they were right and I
was wrong. But now that I had hit on the astonishing theory that the
individual has the right to think for himself, I saw quite clearly
that most of their standards of conduct sprang from their sheep-like
stupidity. They moved in flocks because they had not the courage to
choose a line for themselves. The material result of this new theory
of life was to make me enormously conceited, and I moved among my
comrades with a mysterious confidence, and gave myself the airs of a
Byron in knickerbockers. My unpopularity increased by leaps and
bounds, but so did my moral courage, and I accepted the belated
efforts of my school-fellows to knock the intelligence out of me as
so many tributes to the force of my individuality. I no longer cried
in my bed at night, but lay awake enraptured at the profundity of my
thoughts. After years of unquestioning humility I enjoyed a prolonged
debauch of intellectual pride, and I marvelled at the little boy of
yesterday who had wept because he could not be an imbecile. It was
the apotheosis of the ugly duckling, and I saw my swan's plumage
reflected in the placid faces of the boys around me, as in the vacant
waters of a pool. As yet I did not dream of a moulting season, still
less that a day would come when I should envy the ducks their
domestic ease and the unthinking tranquillity of their lives. A
little boy may be excused for not realising that Hans Andersen's
story is only the prelude to a sadder story that he had not the heart
to write.

My new freedom of spirit gave me courage to re-examine the emotional
and aeesthetic values of my environment. I could not persuade myself
that I liked the sound of bells, and the greyness of the country in
winter-time still revolted me, as though I had not yet forgotten the
cheerful reds and greens and blues of the picture-books that filled
my mind as a child with dreams of a delightful world. But now that I
was wise enough to make the best of my unboyish emotionalism, I began
to take pleasure in certain phases of school-life. Though I was
devoid of any recognisable religious sense I liked the wide words in
the Psalms that we read at night in the school chapel. This was not
due to any precocious recognition of their poetry, but to the fact
that their intense imagery conjured up all sorts of precious visions
in my mind, I could see the hart panting after the water-brooks, in
the valleys of Exmoor, where I had once spent an enchanted ho