I am deeply touched by your letter (from Munich). It was very wrong to neglect writing to you from London. I was very much busy of course before leaving London, after your letter last received there came, and when writing to father I postponed writing you until I could do you more justice.

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Can you not understand that you make a larger demand upon me—a demand more difficult for me to meet than anybody or anything else? Because I must wrest myself so entirely from my daily habit—from my ordinary subjects of thought—because you are so far from me and don’t know me and are liable to mistake me. You give me the position towards you of an adviser if not an instructor—a position I have to no one else, being to all others a disputant, a counsellor on equality, or a master. So to others I habitually speak without fear—knowing that what I say carelessly, wrongly, exaggeratedly, is to be tryed and the wrong and overplus to be neutralized by another prejudice and will, or, speaking with authority to my business people, that it is for myself, for my own success or failure, I speak. You appeal directly to my conscience, my common sense. My conscience is a healthier one than yours, my education & knowledge is broader and more valuable than yours. But your common sense—tact and instinct—is better, safer, than mine. It only should be clearer, freer, bolder and directer in commanding your action than it is. I respect it & have more confidence in it than you have yourself. And when you are concerned lest I should not have liked what you have written me, as you tell me, you place me in a position to yourself which you ought not—which I have no right to take.

What I shall most like to see is evidence of any sort of your own independent individuality. I want you to differ with me, to fight me, and to conquer me. To write what I do not “like” and to make me like it. But I did like what you wrote—at least I respected it, and accepted it. I think perhaps I have more faith in you & more respect for you than you for yourself. You must learn not to be so easily influenced by others, by me or anyone else, & to be superior to moods. The chief use of friends is not to be priests and kings to us—not to advise us or command us but to help us, equally by sympathy and by opposition, to find out clearly and confidently, our own judgment and our own instinct, taste, genius, inspiration, love appetite, antipathy & repugnances. The sum of all is God revealing Himself to us each individually & faith is the courage to accept and abide by this individual revelation. To be true to ourselves, our healthy selves, is to be true to God, in whose image we are created. Do & follow that which you most continually & confidently feel right & best—most satisfactory for yourself. Then however wrong in particulars you will be right in drift.

You speak of the peculiar curse of travelling. Yet this like all others you can & apparently do turn to blessing. Do you [not] believe that indignation and abhorrent perception of evil, of that which is contemptible & hateful, is just as good for us, just as necessary to our health as admiration and longing for that which is truly admirable & good?

I am afraid you will find Sophy in a tight place—wanting your sympathy and help. Don’t think you cannot help her. I hear all the family are strongly opposed to her marrying Mr. P. That Simon has (indignantly) refused to assist him to obtain a divorce. How nearly right their idea of P. may be, you can judge better than I, but I suspect they are influenced more by ideas of “what people will think, ““how strange,” an idea that P. is unorthodox & [a] far [396] from respectable vagabond than any real judgment of his character with some reference to his husband qualities.

This at all events was the case at London. Mrs. S. thought it “unsafe.” It would not be recommended as a model match perhaps in a boarding school lecture room. My first impression was good. P. is a man who must have a wife. S. is a woman who must have a husband. Each would suit the other better than most anyone else.

I have heard nothing of or from Bartholomew since I wrote you. It seems to me you will have been apart from each other so long, when you meet again, that a new strangership will have been established. So you will meet with less embarrassment & emotion & more naturally & satisfactorily than you have imagined. Don’t take anybody’s advice with regard to him. Judge for yourself, and follow your own good sense in your intercourse with him. Don’t be thwarted by modesty or any other form of fear but carry out courageously what is best. It is hard to judge—hard to decide what one does think. I too am finding it so. It is to overcome that hardness & be & do positively that we live.