AN EGOTISTICAL CHAPTER 17 



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 observa- 

 tions. 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 fulfil ! 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 



