ded, knowing
neither how to forget nor how to be patient, nor yet how to despair
peaceably; they are less troubled by that which is, than by that which
ought to be; they have even turned towards that which ought to be, as
towards the salvation for which their whole heart is calling. It is
their weakness not to know how to interest themselves for any length of
time in what does not in some way assume the aspect of a duty that
concerns them. They do not contest, in fact, that it is a weakness not
to be able to look with a disinterested eye on disease, corporal or
spiritual; a weakness to feel the necessity of having something to do at
the bedside of the dying, even if that something be in vain,--to employ
the anguish of one's heart in preparing, even up to the supreme moment,
remedies in the shadow of the chamber.

We are in a state of war. It would be almost cowardly to be silent about
our intimate beliefs, for they are contradicted and attacked. We must
not content ourselves with a pacification or truce which will permit
us with facile weakness to open all the pores of our intelligence to
ideas contrary to our conviction. It is necessary on the contrary to
gird ourselves, to intrench ourselves. There is to-day, between us
and many of our contemporaries, an irreconcilable disagreement that
must be faced, a great combat in which parts must be taken. As far as
I can see this is what it is. In a word, are subjection to animal
instinct, egoism, falsehood, absolutely evil, or are they merely
"inelegances"?--that is to say, things deprecated just at present, but
which, well ornamented and perfumed with grace, might not again attract
us, satisfy us, furnish us a type of life equivalent after all to the
life of the sages and saints; for nothing shows us with certainty that
the latter is any better than the former. Are justice and love a sure
good, a sure law, and the harbor of safety? Or are they possible
illusions, probable vanities? Have we a destiny, an ideal, or are we
agitating ourselves without cause and without purpose for the amusement
of some malicious demiurge, or simply for the absurd caprice of great
Pan? This is the question that divides consciences. A great subject of
dispute; surely greater than that of the divinity of Jesus Christ, for
example, than that even of the existence of a personal God, or of any
other purely speculative question you please; and above all, one more
urgent: for there are counter-blows in i