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could rule his conduct; he felt himself like a traveller in un-
known countries and as he pushed forward the enterprise
fascinated him; he read emotionally, as other men read pure
literature, and his heart leaped as he discovered in noble
words what himself had obscurely felt. His mind was con-
crete and moved with difficulty in regions of the abstract;
but, even when he could not follow the reasoning, it gave
him a curious pleasure to follow the tortuosities of thoughts
that threaded their nimble way on the edge of the incom-
prehensible. Sometimes great philosophers seemed to have
nothing to say to him, but at others he recognised a mind
with which he felt himself at home. He was like the explorer
in Central Africa who comes suddenly upon wide uplands,
with great trees in them and stretches of meadow, so that he
might fancy himself in an English park. He delighted in the
robust common sense of Thomas Hobbes; Spinoza filled him
with awe, he had never before come in contact with a mind
so noble, so unapproachable and austere; it reminded him of
that statue by Rodin, L’Age d’Airain, which he passionately
admired; and then there was Hume: the scepticism of that
charming philosopher touched a kindred note in Philip; and,
revelling in the lucid style which seemed able to put compli-
cated thought into simple words, musical and measured, he
read as he might have read a novel, a smile of pleasure on his
lips. But in none could he find exactly what he wanted. He
had read somewhere that every man was born a Platonist,
an Aristotelian, a Stoic, or an Epicurean; and the history of
George Henry Lewes (besides telling you that philosophy
was all moonshine) was there to show that the thought of

1 Of Human Bondage