ays obscure? They merely wring the will out of us;
and well we may ask, Who would care for his life if he knew he was going
to lose it on the morrow? And what mother would love her children if she
were certain they would fall into evil ways, or if she believed the
soothsayers who told her that her children would oppose her ideas? She
might love them independent of their opposition, but how could she love
them if she knew they were only born to do wrong? Volumes have been
written on the subject of predestination and freewill, and the truth is
that it is as impossible to believe in one as in the other.
Nevertheless, prognostications have a knack of coming true, and if I am
drowned crossing the lake you will be convinced of the truth of omens.
Perhaps I should not write you these things, but the truth is, I cannot
help myself; there is no power of resistance in me. I do not know if I
am well or ill; my brain is on fire, and I go on thinking and thinking,
trying to arrive at some rational belief, but never succeeding.
Sometimes I think of myself as a fly on a window-pane, crawling and
buzzing, and crawling and buzzing again, and so on and so on....

'You are one of those who seem to have been born without much interest
in religion or fear of the here-after, and in a way I am like you, but
with a difference: I acquiesced in early childhood, and accepted
traditional beliefs, and tried to find happiness in the familiar rather
than in the unknown. Whether I should have found the familiar enough if
I hadn't met you, I shall never know. I've thought a good deal on this
subject, and it has come to seem to me that we are too much in the habit
of thinking of the intellect and the flesh as separate things, whereas
they are but one thing. I could write a great deal on this subject, but
I stop, as it were, on the threshold of my thought, for this is no time
for philosophical writing. I am all a-tremble, and though my brain is
working quickly, my thoughts are not mature and deliberate. My brain
reminds me at times of the skies that followed Father Moran's
visit--skies restlessly flowing, always different and always the same.
These last days are merciless days, and I have to write to you in order
to get some respite from purposeless thinking. Sometimes I stop in my
walk to ask myself who I am and what I am, and where I am going. Will
you be shocked to hear that, when I awoke and heard the wind howling, I
nearly got out of bed to pray to G