An obliging fellow pupil
from Alsace, M. Kl----, whose name I often see mentioned as rendering
services to his compatriots in Paris, kindly helped me at the outset.
Literature was to my mind such a secondary matter, amidst the ardent
investigation which absorbed me, that I did not at first pay much
attention to it. Nevertheless, I felt a new genius, very different
from that of the seventeenth century. I admired it all the more
because I did not see any limit to it. The spirit peculiar to Germany
at the close of the last century, and in the first half of the present
one, had a very striking effect upon me; I felt as if entering a place
of worship. This was just what I was in search of, the conciliation
of a truly religious spirit with the spirit of criticism. There were
times when I was sorry that I was not a Protestant, so that I might
be a philosopher without ceasing to be a Christian. Then, again, I
recognised the fact that the Catholics alone are consistent. A single
error proves that a Church is not infallible; one weak part proves
that a book is not a revealed one. Outside rigid orthodoxy, there was
nothing, so far as I could see, except free thought after the manner
of the French school of the eighteenth century. My familiarity with
the German studies placed me in a very false position; for upon the
one hand it proved to me the impossibility of an exegesis which did
not make any concessions, while upon the other hand I quite saw that
the masters of St.
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