non-religious cases the new man may also be born either gradually
or suddenly.

The French philosopher Jouffroy has left an eloquent memorial of his
own "counter-conversion," as the transition from orthodoxy to
infidelity has been well styled by Mr. Starbuck. Jouffroy's doubts had
long harassed him; but he dates his final crisis from a certain night
when his disbelief grew fixed and stable, and where the immediate
result was sadness at the illusions he had lost.

"I shall never forget that night of December," writes Jouffroy, "in
which the veil that concealed from me my own incredulity was torn. I
hear again my steps in that narrow naked chamber where long after the
hour of sleep had come I had the habit of walking up and down. I see
again that moon, half-veiled by clouds, which now and again illuminated
the frigid window-panes. The hours of the night flowed on and I did
not note their passage. Anxiously I followed my thoughts, as from
layer to layer they descended towards the foundation of my
consciousness, and, scattering one by one all the illusions which until
then had screened its windings from my view, made them every moment
more clearly visible.

"Vainly I clung to these last beliefs as a shipwrecked sailor clings to
the fragments of his vessel; vainly, frightened at the unknown void in
which I was about to float, I turned with them towards my childhood, my
family, my country, all that was dear and sacred to me: the inflexible
current of my thought was too strong--parents, family, memory, beliefs,
it forced me to let go of everything. The investigation went on more
obstinate and more severe as it drew near its term, and did not stop
until the end was reached. I knew then that in the depth of my mind
nothing was left that stood erect.

"This moment was a frightful one; and when towards morning I threw
myself exhausted on my bed, I seemed to feel my earlier life, so
smiling and so full, go out like a fire, and before me another life
opened, sombre and unpeopled, where in future I must live alone, alone
with my fatal thought which had exiled me thither, and which I was
tempted to curse. The days which followed this discovery were the
saddest of my life."[93]

[93] Th. Jouffroy: Nouveaux Melanges philosophiques, 2me edition, p.
83. I add two other cases of counter-conversion dating from a certain
moment. The first is from Professor Starbuck's manuscript collection,
and the narrator is a woman.