No More Learning

At that time he spent days and often nights with Swoboda in
endless discussions. Swoboda, who had been away from Vienna
for some time, observed that a change had taken place in Otto
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? 78 Edge of Fear
Weininger's viewpoint. Although he continued to discuss the
psychological problem of man and woman, he seemed more
interested in moral questions, particularly the moral philos-
ophy of Kant (Swoboda, p. 10).
A newspaper article, published a year after Weininger's
death, has now been found. Forgotten in the violent discussion
about him at that time, it sheds some light upon his interest in
moral subjects. The article is called feuilleton: a letter
from otto weininger, and it contains a letter which he
wrote on December 27, 1901, to Professor Jodl concerning his
thesis, which Jodl was going to read for him. The letter is
important because there is in it a sketch of the ethical views
which he was later to bring out in Sex and Character. The
heart of it was: "I believe that my thoughts have become much
clearer, especially in respect to moral problems. If you will
allow me to say so without seeming immodest, I think that in
moral phenomenology (which I think of as a kind of biology of
ideals) it is possible to discern between two different kinds of
ideals--the one group originating in man. . . . There is a
specific masculine morality and there is a specific feminine
morality in ethical dualism, not monism. (Have not all exist-
ing moral systems always been monistic? ) But the division does
not lose its value (for the phenomenology of the types), so
that we really make two demands on every human--fortu-
nately no purely monosexual person exists. From a psycho-
logical point of view it is very interesting to note just how the
purely masculine ideals have been set up by the feminine
philosophers (Spinoza, Kant, Nietzsche) and the more femi-
nine ideals by the masculine thinkers (Christ, Schopenhauer).
Always the same old story: what you don't have yourself be-
comes your ideal. "
This statement is the first proof we have from the hand of
Otto Weininger of his changing view. At a later date he gave
further proof in a treatise that he wrote on a subject related to
his mental change and to his new interest on moral evaluation.
This was his essay "Metaphysics," in which he said that
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? Edge of Fear 79
theoretical, moral considerations made him doubt Kant's con-
ception of psychic phenomena (U. L. D. , p. 114). This view
he had arrived at by the spring of 1902, when the essay was
written.
Further indications of the change in him were his secession
from the Jewish congregation in Vienna in May, 1902, his
essay on Henrik Ibsen in February of the same year, and finally
a letter he wrote to Swoboda some time between the fall of
1901 and the spring of 1902, in which he said, "There are no
problems except moral ones. "
It seems likely that Weininger's moral considerations were
tied up with his peculiar personality make-up. The situation
seems to have been this: while his antinomic traits--his crav-
ings and idealistic thoughts--were the starting point for his
tendencies to preoccupation with moral issues, the lack of
happiness in him at the same time constituted a breeding
ground for those inclinations.
His interest in morality may also have been in part an expres-
sion of the aesthetic aspect of his nature. One might say that
in him the philosophical term ethic corresponds to depressive,
while the term aesthetic corresponds to hypomanic. On this
basis we should say that Otto Weininger was depressed and
was seeing everything in the light of an austere, inexorable, and
punctilious morality. 1
This characteristic we find also in his works. The somber
note is always dominant, as is very apparent in Sex and Char-
acter. Never is there joy, happiness, or spontaneous mirth in his
thoughts. The prevailing tone is always demanding, serious,
bellicose--yet bellicose, not in a jubilant fighting spirit, but
out of a sense of duty.
With this moral coloring of his intellectual and emotional
life, his whole personality acquired a new profile. His convic-
tion reached the stage where he had to live according to his
doctrine. It seems clear that he went so far as to want to prove
the truth of his own opinions, and he set out to carry them into
1See Hjalmar Hellweg, Soren Kierkegaard (Copenhagen, 1933), pp. 167-68.
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? 8o
Edge of Fear
practice. Apparently he did not stop there; whenever he be-
lieved something to be true, he first preached it to himself,
then laid it down as a moral postulate.
