Philosophy ought not to be an arch built over mystery, the better to look down on it, merely as a convenience for curiosity.
Postponing to another time the development of this thought, we content ourselves now with saying that we understand neither man as the point of departure nor progress as the goal, without these two motive forces, faith and love.
Progress is the goal, the ideal is the type.
Ideal, absolute, perfection, infinite,--all mean the same.
History and philosophy have eternal duties which are at the same time simple duties. To oppose Caiaphas as a high priest, Draco as a judge, Trimalcion as a law-giver, Tiberius as an emperor,--that is a duty simple, direct, and clear, and gives no room for doubt. But the right to live apart, even with its objections and its abuse, must be demonstrated and handled carefully; monasticism is a human problem.
In speaking of convents, these homes of error but of innocence, of wanderings from the true path but of good intentions, of ignorance but of devotion, of torture but of martyrdom, we must almost always say yes and no.
A convent is a contradiction: its aim, salvation; its means, sacrifice. The convent is supreme selfishness having as its result supreme abnegation.
To abdicate in order to reign seems to be the motto of monasticism.
In the convent, they suffer in order to enjoy. They take out a letter of credit on death. They discount in earthly night the light of heaven. In the convent hell is endured in advance of the heirship to paradise.
The taking of the veil or the frock is a suicide recompensed by eternity.
Mockery on such a subject does not seem to us to be in place. Everything there is serious, the good as well as the bad.
The just man frowns, but never sneers at it We can sympathize with indignation, but not with malignity.
A few words more. We blame the Church when it is steeped in intrigues. We scorn the spiritual when it is not in accord with the temporal; but we honor the thoughtful man wherever we find him.
A faith of some kind is necessary to man. Alas for him who believes nothing!
We are not necessarily idle because we are absorbed. Labor may be invisible as well as visible.
To reflect is to labor; to think is to act.