The art of this poetry of love and hope, which marked the mystics, lay of course in the background of shadows which marked the cloister. "Inter vania nihil vanius est homine." Man is an imperceptible atom always trying to become one with God. If ever modern science achieves a definition of energy, possibly it may borrow the figure: Energy is the inherent effort of every multiplicity to become unity. Adam's poetry was an expression of the effort to reach absorption through love, not through fear; but to do this thoroughly he had to make real to himself his own nothingness; most of all, to annihilate pride; for the loftiest soul can comprehend that an atom,--say, of hydrogen,--which is proud of its personality, will never merge in a molecule of water. The familiar verse: "Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud?" echoes Adam's epitaph to this day:-- Haeres peccati, natura filius irae, Exiliique reus nascitur omnis homo. Unde superbit homo, cujus conceptio culpa, Nasci poena, labor vita, necesse mori? Heir of sin, by nature son of wrath, Condemned to exile, every man is born. Whence is man's pride, whose conception fault, Birth pain, life labour, and whose death is sure? Four concluding lines, not by him, express him even better:-- Hic ego qui jaceo, miser et miserabilis Adam, Unam pro summo munere posco precem. Peccavi, fateor; veniam peto; parce fatenti; Parce, pater: fratres, parcite; parce, Deus! One does not conceive that Adam insisted so passionately on his sins because he thought them--or himself--important before the Infinite. Chemistry does not consider an atom of oxygen as in itself important, yet if it wishes to get a volume of pure gas, it must separate the elements. The human soul was an atom that could unite with God only as a simple element. The French mystics showed in their mysticism the same French reasonableness; the sense of measure, of logic, of science; the allegiance to form; the transparency of thought, which the French mind has always shown on its surface like a shell of nacre. The mystics were in substance rather more logical than the schoolmen and much more artistic in their correctness of line and scale. At bottom, French saints were not extravagant. One can imagine a Byzantine asserting that no French saint was ever quite saintly. Their aims and ideals were very high, but not beyond reaching and not unreasonable. Drag the French mind as far from line and logic as space permits, the instant it is freed it springs back to the classic and tries to look consequent.