, his prejudices were strongly excited by the
conventional Theism which pervades Figuier's work. Already it was the habit of
his mind to associate popular dogma with intellectual shallowness; herein, as at
every other point which fell within his scope, he had begun to scorn average
people, and to pride himself intensely on views which he found generally
condemned. Day by day he grew into a clearer understanding of the memories
bequeathed to him by his father; he began to interpret remarks, details of
behaviour, instances of wrath, which, though they had stamped themselves on his
recollection, conveyed at the time no precise significance. The issue was that
he hardened himself against the influence of his mother and his aunt, regarding
them as in league against the free progress of his education.
    As women, again, he despised these relatives. It is almost impossible for a
bright-witted lad born in the lower middle class to escape this stage of
development. The brutally healthy boy contemns the female sex because he sees it
incapable of his own athletic sports, but Godwin was one of those upon whose
awaking intellect is forced a perception of the brain-defect so general in women
when they are taught few of life's graces and none of its serious concerns, -
their paltry prepossessions, their vulgar sequaciousness, their invincible
ignorance, their absorption in a petty self. And especially is this phase of
thought to be expected in a boy whose heart blindly nourishes the seeds of
poetical passion. It was Godwin's sincere belief that he held girls, as girls,
in abhorrence. This meant that he dreaded their personal criticism, and that the
spectacle of female beauty sometimes overcame him with a despair which he could
not analyse. Matrons and elderly unmarried women were truly the objects of his
disdain; in them he saw nothing but their shortcomings. Towards his mother he
was conscious of no tenderness; of as little towards his sister, who often
censured him with trenchant tongue; as for his aunt, whose admiration of him was
modified by reticences, he could never be at ease in her company, so strong a
dislike had he for her look, her voice, her ways of speech.
    He would soon be fifteen years old. Mrs. Peak was growing anxious, for she
could no longer consent to draw upon her sister for a portion of the school
fees, and no pertinent suggestion for the lad's future was made by any of the
people who admired his cleverness. Miss Cadman still clung in a fitful way to
the idea of making her nephew a cleric; she had often talked it over with
