Mid-morning. The reason you used ‘seven
percent’ yesterday 's blog post comes from the book title; The Seven Percent Solution.
** **
The Seven-Per-Cent Solution
From
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Seven-Per-Cent Solution: Being a Reprint from the
Reminiscences of John H. Watson, M.D. is a
1974 novel by American writer Nicholas Meyer. It is written as a pastiche of a
Sherlock Holmes adventure, and was made into a film of the same name in 1976.
Published
as a "lost manuscript" of the late Dr. John H. Watson, the book
recounts Holmes' recovery from cocaine addiction (with the help of Sigmund
Freud) and his subsequent prevention of a European war through the unravelling
of a sinister kidnapping plot. It was followed by two other Holmes pastiches by
Meyer, The West End Horror (1976) and
The Canary Trainer (1993), neither of
which has been adapted to film.
The Seven-Per-Cent Solution was ranked ninth in the Publishers
Weekly list of bestselling novels from 1974 and made the The New York Times Best Seller list for
forty weeks between September 15, 1974 and June 22, 1975.
Plot
An
introduction states that two canonical Holmes adventures were fabrications.
These are "The Final Problem", in which Holmes apparently died along
with Prof. James Moriarty, and "The Empty House", wherein Holmes
reappeared after a three-year absence and revealed that he had not been killed
after all. The Seven-Per-Cent Solution's Watson explains that they were
published to conceal the truth concerning Holmes’ “Great Hiatus”.
The
novel begins in 1891, when Holmes first informs Watson of his belief that
Professor James Moriarty is a "Napoleon of Crime". The novel presents
this view as nothing more than the fevered imagining of Holmes' cocaine-sodden
mind; it further states that Moriarty was the childhood mathematics tutor of
Sherlock and his brother Mycroft. Watson meets Moriarty, who denies that he is
a criminal and reluctantly threatens to pursue legal action unless the latter's
accusations cease. Moriarty also refers to a "great tragedy" in
Holmes' childhood, but refuses to explain further when pressed by Watson.
The
heart of the novel consists of an account of Holmes’ recovery from his
addiction. Knowing that Sherlock would never willingly see a doctor about his
addiction and mental problems, Watson and Holmes’ brother Mycroft induce Holmes
to travel to Vienna, where Watson introduces him to Dr. Freud. Using a
treatment consisting largely of hypnosis, Freud helps Holmes shake off his
addiction and his delusions about Moriarty, but neither he nor Watson can
revive Holmes’ dejected spirit.
What
finally does the job is a whiff of mystery: one of the doctor's patients is
kidnapped and Holmes’ curiosity is sufficiently aroused. The case takes the
three men on a breakneck train ride across Austria in pursuit of a foe who is
about to launch a war involving all of Europe. Holmes remarks during the denouement
that they have succeeded only in postponing such a conflict, not preventing it;
Holmes would later become involved in a “European War” in 1914.
One
final hypnosis session reveals a key traumatic event in Holmes' childhood: his
father murdered his mother for adultery and committed suicide afterwards. It
was Moriarty who informed Holmes and his brother of their deaths, and his tutor
then became a dark and malignant figure in his subconscious. Freud and Watson
conclude that Holmes, consciously unable to face the emotional ramifications of
this event, has pushed them deep into his unconscious while finding outlets in
fighting evil, pursuing justice, and many of his famous eccentricities,
including his cocaine habit. However, they decide not to discuss these subjects
with Holmes, believing that he would not accept them, and that it would
needlessly complicate his recovery.
Watson returns to London, but
Holmes decides to travel alone for a while, advising Watson to claim that he
had been killed, and thus the famed "Great Hiatus" is more or less
preserved. It is during these travels that the events of Meyer's sequel The Canary Trainer occur.
References to other works
Holmes's
addiction to cocaine is developed out of the opening scene of Conan Doyle's The Sign of Four. In that scene, Holmes
describes the cocaine with which he is injecting himself as "a
seven-per-cent solution." . . .
Selected and edited from
Wikipedia
** **
Here are the opening lines of Doyle's The Sign of the Four:
** **
The Sign
of the Four
Arthur Conan Doyle
CHAPTER I.
The Science of Deduction
The Science of Deduction
Sherlock
Holmes took his bottle from the corner of the mantelpiece and his hypodermic
syringe from its neat morocco case. With his long, white, nervous fingers he
adjusted the delicate needle, and rolled back his left shirt-cuff. For some
little time his eyes rested thoughtfully upon the sinewy forearm and wrist all
dotted and scarred with innumerable puncture-marks. Finally he thrust the sharp
point home, pressed down the tiny piston, and sank back into the velvet-lined
armchair with a long sigh of satisfaction.
