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p.,c^a.d./^ 




HARVARD COLLEGE 
LIBRARY 




FROM THE FUND OF 

CHARLES MINOT 

CLASS OP 1828 



iJ 







THE 



STORY OF MY HEART 



LONDON : PRINTED BY 

SPOTTISWOODB AND CO., NEW-STRBBT SQUARB 

AND PARLIAMENT STRBBT 









THE 



STORY OF MY HEART 



MY AUTOBIOGRAPHY 



f 



BY 

RICHAUD JEFFERIES 

author of 
'the gamekeeper at home' 'wild life in a southern county' etc. 



LONDON 
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 

1883 

All rights reserved 



-2.(3 Y-CC . C./O 



f AUG 7. 19! 8 



// 1- i.u\.^^ (ffie 1. 1^#(^ 



THE 

STORY OF MY HEART. 



-•o*- 



CHAPTER I. 

The story of my heart commences seven- 
teen years ago. In the glow of youth there 
were times every now and then when I felt 
the necessity of a strong inspiration of soul- 
thought. My heart was dusty, parched for 
want of the rain of deep feeling ; my mind 
arid and dry, for there is a dust which settles 
on the heart as well as that which falls on a 
ledge. It is injurious to the mind as well as 
to the body to be always in one place and 
always surrounded by the same circum- 
stances. A species of thick clothing slowly 
grows about the mind, the pores are choked, 
little habits become a part of existence, and 

B 



/ 



2 THE STORY OF MY HEART 

by degrees the mind is inclosed in a husk. 
When this began to form I felt eager to 
escape from it, to throw it off like heavy 
clothing, to drink deeply once more at the 
fresh fountains of life. An inspiration — a 
long deep breath of the pure air of thought — 
could alone give health to the heart. 

There was a hill to which I used to resort 
at such periods. The labour of walking three 
miles to it, all the while gradually ascending, 
seemed to clear my blood of the heaviness 
accumulated at home. On a warm summer 
day the slow continued rise required continual 
effort, which carried away the sense of oppres- 
sion. The familiar everyday scene was soon 
out of sight ; I came to other trees, meadows, 
and fields ; I began to breathe a new air and 
to have a fresher aspiration. I restrained my 
soul till I reached the sward of the hill ; 
psyche, the soul that longed to be loose. I 
would write psyche always instead of soul to 
avoid meanings which have become attached 
to the word soul, but it is awkward to do so. 



THE STORY OF MY HEART. 3 

Clumsy indeed are all wo rds, the moment, the 
wooden stage of commonplace life is left. I 
restrained psyche, my soul, till I reached and 
put my foot on the grass at the beginning of 
the green hill itself. 

Moving up the sweet short turf, at every 
step my heart seemed to obtain a wider 
horizon of feeling ; with every inhalation of 
rich pure air, a deeper desire. The very light 
of the sun was whiter and more brilliant here. 
By the time I had reached the summit I had 
entirely forgotten the petty circumstances 
and the annoyances of existence. I felt 
myself, myself There was an intrenchment 
on the summit, and going down into the fosse 
I walked round it slowly to recover breath. 
On the south-western side there was a spot 
where the outer bank had partially slipped, 
leaving a gap. There the view was over a 
broad plain, beautiful with wheat, and in- 
closed by a perfect amphitheatre of green 
hills. Through these hills there was one 
narrow groove, or pass, southwards, where 

B 2 



4^ THE STORY OF MY HEART. 

the white clouds seemed to close in the 
horizon. Woods hid the scattered hamlets 
and farmhouses, so that I was quite alone. 

I was utterly alone with the sun and the 
earth. Lying down on the grass, I spoke in 
my soul to the earth, the sun, the air, and the 
distant sea far beyond sight I thought of 
the earth's firmness — I felt it bear me up 
through the grassy couch there came an 
influence as if I could feel the great earth 
speaking to me. I thought of the wandering 
air — its pureness, which is its beauty ; the air 
touched me and gave me something of itself. 
I spoke to the sea, though so far, in my mind 
I saw it, green at the rim of the earth and 
blue in deeper ocean ; I desired to have its 
strength, its mystery and glory. Then I 
addressed the sun, desiring the soul equivalent 
of his light and brilliance, his endurance and 
unwearied race. I turned to the blue heaven 
over, gazing into its depth, inhaling its ex- 
quisite colour and sweetness. The rich blue 
of the unattainable flower of the sky drew 



THE STORY OF MY HEART #5 

my soul towards it, and there it rested, for 
pure colour is rest of heart By all these 
I prayed ; I felt an emotion of the soul beyond 
all definition ; prayer is a puny thing to it, 
and the word is a rude sign to the feeling, 
but I know no other. 

By the blue heaven, by the rolling sun 
bursting through untrodden space, a new 
ocean of ether every day unveiled. By the 
fresh and wandering air encompassing the 
world ; by the sea sounding on the shore — 
the green sea white-flecked at the margin and 
the deep ocean; by the strong earth under 
me. Then, returning, I prayed by the sweet 
thyme, whose little flowers I touched with 
my hand ; by the slender grass ; ,by the 
crumble of dry chalky earth \ took up and 
let fall through my fingers. Touching the 
crumble of earth, the blade of grass, the 
thyme flower, breathing the earth-encircling 
air, thinking of the sea and the sky, holding 
out my hand for the sunbeams to touch 
it, prone on the sward in token of deep 



6 THE STORY OF MY HEART 

reverence, thus I prayed that I might touch 
to the unutterable existence infinitely higher 
than deity. 

With all the intensity of feeling which 
exalted me, all the intense communion I held 
with the earth, the sun and sky, the stars 
hidden by the light, with the ocean — in no 
manner can the thrilling depth of these feel- 
ings be written — with these I prayed, as if 
they were the keys of an instrument, of an 
organ, with which I swelled forth the notes 
of my soul, redoubling my own voice by their 
power. The great sun burning with light ; 
the strong earth, dear earth ; the warm sky ; 
the pure air; the thought of ocean; the 
inexpressible beauty of all filled me with 
a rapture, an ecstasy, an inflatus. With this 
inflatus, too, I prayed. Next to myself I 
came and recalled myself, my bodily existence. 
I held out my hand, the sunlight gleamed on 
the skin and the iridescent nails ; I recalled 
the mystery and beauty of the flesh. I 
thought of the mind with which I could see 



THE STORY OF MY HEART. 7 

the ocean sixty miles distant, and gather to 
myself its glory. I thought of my inner 
existence, that consciousness which is called 
the soul. These — that is, myself — I threw 
into the balance to weigh the prayer the 
heavier. My strength of body, mind and 
soul, I flung into it ; I put forth my strength ; 
I wrestled and laboured, and toiled in might 
of prayer. The prayer, this soul-emotion 
was in itself — not for an object — it was a 
passion. I hid my face in the grass, I was 
wholly prostrated, I lost myself in the wrestle, 
I was rapt and carried away. 

Becoming calmer, I returned to myself 
and thought, reclining in rapt thought, full 
of aspiration, steeped to the lips of my soul 
in desire. I did not then define, or analyse, 
or understand this. I see now that what I 
laboured for was soul-life, more soul-nature, 
to be exalted, to be full of soul-learning* 
Finally I rose, walked half a mile or so along 
the summit of the hill eastwards, to soothe 
myself and come to the common ways of life 



8 THE STORY OF MY HEART 

again. Had any shepherd accidentally seen 
me lying on the turf, he would only have 
thought that I was resting a few minutes ; I 
made no outward show. Who could have 
imagined the whirlwind of passion that was 
going on within me as I reclined there ! I 
was greatly exhausted when I reached home. 
Occasionally I went upon the hill deliberately, 
deeming it good to do so ; then, again, this 
craving carried me away up there of itself. 
Though the principal feeling was the same, 
there were variations in the mode in which 
it affected ma 

Sometimes on lying down on the sward 
I first looked up at the sky, gazing for a long 
time till I could see deep into the azure and 
my eyes were full of the colour ; then I turned 
my face to the grass and thyme, placing my 
hands at each side of my face so as to shut 
out everything and hide myself. Having 
drunk deeply of the heaven above and felt the 
most glorious beauty of the day, and remem- 
bering the old, old sea, which (as it seemed to 



THE STORY OF MY HEART 9 

me) was but just yonder at the edge, I now 
became lost, and absorbed into the being or 
existence of the universe. I felt down deep 
into the earth under, and high above into the 
sky, and farther still to the sun and stars. 
Still farther beyond the stars into the hollow 
of space, and losing thus my separateness of 
being came to seem like a part of the whole. 
Then I whispered to the earth beneath, 
through the grass and thyme, down into the 
depth of its ear, and again up to the starry 
space hid behind the blue of day. Travelling 
in an instant across the distant sea, I saw as 
if with actual vision the palms and cocoanut 
trees, the bamboos of India, and the cedars 
of the extreme south. Like a lake with 
islands the ocean lay before me, as clear and 
vivid as the plain beneath in the midst of 
the amphitheatre of hills. 

With the glory of the great sea, I said ; 
with the firm, solid, and sustaining earth ; 
the depth, distance, and expanse of ether; 
the age, tamelessness, and ceaseless motion 



lo THE STORY OF MY HEART, 

of the ocean ; the stars, and the unknown 
in space ; by all those things which are most 
powerful known to me, and by those which 
exist, but of which I have no idea whatever, 
I pray. Further, by my own soul, that secret 
existence which above all other things bears 
the nearest resemblance to the ideal of spirit, 
infinitely nearer than earth, sun, or star. 
Speaking by an inclination towards, not in 
words, my soul prays that I may have some- 
thing from each of these, that I may gather 
a flower from them, that I may have in 
myself the secret and meaning of the earth, 
the golden sun, the light, the foam-flecked sea. 
Let my soul become enlarged ; I am not 
enough ; I am little and contemptible. I 
desire a greatness of soul, an irradiance of 
mind, a deeper insight, a broader hope. 
Give me power of soul, so that I may actually 
effect by its will that which I strive for. 

In winter, though I could not then rest 
on the grass, or stay long enough to form 
any definite expression, I still went up to 



THE STORY OF MY HEART. ii 

the hill once now and then, for it seemed that 
to merely visit the spot repeated all that I had 
previously said. But it was not only then. 

In summer I went out into the fields, 
and let my soul inspire these thoughts under 
the trees, standing against the trunk, or look- 
ing up through the branches at the sky. 
If trees could speak, hundreds of them would 
say that I had had these soul-emotions under 
them. 'Leaning against the oak*s massive 
trunk, and feeling the rough bark and the 
lichen at my back, looking southwards over 
the grassy fields, cowslip-yellow, at the woods 
on the slope, I thought my desire of deeper 
soul-life. Or under the green firs, looking 
upwards, the sky was more deeply blue at 
their tops ; then the brake fern was unroll- 
ing, the doves cooing, the thickets astir, the 
late ash-leaves coming forth. Under the 
shapely rounded elms, by the hawthorn 
bushes and hazel, everywhere the same 
deep desire for the soul-nature ; to have from 
all green things and from the sunlight the 



12 THE STORY OF MY HEART, 

inner meaning which was not known to them, 
that I might be full of light as the woods of 
the sun's rays. Just to touch the lichened 
bark of a tree, or the end of a spray project- 
ing over the path as I walked, seemed to 
repeat the same prayer in me. 

The long-lived summer days dried and 
warmed the turf in the meadows. I used to 
lie down in solitary corners at full length on 
my back, so as to feel the embrace of the earth. 
The grass stood high above me, and the 
shadows of the tree-branches danced on my 
face. I looked up at the sky, with half-closed 
eyes to bear the dazzling light. Bees buzzed 
over, sometimes a butterfly passed, there was 
a hum in the air, greenfinches sang in the 
hedge. Gradually entering into the intense 
life of the summer days — a life which burned 
around as if every grass blade and leaf were 
a torch — I came to feel the long-drawn life of 
the earth back into the dimmest past, while 
the sun of the moment was warm on me. 
Sesostris on the most ancient sands of the 



THE STORY OF MY HEART. 13 

south, in ancient, ancient days> was conscious 
of himself and of the sun. This sunlight 
linked me through the ages to that past 
consciousness. From all the ages my soul 
desired to take that soul-life which had flowed 
through them as the sunbeams had continually 
poured on earth. As the hot sands take up 
the heat, so would I take up that soul-energy. 
Dreamy in appearance I was breathing full 
of existence ; I was aware of the grass-blades, 
the flowers, the leaves on hawthorn and tree. 
I seemed to live more largely through them, 
as if each were a pore through which I 
drank. The grasshoppers called and leaped, 
the greenfinches sang, the blackbirds happily 
fluted, all the air hummed with life. I was 
plunged deep in existence, and with all that 
existence I prayed. 

Through every grass-blade in the thousand, 
thousand grasses ; through the million leaves, 
veined and edge-cut, on bush and tree ; through 
the song-notes and the marked feathers of the 
birds ; through the insects* hum and the colour 



14 THE STORY OF MY HEART. 

of the butterflies ; through the soft warm air, 
the flecks of cloud dissolving — I used them all 
for prayer. With all the energy the sun- 
beams had poured unwearied on the earth 
since Sesostris was conscious of them on the 
ancient sands ; with all the life that had been 
lived by vigorous man and beauteous woman 
since first in dearest Greece the dream of 
the gods was woven ; with all the soul-life 
that had flowed a long stream down to me, 
I prayed that I might have a soul more than 
equal, far beyond my conception of, these 
things of the past, the present, and the ful- 
ness of all life. Not only equal to these, but 
beyond, higher, and more powerful than I could 
imagine. That I might take from all their 
energy, grandeur, and beauty, and gather it 
into me. That my soul might be more than 
the cosmos of life. 

I prayed with the glowing clouds of sun- 
set and the soft light of the first star coming 
through the violet sky. At night with the 
stars, according to the season ; now with the 
Pleiades, now with the Swan or burning 



THE STORY OF MY HEART 15 

Sirius, and broad Orion s whole constellation, 
red Aldebaran, Arcturus, and the northern 
crown ; with the morning star, the light- 
bringer, once now and then when I saw it, a 
white-gold ball in the violet-purple sky, or 
framed about with pale summer vapour float- 
ing away as red streaks shot horizontally in 
the east. A diffused saffron ascended into 
the luminous upper azure. The disk of the 
sun rose over the hill, fluctuating with throbs 
of light ; his chest heaved in fervour of bril- 
liance. All the glory of the sunrise filled me 
with broader and furnace-like vehemence of 
prayer. That I might have the deepest of 
soul-life, the deepest of all, deeper far than 
all this greatness of the visible universe and 
even of the invisible ; that I might have a 
fulness of soul till now unknown, and utterly 
beyond my own conception. 

In the deepest darkness of the night the 
same thought rose in my mind as in the 
bright light of noontide. What is there 
which I have not used to strengthen the 
same emotion "i 



i6 THE STORY OF MY HEART 



CHAPTER II. 

Sometimes I went to a deep, narrow valley 
in the hills, silent and solitary. The sky 
crossed from side to side, like a roof supported 
on two walls of green. Sparrows chirped in 
the wheat at the verge above, their calls fall- 
ing like the twittering of swallows from the 
air. There was no other sound. The short 
grass was dried grey as it grew by the heat ; 
the sun hung over the narrow vale as if it 
had been put there by hand. Burning, burn- 
ing, the sun glowed on the sward at the foot 
of the slope where these thoughts burned 
into me. How many, many years, how 
many cycles of years, how many bundles of 
cycles of years, had the sun glowed down 
thus on that hollow .^ Since it was formed 



THE STORY OF MY HEART, 17 

how long ? Since it was worn and shaped, 
groove-like, in the flanks of the hills by mighty 
forces which had ebbed. Alone with the 
sun which glowed on the work when it was 
done, I saw back through space to the old 
time of tree-ferns, of the lizard flying through 
the air, the lizard-dragon wallowing in sea 
foam, the mountainous creatures, twice- 
elephantine, feeding on land ; all the crooked 
sequence of life. The dragon-fly which 
passed me traced a continuous descent from 
the fly marked on stone in those days. The 
immense time lifted me like a wave rolling 
under a boat ; my mind seemed to raise itself 
as the swell of the cycles came ; it felt strong 
wath the power of the ages. With all that 
time and power I prayed : that I might have 
in my soul the intellectual part of it ; the 
idea, the thought. Like a shuttle the mind 
shot to and fro the past and the present, in 
an instant. 

Full to the brim of the wondrous past, I 
felt the wondrous present. For the day — 

c 



i8 THE STORY OF MY HEART 

the very moment I breathed, that second of 
time then in the valley, was as marvellous, 
as grand, as all that had gone before. Now, 
this moment was the wonder and the glory. 
Now, this moment was exceedingly wonder- 
ful. Now, this moment give me all the 
thought, all the idea, all the soul expressed in 
the cosmos around me. Give me still more, 
for the interminable universe, past and pre- 
sent, is but earth ; give me the unknown soul, 
wholly apart from it, the soul of which I 
know only that when I touch the ground, 
when the sunlight touches my hand, it is not 
there. Therefore the heart looks into space 
tQ be away from earth. With all the cycles, 
and the sunlight streaming through them, 
with all that is meant by the present, I 
thought in the deep vale and prayed. 

There was a secluded spring to which I 
sometimes went to drink the pure water, 
lifting it in the hollow of my hand. Drinking 
the lucid water, clear as light itself in solu- 
tion, I absorbed the beauty and purity of it. 



THE STORY OF MY HEART 19 

I drank the thought of the element ; I desired 
soul-nature pure and limpid. When I saw 
the sparkling dew on the grass — a rainbo^ 
broken into drops — it called up the same 
thought-prayer. The stormy wind whose 
sudden twists laid the trees on the ground 
woke the same feeling ; my heart shouted 
with it. The soft summer air which entered 
when I opened my window in the morning 
breathed the same sweet desire. At night, 
before sleeping, I always looked out at the 
shadowy trees, the hills looming indistinctly 
in the dark, a star seen between the drifting 
clouds ; prayer of soul-life always. I chose 
the highest room, bare and gaunt, because 
as I sat at work I could look out and see 
more of the wide earth, more of the dome 
of the sky, and could think my desire 
through these. When the crescent of the 
new moon shone, all the old thoughts were 
renewed. 

All the succeeding incidents of the year 
repeated my prayer as I noted them. The 

C 2 



20 THE STORY OF MY HEART 

first green leaf on the hawthorn, the first 
spike of meadow grass, the first song of 
the nightingale, the green ear of wheat. I 
spoke it with the ear of wheat as the sun 
tinted it golden, with the whitening barley ; 
again with the red gold spots of autumn 
»on the beech, the buff oak leaves, and the 
gossamer dew- weighted. All the larks over 
the green corn sang it for me, all the dear 
swallows ; the green leaves rustled it ; the 
green brook-flags waved it ; the swallows 
took it with them to repeat it for me in dis- 
tant lands. By the running brook I medi- 
tated it ; a flash of sunlight here in the curve, 
a flicker yonder on the ripples, the birds 
bathing in the sandy shallow, the rush of 
falling water. As the brook ran winding 
through the meadow, so one thought ran 
winding through my days. 

The sciences I studied never checked it 
for a moment ; nor did the books of old 
philosophy. The sun was stronger than 
science ; the hills more than philosophy. 



THE STORY OF MY HEART 21 

Twice circumstances gave me a brief view 
of the ^ sea ; then the passion rose tumul- 
tuous as the waves. It was very bitter to 
me to leave the sea. 

Sometimes I spent the whole day walking 
over the hills searching for it; as if the 
labour of walking would force it from the 
ground. I remained in the woods for hours, 
among the ash sprays and the fluttering of 
the ring-doves at their nests, the scent of 
pines here and there, dreaming my prayer. 

My work was most uncongenial and 
useless, but even then sometimes a gleam 
of sunlight on the wall, the buzz of a bee 
at the window, would bring the thought to 
me. Onlv to make me miserable, for it was 
a waste of golden time while the rich sun- 
light streamed on hill and pla.in. There was 
a wrenching of the mind, a straining of the 
mental sinews ; I was forced to do this, my 
mind was yonder. Weariness, exhaustion, 
nerve-illness often ensued. The insults 
which are showered on poverty, long struggle 



22 THE STORY OF MY HEART. 

of labour, the heavy pressure of circum- 
stances, the unhappiness, only stayed the 
expression of the feeling. It was always 
there. Often in the streets of London, as 
the red sunset flamed over the houses, the 
old thought, the old prayer, came. 

Not only in grassy fields with green leaf 
and running brook did this constant desire 
find renewal. More deeply still with living 
human beauty; the perfection of form, the 
simple fact of form, ravished and always 
will ravish me away. In this lies the out- 
come and end of all the loveliness of sun- 
shine and green leaf, of flowers, pure water, 
and sweet air. This is embodiment and 
highest expression ; the scattered, uncertain, 
and designless loveliness of tree and sun- 
light brought to shape. Through this beauty 
I prayed deepest and longest, and down to 
this hour. The shape — the divine idea of 
that shape — the swelling muscle ox the 
dreamy limb, strong sinew or curve of bust, 
Aphrodite or Hercules, it is the same. 



THE STORY OF MY HEART 23 

That I may have the soul-life, the soul- 
nature, let divine beauty bring to me divine 
soul. Swart Nubian, white Greek, delicate 
Italian, massive Scandinavian, in all the ex- 
quisite pleasure the form gave, and gives, to 
me immediately becomes intense prayer. 

If I could have been in physical shape 
like these, how despicable in comparison I 
am ; to be shapely of form is so infinitely 
beyond wealth, power, fame, all that am- 
bition can give, that these are dust before it. 
Unless of the human form, no pictures hold 
me ; the rest are flat surfaces. So, too, with 
the other arts, they are dead ; the potters, 
the architects, meaningless, stony, and some 
repellent, like the cold touch of porcelain. 
No prayer with these. Only the human 
form in art could raise it, and most in 
statuary. I have seen so little good statuary, 
it is a regret to me ; still, that I have is be- 
yond all other art. Fragments here, a bust 
yonder, the broken pieces brought from 
Greece, copies, plaster casts, a memory of an 



24 THE STORY OF MY HEART 

Aphrodite, of a Persephone, of an Apollo, 
that is all ; but even drawings of statuary 
will raise the prayer. These statues were 
like myself full of a thought, for ever about 
to burst forth as a bud, yet silent in the 
same attitude. Give me to live the soul- 
life they express. The smallest fragment of 
marble carved in the shape of the human 
arm will wake the desire I felt in my hill- 
prayer. 

Time went on ; good fortune and success 
never for an instant deceived me that they 
were in themselves to be sought ; only my 
soul-thought was worthy. Further years 
bringing much suffering, grinding the very 
life out ; new troubles, renewed insults, loss 
of what hard labour had earned, the bitter 
question : Is it not better to leap into the 
sea ? These, too, have made no impression ; 
constant still to the former prayer my mind 
endures. It was my chief regret that I had 
not endeavoured to write these things, to 
give expression to this passion. I am now 



THE STORY OF MY HEART 25 

trying, but I see that I shall only in part 
succeed. 

The same prayer comes to me at this 
very hour. It is now less solely associated 
with the sun and sea, hills, woods, or beau- 
teous human shape. It is always within. It 
requires no waking ; no renewal ; it is 
always with me. I am it; the fact of my 
existence expresses it. 

After a long interval I came to the 
hills again, this time by the coast. I found 
a deep hollow on the side of a great hill, a 
green concave opening to the sea, where I 
could rest and think in perfect quiet. Behind 
me were furze bushes dried by the heat ; 
immediately in front dropped the steep 
descent of the bowl-like hollow which re- 
ceived and brought up to me the faint 
sound of the summer waves. Yonder lay 
the immense plain of sea, the palest green 
under the continued sunshine, as though the 
heat had evaporated the colour from it ; there 
was no distinct horizon, a heat-mist inclosed 



26 THE STORY OF MY HEART 

it and looked farther away thaii the horizon 

m 

would have done. Silence and sunshine, sea 
and hill gradually brought my mind into 
the condition of intense prayer. Day after 
day, for hours at a time, I came there, my 
soul-desire always the same. Presently I 
began to consider how I could put a part 
of that prayer into form, giving it an object. 
Could I bring it into such a shape as would 
admit of actually working upon the lines it 
indicated for any good ? 

