And why, of all things, plant yourself away in an outpost on the edge
of the wilderness, to lie awake at nights nursing suicidal thoughts over
Schopenhauer? You have lived without principles, you say. And wasted
your youth. And are homeless now all round, with no morals, no country,
no religion. But will you make all this better by making things much
worse?
You've no reason to envy me my country life, by the way, and there's
no sense in your going about longing for the little church of your
childhood, with its Moses and hymns and God. Well, longing does no harm,
perhaps, but don't ever try to find it. The fact is, old fellow, that
such things are not to be found any more.
I take it that religion had the same power on you in your childhood
as it had with me. We were wild young scamps, both of us, but we liked
going to church, not for the sake of the sermons, but to bow our heads
when the hymn arose and join in singing it. When the waves of the
organ-music rolled through the church, it seemed--to me at least--as if
something were set swelling in my own soul, bearing me away to lands
and kingdoms where all at last was as it should be. And when we went out
into the world we went with some echo of the hymn in our hearts, and we
might curse Jehovah, but in a corner of our minds the hymn lived on as
a craving, a hunger for some world-harmony. All through the busy day
we might bear our part in the roaring song of the steel, but in the
evenings, on our lonely couch, another power would come forth in our
minds, the hunger for the infinite, the longing to be cradled and borne
up on the waves of eternity, whose way is past all finding out.
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