"On the whole, these three ways are successively reserved to those who start in Christian asceticism, to those who practise it, and finally to those who attain to the supreme end, the death of self and the life in God.
"Long," pursued the oblate, "I have placed my desires beyond the horizon, yet I progress little; I am scarcely disengaged from the life of Purification, scarcely...."
"And you do not fear—how shall I say—material infirmities, for if at last you succeed in attaining the limits of contemplation, you risk the ruin of your body for ever. Experience seems to show, in effect, that the deified soul acts on the constitution and brings incurable troubles."
The oblate smiled. "In the first place I should, no doubt, fail to attain to the last degree of initiation, the extreme point of mysticism; then, supposing I attain it, what would corporal accidents be in the face of such results?
"Let me also assure you that these accidents are neither so frequent nor so certain as you seem to think.
"A man may be a great mystic, or an admirable saint, and not be the subject of visible phenomena for those who surround him. Would you not think, for example, that levitation, or the flight of bodies in the air, which seems to constitute the highest state of rapture, is one of the rarest? Whom can you quote to me? Saint Teresa, Saint Christina the Admirable, Saint Peter of Alcantara, Dominic of Mary Jesus, Agnes of Bohemia, Margaret of the Blessed Sacrament, the Blessed Gorardesca of Pisa, and above all Saint Joseph of Cupertino, who raised himself at will from the ground. But they are ten or twenty out of thousands of the elect!
"And note well that these gifts do not prove their superiority over other Saints. Saint Teresa declares expressly: it must not be imagined that anyone, blessed as he may be in this respect, is better than those who are not so blessed, for our Lord directs each one according to his particular need.
"And then the doctrine of the Church is seen in the untiring prudence shown in the canonization of the dead. Qualities and not extraordinary acts decide this; for the Church, miracles themselves are only secondary proofs, for she knows that the Spirit of Evil imitates them.
"In the lives of the Blessed you will find, too, the most unusual deeds, and more amazing phenomena than in the biographies of the Saints. These phenomena have rather hindered than helped them. After having beatified them for their virtues, the Church has put off—and no doubt for a long time—their promotion to the sovereign dignity of Saints.
"It is difficult, on the whole, to formulate an exact theory on this subject, for if the cause, if the mental action is the same in all mystics, it differs a little, as I have said, according to God's will and the character of the subjects; the difference of sex often changes the form of the mystic flow, though in essence it never varies; the rush of the Spirit from on High may produce different effects, but is none the less identical.