One evening, when the bright white star 
in Lyra was shining almost at the zenith 
over me, and the deep concave was the more 
profound in the dusk, I formulated it into 
three divisions. First, I desired that I might 
do or find something to exalt the soul, 
something to enable it to live its own life, 
a more powerful existence now. Secondly, 
I desired to be able to do something for 
the flesh, to make a discovery or perfect a 
method by which the fleshly body might 
enjoy more pleasure, longer life, and suffer 



^ THE STORY OF MY HEART. 27 

less pain. Thirdly, to construct a more 
flexible engine with which to carry into 
execution the design of the will. I called 
this the Lyra prayer, to distinguish it from 
the far deeper emotion in which the soul 
was alone concerned. 

Of the three divisions, the la^t was of 
so little importance that it scarcely deserved 
to be named in conjunction with the others. 
Mechanism increases convenience — in no 
degree does it confer physical or moral 
perfection. The rudimentary engines em- 
ployed thousands of years ago in raising 
buildings were in that respect equal to the 
complicated machines of the present day. 
Control of iron and steel has not altered 
or improved the bodily man. I even de- 
bated some time whether such a third 
division should be included at all. Our 
bodies are now conveyed all round the 
world with ease, but obtain no advantage. 
As they start so they return. The most 
perfect human families of ancient times were 



28 THE STORY OF MY HEART. 

almost stationary, as those of Greece. Per- 
fection of form was found in Sparta : how 
small a spot compared to those continents 
over which we are now taken so quickly ! 
Such perfection of form might perhaps again 
dwell, contented and complete in itself, on 
such a strip of land as I could see between 
me and the sand of the sea. Again, a watch 
keeping correct time is no guarantee that 
the bearer shall not suffer pain. The owner 
of the watch may be soulless, without mind- 
fire, a mere creature. No benefit to the 
heart or to the. body accrues from the most 
accurate mechanism. Hence I debated 
whether the third division should be in- 
cluded. But I reflected that time cannot 
be put back on the dial, we cannot return 
to Sparta; there is an existent state of 
things, and existent multitudes ; and possibly 
a more powerful engine, flexible to the will, 
might give them that freedom which is the 
one, and the one only, political or social 



THE STORY OF MY HEART 29 

idea I possess. For liberty, therefore, let it 
be included. 

For the flesh, this arm of mine, the limbs 
of others gracefully moving, let me find 
something that will give them greater per- 
fection. That the bones may be firmer, 
somewhat larger if that would be an advan- 
tage, certainly stronger, that the cartilage 
and sinews may be more enduring, and the 
muscles more powerful, something after the 
manner of those ideal limbs and muscles 
sculptured of old, these in the flesh and real. 
That the organs of the body may be stronger 
in their action, perfect, and lasting. That 
the exterior flesh may be yet more beautiful ; 
that the shape may be finer, and the motions 
graceful. These are the soberest words I can 
find, purposely chosen ; for I am so rapt 
in the beauty of the human form, and so 
earnestly, so inexpressibly, prayerful to see 
that form perfect, that my full thought is not to 
be written. Unable to express it fully, I have 



30 THE STORY OF MY HEART 

considered it best to put it in the simplest 
manner of words. I believe in the human 
form ; let me find something, some method, 
by which that form may achieve the utmost 
beauty. Its beauty is like an arrow, which 
may be shot any distance according to the 
strength of the bow. So the idea expressed 
in the human shape is capable of indefinite 
expansion and elevation of beauty. 

Of the mind, the inner consciousness, the 
soul, my prayer desired that I might discover 
a mode of life for it, so that it might not only 
conceive of such a life, but actually enjoy it 
on the earth. I wished to search out a new 
and higher set of ideas on which the mind 
should work. The simile of a new book of 
the soul is the nearest to convey the meaning 
— a book drawn from the present and future, 
not the past. Instead of a set of ideas based 
on tradition, let me give the mind a new 
thought drawn straight from the wondrous 
present, direct this very hour. Next, to 
furnish the soul with the means of executing 



THE STORY OF MY HEART, 31 

its will, of carrying thought into action. In 
other words, for the soul to become a power. 
These three formed the Lyra prayer, of 
which the two first are immeasurably the 
more important. I believe in the human 
being, mind and flesh ; form and soul. 

It happened just afterwards that I went 
to Pevensey, and immediately the ancient 
wall swept my mind back seventeen hundred 
years to the eagle, the pilum, and the short 
sword. The grey stones, the thin red bricks 
laid by those whose eyes had seen Caesar's 
Rome, lifted me out of the grasp of house- 
life, of modern civilisation, of those minutiae 
which occupy the moment. The grey stone 
made me feel as if I had existed from then 
till now, so strongly did I enter into and see 
my own life as if reflected. My own exist- 
ence was focussed back on me ; I saw its 
joy, its unhappiness, its birth, its death, its 
possibilities among the infinite, above all its 
yearning Question. Why ? Seeing it thus 
clearly, and lifted out of the moment by 



32 THE STORY OF MY HEART. 

the force of seventeen centuries, I recognised 
the full mystery and the depth of things in 
the roots of the dry grass on the wall, in the 
green sea flowing near. Is there anything I 
can do ? The mystery and the possibilities 
are not in the roots of the grass, nor is the 
depth of things in the sea ; they are in my 
existence, in my soul. The marvel of exist- 
ence, almost the terror of it, was flung on me 
with crushing force by the sea, the sun 
shining, the distant hills. With all their pon- 
derous weight they made me feel myself : all 
the time, all the centuries made me feel my- 
self this moment a hundred-fold. I determined 
that I would endeavour to write what I had 
so long thought of, and the same evening 
put down one sentence. There the sentence 
remained two years. I tried to carry it on ; 
I hesitated because I could not express it: 
nor can I now, though in desperation I am 
throwing these rude stones of thought to- 
gether, rude as those of the ancient wall. 



THE STOHY OF MY HEART. 33 



CHAPTER III. 

There were grass-grown tumuli on the hills 
to which of old I used to walk, sit down at 
the foot of one of them, and think. Some 
warrior had been interred there in the ante- 
historic times. The sun of the summer morn- 
ing shone on the dome of sward, and the 
air came softly up from the wheat below, 
the tips of the grasses swayed as it passed 
sighing faintly, it ceased, and the bees 
hummed by to the thyme and heathbells. I 
became absorbed in the glory of the day, 
the sunshine, the sweet air, the yellowing 
corn turning from its sappy green to summer's 
noon of gold, the lark's song like a waterfall 
in the sky. I felt at that moment that I was 
like the spirit of the man whose body was 

D 



34 



THE STORY Oh MY HEAk1\ 



interred in the tumulus ; I could understand 
and feel his existence the same as my own. 
He was as real to me two thousand years 
after interment as those I had seen in the 
body. The abstract personality of the dead 
seemed as existent as thought. As my 
thought could slip back the twenty centuries 
in a moment to the forest-days when he 
hurled the spear, or shot with the bow, hunt- 
ing the deer, and could return again as 
swiftly to this moment, so his spirit could 
endure from then till now, and the time 
was nothing. 

Two thousand years being a second to 
the soul could not cause its extinction. It 
was no longer to the soul than my thought 
occupied to me. Recognising my own inner 
consciousness, the psyche, so clearly, death 
did not seem to me to affect the personality. 
In dissolution there was no bridgeless chasm, 
no unfathomable gulf of separation; the 
spirit did not immediately become inaccess- 
ible, leaping at a bound to an immeasurable 



THE STORY OF MY HEART 35 

distance. Look at another person while 
living ; the soul is not visible, only the body 
which it animates. Therefore, merely be- 
cause after death the soul is not visible is 
no demonstration that it does not still live. 
The condition of being unseen is the same 
condition which occurs while the body is 
living, so that intrinsically there is nothing 
exceptional, or supernatural, in the life of the 
soul after death. Resting by the tumulus, 
the spirit of the man who had been interred 
there was to me really alive, and very close. 
This was quite natural, as natural and simple 
as the grass waving in the wind, the bees 
humming, and the larks' songs. Only by 
the strongest effort of the mind could I 
understand the idea of extinction ; that was 
supernatural, requiring a miracle; the im- 
mortality of the soul natural, like earth. 
Listening to the sighing of the grass I felt 
immortality as I felt the beauty of the 
summer morning, and I thought beyond 

D 2 



36 THE STORY OF MY HEART, 

immortality, of other conditions, more beau- 
tiful than existence, higher than immortality. 

That there is no knowing, in the sense 
of written reasons, whether the soul lives 
on or not, I am fully aware. I do not hope 
or fear. At least while I am living I have 
enjoyed the idea of immortality, and the idea 
of my own soul. If, then, after death, I am 
resolved without exception into earth, air, 
and water, and the spirit goes out like a 
flame, still I shall have had the glory of that 
thought. 

It happened once that a man was drowned 
while bathing, and his body was placed in an 
outhouse near the garden. I passed the out- 
house continually, sometimes on purpose to 
think about it, and it always seemed to me 
that the man was still living. Separation is 
not to be comprehended : the spirit of the 
man did not appear to have gone to an in- 
conceivable distance. As my thought flashes 
itself back through the centuries to the 
luxury of Canopus, and can see the gilded 



THE STORY OF MY HEART 37 

couches of a city extinct, so it slips through 
the future, and immeasurable time in front is 
no boundary to it Certainly the man was 
not dead to me. 

Sweetly the summer air came up to the 
tumulus, the grass sighed softly, the butter- 
flies went by, sometimes alighting on the 
green dome. Two thousand years ! Summer 
after summer the blue butterflies had visited 
the mound, the thyme had flowered, the 
wind sighed in the grass. The azure morn- 
ing had spread its arms over the low tomb ; 
the full glowing noon burned on it; the 
purple of sunset rosied the sward. Stars, . 
ruddy in the vapour of the southern horizon, 
beamed at midnight through the mystic 
summer night, which is dusky and yet full of 
light. White mists swept up and hid it ; 
dews rested on the turf; tender harebells 
drooped ; the wings of the finches fanned the 
air — finches whose colours faded from the 
wings how many centuries ago! Brown 
autumn dwelt in the woods beneath ; the 



38 THE STORY OF MY HEART, 

rime of winter whitened the beech clump on 
the ridge ; again the buds came on the wind- 
blown hawthorn bushes, and in the evening 
the broad constellation of Orion covered the 
east. Two thousand times ! ' Two thousand 
times the woods grew green, and ring-doves 
built their nests. Day and night for two 
thousand years — light and shadow sweeping 
over the mound — two thousand years of 
labour by day and slumber by night Mys- 
tery gleaming in the stars, pouring down in 
the sunshine, speaking in the night, the- 
wonder of the sun and of far space, for 
twenty centuries round about this low and 
green-grown dome. Yet all that mysteiy 
and wonder is as nothing to the Thought 
that lies therein, to the spirit that I feel so 
close. 

Realising that spirit, recognising my own 
inner consciousness, the psyche, so clearly, I 
cannot understand time. It is eternity now. 
I am in the midst of it. It is about me in 
the sunshine; I am in it, as the butterfly floats 



THE STORY OF MY HEART 39 

in the light-laden air. Nothing has to come j 
it is now. Now is eternity ; now is the 
immortal life. Here this moment, by this 
tumulus, on earth, now ; I exist in it. The 
years, the centuries, the cycles are absolutely 
nothing ; it is only a moment since this 
tumulus was raised; in a thousand years 
more it will still be only a moment. To 
the soul there is no past and no future ; all 
is and will be ever, in now. For artificial 
purposes time is mutually agreed on, but 
there is really no such thing. The shadow 
goes on upon the dial, the index moves round 
upon the clock, and what is the difference ? 
None whatever. If the clock had never been 
set going, what would have been the differ- 
ence ? There may be time for the clock, 
the clock may make time for itself, there is 
none for me. 

I dip my hand in the brook and feel the 
stream ; in an instant the particles of water 
which first touched me have floated yards 
down the current, my hand remains there. 



40 THE STORY OF MY HEART. 

I take my hand away, and the flow — the time 
— of the brook does not exist to me. The 
great clock of the firmament, the sun, and the 
stars, the crescent moon, the earth circling 
two thousand times, is no more to me than 
the flow of the brook when my hand is with- 
drawn ; my soul has never been, and never 
can be, dipped in time. Time has never 
existed, and never will ; it is a purely arti- 
ficial arrangement. It is eternity now, it 
always was eternity, and always will be. By 
no possible means could I get into time if I 
tried. I am in eternity now and must there 
remain. Haste not, be at rest, this Now is 
eternity. Because the idea of time has left 
my mind— if ever it had any hold on it— to 
me the man interred in the tumulus is living 
now as I live. We are both in eternity. 

There is no separation — no past ; eternity, 
the Now, is continuous. When all the stars 
have revolved they only produce Now again. 
The continuity of Now is for ever. So that it 
appears to me purely natural, and not super- 



THE STORY OF MY HEART 41 

natural, that the soul whose temporary frame 
was interred in this mound should be existing 
as I sit on the sward. How infinitely deeper is 
thought than- the million miles of the firma- 
ment ! The wonder is here, not there ; now, 
not to be, now always. Things that have been 
miscalled supernatural appear to me simple, 
more natural than nature, than earth, than sea, 
or sun. It is beyond telling more natural 
that I should have a soul than not, that there 
should be immortality ; I think there is much 
more than immortality. It is matter which is 
the supernatural, and difficult of understand- 
ing. Why this clod of earth I hold in my 
hand ? Why this water which drops spark- 
ling from my fingers dipped in the brook ? 
Why are they at all ? When ? How ? 
What for ? Matter is beyond understanding, 
mysterious, impenetrable ; I touch it easily, 
comprehend it, no. Soul, mind — the thought, 
the idea — is easily understood, it understands 
itself and is conscious. 

The supernatural miscalled, the natural in 



42 THE STORY OF MY HEART. 

truth, is the real. To me everything is 
supernatural. How strange that condition 
of mind which cannot accept anything but 
the earth, the sea, the tangible universe ! 
Without the misnamed supernatural these 
to me seem incomplete, unfinished. Without 
soul all these are dead. Except when I walk 
by the sea, and my soul is by it, the sea 
is dead. Those seas by which no man has 
stood — by which no soul has been — whether 
on earth or the planets, are dead. No matter 
how majestic the planet rolls in space, unless 
a soul be there it is dead. -As I move about 
in the sunshine I feel in the midst of the 
supernatural : in the midst of immortal things. 
It is impossible to wrest the mind down to 
the same laws that rule pieces of timber, water, 
or earth. They do not control the soul, how- 
ever rigidly they may bind matter. So full 
am I always of a sense of the immortality now 
at this moment round about me, that it would 
not surprise me in the least if a circumstance 
outside physical experience occurred. It 



THE STORY OF MY HEART, 43 

would seem to me quite natural. Give the 
soul the power it conceives, and there would 
be nothing wonderful in it 

I can see nothing astonishing in what 
are called miracles. Only those who are 
mesmerised by matter can find a difficulty 
in such events. I am aware that the evi- 
dence for miracles is logically and histori- 
cally untrustworthy; I am not defending 
recorded miracles. My point is that in prin- 
ciple I see no reason at all why they should 
not take place this day. I do not even say 
that there are or ever have been miracles, 
but I maintain that they would be perfectly 
natural. The wonder rather is that they do 
not happen frequently. Consider the limit- 
less conceptions of the soul : let it possess 
but the power to realise those conceptions for 
one hour, and how little, how trifling would 
be the helping of the injured or the sick to 
regain health and happiness — merely to think 
it. A soul-work would require but a thought. 
Soul-work is an expression better suited to 



44 THE STORY OF MY HEART. 

my meaning than * miracle,' a term like others 
into which a special sense has been in- 
fused. 

When I consider that I dwell this moment 
in the eternal Now that has ever been and 
will be, that I am in the midst of immortal 
things this moment, that there probably are 
Souls as infinitely superior to mine as mine 
to a piece of timber, what then, pray, is a 
'miracle'? As commonly understood, a 
' miracle * is a mere nothing. I can conceive 
soul-works done by simple will or thought a 
thousand times greater. I marvel that they 
do not happen this moment. The air, the 
sunlight, the night, all that surrounds me 
seems crowded with inexpressible powers, 
with the influence of Souls, or existences, so 
that I walk in the midst of immortal things. 
I myself am a living witness of it. Some- 
times I have concentrated myself, and driven 
away by continued will all sense of outward 
appearances, looking straight with the full 
power of my mind inwards on myself. I find 



THE STORY OF MY HEART 45 

* I ' am there ; an * 1/ I do not wholly under- 
stand, or know, something is there distinct 
from earth and timber, from flesh and bones. 
Recognising it, I feel on thjs margin of a life un- 
known, very near, almost touching it : on the 
verge of powers which if I could grasp would 
give me an immense breadth of existence, an 
ability to execute what I now only conceive ; 
most probably of far more than that. To see 
that * I ' is to know that I am surrounded with 
immortal things. If, when I die, that * I ' also 
dies, and becomes extinct, still even then I 
have had the exaltation of these ideas. 

How many words it has taken to describe 
so briefly the feelings and the thoughts that 
came to me by the tumulus ; thoughts that 
swept past and were gone, and were suc- 
ceeded by others while yet the shadow of 
the mound had not moved from one thyme- 
flower to another, not the breadth of a grass 
blade. Softly breathed the sweet south wind, 
gently the yellow corn waved beneath ; the 
ancient, ancient sun shone on the fresh grass 



46 THE STORY OF MY HEART 

and the flower, my heart opened wide as the 
broad, broad earth. I spread my arms out, 
laying them on the sward, seizing the grass, 
to take the fulness of the days. Could I 
have my own way after death I would be 
burned on a pyre of pine- wood, open to the 
air, and placed on the summit of the hills. 
Then let my ashes be scattered abroad — not 
collected in an urn — freely sown wide and 
broadcast. That is the natural interment 
of man, of man whose Thought at least has 
been among the immortals ; interment in the 
elements. Burial is not enough, it does not 
give sufficient solution into the elements 
speedily; a furnace is confined. The high 
open air of the topmost hill, there let the 
tawny flame lick up the fragment called the 
body, there ca$t the ashes into the space it 
longed for while living. Such a luxury of 
interment is only for the wealthy ; I fear I 
shall not be able to afford it. Else the smoke 
of my resolution into the elements should 
certainly arise in time on the hill-top. 



THE STORY OF MY HEART, 47 

The silky grass sighs as the wind comes 
carrying the blue butterfly more rapidly than 
his wings. A large humble-bee burrs round 
the green dome against which I rest ; my 
hands are scented with thyme. The sweet- 
ness of the day, the fulness of the earth, the 
beauteous earth, how shall I say it ? 

Three things only have been discovered 
of that which concerns the inner consciousness 
since before written history began. Three 
things only in twelve thousand written, or 
sculptured, years, and in the dumb, dim time 
before then. Three ideas the Cavemen 
primeval wrested from the unknown, the 
night which is round us still in daylight — 
the existence of the soul, immortality, the 
deity. These things found, prayer followed 
as a sequential result.. Since then nothing 
further has been found in all the twelve 
thousand years, as if men had been satisfied 
and had found these to suffice. They do 
not suffice me. I desire to advance fur- 
ther, and to wrest a fourth, and even still 



48 THE STORY OF MY HEART. 

more than a fourth, from the darkness of 
thought. I want more ideas of soul-life. 
I am certain that there are more yet to be 
found. A great life — an entire civilisation — 
lies just outside the pale of common thought 
Cities and countries, inhabitants, intelligences, 
culture — an entire civilisation. Except by 
illustrations drawn from familiar things, there 
is no way of indicating a new idea. I do not 
mean actual cities, actual civilisation. Such 
life is different from any yet imagined. A 
nexus of ideas exists of which nothing is 
known — a vast system of ideas — ^a cosmos 
of thought. There is an Entity, a Soul- 
Entity, as yet unrecognised. These, rudely 
expressed, constitute my Fourth Idea. It is 
beyond, or beside, the three discovered by the 
Cavemen ; it is in addition to the existence 
of the soul ; in addition to immortality ; and 
beyond the idea of the deity. I think there 
is something more than existence. 

There is an immense ocean over which 
the mind can sail, upon which the vessel of 



THE STORY OF MY HEART, 49 

thought has not yet been launched I hope 
to launch it The mind of so many thousand 
years has worked round and round inside the 
circle of these three ideas as a boat cm an 
inland lake. Let us haul it over the belt of 
land, launch on the ocean, and sail outwards. 
There is so much beyond all that has ever 
yet been imagined. As I write these words, 
in the very moment, I feel that the whole 
air, the sunshine out yonder lighting up the 
ploughed earth, the distant sky, the circum- 
ambient ether, and that far space, is full of 
soul-secrets, soul-life, things outside the ex- 
perience of all the ages. The fact of my own 
existence as I write, as I exist at this second, 
is so marvellous, so miracle-like, strange, and 
supernatural to me, that I unhesitatingly con- 
clude I am always on the margin of life 
illimitable, and that there are higher con- 
ditions than existence. Everything around 
is supernatural ; everything so full of un- 
explained meaning. 

Twelve thousand years since the Caveman 

E 



50 THE STORY OF MY HEART. 

Stood at the mouth of his cavern and gazed 
out at the night and the stars. He looked 
again and saw the sun rise beyond the sea. 
He reposed in the noontide heat under the 
shade of the trees, he closed his eyes and 
looked into himself. He was face to face 
with the earth, the sun, the night; face to 
face with himself. There was nothing be- 
tween ; no wall of written tradition ; no built- 
up system of culture — his naked mind was 
confronted by naked earth. He made three 
idea- discoveries, wresting them from the 
unknown : the existence of his soul, immor- 
tality, the deity. Now, to-day, as I write, 
I stand in exactly the same position as the 
Caveman. Written tradition, systems of 
culture, modes of thought, have for me no 
existence. If ever they took any hold of my 
mind it must have been very slight ; they 
have long ago been erased. 

From earth and sea and sun, from night, 
the stars, from day, the trees, the hills, from 
my own soul — from these I think. I stand 



THE STORY OF MY HEART 51 

this moment at the mouth of the ancient 
cave, face to face with nature, face to face 
with the supernatural, with myself. My 
naked mind confronts the unknown. I see 
as clearly as the noonday that this is not all ; 
I see other and higher conditions than exis- 
tence ; I see not only the existence of the 
soul, immortality, but, in addition, I realise 
a soul-life illimitable ; I realise the existence 
of a cosmos of thought ; I realise the existence 
of an inexpressible entity infinitely higher 
than deity. I strive to give utterance to a 
Fourth Idea. The very idea that there is 
anothel* idea is something gained. The three 
found , by the Cavemen are but stepping- 
stones : first links of an endless chain. At 
the mouth of the ancient cave, face to face 
with the unknown, they prayed. Prone in 
heart to-day I pray. Give me the deepest 
soul-life. 



E 2 



52 THE STORY OF MY HEART. 



CHAPTER IV. 

The wind sighs through the grass, sighs 
in the sunshine; it has drifted the butterfly 
eastwards along the hill. A few yards away 
there lies the skull of a lamb on the turf, 
white and bleached, picked clean long since 
by crows and ants. Like the faint ripple of 
the summer sea sounding in the hollow of the 
ear, so the sweet air ripples in the grass. 
The ashes of the man interred in the tumulus 
are indistinguishable; they have sunk away 
like rain into the earth ; so his body has dis- 
appeared. I am under no delusion ; I am 
fully aware that no demonstration can be 
given of the three stepping-stones of the 
Cavemen. The soul is inscrutable ; it is not 
in evidence to show that it exists ; immortality 



TH^ STORY OF MY HEART, 53 

is not tangible. Full well I know that reason 
and knowledge and experience tend to dis- 
prove all three ; that experience denies answer 
to prayer. I am under no delusion whatever ; 
I grasp death firmly in conception as I can 
grasp this bleached bone; utter extinction, 
annihilation. That the soul is a product at 
best of organic composition ; that it goes out 
like a flame. This may be the end ; my soul 
may sink like rain into the earth and dis* 
appear. Wind and earth, sea, and night and 
day, what then .'* Let my soul be but a 
product, what then ? I say it is nothing to 
me ; this only I know, that while I have lived 
— now, this moment, while I • live — I think 
immortality, I lift my mind to a Fourth Idea. 
If I pass into utter oblivion, yet I have had 
that. 

