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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Lock and Key Library by Julian Hawthorne, Ed.: agony of an incarcerated mind, without communication and without
sympathy, unable to exchange ideas but with those whose ideas are
only the hideous specters of departed intellect, or even to hear
the welcome sound of the human voice, except to mistake it for the
howl of a fiend, and stop the ear desecrated by its intrusion,--
then at last your fear will become a more fearful hope; you will
wish to become one of them, to escape the agony of consciousness.
As those who have long leaned over a precipice, have at last felt a
desire to plunge below, to relieve the intolerable temptation of
their giddiness,* you will hear them laugh amid their wildest
paroxysms; you will say, 'Doubtless those wretches have some
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