It is interesting in this connection to come upon one of the
aphorisms, which was written down in 1903 but undoubtedly
was conceived previously. He wrote: "Ethics may be defined
thus. You must in full consciousness act in such a way that
every moment is filled with your whole self, with your whole
individuality" (U. L. D. , p. 52). We see then that in the
summer of 1901 he was using introspection as a means of
analyzing scientifically his thoughts and emotions, but now--
probably in the spring of 1902--he saw them in a moral light.
The moral view in itself became a new incitement for him to
explore further into himself. Eventually everything acquired
for Weininger a certain symbolic importance. Consciously or
unconsciously, he set introspection to serving ethics, and he
enabled himself to accomplish the great task he had under-
taken, to live according to his own philosophy.
He entered thus upon a life of moral consistency, with grave
consequences to himself. So grave that he finally broke down
under the program. He abided by Ibsen's dictum, "Being a poet
means meeting your own doomsday. " He perhaps did not
recognize the process himself. The opposite extremes in his
personality extended to emotional and intellectual splitting,
and the struggle led to his ethical considerations. These in turn
paved the way for more mental conflicts. In one short year he
had been taken into a new course of life, from which there was
no return. He had become a victim of himself.
A peculiar fear was born in him; a sense of guilt and a con-
viction of sin started to grow, and because of his new ethical
emphasis on emotional life, he developed a sense of duty which
eventually appeared as an obsession. This overdeveloped,
morbid sense of duty later drove him into self-reproach and
self-accusations--a sign of morbid development.
It was characteristic of him that when he was writing Sex
and Character he said, "What I have found here will hurt no-
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? Edge of Fear 81
body so much as myself" (U. L. D. , p. xvi). His attempt to
arrive at a scheme of ethics took him into struggle and unhappi-
ness. He illustrated his own difficulties in the statements:
"Ethical standards are never given to one. . . . Good people
always have a rigid moral code" (U. L. D. , p. xvi). Ideas like
these ran through his mind when he tried to fulfill the heavy
task of living as he taught.
In the summer of 1902 there appeared in him the fear of
being unable to fulfill his moral task. He then had to wage a
war on two fronts, first, against his own desires and ethical
demands on himself, then, against the fear of not living always
according to his ethical intentions. A sense of guilt and accom-
panying anxiety grew in him.
In this period fear was gradually taking possession of him. It
became a painful and decisive factor in his whole development.
He was much later, probably in July or August, 1903, to write
an aphorism which appeared in Uber die letzten Dinge (p. 53),
"Pain is the psychic correlate of annihilation (disease and
death). " Within these words may be seen two manifestations
that were developing in him in 1902. One in his identification
of pain and fear as equivalents. The other is a new sort of fear
within him. Earlier he had been afraid only of failure to live in
harmony with his moral beliefs; now he began to be afraid for
his very self, for his own life. This new terror first appeared as
his early travels were drawing to an end. When, as he was com-
ing home, he recommended that Gerber read Peer Gynt on the
train, he was alluding to his own state of mind. The words,
"the effect, which I think you will remember for a long time,"
reveal the growing fear of death, which crystallized into
thoughts of suicide.
How did that fear start? We have already noted his simul-
taneous fear of, and desire for, life. The same phenomenon is
to be seen in his sexual life, to judge from the forms and dis-
guises in which it was presented throughout his life. In Sex
and Character there is overemphasis on sex, and the personal
material in the book gives the same impression. The subjective
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Edge of Fear
chapter, which reflects his personality, gives a clear picture of a
young, sexually charged Weininger racing forward. Even after
he entered the ethical phase of life, the sexual problem was of
the greatest importance to him.
