their abundant reservoir. Yet the peril, which he
soon grew to perceive, was that his outfit of emotional experience, his
knowledge of human life in its breadth and complexity, was very narrow
and limited. He had seen life only under a single aspect, and that an
aspect which, poignant and intense as it was, did not easily lend
itself to artistic treatment. The result was that his outlook was a
narrow one, and his mind was driven back upon itself. The need to
speak, to express, to shape thoughts in appropriate words, so long
repressed, so instinctive to him, became almost fearfully imperative.
He was haunted by a hundred ardent speculations in art, in literature,
in religion, in metaphysics, all of a vague rather than a precise kind.
His mind had been always of a loose, poetical type, turning to the
quality of things rather than to outward facts or practical questions.
Temperaments, individualities, appealed to him more than national
movements or aspirations; and then the old love of nature came back
like a solemn passion.

This sudden growth of egotism and introspection tended to alarm and
disquiet Hugh's friends; they put it down to his severance from
practical activities, and began to fear a morbid and self-regarding
attitude. Yet Hugh knew that it would right itself; it was but the
completion of a process, begun in his college days, and checked by his
early entry into professional life; it was a return of his youth, the
natural fulfilment of that period of speculative thought, which a young
man must pass through before he can put himself in line with the world.
And in any case it was inevitable; and Hugh was content as before to
leave himself in the hand of God, only glad at least that a process
which would naturally have been finished under the overshadowing of the
melancholy of youth, could thus be worked out with the temperate
tranquillity, the serenity of manhood.

VIII

Foundations of Faith--Duality--Christianity--The Will of God

After all the inevitable bustle, the moving and settling of furniture,
the constant noting of small needs, the conferences with tradesmen, all
the details inseparable from establishing a new home, had died away,
Hugh found himself, as has been said, for the first time in his life in
comparative solitude. He had a few old friends in Cambridge; but
unless two men are members of the same college, meetings, in a place of
many small engagements, have to be deliberately ar