailed against him and deposed him out of life. The hatred of Hyde for Jekyll, was of a different order. His terror of the gallows drove him continually to commit temporary suicide, and return to his subordinate station of a part instead of a person; but he loathed the necessity, he loathed the despondency into which Jekyll was now fallen, and he resented the dislike with which he was himself regarded. Hence the ape-like tricks that he would play me, scrawling in my own hand blasphemies on the pages of my books, burning the letters and destroying the portrait of my father; and indeed, had it not been for his fear of death, he would long ago have ruined himself in order to involve me in the ruin. But his love of\u00a0life is wonderful; I go further: I, who sicken\u00a0and freeze at the mere thought of him, when I recall the abjection and passion of this attachment, and when I know how he fears my power to cut him off by suicide, I find it in my heart to pity him.<\/p>\n
It is useless, and the time awfully fails me, to prolong this description; no one has ever suffered such torments, let that suffice; and yet even to these, habit brought\u2014no, not alleviation\u2014but a certain callousness of soul, a certain acquiescence of despair; and my punishment might have gone on for years, but for the last calamity which has now fallen, and which has finally severed me from my own face and nature. My provision of the salt, which had never been renewed since the date of the first experiment, began to run low. I sent out for a fresh supply, and mixed the draught; the ebullition followed, and the first change of colour, not the second; I drank it and it was without efficiency. You will learn from Poole how I have had London ransacked; it was in vain; and I am now persuaded that my first supply was impure, and that it was that\u00a0unknown impurity which lent efficacy to the draught.<\/p>\n
About a week has passed, and I am now finishing this statement under the influence of the last of the old powders. This, then, is the last time, short of a miracle, that Henry Jekyll can think his own thoughts or see his own face (now how sadly altered!) in the glass. Nor must I delay\u00a0too long to bring my writing to an end; for if my narrative has hitherto escaped destruction, it has been by a combination of great prudence and great good luck. Should the throes of change take me in the act of writing it, Hyde will tear it in pieces; but if some time shall have elapsed after I have laid it by, his wonderful selfishness and Circumscription to the moment will probably save it once again from the action of his ape-like spite. And indeed the doom that is closing on us both, has already changed and crushed him. Half an hour from now, when I shall again and for ever re-indue that hated personality, I know how I shall sit shuddering and weeping in my chair, or continue, with the most\u00a0strained and fear-struck ecstasy of listening, to pace up and down this room (my last earthly refuge) and give ear to every sound of menace. Will Hyde die upon the scaffold? or will he find courage to release himself at the last moment? God knows; I am careless; this is my true hour of death, and what is to follow concerns another than myself. Here then, as I lay down the pen and proceed to seal up my confession, I bring the life of that unhappy Henry Jekyll to an end.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":251,"menu_order":10,"template":"","meta":{"pb_show_title":"on","pb_short_title":"","pb_subtitle":"","pb_authors":[],"pb_section_license":""},"chapter-type":[48],"contributor":[],"license":[],"class_list":["post-97","chapter","type-chapter","status-publish","hentry","chapter-type-numberless"],"part":3,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/jekyllandhyde\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/97","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/jekyllandhyde\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/jekyllandhyde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/chapter"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/jekyllandhyde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/251"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/jekyllandhyde\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/97\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":106,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/jekyllandhyde\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/97\/revisions\/106"}],"part":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/jekyllandhyde\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/parts\/3"}],"metadata":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/jekyllandhyde\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/97\/metadata\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/jekyllandhyde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"chapter-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/jekyllandhyde\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapter-type?post=97"},{"taxonomy":"contributor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/jekyllandhyde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/contributor?post=97"},{"taxonomy":"license","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/jekyllandhyde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/license?post=97"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}