fcibrarp of the theological Seminar;? 
 
 PRINCETON • NEW JERSEY 
 
 FROM THE LIBRARY OF 
 ROBERT ELLIOTT SPEER 
 
 BV 5031 .S4 1923 
 Sedgwick, Henry Dwight, 186 
 -1957. 
 
 Pro vita monastics 
 
0<U. c W t - li ■ ' 
 
 C-Sb P\ - 
 
pto Vkita (J?onaetica 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2019 with funding from 
 Princeton Theological Seminary Library 
 
 https://archive.org/details/provitamonasticaOOsedg 
 
to li Vita Gtyonaotica 
 
 AN ESSAY IN DEFENCE OF 
 
 THE CONTEMPLATIVE VIR¬ 
 
 TUES BY HENRY DWIGHT SEDGWICK 
 
 AUTHOR OF “LIFE OF MARCUS AURELIUS,” “DANTE,” 
 “AN APOLOGY FOR OLD MAIDS,” “ITALY IN THE THIR¬ 
 TEENTH CENTURY,” “A SHORT HISTORY OF ITALY,” fife. 
 
 BOSTON 
 
 JttCantic Gftontflfp pteee 
 
 MDCCCCXXIII 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1923, BY HENRY DWIGHT SEDGWICK 
 
 D. B.UPDIKE THE MERRYMOUNT PRESS-BOSTON 
 PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 
 
3!n (fyemotiam 
 
 Xu, tl?e vcdi i miei malt indegnt cd cmpi, 
 
 ■Re del cielo, invi0tbile, immortale, 
 
 •Soccorri all* alma diovtata e frale, 
 g’l euo difetto di tua gra)ia adempt: 
 cl?e, a* to V1001 in guerra cd in tentpc 0 ta, 
 il)ora in pace ed in porto; e ee la 0tan5a 
 5 u vana, almen 0ia la partita oncata. 
 
 H quel poco di vtver cl?e in’avanja 
 £d al morir degni e00er tua man preota 
 Xu 0a i ben clje n’ altrui non l?o operanja. 
 
 “Petrarcl? 
 
jCoquar ad ©omnium meum cum sim pulvia et cinis. 
 
 £l?omas a *Rempi0 
 
 Jili, non potes perfcctam possiderc Itbertatem, nisi 
 totaliter abneges temetipsum. 
 
 Xljomas a Rcmpis 
 
 £Dan sl?all find grace; 
 Snd sl?alt not grace find mean*?, tl?at finds ljer wap, 
 Xl?e speediest of rbp winged messengers, 
 
 Xo visit all tl?v creatures? 
 
 XOilton 
 
 TKien ne donne le repos que la red?erd?e sincere de la 
 verite. 
 
 •pascal 
 
rtTaBfc of Contents 
 
 Page 
 
 PREFACE ix 
 
 I THE WORLD AND THE RECLUSE 3 
 
 II DISILLUSION 12 
 
 III THE VOICE OF AUTHORITY 16 
 
 IV THE VALUE OF PRECEDENT 23 
 
 V SAINT ANTHONY 28 
 
 VI SAINT BENEDICT 37 
 
 VII THOMAS A KEMPIS 44 
 
 VIII SENANCOUR,EUGENIE DE GUERIN, AND AMIEL 51 
 IX THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIAN TRADITION 58 
 X SOME GROUNDS OF DOUBT 63 
 
 XI THE BOUNTIES OF SOLITUDE 71 
 
 XII THE VEGETABLE PATCH 78 
 
 XIII THE FLOWER GARDEN 85 
 
 XIV THE LIBRARY 91 
 
 XV THE SPIRITUAL POWER OF SEX 98 
 
 XVI THE REALM OF TRUTH 104 
 
 XVII SELF-EXAMINATION 115 
 
 XVIII THE ORATORY 123 
 
 XIX SPIRITUAL EXERCISES 131 
 
 XX THE USUAL REPROACH 138 
 
 XXI THE GREAT HUMAN NEED 148 
 
 APPENDIX 157 
 

ptcface 
 
 T is common for persons who may 
 be classed as indifferent concern¬ 
 ing religious matters , tofin 
 with current Christianity , at least 
 as it shows itself in Protestant churches , to speak 
 slightingly of it , saying that Christianity has lost 
 its hold upon the people , does not lead in mat¬ 
 ters of conduct nor in ideal purposes , does not 
 produce any radiant personalities or examples 
 of heroic self-sacrifice , does not persuade people 
 that its conceptions of truth concerning the ulti¬ 
 mate ends and meaning of life can be of any 
 significance to them , does not help in the solution 
 of social problems — in shorty that Christianity 
 has become a laggard , a tagger-on to society , 
 a hindrance to freedom of thought and action , 
 serving as an excuse for self-content to those who 
 find themselves well off in the existing state of 
 things and are really unconcerned about the soul, 
 
ptcfacc 
 
 Nor is that the only sort of criticism to which 
 Christianity lies open . During the war , it was 
 plain enough that in each of the warring coun¬ 
 tries religion had been cast afresh in the ancient 
 mould of a tribal god . And for years before the 
 war , many religious-minded persons regarded 
 ecclesiastical Christianity as a sort of hardening 
 of the spirit that hindered thefree play of human 
 hopes for a better world . 
 
 I have no concern with the justice or injus¬ 
 tice of such criticisms , I merely note that they 
 are widespread and are uttered nowadays even 
 more by persons who believe in Christianity as 
 a factorfor spiritual good than by those who do 
 not , and further that these faultfinders , so far 
 as I know , are in full accord with the most de¬ 
 vout Christians in the belief that Christ taught 
 the most direct , possibly the only , way toward 
 the goal of spiritual endeavor , which he called 
 the Kingdom of Heaven . 
 
ptefacc 
 
 It would be quite beside my purpose to treat 
 such great questions as to what truth there may 
 be in Christianity , whether of fact or symbol , 
 or as to whether it is for the good of mankind 
 that Christianity , organized as it is , should con¬ 
 tinue; I merely wish to lay stress upon the fact 
 that , for one reason and another , Christianity , 
 at least among Protestants , has cast aside , or 
 dropped out , <2 gmz/ of the ancient prac¬ 
 tices that during many centuries helped it adapt 
 itself to human needs , enabled it to produce heroic 
 and radiant personalities , and shed over it a 
 poetry which it now lacks . I refer to the prac¬ 
 tices of withdrawal from the world of ordinary 
 life and from the usual occupations of men , into 
 some solitary or sequestered place, where in her¬ 
 mitage or monastery they might give themselves 
 up to contemplation , meditation , and prayer , and 
 to such labors in library or garden as should best 
 fit the mind to be the dwelling-place of what- 
 
pteface 
 
 ever thoughts might seem to them the highest , 
 best , and most beautiful . 
 
 And as , to my way of thinking , jwc/z seques¬ 
 tered habits and practices are of the essence of 
 Christianity, for without them it goes about its 
 task, halt and tnaim.d, in hoptlts, inadejuacy, 
 so also I believe that the individual life , unless 
 it take advantage of those practices^ withdraw¬ 
 ing apart to think high thoughts , and to reconsider 
 by the light of such thoughts its hopes , ambitions , 
 and desires , is and must be imperfect . 
 
 1 The mass of men are absorbed in animal ex¬ 
 istence and indifferent to such matters; but there 
 are always a few , bewildered by the “ burden 
 of the mysterywho would like to set forth in 
 quest of the spiritual life . I do not suggest the 
 literal revival of ancient monasticism; I coun¬ 
 sel no one to set out for the 'Thebaid or Monte 
 Gassino , St. Gall or Giteaux. The seeker need go 
 no further than to an upper chamber in his own 
 
 [ xii ] 
 
fiteface 
 
 dwelling or to a secluded corner of his own gar¬ 
 den , or to any other place where , by means of 
 such accompaniments as suit retirement , — books , 
 fowers , music , meditation , prayer ,—<2 
 may refresh his spirit and wash the dust from 
 his soul , whether his retirement be for half an 
 hour a day , or to a retreat for a week once a 
 year , or, if he be so minded and his situation 
 permits, for such proportion of his time as shall 
 best prosper him upon his spiritual quest. 
 
 Until recently this doctrine of a retreat with 
 its attendant circumstances had been one of the 
 chief teachings of the Church. throughout the 
 Middle Ages Christianity asserted the superior¬ 
 ity of the contemplative life over the active life. 
 Dante , the noblest voice of Christian tradition , 
 saysIn this life we can have two kinds of hap¬ 
 piness by following two different roads , both good 
 and excellent—one road is the Active Life , by 
 which we may attain to a fair state of happi- 
 
 [ ] 
 
ptefacc 
 
 that 'which the world deems desirable , and that 
 by so doing she satisfies the spiritual needs of her 
 members^ forgetting that the business of Chris¬ 
 tianity is not merely to satisfy the spiritual needs 
 that she finds , but also to deepen and broaden and 
 heighten those that exists and to create new needs 
 as well . 
 
 To the outsider , however , it is plain that the 
 Church has not made this radical change of her 
 own volition; she has yielded to the importunate 
 and the worldly . The triumph of the active vir¬ 
 tues over the contemplative is not a triumph of 
 religion but of the worlds just as the great social 
 and political revolution in the fourth century , 
 which text-books upon history call the victory of 
 Christianity , was also in reality the triumph of 
 the world over religion . And if Christianity is to 
 turn about again and lead , if not the many , at 
 least the few that seek the spiritual life , she must 
 supplement her active virtues with the contem- 
 
 [ *vi ] 
 
ptcface 
 
 plative virtues and the practice of them , and 
 enlarge her ideal of service with the notion that 
 to meditate upon things divine until all lesser 
 desires fall away is to render a service to men 
 at least equal to those rendered by the active 
 virtues . 
 
 My purpose in this little book is limited to a 
 consideration of the rift between the world and 
 the religious spirit , as it has existed throughout 
 the course of Christianity and exists still; the 
 thesis being that the contemplative life , by which 
 I mean the definite and regular practice of medi¬ 
 tation , prayer , and the restriction of one's society 
 to books andflowers, for certain times, is neces¬ 
 sary for that serenity of spirit which is now and 
 always has been the chief need of mankind; for 
 upon serenity of spirit depends our power to see 
 truth , to do justice , and to think no evil . 
 
 H. D. S. 
 
 March , 1923 
 
 xvii 
 
}0ro Qlita fi^onaetica 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 * 
 
 
 
31 
 
 fcfje Worfb anb t(je IKecf me 
 
 Xtyc world to too mucl? witl? us. 
 
 Wordsworth 
 
 SOCIETY depends for its well¬ 
 being upon an ability to make use 
 of its latent energy. In time of war 
 most societies, such as our own 
 nation, develop a power to draw 
 upon moral and mental resources of all kinds, 
 of which, in times of ease, they had not been 
 aware. Physical danger has a magic virtue, it 
 doubles the strength of the strong, the craft of 
 the cunning, and the nobility of the noble. This 
 is the one good that can be ascribed to war. But 
 in times of peace the reservoirs of devotion, self- 
 sacrifice, and heroism empty themselves into the 
 dry sands of ordinary life, and the power of set¬ 
 ting an idea high above all material things fades 
 like a mirage. One of the chief problems of so¬ 
 cial life is how to find, and how to put to use, 
 whatever spiritual forces there may be in indi¬ 
 viduals. It is a religious problem and as such 
 should belong to organized Christianity. But 
 many people have lost faith in Christianity, at 
 least in its modern Protestant form. They con- 
 
 [ 3 ] 
 
pto Vtita Qftonaetica 
 
 sider Christian communities both at home and 
 abroad, and are forced to conclude that our pro¬ 
 fessed religion renders little or no spiritual ser¬ 
 vice; the more radical go so far as to regard it 
 as a wholly unsuccessful experiment, while even 
 the more conservative believe that, somehow or 
 other, it has lost access to a reservoir of strength 
 that it once possessed. 
 
 My thesis then is, that the fate of Christian¬ 
 ity lies in its power to recover, and make use of, 
 those resources of the spirit from which in earlier 
 times it drew innocence, peace, serenity, and joy. 
 And as the way to recover those qualities, that 
 ancient Christian poise and radiance of spirit, is 
 neither smooth nor easy, an attempt to consider 
 the nature of the road pursued by men who in 
 the past attained their goal, as well as the causes 
 that may impel others to-day to undertake the 
 quest, may not be amiss, especially if the attempt 
 be made in the hope that those Christians who 
 are concerned over the fate of Christianity may 
 help and encourage such seekers on their way. 
 
 Among the many lines of demarcation that 
 divide men, that one to which I wish to address 
 myself creates two classes of very unequal size. 
 
 One class comprises all people who lead what 
 it is usual to call normal lives, men and women 
 
 t 4 ] 
 
(Gtfe WotC 5 anfc tfje Bxecfuee 
 
 who take their places in the fabric of the social 
 whole as a matter of course, both in the work¬ 
 room and the playground of life; who seek out 
 other people, set store by acquaintances, do busi¬ 
 ness with one another, enter upon joint enter¬ 
 prises, join guilds and clubs, cultivate curiosity 
 concerning their fellows, and in every way look 
 upon themselves primarily as members of a so¬ 
 cial organism. Such people, taken together, con¬ 
 stitute the World. The other class comprises 
 those persons who, for one reason or another, 
 whether native disposition or the experiences of 
 life, shun human relationships, slink away from 
 their fellows, and seek to loosen all the ties by 
 which life without their doing has bound them 
 to the World: in short, to live, so far as may be 
 practicable, by themselves and to themselves. 
 
 A division into classes marked by such con¬ 
 trasting opinions implies antagonism; but there 
 has been and is more antagonism between the 
 World and the recluse than the mere acceptance 
 of opposing ideals necessarily implies. This is 
 due partly to historical causes, but chiefly be¬ 
 cause the contrast between their opposing ideals 
 is sharper and of a higher emotional pitch than 
 usually happens between differing categories. 
 
 The World professes liberality, a desire to 
 
 [ 5 ] 
 
pto Vlita Oftonaetica 
 
 leave every man free to pursue his own ideals 
 according to his own lights. But in practice the 
 World finds this maxim too difficult to carry 
 out, and by open reproach or secret slur con¬ 
 demns the recluse for abandoning what, accord¬ 
 ing to the World’s way of thinking, are the 
 social duties of all men. It would be a good thing 
 if liberty to pursue their ideals were granted to 
 all men. Life as a whole is richer according to 
 the measure of its diversities; for each man who 
 endeavors to bring his life into conformity with 
 his own ideal must perforce contribute some¬ 
 thing to the general good. The sum of ideals 
 that men strive after constitutes the true wealth 
 of mankind. The social whole, whether the re¬ 
 cluse likes it or not, is a unity; and anyone 
 who seriously seeks to live his own life to his 
 own highest satisfaction necessarily renders the 
 greatest social service in his power. This is ob¬ 
 vious; and in matters that do not touch its amour 
 propre the World encourages diversity, or at least 
 follows its principle of giving to each man his 
 liberty. There may be differences of taste, but 
 open disapprobation of a contrary taste is rarely 
 present. One man may feel inwardly certain that 
 his ways of living and doing are better than the 
 ways of his neighbor, nevertheless he does not 
 
 [ 6 ] 
 
Wottb anb ttfe 5Rccfuee 
 
 proceed to the logical complement of his thought 
 and decry the opposite ways of living and doing. 
 But in the disagreement between the World and 
 the recluse an element of hostility bristles up. 
 The cause is plain. The recluse has turned his 
 back upon the World because he does not like 
 the World, and the World takes umbrage and 
 stigmatizes his departure as desertion. The two 
 views of life are opposites, mutually exclusive, 
 like heat and cold, and the only way to recon¬ 
 cile them is by some hypothesis of a more com¬ 
 prehensive whole that shall include them both, 
 as a full day includes both noontide and the 
 night. 
 
 The World is busy with work and pleasure; 
 early and late it toils and sweats; it sows and 
 reaps; it converts forest into pasture and swamp 
 into cornfield; it digs a thousand hidden sub¬ 
 stances out of the depths of the earth; it builds 
 ships, railroads, cities; it stirs up individuals, 
 communities, nations, to greater and greater eco¬ 
 nomic effort; and it makes war. In short, what 
 the World does is so stupendous that it may 
 well be excused for feeling sure that its way of 
 life is better and nobler than that of the recluse. 
 In its more emotional moments the World as¬ 
 serts that it is performing the part ascribed by 
 
 [ 7 ] 
 
fito Vlita Ofyonaetica 
 
 Neoplatonic philosophy to emanations from 
 divinity, that it is weaving der Gottheit lebendiges 
 Kleidy and it holds, as a corollary to this belief, 
 that the recluse is a shirk, a slacker, a deserter 
 from the efforts and hardships of the actual, prac¬ 
 tical living of life. 
 
 One must keep in mind an obvious criticism 
 upon the World’s position. It is this: The 
 World’s opinion springs directly from its activi¬ 
 ties. The World acts upon impulses, appetites, 
 instincts, and the customs that they have set up. 
 It has been moulded on the wheel of the master 
 potter, Desire. It glorifies life, not through any 
 process of reasoning, but from the mere exhila¬ 
 ration of the rush of tumultuous existence. Each 
 man believes himself a rational being; but in the 
 clutch of desire the human reason is no more 
 than a puppet. The will-to-live cracks its whip, 
 and the World dances. Under the intoxicating 
 influence of the god of life, men hurrah and 
 shout that his gift is good, and praise its protean 
 manifestations; they sing soft or loud, bass or 
 treble, according as the breath of life blows 
 through the human pipes. There are, no doubt, 
 individuals, here and there, who strive to pre¬ 
 serve the independence of reason and attempt 
 to control conduct; but cowboys afoot might as 
 
 [ 8 ] 
 
(&f}e Wottb anb ttfe Kecfuee 
 
 well try to stop a stampede of maddened steers 
 as the reasoning few to guide the course of the 
 multitude. 
 
 And this will-to-live has taken a social form. 
 Psychologists tell us that speech, morality, 
 knowledge, the very consciousness of self, exist 
 because the power that expresses itself in life 
 has fashioned creatures of the human species for 
 mutual dependence. It is inevitable that the mass 
 of men who constitute the World should hold 
 a social creed and believe in a communal, cheek- 
 by-jowl, organization of society, in which every 
 man at roll-call shall answer adsutn and take his 
 place in the social fabric. For, the faster life 
 moves, the more potent human energy becomes, 
 the greater the power it acquires through science 
 and cooperation, so much the more firmly does 
 the World believe in the closer and closer union 
 of men. And at the present time, more than 
 ever before, the World is out of sympathy with 
 the motives and aspirations that govern the re¬ 
 cluse; more than ever it is confident in its own 
 views and ideals, more and more impatient of 
 criticism, more and more disinclined to open its 
 mind to alien values and alien modes of thought. 
 Its conception of virtue has become purely so¬ 
 cial, and through its professed ideals of service 
 
 [ 9 ] 
 
fito Vlita &)onaetica 
 
 and social justice it colors its condemnation of the 
 recluse with righteous indignation. 
 
 On the other hand, it must be admitted that 
 the recluse is not free from prejudice. By leaving 
 the World he has not merely condemned it, but 
 he has also openly proclaimed his condemna¬ 
 tion. In his heart he looks upon the World as 
 he would upon the train of Bacchanals that once 
 followed Dionysus over the Thracian hills, men 
 and women with hair flying, clad in fawn skins, 
 crowned with ivy, waving the thyrsus, singing 
 wild melodies, and madly dancing to pipe and 
 cymbal, all worshiping their beautiful young god, 
 whose magic and mystery had set them beside 
 themselves with enthusiasm. In the World’s 
 ways the recluse sees nothing but the will-to-live, 
 attended by desire, appetite, impulse, emotion, 
 leading its votaries in a mad dance over a wild 
 road from birth to death. 
 
 This is an extravagant and unjust view of the 
 World, and shows how hard it is to judge justly 
 where there is an emotional opposition between 
 opinions. Yet all contraries may be reconciled if 
 we will but devise a synthesis large enough to 
 include them; and my purpose is to justify the 
 recluse by the contention that a reconciliation 
 between the World’s values and his may be found 
 
 [ 10 ] 
 
Wottb anb tfje fcecCuee 
 
 by uniting them together in a larger conception 
 of human interests. My belief is that the recluse 
 serves humanity, and thereby serves the World, 
 quite as much as the World serves the recluse. 
 And I shall hope to justify that belief by indicat¬ 
 ing the path which leads the recluse to his soli¬ 
 tude, and by an exposition of his sequestered 
 and cloistered occupations; for at each stage, as 
 I think, he does not withdraw further, but rather 
 comes closer and closer to the dearest interests of 
 humanity. 
 
 The recluse of whom I speak and whose cause 
 I support is, I admit, somewhat of a fanatic; 
 but there is little danger lest there be many such, 
 and fanaticism is often necessary in order to clear 
 the way for those of less resolute purpose who 
 would be glad to avail themselves in modera¬ 
 tion of what the fanatics insist upon to excess. It 
 may be that only the violence of fanaticism can 
 restore the contemplative virtues to the esteem 
 in which they were held of old, bring back medi¬ 
 tation to its place in the ritual of Christianity, 
 enfranchise the moderate recluse, and enable him 
 to withdraw from the World for a fortnight a 
 year, for a day in the month, or an hour in the 
 day. 
 
 [" i 
 
33 
 
 ©ieiffuetou 
 
 £ vidi quceto globo 
 
 Xal, cl?’ io sorrtot del quo vil ecmblatite. 
 
 •paradioo, jejm, 13-i, 135 
 
 HE first stage on this road to 
 spiritual freedom is the conscious¬ 
 ness of a great change. The seeker 
 awakes to find all his values shriv¬ 
 eled and shrunken. He is like 
 the sojourner in a foreign land who returns after 
 long years to his native village to find the houses 
 all standing as they were, ranged each in its 
 curtilage along the village street, the elms and 
 maples rooted to their ancient places and glori¬ 
 ous as of old in ten thousand shimmering leaves, 
 the gardens blooming in many colors, and all 
 the outward lineaments of the beloved place 
 seemingly as they used to be; but the soul of 
 house and garden, the spirit that gave them life, 
 the boys and girls, the loving friends, the hospit¬ 
 able hosts, the welcome, and the cheer—where 
 are they? Like this sojourner who walks sadly 
 up and down, bewildered to find the husks all 
 permanent yet empty of fruit, so the man that 
 has awakened to find the values of life all topsy- 
 
 [ 12 ] 
 
©teiffiteion 
 
 turvy, walks to and fro in bewildered contem- 
 
 Those values had seemed so solid. Wrought 
 and fashioned out of daily experience, they had 
 been grouped and classified, very much as the 
 data of sense are dealt with; and just as the data 
 of sense are compounded into the system of 
 science, so those values, also, had been built up 
 into a system of ethics. And yet the old values 
 are now become as insipid as the white of an egg. 
 The cause or occasion of this change may have 
 been bereavement, disappointment, sickness, old 
 age, or philosophy, but whatever it may have 
 been, its effect has been to convert the treasure- 
 house of the World into a closet of vanities. 
 H ere starts the beginning of the new road, pass¬ 
 ing through the portal of disillusion. 
 
 The World’s prizes — fame, good report, dis¬ 
 tinction, titles, offices, honors—which up to now 
 looked so fair and shining, things which the 
 seeker had been taught to treat with deference 
 and speak of with praise — what has happened? 
 How are the lights that lighted them grown dim! 
 Where is the sparkle and the gold? The bewil¬ 
 dered seeker rubs his eyes. Has he, unbeknown 
 to himself, been initiated into some great mys¬ 
 tery, whereby desire and admiration have dropped 
 
 [ 13 ] 
 
fivo Ditto Cf^ouaefica 
 
 away, leaving him so indifferent that if he could 
 put out his hand and take all these honors, he 
 would not lift a finger? Perhaps in the depths 
 of his subconsciousness, where the Puck-like 
 spirit of self-love is said to play its most impish 
 tricks, jealousy, the impulse to decry what one 
 cannot get ,—les raisins sont verts et bons pour des 
 goujats ,— has been able to deceive him, but with 
 his waking consciousness he is all unaware of 
 deception. To read one’s name on the front page 
 of the morning paper, to be on the lips of thou¬ 
 sands, to be applauded by countless hands, — are 
 these the guerdons that satisfy ambitious men ? 
 And the multitude that read, cheer, clap, what 
 are they? What is their approval worth? And 
 where and w 7 ho are the notable men praised and 
 cheered yesterday, and yesterday’s yesterday ? 
 
 And as with ambitions, so with possessions. A 
 fog falls thick and dark about them. They loom 
 up like icebergs at night before the watch on the 
 deck of a fishing smack; what profit have they ? 
 A palace in New York, a gallery adorned with 
 famous paintings, drawing-rooms furnished forth 
 by Adam, Sheraton, Riesener, and Gouthiere, 
 stables, a yacht, a box at the opera, a troop of 
 servants, and all the luxuries that wealth can 
 buy? Certainly the seeker is not aware of envy, 
 
 [ H ] 
 
Oieiffueion 
 
 nor of any sentiment except of freedom and 
 thankfulness. So with all the inventory that the 
 Prince of this World might unroll. The seeker 
 realizes that all his relations with things of this 
 sort are changed. He need not stuff his ears with 
 wax or lash himself to the mast; the song of these 
 sirens is out of tune and harsh. 
 
