go to the
original and study it for themselves they will have more than fulfilled
the translator's desires.

Another reason which has weighed much with the translator and encouraged
him to undertake this task has been the suddenly awakened interest in
Mysticism and Mystical studies during the last decade. It has become the
fashion to talk about Mysticism, even to pose as Mystics, and--need it
be said?--those who talk the most on such subjects are those who know
the least. For those who have entered into the secret of the King are
ever the most reticent on such matters. At the same time we may welcome
this recent development, if only as a set-off against the Spiritualism
and occultism which have played such havoc with souls during a space of
over fifty years. The human soul, "naturally Christian," as Tertullian
would say, is also naturally Divine in the sense that, as S. Augustine
so often insists, no rest is possible for it save in God. Now those who
are familiar with the _Summa Theologica_ are aware that _Union with God_
is its keynote, or rather is the dominant note which rings out clear
again and again with its ever-repeated _Sursum Corda_! It is this that
gives such special value to the treatises here presented on Prayer and
the Contemplative Life. They flow from the pen of one who was literally
steeped in God and Divine things, and who is speaking to us of things
which he had himself tasted and seen. It is this that gives such
simplicity and charm to the whole of his teaching. He is not
experimenting; he is not speaking of theories; he is portraying to us
what was his everyday life.

Perhaps one of the commonest errors regarding the Spiritual life is the
confusion between the ordinary and the extraordinary ways of God. For
how many does not the Contemplative Life mean the life of ecstasy and
vision with which we are familiar in the lives of the Saints? For S.
Thomas, on the contrary, the Contemplative Life is but the natural life
of a man who is serving God and who devotes a certain portion of his
time to the study and contemplation of Divine things. Ecstasy and vision
he treats of in another place. They occupy a sphere apart. They belong
to God's extraordinary dealings with favoured souls, and while they
presuppose prayer and contemplation on the part of those so visited they
themselves form no integral part of the Contemplative Life; indeed, they
are the exception. Hence in these pages we shall find nought touch