e nursing mother and the handmaid of
mysticism.

"Convinced that the only aim that it was incumbent on man to follow, the
only end he could really need, was to place himself in direct
communication with Heaven, and to out-strip death by merging himself,
unifying himself to the utmost, with God, it tempted souls, subjecting
them to a moderate claustral course, purged them of their earthly
interests, their fleshly aims, and led them back again and again to the
same purpose of renunciation and repentance, the same ideas of justice
and love; and then to retain them, to preserve them from themselves, it
enclosed them in a fence, placed God all about them, as it were, under
every form and aspect."

Jesus was seen in everything--in the fauna, the flora, the structure of
buildings, in every decoration, in the use of colour. Whichever way man
could turn, he still saw Him.

And at the same time he saw his own soul as in a mirror that reflected
it; in certain animals, certain colours, and certain plants he could
discern the qualities which it was his duty to acquire, the vices
against which he had to defend himself.

And he had other examples before his eyes, for the symbolists did not
restrict themselves to turning botany, mineralogy, natural history, and
other sciences to the uses of a catechism; some of them, and among
others Saint Melito, ended by applying the process to the interpretation
of every object that came in their way. A cithara was to them the breast
of the devout man; the members of the human frame became emblematical:
the head was Christ, the hairs were the saints, the nose meant
discretion, the nostrils the spirit of faith, the eye contemplation, the
mouth symbolized temptation, the saliva was the sweetness of the inner
life, the ears figured obedience, the arms the love of Jesus, the hands
stood for good works, the knees for the sacrament of penance, the legs
for the Apostles, the shoulders for the yoke of Christ, the breast for
evangelical doctrine, the belly for avarice, the bowels for the
mysterious precepts of the Lord, the body and loins for suggestions of
lust, the bones typified hardness of heart, and the marrow compunction,
the sinews were evil members of Anti-Christ. And these writers extended
this method of interpretation to the commonest objects of daily use,
even to tools and vessels within reach of all.

Thus there was an uninterrupted course of pious teaching. Yves de
Chartres tells us that p