Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II 1859-1864 The history of Henry Sidgwick's life from 1859 onwards can fortunately be followed to so great an extent in letters that have been preserved as to be presented in almost autobiographical form. But before turning to the letters we have an actual bit of autobiography which gives a clue especially to the ten years from 1859, when he took his degree, to 1869, when he resigned his Fellowship at Trinity— the period which in writing his reminiscences of his brother-in-law, Archbishop Benson, he called his " years of ' storm and stress' as regards religious convictions and ecclesiastical relations." It was suggested to him during his last illness that if his strength did not return sufficiently to enable him to undertake severe mental labour, he might yet usefully write reminiscences which would be interesting. The idea pleased him, and he turned it over in his mind, with the result that about a fortnight before his death he dictated the following fragment—too quickly cut short by his increasing weakness. My aim in what I am about to say now is to give such an account of my life—mainly my inner intellectual life— as shall render the central and fundamental aims that partially at least determined its course when apparently most fitful and erratic, as clear and intelligible as I can. That aim is very simply stated. It has been the solution, or contribution to the solution, of the deepest problems of human life. The peculiarity of my career has been that I have sought light on these problems, and that not casually but systematically and laboriously, from very various sources and by very diverse methods. In my contributions to the Life of Edward Benson I gave an account of myself and my views at school and after my degree which I should like to be read by any one w...