THE STARVING OF EMOTION
In the course of time the utilitarian philosophy, in the form in which it had come to him from his father, ceased to satisfy the distinctly more emotional nature of the son. He became so completely disillusioned with the dry content of this philosophy that he became depressed, lost all joy in work and therewith the capacity for constructive intellectual effort.〖See H. C., xxv, 85-95.〗 Perhaps the most valuable part of the “Autobiography” is the account of this distressed and anxious period, and of the various influences which widened his horizon and humanized his views of life and its significance. Being a man of books, it was largely through a change in the character of his reading that he found solace. The poems of Wordsworth were the most potent single influence. It is altogether likely that a person born with less varied natural endowments would have remained content with and fixed in the cast of thought resulting from premature acquaintance with a single school of philosophy.