round their loins. If the decision has been to go barefoot,
all go barefoot. There may be a prince among them; that prince is the
same shadow as the rest. No titles. Even family names have disappeared.
They bear only first names. All are bowed beneath the equality of
baptismal names. They have dissolved the carnal family, and constituted
in their community a spiritual family. They have no other relatives than
all men. They succor the poor, they care for the sick. They elect those
whom they obey. They call each other "my brother."

You stop me and exclaim, "But that is the ideal convent!"

It is sufficient that it may be the possible convent, that I should take
notice of it.

Thence it results that, in the preceding book, I have spoken of a
convent with respectful accents. The Middle Ages cast aside, Asia cast
aside, the historical and political question held in reserve, from the
purely philosophical point of view, outside the requirements of militant
policy, on condition that the monastery shall be absolutely a voluntary
matter and shall contain only consenting parties, I shall always
consider a cloistered community with a certain attentive, and, in some
respects, a deferential gravity.

Wherever there is a community, there is a commune; where there is a
commune, there is right. The monastery is the product of the formula:
Equality, Fraternity. Oh! how grand is liberty! And what a splendid
transfiguration! Liberty suffices to transform the monastery into a
republic.

Let us continue.

But these men, or these women who are behind these four walls. They
dress themselves in coarse woollen, they are equals, they call each
other brothers, that is well; but they do something else?

Yes.

What?

They gaze on the darkness, they kneel, and they clasp their hands.

What does this signify?

CHAPTER V--PRAYER

They pray.

To whom?

To God.

To pray to God,--what is the meaning of these words?

Is there an infinite beyond us? Is that infinite there, inherent,
permanent; necessarily substantial, since it is infinite; and because,
if it lacked matter it would be bounded; necessarily intelligent, since
it is infinite, and because, if it lacked intelligence, it would end
there? Does this infinite awaken in us the idea of essence, while we can
attribute to ourselves only the idea of existence? In other terms, is it
not the absolute, of which we are only the relative?

At the same time that there is an infini