Let us fight, but let us make a distinction. The peculiar property of truth is never to commit excesses. What need has it of exaggeration? There is that which it is necessary to destroy, and there is that which it is simply necessary to elucidate and examine. What a force is kindly and serious examination! Let us not apply a flame where only a light is required.
So, given the nineteenth century, we are opposed, as a general proposition, and among all peoples, in Asia as well as in Europe, in India as well as in Turkey, to ascetic claustration. Whoever says cloister, says marsh. Their putrescence is evident, their stagnation is unhealthy, their fermentation infects people with fever, and etiolates them; their multiplication becomes a plague of Egypt. We cannot think without affright of those lands where fakirs, bonzes, santons, Greek monks, marabouts, talapoins, and dervishes multiply even like swarms of vermin.
This said, the religious question remains. This question has certain mysterious, almost formidable sides; may we be permitted to look at it fixedly.
IV
The Convent from the Point of View of Principles
Men unite themselves and dwell in communities. By virtue of what right? By virtue of the right of association.
They shut themselves up at home. By virtue of what right? By virtue of the right which every man has to open or shut his door.
They do not come forth. By virtue of what right? By virtue of the right to go and come, which implies the right to remain at home.
There, at home, what do they do?