When, with such dawning perceptions and advancing years, I saw all this, the desire to write left me, the urge to help others ebbed away. It was not that my craftsmanship had failed me but that the will to exercise it had ceased to exist. I realized that it was better to be silent, better to leave others to God's care, than to speak so faultily and to meddle so clumsily. I had to separate myself from the self and work of the younger Brunton. I must refuse to identify myself with them any longer. I could never again go to their defense. There was now an indefinable opposition between us. It was certainly the end of an eventful cycle; it might be the end of all labour for me. I had nothing more to give the contemporary world, but if I studied patiently and attentively why this situation had come about, I might have something to give posterity.
-- Notebooks Category 12: Reflections > Chapter 5 : The Literary Work > # 374
