We attribute, I believe, too many moral ideas to little children.  It is obvious that in this tremendous juncture I ought to have been urged forward by good instincts, or held back by naughty ones.  But I am sure that the fear which I experienced for a short time, and which so unexpectedly melted away, was a purely physical one.  It had nothing to do with the motions of a contrite heart.  As to the destruction of the fountain, I was sorry about that, for my own sake, since I admired the skipping water extremely and had had no idea that I was spoiling its display.  But the emotions which now thronged within me, and which led me, with an almost unwise alacrity, to seek solitude in the back-garden, were not moral at all, they were intellectual.  I was not ashamed of having successfully—­and so surprisingly—­deceived my parents by my crafty silence; I looked upon that as a providential escape, and dismissed all further thought of it.  I had other things to think of.

In the first place, the theory that my Father was omniscient or infallible was now dead and buried.  He probably knew very little; in this case he had not known a fact of such importance that if you did not know that, it could hardly matter what you knew.  My Father, as a deity, as a natural force of immense prestige, fell in my eyes to a human level.  In future, his statements about things in general need not be accepted implicitly.  But of all the thoughts which rushed upon my savage and undeveloped little brain at this crisis, the most curious was that I had found a companion and a confidant in myself.  There was a secret in this world and it belonged to me and to a somebody who lived in the same body with me.  There were two of us, and we could talk with one another.  It is difficult to define impressions so rudimentary, but it is certain that it was in this dual form that the sense of my individuality now suddenly descended upon me, and it is equally certain that it was a great solace to me to find a sympathizer in my own breast.

About this time, my Mother, carried away by the current of her literary and her philanthropic work, left me more and more to my own devices.  She was seized with a great enthusiasm; as one of her admirers and disciples has written, ’she went on her way, sowing beside all waters’.  I would not for a moment let it be supposed that I regard her as a Mrs. Jellyby, or that I think she neglected me.  But a remarkable work had opened up before her; after her long years in a mental hermitage, she was drawn forth into the clamorous harvest-field of souls.  She developed an unexpected gift of persuasion over strangers whom she met in the omnibus or in the train, and with whom she courageously grappled.  This began by her noting, with deep humility and joy, that ’I have reason to judge the sound conversion to God of three young persons within a few weeks, by the instrumentality of my conversations with them’.  At the same time, as another of her biographers has