y life? I cannot tell; but activity will ever find scope.
You may be sure that I must have been sorely forced to have dwelt for
one instant upon a thought which seems more cruel to me than death.
And yet, if my conscience represented it to me as lawful, I should
eagerly avail myself of it, if only out of common decency.

"I hope at all events that those who know me will admit that
interested motives have not estranged me from Christianity. Have not
all my material interests tempted me to find it true? The temporal
considerations against which I have had to struggle would have
sufficed to persuade many others; my heart has need of Christianity;
the Gospel will ever be my moral law; the church has given me my
education, and I love her. Could I but continue to style myself her
son! I pass from her in spite of myself; I abhor the dishonest attacks
levelled at her; I frankly confess that I have no complete substitute
for her teaching; but I cannot disguise from myself the weak points
which I believe that I have found in it and with regard to which it
is impossible to effect a compromise, because we have to do with a
doctrine in which all the component parts hold together and cannot be
detached.

"I sometimes regret that I was not born in a land where the bonds of
orthodoxy are less tightly drawn than in Catholic countries. For, at
whatever cost, I am resolved to be a Christian; but I cannot be an
orthodox Catholic. When I find such independent and bold thinkers as
Herder, Kant, and Fichte, calling themselves Christians, I should like
to be so too. But can I be so in the Catholic faith, which is like a
bar of iron? and you cannot reason with a bar of iron. Will not some
one found amongst us a rational and critical Christianity? I will
confess to you that I believe that I have discovered in some German
writers the true kind of Christianity which is adapted to us. May
I live to see this Christianity assuming a form capable of fully
satisfying all the requirements of our age! May I myself cooperate in
the great work! What so grieves me is the thought that perhaps it will
be needful to be a priest in order to accomplish that; and I could not
become a priest without being guilty of hypocrisy.

"Forgive me, sir, these thoughts, which must seem very reprehensible
to you. You are aware that all this has not as yet any dogmatic
consistence in me; I still cling to the Church, my venerable mother; I
recite the Psalms with heartfelt a