the net-result of
my Workings amounted as yet simply to--Nothing. How then could I
believe in my Strength, when there was as yet no mirror to see it in?
Ever did this agitating, yet, as I now perceive, quite frivolous
question, remain to me insoluble: Hast thou a certain Faculty, a
certain Worth, such even as the most have not; or art thou the
completest Dullard of these modern times? Alas! the fearful Unbelief
is unbelief in yourself; and how could I believe? Had not my first,
last Faith in myself, when even to me the Heavens seemed laid open,
and I dared to love, been all-too cruelly belied? The speculative
Mystery of Life grew ever more mysterious to me: neither in the
practical Mystery had I made the slightest progress, but been
everywhere buffeted, foiled, and contemptuously cast-out. A feeble
unit in the middle of a threatening Infinitude, I seemed to have
nothing given me but eyes, whereby to discern my own wretchedness.
Invisible yet impenetrable walls, as of Enchantment, divided me from
all living: was there, in the wide world, any true bosom I could press
trustfully to mine? O Heaven, No, there was none! I kept a lock upon
my lips: why should I speak much with that shifting variety of
so-called Friends, in whose withered, vain and too-hungry souls
Friendship was but an incredible tradition? In such cases, your
resource is to talk little, and that little mostly from the
Newspapers. Now when I look back, it was a strange isolation I then
lived in. The men and women around me, even speaking with me, were but
Figures; I had, practically, forgotten that they were alive, that they
were not merely automatic. In midst of their crowded streets and
assemblages, I walked solitary; and (except as it was my own heart,
not another's, that I kept devouring) savage also, as the tiger in his
jungle. Some comfort it would have been, could I, like a Faust, have
fancied myself tempted and tormented of the Devil; for a Hell, as I
imagine, without Life, though only diabolic Life, were more frightful:
but in our age of Down-pulling and Disbelief, the very Devil has been
pulled down, you cannot so much as believe in a Devil. To me the
Universe was all void of Life, of Purpose, of Volition, even of
Hostility: it was one huge, dead, immeasurable Steam-engine, rolling
on, in its dead indifference, to grind me limb from limb. O, the vast,
gloomy, solitary Golgotha, and Mill of Death! Why was the Living
banished thither companionless, co