 Like a pilgrim of old bound for the Holy 
 Land, he takes his staff and goes, but not in 
 anger or in contempt, rather in bewilderment and 
 in discontent with himself, oppressed by a shal¬ 
 low breathing and a sultry air. 
 
 [ *5 ] 
 
rn 
 
 Vloice of 
 
 Teicvta, (pv\d^are eavrotis &t b t&v d8iv\up. 
 
 3 £pt 0 tle of 0t. 0ol?n, v:21 
 
 HE portal that leads out of the 
 World is disillusion. Having 
 passed through, the pilgrim is an 
 exile and must seek a new home. 
 What shall he do? Where shall 
 he go? In the forefront of all maxims that look 
 to conduct stands the Delphic command, “Know 
 thyself”; but how shall the pilgrim know him¬ 
 self? for the ordinary terms of self-explanation 
 fail him. He has no part in the hopes, likings, 
 and customs of other men and cannot measure 
 himself by them. He is aware of unlikenesses, 
 but not of likeness. Knowledge of self can be but 
 ill-expressed in negatives. What is there about 
 himself that cuts him off, in what seems to him 
 most essential, from his fellows ? He is one of the 
 multitudinous human units that have been fash¬ 
 ioned by the patient processes of nature, by the 
 push of vital energy, by the caprices of selection, 
 by the unnumbered influences that act upon or¬ 
 ganic matter. Men have been shaped by mutual 
 action and reaction, and finally compounded into 
 
 [ 16 ] 
 
Uloice of Jfut^ority 
 
 our social fabric. These processes have not only 
 made the World what it is, but also each man 
 what he is; they have determined his thought, 
 language, ethics, knowledge, personality. Why, 
 then, is the pilgrim so different from his fellows ? 
 Is he, as the World judges, deficient in social 
 capacity ? Is it an inability to hold his own in the 
 struggle for life that the spirit of self-love has 
 disguised under a cloak of mystery? Is it sub¬ 
 conscious repulsion from noise, coarseness, and 
 vanity? Or is there some law of variability that 
 creates in the World creatures that are not really 
 of it? Or has some foreign element been at work 
 undermining the labor of its fellow elements ? 
 And, if so, what is its nature ? Can it be that a 
 power from a spiritual sphere, some Saifift)r,some 
 invisible messenger, takes a few by the hand and 
 bids them arise and forsake the World? The psy¬ 
 chological causes, no doubt, are clear to the psy¬ 
 chologist, but to the pilgrim self-analysis yields 
 little. And so he turns to see what other men, in 
 like situation with himself, have done in the past. 
 
 The sense of disillusion, of dissatisfaction 
 with the World, is no new thing. It is old, very 
 old, and therefore he to whom it comes is able 
 to question the experience of others at different 
 places along the road of human history, in the 
 
 [ *7 3 
 
Dlita Qftonaztica 
 
 hope that what others have found restorative 
 may be of help also to him. A glance at the pages 
 of the past shows that many, many persons, in 
 their disillusion and discontent, have withdrawn 
 themselves apart from the ordinary ways of men, 
 and that they did so under a deep sense of an¬ 
 tagonism between the standards and values of the 
 World and certain ideal standards and values 
 which, as they thought, if believed in, would 
 make life intelligible. 
 
 This antagonism these precursors have de¬ 
 fined in various ways, as between the World and 
 the Spirit; between the life of the senses and that 
 of the soul; between illusion and truth. It is not 
 of much consequence how the two terms are 
 defined, whether the World means the world of 
 ordinary human life or the domination of the 
 baser appetites and ambitions; whether the soul 
 is a reality, an abstraction, or a symbol; or what 
 illusion, and what truth, may be; the matter of 
 importance is the profound antagonism between 
 the old values and the new. It is upon this an¬ 
 tagonism that the greatest religious teachers have 
 built their doctrines. 
 
 In the Gospel of St. John the World is set in 
 opposition to the Spirit of Truth: “I will pray 
 the Father, and he shall give you another Com- 
 
 [ 18 ] 
 
ff£(je Vloicc of fluttjovity 
 
 forter, that he may abide with you for ever; even 
 the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot re¬ 
 ceive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth 
 him. ... If ye were of the world, the world 
 would love his own: but because ye are not of 
 the world, but I have chosen you out of the 
 world, therefore the world hateth you.. . . When 
 the Comforter is come ... he will reprove the 
 world of sin . . . because they believe not on 
 me. ... Be of good cheer; I have overcome the 
 world. . . . O righteous Father, the world hath 
 not known thee: but I have known thee. . . .” 
 
 These are the words of religious mysticism; 
 they belong, many people would think, to an¬ 
 other time and another race, and perhaps they 
 convey little meaning to rationalistic minds; but 
 at least they proclaim, with the emotional power 
 of poetic imagination, the existence of something 
 which men, in default of a more definite term, 
 call holy, something which stands in sharp op¬ 
 position to the ordinary ways of men. Philo the 
 Jew says: “It is just as impossible that the love 
 of the World can coexist with the love of God, 
 as for light and darkness to coexist at the same 
 time with one another.” 
 
 Subsequently, bigoted men set against each 
 other soul and body, in order to express as for- 
 
 [ J 9 ] 
 
fito Vlita OftonaGtita 
 
 cibly as possible this contrast of values. This 
 opposition is misleading and unfortunate, and 
 proves the drying up of spiritual imagination. 
 It was adopted because it served the immediate 
 purpose of convenience in proselytizing, of de¬ 
 manding from neophytes mere effortless com¬ 
 prehension, and, once adopted, it swept aside all 
 metaphysical delicacy of interpretation. Soul and 
 body, instead of taking their places as supple¬ 
 mentary and cooperative collaborators with dif¬ 
 ferent tasks, were set in antagonism to one an¬ 
 other as opposites and enemies. But this error 
 should not prejudice us against the plain distinc¬ 
 tion between the two theories of value. 
 
 A more just and sensible interpretation of the 
 relation was adopted by the Greeks, who empha¬ 
 sized the difference between the material things 
 with which the bodily senses are primarily busy 
 and those spiritual things with which the sensi¬ 
 bilities of the soul were believed to concern 
 themselves. Socrates busied himself with this 
 difference on the day of his death. He was sit¬ 
 ting on his couch in the prison; at times he 
 rubbed his leg that had been chafed by the fet¬ 
 ters, and at times he stroked the head of his 
 well-beloved disciple, Phsedo, and in his talk 
 he said: “ Shall we assume that there are two 
 
 [ 2 ° ] 
 
fefje Uloice of JTutfJoritp 
 
 kinds of things, one that can be seen, and the 
 other without material form, and that that which 
 has no material form is always the same and that 
 which can be seen always changing; and that we 
 are made up of body and soul and the body 
 resembles rather that which is visible, while the 
 soul resembles rather that which has no mate¬ 
 rial form ? Well, then, we have been saying for a 
 long time that when the soul makes use of the 
 body to investigate anything, by means of sight 
 or hearing or any other of the senses, — for to 
 investigate by means of the senses signifies by 
 means of the body, — then she is dragged by the 
 body into the region of things that are never 
 stable, and wanders about and gets confused and 
 dizzy, as if she were drunk, because she asso¬ 
 ciates with these unstable things. But when the 
 soul, of herself, alone, ponders and reflects, then 
 she passes into a region of purity, eternity, im¬ 
 mortality, and unchangeableness, and, since she 
 too is of such nature that she is at home there, 
 she abides there (when she is alone by herself 
 and not hindered) and she rests from her wan¬ 
 dering, and with that which never changes she 
 remains unchanging, because she has laid hold 
 of the eternal things. And this condition of the 
 soul is called wisdom.” 
 
 [ ] 
 
fito VIita Qtyonaetica 
 
 Socrates, as well as St. John and Philo, lived in 
 a far-off time, unfurnished with the speculations 
 and classified experience which have wrought so 
 great a change in our attitude toward the meta¬ 
 physical world. The data and assumptions on 
 which they base their philosophies have little in 
 common with the data and assumptions on which 
 we base ours. But the difference between that 
 part of man which concerns itself with physical 
 appetites and that other part which loves to dwell 
 among those high abstractions, which some men 
 in their passionate yearning call spiritual realities, 
 remains as broad and deep as ever. 
 
 The like antithesis, only still more funda¬ 
 mental, appears in Buddha’s teaching. He left 
 home, wife, luxury, the prospect of authority and 
 power, all the things that the World sets store 
 by, in order to discover a standard of values that 
 should be the very opposite of that which he had 
 been taught. And an integral part of the story of 
 Christ, of Buddha, of Socrates, is the paradox, 
 that the veneration and worship accorded to them 
 by a great part of mankind was given for the 
 very reason that they forsook and denounced, 
 both in their lives and their teachings, the stand¬ 
 ards of ordinary mankind, and set up other 
 standards of a wholly contradictory character. 
 
 [ « ] 
 
Cfje Ulafue of ^Dccccbent 
 
 U)uudo crant alieni, ocd 2Dco projcimi ac famtliarca amici. 
 
 Xljomaa a Rcmpia 
 
 HE seeker, convert, or novice as 
 we may call him, even if he be not 
 ready to proffer submission, can¬ 
 not but entertain respect for voices 
 which, in spite of the innovations 
 of time, in spite of science and a multitude of 
 philosophers, are still the most authoritative in 
 history; for the voice of greatest authority is that 
 which speaks most directly to the ear of our deep¬ 
 est emotional need. In the realm of speculation 
 upon the things of sense, hypothesis has suc¬ 
 ceeded hypothesis, and stability is at best a recent 
 acquisition; but in the realm of values that de¬ 
 termine the worth of life, there has been for all 
 generations of men with like needs as ourselves 
 a sensitive needle that has steadily pointed in a 
 direction away from the World. The credulous 
 believe that it points to the very central light 
 of the universe — Deus illuminatio mea — but the 
 novice need do no more than to accept its di¬ 
 rection. Some hypothesis he must adopt or he 
 will but go at random. As one of the speakers in 
 
 [ 23 ] 
 
fito Vlita Qfyonaetica 
 
 the PJuedo says: c< I think it is either impossible 
 or very difficult to know about these things in 
 this life; and yet not to investigate them in every 
 way, to desist from inquiry before I am tired 
 out, would be the mark of a feeble fellow. We are 
 obliged to do one of two things, either to find 
 out what is the truth about these matters, or, if 
 that is impossible, we must take the best rational 
 theory, the hardest to refute, get aboard it as if 
 it were a raft, and sail through the dangers of 
 life — unless we should be able to make our voy¬ 
 age in greater safety upon a stauncher vessel, 
 I mean by means of some divine revelation.” 
 
 These authoritative voices, then, bid the 
 seeker turn his back upon the World. That is 
 strong doctrine; for in its fullness it would mean 
 to withdraw from familiar things, from daily 
 usages, from the ties and entanglements of social 
 and business life, from habitual companionship, in 
 short, almost, as the Bible says, to be born again. 
 Certainly no novice would interpret the voice 
 of authority in that comprehensive fashion. He 
 would, perhaps, grasp at some figurative mean¬ 
 ing, such as to retire into his inner self. Marcus 
 Aurelius says: “Nowhere can a man go to find 
 peace more abundantly or greater freedom from 
 the cares of the world, than in his own soul. Re- 
 
 [ ^ ] 
 
(Htfe lliafue of pteccbcnt 
 
 tire thither often and refresh thy spirit.” But the 
 novice will surely find that mere retirement in 
 thought is not sufficient to give his spirit ease, 
 so long as his eyes behold vanity all about and 
 his ears are exposed to the perpetual clamour of 
 people praising the things of the World. 
 
 Nevertheless, circumstances alter cases, and 
 whereas in the fourth century the novice might 
 have gone forth eagerly from Antioch, let us say, 
 into the deserts of Syria, or in a later century 
 from Rome to Monte Cassino, or later still from 
 Paris to Citeaux, to-day he would hesitate long 
 to leave his world of NewYork, or Boston, with¬ 
 out some overpowering inducement. At least, 
 bare prudence would suggest that he should first 
 examine and consider what had happened to 
 men who had fled from the World. So, let us 
 suppose, bearing in mind that the antagonism 
 between the World and what Socrates regarded 
 as spiritual wisdom is constant, however the con¬ 
 ception of those two terms may change their 
 meanings — let us suppose the seeker to inter¬ 
 est himself in what happened to these men of old 
 whom we may call, according to our bias, fugi¬ 
 tives from the World or pioneers of the spiritual 
 life. 
 
 Eugenie de Guerin wrote in her diary: “This 
 
 [ 2 5 ] 
 
;pro Ulita ($ona6ttca 
 
 is the day of Saint Pachomius, the father of 
 monks. I have just read his life; it is very beau¬ 
 tiful. These lives of solitaries have a charm for 
 me! Most of all, those that can be imitated. The 
 others one admires, like the pyramids. As a rule, 
 one always finds something good in them when 
 one reads wisely, even in their extreme exaggera¬ 
 tions; theirs were heroic feats that tend to make 
 us devout, and to admire what is high.” 
 
 Eugenie de Guerin was a recluse, both in spirit 
 and in life. H er brother, her father, her books, 
 — St. Francis de Sales, Thomas a Kempis, and 
 such, — her journal, her bird, her dog, the parish 
 church, the poor peasants round about, consti¬ 
 tuted her world. And yet, to this recluse in “the 
 solitude of Cayla” the earliest of the Christian 
 monks, who established his primitive monastery 
 in the deserts of Egypt, was a light and a guide. 
 As the bee carries the pollen from the flower on 
 the hilltop to the flower in the valley, so there 
 is some winged communication between those 
 who serve the same ideal, however remote their 
 respective places and their respective times, 
 borne onward as it were upon vibrations of some 
 spiritual ether. It is common to speak of ancho¬ 
 rites and monks as if they cut all communica¬ 
 tions, broke all relations, between themselves and 
 
 [ ^6 ] 
 
(1£(}e Viable of ptecehent 
 
 their fellow men. But a very slight acquaintance 
 with their lives shows that this is not so; they 
 substituted new relations for the old. From their 
 deserts and monastic walls they have exerted a 
 greater influence over the lives of men than if 
 they had stayed in the places of their birth and 
 followed the customs of their townsfolk. And it 
 is just because they lived all their lives in soli¬ 
 tude or seclusion that they succeeded in teach¬ 
 ing the Church in their day, that the relation of 
 cause and effect does exist between withdrawal 
 from the world and that habit of serenity which 
 is the nurse of purity, compassion, and justice. 
 
 [ 2 7 ] 
 
tit 
 
 3aint JlntQony 
 
 Know yc not tl?at tlje fricndoT^ip of tlje world 10 enmtt? wttlj 
 £od? Wl?o 0 oevcr therefore will be a friend of tl?e world 
 
 i 0 tl?c enenif of £od. 
 
 0t. 5ame0, iv: 4 
 
 AINT Pachomius founded the 
 first Christian monastery; but St. 
 Anthony was the first Christian 
 hermit, and in the popular mind 
 stands as the conspicuous example 
 of the type. Times change, and with them the 
 customs and usages of men. Dogmas, creeds, 
 ideals pass away, but the human heart remains 
 to-day very much as it was in St. Anthony’s 
 time, and it would be as hazardous to say that 
 his experience of life, his way of bringing his 
 soul to peace, and his way of benefiting his fel¬ 
 low men, can be of no present service, as it would 
 be to shut the pages of Plato on the ground that 
 the world is so changed that his thoughts can 
 no longer stimulate our imagination in its task 
 of guiding our feet along our paths to-day. 
 
 The chief difference between St. Anthony’s 
 World and ours lies in this, that our World is 
 far more comely and seductive, far more bediz¬ 
 ened and tempting, as he would have said, and 
 
 [ 28 ] 
 
§>aint JIntflonp 
 
 therefore there are far fewer who seek to leave 
 it. St. Anthony was like Christian in Pilgrim s 
 Progress fleeing the City of Destruction. He 
 turned his back upon the World and betook 
 himself to the solitude of the desert. Ipse jam 
 omnibus s^eculi vinculis liber asperum atque arduum 
 arripuit institutum — free from all the fetters of the 
 World he laid stout hold of his harsh and ardu¬ 
 ous purpose. To most people to-day St. Anthony 
 was a fanatic, who gave himself over to unpleas¬ 
 ant, superstitious, and foolish practices. Such a 
 judgment implies ignorance and also a sluggish 
 imagination. c< Forests are delightful,” says the 
 disciple of Buddha; “where the World takes no 
 delight there the passionless take delight, for 
 they seek not pleasure.” And in the solitude of 
 the desert, as in that of the forest, there is always 
 one denizen, the spirit of Poetry. She takes her 
 pleasure in the silence of waste places, seeking 
 communion with quiet, broken only by the whis¬ 
 pering wind or the multitudinous soft noises 
 that little creatures make. The desert is very 
 beautiful; there light decks the earth with its 
 most enchanting hues, and more than elsewhere 
 turns color into symbols of things invisible; and 
 there the heated air hums a magical melody to 
 the spiritual ear. The children of the World 
 
 [ 2 9 ] 
 
fito Vlita tyonaetica 
 
 turn poetry into prose; and more than that, they 
 not only fail to get the meaning of the solitary 
 life, but they falsify, or distort to an extent that 
 is equivalent to falsification. Of this unfairness, 
 which is due to prejudice, the life of St. Anthony 
 offers an example. The one incident in the saint’s 
 life that the World knows is what it calls “The 
 Temptation of St. Anthony,” and from the stress 
 that has been laid upon this incident by painter 
 and novelist, the usual inference is that the poor 
 saint all his life was obsessed by images of cour¬ 
 tezans. This is because the World interests itself 
 in such matters and recks little of the long drudg¬ 
 ery by which hermits and monks attained to 
 dominion over the impulses of the body. The 
 principal record of St. Anthony is a biography 
 ascribed to Athanasius, the famous theologian, 
 which contains about sixty ordinary pages. The 
 passage that relates the incident in question is, 
 in the Latin version, “Ille \diabolus\ per noctes 
 in pulchree mulieris vertebatnr ornatum , nulla omit- 
 tens figmenta las civile —at night the Devil would 
 trick himself out like a beautiful woman and 
 forego no images of immodesty.” The telling of 
 this occupies one line and a half, perhaps the 
 thousandth part of the biography. 
 
 Anchorites have sinned in their indiscriminate 
 
 [ 30 ] 
 
Jmint JT tittfony 
 
 condemnation of people who live in the World, 
 but the World has rendered back injustice for 
 injustice; it has ignored the poetry and exag¬ 
 gerated the fanaticism in their lives. Uncon¬ 
 sciously, perhaps, it is nettled by the silent re¬ 
 proach of every man or woman who forsakes it. 
 
 The life that St. Anthony led in exchange for 
 life in the World was upon this fashion. He got 
 his livelihood by the work of his hands, he 
 prayed, he strove “to make himself like one who 
 is conscious that he walks in the sight of God, 
 pure in heart, and ready to obey His will/’ 
 Though he wrestled daily with evil, there was 
 no harshness in him, nor lack of courtesy, but 
 sobriety of judgment and an equable spirit. The 
 fame of these qualities brought to his hermitage 
 a multitude who sought help in their various 
 needs. He consoled the sorrowful, taught the 
 ignorant, appeased the angry, and endeavored to 
 persuade them all to put nothing before the love 
 of Jesus Christ. “Seek ye wisdom, chastity, jus¬ 
 tice, virtue, watchfulness, care of the poor, robust 
 faith in Christ, hospitality, and a mind that over¬ 
 comes anger. If we observe these things, we shall 
 prepare for ourselves a mansion in the land of 
 them that attain peace.” And for further infor¬ 
 mation of his character, as it was trained and dis- 
 
 [ 31 ] 
 
pvo Ulita (tyonaetica 
 
 ciplined by his solitary life, I will quote from his 
 sermons: “The virtue that is within us needs no 
 help from without; for the native purity of the 
 soul, if it be not polluted by some external foul¬ 
 ness, is the source and origin of all the virtues. 
 It must be good, because a good Creator created 
 it. God has given us our souls in charge; let us 
 be faithful to the trust we have accepted. Do not, 
 I beg you, be frightened away by the word virtue , 
 as if it were impossible of achievement, nor think 
 the pursuit of it a sort of far pilgrimage; because, 
 under God’s grace, it depends on our own will. 
 Let the Greeks [the unreligious] cross the seas 
 to other lands, that they may pursue their studies; 
 we need not travel, whether by land or water; 
 
 ■P*WWi—• --- - - ..— - - ® 
 
 for in this and in every corner of the earth rests 
 
 — 3 ’”-— - -■ ■ -I —— I I i iii m i j ,,, i n — M 
 
 a foundation on which to build up the kingdom 
 of heaven. 
 
 “Let Christians and monks have a care lest 
 their weakness give opportunity to the demons 
 of temptation. For according as these demons 
 find us and our thoughts, so are they wont to 
 make their way into our hearts. And if they find 
 there the seeds of fear and of an evil mind, like 
 robbers who take possession of undefended 
 places, they pile fear on fear and torture the 
 wretched soul. To conquer the enemy there is 
 
 [ 32 ] 
 
Jrnint 
 
 one sufficient way, Letiti a spiritualis —by the joy 
 of the spirit; and the thoughts within a soul that 
 is set upon God will drive them out, as we drive 
 out smoke. It is written, let not the sun go down 
 upon thy wrath; so let it be with every fault, let 
 not the sun by day, nor the moon by night, go 
 down witnessing it.” 
 
 The drift of this reference to St. Anthony is 
 to show that from the very beginning of monas- 
 ticism, complete separation from the world of 
 ordinary life does help a man to keep himself 
 from grossness and wrongdoing, and that, even 
 if he stay in his solitude, others will derive aid, 
 if it be merely from the inspiration of his victory, 
 whether they resort to him in the flesh or in the 
 spirit. 
 
 Athanasius goes on to say: “ Who was there in 
 Anthony’s company that did not transmute sor¬ 
 row into joy, anger into peace? What blind man, 
 but felt the burden of blindness lightened? Who 
 that had been dejected by poverty, did not im¬ 
 mediately cast his dejection aside, despise riches 
 and even rejoice in penury? What weary monk 
 but was refreshed by his exhortations ? What 
 youth, assailed by the temptations of the flesh, 
 did not after his counseling become a lover of 
 chastity? Who that had been perturbed by evil 
 
 [ 33 ] 
 
pto Vlita flftonaetica 
 
 thoughts, but left him, the storm within calmed 
 down and soul serene ? For he comprehended the 
 griefs that beset each man, and by his own meri¬ 
 torious life had learned spiritual wisdom, and so 
 knew how to minister to their several ills as if 
 they had been bodily wounds.” 
 
 Anthony (or at least Athanasius, or whoever 
 else has recounted the stories of his struggle with 
 sinful thoughts) conceived of temptations in the 
 most objective and concrete form. He or they 
 could not believe that a force so bent on evil, so 
 persistent, so protean, so subtle, could be other 
 than rational and living; and so, as the stories 
 passed from mouth to mouth among credulous 
 people ignorant of physical laws, the idea of a 
 horrible, personal Devil was created. Butpossibly 
 their exaggerations, primitive and gross as they 
 seem to us, are no worse, if we are to judge them 
 by their effect upon the lives of other men, than 
 the opposite habit of the World, which depre¬ 
 cates, excuses, diminishes, softening here, rubbing 
 out there, smoothing, and tricking out with par¬ 
 aphrase, gloss, apology, and special pleading, 
 until at last sin disappears like a puff of smoke, 
 dissolved in the unwholesome air of polite com¬ 
 plaisance. Of the two extremes, one is unlettered 
 and superstitious, the other flabby and brutal, 
 
 [ 34 ] 
 
§>aint JTnt^onp 
 
 for it is only the brutes that are indifferent as to 
 whether there is a right and a wrong. 
 
 I cite one more trait of this fugitive from the 
 World: “His countenance had a great and ex¬ 
 traordinary beauty in it. If any strangers wished 
 for a sight of him, and found him in company 
 with other monks, though they had never seen 
 him they would pass by the rest and run to An¬ 
 thony, as though drawn by his appearance. Not 
 that he was taller or larger than others, but there 
 was a peculiar composure of manner and purity 
 of soul in him. For, being unruffled in spirit, all 
 his outward expressions of feeling were also free 
 from perturbation; so that the joy of his soul 
 made his very face cheerful, and from the gestures 
 of his body men understood the composure of 
 his soul.” 
 
 A fair inference from the biography of this 
 early anchorite is that self-dependence in mate¬ 
 rial things, and in religious things dependence 
 upon what he called God, together with medita¬ 
 tion, and prayer, and a tyrannical dominion over 
 the fleshly appetites, do teach spiritual wisdom. 
 And there can be no greater skepticism, no more 
 certain indication of the working of the spirit that 
 denies, than to suppose that spiritual wisdom in 
 any man, however remote his life, or inaccessible 
 
 [ 35 ] ' * 
 
fito Wta <X)onaGt\ca 
 
 his habitation, can be unfruitful for other men. 
 And if devotion to such practices all one’s life 
 brings so many notable excellencies, may we not 
 infer that partial devotion will confer some spirit¬ 
 ual benefit upon the seeker? 
 
 [ 36 ] 
 
m3 
 
 ^ainf TSencbict 
 
 ■Requiem eternam dona eie, JDomine , et lup perpctua Inceat eta. 
 
