I respect the mythical
dreams of his 'young days'; I assume that he has been really in love;
but, pray press me not too curiously as to whether I believe it all, as
to whether I really imagine that his youth knew other dreams than those
of the foolish young 'masherdom' one meets in the train every morning,
or that he has married a wife for other than purely 'masculine' reasons.
These matters I do not mind leaving in the form of a postulate--let them
be granted: but that every man has at one time or another had the craze
for saving the world I will not assume. Narcissus took it very early,
and though he has been silent concerning his mission for some time, and
when last we heard of it had considerably modified his propaganda, he
still cherishes it somewhere in secret, I have little doubt; and one may
not be surprised, one of these days, to find it again bursting out 'into
sudden flame.'
His spiritual experience has probably been the deepest and keenest of
his life. I do not propose to trace his evolution from Anabaptism to
Agnosticism. The steps of such development are comparatively familiar;
they have been traced by greater pens than mine. The 'means' may vary,
but the process is uniform.
Whether a man deserts the ancestral Brahminism that has so long been
'good enough for his parents,' and listens to the voice of the Buddhist
missionary, or joins Lucian in the seat of the scornful, shrugging at
augur and philosopher alike; whether it is Voltaire, or Tom Paine, or
Thomas Carlyle, or Walt Whitman, or a Socialist tract, that is the
emancipator, the emancipation is all one.
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