He pulled in his legs and clasped his hands over his knees, leaning forward, frowning and intent. “I don’t care whether I make money. I don’t care whether I get fame. I don’t care whether I leave any work behind me when I die. All I want is certain sensations!” And with all the power of his wits he set himself to try and analyze what these sensations were that he wanted beyond everything.

The first thing he did was to attempt to analyze a mental device he was in the habit of resorting to⁠—a device that supplied him with the secret substratum of his whole life. This was a certain trick he had of doing what he called “sinking into his soul.” This trick had been a furtive custom with him from very early days. In his childhood his mother had often rallied him about it in her lighthearted way, and had applied to these trances, or these fits of absentmindedness, an amusing but rather indecent nursery name. His father, on the other hand, had encouraged him in these moods⁠—taking them very gravely, and treating him, when under their spell, as if he were a sort of infant magician.