Читать книгу The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald онлайн

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“Come down here, you mean, low-browed fanatic!” yelled Bartney, forgetting his pain in a paroxysm of rage. “Come down here, and I’ll drive every bit of Christian Science out of your head.”

“To begin with,” began the shrill falsetto from the window, “there is no pain—absolutely none. Do you begin to have an inkling of that?”

“No,” shouted Bartney. “You, you—” his voice was lost in a gurgle of impotent rage.

“Now, all is mind. Mind is everything. Matter is nothing—absolutely nothing. You are well. You fancy you are hurt, but you are not.”

“You lie!” shrieked Bartney.

Unheeding, Mr. Skiggs went on.

“Thus, if there is no pain, it cannot act on your mind. A sensation is not physical. If you had no brain, there would be no pain, for what you call pain acts on the brain. You see?”

“Oh-h,” cried Bartney, “if you saw what a bottomless well of punishment you were digging for yourself, you’d cut out that monkey business.”

“Therefore, as so-called pain is a mental sensation, your ankle doesn’t hurt you. Your brain may imagine it does, but all sensation goes to the brain. You are very foolish when you complain of hurt—”