,,hours ,,with ,,the ,,mystics ,uniform with this volume1 crown #hvo1 cloth4 ,i4 ,,the ,,symbolism ,,of ,,churches ,,and ,,church ,,ornaments ,a ,,translation ,,of ,,the ,,first ,,book ,,of ,,the ,,rationale ,,divinorum ,,officiorum ,,of ,,william ,,durandus ,with ,introductory ,essay and ,notes by the ,,rev4 ,j4 ,m4 ,,neale ,,and ,,rev4 ,b4 ,,webb ,,ii4 ,,symbolism1 ,,or ,,exposition ,,of ,,the ,,doctrinal ,,differences ,,between ,,catholics ,,and ,,protestants ,as evidenced by their ,symbolical ,writings ,,by ,,john ,,adam ,,moehler1 ,d4,d4 ,,hours ,,with ,,the ,,mystics ,a ,contribution to the ,history of ,religious ,opinion ,,by ,,robert ,,alfred ,,vaughan1 ,b4,a4 ,,sixth ,,edition ,,two ,,volumes ,,in ,,one ,,vol4 ,i ,,new ,,york ,,charles ,,scribner',s ,,sons #gdc #gde ,,broadway #ahic ,,preface ,,to ,,the ,,third ,,edition4 ,the work which is now again published was the result of too many years' steady application1 and has served too great an intellectual use in the special department of thought of which it treats1 to be allowed to fall into oblivion4 ,certainly the reading which the author thought it necessary to accomplish before he presented his conclusions to the public was vast1 and varied4 ,that the fruit of his labours was commensurate may be gathered from the honest admiration which has been expressed by men knowing what hard study really means4 ,the first edition of the #8,hours with the ,mystics' appeared in #ahef2 the second was1 to a great extent1 revised by the author1 but it did not appear until after his death4 ,it was edited by his father1 though most of the work of correction and verification was done by the author's widow4 ,there is no intention of writing a memoir here4 ,that has already been done4 ,but it has been suggested that it might be interesting to trace how ,mysticism gradually became the author's favourite study4 ,to do that it may be well to give a very short sketch of his literary career4 ,from the time he was quite a child he had the fixed idea that he must be a literary man4 ,in his twenty-first year 7#ahdd7 he published a volume of poems1 entitled #8,the ,witch of ,endor1 and other ,poems4' ,the poetry in this little volume--long since out of print--was held to give promise of genius4 ,it was1 of course1 the production of youth1 and in after years the author was fully conscious of its defects4 ,but even though some critics 7and none could be a harder critic of his own work than himself7 might point out an #8overcrowding of metaphor' and a #8want of clearness1' others could instance evidences of #8high poetical capability' and #8happy versification4' ,but at the time it was thought desirable that the young poet should turn his attention to prose composition with the same earnestness4 ,with that object his father proposed to him the study of the writings of ,origen1 with a view to an article on the subject in the ,british ,quarterly ,review4 ,when just twenty-two the author finished this task1 his first solid contribution to the literature of the day4 ,the article showed signs of diligence and patient research in gaining a thorough knowledge of the opinions of the great thinker with whom it dealt4 #8,it is nobly done1' ,judge ,talfourd wrote4 #8,if there is some exuberance of ornament in the setting forth of his 7,origen's7 brilliant theories1 it is only akin to the irregular greatness and the ,asiatic splendour of the mind that conceived them4' ,and the words of the late ,sir ,james ,stephen were not less flattering3 #8,if ,i had been told that the writer of it 7the article7 was a grandfather1 ,i should have wondered only that the old man had retained so much spirit and been able to combine it with a maturity of judgment so well becoming his years4' ,we believe it is no presumption to say that the article has not ceased to be useful to those who wish to gain an idea of the character of one whose name has often been the subject of bitter wordy war between ,christian men4 ,in #ahdf1 a dramatic piece by ,alfred ,vaughan1 entitled #8,edwin and ,elgiva1' appeared in the ,london ,university ,magazine4 ,the subject was one of a most sensational character1 and was treated accordingly4 ,dunstan and his companions are painted in very black colours1 and any doubts as to the reality of the cruelties alleged to have been practised on the unhappy ,queen are not entertained4 ,two poems1 the #8,masque of ,antony' and #8,disenchantment1' though not published until later1 were written about the same date4 ,at this time1 the author was attending the theological course at ,lancashire ,independent ,college1 of which his father was the president4 ,having completed his term of residence there1 he went over to ,halle in order to spend a year in a ,german ,university1 before entering upon any fixed pastoral work4 ,there he had a good opportunity of studying the state of ,german religious thought4 ,the following extract from his journal shows the effect produced on his mind3--#8,if ,i am spared to return1 ,i will preach more of what is called the ,gospel than ,i did before4 ,the talk about adapting religion to the times which is prevalent here1 even among the religious1 appears to me a miserable mistake4 ,it never needed adapting so much as when the apostles preached it1 but they made no such effort4' ,it was1 too1 while studying ,german speculations that the author adopted the system of philosophy1 distinct alike from sceptical and mystical1 which is apparent in this his chief work4 ,it is1 we believe1 impossible for an earnest mind to go through life without periods of sad and painful doubt4 ,the author was no exception to this rule1 and while at ,halle he seems to have suffered bitterly4 ,but he knew the one refuge for the doubting heart1 and turned to it4 ,in the #8,dream of ,philo1' written at this time and published in the volumes of #8,essays and ,remains1' we see some reflection of his own feelings1 and the following verses which we venture to quote must1 we think1 strike a responsive chord in many a heart yearning for peace amidst the turmoil of the world3-- ,not a pathway in life's forest1 ,not a pathway on life's sea2 ,who doth heed me1 who doth lead me1 ,ah1 woe is me6 ,vain the planting and the training1 ,for life's tree on every side ,ever launches useless branches1 ,springs not high but spreadeth wide4 ,ah1 my days go not together ,in an earnest solemn train1 ,but go straying for their playing1 ,or are by each other slain4 ,listen1 listen1 thou forgettest ,thou art one of many more2 ,all this ranging and this changing ,has been law to man of yore4 ,and thou canst not in life's city ,rule thy course as in a cell ,there are others1 all thy brothers1 ,who have work to do as well4 ,some events that mar thy purpose ,may light them upon their way2 ,our sun-shining in declining ,gives earth's other side the day4 ,every star is drawn and draweth ,mid the orbits of its peers2 ,and the blending thus unending ,makes the music of the spheres4 ,if thou doest one work only1 ,in that one work thou wilt fail2 ,use thou many ropes if any ,for the shifting of thy sail4 ,then will scarce a wind be stirring ,but thy canvas it shall fill2 ,not the near way as thou thoughtest1 ,but through tempest as thou oughtest1 ,though not straightly1 not less greatly1 ,thou shalt win the haven still4 ,these verses have been called #8,alfred ,vaughan's ,psalm of ,life4' ,the lessons taught may be an encouragement to others1 as they have been to the author's son1 in times of trial and disappointment4 ,but it must not be supposed that at this time the author's thoughts were all devoted to painful doubts and yearnings4 ,he determined while in ,germany to unite the labours of a literary man to the work of a pastor4 ,his first plan was to take special periods of ,church ,history and lay them before his readers in the form of dramas4 ,he thus describes his idea3--#8,i shall commence the series with ,savonarola4 ,i think it will not be necessary to pay regard to chronological order in the order of composition4 ,i may afterwards take up ,chrysostom1 perhaps ,hildebrand1 endeavouring in all not merely to develop the character of the principal personage1 but to give an exact picture of the religious and political spirit of the times4 ,they must be dramas on the principles of ,king ,john or ,henry ,,iv41 rather than those of ,hamlet or ,macbeth4' ,with this scheme his father did not entirely agree1 and the consequence was a considerable correspondence4 ,dr4 ,vaughan never doubted the genius of his son1 or that something definite would come of his literary tastes1 but he appears to have thought that the dramatic form was not a good way in which to bring the result of genuine hard work before the public4 ,as it happened1 none of these dramas saw the light1 though the plan of the #8,hours with the ,mystics' shows the strong attachment the author felt for that kind of writing1 and it also shows the way in which he could overcome any difficulties arising from its peculiarities4 ,the notion of gentlemen discussing the ,mystics1 over their wine and walnuts1 or in the garden with the ladies in the twilight of a summer evening1 has had to encounter the sneers of some harsh critics1 but we cannot help thinking that advantage is gained by the device of these conversations1 because the talking by various speakers affords an easy opportunity of glancing over many varying theories upon any subject at the same time1 while the essayist would find it difficult to keep his line of argument clear1 and at the same moment state the divergent lines of thought necessary for the right understanding of the position generally4 ,the author began definite ministerial work at ,bath in #ahdh4 ,the thoroughness with which he performed his pastoral duties did not give him much time for literary work4 ,the articles written during his stay in that city were those on ,schleiermacher and ,savonarola4 ,the materials for both essays were collected while at ,halle4 ,when writing to inform his father of the completion of the first of the articles1 he refers to the ,mystics in the following way3-- #8,i shall not begin to write another article at once4 ,but ,i should like to fix on one to have more-or-less in view4 ,there are three subjects on which ,i should like to write some time or other--7#a7 ,savonarola1 for which ,i have much material2 7#b7 on ,mysticism1 tracing it in the ,east1 in the ,greek ,church1 in the ,german ,mystics of the #adth century1 in the ,french ,mystics1 and lastly in those most recent2 7#c7 ,leo the ,great and his stirring times4 ,i should like to do the ,savonarola next4 ,but ,i should also like to know what you think on these subjects1 or on any other you would perhaps like better4 ,the first and third would consist largely of interesting narrative4 ,the second would be rather less popular but more novel4' ,the #8second' subject was worked up into the two volumes now republished4 ,as it gradually became his favourite study1 he felt that the field was expanding before him1 and that it would be necessary1 if he did justice to his theme1 to treat it at a greater length than could be allowed to a magazine article4 ,in the ,british ,quarterly ,review articles appeared on #8,madame ,guyon1' and #8,the ,mystics and the ,reformers1' which were simply the first results of his reading for the great work4 ,it was at ,birmingham that most of this writing was done3 while there he was an indefatigable student4 #8,there1' says a writer in the ,eclectic ,review1 ,nov4 #ahfa1 p4 #ejh1 #8he made himself familiar with many languages--the old ,german1 the ,spanish1 even the ,dutch1 adding these to the ,italian1 ,french1 ,latin1 and ,greek in the classical and later forms1 and all as preparations to the ,history of ,mysticism to which he had pledged himself4 ,the ,mystics had thrown a spell upon him4 ,seldom have they wrought their charms without seducing to their bewildering self-abandonment4444 ,in the case of ,alfred ,vaughan it was not so2 he continued faithful to the high duties of life4 ,he trod the sphere of action and compelled the ghostly band he visited1 or who visited him1 to pay tribute to the highest religious teaching of ,christian truth and life4' ,but the body would not keep pace with his mind4 ,in #ahee he was obliged to resign his pastoral charge at ,birmingham1 and from that time he devoted himself entirely to literature4 ,he wrote several articles and criticisms1 chiefly in the ,british ,quarterly amongst these1 one on ,kingsley's #8,hypatia1' which we believe was much appreciated by the future ,canon of ,westminster4 ,an article on #8,art and ,history' appeared in ,fraser's ,magazine about the same time4 ,and now we reach the first publication of his greater achievement1 the #8,hours with the ,mystics4' ,in ,august1 #ahee1 the printing of the original edition began1 and was completed in the ,february of the following year4 ,the author lived long enough afterwards to witness its success1 and then swiftly came the end4 ,in ,october1 #aheg1 ,alfred ,vaughan passed away into another world where he has doubtless found many of those on whose characters he loved to muse4 ,we will not attempt any analysis of his character1 but we cannot resist the impulse to insert one loving tribute to his memory1 which appeared in a ,birmingham paper 7,aris' ,gazette1 ,nov4 #bgth1 #aheg74 #8,it has seemed fit to the ,all-,wise ,disposer of events to withdraw from this world one of its holiest and most gifted inhabitants1 one who1 had his life been prolonged1 bade fair to have taken rank among its brightest lights and most distinguished ornaments4444 ,the strength and sweetness1 so happily blended in his character1 were apparent in his preaching2 he was tender enough for the most womanly heart1 he was intellectual enough for the most masculine mind4 ,as a writer he had already attained considerable reputation1 and promised to become one of the chief luminaries of the age4 ,as a ,christian1 he was sound in faith1 benignant in spirit1 and most holy in life2 a delighter in the doctrine of ,god1 his ,saviour1 and an eminent adorner of that doctrine4' ,before venturing on any remarks upon the subject-matter of the book itself1 we may be allowed to make a slight reference to opinions expressed upon it at the time of its publication4 ,in ,fraser's ,magazine for ,september1 #ahef1 there was a long review by ,canon ,kingsley4 ,in this article weak points are shown and sometimes the criticisms are rather severe2 but there was too much real sympathy between the two men 7though they never knew each other personally7 for the reviewer not fully to appreciate the good qualities in the work before him4 ,now that ,charles ,kingsley's name is such a household word in ,england1 no apology is needed for quoting two passages from the above-mentioned essay4 #8,there is not a page1' it says in one place1 #8nor a paragraph in which there is not something worth recollecting1 and often reflections very wise and weighty indeed1 which show that whether or not ,mr4 ,vaughan has thoroughly grasped the subject of ,mysticism1 he has grasped and made part of his own mind and heart many things far more practically important than ,mysticism1 or any other form of thought2 and no one ought to rise up from the perusal of his book without finding himself1 if not a better1 at least a more thoughtful man1 and perhaps a humbler one also1 as he learns how many more struggles and doubts1 discoveries1 sorrows and joys1 the human race has passed through1 than are contained in his own private experience4' ,in another place1 while pointing out various improvements which he would like to see in another edition1 ,mr4 ,kingsley adds1 #8,but whether our hope be fulfilled or not1 a useful and honourable future is before the man who could write such a book as this is in spite of all defects4' ,the reviewer adds later in a reprint of this essay1 #8,mr4 ,vaughan's death does not1 ,i think1 render it necessary for me to alter any of the opinions expressed here1 and least of all that in the last sentence1 fulfilled now more perfectly than ,i could have foreseen4' ,with the mention of ,charles ,kingsley's name we are reminded of others of the same school of thought1 and therefore the following comparison in an article in the ,eclectic ,review 7,november1 #ahfa7 may prove interesting4 ,the reader must judge of its truth4 #8,while ,robertson of ,brighton1' says the reviewer1 #8was preaching his sermons1 and ,archer ,butler was preparing his ,lectures on ,philosophy1 ,alfred ,vaughan about the same age1 but younger than either1 was accumulating material for1 and putting into shape1 the 8,hours with the ,mystics40 ,he died within a year or two of their departure1 and still nearer to the period of youth than those extraordinary men4 ,his name suggests their names to the mind--all victims to the fatal thirty-four and thirty-seven4 ,he had not the wonderful touch of ,robertson's 8vanished hand02 he had not the tenacity of muscle and fibre of ,archer ,butler2 but he combined many of the characteristics of both1 and added that which gave individuality to his genius4 ,he had not the fine subtle sense of insight possessed by ,robertson2 he had not the rapid and comprehensive power of ,butler4 ,they again had not his large and generous culture4' ,more of such favourable criticisms and kindly words from men of learning might be quoted1 but we forbear4 ,the task of referring to such sentiments is not unnaturally attractive to the son of such a man2 but it is simply desired to put forward this book once again on its own merits1 in the hope that there are still many who will rightly appreciate the labour and genius to which it bears witness4 ,about the work itself it will be necessary to say only a few words4 ,when the #8,hours with the ,mystics' first appeared it traversed ground which was to a great extent untrodden1 at any rate in ,england4 ,mysticism1 though a favourite study of the author1 was not then1 and can scarcely be said to be now1 a popular subject4 ,a matter-of-fact age puts such ideas on one side1 as something too weak for serious consideration4 ,the majority indeed have but a very hazy notion as to what ,mysticism is2 they only have an idea that something is meant which is very inferior1 and they pass it by4 ,well has ,mr4 ,maurice said that such terms 7,medival ,phil4 p4 #adc7 #8are the cold formal generalisations of a late period1 commenting on men with which it has no sympathy4' ,in the minds of thoughtful men the name of mystic points to a special and recognisable tendency1 and the history given in this book shows that the same tendency has been working in the world for ages2--,hindus and ,persians1 ,neoplatonists and ,schoolmen1 ,anabaptists and ,swedenborgians1 have all felt its force4 ,the main principle of all their doctrine was the necessity of a closer union with the ,deity4 ,among ,christians1--with whom we are chiefly concerned1--this close connection1 it was thought1 could only be gained after passing through stages of illumination and purification2 and progress in the way of perfection was to be made not by labour and study1 but by solitude1 and asceticism4 ,in these volumes this doctrine is exhibited2 especially we trace the influence which the pseudo-,dionysius had in the fourth century2 how1 under his guidance1 these ideas spread in the ,east1 and thence to the ,west2 the position taken up by ,mystics against the ,schoolmen1 and the condition of ,mysticism at the time of the ,reformation4 ,these topics are interesting1 and to the questions which must be raised in connection with them in every thoughtful mind1 it is hoped that the reader will find satisfactory answers in the following pages4 ,it will be seen that the field over which the reader is taken by the author is very large4 ,it is believed that though there have been during recent years various contributions made to the literature on this subject1 no writer has attempted to take in all the various phases which are pictured in this book4 ,in ,german ,mystics some writers have found a congenial theme2 others have taught us more about the mysterious religions of the ,east4 ,it is1 we think1 to be regretted that more attention has not been paid to the ,mystics of the ,scholastic period4 ,the position held by ,hugo of ,s4 ,victor and his followers was by no means insignificant4 ,as a mystic1 ,hugo showed that it was possible to combine contemplation with common sense and learning4 ,in an age when ,scholasticism was submitting religion to cold and exact logic1 it was like turning from some dusty road into a quiet grass-grown lane1 to hear of devout contemplation leading up to perfect holiness and spiritual knowledge4 ,most of us are ready to agree with these men when they maintain that there are mysteries of ,divine ,truth which cannot be analysed by the understanding1 but which can be embraced by thoughtful and reverent contemplation4 ,so long as the use of both learning and devotion was admitted1 we are able to sympathise with them4 ,but it is a truism to say that the tendency of any movement is to go to extremes4 ,the ,mystics of this period appear to have recoiled horror-struck from what seemed to them rationalistic or materialistic ideas4 ,in that1 they might be right enough4 ,but starting from the true standpoint that there are mysteries in the ,infinite which we finite creatures cannot fathom with our finite minds1 they proceeded to the extreme of putting devotion before knowledge4 ,next1 they thought there was nothing to which they could not attain by devout yearning1 even to absorption into the ,deity4 ,the logical conclusion of these theories tended to pantheism3 those who discarded logic yielded to fanaticism4 ,into that error fell most of the disciples of the great ,scholastic ,mystics4 ,and has not the like occurred elsewhere in history8 ,putting religion out of the question1 ,wycliffe may have been a socialist1 but he was far behind his followers4 ,but as such a falling away on the part of the disciple cannot justly take from the character of the master1 so we would still say a word for ,hugo of ,s4 ,victor4 ,a man whose aim in life was the knowledge of ,god1 and who worked for that end with courage and diligence1 is not a character to be neglected4 #8,his name1' says ,mr4 ,maurice 7,medival ,phil4 p4 #adh71 #8has been less remembered in later times than it deserves1 because it has been overshadowed by those of other men who met some of the tastes of the age more successfully1 though their actual power was not greater than his1 perhaps not equal to it4' ,in ,hugo of ,s4 ,victor and his predecessors1 ,bernard and ,anselm1 we see the combination of ,scholasticism and ,mysticism4 ,to some extent they were able to keep a middle course4 ,they would not allow their reason to run riot over sacred mysteries1 and their firm hold on the articles of the ,catholic faith prevented them from sinking into vague pantheism4 ,among the ,mystics of ,germany who come next in the hasty survey we are here attempting1 there does not appear to have been so much steadiness4 ,we do not mean to say that the ,scholastic ,mystics were perfect2 they were not free from exaggerations1 but their extravagances appear to us less dangerous than were those of the old ,german ,mystics4 ,the names of the leading ,german ,mystics are more familiar to most people than are any others4 ,who has not heard of ,tauler8 ,what the influence of his teaching was is shown in the following pages4 ,he may be exonerated from all charge of pantheism1 as may1 also1 be ,ruysbroek and ,suso2 but it is very doubtful whether the writings left by ,eckart acquit him of all connection with these errors4 ,he has been claimed as orthodox by churchmen1 and as a pantheist by many pantheists2 and extracts can be quoted from his works in support of either theory4 ,eckart's position was difficult4 ,the general temper of the world at the time was restless2 the errors and abuses of the ,church drove earnest men to look within4 ,they turned their attention to personal holiness1 to the neglect of the fact that they had any duties towards the ,christian brotherhood at large4 ,to urge his hearers to a closer union with ,god was a noble subject for a preacher4 ,but must it not be confessed that ,eckart had gone too far when he could utter such words as these1 #8a truly divine man has been so made one with ,god that henceforth he does not think of ,god or look for ,god outside himself8' ,his teaching certainly approached often towards the brink of the abyss of pantheism1 and as ,archbishop ,trench says 7,med4 ,ch4 ,hist41 p4 #cdh71 #8sometimes it does not stop short of the brink4' ,between these two schools1 the ,scholastic and the ,german1 many comparisons may be made4 ,the effect of them on the ,catholic ,church as it then existed was very different3 the teaching of ,anselm and ,bernard was calculated to strengthen the ,church1 while that of the later school was not4 ,anselm and his friends were aware of the necessity for personal holiness1 but they were always willing for their disciples to climb the road to perfection by the help of the means of grace held out in the ,church1 as well as by devout contemplation4 ,the ,germans1 on the contrary1 felt there was something wrong with the existing ecclesiastical arrangements1 and through indifference to them drew their disciples away from many practices which were then accounted necessary to salvation4 ,by this disregard for rites and ceremonies1 and by their use of the ,german language in their teaching1 they paved the way for the ,reformers1 and that is a great claim on our respect4 ,at the same time1 we cannot help thinking their hazy ideas rather chilling4 ,surely the highest point in the history of ,mysticism had been reached and passed when the struggle to make reason and imagination work together gave way to mere ecstatic rhapsody4 ,quietism is discussed in the second volume at considerable length2 the familiar names of ,madame ,guyon1 ,bossuet and ,fnlon are brought before us4 ,the story is a sad one4 ,there may be some who think that ,madame ,guyon was not worthy of the friendship of such a saint as ,fnlon1--that must be a matter of opinion2 but on one point all will agree1 the conduct of ,bossuet under the circumstances was not very creditable4 ,those who have a high opinion of the piety of ,bossuet will confess that he does not appear in the narrative to advantage1 even though they may not be able to agree with all the statements the author of this work makes about the ,bishop of ,meaux4 ,fnlon was tender1 gentle1 loving1 and ,bossuet was firm1 stern1 and strict1 but they both did their best to serve ,god in their relative positions1 and ,he1 whose servants they were1 will judge them4 ,glancing1 then1 through the entire length of this history1 we see that the great principle which appears to have actuated all ,mystics was a desire for union with ,god4 ,this they tried to cultivate by seclusion and asceticism4 ,they neglected social duties and fled away into monasteries and deserts2 and sometimes their practical life was not equal in holiness to the reported spirituality of their ecstasies4 ,their excesses of mortification appear almost ludicrous when they themselves alone are concerned1 but when their mad conduct is seen affecting others our feelings grow stronger4 ,but let us speak gently of such eccentricities4 ,these good people1 for good they certainly were1 could not appreciate the fact that ,god was in the busy town as well as in the lonely desert4 ,they heard no voice within them urging them to treat a beggar kindly for the sake of the ,son of ,god4 ,some of them were very charitable1 but what was the nature of their charity8 ,was it not simply done for their own advantage8 ,did they really think of charity as an act done to ,god1 not meritorious1 but as being an offering to their ,heavenly ,father of ,his own8 ,it is to be feared that that was not the general idea4 ,the more extravagant ,mystics appear really to have been horribly selfish4 ,they had yet to learn that the closer union for which they longed is not attained by efforts to #8faire son salut1' or by sitting still in the comfortable assurance of an imputed righteousness4 ,then it must be remembered that all these frantic efforts or dreamy ecstasies were made with a view to union with ,god4 ,and this #8union' was of a novel kind--in many cases there was a notion of an absorption into the ,deity1 together with other ideas which clearly involved erroneous views of ,god4 ,it was the old story of carrying one particular article of faith or pious opinion to extremes1 and this to the disregard1 more or less complete1 of all else4 ,the same thing had happened before in the history of the ,christian ,church4 ,it is not for us to lay down a definition of what is true union with ,god2 but we may say that the fellowship which all true believers enjoy with the ,father through the ,son was not enough for the ,mystic4 ,he struggled and panted for more4 ,how each one succeeded or failed the individual reader of the work must judge1 and decide for himself4 ,before going further1 it may be well to refer to an attack which was made on the author for his treatment of medival saints and of the stories connected with them4 ,obviously1 a man who sympathises with an emotional form of religion would not be inclined to confine these enthusiasts within such narrow limits as would one of a colder temperament4 ,this may explain the feelings of the critics in question4 ,there can be little doubt that the ascetic and the nun1 with their mortifications and trances1 had not for the author much attraction4 ,even the style in which the book was written may have led him to write too lightly on some details of this period2 but if such were the case1 he knew1 as well as any critic1 that these people were trying to do their duty1 even if they failed4 ,the ascetic who thought he had no duty in the world1 and therefore ran away and refused to #8fight a battle for the ,lord1' and the #8hysterical sister1' are rather subjects for pity than for jest2 and contrary as all the author's convictions may have been to asceticism1 he would rather have wept over their strange acts and mad fancies than scoffed at them4 ,we feel convinced that any harsh remarks should be taken as referring to the system which brought its victims into such a condition1 and not to the victims themselves4 ,though disapproving of the system1 the author would never have withheld his admiration from any individual act of self-sacrifice1 when it was done from a right motive and was the offering of a loving heart4 ,the fact that this book is again published by request is a sign that the author's labours have been appreciated and that his name is not forgotten4 #8,some men1' he once wrote in a letter1 #8who have died young1 have lived far longer than others who have outpassed their three-score years and ten4 ,life consists not in the abundance of things a man possesseth1 nor in the abundance of things a man doeth1 but in the abundance of thoughts he thinks leading toward some special result in this world or the next4' ,so1 again1 he writes in his diary1 #8,reputation--consider it1 soul of mine1 not as an end1 but as a means of sowing right thoughts and feelings among thy fellows4 ,strive towards power over the thoughts of men--power that may be solemnly used in ,god's sight as being a faithful steward for ,his glory4 ,have ,i a brain that must be busy1 a will in this direction which--with all my vacillation elsewhere--has been and is unconquerable8 ,let me pray to use it with reverent lowliness of heart as a talent committed to me1 fearing to misuse it1 to allow any corner of the estate to be waste1 or any wain of the harvest to fall into the enemy's hand4' ,if it now be asked1 what are the uses of this book1 we may answer that it has proved helpful as a history of religious thought4 ,further1 it is hoped that it has been1 and still will be1 useful on account of the moral lessons to be drawn from the historical facts4 ,it may also be used as showing how necessary it is to associate ,christianity with our daily lives2 how desirable it is that preachers should avoid confining their hearers' attention to their own individual souls4 ,and then it further teaches that1 while we take religion into the world1 we may learn also to value more the privileges of quiet and retired communion with ,god4 ,in these practical modern days the idea of contemplation appears out of place2 and yet it was our ,divine ,master who said1 #8,come apart into a desert place and rest awhile4' ,perhaps the world would have been better if the hermits had paid more attention to the little word #8awhile4' ,but the bustle of the present day is just as likely to make us forget the injunction altogether4 ,the book's republication now seems to have a special opportuneness1 for in much of the more spiritual progress going on around us there is a good deal of ,mysticism4 ,as in times past men sought refuge in devout contemplation from ,materialism1 so now a horror of ,rationalism and a sense of injustice are likely to drive many to the same extreme4 ,whether or not there has been any undue extravagance developed as yet1 it is not for us to decide4 ,but this history will show how easy and possible it is to carry a good principle beyond its proper limits4 99 99 99 99 99 ,before concluding1 one further personal word must be permitted4 ,no preface to this book1 however short1 would be complete without at least a reference to her who helped the author in his labours as only a good wife can1 and who has taught his son to love ,god and reverence his father's memory as only a good mother can4 ,to her1 the reappearance of this work causes a ray of light amidst a life darkened by much trouble and suffering4 ,it need scarcely be added that the writer of these words esteems it an honour to be in any way connected with his father's labours4 ,what the loss of such a father has been to him cannot be described in words4 ,the following remarks of a clerical friend of the author may partly express the writer's present feelings3 #8,he is gone1 young in years--but for him we may not lament the dispensation--since assuredly he was not only mature in intellect but rich in grace4 ,i delight to think of him as one of that 8blessed company10 the ,church above--to the perfect love and friendship of some members of which ,i love to look forward1 if by ,god's grace ,i may be found worthy to attain to it4' ,this book never had any public dedication4 ,it was the work of the best years of a life offered to ,god4 ,what was not done for the first edition will not be done now2 but let these few lines of the author's son be an offering to the glory of ,god--to the memory of his father--to the self-devotion of his mother4 ,in one of the author's poems is the following verse which is strangely appropriate at this place3-- ,let us toil on--the work we leave behind us1 ,though incomplete1 ,god's hand will yet embalm1 ,and use it some way2 and the news will find us ,in heaven above1 and sweeten endless calm4 ,,wycliffe ,,vaughan4 ,,littlemore1 ,,near ,,oxford1 ,november1 #ahgi4 ,,preface ,,to ,,the ,,first ,,edition4 ,the subject of the present work is one which will generally be thought to need some words of explanation1 if not of apology4 ,mysticism is almost everywhere synonymous with what is most visionary in religion and most obscure in speculation4 ,but a history of ,mysticism--old visions and old obscurities--who is bold enough to expect a hearing for that8 ,is the hopeful present1 struggling toward clear intelligence1 to pause and hear how1 some hundreds of years ago1 men made themselves elaborately unintelligible8 ,is our straining after action and achievement to be relaxed while you relate the way in which ,mystics reduced themselves to utter inactivity8 ,while we are rejoicing in escape from superstitious twilight1 is it well to recall from ,limbo the phantasms of forgotten dreamers1 and to people our sunshine with ghostly shadows8 ,and since ,mysticism is confessedly more or less a mistake1 were it not better to point out to us1 if you can1 a something true and wise1 rather than offer us your portrait of an exaggeration and a folly8 ,such are some of the questions which it will be natural to ask4 ,the answer is at hand4 ,first of all1 ,mysticism1 though an error1 has been associated1 for the most part1 with a measure of truth so considerable1 that its good has greatly outweighed its evil4 ,on this ground alone1 its history should be judged of interest4 ,for we grow more hopeful and more charitable as we mark how small a leaven of truth may prove an antidote to error1 and how often the genuine fervour of the spirit has all but made good the failures of the intellect4 ,in the religious history of almost every age and country1 we meet with a certain class of minds1 impatient of mere ceremonial forms and technical distinctions1 who have pleaded the cause of the heart against prescription1 and yielded themselves to the most vehement impulses of the soul1 in its longing to escape from the sign to the thing signified--from the human to the divine4 ,the story of such an ambition1 with its disasters and its glories1 will not be deemed1 by any thoughtful mind1 less worthy of record than the career of a conqueror4 ,through all the changes of doctrine and the long conflict of creeds1 it is interesting to trace the unconscious unity of mystical temperaments in every communion4 ,it can scarcely be without some profit that we essay to gather together and arrange this company of ardent natures2 to account for their harmony and their differences1 to ascertain the extent of their influence for good and evil1 to point out their errors1 and to estimate even dreams impossible to cold or meaner spirits4 ,these ,mystics have been men of like passions and in like perplexities with many of ourselves4 ,within them and without them were temptations1 mysteries1 aspirations like our own4 ,a change of names1 or an interval of time1 does not free us from liability to mistakes in their direction1 or to worse1 it may be1 in a direction opposite4 ,to distinguish between the genuine and the spurious in their opinion or their life1 is to erect a guide-post on the very road we have ourselves to tread4 ,it is no idle or pedantic curiosity which would try these spirits by their fruits1 and see what mischief and what blessing grew out of their misconceptions and their truth4 ,we learn a lesson for ourselves1 as we mark how some of these ,mystics found ,god within them after vainly seeking ,him without--hearkened happily to that witness for ,him which speaks in our conscience1 affections1 and desires2 and1 recognising love by love1 finally rejoiced in a faith which was rather the life of their heart than the conclusion of their logic4 ,we learn a lesson for ourselves1 as we see one class among them forsaking common duties for the feverish exaltation of a romantic saintship1 and another persisting in their conceited rejection of the light without1 till they have turned into darkness their light within4 ,but the interest attaching to ,mysticism is by no means merely historic4 ,it is active under various forms in our own time4 ,it will certainly play its part in the future4 ,the earlier portion of this work is occupied1 it must be confessed1 with modes of thought and life extremely remote from anything with which we are now familiar4 ,but only by such inquiry into those bygone speculations could the character and influence of ,christian ,mysticism be duly estimated1 or even accounted for4 ,those preliminaries once past1 the reader will find himself in contact with opinions and events less removed from present experience4 ,the attempt to exhibit the history of a certain phase of religious life through the irregular medium of fiction1 dialogue1 and essay1 may appear to some a plan too fanciful for so grave a theme4 ,but it must be remembered1 that any treatment of such a subject which precluded a genial exercise of the imagination would be necessarily inadequate1 and probably unjust4 ,the method adopted appeared also best calculated to afford variety and relief to topics unlikely in themselves to attract general interest4 ,the notes which are appended have been made more copious than was at first designed1 in order that no confusion may be possible between fact and fiction1 and that every statement of importance might be sustained by its due authority4 ,it is hoped that1 in this way1 the work may render its service1 not only to those who deem secondary information quite sufficient on such subjects1 but also to the scholar1 who will thus be readily enabled to test for himself my conclusions1 and who will possess1 in the extracts given1 a kind of anthology from the writings of the leading ,mystics4 ,to those familiar with such inquiries it may perhaps be scarcely necessary to state that ,i have in no instance allowed myself to cite as an authority any passage which ,i have not myself examined1 with its context1 in the place to which ,i refer4 ,in the ,chronicle of ,adolf ,arnstein the minimum of invention has been employed1 and no historical personage there introduced utters any remark bearing upon ,mysticism for which ample warrant cannot be brought forward4 ,wherever1 in the conversations at ,ashfield1 any material difference of opinion is expressed by the speakers1 ,atherton may be understood as setting forth what we ourselves deem the truth of the matter4 ,some passages in these volumes1 and the substance of the chapters on ,quietism1 have made their appearance previously in the pages of one of our quarterly periodicals4 ,it should be borne in mind that my design does not require of me that ,i should give an account of all who are anywhere known to have entertained mystical speculation1 or given themselves to mystical practice4 ,i have endeavoured to portray and estimate those who have made epochs in the history of ,mysticism1 those who are fair representatives of its stages or transitions1 those whose enthusiasm has been signally benign or notoriously baneful4 ,i have either mentioned by name only1 or passed by in silence1 the followers or mere imitators of such men1 and those ,mystics also whose obscure vagaries neither produced any important result nor present any remarkable phnomena4 ,only by resolute omission on this principle has it been possible to preserve in any measure that historical perspective so essential to the truth of such delineations4 ,the fact that the ground ,i traverse lies almost wholly unoccupied1 might be pleaded on behalf of my undertaking4 ,the history of ,mysticism has been but incidentally touched by ,english writers4 ,germany possesses many monographs of unequal value on detached parts of the subject4 ,only recently has a complete account of ,christian ,mysticism appeared1 at all on a level with the latest results of historical inquiry4#a ,this laborious compilation presents the dry bones of doctrinal opinion1 carefully separated from actual life--a grave defect in any branch of ecclesiastical history1 absolutely fatal to intelligibility and readableness in this4 ,if we except the researches of the ,germans into their own medival ,mysticism1 it may be truly said that the little done in ,england has been better done than the much in ,germany4 ,the ,mysticism of the ,neo-,platonists has found a powerful painter in ,mr4 ,kingsley4 ,the ,mysticism of ,bernard meets with a wise and kindly critic in ,sir ,james ,stephen4 ,if1 then1 the subject of this book be neither insignificant in itself1 nor exhausted by the labours of others1 my enterprise at least is not unworthy1 however questionable its success4 ,,the ,,author4 ,february #ast1 #ahef4 ,footnote #a3 ,die ,christliche ,mystik4 ,von ,dr4 ,ludwig ,noack4 ,knigsberg4 ,,preface ,,to ,,the ,,second ,,edition4 ,this work has been some time out of print4 ,it was my hope that the ,second ,edition might have been brought within a single volume4 ,but that has not been practicable4 ,the present edition has been revised by the ,author1 and some fifty pages of new matter have been introduced4 ,this new matter will be found mainly in the ,sixth ,chapter of the ,sixth ,book4 ,in that enlarged treatment of the topic of 8,german ,mysticism in the ,fourteenth ,century0 the reader will meet with a slight recurrence of former trains of thought1 which the ,author might have been inclined to suppress1 but with which ,i have not deemed it well to intermeddle4 ,it will be seen that the design of the supplementary matter is1 in part1 as a reply to criticisms which seemed to call for some such explanation2 and1 in part1 that points touched upon elsewhere might be given with more fulness4 ,to see this ,second ,edition through the press has been the work of one whose intelligent sympathy and patient effort assisted and encouraged the ,author1 in many ways1 in the prosecution of his studies1 and who now finds the solace of her loneliness in treasuring up the products of his mind1 and in cherishing the dear ones he has left to her wise love and oversight4 ,if ,mysticism be often a dream1 it is commonly a dream in the right direction4 ,its history presents one of the most significant chapters in the story of humanity4 ,,robert ,,vaughan4 ,september #gth1 #ahfj4 ,,contents ,,of ,,vol ,i4 ,,book ,i4--,,introduction4 ,,chapter ,i4 ,henry ,atherton #c ,lionel ,gower #e ,frank ,willoughby #g ,,chapter ,,ii4 ,connection of the ,arts #i ,mysticism in an ,emblem #aa ,history #ae ,,chapter ,,iii4 ,etymology #ag ,definitions #ba ,christian ,mysticism #bb ,,chapter ,,iv4 ,causes of ,mysticism #bg ,reaction against ,formalism #bh ,weariness of the ,world #cj ,the ,fascination of ,mystery #ca ,,chapter ,v4 ,classification of ,mystics #ce ,theopathetic ,mysticism #cg ,theosophy #ci ,theurgy #de ,,book ,,ii4--,,early ,,oriental ,,mysticism4 ,,chapter ,i4 ,the ,bagvat-,gita #ea ,,chapter ,,ii4 ,characteristics of ,hindoo ,mysticism #ed ,the ,yogis #eg ,,book ,,iii4--,,the ,,mysticism ,,of ,,the ,,neo-,,platonists4 ,,chapter ,i4 ,philo #fd ,the ,therapeut #ff ,asceticism #fg ,,chapter ,,ii4 ,plotinus #ga ,alexandria #gb ,eclecticism #ge ,platonism and ,neo-,platonism #gf ,plotinus on ,ecstasy #ha ,,chapter ,,iii4 ,neo-,platonism in the ,christian ,church #he ,analogies between ,ancient and ,modern ,speculation #hg ,intuition #hi ,theurgy #ia ,,chapter ,,iv4 ,porphyry #id ,philosophy seeks to rescue ,polytheism #if ,theurgic ,mysticism of ,iamblichus #ajj ,proclus #aje ,,book ,,iv4--,,mysticism ,,in ,,the ,,greek ,,church4 ,,chapter ,i4 ,saint ,anthony #aji ,the ,pseudo-,dionysius #aaa ,,chapter ,,ii4 ,the ,hierarchies of ,dionysius #aad ,the ,via ,negativa and the ,via ,affirmativa #aae ,virtues human and superhuman #aba ,stagnation #abb ,,book ,v4--,,mysticism ,,in ,,the ,,latin ,,church4 ,,chapter ,i4 ,intellectual ,activity of the ,west #acj ,the ,services of ,platonism #acb ,clairvaux #acb ,the ,mysticism of ,bernard #acf ,mysticism opposed to ,scholasticism #ada ,moderation of ,bernard #add ,,chapter ,,ii4 ,hugo of ,st ,victor #aec ,mysticism combined with ,scholasticism #aed ,the ,eye of ,contemplation #aeg ,richard of ,st ,victor #aei ,the ,six ,stages of ,contemplation #afb ,the ,truth and the ,error of ,mystical ,abstraction #afd ,the ,inner ,light and the ,outer #aff ,the ,faculty of ,intuition #afi ,,book ,,vi4--,,german ,,mysticism ,,in ,,the ,,fourteenth ,,century4 ,,chapter ,i4 ,the ,chronicle of ,adolf ,arnstein of ,strasburg #aha ,hermann of ,fritzlar and his ,legends #ahb ,the ,heretics of the ,rhineland #ahd ,the ,preaching of ,master ,eckart #ahh ,from the ,known ,god to the ,unknown #ahi ,disinterested ,love #aic ,eckart's ,story of the ,beggar #aig ,ju-ju #aii ,the ,nameless ,wild #bja ,,chapter ,,ii4 ,the ,doctrine of ,eckart discussed #bjd ,resemblance to ,hegel #bjf ,pantheism ,old and ,new #bji ,,chapter ,,iii4 ,the ,interdict #bad ,henry of ,nrdlingen #baf ,insurrection in ,strasburg #bah ,the ,friends of ,god #bbd ,tauler on the ,image of ,god #bbf ,,chapter ,,iv4 ,tauler's ,disappearance #bcj ,his ,disgrace #bcc ,his ,restoration #bcd ,the ,people comforted and the ,pope defied #bcf ,,chapter ,v4 ,nicholas of ,basle and ,tauler #bci ,the ,theology of ,tauler #bdd ,his ,advice to ,mystics #bdh ,estimate of his ,doctrine #bea ,,chapter ,,vi4 ,further ,thoughts on ,tauler and ,middle-,age ,mysticism #bfj ,tests of ,mysticism #bfh ,spiritual ,influence #bgb ,views of ,god and the ,universe #bgg ,immanence of ,god #bhj ,montanism #bhd ,ground of the ,sou #bia ,origen and ,tauler #cjb ,luther and ,tauler #cjd ,teufelsdrckh #cjg ,,chapter ,,vii4 ,the ,black ,death #cac ,the ,flagellants #caf ,a ,visit to ,ruysbroek at ,grnthal #cbe ,ruysbroek on ,mystical ,union #cbh ,heretical ,mystics #ccj ,ecclesiastical ,corruption #ccb ,,chapter ,,viii4 ,heinrich ,suso #cda ,his ,austerities #cdc ,his ,visions #cde ,his ,adventures #cdh ,the ,monks of ,mount ,athos #cef ,,chapter ,,ix4 ,nicholas of ,basle #cei ,brigitta #cfa ,angela de ,foligni #cfb ,catharine of ,siena #cfd ,the 8,german ,theology0 #cff ,the 8,imitation of ,christ0 #cfg ,gerson #cfh ,,book ,,the ,,first ,,introduction ,,chapter ,i4 ,wie fruchtbar ist der kleinste ,kreis1 ,wenn man ihn wohl zu pflegen weiss4#b ,,goethe4 ,it was on the evening of a ,november day that three friends sat about their after-dinner table1 chatting over their wine and walnuts1 while the fire with its huge log crackled and sparkled1 and the wind without moaned about the corners of the house4 ,everyone is aware that authors have in their studies an unlimited supply of rings of ,gyges1 coats of darkness1 tarn-caps1 and other means of invisibility1--that they have the key to every house1 and can hear and see words and actions the most remote4 ,come with me1 then1 kindly reader1 and let us look and listen unseen2 we have free leave2 and you must know these gentlemen better4 ,first of all1 the host4 ,see him leaning back in his chair1 and looking into the fire1 one hand unconsciously smoothing with restless thumb and finger the taper stem of his wineglass1 the other playing with the ears of a favourite dog4 ,he appears about thirty years of age1 is tall1 but loses something of his real height by a student's stoop about the shoulders4 ,those decided almost shaggy eyebrows he has would lead you to expect quick1 piercing eyes1--the eyes of the observant man of action4 ,but now that he looks towards us1 you see instead eyes of hazel1 large1 slow-rolling1 often dreamy in their gaze1--such for size and lustre as ,homer gives to ox-eyed ,juno4 ,the mouth1 too1 and the nose are delicately cut4 ,their outline indicates taste rather than energy4 ,yet that massive jaw1 again1 gives promise of quiet power1--betokens a strength of that sort1 most probably1 which can persevere in a course once chosen with indomitable steadiness1 but is not an agile combative force1 inventive in assaults and rejoicing in adventurous leadership4 ,men of his species resemble fountains1 whose water-column a sudden gust of wind may drive aslant1 or scatter in spray across the lawn1 but--the violence once past--they play upward as truly and as strong as ever4 ,perhaps it is a pity that this ,henry ,atherton is so rich as he is1--owns his ,ashfield ,house1 with its goodly grounds1 and has never been forced into active professional life1 with its rough collisions and straining anxieties4 ,abundance of leisure is a trial to which few men are equal4 ,gray was in the right when he said that something more of genius than common was required to teach a man how to employ himself4 ,my friend became early his own task-master1 and labours harder from choice than many from necessity4 ,to high attainment as a classical scholar he has added a critical acquaintance with the literature and the leading languages of modern ,europe4 ,upstairs is a noble library1 rich especially in historical authorities1 and there ,atherton works1 investigating now one historic question1 now another1 endeavouring out of old1 yellow-faced annals to seize the precious passages which suggest the life of a time1 and recording the result of all in piles of manuscript4 ,how often have ,i and ,gower--that youngest of the three1 on the other side1 with the moustache--urged him to write a book4 ,but he waits1 and1 with his fastidiousness1 will always wait1 ,i am afraid1 till he has practically solved this problem2--given a subject in remote history1 for which not ten of your friends care a straw2 required such a treatment of it as shall at once be relished by the many and accredited as standard by the few4 ,so1 thinking it useless to write what scarcely anyone will read1 and despairing of being ever erudite and popular at the same time1 he is content to enquire and to accumulate in most happy obscurity4 ,doubtless the world groans under its many books1 yet it misses some good ones that would assuredly be written if able men with the ambition were oftener possessed of the time required1 or if able men with the time were oftener possessed of the ambition4 ,you ask me1 #8,who is this ,gower8' ,an artist4 ,atherton met with him at ,rome1 where he was tracing classic sites1 and ,gower worshipping the old masters4 ,their pathway chanced on one or two occasions to coincide1 and by little and little they grew fast friends4 ,they travelled through ,germany together on their way home1 and found their friendship robust enough to survive the landing on our ,british shore4 ,unquestionably the pictured ,vatican1 sunny ,forum1 brown ,campagna1 garlanded baths of ,caracalla1 with quaint1 ingenious ,nuremberg1 and haunted ,hartz1 made common memories for both4 ,but this was not all4 ,atherton had found the young painter in a sentimental fever4 ,he raved about ,shelley2 he was full of adoration for the flimsiest abstractions--enamoured of impersonations the most impalpable2 he discoursed in high strain on the dedication of life as a ,hymn to ,intellectual ,beauty4 ,the question of questions with him concerned not ,truth or ,fable1 but the ,beautiful or the ,not-,beautiful4 ,whatever charmed his taste was from ,ormuzd1 the ,good3 whatever revolted it1 from ,ahriman1 the ,evil2 and so the universe was summarily parted4 ,he fancied he was making art religious1 while1 in fact1 he made religion a mere branch of art1--and that branch1 of all others1 the most open to individual caprice4 ,from these wanderings ,atherton reclaimed him1 wisely1 and therefore almost insensibly4 ,gower never forgot the service4 ,in his admiration for ,atherton1 when fully conscious of it1 he little suspected that he1 too1 had conferred a benefit in his turn4 ,atherton had looked too much within1 as ,gower too exclusively without4 ,a certain imaginative1 even poetical element1 dormant in the mind of the former1 was resuscitated by this friendship4 ,gower rejoices in the distressingly novelish ,christian name of ,lionel4 ,why will parents give names to their offspring which are sure to entail ridicule during the most susceptible period of existence8 ,no sooner did young ,lionel enter school1 with that delicate red-and-white complexion1 and long curling hair1 than he was nicknamed ,nelly4 ,but he fought his way stoutly till he won a title from the first part of his name rather than the last1 and in school traditions figures still as ,lion1 royally grim and noble4 ,that open countenance and high forehead1 with the deep piercing eyes set rather far apart1 constitute not merely a promising physiognomy for the artist1 they bear faithful witness to mental power and frankness of character1 to practical sagacity and force4 ,in one respect only can he be charged with asserting in his person his professional pretensions1--his hair is parted in the middle1 falling in natural waves on either side2 long enough1 as your eye tells you1 for grace2 too short for affectation4 ,one quality in ,gower ,i have always especially liked1--his universality4 ,not that he sets up for ,encyclopdism2 on the contrary1 he laments more than he need the scantiness of his knowledge and his want of time for its enlargement4 ,what ,i mean is that with every kind of enquiry1 every province of culture1 he seems to have intuitively the readiest sympathy4 ,though his notion of the particular art or science may be only cursory and general1 his imagination puts him in some way in the place of its exclusive devotees1 and he enters into their feelings till their utmost worship appears scarcely excessive to him4 ,i have heard such votaries pour out unreservedly into his ear1 as into that of a brother enthusiast1 all those delightful details of adventure1 of hope and fear1 of research and of conjecture1 which make the very life of the most minute or the most arid pursuits1 and which books impart to us so rarely4 ,and all this 7making the world to him such a wide one7 without taking aught from his allegiance to painting4 ,already have his genius and his diligence achieved success--you will find his pictures realizing high prices--and that snug little box of his1 only ten minutes' walk from ,ashfield1 is furnished much too handsomely to accord with the popular idea of what must be the residence of a young artist1 five-and-twenty1 but newly started in his profession1 and with all his #8expectations' gathered up within his brush4 ,the third member of the trio1 ,mr4 ,author1 has not certainly the personal advantages of our friend ,gower4 ,i suppose you expect me to say #8our' now1 if only as a compliment4 ,yet stay--a very expressive face1 with a genial hearty look about it2--there6 now he is smiling1 that rather clumsy mouth is quite pleasant2 but he lets too much beard grow for my taste4 ,bearded ,willoughby1 ,o ,reader1 is a literary man1 a confirmed bachelor1 they say2 and encrusted with some roughnesses and oddities which conceal from the eyes of strangers his real warmth of heart and delicacy of feeling4 ,his parents destined him for the ,church from those tender years wherein the only vocation manifest is that which summons boyhood to peg-top and jam tart4 ,when the time drew near in which he should have taken orders1 ,willoughby went up to ,london1 brimful of eager philanthropy1 of religious doubts1 and of literary ambition1 to become one of the ,high-priests of ,letters4 ,his first work was a novel to illustrate the mission of the literary ,priesthood1 a topsy-turvy affair1 but dashingly clever--by the way1 you can scarcely offend him more than to mention it now2--with this book he succeeded in producing a sensation1 and the barrier thus passed1 his pen has found full employment ever since4 ,he has now abandoned the extravagances of hero-worship1 and ,i have even heard him intimate a doubt as to whether #8able editors' were1 after all1 the great1 divinely-accredited hierophants of the species4 ,at present ,willoughby is occupied1 as time allows1 with a philosophical romance1 in which are to be embodied his views of society as it is and as it should be4 ,this desperate enterprise is quite a secret2 even ,atherton and ,gower know nothing of it2 so you will not mention it1 if you please1 to more than half-a-dozen of your most intimate friends4 ,willoughby was first introduced to ,atherton as the author of some articles in favour of certain social reforms in which the latter had deeply interested himself4 ,so remarkable were these papers for breadth1 discrimination1 and vivacity of style1 that the admiring ,atherton could not rest till he had made the acquaintance of the writer4 ,the new combatant awakened general attention1 and ,frank ,willoughby was on the point of becoming a lion4 ,but his conversational powers were inconsiderable4 ,his best thoughts ran with his ink from the point of the pen4 ,so ,atherton1 with little difficulty1 carried him off from the lion-hunters4 ,the three friends were agreed that the crowning locality of all for any mortal was a residence a few miles from town1 with congenial neighbours close at hand1--a house or two where one might drop in for an evening at any time4 ,as was their theory so was their practice1 and the two younger men are often to be found in the evening at ,atherton's1 sometimes in the library with him1 sometimes in the drawing-room1 with the additional enjoyment afforded by the society of his fair young wife and her sister4 ,but while ,i have been ,boswellizing to you about the past history of these friends of mine1 you cannot have heard a word they have been saying4 ,now ,i will be quiet1--let us listen4 ,footnote #b3 ,how fruitful may the smallest circle grow1 ,if we the secret of its culture know4 ,,chapter ,,ii4 ,philosophy itself ,smacks of the age it lives in1 nor is true ,save by the apposition of the present4 ,and truths of olden time1 though truths they be1 ,and living through all time eternal truths1 ,yet want the seas'ning and applying hand ,which ,nature sends successive4 ,else the need ,of wisdom should wear out and wisdom cease1 ,since needless wisdom were not to be wise4 ,,edwin ,,the ,,fair4 ,,atherton4 ,a pleasant little knot to set us1 ,gower1--to determine the conditions of your art4 ,,willoughby4 ,and after dinner1 too1 of all times4 ,,gower4 ,why not8 ,if the picture-critics would only write their verdicts after dinner1 many a poor victim would find his dinner prospects brighter4 ,this is the genial hour2 the very time to discuss sthetics1 where geniality is everything4 ,,willoughby4 ,do you remember that passage in one of our old plays 7,i think it was in ,lamb ,i saw it71 where the crazed father asks all sorts of impossible things from the painter4 ,he wants him to make the tree shriek on which his murdered son hangs ghastly in the moonlight4 ,,gower4 ,salvator has plenty of them1 splintered with shrieking4 ,,willoughby4 ,but this man's frenzy demands more yet3--make me cry1 make me mad1 make me well again1 and in the end leave me in a trance1--and so forth4 ,,atherton4 ,fortunate painter--a picture gallery ordered in a breath6 ,,willoughby4 ,by no means4 ,now does this request1 when you come to think of it1 so enormously violate the conditions of the art8 ,seriously1 ,i should state the matter thus3--,the artist is limited to a moment only1 and yet is the greater artist in proportion as he can not only adequately occupy1 but even transcend that moment4 ,,gower4 ,i agree with you4 ,painting reaches its highest aim when it carries us beyond painting2 when it is not merely itself a creation1 but makes the spectator creative1 and prompts him with the antecedents and the consequents of the represented action4 ,,atherton4 ,but all are not equal to the reception of such suggestions4 ,,gower4 ,and so1 with unsusceptible minds1 we must be satisfied if they praise us for our imitation merely4 ,,willoughby4 ,yet even they will derive more pleasure1 though unable to account for it1 from works of this higher order4 ,those1 assuredly1 are the masterpieces of art1 in any branch1 which are1 as it were1 triumphal arches that lead us out into the domain of some sister art4 ,when poetry pourtrays with the painter1-- ,,gower4 ,my favourite1 ,spenser1 to wit4-- ,,willoughby4 ,when painting sings its story with the minstrel1 and when music paints and sings with both1 they are at their height4 ,take music1 for instance4 ,what scenes does some fine overture suggest1 even when you know nothing of its design1 as you close your eyes and yield to its influence4 ,the events1 or the reading of the previous day1 the incidents of history or romance1 are wrought up with glorious transfigurations1 and you are in the land of dreams at once4 ,some of them rise before me at this moment1 vivid as ever3--now ,i see the fair damosels of the olden time on their palfreys1 prancing on the sward beside a castle gate1 while silver trumpets blow2 then1 as the music changes1 ,i hear cries far off on forlorn and haunted moors2 now it is the sea1 and there sets the sun1 red1 through the ribs of a wrecked hull1 that cross it like skeleton giant bars4 ,there is one passage in the overture to ,fra ,diavolo1 during which ,i always emerge1 through ocean caves1 in some silken palace of the east1 where the music rises and rains in the fountains1 and ethereally palpitates in their wavering rainbows4 ,but dream-scenery of this sort is familiar to most persons at such times4 ,,gower4 ,i have often revelled in it4 ,,willoughby4 ,and what is true for so many with regard to music1 may sometimes be realized on seeing pictures4 ,,atherton4 ,only1 ,i think1 in a way still more accidental and arbitrary4 ,an instance1 however1 of the thing you mention did happen to me last week4 ,i had been reading a ,german writer on mysticism1 searching1 after many disappointments1 for a satisfactory definition of it4 ,page after page of metaphysical verbiage did ,i wade through in vain4 ,at last1 what swarms of labouring words had left as obscure as ever1 a picture seemed to disclose to me in a moment4 ,i saw that evening1 at a friend's house1 a painting which revealed to me1 as ,i imagined1 the very spirit of mysticism in a figure2 it was a visible emblem or hieroglyph of that mysterious religious affection4 ,,willoughby4 ,your own subjectivity forged both lock and key together1 ,i suspect4 ,,gower4 ,what in the world did the piece represent8 ,,atherton4 ,i will describe it as well as ,i can4 ,it was the interior of a ,spanish cathedral4 ,the most prominent object in the foreground below was the mighty foot of a staircase1 with a balustrade of exceeding richness1 which1 in its ascent1 crosses and recrosses the picture till its highest flight is lost in darkness1--for on that side the cathedral is built against a hill4 ,a half-light slanted down--a sunbeam through the vast misty space--from a window without the range of the picture4 ,at various stages of the mounting stairway figures on pillars1 bearing escutcheons1 saints and kings in fretted niches1 and painted shapes of gules and azure from the lofty window in the east1 looked down on those who were ascending1 some in brightness1 some in shadow4 ,at the foot of the stairs were two couchant griffins of stone1 with expanded spiny wings1 arched necks fluted with horny armour1 and open threatening jaws4 ,,gower4 ,now for the interpretation of your parable in stone4 ,,atherton4 ,it represented to me the mystic's progress--my mind was full of that--his initiation1 his ascent1 his consummation in self-loss4 ,first of all the aspirant1 whether he seeks superhuman knowledge or superhuman love1 is confronted at the outset by terrible shapes--the ,dwellers of the ,threshold1 whether the cruelty of asceticism1 the temptations of the adversary1 or the phantoms of his own feverish brain4 ,this fiery baptism manfully endured1 he begins to mount through alternate glooms and illuminations2 now catching a light from some source beyond the grosser organs of ordinary men1 again in darkness and barren drought of soul4 ,the saintly memories of adepts and of heroes in these mystic labours are the faithful witnesses that cheer him at each stage1 whose far glories beacon him from their place of high degree as he rises step by step4 ,are not those first trials fairly symbolized by my griffins1 those vicissitudes of the soul by such light and shadow1 and those exalted spectators by the statues of my stairway and the shining ones of my oriel window8 ,then for the climax4 ,the aim of the mystic1 if of the most abstract contemplative type1 is to lose himself in the ,divine ,dark#c--to escape from everything definite1 everything palpable1 everything human1 into the ,infinite ,fulness2 which is1 at the same time1 the #8intense inane4' ,the profoundest obscurity is his highest glory2 he culminates in darkness2 for is not the deathlike midnight slumber of the sense1 he will ask us1 the wakeful noonday of the spirit8 ,so1 as ,i looked on the picture1 ,i seemed to lose sight of him where the summit of the stair was lost among the shadows crouched under the roof of that strange structure4 ,,gower4 ,i perceive the analogy4 ,i owe you thanks for enabling me to attach at least some definite idea to the word mysticism4 ,i confess ,i have generally used the term mystical to designate anything fantastically unintelligible1 without giving to it any distinct significance4 ,,willoughby4 ,i have always been partial to the mystics1 ,i must say4 ,they appear to me to have been the conservators of the poetry and heart of religion1 especially in opposition to the dry prose and formalism of the schoolmen4 ,,atherton4 ,so they really were in great measure4 ,they did good service1 many of them1 in their day--their very errors often such as were possible only to great souls4 ,still their notions concerning special revelation and immediate intuition of ,god were grievous mistakes4 ,,willoughby4 ,yet without the ardour imparted by such doctrines1 they might have lacked the strength requisite to withstand misconceptions far more mischievous4 ,,atherton4 ,very likely4 ,we should have more mercy on the one-sidedness of men1 if we reflected oftener that the evil we condemn may be in fact keeping out some much greater evil on the other side4 ,,willoughby4 ,i think one may learn a great deal from such erratic or morbid kinds of religion4 ,almost all we are in a position to say1 concerning spiritual influence1 consists of negatives--and what that influence is not we can best gather from these abnormal phases of the mind4 ,certainly an impartial estimate of the good and of the evil wrought by eminent mystics1 would prove a very instructive occupation2 it would be a trying of the spirits by their fruits4 ,,gower4 ,and all the more useful as the mistakes of mysticism1 whatever they may be1 are mistakes concerning questions which we all feel it so important to have rightly answered2 committed1 too1 by men of like passions with ourselves1 so that what was danger to them may be danger also to some of us1 in an altered form4 ,,atherton4 ,unquestionably4 ,rationalism overrates reason1 formalism action1 and mysticism feeling--hence the common attributes of the last1 heat and obscurity4 ,but a tendency to excess in each of these three directions must exist in every age among the cognate varieties of mind4 ,you remember how ,pindar frequently introduces into an ode two opposite mythical personages1 such as a ,pelops or a ,tantalus1 an ,ixion or a ,perseus1 one of whom shall resemble the great man addressed by the poet in his worse1 the other in his better characteristics2 that thus he may be at once encouraged and deterred4 ,deeper lessons than were drawn for ,hiero from the characters of the heroic age may be learnt by us from the religious struggles of the past4 ,it would be impossible to study the position of the old mystics without being warned and stimulated by a weakness and a strength to which our nature corresponds2--unless1 indeed1 the enquiry were conducted unsympathizingly2 with cold hearts1 as far from the faith of the mystics as from their follies4 ,,gower4 ,if we are likely to learn in this way from such an investigation1 suppose we agree to set about it1 and at once4 ,,atherton4 ,with all my heart4 ,i have gone a little way in this direction alone2 ,i should be very glad to have company upon the road4 ,,willoughby4 ,an arduous task1 when you come to look it in the face1--to determine that narrow line between the genuine ardour of the ,christian and the overwrought fervours of the mystical devotee1--to enter into the philosophy of such a question2 and that with a terminology so misleading and so defective as the best at our service4 ,it will be like shaping the second hand of a watch with a pair of shears1 ,i promise you4 ,we shall find continually tracts of ground belonging to one of the rival territories of ,true and ,false inlaid upon the regions of the other1 like those patches from a distant shire that lie in the middle of some of our counties4 ,many of the words we must employ to designate a certain cast of mind or opinion are taken from some accidental feature or transitory circumstance1--express no real characteristic of the idea in question4 ,they indicate our ignorance1 like the castles with large flags1 blazoned with the arms of sovereigns1 which the old monkish geographers set down in their maps of ,europe to stand instead of the rivers1 towns1 and mountains of an unknown interior4 ,,atherton4 ,true enough2 but we must do the best we can4 ,we should never enter on any investigation a little beneath the surface of things if we consider all the difficulties so gravely4 ,besides1 we are not going to be so ponderously philosophical about the matter4 ,the facts themselves will be our best teachers1 as they arise1 and as we arrange them when they accumulate4 ,history fairly questioned is no ,sphinx4 ,she tells us what kind of teaching has been fruitful in blessing to humanity1 and why2 and what has been a mere boastful promise or powerless formula4 ,she is the true test of every system1 and the safeguard of her disciples from theoretical or practical extravagance4 ,were her large lessons learned1 from how many foolish hopes and fears would they save men6 ,we should not then see a fanatical confidence placed in pet theories for the summary expulsion of all superstition1 wrongfulness1 and ill-will1--theories whose prototypes failed ages back3 neither would good ,christian folk be so frightened as some of them are at the seemingly novel exhibitions of unbelief in our time4 ,,willoughby4 ,a great gain--to be above both panic and presumption4 ,i have never heartily given myself to a historic study without realizing some such twofold advantage4 ,it animated and it humbled me4 ,how minute my power2 but how momentous to me its conscientious exercise6 ,i will hunt this mystical game with you1 or any other1 right willingly2 all the more so1 if we can keep true to a historic rather than theoretical treatment of the subject4 ,,gower4 ,as to practical details1 then3--,i propose that we have no rules4 ,,willoughby4 ,certainly not2 away with formalities2 let us be ,thelemites1 and do as we like4 ,we can take up this topic as a bye-work1 to furnish us with some consecutive pursuit in those intervals of time we are so apt to waste4 ,we can meet--never mind at what intervals1 from a week to three months--and throw into the common stock of conversation our several reading on the questions in hand4 ,,atherton4 ,or one of us may take up some individual or period2 write down his thoughts3 and we will assemble then to hear and talk the matter over4 ,,gower4 ,very good4 ,and if ,mrs4 ,atherton and ,miss ,merivale will sometimes deign to honour our evenings with their society1 our happiness will be complete4 ,this mention of the ladies reminds our friends of the time1 and they are breaking up to join them4 ,the essays and dialogues which follow have their origin in the conversation to which we have just listened4 ,footnote #c3 ,the writer1 who goes by the name of ,dionysius ,areopagita1 teaches that the highest spiritual truth is revealed only to those #8who have transcended every ascent of every holy height1 and have left behind all divine lights and sounds and heavenly discoursings1 and have passed into that ,darkness where ,he really is 7as saith the ,scripture7 who is above all things4'--,de ,mystic ,theologi1 cap4 i4 #c4 ,,chapter ,,iii4 ,if we entertain the inward man in the purgative and illuminative way1 that is1 in actions of repentance1 virtue1 and precise duty1 that is the surest way of uniting us to ,god1 whilst it is done by faith and obedience2 and that also is love2 and in these peace and safety dwell4 ,and after we have done our work1 it is not discretion in a servant to hasten to his meal1 and snatch at the refreshment of visions1 unions1 and abstractions2 but first we must gird ourselves1 and wait upon the master1 and not sit down ourselves1 till we all be called at the great supper of the ,lamb4--,,jeremy ,,taylor4 #8,so1 we are to be etymological to-night1' exclaimed ,gower1 as he stepped forward to join ,willoughby in his inspection of a great folio which ,atherton had laid open on a reading desk1 ready to entertain his friends4 #8,what says ,suidas about our word mysticism8' ,,willoughby4 ,i see the old lexicographer derives the original word from the root mu1 to close3 the secret rites and lessons of the ,greek mysteries were things about which the mouth was to be closed4#d ,,gower4 ,we have the very same syllable in our language for the same thing--only improved in expressiveness by the addition of another letter1--we say1 #8to be mum4' ,,atherton4 ,well1 this settles one whole class of significations at once4 ,the term mystical may be applied in this sense to any secret language or ritual which is understood only by the initiated4 ,in this way the philosophers borrowed the word figuratively from the priests1 and applied it to their inner esoteric doctrines4 ,the disciple admitted to these was a philosophical #8myst1' or mystic4 ,,willoughby4 ,the next step is very obvious4 ,the family of words relating to mystery1 initiation1 c41 are adopted into the ecclesiastical phraseology of the early ,christian world1--not in the modified use of them occasionally observable in ,st4 ,paul1 but with their old ,pagan significance4 ,,gower4 ,so that the exclusive and aristocratic spirit of ,greek culture re-appears in ,christianity8 ,,atherton4 ,just so4 ,thus you see the church doors shutting out the catechumens from beholding #8the mystery' 7as they came to call the ,eucharist1 par excellence7 quite as rigidly as the brazen gates of ,eleusis excluded the profane many4 ,you hear ,theodoret and ,ambrose speaking freely before the uninitiated on moral subjects1 but concerning the rites they deemed of mysterious1 almost magical efficacy1 they will deliver only obscure utterances to such auditors2 their language is purposely dark and figurative1--suggestive to the initiated1 unintelligible to the neophyte4 ,how often on approaching the subject of the sacrament1 does ,chrysostom stop short in his sermon1 and break off abruptly with the formula1--#8the initiated will understand what ,i mean4' ,so ,christianity1 corrupted by ,gentile philosophy1 has in like manner its privileged and its inferior order of votaries1--becomes a respecter of persons1 with arbitrary distinction makes two kinds of religion out of one1 and begins to nourish with fatal treachery its doctrine of reserve4#e ,,willoughby4 ,but ,suidas has here1 ,i perceive1 a second meaning in store for us4 ,this latter1 ,i suspect1 is most to our purpose1--it is simply an extension of the former4 ,he refers the word to the practice of closing as completely as possible every avenue of perception by the senses1 for the purpose of withdrawing the mind from everything external into itself1 so as to fit it 7raised above every sensuous representation7 for receiving divine illumination immediately from above4 ,,gower4 ,platonic abstraction1 in fact4 ,,atherton4 ,so it seems4 ,the ,neo-,platonist was accustomed to call every other branch of science the #8lesser mysteries3' this inward contemplation1 the climax of ,platonism1 is the great mystery1 the inmost1 highest initiation4 ,withdraw into thyself1 he will say1 and the adytum of thine own soul will reveal to thee profounder secrets than the cave of ,mithras4 ,so that his mysticus is emphatically the enclosed1 self-withdrawn1 introverted man4#f ,this is an initiation which does not merely1 like that of ,isis or of ,ceres1 close the lips in silence1 but the eye1 the ear1 every faculty of perception1 in inward contemplation or in the ecstatic abstraction of the trance4 ,,willoughby4 ,so then it is an effort man is to make--in harmony with the matter-hating principles of this school--to strip off the material and sensuous integuments of his being1 and to reduce himself to a purely spiritual element4 ,and in thus ignoring the follies and the phantasms of ,appearance--as they call the actual world--the worshipper of pure ,being believed himself to enjoy at least a transitory oneness with the object of his adoration8 ,,atherton4 ,so ,plotinus would say1 if not ,plato4 ,and now we come to the transmission of the idea and the expression to the ,church4 ,a writer1 going by the name of ,dionysius the ,areopagite1 ferries this shade over into the darkness visible of the ecclesiastical world in the fifth century4 ,the system of mystical theology introduced by him was eminently adapted to the monastic and hierarchical tendencies of the time4 ,his #8,mystic' is not merely a sacred personage1 acquainted with the doctrines and participator in the rites called mysteries1 but one also who 7exactly after the ,neo-,platonist pattern7 by mortifying the body1 closing the senses to everything external1 and ignoring every #8intellectual apprehension1'#g attains in passivity a divine union1 and in ignorance a wisdom transcending all knowledge4 ,,gower4 ,prepared to say1 ,i suppose1 with one of old ,george ,chapman's characters-- ,i'll build all inward--not a light shall ope ,the common out-way4-- ,i'll therefore live in dark2 and all my light1 ,like ancient temples1 let in at my top4 ,,willoughby4 ,not much light either4 ,the mystic1 as such1 was not to know anything about the ,infinite1 he was #8to gaze with closed eyes1' passively to receive impressions1 lost in the silent1 boundless #8,dark' of the ,divine ,subsistence4 ,,atherton4 ,this1 then1 is our result4 ,the philosophical perfection of ,alexandria and the monastic perfection of ,byzantium belong to the same species4 ,philosophers and monks alike employ the word mysticism and its cognate terms as involving the idea1 not merely of initiation into something hidden1 but1 beyond this1 of an internal manifestation of the ,divine to the intuition or in the feeling of the secluded soul4 ,it is in this last and narrower sense1 therefore1 that the word is to be understood when we speak of mystical death1 mystical illumination1 mystical union with ,god1 and1 in fact1 throughout the phraseology of what is specially termed ,theologia ,mystica4#h ,,gower4 ,i have often been struck by the surprising variety in the forms of thought and the modes of action in which mysticism has manifested itself among different nations and at different periods4 ,this arises1 ,i should think1 from its residing in so central a province of the mind--the feeling4 ,it has been incorporated in theism1 atheism1 and pantheism4 ,it has given men gods at every step1 and it has denied all deity except self4 ,it has appeared in the loftiest speculation and in the grossest idolatry4 ,it has been associated with the wildest licence and with the most pitiless asceticism4 ,it has driven men out into action1 it has dissolved them in ecstasy1 it has frozen them to torpor4 ,,atherton4 ,hence the difficulty of definition4 ,i have seen none which quite satisfies me4 ,some include only a particular phase of it1 while others so define its province as to stigmatise as mystical every kind of religiousness which rises above the zero of rationalism4 ,,willoughby4 ,the ,germans have two words for mysticism--mystik and mysticismus4 ,the former they use in a favourable1 the latter in an unfavourable1 sense4-- ,,gower4 ,just as we say piety and pietism1 or rationality and rationalism2 keeping the first of each pair for the use1 the second for the abuse4 ,a convenience1 don't you think8 ,,atherton4 ,if the adjective were distinguishable like the nouns--but it is not2 and to have a distinction in the primitive and not in the derivative word is always confusing4 ,but we shall keep to the usage of our own language4 ,i suppose we shall all be agreed in employing the word mysticism in the unfavourable signification1 as equivalent generally to spirituality diseased1 grown unnatural1 fantastic1 and the like4 ,,gower4 ,at the same time admitting the true worth of many mystics1 and the real good and truth of which such errors are the exaggeration or caricature4 ,,atherton4 ,i think we may say thus much generally--that mysticism1 whether in religion or philosophy1 is that form of error which mistakes for a divine manifestation the operations of a merely human faculty4 ,,willoughby4 ,there you define1 at any rate1 the characteristic misconception of the mystics4 ,,gower4 ,and include1 if ,i mistake not1 enthusiasts1 with their visions2 pretended prophets1 with their claim of inspiration2 wonder-workers1 trusting to the divine power resident in their theurgic formulas2 and the philosophers who believe themselves organs of the world-soul1 and their systems an evolution of ,deity4 ,,atherton4 ,yes1 so far2 but ,i do not profess to give any definition altogether adequate4 ,speaking of ,christian mysticism1 ,i should describe it generally as the exaggeration of that aspect of ,christianity which is presented to us by ,st4 ,john4 ,,gower4 ,that answer provokes another question4 ,how should you characterize ,john's peculiar presentation of the ,gospel8 ,,atherton4 ,i refer chiefly to that admixture of the contemplative temperament and the ardent1 by which he is personally distinguished1--the opposition so manifest in his epistles to all religion of mere speculative opinion or outward usage1--the concentration of ,christianity1 as it were1 upon the inward life derived from union with ,christ4 ,this would seem to be the province of ,christian truth especially occupied by the beloved disciple1 and this is the province which mysticism has in so many ways usurped4 ,,gower4 ,truly that unction from the ,holy ,one1 of which ,john speaks1 has found some strange claimants6 ,,willoughby4 ,thus much ,i think is evident from our enquiry--that mysticism1 true to its derivation as denoting a hidden knowledge1 faculty1 or life 7the exclusive privilege of sage1 adept1 or recluse71 presents itself1 in all its phases1 as more or less the religion of internal as opposed to external revelation1--of heated feeling1 sickly sentiment1 or lawless imagination1 as opposed to that reasonable belief in which the intellect and the heart1 the inward witness and the outward1 are alike engaged4 ,note to page #ba4 ,numerous definitions of #8,mystical ,theology' are supplied by ,roman ,catholic divines who have written on the subject4 ,with all of them the terms denote the religion of the heart as distinguished from speculation1 scholasticism1 or ritualism2 and1 moreover1 those higher experiences of the divine life associated1 in their belief1 with extraordinary gifts and miraculous powers4 ,such definitions will accordingly comprehend the theopathetic and theurgic forms of mysticism1 but must necessarily exclude the theosophic4 ,many of them might serve as definitions of genuine religion4 ,these mystical experiences have been always coveted and admired in the ,romish ,church2 and those1 therefore1 who write concerning them employ the word mysticism in a highly favourable sense4 ,that excess of subjectivity--those visionary raptures and supernatural exaltations1 which we regard as the symptoms of spiritual disease1 are1 in the eyes of these writers1 the choice rewards of sufferings and of aspirations the most intense1--they are the vision of ,god and things celestial enjoyed by the pure in heart1--the dazzling glories wherewith ,god has crowned the heads of a chosen few1 whose example shall give light to all the world4 ,two or three specimens will suffice4 ,gerson gives the two following definitions of the ,theologia ,mystica3--#8,est animi extensio in ,deum per amoris desiderium4' ,and again3 #8,est motio anagogica in ,deum per purum et fervidum amorem4' ,elsewhere he is more metaphorical1 describing it as the theology which teaches men to escape from the stormy sea of sensuous desires to the safe harbour of ,eternity1 and shows them how to attain that love which snatches them away to the ,beloved1 unites them with ,him1 and secures them rest in ,him4 ,dionysius the ,carthusian 7associating evidently mystica and mysteriosa7 says1--#8,est autem mystica ,theologia secretissima mentis cum ,deo locutio4' ,john ,jesu ,maria calls it1 #8clestis qudam ,dei notitia per unionem voluntatis ,deo adhrentis elicita1 vel lumine clitus immisso producta4' ,this mystical theology1 observes the ,carthusian ,dionysius1 farther1 7commentating on the ,areopagite71 is no science1 properly so called2 even regarded as an act1 it is simply the concentration 7defixio7 of the mind on ,god--admiration of his majesty--a suspension of the mind in the boundless and eternal light--a most fervid1 most peaceful1 transforming gaze on ,deity1 c4 ,all alike contrast the mystical with the scholastic and the symbolical theology4 ,the points of dissimilarity are thus summed up by ,cardinal ,bona3--#8,per scholasticam discit homo recte uti intelligibilibus1 per symbolicam sensibilibus1 per hanc 7mysticam7 rapitur ad supermentales excessus4 ,scienti human in valle phantasi discuntur1 hc in apice mentis4 ,ill multis egent discursibus1 et erroribus subject sunt3 hc unico et simplici verbo docetur et discitur1 et est mere supernaturalis tam in substanti quam in modo procedendi4'--,via ,compendii ad ,deum1 cap4 iii4 #a-c4 ,the definition given by ,corderius in his introduction to the mystical theology of ,dionysius is modelled on the mysticism of ,john de la ,cruz3--#8,theologia ,mystica est sapientia experimentalis1 ,dei affectiva1 divinitus infusa1 qu mentem ab omni inordinatione puram1 per actus supernaturales fidei1 spei1 et charitatis1 cum ,deo intime conjungit4'--,isagoge1 cap4 ii4 ,the most negative definition of all is that given by ,pachymeres1 the ,greek paraphrast of ,dionysius1 who has evidently caught his master's mantle1 or cloak of darkness4 #8,mystical theology is not perception or discourse1 not a movement of the mind1 not an operation1 not a habit1 nothing that any other power we may possess will bring to us2 but if1 in absolute immobility of mind we are illumined concerning it1 we shall know that it is beyond everything cognizable by the mind of man4'--,dion4 ,opp4 vol4 i4 p4 #gbb4 ,in one place the explanations of ,corderius give us to understand that the mysticism he extols does at least open a door to theosophy itself1 i4e4 to inspired science4 ,he declares that the mystical theologian not only has revealed to him the hidden sense of ,scripture1 but that he can understand and pierce the mysteries of any natural science whatsoever1 in a way quite different from that possible to other men--in short1 by a kind of special revelation4--,isagoge1 cap4 iv4 ,the reader will gather the most adequate notion of what is meant1 or thought to be meant1 by mystical theology from the description given by ,ludovic ,blosius1 a high authority on matters mystical1 in his ,institutio ,spiritualis4 ,corderius cites him at length1 as #8sublimissimus rerum mysticarum interpres4' ,happy1 he exclaims1 is that soul which steadfastly follows after purity of heart and holy introversion1 renouncing utterly all private affection1 all self-will1 all self-interest4 ,such a soul deserves to approach nearer and ever nearer to ,god4 ,then at length1 when its higher powers have been elevated1 purified1 and furnished forth by divine grace1 it attains to unity and nudity of spirit--to a pure love above representation--to that simplicity of thought which is devoid of all thinkings4 ,now1 therefore1 since it hath become receptive of the surpassing and ineffable grace of ,god1 it is led to that living fountain which flows from everlasting1 and doth refresh the minds of the saints unto the full and in over-measure4 ,now do the powers of the soul shine as the stars1 and she herself is fit to contemplate the abyss of ,divinity with a serene1 a simple1 and a jubilant intuition1 free from imagination and from the smallest admixture of the intellect4 ,accordingly1 when she lovingly turns herself absolutely unto ,god1 the incomprehensible light shines into her depths1 and that radiance blinds the eye of reason and understanding4 ,but the simple eye of the soul itself remains open--that is thought1 pure1 naked1 uniform1 and raised above the understanding4 ,moreover1 when the natural light of reason is blinded by so bright a glory1 the soul takes cognizance of nothing in time1 but is raised above time and space1 and assumes as it were a certain attribute of eternity4 ,for the soul which has abandoned symbols and earthly distinctions and processes of thought1 now learns experimentally that ,god far transcends all images--corporeal1 spiritual1 or divine1 and that whatsoever the reason can apprehend1 whatsoever can be said or written concerning ,god1 whatsoever can be predicated of ,him by words1 must manifestly be infinitely remote from the reality of the divine subsistence which is unnameable4 ,the soul knows not1 therefore1 what that ,god is she feels4 ,hence1 by a foreknowledge which is exercised without knowledge1 she rests in the nude1 the simple1 the unknown ,god1 who alone is to be loved4 ,for the light is called dark1 from its excessive brightness4 ,in this darkness the soul receives the hidden word which ,god utters in the inward silence and secret recess of the mind4 ,this word she receives1 and doth happily experience the bond of mystical union4 ,for when1 by means of love1 she hath transcended reason and all symbols1 and is carried away above herself 7a favour ,god alone can procure her71 straightway she flows away from herself and flows forth into ,god 7a se defluens profluit in ,deum71 and then is ,god her peace and her enjoyment4 ,rightly doth she sing1 in such a transport1 #8,i will both lay me down in peace and sleep4' ,the loving soul flows down1 ,i say1 falls away from herself1 and1 reduced as it were to nothing1 melts and glides away altogether into the abyss of eternal love4 ,there1 dead to herself1 she lives in ,god1 knowing nothing1 perceiving nothing1 except the love she tastes4 ,for she loses herself in that vastest solitude and darkness of ,divinity3 but thus to lose is in fact to find herself4 ,there1 putting off whatsoever is human1 and putting on whatever is divine1 she is transformed and transmuted into ,god1 as iron in a furnace takes the form of fire and is transmuted into fire4 ,nevertheless1 the essence of the soul thus deified remains1 as the glowing iron does not cease to be iron4444 ,the soul1 thus bathed in the essence of ,god1 liquefied by the consuming fire of love1 and united to ,him without medium1 doth1 by wise ignorance and by the inmost touch of love1 more clearly know ,god than do our fleshly eyes discern the visible sun4444 ,though ,god doth sometimes manifest himself unto the perfect soul in most sublime and wondrous wise1 yet he doth not reveal himself as he is in his own ineffable glory1 but as it is possible for him to be seen in this life4--,isagoge ,cord4 cap4 vii4 ,footnote #d3 ,on the word ,suidas says1 1 4 ,suicer also cites ,hesychius3 ,etym4 ,mag4--1 1 4 1 4 ,footnote #e3 ,see ,bingham1 ,antiq4 of the ,christian ,church1 vol4 ix4 pp4 #if-aje4 ,clement of ,alexandria abounds in examples of the application to ,christian doctrine of the phraseology in use concerning the heathen mysteries2--e4g4 ,protrept4 cap4 xii4 #abj4 ,footnote #f3 ,both ,plotinus and ,proclus speak of the highest revelation concerning divine things as vouchsafed to the soul which withdraws into itself1 and1 dead to all that is external1 #8gazes with closed eyes' 774 ,see ,tholuck's ,blthensammlung aus der ,morgenlandischen ,mystik2 ,einleitung1 ,i1 p4 #f4 ,dr4 ,tholuck is the only ,german writer ,i have seen who throws light on the word in question by accurately investigating its etymology and successive meanings2 and ,i readily acknowledge my debt to his suggestions on this point4 ,footnote #g3 ,dionysius thus describes the mystical adept who has reached the summit of union3--#8,then is he delivered from all seeing and being seen1 and passes into the truly mystical darkness of ignorance1 where he excludes all intellectual apprehensions 7 71 and abides in the utterly ,impalpable and ,invisible2 being wholly ,his who is above all1 with no other dependence1 either on himself or any other2 and is made one1 as to his nobler part1 with the utterly ,unknown1 by the cessation of all knowing2 and at the same time1 in that very knowing nothing1 he knows what transcends the mind of man4'--,de ,mystic ,theologi1 cap4 i4 p4 #gaj4 ,s4 ,dion4 ,areop4 ,opp4 ,paris1 #afdd4 ,so again he exhorts ,timothy #8by assiduous practice in mystical contemplations to abandon the senses and all operations of the intellect2 all objects of sense and all objects of thought1 all things non-existent and existent 7 1 71 and ignorantly to strive upwards towards ,union as close as possible with ,him who is above all essence and knowledge3--inasmuch as by a pure1 free1 and absolute separation 77 of himself from all things1 he will be exalted 7stripped and freed from everything7 to the superessential radiance of the divine darkness4'--p4 #gjh4 ,about the words rendered #8intellectual apprehensions' commentators differ4 ,the context1 the antithesis1 and the parallel passage in the earlier part of the chapter1 justify us in understanding them in their strict sense1 as conveying the idea of cessation from all mental action whatsoever4 ,footnote #h3 ,see ,note1 p4 #bc4 ,,chapter ,,iv4 ,the desire of the moth for the star1 ,of the night for the morrow1 ,the devotion to something afar ,from the sphere of our sorrow4 ,,shelley4 ,,willoughby4 ,here's another definition for you3--,mysticism is the romance of religion4 ,what do you say8 ,,gower4 ,true to the spirit--not scientific1 ,i fear4 ,,willoughby4 ,science be banished6 ,is not the history of mysticism bright with stories of dazzling spiritual enterprise1 sombre with tragedies of the soul1 stored with records of the achievements and the woes of martyrdom and saintship8 ,has it not reconciled1 as by enchantment1 the most opposite extremes of theory and practice8 ,see it1 in theory1 verging repeatedly on pantheism1 ego-theism1 nihilism4 ,see it1 in practice1 producing some of the most glorious examples of humility1 benevolence1 and untiring self-devotion4 ,has it not commanded1 with its indescribable fascination1 the most powerful natures and the most feeble--minds lofty with a noble disdain of life1 or low with a weak disgust of it8 ,if the self-torture it enacts seems hideous to our sobriety1 what an attraction in its reward6 ,it lays waste the soul with purgatorial pains--but it is to leave nothing there on which any fire may kindle after death4 ,what a promise6--a perfect sanctification1 a divine calm1 fruition of heaven while yet upon the earth6 ,,atherton4 ,go on1 ,willoughby1 ,i like your enthusiasm4 ,think of its adventures1 too4 ,,willoughby4 ,aye1 its adventures--both persecuted and canonized by kings and pontiffs2 one age enrolling the mystic among the saints1 another committing him to the inquisitor's torch1 or entombing him in the ,bastille4 ,and the principle indestructible after all--some minds always who must be religious mystically or not at all4 ,,atherton4 ,i thought we might this evening enquire into the causes which tend continually to reproduce this religious phenomenon4 ,you have suggested some already4 ,certain states of society have always fostered it4 ,there have been times when all the real religion existing in a country appears to have been confined to its mystics4 ,,willoughby4 ,in such an hour1 how mysticism rises and does its deeds of spiritual chivalry---- ,,gower4 ,alas6 ,quixotic enough1 sometimes4 ,,willoughby4 ,how conspicuous1 then1 grows this inward devotion6--even the secular historian is compelled to say a word about it---- ,,atherton4 ,and a sorry1 superficial verdict he gives1 too often4 ,,willoughby4 ,how loud its protest against literalism1 formality1 scholasticism1 human ordinances6 what a strenuous reaction against the corruptions of priestcraft6 ,,atherton4 ,but1 on the other side1 ,willoughby--and here comes the pathetic part of its romance--mysticism is heard discoursing concerning things unutterable4 ,it speaks1 as one in a dream1 of the third heaven1 and of celestial experiences1 and revelations fitter for angels than for men4 ,its stammering utterance1 confused with excess of rapture labouring with emotions too huge or abstractions too subtile for words1 becomes utterly unintelligible4 ,then it is misrepresented3 falls a victim to reaction in its turn2 the delirium is dieted by persecution1 and it is consigned once more to secrecy and silence4 ,,gower4 ,there1 good night1 and pleasant dreams to it6 ,,willoughby4 ,it spins still in its sleep its mingled tissue of good and evil4 ,,atherton4 ,a mixture truly4 ,we must not blindly praise it in our hatred of formalism4 ,we must not vaguely condemn it in our horror of extravagance4 ,,gower4 ,what you have both been saying indicates at once three of the causes we are in search of1--indeed1 the three chief ones1 as ,i suppose3 first of all1 the reaction you speak of against the frigid formality of religious torpor2 then1 heart-weariness1 the languishing longing for repose1 the charm of mysticism for the selfish or the weak2 and1 last1 the desire1 so strong in some minds1 to pierce the barriers that hide from man the unseen world--the charm of mysticism for the ardent and the strong4 ,,atherton4 ,that shrinking from conflict1 that passionate yearning after inaccessible rest1 how universal is it2 what wistful utterance it has found in every nation and every age2 how it subdues us all1 at times1 and sinks us into languor4 ,,willoughby4 ,want of patience lies at the root--who was it said that he should have all eternity to rest in8 ,,atherton4 ,think how the traditions of every people have embellished with their utmost wealth of imagination some hidden spot upon the surface of the earth1 which they have pourtrayed as secluded from all the tumult and the pain of time--a serene ,eden--an ever-sunny ,tempe--a vale of ,avalon--a place beyond the sterner laws and rougher visitations of the common world--a fastness of perpetual calm1 before which the tempests may blow their challenging horns in vain--they can win no entrance4 ,such1 to the fancy of the ,middle ,age1 was the famous temple of the ,sangreal1 with its dome of sapphire1 its six-and-thirty towers1 its crystal crosses1 and its hangings of green samite1 guarded by its knights1 girded by impenetrable forest1 glittering on the onyx summit of ,mount ,salvage1 for ever invisible to every eye impure1 inaccessible to every failing or faithless heart4 ,such1 to the ,hindoo1 was the ,cridavana meadow1 among the heights of ,mount ,sitanta1 full of flowers1 of the song of birds1 the hum of bees--#8languishing winds and murmuring falls of waters4' ,such was the secret mountain ,kinkadulle1 celebrated by ,olaus ,magnus1 which stood in a region now covered only by moss or snow1 but luxuriant once1 in less degenerate days1 with the spontaneous growth of every pleasant bough and goodly fruit4 ,what places like these have been to the popular mind1 even such a refuge for the ,ideal from the pursuit of the ,actual--that the attainment of ,ecstasy1 the height of ,contemplation1 the bliss of ,union1 has been for the mystic4 ,,gower4 ,so those spiritual ,lotos-eaters will only ----hearken what the inner spirit sings1 ,there is no joy but calm2 or1 in their #8fugitive and cloistered virtue1' as ,milton calls it1 say1 ----let us live and lie reclined ,on the hills like gods together1 careless of mankind4 ,,atherton4 ,some2 not all1 however4 ,neither should we suppose that even those who have sunk to such a state---- ,,willoughby4 ,they would say--risen-- ,,atherton4 ,be it by sinking or rising1 they have not been brought to that pass without a conflict4 ,from life's battle-field to the hospital of the hermitage has been but a step for a multitude of minds4 ,hiding themselves wounded from the victor 7for the enemy they could not conquer shall not see and mock their sufferings71 they call in the aid of an imaginative religionism to people their solitude with its glories4 ,the ,prometheus chained to his rock is comforted if the sea nymphs rise from the deep to visit him1 and ,ocean on his hippogriff draws near4 ,and thus1 let the gliding fancies of a life of dreams1 and ,imagination1 the monarch of all their main of thought1 visit the sorrow of these recluses1 and they think they can forget the ravages of that evil which so vexed them once4 ,hence the mysticism of the visionary4 ,he learns to crave ecstasies and revelations as at once his solace and his pride4 ,,gower4 ,is it not likely1 too1 that some of these mystics1 in seasons of mental distress of which we have no record1 tried ,nature as a resource1 and found her wanting8 ,such a disappointment would make that ascetic theory which repudiates the seen and actual1 plausible and even welcome to them4 ,after demanding of the natural world what it has not to bestow1 they would hurry to the opposite extreme1 and deny it any healing influence whatever4 ,go out into the woods and valleys1 when your heart is rather harassed than bruised1 and when you suffer from vexation more than grief4 ,then the trees all hold out their arms to you to relieve you of the burthen of your heavy thoughts2 and the streams under the trees glance at you as they run by1 and will carry away your trouble along with the fallen leaves2 and the sweet-breathing air will draw it off together with the silver multitudes of the dew4 ,but let it be with anguish or remorse in your heart that you go forth into ,nature1 and instead of your speaking her language1 you make her speak yours4 ,your distress is then infused through all things1 and clothes all things1 and ,nature only echoes1 and seems to authenticate1 your self-loathing or your hopelessness4 ,then you find the device of your sorrow on the argent shield of the moon1 and see all the trees of the field weeping and wringing their hands with you1 while the hills1 seated at your side in sackcloth1 look down upon you prostrate1 and reprove you like the comforters of ,job4 ,,atherton4 ,doubtless1 many of these stricken spirits suffered such disappointment at some early period of their history4 ,failure was inevitable1 and the disease was heightened4 ,how ,coleridge felt this when he says so mournfully in his ,ode to ,dejection1-- ,it were a vain endeavour ,though ,i should gaze for ever ,on that green light that lingers in the west3 ,i may not hope from outward forms to win ,the passion and the life whose fountains are within4 ,,willoughby4 ,the feeling of the other class we spoke of--the men of bolder temperament--has been this3 #8,i am a king and yet a captive2 submit ,i cannot2 ,i care not to dream2 ,i must in some way act4' ,,gower4 ,and1 like ,rasselas1 a prince and yet a prisoner in the narrow valley1 such a man1 in his impatience1 takes counsel of a philosopher1 who promises to construct a pair of wings wherewith he shall overfly the summits that frown around him4 ,the mystagogue is a philosopher such as ,rasselas found1 with a promise as large and a result as vain4 ,,atherton4 ,hence the mysticism of the theurgist1 who will pass the bounds of the dreaded spirit-world2 will dare all its horrors to seize one of its thrones2 and aspires--a ,manfred or a ,zanoni--to lord it among the powers of the air4 ,,willoughby4 ,and of the mysticism of the theosophist1 too1 whose science is an imagined inspiration1 who writes about plants and minerals under a divine afflatus1 and who will give you from the resources of his special revelation an explanation of every mystery4 ,,gower4 ,the explanation1 unhappily1 the greatest mystery of all4 ,,atherton4 ,curiously enough1 the ,bible has been made to support mysticism by an interpretation1 at one time too fanciful1 at another too literal4 ,,willoughby4 ,we may call it1 perhaps1 the innocent cause of mysticism with one class1 its victim with another3 the one1 running into mysticism because they wrongly interpreted the ,bible2 the other interpreting it wrongly because they were mystics4 ,the mystical interpreters of school and cloister belong to the latter order1 and many a ,covenanter and godly trooper of the ,commonwealth to the former4 ,,gower4 ,not an unlikely result with the zealous ,ironside--his reading limited to his ,english ,bible and a few savoury treatises of divinity--pouring over the warlike story of ancient ,israel1 and identifying himself with the subjects of miraculous intervention1 divine behest1 and prophetic dream4 ,how glorious would those days appear to such a man1 when angels went and came among men2 when1 in the midst of his husbandry or handicraft1 the servant of the ,lord might be called aside to see some #8great sight3' when the fire dropped sudden down from heaven on the accepted altar1 like a drop spilt from the lip of an angel's fiery vial full of odours2 when the ,spirit of the ,lord moved men at times1 as ,samson was moved in the camp of ,dan1 between ,zorah and ,eshtaol2 and when the ,lord sent men hither and thither by an inward impulse1 as ,elijah was sent from ,gilgal to ,bethel1 and from ,bethel back to ,jericho1 and from ,jericho on to ,jordan4 ,imagination would reproduce those marvels in the world within1 though miracles could no longer cross his path in the world without4 ,he would believe that to him also words were given to speak1 and deeds to do2 and that1 whether in the house1 the council1 or the field1 he was the ,spirit's chosen instrument and messenger4 ,,atherton4 ,this is the practical and active kind of mysticism so prevalent in that age of religious wars1 the seventeenth century4 ,,willoughby4 ,the monks took the opposite course4 ,while the ,parliamentarian soldier was often seen endeavouring to adapt his life to a mistaken application of the ,bible1 the ascetic endeavoured to adapt the ,bible to his mistaken life4 ,,gower4 ,the ,new ,testament not authorising the austerities of a ,macarius or a ,maximus1 tradition must be called in---- ,,willoughby4 ,and side by side with tradition1 mystical interpretation4 ,the ,bible1 it was pretended1 must not be understood as always meaning what it seems to mean4 ,,atherton4 ,it then becomes the favourite employment of the monk to detect this hidden meaning1 and to make ,scripture render to tradition the same service which the mask rendered to the ancient actor1 not only disguising the face1 but making the words go farther4 ,to be thus busied was to secure two advantages at once2 he had occupation for his leisure1 and an answer for his adversaries4 ,,chapter ,v4 ,oh6 contemplation palls upon the spirit1 ,like the chill silence of an autumn sun3 ,while action1 like the roaring south-west wind1 ,sweeps1 laden with elixirs1 with rich draughts ,quickening the wombed earth4 ,guta4 ,and yet what bliss1 ,when1 dying in the darkness of ,god's light1 ,the soul can pierce these blinding webs of nature1 ,and float up to the nothing1 which is all things-- ,the ground of being1 where self-forgetful silence ,is emptiness1--emptiness fulness1--fulness ,god1-- ,till we touch ,him1 and1 like a snow-flake1 melt ,upon his light-sphere's keen circumference6 ,,the ,,saint',s ,,tragedy4 ,,gower4 ,thanks1 if you please1 not reproaches4 ,i was calling help for you1 ,i was summoning the fay to your assistance1 to determine the best possible order of your mystics4 ,,willoughby4 ,the fay8 ,,gower4 ,the fay4 ,down with you in that arm-chair1 and sit quietly4 ,know that ,i was this morning reading ,andersen's ,mrchen--all about ,ole-,luk-,oie1 his ways and works--the queer little elf4 ,upstairs he creeps1 in houses where children are1 softly1 softly1 in the dusk of the evening1 with what do you think under his arm8--two umbrellas1 one plain1 the other covered with gay colours and quaint figures4 ,he makes the eyes of the children heavy1 and when they are put to bed1 holds over the heads of the good children the painted umbrella1 which causes them to dream the sweetest and most wonderful dreams imaginable2 but over the naughty children he holds the other1 and they do not dream at all4 ,now1 thought ,i1 let me emulate the profundity of a ,german critic4 ,is this to be treated as a simple child's tale8 ,far from it4 ,there is a depth of philosophic meaning in it4 ,have not the mystics been mostly childlike natures8 ,have not their lives been full of dreams1 manifold and strange--and they therefore1 if any1 especial favourites of ,ole-,luk-,oie8 ,they have accounted their dreams their pride and their reward4 ,they have looked on the sobriety of dreamlessness as the appropriate deprivation of privilege consequent on carnality and ignorance2 in other words1 the non-dreamers have been with them the naughty children4 ,to learn life's lessons well is1 according to them1 to enjoy as a recompence the faculty of seeing visions and of dreaming dreams4 ,here then is the idea of mysticism4 ,you have its myth1 its legend4 ,ole-,luk-,oie is its presiding genius4 ,now1 ,atherton1 if you could but get hold of his umbrella1 the segments of that silken hemisphere1 with its painted constellations1 would give you your divisions in a twinkling4 ,that was why ,i wanted him4 ,but ,i do not see him letting himself down the bellrope1 or hear his tap at the door4 ,i am afraid we must set to work without him4 ,,willoughby4 ,so be it4 ,a local or historical classification of the mystics is out of the question4 ,i scarcely think you can find a metaphysical one that will bear the test of application and be practically serviceable4 ,then the division some adopt1 of heterodox and orthodox1 saves trouble indeed1 but it is so arbitrary4 ,the ,church of ,rome1 from whom many of these mystics called heretical1 dared to differ1 is no church at all in the true sense1 and assuredly no standard of orthodoxy4 ,in addition to this ,i have a nervous antipathy to the terms themselves2 for1 as ,i have a liking for becoming the champion of any cause which appears to be borne down by numbers1 ,i find my friends who are somewhat heterodox1 frequently charging me with what is called orthodoxy1 and those again who are orthodox as often suspecting me of heterodoxy4 ,,atherton4 ,hear my proposed division4 ,there are three kinds of mysticism1 theopathetic1 theosophic1 and theurgic4 ,the first of these three classes ,i will subdivide1 if needful1 into transitive and intransitive4 ,,gower4 ,your alliteration is grateful to my ear2 ,i hope you have not strained a point to secure us the luxury4 ,,atherton4 ,not a hair's breadth1 ,i assure you4 ,,willoughby4 ,etymologically such a division has the advantage of showing that all the forms of mysticism are developments of the religious sentiment2 that in all its varieties the relationship1 real or imaginary1 which mysticism sustains to the ,divine1 is its primary element2--that its widely differing aspects are all phases it presents in its eccentric orbit about the central luminary of the ,infinite4 ,,gower4 ,your theopathetic mysticism must include a very wide range4 ,by the term theopathetic you denote1 of course1 that mysticism which resigns itself1 in a passivity more or less absolute1 to an imagined divine manifestation4 ,now1 one man may regard himself as overshadowed1 another as impelled by ,deity4 ,one mystic of this order may do nothing1 another may display an unceasing activity4 ,whether he believes himself a mirror in whose quiescence the ,divinity #8glasses himself2' or1 as it were1 a leaf1 driven by the mighty rushing wind of the ,spirit1 and thus the tongue by which the ,spirit speaks1 the organ by which ,god works--the principle of passivity is the same4 ,,atherton4 ,hence my subdivision of this class of mystics into those whose mysticism assumes a transitive character1 and those with whom mysticism consists principally in contemplation1 in ,quietism1 in negation1 and so is properly called intransitive4 ,,willoughby4 ,yet some of those whose mysticism has been pre-eminently negative1 who have hated the very name of speculation1 and placed perfection in repose and mystical death1 have mingled much in active life4 ,they appear to defy our arrangement4 ,,atherton4 ,it is only in appearance4 ,they have shrunk from carrying out their theory to its logical consequences4 ,their activity has been a bye-work4 ,the diversities of character observable in the mysticism which is essentially intransitive arise1 not from a difference in the principle at the root1 but from varieties of natural temperament1 of external circumstances1 and from the dissimilar nature or proportion of the foreign elements incorporated4 ,,gower4 ,it is clear that we must be guided by the rule rather than the exception1 and determine1 according to the predominant element in the