89 and of 1830 and
of 1848, Rome blossoming out in Paris, is an anachronism. In ordinary
times, in order to dissolve an anachronism and to cause it to vanish,
one has only to make it spell out the date. But we are not in ordinary
times.

Let us fight.

Let us fight, but let us make a distinction. The peculiar property of
truth is never to commit excesses. What need has it of exaggeration?
There is that which it is necessary to destroy, and there is that which
it is simply necessary to elucidate and examine. What a force is kindly
and serious examination! Let us not apply a flame where only a light is
required.

So, given the nineteenth century, we are opposed, as a general
proposition, and among all peoples, in Asia as well as in Europe,
in India as well as in Turkey, to ascetic claustration. Whoever says
cloister, says marsh. Their putrescence is evident, their stagnation is
unhealthy, their fermentation infects people with fever, and etiolates
them; their multiplication becomes a plague of Egypt. We cannot think
without affright of those lands where fakirs, bonzes, santons, Greek
monks, marabouts, talapoins, and dervishes multiply even like swarms of
vermin.

This said, the religious question remains. This question has certain
mysterious, almost formidable sides; may we be permitted to look at it
fixedly.

CHAPTER IV--THE CONVENT FROM THE POINT OF VIEW OF PRINCIPLES

Men unite themselves and dwell in communities. By virtue of what right?
By virtue of the right of association.

They shut themselves up at home. By virtue of what right? By virtue of
the right which every man has to open or shut his door.

They do not come forth. By virtue of what right? By virtue of the right
to go and come, which implies the right to remain at home.

There, at home, what do they do?

They speak in low tones; they drop their eyes; they toil. They renounce
the world, towns, sensualities, pleasures, vanities, pride, interests.
They are clothed in coarse woollen or coarse linen. Not one of them
possesses in his own right anything whatever. On entering there, each
one who was rich makes himself poor. What he has, he gives to all. He
who was what is called noble, a gentleman and a lord, is the equal of
him who was a peasant. The cell is identical for all. All undergo the
same tonsure, wear the same frock, eat the same black bread, sleep on
the same straw, die on the same ashes. The same sack on their backs, the
same rope a