Study, however, led him by degrees to all the questions rife in the world about him; with the inevitable result that his maturer thought turned back upon things he fancied himself to have outgrown.

His time had been wasted.

At thirty-two all he had clearly learnt was a regret for vanished years.
He resisted as a temptation the philosophic quietism which had been his strength and his pride.

From the pages of Marcus Aurelius, which he had almost by heart, one passage only was allowed to dwell with him: "When thou art hard to be stirred up and awaked out of thy sleep, admonish thyself and call to mind that to perform actions tending to the common good is that which thine own proper constitution, and that which the nature of man, do require." Morning and night, the question with him became, what could he do in the cause of civilisation?
And about this time it chanced that he made the acquaintance of Dyce Lashmar.

He listened, presently, to the bio-sociological theory of human life, believing it to be Lashmar's own, and finding in it a great deal that was not only intellectually fruitful, but strong in appeal to his sympathies.