know myself; shall discover that constraint;—this is my vocation. I shall thus, and under that supposition I shall necessarily, form my own mode of thought. Then shall I stand absolutely independent, thoroughly equipt and perfected through my own act and deed. The primitive source of all my other thought and of my life itself, that from which everything proceeds which can have an existence in me, for me, or through me, the innermost spirit of my spirit,—is no longer a foreign power, but it is, in the strictest possible sense, the product of my own will. I am wholly my own creation. I might have followed blindly the leading of my spiritual nature. But I would not be a work of Nature but of myself, and I have become so even by means of this resolution. By endless subtilties I might have made the natural conviction of my own mind dark and doubtful. But I have accepted it with freedom, simply because I resolved to accept it. I have chosen the system which I have now adopted with settled purpose and deliberation from among other possible modes of thought, because I have recognised in it the only one consistent with my dignity and my vocation. With freedom and consciousness I have returned to the point at which Nature had left me. I accept that which she announces;—but I do not accept it because I must; I believe it because I will.
The exalted vocation of my understanding fills me with reverence. It is no longer the deceptive mirror which reflects a series of empty pictures, proceeding from nothing and tending to nothing; it is bestowed upon me for a great purpose. Its cultivation for this
