offered to him. In old days I used to say mass with the levity which in
time infects even the gravest things when we do them too often. Since
acquiring my new principles [of reverential scepticism] I celebrate it
with more veneration: I am overcome by the majesty of the Supreme Being,
by his presence, by the insufficiency of the human mind, which conceives
so ill what pertains to its author. When I approach the moment of
consecration, I collect myself for performing the act with all the
feelings required by the church and the majesty of the sacrament. I
strive to annihilate my reason before the Supreme Intelligence, saying,
Who art thou that thou shouldst measure infinite power?'[17]

The Savoyard Vicar is not imaginary. The acquiescence in indefinite
ideas for the sake of comforted emotions, and the abnegation of strong
convictions in order to make room for free and plenteous effusion, have
for us all the marks of a too familiar reality. Such a doctrine is an
everyday plea for self-deception, and a current justification for
illusion even among some of the finer spirits. They have persuaded
themselves not only that the life of the religious emotions is the
highest life, but that it is independent of the intellectual forms with
which history happens to have associated it. And so they refine and
sophisticate and make havoc with plain and honest interpretation, in
order to preserve a soft serenity of soul unperturbed.

Now, we are not at all concerned to dispute such positions as that
Feeling is the right starting-point of moral education; that in forming
character appeal should be to the heart rather than to the
understanding; that the only basis on which our faculties can be
harmoniously ordered is the preponderance of affection over reason.
These propositions open much grave and complex discussion, and they are
not to our present purpose. We only desire to state the evil of the