Still, while I was in this way making a purely mental endeavour to
penetrate into as many intellectual domains as I could, and to become
master of one subject after another, I was very far from being at peace
with regard to my intellectual acquisitions, or from feeling myself in
incontestable possession of them. While I was satisfying my desire for
insight or knowledge and, by glimpses, felt my supremest happiness in
the delight of comprehension, an ever more violent struggle was going
on in my emotions.
As my being grew and developed within me and I slowly emerged from the
double state of which I had been conscious, in other words, the more I
became one and individual and strove to be honest and true, the less I
felt myself to be a mere individual, the more I realised that I was
bound up with humanity, one link in the chain, one organ belonging to
the Universe. The philosophical Pantheism I was absorbed by, itself
worked counter to the idea of individualism inherent in me, taught me
and presented to me the union of all beings in Nature the All-Divine.
But it was not from Pantheism that the crisis of my spiritual life
proceeded; it was from the fountains of emotion which now shot up and
filled my soul with their steady flow. A love for humanity came over
me, and watered and fertilised the fields of my inner world which had
been lying fallow, and this love of humanity vented itself in a vast
compassion.
This gradually absorbed me till I could hardly bear the thought of the
suffering, the poor, the oppressed, the victims of Injustice. I always
saw them in my mind's eye, and it seemed to be my duty to work for
them, and to be disgraceful of me to enjoy the good things of life
while so many were being starved and tortured. Often as I walked along
the streets at night I brooded over these ideas till I knew nothing of
what was passing around me, but only felt how all the forces of my
brain drew me towards those who suffered.
There were warm-hearted and benevolent men among my near relatives. The
man whom my mother's younger sister had married had his heart in the
right place, so much indeed that he no sooner saw or heard of distress
than his hand was in his pocket, although he had little from which to
give. My father's brother was a genuinely philanthropic man, who
founded one beneficent institution or society after the other, had an
unusual power of inducing his well-to-do fellow-townsmen to carry his
schemes through, and in the elaboration of them showed a perception and
practical sense that almost amounted to genius; this was the more
surprising since his intelligence was not otherwise remarkable for its
keenness and his reasoning methods were confused. But what I felt was
quite different. My feelings were not so easily roused as those of the
first-mentioned; I was not so good-natured or so quick to act as he.
Neither did they resemble those of my other uncle, who merely
represented compassion for those unfortunately situated, but was
without the least vestige of rebellious feeling against the conditions
or the people responsible for the misery; my uncle was always content
with life as it was, saw the hand of a loving Providence everywhere and
was fully and firmly convinced that he himself was led and helped by
this same Providence, which specially watched over the launching of his
projects for the welfare of mankind. No, my feeling was of quite
another kind. Nothing was farther removed from me than this sometimes
quite childish optimism. It was not enough for me to advertise the
sufferings of a few individuals and, when possible, alleviate them; I
sought the causes of them in brutality and injustice. Neither could I
recognise the finger of a Universal Ruler in a confusion of
coincidences, conversations, newspaper articles, and advice by prudent
men, the outcome of all which was the founding of a society for
seamstresses or the erection of a hospital to counteract the misery
that the Controlling Power had Itself occasioned. I was a child no
longer, and in that sense never had been childish. But my heart bled
none the less with sympathy for society's unfortunates. I did not as
yet perceive the necessity of that selfishness which is self-assertion,
and I felt oppressed and tormented by all that I, in my comparatively
advantageous position as a non-proletarian, enjoyed, while many others
did not.
Then another mood, with other promptings, asserted itself. I felt an
impulse to step forward as a preacher to the world around me, to the
thoughtless and the hardhearted. Under the influence of strong emotion
I wrote an edifying discourse, _The Profitable Fear_. I began to regard
it as my duty, so soon as I was fitted for it, to go out into the town
and preach at every street-corner, regardless of whether a lay
preacher, like myself, should encounter indifference or harvest scorn.
This course attracted me because it presented itself to me under the
guise of the most difficult thing, and, with the perversity of youth, I
thought difficulty the only criterion of duty. I only needed to hit
upon something that seemed to me to be the right thing and then say to
myself: "You dare not do it!" for all the youthful strength and daring
that was in me, all my deeper feelings of honour and of pride, all my
love of grappling with the apparently insurmountable to unite, and in
face of this _You dare not_, satisfy myself that I did dare.
As provisionally, self-abnegation, humility, and asceticism seemed to
me to be the most difficult things, for a time my whole spiritual life
was concentrated into an endeavour to attain them. Just at this time--I
was nineteen--my family was in a rather difficult pecuniary position,
and I, quite a poor student, was cast upon my own resources. I had
consequently not much of this world's goods to renounce. From a
comfortable residence in Crown Prince's Street, my parents had moved to
a more modest flat in the exceedingly unaristocratic Salmon Street,
where I had an attic of limited dimensions with outlook over roofs by
day and a view of the stars by night. Quiet the nights were not,
inasmuch as the neighbouring houses re-echoed with screams and shrieks
from poor women, whom their late-returning husbands or lovers thrashed
in their cups. But never had I felt myself so raised, so exhilarated,
so blissfully happy, as in that room. My days slipped by in ecstasy; I
felt myself consecrated a combatant in the service of the Highest. I
used to test my body, in order to get it wholly under my control, ate
as little as possible, slept as little as possible, lay many a night
outside my bed on the bare floor, gradually to make myself as hardy as
I required to be. I tried to crush the youthful sensuality that was
awakening in me, and by degrees acquired complete mastery over myself,
so that I could be what I wished to be, a strong and willing instrument
in the fight for the victory of Truth. And I plunged afresh into study
with a passion and a delight that prevented my perceiving any lack, but
month after month carried me along, increasing in knowledge and in
mental power, growing from day to day.