is degrading even
to the observer.

"A worthy parish priest has often told me that the sore part of his
profession, that which filled him with despair, and his life with
torment, was the confession.

"The studies with which they prepare for it in the seminaries are
such as entirely ruin the disposition, weaken the body, and
enervate and defile the soul.

"Lay education, without making any pretension to an extraordinary
degree of purity, and though the pupils it forms will, one day,
enjoy public life, takes, however, especial care to keep from the
eyes of youth the glowing descriptions that excite the passions.

"Ecclesiastical education, on the contrary, which pretends to form
men superior to man, pure virgin minds, angels, fixes precisely the
attention of its pupils upon things that are to be for ever
forbidden them, and gives them for subjects of study terrible
temptations, such as would make all the saints run the risk of
damnation. Their printed books have been quoted, but not so their
copy-books, by which they complete the two last years of seminary
education: these copy-books contain things that the most audacious
have never dared to publish.

* * * * *

"This surprising imprudence proceeded originally from the very
scholastic supposition, that the body and soul could be perfectly
well kept apart."

What is the influence by which the power of the confessor is converted
into that of the director? It is done in the usual way--by the continual
repetition of the same process for a length of time. Habit is the
insidious enemy that, ere it seems to assail, has already conquered and
led captive.

"Stand at this window every day, at a certain hour in the
afternoon. You will see a pale man pass down the street, with his
eyes cast on the ground, and always following the same line of
pavement next the houses. Where he set his foot yesterday, there he
does to-day, and there he will to-morrow; he would wear out the
pavement if it was never renewed. And by this same street he goes
to the same house, ascends to the same story, and in the same
cabinet speaks to the same person. He speaks of the same things,
and his manner seems the same. The person who listens to him sees
no difference between yesterday and to-day; gentle uniformity, as
serene as an infant's