Three
times a day for many months I [Watson] had witnessed this performance, but
custom had not reconciled my mind to it. On the contrary, from day to day I had
become more irritable at the sight, and my conscience swelled nightly within me
at the thought that I had lacked the courage to protest. Again and again I had
registered a vow that I should deliver my soul upon the subject, but there was
that in the cool, nonchalant air of my companion, which made him the last man
with whom one would care to take anything approaching to a liberty. His great
powers, his masterly manner, and the experience which I had had of his many
extraordinary qualities, all made me diffident and backward in crossing him.
Yet upon
that afternoon, whether it was the Beaune, which I had taken with my lunch, or
the additional exasperation produced by the extreme deliberation of his manner,
I suddenly felt that I could hold out no longer.
“Which is
it to-day?” I asked, - “morphine or cocaine?”
He raised
his eyes languidly from the old black- letter volume, which he had opened. “It
is cocaine,” he said, - “a seven-per-cent solution. Would you care to try it?”
“No,
indeed,” I answered, brusquely. “My constitution has not got over the Afghan
campaign yet. I cannot afford to throw any extra strain upon it.”
He smiled
at my vehemence. “Perhaps you are right, Watson,” he said. “I suppose that its
influence is physically a bad one. I find it, however, so transcendently
stimulating and clarifying to the mind that its secondary action is a matter of
small moment.”
“But
consider!” I said, earnestly. “Count the cost! Your brain may, as you say, be
roused and excited, but it is a pathological and morbid process which involves
increased tissue-change and may at last leave a permanent weakness. You know,
too, what a black reaction comes upon you. Surely the game is hardly worth the
candle. Why should you, for a mere passing pleasure, risk the loss of those
great powers with which you have been endowed? Remember that I speak not only
as one comrade to another, but as a medical man to one for whose constitution
he is to some extent answerable.”
He did not
seem offended. On the contrary, he put his fingertips together and leaned his
elbows on the arms of his chair, like one who has a relish for conversation.
“My mind,”
he said, “rebels at stagnation. Give me problems, give me work, give me the
most abstruse cryptogram or the most intricate analysis, and I am in my own
proper atmosphere. I can dispense then with artificial stimulants. But I abhor
the dull routine of existence. I crave for mental exaltation. That is why I
have chosen my own particular profession,—or rather created it, for I am the
only one in the world.”
“The only
unofficial detective?” I said, raising my eyebrows.
“The only
unofficial consulting detective,” he answered. . . .
Selected
and edited from - https://sherlock-holmes/stories/pdf/a4/1-sided/signDOTpdf
** **
You took the time to discover and copy what
is important here in terms of your use of ‘seven percent’. It did not come from
nowhere; it came from your mind, your brain, boy. If you want a small mystery
like the fictional Sherlock wanted a large one to keep his brain focused, then
you will find the answer in the above. I can only work with what I have to work
with – your heartansoulanmind. Be clever and work it out. – Amorella
1007
hours. This is another fun assignment. I am no Dr. Freud though.
Last
night you watched the last episode of “Dig” and this afternoon you watched last
night’s “Grimm”. You do not know what to think of the story “Dig” but you are
no longer interested if the channel would bring it back for a second season. It
didn’t leave you with any questions as it all appears resolved, plus an added
humanitarian bonus, the sacrificial red calf survives to live its life out in a
pasture among other cattle of its own kind. “Grimm” has questions and lots of
drama; the previews of the last episode of the season have you thinking: “I
wish I could write like that, what an adventurous and fun script. Drama but
with an edge that no one would think it real anyway so why not just enjoy the
story – script and all. – Amorella
1436
hours. What you said is what I feel but I couldn’t produce the words to
describe. Thank you, Amorella. This assignment is to focus on how and why I
came up with the joke on seven percent of the GMG series being true, that is,
nonfiction. The joke is what seven percent? Of course no one would ever know or
even care, as it would be a useless endeavor. I am reminded here of the ancient
Greek fortune tellers who set up their prophecies in riddles so no one could
really understand what the future outcome of a battle would actually be; or the
use of the witches’ prophecies in MacBeth, tricksters three. But why did
I say seven percent true and not ten percent or five percent? A Freudian slip –
so it was out the unconscious or subconscious, if you will.
1856 hours. There was not much to this. I knew the title of
the book and I put this together with Holmes using a seven percent solution of
cocaine along with Freud and the subconscious and hypnosis used to attempt to
show Holmes how he was continuing his addiction. The ‘seven percent coke’ is my
sense of truth because although the Merlyn works are fiction there is some
truth of spirit in them, my spirit. I would like to think seven percent, as it
was satisfying to Holmes, I also might find it satisfying.