The original three ideas of the Cavemen 
became encumbered with superstition ; ritual 
grew up, and ceremony, and long ranks of 
souls were painted on papyri waiting to be 
weighed in the scales, and to be punished 



54 THE STORY OF MY HEART 

or rewarded. These cobwebs grotesque have 
sullied the original discoveries and cast them 
into discredit. Erase them altogether, and 
consider only the underlying principles. The 
principles do not go far enough, but I shall 
not discard all of them for that. Even 
supposing the pure principles to be illusions, 
and annihilation the end, even then it is 
better — it is something gained to have thought 
them. Thought is life; to have thought 
them is to have lived them. Accepting two 
of them as true in principle, then I say 
that these are but the threshold. For twelve 
thousand years no effort has been made to 
get beyond that threshold. These are but 
the primer of soul-life ; the merest hiero- 
glyphics chipped out, a little shape given to 
the unknown. 

Not tormorrow but to-day. Not the 
to-morrow of the tumulus, the hour of the sun- 
shine now. This moment give me to live soul- 
life, not only after death. Now is eternity, 
now I am in the midst of immortality ; now 



THE STORY OF MY HEART. 55 

the supernatural crowds around me. Open 
my mind, give my soul to see, let me live it 
now on earth, while I hear the burring of the 
larger bees, the sweet air in the grass, and 
watch the yellow wheat wave beneath me. 
Sun and earth and sea, night and day — 
these are the least of things. Give me soul- 
life. 

There is nothing human in nature. The 
earth, though loved so dearly, would let me 
perish on the ground, and neither bring forth 
food nor water. Burning in the sky the 
great sun, of whose company I have been so 
fond, would merely burn on and make no 
motion to assist me. Those who have been 
in an open boat at sea without water have 
proved the mercies of the sun, and of the deity 
who did not give them one drop of rain, dying 
in misery under the same rays that smile so 
beautifully on the flowers. In the south the 
sun is the enemy ; night and coolness and 
rain are the friends of man. As for the sea, 
it offers us salt water which we cannot drink. 



56 THE STORY OF MY HEART 

The trees care nothing for us ; the hill I 
visited so often in days gone by has not missed 
me. The sun scorches man, and will in his 
naked state roast him alive. The sea and 
the fresh water alike make no effort to uphold 
him if his vessel founders ; he casts up his 
arms in vain, they come to their level over 
his head, filling the spot his body occupied. 
If he falls from a cliff the air parts ; the earth 
beneath dashes him to pieces. 

Water he can drink, but it is not pro- 
duced for him ; how many thousands have 
perished for want of it ? Some fruits are 
produced which he can eat, but they do not 
produce themselves for him ; merely for the 
purpose of continuing their species. In wild, 
tropical countries, at the first glance there 
appears to be some consideration for him, 
but it is on the surface only. The lion 
pounces on him, the rhinoceros crushes him, 
the serpent bites, insects torture, diseases 
rack him. Disease worked its dreary will 
even among the flower-crowned Polynesians. 



THE STORY OF MY HEART 57 

Returning to our own country, this very 
thyme which scents my fingers did not grow 
for that purpose, but for its own. So does 
the wheat beneath ; we utilise it, but its 
original and native purpose was for itself. 
By night it is the same as by day ; the stars 
care not, they pursue their courses revolv- 
ing, and we are nothing to them. There is 
nothing human in the whole round of nature. 
All nature, all the universe that we can see, 
is absolutely indifferent to us, and except to 
us human life is of no more value than grass. 
If the entire human race perished at this 
hour, what difference would it make to the 
earth } What would the earth care ? As 
much as for the extinct dodo, or for the fate 
of the elephant now going. 

On the contrary, a great part, perhaps 
the whole, of nature and of the universe is 
distinctly anti-human. The term inhuman 
does not express my meaning, anti-human is 
better ; outre-human, in the sense of beyond, 
outside, almost grotesque in its attitude 



58; THE STORY OF MY HEART. 

towards, would nearly convey it. Everything 
is anti-human. How extraordinary, strange, 
and incomprehensible are the creatures cap- 
tured out of the depths of the sea ! The dis- 
torted fishes ; the ghastly cuttles ; the hideous 
eel-like shapes ; the crawling shell-encrusted 
things ; the centipede-like beings ; monstrous 
forms, to see which gives a shock to the 
brain. They shock the mind because they 
exhibit an absence of design. There is no 
idea in them. 

They have no shape, form, grace, or pur- 
pose ; they call up a vague sense of chaos, 
chaos which the mind revolts from. It would 
be a relief to the thought if they ceased to 
be, and utterly disappeared from the sea. 
They are not inimical of intent towards man, 
not even the shark ; but there the shark is, 
and that is enough. These miserably hideous 
things of the sea are not anti-human in the 
sense of persecution, they are outside, they 
are ultra and beyond. It is like looking into 
chaos, and it is vivid because these creatures. 



THE STORY OF MY HEART. 59 

interred alive a hundred fathoms deep, are 
seldom seen. So that the mind sees them 
as if only that moment they had come into 
existence. Use has not habituated it to them, 
so that their anti-human character is at once 
apparent, and stares at us with glassy eye. 

But it is the same in reality with the 
creatures on the earth. There are some of 
these even now to which use has not accus- 
tomed the mind. Such, for instance, as the 
toad. At its shapeless shape appearing in 
an unexpected corner many people start and 
exclaim. They are aware that they shall 
receive no injury from it, yet it affrights 
them, it sends a shock to the mind. The 
reason lies in its obviously anti-human cha- 
racter. All the designless, formless chaos 
of chance-directed matter, without idea or 
human plan, squats there embodied in the 
pathway. By watching the creature, and 
convincing the mind from observation that 
it is harmless, and even has uses, the horror 
wears away. But still remains the form to 



6o THE STORY OF MY HEART, 

which the mind can never reconcile itself. 
Carved in wood it is still repellent. 

Or suddenly there is a rustle like a faint 
hiss in the grass, and a green snake glides 
over the bank. The breath in the chest 
seems to lose its vitality ; for an instant the 
nerves refuse to transmit the force of life. 
The gliding yellow-streaked worm is so 
utterly opposed to the ever present Idea 
in the mind. Custom may reduce the horror, 
but no long pondering can ever bring that 
creature within the pale of the human Idea. 
These are so distinctly opposite and anti- 
human that thousands of years have not 
sufficed to soften their outline. Various 
insects and creeping creatures excite the 
same sense in lesser degrees. Animals and 
birds in general do not. The tiger is 
dreaded but causes no disgust. The ex- 
ception is in those that feed on offal. 
Horses and dogs we love ; we not only do 
not recognise anything opposite in them, we 
come to love them. 



THE STORY OF MY HEART, 6i 

They are useful to us, they show more or 
less sympathy with us, they possess, especi- 
ally the horse, a certain grace of movement. 
A gloss, as it were, is thrown over them by 
these attributes and by familiarity. The 
shape of the horse to the eye has become 
conventional : it is accepted. Yet the horse 
is not in any sense human. Could we look 
at it suddenly, without previous acquaintance, 
as at strange fishes in a tank, the ultra»»human 
character of the horse would be apparent. It 
is the curves of the neck and body that carry 
the horse past without adverse comment. 
Examine the hind legs in detail, and the 
curious backward motion, the shape and anti- 
human curves become apparent. Dogs take 
us by their intelligence, but they have no 
hand ; pass the hand over the dog's head, 
and the shape of the skull to the sense of 
feeling is almost as repellent as the form of 
the toad to the sense of sight. We have 
gradually gathered around us all the crea- 
tures that are less markedly anti-human. 



62 THE STORY OF MY HEART 

horses and dogs and birds, but they are still 
themselves. They originally existed like the 
wheat, for themselves ; we utilise them, but 
they are not of us. 

There is nothing human in any living 
animal. All nature, the universe as far as 
we see,, is anti-, or ultra-human, outside, 
and has no concern with man. These things 
are unnatural to him. By no course of reason- 
ing, however tortuous, can nature and the 
universe be fitted to the mind. Nor can the 
mind be fitted to the cosmos. My mind can- 
not be twisted to it ; I am separate alto- 
gether from these designless things. The 
soul cannot be wrested down to them. The 
laws of nature are of no importance to it. I 
refuse to be bound by the laws of the tides, 
nor am I so bound. Though bodily swung 
round on this rotating globe, my mind always 
remains in the centre. No tidal law, no 
rotation, no gravitation can control my 
thought. 

Centuries of thought have failed to recon«? 



THE STORY OF MY HEART. 63 

cile and fit the mind to the universe, which is 
designless, and purposeless, and without idea. 
I will not endeavour to fit my thought to 
it any longer ; I find and believe myself to 
be distinct — separate ; and I will labour in 
earnest to obtain the highest culture for 
myself. As these natural things have no 
connection with man, it follows again that 
the natural is the strange and mysterious, 
and the supernatural the natural. 

There being nothing human in nature or 
the universe, and all things being ultra- 
human and without design, shape, or pur- 
pose, I conclude that no deity has anything 
to do with nature- There is no god in 
nature, nor in any matter anywhere, either 
in the clods on the earth or in the com- 
position of the stars. For what we under- 
stand by the deity is the purest form of 
Idea, of Mind, and no mind is exhibited 
in these. That which controls them is dis- 
tinct altogether from deity. It is not force- 
in the sense of electricity, nor a deity as god, 



64 THE STORY OF MY HEART. 

nor a spirit, not even an intelligence, but a 
power quite different to anything yet ima- 
gined. I cease, therefore, to look for deity 
in nature or the cosmos at large, or to trace 
any marks of divine handiwork. I search 
for traces of this force which is not god, and 
is certainly not the higher than deity of 
whom I have written. It is a force without 
a mind. I wish to indicate something more 
subtle than electricity, but absolutely devoid 
of consciousness, and with no more feeling 
than the force which lifts the tides. 

Next, in human affairs, in the relations of 
man with man, in the conduct of life, in the 
events that occur, in human affairs generally, 
everything happens by chance. No pru- 
dence in conduct, no wisdom or foresight 
can effect anything, for the most trivial cir- 
cumstance will upset the deepest plan of the 
wisest mind. As Xenophon observed in old 
times, wisdom is like casting dice and de- 
termining your course by the number that 
appears. Virtue, humanity, the best and 



THE STORY OF MY HEART, 65 

most beautiful conduct is wholly in vain. 
The history of thousands of years demon- 
strates it. In all these years there is no 
more moving instance on record than that of 
Danae, when she was dragged to the preci- 
pice, two thousand years ago. Sophron was 
governor of Ephesus, and Laodice plotted to 
assassinate him. Danae discovered the plot, 
and warned Sophron, who fled, and saved 
his life. Laodice — the murderess in intent 
— had Danae seized and cast from a cliff. 
On the verge Danae said that some persons 
despised the deity, and they might now 
prove the justice of their contempt by her 
fate. For having saved the man who was 
to her as a husband, she was rewarded in 
this way with cruel death by the deity, but 
Laodice was advanced to honour. The 
bitterness of these words remains to this 
hour. 

In truth the deity, if responsible for such 
a thing, or for similar things which occur 

F 



66 THE STORY OF MY HEART. 

now, should be despised. One must always 
despise the fatuous belief in such a deity. 
But as everything in human affairs obviously 
happens by chance, it is clear that no deity 
is responsible. If the deity guides chance 
in that manner, then let the deity be de- 
spised. Apparently the deity does not in- 
terfere, and all things happen by chance. 
I cease, therefore, to look for traces of 
the deity in life, because no such traces 
exist. 

I conclude that there is an existence, a 
something higher than soul — higher, better, 
and more perfect than deity. Earnestly I 
pray to find this something better than a 
god. There is something superior, higher, 
more good. For this I search, labour, 
think, and pray. If after all there be no- 
thing, and my soul has to go out like a 
flame, yet even then I have thought this 
while it lives. With the whole force of my 
existence, with the whole force of my thought, 
mind, and soul, I pray to find this Highest 



\ 



THE STORY OF MY HEART 67 

Soul, this greater than deity, this better than 
god. Give me to live the deepest soul-life 
now and always with this Soul. For want 
of words I write soul, but I think that it is 
something beyond soul. 



F2 



68 THE STORY OF MY HEART 



CHAPTER V. 

It is not possible to narrate these incidents 
of the mind in strict order. I must now 
return to a period earlier than anything 
already narrated, and pass in review other 
phases of my search from then up till recently. 
So long since that I have forgotten the date, 
I used every morning to visit a spot where I 
could get a clear view of the east. Imme- 
diately on rising I went out to some elms ; 
thence I could see across the dewy fields to 
the distant hill over or near which the sun 
rose. These elms partially hid me, for at 
that time I had a dislike to being seen, 
feeling that I should be despised if I was 
noticed. This happened once or twice, and 
I knew I was watched contemptuously. 



THE STORY OF MY HEART 69 

though no one had the least idea of my 
object. But I went every morning, and was 
satisfied if I could get two or three minutes 
to think unchecked. Often I saw the sun 
rise over the line of the hills, but if it was 
summer the sun had been up a long time. 

I looked at the hills, at the dewy grass, 
and then up through the elm branches to the 
sky. In a moment all that was behind. me, 
the house, the people, the sounds, seemed to 
disappear, and to leave me alone. Involun- 
tarily I drew a long breath, then I breathed 
slowly. My thought, or inner consciousness, 
went up through the illumined sky, and I 
was lost in a moment of exaltation. This 
only lasted a very short time, perhaps only 
part of a second, and while it lasted there 
was no formulated wish. I was. absorbed ; I 
drank the beauty of the morning ; I was 
exalted. When it ceased I did wish for some 
increase or enlargement of my existence to 
correspond with the largeness of feeling I 
had momentarily enjoyed. Sometiaies the 



70 THE STORY OF MY HEART 

wind came through the tops of the elms, 
and the slender boughs bent, and gazing up 
through them, and beyond the fleecy clouds, 
I felt lifted up. The light coming across the 
grass and leaving itself on the dew-drops, the 
sound of the wind, and the sense of mounting 
to the lofty heaven," filled me with a deep 
sigh, a wish to draw something out of the 
beauty of it, some part of that which caused 
my admiration, the subtle inner essence. . 

Sometime^ the green tips of the highest 
boughs seemed gilded, the light laid a gold 
on the green. Or the 'trees bowed to a 
•stormy wind roaring through them, the grass 
threw itself down, and in the east broad cur- 
tains of a rosy tint stretched along. The 
light was turned to redness in the vapour, and 
rain hid the summit of the hill. In the rush 
and roar of the stormy wind the same exalta- 
tion, the same desire, lifted me for a moment. 
I went there every morning, I could not 
exactly define why ; it was like going to a 
rose bush to taste the scent of the flower and 



THE STORY OF MY HEART 71 

feel the dew from its petals on the lips. But 
I desired the beauty — the inner subtle mean- 
ing — ^to be in me, that I might have it, and 
with it an existence of a higher kind. 

Later on I began to have daily pil- 
grimages to think these things. There was 
.a feeling that I mu^t go somewhere, and 
be alone. It was a necessity to have a few 
minutes of this separate life every day ; my 
mind required to live its own life apart from 
other things. A great oak at a short distance 
was one resort, and sitting on the grass at the 
roots, or leaning against the trunk and look- 
ing over the quiet meadows towards the 
bright southern sky, I could live my own life 
a little while. Behind the trunk I was alone ; 
I liked to lean against it ; to touch the lichen 
on the rough bark. High in the wood of 
branches the birds were not alarmed ; they 
sang, or called, and passed to and fro happily: 
The wind moved the leaves, and they replied 
to it softly ; and now at this distance of time 
I can see the fragments of sky up through the 



72 THE STORY OF MY HEART 

boughs. Bees were always humming in the 
green field ; ring-doves went over swiftly, 
flying for the woods. 

Of the sun I was conscious ; I could not 
look at it, but the boughs held back the 
beams so that I could feel the sun's presence 
pleasantly. They shaded the sun, yet let me 
know that it was there. There came to me 
a delicate, but at the same time a deep 
strong, and sensuous enjoyment of the beauti- 
ful green earth, the beautiful sky and sun ; I 
felt them, they gave me inexpressible delight, 
as if they embraced and poured out their love 
upon me. It was I who loved them, for 
my heart was broader than the earth ; it is 
broader now than even then, more thirsty 
and desirous. After the sensuous enjoy- 
ment always came the thought, the desire : 
That I might be like this ; that I might 
have the inner meaning of the sun, the light, 
the earth, the trees and grass, translated into 
some growth of excellence in myself, both of 
body and of mind; greater perfection of 



THE STORY OF MY HEART. 73 

physique, greater perfection of mind and 
soul ; that I might be higher in myself. To 
this oak I came daily for a long time; some- 
times only for a minute, for just to view the 
spot was enough. In the bitter cold of spring, 
when the north wind blackened everything, 
I used to come now and then at night to 
look from under the bare branches at the 
splendour of the southern sky. The stars 
burned with brilliance, broad Orion and 
flashing Sirius — there are more or brighter 
constellations visible then than all the year; 
and the clearness of the air and the black- 
ness of the sky — black, not clouded — let 
them gleam in their fulness. They lifted me 
— they gave me fresh vigour of soul. Not 
all that the stars could have given, had 
they been destinies, could have satiated me. 
This, all this, and more, I wanted in myself. 
There was a place a mile or so along the 
road where the hills could be seen much 
better ; I went there frequently to think the 
same thought. Another spot was by an 



74 THE STORY OF MY HEART. 

elm, a very short walk, where openings in 
the trees, and the slope of the ground, 
brought the hills well into view. This, too, 
was a favourite thinking-place. Another 
was a wood, half an hour's walk distant, 
through part of which a rude track went, so 
that it was not altogether inclosed. The 
ash-saplings, and the trees, the firs, the 
hazel bushes — to be among these enabled 
me to be myself. Fcom the buds of spring 
to the berries of autumn, I always liked to 
be there. Sometimes in spring there was a 
sheen of blue-bells covering acres ; the doves 
cooed ; the blackbirds whistled sweetly ; 
there was a taste of green things in the 
air. But it was the tall firs that pleased 
me most ; the glance rose up the flame- 
shaped fir-tree, tapering to its green tip, and 
above was the azure sky. By aid of the tree 
I felt the sky more. By aid of everything 
beautiful I felt myself, and in that intense 
sense of consciousness prayed for greater 
perfection of soul and body. 



THE STORY OF MY HEART, 75 

Afterwards, I walked almost daily more 
than two miles along the road to a spot 
where the hills began, where from the first 
rise the road could be seen winding south- 
wards over the hills, open and uninclosed. 
I paused a minute or two by a clump of firs, 
in whose branches the wind always sighed — 
there is always a movement of the air on a 
hill. Southwards the sky was illumined by 
the sun, southwards the clouds moved across 
the opening or pass in the amphitheatre, 
and southwards, though far distant, was 
the sea. There I could think a moment. 
These pilgrimages gave me a few sacred 
minutes daily ; the moment seemed holy 
when the thought or desire came in its 
full force. 

A time came when, having to live in a 
town, these pilgrimages had to be suspended. 
The wearisome work on which I was en- 
gaged would not permit of them. But I used 
to look now and then, from a window, in the 
evening at a birch tree at some distance ; its 



76 THE STORY OF MY HEART 

graceful boughs drooped across the glow of 
the sunset. The thought was not suspended ; 
it lived in me always. A bitterer time still 
came when it was necessary to be separated 
from those I loved.. There is little indeed 
in the more immediate suburbs of London to 
gratify the sense of the beautiful. Yet there 
was a cedar by which I used to walk up and 
down, and think the same thoughts as under 
the great oak in the solitude of the sunlit 
meadows. In the course of slow time 
happier circumstances brought us together 
again, and, though near London, at a spot 
where there was easy access to meadows and 
woods. Hills that purify those who walk on 
them there were not. Still I thought my 
old thoughts. 

I was much in London, and, engage- 
ments completed, I wandered about in the 
same way as in the woods of former days. 
From the stone bridges I looked down on 
the river ; the gritty dust, and straws that 
lie on the bridges, flew up and whirled 



THE STORY OF MY HEART yj 

round with every gust from the flowing tide ; 
gritty dust that settles in the nostrils and on 
the lips, the very residuum of all that is 
repulsive in the greatest city of the world. 
The noise of the traffic and the constant 
pressure from the crowds passing, their in- 
cessant and disjointed talk, could not distract 
me. One moment at least I had, a moment 
when I thought of the push of the great 
sea forcing the water to flow under the feet 
of these crowds, the distant sea strong and 
splendid ; when I saw the sunlight gleam on 
the tidal wavelets ; when I felt the wind, and 
was conscious of the earth, the sea, the sun, 
the air, the immense forces working on, while 
the city hummed by the river. Nature was 
deepened by the crdwds and foot-worn 
stones. If the tide had ebbed, and the masts 
of the vessels were tilted as the hulls rested 
on the shelving mud, still even the blackened 
mud did not prevent me seeing the water 
as water flowing to the sea. The sea had 
drawn down, and the wavelets washing the 



78 THE STORY OF MY HEART. 

Strand here as they hastened were running 
the faster to it. Eastwards from London 
Bridge the river raced to the ocean. 

The bright morning sun of summer 
heated the eastern parapet of London Bridge ; 
I stayed in the recess to acknowledge it. 
The smooth water was a broad sheen of 
light, the built-up river flowed calm and 
silent by a thousand doors, rippling only 
where the stream chafed against a chain. 
Red pennants drooped, gilded vanes gleamed 
on polished masts, black-pitched hulls glis- 
tened like a black rook's feathers in sunlight ; 
the clear air cut out the forward angles of 
the warehouses, the shadowed wharves were 
quiet in shadows that carried light ; far down 
the ships that were hauling out moved in 
repose, and with the stream floated away 
into the summer mist. There was a faint 
blue colour in the air hovering between the 
built-up banks, against the lit walls, in the 
hollows of the houses. The swallows 
wheeled and climbed, twittered and glided 



s 



THE STORY OF MY HEART 79 

downwards. Burning on the great sun stood 
in the sky, heating the parapet, glowing stead- 
fastly upon me as when I rested in the 
narrow valley grooved out in prehistoric times. 
Burning on steadfast, and ever present as my 
thought. Lighting the broad river, the 
broad walls ; lighting the least speck of dust ; 
lighting the great heaven ; gleaming on my 
finger-nail. The fixed point of day — the 
sun. I was intensely conscious of it ; I felt 
it ; I felt the presence of the immense 
powers of the universe ; I felt out into the 
depths of the ether. So intensely conscious 
of the sun, the sky, the limitless space, I felt 
too in the midst of eternity then, in the 
midst of the supernatural, among the im- 
mortal, and the greatness of the material 
realised the spirit. By these I saw my soul ; 
by these I knew the supernatural to be more 
intensely real than the sun. I touched the 
supernatural, the immortal, there that mo- 
ment 

When, weary of walking on the pave- 



>^ 



8o THE STORY OF MY HEART 

ments, I went to rest in the National Gallery, 
I sat and rested before one or other of the 
human pictures. I am not a picture lover, 
they are flat surfaces, but those that I call 
human are nevertheless beautiful. The knee 
in Daphnis and Chloe and the breast are 
like living things ; they draw the heart 
towards them, the heart must love them. I 
lived in looking ; without beauty there is no 
life for me, the divine beauty of flesh is life 
itself to me. The shoulder in the Surprise, 
the rounded rise of the bust, the exquisite 
tints of the ripe skin, momentarily gratified 
the sea-thirst in me. For I thirst with all 
the thirst of the salt sea, and the sun-heated 
sands dry for the tide, with all the sea I thirst 
for beauty. And I know full well that one 
lifetime, however long, cannot fill my heart- 
My throat and tongue and whole body have 
often been parched and feverish dry with 
this measureless thirst, and again moist to 
the fingers' ends like a sappy bough. It burns 
in me as the sun burns in the sky. 



THE STORY OF MY HEART 8i 

The glowing face of Cytherea in Titian s 
Venus and Adonis, the heated cheek, the 
lips that kiss each eye that gazes on them, the 
desiring glance, the golden hair — sunbeams 
moulded into features — this face answered me. 
Juno's wide back and mesial groove, is any- 
thing so lovely as the back ? Cytherea's poised 
hips unveiled for judgment ; these called up 
the same thirst I felt on the green sward in the 
sun, on the wild beach listening to the quiet 
sob as the summer wave drank at the land. 
I will search the world through for beauty. 
I came here and sat to rest before these in 
the days when I could not afford to buy so 
much as a glass of ale, weary and faint 
from walking on stone pavements. I came 
later on, in better times, often straight from 
labours which though necessary will ever be 
distasteful, always to rest my heart with 
loveliness. I go still ; the divine beauty of 
flesh is life itself to me. It was,, and is, 
one of my London pilgrimages. 

