{"collection":"scripture-revelation","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_11935/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_11935","id":"gutenberg_11935","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/11935","summary":null,"tags":["Category: British Literature","Category: Essays, Letters & Speeches","Category: Religion/Spirituality","English literature -- History and criticism","Mysticism -- Great Britain","Mysticism in literature"],"text":"Mysticism in English Literature\n\nBy\n\nCaroline F. E. Spurgeon\n\n\n\n\n\"Many are the thyrsus-bearers, but few are the mystics\"\n\nPh\u00e6do\n\n\nMysticism in English Literature\n\n\n\n\nNote\n\n\n\nThe variety of applications of the term \"mysticism\" has forced me to\nrestrict myself here to a discussion of that philosophical type of\nmysticism which concerns itself with questions of ultimate reality. My\naim, too, has been to consider this subject in connection with great\nEnglish writers. I have had, therefore, to exclude, with regret, the\nliterature of America, so rich in mystical thought.\n\nI wish to thank Mr John Murray for kind permission to make use of an\narticle of mine which appeared in the _Quarterly Review_, and also Dr\nWard and Mr Waller for similar permission with regard to certain\npassages in a chapter of the _Cambridge History of English Literature_,\nvol. ix.\n\nI am also indebted to Mr Bertram Dobell, Messrs Longmans, Green, Mrs\nCoventry Patmore and Mr Francis Meynell for most kindly allowing me to\nquote from the works respectively of Thomas Traherne, Richard Jefferies,\nCoventry Patmore, and Francis Thompson.\n\nC.F.E.S.\n\n_April_ 1913.\n\n\n\n\nContents\n\n\n\nI. Introduction\n\n     Definition of Mysticism. The Early Mystical Writers. Plato.\n     Plotinus. Chronological Sketch of Mystical Thought in England.\n\n\nII. Love and Beauty Mystics\n\n     Shelley, Rossetti, Browning, Coventry Patmore, and Keats.\n\n\nIII. Nature Mystics\n\n     Henry Vaughan, Wordsworth, Richard Jefferies.\n\n\nIV. Philosophical Mystics\n\n     (i) _Poets._--Donne, Traherne, Emily Bront\u00eb, Tennyson.\n\n     (ii) _Prose Writers._--William Law, Burke, Coleridge, Carlyle.\n\n\nV. Devotional and Religious Mystics\n\n     The Early English Writers: Richard Rolle and Julian; Crashawe,\n     Herbert, and Christopher Harvey; Blake and Francis Thompson.\n\n\nBibliography\n\nIndex\n\n\n\n\n\nMysticism in English Literature\n\n\n\n\nChapter I\n\nIntroduction\n\n\n\nMysticism is a term so irresponsibly applied in English that it has\nbecome the first duty of those who use it to explain what they mean by\nit. The _Concise Oxford Dictionary_ (1911), after defining a mystic as\n\"one who believes in spiritual apprehension of truths beyond the\nunderstanding,\" adds, \"whence _mysticism_ (n.) (often contempt).\"\nWhatever may be the precise force of the remark in brackets, it is\nunquestionably true that mysticism is often used in a semi-contemptuous\nway to denote vaguely any kind of occultism or spiritualism, or any\nspecially curious or fantastic views about God and the universe.\n\nThe word itself was originally taken over by the Neo-platonists from the\nGreek mysteries, where the name of \u03bc\u03cd\u03c3\u03c4\u03b7\u03c2 given to the initiate,\nprobably arose from the fact that he was one who was gaining a knowledge\nof divine things about which he must keep his mouth shut (\u03bc\u03cd\u03c9 = close\nlips or eyes). Hence the association of secrecy or \"mystery\" which still\nclings round the word.\n\nTwo facts in connection with mysticism are undeniable whatever it may\nbe, and whatever part it is destined to play in the development of\nthought and of knowledge. In the first place, it is the leading\ncharacteristic of some of the greatest thinkers of the world--of the\nfounders of the Eastern religions of Plato and Plotinus, of Eckhart and\nBruno, of Spinoza, Goethe, and Hegel. Secondly, no one has ever been a\nlukewarm, an indifferent, or an unhappy mystic. If a man has this\nparticular temperament, his mysticism is the very centre of his being:\nit is the flame which feeds his whole life; and he is intensely and\nsupremely happy just so far as he is steeped in it.\n\nMysticism is, in truth, a temper rather than a doctrine, an atmosphere\nrather than a system of philosophy. Various mystical thinkers have\ncontributed fresh aspects of Truth as they saw her, for they have caught\nglimpses of her face at different angles, transfigured by diverse\nemotions, so that their testimony, and in some respects their views, are\ndissimilar to the point of contradiction. Wordsworth, for instance,\ngained his revelation of divinity through Nature, and through Nature\nalone; whereas to Blake \"Nature was a hindrance,\" and Imagination the\nonly reality. But all alike agree in one respect, in one passionate\nassertion, and this is that unity underlies diversity. This, their\nstarting-point and their goal, is the basic fact of mysticism, which, in\nits widest sense, may be described as an attitude of mind founded upon\nan intuitive or experienced conviction of unity, of oneness, of\nalikeness in all things. From this source springs all mystical thought,\nand the mystic, of whatever age or country, would say in the words of\nKrishna--\n\n    There is true knowledge. Learn thou it is this:\n    To see one changeless Life in all the Lives,\n    And in the Separate, One Inseparable.\n    _The Bhagavad-G\u00eet\u00e2_, Book 18.\n\nThis fundamental belief in unity leads naturally to the further belief\nthat all things about us are but forms or manifestations of the one\ndivine life, and that these phenomena are fleeting and impermanent,\nalthough the spirit which informs them is immortal and endures. In other\nwords, it leads to the belief that \"the Ideal is the only Real.\"\n\nFurther, if unity lies at the root of things, man must have some share\nof the nature of God, for he is a spark of the Divine. Consequently, man\nis capable of knowing God through this godlike part of his own nature,\nthat is, through his soul or spirit. For the mystic believes that as the\nintellect is given us to apprehend material things, so the spirit is\ngiven us to apprehend spiritual things, and that to disregard the spirit\nin spiritual matters, and to trust to reason is as foolish as if a\ncarpenter, about to begin a piece of work, were deliberately to reject\nhis keenest and sharpest tool. The methods of mental and spiritual\nknowledge are entirely different. For we know a thing mentally by\nlooking at it from outside, by comparing it with other things, by\nanalysing and defining it, whereas we can know a thing spiritually only\nby becoming it. We must _be_ the thing itself, and not merely talk about\nit or look at it. We must be in love if we are to know what love is; we\nmust be musicians if we are to know what music is; we must be godlike if\nwe are to know what God is. For, in Porphyry's words: \"Like is known\nonly by like, and the condition of all knowledge is that the subject\nshould become like to the object.\" So that to the mystic, whether he be\nphilosopher, poet, artist, or priest, the aim of life is to become like\nGod, and thus to attain to union with the Divine. Hence, for him, life\nis a continual advance, a ceaseless aspiration; and reality or truth is\nto the seeker after it a vista ever expanding and charged with ever\ndeeper meaning. John Smith, the Cambridge Platonist, has summed up the\nmystic position and desire in one brief sentence, when he says, \"Such as\nmen themselves are, such will God Himself seem to them to be.\" For, as\nit takes two to communicate the truth, one to speak and one to hear, so\nour knowledge of God is precisely and accurately limited by our capacity\nto receive Him. \"Simple people,\" says Eckhart, \"conceive that we are to\nsee God as if He stood on that side and we on this. It is not so: God\nand I are one in the act of my perceiving Him.\"\n\nThis sense of unity leads to another belief, though it is one not always\nconsistently or definitely stated by all mystics. It is implied by Plato\nwhen he says, \"All knowledge is recollection.\" This is the belief in\npre-existence or persistent life, the belief that our souls are\nimmortal, and no more came into existence when we were born than they\nwill cease to exist when our bodies disintegrate. The idea is familiar\nin Wordsworth's _Ode on the Intimations of Immortality_.\n\nFinally, the mystic holds these views because he has lived through an\nexperience which has forced him to this attitude of mind. This is his\ndistinguishing mark, this is what differentiates him alike from the\ntheologian, the logician, the rationalist philosopher, and the man of\nscience, for he bases his belief, not on revelation, logic, reason, or\ndemonstrated facts, but on _feeling_, on intuitive inner knowledge.\n\nHe has felt, he has seen, and he is therefore convinced; but his\nexperience does not convince any one else. The mystic is somewhat in the\nposition of a man who, in a world of blind men, has suddenly been\ngranted sight, and who, gazing at the sunrise, and overwhelmed by the\nglory of it, tries, however falteringly, to convey to his fellows what\nhe sees. They, naturally, would be sceptical about it, and would be\ninclined to say that he is talking foolishly and incoherently. But the\nsimile is not altogether parallel. There is this difference. The mystic\nis not alone; all through the ages we have the testimony of men and\nwomen to whom this vision has been granted, and the record of what they\nhave seen is amazingly similar, considering the disparity of personality\nand circumstances. And further, the world is not peopled with totally\nblind men. The mystics would never hold the audience they do hold, were\nit not that the vast majority of people have in themselves what William\nJames has called a \"mystical germ\" which makes response to their\nmessage.\n\nJames's description of his own position in this matter, and his feeling\nfor a \"Beyond,\" is one to which numberless \"unmystical\" people would\nsubscribe. He compares it to a tune that is always singing in the back\nof his mind, but which he can never identify nor whistle nor get rid of.\n\"It is,\" he says, \"very vague, and impossible to describe or put into\nwords.... Especially at times of moral crisis it comes to me, as the\nsense of an unknown something backing me up. It is most indefinite, to\nbe sure, and rather faint. And yet I know that if it should cease there\nwould be a great hush, a great void in my life.\"[1]\n\nThis sensation, which many people experience vaguely and intermittently,\nand especially at times of emotional exaltation, would seem to be the\nfirst glimmerings of that secret power which, with the mystics, is so\nfinely developed and sustained that it becomes their definite faculty of\nvision. We have as yet no recognised name for this faculty, and it has\nbeen variously called \"transcendental feeling,\" \"imagination,\" \"mystic\nreason,\" \"cosmic consciousness,\" \"divine sagacity,\" \"ecstasy,\" or\n\"vision,\" all these meaning the same thing. But although it lacks a\ncommon name, we have ample testimony to its existence, the testimony of\nthe greatest teachers, philosophers, and poets of the world, who\ndescribe to us in strangely similar language--\n\n              That serene and blessed mood\n    In which ... the breath of this corporeal frame,\n    And even the motion of our human blood,\n    Almost suspended, we are laid asleep\n    In body, and become a living soul:\n    While with an eye made quiet by the power\n    Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,\n    We see into the life of things.\n                                     _Tintern Abbey._\n\n\"Harmony\" and \"Joy,\" it may be noted, are the two words used most\nconstantly by those who have experienced this vision.\n\nThe mystic reverses the ordinary methods of reasoning: he must believe\nbefore he can know. As it is put in the _Theologia Germanica_, \"He who\nwould know before he believeth cometh never to true knowledge.\" Just as\nthe sense of touch is not the faculty concerned with realising the\nbeauty of the sunrise, so the intellect is not the faculty concerned\nwith spiritual knowledge, and ordinary intellectual methods of proof,\ntherefore, or of argument, the mystic holds, are powerless and futile\nbefore these questions; for, in the words of Tennyson's Ancient Sage--\n\n    Thou canst not prove the Nameless, O my son,\n    Nor canst thou prove the world thou movest in:\n    Thou canst not prove that thou art body alone,\n    Nor canst thou prove that thou art spirit alone,\n    Nor canst thou prove that thou art both in one:\n    Thou canst not prove thou art immortal, no,\n    Nor yet that thou art mortal--nay, my son,\n    Thou canst not prove that I who speak with thee\n    Am not thyself in converse with thyself,\n    For nothing worthy proving can be proven,\n    Nor yet disproven.\n\nSymbolism is of immense importance in mysticism; indeed, symbolism and\nmythology are, as it were, the language of the mystic. This necessity\nfor symbolism is an integral part of the belief in unity; for the\nessence of true symbolism rests on the belief that all things in Nature\nhave something in common, something in which they are really alike. In\norder to be a true symbol, a thing must be partly the same as that which\nit symbolises. Thus, human love is symbolic of divine love, because,\nalthough working in another plane, it is governed by similar laws and\ngives rise to similar results; or falling leaves are a symbol of human\nmortality, because they are examples of the same law which operates\nthrough all manifestation of life. Some of the most illuminating notes\never written on the nature of symbolism are in a short paper by R. L.\nNettleship,[2] where he defines true mysticism as \"the consciousness\nthat everything which we experience, every 'fact,' is an element and\nonly an element in 'the fact'; i.e. that, in being what it is, it is\nsignificant or symbolic of more.\" In short, every truth apprehended by\nfinite intelligence must by its very nature only be the husk of a deeper\ntruth, and by the aid of symbolism we are often enabled to catch a\nreflection of a truth which we are not capable of apprehending in any\nother way. Nettleship points out, for instance, that bread can only be\nitself, can only _be_ food, by entering into something else,\nassimilating and being assimilated, and that the more it loses itself\n(what it began by being) the more it \"finds itself\" (what it is intended\nto be). If we follow carefully the analysis Nettleship makes of the\naction of bread in the physical world, we can see that to the man of\nmystic temper it throws more light than do volumes of sermons on what\nseems sometimes a hard saying, and what is at the same time the ultimate\nmystical counsel, \"He that loveth his life shall lose it.\"\n\nIt is worth while, in this connection, to ponder the constant use Christ\nmakes of nature symbolism, drawing the attention of His hearers to the\nanalogies in the law we see working around us to the same law working in\nthe spiritual world. The yearly harvest, the sower and his seed, the\nleaven in the loaf, the grain of mustard-seed, the lilies of the field,\nthe action of fire, worms, moth, rust, bread, wine, and water, the\nmystery of the wind, unseen and yet felt--each one of these is shown to\ncontain and exemplify a great and abiding truth.\n\nThis is the attitude, these are the things, which lie at the heart of\nmysticism. In the light of this, nothing in the world is trivial,\nnothing is unimportant nothing is common or unclean. It is the feeling\nthat Blake has crystallised in the lines:\n\n    To see a world in a grain of sand\n    And a Heaven in a wild flower,\n    Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand\n    And Eternity in an hour.\n\nThe true mystic then, in the full sense of the term, is one who _knows_\nthere is unity under diversity at the centre of all existence, and he\nknows it by the most perfect of all tests for the person concerned,\nbecause he has felt it. True mysticism--and this cannot be\nover-emphasised--is an experience and a life. It is an experimental\nscience, and, as Patmore has said, it is as incommunicable to those who\nhave not experienced it as is the odour of a violet to those who have\nnever smelt one. In its highest consummation it is the supreme adventure\nof the soul: to use the matchless words of Plotinus, it is \"the flight\nof the Alone to the Alone.\"\n\nAs distinguished, therefore, from the mystical thinker or philosopher,\nthe practical mystic has direct knowledge of a truth which for him is\nabsolute. He consequently has invariably acted upon this knowledge, as\ninevitably as the blind man to whom sight had been granted would make\nuse of his eyes.\n\nAmong English writers and poets the only two who fulfil this strict\ndefinition of a mystic are Wordsworth and Blake. But we are not here\nconcerned primarily with a study of those great souls who are mystics\nin the full and supreme sense of the word. For an examination of their\nlives and vision Evelyn Underhill's valuable book should be consulted.\nOur object is to examine very briefly the chief English writers--men of\nletters and poets--whose inmost principle is rooted in mysticism, or\nwhose work is on the whole so permeated by mystical thought that their\nattitude of mind is not fully to be understood apart from it.\n\nNaturally it is with the poets we find the most complete and continuous\nexpression of mystical thought and inspiration. Naturally, because it\nhas ever been the habit of the English race to clothe their profoundest\nthought and their highest aspiration in poetic form. We do not possess a\nPlato, a Kant, or a Descartes, but we have Shakespeare and Wordsworth\nand Browning. And further, as the essence of mysticism is to believe\nthat everything we see and know is symbolic of something greater,\nmysticism is on one side the poetry of life. For poetry, also, consists\nin finding resemblances, and universalises the particulars with which it\ndeals. Hence the utterances of the poets on mystical philosophy are\npeculiarly valuable. The philosopher approaches philosophy directly, the\npoet obliquely; but the indirect teaching of a poet touches us more\nprofoundly than the direct lesson of a moral treatise, because the\nlatter appeals principally to our reason, whereas the poet touches our\n\"transcendental feeling.\"\n\nSo it is that mysticism underlies the thought of most of our great\npoets, of nearly all our greatest poets, if we except Chaucer, Dryden,\nPope, and Byron. Shakespeare must be left on one side, first, because\nthe dramatic form does not lend itself to the expression of mystical\nfeeling, and secondly, because even in the poems there is little real\nmysticism, though there is much of the fashionable Platonism.\nShakespeare is metaphysical rather than mystical, the difference being,\nroughly, that the metaphysician seeks to know the beginnings or causes\nof things, whereas the mystic feels he knows the end of things, that all\nnature is leading up to union with the One.\n\nWe shall find that mystical thought, and the mystical attitude, are\ncuriously persistent in English literature, and that although it seems\nout of keeping with our \"John Bull\" character, the English race has a\nmarked tendency towards mysticism. What we do find lacking in England is\nthe purely philosophical and speculative spirit of the detached and\nunprejudiced seeker after truth. The English mind is anti-speculative;\nit cares little for metaphysics; it prefers theology and a given\nauthority. English mystics have, as a rule, dealt little with the\ntheoretical side of mysticism, the aspect for instance with which\nPlotinus largely deals. They have been mainly practical mystics, such as\nWilliam Law. Those of the poets who have consciously had a system and\ndesired to impart it, have done so from the practical point of view,\nurging, like Wordsworth, the importance of contemplation and meditation,\nor, like Blake, the value of cultivating the imagination; and in both\ncases enforcing the necessity of cleansing the inner life, if we are to\nbecome conscious of our divine nature and our great heritage.\n\nFor the sake of clearness, this thought may first be traced very briefly\nas it appears chronologically; it will, however, be considered in\ndetail, not in order of time, but according to the special aspect of\nBeing through which the writer felt most in touch with the divine life.\nFor mystics, unlike other thinkers, scientific or philosophical, have\nlittle chronological development, since \"mystic truths can neither age\nnor die.\" So much is this the case that passages of Plotinus and\nTennyson, of Boehme and Law, of Eckhart and Browning, may be placed side\nby side and be scarcely distinguishable in thought. Yet as the race\nevolves, certain avenues of sensation seem to become more widely opened\nup. This is noticeable with regard to Nature. Love, Beauty, Wisdom, and\nDevotion, these have been well-trodden paths to the One ever since the\ndays of Plato and Plotinus; but, with the great exception of St Francis\nof Assisi and his immediate followers, we have to wait for more modern\ntimes before we find the intense feeling of the Divinity in Nature which\nwe associate with the name of Wordsworth. It is in the emphasis of this\naspect of the mystic vision that English writers are supreme. Henry\nVaughan, Wordsworth, Browning, Richard Jefferies, Francis Thompson, and\na host of other poet-seers have crystallised in immortal words this\nilluminated vision of the world.\n\nThe thought which has been described as mystical has its roots in the\nEast, in the great Oriental religions. The mysterious \"secret\" taught by\nthe Upanishads is that the soul or spiritual consciousness is the only\nsource of true knowledge. The Hindu calls the soul the \"seer\" or the\n\"knower,\" and thinks of it as a great eye in the centre of his being,\nwhich, if he concentrates his attention upon it, is able to look\noutwards and to gaze upon Reality. The soul is capable of this because\nin essence it is one with Brahman, the universal soul. The apparent\nseparation is an illusion wrought by matter. Hence, to the Hindu, matter\nis an obstruction and a deception, and the Eastern mystic despises and\nrejects and subdues all that is material, and bends all his faculties on\nrealising his spiritual consciousness, and dwelling in that.\n\nThis type of thought certainly existed to some extent in both Greece\nand Egypt before the Christian era. Much of Plato's thought is mystical\nin essence, and that which be points out to be the motive force of the\nphilosophic mind is also the motive force of the mystic, namely, the\nelement of attraction, and so of love towards the thing which is akin to\nhim. The illustration of the dog being philosophic because he is angry\nwith a stranger but welcomes his friend,[3] though at first it may seem,\nlike many of Plato's illustrations, far-fetched or fanciful, in truth\ngoes to the very root of his idea. Familiarity, akinness, is the basis\nof attraction and affection. The desire of wisdom, or the love of\nbeauty, is therefore nothing but the yearning of the soul to join itself\nto what is akin to it. This is the leading conception of the two great\nmystical dialogues, the Symposium and the Ph\u00e6drus. In the former,\nSocrates, in the words of the stranger prophetess Diotima, traces the\npath along which the soul must travel, and points out the steps of the\nladder to be climbed in order to attain to union with the Divine. From\nbeauty of form and body we rise to beauty of mind and spirit, and so to\nthe Beauty of God Himself.\n\n     He who under the influence of true love rising upward from these\n     begins to see that beauty, is not far from the end. And the true\n     order of going or being led by another to the things of love, is to\n     use the beauties of earth as steps along which he mounts upwards\n     for the sake of that other beauty, going from one to two, and from\n     two to all fair forms, and from fair forms to fair practices, and\n     from fair practices to fair notions, until from fair notions he\n     arrives at the notion of absolute beauty, and at last knows what\n     the essence of beauty is. This ... is that life above all others\n     which man should live, in the contemplation of beauty absolute.[4]\n\nThat is a passage whose music re-echoes through many pages of English\nliterature, especially in the poems of Spenser, Shelley, and Keats.\n\nPlato may therefore be regarded as the source of speculative mysticism\nin Europe, but it is Plotinus, his disciple, the Neo-platonist, who is\nthe father of European mysticism in its full sense, practical as well as\nspeculative, and who is also its most profound exponent. Plotinus (A.D.\n204-270), who was an Egyptian by birth, lived and studied under Ammonius\nSakkas in Alexandria at a time when it was the centre of the\nintellectual world, seething with speculation and schools, teachers and\nphilosophies of all kinds, Platonic and Oriental, Egyptian and\nChristian. Later, from the age of forty, he taught in Rome, where he was\nsurrounded by many eager adherents. He drew the form of his thought both\nfrom Plato and from Hermetic philosophy (his conception of Emanation),\nbut its real inspiration was his own experience, for his biographer\nPorphyry has recorded that during the six years he lived with Plotinus\nthe latter attained four times to ecstatic union with \"the One.\"\nPlotinus combined, in unusual measure, the intellect of the\nmetaphysician with the temperament of the great psychic, so that he was\nable to analyse with the most precise dialectic, experiences which in\nmost cases paralyse the tongue and blind the discursive reason. His\nsixth Ennead, \"On the Good or the One,\" is one of the great philosophic\ntreatises of the world, and it sums up in matchless words the whole\nmystic position and experience. There are two statements in it which\ncontain the centre of the writer's thought. \"God is not external to any\none, but is present in all things, though they are ignorant that he is\nso.\" \"God is not in a certain place, but wherever anything is able to\ncome into contact with him there he is present\" (_Enn._ vi. 9, \u00a7\u00a7 4, 7).\nIt is because of our ignorance of the indwelling of God that our life is\ndiscordant, for it is clashing with its own inmost principle. We do not\nknow ourselves. If we did, we would know that the way home to God lies\nwithin ourselves. \"A soul that knows itself must know that the proper\ndirection of its energy is not outwards in a straight line, but round a\ncentre which is within it\" (_Enn._ vi. 9, \u00a7 8).\n\nThe whole Universe is one vast Organism (_Enn._ ix. 4, \u00a7\u00a7 32, 45), and\nthe Heart of God, the source of all life, is at the centre, in which all\nfinite things have their being, and to which they must flow back; for\nthere is in this Organism, so Plotinus conceives, a double circulatory\nmovement, an eternal out-breathing and in-breathing, the way down and\nthe way up. The way down is the out-going of the undivided \"One\" towards\nmanifestation. From Him there flows out a succession of emanations. The\nfirst of these is the \"Nous\" or Over-Mind of the Universe, God as\nthought. The \"Mind\" in turn throws out an image, the third Principle in\nthis Trinity, the Soul of all things. This, like the \"Nous,\" is\nimmaterial, but it can act on matter. It is the link between man and\nGod, for it has a lower and a higher side. The lower side _desires_ a\nbody and so creates it, but it is not wholly incarnate in it, for, as\nPlotinus says, \"the soul always leaves something of itself above.\"\n\nFrom this World Soul proceed the individual souls of men, and they\npartake of its nature. Its nature is triple, the animal or sensual soul,\nclosely bound to the body, the logical reasoning human soul, and the\nintellectual soul, which is one with the Divine Mind, from whence it\ncomes and of which it is an image.\n\nSouls have forgotten then: divine origin because at first they were so\ndelighted with their liberty and surroundings (like children let loose\nfrom their parents, says Plotinus), that they ran away in a direction as\nfar as possible from their source. They thus became clogged with the\njoys and distractions of this lower life, which can never satisfy them,\nand they are ignorant of their own true nature and essence. In order to\nreturn home, the soul has to retrace the path along which she came, and\nthe first step is to get to know herself, and so to know God. (See\n_Enn._ vi. 9, \u00a7 7.) Thus only can she be restored to the central unity\nof the universal soul. This first stage on the upward path is the\npurgative life, which includes all the civic and social virtues, gained\nthrough general purification, self-discipline, and balance, with, at the\nsame time, a gradual attainment of detachment from the things of sense,\nand a desire for the things of the spirit.