ty. Eden should be changed into a Lyceum. Science should be
a cordial. To enjoy,--what a sad aim, and what a paltry ambition! The
brute enjoys. To offer thought to the thirst of men, to give them all as
an elixir the notion of God, to make conscience and science fraternize
in them, to render them just by this mysterious confrontation; such is
the function of real philosophy. Morality is a blossoming out of truths.
Contemplation leads to action. The absolute should be practicable. It is
necessary that the ideal should be breathable, drinkable, and eatable to
the human mind. It is the ideal which has the right to say: Take, this!
It is on this condition that it ceases to be a sterile love of science
and becomes the one and sovereign mode of human rallying, and that
philosophy herself is promoted to religion.

Philosophy should not be a corbel erected on mystery to gaze upon it
at its ease, without any other result than that of being convenient to
curiosity.

For our part, adjourning the development of our thought to another
occasion, we will confine ourselves to saying that we neither understand
man as a point of departure nor progress as an end, without those two
forces which are their two motors: faith and love.

Progress is the goal, the ideal is the type.

What is this ideal? It is God.

Ideal, absolute, perfection, infinity: identical words.

CHAPTER VII--PRECAUTIONS TO BE OBSERVED IN BLAME

History and philosophy have eternal duties, which are, at the same time,
simple duties; to combat Caiphas the High-priest, Draco the Lawgiver,
Trimalcion the Legislator, Tiberius the Emperor; this is clear, direct,
and limpid, and offers no obscurity.

But the right to live apart, even with its inconveniences and its
abuses, insists on being stated and taken into account. Cenobitism is a
human problem.

When one speaks of convents, those abodes of error, but of innocence,
of aberration but of good-will, of ignorance but of devotion, of torture
but of martyrdom, it always becomes necessary to say either yes or no.

A convent is a contradiction. Its object, salvation; its means thereto,
sacrifice. The convent is supreme egoism having for its result supreme
abnegation.

To abdicate with the object of reigning seems to be the device of
monasticism.

In the cloister, one suffers in order to enjoy. One draws a bill of
exchange on death. One discounts in terrestrial gloom celestial light.
In the cloister, hell is ac