with the negative vision or conviction of sin, sometimes with the
positive longing for holiness and peace, is the mental preparation of
conversion; which, though not a constant, is at least a characteristic
feature of the beginning of the spiritual life as seen in history. We
might, indeed, expect some crucial change of attitude, some inner
crisis, to mark the beginning of a new life which is to aim only at God.
Here too we find one motive of that movement of world-abandonment which
so commonly follows conversion, especially in heroic souls. Thus St.
Paul hides himself in Arabia; St. Benedict retires for three years to
the cave at Subiaco; St. Ignatius to Manresa. Gerard Groot, the
brilliant and wealthy young Dutchman who founded the brotherhood of the
Common Life, began his new life by self-seclusion in a Carthusian cell.
St. Catherine of Siena at first lived solitary in her own room. St.
Francis with dramatic completeness abandoned his whole past, even the
clothing that was part of it. Jacopone da Todi, the prosperous lawyer
converted to Christ's poverty, resorted to the most grotesque devices to
express his utter separation from the world. Others, it is true, have
chosen quieter methods, and found in that which St. Catherine calls the
cell of self-knowledge the solitude they required; but _some_ decisive
break was imperative for all. History assures us that there is no easy
sliding into the life of the Spirit.

A secondary cause of such world refusal is the first awakening of the
contemplative powers; the intuition of Eternity, hitherto dormant, and
felt at this stage to be--in its overwhelming reality and appeal--in
conflict with the unreal world and unsublimated active life. This is the
controlling idea of the hermit and recluse. It is well seen in St.
Teresa; whom her biographers describe as torn, for years, between the
interests of human intercourse and the imperative inner voice urging her
to solitary self-discipline and prayer. So we may say that in the