ABSTRACT
My life has in this respect had a greater variety in it, than that perhaps of most human beings. Every four or five years I gain some new perception, become intimately sensible to some valuable circumstance, that introduces an essential change of many of my preconceived notions and determinations. Every four or five years I look back astonished at the stupidity or folly of which I had a short time before been the dupe. For this reason no man ever stood more in need of the best intellectual society, while perhaps no man ever suffered more from the dearth of it. 1
