After I had lived for some years the isolated life I have described,
though I was engaged the whole time in ordinary professional pursuits,
all at once there broke upon my soul, in harmony with the seasons of
nature, a springtime such as I had not before experienced; and an
unexpected life and life-aim budded and blossomed in my breast. All my
inner life and life-aims had become narrowed to the circle of
self-culture and self-education. The outer life, my profession, I
carried on as a mere means of subsistence, quite apart from my real
inner self, and my sphere of operation was limited. I was driven
perforce from pillar to post till at last I had arrived where the Main
unites herself with the Rhine.[90] Here there budded and opened to my
soul one lovely bright spring morning, when I was surrounded by Nature
at her loveliest and freshest, this thought, as it were by
inspiration:--That there must exist somewhere some beautifully simple
and certain way of freeing human life from contradiction, or, as I then
spake out my thought in words, some means of restoring to man, himself,
at peace internally; and that to seek out this way should be the
vocation of my life.
Pages:
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199