From private writings considered in isolation, one might gain the impression that Alfred Deakin's commitment to politics in his early career was not wholehearted. Probably even then he was being less than sincere with himself; and among the fascinating patterns observed in his life is a seeking, an expectation and a gradual fulfilment of a sense of Divine sanction for that career, a process whereby he came to believe he was after all best placed to assist a Greater Purpose. This is less a comment on the career of the most successful and best-liked politician of his generation, than on a mind that always sought higher ground; perhaps too it gives a hint as to the role of private writing in that life. As his political career unfolded, this theme of hesitancy or unworthiness for the task at hand, expressed at times as vague and lingering aspirations to the literary life, resurfaced periodically in his private meditations. Now, after only three years in public life, inspired by Seeley's Natural Religion, he was thinking that he might ‘go “teach & organise the outlying world” of so-called heathendom’.