Then I fell in with O. W. Holmes's Autocrat and Professor, and found a friendly hand in the darkness. It led me to Emerson and Carlyle; then I found Darwin, Spencer, and the rest of them. My loneliness was mitigated, but the seared place in my soul was not healed, and never will be healed. I cannot read the Inferno and Purgatorio of Dante without horror, and thus the poetic beauty of those great cantos is darkened for me. I cannot worship "God," for "God" is the fiend whose image was stamped into my mind in its most plastic, most defenceless period. Truly that early teaching has much to answer for. It has poisoned a great part of my life. I suppose if I could have "accepted" that Being as my God, accepting also the sacrifice--the Blood--by which that Being's anger was supposed to be assuaged--I suppose I should have been happy, feeling myself "saved." (But I have lately been surprised to find how ineffective this belief can be. An acquaintance of mine, an orthodox churchwoman who has no religious doubts, and who talks much of the Bible, confesses to "a fear of death which clouds even her brightest moments"--an ever-present, unconquerable dread.) However, I could not accept the dogma. Why, I don't know. Somehow my whole mind and heart revolted against the entire plan of salvation. I never believed any of it. I felt it could not be true. And yet it tortured me. Illogical? Yes: human beings are illogical. I am no exception. The Christian who believes he will go to heaven is equally illogical in his unwillingness to die.