( 4G8 ) 



THE MATERIALIST. 



(A CONFESSION.) 



Masterless passion sways us to the mood 

 Of what it likes or loathes." 



" I WAS born to considerable wealth, and being left at an early 

 age without parental control, the facilities it gave me for pursuing 

 my own mad schemes have been my curse. With an imagination of 

 the most vigorous character, with an ardent temperament, with 

 an enthusiasm bordering, as I have often thought, on actual insanity, 

 I ran through a course of vice, ever vainly striving to attain a some- 

 thing a sort of ultimatum of desire, which led me, step after step, 

 to the commission of deeds, which were which must have been 

 acts of madness. If evil spirits are permitted to occupy human 

 frames, then may my conduct be explicable, for I blighted every 

 thing fair and holy that crossed me in my path. But my search was 

 futile: one passion gratified, another sprung up in its stead, till 

 utterly worn down by unbridled indulgence, I buried myself and my 

 crimes in the seclusion of an Italian monastery. With renovated 

 health returned a part of my desires. The indulgence of my animal 

 propensities formed no part of these. I had run the gauntlet of them, 

 and my mind turned with almost sickening disgust from a contem- 

 plation of my past life. 



A ' change had come o'er my spirit ;' a wish for knowledge fully as 

 irresistible, fully as insatiable as the former, now engrossed all my 

 faculties. I was still young, very young, being barely twenty-two. 

 I left the Continent, returned to England, entered myself at one of 

 our universities, and devoted my entire time to pursuits equally vain, 

 hollow, and illusory. Fool that I was, to suppose that after being 

 unable to satisfy the grosser demands of my senses, I should succeed 

 in quelling the devouring passion for intellectual acquirement which 

 now possessed me ! Better, a thousand times better had I pursued my 

 sensualities till utter destruction had attended me ! Month after month, 

 day and night, I spent in the closet: book after book, science after 

 science were mastered : but the farther I advanced , the more un- 

 bounded became the prospect. Truly did Sir Isaac Newton remark, 

 that at the end of his long life of learning, it appeared to him that he 

 was but picking up a few shells on the shore of the vast sea of 

 knowledge : every attainment I made led me still deeper into a 

 wilderness of pursuit. Could I have methodized, could I have 

 arranged as I proceeded, it would have been well ; but to a mind 

 constituted like mine, this most important part of learning was 

 despised, and I rushed blindly forward, leaving every thing behind in 

 a state of chaotic confusion. 



" After running through several of the branches of human know- 

 ledge, my attention was led to metaphysical inquiries : the in- 



