As a rudiment of that vaulting ambition and its consequences which grew
up in me by degrees, and has, I lament to say, remained with me, though
now grown prudent and steady, the better aims of which I have striven to
fulfil, I may mention here, in taking leave of my boyhood, that there
was a bath at Islington called Peerless Pool, to which in summer the
boys of the school were sent to bathe. It was a large mass of water,
oblong in shape, with a wide promenade. There we would spend a whole
afternoon, sent there by the authorities when the half-holiday was at
hand. There, to excite the wonder and applause of the other boys, I
punished myself by taking the longest run to the water’s edge that was
obtainable within the enclosure, and leaping somersault fashion into
the air to a great height, and reaching the water in a seated posture.
In doing this I entailed on myself a punishment equal to being flogged.
Being somewhat sheepish at the age of fifteen, I did not stand very high
in the estimation of my uncle, General Gordon, while staying with him at
Woolwich, when one day he took me down to the Thames to bathe. There was
a platform, probably for the soldiers to jump from into the water; this
afforded me a long run, and I resolved on performing my feat. My uncle
was perfectly amazed at it, and often alluded to it with surprise in
later years.
After this display of my pluck, he was much in favour of my going into
the army.
By this time my mother was gravitating southwards with my sister and
brother, that she might be near her sisters; she accordingly took a house
at Lewes, where there was a good grammar school suitable for my brother.
The process of intellectual growth in all probability differs in
individuals; what it was in me I am able to state. It is my opinion that
with the same organism as I now have, with which I can grasp and master
any subject, not much matter what it is, I should have made but a poor
show of intellect but for certain elements of a moral nature. The first
of these is a sense of one’s own nothingness without knowledge; the
second is a desire for even more knowledge than most persons possess.
All this is emotional, but it supplies an impulse to intellectual motor
power, which, when traced out, proves to be of a very simple kind,
consisting of impressions derived from without being reiterated within,
and inspected over and over again. Take several brains of the same
capacity: one man has not the impulse of ambition or desire. Say to him—
“All the world’s a stage.” His ear takes the words to his brain, and they
are lodged there; he can repeat them from memory of sound. Say to another—
“All the world’s a stage.” He will be impressed, first by words, on
receiving them, and will repeat them mentally, and in doing so will see
that he is reiterating a pre-existing mental impression; one which at
some time he had derived through the eye; he will see a stage with men
and women on it—the players. He will see these making “their exits and
their entrances,” and by reiterated observation of old impressions,
which run parallel, he will observe men and women actively employed in
the world. By a like process of observing old impressions mentally, he
will not only witness the phenomena of human life, but will undergo the
appropriate emotion even before the phenomena are realized, the emotion
leading up to the idea.
Now all this requires previous knowledge, without which no extended
train of thought can be effectively carried out; whence it is that those
who are ambitious and have a desire for knowledge, will acquire it at
every expense, both of time and labour, and will so become accustomed to
keeping their native intellect in play.