Another was to the Greek sculpture 

G 



82 THE STORY OF MY HEART. 

galleries in the British Museum. The 
statues are not, it is said, the best ; broken 
too, and mutilated, and seen in a dull, com- 
monplace light. But they were shape — 
divine shape of man and woman ; the form 
of limb and torso, of bust and neck, gave 
me a sighing sense of rest These were 
they who would have stayed with me under 
the shadow of the oaks while the blackbirds 
fluted and the south air swung the cowslips. 
They would have walked with me among 
the reddened gold of the wheat. They 
would have rested with me on the hill-tops 
and in the narrow valley grooved of ancient 
times. They would have listened with me 
to the sob of the summer sea drinking the 
land. These had thirsted of sun, and earth, 
and sea, and sky. Their shape spoke this 
thirst and desire like mine — if I had lived 
with them from Greece till now I should not 
have had enough of them. Tracing the form 
of limb and torso with the eye gave me a 
sense of rest. 



THE STORY OF MY HEART 83 

Sometimes I came in from the crowded, 
streets and ceaseless hum ; one glance at 
these shapes and I became myself. Some- 
times I came from the Reading-room, where 
under the dome I often looked up from^ 
the desk and realised the crushing hope 
lessness of books, useless, not equal to one 
bubble borne along on the running brook. 
I had walked by, giving no thought like the 
spring when I lifted the water in my hand 
and saw the light gleam on it. Torso and 
limb, bust and neck instantly returned me 
to myself; I felt as I did lying on the turf 
listening to the wind among the grass ; it 
would have seemed natural to have found 
butterflies fluttering among the statues. The 
same deep desire was with me. I shall 
always go to speak to them ; they are a place 
of pilgrimage ; wherever there is a beautiful 
statue there is a place of pilgrimage. 

I always stepped aside, too, to look 
awhile at the head of Julius Csesar. The 
domes of the swelling temples of his broad 

G 2 



84 THE STORY OF MY HEART. 

head are full of mind, evident to the eye 
as a globe is full of substance to the sense 
of feeling in the hands that hold it The 
thin worn cheek is entirely human ; endless 
difficulties surmounted by endless labour 
are marked in it, as the sandblast, by dint 
of particles ceaselessly driven, carves the 
hardest material. If circumstances favoured 
him he made those circumstances his own 
by marvellous labour, so as justly to receive 
the credit of chance. Therefore the thin 
cheek is entirely human — the sum of human 
life made visible in one face — labour, and 
endurance, and mind, and all in vain. A 
shadow of deep sadness has gathered on it 
in the years that have passed because en- 
durance was without avail. It is sadder to 
look at than the grass-grown tumulus I used 
to sit by, because it is a personality, and also 
on account of the extreme folly of our human 
race ever destroying our greatest. 

Far better had they endeavoured, how- 
ever hopelessly, to keep him living till this 



THE STORY OF MY HEART, 85 

day. Did but the race this hour possess 
one-hundredth part of his breadth of view, 
how happy for them! Of whom else can 
it be said that he had no enemies to forgive 
because he recognised no enemy ? Nineteen 
hundred years ago he put in actual practice, 
with more arbitrary power than any despot, 
those very principles of humanity which are 
now put forward as the highest culture. But 
he made them to be actual things under his 
sway. 

The one man filled with mind ; the one 
man without avarice, anger, pettiness, little- 
ness ; the one man generous and truly great 
of all history. It is enough to make one 
despair to think of the mere brutes butting 
to death the great-minded Caesar. He comes > 
nearest to the ideal of a design-power arrang- 
ing the affairs of the world for good in prac- 
tical things. Before his face — the divine brow 
of mind above, the human suffering- drawn 
cheek beneath — my own thought became set 
and strengthened. That I could but look at 



86 THE STORY OF MY HEART 

things in the broad way he did ; that I 
could but possess one particle of such width 
of intellect to guide my own course, to cope 
with and drag forth from the iron-resisting 
forces of the universe some one thing of my 
prayer for the soul and for the flesh ! 



THE STORY OF MY HEART 87 



CHAPTER VI. 

There is a place in front of the Royal Ex- 
change where the wide pavement reaches out 
like a promontory. It is in the shape of a 
triangle with a rounded apex. A stream of 
traffic runs on either side, and other streets 
send their currents down into the open space 
before it. Like the spokes of a wheel con- 
verging streams of human life flow into this 
agitated pool. Horses and carriages, carts, 
vans, omnibuses, cabs, every kind of convey- 
ance cross each other's course in every possible 
direction. Twisting in and out by the wheels 
and under the horses' heads, working a 
devious way, men and women of all condi- 
tions wind a path over. They fill the inter- 
stices between the carriages and blacken the 



88 THE STORY OF MY HEART 

surface, till the vans almost float on human 
beings. Now the streams slacken, and now 
they rush amain, but never cease ; dark 
waves are always rolling down the incline 
opposite, waves swell out from the side rivers, 
all London converges into this focus. There 
is an indistinguishable noise — it is not clatter, 
hum, or roar, it is not resolvable ; made up of 
a thousand thousand footsteps, from a thou- 
sand hoofs, a thousand wheels — of haste, and 
shuffle, and quick movements, and ponderous 
loads ; no attention can resolve it into a fixed 
sound. 

Blue carts and yellow omnibuses, var- 
nished carriages and brown vans, green 
omnibuses and red cabs, pale loads of yellow 
straw, rusty-red iron clanking on paintless 
carts, high white wool-packs, grey horses, 
bay horses, black teams ; sunlight sparkling 
on brass harness, gleaming from carriage 
panels ; jingle, jingle, jingle ! An intermixed 
and intertangled, ceaselessly changing jingle, 
too, of colour ; flecks of colour champed, as it 



THE STORY OF MY HEART 89 

were, like bits in the horses' teeth, frothed 
and strewn about, and a surface always of 
dark-dressed people winding like the curves 
on fast-flowing water. This is the vortex 
and whirlpool, the centre of human life to- 
day on the earth. Now the tide rises and 
now it sinks, but the flow of these rivers 
always continues. Here it seethes and whirls, 
not for an hour only, but for all present time, 
hour by hour, day by day, year by year. 

Here it rushes and pushes, the atoms tri- 
turate and grind, and, eagerly thrusting by, 
pursue their separate ends. Here it appears 
in its unconcealed personality, indiff"erent to all 
else but itself, absorbed and rapt in eager self, 
devoid and stripped of conventional gloss and 
politeness, yielding only to get its own way ; 
driving, pushing, carried on in a stress of 
feverish force like a bullet, dynamic force 
apart from reason or will, like the force that 
lifts the tides and sends the clouds onwards. 
The friction of a thousand interests evolves 
a condition of electricity in which men are 



90 THE STORY OF MY HEART 

moved to and fro without considering their 
steps. Yet the agitated pool of life is stonily 
indifferent, the thought is absent or preoccu- 
pied, for it is evident that the mass are. un- 
conscious of the scene in which they act. 

But it is more sternly real than the very 
stones, for all these men and women that 
pass through are driven on by the push of 
accumulated circumstances ; they cannot stay, 
they must go, their necks are in the slave's 
ring, they are beaten like seaweed against the 
solid walls of fact. In ancient times, Xerxes, 
the king of kings, looking down upon his 
myriads, wept to think that in a hundred 
years not one of them would be left Where 
will be these millions of to-day in a hundred 
years 1 But, further than that, let us ask. 
Where then will be the sum and outcome of 
their labour 1 If they wither away like sum- 
mer grass, will not at least a result be left 
which those of a hundred years hence may 
be the better for ? No, not one jot ! There 
will not be any sum or outcome or result 



THE STORY OF MY HEART 91 

of this ceaseless labour and movement; it 
vanishes in the moment that it is done, and 
in a hundred years nothing will be there, for 
nothing is there now. There will be no more 
sum or result than accumulates from the 
motion of a revolving cowl on a housetop. 
Nor do they receive any more sunshine 
during their lives, for they are unconscious 
of the sun. 

> I used to come and stand near the apex 
of the promontory of pavement which juts out 
towards the pool of life ; I still go there to 
ponder. Burning in the sky, the sun shone 
on me as when I rested in the narrow valley 
carved in prehistoric time. Burning in the 
sky, I can never forget the sun. The heat 
of summer is dry there as if the light carried 
an impalpable dust ; dry, breathless heat that 
will not let the skin respire, but swathes up 
the dry fire in the blood. But beyond the 
heat and light, I felt the presence of the sun 
as I felt it in the solitary valley, the presence 
of the resistless forces of the universe ; the 



92 THE STORY OF MY HEART 

sun burned in the sky as I stood and pondered. 
Is there any theory, philosophy, or creed, is 
there any system or culture, any formulated 
method able to meet and satisfy each separate 
item of this agitated pool of human life ? By 
which they may be guided, by which hope, 
by which look forward ? Not a mere illusion 
of the craving heart — something real, as real 
as the solid walls of fact against which, like 
drifted seaweed, they are diashed ; something 
to give each separate personality sunshine 
and a flower in its own existence now ; some - 
thing to shape this million-handed labour to 
an end and outcome that will leave more sun- 
shine and more flowers to those who must 
succeed ? Something real now, and not in 
the spirit-land ; in this hour now, as I stand 
and the sun burns. Can any creed, philo- 
sophy, system, or culture endure the test and 
remain unmoken in this fierce focus of human 
life? 

Consider, is there anything slowly painted 
on the once mystic and now commonplace 



THE STORY OF MY HEART 93 

papyri of ancient, ancient Egypt, held on the 
mummy's withered breast ? In that elaborate 
ritual, in the procession of the symbols, in the 
winged circle, in the laborious sarcophagus ? 
Nothing; absolutely nothing! Before the 
fierce heat of the human furnace, the papyri 
smoulders away as paper smoulders under a 
lens in the sun. Remember Nineveh and 
the cult of the fir-cone, the turbaned and 
bearded bulls of stone, the lion hunt, the 
painted chambers loaded with tile books, the 
lore of the arrow-headed writing. What is in 
Assyria ? There is sand, and failing rivers, 
and in Assyria's writings an utter nothing. 
The aged caves of India, who shall tell when 
they were sculptured ? Far back when the sun 
was burning, burning in the sky as now in 
untold precedent time. Is there any meaning 
in those ancient caves ? The indistinguish- 
able noise not to be resolved, born of the 
human struggle, mocks in answer. 

In the strange characters of the Zend, in 
the Sanscrit, in the effortless creed of Con- 



94 THE STORY OF MY HEART. 

fucius, in the Aztec coloured-string writings 
and rayed stones, in the uncertain marks left 
of the sunken Polynesian continent, hiero- 
glyphs as useless as those of Memphis, 
nothing. Nothing ! They have been tried, 
and were found an illusion. Think then, to- 
day, now looking from this apex of the pave- 
ment promontory outwards from our own 
land to the utmost bounds of the farthest 
sail, is there any faith or culture at this hour 
which can stand in this fierce heat ? From the 
various forms of Semitic, Aryan, or Turanian 
creed now existing, from the printing-press 
to the palm-leaf volume on to those who 
call on the jewel in the lotus, can aught be 
gathered which can face this, the Reality ? 
The indistinguishable noise, non-resolvable, 
roars a loud contempt. 

Turn, then, to the calm reasoning of 
Aristotle ; is there anything in that ? Can 
the half-divine thought of Plato, rising in 
storeys of sequential ideas, following each 
other to the conclusion, endure here ? No ! 



THE STORY OF MY HEART, 95 

All the philosophers in Diogenes Laertius 
fade away ; the theories of mediaeval days ; the 
organon of experiment; down to this hour 
— they are useless alike. The science of this 
hour, drawn from the printing-press in an 
endless web of paper, is powerless here ; the 
indistinguishable noise echoed from the 
smoke-shadowed walls despises the whole. 
A thousand footsteps, a thousand hoofs, a 
thousand wheels roll over and utterly con- 
temn them in complete annihilation. Mere 
illusions of heart or mind, they are tested 
and thrust aside by the irresistible push of a 
million converging feet. 

Burning in the sky the sun shines as it 
shone on me in the solitary valley, as it 
burned on when the earliest cave of India 
was carved. Above the indistinguishable 
roar of the many feet I feel the presence of 
the sun, of the immense forces of the uni- 
verse, and beyond these the sense of the 
eternal now, of the immortal. Full well 
aware that all has failed, yet, side by side 



96 THE STORY OF MY HEART 

with the sadness of that knowledge, there 
lives on in me an unquenchable belief, thought 
burning like the sun, that there is yet some- 
thing to be found, something real, something 
to give each separate personality sunshine 
and flowers in its own existence now. 
Something to shape this million-handed 
labour to an end and outcome, leaving accu- 
mulated sunshine and flowers to those who 
shall succeed. It must be dragged forth by 
might of thought from the immense forces 
of the universe. 

To prepare for such an effort, first the 
mind must be cleared of the conceit that, 
because we live to-day, we are wiser than 
the ages gone. The mind must acknow- 
ledge its ignorance ; all the learning and lore 
of so many eras must be erased from it as 
an encumbrance. It is not from past or 
present knowledge, science or faith, that it 
is to be drawn. Erase these altogether as 
they are erased under the fierce heat of the 
focus before me. Begin wholly afresh. Go 



I 



I 



THE STORY OF MY HEART- 97 

Straight to the sun, the immense forces of 
the universe, to the Entity unknown ; go 
higher than a god ; deeper than prayer ; and 
open a new day. That I might but have a 
fragment of Caesar's intellect to find a frag- 
ment of this desire ! 

From my home near London I made a 
pilgrimage almost daily to an aspen by a 
brook. It was a mile and a quarter along 
the road, far enough for me to walk off the 
concentration of mind necessary for work. 
The idea of the pilgrimage was to get away 
from the endless and nameless circumstances 
of everyday existence, which by degrees 
build a wall about the mind so that it travels 
in a constantly narrowing circle. This tether 
of the faculties tends to make them accept 
present knowledge, and present things, as all 
that can be attained to. This is all — there is 
nothing more — is the iterated preaching of 
house-life. Remain ; be content ; go round 
and round in one barren path, a little money, 
a little food and sleep, some ancient fables, 

H 



98 THE STORY OF MY HEART 

old age and death. Of all the inventions of 
casuistry with which man for ages has in 
various ways manacled himself, and stayed 
his own advance, there is none equally potent 
with the supposition that nothing more is 
possible. Once well impress on the mind 
that it has already all, that advance is impos- 
sible because there is nothing further, and it 
IS chained like a horse to an iron pin in the 
ground. It is the most deadly — the most 
^fatal poison of the mind. No such casuistry 
has ever for a moment held me, but still, if 
permitted, the constant routine of house-life, 
the same work, the same thought in the work, 
the little circumstances regularly recurring, 
will dull the keenest edge of thought By 
my daily pilgrimage, I escaped from it back 
to the sun. 

In summer the leaves of the aspen rustled 
pleasantly, there was the tinkle of falling 
water over a hatch, thrushes sang and black- 
birds whistled, greenfinches laughed in their 
talk to each other. The commonplace dusty 



THE STORY OF MY HEART 99 

road was commonplace no longer. In the 
dust was the mark of the chaffinches' little 
feet ; the white light rendered even the dust 
brighter to look on. The air came from the 
south-west — there were distant hills in that 
direction — over fields of grass and corn. As 
I visited the spot from day to day the wheat 
grew from green to yellow, the wild roses 
flowered, the scarlet poppies appeared, and 
again the beeches reddened in autumn. In 
the march of time there fell away from 
my mind, as the leaves from the trees in 
autumn, the last traces and relics of supersti- 
tions, and traditions acquired compulsorily in 
childhood. Always feebly adhering, they 
finally disappeared. 

There fell away, too, personal bias and 
prejudices, enabling me to see clearer and 
with wider sympathies. The glamour of 
modern science and discoveries faded away, 
for I fo.und them no more than the first pot- 
ter*s wheel. Erasure and reception proceeded 
together ; the past accumulations of casuistry 

H 2 



100 THE STORY OF MY HEART, 

were erased, and my thought widened to re- 
ceive the idea of something beyond all pre- 
vious ideas. With disbelief, belief increased. 
The aspiration and hope, the prayer, was the 
same as that which I felt years before on the 
hills, only it now broadened. 

Experience of life, instead of curtailing 
and checking my prayer, led me to reject ex- 
perience altogether. As well might the horse 
believe that the road the bridle forces it to 
traverse every day encircles the earth as I 
believe in experience. All the experience of 
the greatest city in the world could not with- 
hold me. I rejected it wholly. I stood bare- 
headed before the sun, in the presence of the 
earth and air, in the presence of the immense 
forces of the universe. I demand that which 
will make me more perfect now, this hour. 
London convinced me of my own thought. 
That thought has always been with me, and 
always grows wider. 

One midsummer I went out of the road 
into the fields, and sat down on the grass 



THE STORY OF MY HEART loi 

between the yellowing wheat and the green 
hawthorn bushes. The sun burned in the 
sky, the wheat was full of a luxuriant sense of 
growth, the grass high, the earth giving its 
vigour to tree and leaf, the heaven blue. 
The vigour and growth, the warmth and 
light, the beauty and richness of it entered 
into me ; an ecstasy of soul accompanied the 
delicate excitement of the senses, the soul 
rose with the body. Rapt in the fulness of 
the moment, I prayed there with all that 
expansion of mind and frame ; no words, no 
definition, inexpressible desire of physical 
life, of soul-life, equal to and beyond the 
highest imagining of my heart. 

These memories cannot be placed in 
exact chronological order. There was a time 
when a weary restlessness came upon me, 
perhaps from too-long-continued labour. It 
was like a drought— a moral drought — as if 
I had been absent for many years from the 
sources of life and hope. The inner nature 
was faint, all was dry and tasteless ; I was 



102 THE STORY OF MY HEART. 

weary for the pure, fresh springs of thought. 
Some instinctive feeling uncontrollable drove 
me to the sea ; I was so under its influence 
that I could not arrange the journey so as to 
get the longest day. I merely started, and 
of course had to wait and endure much in- 
convenience. To get to the sea at some 
quiet spot was my one thought ; to do so I 
had to travel farther, and from want of pre- 
arrangement it was between two and three in 
the afternoon before I reached the end of my 
journey. Even then, being too much pre- 
occupied to inquire the way, I missed the 
road and had to walk a long distance before 
coming to the shore. But I found the sea at 
last ; I walked beside it in a trance away 
from the houses out into the wheat. The 
ripe corn stood up to the beach, the waves 
on one side of the shingle, and the yellow 
wheat on the other. 

There, alone, I went down to the sea. I 
stood where the foam came to my feet, and 
looked out over the sunlit waters. The great 



THE STORY OF MY HEART 103 

earth bearing the richness of the harvest, and 
its hills golden with corn, was at my back ; 
its strength and firmness under me. The 
great sun shone above, the wide sea was 
before me, the wind came sweet and strong 
from the waves. The life of the earth and 
the sea, the glow of the sun filled me; I 
touched the surge with my hand, I lifted 
my face to the sun, I opened my lips to 
the wind. I prayed aloud in the roar of 
the waves — my soul was strong as the sea 
and prayed with the sea's might. Give me 
fulness of life like to the sea and the sun, to 
the earth and the air ; give me fulness of 
physical life, mind equal ^nd beyond their 
fulness ; give me a greatness and perfection 
of soul higher than all things, give me my 
inexpressible desire which swells in me like 
a tide, give it to me with all the force of the 
sea. 

Then I rested, sitting by the wheat ; the 
bank of beach was between me and the sea, 
but the waves beat against it ; the sea was 



lOA, THE STORY OF MY HEART 

there, the sea was present and at hand. By 
the dry wheat I rested, I did not think, I 
was inhaling the richness of the sea, all the 
strength and depth of meaning of the sea 
and earth came to me again. I rubbed out 
some of the wheat in my hands, I took up a 
piece of clod and crumbled it in my fingers — 
it was a joy to touch it — I held my hand so 
that I could see the sunlight gleam on the 
slightly moist surface of the skin. The earth 
and sun were to me like my flesh and blood, 
and the air of. the sea life. 

With all the greater existence I drew from 
them I prayed for a bodily life equal to it, for 
a soul-life beyond my thought, for my inex- 
pressible desire of more than I could shape 
even into idea. \There was something higher 
than idea, invisible to thought as air to the 
eye/ give me bodily life equal in fulness to 
the strength of earth, and sun, and sea ; give 
me the soul- life of my desire. Once more I 
went down to the sea, touched it, and said 
farewell. So deep was the inhalation of this 



THE STORY OF MY HEART los 

life that day, that it seemed to remain in me 
for years. This was a real pilgrimage. 

Time passed away, with more labour, 
pleasure, and again at last, after much pain 
and weariness of mind, I came down again 
to the sea. The circumstances were changed 
— it was not a hurried glance — there were 
opportunities for longer thought. It mattered 
scarcely anything to me now whether I was 
alone, or whether houses and other people were 
near. Nothing could disturb my inner vision. 
By the sea, aware of the sun overhead, and 
the blue heaven, I feel that there is nothing 
between me and space. This is the verge 
of a gulf, and a tangent from my feet goes 
straight unchecked into the unknown. It is 
the edge of the abyss as much as if the earth 
were cut away in a sheer fall of eight thou- 
sand miles to the sky beneath, thence a hollow 
to the stars. Looking straight out is looking 
straight down ; the eye-glance gradually de- 
parts from the sea- level, and, rising as that 
falls, enters the hollow of heaven. It is 



io6 THE STORY OF MY HEART 

gazing along the face of a vast precipice 
into the hollow space which is nameless. 

There mystery has been placed, but 
realising the vast hollow yonder makes me 
feel that the mystery is here. I, who am here 
on the verge, standing on the margin of the 
sky, am in the mystery itself. If I let my 
eye look back upon me from the extreme 
opposite of heaven, then this spot where I 
stand is in the centre of the hollow. Alone 
with the sea and sky, I presently feel all the 
depth and wonder of the unknown come back 
surging up around, and touching me as the 
foam runs to my feet. I am in it now, not 
to-morrow, this moment ; I cannot escape 
from it Though I may deceive myself with 
labour, yet still I am in it ; in sleep too. 
There is no escape from this immensity. 

Feeling this by the sea, under the sun, 
my life enlarges and quickens, striving to take 
to itself the largeness of the heaven. The 
frame cannot expand, but the soul is able to 
stand before it. No giant's body could be in 



THE STORY OF MY HEART. 107 

proportion to the eartl^j but a little spirit is equal 
to the entire cosmos, to earth and ocean, sun 
and star-hollow/ These are but a few acres 
to it. Y^ere the cosmos twice as wide, the 
soul could run over it, and return to itself in 
a time so small, no measure exists to mete it. 
Therefore, I think the soul may sometimes 
find out an existence as superior as my mind 
is to the dead chalk cliff. / 

With the great sun burning over the foam- 
flaked sea, roofed with heaven — aware of 
myself, a consciousness forced on me by these 
things — I feel that thought must yet grow 
larger and correspond in magnitude of con- 
ception to these. But these cannot content 
me, these Titanic things of sea, and sun, and 
profundity ; J feel that my thought is stronger 
than they are. I burn life like a torch. The 
hot light shot back from the sea scorches my 
cheek — my life is burning in me. The soul ** 
throbs like the sea for a larger life. No 
thought which I have ever had has satisfied 
my soul. 



jo8 THE STORY OF MY HEART 



CHAPTER VII. 

My strength is not enough to fulfil my 
desire; if I had the strength of the ocean, 
and of the earth, the burning vigour of the 
sun implanted in my limbs, it would hardly 
suffice to gratify the measureless desire of 
life which possesses me. I have often walked 
the day long over the sward, and compelled 
to pause, at length, in my weariness, I was 
full of the same eagerness with which I 
started. The sinews would obey no longer, 
but the will was the same. My frame could 
never take the violent exertion nriy heart 
demanded. Labour of body was like meat 
and drink to me. Over the open hills, up 
the steep ascents, mile after mile, there was 
deep enjoyment in the long-drawn breath, 



THE STORY OF MY HEART 109 

the spring of the foot, in the act of rapid 
movement. Never have I had enough of it ; 
I wearied long before I was satisfied, and 
weariness did not bring a cessation of desire ; 
the thirst was still there. 

