270
St. Augustine.—Reason would never submit, if it did not judge that there are some occasions on which it ought to submit. It is then right for it to submit, when it judges that it ought to submit.
271
Wisdom sends us to childhood. Nisi efficiamini sicut parvuli.[1]
272
There is nothing so conformable to reason as this disavowal of reason.
273
If we submit everything to reason, our religion will have no mysterious and supernatural element. If we offend the principles of reason, our religion will be absurd and ridiculous.
274
All our reasoning reduces itself to yielding to feeling.
But fancy is like, though contrary to feeling, so that we cannot distinguish between these contraries. One person says that my feeling is fancy, another that his fancy is feeling. We should have a rule. Reason offers itself; but it is pliable in every sense; and thus there is no rule.
275
Men often take their imagination for their heart; and they believe they are converted as soon as they think of being converted.
276
M. de Roannez said: "Reasons come to me afterwards, but at first a thing pleases or shocks me without my knowing the reason, and yet it shocks me for that reason which I only discover afterwards." But I believe, not that it shocked him for the reasons which were found afterwards, but that these reasons were only found because it shocks him.
- ↑ Matthew, xviii. 3.
