But no flash of lightning followed. Down below, on the beach, the gray waves curled over with a slow musical splash. I looked into the sky, but it was calm and untroubled, and I decided that the story was a myth.
Most of my religious difficulties were, however, metaphysical. The conception of eternity was one I could not grasp. I could, in a vague way, figure myself as living on for ever, but I could not with the same facility move my mind backward. I seemed able to imagine that there might be no end, but I could not imagine that there had been no beginning. "If there had been no beginning, how could we ever have got as far as this? "I asked myself. "Where I am now—this particular moment—must be at a certain distance from something, or it cannot be anywhere. But if there is no beginning, then this moment cannot be any further on than yesterday was! "My brain grew dizzy with vain efforts to think impossible thoughts. I would break a stick and say, "God can make it that I haven't broken it. But if I shut my eyes, and when I open them the stick is whole, that will only show He has mended it. Yet He is all-powerful! "And so on, and so on; for whatever point I took up, sooner or later I was met by an insoluble problem. These problems were, nevertheless, just what fascinated me. The practical ethics of religion, that I should simply be good and encourage in myself a variety of Christian virtues—that kind of thing did not interest me in the least. As a matter of fact, I possessed singularly few of these virtues. It is true that I detested any kind of meanness or cruelty, that I was truthful, straightforward, and, in certain directions, loving and gentle enough; but I was egotistical, proud, and ludicrously self-conscious, quick tempered, flying into violent passions for very little, and, above all, I had a stubbornness nothing could move.
