smaller natures and the meaner4 minds. I became the spendthrift of my own genius, and to waste an eternal youth gave me a curious joy. Tired of being on the heights I deliberately went to the depths in the search for new sensations. What the paradox was to me in the sphere of thought, perversity became to me in the sphere of passion. Desire, at the end, was a malady, or a madness, or both. I grew careless of the lives of others. I took pleasure where it pleased me and passed on. I forgot that every little action of the common day makes
2. George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-1824), 3. Idle stroller (French). Romantic poet. 4. More shallow or more trivial.
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1 1742 / OSCAR WILDE
or unmakes character, and that therefore what one has done in the secret
chamber one has some day to cry aloud on the housetops. I ceased to be Lord
over myself. I was no longer the Captain of my Soul,' and did not know it. I
allowed you to dominate me, and your father to frighten me. I ended in horrible
disgrace. There is only one thing for me now, absolute Humility: just as there
is only one thing for you, absolute Humility also. You had better come down
into the dust and learn it beside me. 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 pos
sible mood of suffering. Better than Wordsworth himself I know what Words-
worth meant when he said: Suffering is permanent, obscure, and dark
And has the nature of Infinity.6 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
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 later. Had anyone told me of it, I would have rejected
it. Had it been brought to me, I would have refused it. As I found it, I want
to keep it. I must do so. It is the one thing that has in it the elements of life, of a new life, a Vita Nuova7 for me.
ft ft ?
Morality does not help me. I am a born antinomian.8 I am one of those who
are made for exceptions, not for laws. But while I see that there is nothing
wrong in what one does, I see that there is something wrong in what one
becomes. It is well to have learned that.
Religion does not help me. The faith that others give to what is unseen, I
give to what one can touch, and look at. My Gods dwell in temples made with
hands, and within the circle of actual experience is my creed made perfect
and complete: too complete it may be, for like many or all of those who have
placed their Heaven in this earth, I have found in it not merely the beauty of
Heaven, but the horror of Hell also. When I think about Religion at all, I feel
as if I would like to found an order for those who cannot believe: the Confra
ternity of the Fatherless one might call it, where on an altar, on which no
taper burned, a priest, in whose heart peace had no dwelling, might celebrate
with unblessed bread and a chalice empty of wine. Everything to be true must
become a religion. And agnosticism should have its ritual no less than faith.
It has sown its martyrs, it should reap its saints, and praise God daily for having
hidden Himself from man. But whether it be faith or agnosticism, it must be
nothing external to me. Its symbols must be of my own creating. Only that is
