it is not painful, not more pronounced, indeed, than that of persons who
are trying to bring back a dream which they remember having had without
being able to recall the first thing about what it was. Of course, the
patient subsequently finds shreds and fragments of ideas, as well as
facts in his external relations, which, having been connected with the
extirpated subject, are now unaccountable. About these the feeling is, I
suppose, like that of a man who, when he gets over a fit of drunkenness
or somnambulism, finds himself unable to account for things which he has
unconsciously said or done. The immediate effect of the operation, as I
intimated before, is to leave the patient very drowsy, and the first
desire is to sleep."

"Doctor," said Henry, "when you talk it all seems for the moment quite
reasonable, but you will pardon me for saying that, as soon as you stop,
the whole thing appears to be such an incredible piece of nonsense that I
have to pinch myself to be sure I am not dreaming."

The doctor smiled.

"Well," said he, "I have been so long engaged in the practical
application of the process that I confess I can't realize any element of
the strange or mysterious about it. To the eye of the philosopher nothing
is wonderful, or else you may say all things are equally so. The
commonest and so-called simplest fact in the entire order of nature is
precisely as marvellous and incomprehensible at bottom as the most
uncommon and startling. You will pardon me if I say that it is only to
the unscientific that it seems otherwise. But really, my dear sir, my
process for the extirpation of thoughts was but the most obvious
consequence of the discovery that different classes of sensations and
ideas are localized in the brain, and are permanently identified with