I.
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I
It is a very wholesome and regenerating change which a man undergoes
when he “comes to himself.” It is not only after periods of
recklessness or infatuation, when he has played the spendthrift or the
fool, that a man comes to himself. He comes to himself after
experiences of which he alone may be aware: when he has left off being
wholly preoccupied with his own powers and interests and with every
petty plan that centers in himself; when he has cleared his eyes to see
the world as it is, and his own true place and function in it.
It is a process of disillusionment. The scales have fallen away. He
sees himself soberly, and knows under what conditions his powers must
act, as well as what his powers are. He has got rid of earlier
prepossessions about the world of men and affairs, both those which
were too favorable and those which were too unfavorable—both those of
the nursery and those of a young man’s reading. He has learned his own
paces, or, at any rate, is in a fair way to learn them; has found his
footing and the true nature of the “going” he must look for in the
world; over what sorts of roads he must expect to make his running, and
at what expenditure of effort; whither his goal lies, and what cheer he
may expect by the way. It is a process of disillusionment, but it
disheartens no soundly made man. It brings him into a light which
guides instead of deceiving him; a light which does not make the way
look cold to any man whose eyes are fit for use in the open, but which
shines wholesomely, rather upon the obvious path, like the honest rays
of the frank sun, and makes traveling both safe and cheerful.