world and is the individual man intended, after all, to find rest only in
an eternal childhood?

How many times have I asked myself these questions! Solitude has the
advantage or the danger of making us continually search more deeply into
the same ideas. As our discourse is only with ourself, we always give
the same direction to the conversation; we are not called to turn it to
the subject which occupies another mind, or interests another's feelings;
and so an involuntary inclination makes us return forever to knock at the
same doors!

I interrupted my reflections to put my attic in order. I hate the look
of disorder, because it shows either a contempt for details or an
unaptness for spiritual life. To arrange the things among which we have
to live, is to establish the relation of property and of use between them
and us: it is to lay the foundation of those habits without which man
tends to the savage state. What, in fact, is social organization but a
series of habits, settled in accordance with the dispositions of our
nature?

I distrust both the intellect and the morality of those people to whom
disorder is of no consequence--who can live at ease in an Augean stable.
What surrounds us, reflects more or less that which is within us. The
mind is like one of those dark lanterns which, in spite of everything,
still throw some light around. If our tastes did not reveal our
character, they would be no longer tastes, but instincts.

While I was arranging everything in my attic, my eyes rested on the
little almanac hanging over my chimney-piece. I looked for the day of
the month, and I saw these words written in large letters: "FETE DIEU!"