of my own),
because the view, which it opens on us, is positive and
objective, in spite of the fullest demonstration that it really
has no claim upon our reception. The reader says, "What else can
the prophecy mean?" just as my Accuser asks, "What, then, does
Dr. Newman mean?" ... I reflected, and I saw a way out of my
perplexity.

Yes, I said to myself, his very question is about my _meaning_;
"What does Dr. Newman mean?" It pointed in the very same
direction as that into which my musings had turned me already.
He asks what I _mean_; not about my words, not about my
arguments, not about my actions, as his ultimate point, but
about that living intelligence, by which I write, and argue, and
act. He asks about my Mind and its Beliefs and its sentiments;
and he shall be answered;--not for his own sake, but for mine,
for the sake of the Religion which I profess, and of the
Priesthood in which I am unworthily included, and of my friends
and of my foes, and of that general public which consists of
neither one nor the other, but of well-wishers, lovers of fair
play, sceptical cross-questioners, interested inquirers, curious
lookers-on, and simple strangers, unconcerned yet not careless
about the issue,--for the sake of all these he shall be
answered.

My perplexity had not lasted half an hour. I recognized what I
had to do, though I shrank from both the task and the exposure
which it would entail. I must, I said, give the true key to my
whole life; I must show what I am, that it may be seen what I am
not, and that the phantom may be extinguished which gibbers
instead of me. I wish to be known as a living man, and not as a
scarecrow which is dressed up in my clothes. False ideas may be
refuted indeed by argument, but by true ideas alone are they
expelled. I will vanquish, not my Accuser, but my judges. I will
indeed answer his charges and criticisms on me one by one[1],
lest any one should say that they are unanswerable, but such a
work shall not be the scope nor the substance of my reply. I
will draw out, as far as may be, the history of my mind; I will
state the point at which I began, in what external suggestion or
accident each opinion had its rise, how far and how they
developed from within, how they grew, were modified, were
combined, were in collision with each ot