therefore what one has done in the secret chamber one has some day
to cry aloud on the housetop. I ceased to be lord over myself. I
was no longer the captain of my soul, and did not know it. I
allowed pleasure to dominate me. I ended in horrible disgrace.
There is only one thing for me now, absolute humility.

I have lain in prison for nearly two years. Out of my nature has
come wild despair; an abandonment to grief that was piteous even to
look at; terrible and impotent rage; bitterness and scorn; anguish
that wept aloud; misery that could find no voice; sorrow that was
dumb. I have passed through every possible mood of suffering.
Better than Wordsworth himself I know what Wordsworth meant when he
said -


'Suffering is permanent, obscure, and dark
And has the nature of infinity.'


But while there were times when I rejoiced in the idea that my
sufferings were to be endless, I could not bear them to be without
meaning. Now I find hidden somewhere away in my nature something
that tells me that nothing in the whole world is meaningless, and
suffering least of all. That something hidden away in my nature,
like a treasure in a field, is Humility.

It is the last thing left in me, and the best: the ultimate
discovery at which I have arrived, the starting-point for a fresh
development. It has come to me right out of myself, so I know that
it has come at the proper time. It could not have come before, nor