To all concerned: I apologize for the inadvertent errors in my fisst transmission. Here is a corrected draft. > 4/26/99 > > > > In the interests of accuracy, referring here to Prof. Rice's use of >and commentary on Robert Louis Stevenson's narrative depiction of that >unhappy doppelganger,to state that Dr. Jekyll "was tranformed into the >infamous Mr. Hyde" is to shift the blame to some vague and unnamed power >and therefore to misread the "moral" of that novella. The passive voice >construction aside, Dr.Jekyll was himself the initiating culprit as well >as the victim of that deliberate slide into self-destruction. He began, he himself tells us, by pondering too long on "those >provinces of good and ill which divide and compound man's dual nature. . . >. With every day, and from both sides of my intelligence, the moral and the >intellectual," he confesses, "I thus drew steadily nearer to that truth, >by whose partial discovery I have been doomed to such a dreadful shipwreck: >that man is not truly one, but truly two. I say two because the state of my >own knowledge does not pass beyond that point. Others will follow, others >will outstrip me on the same lines; and I hazard the guess that man will >be ultimately known for a mere polity of multifarious,incongruous, and >independent denizens." > Being a "scientist" and physician, he naturally has his own >laboratory,in which he begins experimenting on himself and becomes >inexorably addicted to a concoction of his own making--which ultimately >leads to his doom, to the distress of those around him. > > I, for one, do not sense,first,that this is the way Prof. Rice >reads this novel or his memory of it--for many, it HAS been a long time >since they read it); or second, that (to quote him) "Supporters of the >implementation plan we are asked to vote on tomorrow have resurrected this >imagery--i.e., his own misreading--in their arguments." > > Again,I for one share many of Prof. Rice's concerns; but I DO hate >to see a worthy piece of fiction distorted and used for a purpose far >other than an aesthetic and enlightening one. > > > tcw > > > > > > > > > >t.c. ware t.c. ware