Ideal, absolute, perfection, infinite,—all mean the same.
[CHAPTER VII.]
CARE TO BE EXERCISED IN CONDEMNING.
History and philosophy have eternal duties which are at the same time simple duties. To oppose Caiaphas as a high priest, Draco as a judge, Trimalcion as a law-giver, Tiberius as an emperor,—that is a duty simple, direct, and clear, and gives no room for doubt. But the right to live apart, even with its objections and its abuse, must be demonstrated and handled carefully; monasticism is a human problem.
In speaking of convents, these homes of error but of innocence, of wanderings from the true path but of good intentions, of ignorance but of devotion, of torture but of martyrdom, we must almost always say yes and no.
A convent is a contradiction: its aim, salvation; its means, sacrifice. The convent is supreme selfishness having as its result supreme abnegation.
To abdicate in order to reign seems to be the motto of monasticism.
In the convent, they suffer in order to enjoy. They take out a letter of credit on death. They discount in earthly night the light of heaven. In the convent hell is endured in advance of the heirship to paradise.
The taking of the veil or the frock is a suicide recompensed by eternity.