Could an ignorant youth, fevered with curiosity and the first
goadings of the questioning spirit, resist such logic, such
scorn, such scathing wit, as he met with here?
Then followed Rousseau; 'Emile' became my favourite.
Froude's 'Nemesis of Faith' I read, and many other books of a
like tendency. Passive obedience, blind submission to
authority, was never one of my virtues, and once my faith was
shattered, I knew not where to stop - what to doubt, what to
believe. If the injunction to 'prove all things' was
anything more than an empty apophthegm, inquiry, in St.
Paul's eyes at any rate, could not be sacrilege.
It was not happiness I sought, - not peace of mind at least;
for assuredly my thirst for knowledge, for truth, brought me
anything but peace. I never was more restless, or, at times,
more unhappy. Shallow, indeed, must be the soul that can
lightly sever itself from beliefs which lie at the roots of
our moral, intellectual, and emotional being, sanctified too
by associations of our earliest love and reverence. I used
to wander about the fields, and sit for hours in sequestered
spots, longing for some friend, some confidant to take
counsel with. I knew no such friend. I did not dare to
speak of my misgivings to others. In spite of my earnest
desire for guidance, for more light, the strong grip of
childhood's influences was impossible to shake off. I could
not rid my conscience of the sin of doubt.
It is this difficulty, this primary dependence on others,
which develops into the child's first religion, that
perpetuates the infantile character of human creeds; and,
what is worse, generates the hideous bigotry which justifies
that sad reflection of Lucretius: 'Tantum Religio potuit
suadere malorum!'
CHAPTER IX
TO turn again to narrative, and to far less serious thoughts.
The last eighteen months before I went to Cambridge, I was
placed, or rather placed myself, under the tuition of Mr.
Robert Collyer, rector of Warham, a living close to Holkham
in the gift of my brother Leicester. Between my Ely tutor
and myself there was but little sympathy. He was a man of
much refinement, but with not much indulgence for such
aberrant proclivities as mine. Without my knowledge, he
wrote to Mr. Ellice lamenting my secret recusancy, and its
moral dangers. Mr. Ellice came expressly from London, and
stayed a night at Ely. He dined with us in the cloisters,
and had a long private conversation with my tutor, and,
before he left, with me. I indignantly resented the
clandestine representations of Mr. S., and, without a word to
Mr. Ellice or to anyone else, wrote next day to Mr. Collyer
to beg him to take me in at Warham, and make what he could of
me, before I went to Cambridge. It may here be said that Mr.
Collyer had been my father's chaplain, and had lived at
Holkham for several years as family tutor to my brothers and
myself, as we in turn left the nursery.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 35 of 208
Words from 17452 to 17964
of 106633