\n\nThe next step is to rise up to mind (_Enn._ v. 1, \u00a7 3) to the world of\npure thought, the highest unity possible to a self-conscious being. This\nis often called the illuminative life, and it might be summed up as\nconcentration of all the faculties--will, intellect, feeling--upon God.\nAnd lastly comes the unitive life, which is contemplation, the intense\ndesire of the soul for union with God, the momentary foretaste of which\nhas been experienced by many of the mystics. This last stage of the\njourney home, the supreme Adventure, the ascension to the One above\nthought, this cannot be spoken of or explained in words, for it is a\nstate beyond words, it is \"a mode of vision which is ecstasy.\" When the\nsoul attains to this state, the One suddenly appears, \"with nothing\nbetween,\" \"and they are no more two but one; and the soul is no more\nconscious of the body or of whether she lives or is a human being or an\nessence; she knows only that she has what she desired, that she is where\nno deception can come, and that she would not exchange her bliss for the\nwhole of Heaven itself\" (paraphrased from _Enn._ vi. 7, \u00a7 24).\n\nThe influence of Plotinus upon later Christian mysticism was immense,\nthough mainly indirect, through the writings of two of his spiritual\ndisciples, St Augustine (354-450), and the unknown writer, probably of\nthe early sixth century, possibly a Syrian monk, who ascribes his works\nto Dionysius the Areopagite, the friend of St Paul. The works of\n\"Dionysius\" were translated from Greek into Latin by the great Irish\nphilosopher and scholar, John Scotus Erigena (Eriugena), and in that\nform they widely influenced later medi\u00e6val mysticism.\n\nThe fusion of Eastern mysticism with Christianity finally brought about\nthe great change which constitutes the difference between Eastern and\nWestern mysticism, a change already foreshadowed in Plato, for it was\nin part the natural outcome of the Greek delight in material beauty, but\nfinally consummated by the teachings of the Christian faith. Eastern\nthought was pure soul-consciousness, its teaching was to annihilate the\nflesh, to deny its reality, to look within, and so to gain\nenlightenment. Christianity, on the other hand, was centred in the\ndoctrine of the Incarnation, in the mystery of God the Father revealing\nHimself in human form. Hence the human body, human love and\nrelationships became sanctified, became indeed a means of revelation of\nthe divine, and the mystic no longer turned his thoughts wholly inwards,\nbut also outwards and upwards, to the Father who loved him and to the\nSon who had died for him. Thus, in the West, mystical thought has ever\nrecognised the deep symbolism and sacredness of all that is human and\nnatural, of human love, of the human intellect, and of the natural\nworld. All those things which to the Eastern thinker are but an\nobstruction and a veil, to the Western have become the very means of\nspiritual ascent[5]. The ultimate goal of the Eastern mystic is summed\nup in his assertion, \"I am Brahman,\" whereas the Western mystic\nbelieves that \"he who sees the Infinite in all things, sees God.\"\n\nIn the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the mystical tradition was\ncarried on in France by St Bernard (1091-1153), the Abbot of Clairvaux,\nand the Scotch or Irish Richard of the Abbey of St Victor at Paris, and\nin Italy, among many others, by St Bonaventura (1221-1274), a close\nstudent of Dionysius, and these three form the chief direct influences\non our earliest English mystics.\n\nEngland shares to the full in the wave of mystical experience, thought,\nand teaching which swept over Europe in the fourteenth and early\nfifteenth centuries, and at first the mystical literature of England, as\nalso of France, Germany, Italy, and Sweden, is purely religious or\ndevotional in type, prose treatises for the most part containing\npractical instruction for the inner life, written by hermits, priests,\nand \"anchoresses.\" In the fourteenth century we have a group of such\nwriters of great power and beauty, and in the work of Richard Rolle,\nWalter Hilton, Julian of Norwich, and the author of the _Cloud of\nUnknowing_, we have a body of writings dealing with the inner life, and\nthe steps of purification, contemplation, and ecstatic union which throb\nwith life and devotional fervour.\n\nFrom the time of Julian of Norwich, who was still alive in 1413, we\nfind practically no literature of a mystical type until we come to\nSpenser's _Hymns_ (1596), and these embody a Platonism reached largely\nthrough the intellect, and not a mystic experience. It would seem at\nfirst sight as if these hymns, or at any rate the two later ones in\nhonour of Heavenly Love and of Heavenly Beauty, should rank as some of\nthe finest mystical verse in English. Yet this is not the case. They are\nsaturated with the spirit of Plato, and they express in musical form the\nlofty ideas of the _Symposium_ and the _Ph\u00e6drus_: that beauty, more\nnearly than any other earthly thing, resembles its heavenly prototype,\nand that therefore the sight of it kindles love, which is the excitement\nand rapture aroused in the soul by the remembrance of that divine beauty\nwhich once it knew. And Spenser, following Plato, traces the stages of\nascent traversed by the lover of beauty, until he is caught up into\nunion with God Himself. Yet, notwithstanding their melody and their\nPlatonic doctrine, the note of the real mystic is wanting in the\n_Hymns_, the note of him who writes of these things because he knows\nthem.\n\nIt would take some space to support this view in detail. Any one\ndesirous of testing it might read the account of transport of the soul\nwhen rapt into union with the One as given by Plotinus (_Enn._ vi. 9,\n\u00a7 10), and compare it with Spenser's description of a similar experience\n(_An Hymne of Heavenly Beautie_, 11. 253-273). Despite their poetic\nmelody, Spenser's words sound poor and trivial. Instead of preferring to\ndwell on the unutterable ecstasy, contentment, and bliss of the\nexperience, he is far more anxious to emphasise the fact that \"all that\npleased earst now seemes to paine.\"\n\nThe contradictory nature of his belief is also arresting. In the early\npart of the _Hymne of Heavenly Beautie_, in-speaking of the glory of God\nwhich is so dazzling that angels themselves may not endure His sight, he\nsays, as Plato does,\n\n    The meanes, therefore, which unto us is lent\n    Him to behold, is on his workes to looke,\n    Which he hath made in beauty excellent.\n\nThis is the view of the true mystic, that God may be seen in all His\nworks, by the eye which is itself purified. Yet, in the last stanza of\nthis beautiful Hymn, this is how Spenser views the joy of the union of\nthe soul with its source, when it looks\n\n            at last up to that Soveraine Light,\n    From whose pure beams al perfect beauty springs,\n    That kindleth love in every godly spright\n    Even the love of God; _which loathing brings\n    Of this vile world and these gay-seeming things_.\n\nThis is not the voice of the mystic. It is the voice of the Puritan,\nwho is also an artist, who shrinks from earthly beauty because it\nattracts him, who fears it, and tries to despise it. In truth, the\ndominating feature in Spenser's poetry is a curious blending of\nPuritanism of spirit with the Platonic mind.\n\nIn the seventeenth century, however, England is peculiarly rich in\nwriters steeped in mystical thought.\n\nFirst come the Quakers, headed by George Fox. This rediscovery and\nassertion of the mystical element in religion gave rise to a great deal\nof writing, much of it very interesting to the student of religious\nthought. Among the _Journals_ of the early Quakers, and especially that\nof George Fox, there are passages which charm us with their sincerity,\nquaintness, and pure flame of enthusiasm, but these works cannot as a\nwhole be ranked as literature. Then we have the little group of\nCambridge Platonists, Henry More, John Smith, Benjamin Whichcote, and\nJohn Norris of Bemerton. These are all Platonic philosophers, and among\ntheir writings, and especially in those of John Norris, are many\npassages of mystical thought clothed in noble prose. Henry More, who is\nalso a poet, is in character a typical mystic, serene, buoyant, and so\nspiritually happy that, as he told a friend, he was sometimes \"almost\nmad with pleasure.\" His poetical faculty is, however, entirely\nsubordinated to his philosophy, and the larger portion of his work\nconsists of passages from the _Enneads_ of Plotinus turned into rather\nobscure verse. So that he is not a poet and artist who, working in the\nsphere of the imagination, can directly present to us mystical thoughts\nand ideas, but rather a mystic philosopher who has versified some of his\ndiscourses. At this time also many of the \"metaphysical poets\" are\nmystical in much of their thought. Chief among these is John Donne, and\nwe may also include Henry Vaughan, Traherne, Crashaw, and George\nHerbert.\n\nBunyan might at first sight appear to have many of the characteristics\nof the mystic, for he had certain very intense psychic experiences which\nare of the nature of a direct revelation of God to the soul; and in his\nvivid religious autobiography, _Grace Abounding_, he records sensations\nwhich are akin to those felt by Rolle, Julian, and many others. But\nalthough psychically akin, he is in truth widely separated from the\nmystics in spirit and temperament and belief. He is a Puritan,\noverwhelmed with a sense of sin, the horrors of punishment in hell, and\nthe wrath of an outside Creator and Judge, and his desire is aimed at\nescape from this wrath through \"election\" and God's grace. But he is a\nPuritan endowed with a psychopathic temperament sensitive to the point\nof disease and gifted with an abnormally high visualising power. Hence\nhis resemblance to the mystics, which is a resemblance of psychical\ntemperament and not of spiritual attitude.\n\nIn the eighteenth century the names of William Law and William Blake\nshine out like stars against a dark firmament of \"rationalism\" and\nunbelief. Their writings form a remarkable contrast to the prevailing\nspirit of the time. Law expresses in clear and pointed prose the main\nteachings of the German seer Jacob Boehme;[6] whereas Blake sees visions\nand has knowledge which he strives to condense into forms of picture and\nverse which may be understood of men. The influence of Boehme in the\neighteenth and nineteenth centuries is very far-reaching. In addition to\ncompletely subjugating the strong intellect of Law, he profoundly\ninfluenced Blake. He also affected Thomas Erskine of Linlathen, and\nthrough him, Carlyle, J. W. Farquhar, F. D. Maurice, and others. Hegel,\nSchelling, and Schlegel are alike indebted to him, and through them,\nthrough his French disciple St Martin, and through Coleridge--who was\nmuch attracted to him--some of his root-ideas returned again to England\nin the nineteenth century, thus preparing the way for a better\nunderstanding of mystical thought. The Swedish seer Emmanuel Swedenborg\n(1688-1772) was another strong influence in the later eighteenth and the\nnineteenth centuries. Swedenborg in some ways is curiously material, at\nany rate in expression, and in one point at least he differs from other\nmystics. That is, he does not seem to believe that man has within him a\nspark of the divine essence, but rather that he is an organ that\nreflects the divine life. He is a recipient of life, but not a part of\nlife itself. God is thought of as a light or sun outside, from which\nspiritual heat and light (= love and wisdom) flow into men. But, apart\nfrom this important difference Swedenborg's thought and teaching are\nentirely mystical. He believes in the substantial reality of spiritual\nthings, and that the most essential part of a person's nature, that\nwhich he carries with him into the spiritual world, is his love. He\nteaches that heaven is not a place, but a condition, that there is no\nquestion of outside rewards or punishments, and man makes his own heaven\nor hell; for, as Patmore pointedly expresses it--\n\n    Ice-cold seems heaven's noble glow\n    To spirits whose vital heat is hell.\n\nHe insists that Space and Time belong only to physical life, and when\nmen pass into the spiritual world that love is the bond of union, and\nthought or \"state\" makes presence, for thought is act. He holds that\ninstinct is spiritual in origin; and the principle of his science of\ncorrespondences is based on the belief that everything outward and\nvisible corresponds to some invisible entity which is its inward and\nspiritual cause. This is the view echoed by Mrs Browning more than once\nin _Aurora Leigh_--\n\n                There's not a flower of spring,\n    That dies in June, but vaunts itself allied\n    By issue and symbol, by significance\n    And correspondence, to that spirit-world\n    Outside the limits of our space and time,\n    Whereto we are bound.\n\nIn all this and much more, Swedenborg's thought is mystical, and it has\nhad a quite unsuspected amount of influence in England, and it is\ndiffused through a good deal of English literature.\n\nBlake knew some at least of Swedenborg's books well; two of his friends,\nC. A. Tulk and Flaxman, were devoted Swedenborgians, and he told Tulk\nthat he had two different states, one in which he liked Swedenborg's\nwritings, and one in which he disliked them. Unquestionably, they\nsometimes irritated him, and then he abused them, but it is only\nnecessary to read his annotations of his copy of Swedenborg's _Wisdom of\nthe Angels_ (now in the British Museum) to realise in the first place\nthat he sometimes misunderstood Swedenborg's position and secondly,\nthat when he did understand it, he was thoroughly in agreement with it,\nand that he and the Swedish seer had much in common. Coleridge admired\nSwedenborg, he gave a good deal of time to studying him (see Coleridge's\nletter to C. A. Tulk, July 17, 1820), and he, with Boehme, were two of\nthe four \"Great Men\" unjustly branded, about whom he often thought of\nwriting a \"Vindication\" (Coleridge's Notes on Noble's Appeal, _Collected\nWorks_, ed. Shedd, 1853 and 1884, vol. v. p. 526).\n\nEmerson owes much to Swedenborg,[7] and Emerson's thought had much\ninfluence in England. Carlyle also was attracted to him (see his letter\nfrom Chelsea, November 13, 1852); Mrs Browning studied him with\nenthusiasm and spent the winter of 1852-3 in meditation on his\nphilosophy (_Letters_, vol. ii. p. 141), which bore fruit four years\nlater in _Aurora Leigh_.\n\nCoventry Patmore is, however, the English writer most saturated with\nSwedenborg's thought, and his _Angel in the House_ embodies the main\nfeatures of Swedenborg's peculiar views expressed in _Conjugial Love_,\non sex and marriage and their significance. It is not too much to say\nthat Swedenborg influenced and coloured the whole trend of Patmore's\nthought, and that he was to him what Boehme was to Law, the match which\nset alight his mystical flame. He says Swedenborg's _Heaven and Hell_\n\"abounds with perception of the truth to a degree unparalleled perhaps\nin uninspired writing,\" and he asserts that he never tires of reading\nhim, \"he is unfathomably profound and yet simple.\"[8]\n\nWhatever may be the source or reason, it is clear that at the end of the\neighteenth century we begin to find a mystical tinge of thought in\nseveral thinkers and writers, such as Burke, Coleridge, and Thomas\nErskine of Linlathen. This increases in the early nineteenth century,\nstrengthened by the influence, direct and indirect, of Boehme,\nSwedenborg, and the German transcendental philosophers and this mystical\nspirit is very marked in Carlyle, and, as we shall see, in most of the\ngreatest nineteenth-century poets.\n\nIn addition to those writers which are here dealt with in detail, there\nis much of the mystic spirit in others of the same period, to name a few\nonly, George Meredith, \"Fiona Macleod,\" Christina Rossetti, and Mrs\nBrowning; while to-day writers like \"A. E.,\" W. B. Yeats, and Evelyn\nUnderhill are carrying on the mystic tradition.\n\n\n\n\nChapter II\n\nLove and Beauty Mystics\n\n\n\nIn studying the mysticism of the English writers, and more especially of\nthe poets, one is at once struck by the diversity of approach leading to\nunity of end.\n\n     \"There are,\" says Plotinus, \"different roads by which this end\n     [apprehension of the Infinite] may be reached. The love of beauty,\n     which exalts the poet; that devotion to the One and that ascent of\n     science which makes the ambition of the philosopher; and that love\n     and those prayers by which some devout and ardent soul tends in its\n     moral purity towards perfection. These are the great highways\n     conducting to that height above the actual and the particular,\n     where we stand in the immediate presence of the Infinite, who\n     shines out as from the deeps of the soul.\"--_Letter to Flaccus._\n\nWe have grouped together our English writers who are mystical in\nthought, according to the five main pathways by which they have seen the\nVision: Love, Beauty, Nature, Wisdom, or Devotion. Even within these\ngroups, the method of approach, the interpretation or application of the\nIdea, often differs very greatly. For instance, Shelley and Browning may\nboth be called love-mystics; that is, they look upon love as the\nsolution of the mystery of life, as the link between God and man. To\nShelley this was a glorious intuition, which reached him through his\nimagination, whereas the life of man as he saw it roused in him little\nbut mad indignation, wild revolt, and passionate protest. To Browning\nthis was knowledge--knowledge borne in upon him just because of human\nlife as he saw it, which to him was a clear proof of the great destiny\nof the race. He would have agreed with Patmore that \"you can see the\ndisc of Divinity quite clearly through the smoked glass of humanity, but\nno otherwise.\" He found \"harmony in immortal souls, spite of the muddy\nvesture of decay.\"\n\nThe three great English poets who are also fundamentally mystical in\nthought are Browning, Wordsworth, and Blake. Their philosophy or\nmystical belief, one in essence, though so differently expressed, lies\nat the root, as it is also the flower, of their life-work. In others, as\nin Shelley, Keats, and Rossetti, although it is the inspiring force of\ntheir poetry, it is not a flame, burning steadily and evenly, but rather\na light flashing out intermittently into brilliant and dazzling\nradiance. Hence the man himself is not so permeated by it; and hence\nresults the unsatisfied desire, the almost painful yearning, the\nrecurring disappointment and disillusionment, which we do not find in\nBrowning, Wordsworth, and Blake.\n\nIn our first group we have four poets of markedly different\ntemperaments--Shelley intensely spiritual; Rossetti with a strong tinge\nof sensuousness, of \"earthiness\" in his nature; Browning, the keenly\nintellectual man of the world, and Patmore a curious mixture of\nmaterialist and mystic; yet to all four love is the secret of life, the\none thing worth giving and possessing.\n\nShelley believed in a Soul of the Universe, a Spirit in which all things\nlive and move and have their being; which, as one feels in the\n_Prometheus_, is unnamable, inconceivable even to man, for \"the deep\ntruth is imageless.\" His most passionate desire was not, as was\nBrowning's, for an increased and ennobled individuality, but for the\nmystical fusion of his own personality with this Spirit, this object of\nhis worship and adoration. To Shelley, death itself was but the rending\nof a veil which would admit us to the full vision of the ideal, which\nalone is true life. The sense of unity in all things is most strongly\nfelt in _Adonais_, where Shelley's maturest thought and philosophy are\nto be found; and indeed the mystical fervour in this poem, especially\ntowards the end, is greater than anywhere else in his writings. The\n_Hymn to Intellectual Beauty_ is in some ways Shelley's clearest and\nmost obvious expression of his devotion to the Spirit of Ideal Beauty,\nits reality to him, and his vow of dedication to its service. But the\n_Prometheus_ is the most deeply mystical of his poems; indeed, as Mrs\nShelley says, \"it requires a mind as subtle and penetrating as Shelley's\nown to understand the mystic meanings scattered throughout the poem.\"\n\nShelley, like Blake, regarded the human imagination as a divine creative\nforce; Prometheus stands for the human imagination, or the genius of the\nworld; and it is his union with Asia, the divine Idea, the Spirit of\nBeauty and of Love, from which a new universe is born. It is this union,\nwhich consummates the aspirations of humanity, that Shelley celebrates\nin the marvellous love-song of Prometheus. As befitted a disciple of\nGodwin, he believed in the divine potentiality of man, convinced that\nall good is to be found within man's own being, and that his progress\ndepends on his own will.\n\n                        It is our will\n    That thus enchains us to permitted ill--\n    We might be otherwise--we might be all\n    We dream of happy, high, majestical.\n    Where is the love, beauty, and truth we seek\n    But in our mind?\n\n    _Julian and Maddalo._\n\nIn the allegorical introduction to the _Revolt of Islam_, which is an\ninteresting example of Shelley's mystical mythology, we have an insight\ninto the poet's view of the good power in the world. It is not an\nalmighty creator standing outside mankind, but a power which suffers and\nrebels and evolves, and is, in fact, incarnate in humanity, so that it\nis unrecognised by men, and indeed confounded with evil:--\n\n    And the Great Spirit of Good did creep among\n    The nations of mankind, and every tongue\n    Cursed and blasphemed him as he passed, for none\n    Knew good from evil.\n\nThere is no doubt that to Shelley the form assumed by the divine in man\nwas love. Mrs Shelley, in her note to _Rosalind and Helen_, says that,\n\"in his eyes it was the essence of our being, and all woe and pain arose\nfrom the war made against it by selfishness or insensibility, or\nmistake\"; and Shelley himself says, \"the great secret of morals is love;\nor a going out of our own nature, and an identification of ourselves\nwith the beautiful which exists in thought, action or person, not our\nown.\"\n\nShelley was always searching for love; and, although he knew well,\nthrough his study of Plato, the difference between earthly and spiritual\nlove, that the one is but the lowest step on the ladder which leads to\nthe other, yet in actual practice he confounded the two. He knew that he\ndid so; and only a month before his death, he summed up in a sentence\nthe tragedy of his life. He writes to Mr Gisborne about the\n_Epipsychidion_, saying that he cannot look at it now, for--\n\n     \"the person whom it celebrates was a cloud instead of a Juno,\" and\n     continues, \"If you are curious, however, to hear what I am and have\n     been, it will tell you something thereof. It is an idealized\n     history of my life and feelings. I think one is always in love with\n     something or other; the error--and I confess it is not easy for\n     spirits cased in flesh and blood to avoid it--consists in seeking\n     in a mortal image the likeness of what is, perhaps, eternal.\"\n\nNo poet has a more distinct philosophy of life than Browning. Indeed he\nhas as much a right to a place among the philosophers, as Plato has to\none among the poets. Browning is a seer, and pre-eminently a mystic; and\nit is especially interesting as in the case of Plato and St Paul, to\nencounter this latter quality as a dominating characteristic of the mind\nof so keen and logical a dialectician. We see at once that the main\nposition of Browning's belief is identical with what we have found to be\nthe characteristic of mysticism--unity under diversity at the centre of\nall existence. The same essence, the one life, expresses itself through\nevery diversity of form.\n\nHe dwells on this again and again:--\n\n                                       God is seen\n    In the star, in the stone, in the flesh, in the soul and the clod.\n\nAnd through all these forms there is growth upwards. Indeed, it is only\nupon this supposition that the poet can account for\n\n          many a thrill\n    Of kinship, I confess to, with the powers\n    Called Nature: animate, inanimate\n    In parts or in the whole, there's something there\n    Man-like that somehow meets the man in me.\n\n    _Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau._\n\nThe poet sees that in each higher stage we benefit by the garnered\nexperience of the past; and so man grows and expands and becomes capable\nof feeling for and with everything that lives. At the same time the\nhigher is not degraded by having worked in and through the lower, for he\ndistinguishes between the continuous persistent life, and the temporary\ncoverings it makes use of on its upward way;\n\n    From first to last of lodging, I was I,\n    And not at all the place that harboured me.\n\nHumanity then, in Browning's view, is not a collection of individuals,\nseparate and often antagonistic, but one whole.\n\n    When I say \"you\" 'tis the common soul,\n    The collective I mean: the race of Man\n    That receives life in parts to live in a whole\n    And grow here according to God's clear plan.\n\n    _Old Pictures in Florence._\n\nThis sense of unity is shown in many ways: for instance, in Browning's\nprotest against the one-sidedness of nineteenth-century scientific\nthought, the sharp distinction or gulf set up between science and\nreligion. This sharp cleavage, to the mystic, is impossible. He knows,\nhowever irreconcilable the two may appear, that they are but different\naspects of the same thing. This is one of the ways in which Browning\nanticipates the most advanced thought of the present day.\n\nIn _Paracelsus_ he emphasises the fact that the exertion of power in the\nintelligence, or the acquisition of knowledge, is useless without the\ninspiration of love, just as love is waste without power. Paracelsus\nsums up the matter when he says to Aprile--\n\n    I too have sought to KNOW as thou to LOVE\n    Excluding love as thou refusedst knowledge....\n                           We must never part ...\n    Till thou the lover, know; and I, the knower,\n    Love--until both are saved.\n\nArising logically out of this belief in unity, there follows, as with\nall mystics, the belief in the potential divinity of man, which\npermeates all Browning's thought, and is continually insisted on in such\npoems as _Rabbi ben Ezra, A Death in the Desert_, and _The Ring and the\nBook_. He takes for granted the fundamental position of the mystic, that\nthe object of life is to know God; and according to the poet, in knowing\nlove we learn to know God. Hence it follows that love is the meaning of\nlife, and that he who finds it not\n\n                   loses what he lived for\n    And eternally must lose it.\n\n    _Christina._\n\n    For life with all it yields of joy and woe\n    And hope and fear ...\n    Is just our chance o' the prize of learning love.\n\n    _A Death in the Desert._\n\nThis is Browning's central teaching, the key-note of his work and\nphilosophy. The importance of love in life is to Browning supreme,\nbecause he holds it to be the meeting-point between God and man. Love is\nthe sublimest conception possible to man; and a life inspired by it is\nthe highest conceivable form of goodness.\n\nIn this exaltation of love, as in several other points, Browning much\nresembles the German mystic, Meister Eckhart. To compare the two writers\nin detail would be an interesting task; it is only possible here to\nsuggest points of resemblance. The following passage from Eckhart\nsuggests several directions in which Browning's thought is peculiarly\nmystical:--\n\n     Intelligence is the youngest faculty in man.... The soul in itself\n     is a simple work; what God works in the simple light of the soul is\n     more beautiful and more delightful than all the other works which\n     He works in all creatures. But foolish people take evil for good\n     and good for evil. But to him who rightly understands, the one work\n     which God works in the soul is better and nobler and higher than\n     all the world. Through that light comes grace. Grace never comes in\n     the intelligence or in the will. If it could come in the\n     intelligence or in the will, the intelligence and the will would\n     have to transcend themselves. On this a master says: There is\n     something secret about it; and thereby he means the spark of the\n     soul, which alone can apprehend God. The true union between God and\n     the soul takes place in the little spark, which is called the\n     spirit of the soul.