Despair brings death, but prayer does away with despair; and when a man
has prayed he feels himself supported by new confidence and endowed with
power to act. As to the means employed by the Sovereign Master of human
beings to avert impending dangers from those who beseech His assistance,
I confess that the knowledge of them is above the intelligence of man,
who can but wonder and adore. Our ignorance becomes our only resource,
and happy, truly happy; are those who cherish their ignorance! Therefore
must we pray to God, and believe that He has granted the favour we have
been praying for, even when in appearance it seems the reverse. As to the
position which our body ought to assume when we address ourselves to the
Creator, a line of Petrarch settles it:

'Con le ginocchia della mente inchine.'

Man is free, but his freedom ceases when he has no faith in it; and the
greater power he ascribes to faith, the more he deprives himself of that
power which God has given to him when He endowed him with the gift of
reason. Reason is a particle of the Creator's divinity. When we use it
with a spirit of humility and justice we are certain to please the Giver
of that precious gift. God ceases to be God only for those who can admit
the possibility of His non-existence, and that conception is in itself
the most severe punishment they can suffer.

Man is free; yet we must not suppose that he is at liberty to do
everything he pleases, for he becomes a slave the moment he allows his
actions to be ruled by passion. The man who has sufficient power over
himself to wait until his nature has recovered its even balance is the
truly wise man, but such beings are seldom met with.

The reader of these Memoirs will discover that I never had any fixed aim