free and spontaneous.
Whoever has had experience of this _rationabile obsequium_ cannot put
up with any other. An order is a humiliation whosoever has to obey is
a _capitis minor_ sullied on the very threshold of the higher life.
Ecclesiastical obedience has nothing lowering about it; for it is
voluntary, and those who do not get on together can separate. In one
of my Utopian dreams of an aristocratic society, I have provided that
there should only be one penalty, death; or rather, that all serious
offences should be visited by a reprimand from the recognised
authorities which no man of honour would survive. I should never have
done to be a soldier, for I should either have deserted or committed
suicide. I am afraid that the new military institutions which do
not leave a place for any exceptions or equivalents will have a very
lowering moral effect. To compel every one to obey is fatal to genius
and talent. The man who has passed years in the carriage of arms after
the German fashion is dead to all delicate work whether of the hand or
brain. Thus it is that Germany would be devoid of all talent since she
has been engrossed in military pursuits, but for the Jews, to whom she
is so ungrateful.

The generation which was from fifteen to twenty years of age, at the
brilliant but fleeting epoch of which I am speaking, is now between
fifty-five and sixty. It will be asked whether this generation has
realised the unbounded hopes which the ardent spirit of our great
preceptor had conceived. The answer must unquestionably be in the
negative, for if these hopes had been fulfilled the face of the world
would have been completely changed. M. Dupanloup was too little in
love with his age, and too uncompromising to its spirit, to mould men
in accordance with the temper of the time. When I recall one of these
spiritual readings during which the master poured out the treasures of
his intelligence, the class-room with its serried benches upon which
clustered two hundred lads hushed in attentive respect, and when I set
myself to inquire whither have fled the two hundred souls, so closely
bound together by the ascendency of one man, I count more than one
case of waste and eccentricity; as might be expected, I can count
archbishops, bishops, and other dignitaries of the Church, all to a
certain extent enlightened and moderate in their views. I come upon
diplomatists, councillors of state, and others, whose honourable
careers would in some