[9]\n\nThe essential unity of God and man is expressed more than once by\nBrowning in Eckhart's image: as when he speaks of God as Him\n\n    Who never is dishonoured in the spark\n    He gave us from his fire of fires.\n\nHe is at one with Eckhart, and with all mystics, in his appeal from the\nintellect to that which is beyond intellect; in his assertion of the\nsupremacy of feeling, intuition, over knowledge. Browning never wearies\nof dwelling on the relativity of physical knowledge, and its inadequacy\nto satisfy man. This is perhaps best brought out in one of the last\nthings he wrote, the \"Reverie\" in _Asolando_; but it is dwelt on in\nnearly all his later and more reflective poems. His maxim was--\n\n    Wholly distrust thy knowledge, then, and trust\n    As wholly love allied to ignorance!\n    There lies thy truth and safety. ...\n                           Consider well!\n    Were knowledge all thy faculty, then God\n    Must be ignored: love gains him by first leap.\n\n    _A Pillar at Sebzevar._\n\nAnother point of resemblance with Eckhart is suggested by his words:\n\"That foolish people take evil for good, and good for evil.\" Browning's\ntheory of evil is part of the working-out of his principle of what may\nbe called the coincidence of extreme opposites. This is, of course, part\nof his main belief in unity, but it is an interesting development of it.\nThis theory is marked all through his writings; and, although\nphilosophers have dealt with it, he is perhaps the one poet who faces\nthe problem, and expresses himself on the point with entire conviction.\nHis view is that good and evil are purely relative terms (see _The\nBean-stripe_), and that one cannot exist without the other. It is evil\nwhich alone makes possible some of the divinest qualities in\nman--compassion, pity, forgiveness patience. We have seen that Shelley\nshares this view, \"for none knew good from evil\"; and Blake expresses\nhimself very strongly about it, and complains that Plato \"knew nothing\nbut the virtues and vices, the good and evil.... There is nothing in all\nthat.... Everything is good in God's eyes.\" Mysticism is always a\nreconcilement of opposites; and this, as we have seen in connection with\nscience and religion, knowledge and love, is a dominant note of\nBrowning's philosophy. He brings it out most startlingly perhaps in _The\nStatue and the Bust_, where he shows that in his very capacity for\nvice, a man proves his capacity for virtue, and that a failure of energy\nin the one implies a corresponding failure of energy in the other.\n\nAt the same time, clear knowledge that evil is illusion would defeat its\nown end and paralyse all moral effort, for evil only exists for the\ndevelopment of good in us.\n\n             Type needs antitype:\n    As night needs day, as shine needs shade, so good\n    Needs evil: how were pity understood\n    Unless by pain?\n\nThis is one reason why Browning never shrank from the evil in the world,\nwhy indeed he expended so much of his mind and art on the analysis and\ndissection of every kind of evil, laying bare for us the working of the\nmind of the criminal, the hypocrite, the weakling, and the cynic;\nbecause he held that--\n\n    Only by looking low, ere looking high\n    Comes penetration of the mystery.\n\nThere are other ways in which Browning's thought is especially mystical,\nas, for instance, his belief in pre-existence, and his theory of\nknowledge, for he, like Plato, believes in the light within the soul,\nand holds that--\n\n                               To know\n    Rather consists in opening out a way\n    Whence the imprisoned splendour may escape,\n    Than in effecting entry for a light\n    Supposed to be without.\n\n    _Paracelsus_, Act I.\n\nBut the one thought which is ever constant with him, and is peculiarly\nhelpful to the practical man, is his recognition of the value of\nlimitation in all our energies, and the stress he lays on the fact that\nonly by virtue of this limitation can we grow. We should be paralysed\nelse. It is Goethe's doctrine of _Entbehrung_, and it is vividly\nportrayed in the epistle of Karshish. Paracelsus learns it, and makes it\nclear to Festus at the end.\n\nThe natural result of Browning's theory of evil, and his sense of the\nvalue of limitation, is that he should welcome for man the experience of\ndoubt, difficulty, temptation, pain; and this we find is the case.\n\n    Life is probation and the earth no goal\n    But starting point of man ...\n    To try man's foot, if it will creep or climb\n    'Mid obstacles in seeming, points that prove\n    Advantage for who vaults from low to high\n    And makes the stumbling-block a stepping-stone.\n\n    _The Ring and the Book_: The Pope, 1436-7, 410-13.\n\nIt is this trust in unending progress, based on the consciousness of\npresent failure, which is peculiarly inspiriting in Browning's thought,\nand it is essentially mystical. Instead of shrinking from pain, the\nmystic prays for it, for, properly met, it means growth.\n\n                          Was the trial sore?\n    Temptation sharp? Thank God a second time!\n    Why comes temptation but for man to meet\n    And master and make crouch beneath his foot,\n    And so be pedestaled in triumph?\n\n    _The Ring and the Book_: The Pope, 1182-02.\n\nRossetti's mysticism is perhaps a more salient feature in his art than\nis the case with Browning, and the lines of it, and its place in his\nwork, have been well described by Mr Theodore Watts-Dutton.[10] We can\nonly here indicate wherein it lies, and how it differs from and falls\nshort of the mysticism of Shelley and Browning. Rossetti, unlike\nBrowning, is not the least metaphysical; he is not devoured by\nphilosophical curiosity; he has no desire to solve the riddle of the\nuniverse. All his life he was dominated and fascinated by beauty, one\nform of which in especial so appealed to him as at times almost to\noverpower him--the beauty of the face of woman.[11] But this beauty is\nnot an end in itself; it is not the desire of possession that so stirs\nhim, but rather an absolute thirst for the knowledge of the mystery\nwhich he feels is hiding beneath and beyond it. Here lies his\nmysticism. It is this haunting passion which is the greatest thing in\nRossetti, which inspires all that is best in him as artist, the belief\nthat beauty is but the expression or symbol of something far greater and\nhigher, and that it has kinship with immortal things. For beauty, which,\nas Plato has told us, is of all the divine ideas at once most manifest\nand most lovable to man, is for Rossetti the actual and visible symbol\nof love, which is at once the mystery and solution of the secret of\nlife.[12] Rossetti's mystical passion is perhaps most perfectly\nexpressed in his little early prose romance, _Hand and Soul_. It is\npurer and more austere than much of his poetry, and breathes an amazing\nforce of spiritual vision. One wonders, after reading it, that the\nwriter himself did not attain to a loftier and more spiritual\ndevelopment of life and art; and one cannot help feeling the reason was\nthat he did not sufficiently heed the warning of Plotinus, not to let\nourselves become entangled in sensuous beauty, which will engulf us as\nin a swamp.\n\nCoventry Patmore was so entirely a mystic that it seems to be the first\nand the last and the only thing to say about him. His central conviction\nis the unity of all things, and hence their mutual interpretation and\nsymbolic force. There is only one kind of knowledge which counts with\nhim, and that is direct apprehension or perception, the knowledge a man\nhas of Love, by being in love, not by reading about its symptoms. The\n\"touch\" of God is not a figure of speech.\n\n     \"Touch,\" says Aquinas, \"applies to spiritual things as well as to\n     material things.... The fulness of intelligence is the obliteration\n     of intelligence. God is then our honey, and we, as St Augustine\n     says, are His; and who wants to understand honey or requires the\n     _rationale_ of a kiss?\" (_Rod, Root, and Flower_, xx.)\n\nOnce given the essential idea, to be grasped by the intuitive faculty\nalone, the world is full of analogies, of natural revelations which help\nto support and illustrate great truths. Patmore was, however, caught and\nenthralled by one aspect of unity, by one great analogy, almost to the\nexclusion of all others. This is that in human love, but above all in\nwedded love, we have a symbol (that is an expression of a similar force\nin different material) of the love between God and the soul. What\nPatmore meant was that in the relationship and attitude of wedded lovers\nwe hold the key to the mystery at the heart of life, and that we have in\nit a \"real apprehension\" (which is quite different from real\ncomprehension[13]) of the relationship and attitude of humanity to God.\nHis first wife's love revealed to him this, which is the basic fact of\nall his thought and work.\n\n     The relationship of the soul to Christ _as His betrothed wife_ is\n     the key to the feeling with which prayer and love and honour should\n     be offered to Him ... _She_ showed me what that relationship\n     involves of heavenly submission and spotless passionate\n     loyalty.[14]\n\nHe believed that sex is a relationship at the base of all things natural\nand divine;\n\n    Nature, with endless being rife,\n      Parts each thing into \"him\" and \"her\"\n    And, in the arithmetic of life,\n      The smallest unit is a pair.[15]\n\nThis division into two and reconciliation into one, this clash of forces\nresulting in life, is, as Patmore points out in words curiously\nreminiscent of those of Boehme, at the root of all existence. All real\napprehension of God, he says, is dependent upon the realisation of his\ntriple Personality in one Being.\n\n     Nature goes on giving echoes of the same living triplicity in\n     animal, plant, and mineral, every stone and material atom owing its\n     being to the synthesis or \"embrace\" of the two opposed forces of\n     expansion and contraction. Nothing whatever exists in a single\n     entity but in virtue of its being thesis, antithesis, and synthesis\n     and in humanity and natural life this takes the form of sex, the\n     masculine, the feminine, and the neuter, or third, forgotten sex\n     spoken of by Plato, which is not the absence of the life of sex,\n     but its fulfilment and power, as the electric fire is the\n     fulfilment and power of positive and negative in their \"embrace.\"\n\nThe essay from which this passage is taken, _The Bow set in the Cloud_,\ntogether with _The Precursor_, give in full detail an exposition of this\nbelief of Patmore's, which was for him \"_the burning heart of the\nUniverse_.\"\n\n    Female and male God made the man;\n      His image is the whole, not half;\n    And in our love we dimly scan\n      The love which is between Himself.[16]\n\nGod he conceived of as the great masculine positive force, the soul as\nthe feminine or receptive force, and the meeting of these two, the\n\"mystic rapture\" of the marriage of Divinity and Humanity, as the source\nof all life and joy.\n\nThis profound and very difficult theme is treated by Patmore in a manner\nat once austere and passionate in the exquisite little preludes to the\n_Angel in the House_, and more especially in the odes, which stand alone\nin nineteenth-century poetry for poignancy of feeling and depth of\nspiritual passion. They are the highest expression of \"erotic\nmysticism\"[17] in English; a marvellous combination of flaming ardour\nand sensuousness of description with purity and austerity of tone. This\nlatter effect is gained largely by the bare and irregular metre, which\nhas a curiously compelling beauty of rhythm and dignity of cadence.\n\nThe book into which Patmore put the fullness of his convictions, the\n_Sponsa Dei_, which he burnt because he feared it revealed too much to a\nworld not ready for it, was says Mr Gosse, who had read it in\nmanuscript, \"a transcendental treatise on Divine desire seen through the\nveil of human desire.\" We can guess fairly accurately its tenor and\nspirit if we read the prose essay _Dieu et ma Dame_ and the wonderful\node _Sponsa Dei_, which, happily, the poet did not destroy.\n\nIt may be noted that the other human affections and relationships also\nhave for Patmore a deep symbolic value, and two of his finest odes are\nwritten, the one in symbolism of mother love, the other in that of\nfather and son.[18]\n\nWe learn by human love, so be points out, to realise the possibility of\ncontact between the finite and Infinite, for divinity can only be\nrevealed by voluntarily submitting to limitations. It is \"the mystic\ncraving of the great to become the love-captive of the small, while the\nsmall has a corresponding thirst for the enthralment of the great.\"[19]\n\nAnd this process of intercourse between God and man is symbolised in\nthe Incarnation, which is not a single event in time, but the\nculmination of an eternal process. It is the central fact of a man's\nexperience, \"for it is going on perceptibly in himself\"; and in like\nmanner \"the Trinity becomes the only and self-evident explanation of\nmysteries which are daily wrought in his own complex nature.\"[20] In\nthis way is it that to Patmore religion is not a question of blameless\nlife or the holding of certain beliefs, but it is \"an experimental\nscience\" to be lived and to be felt, and the clues to the experiments\nare to be found in natural human processes and experiences interpreted\nin the light of the great dogmas of the Christian faith.\n\nFor Keats, the avenue to truth and reality took the form of Beauty. The\nidea, underlying most deeply and consistently the whole of his poetry,\nis that of the unity of life; and closely allied with this is the belief\nin progress, through ever-changing, ever-ascending stages. _Sleep and\nPoetry, Endymion_, and _Hyperion_ represent very well three stages in\nthe poet's thought and art. In _Sleep and Poetry_ Keats depicts the\ngrowth even in an individual life, and describes the three stages of\nthought, or attitudes towards life, through which the poet must pass.\nThey are not quite parallel to the three stages of the mystical ladder\nmarked out by Wordsworth in the main body of his poetry, because they do\nnot go quite so far, but they are almost exactly analogous to the three\nstages of mind he describes in _Tintern Abbey_. The first is mere animal\npleasure and delight in living--\n\n    A pigeon tumbling in clear summer air;\n    A laughing school-boy without grief or care\n    Hiding the springy branches of an elm.\n\nThen follows simple unreflective enjoyment of Nature. The next stage is\nsympathy with human life, with human grief and joy, which brings a sense\nof the mystery of the world, a longing to pierce it and arrive at its\nmeaning, symbolised in the figure of the charioteer.\n\nTowards the end of Keats's life this feeling was growing stronger; and\nit is much dwelt upon in the _Revision of Hyperion_. There he plainly\nstates that the merely artistic life, the life of the dreamer, is\nselfish; and that the only way to gain real insight is through contact\nand sympathy with human suffering and sorrow; and in the lost Woodhouse\ntranscript of the _Revision_, rediscovered in 1904, there are some lines\nin which this point is still further emphasised. The full realisation of\nthis third stage was not granted to Keats during his short life; he had\nbut gleams of it. The only passage where he describes the ecstasy of\nvision is in _Endymion_ (bk. i., 1. 774 ff.), and this resembles in\nessentials all the other reports of this experience given by mystics.\nWhen the mind is ready, anything may lead us to it--music, imagination,\nlove, friendship.\n\n    Feel we these things?--that moment have we stept\n    Into a sort of oneness, and our state\n    Is like a floating spirit's.\n\nKeats felt this passage was inspired, and in a letter to Taylor in\nJanuary 1818 he says, \"When I wrote it, it was a regular stepping of the\nImagination towards a truth.\"\n\nIn _Endymion_, the underlying idea is the unity of the various elements\nof the individual soul; the love of woman is shown to be the same as the\nlove of beauty; and that in its turn is identical with the love of the\nprinciple of beauty in all things. Keats was always very sensitive to\nthe mysterious effects of moonlight, and so for him the moon became a\nsymbol for the great abstract principle of beauty, which, during the\nwhole of his poetic life, he worshipped intellectually and spiritually.\n\"The mighty abstract Idea I have of Beauty in all things stifles the\nmore divided and minute domestic happiness,\" he writes to his brother\nGeorge; and the last two well-known lines of the _Ode on a Grecian Urn_\nfairly sum up his philosophy--\n\n    Beauty is truth, truth Beauty, that is all\n    Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.\n\nSo that the moon represents to Keats the eternal idea, the one essence\nin all. This is how he writes of it, in what is an entirely mystical\npassage in _Endymion_--\n\n     ... As I grew in years, still didst thou blend\n    With all my ardours: thou wast the deep glen;\n    Thou wast the mountain-top, the sage's pen,\n    The poet's harp, the voice of friends, the sun;\n    Thou wast the river, thou wast glory won;\n    Thou wast my clarion's blast, thou wast my steed,\n    My goblet full of wine, my topmost deed:\n    Thou wast the charm of women, lovely Moon!\n\nIn his fragment of _Hyperion_, Keats shadows forth the unity of all\nexistence, and gives magnificent utterance to the belief that change is\nnot decay, but the law of growth and progress. Oceanus, in his speech to\nthe overthrown Titans, sums up the whole meaning as far as it has gone,\nin verse which is unsurpassed in English--\n\n    We fall by course of Nature's law, not force\n    Of thunder, or of Jove ...\n     ... on our heels a fresh perfection treads,\n    A power more strong in beauty, born of us\n    And fated to excel us, as we pass\n\n    In glory that old Darkness ...\n    ... for 'tis the eternal law\n    That first in beauty should be first in might.\n\nThis is true mysticism, the mysticism Keats shares with Burke and\nCarlyle, the passionate belief in continuity of essence through\never-changing forms.\n\n\n\n\nChapter III\n\nNature Mystics\n\n\n\nVaughan and Wordsworth stand pre-eminent among our English poets in\nbeing almost exclusively occupied with one theme, the mystical\ninterpretation of nature. Both poets are of a meditative, brooding cast\nof mind; but whereas Wordsworth arrives at his philosophy entirely\nthrough personal experience and sensation, Vaughan is more of a mystical\nphilosopher, deeply read in Plato and the medi\u00e6val alchemists. The\nconstant comparison of natural with spiritual processes is, on the\nwhole, the most marked feature of Vaughan's poetry. If man will but\nattend, he seems to say to us, everything will discourse to him of the\nspirit. He broods on the silk-worm's change into the butterfly\n(_Resurrection and Immortality_); he ponders over the mystery of the\ncontinuity of life as seen in the plant, dying down and entirely\ndisappearing in winter, and shooting up anew in the spring (_The Hidden\nFlower_); or, while wandering by his beloved river Usk, he meditates\nnear the deep pool of a waterfall on its mystical significance as it\nseems to linger beneath the banks and then to shoot onward in swifter\ncourse, and he sees in it an image of life beyond the grave. The seed\ngrowing secretly in the earth suggests to him the growth of the soul in\nthe darkness of physical matter; and in _Affliction_ he points out that\nall nature is governed by a law of periodicity and contrast, night and\nday, sunshine and shower; and as the beauty of colour can only exist by\ncontrast, so are pain, sickness, and trouble needful for the development\nof man. These poems are sufficient to illustrate the temper of Vaughan's\nmind, his keen, reverent observation of nature in all her moods, and his\nintense interest in the minutest happenings, because they are all\nmanifestations of the one mighty law.\n\nVaughan appears to have had a more definite belief in pre-existence than\nWordsworth, for he refers to it more than once; and _The Retreate_,\nwhich is probably the best known of all his poems and must have\nfurnished some suggestion for the _Immortality Ode_, is based upon it.\nVaughan has occasionally an almost perfect felicity of mystical\nexpression, a power he shares with Donne, Keats, Rossetti, and\nWordsworth. His ideas then produce their effect through the medium of\nart, directly on the feelings. The poem called _Quickness_ is perhaps\nthe best example of this peculiar quality, which cannot be analysed but\nmust simply be felt; or _The World_, with its magnificent symbol in the\nopening lines:--\n\n      I saw Eternity the other night,\n    Like a great _Ring_ of pure and endless light,\n       All calm, as it was bright;\n    And round beneath it, Time, in hours, days, years,\n      Driv'n by the spheres,\n    Like a vast shadow mov'd.[21]\n\nMysticism is the most salient feature of Wordsworth's poetry, for he was\none who saw, whose inward eye was focussed to visions scarce dreamt of\nby men. It is because of the strangeness and unfamiliarity of his vision\nthat he is a difficult poet to understand, and the key to the\nunderstanding of him is a mystic one. People talk of the difficulty of\nBrowning, but he is easy reading compared with a great deal of\nWordsworth. It is just the apparent simplicity of Wordsworth's thought\nwhich is so misleading. A statement about him of the following kind\nwould be fairly generally accepted as the truth. Wordsworth was a\nsimple-minded poet with a passion for nature, he found great joy and\nconsolation in the contemplation of the beauty of hills and dales and\nclouds and flowers, and urged others to find this too; he lived, and\nrecommended others to live a quiet retired unexciting kind of life, and\nhe preached a doctrine of simplicity and austerity. Now, except that\nWordsworth had a passion for Nature, there is not a single true\nstatement here. Wordsworth was not only a poet, he was also a seer, a\nmystic and a practical psychologist with an amazingly subtle mind, and\nan unusual capacity for feeling; he lived a life of excitement and\npassion, and he preached a doctrine of magnificence and glory. It was\nnot the beauty of Nature which brought him joy and peace, but the _life_\nin Nature. He himself had caught a vision of that life, he knew it and\nfelt it, and it transformed the whole of existence for him. He believed\nthat every man could attain this vision which he so fully possessed, and\nhis whole life's work took the form of a minute and careful analysis of\nthe processes of feeling in his own nature, which he left as a guide for\nthose who would tread the same path. It would be correct to say that the\nwhole of his poetry is a series of notes and investigations devoted to\nthe practical and detailed explanation of how he considered this state\nof vision might be reached. He disdained no experience--however trivial,\napparently--the working of the mind of a peasant child or an idiot boy,\nthe effect produced on his own emotions by a flower, a glowworm, a\nbird's note, a girl's song; he passed by nothing which might help to\nthrow light on this problem. The experience which Wordsworth was so\nanxious others should share was the following. He found that when his\nmind was freed from pre-occupation with disturbing objects, petty cares,\n\"little enmities and low desires,\" that he could then reach a condition\nof equilibrium, which he describes as a \"wise passiveness,\" or a \"happy\nstillness of the mind.\" He believed this condition could be deliberately\ninduced by a kind of relaxation of the will, and by a stilling of the\nbusy intellect and striving desires. It is a purifying process, an\nemptying out of all that is worrying, self-assertive, and self-seeking.\nIf we can habitually train ourselves and attune our minds to this\ncondition, we may at any moment come across something which will arouse\nour emotions, and it is then, when our emotions--thus purified--are\nexcited to the point of passion, that our vision becomes sufficiently\nclear to enable us to gain actual experience of the \"central peace\nsubsisting for ever at the heart of endless agitation.\" Once seen, this\nvision changes for us the whole of life; it reveals unity in what to our\nevery-day sight appears to be diversity, harmony where ordinarily we\nhear but discord, and joy, overmastering joy, instead of sorrow.\n\nIt is a kind of illumination, whereby in a lightning flash we see that\nthe world is quite different from what it ordinarily appears to be, and\nwhen it is over--for the experience is but momentary--it is impossible\nto describe the vision in precise terms, but the effect of it is such as\nto inspire and guide the whole subsequent life of the seer. Wordsworth\nseveral times depicts this \"bliss ineffable\" when \"all his thought were\nsteeped in feeling.\" The well-known passage in _Tintern Abbey_ already\nquoted (p. 7) is one of the finest analysis of it left us by any of the\nseers, and it closely resembles the accounts given by Plotinus and\nBoehme of similar experiences.\n\nTo Wordsworth this vision came through Nature, and for this reason. He\nbelieved that all we see round us is alive, beating with the same life\nwhich pulsates in us. It is, he says,--\n\n      my faith that every flower\n    Enjoys the air it breathes.\n\nand that if we will but listen and look, we will hear and see and feel\nthis central life. This is the pith of the message we find repeated\nagain and again in various forms throughout Wordsworth's poetry, and\nperhaps best summed up at the end of the fourth book of the _Excursion_,\na book which should be closely studied by any one who would explore the\nsecret of the poet's outlook upon life. He tells us in the _Prelude_\n(Book iii.) that even in boyhood it was by this feeling he \"mounted to\ncommunity with highest truth\"--\n\n    To every natural form, rock, fruits, or flower,\n    Even the loose stones that cover the highway,\n    I gave a moral life: I saw them feel,\n    Or linked them to some feeling: the great mass\n    Lay bedded in a quickening soul, and all\n    That I beheld respired with inward meaning.\n\nWordsworth, in short, was haunted by the belief that the secret of the\nuniverse is written clearly all round us, could we but train and purify\nour mind and emotions so as to behold it. He believed that we are in\nsomething the same attitude towards Nature as an illiterate untrained\nperson might be in the presence of a book containing the philosophy of\nHegel. To the educated trained thinker, who by long and arduous\ndiscipline has developed his mental powers, that book contains the\nrevelation of the thought of a great mind; whereas to the uneducated\nperson it is merely a bundle of paper with words printed on it. He can\nhandle it, touch it, see it, he can read the words, he can even\nunderstand many of them separately, but the essence of the book and its\nmeaning remains closed to him until he can effect some alteration in\nhimself which will enable him to understand it.\n\nWordsworth's claim is that he had discovered by his own experience a way\nto effect the necessary alteration in ourselves which will enable us to\ncatch glimpses of the truths expressing themselves all round us. It is a\ngreat claim, but he would seem to have justified it.\n\nIt is interesting that the steps in the ladder of perfection, as\ndescribed by Wordsworth, are precisely analogous to the threefold path\nor \"way\" of the religious and philosophic mystic, an ethical system or\nrule of life, of which, very probably, Wordsworth had never heard.\n\nThe mystic vision was not attained by him, any more than by others,\nwithout deliberate renunciation. He lays great stress upon this; and yet\nit is a point in his teaching sometimes overlooked. He insists\nrepeatedly upon the fact that before any one can taste of these joys of\nthe spirit, he must be purified, disciplined, self-controlled. He leaves\nus a full account of his purgative stage. Although he started life with\na naturally pure and austere temperament, yet he had deliberately to\ncrush out certain strong passions to which he was liable, as well as all\npersonal ambition, all love of power, all desire for fame or money; and\nto confine himself to the contemplation of such objects as--\n\n                             excite\n    No morbid passions, no disquietude,\n    No vengeance and no hatred.\n\nIn the _Recluse_ he records how he deliberately fought, and bent to\nother uses, a certain wild passionate delight he felt in danger, a\nstruggle or victory over a foe, in short, some of the primitive\ninstincts of a strong, healthy animal, feelings which few would regard\nas reprehensible. These natural instincts, this force and energy, good\nin themselves, Wordsworth did not crush, but deliberately turned into a\nhigher channel.