That there is a duality in us--a lifelong battle
between flesh and spirit--we all, alas! know well enough; but which is
flesh and which is spirit, what philosophers in these days can tell us?
Still less bad we two found out any such duality or discord in ourselves;
for we were gentle and obedient children. The pleasures of the world
did not tempt us. We did not know of their existence; and no foundlings
educated in a nunnery ever grew up in a more virginal and spotless
innocence--if ignorance be such--than did Susan and I.
The narrowness of my sphere of observation only concentrated the faculty
into greater strength. The few natural objects which I met--and they, of
course, constituted my whole outer world (for art and poetry were tabooed
both by my rank and my mother's sectarianism, and the study of human beings
only develops itself as the boy grows into the man)--these few natural
objects, I say, I studied with intense keenness. I knew every leaf and
flower in the little front garden; every cabbage and rhubarb plant in
Battersea fields was wonderful and beautiful to me.
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