d non-sensorial impressions, and they are
persons whose spiritual life was of very great intensity. They have
_internal impressions_ which cannot be accounted fruits of the
imagination, but must be accepted as realities simply perceived. That
they are realities is affirmed not only by the introspection of normal
subjects, but by the effect upon their internal personality. "The
revelations vouchsafed by God," says Saint Teresa, "are distinguished
by the great spiritual benefits with which they enrich the soul; they
are accompanied by light, discernment, and wisdom." But if such
persons wish to describe these impressions which do not penetrate by
means of the senses, they are obliged to borrow the language of
sensorial impression. "I heard a voice," says the Blessed Raymond of
Capua, "which was not in the air, and which pronounced words that
reached my spirit, but not my ear; nevertheless I understood it more
distinctly than if it had come to me from an external voice. I could
not reproduce this voice, if I can call that a voice which had no
sound. This voice formed words and presented them to my spirit." The
Life of Saint Teresa abounds in similar descriptions, in which she
tries to convey, by the inappropriate language of the senses, what she
saw, not with her eyes, but with her soul.

The difference between these internal impressions, which occur in
others as well as in saints (and certainly do not constitute
saintliness), and the hallucinations of the insane, is clearly marked.
In the madman, an excitement of the cerebral cortex reproduces old
images deposited by the sensorial memory, which project themselves
into the external world whence they were taken, with external
sensorial characteristics; so that the sufferer really believes that
he sees his phantasms with his actual eyes, and that he hears the
voices which persecute him; he is the victim of a pathological
condition; the whole personality reveals signs of his organic
decadence, the concomitants of his psychical disintegration.

Setting aside, then, direct spiritual impressions of very rare
occurrence, not to be looked upon even as aids to sanctity,
impressions which may form suitable subjects of study for specialists
such as teleologists or the members of the English Society of
Psychical Research, but which do not enter into educational
conceptions, there remains for our consideration but a single material
of construction for intellectual activities: that of