The reading of Schopenhauer was another strong influence during my life as a student in Germany. I long paid a great deal of attention to the philosophy of Kant. But during the years before 1890, I never supposed myself to be very strongly under the influence of Hegel, nor yet of Green, nor of either of the Cairds. I should confess to the charge of having been, during my German period of study, a good deal under the influence of the Romantic School, whose philosophy of poetry I read and expounded with a good deal of diligence. But I early cherished a strong interest in logic, and long desired to get a fair knowledge of mathematics.
When I review this whole process, I strongly feel that my deepest motives and problems have centred about the Idea of the Community, although this idea has only come gradually to my clear consciousness. This was what I was intensely feeling, in the days when my sisters and I looked across the Sacramento Valley, and wondered about the great world beyond our mountains. This
