Join Host Bree Carlile as she reads the one hundred thirty-second chapter of Les Miserables.

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>> Brie Carlisle: Take a look, in the book and let's see

what we can find.

Take it chapter by chapter. One

fight M at a time

so many adventures and

mountains we can climb

to give word for word, line by

line, one bite at a time.

>> Brie Carlisle: Welcome.

>> Brie Carlisle: To bite at a time books where we read you your favorite

classics, one byte at a time. my name is Bre

Carlisle and I love to read and wanted to share

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>> Brie Carlisle: Values today well be

continuing. Les miserable by

Victor Hugo chapter

three on what conditions one can

respect the past.

Monasticism, such as it existed in

Spain and such as it still exists in

Tibet, is a sort of

thysis for civilization. It

stops life short. It simply

depopulates clostration,

castration. It has been the scourge of

Europe. Added this the violence so often done to the

conscience, the forced vocations,

feudalism bolstered up by the cloister,

the rite of the firstborn pouring the excess of the family

into monasticism, the ferocities of which we

have just spoken, the in pace, the closed mouths, the

walled up brains, so many unfortunate

minds placed in the dungeon of eternal vows,

the taking of the habit, the interment of

living souls. Add individual tortures

to national degradations, and whoever you may

be, you will shudder before the frock and the veil,

those two winding sheets of human devising.

Nevertheless, at certain points and in certain

places, in spite of philosophy,

in spite of progress, the spirit of the

cloister persists in the midst of the 19th

century, and a singular ascetic

recrudescence is at this moment astonishing.

The civilized world, the obstinacy of

antiquated institutions in perpetuating themselves

resembles the stubbornness of the rancid perfume

which should claim our hair. The pretensions

of the spoiled fish which should persist in being eaten.

The persecution of the childs garment, which should insist on

clothing the man. The tenderness of

corpses which should return to embrace the living

ingrates, says the garment. I protected

you in inclement weather. Why will you have nothing to do with

me? I have just come from the deep sea, says

the fish. I have been a rose, says the

perfume. I have loved you, says the

corpse. I have civilized you, says

the convent. In this there is

but one reply. In former

days, to dream of the indefinite

prolongation of defunct things and of the government of

men by embalming, to restore dogmas in bad

condition, to regild shrines, to patch

up cloisters, to rubless

reliquaries, to refurnish

superstitions, to re victual

fanaticisms, to put new handles on holy water

brushes and militarism, to reconstitute

monasticism and militarism. To believe

in the salvation of society by the multiplication of

parasites, to force the past on the

present. This seems

strange. Still, there are

theorists who hold such theories. These

theorists, who are, in other respects, people of

intelligence, have a very simple process.

They apply to the past. A glazing

which they call social order, divine

right, morality. Family. The

respective elders. Antique authority, sacred

tradition, legitimacy, religion. And

they go about shouting, look, take this, honest

people. This LogiC was known to the

ancients. The soothsayers practice

it. They rubbed a black heifer over with chalk

and said, she is white boscritatis.

As for us, we respect the

past here and there, and we spare it above

all, provided that it consents to be

dead. If it insists on being alive, we

attack it and we try to kill it.

Superstitions, bigotries, affected

devotion, prejudices. Those

forms, all forms, as they

are, are tenacious of life.

They have teeth and nails in their smoke, and they must

be clasped close, body to

body. And war must be made on

them. And that without Truce.

For it is one of the fatalities of humanity to be condemned to

eternal combat with phantoms. It is

difficult to seize darkness by the throat and

hurl it to the earth. A convent

in France, in the broad daylight of the 19th

century, is a college of owls facing the light.

A cloister caught in the very act of

aestheticism in the very heart of the city of

89 and of 1830 and of

1848, Rome, blossoming out in

Paris is an anachronism. In ordinary

times, in order to dissolve an anachronism and to cause it to

vanished, one has only to make it

spell out the date. But we are

not in ordinary times.

Let us fight. Let us fight, but

let us make a distinction. The peculiar property of

truth is never to commit excesses.

What need has it of exaggeration?

There is that which it is necessary to destroy,

and there is that which it is simply necessary to elucidate

and examine what, a force

is. Kindly and serious examination.

Let us not apply a flame where only a light is

required. So given the 19th century,

we are opposed as a general proposition, and among all

peoples in Asia as well as in Europe,

in India as well as in turkey, to

ascetic claustration.

Whoever says cloister, says Marsh,

their protressance is evident. Their

stagnation is unhealthy. their fermentation infects

people with fever and tiliates them.

Their multiplication becomes a plague of Egypt.

We cannot think without a fright of those lands where

fakirs, bonzes, satans, greek monks,

marabouts, telepoins, and dervishes

multiply even like swarms of vermin.

This said, the religious

question remains. This

question has certain mysterious, almost formidable

sides. May we be permitted

to look at it fixedly?

Thank you for joining bite at a time books today while we

read a bite of one of your favorite classics.

Again, my name is Brie Carlisle,

and I hope you come back tomorrow for the next

bite of Le Miserable.

>> Brie Carlisle: Don't forget to sign up for our

newsletter@biteoutimebooks.com dot. And

check out the shop. You can check out the show notes

or our website, byteaditimebooks.com,

for the rest of the links for our show. Wed love

to hear from you on social media as well.

>> Brie Carlisle: Take a look and a broken let's

see what we can find

take it chapter by chapter,

one at a time.

Pictures and mountains we can

climb

take your word go word line by line,

one bite at a time.