I
have a liking for such days as these; they revive one's converse with
one's self and make it possible to live the inner life; they are quiet
and peaceful, like a song in a minor key. We are nothing but thought,
but we feel our life to its very center. Our very sensations turn to
reverie. It is a strange state of mind; it is like those silences in
worship which are not the empty moments of devotion, but the full
moments, and which are so because at such times the soul, instead of
being polarized, dispersed, localized, in a single impression or
thought, feels her own totality and is conscious of herself. She tastes
her own substance. She is no longer played upon, colored, set in motion,
affected, from without; she is in equilibrium and at rest. Openness and
self-surrender become possible to her; she contemplates and she adores.
She sees the changeless and the eternal enwrapping all the phenomena of
time. She is in the religious state, in harmony with the general order,
or at least in intellectual harmony. For _holiness_, indeed, more is
wanted--a harmony of will, a perfect self-devotion, death to self and
absolute submission.
Psychological peace--that harmony which is perfect but virtual--is but
the zero, the potentiality of all numbers; it is not that moral peace
which is victorious over all ills, which is real, positive, tried by
experience, and able to face whatever fresh storms may assail it.
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