fic minds had
seen for the last two hundred years as clearly as he had done. The
scientific spirit was the fundamental principle in my disposition.
M. Pinault would have been the master for me if he had not in some
strange way striven to disguise and distort the best traits in his
talent. I understood him better than he would have wished, and,
in spite of himself. I had received a rather advanced education
in mathematics from my first teachers in Brittany. Mathematics and
physical induction have always been my strong point, the only stones
in the edifice which have never shifted their ground and which are
always serviceable. M. Pinault taught me enough of general natural
history and physiology to give me an insight into the laws
of existence. I realised the insufficiency of what is called
spiritualism; the Cartesian proofs of the existence of a soul distinct
from the body always struck me as being very inadequate, and thus I
became an idealist and not a spiritualist in the ordinary acceptation
of the term. An endless _fieri_, a ceaseless metamorphosis seemed to
me to be the law of the world. Nature presented herself to me as
a whole in which creation of itself has no place, and in which
therefore, everything undergoes transformation.[3] It will be asked
how it was that this fairly clear conception of a positive philosophy
did not eradicate my belief in scholasticism and Christianity. It was
because I was young and inconsistent, and because I had not acquired
the critical faculty. I was held back by the example of so many mighty
minds which had read so deeply in the book of nature, and yet had
remained Christians. I was more specially influenced by Malebranche,
who continued to recite his prayers throughout the whole of his
life, while holding, with regard to the general dispensation of the
universe, ideas differing but very little from those which I had
arrived at. The _Entretiens sur la Metaphysique_ and the _Meditations
chretiennes_ were ever in my thoughts.

The fondness for erudition is innate in me, and M. Gosselin did much
to develop it. He had the kindness to choose me as his reader. At
seven o'clock every morning I went to read to him in his bedroom,
and he was in the habit of pacing up and down, sometimes stopping,
sometimes quickening his pace and interrupting me with some sensible
or caustic remark. In this way I read to him the long stories of
Father Maimbourg, a writer who is now forgotten, but who in his