era; and in it I first laid stress upon the importance and the necessity of religious feelings in modern men and in society. Metaphysical experience I found in art and particularly in poetry; and poetry, albeit realistic poetry, helped me in political life. I have always been a reader of philosophic and scientific works, without neglecting pure literature and literary criticism. My imagination I exercised deliberately and, thanks to scientific precision, I escaped becoming fantastic. In science, it is a question of acquiring an accurate method. I sought to develop a critical faculty as a preservative against shallowness, and insisted on strict and pitiless analysis, even in history and sociology; but the analytical method was for me a means, not an end. The end was synthesis and organization, as all my writings show. Nor do I regret my critical work or my exposure of the Königinhofer and Grünberger manuscripts, though they had long been regarded as one of our national treasures. I regret only the mistakes which I made. My opponents deplored my rationalism, claiming that the Fatherland and the national consciousness of our people were being endangered, although I was on principle hostile to the one-sided rationalism that takes no account of the feelings and of the will, or of their psychological and ethical significance. True, I did not recognize the rightness of all feelings; and the lengths to which parochialism could go was shown when I was obliged to demonstrate in a court of law that my work “On Suicide” did not advocate suicide.
In political life I studied and observed men in the same way as I study characters in novels or in modern poetry. One must know men, select them and assign to them suitable tasks if one is to organize them politically. At an early stage I acquired the habit of observing the people with whom I had to deal, or who were prominent in public life, as though I intended to write a book about them. I collected all possible data upon friend and foe, and gathered biographical material upon those who played an active political part. Before meeting statesmen and public men, I read their writings or speeches and got as much information as I could about them. This habit really began in childhood. At the age of fourteen, when I was about to become a teacher, Lavater’s “Physiognomy” fell into my hands. I read it eagerly and grasped its importance for teachers. Hence, possibly, my continual study of men—and of myself.
Soon after settling in Prague I was drawn into politics and came into touch with all our leaders. My first experience