mysticism of individuals1 the position to be assigned them4 ,if we were to classify only those who were perfectly consistent with themselves1 we could include scarcely half-a-dozen names1 and those1 by the way1 the least rational of all1 for the most thorough-going are the madmen4 ,,atherton4 ,the mysticism of ,st4 ,bernard1 for example1 in spite of his preaching1 his travels1 his diplomacy1 is altogether contemplative--the intransitive mysticism of the cloister4 ,his active labours were a work apart4 ,,gower4 ,such men have been serviceable as members of society in proportion to their inconsistency as devotees of mysticism4 ,a heavy charge this against their principle4 ,,willoughby4 ,in the intransitive division of the theopathetic mysticism you will have three such names as ,suso1 ,ruysbrook1 ,molinos1 and all the ,quietists1 whether ,french or ,indian4 ,,atherton4 ,and in the transitive theopathy all turbulent prophets and crazy fanatics4 ,this species of mysticism usurps the will more than the emotional part of our nature4 ,the subject of it suffers under the ,divine1 as he believes1 but the result of the manifestation is not confined to himself1 it passes on to his fellows4 ,,gower4 ,if you believe ,plato in the ,ion1 you must range here all the poets1 for they sing well1 he tells us1 only as they are carried out of themselves by a divine madness1 and mastered by an influence which their verse communicates to others in succession4 ,,willoughby4 ,we must admit here also1 according to ancient superstition1 the ,pythoness on her tripod1 and the ,sibyl in her cave at ,cum1 as she struggles beneath the might of the god3-- ,phbi nondum patiens immanis in antro ,bacchatur vates1 magnum si pectore possit ,excussisse ,deum3 tanto magis ille fatigat ,os rabidum1 fera corda domans1 fingitque premendo4 ,,atherton4 ,i have no objection4 ,according to ,virgil's description1 the poor ,sibyl has earned painfully enough a place within the pale of mysticism4 ,but those with whom we have more especially to do in this province are enthusiasts such as ,tanchelm1 who appeared in the twelfth century1 and announced himself as the residence of ,deity2 as ,gichtel1 who believed himself appointed to expiate by his prayers and penance the sins of all mankind2 or as ,kuhlmann1 who traversed ,europe1 the imagined head of the ,fifth monarchy1 summoning kings and nobles to submission4 ,,gower4 ,some of these cases we may dismiss in a summary manner4 ,the poor brainsick creatures were cast on evil times indeed4 ,what we should now call derangement was then exalted into heresy1 and honoured with martyrdom4 ,we should have taken care that ,kuhlmann was sent to an asylum1 but the ,russian patriarch burned him1 poor fellow4 ,,atherton4 ,we must not forget1 however1 that this species of mysticism has sometimes been found associated with the announcement of vital truths4 ,look at ,george ,fox and the early ,quakers4 ,,willoughby4 ,and ,i would refer also to this class some of the milder forms of mysticism1 in which it is seen rather as a single morbid element than as a principle avowed and carried out4 ,jung ,stilling is an instance of what ,i mean4 ,you see him1 fervent1 earnest1 and yet weak2 without forethought1 without perseverance2 vain and irresolute1 he changes his course incessantly1 seeing in every variation of feeling and of circumstance a special revelation of the ,divine will4 ,,atherton4 ,add to this modification a kindred error1 the doctrine of a #8particular faith' in prayer1 so much in vogue in ,cromwell's court at ,whitehall4 ,howe boldly preached against it before the ,protector himself4 ,,willoughby4 ,now1 ,atherton1 for your second division1 theosophic mysticism4 ,whom do you call theosophists8 ,,atherton4 ,among the ,germans ,i find mysticism generally called theosophy when applied to natural science4 ,too narrow a use of the word1 ,i think4 ,we should have in that case scarcely any theosophy in ,europe till after the ,reformation4 ,the word itself was first employed by the school of ,porphyry4 ,the ,neo-,platonist would say that the priest might have his traditional discourse concerning ,god 7theology71 but he alone1 with his intuition1 the highest wisdom concerning him4 ,,gower4 ,i can't say that ,i have any clear conception attached to the word4 ,,atherton4 ,you want examples8 ,take ,plotinus and ,behmen4 ,,gower4 ,what a conjunction6 ,,atherton4 ,not so far apart as may appear4 ,their difference is one of application more than of principle4 ,had ,plotinus thought a metal or a plant worth his attention1 he would have maintained that concerning that1 even as concerning the infinite1 all truth lay stored within the recesses of his own mind4 ,but of course he only cared about ideas4 ,mystical philosophy is really a contradiction in terms1 is it not8 ,,gower4 ,granted1 since philosophy must build only upon reason4 ,,atherton4 ,very good4 ,then when philosophy falls into mysticism ,i give it another name1 and call it theosophy4 ,and1 on the other side1 ,i call mysticism1 trying to be philosophical1 theosophy likewise4 ,that is all4 ,,willoughby4 ,so that the theosophist is one who gives you a theory of ,god1 or of the works of ,god1 which has not reason1 but an inspiration of his own for its basis4 ,,atherton4 ,yes2 he either believes1 with ,swedenborg and ,behmen1 that a special revelation has unfolded to him the mystery of the divine dispensations here or hereafter--laid bare the hidden processes of nature1 or the secrets of the other world2 or else1 with ,plotinus and ,schelling1 he believes that his intuitions of those things are infallible because divine--subject and object being identical1--all truth being within him4 ,thus1 while the mystic of the theopathetic species is content to contemplate1 to feel1 or to act1 suffering under ,deity in his sublime passivity1 the mysticism ,i term theosophic aspires to know and believes itself in possession of a certain supernatural divine faculty for that purpose4 ,,gower4 ,you talk of mysticism trying to be philosophical2 it does then sometimes seek to justify itself at the bar of reason8 ,,atherton4 ,i should think so--often3 at one time trying to refute the charge of madness and prove itself throughout rational and sober2 at another1 using the appeal to reason up to a certain point and as far as serves its purpose1 and then disdainfully mocking at demands for proof1 and towering above argument1 with the pretence of divine illumination4 ,,willoughby4 ,some of these mystics1 talking of reason as they do1 remind me of ,lysander at the feet of ,helena1 protesting 7with the magic juice scarce dry upon his eyelids7 that the decision of his spell-bound faculties is the deliberate exercise of manly judgment-- ,the mind of man is by his reason swayed1 ,and reason says you are the worthier maid4 ,,gower4 ,now you come to ,shakspeare1 ,i must cap your quotation with another3 ,i fit those mystics ,atherton speaks of as using reason up to a certain point and then having done with it1 with a motto from the ,winter's ,tale--much at their service4 ,they answer1 with young enamoured ,florizel1 when ,reason1 like a grave ,camillo1 bids them #8be advised'-- ,i am2 and by my fancy3 if my reason ,will thereto be obedient1 ,i have reason2 ,if not1 my senses better pleased with madness ,do bid it welcome4 ,,atherton4 ,to classify the mystics adequately1 we should have a terminology of dreams rich as that of ,homer1 and distinguish1 as he does1 the dream-image of complete illusion from the half-conscious dream between sleeping and waking2-- from 4 ,how unanimous1 by the way1 would the mystics be in deriving from --dream from enjoyment4 ,,willoughby4 ,to return from the poets to business2 was not all the science of the ,middle ,age theosophic rather than philosophic8 ,both to mystical schoolmen and scholastic mystics the ,bible was a book of symbols and propositions1 from which all the knowable was somehow to be deduced4 ,,atherton4 ,most certainly4 ,the mystical interpretation of ,scripture was their measuring-reed for the temple of the universe4 ,the difference1 however1 between them and ,behmen would be this--that1 while both essayed to read the book of nature by the light of grace1 ,behmen claimed a special revelation1 a divine mission for unfolding these mysteries in a new fashion2 schoolmen1 like ,richard of ,st4 ,victor1 professed to do so only by the supernatural aid of the ,spirit illuminating the data afforded by the ,church4 ,and again1 ,behmen differs from ,schelling and modern theosophy in studying nature through the medium of an external revelation mystically understood1 while they interpret it by the unwritten inward revelation of ,intellectual ,intuition4 ,i speak only of the difference of principle1 not of result4 ,but no one will dispute that nearly every scientific enquiry of the ,middle ,age was conducted on mystical principles1 whether as regarded our source of knowing or its method4 ,,willoughby4 ,and what wonder8 ,does not ,milton remind us that ,julian's edict1 forbidding ,christians the study of heathen learning1 drove the two ,apollinarii to #8coin all the seven liberal sciences' out of the ,bible8 ,the jealous tyranny of the ,papacy virtually perpetuated the persecution of the ,apostate4 ,every lamp must be filled with church oil4 ,every kind of knowledge must exist only as a decoration of the ecclesiastical structure4 ,every science must lay its foundation on theology4 ,see a monument attesting this1 a type of the times1 in the cathedral of ,chartres1 covered with thousands of statues and symbols1 representing all the history1 astronomy1 and physics of the age--a sacred encyclopdia transferred from the pages of ,vincent of ,beauvais to the enduring stone1 so to bid all men see in the ,church a ,mirror of the ,universe--a speculum universale4 ,who can be surprised that by the aid of that facile expedient1 mystical interpretation1 many a work of mortal brain should have been bound and lettered as #8,,holy ,,bible1' or that research should have simulated worship1 as some ,cantab1 pressed for time1 may study a problem at morning chapel8 ,,atherton4 ,what interminable lengths of the fine-spun1 gay-coloured ribbons of allegory and metaphor has the mountebank ingenuity of that mystical interpretation drawn out of the mouth of ,holy ,writ6 ,,gower4 ,and made religion a toy--a tassel on the silken purse of the spendthrift ,fancy4 ,,willoughby4 ,granting1 ,atherton1 your general position that the undue inference of the objective from the subjective produces mysticism1 what are we to say of a man like ,descartes1 for example8 ,you will not surely condemn him as a mystic4 ,,atherton4 ,certainly1 not altogether2 reason holds its own with him--is not swept away by the hallucinations of sentiment1 or feeling1 or special revelation2 but none of our powers act quite singly--nemo omnibus horis sapit--a mystical element crops out here and there4 ,i think he carried too far the application of a principle based1 in great part at least1 on truth4 ,in his inference of the objective from the subjective1 ,i think he was so far right that our ability to conceive of a ,supreme ,perfection affords a strong presumption that such a ,god must exist4 ,it is not to be supposed that the conception can transcend the reality4 ,his argument from within is a potent auxiliary of the argument from without1 if not by itself so all-sufficient as he supposes4 ,there are1 too1 ,i think1 certain necessary truths which1 by the constitution of our mind1 we cannot conceive as possibly other than they are1 when once presented to us from without4 ,but we surely should not on this account be justified in saying with the mystic ,bernard1 that each soul contains an infallible copy of the ideas in the ,divine ,mind1 so that the pure in heart1 in proportion as they have cleansed the internal mirror1 must in knowing themselves1 know also ,god4 ,it must be no less an exaggeration of the truth to say1 with the philosopher ,descartes1 that certain notions of the laws of ,nature are impressed upon our minds1 so that we may1 after reflecting upon them1 discover the secrets of the universe4 ,on the strength of this principle he undertakes to determine exactly how long a time it must have required to reduce chaos to order4 ,the effort made by ,descartes to insulate himself completely from the external world and the results of experience1 was certainly similar in mode1 though very different in its object1 from the endeavours after absolute self-seclusion made by many of the mystics4 ,the former sought to detect by abstraction the laws of mind2 the latter1 to attain the vision of ,god4 ,,gower4 ,there is much more of mysticism discernible in some of the systems which have followed in the path opened by ,descartes4 ,what can be more favourable than ,schelling's ,identity principle to the error which confounds1 rather than allies1 physics and metaphysics1 science and theology8 ,,atherton4 ,behmen himself is no whit more fantastical in this way than ,oken and ,franz ,baader4 ,,gower4 ,these theosophies1 old and new1 with their self-evolved inexplicable explanations of everything1 remind me of the ,frenchman's play-bill announcing an exhibition of the ,universal ,judgment by means of three thousand five hundred puppets4 ,the countless marionette figures in the brain of the theosophist--,elements1 ,forms1 ,tinctures1 ,mothers of ,nature1 ,fountain-spirits1 ,planetary ,potencies1 c41 are made to shift and gesticulate unceasingly1 through all possible permutations and combinations1 and the operator has cried #8,walk in6' so long and loudly1 that he actually believes1 while pulling the wires in his metaphysical darkness1 that the great universe is being turned and twitched after the same manner as his painted dolls4 ,,willoughby4 ,i must put in a word for men like ,paracelsus and ,cornelius ,agrippa4 ,they helped science out of the hands of ,aristotle1 baptized and spoiled by monks4 ,europe1 newly-wakened1 follows in search of truth1 as the princess in the fairy-tale her lover1 changed into a white dove2 now and then1 at weary intervals1 a feather is dropped to give a clue2 these aspirants caught once and again a little of the precious snowy down1 though often filling their hands with mere dirt1 and wounding them among the briars4 ,forgive them their signatures1 their basilisks and homunculi1 and all their restless1 wrathful arrogance1 for the sake of that indomitable hardihood which did life-long battle1 single-handed1 against enthroned prescription4 ,,atherton4 ,with all my heart4 ,how venial the error of their mysticism 7with an aim1 at least1 so worthy71 compared with that of the enervating ,romanist theopathy whose #8holy vegetation' the ,reformers so rudely disturbed4 ,on the eve of the ,reformation you see hapless ,christianity1 after vanquishing so many powerful enemies1 about to die by the hand of ascetic inventions and superstitions1 imaginary sins and imaginary virtues1--the shadowy phantoms of monastic darkness2 like the legendary hero ,wolf-,dietrich1 who1 after so many victories over flesh-and-blood antagonists1 perishes at last in a night-battle with ghosts4 ,,gower4 ,the later mystical saints of the ,romish calendar seem to me to exhibit what one may call the degenerate chivalry of religion1 rather than its romance4 ,how superior is ,bernard to ,john of the ,cross6 ,it is easy to see how1 in a rough age of fist-law1 the laws of chivalry may inculcate courtesy and ennoble courage4 ,but when afterwards an age of treaties and diplomacy comes in--when no ,charles the ,bold can be a match for the ,italian policy of a ,louis ,,xi4--then these laws sink down into a mere fantastic code of honour4 ,for the manly gallantry of ,ivanhoe we have the euphuism of a ,sir ,piercie ,shafton4 ,and so a religious enthusiasm1 scarcely too fervent for a really noble enterprise 7could it only find one71 gives birth1 when debarred from the air of action and turned back upon itself1 to the dreamy extravagances of the recluse1 and the morbid ethical punctilios of the ,director4 ,,willoughby4 ,the only further question is about your third division1 ,atherton1--theurgic mysticism4 ,we may let the ,rabbinical ,solomon--mastering the archdmon ,aschmedai and all his host by the divine potency of the ,schemhamporasch engraven on his ring1 chaining at his will the colossal powers of the air by the tremendous name of ,metatron1--stand as an example of theurgy4 ,,gower4 ,and ,iamblichus1 summoning ,souls1 ,heroes1 and the ,principalities of the upper sphere1 by prayer and incense and awful mutterings of adjuration4 ,,atherton4 ,all very good2 but hear me a moment4 ,i would use the term theurgic to characterize the mysticism which claims supernatural powers generally1--works marvels1 not like the black art1 by help from beneath1 but as white magic1 by the virtue of talisman or cross1 demi-god1 angel1 or saint4 ,thus theurgic mysticism is not content1 like the theopathetic1 with either feeling or proselytising2 nor1 like the theosophic1 with knowing2 but it must open for itself a converse with the world of spirits1 and win as its prerogative the power of miracle4 ,this broad use of the word makes prominent the fact that a common principle of devotional enchantment lies at the root of all the pretences1 both of heathen and of ,christian miracle-mongers4 ,the celestial hierarchy of ,dionysius and the benign dmons of ,proclus1 the powers invoked by ,pagan or by ,christian theurgy1 by ,platonist1 by ,cabbalist1 or by saint1 alike reward the successful aspirant with supernatural endowments2 and so far ,apollonius of ,tyana and ,peter of ,alcantara1 ,asclepigenia and ,st4 ,theresa1 must occupy as religious magicians the same province4 ,the error is in either case the same--a divine efficacy is attributed to rites and formulas1 sprinklings or fumigations1 relics or incantations1 of mortal manufacture4 ,,willoughby4 ,it is not difficult to understand how1 after a time1 both the species of mysticism we have been discussing may pass over into this one4 ,it is the dream of the mystic that he can elaborate from the depth of his own nature the whole promised land of religious truth1 and perceive 7by special revelation7 rising from within1 all its green pastures and still waters1--somewhat as ,pindar describes the sun beholding the ,isle of ,rhodes emerging from the bottom of the ocean1 new-born1 yet perfect1 in all the beauty of glade and fountain1 of grassy upland and silver tarn1 of marble crag and overhanging wood1 sparkling from the brine as after a summer shower4 ,but alas1 how tardily arises this new world of inner wonders6 ,it must be accelerated--drawn up by some strong compelling charm4 ,the doctrine of passivity becomes impossible to some temperaments beyond a certain pass4 ,the enjoyments of the vision or the rapture are too few and far between--could they but be produced at will6 ,whether the mystic seeks the triumph of superhuman knowledge or that intoxication of the feeling which is to translate him to the upper world1 after a while he craves a sign4 ,theurgy is the art which brings it4 ,its appearance is the symptom of failing faith1 whether in philosophy or religion4 ,its glory is the phosphorescence of decay4 ,,atherton4 ,generally1 ,i think it is2 though it prevailed in the age of the ,reformation--borrowed1 however1 ,i admit1 on the revival of letters1 from an age of decline4 ,,book ,,the ,,second ,,early ,,oriental ,,mysticism ,,chapter ,i4 ,from worldly cares himselfe he did esloyne1 ,and greatly shunned manly exercise2 ,from everie worke he chalenged essoyne1 ,for contemplation sake3 yet otherwise ,his life he led in lawlesse riotise2 ,by which he grew to grievous maladie3 ,for in his lustlesse limbs through evill guise1 ,a shaking fever raignd continually2 ,such one was ,idlenesse1 first of this company4 ,,spenser4 ,having free access to the ,commonplace ,book of my friend ,atherton1 ,i now extract therefrom a few notes1 written after reading ,wilkins' translation of the ,bagvat-,gita4 ,this episode in a heroic poem of ancient ,india is considered the best exponent of early oriental mysticism4 ,i give these remarks just as ,i find them1 brief and rough-hewn1 but not1 ,i think1 hasty4 ,observations on ,indian mysticism1 propos of the ,bagvat-,gita4 ,this poem consists of a dialogue between the god ,crishna and the hero ,arjoun4 ,crishna1 though wearing a human form1 speaks throughout as ,deity4 ,arjoun is a young chieftain whom he befriends4 ,a great civil war is raging1 and the piece opens on the eve of battle4 ,crishna is driving the chariot of ,arjoun1 and they are between the lines of the opposing armies4 ,on either side the war-shells are heard to sound--shells to which the ,indian warriors gave names as did the paladins of ,christendom to their swords4 ,the battle will presently join1 but ,arjoun appears listless and sad4 ,he looks on either army2 in the ranks of each he sees preceptors whom he has been taught to revere1 and relatives whom he loves4 ,he knows not for which party to desire a bloody victory3 so he lays his bow aside and sits down in the chariot4 ,crishna remonstrates1 reminds him that his hesitation will be attributed to cowardice1 and that such scruples are1 moreover1 most unreasonable4 ,he should learn to act without any regard whatever to the consequences of his actions4 ,at this point commence the instructions of the god concerning faith and practice4 ,so ,arjoun must learn to disregard the consequences of his actions4 ,i find here not a #8holy indifference1' as with the ,french ,quietists1 but an indifference which is unholy4 ,the sainte indiffrence of the west essayed to rise above self1 to welcome happiness or misery alike as the will of ,supreme ,love4 ,the odious indifference of these orientals inculcates the supremacy of selfishness as the wisdom of a god4 ,a steep toil1 that apathy towards ourselves2 a facilis descensus1 this apathy toward others4 ,one ,quietist will scarcely hold out his hand to receive heaven3 another will not raise a finger to succour his fellow4 ,mysticism1 then1 is born armed completely with its worst extravagances4 ,an innocent childhood it never had2 for in its very cradle this ,hercules destroys1 as deadly serpents1 ,reason and ,morality4 ,crishna1 it appears1 can invest the actions of his favourites with such divineness that nothing they do is wrong4 ,for the mystical adept of ,hindooism the distinction between good and evil is obliterated as often as he pleases4 ,beyond this point mysticism the most perverted cannot go2 since such emancipation from moral law is in practice the worst aim of the worst men4 ,the mysticism of a man who declares himself the ,holy ,ghost constitutes a stage more startling but less guilty2 for responsibility ends where insanity begins4 ,the orientals know little of a system of forces4 ,they carry a single idea to its consequences4 ,the dark issue of the self-deifying tendency is exhibited among them on a large scale1--the degrees of the enormity are registered and made portentously apparent as by the movement of a huge hand upon its dial4 ,western mysticism1 checked by many better influences1 has rarely made so patent the inherent evil even of its most mischievous forms4 ,the ,european1 mystic though he be1 will occasionally pause to qualify1 and is often willing to allow some scope to facts and principles alien or hostile to a favourite idea4 ,it should not be forgotten that the doctrine of metempsychosis is largely answerable for ,crishna's cold-blooded maxim4 ,he tells ,arjoun that the soul puts on many bodies1 as many garments1 remaining itself unharmed3 the death of so many of his countrymen--a mere transition1 therefore--need not distress him4 ,,chapter ,,ii4 ,quel diable de jargon entends-je ici8 ,voici bien du haut style4 ,,moli,,re4 ,mysticism has no genealogy4 ,it is no tradition conveyed across frontiers or down the course of generations as a ready-made commodity4 ,it is a state of thinking and feeling1 to which minds of a certain temperament are liable at any time or place1 in occident and orient1 whether ,romanist or ,protestant1 ,jew1 ,turk1 or ,infidel4 ,it is more or less determined by the positive religion with which it is connected4 ,but though conditioned by circumstance or education1 its appearance is ever the spontaneous product of a certain crisis in individual or social history4 ,a merely imitative mysticism1 as exemplified by some ,tractarian ecclesiastics1 is an artificial expedient1 welcome to ambitious minds as an engine1 to the frivolous as a devotional diversion1 to the weak and servile as a softly-cushioned yoke4 ,were mysticism a transmitted principle we should be able to trace it through successive translations to a form which might be termed primitive4 ,we might mark and throw off1 as we ascended1 the accretions with which it has been invested1 till we reached its origin--the simple idea of mysticism1 new-born4 ,the mysticism of ,india1 the earliest we can find1 shows us that nothing of this sort is possible4 ,that set of principles which we repeatedly encounter1 variously combined1 throughout the history of mysticism1 exhibits itself in the ,bagvat-,gita almost complete4 ,the same round of notions1 occurring to minds of similar make under similar circumstances1 is common to mystics in ancient ,india and in modern ,christendom4 ,the development of these fundamental ideas is naturally more elevated and benign under the influence of ,christianity4 ,summarily1 ,i would say1 this ,hindoo mysticism-- 7#a47 ,lays claim to disinterested love1 as opposed to a mercenary religion2 7#b47 ,reacts against the ceremonial prescription and pedantic literalism of the ,vedas2 7#c47 ,identifies1 in its pantheism1 subject and object1 worshipper and worshipped2 7#d47 ,aims at ultimate absorption in the ,infinite2 7#e47 ,inculcates1 as the way to this dissolution1 absolute passivity1 withdrawal into the inmost self1 cessation of all the powers1--giving recipes for procuring this beatific torpor or trance2 7#f47 ,believes that eternity may thus be realized in time2 7#g47 ,has its mythical miraculous pretentions1 i4e41 its theurgic department2 7#h47 ,and1 finally1 advises the learner in this kind of religion to submit himself implicitly to a spiritual guide1--his ,guru4 ,with regard to 7#a71 it is to be observed that the disinterestedness of the worship enjoined by ,crishna is by no means absolute1 as ,madame ,guyon endeavoured to render hers4 ,the mere ritualist1 buying prosperity by temple-gifts1 will realise1 says ,crishna1 only a partial enjoyment of heaven4 ,arjoun1 too1 is encouraged by the prospect of a recompence1 for he is to aspire to far higher things4 #8,men who are endowed with true wisdom are unmindful of good or evil in this world1--wise men who have abandoned all thought of the fruit which is produced from their actions are freed from the chains of birth1 and go to the regions of eternal happiness4' ,in some hands such doctrine might rise above the popular morality2 in most it would be so interpreted as to sink below even that ignoble standard4 7#c47 #8,god1' saith ,crishna1 #8is the gift of charity2 ,god is the offering2 ,god is in the fire of the altar2 by ,god is the sacrifice performed2 and ,god is to be obtained by him who maketh ,god alone the object of his works4' ,again1 #8,i am moisture in the water1 light in the sun and moon1 444 human nature in mankind1 444 the understanding of the wise1 the glory of the proud1 the strength of the strong1' c4 7#d47 ,this eternal absorption in ,brahm is supposed to be in some way consistent with personality1 since ,crishna promises ,arjoun enjoyment4 ,the mystic of the ,bagvat-,gita seeks at once the highest aim of the ,hindoo religion1 the attainment of such a state that when he dies he shall not be born again into any form on earth4 ,future birth is the ,hindoo hell and purgatory4 ,so with ,buddhism1 and its ,nirwana4 ,but the final absorption which goes by the name of ,nirwana among the ,buddhists is described in terms which can only mean annihilation4 ,according to the ,buddhists all sentient existence has within it one spiritual element1 homogeneous in the animal and the man1--,thought1 which is a divine substance4 ,this #8,thought' exists in its highest degree in man1 the summit of creation1 and from the best among men it lapses directly out of a particular existence into the universal4 ,thus the mind of man is divine1 but most divine when nearest nothing4 ,hence the monastic asceticism1 inertia1 trance1 of this kindred oriental superstition4 7,see ,spence ,hardy's ,eastern ,monachism47 7#e47 #8,divine wisdom is said to be confirmed when a man can restrain his faculties from their wonted use1 as the tortoise draws in his limbs4' ,the devotees who make it their principal aim to realise the emancipation of the spirit supposed to take place in trance1 are called ,yogis4 #8,the ,yogi constantly exerciseth the spirit in private4 ,he is recluse1 of a subdued mind and spirit1 free from hope and free from perception4 ,he planteth his own seat firmly on a spot that is undefiled1 neither too high nor too low1 and sitteth upon the sacred grass which is called ,koos1 covered with a skin and a cloth4 ,there he whose business is the restraining of his passions should sit1 with his mind fixed on one object alone2 in the exercise of his devotion for the purification of his soul1 keeping his head1 his neck1 and body steady1 without motion2 his eyes fixed on the point of his nose1 looking at no other place around4' ,the monks of ,mount ,athos1 whose mysticism was also of this most degraded type1 substituted1 as a gazing-point1 the navel for the nose4 ,ward1 in describing the ,yogi practice1 tells us that at the latest stage the eyes also are closed1 while the fingers and even bandages are employed to obstruct almost completely the avenues of respiration4 ,then the soul is said to be united to the energy of the body2 both mount1 and are as it were concentrated in the skull2 whence the spirit escapes by the basilar suture1 and1 the body having been thus abandoned1 the incorporeal nature is reunited for a season to the ,supreme4#i ,stupefying drugs were doubtless employed to assist in inducing this state of insensibility4 ,crishna teaches that #8the wisely devout' walk in the night of time when all things rest1 and sleep in the day of time when all things wake4 ,in other words1 the escape from sense is a flight from illusion into the undeceiving condition of trance4 ,so the ,code of ,menu pronounces the waking state one of deceptive appearances--a life among mere phantasmata2 that of sleep a little nearer reality2 while that of ecstasy1 or trance1 presents the truth--reveals a new world1 and enables the inner eye 7which opens as the outer one is closed7 to discern the inmost reality of things4 ,these are pretensions which mysticism has often repeated4 ,this notion underlies the theory and practice of spiritual clairvoyance4 7#f47 #8,the learned behold him 7,deity7 alike in the reverend ,brahmin perfected in knowledge2 in the ox and in the elephant2 in the dog1 and in him who eateth the flesh of dogs4 ,those whose minds are fixed on this equality gain eternity even in this world' 7transcend the limitation of time74 7#g47 ,the following passage1 given by ,ward1 exhibits at once the nature of the miraculous powers ascribed to the highest class of devotees1 and the utter lawlessness arrogated by these #8god-intoxicated' men3-- #8,he 7the ,yogi7 will hear celestial sounds1 the songs and conversation of celestial choirs4 ,he will have the perception of their touch in their passage through the air4 ,he is able to trace the progress of intellect through the senses1 and the path of the animal spirit through the nerves4 ,he is able to enter a dead or a living body by the path of the senses1 and in this body to act as though it were his own4 #8,he who in the body hath obtained liberation is of no caste1 of no sect1 of no order2 attends to no duties1 adheres to no shastras1 to no formulas1 to no works of merit2 he is beyond the reach of speech2 he remains at a distance from all secular concerns2 he has renounced the love and the knowledge of sensible objects2 he is glorious as the autumnal sky2 he flatters none1 he honours none2 he is not worshipped1 he worships none2 whether he practises and follows the customs of his country or not1 this is his character4' ,in the fourteenth century1 mystics were to be found among the lower orders1 whose ignorance and sloth carried negation almost as far as this4 ,they pretended to imitate the divine immutability by absolute inaction4 ,the dregs and refuse of mysticism along the ,rhine are equal in quality to its most ambitious produce on the banks of the ,ganges4 7#h47 ,the ,guru is paralleled by the ,pir of the ,sufis1 the ,confessor of the ,middle ,age1 and the ,directeur of modern ,france4#aj ,a mysticism which rests ultimately on the doctrine that the human soul is of one substance with ,god1 is fain to fall down and worship at the feet of a man4 ,such directorship is1 of course1 no essential part of mysticism--is1 in fact1 an inconsistency2 but1 though no member1 or genuine outgrowth1 it is an entozoon lamentably prevalent4 ,the mystic1 after all his pains to reduce himself to absolute passivity1 becomes not theopathetic1 but anthropopathetic--suffers1 not under ,god1 but man4 ,footnote #i3 ,see ,wilkins' ,bagvat-,gita1 pp4 #fc-fe4 ,ward1 ii4 #ahj4 ,also1 ,asiatic ,researches1 vol4 xvii4 pp4 #afi-cac1 containing an account of these ,yogis1 by ,horace ,hayman ,wilson4 ,one sect1 we are told1 have a way of contemplating ,vishnu in miniature1 by imagining the god in their heart1 about the size of an open hand1 and so adoring him from top to toe4 ,in this gross conception of an indwelling deity these ,hindoos do indeed exceed ,st4 ,theresa1 who after swallowing the wafer conceives of ,christ as prisoner in her inwards1 and1 making her heart a doll's-house1 calls it a temple4 ,but beyond her1 and beyond the ,indians1 too1 in sensuousness1 are the ,romanist stories of those saints in whom it is declared that a post-mortem examination has disclosed the figure of ,christ1 or the insignia of his passion1 miraculously modelled in the chambers of the heart4 ,footnote #aj3 ,asiatic ,researches1 loc4 cit4 ,the worshipped principle of ,hindooism is not love1 but power4 ,certain objects are adored as containing divine energy4 ,the ,guru is a representative and vehicle of divine power--a ,godful man1 and accordingly the most imperious of task-masters4 ,the prodigies of asceticism1 so abundant in ,indian fable1 had commonly for their object the attainment of superhuman powers4 ,thus ,taraki1 according to the ,siva ,puran1 stood a hundred years on tip-toe1 lived a hundred years on air1 a hundred on fire1 c4 for this purpose4--,notes to ,curse of ,kehama1 p4 #bcg4 ,the following passage1 cited by ,ward1 exhibits the subjective idealism of these ,hindoos in its most daring absurdity4 #8,let every one meditate upon himself2 let him be the worshipper and the worship4 ,whatever you see is but yourself1 and father and mother are nonentities2 you are the infant and the old man1 the wise man and the fool1 the male and the female2 it is you who are drowned in the stream--you who pass over2 you are the sensualist and the ascetic1 the sick man and the strong2 in short1 whatsoever you see1 that is you1 as bubbles1 surf1 and billows are all but water4' ,now1 there is an obvious resemblance between this idealism and that of ,fichte4 ,the ,indian and the ,german both ignore the notions formed from mere sensible experience2 both dwell apart from experience1 in a world fashioned for themselves out of #8pure thought2' both identify thought and being1 subject and object4 ,but here the likeness ends4 ,the points of contrast are obvious4 ,the ,hindoo accepts as profoundest wisdom what would be an unfair caricature of the system of ,fichte4 ,the idealism of the ,oriental is dreamy and passive2 it dissolves his individuality2 it makes him a particle1 wrought now into this1 now into that1 in the ever-shifting phantasmagoria of the universe2 he has been1 he may be1 he1 therefore1 in a sense is1 anything and everything4 ,fichte's philosophy1 on the contrary1 rests altogether on the intense activity--on the autocracy of the ,ego1 which posits1 or creates1 the ,non-,ego4 ,he says1 #8,the activity and passivity of the ,ego are one and the same4 ,for in as far as it does not posit a something in itself1 it posits that something in the ,non-,ego4 ,again1 the activity and passivity of the ,non-,ego are one and the same4 ,in as far as the ,non-,ego works upon the ,ego1 and will absorb a something in it1 the ,ego posits that very thing in the ,non-,ego4' 7,grundlage der gesammten ,wissenschaftslehre1 #c4 ,smmtliche ,werke1 v4 i4 p4 #agg47 ,action is all in all with him4 ,god he calls #8a pure ,action' 7reines ,handeln71 the life and principle of a supersensuous order of the world--just as ,i am a pure ,action1 as a link in that order4 7,gerichtliche ,verantwortung gegen die ,anklage des ,atheismus1 ,werke1 v4 p4 #bfa47 ,charged with denying personality to ,god1 ,fichte replies that he only denied him that conditioned personality which belongs to ourselves--a denial1 ,i suppose1 in which we should all agree4 ,the only ,god in his system which is not an uninfluential abstraction is manifestly the ,ego--that is dilated to a colossal height1 and deified4 ,pre-eminently anti-mystical as was the natural temperament of ,fichte1 here he opens a door to the characteristic misconception of mysticism--the investiture of our own notions and our own will with a divine authority or glory4 ,he would say1 #8,the man of genius does think divine thoughts4 ,but the man who is unintelligible1 who1 in the very same province of pure thought as that occupied by the true philosopher1 thinks only at random and incoherently2 he is mistaken1 ,i grant1 in arrogating inspiration--him ,i call a mystic4' ,but of unintelligibility or incoherence what is to be the test1--who is to be the judge8 ,in this anarchy of gods1 numerous as thinkers1 one deity must have as much divine right as another4 ,there can be no appeal to experience1 which all confessedly abandon2 no appeal to facts1 which each ,ego creates after its own fashion for itself4 ,,book ,,the ,,third ,,the ,,mysticism ,,of ,,the ,,neo-,,platonists ,,chapter ,i4 ----a man is not as ,god1 ,but then most godlike being most a man4 ,,tennyson4 ,,kate4 ,what a formidable bundle of papers1 ,henry4 ,,atherton4 ,don't be alarmed1 ,i shall not read all this to you2 only three ,neo-,platonist letters ,i have discovered4 ,,mrs4 ,,atherton4 ,we were talking just before you came in1 ,mr4 ,willoughby1 about ,mr4 ,crossley's sermon yesterday morning4 ,,willoughby4 ,ah1 the ,tabernacle in the ,wilderness2 did you not think his remarks on the use and abuse of symbolism in general very good8 ,brief1 too1 and suggestive2 just what such portions of a sermon should be4 ,,atherton4 ,he overtook me on my walk this morning1 and ,i alluded to the subject4 ,he said he had been dipping into ,philo last week1 and that suggested his topic4 ,i told him ,i had paid that respectable old gentleman a visit or two lately1 and we amused ourselves with some of his fancies4 ,think of the seven branches of the candlestick being the seven planets--the four colours employed1 the four elements--the forecourt symbolizing the visible1 the two sanctuaries the ideal world--and so on4 ,,gower4 ,at this rate the furniture in one of ,hoffmann's tales cannot be more alive with spirit than ,philo's temple apparatus4 ,an ingenious trifler1 was he not8 ,,atherton4 ,something better1 ,i should say4 ,,gower4 ,not1 surely1 when his great characteristic is an unsurpassed facility for allegorical interpretation4 ,is not mystical exegesis an invariable symptom of religious dilettantism8 ,,atherton4 ,with the successors and imitators--yes2 not with the more earnest originals1--such names as ,philo1 ,origen1 ,swedenborg4 ,,gower4 ,but1 at any rate1 if this spiritualizing mania be ,philo's great claim to distinction1 head a list of mystical commentators with him1 and pass on to some one better4 ,,atherton4 ,he need not detain us long4 ,for our enquiry he has importance chiefly as in a sort the intellectual father of ,neo-,platonism--the first meeting-place of the waters of the eastern and the western theosophies4 ,this is his great object--to combine the authoritative monotheism of his ,hebrew ,scriptures with the speculation of ,plato4 ,,gower4 ,absurd attempt6--to interpret the full1 clear utterance of ,moses1 who has found1 by the hesitant and conflicting conjectures of ,plato1 who merely seeks4 ,,willoughby4 ,yet a very natural mistake for a ,jew at ,alexandria1 reared in ,greek culture1 fascinated by the dazzling abstractions of ,greek philosophy4 ,he belonged less to ,jerusalem1 after all1 than to ,athens4 ,,atherton4 ,there lies the secret4 ,philo was proud of his saintly ancestry1 yet to his eye the virtues of the ,old ,testament worthy wore a rude and homely air beside the refinement of the ,grecian sage4 ,the good man of ,moses and the philosopher of ,philo represent two very different ideals4 ,with the former the moral1 with the latter the merely intellectual1 predominates4 ,so the ,hebrew faith takes with ,philo the exclusive ,gentile type1--despises the body1 is horrified by matter1 tends to substitute abstraction for personality1 turns away1 ,i fear1 from the publican and the sinner4 ,,gower4 ,so1 then1 ,platonism in ,philo does for ,judaism what it was soon to do for ,christianity1--substitutes an ultra-human standard--an ascetic1 unnatural1 passively-gazing contemplation--an ambitious1 would-be-disembodied intellectualism1 for the all-embracing activities of common ,christian life1 so lowly1 yet so great4 ,,willoughby4 ,yet ,alexandrian ,platonism was the gainer by ,philo's accommodation4 ,judaism enfeebled could yet impart strength to heathendom4 ,the infusion enabled the ,neo-,platonists to walk with a firmer step in the religious province2 their philosophy assumed an aspect more decisively devout4 ,numenius learns of ,philo1 and ,plotinus of ,numenius1 and the ecstasy of ,plotinus is the development of ,philo's intuition4 ,,gower4 ,let me sum up2 and forgive an antithesis4 ,philo's great mistake lay in supposing that the religion of philosophy was necessarily the philosophy of religion4 ,but we have forgotten your letter1 ,atherton4 ,,atherton4 ,here is the precious document--a letter written by ,philo from ,alexandria1 evidently just after his journey to ,rome4 7,reads47 ,,philo ,,to ,,heph,,stion4 ,i am beginning to recover myself1 after all the anxiety and peril of our embassy to ,caligula4 ,nothing shall tempt me to visit ,rome again so long as this ,emperor lives4 ,our divine ,plato is doubly dear after so long an absence4 ,only an imperative sense of duty to my countrymen could again induce me to take so prominent a part in their public affairs4 ,except when our religion or our trade is concerned1 the government has always found us more docile than either the ,greeks or the ,egyptians1 and we enjoy accordingly large privileges4 ,yet when ,i saw the ill turn our cause took at ,rome1 ,i could not but sigh for another ,julius ,csar4 ,i am sorry to find you saying that you are not likely to visit ,alexandria again4 ,this restless1 wicked city can present but few attractions1 ,i grant1 to a lover of philosophic quiet4 ,but ,i cannot commend the extreme to which ,i see so many hastening4 ,a passion for ascetic seclusion is becoming daily more prevalent among the devout and the thoughtful1 whether ,jew or ,gentile4 ,yet surely the attempt to combine contemplation and action should not be so soon abandoned4 ,a man ought at least to have evinced some competency for the discharge of the social duties before he abandons them for the divine4 ,first the less1 then the greater4 ,i have tried the life of the recluse4 ,solitude brings no escape from spiritual danger4 ,if it closes some avenues of temptation1 there are few in whose case it does not open more4 ,yet the ,therapeut1 a sect similar to the ,essenes1 with whom you are acquainted1 number many among them whose lives are truly exemplary4 ,their cells are scattered about the region bordering on the farther shore of the ,lake ,mareotis4 ,the members of either sex live a single and ascetic life1 spending their time in fasting and contemplation1 in prayer or reading4 ,they believe themselves favoured with divine illumination--an inner light4 ,they assemble on the ,sabbath for worship1 and listen to mystical discourses on the traditionary lore which they say has been handed down in secret among themselves4 ,they also celebrate solemn dances and processions1 of a mystic significance1 by moonlight on the shore of the great mere4 ,sometimes1 on an occasion of public rejoicing1 the margin of the lake on our side will be lit with a fiery chain of illuminations1 and galleys1 hung with lights1 row to and fro with strains of music sounding over the broad water4 ,then the ,therapeut are all hidden in their little hermitages1 and these sights and sounds of the world they have abandoned1 make them withdraw into themselves and pray4 ,their principle at least is true4 ,the soul which is occupied with things above1 and is initiated into the mysteries of the ,lord1 cannot but account the body evil1 and even hostile4 ,the soul of man is divine1 and his highest wisdom is to become as much as possible a stranger to the body with its embarrassing appetites4 ,god has breathed into man from heaven a portion of his own divinity4 ,that which is divine is invisible4 ,it may be extended1 but it is incapable of separation4 ,consider how vast is the range of our thought over the past and the future1 the heavens and the earth4 ,this alliance with an upper world1 of which we are conscious1 would be impossible1 were not the soul of man an indivisible portion of that divine and blessed ,spirit 7 74 ,contemplation of the ,divine ,essence is the noblest exercise of man2 it is the only means of attaining to the highest truth and virtue1 and therein to behold ,god is the consummation of our happiness here4 ,the confusion of tongues at the building of the tower of ,babel should teach us this lesson4 ,the heaven those vain builders sought to reach1 signifies symbolically the mind1 where dwell divine powers4 ,their futile attempt represents the presumption of those who place sense above intelligence--who think that they can storm the ,intelligible by the ,sensible4 ,the structure which such impiety would raise is overthrown by spiritual tranquillity4 ,in calm retirement and contemplation we are taught that we know like only by like1 and that the foreign and lower world of the sensuous and the practical may not intrude into the lofty region of divine illumination4 ,i have written a small treatise on the ,contemplative ,life1 giving an account of the ,therapeut4 ,if you will neither visit me nor them1 ,i will have a copy of it made1 and send you4#aa ,farewell4 ,,gower4 ,how mistaken is ,philo in maintaining that the senses cannot aid us in our ascent towards the supersensuous2--as though the maltreatment of the body1 the vassal1 by the soul1 the suzerain1 were at once the means and the proof of mastery over it4 ,duly care for the body1 and the thankful creature will not forget its place1 and when you wish to meditate1 will disturb you by no obtrusive hint of its presence4 ,i find that ,i can rise above it only by attention to its just claims4 ,if ,i violate its rights ,i am sued by it in the high court of nature1 and cast with costs4 ,,mrs4 ,,atherton4 ,and certainly our most favoured moments of ascent into the ideal world have their origin usually in some suggestion that has reached us through the senses4 ,i remember a little song of ,uhland's called ,the ,passing ,minstrel--a brief parable of melody1 like so many of his pieces1--which1 as ,i understood it1 was designed to illustrate this very truth4 ,the poet falls asleep on a #8hill of blossoms' near the road1 and his soul flutters away in dream to the golden land of ,fable4 ,he wakes1 as one fallen from the clouds1 and sees the minstrel with his harp1 who has just passed by1 and playing as he goes1 is lost to sight among the trees4 #8,was it he1' the poet asks1 #8that sang into my soul those dreams of wonder8' ,another might inform the fancy with another meaning1 according to the mood of the hour4 ,it appeared to me an emblem of the way in which we are often indebted to a sunset or a landscape1 to a strain of music or a suddenly-remembered verse1 for a voyage into a world of vision of our own1 where we cease altogether to be aware of the external cause which first transported us thither4 ,,atherton4 ,that must always be true of imagination4 ,but ,platonism discards the visible instead of mounting by it4 ,considered morally1 too1 this asceticism sins so grievously4 ,it misuses the iron of the will1 given us to forge implements withal for life's husbandry1 to fashion of it a bolt for a voluntary prison4 ,at ,alexandria1 doubtless1 ,sin was imperious in her shamelessness1 at the theatre and at the mart1 in the hall of judgment and in the house of feasting1 but there was suffering as well as sin among the crowds of that great city1 with all their ignorance and care and want1 and to have done a something to lessen the suffering would have prepared the way for lessening the sin4 ,footnote #aa3 ,philo gives an account of the ,therapeut referred to in the letter1 in his treatise ,de ,vit ,contemplativ4 ,passages corresponding with those contained in the letter contributed by ,atherton1 concerning the enmity of the flesh and the divine nature of the soul1 are to be found in the works of ,philo1 ,sacr4 ,leg4 ,alleg4 lib4 iii4 p4 #aja 7ed4 ,mangey72 lib4 ii4 p4 #fd2 ,de eo quod det4 potiori insid4 soleat1 pp4 #aib1 #bjh4 ,philo's interpretation of the scriptural account concerning ,babel is contained in the ,de ,confus4 ,linguarum1 p4 #dbd4 ,his exposition of ,gen4 i4 #i1 illustrates the same principle1 ,sacr4 ,leg4 ,alleg4 lib4 i4 p4 #ed2 so of ,gen4 xxxvii4 #ab2 ,de eo quod pot4 p4 #aib4 ,eusebius shows us how ,eleazar and ,aristobulus must have prepared the way for ,philo in this attempt to harmonize ,judaism with the letters and philosophy of ,greece4 ,prp4 ,evang4 lib4 viii4 #i1 #aj4 ,,chapter ,,ii4 ,la philosophie n'est pas philosophie si elle ne touche l'abme2 mais elle cesse d'tre philosophie si elle y tombe4--,,cousin4 ,,gower4 ,i hope you are ready1 ,atherton1 to illumine my darkness concerning ,neo-,platonism1 by taking up that individual instance you were speaking of last ,monday4 ,,atherton4 ,i have something ready to inflict2 so prepare to listen stoutly4 7,reads47 ,plato pronounces ,love the child of ,poverty and ,plenty--the ,alexandrian philosophy was the offspring of ,reverence and ,ambition4 ,it combined an adoring homage to the departed genius of the age of ,pericles with a passionate1 credulous craving after a supernatural elevation4 ,its literary tastes and religious wants were alike imperative and irreconcilable4 ,in obedience to the former1 it disdained ,christianity2 impelled by the latter1 it travestied ,plato4 ,but for that proud servility which fettered it to a glorious past1 it might have recognised in ,christianity the only satisfaction of its higher longings4 ,rejecting that1 it could only establish a philosophic church on the foundation of ,plato's school1 and1 forsaking while it professed to expound him1 embrace the hallucinations of intuition and of ecstasy1 till it finally vanishes at ,athens amid the incense and the hocus-pocus of theurgic incantation4 ,as it degenerates1 it presses more audaciously forward through the veil of the unseen4 ,it must see visions1 dream dreams1 work spells1 and call down deities1 demi-gods1 and dmons from their dwellings in the upper air4 ,the ,alexandrians were eclectics1 because such reverence taught them to look back2 mystics1 because such ambition urged them to look up4 ,they restore philosophy1 after all its weary wanderings1 to the place of its birth2 and1 in its second childhood1 it is cradled in the arms of those old poetic faiths of the past1 from which1 in the pride of its youth1 it broke away4 ,the mental history of the founder best illustrates the origin of the school4 ,plotinus1 in ,a4,d4 #bcc1 commences the study of philosophy in ,alexandria1 at the age of twenty-eight4 ,his mental powers are of the concentrative rather than the comprehensive order4 ,impatient of negation1 he has commenced an earnest search after some truth which1 however abstract1 shall yet be positive4 ,he pores over the ,dialogues of ,plato and the ,metaphysics of ,aristotle1 day and night4 ,to promote the growth of his #8soul-wings1' as ,plato counsels1 he practises austerities his master would never have sanctioned4 ,he attempts to live what he learns to call the #8angelic life2' the #8life of the disembodied in the body4' ,he reads with admiration the life of ,apollonius of ,tyana1 by ,philostratus1 which has recently appeared4 ,he can probably credit most of the marvels recorded of that strange thaumaturgist1 who1 two hundred years ago1 had appeared--a revived ,pythagoras1 to dazzle nation after nation through which he passed1 with prophecy and miracle2 who had travelled to the ,indus and the ,ganges1 and brought back the supernatural powers of ,magi and ,gymnosophists1 and who was said to have displayed to the world once more the various knowledge1 the majestic sanctity1 and the superhuman attributes1 of the sage of ,crotona4 ,this portraiture of a philosophical hierophant--a union of the philosopher and the priest in an inspired hero1 fires the imagination of ,plotinus4 ,in the ,new-,pythagoreanism of which ,apollonius was a representative1 ,orientalism and ,platonism were alike embraced4#ab ,perhaps the thought occurs thus early to ,plotinus--could ,i travel eastward ,i might drink myself at those fountain-heads of tradition whence ,pythagoras and ,plato drew so much of their wisdom4 ,certain it is1 that1 with this purpose1 he accompanied1 several years subsequently1 the disastrous expedition of ,gordian against the ,parthians1 and narrowly escaped with life4 ,at ,alexandria1 ,plotinus doubtless hears from orientals there some fragments of the ancient eastern theosophy--doctrines concerning the principle of evil1 the gradual development of the ,divine ,essence1 and creation by intermediate agencies1 none of which he finds in his ,plato4 ,he cannot be altogether a stranger to the lofty theism which ,philo marred1 while he attempted to refine1 by the help of his #8,attic ,moses4' ,he observes a tendency on the part of philosophy to fall back upon the sanctions of religion1 and on the part of the religions of the day to mingle in a ,deism or a ,pantheism which might claim the sanctions of philosophy4 ,the signs of a growing toleration or indifferentism meet him on every side4 ,rome has long been a ,pantheon for all nations1 and gods and provinces together have found in the capitol at once their ,olympus and their metropolis4 ,he cannot walk the streets of ,alexandria without perceiving that the very architecture tells of an alliance between the religious art of ,egypt and of ,greece4 ,all1 except ,jews and ,christians1 join in the worship of ,serapis4#ac ,was not the very substance of which the statue of that god was made1 an amalgam8--fit symbol of the syncretism which paid him homage4 ,once ,serapis had guarded the shores of the ,euxine1 now he is the patron of ,alexandria1 and in him the attributes of ,zeus and of ,osiris1 of ,apis and of ,pluto1 are adored alike by ,east and ,west4 ,men are learning to overlook the external differences of name and ritual1 and to reduce all religions to one general sentiment of worship4 ,for now more than fifty years1 every educated man has laughed1 with ,lucian's satire in his hand1 at the gods of the popular superstition4 ,a century before ,lucian1 ,plutarch had shown that some of the doctrines of the barbarians were not irreconcilable with the philosophy in which he gloried as a ,greek4 ,plutarch had been followed by ,apuleius1 a practical eclectic1 a learner in every school1 an initiate in every temple1 at once sceptical and credulous1 a sophist and a devotee4 ,plotinus looks around him1 and inquires what philosophy is doing in the midst of influences such as these4 ,peripateticism exists but in slumber under the dry scholarship of ,adrastus and ,alexander of ,aphrodisium1 the commentators of the last century4#ad ,the ,new ,academy and the ,stoics attract youth still1 but they are neither of them a philosophy so much as a system of ethics4 ,speculation has given place to morals4 ,philosophy is taken up as a branch of literature1 as an elegant recreation1 as a theme for oratorical display4 ,plotinus is persuaded that philosophy should be worship--speculation1 a search after ,god--no amusement1 but a prayer4 ,scepticism is strong in proportion to the defect or weakness of everything positive around it4 ,the influence of nesidemus1 who1 two centuries ago1 proclaimed universal doubt1 is still felt in ,alexandria4 ,but his scepticism would break up the foundations of morality4 ,what is to be done8 ,plotinus sees those who are true to speculation surrendering ethics1 and those who hold to morality abandoning speculation4 ,in his perplexity1 a friend takes him to hear ,ammonius ,saccas4 ,he finds him a powerful1 broad-shouldered man1 as he might naturally be who not long before was to be seen any day in the sultry streets of ,alexandria1 a porter1 wiping his brow under his burden4 ,ammonius is speaking of the reconciliation that might be effected between ,plato and ,aristotle4 ,this eclecticism it is which has given him fame4 ,at another time it might have brought on him only derision2 now there is an age ready to give the attempt an enthusiastic welcome4 #8,what1' he cries1 kindling with his theme1 #8did ,plato leave behind him1 what ,aristotle1 when ,greece and philosophy had waned together8 ,the first1 a chattering crew of sophists3 the second1 the lifeless dogmatism of the sensationalist4 ,the self-styled followers of ,plato were not brave enough either to believe or to deny4 ,the successors of the ,stagyrite did little more than reiterate their denial of the ,platonic doctrine of ideas4 ,between them morality was sinking fast4 ,then an effort was made for its revival4 ,the attempt at least was good4 ,it sprang out of a just sense of a deep defect4 ,without morality1 what is philosophy worth8 ,but these ethics must rest on speculation for their basis4 ,the ,epicureans and the ,stoics1 ,i say1 came forward to supply that moral want4 ,each said1 we will be practical1 intelligible1 utilitarian4 ,one school1 with its hard lesson of fate and self-denial2 the other1 with its easier doctrine of pleasure1 more or less refined1 were rivals in their profession of ability to teach men how to live4 ,in each there was a certain truth1 but ,i will honour neither with the name of a philosophy4 ,they have confined themselves to mere ethical application--they are willing1 both of them1 to let first principles lie unstirred4 ,can scepticism fail to take advantage of this8 ,while they wrangle1 both are disbelieved4 ,but1 sirs1 can we abide in scepticism8--it is death4 ,you ask me what ,i recommend8 ,i say1 travel back across the past4 ,out of the whole of that by-gone and yet undying world of thought1 construct a system greater than any of the sundered parts4 ,repudiate these partial scholars in the name of their masters4 ,leave them to their disputes1 pass over their systems1 already tottering for lack of a foundation1 and be it yours to show how their teachers join hands far above them4 ,in such a spirit of reverent enthusiasm you may attain a higher unity1 you mount in speculation1 and from that height ordain all noble actions for your lower life4 ,so you become untrue neither to experience nor to reason1 and the genius of eclecticism will combine1 yea1 shall ,i say it1 will surpass while it embraces1 all the ancient triumphs of philosophy6#8#ae ,such was the teaching which attracted ,longinus1 ,herennius1 and ,origen 7not the ,father74 ,it makes an epoch in the life of ,plotinus4 ,he desires now no other instructor1 and is preparing to become himself a leader in the pathway ,ammonius has pointed out4 ,he is convinced that ,platonism1 exalted into an enthusiastic illuminism1 and gathering about itself all the scattered truth upon the field of history1--,platonism1 mystical and catholic1 can alone preserve men from the abyss of scepticism4 ,one of the old traditions of ,finland relates how a mother once found her son torn into a thousand fragments at the bottom of the ,river of ,death4 ,she gathered the scattered members to her bosom1 and rocking to and fro1 sang a magic song1 which made him whole again1 and restored the departed life4 ,such a spell the ,alexandrian philosophy sought to work--thus to recover and re-unite the relics of antique truth1 dispersed and drowned by time4 ,plotinus occupied himself only with the most abstract questions concerning knowledge and being4 ,detail and method--all the stitching and clipping of eclecticism1 he bequeathed as the handicraft of his successors4 ,his fundamental principle is the old petitio principii of idealism4 ,truth1 according to him1 is not the agreement of our apprehension of an external object with the object itself--it is rather the agreement of the mind with itself4 ,the objects we contemplate and that which contemplates1 are identical for the philosopher4 ,both are thought2 only like can know like2 all truth is within us4 ,by reducing the soul to its most abstract simplicity1 we subtilise it so that it expands into the infinite4 ,in such a state we transcend our finite selves1 and are one with the infinite2 this is the privileged condition of ecstasy4 ,these blissful intervals1 but too evanescent and too rare1 were regarded as the reward of philosophic asceticism--the seasons of refreshing1 which were to make amends for all the stoical austerities of the steep ascent towards the abstraction of the primal unity4 ,thus the ,neo-,platonists became ascetics and enthusiasts3 ,plato was neither4 ,where ,plato acknowledges the services of the earliest philosophers--the imperfect utterances of the world's first thoughts1--,neo-,platonism 7in its later period1 at least7 undertakes to detect1 not the similarity merely1 but the identity between ,pythagoras and ,plato1 and even to exhibit the ,platonism of ,orpheus and of ,hermes4 ,where ,plato is hesitant or obscure1 ,neo-,platonism inserts a meaning of its own1 and is confident that such1 and no other1 was the master's mind4 ,where ,plato indulges in a fancy1 or hazards a bold assertion1 ,neo-,platonism1 ignoring the doubts ,plato may himself express elsewhere1 spins it out into a theory1 or bows to it as an infallible revelation4#af ,where ,plato has the doctrine of ,reminiscence1 ,neo-,platonism has the doctrine of ,ecstasy4 ,in the ,reminiscence of ,plato1 the ideas the mind perceives are without it4 ,here there is no mysticism1 only the mistake incidental to metaphysicians generally1 of giving an actual existence to mere mental abstractions4 ,in ,ecstasy1 the ideas perceived are within the mind4 ,the mystic1 according to ,plotinus1 contemplates the divine perfections in himself2 and1 in the ecstatic state1 individuality 7which is so much imperfection71 memory1 time1 space1 phenomenal contradictions1 and logical distinctions1 all vanish4 ,it is not until the rapture is past1 and the mind1 held in this strange solution1 is1 as it were1 precipitated on reality1 that memory is again employed4 ,plotinus would say that ,reminiscence could impart only inferior knowledge1 because it implies separation between the subject and the object4 ,ecstasy is superior--is absolute1 being the realization of their identity4 ,true to this doctrine of absorption1 the ,pantheism of ,plotinus teaches him to maintain1 alike with the ,oriental mystic at one extreme of time1 and with the ,hegelian at the other1 that our individual existence is but phenomenal and transitory4 ,plotinus1 accordingly1 does not banish reason1 he only subordinates it to ecstasy where the ,absolute is in question4#ag ,it is not till the last that he calls in supernatural aid4 ,the wizard king builds his tower of speculation by the hands of human workmen till he reaches the top story1 and then summons his genii to fashion the battlements of adamant1 and crown them with starry fire4 ,,gower4 ,thanks4 ,these ,neo-,platonists are evidently no mere dreamers4 ,they are erudite and critical1 they study and they reason1 they are logicians as well as poets2 they are not mystics till they have first been rationalists1 and they have recourse at last to mysticism only to carry them whither they find reason cannot mount4 ,,atherton4 ,now1 ,i have a letter by ,plotinus4 ,it is without a date1 but from internal evidence must have been written about ,a4,d4 #bfj4 ,,plotinus ,,to ,,flaccus4 ,i applaud your devotion to philosophy2 ,i rejoice to hear that your soul has set sail1 like the returning ,ulysses1 for its native land--that glorious1 that only real country--the world of unseen truth4 ,to follow philosophy1 the senator ,rogatianus1 one of the noblest of my disciples1 gave up the other day all but the whole of his patrimony1 set free his slaves1 and surrendered all the honours of his station4 ,tidings have reached us that ,valerian has been defeated1 and is now in the hands of ,sapor4 ,the threats of ,franks and ,allemanni1 of ,goths and ,persians1 are alike terrible by turns to our degenerate ,rome4 ,in days like these1 crowded with incessant calamities1 the inducements to a life of contemplation are more than ever strong4 ,even my quiet existence seems now to grow somewhat sensible of the advance of years4 ,age alone ,i am unable to debar from my retirement4 ,i am weary already of this prison-house1 the body1 and calmly await the day when the divine nature within me shall be set free from matter4 ,the ,egyptian priests used to tell me that a single touch with the wing of their holy bird could charm the crocodile into torpor2 it is not thus speedily1 my dear friend1 that the pinions of your soul will have power to still the untamed body4 ,the creature will yield only to watchful1 strenuous constancy of habit4 ,purify your soul from all undue hope and fear about earthly things1 mortify the body1 deny self1--affections as well as appetites1 and the inner eye will begin to exercise its clear and solemn vision4 ,you ask me to tell you how we know1 and what is our criterion of certainty4 ,to write is always irksome to me4 ,but for the continual solicitations of ,porphyry1 ,i should not have left a line to survive me4 ,for your own sake and for your father's1 my reluctance shall be overcome4 ,external objects present us only with appearances4 ,concerning them1 therefore1 we may be said to possess opinion rather than knowledge4 ,the distinctions in the actual world of appearance are of import only to ordinary and practical men4 ,our question lies with the ideal reality that exists behind appearance4 ,how does the mind perceive these ideas8 ,are they without us1 and is the reason1 like sensation1 occupied with objects external to itself8 ,what certainty could we then have1 what assurance that our perception was infallible8 ,the object perceived would be a something different from the mind perceiving it4 ,we should have then an image instead of reality4 ,it would be monstrous to believe for a moment that the mind was unable to perceive ideal truth exactly as it is1 and that we had not certainty and real knowledge concerning the world of intelligence4 ,it follows1 therefore1 that this region of truth is not to be investigated as a thing external to us1 and so only imperfectly known4 ,it is within us4 ,here the objects we contemplate and that which contemplates are identical1--both are thought4 ,the subject cannot surely know an object different from itself4 ,the world of ideas lies within our intelligence4 ,truth1 therefore1 is not the agreement of our apprehension of an external object with the object itself4 ,it is the agreement of the mind with itself4 ,consciousness1 therefore1 is the sole basis of certainty4 ,the mind is its own witness4 ,reason sees in itself that which is above itself as its source2 and again1 that which is below itself as still itself once more4 ,knowledge has three degrees--,opinion1 ,science1 ,illumination4 ,the means or instrument of the first is sense2 of the second1 dialectic2 of the third1 intuition4 ,to the last ,i subordinate reason4 ,it is absolute knowledge founded on the identity of the mind knowing with the object known4#ah ,there is a raying out of all orders of existence1 an external emanation from the ineffable ,one 774 ,there is again a returning impulse1 drawing all upwards and inwards towards the centre from whence all came 774 ,love1 as ,plato in the ,banquet beautifully says1 is the child of ,poverty and ,plenty4#ai ,in the amorous quest of the soul after the ,good1 lies the painful sense of fall and deprivation4 ,but that ,love is blessing1 is salvation1 is our guardian genius2 without it the centrifugal law would overpower us1 and sweep our souls out far from their source toward the cold extremities of the ,material and the ,manifold4 ,the wise man recognises the idea of the ,good within him4 ,this he develops by withdrawal into the ,holy ,place of his own soul4 ,he who does not understand how the soul contains the ,beautiful within itself1 seeks to realize beauty without1 by laborious production4 ,his aim should rather be to concentrate and simplify1 and so to expand his being2 instead of going out into the ,manifold1 to forsake it for the ,one1 and so to float upwards towards the divine fount of being whose stream flows within him4 ,you ask1 how can we know the ,infinite8#bj ,i answer1 not by reason4 ,it is the office of reason to distinguish and define4 ,the ,infinite1 therefore1 cannot be ranked among its objects4 ,you can only apprehend the ,infinite by a faculty superior to reason1 by entering into a state in which you are your finite self no longer1 in which the ,divine ,essence is communicated to you4 ,this is ,ecstasy4 ,it is the liberation of your mind from its finite consciousness4 ,like only can apprehend like2 when you thus cease to be finite1 you become one with the ,infinite4 ,in the reduction of your soul to its simplest self 771 its divine essence1 you realize this ,union1 this ,identity 774 ,but this sublime condition is not of permanent duration4 ,it is only now and then that we can enjoy this elevation 7mercifully made possible for us7 above the limits of the body and the world4 ,i myself have realized it but three times as yet1 and ,porphyry hitherto not once4 ,all that tends to purify and elevate the mind will assist you in this attainment1 and facilitate the approach and the recurrence of these happy intervals4 ,there are1 then1 different roads by which this end may be reached4 ,the love of beauty which exalts the poet2 that devotion to the ,one and that ascent of science which makes the ambition of the philosopher2 and that love and those prayers by which some devout and ardent soul tends in its moral purity towards perfection4 ,these are the great highways conducting to that height above the actual and the particular1 where we stand in the immediate presence of the ,infinite1 who shines out as from the deeps of the soul4#ba ,note to page #ge4 ,this imaginary fragment from ,ammonius ,saccas is1 ,i believe1 true to what seems fairly inferred concerning his teaching4 ,see ,brucker1 ii4 p4 #baa2 and ,jules ,simon1 i4 #bje2 ii4 #ffh4 ,plotinus appears to have been indebted to ,numenius even more than to ,ammonius or ,potamon for some of the ideas peculiar to his system4 ,the modicum of information concerning ,numenius which ,eusebius has handed down shows that this ,platonist anticipated the characteristic doctrine of ,neo-,platonism concerning the ,divine ,being4 ,like the ,neo-,platonist1 he pursued philosophical inquiry in a religious spirit1 imploring1 as ,plotinus does1 divine illumination4 ,he endeavoured to harmonize ,pythagoras and ,plato1 to elucidate and confirm the opinions of both by the religious dogmas of the ,egyptians1 the ,magi1 and the ,brahmins1 and1 like many of the ,christian ,fathers1 he believed that ,plato stood indebted to the ,hebrew as well as to the ,egyptian theology for much of his wisdom4 ,he was pressed by the same great difficulty which weighed upon ,plotinus4 ,how could the immutable ,one create the ,manifold without self-degradation8 ,he solved it in a manner substantially the same4 ,his answer is--by means of a hypostatic emanation4 ,he posits in the ,divine ,nature three principles in a descending scale4 ,his order of existence is as follows3-- ,i4 ,god1 the ,absolute4 ,,ii4 ,the ,demiurge2 he is the ,artificer1 in a sense1 the imitator of the former4 ,he contemplates matter1 his eye ordains and upholds it1 yet he is himself separate from it1 since matter contains a concupiscent principle1--is fluctuating1 and philosophically non-existent4 ,the ,demiurge is the 1 and good2 for goodness is the original principle of ,being4 ,the second ,hypostasis1 engaged in the contemplation of matter1 does not attain the serene self-contemplation of the ,first4 ,,iii4 ,substance or ,essence1 of a twofold character1 corresponding to the two former4 ,the ,universe is a copy of this third ,principle4 ,this not very intelligible theory1 which of course increases instead of lessening the perplexity in which the ,platonists were involved1 though differing in detail from that of ,plotinus1 proceeds on the same principle2--the expedient1 namely1 of appending to the ,one certain subordinate hypostases to fill the gap between it and the ,manifold4 7,see1 on his opinions1 ,euseb4 ,prp4 ,evang4 lib4 viii4 p4 #daa 7ed4 ,viger72 lib4 xi4 c4 #ah1 p4 #ecg2 capp4 #ba1 #bb1 and lib4 xv4 c4 #ag47 ,note to page #ha4 ,plotinus and his successors are the model of the ,pseudo-,dionysius in his language concerning the ,deity4 ,of his abstract primal principle neither being nor life can be predicated2 he is above being and above life4 ,enn4 iii4 lib4 #h1 c4 #i4 ,but man by simplifying his nature to the utmost possible extent may become lost in this ,unity4 ,in ,enn4 v4 lib4 #e1 c4 #h1 the mind of the contemplative philosopher is described as illumined with a divine light4 ,he cannot tell whence it comes1 or whither it goes4 ,it is rather he himself who approaches or withdraws4 ,he must not pursue it 7 7 but abide 7a true ,quietist7 in patient waiting1 as one looking for the rising of the sun out of the ocean4 ,the soul1 blind to all beside1 gazes intently on the ideal vision of the ,beautiful1 and is glorified as it contemplates it-- 1 1 4 ,but this is only a preliminary stage of exaltation4 ,the ,absolute or the ,one1 has no parts2 all things partake of him1 nothing possesses him2 to see impartially is an impossibility1 a contradiction1--if we imagine we recognise a portion he is far from us yet1--to see him mediately 7 7 is to behold his traces1 not himself4 4 ,but1 asks ,plotinus1 is not seeing him wholly identity with him8 cap4 #aj4 ,the mystical aspirant is directed therefore to leave the glorified image of himself1 radiant with the transforming effulgence of ,beauty1 to escape from his individual self by withdrawing into his own unity1 wherein he becomes identified with the ,infinite ,one-- 1 1 1 4 ,retreating into the inmost recesses of his own being1 he there 1 1 1 4 ,no language could more clearly express the doctrine of identity--the object seen and the subject seeing are one4 ,plotinus triumphantly asks-- 2 1 1 1 1 1 4 ,ibid4 pp4 #eeb-c4 ,footnote #ab3 ,the testimony of ,cicero and ,iamblichus may be received as indicating truly the similarity of spirit between ,pythagoras and ,plato1--their common endeavour to escape the sensuous1 and to realize in contemplative abstraction that tranquillity1 superior to desire and passion1 which assimilated men to gods4 ,the principles of both degenerated1 in the hands of their latest followers1 into the mysteries of a theurgic freemasonry4 ,the scattered ,pythagoreans were1 many of them1 incorporated in the ,orphic associations1 and their descendants were those itinerant vendors of expiations and of charms--the of whom ,plato speaks 7,repub4 ii4 p4 #gj7--the ,grecian prototypes of ,chaucer's ,pardonere4 ,similarly1 in the days of ,iamblichus1 the charlatans glorified themselves as the offspring of ,plato4 ,footnote #ac3 ,clement of ,alexandria gives a full account of the various stories respecting this idol1 ,protrept4 c4 iv4 p4 #db 7ed4 ,potter72 moreover an etymology and legend to match1 ,strom4 lib4 i4 p4 #chc4 ,certain sorts of wood and metal were supposed peculiarly appropriate to certain deities4 ,the art of the theurgist consisted partly in ascertaining the virtues of such substances2 and it was supposed that statues constructed of a particular combination of materials1 correspondent with the tastes and attributes of the deity represented1 possessed a mysterious influence attracting the ,power in question1 and inducing him to take up his residence within the image4 ,iamblichus lays down this principle of sympathy in the treatise ,de ,mysteriis1 v4 #bc1 p4 #aci 7ed4 ,gale1 #afgh74 ,kircher furnishes a description of this statue of ,serapis1 dip4 gypt4 i4 #aci4 ,footnote #ad3 ,see ,histoire de l',ecole d',alexandrie1 par ,m4 ,jules ,simon1 tom4 i4 p4 #ii4 ,footnote #ae3 ,see ,note1 p4 #hb4 ,footnote #af3 ,see ,jules ,simon1 ii4 pp4 #fbf1 c4 ,footnote #ag3 ,see ,note to ,chap4 ,,iii4 p4 #ib4 ,footnote #ah3 ,the statements made in this and the preceding paragraph1 and the reasons adduced by ,plotinus in support of them1 will be found in the fifth ,ennead1 lib4 v4 c4 i4 ,he assumes at once that the mind must be1 from its very nature1 the standard of certitude4 ,he asks 7p4 #eai7 1 4 ,he urges that if ,intelligibles were without the mind it could possess but images of them2 its knowledge1 thus mediate1 would be imperfect1 p4 #eba4 ,truth consists in the harmony of the mind with itself4 1 1 4 4 1 4 1 4 4 1 1 4 1 1 4 4 1 p4 #ebb4 ,footnote #ai3 ,enn4 iii4 lib4 v4 capp4 #b #g4 ,there the gardens of ,jove1 and ,porus1 with his plenty1 are said to be allegorical representations of the intellectual food of a soul nourished and delighted by the truths of ,reason4 ,poverty1 again1 with its sense of need1 is the source of intellectual desire4 ,comp4 ,plato1 ,symp4 p4 #dbi 7,bekk74 ,footnote #bj3 ,see ,note #b1 p4 #hb4 ,footnote #ba3 ,enn4 i4 lib4 #c1 c4 #a4 ,,chapter ,,iii4 ,lume lass che visibile face ,lo creatore a quella creatura ,che solo in lui vedere ha la sua pace4#bb ,,dante4 ,,mrs4 ,,atherton4 ,i confess ,i cannot understand what that state of mind can be which ,plotinus calls ecstasy in the letter you read us last night1 and about which most of your mystical fraternity talk so mysteriously4 ,,kate4 ,i think ,i shall have myself mesmerised some day to form an idea4 ,,willoughby4 ,i suppose the mystic1 by remaining for many hours 7enfeebled1 perhaps1 by fast and vigil71 absolutely motionless1 ceasing to think of anything--except that he thinks he is successful in thinking of nothing1 and staring pertinaciously at vacancy1 throws himself at last into a kind of trance4 ,in this state he may perceive1 even when the eyes are closed1 some luminous appearance1 perhaps the result of pressure on the optic nerve--,i am not anatomist enough to explain2 and if his mind be strongly imaginative1 or labouring with the ground-swell of recent excitement1 this light may shape itself into archetype1 dmon1 or what not4 ,in any case1 the more distinct the object seen1 the more manifestly is it the projection of his own mind--a ,brocken-phantom1 the enlarged shadow of himself moving on some shifting tapestry of mist4 ,,kate4 ,like the woodman described by ,coleridge as beholding with such awe an appearance of the kind1 when he ,sees full before him gliding without tread ,an image with a glory round its head1 ,this shade he worships for its golden hues1 ,and makes 7not knowing7 that which he pursues4 ,,atherton4 ,such has been the god of many a mystic4 ,he will soar above means1 experience1 history1 external revelation1 and ends by mistaking a hazy reflex of his own image for ,deity4 ,,gower4 ,but we must not forget that1 according to ,plotinus1 all sense of personality is lost during ecstasy1 and he would regard any light or form whatever 7presented to what one may call his cerebral vision7 as a sign that the trance was yet incomplete4 ,he yearns to escape from everything that can be distinguished1 bounded1 or depicted1 into the illimitable inane4 ,,atherton4 ,very true4 ,and it is this extreme of negation and abstraction for which ,plotinus is remarkable1 that makes it alone worth our while to talk so much about him4 ,his philosophy and that of his successors1 mistaken for ,platonism1 was to corrupt the ,christian ,church4 ,for hundreds of years there will be a succession of prelates1 priests1 or monks1 in whose eyes the frigid refinements of ,plotinus will be practically1 though not confessedly1 regarded as representing ,god far more worthily than the grand simplicity and the forcible figurativeness of ,scripture language4 ,for the ,christian's ,god will be substituted that sublime cypher devised by ,plotinus--that blank something1 of which you cannot say that it exists1 for it is above existence4 ,stop a moment--let me tell my beads1 and try to count off the doctrines we shall meet with again and again in those forms of ,christian mysticism where the ,neo-,platonist element prevails--the germs of all lie in ,plotinus4 ,there is1 first of all1 the principle of negation2 that all so-called manifestations and revelations of ,god do in fact veil him2 that no affirmative can be predicated of him1 because he is above all our positive conceptions2 that all symbols1 figures1 media1 partial representations1 must be utterly abandoned because1 as finite1 they fall infinitely short of the ,infinite4 ,here we are sunk below humanity--our knowledge consists in ignorance--our vision in darkness4 ,the next step raises us in an instant from this degrading limitation up to ,deity--#8sets our feet in a large room1' as the later mystics phrased it--even in infinity1 and identifies us for a time with ,god4 ,since the partial finite way of knowing ,god is so worthless1 to know him truly we must escape from the finite1 from all processes1 all media1 from the very gifts of ,god to ,god himself1 and know him immediately1 completely1 in the infinite way--by receiving1 or being received into1 him directly4 ,to attain this identity1 in which1 during a brief space of rapture at least1 the subject and object1 the knower and the known1 are one and the same1 we must withdraw into our inmost selves1 into that simple oneness of our own essence which by its very rarity is susceptible of blending with that supreme attenuation called the ,divine ,essence4 ,so doing1 we await in passivity the glory1 the embrace of ,union4 ,hence the inmost is the highest--introversion is ascension1 and introrsum ascendere the watchword of all mystics4 ,god is found within1 at once radiating from the depths of the soul1 and absorbing it as the husk of personality drops away4 ,,willoughby4 ,and so the means and faculties ,god has given us for knowing him are to lie unused4 ,,atherton4 ,certainly2 night must fall on reason1 imagination1 memory--on our real powers--that an imaginary power may awake4 ,this is what the mystics call the absorption of the powers in ,god1 leaving active within us nothing natural1 in order that ,god may be substituted for ourselves1 and all operations within be supernatural1 and even divine4 ,,gower4 ,then mysticism is a spiritual art whereby the possible is forsaken for the impossible--the knowable for the unknowable4 ,,willoughby4 ,or a contrivance1 say1 for reaching ,divinity which realizes only torpor4 ,,gower4 ,a sorry sight this misdirection and disappointment of spiritual aspiration4 ,does it not remind you of that ever-suggestive legend of ,psyche--how she has to carry the box of celestial beauty to ,venus1 and by the way covets some of this loveliness for herself4 ,she lifts the lid1 and there steals out a soporific vapour1 throwing her into a deep slumber on the edge of a dizzy precipice4 ,there she lies entranced till ,eros comes to waken and to rescue her4 ,,atherton4 ,i should grow very tiresome if ,i were now to attempt to indicate the likeness and the difference between ancient and modern speculation on these questions1 and where ,i think the error lies1 and why4 ,but you must bear with me1 ,kate1 if ,i hang some dry remarks on what you said just now4 ,,kate4 ,i am sure ,i-- ,,atherton4 ,you quoted ,coleridge a minute since4 ,he first1 and after him ,carlyle1 familiarized ,england with the ,german distinction between reason and understanding4 ,in fact1 what the ,epicureans and the ,stoics were to ,plotinus in his day1 that were ,priestley and ,paley to ,coleridge4 ,the spiritualist is the sworn foe of your rationalist and pleasures-of-virtue man4 ,romance must loathe utilitarianism1 enthusiasm scorn expediency4 ,hence the reaction which gives us ,schelling as the ,plotinus of ,berlin1 and ,coleridge as the ,schelling of ,highgate4 ,the understanding had been over-tasked--set to work unanimated and unaided by the conscience and the heart4 ,the result was pitiable--lifeless orthodoxy and sneering scepticism4 ,christianity was elaborately defended on its external evidences2 the internal evidence of its own nature overlooked4 ,what was needful at such a juncture8 ,surely that both should be employed in healthful alliance--the understanding and the conscience--the faculty which distinguishes and judges1 and the faculty which presides over our moral nature1 deciding about right and wrong4 ,these are adequate to recognise the claims of ,revelation4 ,the intellectual faculty can deal with the historic evidence1 the moral can pronounce concerning the tendency of the book1 righteous or unrighteous4 ,in those features of it unexplained and inexplicable to the understanding1 if we repose on faith1 we do so on grounds which the understanding shows to be sound4 ,hence the reception given to ,christianity is altogether reasonable4 ,but no such moderate ground as this would satisfy the ardour which essayed reform2 the understanding1 because it could not do everything--could not be the whole mind1 but only a part--because it was proved unequal to accomplish alone the work of all our faculties together1 was summarily cashiered4 ,we must have for religion a new1 a higher faculty4 ,instead of reinforcing the old power1 a novel nomenclature is devised which seems to endow man with a loftier attribute4 ,this faculty is the intuition of ,plotinus1 the ,intellectuelle ,anschauung of ,schelling2 the ,intuitive ,reason1 ,source of ,ideas and ,absolute ,truths1 the ,organ of ,philosophy and ,theology1 as ,coleridge styles it4 ,it is a direct beholding1 which1 according to ,plotinus1 rises in some moments of exaltation to ecstasy4 ,it is1 according to ,schelling1 a realization of the identity of subject and object in the individual1 which blends him with that identity of subject and object called ,god2 so that1 carried out of himself1 he does1 in a manner1 think divine thoughts--views all things from their highest point of view--mind and matter from the centre of their identity4#bc ,he becomes recipient1 according to ,emerson1 of the ,soul of the world4 ,he loses1 according to ,coleridge1 the particular in the universal reason2 finds that ideas appear within him from an internal source supplied by the ,logos or ,eternal ,word of ,god--an infallible utterance from the divine original of man's highest nature4#bd ,,willoughby4 ,one aim in all--to escape the surface varieties of our individual 7or more properly dividual7 being1 and penetrate to the universal truth--the absolute certainty everywhere the same3--a shaft-sinking operation--a descent into our original selves--digging down1 in one case from a garden1 in another from a waste1 here from the heart of a town1 there from a meadow1 but all the miners are to find at the bottom a common ground--the primval granite--the basis of the eternal truth-pillars4 ,this ,i take to be the object of the self-simplification ,plotinus inculcates--to get beneath the finite superficial accretions of our nature4 ,,atherton4 ,and what comes of it after all8 ,after denuding ourselves of all results of experience1 conditioned distinctions1 c41 we are landed in a void1 we find only hollow silence1 if we may accept a whisper or two1 saying that ingratitude1 treachery1 fraud1 and similar crimes1 are very wrong4 ,,gower4 ,and even these dictates are those of our moral sense1 not of an intellectual power of insight4 ,for surely to call conscience practical ,reason1 as ,kant does1 is only to confound our moral and intellectual nature together4 ,,atherton4 ,very well1 then4 ,seclude and simplify yourself thoroughly1 and you do not find data within you equal to your need--equal to show you what ,god is1 has done1 should do1 c4 ,,willoughby4 ,but all these intuitionalists profess to evolve from their depths very much more than those simplest ethical perceptions4 ,,atherton4 ,by carrying down with them into those depths the results of the understanding1 of experience1 of external culture1 and then bringing them up to light again as though they had newly emerged from the recesses of the ,infinite4 ,this intuitional metal1 in its native state1 is mere fluent1 formless quicksilver2 to make it definite and serviceable you must fix it by an alloy2 but then1 alas6 it is pure ,reason no longer1 and1 so far from being universal truth1 receives a countless variety of shapes1 according to the temperament1 culture1 or philosophic party1 of the individual thinker4 ,so that1 in the end1 the result is merely a dogmatical investiture of a man's own notions with a sort of divine authority4 ,you dispute with ,schelling1 and he waves you away as a profane and intuitionless laic4 ,what is this but the sacerdotalism of the philosopher8 ,the fanatical mystic who believes himself called on to enforce the fantasies of his special revelation upon other men1 does not more utterly contemn argument than does the theosophist1 when he bids you kick your understanding back into its kennel1 and hearken in reverend awe to his intuitions4 ,,willoughby4 ,telling you1 too1 that if your inward witness does not agree with his1 you are1 philosophically speaking1 in the gall of bitterness and the bond of iniquity4 ,,atherton4 ,you are catching the approved style of expression so much in vogue with our modern religious infidelity4 ,this is the artifice--to be scriptural in phrase1 and anti-scriptural in sense3 to parade the secret symbols of ,christianity in the van of that motley army which marches to assail it4 ,,gower4 ,the expedient reminds me of the device of ,cambyses1 who1 when he drew out his forces against the ,egyptians1 placed a row of ibises in front of his line1 and the ,egyptians1 it is said1 suffered defeat rather than discharge an arrow which might wound the birds they worshipped4 ,,willoughby4 ,to go back to ,plotinus4#be ,that doctrine of the ,epistrophe--the return of all intelligence by a law of nature to the divine centre--must inevitably be associated with the unhealthy morality always attendant on pantheism4 ,it is an organic process godward1 ending in loss of personal existence1 no moral or spiritual elevation4 ,,gower4 ,his abstract ,unity has no character1 only negation of all conceivable attributes--so will and character can have no place in his theory of assimilation to ,god4 ,self-culture is self-reduction4 ,what a plan of the universe6--all intelligence magnetically drawn to the ,centre1 like the ships to the ,mountain of the ,loadstone in the ,arabian ,nights--as they approach1 the nails which hold them together are withdrawn1 they fall apart1 and all the fabric is dissolved4 ,,willoughby4 ,it is curious to observe how rapidly the mind gives way under the unnatural strain of this super-essential abstraction1 and indemnifies itself by imaginative and fantastical excesses for the attempt to sojourn in an atmosphere so rare4 ,at first1 ecstasy is an indescribable state--any form or voice would mar and materialize it4 ,the vague boundlessness of this exaltation1 in which the soul swoons away1 is not to be hinted at by the highest utterance of mortal speech4 ,but a degenerate age or a lower order of mind demands the detail and imagery of a more tangible marvel4 ,the demand creates supply1 and the mystic1 deceiver or deceived1 or both1 begins to furnish forth for himself and others a full itinerary of those regions in the unseen world which he has scanned or traversed in his moments of elevation4 ,he describes the starred baldrics and meteor-swords of the arial panoply2 tells what forlorn shapes have been seen standing dark against a far depth of brightness1 like stricken pines on a sunset horizon2 what angelic forms1 in gracious companies1 alight about the haunts of men1 thwarting the evil and opening pathways for the good2 what genii tend what mortals1 and under what astral influences they work weal or woe2 what beings of the middle air crowd in embattled rows the mountain side1 or fill some vast amphitheatre of silent and inaccessible snow1--how some encamp in the valley1 under the pennons of the summer lightning1 and others find a tented field where the slow wind unrolls the exhalations along the marsh1 and builds a billowy canopy of vapours3 all is largely told1--what ethereal heraldry marshals with its blazon the thrones and dominions of the unseen realm2 what giant powers and principalities darken with long shadow1 or illumine with a winged wake of glory1 the forms of following myriads1--their ranks and races1 wars and destiny1 as minutely registered as the annals of some neighbour province1 as confidently recounted as though the seer had nightly slipped his bonds of flesh1 and mingled in their council or their battle4 ,,atherton4 ,a true portraiture4 ,observe how this mysticism pretends to raise man above self into the universal1 and issues in giving us only what is personal4 ,it presents us1 after all1 only with the creations of the fancy1 the phenomena of the sensibility peculiar to the individual1--that finite1 personal idiosyncrasy which is so despised4 ,its philosophy of the universe subsides into a morbid psychology4 ,man is persuaded that he is to traverse the realms of fire and air1 where the intelligible essences and archetypes of all things dwell2 and1 like the ,knight of ,la ,mancha1 he never stirs in reality from the little grass-plot of individual temperament on which his wondrous wooden horse stands still4 ,this theosophy professes to make man divine1 and it fails at last to keep him even rational4 ,it prevents his becoming what he might be1 while it promises to make him what he never can become4 ,note to page #ij4 ,m4 ,simon has shown1 with much acuteness1 in what way the exigencies of the system of ,plotinus compelled him to have recourse to a new faculty1 distinct from reason4 ,plotinus perceived that ,plato had not been true to the consequences of his own dialectics4 ,when he had reached the summit of his logical abstraction1--had passed through definition after definition1 each more intangible than the last1 on his way upward towards the ,one1 he arrived at last at a ,god who was above ,being itself4 ,from this result he shrank1 and so ceased to be consistent4 ,how could such a ,god be a ,god of ,providence1 such a shadow of a shade a creator8 ,plato was not prepared1 like ,plotinus1 to soar so completely above experience and the practical as to accept the utmost consequences of his logical process4 ,so1 that his ,god might be still the ,god of ,providence1 he retained him within the sphere of reason1 gave him ,being1 ,thought1 ,power1 and called him the ,demiurge4 ,when ,plotinus1 like a true eclectic1 carried still farther his survey of what history afforded him1 he found ,aristotle postulating a ,deity so restricted by his own abstraction and immutability as to render it impossible to associate with his nature the idea of superintendence4 ,it was feared that to represent ,god as the ,god of ,creation and of ,providence would be to dualize him4 ,and yet the world did exist4 ,how were the serene and remote ,unity demanded by logic1 and that activity and contact with matter no less imperatively demanded for ,god by experience1 to be reconciled with each other8 ,it is scarcely necessary to observe that there was no real difficulty4 ,the whole problem was the result of the notion1 so universal1 concerning the evil of matter1 and of the wrong answer given by ancient philosophy to the vexed question--,does the ,supreme work 1 or 8 ,philosophy maintained the former2 the ,christian ,church the latter4 ,to remove this obstacle which philosophy had itself constructed1 ,plotinus proposed his theory of these hypostases1 in the ,divine ,nature4 ,above and beyond a ,god such as that of ,plato1 he places another like that of ,aristotle1 and above him a simple ,unity1 like the ,god of the ,eleatics4 ,the last was the ultimatum of the process of logical simplification--a something above being4 ,but the hypothesis was destitute of proof--it was1 in fact1 contrary to reason4 ,plotinus must therefore either surrender his theory or bid farewell to reason4 ,he chose the latter course4 ,he does not deny the important services of reason1 but he professes to transcend its limits4 ,he calls in mysticism to substantiate1 by the doctrines of ,illumination and ,identity1 his imaginary ,god4 ,he affirms a ,god beyond reason1 and then a faculty beyond reason to discern that ,god withal4 ,this attempt to solve the problem in question is of course a failure4 ,it is still more open than the system of ,plato to ,aristotle's objection1 that it resembled the expedient of an arithmetician who should endeavour to simplify a calculation he found perplexing by taking still higher figures4 ,plotinus does not explain what he means by a ,hypostasis4 ,if the ,hypostases in his ,trinity have reality1 the ideal unity he is so anxious to preserve in the ,divine ,nature is after all destroyed4 ,if they have not1 the gap between the ,one and the ,manifold is still without a bridge1 and the difficulty they are introduced to remove remains in effect where it was4 ,if this hypothesis had made no part of the system of ,plotinus1 the great occasion for the doctrine of ,ecstasy and the most powerful internal inducement to mysticism would have been wanting4 ,the philosopher escapes from his labyrinth by borrowing the wings of the mystic4--,see ,jules ,simon1 tom4 i4 pp4 #fc1 #hd2 ii4 #dfb4 ,footnote #bb3 ,there is above a light which makes visible the ,creator to that creature who finds his peace only in the vision of ,him4 ,footnote #bc3 ,see ,schelling's ,system des ,trancendentalen ,idealismus1 pp4 #ai-bc 7,tbingen1 #ahjj71 and ,chalybus1 ,hist4 ,entw4 d4 ,spec4 ,phil4 p4 #bdd4 ,footnote #bd3 ,aids to ,reflection1 pp4 #bbe1 #bdi4 ,the reader is referred to a discriminating criticism of this doctrine in the ,british ,quarterly ,review1 ,no4 xxxvii4 ,footnote #be3 ,see ,note1 p4 #ib4 ,,chapter ,,iv4 ,stargaze4 ',tis drawn1 ,i assure you1 from the aphorisms of the old ,chaldeans1 ,zoroaster the first and greatest magician2 ,mercurius ,trismegistus1 the later ,ptolemy1 and the everlasting prognosticator1 old ,erra ,pater4--,,massinger4 ,,willoughby4 ,we have now about done1 ,i suppose1 with the theosophic branch of the ,neo-,platonist school2 with its latest leaders it degenerates into theurgic mysticism4 ,,kate4 ,i hope it is going to degenerate into something one can understand4 ,,gower4 ,the great metaphysician1 ,plotinus1 is off the stage1 that is some comfort for you1 ,miss ,merivale4 ,magic is less wearisome than metaphysics4 ,,atherton4 ,the change is marked1 indeed4 ,plotinus1 wrapt in his proud abstraction1 cared little for fame4 ,his listening disciples were his world4 ,porphyry entered his school fresh from the study of ,aristotle4 ,at first the daring opponent of the master1 he soon became the most devoted of his scholars4 ,with a temperament more active and practical than that of ,plotinus1 with more various ability and far more facility in adaptation1 with an erudition equal to his fidelity1 blameless in his life1 pre-eminent in the loftiness and purity of his ethics1 he was well fitted to do all that could be done towards securing for the doctrines he had espoused that reputation and that wider influence to which ,plotinus was so indifferent4 ,his aim was twofold4 ,he engaged in a conflict hand to hand with two antagonists at once1 by both of whom he was eventually vanquished4 ,he commenced an assault on ,christianity without1 and he endeavoured to check the progress of superstitious usage within the pale of ,paganism4 ,but ,christianity could not be repulsed1 and heathendom would not be reformed4 ,in vain did he attempt to substitute a single philosophical religion which should be universal1 for the manifold and popular ,polytheism of the day4 ,christian truth repelled his attack on the one side1 and idolatrous superstition carried his defences on the other4 ,,willoughby4 ,a more false position could scarcely have been assumed4 ,men like ,porphyry constituted themselves the defenders of a ,paganism which did but partially acknowledge their advocacy4 ,often suspected by the ,emperors1 they were still oftener maligned and persecuted by the jealousy of the priests4 ,they were the unaccredited champions of ,paganism1 for they sought to refine while they conserved it4 ,they defended it1 not as zealots1 but as men of letters4#bf ,they defended it because the old faith could boast of great names and great achievements in speculation1 literature1 and art1 and because the new appeared novel and barbarian in its origin1 and humiliating in its claims4 ,they wrote1 they lectured1 they disputed1 in favour of the temple and against the church1 because they dreamed of the days of ,pericles under the yoke of the ,empire3 not because they worshipped idols1 but because they worshipped ,plato4 ,,mrs4 ,,atherton4 ,and must not that very attempt1 noticed just now1 to recognise all religions1 have been as fatal to them as the causes you mention8 ,,atherton4 ,certainly4 ,mankind does not require a revelation to give them a religion1 but to give them one which shall be altogether true4 ,these ,neo-,platonists were confronted by a religion intolerant of all others4 ,they attempted1 by keeping open house in their eclectic ,pantheon1 to excel where they thought their antagonist deficient4 ,they failed to see in that benign intolerance of falsehood1 which stood out as so strange a characteristic in the ,christian faith1 one of the credentials of its divine origin4 ,no theory of the universe manufactured by a school can be a gospel to man's soul4 ,they forgot that lip-homage paid to all religions is the virtual denial of each4 ,,gower4 ,strange position1 indeed1 maintaining as their cardinal doctrine the unity and immutability of the divine nature1 and entering the lists as conservators of polytheism2 teaching the most abstract and defending the most gross conceptions of deity2 exclaiming against vice1 and solicitous to preserve all the incentives to it which swarm in every heathen mythology4 ,of a truth1 no clean thing could be brought out of that unclean1--the new cloth would not mend the old garment4 ,men know that they ought to worship2 the question is1 ,whom8 and ,how8 ,,willoughby4 ,then1 again1 their attempt to combine religion and philosophy robbed the last of its only principle1 the first of its only power4 ,the religions lost in the process what sanctity and authoritativeness they had to lose1 while speculation abandoned all scientific precision1 and deserted its sole consistent basis in the reason4 ,this endeavour to philosophise superstition could only issue in the paradoxical product of a philosophy without reason1 and a superstition without faith4 ,to make philosophy superstitious was not difficult1 and they did that2 but they could not--do what they would--make superstition philosophical4 ,,atherton4 ,add1 too1 that ,greek philosophy1 which had always repelled the people1 possessed no power to seclude them from the ,christianity that sought them out4 ,in vain did it borrow from ,christianity a new refinement1 and receive some rays of light from the very foe which fronted it---- ,,willoughby4 ,as is very visible in the higher moral tone of ,porphyry's ,treatise on ,abstinence4 ,,atherton4 ,the struggles of heathendom to escape its doom only the more display its weakness and the justice of the sentence4 ,,gower4 ,like the man in the ,gesta ,romanorum1 who came to the gate where every humpbacked1 one-eyed1 scald-headed passenger had to pay a penny for each infirmity3 they were going only to demand toll for his hunch1 but he resisted1 and in the struggle was discovered to be amenable for every deformity and disease upon the table4 ,so1 no doubt1 it must always be with systems1 states1 men1 and dogs1 that won't know when they have had their day4 ,the scuffle makes sad work with the patched clothes1 false teeth1 wig1 and cosmetics4 ,,atherton4 ,life is sweet4 ,as to ,porphyry it was doubtless his more practical temperament that led him to modify the doctrine of ,plotinus concerning ecstasy4 ,with ,porphyry the mind does not lose1 in that state of exaltation1 its consciousness of personality4 ,he calls it a dream in which the soul1 dead to the world1 rises to an activity that partakes of the divine4 ,it is an elevation above reason1 above action1 above liberty1 and yet no annihilation1 but an ennobling restoration or transformation of the individual nature4#bg ,,gower4 ,one of ,porphyry's notions about the spirits of the air1 of which you told me in our walk yesterday1 quite haunted me afterwards4 ,it contains a germ of poetry4 ,,kate4 ,by all means let us have it4 ,,gower4 ,our philosopher believed in a certain order of evil genii who took pleasure in hunting wild beasts1--dmons1 whom men worshipped by the title of ,artemis and other names1 falsely attributing their cruelty to the calm and guiltless gods1 who can never delight in blood4 ,some of these natures hunted another prey4 ,they were said to chase souls that had escaped from the fetters of a body1 and to force them to re-enter some fleshly prison once more4 ,how ,i wish we could see a design of this by ,david ,scott6 ,imagine the soul that has just leaped out of the door of that dungeon of ignorance and pain1 the body1 as ,porphyry would term it1 fluttering in its new freedom in the sunshine among the tree-tops1 over wild and town--all the fields of air its pleasure-ground for an exulting career on its upward way to join the journeying intelligences in their cars above4 ,but it sees afar off1 high in mid-air1 a troop of dark shapes2 they seem to approach1 to grow out of the airy recesses of the distance--they come down the white precipices of the piled clouds1 over the long slant of some vapour promontory--forms invisible to man1 and1 with them1 spectre-hounds1 whose baying spirits alone can hear4 ,as they approach1 the soul recognises its enemies4 ,in a moment it is flying away1 away1 and after it they sweep--pursuers and pursued1 shapes so ethereal that the galleries of the ant are not shaken as hunters and quarry glide into the earth1 and not a foam-bell is broken or brushed from the wave when they emerge upon the sea1 and with many a winding and double mount the air4 ,at last hemmed in1 the soul is forced--spite of that desperate sidelong dart which had all but eluded them--down into a body1 the frame of a beggar's babe or of a slave's2 and1 like some struggling bird1 drawn with beating wings beneath the water1 it sinks into the clay it must animate through many a miserable year to come4 ,,willoughby4 ,i wish you would paint it for us yourself4 ,you might represent1 close by that battle of the spirits1 a bird singing on a bough1 a labourer looking down1 with his foot upon his spade1 and peasants dancing in their #8sunburnt mirth' and jollity--wholly unconscious1 interrupted neither in toil nor pleasure by the conflict close at hand4 ,it might read as a satire on the too common indifference of men to the spiritual realities which are about them every hour4 ,,mrs4 ,,atherton4 ,the picture would be as mysterious as an ,emblem by ,albert ,durer4 ,,gower4 ,it is that suggestiveness ,i so admire in the ,germans4 ,for the sake of it ,i can often pardon their fantastic extravagances1 their incongruous combinations1 their frequent want of grace and symmetry4 ,,atherton4 ,so can ,i1 when an author occupies a province in which such indirectness or irony1 such irregularity1 confusion1 or paradox1 are admissible4 ,take1 as a comprehensive example1 ,jean ,paul4 ,but in philosophy it is abominable4 ,there1 where transparent order should preside1 to find that under the thick and spreading verbiage meaning is often lacking1 and1 with all the boastful and fire-new nomenclature1 if found1 is old and common1--that the language is commonly but an array of what one calls ,rich windows that exclude the light1 ,and passages that lead to nothing2-- ,this puts me out of all patience4 ,,gower4 ,the fault you object to reminds me of some ,flemish landscape-pieces ,i have seen2 there are trees1 so full of grand life1 they seem with their outstretched arms to menace the clouds1 and as though1 if they smote with their many hundred hands1 they could beat away the storm instead of being bowed by it2 and underneath these great ones of the forest1 which should shadow nothing less than a woodland council of ,titans or a group of recumbent gods1 the painter places only a rustic with a cow or two1 an old horse1 a beggar1 or some other most every-day of figures4 ,,mrs4 ,,atherton4 ,and you mean that the ,german words are large-looking as the trees1 and the ideas worn and ordinary as the figures8 ,what will ,mr4 ,willoughby say to that8 ,,atherton4 ,i think ,willoughby will agree with me that it is high time that we should go back to our theurgic mysticism and ,iamblichus4 ,here is a letter of his3-- ,,iamblichus ,,to ,,agathocles4 ,i assure you1 my friend1 that the efforts of ,porphyry1 of whom you appear disposed to think so highly1 will be altogether in vain4 ,he is not the true philosopher you imagine4 ,he grows cold and sceptical with years4 ,he shrinks with a timid incredulity from reaping in that field of supernatural attainment which theurgy has first opened1 and now continually enlarges and enriches4 ,theurgy1 be sure of it1 is the grand1 ,i may say1 the sole path to the exaltation we covet4 ,it is the heaven-given organum1 in the hands of the wise and holy1 for obtaining happiness1 knowledge1 power4 ,the pomp of emperors becomes as nothing in comparison with the glory that surrounds the hierophant4 ,the priest is a prophet full of deity4 ,the subordinate powers of the upper world are at his bidding1 for it is not a man1 but a god who speaks the words of power4 ,such a man lives no longer the life common to other men4 ,he has exchanged the human life for the divine4 ,his nature is the instrument and vehicle of ,deity1 who fills and impels him 7 47 ,men of this order do not employ1 in the elevation they experience1 the waking senses as do others 7 74 ,they have no purpose of their own1 no mastery over themselves4 ,they speak wisdom they do not understand1 and their faculties1 absorbed in a divine power1 become the utterance of a superior will4 ,often1 at the moment of inspiration1 or when the afflatus has subsided1 a fiery ,appearance is seen1--the entering or departing ,power4 ,those who are skilled in this wisdom can tell by the character of this glory the rank of the divinity who has seized for the time the reins of the mystic's soul1 and guides it as he will4 ,sometimes the body of the man subject to this influence is violently agitated1 sometimes it is rigid and motionless4 ,in some instances sweet music is heard1 in others1 discordant and fearful sounds4 ,the person of the subject has been known to dilate and tower to a superhuman height2 in other cases1 it has been lifted up into the air4 ,frequently1 not merely the ordinary exercise of reason1 but sensation and animal life would appear to have been suspended2 and the subject of the afflatus has not felt the application of fire1 has been pierced with spits1 cut with knives1 and been sensible of no pain4 ,yea1 often1 the more the body and the mind have been alike enfeebled by vigil and by fasts1 the more ignorant or mentally imbecile a youth may be who is brought under this influence1 the more freely and unmixedly will the divine power be made manifest4 ,so clearly are these wonders the work1 not of human skill or wisdom1 but of supernatural agency6 ,characteristics such as these ,i have mentioned1 are the marks of the true inspiration4 ,now1 there are1 ,o ,agathocles1 four great orders of spiritual existence1--,gods1 ,dmons1 ,heroes or ,demi-gods1 and ,souls4 ,you will naturally be desirous to learn how the apparition of a ,god or a ,dmon is distinguished from those of ,angels1 ,principalities1 or ,souls4 ,know1 then1 that their appearance to man corresponds to their nature1 and that they always manifest themselves to those who invoke them in a manner consonant with their rank in the hierarchy of spiritual natures4 ,the appearances of ,gods are uniform 771 those of ,dmons various 774 ,the ,gods shine with a benign aspect4 ,when a ,god manifests himself1 he frequently appears to hide sun or moon1 and seems as he descends too vast for earth to contain4 ,archangels are at once awful and mild2 ,angels yet more gracious2 ,dmons terrible4 ,below the four leading classes ,i have mentioned are placed the malignant ,dmons1 the ,anti-gods 774 ,each spiritual order has gifts of its own to bestow on the initiated who evoke them4 ,the ,gods confer health of body1 power and purity of mind1 and1 in short1 elevate and restore our natures to their proper principles4 ,angels and ,archangels have at their command only subordinate bestowments4 ,dmons1 however1 are hostile to the aspirant1--afflict both body and mind1 and hinder our escape from the sensuous4 ,principalities1 who govern the sublunary elements1 confer temporal advantages4 ,those of a lower rank1 who preside over matter 771 display their bounty in material gifts4 ,souls that are pure are1 like ,angels1 salutary in their influence4 ,their appearance encourages the soul in its upward efforts4 ,heroes stimulate to great actions4 ,all these powers depend1 in a descending chain1 each species on that immediately above it4 ,good ,dmons are seen surrounded by the emblems of blessing1 ,dmons who execute judgment appear with the instruments of punishment4 ,there is nothing unworthy of belief in what you have been told concerning the sacred sleep1 and divination by dreams4 ,i explain it thus3-- ,the soul has a twofold life1 a lower and a higher4 ,in sleep that soul is freed from the constraint of the body1 and enters1 as one emancipated1 on its divine life of intelligence4 ,then1 as the noble faculty which beholds the objects that truly are--the objects in the world of intelligence--stirs within1 and awakens to its power1 who can be surprised that the mind1 which contains in itself the principles of all that happens1 should1 in this its state of liberation1 discern the future in those antecedent principles which will make that future what it is to be8 ,the nobler part of the soul is thus united by abstraction to higher natures1 and becomes a participant in the wisdom and foreknowledge of the ,gods4 ,recorded examples of this are numerous and well authenticated2 instances occur1 too1 every day4 ,numbers of sick1 by sleeping in the temple of sculapius1 have had their cure revealed to them in dreams vouchsafed by the god4 ,would not ,alexander's army have perished but for a dream in which ,dionysus pointed out the means of safety8 ,was not the siege of ,aphutis raised through a dream sent by ,jupiter ,ammon to ,lysander8 ,the night-time of the body is the day-time of