\n\nAt the end of the _Prelude_ he makes his confession of the sins he did\nnot commit.\n\n    Never did I, in quest of right and wrong,\n    Tamper with conscience from a private aim;\n    Nor was in any public hope the dupe\n    Of selfish passions; nor did ever yield\n    Wilfully to mean cares or low pursuits.\n\nSuch a confession, or rather boast, in the mouth of almost any other man\nwould sound hypocritical or self-complacent; but with Wordsworth, we\nfeel it is the bare truth told us for our help and guidance, as being\nthe necessary and preliminary step. It is a high standard which is held\nup before us, even in this first stage, for it includes, not merely the\navoidance of all obvious sins against man and society, but a tuning-up,\na transmuting of the whole nature to high and noble endeavour.\nWordsworth found his reward, in a settled state of calm serenity,\n\"consummate happiness,\" \"wide-spreading, steady, calm, contemplative,\"\nand, as he tells us in the fourth book of the _Prelude_, on one evening\nduring that summer vacation,\n\n           Gently did my soul\n    Put off her veil, and, self-transmuted, stood\n    Naked, as in the presence of her God.\n\nWhen the mind and soul have been prepared, the next step is\nconcentration, aspiration. Then it is borne in upon the poet that in the\ninfinite and in the eternal alone can we find rest, can we find\nourselves; and towards this infinitude we must strive with unflagging\nardour;\n\n    Our destiny, our being's heart and home,\n    Is with infinitude, and only there.\n\n         _Prelude_, Book vi. 604.\n\nThe result of this aspiration towards the infinite is a quickening of\nconsciousness, upon which follows the attainment of the third or unitive\nstage, the moment when man can \"breathe in worlds to which the heaven of\nheavens is but a veil,\" and perceive \"the forms whose kingdom is where\ntime and place are not.\" Such minds--\n\n             need not extraordinary calls\n    To rouse them; in a world of life they live,\n    By sensible impressions not enthralled,\n     ... the highest bliss\n    That flesh can know _is theirs_--the consciousness\n    Of Whom they are.\n\n          _Prelude_, Book xiv. 105, 113,\n\nWordsworth possessed in a peculiar degree a mystic sense of infinity,\nof the boundless, of the opening-out of the world of our normal finite\nexperience into the transcendental; and he had a rare power of putting\nthis into words. It was a feeling which, as he tells us in the _Prelude_\n(Book xiii.), he had from earliest childhood, when the disappearing line\nof the public highway--\n\n    Was like an invitation into space\n    Boundless, or guide into eternity,\n\na feeling which, applied to man, gives that inspiriting certitude of\nboundless growth, when the soul has--\n\n     ... an obscure sense\n    Of possible sublimity, whereto\n    With growing faculties she doth aspire.\n\nIt is at this point, and on this subject, that Wordsworth's poetical and\nethical imagination are most nearly fused. This fusion is far from\nconstant with him; and the result is that there are tracts of his\nwritings where the sentiments are excellent, the philosophy\nilluminating, but the poetry is not great: it does not awaken the\n\"transcendental feeling.\"[22] The moments when this condition is most\nfully attained by Wordsworth occur when, by sheer force of poetic\nimagination combined with spiritual insight, in some mysterious and\nindescribable way, he flashes upon us a sensation of boundless infinity.\nHerein consists the peculiar magic of such a poem as _Stepping\nWestward_; and there is a touch of the same feeling in the _Solitary\nReaper_.\n\nIt is hardly necessary to dwell on other mystical elements in\nWordsworth, such as his belief in the one law governing all things,\n\"from creeping plant to sovereign man,\" and the hint of belief in\npre-existence in the _Ode on Immortality_. His attitude towards life as\na whole is to be found in a few lines in the \"after-thought\" to the\nDuddon sonnets.\n\n    The Form remains, the Function never dies;\n    While we, the brave, the mighty and the wise,\n    We Men, who in our morn of youth defied\n    The elements, must vanish:--be it so!\n    Enough, if something from our hands have power\n    To live, and act, and serve the future hour;\n    And if, as toward the silent tomb we go,\n    Through love, through hope, and faith's transcendent dower,\n    We feel that we are greater than we know.\n\nRichard Jefferies is closely akin to Wordsworth in his overpowering\nconsciousness of the life in nature. This consciousness is the strongest\nforce in him, so that at times he is almost submerged by it, and he\nloses the sense of outward things. In this condition of trance the sense\nof time vanishes, there is, he asserts, no such thing, no past or\nfuture, only now, which is eternity. In _The Story of my Heart_, a\nrhapsody of mystic experience and aspiration he describes in detail\nseveral such moments of exaltation or trance. He seems to be peculiarly\nsensitive to sunshine. As the moon typifies to Keats the eternal essence\nin all things, so to Jefferies the sun seems to be the physical\nexpression or symbol of the central Force of the world, and it is\nthrough gazing on sunlight that he most often enters into the trance\nstate.\n\nStanding, one summer's morning, in a recess on London Bridge, he looks\nout on the sunshine \"burning on steadfast,\" \"lighting the great heaven;\ngleaming on my finger-nail.\"\n\n     \"I was intensely conscious of it,\" he writes, \"I felt it; I felt\n     the presence of the immense powers of the universe; I felt out into\n     the depths of the ether. So intensely conscious of the sun, the\n     sky, the limitless space, I felt too in the midst of eternity then,\n     in the midst of the supernatural, among the immortal, and the\n     greatness of the material realised the spirit. By these I saw my\n     soul; by these I knew the supernatural to be more intensely real\n     than the sun. I touched the supernatural, the immortal, there that\n     moment.\"[23]\n\nWhen he reaches this state, outer things drop away,[24] and he seems to\nbecome lost, and absorbed into the being of the universe. He partakes,\nmomentarily, of a larger, fuller life, he drinks in vitality through\nnature. The least blade of grass, he says, or the greatest oak, \"seemed\nlike exterior nerves and veins for the conveyance of feeling to me.\nSometimes a very ecstasy of exquisite enjoyment of the entire visible\nuniverse filled me.\"[25]\n\nThis great central Life Force, which Jefferies, like Wordsworth, seemed\nat moments to touch, he, in marked contrast to other mystics, refuses to\ncall God. For, he says, what we understand by deity is the purest form\nof mind, and he sees no mind in nature. It is a force without a mind,\n\"more subtle than electricity, but absolutely devoid of consciousness\nand with no more feeling than the force which lifts the tides.\"[26] Yet\nthis cannot content him, for later he declares there must be an\nexistence higher than deity, towards which he aspires and presses with\nthe whole force of his being. \"Give me,\" he cries, \"to live the deepest\nsoul-life now and always with this 'Highest Soul.'\"[27]\n\nThis thrilling consciousness of spiritual life felt through nature,\ncoupled with passionate aspiration to be absorbed in that larger life,\nare the two main features of the mysticism of Richard Jefferies.\n\nHis books, and especially _The Story of my Heart_, contain, together\nwith the most exquisite nature description, a rich and vivid record of\nsensation, feeling, and aspiration. But it is a feeling which, though\nvivifying, can only be expressed in general terms, and it carries with\nit no vision and no philosophy. It is almost entirely emotional, and it\nis as an emotional record that it is of value, for Jefferies'\nintellectual reflections are, for the most part, curiously contradictory\nand unconvincing.\n\nThe certainty and rapture of this experience of spiritual emotion is all\nthe more amazing when we remember that the record of it was written in\nagony, when he was wrecked with mortal illness and his nerves were\nshattered with pain. For with him, as later with Francis Thompson,\nphysical pain and material trouble seemed to serve only to direct him\ntowards and to enhance the glory of the spiritual vision.\n\n\n\n\nChapter IV\n\nPhilosophical Mystics\n\n\n\nThe mystical sense may be called philosophical in all those writers who\npresent their convictions in a philosophic form calculated to appeal to\nthe intellect as well as to the emotions. These writers, as a rule,\nthough not always, are themselves markedly intellectual, and their\nprimary concern therefore is with truth or wisdom. Thus Donne, William\nLaw, Burke, Coleridge, and Carlyle are all predominantly intellectual,\nwhile Traherne, Emily Bront\u00eb, and Tennyson clothe their thoughts to some\nextent in the language of philosophy.\n\nThe dominating characteristic of Donne is intellectuality; and this may\npartly account for the lack in him of some essentialty mystical\nqualities, more especially reverence, and that ascension of thought so\ncharacteristic of Plato and Browning. These shortcomings are very well\nillustrated in that extraordinary poem, _The, Progress of the Soul_. The\nidea is a mystical one, derived from Pythagorean philosophy, and has\ngreat possibilities, which Donne entirely fails to utilise; for, instead\nof following the soul upwards on its way, he depicts it as merely\njumping about from body to body, and we are conscious of an entire lack\nof any lift or grandeur of thought. This poem helps us to understand how\nit was that Donne, though so richly endowed with intellectual gifts, yet\nfailed to reach the highest rank as a poet. He was brilliant in\nparticulars, but lacked the epic qualities of breadth, unity, and\nproportion, characteristics destined to be the distinctive marks of the\nschool of which he is looked upon as the founder.\n\nApart from this somewhat important defect, Donne's attitude of mind is\nessentially mystical. This is especially marked in his feeling about the\nbody and natural law, in his treatment of love, and in his conception of\nwoman. The mystic's postulate--if we could know ourselves, we should\nknow all--is often on Donne's lips, as for instance in that curious poem\nwritten in memory of Elizabeth Drury, on the second anniversary of her\ndeath. It is perhaps best expressed in the following verse:\n\n      But we know our selves least; Mere outward shews\n        Our mindes so store,\n    That our soules, no more than our eyes disclose\n    But forme and colour. Onely he who knowes\n        Himselfe, knowes more.\n\n    _Ode: Of our Sense of Sinne._\n\nOne of the marked characteristics of Donne's poetry is his continual\ncomparison of mental and spiritual with, physical processes. This sense\nof analogy prevailing throughout nature is with him very strong. The\nmystery of continual flux and change particularly attracts him, as it\ndid the Buddhists[28] and the early Greek thinkers, and Nettleship's\nremarks about the nature of bread and unselfishness are akin to the\nfollowing comparison:--\n\n                  Dost thou love\n    Beauty? (And beauty worthy'st is to move)\n    Poor cousened consener, _that_ she, and _that_ thou,\n    Which did begin to love, are neither now;\n    Next day repaires (but ill) last dayes decay.\n    Nor are, (although the river keepe the name)\n    Yesterdaies waters, and to-daies the same.\n\n    _Of the Progresse of the Soule. The second\n    Anniversarie_, 389-96.\n\nDonne believes firmly in man's potential greatness, and the power within\nhis own soul:\n\n    Seeke wee then our selves in our selves; for as\n    Men force the Sunne with much more force to passe.\n    By gathering his beames with a chrystall glasse;\n\n    So wee, If wee into our selves will turne,\n    Blowing our sparkes of virtue, may out-burne\n    The straw, which doth about our hearts sojourne.\n\n    _Letter to Mr Roland Woodward._\n\n\nAnd although, in the _Progress of the Soul_, he failed to give\nexpression to it, yet his belief in progress is unquenchable. He fully\nshares the mystic's view that \"man, to get towards Him that's Infinite,\nmust first be great\" (_Letter to the Countess of Salisbury_).\n\nIn his treatment of love, Donne's mystical attitude is most clearly\nseen. He holds the Platonic conception, that love concerns the soul\nonly, and is independent of the body, or bodily presence; and he is the\npoet, who, at his best, expresses this idea in the most dignified and\nrefined way. The reader feels not only that Donne believes it, but that\nhe has in some measure experienced it; whereas with his imitators it\ndegenerated into little more than a fashionable \"conceit.\" The\n_Undertaking_ expresses the discovery he has made of this higher and\ndeeper kind of love; and in the _Ecstasy_ he describes the union of the\nsouls of two lovers in language which proves his familiarity with the\ndescription of ecstasy given by Plotinus (_Enn._ vi. 9, \u00a7 11). The great\nvalue of this spiritual love is that it is unaffected by time and space,\na belief which is nowhere more exquisitely expressed than in the refrain\nof his little song, _Soul's Joy_.[29]\n\n    O give no way to griefe,\n    But let beliefe\n      Of mutuall love,\n    This wonder to the vulgar prove\n      Our Bodyes, not wee move.\n\nIn one of his verse letters to the Countess of Huntingdon[30] he\nexplains how true love cannot be desire:\n\n    'Tis love, but with such fatall weaknesse made,\n    That it destroyes it selfe with its owne shade.\n\nHe goes still further in the poem entitled _Negative Love_, where he\nsays that love is such a passion as can only be defined by negatives,\nfor it is above apprehension, and his language here is closely akin to\nthe description of the One or the Good given by Plotinus in the sixth\nEnnead.\n\nThomas Traherne is a mystical writer of singular charm and originality.\nThe manuscripts of his poems and his prose _Meditations_, a kind of\nspiritual autobiography and notebook, were only discovered and printed\nquite recently, and they form a valuable addition to the mystical\nliterature of the seventeenth century.\n\nHe has affinities with Vaughan, Herbert, and Sir Thomas Browne, with\nBlake and with Wordsworth. He is deeply sensitive to the beauty of the\nnatural world, and he insists on the necessity for rejoicing in this\nbeauty if we are really to live. By love alone is God to be approached\nand known, he says, but this love must not be finite. \"He must be loved\nin all with an unlimited love, even in all His doings, in all His\nfriends, in all His creatures.\" In a prose passage of sustained beauty\nTraherne thus describes the attitude towards earth which is needful\nbefore we can enter heaven.\n\n     You never enjoy the world aright, till the Sea itself floweth in\n     your veins, till you are clothed with the heavens, and crowned with\n     the stars:.... Till you can sing and rejoice and delight in God, as\n     misers do in gold, and Kings in sceptres, you never enjoy the\n     world.\n\n     Till your spirit filleth the whole world, and the stars are your\n     jewels;.... till you love men so as to desire their happiness, with\n     a thirst equal to the zeal of your own: till you delight in God for\n     being good to all: you never enjoy the world.... The world is a\n     mirror of infinite beauty, yet no man sees it. It is a Temple of\n     Majesty, yet no man regards it. It is a region of Light and Peace,\n     did not men disquiet it. It is the Paradise of God.... It is, the\n     place of Angels and the Gate of Heaven.[31]\n\nHe is for ever reiterating, in company with all the mystics, that\n\n    'Tis not the object, but the light\n    That maketh Heaven: 'tis a purer sight.\n\nHe shares Wordsworth's rapture in the life of nature, and Browning's\ninterest in his fellow-men; he has Shelley's belief in the inner meaning\nof love, and much of Keats's worship of beauty, and he expresses this in\nan original and lyrical prose of quite peculiar and haunting beauty. He\nhas embodied his main ideas, with a good deal of repetition both in\nprose and verse, but it is invariably the prose version, probably\nwritten first, which is the most arresting and vigorous.\n\nHis _Meditations_ well repay careful study; they are full of wisdom and\nof an imaginative philosophy, expressed in pithy and telling form, which\ncontinually reminds the reader of Blake's _Proverbs of Hell_.\n\n    To have no principles or to live beside them, is equally miserable.\n    Philosophers are not those that speak but do great things.\n    All men see the same objects, but do not equally understand them.\n    Souls to souls are like apples, one being rotten rots another.\n\nThis kind of saying abounds on every page. Some of his more sustained\nphilosophic passages are also noteworthy; such, for instance, is his\ncomparison of the powers of the soul to the rays of the sun, which carry\nlight in them unexpressed until they meet an object (_Meditations_,\nsecond century, No. 78). But Traherne's most interesting contribution to\nthe psychology of mysticism is his account of his childhood and the\n\"vision splendid\" that he brought with him. Even more to him than to\nVaughan or Wordsworth,\n\n    The earth, and every common sight\n      ... did seem\n    Apparelled in celestial light,\n\nand his description of his feelings and spiritual insight are both\nastonishing and convincing. A number of his poems are devoted to this\ntopic (_The Salutation, Wonder, Eden, Innocence, The Rapture, The\nApproach_, and others), but it is the prose account which must be given.\n\n     All appeared now, and strange at first, inexpressibly rare and\n     delightful and beautiful. I was a little stranger, which at my\n     entrance into the world was saluted and surrounded with innumerable\n     joys.... The corn was orient and immortal wheat, which never should\n     be reaped, nor was ever sown. I thought it had stood from\n     everlasting to everlasting. The dust and stones of the street were\n     as precious as gold: the gates were at first the end of the world.\n     The green trees when I saw them first ... transported and ravished\n     me, their sweetness and unusual beauty made my heart to leap, and\n     almost mad with ecstasy, they were such strange and wonderful\n     things. The Men! O what venerable and reverend creatures did the\n     aged seem! Immortal Cherubims! And young men glittering and\n     sparkling Angels, and maids strange seraphic pieces of life and\n     beauty! Boys and girls tumbling in the street, and playing, were\n     moving jewels. I knew not that they were born or should die; but\n     all things abided eternally as they were in their proper places....\n     The city seemed to stand in Eden, or to be built in Heaven.[32]\n\nIt is necessary to quote at some length, because it is the way in which\nTraherne expresses his experiences or reflections which is the moving\nand original thing about him. This last passage seems to anticipate\nsomething of the magic of Keats in the _Ode to a Nightingale_ or the\n_Grecian Urn_, the sense of continuity, and of eternity expressed in\ntime. Traherne's account of the gradual dimming of this early radiance,\nand his enforced change of values is equally unusual. Only with great\ndifficulty did his elders persuade him \"that the tinselled ware upon a\nhobby-horse was a fine thing\" and that a purse of gold was of any value,\nbut by degrees when he found that all men prized things he did not dream\nof, and never mentioned those he cared for, then his \"thoughts were\nblotted out; and at last all the celestial great and stable treasures,\nto which I was born, as wholly forgotten, if as they had never been.\"\n\nBut he remembered enough of those early glories to realise that if he\nwould regain happiness, he must \"become, as it were, a little child\nagain,\" get free of \"the burden and cumber of devised wants,\" and\nrecapture the value and the glory of the common things of life.\n\nHe was so resolutely bent on this that when he had left college and come\ninto the country and was free, he lived upon \u00a310 a year, fed on bread\nand water, and, like George Fox, wore a leather suit. Thus released from\nall worldly cares, he says, through God's blessing, \"I live a free and\nkingly life as if the world were turned again into Eden, or much more,\nas it is at this day.\"\n\nIn Emily Bront\u00eb we have an unusual type of mystic. Indeed she is one of\nthe most strange and baffling figures in our literature. We know in\ntruth very little about her, but that little is quite unlike what we\nknow about any one else. It is now beginning to be realised that she was\na greater and more original genius than her famous sister, and that\nstrong as were Charlotte's passion and imagination, the passion and\nimagination of Emily were still stronger. She had, so far as we can\ntell, peculiarly little actual experience of life, her material\ninterests were bounded by her family, the old servant Tabby, the dogs,\nand the moors. For the greater part of her thirty years of life she did\nthe work of a servant in the little parsonage house on the edge of the\ngraveyard. She can have read little of philosophy or metaphysics, and\nprobably had never heard of the mystics; she was brought up in a narrow,\ncrude, and harshly material creed; yet her own inner experience, her\ntouch with the secret of life, enabled her to write the remarkable\nseries of poems the peculiar and haunting quality of which has as yet\nscarcely been recognised. They are strong and free and certain, hampered\nby no dogma, weighted by no explanation, but containing--in the simplest\nlanguage--the record of the experience and the vision of a soul. Emily\nBront\u00eb lived remote, unapproachable, self-sufficing and entirely\ndetached, yet consumed with a fierce, unquenchable love of life and of\nnature, of the life which withheld from her all the gifts most prized of\nmen, love, friendship, experience, recognition, fame; and of the nature\nwhich she knew only on a circumscribed space of the wild Yorkshire\nmoors.\n\nIn her poems her mysticism is seen principally in two ways: in her\nunerring apprehension of values, of the illusory quality of material\nthings, even of the nature she so loved, together with the certain\nvision of the one Reality behind all forms. This, and her description of\necstasy, of the all-sufficing joy of the inner life of one who has\ntasted this experience, mark her out as being among those who have seen,\nand who know. In _The Prisoner_, the speaker, a woman, is \"confined in\ntriple walls,\" yet in spite of bolts and bars and dungeon gloom she\nholds within herself an inextinguishable joy and unmeasured freedom\nbrought to her every night by a \"messenger.\"\n\n    He comes with western winds, with evening's wandering airs,\n    With that clear dusk of heaven that brings the thickest stars.\n    Winds take a pensive tone, and stars a tender fire,\n    And visions rise, and change, that kill me with desire.\n\n           *       *       *       *       *\n\n    But, first, a hush of peace--a soundless calm descends;\n    The struggle of distress, and fierce impatience ends;\n    Mute music soothes my breast--unuttered harmony,\n    That I could never dream, till Earth was lost to me.\n\n    Then dawns the Invisible; the Unseen its truth reveals;\n    My outward sense is gone, my inward essence feels:\n    Its wings are almost free--its home, its harbour found,\n    Measuring the gulf, it stoops and dares the final bound.\n\n    Oh! dreadful is the check--intense the agony--\n    When the ear begins to hear, and the eye begins to see;\n    When the pulse begins to throb, the brain to think again;\n    The soul to feel the flesh, and the flesh to feel the chain.\n\nThis is the description--always unmistakable--of the supreme mystic\nexperience, the joy of the outward flight, the pain of the return, and\nit could only have been written by one who in some measure had knowledge\nof it. This, together with the exquisite little poem _The Visionary_,\nwhich describes a similar experience, and _The Philosopher_, stand apart\nas expressions of spiritual vision, and are among the most perfect\nmystic poems in English.\n\nHer realisation of the meaning of common things, her knowledge that they\nhold the secret of the universe, and her crystallisation of this in\nverse, place her with Blake and Wordsworth.\n\n    What have those lonely mountains worth revealing?\n    More glory and more grief than I can tell:\n    The earth that wakes one human heart to feeling\n    Can centre both the worlds of Heaven and Hell.\n\nAnd finally, the sense of continuous life--one central, all-sustaining\nLife--of the oneness of God and man, has never been more nobly expressed\nthan in what is her best-known poem, the last lines she ever wrote:--\n\n    O God within my breast,\n    Almighty, ever-present Deity!\n    Life--that in me has rest,\n    As I--undying Life--have power in Thee!\n\n           *       *       *       *       *\n\n    With wide-embracing love\n    Thy spirit animates eternal years,\n    Pervades and broods above,\n    Changes, sustains, dissolves, creates, and rears.\n\n    Though earth and man were gone,\n    And suns and universes ceased to be,\n    And Thou wert left alone,\n    Every existence would exist in Thee.\n\nTennyson differs widely from the other poets whom we are considering in\nthis connection. He was not born with the mystical temperament, but, on\nthe contrary, he had a long and bitter struggle with his own doubts and\nquestionings before he wrested from them peace. There is nothing of\nmystic calm or strength in the lines--\n\n    Oh, yet we trust that somehow good\n    Will be the final goal of ill.\n\nHe has no mystic rapture in Nature like Wordsworth,\n\n    I found Him not in world or sun\n    Or eagle's wing, or insect's eye;\n\nno mystic interpretation of life as had Browning, no yearning for union\nwith the spirit of love and beauty as had Shelley. Tennyson's mysticism\ncame, as it were, rather in spite of himself, and is based on one thing\nonly--experience. He states his position quite clearly in _In Memoriam_,\ncxxiv. As is well known, he had from time to time a certain peculiar\nexperience, which he describes fully both in prose and verse, a touch at\nintervals throughout his life of \"ecstasy,\" and it was on this he based\nhis deepest belief. He has left several prose accounts of this mental\nstate, which often came to him through repeating his own name silently,\n\n     till all at once, as it wore, out of the intensity of the\n     consciousness of individuality, the individuality itself seemed to\n     resolve and fade away into boundless being, and this not a confused\n     state, but the clearest of the clearest, the surest of the surest,\n     utterly beyond words, where death was an almost laughable\n     impossibility, the loss of personality (if so it were) seeming no\n     extinction, but the only true life[33]\n\nIt is a somewhat similar experience which is described in _In Memoriam_,\nxcv.\n\n    And all at once it seem'd at last\n    The living soul was flash'd on mine,\n    And mine in this was wound, and whirl'd\n    About empyreal heights of thought,\n    And came on that which is, and caught\n    The deep pulsations of the world.\n\nAnd again in the conclusion of the _Holy Grail_--\n\n    Let visions of the night or of the day\n    Come, as they will; and many a time they come,\n    Until this earth he walks on seems not earth,\n    This light that strikes his eyeball is not light,\n    This air that strikes his forehead is not air\n    But vision--yea, his very hand and foot--\n    In moments when he feels he cannot die,\n    And knows himself no vision to himself,\n    Nor the high God a A vision, nor that One\n    Who rose again.\n\n\"These three lines,\" said Tennyson, speaking of the last three quoted,\n\"are the (spiritually) central lines in the Idylls.\" They are also the\ncentral lines in his own philosophy, for it was the experience of this\n\"vision\" that inspired all his deepest convictions with regard to the\nunity of all things, the reality of the unseen, and the persistence of\nlife.\n\nThe belief in the impotence of intellectual knowledge is very closely\nconnected, it is indeed based, upon these \"gleams\" of ecstasy. The\nprologue to _In Memoriam_ (written when the poem was completed) seems to\nsum up his faith after many years of struggle and doubt; but it is in\nthe most philosophical as well as one of the latest, of his poems, _The\nAncient Sage_, that we find this attitude most fully expressed. Tennyson\nwrote of it: \"The whole poem is very personal. The passages about\n'Faith' and 'the Passion of the Past' were more especially my own\npersonal feelings.