ith the ceremonial law, or who offered the greatest number of
sacrifices, but for the pure in heart, for men of good will.

These considerations are not perhaps without their use in showing the
spiritual ancestry of the Saint of Assisi.

For him, as for St. Paul and St. Augustine, conversion was a radical and
complete change, the act of will by which man wrests himself from the
slavery of sin and places himself under the yoke of divine authority.
Thenceforth prayer, become a necessary act of life, ceases to be a magic
formula; it is an impulse of the heart, it is reflection and meditation
rising above the commonplaces of this mortal life, to enter into the
mystery of the divine will and conform itself to it; it is the act of
the atom which understands its littleness, but which desires, though
only by a single note, to be in harmony with the divine symphony.

_Ecce adsum Domine, ut faciam voluntatem tuam._

When we reach these heights we belong not to a sect, but to humanity; we
are like those wonders of nature which the accident of circumstances has
placed upon the territory of this or that people, but which belong to
all the world, because in fact they belong to no one, or rather they are
the common and inalienable property of the entire human race. Homer,
Shakespeare, Dante, Goethe, Michael Angelo, Rembrandt belong to us all
as much as the ruins of Athens or Rome, or, rather, they belong to
those who love them most and understand them best.

But that which is a truism, so far as men of genius in the domain of
imagination or thought are concerned, still appears like a paradox when
we speak of men of religious genius. The Church has laid such absolute
claim to them that she has created in her own favor a sort of right. It
cannot be that this arbitrary confiscation shall endure forever. To
prevent it we have not to perform an act of negation or demolition: let
us leave to the chapels their statues and their relics, and far from
belittling the saints, let us make their true grandeur shine forth.

* * * * *

It is time to say a few words concerning the difficulties of the work
here presented to the public. History always embraces but a very feeble
part of the reality: ignorant, she is like the stories children tell of
the events that have occurred before their eyes; learned, she reminds us
of a museum organized with all the modern improvements. Instead of
making you see nature with its