278 WILD SCENES AND WILD HUNTERS. 



everything — the justice and the being of God — ^for he mea- 

 sures him, his entity, and his acts, by the human standard — 

 the truth and virtue of his race — ^for he measures them by 

 what he has felt and realized to be his own capabilities of 

 evil ; and so he goes on, until life — ^its purposes, its duties, 

 its realities — ^becomes to him one vast lie — a monstrous illu- 

 sion ; and himself, with his passions and their ferocious crav- 

 ings, the only actuality — ^his own volition, the focal power 

 round which and for which, the universe revolves. This 

 devouring egotism — though more, in my instance, an intel- 

 lectual, than a moral vice — had swallowed up all social ties. 



I could recognize society tiow, only as a masked battle-field, 

 in which every man, as captain of his own passions, saw in each 

 feUow man he met a sworn instinctive foe, leading his own 

 cohort of selfish passions in the grand meUe of life. The 

 individual contests, then, were decided by the cool and wary 

 subtlety of the Olympic wrestler. The genial virtues, family 

 ties, friendship, love, benevolence, constituted the mere 

 masquerade of the great central instinct, selfishness! 



This infernal creed grew upon me, until I became, in plain 

 words, a devil. Those who had known me and loved me as 

 the gay, frank, confiding enthusiast, stared at my altered face 

 and relentless savagery of manner — first in speechless astonish- 

 ment, and then turned aside to weep ! When I laughed at 

 and mocked their tears, they tried to think me mad — but I 

 was too coolly and rationally brutal for that. They could 

 not put me in a strait jacket, but could only wonder and 

 grieve. 



The very fiends of hell would have been aghast at the 

 awful phantasies which came and dwelt with me as matters 

 of course. I could think of stabbing my own friend, as a 

 common-place thing to be calculated upon. I became morose 

 and vicious in my temper until my best friends avoided me, 

 and those who had given me cause for enmity would turn 

 aside from my path. I had become a downright nuisance, 