the soul4 ,what ,i have now said--with little method1 ,i confess--sets before you but a portion of the prerogatives in which the initiated glory4 ,there is much behind for which words are too poor4 ,i have written enough1 ,i am sure1 to kindle your ambition1 to bid you banish doubt1 and persevere in the aspirations which so possessed you when ,i saw you last4#bh ,farewell4 ,,gower4 ,that explanation of prophetic dreams and the temple sleep is very curious and characteristic4 ,no doubt the common phenomena of mesmerism may have been among the sacred secrets preserved by the priests of ,egypt and of ,greece4 ,,kate4 ,the preference for young and weakly persons1 who would possess an organization more susceptible of such influences1 makes it look very likely4 ,,atherton4 ,observe how completely the theurgic element1 with ,iamblichus1 supersedes the theosophic4 ,in the process of time the philosophical principles on which the system of ,plotinus rested are virtually surrendered1 little by little1 while divination and evocations are practised with increasing credulity1 and made the foundation of the most arrogant pretensions4 ,plotinus declared the possibility of an absolute identification of the divine with the human nature4 ,here was the broadest basis for mysticism possible4 ,porphyry retired from this position1 took up narrower ground1 and qualified the great mystical principle of his master4 ,he contended that in the union which takes place in ecstasy1 we still retain the consciousness of personality4 ,iamblichus1 the most superstitious of all in practice1 diminished the real principle of mysticism still farther in theory4 ,he denied that man has a faculty inaccessible to passion1 and eternally active4#bi ,,willoughby4 ,and so the metaphysics and the marvels of mysticism stand in an inverse ratio to each other4 ,but it is not unnatural that as the mystic1 from one cause or another1 gives up those exaggerated notions of the powers of man and those mistaken views of the relationship between man and ,god1 which went together to make up a mystical system of philosophy1 he should endeavour to indemnify himself by the evocations of theurgy1 so as to secure1 if possible1 through a supernatural channel1 what speculation had unsuccessfully attempted4 ,,atherton4 ,true2 but in this case ,i should invert the order1 and say that as the promise of theurgy exercised an attraction of growing strength on an order of mind less fitted for speculation1 such temperaments would readily drop the speculative principle of mysticism in their eagerness to grasp the illusive prize--apparently so practical--which a commerce with superior natures held out4 ,,willoughby4 ,and so the intellectual ambition and the poetical spirit1 so lofty in ,plotinus1 subside1 among the followers of ,iamblichus1 into the doggrel of the necromancer's charm4 ,,gower4 ,much such a descent as the glory of ,virgil has suffered1 whose tomb at ,pausilipo is now regarded by the populace of degenerate ,naples less with the reverence due to the poet than with the awe which arises from the legendary repute of the medival magician4 ,,atherton4 ,so the idealism of strong minds becomes superstition in the weak4 ,in the very shrine where culture paid its homage to art or science1 feebleness and ignorance1 in an age of decline1 set up the image-worship of the merely marvellous4 ,,mrs4 ,,atherton4 ,i think you mentioned only one other of these worthies4 ,,atherton4 ,proclus4 ,he is the last great name among the ,neo-,platonists4 ,he was the most eclectic of them all1 perhaps because the most learned and the most systematic4 ,he elaborated the trinity of ,plotinus into a succession of impalpable ,triads1 and surpassed ,iamblichus in his devotion to the practice of theurgy4 ,proclus was content to develop the school in that direction which ,iamblichus--7successful from his very faults7--had already given it4 ,with ,proclus1 theurgy was the art which gives man the magical passwords that carry him through barrier after barrier1 dividing species from species of the upper existences1 till1 at the summit of the hierarchy1 he arrives at the highest4 ,according to him1 ,god is the ,non-,being who is above all being4 ,he is apprehended only by negation4 ,when we are raised out of our weakness1 and on a level with ,god1 it seems as though reason were silenced1 for then we are above reason4 ,we become intoxicated with ,god1 we are inspired as by the nectar of ,olympus4 ,he teaches philosophy as the best preparation for ,quietism4 ,for the scientific enquirer1 toiling in his research1 ,proclus has a ,god to tell of1 supreme1 almighty1 the world-maker and governor of ,plato4 ,for him who has passed through this labour1 a ,god known only by ecstasy--a ,god who is the repose he gives--a ,god of whom the more you deny the more do you affirm4 ,,willoughby4 ,and this is all6 ,after years of austerity and toil1 ,proclus--the scholar1 stored with the opinions of the past1 surrounded by the admiration of the present--the astronomer1 the geometrician1 the philosopher1--learned in the lore of symbols and of oracles1 in the rapt utterances of ,orpheus and of ,zoroaster--an adept in the ritual of invocations among every people in the world--he1 at the close1 pronounces ,quietism the consummation of the whole1 and an unreasoning contemplation1 an ecstasy which casts off as an incumbrance all the knowledge so painfully acquired1 the bourne of all the journey4 ,,mrs4 ,,atherton4 ,as though it were the highest glory of man1 forgetting all that his enquiry has achieved1 hidden away from the world1--to gaze at vacancy1 inactive and infantine2--to be like some peasant's child left in its cradle for a while in the furrow of a field1 shut in by the little mound of earth on either side1 and having but the blue ther above1 dazzling and void1 at which to look up with smiles of witless wonder4 ,note to page #ajc4 ,iamblichus1 de ,mysteriis1 sect4 x4 cc4 #a1 #d1 #f2 iii4 #d1 #h1 #f1 #bd2 i4 #e1 #f2 ii4 #c2 iii4 #ca2 ii4 #d1 #f1 #g2 iii4 #a1 #c4 ,these passages1 in the order given1 will be found to correspond with the opinions expressed in the letter as those of ,iamblichus4 ,the genuineness of the treatise ,de ,mysteriis has been called in question1 but its antiquity is undoubted4 ,it differs only in one or two very trivial statements from the doctrines of ,iamblichus as ascertained from other sources1 and is admitted by all to be the production1 if not of ,iamblichus himself1 of one of his disciples1 probably writing under his direction4 ,jules ,simon1 ii4 #bai4 ,for the opinions ascribed to ,porphyry in this letter1 see his ,epistola ad ,anebonem1 passim4 ,he there proposes a series of difficult questions1 and displays that sceptical disposition1 especially concerning the pretensions of ,theurgy1 which so much scandalized ,iamblichus4 ,the ,de ,mysteriis is an elaborate reply to that epistle1 under the name of ,abammon4 ,in several passages of the ,de ,mysteriis 7ii4 #aa2 v4 #a1 #b1 #c1 #g2 vi4 #f7 ,iamblichus displays much anxiety lest his zeal for ,theurgy should lead him to maintain any position inconsistent with the reverence due to the gods4 ,he was closely pressed on this weak point by the objections of ,porphyry4 7,ep4 ad ,anebon4 #e1 #f47 ,his explanation in reply is1 that the deities are not in reality drawn down by the mere human will of the ,theurgist1 but that man is raised to a participation in the power of the gods4 ,the approximation is real1 but the apparent descent of divinity is in fact the ascent of humanity4 ,by his long course of preparation1 by his knowledge of rites and symbols1 of potent hymns1 and of the mysterious virtues of certain herbs and minerals1 the ,theurgist is supposed to rise at last to the rank of an associate with celestial powers2 their knowledge and their will become his1 and he controls inferior natures with the authority of the gods themselves4 ,iamblichus supposes1 moreover1 that there is an order of powers in the world1 irrational and undiscerning1 who are altogether at the bidding of man when by threats or conjurations he chooses to compel them4 ,de ,myst4 vi4 #e4 ,footnote #bf3 ,j4 ,simon1 i4 #aed2 ii4 #agc4 ,footnote #bg3 ,j4 ,simon1 liv4 iii4 chap4 #d4 ,footnote #bh3 ,see ,note1 p4 #ajf4 ,footnote #bi3 ,jules ,simon1 ii4 #bah4 ,,book ,,the ,,fourth ,,mysticism ,,in ,,the ,,greek ,,church ,,chapter ,i4 ,questi ordini di su tutti s'ammirano ,e di gi vincon si che verso ,iddio ,tutti tirati sono e tutti tirano4 ,e ,dionisio con tanto disio ,a contemplar questi ordini si mise1 ,che li nom e distinse com' io4#cj ,,dante4 ,,kate4 ,i have been looking at the pictures in ,mrs4 ,jameson's ,sacred and ,legendary ,art1 of those strange creatures1 the hermit saints--the ,fathers of the desert4 ,only see this one1 what a mane and claws6 ,the two lions digging the grave there are own brothers to the holy men themselves4 ,,atherton4 ,yet they claimed powers as much above humanity as1 to look at them1 you would think them beneath it4 ,,gower4 ,religious ,nebuchadnezzars4 ,,willoughby4 ,no shavelings1 at any rate1 like the smooth-faced sanctities of the later calendar4 ,,atherton4 ,you will find among these anchorites almost all the wonder-working pretensions of medival mysticism in full development1 thus early2--the discernment of spirits1 gift of prophecy1 miraculous powers of various kinds1 ecstasy1 exorcism1 c4 c4 ,i should take ,st4 ,antony as a fair specimen of the whole class4#ca ,,mrs4 ,,atherton4 ,look1 here is his picture2 there he stands1 with crutch and bell and pig4 ,,atherton4 ,the bell denotes his power over evil spirits1 and the pig the vanquished dmon of sensuality4 ,in his life1 by ,athanasius1 there is a full account of his battle with many dmons in the shape of lions1 bulls1 and bears4 ,he passed twenty years in an old castle which he found full of serpents4 ,the power of the saint expelled those unpleasant aborigines4 ,that nose1 you see there1 was supposed to possess the faculty of detecting by its miraculous keenness of scent the proximity of an evil spirit4 ,there is an odour of iniquity1 you must know1 as well as an odour of sanctity4 ,this disposition to literalize metaphors gave currency to the monkish stories of after times concerning the refreshing fragrance found to arise from the remains of disinterred saints4 ,in fact1 the materialization of the spiritual1 or what passes for such1 is the characteristic principle of the theurgic mysticism within the ,roman ,catholic ,church4 ,st4 ,antony1 on one occasion1 sees his own soul1 separated from the body1 carried through the air4 ,,gower4 ,a striking instance1 ,i should say1 of the objectivity of the subject4 ,,atherton4 ,one of his visions is not without grandeur4 ,the brethren had been questioning him one day concerning the state of departed spirits4 ,the following night he heard a voice saying1 #8,antony1 get up2 go out and look6' ,he obeyed1 and saw a gigantic figure1 whose head was in the clouds1 and whose outstretched arms extended far across the sky4 ,many souls were fluttering in the air1 and endeavouring1 as they found opportunity1 to fly upward past this dreadful being4 ,numbers of them he seized in the attempt1 and dashed back upon the earth4 ,some escaped him and exulted above1 while he raged at their success4 ,thus sorrowing and rejoicing were mingled together1 as some were defeated and others triumphant4 ,this1 he was given to understand1 was the rise and fall of souls4 ,,willoughby4 ,that picture would be really ,dantesque1 if only a little more definite4 ,macarius is another great name1 too1 among these ,christian ascetics and theurgists--the one who retired to the deserts of ,nitria in the fourth century4 ,,atherton4 ,he is not only famous for his measure of the supernatural powers ascribed to his brethren1 but his homilies have been appealed to by modern theopathetic mystics as an authority for ,quietism4 ,he teaches perfectionist doctrine1 certainly1 but ,i do not think his words will bear the construction ,poiret and others would give them4 ,he was at least innocent of the sainte indiffrence4#cb ,,mrs4 ,,atherton4 ,you said we were to discuss ,dionysius the ,areopagite this evening4 ,,kate4 ,pray introduce me first4 ,i know nothing about him4 ,,atherton4 ,no one does know who really wrote the books which passed under that name4 ,it is generally admitted that the forgery could not have been committed earlier than the middle of the fifth century1 probably somewhat later4 ,so all ,i can tell you is1 that somewhere or other 7it is not unlikely at ,constantinople1 but there is no certainty71 about the time when ,theodoric was master of ,italy--when the ,vandal swarms had not yet been expelled from northern ,africa--while ,constantinople was in uproar between the greens and the blues1 and rival ecclesiastics headed city riots with a rabble of monks1 artizans1 and bandit soldiery at their heels--while orthodoxy was grappling with the ,monophysite and ,eutychian heresies on either hand1 and the religious world was rocking still with the groundswell that followed those stormy synods in which ,palestine and ,alexandria1 ,asia and ,constantinople1 from opposite quarters1 gathered their strength against each other--a monk or priest was busy1 in his quiet solitude1 with the fabrication of sundry treatises and letters which were to find their way into the ,church under the all-but apostolic auspices of that convert made by the ,apostle of the ,gentiles when he spoke on ,mars ,hill4 ,the writings would seem to have been first appealed to as genuine in the year #ecc4 ,as heretics cited them1 their authority was disputed at the outset2 but being found favourable to the growing claims of the hierarchy1 and likely to be useful1 they were soon recognised and employed accordingly4#cc ,,willoughby4 ,proclus could not have been long dead1 and his reputation must have been still at its height1 when this anonymous--let us call him ,dionysius at once--was writing his ,platonized theology4 ,,atherton4 ,with the divines of ,byzantium ,proclus represented the grand old world of ,greek thought4 ,even those who wrote against him as a heathen betray the influence he exercised on their doctrines4 ,the object of ,dionysius evidently was to accommodate the theosophy of ,proclus to ,christianity4 ,another aim1 not less conspicuous1 was to strengthen all the pretensions of the priesthood1 and to invest with a new traditionary sanction the ascetic virtues of the cloister4 ,footnote #cj3 ,all these orders gaze admiring upward1 and exert an influence downward 7each on that immediately beneath it71 so that they all together reciprocally draw and are drawn toward ,god4 ,dionysius gave himself with such zeal to the contemplation of them that he named and distinguished them as ,i have done4 ,footnote #ca3 ,athanasii ,opp4 ,vita ,s4 ,antonii4 ,the vision alluded to is related p4 #dih4 ,footnote #cb3 ,poiret1 ,bibliotheca ,mysticorum1 p4 #ie4 ,macarius gives great prominence to the doctrine of ,union--describes the streaming in of the ,hypostatic ,light--how the spiritual nature is all-pervaded by the glory1 and even the body is not so gross as to be impenetrable by the divine radiance4 ,some centuries later we find the monks of ,mount ,athos professing to discern this supernatural effulgence illuminating their stomachs4 ,gass1 ,die ,mystik des ,n4 ,cabasilas1 p4 #ef4 ,footnote #cc3 ,in the year #ecc the books of ,dionysius were cited by the ,severians1 and their genuineness called in question by the bishop because neither ,athanasius nor ,cyril had made any allusion to them4 ,acta ,concil4 ,hard4 ii4 p4 #aaei4 ,,chapter ,,ii4 ,they that pretend to these heights call them the secrets of the kingdom2 but they are such which no man can describe2 such which ,god hath not revealed in the publication of the ,gospel2 such for the acquiring of which there are no means prescribed1 and to which no man is obliged1 and which are not in any man's power to obtain2 nor such which it is lawful to pray for or desire2 nor concerning which we shall ever be called to account4--,,jeremy ,,taylor4 #8,i have here1' said ,atherton on the next evening1 #8some notes on the doctrine of this pretended ,areopagite--a short summary2 shall ,i read it8' #8,by all means4' ,so the following abstract was listened to--and with creditable patience4#cd 7#a47 ,all things have emanated from ,god1 and the end of all is return to ,god4 ,such return--deification1 he calls it--is the consummation of the creature1 that ,god may finally be all in all4 ,a process of evolution1 a centrifugal movement in the ,divine ,nature1 is substituted in reality for creation4 ,the antithesis of this is the centripetal process1 or movement of involution1 which draws all existence towards the point of the ,divine centre4 ,the degree of real existence possessed by any being is the amount of ,god in that being--for ,god is the existence in all things4 ,yet ,he himself cannot be said to exist1 for he is above existence4 ,the more or less of ,god which the various creatures possess is determined by the proximity of their order to the centre4 7#b47 ,the chain of being in the upper and invisible world1 through which the ,divine ,power diffuses itself in successive gradations1 he calls the ,celestial ,hierarchy4 ,the ,ecclesiastical ,hierarchy is a corresponding series in the visible world4 ,the orders of ,angelic natures and of priestly functionaries correspond to each other4 ,the highest rank of the former receive illumination immediately from ,god4 ,the lowest of the heavenly imparts divine light to the highest of the earthly hierarchy4 ,each order strives perpetually to approximate to that immediately above itself1 from which it receives the transmitted influence2 so that all1 as ,dante describes it1 draw and are drawn1 and tend in common towards the centre--,god4 ,the three triads of angelic existences1 to whom answer the ranks of the terrestrial hierarchy1 betrays the influence of ,proclus1 whose hierarchy of ideas corresponds1 in a similar manner1 to his hierarchy of hypostases4 ,,gower4 ,the system reminds one of those old pictures which are divided into two compartments1 the upper occupied by angels and cherubs on the clouds1 and the lower by human beings on the earth1 gazing devoutly upward at their celestial benefactors4 ,,atherton4 ,the work of ,christ is thrown into the background to make room for the ,church4 ,the ,saviour answers1 with ,dionysius1 rather to the ,logos of the ,platonist than to the ,son of ,god revealed in ,scripture4 ,he is allowed to be1 as incarnate1 the founder of the ,ecclesiastical ,hierarchy2 but1 as such1 he is removed from men by the long chain of priestly orders1 and is less the ,redeemer1 than remotely the ,illuminator1 of the species4 ,purification1 illumination1 perfection1--the three great stages of ascent to ,god 7which plays so important a part in almost every succeeding attempt to systematise mysticism7 are mystically represented by the three sacraments1--,baptism1 the ,eucharist1 and ,unction4 ,the ,church is the great ,mystagogue3 its liturgy and offices a profound and elaborate system of symbolism4 7#c47 ,the ,greek theory1 with its inadequate conception of the nature of sin1 compels ,dionysius virtually to deny the existence of evil4 ,everything that exists is good1 the more existence the more goodness1 so that evil is a coming short of existence4 ,he hunts sin boldly from place to place throughout the universe1 and drives it at last into the obscurity of the limbo he contrives for it1 where it lies among things unreal4 ,all that exists he regards as a symbolical manifestation of the super-existent4 ,what we call creation is the divine allegory4 ,in nature1 in ,scripture1 in tradition1 ,god is revealed only in figure4 ,this sacred imagery should be studied1 but in such study we are still far from any adequate cognizance of the ,divine ,nature4 ,god is above all negation and affirmation3 in ,him such contraries are at once identified and transcended4 ,but by negation we approach most nearly to a true apprehension of what ,he is4 ,negation and affirmation1 accordingly1 constitute the two opposed and yet simultaneous methods he lays down for the knowledge of the ,infinite4 ,these two paths1 the ,via ,negativa 7or ,apophatica7 and the ,via ,affirmativa 7or ,cataphatica7 constitute the foundation of his mysticism4 ,they are distinguished and elaborated in every part of his writings4 ,the positive is the descending process4 ,in the path downward from ,god1 through inferior existences1 the ,divine ,being may be said to have many names2--the negative method is one of ascent2 in that1 ,god is regarded as nameless1 the inscrutable ,anonymous4 ,the symbolical or visible is thus opposed1 in the ,platonist style1 to the mystical or ideal4 ,to assert anything concerning a ,god who is above all affirmation is to speak in figure1 to veil him4 ,the more you deny concerning ,him1 the more of such veils do you remove4 ,he compares the negative method of speaking concerning the ,supreme to the operation of the sculptor1 who strikes off fragment after fragment of the marble1 and progresses by diminution4 7#d47 ,our highest knowledge of ,god1 therefore1 is said to consist in mystic ignorance4 ,in omni-nescience we approach ,omniscience4 ,this ,path of ,negation is the highway of mysticism4 ,it is by refraining from any exercise of the intellect or of the imagination--by self-simplification1 by withdrawal into the inmost1 the divine essence of our nature--that we surpass the ordinary condition of humanity1 and are united in ecstasy with ,god4 ,dionysius does not insist so much on ,union as the later mystics1 but he believes1 at all events1 that the eminent saint may attain on earth an indescribable condition of soul--an elevation far transcending the reach of our natural faculties--an approach towards the beatific vision of those who are supposed to gaze directly on the ,divine ,essence in heaven4 ,his disciple is perpetually exhorted to aspire to this climax of abstraction--above sight1 and thought1 and feeling1 as to the highest aim of man4 ,,willoughby4 ,what contradictions are here6 ,with one breath he extols ineffable ignorance as the only wisdom2 with the next he pretends to elucidate the ,trinity1 and reads you off a muster-roll of the heavenly hierarchies4 ,,gower4 ,and are not these1 supplemented by the hierarchy of ecclesiastics1 his real objects of worship8 ,no man could make an actual ,god of that super-essential ultimatum1 that blank ,next-to-,nothingness which the last ,neo-,platonists imagined as their ,supreme4 ,proclus could not2 ,dionysius could not4 ,what then8 ,a reaction comes1 which1 after refining polytheism to an impalpable unity1 restores men to polytheism once more4 ,up mounts speculation1 rocket-like3 men watch it1 a single soaring star with its train of fire1 and1 at the height1 it breaks into a scattering shower of many-coloured sparks4 ,from that ,abstraction of which nothing can be predicated1 nothing can be expected4 ,the figment above being is above benignity4 ,so the objects of invocation are gods1 demi-gods1 dmons1 heroes2 or1 when baptized1 cherubim1 seraphim1 thrones1 dominions1 powers1 archangels1 angels1 saints2 in either case1 whether at ,athens or at ,constantinople1 the excessive subtilisation of the ,one contributes toward the worship of the ,manifold4 ,,atherton4 ,the theology of the ,neo-,platonists was always in the first instance a mere matter of logic4 ,it so happened that they confounded ,universals with causes4 ,the miserable consequence is clear4 ,the ,highest becomes with them1 as he is with ,dionysius1 merely the most comprehensive1 the universal idea1 which includes the world1 as genus includes species4#ce ,,mrs4 ,,atherton4 ,the divinity of this old ,father must be a bleak affair indeed--,christianity frozen out4 ,,gower4 ,i picture him to myself as entering with his philosophy into the theological structure of that day1 like ,winter into the cathedral of the woods 7which an autumn of decline has begun to harm already72--what life yet lingers1 he takes away1--he untwines the garlands from the pillars of the trees1 extinguishes the many twinkling lights the sunshine hung wavering in the foliage1 silences all sounds of singing1 and fills the darkened aisles and dome with a coldly-descending mist1 whose silence is extolled as above the power of utterance1--its blinding1 chill obscureness lauded as clearer than the intelligence and warmer than the fervour of a simple and scriptural devotion4 ,,atherton4 ,you have described my experience in reading him1 though ,i must say he suggested nothing to me about your cathedral of the woods1 c4 ,his verbose and turgid style1 too1 is destitute of all genuine feeling4#cf ,he piles epithet on epithet1 throws superlative on superlative1 hyperbole on hyperbole1 and it is but log upon log1--he puts no fire under1 neither does any come from elsewhere4 ,he quotes ,scripture--as might be expected--in the worst style1 both of the schoolman and the mystic4 ,fragments are torn from their connexion1 and carried away to suffer the most arbitrary interpretation1 and strew his pages that they may appear to illustrate or justify his theory4 ,,gower4 ,how forlorn do those texts of ,scripture look that you discern scattered over the works of such writers1 so manifestly transported from a region of vitality and warmth to an expanse of barrenness4 ,they make the context look still more sterile1 and while they say there must be life somewhere1 seem to affirm1 no less emphatically1 that it is not in the neighbourhood about them4 ,they remind me of those leaves from the chestnut and the birch ,i once observed upon a glacier4 ,there they lay1 foreign manifestly to the treeless world in which they were found2 the ice appeared to have shrunk from them1 and they from the ice2 each isolated leaf had made itself a cup-like cavity1 a tiny open sarcophagus of crystal1 in which it had lain1 perhaps for several winters4 ,doubtless1 a tempest1 which had been vexing some pleasant valley far down beneath1 and tearing at its trees1 must have whirled them up thither4 ,yet the very presence of the captives reproached the poverty of the ,snow-,king who detained them1 testifying as they did to a genial clime elsewhere1 whose products that ice-world could no more put forth1 than can such frozen speculations as this of ,dionysius1 the ripening #8fruits of the ,spirit4' ,,willoughby4 ,his lurking fatalism and his pantheism were forgiven him1 no doubt1 on consideration of his services to priestly assumption4 ,he descends from his most cloudy abstraction to assert the mysterious significance and divine potency of all the minuti of the ecclesiastical apparatus and the sacerdotal etiquette4 ,what a reputation these writings had throughout the middle age6 ,,atherton4 ,dionysius is the mythical hero of mysticism4 ,you find traces of him everywhere4 ,go almost where you will through the writings of the medival mystics1 into their depths of nihilism1 up their heights of rapture or of speculation1 through their over-growth of fancy1 you find his authority cited1 his words employed1 his opinions more or less fully transmitted1 somewhat as the traveller in the ,pyrenees discerns the fame of the heroic ,roland still preserved in the names and in the legends of the rock1 the valley1 or the flower4 ,passages from the ,areopagite were culled1 as their warrant and their insignia1 by the priestly ambassadors of mysticism1 with as much care and reverence as the sacred verben that grew within the enclosure of the ,capitoline by the ,feciales of ,rome4 ,,mrs4 ,,atherton4 #8,oh1 sweet ,fancy1 let her loose1' as ,keats says4 ,i think my husband has been learning in ,mr4 ,gower's school4 ,how far he went to fetch that simile6 ,,gower4 ,perhaps he has my excuse in this case1 that he could not help it4 ,,willoughby4 ,or he may at once boldly put in the plea of ,sterne1 who in one place lays claim to the gratitude of his readers for having voyaged to fetch a metaphor all the way to the ,guinea coast and back4 ,,atherton4 ,it contributed greatly to the influence of the ,areopagite that he became confounded with the ,dionysius1 or ,st4 ,denys1 who was adopted as the patron-saint of ,france4 ,,kate4 ,a singular fortune1 indeed3 so that he was two other people besides himself2--like ,mrs4 ,malaprop's ,cerberus1 three gentlemen at once4 ,,gower4 ,i think we have spent time enough upon him4 ,grievously do ,i pity the miserable monks his commentators1 whose minds1 submerged in the mare tenebrosum of the cloister1 had to pass a term of years in the mazy arborescence of his verbiage1--like so many insects within their cells in the branches of a great coral4#cg ,,atherton4 ,don't throw away so much good compassion1 ,i dare say it kept them out of mischief4 ,,willoughby4 ,i cannot get that wretched abstraction out of my head which the ,neo-,platonists call deity4 ,how such a notion must have dislocated all their ethics from head to foot6 ,the merest anthropomorphism had been better2--yes1 ,homer and ,hesiod are truer1 after all4 ,,atherton4 ,i grant the gravity of the mischief4 ,but we must not be too hard on this ecclesiastical ,neo-,platonism4 ,it does but follow ,aristotle here4 ,you remember he considers the possession of virtues as quite out of the question in the case of the gods4 ,,gower4 ,is it possible8 ,why1 that is as though a man should lame himself to run the faster4 ,here is a search after ,god1 in which1 at starting1 all moral qualities are removed from him2 so that the testimony of conscience cannot count for anything2--the inward directory is sealed2 the clue burnt4 ,truly the world by wisdom knew not ,god6 ,,willoughby4 ,this unquestionably is the fatal error of ,greek speculation--the subordination of morals to the intellectual refinements of an ultra-human spiritualism4 ,even with ,numenius you have to go down the scale to a subordinate god or hypostasis before you arrive at a deity who condescends to be good4 ,,gower4 ,how much #8salt' there must still have been in the medival ,christianity to survive1 as far as it did1 the reception of these old ethical mistakes into the very heart of its doctrine6 ,,atherton4 ,aristotle reasons thus3 how can the gods exhibit fortitude1 who have nothing to fear--justice and honesty1 without a business--temperance1 without passions8 ,such insignificant things as moral actions are beneath them4 ,they do not toil1 as men4 ,they do not sleep1 like ,endymion1 #8on the ,latmian hill4' ,what remains8 ,they lead a life of contemplation2--in contemplative energy lies their blessedness4#ch ,so the contemplative sage who energises directly toward the central ,mind--the intellectual source and ultimatum1 is the true imitator of the divine perfections4 ,,gower4 ,transfer this principle to ,christianity1 and the monk becomes immediately the highest style of man4 ,,willoughby4 ,and you have a double morality at once3 heroic or superhuman virtues1 the graces of contemplation for the saintly few1--glorious in proportion to their uselessness2 and ordinary virtues for the many1--social1 serviceable1 and secondary4 ,,atherton4 ,not that the schoolman would release his saint altogether from the obligations of ordinary morality2 but he would say1 this ordinary morality does not fit the contemplatist for heaven--it is but a preliminary exercise--a means to an end1 and that end1 the transcendence of everything creaturely1 a superhuman exaltation1 the ceasing from his labours1 and swooning as it were into the divine repose4 ,,willoughby4 ,then ,i must put in a word for our mystics4 ,it is not they who corrupted ,christian morals by devising this divorce between the virtues of daily life and certain other virtues which are unhuman1 anti-terrestrial1 hypercreaturely--forgive the word--they drive us hard for language4 ,they found the separation already accomplished2 they only tilled with ardour the plot of ground freely allotted them by the ,church4 ,,atherton4 ,just so2 in this doctrine of moral dualism--the prolific mother of mystics--,aquinas is as far gone as ,bernard4 ,,gower4 ,the mention of ,bernard's name makes one impatient to get away from the ,greek ,church1 westward4 ,,atherton4 ,we may say farewell to ,byzantium now4 ,that ,greek ,church never grew beyond what it was in the eighth and ninth centuries4 ,,gower4 ,i have always imagined it a dwarf1 watching a ,nibelungen hoard1 which after all never enriches anybody4 ,nothing but that tedious counting1 and keeping tidy1 and standing sentinel1 for ages4 ,,atherton4 ,see what good a little fighting does4 ,the ,greek ,church had its scholastic element--witness ,john of ,damascus2 it had its mystical--as we have seen2 but neither the one nor the other was ever developed to such vigour as to assert itself against its rival1 and struggle for mastery4 ,in the ,west the two principles have their battles1 their armistices1 their reconciliations1 and both are the better4 ,in the ,east they are coupled amicably in the leash of antiquity1 and dare not so much as snarl4 ,,willoughby4 ,i suppose the mysticism of the ,greek ,church was more objective1 as the ,germans would say1--dependent on its sacramental media and long trains of angelic and human functionaries1 handing down illumination2 that of the ,west1 subjective4 ,,atherton4 ,that will be generally true4 ,the eastern mysticism creeps under the sacerdotal vestments1 is never known to quit the precincts of church and cloister1 clings close to the dalmatica1 and lives on whiffs of frankincense4 ,the western is often to be found far from candle1 book1 and bell1 venturing to worship without a priest4 ,in short1 as ,gower would antithetically say1 the mystic of the ,east is always a slave1 the mystic of the ,west often a rebel2 ,symbolism is the badge of the one1 ,individualism the watch-word of the other4 ,,gower4 ,how spiteful you are to-night1 ,atherton4 ,i propose that we break up1 and hear nothing more you may have to say4 ,note to ,page #aba4 ,aristotle extols contemplation1 because it does not require means and opportunity1 as do the social virtues1 generosity1 courage1 c4 ,plotinus lays still more stress on his distinction between the mere political virtues--which constitute simply a preparatory1 purifying process1 and the superior1 or exemplary--those divine attainments whereby man is united with ,god4 ,aquinas adopts this classification1 and distinguishes the virtues as exemplares1 purgatori and politic4 ,he even goes so far as to give to each of the cardinal virtues a contemplative and ascetic turn2 designating ,prudence1 in its highest exercise1 as contempt for all things worldly2 ,temperance is abstraction from the sensuous2 ,fortitude1 courage in sustaining ourselves in the aerial regions of contemplation1 remote from the objects of sense2 ,justice1 the absolute surrender of the spirit to this law of its aspiration4 ,he argues that1 as man's highest blessedness is a beatitude surpassing the limits of human nature1 he can be prepared for it only by having added to that nature certain principles from the divine2--such principles are the theological or superhuman virtues1 ,faith1 ,hope1 and ,charity4 ,see ,mnscher's ,dogmengeschichte1 #b ,abth4 #b ,absch4 #acf4 ,in consequence of the separation thus established between the human and the divine1 we shall find the mystics of the fourteenth century representing regeneration almost as a process of dehumanization1 and as the substitution of a divine nature for the human in the subject of grace4 ,no theologians could have been further removed from ,pelagianism2 few more forgetful than these ardent contemplatists that divine influence is vouchsafed1 not to obliterate and supersede our natural capacities by some almost miraculous faculty1 but to restore and elevate man's nature1 to realise its lost possibilities1 and to consecrate it wholly1 in body and soul--not in spirit1 merely--to the service of ,god4 ,with one voice both schoolmen and mystics would reason thus3--#8,is not heaven the extreme opposite of this clouded1 vexed1 and sensuous life8 ,then we approach its blessedness most nearly by a life the most contrary possible to the secular1--by contemplation1 by withdrawment1 by total abstraction from sense4' ,this is one view of our best preparation for the heavenly world4 ,at the opposite pole stands ,behmen's doctrine1 far less dangerous1 and to be preferred if we must have an extreme1 viz41 that the believer is virtually in the heavenly state already--that eternity should be to us as time1 and time as eternity4 ,between these two stands the scriptural teaching4 ,st4 ,paul does not attempt to persuade himself that earth is heaven1 that faith is sight1 that hope is fruition4 ,he groans here1 being burdened2 he longs to have done with shortcoming and with conflict2 to enter on the vision face to face1 on the unhindered service of the state of glory4 ,but he does not deem it the best preparation for heaven to mimic upon earth an imaginary celestial repose1--he will rather labour to-day his utmost at the work to-day may bring1--he will fight the good fight1 he will finish his course1 and then receive the crown4 ,footnote #cd3 ,for the passages authenticating this account1 see ,dion4 ,areop4 ,opp4 as follows3-- 7#a47 ,de ,div4 ,nom4 c4 iv4 #a2 v4 #c1 #f1 #h2 vi4 #b1 #c2 i4 #a4 ,de ,eccl4 ,hier4 i4 #c4 7#b47 ,de ,cl4 ,hier4 i4 #b1 #c2 v4 #c1 #d2 vii4 ,de ,eccl4 ,hier4 i4 #a2 x4 #c4 ,the resemblance of this whole process to the ,prodos and ,epistrophe of ,plotinus is sufficiently obvious4 7#c47 ,de ,div4 ,nom4 iv4 #bj1 p4 #dhh4 ,the chase after evil runs through sections #bd-cd4 ,he sums up in one place thus3--#8,in a word1 good springs from the sole and complete cause1 but evil from many and partial defects4 ,god knows the evil as good1 and with him the causes of things evil are beneficent powers4' ,proclus seeks escape from the hopeless difficulty in precisely the same way4 ,concerning the ,via negativa and affirmativa1 see ,de ,div4 ,nom4 i4 #a1 #e1 #d2 ,de ,cl4 ,hier4 xv42 and ,de ,myst4 ,theol4 i4 #b1 #c4 7#d47 ,ibid4 ,also1 ,ep4 ad4 ,dorotheum1 ,de ,myst4 ,theol4 iii4 pp4 #gad1 #gba4 ,footnote #ce3 ,see ,meier1 #8,dionysii ,areop4 et ,mysticorum sculi xiv4 doctrin inter se comparantur4' ,he remarks justly #8caus ad ,causatum relationem cum relatione generis ad speciem confudit'1 p4 #ac4 ,footnote #cf3 ,the hyper and the a privative are in constant requisition with ,dionysius4 ,he cannot suffer any ordinary epithet to go alone1 and many of his adjectives march pompously1 attended by a hyper on one side1 and a superlative termination on the other4 ,footnote #cg3 ,the later ,greek theology modified the most objectionable parts of the ,dionysian doctrine1 while continuing to reverence him as a ,father4 ,see ,ullmann's ,nicholas von ,methone4 ,footnote #ch3 ,aristot4 ,eth4 ,nic4 lib4 x4 c4 #h4--,see ,note1 ,page #abc4 ,,book ,,the ,,fifth ,,mysticism ,,in ,,the ,,latin ,,church ,,chapter ,i4 ,look up1 my ,ethel6 ,when on the glances of the upturned eye ,the plumed thoughts take travel1 and ascend ,through the unfathomable purple mansions1 ,threading the golden fires1 and ever climbing ,as if 'twere homewards winging--at such time ,the native soul1 distrammelled of dim earth1 ,doth know herself immortal1 and sits light ,upon her temporal perch4 ,,violenzia4 ,the winter had now broken up his encampment1 and was already in full retreat4 ,with the approach of spring the mystical conversations of our friends entered on the period of the ,middle ,ages4 ,the lengthening mornings found ,atherton early at his desk1 sipping a solitary and preliminary cup of coffee1 and reading or writing4 ,willoughby felt his invention quickened by the season1 and a new elasticity pervade him4 ,his romance advanced with fewer hindrances from that cross-grained dissatisfaction which used so frequently to disfigure his manuscript with the thorny scratches and interlineations of an insatiable correction4 ,gower1 too1 could enter once more on the enjoyment of his favourite walk before breakfast4 ,in wandering through the dewy meadows1 in #8the slanting sunlight of the dawn1' he felt1 as we all must1 that there is truth in what the chorus of mystics have ever said or sung about the inadequacy of words to express the surmise and aspiration of the soul4 ,in a morning solitude there seems to lie about our fields of thought an aerial wealth too plenteous to be completely gathered into the granary of language4 ,o who would mar the season with dull speech1 ,that must tie up our visionary meanings ,and subtle individual apprehensions ,into the common tongue of every man8 ,and of the swift and scarce detected visitants ,of our illusive thoughts seek to make prisoners1 ,and only grasp their garments4 ,it is one of the pleasant pastimes of the spring to watch day by day the various ways in which the trees express1 by a physiognomy and gesture of their own1 their expectation of the summer4 ,look at those young and delicate ones1 alive with impatience to the tip of every one of the thousand sprays that tremble distinct against the sky1 swaying uneasily to and fro in the sharp morning breeze4 ,they seem longing to slip their rooted hold upon the earth1 and float away to embrace their bridegroom sun in the air4 ,and see those veterans--what a gnarled1 imperturbable gravity in those elder citizens of park or wood3 they are used to it2 let the day bring new weatherstains or new buds1 they can bide their time4 ,and are they not already wrapped1 many of them1 in hood and habit of dark glossy ivy--woodland senatorial fur--they can afford to wait4 ,here1 look1 close beside us1 the eyes of the buds are even now peeping through the black lattice of the boughs1 and those amber-coloured clouds overhead are looking them promises of kindly showers as they sail by4 ,what is that sparkling on yonder hill8 ,only the windows of a house with eastern aspect3 the sun lights his beacon-fire regularly there1 to signal to his children down in the hollow that he is coming1 though they cannot see him yet1 and will roll away the cloud from the valley mouth1 and make the place of their night-sepulchre glorious with his shining raiment4 ,amidst these delights of nature1 and the occupation of his art1 ,gower thought sometimes of the mystics who enjoy such things so little4 ,he had even promised to write a short paper on the mystical schoolmen of ,st4 ,victor1 ,hugo and ,richard1 and was himself surprised to find how soon he warmed to the subject--with what zest he sought for glimpses of cloister-life in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries4 ,when next our friends met in the library1 ,gower expressed his hearty and unceremonious satisfaction at their having done1 as he hoped1 with that #8old bore1' ,dionysius ,areopagita4 ,by none was the sentiment echoed with more fervour than by ,atherton1 whose conscience perhaps smote him for some dry reading he had inflicted on his auditors4 ,but he made no apology1 that ,gower might not think he took his remark to himself1 and return him a compliment4 ,,willoughby4 ,to see how this world goes round6 ,only think of ,proclus having his revenge after all1--he and his fellows ruling from their urns when dead the ,christianity which banished them while living4 ,,atherton4 ,not altogether satisfactory1 either1 could he have looked in upon the world1 and seen the use to which they put him4 ,it was true that1 under the name of ,dionysius1 his ideas were reverenced and expounded by generations of dreaming monks1--that under that name he contributed largely to those influences which kept stagnant the religious world of the ,east for some nine hundred years4 ,but it was also true that his thoughts were thus conserved only to serve the purpose of his ancient enemies2 so that he assisted to confer omnipotence on those ,christian priests whom he had cursed daily in his heart while lecturing1 sacrificing1 and conjuring at ,athens4 ,,gower4 ,again ,i say1 let us turn from the stereotyped ,greek ,church to the ,west1--,i want to hear about ,st4 ,bernard4 ,,atherton4 ,presently4 ,let us try and apprehend clearly the way in which ,neo-,platonism influenced medival ,europe4 ,,willoughby4 ,a trifling preliminary6 ,atherton means us to stay here all night4 ,you may as well resign yourself1 ,gower4 ,,atherton4 ,never fear2 ,i only want to look about me1 and see where we are just now4 ,suppose ourselves sent back to the ,middle ,age--what will be our notion of ,platonism8 ,we can't read a line of ,greek4 ,we see ,plato only through ,plotinus1 conserved by ,augustine1 handed down by ,apuleius and ,boethius4 ,we reverence ,aristotle1 but we care only for his dialectics4 ,we only assimilate from antiquity what seems to fall within the province of the ,church4 ,plato appears to us surrounded by that religious halo with which ,neo-,platonism invested philosophy when it grew so devotional4 ,we take ,augustine's word for it that ,plotinus really enunciated the long-hidden esoteric doctrine of ,plato4 ,the reverent1 ascetic1 ecstatic ,platonism of ,alexandria seems to us so like ,christianity1 that we are almost ready to believe ,plato a sort of harbinger for ,christ4 ,we are devoted ,realists2 and ,realism and ,asceticism make the common ground of ,platonist and ,christian4 ,if scholastic in our tendencies1 ,aristotle may be oftener on our lips2 if mystical1 ,plato2 but we overlook their differences4 ,we believe1 on ,neo-,platonist authority1 that the two great ones were not the adversaries which had been supposed4 ,aristotle is in the forecourt1 and through study of him we pass into that inner shrine where the rapt ,plato 7all but a monk in our eyes7 is supposed to exemplify the contemplative life4 ,dionysius in the ,east1 then1 is soporific4 ,mysticism1 there1 has nothing to do save drowsily to label all the ,church gear with symbolic meanings of wondrous smallness4 ,dionysius in the ,west has come into a young world where vigorous minds have been long accustomed to do battle on the grandest questions2 grace and free-will--how they work together2 sin and redemption--what they really are2 faith and reason--what may be their limits4 ,,gower4 ,compare those great controversies with that miserable ,monophysite and ,monothelite dispute for which one can never get up an interest4 ,how much we owe still to that large-souled ,augustine4#ci ,,atherton4 ,well1 for this very reason1 they might worship ,dionysius as a patron saint to their hearts' content at ,st4 ,denis1 but he could never be in ,france the master mystagogue they made him at ,byzantium4 ,his name1 and some elements in his system1 became indeed an authority and rallying point for the mystical tendency of the ,west1 but the system as a whole was never appropriated4 ,he was reverentially dismembered1 and so mixed up with doctrines and questions foreign to him1 by a different order of minds1 with another culture1 and often with another purpose1 that ,i would defy his ghost to recognise his own legacy to the ,church4 ,,gower4 ,good ,hugo of ,st4 ,victor1 in his ,commentary on the ,hierarchies1 does certainly wonderfully soften down the pantheism of his original4 ,dionysius comes out from under his hands almost rational1 quite a decent ,christian4 ,,atherton4 ,and before ,hugo1 if you remember1 ,john ,scotus ,erigena translated him1 and elaborated on his basis a daring system of his own1 pantheistic ,i fear1 but a marvel of intellectual power--at least two or three centuries in advance of his age4 ,and these ideas of ,erigena's1 apparently forgotten1 filter through1 and reappear once more at ,paris in the free-thinking philosophy of such men as ,david of ,dinant and ,amalric of ,bena4#dj ,,willoughby4 ,strange enough3 so that1 could ,dionysius have returned to the world in the thirteenth century1 he1 the worshipper of the priesthood1 would have found sundry of his own principles in a new livery1 doing service in the ranks of the laity against the clergy1 and strengthening the hands of that succession of heretics so long a thorn in the side of the corrupt hierarchy of ,france4 ,,atherton4 ,in ,germany1 a century later1 many of the mystics put ,platonist doctrine to a similar use4 ,in fact1 ,i think we may say generally that the ,neo-,platonist element1 which acted as a mortal opiate in the ,east1 became a vivifying principle in the ,west4 ,there the ,alexandrian doctrine of ,emanation was abandoned1 its pantheism nullified or rejected1 but its allegorical interpretation1 its exaltation1 true or false1 of the spirit above the letter1--all this was retained1 and ,platonism and mysticism together created a party in the ,church the sworn foes of mere scholastic quibbling1 of an arid and lifeless orthodoxy1 and at last of the more glaring abuses which had grown up with ecclesiastical pretension4 ,,gower4 ,now for ,bernard4 ,i see the name there on that open page of your note-book4 ,read away--no excuses4 ,,atherton4 ,some old notes4 ,but before ,i read them1 look at this rough plan of the valley of ,clairvaux1 with its famous abbey4 ,i made it after reading the ,descriptio ,monasterii ,clar-,vallensis1 inserted in the ,benedictine edition of ,bernard's works4 ,it will assist us to realize the locality in which this great church-father of the twelfth century passed most of his days4 ,it was once called the ,valley of ,wormwood--was the ill-omened covert of banditti2 ,bernard and his monks come clearing and chanting1 praying and planting2 and lo6 the absinthial reputation vanishes--the valley smiles--is called1 and made1 ,clairvaux1 or ,brightdale4 ,,kate4 ,transformed1 in short1 into #8a serious paradise1' as ,mr4 ,thackeray would say4 ,,atherton4 ,yes1 you puss4 ,here1 you see1 ,i have marked two ranges of hills which1 parting company1 enclose the broad sweep of our ,brightdale1 or ,fairvalley4 ,where the hills are nearest together you see the one eminence covered with vines1 the other with fruit trees2 and on the sides and tops dusky groups of monks have had many a hard day's work1 getting rid of brambles and underwood1 chopping and binding faggots1 and preparing either slope to yield them wherewithal to drink1 from the right hand1 and to eat1 from the left4 ,not far from this entrance to the valley stands the huge pile of the abbey itself1 with its towers and crosses1 its loop-hole windows and numerous outbuildings4 ,that is the river ,aube 7,alba7 running down between the heights2 here1 you see1 is a winding channel the monks have dug1 that a branch of it may flow in under the convent walls4 ,good river6 how hard it works for them4 ,no sooner under the archway than it turns the great wheel that grinds their corn1 fills their caldarium1 toils in the tannery1 sets the fulling-mill agoing4 ,hark to the hollow booming sound1 and the regular tramp1 tramp of those giant wooden feet2 and there1 at last1 out rushes the stream at the other side of the building1 all in a fume1 as if it had been ground itself into so much snowy foam4 ,on this other side1 you see it cross1 and join the main course of its river again4 ,proceeding now along the valley1 with your back to the monastery1 you pass through the groves of the orchard1 watered by crossing runnels from the river1 overlooked by the infirmary windows--a delightful spot for contemplative invalids4 ,then you enter the great meadow--what a busy scene in hay-making time1 all the monks out there1 helped by the additional hands of donati and conductitii1 and the country folk from all the region round about1--they have been working since sunrise1 and will work till vespers2 when the belfry sounds for prayers at the fourth hour after sunrise1 they will sing their psalms in the open air to save time1 and doubtless dine there too--a monastic pic-nic4 ,on one side of the meadow is a small lake1 well stored with fish4 ,see some of the brethren angling on its bank1 where those osiers have been planted to preserve the margin2 and two others have put off in a boat and are throwing their net1 with edifying talk at whiles perhaps1 on the parallel simplicity of fish and sinners4 ,at the extremity of the meadow are two large farm-houses1 one on each side the river2 you might mistake them for monasteries from their size and structure1 but for the ploughs and yokes of oxen you see about4 ,,mrs4 ,,atherton4 ,thank you2 so much for the place2 and the man--his personal appearance--is anything known about that8 ,,atherton4 ,you must imagine him somewhat above the middle height1 very thin1 with a clear1 transparent1 red-and-white complexion2 always retaining some colour on his hollow cheeks2 his hair light2 his beard inclining to red--in his later years1 mixed with white2 his whole aspect noble and persuasive1 and when he speaks under excitement losing every trace of physical feebleness in the lofty transformation of a benign enthusiasm4#da ,now ,i shall trouble you with some of my remarks1 on his mysticism principally4 ,you will conceive what a world of business he must have had upon his shoulders1 even when at home at ,clairvaux1 and acting as simple abbot2 so much detail to attend to1--so many difficulties to smooth1 and quarrels to settle1 and people to advise1 in connexion with his own numerous charge and throughout all the surrounding neighbourhood2 while to all this was added the care of so many infant monasteries1 springing up at the rate of about four a year1 in every part of ,europe1 founded on the pattern of ,clairvaux1 and looking to him for counsel and for men4 ,i scarcely need remind you how struggling ,christendom sent incessant monks and priests1 couriers and men-at-arms1 to knock and blow horn at the gate of ,clairvaux ,abbey2 for ,bernard1 and none but he1 must come out and fight that audacious ,abelard2 ,bernard must decide between rival ,popes1 and cross the ,alps time after time to quiet tossing ,italy2 ,bernard alone is the hope of fugitive ,pope and trembling ,church2 he only can win back turbulent nobles1 alienated people1 recreant priests1 when ,arnold of ,brescia is in arms at ,rome1 and when ,catharists1 ,petrobrusians1 ,waldenses1 and heretics of every shade1 threaten the hierarchy on either side the ,alps2 and at the preaching of ,bernard the ,christian world pours out to meet the disaster of a new crusade4 ,,gower4 ,and accomplishing a work like this with that emaciated1 wretchedly dyspeptic frame of his6--first of all exerting his extraordinary will to the utmost to unbuild his body2 and then putting forth the same self-control to make the ruins do the work of a sound structure4 ,,atherton4 ,could we have seen him at home at ,clairvaux1 after one of those famous ,italian journeys1 no look or word would have betrayed a taint of spiritual pride1 though every rank in church and state united to do him honour--though great cities would have made him almost by force their spiritual king--though the blessings of the people and the plaudits of the council followed the steps of the peacemaker--and though1 in the belief of all1 a dazzling chain of miracles had made his pathway glorious4 ,we should have found him in the kitchen1 rebuking by his example some monk who grumbled at having to wash the pots and pans2 on the hill-side1 cutting his tale and bearing his burthen with the meanest novice2 or seen him oiling his own boots1 as they say the arch-tempter did one day2 we should have interrupted him in the midst of his tender counsel to some distressed soul of his cloistered flock1 or just as he had sat down to write a sermon on a passage in ,canticles against the next church-festival4#db ,but now to my notes4 7,atherton reads47 ,in considering the religious position of ,bernard1 ,i find it not at all remarkable that he should have been a mystic1--very remarkable that he should not have been much more the mystic than he was4 ,this moderation may be attributed partly to his constant habit of searching the ,scriptures--studying them devotionally for himself1 unencumbered with the commentaries reverenced by tradition4#dc ,rigid exemplar and zealous propagator of monasticism as he was1 these hours with the ,bible proved a corrective not unblessed1 and imparted even to the devotion of the cloister a healthier tone4 ,add to this his excellent natural judgment1 and the combination1 in his case1 of the active with the contemplative life4 ,he knew the world and men2 he stood with his fellows in the breach1 and the shock of conflict spoiled him for a dreamer4 ,the distractions over which he expended so much complaint were his best friends4 ,they were a hindrance in the way to the monastic ideal of virtue--a help toward the ,christian4 ,they prevented his attaining that pitch of uselessness to which the conventual life aspires1 and brought him down a little nearer to the meaner level of apostolic labour4 ,they made him the worse monk1 and by so much the better man4 ,with ,bernard the monastic life is the one thing needful4 ,he began life by drawing after him into the convent all his kindred2 sweeping them one by one from the high seas of the world with the irresistible vortex of his own religious fervour4 ,his incessant cry for ,europe is--,better monasteries1 and more of them4 ,let these ecclesiastical castles multiply2 let them cover and command the land1 well garrisoned with men of ,god1 and then1 despite all heresy and schism1 theocracy will flourish1 the earth shall yield her increase1 and all people praise the ,lord4 ,who so wise as ,bernard to win souls for ,christ--that is to say1 recruits for the cloister8 ,with what eloquence he paints the raptures of contemplation1 the vanity and sin of earthly ambition or of earthly love6 ,wherever in his travels ,bernard may have preached1 there1 presently1 exultant monks must open wide their doors to admit new converts4 ,wherever he goes he bereaves mothers of their children1 the aged of their last solace and last support2 praising those the most who leave most misery behind them4 ,how sternly does he rebuke those ,rachels who mourn and will not be comforted for children dead to them for ever6 ,what vitriol does he pour into the wounds when he asks if they will drag their son down to perdition with themselves by resisting the vocation of heaven6 whether it was not enough that they brought him forth sinful to a world of sin1 and will they now1 in their insane affection1 cast him into the fires of hell8#dd ,yet ,bernard is not hard-hearted by nature4 ,he can pity this disgraceful weakness of the flesh4 ,he makes such amends as superstition may4 ,i will be a father to him1 he says4 ,alas6 cold comfort4 ,you1 their hearts will answer1 whose flocks are countless1 would nothing content you but our ewe lamb8 ,perhaps some cloister will be1 for them too1 the last resource of their desolation4 ,they will fly for ease in their pain to the system which caused it4 ,bernard hopes so4 ,so inhuman is the humanity of asceticism2 cruel its tender mercies2 thus does it depopulate the world of its best in order to improve it4 ,to measure1 then1 the greatness of ,bernard1 let me clearly apprehend the main purpose of his life4 ,it was even this convent-founding1 convent-ruling business4 ,this is his proper praise1 that1 though devoted body and soul1 to a system so false1 he himself should have retained and practised so much of truth4 ,the task of history is a process of selection4 ,the farther we recede from a period1 the more do we eliminate of what interests us no longer4 ,a few leading events stand clearly out as characteristic of the time1 and about them all our details are clustered4 ,but when dealing with an individual1 or with the private life of any age1 the method must be reversed1 and we must encumber ourselves again with all the cast-off baggage that strews the wayside of time's march4 ,so with ,bernard4 ,the ,abelard controversy1 the schism1 the quarrels of pope and emperor1 the crusade1 are seen by us--who know what happened afterwards--in their true importance4 ,these facts make the epoch1 and throw all else into shade4 ,but we could not so have viewed them in the press and confusion of the times that saw them born4 ,bernard and his monks were not always thinking of ,abelard or ,anaclet1 of ,arnold of ,brescia1 ,roger of ,sicily1 or ,lothaire4 ,in the great conflicts which these names recal to our minds1 ,bernard bore his manful part as a means to an end4 ,many a sleepless night must they have cost him1 many a journey full of anxiety and hardship1 many an agonizing prayer1 on the eve of a crisis calling for all his skill and all his courage4 ,but these were difficulties which he was summoned to encounter on his road to the great object of his life--the establishment of ecclesiastical supremacy by means of the conventual institute4 ,the quarrels within the ,church1 and between the ,church and the ,state1 must be in some sort settled before his panacea could be applied to the sick body of the time4 ,in the midst of such controversies a host of minor matters would demand his care1--to him of scarcely less moment1 to us indifferent4 ,there would be the drawing out of convent charters and convent rules1 the securing of land1 of money1 of armed protection for the rapidly increasing family of monasteries2 election of abbots and of bishops2 guidance of the same in perplexity2 holding of synods and councils1 with the business thereto pertaining2 delinquencies and spiritual distresses of individuals2 jealous squabbles to be soothed between his ,cistercian order and them of ,cluny2 suppression of clerical luxury and repression of lay encroachment1 c4 c4 ,thus the year #aaah would be memorable to ,bernard and his monks1 not so much because in it ,gelasius ascended the chair of ,st4 ,peter1 and the ,emperor ,henry gave him a rival1 or even because then the order of ,knights ,templars took its rise1 so much as from their joy and labour about the founding of two new monasteries1--because that year saw the establishment of the first daughter of ,clairvaux1 the ,abbey of ,fontaines1 in the diocese of ,chalons2 and of a sister1 ,fontenay1 beside the ,yonne2--the one a growth northward1 among the dull plains of ,champagne1 with their lazy streams and monotonous poplars2 the other a southern colony1 among the luscious slopes of vine-clad ,burgundy4#de ,bernard had his wish4 ,he made ,clairvaux the cynosure of all contemplative eyes4 ,for any one who could exist at all as a monk1 with any satisfaction to himself1 that was the place above all others4 ,brother ,godfrey1 sent out to be first abbot of ,fontenay1--as soon as he has set all things in order there1 returns1 only too gladly1 from that rich and lovely region1 to re-enter his old cell1 to walk around1 delightedly revisiting the well-remembered spots1 among the trees or by the waterside1 marking how the fields and gardens have come on1 and relating to the eager brethren 7for even ,bernard's monks have curiosity7 all that befel him in his work4 ,he would sooner be third prior at ,clairvaux than abbot of ,fontenay4 ,so1 too1 with brother ,humbert1 commissioned in like manner to regulate ,igny ,abbey 7fourth daughter of ,clairvaux74 ,he soon comes back1 weary of the labour and sick for home1 to look on the ,aube once more1 to hear the old mills go drumming and droning1 with that monotony of muffled sound--the associate of his pious reveries--often heard in his dreams when far away2 to set his feet on the very same flagstone in the choir where he used to stand1 and to be happy4 ,but ,bernard1 though away in ,italy1 toiling in the matter of the schism1 gets to hear of his return1 and finds time to send him across the ,alps a letter of rebuke for this criminal self-pleasing1 whose terrible sharpness must have darkened the poor man's meditations for many a day4#df ,bernard had farther the satisfaction of improving and extending monasticism to the utmost2 of sewing together1 with tolerable success1 the rended vesture of the papacy2 of suppressing a more popular and more scriptural ,christianity1 for the benefit of his despotic order2 of quenching for a time1 by the extinction of ,abelard1 the spirit of free inquiry2 and of seeing his ascetic and superhuman ideal of religion everywhere accepted as the genuine type of ,christian virtue4 ,at the same time the principles advocated by ,bernard were deprived1 in his hands1 of their most noxious elements4 ,his sincere piety1 his large heart1 his excellent judgment1 always qualify1 and seem sometimes to redeem1 his errors4 ,but the well-earned glory and the influence of a name achieved by an ardour and a toil almost passing human measure1 were thrown into the wrong scale4 ,the mischiefs latent in the teaching of ,bernard become ruinously apparent in those who entered into his labours4 ,his successes proved eventually the disasters of ,christendom4 ,one of the best of men made plain the way for some of the worst4 ,bernard1 while a covert for the fugitive pontiff1 hunted out by insurgent people or by wrathful emperor1 would yet impose some rational limitations on the papal authority4#dg ,but the chair upheld by ,bernard was to be filled by an ,innocent ,,iii41 whose merciless arrogance should know no bounds4 ,bernard pleaded nobly for the ,jews1 decimated in the crusading fury4#dh ,yet the atrocities of ,dominic were but the enkindling of fuel which ,bernard had amassed4 ,disciple of tradition as he was1 he would allow the intellect its range2 zealous as he might be for monastic rule1 the spontaneous inner life of devotion was with him the end--all else the means4 ,ere long1 the end was completely forgotten in the means4 ,in succeeding centuries1 the ,church of ,rome retained what life it could by repeating incessantly the remedy of ,bernard4 ,as corruption grew flagrant1 new orders were devised4 ,bernard saw not1 nor those who followed in his steps1 that the evil lay1 not in the defect or abuse of vows and rules1 but in the introduction of vows and rules at all1--that these unnatural restraints must always produce unnatural excesses4 ,what is true concerning the kind of religious impulse imparted to ,europe by the great endeavour of ,bernard's life is no less so as regards the character of his mysticism4 ,in the theology of ,bernard reason has a place1 but not the right one4 ,his error in this respect is the primary source of that mystical bias so conspicuous in his religious teaching4 ,like ,anselm1 he bids you believe first1 and understand1 if possible1 afterwards4 ,he is not prepared to admit the great truth that if ,reason yields to ,faith1 and assigns itself anywhere a limit1 it must be on grounds satisfactory to ,reason4 ,to any measure of ,anselm's remarkable speculative ability1 ,bernard could lay no claim4 ,he was at home only in the province of practical religion4 ,but to enquiries and reasonings such as those in which ,anselm delighted1 he was ready to award1 not blame1 but admiration4 ,faith1 with ,bernard1 receives the treasure of divine truth1 as it were1 wrapped up 7involutum72 ,understanding may afterwards cautiously unfold the envelope1 and peep at the prize1 but may never examine the contents first1 to determine whether it shall be received or not4#di ,if the chase be so dear to that mighty hunter1 ,intellect1 he shall have his sport1 on certain conditions4 ,let him admit that the ,church has caught and killed the quarry of truth1 and brought it to his door4 ,that granted1 he may1 if he will1 cry boot and saddle1 ride out to see where the game broke cover1 or gallop with hounds1 and halloo over hill and dale1 pursuing an imaginary object1 and learning how truth might have been run down4 ,great1 accordingly1 was ,bernard's horror when he beheld ,abelard throwing open to discussion the dogmas of the ,church2 when he saw the alacrity with which such questions were taken up all over ,france1 and learnt that not the scholars of ,paris merely1 but an ignorant and stripling laity were discussing every day1 at street corners1 in hall1 in cottage1 the mysteries of the ,trinity and the ,immaculate ,conception4 ,faith1 he cried1 believes2 does not discuss2 ,abelard holds ,god in suspicion1 and will not believe even ,him without reason given4#ej ,at the same time1 the credo ut intelligam of ,bernard is no indolent or constrained reception of a formula4 ,faith is the divine persuasion of the pure in heart and life4 ,bernard would grant that different minds will apprehend the same truth in different aspects2 that an absolute uniformity is impossible4 ,but when faith is made to depend so entirely on the state of the heart1 such concessions are soon withdrawn4 ,a difference in opinion from the acknowledged standard of piety is regarded as a sure sign of a depraved heart4 ,a divine illumination as to doctrine is assumed for those whose practical holiness caused them to shine as lights in the ,church4#ea ,thus1 on the elementary question of faith1 the mystical tendency of ,bernard is apparent2 the subjective and even the merely emotional element assumes undue prominence2 and a way is opened for the error incident to all mysticism--the unwarrantable identification of our own thoughts with the mind of ,god4 ,but if1 in his starting-point1 ,bernard be a mystic1 much more so is he in the goal he strains every power to reach4 ,the design of ,christianity is1 in his idea1 not to sanctify and elevate all our powers1 to raise us to our truest manhood1 accomplishing in every excellence all our faculties both of mind and body1 but to teach us to nullify our corporeal part1 to seclude ourselves1 by abstraction1 from its demands1 and to raise us1 while on earth1 to a super-human exaltation above the flesh1--a vision and a glory approaching that of the angelic state4 ,thus he commences his analysis of meditation by describing the felicity of angels4 ,they have not to study the ,creator in his works1 slowly ascending by the media of sense4 ,they behold all things in the ,word--more perfect there1 by far1 than in themselves4 ,their knowledge is immediate--a direct intuition of the primal ideas of things in the mind of the ,creator4 ,to such measure of this immediate intuition as mortals may attain he exhorts the devout mind to aspire4 ,they do well who piously employ their senses among the things of sense for the divine glory and the good of others4 ,happier yet are they who1 with a true philosophy1 survey and explore things visible1 that they may rise through them to a knowledge of the ,invisible4 ,but most of all does he extol the state of those who1 not by gradual stages of ascent1 but by a sudden rapture1 are elevated at times1 like ,st4 ,paul1 to the immediate vision of heavenly things4 ,such favoured ones are adepts in the third and highest species of meditation4 ,totally withdrawn into themselves1 they are not only1 like other good men1 dead to the body and the world1 and raised above the grosser hindrances of sense1 but even beyond those images and similitudes drawn from visible objects which colour and obscure our ordinary conceptions of spiritual truths4#eb ,but if1 so far1 ,bernard betrays the mystic1 in this ambition to transcend humanity and to anticipate the sight and fruition of the celestial state1 let him have full credit for the moderation which preserved him from going farther4 ,compared with that of many subsequent mystics1 the mysticism of ,bernard is sobriety itself4 ,from the practical vice of mysticism in his ,church1--its tendency to supersede by extraordinary attainments the humbler and more arduous ,christian virtues--,bernard was as free as any one could be in those times4 ,against the self-indulgence which would sacrifice every active external obligation to a life of contemplative sloth he protested all his days1 by word and by example4 ,he is equally removed from the pantheistic extreme of ,eckart and the imaginative extravagances of ,st4 ,theresa4 ,his doctrine of ,union with ,god does not surrender our personality or substitute ,god for the soul in man4 ,when he has occasion to speak1 with much hesitation and genuine humility1 of the highest point of his own experience1 he has no wonderful visions to relate4 ,the visit of the ,saviour to his soul was unattended by visible glory1 by voices1 tastes1 or odours2 it vindicated its reality only by the joy which possessed him1 and the new facility with which he brought forth the practical fruits of the ,spirit4#ec ,he prays ,god for peace and joy and charity to all men1 and leaves other exaltations of devotion to apostles and apostolic men1--#8the high hills to the harts and the climbing goats4' ,the fourth and highest stage of love in his scale1--that transformation and utter self-loss in which we love ourselves only for the sake of ,god1 he believes unattainable in this life1--certainly beyond his own reach4 ,to the mystical death1 self-annihilation1 and holy indifference of the ,quietists1 he is altogether a stranger4#ed ,it is worth while at least to skim and dip among his sermons on the ,canticles4 ,the ,song of ,solomon is a trying book for a man like ,bernard1 and those expositions do contain much sad stuff1 interspersed1 however1 with many fine reaches of thought and passages of consummate eloquence4 ,mystical interpretation runs riot4 ,everything is symbolized4 ,metaphors are elaborated into allegories1 similitudes broken up into divers branches1 and about each ramification a new set of fancies clustered4 ,the sensuous imagery borrowed from love and wine--the kisses1 bedchambers1 and winecellars of the soul1 remind us at every page of that luscious poetry in which the ,persian ,sufis are said to veil the aspirations of the spirit of man after its ,maker4 ,yet1 with all the faults of a taste so vicious there is no affectation1 no sentimentality1 nothing intentionally profane4 ,it was with ,bernard a duty and a delight to draw as much meaning as possible from the sacred text1 by the aid of an inexhaustible fancy and an inventive ingenuity in that way1 which only ,swedenborg has surpassed4 ,even in his letters on comparatively ordinary topics1 he always gives a certain largeness to his subject by his lofty imaginative style of handling it4 ,he seldom confines himself to the simple point in hand1 but starts off to fetch for it adornments1 illustrations1 or sanctions from quarters the most remote1 or heights the most awful4 ,always in earnest1 yet always the rhetorician1 he seems to write as though viewing1 not the subject itself1 but some vast reflection of it projected on the sky4 ,in those sermons on ,solomon's ,song1 it is generally rather the glowing and unseemly diction1 than the thought1 we have to blame4 ,with such allowance1 it is not difficult to discern1 under that luxuriance of flowers and weeds1 many a sentiment true and dear to the ,christian heart in every age4 ,bernard appears to have believed himself invested on some occasions with miraculous powers4 ,so far he has a place in the province of theurgic mysticism4 ,perhaps the worst thing of this sort to be laid to his charge is his going so far as he did towards endorsing the prophecies of the ,abbess ,hildegard4#ee ,note to page #aca4 ,the writings of ,augustine handed ,neo-,platonism down to posterity as the original and esoteric doctrine of the first followers of ,plato4 ,he enumerates the causes which led1 in his opinion1 to the negative position assumed by the ,academics1 and to the concealment of their real opinions4 ,he describes ,plotinus as a resuscitated ,plato4 ,contra ,academ4 iii4 #ag-bj4 ,he commends ,porphyry for his measure of scepticism as regards ,theurgy1 and bestows more than due praise on the doctrine of ,illumination held by ,plotinus1 for its similarity to the ,christian truth concerning divine grace4 ,de ,civitate ,dei1 x4 #aj2 x4 #b4 ,he gives a scale of the spiritual degrees of ascent to ,god1 formed after the ,platonist model 7the of the ,symposium71 and so furnished a precedent for all the attempts of a similar kind in which scholastic mysticism delighted to exercise its ingenuity4 ,de ,quantitate ,anim1 c4 #ce4 ,he enumerates three kinds of perception1--corporeal1 intellectual 7scientia7 and spiritual 7sapientia72 and in describing the last uses the words introrsum ascendere 7,de ,trin4 xii4 #ae2 and comp4 ,de ,lib4 ,arbit4 ii4 #ab74 ,but this phrase does not appear to have carried1 with ,augustine1 the sense it bore when gladly adopted by mystical divines of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries4 ,he says elsewhere that man1 like the prodigal1 must come to himself before he can arise and go to his ,father4 7,retract4 i4 #h47 ,here what the wanderer finds within is the voice of conscience1 and in this sense it is quite true that the step inward is a step upward4 ,but it is not true that the inmost is the highest in the sense that man is able by abstraction and introspection to discover within himself a light which shall supersede1 or supplement1 or even supply the place of external ,revelation4 ,note to page #aca4 ,,john ,,scotus ,,erigena4--,this remarkable man began to teach in the #8,school of the ,palace1' under ,charles the ,bald1 about the middle of the ninth century4 ,he translated ,dionysius1 took part in the ,gottschalk controversy1 and1 at last1 when persecuted for the freedom of his opinions1 found a refuge with ,alfred the ,great4 ,erigena idolizes ,dionysius and his commentator ,maximus4 ,he believes in their hierarchies1 their divine ,dark1 and supreme ,nothing4 ,he declares1 with them1 that ,god is the essence of all things4 ,ipse namque omnium essentia est qui solus vere est1 ut ait ,dionysius ,areopagita4 ,esse1 inquit1 omnium est ,superesse ,divinitatis4--,de ,div4 ,nat4 i4 #c1 p4 #ddc4 7,jo4 ,scoti ,opp41 ,paris1 #ahec47 ,but though much of the language is retained1 the doctrine of ,dionysius has assumed a form altogether new in the brain of the ,scotchman4 ,the phraseology of the emanation theory is1 henceforth1 only metaphor4 ,what men call creation is1 with ,erigena1 a necessary and eternal self-unfolding 7analysis1 he calls it7 of the divine nature4 ,as all things are now ,god1 self-unfolded1 so1 in the final restitution1 all things will be resolved into ,god1 self-withdrawn4 ,not the mind of man merely1 as the ,greek thought1 but matter and all creatures will be reduced to their primordial causes1 and ,god be manifested as all in all4 ,de ,div4 ,nat4 i4 #gb4 ,postremo universalis creatura ,creatori adunabitur1 et erit in ipso et cum ipso unum4 ,et hic est finis omnium visibilium et invisibilium1 quoniam omnia visibilia in intelligibilia1 et intelligibilia in ipsum ,deum transibunt1 mirabili et ineffabili adunatione1 non autem1 ut spe diximus1 essentiarum aut substantiarum confusione aut interitu--v4 #bj1 p4 #hid4 ,in this restitution1 the elect are united to ,god with a degree of intimacy peculiar to themselves--v4 #ci4 ,the agent of this restoration1 both for beings above and below mankind1 is the ,incarnate ,word--v4 #be1 p4 #iac4 ,erigena regards our incarceration in the body1 and the distinction of sex1 as the consequence of sin4 ,he abandons the idea of a sensuous hell4 ,what is termed the fire of hell is with him a principle of law to which both the good and evil are subject1 which wickedness assimilates and makes a torment2 goodness a blessing4 ,so1 he says1 the light is grateful to the sound eye1 painful to the diseased2 and the food which is welcome to health is loathed by sickness4 ,de ,predestinatione1 cap4 xvii4 p4 #dbh4 ,this idea1 in which there lies assuredly an element of truth1 became a favourite one with the mystics1 and re-appears in many varieties of mysticism4 ,erigena1 farther1 anticipates ,kant in regarding time and space as mere modes of conception peculiar to our present state4 ,he himself is much more rationalist than mystic 7except in the fanciful interpretations of ,scripture to which he is compelled to resort72 but his system was developed1 three centuries later1 into an extreme and revolutionary mysticism4 ,the combination of ,platonism and ,christianity1 so often attempted1 abandoned1 and renewed1 assumes five distinct phases4 ,i4 ,in the ,east1 with ,dionysius2 dualistic1 with real and ideal worlds apart1 removing man far from ,god by an intervening chain of hierarchic emanations4 ,,ii4 ,in the ,west1 with ,scotus ,erigena2 abandoning emanation for ever1 and taking up instead the idea to which the ,germans give the name of ,immanence4 ,god regarded more as the inner life and vital substratum of the universe1 than as radiating it from a far-off point of abstraction4 ,,iii4 ,in the thirteenth century1 at ,paris1 with ,amalric of ,bena and ,david of ,dinant4 ,they pronounce ,god the material1 essential cause of all things1--not the efficient cause merely4 ,the ,platonic identification of the velle and the esse in ,god4 ,david and his sect blend with their pantheism the doctrine that under the coming new dispensation--that of the ,holy ,ghost--all believers are to regard themselves as incarnations of ,god1 and to dispense 7as men filled with the ,spirit7 with all sacraments and external rites4 ,they carry the spiritualizing tendency of ,erigena to a monstrous extreme1 claim special revelation1 declare the real resurrection accomplished in themselves1 and that they are already in heaven1 which they regard as a state and not a place4 ,they maintain that the good are sufficiently rewarded and the bad adequately punished by the blessedness or the privation they inwardly experience in time1--in short1 that retribution is complete on this side the grave1 and heavy woes1 accordingly1 will visit corrupt ,christendom4 ,the practical extravagance of this pantheism was repeated1 in the fourteenth century1 by fanatical mystics among the lower orders4 ,,iv4 ,with ,eckart1 who reminds us of ,plotinus4 ,the #8,intuition' of ,plotinus is ,eckart's #8,spark of the ,soul1' the power whereby we can transcend the sensible1 the manifold1 the temporal1 and merge ourselves in the changeless ,one4 ,at the height of this attainment1 the mystic of ,plotinus and the mystic of ,eckart find the same ,god1--that is1 the same blank abstraction1 above being and above attributes4 ,but with ,plotinus such escape from finite consciousness is possible only in certain favoured intervals of ecstasy4 ,eckart1 however 7whose very pantheism is the exaggeration of a ,christian truth beyond the range of ,plotinus71 will have man realize habitually his oneness with the ,infinite4 ,according to him1 if a man by self-abandonment attains this consciousness1 ,god has realized ,himself within him--has brought forth his ,son--has evolved his ,spirit4 ,such a man's knowledge of ,god is ,god's knowledge of ,himself4 ,for all spirit is one4 ,to distinguish between the divine ground of the soul and the ,divinity is to disintegrate the indivisible ,universal ,spirit--is to be far from ,god--is to stand on the lower ground of finite misconception1 within the limits of transitory ,appearance4 ,the true child of ,god #8breaks through' such distinction to the #8,oneness4' ,thus1 creation and redemption are resolved into a necessary process--the evolution and involution of ,godhead4 ,yet this form of medival pantheism appears to advantage when we compare it with that of ancient or of modern times4 ,the pantheism of the ,greek took refuge in apathy from ,fate4 ,the pantheism of the present day is a plea for self-will4 ,but that of ,eckart is half redeemed by a sublime disinterestedness1 a confiding abnegation of all choice or preference1 which betrays the presence of a measure of ,christian element altogether inconsistent with the basis of his philosophy4 ,v4 ,with ,tauler and the #8,german ,theology4' ,this is the best1 indisputably1 of all the forms assumed by the combination in question4 ,the ,platonism is practically absorbed in the ,christianity4 ,tauler speaks of the ideal existence of the soul in ,god--of the loss of our nameless ,ground in the unknown ,godhead1 and we find language in the ,theologia ,germanica concerning ,god as the substance of all things--concerning the partial and the ,perfect1 the manifold and the ,one1 which might be pantheistically construed4 ,but such interpretation would be most unfair1 and is contradicted by the whole tenour both of the sermons and the treatise4 ,an apprehension of the nature of sin so searching and profound as that in the #8,theology1' is impossible to pantheism4 ,luther could see therein only most ,christian theism4 ,these mystics still employed some of the terms transmitted by a revered philosophy4 ,tauler cites with deference the names of ,dionysius1 ,proclus1 and ,plotinus4 ,this mysticism clothes its thought with fragments from the old philosopher's cloak--but the heart and body belong to the school of ,christ4 ,with ,dionysius1 and even with ,erigena1 man seems to need but a process of approximation to the divine subsistence--a rise in the scale of being by becoming quantitatively rather than qualitatively more4 ,with the ,german mystics he must be altogether unmade and born anew4 ,to shift from one degree of illumination to another somewhat higher1 is nothing in their eyes1 for the need lies not in the understanding1 but in heart and will4 ,according to them1 man must stand virtually in heaven or hell--be ,god's or the devil's4 ,the ,father of our spirits is not relegated from men by ecclesiastical or angelic functionaries1 but nearer to every one1 clerk or lay1 gentle or simple1 than he is to himself4 ,so the exclusiveness and the frigid intellectualism so characteristic of the ancient ethnic philosophy1 has vanished from the ,teutonic mysticism4 ,plato helps rather than harms by giving a vantage ground and defence to the more true and subjective1 as opposed to a merely institutional ,christianity4 ,both ,eckart and the ,theologia ,germanica would have man #8break through' and transcend #8distinction4' ,but it is true1 with slight exception1 that the distinctions ,eckart would escape are natural2 those which the #8,theology' would surpass1 for the most part artificial4 ,the asceticism of both is excessive4 ,the self-reduction of ,eckart is1 however1 more metaphysical than moral2 that of the #8,theology' moral essentially4 ,both would say1 the soul of the regenerate man is one with ,god--cannot be separated from ,him4 ,but only ,eckart would say1 such soul is not distinct from ,god4 ,both would essay to pass from the ,nature to the ,being of ,god--from his manifested ,existence to his ,essence1 and they both declare that our nature has its being in the divine4 ,but such assertion1 with ,tauler and the ,theologia ,germanica1 by no means deifies man4 ,it is but the ,platonic expression of a great ,christian doctrine--the real ,fatherhood of ,god4 ,note to page #adb4 ,itaque tum per totam fere ,galliam in civitatibus1 vicis1 et castellis1 a scholaribus1 non solum intra scholas1 sed etiam triviatim2 nec a litteratis1 aut provectis tantum1 sed a pueris et simplicibus1 aut certe stultis1 de sancta ,trinitate1 qu ,deus est1 disputaretur1 c4--,epist4 #ccg1 and comp4 ,epist4 #ccb4 ,bernard at first refused to encounter ,abelard1 not simply because from his inexperience in such combats he was little fitted to cope with that dialectic ,goliath--a man of war from his youth--but because such discussions were in themselves1 he thought1 an indignity to the faith4--,epist4 #ahi4 ,abelard he denounces as wrong1 not only in his heretical results1 but in principle1--,cum ea ratione nititur explorare1 qu pia mens fidei vivacitate apprehendit4 ,fides piorum credit1 non discutit4 ,sed iste ,deum habens suspectum1 credere non vult1 nisi quod prius ratione discusserit4--,epist4 #cch4 ,note to page #adc4 ,in the eyes both of ,anselm and ,bernard1 to deny the reality of ,ideas is to cut off our only escape from the gross region of sense4 ,neither faith nor reason have then left them any basis of operation4 ,we attain to truth only through the medium of ,ideas1 by virtue of our essential relationship to the ,divine ,source of ,ideas--the ,infinite ,truth4 ,that ,supreme ,truth which gives to existing things their reality is also the source of true thoughts in our minds4 ,thus our knowledge is an illumination dependent on the state of the heart towards ,god4 ,on this principle all doubt must be criminal1 and every heresy the offspring1 not of a bewildered brain1 but of a wicked heart4 ,the fundamental maxim of the medival religio-philosophy--,invisibilia non decipiunt1 was fertile in delusions4 ,it led men to reject1 as untrustworthy1 the testimony of sense and of experience4 ,thus1 in the transubstantiation controversy of the ninth century1 ,realism and ,superstition conquered together4 ,it taught them to deduce all knowledge from certain mental abstractions1 ,platonic ,ideas and ,aristotelian ,forms4 ,thus ,bonaventura 7who exhibits this tendency at its height7 resolves all science into union with ,god4 ,the successive attainment of various kinds of knowledge is1 in his system1 an approximation1 stage above stage1 to ,god--a scaling of the heights of ,illumination1 as we are more closely united with the ,divine ,word--the repertory of ,ideas4 ,thus1 again1 the ,scriptures were studied by the schoolmen less as a practical guide for the present life than as so much material whence they might deduce metaphysical axioms and propositions--discover more of those divine abstractions which they regarded as the seminal principles of all thought and all existence4 ,they were constantly mistaking results which could only have been attained by revelation or tradition from without1 for truth evolved from within the depths of the finite mind1 by virtue of its immediate commerce with the ,infinite4 ,anselm found no difficulty in assuming that the ,god of his ontological proof was identical with the ,god of the ,bible4 ,note to page #add4 ,thus1 speaking of the angelic state1 he says1--,creatura cli illa est1 prsto habens per quod ista intueatur4 ,videt ,verbum1 et in ,verbo facta per ,verbum4 ,nec opus habet ex his qu facta sunt1 factoris notitiam mendicare4--,de ,consid4 ,v4 i41 and comp4 ,serm4 in ,cantica1 v4 #d4 ,the three kinds of meditation1 or stages of ,christian proficiency1 referred to in the text1 ,bernard calls consideratio dispensativa1 stimativa1 and speculativa4 ,the last is thus defined3--,speculativa est consideratio se in se colligens1 et1 quantum divinitus adjuvatur1 rebus humanis eximens ad contemplandum ,deum4 ,he who reaches it is among the greatest in the ,kingdom of ,heaven4 ,at omnium maximus1 qui spreto ipso usu rerum et sensuum1 quantum quidem human fragilitati fas est1 non ascensoriis gradibus1 sed inopinatis excessibus1 avolare interdum contemplando ad illa sublimia consuevit4 ,ad hoc ultimum genus illos pertinere reor excessus ,pauli4 ,excessus non ascensus3 nam raptum potius fuisse1 quam ascendisse ipse se perhibet4--,de ,consid4 v4 ii4 ,in one of the ,sermons on the ,canticles1 ,bernard discourses at more length on this kind of exaltation4 ,proinde et ego non absurde spons exstasim vocaverim mortem1 qu tamen non vita1 sed vit eripiat laqueis4444 ,excedente quippe anima1 etsi non vita certe vit sensu1 necesse est etiam ut nec vit tentatis sentiatur4444 ,utinam hac morte frequenter cadam4444 ,bona mors1 qu vitam non aufert1 sed transfert in melius2 bona1 qua non corpus cadit1 sed anima sublevatur4 ,verum hc hominum est4 ,sed moriatur anima mea morte etiam si dici potest1 ,angelorum1 ut presentium memoria excedens rerum se inferiorum corporearumque non modo cupiditatibus1 sed et similitudinibus exuat4444 ,talis1 ut opinor1 excessus1 aut tantum1 aut maxime contemplatio dicitur4 ,rerum etenim cupiditatibus vivendo non teneri1 human virtutis est2 corporum vero similitudinibus speculando non involvi1 angelic puritatis est4444 ,profecisti1 separasti te2 sed nondum elongasti1 nisi et irruentia undique phantasmata corporearum similitudinum transvolare mentis puritate prvaleas4 ,hucusque noli tibi promittere requiem4--,in ,cantica1 ,serm4 lii4 #d1 #e4 ,note to page #add4 ,fateor et mihi adventasse ,verbum1 in insipientia dico1 et pluries4 ,cumque spius intraverit ad me1 non sensi aliquoties cum intravit4 ,adesse sensi1 adfuisse recordor1 interdum et prsenti potui introitum ejus1 sentire nunquam1 sed ne exitum quidem4444 ,qua igitur introivit8 ,an forte nec introivit quidem1 quia non deforis venit8 ,neque enim est unum aliquid ex iis que foris sunt4 ,porro nec deintra me venit quoniam bonum est1 et scio quoniam non est in me bonum4 ,ascendi etiam superius meum3 et ecce supra hoc ,verbum eminens4 ,ad inferius quoque meum curiosus explorator descendi3 et nihilominus infra inventum est4 ,si foras aspexi1 extra omne exterius meum comperi illud esse3 si vero intus1 et ipsum interius erat4444 ,ita igitur intrans ad me aliquoties ,verbum sponsus1 nullis unquam introitum suum indiciis innotescere fecit1 non voce1 non specie1 non incessu4 ,nullis denique suis motibus compertum est mihi1 nullis meis sensibus illapsum penetralibus meis3 tantum ex motu cordis1 sicut prfatus sum1 intellexi prsentiam ejus2 et ex fuga vitiorum carnaliumque compressione affectuum1 c4--,in ,cantica1 ,serm4 lxxiv4 #e1 #f4 ,the metaphors of ,bernard are actual sounds1 sights1 and fragrances with ,st4 ,theresa4 ,from this sensuous extreme his practical devotion is as far removed1 on the one side1 as from the cold abstraction of ,dionysius on the other4 ,his contemplation is no staring at the ,divine ,essence till we are blind--no oblivion or disdain of outward means4 ,we see ,god1 he says1 not as ,he is1 but as ,he wills--sicuti vult non sicuti est4 ,so when describing that ascent of the soul to ,god1 or descent of ,god into the soul1 which constitutes ,union1 he says1--,in ,spiritu fit ista conjunctio4444 ,non ergo sic affecta et sic dilecta 7anima7 contenta erit omnino vel illa1 qu multis per ea qu facta sunt2 vel1 illa qu paucis per visa et somnia facta est manifestatio sponsi1 nisi et speciali prrogativa intimis illum affectibus atque ipsis medullis cordis clitus illapsum suscipiat1 habeatque prsto quem desiderat non figuratum1 sed infusum3 non apparentem sed afficientem2 nec dubium quin eo jucundiorem1 quo intus1 non foris4 ,verbum nempe est1 non sonans1 sed penetrans2 non loquax1 sed efficax2 non obstrepens auribus1 sed affectibus blandiens1 c4--,in ,cantica1 ,serm4 xxxi4 #f and #a4 ,comp4 also his remarks at the close of the sermon1 on the difference between faith and sight1 p4 #bhfh4 ,bernard describes three kisses of the soul1--the kiss of the feet of ,god1 of the hand1 and of the mouth4 7,serm4 de diversis1 #hg1 and ,in ,cantica1 ,serm4 iv47 ,this is his fanciful way of characterising1 by the elaboration of a single figurative phrase of ,scripture1 the progress of the soul through conversion and grace to perfection4 ,here1 as in so many instances1 his meaning is substantially correct2 it is the expression which is objectionable4 ,he is too much in earnest for the artificial gradations and metaphysical refinements of later mysticism4 ,compare him1 in this respect1 with ,john of the ,cross4 ,bernard would have rejected as unprofitable those descriptions of the successive absorption of the several faculties in ,god2 those manifold kinds of prayer--prayers of quiet1 prayers of union1 prayers of ecstasy1 with their impalpable distinctions2 that analysis1 miraculously achieved1 of miraculous ravishments1 detailed at such length in the tedious treatises of the ,spanish mystics4 ,the doctrine taught by ,john of the ,cross1 that ,god compensates the faithful for the mortification of the senses by sensuous gratifications of a supernatural kind1 would have revolted the more pure devotion of the simple-minded ,abbot of ,clairvaux4--,see ,la ,monte du ,mont ,carmel1 livre ii4 chapp4 #af1 #ag2 pp4 #deg1 c4 ,it should be borne in mind that the highest kind of ,consideratio is identical1 in ,bernard's phraseology1 with ,contemplatio2 and the terms are thus often used interchangeably4 ,generally1 ,consideratio is applied to inquiry1 ,contemplatio to intuition4 ,de ,consid4 lib4 ii4 cap4 #b4 ,note to page #adf4 ,see ,vita1 ii4 cap4 #bg1 where his biographer gives ,bernard's own modest estimate of these wonders4 ,wide1 indeed1 is the difference between the spiritual mysticism of ,bernard and the gross materialism and arrogant pretension which characterise the vision and the prophecy to which ,hildegard laid claim4 ,the morbid ambition of theurgic mysticism received a new impulse from the sanction afforded her by ,bernard and the contemporary popes4 ,bernard makes no doubt of the reality of her gifts1 and desires a place in her prayers4 7,epist4 #cff47 ,he did not foresee that the most extravagant and sensuous mysticism must soon of necessity displace the simpler and less dazzling4 ,he would be afraid of taking his place with ,rationalist mockers1 and a superstitious awe would readily persuade him that it was better to believe than to doubt4 ,when emperors and popes corresponded on familiar terms with the seeress2 when haughty nobles and learned ecclesiastics sought counsel at her oracle concerning future events1 and even for the decision of learned questions2 when all she said in answer was delivered as subject to and in the interest of the ,church ,catholic--was often the very echo of ,bernard's own warnings and exhortations--who was he1 that he should presume to limit the operations of the ,spirit of ,god8 ,many of ,hildegard's prophecies1 denouncing the ecclesiastical abuses of the day1 were decidedly reformatory in their tendency4 ,in this respect she is the forerunner of the ,abbot ,joachim of ,calabria1 and of ,st4 ,brigitta1 whose prophetic utterances startled the corrupt ,church in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries4 ,in her supernatural gift of language1 her attendant divine radiance1 and her fantastic revelations1 she1 like her friend ,elizabeth of ,schonau 7who had an angel to wait upon her1 and saw the eleven thousand virgins71 prepares the way for ,catharine of ,siena1 ,angela of ,foligni1 and ,st4 ,theresa4 ,footnote #ci3 ,see ,note #a1 p4 #adf4 ,footnote #dj3 ,see ,note #b1 p4 #adf4 ,footnote #da3 ,vita1 ii4 cap4 v4 ,footnote #db3 ,see the account of his diet1 and of the feebleness and sickness consequent on his austerities1 by the same biographer 7,alanus71 ,vita1 ii4 cap4 x41 in the ,paris reprint of #ahci1 from the ,benedictine edition of ,bernard1 tom4 ii4 p4 #bdbf4 ,john ,eremita describes the devil's visit to ,bernard1 #8ut ungeret sandalia sua secundum consuetudinem1' and relates the rebuke of the proud monk who would not wash the scutell in the kitchen4--,vita1 iv4 p4 #bejh4 ,footnote #dc3 ,vita1 ii4 cap4 x4 #cb4 ,footnote #dd3 ,epp4 cx41 cxi4 ,footnote #de3 ,chronologia ,bernardina1 ,opp4 tom4 i4 p4 #hc4 ,footnote #df3 ,epist4 cxli4 ,footnote #dg3 ,de ,consideratione1 ,,iv4 iii4 #g1 and ,,ii4 vi4 #aa1 pp4 #ajbh and #ajfj4 ,footnote #dh3 ,epist4 ccclxv4 to the ,archbishop of ,mayence1 against the fanatic ,rudolph4 ,footnote #di3 ,he thus distinguishes ,faith1 ,intellection1 and ,opinion3-,fides est voluntaria qudam et certa prlibatio necdum propalat veritatis4 ,intellectus est rei cujuscumque invisibilis certa et manifesta notitia4 ,opinio est quasi pro vero habere aliquid2 quod falsum esse nescias4444 ,quid igitur distat 7fides7 ab intellectu8 ,nempe quod etsi non habet incertum non magis quam intellectus1 habet tamen involucrum1 quod non intellectus4444 ,nil autem malumus scire1 quam qu fide jam scimus4 ,nil supererit ad beatitudinem1 cum qu jam certa sunt nobis1 erunt que et nuda4--,de ,consideratione1 ,v4 #d1 p4 #ajge4 ,footnote #ej3 ,see ,note1 p4 #adi4 ,footnote #ea3 ,see ,note1 p4 #adi4 ,footnote #eb3 ,see ,note #a1 p4 #aej4 ,footnote #ec3 ,see ,note #b1 p4 #aej4 ,footnote #ed3 ,sane in hoc gradu 7tertio7 diu statur3 et nescio si a quoquam hominum quartus in hac vita perfecte apprehenditur1 ut se scilicet diligat homo tantum propter ,deum4 ,asserant hoc si qui experti sunt3 mihi1 fateor1 impossibile videtur4--,de diligendo ,deo1 xv4 and ,epist4 xi4 #h4 ,and1 again1 in the same treatise 7vii4 #ag71--,non enim sine prmio diligitur ,deus1 etsi absque prmii intuitu diligendus sit4444 ,verus amor se ipso contentus est4 ,habet prmium1 sed id quod amatur4 ,footnote #ee3 ,see ,note1 p4 #aea4 ,,chapter ,,ii4 ,licht und ,farbe4 ,wohne1 du ewiglich ,eines1 dort bei dem ewiglich ,einen6 ,farbe1 du wechselnde1 komm' freundlich zum ,menschen herab6#ef ,,schiller4 ,on the next evening of meeting1 ,gower commenced as follows his promised paper on ,hugo and ,richard of ,st4 ,victor4 ,hugo of ,st4 ,victor4 ,the celebrated ,school of ,st4 ,victor 7so called from an ancient chapel in the suburbs of ,paris7 was founded by ,william of ,champeaux at the commencement of the twelfth century4 ,this veteran dialectician assumed there the habit of the regular canons of ,augustine1 and after an interval1 began to lecture once more to the students who flocked to his retirement4 ,in #aaad1 king and pope combined to elevate the priory to an abbacy4 ,bishops and nobles enriched it with their gifts4 ,the canons enjoyed the highest repute for sanctity and learning in that golden age of the canonical institute4 ,st4 ,victor colonized ,italy1 ,england1 ,scotland1 and ,lower ,saxony1 with establishments which regarded as their parent the mighty pile of building on the outskirts of ,paris4 ,within a hundred years from its foundation it numbered as its offspring thirty abbeys and more than eighty priories4 ,hugo of ,st4 ,victor was born in #ajig1 of a noble ,saxon family4 ,his boyhood was passed at the convent of ,hamersleben4 ,there he gave promise of his future eminence4 ,his thirst after information of every kind was insatiable4 ,the youth might often have been seen walking alone in the convent garden1 speaking and gesticulating1 imagining himself advocate1 preacher1 or disputant4 ,every evening he kept rigid account of his gains in knowledge during the day4 ,the floor of his room was covered with geometrical figures traced in charcoal4 ,many a winter's night1 he says1 he was waking between vigils in anxious study of a horoscope4 ,many a rude experiment in musical science did he try with strings stretched across a board4 ,even while a novice1 he began to write4 ,attracted by the reputation of the abbey of ,st4 ,victor1 he enrolled his name among the regular canons there4 ,not long after his arrival1 the emissaries of an archdeacon1 worsted in a suit with the chapter1 murdered the prior1 ,thomas4 ,hugo was elected to succeed him in the office of instructor4 ,he taught philosophy1 rhetoric1 and theology4 ,he seldom quitted the precincts of the convent1 and never aspired to farther preferment4 ,he closed a peaceful and honoured life at the age of forty-four1 leaving behind him those ponderous tomes of divinity to which ,aquinas and ,vincent of ,beauvais acknowledge their obligations1 and which gained for their author the name of a second ,augustine4#eg ,hitherto mysticism1 in the person of ,bernard1 has repudiated scholasticism4 ,in ,hugo1 and his successor ,richard1 the foes are reconciled4 ,bonaventura in the thirteenth1 and ,gerson in the fifteenth century1 are great names in the same province4 ,indeed1 throughout the middle ages1 almost everything that merits the title of mystical theology is characterized by some such endeavour to unite the contemplation of the mystic with the dialectics of the schoolman4 ,there was good in the attempt4 ,mysticism lost much of its vagueness1 and scholasticism much of its frigidity4 ,hugo was well fitted by temperament to mediate between the extreme tendencies of his time4 ,utterly destitute of that daring originality which placed ,erigena at least two centuries in advance of his age1 his very gentleness and caution would alone have rendered him more moderate in his views and more catholic in sympathy than the intense and vehement ,bernard4 ,hugo1 far from proscribing science and denouncing speculation1 called in the aid of the logical gymnastics of his day to discipline the mind for the adventurous enterprise of the mystic4 ,if he regarded with dislike the idle word-warfare of scholastic ingenuity1 he was quite as little disposed to bid common sense a perpetual farewell among the cloudiest realms of mysticism4 ,his style is clear1 his spirit kindly1 his judgment generally impartial4 ,it is refreshing in those days of ecclesiastical domination to meet with at least a single mind to whom that ,romanist ideal--an absolute uniformity in religious opinion--appeared both impossible and undesirable4#eh ,a few words may present the characteristic outlines of his mysticism4 ,it avails itself of the aid of speculation to acquire a scientific form--in due subjection1 of course1 to the authority of the ,church4 ,it will ground its claim on a surer tenure than mere religious emotion or visionary reverie4 ,hugo1 with all his contemporaries1 reverenced the ,pseudo-,dionysius4 ,his more devout and practical spirit laboured at a huge commentary on the ,heavenly ,hierarchy1 like a good angel1 condemned for some sin to servitude under a paynim giant4 ,in the hands of his commentator1 ,dionysius becomes more scriptural and human--for the cloister1 even edifying1 but remains as uninteresting as ever4 ,hugo makes a threefold division of our faculties4 ,first1 and lowest1 ,cogitatio4 ,a stage higher stands ,meditatio3 by this he means reflection1 investigation4 ,third1 and highest1 ranges ,contemplatio3 in this state the mind possesses in light the truth which1 in the preceding1 it desired and groped after in twilight4#ei ,he compares this spiritual process to the application of fire to green wood4 ,it kindles with difficulty2 clouds of smoke arise2 a flame is seen at intervals1 flashing out here and there2 as the fire gains strength1 it surrounds1 it pierces the fuel2 presently it leaps and roars in triumph--the nature of the wood is being transformed into the nature of fire4 ,then1 the struggle over1 the crackling ceases1 the smoke is gone1 there is left a tranquil1 friendly brightness1 for the master-element has subdued all into itself4 ,so1 says ,hugo1 do sin and grace contend2 and the smoke of trouble and anguish hangs over the strife4 ,but when grace grows stronger1 and the soul's eye clearer1 and truth pervades and swallows up the kindling1 aspiring nature1 then comes holy calm1 and love is all in all4 ,save ,god in the heart1 nothing of self is left4#fj ,looking through this and other metaphors as best we may1 we discover that ,contemplation has two provinces--a lower and a higher4 ,the lower degree of contemplation1 which ranks next above ,meditation1 is termed ,speculation4 ,it is distinct from ,contemplation proper1 in its strictest signification4 ,the attribute of ,meditation is ,care4 ,the brow is heavy with inquiring thought1 for the darkness is mingled with the light4 ,the attribute of ,speculation is ,admiration--,wonder4 ,in it the soul ascends1 as it were1 a watch-tower 7specula71 and surveys everything earthly4 ,on this stage stood the ,preacher when he beheld the sorrow and the glory of the world1 and pronounced all things human ,vanity4 ,to this elevation1 whence he philosophizes concerning all finite things1 man is raised by the faith1 the feeling1 and the ascetic practice of religion4 ,speculative illumination is the reward of devotion4 ,but at the loftiest elevation man beholds all things in ,god4 ,contemplation1 in its narrower and highest sense1 is immediate intuition of the ,infinite4 ,the attribute of this stage is ,blessedness4 ,as a mystic1 ,hugo cannot be satisfied with that mediate and approximate apprehension of the ,divine ,nature which here on earth should amply satisfy all who listen to ,scripture and to ,reason4 ,augustine had told him of a certain spiritual sense1 or eye of the soul4 ,this he makes the organ of his mysticism4 ,admitting the incomprehensibility of the ,supreme1 yet chafing as he does at the limitations of our finite nature1 ,faith--which is here the natural resource of ,reason--fails to content him4 ,he leaps to the conclusion that there must be some immediate intuition of ,deity by means of a separate faculty vouchsafed for the purpose4 ,you have sometimes seen from a hill-side a valley1 over the undulating floor of which there has been laid out a heavy mantle of mist4 ,the spires of the churches rise above it--you seem to catch the glistening of a roof or of a vane--here and there a higher house1 a little eminence1 or some tree-tops1 are seen1 islanded in the white vapour1 but the lower and connecting objects1 the linking lines of the roads1 the plan and foundation of the whole1 are completely hidden4 ,hugo felt that1 with all our culture1 yea1 with ,aristotle to boot1 revealed truth was seen by us somewhat thus imperfectly4 ,no doubt certain great facts and truths stand out clear and prominent1 but there is a great deal at their basis1 connecting them1 attached to them1 which is impervious to our ordinary faculties4 ,we are1 in fact1 so lamentably far from knowing all about them4 ,is there not some power of vision to be attained which may pierce these clouds1 lay bare to us these relationships1 nay1 even more1 be to us like the faculty conferred by ,asmodeus1 and render the very roofs transparent1 so that from topstone to foundation1 within and without1 we may gaze our fill8 ,and if to realize this wholly be too much for sinful creatures1 yet may not the wise and good approach such vision1 and attain as the meed of their faith1 even here1 a superhuman elevation1 and in a glance at least at the ,heavenly ,truth unveiled1 escape the trammels of the finite8 ,such probably was the spirit of the question which possessed1 with a ceaseless importunity1 the minds of men1 ambitious alike to define with the schoolman and to gaze with the seer4 ,hugo answers that the eye of ,contemplation--closed by sin1 but opened more or less by grace--furnishes the power thus desiderated4#fa ,but at this1 his highest point1 he grasps a shadow instead of the substance4 ,something within the mind is mistaken for a manifestation from without4 ,a mental creation is substituted for that ,divine ,existence which his rapture seems to reveal4 ,he asserts1 however1 that this ,eye beholds what the eye of sense and the eye of reason cannot see1 what is both within us and above us--,god4 ,within us1 he cries1 is both what we must flee and whither we must flee4 ,the highest and the inmost are1 so far1 identical4#fb ,thus do the pure in heart see ,god4 ,in such moments the soul is transported beyond sense and reason1 to a state similar to that enjoyed by angelic natures4 ,the contemplative life is prefigured by the ark in the deluge4 ,without are waves1 and the dove can find no rest4 ,as the holy ship narrowed toward the summit1 so doth this life of seclusion ascend from the manifold and changeful to the ,divine ,immutable ,unity4 ,the simplification of the soul he inculcates is somewhat analogous to the ,haplosis of the ,neo-,platonists4 ,all sensuous images are to be discarded2 we must concentrate ourselves upon the inmost source1 the nude essence of our being4 ,he is careful1 accordingly1 to guard against the delusions of the imagination4#fc ,he cautions his readers lest they mistake a mere visionary phantasm--some shape of imaginary glory1 for a supernatural manifestation of the ,divine ,nature to the soul4 ,his mysticism is intellectual1 not sensuous4 ,too practical for a sentimental ,quietism or any of its attendant effeminacies1 and1 at the same time1 too orthodox to verge on pantheism1 his mystical doctrine displays less than the usual proportion of extravagance1 and the ardent eloquence of his #8,praise of ,love' may find an echo in every ,christian heart4 ,richard of ,st4 ,victor4 ,now1 let us pass on to ,richard of ,st4 ,victor4 ,he was a native of ,scotland1 first the pupil and afterwards the successor of ,hugo4 ,richard was a man whose fearless integrity and energetic character made themselves felt at ,st4 ,victor not less than the intellectual subtilty and flowing rhetoric which distinguished his prelections4 ,he had far more of the practical reformer in him than the quiet ,hugo4 ,loud and indignant are his rebukes of the empty disputation of the mere schoolman1--of the avarice and ambition of the prelate4 ,his soul is grieved that there should be men who blush more for a false quantity than for a sin1 and stand more in awe of ,priscian than of ,christ4#fd ,alas6 he exclaims1 how many come to the cloister to seek ,christ1 and find lying in that sepulchre only the linen clothes of your formalism6 ,how many mask their cowardice under the name of love1 and let every abuse run riot on the plea of peace6 ,how many others call their hatred of individuals hatred of iniquity1 and think to be righteous cheaply by mere outcry against other men's sins6 ,complaints like these are not without their application nearer home4#fe ,his zeal did not confine itself to words4 ,in the year #aafb he was made prior4 ,ervisius the abbot was a man of worldly spirit1 though his reputation had been high when he entered on his office4 ,he gradually relaxed all discipline1 persecuted the ,god-fearing brethren1 and favoured flatterers and spies2 he was a very ,dives in sumptuousness1 and the fair name of ,st4 ,victor suffered no small peril at his hands4 ,the usual evils of broken monastic rule were doubtless there1 though little is specified--canons going in and out1 whither they would1 without inquiry1 accounts in confusion1 sacristy neglected1 weeds literally and spiritually growing in holy places1 wine-bibbing and scandal carried on at a lamentable rate1 sleepy lethargy and noisy brawl1 the more shameful because unpunished4 ,ervisius was good at excuses1 and of course good for nothing else4 ,if complaints were made to him1 it was always that cellarer1 that pittanciar1 or that refectorarius--never his fault4 ,these abuses must soon draw attention from without4 ,richard and the better sort are glad4 ,the pope writes to the king about the sad accounts he hears4 ,bishops bestir themselves4 ,orders come from ,rome forbidding the abbot to take any step without the consent of the majority of the chapter4 ,richard's position is delicate1 between his vow of obedience to his superior and the good of the convent4 ,but he plays his part like a man4 ,an archbishop is sent to ,st4 ,victor to hold a commission of inquiry4 ,all is curiosity and bustle1 alarm and hope among the canons1 innocent and guilty4 ,at last1 ,ervisius1 after giving them much trouble1 is induced to resign4 ,they choose an able successor1 harmony and order gradually return1 and ,richard1 having seen the abbey prosperous once more1 dies in the following year4#ff ,in the writings of ,richard1 as compared with those of ,hugo1 ,i find that what belongs to the schoolman has received a more elaborate and complex development1 while what belongs to the mystic has also attained an ampler and more prolific growth4 ,all the art of the scholastic is there--the endless ramification and subdivision of minute distinctions2 all the intellectual fortification of the time--the redoubts1 ravelins1 counterscarps1 and bastions of dry1 stern logic2 and among these1 within their lines and at last above them all1 is seen an almost oriental luxuriance of fancy and of rhetoric--palm and pomegranate1 sycamore and cypress1 solemn cedar shadows1 the gloom in the abysses of the soul1--luscious fruit and fragrant flowers1 the triumphs of its ecstasy1 all blissful with the bloom and odours of the upper ,paradise4 ,he is a master alike in the serviceable science of self-scrutiny1 and in the imaginary one of self-transcendence4 ,his works afford a notable example of that fantastic use of ,scripture prevalent throughout the ,middle ,age4 ,his psychology1 his metaphysics1 his theology1 are all extracted from the most unlikely quarters in the ,bible by allegorical interpretation4 ,every logical abstraction is attached to some personage or object in the ,old ,testament history1 as its authority and type4 ,rachel and ,leah are ,reason and ,affection4 ,bilhah and ,zilpah are ,imagination and ,sense4 ,his divinity is embroidered on the garments of ,aaron1 engraven on the sides of the ark1 hung on the pins and rings of the tabernacle4 ,his definitions and his fancies build in the eaves of ,solomon's temple1 and make their #8pendent bed and procreant cradle' in the carved work of the holy place4 ,to follow the thread of his religious philosophy1 you have to pursue his agile and discursive thoughts1 as the sparrow-hawk the sparrow1 between the capitals1 among the cedar rafters1 over the gilded roof1 from court to court1 column to