But in this case there is no such responsibility. None of the
persons concerned have any objection to the publication of these
records, and as for the writer himself he was entirely free from
any desire for a fastidious seclusion. His life was a secluded one
enough, and he felt strongly that a man has a right to his own
personal privacy. But his own words sufficiently prove, if proof
were needed, that he felt that to deny the right of others to
participate in thoughts and experiences, which might uplift or help
a mourner or a sufferer, was a selfish form of individualism with
which he had no sympathy whatever. He felt, and I have heard him
say, that one has no right to withhold from others any reflections
which can console and sustain, and he held it to be the supreme
duty of a man to ease, if he could, the burden of another. He knew
that there is no sympathy in the world so effective as the sharing
of similar experiences, as the power of assuring a sufferer that
another has indeed trodden the same dark path and emerged into the
light of Heaven. I will even venture to say that he deliberately
intended that his records should be so used, for purposes of
alleviation and consolation, and the bequest that he made of his
papers to myself, entrusting them to my absolute discretion, makes
it clear to me that I have divined his wishes in the matter.
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