\" Through the mouth of the Sage, the poet declares in\nimpassioned words the position of the mystic, and points out the\nimpotence of sense-knowledge in dealing with that which is beyond either\nthe senses or the reason:\n\n    For Knowledge is the swallow on the lake\n    That sees and stirs the surface-shadow there\n    But never yet hath dipt into the abysm.\n\nTennyson, like Wordsworth, emphasises the truth that the only way in\nwhich man can gain real knowledge and hear the \"Nameless\" is by diving\nor sinking into the centre of his own being. There is a great deal of\nEastern philosophy and mysticism in the _Ancient Sage_, as, for\ninstance, the feeling of the unity of all existence to the point of\nmerging the personality into the universal.\n\n    But that one ripple on the boundless deep\n    Feels that the deep is boundless, and itself\n    For ever changing form, but evermore\n    One with the boundless motion of the deep.\n\nWe know that Tennyson had been studying the philosophy of L\u00e2o-Tsze about\nthis time; yet, though this is, as it were, grafted on to the poet's\nmind, still we may take it as being his genuine and deepest conviction.\nThe nearest approach to a definite statement of it to be found in his\npoems is in the few stanzas called _The Higher Pantheism_, which he sent\nto be read at the first meeting of the Metaphysical Society in 1869.\n\n    Speak to Him thou for He hears, and Spirit with Spirit can meet--\n    Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than hands and feet.\n\n           *       *       *       *       *\n\n    And the ear of man cannot hear, and the eye of man cannot see;\n    But if we could see and hear, this Vision--were it not He?\n\nIn William Law, Burke, Coleridge, and Carlyle, we have a succession of\ngreat English prose-writers whose work and thought is permeated by a\nmystical philosophy. Of these four, Law is, during his later life, by\nfar the most consistently and predominantly mystical.\n\nAs has been indicated, there were many strains of influence which in the\nseventeenth century tended to foster mystical thought in England. The\ngroup of Cambridge Platonists, to which Henry More belonged, gave new\nexpression to the great Neo-platonic ideas, but in addition to this a\nstrong vein of mysticism had been kept alive in Amsterdam, where the\nexiled Separatists had gone in 1593. They flourished there and waxed\nstrong, and sent back to England during the next century a continual\nstream of opinion and literature. To this source can be traced the ideas\nwhich inspired alike the Quakers, the Seekers, the Behmenists, the\nFamilists, and numberless other sects who all embodied a reaction\nagainst forms and ceremonies, which, in ceasing to be understood, had\nbecome lifeless. These sects were, up to a certain point, mystical in\nthought, for they all believed in the \"inner light,\" in the immediate\nrevelation of God within the soul as the all-important experience.\n\nThe persecutions of the Quakers under Charles II. tended to withdraw\nthem from active philanthropy, and to throw them more in the direction\nof a personal and contemplative religion. It was then that the writings\nof Madame Bourignon, Madame Guyon, and F\u00e9nelon became popular, and were\nmuch read among a certain section of thinkers, while the influence of\nthe teachings of Jacob Boehme, whose works had been translated into\nEnglish between the years 1644 and 1692, can be traced, in diverse ways.\nThey impressed themselves on the thought of the founders of the Society\nof Friends, they produced a distinct \"Behmenist\" sect, and it would seem\nthat the idea of the three laws of motion first reached Newton through\nhis eager study of Boehme. But all this has nothing directly to do with\nliterature, and would not concern us here were it not that in the\neighteenth century William Law came into touch with many of these\nmystical thinkers, and that he has embodied in some of the finest prose\nin our language a portion of the \"inspired cobbler's\" vision of the\nuniverse.\n\nLaw's character is one of considerable interest. Typically English, and\nin intellect typically of the eighteenth century, logical, sane,\npractical, he is not, at first sight, the man one would expect to find\nin sympathy with the mystics. Sincerity is the keynote of his whole\nnature, sincerity of thought, of belief, of speech, and of life.\nSincerity implies courage, and Law was a brave man, never shirking the\nlogical outcome of his convictions, from the day when he ruined his\nprospects at Cambridge, to the later years when he suffered his really\nconsiderable reputation to be eclipsed by his espousal of an\nuncomprehended and unpopular mysticism. He had a keen rather than a\nprofound intellect, and his thought is lightened by brilliant flashes of\nwit or of grim satire. We can tell, however, from his letters and his\nlater writings, that underneath a severe and slightly stiff exterior,\nwere hidden emotion, enthusiasm, and great tenderness of feeling.\n\nBy middle life Law was well known as a most able and brilliant writer on\nmost of the burning theological questions of the day, as well as the\nauthor of one of the best loved and most widely read practical and\nethical treatises in the language, _A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy\nLife_. These earlier writings are by far the best known of his works,\nand it is with the _Serious Call_ that his name will always be\nassociated.\n\nUntil middle age he showed no marked mystical tendency, although we know\nthat from the time he was an undergraduate he was a \"diligent reader\"\nof mystical books, and that he had studied, among others, Dionysius the\nAreopagite, Ruysbroek, Tauler, Suso, and the seventeenth century\nQuietists, F\u00e9nelon, Madame Guyon, and Antoinette Bourignon.\n\nWhen, however, he was about forty-six (c. 1733), he came across the\nwritings of the seer who set his whole nature aglow with spiritual\nfervour, so that when he first read his works they put him into \"a\nperfect sweat.\" Jacob Boehme--or Behmen, as he has usually been called\nin England--(1575-1624), the illiterate and untrained peasant shoemaker\nof G\u00f6rlitz, is one of the most amazing phenomena in the history of\nmysticism, a history which does not lack wonders. His work has so much\ninfluenced later mystical thought and philosophy that a little space\nmust be devoted to him here. He lived outwardly the quiet, hard-working\nlife of a simple German peasant, but inwardly--like his fellow-seer\nBlake--he lived in a glory of illumination, which by flashes revealed to\nhim the mysteries and splendours he tries in broken and faltering words\nto record. He saw with the eye of his mind into the heart of things, and\nhe wrote down as much of it as he could express.\n\nThe older mystics--eastern and western alike--had laid stress on unity\nas seen in the nature of God and all things. No one more fully believed\nin ultimate unity than did Boehme, but he lays peculiar stress on the\nduality, or more accurately, the trinity in unity; and the central point\nof his philosophy is the fundamental postulate that all manifestation\nnecessitates opposition. He asserted the uniformity of law throughout\nall existence, physical and spiritual, and this law, which applies all\nthrough nature, divine and human alike, is that nothing can reveal\nitself without resistance, good can only be known through evil, and\nweakness through strength, just as light is only visible when reflected\nby a dark body.\n\nThus when God, the Triune Principle, or _Will_ under three aspects,\ndesires to become manifest, He divides the Will into two, the \"yes\" and\nthe \"no,\" and so founds an eternal contrast to Himself out of His own\nhidden Nature, in order to enter into struggle with it, and finally to\ndiscipline and assimilate it. The object of all manifested nature is the\ntransforming of the will which says \"No\" into the will which says \"Yes,\"\nand this is brought about by seven organising spirits or forms. The\nfirst three of these bring nature out of the dark element to the point\nwhere contact with the light is possible. Boehme calls them harshness,\nattraction, and anguish, which in modern terms are contraction,\nexpansion, and rotation. The first two are in deadly antagonism, and\nbeing forced into collision, form an endless whirl of movement. These\ntwo forces with their resultant effect are to be found all through\nmanifested nature, within man and without, and are called by different\nnames: good, evil and life, God, the devil and the world, homogeneity,\nheterogeneity, strain, or the three laws of motion, centripetal and\ncentrifugal force, resulting in rotation. They are the outcome of the\n\"nature\" or \"no\" will, and are the basis of all manifestation. They are\nthe \"power\" of God, apart from the \"love,\" hence their conflict is\nterrible. When spirit and nature approach and meet, from the shock a new\nform is liberated, lightning or fire, which is the fourth moment or\nessence. With the lightning ends the development of the negative triad,\nand the evolution of the three higher forms then begins; Boehme calls\nthem light or love, sound and substance; they are of the spirit, and in\nthem contraction, expansion, and rotation are repeated in a new sense.\nThe first three forms give the stuff or strength of being, the last\nthree manifest the quality of being good or bad, and evolution can\nproceed in either direction.\n\nThe practical and ethical result of this living unity of nature is the\nside which most attracted Law, and it is one which is as simple to state\nas it is difficult to apply. Boehme's philosophy is one which can only\nbe apprehended by living it. Will, or desire, is the radical force in\nman as it is in nature and in the Godhead, and until that is turned\ntowards the light, any purely historical or intellectual knowledge of\nthese things is as useless as if hydrogen were to expect to become water\nby study of the qualities of oxygen, whereas what is needed is the\nactual union of the elements.\n\nThe two most important of Law's mystical treatises are _An Appeal to all\nthat Doubt_, 1740, and _The Way to Divine Knowledge_, 1752. The first of\nthese should be read by any one desirous of knowing Law's later thought,\nfor it is a clear and fine exposition of his attitude with regard more\nespecially to the nature of man, the unity of all nature, and the\nquality of fire or desire. The later book is really an account of the\nmain principles of Boehme, with a warning as to the right way to apply\nthem, and it was written as an introduction to the new edition of\nBoehme's works which Law contemplated publishing.\n\nThe following is the aspect of Boehme's teaching which Law most\nconsistently emphasises.\n\nMan was made out of the Breath of God; his soul is a spark of the Deity.\nIt therefore cannot die, for it \"has the Unbeginning, Unending Life of\nGod in it.\" Man has fallen from his high estate through ignorance and\ninexperience, through seeking separation, taking the part for the whole,\ndesiring the knowledge of good and evil as separate things. The\nassertion of self is thus the root of all evil; for as soon as the will\nof man \"turns to itself, and would, as it were, have a Sound of its own,\nit breaks off from the divine harmony, and falls into the misery of its\nown discord.\" For it is the state of our will that makes the state of\nour life. Hence, by the \"fall,\" man's standpoint has been dislocated\nfrom centre to circumference, and he lives in a false imagination. Every\nquality is equally good, for there is nothing evil in God from whom all\ncomes; but evil appears to be through separation. Thus strength and\ndesire in the divine nature are necessary and magnificent qualities, but\nwhen, as in the creature, they are separated from love, they appear as\nevil.[34] The analogy of the fruit is, in this connection a favourite\none with both Law and Boehme. When a fruit is unripe (i.e. incomplete)\nit is sour, bitter, astringent, unwholesome; but when it has been longer\nexposed to the sun and air it becomes sweet, luscious, and good to eat.\nYet it is the same fruit, and the astringent qualities are not lost or\ndestroyed, but transmuted and enriched, and are thus the main cause of\nits goodness.[35] The only way to pass from this condition of\n\"bitterness\" to ripeness, from this false imagination to the true one,\nis the way of death. We must die to what we are before we can be born\nanew; we must die to the things of this world to which we cling, and for\nwhich we desire and hope, and we must turn towards God. This should be\nthe daily, hourly exercise of the mind, until the whole turn and bent of\nour spirit \"points as constantly to God as the needle touched with the\nloadstone does to the north.\"[36] To be alive in God, before you are\ndead to your own nature, is \"a thing as impossible in itself, as for a\ngrain of wheat to be alive before it dies.\"\n\nThe root of all, then, is the will or desire. This realisation of the\nmomentous quality of the will is the secret of every religious mystic,\nthe hunger of the soul, as Law calls it, is the first necessity, and all\nelse will follow.[37] It is the seed of everything that can grow in us;\n\"it is the only workman in nature, and everything is its work;\" it is\nthe true magic power. And this will or desire is always active; every\nman's life is a continual state of prayer, and if we are not praying for\nthe things of God, we are praying for _something else_.[38] For prayer\nis but the desire of the soul. Our imaginations and desires are,\ntherefore, the greatest realities we have, and we should look closely to\nwhat they are.[39]\n\nIt is essential to the understanding of Law, as of Boehme, to remember\nhis belief in the reality and actuality of the oneness of nature and of\nlaw.[40] Nature is God's great Book of Revelation, for it is nothing\nelse but God's own outward manifestation of what He inwardly is, and can\ndo.... The mysteries of religion, therefore, are no higher, nor deeper\nthan the mysteries of nature.[41] God Himself is subject to this law.\nThere is no question of God's mercy or of His wrath,[42] for it is an\neternal principle that we can only receive what we are capable of\nreceiving; and to ask why one person gains no help from the mercy and\ngoodness of God while another does gain help is \"like asking why the\nrefreshing dew of heaven does not do that to the flint which it does to\nthe vegetable plant.\"[43]\n\nSelf-denial, or mortification of the flesh is not a thing imposed upon\nus by the mere will of God: considered in themselves they have nothing\nof goodness or holiness, but they have their ground and reason in the\nnature of the thing, and are as \"absolutely necessary to make way for\nthe new birth, as the death of the husk and gross part of the grain is\nnecessary to make way for its vegetable life.\"[44]\n\nThese views are clear enough, but the more mystical ones, such as those\nwhich Law and Boehme held, for instance, about fire, can only be\nunderstood in the light of this living unity throughout nature,\nhumanity, and divinity.\n\n     \"Everything in temporal Nature,\" says Law, \"is descended out of\n     that which is eternal, and stands as a palpable, visible Outbirth\n     of it: ... Fire and Light and Air in this World are not only a true\n     Resemblance of the Holy Trinity in Unity, but are the Trinity\n     itself in its most outward, lowest kind of Existence or\n     Manifestation.... Fire compacted, created, separated from Light and\n     Air, is the Elemental Fire of this World: Fire uncreated,\n     uncompacted, unseparated from Light and Air, is the heavenly Fire\n     of Eternity: Fire kindled in any material Thing is only Fire\n     breaking out of its created, compacted state; it is nothing else\n     but the awakening the Spiritual Properties of that Thing, which\n     being thus stirred up, strive to get rid of that material Creation\n     under which they are imprisoned ... and were not these spiritual\n     Properties imprisoned in Matter, no material Thing could be made to\n     burn.... Fire is not, cannot be a material Thing, it only makes\n     itself visible and sensible by the Destruction of Matter.\"[45] \"If\n     you ask what Fire is in its first true and unbeginning State, not\n     yet entered into any Creature, It is the Power and Strength, the\n     Glory and Majesty of eternal Nature.... If you ask what Fire is in\n     its own spiritual Nature, it is merely a _Desire_, and has no other\n     Nature than that of a _working Desire_, which is continually its\n     _own Kindler_.\" [46]\n\nAll life is a kindled fire in a variety of states, and every dead,\ninsensitive thing is only dead because its fire is quenched or\ncompressed, as in the case of a flint, which is in a state of death\n\"because its fire is bound, compacted, shut up and imprisoned,\" but a\nsteel struck against it, shows that every particle of the flint consists\nof this compacted fire.\n\nBut even as, throughout all nature, a state of death is an imprisoned\nfire, so throughout all nature is there only one way of kindling life.\nYou might as well write the word \"flame\" on the outside of a flint and\nexpect it to emit sparks as to imagine that any speculations of your\nreason will kindle divine life in your soul.\n\n     No; Would you have Fire from a Flint; its House of Death must be\n     shaken, and its Chains of Darkness broken off by the Strokes of a\n     Steel upon it. This must of all Necessity be done to your Soul, its\n     imprisoned Fire must be awakened by the sharp Strokes of Steel, or\n     no true Light of Life can arise in it.[2]\n\nAll life, whether physical or spiritual, means a death to some previous\ncondition, and must be generated in pain. 6 1: _An Appeal, Works_,\nvol. vi. pp. 166. 2 _Ibid._, p, 82.\n\nIf this mystical view of Fire be clear, it will be easy enough to\nfollow what Law says about Light and Darkness, or Air, Water, and Earth,\ninterpreting them all in the same way as \"eternal Things become gross,\nfinite, measurable, divisible, and transitory.\"[47]\n\n_The Spirit of Prayer_ is of all Law's works the one most steeped in\nmystic ardour, and it possesses a charm, a melody of rhythm, and an\nimaginative quality rarely to be found in his earlier work. It should be\nread by those who would see Law under a little known aspect, and who do\nnot realise that we have an English mystic who expresses, with a\nstrength and beauty which Plotinus himself has rarely surpassed, the\nlonging of the soul for union with the Divine.\n\nBurke, Coleridge, and Carlyle are three very different writers who are\nalike in the mystical foundations of their belief, and who, through\ntheir writings, for over a hundred years in England carry on the\nmystical attitude and diffuse much mystical thought.\n\nBurke, the greatest and most philosophic of English statesmen, was so\nlargely because of his mystic spirit and imagination. Much of the\ngreatness of his political pamphlets and speeches and of their enduring\nvalue is owing to the fact that his arguments are based on a sense of\noneness and continuity, of oneness in the social organism and of\ncontinuity in the spirit which animates it. He believes in a life in the\nUniverse, in a divine order, mysterious and inscrutable in origins and\nin ends, of which man and society are a part.\n\nThis society is linked together in mutual service from the lowest to the\nhighest. \"Society is indeed a contract,\" he says in a memorable passage,\n\n     It is a partnership in all science; a partnership in all art; a\n     partnership in every virtue, and in all perfection. As the ends of\n     such a partnership cannot be obtained in many generations, it\n     becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but\n     between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are\n     to be born. Each contract of each particular state is but a clause\n     in the great prim\u00e6val contract of eternal society, linking the\n     lower with the higher natures, connecting the visible and invisible\n     world, according to a fixed compact sanctioned by the inviolable\n     oath which holds all physical and all moral natures, each in their\n     appointed place.\n\nThese are strange words for an English statesman to address to the\nEnglish public in the year 1790; the thought they embody seems more in\nkeeping with its surroundings when we hear it thundered out anew forty\nyears later by the raw Scotch preacher-philosopher in the chapter he\ncalls \"Organic Filaments\" in his odd but strangely stirring mystical\nrhapsody, _Sartor Resartus_.\n\nIt is on this belief of oneness, this interrelationship and\ninterdependence that all Burke's deepest practical wisdom is based. It\nis on this he makes his appeal for high principle and noble example to\nthe great families with hereditary trusts and fortunes, who, he says, he\nlooks on as the great oaks that shade a country and perpetuate their\nbenefits from generation to generation.\n\nThis imaginative belief in the reality of a central spiritual life is\nalways accompanied, whether definitely expressed or not, with a belief\nin the value of particulars, of the individual, as opposed to general\nstatements and abstract philosophy. The mystic, who believes in an\ninward moulding spirit, necessarily believes that all reforms must come\nfrom within, and that, as Burke points out in the _Present Discontents_,\ngood government depends not upon laws but upon individuals. Blake, in a\ncharacteristic phrase, says: \"He who would do good to another must do it\nin minute particulars; general good is the plea of the hypocrite,\nflatterer, and scoundrel.\" This sums up the essence of the social\nphilosophy of these three thinkers, as seen by Burke's insistence on the\nvalue of concrete details in Coleridge's use of them in his Lay Sermon,\nand in Carlyle's belief in the importance of the single individual life\nin history.\n\nIt is easy to see that Coleridge's attitude of mind and the main lines\nof his philosophy were mystical. From early years, as we know from\nLamb, he was steeped in the writings of the Neo-platonists and these,\ntogether with Boehme, in whom he was much interested, and Schelling,\nstrengthened a type of belief already natural to him.\n\nIn spite of his devotion to the doctrines of Hartley, it is clear from\nhis poetry and letters, that Coleridge very early had doubts concerning\nthe adequacy of the intellect as an instrument for arriving at truth,\nand that at the same time the conviction was slowly gaining ground with\nhim that an act of the will is necessary in order to bring man into\ncontact with reality. Coleridge believed in a Spirit of the universe\nwith which man could come into contact, both directly by desire, and\nalso mediately through the forms and images of nature, and in the\n_Religious Musings_ (1794) we get very early a statement of this\nmystical belief.\n\n    There is one Mind, one omnipresent Mind\n    Omnific. His most holy name is Love.\n\nFrom Him--\n\n    ... we roam unconscious, or with hearts\n    Unfeeling of our universal Sire,\n\nand the greatest thing we can achieve, \"our noon-tide majesty,\" is--\n\n                      to know ourselves\n    Parts and proportions of one wonderous whole!\n\nThe way to attain this knowledge is not by a process of reasoning, but\nby a definite act of will, when the \"drows\u00e9d soul\" begins to feel dim\nrecollections of its nobler nature, and so gradually becomes attracted\nand absorbed to perfect love--\n\n                  and centered there\n    God only to behold, and know, and feel,\n    Till by exclusive consciousness of God\n    All self-annihilated it shall make\n    God its Identity: God all in all!\n\nThis sense of \"oneness,\" with the desire to reach out to it, was very\nstrong with Coleridge in these earlier years, and he writes to Thelwall\nin 1797, \"The universe itself, what but an immense heap of little\nthings?... My mind feels as if it ached to behold and know something\n_great_, something _one_ and _indivisible_.\" He is ever conscious of the\nsymbolic quality of all things by which we are visibly surrounded,\n\n        all that meets the bodily sense I deem\n    Symbolical, one mighty alphabet\n    For infant minds.[48]\n\nTo pierce through the outer covering, and realise the truth which they\nembody, it is necessary to feel as well as to see, and it is the loss of\nthis power of feeling which Coleridge deplores in those bitterly sad\nlines in the _Dejection Ode_ when he gazes \"with how blank an eye\" at\nthe starry heavens, and cries,\n\n    I see, not feel, how beautiful they are!\n\nIt is in this Ode that we find the most complete description in English\nverse of that particular state of depression and stagnation which often\nfollows on great exaltation, and to which the religious mystics have\ngiven the name of the \"dark night of the soul.\" This is an experience,\nnot common to all mystics, but very marked in some, who, like St John of\nthe Cross and Madame Guyon, are intensely devotional and ecstatic. It\nseems to be a well-defined condition of listlessness, apathy, and\n_dryness_, as they call it, not a state of active pain, but of terrible\ninertia, weariness, and incapacity for feeling; \"a wan and heartless\nmood,\" says Coleridge,\n\n    A grief without a pang, void, dark, and drear,\n      A stifled, drowsy, unimpassioned grief,\n      Which finds no natural outlet, no relief,\n        In word, or sigh, or tear.\n\nColeridge's distrust of the intellect as sole guide, and his belief in\nsome kind of intuitional act being necessary to the apprehension of\nreality, which he felt as early as 1794, was strengthened by his study\nof the German transcendental philosophers, and in March 1801 he writes,\n\"My opinion is that deep thinking is attainable only by a man of deep\nfeeling; and that all truth is a species of Revelation.\"\n\nColeridge, following Kant, gave the somewhat misleading name of \"reason\"\n(as opposed to \"understanding\") to the intuitive power by which man\napprehends God directly, and, in his view, imagination is the faculty,\nwhich in the light of this intuitive reason interprets and unifies the\nsymbols of the natural world. Hence its value, for it alone gives man\nthe key\n\n    Of that eternal language, which thy God\n    Utters, who from eternity doth teach\n    Himself in all, and all things in himself.[49]\n\nCarlyle's mysticism is the essence of his being, it flames through his\namazing medley of writings, it guides his studies and his choice of\nsubjects, it unifies and explains his visions, his thought, and his\ndoctrines. His is a mystical attitude and belief of a perfectly simple\nand broad kind, including no abstruse subtleties of metaphysical\nspeculation, as with Coleridge, but based on one or two deeply rooted\nconvictions. This position seems to have been reached by him partly\nthrough intellectual conflict which found relief and satisfaction in the\nview of life taken by Goethe, Fichte, and other German \"transcendental\"\nthinkers; but partly also through a definite psychical experience which\nbefell him in Edinburgh when he was twenty-six, and which from that day\nchanged for him the whole of his outlook on life. He speaks of it\nhimself as \"a Spiritual New-birth, or Baphometic Fire-baptism.\" It came\nto him after a period of great wretchedness, of torture with doubt and\ndespair, and--what is significant--\"during three weeks of total\nsleeplessness.\" These are conditions which would be likely to reduce his\nbody to the state of weakness and sensitiveness which seems often\nantecedent to psychic experience. He has given an account of the\nincident in _Sartor_ (Book ii. chap, vii.), when, he says, \"there rushed\nlike a stream of fire over my whole soul; and I shook base Fear away\nfrom me for ever. I was strong, of unknown strength; a spirit, almost a\ngod.\" The revelation seems to have been of the nature of a certainty and\nassertion of his own inherent divinity, his \"native God-created\nmajesty,\" freedom and potential greatness. This brought with it a\ncharacteristic defiance of untoward outer circumstances which gave him\nstrength and resolution. \"Perhaps,\" he says, \"I directly thereupon began\nto be a man.\"\n\nCarlyle believes that the world and everything in it is the expression\nof one great indivisible Force; that nothing is separate, nothing is\ndead or lost, but that all \"is borne forward on the bottomless shoreless\nflood of Action, and lives through perpetual metamorphoses.\" Everything\nin the world is an embodiment of this great Force, this \"Divine Idea,\"\nhence everything is important and charged with meaning. \"Rightly viewed\nno meanest object is insignificant; all objects are as windows, through\nwhich the philosophic eye looks into Infinitude itself.\"[50]\n\nThe universe is thus the \"living visible garment of God,\" and \"matter\nexists only spiritually,\" \"to represent some Idea, and _body_ it forth.