column1 and sometimes after all the chase is vain1 for they have escaped into the bosom of a cloud4#fg ,on a basis similar to that of ,hugo1 ,richard erects six stages of ,contemplation4 ,the two first grades fall within the province of ,imagination2 the two next belong to ,reason2 the two highest to ,intelligence4 ,the objects of the first two are ,sensibilia2 of the second pair1 ,intelligibilia 7truths concerning what is invisible1 but accessible to reason72 of the third1 ,intellectibilia 7unseen truth above reason74 ,these1 again1 have their subdivisions1 into which we need not enter4#fh ,within the depths of thine own soul1 he would say1 thou wilt find a threefold heaven--the imaginational1 the rational1 and the intellectual4 ,the third heaven is open only to the eye of ,intelligence--that ,eye whose vision is clarified by divine grace and by a holy life4 ,this ,eye enjoys the immediate discernment of unseen truth1 as the eye of the body beholds sensible objects4 ,his use of the word ,intelligence is not always uniform4 ,it would seem that this divinely-illumined eye of the mind is to search first into the deeps of our own nature 7inferiora invisibilia nostra71 and then upward into the heights of the divine 7superiora invisibilia divina74#fi ,for the highest degrees of ,contemplation penitence avails more than science2 sighs obtain what is impossible to reason4 ,this exalted intuition begins on earth1 and is consummated in heaven4 ,some1 by divine assistance1 reach it as the goal of long and arduous effort4 ,others await it1 and are at times rapt away unawares into the heaven of heavens4 ,some good men have been ever unable to attain the highest stage2 few are fully winged with all the six pinions of ,contemplation4 ,in the ecstasy he describes1 there is supposed to be a dividing asunder of the soul and the spirit as by the sword of the ,spirit of ,god4 ,the body sleeps1 and the soul and all the visible world is shut away4 ,the spirit is joined to the ,lord1 and one with ,him1--transcends itself and all the limitations of human thought4 ,in such a moment it is conscious of no division1 of no change2 all contraries are absorbed1 the part does not appear less than the whole1 nor is the whole greater than a part2 the universal is seen as particular1 the particular as universal2 we forget both all that is without and all that is within ourselves2 all is one and one is all2 and when the rapture is past the spirit returns from its trance with a dim and dizzy memory of unutterable glory4#gj ,this account presents in some parts the very language in which ,schelling and his disciples are accustomed to describe the privilege of ,intellectual ,intuition4 ,,atherton4 ,i move thanks to ,gower4 ,,willoughby4 ,which ,i second4 ,it has been strange enough to see our painter turn bookworm1 and oscillating1 for the last fortnight or more1 between the forest sunset on his easel and ,atherton's old black-letter copy of ,richard of ,st4 ,victor4 ,,gower4 ,the change was very pleasant4 ,as grateful1 ,i should think1 as the actual alternation such men as ,hugo and ,richard must have enjoyed when they betook themselves1 after the lassitude that followed an ecstasy1 to a scholastic argumentation2 or again refreshed themselves1 after the dryness of that1 by an imaginative flight into the region of allegory1 or by some contemplative reverie which carried them far enough beyond the confines of logic4 ,the monastic fancy found this interchange symbolized in the upward and downward motion of the holy bell4 ,is it not in ,longfellow's ,golden ,legend that a friar says-- ,and the upward and downward motions show ,that we touch upon matters high and low2 ,and the constant change and transmutation ,of action and of contemplation2 ,downward1 the ,scripture brought from on high1 ,upward1 exalted again to the sky2 ,downward1 the literal interpretation1 ,upward1 the ,vision and ,mystery6 ,,willoughby4 ,much as a miracle-play must have been very refreshing after a public disputation1 or as the most overwrought and most distinguished members of the legal profession are said to devour with most voracity every good novel they can catch4 ,,atherton4 ,it is remarkable to see the mystical interpreters of that day committing the two opposite mistakes1 now of regarding what is symbolical in ,scripture as literal1 and again of treating what is literal as symbolical4 ,,gower4 ,somewhat like the early travellers1 who mistook the hybrid figures of the hieroglyphic sculptures they saw for representations of living animals existing somewhere up the country1 and then1 at other times1 fancied they found some profound significance in a simple tradition or an ordinary usage dictated by the climate4 ,,willoughby4 ,yet there lies a great truth in the counsel they give us to rise above all sensuous images in our contemplation of the ,divine ,nature4 ,,atherton4 ,no doubt4 ,god is a spirit4 ,the ,infinite ,mind must not be represented to our thought through the medium of any material image1 as though in that we had all the truth4 ,we must not confound the medium with the object4 ,but the object is in fact inaccessible without a medium4 ,the ,divine ,nature is resolved into a mere blank diffusion when regarded as apart from a ,divine ,character4 ,we are practically without a ,god in the presence of such an abstraction4 ,to enable us to realize personality and character there must be a medium1 a representation1 some analogy drawn from relationships or objects with which we are acquainted4 ,the fault ,i find with these mystics is1 that they encourage the imagination to run riot in provinces where it is not needed1 and prohibit its exercise where it would render the greatest service4 ,orthodox as they were in their day1 they yet attempt to gaze on the ,divine ,nature in its absoluteness and abstraction1 apart from the manifestation of it to our intellect1 our heart1 and our imagination1 which is made in the incarnate ,christ ,jesus4 ,god has supplied them with this help to their apprehension of ,him1 but they hope by ,his help to dispense with it4 ,they neglect the possible and practical in striving after a dazzling impossibility which allures their spiritual ambition4 ,this is a natural consequence of that extravagance of spirituality which tells man that his highest aim is to escape from his human nature--not to work under the conditions of his finite being1 but to violate and escape them as far as possible in quest of a superhuman elevation4 ,we poor mortals1 as ,schiller says1 must have colour4 ,the attempt to evade this law always ends in substituting the mind's creation for the mind's ,creator4 ,,willoughby4 ,i cannot say that ,i clearly understand what this much-extolled introspection of theirs is supposed to reveal to them4 ,,atherton4 ,neither1 very probably1 did they4 ,but though an exact localization may be impossible1 ,i think we can say whereabout they are in their opinion on this point4 ,their position is intermediate4 ,they stand between the truth which assigns to an internal witness and an external revelation their just relative position1 and that extreme of error which would deny the need or possibility of any external revelation whatever4 ,they do not ignore either factor2 they unduly increase one of them4 ,,willoughby4 ,good4 ,will you have the kindness first to give me the truth as you hold it8 ,then we shall have the terminus a quo4 ,,atherton4 ,there is what has been variously termed an experimental or moral evidence for ,christianity1 which comes from within4 ,if any one reverently searches the ,scriptures1 desiring sincerely to know and do the will of ,god as there revealed1 he has the promise of ,divine assistance4 ,he will find1 in the evil of his own heart1 a reality answering to the statements of the ,bible4 ,he will find1 in repentance and in faith1 in growing love and hope1 that very change taking place within which is described in the book without4 ,his nature is being gradually brought into harmony with the truth there set forth4 ,he has experienced the truth of the ,saviour's words1 #8,if any man will do his will1 he shall know of the doctrine whether it be of ,god4' ,but in this experimental evidence there is nothing mystical4 ,it does not at all supersede or infringe on the evidence of testimony1--the convincing argument from without1 which may at first have made the man feel it his duty to study a book supported by a claim so strong4 ,neither does he cease to use his reason1 when looking within1 any more than when listening to witness from without4 ,in self-observation1 if in any exercise1 reason must be vigilant4 ,neither is such inward evidence a miraculous experience peculiar to himself4 ,it is common to multitudes4 ,it is open to all who will take the same course he has done4 ,he does not reach it by a faculty which transcends his human nature1 and leaves in the distance every power which has been hitherto in such wholesome exercise4 ,there is here no special revelation1 distinct from and supplementary to the general4 ,such a privilege would render an appeal from himself to others impossible4 ,it would entrench each ,christian in his individuality apart from the rest4 ,it would give to conscientious differences on minor points the authority of so many conflicting inspirations4 ,it would issue in the ultimate disintegration of the ,christian body4 ,the error of the mystics we are now considering consists in an exaggeration of the truth concerning experimental evidence4 ,they seem to say that the ,spirit will manifest to the devout mind verities within itself which are1 as it were1 the essence and original of the truths which the ,church without has been accustomed to teach2 so that1 supposing a man to have rightly used the external revelation1 and at a certain point to suspend all reference to it1 and to be completely secluded from all external influences1 there would then be manifest to him1 in ,god1 the ,ideas themselves which have been developed in time into a ,bible and a historical ,christianity4 ,the soul1 on this ,platonist principle1 enjoys a commerce once more with the world of ,intelligence in the depth of the ,divine ,nature4 ,she recovers her wings4 ,the obliterations on the tablet of ,reminiscence are supplied4 ,a theosophist like ,paracelsus would declare that the whole universe is laid up potentially in the mind of man--the microcosm answering to the macrocosm4 ,in a similar way these mystics would have us believe that there is in man a microdogma within1 answering to the macrodogma of the ,church without4 ,accordingly they deem it not difficult to discover a ,christology in psychology1 a ,trinity in metaphysics4 ,hence1 too1 this erroneous assertion that if the heathen had only known themselves1 they would have known ,god4 ,,gower4 ,if some of our modern advocates of the theory of ,insight be right1 they ought to have succeeded in both4 ,,atherton4 ,that #8,know thyself' was a precept which had its worth in the sense ,socrates gave it4 ,in the sense of ,plotinus it was a delusion4 ,applied to morals1--regarded as equivalent to a call to obey conscience1 it might render service4 ,and yet varying and imperfect consciences--conflicting inner laws1 could give men as an inference no immutable and perfect ,lawgiver4 ,understood as equivalent to saying that the mind is in itself an all-sufficient and infallible repertory of spiritual truth1 history in every page refutes it4 ,the monstrosities of idolatry1 the disputes of philosophical schools1 the aspirations among the best of the sages of antiquity after a divine teaching of some sort--all these facts are fatal to the notion4 ,it is one thing to be able in some degree to appreciate the excellence of revealed truth1 and quite another to be competent to discover it for ourselves4 ,lactantius was right when he exclaimed1 as he surveyed the sad and wasteful follies of heathendom1 ,o quam difficilis est ignorantibus veritas1 et quam facilis scientibus6 ,,willoughby4 ,i must say ,i can scarcely conceive it possible to exclude from the mind every trace and result of what is external1 and to gaze down into the depths of our simple self-consciousness as the mystic bids us do4 ,it is like forming a moral estimate of a man exclusive of the slightest reference to his character4 ,,gower4 ,i think that as the result of such a process1 we should find only what we bring4 ,assuredly this must continually have been the case with our friends ,hugo and ,richard4 ,the method reminds me of a trick ,i have heard of as sometimes played on the proprietor of a supposed coal-mine in which no coal could be found1 with a view to induce him to continue his profitless speculation4 ,geologists1 learned theoretical men1 protest that there can be no coal on that estate--there is none in that part of ,england4 ,but the practical man puts some lumps slyly in his pocket1 goes down with them1 and brings them up in triumph1 as fresh from the depths of the earth4 ,,atherton4 ,some ,german writers1 even of the better sort have committed a similar mistake in their treatment of the life of ,christ4 ,first they set to work to construct the idea of ,christ 7out of the depths of their consciousness1 ,i suppose71 then they study and compare the gospels to find that idea realized4 ,they think they have established the claim of ,evangelists when they can show that they have found their idea developed in the biography they give us4 ,as though the ,german mind could have had any idea of ,christ at all within its profundities1 but for the fishermen in the first instance4 ,,gower4 ,this said ,eye of ,intelligence appears to me a pure fiction4 ,what am ,i to make of a faculty which is above1 and independent of1 memory1 reason1 feeling1 imagination1--without cognizance of those external influences 7which at least contribute to make us what we are71 and without organs1 instruments1 or means of any kind for doing any sort of work whatever8 ,surely this complete and perpetual separation between intuition and everything else within and without us1 is a most unphilosophical dichotomy of the mind of man4 ,,atherton4 ,equally so1 whether it be regarded as natural to man or as a supernatural gift4 ,our intuitions1 however rapid1 must rest on the belief of some fact1 the recognition of some relationship or sense of fitness1 which rests again on a judgment1 right or wrong4 ,,willoughby4 ,and in such judgment the world without must have large share4 ,,gower4 ,for the existence of such a separate faculty as a spiritual gift we have only the word of ,hugo and his brethren4 ,the faith of ,scripture1 instead of being cut off from the other powers of the mind1 is sustained by them1 and strengthens as we exercise them4 ,,atherton4 ,president ,edwards1 in his ,treatise on the ,affections1 appears to me to approach the error of those mystics1 in endeavouring to make it appear that regeneration imparts a new power1 rather than a new disposition1 to the mind4 ,such a doctrine cuts off the common ground between the individual ,christian and other men4 ,according to the ,victorines it would seem to be the glory of ,christianity that it enables man1 at intervals at least1 to denude himself of reason4 ,to me its triumph appears to consist in this1 that it makes him1 for the first time1 truly reasonable1 who before acted unreasonably because of a perverted will4 ,note to page #aeh4 ,the treatise by ,hugo1 entitled ,de ,vanitate ,mundi1 is a dialogue between teacher and scholar1 in which1 after directing his pupil to survey the endless variety and vicissitude of life1 after showing him the horrors of a shipwreck1 the house of ,dives1 a marriage feast1 the toils and disputes of the learned1 the instructor bids him shelter himself from this sea of care in that ark of ,god1 the religious life4 ,he proceeds to describe that inner ,eye1 that oculus cordis1 whose vision is so precious4 #8,thou hast another eye1' he says 7lib4 i4 p4 #agb71 #8an eye within1 far more piercing than the other thou speakest of1--one that beholds at once the past1 the present1 and the future2 which diffuses through all things the keen brightness of its vision2 which penetrates what is hidden1 investigates what is impalpable2 which needs no foreign light wherewith to see1 but gazes by a light of its own1 peculiar to itself 7luce aliena ad videndum non indigens1 sed sua ac propria luce prospiciens74 ,self-collection is opposed 7p4 #age7 to distraction1 or attachment to the manifold1--is declared to be restauratio1 and at the same time elevatio4 ,the scholar inquires1 #8,if the heart of man be an ark or ship1 how can man be said to enter into his own heart1 or to navigate the universe with his heart8 ,lastly1 if ,god1 whom you call the harbour1 be above1 what can you mean by such an unheard-of thing as a voyage which carries the ship upwards1 and bears away the mariner out of himself8' ,the teacher replies1 #8,when we purpose elevating the eye of the mind to things invisible1 we must avail ourselves of certain analogies drawn from the objects of sense4 ,accordingly1 when1 speaking of things spiritual and unseen1 we say that anything is highest1 we do not mean that it is at the top of the sky1 but that it is the inmost of all things4 ,to ascend to ,god1 therefore1 is to enter into ourselves1 and not only so1 but in our inmost self to transcend ourselves4 7,ascendere ergo ad ,deum hoc est intrare ad semet ipsum1 et non solum ad se intrare1 sed ineffabili quodam modo in intimis etiam se ipsum transire1 p4 #agf47 ,hugo1 like ,richard1 associates this illumination inseparably with the practices of devotion4 ,the tree of ,wisdom within is watered by ,grace4 ,it stands by ,faith1 and is rooted in ,god4 ,as it flourishes1 we die to the world1 we empty ourselves1 we sigh over even the necessary use of anything earthly4 ,devotion makes it bud1 constancy of penitence causes it to grow4 ,such penitence 7compunctio7 he compares to digging in search of a treasure1 or to find a spring4 ,sin has concealed this hoard--buried this water-source down beneath the many evils of the heart4 ,the watching and the prayer of the contrite spirit clears away what is earthly1 and restores the divine gift4 ,the spirit1 inflamed with heavenly desire1 soars upward--becomes1 as it ascends1 less gross1 as a column of smoke is least dense towards its summit1 till we are all spirit2 are lost to mortal ken1 as the cloud melts into the air1 and find a perfect peace within1 in secret gazing on the face of the ,lord4 ,de ,arca morali1 lib4 iii4 cap4 #g4 ,note to page #afb4 ,see the introductory chapters of the ,benjamin ,minor1 or ,de prep4 anim4 ad contemp4 fol4 #cd1 c4--,richard rates this kind of interpretation very highly1 and looks for success therein to ,divine ,illumination4 7,de eruditione interioris hominis1 cap4 vi4 fol4 #be47 ,a passage or two from an appendix to his ,treatise on ,contemplation1 may serve1 once for all1 as a specimen of his mystical interpretation4 ,it is entitled ,nonnull allegori tabernaculi fderis4 #8,by the tabernacle of the covenant understand the state of perfection4 ,where perfection of the soul is1 there is the indwelling of ,god4 ,the nearer we approach perfection1 the more closely are we united with ,god4 ,the tabernacle must have a court about it4 ,understand by this the discipline of the body2 by the tabernacle itself1 the discipline of the mind4 ,the one is useless without the other4 ,the court is open to the sky1 and so the discipline of the body is accessible to all4 ,what was within the tabernacle could not be seen by those without4 ,none knows what is in the inner man save the spirit of man which is in him4 ,the inner man is divided into rational and intellectual2 the former represented by the outer1 the latter by the inner part of the tabernacle4 ,we call that rational perception by which we discern what is within ourselves4 ,we here apply the term intellectual perception to that faculty by which we are elevated to the survey of what is divine4 ,man goes out of the tabernacle into the court in the exercise of works4 ,he enters the first tabernacle when he returns to himself4 ,he enters the second when he transcends himself4 ,self-transcendence is elevation into ,deity4 7,transcendendo sane seipsum elevatur in ,deum47 ,in the former1 man is occupied with the consideration of himself2 in the latter1 with the contemplation of ,god4 #8,the ark of the covenant represents the grace of contemplation4 ,the kinds of contemplation are six1 each distinct from the rest4 ,two of them are exercised with regard to visible creatures1 two are occupied with invisible1 the two last with what is divine4 ,the first four are represented in the ark1 the two others are set forth in the figures of the cherubim4 ,mark the difference between the wood and the gold4 ,there is the same difference between the objects of imagination and the objects of reason4 ,by imagination we behold the forms of things visible1 by ratiocination we investigate their causes4 ,the three kinds of consideration which have reference to things1 works1 and morals1 belong to the length1 breadth1 and height of the ark respectively4 ,in the consideration of form and matter1 our knowledge avails a full cubit4 7,it is equivalent to a cubit when complete47 ,but our knowledge of the nature of things is only partial4 ,for this part1 therefore1 we reckon only half a cubit4 ,accordingly1 the length of the ark is two cubits and a half4'444 ,and thus he proceeds concerning the crown1 the rings1 the staves1 the mercy-seat1 the cherubim1 c4--,fol4 #fc1 c4 ,note to page #afc4 ,the three heavens within the mind are described at length4 7,de ,contemp4 lib4 iii4 cap4 #h47 ,in the first are contained the images of all things visible2 in the second lie the definitions and principles of things seen1 the investigations made concerning things unseen2 in the third are contemplations of things divine1 beheld as they truly are--a sun that knows no going down1--and there1 and there alone1 the kingdom of ,god within us in its glory4--,cap4 x4 fol #eb4 ,the eye of ,intelligence is thus defined 7cap4 ix473--,intelligenti siquidem oculus est sensus ille quo invisibilia videmus3 non sicut oculo rationis quo occulta et absentia per investigationem qurimus et invenimus2 sicut spe causas per effectus1 vel effectus per causas1 et alia atque alia quocunque ratiocinandi modo comprehendimus4 ,sed sicut corporalia corporeo sensu videre solemus visibiliter potentialiter et corporaliter2 sic utique intellectualis ille sensus invisibilia capit invisibiliter quidem1 sed potentialiter1 sed essentialiter4 7,fol4 #eb47 ,he then goes on to speak of the veil drawn over this organ by sin1 and admits that even when illuminated from above1 its gaze upon our inner self is not so piercing as to be able to discern the essence of the soul4 ,the inner verities are said to be within1 the upper1 beyond the veil4 #8,it may be questioned1 however1 whether we are to see with this same eye of ,intelligence the things beyond the veil1 or whether we use one sense to behold the invisible things which are divine1 and another to behold the invisible things of our own nature4 ,but those who maintain that there is one sense for the intuition of things above and another for those below1 must prove it as well as they can4 ,i believe that in this way they introduce much confusion into the use of this word ,intelligence1--now extending its signification to a speculation which is occupied with what is above1 and now confining it to what is below1 and sometimes including both senses4 ,this twofold intuition of things above and things below1 whether we call it1 as it were1 a double sense in one1 or divide it1 is yet the instrument of the same sense1 or a twofold effect of the same instrument1 and whichever we choose1 there can be no objection to our saying that they both belong to the intellectual heaven4' ,there is certainly much of the confusion of which he complains in his own use of the word1--a confusion which is perhaps explained by supposing that he sometimes allows ,intelligence to extend its office below its proper province1 though no other faculty can rise above the limits assigned to it4 ,intelligence may sometimes survey from her altitude the more slow and laborious processes of reason1 though she never descends to such toil4 ,he dwells constantly on the importance of self-knowledge1 self-simplification1 self-concentration1 as essential to the ascent of the soul4--,de ,contemp4 lib4 iii4 c4 #c1 c4 #f2 and on the difficulty of this attainment1 lib4 iv4 c4 #f4 ,note to page #afc4 ,de ,contemp4 lib4 iv4 cap4 #f4 ,ibid4 cap4 #bc1 and comp4 lib4 v4 cap4 #a4 ,also iv4 cap4 #aj4 ,he calls it expressly a vision face to face3--,egressus autem quasi facie ad faciem intuetur1 qui per mentis excessus extra semetipsum ductus summ sapienti lumen sine aliquo involucro figurarum ve adumbratione2 denique non per speculum et in enigmate1 sed in simplici 7ut sic dicam7 veritate contemplatur4--,fol4 #ef4 ,see also lib4 v4 cpp4 #d1 #e1 where he enters at large on the degrees and starting-points of self-transcendence4 ,comp4 iv4 c4 #b1 fol4 #fj4 ,de ,contemp4 i4 cap4 #aj1 describes the six wings1 and declares that in a future state we shall possess them all4 ,speaking of ecstasy1 he says3--#8,cum enim per mentis excessum supra sive intra nosmetipsos in divinorum contemplationem rapimur exteriorum omnium statim immo non solum eorum qu extra nos verum etiam eorum qu in nobis sunt omnium obliviscimur4' ,when explaining the separation of soul and spirit1 he exclaims1--#8,o alta quies1 ,o sublimis requies1 ubi omnis quod humanitus moveri solet motum omnem amittit2 ubi omnis qui tunc est motus divinitus fit et in ,deum transit4 ,hic ille spiritus efflatus in manus patris commendatur1 non 7ut ille somniator ,jacob7 scala indiget ut ad tertium 7ne dicam ad primum7 clum evolet4 ,quid quso scala indigeat quem pater inter manus bajulat ut ad tertii cli secreta rapiat intantum ut glorietur1 et dicat1 ,dextera tua suscepit me4444 ,spiritus ab infimis dividitur ut ad summa sublimetur4 ,spiritus ab anima scinditur ut ,domino uniatur4 ,qui enim adhret ,domino unus spiritus est4--,de extermin4 mali et promotione boni1 cap4 xviii4 ,again 7,de ,contemp4 lib4 iv4 c4 #d71 ,in hac gemina speculatione nihil imaginarium1 nihil fantasticum debet occurrere4 ,longe enim omnem corpore similitudinis proprietatem excedit quicquid spectaculi tibi hc gemina novissimi operis specula proponit4444 ,ubi pars non est minor suo toto1 nec totum universalius suo individuo2 immo ubi pars a toto non minuitur1 totum ex partibus non constituitur2 quia simplex est quod universaliter proponitur et universale quod quasi particulare profertur2 ubi totum singula1 ubi omnia unum et unum omnia4 ,in his utique absque dubio succumbit humana ratio1 et quid faciat ibi imaginatio8 ,absque dubio in ejusmodi spectaculo officere potest2 adjuvare omnino non potest4 ,elsewhere he describes the state as one of rapturous spiritual intoxication4 ,magnitudine jocunditatis et exultationis mens hominis a seipsa alienatur1 quum intima illa intern suavitatis abundantia potata1 immo plene inebriata1 quid sit1 quid fuerit1 penitus obliviscitur2 et in abalienationis excessum tripudii sui nimietate traducitur2 et in supermundanum quendam affectum sub quodam mir felicitatis statu raptim transformatur4--,ibid4 lib4 v4 c4 #e1 fol4 #fj4 ,footnote #ef3 ,light and ,colour4--,light1 thou eternally one1 dwell above by the great ,one ,eternal2 ,colour1 thou changeful1 in love come to ,humanity down6 ,footnote #eg3 ,liebner's ,hugo of ,st4 ,victor1 p4 #ba4--,this account of his early studies is given by ,hugo in his ,didascalion4 ,footnote #eh3 ,schmid1 ,der ,mysticismus des ,m4 ,a41 p4 #cjc4 ,footnote #ei3 ,comp4 ,de ,sacramentis1 lib4 v4 p4 x4 c4 #d4 7tom4 iii4 p4 #daa4 ,garzon's edition of his works1 ,cologne1 #afag47 ,footnote #fj3 ,see ,liebner1 p4 #cae4 ,footnote #fa3 ,de ,sacramentis1 lib4 i4 p4 i4 cap4 #ab4--,quisquis sic ordinatus est1 dignus est lumine solis3 ut mente sursum erecta et desiderio in superna defixo lumen summ veritatis contemplanti irradiet3 et jam non per speculum in nigmate1 sed in seipsa ut est veritatem agnoscat et sapiat4 ,footnote #fb3 ,see ,note1 p4 #agj4 ,footnote #fc3 ,tom4 iii4 p4 #cef4--;,in speaking of the days of creation and of the analogous seasons in the new creation within man1 he says that as ,god first saw the light1 that it was good1 and then divided it from the darkness1 so we must first try the spirit and examine our light with care1 ere we part it from what we call darkness1 since ,satan can assume the garb of an angel of light4 ,for an elaborate account of his entire theology1 the reader is referred to ,liebner's ,hugo von ,st4 ,victor und die ,theologischen ,richtungen seiner ,zeit2 one of the best of the numerous monographs ,german scholarship has produced4 ,footnote #fd3 ,richardi ,s4 ,victoris ,opp4 7,lyons1 #aecd71 ,de ,preparatione animi ad contemplationem1 fol4 #ci4 ,footnote #fe3 ,ibid4 cap4 xli4 ,footnote #ff3 ,engelhardt1 ,richard von ,st4 ,victor1 p4 #f4 ,footnote #fg3 ,see ,note1 p4 #aga4 ,footnote #fh3 ,the six degrees of contemplation are as follows 7,de ,contemp4 i4 #f1 fol4 #de73 #a ,in imaginatione secundum solam imaginationem4 #b ,in imaginatione secundum rationem4 #c ,in ratione secundum imaginationem4 #d ,in ratione secundum rationem4 #e ,supra rationem sed non prter rationem4 #f ,supra rationem videtur esse prter rationem4 ,the office of ,imagination to which the first two belong is ,thought 7,cogitatio72 the office of ,reason1 ,investigation 7,meditatio72 that of ,intelligence1 ,contemplation 7,contemplatio74--,ibid4 cap4 #c4 ,these three states are distinguished with much care1 and his definition of the last is as follows3--,contemplatio est perspicax et liber animi contuitus in res perspiciendas undequaque diffusus4--,ibid4 cap4 #d4 ,he draws the distinction between intelligibilia and intellectibilia in cap4 #g2 the former invisibilia ratione tamen comprehensibilia2 the latter invisibilia et human rationi incomprehensibilia4 ,the four lower kinds are principally occupied1 he adds1 with created objects1 the two last with what is uncreated and divine4--,fol4 #de4 ,footnote #fi3 ,see ,note1 p4 #aga4 ,footnote #gj3 ,see ,note1 p4 #agb4 ,,book ,,the ,,sixth ,,german ,,mysticism ,,in ,,the ,,fourteenth ,,century ,,chapter ,i4 ,i pray thee1 peace2 ,i will be flesh and blood1 ,for there was never yet philosopher1 ,that could endure the toothache patiently2 ,however they have writ the style of gods1 ,and made a pish at chance and sufferance4 ,,much ,,ado ,,about ,,nothing4 ,it is more healthful and nutritive to dig the earth1 and to eat of her fruits1 than to stare upon the greatest glories of the heavens1 and live upon the beams of the sun3 so unsatisfying a thing is rapture and transportation to the soul2 it often distracts the faculties1 but seldom does advantage piety1 and is full of danger in the greatest of its lustre4--,,jeremy ,,taylor4 ,the approach of summer separated the members of the ,ashfield circle for a time4 ,atherton purposed spending a few weeks in ,germany1 and ,willoughby consented to accompany him4 ,they were to visit once more ,bonn1 ,heidelberg1 and ,frankfort1 then to make ,strasburg their head quarters1 and thence to ramble about ,alsace4 ,as soon as ,atherton had left them1 ,mrs4 ,atherton and ,kate ,merivale set out for the ,west of ,england1 to visit their friends ,mr4 and ,mrs4 ,lowestoffe4 ,gower projected a sketching excursion along the banks of the ,wye4 ,he knew the ,lowestoffes1 and gladly bound himself by the promise they exacted1 that he would make ,summerford ,house his home for a day or two now and then1 in the course of his wanderings4 ,the beauty of the grounds and neighbourhood would have rendered such visits eminently delightful1 even had the hospitable host and hostess been less accomplished admirers of art1 or had ,gower found no irresistible attraction in one of their guests4 ,the days at ,summerford glided by in the enjoyment of those innumerable minor satisfactions which1 far more than highly pleasurable excitements1 make up the happiness of existence4 ,if you doubt it1 consult ,abraham ,tucker on the matter4 ,to many persons1 life at the ,lowestoffes' would have been intolerably dull4 ,there were few visitors4 ,the family seldom emerged from their retirement to visit the neighbouring city4 ,their amusements and their occupations1 though varied1 were confined within limits which some would find lamentably narrow4 ,lowestoffe himself was an early man and a punctual4 ,it cost him something to smile a courteous forgiveness when even a favourite guest transgressed any of the family regulations on which his comfort so much depended4 ,his horses and dogs1 his grounds and his flowers1 everything about him and all dependent upon him1 were methodically cared for1 inspected1 or commanded by himself in person4 ,in one respect only was there irregularity1--no servant1 labourer1 or workman could be sure of any moment in which the master might not suddenly appear to see that all went rightly4 ,though scrupulously just1 and of a generous nature1 ,lowestoffe was only too subject to a nervous dread of being defrauded by those he employed1 and used often to declare that men were ruined1 not so much by what they spent themselves1 as by what they allowed others to spend for them4 ,in his early days he had contented himself with the mere necessaries of his position in life1 to discharge the debts which he inherited4 ,he would actually have gone into business 7to the horror of his aristocratic friends1 but with the applause of every impartial conscience71 had there been no other way whereby to emancipate his property and honour4 ,all declared he would have made a fortune if he had4 ,a few years of self-denial1 and a few more of frugality and industrious vigilance1 realized the full accomplishment of his most cherished desire4 ,his care and activity enabled him to deal very liberally whatever his confidence was at last bestowed1 and to expend in discriminating charity a large annual sum4 ,he was a connoisseur and a liberal patron of art1 but no solicitation could induce him to purchase an old master4 ,he knew well how skilfully imitations of antiquity are prepared1 and had he bought a reputed ,titian or ,correggio1 he would have fidgeted himself into a fever in a fortnight1 by ruminating on the probabilities of deception4 ,he spent his money far more wisely on choice pieces by living artists4 ,when the morning was over1 the afternoon and evening found him a cheerful and fascinating companion4 ,his cares were thrown off1 and he was restless and anxious no longer about little things4 ,literature and art1 even mere frolic1 play with a child1 or a game of any kind1 were welcome4 ,gower whispered an antithesis one day1 to the effect that ,lowestoffe gave one half the day to childish wisdom and the other to wise childishness4 ,we have mentioned what was not to be found at ,summerford4 ,what the two sisters did find there was amply sufficient for enjoyment4 ,there was a long avenue winding up to the house1 so beset with ancient trees1 that it seemed a passage through the heart of a wood4 ,the lawn on which it opened was dotted with islands and rings of flower-bed1--perfect magic circles of horticulture1 one all blue1 another red1 another yellow4 ,there was the house itself1 with its old-fashioned terraces1 urns1 and balustrades1 and behind it--oh1 joy--a rookery6 ,a conservatory shot out its transparent glittering wing on one side of the edifice4 ,at the foot of a slope of grass descending from the flower-palace lay a pool1 shut in by a mound and by fragments of rock overgrown with flowers1 and arched above by trees4 ,on the surface spread the level leaves of the water-lilies1 with the sparkling bubbles here and there upon their edges1 and everywhere the shadowed water was alive with fish1 that might be seen darting1 like little ruddy flames1 in and out among the arrowy sheaves of reeds4 ,then farther away there were old irregular walks1 richly furred with moss1 wandering under trees through which the sunbeams shot1 now making some glossy evergreen far in among the stems and underwood shine with a startling brightness 7so that the passer-by turned to see if there were not running water there1 and fancied ,undine had been at her tricks again71--now rendering translucent some plume of fern1 now kindling some rugged edge of fir1 and again glistening on some old tree-trunk1 mailed with its circular plates of white lichen4 ,these wood pathways--often broken into natural steps by the roots of the trees which ran across their course--led up a steep hill4 ,from the summit were seen1 in front1 opposite heights1 thickly covered with foliage1 through which it was only here and there that a jutting point of rock could show itself to be reddened by the setting sun4 ,beneath1 at a great depth1 a shallow brook idled on its pebbles1 and you looked down on the heads of those who crossed its rustic bridge4 ,on the one hand1 there stretched away to the horizon a gentle sweep of hills1 crossed and re-crossed with hedgerows and speckled with trees and sheep1 and1 on the other1 lay the sea1 in the haze of a sultry day1 seen like a grey tablet of marble veined with cloud-shadows4 ,all this without doors1 and books1 pictures1 prints1 drawing1 chess1 chat1 so choice and plentiful within1 made ,summerford #8a dainty place'-- ,attempred goodly well for health and for delight4 ,meanwhile ,atherton in ,germany was reviving old acquaintanceships and forming new1 studying the historic relics of old ,strasburg under the shadow of its lofty minster1 and relieving his research by rides and walks1 now with student and now with professor4 ,early in ,august he and ,willoughby returned to ,england1 and repaired straightway to ,summerford4 ,there1 accordingly1 the mystical circuit was complete once more4 ,in a day or two the discovery was made1 through some mysterious hints dropped by ,willoughby1 that ,atherton had brought home a treasure from the ,rhine4 ,cross-examination elicited the fact that the said treasure was a manuscript4 ,something to do with mysticism8 ,partly so4 ,then we must hear it4 ,atherton consented without pretending reluctance4 ,the document purported to be his translation of a narrative discovered among the ,strasburg archives1 written by one ,adolf ,arnstein1 an armourer of that city1--a personage who appears to have lived in the fourteenth century1 and kept some record of what he saw and heard4 ,so the manuscript was read at intervals1 in short portions1 sometimes to the little circle grouped on the grass under the trees1 sometimes as they sat in the house1 with open windows1 to let in the evening song of the birds4 ,atherton commenced his first reading as follows3-- ,,the ,,chronicle ,,of ,,adolf ,,arnstein ,,of ,,strasburg4 ,this book was begun in the year after the birth of our ,lord1 one thousand three hundred and twenty4 ,whosoever readeth this book1 let him pray for the soul of ,adolf ,arnstein1 a poor sinful man1 who wrote it4 ,and to all who read the same1 or hear it read1 may ,god grant everlasting life4 ,amen4 #acbj4 ,september4 ,st4 ,matthew's ,day4--,three days ago ,i was surprised by a visit from ,hermann of ,fritzlar1#ga who has travelled hither from ,hesse to hear ,master ,eckart preach4 ,how he reminded me of what seem old times to me now--ay1 old times1 though ,i am but twenty this day--of the days when my honoured father lived and ,i was a merry boy of fifteen1 little thinking that ,i should so soon be left alone to play the man as ,i best might4 ,hermann is the cause of my writing this4 ,we were talking together yesterday in this room1 while the workmen were hammering in the yard below1 and the great forge-bellows were groaning away as usual4 ,i told him how ,i envied his wonderful memory4 ,he replied by reminding me that ,i could write and he could not4 #8,ah1' said ,i1 #8but your mind is full of things worth writing down4 ,you scarcely hear or read a legend1 a hymn1 or a godly sermon1 but it is presently your own1 and after it has lain working in your brain for some time1 you produce it again1 and say or sing it after a way you have1 so that it is quite delightful to hear4' ,the night before last ,i had taken him down into the work-shop1 and told the men to stop their clatter for awhile1 and hear something to do them good--none of your ,latin mumbling1 but a godly history in their mother-tongue4 ,and then did my friend tell them the ,legend of ,saint ,dorothea1 with such a simple tenderness that my rough fellows stood like statues till he had done4 ,i saw a tear run down ,hans' sooty face1 making a white channel over his cheek4 ,he would have it afterwards that some dust had blown into his eye4 #8,my good friend1' said ,hermann1 #8,i am a dozen years at least older than you2 let me counsel you not to set light by your gift1 and let it lie unused4 ,had ,i that same scrivening art at my service1 ,i should write me a book setting forth what ,i heard and observed while it was fresh in my mind4 ,i know many good men who would hold such a book1 written by a ,god-fearing man1 as great treasure4 ,they would keep it with care and hand it down to those who came after them1 so that the writer thereof should be thought on when his hand was cold4 ,i have it in my thoughts to dictate one day or other to some cunning scribe1 some of the legends ,i so love4 ,haply they may not be the worse for their passage through the mind of a plain man with a loving heart1 who has carried them about with him whithersoever he went1 lived in them and grown one with them4 ,but you can do much more if you list4 ,i know1 moreover1 that you1 ,adolf1 are not the man to turn away from your father's old friends because the great ones despise and daily vex them4' ,this evening ,i do herewith begin to act on the resolution his words awakened4 ,i am but a layman1 and so is he1 but for that matter ,i have hearkened to teachers who tell me that the layman may be nearer to heaven than the clerk1 and that all such outer differences are of small account in the eye of ,god4 99 99 99 99 99 ,my father was an armourer and president of the guild4 ,all looked up to him as the most fearless and far-seeing of our counsellors4 ,he taught us how to watch and to resist the encroachments of the bishop and the nobles4 ,we have to thank his wisdom mainly that our position has been not a little strengthened of late4 ,still1 how much wrong have we oftentimes to suffer from the senate and their presidents6 ,strasburg prospers--marvellously1 considering the dreadful pestilence seven years back2 but there is much to amend1 ,heaven knows6 ,my father fell on a journey to ,spires1 in an affray with ,von ,otterbach and his black band4 ,he could use well the weapons he made1 and wounded ,von ,otterbach well nigh to the death before he was overpowered by numbers4 ,the ,rhenish ,league was strong enough1 and for once bold enough1 to avenge him well4 ,that castle of ,otterbach1 which every traveller and merchant trembled to pass1 stands now ruinous and empty4 ,i1 alas6 was away the while1 on my apprentice-travels4 ,the old evil is but little abated1 though our union has1 ,i doubt not1 prevented many of the worst mischiefs of the fist-law4 ,every rock along the ,rhine is castled4 ,they espy us approaching from far off1 and at every turn have we to wrangle1 and now and then1 if strong enough1 to fight1 with these vultures about their robber-toll4 ,right thankful am ,i that my father died a man's death1 fighting--that ,i have not to imagine his fate as like that of some1 who1 falling alive into their hands1 have been horribly tortured1 and let down by a windlass1 with dislocated limbs1 into the loathsome dog-hole of a keep1 to writhe and die by inches in putrid filth and darkness4 ,yet our very perils give to our calling an enterprise and an excitement it would otherwise lack4 ,the merchant has his chivalry as well as the knight4 ,moreover1 as rich old ,gersdorf says1 risk and profit run together--though1 as to money1 ,i have as much already as ,i care for4 ,we thrive1 despite restrictions and extortions innumerable1 legal and illegal4 ,my brother ,otto sends me word from ,bohemia that he prospers4 ,the ,bohemian throats can never have enough of our wines1 and we are good customers for their metal4 ,otto was always a rover4 ,he talks of journeying to the ,east4 ,it seems but yesterday that he and ,i were boys together1 taking our reading and writing lessons from that poor old ,waldensian whom my father sheltered in our house4 ,how we all loved him6 ,i never saw my father so troubled at anything as at his death4 ,our house has been ever since a refuge for such persecuted wanderers4 ,the wrath of ,popes1 prelates1 and inquisitors hath been especially kindled of late years against sundry communities1 sects1 and residues of sects1 which are known by the name of ,beghards1 ,beguines1 ,lollards1 ,kathari1 ,fratricelli1 ,brethren of the ,free ,spirit1#gb c4 ,councils1 they tell me1 have been held at ,cologne1 ,mayence1 and ,narbonne1 to suppress the ,beghards4 ,yet their numerous communities in the ,netherlands and the ,rhineland are a blessing to the poor folk1 to whom the hierarchy are a curse4 ,the clergy are jealous of them4 ,they live single1 they work with their hands1 they nurse the sick1 they lay out the dead1 they lead a well-ordered and godly life in their ,beguinasia1 under the ,magister or ,magistra2 but they are bound by no vows1 fettered by no harassing minuti of austerity1 and think the liberty of the ,spirit better than monkish servitude4 ,some of them have fallen into the notions of those enthusiastic ,franciscans who think the end of the world at hand1 and that we live in1 or near1 the days of ,antichrist4 ,and no wonder1 when the spiritual heads of ,christendom are so unchristian4 ,there are some sturdy beggars who wander about the country availing themselves of the name of ,beghard to lead an idle life4 ,these ,i excuse not4 ,they say some of these ,beghards claim the rank of apostles--that they have subterranean rooms1 where both sexes meet to hear blasphemous preachers announce their equality with ,god4 ,yea1 worse charges than these--even of grossest lewdness--do they bring4 ,i know many of them1 both here and at ,cologne1 but nothing of this sort have ,i seen1 or credibly heard of4 ,they are the enemies of clerical pomp and usurpation1 and some1 ,i fear1 hold strange fantastical notions1 coming ,i know not whence4 ,but the churchmen themselves are at fault1 and answerable for it all4 ,they leave the artisans and labourers in besotted ignorance1 and when they do get a solitary religious idea that comes home to them1 ten to one but it presently confounds or overthrows what little sense they have4 ,many deeply religious minds among us1 both of laity and clergy1 are at heart as indignant at the crimes of the hierarchy as can be the wildest mob-leading fanatic who here and there appears for a moment1 haranguing the populace1 denouncing the denouncers1 and bidding men fight sin with sin4 ,we who sigh for reform1 who must have more spiritual freedom1 have our secret communications1 our meetings now and then for counsel1 our signs and counter-signs4 ,folks call the ,rhineland the ,parsons' ,walk--so full is it of the clergy1 so enjoyed and lorded over by them4 ,verily1 it is at least as full of those hidden ones1 who1 in various wise which they call heresy1 do worship ,god without man coming in between4 ,the tide of the time is with us4#gc ,our once famous ,godfrey of ,strasburg is forgotten4 ,wolfram von ,eschenbach is the universal model4 ,his ,parzival and ,titurel live on the lips of the many rhymesters and minstrels who wander from town to town now1 as once they did from court to court and castle to castle4 ,it is the religiousness and the learning of ,wolfram that finds favour for him and countless imitators4 ,this is the good sign ,i mean4 ,our singers have turned preachers4 ,they are practical1 after their fashion4 ,they are a ,book of ,proverbs1 and give us maxims1 riddles1 doctrines1 science1 in their verses4 ,if they sing of chivalry1 it is to satirize chivalry--such knighthood as now we have4 ,they are spreading and descending towards the people4 ,men may have their songs of chivalry in ,spain1 where1 under the blessed ,st4 ,iago1 good knights and true have a real crusade against those heathen hounds the ,moors1 whom ,god confound4 ,but here each petty lord in his castle has nothing to do but quarrel with his neighbour and oppress all weaker than himself4 ,what to such men1 robbing1 drinking1 devouring their living with harlots1 are ,arthur and the ,round ,table1 or ,oliver and ,roland8 ,so the singers come to us4 ,in good sooth1 the old virtues of knighthood--its truth and honour1 its chastity and courage--are found far more among the citizens than with the nobles4 ,we relish the sage precepts and quaint abstruseness of ,reimar of ,zweter1 though he be somewhat of a pedant4 ,albertus ,magnus is the hero with him1 instead of ,charlemagne4 ,his learning is a marvel1 and he draws all morality by allegory out of the ,seven ,sciences in most wondrous wise4 ,frauenlob himself 7alas6 ,i heard last year that he was dead7 could not praise fair ladies more fairly4 ,he assails1 in the boldest fashion1 the ,pope and ,rome1 and their daughters ,cologne and ,mayence4 ,the last time he was over here from ,bohemia1 we laughed nigh to bursting at his caricature of a tournament1 and applauded till the rafters rang again when he said that not birth1 but virtue1 made true nobleness4 ,then our ballads and popular fables are full of satire on the vices of ecclesiastics4 ,all this tends to keep men awake to the abuses of the day1 and to deepen their desire for reform4 ,we shall need all the strength we can gather1 political and religious1 if in the coming struggle the name of ,german is not to be a shame4 ,our ,holy ,father promises to indemnify himself for the humiliation he suffers at ,avignon by heaping insults upon ,germany4 ,if ,louis of ,bavaria conquers ,frederick1 ,i should not wonder if we ,strasburgers wake up some morning and find ourselves excommunicate4 ,all true hearts must be stirring--we shall have cowards and sluggards enow on all hands4 ,last month the ,emperor ,louis was here with his army for a few days4 ,our bishop ,ochsenstein and the ,zorn family espouse the cause of his rival ,frederick the ,fair4 ,louis has on his side1 however1 the best of us--the family of the ,mllenheim1 the chief burghers1 and the people generally4 ,every true ,german heart1 every hater of foreign domination1 must be with him4 ,many a skirmish has there been in our streets between the retainers of the two great houses of ,zorn and ,mllenheim1 and now their enmity is even more bitter than heretofore4 ,the senate received ,louis with royal honours4 ,when ,frederick was here five years ago1 we would only entertain him as a guest4 ,the clergy and most of the nobles hailed him as ,emperor4 ,now1 when ,louis came1 it was their turn to stand aloof4 ,there were few of them in the cathedral the other day1 when he graciously confirmed our privileges4 ,the bishop issued orders to put a stop to the performance of all church offices while ,louis was here2 whereupon1 either from prudence or consideration for our souls1 he shortened his visit4#gd #acbj4 ,september4 ,st4 ,maurice's ,day4--,a long conversation with ,hermann to-day4 ,he has heard ,eckart repeatedly1 and1 as ,i looked for1 is both startled and perplexed4 ,of a truth it is small marvel that such preaching as his stirred up all ,cologne1 gathered crowds of wondering hearers1 made him fast friends and deadly enemies1 and roused the wrath of the heretic-hunting archbishop4 ,hermann brought me home some of the things this famous doctor said which most struck him4 ,i wrote them down from his lips1 and place them here4 #8,he who is at all times alone is worthy of ,god4 ,he who is at all times at home1 to him is ,god present4 ,he who standeth at all times in a present ,now1 in him doth ,god the ,father bring forth his son without ceasing4#ge #8,he who finds one thing otherwise than another--to whom ,god is dearer in one thing than another1 that man is carnal1 and still afar off and a child4 ,but he to whom ,god is alike in all things hath become a man4#gf #8,all that is in the ,godhead is one4 ,thereof can we say nothing4 ,it is above all names1 above all nature4 ,the essence of all creatures is eternally a divine life in ,deity4 ,god works4 ,so doth not the ,godhead4 ,therein are they distinguished1--in working and not working4 ,the end of all things is the hidden darkness of the eternal ,godhead1 unknown and never to be known4#gg #8,i declare1 by good truth and truth everlasting1 that in every man who hath utterly abandoned self1 ,god must communicate ,himself according to all ,his power1 so completely that he retains nothing in ,his life1 in ,his essence1 in ,his ,nature1 and in ,his ,godhead--,he must communicate all to the bringing forth of fruit4#gh #8,when the ,will is so united that it becometh a ,one in oneness1 then doth the ,heavenly ,father produce his only-begotten ,son in ,himself and in me4 ,wherefore in ,himself and in me8 ,i am one with ,him--,he cannot exclude me4 ,in the self-same operation doth the ,holy ,ghost receive his existence1 and proceeds from me as from ,god4 ,wherefore8 ,i am in ,god1 and if the ,holy ,ghost deriveth not his being from me1 ,he deriveth it not from ,god4 ,i am in nowise excluded4#gi #8,there is something in the soul which is above the soul1 divine1 simple1 an absolute ,nothing1 rather unnamed than named1 unknown than known4 ,so long as thou lookest on thyself as a ,something1 so long thou knowest as little what this is as my mouth knows what colour is1 or as my eye knows what taste is4 ,of this ,i am wont to speak in my sermons1 and sometimes ,i have called it a ,power1 sometimes an uncreated ,light1 sometimes a divine ,spark4 ,it is absolute and free from all names and forms1 as ,god is free and absolute in ,himself4 ,it is higher than knowledge1 higher than love1 higher than grace4 ,for in all these there is still distinction4 ,in this power doth blossom and flourish ,god1 with all ,his ,godhead1 and the ,spirit flourisheth in ,god4 ,in this power doth the ,father bring forth ,his only-begotten ,son1 as essentially as in ,himself1 and in this light ariseth the ,holy ,ghost4 ,this ,spark rejects all creatures1 and will have only ,god1 simply as he is in ,himself4 ,it rests satisfied neither with the ,father1 nor the ,son1 nor the ,holy ,ghost1 nor with the three ,persons1 as far as each exists in its respective attributes4 ,i will say what will sound more marvellous yet4 ,this ,light is satisfied only with the super-essential essence4 ,it is bent on entering into the simple ,ground1 the still ,waste1 wherein is no distinction1 neither ,father1 ,son1 nor ,holy ,ghost1--into the ,unity where no man dwelleth4 ,there is it satisfied in the light1 there it is one2 then is it in itself1 as this ,ground is a simple stillness in itself1 immoveable2 and yet by this ,immobility are all things moved4#hj #8,god in himself was not ,god--in the creature only hath ,he become ,god4 ,i ask to be rid of ,god--that is1 that ,god1 by his grace1 would bring me into the ,essence--that ,essence which is above ,god and above distinction4 ,i would enter into that eternal ,unity which was mine before all time1 when ,i was what ,i would1 and would what ,i was2--into a state above all addition or diminution2--into the ,immobility whereby all is moved4#ha #8,folks say to me often--8,pray ,god for me40 ,then ,i think with myself1 8,why go ye out8 ,why abide ye not in your own selves1 and take hold on your own possession8 ,ye have all truth essentially within you840#hb #8,god and ,i are one in knowing4 ,god's ,essence is ,his knowing1 and ,god's knowing makes me to know ,him4 ,therefore is ,his knowing my knowing4 ,the eye whereby ,i see ,god is the same eye whereby ,he seeth me4 ,mine eye and the eye of ,god are one eye1 one vision1 one knowledge1 and one love4#hc #8,if any man hath understood this sermon1 it is well for him4 ,had not a soul of you been here1 ,i must have spoken the very same words4 ,he who hath not understood it1 let him not trouble his heart therewith1 for as long as a man is not himself like unto this truth1 so long will he never understand it1 seeing that it is no truth of reflection1 to be thought out1 but is come directly out of the heart of ,god without medium4'#hd ,of all this ,i can understand scarcely anything4 ,the perpetual incarnation of ,god in good ,christians1 the nameless ,nothing1 the self-unfolding and self-infolding of ,god 7,i know not what words to use7 are things too high for my grosser apprehension4 ,i shall let the sayings lie here2 some one else who reads may comprehend them4 ,i am content to be a child in such matters4 ,i look with awe and admiration on men who have attained while yet in the flesh heights of wisdom which will be1 perhaps to all eternity1 beyond the reach of such as ,i am4 #acbj4 ,october4 ,st4 ,francis' ,day4--,went with ,hermann this morning to hear mass4 ,master ,eckart preached again4 ,dr4 ,tauler in the church4 ,how every one loves that man6 ,as several of his brethren made their way to their places1 ,i saw the people frown on some of them1 and laugh and leer to each other as two or three of them passed4 ,they had reason1 ,i know1 to hate and to despise certain among them4 ,but to ,tauler all bowed1 and many voices blessed him4 ,he has a kind heart to feel for us1 the commonalty4 ,he and his sermons are one and the same4 ,he means all he says1 and we can understand much1 at least1 of what he means4 ,there is a cold grandeur about ,master ,eckart4 ,he seems above emotion3 his very face1 all intellect1 says it is a weakness to feel4 ,at him we wonder2 with ,master ,tauler we weep4 ,how reverently did ,tauler listen1 as a son to a father1 to the words of the great ,doctor4 ,no doubt he understood every syllable4 ,he is and shall be my sole confessor4 ,i will question him1 some day1 concerning these lofty doctrines whereby it would seem that the poorest beggar may outpass in wisdom and in blessedness all the ,popes of ,christendom4 ,master ,eckart said to-day3--#8,some people are for seeing ,god with their eyes1 as they can see a cow1 and would love ,god as they love a cow 7which thou lovest for the milk and for the cheese1 and for thine own profit74 ,thus do all those who love ,god for the sake of outward riches or of inward comfort2 they do not love aright1 but seek only themselves and their own advantage4#he #8,god is a pure good in ,himself1 and therefore will ,he dwell nowhere save in a pure soul4 ,there ,he may pour ,himself out2 into that ,he can wholly flow4 ,what is ,purity8 ,it is that man should have turned himself away from all creatures1 and have set his heart so entirely on the pure good1 that no creature is to him a comfort1 that he has no desire for aught creaturely1 save as far as he may apprehend therein the pure good which is ,god4 ,and as little as the bright eye can endure aught foreign in it1 so little can the pure soul bear anything in it1 any stain1 aught between it and ,god4 ,to it all creatures are pure to enjoy1 for it enjoyeth all creatures in ,god1 and ,god in all creatures4 ,yea1 so pure is that soul that she seeth through herself1 she needeth not to seek ,god afar off1 she finds him in herself1 when1 in her natural purity1 she hath flowed out into the super-natural of the pure ,godhead4 ,and thus is she in ,god and ,god in her1 and what she doeth that she doeth in ,god and ,god doeth it in her4#hf #8,then shall a man be truly poor when he is as free from his creature will as he was before he was born4 ,and ,i say to you1 by the eternal truth1 that so long as ye desire to fulfil the will of ,god1 and have any desire after eternity and ,god1 so long are ye not truly poor4 ,he alone hath true spiritual poverty who wills nothing1 knows nothing1 desires nothing4#hg #8,for us1 to follow truly what ,god willeth1 is to follow that whereto we are most inclined1--whereto we feel most frequent inward exhortation and strongest attraction4 ,the inner voice is the voice of ,god4'#hh ,after the service1 ,hermann left me to go and see a sick friend4 ,i mingled with the crowd4 ,there was a knot of people gathered before ,all-,saints1 discussing what they had heard4 ,a portly1 capon-lined burgomaster declared he had first been hungry1 then sleepy1 and that was all he knew4 ,he had verily1 as a wag presently told him1 obeyed the master1 and lost consciousness of all external things4 ,whereat the jolly citizen was so tickled that he took the joker home to dine with him1 promising mountains of pickled pork1 a whole ,black ,forest of sauer kraut1 and boundless beakers of hippocras4 ,an innocent novice from the country 7looking fresh as a new-caught trout7 began to say1 #8,well1 it doth seem to me that though ,doctor ,eckart received his ,doctorate from ,rome1 at the hands of our ,holy ,father1 though he hath studied and taught at ,paris1 though he hath been ,provincial of our order in ,saxony1 and ,vicar-,general in ,bohemia--where he played the cat with the mice1 ,i can tell you--yet that some things he said were----' #8,hold your tongue for a jackass1' quoth a senior brother1 who liked not1 methinks1 to hear a whisper against the orthodoxy of the order1 by whomsoever or against whomsoever uttered4 #8,he is a blasphemer1' said a friar4 #8,good people1 did not you hear him say that what burned in hell was the ,nothing8#hi ,then nothing burns2 ergo1 there is no hell4' #8,i don't think he believes in ,god at all1' cried one3--#8,did he not say something about caring no more for ,god than for a stone8' #8,ay1 but1' urged the friar1 #8no hell1 and so no purgatory--think of that4 ,why1 he has swept the universe as clean of the devil as a housewife's platter at a christening4' ,some one in the crowd shouted out1 #8,that fellow cares not what becomes of ,god1 but he can't give up his devil4' ,whereon the friar grew very red in the face1 as we all laughed1 but could not bethink him of any answer1 and went capped with the name of ,brother ,brimstone ever after4 #8,what was that he said1' asked a slip-shod1 sottish-looking tailor1 #8about doing what you like1 and that is what ,god likes8' #8,friends1' cries next a rainbow-coloured1 dandified puppy1 a secretary of the bishop's1 stroking the down of a would-be moustache1 evidently as yet only in a state of ,becoming 7,werden7--#8,i would fain have moderately kicked him1---- #8,my friends' 7smiling with a patronizing blandness at the tailor71 #8you are right2 the public morals are in danger4 ,evil men and seducers wax worse and worse4 ,but the ,holy ,church will protect her children4 ,we have heard pestilent heresy this day4 ,to hear that man talk1 you would fancy he thought there was as much divinity in his little finger as in the whole body of the ,virgin ,mother of ,god4' ,whereupon up starts a little man whom ,i knew for one of the brethren of the ,free ,spirit--takes his place on a stone that lay in the mud of the middle of the street1 and begins--#8,good people1 did you not hear the doctor say that those who cannot understand his doctrine are to hold by the common faith8 ,did not ,saint ,peter say of the ,epistles of the blessed ,saint ,paul that there were some things therein hard to be understood1 which the ignorant would wrest to their own destruction8 ,i'll tell you the ignorance he means and the knowledge he means4 ,friend ,crispin there1 whom you carried home drunk in a barrow last night1 and ,master ,secretary here1 who transgresses in like wise and worse in a daintier style1 and hath1 by the way1 as much perfumery about him as though the scent thereof1 rising towards heaven1 were so much incense for the taking away of his many sins--they are a couple of ,st4 ,paul's ignoramuses4 ,the knowledge ,st4 ,paul means is the thoughtful love of doing the right thing for the love of ,christ4 ,but the ,pope himself may be one of these witless ones1 if the love of sin be stronger in him than the love of holiness4 ,the preaching of all the twelve ,apostles would be turned to mischief and to licence by such as you1 you feather-brained1 civet-tanned puppet of a man1 you adulterous1 quill-driving hypocrite4' #8,seize him1' shouts my ,secretary1 and darted forward2 but an apprentice put out his foot1 and over he rolled into the mire1 grievously ruffling and besmutching all his gay feathers1 while the little man mingled with the laughing people1 and made his escape4 ,i hope he is out of ,strasburg1 or he may be secluded in a darkness and a solitude anything but divine4 ,he was a trifle free of tongue1 assuredly2 ,i suppose that makes a part of the freedom of the ,spirit with him4 ,he had right1 however1 beyond question4 ,the confusion created by this incident had scarcely ceased1 when ,i saw advancing towards us the stately form of ,master ,eckart himself4 ,he looked with a calm gravity about upon us1 as he paused in the midst--seemed to understand at once of what sort our talk had been1 and appeared about to speak4 ,there was a cry for silence--#8,hear the ,doctor6 hear him6' ,whereon he spoke as follows3-- #8,there was once a learned man who longed and prayed full eight years that ,god would show him some one to teach him the way of truth4 ,and on a time1 as he was in a great longing1 there came unto him a voice from heaven1 and said1 8,go to the front of the church1 there wilt thou find a man that shall show thee the way to blessedness40 #8,so thither he went1 and found there a poor man whose feet were torn1 and covered with dust and dirt1 and all his apparel scarce three hellers worth4 ,he greeted him1 saying1 8,god give thee good morrow40 ,thereat made he answer1 8,i never had an ill morrow40 ,again said he1 8,god prosper thee40 ,the other answered1 8,never had ,i aught but prosperity40 #88,heaven save thee10 said the scholar1 8how answerest thou me so80 #88,i was never other than saved40 #88,explain to me this1 for ,i understand not40 #88,willingly10 quoth the poor man4 8,thou wishest me good morrow4 ,i never had an ill morrow1 for1 am ,i an hungered1 ,i praise ,god2 am ,i freezing1 doth it hail1 snow1 rain1 is it fair weather or foul1 ,i praise ,god2 and therefore had ,i never ill morrow4 ,thou didst say1 ,god prosper thee4 ,i have been never unprosperous1 for ,i know how to live with ,god2 ,i know that what he doth is best1 and what ,god giveth or ordaineth for me1 be it pain or pleasure1 that ,i take cheerfully from ,him as the best of all1 and so ,i had never adversity4 ,thou wishest ,god to bless me4 ,i was never unblessed1 for ,i desire to be only in the will of ,god1 and ,i have so given up my will to the will of ,god1 that what ,god willeth ,i will40 #88,but if ,god were to cast thee into hell10 said the scholar1 8what wouldst thou do then80 #88,cast me into hell8 ,his goodness holds him back therefrom4 ,yet if he did1 ,i should have two arms to embrace him withal4 ,one arm is true ,humility1 and therewith am ,i one with his holy humanity4 ,and with the right arm of ,love1 that joineth his holy ,godhead1 ,i would embrace him1 so ,he must come with me into hell likewise4 ,and even so1 ,i would sooner be in hell1 and have ,god1 than in heaven1 and not have ,him40 #8,then understood this ,master that true ,abandonment1 with utter ,abasement1 was the nearest way to ,god4 #8,moreover the ,master asked3 8,from whence comest thou80 #88,from ,god40 #88,where hast thou found ,god80 #88,where ,i abandoned all creatures4 ,i am a king4 ,my kingdom is my soul4 ,all my powers1 within and without1 do homage to my soul4 ,this kingdom is greater than any kingdom on the earth40 #88,what hath brought thee to this perfection80 #88,my silence1 my heavenward thoughts1 my union with ,god4 ,for ,i could rest in nothing less than ,god4 ,now ,i have found ,god1 and have everlasting rest and joy in ,him40#ij ,with that ,master ,eckart ceased1 and went on his way again1 leaving us in wonderment2 and ,i watched him1 as far as ,i could see along the winding street1 walking on under the over-hanging gables1 with his steady step and abstract air1 and his silver locks fluttering out in the wind from under his doctor's hat4 ,when ,i looked round1 ,i found myself almost alone4 ,he is a holy man1 let what will be said about heresy4 ,i set down here a new hymn ,hermann sang me--sweet1 as he sang it--with a ringing repetition that chimes right pleasantly1 and makes amends for some lack of meaning in the words4#ia ,oh be glad1 thou ,zion's daughter1 ,joyous news to thee are sent2 ,thou shalt sing a strain of sweetness1 ,sing it to thy heart's content4 ,now the friend of ,god thou art1 ,therefore shalt thou joy at heart1 ,therefore know no sorrow-smart4 ,lo6 'tis ju-ju-jubilation1 ,meditation2 ,ju-ju-ju-ju-jubilation1 ,contemplation2 ,ju-ju-ju-jubilation2 ,ju-ju-ju-jubilation2 ,speculation2 ,ju-ju-ju-jubilation1 ,conciliation6 ,meditation1 that is goodly1 ,when a man on ,god will muse2 ,jubilation worketh wonder1 ',tis the harp the soul doth use4 ,speculation1 that is sheen1 ,contemplation crowns1 ,i ween1 ,concord leads1 the dance's queen1 ,lo6 ju-ju-ju- ,conciliation6 ',tis jubilation ,at the sweets of contemplation6 ,have been haunted by this ju-ju1 in-doors and out1 whatever ,i have been doing for the last three days1 and ,i hear it in every stroke upon the anvil4 #acbj4 ,second week in ,october4--,a ride over to ,fegersheim about ,sir ,rudolf's new bascinet with the beaked ventaille4 ,as ,i reached the castle the ladies were just coming out for hawking1 with a brave company of knights and squires4 ,they were fair to see1 with their copes and kirtles blue and white1 and those fanciful new-fashioned crowns on their heads1 all glittering with gold and jewels4 ,sir ,rudolf stayed for me awhile and then followed them4 ,on my way back1 rested at noon at a little hostelry1 where ,i sat before the door at a table1 chatting with mine host4 ,there ride up a priest and monk with attendants4 ,holy ,mary1 what dresses6 ,the monk with bells on his horse's bridle1 his hood fastened with a great golden pin1 wrought at the head into a true-love knot1 his hair growing long so as to hide his tonsure1 his shoes embroidered and cut lattice-wise4#ib ,there was the priest with broad gold girdle1 gown of green and red1 slashed after the newest mode1 and a long sword and dagger1 very truly militant4 ,i marvelled at the variety and unction of the oaths they had at their service4 ,the advantage of a theological training was very manifest therein4 ,scarcely were these worthies1 with bag and baggage1 well on their way again when ,i espied1 walking towards the inn1 a giant of a man--some three inches higher than ,i am 7a sight ,i have not often seen71 miserably attired1 dusty and travel-worn4 ,when he came to where ,i was he threw down his staff and bundle1 cast his huge limbs along the bench1 gave a careless1 surly glance at me1 and1 throwing back his shaggy head of black hair1 seemed about to sleep4 ,having pity on his weariness ,i said1 #8,art thirsty1 friend8 the sun hath power to-day4' ,thereupon he partly raised himself1 looked fixedly at me1 and then drank off the tankard ,i pushed towards him1 grunting out a something which methought was meant for thanks4 ,being now curious1 ,i asked him straight1 #8,where he came from8' ,he4 ,i never came from anywhere4 ,i4 ,what are you8 ,he4 ,i am not4 ,i4 ,what will you8 ,he4 ,i will not4 ,i4 ,this is passing strange4 ,tell me your name4 ,he4 ,men call me the ,nameless ,wild4 ,i4 ,not far off the mark either2 you talk wildly enough4 ,where do you come from8 whither are you bound8 ,he4 ,i dwell in absolute ,freedom4 ,i4 ,what is that8 ,he4 ,when a man lives as he list1 without distinction 7,otherness1 ,anderheit71 without before or after4 ,the man who hath in his ,eternal ,nothing become nothing knows nought of distinctions4 ,i4 ,but to violate distinction is to violate order1 and to break that is to be a slave4 ,that is not the freedom indeed1 which the truth gives4 ,he that committeth sin is the servant of sin4 ,no man can be so utterly self-annihilated and lost in ,god1--can be such a very nothing that there remains no remnant of the original difference between creature and ,creator4 ,my soul and body are one1 are not separate2 but they are distinct4 ,so is it with the soul united to ,god4 ,mark the difference1 friend1 ,i prithee1 between separation and distinction 7,geschiedenheit und ,unterschiedenheit74 ,he4 ,the teacher saith that the saintly man is ,god's son1 and what ,christ doth1 that doth he4 ,i4 ,he saith that such man followeth ,christ in righteousness4 ,but our personality must ever abide4 ,christ is son of ,god by nature1 we by grace4 ,your pride blinds you4 ,you are enlightened with a false light1 coming whence ,i know not4 ,you try and #8break through' to the ,oneness1 and you break through reason and reverence4 ,he replied by telling me that ,i was in thick darkness1 and the boy coming with my horse1 ,i left him4#ic ,as ,i rode homeward ,i thought on the contrast ,i had seen4 ,this man who came last is the natural consequent on the two who preceded him4 ,so doth a hypocritical1 ghostly tyranny produce lawlessness4 ,i have seen the ,priest and the ,levite1 and methinks one of the thieves1--where is our good ,samaritan8 ,i know not which extreme is the worst4 ,one is selfish absoluteness1 the other absolute selfishness4 ,oh1 for men among us who shall battle with each in the strength of a truth above them both6 ,poor ,alsace6 ,here ,atherton laid aside his manuscript1 and conversation commenced4 ,footnote #ga3 ,the ,heiligenleben of ,hermann von ,fritslar has been recently edited by ,franz ,pfeiffer1 in his ,ausgabe der ,deutschen ,mystiker 7,leipsig1 #ahde74 ,hermann says himself repeatedly that he had caused his book to be written 7schreiben lassen7 and there is every reason to believe that he was1 like ,rulman ,merswin and ,nicholas of ,basle1 his contemporaries1 a devout layman1--one of a class among the laity characteristic of that age and neighbourhood1 who1 without entering into an order1 spent the greater part of their time in the exercises of religion1 and of their fortune on religious objects4 ,though he could not write1 he could read1 and his book is confessedly a compilation from many books and from the sermons and the sayings of learned and godly men4 ,he says1 ,diz buch ist zu sammene gelesen zze vile anderen bucheren und zze vile predigten und zze vil lrren4--,vorrede4 ,footnote #gb3 ,concerning these sects1 see ,ullmann1 ,reformatoren vor der ,reformation1 vol4 ii4 pp4 #a-ah4 ,the fullest account is given of them in a masterly ,latin treatise by ,mosheim1 ,de ,beghardis et ,beguinabus4 ,he enters at length into the discussion of their name and origin2 details the various charges brought against them1 and gives the bulls and acts issued for their suppression4 ,see especially the circular of ,john ,ochsenstein1 ,bishop of ,strasburg1 cap4 iv4 xi4 p4 #bee4 ,footnote #gc3 ,authority for these statements concerning the literature of the period1 will be found in ,gervinus1 ,geschichte der poetischen ,national-,literatur der ,deutschen1 part vi4 #a1 #b1 #e4 ,footnote #gd3 ,johannes ,tauler von ,strasburg1 by ,dr4 ,carl ,schmidt1 pp4 #h-aj2 and ,laguille's ,histoire d',alsace1 liv4 xxiv4 ,footnote #ge3 ,meister ,eghart spricht3 wer alle cit allein ist1 der ist gottes wirdige2 vnt wer alliu cit do heimenen ist1 dem ist got gegenwrtig2 vnt wer alliu cit stat in einem gegenwrtigen nu1 in dem gebirt got der vatter sinen sune an vnderlas4--,sprche ,deutscher ,mystiker1 in ,wackernagel's ,altdeutsches ,lesebuch1 p4 #hhi4 ,footnote #gf3 ,meister ,eghart sprach3 vnt wem in einem anders ist denne in dem andern1 vnt dem got lieber ist in einem denne in dem andern1 der mensche ist grobe1 vnt noch verre vnt ein kint4 ,aber dem got gelich ist in allen1 der ist ce man worden4--,ibid4 ,both this saying and the foregoing are expressions for that total indifference and self-abandonment so strenuously inculcated by the mystics4 ,he who lives weaned from the world1 alone with ,god1 without regrets1 without anticipations1 #8stands in a present ,now1' and sees the divine love as clearly in his sorrows as in his joys1--does not find #8one thing other than another4' ,there is exaggeration in suppressing1 as ,eckart would do1 the instinct of thanksgiving for special benefaction2 but in his strong language lies couched a great truth1--that only in utter self-surrender can man find abiding peace4 ,footnote #gg3 ,alles das in der gottheyt ist1 das ist ein1 vnd davon ist nicht zu sprechen4 ,got der wrcket1 die gotheyt nit1 sy hat auch nicht zu wrckende1 in ir ist auch kein werck4 ,got vnt gotheyt hat underscheyd1 an wrcken vnd an nit wrcken4 ,was ist das letst end8 ,es ist die verborgen finsternusz der ewigen gotheit1 vnd ist unbekant1 vnd wirt nymmerme bekant4 7,see a paper on ,eckart1 by ,dr4 ,carl ,schmidt in the ,theol4 ,stud4 u4 ,kritiken1 #ahci1 #c1 p4 #fic47 ,comp4 the following3--,got ist noch gut noch besser1 noch allerbest1 vnd ick thue also unrecht1 wenn ick ,got gut heisse1 rechte ase ob ick oder er etwas wiz weiss und ick es schwarz heisse4--,ibid4 p4 #fge4 ,this last assertion was one of the counts of accusation in the bull of #accj4 ,footnote #gh3 ,martensen's ,meister ,eckart 7,hamburg1 #ahdb71 p4 #bb4--,the divine communication assumes with ,eckart the form of philosophical necessity4 ,the man emptied of ,self is infallibly full of ,deity1 after the fashion of the old principle1 #8,nature abhors a vacuum4' ,yet even this doctrine is not wholly false4 ,it is the misrepresentation of a ,christian truth4 ,its correlative verity is this1--that the kingdom of grace1 like the kingdom of nature1 has its immutable laws4 ,he who seeks shall find2 as we sow we reap1 with unerring certainty4 ,gravitation is not more sure than the announcement1 #8,with that man will ,i dwell who is of a meek and contrite spirit4' ,footnote #gi3 ,martensen1 p4 #bc4 ,comp4 ,stud4 u4 ,krit4 loc4 cit4 ,alles das denn got yn gegab seinem eingebornen sun1 das hat er mir gegeben4444 ,was got wrcket1 das ist ein1 darumb gebiret er mich seinen sun1 on aller underscheyd4--,these words exhibit the pantheistic principle on which this assumption is based4 ,all spirit 7whether in so called creature or ,creator7 is substantially one and the same4 ,it cannot be divided2 it can have no distinctive operations4 ,our dividual personal consciousness is1 as it were1 a temporary accretion on the ,universal ,soul with which we are in contact4 ,escaping this consciousness1 we merge in--that is1 we become--the ,universal ,soul4 ,we are brought into the ,essence1--the calm1 unknown oneness beyond all manifestation1 above creation1 providence1 or grace4 ,this is ,eckart's escape from distinction1--lapse into the totality of spirit4 ,this doctrine he teaches1 not in opposition to the current ,christian doctrine1 but as a something above it1--at once its higher interpretation and its climax4 ,footnote #hj3 ,these statements concerning the #8fncklin der vernunfft' are the substance of passages given by ,martensen1 pp4 #bf1 #bg1 and ,schmidt 7,stud4 u4 ,krit4 l4 c471 pp4 #gjg1 #gji4--;,ich sprich es bey gutter warheit1 und bey yemmerwerender warheit1 und bey ewiger warheit1 das disem liechte nit benget an dem einfaltigem stilstanden gtlichen wesen1 von wannen disz wesen harkommet1 es will in den einfaltigen grundt in die stillen wste1 das nye underscheyd ingeluget1 weder vatter noch sun noch heiliger geist1 in dem einichen1 da niemant daheim ist1 da benget es im liechte1 und da ist es einicher1 denn es sey in im selber1 wann diser grundt ist ein einfeltig stille die in ir selber unbeweglich ist1 und von diser ,unbeweglichkeit werdent beweget alle ding1 c4 ,hermann von ,fritslar1 in a remarkable passage1 enumerates the various and conflicting names given to this organ of mysticism4 #8,und das leben was daz licht der lte4' ,daz meinet1 daz di sle einen funken in ir ht1 der ist in gote wiclchen gewest leben und licht4 ,und dirre funke ist mit der sle geschaffen in allen menschen und ist ein lter licht in ime selber und strafet allewege umme sunde und hat ein stte heischen zu der tugende und kriget allewege wider in snen ursprung4444 ,dar umme heizen in etlche meistere einen wechter der sle4 ,also sprach ,danil3 #8der wechter f dem turme der rufet gar sre4 ,etliche heizen disen funken einen haven der sle4 ,etlche heizen in di worbele 7axis1 or centre7 der sle4 ,etelche heizen in ein gotechen in der sle4 ,etelche heizen in ein antlitze der sle4 ,eteliche heizen intellectus1 daz ist ein instnde kraft in der sle4 ,etlche heizen in sinderisis4 ,etliche heizen in daz w der sle4 ,etlche heizen in daz nirgen der sle4--,heiligenleben4 ,di dritte messe1 p4 #cb4 ,footnote #ha3 ,martensen1 p4 #bg4 ,schmidt1 loc4 cit4 ,footnote #hb3 ,the passage in ,martensen1 p4 #bj4 ,footnote #hc3 ,martensen1 pp4 #ai1 #bi4 ,footnote #hd3 ,ibid4 p4 #bi4 ,footnote #he3 ,etlich leut wllent got mit den ougen ansehn1 als sy ein ku ansent unnd wllent gott liebhan1 als sy ein ku liebhaben 7die hastu lieb umb die milch1 und umb den ktz1 und umb dein eigen nutz74 ,also thund alle die leut die got liebhand1 um uszwendigen reichtum1 oder umb inwendigen trost1 und die hand gott nit recht lieb1 sunder sy suchent sich selbs und ir eigen nutz4--,schmidt1 p4 #gab4 ,footnote #hf3 ,got ist ein luter guot an ime selben1 vnt do von wil er nienen wonen denne in einer lutern sele3 in die mag er sich ergiessen vnt genzeclichen in si fliessen4 was ist luterkeit8 das ist das sich der mensche gekeret habe von allen creaturen1 vnt sin herce so gar uf gerichtet habe gen dem lutern guot1 das ime kein creature trstlichen si1 vnt ir ouch nit begere denne als vil als si das luter guot1 das got ist1 darinne begriffen mag4 vnt also wenig das liechte ouge icht in ime erliden mag1 also wenig mag diu luter sele icht an ir erliden keine vermasung vnt das si vermitlen mag4 ir werdent alle creaturen luter ce niessen3 wanne si niusset alle creaturen in got vnt got in allen creaturen4 ,denne si ist also luter1 das si sich selben durschowet1 denne endarf si got nit verre suochen3 si vindet in ir selben1 wanne si in ir natiurlichen luterkeit ist geflossen in das bernatiurliche der lutern gotheit4 vnt also ist si in got1 vnt got in ir2 vnt was si tuot1 das tuot si in got1 vnt tuot es got in ir4--,wackernagel1 p4 #hia4 ,footnote #hg3 ,wann sol der mensch warlich arm sein1 so soll er seynes geschaffnen willes also ledig sein1 als er was do er noch nit was4 ,und ich sag euch bey der ewigen warheit1 als lang ir willen hand zu erfllend den willen gottes1 vnd icht begerung hand der ewigkeit und gottes1 also lang seind ir nitt recht arm1 wann das ist ein arm mensch der nicht wil1 noch nicht bekennet1 noch nicht begeret--,schmidt1 p4 #gaf4 ,here again is the most extravagant expression possible of the doctrine of sainte indiffrence1 in comparison with which ,madame ,guyon is moderation itself4 ,footnote #hh3 ,see ,schmidt1 p4 #gbd4 ,footnote #hi3 ,he was charged with denying hell and purgatory1 because he defined future punishment as deprivation1--#8,das ,nicht in der helle brinnet4'--,schmidt1 p4 #gbb4 ,footnote #ij3 ,the narrative here put into the mouth of ,eckart is found in an appendix to ,tauler's ,medulla anim4 ,there is every reason to believe that it is ,eckart's4 ,martensen gives it1 p4 #ajg4 ,footnote #ia3 ,a literal translation of a curious old hymn in ,wackernagel's collection1 p4 #hif4 ,footnote #ib3 ,c4 ,schmidt 7,johannes ,tauler von ,strasburg1 p4 #db7 gives examples of the extravagant display in dress common among the clergy at that time4 ,footnote #ic3 ,the substance of this dialogue will be found in the works of ,heinrich ,suso 7ed4 ,melchior ,diepenbrock1 ,regensburg1 #ahcg71 ,book iii4 chap4 vii4 pp4 #caj-ad4 ,suso represents himself as holding such a conversation with #8ein vernunftiges ,bilde1 das war subtil an seinen ,worten und war aber ungebt an seinen ,werken und war ausbrchig in florirender ,reichheit1' as he sat lost in meditation on a summer's day4 ,atherton has ventured to clothe this ideal of the enthusiast of those times in more than a couple of yards of flesh and blood1 and supposed ,arnstein to have picked up divinity enough in his sermon-hearing to be able to reason with him just as ,suso does in his book4 ,the wandering devotees1 who at this time abounded throughout the whole region between the ,netherlands and ,switzerland1 approximated1 some of them1 to ,eckart's portraiture of a religious teacher1 others to ,suso's ideal of the ,nameless ,wild4 ,in some cases the enthusiasm of the same man may have approached now the nobler and now the baser type4 ,,chapter ,,ii4 ,for as though there were metempsychosis1 and the soul of one man passed into another2 opinions do find1 after certain revolutions1 men and minds like those that first begat them4--,,sir ,,thomas ,,browne4 ,,willoughby4 ,what struck me most as novel in the mysticism of this strange ,master ,eckart was the stress he laid on our own consciousness of being the sons of ,god4 ,neither the ecclesiastical nor the scholastic gradations and preparatives for mysticism1 so important with his predecessors1 seem of much moment with him in comparison with the attainment1 per saltum1 as it were1 of this blessed certainty4 ,perhaps the secret of his reaction against the orthodoxy of his day lay here4 ,he craves a firm resting-place for his soul4 ,the ,church cannot satisfy the want4 ,he will supply it for himself1 and1 to do so1 builds together into a sort of system certain current notions that suit his purpose1 some new and others old1 some in tolerable harmony with ,christianity1 others more hostile to it than he was altogether aware4 ,these pantheistic metaphysics may have seemed to him his resource and justification--may have been the product of the brain labouring to assure the heart4 ,,atherton4 ,a very plausible conjecture4 ,amalric of ,bena1 who had been famous as a teacher in ,paris nearly a hundred years before ,eckart went to study there1 maintained that a personal conviction of our union to ,christ was necessary to salvation4 ,he was condemned for the doctrine1 but it survived4 ,,willoughby4 ,thank you4 ,that fact supports me4 ,might not ,eckart have desired to assert for our inward religious life a worthier and more independent place1 as opposed to the despotic externalism of the time--to make our access to ,christ more immediate1 and less subject to the precarious mercies of the ,church8 ,,atherton4 ,a grand aim1 if so3 but to reach it he unfortunately absorbs the objective in the subjective element of religion--rebounds from servility to arrogance1 and makes humanity a manifestation of the ,divine ,essence4 ,,gower4 ,in order to understand his position1 the question to be first asked appears to me to be this4 ,if ,eckart goes to the ,church1 and says1 #8,how can ,i be assured that ,i am in a state of salvation8' what answer will the ,holy ,mother give him8 ,can you tell me1 ,atherton8 ,,atherton4 ,she confounds justification and sanctification together1 you will remember4 ,so she will answer1 #8,my son1 as a ,christian of the ordinary sort1 you cannot have any such certainty--indeed1 you are much better without it4 ,you may conjecture that you are reconciled to ,god by looking inward on your feelings1 by assuring yourself that at least you are not living in any mortal sin4 ,if1 indeed1 you were appointed to do some great things for my glory1 you might find yourself among the happy few who are made certain of their state of grace by a special and extra revelation1 to hearten them for their achievements4' ,,gower4 ,shameful6 ,the ,church then admits the high1 invigorating influence of such certainty1 but denies it to those who1 amid secular care and toil1 require it most4 ,,willoughby4 ,while discussing ,eckart1 we have lighted on a doctrine which must have produced more mysticism than almost any other you can name4 ,on receiving such reply1 how many ardent natures will strain after visions and miraculous manifestations1 wrestling for some token of their safety6 ,,gower4 ,and how many will be the prey of morbid introspections1 now catching the exultant thrill of confidence1 and presently thrown headlong into some despairing abyss4 ,,atherton4 ,as for the mass of the people1 they will be enslaved for ever by such teaching1 trying to assure themselves by plenty of sacraments1 believing these the causes of grace1 and hanging for their spiritual all on the dispensers thereof4 ,,willoughby4 ,then1 to apply the result of your question1 ,gower1 to ,eckart1--as he has in him nothing servile1 and nothing visionary1 he resolves to grasp certainty with his own hand--wraps about him relics of the old ,greek pallium1 and retires to his extreme of majestic isolation4 ,,gower4 ,pity that he could not find the scriptural ,via ,media--that common truth which1 while it meets the deepest wants of the individual1 yet links him in wholesome fellowship with others--that pure outer light which nurtures and directs the inner4 ,,willoughby4 ,no easy way to find in days when ,plato was installed high priest1 and the whole biblical region a jungle of luxuriant allegoric conceits or thorny scholastic formulas4 ,,gower4 ,this daring ,eckart reminds me of that heroic leader in ,beaumont and ,fletcher's ,bonduca4 ,i think ,i hear him cry with ,caratach1 ,cease your fretful prayers1 ,your whinings1 and your tame petitions2 ,the gods love courage armed with confidence1 ,and prayers fit to pull them down3 weak tears ,and troubled hearts1 the dull twins of cold spirits1 ,they sit and smile at4 ,hear how ,i salute 'em4 ,,lowestoffe4 ,did you not say yesterday1 ,atherton1 that ,eckart's system had received high praise from ,hegel8 ,,atherton4 ,oh yes1 he calls it #8a genuine and profound philosophy4' ,indeed the points of resemblance are very striking1 and1 setting aside for the moment some redeeming expressions and the more religious spirit of the man1 ,eckart's theosophy is a remarkable anticipation of modern ,german idealism4 ,that abstract ground of ,godhead ,eckart talks about1 answers exactly to ,hegel's ,logische ,idee4 ,the ,trinity of process1 the incarnation ever renewing itself in men1 the resolution of redemption almost to a divine self-development1 constitute strong features of family likeness between the ,dominican and both ,hegel and ,fichte4#id ,,gower4 ,one may fancy that while ,hegel was teaching at ,heidelberg it must have fared with poor ,eckart as with the dead huntsman in the ,danish ballad1 while a usurper was hunting with his hounds over his patrimony1-- ,with my dogs so good1 ,he hunteth the wild deer in the wood2 ,and with every deer he slays on the mould1 ,he wakens me up in the grave so cold4 ,,atherton4 ,nay1 if we come to fancying1 let us call in ,pythagoras at once1 and say that the soul of ,eckart transmigrated into ,hegel4 ,,gower4 ,with all my heart4 ,the ,portuguese have a superstition according to which the soul of a man who has died1 leaving some duty unfulfilled or promised work unfinished1 is frequently known to enter into another person1 and dislodging for a time the rightful soul-occupant1 impel him unconsciously to complete what was lacking4 ,on a dreamy summer day like this1 we can imagine ,hegel in like manner possessed by ,eckart in order to systematize his half-developed ideas4 ,,willoughby4 ,it is certainly very curious to mark the pathway of these pantheistic notions through successive ages4 ,seriously1 ,i did not know till lately how venerably antique were the discoveries of absolute idealism4 ,,lowestoffe4 ,i confess that the being one in oneness1 the nothing1 the soul beyond the soul1 the participation in the all-moving ,immobility of which ,eckart speaks1 are to me utterly unintelligible4 ,,gower4 ,do not trouble yourself4 ,no one will ever be able to get beyond the words themselves1 any more than ,bardolph could with the phrase which so tickled the ear of ,justice ,shallow4 #8,accommodated2 that is1 when a man is1 as they say1 accommodated3 or1 when a man is1--being1--whereby1--he may be thought to be accommodated2 which is an excellent thing4' ,,atherton4 ,yet1 to do ,eckart justice1 he has his qualifications and his distinctions in virtue of which he imagines himself still within the pale of orthodoxy1 and he strongly repudiates the ,antinomian consequences to which his doctrines were represented as tending4 ,,gower4 ,ay1 it is just in this way that the mischief is done4 ,these distinctions many a follower of his could not or would not understand1 and so his high philosophy produced in practice far oftener such men as the ,nameless ,wild than characters resembling the more pure and lofty ideal he drew himself in his discourse to the good people of ,strasburg4 ,these philosophical edge-tools are full perilous4 ,modern ,germany is replete with examples of that fatal facility in the common mind for a practical application of philosophic paradox which our friend ,adolf lamented at ,fegersheim4 ,when a philosophy which weakens the embankments that keep licence out has once been popularized1 the philosopher cannot stop the inundation by shouting from his study-window4 ,de ,wette himself at last became aware of this1 and regretted it in vain4 ,such speculation resembles the magic sword of ,sir ,elidure--its mysterious virtue sometimes filled even its owner with a furor that hurried him to an indiscriminate slaughter1 but wielded by any other hand its thirst could be satisfied only with the blood of every one around1 and at last with the life of him who held it4 ,,lowestoffe4 ,still there is far more excuse for ,eckart than for our nineteenth century pantheists4 ,even the desperation of some of those poor ignorant creatures1 who exaggerated ,eckart's paradoxes till they grew a plea for utter lawlessness1 is not so unnatural1 however lamentable4 ,who can wonder that some should have overwrought the doctrine of ,christ in us and neglected that of ,christ for us1 when the opus operatum was in its glory1 ghostly comfort bought and sold1 and ,christ our sacrifice pageanted about in the mass1 as ,milton says1--a fearful idol8 ,or that the untaught many1 catching the first thought of spiritual freedom from some mystic1 should have been intoxicated instantly4 ,the laity1 forbidden so long to be ,christians on their own account1 rise up here and there1 crying1 #8,we will be not ,christians merely1 but so many ,christs4' ,they have been denied what is due to man1 they will dreadfully indemnify themselves by seizing what is due to ,god4 ,has not the letter been slaying them by inches all their days8 ,the spirit shall give them life6 ,,gower4 ,like the peasant in the apologue2--religion has been so long doled out to them in a few pitiful drops of holy water1 till in their impatience they must have a whole ,ganges-flood poured into their grounds1 obliterating1 with a vengeance1 #8all distinctions1' and drowning every logical and social landmark under the cold grey level--the blank neutral-tint of a stoical indifference which annihilates all order and all law4 ,,atherton4 ,by a strange contradiction1 ,eckart employs ,revelation at one moment only to escape it the next--and uses its beacon-lights to steer from1 not to the haven4 ,he pays homage to its authority1 he consults its record1 but presently leaves it far behind to lose himself in the unrevealed ,godhead--floats away on his #8sail-broad vans' of speculation through the vast vacuity in search of ----a dark ,illimitable ocean1 without bound1 ,without dimension1 where length1 breadth1 and height1 ,and time and place are lost4 ,when there1 he finds his cloudy seat soon fails him2 he returns once more to the realities of revelation1 only to forsake this lower ground again when he has renewed his strength4 ,this oscillation betrays a fatal contradiction4 ,to shut behind us the gate on this inferior world is not necessarily to open the everlasting doors of the upper one4 ,,gower4 ,i very much admire the absolute resignation of that devout mendicant described by ,eckart4 ,he is a ,quietist of the very best sort--his life a #8,thy will be done4' ,he is a ,fnelon in rags4 ,,atherton4 ,after all1 make what allowance we will1--giving ,eckart all the benefit due from the fact that his life was pure1 that he stood in no avowed antagonism to ,christian doctrine or institute1 that devout men like ,tauler and ,suso valued his teaching so highly1--still1 he stands confessed a pantheist2 no charity can explain that away4 ,,gower4 ,i am afraid not4 ,what else can we call him when he identifies himself and all ,christian men with the ,son1 as we have heard1 makes himself essential to ,god1 will share with him in the evolution of the ,holy ,ghost1 and1 forbidding you to regard yourself as a something distinct from ,god1 exhorts you 7if you would be a justified person and child of ,god indeed7 to merge the ground of your own nature in the divine1 so that your knowledge of ,god and his of you are the same thing1--i4e41 you and ,he one and the same8 ,but can you conjecture1 ,atherton1 by what process he arrived at such a pass8 ,,atherton4 ,perhaps in this way3--,john ,scotus ,erigena 7with whose writings ,eckart could scarcely have failed to make acquaintance at ,paris7 asserts the identity of ,being and ,willing1 of the ,velle and the ,esse in ,god2 also the identity of ,being and ,knowing4 ,applying this latter proposition to the relationship between ,god and man1 he comes logically enough to this conclusion1--#8,man1 essentially considered1 may be defined as ,god's knowledge of him2 that is1 man reduced to his ultimate--his ground1 or simple subsistence--is a divine ,thought4 ,but1 on the same principle1 the thoughts of ,god are1 of course1 ,god4 ,hence ,eckart's doctrine--the ground of your being lies in ,god4 ,reduce yourself to that simplicity1 that root1 and you are in ,god4 ,there is no longer any distinction between your spirit and the divine1--you have escaped personality and finite limitation4 ,your particular1 creature self1 as a something separate and dependent on ,god1 is gone4 ,so also1 obviously1 your creaturely will4 ,henceforth1 therefore1 what seems an inclination of yours is in fact the divine good pleasure4 ,you are free from law4 ,you are above means4 ,the very will to do the will of ,god is resolved into that will itself4 ,this is the ,apathy1 the ,negation1 the ,poverty1 he commends4 ,with ,eckart personally this self-reduction and deification is connected with a rigorous asceticism and exemplary moral excellence4 ,yet it is easy to see that it may be a merely intellectual process1 consisting in a man's thinking that he is thinking himself away from his personality4 ,he declares the appearance of the ,son necessary to enable us to realize our sonship2 and yet his language implies that this realization is the perpetual incarnation of that ,son--does1 as it were1 constitute him4 ,christians are accordingly not less the sons of ,god by grace than is ,christ by nature4 ,believe yourself divine1 and the ,son is brought forth in you4 ,the ,saviour and the saved are dissolved together in the blank absolute ,substance4 ,,willoughby4 ,so then1 ,eckart would say1--#8,to realize himself1 ,god must have ,christians2' and ,hegel1--#8,to realize him self1 ,he must have philosophers4' ,,atherton4 ,miserable inversion6 ,this result of ,eckart's speculation was expressed with the most impious enormity by ,angelus ,silesius1 in the seventeenth century4 ,in virtue of the necessity ,god is under 7according to this theory7 of communicating himself1 bon gr1 mal gr1 to whomsoever will refine himself down to his #8,nothing1' he reduces the ,almighty to dependence1 and changes places with ,him upon the eternal throne on the strength of his self-transcending humility6 ,note to page #bjg4 ,both ,hegel and ,eckart regard ,thought as the point of union between the human nature and the divine4 ,but the former would pronounce both ,god and man unrevealed1 i4e41 unconscious of themselves1 till ,thought has been developed by some ,method into a philosophic ,system4 ,mysticism brings ,eckart nearer to ,schelling on this matter than to the dry schoolman ,hegel4 ,the charge which ,hegel brings against the philosophy of ,schelling he might have applied1 with a little alteration1 to that of ,eckart4 ,hegel says1 #8,when this knowledge which claims to be essential and ignores apprehension 7is begrifflose71 professes to have sunk the peculiarity of ,self in the ,essence1 and so to give forth the utterance of a hallowed and unerring philosophy1#ie men quite overlook the fact that this so-called wisdom1 instead of being yielded up to the influence of ,divinity by its contempt of all proportion and definiteness1 does really nothing but give full play to accident and to caprice4 ,such men imagine that by surrendering themselves to the unregulated ferment of the ,substance 7,substanz71 by throwing a veil over consciousness1 and abandoning the understanding1 they become those favourites of ,deity to whom he gives wisdom in sleep2 verily1 nothing was ever produced by such a process better than mere dreams4'--,vorrede zur ,phnomenologie1 p4 #f4 ,these are true and weighty words3 unfortunately ,hegel's remedy proves worse than the disease4 ,we seem to hear ,eckart speak when ,fichte exclaims1 #8,raise thyself to the height of religion1 and all veils are removed2 the world and its dead principle passes away from thee1 and the very ,godhead enters thee anew in its first and original form1 as ,life1 as thine own life which thou shalt and oughtest to live4--,anweisung zum sel4 ,leben1 p4 #dgj4 ,and again1 #8,religion consists in the inward consciousness that ,god actually lives and acts in us1 and fulfils his work4'--,ibid4 p4 #dgc4 ,but ,eckart would not have affirmed with ,fichte 7a few pages farther on7 that1 were ,christ to return to the world1 he would be indifferent to the recognition or the denial of his work as a ,saviour1 provided a man were only united to ,god somehow6 ,footnote #id3 ,see ,note1 p4 #bab4 ,footnote #ie3 ,eckart does not make use of his lapse into the ,essence to philosophise withal2 it is simply his religious ultimatum4 ,,chapter ,,iii4 ,with that about ,i tourned my hedde1 ,and sawe anone the fifth rout ,that to this lady gan lout1 ,and doune on knees1 anone1 to fall1 ,and to her tho besoughten all1 ,to hiden hir good workes eke1 ,and said1 they yeve not a leke ,for no fame1 ne soch renoun1 ,for they for contemplacioun1 ,and ,goddes love had it wrought1 ,ne of fame would they nought4 ,,chaucer3 ,,the ,,house ,,of ,,fame4 ,on the next occasion when our little ,summerford circle was ready to hear some more of ,arnstein's ,chronicle1 they were informed by ,atherton that four years of the manuscript were missing1--that such intervals were only too frequent1--in fact1 the document was little more than a collection of fragments4 #8,the next entry ,i find1' said he1 #8is in #acbd1 and the good armourer1 in much excitement1 begins with an exclamation4 #acbd4 ,july4 ,st4 ,kylian's ,day4--,what a day this has been6 ,strasburg1 and all the states which adhere to ,louis1 are placed under the bann4 ,the bells were ringing merrily at early morning2 now1 the ,interdict is proclaimed1 and every tongue of them is silent4 ,as the news flew round1 every workman quitted his work4 ,the busy stalls set out on either side of the streets were left empty4 ,the tools and the wares lay unlooked at and untouched4 ,the bishop and the clergy of his party1 and most of the ,dominicans1 keep out of sight4 ,my men are furious4 ,i have been all day from house to house1 and group to group1 telling the people to keep a good heart4 ,we shall have a sad time of it1 ,i see4 ,it is so hard for the poor creatures to shake off a fear in which they have been cradled4 ,the clergy and the monks will pour out of ,strasburg1 as out of a ,sodom1 in shoals4 ,a mere handful will stay behind1--not nearly enough to christen those who will be born and to shrive those who will die in this populous city4 ,they may name their price3 the greedy of gain may make their fortunes4 ,the miserable poor will die1 numbers of them1 in horror1 unable to purchase absolution4 ,and then1 out of the few priests who do remain1 scarcely any will have the courage to disobey the pope1 and1 despite the ,interdict1 say mass4 ',tis an anxious time for either party4 ,louis has most of the states on his side1 and the common voice1 in all the towns of the ,rhineland--7in the princely ,cologne most of all71 is1 ,i hear1 loud in his favour4 ,the ,minorites will be with him1 and all of that sort among the friars1 who have little favour to lose with his ,holiness4 ,but ,france is with the ,pope against him2 ,duke ,leopold is a doughty adversary2 ,john of ,bohemia restless and fickle1 and no doubt the ,pope will set on the ,polacks and pagan ,lithuanians to waste most horribly all the north and eastern frontiers4 ,since the victory of ,mhldorf1 ,frederick has lain in prison4 ,that battle is the grievance4 ,the enemies of the ,emperor are more full of rancour than ever4 ,yet1 with all the mischief it may bring in the present1 what lover of the ,fatherland can sorrow therefor8 ,gallant little ,schweppermann1 with his lame foot and grey hair1 and his glorious two eggs1 long may he live to do other such deeds6#if ,louis holds a high spirit at present1 and goes about under the bann with a brave heart4 ,but it is only the outset as yet4 ,i much fear me he may lack the staunchness to go through as he has begun4 ,there is store of thunder behind at ,avignon4 ,methinks he hankers1 like a child1 mainly after the lance and sword and crown of ,charlemagne1 to dress him out perfectly withal ,king of the ,romans1 and seeth not the full bearing of the very war he wages4 ,we shall not be idle4 ,it is already proposed to send off troops to the aid of ,louis4 ,i have half a mind to go myself2 but home can ill spare me now1 and ,i render the ,emperor more service by such little influence as ,i have in ,strasburg4 ,to-morrow1 to consult about the leagues to be formed with neighbouring towns and with the ,swiss burghers1 to uphold the good cause together4 99 99 99 99 99 #acbf4 ,march4 ,st4 ,gregory's ,day4--,duke ,leopold died here yesterday1 at the ,ochsenstein ,palace4#ig ,after ravaging the suburbs of ,spires1 he came hither in a raging fever to breathe his last4 ,the bishop told him he must pardon the ,landgrave of ,lower ,alsace from the bottom of his heart4 ,they say he struggled long and wrathfully against the condition1 till1 finding the bishop firm in refusing absolution on other terms1 he gave way4 ,but1 just as he was about to receive the host1 a fit of vomiting came on1 wherein he presently expired1 without the sacrament after all4 ,frederick has been now at liberty some months4 ,louis visited him in his prison4 ,to think of their having been together all their boyhood1 and loving each other so1 to meet thus6 ,frederick the ,handsome1 haggard with a three years' imprisonment--his beard down to his waist2 and ,louis1 successful and miserable4 ,they say ,frederick cut off his beard at first1 and sent it1 by way of memorial1 to ,john of ,bohemia1 and that when he went back to his castle he found his young wife had wept herself blind during his captivity4 ,he swore on the holy wafer to renounce his claim to the empire4 ,the ,pope released him from his oath soon after1 but he keeps his word like knight1 not like priest1 and holds to it yet4 ,it is whispered that they have agreed to share the throne4 ,but that can never be brought to pass4 ,heard to-day1 by a merchant1 of ,hermann4#ih ,he is travelling through ,spain4 ,i miss him much4 ,before he left ,strasburg he was full of ,eckart's doctrine1 out of all measure admiring the wonderful man1 and hoarding every word that dropped from his lips4 ,eckart is now sick at ,cologne1 among his sorrowing disciples4 ,grieved to hear that the leeches say he hath not long to live4 ,a long conversation with ,henry of ,nrdlingen4#ii ,he has journeyed hither1 cast down and needy1 to ask counsel of ,tauler4 ,verily he needs counsel1 but hath not strength of mind to take it when given4 ,tauler says ,henry has many friends among the excellent of the earth2 all love him1 and he is full of love1 but sure a pitiful sight to see4 ,his heart is with us4 ,he mourns over the trouble of the time4 ,he weeps for the poor folk1 living and dying without the sacraments4 ,but the ,interdict crushes his soul4 ,now he has all but gathered heart to do as ,tauler doth--preach and labour on1 unmoved by all this uproar1 but anon his courage is gone1 and he falls back into his fear again as soon as he is left alone4 ,he sits and pores over those letters of spiritual consolation which ,margaret ,ebner has written to him4 ,he says sometimes she alone retains him on the earth4 ,verily ,i fear me that1 priest as he is1 some hopeless earthly love mingles with his friendship for that saintly woman4 ,he has had to flee from his home for refusing to perform service4 ,strasburg1 in that case1 can be no abiding place for him4 ,i see nothing before him but a wretched wandering1 perhaps for years4 ,i cannot get him to discern the malice of ,pope ,john1 rather than the wrath of heaven1 in the curse that withers us4 ,i gave him a full account of what the ,pope's court at ,avignon truly is1 as ,i gathered from a trusty eye-witness1 late come from thence1 whom ,i questioned long the other day4#ajj ,i told him that gold was the one true god there--our ,german wealth1 wrung out from us1 and squandered on ,french courtiers1 players1 buffoons1 and courtezans--,christ sold daily for it--the palace full of cardinals and prelates1 grey-haired debauchees and filthy mockers1 to a man--accounting chastity a scandal1 and the soul's immortality and coming judgment an old wife's fable2--yea1 simony1 adultery1 murder1 incest1 so frequent and unashamed1 that the ,frenchmen themselves do say the ,pope's coming hath corrupted them4 ,i asked him if these were the hands to take up ,god's instruments of wrath to bruise with them his creatures8 ,but all in vain4 ,there is an awfulness in the very name of ,pope which blinds reason and strikes manhood down1 in him1 as in thousands more4 99 99 99 99 99 ,a4,d4 #accb4 ,fourth week after ,easter4--,but now awaked from the first sleep ,i have had for the last three days and nights4 ,i set down in a word or two what hath happened1 then out to action again4 ,last ,wednesday1 at the great festival1 the nobles1 knights1 and senators1 with a brave show of fair ladies1 banqueted at the grand house in the ,brandgasse4#aja ,within1 far into the night1 minstrelsy and dancing2 without1 the street blocked up with a crowd of serving men and grooms with horses1 torch-bearers1 and lookers-on of all sorts--when1 suddenly1 the music stopped--they heard shouts and the clash of swords and shrill screams4 ,there had been a quarrel between a ,zorn and a ,mllenheim--they drew--,von ,hunefeld was killed on the spot1 another of the ,zorns avenged him by cutting down ,wasselenheim2 the conflict became general1 in hall1 in the antechambers1 down the great staircase1 out on the steps1 the retainers took part on either side1 and the fray ended in the flight of the ,zorns1 who left six slain in the house and in the street4 ,two were killed on the side of the ,mllenheims4 ,all who fell were of high rank1 and several of either faction are severely wounded4 ,they draw off to their quarters1 each breathing vengeance1 preparing for another conflict at daybreak4 ,all the rest of the night the ,landvogt and ,gotzo von ,grosstein were riding to and fro to pacify them--to no purpose4 ,each party declared they would send for the knights and gentry of their side from the country round about4 ,i was with ,burckard ,zwinger when we heard this4 #8,now1' said ,i1 #8or all is lost4 ,off1 and harangue the people4 ,i will get the best of the burghers together4' ,we parted4 ,all the city was astir4 ,as ,i made my way from house to house1 ,i sent the people ,i met off to the market place to hear ,zwinger4 ,i could hear their shouts1 summons enough now1 without any other4 ,when ,i got back to the ,roland's pillar1 ,i found that his plain1 home-thrust speech had wrought the multitude to what we would1 and no more4 ,snatches of it flew from mouth to mouth1 like sparks of fire1--he had struck well while the iron was hot4 #8,to the ,stadtmeister6' was the cry4 #8,the keys6 ,the seal6 ,the standard6 ,we will have our standard4 ,let the citizens defend their own6' ,most of the burghers were of one mind with ,zwinger1 and we went in a body 7the crowd shouting behind us1 a roaring sea of heads1 and the bell on the townhouse ringing as never before7 to demand the keys of young ,sieck4 ,he yielded all with trembling4 ,by daybreak we had dispersed2 the several corporations repaired armed to their quarters2 the gates were shut2 the bridges guarded2 the walls manned4 ,all was in our hands4 ,so far safe4 ,the nobles1 knights1 and gentry of the neighbourhood came up in the morning in straggling groups1 approaching the city from various quarters1 with as many of their men as could be hastily gathered1 but drew off again when they saw our posture of defence4 ,it was truly no time for them4 ,this promptitude has saved ,strasburg from being a field of battle in every street for counts and men at arms1 who despise and hate the citizens--whose victory1 on whatever side1 would have been assured pillage and rapine1 and1 in the end1 the loss of our privilege to deal solely for ourselves in our own affairs4 ,well done1 good ,zwinger1 thou prince of bakers1 with thy true warm heart1 and cool head1 and ready tongue6 ,to our praise be it said1 no deed of violence was done2 there was no blood-thirstiness1 no spoiling1 but a steady purpose in the vast crowd that1 hap what would1 no strangers should come in to brawl and rob in ,strasburg4 ,while the gates have been closed and the ,town ,hall guarded1 we have been deliberating on a new senate4 ,four new ,stadtmeisters elected4 ,zwinger made ,amtmeister4 ,the magistracy taken out of the exclusive hands of the great families and open to the citizens generally1 gentlemen1 burghers1 and artizans1 side by side4 ,the workmen no longer to be slaves to the caprice of the gentry4 ,the nobles are disarmed for a time1 to help them settle their quarrel more quickly4 ,i go the rounds with the horse patrol every night4 ,the gates are never to be opened except when the great bell has rung to give permission4 ,we sit in the ,town ,hall with our swords4 ,i took my place there this morning1 armed to the teeth1 and verily my ,margarita seemed proud enough when she sent me forth1 with a kiss1 to my new dignity1 clad in good steel instead of senatorial finery4 ,we have every prospect of peace and prosperousness4 ,the nobles see our strength1 and must relinquish with as good a grace as they may a power they have usurped4 ,the main part of the old laws will abide as before4 ,all is perfectly quiet4 ,there has been no mere vengeance or needless rigour4 ,i hear nothing worse than banishment will be inflicted upon any--that only on a few4 ,the bishop's claws will be kept shorter4 99 99 99 99 99 #acch4 ,august4 ,st4 ,bartholomew's ,day4--,now is the rent between clerk and layman1 pope and emperor1 wider even than heretofore4 ,last month was held the electorial diet at ,rhense4 ,the electors1 by far the greater part1 with ,louis2 and their bold doings now apparent4 ,yesterday was issued1 at ,frankfort1 a manifesto of the ,emperor's1 wherein ,benedict1 he and all his curses1 are set at nought1 and the mailed glove manfully hurled in his teeth4 ,thereby he declares1 that whomsoever the electors choose they will have acknowledged rightful emperor1 whether the pope bless or bann1 and all who gainsay this are traitors2--that the emperor is not1 and will not be1 in anywise dependent on the pope4 ,all good subjects are called on to disregard the ,interdict1 and such towns or states as obey the same are to forfeit their charters4#ajb ,it was indeed high time to speak out4 ,louis1 losing heart1 tried negotiation1 and made unworthy concessions to the pope1 whereon he 7impatient1 they say1 to get back to ,italy7 would have come to an agreement1 but the ,french cardinals took care to cross