We have lost the mystical sense;
and what is religion without mysticism? A rose without perfume.
The words _repentance_ and _sanctification_ are always on our lips. But
_adoration_ and _consolation_ are also two essential elements in
religion, and we ought perhaps to make more room for them than we do.
April 28, 1861.--In the same way as a dream transforms according to its
nature, the incidents of sleep, so the soul converts into psychical
phenomena the ill-defined impressions of the organism. An uncomfortable
attitude becomes nightmare; an atmosphere charged with storm becomes
moral torment. Not mechanically and by direct causality; but imagination
and conscience engender, according to their own nature, analogous
effects; they translate into their own language, and cast into their own
mold, whatever reaches them from outside. Thus dreams may be helpful to
medicine and to divination, and states of weather may stir up and set
free within the soul vague and hidden evils. The suggestions and
solicitations which act upon life come from outside, but life produces
nothing but itself after all. Originality consists in rapid and clear
reaction against these outside influences, in giving to them our
individual stamp. To think is to withdraw, as it were, into one's
impression--to make it clear to one's self, and then to put it forth in
the shape of a personal judgment.
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