Before my mesmeric experiments and acquaintance with Priscilla, I was a sort of Rationalist, accepting Christianity in name, and explaining its miracles and mysteries on purely natural principles. Afterwards, after my philanthropic schemes had miscarried, my worship of humanity as God had proved a failure, and my belief in progress had expired in the crucible of experience, I fell into a sort of despair, and would fain have persuaded myself that I believed in nothing. If I did not absolutely deny God, my belief in him became so obscured by the mists of my speculations and the corruptions of my heart, that I was in reality no better than an atheist. The devil was a bugbear invented by the priests, and men were mere motes in the sunbeam. I have already described the state into which I fell—a state from which I would risk my life to save my bitterest enemy. Prior to the absolute crushing of all my hopes, which followed my having finished all the work I had marked out for myself to do, and found it nought, I regarded myself as a Free-Thinker, because I had either allowed myself to think, or had made myself acquainted with the thoughts of others, against religion. My freedom and independence of mind were in denying, not in believing. I was not free to think in favor of religion, nor sufficiently independent to believe Christianity, and labor in earnest to serve God and save my own soul. To have done so would have been sheer superstition, would have been sinking myself to the level of the vulgar, and to have exposed myself to the gibes and sneers of my scientific associates. Nevertheless, my unbelief, my scepticism, and my radicalism, were a sort of violence done to my own better feelings and graver judgment. They never came natural to me, and I am sure I was never cut out for a philanthropist or a world-reformer. There was always something in the views and practices of my associates that disgusted me, and often was I obliged to hold my nose when they were discussed, as it is said Satan does when he encounters a confirmed sensualist. I had no natural relish for “the Newness,” and when at worst retained a secret reverence for the past, and dwelt with pleasure on the time-hallowed, over which for ages had flowed the stream of human affection, human joy, and human sorrow. I stood in awe before the shadow of the hoary Eld, and wished always to find myself bound by indissoluble ties to what had gone before me, as well as to what might come after me. Half in spite, and half under the charm of Priscilla, I embraced philanthropy, but not inwardly, for her sophistry never for a moment deceived me. Never was there a moment when I did not see through the philanthropists, radicals, and revolutionists with whom I associated, or when with a breath I could not have swept away their cobweb theories; never for a moment was I deceived as to the actual character of the devilish movements I myself set on foot.