must have felt this.  There is a sort of inward debate going on within us with regard to happiness, and by it we are inevitably influenced in the way we take a certain thing; for there is no one who will deny that he contains within himself a thousand germs which might render him absolutely wretched.  The question is whether he will allow them free course, or whether he will abstract himself from them.  We are only happy on the sly, my dear friend, but what is to be done?  Happiness is not so sacred a thing that it should only be accepted when derived from perfect reason.

You will perhaps think it strange that, not believing in Christianity, I can feel so much at ease.  This would be singular if I still had doubts, but if I must tell you the whole truth, I will confess that I have almost got beyond the doubting stage.  Explain to me how you manage to believe.  My dear friend, it is too late for me to exclaim to you.  “Take care.”  If you were not what you are, I should throw myself at your feet, and implore of you to declare whether you felt that you could swear that you would not alter your views at any period of your existence....  Think what is involved in swearing as to one’s future thoughts!...  I am very sorry that our friend A——­ is definitely bound to the Church, for I feel sure that if he has not already doubted he will do so.  We shall see in another twenty years.  I hardly know what I am saying to you, but I cannot help wishing with St. Paul, that “all were such as I am,” thankful that I have no need to add “except these bonds.”  With respect to the bonds which held me before, I do not regret them.  Philosophy bids us say, Dominus pars.

When I was going up to the altar to receive the tonsure, I was already terribly exercised by doubt, but I was forced onward, and I was told that it was always well to obey.  I went forward therefore, but God is my witness, that my inmost thought and the vow which I made to myself, was that I would take for my part the truth which is the hidden God, that I would devote myself to its research, renouncing all that is profane, or that is calculated to make us deviate from the holy and divine goal to which nature calls us.  This was my resolve, and an inward voice told me that I should never repent me of my promise.  And I do not repent of it, my dear friend, and I am ever repeating the soothing words Dominus pars, and I believe that I am not less agreeable to God or faithful to my promise, than he who does not scruple to pronounce them with a vain heart, and a frivolous mind.  They will never be a reproach to me until, prostituting my thought to vulgar objects, I devote my life to one of those gross and commonplace aims which suffice for the profane, and until I prefer gross and material pleasures to the sacred pursuit of the beautiful and the true.  Until that time arrives, I shall recall with anything but regret the day on which I pronounced these words.

Man can never be sure enough of his thoughts to swear fidelity to such and such a system which for the time he regards as true.  All that he can do is to devote himself to the service of the truth, whatever it may be, and dispose his heart to follow it wherever he believes that he can see it, at no matter how great a sacrifice.