I rowed, I used the axe, I split tree- 
trunks with wedges ; my arms tired, but my 
spirit remained fresh and chafed against the 
physical weariness. My arms were not 
strong enough to satisfy me with the axe, or 
wedges, or oars. There was delight in the 
moment, but it was not enough. I swam, 
and what is more delicious than swimming ? 
It is exercise and luxury at once. But I 
could not swim far enough ; I was always dis- 
satisfied with myself on leaving the water. 
Nature has not given me a great frame, and 
had it done so I should still have longed for 
more. I was out of doors all day, and often 
half the night ; still I wanted more sunshine, 
more air, the hours were too short. I feel 
this even more now than in the violence of 
early youth ; the hours are too short, the day 



no THE STORY OF MY HEART 

should be sixty hours long. Slumber, too, 
is abbreviated and restricted ; forty hours of 
night and sleep would not be too much. So 
little can be accomplished in the longest 
summer day, so little rest and new force is 
accumulated in a short eight hours of sleep. 

I live by the sea now ; I can see nothing 
of it in a day ; why, I do but get a breath of 
it, and the sun sinks before I have well 
begun to think. Life is so little and so 
mean. I dream sometimes backwards of the 
ancient times. If I could have the bow of 
Ninus, and the earth full of wild bulls and 
lions, to hunt them down, there would be rest 
in that. To shoot with a gun is nothing ; a 
mere touch discharges it. Give me a bow, 
that I may enjoy the delight of feeling 
myself draw the string and the strong wood 
bending, that I may see the rush of the 
arrow, and the broad head bury itself deep in 
shaggy hide. Give me an iron mace that I 
may crush the savage beast and hammer him 
down. A spear to thrust through with, so 



THE STORY OF MY HEART in 

that I may feel the long blade enter and the 
push of the shaft. The unwearied strength 
of Ninus to hunt unceasingly in the fierce 
sun. Still I should desire greater strength 
and a stouter bow, wilder creatures to combat 
The intense life of the senses, there is never 
enough for them. I envy Semiramis; I 
would have been ten times Semiramis. I 
envy Nero, because of the great concourse 
of beauty he saw. I should like to be loved 
by every beautiful woman on earth, from 
the swart Nubian to the white and divine 
Greek. 

Wine is pleasant and meat refreshing ; 
but though I own with absolute honesty that 
I like them, these are the least of all. Of 
these two only have I ever had enough. 
The vehemence of exertion, the vehemence 
of the spear, the vehemence of sunlight and 
life, the insatiate desire of insatiate Semi- 
ramis, the still more insatiate desire of love, 
divine and beautiful, the uncontrollable 
adoration of beauty, these— these : give me 



112 THE STORY OF MY HEART, 

these in greater abundance than was ever 
known to man or woman. The strength of 
Hercules, the fulness of the senses, the rich- 
ness of life, would not in the least impair my 
desire of soul-life. On the reverse, with 
every stronger beat of the pulse my desire of 
soul-life would expand. So it has ever been 
with me ; in hard exercise, in sensuous 
pleasure, in the embrace of the sunlight, 
even in the drinking of a glass of wine, my 
heart has been lifted the higher towards 
perfection of soul. Fulness of physical life 
causes a deeper desire of soul-life. 

Let me be physically perfect, in shape, 
vigour, and movement. My frame naturally 
slender will not respond to labour, and 
increase in proportion to effort, nor will expo- 
sure harden a delicate skin. It disappoints 
me so far, but my spirit rises with the effort, 
and my thought opens. This is the only 
profit of frost, the pleasure of winter, to 
conquer cold, and to feel braced and 
strengthened by that whose province it is 



THE STORY OF MY HEART 113 

to wither and destroy, making of cold, life's 
enemy, life's renewer. The black north wind 
hardens the resolution as steel is tempered in 
ice water. It is a sensual joy, as sensuous as 
the warm embrace of the sunlight, but fulness 
of physical life ever brings to me a more eager 
desire of soul-life. 

Splendid it is to feel the boat rise to 
the roller, or forced through by the sail to 
shear the foam aside like a share ; splendid 
to undulate as the chest lies on the wave, 
swimming, the brimming ocean round, then 
I know and feel its deep strong tide, its 
immense fulness, and the sun glowing over ; 
splendid to climb the steep green hill : in 
these I feel myself, I drink the exquisite joy 
of the senses, and my soul lifts itself with 
them. It is beautiful even to watch a fine 
horse gallop, the long stride, the rush of the 
wind as he passes — my heart beats quicker to 
the thud of the hoofs, and I feel his strength. 
Gladly would I have the strength of the 
Tartar stallion roaming the wild steppe ; that 



ki4 THE STORY OF MY HEART. 

very strength, what vehemence of soul- 
thought would accompany it But I should 
like it, too, for itself. For I believe, with all 
my heart, in the body and the flesh, and 
believe that it should be increased and made 
more beautiful by every means. I believe — 
I do more than think — I believe it to be a 
sacred duty, incumbent upon every one, man 
and woman, to add to and encourage their 
physical life, by exercise, and in every 
manner. A sacred duty each towards himself, 
and each towards the whole of the human 
race. Each one of us should do some little 
part for the physical good of the race — 
health, strength, vigour. There is no harm 
therein to the soul : on the contrary, those 
who stunt their physical life are most certainly 
stunting their souls. 

I believe all manner of asceticism to be 
the vilest blasphemy — blasphemy towards the 
whole of the human race. I believe in the 
flesh and the body, which is worthy of 
worship — to see a perfect human body un- 
veiled causes a sense of worship. The ascetics 



THE STORY OF MY HEART 115 

are the only persons who are impure. Increase 

of physical beauty is attended by increase of 

soul beauty. The soul is the higher even by 

gazing on beauty. Let me be fleshly perfect. 

It is in myself that I desire increase, 

profit, and exaltation of body, mind, and souh 

The surroundings, the clothes, the dwelling, 

the social status, the circumstances are to me 

utterly indifferent. Let the floor of the room 

be bare, let the furniture be a plank table, the 

bed a mere pallet. Let the house be plain 

and simple, but in the midst of air and light. 

These are enough — a cave would be enough ; 

in a warmer climate the open air would 

suffice. Let me be furnished in myself with 

health, safety, strength, the perfection of 

physical existence ; let my mind be furnished 

with highest thoughts of soul-life. Let me 

be in myself myself fully. The pageantry of 

power, the still more foolish pageantry of 

wealth, the senseless precedence of place ; I 

fail words to express my utter contempt for 

such pleasure or such ambitions. Let me be 

1 2 



'\ 



ii6 THE STORY OF' MY HEART 

in myself myself fully, and those I love 
equally so. 

It is enough to lie on the sward in the 
shadow of green boughs, to listen to the songs 
of summer, to drink in the sunlight, the air, 
the flowers, the sky, the beauty of all. Or 
upon the hill-tops to watch the white clouds 
rising over the curved hill-lines, their shadows 
descending the slope. Or on the beach to 
listen to the sweet sigh as the smooth sea 
runs up and recedes. It is lying beside the 
immortals, in-drawing the life of the ocean, 
the earth, and the sun. 

I want to be always in company with 
these, with earth, and sun, and sea, and stars 
by night. The pettiness of house-life— chairs 
and tables — and the pettiness of observances, 
the petty necessity of useless labour, useless 
because productive of nothing, chafe me the 
year through. I want to be always in com- 
pany with the sun, and sea, and earth. 
These, and the stars by night, are my natural 
companions. 



THE STORY OF MY HEART 117 

My heart looks back and sympathises, 
with all the joy and life of ancient time. With 
the circling dance burned in still attitude on 
the vase ; with the chase and the hunter 
eagerly pursuing, whose javelin trembles to 
be thrown ; with the extreme fury of feeling, 
the whirl of joy in the warriors from Marathon 
to the last battle of Rome, not with the 
slaughter, but with the passion — the life in the 
passion ; with the garlands and the flowers ; 
with all the breathing busts that have panted 
beneath the sun. O beautiful human life ! 
Tears come in my eyes as I think of it. 
So beautiful, so inexpressibly beautiful ! 

So deep is the passion of life that, 
if it were possible to live again, it must be 
exquisite to die pushing the eager breast 
against the sword. In the flush of strength to 
face the sharp pain joyously, and laugh in the 
last glance of the sun — if only to live again, 
now on earth, were possible. So subtle is the 
chord of life that sometimes to watch troops 
marching in rhythmic order, undulating along 



Ii8 THE STORY OF MY HEART 

the column as the feet are lifted, brings tears 
in my eyes. Yet could I have in my own 
heart all the passion, the love and joy, burned 
in the breasts that have panted, breathing 
deeply, since the hour of I lion, yet still I 
should desire more. How willingly I would 
strew the paths of all with flowers; how 
beautiful a delight to make the world joyous ! 
The song should never be silent, the dance 
never still, the laugh should sound like water 
which runs for ever. 

I would submit to a severe discipline, and 
to go without many things cheerfully, for the 
good and happiness of the human race in the 
future. Each one of us should do something, 
however small, towards that great end. At 
the present time the labour of our prede- 
cessors in this country, in all other countries 
of the earth, is entirely wasted. We live — 
that is, we snatch an existence — and our 
works become nothing. The piling up of 
fortunes, the building of cities, the establish- 
ment of immense commerce, ends in a cipher. 



THE STORY OF MY HEART 119 

These objects are so outside my idea that I 
cannot understand them, and look upon the 
struggle in amazement. Not even the pres- 
sure of poverty can force upon me an under- 
standing of, and sympathy with, these things. 
It is the human being as the human beirtg 
of whom I think. That the human being 
as the human being, nude — apart altogether 
from money, clothing, houses, properties — 
should enjoy greater health, strength, safety, 
beauty, and happiness I would gladly agree 
to a discipline like that of Sparta. The 
Spartan method did produce the finest race 
of men, and Sparta was famous in antiquity 
for the most beautiful women. So far, there- 
fore, it fits exactly to my ideas. 

No science of modern times has yet dis- 
covered a plan to meet the requirements of 
the millions who live now, no plan by which 
they might attain similar physical proportion. 
Some increase of longevity, some slight im- 
provement in the general health is promised, 
and these are great things, but far,* far be- 



I20 THE STORY OF MY HEART 

neath the ideal. Probably the whole mode 
of thought of the nations must be altered 
before physical progress is possible. Not 
while money, furniture, affected show'and the 
pageantry of wealth are the ambitions of the 
mliltitude can the multitude become ideal in 
form. When the ambition of the multitude 
is fixed on the ideal of form and beauty, then 
that ideal will become immediately possible, 
and a marked advance towards it could be 
made in three generations. Glad, indeed, 
should I be to discover something that would 
help towards this end. 

How pleasant it would be each day to 
think. To-day I have done something that 
will tend to render future generations more 
happy. The very thought would make this 
hour sweeter. It is absolutely necessary that 
something of this kind should be discovered. 
First, we must lay down the axiom that as 
yet nothing has been found ; we have nothing 
to start with ; all has to be begun afresh. All 



f 



THE STORY OF MY HEART, 121 

courses or methods of human life have 
hitherto been failures. Some course of life is 
needed based on things that are, irrespective 
of tradition. The physical ideal must be kept 
steadily in view. 



122 THE STORY OF MY HEART 



CHAPTER VIII. 

An enumeration of the useless would almost 
be an enumeration of everything hitherto pur- 
sued. For instance, to go back as far as 
possible, the study and labour expended on 
Egyptian inscriptions and papyri, which con- 
tain nothing but doubtful, because laudatory 
history, invocations to idols, and similar 
matters, all these labours are in vain. Take 
a broom and sweep the papyri away into the 
dust. The Assyrian terra-cotta tablets, some 
recording fables, and some even sadder — 
contracts between men whose bodies were 
dust twenty centuries since — take a hammer 
and demolish them. Set a battery to beat 
down the pyramids, and a mind-battery to 
destroy the deadening influence of tradition. 



THE STORY OF MY HEART 123 

The Greek statue lives to this day, and has 
the highest use of all, the use of true beauty. 
The Greek and Roman philosophers have the 
value of furnishing the mind with material to 
think from. Egyptian and Assyrian, mediae- 
val and eighteenth-century culture, miscalled, 
are all alike mere dust, and absolutely use- 
less. 

Vrhere is a mass of knowledge so-called at 
the present day equally useless, and nothing 
but an encumbrance. We are forced by cir- 
cumstances to become familiar with it, but the 
time expended on it is lostyNo physical ideal 
— far less any soul-ideal — will ever be reached 
by it. In a recent generation erudition in the 
text of the classics was considered the most 
honourable of pursuits : certainly nothing 
could be less valuable. In our own genera- 
tion, another species of erudition is lauded — 
erudition in the laws of matter — which, in 
itself, is but one degree better. The study 
of matter for matter s sake is despicable ; if 
any can turn that study to advance the ideal 



124 THE STORY OF MY HEART. 

of life, it immediately becomes most valuable. 
But not without the human ideal. \ It is 
nothing to me if the planets revolve around 
the sun, or the sun round the earth, unless I 
can thereby gather an increase of body or 
mind./ As the conception of the planets re- 
volving around the sun, the present astrono- 
mical conception of the heavens, is distinctly 
grander than that of Ptolemy, it is therefore 
superior, and a gain to the human mind. So 
with other sciences, not immediately useful, 
yet if they furnish the mind with material of 
thought, they are an advance. 

But not in themselves — only in conjunc- 
tion with the human ideal. Once let that 
slip out of the thought, and science is of no 
more use than the invocations in the Egyptian 
papyri. The world would be the gainer if 
the Nile rose and -swept away pyramid and 
tomb, sarcophagus, papyri, and inscription ; 
for it seems as if most of the superstitions 
which still to this hour, in our own country, 
hold minds in their sway, originated in 



THE STORY OF MY HEART 125 

Eg>''pt The world would be th'e gainer if 
a Nile flood of new thought arose and swept 
away the past, concentrating the effort of all 
the races of the earth upon man's body, that 
it might reach an ideal of shape, and health, 
and happiness. 

Nothing is of any use unless it gives me 
a stronger body and mind, a more beautiful 
body, a happy existence, and a soul-life now. 
The last phase of philosophy is equally use- 
less with the rest. The belief that the human 
mind was evolved, in the process of un- 
numbered years, from a fragment of pal- 
pitating slime through a thousand gradations, 
is a modern superstition, and proceeds upon 
assumption alone. 

Nothing is evolved, no evolution t?ikes 
place, there is no record of such an event ; 
it is pure assertion. The theory fascinates 
many, because they find, upon study of 
physiology, that the gradations between 
animal and vegetable are so fine and so close 
together, as if a common web bound them 



126 THE STORY OF MY HEART 

together. But although they stand so near 
they never change places. They are like the 
figures on the face of a clock ; there are minute 
dots between, apparently connecting each 
with the other, and the hands move round 
over all. Yet ten never becomes twelve, and 
each second even is parted from the next, as 
you may hear by listening to the beat. So 
the gradations of life, past and present, 
though standing close together never change 
places. Nothing is evolved. There is no 
evolution any more than there is any design 
in nature. By standing face to face with 
nature, and not from books, I have convinced 
myself that there is no design and no evolu- 
tion. What there is, what was the cause, 
how and why, is not yet known ; certainly it 
was neither of these. 

\ But it may be argued the world must have 
been created, or it must have been made of 
existing things, or it must have been evolved, 
or it must have existed for ever, through all 
eternity. I think not. I do not think that 



THE STORY OF MY HEART 127 

either of these are musts, nor that any * must ' 
has yet been discovered ; not even that there 
' must ' be a first cause/ There may be other 
things — other physical forces even — of which 
we know nothing/^ I strongly suspect there 
are. There may be other ideas altogether 
from any we have hitherto had the use of. 
For many ages our ideas have been confined 
to two or three. We have conceived the idea 
of creation, which is the highest and grandest 
of all, if not historically true ; we have con- 
ceived the idea of design, that is of an intel- 
ligence making order and revolution of chaos ; 
and we have conceived the idea of evolution 
by physical laws of matter, which, though 
now so much insisted on, is as ancient as 
the Greek philosopher^. But there may be 
another alternative ; I think there are other 
alternatives. 

Whenever the mind obtains a wider view 
we may find that origin, for instance, is not 
always due to what is understood by cause. 
At this moment the mind is unable to con- 



128 THE STORY OF MY HEART. 

ceive of anything happening, or of anything 
coming into existence, without a cause. From 
cause to effect is the sequence of our ideas. 
But I think that if at sometime we should 
obtain an altogether different and broader 
sequence of ideas, we may discover that there 
are various other alternatives. As the world, 
and the universe at large, was not constructed 
according to plan, so it is clear that the 
sequence or circle of ideas which includes 
plan, and cause, and effect, are not in the 
circle of ideas which would correctly explain 
it. Put aside the plan -circle of ideas, and it 
will at once be evident that there is no in- 
herent necessity or ' must' There is no in- 
herent necessity for a first cause, or that the 
world and the universe was created, or that 
it was shaped of existing matter, or that it 
evolved itself and its inhabitants, or that the 
cosmos has existed in varying forms for ever. 
There may be other alternatives altogether. 
The only idea I can give is the idea that 
there is another idea. 



THE STORY OF MY HEART 129 

In this ' must ' — * it must follow ' — lies my 
objection to the Icgic of science. The argu- 
ments proceed from premises to conclusions, 
and end with the assumption * it therefore fol- 
lows/ But I say that, however carefully the 
argument be built up, even though apparently 
flawless, there is no such thing at present as 
* it must follow/ Human ideas at present natu- 
rally form a plan, and a balanced design ; they 
might be indicated by a geometrical figure, 
an upright straight line in the centre, and 
branching from that straight line curves on 
either hand exactly equal to each other. In 
drawing that is how we are taught, to balance 
the outline or curves on one side with the 
curves on the other. In nature and in fact 
there is no such thing. The stem of a tree 
represents the upright line, but the branches 
do not balance ; those on one side are larger 
or longer than those on the other. Nothing 
is straight, but all things curved, crooked, and 
unequal. 

The human body is the most remarkable 

K 



I30 THE STORY OF MY HEART 

instance of inequality, lack of balance, and 
want of plan. The exterior is beautiful in 
its lines, but the two hands, the two feet, the 
two sides of the face, the two sides of the 
profile, are not precisely equal. The very 
nails of the fingers are set ajar, as it were, to 
the lines of the hand, and not quite straight. 
Examination of the interior organs shows a 
total absence of balance. The heart is not 
in the centre, nor do the organs correspond 
in any way. The viscera are wholly opposed 
to plan. Coming, lastly, to the bones, these 
have no humanity, as it were, of shape ; they 
are neither round nor square ; the first sight 
of them causes a sense of horror, so extra- 
human are they in shape ; there is no balance 
of design in them. These are very brief 
examples, but the whole universe, so far as 
it can be investigated, is equally unequal. 
No straight line runs through it, with balanced 
curves each side. 

Let this thought now be carried into the 
realms of thought. The mind, or circle, or 



THE STORY OF MY HEART iji 

sequence of ideas, acts, or thinks, or exists in 
a balance, or what seems a balance to it. A 
straight line of thought is set in the centre, 
with equal branches each side, and with a gene- 
rally rounded outline* But this corresponds 
to nothing in tangible fact. Hence I think, 
by analogy, we may suppose that neither 
does it correspond to the circle of ideas which 
caused us and all things to be, or, at all 
events, to the circle of ideas which accurately 
understand us and all things. There are 
other ideas altogether. From standing face 
to face so long with the real earth, the real 
sun, and the real sea, I am firmly convinced 
that there is an immense range of thought 
quite unknown to us yet. 

The problem of my own existence also 
convinces me that there is much more. The 
questions are : Did my soul exist before my 
body was formed "i Or did it come into life 
with my body, as a product, like a flame, of 
combustion ? What will become of it after 
death } Will it simply go out like a flame 

K2 



\ 



132 THJ^ STORY OF MY HEART. 

and become non-existent, or will it live for 
ever in one or other mode ? To these ques- 
tions I am unable to find any answer whatso- 
ever. In our present range of ideas there is 
no reply to them. I may have previously 
existed ; I may not have previously existed. 
I may be a product of combustion ; I may 
exist on after physical life is suspended, or I 
may not. No demonstration is possible. But 
what I want to say is that the alternatives of 
extinction or immortality may not be the only 
alternatives. There may be something else, 
more wonderful than immortality, and far 
beyond and above that idea. There may be 
something immeasurably superior to it As 
our ideas have run in circles for centuries, it 
is difficult to find words to express the idea 
that there are other ideas. For myself, 
though I cannot fully express myself, I feel 
fully convinced that there is a vast immensity 
of thought, of existence, and of other things 
beyond even immortal existence. 



7 HE STORY OF MY HEART, 133 



CHAPTER IX. 

In human affairs everything happens by 
chance — that is, in defiance of human ideas, 
and without any direction of an intelligence. 
A man bathes in a pool, a crocodile seizes and 
lacerates his flesh. If any one maintains 
that an intelligence directed that cruelty, I 
can only reply that his mind is under an 
illusion. A man is caught by a revolving 
shaft and torn to pieces, limb from limb. 
There is no directing intelligence in human 
affairs, no protection, and no assistance. 
Those who act uprightly are not rewarded, 
but they and their children often wander in 
the utmost indigence. Those who do evil are 
not always punished, but frequently flourish 
and have happy children. Rewards and 



134 THE STORY OF MY HEART, 

punishments are purely human institutions, 
and if government be relaxed they entirely 
disappear. No intelligence whatever inter- 
feres in human affairs. There is a most 
senseless belief now prevalent that effort, 
and work, and cleverness, perseverance and 
industry, are invariably successful. Were 
this the case, every man would enjoy a com- 
petence, at least, and be free from the cares of 
money. This is an illusion almost equal to the 
superstition of a directing intelligence, which 
every fact and every consideration disproves. 
How can I adequately express my con- 
tempt for the assertion that all things occur 
for the best, for a wise and beneficent end, and 
are ordered by a humane intelligence ! It is 
the most utter falsehood and a crime against 
the human race. Even in my brief time I 
have been contemporary with events of the 
most horrible character ; as when the mothers 
in the Balkans cast their own children from 
the train to perish in the snow ; as when the 



THE STORY OF MY HEART 135 

Princess Alice foundered, and six hundred 
human beings were smothered in foul water ; 
as when the hecatomb of two thousand 
maidens were burned in the church at Sant- 
iago ; as when the miserable creatures tore at 
the walls of the Vienna theatre. Consider 
only the fates which overtake the little chil- 
dren. Human suffering is so great, so endless, 
so awful that I can hardly write of it. I could 
not go into hospitals and face it, as some do, 
lest my mind should be temporarily overcome. 
The whole and the worst the worst pessimist 
can say is far beneath the least particle of the 
truth, so immense is the misery of man. It 
is the duty of all rational beings to acknow- 
ledge the truth. There is not the least trace 
of directing intelligence in human affairs. 
This is a foundation of hope, because, if the 
present condition of things were ordered by 
a superior power, there would be no possi- 
bility of improving it for the better in the 
spite of that power. Acknowledging that 



136 THE STORY OF MY HEART 

no such direction exists, all things become at 
once plastic to our will. 

The credit given by the unthinking to the 
statement that all affairs are directed has 
been the bane of the world since the days of 
the Egyptian papyri and the origin of super- 
stition. So long as men firmly believe that 
everything is fixed for them, so long is pro- 
gress impossible. If you argue yourself into 
the belief that you cannot walk to a place, 
you cannot walk there. But if you start you 
can walk there easily. Any one who will 
consider the affairs of the world at large, and 
of the individual, will see that they do not 
proceed in the manner they would do for our 
happiness if a man of humane breadth of 
view were placed at their head with unlimited 
power, such as is credited to the intelligence 
which does not exist. A man of intellect and 
humanity could cause everything to happen 
in an infinitely superior manner. Could one 
like the divine Julius — humane, generous, 
broadest of view, deep thinking — ^wield such 



THE STORY OF MY HEART 137 

power, certainly every human being would 
enjoy happiness. 

