I feel that I can unreservedly trust you.
"You will no doubt wonder as to my aim in executing this hazardous and Quixotic project.

I do not mind telling you now, at this lapse of time, though I have never before opened my reasons to any one, because I think that I observe in you traces of that temper which led me to take the step.
"It seemed to me that Western life had got into a confusion and complication from which nothing could deliver it.

The principles now incorporated with the very existence of the most influential men in it seemed to me to be radically erroneous, and the disposition of the Western mind is of a kind which augments with indefinite rapidity the strength of any prevalent idea.
"What I mean is this.

May I explain by a quotation?
A sentence from a certain review of the poet Coleridge's life and work is as follows: 'Devoted as he was to mystic and ideal contemplation, to abstractions of mind and spirit, he naturally became untrustworthy in every relation of life.' "That represents, in an exaggerated form, the ideal of the Western mind.

They are, though they would not so name themselves, gross materialists; and the tendency is increasing on them daily and yearly.