\"\nWe, each of us, are therefore one expression of this central spirit, the\nonly abiding Reality; and so, in turn, everything we know and see is but\nan envelope or clothing encasing something more vital which is invisible\nwithin. Just as books are the most miraculous things men can make,\nbecause a book \"is the _purest_ embodiment a Thought of man can have,\"\nso great men are the highest embodiment of Divine Thought visible to us\nhere. Great men are, as it were, separate phrases, \"inspired texts\" of\nthe great book of revelation, perpetually interpreting and unfolding in\nvarious ways the Godlike to man (_Hero as Man of Letters_, and _Sartor_,\nBook ii. chap. viii.).\n\nFrom this ground-belief spring all Carlyle's views and aims. Hence his\ngospel of hero-worship, for the \"hero\" is the greatest embodied \"Idea\" a\nman can know, he is a \"living light fountain,\" he is \"a man sent hither\nto make the divine mystery more impressively known to us.\" Hence it is\nclear that the first condition of the great man is that he should be\nsincere, that he should _believe_. \"The merit of originality is not\nnovelty: it is sincerity. The believing man is the original man.\" It is\nequally necessary that his admirers should be sincere, they too must\nbelieve, and not only, as Coleridge puts it, \"believe that they\nbelieve.\" No more immoral act can be done by a human creature, says\nCarlyle, than to pretend to believe and worship when he does not.\n\nHence also springs Carlyle's doctrine of work. If man is but the\nmaterial embodiment of a spiritual Idea or Force, then his clear duty is\nto express that Force within him to the utmost of his power. It is what\nhe is here for, and only so can he bring help and light to his\nfellow-men.[51] And Carlyle, with Browning, believes that it is not the\nactual deeds accomplished that matter, no man may judge of these, for\n\"man is the spirit he worked in; not what he did, but what he became.\"\n\n\n\n\nChapter V\n\nDevotional and Religious Mystics\n\n\n\nAll mystics are devotional and all are religious in the truest sense of\nthe terms. Yet it seems legitimate to group under this special heading\nthose writers whose views are expressed largely in the language of the\nChristian religion, as is the case with our earliest mystics, with\nCrashaw and Francis Thompson and it applies in some measure to Blake.\nBut beyond this, it seems, in more general terms, to apply specially to\nthose who are so conscious of God that they seem to live in His\npresence, and who are chiefly concerned with approaching Him, not by way\nof Love, Beauty, Wisdom, or Nature, but directly, through purgation and\nadoration.\n\nThis description, it is obvious, though it fits fairly well the other\nwriters here included, by no means suffices for Blake. For he possessed\nin addition a philosophy, a system, and a profound scheme of the\nuniverse revealed to him in vision. But within what category could Blake\nbe imprisoned? He outsoars them all and includes them all. We can only\nsay that the dominant impression he leaves with us that is of his\nvivid, intimate consciousness of the Divine presence and his attitude of\ndevotion.\n\nWe have seen that the earliest mystical thought came into this country\nby way of the writings of \"Dionysius\" and of the Victorines (Hugh and\nRichard of St Victor), and it is this type of thought and belief cast\ninto the mould of the Catholic Church that we find mainly in the little\ngroup of early English mystics, whose writings date from the middle of\nthe thirteenth to the beginning of the fifteenth century.[52]\n\nThese early Catholic mystics are interesting from a psychological point\nof view, and they are often subtle exponents of the deepest mystical\ntruths and teachings, and in some cases this is combined with great\nliterary power and beauty.\n\nOne of the earliest examples of this thought in English literature is\nthe tender and charming lyric by Thomas de Hales, written probably\nbefore 1240. Here is perhaps the first expression in our poetry of\npassionate yearning of the soul towards Christ as her true lover, and of\nthe joy of mystic union with Him. A maid of Christ, says the poet, has\nbegged him to \"wurche a luve ron\" (make a love-song), which he does; and\npoints out to her that this world's love is false and fickle, and that\nworldly lovers shall pass away like a wind's blast.\n\n    Hwer is Paris and Heleyne\n      That weren so bright and feyre on bleo:\n    Amadas, Tristram and Dideyne\n      Yseud\u00e9 and all\u00e9 theo:\n    Ector with his scharp\u00e9 meyne\n      And Cesar riche of wor[l]des feo?\n    Heo beoth iglyden ut of the reyne,\n      So the schef is of the cleo.\n\nAs the corn from the hill-side, Paris and Helen and all bright lovers\nhave passed away, and it is as if they had never lived.\n\nBut, maid, if you want a lover, he continues, I can direct you to one,\nthe fairest, truest, and richest in the whole world. Henry, King of\nEngland, is his vassal, and to thee, maid, this lover sends a message\nand desires to know thee.\n\n    Mayde to the he send his sonde\n    And wilneth for to beo the cuth.\n\nAnd so the poem goes on to express in simple terms of earthly love, the\npassionate delight and joy and peace of the soul in attaining to union\nwith her God, in whose dwelling is perfect bliss and safety.\n\nThis poem is a delicate example of what is called \"erotic mysticism,\"\nthat is the love and attraction of the soul for God, and of God for the\nsoul, expressed in the terms of the love between man and woman. It is a\ntype of expression characteristic of the great mystics of the Catholic\nChurch, especially in the Middle Ages,[53] and we find a good deal of it\nin our earliest mystical writers. One of the most charming examples of\nit other than this lyric, is the chapter \"Of Love\" in the _Ancren\nRiwle_, or Rule for Anchoresses, written probably early in the\nthirteenth century. An account is there given, quite unsurpassed for\ndelicate beauty, of the wooing of the soul by God.[54] On the whole,\nhowever, this type of mysticism is rare in England, and we scarcely meet\nit again after these early writers until we come to the poems of\nCrashaw. The finest expression of it is the Song of Solomon, and it is\neasy to see that such a form of symbolism is specially liable to\ndegradation, and is open to grave dangers, which it has not always\nescaped. Yet, in no other terms known to man is it possible so fully to\nexpress the sense of insatiable craving and desire as well as the\nrapture of intimate communion felt by the mystic towards his God, as in\nthe language of that great passion which, in its purest form, is the\nbest thing known to man and his highest glory. \"I saw Him, and sought\nHim, I had Him and I wanted Him.\" Could any words more completely\nexpress the infinity of love's desire, ever unsatisfied even in\npossession, than does this love-cry from the heart of Julian the\nanchoress of Norwich?\n\nThe intensity and freshness of religious feeling of a mystical type in\nEngland in the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries are often\nnot realised, partly owing to the fact that much of the religious\nwriting of this time is still in manuscript. The country was full of\ndevotees who had taken religious vows, which they fulfilled either in\nthe many monasteries and convents, or often in single cells, as \"hermit\"\nor \"anchoress.\" Here they lived a life devoted to contemplation and\nprayer, and to the spiritual assistance of those who sought them out.\n\nThe hermits, of whom there were a large number, were apparently free to\nmove from one neighbourhood to another, but the woman recluse, or\n\"anchoress,\" seldom or never left the walls of her cell, a little house\nof two or three rooms built generally against the church wall, so that\none of her windows could open into the church, and another, veiled by a\ncurtain, looked on to the outer world, where she held converse with and\ngave counsel to those who came to see her. Sometimes a little group of\nrecluses lived together, like those three sisters of Dorsetshire for\nwhom the _Ancren Riwle_ was written, a treatise which gives us so many\nhomely details of this type of life.\n\nRichard Rolle (_c._ 1300-1349), of Hampole, near Doncaster, and the\nLady Julian, a Benedictine nun of Norwich (1342-_c._1413), are the two\nmost interesting examples of the medi\u00e6val recluse in England. Both seem\nto have had a singular charm of character and a purity of mystical\ndevotion which has impressed itself on their writings. Richard Rolle,\nwho entered upon a hermit's life at nineteen on leaving Oxford, had\ngreat influence both through his life and work on the whole group of\nfourteenth-century religious writers, and so on the thought of medi\u00e6val\nEngland. His contemporaries thought him mad, they jeered at him and\nabused him, but he went quietly on his way, preaching and writing. Love\nforced him to write; love, he said, gave him wisdom and subtlety, and he\npreached a religion of love. Indeed the whole of his work is a symphony\nof feeling, a song of Love, and forms a curious reaction against the\nexaltation of reason and logic in scholasticism. He wrote a large number\nof treatises and poems, both in Latin and English, lyrical songs and\nalliterative homilies, burning spiritual rhapsodies and sound practical\nsermons, all of which were widely known and read. Certain points about\nRolle are of special interest and distinguish him from other mystics and\nseers. One is that for him the culminating mystical experience took the\nform of melody, rhythm, harmony. He is the most musical of mystics, and\nwhere others \"see\" or \"feel\" Reality, he \"hears\" it. Hence his\ndescription of his soul's adventures is peculiarly beautiful, he thinks\nin images and symbols of music, and in his writings we find some of the\nmost exquisite passages in the whole literature of mysticism, veritable\nsongs of spiritual joy. In the _Fire of Love_, perhaps the finest of his\nmore mystical works, he traces in detail his journey along the upward\npath. This is very individual, and it differs in some important respects\nfrom other similar records. He passed through the stage of \"purgation,\"\nof struggle between the flesh and spirit, of penitence and aspiration,\nthrough \"illumination,\" until he reached, after nearly three years, the\nthird stage of contemplation of God through love.[55]\n\nIn this condition, after about a year, \"the door of heaven yet biding\nopen,\" he experienced the three phases to which he gives the names of\n\"calor, canor, dulcor,\" heat, song, and sweetness. \"Heat soothly I call\nwhen the mind truly is kindled in Love Everlasting, and the heart on the\nsame manner to burn not hopingly, but verily is felt.\"[56]\n\nThis \"burning\" seems to have been for him a real physical sensation, a\nbodily condition induced by the adventure of the spirit. This is not\nunusual in mystical states, and possibly the cryptic notes made by\nPascal record a similar experience.[57] He continued in this warmth for\nnine months, when suddenly he felt and heard the \"canor,\" the \"spiritual\nmusic,\" the \"invisible melody\" of heaven. Here is his description of his\nchange from \"burning love\" to the state of \"songful love.\"\n\n     Whilst ... I sat in chapel, in the night, before supper, as I my\n     psalms sung, as it were the sound of readers or rather singers\n     about me I beheld. Whilst also, praying to heaven, with all desire\n     I took heed, suddenly, in what manner I wot not, in me the sound of\n     song I felt; and likeliest heavenly melody I took, with me dwelling\n     in mind. Forsooth my thought continually to mirth of song was\n     changed: and as it were the same that loving I had thought, and in\n     prayers and psalms had said, the same in sound I showed, and so\n     forth with [began] to sing that [which] before I had said, and from\n     plenitude of inward sweetness I burst forth, privily indeed, alone\n     before my Maker.[58]\n\nThe sweetness of this inward spiritual song is beyond any sound that may\nbe heard with bodily ears, even lovers can only catch snatches of it.\n\"Worldly lovers soothly words or ditties of our song may know, for the\nwords they read: but the tone and sweetness of that song they may not\nlearn.\"[59] The final stage of \"sweetness\" seems really to include the\nother two, it is their completion and fruition. The first two, says\nRolle, are gained by devotion, and out of them springs the third.[60]\nRolle's description of it, of the all-pervading holy joy, rhythm, and\nmelody, when the soul, \"now become as it were a living pipe,\" is caught\nup into the music of the spheres, \"and in the sight of God ... joying\nsounds,\"[61] deserves to be placed beside what is perhaps the most\nmagnificent passage in all mystical literature, where Plotinus tells us\nof the choral dance of the soul about her God.[62]\n\nEnough has been said to show that Rolle is a remarkable individual, and\none of the most poetic of the English religious mystical writers, and it\nis regrettable that some of his other works are not more easily\naccessible. Unfortunately, the poem with which his name is generally\nassociated, _The Pricke of Conscience_, is entirely unlike all his other\nwork, both in form and matter. It is a long, prosaic and entirely\nunmystical homily in riming couplets, of a very ordinary medi\u00e6val type,\nstirring men's minds to the horrors of sin by dwelling on the pains of\npurgatory and hell. It would seem almost certain, on internal evidence,\nthat the same hand cannot have written it and the _Fire of Love_, and\nrecent investigation appears to make it clear that Rolle's part in it,\nif any, was merely of the nature of compilation or translation of some\nother work, possibly by Grosseteste.[63]\n\nOf the life of the Lady Julian we know very little, except that she was\nalmost certainly a Benedictine nun, and that she lived for many years in\nan anchoress's cell close to the old church of St Julian at Conisford,\nnear Norwich. But her character and charm are fully revealed in the\nlittle book she has left of _Revelations of Divine Love_, which contains\na careful account of a definite psychological experience through which\nshe passed on the 8th day of May 1373, when she was thirty years of age.\nShe adds to this record of fact certain commentaries and explanations\nwhich, she says, have been taught her gradually in the course of the\nsubsequent twenty years. This experience, which lasted altogether\nbetween five and six hours, was preceded by a seven days' sickness most\nvividly described, ending in a semi-rigidity of the body as if it were\nalready half dead, and it took the form of sixteen \"Shewings\" or\n\"Visions.\" These, she says, reached her in three ways, \"by bodily sight,\nby word formed in mine understanding\" (verbal messages which took form\nin her mind), \"and by spiritual sight.\" But of this last, she adds, \"I\nmay never fully tell it.\"[64] It is impossible here to do justice to\nthis little book, for it is one of the most important documents in the\nhistory of mysticism. There is no mention in it of any preliminary\n\"purgative\" stage, nor of any ultimate experience of ecstasy; it is\nsimply--if one may so put it--a narrative of certain intimate talks with\nGod, once granted, when, during a few hours of the writer's life, He\nexplained various difficulties and made clear to her certain truths. The\nimpression left of the nearness of God to the soul was so vivid and\nsustaining, that it is not possible to read the record of it, even now,\nacross six hundred years, without feeling strangely stirred by the\nwriter's certainty and joy.\n\nHer vision is of Love: Love is its meaning, and it was shown her for\nLove; she sees that God is Love and that God and man are one. \"God is\nnearer to us than our own soul, for man is God, and God is in all.\" If we\ncould only know ourselves, our trouble would be cleared away, but it is\neasier to come to the knowing of God than to know our own soul.[65] \"Our\npassing life here that we have in our sense-soul knoweth not what our\nSelf is,\" and the cause of our disease is that we rest in little things\nwhich can never satisfy us, for \"our Soul may never have rest in things\nthat are beneath itself.\" She actually saw God enfolding all things.\n\"For as the body is clad in the cloth, and the flesh in the skin, and\nthe bones in the flesh, and the heart in the whole, so are we, soul and\nbody, clad in the Goodness of God, and enclosed.\" She further had sight\nof all things that are made, and her description of this \"Shewing\" is so\nbeautiful and characteristic that it must be given in her own words.\n\n     \"In this same time our Lord shewed me a spiritual sight of His\n     homely loving.... He shewed me a little thing, the quantity of an\n     hazel-nut, in the palm of my hand; and it was as round as a ball. I\n     looked thereupon with the eye of my understanding, and thought:\n     _What may this be_? And it was answered generally thus: _It is all\n     that is made_. I marvelled how it might last, for methought it\n     might suddenly have fallen to naught for little[ness]. And I was\n     answered in my understanding: _It lasteth, and ever shall [last]\n     for that God loveth it_. And so All-thing hath the Being by the\n     love of God.\" Later, she adds, \"Well I wot that heaven and earth,\n     and all that is made is great and large, fair and good; but the\n     cause why it shewed so little to my sight was for that I saw it in\n     the presence of Him that is the Maker of all things: for to a soul\n     that seeth the Maker of all, all that is made seemeth full little.\"\n     \"In this Little Thing,\" she continues, \"I saw three properties. The\n     first is that God made it, the second is that God loveth it, the\n     third, that God keepeth it. But what is to me verily the Maker, the\n     Keeper, and the Lover--I cannot tell; for till I am Substantially\n     oned to Him, I may never have full rest nor very bliss: that is to\n     say, till I be so fastened to Him, that there is right nought that\n     is made betwixt my God and me\" (_Revelations_, pp. 10, 18).\n\nJulian's vision with regard to sin is of special interest. The problem\nof evil has never been stated in terser or more dramatic form.\n\n     After this I saw God in a Point, that is to say, in mine\n     understanding which sight I saw that He is in all things. I beheld\n     and considered, seeing and knowing in sight, with a soft dread, and\n     thought: _What is sin?_ (_Ibid_, p. 26).\n\nHere is the age-old difficulty. God, so the mystic sees, is \"in the\nMid-point of all thing,\" and yet, as Julian says, it is \"dertain He\ndoeth no sin.\" The solution given to her is that \"sin is no deed,\" it\n\"hath no part of being,\" and it can only be known by the pain it is\ncause of. Sin is a negation, a failure, an emptiness of love, but pain\n_is_ something it is a purification. Sin brings with it pain, \"to me was\nshewed no harder hell than sin\"; but we must go through the pain in\norder to learn, without it we could never have the bliss. As a wave\ndraws back from the shore, in order to return again with fuller force;\nso sin, the lack of love, is permitted for a time, in order that an\nopening be made for an inrush of the Divine Love, fuller and more\ncomplete than would otherwise be possible. It is in some such way as\nthis, dimly shadowed, that it was shown to Julian that sin and pain are\nnecessary parts of the scheme of God. Hence God does not blame us for\nsin, for it brings its own blame or punishment with it, nay more, \"sin\nshall be no shame to man, but worship,\" a bold saying, which none but a\nmystic would dare utter. When God seeth our sin, she says, and our\ndespair in pain, \"His love excuseth us, and of His great courtesy He\ndoeth away all our blame, and beholdeth us with ruth and pity as\nchildren innocent and unloathful.\"\n\nIt would be pleasant to say more of Julian, but perhaps her own words\nhave sufficed to show that here we are dealing with one of the great\nmystics of the world. Childlike and yet rashly bold, deeply spiritual,\nyet intensely human, \"a simple creature, unlettered,\" yet presenting\nsolutions of problems which have racked humanity, she inherits the true\nparadoxical nature of the mystic, to which is added a beauty and\ndelicacy of thought and expression all her own.\n\nThere were many other mystical works written about this time in England.\nOf these the best known and the finest is _The Scale, or Ladder, of\nPerfection_, by Walter Hylton, the Augustinian, and head of a house of\ncanons at Thurgarton, near Newark, who died in 1396. This is a practical\nand scientific treatise of great beauty on the spiritual life.[66] An\ninteresting group of writings are the five little treatises, almost\ncertainly by one author (_c._ 1350-1400), to be found in Harleian 674,\nand other MSS. Their names are _The Cloud of Unknowing, The Epistle of\nPrayer, The Epistle of Discretion, The Treatise of Discerning Spirits_,\nand _The Epistle of Privy Counsel_. We find here for the first time in\nEnglish the influence and spirit of Dionysius, and it is probably to the\nsame unknown writer we owe the first (very free) translation of the\n_Mystical Theology_ of Dionysius, _Deonise Hid Divinite_, which is bound\nup with these other manuscripts.\n\nThese little tracts are written by a practical mystic, one who was able\nto describe with peculiar accuracy and vividness the physical and\npsychological sensations accompanying mystical initiation. _The Cloud of\nUnknowing_ is an application in simple English of the Dionysian teaching\nof concentration joined to the practice of contemplation taught by\nRichard of St Victor, and it describes very clearly the preliminary\nstruggles and bewilderment of the soul. The _Epistle of Privy Counsel_\n(still in MS.) is the most advanced in mystical teaching: the writer in\nit tries to explain very intimately the nature of \"onehede with God,\"\nand to give instruction in simple and yet deeply subtle terms as to the\nmeans for attaining this.\n\nThere is a mystical strain in other writings of this time, the most\nnotable from the point of view of literature being in the\nfourteenth-century alliterative poem of _Piers the Plowman_.[67] This is\nmystical throughout in tone, more especially in the idea of the journey\nof the soul in search of Truth, only to find, after many dangers and\ndisciplines and adventures, that--\n\n    If grace graunte the to go in this wise,\n    Thow shalt see in thi-selve Treuthe sitte in thine herte\n    In a cheyne of charyte as thow a childe were.[68]\n\nMoreover, the vision of Dowel, Dobet, and Dobest, bears a definite\nanalogy to the three stages of the mystic's path, as will be seen if the\ndescription of the qualities of these three are examined, as they are\ngiven in B., Passus viii. 11. 78-102.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nCrashaw, George Herbert, and Christopher Harvey all alike sound the\npersonal note in their religious poems. All three writers describe the\nlove of the soul for God in the terms of passionate human love: Crashaw\nwith an ardour which has never been surpassed, Herbert with a homely\nintimacy quite peculiar to him, and Christopher Harvey with a point and\nepigrammatic setting which serve only to enhance the deep feeling of\nthe thought.\n\nIn many a lyric of flaming passion Crashaw expresses his love-longing\nfor his God, and he describes in terms only matched by his spiritual\ndescendant, Francis Thompson, the desire of God to win the human soul.\n\n    Let not my Lord, the mighty lover\n    Of soules, disdain that I discover\n       The hidden art\n    Of his high stratagem to win your heart,\n       It was his heavnly art\n       Kindly to crosse you\n       In your mistaken love,\n       That, at the next remove\n       Thence he might tosse you\n       And strike your troubled heart\n          Home to himself.[69]\n\nThe main feature of Herbert's poetry is the religious love lyric, the\ncry of the individual soul to God. This is the mystical quality in his\nverse, which is quieter and far less musical than Crashaw's, but which\npossesses at times a tender fragrance and freshness, as in the little\npoem _Love_.\n\nChristopher Harvey, the friend of Izaak Walton and the admirer of\nHerbert, has in his poems some lines which breathe almost as rapturous a\npassion of spiritual love as anything in Crashaw. Such is his epigram\non the _Insatiableness of the Heart_.\n\n    The whole round world is not enough to fill\n    The heart's three corners; but it craveth still.\n    Onely the Trinity, that made it, can\n    Suffice the vast-triangled heart of man.[70]\n\nOr again, in a later epigram in the same poem (_The School of the\nHeart_), he puts the main teaching of Plotinus and of all mystics into\nfour pregnant lines--\n\n    My busie stirring heart, that seekes the best,\n    Can find no place on earth wherein to rest;\n    For God alone, the Author of its blisse,\n    Its only rest, its onely center is.\n\nBut it is Crashaw who, of these three, shares in fullest measure the\npassion of the great Catholic mystics, and more especially of St Teresa,\nwhom he seems almost to have worshipped. His hymn to her \"name and\nhonor\" is one of the great English poems; it burns with spiritual flame,\nit soars with noble desire. Near the beginning of it, Crashaw has, in\nsix simple lines, pictured the essential mystic attitude of action, not\nnecessarily or consciously accompanied by either a philosophy or a\ntheology. He is speaking of Teresa's childish attempt to run away and\nbecome a martyr among the Moors.\n\n    She never undertook to know\n    What death with love should have to doe;\n    Nor has she e're yet understood\n    Why to shew love, she should shed blood\n    Yet though she cannot tell you why,\n    She can LOVE, and she can DY.\n\nSpiritual love has never been more rapturously sung than in this\nmarvellous hymn. Little wonder that it haunted Coleridge's memory, and\nthat its deep emotion and rich melody stimulated his poet's ear and\nimagination to write _Christabel_.[71] Crashaw's influence also on\nPatmore, more especially on the _Sponsa Dei_, as well as later on\nFrancis Thompson, is unmistakable.\n\nWilliam Blake is one of the great mystics of the world; and he is by far\nthe greatest and most profound who has spoken in English. Like Henry\nMore and Wordsworth, he lived in a world of glory, of spirit and of\nvision, which, for him, was the only real world. At the age of four he\nsaw God looking in at the window, and from that time until he welcomed\nthe approach of death by singing songs of joy which made the rafters\nring, he lived in an atmosphere of divine illumination. The material\nfacts of his career were simple and uneventful. He was an engraver by\nprofession, poet and painter by choice, mystic and seer by nature. From\nthe outer point of view his life was a failure. He was always crippled\nby poverty, almost wholly unappreciated in the world of art and letters\nof his day, consistently misunderstood even by his best friends, and\npronounced mad by those who most admired his work. Yet, like all true\nmystics, he was radiantly happy and serene; rich in the midst of\npoverty. For he lived and worked in a world, and amongst a company,\nlittle known of ordinary men:--\n\n    With a blue sky spread over with wings,\n    And a mild Sun that mounts & sings;\n    With trees & fields full of Fairy elves,\n    And little devils who fight for themselves--\n\n           *       *       *       *       *\n\n    With Angels planted in Hawthorn bowers,\n    And God Himself in the passing hours.[72]\n\nIt is not surprising that he said, in speaking of Lawrence and other\npopular artists who sometimes patronisingly visited him, \"They pity me,\nbut 'tis they are the just objects of pity, I possess my visions and\npeace. They have bartered their birthright for a mess of pottage.\" The\nstrength of his illumination at times intoxicated him with joy, as he\nwrites to Hayley (October 23, 1804) after a recurrence of vision which\nhad lapsed for some years, \"Dear Sir, excuse my enthusiasm or rather\nmadness, for I am really drunk with intellectual vision whenever I take\na pencil or graver into my hand.\" This is the \"divine madness\" of which\nPlato speaks, the \"inebriation of Reality,\" the ecstasy which makes the\npoet \"drunk with life.\"[73]\n\nIn common with other mystics, with Boehme, St Teresa, and Madame Guyon,\nBlake claimed that much of his work was written under direct\ninspiration, that it was an automatic composition, which, whatever its\nsource, did not come from the writer's normal consciousness. In speaking\nof the prophetic book _Milton_, he says--\n\n     I have written this poem from immediate dictation, twelve or\n     sometimes twenty or thirty lines at a time, without pre-meditation\n     and even against my will. The time it has taken in writing was thus\n     rendered non-existent, and an immense poem exists which seems to be\n     the labour of a long life, all produced without labour or study.