aming 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. When the cross became the "foolishness" of the
cross, it took possession of the masses. And in our own day, those who
wish to get rid of the supernatural, to enlighten religion, to economize
faith, find themselves deserted, like poets who should declaim against
poetry, or women who should decry love. Faith consists in the acceptance
of the incomprehensible, and even in the pursuit of the impossible, and
is self-intoxicated with its own sacrifices, its own repeated
extravagances.

It is the forgetfulness of this psychological law which stultifies the
so-called liberal Christianity. It is the realization of it which
constitutes the strength of Catholicism.

Apparently, no positive religion can survive the supernatural element
which is the reason for its existence. Natural religion seems to be the
tomb of all historic cults. All concrete religions die eventually in the
pure air