part and parcel of the right acquired by the purchaser
of a book. It seemed to me that in placing the
lines referring to her in a book for the trade I should
be acting with as much impropriety as if I sent a portrait
of her for sale to an auction room. The pamphlet
in question will not, therefore, be reprinted until
after my death, appended to it, very possibly being
several of her letters selected by me beforehand.
The natural sequence of this book, which is neither
more nor less than the sequence in the various periods
of my life, brings about a sort of contrast between
the anecdotes of Brittany and those of the Seminary,
the latter being the details of a darksome struggle,
full of reasonings and hard scholasticism, while the
recollections of my earlier years are instinct with
the impressions of childlike sensitiveness, of candour,
of innocence, and of affection. There is nothing
surprising about this contrast. Nearly all of
us are double. The more a man develops intellectually,
the stronger is his attraction to the opposite pole:
that is to say, to the irrational, to the repose of
mind in absolute ignorance, to the woman who is merely
a woman, the instinctive being who acts solely from
the impulse of an obscure conscience. The fierce
school of controversy, in which the mind of Europe
has been involved since the time of Abelard, induces
periods of mental drought and aridity. The brain,
parched by reasoning, thirsts for simplicity, like
the desert for spring water. When reflection has
brought us up to the last limit of doubt, the spontaneous
affirmation of the good and of the beautiful which
is to be found in the female conscience delights us
and settles the question for us. This is why religion
is preserved to the world by woman alone. A beautiful
and a virtuous woman is the mirage which peoples with
lakes and green avenues our great moral desert.
The superiority of modern science consists in the fact
that each step forward it takes is a step further in
the order of abstractions. We make chemistry
from chemistry, algebra from algebra; the very indefatigability
with which we fathom nature removes us further from
her. This is as it should be, and let no one fear
to prosecute his researches, for out of this merciless
dissection comes life. But we need not be surprised
at the feverish heat which, after these orgies of
dialectics, can only be calmed by the kisses of the
artless creature in whom nature lives and smiles.
Woman restores us to communication with the eternal
spring in which God reflects Himself. The candour
of a child, unconscious of its own beauty and seeing
God clear as the daylight, is the great revelation
of the ideal, just as the unconscious coquetry of
the flower is a proof that Nature adorns herself for
a husband.