It requires then an objective vision or certitude, something to aim at; and also a total integration of the self, its dedication to that aim.

Both terms, vision and response, are essential to it.
This definition may seem at first sight rather dull.

It suggests little of that poignant and unearthly beauty, that heroism, that immense attraction, which really belong to the spiritual life.

Here indeed we are dealing with poetry in action: and we need not words but music to describe it as it really is.

Yet all the forms, all the various beauties and achievements of this life of the Spirit, can be resumed as the reactions of different temperaments to the one abiding and inexhaustibly satisfying Object of their love.