The ‘spiritual truth’ you are talking about
here in context is one hundred percent, boy. I would not allow any less. This
all comes through your mind, memory, personality and passion to be filtered
through heartansoulanmind and into content of the Merlyn books. – Amorella
1906
hours. Outside of being dead nothing in this world is one hundred percent, Amorella.
That is why the heartansoulanmind of a human
being is not entirely of this physical world, boy. – Amorella
1909
hours. I won’t quibble over a ninety-nine point nine percent. Have it your way,
but I don’t agree. I would prefer the seven percent being true.
You had scrambled eggs and toast for supper
and watched another episode of “Bones”, “Blue Bloods” and “Modern Family”.
Carol is on her iMac and you are on the MacAir. – Amorella
2142
hours. My last comment is a Freudian slip. I just added the ‘being true’
because that is how the statement was supposed to be. This doesn’t seem right
though. Gary brought this up at least once in the 1990’s, saying, ‘what if some
of your story is true?’ We laughed. It would be funny is come of the story were
found to be true, but only as a joke. Besides, when you compare it with the
fictional story being completely honest from heartansoulanmind, the honesty
means more that seven percent honest (in a different context, such as there may
be aliens that have three inhabitable planets surrounded by a single yellow sun
on the other side of the galaxy. The problem is, I don’t know my
heartansoulanmind well enough to ‘know’ that the story is 50, 75, or 99 percent
honest let alone a hundred.
That alone keeps you and the other human
beings innocent, don’t you see. – Amorella
2154
hours. Innocence has to do with Original Sin in this context; at least this is
how I see it.
** **
Original
sin, also called ancestral sin, is the Christian
doctrine of humanity's state of sin
resulting from the fall of man, stemming from Adam's rebellion in Eden. This
condition has been characterized in many ways, ranging from something as
insignificant as a slight deficiency, or a tendency toward sin yet without
collective guilt, referred to as a "sin nature", to something as
drastic as total depravity or automatic guilt of all humans through collective
guilt.
The
concept of original sin was first alluded to in the 2nd century by Irenaeus,
Bishop of Lyons in his controversy with certain dualist Gnostics. Other church
fathers such as Augustine also developed the doctrine, seeing it as based on
the New Testament teaching of Paul the Apostle (Romans 5:12-21 and 1
Corinthians 15:22) and the Old Testament verse of Psalm 51:5. Tertullian,
Cyprian, Ambrose and Ambrosiaster considered that humanity shares in Adam's
sin, transmitted by human generation. Augustine’s formulation of original sin
was popular among Protestant reformers, such as Martin Luther and John Calvin,
who equated original sin with concupiscence, affirming that it persisted even
after baptism and completely destroyed freedom. The Jansenist movement,
which Catholic Church then declared heretical, also maintained that original
sin destroyed freedom of will.
Jewish theologians are divided in
regard to the cause of what is called "original sin". Some teach that
it was due to Adam's yielding to temptation in eating of the forbidden fruit
and has been inherited by his descendants; the majority, however, do not hold
Adam responsible for the sins of humanity, teaching that, in Genesis 8:21 and
6:5-8, God recognized that Adam's sins are his alone. However, Adam is
recognized by some as having brought death into the world by his disobedience.
Because of his sin, his descendants will live a mortal life, which will end in
death of their bodies. The doctrine of "inherited sin" is not found
in most of mainstream Judaism. Although some in Orthodox Judaism place blame on
Adam for overall corruption of the world, and though there were some Jewish
teachers in Talmudic times who believed that death was a punishment brought
upon humanity on account of Adam's sin, that is not the dominant view in most
of Judaism today. Modern Judaism generally teaches that humans are born
sin-free and untainted, and choose to sin later and bring suffering to
themselves. The concept of inherited sin is also not found in any real form in
Islam. Some interpretations of original sin are rejected by other Christian
theologies.
Selected and edited from
Wikipedia – original sin
** **
2211
hours. This is an eye opener. I spent too many years teaching Milton’s Paradise
Lost. I forget all this stuff even though I have read on the subject. These
theological arguments are beyond me. Nobody knows. Such arguments are
hypothetical at best. Innocence is hypothetical too. I don’t know anything
really. This circumstance just reminds me that without Wikipedia I would not
know what I have mostly forgotten or perhaps worse misread in the first place.
Post. – Amorella
2239
hours. I know nothing really, but my own sense of existence.
Then you do not deny my existence? –
Amorella
2241
hours. At least, you are my imagination; at most, I have absolutely no idea.
You see how innocent you are, boy? Post. –
Amorella
2246
hours. If I were innocent I would not know how to lie.
There’s the rub, boy. – Amorella
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