n her place.

As for the soul, can we say it lives? Is this not rather actual death?
The great mystics sought for death, and could not find it: the living
activity remained even in the sepulchre. To die, singly, in God, to
die with one's own will and energy, this is not dying completely. But
slothfully to allow your soul to enter the mad vortex of another soul,
and suffer, half-asleep, the strange transformation in which your
personality is absorbed in his; this is, indeed, real moral death; we
need not look for any other.

"To act, is the deed of the novice; to suffer, is immediate gain; to
die, is perfection. Let us go forward in darkness, and we shall go
well; the horse that goes round blind-folded grinds corn so much the
better. Let us neither think nor read. A _practical_ master will tell
us, better than any book, what we must do at the very moment. It is a
great security to have an experienced guide to govern and direct us,
according to his actual intelligence, and prevent our being deceived by
the demon or our own senses."[1]

Molinos, in leading us gently by this road, seems to me to know very
well whither he is conducting us. I judge so by the infinite
precautions he takes to re-assure us; by his crying up everywhere
humility, austerity, excessive scrupulousness, and prudence carried to
a ridiculous extreme. The saints are not so wise. In a very humble
preface, he believes that this little book, devoid of ornament and
style, and without a protector, cannot have any success; "he will, no
doubt, be criticised; everybody will find him insipid." In the last
page, his humility is still greater, he _lays his work prostrate_, and
submits it to the correction of the Holy Roman Church.

He gives us to understand, that the real director directs without any
inclination for the task: "He is a man who would gladly dispense with
the care of souls, who sighs and pants for solitude. He is,
especially, very far from wishing to get the direction of women, they
being, generally, too little prepared. He must take especial care not
to call his penitent _his daughter_; the word is too tender, and God is
jealous of it. Self-love united with passion, that hydra-headed
monster, sometimes assumes the form of gratitude and filial affection
for the confessor. He must not visit his penitents at their homes, not
even in cases of sickness, _unless he be called_."

This is, indeed, an astounding severity: these are excessi