should hate ourselves; _we should be in charity with ourselves as
with others_.[309]

Spontaneous, unreflecting good acts proceed from what the mystics call
the apex of the soul. "In such acts St. Antony places the most perfect
prayer--unconscious prayer."

Of prayer he says, "We pray as much as we desire, and we desire as
much as we love." Vocal prayer cannot be (as the extreme quietists
pretend) useless to contemplative souls; "for Christ has taught us a
vocal prayer."

He then proceeds to deal with "passive contemplation," and refers
again to the "unconscious prayer" of St. Antony. But "pure
contemplation is never unintermittent in this life." "Bernard, Teresa,
and John say that their periods of pure contemplation lasted not more
than half an hour." "Pure contemplation," he proceeds, "is negative,
being occupied with no sensible image, no distinct and nameable idea;
it stops only at the purely intellectual and abstract idea of being."
Yet this idea includes, "as distinct objects," all the attributes of
God--"as the Trinity, the humanity of Christ, and all His mysteries."
"To deny this is to annihilate Christianity under pretence of
purifying it, and to confound God with _neant_. It is to form a kind
of deism which at once falls into atheism, wherein all real idea of
God as distinguished from His creatures is rejected." Lastly, it is to
advance two impieties--(i.) To suppose that there is or may be on the
earth a contemplative who is no longer a traveller, and who no longer
needs the way, since he has reached his destination. (ii.) To ignore
that Jesus Christ is the way as well as the truth and the life, the
finisher as well as the author of our faith.

This criticism of the formless vision is excellent, but there is a
palpable inconsistency between the definition of "negative
contemplation" and the inclusion in it of "all the attributes of God
as distinct objects." Contradictions of this sort abound in Fenelon,
and destroy the value of his writings as contributions to religious
philosophy, though in his case, as in many others, we may speak of
"noble inconsistencies" which do more credit to his heart than
discredit to his intellect. We may perhaps see here the dying spasm of
the "negative method," which has crossed our path so often in this
survey.

The image of Jesus Christ, Fenelon continues, is not clearly seen by
contemplatives at first, and may be withdrawn while the soul passes
through the last furnace