When I first met Vivekananda in 1881, we were fellowstudents of Principal William Hastie, scholar, metaphysician, and poet, at the General Assembly’s College. ... I saw and recognized in him a high, ardent and pure nature, vibrant and resonant with impassioned sensibilities. He was certainly no sour or cross-grained puritan, no normal hypochondric; in the recesses of his soul he wrestled with the fierce and fell spirit of Desire, the subtle and illusive spirit of Fancy. ...He tried diverse teachers, creeds and cults, and it was this quest that brought him, though at first in a doubting spirit, to the Paramahamsa of Dakshineshwar, who spoke to him with an authority that none had spoken before. ...But his rebellious intellect scarcely yet owned the Master. ...It was only gradually that the doubts of that keen intellect were vanquished by the calm in the subsequent life-history of Vivekananda who, after he had found the firm assurance he sought in the saving Grace and Power of his Master, went about preaching and teaching the creed of the Universal Man, and the absolute and inalienable sovereignty of the Self.
