If you
only knew the state of my head and my heart! Do not imagine that all
this has assumed a dogmatic consistency within me; so far from that,
I am the reverse of exclusive. I am willing to admit counter-evidence,
at all events for the time. Is it not possible to conceive a state of
things during which the individual and humanity are perforce exposed
to instability? You may answer that this is an untenable position for
them. Yes, but how can it be helped? It was necessary at one period
that people should be sceptical from a scientific point of view as to
morality, and yet, at this same period, men of pure minds could be
and were moral, at the risk of being inconsistent. The disciples of
scholasticism would mock at this, and triumphantly point to it as a
blunder in logic. It is easy to prove what is patent to every one.
Their idea is a moral state in which every detail has its set formula,
and they care little about the substance as long as the outward form
is perfect. They know neither man nor humanity as they really exist.
Yes, my dear friend, I still believe; I pray and recite the Lord's
Prayer with ecstasy. I am very fond of being in church, where the pure
and simple piety moves me deeply in the lucid moments when I inhale
the odour of God. I even have devotional fits, and I believe that they
will last, for piety is of value even when it is merely psychological.
It has a moralising effect upon us, and raises us above wretched
utilitarian preoccupations; for where ends utilitarianism there begins
the beautiful, the infinite, and Almighty God; and the pure air wafted
thence is life itself.
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