so far profit by it as to be slightly less vicious and disgusting than
his companions. But education, which we speak of as a panacea for all
ills, only deals with what it finds, and does not, as we ought to
claim, rub down bad points and accentuate good, and it is this, that
perhaps more than anything else has made me a Determinist, that
the very capacity for change and improvement is so native to some
characters, and so utterly lacking to others. A man can in real truth
do nothing of himself, though there are all possible varieties—from
the man who can see his deficiencies and make them up, through the
man who sees his weak points and can not strengthen them, to the
spiritually blind who can not even see them. I may of course belong to
the latter class myself—it is the one thing about which no one can
decide for himself—but an inherent contempt for certain parts of my
character seems to hint to me that it is not so."

It will be seen from the last two letters that his ethical position
was settling itself.

I therefore think, before I go any further, it will be as well to
give a short account of his religious opinions at this time, as they
were very much bound up with his life. He told me not unfrequently
that religion had been nothing whatever to him at school, and he came
up to the University impressionable, ardent, like a clean paper ready
for any writing.

It is well known that at the Universities there is a good deal of
proselytizing; that it is customary for men of marked religious views
and high position to have a large _clientèle_ of younger men
whom they influence and mould; schools of the prophets.