Yes, Germany delights me, not so much in her scientific as in her moral aspect.  The morale of Kant is far superior to all his logic and intellectual philosophy, and our French writers have never alluded to it.  This is only natural, for the men of our day have no moral sense.  France seems to me every day more devoid of any part in the great work of renovating the life of humanity.  A dry, anti-critical, barren, and petty orthodoxy, of the St. Sulpice type; a hollow and superficial imitation full of affectation and exaggeration, like Neo-Catholicism; and an arid and heartless philosophy, crabbed and disdainful, like the University, make up the sum of French culture.  Jesus Christ is nowhere to be found.  I have been inclined to think that He would come to us from Germany; not that I suppose He would be an individual, but a spirit.  And when we use the word Jesus Christ we mean, no doubt, a certain spirit rather than an individual, and that is the Gospel.  Not that I believe that this apparition is likely to bring about either an upset or a discovery; Jesus Christ neither overturned nor discovered anything.  One must be Christian, but it is impossible to be orthodox.  What is needed is a pure Christianity.  The archbishop will be inclined to believe this; he is capable of founding pure Christianity in France.  I apprehend that one result of the tendency among the French clergy to study and gain instruction will be to rationalise us a little.  In the first place they will get tired of scholasticism, and when that has been got rid of there will be a change in the form of ideas, and it will be seen that the orthodox interpretation of the Bible does not hold water.  But this will not be effected without a struggle, for your orthodox people are very tenacious in their dogmatism, and they will apply to themselves a certain quantity of Athanasian varnish which will close their eyes and ears.  Yes, I should much like to be there!  And I am about, it may be, to cut off my arms, for the priests will be all powerful yet a while, and it may well be that there will be nothing to be done without being a priest, as Ronge and Czerski were.  I have read a letter to Czerski from his mother, in which she reminds him of the sacrifices she had made for his clerical education and entreats him to remain staunch to Catholicism.  But how can he serve it more sincerely than by devoting himself to what he believes to be the truth?

Forgive me, my dear friend, for what I have just said to you.  If you only knew the state of my head and my heart!  Do not imagine that all this has assumed a dogmatic consistency within me; so far from that, I am the reverse of exclusive.  I am willing to admit counter-evidence, at all events for the time.  Is it not possible to conceive a state of things during which the individual and humanity are perforce exposed to instability?  You may answer that this is an untenable position for them.  Yes, but how can it be helped?  It was necessary at one period