Or is he? As in the early chapters of Mary Shelley's careful revisions for the 1831
edition where we find her intent on accentuating the link between Victor's statements
and the exhausted, fanatic sufferer rescued by Walton's crew, this proviso may be
inserted to suggest the opposite of its import, that the man who utters it is, or
has been, mad. At the very least the statement raises the question of wherein the
truth lies, in scientific evidence or in psychological experience.