"Oh," laughed Nemur.
"You're feeling sorry for yourself.
What did you expect?
This experiment was calculated to raise your intelligence, not to make you popular.
We had no control over what happened to your personality, and you've developed from a likeable, retarded young man into an arrogant, self-centered, antisocial bastard."
"The problem, dear professor, is that you wanted someone who could be made intelligent but still be kept in a cage and displayed when necessary to reap the honors you seek. The hitch is that I'm a person."
He was angry, and I could see he was torn between ending the fight and trying once more to beat me down.
"You're being unfair, as usual.
You know we've always treated you well—done everything we could for you."
"Everything but treat me as a human being.
You've boasted time and again that I was nothing before the experiment, and I know why.
Because if I was nothing, then you were responsible for creating me, and that makes you my lord and master.
You resent the fact that I don't show my gratitude every hour of the day. Well, believe it or not, I am grateful.
But what you did for me—wonderful as it is—doesn't give you the right to treat me like an experimental animal.
I'm an individual now, and so was Charlie before he ever walked into that lab.
You look shocked!
Yes, suddenly we discover that I was always a person—even before—and that challenges your belief that someone with an I.Q. of less than 100 doesn't deserve consideration.
Professor Nemur, I think when you look at me your conscience bothers you."
"I've heard enough," he snapped.
"You're drunk"
"Ah, no," I assured him.
"Because if I get drunk, you'll see a different Charlie Gordon from the one you've come to know.
Yes, the other Charlie who walked in the darkness is still here with us.
Inside me."
"He's gone out of his head," said Mrs. Nemur. "He's talking as if there were two Charlie Gordons.
You'd better look after him, doctor."
Dr. Strauss shook his head.
"No.
I know what he means. It's come up recently in therapy sessions.
A peculiar dissociation has taken place in the past month or so. He's had several experiences of perceiving himself as he was before the experiment—as a separate and distinct individual still functioning in his consciousness—as if the old Charlie were struggling for control of the body—"
"No!
I never said that!
Not struggling for control. Charlie is there, all right, but not struggling with me. Just waiting. He has never tried to take over or tried to prevent me from doing anything I wanted to do."
Then, remembering about Alice, I modified it. "Well, almost never. The humble, self-effacing Charlie you were all talking about a while ago is just waiting patiently.
I'll admit I'm like him in a number of ways, but humility and self-effacement are not among them.
I've learned how little they get a person in this world.
"You've become cynical," said Nemur.
"That's all this opportunity has meant to you. Your genius has destroyed your faith in the world and in your fellow men."
"That's not completely true," I said softly.
"But I've learned that intelligence alone doesn't mean a damned thing.
Here in your university, intelligence, education, knowledge, have all become great idols.
But I know now there's one thing you've all overlooked: intelligence and education that hasn't been tempered by human affection isn't worth a damn."
I helped myself to another martini from the nearby sideboard and continued my sermon.
"Don't misunderstand me," I said. "Intelligence is one of the greatest human gifts.
But all too often a search for knowledge drives out the search for love.
This is something else I've discovered for myself very recently.
I present it to you as a hypothesis: Intelligence without the ability to give and receive affection leads to mental and moral breakdown, to neurosis, and possibly even psychosis.
And I say that the mind absorbed in and involved in itself as a self-centered end, to the exclusion of human relationships, can only lead to violence and pain.
"When I was retarded I had lots of friends.
Now I have no one.