m the precedence_."--Maupas du Tour, Life of
St. Francois de Sales, p. 199.

CHAPTER VII.

DESIRE.--ABSORPTION AND ASSIMILATION CONTINUED.--TERRORS OF THE OTHER
WORLD.--THE PHYSICIAN AND THE
PATIENT.--ALTERNATIVES.--POSTPONEMENTS.--THE EFFECTS OF FEAR IN
LOVE.--TO BE ALL-POWERFUL AND ABSTAIN.--STRUGGLES BETWEEN THE SPIRIT
AND THE FLESH.--MORAL DEATH MORE POTENT THAN PHYSICAL LIFE.--IT CANNOT
REVIVE.

Let us a pause a moment at the brink of the abyss that we have just had
a glimpse of, and before we descend into it, let us know well where we
are.

The unlimited dominion, of which we spoke just now, could never be
sufficiently explained by the power of habit, strengthened by all the
arts of seduction and captation; it would be especially impossible to
understand how so many inferior men succeed in obtaining their ends.
We must repeat here what we have said elsewhere: _If this power of
death has so much hold upon the soul, the reason is, that it generally
attacks it in its dying state_; when weakened by worldly passions, and
crushing it more and more by the ebb and flow of religious passions, it
finds at last that it has neither strength, nor nerve, nor anything
that can offer resistance.

Which of us has not known, in his life, those moments when violent
activity having ruffled our hearts, we hate action, liberty, and
ourselves?--when the wave that bore us upon its gentle but treacherous
bosom retires suddenly and harshly from beneath, leaving us upon the
dry strand--where we remain like a log? Never could the soul, thus
stranded, be set in motion again, if it were not, independently of its
will, floated off by the waves of Lethe. A low voice then says, "Move
not; act no more, do not even wish; die in will."--"Happy release! wish
for me! There, I give up to you that troublesome liberty, the weight
of which oppressed me so much. A soft pillow of faith, a childish
obedience is all I now want. Now I shall sleep happily!"

But such people do not sleep, they only dream. How can they, nervous
and trembling with weakness, expect to repose? They lie still, it is
true; but they are also plunged in dreams. The soul will not act, but
the imagination acts without her; and this involuntary fluctuation is
but the more fatiguing. Then, all the terrors of childhood crowd upon
the patient, and more steadfastly than they did upon the child. The
phantasmagoria of the middle ages, which we thought forgotten, revives