 HE World’s theory that ancho¬ 
 rites do nothing for their fellow 
 men is contradicted by the life of 
 St. Anthony, and the similar re¬ 
 proach it casts upon monks is 
 still more flatly contradicted by the achievement 
 of St. Benedict. As Anthony is an archetype and 
 represents the anchorite’s real relation to human¬ 
 ity, so St. Benedict is also an archetype, and the 
 growth and long prosperity of what he called Do- 
 minici schola servitii , his Schoolfor the service of God, 
 are proof of his usefulness to his fellows. And 
 since human nature remains a constant factor 
 throughout all the revolutions and mutations 
 that have come over our western world from 
 Benedict’s day to our own, it is, as I have said, 
 no more than prudent for the neophyte, unless 
 he rejects wholly the notion that the past can 
 help the present, to examine a little into this 
 famous system. 
 
 The Benedictine rule is addressed to those 
 who yearn to enter into eternal life: Quihus ad 
 vitam aternam amor incumhit. And eternal life 
 
 [ 37 ] 
 
pto Vlita Qftonaetica 
 
 does not mean a life hereafter; nor does it involve 
 any reference to time, for time is but a condi¬ 
 tion under which mortal life is lived, perhaps a 
 category or device of the human mind, and has 
 no part in God. Rather, eternal life means the en¬ 
 joyment of something that transcends all human 
 limitations, the consciousness, if such be possible, 
 of that which is perfect. In other words, the object 
 of the rule is the knowledge and love of God. 
 The method consists primarily in the practice of 
 solitude; for solitude takes us away from worldly 
 temptations, it affords opportunity for self-exam¬ 
 ination, meditation, and prayer, it quickens the 
 desire for holiness, and brings us face to face with 
 the mystery of eternal values. The practice of sol¬ 
 itude is therefore an indispensable part of spir¬ 
 itual discipline. But solitude, if unregulated, in 
 spite of its soothing touch, comparable to that 
 of a child’s hand, is unable of itself to give the 
 recluse the peace that he most needs. Like un¬ 
 chartered freedom, solitude unregulated becomes 
 a burden. Senancour, to take a modern instance, 
 who fled from the maladjustments of the World, 
 did not find in the life of a recluse the peace that 
 he had hoped for; solitude with him begot rest¬ 
 lessness and restlessness unhappiness. A recluse 
 needs regularity of life, hours that bring their 
 
 [ 38 ] 
 
$aint TBcncbict 
 
 appointed changes, definite tasks to do, whether 
 self-imposed or commanded by some outside 
 authority, otherwise disquiet will dog his steps. 
 This need is met by the provisions of the Bene¬ 
 dictine rule; they serve as a trellis to support and 
 direct the shoots and tendrils of the religious im¬ 
 agination, they rescue untrained wills from tedi¬ 
 ous license and wayward Teachings out to right 
 and left, and lift the spirit toward sunlight and 
 the upper air. 
 
 But ordinary human nature, even of a serious 
 cast, needs some indulgence on its quest of the 
 eternal values. Men, except such as are very 
 strenuous and tense, drawn like a bent bow to 
 the arrow’s head, need some intercourse with 
 their fellows, especially with such as are upon a 
 like quest as themselves; otherwise they find the 
 long stretch of solitude, day after day, tedious 
 and unfruitful. Besides, company gives employ¬ 
 ment to the native kindliness in man; and the 
 union of many diminishes for each his servitude 
 to material cares, for by assigning to each the 
 duties that he can best perform; to one cooking, 
 to another the vegetable garden, to a third copy¬ 
 ing manuscripts, to a fourth illuminating missals, 
 and so on, the necessary tasks are more speedily 
 accomplished. Human fellowship, too,saves men 
 
 [ 39 ] 
 
fit o Vlita fyonaetica 
 
 from whimsies and fantastical notions, to which 
 solitaries are sometimes liable. And one monk 
 may learn from another some virtue, some dis¬ 
 cipline, some practice, some thought or hope, 
 some vision of the divine, which of himself he 
 could not have discovered. And, also, in the of¬ 
 fices of worship, in common supplication for fuller 
 life and deeper spiritual satisfactions, there is a 
 contagion that passes from man to man, so that 
 if one man’s heart is lifted up, his neighbor’s 
 heart is stirred and lifted likewise, as the first 
 fledgling that spreads its wings encourages its fel¬ 
 lows. For these reasons Benedict rejected com¬ 
 plete solitude and gathered his monks together 
 for the better attainment by all of their common 
 end. 
 
 The several articles of the rule I need not re¬ 
 count. They prescribe obedience, work, prayer, 
 and a strict observance of the summa quies , the 
 perfect peacefulness, to which fugitives from the 
 World aspire. They are addressed to those who 
 are ready to renounce their own desires and be¬ 
 come soldiers in the service of Christ. A brief 
 enumeration of certain precepts, which, in the 
 language of the rule, are instrumentalities of good 
 works, will serve to indicate the spirit of the 
 whole:— 
 
 [ 40 ] 
 
§>aint %etiebict 
 
 Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy 
 heart, and with all thy sou], and with all thy mind, 
 and ... Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. 
 
 Thou shalt be a stranger to the World’s doings. 
 Thou shalt not return evil for evil. 
 
 Thou shalt not love much talk. 
 
 Thou shalt be often on thy knees in prayer. 
 Thou shalt hate thine own self-will. 
 
 From this, in an imperfect way, one can infer 
 the general nature of St. Benedict’s monastic sys¬ 
 tem. It was not, of course, intended to provide 
 its members with a well-rounded life, nor to 
 teach them the ways of men or a knowledge of 
 this physical universe. Its purpose was to found 
 schools for the service of God. Such a purpose 
 stands over against the purpose of life in the 
 World, and the opposition is justly expounded, 
 I think, by Cardinal Newman. He ascribes to 
 St. Benedict “for his discriminating badge, the 
 element of poetry,” and explains what he means 
 by this as follows: “Poetry, I conceive, what¬ 
 ever be its metaphysical essence, or however va¬ 
 rious may be its kinds, is always the antagonist 
 to science. As science makes progress in any sub¬ 
 ject matter, poetry recedes from it. The two can¬ 
 not stand together; they belong respectively to 
 
 [ 41 ] 
 
fito Vlita Qftonaetica 
 
 two modes of viewing things, which are contra¬ 
 dictory of each other. Reason investigates, ana¬ 
 lyzes, numbers, weighs, measures, ascertains, lo¬ 
 cates the objects of its contemplation, and thus 
 gains a scientific knowledge of them. But as to 
 the poetical, very different is the frame of mind 
 which is necessary for its perception. It demands, 
 as its primary condition, that we should not put 
 ourselves above the objects in which it resides, 
 but at their feet; that we should feel them to be 
 above and beyond us, that we should look up to 
 them, and that, instead of fancying that we can 
 comprehend them, we should take for granted 
 that we are surrounded and comprehended by 
 them ourselves. It implies that we understand 
 them to be vast, immeasurable, impenetrable, in¬ 
 scrutable, mysterious, so that at best we are only 
 forming conjectures about them, not conclusions; 
 for the phenomena which they present admit of 
 many explanations, and we cannot know the true 
 one. Poetry does not address the reason, but the 
 imagination and the affections; it leads to admira¬ 
 tion, enthusiasm, devotion, love. The vague, the 
 uncertain, the irregular, the sudden, are among 
 its attributes or sources.” 
 
 Following this interpretation, the observance 
 of Benedict’s monastic rule appears to be, in 
 
 [ 42 ] 
 
Jxxint IBenebict 
 
 part, a sort of meditative poetry, like much of 
 Wordsworth, and, in part, a passionate lyrical 
 hymn, such as those Latin hymns to be found in 
 the Roman Breviary, a poetry, however, not ex¬ 
 pressed in verse and stanza, in metre or rhyme, 
 but in quiet human lives. In Benedict’s opinion, 
 the love of God is the spirit of poetry, and to 
 do His will is to become a poet. 
 
 [ 43 ] 
 
vim 
 
 HEQomae a jketnpi$ 
 
 O qul scintlllam Ijaberet verse cantatte, 
 profecto omnia tcrrena acntirct plena fore vamtatte. 
 Xl?oma0 a ‘Rempio 
 
 AINT Benedict’s foresight de¬ 
 termined the form and usages of 
 the system that was to serve as a 
 house of refuge for fugitives from 
 the World during all the Middle 
 Ages and into modern times. The system was 
 flexible and permitted different ideas or emotions 
 to become predominant at one time or another, as 
 work, asceticism, prayer, or contemplation. The 
 reproach laid against it is that corruption donned 
 cowl, cord, and sandals, and converted monas¬ 
 teries into abodes of idleness, if not worse. To 
 which it may be answered, that the monastic 
 system was never intended for all men; no monk, 
 however enthusiastic, ever proposed that it 
 should apply to everybody. As to corruption, 
 that is a social problem, biological and psycho¬ 
 logical, whose solution concerns the World quite 
 as much as it concerns the monastery. There is, 
 of course, no magical remedy in a monastery to 
 cure men of evil inclinations against their will. 
 
 [ 44 ] 
 
Cffamae a Siempte 
 
 The value of the monastic system is that it em¬ 
 bodies ideas and practices which in the past have 
 enabled serious-minded men to attain inward 
 peace, and cultivate a knowledge and love of 
 God. At any rate, the system endured in full 
 fruition down to the Reformation and produced 
 its ripest fruit shortly before the modern world 
 determined, for one reason and another, to make 
 an end of it. That ripest fruit is contained in 
 Thomas a Kempis’s book, De Imitatione Christi. 
 Thomas’s life was that of the typical monk; it 
 contains no more incident than befitted the nar¬ 
 row monastery walls on Mount St. Agnes. To 
 copy pious manuscripts, to fetch water from the 
 well, to walk with patient feet up and down the 
 little garden path while his thoughts soared far 
 above, to hoe cabbages, to cook what food suf¬ 
 ficed for his brethren and himself, to preach to 
 novices, to compile biographies of saintly bro¬ 
 thers who had gone before—such was his life. 
 
 With what sweet labour did your hands transcribe 
 The Word for those who shared your convent walls. 
 Brothers of Common Life, 
 
 Nor age, nor strife 
 
 Dimmed your swift vision of the Inner Word, 
 
 But with the clear-tongued message of a bird 
 
 [ 45 ] 
 
pro CJtifa tityonaetica 
 
 Singing in April from an apple bough 
 
 You gave your gospel — as when sunlight falls 
 
 Piercingly into Shadow—Surely now 
 
 In the white-feathered host of Heaven you sing 
 
 The Song that was your earthly tutoring. 
 
 The Imitation of Christ is reckoned among the 
 classics of literature, and takes its place beside 
 the selected few of chiefest note, whoever makes 
 the selection. It is the flower of monastic poetry. 
 It sets forth the monastic ideal in its passion, its 
 beauty, and all its imperfections. The imperfec¬ 
 tions are plain enough; that ideal detaches life not 
 merely from the World, but also from all human 
 affections and interests; it passes over the noblest 
 human emotions, such as delight in beauty, the 
 love of Dante for Beatrice, the passion of the 
 mother for her son, and whatever other earthly 
 feeling seems in the eyes of ordinary men to re¬ 
 veal most clearly a divine presence. 
 
 Such an outlook upon human life, such dog¬ 
 mas, are no longer acceptable, even to the re¬ 
 cluse who has forsaken the World. But the book 
 is immortal because of its passion, its truth, and 
 its heroism. It is a noble exposition of one mode 
 of spiritual life. It is based upon two postulates: 
 that the World and its pleasures are vain things, 
 and that the one way of escape lies in imitation 
 
 [ 46 ] 
 
fofjomae a Eempie 
 
 of Christ; and it proceeds by a series of coun¬ 
 sels, precepts, prayers,and praises, to instruct the 
 novice how he may climb the long, steep road 
 to freedom. The seeker must turn his back on 
 temptation, practise humility, dwell upon reli¬ 
 gious thoughts, cleanse his soul by penitence 
 and prayer, and, trampling upon all earthly de¬ 
 sires, steadfastly follow in the footsteps of the 
 Divine Leader, with a whole heart and unfalter- 
 ingdevotion. If we grant his two postulates, he 
 is the wisest and most lovable of teachers. I quote 
 here and there from his pages: — 
 
 Vanity of vanity, all is vanity, except to love God 
 and serve Him only. 
 
 If you wish to stand erect and go forward in duty, 
 you will deem yourself an exile and a pilgrim on 
 this earth. 
 
 The beginning of all evil temptations is incon¬ 
 stancy of soul and little trust in God. As a ship 
 without helm is driven hither and thither by the 
 waves, so the weak man, losing hold of his pur¬ 
 pose, is tempted on every side. 
 
 He that hath true love in no wise seeks his own 
 good; his only desire is that the glory of God be 
 shown forth in all things. He envies no man, for 
 he is indifferent to his own pleasure; nor does he 
 
 [ 47 ] 
 
fito Vlita Qftonaetica 
 
 wish to enjoy himself, for above all joys he hopes 
 to attain felicity in God. 
 
 He that purposes to commune with the inward 
 things of the spirit must depart from the mul¬ 
 titude, as Jesus did. 
 
 Leave vain things to the vain, and busy yourself 
 with the commandments of God. 
 
 Strive to be patient and tolerate the faults of 
 others and their infirmities, whatever they be; 
 for you yourself have many which others must 
 put up with. If you cannot make yourself such 
 a one as you wish, how can you expect another 
 to conform to what you approve of? 
 
 You know that you are come to be a servant, not 
 a master, that you are called to labor and endure, 
 not to sit at ease and talk. 
 
 By two wings a man is lifted up from earthly 
 things, by simplicity and purity. 
 
 First establish yourself in peace, and then you 
 shall be able to set others at peace. 
 
 He that shall best know how to suffer will have 
 the greater peace, and he that is mistrustful of 
 nothing shall be truly at peace. 
 
 Oh, if you would mark how much peace to your¬ 
 self and joy to others you would procure by doing 
 
 [ 48 ] 
 
flDJomas & J kcmpie 
 
 right, I think you would be more careful of your 
 spiritual perfection. 
 
 If we were not wrapped up in ourselves, if in¬ 
 stead we were dead to ourselves, then we should 
 be able to perceive things divine, and experience 
 contemplation of heaven; the whole hindrance, 
 and it is very great, is this: that we are not free 
 from passion and desire, nor do we strive to walk 
 in the perfect way of the saints. 
 
 A man should so stablish himself in God, that 
 he would not need much human consolation. 
 
 If you seek Jesus in all things, you will find 
 him everywhere, but if you seek yourself, you 
 will find yourself. 
 
 When you shall have come to this, that trib¬ 
 ulation is sweet and savorous to you for Christ’s 
 sake, then believe that it is well with you, for you 
 have found paradise on earth. 
 
 No man is fitted to understand heavenly things, 
 unless he has stooped under burdens for Christ’s 
 sake. 
 
 Cardinal Gasquet says that “the monastic life 
 adapts itself to the workings of grace in each 
 individual soul, and gains its end when it has 
 brought that individual soul to the highest per- 
 
 [ 49 ] 
 
ftio tit ita Qtyonaetica 
 
 fection of which its natural and supernatural 
 gifts render it capable.” This assertion is true of 
 Thomas a Kempis. His ideal strikes a chill into 
 the heart of the ordinary man, who finds his 
 pleasures at the family hearth, in the laughter of 
 children, the welcomings of friends, the obvious 
 achievements of prosperous labor, and the appro¬ 
 bation of the community; but the monastic life 
 is not for the ordinary man. The ideal of Thomas 
 a Kempis is far different. He seeks by all means, 
 great and small, to foster and increase his love of 
 God; no duty is too menial, no renunciation too 
 great, that enables his heart to burn with deeper 
 devotion. And if one may venture to judge by 
 the analogy of human affections, to love God, 
 if that is possible, must be the highest human 
 felicity. 
 
 [ 50 ] 
 
um 
 
 3enancour, (Suge'nie be Guerin, anb JJmieC 
 
 Sili, quid l?oc vcl lllud ad te? Xu £De scquere. 
 
 Xfyomas a Rempi0 
 
 UCH then, in a general way, is the 
 method by which solitaries of old 
 sought to attain a higher life. Those 
 of whom I have spoken consti¬ 
 tuted a part of the mighty theo¬ 
 logical and ecclesiastical system which guided and 
 governed mediaeval Europe, and for that reason 
 it is popularly believed that both the salvation 
 they sought and their way of seeking are inex¬ 
 tricably bound up with that system, and must 
 stand or fall with it. In order to avoid this ob¬ 
 jection to my argument from authority, I shall 
 refer to sundry solitaries who were not, in any 
 technical sense at least, members of that system. 
 If it be again urged as an objection, that these 
 also were religious-minded, I must admit they 
 were; and if that quality shall debar a solitary 
 from usefulness to-day, then I must admit, as a 
 rule, solitaries will be useless. Almost all men 
 who forsake the World become seekers of God, 
 although the God they seek need not be the 
 Christian God. But I deny that their religious- 
 
 [ 51 ] 
 
fito Vlita Qfyonaetica 
 
 mindedness is a bar to their usefulness, and I go 
 much further: I will rest my whole contention — 
 that solitaries serve the World—upon this very 
 quality of religious-mindedness, with the proviso 
 that they are not bigots but pilgrims in search 
 of what to them shall prove eternal life. My be¬ 
 lief is that, as a rule, the modern solitary leaves 
 the World under the constraint of some tedium, 
 disgust, or sense of vanity, but that after he has 
 left the World he will be swept along, whether 
 by loneliness or some spiritual attraction, upon 
 a search for God; and yet perhaps it is that a 
 desire for God has aroused these several forms of 
 discontent. However that may be, I come to my 
 instances of hungry-hearted persons who do not 
 belong to the great monastic system, and yet have 
 sought salvation in solitude. Senancour found the 
 World to consist of “Embarras, ennuis, con- 
 traintes, insipidite.” He says: “Pour moi, j’ai 
 appris avant tout, que le parti le plus sage serait 
 encore de renoncer a la vie du monde, si meme 
 on n’avait rien de vraiment heureux a y substi- 
 tuer. ... I no longer think of putting my life 
 to use, I only seek to fill it; I no longer wish to 
 enjoy it, merely to put up with it; I do not exact 
 virtue of it, rather that it shall do no wrong — 
 but even this, where may I procure it or even 
 
 [ 52 ] 
 
hhcnancont , (SuQenie be Guerin, anb Jfmief 
 
 hope for it? . . . Let us keep up our silent sanc¬ 
 tuaries; in them the eternal perspectives are pre¬ 
 served, and such ideas as, at least to some extent, 
 restore a man to his moral composure, and serve 
 to rescue him from the degradation of the World. 
 . . . When the religious-minded has once beheld 
 beatitude in his visions he looks no more for 
 them on earth; and if he shall lose those ravish¬ 
 ing illusions he finds no charm in things far in¬ 
 ferior to his dreams.” 
 
 To keep up our silent sanctuaries —that should 
 have been Senancour’s task, as it was his duty. 
 But he achieved nothing because he wandered 
 about in search of a monastery built by human 
 hands out of bricks and clay, and did not learn 
 that each man must build a silent sanctuary for 
 himself out of spiritual materials, and that the 
 physical monastery is merely of value according 
 as it shall serve that end. 
 
 Eugenie de Guerin, on the contrary, — to come 
 to my second instance, — took the materials that 
 lay ready to her hands and built her silent spir¬ 
 itual sanctuary. And that spiritual sanctuary 
 seems to have converted her father’s house into 
 its own essence, or at least into a corporeal coun¬ 
 terpart. Simplicity was there, religious devout¬ 
 ness, pious practices, and a humdrum round of 
 
 [ 53 ] 
 
fito Vlita Qftonaetica 
 
 daily duties. Her journal and letters contain little 
 more reference to the outside world than do the 
 records of Mount St. Agnes or of Sacro Speco. 
 The early morning sun, the bird upon a bush 
 outside her window, the chirp of grasshoppers, 
 a brood of chickens, a lame duckling, the dog, the 
 falling leaves, the fragrance of flowers, these con¬ 
 stitute the furnishings of life. Her spirit is like 
 that of Thomas a Kempis. She says of a friend: 
 u I have noticed Gabrielle does not approve my 
 inclination to retirement and renouncement of 
 the World. She does not know me; she isyounger 
 and does not understand that a time comes when 
 the heart lets go of all that does not help it to 
 live. The World enchants and intoxicates, but 
 that is not life. Life can be found only in God and 
 in oneself. To be alone with God, oh, happiness 
 supreme!” And in another passage: “I have not 
 read the life of the saint for the day, I am going 
 to read it; I always do before dinner. I find that 
 while one is eating, it is good to have in the soul 
 something spiritual like the life of a saint. The 
 Life of St. Macedone is charming. He is the saint 
 that said to a hunter, who was amazed to meet 
 him in the mountains, c You run after beasts, but 
 I run after God.’ These words contain all the life 
 of saints, and also of men of the World.” She 
 
 [ 54 ] 
 
§>enancout, (Eugenie be Guerin, atifc Jfmief 
 
 calls herself pauvre anachorete , and with reason; 
 and writes to her brother,“ What would you do 
 with my perpetual calm? For, except for what 
 comes from my heart or from my head, there is 
 no movement in my life. At this moment I have 
 just come back from a little walk in the sunshine; 
 there was nothing stirring near me except some 
 flies buzzing in the warm air. I was alone in the 
 great empty monastery. This complete loneliness 
 made me live for an hour as hermits have lived 
 for years, men and women, souls withdrawn apart 
 from the world. Without material cares, with no 
 word but from within, with no emotions but those 
 that start within the mind, with no life but that 
 of the soul: there is in this unattachment a free¬ 
 dom full of enjoyment, an unsuspected happi¬ 
 ness, and I well understand how, in order to make 
 it last, one would go and hide a hundred leagues 
 in the desert. ... It is because the world does 
 not satisfy the soul; it entertains it but does not 
 give it life. One feels this, however young, when 
 once the heart detaches itself from illusions.” 
 
 And with her, as with St. Benedict, the spirit 
 of poetry was a familiar visitant. <c I write,” she 
 says, “with fresh hands, for I have just been 
 washing my gown in the brook. It is pleasant to 
 be washing, to see the fish pass by, and ripples, 
 
 [ 55 ] 
 
fito Vlita OfyonaGtica 
 
 blades of grass, leaves, or flowers fallen in — to 
 watch these, and I don’t know what beside, float 
 down the stream. Many things come to the 
 washerwoman who has eyes to see the brook as 
 it goes by. It is the birds’ bathroom, the sky’s 
 looking-glass, the image of life, a running road, 
 the reservoir that fills the baptismal font.” And 
 so, for good reasons, she was content. “Rien ne 
 me plait comme mon desert.” 
 
 My third instance is Amiel. Thomas a Kempis 
 says: Pacem omnes desiderant; sed qux ad veram 
 pacem pertinent, non omnes cur ant. Pax mea , cum hu- 
 milibus et mansuetis corde. Pax tua erit in multa pa- 
 tientia. These words almost seem like the sum¬ 
 ming up of Amiel’s journal. His soul was that 
 of a recluse, but circumstances did not permit 
 him to flee from the World, and it may be that 
 he did not know that solitude would be for him 
 not merely a road, but the only road, to the peace 
 he sought, to freedom from the burden of trivial 
 things. He seems to have understood himself no 
 further than to have been aware that he was too 
 sensitive, too imaginative, too self-distrustful, 
 for practical life. He yearned for what Words¬ 
 worth describes: — 
 
 [ 56 ] 
 
£>cnancont , 0ugenie be Guerin, <w& JTmief 
 
 What but this, 
 
 The universal instinct of repose, 
 
 The longing for confirmed tranquillity, 
 
 Inward and outward; humble, yet sublime: — 
 
 The life where hope and memory are as one; 
 Earth quiet and unchanged ; the human Soul 
 Consistent in self-rule; and heaven revealed 
 To meditation in that quietness! 
 
 Amiel beats his wings against the constraining 
 walls builded about him by society. “ Vivre de la 
 vie eternelle, e’est la le but et la felicite supreme 
 pour le philosophe, l’artiste, le saint. Eh bien, 
 vivons de la vie eternelle. ... II n’y a de repos 
 pour l’esprit que dans l’absolu, pour le sentiment 
 que dans l’infini, pour Fame que dans le divin. 
 . . . II n’y a qu’une chose necessaire: posseder 
 Diem” 
 
 La vie est une lutte et des lors un supplice, 
 
 Et e’est la sa laideur, et e’est la mon effroi. 
 
 L’harmonie et la paix sont mes desirs a moi, 
 
 C’est pourquoi vers ton gouffre, 6 saint Bouddha, je glisse. 
 
 Is it not the stirrings of a yearning for God that 
 arouse this angry swarm of discontents ? 
 
 [ 57 ] 
 
C(?e 3?nfFuence of (DJmtian Ctabifion 
 
 £Uii autcm Xe per contcmptuin mundanorum, et carnte mortfftca// 
 tioncm aequuutur, vcrc eapicntcs ceoe coguoscuntur: quia dc 
 xsxnimtc ad vcritatctn, de carne ad epfritum tranaferimtur. 
 