\n\nWhatever may be their source, all Blake's writings are deeply mystical\nin thought, and symbolic in expression, and this is true of the\n(apparently) simple little _Songs of Innocence_, no less than of the\ngreat, and only partially intelligible, prophetic books. To deal at all\nadequately with these works, with the thought and teaching they contain,\nand the method of clothing it, would necessitate a volume, if not a\nsmall library, devoted to that purpose. It is possible, however, to\nindicate certain fundamental beliefs and assertions which lie at the\nbase of Blake's thought and of his very unusual attitude towards life,\nand which, once grasped, make clear a large part of his work. It must be\nremembered that these assertions were for him not matters of belief, but\nof passionate knowledge--he was as sure of them as of his own existence.\n\nBlake founds his great myth on his perception of unity at the heart of\nthings expressing itself in endless diversity. \"God is in the lowest\neffects as [in] the highest causes. He is become a worm that he may\nnourish the weak.... Everything on earth is the word of God, and in its\nessence is God.\"[74]\n\nIn the _Everlasting Gospel_, Blake emphasises, with more than his usual\namount of paradox, the inherent divinity of man. God, speaking to Christ\nas the highest type of humanity, says--\n\n    If thou humblest thyself, thou humblest me.\n    Thou also dwellst in Eternity.\n    Thou art a man: God is no more:\n    Thy own humanity learn to adore,\n    For that is my Spirit of Life.[75]\n\nSimilarly the union of man with God is the whole gist of that\napparently most chaotic of the prophetic books, _Jerusalem_.\n\nThe proof of the divinity of man, it would seem, lies in the fact that\nhe desires God, for he cannot desire what he has not seen. This view is\nsummed up in the eight sentences which form the little book (about 2\ninches long by 1\u00bd inches broad) in the British Museum, _Of Natural\nReligion_. Here are four of them.\n\n     Man's perceptions are not bounded by organs of perception, he\n     perceives more than sense (tho' ever so acute) can discover.\n\n     None could have other than natural or organic thoughts if he had\n     none but organic perceptions.\n\n     Man's desires are limited by his perceptions, none can desire what\n     he has not perceiv'd.\n\n     The desires and perceptions of man untaught by anything but organs\n     of sense, must be limited to objects of sense.\n\nThe solution of the difficulty is given in large script on the last of\nthe tiny pages of the volume:\n\n     Therefore God becomes as we are, that we may be as he is.\n\nAccording to Blake, the universe as we know it, is the result of the\nfall of the one life from unity into division. This fall has come about\nthrough man seeking separation, and taking the part for the whole. (See\nJacob Boehme's view, pp. 94, 95 above, which is identical with that of\nBlake.) \"Nature,\" therefore, or the present form of mental existence,\nis the result of a contraction of consciousness or \"selfhood,\" a\ntendency for everything to shrink and contract about its own centre.\nThis condition or \"state\" Blake personifies as \"Urizen\" (=Reason) a\ngreat dramatic figure who stalks through the prophetic books,\nproclaiming himself \"God from Eternity to Eternity,\" taking up now one\ncharacteristic and now another, but ever of the nature of materialism,\nopaqueness, contraction. In the case of man, the result of this\ncontraction is to close him up into separate \"selfhoods,\" so that the\ninlets of communication with the universal spirit have become gradually\nstopped up; until now, for most men, only the five senses (one of the\nleast of the many possible channels of communication) are available for\nthe uses of the natural world. Blake usually refers to this occurrence\nas the \"flood \": that is, the rush of general belief in the five senses\nthat overwhelmed or submerged the knowledge of all other channels of\nwisdom, except such arts as were saved, which are symbolised under the\nnames of Noah (=Imagination) and his sons. He gives a fine account of\nthis in _Europe_ (p. 8), beginning--\n\n    Plac'd in the order of the stars, when the five senses whelm'd\n    In deluge o'er the earth-born man, then turn'd the fluxile eyes\n    Into two stationary orbs, concentrating all things.\n    The ever-varying spiral ascents to the heavens of heavens\n    Were bended downward, and the nostrils' golden gates shut,\n    Turn'd outward, barr'd, and petrify'd against the infinite.\n\nThe only way out of this self-made prison is through the Human\nImagination, which is thus the Saviour of the world. By \"Imagination\"\nBlake would seem to mean all that we include under sympathy, insight,\nidealism, and vision, as opposed to self-centredness, logical argument,\nmaterialism and concrete, scientific fact. For him, Imagination is the\none great reality, in it alone he sees a human faculty that touches both\nnature and spirit, thus uniting them in one. The language of Imagination\nis Art, for it speaks through symbols so that men shut up in their\nselfhoods are thus ever reminded that nature herself is a symbol. When\nthis is once fully realised, we are freed from the delusion imposed upon\nus from without by the seemingly fixed reality of external things. If we\nconsider all material things as symbols, their suggestiveness, and\nconsequently their reality, is continually expanding. \"I rest not from\nmy great task,\" he cries--\n\n    To open the eternal worlds, to open the immortal eyes\n    Of man inwards into the worlds of thought, into eternity,\n    Ever expanding in the bosom of God, the human imagination.\n\nIn Blake's view the qualities most sorely needed by men are not\nrestraint and discipline, obedience or a sense of duty, but love and\nunderstanding. \"Men are admitted into heaven, not because they have\ncurbed and governed their passions, or have no passions, but because\nthey have cultivated their understandings.\" To understand is three parts\nof love, and it is only through Imagination that we _can_ understand. It\nis the lack of imagination that is at the root of all the cruelties and\nall the selfishness in the world. Until we can feel for all that lives,\nBlake says in effect, until we can respond to the joys and sorrows of\nothers as quickly as to our own, our imagination is dull and incomplete:\n\n    Each outcry of the hunted Hare\n    A fibre from the Brain does tear\n    A Skylark wounded in the wing\n    A Cherubim does cease to sing.\n\n    _Auguries of Innocence._\n\nWhen we feel like this, we will go forth to help, not because we are\nprompted by duty or religion or reason, but because the cry of the weak\nand ignorant so wrings our heart that we cannot leave it unanswered.\nCultivate love and understanding then, and all else will follow. Energy,\ndesire, intellect; dangerous and deadly forces in the selfish and\nimpure, become in the pure in heart the greatest forces for good. What\nmattered to Blake, and the only thing that mattered, was the purity of\nhis soul, the direction of his will or desire, as Law and Boehme would\nhave put it. Once a man's desire is in the right direction, the more he\ngratifies it the better;\n\n    Abstinence sows sand all over\n      The ruddy limbs & flaming hair,\n    But Desire Gratified\n      Plants fruits of life & beauty there.[76]\n\nOnly an extraordinarily pure nature or a singularly abandoned one could\nconfidently proclaim such a dangerous doctrine. But in Blake's creed, as\nSwinburne has said, \"the one thing unclean is the belief in\nuncleanness.\"\n\nIt is easy to see that this faculty which Blake calls \"Imagination\"\nentails of itself naturally and inevitably the Christian doctrine of\nself-sacrifice. It is in _Milton_ that Blake most fully develops his\ngreat dogma of the eternity of sacrifice. \"One must die for another\nthrough all eternity\"; only thus can the bonds of \"selfhood\" be broken.\nMilton, just before his renunciation, cries--\n\n    I will go down to self-annihilation and eternal death\n    Lest the Last Judgment come and find me unannihilate,\n    And I be seiz'd and giv'n into the hands of my own Selfhood.\n\nFor, according to Blake, personal love or selfishness is the one sin\nwhich defies redemption. This whole passage in _Milton_ (Book i., pp.\n12, 13) well repays study, for one feels it to be alive with meaning,\nholding symbol within symbol. Blake's symbolism, and his fourfold view\nof nature and of man, is a fascinating if sometimes a despairing study.\nBlake has explained very carefully the way in which the visionary\nfaculty worked in him:--\n\n    What to others a trifle appears\n    Fills me full of smiles or tears;\n    For double the vision my Eyes do see,\n    And a double vision is always with me.\n    With my inward Eye, 'tis an old Man grey,\n    With my outward, a Thistle across my way.\n\n           *       *       *       *       *\n\n    Now I a fourfold vision see,\n    And a fourfold vision is given to me;\n    'Tis fourfold in my supreme delight,\n    And threefold in soft Beulah's night,\n    And twofold Always. May God us keep\n    From Single vision & Newton's sleep![77]\n\nHe says twofold always, for everything was of value to Blake as a\nsymbol, as a medium for expressing a still greater thing behind it. It\nwas in this way that he looked at the human body, physical beauty,\nsplendour of colour, insects, animate, states, and emotions, male and\nfemale, contraction and expansion, division and reunion, heaven and\nhell.\n\nWhen his imagination was at its strongest, his vision was fourfold,\ncorresponding to the fourfold division of the Divine Nature, Father,\nSon, Spirit, and the fourth Principle, which may be described as the\nImagination of God, without which manifestation would not be\npossible.[78] These principles, when condensed and limited so as to be\nseen by us, may take the form of Reason, Emotion, Energy and Sensation,\nor, to give them Boehme's names, Contraction, Expansion, Rotation, and\nVegetative life. These, in turn, are associated with the four states of\nhumanity or \"atmospheres,\" the four elements, the four points of the\ncompass, the four senses (taste and touch counting as one), and so on.\nBlake seemed, as it were, to hold his vision in his mind in solution,\nand to be able to condense it into gaseous, liquid, or solid elements at\nwhatever point he willed. Thus we feel that the prophetic books contain\nmeaning within meaning, bearing interpretation from many points of view;\nand to arrive at their full value, we should need to be able--as Blake\nwas--to apprehend all simultaneously,[79] instead of being forced\nlaboriously to trace them out one by one in succession. It is this very\nfaculty of \"fourfold vision\" which gives to these books their\never-changing atmosphere of suggestion, elusive and magical as the\nclouds and colours in a sunset sky, which escape our grasp in the very\neffort to study them. Hence, for the majority even of imaginative\npeople, who possess at the utmost \"double vision,\" they are difficult\nand often wearisome to read. They are so, because the inner, living,\nvibrating ray or thread of connection which evokes these forms and\nbeings in Blake's imagination, is to the ordinary man invisible and\nunfelt; so that the quick leap of the seer's mind from figure to figure,\nand from picture to picture, seems irrational and obscure.\n\nTo this difficulty on the side of the reader, there must in fairness be\nadded certain undeniable limitations on the part of the seer. These are\nprincipally owing to lack of training, and possibly to lack of patience,\nsometimes also it would seem to defective vision. So that his symbols\nare at times no longer true and living, but artificial and confused.\n\nBlake has visions, though clouded and imperfect, of the clashing of\nsystems, the birth and death of universes, the origin and meaning of\ngood and evil, the function and secret correspondences of spirits, of\nstates, of emotions, of passions, and of senses, as well as of all forms\nin earth and sky and sea. This, and much more, he attempts to clothe in\nconcrete forms or symbols, and if he fails at times to be explicit, it\nis conceivable that the fault may lie as much with our density as with\nhis obscurity. Indeed, when we speak of Blake's obscurity, we are\nuncomfortably reminded of Crabb Robinson's naive remark when recording\nBlake's admiration for Wordsworth's _Immortality Ode_: \"The parts ...\nwhich Blake most enjoyed were the most obscure--at all events, those\nwhich I least like and comprehend.\"\n\nBlake's view of good and evil is the characteristically mystical one, in\nhis case much emphasised. The really profound mystical thinker has no\nfear of evil, for he cannot exclude it from the one divine origin, else\nthe world would be no longer a unity but a duality. This difficulty of\n\"good\" and \"evil,\" the crux of all philosophy, has been approached by\nmystical thinkers in various ways (such as that evil is illusion, which\nseems to be Browning's view), but the boldest of them, and notably Blake\nand Boehme, have attacked the problem directly, and carrying mystical\nthought to its logical conclusion, have unhesitatingly asserted that God\nis the origin of Good and Evil alike, that God and the devil, in short,\nare but two sides of the same Force. We have seen how this is worked out\nby Boehme, and that the central point of his philosophy is that all\nmanifestation necessitates opposition. In like manner, Blake's\nstatement, \"Without Contraries is no progression,\" is, in truth, the\nkeynote to all his vision and mythology.\n\n     Attraction and Repulsion, Benson and Energy, Love and Hate, are\n     necessary to Human existence.\n\n     From these contraries spring what the religious call Good and Evil.\n\n     Good is the passive that obeys Reason. Evil is the active springing\n     from Energy. Good is Heaven. Evil is Hell.\n\nWith these startling remarks Blake opens what is the most intelligible\nand concise of all the prophetic books, _The Marriage of Heaven and\nHell_. Swinburne calls it the greatest of Blake's books, and ranks it as\nabout the greatest work \"produced by the eighteenth century in the line\nof high poetry and spiritual speculation.\" We may think Swinburne's\npraise excessive, but at any rate it is well worth reading (_Essay on\nBlake_, 1906 edn., pp. 226-252). Certainly, if one work had to be\nselected as representative of Blake, as containing his most\ncharacteristic doctrines clothed in striking form, this is the book to\nbe chosen. Place a copy of _The Marriage of Heaven and Hell_ in the\nhands of any would-be Blake student (an original or facsimile copy,\nneedless to say, containing Blake's exquisite designs, else the book is\nshorn of half its force and beauty); let him ponder it closely, and he\nwill either be repelled and shocked, in which case he had better read no\nmore Blake, or he will be strangely stirred and thrilled, he will be\ntouched with a spark of the fire from Blake's spirit which quickens its\nwords as the leaping tongues of flame illuminate its pages. The kernel\nof the book, and indeed of all Blake's message, is contained in the\nfollowing statements on p. 4, headed \"The Voice of the Devil.\"\n\n     All Bibles or sacred codes have been the causes of the following\n     Errors:--\n\n     1. That man has two real existing principles, viz. a Body and a\n     Soul.\n\n     2. That Energy, called Evil, is alone from the Body; and that\n     reason, called Good, is alone from the Soul.\n\n     3. That God will torment Man in Eternity for following his\n     Energies.\n\n     But the following Contraries to these are True:--\n\n     1. Man has no Body distinct from his Soul, for that called Body is\n     a portion of Soul discerned by the five Senses, the chief inlets of\n     Soul in this age.\n\n     2. Energy is the only life and is from the Body, and Reason is the\n     bound or outward circumference of Energy.\n\n     3. Energy is Eternal Delight.\n\nBlake goes on to write down some of the Proverbs which he collected\nwhile walking among the fires of hell. These \"Proverbs of Hell\" fill\nfour pages of the book, and they are among the most wonderful things\nBlake has written. Finished in expression, often little jewels of pure\npoetry, they are afire with thought and meaning, and inexhaustible in\nsuggestion. Taken all together they express in epigrammatic form every\nimportant doctrine of Blake's. Some of them, to be fully understood,\nmust be read in the light of his other work. Thus, \"The road of excess\nleads to the palace of wisdom,\" or, \"If the fool would persist in his\nfolly he would become wise,\" are expressions of the idea constantly\nrecurrent with Blake that evil must be embodied or experienced before it\ncan be rejected.[80] But the greater number of them are quite clear and\npresent no difficulty, as for instance the following:--\n\n     A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees.\n\n     He whose face gives no light shall never become a star.\n\n     No bird soars too high, if he soars with his own wings.\n\n     What is now proved was once only imagined.\n\n     As the air to a bird or the sea to a fish, so is contempt to the\n     contemptible.\n\n     Exuberance is Beauty.\n\n     Everything possible to be believed is an image of truth.\n\nThere are two tendencies of Blake's mind, both mystical--that is, rooted\nin unity--the understanding of which helps, on the one hand, to clear\nmuch in his writing that seems strange and difficult; and, on the\nother, reveals a deep meaning in remarks apparently simple to the point\nof silliness. These are his view of the solidarity of mental and\nspiritual as compared with physical things, and his habit of\nconcentrating a universal truth into some one small fact.\n\nFor Blake, mental and spiritual things are the only real things. Thought\nis more real than action, and spiritual attitude is more real than\nthought. It is the most real thing about us, and it is the only thing\nthat is of any importance. The difference between Blake's attitude and\nthat of the ordinary practical man of the world is summed up in his\ncharacteristic pencil comment in his copy of Bacon's _Essays_ on the\nremark, \"Good thoughts are little better than good dreams,\" in the Essay\non Virtue. Blake writes beside this, \"Thought _is_ act.\" This view is\nwell exemplified in the Job illustrations, where Blake makes quite clear\nhis view of the worthlessness, spiritually, of Job's gift to the beggar\nof part of his last meal, because of the consciously meritorious\nattitude of Job's mind.[81]\n\nIf this attitude be remembered it explains a good many of the most\nstartling and revolutionary views of Blake. For instance, in the poems\ncalled \"Holy Thursday\" in the _Songs of Innocence and Experience_, he\npaints first of all with infinite grace and tenderness the picture of\nthe orphan charity children going to church, as it would appear to the\nordinary onlooker.\n\n    The hum of multitudes was there but multitudes of lambs,\n    Thousands of little boys & girls raising their innocent hands.\n\n           *       *       *       *       *\n\n    Beneath them sit the aged men, wise guardians of the poor;\n    Then cherish pity, lest you drive an angel from your door.\n\nBut in short, scathing words and significant change of metre he reverses\nthe picture to show his view of it, when, in the companion song of\n\"Experience,\" he asks--\n\n    Is this a holy thing to see\n    In a rich and fruitful land,\n    Babes reduc'd to misery,\n    Fed with cold and usurous hand?\n\nIt is owing to a false idea that we can bear to see this so-called\n\"charity\" at all, for we--\n\n     reduce the man to want a gift, and then give with pomp.\n\nThe real evil is that we can suffer the need of the crust of bread to\nexist. This is a view which is gradually beginning to be realised\nto-day.\n\nBlake is peculiarly daring and original in his use of the mystical\nmethod of crystallising a great truth in an apparently trivial fact. We\nhave seen some of these truths in the Proverbs, and the _Auguries of\nInnocence_ is nothing else but a series of such facts, a storehouse of\ndeepest wisdom. Some of these have the simplicity of nursery rhymes,\nthey combine the direct freshness of the language of the child with the\nprofound truth of the inspired seer.\n\n    If the Sun & Moon should Doubt\n    They'd immediately Go Out.\n\nIt would scarcely be possible to sum up more completely than does this\nartless couplet the faith--not only of Blake--but of every mystic.\nSimple, ardent, and living, their faith is in truth their life, and the\nveriest shadow of doubt would be to them a condition of death. They are\nthe only people in the world who are the \"possessors of certainty.\" They\nhave seen, they have felt: what need they of further proof? Logic,\nphilosophy, theology, all alike are but empty sounds and barren forms to\nthose who know.\n\nTo Francis Thompson the presence of the Divine in all things is the one\noverwhelming fact. As a result of this sense, the consciousness that\neverything is closely related, closely linked together, is ever present\nin his poetry. It is the vision of this truth, he believes, which will\nbe the revelation of a new heaven and a new earth.\n\n    When to the new eyes of thee\n    All things by immortal power,\n    Near or far,\n    Hiddenly\n    To each other link\u00e8d are,\n    That thou canst not stir a flower\n    Without troubling of a star.\n\n    _The Mistress of Vision._\n\nHis \"Divine intoxication,\" his certainty of the presence of God, is the\nmore remarkable when it is realised through what depths of want and\ndegradation and suffering Thompson passed, and what his life was for\nmany years. His father, a north-country doctor, wished him to follow the\nprofession of medicine, but the son could not bear it, and so he ran\naway from home with--for sole wealth--a Blake in one pocket and an\nAeschylus in the other. In his struggle for life in London, fragile in\nbody and sensitive in soul, he sank lower and lower, from selling boots\nto errand-boy, and finally for five years living as a vagabond without\nhome or shelter, picking up a few pence by day, selling matches or\nfetching cabs, and sleeping under the archways of Covent Garden Market\nat night. At last, in the very depth of his misery, he was sought out\nand rescued by the editor of the paper to whom he had sent _Health and\nHoliness_ and some of his poems. This saved him, his work brought him\ngood friends, and he was enabled to write his wonderful poetry. These\nterrible experiences, which would have quenched the faith of the\nordinary man and led him to despair, with the poet mystic sought\nexpression in those six triumphant verses found among his papers when he\ndied,[82] verses charged with mystic passion, which assert the solid\nreality of spiritual things, and tell us that to the outcast and the\nwanderer every place was holy ground, Charing Cross was the gate of\nheaven, and that he beheld--\n\n    Christ walking on the water\n    Not of Gennesareth, but Thames!\n\nThrough all that he writes there breathes the spirit of mystic devotion\nand aspiration, but the following characteristics and beliefs may be\nspecially noted.\n\n(1) His reverence of childhood. He sees in the child something of the\ndivinity which Vaughan and Wordsworth saw, and his poems to children,\nsuch as _Daisy_ and _The Poppy_, have a special quality of passionate\nworship all their own.\n\n(2) His attitude towards the beauty of woman. This is entirely mystical,\nand is akin to the view of Plato and of Donne. He shares their belief\nthat love is but the power to catch sight of the beauty of the soul,\nwhich shines through and actually moulds the beauty of face and body.\n\n    How should I gauge what beauty is her dole,\n    Who cannot see her countenance for her soul,\n    As birds see not the casement for the sky?\n    And, as 'tis check they prove its presence by,\n    I know not of her body till I find\n    My flight debarred the heaven of her mind.\n\n    _Her Portrait._\n\n(3) His attraction towards the continual change and renewal of nature,\nnot only of the movement of life to death, but of death to life. He\nbroods over the changing cycles of the year, winter and spring, decay\nand re-birth, and he sees in them a profound and far-reaching symbolism.\nThis is magnificently expressed in the _Ode to the Setting Sun_, where\nhe paints a picture, unmatched in English verse, of the sun sinking to\nrest amid the splendours gathered round him in his fall. The poem is\ncharged with mystic symbolism, the main thought of which is that human\nlife, ending apparently in death, is but the prelude of preparation for\na more glorious day of spiritual re-birth.\n\n    For birth hath in itself the germ of death,\n      But death hath in itself the germ of birth.\n    It is the falling acorn buds the tree,\n    The falling rain that bears the greenery,\n      The fern-plants moulder when the ferns arise.\n      For there is nothing lives but something dies,\n    And there is nothing dies but something lives.\n\nBut Francis Thompson's most entirely mystical utterance is the famous\nOde--_The Hound of Heaven_--where he pictures with a terrible vividness\nand in phrase of haunting music the old mystic idea of the Love\nchase.[83] It is the idea expressed by Plotinus when he says, \"God ...\nis present with all things, though they are ignorant that He is so. For\nthey fly from Him, or rather from themselves. They are unable,\ntherefore, to apprehend that from which they fly\" (_Ennead_, vi. \u00a7 7).\nWe see the spirit of man fleeing in terror \"down the nights and down the\ndays\" before the persistent footsteps of his \"tremendous Lover,\" until,\nbeaten and exhausted, he finds himself at the end of the chase face to\nface with God, and he realises there is for him no escape and no\nhiding-place save in the arms of God Himself.\n\nThe voices of the English poets and writers form but one note in a\nmighty chorus of witnesses whose testimony it is impossible for any\nthoughtful person to ignore. Undoubtedly, in the case of some mystics,\nthere has been great disturbance both of the psychic and physical\nnature, but on this account to disqualify the statements of Plotinus, St\nAugustine, Eckhart, Catherine of Siena, Catherine of Genoa, Blake, and\nWordsworth, would seem analogous to Macaulay's view that \"perhaps no\nperson can be a poet, or can even enjoy poetry without a certain\nunsoundness of mind.\" Our opinion about this must depend on what we mean\nby \"soundness of mind.\" To some it may appear possible that the mystics\nand poets are as sound as their critics. In any case, the unprejudiced\nperson to-day would seem driven to the conclusion that these people, who\nare, many of them, exceptionally great, intellectually and morally, are\ntelling us of a genuine experience which has transformed life for them.\nWhat, then, is the meaning of this experience? What explanation can we\ngive of this puzzling and persistent factor in human life and history?\nThese are not easy questions to answer, and only a bare hint of lines of\nsolution dare be offered.\n\nIt is of interest to note that the last word in science and philosophy\ntends to reinforce and even to explain the position of the mystic. The\nlatest of European philosophers, M. Bergson, builds up on a mystical\nbasis the whole of his method of thought, that is, on his perception of\nthe simple fact that true duration, the real time-flow, is known to us\nby a state of feeling which he calls intuition, and not by an\nintellectual act.\n\nHe says something like this. We find as a matter of practice that\ncertain problems when presented to the intellect are difficult and even\nimpossible to solve, whereas when presented to our experience of life,\ntheir solution is so obvious that they cease to be problems. Thus, the\nunaided intellect might be puzzled to say how sounds can grow more alike\nby continuing to grow more different. Yet a child can answer the\nquestion by sounding an octave on the piano. But this solution is\nreached by having sensible knowledge of the reality and not by logical\nargument. Bergson's view, therefore, is that the intellect has been\nevolved for practical purposes, to deal in a certain way with material\nthings by cutting up into little bits what is an undivided flow of\nmovement, and by looking at these little bits side by side. This, though\nnecessary for practical life, is utterly misleading when we assume that\nthe \"points\" thus singled out by the intellect represent the \"thickness\"\nof reality. Reality is fluidity, and we cannot dip up its substance with\nthe intellect which deals with surfaces, even as we cannot dip up water\nwith a net, however finely meshed. Reality is movement, and movement is\nthe one thing we are unable intellectually to realise.