258 INDOOE STUDIES 



months. If there is anything in it, it will ripen 

 and mellow in that time. I rarely take any notes, 

 and I have a very poor memory, but rely upon the 

 affinity of my mind for a certain order of truths or 

 observations. What is mine will stick to me, and 

 what is not will drop off. When I returned from 

 England after a three months' visit in the summer 

 of 1882, I was conscious of having brought back 

 with me a few observations that I might expand 

 into two or three short essays. But when I began 

 to open my pack the contents grew so upon my 

 hands that it reached many times the measure I at 

 first proposed. Indeed, when I look back over my 

 seven volumes I wonder where they have all come 

 from. I am like a boy who at the close of the day 

 looks over his string of fish curiously, not one of 

 which did he know of in the morning, and every 

 one of which came to his hand from depths beyond 

 his ken by luck and skill in fishing. I have often 

 caught my fish when I least expected to, and as 

 often my most determined efforts have been entirely 

 unavailing. 



It is a wise injunction, "Know thyself," but 

 how hard to fulfill! This unconscious region in 

 one, this unconscious setting of the currents of his 

 life in certain directions, — how hard to know 

 that! The influences of his family, his race, his 

 times, his environment, are all deeper than the 

 plummet of his self-knowledge can reach. Yet 

 how we admire the ready man, the man who always 

 has complete control of his resources, who can speak 