 £i?oma0 a Rcmpte 
 
 OLITARIES, as I have said, 
 either before they leave the World, 
 or after they have left it, become 
 religious-minded, and it is true 
 that their religious-mindedness is 
 likely to be colored by the Christian doctrines 
 which the World has so long professed. Certainly 
 not only Eugenie de Guerin but also Senancour 
 and Amiel were deeply affected by them. Those 
 Christian doctrines sanction and approve the idea 
 and practice of the monastic system — manual 
 and intellectual labor of certain limited kinds, 
 prayer, spiritual exercises, and meditation. The 
 modern solitary who, we may suppose, has wan¬ 
 dered far from sectarian dogmas, is apt to prick 
 up his ears at this sanction. He scents supersti¬ 
 tion. He is fearful lest Christianity should prove 
 to be much more than sponsor, that if there had 
 been no Christian Church, there would have been 
 no monastic practices, no discipline of solitude, no 
 prayer, no spiritual exercises, no meditation, but 
 
 [ 58 ] 
 
(Cfje Jnftnencc of Cfjmtian tradition 
 
 that all such ideas and doings would have been 
 relegated long ago to the limbo of outworn su¬ 
 perstitions. He is afraid that though Christian¬ 
 ity may lay claim to poetry and visions beauti¬ 
 ful, yet the World holds fast to common sense 
 and truth, and that for the sake of his intellec¬ 
 tual integrity he must not take up with ideas and 
 practices that spring from error. 
 
 Let us give this apprehension due weight. It 
 must be admitted that the Christian Church has 
 moulded our civilization and our ways of thought, 
 and still maintains dominion over our senti¬ 
 ments, and through them affects our judgment. 
 She plays a great part in matters that touch our 
 dearest emotions. She enters as a solemn visit¬ 
 ant into the great ceremonies of life and death, 
 she has inherited much of the noblest achieve¬ 
 ments in art, her cathedrals are the most glo¬ 
 rious buildings on earth, her steeples and bel¬ 
 fries add a charm to the loveliest landscapes that 
 embrace human habitations, and on Sundays 
 and feast days she displays her power and au¬ 
 thority in every city, town, village, and hamlet. 
 The position of Christ in theological thought 
 is proof of her amazing hold on educated men. 
 Many a philosopher still professes her dogmas, 
 and her traditions exert a profound influence 
 
 [ 59 ] 
 
fito Ulita #?on«etica 
 
 upon us all. It is very difficult for earnest- 
 minded men who yearn after things of the spirit 
 to approach any problem of spiritual life quite 
 free from the ideas taught by the Church. If that 
 theological and ecclesiastical system invented the 
 road that leads away from the World and de¬ 
 vised those practices which St. Benedict coun¬ 
 seled as right occupations for the employment 
 of solitude, then the pilgrim should undoubt¬ 
 edly pause and consider. Nevertheless, it often 
 happens that one road serves men who travel 
 from very different motives: one traveler may 
 take the high road to London for the sake of 
 pleasure, another for business, and yet it will 
 lead a third to worship at Westminster Abbey. 
 
 The Church may be wrong in her dogmas, 
 wrong in her interpretation of the solution of 
 the deepest problem in life, notwithstanding,— 
 and herein lie her strength and her justification, 
 —she poses that problem correctly. She has taken 
 to heart the saying of her Lord, that man cannot 
 live by bread alone; she perceives that human 
 weakness reaches out its hand, that man craves 
 a satisfaction which the senses cannot yield: she 
 recognizes his aspiration toward knowledge of re¬ 
 ligious truth, his yearning for a Divine Friend, 
 his hunger for Infinite Love. Such phraseology 
 
 [ 60 ] 
 
(€($c ^Influence of €^tietian f&vahition 
 
 as this may not be acceptable to the pilgrim, but 
 put into other words it means nothing else than 
 that, for some persons at least, a man’s salvation 
 lies in turning toward a knowledge of that which 
 shall best satisfy his craving for knowledge, and 
 toward a love that shall best satisfy his craving 
 for love. And the pilgrim himself cannot formu¬ 
 late his problem otherwise than as a conscious¬ 
 ness of a driving need for intellectual and emo¬ 
 tional satisfaction. 
 
 The Christian system fared badly when the 
 World laid hands upon it; men of the World, 
 servants of ambition or pleasure or compromise, 
 added, altered, painted, and rearranged, put tin¬ 
 sel on and gaudy trimmings, and covered up the 
 simple outline of the first design. But when these 
 trappings and amplifications are pulled off, the 
 formula of human needs reappears in its native 
 simplicity. Th^se needs are inherent in human 
 nature. To these Christianity added hope, and 
 the Church added dogma. So long as the pil¬ 
 grim follows the road taken by these religious 
 needs, inherent in the heart of man, he should not 
 be troubled merely because Christian hope and 
 ecclesiastical dogma are companions of his way. 
 
 Grant that infinite multiplicity is assumed to 
 be a unity because of the nature of the human 
 
 [ 61 ] 
 
fito Wita $?onaetica 
 
 mind or because of the tendency of philosophic 
 thought to simplification; grant that God is 
 identified with Jesus Christ because of our in¬ 
 ability to deal with metaphysical problems, of 
 our practical human need that Godhead be ex¬ 
 pressed in terms intelligible to men of all kinds 
 and classes; grant that the Holy Ghost depends 
 upon the assumption that our human craving 
 for holiness implies an objective reality; grant 
 that the Church is the corporate expression of 
 human need for a royal road by which common 
 men may travel toward that which for them is 
 the highest; grant to skepticism the justice of all 
 its doubts, grant to those who deny the Chris¬ 
 tian creed the truth of all their denials; never¬ 
 theless, you but show the more plainly the two 
 elementary religious needs of the human heart, 
 knowledge and love. These remain in spite of 
 doubt and denial, the data for the gravest human 
 problem. 
 
 [ 62 ] 
 
3e 
 
 &ome iEirounbe of iDoii6t 
 
 Xtycoe our actors, as 5 foretold you, were all spirits. 
 
 XI ?e jCcmpcst 
 
 F, however, the pilgrim is still afraid 
 that he may be sinning against 
 his intellectual integrity, that the 
 World maybe right in asserting 
 that men should stick to prose, 
 should take the universe as the senses reveal it, 
 should enjoy life all they can, not drop the bone 
 for the shadow, like the dog in the fable, let him 
 reflect for a little upon the nature of that cer¬ 
 tainty which seems to the World so firm and solid. 
 A very brief consideration will raise doubts, and 
 incline him to suspect that poetry may hold as 
 much truth as there is in prose, or possibly more. 
 
 I accept (let us suppose) my subjective self; I 
 am a spectator that perceives; but what is it that 
 I perceive ? A long stream of pageantry forever 
 shifting, flowing onward like a river, the present 
 scene passing rapidly beyond the horizon of con¬ 
 sciousness, and a new succession of imagery com¬ 
 ing into its place, and yet never a glimpse of the 
 machinery, if there be such, that shifts the scenes. 
 So it is from birth to death, from dark to dark, a 
 
 [ 63 ] 
 
pto Vlita (tyonaetica 
 
 stream of pageantry and nothingmore. Ifwe draw 
 the inference that there must be some reality to 
 cause these shifting pictures—vibrations ofether 
 to cause our perception of light, vibrations of air 
 to create sounds, and other manifestations of en- 
 ergy to stir other sets of nerves to action, never¬ 
 theless, across the chasm that divides outer vi¬ 
 brations from the pictures in consciousness there 
 is no bridge of explanation. And besides, the 
 nerves respond to but some of the vibrations that 
 buzz in the outer world; so that even if it were 
 possible to get outside of consciousness and have 
 knowledge of vibrations as they really are, our 
 knowledge of that outer world would be but frag¬ 
 mentary and therefore necessarily misleading. 
 And further, even if the neural shocks that reach 
 the brain were truth-bearing messages that could 
 be interpreted by an impartial mind, they meet 
 no such interpreter; for the mind has been so 
 moulded and twisted by past experiences that the 
 original message is quite distorted in its inter¬ 
 pretation, the meaning gets translated into a lot 
 of ready-made, happy-go-lucky sentences. Every 
 perception is tricked out, as it were, in the tailor 
 shop of memory and the millinery parlors of 
 imagination, and never reaches consciousness in 
 its native state. And if we consider the eternal 
 
 [ 64 ] 
 
Jiome if)totwfc6 of £)ou6t 
 
 sequences of movements, causes and effects, how 
 can we be sure that this effect, or that, necessarily 
 follows upon a cause ? Or, if we turn our attention 
 to what we call nature’s laws, what indubitable 
 warrant have we to believe, for instance, that 
 there is conservation of energy, when no experi¬ 
 ment in its same circumstances can ever be re¬ 
 peated? How can we feel confidence in any in¬ 
 formation whatever concerning outward reality? 
 
 And if we pass from the stuff of life to its pat¬ 
 tern, the World has still less justification to de¬ 
 mand our acceptance of its views. To be sure, in 
 this particular it can hardly be said to possess a 
 theory of its own, since the doctrine of “ Let us 
 eat, drink, and be merry” ignores all questions 
 of why, whence, and whither; nevertheless, when 
 the World—if it ever bothers its head at all 
 about the matter — takes over from science the 
 hypothesis of irrational forces, it fares no bet¬ 
 ter, for science has no theory upon metaphysical 
 causes and ends. Science merely propounds a 
 series of activities, which quite without purpose 
 have constituted this sensitive instrument, con¬ 
 sciousness, and then play upon it, adagio or allegro, 
 a sequence of random notes. Such an hypothesis 
 seems fantastic, almost whimsical, as an explana¬ 
 tion of the pattern of life. 
 
 [ 65 ] 
 
fito Vlita ($}cma6ttca 
 
 But suppose the novice insists upon credu¬ 
 lity, and wishes to believe that the perceptions re¬ 
 port external reality as it actually is; how can he ? 
 If he examines his mind, he finds it primarily 
 an organ to secure the preservation of his life. 
 Its natural propensities are to fix its attention on 
 food and drink, sleep, danger, and escape. Ani¬ 
 mals with intellectual aptitudes for metaphysical 
 truth could never have survived. The mind is an 
 instrument, like another, shaped and adapted for 
 its primary uses. If reality in all its endless vari¬ 
 ety passes before it, the mind will perceive and 
 grasp only what may serve its body’s interests. 
 And even if it have avocations, and lay hold of 
 aspects of reality that do not concern the primary 
 instincts, what warrant is there that it does so 
 from a love of truth? And supposing the mind 
 be obsessed by a love of truth, what hope is there 
 that it grasps even a thousandth part of that 
 multitudinous reality? If a reader were to read 
 only every tenth word of a book, what would he 
 know of its contents ? 
 
 And if a man, before he puts his trust in what 
 we call knowledge, must postulate the truthful¬ 
 ness of perceptions, he must do as much for 
 memories, since perceptions, without the support 
 and interpretation of memories, are meaningless. 
 
 [ 66 ] 
 
Jjome lf)t:oun&0 of Oou 6 t 
 
 But reflection shows how capricious memory is. 
 Of a hundred thousand perceptions only a bare 
 scattering are remembered; and these all by 
 favor. Here, too, the body’s interests are para¬ 
 mount. M. Bergson says that one function of the 
 mind is to forget, to discharge itself of the myr¬ 
 iad superfluous perceptions that our senses pile 
 upon us. 
 
 And there is a further difficulty about mem¬ 
 ory. What proof is there, apart from convenience 
 to philosophy, that to-day’s memory is a true 
 counterpart of yesterday’s perception? To be 
 sure, the image in memory asserts its own truth¬ 
 fulness, but what evidence can it adduce? Yes¬ 
 terday’s perception is gone, never to return; we 
 cannot recapture it, set it and its memory side 
 by side, and compare the two. And what reason is 
 there to suppose that memory is more veracious 
 than perception? And yet perception is a notori¬ 
 ous false witness, for as we know, it flatly asserts 
 the objective existence of color, solidity, sub¬ 
 stance, and science denies all this. 
 
 However, let credulity have its way, and not 
 only accept the truthfulness of perceptions and 
 of memories, but also assume that memory pre¬ 
 serves what is pertinent and necessary to a true 
 comprehension of reality; even with this raw 
 
 r 6 7 ] 
 
pto Ulita (tyotiaetica 
 
 material all secure, in order to decipher and com¬ 
 prehend the meaning of that material, the novice 
 must have recourse to reason. All our perceptions 
 and memories are sifted, sorted, arranged, placed 
 in sequences and figures, by reason; for it is 
 not the rude chaos of perceptions and memories 
 that of itself is supposed to reveal reality, but 
 the rearrangement by reason. And how can we 
 put confidence in reason ? Look at its origin in 
 order to judge of its authority. We find that, in 
 the course of life upon this globe, reason is com¬ 
 paratively a newcomer. In the biological scale, 
 long before we go back to our unicellular ances¬ 
 tors, there are no traces of human reason to be 
 found, no laws of thought in operation, no power 
 to feel the cogency of hence and therefore. The 
 origins of life lie far back of the beginnings of 
 reason, in a “dark backward and abysm” of ele¬ 
 mentary stimuli and reactions. What warrant 
 have we, then, for a belief that reason, born of 
 things without reason, can and does arrange our 
 perceptions and memories in accordance with the 
 pattern of objective things that exist outside of 
 mind ? 
 
 Difficulty treads on the heels of difficulty. If 
 reason may be trusted, nevertheless its processes 
 and conclusions must be expressed in words, and 
 
 [ 68 ] 
 
J>ome iStounbe of £)ou6t 
 
 words are full of prejudices, inheritors of old par¬ 
 tisanships, most fitful in their elusive and subtle 
 metamorphoses. And suppose that we vault over 
 these obstacles, we find from observation that in 
 practice we pay little regard to reason. Many an¬ 
 other guide exercises quite as much control over 
 our beliefs as reason does. Authority, for instance, 
 or fashion. The routine of daily life, our food, our 
 customs, our schools, churches, courts of law, our 
 tastes, our admirations, obey authority or fashion. 
 In all the great interests of life, as the potter’s 
 wheel shapes the vessel of clay, so imitation, not 
 reason, shapes our conduct. And, looking further 
 afield, human life appears to be very impatient 
 of reason, eager to get rid of it as a troublesome 
 accessory. That part of the business of corporeal 
 life best carried on, such as breathing, digestion, 
 the circulation of the blood, is quite free from the 
 interference of reason. Bodily acts that follow 
 mechanically upon stimuli are our best; next in 
 merit come instinctive actions. Consider what 
 would happen, if in a moment of imminent dan¬ 
 ger action should pause while reason was debat¬ 
 ing whether life is, or is not, worth the living. In 
 the scale of biological merit, next to instinctive 
 action comes habitual action, such as reading, 
 writing, walking, eating, which have properly 
 
 [ 69 ] 
 
fito IHta OftonaGtica 
 
 been taken from reason and handed over to habit. 
 Wherever life has been able to shove reason 
 aside, it has done so. 
 
 Surely a pilgrim need not stick to the prose of 
 common sense, nor fear lest faith and imagina¬ 
 tion shall lead him astray. Faith and imagination 
 are the two distinguishing traits of mind, the two 
 factors of knowledge, the two primal conditions 
 of human existence; without them the senses and 
 reason would be the very shadow of vanity. Why, 
 then, should the pilgrim distrust them when they 
 busy themselves with religious matters? 
 
 [ 70 ] 
 
XJ, 
 
 fotfe TSountiee of Siotitube 
 
 3 long for scenes wl?erc man l?ae never trod — 
 
 Sc r scenes wljerc woman never smiled or wept — 
 jCljerc to abide witl;> mp Creator, f5od, 
 
 and sleep a & X in cl?ildl?ood swectlp slept, 
 
 Sn\\ of l?igl? tljougljts, unborn. 
 
 5ol?n Clare 
 
 AN it be that the World is right 
 to lay its stakes on physical fact as 
 against an ideal philosophy? How, 
 for instance, can Dante’s vision 
 beautiful, that Donna beata e bella , 
 that Florentine maiden so endowed and informed 
 with heavenly communion that she is become all 
 immortal and divine, be explained as superfluous 
 imagery in consciousness, sketched at hazard by 
 the blind hand of physical fact, busy with its phys¬ 
 ical task, as if charred sticks wheeled on a barrow 
 by a careless laborer might rub against the wall 
 he passes by and trace the outline of Signorelli’s 
 angels? The choice before the pilgrim seems to 
 lie in finding the cause of the gorgeous imagery 
 in Dante’s mind, either in the blind melee of 
 physical energies, unknown except as causes of 
 such imagery, or in the magnetic force of some 
 final end toward which struggling, thwarted, spir- 
 
 [ 71 ] 
 
pto Vlita &)ona6tica 
 
 itual instincts pursue their course “as birds their 
 trackless way.” Is he to believe in chaos or tele¬ 
 ology, in Nature or God? 
 
 Long ago Pascal said: “Voila ce que je vois 
 et ce qui me trouble. Je regarde de toutes parts, 
 et ne vois partout qu’obscurite. La nature ne 
 m’offre rien qui ne soit matiere de doute et d’in- 
 quietude. Si je n’y voyais rien qui marquat une 
 Divinite, je me determinerais a n’en rien croire. 
 Si je voyais partout les marques d’un Createur, 
 je reposerais en paix dans la foi. Mais, voyant 
 trop pour nier, et trop peu pour m’assurer, je 
 suis dans un etat a plaindre, et ou j’ai souhaite 
 cent fois que, si un Dieu la soutient, elle le mar¬ 
 quat sans equivoque; et que, si les marques 
 qu’elle en donne sont trompeuses, elle les suppri- 
 mat tout a fait; qu’elle dit tout ou rien, afin que 
 je visse quel parti je dois suivre. Au lieu qu’en 
 l’etat ou je suis, ignorant ce que je suis et ce que 
 je dois faire, je ne connais ni ma condition, ni 
 mon devoir. Mon coeur tend tout entier a con- 
 naitre ou est le vrai bien, pour le suivre.” 
 
 Who wins the wager? where does reality lie? 
 Dean Inge says: “One test is infallible: what¬ 
 ever view of reality deepens our sense of the tre¬ 
 mendous issues of life in the world wherein we 
 move is for us nearer the truth than any view 
 
 [ 72 ] 
 
T5ountice of J>of itube 
 
 which diminishes that sense.” Surely our pilgrim 
 need not fear wronging his intellectual integrity 
 because he turns his back upon the World’s ma¬ 
 terial philosophy as well as on the World, nor 
 because, upon his path away therefrom to soli¬ 
 tude, he consorts with men of a religious mind, 
 nor even with persons steeped in Christian be¬ 
 liefs. Many another, not a Christian, seeks out 
 solitude and its religious inspirations. To show 
 that our pilgrim need not be fearful, I quote from 
 a solitary quite free from theological and ecclesi¬ 
 astical traditions. 
 
 “ Ah! I need solitude. I have come forth to this 
 hill at sunset to see the forms of the mountains 
 on the horizon—to behold and commune with 
 something grander than man. Their mere dis¬ 
 tance and unprofanedness is an infinite encour¬ 
 agement. It is with infinite yearning and aspira¬ 
 tion that I seek solitude, more and more resolved 
 and strong. . . . 
 
 “ I thrive best on solitude. If I have had a 
 companion only one day in a week, unless it were 
 one or two I could name, I find that the value of 
 the week to me has been seemingly affected. It 
 dissipates my day, and often it takes me another 
 week to get over it. . . . 
 
 [ 73 ] 
 
fito Vlita (fyonaetica 
 
 “ There is nothing so sanative, so poetic, as 
 a walk in the woods and fields even now, when 
 I meet none abroad for pleasure. Nothing so in¬ 
 spires me and excites such serene and profitable 
 thought. The objects are elevating. In the street 
 and in society I am almost invariably cheap and 
 dissipated, my life is unspeakably mean. But 
 alone in distant woods or fields, in unpretend¬ 
 ing sprout-lands or pastures tracked by rabbits, 
 even in a bleak and, to most, cheerless day, like 
 this, when a villager would be thinking of his 
 inn, I come to myself, I once more feel myself 
 grandly related, and that cold and solitude are 
 friends of mine. I suppose that this value, in my 
 case, is equivalent to what others get by church¬ 
 going and prayer. . . . It is as if I always met in 
 those places some grand, serene, immortal, infi¬ 
 nitely encouraging, though invisible companion, 
 and walked with him. This is a common expe¬ 
 rience in my traveling. I plod along, thinking 
 what a miserable world this is and what miserable 
 fellows we that inhabit it, wondering what it is 
 tempts men to live in it; but anon I leave the 
 towns behind and am lost in some boundless 
 heath, and life becomes gradually more tolerable, 
 if not even glorious. . . . Solitude was sweet to 
 me as a flower. ... I love to be alone. I never 
 
 [ 74 ] 
 
TSountiee of 3o?itube 
 
 found the companion that was so companionable 
 as solitude.” 
 
 But in addition to the reproach of outworn reli¬ 
 gious beliefs, critics of the recluse often charge 
 that solitude involves mental emptiness and idle¬ 
 ness. Not at all. There is no more reason to sup¬ 
 pose that a solitary is empty-headed and idle 
 than that men of the World are empty-headed 
 and idle. Undistraught by the society of men, the 
 solitary may turn his attention to other creatures 
 and created things; he substitutes new interests 
 for old; he has leisure to look about him at this 
 curious universe and turn over some of its pages. 
 There are all the stars of the sky, “the Pleiades, 
 the late-setting Bootes, the Bear, which men also 
 call the Wain, that circles round in its place and 
 gazes at Orion,” just as they were when Odysseus 
 set his course by them and steered his raft from 
 Calypso’s isle to the landof the Phaeacians. There 
 is the earth with all its elements and energies, its 
 records of ancient times, of physical mutations 
 and geological contortions, where the recluse 
 may sit upon the ground and read sad stories 
 of dead nations, species extinct, and epochs 
 barely decipherable. He may make acquaintance 
 with humble fellow travelers from birth to death, 
 
 [ 75 ] 
 
pto VHta d?onaefica 
 
 horses, dogs, sheep, cats, — they are but other 
 manifestations of the wayward spirit of life, for 
 the breath they breathe is one with ours, — the 
 shy squirrel that may by patience be coaxed to 
 accept morsels from the solitary’s lunch, the bees 
 busily bringing pollen from stamens near at hand 
 to pistils far away, all unwitting (as we with our 
 odd conceptions of knowledge assume) that they 
 are creating fresh sources of nectar and ambrosial 
 meal for the next generation of bees. 
 
 There are the wild flowers in all their modesty 
 and glory: the blueweed that covers barren fields 
 with a benediction of violet hue, such as Fra An¬ 
 gelico chooses for the saints in Paradise; the joe- 
 pye weed that might supply color for Persian 
 painters painting a sultan’s palace in Persepolis; 
 the staminate early meadow-rue that shakes its 
 drooping stamens like golden bells at a fairy 
 wedding; the yellow melilot that might grow in 
 a poet’s dreams; and pendulous bellworts that 
 hang their heads under the burden of their Latin 
 polysyllables. The World cares little for road¬ 
 sides, upland pastures, swamps, or stony fields; 
 it prefers Broadway, the Boulevard Haussmann, 
 Piccadilly. The solitary does not wish to divert 
 the World from its haunts and bring it to his 
 solitude—by no means; why, then, should not 
 
 [ 76 ] 
 
(TE0e Tbomtm of £>otitube 
 
 the World let the solitary alone, or even gently 
 encourage him in his retired ways, instead of call¬ 
 ing him a slacker and a do-nothing? 
 
 But the ultimate justification of solitude lies 
 in its function as a nurse to the religious spirit. 
 Many a man finds there, and there only, what 
 Wordsworth refers to as the sense “ of something 
 far more deeply interfused,” and which old Seneca 
 calls “the presence of some god.” An effluence 
 emanates from Nature, as if the great mother, in 
 the closer communion and deeper sympathy of 
 solitude, folded her arms about her children and 
 hummed old tunes which she had heard before 
 the birth of worlds. 
 
 In solitude the recluse has leisure to ponder 
 over the most significant fact in life: that there 
 are values. I do not mean the difference of rank 
 in the organic scale of creation, but the judg¬ 
 ment of “better” or “worse” that the perceiv¬ 
 ing mind passes upon all images that excite its 
 interest. It seems as if that high judicial faculty 
 dealt with the inmost verity in life. And in soli¬ 
 tude, far better than in company, the recluse may 
 brood, during what time he likes, over specula¬ 
 tion as to whither this verity may lead us. 
 
 [ 77 ] 
 
X33 
 
 (Efje Ulcgct«6fe 
 
 0eck and ye sljall find. 
 
 0t. iDattl?cw, vii: 7 
 
 ISCONTENT with false values 
 is the motive that has impelled 
 all monks and recluses, from St. 
 Anthony to Thoreau, to leave the 
 World. Solitude, I repeat, best can 
 furnish the recluse with the conditions under 
 which he may hope to readjust those values 
 until they shall, at last, rest on the foundation 
 of complete mental satisfaction. In solitude the 
 monks of old attained that goal. If we go on a 
 quest, all agree that it is prudent to start with 
 an hypothesis; and the most reasonable hypoth¬ 
 esis must be based on the experience of other 
 seekers, who believe that they have found. Why 
 should we be deterred because they expressed 
 the satisfaction of attainment in an outworn the¬ 
 ological and ecclesiastical language? Has Cicero 
 nothing to say to us because he wrote in Latin, 
 or Homer because he wrote in Greek? Those 
 monastic seekers thought that they had come 
 upon reality, and they called it God; and in the 
 acceptance of values based upon that reality they 
 
 [ 78 ] 
 
®}c VleQctaBCe :pafc# 
 
 found peace. Modern seekers are doubtful if 
 men’s minds can lay hold of reality; and yet it 
 is difficult to suppose that he who has attained 
 to perfect peace can be persuaded that he has 
 not touched reality at least with his finger-tips. 
 Some modern philosophers declare their belief 
 in a Reality, all-embracing, of which finite crea¬ 
 tures, each in its several way, are finite expres¬ 
 sions. 
 
