A Strange Story

ISBN 9780984491933: Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873) is "chiefly remembered ... as a prolific novelist", whose several novels "remain immensely readable"-"a novelist of the first rank". A Strange Story is set in nineteenth century England, where a young provincial physician, Allen Fenwick, who, now in his thirties and with a successful practice, finds love-his "heart's twin"-in an 18-year-old newcomer to town, Miss Lilian Ashleigh. It began with an "irresistible impulse"-a something intangible, if not spiritual-that persuaded him to take a different route to his destination, where he chanced upon Lilian, as if by accident, in the garden of her new home. A Strange Story is a literary work of science fiction, romance, murder mystery, introspection on the meaning of life, and spirituality, interspersed with discerning social commentary, written vividly into historical philosophical context. Spirituality is not disparaging to the story, however. Not only does fiction embolden the reader to suspend disbelief concerning that which he cannot experience, as tangible proof of existence, with his five bodily senses, the story's elements are united by an understanding that, with reference merely to one's common sense, we should surmise there is more to life, and nature, than which our human senses can perceive. And Allen Fenwick asks himself, "Are there within me senses finer than those I have cultured, or without me vistas of knowledge which instincts, apart from my senses, divine?" The story intimates the development of science apart from philosophy and (non-institutionalized) religion/spirituality-with references to Francis Bacon's science of inductive reasoning-and, perhaps, their promise of a reunification under a science firmly rooted in Universal Natural Law. Is the "garden", or our understanding, of science "too narrow for Nature?" Might the modern scientist (or "puzzled student" of science) glean insight-from "perhaps unintelligible ... shreds of sentences" in Bulwer Lytton's prose-for the advancement of Unified Theory, or "chemistry, in connection with electricity and magnetism"? Perhaps "secrets in nature ... when analyzed, ... might prove to be quite reconcilable with sober science". "I can well conceive that the story I tell will be regarded by most as a wild and fantastic fable; that by some it may be considered a vehicle for guesses at various riddles of Nature, without or within us, which are free to the license of romance, though forbidden to the caution of science". Ponder whether "reason has ever advanced one step into knowledge except through that imaginative faculty which is strongest in the wisdom of ignorance, and weakest in the ignorance of the wise"? References to the Freemasons, Rosicrucians, and Sages and Adepts who were well "versed in the mysteries of Nature", leave the reader wondering whether they are woven into the story because they are, perhaps, connected historically through a larger benevolent purpose for mankind. The story is, on the whole, a Godly one. For example, the character Sir Philip Derval reflects on his life: "I have gone out of my way to do what I deemed good, and to avert or mitigate what appeared to me evil. I pause now and ask myself, whether the most virtuous existence be not that in which virtue flows spontaneously from the springs of quiet every-day action; -when a man does good without restlessly seeking it, does good unconsciously, simply because he is good and he lives?" (Description Copyright (c)2017 Peter C. Dawson Publishing. All Rights Reserved.)