"Man's spirit is naturally superstitious, I think: that is the secret of all this nonsense about worship. He is ignorant, and fears and trembles. Enlighten him, and he will walk upright and rely on himself alone."
"And what is man, that he should rely on himself alone?" responded Eugene; "a being weaker than the lower animals, needing even more protection than they do to defend him from the inclemency of the weather, and obliged to labor to provide food sufficient for himself, while the food of calves and goats grows beneath their feet. When young, man is powerless; when sick, powerless; when old, powerless; nay, without aid he is usually powerless."
"But man generic," said the duchess, "can aid this greatly. Combinations might be formed which would remedy this individual powerlessness. Such, they tell me, are in contemplation; and when formed, superstition will be crushed under the chariot-wheels of improvement in man's physical condition."
"It might," said Eugene, "if any degree of mere animal enjoyment could content man, but it cannot. Let man surround himself with luxury to the highest possible degree, there will still be the feeling that a higher life exists for him. Man's soul, the divine spark inbreathed by God, can rest only in God. Glimpses of high destinies still float around us, and in our unsatisfied longings—unsatisfied when most provided for—we find the pledge that we were made for higher things."'
"Mere Platonic crudities these, my dear brother," said the duchess, with a smile. "Beware! you are on a dangerous path; themes like these have misled many a noble mind. And look! Euphrasie is smiling an assent to your mysticisms; she thinks you are already half-way on the road to Catholicity."
"No matter by what road we are led, provided we arrive at truth," responded Eugene. "But you are mistaken in your conjecture; I have not been studying Platonism but Christianity."
"It may be Christianity is but a form of Platonism," said the duchess: "at least many learned men have so asserted. What Christianity was intended to be by its founder I can hardly make out; but it seems to have borrowed largely from the mystics as it travelled through philosophy."
"Nay," said Eugene, "to me that appears a gratuitous assumption. That to a superficial observer there may be some grounds of resemblance between the ideas of spirituality, abstractly considered, entertained by the mystics and by the Christians. I grant—as also that, to a certain extent, man may be capable of deducing these abstract ideas from observation of nature's workings. Nature is a manifestation of the spirit of God, consequently there always must exist a certain correlative teaching in nature corresponding to a higher spiritual teaching, though man's blindness will not always perceive it; but this is only an exterior relationship. The spirit of Christianity enfolds a principle which natural philosophy does not touch."
"A principle which is the mere creature of human imagination." said the duchess; "nay, I might say it is the offspring of discontent. Man is dissatisfied with his lot, and frames a heaven for the future. He were more wisely employed in remedying the present evil."
"If it were possible, you should say, sister. How many evils can man avert? Do we not suffer, from natural predisposition, diseases of various kinds? Do we not suffer in our affections from the misconduct of others? And do not the majority suffer an enforced toil, which absorbs their time, and leaves them neither energy nor leisure for speculative thoughts? They must work or die. Now, philosophy would but render a man discontented with this state of things—a state which leaves the toil to one, and the enjoyment, supposititious perhaps, but still [{331}] apparent enjoyment to another. Force can compel it—the force of unsatisfied nature; but Christianity hallows it—sanctifies it—by teaching how all apparent hardships may nourish virtue and unite the soul to God."