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Perfect correspondence between the will and the law never occurs in this life, because the sensibility never allows us to attain a permanently good disposition, armed against every temptation; our will can never be holy, but at best virtuous, and our lawful disposition never escape the consciousness of a constant tendency to transgression, or at least of impurity.
The reader will be more benefited by existing facts than sanguine anticipations, or visionary predictions. A German medical writer calculates that one in 150 of those who frequently attend theatres become diseased and die, from the impurity of the atmosphere.
"Love is the most virtuous sentiment; from it emanates all greatness. Only the barbarians calumniate it, hiding it as a dishonest thing." "I know a people," said Actæon, "among whom love, the divine fusion of bodies, is looked upon as an impurity. Israel is an amalgamation of miserable tribes, occupying an arid region surrounding a temple of barbaric construction, copied from all peoples.
Then, when in his last throes his bonnet fell, it was miraculous to see the defunct arise, and after he had spread a nice handkerchief on the stage, and there deposited his head-dress, free from impurity, philosophically resume his dead condition; but it was not yet over, for the exigent audience, not content "that when the man were dead, why there an end," insisted on a repetition of the awful scene, which the highly flattered corpse executed three several times to the gratification of the cruel and torment-loving assembly.
This pained him acutely, for he never forgot that she had been the means of his introduction to Cornelia, from whom he could not wholly dissociate her: and the idea that any prospective shred of impurity hung about one who had even looked on his beloved, was utter anguish to the keen sentimentalist.
Within the emotional sphere itself, it may be added, there is a tendency to disharmony in women owing to the contradictory nature of the feelings which are traditionally impressed upon her, a contradiction which dates back indeed to the identification of sacredness and impurity at the dawn of civilization.
In the church, the impurity and the purity are similarly circumstanced, n. 431. There are a sphere of adulterous love and a sphere of conjugial love, n. 434. The sphere of adulterous love ascends from hell, and the sphere of conjugial love descends from heaven, n. 435. In each world those two spheres meet, but do not unite, n. 436.
One must not sleep, for example, or even lie down to rest, with his feet turned towards it. One must not pray before it, or even stand before it, while in a state of religious impurity such as that entailed by having touched a corpse, or attended a Buddhist funeral, or even during the period of mourning for kindred buried according to the Buddhist rite.
What do I know of God that I do not owe to Jesus Christ? Nothing. You may guess much, you may hope a little, you may dread a great deal, you may question more than all, but you will know nothing. Well, then, further, this solemn emblem stands for impurity.
Our minds fall very readily under the spell of such unmitigated words as Purity and Chastity. Only death beyond decay, absolute non-existence, can be Pure and Chaste. Life is impurity, fact is impure. Everything has traces of alien matter; our very health is dependent on parasitic bacteria; the purest blood in the world has a tainted ancestor, and not a saint but has evil thoughts.
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