orcing this thought on myself very rapidly,
I produced a something like suspension of thought or syncope; not a
vertigo, but that mental condition which is allied to it. I have several
times read of men who recorded nearly the same thing among their youthful
experiences, but I do not recall that any of them induced this _coma_ by
reflecting on the ego-ism of the I, or the me-ness of the Me. {16} It
often recurred to me in after years when studying Schelling and Fichte,
or reading works by Mystics, Quietists, and the like. At a very early
age I was indeed very much given to indulging in states of mind
resembling metaphysical abstraction--a kind of vague marvelling what I
_was_ and what others were; whether they and everything were not spirits
playing me tricks, or a delusion--a kind of psychology without material
or thought, like a workman without tools.

For a short time, while five or six years old, and living at Mrs.
Eaton's, I was sent to a school of boys of all ages, kept by a man named
Eastburn, in Library Street, whom I can only recall as a coarse, brutal
fiend. From morning to night there was not a minute in which some boy
was not screaming under the heavy rattan which he or his brother always
held. I myself--infant as I was--for not learning a spelling-lesson
properly, was subjected to a caning which would have been cruel if
inflicted on a convict or sailor. In the lower story this man's sister
kept a girls' school, and the ruffian was continually being called
downstairs to beat the larger girls. My mother knew nothing of all this,
and I was ashamed to tell that I had been whipped. I have all my life
been opposed to corporal punishment, be it in schools or for criminals.
It brings out of boys all that is evil in their nature and nothing that
is good, developing bullying and cruelty, while it is eminently
productive of cowardice, lying, and meanness--as I have frequently found
when I came to hear the private life of those who defend it as creating
"manliness." It was found during the American war that the soldiers who
had been most accustomed to beating and to being beaten were by far the
greatest cowards, and that "Billy Wilson's" regiment of pugilists was so
absolutely worthless as to be unqualified for the field at any time. One
thing is very certain, that I have found that boys who attend schools
where there is no whipping, and little or no fighting, are freest from
that _coarseness_ which is so inva