I saw the estate pass into other hands; a mighty
change passed over me, as impossible, perhaps, as unfitting, for me
to analyse. I was considered mad. Perhaps I was so: there is a divine
insanity, a celestial folly, which conquers worlds. At least, when that
period was past, I had done, and suffered so strangely, that nothing
henceforth could seem strange to me. I had broken the yoke of custom and
opinion. My only ground was now the bare realities of human life and duty.
In poverty and loneliness I thought out the problems of society, and seemed
to myself to have found the one solution--self-sacrifice. Following my
first impulse, I had given largely to every charitable institution I could
hear of--God forbid that I should regret those gifts--yet the money, I
soon found, might have been better spent. One by one, every institution
disappointed me; they seemed, after all, only means for keeping the poor
in their degradation, by making it just not intolerable to them--means for
enabling Mammon to draw fresh victims into his den, by taking off his
hands those whom he had already worn out into uselessness.
Pages:
811
812
813
814
815
816
817
818
819
820
821
822
823
824
825
826
827
828
829
830
831
832
833
834
835