split against is the want of that which has vanished within
me, thereby freeing my thoughts, but bringing instead of it the mortal
disease that has become my tragedy; it is the catechismal simplicity
of the soul.

Now I can account for it clearly, perhaps not quite satisfactorily,
for I am of so complex a disposition as to have lost the very instinct
of simplicity. "I hear thy voice, but I see thee not." My spiritual
sight suffers from Daltonian disease and cannot distinguish colors.

I cannot even understand how any one can accept a principle, however
hallowed by ages, without looking at it from both sides, pulling it to
pieces, into shreds and atoms, until it crumbles into dust and cannot
be put together any more.

Aniela cannot understand that a principle once considered good,
hallowed by religion, as well as by public opinion, could be
considered otherwise than as a sacred duty.

It does not matter to me whether she is conscious of it, or it is
instinctive impulse reasoned out by her intelligence, or merely
acquired; it is enough that it has entered her very nature.

I had a glimpse of it the other day when I spoke about Pani Korytzka's
divorce suit: "You can prove everything, and yet when one does wrong
conscience tells us: 'It is wrong, it is wrong!'" I did not then
attach the importance to these words that belonged to them. In Aniela
there is no wavering, no doubt whatever. Her soul winnows the chaff
from the grain with such precision that there can be no question about
its purity. She does not try to find her own norma, but takes it
ready-made from religion, general moral principles, and clings to
them so strongly that they become her very own, for they permeate her
system. The simpler the differential quality of good and evil, the
more absolute and merciless it grows. In this ethical code there are
no extenuating circumstances. As according to it the wife belongs to
her husband, she who gives herself to another does wrong. There are no
discussions, no considerations, or reflections,--there is the right
hand for the righteous, the left for the sinners, God's mercy above
all,--but nothing between, no intermediate place.

It is the code of the honest villager, so simple that people like me
do not understand it. It seems to us that human life and human souls
are too complex to find room in it. Unfortunately we have not found
anything to replace it, and consequently we flutter here and there
like stray birds