y null. How should thoughts communicate freely from one to the
other when each one forbore a look into the bottom of his own mind?
Whatever one may feel, one knows that certain dogmas at any rate must be
blinked, set aside; and if it already amounts to an embarrassment when
the dogmas are discreet enough to stay within the limits traced for them
(that was the case, to sum all up, of those belonging to the beyond)
what is to be said when they pretend to mix themselves with life, to
rule life entirely as our laical and obligatory dogmas actually do? Just
you try to forget the dogma of your country! The new religion compelled
a return to the Old Testament. It was not to be made comfortable with
lip devotion and innocent rituals, hygienic and ridiculous, like
confession, Friday fasting, rest on Sunday, which once upon a time
incited the racy spirit of our "philosophers" during the period when the
people were free--under the kings. The new religion wanted all, was not
satisfied with less; all the man complete, his body, his blood, his life
and his thinking mind. Above all his blood. Since the time of the Aztecs
of Mexico never was there a divinity so gorged with blood. It would be
deeply unjust to say that the believers did not suffer from this. They
suffered, but they believed. Alas my poor brother men, for whom
suffering itself is a proof positive of the divine!...

Mr. and Mrs. Aubier suffered like the others, and like the others
adored. But from a growing boy one could not demand such abnegation of
heart, feeling and good sense. Pierre would have liked to comprehend at
least what it was that oppressed him. What a lot of questions burned
within which he could not utter! For the very first word of all was,
"But what if I don't believe in it at all!"--a blasphemy just to start
with. No, he could not speak out. They would have gazed at him in a
stupor, frightened, indignant--with sorrow and shame. And since he was
at that plastic age when the soul, with a bark still too tender,
wrinkles up at the slightest breeze that comes from outside and under
its furtive fingers molds its form shudderingly, he felt himself
beforehand sorrowful and ashamed. Ah! how they believed, all of them!
(But did they really all of them believe?) How was it they managed it
then?--One did not dare to ask. Not to believe, standing all alone among
all those who do believe, is like one who lacks some organ, superfluous
perchance, but one that all the othe