[03] Frankenstein or, The Modern Prometheus [프랑켄슈타인]

Chapter 2

 

We were brought up together; there was not quite a year difference in

our ages. I need not say that we were strangers to any species of

disunion or dispute. Harmony was the soul of our companionship, and

the diversity and contrast that subsisted in our characters drew us

nearer together. Elizabeth was of a calmer and more concentrated

disposition; but, with all my ardour, I was capable of a more intense

application and was more deeply smitten with the thirst for knowledge.

She busied herself with following the aerial creations of the poets;

and in the majestic and wondrous scenes which surrounded our Swiss

home —the sublime shapes of the mountains, the changes of the seasons,

tempest and calm, the silence of winter, and the life and turbulence of

our Alpine summers—she found ample scope for admiration and delight.

While my companion contemplated with a serious and satisfied spirit the

magnificent appearances of things, I delighted in investigating their

causes. The world was to me a secret which I desired to divine.

Curiosity, earnest research to learn the hidden laws of nature,

gladness akin to rapture, as they were unfolded to me, are among the

earliest sensations I can remember.

 

On the birth of a second son, my junior by seven years, my parents gave

up entirely their wandering life and fixed themselves in their native

country. We possessed a house in Geneva, and a _campagne_ on Belrive,

the eastern shore of the lake, at the distance of rather more than a

league from the city. We resided principally in the latter, and the

lives of my parents were passed in considerable seclusion. It was my

temper to avoid a crowd and to attach myself fervently to a few. I was

indifferent, therefore, to my school-fellows in general; but I united

myself in the bonds of the closest friendship to one among them. Henry

Clerval was the son of a merchant of Geneva. He was a boy of singular

talent and fancy. He loved enterprise, hardship, and even danger for

its own sake. He was deeply read in books of chivalry and romance. He

composed heroic songs and began to write many a tale of enchantment and

knightly adventure. He tried to make us act plays and to enter into

masquerades, in which the characters were drawn from the heroes of

Roncesvalles, of the Round Table of King Arthur, and the chivalrous

train who shed their blood to redeem the holy sepulchre from the hands

of the infidels.

 

No human being could have passed a happier childhood than myself. My

parents were possessed by the very spirit of kindness and indulgence.

We felt that they were not the tyrants to rule our lot according to

their caprice, but the agents and creators of all the many delights

which we enjoyed. When I mingled with other families I distinctly

discerned how peculiarly fortunate my lot was, and gratitude assisted

the development of filial love.

 

My temper was sometimes violent, and my passions vehement; but by some

law in my temperature they were turned not towards childish pursuits

but to an eager desire to learn, and not to learn all things

indiscriminately. I confess that neither the structure of languages,

nor the code of governments, nor the politics of various states

possessed attractions for me. It was the secrets of heaven and earth

that I desired to learn; and whether it was the outward substance of

things or the inner spirit of nature and the mysterious soul of man

that occupied me, still my inquiries were directed to the metaphysical,

or in its highest sense, the physical secrets of the world.

 

Meanwhile Clerval occupied himself, so to speak, with the moral

relations of things. The busy stage of life, the virtues of heroes,

and the actions of men were his theme; and his hope and his dream was

to become one among those whose names are recorded in story as the

gallant and adventurous benefactors of our species. The saintly soul

of Elizabeth shone like a shrine-dedicated lamp in our peaceful home.

Her sympathy was ours; her smile, her soft voice, the sweet glance of

her celestial eyes, were ever there to bless and animate us. She was

the living spirit of love to soften and attract; I might have become

sullen in my study, rough through the ardour of my nature, but that

she was there to subdue me to a semblance of her own gentleness. And

Clerval—could aught ill entrench on the noble spirit of Clerval? Yet

he might not have been so perfectly humane, so thoughtful in his

generosity, so full of kindness and tenderness amidst his passion for

adventurous exploit, had she not unfolded to him the real loveliness of

beneficence and made the doing good the end and aim of his soaring

ambition.

 

I feel exquisite pleasure in dwelling on the recollections of childhood,

before misfortune had tainted my mind and changed its bright visions of

extensive usefulness into gloomy and narrow reflections upon self. Besides,

in drawing the picture of my early days, I also record those events which

led, by insensible steps, to my after tale of misery, for when I would

account to myself for the birth of that passion which afterwards ruled my

destiny I find it arise, like a mountain river, from ignoble and almost

forgotten sources; but, swelling as it proceeded, it became the torrent

which, in its course, has swept away all my hopes and joys.

 

Natural philosophy is the genius that has regulated my fate; I desire,

therefore, in this narration, to state those facts which led to my

predilection for that science. When I was thirteen years of age we all went

on a party of pleasure to the baths near Thonon; the inclemency of the

weather obliged us to remain a day confined to the inn. In this house I

chanced to find a volume of the works of Cornelius Agrippa. I opened it

with apathy; the theory which he attempts to demonstrate and the wonderful

facts which he relates soon changed this feeling into enthusiasm. A new

light seemed to dawn upon my mind, and bounding with joy, I communicated my

discovery to my father. My father looked carelessly at the title page of my

book and said, “Ah! Cornelius Agrippa! My dear Victor, do not waste

your time upon this; it is sad trash.”