 The recluses of old withdrew from among the 
 congregations of men and built a monastery 
 out of wood and stone, bricks and mortar, on a 
 remote mountain-side, or in some clear valley 
 where they should hear the waters of a river 
 hurrying to find peace in the great sea, quel mare 
 al qual tutto si move. A monastery, as its name 
 shows, is primarily a place where one lives alone, 
 or, at least, a place for the practice of solitude. 
 Absolute separation from all men is virtually im¬ 
 possible, and that is not what the recluse seeks. 
 His need is merely separation from what he calls 
 the World. And according to traditional usage 
 a monastery provides not only solitude but also 
 modes of employment. Of these modes four are 
 preeminent—garden, library, oratory, and cell. 
 This system is still a wise guide; the recluse in 
 his retreat cannot do better than to follow it. 
 
 [ 79 ] 
 
fito iilittt ftfonaetica 
 
 The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life. 
 The mediaeval world is past, its social institu¬ 
 tions are gone, the feudal system will never re¬ 
 turn, nor will the great monastic orders ever lift 
 their heads again. But as graftings from a wild 
 stock maybe brought into the orchard, and seeds 
 from mountain flowers be planted in a garden 
 bed, so it is possible to bring from the long past 
 ideas that once clothed themselves in antique 
 or mediaeval forms and will now take modern 
 shapes and add richness and variety to our mod¬ 
 ern ways of doing and thinking. Even the feudal 
 system may stimulate our imagination. In feudal 
 times, social inequality — men rising one above 
 another in place and dignity, of diverse educa¬ 
 tion and diverse occupations, groups and classes 
 varying in duties and privileges, with different 
 modes and conditions of living—presented the 
 spectacle of a society in which men looked up 
 without envy or malice, and even found life 
 richer from the thought that there were degrees 
 of excellency and honor, and imagined that it 
 was a privilege to serve and work for somebody 
 better than oneself. But most men prefer a level 
 plain to the mountains; they can build railroads, 
 drive motor cars, trucks, and lorries more expe¬ 
 ditiously in the flat country, build cities more 
 
 [ 8 ° ] 
 
Zilegeta6£e ^DatclJ 
 
 easily, and accumulate wealth far more speedily. 
 And yet some men had rather be poor moun¬ 
 taineers and live in highlands, surrounded by 
 peaks and mountains that lift their tops toward 
 heaven, than to be rich burgesses dwelling in the 
 plains. In like manner the bygone monastic sys¬ 
 tem offers ideas and suggestions to us of to-day. 
 Let me avail myself of it as an allegory: for as we 
 still go to the Bible to find the deepest religious 
 experience of mankind, so in the monastic sys¬ 
 tem we shall find recorded a great part of what¬ 
 ever success men have achieved in their search 
 for spiritual wisdom. Much of the allegory must 
 be taken as such, but other parts may be accepted 
 literally or interpreted as if parables, according 
 to the need and condition of the reader. 
 
 Let the recluse, then, begin his period of iso¬ 
 lation and self-discipline in a garden, and at first, 
 following the Benedictine regulation of labor in 
 return for livelihood, let him go to work in the 
 vegetable patch. It is not necessary that this 
 monastic garden be shut in by walls, like its 
 European predecessors in mediaeval centuries; 
 let us suppose it to lie far out in the open coun¬ 
 try, with the bay of some great lake, or estuary 
 of the sea, spreading out its curve of blue at the 
 foot of the monastic precincts. A mountain range 
 
 [ 81 ] 
 
fivo Viita &)onaetica 
 
 bounds the horizon to the north, and a shelter¬ 
 ing fringe of spruce and hemlock hedges the 
 garden in. Even the neighboring hamlet in¬ 
 trudes on the monastic seclusion no further than 
 to send up faint columns of smoke from busy 
 kitchens, nor theoutlyingfarms, apartfrom cheer¬ 
 ful barnyard noises, nor the farmer except when 
 he sings or whistles as he drives his plough. The 
 recluse lays out a corner of the garden for pota¬ 
 toes. Tie looks into the future, and sees, in his 
 mind’s eye, rows of plants full grown, laden with 
 leaves and flowers, and down within the little 
 mounds of earth, clusters of tubers Arm and fresh. 
 This vision he hopes to bring to birth in the 
 world of tangible things, and he sets out to co¬ 
 ordinate the forces of nature in such manner that 
 the potato patch shall come to be a copy of his 
 thought. Other hands, perhaps, in the summer 
 before, digged the soil deep; and during the win¬ 
 ter Jack Frost has been grinding the particles of 
 earth finer and finer, so that our solitary steps in 
 after the process of preparation has commenced. 
 He takes a spade, digs a trench north by south, 
 six inches deep, another two feet away, and an¬ 
 other, until the patch assigned to potatoes is all 
 taken up; he then lays along the bottom of each 
 trench some stimulating fertilizer—an admixture 
 
 [ 82 ] 
 
fatfe Ule$eta6Ce patcty 
 
 of wood ashes, lime, dead leaves, together with 
 manure from the barnyard — and over that he 
 scatters a thin covering of earth. These strange 
 bedfellows prepare the ground for the infant life 
 of the plant, nurse the tender sprout, warm and 
 comfort it, and enable it to lift its haulm out of the 
 dark into the air and sunlight. Having prepared 
 the bed, the recluse must take parent potatoes, 
 carve them into segments, cutting out in prefer¬ 
 ence the eyes from the apex, and lay the sets, 
 eyes upward, along the bottom of the trench 
 (carefully, lest they touch the manure and the 
 flavor of the future potato be impaired), and then 
 cover them with earth. And when he has done 
 this and laid aside the spade, he will take up the 
 hoe, since he must uproot the weeds; for though 
 Nature will help him grow potatoes, yet she is 
 the universal mother, and in her passionate, way¬ 
 ward fashion, loves all her children—weeds, as 
 they are despitefully called by lovers of domes¬ 
 ticated flowers, quite as much as vegetables or 
 flowers themselves. Then from hoe back to spade, 
 to bank the earth about the sprouting plants; for 
 although stalk, leaves, and flowers should have 
 all the sun that shines, the tubers, often much 
 against their will, must stay well covered up in 
 the dark. And day by day, through all the grow- 
 
 [ 83 ] 
 
pto Vlita Qftonattka 
 
 ing season, the recluse must watch the plants, and 
 guard them jealously from insect and disease; he 
 must mix fungicide, take pump, and spray and 
 spray. 
 
 When his back feels broken, then he may 
 pause to lean upon his spade and muse over the 
 process. First, clear and distinct in his mind’s 
 eye, gleamed the idea, and this idea with a sort 
 of kingly authority summoned him to work; it 
 roused desire, desire stirred will, and will in some 
 mysterious way despatched currents down the 
 motor nerves; and hands, arms, legs, hurried to 
 combine materials and forces that should give 
 corporeal substance to his original idea. Man, 
 sunshine, rain, manure, the minerals in the soil, 
 all toil together in patient collaboration to help 
 the little underground stems lay up their stores 
 of starch. The recluse now perceives that he is 
 an agent in creation, bringing order out of chaos, 
 laying a yoke on the neck of the untamed actual 
 and breaking it into the service of the ideal. But 
 not quite that, for these powers are as ready and 
 eager as he; they are not slaves, but colaborers. 
 In the idea lies power; out of the idea flows forth 
 energy. This is one of the first lessons taught 
 under the monastic system. 
 
 [ 84 ] 
 
30373 ! 
 
 lZC)e jffovwc l^atben 
 
 U)td 'B.ature’0 old felicities. 
 
 Wordowortl? 
 
 l^cureuje celui . . . 
 
 iCLui plane our la vie et comprend oano effort 
 Cc laugage dco fleuro et deo cljooco muetteo! 
 Baudelaire 
 
 HE vegetable patch of a monas¬ 
 tery does not ask of its gardener 
 more than such parts of his time 
 as may be strictly necessary for 
 the crop, since the monastic rule 
 recognizes that flowers are as necessary for the 
 spirit as food is for the body. A solitary in quest 
 of values that shall rest upon the ultimate satis¬ 
 factions of the soul must go by way of a flower 
 
 Giovanni Baptista of Ferrara, full of a noble 
 confidence that the flowery path will lead to 
 heaven, bids one tread floridam ad ccelum viarn . 
 And a lay brother of the Carthusian Order, for 
 thirty years gardener to the Charter House in 
 Paris, says: “The culture of gardens has always 
 been looked upon as the fine art of the world: 
 nothing can afford more pleasure than the pur¬ 
 suit of it. This is the pleasure I wish to a curious 
 
 [ 85 ] 
 
pto liiita (fyonaetica 
 
 person, who disengaged from the tumultuous 
 scene of the world, and inspired with a sense of 
 religion, has taken up a resolution to pass the rest 
 of his days at his country-house, where he may 
 taste the innocent pleasures of a rural life.” 
 
 Consider, for instance, the Canterbury Bell, 
 Campanula Medium. If it is not a poet’s flower, 
 like daffodils, pansies, roses, or rue, that must be 
 because its name will not fit into English verse, 
 for surely it is a most enchanting and romantic 
 flower. Bells speak a language of their own to the 
 human heart. No wonder that the Church as pro¬ 
 logue to its liturgy introduced the ringing of the 
 bell. A bell of metal cast by the masters at Bruges 
 is an exquisite achievement of art and science. 
 The fused metals obey their foreordained ratio; 
 every circle and curve in their molten union, from 
 crown to mouth, has been prescribed by primal 
 laws that rule the waves of sound. And when the 
 sun sinks below the horizon, the novice leans his 
 hoe against the wheelbarrow and listens in the 
 direction of the parish church till a rope is pulled, 
 the bell swings, and the heavy clapper strikes the 
 rim, and notes of solemn music fly through the air 
 and in devout processional glide across the waters 
 of the bay. Ave Maria! Involuntarily he repeats 
 such verses as may start up in his memory: 
 
 [ 86 ] 
 
(&tje jffowct: barbell 
 
 Vergine, s’ a mercede 
 
 Miseria estrema dell’ umane cose 
 
 Giammai tivolse, al mio prego t’ inchina; 
 
 Soccorri alia mia guerra ; 
 
 Bench’ i’ sia terra, e tu del del regina. 
 
 But the music of the Canterbury Bell is still more 
 melodious and devout. For my part, I think, 
 especially when it wears its true color, blue or 
 white, that it should be called Campanula Vir- 
 ginis, except that the Campanula is far older than 
 Christianity. She was a nymph. As the story is 
 told, her father was a fantastic youth who always 
 went about tinkling a bell, and her mother 
 “a subterraneous nymph,” and, so long as the 
 daughter lived, their happiness was without par¬ 
 allel. Campanula was vigilant and faithful; and 
 the Hesperides, mistresses of the wonderful gar¬ 
 den, gave her an office of trust in it, which was 
 that whenever a thief came to steal the golden 
 apples, she should arouse the guardian dragon. 
 Campanula flung herself in the way of every thief, 
 and at his touch she uttered a tinkling sound 
 that warned the dragon. But one night a robber 
 murdered her. The Hesperides, in order to com¬ 
 fort the stricken parents, transmuted her body 
 into a flower and planted the flower in their gar¬ 
 den, and gave orders that it should be carefully 
 
 [ 87 ] 
 
^Dro Ikita Qtyonaetica 
 
 tended. And Sieur Liger d’Auxerre, who tells 
 the story, says a fidelity is a virtue that always 
 recommends a man, not only during life, but 
 even after Destiny has lodged him in his grave.” 
 
 The Campanula Virginis is very beautiful; and 
 what a miracle! A little seed, a little soil, a little 
 water, and the glorious sun, and down go little 
 roots into the earth, the green stalk lifts its head, 
 its tender leaves uncurl, and at the top of every 
 stem a bud starts forth, unfolds its corolla, and 
 becomes a bell. Do the upholders of a mecha¬ 
 nistic universe go into their laboratory and pro¬ 
 duce an achievement like this ? The psycholo¬ 
 gists, however, tell us that the pleasure we get 
 from the Campanula Virginis is due not to the 
 sensations of light, color, line, and shape, but to 
 an accompanying affection, which should not 
 be confounded with the sensations themselves; 
 nevertheless, they do not tell us what raison d'etre 
 that accompanying affection may claim. How and 
 why did this sense of beauty come? Out of what 
 was it evolved, or what power fashioned it? 
 
 Flowers make one of the monastic textbooks, 
 and the lesson that St. Benedict the poet would 
 have the solitary learn is the lesson of beauty. 
 For those that are not trained psychologists it 
 is not an easy lesson. What biological end does 
 
 [ 88 ] 
 
(€f$e jfCowet l&aibcn 
 
 the love of beauty serve? If the recluse shall, 
 day by day, as the sun climbs the same arc of 
 heaven, watch the light glide softly along the 
 outer convexity of the corolla till it reach the 
 lip, then creep within and gild the pistil with a 
 deeper yellow, and shift the hues of green upon 
 its leaves, does he make himself more fit to out¬ 
 live his less sensitive competitors ? Are lovers of 
 beauty survivors in the struggle for life? Does 
 nature select them as a favorable variation? It is 
 sometimes said that delight in beauty plays a role 
 in the drama of sex; but what planted in the 
 feminine mind the love of beauty? Delight in 
 beauty, if it shall explain the victorious wooing 
 of the beautiful lover, must have arisen first. 
 
 In the monastery beauty teaches other dog¬ 
 mas and another goal, another theory of fitness. 
 Can it be that beauty, ofwhich men talk so much, 
 is a mere accident? Is the spiritual exhilaration 
 engendered of loveliness in nature and art of no 
 advantage in the life of men ? Are all the artists 
 that have ever lived wholly wrong? Let an artist 
 build, write,compose, paint, or model, yet, though 
 his work should last for a thousand years, though 
 he should receive a great price, though his name 
 should become a household word, if he knows 
 that there is no beauty in his handiwork it is a 
 
 [ «9 ] 
 
fito Vlita Qftonaetica 
 
 failure in his eyes, one vanity the more. Is beauty 
 really empty of all meaning? Art, perhaps, may 
 achieve its purpose in human appreciation, in the 
 pleasure of the moment derived from the work 
 of art. But Nature differs from Art. Nature brings 
 forth nothing that is an end in itself; whatever 
 she does is for the sake of that which shall come 
 after, and that, too, is for the sake of its succes¬ 
 sors. “In sequent toil all forwards do contend.” 
 
 May it be that we have erred by assigning to 
 the power which acts through Nature a mere ma¬ 
 terial, a mere physico-chemical, task ? The theory 
 in the monastery, at least, is that beauty serves 
 some ultimate end, is some masterful manifes¬ 
 tation of reality, or, as the old phraseology ex¬ 
 pressed it, a shadowing forth of the divine. The 
 solitary is taught that the flower should give him 
 some such satisfaction as comes to a traveler 
 who has lost his way in the forest, when he catches 
 sight of a blazed tree and learns therefrom the 
 direction that shall guide him toward his jour¬ 
 ney’s destination. 
 
 [ 90 3 
 
Ci6rarp 
 
 Jn eortem ac Itbcrtatcm tranoicna ftUorutn JDei, qut atant 
 super pra*scntta ct speculaittur aterna. 
 
 Xljoinaa a Rcmpia 
 
 HE second discipline of a retreat 
 is the library. The novice might 
 expect to find upon the shelves 
 books of theology and devout 
 learning, lives of saints, treatises 
 upon ethics and such, and little else. He would 
 be wrong. The monastery imposes no such lim¬ 
 itations; rather it encourages, if it does not 
 oblige, its inmates to read widely in any or all re¬ 
 gions of this printed world, wandering whither 
 they will. Some special literature or topic is ad¬ 
 vised. On first quitting the World there is like¬ 
 lihood that the recluse is too much under the in¬ 
 fluence of grief, cynicism, or scorn, and the best 
 way to wash his mind of these impurities and re¬ 
 store it to a state of serenity is to steep himself 
 in far-off things. Take Greek literature, for ex¬ 
 ample. One need be no scholar in order to stumble 
 about and grope one’s way in Homer, in Plato, 
 or Euripides, and thereby forget oneself. The 
 strangeness of this Greek language, with its sup- 
 
 [ 91 ] 
 
pio Ulita ®)ona$tka 
 
 pleness and sinewy elegance, holds the recluse; 
 and the Hellenic world in all its richness and 
 nobility, its surrender to passion and its love of 
 form, is the best of medicines. In that intenser 
 world of old the modern reader cools his own 
 heat of grief or disgust. Here is diversion in its 
 bestsense. Behold Achilles, swift of foot, andgod- 
 like in his strength and youthful beauty, mighti¬ 
 est of warriors, standing by his tent in sullen rage 
 at the dishonor put upon him by Agamemnon. 
 In his absence from the battle, the Trojans have 
 burst their way over the protecting wall, across 
 the ditch, and are setting fire to the Grecian ships. 
 His dear friend, Patroclus, runs up with the news, 
 weeping; and great Achilles says: — 
 
 Why dost thou weep, Patroclus, like a foolish 
 Little girl, who running to her mother asks 
 To be taken up, tugs at her gown and pulls 
 Her back as she walks on, and cries, and 
 Looks with longing, till she be taken up. 
 
 Thou art like her, Patroclus, weeping these tender tears. 
 
 Does not the scene make us forget ourselves? 
 Or take the most famous trial in history, where 
 Socrates defends himself by alleging that he has 
 followed what he believed to be the divine com¬ 
 mand: cc Verily, this is so, ye men of Athens. 
 
 [ 92 ] 
 
(€tfe Ci6rarp 
 
 Wherever a man shall take his place in the bat¬ 
 tlefield, whether he thinks that to be the best 
 place, or has been ordered there by the com¬ 
 mander, there — as I think — he should stay, and 
 abide danger, and not deem death or anything 
 else worse than shame.” And he tells his judges 
 that, should they offer to spare him on condition 
 that he shall refrain from his former ways, he will 
 answer: “ Ye men of Athens, I entertain high re¬ 
 gard and affection for you, but I shall obey the 
 god rather than you; and so long as I live, and 
 am able, I shall not give up philosophy, nor my 
 exhortation, nor stop expounding my belief to 
 any one of you that I may meet, saying in my 
 customary fashion, c My dear fellow,are not you, 
 an Athenian, a very great city and of high re¬ 
 nown for wisdom and power, ashamed to busy 
 yourself about money, striving to get as much 
 as you can, and about reputation and honors, 
 and not busy yourself nor take thought of wis¬ 
 dom, and truth, and of your 80111 ?' ... For I 
 do nothing else but go about trying to persuade 
 you, both young and old, not to busy yourselves 
 about your bodies or about money more than 
 about your soul—how it may become very noble; 
 and I say that virtue does not come from money, 
 but that from virtue comes money and all other 
 
 [ 93 ] 
 
fito Ditto tyotiaetica 
 
 good things, whether to the individual or to the 
 state. . . . Therefore, I say, O Athenians, acquit 
 me or do not acquit me, for I shall not do dif¬ 
 ferently, not even if I have to die many times.” 
 There, before the recluse, as he reads the im¬ 
 mortal pages, Socrates pronounces his apology, 
 in the presence of the three accusers, while to the 
 east stands the acropolis crowned by the Parthe¬ 
 non, and beyond rise the outlines of Pentelicus 
 and Hymettus, and to the west shimmers the 
 sea, and out of the blue waters Salamis lifts her 
 memorable head; and there, quivering with rev¬ 
 erence and admiration, in among the blind-eyed 
 judges, for the moment, stands the recluse also, 
 oblivious of the two thousand five hundred years 
 between. 
 
 Or if he be troubled by the sin-wrought woe 
 in our modern world, let him read The Trojan 
 Women —how Hecuba goes from the ruins of 
 high prosperity to slavery. 
 
 Fiction, too, is part of the discipline. Here 
 the recluse, as it were, returns to the World 
 again but with a difference. We are so used to 
 this world of fiction that it appears as natural, 
 as much a matter of course, as the physical 
 world of ordinary life; and we are apt to forget 
 that, as a rule, a novel is for a man to read by 
 
 [ 94 ] 
 
(€#e Ci6ratp 
 
 himself and not in company, that it is a sort of 
 handmaiden to solitude. This is a world, so far 
 as the life of civilized man is concerned, as ample, 
 as populous, as dramatic, as full of vicissitudes, as 
 the world of sensuous experience. The palaces 
 of Shakespeare, Cervantes, Goethe, Walter Scott, 
 the mansions of Tolstoi, Balzac, Victor Hugo, 
 Thackeray, and Dickens, the summer parlors 
 of Stevenson, Hawthorne, Motte-Fouque, Fo- 
 gazzaro, all lie open, unobstructed by bolt or 
 bar. In these places of delight and joy, of fear 
 and terror, the recluse wanders about at will, 
 unseen, unheard. In the midst of the stir and 
 bustle of life he preserves his solitude. And the 
 reason that the monastic discipline enjoins such 
 reading is that at the beginning of his novitiate 
 there is danger lest the recluse be too much ab¬ 
 sorbed in repentance, self-reproach, regret, and 
 downheartedness; not at once can he attain the 
 source of strength that he seeks. Besides, he 
 must not let his heart lose the one good gift the 
 World occasions — its quicker beating for com¬ 
 passion, pity, admiration, or scorn. In the world 
 of fiction he beholds Desdemona, Cordelia, Mar¬ 
 guerite, the heroines of Turgueniev or George 
 Eliot, and untrammeled by consciousness of self, 
 embarrassment, shyness, incapacity, unembit- 
 
 [ 95 ] 
 
pto Ulita Qtyonaetica 
 
 tered by any personal wrong from the doersof evil, 
 he gives himself up to the flood of sympathy. 
 
 And in this world of fiction the recluse ob¬ 
 serves that there is both good and evil, inter¬ 
 mingling, bound together, now one predomi¬ 
 nant, now the other, but neither visible in the 
 utter absence of the other, twins, each depend¬ 
 ent for existence on its fellow. And yet, in spite 
 of the eternal presence of evil, no reader blames 
 the author. Nobody is indignant with Shake¬ 
 speare for Lady Macbeth, lago, Regan, Goneril, 
 or thinks that he did wrong to create them. 
 Wickedness is part of the texture of the whole, 
 the shadow against which the light shows most 
 triumphant. And further, although he praises 
 most those dramas or romances in which there 
 is no trace of the master’s hand, but each char¬ 
 acter is left to fashion its own salvation or de¬ 
 struction, nevertheless, if he be a real lover of 
 books, he will value most those in which, as he 
 imagines, he can discern a personality, not in 
 this act or that, not in this character or that epi¬ 
 sode, but rather in a quality comparable in sub¬ 
 tility to the ethereal element that fills the inter¬ 
 stellar spaces — of which the lover of books 
 is mysteriously conscious, as of the memory of 
 something fragrant in a forgotten dream. 
 
 [ 96 ] 
 
Ci6rat:y 
 
 Most of all, the world of fiction, being a world 
 of ideas, teaches the recluse that in order to make 
 a world there is no need to postulate ponderable 
 matter or shocks of energy; that consciousness 
 is the ultimate element; and that ideas constitute 
 the reality that enters into human experience. 
 
 [ 97 ] 
 
XVI 
 
 (£(}e J>jmifttaf fOowet of J>e$> 
 
 JDonna £ genttl ncl ciel. 
 
 Jnfcrno, ti, 94 
 
 HE quest for new values, the 
 search for a well of water drinking 
 wherefrom one shall not thirst 
 again, is, according to the World, 
 a wild and foolish chase, and it 
 is certainly so far wild and indeterminate that it 
 is much more prudent for the seeker to adhere 
 to tradition and the trodden path. Many others 
 have sought; and the road of tradition is the 
 summing up and conclusion of all their experi¬ 
 ments. This road, as I have said, led men from 
 the World, whether for life or for a season, into 
 a retreat where they meditated upon spiritual 
 forces and the various modes of the revelation 
 of God. In these meditations some were stirred 
 to reverence and belief by the story of the New 
 Testament; others by the beauty, the tender¬ 
 ness, the grandeur of nature, the song of birds, 
 the expanse of ocean, the daffodils that outdare 
 the swallows, the rathe primrose; and others by 
 the miracle of human love. Animals breed; gross 
 appetite is all that Nature needs to induce obe- 
 
 [ 98 ] 
 
(E$e Jtpirituaf ^Oower of 
 
 dience to her great law, “ Be fruitful and multi¬ 
 ply ”; then why should she superfluously squan¬ 
 der chemical energy merely to produce a pas¬ 
 sion more a hindrance than a help, that would 
 renounce all appetites and self in an ecstasy of 
 metaphysical imaginings ? Why should mere ani¬ 
 mal union bear such an emphasis? — 
 
 I love thee with the breath, 
 
 Smiles, tears, of all my life! — and, if God choose, 
 
 I shall but love thee better after death,— 
 
 why, unless the end of life be to attain some 
 higher spiritual existence, to mount on the wings 
 of mystery nearer to God, or to serve Him by 
 helping bring some nobler world to birth ? How¬ 
 ever much, during periods of retreat, men came 
 to find God in the New Testament, or in nature 
 roundabout, still they longed for an ampler, a 
 more intimate, revelation; and, lo! by the inter¬ 
 vention of grace induced by their striving after 
 holiness, the scales dropped from their eyes and 
 they perceived that here in common life is the 
 very revelation that they sought; yet how full 
 of perplexity, mystery, and evanescence. The 
 animal, man, stands in the presence of a mira¬ 
 cle. By the consecrating magic of spiritual love 
 the divine is revealed in the human, and, while 
 
 [ 99 ] 
 
pto Wta onaetica 
 
 that passion glows, remains visible; but when 
 the spiritual fire dies away, the vision vanishes. 
 Whence did the revelation come, and whither 
 did it go? 
 