and undo all4 ,the emperor even applied to ,philip personally--asking the ,king of ,france1 forsooth1 to suffer him to be king of the ,romans--then1 finding that vain1 is leagued with the ,english king1 and war declared against ,france4 ,this sounds bravely4 ,shame on the electors if they hold not to their promise now4 ,as to our ,strasburg1 we stand by the emperor1 as of old1 despite our bishop ,berthold1 who1 with sword instead of crook1 has done battle with the partisans of ,louis for now some years1 gathering help from all parts among the nobles and the gentry1 burning villages1 besieging and being besieged1 spoiling and being spoiled2 moreover1 between whiles1 thinking to win himself the name of a zealous pastor by issuing decrees against long hair growing on clerks' heads1 and enforcing fiercely all the late bulls against the followers of ,eckart1 the ,beghards1 and others4#ajc ,last year he tasted six weeks' imprisonment1 having quarrelled with the heads of the chapter4 ,rudolph von ,hohenstein and others of the opposite party1 surrounded one night the house of the ,provost of ,haselach1 where he lay1 and carried him off in his shirt to the ,castle of ,vendenti2 and smartly did they make him pay before he came out4 ,we have full authority to declare war against him1 if he refuses now to submit to ,louis1 as ,i think not likely1 seeing how matters go at present4 ,he had the conscience to expect that we magistrates would meddle in his dispute and take his part4 ,even the senators1 who adhere mainly to the ,zorn family1 were against him1 and methinks after all he has done to harass and injure us1 we did in a sort return good for evil in being merely lookers-on4 ,tauler is away on a visit to ,basle1 where the state of parties is precisely similar to our own1 the citizens there1 as in ,friburg1 joining our league for ,louis and for ,germany2 and the bishop against them1 tooth and nail4#ajd ,my eldest boy 7,god bless him1 he is fifteen this day1 and a lad for a father to be proud of7 hath accompanied the ,doctor thither1 having charge of sundry matters of business for me there4 ,had word from him last week4 ,they have somehow procured a year's remission of the ,interdict for ,basle4 ,he says ,suso came to see ,tauler1 and that they had long talk together for two days4 ,henry of ,nrdlingen is there likewise1 and now that the pope hath kennelled his barking curse for a twelvemonth1 preaches1 to the thronging of the churches1 wherever he goes4 ,a4,d4 #acci4 ,january4--,the new year opens gloomily4 ,without loss of time1 fresh-forged anathemas are come1 and coming1 against the outspoken emperor and this troublesome ,germany4 ,some of the preachers1 and the bare-footed friars especially1 have yet remained to say mass and perform the offices2 now1 even these are leaving the city4 ,some cloisters have stood for now two or three years quite empty4 ,many churches are deserted altogether1 and the doors nailed up4 ,the magistracy have issued orders to compel the performance of service4 ,the clerks are fairly on the anvil2 the civil hammer batters them on the one side1 and the ecclesiastical upon the other with alternate strokes4 ,bitter wind and sleet this morning4 ,saw three ,dominicans creeping back into the town1 who had left it a month ago1 refusing to say mass4 ,poor wretches1 how starved and woe-begone they looked1 after miserable wanderings about the country in the snow1 winter showing them scant courtesy1 and sure ,i am the boors less2 and now coming back to a deserted convent and to a city where men's faces are towards them as a flint4 ,straight1 as ,i saw them1 there came into my mind that goodly exhortation of ,dr4 ,tauler's1 that we should show mercy1 as doth ,god1 unto all1 enemies and friends alike1 for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen1 how can he love ,god1 whom he hath not seen8#aje ,ran after them1 called them in1 thawed them1 fed them1 comforted them with kind words and good ale by the great fire1--then argued with them4 ,they thought it a cruel thing that they must starve because pope and emperor are at feud4 #8,and is it not1' urged ,i1 #8a crueller that thousands of innocent poor folk should live without sacrament1 never hear a mass1 perhaps die unshriven1 for the very same reason8 ,is not ,god's law higher than the pope's1--do to others as ye would they should do unto you8 ,could you look for other treatment at the hands of our magistrates1 and expect to be countenanced and sustained by them in administering the malediction of their enemies8#8 ,thought it most courteous1 however1 to ply them more pressingly with food than with arguments4 ,while they were there1 in comes my little ,otto1 opens his eyes wide with wonder to see them1 and presently breaks out with the words1 now on the tongue of every ,strasburger1 a rhyming version of the decree3-- ,they shall still their masses sing1 ,or out of the city we'll make them spring4#ajf ,told him he should not sing that just then1 and1 when he was out of the room1 bade them mark by that straw which way the wind blew4 ,i record here a vision vouchsafed to that eminent saint the abbess ,christina ,ebner1 of ,engelthal1 near ,nurnberg4 ,she beheld the ,romish ,church in the likeness of a great minster1 fair to see1 but with doors closed by reason of the bann4 ,priestly voices1 solemn and sweet1 were heard to chant within2 and1 without1 stood a multitude waiting and hearkening1 but no man dared enter4 ,then came there to the nun one in the habit of a preacher1 and told her that he would give her words to speak to comfort the poor folk withal that stood outside1--and that man was the ,lord ,christ4 ,and verily1 in some sort1 so hath ,god done1 having pity upon us1 for through all ,rhineland hath he moved godly men1 both clerks and laity1 to draw nearer the one to the other1 forming together what we call the association of the ,friends of ,god1 for the better tending of the inward life in these troublous times1 for wrestling with the ,almighty on behalf of his suffering ,christendom1 and for the succour of the poor people1 by preaching and counsel and sacrament1 that are now as sheep without a shepherd1 and perishing for lack of spiritual bread4#ajg ,tauler is of the foremost among them1 and with his brethren1 ,egenolph of ,ehenheim and ,dietrich of ,colmar1 labours without ceasing1 having now the wider field and heavier toil1 as so few are left in ,strasburg who will perform any church service for love or money4 ,ah6 well might the ,abbess ,christina say of him that the ,spirit of ,god dwelt within him as a sweet harping4 ,he has travelled much of late1 and wherever he goes spreads blessing and consolation2 the people flock to hear him2 the hands of the ,friends of ,god are strengthened2 and a savour of heavenly love and wisdom is left behind4 ,his good name hath journeyed1 they say1 even beyond the ,alps1 and into the ,low ,countries4 ,neither are there wanting many like-minded1 though none equal to him4 ,he found at ,cologne ,henry of ,lwen1 ,henry1 and ,franke1 and ,john of ,sterngasse1#ajh brother ,dominicans all of them1 preaching constantly1 with much of his own fervour1 if with a doctrine more like that of ,eckart4 ,in ,switzerland there is ,suso1 and ,i hear much of one ,ruysbroek1 in the ,netherlands1 a man younger than ,tauler1 and a notable master in the divine art of contemplation4 ,among the ,friends of ,god are numbers both of men and women of every rank1 abbots and farmers1 knights and nuns1 monks and artizans4 ,there is ,conrad1 ,abbot of ,kaisersheim3 there are the nuns of ,unterlinden and ,klingenthal1 at ,colmar and ,basle1 as well as the holy sisters of ,engelthal2 the knights of ,rheinfeld1 ,pfaffenheim1 and ,landsberg2 our rich merchant here1 ,rulman ,merswin1 and one1 unworthy of so good a name1 that holds this pen4 ,our law is that universal love commanded by ,christ1 and not to be gainsaid by his vicar4 ,some have joined themselves to us for awhile1 and gone out from us because they were not of us2 for we teach no easy road to heaven for the pleasing of the flesh4 ,many call us sectaries1 ,beghards1 brethren of the ,free ,spirit1 or of the ,new ,spirit1 and what not4 ,they might call us by worse names1 but we are none of these4 ,the prophecies of some among us1 concerning judgments to be looked for at the hands of ,god1 and the faithful warnings of others1 have made many angry4 ,yet are not such things needed1 when1 as ,dr4 ,tauler saith1 the princes and prelates are1 too many of them1 worse than ,jews and infidels1 and mere horses for the devil's riding4#aji ,so far from wishing evil1 we mourn as no others over the present woe1 and the ,friends of ,god are1 saith ,dr4 ,tauler again1 pillars of ,christendom1 and holders off for awhile of the gathered cloud of wrath4 ,beyond all question1 if all would be active as they are active in works of love to their fellows1 the face of the times would brighten presently1 and the world come into sunshine4 ,it was but yesterday that in his sermon ,tauler repeated the saying of one--an eminent ,friend of ,god--#8,i cannot pass my neighbour by without wishing for him in my heart more of the blessedness of heaven than for myself2#8--#8and that1' said the good ,doctor1 #8,i call true love4' ,sure ,i am that such men stand between the living and the dead4#aaj #acci4 ,march4--,much encouraged on hearing ,dr4 ,tauler's sermon on #8,whose is the image and superscription8#8#aaa ,it was the last part that gladdened me more especially1 when he was enforcing watchfulness and self-examination1 and yet showed that the command might be obeyed by men such as ,i am1 in the midst of a worldly calling4 ,many1 said he1 complain that they are so busied with outward things as to have no time to look inward4 ,but let such1 for every six steps they have to take outward in their daily duty1 take one step inward1 and observe their hearts1 and their business will be to them no stumbling-block4 ,many are cloistered in body while thought and desire wander to and fro over the earth4 ,but many others do1 even amid the noise and stir of the market-place and the shop1 keep such watch over their hearts1 and set such ward on their senses1 that they go unharmed1 and their inner peace abides unbroken4 ,such men are much more truly to be called monks than those who1 within a convent wall1 have thought and senses so distraught that they can scarce say a single ,paternoster with true devotion4 ,he said that ,god impressed his image and superscription on our souls when he created us in his image4 ,all true ,christians should constantly retire into themselves1 and examine throughout their souls wherein this image of the ,holy ,trinity lieth1 and clear away therefrom such images and thoughts as are not of ,god's impressing1--all that is merely earthly in love and care1 all that hath not ,god purely for its object4 ,it must be in separateness from the world1 withdrawal from all trust and satisfaction in what is creaturely1 that we present ,god the image he hath engraven1 clear and free from rust4 ,this image and superscription lies in the inmost inmost of the soul1 whither ,god only cometh1 and neither men nor angels1 and where he delights to dwell4 ,he will share it with no other4 ,he hath said1 #8,my delight is in the sons of men4' ,thus is the inmost of our soul united to the inmost of the very ,godhead1 where the eternal ,father doth ever speak and bring forth his eternal essential ,word1 his only-begotten ,son1 equal in honour1 power1 and worthiness1 as saith the ,apostle--#8,he is the brightness of his glory and the express image of his person4' ,by him hath the ,father made all things4 ,as all things have their beginning and source from the ,godhead1 by the birth of the eternal ,word out of the ,father1 so do all creatures in their essence subsist by the same birth of the ,son out of the ,father1 and therefore shall they all return in the same way to their source1 to wit1 through the ,son to the ,father4 ,from this eternal birth of the ,son ariseth the love of ,god the ,father to his divine ,son1 and that of the ,son to his divine ,father1 which love is the ,holy ,ghost--an eternal and divine ,bond1 uniting the ,father and the ,son in everlasting ,love4 ,these three are essentially one--one single pure essential unity1 as even the heathen philosophers bear witness4 ,therefore1 saith ,aristotle1 #8,there is but one ,lord who ordaineth all things4' ,he1 therefore1 that would be truly united to ,god must dedicate the penny of his soul1 with all its faculties1 to ,god alone1 and join it unto ,him4 ,for if the highest and most glorious ,unity1 which is ,god himself1 is to be united to the soul1 it must be through oneness 7,einigkeit74 ,now when the soul hath utterly forsaken itself and all creatures1 and made itself free from all manifoldness1 then the sole ,unity1 which is ,god1 answers truly to the oneness of the soul1 for then is there nothing in the soul beside ,god4 ,therefore between such a soul and ,god 7if a man be so prepared that his soul hangs on nothing but ,god himself7 there is so great a oneness that they become one1 as the ,apostle saith1 #8,he that is joined to the ,lord is one spirit4' ,but there are some who will fly before they have wings1 and pluck the apples before they are ripe1 and1 at the very outset of the ,divine life1 be so puffed up that it contents them not to enter in at the door and contemplate ,christ's humanity1 but they will apprehend his highness and incomprehensible ,deity only4 ,so did once a priest1 and fell grievously1 and bitterly mourned his folly1 and had to say1 #8,ah1 most ,merciful6 had ,i followed truly the pattern of thy holy humanity1 it had not been thus with me6' ,beware of such perilous presumption--your safe course is to perfect yourselves first in following the lowly life of ,christ1 and in earnest study of the shameful cross4 ,methinks this is true counsel1 and better1 for our sort at least1 than ,master ,eckart's exhortation to break through into the essence1 and to exchange ,god made manifest for the absolute and inscrutable ,godhead4 #acci4 ,march #bj4--;,finished to-day a complete suit of armour for young ,franz ,mllenheim4 ,the aristocratic families bear the change of government more good-humouredly than ,i looked for4 ,their influence is still great1 and they can afford to make a virtue of necessity4 ,most of them now1 too1 are on the right side4 ,a great improvement--locking our doors at night4#aab ,this is the first time ,i have thought to record it1 though the custom has been introduced these nine years4 ,before1 there was not a lock to a house-door in ,strasburg1 and if you wanted to shut it1 on ever so great a need1 you had to work with spade and shovel to remove a whole mountain of dirt collected about the threshold4 ,several new roads1 too1 made of late by the merchant-league of the ,rhineland4 ,footnote #if3 ,louis was indebted for this important victory to the skill of ,schweppermann4 ,after the battle the sole supply of the imperial table was found to consist of a basket of eggs1 which the emperor distributed among his officers1 saying1 #8,to each of you one egg--to our gallant ,schweppermann two4'--,menzel4 ,footnote #ig3 ,see ,laguille1 ,histoire d',alsace1 liv4 xxiii4 p4 #bga4 ,footnote #ih3 ,many passages in his ,heiligenleben are altogether in the spirit of ,eckart1 and have their origin1 beyond question1 in his sayings1 or in those of his disciples4--,see pp4 #aad1 #abe1 #aej1 #ahg 7,pfeiffer71 and also the extracts in ,wackernagel1 ,altd4 ,leseb4 p4 #hec4 ,footnote #ii3 ,see ,schmidt's ,tauler1 ,appendix1 p4 #agb1 c41 where such information as can be obtained concerning ,henry of ,nrdlingen is given4 ,footnote #ajj3 ,compare ,petrarch's account in his letters1 cited by ,gieseler3 #8,mitto stupra1 raptus1 incestus1 adulteria1 qui jam pontificalis lascivi ludi sunt3 mitto raptarum viros1 ne mutire audeant1 non tantum avitis laribus1 sed finibus patriis exturbatos1 quque contumeliarum gravissima est1 et violatas conjuges et externo semine gravidas rursus accipere1 et post partum reddere ad alternam satietatem abutentium coactos4' ,footnote #aja3 ,laguille gives an account of this revolution1 ,hist4 d',alsace1 p4 #bgf4 ,footnote #ajb3 ,schmidt's ,tauler1 p4 #ab4 ,footnote #ajc3 ,laguille1 liv4 xxiv4 p4 #bhj4 ,footnote #ajd3 ,schmidt1 p4 #bb4 ,footnote #aje3 ,tauler's ,sermon on the ,twenty-second ,sunday after ,trinity contains an exhortation to ,christian love1 remarkable for beauty and discrimination4 ,tauler's ,predigten1 vol ii4 p4 #eia 7,berlin1 #ahda74 ,footnote #ajf3 ,schmidt1 p4 #ad3-- #8do soltent s ouch frbas singen oder aber us der statt springen4' ,footnote #ajg3 ,schmidt's ,tauler1 ,anhang ber die ,gottesfreunde4 ,footnote #ajh3 ,passages from two of these mystics1 ,heinrich von ,lwen and ,johannes von ,sterngasse1 are given among the ,sprche ,deutscher ,mystiker1 in ,wackernagel1 p4 #hij4 ,footnote #aji3 ,see ,tauler's ,predigten1 vol4 ii4 p4 #ehd2 and also1 concerning the charge of sectarianism1 p4 #eie2 and the services of the ,friends of ,god1 vol4 i4 pred4 xxvi4 p4 #aid2 pred4 xi4 p4 #he4 ,footnote #aaj3 ,ibid41 vol4 ii4 pred4 lxvi4 p4 #eid4 ,footnote #aaa3 ,the sermon referred to is that on the ,twenty-third ,sunday after ,trinity1 vol4 ii4 p4 #eih4 ,while he is careful to warn his hearers against the presumption of attempting at once to contemplate ,deity apart from its manifestation in the humanity of ,christ1 he yet seems to admit that when the soul has been thoroughly exercised in the imitation of ,christ1--has become conformed1 as far as man can be1 to his spirit and his sufferings1 then there commences a period of repose and joy in which there is an extraordinary intuition of ,deity1 which approximates to that perfect vision promised hereafter1 when we shall see1 not #8through a glass darkly1' but face to face4--,vol4 ii4 p4 #fji4 ,footnote #aab3 ,meiners1 ,hist4 ,vergleichung der ,sitten1 c41 des ,mittelalters1 vol4 ii4 p4 #aag4 ,,chapter ,,iv4 ,if you would be pleased to make acquaintance with a solid theology of the good old sort in the ,german tongue1 get ,john ,tauler's sermons2 for neither in ,latin nor in our own language have ,i ever seen a theology more sound or more in harmony with the ,gospel4--,,luther 7to ,spalatin74 ,die ,sehnsucht und der ,trame ,weben ,sie sind der weichen ,seele sss1 ,doch edler ist ein starkes ,streben ,und macht den schnen ,traum gewiss4#aac ,,uhland4 ,on another evening1 after ,kate had played a plaintive air on the piano as an overture2 when ,atherton had praised it as expressive of the upward fluttering struggle of the ,psyche of ,mysticism1 and ,gower had quoted ,jean ,paul's fancy1 where he says that sweet sounds are the blue waves that hide the sea-monsters which lurk in the deeps of life--,adolf's journal was continued1 as follows3-- #acci4 ,december4 ,st4 ,barbara's ,day4--,three days ago1 at the close of his sermon1 ,doctor ,tauler said he would preach to-day on the highest perfection attainable in this life4 ,went to hear him4 ,the cloister-chapel crowded long before the time4 ,he began by telling us that he had much to say1 and so would not to-day preach from the gospel according to his wont1 and moreover would not put much ,latin into his sermon1 but would make good all he taught with ,holy ,writ4 ,then he went on to preach on the necessity of dying utterly to the world and to our own will1 and to yield ourselves up1 #8dying-wise1' into the hands of ,god4 ,he gave further four-and-twenty marks1 whereby we may discern who are the true1 righteous1 illuminated1 contemplative men of ,god4#aad ,observed close under the pulpit a stranger 7by his dress1 from the ,oberland7 who did diligently write down1 from time to time1 what the ,doctor said--a man of notable presence1 in the prime of life1 with large piercing eyes under shaggy brows1 eagle nose1 thoughtful head--altogether so royal a man as ,i never before saw4 ,he mingled with the crowd after sermon1 and ,i could not learn who he was4 ,several others1 as curious1 and no wiser than myself4 ,this mysterious personage may perhaps be one of the ,friends of ,god1 who are numerous in the ,oberland4 ,methought he wished to escape notice4 ,perhaps he is a ,waldensian1 and dreads the evil eye of the inquisitor4 #acdj4 ,january4 ,eve of ,st4 ,agnes4--,strange2 nothing has been seen of the ,doctor for this whole month4 ,his penitents are calling continually at the convent1 craving admittance to their confessor1 but he will see no one4 ,he is not ill1 they say1 and takes his part in the convent services with the rest1 but never stirs beyond the walls4 ,none of his many friends can tell us what is the matter4 #acdj4 ,july4 ,st4 ,alexius' ,day4--,all things much as aforetime1 that is1 ill enough4 ,business slack generally1 but our hammers going4 ,the worst is this loss of ,tauler1 our comfort in our trouble4 ,many reports1 no certainty4 ,some say he has committed some crime1 and sits now in the convent prison4 ,this ,i everywhere contradict4 ,others will have it that he is gone mad4 ,many of his former friends are now turned against him1 and his enemies make them merry4 ,went again to the convent to get what news ,i could4 ,enquired of the porter why the ,doctor had shut himself up4 ,he replied1 #8,indeed1 sir1 and ,i cannot know4' ,methought a wonderful close answer for a porter4 ,went into the locutory4 ,in the passage the cook ran by me1 having just received twenty-five cuffs on the head for leaving the vessels and linen dirty on ,saturday night4 ,much laughter thereat4 ,several monks in the locutory1 among them brother ,bernard1 the cellarer1 an acquaintance of mine--a bustling1 shrewd little man1 provider of the monastic prog#aae to general satisfaction1 talking often of pittances and profound in beeves1--a brave blade1 and seen swaggering now and then on holidays with sword at his side1 affecting1 more than beseems1 secular gallantry4 ,said1 when ,i asked him concerning ,tauler1 #8,oh1 poor fellow1 the devil's clawing him a bit1 that's all4' ,another said1 #8,we always knew it would be this way4' ,a third1 #8,i said so from the first--spiritual pride1 ,lucifer's sin1 ,lucifer's sin6' ,looked at the rascal's paunch--thought he ran little danger of such sin from any over-mortifying of the flesh4 ,his flesh ought to have mortified him1 the brazen-face4 ,spake up for ,tauler as ,i could1 but saw that he was the jest of his brethren--having doubtless to bear cruelty and mocking along with some melancholy inward fight of afflictions--and came away home with a heavy heart4 ,could not get speech with the abbot1 who was busy looking to the monks' beds1 that they were not too soft4 #acdb4 ,new ,year's ,day4--,public notice given1 that in three days ,tauler will preach once more4 ,the news makes great talk4 ,my heart sings jubilate thereat4 ,i look back on two weary years that he has now been hidden from those who so need him4 ,i have confessed to no one the while--somehow1 could not to any other--yet ,i fear me such neglect is a sin4 ,those like-minded with ,tauler have been busy among us in their work of love1 but the master-spirit is sorely missed1 notwithstanding4 ,one ,ludolph of ,saxony1 who was a ,dominican1 and has come over hither from ,cologne lately1 to be prior of the new ,carthusian convent1 has been a great blessing unto us4 ,he speaks out boldly against abuses1 and persuades men tenderly to follow ,christ carrying the cross4 ,bishop ,berthold quieter of late2 finds it prudent to keep on better terms at present with the emperor4 ,little ,hans a month old to-day4 ,a household of now five children4 ,henry of great service to me4 ,think sometimes of leaving the business with him almost altogether1 if only to have him near4 ,margarita not again ill since the first times of the interdict4 ,a great mercy6 ,getting richer yet1 and tremble sometimes lest it should ensnare my soul1 therefore1 ,i disencumber myself at intervals of considerable sums for sick and poor folk4 ,must bear in mind ,tauler's counsel to use and enjoy everything intending ,god therein4 ,find my affections go forth much--,i hope not too much--towards this last babe4 ,he thrives well2 verily1 no child could be more unlike the blessed ,st4 ,nicholas1 of whom ,i have heard a friar say that1 when hanging on his mother's breast1 he fasted ,wednesdays and ,fridays1 and could not be brought to suck more than once a day4 ,but if ,i stay to number up my blessings1 ,i shall have a list longer than the curse-roll of the ,pope4 ,god give me an unworldly1 thankful1 watchful spirit6 #acdb4 ,january #f4--;,alas6 that ,i should have to write what now ,i must6 ,i forced a way into the crowded church--every part filled with people1 wedged in below so that they could not move1 clustered like bees where they had climbed above into every available place1 and a dense mass in the porch besides4 ,the ,doctor came1 looking woefully ill1 changed as ,i scarce ever saw a man1 to live4 ,he mounted the lectorium1 held his cap before his eyes1 and said3 #8,o merciful and eternal ,god1 if it be thy will1 give me so to speak that thy divine name may be praised and honoured1 and these men bettered thereby4' ,with that he began to weep4 ,we waited1 breathless4 ,still he wept1 and could speak no word1 his sobs audible in the stillness1 and the tears making their way through his fingers as he hid his face in his hands4 ,this continued till the people grew restless4 ,longer yet1 with more manifest discontent4 ,at last a voice cried out from among the people 7,i think it was that roughspoken ,carvel1 the butcher71 #8,now then1 ,sir1 how long are we to stop here8 ,it is getting late1 if you don't mean to preach1 let us go home4' ,i saw that ,tauler was struggling to collect himself by prayer1 but his emotion became only the more uncontrollable1 and at last he said1 with a broken voice1-- #8,dear brethren1 ,i am sorry from my heart to have kept you so long1 but at this time ,i cannot possibly speak to you4 ,pray ,god for me that he would help me1 and ,i may do better at another time4' ,so we went away1 and the report thereof was presently all over ,strasburg4 ,the snowball had plenty of hands to roll it1 and lost nothing by the way4 ,the people1 numbers of them1 seemed to me with a wicked glee to delight in showing how the learned ,doctor had made a fool of himself4 ,those who had counted him mad before reckoned themselves now little short of prophets4 ,many such whom ,i met in the streets looked and spoke with such a hateful triumph of the matter as well nigh put me beside myself4 ,not so long ago1 no one could satisfy them but ,tauler2 not the name of the most popular of saints oftener on their lips2 the very ground he trod on was blessed2 a kindly word from his lips food for days--and now the hands stretched out almost in adoration1 throw mire on the fallen idol1 and not a #8prentice lad behind his stall but hugs himself in his superior sanity4 ,had he been a hunter after popularity1 what a judgment6 ,verily that man has the folly of a thousand fools who lives for the applause of the multitude4 ,but ,i know how ,tauler's heart bled for them4 ,friar ,bernard came over this evening4 ,he says the superiors are wroth beyond measure with ,tauler for the scandal he has brought upon the order1 and will forbid him to preach more4 ,entertained my jovial gauger of monks' bellies with the best cheer ,i had--he has a good heart after all1 and is unfeignedly sorry for ,tauler's disgrace4 ,says he thinks the ,doctor has fasted and done penance beyond his strength1 that the sudden coming out from his cell to preach to such numbers was too much for his weakness1--that he will get over it and be himself again1 and much more1--to the hope whereof he pledged me in another glass1 and left me not a little comforted4 #acdb4 ,january4 ,st4 ,vincent's ,day4--,saw ,bernard again1 who gives me the good news that ,dr4 ,tauler obtained permission from the prior to deliver a ,latin address in the school1 and did acquit himself to such admiration1 that he is to be allowed to preach in public when he will4 #acdb4 ,january #bc4--,tauler preached to-day in the chapel of the nunnery of ,st4 ,agatha1 on #8,behold the bridegroom cometh2 go ye out to meet him4' ,a wondrous discourse--a torrent that seems to make me dizzy yet4 ,as he was describing1 more like an angel than a man1 the joy of the bride at the approach of the bridegroom1 a man cried out1 #8,it is true6' and fell senseless on the floor4 ,as they were about him to bring him to himself1 a woman among them shrieked1 #8,oh1 stop1 sir1 stop6 or he will die in our arms6' ,whereat he said calmly1 and with his face lighted up as though he saw the heavens opened1 #8,ah1 dear children1 and if the bridegroom will call home the bride1 shall we not willingly suffer him8 ,but nevertheless ,i will make an end4' ,then after sermon he read mass again1 and1 as ,i came out1 ,i saw the people gathered about several persons in the court who lay on the ground1 as though dead1 such had been the power of his words4 #acdb4 ,february4 ,st4 ,blasius' ,day4--,now ,tauler is continually preaching1 not only in the church of his convent1 but in those of various monasteries and nunneries1 in the ,beguinasia1 and in the cells wherein little companies of pious women have gathered themselves together to hide from the dangers of the world4 ,he never cited so much ,latin as some1 now less than heretofore4 ,more alive than ever1 it would seem1 to our wants1 he addresses himself mightily to heart and conscience1 which he can bind up or smite at will4 ,his love and care1 for the laity most of all1 is a marvel2 he lives for us1 and yet appears to hold himself no greater than the least4 ,before1 there was none like him1 now we feel that in heavenliness of nature he has gone beyond his former self4 ,so earnestly does he exhort to active love to man1 as well as to perfect resignation to ,god1 that already a new spirit seems to pervade many1 and they begin to care for others1 as he tells us the first ,christians did4 ,he tells them mere prayers1 and mass1 and alms1 and penance1 will help them nothing unless the ,holy ,spirit breathes life into them4 ,he says the priests are not of necessity better men because they oftener taste the ,lord's body1 that outward things such as those profit nothing alone1 and that those who love their fellows most are the truest instructors1 and teach more wisely than all the schools4 #acdd4 ,march4--,tauler hath of late1 besides preaching constantly as ever1 begun to send forth from time to time sundry small books1 full of consolation and godly counsel for these days4 ,copies of them are fast multiplied1 and people gather to hear them read at each other's houses4 ,this is a new thing1 and works powerfully4 ,the greatest stir has been made by two letters issued by ,tauler1 ,ludolph the ,carthusian1 and others1 and sent out1 not only through ,strasburg1 but all the region round about4#aaf ,the bishop is very angry thereat2 though1 before1 he had come several times to hear ,tauler1 and had professed no small admiration of him4 ,one of these letters is to comfort the people1 and exhorts all priests to administer the sacraments to all who shall desire1 the bann notwithstanding4 #8,for1' it saith1 #8ye are bound to visit and console the sick1 remembering the bitter pain and death of ,christ1 who hath made satisfaction1 not for your sins only1 but also for those of the whole world1 who doth represent us all before ,god1 so that if one falleth innocently under the bann1 no ,pope can shut him out of heaven4 ,ye should1 therefore1 give absolution to such as wish therefor--giving heed rather to the bidding of ,christ and his ,apostles than to the bann1 which is issued only out of malice and avarice4' ,thus truly have these good men done1 and many with them1 so that numbers have died in peace1 fearing the bann not a whit1 whereas before1 many thousands1 unshriven1 gave up the ghost in the horrors of despair4 ,the other letter is addressed to the learned and great ones among the clergy4 ,it saith that there are two swords--a spiritual1 which is ,god's word1 and the temporal1 the secular power3--that these two are to be kept distinct2 both are from ,god1 and ought not to be contrary the one to the other4 ,the spiritual power should fulfil its proper duty and uphold the temporal1 while that again should protect the good and be a terror to evil-doers4 ,if temporal princes sin1 such as are spiritual should exhort them1 in love and humility1 to amend their ways4 ,it is against the law of ,christ that the shepherds1 when one of these falls beneath their displeasure1 should for that reason presume to damn a whole country1 with all its cities1 towns1 and villages1 where dwell the poor innocent folk who are no partakers in the sin4 ,it cannot be proved from ,scripture that all those who will not kiss the ,pope's foot1 or receive a certain article of faith1 or who hold by an emperor duly elected and well fulfilling his office1 and do him service as set over them by ,god1 do therein sin against the ,church and are heretics4 ,god will not demand of vassals an account of the sins of their lords1 and neither should subjects1 bound to obey the emperor as the highest temporal power1 be given over to damnation as though answerable for the faults of their rulers4 ,therefore all who hold the true ,christian faith1 and sin only against the person of the ,pope1 are no heretics4 ,those1 rather1 are real heretics who obstinately refuse to repent and forsake their sins2 for let a man have been what he may1 if he will so do1 he cannot be cast out of the ,church4 ,through ,christ1 the truly penitent thief1 murderer1 traitor1 adulterer1 all may have forgiveness4 ,such as ,god beholdeth under an unrighteous bann1 he will turn for them the curse into a blessing4 ,christ himself did not resist the temporal power1 but said1 ,my kingdom is not of this world4 ,our souls belong unto ,god1 our body and goods to ,csar4 ,if the emperor sins1 he must give account to ,god therefor--not to a poor mortal man4 ,footnote #aac3 ,to long and weave a woof of dreams is sweet unto the feeble soul1 but nobler is stout-hearted striving1 and makes the dream reality4 ,footnote #aad3 ,this sermon is given entire in the second chapter of the ,lebenshistorie des ehrwrdigen ,doctors ,johann ,tauler1 prefixed to his sermons4 ,the succeeding incidents are all related by the same authority4 ,the cellarer only and the family affairs of ,adolf1 appear to be invented by ,atherton4 ,footnote #aae3 ,atherton defends this word by the usage of ,thomas ,fuller4 ,footnote #aaf3 ,these letters are preserved in substance in ,specklin's ,collectanea1 and are inserted1 from that source1 in the introduction by ,grres to ,diepenbrock's edition of ,suso's works2 pp4 xxxv4 c4 ,,chapter ,v4 ,the meanes1 therefore1 which unto us is lent ,him to behold1 is on his workes to looke1 ,which he hath made in beautie excellent1 ,and in the same1 as in a brasen booke1 ,to read enregistred in every nooke ,his goodnesse1 which his beautie doth declare2 ,for all that's good is beautifull and faire4 ,thence gathering plumes of perfect speculation1 ,to impe the wings of thy high-flying mynd1 ,mount up aloft through heavenly contemplation1 ,from this darke world1 whose damps the soule do blynd1 ,and1 like the native brood of eagles kynd1 ,on that bright ,sunne of ,glorie fixe thine eyes1 ,cleared from grosse mists of fraile infirmities4 ,,spenser3 ,,hymne ,,of ,,heavenly ,,beautie4 ,,willoughby4 ,i did not think ,atherton had so much artifice in him4 ,he broke off his last reading from ,arnstein's ,chronicle with a mystery unexplained1 quite in the most approved feuilleton style4 ,,gower4 ,you have excited the curiosity of the ladies most painfully1 ,i assure you4 ,i believe ,i am empowered to say that they cannot listen to any more of the armourer's journal until you have accounted for ,tauler's singular disappearance4 ,,kate4 ,one word for us and two for yourself1 ,mr4 ,gower4 ,,atherton4 ,ungrateful public6 ,you all know ,i haven't a particle of invention in my nature4 ,it is just because ,i am not a novelist that ,i have not been able to explain everything4 ,arnstein is1 like me1 a matter-of-fact personage1 and could not be in two places at once4 ,however1 to relieve you1 ,i am ready to acknowledge that ,i am in possession of information about these incidents quite independent of the irregular entries in his record4 ,there is no secret2 it is all matter of sober history4 ,the facts are these-- ,one day there came a stranger to ,tauler1 desiring to confess to him4 ,it was the remarkable man who had so attracted the attention of ,adolf in the church4 ,he was called ,nicholas of ,basle1 and was well known in the ,oberland as an eminent #8,friend of ,god4' ,he was one of those men so characteristic of that period--a layman exercising a wider spiritual influence than many a bishop4 ,he was perhaps a ,waldensian1 holding the opinions of that sect1 with a considerable infusion of visionary mysticism4 ,the ,waldenses1 and the ,friends of ,god1 were drawn nearer to each other by opposition1 and the disorders of the time1 as well as by the more liberal opinions they held in common1 and it is not always easy to distinguish them4 ,after confession1 the layman requested1 much to the ,doctor's surprise1 that he would preach a sermon on the highest spiritual attainment a man may reach in time4 ,tauler yielded at length to his importunity1 and fulfilled his promise4 ,nicholas brought his notes of the sermon to ,tauler1 and in the course of their conversation1 disclosed the object of his visit4 ,he had travelled those thirty miles1 he said1 not merely to listen to the doctor1 of whom he had heard so much1 but1 by ,god's help1 to give him some counsel that should do him good4 ,he told him plainly that the sermon1 though excellent in its way1 could teach him nothing--the ,great ,teacher could impart to him more knowledge in an hour than ,tauler and all his brethren1 preaching till the day of doom4 ,tauler was first astonished1 then indignant1 to hear a mere layman address him in such language4 ,nicholas appealed to that very anger as a proof that the self-confidence of the ,pharisee was not yet cleansed away1 that the preacher trusted with unbecoming pride in his mastership and great learning4 ,you must remember the vast distance which at that day separated the clerk from the layman1 to give to the candour and humility of ,tauler its due value4 ,the truth flashed across his mind4 ,deeply affected1 he embraced the layman1 saying1 #8,thou hast been the first to tell me of my fault4 ,stay with me here4 ,henceforth ,i will live after thy counsel2 thou shalt be my spiritual father1 and ,i thy sinful son4' ,nicholas acceded to his request1 and gave him1 to begin with1 a kind of spiritual ,a ,b ,c1--a list of moral rules1 commencing in succession with the letters of the alphabet1 which he was to commit to memory and to practise1 together with sundry bodily austerities1 for five weeks1 in honour of the five wounds of ,christ4 ,but the discipline which followed was yet more severe4 ,tauler was directed to abstain from hearing confession1 from study and from preaching1 and to shut himself up in his cell1 that1 in solitary contemplation of the sufferings and death of ,christ1 he might attain true humility and complete renewal4 ,the anticipated consequences ensued4 ,his friends and penitents forsook him2 he became the by-word of the cloister2 his painful penances brought on a lingering sickness4 ,borne down by mental and bodily sufferings together1 he applied to his friend for relief4 ,the layman told him that he was going on well--it would be better with him ere long--he might remit his severer self-inflictions1 and should recruit the body by a more generous diet4 ,nicholas was now called away by important business1 he said1 and ,tauler was left to himself4 ,his parting advice to his spiritual scholar was1 that if he came to want1 he should pawn his books1 but sell them on no account1 for the day would come when he would need them once more4 ,tauler continued in this trying seclusion for nearly two years1 contemned by the world without as one beside himself1 oppressed within by distress of mind and feebleness of body4 ,it had been forbidden him to desire1 even when thus brought low1 any special communication from ,god that might gladden him with rapture or consolation4 ,such a request would spring from self and pride4 ,he was there to learn an utter self-abandonment--to submit himself without will or choice to the good pleasure of ,god--to be tried with this or any other affliction1 if need were1 till the judgment day4 ,now it came to pass1 when he had become so ill that he could not attend mass or take his place in the choir as he had been wont1 that1 as he lay on his sickbed1 he meditated once more on the sufferings and love of our ,lord and ,saviour1 and thought on his own life1 what a poor thing it had been1 and how ungrateful4 ,with that he fell into a marvellous great sorrow1 says the history1 for all his lost time and all his sins1 and spake1 with heart and mouth1 these words3-- #8,o merciful ,god1 have mercy upon me1 a poor sinner2 have mercy in thine infinite compassion1 for ,i am not worthy to live on the face of the earth4' ,then as he sat up waking in his sickness and sorrow1 he heard a voice saying1 #8,stand fast in thy peace1 trust ,god1 remember that he was once on the earth in human nature1 healing sick bodies and sick souls4' ,when he heard these words he fell back fainting1 and knew no more4 ,on coming to himself1 he found that both his inward and outward powers had received new life4 ,much that had before been strange now seemed clear4 ,he sent for his friend1 who heard with joy what he had to tell4 #8,now1' said ,nicholas1 #8thou hast been for the first time moved by the ,highest1 and art a partaker of the grace of ,god1 and knowest that though the letter killeth1 the ,spirit giveth life4 ,now wilt thou understand the ,scripture as never before--perceive its harmony and preciousness1 and be well able to show thy fellow ,christians the way to eternal life4 ,now one of thy sermons will bring more fruit than a hundred aforetime1 coming1 as it will1 from a simple1 humbled1 loving heart2 and much as the people have set thee at nought1 they will now far more love and prize thee4 ,but a man with treasure must guard against the thieves4 ,see to it that thou hold fast thy humility1 by which thou wilt best keep thy riches4 ,now thou needest my teaching no longer1 having found the right ,master1 whose instrument ,i am1 and who sent me hither4 ,now1 in all godly love1 thou shalt teach me in turn4' ,tauler had pledged his books for thirty gulden4 ,the layman went immediately and redeemed them at his own cost1 and by his advice ,tauler caused it to be announced that in three days he would preach once more4 ,you have already heard how our good friend ,adolf records the unhappy result of this first attempt4 ,tauler went with his trouble to ,nicholas1 who comforted him by the assurance that such farther trial was but a sign of the careful love which carried on the work within4 ,there must have been some remnant of self-seeking which was still to be purged away4 ,he advised him to wait awhile1 and then apply for permission to deliver a ,latin address to the brethren in the school4 ,this he at last received1 and a better sermon they never heard4 ,so the next preacher1 at the close of his discourse1 made the following announcement to the congregation3 #8,i am requested to give notice that ,doctor ,tauler will preach here to-morrow4 ,if he succeeds no better than before1 the blame must rest with himself4 ,but this ,i can say1 that he has read us in the school a prelection such as we have not heard for many a day2 how he will acquit himself now1 ,i know not1 ,god knoweth4' ,then followed the overpowering discourse1 of whose effects you have heard2 and from this time forward commenced a new ra in ,tauler's public life4 ,for full eight years he laboured unremittingly1 with an earnestness and a practical effect far surpassing his former efforts1 and in such esteem with all classes that his fellow-citizens would seem to have thought no step should be taken in spiritual matters1 scarcely in temporal1 without first seeking counsel of ,tauler4 ,,lowestoffe4 ,a most singular story4 ,but how have all these minute circumstances come down to us8 ,,atherton4 ,when ,tauler was on his death-bed he sent for ,nicholas1 and gave him a manuscript1 in which he had written down their conversations1 with some account of his own life and ,god's dealings towards him1 ,his unworthy servant1 requesting him to make thereof a little book4 ,the layman promised to do so4 #8,but see to it1' continued the ,doctor1 #8that you can conceal our names4 ,you can easily write #8,the ,man and the ,doctor'--for the life and words and works which ,god hath wrought through me1 an unworthy1 sinful man1 are not mine1 but belong unto ,almighty ,god for ever4 ,so let it be1 for the edifying of our fellow men2 but take the writing with thee into thy country1 and let no man see it while ,i live4' ,this narrative has been preserved1 and there is no difficulty in discerning in the ,doctor and the man1 ,tauler and ,nicholas of ,basle4#aag ,you will now let me resume my reading1 ,i suppose4 ,chronicle of ,adolf ,arnstein1 continued4 #acdd4 ,eve of ,st4 ,dionysius4--,i here set down passages from sermons ,i have at sundry times heard ,doctor ,tauler preach4 ,i have made it my wont to go straight home as soon as the service has been ended1 and write what ,i could best remember4 ,the goodly sayings which follow are copied from those imperfect records1 and placed here for my edification and that of my children and others after me4 ,from a sermon on ,christ's teaching the multitude out of the ship4--,the soul of the believing man1 wherein ,christ is1 doth find its representation in that ship4 ,speaking of the perpetual peace such souls may have1 despite what storm and commotion soever1 he added 7not a little to my comfort73 #8,but some of you have not felt all this2 be not ye dismayed4 ,there are poor fishers as well as rich2 yea1 more poor than rich4 ,hold this as unchangeably sure1 that the trials and struggle of no man are of small account4 ,if a man be but in right earnest1 longeth to be a true lover of ,god1 and perseveres therein1 and loves those he knows or deems to be such1--doth heartily address himself to live fairly after ,job's pattern1 and intend ,god unfeignedly in his doing or not doing1 such a man will assuredly enter into ,god's peace1 though he should tarry for it till his dying day4 ,even those true friends and lovers of ,god who enjoy so glorious a peace have disquiet and trouble of their own in that they cannot be towards their faithful ,god all they would1 and in that even what ,god giveth is less large than their desires4' #8,in the highest stage of divine comfort is that peace which is said to pass all understanding4 ,when that noblest part of the soul to which no name can be given is completely turned to ,god and set on ,him1 it takes with it all those faculties in man to which we can give names4 ,this conversion involves both that in ,god which is ,nameless and that in the consciousness of man which can be named4 ,these are they whom ,st4 ,dionysius calls godly-minded men4 ,as ,paul saith1 #8,that ye may be rooted and grounded in love2 and understand with all saints what is the breadth1 and length1 and height1 and depth4' ,for the height and depth which are revealed in such men can be apprehended by no human sense or reason2 they reach beyond all sense out into a deep abyss4 ,this great good1 light1 and comfort1 is inwardly revealed only to those who are outwardly sanctified and inwardly illuminated1 and who know how to dwell inwardly within themselves4 ,to such1 heaven and earth and all creatures are as an absolute ,nothing1 for they themselves are a heaven of ,god1 inasmuch as ,god dwelleth and rests in them4' #8,god draweth these men in such wise into ,himself1 that they become altogether pleasing unto ,him1 and all that is in them becomes1 in a super-essential way1 so pervaded and transformed1 that ,god himself doeth and worketh all their works4 ,wherefore1 clearly1 such persons are called with right--,godlike 7,gottformige74 ,for if we could see such minds as they truly are1 they would appear to us like ,god1 being so1 however1 not by nature1 but by grace4 ,for ,god lives1 forms1 ordaineth1 and doeth in them all his works1 and doth use ,himself in them4' #8,it fares with such men as with ,peter1 when1 at the miraculous draught of fishes1 he exclaimed1 #8,depart from me1 for ,i am a sinful man1 ,o ,lord6' ,see6 he can find no words1 no way of utterance1 for that within4 ,so is it1 ,i say1 with such men--they find themselves empty of fit words and works4 ,and that is the first mode4 ,the other is that they fall utterly into their own groundless ,nothing 7in ihr grundloses ,nichts71 and become so small and utterly nothing in ,god as quite to forget all gifts they have received before1 and do1 as it were1 pour themselves back again absolutely into ,god 7whose they properly are7 as though such bestowments had never been theirs4 ,yea1 they are withal as barely nothing as though they had never been4 ,so sinks the created ,nothing in the ,uncreated1 incomprehensibly1 unspeakably4 ,herein is true what is said in the ,psalter1 #8,deep calleth unto deep4' ,for the uncreated ,deep calls the created1 and these two deeps become entirely one4 ,then hath the created spirit lost itself in the spirit of ,god1 yea1 is drowned in the bottomless sea of ,godhead4 ,but how well it is with such a man passeth all understanding to comprehend4 ,such a man becomes1 thirdly1 essential1 virtuous1 godly2 in his walk1 loving and kindly1 condescending and friendly towards all men1 so that no man can detect in him any fault or transgression1 any vice or crime4 ,moreover1 he is believing and trustful towards all men1 hath mercy and sympathy for every man without distinction2 is not austere and stern1 but friendly1 gentle1 and good1 and it is not possible that such men should ever be separated from ,god4 ,unto such perfectness may all we be graciously helped of ,god our ,saviour1 unto whom be praise for ever4 ,amen4'#aah #8,the ground or centre of the soul is so high and glorious a thing1 that it cannot properly be named1 even as no adequate name can be found for the ,infinite and ,almighty ,god4 ,in this ground lies the image of the ,holy ,trinity4 ,its kindred and likeness with ,god is such as no tongue can utter4 ,could a man perceive and realize how ,god dwelleth in this ground1 such knowledge would be straightway the blessedness of salvation4 ,the apostle saith1 #8be renewed in the spirit of your mind 7,gemthes74' ,when the mind is rightly directed1 it tendeth towards this ground whose image is far beyond its powers4 ,in this mind we are to be renewed1 by a perpetual bringing of ourselves into this ground1 truly loving and intending ,god immediately4 ,this is not impossible for the mind itself1 though our inferior powers are unequal to such unceasing union with ,god4 ,this renewal must take place also in the spirit4 ,for ,god is a spirit1 and our created spirit must be united to and lost in the uncreated1 even as it existed in ,god before its creation4 ,every moment in which the soul so re-enters into ,god1 a complete restoration takes place4 ,if it be done a thousand times in a day1 there is1 each time1 a true regeneration3 as the ,psalmist saith1--#8,this day have ,i begotten thee4' ,this is when the inmost of the spirit is sunk and dissolved in the inmost of the ,divine ,nature1 and thus new-made and transformed4 ,god pours ,himself out thus into our spirit1 as the sun rays forth its natural light into the air1 and fills it with sunshine1 so that no eye can tell the difference between the sunshine and the air4 ,if the union of the sun and air cannot be distinguished1 how far less this divine union of the created and the uncreated ,spirit6 ,our spirit is received and utterly swallowed up in the abyss which is its source4 ,then the spirit transcends itself and all its powers1 and mounts higher and higher towards the ,divine ,dark1 even as an eagle towards the sun4' #8,yet let no man in his littleness and nothingness think of himself to approach that surpassing darkness1--rather let him draw nigh to the darkness of his ignorance of ,god1 let him simply yield himself to ,god1 ask nothing1 desire nothing1 love and mean only ,god1 yea1 and such an unknown ,god4 ,let him lovingly cast all his thoughts and cares1 and his sins too1 as it were1 on that unknown ,will4 ,beyond this unknown will of ,god he must desire and purpose nothing1 neither way1 nor rest1 nor work1 neither this nor that1 but wholly subject and offer himself up to this unknown will4 ,moreover1 if a man1 while busy in this lofty inward work1 were called by some duty in the ,providence of ,god to cease therefrom and cook a broth for some sick person1 or any other such service1 he should do so willingly and with great joy4 ,this ,i say that if it happened to me that ,i had to forsake such work and go out to preach or aught else1 ,i should go cheerfully1 believing not only that ,god would be with me1 but that ,he would vouchsafe me it may be even greater grace and blessing in that external work undertaken out of true love in the service of my neighbour than ,i should perhaps receive in my season of loftiest contemplation4' #8,the truly enlightened man--alas6 that they should be so few--scarce two or three among a thousand--sinks himself the deeper in his ,ground the more he recognises his honour and his blessedness1 and of all his gifts ascribes not even the least unto himself4 ,our righteousness and holiness1 as the prophet saith1 is but filthiness4 ,therefore must we build1 not on our righteousness1 but on the righteousness of ,god1 and trust1 not in our own words1 works1 or ways1 but alone in ,god4 ,may this ,god give us all power and grace to lose ourselves wholly in ,him1 that we may be renewed in truth1 and found to ,his praise and glory4 ,amen4'#aai ,speaking of the publican in the temple1 he put up a prayer that ,god would give him such an insight as that man had into his own ,nothing and unworthiness2--#8,that1' said he1 #8is the highest and most profitable path a man can tread4 ,for that way brings ,god continually and immediately into man4 ,where ,god appears in ,his mercy1 there is ,he manifest also with all ,his nature--with ,himself4'#abj ,i understand the ,doctor as teaching three states or conditions wherein man may stand2 that of nature1 by the unaided light of reason1 which in its inmost tends ,godward1 did not the flesh hinder2 that of grace2 and a higher stage yet1 above grace1 where means and medium are as it were superseded1 and ,god works immediately within the transformed soul4 ,for what ,god doeth that ,he is4 ,yet that in this higher state1 as in the second1 man hath no merit2 he is nothing and ,god all4 ,in the course of this same sermon he described humility as indispensable to such perfectness1 since the loftiest trees send their roots down deepest4 ,he said that we should not distress ourselves if we had not detailed to our confessor all the short-coming and sin of our hearts1 but confess to ,god and ask ,his mercy4 ,no ecclesiastical absolution can help us unless we are contrite for our sin before ,god4 ,we are not to keep away from the ,lord's body because we feel so deeply our unworthiness to partake of the sacrament1 seeing that they who are whole need not a physician1 but they that are sick4#aba #8,there are some who can talk much and eloquently of the incarnation and bitter sufferings of ,christ1 who do with tears apostrophise him from head to foot as they present him to their imagination4 ,yet is there often in this more of sense and self-pleasing than of true love to ,god4 ,they look more to the means than to the end4 ,for my part1 ,i would rather there were less of such excitement and transport1 less of mere sweet emotion1 so that a man were diligent and right manful in working and in virtue1 for in such exercise do we learn best to know ourselves4 ,these raptures are not the highest order of devotion1 though would that many a dull heart had more of such sensibility6 ,there are1 as ,st4 ,bernard hath said1 three kinds of love1 the sweet1 the wise1 and the strong4 ,the first is as a gilded image of wood1 the second as a gilded image of silver1 the third an image of pure gold4 ,one to whom ,god hath vouchsafed such sweetness should receive it with lowliness and thankfulness1 discerning therein his weakness and imperfection1 in that ,god has to allure and entice him as a little child4 ,he should not rest at this point1 but press on1 through images1 above all image and figure2 through the outward exercise of the senses to the inward ground of his soul1 where properly the kingdom of ,god is4 ,there are many altogether at home amid sensuous imagery1 and having great joy therein1 whose inner ground is as fast shut to them as a mountain of iron through which there is no way4' #8,dionysius writeth how ,god doth far and superessentially surpass all images1 modes1 forms1 or names that can be applied to ,him4 ,the true fulness of divine enlightenment is known herein that it is an essential illumination1 not taking place by means of images or in the powers of the soul1 but rather in the ground itself of the soul1 when a man is utterly sunk in his own ,nothing4 ,this ,i say against the #8free spirits1' who persuade themselves that by means of certain appearances and glances of revelation they have discerned the truth1 and please themselves with their own exaltation1 knowledge1 and wisdom2 going about in a false emptiness 7,ledigkeit7 of their own2 and speaking to others as though they were not yet advanced beyond the use of forms and images2 bringing1 with their frivolous presumption1 no small dishonour upon ,god4 ,but know ye1 ,christians beloved1 that no truly pious and ,god-fearing man gives himself out as having risen above all things1 for things in themselves utterly insignificant and mean are yet1 in the truth1 right and good2 and though any one may be in reality elevated above such lesser matters1 yet doth he love and honour them not less than heretofore2 for the truly pious account themselves less than all things1 and boast not that they have surpassed or are lifted above them4'#abb #8,o1 dear child1 in the midst of all these enmities and dangers1 sink thou into thy ground and thy ,nothingness1 and let the tower with all its bells fall on thee1 yea1 let all the devils in hell storm out upon thee1 let heaven and earth with all their creatures assail thee1 all shall but marvellously serve thee--sink thou only into thy ,nothingness1 and the better part is thine6#8#abc #8,yet some will ask what remains after a man hath thus lost himself in ,god8 ,i answer1 nothing but a fathomless annihilation of himself1 an absolute ignoring of all reference to himself personally1 of all aims of his own in will and heart1 in way1 in purpose1 or in use4 ,for in this self-loss man sinks so deep into the ground that if he could1 out of pure love and lowliness1 sink himself deeper yet1 and become absolutely nothing1 he would do so right gladly4 ,for such a self-annihilation hath been brought to pass within him that he thinketh himself unworthy to be a man1 unfit to enter ,god's house and temple1 and to look upon a crucifix painted on the wall2 yea1 such a man deemeth himself not so good by far as the very worst4 ,nevertheless1 as far as regards the sufferings and death of the ,lord--the birth and incarnation of the ,son of ,god--,his holy and perfect life that ,he lived on earth among sinful men1 all this such a man did never before so heartily and strongly love as now he doth2 yea1 now his care is how he may order his life right ,christianly1 and fashion it anew1 and out of fervent love toward his ,lord and ,saviour1 exercise himself without ceasing in all good work and virtue4'#abd #8,there are those who thoughtlessly maim and torture their miserable flesh1 and yet leave untouched the inclinations which are the root of evil in their hearts4 ,ah1 my friend1 what hath thy poor body done to thee1 that thou shouldst so torment it8 ,oh folly6 mortify and slay thy sins1 not thine own flesh and blood4'#abe ,,willoughby4 ,my dear ,atherton1 this is grand doctrine4 ,may ,i never be farther from the kingdom of heaven than such a mystic4 ,surely ,luther's praise is just4 ,compare such theology as this with the common creed and practice of that day4 ,the faults are nearly all those of the time--the excellence his own4 ,,atherton4 ,it is wonderful to see how little harm his ,platonism can do to a man so profoundly reverent1 so fervent in his love to ,christ4 ,how often he seems to tread the verge of ,eckart's pantheistic abyss1 but never falls into it6 ,his heart is true2 he walks uprightly1 and so1 surely4 ,that conception of sin as selfishness--that doctrine of self-abandonment1 death in ourselves and life in ,god--these are convictions with him so deep and blessed--so far beyond all ,greek philosophy--so fatal to the intellectual arrogance of pantheism1 that they bear him safe through every peril4 ,,gower4 ,his sermons cannot fail to do one good--read with the heart and imagination4 ,but if you coldly criticise1 and can make no allowance for the allegories and metaphors and vehement language of the mystic1 you may shut the book at once4 ,,atherton4 ,and shut out blessing from your soul4 ,it is not difficult to see1 however1 where ,tauler's danger lies4 ,there is an excess of negation in his divinity4 ,he will ignore1 deny1 annihilate almost everything you can name1--bid you be knowledgeless1 desireless1 motionless1--will enjoin submission to the unknown ,god 7when it is our triumph in ,christ that we submit to the ,revealed and ,known7--and1 in short1 leaves scarcely anything positive save the mysterious lapse of the soul's ,ground1 or ,spark1 into the ,perfect1 the ,essential ,one4 ,he seems sometimes to make our very personality a sin1 as though the limitations of our finite being were an element in our guilt4 ,the separation of a particular faculty or higher power of the soul which unites with ,god1 while the inferior powers are either absorbed or occupied in the lower sphere1 this is the great metaphysical mistake which lies at the root of so many forms of mysticism4 ,with ,tauler the work of grace consists too much of extremes--it dehumanizes in order to deify4 ,,willoughby4 ,but that1 remember1 is no fault of ,tauler's especially4 ,he does but follow here the ascetic1 superhuman aspiration of a ,church which1 trying to raise some above humanity1 sinks myriads below it4 ,,atherton4 ,granted4 ,that error does not lessen my love and admiration for the man4 ,,gower4 ,your extracts show1 too1 that the ,nothingness towards which he calls men to strive is no indolent ,quietism1 nor1 as with ,eckart1 a kind of metaphysical postulate1 but in fact a profound spiritual self-abasement and the daily working out of a self-sacrificing ,christ-like character4 ,,atherton4 ,blessed are his contradictions and inconsistencies6 ,logic cannot always reconcile ,tauler with himself--our hearts do4#abf ,,willoughby4 ,never surely was a theory so negative combined with an action more fervently intense--a positiveness more benign4 ,,gower4 ,in his life we understand him1--that is at once the explanation and vindication of what his mysticism means4 ,,atherton4 ,few1 however1 of his fellow-mystics rose1 so far as ,tauler1 above the peculiar dangers of mysticism4 ,even the good layman1 ,nicholas of ,basle1 was a man of vision1 and assumed a kind of prophecy4 ,tauler and the ,theologia ,germanica stand almost alone in rejecting the sensuous element of mysticism--its apparitions1 its voices1 its celestial phantasmagoria4 ,with many of his friends mysticism became secluded1 effeminate1 visionary1 because uncorrected1 as in his case1 by benevolent action1 by devoted conflict against priestly wrong4 ,,kate4 ,tauler1 then1 was a ,protestant in spirit--a genuine forerunner of the ,reformation8 ,,atherton4 ,unquestionably4 ,,mrs4 ,,atherton4 ,but what could the common people make of this high ideal he sets before them8 ,could they be brought heartily to care about that kind of ultra-human perfectness8 ,beautiful it must have been to hear this eloquent man describe the divine passion of the soul1 how-- ,love took up the harp of life and smote on all the chords with might1 ,smote the chord of ,self1 that1 trembling1 passed in music out of sight1 --but bewildering1 rather8 ,,atherton4 ,i am afraid so4 ,yet there was much they evidently did understand and relish4 ,,gower4 ,in fact the ,reformers were wanted1 with their ,bible1 with their simpler1 homelier teaching--so much less ascetic1 so much more human--and with their written word1 interpreted more soundly2 coming1 not to extinguish that inner light1 but to enclose1 as in a glass1 the precious flame1 otherwise fitfully blown about by the gusts of circumstance and feeling4 ,,willoughby4 ,but none the less let us praise the man who lived so nobly by the light he had--who made human works as nothing1 that ,god might be all--who took the heavenly kingdom from the hands of the priest1 and proclaimed it in the heart of every spiritual worshipper4 ,,gower4 ,though ,tauler adopts at times the language of ,eckart1 no one can fail to discern a very different spirit4 ,how much more profound his apprehension of sin--his sense of need2 how much more prominent ,christ1 rescuing and purifying the stricken soul4 ,tauler lays man in the dust1 and keeps him there4 ,eckart suffers him to expand from ,nothing to ,infinity4 ,summarily1 ,i would put the difference thus3--,with ,eckart the language of ,christianity becomes the metaphorical expression for pantheism2 with ,tauler1 phraseology approaching pantheism is the metaphorical expression of a most truly ,christian conviction4 ,if the former sins even more in the spirit than in the letter1 in the case of the latter the sins of the letter are redeemed by the excellence of the spirit4 ,note to page #bdf4 ,the passages in the text are from the second ,sermon on ,fifth ,sunday after ,trinity1 ,predigten1 ii4 pp4 #cec1 c4 ,the spiritual conflict and desolation which had shaken ,tauler's nature to its depths bears fruit in this profound humility4 ,self-abasement is the cardinal doctrine of all his sermons2 his lowliness of spirit the safeguard of his theology from all dangerous error4 ,the troubles through which he and ,suso were made to pass1 gave them an antidote to the poison of the current ecclesiastical doctrine4 ,consciences so stirred were not to be cast into a sleep by the mesmeric passes of a priestly hand4 ,he only who had hurt could heal2 they fled from man to ,god--from means to the ,end1 and so1 like the patriarch1 their eye saw ,god1 and they repented and abhorred themselves as in dust and ashes4 ,never after that could they believe in salvation by works1 and so they became aliens from the spirit of that ,church whose pale retained them to the last4 ,tauler and his brethren will #8escape distinction2#8--not that which is between creature and ,creator1 or between good and evil--that rather which the ,pharisee makes when he says1 #8,i am holier than thou4' ,it is their very anxiety to escape all assumption of merit which partly vitiates the letter of their theology1 and makes them speak as though grace substituted ,god for man within the renewed nature4 ,they will escape the dry and fruitless distinctions of the schoolman4 ,they will escape the distinction which selfish comfort-worshippers make so broad between ease and hardship4 ,sorrow and joy1 pain and pleasure1 are trustfully accepted as alike coming from the hand of love4 ,even when ,tauler speaks of self-surrender to an #8unknown ,will1' we must not press his words too far4 ,it is very evident that he who reaches this coveted abandonment is not supposed to have forgotten that gracious character under which ,god has made ,himself known--of which ,christ is the manifestation4 ,in casting his care on an unknown ,will1 ,tauler acts on the conviction that he is cared for1--this fact he knows2 but precisely what that care may deem best for him he does not know4 ,he surrenders1 in true self-distrust1 his personal notion of what may be the ,divine good pleasure in any particular case4 ,few lessons were more needed than this in ,tauler's day1 when superstition found signs and wonders everywhere1 and fanaticism so recklessly identified human wrath and ,divine righteousness4 ,tauler's #8state above grace1' and #8transformed condition of the soul1 in which ,god worketh all its works1' are perhaps little more than injudicious expressions for that more spontaneous and habitual piety characteristic of the established ,christian life1--that religion which consists so much more in a pervading spirit of devotion than in professed and special religious acts4 ,he certainly inculcates no proud and self-complacent rejection and depreciation of any means4 ,rather would the man who learnt ,tauler's doctrine well find all persons1 objects1 and circumstances1 made more or less #8means of grace' to him4 ,in a landscape or a fever1 an enemy or an accident1 his soul would find discipline and blessing1 and not in mass and penance and paternoster merely2--for is not ,god in all things near us1 and willing to make everything minister to our spiritual growth8 ,such teaching was truly reformatory1 antagonistic as it was to that excessive value almost everywhere attached in those days to works and sacraments4 ,so again with ,tauler's exhortation to rise above symbol1 image1 or figure4 ,he carries it too far1 indeed4 ,such asceticism of the soul is too severe a strain for ordinary humanity4 ,it is unknown to ,his teaching1 who spake as never man spake4 ,yet there lay in it a most wholesome protest against religious sentimentalism1 visionary extravagance1 hysterical inoperative emotions1--against the fanciful prettinesses of superstitious ritual and routine4 ,tauler's #8,nothing1' or #8,ground' of the soul1 may be metaphysically a fiction--religiously it indicates the sole seat of inward peace4 ,only as we put no trust in things earthly1--only as amidst our most strenuous action the heart saith ever1 #8,thy will be done1'--only as we strive to reduce our feverish hopes and fears about temporal enjoyment as nearly as we can to ,nothing1--are we calm and brave1 whatever may befal4 ,this loving repose of ,faith is ,eternal ,life1 as sin is so much present death2--it is a life lived1 in harmony with the everlasting1 above the restlessness of time2--it is 7in ,eckart's phrase1 though not in ,eckart's sense7 a union with the ,allmoving ,immobility--the divine serenity of ,love ,omnipotent1 guiding and upholding all without an effort4 ,note to page #bdh4 ,the above is from the ,sermon on the ,nineteenth ,sunday after ,trinity1 ii4 p4 #edf4 ,he says in this discourse that the soul has various names1 according to the different operations and attributes belonging to it4 ,it is called ,anima1 or soul2 ,spirit2 and ,disposition 7gemth71 a marvellous and very lovely thing--for the memory1 the understanding1 and the will of man are all collected therein4 ,the ,disposition hath an objectum above the other powers1 and as it follows or forsakes that aim so is it well or ill with the rest of man's nature4 ,fourthly1 the soul is called mens or mensch 7man71 and that is the ground which is nameless1 and wherein dwells hidden the true image of the ,holy ,trinity4 7,compare ,third ,serm4 on ,third ,sunday after ,trin41 ii4 p4 #cje1 and ,serm4 on ,eleventh ,sunday after ,trin41 ii4 p4 #dce47 ,by the synteresis1 or synderesis1 ,tauler appears to mean the native tendency of the soul towards ,god4 ,with ,tauler and the mystics generally this tendency is an original capacity for knowing ,god immediately4 ,the term is not peculiar to the mystics1 but it bears in their writings a signification which non-mystical theologians refuse to admit4 ,the distinction usually made between and is simply this3 the former expresses that constitution of our nature whereby we assent at once to the axioms of morality1 while the latter denotes that judgment which man passes on himself in conformity with such constitution of his moral nature4 ,the second is related to the first somewhat as recollection is to memory4 ,on this divine centre or substratum of the soul rests the fundamental doctrine of these mystics4 ,so ,hermann of ,fritslar says1 speaking of--di kraft in der sle di her heizit sinderisis4 ,in dirre kraft mac inkein kratre wirken noch inkein kratrlch bilde1 sunder got der wirket dar in ne mittel und ne underlz4 ,heiligenleben1 p4 #ahg4 ,thus1 he says elsewhere1 that the masters speak of two faces of the soul1 the one turned toward this world1 the other immediately to ,god4 ,in the latter ,god doth flow and shine eternally1 whether man knoweth it or not4 ,it is1 therefore1 according to man's nature as possessed of this divine ground1 to seek ,god1 his original2 it must be so for ever1 and even in hell the suffering there has its source in the hopeless contradiction of this indestructible tendency4 ,note to page #bea4 ,this passage is from the ,third ,serm4 on ,thirteenth ,sun4 after ,trin41 ii4 p4 #dhj4 ,the same remarkable combination of inward aspiration and outward love and service is urged with much force and beauty in the ,sermon on ,fifth ,sunday after ,trinity1 and in that on the ,sixteenth ,sunday after ,trinity1 ii4 p4 #eab4 ,tauler speaks of this ,ground of the soul as that which is inseparable from the ,divine nature1 and wherein man hath by ,grace what ,god is by nature4 ,predigten1 ii4 p4 #aii4 ,he quotes ,proclus as saying that1 while man is busied with images1 which are beneath us1 and clings to such1 he cannot possibly return into his ,ground or ,essence4 #8,if thou wilt know by experience that such a ,ground truly is1 thou must forsake all the manifold and gaze thereon with thine intellectual eye alone4 ,but wouldst thou come nearer yet1 turn thine intellectual eyesight therefrom--for even the intellect is beneath thee--and become one with the ,one--that is1 unite thyself with ,unity4' ,this unity ,proclus calls the #8calm1 silent1 slumbering1 and incomprehensible divine ,darkness4' #8,to think1 beloved in the ,lord1 that a heathen should understand so much and go so far1 and we be so behind1 may well make us blush for shame4 ,to this our ,lord ,jesus ,christ testifies when he says the kingdom of ,god is within you4 ,that is1 this kingdom is born in the inmost ,ground of all1 apart from all that the powers of the mind can accomplish4444 ,in this ,ground the eternal heavenly ,father doth bring forth his only-begotten ,son1 a hundred thousand times quicker than an instant1 according to our apprehension1--ever anew in the light of ,eternity1 in the glory and unutterable brightness of his own ,self4 ,he who would experience this must turn himself inward far away from all working of his outward and inward powers and imaginations--from all that ever cometh from without1 and then sink and dissolve himself in the ,ground4 ,then cometh the power of the ,father1 and calls the man into ,himself through his only-begotten ,son2 and so the ,son is born out of the ,father and returneth unto the ,father1 and such a man is born in the ,son of the ,father1 and floweth back with the ,son into the ,father again1 and becomes one with them' 7p4 #bjc1 and ,schmidt1 p4 #abg74 ,yet1 with all this1 ,tauler sincerely repudiates any pantheistic confusion of the ,divine and human1 and is always careful to state that this highest attainment--the vanishing point of ,humanity1 is the work of ,grace4 ,some of his expressions in describing this union are almost as strong as those of ,eckart 7,third ,serm4 on ,third ,sun4 after ,trin41 ii4 p4 #caj71 but his general tone far more lowly1 practical1 and true4 ,note to page #bec4 ,we best ascertain the true meaning of ,tauler's mystical phraseology1 and discover the point at which he was desirous that mysticism should arrest its flight1 by listening to the rebukes he administers to the unrighteous1 pantheistic1 or fantastical mystics of the day4 ,a sermon of his on ,psalm xci4 #e 7,pred4 vol4 i4 p4 #bbh7 is of great importance in this respect4 ,speaking of such as embrace a religious life1 without any true vocation1 he points out how1 as they follow only their own inclinations1 they naturally desire rest1 but are satisfied with a merely natural inaction instead of that spiritual calm which is the gift of ,god4 ,consequently1 while the devout mind 7as ,gregory saith7 cannot tolerate self-seeking1 or be content with any such mere negation1 these men profess to have attained the elevation of true peace while they have done nothing more than abstain from all imagination and action4 ,any man1 remarks ,tauler1 very sensibly1 may do this1 without any especial grace from ,god4 ,such persons live in indolence1 become self-complacent and full of pride4 ,true love ever longs to love more2 the more of ,god it hath the more it covets4 ,god is never to be found in the pretended quiet of such men1 which any ,turk or heathen could find in the same way1 as easily as they4 ,they are persuaded by the devil that devout exercises and works of charity will only disturb their inward quiet1 and do1 in fact1 disobey and resist ,god in their self-satisfied delusion4 ,he next exposes the error of those who undergo great austerities to be thought holy1--suffering for their own glory rather than that of ,god2 and who think their penance and their works give them an extraordinary claim on the ,most ,high4 ,he shows how often they fall into temptation by their wayward and passionate desire after special spiritual manifestations1 and by their clamorous importunity for particular bestowments on which their unmortified self-will has been obstinately set4 ,divine love1 he says1 offers itself up without reserve to ,god--seeks ,his glory alone1 and can be satisfied with nothing short of ,god ,himself4 ,natural love seeks itself in all things1 and falls ere long1 as ,adam did1 into mortal sin--into licence1 pride1 and covetousness4 ,then he proceeds to describe an error1 #8yet more dangerous than this1' as follows3--#8,those who compose this class call themselves ,god-seeing 7,gott schauende7 men4 ,you may know them by the natural rest they profess to experience1 for they imagine themselves free from sin and immediately united to ,god4 ,they fancy themselves free from any obligation to obey either divine or human laws1 and that they need no longer be diligent in good works4 ,they believe the quiet to which they have devoted themselves so lofty and glorious a thing that they cannot1 without sin1 suffer themselves to be hindered or disturbed therein4 ,therefore will they be subject to no man--will work not at all1 either inwardly or outwardly1 but lie like an idle tool awaiting its master's hand4 ,they think1 if they were to work1 ,god's operation within them would be hindered2 so they sit inactive1 and exercise themselves in no good work or virtue4 ,in short1 they are resolved to be so absolutely empty and idle that they will not so much as praise and thank ,god--will not desire or pray for anything--will not know or learn anything4 ,all such things they hold to be mischievous--persuade themselves that they possess already all that can be requested1 and that they have the true spiritual poverty because1 as they flatter themselves1 they live without any will of their own1 and have abandoned all choice4 ,as to the laws and ordinances of the ,church1 they believe that they have not only fulfilled them1 but have advanced far beyond that state for which such institutions were designed4 ,neither ,god nor man 7they say7 can give or take from them aught1 because they suffered all that was to be suffered till they passed beyond the stage of trial and virtue1 and finally attained this absolute ,quiet wherein they now abide4 ,for they declare expressly that the great difficulty is not so much to attain to virtue as to overcome or surpass it1 and to arrive at the said ,quiet and absolute emptiness of all virtue4 ,accordingly they will be completely free and submit to no man1--not to pope or bishops1 or to the priests and teachers set over them2 and if they sometimes profess to obey1 they do not in reality yield any obedience either in spirit or in practice4 ,and just as they say they will be free from all laws and ordinances of the ,holy ,church1 so they affirm1 without a blush1 that as long as a man is diligently striving to attain unto the ,christian virtues he is not yet properly perfect1 and knows not yet what spiritual poverty and spiritual freedom or emptiness really are4 ,moreover1 they believe that they are exalted above the merits of all men and angels2 that they can neither add to their virtues nor be guilty of any fault or sin1 because 7as they fancy7 they live without will1 have brought their spirit into ,quiet and ,emptiness1 are in themselves nothing1 and veritably united unto ,god4 ,they believe1 likewise1 madly enough1 that they may fulfil all the desires of their nature without any sin1 because1 forsooth1 they have arrived at perfect innocence1 and for them there is no law4 ,in short1 that the ,quiet and freedom of their spirit may not be hindered1 they do whatsoever they list4 ,they care not a whit for fasts1 festivals1 or ordinances1 but what they do is done on account of others1 they themselves having no conscience about any such matters4' ,a fourth class brought under review are less arrogant than these enthusiasts1 and will admit that they may progress in grace4 ,they are #8,god-suffering 7,gottesleidende7 men'--in fact1 mystics of the intransitive theopathetic species par excellence4 ,their relation toward ,god is to be one of complete passivity1 and all their doings 7of whatever character7 are ,his work4 ,tauler acknowledges duly the humility and patient endurance of these men4 ,their fault lies1 he says1 in their belief that every inward inclination they feel is the movement of the ,holy ,ghost1 and this even when such inclinations are sinful1 #8whereas the ,holy ,spirit worketh in no man that which is useless or contrary to the life of ,christ and ,holy ,scriptures4' ,in their constancy as well as in their doctrine they nearly resemble the early ,quakers4 ,they would sooner die1 says ,tauler1 than swerve a hair's breadth from their opinion or their purpose4 ,tauler's reprobation of these forms of mysticism--which his own expressions1 too literally understood1 might appear sometimes to approach--shows clearly that he was himself practically free from such extremes4 ,his concluding remarks enforce very justly the necessity of good works as an evidence to our fellow-men of our sincerity4 ,he dwells on the indispensableness of religious ordinance1 worship1 and thanksgiving1 as at once the expression and the nourishment of devout affection4 ,he precludes at the same time1 in the strongest language1 all merit in the creature before ,god4 #8,i say that if it were possible for our spiritual nature to be deprived of all its modes of operation1 and to be as absolutely inactive as it was when it lay yet uncreated in the abyss of the ,divine ,nature1--if it were possible for the rational creature to be still as it was when in ,god prior to creation1--neither the one nor the other could even thus merit anything1 yea1 not now any more than then2 it would have no more holiness or blessedness in itself than a block or a stone' 7p4 #bdc74 ,he points to the example of ,christ as the best refutation of this false doctrine of ,quiet1 saying1 #8,he continued without ceasing to love and desire1 to bless and praise his ,heavenly ,father1 and though his soul was joined to and blessed in the ,divine ,essence1 yet he never arrived at the ,emptiness of which these men talk4' ,footnote #aag3 ,the substance of the foregoing narrative concerning ,tauler and the laymen will be found in the ,lebenshistorie des ehrwrdigen ,doctors ,joh4 ,tauler4 ,see also ,c4 ,schmidt's account of ,nicholas in his monograph on ,tauler 7p4 #bh71 and a characteristic letter by ,nicholas concerning visions of coming judgment given in the ,appendix4 ,footnote #aah3 ,see ,note1 p4 #bed4 ,footnote #aai3 ,see first ,note1 p4 #bef4 ,footnote #abj3 ,serm4 on ,eleventh ,sun4 after ,trinity1 ii4 p4 #dcf4 ,footnote #aba3 ,serm4 on ,eleventh ,sun4 after ,trin41 ii4 pp4 #ddb1 #ddc4 ,also1 ,predigten1 vol4 iii4 p4 #ai1 and ,schmidt1 p4 #abe4 ,footnote #abb3 ,third ,serm4 on ,thirteenth ,sun4 after ,trin41 ii4 pp4 #dgd-dgh4 ,footnote #abc3 ,first ,serm4 on ,thirteenth ,sun4 after ,trin41 ii4 p4 #dei4 ,footnote #abd3 ,see second ,note1 p4 #bef4 ,footnote #abe3 ,twenty-first ,sun4 after ,trin41 ii4 p4 #ehd4 ,footnote #abf3 ,see ,note1 p4 #beg4 ,,chapter ,,vi4 ,keep all thy native good1 and naturalize ,all foreign of that name2 but scorn their ill4 ,embrace their activeness1 not vanities2 ,who follows all things forfeiteth his will4 ,,herbert4 ,the day after the conversation recorded in the last chapter1 ,atherton was called to a distance from ,summerford on legal business4 ,before leaving1 he had some further talk with ,willoughby on several topics suggested by what had passed on the previous day4 ,the lawyers did not release him so promptly as he had expected1 and as he had taken a copy of ,tauler's sermons with him1 and had time at his disposal1 he wrote more than once to his friend in the course of the next week4 ,this chapter will consist of extracts from the letters thus written1 and will form a fitting supplement to matters dealt with in several preceding conversations4 99 99 99 99 99 ,i scarcely need remind you that there are great practical advantages to be derived from a course of mental travel among forms of ,christian belief in many respects foreign to our own4 ,nothing so surely arrests our spiritual growth as a self-complacent1 insular disdain of other men's faith4 ,to displace this pride by brotherly-kindness--to seek out lovingly the points whereon we agree with others1 and not censoriously those wherein we differ1 is to live in a clearer light1 as well as a larger love4 ,then again1 the powers of observation and of discrimination called into exercise by such journeyings among brethren of another speech will greatly benefit us4 ,the very endeavour to distinguish between the good in others which we should naturalize and assimilate for ourselves1 and the error which could be profitable neither for them nor for us1 is most wholesome4 ,such studies lead us to take account of what we already have and believe2 so that we come to know ourselves better by the comparison both in what we possess and in what we lack4 ,every section of the ,church of ,christ desires to include in its survey the whole fabric of revealed truth4 ,what party will admit to an antagonist that its study of the divine edifice has been confined to a single aspect8 ,and yet the fact is beyond all candid questioning that each group of worshippers1 with whatever honesty of intention they may have started to go round about the building1 and view it fairly from every side1 have1 notwithstanding1 their favourite point of contemplation--one spot where they are most frequently to be found1 intent on that side of truth to which1 from temperament or circumstance1 they are most attached4 ,there is both good and evil in this inevitable partiality2 but the good will be most happily realized1 and the evil most successfully avoided1 if we have liberality enough now and then to take each other's places4 ,it is possible1 in this way1 both to qualify and to enrich our own impressions from the observations of those who have given themselves1 with all the intensity of passion1 to some aspect of truth1 which1 while it may be the opposite1 is yet the complement of the view preferred by ourselves4 ,how often1 as the result of an acquaintance made with some such diverse 7and yet kindred7 species of devotion1 are we led to ask ourselves--#8,is there not a fuller meaning than ,i had supposed in this passage1 or that other1 of ,holy ,writ8 ,have ,i not1 because certain passages have been abused1 allowed myself unconsciously to slight or to defraud them of their due significance8' ,and1 in this way both those parts of ,scripture we have most deeply studied1 and those which we have but touched with our plummet1 may disclose their blessing to us1 and fill higher the measure of our joy4 ,nor is this all4 ,we gather both instruction and comfort from the spiritual history of others who have passed through the same darkness1 doubt1 or sorrow1 which we ourselves have either encountered1 or may be on our way to meet4 ,how glad was ,christian when he heard the voice of a fellow-pilgrim in the ,valley of the ,shadow of ,death6 ,and when suns are bright1 and the waters calm1 and the desired wind blows steadily1 he is the wise mariner who employs his leisure in studying the records of others who have made voyage already in those latitudes2 who learns from their expedients1 their mishaps1 or their deliverances1 how best to weather the storms1 or to escape the quicksands that await him4 ,of all who have sailed the seas of life1 no men have experienced a range of vicissitude more wide than has fallen to the lot of some among the mystics4 ,theirs have been the dazzling heights2 the lowest depths also have been theirs4 ,their solitary vessels have been swept into the frozen ,north1 where the ice of a great despair has closed about them like the ribs of death1 and through a long soul's winter they have lain hidden in cold and darkness1 as some belated swallow in the cleft of a rock4 ,it has been theirs1 too1 to encounter the perilous fervours of that zone where never cooling cloud appears to veil insufferable radiance1 and to glow beneath those glories with an ardour so intense that some men1 in their pity1 have essayed to heal it as a fever1 and others1 in their wrath1 to chain it as a frenzy4 ,now afflicted1 tossed with tempest1 and not comforted1 ere long there hath been built for them at once a palace and a place of rest2 their foundations have been laid with sapphires1 their windows have been made of agates1 and their gates of carbuncles1 and all their borders of pleasant stones4 ,a place of rest6 ,yes1 in that one word ,,rest lies all the longing of the mystic4 ,every creature in heaven above1 and in the earth beneath1 saith ,master ,eckart1 all things in the height and all things in the depth1 have one yearning1 one ceaseless1 unfathomable desire1 one voice of aspiration3 it is for rest2 and again1 for rest2 and ever1 till the end of time1 for rest6 ,the mystics have constituted themselves the interpreters of these sighs and groans of the travailing creation2 they are the hierophants to gather1 and express1 and offer them to heaven2 they are the teachers to weary1 weeping men of the way whereby they may attain1 even on this side the grave1 a serenity like that of heaven4 ,what the halcyon of fable is among the birds1 that are the mystics among their kind4 ,they essay to build them a marvellous nest1 which not only floats upon the waves of life1 but has the property of charming those waves to a glassy stillness1 so that in mid-winter1 and the very heart of storms1 their souls enjoy1 for a season1 what the ancients called #8the halcyon days1'--that wondrous week of calm ordained for the favoured bird when the year is roughest4 ',tis pity1 murmurs old ,montaigne1 that more information hath not come down to us concerning the construction of these nests4 ,tradition has it1 that the halcyon first of all fashions the said nest by interlacing the bones of some fish4 ,when it is put together she takes it1 like a boat ready for launching1 and lays it on the beach3 the waves come up3 they lift it3 they let it fall3 they toss it gently among the rocks and pebbles2 what is faultily made their play breaks1 or makes to gape1 so that the bird discovers the weak places1 and what parts must be more duly finished2 what is well knit together already1 their strokes only season and confirm4 ,now when we read the lives of the mystics--each of whom has a method1 more or less his own1 of weaving such a nest1 in other words1 his ,theory and ,practice of ,quietude--we see the structure on trial4 ,experience1 with its buffeting1 tests each man's method for the attainment of ,rest4 ,if we watch carefully1 we shall see that some things in the doctrine of many of them break away under trial1 while others are rendered only more compact and buoyant thereby4 ,the examination of the appliances and the processes adopted by these searchers after the ,divine ,stillness1 ought to be very helpful to ourselves4 ,as far as we have their history before us1 we can try them by their fruits4 ,we ask1 in the case of one man1 by what divine art was it that his ark was so skilfully framed as to out-ride those deluges of trouble as though they had been the waters of some windless mere8 ,we ask1 in the case of another1 by what fault came it in the structure of his sailing nest1 that the waters entered1 and he sank1 or seemed to sink1 finding not the rest of soul he sought1 but the vexation of soul he fled8 ,we ask1 in the several most signal examples of the class1 how far did their mysticism help them to realize true manhood--make them strong to bear and strong to do8 ,how far did it tend1 or did it not tend1 towards the complete development and consecration of their nature8 ,to derive from such inquiries their full benefit1 two qualifications are indispensable3--the judgment must be clear1 the sympathies must be warm4 ,the inquirer must retain self-possession enough not to be too readily fascinated1 or too soon offended1 by certain strange and startling forms of expression2 he must not suppose1 that because1 for a long time1 the mystics have been unduly depreciated1 it is wisdom now to cover them with thoughtless and indiscriminate praise4 ,he must not suppose that the mystics are an exception to the ordinary limitations of mortals--that the glorious intensity of some among them was realized without any diminution of breadth1 and that their view embraced1 with equal fondness and with equal insight1 every quarter in the heaven of truth4 ,and1 on the other hand1 let him beware how he seeks to understand these men without fellow-feeling and without love4 ,the weak and volatile nature is smitten1 on a first interview with the mystics1 with a rage for mysticism--is for turning mystic straightway1 and is out of patience1 for six weeks1 with every other form of ,christianity4 ,the cold and proud nature scorns their ardour as a phantasy1 and 7to its own grievous injury7 casts out the warmth they bring4 ,the loving nature and the wise says not1 #8,i will be blind to their errors1' but1 #8,i will always look at those errors in the light of their excellences4' #8,the critic of ,tauler no man has a right to become1 who has not first ascertained that he is a better man than ,tauler4'#abg ,what are we to understand by these words8 ,if such an assertion be true at all1 it cannot be true for ,tauler only4 ,would ,mr4 ,kingsley say that no man has a right to become the critic of ,augustine1 of ,luther1 of ,calvin1 of ,wesley1 of ,george ,fox1 who has not first ascertained himself a better man8 ,ought every biographer1 who is not a mere blind eulogist1 to start with the presumption that he is a better man than he of whom he writes8 ,ought the historian1 who forms his critical estimate of the qualities possessed or lacking--of the service rendered in this direction or in that1 by the worthies of the ,church1 to suppose himself superior to each in turn8 ,as in art he who estimates the worth of a poem is not required to write better poetry1 so in morals1 he who estimates the worth of a character is not required to display superior virtue4 ,or is it the opinions1 rather than the character of ,tauler1 which only a better man than ,tauler may criticise8 ,any one who1 on being made acquainted with certain opinions1 differs from them1 is supposed to have criticised them4 ,in as far as ,mr4 ,kingsley may not agree with some of the well-known opinions of ,augustine1 ,luther1 or ,fox1 so far has he ventured to be their critic2 yet he does not suppose himself a better man4 ,why should ,tauler alone be thus fenced about with a statement that virtually prohibits criticism8 ,such advocacy harms a client's cause4 ,people are apt to suspect that their scrutiny is feared1 when such pains are taken to keep them at a distance4 ,so confident am ,i that the dross in ,tauler is as nothing beside the gold1 that ,i would invite1 rather than deter1 the most candid and sober exercise of the critical judgment with regard to him4 ,perhaps ,mr4 ,kingsley may be1 in reality1 much of the same mind2 if so1 he should not write as though he thought quite otherwise4 ,i cannot suppose that ,mr4 ,kingsley would seriously maintain that the mystic ought1 from the very nature of his claims1 to be exempt from that scrutiny to which history continually subjects the fathers1 the schoolmen1 and the reformers4 ,yet there are those who would have us hearken to every voice professing to speak from the #8everlasting deeps' with a reverence little more discriminating than that which the ,mussulman renders to idiocy and madness4 ,curiously ignorant concerning the very objects of their praise1 these admirers would seem to suppose that every mystic repudiates the exercise of understanding1 is indifferent to the use of language1 and invariably dissolves religious opinion in religious sentiment4 ,these eulogists of mysticism imagine that they have found in the virtues of a ,tauler1 a platform whence to play off with advantage a volley of commonplaces against #8literalisms1' #8formulas1' #8creeds1' #8shams1' and the like4 ,it is high time to rescue the mystics from a foolish adoration1 which the best among them would be the most eager to repudiate4 ,so far from forbidding men to try the spirits1 the most celebrated among the mystics lead the way in such examination4 ,it is the mystics themselves who warn us so seriously that mysticism comprises an evil tendency as well as a good1 and has had its utterances from the nether realms as well as from the upper4 ,the great mystics of the fourteenth century would have been indignant with any man who had confounded1 in a blind admiration1 their mysticism with the self-deifying antinomianism that prevailed among the #8,brethren of the ,free ,spirit4' ,in many of ,tauler's sermons1 in the ,theologia ,germanica1 in the writings of ,suso and of ,ruysbroek1 care is taken to mark1 with all the accuracy possible to language1 the distinction between the ,false ,light and the ,true4 ,there is not a confession of faith in the world which surpasses in clearness and precision the propositions in ,fnelon's ,maxims of the ,saints1 whereby it is proposed to separate the genuine ,quietism from the spurious4 ,the mystic ,gerson criticises the mystic ,ruysbroek4 ,nicholas of ,strasburg criticises ,hildegard and ,joachim2 ,behmen criticises ,stiefel and ,meth2 ,henry ,more criticises the followers of ,george ,fox4 ,so far are such mystics from that indifference to the true or the false in doctrine1 which constitutes1 with some1 their highest claim to our admiration4 ,it is absurd to praise men for a folly3 it is still more absurd to praise them for a folly of which they are guiltless4 ,but here ,i can suppose some one ready to interrupt me with some such question as this3--,is it not almost inevitable1 when the significance of the word mysticism is so broad and ill-defined1 that those who speak of it should misunderstand or be misunderstood8 ,what two persons can you meet with who will define the term in precisely the same way8 ,the word is in itself a not less general and extensive one than revolution1 for instance4 ,no one speaks of revolution in the abstract as good or evil4 ,every one calls this or that revolution glorious or disastrous1 as they conceive it to have overthrown a good government or a bad4 ,but the best among such movements are not without their evil1 nor are the worst perhaps absolutely destitute of good4 ,does not mysticism1 in like manner1 sometimes rise up against a monstrous tyranny1 and sometimes violate a befitting order8 ,has there been no excess in its triumphs8 ,has there been no excuse for its offences8 ,see1 then1 what opposites are coupled under this single word6 ,is it not mainly for this reason that you hear one man condemning and another extolling mysticism8 ,he who applauds is thinking of such mystics as ,bernard1 or ,tauler1 or ,fnelon2 he who denounces is thinking of the ,carlstadts1 the ,mnzers1 or the ,southcotes4 ,he who applauds is thinking of men who vanquished formalism2 he who denounces is thinking of men who trampled on reason or morality4 ,has not each his right8 ,are not your differences mere disputes about nomenclature1 and can you ever come to understanding while you employ so ambiguous a term8 ,so it seems to me that ,common ,sense might speak1 and very forcibly1 too4 ,it is indeed to be regretted that we have not two words--one to express what may be termed the true1 and another for the false1 mysticism4 ,but regret is useless4 ,rather let us endeavour to show how we may employ1 least disadvantageously1 a term so controverted and unfortunate4 ,on one single question the whole matter turns3--,are we or are we not to call ,st4 ,john a mystic8 ,if we say #8,yes1' then of course all those are mystics whose teaching is largely impregnated with the aspect of ,christianity presented in the writings of that ,apostle4 ,then he is a mystic who loves to dwell on the union of ,christians with ,christ2 on ,his abode in us1 and our abiding in ,him2 on the identity of our knowledge of ,god with our likeness to ,him2 of truth with love2 of light with life2 on the witness which he who believes hath within himself4 ,then he is a mystic who regards the ,eternal ,word as the source of whatever light and truth has anywhere been found among men1 and who conceives of the ,church of ,christ as the progressive realization of the ,redeemer's prayer--#8,i in them and thou in me1 that they may be made perfect in one4' ,now1 ,i think that1 in the strict use of language1 the word mystic should be applied1 not to ,st4 ,john1 but to those who more or less exaggerate his doctrine concerning spiritual influence and life in ,god4 ,the ,scripture is the standard whereby alone the spirits are to be tried1 in all candour and charity4 ,to those who repudiate this authority ,i do not write4 ,but if any one1 understanding by #8mystics' simply those who give full force to the language of ,st4 ,john1 shall praise them1 however highly1 ,i am perfectly at one with him in his admiration--my only difference is about the use of the mere word4 ,so much then is settled4 ,it will be obvious1 however1 that the historian of mysticism will scarcely find it possible always to confine his use of the word to the exaggeration just specified4 ,for he must take up1 one after the other1 all those personages who have at any time been reckoned by general consent among the mystics4 ,but an age which has relapsed into coldness will inevitably stigmatize as a mystic any man whose devout ardour rises a few degrees above its own frigidity4 ,it is as certain as anything can be that1 if a ,german had appeared among the ,lutherans of the seventeenth century1 teaching in his own way just as ,st4 ,john taught1 without one particle of exaggeration1 he would have been denounced as a mystic from a hundred pulpits4 ,hence it has come to pass that some men1 who have figured largely as mystics in the history of the ,church1 have in them but a comparatively small measure of that subjective excess which we would call mysticism1 in the strict sense4 ,tauler is one of these4 ,but it may be said1--,you talk of testing these men by ,scripture2 yet you can only mean1 by your interpretation of ,scripture4 ,how are you sure that your interpretation is better than theirs8 ,such an objection lies equally against every appeal to ,scripture4 ,for we all appeal to what we suppose to be the meaning of the sacred writers1 ascertained according to the best exercise of our judgment4 ,the science of hermeneutics has established certain general principles of interpretation which are acknowledged by scholars of every creed4 ,but if any one now-a-days resolves the ,new ,testament into allegory1 and supposes1 for example1 that by the five husbands of the woman of ,samaria we are to understand the five ,senses1 ,i cannot of course try my cause with him before a ,court where he makes the verdict what he pleases4 ,i can only leave him with his riddles1 and request him to carry my compliments to the ,sphinx4 ,there is1 then1 a twofold test by which ,tauler and other mystics are to be judged1 if their teaching is to profit rather than to confuse and mislead us4 ,we may compare the purport of his discourses with the general tenor and bearing of the ,new ,testament1 as far as we can apprehend it as a whole4 ,are some unquestionable truths but rarely touched1 and others pushed to their utmost limits8 ,if we think we see a certain disproportionateness--that there is a joyousness1 and freedom1 and warm humanity about the portraiture of ,christian life in ,st4 ,john1 which we lack in his very sincere disciple1 the ascetic and the mystic1--we trifle with truth if we do not say so4 ,the other test is the historical4 ,was a certain mystic on the side of the truth and onwardness of his time1 or against it8 ,did he rise above its worst errors1 or did he aggravate them8 ,and here ,tauler stands with a glory round his head4 ,whatever exaggeration there may have been of the inward as against the outward1 it was scarcely more than was inevitable in the case of a man who had to maintain the inmost verities of ,christian life amidst almost universal formality and death4 ,what then1 it may be asked1 is that exaggeration of which you speak8 ,for hitherto your account of mysticism proper is only negative--it is a something which ,st4 ,john does not teach4 ,i will give a few examples4 ,if a man should imagine that his inward light superseded outward testimony1 so that the words of ,christ and his inspired disciples became superfluous to him2 if he regarded indifference to the facts and recorded truths of the ,new ,testament as a sign of eminent spirituality1 such a man would1 ,i think1 abuse the teaching of ,st4 ,john concerning the unction from the ,holy ,one4 ,the same ,apostle who declares that he who hateth his brother abideth in darkness1 refuses to bid ,god speed to him who brings not the doctrine of ,christ1 and inseparably associates the #8anointing' which his children had received1 with their abiding in the truth they had heard from his lips4 7#a ,john ii4 #bd47 ,if1 again1 any man were to pretend that a special revelation exempted him from the ordinary obligations of morality--that his union with ,god was such as to render sinless in him what would have been sin in others1 he would be condemned1 and not supported1 by conscience and ,scripture4 ,neither could that mystic appeal to ,st4 ,john who should teach1 instead of the discipline and consecration of our faculties1 such an abandonment of their use1 in favour of supernatural gifts1 as should be a premium on his indolence1 and a discouragement to all faithful endeavour to ascertain the sense of ,holy ,writ4 ,nor1 again1 does any mystic who disdains hope as a meanness abide by the teaching of ,st4 ,john4 ,for the ,apostle regards the hope of heaven as eminently conducive to our fitness for it1 and says--#8,he that hath this hope purifieth himself4' ,the mystical ascetic who refuses to pray for particular or temporal bestowments is wrong in his practice1 however elevated in his motive4 ,for ,st4 ,john can write1--#8,i pray 77 above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health1 even as thy soul prospereth4' 7#c ,john #b47 ,nowhere does that ,apostle prescribe absolute indifference1 or absolute passivity4 ,lastly1 ,john is not so afraid of anthropomorphism as to discourage or refine away the symbol and the figure4 ,it is evident that he regards the fatherhoods and the brotherhoods of this earthly life1 not as fleshly ideas which profane things spiritual1 but as adumbrations1 most fit 7however inadequate7 to set forth the divine relationship to us1--yea1 farther1 as facts which would never have had place in time1 had not something like their archetype from the first existed in that ,eternal ,mind who has made man in his own image4 ,i remember hearing of an old lady1 a member of the ,society of ,friends1 who interrupted a conversation in which the name of ,jerusalem had been mentioned1 by the exclamation1 #8,jerusalem--umph--,jerusalem--it has not yet been revealed to me that there is such a place6' ,now ,i do not say that our friend the ,quakeress might not have been an excellent ,christian2 but ,i do venture to think her far gone in mysticism4 ,her remark puts the idea of mysticism1 in its barest and most extreme form1 as a tendency which issues in refusing to acknowledge the external world as a source of religious knowledge in any way1 and will have every man's ,christianity evolved de novo from the depths of his own consciousness1 as though no apostle had ever preached1 or evangelist written1 or any ,christian existed beside himself4 ,it is not1 therefore1 the holding the doctrine of an inward light that makes a mystic1 but the holding it in such a way as to ignore or to diminish the proper province of the outer4 99 99 99 99 99 ,i should certainly like to see some one settle for us definitively the questions which lie at the root of mysticism1 such as these1 for example3--,is there an immediate influence exerted by the ,spirit of ,god on the spirit of man8 ,and if so1 under what conditions8 ,what are those limits which1 once passed1 land us in mysticism8 ,but the task1 ,i fear1 is beyond all hope of satisfactory execution4 ,every term used would have to be defined1 and the words of the definition defined again1 and every definition and subdefinition would be open to some doubt or some objection4 ,marco ,polo tells us that the people of ,kin-sai throw into the fire1 at funerals1 pieces of painted paper1 representing servants1 horses1 and furniture2 believing that the deceased will enjoy the use of realities corresponding to these in the other world4 ,but1 alas1 for our poor definition-cutter1 with his logical scissors6 ,where shall he find a faith like that of the ,kin-sai people1 to believe that there actually exist1 in the realm of spirit and the world of ideas1 realities answering to the terms he fashions8 ,no2 these questions admit but of approximate solution4 ,the varieties of spiritual experience defy all but a few broad and simple rules4 ,hath not ,one told us that the influence in which we believe is as the wind1 which bloweth as it listeth1 and we cannot tell whence it cometh and whither it goeth8 ,for my own part1 ,i firmly believe that there is an immediate influence exerted by the ,divine ,spirit4 ,but is this immediate influence above sense and consciousness1 or not8 ,yes1 answers many a mystic4 ,but1 if it be above consciousness1 how can any man be conscious of it8 ,and what then becomes of the doctrine--so vital with a large class of mystics--of perceptible guidance1 of inward impulses and monitions8 ,speaking with due caution on a matter so mysterious1 ,i should say that1 while the indwelling and guidance of the ,spirit is most real1 such influence is not ordinarily perceptible4 ,it would be presumption to deny that in certain cases of especial need 7as in some times of persecution1 sore distress1 or desolation7 manifestations of a special 7though not miraculous7 nature may have been vouchsafed4 ,with regard to the witness of the ,spirit1 ,i think that the language of ,st4 ,john warrants us in believing that the divine life within us is its own evidence4 ,certain states of physical or mental distemper being excepted1 in so far as our life in ,christ is vigorously and watchfully maintained1 in so far will the witness of the ,spirit with our spirit give us direct conviction of our sonship4 ,how frequently1 throughout his first ,epistle1 does the ,apostle repeat that favourite word1 1 #8we know6' ,again1 as to the presence of ,christ in the soul4 ,says the ,lutheran ,church1 #8,we condemn those who say that the gifts of ,god only1 and not ,god himself1 dwell in the believer4' ,i have no wish to echo any such condemnation1 but ,i believe that the ,lutheran affirmation is the doctrine of ,scripture4 ,both ,christ himself and the ,spirit of ,christ are said to dwell within the children of ,god4 ,we may perhaps regard the indwelling of ,christ as the abiding source or principle of the new life1 and the indwelling of the ,spirit as that progressive operation which forms in us the likeness to ,christ4 ,the former is vitality itself2 the latter has its degrees1 as we grow in holiness4 ,once more1 as to passivity4 ,if we really believe in spiritual guidance1 we shall agree with those mystics who bid us abstain from any self-willed guiding of ourselves4 ,when a good man has laid self totally aside that he may follow only the leading of the ,spirit1 is it not essential to any practical belief in ,divine direction that he should consider what then appears to him as right or wrong to be really such1 in his case1 according to the mind of the ,spirit8 ,yet to say thus much is not to admit that the influences of the ,spirit are ordinarily perceptible4 ,the motion of a leaf may indicate the direction of a current of air2 it does not render the air visible4 ,the mystic who has gathered up his soul in a still expectancy1 perceives at last a certain dominant thought among his thoughts4 ,he is determined1 in one direction or another4 ,but what he has perceived is still one of his own thoughts in motion1 not the hand of the ,divine ,mover4 ,here1 however1 some mystics would say1 #8,you beg the question4 ,what we perceive is a something quite separate from ourselves--in fact1 the impelling ,spirit4' ,in this case the matter is beyond discussion4 ,i can only say1 my consciousness is different4 ,i shall be to him a rationalist1 as he to me a mystic2 but let us not dispute4 ,obviously1 the great difficulty is to be quite sure that we have so annihilated every passion1 preference or foregone conclusion as to make it certain that only powers from heaven can be working on the waters of the soul4 ,that ripple1 which has just stirred the stillness6 ,was it a breath of earthly air8 ,was it the leaping of a desire from within us8 ,or was it indeed the first touch1 as it were1 of some angelic hand1 commissioned to trouble the pool with healing from on high8 ,if such questions are hard to answer1 when judging ourselves1 how much more so when judging each other6 ,when we desire to determine difficult duty by aid of the illumination promised1 self must be abandoned4 ,but what self8 ,assuredly1 selfishness and self-will4 ,not the exercise of those powers of observation and judgment which ,god has given us for this very purpose4 ,a divine light is promised1 not to supersede1 but to illuminate our understanding4 ,greatly would that man err who should declare those things only to be his duty to which he had been specially #8drawn1' or #8moved1' as the ,friends would term it4 ,what can be conceived more snug and comfortable1 in one sense1 and more despicable1 in another1 than the easy1 selfish life which such a man might lead1 under pretence of eminent spirituality8 ,refusing to read and meditate on the recorded example of ,christ's life--for that is a mere externalism--he awaits inertly the development of an inward ,christ4 ,as he takes care not to expose himself to inducements to unpleasant duty--to any outward teachings calculated to awaken his conscience and elevate his standard of obligation--that conscience remains sluggish1 that standard low4 ,he is honest1 respectable1 sober1 we will say4 ,his inward voice does not as yet urge him to anything beyond this4 ,others1 it is true1 exhaust themselves in endeavours to benefit the souls and bodies of men4 ,they are right 7he says71 for so their inward ,christ teaches them4 ,he