In the _Essai_, my independence in matters of religion and politics is complete; I examine everything: a _Republican_, I serve the Monarchy; a _philosopher_, I honour religion. These are not contradictions: they are forced consequences of the uncertainty of theory and the certainty of practice among men. My mind, constructed to believe in nothing, not even in myself, constructed to despise everything, splendours and miseries, peoples and kings, has nevertheless been dominated by an instinct of reason which commanded it to submit to all that is recognised as fine: religion, justice, humanity, equality, liberty, glory. That which people to-day dream concerning the future, that which the present generation imagines itself to have discovered concerning a society yet to be born, founded upon principles quite different from those of the old society, is announced positively in the _Essai._ I have anticipated by thirty years those who call themselves the proclaimers of an unknown world. My acts have belonged to the ancient city, my thoughts to the new; the former to my duty, the latter to my nature. The _Essai_ was not an impious book; it was a book of doubt and sorrow. I have already said so[84]. For the rest, I have had to exaggerate my fault to myself, and to redeem with ideas of order so many passionate ideas strewn over my works. I fear lest, at the commencement of my career, I may have done harm to youth; I owe it a reparation, and at least I owe it other lessons. Let it learn that one can struggle successfully with a troubled nature; I have seen moral beauty, the divine beauty, superior to every earthly dream: it needs but a little courage to reach it and keep to it. In order to finish what I have to say touching my literary career, I must mention the work which commenced it, and which remained in manuscript until the year in which I inserted it in my Complete Works. At the beginning of the _Natchez_, the preface described how the work was recovered in England, thanks to the trouble and the obliging research of Messieurs de Thuisy. A manuscript from which I have been able to extract _Atala, René_, and several descriptions included in the _Génie du Christianisme_, is not absolutely barren. This first manuscript was written in one piece, without sections; all the subjects were confused in it: journeys, natural history, the dramatic portion, etc.; but, besides this manuscript, composed in one stroke, there existed another, divided into books. In this second work, I had not only proceeded to the separation of the matter, but I had also changed the character of the composition, by altering it from the romantic to the idyllic. A young man who promiscuously heaps up his ideas, his inventions, his studies, die results of his reading, is bound to produce chaos; but also in this chaos there is a certain fecundity which belongs to the potency of his age.