with the indulgence of a reverie in this long spiritual journey. At
every step the neophyte employed his five senses in the effort of
intellectual realization. Prostrate upon the ground, gazing with closed
eyelids in the twilight of his cell upon the mirror of imagination, he
had to _see_ the boundless flames of hell and souls encased in burning
bodies, to _hear_ the shrieks and blasphemies, to _smell_ their sulphur
and intolerable stench, to _taste_ the bitterness of tears and _feel_
the stings of ineffectual remorse.

[Footnote 166: _Inst. Soc. Jesu_, vol. iv. The same volume contains the
Directorium, or rules for the use of the _Exercitia_.]

He had to localize each object in the camera obscura of the brain. If
the Garden of Gethsemane, for instance, were the subject of his
meditation, he was bound to place Christ here and the sleeping apostles
there, and to form an accurate image of the angel and the cup. He gazed
and gazed, until he was able to handle the raiment of the Saviour, to
watch the drops of bloody sweat beading his forehead and trickling down
his cheeks, to grasp the chalice with the fingers of the soul. As each
carefully chosen and sagaciously suggested scene was presented, he had
to identify his very being, soul, will, intellect, and senses, with the
mental vision. He lived again, so far as this was possible through
fancy, the facts of sacred history. If the director judged it advisable,
symbolic objects were placed before him in the cell; at one time skulls
and bones, at another fresh sweetsmelling flowers. Fasting and
flagellation, peculiar postures of the body, groanings and weepings,
were prescribed as mechanical aids in cases where the soul seemed
sluggish. The sphere traversed in these exercises was a narrow one. The
drill aimed at intensity of discipline, at a concentrated and concrete
impression, not at width of education or at intellectual enlightenment.
Speculation upon the fundamental principles of religion was excluded.
God's dealings with mankind revealed in the Old Testament found no place
in this theory of salvation. Attention was riveted upon a very few
points in the life of Christ and Mary, such as every Catholic child
might be supposed to be familiar with. But it was fixed in such a way as
to bring the terrors and raptures of the mystics, of a S. Catharine or a
S. Teresa, within the reach of all; to place spiritual experience _a la
portee de tout le monde_. The vulgarity is only equa