is right 7he says71 for so does not his inward ,christ teach him4 ,it is to be hoped that a type of mysticism so ignoble as this can furnish but few specimens4 ,yet such is the logical issue of some of the extravagant language we occasionally hear concerning the bondage of the letter and the freedom of the spirit4 ,when the letter means what ,god chooses1 and the spirit what we choose1 ,self is sure to exclaim1 #8,the letter killeth4' ,if the light that is in thee be darkness1 how great is that darkness6 ,such1 then1 in imperfect outline1 is what ,i hold to be true on this question concerning the reality and extent of the ,spirit's influence4 ,as there are two worlds--the seen and the unseen--so have there been ever two revelations--an inward and an outward--reciprocally calling forth and supplementing each other4 ,to undervalue the outward manifestation of ,god1 in nature1 in providence1 in revelation1 because it is outward--because it is vain without the inward manifestation of ,god in the conscience and by the ,spirit1 is the great error of mysticism4 ,hence it has often disdained means because they are not--what they were never meant to be--the end4 ,an ultra-refinement of spirituality has rejected1 as carnal and unclean1 what ,god has commended to men as wholesome and helpful4 ,it is not wise to refuse to employ our feet because they are not wings4 99 99 99 99 99 ,but it is not mysticism to believe in a world of higher realities1 which are1 and ever will be1 beyond sight and sense2 for heaven itself will not abrogate manifestation1 but substitute a more adequate manifestation for a less4 ,what thoughtful ,christian man supposes that in any heaven of heavens1 any number of millenniums hence1 the ,wisdom1 ,power1 or ,goodness of ,god will become manifest to him1 as so many visible entities1 with form1 and hue1 and motion8 ,it is not mysticism to believe that the uncreated underlies all created good4 ,augustine will not be suspected of pantheism2 and it is ,augustine who says--#8,from a good man1 or a good angel1 take away angel1 take away man--and you find ,god4' ,we may be realists 7as opposed to the nominalist7 without being mystics4 ,for the surmise of ,plato1 that the world of ,appearance subsisted in and by a higher world of ,divine ,thoughts is confirmed 7while it is transcended7 by ,christianity1 when it tells us of that ,divine ,subsistence1 that ,eternal ,word1 by whom and in whom1 all things consist1 and without whom was not anything made that is made4 ,and herein lies that real1 though often exaggerated1 affinity between ,platonism and ,christianity1 which a long succession of mystics have laboured so lovingly to trace out and to develop4 ,in the second and third centuries1 in the fourteenth1 and in the seventeenth2 in the ,christian school at ,alexandria1 in the pulpits of the ,rhineland1 at ,bemerton1 and at ,cambridge1 ,plato has been the #8,attic ,moses' of the ,clements and the ,taulers1 the ,norrises and the ,mores4 ,but when mysticism1 in the person of ,plotinus1 declares all thought essentially one1 and refuses to ,ideas any existence external to our own minds1 it has become pantheistic4 ,so1 also1 when the ,oriental mystic tells us that our consciousness of not being infinite is a delusion 7maya7 to be escaped by relapsing ecstatically into the universal ,life4 ,still more dangerous does such mysticism become when it goes a step farther and says--,that sense of sin which troubles you is a delusion also2 it is the infirmity of your condition in this phantom world to suppose that right is different from wrong4 ,shake off that dream of personality1 and you will see that good and evil are identical in the ,absolute4 ,in considering the ,german mysticism of the fourteenth century it is natural to inquire1 first of all1 how far it manifests any advance beyond that of preceding periods4 ,an examination of its leading principles will show that its appearance marks an epoch of no mean moment in the history of philosophy4 ,these monks of the ,rhineland were the first to break away from a long-cherished mode of thought1 and to substitute a new and profounder view of the relations subsisting between ,god and the universe4 ,their memorable step of progress is briefly indicated by saying that they substituted the idea of the immanence of ,god in the world for the idea of the emanation of the world from ,god4 ,these two ideas have given rise to two different forms of pantheism2 but they are neither of them necessarily pantheistic4 ,to view rightly the relationship of ,god to the universe it is requisite to regard ,him as both above it and within it4 ,so ,revelation taught the ancient ,hebrews to view their great #8,i am4' ,on the one hand1 ,he had ,his dwelling in the heavens1 and humbled ,himself to behold the affairs of men2 on the other1 ,he was represented as having beset man behind and before1 as giving life to all creatures by the sending forth of ,his breath1 as giving to man understanding by ,his inspiration1 and as dwelling1 in an especial sense1 with the humble and the contrite4 ,but philosophy1 and mysticism1 frequently its purest aspiration1 have not always been able to embrace fully and together these two conceptions of transcendence and of immanence4 ,we find1 accordingly1 that from the days of ,dionysius ,areopagita down to the fourteenth century1 the emanation theory1 in one form or another1 is dominant4 ,the daring originality of ,john ,scotus could not escape from its control4 ,it is elaborately depicted in ,dante's ,paradiso4 ,the doctrine of immanence found first utterance with the ,dominican ,eckart2 not in timid hints1 but intrepid1 reckless1 sounding blasphemous4 ,what was false in ,eckart's teaching died out after a while2 what was true1 animated his brother mystics1 transmigrated eventually into the mind of ,luther1 and did not die4 ,to render more intelligible the position of the ,german mystics it will be necessary to enter into some farther explanation of the two theories in question4 ,the theory of emanation supposes the universe to descend in successive1 widening circles of being1 from the ,supreme--from some such #8trinal1 individual' ,light of lights1 as ,dante seemed to see in his ,vision4 ,in the highest1 narrowest1 and most rapid orbits1 sing and shine the refulgent rows of ,cherubim and ,seraphim and ,thrones4 ,next these1 in wider sweep1 the ,dominations1 ,virtues1 ,powers4 ,below these1 ,princedoms1 ,archangels1 ,angels1 gaze adoring upwards4 ,of these hierarchies the lowest occupy the largest circle4 ,beneath their lowest begins our highest sphere--the empyrean1 enfolding within its lesser and still lesser spheres1 till we reach the centre--#8that dim spot which men call earth4' ,through the hierarchies of heaven1 and the corresponding hierarchies of the church1 the grace of ,god is transmitted1 stage by stage1 each order in its turn receiving from that above1 imparting to that below4 ,this descent of divine influence from the highest point to the lowest is designed to effect a similar ascent of the soul from the lowest to the highest4 ,of such a theory ,john ,scotus ,erigena is the most philosophical exponent4 ,with him the restitution of all things consists in their resolution into their ideal sources 7caus primordiales74 ,man and nature are redeemed in proportion as they pass from the actual up to the ideal2 for in his system1 the actual is not so much the realization of the ideal as a fall from it4 ,so1 in the spirit of this theory1 the mounting soul1 when it anticipates in imagination the redemption of the travailing universe1 will extract from music the very essence of its sweetness1 and refine that again 7far above all delight of sense7 into the primal idea of an ,eternal ,harmony4 ,so likewise1 all form and colour--the grace of flowers1 the majesty of mountains1 the might of seas1 the red of evening or of morning clouds1 the lustre of precious stones and gold in the gleaming heart of mines--all will be concentrated and subtilized into an abstract principle of ,beauty1 and a hueless original of ,light4 ,all the affinities of things1 and instincts of creatures1 and human speech and mirth1 and household endearment1 he will sublimate into abstract ,wisdom1 ,joy1 or ,love1 and sink these abstractions again into some crystal sea of the third heaven1 that they may have existence only in their fount and source--the superessential ,one4 ,very different is the doctrine of ,immanence1 as it appears in the ,theologia ,germanica1 in ,eckart1 in ,jacob ,behmen1 and afterwards in some forms of modern speculation4 ,the emanation theory supposes a radiation from above2 the theory of immanence1 a self-development1 or manifestation of ,god from within4 ,a geometrician would declare the pyramid the symbol of the one1 the sphere the symbol of the other4 ,the former conception places a long scale of degrees between the heavenly and the earthly3 the latter tends to abolish all gradation1 and all distinction4 ,the former is successive2 the latter1 immediate1 simultaneous4 ,a chemist might call the former the sublimate1 the latter the diluent1 of the ,actual4 ,the theory of immanence declares ,god everywhere present with all ,his power--will realize heaven or hell in the present moment--denies that ,god is nearer on the other side the grave than this--equalizes all external states--breaks down all steps1 all partitions--will have man at once escape from all that is not ,god1 and so know and find only ,god everywhere4 ,what are all those contrasts that make warp and woof in the web of time2 what are riches and poverty1 health and sickness2 all the harms and horrors of life1 and all its joy and peace1--what past and future1 sacred and secular1 far and near8 ,are they not the mere raiment wherewith our narrow human thought clothes the ,ever-present1 ,ever-living ,one8 ,phantoms1 and utter nothing--all of them6 ,the one sole reality is even this--that ,god through ,christ does assume flesh in every ,christian man2 abolishes inwardly his creature self1 and absorbs it into the eternal stillness of ,his own #8all-moving ,immobility4' ,so1 though the storms of life may beat1 or its suns may shine upon his lower nature1 his true 7or uncreated7 self is hidden in ,god1 and sits already in the heavenly places4 ,thus1 while the ,greek ,dionysius bids a man retire into himself1 because there he will find the foot of that ladder of hierarchies which stretches up to heaven2 the ,germans bid man retire into himself because1 in the depths of his being1 ,god speaks immediately to him1 and will enter and fill his nature if he makes ,him room4 ,in spite of some startling expressions 7not perhaps unnatural on the first possession of men by so vast a truth71 the advance of the ,german mysticism on that of ,dionysius or ,erigena is conspicuous4 ,the ,greek regards man as in need only of a certain illumination4 ,the ,celt saves him by a transformation from the physical into the metaphysical4 ,but the ,teuton1 holding fast the great contrasts of life and death1 sin and grace1 declares an entire revolution of will--a totally new principle of life essential4 ,it is true that the ,german mystics dwell so much on the bringing forth of the ,son in all ,christians now1 that they seem to relegate to a distant and merely preliminary position the historical incarnation of the ,son of ,god4 ,but this great fact is always implied1 though less frequently expressed4 ,and we must remember how far the ,church of ,rome had really banished the ,saviour from human sympathies1 by absorbing to the extent she did1 his humanity in his divinity4 ,christ was by her brought really near to men only in the magical transformation of the ,sacrament1 and was no true ,mediator4 ,the want of human sympathy in their ideal of ,him1 forced them to have recourse to the maternal love of the ,virgin1 and the intercession of the saints4 ,unspeakable was the gain1 then1 when the ,saviour was brought from that awful distance to become the guest of the soul1 and vitally to animate1 here on earth1 the members of his mystical body4 ,even ,eckart1 be it remembered1 does not say1 with the ,hegelian1 that every man is divine already1 and the divinity of ,christ not different in kind from our own4 ,he attributes a real divineness only to a certain class of men--those who by grace are transformed from the created to the uncreated nature4 ,it is not easy to determine the true place of ,christ in his pantheistic system2 but this much appears certain1 that ,christ and not man--grace1 and not nature1 is the source of that incomprehensible deification with which he invests the truly perfect and poor in spirit4 ,on the moral character of ,eckart1 even the malice of persecution has not left a stain4 ,yet that unknown ,god to which he desires to escape when he says #8,i want to be rid of ,god1' is a being without morality4 ,he is above goodness1 and so those who have become identical with ,him #8are indifferent to doing or not doing1' says ,eckart4 ,i can no more call him good1 he exclaims1 than ,i can call the sun black4 ,in his system1 separate personality is a sin--a sort of robbery of ,god3 it resembles those spots on the moon1 which the angel describes to ,adam as #8unpurged vapours1 not yet into her substance turned4' ,i am not less than ,god1 he will say1 there is no distinction3 if ,i were not1 ,he would not be4 #8,i hesitate to receive anything from ,god--for to be indebted to ,him would imply inferiority1 and make a distinction between ,him and me2 whereas1 the righteous man is1 without distinction1 in substance and in nature1 what ,god is4' ,here we see the doctrine of the immanence of ,god swallowing up the conception of his transcendence4 ,a pantheism1 apparently apathetic and arrogant as that of the ,stoics1 is the result4 ,yet1 when we remember that ,eckart was the friend of ,tauler and ,suso1 we cannot but suppose that there may have lain some meaning in such language less monstrous than that which the words themselves imply4 ,eckart would probably apply such expressions1 not to his actual self2--for that he supposes non-existent1 and reduced to its true nothing--but to the divine nature which1 as he thought1 then superseded within him the annihilated personality4 ,tauler 7and with him ,ruysbroek and ,suso7 holds in due combination the correlative ideas of transcendence and of immanence4 99 99 99 99 99 ,such1 then1 is one of the most important characteristics of ,german mysticism in the fourteenth century4 ,i have next to ascertain in which of the leading orders of mystics ,tauler should be assigned a place4 #8,divination1' saith ,bacon1 #8is of two kinds--primitive1 and by influxion4' ,the former is founded on the belief that the soul1 when by abstinence and observances it has been purified and concentrated1 has #8a certain extent and latitude of pre-notion4' ,the latter is grounded on the persuasion that the foreknowledge of ,god and of spirits may be infused into the soul when rendered duly passive and mirror-like4 ,of these two kinds of divining the former is characterized by repose and quiet1 the latter by a fervency and elevation such as the ancients styled furor4 ,now our mystical divines have this in common with the diviners1 that they chiefly aim to withdraw the soul within itself4 ,they may be divided most appropriately after a like manner4 ,a cursory inspection will satisfy any one that theopathetic mysticism branches into two distinct1 and often contrasted1 species4 ,there is the serene and contemplative mysticism2 and over against it1 the tempestuous and the active4 ,the former is comparatively self-contained and intransitive2 the latter1 emphatically transitive4 ,its subject conceives himself mastered by a divine seizure4 ,emotions well-nigh past the strain of humanity1 make the chest to heave1 the frame to tremble2 cast the man down1 convulsed1 upon the earth4 ,or visions that will not pass away1 burn into his soul their glories and their terrors4 ,or words that will not be kept down1 force an articulation1 with quaking and with spasms1 from organs no longer under his control4 ,the contemplative mystic has most commonly loved best that side of ,christian truth which is nearest to ,platonism2 the enthusiastic or practical mystic1 that which connects it with ,judaism4 ,the former hopes to realize within himself the highest ascents of faith and hope--nay1 haply1 to surpass them1 even while here below4 ,the latter comes forth from his solitude1 with warning1 apocalyptic voice1 to shake a sleeping ,church4 ,he has a word from the ,lord that burns as a fire in his bones till it be spoken4 ,he lifts up his voice1 and cries1 exhorting1 commanding1 or foretelling1 with the authority of inspiration4 ,the ,phrygian mountaineer1 ,montanus1 furnishes the earliest example1 and a very striking one1 of this enthusiastic or prophetic kind of mysticism4 ,he and his followers had been cradled in the fiercest and most frantic superstitions of heathendom4 ,terrible was ,cybele1 the mountain mother1 throned among the misty fastnesses of ,ida4 ,maddest uproar echoed through the glens on her great days of festival4 ,there is beating of drum and timbrel1 clashing of cymbals1 shrill crying of pipes2 incessant the mournful sound of barbarous horns2 loud1 above all1 the groans and shrieks and yells from frenzied votaries whom the goddess has possessed4 ,they toss their heads2 they leap2 they whirl2 they wallow convulsed upon the rocks1 cutting themselves with knives2 they brandish1 they hurl their weapons2 their worship is a foaming1 raving1 rushing to-and-fro1 till the driving deity flings them down exhausted1 senseless4 ,among these demoniacs--sanguine fleti1 ,terrificas capitum quatientes numine cristas1 as ,lucretius has described them--these ,corybantes1 or head-tossers1 ,christianity made its way1 exorcising a legion of evil spirits4 ,but the enthusiastic temperament was not expelled4 ,these wild men1 become ,christians1 carried much of the old fervour into the new faith4 ,violent excitement1 ecstatic transport1 oracular utterance1 were to them the dazzling signs of the divine victory--of the forcible dislodgment of the power of ,darkness by the power of ,light4 ,so ,montanus readily believes1 and finds numbers to believe1 that he is the subject of a divine possession4 ,against the bloodthirsty mob in the villages and towns--against a ,marcus ,aurelius1 ordaining massacre from the high places of the ,csars--had not ,god armed his own with gifts beyond the common measure--with rapture--with vision--with prophecy8 ,yes6 the promised ,paraclete was indeed among them1 and it was not they1 but ,he1 who spake4 ,so thought the ,montanists1 as they announced new precepts to the ,church2 as they foretold the gathering judgment of ,antichrist and the dawning triumph of the saints2 as they hastened forth1 defiant and sublime1 to provoke from their persecutors the martyr's crown4 ,let us not overlook the real heroism of these men1 while touching on their errors4 ,but their conception of the ,church of ,christ1 so analogous1 in many respects1 to that of the early ,quakers--was it the right one8 ,according to ,montanus1 the ,church was to be maintained in the world by a succession of miraculous interventions4 ,from time to time1 fresh outpourings of the ,spirit would inspire fresh companies of prophets to ordain ritual1 to confute heresy1 to organize and modify the ,church according to the changing necessities of each period4 ,he denied that the ,scripture was an adequate source1 whence to draw the refutation of error and the new supplies of truth demanded by the exigencies of the future4 ,as ,romanism sets up an infallible ,pope to decide concerning truth1 and in fact to supplement revelation1 as the organ of the ,divine ,spirit ever living in the ,church2 so these mystics have their inspired teachers and prophets1 raised up from time to time1 for the same purpose4 ,but the contemplative mystics1 and indeed ,christians generally1 borne out1 as we think1 by ,scripture and by history1 deny any such necessity1 and declare this doctrine of supplementary inspiration alien from the spirit of ,christianity4 ,while ,montanus and his prophetesses1 ,maximilla and ,priscilla1 were thus speaking1 in the name of the ,lord1 to the country-folk of ,phrygia or to the citizens of ,pepuza1 ,clement at ,alexandria was teaching1 on the contrary1 that we have the organ requisite for finding in the ,scriptures all the truth we need--that they are a well of depth sufficient1 nay inexhaustible2 and that the devout exercise of reason in their interpretation and application is at once the discipline and prerogative of the manhood proper to the ,christian dispensation4 ,we are no longer ,jews1 he would say1 no longer children4 ,the presence of the ,spirit with us is a part of the ordinary law of the economy under which we live4 ,it is designed that the supernatural shall gradually vindicate itself as the natural1 in proportion as our nature is restored to its allegiance to ,god4 ,it is not necessary that we should be inspired in the same way as the sacred writers were1 before their writings can be adequately serviceable to us4 ,such was the opposition in the second century1 and such has it been in the main ever since1 between these two kinds of mystical tendency4 ,the ,montanist type of mysticism1 as we see it in a ,hildegard1 among the ,quakers1 among the ,protestant peasantry of the ,cevennes1 and among some of the #8,friends of ,god1' usually takes its rise with the uneducated1 is popular1 sometimes revolutionary4 ,animated by its spirit1 ,carlstadt filled ,wittenberg with scandal and confusion2 and the ,anabaptist mob reddened the sky with the burning libraries of ,osnaburg and ,munster4 ,the ,alexandrian mysticism1 so far from despising scholarship and philosophy1 as so much carnal wisdom1 desires to appropriate for ,christianity every science and every art4 ,it is the mysticism of theologians1 of philosophers1 and scholars4 ,it exists as an important element in the theology of ,clement1 of ,origen1 and of ,augustine4 ,it assumes still greater prominence in a ,hugo or a ,richard of ,st4 ,victor4 ,it obtained its fullest proportions in these ,german mystics of the fourteenth century4 ,it refined and elevated the scholarship of ,reuchlin1 ,ficinus1 and ,mirandola4 ,it is at once profound and expansive in our ,english ,platonists4 ,yet let it not be supposed that the extravagance of the enthusiastic mysticism has not its uses1 or that the serenity of the contemplative is always alike admirable4 ,both have1 in their turn1 done goodly service4 ,each has had a work given it to do in which its rival would have failed4 ,the eccentric impetuosity of ,montanism1 ancient and modern1 has done good1 directly and indirectly1 by breaking through traditional routine--by protesting against the abuses of human authority--by stirring many a sleeping question1 and daring many an untried path of action4 ,on the other hand1 the contemplative mysticism has been at times too timid1 too fond of an elegant or devout1 but still unworthy1 ease4 ,the ,nicodemuses of the sixteenth century1 the ,brionnets and the ,gerard ,roussels1 were nearly all of them ,platonists4 ,they were men whose mysticism raised them above the wretched externalism of ,rome1 and at the same time furnished them with an ingenious excuse for abiding safely in her communion4 #8,what1' they would say1 #8are the various forms of the letter1 to the unity of the ,spirit8 ,can we not use the signs of ,romanism in the spirit of ,protestantism--since1 to the spiritual and the wise1 this outward usage or that1 is of small matter8' ,the enthusiastic mysticism tends to multiply1 and the contemplative to diminish1 positive precept and ordinance4 ,the former will sometimes revolt against one kind of prescription only to devise a new one of its own4 ,so the followers of ,fox exchanged surplice and #8steeple-house' for a singularity of hat1 coat1 and pronouns4 ,the contemplative mystic loves to inform his common life with the mysterious and the divine4 ,certain especial sanctities he has1 but nothing unsanctified2 and he covers his table with an altar-cloth1 and curtains his bed with a chasuble1 and drinks out of a chalice every day of his life4 ,a ,montanus commends celibacy2 an ,origen sees typified in marriage the espousals of the ,church4 ,the zeal of the enthusiastic mysticism is ever on the watch for signs--expects a kingdom coming with observation--is almost always ,millenarian4 ,the contemplatist regards the kingdom of heaven as internal1 and sees in the history of souls a continual day of judgment4 ,the one courts the vision and hungers after marvel3 the other strives to ascend1 above all form and language1 from the valley of phantasmata to the silent heights of #8imageless contemplation4' ,the one loves violent contrasts1 and parts off abruptly the religious world and the irreligious1 the natural and the supernatural4 ,the other loves to harmonize these opposites1 as far as may be--would win rather than rebuke the world--would blend1 in the daily life of faith1 the human with the divine working3 and delights to trace everywhere types1 analogies1 and hidden unity1 rather than diversity and strife4 ,the ,old ,testament has been always the favourite of the prophetic mysticism3 the contemplative has drunk most deeply into the spirit of the ,new4 99 99 99 99 99 ,mysticism1 as exhibited in ,tauler's sermons1 is much more likely to win appreciation at the hands of ,english readers than mysticism in the ,theologia ,germanica4 ,the principles which were there laid down as bare abstractions are here warmed by sunshine and clothed with verdure4 ,to the theory of mysticism we find added many a suggestive hint concerning its practice4 ,there were general statements in the ,theologia ,germanica so dim1 so vast1 so ultra-human1 that many readers would be at a loss to understand how they could possibly become a practice or a joy in any soul alive4 ,in the sermons1 a brother mystic supplies the requisite qualification1 and shows that the old ,teutonic knight had1 after all1 a meaning not so utterly remote from all the ways and wants of flesh and blood4 ,brought out to view by ,tauler's fervour1 his invisible ink becomes a legible character4 ,the exhortations of the pulpit thus interpret the soliloquy of the cell2 and when the preacher illuminates mysticism with the many-coloured lights of metaphor and passion--when he interrogates1 counsels1 entreats1 rebukes1 we seem to return from the confines of the nameless1 voiceless ,void to a region within the rule of the sun1 and to beings a little lower than the angels4 ,it will reassure many readers to discover from these sermons that the mystics whom ,tauler represents are by no means so infatuated as to disdain those external aids which ,god has provided1 or which holy men of old have handed down--that they do not call history a husk1 social worship a vain oblation1 or decent order bondage to the letter--that when they speak of transcending time and place1 they pretend to no new commandment1 and do but repeat a truth old as all true religion--that they are on their guard1 beyond most men1 against that spiritual pride which some think inseparable from the mystical aspiration--that so far from encouraging the morbid introspection attributed to them1 it is their first object to cure men of that malady--that instead of formulating their own experience as a test and regimen for others1 they tell men to sit down in the lowest place till ,god calls them to come up higher--and finally1 that they are men who have mourned for the sins1 and comforted the sorrows of their fellows1 with a depth and compass of lowly love such as should have disarmed every unfriendly judgment1 had their errors been as numerous as their excellence is extraordinary4 ,any one who has attentively read ,tauler's discourses as now accessible may consider himself familiar with the substance of ,tauler's preaching4 ,from whatever part of ,scripture history1 prophecy1 song1 or precept1 his text be taken1 the sermons1 we may be sure1 will contain similar exhortations to self-abandonment1 the same warnings against a barren externalism1 the same directions to prepare the way for the inward ,advent of the ,lord in the ,ground of the ,soul4 ,the allegorical interpretation1 universal in those days1 rendered easy such an ever-varied presentation of a single theme4 ,did the multitude go out into the wilderness to the preaching of ,john8 ,we are to go forth into the wilderness of the spiritual life4 ,did ,joseph and ,mary seek their son in vain among their friends and acquaintance1 and find him in his ,father's house8 ,we also must retire to the inmost sanctuary of the soul1 and be found no more in the company of those hindering associates1 our own ,thoughts1 ,will1 and ,understanding4 ,did ,christ say to ,mary ,magdalen1 #8,i have not yet ascended to my ,father8' ,he meant1 #8,i have not yet been spiritually raised within thy soul2' for he himself had never left the ,father4 ,from the sermon on the fifteenth ,sunday after ,trinity ,i select a passage which contains in two sentences the kernel of ,tauler's doctrine--the principle which1 under a thousand varieties of illustration and application1 makes the matter of all his sermons4 #8,when1 through all manner of exercises the outward man has been converted into the inward1 reasonable man1 and thus the two1 that is to say1 the powers of the senses and the powers of the reason1 are gathered up into the very centre of the man's being--the unseen depths of his spirit wherein lies the image of ,god1--and thus he flings himself into the divine abyss1 in which he dwelt eternally before he was created2 then when ,god finds the man thus simply and nakedly turned towards ,him1 the ,godhead bends down and descends into the depths of the pure1 waiting soul1 and transforms the created soul1 drawing it up into the uncreated essence1 so that the spirit becomes one with ,him4 ,could such a man behold himself1 he would see himself so noble that he would fancy himself ,god1 and see himself a thousand times nobler than he is in himself1 and would perceive all the thoughts and purposes1 words and works1 and have all the knowledge of all men that ever were4' ,an explanation of this extract will be a summary of ,tauler's theology4 ,first of all1 it is obvious that he regards human nature as tripartite--it is a temple in three compartments3 there is the outer court of the senses2 there is the inner court of the intellectual nature1 where the powers of the soul1 busy with the images of things1 are ever active1 where ,reason1 ,memory1 ,will1 move to and fro1 as a kind of mediating priests2 there is1 lastly1 and inmost1 a ,holy of ,holies--the ,ground of the ,soul1 as the mystics term it4 #8,yes6' exclaims some critic1 #8this ,ground1 of which we hear so much1 which the mystics so labour to describe1 what is it1 after all8' ,let ,tauler answer4 ,he here calls it #8the very centre of man's being'--#8the unseen depths of his spirit1 wherein lies the image of ,god4' ,i believe that he means to indicate by these and other names that element in our nature by virtue whereof we are moral agents1 wherein lies that idea of a right and a wrong which finds expression 7though not always adequate7 in the verdicts of conscience--that ,synderesis 7to use an ,aristotelian word7 of which the ,syneidesis is the particular action and voice--that part of our finite nature which borders on the infinite--that gate through which ,god enters to dwell with man4 ,nor is the belief in such a principle by any means peculiar to the mystics2 men at the farthest remove1 by temperament and education1 from mysticism1 are yet generally found ready to admit that we can only approach a solution of our great difficulties concerning predestination and free will1 by supposing that there is a depth in our nature where the divine and human are one4 ,this is ,tauler's spark and potential divinity of man--that face of man's soul wherein ,god shineth always1 whether the man be aware thereof or not4 ,this1 to speak ,platonically1 is the ideal part of man--that part of him whereby1 as a creature1 he participates in the ,word by whose thought and will all creatures exist4 ,it is the unlost and inalienable nobleness of man--that from which1 as ,pascal says1 his misery as well as his glory proceeds--that which1 according to ,tauler1 must exist even in hell1 and be converted into the sorrow there4 ,the ,christian ,platonist expresses his conception of the consummated redemption of man by saying that he is restored to his original idea--becomes what he was designed to be before sin marred him--puts off the actual sinful self1 and puts on the truer primal self which exists only in ,god4 ,in this sense ,eckart says1 #8,i shall be sorry if ,i am not younger to-morrow than ,i am to-day--that is1 a step nearer to the source whence ,i came'--away from this ,eckart to the ,divine ,idea of man4 ,such1 then1 is this ,ground4 ,next1 how is the lapse1 or transit into it1 effected8 ,tauler reminds us that many men live as though ,god were not in this way nearer to them than they are to themselves4 ,they possess inevitably this image--this immediate receptivity of ,god1 but they never think of their prerogative1 never seek ,him in whom they live and move4 ,such men live in the outside of themselves--in the sensuous or intellectual nature2 but never lift the curtain behind which are the rays of the ,shekinah4 ,it will profit me nothing1 says ,tauler1 to be a king1 if ,i know it not4 ,so the soul must break away from outward things1 from passion and self1 and in abandonment and nothingness seek ,god immediately4 ,when ,god is truly found1 then indeed the simplified1 self-annihilated soul1 is passive4 ,but the way thereto1 what action it demands1 what strong crying and tears1 what trampling out of subtle1 seemly1 darling sins6 ,first of all1 the senses must be mastered by1 and absorbed in1 the powers of the soul4 ,then must these very powers themselves--all reasonings1 willings1 hopings1 fearings1 be absorbed in a simple sense of the ,divine presence--a sense so still1 so blissful1 as to annihilate before and after1 obliterate self1 and sink the soul in a ,love1 whose height and depth1 and length and breadth1 passing knowledge1 shall fill it with all the fulness of ,god4 #8,what6' it may be said1 #8and is this death--not of sin merely1 but of nature--the demand of your mysticism8 ,is all peace hollow which is not an utter passivity--without knowledge1 without will1 without desire--a total blank8' ,not altogether so1 the mystic will reply4 ,these powers of the soul must cease to act1 in as far as they belong to self2 but they are not destroyed3 their absorption in the higher part of our nature is in one sense a death2 in another1 their truest life4 ,they die2 but they live anew1 animated by a principle of life that comes directly from the ,father of lights1 and from the ,light who is the life of men4 ,that in them which is fit to live1 survives4 ,still are they of use in this lower world1 and still to be employed in manifold service2 but1 shall ,i say it8 they are no longer quite the same powers4 ,they are1 as it were1 the glorified spirits of those powers4 ,they are risen ones4 ,they are in this world1 but not of it4 ,their life has passed into the life which1 by slaying1 has preserved and exalted them4 ,so have ,i heard of a nightingale1 challenged by a musician with his lute2 and when all nature's skill was vain to rival the swift and doubling and redoubling mazes and harmonies of mortal science1 the bird1 heart-broken1 dropt dead on the victorious lute2--and yet1 not truly dead1 for the spirit of music which throbbed in that melodious throat had now passed into the lute2 and ever afterward breathed into its tones a wild sweetness such as never ,thessalian valley heard before--the consummate blending of the woodland witchery with the finished height of art4 #8,you see1' our mystic continues--and let us hear him1 for he has somewhat more to say1 and to the purpose1 as it seems--#8you see that we are no enemies to the symbol and the figure in their proper place1 any more than we are to the arguments of reason4 ,but there are three considerations which ,i and my brethren would entreat you to entertain4 ,first of all1 that logical distinctions1 and all forms of imagery1 must of necessity be transcended when we contemplate directly that ,being who is above time and space1 before and after1--the universal ,presence1--the dweller in the everlasting ,now4 ,in the highest states of the soul1 when she is concentrated on that part of her which links her with the infinite1 when she clings most immediately to the ,father of spirits1 all the slow technicalities1 and the processes and the imaginations of the lower powers1 must inevitably be forgotten4 ,have you never known times when1 quite apart from any particular religious means1 your soul has been filled1 past utterance1 with a sense of the divine presence1--when emotion has overflowed all reasoning and all words1 and a certain serene amazement--a silent gaze of wonder--has taken the place of all conclusions and conceptions8 ,some interruption came1 or some reflex act dissolved the spell of glory and recalled you to yourself1 but could not rob you of your blessing4 ,there remained a divine tranquillity1 in the strength whereof your heaviest trouble had grown lighter than the grasshopper1 and your hardest duty seemed as a cloud before the winds of the morning4 ,in that hour1 your soul could find no language2 but looking back upon it1 you think if that unutterable longing and unutterable rest could have found speech1 it would have been in words such as these--8,whom have ,i in heaven but ,thee8 and there is none upon earth that ,i desire beside ,thee40 #8,then again1 we would have you consider that the mere conclusions of the intellect1 the handiwork of imagination1 the effervescence of sentiment1 yea1 sensible delight in certain religious exercises--all these things1 though religion's hand-maidens1 are not religion herself4 ,sometimes they are delusive2 always are they dangerous1 if they1 rather than ,god1 become in any way our dependence4 ,if the heart--the central fount of life's issues--be not ,god's1 what avail the admitted propositions1 and touching pictures1 and wafts of sweetness--the mere furniture1 adornment1 and incense1 of the outer courts of thy nature8 ,christ in thy soul1 and not the truth about ,him in thy brain1 is thy life's life2 and his agony of love must pierce thee somewhat deeper than the pathos of a tragedy4 ,there are those who live complacently on the facilities and enjoyments they have in certain practices of devotion1 when all the while it is rather they themselves1 as thus devout1 and not their ,lord1 whom they love4 ,some such are not yet ,christians at all4 ,others1 who are1 have yet to learn that those emotions they set such store by1 belong1 most of them1 to the earliest and lowest stages of the ,christian life4 ,the lotus-flowers are not the ,nile4 ,there are those who violently excite the imagination and the feeling by long gazing on the crucifix--by picturing the torments of martyrs--by performing repeated acts of ,contrition1--by trying to wish to appropriate to themselves1 for ,christ's sake1 all the sufferings of all mankind--by praying for a love above that of all seraphim1 and do often1 in wrestling after such extraordinary gifts1 and harrowing their souls with such sensuous horrors1 work out a mere passion of the lower nature1 followed by melancholy collapse1 and found pitiably wanting in the hour of trial4#abh ,in these states does it oftenest happen that the phantoms of imagination are mistaken for celestial manifestations2 and forms which belong to middle air1 for shiny ones from the third heaven4 ,i have been told that astronomers have sometimes seen in the field of their glass1 floating globes of light--as it seemed1 new planets swimming within their ken2 and these were but flying specks of dust1 hovering in the air2 but magnified and made luminous by the lenses through which they looked1 and by the reflection of the light4 ,the eye of the mind may be visited by similar illusions4 ,i counsel all1 therefore1 that they ask only for grace sufficient against present evil1 and covet not great things1 but be content with such measures of assurance and sensible delight as ,god shall think safe for them2 and that1 above all1 they look not at ,his gifts in themselves1 but out of themselves1 to ,him1 the ,giver4 #8,the third consideration ,i have to urge1 in justification of precepts which appear to you unnatural1 is this3--there are certain trials and desolations of soul1 to which the best are exposed1 wherein all subordinate acts are impossible2 and then happy is he who has never exalted such helps above their due place4 ,i scarcely know how to make myself understood to any save those who have been at some time on the edge1 at least1 of those unfathomable abysses4 ,good men of prosperous and active life may scarcely know them4 ,few who have lived much in retirement1 with temperament meditative1 and perhaps melancholy1 have altogether escaped4 ,there are times when1 it may be that some great sorrow has torn the mind away from its familiar supports1 and laid level those defences which in prosperity seemed so stable--when the most rooted convictions of the reason seem rottenness1 and the blossom of our heavenward imaginations goes up before that blast as dust--when our works and joys and hopes1 with all their multitude and pomp and glory1 seem to go down together into the pit1 and the soul is left as a garden that hath no water1 and as a wandering bird cast out of the nest--when1 instead of our pleasant pictures1 we have about us only doleful creatures among ruins--when a spirit of judgment and a spirit of burning seem to visit the city of the heart1 and in that day of trouble and of treading down and of perplexity1 the noise of viols1 and the mirth of the tabret1 and the joy of the harp1 are silent as the grave4 ,now1 ,i say1 blessed is the man who1 when cast into this utter wretchedness1 far away from all creatures and from all comfort1 can yet be willing1 amidst all his tears and anguish1 there to remain as long as ,god shall please--who seeks help from no creature--who utters his complaint to the ear of ,god alone--who still1 with ever-strengthening trust1 is ready to endure till self shall have been purged out by the fires of that fathomless annihilation--who1 crying out of the depths1 while the ,spirit maketh intercession within him with groanings that cannot be uttered1 shall presently be delivered when the right time hath come1 and rejoice in that glorious liberty of the children of ,god1 wherein they are nothing and ,he is all6' ,now1 somewhat thus1 ,i think1 would that class of mystics whom ,tauler represents1 reply to the very natural objections urged by many in our times4 ,nor does such reply1 so far1 seem to me either unsatisfactory in itself1 or in any way contrary to ,scripture4 ,it is with the aim1 and under the qualifications1 ,i have endeavoured to set forth1 that these mystics would refuge the soul in a height above reasonings1 outward means and methods1 in a serenity and an abstraction wherein the subtlest distinctions and most delicate imaginations would seem too gross and sensuous--where 7as in ,endymion's ecstasy7 #8,essences ,once spiritual1 are like muddy lees1 ,meant but to fertilize our earthly root1 ,and make our branches lift a golden fruit ,into the bloom of heaven4' ,on the latter part of the extract given just now ,i have not yet commented4 ,it suggests a question of no small moment4 ,what1 it will be asked1 is the relation sustained by the ,saviour of mankind to this mystical process--this drawing up of the created soul into the uncreated essence8 ,is not a blank abstraction--an essential nothing1 substituted for the ,son of man8 ,how does the abstract ,essence in which ,tauler would sink the soul1 differ from the abstract ,essence or super-essential ,unity in which a ,plotinus would lose himself1 or from that ,divine substance in which the pantheistic ,sufis sought to dissolve their personality8 ,in this region 7confessedly above distinction71 the mystic cannot1 by his own admission1 distinguish one abstraction from the other4 ,there is a story of a lover who1 ,leander-like1 swam nightly across a strait to visit the lady of his heart4 ,a light which she exhibited on the shore was the beacon of the adventurous swimmer4 ,but two brothers 7cruel as those who murdered ,isabella's lover in the wood7 removed the light one dark and stormy night1 and placed it in a boat anchored not near shore1 but in mid-waters1 where the strait was broadest4 ,their victim struggled as long as mortal strength might endure1 towards the treacherous light--farther and farther out--into the ocean which engulphed him4 ,have not the mystics1 in like manner1 shifted the beacon and substituted an expanse--an abyss1 as the object of man's effort1 instead of that love and sympathy which await him in the heart of the ,son of man8 ,can it be possible that the best thing to do with a revelation of ,god1 now we have one1 is to throw it behind our backs8 ,now that the light the wisest heathen longed for has come1 are we to rid ourselves of it1 with all speed1 and fly1 like ,eckart1 from the known to the old1 unknown ,god8 ,to do this1 is to account as foolishness the wisdom of ,god manifest in the flesh4 ,is it not all--as the enemies of ,quietism used to say--a device of the ,devil8 ,does it not look as though the ,arch-enemy1 unable to undo the work of redemption1 had succeeded1 by a master-stroke of policy1 in persuading men to a false spirituality1 which should consist in obliterating the facts of that redemption from their own minds as completely as though it had never been wrought8 ,now it is much better1 ,i think1 to put objections like these in all their strength1 and to give them fair hearing4 ,they will occur to many persons in the reading of these sermons4 ,they will awaken a distrust and a perplexity which are not to be talked down by high words1 or by telling men that if they do not sufficiently admire these mystics1 so much the worse for them4 ,one of the objections thus urged is logically unanswerable4 ,if ,eckart and ,plotinus both succeed in reducing their minds to a total emptiness of all memory1 knowledge1 and desire1 in order to contemplate a super-essential ,void1 equally blank1 the ,christian and the heathen pantheist are indistinguishable4 ,vacuum ,a1 would be a vacuum no longer if it contained anything to distinguish it from vacuum ,b2 and to escape1 in the most absolute sense1 all distinction1 is ,eckart's highest ambition4 ,but it is to be remembered1 first of all1 that ,tauler does not go so far as ,eckart in his impatience of everything intelligible1 conceivable1 or utterable4 ,and next1 that1 happily1 neither ,eckart1 ,tauler1 nor any man1 can really reduce himself to that total nescience and apathy demanded by the theory which makes personality a sin1 knowledge an infirmity1 imagination a folly4 ,humanity is still too strong for any such de-humanizing ideal4 ,the ,absolute of ,tauler is not1 like the ,absolute of ,plotinus1 an abstraction above morality4 ,his link between finite and infinite--his image of ,god1 is moral1 not metaphysical merely4 ,it is his knowledge1 first of all1 of ,god in ,christ which enables him to contemplate the ,infinite1 not as boundless being1 but as unfathomable love4 ,so he stands firm on the grand ,christian foundation1 and the ,son is his way to the ,father4 ,following ,dionysius1 that arch-mystagogue1 he does indeed invite the trembling soul into the shadows of a ,divine darkness1 wherein no specific attribute or act is perceptible to the baffled sight4 ,but across that profound obscure and utter silence1 there floats1 perceptible1 some incense from the censer1 of the ,elder ,brother--the eternal ,high ,priest4 ,it is a darkness1 but such an one as we have when we close our eyes after spectacles of glory--a darkness luminous and living with the hovering residue of splendours visible no longer4 ,it is a silence1 but such an one as we have after sweet music--a silence still stirred by inward echoes1 and repetitions1 and floating fragments of melodies that have ceased to fall upon the ear4 ,it seems a chilling purity1 a hueless veil--but such a veil as the snowfall lays upon an ,alpine church-yard1 hiding all colour but not all form1 and showing us still where the crosses are4 ,by their fruits we know these mystics4 ,no men animated by a love so ,christ-like as was theirs1 could have put an abstraction in the place of ,christ4 ,with regard to the work of ,christ1 ,tauler acknowledges 7more readily than ,george ,fox7 that the divine element or inward light in man must remain a mere surmise or longing1 apart from the historic manifestation of ,god in the flesh4 ,it is ,jesus of ,nazareth who at once interprets to the soul1 while ,he satisfies1 its own restless heavenward desire4 ,it is ,his grace alone which makes a mere capacity of ,god1 a possession--a mere potentiality1 actual4 ,the view of ,christ which ,tauler loves to present most frequently is that expressed by those passages of ,scripture which speak of ,him as the first-born among many brethren1 and which remind us that both ,he that sanctifieth and they that are sanctified are all of one4 ,he would say that the ,saviour now lives upon the earth1 in the person of all true believers2 and that1 in a subordinate sense1 the ,word is being continually made flesh1 as ,christ is formed in the hearts of ,christians4 ,with one voice ,eckart and ,tauler1 ,ruysbroek and ,suso1 exclaim--#8,arise1 ,o man6 realize the end of thy being3 make room for ,god within thy soul1 that he may bring forth his ,son within thee4' ,the ,saviour's obedience unto death is regarded by ,tauler1 rather in its exemplary1 than in its propitiatory aspect4 ,very important1 as characteristic of his theology1 is the distinction he makes between our union to the humanity of ,christ1 and our union to his divinity4 ,as man1 ,he is the ideal of humanity--the exemplar of self-surrender4 ,all that ,he received from the ,father was yielded up to ,him in that absolute devotedness which all ,his brethren imitate4 ,we are united to ,his humanity in proportion as we follow the obedience and self-sacrifice of ,his earthly life4 ,but above this moral conformity to ,his example1 ,tauler sets another and a higher union to ,his divinity4 ,and this union with the ,godhead of the ,son is not a superior degree of moral likeness to ,him1 it is rather an approximation to another mode of existence4 ,it is an inward transit from our actual to our ideal self--not to the moral ideal 7for that is already realized in proportion as we are united to ,his humanity71 but to our ,platonic archetypal ideal4 ,this higher process of union to the ,word1 or return to our ideal place in ,him1 consists in escaping from all that distinguishes us as creatures on this earth--in denuding ourselves of reasonings1 imaginations1 passions1--humanities1 in fact1 and reducing ourselves to that metaphysical essence or germ of our being1 which lay from eternity--not a creature1 but the thought of a creature1 in the ,divine ,word4 ,now it appears to me that this self-spiritualizing process which seeks by a refined asceticism to transcend humanity and creatureliness1 is altogether a mistake4 ,an ideal sufficiently high1 and ever beyond us1 is already given in the moral perfection of ,christ ,jesus4 ,this desire to escape from all the modes and means of our human existence came not from ,paul1 but from ,plato4 ,it revives the impatience of that noble but one-sided1 ,greek ideal1 which despised the body and daily life1 abhorred matter as a prison-house1 instead of using it as a scaffolding1 and longed so intensely to become pure1 passionless intellect4 ,i know no self-transcendence1 and ,i desire none1 higher than the self-sacrifice of the good ,shepherd1 who laid down his life for the sheep4 ,you will probably be reminded here of another great ,platonist4 ,origen1 also1 makes a distinction between those who know ,christ1 according to the flesh1 as he terms it1 i4e41 in his sufferings1 death1 and resurrection1 and that higher class of the perfect1 or ,gnostici1 who1 on the basis of that fundamental knowledge1 rise from the historical ,christ to the spiritual essence of the ,word4 ,origen1 however1 supposed that this communion with the ,logos1 or eternal ,reason1 might become the channel of a higher knowledge1 illumining the ,gnosticus with a divine philosophy4 ,with ,tauler1 on the contrary1 the intellectual ambition is less prominent2 and he who has ascended into the uncreated essence cannot bring down from thence any wisdom for this lower world4 ,thus1 in our extract1 he says that if the soul united to the word could perceive itself1 it would seem altogether like ,god1 and would appear possessed of all knowledge that ever was4 ,such is the ideal2 but the first reflex act would dissolve that trance of absolute1 immediate oneness1 and restore the mystic to the humbling consciousness of a separate1 actual self2 and here lies the great difference between ,tauler and ,eckart4 ,tauler1 ,suso1 and ,ruysbroek say1 that in these moments of exaltation the soul 7above distinctions7 is not conscious of its distinction as a separate1 creature entity4 ,eckart says1 not that the soul has1 for a moment1 forgotten all that is personal1 and that parts it off from ,god1 but that the distinction does not exist at all1--not that we do not know ourselves as separate1 but that ,god does not4 ,to draw the line between theism and pantheism1 is not always easy2 but ,i think it must lie somewhere hereabout4 ,with regard to the doctrines of holy indifference and disinterested love1 the ,german mystics are by no means so extreme as the ,french4 ,their views of the divine character were more profound and comprehensive2 their heaven and hell were less external and realistic4 ,a mysticism like theirs could not concentrate itself1 as ,quietism did1 on the degrees and qualities of one particular affection4 ,their ,god was one who1 by a benign necessity of nature1 must communicate ,himself in blessing1 one whose love lay at the root of ,his being4 #8,if men would only believe1' cries ,tauler1 in one of his sermons1 #8how passionately ,god longs to save1 and bring forth ,his ,son in them6' ,they care little for being themselves accused of making matter eternal1 and creatures necessary to ,god1 if they can free ,him from the imputation of selfishness or caprice4 ,and so they have no scruples as to whether it be not selfish and criminal to pray for our own salvation4 ,in the sense of ,tauler--a true and deep one--no man can say1 #8,thy will be done1' and #8,thy kingdom come1' without praying for his own salvation4 ,when ,tauler seems to demand a self-abnegation which consents to perdition itself1 he is to be understood in one of two ways3 either he would say that salvation should be desired for the sake of ,god1 above our own1 and that we should patiently submit1 when ,he sees fit to try us by withdrawing our hope of it2 or that the presence and the absence of ,god make heaven and hell--that no conceivable enjoyment ought to be a heaven to us without ,him1 no conceivable suffering a hell with ,him4 ,but how different is all this from teaching1 with some of the ,quietists1 that1 since 7as they say7 ,god is equally glorified in our perdition and in our salvation1 we should have no preference 7if our love be truly disinterested7 for the one mode of glorifying ,him above the other4 ,that any human being ever attained such a sublime indifference ,i shall not believe1 until it is attested by a love for man as much above ordinary ,christian benevolence1 as this love for ,god professes to be above ordinary ,christian devotion2 for what is true of the principle of love1 is true of its degrees--#8,he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen1 how shall he love ,god whom he hath not seen8' ,the strongly ascetic language of ,tauler and his brethren1 their almost ,manichean contempt of the world1 must be read by the light of their times1 so full of misery and corruption2 and by the light1 also1 of those fearful furnaces of trial through which they had personally passed4 ,what soul1 into which the iron has entered1 will say1 while the pain is still fresh1 that the words of ,tauler1 or of ,thomas ,kempis1 are intemperate8 ,it is probable that ,tauler would have been less impatient to abolish his very personality1 in order to give place to ,god1 had he been able1 like ,luther1 to regard salvation1 in greater measure1 as consisting in a work done for1 as well as wrought in him4 ,but his justification is a progressive1 approximate process4 ,it is not a something he accepts1 but a something he has to work out2 and seeing1 as1 with his true humility1 he was sure to do1 how unsatisfactory was his likeness to ,god1 how great the distance still1 the only resource open to him is to ignore or annihilate that sorry and disappointing personality altogether1 that ,god1 instead of it1 may perform his actions1 and be1 in fact1 the substitute for his soul4 ,both ,tauler and ,luther believe in substitution4 ,the substitution of ,tauler is internal--,god takes his place within himself4 ,the substitution of ,luther is external--when he believed in ,christ1 the ,saviour associated him with ,himself1 and so brought him into sonship4 ,so inevitable is the idea of some substitution1 where the sense of sin is deep4 ,luther believes as profoundly as ,tauler in a present1 inward1 living ,saviour1 as opposed to a remote historic personage1 intellectually acknowledged4 ,in the theology of both the old dualism is broken down1 and ,god is brought near to man1 yea1 within him4 ,but the ,son to whom ,tauler is united1 is the uncreated essence1 the super-essential ,word1 from the beginning with the ,father4 ,the ,son to whom ,luther is united is emphatically the ,godman1 as truly human1 in all sympathy and nearness1 as when ,he walked the ,galilean hills4 ,the humanity of ,christ is chiefly historic with ,tauler1 and for any practical purpose can scarcely be said to have survived ,his exaltation2 but with ,luther that humanity is so vital and so perpetual that he will even transfer to it the attributes of ,deity4 ,so far from desiring to pass upward from the man ,christ ,jesus to the ,logos1 as from a lower to a higher1 ,luther calls #8that sinking himself so deep in flesh and blood1' the most glorious manifestation of ,godhead4 ,he does not1 with the ,platonists1 see degradation in the limitations of our nature2 that nature has been honoured unspeakably1 and is glorified1 not annihilated1 by the ,incarnate ,one4 ,according to ,luther1 the undivine consists in sin1 and sin alone2 not in our human means and modes1 and processes of thought4 ,thus with him the divine and human are intimately associated1 not merely in the religious life1 as it is termed1 but in our temporal hopes and fears1 in every part of our complicated1 struggling1 mysterious humanity4 ,the theology of ,luther is more free1 joyous1 and human1 partly because the serene and superhuman ideal of ,tauler did not appear to him either possible or desirable1 partly because sanctification was1 with him1 a change of state consequent on a change of relation--the grateful service of one who1 by believing1 has entered into rest2 and partly1 also1 because he does not lose sight of the humanity of ,christ1 in ,his divinity1 to the extent which ,tauler does4 ,both ,luther and ,tauler say--the mere history alone will not profit3 ,christ must be born in you4 ,luther adds--,christ begins to be born in you as soon as you heartily believe upon ,him4 ,tauler adds--,christ is born in you as soon as you have become nothing4 ,it would be very unfair to make it a matter of blame to ,tauler that he did not see with ,luther's eyes1 and do ,luther's work4 ,luther in one century1 and ,tauler in another1 had their tasks appointed1 and quitted themselves like men4 ,it was for ,tauler to loosen the yoke of asceticism3 it was for ,luther to break it in pieces4 ,but it would be just as culpable to disguise the real differences between ,tauler and ,luther1 and to conceal the truth1 from a desire to make ,tauler appear a more complete reformer than he really was4 ,our ,high ,churchmen1 in their insular self-complacency1 love to depreciate ,luther and the ,continental reformers4 ,idolaters of the past as they are1 we do not think that they will be better pleased with that noblest product of the ,middle ,age--the ,german mysticism of the fourteenth century1 now placed within their reach4 ,these sermons of ,tauler assert so audaciously against sacerdotalism1 the true priesthood of every ,christian man4 ,there is so little in them of the #8,church about us1' so much of the #8,christ within us4' 99 99 99 99 99 ,it would have moved the scorn of some of the mystics1 and the sorrow of others1 could they have been made aware of the strange uses to which some persons were to turn them in this nineteenth century4 ,the ,emersonian philosophy1 for example1 is grieved that one series of writings should arrogate inspiration to themselves alone4 ,it is obvious that a ready credence given to professed inspiration in other quarters1 and later times1 must tend to lower the exclusive prestige of the ,scriptures4 ,thus the mystics may be played off against the ,apostles1 and all that is granted to mysticism may be considered as so much taken from the ,bible4 ,a certain door has been marked with a cross4 ,emerson1 like the sly ,abigail of the ,forty ,thieves1 proceeds to mark1 in like manner1 all the doors in the street4 ,very gratifying truly1 and comic in the highest degree1 to witness the perplexity of mankind1 going up and down1 seeking some indication of the hoped-for guidance from above6 ,i do not believe that the inspired writers were 7to use ,philo's comparison7 as passive as a lyre under the hand of a musician4 ,but some1 who are much shocked at this doctrine in their case1 would have us be awe-stricken1 rather than offended1 by similar pretension on the part of certain mystics4 ,then1 they tell us to tread delicately--to remember how little the laws of our own nature are known to us--to abstain from hasty judgment4 ,in this way1 it is supposed that ,bibliolatry may be in some measure checked1 and one of the greatest religious evils of the time be happily lessened4 ,criticise1 if you will1 ,john's history1 or ,paul's letters1 but let due reverence restrain you from applying the tests of a superficial common sense to the utterances of the ,montanuses1 the ,munzers1 the ,engelbrechts1 the ,hildegards1 the ,theresas4 ,but what saith ,history as to mysticism8 ,very plainly she tells us that the mystics have been a power in the world1 and a power for good1 in proportion as their teaching has been in accordance with the ,bible2--that the instances wherein they have failed have been precisely those in which they have attempted 7whether wittingly1 or not7 to substitute another and a private revelation for it4 ,they have come as a blessing to their age1 just in proportion as they have called the attention of men to some of the deepest lessons of that book--to lessons too commonly overlooked4 ,the very men who might seem1 to superficial observers1 to bear witness against the ,bible1 do in reality utter the most emphatic testimony for it4 ,a fact of this nature lends additional importance to the history of mysticism at the present time4 ,again1 there are some who may suppose there is a real resemblance between the exhortations of ,tauler1 and the counsel given men by such philosophers as ,fichte or ,herr ,teufelsdrckh4 ,do not both urge men to abandon introspections--to abstain from all self-seeking--to arise and live in the transcendental world1 by abandoning hope and fear1 and by losing our finite in an ,infinite ,will8 ,some similarity of sound there may occasionally be1 but the antipathy of principle between the two kinds of teaching is profound and radical4 ,i will suppose that there comes to our ,teufelsdrckh some troubled spirit1 full of the burden of #8this unintelligible world1' questioning1--as to an oracle4 ,the response is ready4 #8,what do you come whining to me about your miserable soul for8 ,the soul-saving business is going down fast enough now-a-days1 ,i can tell you4 ,so you want to be happy1 do you8 ,pining after your ,lubberland1 as usual1--your ,millennium of mere ,ease and plentiful supply4 ,poor wretch6 let me tell you this1--the very fact of that hunger of yours proves that you will never have it supplied4 ,your appetite1 my friend1 is too enormous4 ,in this wild ,universe of ours1 storming-in1 vague-menacing1 it is enough if you shall find1 not happiness1 but existence and footing to stand on1--and that only by girding yourself for continual effort and endurance4 ,i was wretched enough once--down in the 8,everlasting ,nay10 thinking this a ,devil's-world1 because1 in the universal scramble of myriads for a handful1 ,i had not clutched the happiness ,i set my heart on4 ,now1 here ,i am in the 8,everlasting ,yea10 serene as you see me4 ,how8 ,simply by giving up wanting to be happy1 and setting to work1 and resigning myself to the ,eternities1 ,abysses1 or whatsoever other name shall be given to the fontal ,vortices of the inner realms4444 ,miracles6 ,fiddlestick6 ,are not you a miracle to your horse8 ,what can they prove8444 ,inspiration6--,try and get a little for yourself1 my poor friend4 ,work1 man3 go work1 and let that sorry soul of thine have a little peace4' #8,peace1' repeats our #8poor friend1' as he goes discomfited away4 #8,peace6 the very thing this soul of mine will not let me have1 as it seems4 ,i know ,i am selfish4 ,i dare say this desire of happiness is very mean and low1 and all that2 but ,i would fain reach something higher4 ,yet the first step thereto he does not show me4 ,to leap into those depths of stoical apathy which that great man has reached1 is simply impossible to poor me4 ,his experience is not mine4 ,he tells a bedridden man to climb the mountains1 and he will straightway be well4 ,let him show me the way to a little strength1 and in time ,i may4 ,i will not hunger any more after mere 8lubberly enjoyment10 if he will offer my affections something more attractive4 ,but ,infinite ,will1 and ,law1 and ,abysses1 and ,eternities1 are not attractive--nay1 ,i am not sure that they are intelligible to me or any mortal4' ,now the doctrine of ,tauler is nowhere more in contrast with that just uttered than in its tenderness of ,christian sympathy and adaptation1 as compared with the dreary and repellent pride of the philosopher4 ,instead of overwhelming the applicant by absurdly demanding1 as the first step1 a sublimity of self-sacrifice which only the finished adept may attain1 ,tauler is not too proud to begin at the beginning4 ,disinterested love is1 with him1 a mountain to which he points in the distance1 bright with heavenly glory4 ,disinterested love1 with ,teufelsdrckh1 is an avalanche hurled down right in the path of the beginner4 ,tauler does not see1 in the unhappiness of the man1 so much mere craven fear1 or thwarted selfishness4 ,he sees ,god's image in him2 he believes that that hunger of his soul1 which he vainly tries to satisfy with things earthly1 is a divine craving1 a proof that he was born to satisfy it with things heavenly4 ,he does not talk grandiloquently about ,duty1 and the glory of moral ,freedom4 ,he tells him that the same ,saviour who died upon the cross is pleading and knocking at his heart1 and doth passionately long to bless him4 ,he sends him away to think over this fact1 till it shall become more real to him than house and home1 or sun and stars4 ,he does not think that he can improve on #8the low morality' of the gospel by disdaining to appeal to hope and fear in order to snatch men from their sins4 ,if so to plead be to speak after the flesh1 after the flesh he will speak1 to save a brother4 ,there will be time enough1 he thinks1 if ,god sees fit to lead the man to the heights of absolute self-loss2 and ,god will take ,his own way to do it4 ,all ,tauler has to do is to declare to him the truth concerning a ,saviour1 not to prescribe out of his own experience a law beyond that which is written4 ,in this way1 instead of striking him into despair1 or bidding him bury care in work1 he comforts and strengthens him4 ,he does not despise him for keeping the law simply out of love to ,him who gave it4 ,he does not think it unmanly1 but true manhood rather1 when he sees him living1 a suppliant1 dependent on a life higher than his own--on a ,person1 whose present character and power were attested of old by history and miracle1 as well as now by the #8witness of the ,spirit4' ,i think the candid reader of ,tauler's sermons1 and of ,sartor ,resartus1 will admit that a difference in substance such as ,i have pointed out1 does exist between them4 ,if so1 those who follow the philosophy of ,teufelsdrckh cannot claim ,tauler--have no right to admire him1 and ought to condemn in him that which they condemn in the ,christianity of the present day4 ,footnote #abg3 ,preface to ,tauler's ,life and ,sermons by ,susanna ,winkworth4 ,footnote #abh3 ,nicole1 in his ,trait de la ,prire1 describes and criticises this style of devotion4 ,it must always be borne in mind that the warnings of ,tauler with regard to the image and the symbol are addressed1 not to us sober ,protestant folk1 but especially to the devotees of the cloister4 ,those who have some acquaintance with the fantastic excesses he combats1 will not think his language too strong4 ,,chapter ,,vii4 ,alas poor country2 ,almost afraid to know itself6 ,it cannot ,be called our mother1 but our grave4 ,where nothing1 ,but who knows nothing1 is once seen to smile2 ,where sighs1 and groans1 and shrieks that rend the air1 ,are made1 not mark'd2 where violent sorrow seems ,a modern ecstasy2 the dead man's knell ,is there scarce asked1 for who2 and good men's lives ,expire before the flowers in their caps1 ,dying or ere they sicken4 ,,macbeth4 ,the day after ,atherton's return1 ,willoughby and ,gower met about noon1 at ,lowestoffe's lodge gate1 the one returning from a piscatory expedition of six hours1 with fish1 the other from a pictorial ramble of four days1 with sketches4 ,willoughby had to tell of the escapades of tricksy trout1 and of the hopes and fears which were suspended on his line4 ,but not a word1 of course1 had he to say of the other thoughts which busied him the while1--how his romance was in his head1 as he carried those credentials of idleness1 the fishing-tackle1 and how1 while he was angling for fish1 he was devising the fashion in which ,blanche should throw the fly for ,florian4 ,gower had seen such glades and uplands--such wondrous effects of light and shadow--he1 too1 had had his adventures1 and could show his trophies4 ,dinner was succeeded by that comparatively somnolent period which preceded the early tea so dear to ,lowestoffe4 ,atherton found that a book of ,schubert's1 which had interested him in the morning1 was1 in the afternoon1 only a conducting-rod to lure down the subtile influence of sleep4 ,lowestoffe1 lulled by the buzzing flies1 dropped off into an arm-chair doze1 without apology or disguise4 ,he had been early up1 and had been riding about all day on a new chestnut mare4 ,violently had he objurgated that wretch of a groom for giving her too many beans1 thereby rendering her in danger of flying at the heels2 and what was worse1 the monster had put on a gag snaffle with the martingale1 and narrowly escaped getting her into mischief4 ,but the flying storm had long since swept away4 ,before tea1 ,lowestoffe was in his good-humoured1 irrational humour2 after tea he would be in his good-humoured rational one4 ,as for ,gower and ,kate1 they had quietly withdrawn together to see a water-lily that had just blown1 and were not heard of till tea-time4 ,after tea1 when certain sleepy people had again become responsible creatures1 conversation began4 ,,gower4 ,don't you think ,atherton has a very manuscriptural air to-night8 ,,kate4 ,there is a certain aspect of repletion about him4 ,,mrs4 ,,atherton4 ,we must bleed him1 or the consequences may be serious4 ,what's this8 7,pulls a paper out of his pocket47 ,,kate4 ,and this6 7,pulls out another47 ,,willoughby4 ,he seems better now4 ,,atherton 7abstractedly74 ,i was thinking of the difference between ,gower's studies and mine for the last few days4 ,i have been reading a dark1 miserable chapter in the history of man4 ,he has been the chronicler of pleasant passages in the history of rocks and trees1--his great epochs1 a smile of sun-shine or sudden chill of shadow1--the worst disasters1 a dull neutral-tint kind of day1 or a heavy rain1--his most impracticable subjects1 beauties too bright or evanescent to be caught4 ,it is sad to think how every subject of our study deepens in sorrow as it rises in dignity4 ,,willoughby4 ,and yet it is only by the manful struggles of past generations through calamity and against wrong1 that we have bequeathed to us the leisure1 the liberty1 and the knowledge essential to the highest enjoyment of nature4 ,atherton1 in fact1 studies the chequered and intricate causes which issue in the taste of ,gower as one of their effects4 ,i should think it must be no small gain for an artist to be placed beyond the medival idea which set the ,inferno in the centre of the earth1 and imagined1 far below the roots of the mountains and the channels of the sea1 eternal flames as the kernel of the world4 ,,gower4 ,i have sometimes endeavoured1 while lying on the grass1 to realise in my own way the conception of the world by the light-hearted ,greeks as an animal1 or as a robe or peplus4 ,i have imagined the clouds the floating breath of the great creature1 rising against the crystal sphere of the sky1 under which it lies as in an enchanter's glass2--the seas1 some delicate surfaces of the huge organism1 that run wrinkled into a quick shiver at the cold touch of wind2--the forests1 a fell of hair which is ruffled by the chafing hand of the tempest4 ,then1 when ,i look at the earth in the other aspect1 as a variegated woven robe1 ,i see it threaded silverly with branching rivers spangled with eyes of lakes2 where the sleek meadows lie1 it is rich with piled velvet1 and where the woods are1 tufted with emerald feathers4 ,but now ,i want to hear something more about our ,strasburg people4 ,,atherton4 ,bad news4 ,there is a great hiatus in ,arnstein's journal1 which history fills up with pestilence and bloodshed4 ,i have drawn up a few notes of this interval which must serve you as an outline4 7,reads47 ,in the year #acdh that terrible contagion1 known as the ,black ,death1 which journeyed from the ,east to devastate the whole of ,europe1 appeared at ,strasburg4#abi ,everywhere famine1 floods1 the inversion of the seasons1 strange appearances in the sky1 had been its precursors4 ,in the ,mediterranean ,sea1 as afterwards in the ,baltic1 ships were descried drifting masterless1 filled only by plague-stricken corpses4 ,every man dreaded1 not merely the touch and the breath of his neighbour1 but his very eye1 so subtile and so swift seemed the infection4 ,in many parts of ,france it was computed that only two out of every twenty inhabitants were left alive4 ,in ,strasburg sixteen thousand perished2 in ,avignon sixty thousand4 ,in ,paris1 at one time1 four or five hundred were dying in a day4 ,in that city1 in the midst of a demoralization and a selfish horror like that ,thucydides has painted1 the ,sisters of ,mercy were seen tending the sufferers who crowded the ,htel-,dieu2 and1 as death thinned their martyr-ranks1 numbers more were ready to fill the same office of perilous compassion4 ,pausanias says that in ,athens alone out of all ,greece there was raised an altar to mercy4 ,but it was an altar almost without a ministry4 ,heathendom1 at its best1 might glory in the shrine2 ,christianity1 at its worst1 could furnish the priesthood4 ,in ,strasburg ,tauler laboured fearlessly1 with ,thomas and ,ludolph1 among the panic-stricken people--doubly cursed by the ,interdict and by the plague4 ,great fires of vine-wood1 wormwood1 and laurel were kept burning in the squares and market-places to purify the air1 lighting up the carved work of the deserted town-hall1 and flickering aslant the overhanging gables of the narrow crooked streets and the empty tradesmen's stalls4 ,the village was ravaged as fatally as the town4 ,the herds grew wild in the fields of the dead peasants1 or died strangely themselves--victims1 apparently1 to the universal blight of life4 ,the charlatans of the day drove for awhile a golden traffic with quintessences and distillations1 filthy and fantastic medicines1 fumigation of shirts and kerchiefs1 charms and invocations1 only at last to perish in their turn4 ,even the monks had lost their love for gold1 since every gift was deadly4 ,in vain did trembling men carry their hoards to the monastery or the church4 ,every gate was barred1 and the wealthy might be seen tossing their bags of bezants over the convent walls4 ,in the outskirts of towns and cities1 huge pits were opened1 whose mouths were daily filled with hideous heaps of dead4 ,the pope found it necessary to consecrate the river ,rhone1 and hundreds of corpses were cast out at ,avignon1 from the quays and pleasant gardens by the water-side1 to be swept by the rapid stream under the silent bridges1 past the forgotten ships and forsaken fields and mourning towns1 livid and wasting1 out into the sea4 ,in a frenzy of terror and revenge the people fell upon the miserable ,jews4 ,they were accused of poisoning the wells1 and every heart was steeled against them4 ,fear seemed to render all classes more ferocious1 and the man who might sicken and die to-morrow found a wretched compensation in inflicting death to-day on the imagined authors of his danger4 ,toledo was supposed to be the centre of an atrocious scheme by which the ,jews were to depopulate ,christendom4 ,at ,chillon several ,jews1 some after torture and some in terror of it1 confessed that they had received poison for that purpose4 ,it was a black and red powder1 made partly from a basilisk1 and sent in the mummy of an egg4 ,the deposition of the ,jews arrested at ,neustadt was sent by the castellan of ,chillon to ,strasburg4 ,bishops1 nobles1 and chief citizens held a diet at ,binnefeld in ,alsace1 to concert measures of persecution4 ,the deputies of ,strasburg1 to their honour be it spoken1 declared that nothing had been proved against the ,jews4 ,their bishop was the most pitiless advocate of massacre4 ,the result was a league of priests1 lords1 and people1 to slay or banish every ,jew4 ,in some places the senators and burgomasters were disposed to mercy or to justice4 ,the pope and the emperor raised their voices1 alike in vain1 in behalf of the victims4 ,some ,christians1 who had sought from pity or from avarice to save them1 perished in the same flames4 ,the noble of whom they bought protection was stigmatised as a ,jew master1 execrated by the populace1 at the mercy of his enemies4 ,no power could stem the torrent4 ,the people had tasted blood2 the priest had no mercy for the murderers of the ,lord2 the baron had debts easily discharged by the death of his creditor4 ,at ,strasburg a monster scaffold was erected in the ,jewish burial ground1 and two thousand were burnt alive4 ,at ,basle all the ,jews were burnt together in a wooden edifice erected for the purpose4 ,at ,spires they set their quarter in flames1 and perished by their own hands4 ,a guard kept out the populace while men commissioned by the senate hunted for treasure among the smoking ruins4 ,the corrupting bodies of those slain in the streets were put up in empty wine casks1 and trundled into the ,rhine4 ,when the rage for slaughter had subsided1 hands1 red with ,hebrew blood1 were piously employed in building belfries and repairing churches with ,jewish tombstones and the materials of ,jewish houses4 ,the gloomy spirit of the time found fit expression in the fanaticism of the ,flagellants4#acj ,similar troops of devotees had in the preceding century carried throughout ,italy the mania of the scourge2 but never before had the frenzy of penance been so violent or so contagious4 ,it was in the summer of #acdi that they appeared in ,strasburg4 ,all the bells rang out as two hundred of them1 following two and two many costly banners and tapers1 entered the city1 singing strange hymns4 ,the citizens vied with each other in opening to them their doors and seating them at their tables4 ,more than a thousand joined their ranks4 ,whoever entered their number was bound to continue among them thirty-four days1 must have fourpence of his own for each day1 might enter no house unasked1 might speak with no woman4 ,the lash of the master awaited every infraction of their rule4 ,the movement partook of the popular1 anti-hierarchical spirit of the day4 ,the priest or friar could hold no rank1 as such1 among the ,flagellants4 ,the mastership was inaccessible to him1 and he was precluded from the secret council4 ,the scourging took place twice a day4 ,every morning and evening they repaired in procession to the place of flagellation outside the city4 ,there they stripped themselves1 retaining only a pair of linen drawers4 ,they lay down in a large circle1 indicating by their posture the particular sin of which each penitent was principally guilty4 ,the perjured lay on his side1 and held up three fingers2 the adulterer on his face4 ,the master then passed round1 applying his lash to each in succession1 chanting the rhyme-- ,stand up in virtue of holy pain1 ,and guard thee well from guilt again4 ,one after the other1 they rose and followed him1 singing and scourging themselves with whips in which were great knots and nails4 ,the ceremony closed with the reading of a letter1 said to have been brought by an angel from heaven1 enjoining their practice1 after which they returned home in order as they came4 ,the people crowded from far and near to witness the piteous expiation1 and to watch with prayers and tears the flowing blood which was to mingle with that of ,christ4 ,the pretended letter was reverenced as another gospel1 and the ,flagellant was already believed before the priest4 ,the clergy grew anxious as they saw the enthusiasm spreading on every side4 ,but the unnatural furor could not last2 its own extravagance prepared its downfall4 ,an attempt made by some ,flagellants in ,strasburg to bring a dead child to life was fatal to their credit4 ,the ,emperor1 the ,pope1 and the prelates took measures against them simultaneously1 in ,germany1 in ,france1 in ,sicily1 and in the ,east4 ,the pilgrimage of the scourge was to have lasted four-and-thirty years4 ,six months sufficed to disgust men with the folly1 to see their angelic letter laughed to scorn1 their processions denounced1 their order scattered4 ,meanwhile the enemies of ,tauler were not idle4 ,louis of ,bavaria was dead4 ,the new ,emperor ,charles ,,iv4 was of the papal party1 and called the ,parsons' ,kaiser1 but a man of vigour and enlightenment2 so weary ,germany1 broken by so many calamities1 was generally inclined to acknowledge his claim4 ,about the year #acdh he visited ,strasburg1 and the clergy brought ,tauler and his two friends before him4 ,they were to answer for their hard words against priests and princes4 ,charles listened attentively to the statement of their principles1 and to their spirited defence of what they had said and done4 ,at last he said 7conceive the dismay of the prelates67 that1 after all1 #8he was very much of their mind4' ,but the ecclesiastics did not rest till they had procured a condemnatory sentence4 ,the accused were commanded to publish a recantation1 and to promise to refrain for the future from such contumacious language concerning the ,church and the ,interdict1 on pain of excommunication4 ,it is said that1 in spite of this decision1 they did but speak and write the more in the same spirit4 ,this1 however1 is not certain4 ,it is known that ,tauler shortly afterwards left his native city1 and fixed his residence in ,cologne1 where he mostly spent the remainder of his life1 actively engaged as a preacher in endeavouring to promote a deeper spirituality1 and in combating the enthusiasm of the pantheistic ,beghards who abounded in that city4#aca ,chronicle of ,adolf ,arnstein1 continued4 ,,strasburg4 #aced4 ,january4--,in the comparative leisure of the winter time1 ,i set down in order 7from such fragmentary notes as ,i then made7 records of a journey undertaken last year to ,flanders4 ,when ,i left ,strasburg1 to sail down the ,rhine1 our city had enjoyed at last nearly two years' prosperity4 ,we could scarcely believe the respite real4 ,first of all1 after so many troubles and dissensions1 the ,black ,death had laid us waste4 ,then came the ,flagellants1 turning all things upside down--the irresistible infection of their fury--the thirst for blood they stirred up everywhere--the slaughter of the miserable ,jews4 ,then we had the ,emperor among us1 demanding unrighteous imposts4 ,our old spirit rose4 ,for two years and a half our chains and guard-ships barred the passage of the ,rhine4#acb ,we would endure any extremity rather than submit1 and our firmness won the day4 ,now1 for the last three years1--the pestilence and its horrors over2 blockaded business free again2--our little world has been gambolling like children let loose from school4 ,never such rapid and fruitful buying and selling1 such marrying and giving in marriage1 such feasting1 pageantry1 and merriment1 among high and low alike4#acc ,all the year is ,may for the morris-dancers4 ,no one remembers now the scourge or the torch4 ,the clergy might have learnt a lesson from the outbreak of the ,flagellants4 ,it should have shown them how hateful their vices and their pride had made them to the people4 ,but the universal levity now pardons clerical crime and folly as it does every other4 ,the odious exaggeration of the ,flagellants has given men a pretext for licence1 and ruined the hopes of reform4 ,the cause of emperor against pope exists no longer4 ,in the hour of conflict and of sorrow1 men hailed the help and listened to the teaching of the ,friends of ,god4 ,tauler himself1 were he among us1 would find it another ,strasburg4 ,landed at ,cologne1 ,i hastened to the cloister of ,st4 ,gertrude to find ,dr4 ,tauler4 ,with what delight did ,i see him once more6 ,i thought him looking much older1 and1 indeed1 he said he thought the same of me4 ,the time has been long but a stepmother to merry faces and ruddy cheeks4 ,he told me that he had met with great kindness in this city1 which he had always loved4 ,his friends were numerous2 his preaching1 he hoped not without fruit1 and he had succeeded in reforming much that had been amiss4#acd ,i had many messages for him from his old friends in ,strasburg1 and he had so many questions to ask1 he knew not where to begin4 ,he inquired particularly after ,rulman ,merswin4 ,this rich merchant had withdrawn from the world 7with the consent of his wife7 and devoted himself altogether to the contemplative life1 a short time previous to the coming of the ,black ,death4 ,his austerities had been almost fatal4 ,tauler's last counsel to him was to lessen their severity4 ,i saw him before ,i left1 and he desired me to tell ,tauler that the ,layman had visited him more than once1 and was now his spiritual guide4 ,i informed the ,doctor1 moreover1 that during the last year ,merswin had been privately busied in writing a book1 to be called ,the ,nine ,rocks1 of which he did me the honour of reading to me a part4#ace ,the ,doctor asking what ,i thought1 ,i said it seemed to be the work of a powerful and sombre imagination1 excited by the sufferings he had inflicted on himself1 yet containing many solemn and most just rebukes of the vices prevalent4 ,tauler said that such excessive mortification in all classes1 and especially among the clergy1 often weakened1 instead of exalting the intellect4 ,he feared that the good ,rulman would always lean too much on visions1 voices1 ecstasies1 and the like1 and never rise to the higher calm of unsensuous1 imageless contemplation4 ,the second time ,i visited ,tauler1 ,i found him reading--he told me for the fourth time--a book called ,the ,spiritual ,nuptials1 by ,john ,ruysbroek4#acf ,the ,doctor praised it highly1 and as ,i questioned him about it1 offered to lend it me to read4 ,i had heard of ,ruysbroek as a master in spiritual mysteries1 often holding intercourse by letter with the ,friends of ,god in ,cologne1 ,alsace1 and even in the ,oberland4 ,i took the book home to my inn1 and shut myself up to read it4 ,many parts of it ,i copied out4 ,not a few things in it ,i found hard to be understood1 and consulting with the ,doctor about them1 he told me he purposed setting out in a few days to visit the author4 ,should ,i like to accompany him8 ,i said #8,yes1 with all my heart4' ,so we left ,cologne to travel to the convent of ,grnthal1 in the heart of the forest of ,soigne1 not far from ,louvain1 whither the holy man1 now sixty years of age1 had of late retired4#acg ,from ,cologne we journeyed direct to ,aix-la-,chapelle4 ,there we saw the chair in which the emperors sit when they are crowned4 ,its sides are of ivory1 and the bottom is made of a piece of wood from ,noah's ,ark4 ,tasted the water in the famous hot springs there4 ,it is saltish2 the physicians say of singular virtue1 whether taken inwardly or outwardly4 ,saw near the town a water which is lukewarm1 by reason of one of the hot springs which passes under it4 ,there are bred in it fine fish1 they say1 which must be put in cold water two months before they are eaten4 ,from ,aix-la-,chapelle we went to ,maestricht1 and thence through ,tirlemont1 to ,louvain4 ,this last is a wealthy city1 with a fine town-hall4 ,the ,flemings seem very fond of bells1 which are always chiming1 and the great multitude of storks was a strange thing to me2 they make their nests on the tops of the chimneys4 ,the country round is very fertile1 and the great guilds exceeding prosperous4 ,the small handicrafts have more power there than with us at ,strasburg4 ,at ,ypres1 ,i hear1 they lately mustered five thousand strong in the market-place1 and headed by their deacons1 engaged and routed the knights and men-at-arms who wished to hold the town against the men of ,ghent4#ach ,they are very brave and determined1 and keep better together1 as it seems to me1 than our folk4 ,i found no small excitement in the city1 on account of the war then carrying on between the men of ,ghent and their allies1 on the one side1 and the ,earl of ,flanders on the other4 ,it began with the old rivalry between ,ghent and ,bruges--some dispute about a canal from the ,lys4 ,the real struggle is between lords and commons4 ,what ,bishop ,berthold and his party have been to us1 that is the ,count de ,male to these ,flemings4 ,the popular side has lost a brave leader in ,john ,lyon4 ,he revived the ,white ,hoods1 and stirred up all ,flanders against the earl4 ,but two at least of the new captains1 ,john ,boule and ,peter du ,bois1 bid fair to fill his place4 ,when ,i was at ,louvain1 the troops of the earl were besieged in ,oudenarde by upwards of a hundred thousand men1 gathered out of all the principal towns1 well provisioned and appointed4 ,the besiegers were very strong in cross-bow men1 and had with them some great guns1 which did no small damage4 ,many hot assaults were made1 both by land and water1 and on both sides many brave men slain 7,heaven rest their souls67 for the ,flemings were no whit behind the knights in foolhardiness4 ,when ,i left ,brabant1 report said that a peace was1 or soon would be concluded1 to be ratified1 according to their wont there1 by enormous dinners4 ,certain it is that neither ,oudenarde nor ,dendermonde were carried after all4#aci ,they still talked at ,louvain about that flower of chivalry ,edward ,,iii4 of ,england1 who was there for a season some few years back4#adj ,his princely entertainments to lords and ladies left the country full of golden traditions about him4 ,the islanders won all hearts by their unparalleled magnificence and generosity4 ,they say the ,english king called ,james von ,artaveld--brewer of metheglin as he was--his cousin1 and was passing wroth when he heard of his murder4 ,yet methinks he cares but little after all for the ,flemish weavers1 save as they may help him and his knights against ,france4 ,nevertheless1 the weaker ,france1 the better for ,germany4 ,i think ,i understand why our emperor ,charles so flatters the pope4 ,if his ,holiness could confide in ,germany he would fain break with ,france4 ,be this as it may1 not a word now is heard about the claims of the empire4 ,the ,ghibelline cause finds no leader4 ,the spirit of the ,hohenstaufen lives only in the rhymes of the minstrel4 ,no doubt times are changed4 ,there may be policy in the submission1 but ,i love it not4 ,the ,doctor interpreted to me the other day the emperor's ,latin motto1 which set me thinking4 ,it means--the best use you can make of your own wits is to turn to good account the follies of other people4#ada ,so cardinals and envoys riding to and fro1 plotting and treaty-making1 will manage ,christendom now1 not strong arms and sword-strokes4 ,whether1 in the end1 this change will lead to better or to worse1 it baffles my poor brain to decide4 ,we set out from ,louvain for ,grnthal1 quite a troop of us4 ,there was a noble widow-lady1 with her attendants1 who was going to crave ghostly counsel from the prior4 ,she had lost her husband by the plague1 three years since1 and appeared still overwhelmed with grief1 speaking to no one1 and never suffering her face to be seen4 ,her women1 when not near her1 were merry enough with the followers of a young ,frenchman of family who carried letters to ,ruysbroek from his uncle1 an abbot in ,paris4 ,we had with us besides two ,minorite friars from ,guelders4 ,the head dresses of the women were fit for giantesses1 rising up like a great horn1 with long ribbons fluttering from the top4 ,one of them had a little dagger in her girdle1 and managed a spirited horse to admiration4 ,the ,frenchman1 with whom ,i had much talk1 was an arrant fop1 yet a shrewd fellow withal4 ,he jingled like a jester with his many silver bells1 his hair was tied behind in a tail1 the points of his shoes turned up1 his parti-coloured doublet cut short round 7a new fashion1 adopted for greater swiftness in flying from an enemy71 and his beard1 long and bushy1 trimmed with a sort of studied negligence4 ,he gave me a melancholy account of the state of ,france1 divided within1 overrun by the ,english invaders1 nobles plundering and burning--here to-day and there to-morrow1 without pity1 law1 or loyalty2 knights destroying1 not helping the weak3 troops of robbers surprising castles and even taking towns2 and the wretched peasantry fain often to hide themselves and their cattle for weeks and months in great caves hollowed out underneath the ground4 ,one of the friars told me a story current about ,prior ,ruysbroek1 how1 one day1 he was absent longer than usual in the forest1 whither he was accustomed to retire for meditation1 and as some of the brethren went to seek him they saw a tree at a distance which appeared surrounded by fiery glory4 ,the holy man was sitting at its foot1 lost in contemplation6 ,the ,saviour and our ,blessed ,lady herself are said to have appeared to him more than once4#adb ,we reached ,grnthal--a great building of exceeding plainness--soon after nightfall4 ,found there visitors from ,brussels1 so that1 between us1 nearly all the guest chambers were filled4 ,the good ,ruysbroek has been there but a year1 yet if he is always to be thus sought unto1 methinks he is as far from his longed-for seclusion as ever4#adc ,we remained three weeks at ,grnthal1 for whenever the ,doctor would be going1 the good ,prior so besought him to tarry longer that he could not in courtesy say him nay4 ,often ,ruysbroek and ,tauler would spend all the summer morning in the forest1 now walking1 now sitting under the trees1 talking of the concerns of the soul1 or of the fears and hopes awakened by these doubtful times4 ,i was permitted repeatedly to accompany them1 and afterwards wrote down some of the more remarkable things ,i heard said4 ,these two saintly men1 prepared to love each other as brothers in a common experience1 seemed at once to grow together into a friendship as strong as though many years had been employed in the building thereof4 ,neither of them vain1 neither jealous1 each was for humbling himself beneath the other1 and seemed desirous rather to hear and learn than to talk about himself4 ,speaking about the ,son of ,god and the soul of man1 ,ruysbroek said--#8,i believe that the ,son is the ,image of the ,father1 that in the ,son have dwelt from all eternity1 foreknown and contemplated by the ,father1 the prototypes of all mankind4 ,we existed in the ,son before we were born--,he is the creative ground of all creatures--the eternal cause and principle of their life4 ,the highest essence of our being rests therefore in ,god1--exists in his image in the ,son4 ,after our creation in time1 our souls are endowed with these properties1 which are in effect one2 the first1 the ,imageless ,nudity1 7die bildlose ,nacktheit7--by means of this we receive and are united to the ,father2 the second1 the ,higher ,reason of the ,soul 7die hhere ,vernunft der ,seele71 the mirror of brightness1 by which we receive the ,son2 the third1 the ,spark of the ,soul 7,funken der ,seele7 by which we receive the love of ,god the ,holy ,ghost4 ,these three faculties are in us all the ground of our spiritual life1 but in sinners they are obscured and buried under their transgressions4#add #8,the office of the ,son in time was to die for us1 fulfil the law1 and give us a divine pattern of humility1 love1 and patience4 ,he is the fountain whence flows to us all needed blessing1 and with him works the ,holy ,spirit4 ,what the ,son did he did for all--is ,light-bringer for all mankind1 for the ,catholic ,church especially1 but also for every devoutly-disposed mind4 ,grace is common1 and whoever desires it has it4 ,without it no natural powers or merits can save us4 ,the will is free by nature1 it becomes by grace more free2 yea1 a king1 lord of every lower power1 crowned with ,love1 clad in the might of the ,holy ,ghost4 ,there is a natural will towards good 7,synderesis7 implanted in us all1 but damped by sin4 ,we can will to follow this better impulse1 and of ourselves desire the help of divine grace1 without which we can never overcome sin and rise above ourselves4 ,everything depends on will4 ,a man must will right strongly4 ,will to have humility and love1 and they are thine4 ,if any man is without the spirit of ,god1 it is his own fault1 for not seeking that without which he cannot please ,him4#ade #8,true penitence is of the heart2 bodily suffering is not essential4 ,no one is to think he is shut out from ,christ because he cannot bear the torturing penance some endure4 ,we must never be satisfied with any performance1 any virtue--only in the abyss1 the ,nothingness of ,humility1 do we rise beyond all heavens4 ,true desire after ,god is not kept back by the sense of defect4 ,the longing soul knows only this1 that it is bent on ,god4 ,swallowed up in aspiration1 it can take heed of nothing more4'#adf 7,a very weighty saying this1 methinks1 and helpful47 ,speaking of the inner life1 and the union of the soul with ,god1 ,ruysbroek said-- #8,god dwells in the highest part of the soul4 ,he who ascends this height has all things under his feet4 ,we are united to ,god when1 in the practice of the virtues1 we deny and forsake ourselves1 loving and following ,god above all creatures4 ,we cannot compel ,god by our love to love us1 but ,he cannot sanctify us unless we freely contribute our effort4 ,there is a reciprocal desire on our part and that of ,god4 ,the free inspiration of ,god is the spring of all our spiritual life4 ,thence flows into us knowledge--an inner revelation which preserves our spirit open1 and1 lifting us above all images and all disturbance1 brings us to an inward silence4 ,here the divine inspiration is a secret whispering in the inner ear4 ,god dwells in the heart pure and free from every image4 ,then first1 when we withdraw into the simplicitas of our heart1 do we behold the immeasurable glory of ,god1 and our intellect is as clear from all considerations of distinction and figurative apprehensions1 as though we had never seen or heard of such things4 ,then the riches of ,god are open to us4 ,our spirit becomes desireless1 as though there were nothing on earth or in heaven of which we stood in need4 ,then we are alone with ,god1 ,god and we--nothing else4 ,then we rise above all multiplicity and distinction into the simple nakedness of our essence1 and in it become conscious of the infinite wisdom of the ,divine ,essence1 whose inexhaustible depths are as a vast waste1 into which no corporeal and no spiritual image can intrude4 ,our created is absorbed in our uncreated life1 and we are as it were transformed into ,god4 ,lost in the abyss of our eternal blessedness1 we perceive no distinction between ourselves and ,god4 ,as soon as we begin to reflect and to consider what that is we feel1 we become aware of such distinction1 and fall back to the level of reason4'#adg ,here ,tauler asked whether such language was not liable to abuse by the heretics who confound man and ,god8 ,he referred to a passage in the ,spiritual ,nuptials1 in which ,ruysbroek said that we became identical1 in this union1 with the glory by which we are illumined4#adh ,ruysbroek answered1 that he had designed to qualify duly all such expressions4 #8,but you know1 ,doctor1' continued he1 #8,i have not your learning1 and cannot at all times say so accurately as ,i would what ,i mean4 ,out of the mouths of babes and sucklings6--,i would say that in such a state all our powers are in repose1 not that they are annihilated4 ,if so1 we should lose our existence as creatures4 ,we are one with ,god1 but yet always creature existences distinct from ,god4 ,i do humbly believe1 let my enemies say what they may1 that ,i wrote no word of that book save at the impulse of the ,holy ,ghost1 and with a peculiar and most blessed presence to my soul of the ,holy ,trinity4 ,but what shall ,i call this blessedness8 ,it includes peace1 inward silence1 affectionate hanging on the source of our joy1 sleep in ,god1 contemplation of the heaven of darkness1 far above reason4#8#adi ,the conversation then turned on the heresies of the time1 the corruptions of the ,church and of the ,state1 and other practical matters more within my compass4 ,ruysbroek said that the great sin and error of these heretics lay in their aspiring to union with ,god by a summary and arrogant method of their own4 ,they persuaded themselves that1 merely by ceasing to think and distinguish1 they could withdraw themselves into the essence of their nature1 and so1 without the help of grace or the practice of virtue1 attain by bare nature the rest and blessedness of absolute simplicity and superiority to all modes and images4 #8,verily1' quoth ,tauler1 #8though they give themselves out for the wisest and the holiest1 it is only themselves1 not ,god1 they enjoy4 ,yet mischievous as they are1 often as ,i have preached against them1 ,i never have taken1 nor shall ,i take1 any part in their persecution4'#aej #8,i have had plentiful opportunity1' continued ,ruysbroek1 #8for observing these men4 ,i would divide them into four classes4#aea ,first of all there are those whose doctrine sins especially against the ,holy ,ghost4 ,they say the essential ,godhead works not1 but the ,holy ,ghost doth3 that they belong to that ,divine ,essence1 and will rest in like manner2--that they are1 therefore1 above the ,spirit of ,god4 ,they hold that1 after time1 all things will be ,god1 one absolute ,quiescence1 without distinction and without change4 ,so they will neither know nor act1 neither think nor thank1 but be free from all desire1 all obligation4 ,this they call ,poverty of ,spirit4 ,i say it is a devilish poverty1 and such souls must be poor as hell in divine love and knowledge4 #8,the second class say1 with like blasphemy1 #8,we are divine by nature4 ,there is one ,god1 and we are identical with ,him4 ,we with ,him have created all things2 if we had not chosen1 we had not been born4 ,it was our own choice to exist as we do4 ,god can do nothing without us1 and we give ,him therefore no preference1 pay ,him no homage4 ,honour to ,him is honour to us4 ,what we are we would be1 what we would be we are2 with ,god we have created ourselves and all things2 heaven and earth hang on our will4' ,this insane spiritual pride is flatly contrary to all catholic doctrine4 #8,the third class sin not less against the ,son4 ,they say1 we are as much incarnate as ,christ was1 and1 in the same sense1 divine sons of ,god4 ,had ,he lived long enough1 ,he would have attained to the same contemplative quiet we enjoy4 ,retired into our inmost selves1 we find ourselves the same ,wisdom of ,god which ,christ is4 ,when ,he is honoured1 we are honoured1 for we are identical with ,him4 #8,the fourth class declare that neither ,god nor themselves1 heaven nor hell1 action nor rest1 good nor evil1 have any real existence4 ,they deny ,god and the work of ,christ1 ,scripture1 sacraments1--everything4 ,god is nothing2 they are nothing2 the universe is nothing4 #8,some hold doctrines such as these in secret1 and conform outwardly1 for fear4 ,others make them the pretext for every kind of vice and insolent insubordination4 ,of a truth we should cross ourselves when we but speak of them1 as in the neighbourhood of spirits from the pit4' #8,and what hope1' said ,tauler1 #8of better things1 while the ,church is crowded with hirelings1 and1 with lust and bravery1 everywhere leads on the world in sin8' #8,what hope1 indeed6' mournfully responded ,ruysbroek4 #8,the grace of the sacraments is shamefully bought and sold4 ,rich transgressors may live as they list4 ,the wealthy usurer is buried before the altar1 the bells ring1 the priest declares him blessed4 ,i declare that if he died in unrighteousness1 not all the priests in ,christendom1 not all his hoards lavished to feed the poor1 could save him from perdition4 ,see1 too1 the monks1 mendicants and all1 what riches6 what sumptuous fare6 what licence1 in violation of every vow6 what odious distinctions6 ,some have four or five garments1 another scarcely one4 ,some revel with the prior1 the guardian1 and the lector in the refectory1 at a place of their own4 ,others must be content with herring and cabbage1 washed down with sour beer4 ,little by little the habit is changed1 black becomes brown1 grey is exchanged for blue1 the white must be of the finest stuff1 the shape of the newest cut4' #8,this1' said ,tauler1 #8is what ,i so much admire in your little community here4 ,you have practically abolished those mischievous distinctions1 the cause of so much bitterness in our religious houses4 ,every one has his place1 but no one is degraded4 ,you yourself will perform the meanest offices1 as the other morning1 when ,arnstein found you sweeping the lectorium4 ,yours is the true canonical life--the life of a family4 ,every one is ready to do kind offices for his brethren1 and your own example teaches daily forgetfulness of self4' ,ruysbroek looked uneasy under these praises1 and they spoke again of the prevalent evils in the ,church4#aeb #8,how many nuns have ,i seen1' said ,ruysbroek1 #8daintily attired1 with silver bells to their girdles1 whose prison was the cloister and their paradise the world6 ,a retinue of forty reiters is a moderate attendance for a prelate out on a visitation4 ,i have known some priests who engaged themselves as business agents to laymen2 others who have entered the service of ladies of rank1 and walked behind them as footmen into church4 ,a criminal has but to pay money down1 and he may serve the devil for another year4 ,a trim reckoning1 and satisfaction for all parties6 ,the bishop gets the gold1 the devil gets the soul1 and the miserable fool the moment's pleasure of his lust4'#aec ,when1 one day1 they were conversing on future rewards and punishments1 ,i remember hearing ,ruysbroek say--#8,i trust ,i am ready for all ,god sends me1 life or death1 or even hell-pains themselves4' ,an attainment of virtue inconceivable to me4#aed ,at ,grnthal ,i saw much of a lay brother named ,john ,affliginiensis1 the cook of the community4#aee ,he accompanied ,ruysbroek thither4 ,though wholly unlettered1 he serves daily as a goodly ensample of the active and contemplative life united4 ,it is his calling to see to the dinners of the brethren2 he is scarce less helpful to their devotions4 ,that he is a good plain cook ,i can bear witness1 and to the edifying character of the discourses he sometimes delivers to the canons1 all testify4 ,he scarcely sleeps at all1 goes meanly clad1 and eats the veriest refuse of the convent fare4 ,he is one of the meekest and most humble of men--has had his sore fights of temptation1 fierce inward purgations1 and also his favoured hours and secret revelations4 ,ruysbroek loves him like a brother4 ,the esteem in which he is held1 and the liberty of speech allowed him1 is characteristic of the simple and brotherly spirit which dwells among these worthy canons4 ,grnthal is not1 like so many religious houses1 a petty image of the pettiest follies of the world4 ,there they do seem to have withdrawn in spirit from the strife and pomp of secular life4 ,gladly would ,i spend my last years among the beeches and the oaks that shut in their holy peace4 ,but while ,i may ,i must be doing2 had my call been to the contemplative life ,i should have been moulded in another fashion4 ,on our journey back from ,louvain ,i had rare entertainment4 ,we had scarcely passed out beyond the gates1 when ,tauler rode forward1 in deep discourse with an ecclesiastic of the party4 ,a hasty glance at our fellow-travellers1 as we mustered at the door of the hostelry1 had not led me to look for any company likely to eke out a day's travel with aught that was pleasant or of profit4 ,but ,i was mistaken4 ,i espied ere long1 a neat1 merry-looking little man1 in a minstrel's habit1 with a gittern slung at his back4 ,to him ,i joined himself1 and he1 pleased evidently with the notice ,i took of him1 sang me songs and told me stories all the way4 ,he said his name was ,muscatblut1 and ,i was not sorry to be able to gratify him by answering that his fame had already reached my ears4#aef ,he had store of songs1 with short and long lines curiously interwoven in a way of his own1 a very difficult measure to write1 as he assured me--the very triumph of his heart4 ,these love-lays he interspersed with riddles and rhyming proverbs1 with quaint allegories1 satires on clerks and monks1 and stories about husbands and wives1 making all within hearing roll in their saddles with laughter4 ,he had likewise certain coarse songs1 half amatory1 half devotional1 tagged with bits of slang and bits of ,latin1 about the wooing of our ,lady4 ,i told him1 to his surprise1 to stop2 it was flat blasphemy4 ,he said the voluptuous passages of his lay were after ,frauenlob's best manner1 and as to the sacred personages1 by ,st4 ,bartholomew6 many a holy clerk had praised that part most of all1 calling it a deep allegory1 most edifying to the advanced believer4 ,at ,cologne ,i parted from the ,doctor with many embraces4 ,on my way back to ,strasburg ,i took boat up the ,mayne to ,frankfurt1 whither business called me4 ,we passed a little woody island in the midst of the river1 which was pointed out to me as the residence of the leprous barefooted friar1 whose songs and airs are so popular throughout the ,rhineland4 ,i looked with reverence at the melancholy spot4 ,there he dwells alone1 shut out from mankind1 yet delighting and touching every heart4 ,his songs are sweet as the old knightly lays of love1 full of courtly grace and tenderness1 and yet they are songs for the people from one truly of themselves4 ,the burgher has his minstrelsy now1 as well as the noble4 ,this at least is a good sign4 ,note to page #cba4 ,from this time forward1 ,rulman ,merswin gave himself up to the spiritual guidance of ,nicholas the layman--taking him to be to him #8in ,god's stead4' ,he took no step without his direction1 and wrote at his command his book entitled ,von den vier ioren sins anevohenden lebendes--a record of what may be called his spiritual apprenticeship4 ,nicholas took a copy of it back with him to the ,oberland4 ,schmidt has brought together what is known of ,merswin1 in the ,appendix to his life of ,tauler1 pp4 #agg1 c4 ,the ,book of the ,nine ,rocks was commenced in #aceb4 ,it has been published in ,diepenbrock's edition of the works of ,suso1 to whom it was1 till recently1 attributed4 ,the claim of ,merswin to its authorship is established beyond question--7,schmidt1 #ahj74 ,the work opens by relating how1 early one morning in ,advent1 a man 7the author7 was warned of ,god to prepare himself1 by inward retirement1 for that which ,he should show him4 ,he was made to behold a vision full of strange and alarming appearances4 ,he cried out1 #8,ah1 my heart's ,love6 what meanest thou with these mysterious symbols8' ,he struggled hard against the phantoms of his trance1 but the marvellous forms only multiplied the more4 ,he was constrained by a divine voice to gaze1 and commanded1 in spite of his humble remonstrances1 to write in a book what he saw--the image of the corruptions of ,christendom1 for the warning of the guilty and the edification of the faithful4 ,the dialogues are given at length between him and ,god--#8the ,man' and #8the ,answer4' ,for eleven weeks1 in sickness and spiritual distress1 he wavered4 ,he was but a poor1 ignorant layman2 how should he presume to exhort the ,church8 #8,the ,voice of the ,answer' is heard saying1 #8,came not thy reluctance from humility1 ,i would consign thee to the pit4 ,i see ,i must compel thee4 ,in the name of the ,holy ,trinity1 ,i command thee to begin to write this day4' ,the souls of men proceeding from ,god1 but few of them returning to their ,original1 are shown him under the similitude of multitudes of fish1 brought down by the descent of great waters from the summit of a mountain4 ,men in the valley are catching them in nets4 ,scarce half of them reach the sea below4 ,there the remnant swim in all directions1 and at length endeavour to leap back1 up to the source whence they came4 ,numbers are taken in the nets2 only a few reach even the base of the mountain4 ,some who ascend higher fall back upon the rocks and die4 ,a very few1 springing from rock to rock1 reach exhausted1 the fountain at the top1 and there forget their pains4 ,the twenty following chapters are occupied with a dialogue1 in which the divine ,voice enumerates the characteristic sins of all classes of mankind1 from the pope to the begging friar--from the emperor to the serf4 ,then commences the vision of the ,nine ,rocks4 ,a mountain1 enormous in breadth and height1 fills all the scene4 ,as the eye travels up the ascent1 it beholds nine steep rocks1 each loftier than that which preceded it1--the highest lost in the heavens4 ,from the lowest the whole surface of the earth is visible4 ,a net is spread over all the region beneath1 but it does not reach the mountain4 ,the multitudes seen beneath it are men in mortal sin4 ,the men standing on the first and lowest rock are religious persons1 but such as are lukewarm1 defective in aspiration and in zeal4 ,they dwell dangerously near the net--7cap4 xxiii474 ,some1 from the first rock1 are seen making their way up the precipice1 and reaching the second1 where they become of dazzling brightness4 ,those on the second rock have heartily forsaken the world2 they will suffer less in purgatory1 enjoy more in heaven1 than those beneath2 but they1 too1 are far from their ,origin yet1 and in danger of spiritual pride1 