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THE CONVENT AS AN ABSTRACT IDEA
This book is a drama, whose leading personage is the Infinite.
Man is the second.
Such being the case, and a convent having happened to be on
our road, it has been our duty to enter it.
Why?
Because the convent, which is common to the Orient as well
as to the Occident, to antiquity as well as to modern times, to
paganism, to Buddhism, to Mahometanism, as well as to Christianity,
is one of the optical apparatuses applied by man to the Infinite.
This is not the place for enlarging disproportionately on
certain ideas; nevertheless, while absolutely maintaining our
reserves, our restrictions, and even our indignations, we must
say that every time we encounter man in the Infinite, either well
or ill understood, we feel ourselves overpowered with respect.
There is, in the synagogue, in the mosque, in the pagoda, in the
wigwam, a hideous side which we execrate, and a sublime side,
which we adore.
What a contemplation for the mind, and what endless food for
thought, is the reverberation of God upon the human wall!
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