re in the past six weeks than in all the years that preceded
them. I am filled with this feverish sense of liberation; it keeps
rising to my head like the fumes of strong wine. I find I am an active,
sentient, intelligent creature, with desires, with passions, with
possible convictions--even with what I never dreamed of, a possible will
of my own! I find there is a world to know, a life to lead, men and
women to form a thousand relations with. It all lies there like a great
surging sea, where we must plunge and dive and feel the breeze and breast
the waves. I stand shivering here on the brink, staring, longing,
wondering, charmed by the smell of the brine and yet afraid of the water.
The world beckons and smiles and calls, but a nameless influence from the
past, that I can neither wholly obey nor wholly resist, seems to hold me
back. I am full of impulses, but, somehow, I am not full of strength.
Life seems inspiring at certain moments, but it seems terrible and
unsafe; and I ask myself why I should wantonly measure myself with
merciless forces, when I have learned so well how to stand aside and let
them pass. Why shouldn't I turn my back upon it all and go home to--what
awaits me?--to that sightless, soundless country life, and long days
spent among old books? But if a man _is_ weak, he doesn't want to assent
beforehand to his weakness; he wants to taste whatever sweetness there
may be in paying for the knowledge. So it is that it comes back--this
irresistible impulse to take my plunge--to let myself swing, to go where
liberty leads me." He paused a moment, fixing me with his excited eyes,
and perhaps perceived in my own an irrepressible smile at his perplexity.
"'Swing ahead, in Heaven's name,' you want to say, 'and much good may it
do you.' I don't know whether you are laughing at my scruples or at what
possibly strikes you as my depravity. I doubt," he went on gravely,
"whether I have an inclination toward wrong-doing; if I have, I am sure I
shall not prosper in it. I honestly believe I may safely take out a
license to amuse myself. But it isn't that I think of, any more than I
dream of, playing with suffering. Pleasure and pain are empty words to
me; what I long for is knowledge--some other knowledge than comes to us
in formal, colourless, impersonal precept. You would understand all this
better if you could breathe for an hour the musty in-door atmosphere in
which I have always lived. To break a wind