But that which is thoughtlessly credited 
to a non-existent intelligence should really be 
claimed and exercised by the human race. 
It is ourselves who should direct our affairs, 
protecting ourselves from pain, assisting our- 
selves, succouring and rendering our lives 
happy. We must do for ourselves what 
superstition has hitherto supposed an intelli- 
gence to do for us. Nothing whatsoever is 
done for us. We are born naked, and not even 
protected by a shaggy covering. Nothing is 
done for us. The first and strongest com- 
mand (using the word to convey the idea 
only) that nature, the universe, our own 
bodies give is to do everything for ourselves. 
The sea does not make boats for us, nor the 
earth of her own will build us hospitals. The 
injured lie bleeding, and no invisible power 
lifts them up. The maidens were scorched 
in the midst of their devotions, and their 
remains make a mound hundreds of yards 



138 THE STORY OF MY HEART 

long. The infants perished in the snow, and 
the ravens tore their limbs. Those in the 
theatre crushed each other to the death-agony. 
For how long, for how many thousand years, 
must the earth and the sea, and the fire and 
the air, utter these things and force them upon 
us before they are admitted in their full 
significance ? 

These things speak with a voice of 
thunder. From every human being whose 
body has been racked by pain, from every 
human being who has suffered from accident 
or disease, from every human being drowned, 
burned, or slain by negligence, there goes up 
a continually increasing cry louder than the 
thunder. An awe-inspiring cry dread to 
listen to, which no one dares listen to, against 
which ears are stopped by the wax of super- 
stition, and the wax of criminal selfishness : — 
These miseries are your doing, because you 
have mind and thought, and could have 
prevented them. You can prevent them in 
the future. You do not even try. 



THE STORY OF MY HEART 139 

It is perfectly certain that all diseases 
without exception are preventible, or if not so 
that they can be so weakened as to do no harm. 
It is perfectly certain that all accidents are 
preventible ; there is not one that does not 
arise from folly or. negligence. All accidents 
are crimes. It is perfectly certain that all 
human beings are capable of physical happi- 
ness. It is absolutely incontrovertible that 
the ideal shape of the human being is attain- 
able to the exclusion of deformities. It is 
incontrovertible that there is no necessity for 
any man to die but of old age, and that if 
death cannot be prevented life can be pro- 
longed far beyond the farthest now known. 
It is incontrovertible that at the present time 
no one ever dies of old age. Not one single 
person ever dies of old age, or of natural 
causes, for there is no such thing as a natural 
cause of death. They die of disease or weak- 
ness which is the result of disease, either in 
themselves or in their ancestors. No such 
thing as old age is known to us. We do not 



I40 THE STORY OF MY HEART 

even know what old age would be like, be- 
cause no one ever lives to it. 

Our bodies are full of unsuspected flaws, 
handed down it may be for thousands of 
years, and it is of these that we die, and not 
of natural decay. Till these are eliminated, 
or as nearly eliminated as possible, we shall 
never even know what true old age is like, nor 
what the true natural limit of human life is. 
The utmost limit now appears to be about one 
hundred and five years, but as each person who 
has got so far has died of weaknesses inherited 
through thousands of years, it is impossible to 
say to what number of years he would have 
reached in a natural state. It seems more 
than possible that true old age — the slow and 
natural decay of the body apart from inherited 
flaw — would be free from very many, if not 
all, of the petty miseries which now render 
extreme age a doubtful blessing. If the 
limbs grew weaker they would not totter ; if 
the teeth dropped it would not be till the 
last ; if the eyes were less strong they would 



THE STORY OF MY HEART 141 

not be quite dim ; nor would the mind lose its 
memory. 

But now we see eyes become dim and 
artificial aid needed in comparative youth, 
and teeth drop out in mere childhood. Many 
men and women lose teeth before they are 
twenty. This simple fact is evidence enough 
of inherited weakness or flaw. How could a 
person who had lost teeth before twenty be 
ever said to die of old age, though he died^ 
at a hundred and ten ? Death is not a super- 
natural event; it is an event of the most 
materialistic character, and may certainly be 
postponed, by the united efforts of the human 
race, to a period far more distant from the 
date of birth than has been the case during 
the historic period. The question has often 
been debated in my mind whether death is or 
is not wholly preventible ; whether, if the entire 
human race were united in their efforts to 
eliminate causes of decay, death might not 
also be altogether eliminated. 

If we consider ourselves by the analogy of 



142 THE STORY OF MY HEART 

animals, trees, and other living creatures, the 
reply is that, however postponed, in long 
process of time the tissues must wither. 
Suppose an ideal man, free from inherited 
flaw, then though his age might be prolonged 
to several centuries, in the end the natural 
body must wear out That is true so far. 
But it so happens that the analogy is not just, 
and therefore the conclusions it points to are 
not tenable. 

Man is altogether different from every 
other animal, every other living creature 
known. He is different in body. In his 
purely natural state — in his true natural state 
— he is immeasurably stronger. No animal 
approaches to the physical perfection of which 
a man is capable. He can weary the strongest 
horse, he can outrun the swiftest stag, he 
can bear extremes of heat and cold, hunger 
and thirst, which would exterminate every 
known living thing. Merely in bodily 
strength he is superior to all. The stories of 
antiquity, which were deemed fables, m^y be 



THE STORY OF MY HEART 143 

fables historically, but search has shown that 
they are not intrinsically fables. Man of 
flesh and blood is capable of all that Ajax, 
all that Hercules did. Feats in modern days 
have surpassed these, as when Webb swam 
the Channel ; mythology contains nothing 
equal to that The difference does not end 
here. Animals think to a certain extent, but 
if their conceptions be ever so clever, not 
having hands they cannot execute them. 

I myself maintain that the mind of man 
is practically infinite. It can understand any- 
thing brought before it. It has not the 
power of its own motion to bring everything 
before it, but when anything is brought it 
is understood. It is like sitting in a room 
with one window ; you cannot compel every- 
thing to pass the window, but whatever 
does pass is seen. It is like a magnifying 
glass, which magnifies and explains everything 
brought into its focus. The mind of man is 
infinite. Beyond this, man has a soul. I do 
aot use this word in the common sense which 



144 THE STORY OF MY HEART, 

circumstances have given to it I use it as the 
only term to express that inner consciousness 
which aspires. These brief reasons show 
that the analogy is imperfect, and that there- 
fore, although an ideal animal — ^a horse, a dog, 
a lion — must die, it does not follow that an 
ideal man must He has a body possessed of 
exceptional recuperative powers, which, under 
proper conditions, continually repairs itself. 
He has a mind by which he can select re- 
medies, and select his course and carefully 
restore the waste of tissue. He has a soul, 
as yet it seems to me lying in abeyance, by 
the aid of which he may yet discover things 
now deemed supernatural. 

Considering these things I am obliged by 
facts and incontrovertible argument to con- 
clude that death is not inevitable to the ideal 
man. He is shaped for a species of physical 
immortality. The beauty of form of the ideal 
human being indicates immortality — the con- 
tour, the curve, the outline answer to the idea 
of life. In the course of ages united effo^ 



THE STORY OF MY HEART, 145 

long- continued may eliminate those causes of 
decay which have grown up in ages past, and 
after that has been done advance farther and 
improve the natural state. As a river brings 
down suspended particles of sand, and de- 
positing them at its mouth forms a delta and a 
new country.; as the air and the rain and the 
heat of the sun dessicate the rocks and slowly 
wear down mountains into sand, so the united 
action of the human race, continued through 
centuries, may build up the ideal man and 
woman. Each individual labouring in his day 
through geological time in front must pro- 
duce an effect. The instance of Sparta, where 
so much was done in a few centuries, is almost 
proof of it. 

The truth is, we die through our ancestors ; 
we are murdered by our ancestors. Their 
dead hands stretch forth from the tomb and 
drag us down to their mouldering bones. We 
in our turn are now at this moment preparing 
death for our unborn posterity. This day 
tbi^se that die do not die in the sense of old 



146 THE STORY OF MY HEART. 

age, they are slain. Nothing has been 
accumulated for our benefit in ages past. All 
the labour and the toil of so many millions 
continued through such vistas of time, down 
to those millions who at this hour are rushing 
to and fro in London, has accumulated nothing 
for us. Nothing for our good. The only 
things that have been stored up have been 
for our evil and destruction, diseases and 
weaknesses crossed and cultivated and ren- 
dered almost part and parcel of our very 
bones. Now let us begin to roll back the 
tide of death, and to set our faces steadily to 
a future of life. It should be the sacred and 
sworn duty of every one, once at least during 
lifetime, to do something in person towards 
this end. It would be a delight and pleasure 
to me to do something every day, were it ever 
so minute. To reflect that another human 
being, if at a distance of ten thousand years 
from the year 1883, would enjoy one hour's 
more life, in the sense of fulness of life, in 
consequence of anything I had done in my 
little span, would be to me a peace of souL 



THE STORY OF MY HEART 147 



CHAPTER X. 

United effort through geological time in front 
is but the beginning of an idea. I am con- 
vinced that much more can be done, and 
that the length of time may be almost 
immeasurably shortened. The general prin- 
ciples that are now in operation are of the 
simplest and most elementary character, yet 
they have already made considerable differ- 
ence. I am not content with these. There 
must be much more — there must be things 
which are at present unknown by whose aid 
advance may be made. Research proceeds 
upon the same old lines and runs in the 
ancient grooves. Further, it is restricted by 
the ultra-practical views which are alone 
deemed reasonable. But there should be no 

L 2 



148 THE STORY OF MY HEART. 

limit placed on the mind. The purely ideal 
is as worthy of pursuit as the practical, and 
the mind is not to be pinned to dogmas of 
science any more than to dogmas of super- 
stition. Most injurious of all is the con- 
tinuous circling on the same path, and it is 
from this that I wish to free my mind. 

• 

The pursuit of theory — the organon of pure 
thought — has led incidentally to great dis- 
coveries, and for myself, I am convinced it is 
of the highest value. The process of ex- 
periment has produced much, and has applied 
what was previously found. Empiricism is 
worthy of careful re-working out, for it is a 
fact that most things are more or less em- 
pirical, especially in medicine. Denial may 
be given to this statement, nevertheless it is 
true, and I have had practical exemplification 
of it in my own experience. Observation is 
perhaps more powerful an organon than 
either experiment or empiricism. If the 
eye is always watching, and the mind on the 
alert, ultimately chance supplies the solution. 



THE STORY OF MY HEART 149 

The difficulties 1 have encountered have 
generally been solved by chance in this way. 
When I took an interest in archaeological 
matters — an interest long since extinct — I 
considered that a part of an army known to 
have marched in a certain direction during 
the Civil War must have visited a town in 
which I was interested. But I exhausted every 
mode of research in vain ; there was no 
evidence of it. If the knowledge had ever 
existed it had dropped again. Some years 
afterwards when my interest had ceased, and 
I had put such inquiries for ever aside (being 
useless like the Egyptian papyri), I was 
reading in the British Museum. Presently I 
returned my book to the shelf, and then 
slowly walked along the curving wall lined 
with volumes, looking to see if I could light 
on anything to amuse me. I took out a 
volume for a glance ; it opened of itself at a 
certain page, and there was the information 
I had so long sought — a reprint of an old 
pamphlet describing the visit of the army to 



ISO THE STORY OF MY HEART, 

the town in the Civil War. So chance 
answered the question in the course of time. 

And I think that, seeing how great a part 
chance plays in human affairs, it is essential 
that study should be made of chance ; it seems 
to me that an organon might be deduced 
from chance as much as from experiment. 
Then there is the inner consciousness — the 
psyche — that has never yet been brought to 
bear upon life and its questions. Besides 
which there is a supersensuous reason. Often I 
have argued with myself that such and such a 
course was the right one to follow, while in 
the intervals of thinking about it an under- 
current of unconscious impulse has desired 
me to do the reverse or to remain inactive. 
Sometimes it has happened that the super- 
sensuous reasoning has been correct, and 
the most faultless argument wrong. I pre- 
sume this supersensuous reasoning, pro- 
ceeding independently in the mind, arises 
from perceptions too delicate for analysis. 
From these considerations alone I am con- 



THE STORY OF MY HEART 151 

vinced that, by the aid of ideas yet to be dis- 
covered, the geological time in front may be 
immeasurably shortened. These modes of 
research are not all. The psyche — the soul 
in me — tells me that there is much more, that 
these are merely beginnings of the crudest 
kind. 

I fully recognise the practical difficulty 
arising from the ingrained, hereditary, and 
unconscious selfishness which began before 
history, and has been crossed and cultivated 
for twelve thousand years since. This 
renders me less sanguine of united effort 
through geological time ahead, unless some 
idea can be formed to give a stronger impulse 
even than selfishness, or unless the selfishness 
can be utilised. The complacency with 
which the mass of people go about their 
daily task, absolutely indifferent to all other 
considerations, is appalling in its concentrated 
stolidity. They do not intend wrong — they 
intend rightly: in truth, they work against 
the entire human race* So wedded and so 



1S2 THE STORY OF MY HEART. 

confirmed is the world in its narrow groove of 
self, so stolid and so complacent under the 
immense weight of miser)^, so callous to its 
own possibilities, and so grown to its chains, 
that I almost despair to see it awakened. 
Cemeteries are often placed on hillsides, and 
the white stones are visible far off. If the 
whole of. the dead in a hillside cemetery were 
called up alive from their tombs, and walked 
forth down into the valley, it would not rouse 
the mass of people from the dense pyramid 
of stolidity which presses on them. 

There would be gaping and marvelling and 
rushing about, and what then } In a week or 
two the ploughman would settle down to his 
plough, the carpenter to his bench, the smith 
to his anvil, the merchant to his money, and 
the dead come to life would be utterly for- 
gotten. No matter in what manner the 
possibilities of human life are put before the 
world, the crowd continues as stolid as before. 
Therefore nothing hitherto done, or sug- 
gested, or thought of, is of much avail ; but 



THE STORY OF MY HEART 153 

this fact in no degree stays me from the 
search. On the contrary, the less there has 
been accomplished the more anxious I am ; 
the truth it teaches is that the mind must be 
lifted out of its old grooves before anything 
will be certainly begun. Erase the past from 
the mind — stand face to face with the real now 
— and work out all anew. Call the soul to 
our assistance ; the soul tells me that outside 
all the ideas that have yet occurred there 
are others, whole circles of others. 

I remember a cameo of Augustus Caesar 
— the head of the emperor is graven in delicate 
lines, and shows the most exquisite propor- 
tions. It is a balanced head, a head adjusted 
to the calmest intellect. That head when it 
was living contained a circle of ideas, the 
largest, the widest, the most profound current 
in his time. All that philosophy had taught, 
all that practice, experiment, and empiricism 
had discovered, was familiar to him. There 
was no knowledge in the ancient world but 
what was accessible to the Emperor of Rome. 



154 THE STORY OF MY HEART. 

Now at this day there are amongst us heads 
as finely proportioned as that cut out in the 
cameo. Though these living men do not 
possess arbitrary power, the advantages of. 
arbitrary power — as far as knowledge is con- 
cerned — are secured to them by education, 
by the printing-press, and the facilities of our 
era. It is reasonable to imagine a head of 
our time filled with the largest, the widest, 
the most profound ideas current in the age. 
Augustus Caesar, however great his intellect, 
could not in that balanced head have pos- 
sessed the ideas familiar enough to the 
living head of this day. As we have a circle 
of ideas unknown to Augustus Caesar, so I 
argue there are whole circles of ideas un- 
known to us. It is these that I am so 
earnestly desirous of discovering. 

For nothing has as yet been of any value, 
however good its intent. There is no virtue, 
or reputed virtue, which has not been rigidly 
pursued, and things have remained as before. 
Men and women have practised self-denial, 



THE STORY OF MY HEART. 155 

and to what end ? They have compelled 
themselves to suffer hunger and thirst ; in 
vain. They have clothed themselves in sack- 
cloth and lacerated the flesh. They have muti- 
lated themselves. Some have been scrupu- 
lous to bathe, and some have been scrupu- 
lous to cake their bodies with the foulness 
of years. Many have devoted their lives to 
assist others in sickness or poverty. Chastity 
has been faithfully observed, chastity both of 
body and mind. Self-examination has been 
pursued till it ended in a species of sacred in- 
sanity, and all these have been of no more value 
than the tortures undergone by the Indian 
mendicant who hangs himself up by a hook 
through his back. All these are pure folly. 

Asceticism has not improved the form, or 
the physical well-being, or the heart of any 
human being. On the contrary, the hetaira 
is often the warmest hearted and the most 
generous. Casuistry and self-examination 
are perhaps the most injurious of all the 
virtues, utterly destroying independence of 



156 THE STORY OF MY HEART, . 

mind. Self-denial has had no result, and all 
the self-torture of centuries has been thrown 
away. Lives spent in doing good have been 
lives nobly wasted. Everything is in vain. 
The circle of ideas we possess is too limited 
to aid us. We need ideas as far outside our 
circle as ours are outside those that were 
pondered over by Augustus Caesar. 

The most extraordinary spectacle, as it 
seems to me, is the vast expenditure of labour 
and time wasted in obtaining mere subsistence. 
As a man, in his lifetime, works hard and 
saves money, that his children may be free 
from the cares of penury, and may, at least, 
have sufficient to eat, drink, clothe, and roof 
them, so the generations that preceded us 
might, had they so chosen, have provided for 
our subsistence. The labour and time of ten 
generations, properly directed, would sustain 
a hundred generations succeeding to them, 
and that, too, with so little self-denial on the 
part of the providers as to be scarcely felt 
So men now, in this generation, ought clearly 



THE STORY OF MY HEART 157 

to be laying up a store, or, what is still more 
powerful, arranging and organising that the 
generations which follow may enjoy compara- 
tive freedom from useless labour. Instead of 
which, with transcendent improvidence, the 
world works only for to-day, as the world 
worked twelve thousand years ago, and our 
children's children will still have to toil and 
slave for the bare necessities of life. This 
is, indeed, an extraordinary spectacle. 

That twelve thousand written years should 
have elapsed, and the human race — able to 
reason and to think, and easily capable of 
combination in immense armies for its own 
destruction — should still live from hand to 
mouth, like cattle and sheep, like the animals 
of the field and the birds of the woods ; that 
there should not even be roofs to cover the 
children born, unless those children labour 
and expend their time to pay for them ; that 
there should not be clothes, unless, again, 
time and labour are expended to procure 
them ; that there should not be even food for 



158 THE STORY OF MY HEART 

the children of the human race, except they 
labour as their fathers did twelve thousand 
years ago ; that even water should scarce be 
accessible to them, unless paid for by labour ! 
In twelve thousand written years the world 
has not yet built itself a House, nor filled 
a Granary, nor organised itself for its own 
comfort. It is so marvellous I cannot 
express the wonder with which it fills me. 
And more wonderful still, if that could be, 
there are people so infatuated, or, rather, so 
limited of view, that they glory in this state 
of things, declaring that work is the main 
object of man*s existence — work for subsist- 
ence — and glorying in their wasted time. To 
argue with such is impossible ; to leave them 
is the only resource. 

This our earth this day produces sufficient 
for our existence. This our earth produces 
not only a sufficiency, but a superabundance, 
and pours a cornucopia of good things down 
upon us. Further, it produces sufficient for 
stores and granaries to be filled to the roof- 



THE STORY OF MY HEART 159 

tree for years ahead. I verily believe that 
the earth in one year produces enough food 
to last for thirty. Why, then, have we not 
enough ? Why do people die of starvation, 
or lead a miserable existence on the verge of 
it ? Why have millions upon millions to toil 
from morning to evening just to gain a mere 
crust of bread ? Because of the absolute 
lack of organisation by which such labour 
should produce its effect, the absolute lack 
of distribution, the absolute lack even of the 
very idea that such things are possible. Nay, 
even to mention such things, to say that they 
are possible, is criminal with many. Madness 
could hardly go farther. 

That selfishness has all to do with it I 
entirely deny. The human race for ages 
upon ages has been enslaved by ignorance 
and by interested persons, whose<object it has 
been to confine the minds of men, thereby 
doing more injury than if with infected 
hands they purposely imposed disease on the 
heads of the people. Almost worse than 



i6o THE STORY OF MY HEART 

these, and at the present day as injurious, are 
those persons incessantly declaring, teaching, 
and impressing upon all that to work is man's 
highest condition. This falsehood is the 
interested superstition of an age infatuated 
with money, which having accumulated it 
cannot even expend it in pageantry. It is a 
falsehood propagated for the doubtful benefit 
of two or three out of ten thousand. It is 
the lie of a morality founded on money only, 
and utterly outside and having no association 
whatever with the human being in itself. 
Many superstitions have been got rid of in 
these days ; time it is that this, the last and 
worst, were eradicated. 

At this hour, out of thirty-four millions 
who inhabit this country, two-thirds — say 
twenty-two millions — live within thirty years 
of that aboAinable institution the poorhouse. 
That any human being should dare to apply 
to another the epithet ' pauper ' is, to me, the 
greatest, the vilest, the most unpardonable 
crime that could be committed. Each human 



THE STORY OF MY HEART i6i 

being, by mere birth, has a birthright in this 
earth and all its productions ; and if they do 
not receive it, then it is they who are injured, 
and it is not the * pauper ' — oh, inexpressibly 
wicked word! — it is the well-to-do, who are 
the criminal classes. It matters not in the 
least if the poor be improvident, or dnmken, 
or evil in any way. Food and drink, roof 
and clothes, are the inalienable right of every 
child born into the light. If the world does 
not provide it freely — not as a grudging gift 
but as a right, as a son of the house sits down 
to breakfast — then is the world mad. But 
the world is not mad, only in ignorance — ^an 
interested ignorance, kept up by strenuous 
exertions, from which infernal darkness it 
will, in course of time, emerge, marvelling at 
the past as a man wonders at and glories in 
the light who has escaped from blindness. 



M 



i62 THE STORY OF MY HEART 



CHAPTER XL 

This our earth produces not only a sufficiency 
and a superabundance, but in one year pours 
a cornucopia of good things forth, enough to 
fill us all for many years in succession. The 
only reason we do not enjoy it is the want of 
rational organisation. I know, of course, and 
all who think know that some labour or super- 
vision will be always necessary, since the 
plough must travel the furrow and the seed 
must be sown ; but I maintain that a tenth, 
nay, a hundredth, part of the labour and 
slavery now gone through will be sufficient, 
and that in the course of time, as organisation 
perfects itself and discoveries advance, even 
that part will diminish. For the rise and fall 
of the tides alone furnish forth sufficient 



THE STORY OF MY HEART 163 

power to do all the labour that is done on the 
earth automatically. Is ideal man, then, to 
be idle ? I answer that if so I see no wrong, 
but a great good. I deny altogether that 
idleness is an evil, or that it produces evil, 
and I am well aware why the interested are 
so bitter against idleness — namely, because it 
gives time for thought, and if men had time 
to think their reign would come to an end. 
Idleness — that is, the absence of the necessity 
to work for subsistence — is a great good. 

I hope succeeding generations will be 
able to be idle. I hope that nine-tenths of 
their time will be leisure time ; that they 
may enjoy their days, and the earth, and the 
beauty of this beautiful world ; that they may 
rest by the sea and dream ; that they may 
dance and sing, and eat and drink. I will 
work towards that end with all my heart. If 
employment they must have — ^and the rest- 
lessness of the mind will insure that some 
will be followed — then they will find scope 
enough in the perfection of their physical 

M 2 



i64 THE STORY OF MY HEART 

frames, in the expansion of the mind, and in 
the enlargement of the soul. They shall not 
work for bread, but for their souls. I am 
willing to divide and share all I shall ever 
have for this purpose, though I think that the 
end will rather be gained by organisation 
than by sharing alone. 

In these material things, too, I think that 
we require another circle of ideas, and I 
believe that such ideas are possible, and, 
in a manner of speaking, exist. Let me 
exhort every one to do their utmost to think 
outside and beyond our present circle of ideas. 
For every idea gained is a hundred years of 
slavery remitted. Even with the idea of 
organisation which promises most I am not 
satisfied, but endeavour to get beyond and 
outside it, so that the time now necessary may 
be shortened. Besides which, I see that 
many of our difficulties arise from obscure 
and remote causes — obscure like the shape of 
bones, for whose strange curves there is no 
familiar term. We must endeavour to under 



THE STORY OF MY HEART 165 

Stand the crookedness and unfamiliar curves 
of the conditions of life. Beyond that still 
there are other ideas. Never, never rest con- 
tented with any circle of ideas, but always be 
certain that a wider one is still possible. For 
my thought is like a hyperbola that continually 
widens ascending. 

