I must point out here the principal works of documents on which I have drawn for this book, and explain my manner of reference. I. First and foremost come the writings of the Saint herself: -Her Life; The Book of the Foundations; The Way of Perfection; The Interior Castle. These I quote from the translation by Pather Bouix (Librairie Lecoffre), and since the editions are numerous, and the pagination of them may differ, I refer as a rule to chapters. One of the most important sources is furnished us by her Letters. Of these the new edition of Father Gregoire de Saint-Joseph is that to which I...

No-great men and little, we are all of us formed out of the same clay and the same spirit is breathed into each one of us. We stand, as it were, on different steps of the same ladder, which springs from one and the same nature and reaches up to one and the same God.-We may aggravate the original weakness of our nature by yielding to it, or we may use the help offered to us and so develop all the potential strength and beauty it possesses, but whichever course we take, we can never completely destroy a single one of the features of our complex humanity. No matter how degenerate on the one...

A S a biography is not merely a catalogue of facts and circumstances determining an individual life, but an attempt to make a personality evident in all its characteristic distinctness, we have no reason to compJain that the life of St Ignatius has been written once more. There is room for endless approximation towards perfection in biography without any danger of so attaining it as to leave place for no further endeavour. It were comparatively easy to take the man as he was, the child of his age and country, formed by the society around him, educated in its beliefs and its ignorances, its...