A convent in France in the full noon of the nineteenth century is a college of owls blinking at the daylight. A cloister in the open act of asceticism, in the very midst of the city of '89, of 1830, and of 1848,--Rome blossoming in Paris,--is an anachronism. At any ordinary time, to lay an anachronism, and make it vanish, we need only to make it spell out the date. But we are not in ordinary times.
Let us fight; but let us distinguish. The essence of truth consists in never exaggerating. What need has she of exaggerating? There are some things that must be destroyed, and there are some things that need only be lighted up and looked at. Kind and serious examination, what a power it is! Let us not use fire where light will answer even purpose.
Given the nineteenth century, then, we are opposed on general principles, and in all nations, in Asia as well as in Europe, in India as in Turkey, to cloistered asceticism. Convent means bog. Their putrescence is undisguisable, their stagnation is unhealthy, their fermentation breeds fever and wasting pestilence in nations, their increase becomes one of the plagues of Egypt. We cannot think without fright of those countries where fakirs, bonzes, santons, caloyers, marabouts, talapoins, and dervishes multiply like swarms of vermin.
This said, the question of religion still remains. This question has phases which are mysterious and almost fearful. Let us look at it steadily.
Some men unite and live together. By what right? By the right of association.
They shut themselves up at home. By what right? By the right which every man has to keep his door open or shut.
They do not go out. By what right? By the right to go and come, which implies the right to stay at home.
They speak in low tones; they lower their eyes; they work. They renounce the world, cities, sensual joys, pleasures, vanity, pride, interest. They are clad in coarse wool, or coarse canvas. Not one of them has any property of his own. In entering, he who was rich makes himself poor. Whatever he has he gives to them all. He who was what the world calls well born, the nobleman and the lord, is the equal of him who was a peasant. All have the same cell. All bear the same tonsure, wear the same frock, eat the same black bread, sleep on the same straw, die on the same ashes. The same sackcloth on the back, the same rope around the loins. If it is the rule to go barefoot, all go barefoot. One of them may have been a prince, this prince is the same shade as the others. No more titles, family names even have disappeared. They bear only Christian names. All bow beneath the equality of baptismal names. They have dissolved the fleshly family, and have formed in their community the spiritual family. They have no longer any other kindred than mankind. They help the poor, they heal the sick. They elect those whom they obey. They call each other "brother."