saint was a greed for mortification; and he died very literally of blood-poisoning, brought about by his own suicidal act, because he willed too possessively to share the passion and sufferings of Christ—the death instead of the life.
That blood-poisoning of the mediæval saint's was a reaction, violent and unkind, against the wrongful version of possession which, in their day as in our own, was destroying the peaceful possibilities of human society.
Yet without a certain quality of possessiveness the human mind cannot grow. Wordsworth pictures for us very beautifully that natural possessive element in its age of innocence.
A six year darling of a pigmy size!
See, where 'mid work of his own hand he lies,
Fretted by sallies of his mother's kisses,
With light upon him from his father's eyes!
See, at his feet, some little plan or chart,
Some fragment from his dream of human life,
Shaped by himself with newly-learnèd art;
A wedding or a festival,
A mourning or a funeral;
And this hath now his heart,
And unto this he frames his song.
With these mental possessions he is opening his mind to the coming conquests of life: as much to be conquered by its beauty as to conquer it. But what he gains from his appreciation of earth's loveliness brings loss to none;