He expressed his accentuated view when he wrote, "The
artist is sexual because he gives forth emanations" (U. L. D. ,
p. 60). In this he supplied information about his own sexuality,
which was the chief source of his interest in the sexual problem
and the origin of his own misery. He was at an age when his
own sexual drive was beginning to affect the attitude of his
personality. Like any young man of his age, he, of course, had
personal problems of a sexual nature, but they were the usual,
ordinary problems which most young men experience. His
sexual drive was strong, but we do not know of any decisive
experience which suddenly turned all his attention to the sexual
problem. In his own works we find no proof of any conclusive
sexual event at any definite time, nor have we any helpful
information about his sexual experiences in childhood. Yet the
complex part that sexuality played in his great work--homo-
j sexuality, sadism, masochism, etc. --and his opposition to
' women both lend weight to the belief that his sexual drive was
seriously disturbed. Swoboda also wrote (p. 44) that "the dis-
turbances in his emotional and intellectual life were caused by
deviations in his sexual urge, which spread like an infection
\ from one domain to another and finally broke down the
resistance of the organism. " Schneider wrote in like manner,
"It is at least highly probable that Weininger was not quite
normal in sexual respects, and perhaps in other ways" (Der
Fall, p. 2).
What brought about this disturbance that affected his whole
life? Swoboda, who was a patient and pupil of Freud and there-
fore had some psychoanalytic knowledge, says simply, "The
cause of his disturbance is of no great importance. " By making
this assertion and saying that the "hatred" apparent in Wein-
inger's works was undoubtedly the result of a suppression of his
normal sex life, Swoboda stopped his investigation just where
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? Edge of Fear 83
he should have begun. One must, of course, seek the reason for
the deviation of Weininger's sexual drive.
There is no adequate information to assure us that his physi-
cal development was normal. It has been suggested that pos-
sibly his sexual organs were, because of congenital defect, under-
developed. Such a flaw would explain Otto's peculiarity. Yet
even if his physical development was perfectly normal (and
certainly he reached mental maturity very early), there is
the possibility that he may have suffered a sexual trauma in
childhood, though we have no indication that his disturbance
came from an early sexual experience. We know that Otto
was from his earliest childhood under the steady influence of a
severe and energetic father. Because of rigid intellectual train-
ing and his own intellect it is likely that his normal sexual
feelings were thrust into the background. Observing his father's
severe treatment of his mother may have developed in Otto a
hostile feeling toward her and toward women in general. This
feeling may have been increased by the fact that he grew up in
a Jewish home, even though the culture of the Weiningers was
only that of assimilated Jews. It is true that Otto's Jewish train-
ing was slight. It is also true, as Bliiher points out, that Jewish
society is less a man's and more a family society. 2 Nevertheless
in Otto Weininger's home the father asserted superiority, and
the situation may have influenced Otto to some extent. Severe
family stresses may have been influential in creating a trauma
when he was a child, with an eventual suppression of normal
sex life. 3
Further, Weininger was extremely sexual and sensual. The
question of his relations with women will be discussed later,
but he certainly entertained strong desires. The poem "Schau-
der" showed that he feared to approach women. Another
2 Hans Bliiher, Die Rolle in der mannlichen Gesellschaft, II (Jena, 1927), 170.
8 The symptoms of hysteria in Weininger also give one reason to believe that
a sexuai trauma had occurred. Sexual trauma in early childhood, that is before
puberty, is a special reason for hysteria, because sexual passivity in the presexual
period is a special condition for hysteria. Sigmund Freud, Der Sammlung kleiner
Schriften zur Neurosenlehre (Leipzig and Vienna, 1911), p. 1x2.
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Edge of Fear
poem, which his sister has made it possible for me to publish,
shows the same feeling.
Sieh mich gebeugt mit lockerm Schritte
In Mauernahe angstlich gehn,
Verhohnend dein Gebot der Sitte
Nach Fiisschen und nach Busen spahn.
Das ist der Weg, der langst bekannte,
Zu ihr, der Gottin ohne Scham,
Den ich so oft zu gehen brannte,
Und reuig weinend wiederkam.
O Gott, in all Spiegel schlage
Vernichtend deine Faust hinein,
Das klare Licht entzieh dem Tage,
Dem Bache nimm den Widerschein!
--Und htihnisch schleicht das alte Bangen
der heissbegehrten Lust voran--
O!
Gib dem Laster rothe Wangen,
dass ich ihm angstlos frohnen kann!
Filled with longing and carefully hidden,
Stealing my way through the darkest night,
I laugh at all that your law has bidden,
Burning, voluptuous, yet full of fright.
This is the road I have often wandered
To her, the Goddess who knows no shame,
The road desire bade me to follow,
And I was weeping when home I came.
May darkness reign on the road I follow;
May God turn day into darkest night,
Make the windows and mirrors empty, hollow,
Leave not a shimmer, no trace of light.
And, scornful still, the ancient terror
Steals darkly ahead of the dear delight.
Oh, redden the cheeks of Sinful Error
That I may serve him, free of fright.
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? Edge of Fear 85
A strong undercurrent of sexual experience runs through the
poem. Expressed in the poetic speech are the feelings deep in
the heart of a man fighting against his sexual drives and desires.
He tries to escape his violent sexual cravings. He wants to enjoy
sin without fear, especially the fear called forth by breaking the
moral law.
The poem demonstrates an aggressive sexual impulse ("This
is the road I have often wandered. . . . The road desire bade
me to follow"), which made it difficult for him to abstain. His
sexual drive did not give him comfort, because he wanted to
enjoy it without fear. Thus even though he expected to be
attracted, he was at the same time repelled by his sexual desires.
His own sexual aggressiveness produced in him a double sense
of values and an ambivalency of sexual feelings. Simultaneously
he felt affection and disgust, warmth and hostility, love and
hate. He says in Sex and Character (p. 108): "The man has
no desire for sexual maturity while he is young; to the young
girl it means the highest of all expectations. The symptoms of
sexual maturity in a man give him uncomfortable, restless, and
hostile feelings. The woman follows her somatic development
during puberty with great excitement and the most feverish and
impatient expectations. "
Ordinarily, ambivalency of this type can, within certain
limits, be quite normal. In Weininger's personality make-up,
however, was ingrained a positively aggressive sexuality, which
turned his intense sexual drive into the opposite extreme.
While he longed for sexual experience, he at the same time felt
hostile and frightened.
We see that this frightened restraint made the longing for
sexual experiences stronger; but the stronger the longing, the
more hostile his attitude. These contradictory and conflicting
tendencies in the sexual sphere were closely associated with his
whole personality. In the course of his life he developed a
hatred toward sex, and this was the basis and root of his strong
ego-consciousness, his hypertrophic ego.
His shrinking from pleasure he extended to a principle. He
came to believe that no one should enjoy a normal sex life.
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? 86 Edge of Fear
Further, the effect was that he lived his life psychically; in other
words his sexual life took the form of fantasies. He did not love
women, but the female being. He loved from a distance and
could not have anything to do with any real woman.
His own sexual drive influenced deeply his thinking on sexual
problems in general, as may be clearly seen in Sex and Char-
acter. His ethical tendency is apparent in his great work, but
in it sexual desire prevails. As a pupil of Kant and Plato, he felt
it imperative to express his moral attitude and to formulate his
ethical confession, but he was at the same time dependent on
introspection, and his sexual nature colored his attitude. For
instance, his ideas concerning the connection of logic and
ethics and his theory of universal responsibility are independent
problems, yet in working them out he mixed in sexual motifs.
The explanation lies in the conflict of strong idealism and a
violent sexual urge within him. The moral evaluation that ap-
pears in his writings corresponds to his idealism; he applied the
personal ethical principles of Kant to himself and he trans-
ferred them to apply to humanity, but always in such a way that
in one form or another his sexuality was involved in his
personal ethics. When Lucka and Swoboda say that his moral
interest was never--or only occasionally--involved in his work
on the sexual problem, they are not correct.
Weininger was, naturally, already aware of his moralistic
tendencies, but the sources of his moral considerations, and
more particularly the mental suffering that accompanied them,
were not seen clearly at first. Only when his intellectual gifts
were in full bloom, after his thesis had been written in 1901,
was he a suffering man. All his false ideas at this time were a
product of his own mental conflict, the struggle between his
biological drives and moral tendencies as they emerged more
and more from his introspection. If he arrived at a certain idea
out of emotional motives, he then proved it by building up an
opinion through a combination of concepts. This process is
very apparent in Vber die letzten Dinge. Swoboda comments,
"The completely superficial analogy between two facts is here
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? Edge of Fear 87
taken as sufficient proof of his preconceived ideas" (Swoboda,
p. 21). The process is, of course, usually called rationalization.
