I am obliged here to mention these circumstances, and to describe them
so particularly, because in them I see the first cause of my early
habit of introspection, my tendency to self-examination, and my early
separation from companionship with other men. Soon after the birth of
her own son, when I had scarcely entered my boyhood, my step-mother
ceased to use the sympathetic, heart-uniting "thou" in speaking to me,
and began to address me in the third person, the most estranging of our
forms of speech. And as in this mode of address the third person, "he,"
isolates the person addressed, it created a great chasm between my
step-mother and me.[4] At the beginning of my boyhood, I already felt
utterly lonely, and my soul was filled with grief.

Some coarse-minded people wished to make use of my sentiments and my
mood at this time to set me against my step-mother, but my heart and
mind turned with indignation from these persons, whom I thenceforth
avoided, so far as I was able. Thus I became, at an early age, conscious
of a nobler, purer, inner-life, and laid the foundation of that proper
self-consciousness and moral pride which have accompanied me through
life. Temptations returned from time to time, and each time took a more
dangerous form: not only was I suspected as being capable of unworthy
things, but base conduct was actually charged against me, and this in
such a way as left no doubt of the impropriety of the suspicion and of
the untruthfulness of the accusation. So it came to pass that in the
first years of my boyhood I was perforce led to live to myself and in
myself--and indeed to study my own being and inner consciousness, as
opposed to external circumstances. My inward and my outward life were
at that time, even during play and other occupations, my principal
subjects for reflection and thought.