teach morality, it is still more important to inspire motives to be moral; and these motives consist, above every thing, in religious emotion. Almost all men are nearly equally informed as to the inconveniences and the advantages of vice and virtue; but that which all the world wants, is the strengthening of the internal disposition with which we struggle against the violent inclinations of our nature. If the whole business was to argue well with mankind, why should those parts of the service, which are only songs and ceremonies, lead us so much more than sermons to meditation and to piety? The greater part of preachers confine themselves to declaiming against evil inclinations, instead of showing how we yield to them, and how we resist them; the greater part of preachers are judges who direct the trial of men: but the priests of God ought to tell us what they suffer and what they hope; how they have modified their characters by certain thoughts; in a word, we expect from them the secret memoirs of the soul in its relations with the Deity. Prohibitory laws are no inore sufficient for the government of individuals than of States. The social system is obliged to put animated interests into action, to give aliment to human life: it is the same with the religious instructors of man; they can only preserve him from his passions by exciting a living and pure ecstasy in his heart: the passions are much better, in many respects, than a servile apathy; and nothing can moderate them but a profound sentiment, the enjoyments of which we ought to describe, if we can, with as much force and truth as we have introduced into our descriptions of the charr of earthly affections. Whatever men of wit may have said, there exists a natural alliance between religion and genius. The Mystics have almost all a bias towards poetry and the fine arts; their ideas are in accord with true superiority of every sort, while incredulous and worldly-minded mediocrity is its enemy; that mediocrity cannot endure those who wish to penetrate into the soul; as it has put its best qualities on the surface, to touch the core is to discover its wretchedness. The philosophy of Idealism, the Christianity of Mysticism, and the poetry of nature, have, in many respects, all the same end, and the same origin; these philosophers, these Christians, and these poets, all unite in one common desire. They would wish to substitute for the factitious system of society, rot the ignorance of barbarous times, but an intellectual culture, which leads us back to simplicity by the very perfection of knowledge; they would, in short, wish to make energetic and reflecting, sincere and generous men, out of these characters without dignity; these minds without ideas; these jesters without gayety; these Epicureans without imagination, who, for want of better, are called the human species. CHAPTER VI. OF PAIN. THAT axiom of the Mystics has been much blamed, which asserts that pain is a good. Some philosophers of antiquity have pronounced it not an evil; it is, however, much more difficult to consider it with indifference than with hope.' In effect, if we were not convinced that pain was the means of moral improvement, to what an excess of irritation would it not carry us? Why in that case summon us into life to be consumed by pain? Why concentrate all the torments and all the wonders of the universe in a weak heart, which fears and which desires? Why give us the power of loving, and snatch from us at last all that we hold dear? In short, why bring us to death, terrific death? When the illusion of the world has made us forget it, how is it recalled to our minds! It is in the midst of the splendors of this world that Death unfurls his funereal ensign. 1 Lord Bacon says that prosperities are the benefactions of the Old Tesament, and adversities of the New. "Cosi trapassa al trapassar d'un giorno We have seen at a fete that princess, who, although the mother of eight children, still united the charm of perfect beauty to all the dignity of the maternal character. She opened the ball; and the melodious sounds of music gave a signal for the moments consecrated to joy. Flowers adorned her lovely head, and dress and the dance must have recalled to her the first days of her youth; nevertheless, she appeared already to fear the very pleasures to which so much success might have attached her. Alas! in what a manner was this vague presentiment realized! On a sudden the numberless torches, which replace the splendor of the day, are about to be changed into devouring flames, and the most dreadful sufferings will take the place of the gorgeous luxury of the fête. What a contrast! and who can grow weary of reflecting upon it? No, never have the grandeur and the misery of man so closely approached each other; and our fickle thoughts, so easily diverted from the dark threatenings of futurity, have been struck in the same hour with all the brilliant and terrible images which destiny, in general, scatters at a distance from each other over the path of time. No accident, however, had reached her, who would not have died but for her own choice. She was in safety; she might have renewed the thread of that life of virtue which she had been leading for fifteen years; but one of her daughters was still in danger, and the most delicate and timid of beings precipitates herself into the midst of flames which would have made warriors recoil. Every mother would have felt what she did! But who thinks she has sufficient strength to imi 1 "Thus withers in a day the verdure and the flower of mortal life; it is in vain that the month of spring returns in its season; life never resumes her verdure or her flowers."