Subject: I carried over my arm,

From: Meller Fitzrandolph <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 23 Aug 2009 20:46:12 +0200

Uture life. Unceasing self-contemplation, self-analysis, and
self-education have been the fundamental characteristics of my life from
the very first, and have remained so until these latest days. To stir
up, to animate, to awaken, and to strengthen, the pleasure and power of
the human being to labour uninterruptedly at his own education, has
become and always remained the fundamental principle and aim of my
educational work. Great was my joy when I believed I had proved
completely to my own satisfaction that I was not destined to go to hell.
The stony, oppressive dogmas of orthodox theology I very early explained
away, perhaps assisted in this by two circumstances. Firstly, I heard
these expressions used over and over again, from my habit of being
present at the lessons given by my father in our own house, in
preparation for confirmation. I heard them used also in all sorts of
ways, so that my mind almost unconsciously constructed some sort of
explanation of them. Secondly, I was often a mute witness of the strict
way in which my father performed his pastoral duties, and of the
frequent scenes between him and the many people who came to the
parsonage to seek advice and consolation. I was thus again constantly
attracted from the outer to the inner aspects of life. Life, with its
inmost motives laid bare, passed before my eyes, with my father's
comments pronounced upon it; and thing and word, act and symbol were
thus perceived by me in their most vivid relationship. I saw the
disjointed, heavy-laden, torn, inharmonious life of man as it appeared
in this community of five thousand souls, before the watchful eyes of
its earnest, severe pastor. Matrimonial and sexual circumstances
especially were often the objects of my father's gravest condemnation
and rebuke. The way in which he spoke about these matters showed me that
they formed one of the most oppressive and difficult parts of human
conduct; and, in my youth and innocence, I felt a deep pain and sorrow
that man alone, among all creatures, should be doomed to these
separations of sex, whereby the right path was made so difficult for him
to find. I felt it a real necessity for the satisfactio