nds
towards contemplative ecstasy, alternated in him with a keen perception
of outward facts and a vigorous practical judgment of men and things.
And in this case of the Trial by Fire, the latter characteristics were
stimulated into unusual activity by an acute physical sensitiveness
which gives overpowering force to the conception of pain and destruction
as a necessary sequence of facts which have already been causes of pain
in our experience. The promptitude with which men will consent to touch
red-hot iron with a wet finger is not to be measured by their theoretic
acceptance of the impossibility that the iron will burn them: practical
belief depends on what is most strongly represented in the mind at a
given moment. And with the Frate's constitution, when the Trial by Fire
was urged on his imagination as an immediate demand, it was impossible
for him to believe that he or any other man could walk through the
flames unhurt--impossible for him to believe that even if he resolved to
offer himself, he would not shrink at the last moment.

But the Florentines were not likely to make these fine distinctions. To
the common run of mankind it has always seemed a proof of mental vigour
to find moral questions easy, and judge conduct according to concise
alternatives. And nothing was likely to seem plainer than that a man
who at one time declared that God would not leave him without the
guarantee of a miracle, and yet drew back when it was proposed to test
his declaration, had said what he did not believe. Were not Fra
Domenico and Fra Mariano, and scores of Piagnoni besides, ready to enter
the fire? What was the cause of their superior courage, if it was not
their superior faith? Savonarola could not have explained his conduct
satisfactorily to his friends, even if he had been able to explain it
thoroughly to himself. And he was not. Our naked feelings make haste
to clothe themselves in propositions which lie at hand among our store
of opinions, and to give a true account of what passes within us
something else is necessary besides sincerity, even when sincerity is
unmixed. In these very moments, when Savonarola was kneeling in audible
prayer, he had ceased to hear the words on his lips. They were drowned
by argumentative voices within him that shaped their reasons more and
more for an outward audience.

"To appeal to heaven for a miracle by a rash acceptance of a challenge,
which is a mere snare prepared for me by