the last hundred and fifty years. It would be a rash man who said that they were wrong. As Clausewitz said, war is in the heart and mind; but two minds which understand each other perfectly are better than one.
We are back where I started at the beginning of the book, with the forlorn challenge to achieve with self-discipline what others have perfected with discipline. Yet how better to be reconciled with one's country's enemies, than to take some gift of theirs, and try to improve upon it? So we have come round in full circle; and the structure of thought described in the preceding chapters merely illustrates the adventure, without revealing anything of what happened. Nor do I intend to reveal anything now, except to say that it was not fore-ordained that I would respond; I could just as easily have chosen virtue and happiness. Perhaps I would have been wiser to have done so. There were several occasions when I could have turned aside; and I remember one moment in particular when the decision to continue was balanced on a knife-edge. Had I turned aside, not one word of this book would ever have been written. On any adventure there are risks. I may have been lucky, and arrived more or less unscathed at the far end; few people know what it cost. It does not follow that someone who followed my example would necessarily be so lucky. He might be; he might not. There were times when I was afraid I would be overwhelmed, in much the same way in the spiritual world, that an antarctic expedition, that I have read about, nearly had their equipment blown to pieces by the wind in the physical world. Certainly I would not want to go through it again, anymore than I would want to relive descending an alpine gully in an avalanche. Nor would I criticise anyone who did not want to begin; although I suppose I am glad I did. For myself, I think I will take Voltaire's advice and cultivate my garden, when I retire; unless I am lucky like Goethe, who wrote: