split tree-trunks with wedges; my arms tired, but my spirit remained fresh and
chafed against the physical weariness." Had he been indefinitely stronger, he
would have longed for more strength. He was often out of doors all day and
often half the night; wanted more sunshine; wished the day was sixty hours long;
took pleasure in braving the cold so that it should be not life's destroyer but its
renewer. Yet he abhorred asceticism. He wrestled with the problem of the origin
of his soul and destiny, but could find no solution; revolted at the assertion that
all is designed for the best; "a man of intellect and humanity could cause
everything to happen in an infinitely superior manner." He discovered that no
one ever died of old age, but only of disease; that we do not even know what old
age would be like; found that his soul is infinite, but lies in abeyance; that we are
murdered by our ancestors and must roll back the tide of death; that a hundredth
part of man's labor would suffice for his support; that idleness is no evil; that in
the future nine-tenths of the time will be leisure, and to that end he will work
with all his heart. "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."
Interesting as is this document, it is impossible to avoid the suspicion that the
seventeen years which intervened between the beginning of these experiences
and their final record, coupled with the perhaps unconscious tendency toward
literary effect, detract more or less from their value as documents of adolescent
nature.
Mr. H. Fielding Hall, author of "The Soul of a People," has since written a
book[32] in which, beginning with many definitions of Christianity, weighing
the opinion of those who think all our advance is made because of, against those
who think it in spite of Christianity, he proceeds to give the story of a boy,
probably himself, who till twelve was almost entirely reared by women and with
children younger than himself.
He was sickly, and believed not in the Old but in the New Testament; in the
Sermon on the Mount, which he supposed all accepted and lived by; that war
and wealth were bad and learning apt to be a snare; that the ideal life was that of
a poor curate, working hard and unhappy. At twelve, he went to a boarding-
school, passed from a woman's world into a man's, out of the New Testament
into the Old, out of dreams into reality. War was a glorious opportunity, and all