dreamland. There being nothing real to weigh them against,
the trivial did duty for the great.

This period of my life, from the age of fifteen or sixteen to twenty-two
or twenty-three, was one of utter disorderliness.

When, in the early ages of the Earth, land and water had not yet
distinctly separated, huge misshapen amphibious creatures walked the
trunk-less forests growing on the oozing silt. Thus do the passions of
the dim ages of the immature mind, as disproportionate and curiously
shaped, haunt the unending shades of its trackless, nameless
wildernesses. They know not themselves, nor the aim of their wanderings;
and, because they do not, they are ever apt to imitate something else.
So, at this age of unmeaning activity, when my undeveloped powers,
unaware of and unequal to their object, were jostling each other for an
outlet, each sought to assert superiority through exaggeration.

When milk-teeth are trying to push their way through, they work the
infant into a fever. All this agitation finds no justification till the
teeth are out and have begun assisting in the absorption of food. In the
same way do our early passions torment the mind, like a malady, till
they realise their true relationship with the outer world.

The lessons I learnt from my experiences at that stage are to be found
in every moral text-book, but are not therefore to be despised. That
which keeps our appetites confined within us, and checks their free
access to the outside, poisons our life. Such is selfishness which
refuses to give free play to our desires, and prevents them from
reaching their real goal, and that is why it is always accompanied by
festering untruths and extravagances. When our desires find unlimited
freedom in good work they shake off their diseased condition and come
back to their own nature;--that is their true end, there also is the joy
of their being.

The condition of my immature mind which I have described was fostered
both by the example and precept of the time, and I am not sure that the
effects of these are not lingering on to the present day. Glancing back
at the period of which I tell, it strikes me that we had gained more of
stimulation than of nourishment out of English Literature. Our literary
gods then were Shakespeare, Milton and Byron; and the quality in their
work which stirred us most was strength of passion. In the social life
of Englishmen passionate outbursts are kept severely in check, for w