I entered my new sphere of educational work in July 1807. I was
twenty-five years old, as far as years went, but younger by several
years in regard to the development of my character. I neither felt
myself so old as I was, nor indeed had I any conception or realisation
of my age. I was only conscious of the strength and striving of my life,
the extent of my mental culture, the circumstances of my experience in
the world, and especially of--what shall I call it?--the shiftlessness
and undeveloped state of my culture as far as its helplessness with the
external world was concerned, of my ignorance of life both as to what it
really was, and how it showed in its outer aspect. The state of my
culture was such as only to serve to plunge me into conflict, through
the contradiction and opposition in which I found myself henceforward
with all existing methods; and consequently the whole period of my
tutorial career was one continual contest.

It was a salutary thing for me that this was my appointed lot from the
very beginning. Now and later on I was therefore able to say to myself
by way of consolation and encouragement: "You knew beforehand just how
it would be." Still, unpleasantness seldom arrives in exactly the manner
expected, and the unexpected is always the hardest to bear. Thus it was
with me in this case; my situation seemed to contain insurmountable
difficulties. I sought the basis for them in imperfect culture; and the
cause of the disconnected nature of the culture I had been able to
attain, lay, so I perceived, in the interruptions which marred my
university career. Educator and teacher, however, I had determined to
become and to remain; and as far as I could know my own feelings and my
own powers, I must and would work out my profession in an independent
free fashion of my own, founded on the view of man and his nature and
relationships which had now begun to dawn upon me. Yet every man finds