“It is as great a difficulty for me to reconcile my being here with my sense of duty towards you. . . .  Since I must speak, let me tell you that I have at present no disposition to return.  Neither are the circumstances that surround me now those which will give me contentment; but I feel that I am here as a temporary place, and that by spring something will turn up which I hope will be for the happiness of us all.  What it will be I have not the least idea of now.  It is as impossible for me to give you an explanation of that which has led me of late as it would be for a stranger.  All before me is dark, even as that is which leads me now and has led me before.  One sentiment I have which I feel I cannot impart to you.  It is that I am controlled.  Formerly I could act from intention, but now I have no future to design, nothing in prospect, and my present action is from a present cause, not from any past. Hence it is that while my action may appear to others as designed, to me it is unlooked-for and unaccountable.  I do not expect that others can feel this as I do.  I am tossed about in a sea without a rudder.  What drives me onward, and where I shall be driven, is to me unknown.  My past life seems to me like that of another person, and my present is like a dream.  Where am I?  I know not.  I have no power over my present, I do not even know what it is.  Whom can I find like myself, whom can I speak to that will understand me?

“This makes me still, lonely; and I cannot wish myself out of this state.  I have no will to do that—­not that I have any desire to.  All I can say is that I am in it.  What would be the effect of necessity on me, I know not, whether it would lead me back or lead me on.  My feeling of duty towards you is a continual weight upon me which I cannot throw off—­it is best, perhaps, that I cannot.  All appears to me as a seeming, not a reality.  Nothing touches that life in me which is seeking that which I know not.”

TO GEORGE HECKER.—­“Brook Farm, March 6, 1843.—­What was the reason of my going, or what made me go?  The reason I am not able to tell.  But what I felt was a dark, irresistible influence upon me that led me away from home.  What it was I know not.  What keeps me here I cannot tell.  It is only when I struggle against it that a spell comes over me.  If I give up to it, nothing is the matter with me.  But when I look to my past, my duty toward you all, and consider what this may lead me to, and then attempt to return, I get into a state which I cannot speak of . . .

“By attempt to return I mean an attempt to return to my old life, for so I have to call it—­that is, to get clear of this influence.  And yet I have no will to will against it.  I do not desire it, or its mode of living, and I am opposed to its tendency.

“What bearing this has upon the question of my coming home you will perceive.  As soon as I can come, I will.  If I should do so now, it would throw me back to the place from which I started.  Is this fancy on my part?  All I can say is that if so the last nine or ten months of my life have been a fancy which is too deep for me to control.”