comes to know not by the teaching of others, but when it naturally
begins to recognize the beauty and importance of life, and man's
serious place in it; when it sees the possibility of infinite
perfection of which the world is capable, and devotes itself to that
endeavor, not only with the hope, but with a full conviction of
reaching that perfection which it imagines possible. While in the
university he had that year read Spencer's Social Statics, and
Spencer's reasoning bearing on private ownership of land produced a
strong impression on him, especially because he was himself the son of
a landed proprietress. His father was not rich, but his mother
received as her marriage portion ten thousand acres of land. He then
for the first time understood all the injustice of private ownership
of land, and being one of those to whom any sacrifice in the name of
moral duty was a lofty spiritual enjoyment, he forthwith divided the
land he had inherited from his father among the peasants. On this
subject he was then composing a disquisition.

His life on the estate of his aunts was ordered in the following way:
He rose very early, some times at three o'clock, and till sunrise
bathed in the river under a hill, often in the morning mist, and
returned when the dew was yet on the grass and flowers. Some mornings
he would, after partaking of coffee, sit down to write his
composition, or read references bearing on the subject. But, above
all, he loved to ramble in the woods. Before dinner he would lie down
in the woods and sleep; then, at dinner, he made merry, jesting with
his aunts; then went out riding or rowing. In the evening he read
again, or joined his aunts, solving riddles for them. On moonlit
nights he seldom slept, because of the immense joy of life that
pervaded him, and instead of sleeping, he sometimes rambled in the
garden till daylight, absorbed in his thoughts and phantasies.