"But of my life otherwise. I take it fir granted that you would know where I
stand, what I have become, whether I have kept faith with the ideals of my
youth.
"I have succeeded, perhaps reached now what men call the highest point of
their worldly prosperity, made good my resolve that no human power should
defeat me. All that Macbeth had not I have: a quiet throne of my own,
children, wife, troops of friends, duties, honours, ease. There have been
times when with natural misgiving lest I had wandered too far these many
summers on a sea of glory, I have prepared for myself the lament of Wolsey
on his fall: yet ill fortune had not overwhelmed me or mine.
"All this prosperity, as the mere fruit of my toil, has been less easy than
for many. I may not boast the Apostle that I have fought a good fight, but I
can say that I fought a hard one. The fight will always be hard for any man
who undertakes to conquer life with the few simple weapons I have used and
who will accept victory only upon such terms as I have demanded. For be my
success small or great, it has been won without inner compromise or other
form of self-abasement. No man can look me in the eyes and say I ever
wronged him for my own profit; none may charge that I have smiled on him in
order to use him, or call him my friend that I might make him do for me the
work of a servant.
"Do not imagine I fail to realize that I have added my full share to the
general evil of the world: in part unconsciously, in part against my
conscious will. It is the knowledge of this influence of imperfection
forever flowing from myself to all others that has taught me charity with
all the wrongs that flow from others toward me. As I have clung to myself
despite the evil, so I have clung to the world despite all the evil that is
in the world. To lose faith in men, not humanity; to see justice go down and
not believe in the triumph of injustice; for every wrong that you weakly
deal another or another deals you to love more and more the fairness and
beauty of what is right; and so to turn with ever-increasing love from the
imperfection that is in us all to the Perfection that is above us all--the
perfection that is God: this is one of the ideals of actual duty that you
once said were to be as candles in my hand. Many a time this candle has gone
out; but as quickly as I could snatch any torch--with your sacred name on my
lips--it has been relighted.