 Upon such speculations men in retreat are 
 wont to ponder; and in the early days of Chris¬ 
 tianity, before science had done and undone all 
 it has, a result of that pondering was to apply 
 the talisman of sex to spiritual uses, and person¬ 
 ify the divine revealed in woman. Materials lay 
 ready to hand. According to the story, a Jewish 
 maiden was betrothed to a carpenter. Her first¬ 
 born son went forth to preach his doctrine that 
 the Kingdom of God is within us. In the brief 
 biographies that tell his life she appears but mo¬ 
 mentarily here and there, and — except at the 
 annunciation — in the background. She keeps 
 his childish sayings in her heart, as all mothers 
 treasure up the sayings of their first-born sons; 
 she goes to look for him when lost; she waits 
 upon the outskirts of the crowd while he is 
 preaching; and when he is crucified she stands 
 hard by the cross. A scant half page would more 
 than hold her history, and yet the words con¬ 
 cerning her have been like the mustard seed in 
 the parable. Human needs laid hold of her. 
 Christ, abstracted by an arid theology, had as- 
 
 [ 100 ] 
 
(&Qc J)pir ituaC fiowet of J>qp 
 
 cended to the highest heaven, to act as Judge 
 on the Dies Ir<e> leaving behind him an austere 
 image which masters in mosaic have depicted on 
 choir vaults at Venice and Monreale. The spec¬ 
 ulative intelligence required an explanation of 
 the spiritual love of man for woman; sinners 
 needed a new mediator; men, sensitive to the 
 finer influences of sex, needed a mother, needed 
 a maiden, needed the sympathy and love man 
 cannot give to man. And at last the image of the 
 Virgin Mary arose, crowned with light. By her 
 maidenhood she touched the sentiment of chiv¬ 
 alry in man, by her motherhood she entered 
 every human heart. Her conception was im¬ 
 maculate, and therefore, the natural passing into 
 the supernatural, this creature, born of spiritual 
 desire, grew to become the tenderest, the most 
 compassionate, the most humanly necessary 
 emanation from the godhead. Down from heaven 
 and Deity she came, maiden and mother, to earth 
 and men. From the sculptors of Rheims and the 
 glass-stainers of Chartres to Mending and Fra 
 Angelico, from the jongleur of Notre-Dame to 
 Dante and Petrarch, throughout all Christen¬ 
 dom, in the old world and the new, the Virgin 
 visited and blessed her worshipers with a love 
 equaling the love of living women. Deity of itself 
 
 [ 101 ] 
 
pto Ulita flftonaetica 
 
 cannot know sorrow; but Mary had learned on 
 earth the greatest lesson of sorrow. 
 
 Stabat mater dolorosa 
 Juxta crucem lacrymosa, 
 
 Dum pendebat filius; 
 
 Cujus animam gementem, 
 
 Contristantem ac dolentem 
 Pertransivit gladius. 
 
 Sorrow teaches compassion, and compassion be¬ 
 stows the final grace on motherhood. So schooled 
 and disciplined, Mary became to men what 
 Michelangelo expressed in his Pieta and Dante 
 in the last canto of the Paradiso. Unnumbered 
 thousands have prayed many a prayer like that 
 of St. Francis de Sales: “Ayez memoire et sou- 
 venance, tres douce Vierge, que vous etes ma M ere 
 et que je suis votre enfant, que vous etes tres 
 puissante etqueje suis un pauvre petit etre vil 
 et faible. Je vous supplie, ma tres douce Mere, 
 que vous me gouverniez et defendriez dans 
 toutes mes voies et actions.” Little can Deity do 
 for men if it cannot play the mother’s part. And, 
 of old, in the scheme of things, this was possible; 
 good men and sinners stretched forth their arms 
 and heard her voice upon the inward ear, beheld 
 her radiance with the inward eye, felt her pres- 
 
 [ 102 ] 
 
ATlJe £>pmtuat ;|5o wt of J)ey 
 
 ence shed round about, like the coolness of a 
 summer’s evening, such as falls on close-clipped 
 lawns and graveled walks bordered by lilies and 
 the flowering plum. The sun’s white light is too 
 puissant for mortal eyes; it must be veiled in 
 clouds, or visit first the opaque, corporeal world, 
 and only then, refracted and diminished, may it 
 come unharmful, in a thousand colors and hues, 
 to fall upon the tender retina. In like manner, 
 Deity would be unbearable if revealed direct, so 
 it is shrouded in infinity, veiled by human doubts 
 and human ignorance, and only shines upon the 
 dull souls of men in a refracted and diminished 
 way, through instrumentalities that poets call 
 visitants from heaven but men call children, 
 wives, or mothers, or dawns on the imaginative 
 mind in the gracious image of the Virgin Mary, 
 or in the idea of Christ. But the Virgin’s image 
 and Christ’s divinity have been rejected of men, 
 and cast aside, and Deity is again shrouded in 
 impenetrable clouds. 
 
 [ io 3 ] 
 
XVl3! 
 
 (€IJe JRcafm of (CrittlJ 
 
 Wl?at 10 Xrutl 2? —'pontfii© pilate 
 
 HE recluse paces the cloister, im¬ 
 patient with iconoclasm, however 
 useful or necessary iconoclasm 
 may be, since any child or barba¬ 
 rian can pull down; he is inter¬ 
 ested in building up a spiritual edifice in which 
 his soul may dwell and be at home. He marks 
 the magical power in an idea: how it may burst 
 the coverings in which it is encased, may germi¬ 
 nate and grow, may draw in life and nourishment 
 from human needs, or rather, how human needs 
 are able to seize upon the tiny seeds of hope, 
 tend and watch over them, warm them with de¬ 
 sire and water them with tears, breathe into them 
 the faculty of growth, and at last create a divine 
 power that in its turn, inspired by gratitude, will 
 bless and prosper its creators and servants. It 
 was after such manner that the hermits, the saints, 
 and the sinners of the Middle Ages recognized, 
 or created, the gracious image of Our Lady—for 
 creation is nothing else than by apprehension of 
 the mind to separate and give intelligible form 
 to circumambient forces, which unapprehended, 
 
 [ I0 4 ] 
 
(£f )c fiveafm of fcvutf} 
 
 undifferentiated, unformed, would remain mere 
 manifestations of chaos. In this way the rational 
 mind obtains the uniformity of nature, the phe¬ 
 nomena of causality, and perhaps time, or even 
 space. The wondrous and strange part is that 
 whenever the soul of the external universe is 
 apprehended or moulded by the spiritual needs 
 of man into some spiritual form, it reveals itself 
 as a helper. Reality lies neither in repetition, nor 
 duration, nor the concordant testimony of mul¬ 
 titudes of men; it is a manifestation of power, 
 and must be measured by its effect in human 
 experience. For the solitary the reality, la vraie 
 verite , exacts reverence and demands worship; 
 and yet, if this be so, reality must exist some¬ 
 where ; and where can that abiding-place be ? It is 
 not in matter; it is not in mere perceptions, con¬ 
 fined within the human mind. Neither the flux of 
 motion within the circumscription of space, nor 
 the thinking mirror on which momentary images 
 are flashed, can be more than a place of transitory 
 visitation for the august spirit of reality. 
 
 Our Solitary, so meditating, recalls to mind 
 what Plato, the poet, thought. There is a region 
 far above the perturbation of life, the wayward¬ 
 ness of desire, and the dominioffof the senses: 
 a realm of ideas, of universals, as philosophers 
 
 [ I0 5 ] 
 
fito Vlita QfyonaGtka 
 
 call them, pure, everlasting, immortal, change¬ 
 less. These ideas are the archetype of what, to 
 men occupied with the satisfaction of earthly de¬ 
 sires and appetites, passes for reality. To them 
 these pure spiritual realities are abstractions from 
 the concrete, fictions of thought, names for the 
 traits and qualities of things, convenient sym¬ 
 bols in practical reckonings. “ Universals are not 
 real,” they say; and in so saying make use of the 
 very realities they deny. For in order to make 
 this denial, they must invoke the idea of reality, 
 the idea of being, and the idea of ideas; and 
 the three are universals. Indeed, neither speech 
 nor thought can do without them. We recognize 
 something because it embodies an idea that we 
 know; or if we recognize a thing because of its 
 similarity or relation to another thing, that is 
 because the similarity or relation is an idea that 
 we know. Our faculty of thought depends upon 
 this “pure, everlasting, immortal” realm, of 
 which a distinguished philosopher says: “It is 
 unchangeable, rigid, exact, delightful to the 
 mathematician, the logician, the builder of meta¬ 
 physical systems, and all who love perfection 
 more than life.” It is, indeed, the home of perfec¬ 
 tion; there dwell Wisdom, Fortitude, Sobriety, 
 and Justice; there dwell the attributes of Deity. 
 
 [ 106 ] 
 
(IZtfe Svcafm of rtTntf$ 
 
 But the quoted phrase suggests too marked a 
 contrast between life and perfection. The two 
 spheres are separate, not contrasted, for in life 
 
 there is always endeavor after perfection, as creep- 
 
 * 
 
 ing babies try to stand and walk; and though 
 life never attains, it aims persistently at the goal. 
 Here and there some laborious disciple of Jus¬ 
 tice, Truth, or Beauty seeks to embody his vision 
 of that ideal, shining far off in its incorruptible 
 heaven, within the visible, the palpable, the near 
 at hand. Or rather, should we not say that from 
 among the crowd of unilluminated, every now 
 and again Justice, Truth, or Beauty selects one 
 man or another to be her servant, entrusts her 
 thyrsus to his hand, and bids him do her will in 
 the material world? 
 
 Meditating upon Plato, the Solitary advances 
 toward the chapel. Beside the door, within the 
 wall is a recess, and in the recess an image of the 
 Virgin. He pauses again: — 
 
 Donna, se’ tanto grande e tanto vali, 
 
 che, qual vuol grazia ed a te non ricorre, 
 sua disianza vuol volar senz’ ali. 
 
 La tua benignita non pur soccorre 
 a chi domanda, ma molte fiate 
 liberamente al domandar precorre. 
 
 [ 10 7 ] 
 
fito Vlita (fyonaetica 
 
 Lady, so great art thou, so great thy power, 
 
 That whoso wishes grace, and seeks thee not, 
 
 His longing wishes, without wings, to fly. 
 
 Thy beneficence not only succoureth 
 Him that doth ask, but many times 
 Of its own will anticipates the asking. 
 
 Does this little image in the recess depict nothing 
 more than fancy? Is not Our Lady real? In the 
 pure region of ideas two are conspicuous, maiden¬ 
 hood and motherhood. To the Solitary it appears 
 as if, in the greater days of creation, when spirit¬ 
 ual life first appeared on earth, each of these en¬ 
 nobling ideas was detached, differentiated, sepa¬ 
 rated, from the general mass of ideal chaos, and 
 given its specific aspect by some spiritual faculty 
 (for so he is wont to term faculties that minis¬ 
 ter to the soul’s needs), as vibrations of sound 
 are differentiated from vibratory chaos by the 
 nerves within the ear. Just as, to compare spir¬ 
 itual things with material, a sculptor cuts out his 
 statue from the enveloping block. An idea of 
 beauty lies within the cliffside of Carrara waiting 
 for the eye of genius to discover it; why should not 
 an idea of beauty lie unseen within the mass of 
 the ideal, until it is separated and given shape and 
 name by mortal needs ? Does matter cease to be 
 everlasting because it wears the corporeal form of 
 
 [ ] 
 
Keafm of 
 
 Hermes, or idea lose aught of its immortal es¬ 
 sence because it takes a woman’s shape? We are 
 wont to say that in moments of inspiration the 
 mind creates beauty and discovers truth. We 
 might say equally well, the mind discovers beauty 
 and creates truth. Phrase it as we please, there is 
 some faculty within men which, in moments of 
 high passion, fine frenzy, or holy resolve, creates 
 love, heroism, or the works of genius. Some such 
 faculty finds its material in the realm of ideas. 
 That realm is truth; and when some spiritual 
 Prometheus fetched down the idea of mother¬ 
 hood and the idea of maidenhood, the primal 
 essence of truth still remained in them. 
 
 And how did they come together, making one 
 out of two ? Is their union a sort of marriage 
 that incorporates and makes them one, or is it a 
 unity of double aspect, existent from all eternity? 
 But however it came about, there, in that im¬ 
 mortal realm which the poet-seer Plato beheld,the 
 realm “dear to those who love perfection more 
 than life,” the two gracious ideas met. Tentative 
 meetings there had been long before Plato’s 
 time, such, for instance, as that of Demeter and 
 Kore, Mother and Maid, but because Demeter 
 and Kore were not pure universals the attempt 
 failed. Under the wiser direction of Christian 
 
 [ I0 9 ] 
 
pto Vlita Otyonaetica 
 
 needs the two joined in absolute union to create 
 the beneficent concept known on earth as Our 
 Lady. This combination may be likened to a 
 chemical union of two substances which require 
 also the action of a third to enable them to drop 
 their individuality and become one substance. 
 
 However, the manner and time of the birth of 
 Our Lady as a divine idea is of no consequence; 
 the beginnings of things (whether the start of in¬ 
 dividual life, the origin of protoplasm, or the first 
 appearance of mind) are vague, undetermined, 
 and, for those who judge of values by what shall 
 be, rather than by what has been, quite irrele¬ 
 vant. The needs of mankind discovered, or oc¬ 
 casioned, or, if one may choose to put it so, 
 wrought the miracle, just as they discovered, oc¬ 
 casioned, or wrought the ideas of Beauty, Jus¬ 
 tice, and Truth. These needs, as metaphysicians 
 might say, joined together two universals and 
 a particular. The particular is the Mary of the 
 gospels. But historic fact, having served its pur¬ 
 pose as a dissolvent of the separateness of the 
 component ideas, hung so light and loose about 
 Our Lady, that she was able to drop that ele¬ 
 ment, to let it melt, evaporate, and disappear, 
 leaving only pure, immortal idea behind. This 
 new idea is a pure universal: witness its copies 
 
 [ 110 ] 
 
i£0e Ifteafm of fCrutf? 
 
 here below-—Notre-Dame de Paris, de Rheims, 
 de Chartres, de Lourdes, Our Lady of West¬ 
 minster, of Durham, Die Jungfrau of Aachen or 
 Munich, la Madonna di Siena, di Firenze, del 
 Carmine, Mater Dolorosa, Mater Amabilis, and 
 thousands more. 
 
 Our Lady—and to each lover she presents an 
 individual aspect—lives in the abode of ideas, 
 and her power, like all other manifestations of 
 power, depends upon the relation between her 
 and her worshiper; she will influence his life ac¬ 
 cording to his sensitiveness and his ability, just 
 as a love of Justice or a passion for Beauty may 
 move a man to do acts of justice or embody an 
 image of beauty. No force can produce an effect 
 unless the object it works upon is sensitive to 
 its push and incidence. The reason for denying 
 to her the possession of reality seems to be 
 that when men began to become more and more 
 interested in material things, more and more 
 steeped in the cares and pleasures of this world, 
 then her image grew faint, and her power also, 
 and that, when all interest in her departed, then 
 she, too, as if she had been but the shadow of 
 faith, vanished altogether. So might we think 
 that light is unreal when we cease to see it be¬ 
 cause there is no object present to intercept and 
 
 [ 111 ] 
 
pto Vlita iS^oitaedca 
 
 reflect it; or that our neighbor, who goes aboard 
 a ship and sails away, has passed into nothing¬ 
 ness; or that some art of color in glass or con¬ 
 tour in pottery has been annihilated because it 
 has been forgotten. And, we may ask, what would 
 this seeming solid be, which we call the earth, 
 this evoker of sensations, this object of specu¬ 
 lations, what would become of it, if mind should 
 perish? Is it more permanent, more real, more 
 true, than an idea? And if we anticipate that time 
 when this fair earth shall have become cold and 
 dry, all verdure gone, the glorious oceans, cir¬ 
 cling round the globe, hardly to be traced in 
 deeps and hollows, and all thinking things de¬ 
 parted, and with them all memory, all capacity 
 for thought departed too — shall Beauty and Jus¬ 
 tice and Truth likewise perish? By no means. 
 In their pure, immortal, everlasting, unchange¬ 
 able realm they will continue as before, eternal 
 and uncorrupted, ready to inspire the heart of 
 any new-born thinking creature that may come 
 to life with a passion to reproduce once more 
 fair copies of ideal things in the visible and the 
 tangible. And if humanity shall reappear with 
 sex, with mother and children, Our Lady also 
 will be there, with her Child in her arms, eternal 
 in her maidenhood, eternal in her motherhood, 
 
 [ 112 ] 
 
(IZffe IReafm of dZvutf} 
 
 with the love light in her eye, and the smile on 
 her lips, gracious in her divine assurance that 
 purity is a gleam from on high, and that a child 
 is the revelation of God. Surely she will be there 
 to bless any thinking thing in human form. She 
 may, in her remote loneliness, have lost the 
 memory of the Hebrew maiden and have forgot¬ 
 ten that her name is Mary; but new creatures in 
 human form will kneel, in conscious or uncon¬ 
 scious prayer, to the eternal ideas of maidenhood 
 and motherhood, and again picture them in the 
 most beautiful of human images. 
 
 Or, if this gracious image shares with speech 
 and thought our human powerlessness to ex¬ 
 press any aspect of truth, and proves but one 
 more ill-chosen symbol, still man must not weary 
 in his endeavor to consecrate the power of sex 
 to spiritual uses; for if it be humanly possible to 
 believe in a revelation of God, our best hope lies 
 in the sanctification of this mysterious duality. 
 In the realm of truth ail is possible. Who does 
 not, at least in his blessed moments, hear in his 
 heart the song of the Mystical Chorus? 
 
 Alles Vergangliche 
 1st nur ein Gleichniss; 
 
 Das Unzulangliche 
 Hier wird’s Ereigniss; 
 
 [ ”3 ] 
 
}0ro ill ita &}ona$tica 
 
 Das Unbeschreibliche, 
 Hier ist es gethan; 
 
 Das Ewig-Weibliche 
 Zieht uns hinan. 
 
 All that is corruptible is but a symbol; that 
 which on earth is unattainable takes corporeal 
 form in this realm of Truth; and what is be¬ 
 yond language there steps forth a fact; the Holy 
 Spirit that manifests itself in woman lifts man to 
 Reality. 
 
 [ ”4 ] 
 
XV13I3I 
 
 M>eCff<£ivamination 
 
 £qo eum lujc mundi: qut sequitur me non ambulat in tenebrte, 
 
 acd ljabebit lumen vtt«e. 
 
 3ot?n, viii: 12 
 
 S our Solitary constitutes the con¬ 
 gregation of his monastery, the 
 hour of vespers depends upon 
 his mood. His meditations have 
 aroused a restlessness which urges 
 e slips back the bolt of the great 
 gate and walks out of the cloistered precincts, 
 across the neighboring fields, through pastures 
 where browsing cows begin to turn their heads 
 homeward, and up a footpath into the woods, 
 with a purpose to reach the hilltop and win a 
 prospect of the setting sun. The shadows fall 
 longer and longer, and the cool of twilight sends 
 emissaries before. Once he is well in the woods, 
 the little voices of flora and fauna, heedless of 
 his presence, chatter round about him. Leaves 
 rustle, boughs creak, frogs sing, the white- 
 throated sparrow pipes its melancholy dactyls, 
 and crows caw clamorously. But more clear and 
 definite than these exterior sounds, he hears a 
 voice. There is no one on the mountainside but 
 
 [ ”5 ] 
 
fito Vlita &}onaetica 
 
 himself, and the voice is obviously the articula¬ 
 tion of his own thoughts; nevertheless, so near 
 does it sound that he involuntarily pauses and 
 looks about for the speaker. 
 
 Voice: Why do you try to deceive yourself? Why 
 do you play at an imaginary game? 
 
 The Solitary stops to think; his only wish is to 
 answer truthfully, but it is so hard to catch the 
 shifting turns of thought and put them into 
 words. The absurd similes that come into his 
 mind annoy him, — iEneas clasping Creusa, 
 Achilles unable to overtake the tortoise, chase 
 of a greased pig, — but their very mockery of 
 his attempt to catch his thought seems to fur¬ 
 nish him with an excuse. 
 
 Solitary: I try to think the truth; but truth is 
 hard to think. 
 
 Voice: Every one can say what he believes. 
 
 Solitary: No; the man who can say definitely what 
 he believes is not thinking. Belief concerning 
 the deep things of life is a living thing; and 
 every element in it is forever shifting; a pre¬ 
 sentment of it as fixed and static is necessarily 
 false. If a man is able to define his creed in rigid 
 articles, it is because all his feelings have been 
 
 [ 116 ] 
 
J>effv (Semination 
 
 cast into prepared categories, and his recital will 
 read like the advertisements of an auctioneer. 
 His tenets will be abstracts, condensations, epit¬ 
 omes, generalizations. Belief is motion, a breath¬ 
 ing, palpitating, living thing; but an articulate 
 creed consists of frozen slices of thought, real 
 or fancied, ready for display in a front window. 
 
 Voice: You seek excuses. I am not asking for 
 delicate discriminations of thought. Your creed 
 remains in substance the same from day to day, 
 living though it be, just as your body retains its 
 identity, although that changes too. Give over 
 your evasions and fencings. 
 
 Solitary: I will try. 
 
 Voice: You profess to reject the teachings of 
 common sense; but it is your moral unwilling¬ 
 ness to face facts that seeks refuge in skepticism. 
 Some minds, perhaps, find it possible' to disbe¬ 
 lieve in the assertions of common sense; but are 
 you, if put upon your honor, one of them ? Your 
 living, your daily routine, your every act is an 
 acceptance of its doctrines. Even your professed 
 skepticism of reason itself is the result of a chain 
 of reasoning. Answer me truthfully. Do you not 
 really accept this common-sense, matter-of-fact, 
 physical world that your senses report? 
 
 [ J1 7 ] 
 
pto Vlita Qftonaetka 
 
 Solitary: I do not. Nothing is more sure than that 
 there is no evidence of any common property 
 shared by a material world and the mental inter¬ 
 pretations of it. 
 
 Voice: Well, if you object to the word material , 
 call it an ideal world, mental stuff, the substance 
 of consciousness, the mind of God, or whatever 
 you choose; my question is, Do you not accept 
 a fundamental distinction between images, or 
 ideas, or feelings, that we may call sensuous, and 
 the imagery of a dream or of your imagination — 
 a distinction which in common speech we desig¬ 
 nate by the adjectives real and imaginary ? 
 
 Solitary: I cannot tell. It may be that my diffi¬ 
 culty lies here, similar to that which I expressed 
 in regard to the formulation of a creed. I usu¬ 
 ally think of your common-sense world as being 
 a world that science can deal with, that is, as 
 static, cut up into forms and shapes by the pro¬ 
 cesses of perception and memory, whereas I be¬ 
 lieve reality is a continuous flux, which, quicker 
 than you can say of it, “ This is so,” is something 
 else. The distinction you postulate as a test of 
 reality has no meaning for me. My test is quite 
 other than that. To my mind all thoughts, ideas, 
 feelings, or dreams are equally real, and the one 
 
 [ ”8 ] 
 
S>etf//<B^amination 
 
 important difference between them lies in the de¬ 
 gree of value that they severally possess for me. 
 
 Voice: But you do acknowledge an uncontrolla¬ 
 ble quality about the actual present that makes 
 it of a different kind from the pictures of your 
 imagination, and different, too, from the imagery 
 in your memory ? 
 
 Solitary: How can I tell? If uncontrollability is 
 a proof of reality, all the images in dreams or 
 delirium are certainly real. If my will appears to 
 control the images in my imagination, what war¬ 
 rant have I that my will is not as uncontrollable 
 by me as your physical reality? And then I shall 
 have at one remove the same evidence of their 
 reality that you rely upon for proof of the exist¬ 
 ence of a material world. 
 
 Voice: But the physical world persists, and re¬ 
 appears each time you turn to it. 
 
 Solitary: Persistence and repetition are no proofs 
 at all; for if one appearance of an image has no 
 element of reality, ten thousand repetitions will 
 not corroborate it. 
 
 Voice: Remember that by your skepticism you 
 are not raising your phantasies to the level of 
 reality, but dissolving reality into a world of 
 dreams. 
 
 [ ”9 ] 
 
fito Hi ita &}onaetica 
 
 Solitary: I admit a difference between what you 
 call perceptions and what you call ideas; only I 
 do not concede that this is a difference of reality. 
 
 Voice: All I ask is for you honestly to recognize 
 that the difference is fundamental—the differ¬ 
 ence, let us say, between the Beatrice Portinari 
 who married Messer Simone de’Bardi and the 
 Beatrice of the Divine Comedy. 
 
 Solitary: I do. 
 
