The most fanatical apostles of auricular confession cannot deny that the examination of conscience, which must precede confession, is a most difficult task; a task which, instead of filling the mind with peace, fills it with anxiety and serious fears. Is it then only after confession that they promise such peace? But they know very well that this promise is also a cruel deception ... for to make a good confession, the penitent has to relate not only all his bad actions, but all his bad thoughts and desires, their number, and various aggravating circumstances. But have they found a single one of their penitents who was certain to have remembered all the thoughts, the desires, all the criminal aspirations of the poor sinful heart? They are well aware that to count the thoughts of the mind for days and weeks gone by, and to narrate those thoughts accurately at a subsequent period, are just as easy as to weigh and count the clouds which have passed over the sun, in a three days storm, a month after that storm is over. It is simply impossible, absurd! This has never been, this will never be done. But there is no possible peace so long as the penitent _is not sure_ that he has remembered, counted and confessed every past sinful thought, word and deed. It is then impossible, yes! it is morally and physically _impossible_ for a soul to find peace through auricular confession. If the law which says to every sinner: "You are bound, under pain of eternal damnation, to remember all your bad thoughts and confess them to the best of your memory", were not so evidently a satanic invention, it ought to be put among the most infamous ideas which have ever come out from the brain of fallen man. For, who can remember and count the thoughts of a week, of a day, nay, of an hour of his sinful life? Where is the traveller who has crossed the swampy forests of America, in the three months of a warm summer, who could tell the number of musquitoes which have bitten him and drawn the blood from the veins? What should that traveller think of the man who, seriously, would tell him: "You must prepare yourself to die, if you do not tell me, to the best of your memory, how many times you have been bitten by the musquitoes, the last three summer months, when you crossed the swampy lands along the shores of the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers? Would he not suspect that his merciless inquirer had just escaped from a lunatic asylum? But it would be much more easy for that traveller to say how many times he has suffered from the bitings of the musquitoes, than for the poor sinner to count the bad thoughts which have passed through his sinful heart, through any period of his life. Though the penitent is told that he must confess his thoughts only according to his _best_ recollection,--he will _never, never_ know if he has done his _best_ efforts to remember everything: he will constantly fear lest he has not done his _best_ to count and confess them correctly.