I thought that from you I should obtain confirmation where I needed it, but your influence was of the opposite kind.

Your letters so abounded with suggestion that was quite new to me, referred so familiarly to beliefs and interests of which I was quite ignorant, showed such a boldness in judging all things, that I drifted further and further from certainty.

The result of it all was that I fell ill.
"You see now what it is that has burdened me from the day when I first began to ask myself about my beliefs.

I was taught to believe that the world was sin, and that the soul only freed itself from sin in proportion as it learned to live apart from and independently of the world.

Everything was dark because of sin; only in the still, secret places of the soul was the light of purity and salvation.
"I thought I had passed out of this.