PART III
Ainsi de ce désir que le primitif croyait être une des forces de l’univers et d’où il fit sortir tout son panthéon, le musulman a fait Allâh, l’être parfait auquel il s’abandonne. De même que le primitif logeait dans la cuiller promenée processionnellement son désir de voir l’eau abreuver la terre, ainsi le musulman croit qu’Allâh réalise la perfection en dehors de lui. Sous une forme plus abstraite l’argument ontologique de Descartes conclura de l’idée du parfait à son existence, sans s’apercevoir qu’il y a là, non pas un raisonnement, un argument, mais une imagination. Et cependant, à bien entendre les paroles des grands croyants, c’est en eux qu’ils portent ce dieu: il n’est que la conscience de l’effort continuel qui est en nous. La grâce du Janséniste n’est autre que cet effort intérieur.’
Doutté—Magie et Religion.
CHAPTER XXI
‘WHAT IS CARTESIANISM?’
With the return of hope quite involuntarily Madeleine began once more to pray. But to whom was she praying? Surely not to the hard, remote God of the Jansenists, for that, she knew by bitter experience, would avail her nothing. Jansenism led straight to the ‘Heavenly Rape’; of that she was convinced. If, as in spite of herself she could not doubt, there was only one God, and He such a Being as the Jansenists presented Him, then she must not pray, for prayers only served to remind Him of her existence, and that He should completely forget her was her only hope of escape from the ‘ravishing arms.’
But ghostly weapons she must have with which to fight for success on Saturday. If not prayers, then something she could do; if not the belief in a Divine Ally, then some theory of the universe which justified her in hoping. For in Madeleine there was this much of rationalism—perverted and scholastic though it might be—that for her most fantastic superstitions she always felt the need of a semi-philosophical basis.
Suddenly she remembered Jacques’s words in the Place Maubert: ‘’Tis the will that Descartes writes of—a magic sword like to the ones in Amadis.’ To will, was not that the same as to desire? Mère Agnès had insisted on the importance of desiring. She had talked about the adamant of desire that neither the tools of earth can break nor the chemistry of Hell resolve. Hours of anguish could testify to that adamant being hers, but what if the adamant were a talisman, and that in its possession lay the certainty of success? She must find out about Cartesianism.
She ran into the parlour.