, and you will make of yourself a true
woman. By trying to be a bit of everything you become insignificant.
Napoleon the Great was a curse to mankind, but one thinks more of him
than of Napoleon the Little, who wasn't quite sure whether to be a curse
or a blessing. There is a self in every one of us; the end of our life
is to discern it, bring it out, make it actual. You don't yet know your
own self; you have not the courage to look into your heart and mind; you
keep over your eyes the bandage of dogmas in which you only half
believe. Your insincerity blights the natural qualities of your
intellect. You have so long tried to persuade yourself of the evil of
every way of thinking save ecclesiastical dogmatism, that you cannot
judge fairly even those to whom you are most friendly. Cannot you see
that the world has outgrown the possibility of one universal religion?
For good or for evil, each of us must find a religion in himself, and
you have no right whatever to condemn before you have understood.'

'You cannot say that you have any religion,' she said, facing him. He
saw to his astonishment that there had been tears in her eyes.

'You cannot say that I have none. The radical fault of your uninstructed
way of looking at things is that you imagine mankind and the world to be
matters of such simple explanation. You learn by heart a few maxims,
half a dozen phrases, and there is your key to every mystery. That is
the child's state of mind. You have never studied, you have never
thought. Your self-confidence is ludicrous; you and such as you do not
hesitate to judge offhand men who have spent a long life in the
passionate pursuit of wisdom. You have no reverence. It is the fault you
attribute to me, but wrongly; if you had ever brought an open mind to
our conversations, you would have understood that my reverence even for
your ideal is not a wit less than your own; it is only that I see it in
another light. You say that I have no religion: what if I have not? Are
one's final conclusions to be achieved in a year or two of early
manhood? I have my inner voices, and I try to understand them. Often
enough they are ambiguous, contradictory; I live in hope that their
bidding will become clearer. I search for meanings, try to understand
myself, strive after knowledge.'

'You might as well have been born a pagan. One voice has spoken; its
bidding is the sufficient and only guide.'

'Say rather that so it seems to you. Your inheri