Obstinate rationalists, what is your logic worth here?  Has it armed you against the surprises held in store for you by a multitude of facts inaccordant with your reasonings?  Oh, proud and haughty reason, bow your head!  Confess the inanity of your ways.  Bow yet, once again, and contemplate the mystery whence luminous instruction shall beam for you!

At bottom these mysteries may surprise and baffle a reason deprived of principle; but they are never contrary to it, because they proceed from reason itself, from that Supreme Reason which created us in its own image; and, by that very fact, is always in accord with individual reason in so far as this will consent to sacrifice its own prejudices to it, or listen to its infallible lessons.

But man’s reason most frequently heeds itself alone.  Thence, once again, arise its infirmities.  Thus, what will happen, if, because the truths which I utter here are obscure and do not at the first glance appear to conform to the requirements of logic, you hastily reject them with all the loftiness of your scornful reason, which would blush to admit what it did not understand!  Poor reason! which in and of itself understands so little, and admits so many follies as soon as a scholar affirms them.  The consequence will be that you will be strengthened in the error which flatters your ignorance.  Behold that proud reason which would never bend before a mystery revealed, behold it, I say, bowed beneath the weight of prejudices, which there will be more than one scholar, more than one logician, ready to endorse.

Thus reason will refuse as unworthy itself, all belief in the actions of God or of unseen spirits, the angels, heaven, but will not dare to doubt the existence of moving atoms, invisible corpuscles.  This is the mental poverty into which the enemies of religious faith unwittingly fall.  They pervert that instrument of reason whose true use is to supplement and fortify imperfect intelligence, and misuse it to discredit and overthrow the original intuitions of intelligence.

Random Notes.

    Type—­Man. 
    Prototype—­Angel. 
    Archetype—­God.

It is within himself that man should find the reason of all he studies.  In the angels he should find the secret of his being:  they are his prototypes.  Lastly, it is in the Divine archetype that we are to look for the universal reason.

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The Senses.

    Taste and smell say:  It is Good. 
    Sight and touch say:  It is Beautiful. 
    Hearing and speech say:  It is True.

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Every agreeable or disagreeable sight makes the body reaect backward.  The degree of reaction should be in proportion to the degree of interest caused by the sight of the object presented to our sight.

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