official business; and I often took advantage of this circumstance to amuse myself much more. rationally and profitably at home, with the study of the Elements of Euclid, than I could have done in vain and dissipated company.

My ambition, my love of military glory, had indeed been much cooled and damped by experience, and diverted by other pursuits of sensual pleasure and emolument, which I found to be full of snares and thorns; but it now revived in great force, and became, in the hands of a merciful Providence, the instrument by means of which I was gradually rescued from perdition. I found that theory, as well as practice, was necessary to form a good soldier, which I still ardently desired to be; and I saw plainly that the shortest way to acquire a theoretical knowledge, was to sit down seriously and regularly, and go through a course of mathematical studies. It also struck me, that such a course would more effectually than any thing else divert my attention from those dismal visions, which had so long rendered my existence a dreadful burden; and from which I could find no deliverance in what the world called pleasure. Animated, therefore, in the highest degree with the delightful prospect of effecting two such important objects at once, and attracted also very strongly by the growing taste which I felt for such speculations, I made immediately a

firm resolution (which I was enabled to keep) that I would devote myself to this one object, from that day; and that I would wholly reject every consideration or temptation whatsoever, that should at all interfere with this determination.

Finding then that I could not prosecute this plan, without resigning my appointment in Calcutta, I instantly resolved to give it up; and I accordingly did so, as soon as my friend returned, in spite of the advice and remonstrances of all my well-wishers, who were by no means proper judges of an action whose motives they could not penetrate. They were naturally surprised at my resigning a post of eight hundred pounds per annum, besides free quarters and table.

Having then resigned my office, I rejoined my corps; and my new plan, being an untried road to happiness, was trod by me with all the ardour and enthusiasm of my natural disposition. Thanks be to God; for this was in some measure the beginning of my return from spiritual captivity and bondage.

The difficulties which I encountered, at setting out without a guide, only acted as a spur to my diligence; I therefore persisted with unabating perseverance to study nearly all the day; and when I quitted Euclid and my algebra, it was only to attack the Persian language,

which I also included in my military plan, or to take up my violin as a relaxation from intense mental application.

As I thus proceeded, working out every thing by my own labour, and comparing one branch of science with another, I could not but perceive the strong analogy between the whole; and that they were in fact only as different languages, which expressed the same truths in different modes. This discovery (for such it was to me) excited my curiosity to trace this very striking analogy still further and further, and even to advert to it constantly, in the study of all subjects whatsoever, that came under my consideration. Accordingly, the more I examined and compared, the more clearly I was convinced, that mathematical truth, as in the Elements of Euclid, was the common basis, the real, though hitherto to me unsuspected, law of truth, reason, and proportion in every line, in whatever direction; both in respect to the objects of animate and inanimate nature, and also in respect to the human heart and mind.

By attending to arguments of any kind with this clue in my head, I still perceived the same things. All was to me like geometry. I saw that the truth of every subject was a mathematically straight line, surrounded on either side by imperceptible curvatures of error, of different degrees of excentricity, which were

adopted as straight lines by disputants, according to the degree of the clearness of their understandings or mental sight at the time. I also perceived that this greater or less clearness of sight depended ultimately upon the feelings of their hearts, which either elucidated or obscured the operations of the understanding by the coolness or heat of the passions at the time; and that the same persons who reasoned truly, when unbiassed by inclination, argued in downright opposition to the plainest mathematical demonstrations, whenever their hearts became interested on the other side*. I also observed, that those who could clearly see these inconsistencies in others, were almost blind to the same things in themselves; and I therefore gave myself credit for being as blind as my neighbours with respect to my own failings.

Hence I laid it down as a moral theorem, that the heart was the source of all our errors; and therefore, that the difficulty of discovering the truth with respect to our own selves, was almost if not quite insurmountable by any human being; because it depended on his being able to abstract himself from himself; on his being able to remove as it were from his own

* Because feeling is demonstration to the heart; and when that demonstration is strong, it rejects with indignation the demonstrations of the intellect.

center of gravity, beyond the sphere of the attractions of his own heart! so that in physics a man might as well attempt to rise above the moon in our solar system.

In short, the more I studied human nature through the medium of analogy, the more entirely I was persuaded of its weakness, blindness, and depravity. I saw plainly, that but few men, comparatively, either approved or disapproved from love of the truth, but merely from the corrupt bias of the heart; which, by its strong attractions of lust and selfishness, obscured and misguided the rational understanding; as Omphale is said to have fascinated the son of Jove, making him to spin with her maidens: or as "the Danite strong" was besotted by Delilah, and by her betrayed to the five lords of the Philistines, who blinded him! Even thus is the understanding mind cajoled by the sorceries of the passions, and delivered up to the dominion of the carnal senses, which are five tyrannic lords, by whom reason itself is blinded.

About this time, I learnt by letters from my sister in England, whose husband had died, that she was in great embarassment, owing to the unexpected failure of some of her annuities. This intelligence cut me to the quick; for, not even suspecting her situation, which she had concealed from me as long as possible, I had