nary.
Their control is exercised almost imperceptibly, for the seminary
seems to conduct itself, instead of being conducted by them. The
regulations, the usages, and the spirit of the place are the sole
agents; the directors are mere passive overseers. St. Sulpice is
a machine which has been well constructed for the last two hundred
years: it goes of itself, and all that the driver has to do is to
watch the movements, and from time to time to screw up a nut and oil
the joints. It is not like Saint-Nicholas, for instance, where the
machine was never allowed to go by itself. The driver was always
tinkering at it, running first to the right and then to the left,
peering in here and altering a wheel there, not knowing or remembering
that the best mounted machine is the one which requires the least
attention from the man who sets it in motion. The great advantage
which I enjoy here is the remarkable facility afforded me for work
which has become a prime necessity to me, and which, considering
my internal condition, is also a duty. The lectures on morals
are excellent, but I cannot say as much of those on dogma, as the
professor is a novice. This, coupled with the great importance of the
_Traites de la Religion et de l'Eglise,_ especially in my case, would
be a very serious drawback, but for my having found substitutes for
him among the other professors." As a matter of fact, I had a special
liking for the ecclesiastical sciences. A text once implanted in my
memory was never forgotten; my head was in the state of a _Sic et Non_
of Abelard. Theology is like a Gothic cathedral, having in common with
its grandeur its vast empty spaces and its lack of solidity. Neither
to the Fathers of the Church nor to the Christian writers during the
first half of the Middle Ages did it occur to draw up a systematic
exposition of the Christian dogmas which would dispense with reading
the Bible all through. The _Summa_ of St. Thomas Aquinas, a summary of
the earlier scholasticism, is like a vast bookcase with compartments,
which, if Catholicism is to endure, will be of service to all time,
the decisions of councils and of Popes in the future having, so to
speak, their place marked out for them beforehand. There can be no
question of progress in such an order of exposition. In the sixteenth
century, the Council of Trent settled a number of points which had
hitherto been the subject of controversy; but each of these anathemas
had already its plac