he designs of Providence in respect to ourselves;
but we have next to no influence upon their accomplishment. _Quid
habes quod non accepisti_? The dogma of grace is the truest of all the
Christian dogmas.

My experience of life has, therefore, been very pleasant; and I do
not think that there are many human beings happier than I am. I have
a keen liking for the universe. There may have been moments when
subjective scepticism has gained a hold upon me, but it never made me
seriously doubt of the reality, and the objections which it has evoked
are sequestered by me as it were within an inclosure of forgetfulness;
I never give them any thought, my peace of mind is undisturbed. Then,
again, I have found a fund of goodness in nature and in society.
Thanks to the remarkable good luck which has attended me all my life,
and always thrown me into communication with very worthy men, I have
never had to make sudden changes in my attitudes. Thanks, also, to
an almost unchangeable good temper, the result of moral healthiness,
which is itself the result of a well-balanced mind, and of tolerably
good bodily health, I have been able to indulge in a quiet philosophy,
which finds expression either in grateful optimism or playful irony.
I have never gone through much suffering. I might even be tempted to
think that nature has more than once thrown down cushions to break the
fall for me. Upon one occasion, when my sister died, nature literally
put me under chloroform, to save me a sight which would perhaps have
created a severe lesion in my feelings, and have permanently affected
the serenity of my thought.

Thus, I have to thank some one; I do not exactly know whom. I have
had so much pleasure out of life that I am really not justified in
claiming a compensation beyond the grave. I have other reasons for
being irritated at death: he is levelling to a degree which annoys
me; he is a democrat, who attacks us with dynamite; he ought, at all
events, to await our convenience and be at our call. I receive many
times in the course of the year an anonymous letter, containing the
following words, always in the same handwriting: "If there should be
such a place as hell after all?" No doubt the pious person who
writes to me is anxious for the salvation of my soul, and I am deeply
thankful for the same. But hell is a hypothesis very far from being in
conformity with what we know from other sources of the divine mercy.
Moreover, I can lay my hand on