Confessor--The Priest in the
Middle Ages--1st, believed--2ndly, was mortified--3rdly, knew--4thly,
interrogated less--The Dangers of the Young Confessor--How he
Strengthens his Tottering Position

CHAPTER III.

Confession--The Confessor and the Husband--How they Detach the
Wife--The Director--Directors in Concert--Ecclesiastical Policy

CHAPTER IV.

Habit--Power of Habit--Its Insensible Beginning; its Progress--Second
Nature; often fatal--A Man taking Advantage of his Power--Can we get
clear of it?

CHAPTER V.

On Convents--Omnipotence of the Director--Condition of the Nuns,
Forlorn and Wretched--Convents made Bridewells and
Bedlams--Captation--Barbarous Discipline; Struggle between the Superior
Nun and the Director; Change of Directors--The Magistrate

CHAPTER VI.

Absorption of the Will--Government of Acts, Thoughts, and
Wills--_Assimilation_ of the Soul--_Transhumanation_--To become the God
of another--Pride and Desire

CHAPTER VII.

Desire. Terrors of the other World--The Physician and his
Patient--Alternatives; Postponements--Effects of Fear in Love--To be
All-powerful and Abstain--Struggles between the Spirit and the
Flesh--Moral Death more Potent than Physical Life--It will not revive

PART III.

CHAPTER I.

Schism in Families--The Daughter; by whom Educated--Importance of
Education--The Advantage of the First Instructor--Influence of Priests
upon Marriage--Which they Retain after that Ceremony

CHAPTER II.

Woman--The Husband does not Associate with the Wife--He seldom knows
how to Initiate her into his Thoughts--What Mutual Initiation would
be--The Wife Consoles Herself with her Son--He is taken from her; her
Loneliness and _Ennui_--A pious young Man--The _Spiritual_ and the
_Worldly_ Man--Who is now the Mortified Man

CHAPTER III.

The Mother--Alone for a Long Time, she can bring up her
Child--Intellectual Nourishment--Gestation, Incubation, Education--The
Child Guarantees the Mother, and she the Child--She protects his
Originality, which Public Education must Limit--The Father even Limits
it, the Mother Defends it--Her Weakness; she wishes her Son to be a
Hero--Her Heroic Disinterestedness

CHAPTER IV.

Love--Love wishes to _raise_ and not absorb--False Theory of our
Adversaries; Dangerous Practice--Love wishes to form an Equal who may
love freely--Love in the World, in the Civil World--And in Families,
not understood by the Middle Ages--Family Religion