them the most strongly, even
Bossuet, in practice tends towards them, like the others.

What signifies their writing against the theory of Quietism? Quietism
is much more a method than a system: a method of drowsiness and
indolence which we ever meet with, in one, shape or other, in religious
direction. It is useless to recommend activity, like Bossuet, or to
permit it, like Fenelon, if, preventing every active exercise of the
soul, and holding it, as it were, in leading-strings, you deprive it of
the habit, taste, and power of acting.

Is it not then an illusion, Bossuet? if the soul still seems to act,
when this activity is no longer its own, but yours. You show me a
person who moves and walks; but I see well that this appearance of
motion proceeds from your influence over that person, you yourself
being, as it were, the principle of action, the cause and reason of
living, walking, and moving.

There is always the same sum of action in the total; only, in this
dangerous affinity between the director and the person directed, all
the action is on the side of the former; he alone remains an active
force, a will, a person; he who is directed losing gradually all that
constitutes his personality, becomes--what?--a machine.

When Pascal, in his proud contempt for reason, engages us _to become
stupid_, and bend within us what he calls the _automaton_ and
_machine_, he does not see that it will only be an _exchange_ of
reason. Our reason having herself put on the bit and bridle, that of
another man will mount, ride, and guide it at his will, as he would a
horse.

If the automaton should still possess some motion, how will they lead
it? According to the _probable_ opinion, for the _probablism_ of the
Jesuits reigned in the first half of the century. Later, when its
motion ceased, the paralysed age learned from the Quietists that
immobility is perfection itself.

The decay and impotency which characterised the latter years of Louis
XIV. are rather veiled by a remnant of literary splendour; they are,
nevertheless, deeply seated. This was the natural consequence, not
only of great efforts which produce exhaustion, but also of the
theories of abnegation, impersonality, and systematic nullity, which
had always gained ground in this century. By dint of continually
repeating that one cannot walk well without being supported by another,
a generation arose that no longer walked at all, but boasted of having
forgotten