This picture is confirmed by Ewald, who speaks particularly
of his life: "The calm course of the discussions had been dis-
carded. Weininger spoke passionately; he was jerky, abrupt,
more visionary than logical; claimed, rather than considered,
the facts. While in the first period of his life he limited himself
to making sound observations and gaining experience, his
main interest in his second period was in strict, systematic
argumentation; he now uttered his opinions as unconditional
dogma which had to be believed. Typical words were, 'It is
quite obvious'--expressions which drew smiles and for which
he was scolded. Most of his opinions were very far from
obvious, as he professed many peculiar ideas which, when
found in his writings, have given the malicious critic an easy
target for attack. " 4
Rappaport also stresses the fact that fear--fear for himself--
was a constituent part of his mental life (U. L. D. , p. xvi).
We must bear in mind that there is a difference between
fear and terror. Fear is directed toward something indefinite.
Terror is more a state of one's own personality, an extreme
fright, more or less definable; it may be an anticipation that
something must happen, that something will happen. One
would, then, think that fear of death is a fear in general, while
terror of death would be called forth only by the thought of
one's own immediate death. It is better to distinguish between
an indefinite, vague fear and a rationalized, definite one and
to recognize the transitional forms between the two. At the
beginning of psychotic processes it is not uncommon for a more
or less indefinite fear to manifest itself. When a partially or
completely rationalized terror takes the place of the vague fear,
the change may be an expression of relief or a result of delibera-
tion.
With this distinction in mind, we may look at the psycho-
* Oskar Ewald (pseudonym of Oskar Friedlander), Die Enveckung (Berlin,
1922), pp. 67-68. This work is hereafter cited in the text simply as Ewald.
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? 88
Edge of Fear
logical phenomenon in Otto Weininger which we must call
terror. We do not find that it was bound up in his personality
and expressed in his mood. The fear present in his original
personality resulted from the struggle between his desires for
sexual expression and for reality elsewhere and his rejection of
his longings, while the terror of his later days was a new
phenomenon, originating from reserves of earlier years, as
evidenced in his letters to Gerber. At that time his terror grew
stronger and appeared rationalized.
Only once did Weininger directly admit that he was afraid
--on the night of November 20, 1902, when he talked to
Gerber of committing suicide. In Vber die letzten Dinge he
referred to the thoughts and feelings that led up to the in-
cident: "The dog has the most amazing and deep connection
with death. Months before the dog had become a problem to
me, I sat one afternoon around five o'clock in a room in the
Miinchener Gasthof, where I was staying, and thought of some-
thing. I suddenly heard a dog bark in a very peculiar, penetrat-
ing way which was then quite new to me, and at the same
moment I had the inevitable conviction that someone was dying
at that very moment. Months later, in the most terrible night
of my whole life, without being ill, I literally had to fight against
death--because in great men there is no mental death without
physical death, because in them life and death confront each
other, violent and intense, as the only possibilities. Just as I was
trying to fall asleep, I heard a dog bark three times in just the
same way as that time in Munich. The dog had been barking
all night long, but those three times were different. I noticed
that at that moment I was biting furiously at the sheet, like a
dying man. . . .
"Shortly before that night I had had several times the same
vision that Goethe must have had, to judge from Faust. I saw
a black dog which sometimes seemed as if he were followed by
a fiery light. . . . "
In this account we can discover the signs of his change of
mood, which seems to have been more and more colored by
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? Edge of Fear 89
terror, though in writing of his experience he did not use that
word at all. Apparently--if we accept the evidence of a postcard
written in Munich on July 29, 1902--in his earlier experience
his fear had not gone so far as to concern his very self, even if a
struggle had begun within him. Yet his statement that at the
same moment he had the conviction that someone was dying
somewhere bears out the suspicion that already the fear of
death was dawning in him. The consciousness of fear increased
and grew to terror. It is significant that Weininger later in his
essay "Science and Culture" said not only that "terror is always
the feeling of lifelessness" but also that "one can be afraid only
of life" (U. L. D. , p. 146). As it gradually became clear that the
fight between his cravings and his moral ideas was turning into
a fight for his own life, his terror became definite and quite ra-
tionalized. This terror of death mounted to the night of ma-
cabre experience when he bit furiously at the sheet "like a dying
man. "
When Otto returned to Vienna in September, 1902, instead
of being a fresh, rested man, rejoicing in mental harmony and
ready to start work with new energy, he was depressed, restless,
and full of doubt. This fact in itself is of no great significance.
