translation of Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason,"
the first half of it many times; Dugald Stewart's works, something of
Reid, Locke, and Hobbes's "Leviathan"; had bought and read French
versions of Schelling's "Transcendental Idealism" and Fichte's
fascinating "Destiny of Man"; studied a small handbook of German
philosophy; the works of Campanella and Vanini (Bruno much later, for his
works were then exceeding rare. I now have Weber's edition), and also,
with intense relish and great profit, an old English version of Spinoza's
_Tractatus Theologico-Politicus_. In which last work I had the real key
and clue to all German philosophy and Rationalism, as I in time found
out. I must here modestly mention that I had, to a degree which I
honestly believe seldom occurs, the art of _rapid_ yet of
carefully-observant reading. George Boker once, quite unknown to me,
gave me something to read, watched my eyes as I went from line to line,
timed me by watch, and finally examined me on what I had read. He
published the incident long after, said he had repeated it more than once
_a mon insu_, and that it was remarkable.

Such a dual life as I at this time led it has seldom entered into the
head of man to imagine. I was, on the one hand, a school-boy in a
jacket, leading a humiliated life among my kind, all because I was sickly
and weak; while, on the other hand, utterly alone and without a living
soul to whom I could exchange an idea, I was mastering rapidly and boldly
that which was _then_ in reality the tremendous problem of the age. I
can now see that, as regards its _real_ antique bases, I was far more
deeply read and better grounded than were even its most advanced leaders
in Anglo-Saxony. For I soon detected in Carlyle, and much more in
Emerson, a very slender knowledge of that stupendous and marvellous
ancient Mysticism which sent its soul in burning faith and power to the
depth of "the downward-borne elements of God," as Hermes called them. I
missed even the rapt faith of such a weak writer as Sir Kenelm Digby,
much more Zoroaster! Vigourous and clever and bold writers they
were--Carlyle was far beyond me in literary _art_--but true Pantheists
they were _not_. And they were men of great genius, issuing essays to
the age on popular, or political, or "literary" topics; but
_philosophers_ they most assuredly were _not_, nor men tremendous in
spiritual truth. And yet it was precisely as _philosophers_ and
thaumaturgists