“I See so increasingly plainly the triple fault and undermining character of my influence ... If only I had looked out against the selfishness of leaning on one whom I ought to have propped still for many a day! I have dropped my own child, my first-born, whom God gave me to carry and to guard . . .”

These words occur in the poignant appeal which Baron von Hiigel addressed to his newly-found friend, Father George Tyrrell, S.J., in 1897. The Baron, lonely in his unique intellectual and spiritual greatness, hungry for companionship and understanding, had made his twenty-year-old daughter his confidant and the close sharer of his mental strife. In so doing he had wrecked her health and her faith, and he turned to Father Tyrrell to help her in her need. Tyrrell responded nobly and wisely, and wrote to von Hiigel: