“Mind, this has been in my case a negative influence; it has never urged a course upon me; it has always withheld me.  Even in a dilemma of any kind, it never has said, ‘Do this;’ it is always, ’Avoid that.’  So that I have had to take my line, as I have done in practical things, though never in opposition to its warnings.

“I had always thought that I was being educated to the point of describing this subjective law to others, and helping them to some such position.  I have always felt that I had a message to deliver, though the manner and method of delivering it I felt I had to discover.

“And so I was led from point to point.  I was educated without any special domestic attachments.  I was shown that I was not to believe in my friends.  And then, at Cambridge, it came upon me that this was what was meant—­that I was not to devote myself to mean, selfish objects; that I was not even to be solaced by individual love:  but that I was to speak to the world the way of inward happiness by the simplification of the complex issues, the human intricacies, which have gathered round and obscured the whole problem.

“Then I gradually gave up, or thought I was giving up, human ambitions.  I took a course which I saw was not to end in human fame, or wealth, or happiness of the ordinary kinds; and that I might test my capacities a little more and learn myself, and also familiarize myself with more aspects of the great question which I was going to face, I travelled among the cities of men and the solitudes of the earth.

“And at last I thought I had found the way; but I will not tell you what it was, for I now see that I was mistaken.  I thought I saw that my duty was to come back and speak the first words to the society in which most naturally I moved; and I came to London, as you know.  And then I began to write; but I failed there.  I was not disheartened, for I felt that I was being led, and that that was not the way.  And once I thought that I was to be pointed out the path by the love of a daring woman; but that went from me too, as you know, and so I waited to be shown how to speak.

“But it is not to be; for while I waited, this has fallen upon me; and this is more than I can bear.  It is terrible enough, as a human being, to look Death in the face, and question of the blind eye what are the secrets he knows; but I have passed through that before, and I can truly say I do not dread that now.  It is rather with an intense and reverent curiosity that I look forward to death, as the messenger that will tell me that my work here is over, and I am to learn God’s ways elsewhere.  No, it is not that; but it is the utter aimlessness and failure of my life.  I have not attracted men’s praise—­I did not hope to do that.  I have not even attracted their attention.  I have not communicated the least grain of what I feel I know.

“Far from looking upon me as a man who at least sees clearer than others, as having a truth of price which they might be glad to learn, they look upon me as a man who has failed even to live life upon their basis, classing me with those utter failures who fail in life because they have no sense of proportion, because they can not comprehend the complex issues among which they have to fight.