It is a matter of idle curiosity with us how an unbelieving
generation, ingenious in devising natural explanations (which are
most unnatural) of supernatural phenomena, would explain away the
wonder of the young Saint's life which is the subject of the
following pages. It presents to us a picture of Divine Condescension
guiding and inspiring and aiding human effort, so convincingly clear
and transparent in its smallest details and in its general effect as
to seem outside the pale of all possible mutilation and
misinterpretation by malice or skeptical analysis. Natural reaction
against sinful excess, thwarted ambitions, disappointed hopes, meek
conformity with environment, ecclesiastical manipulation of pliant
material, tame acquiescence in family traditions and arrangements,
these and all the other stock "explanations," with which a groveling
world seeks to pull down the Saints to its own dreary level, cannot
be invoked to dissipate the mystery and the glory surrounding
Stanislaus. How did he come so early in life, and in a nobleman's
family, to set such store upon spiritual values? How did his tender
and immature mind grasp with such swift sureness the one lesson of
all philosophies, that life on its material side is an incident
rather than the sum of human existence and can never satisfy
the soul's desires ? How could this mere boy have developed, so
young, an iron will which wrought that hardest of all laborious
tasks, namely, the conformation of conduct with lofty ideals? There
are supernatural answers to these and similar questions which might
be raised concerning the brief career of St. Stanislaus. We know of
no merely natural answers.

The lively and energetic style adopted in the present biography may
create a trace of mild surprise in older readers. Sanctity, it is
true, some one may say, is a very beautiful achievement in a world