It was characteristic of his natural indolence that he chose the very easiest method of reading—­that is to say, he always read, if he could, in a translation, or if the style of the original was the object, with one.  This, like his posture, nearly recumbent, was deliberately adopted.  “I find,” he said, “that the reflective part of my brain works best when I have as little either bodily or purely intellectual to distract me as possible.  And it is the reflective part,” he says, “that I always preferred to cultivate, and that latterly I have devoted my whole attention to.  It is through the reflective part that one gets the highest influence over people.  Training the reflective function is the training of character, while the training of the purely physical side often, and the training of the intellectual side not uncommonly, have a distinctly deteriorative effect.

“By the reflective part, I mean all that deals with the connection of things, the discovery of principles, the laws that regulate emotion and influence, the motives of human nature, the basis of existence, the solution of the problem of life and being—­that vast class of subjects which lie just below, and animate concrete facts, and which are the only things worthy of the devotion of a philosopher, though no knowledge is unworthy of his attention.

“I am not quite clear what position I intend to take up in the world at large.  This only is certain, that if I am going to teach, and I have a vague sense that I am destined for that, it is necessary first to know something, to be sure of something.”

All his days were alike, except that on Sunday he used to frequent city churches in the afternoon, or go to Westminster Abbey and St. Paul’s.  His father was a friend of a canon at the former place, and Arthur was generally certain of a stall; and I used often to see his tall form there, with his eyes “indwelling wistfully,” “reputans secum,” as Virgil says, lost in speculations and wonders, and a whole host of melancholy broodings over life and death to which he rarely gave voice, but which formed a perpetual background to his thoughts.  He varied this by visits to his father in Hampshire, and occasional trips to the country, not unfrequently alone, the object and occupation of which he never told me, except to say once that he had explored, he thought, every considerable “solitude” in England.

There is one thing that I must not forget to mention—­his dreams.  He never slept, he told me, without innumerable dreams, and he not unfrequently told me of them.  They always struck me as curiously vivid.  I subjoin the following from one of his diaries.  They are often given at full length.  This is one of the most interesting I can find.

“January 8.—­Slept badly; toward morning dreamed that I was walking with two or three friends, and accompanied by a tall man whom I did not know, wrapped in a cloak, through a very dark wood.  I seemed to be in a very heavy mood.  We came upon a building brightly lighted, and, entering, found a hall with many people dining.  There was much wine and talk, and a great deal of laughing and merriment.  We appeared to be invisible.