they prepare for it in the seminaries, are such
as entirely ruin the disposition, weaken the body, and enervate and
defile the soul.

Lay education, without making any pretension to an extraordinary degree
of purity, and though the pupils it forms will, one day, enjoy public
life, takes, however, especial care to keep from the eyes of youth the
glowing descriptions that excite the passions.

Ecclesiastical education, on the contrary, which pretends to form men
superior to man, pure virgin minds, angels, fixes precisely the
attention of its pupils upon things that are to be for ever forbidden
them, and gives them for subjects of study terrible temptations, such
as would make all the saints run the risk of damnation. Their printed
books have been quoted, but not so their copy-books, by which they
complete the two last years of seminary education. These copy-books
contain things that the most audacious have never dared to publish.

I dare not quote here what has been revealed to me about this idiotic
education by those who have been its martyrs, and narrowly escaped
destruction from it. No one can imagine the condition of a poor young
man, still a believer, and very sincere, struggling between the terrors
and temptations with which they surround him, at pleasure, with two
unknown subjects, either one of which might drive him mad, _Woman!
Hell!_--and yet obliged to look incessantly at the abyss, blinded,
through these impure books, with his sanguine youthful constitution.

This surprising imprudence proceeded originally from the very
scholastic supposition, that the body and soul could be perfectly well
kept apart. They had imagined they could lead them like two coursers
of different tempers, the one to the right and the other to the left.
They did not reflect that, in this case, man would be in the
predicament of the chariot sculptured upon the tablet of the Louvre,
which, pulled both ways, must inevitably be dashed to pieces.

However different these two substances may be in nature, it is but too
manifest that they are mingled in action. Not a motion of the soul but
acts upon the body, which re-acts in the same manner. The most cruel
discipline inflicted upon the body will destroy it rather than prevent
its action upon the soul. To believe that a vow, a few prayers, and a
black robe, will deliver you from the flesh, and make you a pure
spirit--is perfect childishness.

They will refer me to the middle ages, a