a history of successive renunciations of complication,
one form of contact with the outer life being dropped after another, to
save the purity of inner tone.[209] "Is it not better," a young sister
asks her Superior, "that I should not speak at all during the hour of
recreation, so as not to run the risk, by speaking, of falling into
some sin of which I might not be conscious?"[210] If the life remains
a social one at all, those who take part in it must follow one
identical rule.

Embosomed in this monotony, the zealot for purity feels clean and free
once more. The minuteness of uniformity maintained in certain
sectarian communities, whether monastic or not, is something almost
inconceivable to a man of the world. Costume, phraseology, hours, and
habits are absolutely stereotyped, and there is no doubt that some
persons are so made as to find in this stability an incomparable kind
of mental rest.

[208] On this subject I refer to the work of M. Murisier (Les Maladies
du sentiment Religieux, Paris, 1901), who makes inner unification the
mainspring of the whole religious life. But ALL strongly ideal
interests, religious or irreligious, unify the mind and tend to
subordinate everything to themselves. One would infer from M.
Murisier's pages that this formal condition was peculiarly
characteristic of religion, and that one might in comparison almost
neglect material content, in studying the latter. I trust that the
present work will convince the reader that religion has plenty of
material content which is characteristic and which is more important by
far than any general psychological form. In spite of this criticism, I
find M. Murisier's book highly instructive.

[209] Example: "At the first beginning of the Servitor's [Suso's]
interior life, after he had purified his soul properly by confession,
he marked out for himself, in thought, three circles, within which he
shut himself up, as in a spiritual intrenchment. The first circle was
his cell, his chapel, and the choir. When he was within this circle,
he seemed to himself in complete security. The second circle was the
whole monastery as far as the outer gate. The third and outermost
circle was the gate itself, and here it was necessary for him to stand
well upon his guard. When he went outside these circles, it seemed to
him that he was in the plight of some wild animal which is outside its
hole, and surrounded by the hunt, and therefore in need of all its