rise. What can education and true direction require? What love desires in its highest and most disinterested idea that the young creature may rise. Take this word in both its acceptations. She wishes the child may rise above herself, up to the level of him who helps her, and even above him, if he can. The stronger party, far from absorbing the weaker, wishes to make him strong, and put him on an equal footing. She endeavours to effect this by developing in him not only whatever is similar in their natures, but even whatever is characteristically distinctive between them, by exciting his free originality, provoking activity in this being born for action, and by appealing to the person, and what is most personal in the person, his will. The dearest wish of love is to excite the will, and the moral force of the person loved, to its highest degree to heroism!

The ideal of every mother, and it is the true one in education, is to make a hero, a man powerful in actions and fruitful in works, who may be endowed with will, power, and a creative genius. Let us compare with this ideal, that of ecclesiastical education and direction.

The latter wishes to make a saint, and not a hero : it believes these two words to be diametrically opposite. It is mistaken also in its idea of sanctity, in making it consist not in being in harmony with God, but in absorption in God.

All this priestly theology, as soon as we provoke

it a little, and do not allow it to remain in inconsistency, falls headlong down the irresistible declivity, right into this abyss. There it ended, as it was obliged to end, in the seventeenth century. The great directors of that time, who, by being the last, had the advantage of analysing the thing, show us perfectly well the bottom of it, which is annihilation, the art of annihilating activity, the will, and personality, "Annihilate ?". "Yes, but in God.". "His active and cre

"But does God wish it?"

ating spirit must wish us to resemble him, to act, and to create. You have a wrong idea of God the Father."

This false theory is convicted in practice. By following it closely we have seen that it arrives at quite an opposite goal. It promises to absorb man in God; and it consoles him for this absorption, by promising him that he shall participate in the infinite existence which he is entering. But, in reality, it does nothing more than absorb man in man, in infinite littleness. The person directed being annihilated in the director, of two persons there remains but one; the other, as a person, has perished, and become a thing.

Devout direction, noticed in our first part among the most loyal directors, and among very pious women, gives me two results, which I state thus :

1st, A saint who discourses for a long time with

a female saint on the love of God, infallibly converts her to love.

2dly, If this love remain pure, it is a chance; it is because the man is a saint; for the person directed, losing gradually all her own will, must, in course of time, be at his mercy. We must suppose, also, that he who may do every thing will take no advantage of it, and that this miracle of abstinence will be renewed every day. The priest has always thought himself, in his interior strength, to be a great master in matters of love. Accustomed to control his own passions, to be deceitful, and to beat about the bush, he believes he is the exclusive possessor of the real secret, how passions are to be managed. He advances under cover of ambiguous expressions, and he advances in safety; for he is patient, and waits till he has gained a footing in habits and in customs. He laughs in his sleeve at our impassioned vivacity, imprudent frankness, and ungoverned impetuosity, which cause us to pass wide of the mark.

If love was the art of surprising the soul, of subjugating it by authority and insinuation, and of conquering it by fear, in order to gain it by indulgence, so that, when wearied and drowsy with exertion, it may allow itself to be enveloped and caught in an invisible net; if this were love, then certainly the priest would be its great teacher.

Clever masters! learn from ignorant and unskilful men, that, with all your little arts, you have never

known what is this sacred thing.

It requires a sincere heart; and loyalty in the means, as its first condition: the second is, that generosity which does not wish to enslave, but rather to set at liberty and fortify what it loves; to love it in liberty; leaving it free to love or not to love.

Come, my saints! and listen to worldly men on this subject to dramatists, to Molière, and to Shakspeare. These have known more about it than you. The lover is asked who is the loved object? of what name? of what figure? and of what shape? "Just as high as my heart.” *

A noble standard, which is that of love, as well as that of education, and of every kind of initiation: a sincerely wished for equality, the desire of raising the other person to one's own height, and of making her one's equal, "just as high as one's heart,” said Shakspeare; and Molière has done the same. The latter was, in the highest degree, "the educating genius†;" one who wishes to raise and set free, and who loves in equality, liberty, and intelligence. He has denounced, as a crimet, that unworthy love which surprises the soul by keeping it apart in ignorance, and holding it as a slave and captive.

In his life, conformable to his works, he gave the noble example of that generous love, which wishes

*

Shakspeare's "As you Like it.”

†The ingenious and very just remark of E. Noël.
In his Ecole des Femmes, and elsewhere,

that the person loved should be his equal, and as much as himself, which strengthens her, and gives her arms even against himself. This is love, and this is faith. It is the belief that sooner or later the emancipated being must return to the most worthy. And who is the most worthy? Is it not he who wished to be loved with liberty?

Nevertheless, let us well weigh the meaning of this important word his equal, and all the dangers it may contain. It is as if this creator said to the creature, whom he has made and is now emancipating, "Thou art free; the power under which thou hast grown up holds thee no more: being away from me, and attached to me now only by the heart and memory, thou mayest act and think elsewhere, nay, against me if thou wilt!”

This is what is so sublime in love; and the reason why God pardons it so many weaknesses! It is because in its unlimited disinterestedness, wishing to make a free being, and to be loved freely by it, it creates its own peril. The saying, "You may act elsewhere," contains also "to love elsewhere," and the chance of losing the object. That hand, so weak before, but now strengthened and made bold by all the cares of affection, receives the sword from love: even would she turn it against him, she can; there is nothing to hinder her, for he has reserved nothing for himself.

Pray let us exalt this idea, and extend it from the