Is happiness anything more than a conventional fiction?  The deepest reason for my state of doubt is that the supreme end and aim of life seems to me a mere lure and deception.  The individual is an eternal dupe, who never obtains what he seeks, and who is forever deceived by hope.  My instinct is in harmony with the pessimism of Buddha and of Schopenhauer.  It is a doubt which never leaves me, even in my moments of religious fervor.  Nature is indeed for me a Maia; and I look at her, as it were, with the eyes of an artist.  My intelligence remains skeptical.  What, then, do I believe in?  I do not know.  And what is it I hope for?  It would be difficult to say.  Folly!  I believe in goodness, and I hope that good will prevail.  Deep within this ironical and disappointed being of mine there is a child hidden—­a frank, sad, simple creature, who believes in the ideal, in love, in holiness, and all heavenly superstitions.  A whole millennium of idyls sleeps in my heart; I am a pseudo-skeptic, a pseudo-scoffer.

     “Borne dans sa nature, infini dans ses voeux,
     L’homme est un dieu tombe qui se souvient des cieux.”

* * * * *

March 17th, 1870.—­This morning the music of a brass band which had stopped under my windows moved me almost to tears.  It exercised an indefinable, nostalgic power over me; it set me dreaming of another world, of infinite passion and supreme happiness.  Such impressions are the echoes of Paradise in the soul; memories of ideal spheres whose sad sweetness ravishes and intoxicates the heart.  O Plato!  O Pythagoras! ages ago you heard these harmonies, surprised these moments of inward ecstasy,—­knew these divine transports!  If music thus carries us to heaven, it is because music is harmony, harmony is perfection, perfection is our dream, and our dream is heaven.

* * * * *

April 1st, 1870.—­I am inclined to believe that for a woman love is the supreme authority,—­that which judges the rest and decides what is good or evil.  For a man, love is subordinate to right.  It is a great passion, but it is not the source of order, the synonym of reason, the criterion of excellence.  It would seem, then, that a woman places her ideal in the perfection of love, and a man in the perfection of justice.

* * * * *

June 5th, 1870.—­The efficacy of religion lies precisely in that which is not rational, philosophic, nor eternal; its efficacy lies in the unforeseen, the miraculous, the extraordinary.  Thus religion attracts more devotion in proportion as it demands more faith,—­that is to say, as it becomes more incredible to the profane mind.  The philosopher aspires to explain away all mysteries, to dissolve them into light.  It is mystery, on the other hand, which the religious instinct demands and pursues:  it is mystery which constitutes the essence of worship, the power of proselytism.