Such a dual life as I at this time led it has seldom entered into the head of man to imagine. I was, on the one hand, a school-boy in a jacket, leading a humiliated life among my kind, all because I was sickly and weak; while, on the other hand, utterly alone and without a living soul to whom I could exchange an idea, I was mastering rapidly and boldly that which was _then_ in reality the tremendous problem of the age. I can now see that, as regards its _real_ antique bases, I was far more deeply read and better grounded than were even its most advanced leaders in Anglo-Saxony. For I soon detected in Carlyle, and much more in Emerson, a very slender knowledge of that stupendous and marvellous ancient Mysticism which sent its soul in burning faith and power to the depth of "the downward-borne elements of God," as Hermes called them. I missed even the rapt faith of such a weak writer as Sir Kenelm Digby, much more Zoroaster! Vigourous and clever and bold writers they were--Carlyle was far beyond me in literary _art_--but true Pantheists they were _not_. And they were men of great genius, issuing essays to the age on popular, or political, or "literary" topics; but _philosophers_ they most assuredly were _not_, nor men tremendous in spiritual truth. And yet it was precisely as _philosophers_ and thaumaturgists and revealers of _occulta_ that they posed--especially Emerson. And they dabbled or trifled with free thought and "immorality," crying Goethe up as the Light of Lights, while all their inner souls were bound in the most Puritanical and petty goody-goodyism. Though there were traces of grim Scotch humour in Carlyle, my patron saint and master, Rabelais, or aught like him, had no credit with them. They _paddled_ in Pantheism, but as regards it, both lacked the stupendous faith and inspiration of the old adepti, who flung their whole souls into God; and yet they sneered at Materialism and Science.