Feb. 6, 1837.—­Why is it that our desires so infinitely transcend our capacities?  We grasp at everything—­do so by the very constitution of our natures; and seize—­less than nothing.  We can not rest without perfection in everything, yet the labor of a life devoted to one thing, only shows us how unattainable it is.  I am oppressed with gloom—­oh, for light, light, light! Feb. 20th.—­Alas! my feelings of discouragement and despondency, instead of diminishing, strengthen every day.  I have been ill for the last fortnight; and possibly physical causes have contributed to shroud my mind in this thick darkness.  Yet I can not believe that conviction so clear, conclusions so irresistible as those which weigh me down, are entirely the result of morbid physical action.  In order to prove that they are not, and to have the means of judging hereafter of the rationalness of my present judgments, I will record the grounds of my despondency.  As nearly as I can recollect, the thought which oftenest pressed itself upon me, when these feelings of gloom began, was that I was living to no purpose.  I was conscious, not only of a conviction that I ought to live to do good, but of an intense desire to do good—­to know that I was living to some purpose; and I felt perfectly certain that this knowledge was essential to my happiness.  I began to wonder that I had been contented to seek knowledge all my life for my own pleasure, or with an indefinite idea that it might contribute in some way to my usefulness,—­without any distinct plan....  I then began to inquire what results I had of “all my labor which I have taken under the sun” and these are my conclusions: 

1.  I have not that mental discipline, or that command of my own powers, which is one of the most valuable results of properly directed study.  I can not grasp a subject at once, and view it in all its bearings.

2.  I have not that self-knowledge which is another sure result of proper study.  I do not know what I am capable of, nor what I am particularly fitted for, nor what I am most deficient in.  I am forever pouring into my own mind, and yet never find out what is there.

3d.  I have no principle of arrangement or assimilation which might unite all my scattered knowledge.  Oh, how different if I had had one definite object which, like the lens, should concentrate all the scattered rays to one focus.  I met with this remark of Sir Egerton Bridges to-day; it applies to me exactly:  “I have never met with one who seemed to have the same overruling passion for literature as I have always had.  A thousand others have pursued it with more principle, reason, method, fixed purpose, and effect; mine I admit to have been pure, blind, unregulated love.”

4th.  I have lost the power of thinking for myself.  My memory, which was originally good, has been so washed away by the floods of trash which have been poured into it, that now it scarcely serves me at all.