"By extinguishing the fires of nature! Why should not faith and nature grow strong together? I have spent my life on the hill-side back yonder, as you know, and I have had leisure enough for studying these monks. I have tried to do them justice. At different times I have almost lived with St. Benedict at Subiaco, and St. Patrick on the mountain, and St. Anthony in the desert, and St. Thomas in the cell. I understand and value the elements of truth and beauty in the lives of the ancient solitaries. But they belong so inalienably to the past. We have outgrown the ideals of antiquity. How can a man now look upon his body as his evil tenement of flesh? How can he believe that he approaches sainthood by destroying his manhood? The highest type of personal holiness is said to be attained in the cloister. That is not true. The highest type of personal holiness is to be attained in the thick of the world's temptations. Then it becomes sublime. It seems to me that the heroisms worth speaking of nowadays are active, not meditative. But why should I say this to you, who as much as any one else have taught me to think thus--I who myself am able to do nothing? But though I can do nothing, I can at least look upon the monastic ideal of life as an empty, dead, husk, into which no man with the largest ideas of duty will ever compress his powers. Even granting that it develops personal holiness, this itself is but one element in the perfect character, and not even the greatest one." "But do you suppose that these monks have deliberately and freely chosen their vocation? You know perfectly well that often there are almost overwhelming motives impelling men and women to hide themselves away from the world--from, its sorrows, its dangers, its temptations."