e, and made a little progress even, as
we sometimes do when we least think it.

He took more and more to brooding in the garret; and as more questions
presented themselves for solution, he became more anxious to arrive at
the solution, and more uneasy as he failed in satisfying himself that
he had arrived at it; so that his brain, which needed quiet for the true
formation of its substance, as a cooling liquefaction or an evaporating
solution for the just formation of its crystals, became in danger of
settling into an abnormal arrangement of the cellular deposits.

I believe that even the new-born infant is, in some of his moods,
already grappling with the deepest metaphysical problems, in
forms infinitely too rudimental for the understanding of the grown
philosopher--as far, in fact, removed from his ken on the one side, that
of intelligential beginning, the germinal subjective, as his abstrusest
speculations are from the final solutions of absolute entity on the
other. If this be the case, it is no wonder that at Robert's age the
deepest questions of his coming manhood should be in active operation,
although so surrounded with the yoke of common belief and the shell of
accredited authority, that the embryo faith, which in minds like his
always takes the form of doubt, could not be defined any more than its
existence could be disproved. I have given a hint at the tendency of
his mind already, in the fact that one of the most definite inquiries to
which he had yet turned his thoughts was, whether God would have mercy
upon a repentant devil. An ordinary puzzle had been--if his father were
to marry again, and it should turn out after all that his mother was
not dead, what was his father to do? But this was over now. A third was,
why, when he came out of church, sunshine always made him miserable, and
he felt better able to be good when it rained or snowed hard. I might
mention the inquiry whether it was not possible somehow to elude the
omniscience of God; but that is a common question with thoughtful
children, and indicates little that is characteristic of the individual.
That he puzzled himself about the perpetual motion may pass for little
likewise; but one thing which is worth mentioning, for indeed it caused
him considerable distress, was, that in reading the Paradise Lost
he could not help sympathizing with Satan, and feeling--I do not say
thinking--that the Almighty was pompous, scarcely reasonable, and
somewhat re