Chapter 02 (Frankenstein (Full Cast))

01section four of Frankenstein.

02This LibriVox recording is in the public domain.

03Frankenstein or the modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley.

04Section four.

05Chapter two.

06We were brought up together.

07There was not quite a year difference in our ages.

08I need not say that we were strangers to any species of disunion or dispute.

09Harmony was the soul of our companionship, and the diversity and contrast that subsisted in our characters drew us nearer together.

10Elizabeth 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.

11She 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.

12While my companion contemplated with a serious and satisfied spirit the magnificent appearances of things, I delighted in investigating their causes.

13The world was to me a secret which I desired to divine.

14Curiosity, 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.

15On 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.

16We possessed a house in Geneva, and a campagna in Belle Rive, the eastern shore of the lake, at the distance of rather more than a league from the city.

17We resided principally in the latter, and the lives of my parents were passed in considerable seclusion.

18It was my temper to avoid a crowd, and to attach myself fervently to a few.

19I was indifferent, therefore, to my schoolfellows in general, but I united myself in the bonds of the closest friendship to one among them.

20Henry Clerval was the son of a merchant of Geneva.

21He was a boy of singular talent and fancy.

22He loved enterprise, hardship, and even danger for its own sake.

23He was deeply read in books of chivalry and romance.

24He composed heroic songs, and began to write many a tale of enchantment and knightly adventure.

25He 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.

26No human being could have passed a happier childhood than myself.

27My parents were possessed by the very spirit of kindness and indulgence.

28We 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.

29When I mingled with other families, I distinctly discerned how peculiarly fortunate my lot was, and gratitude assisted the development of filial love.

30My temper was sometimes violent and my passion vehement, but by some law in my temperature they turned out not towards childish pursuits, but to an eager desire to learn, and to not learn all things indiscriminately.

31I confess that neither the structure of languages, nor the code of governments, nor the policies of various states possessed attractions for me.

32It 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.

33Meanwhile, Clerval occupied himself, so to speak, with the moral relations of things.

34The busy stage of life, the virtues of heroes, and the actions of men were his theme.

35And 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.

36The saintly soul of Elizabeth shone like a shrine-dedicated lamp in our peaceful home.

37Her sympathy was ours, her smile, her soft voice, the sweet glance of her celestial eyes, were ever there to bless and animate us.

38She was the living spirit of love to soften and attract.

39I might have become sullen in my study, rout through the ardour of my nature, but that she was there to subdue me to a semblance of her own gentleness.

40And Clerval could aught ill entrench on the noble spirit of Clerval.

41Yet 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.

42I 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.

43Besides, 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 a rise, like a mountain river, from ignoble and almost forgotten sources.

44But, swelling as it proceeded, it became a torrent, which in its course has swept away all my hopes and joys.

45Natural philosophy is the genius that has regulated my fate.

46I desire, therefore, in this narration, to state those facts which led to my predilection for that science.

47When I was thirteen years of age, we all went on a party of pleasure to the baths near Tonon.

48The inclemency of the weather obliged us to remain a day confined to the inn.

49In this house I chanced to find a volume of the works of Cornelius Agrippa.

50I opened it with apathy.

51The theory which he attempts to demonstrate, and the wonderful facts which he relates, soon changed this feeling into enthusiasm.

52A new light seems to dawn upon my mind, and, bounding with joy, I communicated my discovery to my father.

53My father looked carelessly at the title-page of my book, and said, Ah, Cornelius Agrippa!

54My dear Victor, do not waste your time upon this.

55It is sad trash.

56If, 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 contended my imagination, warmed as it was, while returning with great ardour to my former studies.

57It is even possible that the trade of my ideas would never have received the fatal impulse that led to my ruin.

58But 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.

59When I returned home, my first care was to procure the whole works of this author, and afterwards of Paracelsus and Albertus Magnus.

60I read and studied the wild fancies of these writers with delight.

61They appeared to be treasures known to few besides myself.

62I have described myself as always having been imbued with a fervent longing to penetrate the secrets of nature.

63In spite of the intense labour and wonderful discoveries of modern philosophers, I always came from my studies discontented and unsatisfied.

64Sir Isaac Newton is said to have avowed that he felt like a child picking up shells beside the great and unexplored ocean of truth.

65Those 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.

66The untaught peasant beheld the elements around him and was acquainted with their practical uses.

67The most learned philosopher knew little more.

68He had partially unveiled the face of nature, but her immortal lineaments were still a wonder and a mystery.

69He might dissect, anatomize, and give names, but, not to speak of a final cause, causes in their secondary and tertiary grades were utterly unknown to him.

70I 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.

71But here were books, and here were men who had penetrated deeper and knew more.

72I took their word for all that they averred, and I became their disciple.

73It 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.

74My father was not scientific, and I was left to struggle with a child's blindness added to a student's thirst for knowledge.

75Under 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.

76But the latter soon obtained my undivided attention.

77Wealth is 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?

78Nor were these my only visions.

79The raising of ghosts or devils was a promise liberally accorded by my favourite authors, the fulfilment of which I most eagerly sought.

80And if my incantations were always unsuccessful, I attributed the failure rather to my own experience and mistake than to a want of skill or fidelity in my instructors.

81And 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.

82When I was about fifteen years old, we had retired to our house near Belle-Rive, when we witnessed a most violent and terrible thunderstorm.

83It advanced from behind the mountains of Jura, and the thunder burst at once with frightful loudness from various quarters of the heavens.

84I remained, while the storm lasted, watching its progress with curiosity and delight.

85As 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.

86When we visited it the next morning, we found the tree shattered in a singular manner.

87It was not splintered by the shock, but entirely reduced to thin ribbons of wood.

88I never beheld anything so utterly destroyed.

89Before this, I was not unacquated with the more obvious laws of electricity.

90On this occasion, a man of great research and 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.

91All that he said threw greatly into the shade Cornelius Agrippa, Albertus Magnus, and Paracelsus, the lords of my imagination.

92But by some fatality the overthrow of these men disinclined me to pursue my accustomed studies.

93It seemed to me as if nothing would or could ever be known.

94All that had so long engaged my attention suddenly grew despicable.

95By 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 great disdain for a would-be science which could never even step within the threshold of real knowledge.

96In 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.

97Thus, strangely, are our souls constructed, and by such slight ligaments are we bound to prosperity or ruin.

98When 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.

99Her victory was announced by an unusual tranquillity and gladness of soul which followed the relinquishing of my ancient and latterly tormenting studies.

100It was thus that I was to be taught to associate evil with their prosecution, happiness with their disregard.

101It was a strong effort of the spirit of good, but it was ineffectual.

102Destiny was too potent, and her immutable laws had decreed my utter and terrible destruction.

103End of section 4 and her immutable laws of the spirit of the and the other and the other and the other and the other and the other and the other and the other and the other