APPENDIX.
This volume was already in the press, when Abbé Cognat published in the Correspondant (January 25th, 1883) the letters which I wrote to him in 1845 and 1846.[23] As several of my friends told me that they had found them very interesting, I reproduce them here just as they were published.
Tréguier, August 14th, 1845.
My dear friend,
Few events of importance have occurred, but many thoughts and feelings have crowded in upon me since the day we parted. I am all the more glad to impart them to you because there is no one else to whom I can confide them. I am not alone, it is true, when I am with my mother; but there are many things that my tender regard for her compels me to keep back, and which, for the matter of that, she would not understand.
Nothing has occurred to advance the solution of the important problem of which, as is only natural, my mind is full. I have learnt nothing more, unless it be the immensity of the sacrifice which God required of me. A thousand painful details which I had never thought of have cropped up, with the effect of complicating the situation, and of showing me that the course dictated me by my conscience opened up a future of endless trouble. I should have to enter into long and painful details to make you understand exactly what I mean; and it must suffice if I tell you that the obstacles of which we have on various occasions spoken are as nothing by comparison with those which have suddenly started up before me. It was no small thing to brave an opinion which would, one knew, be very hard upon one, and to live on for long years an arduous life leading to one knew not what; but the sacrifice was not then consummated. God enjoins me to pierce with my own hand a heart upon which all the affection there is in my own has been poured out. Filial love had absorbed in me all the other affections of which I was capable, and which God did not bring into play within me. Moreover, there existed between my mother and myself many ties arising from a thousand impalpable details which can be better felt than described. This was the most painful part of the sacrifice which God required of me. I have hitherto only spoken to her about Germany, and that is enough to make her very unhappy. I tremble to think of what will happen when she knows all. Her tender caresses go to my very heart, as do her plans for my future, of which she is ever talking to me, and in which I have not the courage to disappoint her. She is standing close to me as I write this to you. Did she but know! I would sacrifice everything to her except my duty and my conscience. Yes, if God exacted of me, in order to spare her this pain, that I should extinguish my thought and condemn myself to a plodding, vulgar existence, I would submit. Many a time I have endeavoured to deceive myself, but it is not in human power to believe or not to believe at will. I wish that I could stifle within me the faculty of self-examination, for it is this which has caused all my unhappiness. Fortunate are the children who all their life long do but sleep and dream! I see around me men of pure and simple lives whom Christianity has had the power to make virtuous and happy. But I have noticed that none of them have the critical faculty; for which let them bless God!
I cannot tell you to what an extent I am spoilt and made much of here, and it is this which grieves me so. Did they but know what is passing in my heart! I am fearful at times lest my conduct may be hypocritical, but I have satisfied my conscience in this respect. God forbid that I should be a cause of scandal to these simple souls!
When I see in what an inextricable net God has involved me while I was asleep, I am unable to resist fatalistic thoughts, and I may often have sinned in that respect; yet I never have doubted my Father which is in Heaven or His goodness. Upon the contrary, I have always given Him thanks, and have never felt myself nearer to Him than at moments like those. The heart learns only by suffering, and I believe with Kant that God is only to be known through the heart. Then too I was a Christian, and resolved ever to remain one. But can orthodoxy be critical? Had I but been born a German Protestant, for then I should have been in my proper place! Herder ended his days a bishop, and he was only just a Christian; but in the Catholic religion you must be orthodox. Catholicism is a bar of iron, and will not admit anything like reasoning.
Forgive me, my dear friend, the wish which I have just expressed and which does not even come from that part in me which still believes without knowing. You must, in order to be orthodox, believe that I am reduced to my present condition by my own fault; and that is very hard. Nevertheless, I am quite disposed to think that it is to a great extent my own fault. He who knows his own heart will always answer, “Yes,” when he is told, “It is your own fault.” Nothing of all that has happened to me is easier for me to admit than that. I will not be as obstinate as Job with regard to my own innocence. However pure of offence I might believe myself to be, I would only pray God to have pity on me. The perusal of the Book of Job delights me; for in this Book is to be found poetry in its most divine form. The Book of Job renders palpable the mysteries which one feels within one’s own heart, and to which one has been painfully endeavouring to give tangible shape.
None the less do I resolutely continue to follow out my thoughts. Nothing will induce me to abandon this, even if I should be compelled to appear to sacrifice it to the earning of my daily bread. God had, in order to sustain me in my resolve, reserved for this critical moment an event of real significance from the intellectual and moral standpoint. I have studied Germany, and it has seemed to me that I have been entering some holy place. All that I have lighted upon in the course of the study is pure, elevating, moral, beautiful, and touching. Oh! My Soul! Yes, it is a real treasure, and the continuation of Jesus Christ. Their moral qualities excite my liveliest admiration. How strong and gentle they are! I believe that it is in this direction that we must look for the advent of Christ I regard this apparition of a new spirit as analogous to the birth of Christianity, except as to the difference of form. But this is of little importance, for it is certain that when the event which is to renovate the world shall recur, it will not in the mode of its accomplishment resemble that which has already occurred. I am attentively following the wave of enthusiasm which is at this moment spreading over the north. M. Cousin has just started to study its progress for himself, I am referring to Ronge and Czerski, whose names you must have heard mentioned. May God pardon me for liking them, even if they should not be pure: for what I like in them, as in all others who have evoked my enthusiasm, is a certain standard of attractiveness and morality which I have assigned them; in short, I admire in them my ideal. It may be asked whether or not they come up to this standard. That to my mind is quite a secondary matter.