\n\nIn order to grasp reality we must use the faculty of contact or\nimmediate feeling, or, as Bergson calls it, intuition. Intuition is a\ndifferent order of knowledge, it is moulded on the very form of life,\nand it enables us to enter into life, to be one with it, to live it. It\nis \"a direction of movement: and, although capable of infinite\ndevelopment, is simplicity itself.\" This is the mystic art, which in\nits early stages is a direction of movement, an alteration of the\nquality and intensity of the self. So Bergson, making use of and\napplying the whole range of modern psychology and biology, tells us that\nwe must develop intuition as a philosophical instrument if we are to\ngain any knowledge of things in themselves; and he is thus re-echoing in\nmodern terms what was long ago stated by Plotinus when he said--\n\n     Knowledge has three degrees--opinion, science, illumination. The\n     means or instrument of the first is sense, of the second dialectic,\n     of the third intuition. To the last I subordinate reason. It is\n     absolute knowledge founded on the identity of the mind knowing with\n     the object known. (_Letter to Flaccus._)\n\nWe have discovered that sense knowledge, however acute, has to be\ncorrected by the intellect, which tells us that the sun does not go\nround the earth, although it appears to our observation to do this. So\npossibly, in turn, the intellect, however acute, may have to be\ncorrected by intuition, and the impotence of brain knowledge in dealing\nwith the problem of life is leading slowly to the perception that to\n_know_ in its true sense is not an intellectual process at all.\n\nFurther, in Bergson's theory of the nature of mind, and in his theory of\nrhythm, he seems to indicate the lines of a technical explanation of\nsome part of the mystic experience.[84] The soul, or the total psychic\nand mental life of man, he says, is far greater than the little bit of\nconsciousness of which we are normally aware, and the brain acts as a\nsheath or screen, which allows only a point of this mental life to touch\nreality. The brain or the cerebral life is therefore to the whole mental\nlife as the point of a knife is to the knife itself. It limits the field\nof vision, it cuts in one direction only, it puts blinkers on the mind,\nforcing it to concentrate on a limited range of facts. It is conceivable\nthat what happens with the mystics is that their mental blinkers become\nslightly shifted, and they are thus able to respond to another aspect or\norder of reality. So that they are swept by emotions and invaded by\nharmonies from which the average man is screened. Life having for them\nsomewhat changed in direction, the brain is forced to learn new\nmovements, to cut along fresh channels, and thus to receive sensations\nwhich do not directly minister to the needs of physical life. \"Our\nknowledge of things,\" says Bergson, \"derives its form from our bodily\nfunctions and lower needs. By unmaking that which these needs have made,\nwe may restore to Intuition its original purity, and so recover contact\nwith the Real.\" It is possibly this very unmaking and remaking, this\nreadjustment which we see at work in the lives of the great mystics, and\nwhich naturally causes great psychic and even physical disturbances.\n\nBergson's theory of rhythm is peculiarly illuminating in this\nconnection. The intellect, he says, is like a cinematograph. Moving at a\ncertain pace, it takes certain views, snapshots of the continuous flux\nof reality, of which it is itself a moving part. The special views that\nit picks out and registers, depend entirely upon the relation between\nits movement and the rhythm or movement of other aspects of the flux. It\nis obvious that there are a variety of rhythms or tensions of duration.\nFor example, in what is the fraction of a second of our own duration,\nhundreds of millions of vibrations, which it would need thousands of our\nyears to count, are taking place successively in matter, and giving us\nthe sensation of light. It is therefore clear that there is a great\ndifference between the rhythm of our own duration and the incredibly\nrapid rhythms of physical matter. If an alteration took place in our\nrhythm, these same physical movements would make us conscious--not of\nlight--but of some other thing quite unknown.\n\n\"Would not the whole of history,\" asks Bergson, \"be contained in a very\nshort time for a consciousness at a higher degree of tension than our\nown?\" A momentary quickening of rhythm might thus account for the\nsensation of timelessness, of the \"participation in Eternity\" so often\ndescribed by the mystic as a part of the Vision of God.\n\nAgain, Bergson points out that there is nothing but movement; that the\nidea of _rest_ is an illusion, produced when we and the thing we are\nlooking at are moving at the same speed, as when two railway trains run\nside by side in the same direction. Here, once more, may not the mystic\nsensation of \"stillness,\" of being at one with the central Life, be\nowing to some change having taken place in the spiritual rhythm of the\nseer, approximating it to that of the Reality which he is thus enabled\nto perceive, so that the fretful movement of the individual mind becomes\nmerged in the wider flow of the whole, and both seem to be at rest?\n\nThus, the most recent philosophy throws light on the most ancient mystic\nteaching, and both point to the conclusion that our normal waking\nconsciousness is but one special type of many other forms of\nconsciousness, by which we are surrounded, but from which we are, most\nof us, physically and psychically screened. We know that the\nconsciousness of the individual self was a late development in the race;\nit is at least possible that the attainment of the consciousness that\nthis individual self forms part of a larger Whole, may prove to be yet\nanother step forward in the evolution of the human spirit. If this be\nso, the mystics would appear to be those who, living with an intensity\ngreater than their fellows, are thus enabled to catch the first gleams\nof the realisation of a greater self. In any case, it would seem\ncertain, judging from their testimony, that it is possible, by applying\na certain stimulus, to gain knowledge of another order of consciousness\nof a rare and vivifying quality. Those who have attained to this\nknowledge all record that it must be felt to be understood, but that, so\nfar as words are of use, it is ever of the nature of a reconciliation;\nof discord blending into harmony, of difference merging into unity.\n\n\n\n\nBibliography\n\n\n\nNOTE.--The literature on mysticism is growing very large, and the\nfollowing is only a small selection from the general works on it. In the\ncase of individual writers, references are given only where there might\nbe difficulty about editions. Thus no references are given to the works\nof Burke, Carlyle, Wordsworth, Shelley, Tennyson, Browning, etc.\n\n\n\nGeneral\n\n\nUnderhill, Evelyn. _Mysticism_, Methuen, 1911. (See the valuable\nBibliography of mystical works, pp. 563-585.) _The Mystic Way_, Dent,\n1913.\n\nJones, Rufus M. _Studies in Mystical Religion_, Macmillan, 1909.\n\nJames, William. _The Varieties of Religious Experience_, Longmans Green,\n1905.\n\nInge, W. R. _Christian Mysticism_, Methuen, 1899. _Studies of English\nMystics_, Murray, 1905. _Light, Life and Love._ Selections from the\nGerman mystics. With Introduction. Methuen, 1904.\n\nH\u00fcgel, Baron F. von. _The Mystical Element in Religion_, 2 vols.. Dent,\n1909.\n\nDelacroix, H. _\u00c9tudes d'Histoir\u00e9 et de Psychologie du Mysticisme_,\nParis, 1908.\n\nR\u00e9c\u00e9jac, E. _Essai sur les fondements de la Connaissance Mystique_,\nParis, 1897 (translated by S. C. Upton, London, 1899).\n\nGregory, Eleanor C. _A Little Book of Heavenly Wisdom._ Selections from\nsome English prose mystics, with Introduction. Methuen, 1902.\n\n\n\nForeign Influences\n\n\nPlato (_c._ 427-347 B.C.). _Opera_, ed. J. Burnet, 5 vols. (Bibliotheca\nScriptorum Classicorum Oxoniensis), 1899-1907.\n\nPlato (Eng. trans.) _The Dialogues_, translated by B. Jowett, 5 vols.,\nOxford, 3rd ed., 1892.\n\nPlotinus (A.D. 204-270). _Plotini Enn\u00e9ades, pr\u00e6smisso Porphyrii de vita\nPlotini deque ordine librorum ejus libello_, edidit R. Volkmann, 2\nvols., Leipzig, 1883-84. (Eng. trans.) There is no complete English\ntranslation of the _Enneads_, only _Select Works_, translated by T.\nTaylor, 1817; re-issued, George Bell, 1895. (French trans.) _Les Enn\u00e9ades\nde Plotin_, translated by M.-N. Bouillet, 3 vols., Paris, 1857-61. (This\nis complete and very good, but out of print.) The best critical account\nof Plotinus is in _The Evolution of Theology in the Greek Philosophers_,\nby Edward Caird, 2 vols., Maclehose, 1904.\n\nDionysius the Areopagite. _Works_, translated Parker, 1897.\n\nJacob Boehme (1575-1624). _Works_ (incomplete), 4 vols., 1764-81.\nReprint of complete works in progress, ed. C. J. Barker, published J.\nWatkins. (See Bibliography to chap. xii. of _Cambridge History of\nEnglish Literature_, vol. ix.)\n\nEmmanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772). _Works_, published by the Swedenborg\nSociety, London. Selections, _A Compendium of the Theological Writings_,\ned. Warren, 1901.\n\n\n\nEnglish Writers\n\n\nThomas de Hales (fl. 1250). _A Luve Ron_, (printed in) Morris's Old\nEnglish Miscellany (E.E.T.S.), 1872.\n\nRichard Rolle (1290?-1349). _Richard Rolle and his Followers_, ed.\nHorstmann, 2 vols., Sonnenschein, 1895-6. _The Fire of Love, and the\nMending of Life_, ed. R. Harvey (E.E.T.S.), 1896.\n\nAnonymous (_c._ 1350-1400). _The Cloud of Unknowing_, ed. Evelyn\nUnderhill, J. Watkins, 1912.\n\nAll printed, with other early English mystical treatises, in _The Cell\nof Self-Knowledge_, ed. E. G. Gardner, Chatto & Windus, 1910. _The\nEpistle of Prayer_, _The Epistle of Discretion_, _The Treatise of\nDiscerning Spirits_\n\nAnonymous. _The Epistle of Privy Counsel_, in MS., British Museum,\nHarleian, 674 and 2473.\n\n(William Langland, or other authors.? _c._ 1362-1399). _The Vision of\nWilliam Concerning Piers the Plowman_, ed. Skeat, 2 vols., Oxford, 1886.\nJusserand, J. J. _Piers Plowman: a Contribution to the History of\nEnglish Mysticism._ Translated from the French by M. E. R., 1894.\n\nWalter Hylton (d. 1396). _The Scale of Perfection_, ed. Guy, 1869; ed.\nDalgairns, 1870. _The Song of Angels_, printed by Gardner, in _The Cell\nof Self-Knowledge_, 1910.\n\nJulian of Norwich (1342-1413?). _Revelations of Divine Love_, ed.\nWarrack, Methuen, 1912.\n\nRichard Crashaw (1613? 1649). _Poems_, ed. A. R. Waller, Cambridge 1904.\n\nJohn Donne (1573-1631). _Poetical Works_, ed. Grierson, 2 vols., Oxford,\n1912.\n\nGeorge Herbert (1593-1633). _Poems_, ed. Grosart, 1891; Oxford edition,\n1907.\n\nChristopher Harvey (1597-1663). _Poems_, ed. Grosart, 1874.\n\nHenry More (1614-1687). _Complete Poems_, ed. Grosart, 1878. _Life_, by\nR. Ward, 1710, reprinted Theosophical Society, ed. Howard, 1911.\n\nHenry Vaughan (1622-1695). _Poems_, ed. Chambers, 2 vols., 1896.\n\nThomas Traherne (_c._ 1636-1674). _Poetical Works_, ed. Dobell, 1903.\n_Centuries of Meditations_, ed. Dobell, 1908. _Poems of Felicity_, ed.\nBell, Oxford, 1910.\n\nWilliam Law (1686-1761). _Works_, 9 vols., 1753-76, reprinted privately\nby G. Moreton, 1892-3. _The Liberal and Mystical Writings of William\nLaw_, ed. W Scott Palmer, 1908. (See Bibliography to chap xii. of\n_Cambridge History of English Literature_, vol. ix., 1912.)\n\nWilliam Blake (1757-1827). _Works_, ed. Ellis and Yeats, 3 vols.,\nQuaritch, 1893.\n\nWilliam Blake. _Poetical Works_ (including Prophetic Books), ed, Ellis,\n2 vols., Chatto and Windus, 1906. _Poetical Works_ (exclusive of\nProphetic Books), ed. Sampson, Oxford, 1905. (The best text of the\npoems.) _Life_, Gilchrist, 2 vols., Macmillan, 1880. _William Blake_, by\nA. C. Swinburne, Chatto and Windus (new ed.), 1906. _William Blake,\nMysticisme et Po\u00e9sie_, par P. Berger, Paris, 1907.\n\nS. T. Coleridge (1772-1834). _Complete Poetical Works_, ed. E. H.\nColeridge, 2 vols., Oxford, 1912. _Biographia Literaria_, ed. J.\nShawcross, 2 vols., Oxford, 1907.\n\nEmily Bront\u00eb (1818-1848). _Complete Poems_, ed. Shorter, Hodder and\nStoughton, 1910. _The Three Bront\u00ebs_, by May Sinclair, Hutchinson, 1912.\n\nCoventry Patmore (1823-1896). _Poems_, G. Bell, 1906. _The Rod, the\nRoot, and the Flower_, 1895. _Memoirs and Correspondence of C. Patmore_,\nby B. Champneys, 1900.\n\nRichard Jefferies (1848-1887). _The Story of my Heart_, 1883,\n(reprinted) Longmans, 1907.\n\nFrancis Thompson (1859-1907). _New Poems_, Burns and Oates, 1897.\n_Selected Poems_, 1908. _Sister Songs_, 1908.\n\n\n\n\nIndex\n\n\n\nAeschylus\nAlchemists\nAllen, H. E., _Authorship of the Prick of Conscience_\nAmmonias Sakkas\n_Ancren Riwle_\n\n\nBacon, Francis, _Essays_\nBeauty; moon the symbol of;\n  Plato on;\n  truth and;\n  worship of\nBehmenists. (_See_ also under Boehme)\nBergson, mystical basis of his thought;\n  study of;\n  theory of rhythm\n_Bhagavad-G\u00eet\u00e2_\nBlake, William;\n  _Auguries of Innocence_;\n  _Europe_;\n  _Everlasting Gospel_;\n  Illustrations to _Job_;\n  imagination of;\n  in-debtedness to Boehme;\n  greatness of;\n  _Marriage of Heaven and Hell_;\n  _Milton_;\n  _Of Natural Religion_;\n  _Songs of Innocence_;\n  study of;\n  view of Nature;\n  _Vision of Last Judgment_\nBoehme, Jacob;\n  Coleridge on;\n  influence of;\n  Law's use of;\n  study of;\n  view of evil\nBourignon, Madame\nBradley, A. C., _Shakespearian Tragedy_\nBront\u00eb, Charlotte\n----- Emily; _Last Lines_;\n  _Philosopher_;\n  _Prisoner_;\n  study of;\n  _Visionary_\nBrowne, Sir Thomas\nBrowning, Elizabeth Barrett;\n  _Aurora Leigh_\nBrowning, Robert;\n  _Asolando_;\n  _Bean-stripe_;\n  his central teaching;\n  _Death in the Desert_;\n  his intellectuality;\n  his love-mysticism;\n  _Paracelsus_;\n  on pre-existence;\n  _Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau_ ;\n  _Rabbi ben Ezra_;\n  on religion and science;\n  resemblance to Eckhart;\n  _Ring and the Book_;\n  _Statue and Bust_;\n  study of;\n  his view of evil\nBruno, Giordano\nBunyan, John\nBurke, Edmund;\n  _Present Discontents_;\n  study of\nByron\n\n\nCambridge Platonists\nCarlyle, Thomas\n  influence of Emerson on;\n  _Heroes_;\n  nature of his mysticism;\n  _Sartor Resartus_;\n  study of\nCatherine of Genoa\nChaucer\nChrist, use of symbolism\nChristianity and mysticism\n_Cloud of Unknowing_\nColeridge, S. T.\n  Crashaw's influence on;\n  _Dejection_;\n  _Destiny of Nations_;\n  _Frost at Midnight_;\n  Kant's influence;\n  _Lay Sermon_;\n  _Letter to Tulk_;\n  Neo-platonic influence;\n  _Religious Musings_;\n  study of;\n  Swedenborg's influence\nCrashaw, Richard\n  influence of;\n  _St Teresa_\n\n\nDescartes\n_Deonise Hid Divinite_\nDionysius the Areopagite, _Mystical Theology_\nDonne, John\n  _Ecstasy_;\n  _Letter to Woodward_;\n  _Letters to Countess of Huntingdon_;\n  _Negative Love_;\n  _Of our Sense of Sinne_;\n  _Poem on Eliz. Drury_;\n  _Progress of the Soul_;\n  _Soul's Joy_;\n  study of;\n  _Undertaking_\nDryden\n\n\nE., A.\nEckhart\nEmerson, R. W.\nEnglish national character and mysticism\n_Entbehrung_\n_Epistle of Discretion_\n_Epistle of Privy Counsel_\nErskine, Thos., of Linlathen\nEvil, _see_ under _Good and Evil_\n\n\nFamilists\nFarquhar, J. W.\nF\u00e9nelon\nFichte\nFire, views of, held by Law and Boehme\nFlaxman\nFox, George\n\n\nGodwin, Mary, _see_ Shelley, Mrs----William\nGoethe\n  doctrine of _Entbehrung_;\n  influence on Carlyle\nGood and Evil, problem of\nGosse, Edmund, on Patmore's _Sponsa Dei_\nGreek delight in beauty\nGrierson, H. J. C., _Donne's Poems_\nGrosseteste\nGuyon, Madame\n\n\nHartley, David\nHarvey, Christopher, _School of the Heart_\nHegel\nHerbert, George\nHindu mysticism\nHinton, James, _Mystery of Pain_\nHugh of St Victor\nHylton, Walter\n  _Scale or Perfection_\n\n\nImagination\n  a creative force;\n  attainment of truth through;\n  love and;\n  reality of;\n  the \"saviour of the world,\"\nInge, W. R., _Selections from the German Mystics_\nIntuition\n\n\nJames, William\nJefferies, Richard\n  _Story of My Heart_;\n  study of\nJulian, Lady\n  _Revelations of Divine Love_\n\n\nKant\nKeats, George\nKeats\n  _Endymion_;\n  _Letter to Taylor_;\n  _Ode on Nightingale_;\n  _Ode on Grecian Urn_;\n  Plato's influence on;\n  _Revision of Hyperion_;\n  study of\n\nKnowledge, mental and spiritual\n  supremacy of intuition over intellectual, (_see_ also under _Truth_)\nKrishna\n\n\nLamb, Charles\nL\u00e2o-Tsze\nLaw, William\n  _Appeal to all that doubt_;\n  Boehme's influence on;\n  early studies;\n  _Serious Call_;\n  _Spirit of Prayer_;\n  study of;\n  _Way to Divine Knowledge_\nLawrence, Sir Thomas\nLove, human and divine\n  in _Ancren Riwle_;\n  Blake on;\n  Boehme on;\n  Browning on;\n  Coleridge on;\n  Crashaw on;\n  Donne on;\n  Herbert on;\n  Keats on;\n  Lady Julian on;\n  Patmore on;\n  Richard Rolle on;\n  Shelley on;\n  Thomas de Hales on;\n  Francis Thompson on;\n  Traherne on\n\n\nMacaulay\nMacleod, Fiona\nMan, divinity and greatness of;\n  unity with God\nMaurice, F. D.\nMeredith, George\nMetaphysical Society\nMoonlight, Keat's sensitiveness to\nMore, Henry\nMysticism, ascetic;\n  basic fact of;\n  beginnings in East;\n  Bergson's contributions to;\n  English character and;\n  erotic;\n  experiences of melody in;\n  happiness and\n  Hindu\n  meaning of the word\n  methods of, (_see_ also under _Love_, _Vision_, and _Imagination_, etc.)\n  of beauty\n  pathways to, (_see_ also under _Vision_, etc.)\n  philosophical\n  religious thinkers and, (_see_ also under names of authors)\nNature, views and interpretation of\nNeo-platonists\nNettleship, R. L., _Philosophical Remains_\nNewton, debt to Boehme\nNorris, John, of Bemerton\n\n\nPain, problem of\nPascal, Blaise\nPatmore, Coventry\n  _Angel in the House_\n  _Bow set in the Cloud_\n  _Child's Purchase_ and _The Toys_\n  _Conjugial Love_\n  Crashaw's influence on\n  _Dieu et ma Dame_\n  _Memoirs_\n  _Precursor_\n  _Religio Poet\u00e6_\n  _Sod, Boot, and Flower_\n  _Sponsa Dei_\n  study of\n_Piers Plowman_\nPlato\n  influence on Donne\n  Plotinus\n  Shelley\n  Spenser\n  Vaughan\n  on beauty\n  on love\n  _Ph\u00e6drus_,\n  _Republic_\n  _Symposium_\n  system of\nPlatonists, Cambridge\nPlotinus\n  _Enneads_\n  _Letter to Flaccus_\n  Plato's influence on\n  system of\nPope\nPorphyry\nPratt, J. B., _Religious Philosophy of William James_\nPre-existence, belief in\nPythagoras\n\n\nQuakers.\n_Quia amore langueo_\n\n\nReligion and Science\nRhythm, Beigson's theory of\nRichard of St Victor\n  _Benjamin Minor_\nRobinson, Henry Crabb\nRolle, Richard\n  _Fire of Lone_\n  _Pricke of Conscience_\n  study of\nRossetti, Christina\nRossetti, D. G.\n  _Hand and Soul_\n  _House of Life_\n  sensuousness of\n  study of\nRuysbroeck\n\n\nSt Augustine\n  _City of God_\n  influence of Plotinus on\nSt Bernard of Clairvaux\nSt Bonaventura\nSt Catherine of Siena\nSt Francis of Assisi\n  _Fioretti_\nSt John of the Cross\nSt Martin\nSt Paul\nSt Teresa\nSchelling\nScotus Eriugena, John\nSeekers\nSeparatists\nShakespeare\nShelley, Mrs (Mary Godwin)\nShelley;\n  _Adonais_;\n  _Epipsychidion_;\n  _Hymn to Intellectual Beauty_;\n  imagination of;\n  influence of Plato;\n  _Julian and Maddalo_;\n  love mysticism of;\n  _Prometheus_;\n  _Revolt of Islam_;\n  _Rosalind and Helen_;\n  study of\nSmith, John, the Platonist\nSociety, unity in\nSocrates\n_Song of Solomon_\nSpenser, Edmund, _Hymns_;\n  Plato's influence on\nSpinoza\nStewart, J., _Myths of Plato_\nSunlight, Jefferies' sensitiveness to\nSuso\nSwedenborg\n  _Heaven and Hell_,;\n  influence of;\n  thought of;\n  _Wisdom of Angels_\nSwinburne, A. C., _Essay on Blake_\nSymbolism\n\nTauler\nTaylor, Keats's letter to\nTennyson\n  _Ancient Sage_;\n  _Higher Pantheism_;\n  _Holy Grail_;\n  _In Memoriam_;\n  study of\nThelwall\n_Theologia Germanica_\nThomas de Hales, _Luve Ron_\nThompson, Francis;\n  Crashaw's influence on;\n  _Daisy_;\n  _Health and Holiness_;\n  _Hound of Heaven_;\n  _Ode to Setting Sun_;\n  _Poppy_;\n  study of\nThought, reality of\nTime\nTraherne, T.\n  _Approach_;\n  _Centuries of Meditations_;\n  _Eden_;\n  _Innocence_;\n  _Rapture_;\n  _Salutation_;\n  study of;\n  _Wonder_\nTranscendentalists\n_Treatise of Discerning Spirits_\nTruth, beauty and;\n  imagination and;\n  intellect and;\n  steps towards. _See_ also under _Knowledge_\nTulk, C. A.\n\n\nUnderhill, Evelyn, _Mysticism_\n_Upanishads_\n\n\nVaughan, Henry\n  _Affliction_;\n  _Hidden Flower_;\n  _Quickness_;\n  _Retreate_;\n  _Resurrection and Immortality_;\n  _World_;\n  study of\nVision, faculty and ecstasy of\npain and\n  physical condition and\n  renunciation and\n\n\nWatts-Dunton, Theodore, article on Rossetti\nWhichcote, Benjamin\nWill, power of\nWordsworth, William\n  attainment of vision\n  debt to Vaughan\n  Duddon Sonnets\n  _Excursion_\n  fallacy of usual conception of\n  mediation of\n  _Ode on Intimations of Immortality_\n  _Prelude_\n  _Recluse_\n  _Solitary Reaper_\n  _Stepping Westward_\n  study of\n  _Tintern Abbey_\n  value of common things\n  view of Nature\n\nYeats, W. B.\n\n\n\n\nFootnotes\n\n\n\n[1] \"The Religious Philosophy of William James,\" by J. B. Pratt, _Hibbert\nJournal_, Oct. 1911, p. 232.\n\n[2] On \"Spirit,\" in _Philosophical Remains of R. L. Nettleship_, ed. A. C.\nBradley, 1901, pp. 23-32.\n\n[3] _Republic_, ii. 376.\n\n[4] _Symposium_, 211, 212.\n\n[5] This distinction between East and West holds good on the whole,\nalthough on the one side we find the heretical Brahmin followers of\n_Bhakti_, and Ramananda and his great disciple, Kabir, who taught that\nman was the supreme manifestation of God; and on the other, occasional\nlapses into Quietism and repudiation of the body. See _The Mystic, Way_,\nby E. Underhill, pp 22-28.\n\n[6] For an account of Boehme's philosophy, see pp. 91-93 below.\n\n[7] See his essay on him in _Representative Men._\n\n[8] _Memoirs and Correspondence of C. Palmore_, by B. Champneys, 1901,\nvol. ii. pp. 84, 85.\n\n[9] _Selections from the German Mystics_, ed. Inge (Methuen, 1904), p.\n4.\n\n[10] See his article on Rossetti in the _Nineteenth Century_ for March\n1883.\n\n[11] _House of Life_, Sonnet xvii.\n\n[12] _House of Life_, Sonnets i., xxvii., lxxvii.\n\n[13] See _Religio Poet\u00e6_, p. 1.\n\n[14] _Memoirs_, ed. Champneys, i. 146.\n\n[15] _The Angel in the House._ Bk. ii. prelude ii.\n\n[16] _The Angel in the House_, canto viii. prelude iv.\n\n[17] See pp. 113, 114 below.\n\n[18] _The Child's Purchase_ and _The Toys_, poems, I vol., 1906, pp.\n287, 354.\n\n[19] _Seligio Poet\u00e6_, 1893, p. 163.\n\n[20] _Religio Poet\u00e6_, 1893, p. 44.\n\n[21] The \"Ring\" of Eternity is a familiar mystical symbol which Vaughan\ndoubtless knew in other writers; for instance as used by Suso or\nRuysbroeck. See _Mysticism_, by E. Underhill, p. 489 and note.\n\n[22] See the illuminating description of this essentially mystic feeling\ngiven by J. Stewart in _The Myths of Pinto_, Introduction, pp. 39 _et\nseq._\n\n[23] _The Story of my Heart_, pp. 87, 88.\n\n[24] _Ibid._, p. 76.\n\n[25] _The Story of my Heart_, p. 199.\n\n[26] _Ibid._, p. 71.\n\n[27] _Ibid._, p. 74.\n\n[28] See _Compendium of Philosophy_, a medi\u00e6val digest of the\nAbhidhamma, translated by S. Z. Aung and Mrs Rhys Davids, 1910, 152 f.\n\n[29] We cannot agree with Prof Grierson, who, in his fine recent edition\nof the poet (_Donne's Poems_, Oxford, 1912, vol ii., pp. cxxxv.-vi.),\nholds that the style and tone of this song point to Donne not being the\nauthor. For these very qualities it would seem indubitably to be his.\n\n[30] Surely also by Donne, but see Grierson, vol. ii., pp. cxxxviii-ix.\n\n[31] _Centuries of Meditations_, ed. Dobell, 1908, pp. 20, 21.\n\n[32] _Centuries of Meditations_, pp. 156-58.\n\n[33] _Life of Tennyson_, by his son, 1905, p. 268; see also pp 818, 880.\n\n[34] This is the idea, essentially mystical, and originating with\nBoehme, which is worked out in the suggestive little book, _The Mystery\nof Pain_, by James Hinton.\n\n[35] _An Appeal, Work's_, vol. vi. pp. 27, 28.\n\n[36] _The Spirit of Prayer_, _Works_, vol. vii. pp. 23, 24.\n\n[37] _Cf._ St Augustine, \"To will God entirely is to have Him\" (_City of\nGod_, Book xi. chap, iv.), or Ruysbroek's answer to the priests from\nParis who came to consult him on the state of their souls: \"You are as\nyou desire to be.\"\n\n[38] See _The Spirit of Prayer_, _Works_, vol. vii. pp. 150, 151.\n\n[39] _An Appeal, Works_, vol. vi. p. 169.\n\n[40] _Ibid._, pp. 19, 20.\n\n[41] _Ibid._, pp. 69, 80.\n\n[42] _The Spirit of Prayer_, _Works_, vol. vii. pp. 23, 27.\n\n[43] _The Way to Divine Knowledge, Works_, vol. vii. p. 60.\n\n[44] _The Spirit of Prayer_, _Works_, vol. vii. p. 68. See also _ibid._,\npp. 91, 92\n\n[45] _An Appeal, Works_, vol. vi. pp. 132, 133.\n\n\n\n[47] _An Appeal, Works_, vol. vi. p. 115.\n\n[48] _The Destiny of Nations_, II. 16-18.\n\n[49] _Frost at Midnight_, 11. 60-62.\n\n[50] _Sartor Resartus_, Book i. chap. xi.\n\n[51] See _Sartor_, Book iii. chap. iv.\n\n[52] The mystical desire for close contact with God is expressed in\nEnglish as early as before 1170, in Godric's song to the Virgin.\n\n[53] See _Mysticism_, by E. Underhill, pp. 162-166.\n\n[54] _The Ancren Riwle_, ed. J. Morton, Camden Society, 1853, pp.\n397-403.\n\n[55] _Fire of Love_, Bk. 1. cap xvi. p. 36.\n\n[56] _Ibid._, Bk. i. cap. xv. p. 33.\n\n[57] See _Mysticism_, by E. Underhill, pp. 228, 229.\n\n[58] _Fire of Love_, Bk. i. cap. xvi. p. 36.\n\n[59] _Ibid._, Bk. ii. cap. iii. and xii.\n\n[60] _Fire of Love_, Bk. i. cap. xv.\n\n[61] _Ibid._, Bk. ii. cap. vii.\n\n[62] _Enneads_, vi. \u00a7\u00a7 8, 9.\n\n[63] See _The Authorship of the Prick of Conscience_, by H. E. Allen,\nRadcliffe College Monographs, No. 15, Ginn and Co., 1910.\n\n[64] _Revelations_, ed. Warrack, pp. 21, 178. All the quotations which\nfollow are taken from this edition of the _Revelations_.\n\n[65] _Revelations_, p. 135. It Is interesting to compare the words of\nother mystics upon this point; as for instance Richard of St Victor in\n_Benjamin Minor_, cap. 75, or Walter Hylton in _The Scale of\nPerfection_. Note the emphasis laid upon it by Wordsworth, who indicates\nself-knowledge as the mark of those who have attained the \"unitive\"\nstage; see p. 66 above.\n\n[66] Dr. Inge gives an excellent detailed account of it in _Studies of\nEnglish Mystics_, 1906, pp. 80-123.\n\n[67] See _Piers Plowman_, by J. J. Jusserand, 1894\n\n[68] B., Passus v., 614-616.\n\n[69] _Poems_, ed. Waller, 1904, p. 283.\n\n[70] _Poems_, ed. Grosart, 1874, p. 134.\n\n[71] See _Additional Table Talk of S. T. O._, ed. T. Ashe, 1884, p. 322.\n\n[72] _Poems_, ed. Sampson, p. 305.\n\n[73] See _Mysticism_, by E. Underhill, pp. 282-286, and specially the\npassage from the _Fioreth_ of St Francis of Assisi, chap, xlviii.,\nquoted on p. 285.\n\n[74] Notes to Lavater.\n\n[75] From version \u03b32 in _Poetical Works_, ed. John Sampson, 1905,\np. 253.\n\n[76] _Poems_, ed. Sampson, p. 173.\n\n[77] _Poems_, ed Sampson, pp. 305-6, 309-10. Blake is here praying that\nwe may be preserved from the condition of mind which sees no farther\nthan the concrete facts before it; a condition he unfairly associated\nwith the scientific mind in the abstract, and more especially with\nNewton.\n\n[78] This is the principle called occasionally by Blake, and always by\nBoehme, the \"Mirror,\" or \"Looking Glass.\" Blake's names for these four\nprinciples, as seen in the world, in contracted form, are Urizen, Luvah,\nUrthona, and Tharmas.\n\n[79] Possibly in some such way as Mozart, when composing, heard the\nwhole of a symphony. \"Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts\n_successively_, but I hear them as it were all at once\" (Holmes's _Life\nand Correspondence of Mozart_ 1845, pp 317-18)\n\n[80] _Cf._, for instance, \"To be an error, and to be cast out, is a part\nof God's design\" (_A Vision of the Last Judgment_, Gilchrist's Life, ii.\np. 195); and Illustrations 2 and 16 to the Book of Job, see the\ncommentary on them in _Blake's Vision of the Book of Job_, by J. H.\nWicksteed, 1910, p. 21 and note 4. It is interesting to note that, as Mr\nBradley points out (_Shakesperian Tragedy_, pp. 37, 39, 324, 325), it is\na cognate idea which seems to underlie Shakesperian tragedy, and to make\nit bearable.\n\n[81] See the whole exposition of the Job illustrations by Wicksteed, and\nspecially p. 37.\n\n[82] _In no Strange Land._ Selected Poems, 1908, p. 130.\n\n[83] For other examples of the expression of this idea of the \"Following\nLove,\" the quest of the soul by God, especially in the anonymous Middle\nEnglish poem of _Quia amore langueo_, see _Mysticism_, by Evelyn\nUnderhill, pp. 158-162.\n\n[84] The following remarks are much indebted to a valuable article on\n_Bergson and the Mystics_, by Evelyn Underhill, in the _English Review_,\nFeb. 1912, which should be consulted for a fuller exposition of the\nlight shed by Bergson's theories on the mystic experience.","title":"Mysticism in English Literature","tradition":"scripture-revelation","translated_text":null,"word_count":38562}