 

If, instead of this remark, my father had taken the pains to explain to me

that the principles of Agrippa had been entirely exploded and that a modern

system of science had been introduced which possessed much greater powers

than the ancient, because the powers of the latter were chimerical, while

those of the former were real and practical, under such circumstances I

should certainly have thrown Agrippa aside and have contented my

imagination, warmed as it was, by returning with greater ardour to my

former studies. It is even possible that the train of my ideas would never

have received the fatal impulse that led to my ruin. But the cursory glance

my father had taken of my volume by no means assured me that he was

acquainted with its contents, and I continued to read with the greatest

avidity.

 

When I returned home my first care was to procure the whole works of this

author, and afterwards of Paracelsus and Albertus Magnus. I read and

studied the wild fancies of these writers with delight; they appeared to me

treasures known to few besides myself. I have described myself as always

having been imbued with a fervent longing to penetrate the secrets of

nature. In spite of the intense labour and wonderful discoveries of modern

philosophers, I always came from my studies discontented and unsatisfied.

Sir Isaac Newton is said to have avowed that he felt like a child picking

up shells beside the great and unexplored ocean of truth. Those of his

successors in each branch of natural philosophy with whom I was acquainted

appeared even to my boy’s apprehensions as tyros engaged in the same

pursuit.

 

The untaught peasant beheld the elements around him and was acquainted

with their practical uses. The most learned philosopher knew little

more. He had partially unveiled the face of Nature, but her immortal

lineaments were still a wonder and a mystery. He might dissect,

anatomise, and give names; but, not to speak of a final cause, causes

in their secondary and tertiary grades were utterly unknown to him. I

had gazed upon the fortifications and impediments that seemed to keep

human beings from entering the citadel of nature, and rashly and

ignorantly I had repined.

 

But here were books, and here were men who had penetrated deeper and knew

more. I took their word for all that they averred, and I became their

disciple. It may appear strange that such should arise in the eighteenth

century; but while I followed the routine of education in the schools of

Geneva, I was, to a great degree, self-taught with regard to my favourite

studies. My father was not scientific, and I was left to struggle with a

child’s blindness, added to a student’s thirst for knowledge.

Under the guidance of my new preceptors I entered with the greatest

diligence into the search of the philosopher’s stone and the elixir

of life; but the latter soon obtained my undivided attention. Wealth was an

inferior object, but what glory would attend the discovery if I could

banish disease from the human frame and render man invulnerable to any but

a violent death!

 

Nor were these my only visions. The raising of ghosts or devils was a

promise liberally accorded by my favourite authors, the fulfilment of which

I most eagerly sought; and if my incantations were always unsuccessful, I

attributed the failure rather to my own inexperience and mistake than to a

want of skill or fidelity in my instructors. And thus for a time I was

occupied by exploded systems, mingling, like an unadept, a thousand

contradictory theories and floundering desperately in a very slough of

multifarious knowledge, guided by an ardent imagination and childish

reasoning, till an accident again changed the current of my ideas.

 

When I was about fifteen years old we had retired to our house near

Belrive, when we witnessed a most violent and terrible thunderstorm. It

advanced from behind the mountains of Jura, and the thunder burst at once

with frightful loudness from various quarters of the heavens. I remained,

while the storm lasted, watching its progress with curiosity and delight.

As I stood at the door, on a sudden I beheld a stream of fire issue from an

old and beautiful oak which stood about twenty yards from our house; and so

soon as the dazzling light vanished, the oak had disappeared, and nothing

remained but a blasted stump. When we visited it the next morning, we found

the tree shattered in a singular manner. It was not splintered by the

shock, but entirely reduced to thin ribbons of wood. I never beheld

anything so utterly destroyed.

 

Before this I was not unacquainted with the more obvious laws of

electricity. On this occasion a man of great research in natural

philosophy was with us, and excited by this catastrophe, he entered on

the explanation of a theory which he had formed on the subject of

electricity and galvanism, which was at once new and astonishing to me.

All that he said threw greatly into the shade Cornelius Agrippa,

Albertus Magnus, and Paracelsus, the lords of my imagination; but by

some fatality the overthrow of these men disinclined me to pursue my

accustomed studies. It seemed to me as if nothing would or could ever

be known. All that had so long engaged my attention suddenly grew

despicable. By one of those caprices of the mind which we are perhaps

most subject to in early youth, I at once gave up my former

occupations, set down natural history and all its progeny as a deformed

and abortive creation, and entertained the greatest disdain for a

would-be science which could never even step within the threshold of

real knowledge. In this mood of mind I betook myself to the

mathematics and the branches of study appertaining to that science as

being built upon secure foundations, and so worthy of my consideration.

 

Thus strangely are our souls constructed, and by such slight ligaments

are we bound to prosperity or ruin. When I look back, it seems to me

as if this almost miraculous change of inclination and will was the

immediate suggestion of the guardian angel of my life—the last effort

made by the spirit of preservation to avert the storm that was even

then hanging in the stars and ready to envelop me. Her victory was

announced by an unusual tranquillity and gladness of soul which

followed the relinquishing of my ancient and latterly tormenting

studies. It was thus that I was to be taught to associate evil with

their prosecution, happiness with their disregard.

 

It was a strong effort of the spirit of good, but it was ineffectual.

Destiny was too potent, and her immutable laws had decreed my utter and

terrible destruction.