Francis of Assisi, however, was original and great, not through those qualities which he had in common with the vulgar herd of ascetics--abstinences, mortifications, prayers, ecstasies, visions--but on account of something which was, without his knowing it, the very negation of asceticism--the affirmation and the triumph of the gentlest and sweetest feelings of humanity. The ascetic abhorred, condemned, and fled from nature, life, all human affections, in order to steep himself in solitary contemplation: Francis, by example and precept, preached the love of nature, concord, mutual affection between human beings, and work. The ascetic called everything beautiful in the world the work of Satan: Francis brought about a true revolution by calling it the work of God, praising and thanking God for it. It was a new kind of loving and passionate Pantheism which inspired him with the _Song of the Sun_, in which all creatures, animate and inanimate, are joined in fraternal embrace, in which the beautiful and radiant sun, the bright and precious moon and stars, the wind, the clouds, the clear sky--water, “useful, humble, precious, and chaste,”--fire, shining, joyous, “hardy and strong,” Mother Earth, who sustains and feeds us, together with man, who up to that time had been taught to despise everything that might distract him from the selfish thought of his fate in the next world--all these are called upon to sing the glory of the Lord _who is good_, to bless Him for having made the universe so rich, varied, and beautiful, so worthy to be loved.[388] If we think of this bold and far-reaching change, we shall no longer smile in reading the _Song_; remembering, too, that it was the first attempt made by the Italian people to express their religious feelings in the vulgar tongue. For such a song to burst from the impassioned heart of Francis, the germs of universal love which he cherished there must already have come to perfect growth. He must have freed himself entirely from the ancient terror, which, in the common superstitious belief, peopled woods, mountains, air and water, with hidden enemies. As also, in order to bring men back to mutual love, in an age when “those whom one wall and one ditch confined, gnawed one another,” he had, through the natural tendency to extremes, to include, not only Brother Sun and Sister Moon, but even Brother Wolf. Having composed the _Song_, Francis was so well pleased with it that he adapted to it a musical melody, taught it to his disciples, and thought of choosing among his followers some who should go about the world singing the praises of God, and “asking, as their only recompense that their listeners should repent, should call themselves just ‘God’s jesters’--_Joculatores Domini_.” Thus he gave the first and most vigorous impulse to religious poetry in the vulgar tongue.