A man of great mental energy who is deeply engaged in work-
ing on problems will always to a certain extent show restlessness
and discontent. At that time he was making notes and working
on the first sketch of his book Sex and Character. In a letter
to Gerber on October 18, he said: "I should like to see you be-
fore Sunday, as soon as possible. Perhaps I shall call on you
Tuesday at five. The subject: the division of women into moth-
ers and prostitutes" (Taschenbuch, p. 90). That he was work-
ing on his book is also apparent from letters he wrote earlier on
his trip. Yet this fact does not explain his whole mental state.
The restlessness seemed to be altogether on the surface, cover-
ing deep-seated emotional conflicts and the feeling of a lack of
happiness. The result was a mood of depression and discourage-
ment.
Out of this dark gloom came his erratic behavior on Novem-
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? 90 Edge of Fear
ber 20, 1902. Gerber relates: "In the early afternoon of No-
vember 20, Otto's father came to tell me that the day before
Otto had been to his home and had said goodbye to his family
in such a heartfelt and serious manner that there was reason to
be afraid that something might happen. I knew nothing about
it" (Taschenbuch, p. 16).
What happened in the interval between October 18, when
he wrote the letter about his work, and November 20, when his
father reported that he had been home bidding his family
goodbye, we do not know, though Gerber does state that he saw
Otto on the afternoon of November 18 and noticed nothing
peculiar about him. If Gerber was right in saying that Otto was
quite as usual that day, it seems to the outsider that the change
in him must have come quite suddenly. This is certainly the
impression given by Gerber when he goes on to say: "At that
time of day my friend was in Heiligenstadt, where he was teach-
ing. I hurried out there and waited for him outside in the street.
It was a long time before he finally appeared. He came out of
the house at a slow, solemn tempo. The concentrated strength
in his facial expression had given way to a desperate exhaustion
and dejection, something never previously present. His face was
ravaged, worn out, sinister, and serious. In the tone of his voice
I could hear a grave and silent pain. I had not thought that his
condition could be so bad as that. We had been together the
evening and afternoon of the eighteenth, and there had been no
hint of this fundamental change in him. When I asked him why
he felt so obviously ill, he answered in a deprecatory way: 'I
might at least get rid of my uncomfortable feeling by confiding
in someone. ' The abrupt, monosyllabic phrases apparently re-
sulted in temporary relief. "
A change had taken place in Weininger. He felt, however,
that he might purge his mind if he were able to unburden him-
self. The phrase "an uncomfortable feeling" is particularly
characteristic of his condition on that day and during the whole
of that period; it sums up his misery, joylessness, and the feeling
that life was a burden to him.
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? Edge of Fear 91
Gerber goes on with his story by saying: "We took the street-
car to his lodgings, which were in Gersthof. It was a gloomy,
stormy day. Although he wore his overcoat, he still felt cold. To
my anxious question about him he answered by saying, 'In me
is the chill of the grave! ' He said this quite slowly and with an
emphatic stress so that every word cut into my heart. It was
quite clear to me that he could not be left alone while in that
condition. When we reached his room, he said, There is al-
ready a smell of corpse here, isn't there? ' The room gave the
impression of not having had fresh air for several days. I asked
him to come and spend the evening with me. It was under those
circumstances that I told him the news that I had seen in the
morning paper, which later proved to be false--that Knut
Hamsun, to whom he felt much attached, whose books he
owned, and whose Pan he had called the greatest book in the
world, had shot himself. Otto winced, looked disturbed, and
said, 'He, too, then! ' He was even more silent now, refused to
leave his room and go with me, and his conversation consisted
only of hints which he perhaps thought I would not understand.
But those hints left no doubt as to his condition.