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 cray- 
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 now, only as a masked battle-field, 
in which every man, as captain of his own passions, saw in each 
fellow man he met a sworn instinctive foe, leading his own 
cohort of selfish passions jn the grand melée 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, hut 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 
sommon-place thing to be caleulated 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 
uside from my path. I had become a downright nuisance, 
