As soon as he sat down to deliberate composition, a sense of his deficiencies embarrassed him.

Godwin's self-confidence had nothing in common with the conceit which rests on imaginary strength.

Power there was in him; of that he could not but be conscious: its true direction he had not yet learned.

Defect of knowledge, lack of pen-practice, confusion and contradictoriness of aims, instability of conviction,--these faults he recognised in himself at every moment of inward scrutiny.
On his table this evening lay a library volume which he had of late been reading, a book which had sprung into enormous popularity.

It was called _Spiritual Aspects of Evolution_, and undertook, with confidence characteristic of its kind, to reconcile the latest results of science with the dogmas of Oriental religion.