t is most vile? for anti-Christianity has in this country so
low, detestable, and revolting an aspect that I am repelled from it if
only by natural modesty. And then they know nothing whatever about
the matter. I cannot be blamed for not speaking to them in German.
Moreover, as I have already explained to you, I am so situated
intellectually that I can appear one thing to this person and another
to that one without any feigning on my part, and without either of
them being deceived, thanks to having for a time shaken off the yoke
of contradiction.

And then I must tell you that at times I have been within an ace of a
complete reaction, and have wondered whether it would not be more
agreeable to God if I were to cut short the thread of my
self-examination and trace my steps back two or three years. The fact is
that I do not see as I advance further any chance of reaching
Catholicism; each step leads me further away from it. However this may
be, the alternative is a very clear one. I can only return to
Catholicism by the amputation of one of my faculties, by definitely
stigmatising my reason and condemning it to perpetual silence. Yes, if I
returned, I should cease my life of study and self-examination,
persuaded that it could only bring me to evil, and I should lead a
purely mystic life in the Catholic sense. For I trust that so far as
regards a mere commonplace life God will always deliver me from that.
Catholicism meets the requirements of all my faculties excepting my
critical one, and as I have no reason to hope that matters will mend in
this respect I must either abandon Catholicism or amputate this faculty.
This operation is a difficult and a painful one, but you may be sure
that if my moral conscience did not stand in the way, that if God came
to me this evening and told me that it would be pleasing to Him, I
should do it. You would not recognise me in my new character, for I
should cease to study or to indulge in critical thought, and should
become a thorough mystic. You may also be sure that I must have been
violently shaken to so much as consider the possibility of such a
hypothesis, which forces itself upon me with greater terrors than death
itself. But yet I should not despair of striking, even in this career, a
vein of activity which would suffice to keep me going.

And what, all said and done, will be my decision? It is with
indescribable dread that I see the close of the vacation drawing near,
for I shall