THE WAE WITH NATURE 73 



in the affairs of the world at large had in a great 

 measure forsaken me; yet the thought did not 

 seem a degrading one, nor was I at all startled at 

 this newly-discovered indifference, though up till 

 then I had always been profoundly interested in 

 the moves on the great political chessboard of the 

 world. How had I spent those fifty or sixty days, 

 I asked myself, and from what enchanted cup had 

 I drunk the oblivious draught which had wrought 

 so great a change in me? The answer was that I 

 had drunk from the cup of nature, that my days 

 had been spent with peace. It then also seemed 

 to me that the passion for politics, the perpetual 

 craving of the mind for some new thing, is after 

 all only a feverish artificial feeling, a necessary 

 accompaniment of the conditions we live in, per- 

 haps, but from which one rapidly recovers when 

 it can no longer be pandered to, just as a toper, 

 when removed from temptation, recovers a 

 healthy tone of body, and finds to his surprise 

 that he is able to exist without the aid of stimu- 

 lants. It is easy enough to relapse from this free 

 and pleasant condition; in the latter case the 

 emancipated man goes back to the bottle, in the 

 former to the perusal of leading articles and of 

 the fiery utterances of those who make politics 

 their trade. That I have never been guilty of 

 backsliding I cannot boast; nevertheless the les- 

 son nature taught me in that lonely country was 

 not wholly wasted, and while I was in that con- 

 dition of mind I found it very agreeable. I was 



