written signature--and you know how sometimes one may absent-
mindedly scribble a sheet of paper full of meaningless words. I
had a pen in my hand--[picks up a penholder from the table] like
this. And somehow it just began to run--I don't want to claim that
there was anything mystical--anything of a spiritualistic nature
back of it--for that kind of thing I don't believe in! It was a
wholly unreasoned, mechanical process--my copying of that
beautiful autograph over and over again. When all the clean space
on the letter was used up, I had learned to reproduce the
signature automatically--and then--[throwing away the penholder
with a violent gesture] then I forgot all about it. That night I
slept long and heavily. And when I woke up, I could feel that I
had been dreaming, but I couldn't recall the dream itself. At
times it was as if a door had been thrown ajar, and then I seemed
to see the writing-table with the note on it as in a distant
memory--and when I got out of bed, I was forced up to the table,
just as if, after careful deliberation, I had formed an
irrevocable decision to sign the name to that fateful paper. All
thought of the consequences, of the risk involved, had disappeared—
no hesitation remained--it was almost as if I was fulfilling
some sacred duty--and so I wrote! [Leaps to his feet] What could
it be? Was it some kind of outside influence, a case of mental
suggestion, as they call it? But from whom could it come? I
was sleeping alone in that room. Could it possibly be my primitive
self--the savage to whom the keeping of faith is an unknown thing--
which pushed to the front while my consciousness was asleep--
together with the criminal will of that self, and its inability to
calculate the results of an action? Tell me, what do you think of
it?