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.

I am taken here for a good little seminarist, very pious and tractable.  This is not my fault, but it grieves me now and again, for I am so afraid of appearing not to be straightforward.  Yet I do not feign anything, God knows; I merely do not say all I feel.  Should I do better to enter upon these wretched controversies, in which they would have the advantage of being the champions of the beautiful and the pure, and in which I should have the appearance of assimilating myself to all that is most vile? for anti-Christianity has in this country so low, detestable, and revolting an aspect that I am repelled from it if only by natural modesty.  And then they know nothing whatever about the matter.  I cannot be blamed for not speaking to them in German.  Moreover, as I have already explained to you, I am so situated intellectually that I can appear one thing to this person and another to that one without any feigning on my part, and without either of them being deceived, thanks to having for a time shaken off the yoke of contradiction.

And then I must tell you that at times I have been within an ace of a complete reaction, and have wondered whether it would not be more agreeable to God if I were to cut short the thread of my self-examination and trace my steps back two or three years.  The fact is that I do not see as I advance further any chance of reaching Catholicism; each step leads me further away from it.  However this may be, the alternative is a very clear one.  I can only return to Catholicism by the amputation of one of my faculties, by definitely stigmatising my reason and condemning it to perpetual silence.  Yes, if I returned, I should cease my life of study and self-examination, persuaded that it could only bring me to evil, and I should lead a purely mystic life in the Catholic sense.  For I trust that so far as regards a mere