I looked back on Nicopolis and it was now little more than a hamlet, and the quay was a dot. But it still loomed large on my mind. I had spoken of “phantasms” and “dreams.” But I could not think of the human scene in the harbour as a “dream.” Only too life-like were those bipeds—noisy, scurrilous, vile, obscene! How unworthy of the bright and glorious sunlight in which all things were bathed at that moment of full noon—all things in heaven and earth! How glorious was everything except man! Yes, everything except man! Rufus spoke in jest, but did he not speak the truth? What were those “sons of God” on the quay? Surely, surely, they were “sons of clay,” mere puppets to play with and break! To this day I cannot tell why just at this moment so strong a temptation should have so suddenly seized me. But seize me it did. I write it as it happened, that others may take heart if the same thing should happen to them. It was God’s way of dealing with me, suffering me to be almost cast down by evil that He might lift me up for good. Feeling the evil coming, I tried at first to strengthen myself with the sayings of my Master, Epictetus, “See then that thou do nothing as a beast. Else thou hast lost the Man. Thou hast not fulfilled the promise of the Man,” and again, “Man is a being that has nothing more sovereign than his will. He has all other things in subjection to this.” Then I thought of Man as the Psalmist describes him, saying to God, “Thou hast put all things under his feet … yea, and the beasts of the field,” and how the Christians regarded this as meaning that Man was to triumph over sin. But, against these hopeful thoughts, there rose up, first, the confessions of Epictetus that he had never succeeded in producing a Man of this kind, nor anything approaching to it; and then the words of the other Psalm, “Man being in honour hath no understanding, but is like unto the beasts that perish.” I longed to believe the good Voices, but truth seemed to compel me to believe the bad Voices. Worst and strongest of all, there rose up recollections of my own evil deeds, words, and thoughts, from childhood upwards, and they strengthened the Voices of evil. I could not at that moment recall the brighter and better side of my own life. I could not remind myself how different a man in a crowd may be for a moment from the same man in his home and at his work during his daily life. It seemed to me that I ought to be on my guard against hoping contrary to facts. Was not Glaucus right in taunting me with “self-deceiving,” which I called “believing”? Was it not the plain and manifest fact that the Beast was Lord over the Man?