“I can’t for the life of me fancy, I confess,” wrote Tom, “what you
think will come of speculating about necessity and free will. I only
know that I can hold out my hand before me, and can move it to the
right or left, despite of all powers in heaven or earth. As I sit here
writing to you I can let into my heart, and give the reins to, all
sorts of devils’ passions, or to the Spirit of God. Well, that’s enough
for me. I _know_ it of myself, and I believe you know it of yourself,
and everybody knows it of themselves or himself; and why you can’t be
satisfied with that, passes my comprehension. As if one hasn’t got
puzzles enough, and bothers enough, under one’s nose, without going
afield after a lot of metaphysical quibbles. No, I’m wrong—not going
afield—anything one has to go afield for is all right. What a fellow
meets outside himself he isn’t responsible for, and must do the best
he can with. But to go on forever looking inside of one’s self, and
groping about amongst one’s own sensations, and ideas, and whimsies of
one kind and another, I can’t conceive a poorer line of business than
that. Don’t you get into it now, that’s a dear boy.
“Very likely you’ll tell me you can’t help it; that every one has his
own difficulties, and must fight them out, and that mine are one sort,
and yours another. Well, perhaps you may be right. I hope I’m getting
to know that my plummet isn’t to measure all the world. But it does
seem a pity that men shouldn’t be thinking about how to cure some of
the wrongs which poor dear old England is pretty near dying of, instead
of taking the edge off their brains, and spending all their steam in
speculating about all kinds of things, which wouldn’t make any poor man
in the world—or rich one either, for that matter—a bit better off, if
they were all found out, and settled to-morrow.”