although the reverie or contemplation place in the fringe-region of our
mental life, and in apparent freedom from the control of the conscious
reason. The object of recollection and meditation, which are the first
stages of mental prayer, is to set going such a series and to direct it
towards an assigned end: and this first inward-turning act and
self-orientation are voluntary, though the activities which they set up
are not. "You must know, my daughters," says St. Teresa, "that this is
no supernatural act but depends on our will; and that therefore we can
do it, with that ordinary assistance of God which we need for all our
acts and even for our good thoughts."[90]

Consider for a moment what happens in prayer. I pass over the simple
recitation of verbal prayers, which will better be dealt with when we
come to consider the institutional framework of the spiritual life. We
are now concerned with mental prayer or orison; the simplest of those
degrees of contemplation which may pass gradually into mystical
experience, and are at least in some form a necessity of any real and
actualized spiritual life. Such prayer is well defined by the mystics,
as "a devout intent directed to God."[91] What happens in it? All
writers on the science of prayer observe, that the first necessity is
Recollection; which, in a rough and ready way, we may render as
concentration, or perhaps in the special language of psychology as
"contention." The mind is called in from external interests and
distractions, one by one the avenues of sense are closed, till the hunt
of the world is hardly perceived by it. I need not labour this
description, for it is a state of which we must all have experience: but
those who wish to see it described with the precision of genius, need
only turn to St. Teresa's "Way of Perfection." Having achieved this, we
pass gradually into the condition of deep withdrawal variously called
Simplicity or Quiet; a state in which the attention is quietly and