is light and love.'

'Thou speakest rather as a philosopher than as a penitent Catholic.
For me, I feel that I want to look more, and not less, inward. Deeper
self-examination, completer abstraction, than I can attain even here,
are what I crave for. I long--forgive me, my friend--but I long more and
more, daily, for the solitary life. This earth is accursed by man's sin:
the less we see of it, it seems to me, the better.'

'I may speak as a philosopher, or as a heathen, for aught I know: yet it
seems to me that, as they say, the half loaf is better than none; that
the wise man will make the best of what he has, and throw away no lesson
because the book is somewhat torn and soiled. The earth teaches me thus
far already. Shall I shut my eyes to those invisible things of God which
are clearly manifested by the things which are made, because some
day they will be more clearly manifested than now? But as for more
abstraction, are we so worldly here in Scetis?'

'Nay, my friend, each man has surely his vocation, and for each some
peculiar method of life is more edifying than another. In my case, the
habits of mind which I acquired in the world will cling to me in spite
of myself even here. I cannot help watching the doings of others,
studying their characters, planning and plotting for them, trying to
prognosticate their future fate. Not a word, not a gesture of this our
little family, but turns away my mind from the one thing needful.'

'And do you fancy that the anchorite in his cell has fewer
distractions?'

'What can he have but the supply of the mere necessary wants of life?
and them, even, he may abridge to the gathering of a few roots and
herbs. Men have lived like the beasts already, that they might at the
same time live like the angels--and why should not I also?'

'And thou art the wise man of the world--the student of the hearts
of others--the anatomiser of thine own? Hast thou not found out that,
besides a craving stomach, man carries with him a corrupt heart? Many
a man I have seen who, in his haste to fly from the fiends without him,
has forgotten to close the door of his heart against worse fiends who
were ready to harbour within him. Many a monk, friend, changes his
place, but not the anguish of his soul. I have known those who, driven
to feed on their own thoughts in solitude, have desperately cast
themselves from cliffs or ripped up their own bodies, in the longing to
escape from thoughts, from which