It seems to me that the whole progress of life and thought, of love and charity, depends upon our coming to understand each other.  The hostile seclusion which some desire is really a savage and almost animal inheritance; and the best part of civilisation has sprung from the generous self-revelation of kindly and honourable souls.

I am not even deterred, in a case of this kind, by wondering whether the person concerned would have liked or disliked the publication of these letters.  I feel no sort of doubt that, as far as I am concerned, she would be only too willing that I should thus have read and loved them, and I cannot believe that the disapprobation of a few austere people, or the curiosity of a few vulgar people, would weigh in the balance for a moment against the joy of like-minded spirits.

The worst dissatisfaction of life is the difficulty one has in drawing near to others, the foolish hardness, often only superficial, which makes one hold back from and repudiate intimacies.  If I had known and loved a great and worthy spirit, and had been the recipient of his confidences, I should hold it a solemn duty to tell the world what I knew.  I should care nothing for the carping of the cold and unsympathetic, but I should base my decision on the approval of all loving and generous souls.  This seems to me the highest service that art can render, and if it be said that no question of art comes in, in the publication of such records as these letters, I would reply that they are themselves works of the highest and most instinctive art, because the world, its relations and affections, its loss and grief, its pain and suffering, are here seen patiently mirrored and perfectly expressed by a most perceptive personality.  The moment that emotions are depicted and represented, that moment they have felt the holy and transfiguring power of art; and then they pass out of the region of stuffy conventions and commonplace decorums into a finer and freer air.  I do not deny that there is much vulgar inquisitiveness abroad, but that matters little; and, for myself, I am glad to think that the world is moving in the direction of a greater frankness.  I do not mean that a man has not a right to live his life privately, in his own house and his own circle, if he wills.  But if that life is lived simply, generously and bravely, I welcome any ripple or ray from it that breaks in light and fragrance upon the harsher and uglier world.

July 1, 1889.

I have just read an interesting sentence.  I don’t know where it comes from—­I saw it in a book of extracts.

“I am more and more convinced that the cure for sentiment, as for all weakened forms of strong things, is not to refuse to feel it, but to feel more in it.  This seems to me to make the whole difference between a true and a false asceticism.  The false goes for getting rid of what it is afraid of; the true goes for using and making it serve, the one empties, the other fills; the one abstracts, the other concentrates.”