... I have noticed that some men of talent
who have set themselves too late in life the task have been taken in
the toils and have not been able to extricate themselves.
My tutors taught me something which was infinitely more valuable than
criticism or philosophic wisdom; they taught me to love truth, to
respect reason, and to see the serious side of life. This is the only
part in me which has never changed. I left their care with my moral
sense so well prepared to stand any test, that this precious jewel
passed uninjured through the crucible of Parisian frivolity. I was so
well prepared for the good and for the true that I could not possibly
have followed a career which was not devoted to the things of the
mind. My teachers rendered me so unfit for any secular work that I was
perforce embarked upon a spiritual career. The intellectual life
was the only noble one in my eyes; and mercenary cares seemed to me
servile and unworthy.
I have never departed from the sound and wholesome programme which my
masters sketched out for me. I no longer believe Christianity to be
the supernatural summary of all that man can know; but I still believe
that life is the most frivolous of things, unless it is regarded as
one great and constant duty. Oh! my beloved old teachers, now nearly
all with the departed, whose image often rises before me in my
dreams, not as a reproach but as a grateful memory, I have not been so
unfaithful to you as you believe! Yes, I have said that your history
was very short measure, that your critique had no existence, and
that your natural philosophy fell far short of that which leads us to
accept as a fundamental dogma: "There is no special supernatural;"
but in the main I am still your disciple.
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