to take first principles in ethics for granted. When his
mother reads a text to him (May 1832), he retorts, 'Then I will not be
like a little child; I do not want to go to heaven; I would rather stay
on earth.' He declines (in 1834) to join in a hymn which expresses a
desire to die and be with God. Even good people, he says, may prefer to
stay in this world. 'I don't want to be as good and wise as Tom
Macaulay' is a phrase of 1832, showing that even appeals to concrete
ideals of the most undeniable excellence fail to overpower him. He
gradually developed a theory which became characteristic, and which he
obstinately upheld when driven into a logical corner. A stubborn
conflict arose in 1833, when his mother was forced to put him in
solitary confinement during the family teatime. She overhears a long
soliloquy in which he admits his error, contrasts his position with that
of the happy who are perhaps even now having toast and sugar, and
compares his position to the 'last night of Pharaoh.' 'What a barbarian
I am to myself!' he exclaims, and resolves that this shall be his last
outbreak. On being set at liberty, he says that he was naughty on
purpose, and not only submits but requests to be punished. For a short
time he applies spontaneously for punishments, though he does not always
submit when the request is granted. But this is a concession under
difficulties. His general position is that by punishing him his mother
only 'procures him to be much more naughty,' and he declines as
resolutely as Jeremy Bentham to admit that naughtiness in itself
involves unhappiness, or that the happiness of naughtiness should not be
taken into account. He frequently urges that it is pleasanter while it
lasts to give way to temper, and that the discomfort only comes
afterwards. It follows logically, as he argues in 1835, that if a man
could be naughty all his life he would be quite happy. Some time later
(1838) he is still arguing the point, having now reached the conclusion
to which the Emperor Constantine gave a practical application. The
desirable thing would be to be naughty all your life, and to repent just
at the end.

These declarations are of course only interpolations in the midst of
many more edifying though less original remarks. He was exceedingly
conscientious, strongly attached to his parents, and very kind to his
younger brother and sister. I note that when he was four years old he
already thought it, as he did ever afterw