THE CONVENT FROM MORAL STANDPOINT.
Some men unite and live together. By what right? By the right of association.
They shut themselves up at home. By what right? By the right which every man has to keep his door open or shut.
They do not go out. By what right? By the right to go and come, which implies the right to stay at home.
There, at home, what do they do?
They speak in low tones; they lower their eyes; they work. They renounce the world, cities, sensual joys, pleasures, vanity, pride, interest. They are clad in coarse wool, or coarse canvas. Not one of them has any property of his own. In entering, he who was rich makes himself poor. Whatever he has he gives to them all. He who was what the world calls well born, the nobleman and the lord, is the equal of him who was a peasant. All have the same cell. All bear the same tonsure, wear the same frock, eat the same black bread, sleep on the same straw, die on the same ashes. The same sackcloth on the back, the same rope around the loins. If it is the rule to go barefoot, all go barefoot. One of them may have been a prince, this prince is the same shade as the others. No more titles, family names even have disappeared. They bear only Christian names. All bow beneath the equality of baptismal names. They have dissolved the fleshly family, and have formed in their community the spiritual family. They have no longer any other kindred than mankind. They help the poor, they heal the sick. They elect those whom they obey. They call each other "brother."
You stop me, and you exclaim, "But that is an ideal convent."
It is enough that such a convent is possible to make it my duty to take it into account.
This is the reason that in the preceding book I have spoken of a convent in a tone of respect. Putting aside the Middle Ages, putting aside Asia, reserving the consideration of the historical and political question from the purely philosophical point of view, outside of the necessities of militant politics, upon the condition that the monastery should be wholly voluntary, and should shut up only those who freely consent, I should always regard the claustral community with attentive and on some accounts reverend gravity. Where the community is, there is the commune; where the commune is, there is human right. The monastery is the result of the formula: Equality, Fraternity. Oh, how great is Liberty! What a glorious transfiguration! Liberty is all that is needed to transform the monastery into the republic.
Let us go on.
But these men or these women, who are behind these four walls, they wear sackcloth, they are equal, they call each other brother. Very well; but is there anything else that they do?
Yes.
What?
They look into the darkness, they fall upon their knees, and they clasp their hands.
What does that mean?
CHAPTER V.
PRAYER.
They pray.
To whom?
To God.
To pray to God,—what does this mean?
Is there an infinite power outside of us? Is this infinite power a unity, immanent and enduring,—necessarily material, because it is infinite, and if it lacked matter, in so far it would be circumscribed; necessarily intelligent, because it is infinite, and if it lacked intelligence, again it would be limited? Does this infinite power awaken in us the idea of the essence of things, while we can only ascribe to ourselves the idea of existence? In other words, is it not the Absolute of which we are the Relative?
While there is an infinite power outside of us, is there not an infinite power within us? Do not these two infinites (what a fearful plural!) rest one upon the other? Does not the second infinite depend upon the first? Is it not its mirror, its reflection, its echo, an abyss concentric with another abyss? Is this second infinite also intelligent? Does it think? Does it love? Has it a will? If both these infinites are intelligent, each of them has volition, and there is an Ego in the infinite above, as there is an Ego in the infinite below. The Ego in the one below is the soul; the Ego in the one above is God.
To bring by thought the infinite below in contact with the infinite above is called praying.
Let us take nothing from the human spirit; to suppress anything is wrong. Let us regenerate and transform it. Some of man's faculties are directed toward the Unknown,—thought, revery, prayer. The Unknown is an ocean. What is conscience? It is the mariner's compass of the Unknown. Thought, revery, prayer, these are great mysterious rays; let us respect them. Whither tend these grand radiations of the soul? Into the darkness; that is to say, to the light.
The grandeur of democracy is in its denying nothing and abjuring nothing of humanity. Next to the right of man comes the right of the soul.
To crush out fanaticism, and to reverence the infinite, such is the law. Let us not be content to prostrate ourselves under the tree of Creation, and to contemplate its immense branches full of stars. We have a duty,—to work for the human soul, to distinguish between mystery and miracle; to worship the incomprehensible and reject the absurd; to admit as inexplicable only what we must; to make faith more healthy, to remove from religion the superstitions that encumber it; to brush the cobwebs from the image of God.