o me profoundly significant that Gilbert studied first in
the little Poor Man of Assisi what Christ could do in one man before
he came on to the study of what He had done in mankind as a whole, of
Who He was who had done it. For the man thus chosen embodied the
ideals that Gilbert had seen dimly in his boyhood--ideals that most
of us accept a little reluctantly from the Church, but which had
actually attracted him towards the Church. St. Francis "had found the
secret of life in being the servant and the secondary figure". . .
"he seems to have liked everybody, but especially those whom
everybody disliked him for liking." "By nature he was the sort of man
who has that vanity which is the opposite of pride, that vanity which
is very near to humility. He never despised his fellow creatures and
therefore he never despised the opinion of his fellow creatures,
including the admiration of his fellow creatures." "He was above all
things a great giver; and he cared chiefly for the best kind of
giving which is called thanksgiving. If another great man wrote a
grammar of assent, he may well be said to have written a grammar of
acceptance; a grammar of gratitude. He understood down to its very
depths the theory of thanks; and its depths are a bottomless abyss."

Here, in St. Francis, Gilbert saw the apotheosis of his old boyish
thought--that thanksgiving is a duty and a joy, that we should love
not "humanity" but each human. Things shadowed in the Notebook are in
_St. Francis_, for

the transition from the good man to the saint is a sort of
revolution; by which one for whom all things illustrate and
illuminate God becomes one for whom God illustrates and illuminates
all things. It is rather like the reversal whereby a lover might say
at first sight that a lady looked like a flower, and say afterwards
that all flowers reminded him of his lady. A saint and a poet
standing by the same flower might seem to say the same thing; but
indeed though they would both be telling the truth, they would be
telling different truths. For one the joy of life is a cause of
faith, for the other rather a result of faith.*

[* _St. Francis of Assisi_, p. 111.]

_The Everlasting Man_ and the _St. Francis_ seem to me the highest
expression of Gilbert's mysticism. I have hesitated to use the word
for it is not one to be used lightly but I can find no other. Like
most Catholics I have been wont to believe that to be a mystic