The cure of five thousand souls, scattered over six or seven villages, devolved solely on my father.  This work, even to a man so active as my father, who was very conscientious in the fulfilment of his duty as minister, was all-absorbing; the more so since the custom of frequent services still prevailed.  Besides all this, my father had undertaken to superintend the building of a large new church, which drew him more and more from his home and from his children.

I was left to the care of the servants; but they, profiting by my father’s absorption in his work, left me, fortunately for me, to my brothers, who were somewhat older than myself.[2] This, in addition to a circumstance of my later life, may have been the cause of that unswerving love for my family, and especially for my brothers, which has, to the present moment, been of the greatest importance to me in the conduct of my life.  Although my father, for a village pastor, was unusually well informed—­nay, even learned and experienced—­and was an incessantly active man, yet in consequence of this separation from him during my earliest years I remained a stranger to him throughout my life; and in this way I was as truly without a father as without a mother.  Amidst such surroundings I reached my fourth year.  My father then married again, and gave me a second mother.  My soul must have felt deeply at this time the want of a mother’s love,—­of parental love,—­for in this year occurs my first consciousness of self.  I remember that I received my new mother overflowing with feelings of simple and faithful child-love towards her.  These sentiments made me happy, developed my nature, and strengthened me, because they were kindly received and reciprocated by her.  But this happiness did not endure.  Soon my step-mother rejoiced in the possession of a son of her own;[3] and then her love was not only withdrawn entirely from me and transferred to her own child, but I was treated with worse than indifference—­by word and deed, I was made to feel an utter stranger.

I am obliged here to mention these circumstances, and to describe them so particularly, because in them I see the first cause of my early habit of introspection, my tendency to self-examination, and my early separation from companionship with other men.  Soon after the birth of her own son, when I had scarcely entered my boyhood, my step-mother ceased to use the sympathetic, heart-uniting “thou” in speaking to me, and began to address me in the third person, the most estranging of our forms of speech.  And as in this mode of address the third person, “he,” isolates the person addressed, it created a great chasm between my step-mother and me.[4] At the beginning of my boyhood, I already felt utterly lonely, and my soul was filled with grief.