For grief there is no known consolation. It 
is useless to fill our hearts with bubbles. A 
loved one gone is gone, and as to the future 
— even if there is a future — it is unknown. 
To assure ourselves otherwise is to soothe 
the mind with illusions ; the bitterness of it 
is inconsolable. The sentiments of trust 
chipped out on tombstones are touching 
instances of the innate goodness of the human 
heart, which naturally longs for good, and 
sighs itself to sleep in the hope that, if parted, 
the parting is for the benefit of those that are 
gone. But these inscriptions are also awful 
instances of the deep intellectual darkness 
which presses still on the minds of men. The 
least thought erases them. There is no con- 



i66 THE STORY OF MY HEART, 

solation. There is no relief. There is no 
hope certain ; the whole system is a mere 
illusion. I, who hope so much, and am so 
rapt up in the soul, know full well that 
there is no certainty. 

The tomb cries aloud to us — its dead 
silence presses on the drum of the ear like 
thunder, saying, Look at this, and erase your 
illusions ; now know the extreme value of 
human life ; reflect on this and strew human 
life with flowers ; save every hour for the 
sunshine ; let your labour be so ordered that 
in future times the loved ones may dwell 
longer with those who love them ; open your 
minds ; exalt your souls ; widen the sym- 
pathies of your hearts ; face the things that 
are now as you will face the reality of death ; 
make joy real now to those you love, and 
help forward the joy of those yet to be born. 
Let these facts force the mind and the soul to 
the increase of thought, and the consequent 
remission of misery ; so that those whose 
time it is to die may have enjoyed all that is 



THE STORY OF MY HEART 167 

possible in life. Lift up your mind and see 
now in this bitterness of parting, in this 
absence of certainty, the fact that there is 
no directing intelligence ; remember that this 
death is not of old age, which no one living 
in the world has ever seen ; remember that 
old age is possible, and perhaps even more 
than old age ; and beyond these earthly things 
— what ? None know. But let us, turning 
away from the illusion of a directing intelli- 
gence, look earnestly for something better 
than a god, seek for something higher than 
prayer, and lift our souls to be with the more 
than immortal now. 

A river runs itself clear during the night, 
and in sleep thought becomes pellucid. All 
the hurrying to and fro, the unrest and 
stress, the agitation and confusion subside. 
Like a sweet pure spring, thought pours 
forth to meet the light, and is illumined to 
its depths. The dawn at my window ever 
causes a desire for larger thought, the recog- 
nition of the light at the moment of waking 



i68 THE STORY OF MY HEART 

kindles afresh the wish for a broad day of the 
mind. There is a certainty that there are 
yet ideas further, and greater, that there is 
still a limitless beyond. I know at that 
moment that there is no limit to the things 
that may be yet in material and tangible 
shape besides the immaterial perceptions of 
the soul. The dim white light of the dawn 
speaks it. This prophet which has come with 
its wonders to the bedside of every human 
being for so many thousands of years faces 
me once again with the upheld finger of light. 
Where is the limit to that physical sign ? 

From space to the sky, from the sky to 
the hills, and the sea ; to every blade of 
grass, to every leaf, to the smallest insect, to 
the million waves of ocean. Yet this earth 
itself appears but a mote in that sunbeam by 
which we are conscious of one narrow streak 
in the abyss. A beam crosses my silent 
chamber from the window, and atoms are 
visible in it ; a beam slants between the 
fir-trees, and particles rise and fall within, and 



THE STORY OF MY HEART 169 

cross it while the air each side seems void. 
Through the heavens a beam slants, and we 
are aware of the star-stratum in which our 
earth moves. But what may be without that 
stratum ? Certainly it is not a void. This 
light tells us much, but I think in the course 
of time yet more delicate and subtle mediums 
than light may be found, and through these 
we shall see into the shadows of the sky. 
When will it be possible to be certain that the 
capacity of a single atom has been exhausted } 
At any moment some fortunate incident may 
reveal a fresh power. One by one the powers 
of light have been unfolded. 

After thousands of years the telescope 
opened the stars, the prism analysed the sub- 
stance of the sun, the microscope showed the 
minute structure of the rocks and the tissues 
of living bodies. The winged men on the 
Assyrian bas-reliefs, the gods of the Nile, the 
chariot-borne immortals of Olympus, not the 
greatest of imagined beings ever possessed in 
fancied attributes one-tenth the power of light. 



I70 THE STORY OF MY HEART 

As the swallows twitter, the dim white finger 
appears at my window full of wonders, such 
as all the wise men in twelve thousand pre- 
cedent years never even hoped to conceive. 
But this is not all — light is not all ; light con- 
ceals more than it reveals ; light is the darkest 
shadow of the sky ; besides light there are 
many other mediums yet to be explored. For 
thousands of years the sumbeams poured on 
the earth, full as now of messages, and light 
is not a hidden thing to be searched out with 
difficulty. Full in the faces of men the rays 
came with their intelligence from the sun 
when the papyri were painted beside the 
ancient Nile, but they were not understood. 

This hour, rays or unddlations of more 
subtle mediums are doubtless pouring on us 
over the wide earth, unrecognised, and full of 
messages and intelligence from the unseen. 
Of these we are this day as ignorant as those 
who painted the papyri were of light. There 
is an infinity of knowledge yet to be known, 
and beyond that an infinity of thought. No 



THE STORY OF MY HEART. ^71 

mental instrument even has yet been invented 
by which researches can be carried direct to 
the object. Whatever has been found has 
been discovered by fortunate accident; in 
looking for one thing another has been 
chanced on. A reasoning process has yet to 
be invented by which to go straight to the 
desired end. For now the slightest particle 
is enough to throw the search aside, and the 
most minute circumstance sufficient to conceal 
obvious and brilliantly shining truths. One 
summer evening sitting by my window I 
watched for the first star to appear, knowing 
the position of the brightest in the southern 
sky. The dusk came on, grew deeper, but 
the star did not shine. By-and-by, other stars 
less bright appeared, so that it could not 
be the sunset which obscured the expected 
one. Finally, I considered that I must have 
mistaken its position, when suddenly a puff 
of air blew through the branch of a pear tree 
which overhung the window, a leaf moved, 
and there was the star behind the leaf. 



172 THE STORY OF MY HEART 

At present the endeavour to make dis- 
coveries is like gazing at the sky up through 
the boughs of an oak. Here a beautiful star 
shines clearly ; here a constellation is hidden 
by a branch ; a universe by a leaf. Some 
mental instrument or organon is required to 
enable us to distinguish between the leaf 
which may be removed and a real void; 
when to cease to look in one direction, and to 
work in another. Many men of broad brow 
and great intellect lived in the days of ancient 
Greece, but for lack of the accident of a lens, 
and of knowing the way to use a prism, they 
could but conjecture imperfectly. I am in 
exactly the position they were when I look 
beyond light. Outside my present knowledge 
I am exactly in* their condition. I feel that 
there are infinities to be known, but they 
are hidden by a leaf. If any one says to him- 
self that the telescope, and the microscope, 
the prism, and other discoveries have made 
all plain, then he is in the attitude of those 
ancient priests who worshipped the scarabaeus 



THE STORY OF MY HEART. 173 

or beetle. So, too, it is with thought ; outside 
our present circle of ideas I believe there is 
an infinity of idea. All this that has been 
effected with light has been done by bits of 
glass — mere bits of shaped glass, quickly 
broken, and made of flint, so that by the rude 
flint our subtlest ideas are gained. Could we 
employ the ocean as a lens, and force truth 
from the sky, even then I think there would 
be much more beyond. 

Natural things are known to us only 
under two conditions — matter and force, or 
matter and motion. A third, a fourth, a 
fifth — no one can say how many conditions 
— may exist in the ultra-stellar space, and 
such other conditions may equally exist 
about us now unsuspected. Something which 
is neither matter nor force is difficult to con- 
ceive, yet, I think, it is certain that there are 
other conditions. When the mind succeeds 
in entering on a wider series, or circle of 
ideas, other conditions would appear natural 
enough. In this effort upwards I claim the 



174 THE STORY OF MY HEART, 

assistance of the soul — the mind of the mind. 
The eye sees, the mind deliberates on what 
it sees, the soul understands the operation of 
the mind. Before a bridge is built, or a 
structure erected, or an interoceanic canal 
made, there must be a plan, and before a 
plan the thought in the mind. So that it is 
correct to say the mind bores tunnels through 
the mountains, bridges the rivers, and con- 
structs the engines which are the pride of the 
world. 

This is a wonderful tool, but it is capable 
of work yet more wonderful in the explora- 
tion of the heavens. Now the soul is the 
mind of the mind. It can build and construct, 
and look beyond and penetrate space, and 
create. It is the keenest, the sharpest tool 
possessed by man. But what would be said 
if a carpenter about to commence a piece of 
work examined his tools and deliberately cast 
away that with the finest edge ? Such is the 
conduct of those who reject the inner mind 
or psyche altogether. So great is the value 



THE STORY OF MY HEART 175 

of the soul that it seems to me, if the soul 
lived and received its aspirations it would 
not concern if the material universe melted 
away as snow. Many turn aside the instant 
the soul is mentioned, and I sympathise with 
them in one sense ; they fear lest, if they 
acknowledge it, they will be fettered by 
mediaeval conditions. My contention is that 
the restrictions of the mediaeval era should 
entirely be cast into oblivion, but the soul 
recognised and employed. Instead of slurring 

over the soul I desire to see it at its highest 
perfection. 



176 THE STORY OF MY HEART 



CHAPTER XII. 

Subtle as the mind is it can effect little 
without knowledge. It cannot construct a 
bridge, or a building, or make a canal, or 
work a problem in algebra, unless it is pro- 
vided with information. This is obvious, 
and yet some say, What can you effect by the 
soul ? I reply because it has had no employ- 
ment. Mediaeval conditions kept it in 
slumber ; science refuses to accept it. We 
are taught to employ our minds, and furnished 
with materials. The mind has its logic 
and exercise of geometry, and thus assisted 
brings a great force to the solution of 
problems. The soul remains untaught, and 
can effect little. 

I consider that the highest purpose of 



THE STORY OF MY HEART 177 

Study is the education of the soul or psyche. 
It is said that there is no proof of the existence 
of the soul, but, arguing on the same grounds, 
there is no proof of the existence of the mind, 
which is not a tangible thing. For myself, I 
feel convinced that there is a soul, a mind of 
the mind — and that it really exists. Now, 
glancing at the state of wild and uneducated 
men, it is evident that they work with their 
hands and make various things almost instinct- 
ively. But when they arrive at the idea of 
mind, and say to themselves, I possess a 
mind, then they think and proceed farther, 
forming designs and constructions both 
tangible and mental. 

Next then, when we say, I have a soul, 
we can proceed to shape things yet further, 
and to see deeper, and penetrate the mystery. 
By denying the existence and the power of 
the soul — refusing to employ it — we should 
go back more than twelve thousand written 
years of human history. But instead of this, 
I contend, we should endeavour to go for- 

N 



178 THE STORY OF MY HEART 

ward, and to discover a fourth Idea, and after 
that a fifth, and onwards continually. 

I will not permit myself to be taken 
captive by observing physical phenomena, as 
many evidently are. Some gases are mingled 
and produce a liquid ; certainly it is worth 
careful investigation, but it is no more than 
the revolution of a wheel, which is so often 
seen it excites no surprise, though, in truth, 
as wonderful. So is all motion, and so is a 
grain of sand ; there is nothing that is not 
wonderful ; as, for instance, the fact of the 
existence of things at all. But the intense 
concentration of the mind on mechanical 
effects appears often to render it incapable of 
perceiving anything that is not mechanical. 
Some compounds are observed to precipitate 
crystals, all of which contain known angles. 
Thence it is argued that all is mechanical, 
and that action occurs in set ways only. 
There is a tendency to lay it down as an 
infallible law that because we see these 
things therefore everything else that exists in 



THE STORY OF MY HEART T99 

• 

space must be, or move exactly in the same 
manner. But I do not think that because 
crystals are precipitated with fixed angles 
therefore the whole universe is necessarily 
mechanical. I think there are things exempt 
from mechanical rules. The restriction of 
thought to purely mechanical grooves blocks 
progress in the same way as the restrictions of 
mediaeval superstition. Let the mind think, 
dream, imagine, let it have perfect freedom. 
To shut out the soul is to put us back more 
than twelve thousand years. 

Just as outside light, and the knowledge 
gained from light, there are, I think, other 
mediums from which, in times to come, intelli- 
gence will be obtained, so outside the mental 
and the spiritual ideas we now possess 
I believe there exists a whole circle of ideas. 
In the conception of the idea that there 
are others, I lay claim to another idea. 

The mind is infinite and able to under- 
stand everything that is brought before it ; 
there is no limit to its understanding. The 

N 2 



i8o THE STORY OF MY HEART. 

limit is in the littleness of the things and the 
narrowness of the ideas which have been put 
for it to consider. For the philosophies of 
old time past and the discoveries of modern 
research are as nothing to it. They do not 
fill it. When they have been read, the mind 
passes on, and asks for more. The utmost 
of them, the whole together, make a mere 
nothing. These things have been gathered 
together by immense labour, labour so great 
that it is a weariness to think of it ; but yet, 
when all is summed up and written, the mind 
receives it all as easily as the hand picks 

flowers. It is like one sentence — read and 

« 

gone. 

The mind requires more, and more, and 
more. It is so strong that all that can be 
put before it is devoured in a moment. Left 
to itself it will not be satisfied with an invisible 
idol any more than with a wooden one. An 
idol whose attributes are omnipresence, om- 
nipotence, and so on, is no greater than light 
or electricity, which are present everywhere 



f 

%■ 



THE STORY OF MY HEART, i8i 

and all powerful, and from which perhaps the 
thought arose. Prayer which receives no 
reply must be pronounced in vain. The 
mind goes on and requires more than these, 
something higher than prayer, something 
higher than a god. 

I have been obliged to write these things 
by an irresistible impulse which has worked 
in me since early youth. They have not 
been written for the sake of argument, still 
less for any thought of profit, rather indeed 
the reverse. They have been forced from 
me by earnestness of heart, and they express 
my most serious convictions. For seventeen 
years they have been lying in my mind, con- 
tinually thought of and pondered over. I 
was not more than eighteen when an inner 
and esoteric meaning began to come to me 
from all the visible universe, and indefinable 
aspirations filled me. I found them in the 
grass fields, under the trees, on the hill-tops, 
at sunrise, and in the night There was a 
deeper meaning everywhere. The sun burned 



i82 THE STORY OF MY HEART. 

with It, the broad front of morning beamed 
with it; a deep feeling entered me while 
gazing at the sky in the azure noon, and in 
the star-lit evening. 

I was sensitive to all things, to the earth 
under, and the star-hollow round about ; to 
the least blade of grass, to the largest oak. 
They seemed like exterior nerves and veins 
for the conveyance of feeling to me. Some- 
times a very ecstasy of exquisite enjoyment 
of the entire visible universe filled me. I 
was aware that in reality the feeling and the 
thought were in me, and not in the earth or 
sun ; yet I was more conscious of it when in 
company with these. A visit to the sea in- 
creased the strength of the original impulse. 
I began to make efforts to express these 
thoughts in writing, but could not succeed to 
my own liking. Time went on, and harder 
experiences, and the pressure of labour came, 
but in no degree abated the fire of first 
thought. Again and again I made resolu- 
tions that I would write it, in some way or 



THE STORY OF MY HEART 183 

Other, and as often failed. I could express 
any other idea with ease, but not this. Once 
especially I remember in a short interval of 
distasteful labour walking away to a spot by 
a brook which skirts an ancient Romai) wall, 
and there trying to determine and really com- 
mence to work. Again I failed. More time, 
more changes, and still the same thought 
running beneath everything. At last, in 1 880, 
in the old castle of Pevensey, under happy 
circumstances once more I resolved, and 
actually did write down a few notes. Even 
then I could not go on, but I kept the notes 
(I had destroyed all former beginnings), and 
in the end, two years afterwards, commenced 
this iDOok. 

After all this time and thought it is only 
a fragment, and a fragment scarcely hewn. 
Had I not made it personal I could scarcely 
have put it into any shape at all. But I felt 
that I could no longer delay, and that it must 
be done, however imperfectly. I am only too 
conscious of its imperfections, for I have as 



i84 THE STORY OF MY HEART 

it were seventeen years of consciousness of 
my own inability to express this the idea of 
my- life. I can only say that many of these 
short sentences are the result of long-con- 
tinued thought. One of the greatest diffi- 
culties I have encountered is the lack of 
words to express ideas. By the word soul, or 
psyche, I mean that inner consciousness which 
aspires. By prayer I do not mean a request 
for anything preferred to a deity; I mean 
intense soul-emotion, intense aspiration. The 
word immortal is very inconvenient, and yet 
there is no other to convey the idea of soul- 
life. Even these definitions are deficient, 
and I must leave my book as a whole to give 
its own meaning to its words. 

Time has gone on, and still, after so 
much pondering, I feel that I know nothing, 
that I have not yet begun ; I have only 
just commenced to realise the immensity 
of thought which lies outside the know- 
ledge of the senses. Still, on the hills and 
by the sea-shore, I seek and pray deeper 



THE STORY OF MY HEART 185 

than ever. The sun burns southwards over 
the sea and before the wave runs its shadow, 
constantly slipping on the advancing slope 
till it curls and covers its dark image at the 
shore. Over the rim of the horizon waves 
are flowing as high and wide as those that 
break upon the beach. These that come to 
me and beat the trembling shore are like the 
thoughts that have been known so long ; like 
the ancient, iterated, and reiterated thoughts 
that have broken on the strand of mind for 
thousands of years. Beyond and over the 
horizon I feel that there are other waves of 
ideas unknown to me, flowing as the stream 
of ocean flows. Knowledge of facts is limit- 
less, they lie at my feet innumerable like the 
countless pebbles ; knowledge of thought so 
circumscribed ! Ever the same thoughts 
come that have been written down centuries 
and centuries. 

Let me launch forth and sail over the 
rim of the sea yonder, and when another 
rim arises over that, and again and on- 



i86 THE STORY OF MY HEART. 

wards into an ever-widening ocean of idea 
and life. For with all the strength of the 
wave, and its succeeding wave, the depth 
and race of the tide, the clear definition of the 
sky ; with all the subtle power of the great 
sea, there rises an equal desire. Give me life 
strong and full as the brimming o<^an ; give 
me thoughts wide as its plain ; give me a soul 
beyond these. Sweet is the bitter sea by the 
shore where the faint blue pebbles are lapped 
by the green-grey wave, where the wind- 
quivering foam is loth to leave the lashed 
stone. Sweet is the bitter sea, and the clear 
green in which the gaze seeks the soul, looking 
through the glass into itself. The sea thinks 
for me as I listen and ponder : the sea thinks, 
and every boom of the wave repeats my prayer. 
Sometimes I stay on the wet sands as the 
tide rises, listening to the rush of the lines of 
foam in layer upon layer ; the wash swells 
and circles about my feet, I lave my hands in 
it, I lift a little in my hollowed palm, I take 
the life of the sea to me. My soul rising to 



THE STORY OF MY HEART 187 

the immensity utters its desire-prayer with 
all the strength of the sea. Or, again, the 
full stream of ocean beats upon the shore, and 
the rich wind feeds the heart, the sun burns 
brightly ; — the sense of soul-life burns in me 
like a torch. 

Leaving the shore I walk among the trees ; 
a cloud passes, and the sweet short rain comes 
mingled with sunbeams and flower-scented 
air. The finches sing among the fresh green 
leaves of the beeches. Beautiful it is, in 
summer days, to see the wheat wave, and the 
long grass foam-flecked of flower yield and 
return to the wind. My soul of itself always 
desires ; these are to it as fresh food. I have 
found in the hills another valley grooved in 
prehistoric times, where, climbing to the top 
of the hollow, I can see the sea. Down in 
the hollow I look up ; the sky stretches over, 
the sun burns as it seems but just above the 
hill, and the wind sweeps onward. As the 
sky extends beyond the valley, so I know 
that there are ideas beyond the valley of my 



i88 THE STORY OF MY HEART. 

thought ; I know that there is something 
infinitely higher than deity. The great sun 
burning in the sky, the sea, the firm earth, all 
the stars of night are feeble — all, all the 
cosmos is feeble ; it is not strong enough 
to utter my prayer-desire. My soul cannot 
reach to its full desire of prayer. I need no 
earth, or sea, or sun to think my thought. 
If my thought-part — the psyche — were en- 
tirely separated from the body, and from 
the earth, I should of myself desire the 
same. In itself my soul desires ; my exist- 
ence, my soul-existence is in itself my prayer, 
and so long as it exists so long will it pray 
that I may have the fullest soul-life. 



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(hf«i'8 flyenings with the Skeptics. 2 yols. 8yo. 83«. 

Bldh^ Dkstdonary of Boman and Greek Antiquities. Grown 8yo. 7«. M, 
Bogsn^i Bolipse ol Faith. Fcp. 8yo. 6t, 

— DeCenoe of the Bolipse of Faith Fcp. 8yo. 3«. fid, 

RogefcfB Thesanms of English Words and Phrases. Grown 8yo. lOf . Sd, 

Bdeotloais from the Writings of Lord Macaulay. Grown 8yo. 6s, 

Binuxn's Latin Literature. 3 yols. 8yo. 32«. 

Wliltt U Biddle's Large Latin-English Dictionary. 4to. 31<. 

Wlittt'B GoBoise Latin-English Dictionary. Boyal 8yo. 12*, 

— Junior Student's Lat.-Eng. and Eng.-Lat. Dictionary. Square ISmo. 12i. 

a-____4._i_ f The English-Latin Dictionary, 5*. 6d, 
^'^P^a'^v t The Latin-English Dictionary, 7i. 6d. 

WilBon's Studies of ICodem Mind &c, 8yo. lit. 

Wit tJHd Wiadom of the Bey. Sydney Smith. Crown 8yo. 3«. 6d. 

Wltf s Myths of Hellas, translated by F. M. Younghusband. Crown 8yo. 

Tooge's BogUsh-Greek Lexicon. Square 13mo. 8«. 6d. 4to. 31«. 

The Bbbitb and Contributions of A. E. H. B. Crown 8yo. 

▲ntomn Holidays of a Country Parson. 8«. 6<i< 

CDuuigecl Aspects of Unchanged Truths. Z*. 6d, 

Oommon-place Philosopher in Town and Country. 9*. 6d, 

Oovmsel and Comfort spoken from a City Pulpit. 8«. 6d. 

Orltioal Bssays of a Country Parson. 8«. Bd. 

Grayer Thoughts of a Country Parson. Three Series, Si. 6d, each. 

Landaoapes, Churches, and Moralities. 3«. M. 

Ldsoie Hours in Town. Ss. 6d. Lessons of Middle Age. Si, M. 

Oar Little Life. Essays Oonsolatory and Domestic. Zi, 9d. 

Flesent-day Thoughts. 8i. M. 

Becreatlons of a Country Parson. Three Series, St, M, each. 

Seaside Musings on Sundays and Week-Days. 8i. 6d. 

Buidaj Afternoons in the Parish Church of a TJniyersity Oitj, Zs, 6d. 



ASTRONOMY, METEOROLOGY, GEOGRAPHY, ice. 



I't Historical (Geography of Europe. 3 yols. 8yo. 81«. M. 

Vb Outlines of Astronomy. Square crown 8yo. ISi. 
Kdth Jobnston's Dictionary of Geography, or General Gazetteer. 8yo. i3«. 
NdMn't Work on the Moon. Medium 8yo. Zls. 6d. 

FMwtOir^ Bssays on Astronomy. 8yo. 12«. Proctor's Moon. Crown 8yo. lOi. 64. 

— Larger Star Atlas. Folio, 15s, or Maps only, 12s. 6d, 

» New Star AUas. Crown 8yo. 6s. Orbs Around Us. Grown 8yo. 7«. 04. 

— Other Worlds than Ours. Crown 8yo. 10s. 84. 

* Son. Crown 8yo. lis, Uniyerse of Stars. 8yo. lOs. 64. 

— Transits of Venus, 8yo. Zs, 64. Studies of Venus-Transits, 8yo. 5«. 
BdUUi'B Air and Bain. 8yo.84«. 

The FbUIo Sokeols Atlas of Andent Geography. Imperial 8yo. 7s, 64. 
Thit Fmblio Sckeols Atlas of Modem Geography. Imperial 8yo. 6s, 
WtM's Celestial Objects for Common Telescopes. Crown 8yo. 9s, 



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6 



General Lists of Hew Works. 



NATURAL HISTORY & POPULAR SCIENCE. 

JLraofet^B Elements of Physics or Katnral Philosophy. Crown 8vo. 19«. 6^. 

