156 SELECTED ESSA YS FROM LA Y SERMONS 



that kind. But I should like if I may do so without appear- 

 ing, what I earnestly desire not to be, egotistical, — I should 

 like to make it clear to you, that such notions as these, 

 which are sometimes attributed to me, are, as I have said, 

 inconsistent with my mental constitution, and still more 

 inconsistent with the upshot of the teaching of my experi- 

 ence. P^or I can certainly claim for myself that sort of 

 mental temperament which can say that nothing human 

 comes amiss to it. I have never yet met with any branch 

 of human knowledge which I have found unattractive — 

 which it would not have been pleasant to me to follow, so 

 far as I could go; and I have yet to meet with any form of 

 art in which it has not been possible for me to take as acute 

 a pleasure as, I believe, it is possible for men to take. 



And with respect to the circumstances of life, it so hap- 

 pens that it has been my fate to know many lands and many 

 climates, and to be familiar, by personal experience, with 

 almost every form of society, from the uncivilised savage 

 of Papua and Australia and the civilised savages of the 

 slums and dens of the poverty-stricken parts of great cities, 

 to those who perhaps, are occasionally the somewhat over- 

 civilised members of our upper ten thousand. And I have 

 never found, in any of these conditions of life, a deficiency 

 of something which was attractive. Savagery has its pleas- 

 ures, I assure you, as well as civilisation, and I may even 

 venture to confess — if you will not let a whisper of the 

 matter get back to London, where I am known — I am 

 even fain to confess, that sometimes in the din and throng 

 of what is called "a brilliant reception" the vision crosses 

 my mind of waking up from the soft plank which had 

 afforded me satisfactory sleep during the hours of the 

 night, in the bright dawn of a tropical morning, when my 

 comrades were yet asleep, when every sound was hushed. 



