My experience of life has, therefore, been very pleasant; and I do not think that there are many human beings happier than I am. I have a keen liking for the universe. There may have been moments when subjective scepticism has gained a hold upon me, but it never made me seriously doubt of the reality, and the objections which it has evoked are sequestered by me as it were within an inclosure of forgetfulness; I never give them any thought, my peace of mind is undisturbed. Then, again, I have found a fund of goodness in nature and in society. Thanks to the remarkable good luck which has attended me all my life, and always thrown me into communication with very worthy men, I have never had to make sudden changes in my attitudes. Thanks, also, to an almost unchangeable good temper, the result of moral healthiness, which is itself the result of a well-balanced mind, and of tolerably good bodily health, I have been able to indulge in a quiet philosophy, which finds expression either in grateful optimism or playful irony. I have never gone through much suffering. I might even be tempted to think that nature has more than once thrown down cushions to break the fall for me. Upon one occasion, when my sister died, nature literally put me under chloroform, to save me a sight which would perhaps have created a severe lesion in my feelings, and have permanently affected the serenity of my thought.
Thus, I have to thank some one; I do not exactly know whom. I have had so much pleasure out of life that I am really not justified in claiming a compensation beyond the grave. I have other reasons for being irritated at death: he is levelling to a degree which annoys me; he is a democrat, who attacks us with dynamite; he ought, at all events, to await our convenience and be at our call. I receive many times in the course of the year an anonymous letter, containing the following words, always in the same handwriting: "If there should be such a place as hell after all?" No doubt the pious person who writes to me is anxious for the salvation of my soul, and I am deeply thankful for the same. But hell is a hypothesis very far from being in conformity with what we know from other sources of the divine mercy. Moreover, I can lay my hand on my heart and say that if there is such a place I do not think that I have done anything which would consign me to it. A short stay in purgatory would, perhaps, be just; I would take the chance of this, as there would be Paradise afterwards, and there would be plenty of charitable persons to secure indulgences, by which my sojourn would be shortened. The infinite goodness which I have experienced in this world inspires me with the conviction that eternity is pervaded by a goodness not less infinite, in which I repose unlimited trust.