know, however, that even irrespective of all obstacles in space and
time which can increase your difficulty in forming an opinion of me,
through my own efforts I can never be in a position to give you such
guaranties for the future that they would, from your point of view,
justify intrusting me with an object so precious, unless you
supplement by trust in God that which trust in human beings cannot
supply. All that I can do is to give you information about myself with
absolute candor, so far as I have come to understand myself. It will
be easy for you to get reports from others in regard to my public
conduct; I content myself, therefore, with an account of what underlay
that--my inner life, and especially my relations to Christianity. To
do that I must take a start far back.

In earliest childhood I was estranged from my parents' house, and at
no time became entirely at home there again; and my education from the
beginning was conducted on the assumption that everything is
subordinate to the cultivation of the intelligence and the early
acquisition of positive sciences.

After a course of religious teaching, irregularly attended and not
comprehended, I had at the time of my confirmation by Schleiermacher,
on my sixteenth birthday no belief other than a bare deism, which was
not long free from pantheistic elements. It was at about this time
that I, not through indifference, but after mature consideration,
ceased to pray every evening, as I had been in the habit of doing
since childhood; because prayer seemed inconsistent with my view of
God's nature; saying to myself: either God himself, being omnipresent,
is the cause of everything--even of every thought and volition of
mine--and so in a sense offers prayers to himself through me, or, if
my will is independent of God's will, it implies arrogance and a doubt