Goethe once said that the greatest of physical blessings is a big head with enough blood to feed it, and the greatest of physical trials the same head without the blood, whose place has to be supplied by all sorts of fancies, which of course take the most morbid form. In my case they turned, as they have in such thousands of cases, to religious hypochondria. There is nothing more difficult to explain away, on any Darwinian or Contist hypothesis of which I am aware, than 'phenomena' of this kind. They exist, and will have to be dealt with somewhere. The curious story of John Bunyan has been repeated constantly since his days. They were trying at the time. I was fully convinced that I was the wickedest man that ever lived, and even in my illness rather triumphed in the fact after the fashion of Topsy. Looking back from my present vantage-ground, and conscious of never having wittingly harmed anyone, I cannot imagine why I arrived at so desperate a conclusion. I must have tried that poor young doctor sadly; for I never spoke of anything but my sins and my ailments, though naturally I am blessed with a keen interest in all sorts of things--_quicquid agunt homines_, almost. For my sins, to deal with which he felt to be outside his province, he sent to the clergyman of the village locality, who fled after five minutes' discourse; and, as I have learnt since, with a good sense for which I shall ever mentally thank him, wrote to some of my relatives to tell them to send me 'home' at once--dear, good, blessed old word that it is!--and save me from doctors as soon as might be. They preferred an 'asylum.' As to my ailments, I had evolved from my inner consciousness, after a varied and polyglot experience of many physicians, from whom I had suffered many things, certain astounding theories about acids and alkalies, and organic and functional disorders, which were innocent of the slightest foundation in fact, but, as far as I can see, quite as well founded as those of the faculty. One of the Diafoiruses, I remember, who had been baroneted for his performances, entirely declined to pronounce on me at all anything but the simple sentence: 'O Lord, take him away--beef-steaks and cod-liver oil!' Had he said 'Burgundy' instead, I had reverenced him now fully instead of partially. For I was, in fact, starving, and that was all.