CHAPTER XV. THE MYSTICS

En voyant l'aveuglement et la misere de l'homme et ces contrarietes etonnantes qui se decouvrent dans sa nature, et regardant tout l'univers muet, et l'homme sans lumiere, abandonne a lui-meme et comme egare dans ce recoin de l'umvers, sans savoir qui l'y a mis, ce qu'il y est venu faire, ce qu'il deviendra en mourant, j'entre en effroi comme un homme qu'on aurait porte endormi dans une ile deserte et effroyable, et qui s'eveillerait sans connaitre ou il est et sans avoir aucun moyen d'en sortir. Et sur cela j'admire comment on n'entre pas en desespoir d'un si miserable etat. Je vois d'autres personnes aupres de moi de semblable nature, et je leur demande s'ils sont mieux instruits que moi, et ils me disent que non Et sur cela, ces miserables egares, ayant regarde autour d'eux, et ayant vu quelques objets plaisants, s'y sont donnes et s'y sont attaches Pour moi je n'ai pu m'y arreter ni me reposer dans la societe de ces personnes, en tout semblables a moi, miserables comme moi, impuissants comme moi. Je vois qu'ils ne m'aideraient pas a mourir, je mourrai seul, il faut donc faire comme si j'etais seul or, si j'etais seul, je ne batirais pas des maisons, je ne m'embarrasserais point dans des occupations tumultuaires, je ne chercherais l'estime de personne, mais je tacherais settlement a decouvrir la verite.

Ainsi, considerant combien il y a d'apparence qu'il y a autre chose que ce que je vois, j'ai recherche si ce Dieu dont tout le monde parle n'aurait pas laisse quelques marques de lui. Je regarde de toutes parts et ne vois partout qu' obscuritd. La nature ne m'offre rien que ne soit matiere de doute et d'inquietude. Si je n'y voyais rien qui marquat une divinite, je me determinerais a n'en rien croire. Si je voyais partout les marques d'un Createur, je me reposerais en paix dans la foi. Mais voyant trop pour nier, et trop peu pour m'assurer, je suis dans un etat a plaindre, et ou j'ai souhaite cent fois que si un Dieu soutient la nature, elle le marquat sans Equivoque; et que, si les marques qu'elle en donne sont trompeuses, elle les supprimat tout a fait; qu'elle dit tout ou rien, afin que je visse quel parti je dois suivre.

When I see the blindness and misery of man and the astonishing contradictions revealed in his nature, and observe the whole universe mute, and man without light, abandoned to himself, as though lost in this corner of the universe, without knowing who put him here, or what he has come here to do, or what will become of him in dying, I feel fear like a man who has been carried when asleep into a desert and fearful island, and has waked without knowing where he is and without having means of rescue. And thereupon I wonder how man escapes despair at so miserable an estate. I see others about me, like myself, and I ask them if they are better informed than I, and they tell me no. And then these wretched wanderers, after looking about them and seeing some pleasant object, have given themselves up and attached themselves to it. As for me I cannot stop there, or rest in the company of these persons, wholly like myself, miserable like me, impotent like me. I see that they would not help me to die, I shall die alone, I must then act as though alone, but if I were alone I should not build houses, I should not fret myself with bustling occupations, I should seek the esteem of no one, but I should try only to discover the truth.

So, considering how much appearance there is that something exists other than what I see I have sought whether this God of Whom every one talks may not have left some marks of Himself. I search everywhere, and see only obscurity everwhere. Nature offers me nothing but matter of possible doubt and disquiet. If I saw there nothing to mark a divinity, I should make up my mind to believe nothing of it. If I saw everywhere the marks of a Creator, I should rest in peace in faith. But seeing too much to deny, and too little to affirm, I am in a pitiable state, where I have an hundred times wishes that, if a God supports nature, she would show it without equivocation; and that, if the marks she gives are deceptive, she would suppress them wholly; that she say all of nothing, that I may see my path.

This is the true Prometheus lyric, but when put back in its place it refuses to rest at Port-Royal which has a right to nothing but precision; it has but one real home - the Abbaye-de-Saint-Victor. The mind that recoils from itself can only commit a sort of ecstatic suicide; it must absorb itself in God; and in the bankruptcy of twelfth-century science the Western Christian seemed actually on the point of attainment; he, like Pascal, touched God behind the veil of scepticism.

The schools had already proved one or two points which need never have been discussed again. In essence, religion was love; in no case was it logic. Reason can reach nothing except through the senses; God, by essence, cannot be reached through the senses; if He is to be known at all, He must be known by contact of spirit with spirit, essence with essence; directly; by emotion; by ecstasy; by absorption of our existence in His; by substitution of his spirit for ours. The world had no need to wait five hundred years longer in order to hear this same result reaffirmed by Pascal. Saint Francis of Assisi had affirmed it loudly enough, even if the voice of Saint Bernard had been less powerful than it was. The Virgin had asserted it in tones more gentle, but any one may still see how convincing, who stops a moment to feel the emotion that lifted her wonderful Chartres spire up to God.