e of
Apostasy.' In conduct it was the same. Had a divine Messenger from the
clouds, or miraculous Handwriting on the wall, convincingly proclaimed
to me _This thou shalt do_, with what passionate readiness, as I often
thought, would I have done it, had it been leaping into the
infernal Fire. Thus, in spite of all Motive-grinders, and Mechanical
Profit-and-Loss Philosophies, with the sick ophthalmia and hallucination
they had brought on, was the Infinite nature of Duty still dimly present
to me: living without God in the world, of God's light I was not utterly
bereft; if my as yet sealed eyes, with their unspeakable longing,
could nowhere see Him, nevertheless in my heart He was present, and His
heaven-written Law still stood legible and sacred there."

Meanwhile, under all these tribulations, and temporal and spiritual
destitutions, what must the Wanderer, in his silent soul, have endured!
"The painfullest feeling," writes he, "is that of your own Feebleness
(_Unkraft_); ever, as the English Milton says, to be weak is the true
misery. And yet of your Strength there is and can be no clear feeling,
save by what you have prospered in, by what you have done. Between
vague wavering Capability and fixed indubitable Performance, what a
difference! A certain inarticulate Self-consciousness dwells dimly
in us; which only our Works can render articulate and decisively
discernible. Our Works are the mirror wherein the spirit first sees its
natural lineaments. Hence, too, the folly of that impossible Precept,
_Know thyself_; till it be translated into this partially possible one,
_Know what thou canst work at_.

"But for me, so strangely unprosperous had I been, 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 contemp