Your letters so abounded with
suggestion that was quite new to me, referred so familiarly to
beliefs and interests of which I was quite ignorant, showed such a
boldness in judging all things, that I drifted further and further
from certainty. The result of it all was that I fell ill.
"You see now what it is that has burdened me from the day when I
first began to ask myself about my beliefs. I was taught to believe
that the world was sin, and that the soul only freed itself from sin
in proportion as it learned to live apart from and independently of
the world. Everything was dark because of sin; only in the still,
secret places of the soul was the light of purity and salvation.
"I thought I had passed out of this. When I returned to London, and
began this new life, the burden seemed all at once lifted from me. I
could look here and there with freedom; the sky was bright above me;
human existence was cheerful and noble and justified in itself. I
began to learn a thousand things. Above all, my mind fixed on Art;
in that I thought I had found a support that would never fail me.
"Oh, why could it not last? The clouds began to darken over me
again. I heard voices once which I had hoped were for ever silenced.
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