HKB
I was confused but not converted, and as I made no reply, he pressed my hand and added, with a slight touch of irony, "He will be a little Gosselin."
M. Pinault, there can be no question, was far above M. Gosselin in respect to his natural force and the hardihood with which he took up certain views. Like another Diogenes, he saw how hollow and conventional were a host of things which my worthy director regarded as articles of faith. But he did not shake me for a moment. I have never ceased to put faith in the intelligence of man. M. Gosselin, by his confidence in scholasticism, confirmed me in my rationalism, though not to so great an extent as M. Manier, one of the professors of philosophy. He was a man of unswerving honesty, whose opinions were in harmony with those of the moderate universitarian school, at that time so decried by the clergy. He had a great liking for the Scottish philosophers, and gave me Thomas Reid to study. He steadied my thoughts very much, and by the aid of his authority and that of M. Gosselin, I was enabled to put away the exaggerations of M. Pinault; my conscience was at rest, and I even got to think that the contempt for scholasticism and reason, so stoutly professed by the mystics, was not devoid of heresy, and of the worst of all heresies in the eyes of the Company of St. Sulpice, viz., the Fideism of M. de Lamennais.
Thus I gave myself over without scruple to my love for study, living in complete solitude during' two whole years. I did not once come to Paris, readily as leaves were granted. I never joined in any games, passing the recreation hours on a seat in the grounds, and trying to keep myself warm by wearing two or three overcoats. The heads of the college, better advised than I was, told me how bad it was for a lad of my age to take no exercise. I had scarcely done growing before I began to stoop. But my passion for study was too strong for me, and I gave way to it all the more readily because I believed it to be a wholesome one. I was blind to all else, but how could I suppose that the ardour for thought which I heard praised in Malebranche and so many other saintly and illustrious men was blameworthy in me, and was fated to bring about a result which I should have repudiated with indignation if it had been foreshadowed to me.