No More Learning

When I go out of prison, R--- will be waiting for
me on the other side of the big iron-studded gate, and he is the symbol,
not merely of his own affection, but of the affection of many others
besides. I believe I am to have enough to live on for about eighteen
months at any rate, so that if I may not write beautiful books, I may at
least read beautiful books; and what joy can be greater? After that, I
hope to be able to recreate my creative faculty.

But were things different: had I not a friend left in the world; were
there not a single house open to me in pity; had I to accept the wallet
and ragged cloak of sheer penury: as long as I am free from all
resentment, hardness and scorn, I would be able to face the life with
much more calm and confidence than I would were my body in purple and
fine linen, and the soul within me sick with hate.

And I really shall have no difficulty. When you really want love you
will find it waiting for you.

I need not say that my task does not end there. It would be
comparatively easy if it did. There is much more before me. I have
hills far steeper to climb, valleys much darker to pass through. And I
have to get it all out of myself. Neither religion, morality, nor reason
can help me at all.

Morality does not help me. I am a born antinomian. I am one of those
who are made for exceptions, not for laws.
But while I see that there is
nothing wrong in what one does, I see that there is something wrong in
what one becomes. It is well to have learned that.

Religion does not help me. The faith that others give to what is unseen,
I give to what one can touch, and look at. My gods dwell in temples made
with hands; and within the circle of actual experience is my creed made
perfect and complete: too complete, it may be, for like many or all of
those who have placed their heaven in this earth, I have found in it not
merely the beauty of heaven, but the horror of hell also. When I think
about religion at all, I feel as if I would like to found an order for
those who _cannot_ believe: the Confraternity of the Faithless, one might
call it, where on an altar, on which no taper burned, a priest, in whose
heart peace had no dwelling, might celebrate with unblessed bread and a
chalice empty of wine. Every thing to be true must become a religion.
And agnosticism should have its ritual no less than faith. It has sown
its martyrs, it should reap its saints, and praise God daily for having
hidden Himself from man. But whether it be faith or agnosticism, it must
be nothing external to me. Its symbols must be of my own creating. Only
that is spiritual which makes its own form. If I may not find its secret
within myself, I shall never find it: if I have not got it already, it
will never come to me.

Reason does not help me. It tells me that the laws under which I am
convicted are wrong and unjust laws, and the system under which I have
suffered a wrong and unjust system. But, somehow, I have got to make
both of these things just and right to me.