Brands's Dictionary of Science, Literature, and Art. 8 toIs. xnedlnm 870. 68«. 

Deoaisne and Le Maoat's General l^yBtem of Botany. Imperial 8vo. 81i. 6d. 

Dizon'B Bnral Bird Life. Grown Sro. Ulnstrations, 6*, 

Bdmonds's Elementary Botany. Fcp. 8to. 2t. 

Eyans's Bronze Implements of Oreat Britain. Sro. 26s. 

GanoCB Elementary Treatise on Physics, by Atkinson. Large orown 8to. IS«. 

— Natmnl Philosophy, by Atkinson. Grown 8vo. 7s. 9d, 
Ooodevt's Elements of Mechanism. Grown 8yo. Bs. 
Gxoye^B Oonelation of Physical Forces. 8to. 15s. 

Hartwig's Aerial World. 8yo. 10s. Cd. Polar World. 8to. 10<. M, 

— 8ea and its Liying Wonders. Syo. 10s. M. 

— Subterranean World. Svo. 10«. Bd. Tropical World. 8to. 10«. M. 
Hatighton*B Six Lectures on Physical Geography. 8to. Us, 

Heo's Primssral World of Switzerland. 3 vols. 8yo. 12s, 
HelmholtE's Lectures on Sdentiflc Sutyjects. S vols. or. 8yo. 7s. Bd. each. 
Ht!}ah'B Lectures on the History of Modem Music. 8to. 8i. Bd, 

— Transition Period of Musical Eistor} . 8vo. 10s, Bd. 
Seller's Lake Dwellings of Switzerland, by Lee. 2 vols, royal 8yo. i3«. 
IJoyd's Treatise on Magnetism. 8to. 10s. Bd, 

— — on the Waye-Theory of Light. 8vo. 10s. Bd. 
London's Bni^dopflBdia of Plants. Sro. i2s. 

Labbock on the Origin of GiTillsation & Primitive Oordition of Man. 8yo. I81. 
ICaoalister's Zoology and Morphology of Vertebrate Animals, 8to. 10«. Bd, 
Niools* Puzzle ol Life. Grown 8to. Ss. Bd. 

Owen's Gomparative Anatomy and Physiology of the Vertebrate Animals. 8 Tole. 
Syo. IBs, Bd. 

— Experimental Physiology. Crown 8vo. Ss, 

Frootor's Light Science for Leisure Eoura. 8 Series, crown 8to. 7s. Bd. each. 

BiTers*s Orchard House. Sixteenth Edition. Grown 870. 6s. 

— Boee Amateur's Guide. Fcp. 8vo. Is. Bd. 

Btuiley's Familiar History of British Birds. Grown 8yo. Bs, 

l^st-Books of Science, Mechanical and Physical. 
Ataney's Photography, 8«. Bd, 
Anderson's (Sir John) Strength of Materials, Bs, Bd, 
Armstrong's Organic Chemistry, Bs. Bd, 
Ball's Astronomy, 6s. 
Barry's Railway Appliances, Bs. Bd. 
Bauerman'a Systematic Mineralogy, Bs. 
Bloxam & Huntington's Metals, bs. 
Glazebrook'g Physical Optics, 6*. 
Gore's Electro-Metallurgy, Bs. 
Griffin's Algebra and Trigonometry, Bs. Bd, 
Jenkin's Electricity and Magnetism, Bs, Bd, 
Maxwell's Theory of Heat, Bs. Bd. 
Merrifield's Technical Arithmetic and Mensuration, Bs, Bd, 
Miller's Inorg^c Chemistry, Bs. Bd. 
Preece k SiTewright's Telegraphy, 8«. Bd. 
Butley's Study of Bocks, is. Bd, 
BheUey's Workshop AppUances, Zs. Bd. 

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General Lists of New Works. 



Tezt-Booka of ScieBce, Heohanical and ^hjeiceil— continued. 

Thomfi'a Structural and PhysKflogical Botany, 6«. 
Thorpe^B Qoantitative Gheodcal Analysis, 4s. 6<l. 
Thorpe U Mnir's Qoalitatiye Analysis, 8«. 6d. 
TQden's Chemical Philosophy, Bs. 6(2. 
Unwin'B ICachine Design, 6s. 
Watson's Plane and Solid Geometry, 9i, 9d, 

TyDidall's Floating Matter of the Air. Crown 8to. Is. 6d. 

— Fragments of Science. 3 vols, post Svo. 16«. 

— Heat a Mode of Motion. Ctarown Svo. 12<. 

. — Notes on Blectrical Phenomena. Crown 8yo. Is. sewed, Is. 6d. doth. 

— Notes of Lectures on Light. Crown 8yo. 1«. sewed. Is. Bd. cloth. 

— Lectures on Light deliYeied in America. Crown 8yo. 7s. %d, 

— Lessons in Electricity. Crown Svo. 2s. Bd. 

— Sound, New Edition, including Becent Besearohes. Crown Byo. 

Von Gotta on Books, hy Lawrence. Post 8to. 1^, 

Wood's Bible Animals. With 112 Vignettes. Svo. 14s. 

— Common British Insects. Crown Svo. 8s. 6d. 

— flomes Without Hands. Svo. 14s. Insects Abroad. 8to. 14s. 
— > Insects at Home. With 700 DlustrationB. 8yo. 14s. 

— Out of Doors. Crown Svo. 6s. 

— > Strange Dwellings. Grown 8vo. 6s. Sunbeam Edition, 4to. M. 

CHEMISTRY & PHYSIOLOGY. 

Bookton'B Health in the House, Lectures on Elementary Physiology. Gr. Svo. Ss. 

Jago's Inorganic Chemistry, Theoretical and Practical, Fcp. Svo. 2s. 

MiUer'B Elements of Chemistry, Theoretical and Practical. 8 vols. Svo. Part I. 
Chemioal Physics, 16s. Part II. Inorganic Chemistry, 84s. Fart III. Organic 
Ghemistry, price 81s. 6^ 

Beynoldfl'i Experimental Chemistry. Fcp. Svo. ' Part I. Is. 6d. Part n. 2s. 6d. 

Thndiohnm's Annals of Chemical Medicine. Vols. I. & n. Svo. 14s. each. 

Tilden's Practical Chemistry. Fop. Svo. Is. 6<i. 

WattB'B Dictionary of Chemistry. 9 vds. medium Svo. £15. 2s. ed.] 

THE FINE ARTS & ILLUSTRATED EDITIONS. 

Dresser' B ArtB and Art Industries of Japan.: Square crown Svo. 31s. Bd. 
Bastlake's Notes on the Brera Gallery, Milan. Crown Svo. 6s. 

— Notes on the Louvre Gallery, Paris. Crown Svo. 7s. 6d. 
Hulme's Art-Instruction in England, Fcp. Svo. 3s. 6d. 
Jameson's Saored and Legendary Art. 6 vols, square crown Svo. 
Legends of the Madonna. 1 voL 21s. 

— — — Monastic Orders. 1 vol. 21s. 

— — — Saints and Martyrs. 2 vols. 81s. 6d, 

— — — Saviour. Completed by Lady Eastlake. Svcds. 4Ss. 
Longman's Three Cathedrals Dedicated to St. Paul. Square crown Svo. 21«. 
Maoaulay's Lays of Ancient Bome, iUustrated by ScharL Fcp. 4to. 2U 

— — _ illustrated by Weguelin. Grown Svo. 6s.: 
Maotarren's Lectures on Harmony. Svo. 12s. 

Moore's Irish Melodies. With 161 Plates by D. Maclise, BJL Super-royal Svo. 21s. 

— Lalla Bookh, illustrated by Tennid. Square crown Svo. 10s. 9d, 

New Testament (The) illustrated with Woodcuts. New Edition, in course of 

publication in 18 Monthly Parts, Is. each. Quarto. 
Perry en G-reek and Bomaa Sculpture. With 280 Illustrations engraved on 

Wood. Square crown 8vo. 81s. 6d, 



London, LONGMANS & CO. 



8 



General Lists of New Works. 



THE USEFUL ARTS. MANUFACTURES, &C. 
Barry & Bramwell'B BaUways and Locomotives. 8yo. ilt, 
Bonnie^i Oatedbism of the Steam Bngine. Fcp. 8to. 8«. 

— BacampleB of Steam, Ait, and Qas Bnglnea. 4to. 70«. 

— Handbook of the Steam Bngine. Fcp. Svo. 9i. 

— Beoent Impcovements in the Steam Bngine. Fop. 8vo. U, 

— Treatleeon the Steam Bngine. 4to.^<. 

BiaBsey's Bxitieh Navy, in 6 yols. 8vo. with many Dlnstrations. Vol. I. Ship- 
bailding for the Faipoees of War, 10«. dd. Yous. IL & III. is. M, each. 

Oeetj'B Bncydlopndia of Oivil Bngineering. 8vo. 854. 

Onlley'i Handbook of Praotical Telegraphy. 8va 16«. 

■MrtlakeTii Hooaehold Taste in Fomitare, dka Sqaare orown 8vo. lis, 

FlRlrbaim't Uiefiil Information for Bngineers. 8 vote, crown 8vo. 81<. Sd. 

— MmBandMiUwork. lvoL8vo.8fi«. 
Gwll^ Enx^dopedla of Arohiteotare. 8vo. 52«. 64. 

Kerl's Metallorgy, adapted by Orookes and BShrig. 8 vote. 8vo. £4. 19«. 
Loudon'B Bnoydcypndia of Agriooltnie. 8vo. 21i. 

— — —Gardening. 8vo. 21i. 
latdheU't Manual of FrHotioal Aanying. 8vo.81«. 64. 
HorthootfePt lAthee and Tnming. 8vo. 18«. 

Fayen'8 Industrial Ohemlstry Bdited by B. H. Panl, Ph.D. Svo. 4S«. 

PieMe's Art of Pecfomery. FonrUi Bdition. Square crown 8vo. 2U. 

Bennett's Treatise cm the Marine Steam Bngine. 8vo. 81«. 

BtonflBr'i Theory of Strains in ahrders. Boyal 8vo. 86«. 

Urefk Dlotionary of Arts, Maanfactores, Si', Mines. 4 vote, mediom 8vo. £7. 7i. 

YQle on Artificial Manures. By Orookes. 8vo. 21«. 

RELIGIOUS & MORAL WORKS. 

Abbej U Overton's Bnglish Ohnroh In the Bighteenth Oentory. 2 vols. 8vo. 864. 

Arnold's (Bev. Dr. Thomas) Sermons. 6 vote, crown 8vo. is. eaoh. 

Bishop Jeremy Taylor's Bntire Works. With IJfe by Bishop Heber. Bdtted . by 
the Bev. 0. P. Bden. 10 vote. 8vo. £6, 6s. 

BonltbeiPs Oommentaiy on the 89 Articles. Ch^mn 8vo. Bs, 

— History of the Ohnroh of Bngland,Pre-Beformation Period. 8vo.l6<. 
Bray's Elements of Morality. Fcp. Svo. 2s, dd. 

Browned (Bishop) Bzposition of the 89 Axtictes. Svo. 164. 

Oalvert's Wife's Manual. Crown Svo. 6s, 

Ohzist our Ideal. Svo. Ss. 64. 

Oolenao^s Lectures on the Pentateuch aild the Moabite Stone, 8vo. 124. 

Oolanso on the Pentateuch and Book of Joshua. Orown Svo. 64. 

OondflK^ Handbook of the Bible. Poet Svo. 74. 64. 

Oonybeare U Howson'sLife andYetters of St. Paul :— 

libraiy Bdition, with all the Original Illustrations, Maps, Landsoapes on 
Btael, Woodcuts, &o. 2 vote. 4to. 424. 

Intermediate BdiUon, with a SeLeoUon of Maps, Plates, and Woodoats. 
2 vols, square crown Svo. 2l4. 

Stndent's Bdition, revised and condensed, with 46 Blustratians and Maps. 
1 vcl. erewn Svo. 74. 64. 
Oreighten's History of the Papacy during the Bef ormatlon. 2 vols. Svo. 824. 
Davidson's Introduction to the Study of the New Testament. 2 vote. Svo. 8O4. 



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HDioott^ (BlBhop) Oommentaiy on Bt Paul's BplstleB. Bvo. GalatlAxis, 81. 64. 

Bphfldaofl, 8«. U, Partoral Bplstlai, lOi. Bd. I'bSUpsUaa, CkdOMiaiiB aad 

FhUemon, 10«. 9d, TheaBBlonlAiia, 7i. 9d, 
HIUoott'liLeotDrGBoiiiheLifeof onrLord. 8yo. 12«. 
Ewald's Christ and His Time, translated hj J. F. Smitli. 8to. 16«. 

— History of Igrad, translated by Carpenter. 5 vols. 8to. 68«. 

— AntlqidtieB of Israel, translated by SoDy. 8to.U«.64. 
Oospd (The) for the Nineteenth Oentnzy. 4thIUition. 8TO.IO1.M. 
HopUns's Christ the Consoler. Fcp. 8yo. 2«. 64. 

Jnkes's New Man and the Eternal Life. Grown 8to. 6«. 

— Second Death and the Restitution of all Things. Crown 8yo.l«. td, ■ 

— ^I^pes of Gknesis. Crown 8vo. 7«. 64. 

Kalisdh's BiUe StodJee. Part I. the Prophecies of Balaam. 8to. 10«. 6<L 

— — — Part n. the Bookof Jonah. Svo. 10s, 64. 

— Historical and Critical Commentazy on the Old Testament; with a 
'-v New Translation. Vol. L OenesiSf Svo. 18«. or adapted for the General 
,T^ Header, 12U. VoL II. JSxodut, IKi. or adapted for the General Header, 12«. 

Yd. m. LevMeuty Part I. 16s. or adapted for the General Beader, 8s, 
"' VoL lY. Levmcus, Part n. 16s. or adapted for the General Beader, 8«. 
Keary's Outlines of PrimitiTe Belief. Syo. 18<. 
Lyra Germanioa : Hymns translated hy Miss Winkworth. Fop. 8to. ts. 
Manning's Temporal Mission of the Holy Ghost. Crown 8to. 8s. 6dL 
Martinean'B Bndeavonn after the Christian Lifto. Crown 8vo. 7s, 64. 

— Hymns of Praise and Prayer. Crown 8to. 4j. 64. 83mo. Is, 64. 

— Sermons, Honrs of Thought on Sacred Things. 3 vols. 7s, 64. each. 
Mill's Three Essays on Beliglon. 8yo. lOi. 64. 

Monsell's Spiritual Bongs for Sundays and Holidays. Fcp. 8yo. 6s, 18mo. is, 
Mflller's (Max) Origin & Growth of Beligion. Crown Svo. 7s, 64. 

— — Sdenoe of Beligion. Crown 8yo. 7s, 64. 
Newman's Apotogia pro Vit& SuA. Crown Sto. 6«. 

Passing Thoughts on Beligion. By Miss SeweU. Fcp. 8yo. Ss, 64. 
Bewell's (Miss) Preparation for the Holy Communion. 88mo. is, 

— — PrlTate Devotions for Young Persons. 18mo.Si. 
Seymour's Hebrew Psalter. Grown Svo. 7s. 64. 

Smith's Yoyage and Shipwreck of St. Paul. Crown Syo. 7s. 64. 
Supernatural Beligion. Complete Edition. 8 vols. 8yo. 86i. 
Thonghtsfor the Age. By Miss Sewell. Fcp. Syo. 8«. 64. 
Whately's Lessons on the Christian Byf&enoeB. 18mo. 64. 
Whitens Four Gospels In Greek, with Greek-English LezlooB. 82mo. 6s, 

TRAVELS, VOYAGES. &c. 

Baker's Bifle and Hound In Ceylon. Crown 8yo. 7s, 64. 

— Bight Yean In Ceykm. Grown 8yo. 7s, 64. 

Ban's Alpine Guide. 8 YoiLkpost Svo. with Maps and Illustrations :— L Westeni 
Alps, 64. 64. n. Central Alps, 7s. 64. IlL Eastern Alps, lOi. 64. 

Ban on Alpine TraTeiling, and on the Geology of the Alps, Is, 

BnmefB Sunshine and Storm in the East. Crown 8yo. 7s. 64. 

— Yoyage In the Yacht * Sunbeam.' Crown 8to. 7s, 64. School Bditkni, 
fcp. Sto. 8«. Popular Edition, 4to. 64. 



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10 



General Lists of ITew Works. 



Preexoan's Impieesions of the United States of America, down 8vo. 6«. 

HMBall's Ban Bemo and the Western Biviera. Grown 8vo. lOt. 6<2. 

ICaonainara's Medical Geography of India. 870. 21«. 

ICOkK's ^Hnteting In the Biviera. Post 8yo. ninBtrattona, 7i. 64. 

The Alpine Club Ifiap of Switzerland. In Four Sheets. 43«. 

Three in Norway. By Two of Them. Crown 8to. Blnstrations, 6«. 

Weld's Saored Palmlands. Crown 8to. lOi. 6d. 

WORKS OF FICTION. 

Arden, a Novel. By A. Mary F. Bobinson. 2 yoIs. crown 8to. 12«. 

Hester, a Noyel. By Mrs. Hope. 2 vols, crown 8yo. 12^. 

In the Olden Time. By the Author of ' Mademoiselle Mori.' 2 vols, crown Svo. 12s. 

Messer Agnolo's Household. By Leader Soott. Crown 870. 6i. 

Cabinet Bdition of Novels and Tales by the Barl of BeaoonHfleld, K.Q-. 11 vols. 

orown 8yo. price 6«. each. 
Cabinet Bdition of Stories and Tales by Miss SeweD. Crown 8vo. oloth extra, 

gilt edges, inlaa 8«. 6d. eaoh :— 



Amy Herbert Cleve HalL 
The Barl's Daughter. 
Bxperienoe of life. 
Ckctmde. Ivors. 



A GUmpse of the World. 
Katharine Ashton. 
Laneton Parsonage. 
Margaret FerdvaL Ursula. 



Novels and Tales by the Earl of Beaoonsfleld, K.G-. Hughenden Edition, with 2 
Portraits on Steel and 11 Vignettes on Wood. 11 vols, crown 8vo. £2. >«. 

Lothair. Coningsby. Contarini Fleming. 

QybiL Tancred. Alroy, Izion, &«. 

Yeaetia. Henrietta Temple. The x onng Duks, to, 

Vivian Grey. Endymion. 

The Modem Novelist's Library. Baoh Work In crown 8vo. A Single Volwne, 
o<miplete in itself, price 2«. boards, or 2s. 6d, cloth : — 



By the Barl ef Beaoonsfield, K.G. 
Lethair. Coningsby. 
^faJL Tancred. 
veaetia. Henrietta Temple. 
Contarini Fleming. 
Alroy, Ldon, fto. 
The Young Duke, &o. 
Tivian Gny. Bndymion. 

By Anthony TroUope. 
Barohester Towers. 
The Warden. 

By Major Whyte-MelviUe. 
Dlgl^r Grand. 
General Bounce. 



Kate Coventry. 
The Gladiators. 
Good for Nothing. 
Holmby House. 
The laterpreter. 
The Queen's Maries. 

By Various Writers. 
The Atelier du Lyi. 
Atherstone Priory. 
The Bui^iomaster's Family* 
Elsa and her Vulture. 
Mademoiselle Mori. 
The Six Sisters of the Valk^B- 
Unawares. 



Novels and Tales of the Earl ef Beaoonsfleld, K.G. Modem NoveUsfs LRnaiy 

Edition, complete in 11 vols, crown 8vo. price £1. IZs. cloth extra. 
Oliphant's (Mrs.) In Trust. Crewa 8vo. 6s, 

Whispers from Fairy Laad. By Lord Braboume. With 9 niostratlons. OrowK 
8vo. Zs, 6d, 

HIgfledy-Figgledy. By Lard Braboume. With 9 Ulnstrations. Grown 8vo. 8«. M. 

POETRY 8c THE DRAMA. 
Bailey's Fostus, a Poem. Crown 8vo. 12s, 6<f. 

Bowdler's Family Shakspeare. Medium Svo. lis, 6 vols. fop. Svo. 2U. 
Cajley's Iliad of Homer, Homometrically trandated. Svo. 12«. 94, 



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General Lists of New Works. 



11 



Gonlngton'B MneiA of Yirgll, tjunfllated into English Verse. Grown 8yo. 9«. 

— Preae Translation of Virgil's Poems. Grown 8vo. 9t, 
GoetheTs Vaost, translated by Birds. Large crown 870. 12i. 6<f. 

— — translated by Webb. 8vo. ISs. 6(2. 

— — edited by SelsB. Grown 8T0.ff«. 
Ingelow^ Poems. New Edition. 2 T(dB. fcp. 8vo. 13«. 

Macanlay'B Lays of Ancient Borne, with iTty and the Aimada. Itoio. Zs, 6d. 
The same, Gheap Edition, fcp. 8to. U. sewed, 1«. 6d, cloth, 2i. 6<2. cloth extra. 
Moore's Poetical Works, 1 vol. mby type. Post 8vo. 6s, 
Sonthey's Poetical Works. Mediom Sro. 14«. 

RURAL 8PORT8, HORSE St CATTLE MANAGEMENT, &c. 

Dead Shot (The), by Marksman. Grown 8yo. 10s, 6d, 

ntEwygram's Horses and Stables. 8yo. 10<. 6<2. 

Francis's Treatise on Fishing in all its Branches. Post 8yo. 15«. 

Horses and Boads. By Free-Lanoe. Grown 8yo. Bs, 

Hewitt's Visits to Remarkable Places. Grown 8yo. 7s, 6d, 

muss's Hone's Foot, and How to Keep it Soond. Imperial Syo. 12$, M, 

— Plain Treatise on Horse-Shoeing. Poet 870. 2s, M, 

— Stables and StablO-FittingB. Imperial 8yo. 16i. 

— Bemarks on Horses* Teeth. Post8yo. 1<. 6<2. 
MUner's Goontry Pleasures. Grown 8yo. Bs, 
Nevil^s Horses and Biding. Grown 8yo. U, 
Bonalds's Fly-Fisher's Entomology. 8to. 14«. 

Steel's Diseases of the Ox, being a Manual of Bovine Pathology. • 870. ISs, 
Stonehenge's Dog in Health and Disease. Square crown 8to. 7t, M, 

— Greyhound. Square crown 8yo. 10«. 
Wilcooksli Sea-Fisherman. Post 8yo. 12s, 9d, 
Yonatt^s Work on the Dog. 8yo. 6s, 

— — . — -- Horse, ftyo. 7«. 6<f. 

WORKS OF UTILITY St GENERAL INFORMATION. 

Acton's Modem Gookery f<n: Priyate Families. Fcp. 8yo. Is, 6d, 
Blades Practical Treatise on Brewing. 8yo. 10s, 6d, 
■ Bnokton's Food and Home Gookery. Grown 8yo. 2s, 6d. ■ 
Bull on the Maternal Management of Ghildren. Fcp. 8yo. 1«. 6d, 
BnU's Hints to Mothers on the Management of their Health dnring the Period of 

Pregnancy and in the Lying-in Boom. Fop. 8ya Is, 9d. 
OampbeU- Walker's Gonect Gard, or How to Play at Whist. Fop. 8yo.'S<. 9d, 
Johnson's (W. & J. H.) Patentee's Manual. Fourth Edition. 8yo. 10s, 94. 
Johnston's Land Law Ireland Act. Grown 8yo. Is, 
Longman's GhesB Openings. Fop. 8yo. 3«. (kf. 
Madeod's Econfflnics for Beginners. Small crown 8yo. 2s, 64. 

— Elements of Banking. Fourth Edition. Grown 8yo. 5«. 

— Elements of Economics. S yols. small crown 8yo. YOL.L7t,6d, 

— Theory and Practice of Banking. 2 ycUb, Bvo, 26s, 



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12 General Lists of New Works. 



irCaDoch's Diotionaiy of Oommeroe and Commercial Nayigation. 8ya S84. 
liaander's Btogiaphioal Treasory. Fop; Sro. 6t, 

— Historical Treaaory. F^Svo. 64. 

— Bdrnitiflo and literary TreaBOiy. Fop. 8to. 64. 

— Treamiy of Bibla Knowledge, edited by Ayra. HVjp. Sro. 64. 

— Ireasuy of Botany, edited by Llndl^ & Moore. Two Parti, lU, 

— TreaBury of Geograpby. Fq>. Sto. 8«. 

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