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tain passages in his book I could infer that Mr. Bain 

 was no stranger to such sorrows. Take this passage as 

 an illustration. Speaking of the ebb of intellectual 

 force which we all from time to time experience, Mr 

 Bain says: "The uncertainty where to look for the next 

 opening of discovery brings the pain of conflict and the 

 debility of indecision." These words have in them the 

 true ring of personal experience. 



The action of the investigator is periodic. He grap- 

 ples with a subject of inquiry, wrestles with it, over- 

 comes it, exhausts, it may be, both himself and it for 

 the time being. He breathes a space, and then renews 

 the struggle in another field. Now this period of halt- 

 ing between two investigations is not always one of pure 

 repose. It is often a period of doubt and discomfort, 

 of gloom and ennui. " The uncertainty where to look 

 for the next opening of discovery brings the pain of con- 

 flict and the debility of indecision." Such was my pre- 

 cise condition in the Alps this year ; in a score of words 

 Mr. Bain has here sketched my mental diagnosis ; and 

 it was under these evil circumstances that I had to 

 equip myself for the hour and the ordeal that are now 

 come. 



Gladly, however, as I should have seen this duty in 

 other hands, I could by no means shrink from it. Dis- 

 loyalty would have been worse than failure. In some 

 fashion or other feebly or strongly, meanly or manfully, 

 on the higher levels of thought, or on the flats of com- 

 monplace the task had to be accomplished. I looked 

 in various directions for help and furtherance ; but with- 

 out me for a time I saw only " antres vast," and within 

 me " deserts idle." My case resembled that of a sick 

 doctor who had forgotten his art, and sorely needed the 



