day, in the twentieth century, all the bygone
centuries and all of them alive, are still subsisting. When a supposed
error reappears, it must be, believe me, that it has not ceased to be
true in part, just as when one who was dead reappears, it must be that
he was not wholly dead.

Yes, I know well that others before me have felt what I feel and
express; that many others feel it to-day, although they keep silence
about it. Why do I not keep silence about it too? Well, for the very
reason that most of those who feel it are silent about it; and yet,
though they are silent, they obey in silence that inner voice. And I do
not keep silence about it because it is for many the thing which must
not be spoken, the abomination of abominations--_infandum_--and I
believe that it is necessary now and again to speak the thing which must
not be spoken. But if it leads to nothing? Even if it should lead only
to irritating the devotees of progress, those who believe that truth is
consolation, it would lead to not a little. To irritating them and
making them say: Poor fellow! if he would only use his intelligence to
better purpose!... Someone perhaps will add that I do not know what I
say, to which I shall reply that perhaps he may be right--and being
right is such a little thing!--but that I feel what I say and I know
what I feel and that suffices me. And that it is better to be lacking in
reason than to have too much of it.

And the reader who perseveres in reading me will also see how out of
this abyss of despair hope may arise, and how this critical position may
be the well-spring of human, profoundly human, action and effort, and of
solidarity and even of progress. He will see its pragmatic
justification. And he will see how, in order to work, and to work
efficaciously and morally, there is no need of either of these two
conflicting certainties, either that of faith or that of reason, and how
still less is there any need--this never under any circumstances--to
shirk the problem of the immortality of the soul, or to distort it
idealistically--that is to say, hypocritically. The reader will see how
this uncertainty, with the suffering that accompanies it, and the
fruitless struggle to escape from it, may be and is a basis for action
and morals.

And in the fact that it serves as a basis for action and morals, this
feeling of uncertainty and the inward struggle between reason on the one
hand and faith and the passionate longing for