 Voice: Then, to take a further instance, Our Lady 
 is a whimsy of your imagination, and it is child¬ 
 ish to pretend that she has any power of any kind 
 other than that which she receives from your 
 fancy. 
 
 Solitary: My fancy did not create her. I found 
 her. She manifests herself to different men under 
 different forms. Her manifestation to me is the 
 most real of my experiences. She ministers to my 
 needs. She comes with me upon my walks. She 
 kneels beside me at my prayers. I see with in¬ 
 ward eyes her smile; with inward ears I hear her 
 voice; her counsels, her advocacy, her teachings 
 do not vary with my moods. What she is, I can¬ 
 not say, but real with some kind of existence. 
 
 Voice: Then all the fancies of lunatics are real. 
 
 [ 120 ] 
 
3etf{(Examination 
 
 Solitary: Oh! You drive me round and round this 
 eternal circle: perceptions, memories, fancies. A 
 perception is as real as the thing perceived; a 
 memory is as real as a perception; a fancy in the 
 imagination is real, too, furnished with powers 
 and influences of greater authority than any real¬ 
 ity which does not affect the mind. 
 
 Voice: You are trying to create gods, as the hea¬ 
 then do, out of any materials that lie ready to 
 your hand. 
 
 Solitary: You are the Spirit that denies, and life 
 is one eternal affirmation. 
 
 The Solitary paused; no voice answered. He lis¬ 
 tened, but heard nothing but the rustle of leaves, 
 and the murmurous hum of insects. To his sur¬ 
 prise he suddenly became conscious that he was 
 walking at high speed, and that his body was all 
 in a perspiration. He reached an open field on 
 the crest of the hill, stopped, and looked about. 
 The church bell in the far village was ringing the 
 Angelus. The sun had sunk behind the darken¬ 
 ing mass of the western mountains, but the bay 
 still flushed with the thrill of color as it faded 
 away. The blue of heaven deepened, rising higher 
 and higher, as it seemed, into the farthest re- 
 
 [ 121 ] 
 
pto Vlita ftfonaetica 
 
 cesses of space, and also descending nearer and 
 nearer. Soon the long shadow of the mountain 
 rim clasped the whole landscape in its embrace, 
 except for one fair field upon a hillside across the 
 bay, which still shone bright as the last lingering 
 rays of the setting sun kissed it good-night.The 
 Solitary murmured, involuntarily: “The Lord 
 is in his holy temple, let the whole earth keep 
 silence before him.” He smiled to himself, and 
 stood for a time bareheaded. His feelings shook 
 themselves free from body and bodily sense. It 
 seemed as if his individual existence had lost it¬ 
 self in an innumerable crowd of other existences, 
 all striving, with one accord, to chant the same 
 litany — as once, he remembered, he had joined 
 in the Hallelujah Chorus in Carnegie Hall. He 
 looked up at the stars, and shivered with a sud¬ 
 den cold, of terror tempered by defiance, at their 
 inhuman immensity; he shouted, Hallelujah! 
 and with a warm gush of gratitude for the kindly 
 earth and the presence of familiar things, he hur¬ 
 ried homeward. 
 
 [ 122 ] 
 
XW3I3I3I 
 
 Oratory 
 
 ID? 1 ?OU 0 C 0 l?all be called tl?c Ijouae of pra?er. 
 
 0t. 2Dattl?ew, ppi: 13 
 
 ANY people experience little 
 quickening of the spirit in a 
 church. They prefer to worship 
 — if that word will cover a state 
 of mind unexpressed in outward 
 acts—in “ a building of God, an house not made 
 with hands,” or, as Carlyle says, “in the great 
 temple of Eternity,” or in woods, or along the 
 shore of ocean, since to the devout, trees and 
 waves are fellow worshipers. But most seekers 
 find comfort, a sense of far-reaching fellowship, 
 a help for the concentration of thought, a lad¬ 
 der for contemplation to climb up by and to 
 forget that by which it climbed, in the pious 
 instruments devised by men to express their 
 sentiments, for worship and praise — a church, 
 printed words of prayer, the chords of Palestrina, 
 or pictured saints in marble and fresco. In a 
 church the seeker feels that he is in high com¬ 
 munion; the spot has been sanctified by tears 
 and sobs, repentance, agony, and holy vows, 
 by hopes of rising up from falls, of amendment 
 
 [ I2 3 ] 
 
pto Vlita (fyonaetica 
 
 and victory, of belief in the presence of God and 
 of rejoicing angels. In a retreat, therefore, it is 
 the custom to go to some church or chapel to 
 pray. 
 
 One such oratory I remember. It was con¬ 
 structed after the old Romanesque manner, and 
 very small. A few candles burned before the altar. 
 At the back, on the concave ceiling of the little 
 apse, the Byzantine image of God the Son looked 
 down in imperial severity. The tarnished gold 
 of the enamel flickered with the flickering of the 
 candles. A faint smell of incense filled the little 
 space, and a tenuous vapor imparted a vague 
 mystery to the altar, the outline of the windows, 
 and the barrel-vaulted ceiling which, were a man 
 to stand on a bench, he could touch with out¬ 
 stretched hand. All was dim, unintellectual, irra¬ 
 tional, mystical, mediaeval. Is there not here, I 
 thought, some likeness to the soul, struggling 
 upward, in the little, candlelit, house of bodily 
 life, with no better symbols of spiritual life than 
 smoky images ? A worshiper was there. He knelt 
 down and read prayers from his breviary by the 
 poor light of the candles: — 
 
 Si cut enim non est a came sed super carnem , quod 
 carnem facit vivere: Sic non est ab homine , sed super 
 
 [ I2 4 ] 
 
Oratory 
 
 hominem , quod hominem facit beate vivere . Quocirca 
 ut vita carnis anima est , //» beata vita hominis Dens 
 est. 
 
 For, as that which giveth life to the flesh is not 
 from the flesh but above the flesh, so that which 
 giveth spiritual life to man is not from man, but 
 above man. Wherefore, as the life of the flesh is 
 the soul, so the spiritual life of man. is God. 
 
 Miserere Domine! 
 
 Late have I loved Thee, O Thou Eternal Truth 
 and Goodness! late have I sought Thee, my 
 Father! But Thou didst seek me, and when Thou 
 shinedst forth upon me, then I knew Thee and 
 learned to love Thee. I thank Thee, O my Light, 
 that Thou didst thus shine upon me; that Thou 
 didst teach my soul what Thou wouldst be to 
 me, and didst incline thy face in pity upon me. 
 Thou, Lord, hast become my Hope, my Com¬ 
 fort, my Strength, my All. 
 
 Miserere Domine! 
 
 Almighty God, Father of mercies, be pleased to 
 work in me what Thou hast commanded should 
 be in me. Give me, O Lord, the grace of an 
 earnest sorrow. 
 
 Miserere Domine ! 
 
 [ I2 5 ] 
 
fivo Vlita (fyonaetica 
 
 By thy holy love and fear, keep me from sins 
 
 of temper and of the tongue. 
 
 Miserere Domine! 
 
 O Lord, my God, Light of those that see, and 
 
 strength of the strong; hearken unto my soul, 
 
 and hear it crying out of the depths. 
 
 Miserere Domine ! 
 
 O donna in cui la mia speranza vige, 
 e che soffristi per la mia salute 
 
 in Inferno lasciar le tue vestige; 
 
 • ••••••• 
 
 Tu m’ hai di servo tratto a libertate 
 per tutte quelle vie, per tutti i modi, 
 che di cio fare avei la potestate. 
 
 La tua magnificenza in me custodi 
 si, che I’ anima mia, che fatta hai sana, 
 piacente a te dal corpo si disnodi. 
 
 O Lady, in whom my hope finds strength, 
 Who for my soul’s health did endure 
 In Hell to leave thy footprints; 
 
 • ••••••• 
 
 Thou from my slavish state to liberty 
 
 Hast drawn me up, by all the paths, by all 
 The ways that thou hadst power to do; 
 
 [ 126 3 
 
(€(je ©rafoty 
 
 Let thy high majesty keep watch on me. 
 
 So that my spirit, which thou hast made whole, 
 Dear in thy sight, may shuffle off this clay. 
 
 Miserere Domine! 
 
 Tout l’univers est plein de sa magnificence: 
 Qu’on adore ce Dieu, qu’on l’invoque a jamais! 
 II nous donne ses lois, il se donne lui-meme: 
 Pour tant de biens, il commande qu’on l’aime. 
 
 Miserere 'Domine! 
 
 Bow down thine ear, O Lord, hear me: for I am 
 poor and needy. Preserve my soul: O thou my 
 God, save thy servant that trusteth in thee. Be 
 merciful unto me, O Lord: for I cry unto thee 
 daily. Rejoice the soul of thy servant; for unto 
 thee, O Lord, do I lift up my soul. For thou, 
 Lord, art good, and ready to forgive; and plen¬ 
 teous in mercy unto all them that call upon thee. 
 Give ear, O Lord, unto my prayer; and attend 
 to the voice of my supplications. 
 
 Miserere Domine! 
 
 O Lord God of my salvation. I have cried day 
 and night before thee: Let my prayer come be¬ 
 fore thee: incline thine ear unto my cry; for my 
 soul is full of troubles; and my life draweth nigh 
 unto the grave. 
 
 Miserere Domine! 
 
 [ I2 7 ] 
 
pto Vlita ftyonaetica 
 
 Hear my prayer, O Lord, and let my cry come 
 unto thee. Hide not thy face from me in the day 
 when I am in trouble; incline thine ear unto me; 
 in the day when I call answer me speedily. For 
 my days are consumed like smoke, and my bones 
 are burned as a hearth. My heart is smitten and 
 withered like grass; I have eaten ashes like bread, 
 and mingled my drink with weeping. 
 
 Miserere Domine! 
 
 Omnipotens sempiterne Deus y infirmitatem nostram 
 propitius respice , atque ad protegendum nos dexter am 
 tua majestatis extende. 
 
 Almighty, everlasting God, look with favor upon 
 our weakness, and stretch forth the right hand 
 of thy majesty to guard us. 
 
 Miserere Domine! 
 
 Prasta, quasumus^ omnipotens Deus, ut semper ra- 
 tionabilia meditantes , qua tibi sunt placita et dictis 
 exequamur et factis. 
 
 Grant, we beseech Thee, O Almighty God, that 
 always thinking upon the things that are right, 
 we may fulfil thy commandments both in word 
 and deed. 
 
 Miserere Domine! 
 
 [ 1*8 ] 
 
©raforp 
 
 Benedicite omnia opera Domini Domino: laudate et 
 superexaltate eum in specula. 
 
 O all ye Works of the Lord, bless ye the Lord; 
 praise Him and magnify Him for ever! 
 
 Prayer does not stand high in the World’s es¬ 
 teem. Pupils of science judge it a vain and foolish 
 superstition. They may be quite right. But if there 
 is no avail in prayer, neither is there in reason, 
 in the cautious steps of the human intelligence 
 from premises to conclusion; for denial of all 
 value to prayer can only be on the assumption 
 of determinism. If it merely rest on the denial 
 of Deity, of a hearer, or of any power outside of 
 man to alter the course of events, it is irrelevant; 
 for a denial, to be of avail, must exclude the ef¬ 
 fect of prayer upon a man’s self. To the seeker 
 in his retreat, prayer is an exercise to strengthen 
 the spirit, an unfolding of the soul’s wings on 
 a hoped-for flight, such as a skylark may take 
 through cloud into sunshine beyond — a means 
 of restoring equilibrium to the soul after tossing 
 to and fro day by day in the rough crossings 
 between sleep and sleep: the acquisition of in- 
 differency to the pulls and tugs of appetite and 
 pride, of impartiality between self and neigh¬ 
 bor, of a balance that will weigh differences of 
 
 [ I2 9 ] 
 
fito Ulita tiftonaetica 
 
 nationality, of class or creed; and an attainment 
 of the self-respect, the humility, of one who feels 
 that even he may serve the Lord, his God. 
 
 [ * 3 ° ] 
 
X3JX 
 
 £>pititua( (Bivetcieee 
 
 •piurcd repenuntur contemplationcm dc^iderarc, oed qua: ad earn 
 requtruntur, non student epercere . 
 
 Xtyomae a ■Remp<0 
 
 T is sometimes thought, by those 
 who pay little heed to the matter, 
 that the seeker after spiritual 
 values leads an easy, effortless life, 
 waiting for inspiration or a vision. 
 On the contrary, in spiritual life as elsewhere, 
 rewards are proportioned to labor, self-denial, 
 and effort. It is not the idler, nor the self-indul¬ 
 gent man, that can withdraw his attention from 
 the thousand glittering distractions which temp¬ 
 tation spreads around, and fix his gaze steadfastly 
 upward. The teachers of spiritual things, well 
 knowing from their own experience the difficulties 
 in the way, have drawn up a series of counsels to 
 help the novice. Just as the student pursuing any 
 discipline in a university, or an athlete bent upon 
 becoming an oarsman or a football player, is di¬ 
 rected and guided, so the student who wishes to 
 learn what other men have believed to be spir¬ 
 itual knowledge, and to see what others have be¬ 
 lieved to be spiritual light, will follow the coun- 
 
 [ I 3 I ] 
 
fito Wta (fyonaetica 
 
 sels of the masters in his subject. No doubt there 
 are many roads, and each pilgrim must choose 
 his own according to his native bent and acquired 
 inclinations; but a retreat presents a definite phi¬ 
 losophy of conduct, and for the solitary who is 
 honest in his search, the tabulated and codified 
 counsels of those that have attained should by no 
 means be neglected. According to the practice 
 of the main theological and ecclesiastical Chris¬ 
 tian tradition, these counsels lay down a plan of 
 spiritual exercises for daily use during the period 
 of the solitary’s retreat or of his spiritual noviti¬ 
 ate. These counsels are somewhat after this fash¬ 
 ion. Let the novice banish all wandering fancies, 
 his mind following a certain train of thought, 
 very much as if he were attending service in a 
 metaphysical oratory within his own soul. There 
 is nothing out of the usual way in this: all reli¬ 
 gious sects and societies, whether for spiritual, 
 ethical, or mental health, have their liturgical 
 offices for prayer and meditation, in order to 
 stimulate and guide spiritual effort. 
 
 The novice begins by coming, as it were, to spirit¬ 
 ual attention. Adsum, Domine. Then, his thoughts 
 collected, he utters some preparatory prayer: — 
 
 Help me, O Thou whom I blindly seek, to lay 
 
 [ *32 ] 
 
J>f>iri tuaC (B^etcieee 
 
 aside whatever impulses and appetites of the 
 World still cling to me: all envy of other men, 
 all desire of Worldly success, all false doctrine 
 of temporal good or of the World’s satisfaction, 
 all pride, all ill-will and self-deception, all hard¬ 
 ness of heart, all vulgarity and self-love. 
 
 Next, preliminary to meditation, some phrase or 
 ejaculation is to be taken from an approved poet 
 or spiritual writer: — 
 
 Fili, Ego Dominus , confortans in die tribulationis; 
 Venias ad me, cum tibi non fuerit bene. 
 
 My son, it is I, the Lord, ready to comfort in the 
 day of tribulation; Come to me when thou art 
 in trouble. 
 
 Subject of Meditation: 
 
 An episode taken from the life of Christ, or 
 whomever the novice regards as the loftiest spir¬ 
 itual teacher:— 
 
 Jesus saith unto her, Mary. She turned herself 
 and saith unto him, Rabboni; which is to say. 
 Master. Jesus saith unto her, Touch me not; for 
 I am not yet ascended to my Father: but go to 
 my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto 
 my Father, and your Father; and to my God and 
 your God. 
 
 [ 1 33 ] 
 
|3to Vlita Qftonaetica 
 
 The novice is then directed to conjure up the 
 scene before his mind’s eye, as if he were recall¬ 
 ing visual images that he had himself beheld. 
 
 The Episode , according to the letter: 
 
 Imagine yourself present. There before you 
 kneels the woman worshiping and the Master 
 stands denying. Imagine herwoman’s hands out¬ 
 stretched in supplication; imagine the Master’s 
 wounded feet that have trod the Syrian roads, 
 the shores of Galilee, the regions round about 
 Jerusalem, and at last the hard road up the hill 
 of Golgotha. Imagine that you hear Mary’s sin¬ 
 gle word, and the Master’s answering voice. 
 
 The Episode , according to the Spirit: 
 
 Human frailty kneels before the miraculous ap¬ 
 pearance of divine love. You are typified by 
 Mary. Imagine yourself as filled with a passion¬ 
 ate love of the Highest, and, in sudden forget¬ 
 fulness of the truth that the Highest cannot be 
 touched except after heroic self-mastery or self- 
 abandonment, perhaps after suffering even unto 
 death—you hope to attain to a knowledge and 
 love of God by the mere outstretching of your 
 hands. Holiness is out of a sinner’s reach. You 
 are permitted to behold the marks of the suf- 
 
 [ *34 ] 
 
Jipirituaf (Syetcieee 
 
 ferings that have enabled Holiness to realize it¬ 
 self, in order that you shall bear witness to your 
 brethren that Holiness is of God, and that through 
 holiness the human may hope at last to touch the 
 Divine. 
 
 Meditation: 
 
 Life of my life, I shall ever try to keep my body 
 pure, knowing that thy living touch is upon all 
 my limbs. 
 
 I shall ever try to keep all untruths out from 
 my thoughts, knowing that thou art that truth 
 which has kindled the light of reason in my mind. 
 
 I shall ever try to drive all evils away from my 
 heart and keep my love in flower, knowing that 
 thou hast thy seat in the inmost shrine of my 
 heart. 
 
 And it shall be my endeavor to reveal thee in 
 my actions, knowing it is thy power gives me 
 strength to act. 
 
 Prayer: 
 
 Grant me, O Thou whom I seek, the grace to 
 know what men can know of thy truth, and the 
 will to seek after thy Holy Spirit. 
 
 Meditative sequences: 
 
 taken from the Bible, Thomas a Kempis, or any 
 sacred poet or writer in some way connected with 
 
 [ *35 ] 
 
pto lUta Qftonaetica 
 
 the main subject of meditation. For instance, the 
 cross as symbol of purification through suffer¬ 
 ing:— 
 
 He that taketh not his cross, and followeth 
 after me, is not worthy of me. 
 
 If thou bearest the cross willingly, it will bear 
 thee and bring thee to thy wished-for end. 
 
 If thou bearest it unwillingly, thou makest it 
 a burden, and still thou must bear it. 
 
 Dost thou think thou canst escape that which 
 no mortal could ever avoid? What saint was ever 
 in the world that did not bear his cross and trib¬ 
 ulation? 
 
 Needs must that Christ suffered; and how is 
 it that thou wilt seek a way other than this royal 
 road, which is the way of the holy cross? 
 
 The life of Christ was a cross and a martyr¬ 
 dom; and dost thou seek for thyself rest and joy? 
 
 Err as ^ Erras , si aliud qu^eris, quarn pati tribula- 
 tiones: quia tota ista vita mortalis y plena est miseriis , 
 et circumsignata crucibus. 
 
 You go astray, astray, if you seek for aught 
 else than to suffer tribulation: for all this mortal 
 life is full of sorrows, and crosses fence it round 
 about. 
 
 And the higher thou shalt attain in spirit, so 
 
 [ '36 ] 
 
J>pmtuaf (B^ercieee 
 
 much the heavier shalt thou find thy cross; the 
 pain of exile shall grow greater with thy greater 
 love. 
 
 And yet though thou art afflicted in manifold 
 ways, thou shalt not lack some intermixture of 
 consolation; for thou shalt become aware of the 
 rich harvest sprouting within thee that grows 
 from the suffering of the cross. 
 
 For if thou shalt willingly bend beneath it, all 
 the heaviness of tribulation will turn into trust in 
 the divine compassion. 
 
 Resolution: 
 
 This day, and to-morrow and to-morrow, I will 
 construct before my inward eye, my inward ear, 
 my inward folded hands, an image of holiness. 
 Toward this I will aspire. 
 
 Bead mundo corde. 
 
 Amen. 
 
 [ J 37 ] 
 
XX 
 
 (£$e Uleuaf JReptoacJ) 
 
 “Co 001 aen va,” 0 oggiuti 0 e, “e vieti la ©era: 
 non v’arreatatc, ma otudiate tl paaao, 
 menrrc cl?e roccidentc non 0 ’anncra.” 
 
 •purgatorto, jcjcvti, 61//3 
 
 HE other regulations for other 
 hours of the day I may pass over 
 lightly. If our Solitary lives in a 
 monastery, he will, at meals, listen 
 to what lections the prior may 
 deem fit; but if he live in a hermitage, or have 
 a table to himself, it is well for him to have some 
 book quite different from the solemn books of 
 his severer studies. He will do well to read com¬ 
 edy. If there be a God, He is God of laughter 
 as well as of tears; Christianity has gone astray 
 in worshiping its God solely as a Man of Sor¬ 
 rows. A universal God must enter at the door 
 of grief, but he must also enter by the door of 
 heart-easing mirth. On the book-rest upon his 
 table, just to the left of his plate, let the recluse 
 put a volume of Moliere, Cowper’s Letters, Gol¬ 
 doni, Henri Meilhac, or such a delightful little 
 play as Lo es posible , or the Vicar of Wakefield , 
 Foil de Carotte , II Piccolo Mondo Antico , Ve Journal 
 de Madame de La Lour du Pin , or Par tar in de 
 
 [ 138 ] 
 
f£fUleuaf KReproacfl 
 
 Tarascon. Of such books Don Ouixote is the non- 
 pareil. But the recluse must consult his taste, and 
 if he finds in light comedy or farce too tart a con¬ 
 trast with his habitual thoughts, let him read 
 Izaak Walton’s Lives , Port Royal, Lhe Journal of 
 John Woolman, or Tolstoi’s Confessions , or any 
 such. 
 
 And in the evening, seated in his room, gaz¬ 
 ing at the patch of sky bounded by his window- 
 frame, or pacing the silent garden path, he must, 
 under the rules, give himself over to contem¬ 
 plation for the period of half an hour. Let him 
 abstract himself from things of sense, push fan¬ 
 cies and memories aside, narrow more and more 
 his field of consciousness, and finally draw his 
 attention in toward the centre, until he fix it as 
 best he may upon some single point at the very 
 heart of his deepest desire; let him lose self, if 
 not in ecstasy like some Christian mystics, at 
 least on the ethereal summits of untroubled se¬ 
 renity. Surely the Buddha Gautama helped his 
 fellows to deliverance from woe, from vulgarity, 
 from the illusions of the World’s teachings. 
 
 Such then, in brief, are the ways of life in a retreat 
 to-day, for the penitent who desires to profit by 
 the methods of Christian tradition and to spare 
 
 [ *39 ] 
 
pvo Vlita &)onaetica 
 
 himself the labyrinthine difficulties of finding 
 the right road by himself. 
 
 Not everybody can profit by a retreat, not 
 everybody wishes to; and yet the very unwill¬ 
 ingness of children of the World to reconsider 
 the values that the World teaches them is a rea¬ 
 son for such reconsideration; just as it is good 
 for young men born and bred in one country 
 to travel and acquaint themselves with the ways 
 and thoughts of other nations, since they may 
 learn that ideas and beliefs which they had been 
 taught at home to accept as standards for all hu¬ 
 manity, need to be, in the interests of human¬ 
 ity and of themselves, reexamined and rejudged. 
 The pursuit of inward peace, the conquest of the 
 bodily appetites, the cultivation of self-renuncia¬ 
 tion, reverence, aspiration, and whatever fruits 
 of the spirit may be gathered from the tree of 
 self-consecration — these are desirable, and they 
 should be sought systematically. For the pur¬ 
 pose of such systematic teaching, retreats have 
 been established; they are spiritual schools, and 
 of many kinds. In some, pupils teach them¬ 
 selves; in others, they are directed. When St. 
 Catherine of Siena was forbidden by her parents 
 to retire to her bedchamber to worship, she made 
 a cell within her soul to which she withdrew for 
 
 [ HO ] 
 
(C^c Uituae 5Reproac^ 
 
 prayers and sacred thoughts. St. Francis de 
 Sales says, that as birds fly to their nests, and 
 deer seek the shady recesses of the forest, so hu¬ 
 man beings in the very thick of worldly affairs 
 or social frivolity should withdraw for however 
 short a time into the privacy of their own souls. 
 St. Catherine and those penitents whom St. Fran¬ 
 cois de Sales advised were not free to forsake the 
 world; but for such as were, ancient tradition, ac¬ 
 cepting the example of Christ and the Hebrew 
 prophets, counseled a retreat of forty days in the 
 desert. St. Ignatius Loyola prescribed thirty for 
 the practice of his spiritual exercises. Modern 
 spiritual directors consult the circumstances of 
 their penitents. But in the matter of retreats, as in 
 other human affairs, it is always easier to do what 
 others have done than to make a way for oneself, 
 and a man seesawing between yes and no will 
 often follow another’s example; such hesitants 
 need the countenance and encouragement that 
 radiate from men who devote their whole lives 
 to the contemplative virtues. Life-long recluses, 
 in the nature of things, can never number more 
 than a handful, even of such as are discontent 
 with the aims and interests of the World. But the 
 footprints of a single man may point the path to a 
 multitude that have lost their way; and it might 
 
 [ *4i ] 
 
pto Vlita Qfyonaztka 
 
 well be that the bare vision of a recluse living 
 in some sequestered spot, frugal, self-denying, 
 practising the contemplative virtues, indifferent 
 to material welfare and social consideration, and 
 radiantly serene, would persuade two or three, 
 or five or ten, to practise a retreat for a time. For 
 the sake of such persuasion it might be worth 
 while for men weary of the World, or born with¬ 
 out a taste for it, to become in some modern 
 fashion out-and-out monks or hermits. What if 
 their doing so should be foolishness in the eyes 
 of the World, and a stumbling-block to many 
 who are trying in their own way to reform the 
 World from within? Is it not worth while for 
 men of ascetic beliefs to run risks, or even to 
 sacrifice themselves, for a high hope? Men are 
 sacrificed in the World every day for causes far 
 less meritorious. What if the reformers within 
 the World protest, as reformers will, against 
 reforms that do not wear their brand ? The needs 
 of humanity justify any honest experiment. Let 
 us look about us: at the wars between nations, 
 the struggle between classes, the selfishness of 
 the rich, the intemperance of the poor, the want, 
 sickness, sin, that abound, the vice that pollutes 
 city, village, and, it is said, remote farmhouses,— 
 to such a degree that were the comfortably off by 
 
 [ *+2 ] 
 
Vleuai foeptoactf 
 
 some evil fate thin-skinned they could not en¬ 
 dure it,—the bickering between Christian sects 
 and all the ills that come because we do not fol¬ 
 low the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. Does not 
 this spectacle justify any experiment, even the 
 revival of mediaeval methods, in the hope to 
 persuade men to do what Jesus bade? And the 
 principles of the retreat are not without creden¬ 
 tials; they are warranted by the self-denial, the 
 self-effacement, the self-consecration of the re¬ 
 cluse and the solitary. 
 
