“But what is the use of talking? I’m afraid all this is so commonplace that my confession will be taken for a schoolboy exercise⁠—the work of some ambitious lad writing in the hope of his work ‘seeing the light’; or perhaps my readers will say that ‘I had perhaps something to say, but did not know how to express it.’

“Let me add to this that in every idea emanating from genius, or even in every serious human idea⁠—born in the human brain⁠—there always remains something⁠—some sediment⁠—which cannot be expressed to others, though one wrote volumes and lectured upon it for five-and-thirty years. There is always a something, a remnant, which will never come out from your brain, but will remain there with you, and you alone, forever and ever, and you will die, perhaps, without having imparted what may be the very essence of your idea to a single living soul.