-Verses of Tasso, sung in the gardens of Armida. • The Princess Paulina of Schwartzenberg. tate her? Who can reckon so much upon the soul, as not to fear those shudderings which nature bids us feel at the sight of a violent death? A woman braved them; and although the fatal blow then struck her, her last act was maternal: it was at this sublime instant that she appeared before God; and it was impossible to recognize what remained of her upon earth except by the impression on a medal, given by her children, which also marked the place where this angel perished. Ah! all that is horrible in this picture is softened by the rays of a celestial glory. This generous Paulina will hereafter be the saint of mothers; and if their looks do not dare to rise to Heaven, they will rest them upon her sweet figure, and will ask her to implore the blessing of God upon their children. If we had gone so far as to dry up the source of religion apon earth, what should we say to those who see the purest of victims fall? What should we say to those who loved this victim? and with what despair, with what horror for fortune and her perfidious secrets, would not the soul be filled? Not only what we see, but what we imagine, would strike our minds like a thunderbolt, if there was nothing within us free from the power of chance. Have not men lived in an obscure dungeon, where every moment was a pang, where there was no air but what was sufficient for them to begin suffering again? Death, according to the incredulous, must deliver us from every thing; but do they know what death is? do they know whether this death is annihilation? or into what a labyrinth of terrors reflection without a guide may drag us? If an honest man (and the events of a life exposed to the passions may bring on this misfortune), if an honest man, I say, had done an irreparable injury to an innocent being, how could he ever be consoled for it without the assistance of religious expiation? When his victim is in the coffin, to whom must he address his sorrows if there is no communication with that victim; if God himself does not make the dead hear the lamentations of the living; if the sovereign Mediator for man did not say to grief, "It is enough;" and to repentance, "You are forgiven?" It is thought that the chief advantage of religlon is its efficacy in awakening remorse; but it is also very frequently the means of lulling remorse to sleep. There are souls in which the past is predominant; there are those which regret tears to pieces like an active death, and upon which memory falls as furiously as a vulture: it is for them that religion operates as the alleviation of remorse. An idea always the same, and yet assuming a thousand different dresses, fatigues at once, by its agitation and its monotony. The fine arts, which redoubled the power of imagination, augment with it the vivacity of pain. Nature herself becomes importunate when the soul is no longer in harmony with her; her tranquillity, which we once found so sweet, irritates us like indifference; the wonders of the universe grow dim as we gaze upon them; all looks like a vision, even in mid-day splendor. Night troubles us, as if the darkness concealed some secret misfortune of our own, and the shining sun appears to insult the mourning of our hearts. Whither shall we fly, then, from so many sufferings? Is it to death? But the anxiety of unhappiness makes us doubt whether there is rest in the tomb, and despair, even for heists, is as a shadowy revelation of an eternity of pains. Wat shall we do then,what shall we do, O my God! if we cannot throw curselves into thy paternal bosom? He who first called God our Father, knew more of the human heart than the most profound thinkers of the age. It is not true that religion narrows the heart; it is still less so, that the severity of religious principles is to be feared. I only know one sort of severity which is to be dreaded by feeling minds: it is that of the men of the world. These are the persons who conceive nothing, who excuse nothing that is involuntary; they have made a human heart according to their own will, in order to judge it at their leisure. We might address to them what was said to Messrs. de Port-Royal, who, otherwise, deserved much admiration: "It is easy for you to comprehend the man you have created; but, as to the res being, you know him not.” |