 Here let me say a word as to the usual re¬ 
 proach addressed to solitaries.The World charges 
 them with selfishness. I raise no question as to 
 whether the World might better confine this crit¬ 
 icism to its own members; I only ask, in what 
 respect recluses or hermits are more selfish in 
 their attitude toward the World than the World 
 in its attitude toward them? The World wishes 
 the recluse to renounce his creed, to come back, 
 take his place in the turmoil of business and 
 pleasure, do as the World does, help pile the 
 bricks and lay the girders of its Tower of Babel. 
 Is this unselfishness on its part? The World 
 reiterates that the recluse belongs to the same 
 species as itself, to the same race, nation, clan, 
 and as such has social duties; but because the 
 
 [ ! 43 ] 
 
fito Wta tyonaetica 
 
 World is gregarious and follows the ethics of 
 the herd, must solitaries fall in line, like sheep, 
 and do as others do? Beyond question this gre¬ 
 garious morality has been of marked service in the 
 long interracial struggle for physical existence, 
 by holding together the members of the group, 
 for defence or attack, and in economic matters, 
 though at an immense cost of individual self- 
 sacrifice. But the goal of this system is the tri¬ 
 umph of species, race, or nation; and the brightest 
 prospect of the achievement of such triumph 
 leaves the recluse cold and indifferent. For him, 
 the system is a mere social policy, wise for the 
 mass of men, but not of universal obligation. 
 Why, then, should he accept the World’s ethics? 
 The World is no more within its rights when it 
 bids the recluse wear its livery than the recluse 
 would be within his were he to ask the World to 
 follow Schopenhauer and reject the will-to-live. 
 
 For the recluse each man lies under a personal 
 responsibility for what, in the old phrase, he calls 
 the salvation of his soul; and though it is his 
 duty to consult as wide an experience as he can 
 before he constructs his theory of salvation, he 
 must nevertheless construct that theory for him¬ 
 self. If it be thrown up against him that in re¬ 
 jecting gregarious morality he is advocating sel- 
 
 [ *44 ] 
 
fCfie Vleuai KRepvoatty 
 
 fishness as against altruism, I can only say that 
 in all the monks or hermits of whom I have 
 read—I speak of such as have become monks or 
 hermits from inner conviction and not in obedi¬ 
 ence to custom, or love of ease, or any species 
 of shirking — I have found a degree of unselfish¬ 
 ness rarely to be matched among secular persons. 
 The recluse believes in unselfishness, but he finds 
 the sanction elsewhere than in ancestral habits; he 
 hopes, however frail that hope, however wrapped 
 about by darkness, that unselfishness receives 
 the sanction of the good pleasure of God. He is 
 vague, of course, mystical, irrational, in his spec¬ 
 ulation. He believes — if fantastic, iridescent, 
 ever shifting, vaporous images of beauty may be 
 called belief—in the spiritual, by which he means 
 the true interests of the soul: everlasting if the 
 soul is everlasting, temporary if the soul is lim¬ 
 ited in time. And his awkward attempt to dis¬ 
 tinguish the spiritual from the ethical, as ethics 
 are usually accepted, lies in this, that ethics seem 
 to find their sanction in the welfare, or reputed 
 welfare, of the tribe, or at amplest, of the human 
 race; whereas the spiritual, as he dares to hope, 
 depends for its sanction on a love and know¬ 
 ledge of a divine will. And his answer to the 
 perpetual reiterations of the World that his very 
 
 [ *45 ] 
 
fito Vlita Qftonastka 
 
 hopes, thoughts, yearnings, consciousness, are 
 social products, like his food, is that he recks 
 not who grew the grain, or ground the corn, or 
 baked the bread, but merely whether it will sat¬ 
 isfy his hunger. He will not believe that his 
 deepest affections are merely animal instincts, 
 whatever their origin, nor that his yearning for 
 God is merely an imperfect organization in the 
 cells and fibres of his brain. 
 
 These suggestions are but frontier defences; 
 the citadel of his position is this: that humanity 
 is the larger circle that embraces both the recluse 
 and the World. Let the monks build their mon¬ 
 asteries in the Alps, the Apennines, the Andes, 
 or the Himalayas, or the hermit find his cave 
 or pitch his tent where he will, neither they nor 
 he are without influence upon the World, or un¬ 
 related to its inhabitants. The archetypes, St. 
 Anthony and St. Benedict, are evidence enough. 
 There is not a hermit but of him some one 
 may say, 
 
 Oft have we seen him at the peep of dawn 
 Brushing with hasty steps the dews away, 
 
 and they that see him go their ways with some 
 new reflections concerning life, some fresh ex¬ 
 amination of the things they live by. When they 
 
 [ h6 ] 
 
(ICtfe Vteuat foeptoacfj 
 
 pass a house of retreat perhaps they perceive a 
 quietness that they do not find at home, perhaps 
 they scent the fragrance of the garden, perhaps 
 they hear the note of an organ or the words of 
 a psalm, perhaps they find those within, though 
 with none of the possessions that they call good, 
 serene and calm. Honest seekers of spiritual peace 
 are justified by their works. No man can save his 
 own soul without necessarily helping his brother 
 save his soul likewise. 
 
 [ H7 ] 
 
XX3, 
 
 REtfe invent j£>it man Iflecb 
 
 Sn l^fg^wap eljall be tl?cre . . . and 
 it £l?all be called tl?e wap of tjoltneaa. 
 
 Jsaial?, jcjcjev: 8 
 
 NE more word. If it is sure and 
 indubitable that there is a God, 
 then it is sure and indubitable 
 that some body of men should 
 set themselves apart, whether for 
 life or for a season, to seek a knowledge of Him 
 and of his will, in ways quite different from 
 those in which dwellers in the World seek Him, 
 supposing that some dwellers in the World do 
 really seek Him. Foreven if this segregated body 
 makes no discovery, reaches no port, and seems 
 to sail over the high seas of thought and hope 
 in vain, nevertheless no voyage of discovery is 
 wholly fruitless, for like other seekers after know¬ 
 ledge these adventurers render a general service 
 by the elimination of wrong courses and erro¬ 
 neous hypotheses. They bestow upon men the 
 hope that the routes of error are being crossed 
 off the old charts of life and that the chances of 
 attainment grow brighter and brighter. 
 
 If it is doubtful whether there be a God or 
 
 [ 148 ] 
 
RZtfe l&wat fouman tlccb 
 
 no, it is still of equal importance that a search be 
 made, that seekers scatter abroad and look in ail 
 directions, study their own hearts, examine things 
 metaphysical, ponder upon ecstasy and rapture 
 and the passionate love of the infinite that pos¬ 
 sesses the souls of men now and again. There are 
 enough students, philosophers, savants in the 
 World to investigate the laws of matter, the ways 
 of organic life, and track the flying footprints of 
 Nature into her deepest recesses. 
 
 But let us suppose that it is sure and indu¬ 
 bitable that there is no God, that the World is 
 right, that motion in space is the ultimate truth, 
 and that in the search of truth the methods of 
 science are the only methods: that what science 
 busies itself with is the only thing to busy one¬ 
 self with. Nevertheless, as I think, the need of 
 the contemplative and the solitary will become 
 all the greater. If the formation of crystals, the 
 habits of bees, the usages, affections, and thoughts 
 of men, are all on one level of significance, all 
 mere varying records of chance throbbings of 
 some irrational, unintelligent power, if there is 
 no further truth beyond some possible door, then 
 men must take account of this situation, and do 
 what little may be in their power to improve it. 
 The hypothesis assumes that truth has no claim 
 
 [ *49 ] 
 
fito Vkita d^onaeftca 
 
 to any of the solemnity, the devout service, the 
 reverence that the religious attitude of mind has 
 invested it with; the inmost shrine of truth, to 
 borrow an ancient phrase, has no more title to 
 respect than the smoking-room of a Pullman car; 
 beauty deserves no worship; the sacred, the sub¬ 
 lime, are mere antiquated names to conceal igno¬ 
 rance, to designate that which shall one day, when 
 knowledge progresses still further, become com¬ 
 mon, commonplace, vulgar. Love, at its height, is 
 no more than the exuberant and excessive devel¬ 
 opment of the primary instincts. Such is the sit¬ 
 uation which, under the hypothesis, we confront. 
 
 The element in the situation that in especial 
 concerns the subject of this brief is that, explain 
 it as we may, — for the explanation, whatever it 
 should be, is immaterial, — man has a need of 
 something holy. He has become accustomed to 
 a theory that there is some supreme goal toward 
 which he should set his face; that the love of 
 the mother for her son, of David for Absalom, of 
 Dante for Beatrice, of St. Augustine for his God, 
 are somehow rays that shine from out the clouds 
 which veil the goal; and that truth and beauty 
 likewise are beams. To find some makeshift is 
 now his task. Holiness has become a need, his 
 deepest most abiding need, and he cannot ignore 
 
 [ J 5° ] 
 
(TCtfC i&teat $>uman tlceb 
 
 it. Without the possibility of a God, our backs 
 are to the wall, and we must make an heroic effort 
 to confront reality. 
 
 The need of holiness, perhaps, will not be 
 granted. But I shall assume it. And, as there is 
 nothing known to us in the universe higher than 
 man, I assume that holiness must be created out 
 of the ideas and out of the lives of men. I assume 
 that the type of man called holy is needful to 
 men, that his holiness is of a value to be set beside 
 the capacity of the master of a great industry, 
 the ingenuity of a man of science, the creative¬ 
 ness of an artist. Such a type, without belief in 
 a God, will be difficult; but this is a difficulty to 
 which men must address themselves. If I may 
 compare that which we are accustomed to call the 
 spiritual with an idea evolved in the most worldly 
 class in society, the idea of holiness is not with¬ 
 out similarity to the idea of honor. The simi¬ 
 larity lies in this: Honor, in the antiquated sig¬ 
 nificance of the word, is a fantastic, irrational 
 idea, which was, if not created, at least cultivated 
 by men of a certain special education, men in¬ 
 stilled in early youth with certain definite dog¬ 
 mas, trained to accept certain values, disciplined 
 to act with unquestioning obedience to their 
 creed. This creed constrained them to perform 
 
 [ 151 ] 
 
fito Wta Qtyonaetica 
 
 actions which lie beyond the range of self-inter¬ 
 est—as self-interest is interpreted in the theo¬ 
 ries which cluster around the hypothesis that life 
 is a battle for the preservation of self—and to 
 conduct themselves in a manner that does not fit 
 into the usual interpretation of the good of the 
 race. The men who accepted this creed and acted 
 upon it were called gentlemen. It is quite apart 
 from the parallel suggested, that the limitations, 
 the essential wrongness, of the creed, be granted 
 or disputed. The creed has exerted a very marked 
 influence, and even now, perhaps, a man would 
 regard as the strongest possible mode of affirma¬ 
 tion the statement made upon his honor. 
 
 As with the idea of honor, so it is with the 
 idea of holiness; a special class, a special train¬ 
 ing, a special obedience, are necessary to produce 
 and maintain this sentiment. In order to sup¬ 
 ply the spiritual needs of men,— I am speaking 
 under the hypothesis that there is no God, no life 
 hereafter, no soul apart from the nervous sys¬ 
 tem,—a definite, unquestioned, imperious dogma 
 that holiness is a sort of spiritual honor must be 
 created. It must be fashioned out of a material, 
 matched with which the tertiary rocks of the 
 Laurentian Mountains are easily shaped to the 
 craftsman’s will; it must be wrought out of ideas 
 
 [ l S 2 ] 
 
(€$e USteat ^>uman tieeb 
 
 that exclude the divine, and out of a godless life. 
 The requisite art to deal with such material de¬ 
 mands a sort of spiritual workshop or studio, in 
 which the craftsmen shall go to school. And how 
 can this be done in the World, where men are 
 struggling for money and prodigal in spending 
 it, where there is making love and marrying, 
 the pursuit of notoriety, office, fame, or whatever 
 else ambition may desire? How in such a hub¬ 
 bub can poor human nature hold itself free from 
 discontent, envy, vexation, disappointment, cov¬ 
 etousness, lust, greed, malice, and all the con¬ 
 taminations that mar and stain the innocence of 
 holiness? How in such confusion is it possible 
 to secure renunciation, serenity, selflessness, in¬ 
 difference to outward things, or, most of all, con¬ 
 centration upon one single end? This is not, of 
 course, to deny that many virtues are wrought in 
 the World — energy, courage, love of justice and 
 mercy, and the great human affections—and best 
 wrought in the World. And yet how seldom, 
 how very seldom, have any of these virtues ap¬ 
 peared in secular life unspotted by injustice, by 
 prejudice, by intemperance of thought, of speech 
 and act, by desire for praise, by the self-love in¬ 
 separable from the pursuit of any worldly end! 
 As the far-seeing poet says, <£ Es bildet ein Ta- 
 
 [ *53 ] 
 
pto Ulita tyonaetica 
 
 lent sich in der Stille,” and holiness demands a 
 talent, many talents, of a special sort, and these 
 can be developed only in solitude. 
 
 No doubt there is, if one wishes to put it in 
 this way, a taste for holiness just as there is a 
 taste for refinement, whether in art, in literature, 
 or in conduct; and just as parents and school¬ 
 masters endeavor to implant in the young a taste 
 for virtue, so it should be possible to implant in 
 some among them a taste for holiness. Such a 
 taste would never be universal, it would not be 
 popular; but love of refinement is not universal, 
 not even popular, and the same holds good con¬ 
 cerning beauty. If one will but reflect how great 
 a part authority plays in our education, our cus¬ 
 toms, our religion, one need not be incredu¬ 
 lous as to the possibility of establishing a taste 
 for holiness, of calling out talents to develop that 
 taste, and also of securing means to cultivate 
 such talents. 
 
 Because monks in their seclusion and hermits 
 in their solitude tried of old to achieve holiness 
 and failed—if indeed they failed — is of no great 
 weight as an argument that men should not try 
 seclusion and solitude again. In the times when 
 men believed in a God, it was possible to con¬ 
 tend that God might be in every place, as well 
 
 [ 1 54 ] 
 
RZtfe iSteat fynman tleeb 
 
 in the World as out of it; but now, under the 
 hypothesis, we recognize that holiness is a sen¬ 
 timent, a taste, a work of art, and therefore it 
 plainly requires a great effort of social and indi¬ 
 vidual volition. Let men strive for it in the World 
 if they can be persuaded thereto; but let other 
 ways be tried as well. Let lonely souls go off by 
 themselves, and let the World feel that out of 
 solitude may come a light that shall help many 
 along their way. 
 
 The sun is set, the moon no longer shines, 
 no stars twinkle in the sky; we must light our 
 candles, or we shall be in utter darkness. 
 
 (IZfje <8n6 
 

Jfppenbt^ 
 
Jfppcnbi^ 
 
 NOTES, AND TRANSLATIONS OF QUOTATIONS 
 OPENING 
 
 Thou that see’st my evil ways, worthless, undutiful. 
 
 Lord of the heavens, unseen, immortal, 
 
 Succour my frail and erring soul, 
 
 And with thy grace fill up its emptiness: 
 
 So, though I’ve lived in warfare and in storm, 
 
 That I may die in peace and port; and though my life 
 Was vain, at least be my parting good. 
 
 For the short time of stay that still remains, 
 
 And at my death, grant that thy hand be nigh, 
 
 Thou knowest well I have no hope elsewhere. 
 
 Petrarch 
 
 I will speak to the Lord, although I am dust and ashes. 
 
 Thomas a Kempts 
 
 My Son, thou canst not attain perfect freedom unless thou 
 wholly deny thyself. Thomas a Kempis 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 H eading : It is not given to all men toforsake all things , renounce the 
 World , and adopt a monastic life. 
 
 Of the World, St. Fran<pois de Sales says: Qu’est-ce que le 
 monde ? Le monde se doit entendre de ceux qui ont une affec¬ 
 tion dereglee aux biens,a la vie,aux honneurs,dignites, preemi¬ 
 nences, propre estime, et semblables bagatelles apres lesquelles 
 tout les mondains courent et s’en rendent idolatres. 
 
 Sermon pour la Nativite de Notre Dame 
 
 And Pascal: L’homme est visiblement fait pour penser; c’est 
 toute sa dignite et tout son merite, et tout son devoir est de 
 penser comme il faut: or Pordre de la pens£e est de commencer 
 par soi, et par son auteur et sa fin. 
 
 [ 159 ] 
 
Jtppenbi^ 
 
 Or, k quoi pense le monde ? Jamais a cela; mais k danser, 
 k jouer du luth, a chanter, a faire des vers, a courir la bague,^. 
 
 Pensees , Art. xvm, 12 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 Heading: And I saw this world in such guise that I smiled at its 
 cheap appearance. 
 
 Pascal says: En voyant l’aveuglement et la misere de l’homme 
 (et ces contrarietes etonnantes qui se decouvrent dans sa na¬ 
 ture), en regardant tout l’univers muet, et l’homme sans lu- 
 miere, abandonne a lui-meme, et comme egare dans ce recoin 
 de l’univers, sans savoir qui l’y a mis, ce qu’il y est venu faire, ce 
 qu’il deviendra en mourant, incapable de toute connaissance, 
 j’entre en effroi comme un homme qu’on aurait porte endormi 
 dans une lie deserte et effroyable, et qui s’eveilleroit sans con- 
 naitre ou il est, et sans moyen d’en sortir. Pensees , Art. vi, 1 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 Heading: Little children , keep yourselves from idols. 
 
 The quotation concerning Socrates is from the Phtedo 79. 
 
 Lord Bacon says : A recluse leaves the world out of a love and 
 desire to sequester a man’s self for a higher conversation. 
 
 Essays 
 
 Fenelon: Si vous voulez aimer Dieu, pourquoi voulez-vous 
 passer votre vie dans l’amitie de ceux qui ne l’aiment pas et 
 qui se moquent de son amour ? Lettres Spirituelles , No. 1 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 Heading: They were strangers to the World , but very close famil¬ 
 iarfriends to God. — Thomas a Kempis 
 
 Eugenie de Guerin was born in 1805 and died in 1848. She 
 lived in Cayla, a little place in southern France. Her Journal 
 was published in 1862, her Lettres in 1864; Sainte-Beuve and 
 Matthew Arnold made her known to the public. 
 
 [ 160 ] 
 
JTppenfci^p 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 St. Anthony was an Egyptian Saint, who died at a great age 
 about 356 a.d. 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 Heading : O Lord, grant them eternal rest , and let light everlasting 
 shine upon them. (Benedictine motto') 
 
 St. Benedict, 480-543 a.d., born in Nursia, Umbria. He 
 founded the monastic system of western Europe. St. Gregory 
 the Great wrote his life. See, Cuthbert Butler, Benedictine 
 Monachism and Benedicti Regula , and Dom Germain Morin, 
 V Ideal Monasti^ue et la Vie Chretienne des premiers jours. 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 Heading: O whosoever had a spark of true love would perceive at 
 once that all worldly things are full of vanity .— Thomas a Kempis 
 
 Thomas a Kempis, 1380-1471, was a German monk who 
 spent most of his life in the monastery of St. Agnes, near the 
 town of Zwolle in the Netherlands. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 Heading: My Son , what is this thing or that to thee? Follow thou 
 Me. — Thomas a Kempis. 
 
 Senancour, 1770—1846. Author of Fibres meditations ddun soli¬ 
 taire inconnu, Obermann , etc. He became known to English 
 readers by Matthew Arnold’s poem, Obermann. 
 
 Amiel, 1821—1881, A Swiss scholar. His Journal was pub¬ 
 lished after his death; his poems, which are less well known, 
 were published in his lifetime. 
 
 [ '61 ] 
 
Jfypen&i^p 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 Heading: But they that follow Thee from contempt of worldly things 
 and in mortification of the flesh, show themselves to be truly wise ; for 
 they have passed from vanity to truth, from fiesh to the spirit 
 
 Thomas a Kempis 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 See, e.g., A. J. Balfour’s Humanism and Theism. 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 The quotations from Thoreau are taken from his Journal. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 O Virgin, if ever tenderest pity 
 
 For mortal things moved thee to mercy, 
 
 Incline unto my prayer; 
 
 Save me in this deadly strife, 
 
 Though I am clay, and thou 
 Of Heaven the Queen. 
 
 Petrarch 
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 Heading: Passing on into the state and freedom of the children of 
 God, who stand above the present and fix their eyes upon eternal 
 things. — Thomas a Kempis 
 
 Iliad, Book XVI. 
 
 Plato, The Apology. 
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 Heading: There is a gentle lady in heaven. — Inferno, ii, 94 
 
 The mother dolorous was standing 
 Next the cross a-weeping 
 While her son hung there; 
 
 [ 162 ] 
 
^fppcnbt^ 
 
 Her groaning heart, 
 
 In suffering and agony, 
 
 The sword had pierced. 
 
 Sir Oliver Lodge, whose reputation as a man of science has 
 procured him a hearing for many strange theories, says: The 
 idea of Angels is usually treated as fanciful. Imaginative it is, 
 but not altogether fanciful; and though the physical appear¬ 
 ance and attributes of such imaginary beings may have been 
 overemphasized or misconceived, yet facts known to me indi¬ 
 cate that we are not really lonely in our struggle, that our des¬ 
 tiny is not left to haphazard, that there is no such thing as 
 laissez-faire in a highly organized universe. Help may be re¬ 
 jected, but help is available; a ministry of benevolence sur¬ 
 rounds us—a cloud of witnesses — not witnesses only but 
 helpers, agents like ourselves of the immanent God. 
 
 Reason and Belief 
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 Heading : I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall 
 not walk in darkness , but shall have the light of life. 
 
 Philosophy directs us to that spiritual reality which is the only 
 reality; and from this point of view philosophy and religion 
 are one. J. S. Haldane , Mechanism , Life and Personality 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 These prayers are taken from St. Augustine, Jeremy Taylor, 
 Christina Rossetti, Dante, Racine, the Psalms, the Breviarium 
 Romanum , the Benedicite , etc. 
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 Heading : There are many to be found that zvish to be able to con¬ 
 template, but they heed not to practise that which is necessary for 
 contemplation. — Thomas a Kempis 
 
 These spiritual exercises are based on those of St. Ignatius 
 Loyola. 
 
 [ *63 ] 
 
Jfppen&t?? 
 
 The meditation is from Tagore’s Gitanali. 
 
 The meditative sequences are from The Imitation of Christ. 
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 Heading : 
 
 “ The sun is setting and the evening comes f 
 He said, “ Tarry not, hut hasten on. 
 
 While the west is not yet dark .” 
 
 CHAPTER XXI 
 
 Goethe: Talent is fashioned in retirement. Torquato Tasso 
 
 Nietszche says: I have gradually come to see daylight in re¬ 
 gard to the most general defect in our methods of education 
 and training : nobody learns, nobody teaches, nobody wishes 
 to endure solitude. (Niemand lernt, Niemand strebt darnach, 
 Niemand lehrt die Einsamkeit ertragen.) The Dawn of Day 
 
 We retire into seclusion ... so that by retirement we may 
 collect and save forces which will some day be urgently needed 
 by civilization. . . . We make capital and try to safeguard it. 
 
 Human, All Too Human 
 
 The number of petty vengeful people, and, even more, the 
 number of their petty acts of revenge, is incalculable. The air 
 around us is continually whizzing with arrows discharged by 
 their malignity, so that the sun and sky of their lives are dark¬ 
 ened by them — and, alas! not only theirs, but more often ours 
 . . . and this is worse than the frequent wounds they inflict 
 upon our skins and hearts. . . . Well then, Solitude: because of 
 this, Solitude ! The Dawn of Day 
 
 Le malheur des hommes vient d’une seule chose qui est de ne 
 savoir pas demeurer en repos dans une chambre. 
 
 Pascal, Pensees, Art. xxi, i 
 
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