Our Blessed Father, following the example of the holy Archbishop, was invariably kind and gentle, even with the brute creation. He not only himself never did them harm, but he prevented, as far as he could, any being done to them by others, for he believed that those who thus inflict pain on innocent creatures often, even at the risk of their own lives, display a cruel and malevolent kind of courage. He went so far as to regard it as a venial sin to injure creatures for the sole pleasure of harming them where no advantage of any sort would accrue to ourselves; his reason being that we in this way deprive them of the joy to be found in mere existence bestowed upon them by God. "What, then," he was asked, "do you say to the chase, and to the killing of animals for the food of man?" "As regards the food of man," he replied, "the very words you use justify the act, and it is that end which justifies the chase." From this we may conclude that the mere pleasure of the chase was not sufficient, in his opinion, to render lawful the indulging in it. Although he blamed the superstition of the Turks, who think that they acquire merit in the sight of God by lavishing kindness on senseless brutes, even the most savage and cruel, such as wolves and lions, still he used to say that this pity had a good natural source, and that those who were so compassionate to animals were likely to be no otherwise to men, nature teaching us not to despise our own flesh. In spite of these feelings, he was very far from falling into those mistakes which casuists enumerate as the result of excess in gentleness and kindness. The various writers of the life of Blessed Francis tell us how it was commonly remarked that all animals by natural instinct seemed to recognise his tender, compassionate feelings for them, and that when hunted and pursued, they at once took refuge with him, witness the pigeons, which at different times when he was saying the Divine Office, flew for safety and shelter into his very hands. [Footnote 1: _Devout Life_. Part II. c. 13.] UPON THE FEAR OF GHOSTS. Fear is a natural passion, which, like all the others, is in itself neither bad nor good, but bad when it is excessive and disquieting, good when it is subordinate to reason. There are some who, because naturally timid and apprehensive, would never dare to speak in public. Others are so afraid of thunder and lightning that they faint in a storm. Others are afraid of noises at night, and have a horror of darkness and solitude. Others, again, have so great a fear of ghosts and apparitions that they dare not sleep alone in a room.