So I will turn from
these fixed facts and look out for those philosophical theories,
that gave me a later delight, as more interior mental pleasure.
Well, when I first broke through the shackles of the old childish
faith, Percy Bysshe Shelley was my high-priest. Through him I
thought I had come into a beautiful light of nature, vague, shadowy,
and grand, filling vast conceptions of the indefinite. He discarded
the God of the Hebrews, who was fashioned after their own narrow,
revengeful passions; a Being of wrath and war. And a brooding
spirit, an indefinite indwelling life of nature, was a new
revelation to me. I grew mystical and sublime and sentimental, in
this new mental perception. But I wearied of that. I could not walk
on stilts always, and I descended to the earth and read Voltaire,
and laughed and sneered at all the old forms and superstitions of
man. But this does not afford me any enjoyment now--the unhappy do
not feel like laughing at a ribald wit; but, alas! this rubbish is
stored here, and here I must live with it. It blackened and blurred
the pictures of the angels, that adorned my childish memories. It
wiped out all heavenly visions, and left only the earthly life.
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