It is a difficult question, my friends, for any young man - that question i had to grapple with, and which thousands are weighing at the present moment in these uprising times - whether to follow uncritically the track he finds himself in, without considering his aptness for it, or to consider what his aptness or bent may be, and re-shape his course accordingly. I tried to do the latter, and i failed. But i don't admit that my failure proved my view to be a wrong one, or that my success would have made it a right one; though that's how we appraise such attempts nowadays – I mean, not by their essential soundness, but by their accidental outcomes. If I had ended by becoming like one of these gentlemen in red and black that we saw dropping in here by now, everybody would have said: see how wise that young man was, to follow the bent of his nature! But having ended no better than I began they say: See what a fool that fellow was in following a freak of his fancy!
However it was my poverty and not my will that consented to be beaten. It takes two or three generations to do what I tried to do in one; and my impulses – affections – vices perhaps they should be called –were too strong not to hamper a man without advantages; who should be as cold-blooded as a fish and as selfish as a pig to have a really good chance of being one of his country’s worthies. You may ridicule me – I m quite willing that you should – I am a fit subject, no doubt. But I think if you knew what I have gone through these last few years you would rather pity me. And if they knew, it is just possible they would do the same.
I may do some good before I am dead – be a sort of success as a frightful example of what not to do; and so illustrate a moral story. I was perhaps, after all, a paltry victim to the spirit of mental and social restlessness, that makes so many unhappy in these days. And what I appear, a sick and poor man, is not the worst of me. I am in a chaos of principles – groping in the dark – acting by instinct and not after example. Eight or nine years ago when I came here first, I had a neat stock of fixed opinions, but they dropped away one by one; and the further I get the less sure I am. I doubt if I have anything more for my present rule of life than following inclinations which do me and nobody else any harm, and actually give pleasure to those I love best. I perceive there is something wrong somewhere in our social formulas: what it is can only be discovered by men or women with greater insight than mine, - if, indeed, they ever discover it – at least in our time. ‘ For who knoweth what is good for man in this life? – and who can tell a man what shall be after him under the sun? ’