self-seeking1 and of growing faint and remiss in their painful progress--7cap4 xxiv474 ,those on the third rock1 fewer in number1 suffering far more severely in time1 are nearer to ,god1 will suffer little in purgatory1 and are of yet more glorious aspect than their predecessors--7cap4 xxv474 ,such is the process to the summit4 ,all the nine rocks must be surmounted1 would we return to our ,divine ,source4 ,but few attain the last1 which is indeed the ,gate of the ,origin--the consummate blessedness1 in which the believer1 fearless of hell and purgatory1 has annihilated self1 and hath no wish or will save that of ,god4 ,one of these true worshippers brings more blessing to ,christendom than thousands of such as live after their own will1 and know not that they are nothing4 ,finally1 #8the man' is permitted a moment's glance into the ,divine #8,origin4' ,the rapture of that moment he attempted in vain to describe2--no reflection1 no image1 could give the least hint of it4 ,both ,rulman and #8the ,friend of ,god in the ,oberland' believed themselves repeatedly warned of ,god in visions1 that they should build a house for him in ,strasburg4 ,the merchant purchased a ruined cloister on a little island in the river ,ill1 without the city walls4 ,he restored the church1 and erected a stone belfry4 ,nicholas advised him to bestow it on the ,johannites1 in preference to any other ,order1--for there had been no little rivalry among the monks as to who was to enjoy the gift4 ,the conditions of the deed for which he stipulated with the ,master of the ,order are indicative of the new and more elevated position which mysticism had taught the laity to claim4 ,the government of the house was to rest entirely with a lay triumvirate2 the two survivors always to choose a third4 ,the first three governors were ,rulman himself1 ,heinzmann ,wetzel1 knight1 and ,john ,merswin1 burg-graf4 ,the admission of brethren rested with these heads of the house1 and they were free to receive any one1 clerk or layman1 knight or serving man1 whether belonging to the order of ,st4 ,john or not1 requiring only that he should bring with him the moderate sum requisite to render his residence no burden on the convent4 7,schmidt1 p4 #ahi47 ,note to page #cbi4 ,the passage to which ,tauler is made to refer is contained in the third book of the ,spiritual ,nuptials1 chap4 #e3--#8;,ind alle die minschen die bouen ir geschaffenheit verhauen sin in eyn schauwende leuen1 die synt eyn mit deser gotlicher clairheit1 ind sij sint die clairheit selver4 ,ind sy sien ind gevoilen ind vynden sich selver ouermitz dit gotliche licht1 dat sy sin der selue eynveldige gront na wijse irre ungeschaffenheit1 da de clairheit sonder mias vs schynt in gotlicher wijsen ind na sympelheit des wesens eynueldich binnen blijfft ewelich sonder wise4 ,ind hervm soilen die innyge schauwende minschen vsgayn na wijse des schauwens bouen reden ind bouen vnderscheit ind bouen ir geschaffen wesen mit ewigen instarren ouermitz dat ingeboiren licht1 soe werden sy getransformeirt ind eyn mit desem seluen licht da sy mede sien ind dat sy sien4 ,ind also vervolgen die schauwende minschen ir ewich bilde da si zo gemacht sin ind beschauwen got ind alle dinck sonder vnderscheit in eyme eynveldigen sien in gotlicher clairheit4 ,in dat is dat edelste ind dat vrberlichste schauwen da men zo komen mach in desem leuen4'--,vier ,schriften1 p4 #add4 ,and all men who are exalted above their creatureliness into a contemplative life are one with this divine glory1--yea1 are that glory4 ,and they see1 and feel1 and find in themselves1 by means of this divine light1 that they are the same simple ,ground as to their uncreated nature 7i4e41 in respect of their ideal pre-existence in the ,son71 since the glory shineth forth without measure1 after the divine manner1 and abideth within them simply and without mode 7particular manifestation or medium71 according to the simplicity of the essence4 ,wherefore interior contemplative men should go forth in the way of contemplation above reason and distinction1 beyond their created substance1 and gaze perpetually by the aid of their inborn light1 and so they become transformed1 and one with the same light1 by means of which they see1 and which they see4 ,thus do contemplative men arrive at that eternal image after which they were created1 and contemplate ,god and all things without distinction in a simple beholding1 in divine glory4 ,and this is the loftiest and most profitable contemplation whereto men may attain in this life4 ,this passage1 and others like it1 gave rise to the charge of pantheism brought by ,gerson against ,ruysbroek in the following century4 ,the prior of ,grnthal found a defender in ,schnhoven1 who pointed with justice to numerous expressions in the writings of the accused1 altogether incompatible with the heresy alleged4 ,quite inconsistent with any confusion of the divine and human is ,ruysbroek's fine description of the insatiable hunger of the soul--growing by that it feeds on1--the consciousness that all possessed is but a drop to the illimitable undeemed ,perfection yet beyond4 7#8,wi leren in waerheit sijns aenschijns dat al dat wi gesmaken tegen dat ons ontblijft dat en is niet een draep tegen al die zee1 dit verstormt onsen geest in hetten ende in ongeduer van mynnen4'--,von dem funkelnden ,steine1 x4 p4 #aid47 ,so again he says1 #8,want wy enmogen te mael niet got werden ende onse gescapenheit verliesen1 dat is onmoegelic'--p4 #aij2 and similarly that we become one with ,god in love1 not in nature1 7#8ouerformet ende een mit hem in sijnre minnen1 niet in sijnre naturen4'7--,spiegel der ,seligkeit1 xxiv4 ,note to page #cbi4 ,ruysbroek expressed to ,gerard ,groot1 in these very words1 his belief in the special guidance of the ,holy ,spirit vouchsafed for the composition of his books on these #8deep things' of the kingdom4 7,engelhardt1 p4 #afh47 ,the doctrine of ,ruysbroek is substantially the same with that of his friend and brother-mystic1 ,tauler4 ,whether speaking the high ,german of the upper ,rhine or the low ,german of the ,netherlands1 mysticism gives utterance to the same complaint and the same aspiration4 ,ruysbroek is individually less speculative than ,eckart1 less practical than ,tauler4 ,the ,flemish mystic is a more submissive son of the ,church than the stout-hearted ,dominican of ,strasburg1 and lays proportionally more stress on what is outward and institutional4 ,he is fond of handling his topics analytically4 ,his numerous divisions and subdivisions remind us of the scholastic ,richard of ,st4 ,victor1 but ,ruysbroek1 less methodical by nature1 and less disciplined1 more frequently loses sight of his own distinctions4 ,the subject itself1 indeed1 where it possesses the writer1 repudiates every artificial treatment4 ,while he specifies with minuteness the stages of the mystical ascent1 ,ruysbroek does not contend that the experience of every adept in the contemplative life must follow the precise order he lays down4 7,geistl4 ,hochzeit1 ii4 #cj1 p4 #ga47 ,he loves to ally the distinctions he enumerates in the world of nature1 in the operations of grace1 in the heavenly state1 and in the ,divine ,being1 by a relationship of correspondence4 ,thus the seven planets and the seven gifts of the ,holy ,spirit answer to each other4 ,the ,empyrean in the external world corresponds to ,pure ,being in the divine nature1 to the ,spark of the soul in man1 and to the ,contemplative stage of his spiritual experience4 ,this scheme of analogies1 incidental in ,ruysbroek and the earlier mystics1 makes up almost the whole system of mystics like ,behmen and ,swedenborg4 ,his elaborate comparison of the operations of grace to a fountain with three streams 7one of which refreshes the memory1 another clarifies the understanding1 while a third invigorates the will71 resembles strikingly the fanciful method of ,madame ,guyon in her ,torrents1 and of ,st4 ,theresa in her ,degrees of ,prayer4 7,geistl4 ,hochzeit1 xvii4 #cf1 p4 #hj47 ,the mysticism of ,ruysbroek is less sensuous than that of the poetical ,suso4 ,beyond question the higher elevation of the contemplative life must have been a welcome refuge to many devout minds wearied with vain ritual1 penance1 and routine4 ,as acknowledged contemplatists1 they could escape without scandal from contact with the grosser machinery of their religion4 ,accordingly1 to claim superiority to means and modes was by no means always the arrogant pretension it may seem to us4 ,tauler's #8state above grace' was the ark of an unconscious ,protestantism4 ,where the means were made the end1 wisdom forsook them1 and rejoiced to find that the name of mystic could shelter spirituality from the dangers of the suspected heretic4 ,ruysbroek1 however1 felt the want of such a protection for freer thought1 much less than did ,tauler and some of his more active followers4 ,footnote #abi3 ,see ,hecker's ,black ,death 7trans4 by ,dr4 ,babington1 #ahec74--;,hecker gives the documents relating to the trial of the ,neustadt ,jews in an appendix1 from the ,chronicle of ,jacob of ,knigshoven4 ,see also pp4 #ajc-abg4 ,footnote #acj3 ,these fanatics were everywhere foremost among the instigators of the cruelties perpetrated on the ,jews4 ,women1 and even children1 joined their ranks in great numbers1 wearing the hats with red crosses1 carrying flags1 and scourging themselves with the rest4 ,the particulars given are taken from the account in ,jacob von ,knigshoven's ,elsassische u4 ,strassburgische ,chronik1 inserted entire in ,wackernagel1--7p4 #ica74 ,the chronicler says3--#8,zuo ,strsburg kam m denne tsent manne in ire geselleschaft1 und siu teiltent sich zuo ,strsburg3 eine parte der geischelaere gieng das lant abe1 die ander parte das lant f4 und kam s vil volkes in ire bruoderschaft1 das es verdrs den bbest und den keiser und die phafheit4 und der keiser verschreip dem bbeste das er etwas hie zuo gedaechte3 anders die geischeler verkrtent alle die welt4' ,the ,flagellants claimed power to confess and give absolution4 ,the thirty-four days' scourging among them was to make a man as innocent as a babe--the virtue of the lash was above all sacraments4 ,thus the people took religion into their own hands1 blindly and savagely1--no other way was then possible4 ,it was a spasmodic movement of the mass of life beneath1 when the social disorder that accompanied the pestilence had loosened the grasp of the power temporal and spiritual which held them down so long4 ,footnote #aca3 ,see ,schmidt's ,tauler1 p4 #eh4 ,footnote #acb3 ,laguille's ,histoire d',alsace1 liv4 xxv4 p4 #bij4 ,footnote #acc3 ,hecker1 p4 #ha4 ,footnote #acd3 ,schmidt's ,tauler1 p4 #ei4 ,footnote #ace3 ,see ,note1 p4 #ccf4 ,footnote #acf3 ,ruysbroek sent a copy of his book1 ,de ornatu spiritualium nuptiarum1 to the ,friends of ,god in the ,oberland4 ,he had many friends in ,cologne1 and it is very likely that the work may have reached ,tauler there1 either through them or from the author1 who must have heard of him4 ,footnote #acg3 ,see ,johannes ,ruysbroek1 by ,engelhardt1 p4 #afh4 ,footnote #ach3 ,froissart1 book ii4 chap4 #dj4 ,footnote #aci3 ,froissart1 chapp4 #da1 #db4 ,footnote #adj3 ,ibid41 book i4 chap4 #cd4 ,footnote #ada3 ,optimum aliena insania frui4 ,footnote #adb3 ,engelhardt1 p4 #cbf4 ,footnote #adc3 ,it is certain that ,ruysbroek was visited during the many years of his residence in ,grnthal1 much after the manner described1 and also that ,tauler was among the visitors1 though the exact time of his journey is not known4 ,footnote #add3 ,see ,engelhardt1 pp4 #ahi1 #bhh4--;,according to ,ruysbroek1 the ,trinitarian process lies at the basis of the kingdoms both of ,nature and of ,grace4 ,there is a flowing forth and manifestation in the creative ,word1--a return and union of love by the ,holy ,ghost4 ,this process goes on continually in the providential government of the universe1 and in the spiritual life of believers4 ,the upholding of the world1 and the maintenance of the work of grace in the heart1 are both in different ways a perpetual bringing forth of the ,son1 by whom all things consist1 and who is formed in every devout soul4 ,ruysbroek is careful to state 7as a caveat against pantheism7 that such process is no necessary development of the divine nature1--it is the good pleasure of the ,supreme4 7,see ,vier ,schriften von ,j4 ,ruysbroek1 in niederdeutscher ,sprache1 by ,a4 v4 ,arnswaldt2 ,hanover1 #ahdh47 #8,wi hebben alle boven onse ghescapenheit een ewich leuen in gode als in onse leuende sake die ons ghemaect ende ghescapen heest van niete1 maer wi en sijn niet god noch wi en hebben ons seluen niet ghemaeckt4 ,wi en sijn ooc niet wt gode ghevloten van naturen1 maer want ons god ewelijc ghevoelt heest ende bekent in hem seluen1 so heest hi ons ghemaeckt1 niet van naturen noch van node1 maer van vriheit sijns willen1'--p4 #bia4 7,spiegel der ,seligkeit1 xvii47 ,the bosom of the ,father1 he says1 is our proper ground and origin 7der schois des vaders is onse eygen gront ind onse oirsprunck72 we have all1 therefore1 the capacity for receiving ,god1 and ,his grace enables us to recognise and realise this latent possibility 7offenbairt ind brengit vort die verboirgenheit godes in wijsen71--p4 #add4 ,footnote #ade3 ,engelhardt1 pp4 #ahc1 #ahf4 ,ruysbroek speaks as follows of that fundamental tendency godward of which he supposes prevenient grace 7vurloiffende gracie7 to lay hold3--#8,ouch hait der mynsche eyn naturlich gront neygen zo gode overmitz den voncken der sielen ind die overste reden die altzijt begert dat goide ind hasset dat quaide4 ,mit desen punten voirt got alle mynschen na dat sijs behoeven ind ecklichen na sinre noit1' c4--,geistl4 ,hochzeit1 cap4 #c4 ,ruysbroek lays great stress on the exercise of the will4 #8,ye are as holy as ye truly will to be holy1' said he one day to two ecclesiastics1 inquiring concerning growth in grace4 ,it is not difficult to reconcile such active effort with the passivity of mysticism4 ,the mystics all say1 #8,we strive towards virtue by a strenuous use of the gifts which ,god communicates1 but when ,god communicates ,himself1 then we can be only passive--we repose1 we enjoy1 but all operation ceases4' ,footnote #adf3 ,engelhardt1 pp4 #aie1 #aii4 ,footnote #adg3 ,engelhardt1 pp4 #bja1 #bac4 ,in the season of spiritual exaltation1 the powers of the soul are1 as it were1 absorbed in absolute essential enjoyment 7staen ledich in een weselic gebrucken74 ,but they are not annihilated1 for then we should lose our creatureliness4--,mer si en werden niet te niete1 want soe verloeren wy onse gescapenheit4 ,ende alsoe lange als wy mit geneichden geeste ende mit apen ogen sonder merken ledich staen1 alsoe lange moegen wy schouwen ende gebruken4 ,mer in den seluen ogenblijc dat wy proeven ende merken willen wat dat is dat wy geuoelen1 so vallen wy in reden1 ende dan vynden wy onderscheit ende anderheit tusschen ons ende gade1 ende dan vynden wy gade buten ons in onbegripelicheiden4--,von dem funkelnden ,steine1 x4 ,footnote #adh3 ,see first ,note1 p4 #cch4 ,footnote #adi3 ,see second ,note1 p4 #cch4 ,footnote #aej3 ,engelhardt1 p4 #bbe4 ,schmidt's ,tauler1 p4 #fa4--,the same doctrine which furnished a sanctuary for the devotion of purer natures supplied also an excuse for the licence of the base4 ,wilful perversion1 or mere ignorance1 or some one of the manifold combinations of these two factors1 would work the mystical exhortation into some such result as that denounced by ,ruysbroek4 ,we may imagine some bewildered man as speaking thus within himself3--#8,so we are to covet ignorance1 to surmount distinctions1 to shun what is clear or vivid as mediate and comparatively carnal1 to transcend means and bid farewell to the wisdom of the schools4 ,wise and devout men forsake all their learning1 forget their pious toil and penance1 to lose themselves in that ground in which we are united to ,god1--to sink into vague abstract confusion4 ,but may ,i not do at first what they do at last8 ,why take in only to take out8 ,i am empty already4 ,thank heaven6 ,i haven't a distinct idea in my head4' ,it is so that the popular mind is sure to travesty the ultra-refinements of philosophy4 ,footnote #aea3 ,engelhardt1 pp4 #bbd-bbh4--;,eckart1 like ,hegel1 would seem to have left behind him a right-hand and a left-hand party1--admirers like ,suso and ,tauler1 who dropped his extreme points and held by such saving clauses as they found2 and headstrong spirits1 ripe for anarchy1 like these ,new-,lights or ,high-,fliers1 the representatives of mysticism run to seed4 ,ruysbroek's classification of them is somewhat artificial2 fanaticism does not distribute itself theologically4 ,in the treatise entitled ,spiegel der ,seligkeit1 #af1 he describes them generally as follows3--#8,ander quade duulische menschen vint men1 die segghen dat si selue ,cristus sijn of dat si god sijn1 ende dat haer hant hemel ende erde ghemaect heest1 ende dat an haer hant hanghet hemel ende erde ende alle dinc1 ende dat si verheuen sijn boven alle die sacramenten der heiligher kerken1 ende dat si der niet en behoeuen noch si en willen der ooc niet4' ,he represents their claim to identity with ,god as leading to a total moral indifference 7 #ag73--#8;,ende sulke wanen god sijn1 ende si en achten gheen dinc goet noch quaet1 in dien dat si hem ontbeelden connen ende in bloter ledicheit haer eighen wesen vinden ende besitten moghen4' ,their idea of the consummation of all things savours of the ,parisian heresy--the offspring of ,john ,scotus1 popularised by ,david of ,dinant and his followers4 ,the final restitution is to consist in the resolution of all creatures into the ,divine ,substance3--#8,so spreken si voort dat in den lesten daghe des ordels enghele ende duuele1 goede ende quade1 dese sullen alle werden een eenvoudighe substancie der godheit 444 ende na dan1 spreken si voort1 en sal god bekennen noch minnen hem seluen noch ghene creature'--7 #af74 ,footnote #aeb3 ,engelhardt1 pp4 #cbf-ccf4--;,good ,ruysbroek was fully entitled to the encomium placed in the mouth of ,tauler4 ,he himself1 like ,bernard1 would frequently perform the meanest offices of the cloister4 ,the happy spirit of brotherhood which prevailed among the canons of ,grnthal made a deep impression on that laborious practical reformer1 ,gerard ,groot1 when1 in #acgh1 he visited the aged prior4 ,what he then saw was not without its influence in the formation of that community with which his name is associated--the ,brethren of the ,common ,life4--,see ,ullmann1 ,reformatoren vor der ,reformation1 vol4 ii4 ,footnote #aec3 ,engelhardt1 p4 #ccj4--,ruysbroek inveighs with much detail against the vanities of female dress--as to those hair-pads1 sticking up like great horns1 they are just so many #8devil's nests4' ,footnote #aed3 ,ruysbroek expressed himself in these words to ,gerard ,groot 7,engelhardt1 p4 #afh74 ,in his touching description of the #8desolation' endured by the soul on its way upward toward the #8super-essential contemplation1' he makes the sufferer say1--#8,o ,lord1 since ,i am thine 7want ich din eygen bin71 ,i would as soon be in hell as in heaven1 if such should be thy good pleasure2 only do thy glorious will with me1 ,o ,lord6#8--,geistl4 ,hochzeit1 #cj4 ,ruysbroek1 like ,fnelon1 abandons himself thus only on the supposition that even in hell he should still retain the divine favour2--so impossible after all is the absolute disinterestedness toward which ,quietism aspires4 ,the ,flemish mystic distinguishes between the servants of ,god1 the friends1 and the sons4 ,those worshippers who stand in the relation of friends have still something of their own 7besitten oer inwendichkeit mit eygenscap7 in their love to ,god4 ,the sons ascend1 #8dying-wise1' to an absolute emptiness4 ,the friends still set value on divine bestowments and experiences2 the sons are utterly dead to self1 in bare modeless love 7in bloeter1 wiseloeser mynnen74 ,yet1 very inconsistently1 he represents the sons as more assured of eternal life than the friends4 7,von dem funkelnden ,steine1 #h47 ,footnote #aee3 ,a veritable personage4 ,he died in #acgg1 and left behind him a book recording the conflicts he underwent and the revelations vouchsafed him4 7,engelhardt1 p4 #cbf47 ,footnote #aef3 ,the lyrics of ,muscatblut are characterised by ,gervinus 7ii4 p4 #bbe71 and the same authority gives some account1 from the ,limburg ,chronicle1 of the famous friar1 leper1 and poet mentioned by ,arnstein4 ,,chapter ,,viii4 ,unde planctus et lamentum8 ,quid mentem non erigis8 ,quid revolvis monumentum8 ,tecum est quem diligis2 ,jesum quris1 et inventum ,habes1 nec intelligis4 ,unde gemis1 unde ploras8 ,verum habes gaudium4 ,in te latet quod ignoras ,doloris solatium4 ,intus habes1 quris foras ,languoris remedium4#aeg ,,hymn ,,of ,,the ,,fifteenth ,,century4 ,vivo sin vivir mi1 ,y tan alta vida espero ,que muero porque no muero4#aeh ,,st4 ,,theresa4 ,on the next evening ,atherton resumed his reading as follows3-- ,chronicle of ,adolph ,arnstein1 continued4 #aced4 ,march4 ,st4 ,brigitta's ,day4--,a fortnight ago this day1 there came to me1 to buy as goodly a battle-axe as could be made1 young ,sir ,ulric--the same who1 at the tourney the other day1 graced his new-won spurs by such gallant feats of arms4 ,we fell into talk about the great floods which have everywhere wrought of late such loss of life1 and cattle1 and husbandry4 ,he said he had but the day before saved the life of a monk who1 with his companion1 had been carried beyond his depth by the force of the water1 as they were wading across the fields4 #8,the one most in danger1' said ,ulric1 #8had a big book in his bosom4 ,as he flounders about1 out tumbles the book2 he lets go his staff1 and makes after it2 and souse he goes1 over head and ears in a twinkling4 ,the other stands stock still1 and bawls out to me for help4 ,i1 just sworn to succour the distressed and be true to the ,church1 spur ,roland1 plunge in1 and lift out the draggled1 streaming father by the hood1 half throttled and half drowned1 but clutching the book in his frozen fingers as though it were a standard or a fair lady's token4 ,i lay him before me across my horse2 his fellow catches hold of my stirrup1 and we land on the rising ground4 ,when my monk had somewhat come to himself1 he pours as many blessings on my head as there were drops running from his habit2 not1 he said1 for saving his poor life merely1 but that the book was safe4 ,he had just finished writing it--there was not another copy in the world--the devil had an especial spite against it--no doubt the fiend had raised the waters to destroy the seed which fed men's souls as well as the grain which nourished their bodies2 but the faithful ,god had sent me1 like his angel1 just in time for rescue4 ,i saw them in safety1 and he promised to remember me in his orisons4 ,his name1 ,i think he said1 was ,seusse or ,suso4'#aei ,so ,suso is in ,strasburg1 thought ,i1--the man ,i have long wished to see4 ,i lost no time in inquiring after him at the ,dominican convent4 ,there ,i found1 with no small satisfaction1 that he was none the worse for his mishap2 saw him several times1 and persuaded him1 at last1 to honour for a few days my unworthy roof4 ,he has been with us for a week1 but must pursue his journey to-morrow4 ,on my part1 ,i could tell him news about ,ruysbroek1 and ,tauler1 and some of his old friends at ,cologne4 ,on his1 he has won the love of all the household by his gentle1 affectionate nature1 blessed us by his prayers1 and edified every heart by his godly conversation4 ,my good wife would love him1 if for nothing else1 because he so loves the little ones4 ,they love him because he always goes with them to feed the old falcon1 and to throw out crumbs for the sparrows1 because he joins them in petting ,argus1 and talks so sweetly about the ,virgin and ,child1 and the lilies and violets and roses1 and the angels with gold-bright wings that live in heaven4 ,those three tall fellows1 my boys1 fonder of sword-play1 wrestling1 and camping the bar1 than of churchmen or church-going1 will listen to him by the hour1 while he tells of his visions1 his journeys1 his dangers1 and his deliverances4 ,rulman ,merswin also came over and spent two evenings with us4 ,he talked much with ,suso about ,master ,eckart4 ,suso was full of reminiscences and anecdotes about him4 ,in his youthful days he had been his disciple at ,cologne4 #8,at one time1' said ,suso1 #8,i was for ten years in the deepest spiritual gloom4 ,i could not realize the mysteries of the faith4 ,a decree seemed to have gone forth against me1 and ,i thought ,i was lost4 ,my cries1 my tears1 my penance1--all were vain4 ,i bethought me at last of consulting my old teacher1 left my cell1 sailed down the ,rhine1 and at ,cologne the ,lord gave to the words of the master such power that the prison-doors were opened1 and ,i stepped out into the sunshine once more4 ,neither did his counsel cease with life4 ,i saw him in a vision1 not long after his death4 ,he told me that his place was in the ineffable glory1 and that his soul was divinely transformed in ,god4 ,i asked him1 likewise1 several questions about heavenly things1 which he graciously answered1 strengthening me not a little in the arduous course of the inner life of self-annihilation4 ,i have marvelled often that any1 having tasted of the noble wine of his doctrine1 should desire any of my poor vintage4'#afj ,in talking with the brethren at the convent1 while ,suso was their guest1 ,i heard many things related concerning him altogether new to me4 ,i was aware that he had been greatly sought after as a preacher in ,german throughout the ,rhineland1 and stood high in the esteem of holy men as a wise and tender-hearted guide of souls4 ,that he was an especial friend of the ,friends of ,god wherever he found them1 ,i knew4 ,when at ,cologne ,i heard ,tauler praise a book of his which he had in his possession1 called the ,horologe of ,wisdom4#afa ,something of the fame of his austerities1 conflicts1 and revelations1 had come to my ears1 but the half had not been told me4 ,it seems that his life1 from his eighteenth to his fortieth year1 was one long self-torture4 ,the ,everlasting ,wisdom 7who is a tree of life to them that lay hold upon her1 more precious than rubies1 and with whom are durable riches and righteousness7 manifested herself to him4 ,this was his call to the spiritual life4 ,he seemed to behold her--a maiden1 bright as the sun1--her crown1 eternity2--her raiment1 blessedness2--her words1 sweetness2 unknown1 and yet well known2 near1 and yet afar off2 smiling on him1 and saying1 #8,my son1 give me thine heart6' ,from that time forth he dedicated his life to her service4 ,he called himself the servant of the ,eternal ,wisdom1 armed his soul as her knight1 wooed her as his heart's queen1 bore without a murmur the lover's pangs of coyness1 doubt1 and distance1 with all the hidden martyrdom of spiritual passion4#afb ,but the rose of his love1 as he is wont to term it1 had fearful thorns4 ,i heard with a shudder of what he underwent that he might crush to death his naturally active1 buoyant1 impulsive temperament4 ,day and night he wore a close-fitting shirt in which were a hundred and fifty sharp nails1 the points turned inward on the flesh4 ,in this he lay writhing1 like a mangled worm2 and lest in his sleep he should find some easier posture1 or relieve with his hands in any way the smart and sting that1 like a nest of vipers1 gnawed him everywhere1 he had leather gloves made1 covered with sharp blades1 so that every touch might make a wound4 ,time after time were the old scars opened into new gashes4 ,his body appeared like that of one who has escaped1 half dead1 from the furious clutches of a bear4 ,this lasted sixteen years1 till a vision bade him cease4 ,never satisfied with suffering1 he devised a new kind of discipline4 ,he fashioned a wooden cross1 with thirty nails whose points stood out beyond the wood1 and this he wore between his shoulders underneath his garments1 till his back was one loathly sore4 ,to the thirty nails he added afterwards seven more1 in honour of the sorrows of the ,mother of ,god4 ,when he would administer the discipline1 he struck a blow on this cross with his fist1 driving the points into his wounded flesh4 ,he made himself1 moreover1 a scourge1 one of the iron tags of which was bent like a fisher's hook1 and with this he lashed himself till it broke in his hand4 ,for many years he lay at nights in a miserable hole he called his cell1 with an old door for his bed1 and in the depth of winter thought it sin to approach the stove for warmth4 ,his convent lay on a little island where the ,rhine flows out of the ,lake of ,constance4 ,he could see the sparkling water on every side4 ,his wounds filled him with feverish thirst2 yet he would often pass the whole day without suffering a drop to moisten his lips4 ,his recompence was the vision in which1 at one time1 the ,holy ,child brought him a vessel of spring-water2 and1 at another1 ,our ,blessed ,lady gave him to drink from her own heart4 ,such1 they tell me1 was his life till his fortieth year1 when it was signified to him that he should remit these terrible exercises4 ,he is now1 ,i believe1 little more than fifty years old--the mere wreck of a man to look at2 but with such life and energy of spirit that1 now he hath begun to live more like other people1 he may have a good thirty years before him still4#afc ,i questioned him about his book called the ,horologe of ,wisdom1 or ,book of the ,eternal ,wisdom1 for it hath gone abroad under both names4 ,he said it was finished in the year #acdj1 since which time he hath written sundry other pieces4 ,he declared to me that he wrote that treatise only in his most favoured moments1 himself ignorant and passive1 but under the immediate impulse and illumination of the ,divine ,wisdom4 ,he afterwards carefully examined all he had written1 to be sure that there was nothing in his pages other than the holy ,fathers had taught1 and the ,church received4#afd ,methought1 if he was sure of his inspiration1 he might have spared himself this pain1 unless the ,holy ,spirit could in some sort gainsay his own words4 ,he is strongly moved by music1--but what must have been his rapture to hear the hymns of the heavenly host6 ,he has seen himself surrounded by the choir of seraphim and cherubim4 ,he has heard a voice of thrilling sweetness lead the response1 #8,arise and shine1 ,jerusalem1' and has wept in his cell with joy to hear from angels' lips1 at early dawn1 the soaring words1 #8,mary1 the morning star1 is risen to-day4' ,many a time has he seen a heavenly company sent down to comfort him4 ,they have taken him by the hand1 and he has joined in spirit in their dance1--that celestial dance1 which is a blissful undulation to and fro in the depths of the divine glory4 ,one day1 when thus surrounded in vision1 he asked a shining prince of heaven to show him the mode in which ,god had ,his secret dwelling in his soul4 ,then answered the angel1 #8,take a gladsome look into thine inmost1 and see how ,god in thy loving soul playeth ,his play of love4' ,straightway 7said ,suso to me7 ,i looked1 and behold the body about my heart was clear as crystal1 and ,i saw the ,eternal ,wisdom calmly sitting in my heart in lovely wise3 and1 close by that form of beauty1 my soul1 leaning on ,god1 embraced by ,his arm1 pressed to ,his heart1 full of heavenly longing1 transported1 intoxicated with love6#afe ,we were talking one evening of ,may-day eve1 and asking ,suso wherein their custom of celebrating that festival differed from our own4 ,he said that in ,suabia the youths went out1 much in our fashion1 singing songs before the houses of the maidens they loved1 and craving from them garlands in honour of the ,may4 ,he told us how he1 in like manner1 besought ,our ,lady with prayers and tears that he might have a garland from her ,son1 the ,eternal ,wisdom4 ,it was his wont1 he said1 to set up a spiritual ,may-pole--the holy cross1 that ,may-bough of the soul1 blossoming with grace and beauty4 #8,before this1' he continued1 #8,i performed six venias1#aff and sung the hymn1 #8,hail1 holy cross6' thereafter praising ,god somewhat thus3-- #8,hail6 heavenly ,may of the ,eternal ,wisdom1 whose fruit is everlasting joy4 ,first1 to honour thee1 ,i bring thee1 to-day1 for every red rose a heart's love2 then1 for every little violet a lowly inclination2 next1 for every tender lily1 a pure embrace2 for every bright flower ever born or to be born of ,may1 on heath or grassplot1 wood or field1 tree or meadow1 my heart doth bring thee a spiritual kiss2 for every happy song of birds that ever sang in the kindly ,may1 my soul would give thee praises inexhaustible2 for every grace that ever graced the ,may1 my heart would raise thee a spiritual song1 and pray thee1 ,o thou blest soul's ,may6 to help me so to glorify thee in my little time below1 that ,i may taste thy living fruit for evermore above6#8#afg ,the beginning of a new stage of trial was made known to him by the appearance1 in a vision1 of an angel1 bringing him the attire and the shoes of a knight4 ,with these he was to gird himself for new and yet more terrible conflicts4 ,concerning his own austerities he never speaks1 nor does he show to any one the letters of the name of ,jesus1 which he is said to have cut with a style upon his bosom4 ,but of the sufferings which came upon him from without1 he talks freely4 ,at one time1 when in ,flanders1 he was brought before the chapter on a charge of heresy2 but his enemies gained not their wicked end4#afh ,he was in greatest danger of his life shortly before the coming of the plague1 when the fearful rumour was abroad about the poisoning of the wells4 ,he himself told me the story1 as follows3-- #8,i was once despatched on a journey in the service of the convent1 and they gave me as my companion a half-witted lay-brother4 ,we had not been many days on the road1 when1 one morning1 having early left our quarters for the night1 we arrived1 after a long1 hungry walk through the rain1 at a village on the banks of the ,rhine4 ,it happened to be the fair-time4 ,the street was full of booths and stalls1 horses and cattle1 country-folk1 players1 pedlers1 and idle roystering soldiers4 ,my fellow-traveller1 ,peter1 catches sight of a sign1 and turns in straightway to warm himself at the fire1 telling me ,i can go on1 do what ,i have to do1 and ,i shall find him there4 ,as ,i learnt after1 he sits himself down to table with a ruffianly set of drovers and traders that had come to the fair1 who first of all make him half-drunk1 and then seize him1 and swear he has stolen a cheese4 ,at this moment there come in four or five troopers1 hardened fellows1 ripe for any outrage1 who fall on him also1 crying1 #8,the scoundrel monk is a poisoner4' ,the clamour soon gathers a crowd4 #8,when ,peter sees matters at this pass1 he piteously cries out to them to loose him1 and stand still and listen3 he will confess everything4 ,with that they let go their hold1 and he1 standing trembling in the midst of them1 begins3 #8,look at me1 sirs1--you see ,i am a fool2 they call me silly1 and nobody cares for what ,i say3 but my companion1 he is a wise man1 so our ,order has given him the poison-bag1 and he is to poison all the springs between here and ,alsace4 ,he is gone now to throw some into the spring here1 to kill every one that is come to the fair4 ,that is why ,i stayed here1 and would not go with him4 ,you may be sure that what ,i say is true1 for you will see him when he comes with a great wallet full of bags of poison and gold pieces1 which he and the ,order have received from the ,jews for this murderous business4' #8,at these words they all shouted1 #8,after the murderer6 ,stop him6 ,stop him6' ,one seized a spear1 another an axe1 others the first tool or weapon they could lay hands on1 and all hurried furiously from house to house1 and street to street1 breaking open doors1 ransacking closets1 stabbing the beds1 and thrusting in the straw with their swords1 till the whole fair was in an uproar4 ,some friends of mine1 who heard my name mentioned1 assured them of my innocence of such an abominable crime1 but to no purpose4 ,at last1 when they could nowhere find me1 they carried ,peter off to the bailiff1 who shut him up in the prison4 #8,when ,i came back to the inn1 knowing nothing of all this1 the host told me what had befallen ,peter1 and how this evil rumour had stirred up the whole fair against me4 ,i hastened off to the bailiff to beg ,peter's release4 ,he refused4 ,i spent nearly the whole day in trying to prevail with him1 and in going about in vain to get bail4 ,at last1 about vesper time1 with a heavy sum of gulden ,i opened the heart of the bailiff and the doors of the jail4 #8,then my greatest troubles began4 ,as ,i passed through the village1 hoping to escape unknown1 ,i was recognised by some of the mob1 and in a moment they were swarming about me4 #8,down with the poisoner6' they cried4 #8,his gold shall not serve him with us as it did with the bailiff4' ,i ran a little way1 but they closed me in again1 some saying1 #8,drown him in the ,rhine2' others answering1 #8,no1 burn him6 he'll poison the whole river if you throw him in4' ,then ,i saw 7methinks ,i see him now7 a gigantic peasant in a russet jerkin1 forcing his way through the crowd1 with a pike in his hand4 ,seizing me by the throat with one hand1 and flourishing the pike in the other1 he shouted1 #8,hear me1 all of you4 ,let me spit him with my long pike1 like a poisonous toad1 and then plant it in this stout hedge here1 and let the caitiff howl and twist in the air till his soul goes home to the devil4 ,then every one that goes by will see his withered carcass1 rotting and wasting1 and sink him deeper down in hell with curses4 ,come on1--it serves him right4' #8,my brain swam round4 ,i closed my eyes4 ,i expected the next instant to feel the iron4 ,by some merciful interposition1 the wretch was not suffered to execute his purpose4 ,i thought ,i saw some of the better sort looking on with horror-stricken faces1 but they dared not interfere4 ,the women shrieked and wrung their hands4 ,i made my way from one to another of those who seemed least pitiless1 beseeching them to save me4 ,heaven must have heard my cries1 though man did not4 ,they stood round watching me1 disputing with horrid oaths among themselves what they should do4 ,at length--as ,i had sunk on my knees under the hedge1 praying for deliverance--,i saw a priest1 more like an angel than a man1 mightily thrusting them from side to side1 and when he reached me1 laying his hand on my arm1 he looked round on the ring of savage faces1 and threatened them with the hottest curses of the ,church if they harmed a hair upon the head of her servant2 outvoiced their angry cries with loud rebukes of their cowardice1 cruelty1 and sacrilege1 and led me out safely through them all4 ,he brought me to his house1 made fast the doors1 refreshed and sheltered me for the night1 and by the earliest dawn ,i was away and safe upon my journey1 while that abode of the wicked was sunk in its drunken sleep4 ,i keep the anniversary of that dreadful day1 and never shall ,i cease to praise the goodness which answered my prayer in the hour of need1 and delivered me as a bird from the snare of the fowler4#afi #8,on one other occasion only1' continued ,suso1 #8did ,i taste so nearly the bitterness of death4' ,we begged him to tell us the adventure1 and so he did1 somewhat thus-- #8,i was once on my way home from ,flanders1 travelling up the ,rhine4 ,a great feebleness and sickness had been upon me for some days1 so that ,i could not walk fast1 and my companion1 young and active1 had gone on about two miles ahead4 ,i entered an old forest whose trees overhung the steep river bank4 ,it was evening1 and it seemed to grow dark in a moment as ,i entered the chilling shadow of a wood1 in which many a defenceless passenger had been robbed and slain4 ,i had gone on deeper and deeper into the growing gloom1 the wind among the pines sounding like a hungry sea4 ,the fall of my own footsteps seemed like the tread of one coming after me4 ,i stood still and hearkened4 ,it was no one2 when suddenly ,i saw1 not far off among the trees1 two persons1 a man and a woman1 talking together and watching me4 ,i trembled in every limb1 but ,i made the sign of the cross1 and passed on4 ,soon ,i heard quick footsteps behind me4 ,i turned--it was the woman4 ,she was young and fair to look on4 ,she asked my name1 and when she learnt it1 said she knew and reverenced me greatly1 told me how that robber with whom ,i saw her had forced her to become his wife1 and prayed me there and then to hear her confession4 #8,when ,i had shriven her1 think how my fear was heightened to see her go back and talk long and earnestly with the robber1 whose brow grew dark1 as he left her without a word1 and advanced gloomily towards where ,i stood4 ,it was a narrow pathway2 on the one side the forest1 on the other the precipice1 sheer down to the rapid river4 ,alas1 thought ,i1 as my heart sank within me1 now ,i am lost4 ,i have not strength to flee3 no one will hear a cry for help3 he will slay me1 and hide the body in the wood4 ,all was still4 ,i listened in vain for the sound of a boat1 a voice1 or even the bark of a dog4 ,i only heard the feet of the outlaw and the violent beating of my own heart4 ,but1 lo6 when he approached me1 he bowed his knee1 and began to confess4 ,blessed ,mary1 what a black catalogue6 ,while he spake ,i heard1 motionless1 every word of the horrible recital1 and yet ,i was all the time listening for rescue1 watching his face1 and minutely noting every little thing about his person4 ,i remember the very graining of the wood of his lance which he laid aside on the grass when he knelt to me--the long knife in his belt--his frayed black doublet--his rough red hair1 growing close down to his shaggy eyebrows--two great teeth that stood out like tusks--and his hands clasped1 covered with warts1 and just the colour of the roots of the tree by which ,i stood4 ,even during those fearful moments1 ,i can call to mind distinctly how ,i marked a little shining insect that was struggling among the blades of grass1 climbing over a knot of wood1 and that got upon a fir-cone and fell off upon its back4 #8,after revealing to me crimes that made my blood run cold1 he went on to say1 #8,i was once in this forest1 just about this hour of the day1 on the look-out for booty as ,i was this evening1 when ,i met a priest1 to whom ,i confessed myself4 ,he was standing just where you are now1 and when my shrift was ended1 ,i drew out this knife1 stabbed him to the heart1 and rolled his body down there into the ,rhine4' ,when ,i heard this1 the cold sweat burst out upon my face2 ,i staggered back giddy1 almost senseless1 against the tree4 ,seeing this1 the woman ran up1 and caught me in her arms1 saying1 #8,good sir1 fear nothing1 he will not kill you4' ,whereat the murderer said1 #8,i have heard much good of you1 and that shall save your life to-day4 ,pray for me1 good father1 that1 through you1 a miserable sinner may find mercy in his last hour4' ,at this ,i breathed again1 and promised to do as he would have me4 ,then we walked on some way together1 till they parted from me1 and ,i reached the skirts of the wood1 where sat my companion waiting4 ,i could just stagger up to him1 and then fell down at his side1 shivering like a man with the ague4 ,after some time ,i arose1 and we went on our way4 ,but ,i failed not1 with strong inward groaning1 to plead with the ,lord for the poor outlaw1 that he might find grace and escape damnation4 ,and1 in sooth1 ,i had so strong an assurance vouchsafed to me of ,god1 that ,i could not doubt of his final salvation4' ,with stories such as these of what befel himself1 and many others1 whom he knew in ,suabia and the ,oberland1 or met with on his journeys1 the holy man whiled away our windy ,march nights by the ingle4 ,very edifying it was to hear him and ,rulman ,merswin talk together about the higher experiences of the inward life4 ,concerning the stages thereof1 ,suso said that the first consisted in turning away from the world and the lusts of the flesh to ,god3 the second1 in patient endurance of all that is contrary to flesh and blood1 whether inflicted of ,god or man3 the third1 in imitating the sufferings of ,christ1 and forming ourselves after his sweet doctrine1 gracious walk1 and pure life4 ,after this1 the soul must withdraw itself into a profound stillness1 as if the man were dead1 willing and purposing nought but the glory of ,christ and our heavenly ,father1 and with a right lowly demeanour toward friend and foe4 ,then the spirit1 thus advanced in holy exercise1 arriveth at freedom from the outward senses1 before so importunate2 and its higher powers lose themselves in a supernatural sensibility4 ,here the spirit parts with its natural properties1 presses within the circle which represents the eternal ,godhead1 and reaches spiritual perfection4 ,it is made free by the ,son in the ,son4 #8,this ,i call1' he said1 #8the transit of the soul1--it passes beyond time and space1 and is1 with an amorous inward intuition1 dissolved in ,god4 ,this entrance of the soul banishes all forms1 images1 and multiplicity2 it is ignorant of itself and of all things2 it hovers1 reduced to its essence1 in the abyss of the ,trinity4 ,at this elevation there is no effort1 no struggle2 the beginning and the end are one4#agj ,here the ,divine ,nature doth1 as it were1 embrace1 and inwardly kiss through and through1 the soul2 that they may be for ever one4#aga ,he who is thus received into the ,eternal ,nothing is in the ,everlasting ,now1 and hath neither before nor after4 ,rightly hath ,st4 ,dionysius said that ,god is ,non-being--that is1 above all our notions of being4#agb ,we have to employ images and similitudes1 as ,i must do in seeking to set forth these truths1 but know that all such figures are as far below the reality as a blackamoor is unlike the sun4#agc ,in this absorption whereof ,i speak1 the soul is still a creature1 but1 at the time1 hath no thought whether it be creature or no4'#agd ,suso repeated several times this saying--#8,a man of true self-abandonment must be unbuilt from the creature1 in-built with ,christ1 and over-built into the ,godhead4'#age ,we bid adieu with much regret to this excellent man1 and his visit will abide long in our memory4 ,we drew from him a half promise that he would come to see us yet again4 ,may1 #aced4--,oh1 most happy ,may6 ,my brother ,otto hath returned1 after trading to and fro so long in foreign parts4 ,he is well and wealthy1 and will venture forth no more4 ,what store of marvellous tales hath he about the ,east6 ,what hairs-breadth escapes to relate1 and what precious and curious things to show6 ,verily1 were ,i to write down here all he hath to tell of1 ,i might be writing all my days4 ,only one thing will ,i note1 while ,i think of it4 ,he visited ,mount ,athos1 now fourteen years ago3 he described to me the beauty of the mountain1 with its rich olives and lovely gardens1 and the whole neighourhood studded with white convents and hermitages of holy men4 ,some of the monasteries were on rocks so steep that he had to be drawn up by a rope in a basket to enter them4 ,the shrines were wondrous rich with gold and silver and precious stones4 ,but nowhere1 he said1 was he more martyred by fleas4 ,when he was there1 a new doctrine or practice which had sprung up among the monks 7taught1 it is said1 by a certain ,abbot ,simeon71 was making no small stir4 ,there was to be a synod held about it at that time in ,constantinople4 ,it seems that some of the monks 7called1 if ,i mistake not1 ,hesychasts7 held that if a man shut himself up in a corner of his cell1 with his chin upon his breast1 turning his thoughts inward1 gazing towards his navel1 and centering all the strength of his mind on the region of the heart2 and1 not discouraged by at first perceiving only darkness1 held out at this strange inlooking for several days and nights1 he would at length behold a divine glory1 and see himself luminous with the very light which was manifested on ,mount ,tabor4 ,they call these devotees ,navel-contemplators4 ,a sorry business6 ,all the monks1 for lack of aught else to do1 were by the ears about it1--either trying the same or reviling it4#agf ,methought if our heretics have their extravagances and utmost reaches of mystical folly here1 there are some worse still among those lazy ,greeks4 ,,kate4 ,and is that the end of ,arnstein's journal8 ,,atherton4 ,no more has come down to posterity4 ,,mrs4 ,,atherton4 ,that last piece of news from ,mount ,athos seems quite familiar to me4 ,i have just been reading ,curzon's ,monasteries of the ,levant1 and thanks to him1 ,i can imagine the scenery of the mountain and its neighourhood3 the ,byzantine convents1 with their many little windows rounded at the top1 the whole structure full of arches and domes1--the little farms interspersed1 with their white square towers and cottages of stone at the foot1--the forests of gigantic plane trees1 with an underwood of aromatic evergreens1--flowers like those in the conservatory everywhere growing wild1--waterfalls at the head of every valley1 dashing down over marble rocks1--and the bells1 heard tinkling every now and then1 to call the monks to prayer4 ,,willoughby4 ,the crass stupidity of those ,omphalopsychi shows how little mere natural beauty can contribute to refine and cultivate1--at any rate when the pupils are ascetics4 ,the contemporary mysticism of the ,east looks mean enough beside the speculation1 the poetry1 and the action of the ,german mystics of the fourteenth century4 ,it is but the motionless abstraction of the ,indian ,yogi over again4 ,,atherton4 ,yet you will be unjust to the ,greek ,church 7which has little enough to boast of7 if you reckon this gross materialist ,quietism as the only specimen of mysticism she has to show during this period4 ,there was a certain ,cabasilas1 ,archbishop of ,thessalonica1#agg a contemporary of our ,german friends1 an active man in the political and religious movements of the time1 whose writings exhibit very fairly the better characteristics of ,byzantine mysticism4 ,his earnest practical devotion rests on the basis of the traditional sacerdotalism1 but he stands between the extremes of the objective and the subjective mysticism1 though naturally somewhat nearer to the former4 ,he presents1 however1 nothing original to detain us2--so let us away to supper4 ,note to page #ced4 ,the following passage1 placed in the mouth of the ,everlasting ,wisdom may serve as a further specimen of the sensuous and florid cast of ,suso's language3-- #8,i am the throne of joy1 ,i am the crown of bliss4 ,mine eyes are so bright1 my mouth so tender1 my cheeks so rosy-red1 and all my form so winning fair1 that were a man to abide in a glowing furnace till the ,last ,day1 it would be a little price for a moment's vision of my beauty4 ,behold6 ,i am so beauteously adorned with a robe of glory1 so delicately arrayed in all the blooming colours of the living flowers--red roses1 white lilies1 lovely violets1 and flowers of every name1 that the fair blossoms of all ,mays1 and the tender flowerets of all sunny fields1 and the sweet sprays of all bright meadows1 are but as a rugged thistle beside my loveliness4' 7,then he breaks into verse73-- #8,i play in the ,godhead the play of joy1 ,and gladden the angel host on high ,with a sweetness such that a thousand years ,like a vanishing hour of time run by4 #8444 ,happy he who shall share the sweet play1 and tread at my side the joy-dance of heaven for ever in gladsome security4 ,one word from my sweet mouth surpasses all the songs of angels1 the sound of all harps1 and all sweet playing on stringed instruments4444 ,lo6 ,i am a good so absolute that he who hath in time but one single drop thereof finds all the joy and pleasure of this world a bitterness1--all wealth and honour worthless4 ,those dear ones who love me are embraced by my sweet love1 and swim and melt in the sole ,unity with a love which knows no form1 no figure1 no spoken words1 and are borne and dissolved into the ,good from whence they sprang1' c4--,leben1 cap4 vii4 p4 #aii4 ,the following is a sample of ,suso's old ,suabian ,german1 from the extracts given by ,wackernagel1 p4 #hhe3-- #8,entwrt der ewigen wisheit4 ,zuo uallende lon lit an sunderlicher frd4 die diu sel gewinnet von sunderlichen vnd erwirdigen werken mit dien si hie gesiget hat4 alz die hohen lerer1 die starken marterer4 ,vnd die reinen iungfrowen4 ,aber wesentliche lon4 lit an schwlicher ver einung der sele mit der blossen gotheit4 ,wan e geruowet si niemer1 e si gefueret wirt ber alle ir krefte vnd mugentheit4 vnd gewiset wirt in der personen naturlich wesentheit4 ,vnd in dez wesens einvaltig blosheit4 ,vnd in dem gegenwurf vindet si denn genuegde vnd ewige selikeit4 ,vnd ie ab gescheidener lidiger usgang4 ie frier uf gang41 ,vnd ie frier uf gang4 ie neher in gang4 in die wilden wuesti4 vnd in daz tief ab grnde der wiselosen gotheit in die siu versenket ver swemmet vnd uer einet werdent4 daz siu nit anderz mugen wellen denn daz got wil1 vnd daz ist daz selb wesen daz do got ist4 daz ist daz siu selig sint4 von genaden4 als er selig ist von nature4 ,answer of the ,everlasting ,wisdom4--,adventitious reward consists in a particular joy which souls receive for particular worthy deeds wherein they have here been conquerors1--such1 for example1 are the lofty teachers1 the stout martyrs1 and the pure virgins4 ,but essential reward consists in contemplative union of the soul with the bare ,godhead3 for she resteth not until she be carried above all her own powers and possibility1 and led into the natural essentiality of the ,persons1 and into the simple absoluteness of the ,essence4 ,and in the reaction she finds satisfaction and everlasting bliss4 ,and the more separate and void the passage out 7of self71 the more free the passage up2 and the freer the passage up1 the nearer the passage into the wild waste and deep abyss of the unsearchable ,godhead1 in which the souls are sunk and dissolved and united1 so that they can will nothing but what ,god wills1 and become of one nature with ,god1--that is to say1 are blessed by grace as ,he is blessed by nature4 ,footnote #aeg3 ,why smite thy breast and lament8 why not lift up thy soul8 why meditate for ever on the sign8 ,he thou lovest is within thee4 ,thou seekest ,jesus--thou hast him2 he is found1 and thou perceivest it not4 ,why these groans1 this weeping8 ,the true joy is thine2 hidden within thee1 though thou knowest it not1 lies the solace of thine anguish2 thou hast within1 thou seekest without1 the cure for thy languishing soul4 ,footnote #aeh3 ,i live1 but with no life of mine1 and long towards a life so high--,i die because ,i do not die4 ,footnote #aei3 ,the ,life of ,suso1 published in ,diepenbrock's edition of his works1 was written by his spiritual daughter1 ,elsbet ,stglin1 according to the account she received at various intervals from his own lips4 ,he sprang from a good family1--his name1 originally ,heinrich vom ,berg4 ,the name of ,suso he adopted from his mother1 a woman remarkable for her devotion4 ,the secret name of ,amandus1 concealed till after his death1 was supposed to have been conferred by the ,everlasting ,wisdom himself on his beloved servant4 ,the incident of the rescue of himself and his book from the floods1 by the timely intervention of a knight passing that way1 is related in the twenty-ninth chapter of the ,life1 p4 #fh4 ,footnote #afj3 ,heinrich ,suso's ,leben und ,schriften1 von ,m4 ,diepenbrock 7#ahcg71 pp4 #ae1 #ea1 #hf4 ,diepenbrock's book is an edition of the biography by ,stglin1 and of the ,book of the ,everlasting ,wisdom1 c41 from the oldest manuscripts and editions1 and rendered into modern ,german4 ,footnote #afa3 ,leben1 cap4 #dh1--where it is also said that1 on one occasion1 as #8the servant was preaching at ,cologne1 one of his auditors beheld his face luminous with a supernatural effulgence4' ,it is known that ,tauler possessed a copy of the ,horologium ,sapienti4 ,see also ,schmidt's ,tauler1 p4 #afi4 ,comp4 ,leben1 cap4 xxxi4 p4 #gb1 and cap4 xlix4 ,footnote #afb3 ,leben1 cap4 iv4 ,footnote #afc3 ,leben1 cap4 xvii4-xx4 ,suso died in #ache at ,ulm2 he was born about the commencement of the century4 ,footnote #afd3 ,suso sent a ,latin version of the book of the ,everlasting ,wisdom1 under the title ,horologium ,sapienti1 to ,hugo von ,vaucemain1 ,master of the ,order1 for his approval4 ,the date of the work is fixed between #accc and #acdb4 ,the prologue contains the account of the #8inspiratio superna' under which the work was written4--7,diepenb4 ,vorbericht1 p4 #f47 ,it was translated ere long into ,french1 ,dutch1 and ,english1 and appears to have been in the fourteenth century almost what the ,imitatio ,christi became in the fifteenth4--,ibid41 p4 #ae4 ,footnote #afe3 ,leben1 cap4 vi4 ,footnote #aff3 ,reverences or prostrations4 ,footnote #afg3 ,leben1 capp4 x4 and xiv4 ,footnote #afh3 ,leben1 cap4 xxii4 p #e2 and xxv4 ,footnote #afi3 ,this incident is related at length in the twenty-seventh chapter of the ,life2 and the adventure with the robber1 which follows1 in the succeeding4 ,the account given in the text follows closely in all essential particulars the narrative in the biography4 ,footnote #agj3 ,leben1 cap4 lvii4 ,suso speaks to this effect in a dialogue with his spiritual daughter4 ,she describes in another place 7p4 #gd7 how she drew ,suso on to talk on these high themes1 and then wrote down what follows4 ,footnote #aga3 ,ibid41 cap4 xxxiv4 p4 #hj2 and comp4 ,buch4 d4 ,e4 ,weisheit1 cap4 vii4 p4 #aii4 ,footnote #agb3 ,buchlein von d4 ,e4 ,weisheit1 ,buch4 iii4 cap4 ii42 and ,leben1 cap4 lvi4 p4 #afh1 and p4 #cjb4 ,footnote #agc3 ,leben1 p4 #aga4 ,footnote #agd3 ,extravagant as are his expressions concerning the absorption in ,god1 ,suso has still numerous passages designed to preclude pantheism2 declaring that the distinction between the ,creator and the creature is nowise infringed by the essential union he extols4 ,the dialogue with the #8nameless ,wild1' already alluded to1 is an example4--,comp4 ,leben1 cap4 lvi4 pp4 #aff1 #afg1 and ,buch4 d4 ,e4 ,w41 ,buch4 iii4 cap4 vi4 ,footnote #age3 ,leben1 cap4 liii4 p4 #adh4 ,see ,note1 p4 #ceg4 ,footnote #agf3 ,schrckh's ,kirchengeschichte1 vol4 xxxiv4 pp4 #dca-dej4 ,footnote #agg3 ,see ,die ,mystik des ,nikolaus ,cabasilas vom ,leben in ,christo1 von ,dr4 ,w4 ,gass 7#ahdi74--;,in this work1 ,dr4 ,gass publishes1 for the first time1 the ,greek text of the seven books1 ,de ,vita in ,christo1 with an able introduction4 ,the authority for this summary of the theological tendency of ,cabasilas will be found1 pp4 #baj-bbd4 ,,chapter ,,ix4 ,di ,meistere sprechen von zwein antlitzen der sle4 ,daz eine antlitze ist gekart in dise werlt4 ,daz ander antlitze ist gekart di richte in got4 ,in diseme antlitze lchtet und brennet got wiclchen1 der mensche wizzes oder enwizzes nicht4#agh--;,,hermann ,,von ,,fritzlar4 ,,kate4 ,i should like to know what became of our mysterious #8,layman1' ,nicholas of ,basle4 ,,atherton4 ,he lived on many years1 the hidden ubiquitous master-spirit of the ,friends of ,god2 expending his wealth in restless rapid travels to and fro1 and in aiding the adherents of the good cause2 suddenly appearing1 now in the north and now in the south1 to encourage and exhort1 to seek out new disciples and to confirm the old2 and again vanishing as suddenly1 concealing his abode even from his spiritual children1 while sending them frequent tracts and letters by his trusty messenger ,ruprecht2 growing ever more sad and earnest under repeated visions of judgment overhanging ,christendom2 studying the ,scriptures 7which had opened his eyes to so much of ,romanist error7 somewhat after the old ,covenanter fashion1 with an indiscriminate application of ,old ,testament history1 and a firm belief that his revelations were such as prophets and apostles enjoyed1--till1 at last1 at the close of the century1 he was overtaken at ,vienna by the foe he had so often baffled1 and the ,inquisition yet more ennobled a noble life by the fiery gift of martyrdom4#agi ,,gower4 ,i can well imagine what a basilisk eye the ,inquisition must have kept on these lay-priests--these indefatigable writers and preachers to the people in the forbidden vernacular--these ,friends of ,god1 ,beghards1 and ,waldenses2 and on those audacious ,ishmaels1 the ,brethren of the ,free ,spirit1 most of all4 ,i fancy ,i see it1 lurking always on the edge of any light1 watching and watching1 as they say the ,indian lizard does1 crouched in the shadow just outside the circle of light a lamp makes upon the ceiling1 to snatch up with its arrowy tongue the moths which fly toward the fascinating brightness4 ,,willoughby4 ,and do not let us forget that even those pantheistic ,brethren of the ,free ,spirit1 with all their coarseness and violence of exaggeration1 held at least some little truth1 and might plead a large excuse4 ,if some of them broke blindly through all restraint1 they made at any rate a breach in priestcraft better used by better men4-- ,,gower4--,just as the track where buffaloes have made their huge crashing way through the forest1 has often guided the hunter of the backwoods4 ,,atherton4 ,we must not think that the efforts of such a man as ,nicholas were fruitless1 whatever the apparent success of his persecutors4-- ,,gower4--,though history has paid him too little attention1 and though the ,inquisition paid him too much4 ,how ,i love to find examples of that consoling truth that no well-meant effort for ,god and man can ever really die--that the relics of vanished1 vanquished endeavours are gathered up and conserved1 and by the spiritual chemistry of ,providence transformed into a new life in a new age1 so that the dead rise1 and mortality puts on immortality4 ,the lessons such men scattered1 though they might seem to perish1 perpetuated a hidden life till ,luther's time2--like the dead leaves about the winter tree1 they preserved the roots from the teeth of the frost1 and covered a vitality within1 which was soon to blossom on every bough in the sunshine of the ,reformation4 ,,atherton4 ,our fourteenth century1 so full of mysticism both in ,east and ,west1 has some other mystical products to show1 principally of the visionary1 theurgic species4 ,there is ,st4 ,brigitta1 a widow of rank1 leaving her ,swedish pine forests to visit ,palestine1 and after honouring with a pilgrimage every shrine and relic in southern ,europe1 fixing her residence at ,rome1 to the great pecuniary advantage of the faithful there4 ,she writes a discourse on the ,blessed ,virgin at the dictation of an angel1 who visited her punctually for the purpose3 indites bombastic invocations to the eyes1 ears1 hair1 chin1 c41 of the ,saviour2 and ditto to ditto of the ,virgin2 and1 what was not quite so bad1 gives to the world a series of revelations and prophecies1 in which the vices of popes and prelates are lashed unsparingly1 and threatened with speedy judgment4#ahj ,,willoughby4 ,it would be interesting to trace this series of reformatory prophets1 male and female4 ,from the twelfth to the close of the fifteenth century there is a succession of them1 called forth by the hideousness of ecclesiastical corruption--,hildegard1 ,joachim1 ,brigitta1 ,savonarola4 ,,gower4 ,do not forget ,dante4 ,,atherton4 ,you hear them all executing variations1 plaintive or indignant1 menacing or despairing1 on the old and never antiquated theme-- ,curia ,romana non petit ovem sine lan1 ,dantes exaudit1 non dantibus ostia claudit4 ,,gower4 ,and1 to silence these complaints1 the ,church found inquisitors and censors of service1 but most of all--her pattern children--those enthusiasts whose painful labours were employed to quiet the croaking1 much as the lord in old feudal times would often exercise his right of compelling a vassal to spend a night or two in beating the waters of the ponds1 to stop the frog-chorus there1 and procure his master an easy sleep4 ,obedient enthusiasm toils all night that cardinals may snore4 ,,atherton4 ,angela de ,foligni1 who made herself miserable--,i must say something the converse of flourished--about the beginning of the fourteenth century1 was a fine model pupil of this sort1 a genuine daughter of ,st4 ,francis4 ,her mother1 her husband1 her children dead1 she is alone and sorrowful4 ,she betakes herself to violent devotion--falls ill--suffers incessant anguish from a complication of disorders--has rapturous consolations and terrific temptations--is dashed in a moment from a seat of glory above the empyrean to a depth so low that the floor of hell might be its zenith4 ,she tells us how1 on her way to ,assisi1 the ,saviour addressed her1 called her his love1 his sweet1 his joy2 and manifested himself within her soul as he had never done to evangelist or apostle4 ,on one occasion1 her face shone with a divine glory1 her eyes were as flaming lamps2 on another1 a star proceeded from her side1 broke into a thousand beautiful colours1 and glided upwards into the sky4#aha ,,willoughby4 ,a notable example of mystical pyrotechny4 ,,atherton4 ,her etherialised olfactories were gratified by odours of indescribable fragrance2 and to her exalted taste1 the consecrated wafer became almost insupportably delicious4 ,visions and ecstasies by scores are narrated from her lips in the wretched ,latin of ,arnold the ,minorite4 ,all is naught6 ,the flattest and most insipid reading in the world--from first to last a repetition of the old stock phrase1 #8feelings more readily imagined than described4' ,she concludes every account by saying1 #8,no words can describe what ,i enjoyed2' and each rapture is declared to surpass in bliss all the preceding4 ,,lowestoffe4 ,enough6 enough6 ,,atherton4 ,catharine of ,siena---- ,,willoughby4 ,no more1 pray4 ,,atherton4 ,only this one4 ,catharine of ,siena closes the century4 ,she is a specimen somewhat less wretched1 of this delirious mysticism4 ,her visions began when she was six years old1 and a solemn betrothal to our ,lord was celebrated1 with ring and vow1 not very long after4 ,she travelled through the cities and hamlets of ,italy1 teaching1 warning1 expostulating1 and proclaiming to assembled crowds the wonders she had seen in heaven and hell during that trance in which all had thought her dead4 ,she journeyed from ,florence to ,avignon1 and back to ,florence again1 to reconcile the ,pope and ,italy2 she thrust herself between the spears of ,guelph and ,ghibelline--a whole ,medival ,peace-,society in her woman's heart--and when she sank at last1 saw all her labour swept away1 as the stormy waters of the ,great ,schism closed over her head4#ahb ,,gower4 ,what a condemning comment on the pretended tender mercies of the ,church are those narratives which ,rome delights to parade of the sufferings1 mental and bodily1 which her devotees were instructed to inflict upon themselves6 ,i am reminded of the thirsting mule1 which has1 in some countries1 to strike with its hoof among the spines of the cactus1 and drink1 with lamed foot and bleeding lips1 the few drops of milk which ooze from the broken thorns4 ,affectionate suffering natures came to ,rome for comfort2 but her scanty kindness is only to be drawn with anguish from the cruel sharpness of asceticism4 ,the worldly1 the audacious1 escape easily2 but these pliant excitable temperaments1 so anxiously in earnest1 may be made useful4 ,the more dangerous1 frightful1 or unnatural their performances1 the more profit for their keepers4 ,men and women are trained by torturing processes to deny their nature1 and then they are exhibited to bring grist to the mill--like birds and beasts forced to postures and services against the laws of their being--like those who must perform perilous feats on ropes or with lions1 nightly hazarding their lives to fill the pockets of a manager4 ,the self-devotion of which ,rome boasts so much is a self-devotion she has always thus made the most of for herself4 ,calculating men1 who have thought only of the interest of the priesthood1 have known well how best to stimulate and to display the spasmodic movements of a brainsick disinterestedness4 ,i have not the shadow of a doubt that1 once and again1 some priest might have been seen1 with cold grey eye1 endeavouring to do a stroke of diplomacy by means of the enthusiastic ,catharine1 making the fancied ambassadress of heaven in reality the tool of a schemer4 ,such unquestionable virtues as these visionaries may some of them have possessed1 cannot be fairly set down to the credit of the ,church1 which has used them all for mercenary or ambitious purposes1 and infected them everywhere with a morbid character4 ,some of these mystics1 floating down the great ecclesiastical current of the ,middle ,age1 appear to me like the trees carried away by the inundation of some mighty tropical river4 ,they drift along the stream1 passive1 lifeless1 broken2 yet they are covered with gay verdure1 the aquatic plants hang and twine about the sodden timber and the draggled leaves1 the trunk is a sailing garden of flowers4 ,but the adornment is not that of nature--it is the decoration of another and a strange element2 the roots are in the air2 the boughs1 which should be full of birds1 are in the flood1 covered by its alien products1 swimming side by side with the alligator4 ,so has this priestcraft swept its victims from their natural place and independent growth1 to clothe them in their helplessness1 with a false spiritual adornment1 neither scriptural nor human1 but ecclesiastical--the native product of that overwhelming superstition which has subverted and enslaved their nature4 ,the ,church of ,rome takes care that while simple souls think they are cultivating ,christian graces1 they shall be forging their own chains2 that their attempts to honour ,god shall always dishonour1 because they disenfranchise themselves4 ,to be humble1 to be obedient1 to be charitable1 under such direction1 is to be contentedly ignorant1 pitiably abject1 and notoriously swindled4 ,,atherton4 ,strong language1 ,lionel1--yet not unjust to the spirit of the ,romanist system4 ,the charity which pities the oppressed is bound to denounce the oppressor4 ,,willoughby4 ,rem acu tetigisti4 ,if you call priestcraft by smooth names1 your spurious charity to the tyrant is uncharitableness to the slave4 ,it is sickening to hear the unctuous talk with which now-a-days ultra-liberalism will sometimes stretch out a hand to spiritual tyranny4 ,,atherton4 ,not surprising4 ,it is just like the sentimental sympathy got up for some notorious criminal1 which forgets the outrage to society and the sufferings of the innocent1 in concern for the interesting offender4 ,and now let us bid adieu to that fourteenth century which has occupied us so long4 ,i shall only afflict you with one more paper1--to-morrow1 ,lowestoffe1 if we don't go to ,hawksfell4 ,some notes ,i have drawn up on the contemporary ,persian mysticism4 ,,willoughby4 ,stay--do not let us forget that little book1 so much read in the fifteenth century1 and praised and edited by ,luther1--the ,german ,theology4#ahc ,i have read it with great interest4 ,it seems to me to stand alone as an attempt to systematise the speculative element in the more orthodox mysticism of the age4 ,,atherton4 ,we may call it a summary of ,tauler's doctrine1 without his fancy and vehement appeal2 it is a treatise philosophic in its calmness1 deservedly popular for its homely1 idiomatic diction4 ,what we were saying about ,tauler applies substantially to the ,theologia ,germanica4 ,,mrs4 ,,atherton4 ,i have been waiting to hear something about ,thomas ,kempis1#ahd--;certainly the best known of all your mystics4 ,,atherton4 ,right4 ,who could forget the comforter of the fifteenth century8 ,it is curious to compare the third book of his ,imitation of ,christ1 with its dialogue between ,christ and the disciple1 and ,suso's conversation1 in his ,book of the ,eternal ,wisdom1 between ,wisdom and the ,servant4 ,,gower4 ,there is less genius1 less abandon1 if one may so say1 about ,thomas4 ,,atherton4 ,decidedly4 ,that original and daring spirit which carried mysticism to such a height in the fourteenth century1 could not survive in the fifteenth1--an age tending towards consolidation and equilibrium1 bent on the softening down of extremes4 ,suso1 a poet as much as an ascetic1 is continually quitting his cell to admire nature and to mix with men4 ,he mingles speculation borrowed from his master1 ,eckart1 with the luxuriant play of his own inexhaustible fancy4 ,thomas ,kempis is exclusively the ascetic4 ,his mysticism ranges in a narrower sphere4 ,hence1 to a great extent1 his wider influence4 ,he abjures everything that belongs to the thought of the philosopher or the fine feeling of the artist4 ,he appeals neither to the intellect nor to the imagination--simply to the heart4 ,he could be understood without learning1 appreciated without taste1 and so thousands1 in castle and in cloister1 prayed and wept over his earnest page4 #8,see6' said he1 #8this life is filled with crosses4' ,and multitudes1 in misery1 or fear of misery1 made answer1 #8,it is true4'--#8,then1' urged the comforter1 #8be thyself crucified to it1 and it cannot harm thee4 ,cease to have any care1 any aim1 any hope or fear1 save ,christ4 ,yield thyself1 utterly passive and dead to this life1 into his hands who is ,lord of a better4' ,then the sufferers dried their tears1 and strove hard to forget time and self in contemplating ,christ4 ,,gower4 ,and1 let us hope1 not always quite in vain4 ,,atherton4 ,i have one more name yet upon my list1 with which the medival mysticism reaches its conclusion4 ,it is the great ,frenchman1 ,chancellor ,gerson4#ahe ,his figure stands out prominently among the confusions of the time1 half-way between the old age and the new4 ,up to a certain point1 he is a reformer2 beyond it1 the enemy of reform4 ,he is active in the deposition of ,john ,,xxii41 yet he does not hesitate to burn ,john ,huss4 ,he looks on1 with a smile of satisfaction1 when the royal secretaries stab with their penknives the papal bulls1 and the rector tears the insolent parchment into shreds4 ,he sees1 half with pity and half with triumph1 the emissaries of the ,pope1 crowned in mockery with paper tiaras1 and hung with insulting scrolls1 dragged through the streets in a scavenger's tumbril1 to be pilloried by angry ,paris4 ,but he stands aloof in disdain when the ,university1 deserted by the ,parliament1 fraternizes with the mob to enforce reform1--when threadbare students come down from their garrets in the ,pays ,latin to join the burly butchers of ,st4 ,jacques la ,boucherie1--when grave doctors shake hands with ox-fellers1 and ,franciscans and ,white-hoods shout together for the charter4 ,,willoughby4 ,and very wrong he was1 too1 for those butchers1 rough as they were1 were right in the main1--honest1 energetic fellows1 with good heads on their shoulders4 ,could they but have raised money1 they would have saved ,france4 ,but ,gerson would rather be plundered than pay their tax1 and had to hurry down for hiding to the vaults of ,notre ,dame4 ,i remember the story4 ,and when the princes came back to power1 the moderates were pillaged like the rest1--and serve them right4 ,,atherton4 ,yes1 the reform demanded was just and moderate1 and even the rioters lost none of their respect for royalty1 feeling still in their rude hearts no little of that chivalrous loyalty which animated ,gerson himself when he bent low before the poor idiot king1 and with oriental reverence exclaimed1 #8,o ,king1 live for ever6' ,gerson was a radical in the ,church and a conservative in the ,state--the antagonist of the political republicanism1 the champion of the ecclesiastical4 ,his sanguine hopes of peace for his country and of reform for his ,church1 were alike doomed to disappointment4 ,his great work on the theory and practice of mysticism was composed during the stormy period of his public life4 ,imagine how happily he forgot popes and councils1 ,cabochiens and ,armagnacs1 during those brief intervals of quiet which he devoted to the elaboration of a psychology that should give to mysticism a scientific basis4 ,nominalist as he was1 and fully conscious of the defects of scholasticism1 then tottering to its fall1 he differs little in his results from ,richard of ,st4 ,victor4 ,he closes the series of those who have combined mysticism with scholasticism1 and furnishes in himself a summary and critical resum of all that had previously been accomplished in this direction4 ,he was desirous at once of making mysticism definite and intelligible1 and of rendering the study of theology as a science more practical1 devout1 and scriptural4 ,hence his opposition to the extravagance of ,ruysbroek on the one side1 and to the frigid disputation of the schools on the other4 ,he essays to define and investigate the nature of ecstasy and rapture4 ,he even introduces into mysticism that reflection which its very principle repudiates4 ,he recommends an inductive process1 which is to arrange and compare the phenomena of mysticism as manifest in the history of saintly men1 and thence to determine the true and legitimate mystical experience1 as opposed to the heterodox and the fantastic4 ,he maintains that man rises to the height of abstract contemplation1 neither by the intellectual machinery of ,realism1 nor by the flights of ,imagination4 ,if he attempts the first1 he becomes a heretic2 if the second1 a visionary4 ,the indispensable requisite is what he calls #8rapturous love4' ,yet even this is knowledge in the truest sense1 and quite compatible with a rational1 though impassioned self-consciousness4 ,his doctrine of union is so temperate and guarded as almost to exclude him from the genuine mystical fellowship4 ,he has no visions or exaltations of his own to tell of4 ,resembling ,richard in this respect1 to whom he is so much indebted1 he elaborates a system1 erects a tabernacle1 and leaves it to others to penetrate to the inmost sanctuary4 ,like ,bernard1 he thinks those arduous and dazzling heights of devotion are for #8the harts and climbing goats1' not for active practical men such as the ,chancellor4 ,above all1 urges this reformer both of the schoolmen and the mystics1 clear your mind of phantasms--do not mistake the creations of your own imagination for objective spiritual realities4 ,in other words1 #8,be a mystic1 but do not be what nine mystics out of every ten always have been4' ,but now let us have a walk in the garden4 99 99 99 99 99 ,thither all repaired4 ,they entered the conservatory to look at the flowers4 #8,which will you have1 ,mr4 ,atherton1' asked ,kate1 #8to represent your mystics8 ,these stiff1 apathetic cactuses and aloes1 that seem to know no changes of summer and winter1 or these light stemless blossoms1 that send out their delicate roots into the air8' #8,those ,aroide1 do you mean8' replied ,atherton4 #8,i think we must divide them1 and let some mystics have those impassive plants of iron for their device1 while others shall wear the silken filaments of these arial flowers that are such pets of yours4' ,as they came out1 the sun was setting in unusual splendour1 and they stood in the porch to admire it4 #8,i was watching it an hour ago1' said ,gower4 #8,then the western sky was crossed by gleaming lines of silver1 with broken streaks of grey and purple between4 ,it was the funeral pyre not yet kindled1 glittering with royal robe and arms of steel1 belonging to the sun-god4 ,now1 see1 he has descended1 and lies upon it--the torch is applied1 the glow of the great burning reaches over to the very east4 ,the clouds1 to the zenith1 are wreaths of smoke1 their volumes ruddily touched beneath by the flame on the horizon1 and those about the sun are like ignited beams in a great conflagration1 now falling in and lost in the radiance1 now sending out fresh shapes of flashing fire3 that is not to be painted6' ,,lowestoffe 7starting74 ,the swan1 ,i declare6 ,how can he have got out8 ,that scoundrel1 ,john6 ,,atherton4 ,never mind4 ,i know what he comes for4 ,he is a messenger from ,lethe1 to tell us not to forget good ,tauler4 ,,lowestoffe4 ,lethe6 ,nonsense4 ,,mrs4 ,,atherton4 ,my love1 how can you8 ,,atherton4 ,the creature reminded me of an allegorical fancy recorded by ,bacon1--that is all4 ,at the end of the thread of every man's life there is a little medal containing his name4 ,time waits upon the shears1 and as soon as the thread is cut1 catches the medals1 and carries them to the river of ,lethe4 ,about the bank there are many birds flying up and down1 that will get the medals and carry them in their beak a little while1 and then let them fall into the river4 ,only there are a few swans1 which1 if they get a name1 will carry it to a temple1 where it is consecrated4 ,let the name of ,tauler find a swan6 ,,end ,,of ,,vol4 ,i4 ,footnote #agh3 ,the ,masters speak of two faces the soul hath4 ,the one face is turned towards this world4 ,the other face is turned direct toward ,god4 ,in this latter face shineth and gloweth ,god eternally1 whether man is ware or unaware thereof4 ,footnote #agi3 ,schmidt's ,tauler1 pp4 #bje1 c4--,mosheim gives the passage in ,nieder relating the apprehension and death of ,nicholas3--#8,acutissimus enim erat 7says this authority7 et idcirco manus ,inquisitorum diu evaserat4'--,mosheim de ,beghardis et ,beguinabus1 cap4 iv4 #db1 p4 #ded4 ,footnote #ahj3 ,see ,revelationes ,select ,s4 ,brigitt 7,heuser1 #ahea74--,this is a selection for the edification of good ,catholics1 and contains accordingly the most ,mariolatrous and least important of her writings4 ,rudelbach gives some specimens of her spirited rebuke of papal iniquity in his ,savonarola1 pp4 #cjj1 c4 ,in her prophetic capacity she does not hesitate to call the pope a murderer of souls1 and to declare him and his greedy prelates forerunners of ,antichrist4 ,she says1--#8,if a man comes to them with four wounds1 he goes away with five4' ,like ,savonarola1 she placed her sole hope of reform in a general council4 ,a common mode of self-mortification with her found an imitator in ,madame ,guyon3--the ,swede dropped the wax of lighted tapers on her bare flesh1 and carried gentian in her mouth--,vita1 p4 #f4 ,the ,frenchwoman burned herself with hot sealing-wax in the same manner1 and chewed a quid of coloquintida4 ,the ,revelationes de ,vit et ,passione ,jesu ,christi et glorios ,virginis1 contain a puerile and profane account of the birth1 childhood1 and death of our ,lord1 in the style of the apocryphal ,gospel of the ,infancy1 professedly conveyed in conversations with the authoress by the ,mother and her ,son4 ,the ,virgin tells her1 in reference to her ,son1--#8quomodo neque aliqua immunditia ascendit super eum2' and that his hair was never in a tangle--7nec perplexitas in capillise jus apparuit74 ,footnote #aha3 #8,angela de ,foligni4' ,see ,beat ,angel ,fulginio ,visionum et ,instructionum ,liber2 7recens4 ,j4 ,h4 ,lammertz2 ,cologne1 #ahea47--,the account of the wonderful star is given by ,arnold in his ,prologue1 p4 #ab4 ,at one time it is promised by the ,lord that the #8whole ,trinity shall enter into her1' 7capit4 xx472 at another1 she is transported into the midst of the ,trinity4--7,capit4 xxxii47 ,in chapter after chapter of monotonous inflation1 she wearies and disappoints the curious reader by declaring her #8abysses of delectation and illumination' altogether unutterable1--such as language profanes rather than expresses--#8inenarrabiles1' #8indicibiles1' c4 ,so the miraculous taste of the host to her favoured palate was not like bread or flesh1 but a #8sapor sapidissimus1'--like nothing that can be named4--,capit4 xl4 ,the following act of saintship we give in the original1 lest in ,english it should act on delicate readers as an emetic4 ,she speaks of herself and a sister ascetic3--#8,lavimus pedes feminarum ibi existentium pauperum1 et manus hominum1 et maxime cujusdam leprosi1 qui habebat manus valde ftidas et marcidas et prpeditas et corruptas2 et bibimus de ill lotur4 ,tantam autem dulcedinem sensimus in illo potu1 quod per totam viam venimus in magn suavitate1 et videbatur mihi per omnia quod ego gustassem mirabilem dulcedinem1 quantum ad suavitatem quam ibi inveni4 ,et quia qudam squamula illarum plagarum erat interposita in gutture meo1 conata sum ad diglutiendum eam1 sicut si communicassem1 donec deglutivi eam4 ,unde tantam suavitatem inveni in hoc1 quod eam non possum exprimere4'--,capit4 l4 p4 #agf4 ,in her #8,instructions1' she lays it down as a rule that none can ever be deceived in the visions and manifestations vouchsafed them who are truly poor in spirit1--who have rendered themselves as #8dead and putrid' into the hands of ,god4 7,capp4 liv4 lv47 ,she says that when ,god manifests ,himself to the soul1 #8it sees ,him1 without bodily form1 indeed1 but more distinctly than one man can see another man1 for the eyes of the soul behold a spiritual plenitude1 not a corporeal1 whereof ,i can say nothing1 since both words and imagination fail here4' 7,capit4 lii4 p4 #aib47 ,angela died in #acji4 ,footnote #ahb3 #8,catharine of ,siena4' ,grres gives a short account of her in his ,introduction to ,diepenbrock's edition of ,suso1 p4 #if4 ,footnote #ahc3 ,the theology of this remarkable little book is substantially the same with that already familiar to us in the sermons of ,tauler4 ,luther1 writing to ,spalatin1 and praising ,tauler's theology1 sends with his letter what he calls an epitome thereof1--cujus totius velut epitomen ecce hic tibi mitto4 7,epp4 ,de ,wette1 ,no4 xxv47 ,he refers1 there can be little doubt1 to his edition of the ,deutsche ,theologie1 which came out that year4 ,footnote #ahd3 ,see1 especially1 the twelfth chapter of the second book1 ,on the ,necessity of bearing the ,cross4 ,compare ,michelet's somewhat overdrawn picture of the effects of the ,imitation in his ,history of ,france4 ,the ,ignitum cum ,deo ,soliloquium of ,gerlacus ,petrus is a contemporary treatise belonging to the same school4 7,comp4 capp4 xxxix4 and xxvi42 ed4 ,strange1 #ahdi47 ,it is less popular1 less impassioned than the ,imitation1 and more thoroughly impregnated with the spirit of mysticism4 ,gerlach would seem to have studied ,suso3 in one place he imitates his language4 ,the cast of his imagery1 as well as the prominence given to mystical phraseology1 more peculiar to the ,germans1 shows that he addresses himself to an advanced and comparatively esoteric circle4--,comp4 capp4 xxii1 xxiv1 p4 #gh4 ,footnote #ahe3 #8,gerson4#8--,see an article by ,liebner 7,gerson's ,mystische ,theologie7 in the ,theologische ,studien und ,kritiken2 #ahce1 ii4 ,,hours ,,with ,,the ,,mystics ,,vol4 ,,ii4 ,,contents ,,of ,,vol4 ,,ii4 ,,book ,,vii4--,,persian ,,mysticism ,,in ,,the ,,middle ,,age4 ,,chapter ,i4 ,the ,sufis2 their ,mystical ,poetry #c ,mystical ,poetry in the ,west2 ,angelus ,silesius #e ,r4 ,w4 ,emerson #h ,,chapter ,,ii4 ,rabia #aj ,the ,oriental and the ,western ,mysticism compared #ab ,,book ,,viii4--,,theosophy ,,in ,,the ,,age ,,of ,,the ,,reformation4 ,,chapter ,i4 ,the ,position of the ,mystics as regards the ,reformation #ca ,the ,advantage of the ,ground occupied by ,luther #cb ,menacing ,character of the ,revolutionary ,mysticism #ce ,the ,anabaptists of ,munster #cg ,,chapter ,,ii4 ,luther and the ,mystics #da ,the ,prophets of ,zwickau #dd ,carlstadt #dd ,sebastian ,frank #dg ,schwenkfeld #ej ,weigel #ea ,,chapter ,,iii4 ,mysticism and ,science #ec ,the ,cabbala #ee ,nature studied by the ,light of ,grace #eg ,alchemy #eh ,theurgy #ei ,,chapter ,,iv4 ,cornelius ,agrippa #fa ,the ,science of ,sympathies #fc ,redemption1 ,natural and ,spiritual #fg ,,chapter ,v4 ,theophrastus ,paracelsus #ga ,signatures #gf ,theological ,chemistry #gg ,,chapter ,,vi4 ,jacob ,behmen and his ,aurora #gi ,illumination #hb ,troubles #hf ,,chapter ,,vii4 ,jacob ,behmen1 his ,materials1 and ,style of ,workmanship #ij ,the ,theory of ,development by ,contraries #ib ,the ,three ,gates #ie ,the ,aurora #ig ,,chapter ,,viii4 ,jacob ,behmen--,sketch and ,estimate of his ,system #ajc ,the ,mysterium ,magnum #ajd ,the ,seven ,fountain-,spirits #ajd ,examination of his ,doctrine concerning the ,origin of ,evil #aji ,the ,fall #aae ,merits of his ,theosophy #aai ,,chapter ,,ix4 ,the ,rosicrucians #abh ,romance and ,reality #abi ,valentine ,andre and his ,fama ,fraternitatis #acd ,secret ,societies #acf ,the ,creatures of the ,elements #ach ,magical ,words #adj ,pordage and the ,philadelphian ,society #adb ,joanna ,leade #add ,,book ,,ix4--,,the ,,spanish ,,mystics4 ,,chapter ,i4 ,neo-,platonism revived in ,italy #adg ,its ,weakness1 opposed to the ,reformation #adh ,the ,counter-reformation #aej ,headed by ,spain #aej ,character of its ,mysticism #aea ,st4 ,theresa #aec ,her ,autobiography #aef ,the ,director #aeh ,visions #afj ,,chapter ,,ii4 ,theresa's ,four ,degrees of ,prayer #afg ,her ,quietism #aga ,,chapter ,,iii4 ,st4 ,john of the ,cross #ahb ,his ,asceticism #ahc ,his ,mystical ,night #ahe ,more elevated ,character of his ,mysticism #aic ,,book ,x4--,,quietism4 ,,chapter ,i4 ,queen ,quietude #bja ,the ,doctrine of #8,pure ,love' discussed #bje ,madame ,guyon #bjg ,her ,unhappy ,marriage #bjh ,the ,kingdom of ,god within us #baa ,efforts to ,annihilate ,self #bac ,interior ,attraction #baf ,madame ,guyon and the ,romish ,saints #bah ,confessors and ,small-pox #bbb ,the ,seven ,years of ,famine #bbd ,self-loss in ,god #bbg ,mistakes concerning the ,nature of ,spiritual ,influence #bcj ,reformatory ,character of her ,mysticism #bcc ,activity and ,persecution #bcd ,,chapter ,,ii4 ,the ,quietist ,controversy #bdb ,molinos #bdb ,madame ,guyon at ,paris #bde ,st4 ,cyr #bdh ,fnlon and ,madame ,guyon #bej ,signs of ,danger #beb ,the ,conferences at ,issy #bee ,the ,quietism of ,fnlon #beh ,his ,critical ,position #bfb ,writes the ,maxims of the ,saints #bfc ,appeals to ,rome #bfe ,bossuet's ,account of ,quietism #bfh ,fnlon's ,reply #bfi ,infallibility submits to ,louis #bga ,fnlon submits to ,infallibility #bgb ,the ,controversy reviewed #bgc ,mysticism in ,france and in ,germany #bge ,,chapter ,,iii4 ,disinterested ,love #bhc ,antoinette ,bourignon #bhf ,peter ,poiret #bhg ,madame de ,krdener #bhh ,,book ,,xi4--,,mysticism ,,in ,,england4 ,,chapter ,i4 ,britain poor in ,mystics #cja ,george ,fox #cjc ,the ,early ,friends #cje ,asceticism #cji ,doctrine of the ,universal ,light #cji ,,chapter ,,ii4 ,doctrine of ,perceptible ,guidance #cac ,the ,english ,platonists #cae ,henry ,more2 ,norris of ,bemerton #cae ,,book ,,xii4--,,emanuel ,,swedenborg4 ,,chapter ,i4 ,comprehensive ,character of his ,mysticism #cba ,doctrine of ,correspondences #cbc ,stands alone among the ,mystics #cbf ,,chapter ,,ii4 ,his ,memorable ,relations #cbi ,his ,heaven and ,hell #ccj ,moderation of his ,doctrine concerning ,spiritual ,influence #cca ,defects of his ,doctrine concerning the ,work of ,christ #ccb ,the ,church of the ,new ,jerusalem #cce ,,book ,,xiii4--,,conclusion4 ,,chapter ,i4 ,mystical ,tendencies of our own ,time #cdj ,the ,faith-,philosophy #cda ,schleiermacher #cda ,the ,romantic ,school #cdc ,novalis #cdh ,revival of antiquated ,error #cej ,the ,modern ,mysticism a ,repetition of the ,old #cea ,the ,services of ,mysticism #ceb ,its ,dangers #ceb ,its ,lessons #cef ,,chapter ,,ii4 ,mysticism fostered by the ,supposition of a ,separate ,religious ,faculty #cfa ,reason1 how far amenable to ,understanding #cfb ,historic ,reality not opposed to ,spirituality #cfe ,,chapter ,,iii4 ,a ,vision of ,mystics #cfh ,,book ,,the ,,seventh ,,persian ,,mysticism ,,in ,,the ,,middle ,,age ,,chapter ,i4 ,also1 there is in ,god ,which being seen would end us with a shock ,of pleasure4 ,it may be that we should die ,as men have died of joy1 all mortal powers ,summed up and finished in a single taste ,of superhuman bliss2 or1 it may be ,that our great latent love1 leaping at once ,a thousand years in stature--like a stone ,dropped to the central fires1 and at a touch ,loosed into vapour--should break up the terms ,of separate being1 and as a swift rack1 ,dissolving into heaven1 we should go back ,to ,god4 ,,dobell4 ,the next day was fine1 as well it might be after such a sunset2 to ,hawksfell all the party went1 and there was no reading4 ,but on the following 7sunnier yet1 if possible7 they assembled immediately after breakfast in the summer-house1 ,lowestoffe not excepted1 for even he grew inactive with the heat1 and declared himself content to lie on the grass by the hour4 ,atherton congratulated his hearers that they would not for some time be troubled with more lucubrations of his--not till they came1 in due course1 to ,madame ,guyon4 ,for ,willoughby was to take up ,jacob ,behmen1 and ,gower1 who possessed 7as the fruit of an artist's tour7 some acquaintance with ,spanish1 ,st4 ,theresa4 ,then1 unrolling his manuscript1 he began4 ,,the ,,sufis1 ,,or ,,mystical ,,poetry ,,in ,,the ,,east ,,and ,,west4 ,among all the religions of civilized man1 it would be difficult to find one more unfriendly to the growth of mysticism than that of ,mohammed4 ,yet in no religion has mysticism spread more widely or raised its head with greater pride4 ,the cold rationalism of the ,koran1 its ritual minuti1 its formal self-righteousness1 its prohibition of the monastic order1--all combined to warn the mystic from the religious domain of the ,crescent4 ,but stronger than ,mohammedan orthodoxy or the dying commands of the ,prophet were the wants of the human heart and the spirit of an eastern people4 ,the generation which laid ,mohammed in the holy earth of ,medina saw monastic institutions arise and multiply on every side4 ,mystical interpretation could with ease elude the less favourable passages of the ,koran1 and turn others into a warrant4 ,with a single touch of this dexterous pencil1 the mystic could make the ,prophet's portraiture all he desired1 and turn the frown into a smile4 ,the fatalism of the creed of ,islam would furnish a natural basis for the holy indifference of ,quietism4 ,each succeeding century of the ,hegira was found more abundant than the last in a class of men who revolted against the letter in the name of the spirit1 and who aspired to a converse and a unity with ,god such as the ,koran deemed unattainable on this side heaven4 ,the names of the saints and martyrs1 the poets and philosophers1 of mysticism1 are among the brightest in the hagiography and the literature of the ,mohammedan world4 ,the achievements of the former class are adorned with legendary extravagances such as those with which the ,prophet delighted to invest himself4 ,the philosophy of the latter 7whether sung or said7 was not a little aided1 in its contest with rigid orthodoxy1 by the ,grecian learning of that ,alexandria which fell1 in the first outbreak of ,moslem zeal1 before the hosts of ,amrou4 ,in later times 7under the names of ,plato and of ,aristotle7 mysticism and method did battle with each other1 in the ,east as in the ,west1--at ,shiraz1 at ,bagdad1 or at ,cordova1 even as in the ,university of ,paris or the academies of ,italy4 ,the term ,sufism appears to be a general designation for the mystical asceticism of the ,mohammedan faith4 ,the ,sufis cannot be said to constitute a distinct sect1 or to embrace any particular philosophical system4 ,their varieties are endless2 their only common characteristics a claim of some sort to a superhuman commerce with the ,supreme1--mystical rapture1 mystical union1 mystical identity1 or theurgic powers2--and a life of ascetic observance4 ,the name is given to mystics of every shade1 from the sage to the quack1 from poets like ,saadi or philosophers like ,algazzali1 to the mendicant dervise or the crazy fanatic4 ,persia has been for several centuries the great seat of ,sufism4 ,for two hundred years 7during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries of our era7 the descendants of a ,sufi occupied the throne1--governing1 however1 as may be supposed1 not like mystics1 but as men of the world4#ahf ,it is with ,sufism as exhibited principally by the ,sufi poets of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries1 that ,i propose now to occupy your attention4 ,it will be found worth our while1 as we proceed1 to compare the mystical poetry of the ,east and ,west4 ,oriental mysticism has become famous by its poets2 and into poetry it has thrown all its force and fire4 ,the mysticism of the ,west has produced prophecies and interpretations of prophecy2 soliloquies1 sermons1 and treatises of divinity2--it has found solace in autobiography1 and breathed out its sorrow in hymns2--it has essayed1 in earnest prose1 to revive and to reform the sleeping ,church2--but it has never elaborated great poems4 ,in none of the languages of ,europe has mysticism achieved the success which crowned it in ,persia1 and prevailed to raise and rule the poetic culture of a nation4 ,yet the occidental mysticism has not been wholly lacking in poets of its own order4 ,the seventeenth century can furnish one1 and the nineteenth another1--,angelus ,silesius and ,ralph ,waldo ,emerson4 ,the latest research has succeeded only in deciding who ,angelus ,silesius was not4 ,some ,roman ,catholic priest or monk1 assuming the name of ,angelus1 did1 in the seventeenth century1 send forth sundry hymns and religious poems1--among others1 one most euphuistically entitled ,the ,cherubic ,wanderer4 ,the author of this book has been generally identified1 on grounds altogether inadequate1 with a contemporary named ,john ,scheffler1--a renegade from ,jacob ,behmen to the ,pope4 ,suffice it to say that no two men could be more unlike than the virulent fagotty-minded pervert ,scheffler1 and the contemplative pantheistic ,angelus--be he who he may4#ahg ,the ,cherubic ,wanderer is a collection of religious epigrams or rhyming sentences1 most of them smart and pithy enough as to expression1 not a few as destitute of sense as they all are of poetry4 ,the ,wanderer travelled a little way into the eighteenth century1 and then1 lighting upon one of those oblivious arbours so fatal to pilgrims1 sat down1 and slept long4 ,a few years ago some ,romanticist littrateurs of ,germany woke him up1 and announced to the world1 with much sounding of brass and tinkling of cymbals1 that they had resuscitated a paragon of saintship and philosophy4 ,the ,silesian's book reiterates the customary utterances of mysticism4 ,but a harsher tone is audible1 and the doctrines with which we are familiar appear in a more startling and paradoxical form4 ,the more dangerous elements are intensified4 ,pantheism is latent no longer4 ,angelus loves to play at a kind of intellectual seesaw with the terms ,finite and ,infinite1 and their subject or kindred words4 ,now mounts one side1 now the other1 of the restless antithesis4 ,each factor is made to share with its rival every attribute of height or lowness4 ,his favourite style of talking may run as follows3--#8,i cannot do without ,god1 nor ,he without me2 ,he is as small as ,i1 and ,i as great as ,he3--let time be to thee as eternity1 and eternity as time2 the ,all as nothing1 and nothing as the ,all2 then thou hast solved life's problem1 and art one with ,god1 above limit and distinction4' ,we matter-of-fact folk feel irresistibly inclined to parody such an oracle1 and say1--#8,let whole and part1 black and white1 be convertible terms2--let thy head be to thee as thy heels1 and thy heels as thy head2 and thou hast transcended the conditions of vulgar men1 and lapsed to ,limbo irretrievably4' ,silesius1 as a good churchman1 repudiates1 of course1 the charge of pantheism4 ,he declares that the dissolution in ,deity he contemplates does not necessitate the loss of personality1 or confound the ,maker and the made4 ,his distinction is distinguishable #8as water is in water4' ,he appeals to the strong language he hunts out from ,bernard1 ,tauler1 and ,ruysbroek4 ,but the cold-blooded epigram cannot claim the allowance due to the fervid sermon or the often rhapsodical volume of devotion4 ,extravagant as the ,sufi1 he cannot plead like him a spiritual intoxication4 ,crystals and torrents must have separate laws4 ,and which1 moreover1 of the mystical masters to whom ,angelus refers us would have indited such presumptuous doggrel as this8 ,god in my nature is involved1 ,as ,i in the divine2 ,i help to make his being up1 ,as much as he does mine4 ,as much as ,i to ,god owes ,god to me ,his blissfulness and self-sufficiency4 ,i am as rich as ,god1 no grain of dust ,that is not mine too1--share with me he must4 ,more than his love unto himself1 ,god's love to me hath been2 ,if more than self ,i too love him1 ,we twain are quits1 ,i ween4#ahh ,on the other hand1 there are many terse and happy couplets and quatrains in the ,wanderer1 which express the better spirit of mysticism4 ,angelus insists constantly on the vanity of mere externals1--the necessity of a ,christ formed within1 as opposed to a dead1 unsanctifying faith1--the death of self-will1 as the seat of all sin1--the reality of the hell or heaven already wrought in time by sin or holiness4 ,these were the maxims and ejaculations which religious minds1 mystically inclined1 found so edifying4 ,the arrogant egotheism of some passages they took in another sense1 or deemed the sense beyond them4 ,moreover1 the high-flown devotion affected by ,rome has always familiarized her children with expressions which 7as ,thomas ,fuller has it7 #8do knock at the door of blasphemy1 though not always with intent to enter in thereat4' ,the second representative of the ,west1 who must assist towards our comparative estimate of pantheistic mysticism in its poetical form1 is ,mr4 ,emerson1 the ,american essayist4 ,whether in prose or verse he is chief singer of his time at the high court of ,mysticism4 ,he belongs more to the ,east than to the ,west--true brother of those ,sufis with whose doctrine he has so much in common4 ,luxuriant in fancy1 impulsive1 dogmatic1 darkly oracular1 he does not reason4 ,his majestic monologue may not be interrupted by a question4 ,his inspiration disdains argument4 ,he delights to lavish his varied and brilliant resources upon some defiant paradox--and never more than when that paradox is engaged in behalf of an optimism extreme enough to provoke another ,voltaire to write another ,candide4 ,he displays in its perfection the fantastic incoherence of the #8,god-intoxicated' man4 ,in comparing ,emerson with the ,sufis1 it may be as well to state that he does not believe in ,mohammed and receive the ,koran in a manner which would satisfy an orthodox ,mussulman4 ,yet he does so 7if words have meaning7 much after the same fashion in which he believes in ,christ and receives the ,bible4 ,mohammed and ,jesus are both1 to him1 extraordinary religious geniuses--the ,bible and the ,koran both antiquated books4 ,he looks with serene indifference on all the forms of positive religion4 ,he would agree perfectly with those ,sufis who proclaimed the difference between the ,church and the ,mosque of little moment4 ,the distance between the ,crescent and the ,cross is1 with him1 one of degree--their dispute rather a question of individual or national taste than a controversy between a religion with evidence and a religion without4 ,in the nineteenth century1 and in ,america1 the doctrine of emanation and the ascetic practice of the ,east can find no place4 ,but the pantheism of ,germany is less elevated than that of ,persia1 in proportion as it is more developed4 ,the tendency of the latter is to assign reality only to ,god2 the tendency of the former is to assign reality only to the mind of man4 ,the ,sufi strove to lose humanity in ,deity2 ,emerson dissolves ,deity in humanity4 ,the orientals are nearer to theism1 and the moderns farther from it1 than they sometimes seem4 ,that primal ,unity which the ,sufi1 like the ,neo-,platonist1 posits at the summit of all things1 to ray forth the world of ,appearance1 may possibly retain some vestige of personality4 ,but the ,over-,soul of ,emerson1 whose organs of respiration are men of genius1 can acquire personality only in the individual man4 ,the ,persian aspired to reach a divinity above him by self-conquest2 the ,american seeks to realize a divinity within him by self-will4 ,self-annihilation is the watchword of the one2 self-assertion that of the other4 ,footnote #ahf3 ,malcolm's ,persia1 vol4 ii41 p4 #chc4 ,footnote #ahg3 ,see ,schrader's ,angelus ,silesius und seine ,mystik2 ,halle1 #ahec4 ,this author shows1 that the supposition identifying ,scheffler with ,angelus 7copied too readily by one writer from another7 may be traced up to a source of very slight authority4 ,scheffler repudiated mysticism after entering the ,romish communion4 ,furious polemical treatises by ,scheffler1 and sentimental religious poems by ,angelus appeared contemporaneously during a considerable interval4 ,had ,scheffler published anything mystical during his controversy1 his ,protestant antagonists would not have failed to charge him with it4 ,with ,scheffler the ,church is everything4 ,in the ,wanderer of ,angelus the word scarcely occurs4 ,the former lives in externalisms2 the latter covets escape from them4 ,the one is an angry bigot2 the other1 for a ,romanist1 serenely latitudinarian4 ,characteristics so opposite1 urges ,dr4 ,schrader1 could not exist in the same man at the same time4 ,the epithet #8,cherubic' indicates the more speculative character of the book2 as contrasted1 in the language of the mystics1 with the devotion of feeling and passion--seraphic love4 ,footnote #ahh3 ,cherubinischer ,wandersmann1 i4 #ajj1 #i1 #ah2 ,schrader1 p4 #bh4 ,,chapter ,,ii4 ,und so lang du das nicht hast ,dieses3 ,stirb und werde6 ,bist du nur ein trber ,gast ,auf der dunkeln ,erde4#ahi ,,goethe4 #8,let us proceed1 then1' resumed ,atherton1 smoothing his manuscript1 #8on our ,persian expedition4 ,dr4 ,tholuck1 with his ,german translation1 shall act as interpreter1 and we may pause now and then on our way to listen to the deliverances of the two men of vision who accompany us from ,breslau and from ,boston4' ,the first century of the ,hegira has scarcely expired when a mysticism1 strikingly similar to that of ,madame ,guyon1 is seen to arise spontaneously in the devout ardours of a female saint named ,rabia4#aij ,there is the same straining after indifference and self-abnegation--after a love absolutely disinterested--after a devotion beyond language and above means4 ,by the sick-bed of ,rabia stood two holy men4 ,one of them said1 #8,the prayers of that man are not sincere who refuses to bear the chastening strokes of the ,lord4' ,the other went beyond him1 saying1 #8,he is not sincere who does not rejoice in them4' ,rabia1 detecting something of self in that very joy1 surpassed them both as she added1 #8,he is not sincere who does not1 beholding his ,lord1 become totally unconscious of them4' ,the ,mohammedan ,lives of the ,saints records that1 on another occasion1 when questioned concerning the cause of a severe illness1 she replied1 #8,i suffered myself to think on the delights of ,paradise1 and therefore my ,lord hath punished me4' ,she was heard to exclaim1 #8,what is the ,kaaba to me8 ,i need ,god only4' ,she declared herself the spouse of ,heaven1--described her will and personality as lost in ,god4 ,when asked how she had reached this state1 she made the very answer we have heard a ,german mystic render1 #8,i attained it when everything which ,i had found ,i lost again in ,god4' ,when questioned as to the mode1 she replied1 #8,thou1 ,hassan1 hast found ,him by reason and through means2 ,i immediately1 without mode or means4' ,the seeds of ,sufism are here4 ,this mystical element was fostered to a rapid growth through succeeding centuries1 in the ,east as in the ,west1 by the natural reaction of religious fervour against ,mohammedan polemics and ,mohammedan scholasticism4 ,in the ninth century of our era1 ,sufism appears divided between two distinguished leaders1 ,bustami and ,juneid4 ,the former was notorious chiefly for the extravagance of his mystical insanity4 ,the men of genius who afterwards made the name of ,sufism honourable1 and the language of its aspiration classical1 shrank from such coarse excess4 ,it was not enough for ,bustami to declare that the recognition of our personal existence was an idolatry1 the worst of crimes4 ,it was not enough for him to maintain that when man adores ,god1 ,god adores himself4 ,he claimed such an absorption in his pantheistic deity as identified him with all the power1 the wisdom1 and the goodness of the universe4 ,he would say1 #8,i am a sea without bottom1 without beginning1 without end4 ,i am the throne of ,god1 the word of ,god4 ,i am ,gabriel1 ,michael1 ,israfil2 ,i am ,abraham1 ,moses1 ,jesus4' ,if ,epiphanius is to be believed1 the ,messalians were a sect chargeable with the very same folly4 ,if asked1 he says1 concerning a patriarch1 a prophet1 an angel1 or ,christ1 they would reply1 #8,i am that patriarch1 that prophet1 that angel2 ,i am ,christ4' ,a reference to ,emerson's ,essay on ,history renders such professions perfectly credible4 ,bustami and the ,messalians could not have made them in the literal1 but 7by anticipation7 in the ,emersonian sense4 ,they believed1 with him1 that #8there is one mind common to all individual men4' ,they find in him their interpreter1 when he says1 #8,who hath access to this universal mind is a party to all that is or can be done1 for this is the only sovereign agent4' ,emerson couches their creed in modern rhymes1 as he sings exultant1-- ,i am owner of the sphere1 ,of the seven stars and the solar year1 ,of ,csar's hand and ,plato's brain1 ,of ,lord ,christ's heart1 and ,shakspeare's strain4 ,in the spirit of the same philosophy1 ,angelus ,silesius hints at the possibility of such an empire4 ,he reminds his readers that there is no greatness which makes the glory of the past that may not be realized by themselves in the present4 ,thus he asks-- ,dost prize alone ,king ,solomon as wisest of the wise8 ,thou also canst be ,solomon1 and all his wisdom thine4#aia ,but what is only potential with him is claimed as actual by mystical brethren bolder yet than he4 ,the first endeavour of the ,sufi 7as of so many ,christian mystics7 is to achieve that simplifying1 purifying process which shall remove from the mind everything earthly and human--all its creaturely accidents1 and reduce it to that abstract essence which mirrors ,deity1 and is itself ultimately divine4 ,an apologue in the ,mesnevi of ,jelaleddin ,rumi 7a ,sufi poet who wrote in the first half of our thirteenth century7 teaches this doctrine quite in the oriental manner4 ,the ,greeks and the ,chinese dispute before a certain sultan as to which of the two nations is the more skilful in the art of decoration4 ,the sultan assigns to the rival painters two structures1 facing each other1 on which they shall exercise their best ability1 and determine the question of precedence by the issue3-- ,the ,chinese ask him for a thousand colours1 ,all that they ask he gives right royally2 ,and every morning from his treasure-house ,a hundred sorts are largely dealt them out4 ,the ,greeks despise all colour as a stain-- ,effacing every hue with nicest care4 ,brighter and brighter shines their polished front1 ,more dazzling1 soon1 than gleams the floor of heaven4 ,this hueless sheen is worth a thousand dyes1-- ,this is the moon--they but her cloudy veil2 ,all that the cloud is bright or golden with ,is but the lending of the moon or sun4 ,and now1 at length1 are ,china's artists ready4 ,the cymbals clang--the sultan hastens thither1 ,and sees enrapt the glorious gorgeousness-- ,smit nigh to swooning by those beamy splendours4-- ,then1 to the ,grecian palace opposite4 ,just as the ,greeks have put their curtain back1 ,down glides a sunbeam through the rifted clouds1 ,and1 lo1 the colours of that rainbow house ,shine1 all reflected on those glassy walls ,that face them1 rivalling3 the sun hath painted ,with lovelier blending1 on that stony mirror ,the colours spread by man so artfully4 ,know then1 ,o friend6 such ,greeks the ,sufis are1 ,owning nor book nor master2 and on earth ,having one sole and simple task1--to make ,their hearts a stainless mirror for their ,god4 ,is thy heart clear and argent as the moon8 ,then imaged there may rest1 innumerous1 ,the forms and hues of heaven4#aib ,so1 too1 says ,angelus ,silesius1-- ,away with accidents and false appearance1 ,thou must be essence all1 and colourless4 ,and again1-- ,man6 wouldst thou look on ,god1 in heaven or while yet here1 ,thy heart must first of all become a mirror clear4#aic ,jelaleddin ,rumi describes the emancipation of the soul from intellectual distinctions--the laws of finite thought1 the fluctuations of hope and fear1 the consciousness of personality1--under the image of night4 ,this has been the favourite and appropriate symbol of all the family of mystics1 from ,dionysius1 with his #8,divine ,darkness1' to ,john of the ,cross1 in his ,de ,nocte ,obscur1 and on to ,novalis1 in his ,hymnen an die ,nacht4 ,in the following vigorous passage1 ,night is equivalent to the state of self-abandonment and self-transcendence3-- ,every night ,god frees the host of spirits-- ,makes them clear as tablets smooth and spotless-- ,frees them every night from fleshy prison4 ,then the soul is neither slave nor master1 ,nothing knows the bondman of his bondage1 ,nothing knows the lord of all his lordship1 ,gone from such a night is eating sorrow1 ,gone the thoughts that question good and evil4 ,then1 without distraction or division1 ,in the ,one the spirit sinks and slumbers4 ,silesius has the same thought1 cold and dry1 after the poetic ,persian1 yet in words that would furnish no inapt motto to express in a sentence this species of mysticism3-- ,ne'er sees man in this life1 the ,light above all light1 ,as when he yields him up to darkness and to night4#aid ,the ascetic ,sufi bids the mystical aspirant close the senses against every external impression--for the worlds of sense and of contemplation reciprocally exclude each other4 ,we have seen how the ,hindoos and the ,hesychasts endeavoured literally to obey this counsel1 reiterated so often by so many mystagogues3-- ,put wool within the ear of flesh1 for that ,makes deaf the inner hearing1 as with wool2 ,if that can hear1 the spirit's ear is deaf4 ,let sense make blind no more the spirit's eye4 ,be without ear1 without a sense or thought1 ,hark only to the voice1 #8,home1 wanderer1 home6' ,it is quite in accordance with such precepts that the judging faculty should be abandoned by the ,sufi for the intuitive1 and the understanding sacrificed to the feeling4 ,according to the ,koran1 ,mohammed once soared heavenwards1 to such a height that ,gabriel could not overtake him1 and far off below1 appeared to the ,prophet no larger than a sparrow4 ,jelaleddin compares the heart1 the divine principle in man 7the spirit1 in his psychology71 to ,mohammed1 and the understanding to ,gabriel4 ,names and words1 he says1 are but #8nets and shackles4' ,with justice1 in one sense1 he bids men pass from the sign to the thing signified1 and asks1-- ,didst ever pluck a rose from ,r and ,o and ,s8 ,names thou mayst know3 go1 seek the truth they name2 ,search not the brook1 but heaven1 to find the moon4 ,the senses and the lower powers1 nourished by forms1 belong to earth1 and constitute the mere foster-mother of our nature4 ,the intuitive faculty is a ray of ,deity1 and beholds ,essence4 ,the soul which follows its divine parent is therefore a wonder1 and often a scandal to that which recognises only the earthly4 ,jelaleddin compares the rapturous plunge of the soul into its divine and native element to the hastening of the ducklings into the water1 to the terror of the hen that hatched them4#aie ,while exulting in a devotion above all means and modes1 we find the ,sufi 7in nearly every stage of his ascension save the last7 yielding implicit obedience to some human guide of his own choice4 ,the ,persian ,pir was to him what the ,director was to the ,quietist or semi-,quietist of ,france2 what the experienced ,friend of ,god was to the mystic of ,cologne or ,strasburg2 what ,nicholas of ,basle was so long to ,tauler4 ,that a voluntary submission to such authority was yielded is certain4 ,yet we find scarcely an allusion to these spiritual guides among the chief bards of ,sufism4 ,each singer claims or seeks a knowledge of ,god which is immediate1 and beyond the need of at least the orthodox and customary aids and methods4 ,thus ,rumi says-- ,he needs a guide no longer who hath found ,the way already leading to the ,friend4 ,who stands already on heaven's topmost dome ,needs not to search for ladders4 ,he that lies1 ,folded in favour on the sultan's breast1 ,needs not the letter or the messenger4 ,so ,emerson1-- #8,the relations of the soul to the divine spirit are so pure that it is profane to seek to interpose helps4444 ,whenever a mind is simple1 and receives a divine wisdom1 then old things pass away1--means1 teachers1 texts1 temples1 fall2 it lives now and absorbs past and future into the present hour4'#aif ,hence1 in both cases1 the indifference before noticed to all the various forms of positive religion4 ,the ,persian describes all religions as the same liquor in different glasses--all are poured by ,god into one mighty beaker4 ,the self-abandonment and self-annihilation of the ,sufis rest on the basis of their pantheism4 ,personal existence is with them the great illusion of this world of appearance--to cling to it is to be blind and guilty4 ,mahmud 7a ,sufi of the fourteenth century7 says1 in the ,gulschen ,ras1-- ,all sects but multiply the ,i and ,thou2 ,this ,i and ,thou belong to partial being2 ,when ,i and ,thou and several being vanish1 ,then ,mosque and ,church shall bind thee never more4 ,our individual life is but a phantom3 ,make clear thine eye1 and see ,reality6 ,again1 7though here the sense may be moral rather than philosophic1 and selfishness1 not personality1 abjured7-- ,go1 soul6 with ,moses to the wilderness1 ,and hear with him that grand #8,i am the ,lord6' ,while1 like a mountain that shuts out the sun1 ,thine ,i lifts up its head1 thou shalt not see ,me4 ,the lightning strikes the mountain into ruins1 ,and o'er the levelled dust the glory leaps6 ,jelaleddin says of the ,sufi in his self-abnegation1-- ,his love of ,god doth1 like a flame of hell1 ,even in a moment swallow love of self4 ,mahmud1 to express the same thought1 employs the image used by ,thomas ,kempis3-- ,the path from ,me to ,god is truly found1 ,when pure that ,me from ,self as clearest flame from smoke4 ,angelus ,silesius bids men lose1 in utter ,nihilism1 all sense of any existence separate from the ,divine ,substance--the ,absolute3-- ,while aught thou art or know'st or lov'st or hast1 ,not yet1 believe me1 is thy burden gone4 ,who is as though he were not--ne'er had been-- ,that man1 oh joy6 is made ,god absolute4 ,self is surpassed by self-annihilation2 ,the nearer nothing1 so much more divine4#aig ,thus individuality must be ignored to the utmost2 by mystical death we begin to live2 and in this perverted sense he that loseth his life shall find it4 ,hence1 by a natural consequence1 the straining after a sublime apathy almost as senseless as the last abstraction of the ,buddhist4 ,the absolutely disinterested love1 to which the ,sufi aspires1 assumes1 however1 an aspect of grandeur as opposed to the sensuous hopes and fears of ,mohammed's heaven and hell4 ,rumi thus describes the blessedness of those whose will is lost in the will of ,god3-- ,they deem it crime to flee from ,destiny1 ,for ,destiny to them brings only sweetness4 ,welcome is all that ever can befal them1 ,for were it fire it turns to living waters4 ,the poison melts to sugar on their lip2 ,the mire they tread is lustrous diamond1 ,and weal and woe alike1 whatever comes4 ,they and their kingdom lie in ,god's divineness4 ,to pray1 #8,o ,lord1 turn back this trouble from me1' ,they count an insult to the hand that sent it4 ,faithful they are1 but not for ,paradise2 ,god's will the only crowning of their faith3 ,and not for seething hell1 flee they from sin1 ,but that their will must serve the ,will ,divine4 ,it is not struggle1 'tis not discipline1 ,wins them a will so restful and so blest2-- ,it is that ,god from his heart-fountain ever ,fills up their jubilant souls4 ,so1 again1 ,angelus ,silesius1 sometimes pushing his negation to unconscious caricature3-- ,true hero he that would as readily ,be left without ,god as enjoy him near4 ,self-loss finds ,god--to let ,god also go1 ,that is the real1 most rare abandonment4 ,man6 whilst thou thankest ,god for this or that1 ,yet art thou slave to finite feebleness4 ,not fully ,god's is he who cannot live1 ,even in hell1 and find in hell no hell4 ,nought so divine as to let nothing move thee1 ,here or hereafter 7could'st thou only reach it74 ,who loves without emotion1 and without knowledge knows1 ,of him full fitly say we--he is more ,god than man4 ,compare ,emerson1 discoursing of ,intuition and the height to which it raises men3-- #8,fear and hope are alike beneath it4 ,it asks nothing4 ,there is somewhat low even in hope4 ,we are then in vision4 ,there is nothing that can be called gratitude nor properly joy4 ,the soul is raised over passion1' c4 ,so1 again3 #8,prayer as a means to effect a private end is theft and meanness4 ,it supposes dualism in nature and consciousness4 ,as soon as the man is at one with ,god he will not beg4 ,he will then see prayer in all action4'#aih ,this elevation above petition and above desire1 towards which many a ,sufi toiled1 watching1 fasting1 solitary1 through the #8seven valleys' of mystic discipline1 is cheaply accomplished now-a-days by mere nonchalance1 and is hit off by a flourish of the pen4 ,it is the easy boast of any one who finds prayer distasteful and scoffs at psalm singing--who chooses to dub his money-getting with the title of worship1 and fancies that to follow instinct is to follow ,god4 ,the most painful self-negation and the most facile self-indulgence meet at the same point and claim the same pre-eminence4 ,the eastern mystic ignores humanity to attain divinity4 ,the ascent and the descent are proportionate1 and the privileges of nothingness are infinite4 ,we must accompany the ,sufi to his highest point of deification1 and in that transcendental region leave him4 ,his escape from the finite limitations of time and space is thus described1-- ,on earth thou seest his outward1 but his spirit ,makes heaven its tent and all infinity4 ,space and ,duration boundless do him service1 ,as ,eden's rivers dwell and serve in ,eden4 ,again1 ,said1 the servant1 thus recounts one morning to ,mohammed the ecstasy he has enjoyed3-- ,my tongue clave fever-dry1 my blood ran fire1 ,my nights were sleepless with consuming love1 ,till night and day sped past--as flies a lance ,grazing a buckler's rim2 a hundred faiths ,seemed then as one2 a hundred thousand years ,no longer than a moment4 ,in that hour ,all past eternity and all to come ,was gathered up in one stupendous ,now1-- ,let understanding marvel as it may4 ,where men see clouds1 on the ninth heaven ,i gaze1 ,and see the throne of ,god4 ,all heaven and hell ,are bare to me and all men's destinies1 ,the heavens and earth1 they vanish at my glance3 ,the dead rise at my look4 ,i tear the veil ,from all the worlds1 and in the hall of heaven ,i set me central1 radiant as the sun4 ,then spake the ,prophet3--#8,friend1 thy steed is warm2 ,spur him no more4 ,the mirror in thy breast ,did slip its fleshly case1 now put it up-- ,hide it once more1 or thou wilt come to harm4' ,this magniloquence of ,said's is but the vehement poetic expression for the #8absolute intuition' of modern ,germany--that identity of subject and object in which all limitations and distinctions vanish1 and are absorbed in an indescribable transcendental intoxication4 ,if the principle be true at all1 its most lofty and unqualified utterance must be the best1 and what seems to common-sense the thorough-going madness of the fiery ,persian is preferable to the colder and less consistent language of the modern ,teutonic mysticism4 ,quite in the spirit of the foregoing extracts1 ,emerson laments that we do not oftener realize this identity1 and transcend time and space as we ought4-- #8,we live in succession1 in division1 in parts1 in particles4 ,meantime within man is the soul of the whole1 the wise silence1 the universal beauty1 to which every part and particle is equally related1--the eternal ,,one4 ,and this deep power in which we exist1 and whose beatitude is all accessible to us1 is not only self-sufficing and perfect every hour1 but the act of seeing and the thing seen1 the seer and the spectacle1 the subject and the object1 are one4' ,and again3--#8,time and space are but inverse measures of the force of the soul4 ,a man is capable of abolishing them both4 ,the spirit sports with time-- #8,can crowd eternity into an hour ,or stretch an hour to eternity4' ,so ,angelus ,silesius3-- ,rise above ,space and ,time1 and thou canst be ,at any moment in ,eternity4#aii ,the following passage from ,jelaleddin exhibits the kind of identity with ,god claimed by the more extravagant devotees of ,sufism3-- ,are we fools1 we're ,god's captivity2 ,are we wise1 we are his promenade2 ,are we sleeping1 we are drunk with ,god2 ,are we waking1 then we are his heralds2 ,are we weeping1 then his clouds of wrath2 ,are we laughing1 flashes of his love4 ,some among them carried their presumption to a practical extreme which did away with all distinction between good and evil4 ,they declared the sins of the ,sufi dearer to ,god than the obedience of other men1 and his impiety more acceptable than their faith4#bjj ,two extracts more will suffice to show the mode in which this pantheistic mysticism confounds1 at its acme1 the finite and the infinite4 ,they are from ,feridoddin ,attar1 who died in the second or third decade of the fourteenth century4-- ,man1 what thou art is hidden from thyself4 ,know'st not that morning1 mid-day1 and the eve1 ,all are within thee8 ,the ninth heaven art thou2 ,and from the spheres into this roar of time ,didst fall erewhile4 ,thou art the brush that painted ,the hues of all this world--the light of life1 ,that rayed its glory on the nothingness4 ,joy6 joy6 ,i triumph6 ,now no more ,i know ,myself as simply me1 ,i burn with love ,unto myself1 and bury me in love4 ,the ,centre is within me1 and its wonder ,lies as a circle everywhere about me4 ,joy6 joy6 no mortal thought can fathom me4 ,i am the merchant and the pearl at once4 ,lo1 time and space lie crouching at my feet4 ,joy6 joy6 when ,i would revel in a rapture1 ,i plunge into myself and all things know4 ,the poet then introduces ,allah1 as saying that he had cast ,attar into a trance1 and withdrawn him into his own essence1 so that the words he uttered were the words of ,god4#bja ,both with ,emerson and ,angelus1 he who truly apprehends ,god becomes a part of the divine nature1--is a son1 a god in ,god1 according to the latter2 and according to the former1 grows into an organ of the ,universal ,soul4 ,this notion of identity ,emerson seems to arrive at from the human1 ,angelus from the divine side4 ,the salvation of man is reduced with the ,german1 very much to a process of divine development4 ,with the ,american1 every elevated thought merges man for a time in the ,oversoul4 ,the idealism of ,emerson is more subjective1 his pantheism more complete and consequent4 ,angelus is bold on the strength of a theory of redemption which makes man necessary to ,god4 ,emerson is bolder yet1 on his own account1 for he makes his own ,god4 ,this he does when he adores his own ideal1 and1 expanding ,self to ,universality1 falls down and worships4 ,hear him describe this transcendental devotion3-- #8,the simplest person1 who in his integrity worships ,god1 becomes ,god2 yet for ever and ever the influx of this better and universal self is new and unsearchable4' ,again3 #8,i1 the imperfect1 adore my own ,perfect4 ,i am somehow receptive of the great soul1 and thereby ,i do overlook the sun and the stars1 and feel them to be but the fair accidents and effects which change and pass4' ,so1 speaking of the contemplation of ,nature3--#8,i become a transparent eyeball4 ,i am nothing4 ,i see all4 ,the currents of the ,universal ,being circulate through me2 ,i am part or particle of ,god1' c4 ,angelus says1 in virtue of his ideal sonship1-- ,i am as great as ,god1 and he as small as ,i2 ,he cannot me surpass1 or ,i beneath him lie4 ,god cannot1 without me1 endure a moment's space1 ,were ,i to be destroyed1 he must give up the ghost4 ,nought seemeth high to me1 ,i am the highest thing2 ,because e'en ,god himself is poor deprived of me4#bjb ,the central idea of the ,persian mysticism is ,emanation4 ,the soul is to escape from the manifold to the ,one4 ,its tendency 7in proportion as its votary believes that return accomplished7 is to confound man with the ,father4 ,the leading principle in the mysticism of ,eckart and ,angelus ,silesius is ,incarnation4 ,angelus is never weary of reiterating the doctrine that ,god became man in order that man might become ,god4 ,he does not labour1 like the orientals1 to attain deification by ascetic efforts of his own4 ,he has a kind of ,mediator4 ,he seems to believe that through ,christ1 in some way1 every man is a divine ,son of ,god1 if he will only think so4 ,all he has to do is to realize this sonship2 then he becomes1 by ,grace1 all that the ,son of ,god is by ,nature4 ,the obvious result of this mysticism is to identify man with the ,son4 ,in that order of modern mysticism represented by ,emerson1 the central doctrine is ,inspiration4 ,in the creative efforts of the poet1 in the generalizations of the philosopher1 the man of genius speaks as he is moved by the ,oversoul4 ,an influx of the universal spirit floods his being and carries him beyond himself4 ,in intuition the finite ,ego is identified with the absolute ,ego4 ,humanity is a divine evolution1 and each true man 7to use ,emerson's apt illustration7--a faade of ,deity4 ,even ,angelus would have acknowledged that it was in some sort through ,christ that his boastful sonship became possible4 ,but the believer in the ,oversoul will admit no such medium1 and owns a debt to ,christ much as he owns a debt to ,shakspeare4 ,mysticism of this order usurps the office of the ,holy ,ghost1 and directly identifies the spirit of man with the ,spirit of ,god4 ,mysticism has always been accustomed to express the transports of its divine passion by metaphors borrowed from the amorous phraseology of earth4 ,it has done this with every variety of taste1 from the grossness of some of the most eminent ,romanist saints1 to the beautiful ,platonism of ,spenser's ,hymns of #8,heavenly ,love' and #8,heavenly ,beautie4' ,but nowhere has metaphor branched so luxuriantly into allegory as in the ,east1 and nowhere in the ,east with such subtilty and such freedom as among the ,persian mystics4 ,the admiring countrymen of ,hafiz1 ,saadi1 and ,jami1 interpret mystically almost everything they wrote4 ,they underlay these poems everywhere with a system of correspondence whose ingenuity would have done no discredit to ,swedenborg himself4 ,sir ,william ,jones furnishes some specimens of a sort of mystical glossary1 by aid whereof their drinking songs may be read as psalms1 and their amatory effusions transformed into hymns full of edification for the faithful4#bjc ,never1 since the days of ,plotinus1 was a deity imagined more abstract than the ,unity toward which the ,sufi aspires4 ,yet never was religious language more florid and more sensuous4 ,according to the system alluded to1 wine is equivalent to devotion2 the tavern is an oratory2 kisses and embraces1 the raptures of piety2 while wantonness1 drunkenness1 and merriment1 are religious ardour and abstraction from all terrestrial thoughts4 ,the following passage from ,mahmud's ,gulschen ,ras may suffice as a specimen of these devout ,bacchanalia4 ,it has the advantage of exhibiting the key in the lock3-- ,know'st thou who the ,host may be who pours the spirit's wine ,know'st thou what his liquor is whose taste is so divine8 ,the ,host is thy ,beloved ,one--the wine annihilation1 ,and in the fiery draught thy soul drinks in illumination4 ,up1 soul6 and drink with burning lip the wine of ecstasy1 ,the drop should haste to lose itself in ,his unbounded sea4 ,at such a draught mere intellect swims wildered and grows wild2 ,love puts the slave-ring in his ear and makes the rebel mild4 ,our ,friend holds out the royal wine and bids us drink it up2 ,the whole world is a drinking-house and everything a cup4 ,drunken even ,wisdom lies--all in revel sunken2 ,drunken are the earth and heaven2 all the angels drunken4 ,giddy is the very sky1 round so often hasting1 ,up and down it staggers wide1 with but a single tasting4 ,such the wine of might they drink in blest carouse above4 ,so the angels higher lift their flaming height of love4 ,now and then the dregs they fling earthward in their quaffing1 ,and where'er a drop alights1 lo1 an ,eden laughing6#bjd ,footnote #ahi3 ,and if thy heart know nought of this--#8,die that thou mayest be born2' then walkest thou the darksome earth a sojourner forlorn4 ,footnote #aij3 ,tholuck1 ,ssufismus1 sive ,theosophia ,persarum pantheistica 7,berlin1 #ahbb71 pp4 #ea-ed4 ,footnote #aia3 ,tholuck1 ,ssufismus1 p4 #fc4 ,cherub4 ,wand41 ii4 #ah4 ,footnote #aib3 ,tholuck1 ,blthensammlung aus der ,morgenlndischen ,mystik 7,berlin1 #ahbe71 p4 #aad4 ,footnote #aic3 ,cherub4 ,wand41 i4 #bgd2 v4 #ha4 ,footnote #aid3 ,blthen41 p4 #fa4 ,cherub4 ,wand41 iv4 #bc4 ,footnote #aie3 ,blthen41 pp4 #fd1 #ga1 #aac1 #aef4 ,footnote #aif3 ,blthen41 p4 #afg4 ,emerson's ,essays 7#ahdh71 p4 #ce4 ,footnote #aig3 ,blthen41 pp4 #bjd-bjf4 ,cherub4 ,wand41 i4 #bd1 #ib1 #adj4 ,footnote #aih3 ,blthen41 pp4 #ahj1 #aha4 ,cherub4 ,wand41 v4 #cfg2 ii4 #ib2 i4 #ia1 #ci2 ii4 #aeb1 #ei4 ,emerson1 pp4 #cg1 #db4 ,footnote #aii3 ,blthen41 pp4 #he1 #aaf4 ,emerson1 pp4 #ada1 #adc4 ,cherub4 ,wand41 i4 #ab4 ,compare ,richard of ,st4 ,victor1 cited above1 vol4 i41 p4 #agb1 ,note to p4 #afc4 ,footnote #bjj3 ,blthen41 pp4 #hb1 #hd4--,the truth1 of which the licentious doctrine alluded to is the abuse1 is well put by ,angelus1-- #8,dearer to ,god the good man's very sleep ,than prayers and psalms of sinners all night long4'--7v4 #ccd47 ,footnote #bja3 ,blthen41 pp4 #bff1 #bfj4--,never does this soaring idealism become so definite and apprehensible as when it speaks with the #8large utterance' of the ,sufis4 ,angelus has here and there somewhat similar imagery for the same thought4 ,what is with him a dry skeleton acquires flesh and blood among the ,orientals4 #8,sit in the centre1 and thou seest at once ,what is1 what was2 all here and all in heaven4 #8,is my will dead8 ,then what ,i will ,god must1 ,and ,i prescribe his pattern and his end4 #8,i must be sun myself1 and with my beams ,paint all the hueless ocean of the ,godhead4'--7ii4 #ahc2 i4 #ih1 #aae47 ,footnote #bjb3 ,emerson1 pp4 #aed1 #aef1 #aif4 ,cherub4 ,wand41 i4 #aj1 #h1 #bjd4--;,angelus has various modes of expressing the way in which ,god realizes his nature in the salvation of men4 #8,i bear ,god's image4 ,would he see himself8 ,he only can in me1 or such as ,i4 #8,meekness is velvet whereon ,god takes rest3 ,art meek1 ,o man8--,god owes to thee his pillow4 #8,i see in ,god both ,god and man1 ,he man and ,god in me2 ,i quench his thirst1 and he1 in turn1 ,helps my necessity4'--7i4 #aje1 #bad1 #bbd47 ,footnote #bjc3 ,works1 vol4 iv41 ,on the ,mystical ,poetry of the ,persians and ,hindoos4 ,footnote #bjd3 ,blthen41 p4 #bah4 ,,book ,,the ,,eighth ,,theosophy ,,in ,,the ,,age ,,of ,,the ,,reformation ,,chapter ,i4 ,amongst them all sate he that wonned there1 ,that hight ,phantastes by his nature trew2 ,a man of years yet fresh1 as mote appere1 ,of swarth complexion and of crabbed hew1 ,that him full of melancholy did shew2 ,bent hollow beetle brows1 sharpe staring eyes ,that mad or foolish seemed3 one by his view ,mote deeme him born with ill disposed skyes1 ,when oblique ,saturne sate in th' house or agonyes4 ,,spenser4 ,the autumn is already advanced1 and our friends who met at ,summerford have returned to the neighbourhood of ,london4 ,the days of damp and fog have arrived4 ,all nature looks sullen and lustreless4 ,as ,gower gazes through the streaming pane on the narrowed dripping landscape1 he sometimes tries1 as sunny ,persia and the ,sufis recur to him1 to transform the slope before his windows into an eastern valley4 ,fancy shall sow it thick with poppies1 and daisies1 and hyacinths of brilliant red2--a thymy smell breathes up the pass2--and there the ungainly stork1 and gaily painted quails flutter away at the sound of his horse's hoofs4 ,or those house-tops at the foot of the hill1 among their trees1 shall be a ,persian town1 on which he looks from an eminence4 ,there are the flat-roofed white houses1 enclosing in their courts those twinkling silver lights1 the fountains2 the green of trees among the shining walls relieves the eye2 the domes and minarets look down into the narrow streets2 there sleeps the burial-ground1 under the shadow of its sentinel cypresses2 and there blows the garland of gardens1 surrounding the whole with its wavy line of many colours4 ,but the weather is a water-monster1 and swallows up too-venturous ,fancy4 ,for a few moments imagination can lay light behind the clouds2 bright hues flush out on the surface of familiar forms1 and the magic power prevails to change them into creatures of the ,orient4 ,but the rainy reality is too potent1 and the wilderness of vapour will receive no form1 retain no colour4 ,so ,gower turns away from the windows--pokes the fire--feels idle and fit for nothing--struggles with himself--conquers1 and finally achieves a morning's work4 ,willoughby has laid aside his romance for a time and taken to the theosophists--to ,jacob ,behmen more especially4 ,in fact1 he had come to an exciting point in his story4 ,he thought he had found a kind of seething turbulence in his thoughts1 like that which certain rivers are said to manifest1 when in parts of their course they pass over beds of subterranean fire4 ,afraid of becoming morbid and unnatural1 he stopped work at once1 and had recourse to ,behmen as a refrigerant and sedative4 ,the remedy succeeded to admiration4 ,within a day or two the patient could pronounce himself out of poetical danger2 and ,atherton found him1 when he dropped in one morning1 enjoying1 with ,behmen in his hand1 that most promising token of convalescence--a profound sleep4 ,gower resolved to make himself amends for that uncongenial morning1 by spending the evening at ,ashfield4 ,thither also ,willoughby had found his way4 ,a considerable part of the evening was passed in ,atherton's library1 and conversation turned1 before very long1 upon the mystics1 once more1 and their position as regards the ,reformation4 99 99 99 99 99 ,,willoughby4 ,those ,teutonic worthies of the fourteenth century are noble specimens of the mystic4 ,,gower4 ,truly1 with them1 ,mysticism puts on her beautiful garments4 ,see her standing1 gazing heavenward2 #8her rapt soul sitting in her eyes1' and about her what a troop of shining ones6 ,there is ,charity1 her cheek wet with tears for the dead ,christ and pale with love for the living2 carrying1 too1 the oil and the wine--for ,mysticism was the good ,samaritan of the time1 and succoured bleeding ,poverty1 when priest passed by and ,levite2--there is ,truth1 withdrawing worship from the form and superstitious substitute1 transferring it from priest and pageantry to the heart alone with ,god1 and pressing on1 past every channel1 toward the ,fount ,himself2--there ,humility1 pointing to the embers of consumed good works1 while she declares that man is nothing and that ,god is all2--and there1 too1 ,patriotism1 and awakening ,liberty--for ,mysticism appealed to the people in their native tongue2 fashioned the speech and nerved the arms of the ,german nation2 gave heart to the ,fatherland 7bewildered in a tempest of fiery curses7 to withstand1 in the name of ,christ1 the vicar of ,christ2 led on the ,teutonic lion of her popular fable to foil the plots of ,italian ,reynard2 and dared herself to set at nought the infuriate ,infallibility4 ,,atherton4 ,go on1 ,gower4 ,,gower4 ,it seems to me that the doctrine of justification by faith1 is practically involved in a theology like that of ,tauler1 so deep in its apprehension of sin as selfishness1 so thorough in renouncing all merit on the part of man4 ,,atherton4 ,yes1 practically4 ,what was needful in addition was1 that this doctrine should take its due central place in the system of ,christian truth1 as the principle1 if ,i may so speak1 of salvation for all men4 ,it was not enough to arrive at it as the upshot of individual mystical experience4 ,,willoughby4 ,there ,i think you indicate the weak point of this mysticism--it is so individual--so much a matter of the personal inward life4 ,,gower4 ,that surely is the very secret of its strength4 ,,willoughby4 ,yes1 of its strength up to a certain limit2 beyond that limit1 of its weakness4 ,it lacked facility of impartation4 ,its sympathies were broad and humane2 its doctrine too narrow and ascetic4 ,speaking from the depths of a soul that had known the nether darkness and the insufferable glory1 its utterance was broken and obscure4 ,it must be lived through to be understood4 ,it might attract1 but could only partially retain1 the many4 ,its message1 after all1 was to the few4 ,,gower4 ,but those few1 master-minds1 remember4 ,,atherton4 ,true1 yet what powers could compensate for the want of clear speech--of a ready vehicle for transference of thought8 ,a deep saying that of ,jeremy ,taylor's1 where he remarks concerning mystical elevations and abstractions1 that1 while in other sciences the terms must first be known and then the rules and conclusions1 the whole experience of mysticism must first be obtained before we can so much as know what it is1 and the end acquired first--the conclusion before the premises4 ,,willoughby4 ,when ,luther appears1 appealing to the ,bible in the hands of the people1 the defect is supplied1 and we have the ,reformation4 ,that visible and venerable externalism1 the ,romish ,church1 could not be successfully assailed on merely internal grounds4 ,the testimony of the individual heart against it was variable and uncertain1 because more or less isolated4 ,but where the ,scriptures are set free1 and they can be made the basis of assault1 an externalism quite as visible1 and more venerable1 brings the outward to bear against the outward2 while the power of an inward life1 pure and deep and ardent as the best of the mystics ever knew1 animates the irresistible onset4 ,,gower4 ,the testimony of ,history1 then1 is decidedly against our modern spiritualism1 which complains that we make too much of the book1 and sacrifice the subjective religious development to an outward authority4 ,luther--a true man of the spirit--conquered because he could point to a letter4 ,the fire of his own inward life could kindle so grand a flame1 because he was sustained by an authority which no individual mystic could arrogate4 ,the ,scriptures were the common ground for the ,reformer who had the truth1 and the inquirer who sought it4 ,the excessive subjectivity of the mystic deprived him of that advantage4 ,,willoughby4 ,but are we not overlooking other causes which enabled ,luther to accomplish so much1 and precluded the mystics from carrying further their reforming tendency8 ,,atherton4 ,by all means let the influence of the interval between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries be duly taken into account4 ,to do so will only make good ,gower's remark4 ,during the fifteenth century you find no fresh development of mysticism4 ,the genuine religion of the period was still mystical in its complexion1 but characterised by a much larger infusion of the scriptural element4 ,this was the real advance of that interim4 ,at the ,universities the ,bible began to displace the schoolmen4 ,a better system of interpretation prevailed4 ,even with the mystics ,st4 ,paul was already taking the place of ,dionysius1 and mysticism began to lose its nature1 merging in a true spirituality1 sober-minded while fervent4 ,in the theology of such men as ,john ,wessel and ,staupitz 7who with ,tauler and the ,german theology nourished the early religious life of ,luther71 we see a clearer apprehension of the nature of ,christ's work for us--a better balancing of the outward and the inward4 ,in fact1 the great step necessary to produce a reformation1 after the mystics had made their preparation1 was this very bringing into prominence of the word of ,god4 ,then1 to the ardour and the power of mysticism in its noblest form1 was added the authority1 the guidance1 and the divine adaptation of that message of salvation announced to all mankind4 ,,willoughby4 ,then1 again1 the doctrine of ,luther directed men at once to the attainment of that clear hope concerning their spiritual safety which1 say what we will1 is the craving of our nature4 ,we have seen how an ,eckart would become pantheist to extort from philosophy that assurance which was denied him by the ,church4 ,,gower4 ,yet does not the strength and attraction of ,romanism lie in this very characteristic--its tempting facility of comfort8 ,most men prefer a sleeping conscience to a tender one2 and for such the ,romish ,church offers a perpetual siesta4 ,,willoughby4 ,granted2 for this very reason1 however1 she cannot satisfy the deeper wants of the class ,i speak of--those men out of whom may be made mystics1 reformers1 heretics1--but religious ,helots never4 ,i am not speaking of mere comfort1 but of true peace1--of that entrance into a new relationship towards ,god which gives us the heart to aspire towards a new nature4 ,,gower4 ,agreed1 then4 ,bunyan follows ,paul when he makes ,christian lose his burden early in the pilgrimage1 so that he treads the onward path thenceforward with a lighter step4 ,,atherton4 ,and can front ,apollyon better4 ,look round at the ,christendom of that age4 ,you see only two classes who escape the condition of the hired servant--who are the sons of ,god and not his bondsmen4 ,these are the mystics and the reformers4 ,the mystic realizes adoption through appalling griefs and toils2 the reformer is led thither straightway1 as he exclaims with ,st4 ,paul1 #8,being therefore justified by faith1 we have peace with ,god4' ,,willoughby4 ,how strongly does ,luther urge men to believe on ,christ as a ,saviour for them--to receive in lowly simplicity the peace divinely offered4 ,how triumphantly does he show that such a faith is victory--that all other is a mere historic belief about ,christ1 not a belief in an ever-present ,deliverer1 who lives within1 and redeems us daily from ourselves4 ,thus did his followers helm them speedily with hope1 and escape1 in great measure1 the fearful strain of those alternations between rapture and despair1 for which mysticism did not even seek a remedy4 ,the distinction between justification and sanctification is no mere theological refinement4 ,its practical recognition1 at least1 is essential to that solemn joyousness which is the strength and glory of the ,christian life4 ,,atherton4 ,that is1 after all1 the true escape from ,self which delivers you from bondage to the shifting frames and feelings of the hour--the mere accidents of personal temperament1 by making clear the external ground of hope4 ,mysticism had not light enough to find the way to its own ideal of rest4 ,luther1 with his ,bible1 realized in soberness the longed-for repose of its intense passion4 ,,willoughby4 ,we must confess too1 ,i think1 that the representatives of the better mysticism were not strong enough to cope with the fanatical or lawless leaders of the worse4 ,how ,tauler1 ,suso1 ,ruysbroek1 and the author of the ,theologia ,germanica1 lift up their voices against the #8false lights'--against men who deified every impulse1 who professed to have transcended all virtue1 who renounced all moral obligation and outward authority1 or who resigned themselves to a stupid apathy which they called poverty of spirit4 ,,gower4 ,those who constituted this last class must have been men who found in the false doctrine only an excuse for remaining as they were3--hard1 indeed1 to raise them to anything better4 ,i imagine them poor ignorant hinds1 the undermost victims of feudalism4 ,one thinks of ,tennyson's portraiture of the serf1-- ,the staring eye glazed o'er with sapless days1 ,the long mechanic pacings to and fro1 ,the set gray life and apathetic end4 ,,willoughby4 ,be that as it may1 this bastard mysticism1 whether rapacious as ,king ,stork1 or passive as ,king ,log1 multiplies among men4 ,want and oppression seize on the sacred pretext of an inward light1 and mysticism is fast growing fierce and revolutionary4 ,good men1 speaking words of spiritual freedom1 have unawares awakened licence4 ,they themselves slew ,self with vigil and with tears2 and1 lo6 a ,hydra-headed ,self1 rampant and ruthless1 stalks abroad1 and they have been unwittingly his creators4 ,,atherton4 ,what could they do1 as mystics1 but mourn and rebuke8 ,the inward testimony would not render an unvarying verdict in every case4 ,their appeal must be1 either to an amount of right moral discernment already in the individual1 or to the social judgment of a certain religious circle4 ,beyond these limits their very consistency is their weakness4 ,for the thorough-going mystic1 who is resolved to be in all things a light and law unto himself1 replies that his inward light is quite as divinely authoritative for him as is that of the moderate man1 reproving his excesses1 for himself4 ,he will answer1 #8,friend1 walk thou by thy light1 as ,i by mine4 ,the external is nothing to the internal4 8,what is the chaff to the wheat80 saith the ,lord4 ,thou art external to me1 ,i listen therefore to the voice within me1 not to thine4' ,,willoughby4 ,we have1 too1 the express testimony of ,melanchthon to the fact1 that had not ,luther appeared when he did1 to divert the under-current of popular indignation into the middle course of the ,reformation1 a fearful outbreak must have desolated ,europe from the fury kindled by the intolerable oppressions of ,church and ,state4 ,,gower4 ,certainly mysticism could never have spoken with power enough to turn aside such a long-gathered tempest4 ,,willoughby4 ,where the revolutionary spirit had once broken out1 only the strong hand could avail4 ,,atherton4 ,and how ruthlessly was that remedy applied6 ,but--what in the world--,gower1 ,i say1 open your eyes4 ,are you going to sleep8 ,,gower4 ,i was trying to recall a dream ,i had after reading about the ,anabaptists of ,munster4 ,,willoughby4 ,a dream6 ,let us have it4 ,,gower4 ,wait a moment--ah1 now ,i remember4 ,first of all1 ,i saw numbers of people toiling across the fields or along miry roads2 weary mothers1 delicately nurtured1 carrying their babes1 and followed by their crying little ones2 the fathers laden1 it would seem1 with such property as they were allowed to take away4 ,they look back mournfully towards the walls of a city1 out of whose gates more of their friends are being thrust4 ,these are the magistrates1 the rich1 the unbelievers1 driven forth by the populace to find what shelter they may among the boors1 or in the nearest towns4 ,then ,i am suddenly inside the city4 ,i see1 in one place1 a crowd gathered about a shaggy1 wild-eyed preacher1 spluttering1 screaming1 foaming at the mouth2 in another is a circle surrounding two men in rags1 whirling round like spinning dervishes4 ,one man1 with face ghastly pale1 and bandaged head1 who seems to have escaped from a hospital1 moans and wrings his hands1 predicting universal ruin4 ,now1 with a yell1 he has fallen down in convulsions4 ,there a burly brute has pushed down a weeping woman from the door-steps of a great house1 that he may stand on the spot to roar out his prophecy and exhortation4 ,all this was somehow mingled with hosannas to ,mathieson1 the baker2 and at the end of the high street they were dancing about a bonfire made of all the books in the town1 save the ,bible only4 ,then the crowd made way for the favourite wife of ,john ,bokelson1 the tailor1 riding in a great coach1 resplendent in silks and costly stuffs torn from the churches4 ,methought ,i entered the ,town ,hall4 ,there1 on a throne1 in a suit of silver tissue1 slashed and lined with crimson1 fastened with buckles of gold1 sat ,john ,bokelson himself4#bje ,,willoughby4 ,a ,mormon elder1 #8all of the olden time6' ,,atherton4 ,be quiet4 ,he had only eight wives4 ,,gower4 ,there he sat1 with his triple crown1 his globe1 and cross of gold1 his silver and golden swords1 and above his head ,i could read1 #8,king of ,righteousness over the whole ,world4' ,then came a long succession of petitioners1 thrice kneeling and prostrating themselves before him4 ,a bell rang4 ,the audience was over4 ,now he was sending out ambassadors1 calling on the neighbouring towns to rise and establish the ,kingdom of the ,holy ,ghost1--#8for the meek are to inherit the earth1 and the time for spoiling the ,egyptians is come4' ,after this ,i saw long tables spread in the market-place1 with fine linen cloths1 whereat four thousand people partook of the sacrament1 and afterwards riotously feasted2 the grey towers of the cathedral looking down upon them4 ,i passed in at the church doors4 ,all was confusion there1 drunken shouts1 and running to and fro of boys from cook-shops4 ,the great oriel window had been broken by stones1 and on the pavement1 with its time-worn epitaphs1 lay the many-coloured fragments of glass1 among broken flagons and pools of beer4 ,a mad musician had seized upon the organ1 and above the uproar rolled the mighty volumes of sound1 shaking the old dusty banners4 ,now came a crash of unearthly music--quite unheeded1--and then the melody melted and trembled away1 dying down with a far-off wail of unutterable pathos4 ,in the midst of his ecstasy the crazed performer was hurled away by a swarm of #8prentice lads who had found their way up the staircase4 ,one among them struck up the well-known air of a wanton song4 ,there was an outcry and sound of struggling1 and ,i saw the madman leap from the clerestory down into the middle of the nave1---- ,,willoughby4 ,and you woke8 ,,gower4 ,no4 ,there came over me a kind of blank bewilderment1 and all was changed4 ,the sides of the church had become mountains4 ,i was in a winding rocky glen1 and the moon was rising over the black fantastic peaks that shut in the valley4 ,i saw what made me think of ,ezekiel's vision of dry bones4 ,along the hollow of the gorge1 and in the great furrows of the heights on each side1 where should have been mountain streams and pebbles1 were the glistening bones2 and on the rock-ledges where the moonlight fell ,i could see them strewn2 and on every boulder1 skeleton-heaps2 and at the mouth of every cavern1 like icicles hanging from the stony jaws4 ,i heard a rising wind sweep up the pass1--another blast1 and another2 and then1 coming nearer and nearer1 a sound as though withered boughs of innumerable trees were snapping in a tempest4 ,all was whirling1 darting motion among the white rattling fragments1 above1 beneath1 around2 till every clanking bone had been locked to its fellow1 and a skeleton sat on every crag and lay in every hollow4 ,the sinews and the flesh then came up upon them2 after that1 the breath2 and they arose1 an exceeding great army4 ,i heard a muttering near me1 and turning1 ,i saw one gazing on the multitude1 having in his hand a torch4 ,his wild1 eager look startled me4 ,now ,i thought he was ,carlstadt1 and then he changed into ,thomas ,mnzer4 ,then again ,i was sure ,i recognized ,spenser's ,phantastes4 ,he flung his torch into a cleft1 whence it breathed out its last sparks into the windy night1 and bowing his head1 turned slowly away4 ,i heard him say1 #8,dead ,church6 ,dead ,church6 ,how shalt thou live8 ,i have learnt it4 ,flesh and blood first--then breath4 ,truth for a body1 then ,love for a soul4 ,the spirit must have a form--must quicken a letter4 ,first a fact for motive2 then let the young life work4 ,the soul must have its sinews2 the spirit its instrument1 its means1 its words4 ,lie there1 fire that destroyest2 come hither1 fire that warmest1--that warmest to good1 and that warnest from evil4' ,then ,i saw that he had a new book in his hand1--the last part then published of ,luther's ,german ,new ,testament4 ,he vanished4 ,the hills rolled away in smoke1 and ,i awoke with a start4 ,,atherton4 ,i wish ,phantastes and his kindred had really learnt the lesson of your dream4 ,but such hot-brained enthusiasts cannot be taught1 not even by sore stripes of adversity in the school of fools4 ,footnote #bje3 ,a reference to ,raumer's ,history of the ,sixteenth and ,seventeenth ,centuries will satisfy the reader that this dream #8was not all a dream4' ,most minute details are given in a letter from the ,,mss4 of ,dupuy4 ,,chapter ,,ii4 ,he that misbelieves and lays aside clear and cautious reason in things that fall under the discussion of ,reason1 upon the pretence of hankering after some higher principle1 7which1 a thousand to one1 proves but the infatuation of ,melancholy and a superstitious hallucination71 is as ridiculous as if he would not use his natural eyes about their proper object till the presence of some supernatural light1 or till he had got a pair of ,spectacles made of the ,crystalline ,heaven1 or of the ,clum ,empyreum1 to hang upon his nose for him to look through4--,,henry ,,more4 ,,atherton4 ,i ought to acknowledge1 ,i suppose1 that ,i have by me a rough draught1 made some time since1 representing the first strife between ,mysticism and ,reformation4 ,but1 as to reading it1 ,i scarcely think---- ,,willoughby4 ,you will not do so1 ,i beg4 ,,atherton4 ,willoughby1 you shall suffer for that4 ,i'll begin4 ,,willoughby4 ,pelt away4 ,i thought ,i should get a cocoa-nut for my stone4 7,atherton reads47 ,luther and the ,mystics4 ,the estimate to be formed of the mystics who lived before the ,reformation differs very widely from that which is due to those who appeared after it4 ,previous to the ,reformation1 there was a far larger amount of truth with the mystics than with any other party in the ,romish ,church4 ,they were1 in reality1 men of progress1 and belonged to the onward element in their day and generation4 ,for reform of some sort many of them laboured--all of them sighed4 ,they protested against the corruptions of religion4 ,many an ,augean stable would they have cleansed1 could they but have found their ,hercules4 ,in ,france1 ,briconnet1 ,gerard1 and ,roussel were men of this class--not so outspoken as ,luther and his followers1 but led by mysticism to sympathy with reforming views1 and enabled by that very mysticism to retain their connexion with ,rome1 regarding externals as indifferent4 ,when ,luther comes with his doctrine of justification by faith1 and his announcement that the ,scriptures are the sufficient standard of ,christian truth1 a great change takes place4 ,mystics of the more thoughtful1 rightly earnest sort1 are among the first to embrace the new doctrines4 ,here they have the guide they longed for--here they find what mysticism could never give4 ,they are1 some of them1 like ,justin ,martyr1 who waited long among the schools of the ,platonists for their promised immediate intuition of ,deity1 and then discovered among ,christians that ,god was to be known in another way far better--through the medium of his written ,word1 by the teaching of his ,spirit4 ,but those who when a fuller light came1 refused to quit for its lustre that isolated and flickering torch1 about which men had gathered for lack of anything brighter1 such were given over to the veriest absurdity1 or speedily consigned to utter forgetfulness4 ,by the mystic of the fourteenth century1 the way of the ,reformation was in great part prepared4 ,by the mystic of the sixteenth century it was hindered and imperilled4 ,in that huge ship of the state ecclesiastic1 which all true hearts and hands in those troublous times were concerned to work to their very best1 a new code of regulations had been issued4 ,such rule came in with ,luther4 ,now some of those who would have been among the very best sailors under the old management1 proved useless1 or worse than useless under the new4 ,one set of them were insolent and mutinous--had a way of reviling the captain in strange gibberish--and a most insane tendency to look into the powder-room with a light4 ,another class lay about useless1 till having been tumbled over many times by their more active comrades1 they got kicked into corners1 whence they were never more to emerge4 ,so fared it with mysticism1 attempting to persist in existence when its work for that time was done4 ,the mystic so situated was either a caricature of reform or a cipher1 either a fanatical firebrand or an unheeded negation4 ,we need not go far for examples4 ,dr4 ,bodenstein of ,carlstadt 7best known as simple ,carlstadt7 is professor at ,wittenberg1 and a thorough reformer4 ,he is a little1 swarthy1 sunburnt man1 crotchety to the last degree4 ,he follows his intuitions--now this whim1 now that--right to-day1 wrong to-morrow--a man whom you never know where to find4 ,he must spring to his conclusion at once2 he will not first pause for satisfying reasons1--for clear ideas on the various bearings of his thought or deed4 ,so his life is a series of starts2 his actions incongruous and spasmodic1 unlinked1 unharmonized by any thoughtful plan or principle4 ,but ,carlstadt is a man of books as well as of action4 ,he writes treatises1 repeating the doctrines of ,tauler and the ,german ,theology1 all about abandonment1 and not seeing ,god or enjoying ,him more in this than in that event or employment2 about the sin of enjoying ordinances and media1 rather than ,god immediately2 about the blessed self-loss in the ,one2 about the reduction of ourselves to nothing4 ,ah1 ,dr4 ,bodenstein1 thou mayest write for ever that way1 and no one now will read6 ,men have left all this behind4 ,a ripe full vintage invites their thirst2 thine acrid and ascetic grape is now deserted4 ,gladly do they1 for the most part1 exchange the refined and impracticable requirements of mysticism1 its vagueness1 its incessant prohibition1 for the genial1 simple truth of that ,german ,new ,testament which ,luther is giving them4 ,at the juncture of which we are about to speak1 ,luther lay hidden in the ,wartburg4 ,in the small town of ,zwickau1 in the ,erzgebirge1 there arose a knot of enthusiasts for whom ,luther did not go half far enough4 ,there was ,storch1 a weaver1 to whom ,gabriel had made very wonderful communications one night2 another weaver1 named ,thomas1 and a student1 ,stbner1 who had forsaken the toil of study for the easier method of supernatural illumination4 ,to these should be added the more notorious ,thomas ,mnzer1 who has been erroneously regarded as the founder of the party4 #8,why such a slavish reverence for what the ,bible says8' cry these mystics4 #8,what is a mere book8' #8,have we not immediate voices1 impulses1 revelations from the ,holy ,spirit1 dictating all we should do8 ,better this than your ,bible reading and college work4' ,then1 next1 they prophesy terrible woes and judgments to come on ,christendom1 mainly through the ,turks2 they themselves1 perhaps1 in fitting time1 may draw the sword of the ,lord and of ,gideon1 and win the land for the saints4 ,these worthies were put down by the magistrates of ,zwickau4 ,shaking off the ,zwickau dust against their enemies1 several of them seek a #8larger sphere of usefulness' in ,wittenberg4 ,they found the city already in no small excitement concerning certain reforms which ,carlstadt was making at full speed4 ,he fraternizes with the ,zwickau prophets at once4 ,indeed1 he had been heard to say of the whole body of ,scripture what divines were accustomed to say of the law only1 that it was a killing letter1 leading to nothing more than a sense of guilt and deserved condemnation4 ,faster and faster come his changes1 so well-meant1 but so ill-advised4 ,with a few strokes he abolishes auricular confession1 makes it incumbent to violate the fast days1 and renders it customary to come to the sacrament without preparation4 ,next an iconoclast riot is raised4 ,carlstadt declares that the magistrates have power to render criminal those observances which the popular voice declares contrary to the ,word of ,god2 that if they refuse1 the community may take the law into its own hands4 ,a scholar like ,carlstadt1 a professor of established repute1 surrenders at last to the vulgar error of the very coarsest mysticism4 ,he advises his students to go home2 human learning is vain2 ,hebrew and ,greek an idle toil2 inspiration is far above scholarship4 ,were there not prophets among them1 wiser than all the doctors1 who had never studied anything or anywhere for half an hour8 ,he himself went about among the poor people1 asking them the meaning of ,scripture passages1 and believing that the hap-hazard notions they put forth were a special revelation from ,him who hideth from the wise and prudent what is revealed unto babes4 ,imagine the ,professor bawling a text into the ear of some deaf old crone who cowers beside the stove1 and awaiting the irrelevant mumblings of ignorant decrepitude as the oracle of ,god6 ,fancy him accosting the shoemaker at his stall1 and getting his notion of the text in question1 noting it down as infallible1 and going his way rejoicing2 while ,crispin1 who knows him1 thinks over and over again what a far cleverer answer he might have given1 and wishes unsaid what ,carlstadt believes inspired6 ,is there no one in ,wittenberg to unmask these follies1 and to quiet the smouldering excitement dangerously spreading among townspeople and students8 ,melanchthon is young4 ,the loud browbeating volubility of the prophets overpowers his gentle nature4 ,he is undecided--he fancies he sees some force in what they say about baptism4 ,he is timid--he will do nothing4 ,friends write to ,luther4 ,back comes an answer from a man who sees to the heart of the matter in a moment--a standing confutation of the mystic's ambition1 in three sentences4 ,thus replies ,luther--#8,do you wish to know the place1 the time1 the manner in which ,god holds converse with men8 ,hear then--#8,as a lion so hath he crushed all my bones2' and again1 #8,i am cast out from before thy face2' and again1 #8,my soul is filled with plagues1 and my life draweth nigh unto the gates of hell4' ,the ,divine ,majesty does not speak to men immediately1 as they call it1 so that they have vision of ,god1 for ,he saith1 #8,no flesh shall see me and live4' ,human nature could not survive the least syllable of the ,divine utterance4 ,so ,god addresses man through men1 because we could not endure ,his speaking to us without medium4' ,and the mystics could not say 7as mystics so commonly plead7 that ,luther was a man unable1 from defective experience1 to understand them4 ,if any man had sounded the depths of the soul's #8dim and perilous way1' it was he4 ,nay1 it is for him to question their experience4 #8,inquire1' he says to ,melanchthon1 #8if they know aught of those spiritual distresses1 those divine births1 and deaths1 and sorrows1 as of hell4'#bjf ,luther receives day by day more alarming intelligence4 ,he fears the spread of false doctrine--insurrection in the name of reform4 ,he is anxious lest the elector should persecute the new lights--a step which the fat1 amiable1 children-with-sugar-plums-feeding ,frederick1 was not very likely to take4 ,he forms the heroic resolve of quitting his refuge1 and suddenly reappears in ,wittenberg4 ,he preaches sermons marvellous for moderation and wisdom--sermons which accomplish what is so hard1 the calming of heated passion1 the reconciliation of adversaries4 ,at his voice ,violence and ,tumult slink away--their hounds still in the leash2 and ,charity descends1 waving her wand of peace1 and shedding the light of her heavenly smile on every face4 ,so triumphs ,religion over ,fanaticism4 ,finally1 ,luther was called on to hold a discussion with two of the prophets1 ,stbner1 and one ,cellarius1 a schoolmaster4 ,the latter1 when called upon by ,luther to substantiate his positions from the ,scripture1 stamps1 strikes the table with his fist1 and declares it an insult to speak so to a man of ,god4 ,luther1 at last1 seeing this man foaming1 roaring1 leaping about like one possessed1 comes to believe that there is a spirit in these men--but an unclean one from beneath4 ,he cries out finally1 after his homely fashion1 #8,i smack that spirit of yours upon the snout4' ,howls of indignation from the ,zwickauer side--universal confusion--dissolution of assembly4 ,the prophets after this find themselves moved to quit ,wittenberg without delay--their occupation gone4 ,let prosaic or sceptical folk regard this discussion as they may1 to those who look beneath the surface1 it is manifest that there really was a conflict of spirits going on then and there--the unclean spirit of ,arrogance and ,misrule quailing before that of ,truth and ,soberness4#bjg ,carlstadt and his allies of ,zwickau exhibit mysticism rampant1 making reformation look questionable4 ,a very fair representative of the other class of mystic is found in ,sebastian ,frank4 ,this man1 born at the close of the fifteenth century1 seems to have lived a wandering life in different parts of ,germany 7often brought into trouble by his doctrines1 probably7 for some forty or fifty years4 ,he was early enamoured of the ,german ,theology1 the writings of ,tauler1 above all1 of ,eckart's speculations4 ,the leading principles contained in the books he regarded with such veneration1 he elaborated into a system of his own4 ,starting with the doctrine of the ,theologia ,germanica1 that ,god is the substans of all things1 he pushes it to the verge of a dreamy pantheism--nay1 even beyond that uncertain frontier4 ,he conceives of a kind of divine life-process 7,lebens-prozess7 through which the universe has to pass4 ,this process1 like the ,hegelian1 is threefold4 ,first1 the divine substance1 the abstract unity which produces all existence4 ,second1 said substance appearing as an opposite to itself--making itself object4 ,third1 the absorption of this opposition and antithesis--the consummate realization whereof takes place in the consciousness of man when restored to the supreme unity and rendered in a sense divine4 ,the fall of man is1 in his system1 a fall from the ,divinity within him--that ,reason which is the ,holy ,ghost1 in which the ,divine ,being is supposed first to acquire will and self-consciousness4 ,christ is1 with him1 the divine element in man4 ,the work of the historic ,saviour is to make us conscious of the ideal and inward1 and we thus arrive at the consciousness of that fundamental divineness in us which knows and is one with the ,supreme by identity of nature4#bjh ,such doctrine is a relapse upon ,eckart1 and also an anticipation of modern ,german speculation4 ,yet1 shall we say on this account that ,sebastian ,frank was before his age or behind it8 ,the latter unquestionably4 ,he stood up in defence of obsolescent error against a truth that was blessing mankind4 ,he must stand condemned1 on the sole ground of judgment we modern judges care to take1 as one of the obstructives of his day who put forth what strength he had to roll back the climbing wheel of truth4 ,we pardon ,tauler's allegorical interpretations--those freaks of fancy1 so subtile1 so inexhaustible1 so curiously irrelevant in one sense1 yet so sagaciously brought home in another--we assent to ,melanchthon's verdict1 who calls him the ,german ,origen2 but we remember that every one in his times interpreted the ,bible in that arbitrary style4 ,the ,reformers1 aided by the revival of letters1 were successful in introducing those principles of interpretation with which we are ourselves familiar4 ,but for this more correct method of exegesis1 the benign influence of the ,scriptures themselves had been all but nullified2 for any one might have found in them what he would4 ,yet against this good thing1 second only to the ,word itself1 ,sebastian ,frank stands up to fight in defence of arbitrary fancy and of lifeless pantheistic theory with such strength as he may4 ,so has mysticism1 once so eager to press on1 grown childishly conservative1 and is cast out straightway4 ,luther said he had written nothing against ,frank1 he despised him so thoroughly4 #8,unless my scent deceive me1' says the reformer1 #8the man is an enthusiast or spiritualist 7,geisterer71 for whom nothing will do but spirit6 spirit6--and not a word of ,scripture1 sacrament1 or ministry4' ,so ,frank1 contending for the painted dreams of night against the realities of day--for fantasy against soberness--and falling1 necessarily1 in the fight1 has been curtained over in his sleep by the profoundest darkness4 ,scarcely does any one care to rescue from their oblivion even the names of his many books4 ,what is his ,golden ,ark1 or ,seven ,sealed ,book1 or collection of most extravagant interpretations1 called ,paradoxa1 to any human creature8 ,for a ,chronicle he left behind1 the historian has sometimes to thank him4 ,he had a near-sighted mind4 ,action immediately about him he could limn truly4 ,but he had not the comprehensiveness to see whither the age was tending4 ,,willoughby4 ,how admirable is that reply of ,luther's2--an unanswerable rebuke of that presumptuous mysticism which would boastfully tear aside the veil and dare a converse face to face with ,god4 ,semele perishes4 ,that the fanatic survives is proof that he has but embraced a cloud4 ,,atherton4 ,a rebuke1 rather1 of that folly1 in all its forms1 which imagines itself the subject of a special revelation that is no fearful searching of the soul1 but merely a flattering reflection of its own wishes4 ,,gower4 ,and what can most men make of that milder form of the same ambition--,i mean the exhortation to escape all image and figure8 ,how else can we grasp spiritual realities8 ,the figurative language in which religious truth is conveyed to us seems to me to resemble that delicate membrane gummed to the back of the charred papyrus-roll1 which otherwise would crumble to pieces in unwinding4 ,the fragile film alone would drop to dust1 but by this means it coheres1 and may be unfolded for inspection4 ,,willoughby4 ,and when a scripture figure is pressed too far 7the besetting sin of systematising divines71 it is as though your gold-beater's skin1 or whatever it be1 had been previously written on1 and the characters mistaken for those of the roll to which it was merely the support and lining4 ,,gower4 ,i can readily conceive how provoking a man like ,sebastian ,frank must have been to ,luther1 with his doctrines of passivity and apathy1 his holy contempt for rule1 for rationality1 or practicability1 and his idle chaotic system-spinning1 when every hand was wanted for the goodly cause of ,reform4 ,,atherton4 ,then there was ,schwenkfeld1 too1 who went off from ,luther as pietist in one direction1 while ,frank departed as pantheist in the other4 ,,gower4 ,a well-meaning man1 though2 a kind of sixteenth-century ,quaker1 was he not8 ,,atherton4 ,yes4 ,compound a ,quaker1 a ,plymouth ,brother1 and an ,antipdo ,baptist1 and the result is something like a ,schwenkfeldian4 ,,willoughby4 ,for my enquiries concerning ,jacob ,behmen1 ,i find that the most important of the ,lutheran mystics was a quiet man of few words1 pastor at ,tschopau during the latter half of the sixteenth century1 by name ,valentine ,weigel4 ,,gower4 ,you will give us more information about him when you read your essay on ,jacob ,behmen4 ,for the present ,i confess myself tired of these minor mystics4 ,,willoughby4 ,i shall have to do with him only in as far as he was a forerunner of ,jacob4 ,weigel's treatises were published posthumously1 and a very pretty quarrel there was over his grave4 ,he bases his theology on the ,theologia ,germanica1 adds a modification of ,sebastian ,frank1 and introduces the theosophy of ,paracelsus4 ,in this way he brings us near to ,behmen1 who united in himself the two species of mysticism--the theopathetic1 represented by ,schwenkfeld1 on the one side1 and the theosophic1 by ,paracelsus1 on the other4 ,,atherton4 ,as ,lutheranism grew more cold and rigid1 mysticism found more ground of justification1 and its genial reaction rendered service to the ,church once more4 ,,willoughby4 ,i think the sword of the ,thirty ,years' ,war may be said to have cleared legitimate space for it4 ,in that necessary strife for opinion the inward life was sorely perilled4 ,it was inevitable1 ,i suppose1 that multitudes should at least have sought1 not only spirituality in mysticism and purity in separation1 but wisdom in the stars1 wealth in alchemy1 and the communion of saints in secret societies4 ,note to page #df4 ,luther writes3--,jam vero privatum spiritum explores etiam1 quras1 num experti sint spirituales illas angustias et nativitates divinas1 mortes1 infernosque4 ,si audieris blanda1 tranquilla1 devota 7ut vocant7 et religiosa1 etiamsi in tertium clum sese raptos dicant1 non approbabis4 ,tenta ergo et ne ,iesum quidem audias gloriosum1 nisi videris prius crucifixum4 ,a golden rule4--,luth4 ,epist4 ,de ,wette1 ,no4 #ceh4 ,jan4 #ac1 #aebb4 ,the language he uses elsewhere concerning such fanatics is strong1 but not stronger than the occasion demanded4 ,it was indeed no time for compliment--for hesitant1 yea-nay utterance upon the question4 ,the freedom claimed by ,carlstadt's followers led straightway to a lawless pride1 which was so much servitude to ,satan--was the death-wound1 not the crown1 of spiritual life4 ,it was from the fulness of his charity--not in lack of it--that ,luther uttered his manly protest against that perilous lie4 ,michelet selects a passage which shows in a very instructive manner how the strong mind 7in this quarrel1 as in so many more7 breaks in pieces1 with a touch1 the idols which seduce the weak4 #8,if you ask ,carlstadt's people1' says ,luther1 #8how this sublime spirit is arrived at1 they refer you1 not to the ,gospel1 but to their reveries1 to their vacuum4 #8,place thyself1' say they1 #8in a state of void tedium as we do1 and then thou wilt learn the same lesson2 the celestial voice will be heard1 and ,god will speak to thee in person4' ,if you urge the matter further1 and ask what this void tedium of theirs is1 they know as much about it as ,dr4 ,carlstadt does about ,greek and ,hebrew4444 ,do you not in all this recognize the ,devil1 the enemy of divine order8 ,do you not see him opening a huge mouth1 and crying1 #8,spirit1 spirit1 spirit6' and all the while he is crying this1 destroying all the bridges1 roads1 ladders1--in a word1 every possible way by which the spirit may penetrate into you2 that is to say1 the external order established by ,god in the holy baptism1 in the signs and symbols1 and in his own ,word4 ,they would have you learn to mount the clouds1 to ride the wind2 but they tell you neither how1 nor when1 nor where1 nor what2 all these things you must learn of yourself1 as they do4' ,footnote #bjf3 ,see ,note1 p4 #ea4 ,footnote #bjg3 ,see the account in ,ranke's ,history of the ,reformation4 ,footnote #bjh3 ,see ,carriere1 ,die philosophische ,weltanschauung der ,reformationzeit 7#ahdg71 pp4 #aif-bjc4 ,,chapter ,,iii4 ,subtle4 ,your lapis philosophicus8 ,face4 ',tis a stone1 ,and not a stone2 a spirit1 a soul1 and a body2 ,which if you do dissolve1 it is dissolved2 ,if you coagulate1 it is coagulated2 ,if you make it to fly1 it flieth4 ,,the ,,alchemist4 ,,atherton4 ,we are to call on ,willoughby to-night1 ,i believe1 to conduct us to ,jacob ,behmen--or ,boehme1 more correctly4 ,,willoughby4 ,i shall scarcely bring you so far this evening4 ,i have to trouble you with some preliminary paragraphs on the theosophic mysticism which arose with the ,reformation1 some remarks on the theurgic superstitions of that period1 and a word or two about ,cornelius ,agrippa and ,paracelsus4 ,a very formidable preamble1--yet necessary1 ,i assure you4 ,and herewith1 ,willoughby1 after solacing himself with a goodly bunch of grapes1 began to read his essay4 ,,on ,,the ,,theosophy ,,of ,,jacob ,,behmen4 #a4 ,mysticism and ,science4 ,i have to trace the advance of mysticism into a new world4 ,prior to the ,reformation the mystic sought escape in ,god from all that was not ,god4 ,after that epoch he is found seeking at the hands of his ,maker a supernatural acquaintance with all that ,he has made4 ,once his highest knowledge was that surpassing ignorance which swoons in the glory of the ,infinite4 ,now he claims a familiarity passing that of common mortals with the mysteries of sea and land1 of stars and elements4 ,escaping that monastic dualism which abandoned the world to ,satan1 mysticism will now dispute the empire of the prince of this world4 ,inspired from above1 and haply not unaided by angelic ministries1 the master of the hidden wisdom will devoutly elicit the benign potencies of the universe1 and repel the malevolent4 ,no longer a mere contemplatist--gazing up at the heights of the divine nature1 or down into the depth of the human--the mystic of the new age will sweep1 with all-piercing vision1 the whole horizon of things visible4 ,the theosophist covets holiness still1 but knowledge scarcely less4 ,virtue 7as aforetime7 may be regarded by such mystics too much as the means to an end4 ,but the end is no longer the same4 ,with the theopathetic mysticism the exercise of the ,christian graces and the discipline of fiery spiritual purgations were the road to a superhuman elevation--a vision and repose anticipating heaven4 ,with the theosophic1 ,faith and ,charity and ,hope were the conditions of the higher knowledge4 ,for never to the proud1 the greedy1 the impure1 would heaven vouchsafe the keys of mystery and hazardous prerogative in the unseen world4 ,to the contemplative mystic the three heavenly sisters brought a cloud of glory2 for the theosophist they unclasped nature's #8infinite book of secrecy2' in the hand of the theurgist they placed an enchanter's wand4 ,the sphere of mysticism was not thus extended by any expansive force of its own4 ,the spirit of a new and healthier age had ventured to depreciate the morbid seclusion of the cloister4 ,men began to feel that it was at once more manly and more divine to enquire and to know than to gaze and dream4 ,after the servitude of the schools and the collapse of the cloister1 the ambition of the intellect would acknowledge no limit1 would accept of no repose4 ,the highest aspirations of religion and the most daring enterprise of science were alike mystical4 ,they coalesced in theosophy4 ,changes such as these were wrought by a power from without4 ,mysticism was awakened from its feverish dream by the spirit of the time--as ,milton's ,eve by ,adam from her troubled morning sleep--and invited to go forth and see #8nature paint her colours4' ,as the revival of letters spread over ,europe the taste for antiquity1 and natural science began to claim its share in the freedom won for theology1 the pretensions of the ,cabbala1 of ,hermes1 of the ,neo-,platonist theurgy1 became identified with the cause of progress4 ,that ancient doctrine1 familiar to the school of ,plotinus1 according to which the world was a huge animal--a living organism united in all its parts by secret sympathies1--received some fresh development in the fancy of every adept4 ,the student of white magic believed1 with ,iamblichus1 in the divine power inherent in certain words of invocation1 whereby the aspirant might hold intercourse with powers of the upper realm4 ,with the modern1 as with the ancient ,neo-,platonists1 religion bore an indispensable part in all such attempts4 ,proclus required of the theurgist an ascetic purity4 ,campanella demands a fides intrinseca1--that devout simplicity of heart which should qualify the candidate at once to commune with holy spirits and to baffle the delusive arts of the malign4#bji ,but the theosophists of ,germany were not1 like the ,alexandrians1 slavish worshippers of the past4 ,they did not resort to theurgy in order to prop a falling faith4 ,they did not wield that instrument to prolong1 by the spasmodic action of superstitious practice1 the life of an expiring philosophy4 ,those formul of incantation1 those #8symbola' and #8synthemata1' which were everything with ,iamblichus1 were with many of them only a bye-work1 and by others utterly abjured4 ,they believed devoutly in the genuineness of the ,cabbala4 ,they were persuaded that beneath all the floods of change this oral tradition had perpetuated its life unharmed from the days of ,moses downward1--even as ,jewish fable taught them that the cedars alone1 of all trees1 had continued to spread the strength of their invulnerable arms below the waters of the deluge4 ,they rejoiced in the hidden lore of that book as in a treasure rich with the germs of all philosophy4 ,they maintained that from its marvellous leaves man might learn the angelic heraldry of the skies1 the mysteries of the divine nature1 the means of converse with the potentates of heaven4#baj ,but such reverence1 so far from oppressing1 seemed rather to enfranchise and excite their imagination4 ,in the tradition before which they bowed1 the majesty of age and the charm of youth had met together4 ,hierocles brought to them ,pythagoras out of an immemorial past2 and there was no novelty more welcome in that restless wonder-loving present4 ,thus the theosophists could oppose age to age1 and reverently impugn the venerable4 ,antiquity1 in the name of ,aristotle1 so long absolute1 had imposed a shameful bondage4 ,antiquity1 in the name of ,plato1 newly disinterred1 imparted a glorious privilege4 ,the chains of the past were being filed away by instruments which the past had furnished4 ,ancient prescription became itself the plea for change when one half of its demands was repudiated in honour of the other4 ,this theosophy was a strange mixture of the ,hellenic1 the ,oriental1 and the ,christian styles of thought4 ,i shall assume as its emblem the church of ,st4 ,john1 at ,rhodes1 which1 full of statues of saints and tombs of knights1 broken1 or rounded into mounds of sullied snow by the hand of time1 is surmounted by a crescent1 and echoes to the voice of the muezzin1 while sheltering beneath its porch the altar of a ,grecian ,god4 ,but our incongruous theosophic structure1 ever open and ever changing1 enlarged its precincts continually4 ,a succession of eccentric votaries enriched it ceaselessly with quaint devices1 fresh flowers of fancy1 new characters in mystical mosaic1 and intricate arabesques of impenetrable significance4 ,plotinus1 indifferent to the material universe1 had been content to inherit and transmit the doctrine of the world's vitality4 ,that notion now became the nucleus of a complex system of sympathies and antipathies4 ,it suggested remedies for every disease1 whether of mind or body4 ,it prompted a thousand fantastic appliances and symbols4 ,but at the same time it rendered the enquirer more keenly observant of natural phenomena4 ,extolling ,trismegistus to the skies1 and flinging his ,galen into the fire1 ,paracelsus declared the world his book4#baa ,the leaves of that volume were continents and seas--provinces1 its paragraphs--the plants1 the stones1 the living things of every clime1 its illuminated letters4 ,in the dawn of science hovered a meteor1 which at once lured onward and led astray the seekers after truth1--it was the hope of special illumination4 ,they hastened to generalize on a medley of crude fancies and of partial facts4 ,for generalization was with them a sudden impulse1 not a slow result4 ,it was an exalted act prompted by a ,divine light that flashed on intuition from without1 or radiated from the wondrous depths of the microcosm within4 ,hence 7as with bees in dahlias7 their industry was their intoxication4 ,it is of the essence of mysticism to confound an internal creation or process with some external manifestation4 ,often did the theosophist rejoice in the thought that nature1 like the rock in the desert1 had been made to answer to his compelling rod1--that a divinely-given stream welled forth to satisfy his thirst for knowledge4 ,as we look back upon his labours we can perceive that the impulse was by no means a wonder1 and often anything but a blessing4 ,it was in reality but as the rush of the water into the half-sunk shaft of his research1 flooding the region of his first incautious efforts1 and sooner or later arresting his progress in every channel he might open4 ,in fact1 the field of scientific enquiry1 which had withered under the schoolman1 was inundated by the mystic1--so facile and so copious seemed the knowledge realized by heaven-born intuition4 ,it was reserved for induction to develop by a skilful irrigation that wonder-teeming soil4 ,no steady advance was possible when any hap-hazard notion might be virtually invested with the sanction of inspiration4 ,the admixture of light and darkness during that twilight period reached precisely the degree of shadow most favourable to the vigorous pursuit of natural science by supernatural means4 ,it is true that the belief in witchcraft everywhere prevalent did1 ever and anon1 throw people and rulers alike into paroxysms of fear and fury4 ,but an accomplished student of occult art was no longer in much danger of being burnt alive as a fair forfeit to ,satan4 ,the astrologer1 the alchemist1 the adept in natural magic1 were in universal demand4 ,emperors and nobles1 like ,rudolph and ,wallenstein1 kept each his star-gazer in a turret chamber1 surrounded by astrolabes and alembics1 by ghastly preparations and mysterious instruments1 and listened1 with ill-concealed anxiety1 as the zodiac-zoned and silver-bearded counsellor1 bent with study and bleared with smoke1 announced1 in oracular jargon1 the junction of the planets or his progress toward projection4 ,the real perils of such pretenders now arose from the very confidence they had inspired4 ,such was the thirst for gold and the faith in alchemy1 that no man supposed to possess the secret was secure from imprisonment and torture to compel its surrender4 ,setonius was broken on the wheel because the cruel avarice of the great could not wring out of him that golden process which had no existence4 ,the few enquirers whose aim was of a nobler order were mortified to find their science so ill appreciated4 ,they saw themselves valued only as casters of horoscopes and makers of cunning toys4 ,often1 with a bitter irony1 they assumed the airs of the charlatan for their daily bread4 ,impostors knavish as ,sir ,arthur ,wardour's ,dousterswivel1 deceived and deceiving like ,leicester's ,alasco1 swarmed at the petty court of every landgrave and elector4 ,theurgic mysticism was practically admitted even within the ,lutheran ,church1 while the more speculative or devotional mysticism of ,sebastian ,frank1 ,schwenkfeld1 and ,weigel1 was everywhere proscribed4 ,lutheran doctors1 believers in the ,cabbala1 which ,reuchlin had vindicated against the monks1 were persuaded that theurgic art could draw the angels down to mortals4 ,had not the heaven-sent power of the ,cabbala wrought the marvels of ,old ,testament history8 ,had not the power of certain mystic words procured for ,hebrew saints the privilege of converse with angelic natures8 ,had not the ,almighty placed all terrestrial things under the viceregency of the starry influences8 ,had ,he not united all things1 animate and inanimate1 by a subtle network of sympathies1 and was not man the leading chord in this system of harmony--the central heart of this circulating magnetic force8 ,thus much assumed1 a devout man1 wise in the laws of the three kinds of vincula between the upper and lower worlds1 might be permitted to attract to himself on earth those bright intelligences who were to be his fellows in heaven4 ,theurgy rested1 therefore1 on the knowledge of the intellectual vinculum 7the divine potency inherent in certain words71 the astral 7the favourable conjunction of the planets71 and the elementary 7the sympathy of creatures74 ,in the use of these was1 of course1 involved the usual hocus-pocus of magical performance--talismans1 magic lights1 incense1 doves' blood1 swallows' feathers1 et hoc genus omne4#bab ,footnote #bji3 ,horst's ,zauberbibliothek1 vol4 iii4 p4 #ba4 ,footnote #baj3 ,agrippa's ,vanity of ,arts and ,sciences1 chap4 #dg4 ,footnote #baa3 ,see ,m4 ,b4 ,lessing1 ,paracelsus1 sein ,leben und ,denken1 p4 #fj4 ,footnote #bab3 ,the third and fourth volumes of ,horst's ,zauberbibliothek contain a very full account of all these vincula4 ,the vincula of the ,intellectual ,world are principally formulas of invocation2 secret names of ,god1 of celestial principalities and spirits2 ,hebrew1 ,arabic1 and barbarous words2 magical figures1 signs1 diagrams1 and circles4 ,those of the ,elementary ,world consist in the sympathetic influence of certain animals and plants1 such as the mole1 the white otter1 the white dove1 the mandrake2 of stones and metals1 ointments and suffumigations4 ,those of the ,astral or ,celestial ,world depend on the aspects and dispositions of the heavenly bodies1 which1 under the sway of planetary spirits1 infuse their influences into terrestrial objects4 ,this is the astrological department of theurgy4 ,meinhold's ,sidonia contains a truthful exhibition of this form of theurgic mysticism1 as it obtained in ,protestant ,germany4 ,see ,paracelsus1 ,de ,spiritibus ,planetarum1 passim4 7,ed4 ,dorn41 #aehd47 ,,chapter ,,iv4 ,for ,i am siker that there be sciences1 ,by which men maken divers apparences1 ,swiche as thise subtil tregetoures play4 ,for oft at festes have ,i well herd say1 ,that tregetoures1 within an halle large1 ,have made come in a water and a barge1 ,and in the halle rowen up and down4 ,sometime hath semed come a grim leoun1 ,and sometime floures spring as in a mede1 ,sometime a vine and grapes white and rede1 ,sometime a castel all of lime and ston1 ,and whan hem liketh voideth it anon4 ,thus semeth it to every mannes sight4 ,,chaucer4 ,give me thy hand1 terrestrial2 so3--,give me thy hand1 celestial2 so4 ,,merry ,,wives ,,of ,,windsor4 ,,willoughby',s ,,essay--,,second ,,evening4 #b4 ,cornelius ,agrippa4 ,cornelius ,agrippa1 of ,nettesheim1 is a favourable specimen of that daring and versatile order of mind which1 in the sixteenth century1 sought adventure and renown in every province of philosophy4 ,his restless life is picturesque with the contrast of every imaginable vicissitude4 ,a courtier and a scholar1 a soldier and a mystic1 he made the round of the courts of ,europe4 ,patronized and persecuted alternately1 courted as a prodigy and hunted down as a heretic1 we see him to-day a ,plato1 feasted by the ,sicilian tyrant1 to-morrow a ,diogenes1 crawling with a growl into his tub4 ,he lectures with universal applause on the ,verbum ,mirificum of ,reuchlin4 ,he forms a secret association for the promotion of occult science4 ,he is besieged by swarming boors in some ,garde ,douloureuse1 and escapes almost by miracle4 ,he enters the service of ,margaret1 ,regent of the ,netherlands1 then that of the ,emperor1 and is knighted on the field for heroic gallantry in the campaign against the ,venetians4 ,he is next to be heard of as a teacher of theology at ,pavia4 ,plunged into poverty by the reverses of war1 he writes for comfort a mystical treatise ,on the ,threefold ,way of ,knowing ,god4 ,the hand of the ,marquis of ,montferrat plucks him from his slough of despond1 but ere long he is again homeless1 hungering1 often after bread1 ever after praise and power4 ,at the court of ,france1 the ,queen ,mother shows him favour1 but withholds the honour to which such gifts might well aspire4 ,then appears the famous book ,on the ,vanity of ,arts and ,sciences4 ,it was wormwood to the proud spirit of ,agrippa to be treated as a mere astrologer4 ,to think that he must toil in obscurity like a gnome1 calculating aspects1 sextile and quartile1 reckoning the cusps and hours of the houses of heaven1 to subserve the ambition of an implacable intriguante1 when his valour might adorn the tourney and his wisdom sway the council6 ,he would fain have been in ,france what that great astrologer of the previous century1 ,martius ,galeotti1 had been in ,hungary1 to whom the ,czar of ,russia and the ,khan of ,tartary were said to have sent respectful presents of more than royal magnificence2 who was ambassador alike of monarchs and the stars2 who bore a share in the statecraft of the court at ,buda1 and charging abreast with the crowned helm of ,matthias1 rode down the ranks of the turbaned infidel4 ,so the gallant knight and the #8courtier of most elegant thread1' the archimage1 the philosopher1 the divine1 became for awhile a sceptic and a ,timon4 ,the ,de ,vanitate ,scientiarum ravages1 with a wild ,berserker fury1 the whole domain of knowledge4 ,the monk ,ilsan of medival fable did not more savagely trample the roses in the enchanted garden of ,worms1--,pantagruel did not more cruelly roast with fire his six hundred and nine and fifty vanquished horsemen1 than did ,agrippa consume with satire every profession and every calling among men4 ,with reason might he say in his preface1 #8,the grammarians will rail at me--the etymologists will derive my name from the gout--the obstreperous rhetoricians will plague me with their big words and inimical gestures--the intricate geometrician will imprison me in his triangles and tetragonals--the cosmographer will banish me among the bears to ,greenland4' ,scholastic fanaticism could never pardon the man whose sarcasm had left nothing standing1 save the ,holy ,scriptures4 ,the monks and doctors of ,lyons hurled back his tongue-bolts with the dreaded cry of heresy4 ,his disgrace and exile they could compass1 but they could not arrest those winged words or bow that dauntless spirit4 ,the treatise ,on the ,threefold ,way of ,knowing ,god1 shows how1 by ,divine illumination1 the ,christian may discern the hidden meanings of the ,new ,testament1 as the ,cabbalist evolves those of the ,old4 ,it teaches the way in which the devout mind may be united to ,god1 and1 seeing all things in ,him1 and participating in ,his power1 may even now1 according to the measure of faith1 foretell the future and controul the elements4 ,the ,de ,occulta ,philosophia#bac 7a youthful work re-written in his later years7 treats of the three kinds of magic--the ,natural 7the science of sympathies and antipathies1 whereby the adept accelerates or modifies the process of nature so as to work apparent miracles72 the ,celestial1 or ,mathematical 7astrology72 and the ,religious1 or ceremonial 7theurgy74 ,once on a time1 the savans were sorely puzzled by certain irregular holes on the front of an ancient temple4 ,one1 more sagacious than the rest1 suggested that these indentations might be the marks of nails used to fasten to the stone metallic plates representing ,greek characters4 ,and1 in fact1 lines drawn from one point to the next were found to form letters1 and the name of the deity stood disclosed4 ,in like manner1 the student of natural magic sought to decipher the secret language of the universe1 by tracing out those lines of sympathy which linked in a mysterious kindred objects the most remote4 ,it was believed that the fields of space were threaded in every direction by the hidden highways of magnetic influence2 traversed from all points by an intricate network of communication uniting the distant and the near--the celestial and terrestrial worlds4 ,science was charged with the office of discovering and applying those laws of harmony and union which connect the substances of earth with each other and with the operation of the stars4 ,through all the stages of creation men thought they saw the inferior ever seeking and tending towards the higher nature1 and the order above shedding influence on that below4 ,the paternal sun laid a hand of blessing on the bowed head of the corn4 ,the longing dews passed heavenward1 up the ,jacob's ladder of the sunbeams1 and entering among the bright ministeries of the clouds1 came down in kindly showers4 ,each planet1 according to its mind or mood1 shed virtues healing or harmful into minerals and herbs4 ,all sweet sounds1 moving by the mystic laws of number1 were an aspiration towards the music of the spheres--a reminiscence of the universal harmonies4 ,the air was full of phantasms or images of material objects4 ,these1 said ,agrippa1 entering the mind1 as the air the body1 produce presentiments and dreams4 ,all nature is oracular4 ,a cloudy chill or sultry lull are the ,delphi and ,dodona of birds and kine and creeping things4 ,but the sense of sinful man is dull4 ,the master of the hidden wisdom may facilitate the descent of benign influences1 and aid the travailing creation1 sighing for renewal4 ,it is for him to marry 7in the figurative language of the time7 the #8lower and the higher potencies1 the terrestrial and the astral1 as doth the husbandman the vine unto the elm4' ,the sage can make himself felt in the upper realm1 as on the earth1 by touching some chord whose vibration extends into the skies4 ,from the law of sympathy comes the power of amulets and philtres1 images and ointments1 to produce love or hate1 health or sickness1 to arrest the turning arms of the distant mill1 or stay the wings of the pinnace on the ,indian seas4 ,such was ,agrippa's world4 ,according to ,baptista ,porta1 a certain breath of life1 or soul of the world1 pervades the whole organism of the universe1 determines its sympathies1 and imparts1 when received into the soul of the inquirer1 the capacity for magical research4 ,similarly1 in the theory of ,agrippa1 the fifth element1 or ther1 is the breath of this ,world-,soul4 ,within the spirit thus animating the body of the world lie those creative powers1 or qualities1 which are the producers of all things visible4 ,the instruments of this universal plastic ,power are the stars and the spirits of the elements4 ,with all the theosophists man is a microcosm--the harmonized epitome of the universe3 a something representative of all that is contained in every sphere of being1 is lodged in his nature4 ,thus he finds sympathies everywhere1 and potentially knows and operates everywhere4 ,since1 therefore1 the inmost ground of his being is in ,god1 and the rest of his nature is a miniature of the universe1--a true self-knowledge is1 proportionately1 at once a knowledge of ,god and of creation4 ,the sources of ,religion and of ,science are alike within him4 ,agrippa borrows from the ,phdrus four kinds of inspiration1--the ,poetic1 the ,dionysian 7revealing visions71 the ,apollinian 7imparting hidden wisdom71 and that of which ascendant ,venus is the pure patroness--,rapturous ,love1 which carries us to heaven in ecstasy1 and in the mystic union with ,deity discloses things unutterable4 ,he compares the soul1 as ordinarily in the body1 to a light within a dark lantern4 ,in moments of mystical exaltation1 it is taken out of its prison-house1 the divine element is emancipated1 and rays forth immeasurably1 transcending space and time4 ,his ,platonism1 like that of so many1 led him from the sensual and the formal to the ideal4 ,greek was1 with reason1 accounted dangerous4 ,plato was a reformer side by side with ,luther among the ,germans4 ,how loathsome was clerkly vice beside the contemplative ideal of ,plato4 ,in those days almost every great scholar was also a great traveller4 ,the wanderings of ,agrippa and his theosophic brethren contributed not a little to the progress and diffusion of occult science4 ,these errant professors of magic1 like those arial travellers the insects1 carried everywhere with them the pollen of their mystic ,lily1 the symbol of theosophy1 and sowed the fructifying particles in minds of kindred growth wherever they came4 ,their very crosses and buffetings1 if they marred their plans of study1 widened their field of observation2 were fertile in suggestions2 compelled to new resources1 and multiplied their points of view1--as a modern naturalist1 interrupted during his observant morning's walk1 and driven under a tree by a shower1 may find unexpected compensation in the discovery of a new moss upon its bark1 or a long-sought fly among its dropping-leaves4 ,,gower4 ,agrippa's philosophy gives us a highly imaginative view of the world4 ,,atherton4 ,a beautiful romance1--only surpassed by the actual results of modern discovery4 ,,willoughby4 ,in those days every fancied likeness was construed into a law of relationship3 every semblance became speedily reality2--somewhat as the ,chinese believe that sundry fantastic rocks in one of their districts1 which are shaped like rude sculptures of strange beasts1 do actually enclose animals of corresponding form4 ,and as for the links of connexion supposed to constitute bonds of mysterious sympathy1 they are about as soundly deduced as that connexion which our old popular superstition imagined1 between a high wind on ,shrove ,tuesday night1 and mortality among learned men and fish4 ,,gower4 ,and yet how fascinating those dreams of science4 ,what a charm1 for instance1 in a botany which essayed to read in the sprinkled or veined colours of petals and of leaves1 in the soft-flushing hues1 the winding lines1 the dashes of crimson1 amethyst1 or gold1 in the tracery of translucent tissues empurpled or incarnadine1--the planetary cipher1 the hieroglyph of a star1 the secret mark of elementary spirits--of the gliding ,undine or the hovering ,sylph4 ,,willoughby4 ,so too1 in great measure1 with anatomy and psychology2 for man was said to draw life from the central sun1 and growth from the moon1 while imagination was the gift of ,mercury1 and wrath burned down to him out of ,mars4 ,he was fashioned from the stars as well as from the earth1 and born the lord of both4 ,,atherton4 ,this close connexion between the terrestrial and sidereal worlds was to aid in the approximation of man to ,god4 ,the aim was noble--to marry ,natural ,science1 the lower1 to ,revealed ,religion1 the higher2 elevating at once the world and man--the physical and the spiritual2 drawing more close the golden chain which binds the world to the footstool of the eternal throne4 ,while a spirit dwelt in all nature1 transforming and restoring1 and benign influences1 entering into the substances and organisms of earth1 blessed them according to their capacities of blessing 7transforming some with ease to higher forms of beauty1 labouring long1 and almost lost in the grossness and stubbornness of others71 so also in the souls of men wrought the ,divine ,spirit1 gladly welcomed by the lowly-hearted1 darkly resisted by the proud1 the grace of ,god here an odour of life1 and there made a deepening of death upon death4 ,,willoughby4 ,how close their parallel between the laws of receptivity in the inner world and in the outer4 ,they brought their best1 faithfully--these magi1--gold and frankincense and myrrh4 ,,gower4 ,talking of sympathies1 ,i have felt myself for the last quarter of an hour rapidly coming into rapport with those old poet-philosophers4 ,i seem to thirst with them to pierce the mysteries of nature4 ,i imagine myself one of their aspiring brotherhood4 ,i say1 to the dead let nature be dead2 to me she shall speak her heart4 ,the changeful expression1 the speechless gestures of this world1 the languors and convulsions of the elements1 the frowns and smiles of the twin firmaments1 shall have their articulate utterance for my ear4 ,with the inward eye ,i see--here more dim1 there distinct--the fine network of sympathetic influences playing throughout the universe1 as the dancing meshes of the water-shadows on the sides of a basin of marble---- ,,willoughby1 7to ,atherton1 with a grotesque expression of pity47 ,he's off6 ,almost out of sight already4 ,,gower1 7apparently unconscious of the interruption47 ,yes1 ,i will know what legends of the old elemental wars are stored within yon grey promontory1 about whose grandsire knees the waves are gambolling2 and what is the story of the sea--what are the passions of the deep that work those enamoured sleeps and jealous madnesses2 and what the meaning of that thunder-music which the hundred-handed surf smites out from the ebon or tawny keys of rock and of sand along so many far-winding solitary shores4 ,i will know what the mountains dream of when1 under the summer haze1 they talk in their sleep1 and the common ear can perceive only the tinkle of the countless rills sliding down their sides4 ,there shall be told me how first the ,frost-,king won his empire1 and made the vanquished heights of earth to pass under those ice-harrows which men call glaciers4 ,,atherton4 #8,the truant ,fancy was a wanderer ever6' ,,gower4 ,on the commonest things ,i see astral influences raining brightness--no homeliness without some sparkle of the upper glory2--as the wain and shoon of the peasant on some autumn night grow phosphorescent1 and are sown with electric jewellery4 ,with purged eyesight ,i behold the nascent and unfledged virtues of herbs and minerals that are growing folded in this swaying nest named earth1 look hungering up to their parent stars that hover ministering above1 radiant in the topmost boughs of the ,mundane ,tree4 ,i look into the heart of the ,wunderberg1 and see1 far down1 the palaces and churches of an under-world1 see branching rivers and lustrous gardens where gold and silver flow and flower2 ,i behold the ,wild women1 and the jealous dwarfs1 and far away1 the forlorn haunts of the cairn-people1 harping under their mossy stones2 while from the central depths sounds up to me the rolling litany of those giants who wait and worship till the ,great ,restitution-,day4 ,there among those wilderness rocks ,i discern1 under a hood of stone1 a hermit ,potency1 waiting for one to lead him up to the sunny multitudinous surface-world1 and send him forth to bless mankind4 ,o long-tarrying ,virtue1 be it mine to open the doors of thy captivity6 ,thou mineral ,might1 thou fragment from the stones of the ,new ,jerusalem1 thou shalt lodge no more in vain among us6 ,i have felt thy secret growing up within my soul1 as a shoot of the tree of life1 and therewithal will ,i go forth and heal the nations6#bad ,,atherton4 ,no1 not till you have had some supper4 ,i hear the bell4 ,,gower4 ,it is the nineteenth century1 then8 ,ah1 yes1 ,i remember4 ,,willoughby4 ,away1 you rogue6 ,footnote #bac3 ,see ,carriere 7pp4 #hi-aad71 to whom ,i am indebted as regards the character of this and the preceding work1 having had access to neither4 ,footnote #bad3 ,this distressing outbreak on the part of ,gower will scarcely seem extravagant to those who remember how intensely poetical were many of the theosophic hypotheses4 ,analogies which would only occur to imaginative men in their hours of reverie were solidified into principles and enrolled in the code of nature4 ,nothing could be more opposite to the sifting process of modern investigation than the fanciful combination and impersonation of those days1--more akin1 by far1 to mythology than to science4 ,conceits such as the following are those of the poet1--and of the poet as far gone in madness as ,plato could wish him4 ,the waters of this world are mad2 it is in their raving that they rush so violently to and fro along the great channels of the earth4 ,fire would not have burned1 darkness had not been1 but for ,adam's fall4 ,there is a hot fire and a cold4 ,death is a cold fire4--,behmen4 ,all things--even metals1 stones1 and meteors--have sense and imagination1 and a certain #8fiducial' knowledge of ,god in them4 ,the arctic pole draws water by its axle-tree1 and these waters break forth again at the axle-tree of the antarctic pole4 ,earthquakes and thunder are the work of dmons or angels4 ,the lightnings without thunder are1 as it were1 the falling flowers of the #8stival' 7or summer7 stars4--,paracelsus4 ,hail and snow are the fruits of the stars1 proceeding from them as flowers and blossoms from herb or tree4--,paracelsus4 ,night is1 in reality1 brought on by the influence of dark stars1 which ray out darkness1 as the others light4--,paracelsus4 ,the final fires will transform the earth into crystal4 7,a summary expression for one of ,behmen's doctrines47 ,the moon1 planets1 and stars are of the same quality with the lustrous precious stones of our earth1 and of such a nature1 that wandering spirits of the air see in them things to come1 as in a magic mirror2 and hence their gift of prophecy4 ,in addition to the terrestrial1 man has a sidereal body1 which stands in connexion with the stars4 ,when1 as in sleep1 this sidereal body is more free than usual from the elements1 it holds converse with the stars1 and may acquire a knowledge of future events4--,paracelsus4 ,see ,henry ,more's ,enthusiasmus ,triumphatus1 #dd4 ,,chapter ,v4 ,the reason that ,men do not doubt of many things1 is1 that they never examine common ,impressions2 they do not dig to the ,root1 where the ,faults and ,defects lye2 they only debate upon the ,branches3 ,they do not examine whether such and such a thing be true1 but if it has been so and so understood4 ,it is not inquir'd into1 whether ,galen has said anything to purpose1 but whether he has said so or so4--,,montaigne4 ,,willoughby',s ,,essay--,,third ,,evening4 #c4 ,theophrastus ,paracelsus4 ,due place must be given to the influence of that medical ,ishmael1 ,paracelsus4 ,born in #adic at ,einsiedeln1 near ,zurich1 he studied medicine at ,basle1 and travelled ,europe for fourteen years from ,sweden to ,naples1 and from ,france to ,poland4 ,the jealous hatred awakened by a most reasonable project of reform drove him from ,basle soon after his return4 ,vituperated and vituperating1 he became a wanderer throughout ,germany1 everywhere forming1 or followed by1 successive groups of disciples4 ,he died at the age of forty-eight1 in a little inn--but not1 as report has long said1 drunk on the taproom floor2--a victim1 more probably1 to the violence of assailants despatched against him by some hostile physicians4#bae ,paracelsus found the medical profession of those days more disastrously incompetent1 if possible1 than we see it in the pages of ,le ,sage and ,molire4 ,it was so easy of entrance1 he complains1 as to become the tempting resource of knavery and ignorance everywhere4 ,with a smattering of ,greek a doctor might be finished and famous4 ,a dead language was to exorcise deadly maladies4 ,diseases were encountered by definitions1 and fact and experiment unheeded amidst disputes about the sense of ,galen1 ,hippocrates1 and ,avicenna4 ,when a new life began to struggle to the light from beneath the ruins of scholasticism1 the fearless vehemence of such a nature became its appropriate organ4 ,paracelsus was the first to lecture in the vernacular4 ,instead of reading and commenting on the text of ,galen1 or extracting fanciful specifics from ,raymond ,lully1 or ,john de ,rupecissa1 he resolved to observe and judge for himself wherever the ravages of disease or war might furnish him with facts4 ,preposterous as many of his own remedies may have been1 he merits the title of a reformer in effect as well as purpose4 ,he applied1 with great success1 mineral preparations before unknown1 or little used2 performed celebrated cures by the use of opium1 and exposed the fraudulent pretensions of the alchemist and the astrologer4 ,to the persecution and gross abuse of the profession he replied in torrents of undiluted and inexhaustible ,billingsgate4 ,while his velvet-cloaked brethren1 with faces blandly inane or portentously inscrutable1 mounted1 with step of cat-like softness1 to the chamber of the obese burgomaster or the fashionable lady1 ,paracelsus gloried in grandiloquent shabbiness and boisterous vulgarity4 ,he boasted that he had picked up many a hint while chatting as an equal with pedlars1 waggoners1 and old women4 ,he loved to drain his can on the ale-bench before wayside hostelries with boors such as ,ostade has painted4 ,ragged and dusty1 footing it with his knapsack on his back under a broiling sun1 he would swear that there lay more wisdom in his beard than in all the be-doctored wiseacres of all the universities of ,europe4 ,on the basis of principles substantially the same with those represented by ,agrippa1 ,paracelsus developed1 in his own way1 the doctrine of signatures1 and the relationships of the macrocosm and the microcosm4 ,the special illumination of the ,holy ,ghost was not more essential to the monastic perfection of preceding mystics1 than to the success of the theosophist in that devout pursuit of science inculcated by ,paracelsus4 ,the true ,physician--he who would be wise indeed in the mysteries of nature1 must seek with ceaseless importunity the light that cometh from above4 ,in the ,scriptures1 and in the ,cabbala1 lies the key to all knowledge4 ,medicine has four pillars3 7#a7 ,philosophy1 generally equivalent1 as he uses it1 to physiology1--the study of the true nature of material substances in their relation to the microcosm1 man2 7#b7 ,astronomy1 embracing especially the influences of the heavenly bodies on the human frame2 7#c7 ,alchemy1 not gold-making1 but the preparation of specifics--chemistry applied to medicine2 7#d7 ,religion1 whereby the genuine professor of the healing art is taught of ,god1 and works in reliance on1 and union with1 ,him4#baf ,in the spirit of the ancient mystics he describes the exaltation of one whose soul is inwardly absorbed1 so that the ordinary operation of the external senses is suspended4 ,a man thus divinely intoxicated1 lost in thoughts so profound1 may seem1 says ,paracelsus1 a mere fool to the men of this world1 but in the eyes of ,god he is the wisest of mankind1 a partaker of the secrecy of the ,most ,high4#bag ,like ,agrippa 7and with as good reason7 ,paracelsus lays great stress on ,imagination1 using the term1 apparently1 to express the highest realization of faith4 ,bacon observes that ,imagination is with ,paracelsus almost equivalent to ,fascination4 ,he speaks of the ,trinity as imaged in man1 in the ,heart1 7,gemth71 in ,faith1 and in ,imagination1--the three forms of that spiritual nature in us which he declares a fiery particle from the ,divine ,substance4 ,by the disposition of the ,heart we come to ,god2 by ,faith to ,christ2 and by ,imagination we receive the ,holy ,spirit4 ,thus blessed 7did we but truly know our own hearts7 nothing would be impossible to us4 ,this is the true magic1 the gift of ,faith1 which1 were its strength sufficient1 might even now cast out devils1 heal the sick1 raise the dead1 and remove mountains4#bah ,in the sixteenth century we still trace the influence of that doctrine1 so fertile in mysticism1 which ,anselm bequeathed to the schoolmen of the middle age4 ,we are to know by ascending to the fount of being1 and in the primal ,idea1 whence all ideas flow1 to discern the inner potency of all actual existence4 ,but in ,paracelsus we see especial prominence given to two new ideas which greatly modify1 and apparently facilitate the researches of theosophy4 ,one of these is the theory of divine manifestation by ,contraries1--teaching 7instead of the old division of ,being and ,non-being7 the development of the primal ground of existence by antithesis1 and akin1 in fact1 to the principle of modern speculative philosophy1 according to which the ,divine ,being is the absorption 7,aufhebung7 of those contraries which his self-evolution1 or lusus amoris1 has posited4 ,this doctrine is the key-note in the system of ,jacob ,behmen4 ,the other is the assumption that man--the micro-cosm1 is1 as it were1 a miniature of the macro-cosm--the great outer world1--a little parliament to which every part of the universe sends its deputy1--his body a compound from the four circles of material existence1--his animal nature correspondent to1 and dependent on1 the upper firmament1--and his spirit1 a divine efflux wherein1 though fallen1 there dwells a magnetic tendency towards its source1 which renders redemption possible through ,christ4 ,there is nothing1 accordingly1 in the heavens above1 or in the earth beneath1 which may not be found in the minor world of man4 ,on this principle1 further1 depends the whole system of signatures in its application to the cure of human malady4#bai ,paracelsus defines true magic as the knowledge of the hidden virtues and operations of natural objects4 ,the ,cabbala imparts instruction concerning heavenly mysteries1 and teaches the loftiest approximation to the ,supreme4 ,by the combination of these sources of knowledge we come to understand1 and can partially produce1 that marriage between heavenly influences and terrestrial objects1 called1 in the language of theosophy1 ,gamahea4#bbj ,true magic is founded solely #8on the ,ternary and ,trinity of ,god1' and works in harmony with that universal life which1 under the influence of the ,holy ,spirit1 animates all nature1--even the granite1 the ocean1 and the flower4 ,the magic of ,paracelsus disclaims the use of all ceremonies1 conjurations1 bannings1 and blessings1 and will rest solely on the power of that faith to which the promise was given1 that spirits should be subject to it1 and mountains plucked up at its fiat4#bba ,we are here far enough from the theurgic ritual of ,iamblichus4 ,but large room still remained for superstitious practice1 and ,paracelsus could not refuse his faith to the potency of certain magical words1 of waxen images1 and of pentacula inscribed with magic characters4 ,the universal life of nature was mythologically personified in the sylphs and gnomes1 the salamanders and undines1 somewhat as the thought of supernatural presence found its representation in the nymphs1 the nereids1 and the hamadryads1 of ancient ,grecian fable4#bbb ,in the chemistry of ,paracelsus all matter is composed1 in varying proportions1 of salt--the firm coherent principle1 of quicksilver--the fluid1 and of sulphur--the fiery1 or combustible4#bbc ,the theory of signatures proceeded on the supposition that every creature bears1 in some part of its structure or outward conformation1 the indication of the character or virtue inherent in it--the representation1 in fact1 of its idea or soul4 ,southey relates1 in his ,doctor1 a legend1 according to which he who should drink the blood of a certain unknown animal would be enabled to hear the voice and understand the speech of plants4 ,such a man might stand on a mountain at sunrise1 and hearken to their language1 from the delicate voices of wild flowers and grass blades in the dew1 to the large utterance of the stately trees making their obeisance in the fresh morning airs2--might hear each enumerating its gifts and virtues1 and blessing the ,creator for his bestowments4 ,the knowledge thus imparted by a charm1 the student of sympathies sought as the result of careful observation4 ,he essayed to read the character of plants by signs in their organization1 as the professor of palmistry announced that of men by the lines of the hand4 ,such indications were sometimes traced from the resemblance of certain parts of a plant to portions of the human frame1 sometimes they were sought in the more recondite relations of certain plants to certain stars4 ,thus citrons1 according to ,paracelsus1 are good for heart affections because they are heart-shaped2 and because1 moreover1 they have the colour of the sun1 and the heart is1 in a sort1 the sun of the body4 ,similarly1 the saphena riparum is to be applied to fresh wounds1 because its leaves are spotted as with flecks of blood4 ,a species of dentaria1 whose roots resemble teeth1 is a cure for toothache and scurvy4#bbd ,the theosophists1 working on principles very similar to those of the alchemists1 though with worthier and larger purpose1 inherited the extraordinary language of their predecessors4 ,that wisdom of ,gamahea1 which was to explain and facilitate the union of the celestial and terrestrial in the phenomena and processes of nature1 naturally produced a phraseology which was a confused mixture of theological1 astrological1 and chemical terms4 ,to add to the obscurity1 every agent or process was veiled under symbolic names and fantastic metaphors1 frequently changing with the caprice of the adept4 ,thus the white wine of ,lully is called by ,paracelsus the glue of the eagle2 and ,lully's red wine is1 with ,paracelsus1 the blood of the ,red ,lion4 ,often the metaphor runs into a kind of parable1 as with ,bernard of ,treviso4 ,he describes what is understood to be the solution of gold in quicksilver1 under the regimen of ,saturn1 leaving a residuum of black paste1 in the following oriental style3-- #8,the king1 when he comes to the fountain1 leaving all strangers behind him1 enters the bath alone1 clothed in golden robes1 which he puts off1 and gives to ,saturn1 his first chamberlain1 from whom he receiveth a black velvet suit4'#bbe ,in like manner1 in the ,secretum ,magicum attributed 7to ,paracelsus71 we find mention of the chemical ,virgin ,mary1 of chemical deaths and resurrections1 falls and redemptions1 adopted from theological phraseology4 ,we read of the union of the philosophic ,sol1--,quintessentia ,solis1 or ,fifth ,wisdom of ,gold1 with his ,father in the ,golden ,heaven1 whereby imperfect substances are brought to the perfection of the ,kingdom of ,gold4#bbf ,the conclusion of ,weidenfeld's treatise on the ,green ,lion of ,paracelsus may suffice as a specimen of this fanciful mode of expression1 which can never speak directly1 and which1 adopted by ,jacob ,behmen1 enwraps his obscure system in sevenfold darkness3-- #8,let us therefore desist from further pursuit of the said ,green ,lion which we have pursued through the meads and forest of ,diana1 through the way of philosophical ,saturn1 even to the vineyards of ,philosophy4 ,this most pleasant place is allowed the disciples of this art to recreate themselves here1 after so much pains and sweat1 dangers of fortune and life1 exercising the work of women and the sports of children1 being content with the most red blood of the ,lion1 and eating the white or red grapes of ,diana1 the wine of which being purified1 is the most secret secret of all the more secret ,chymy2 as being the white or red wine of ,lully1 the nectar of the ancients1 and their only desire1 the peculiar refreshment of the adopted sons1 but the heart-breaking and stumblingblock of the scornful and ignorant4'#bbg ,footnote #bae3 ,see ,lessing's ,paracelsus1 p4 #ah4 ,footnote #baf3 ,lessing's ,paracelsus1 #bf4 ,footnote #bag3 ,language to this effect is cited among the copious extracts given by ,godfrey ,arnold1 ,unpartheyische ,kirchen- und ,ketzer-,historie1 ,th4 ii4 p4 #cji4 ,footnote #bah3 ,de ,occulta ,philosophia1 ,prologus1 p4 #cj1 and p4 #eh4 ,this is one of the three treatises edited by ,gerard ,dorn1 and published together in a small volume1 ,basle1 #aehd4 ,comp4 also ,arnold1 ,th4 iv4 p4 #ade4 ,footnote #bai3 ,dorn's ,dictionarium ,paracelsi 7,frankfort1 #aehc71 ,art4 ,microcosmus4 ,also the ,secretum ,magicum of ,paracelsus1 entire in ,arnold1 p4 #aej4 ,the implanted image of the ,trinity1 and the innate tendency in man toward his ,divine ,origin1 are familiar to us as favourite doctrines with the mystics of the fourteenth century4 ,footnote #bbj3 ,de ,occ4 ,phil4 cap4 iv4 p4 #de1 and cap4 xi4 p4 #gh4 ,also1 ,dict4 ,paracels4 ,art4 ,magia4 ,talis influentiarum clestium conjunctio vel impressio qua operantur in inferiora corpora clestes vires1 ,gamahea ,magis1 vel matrimonium virium et proprietatum clestium cum elementaribus corporibus1 dicta fuit olim4--,paracelsi ,aurora ,philosophorum1 cap4 iv4 p4 #bd 7ed4 ,dorn74 ,footnote #bba3 ,aurora ,phil4 loc4 cit42 ,de ,occ4 ,phil4 i4 ii42 and xi4 p4 #gi4 ,footnote #bbb3 ,see ,de ,occ4 ,phil4 cap4 v4 ,magical powers are ascribed to images1 p4 #he4 ,a collection of talismanic figures is appended to the treatise4 ,in the ,thesaurus ,philosophorum is to be found 7p4 #ade7 the arcanum of the ,homunculus and the ,universal ,tincture4 ,the ,homunculus is said to be a mannikin1 constructed by magic1 receiving his life and substance from an artificial principle1 and able to communicate to his fabricator all manner of secrets and mysteries of science4 ,footnote #bbc3 ,the three continents--,europe1 ,asia1 and ,africa--were said to represent these three constituent principles respectively2 the stars contain them1 as in so many vials2 the ,penates 7a race of sapient but mortal spirits7 employ them for the manufacture of thunder4 ,footnote #bbd3 ,lessing's ,paracelsus1 #eh4 ,this fanciful kind of physiognomy displaces theurgy1 among these inquirers4 ,it led1 at least1 to much accurate observation4 ,it was a sign of health when the chafing-dish and conjuring-book were forsaken for the woods and fields4 ,cardan1 who repudiates the charge of having ever employed incantations or sought intercourse with dmons1 endeavours to establish chiromancy on what were then called astronomical principles4 ,thus1 ,mars rules the thumb1 wherein lies strength2 ,jupiter1 the forefinger1 whence come auguries of fame and honour1 c4 ,footnote #bbe3 ,see ,lives of the ,alchemistical ,philosophers4 ,this book contains a collection of the most celebrated treatises on the theory and practice of the ,hermetic ,art4 ,the passage from ,bernard is in ,the ,book of ,eirenus ,philalethes1 p4 #aff4 ,footnote #bbf3 ,thus1 ,cardan declared that the law of ,moses was from ,saturn2 that of ,christ1 from ,jupiter and ,mercury4 ,over that of ,mahomet presided1 in conjunction1 ,sol and ,mars2 while ,mars and the ,moon ruled idolatry4 ,it was thought no impiety--only a legitimate explanation1 to attribute the supernatural wisdom and works of our ,lord to the divinely-ordained influences of the planetary system4 ,footnote #bbg3 ,this passage is from the ,annotations of ,weidenfeld on the ,green ,lion of ,paracelsus2 ,lives of the ,alchem4 ,phil4 p4 #bja4 ,the ,thesaurus ,thesaurorum contains another choice specimen of the same sort1 p4 #abd4 ,,chapter ,,vi4 ,men4 ,i pray thee tell me1 ,for thou art a great dreamer-- ,chi4 ,i can dream1 sir1 ,if ,i eat well and sleep well4 ,men4 ,was it never by dream or apparition opened to thee-- ,what the other world was1 or ,elysium8 ,didst never travel in thy sleep8 ,,beaumont ,,and ,,fletcher3 ,the ,mad ,lover4 ,,willoughby',s ,,essay--,,fourth ,,evening4 #d4 ,jacob ,behmen and his ,aurora4 ,let us now crave acquaintance with that most notable theosophist1 ,jacob ,behmen4 ,it is evening1 and in the little town of ,grlitz the business of the day is over4 ,the shopkeepers are chatting together before their doors1 or drinking their beer at tables set out in the open air2 and comfortable citizens are taking wife and children for a walk beyond the town4 ,there is a shoe-maker's shop standing close to the bridge1 and under its projecting gable1 among the signs and samples of the craft1 may be read the name of ,jacob ,boehme4 ,within this house1 in a small and scantily-furnished room1 three men are seated at a table whereon lie a few books and papers and a great heap of newly-gathered plants and wild-flowers4 ,the three friends have just returned from a long ramble in the fields which lie without the ,neissethor4 ,that little man1 apparently about forty years of age1 of withered1 almost mean1 aspect1 with low forehead1 prominent temples1 hooked nose1 short and scanty beard1 and quick blue eyes1 who talks with a thin1 gentle voice1 is ,jacob4#bbh ,on one side of him sits ,dr4 ,kober1 a medical man of high repute in ,grlitz4 ,he it is who gathered in their walk these flowers1 and now he takes up one of them from time to time1 and asks ,behmen to conjecture1 from its form and colour1 its peculiar properties4 ,often has he to exchange looks of wonder with his learned friend on the other side the table1 at the marvellous insight of their uneducated host4 ,this third member of the trio is ,dr4 ,balthasar ,walter1 the ,director of the ,laboratory at ,dresden1 a distinguished chemist1 who has travelled six years in the ,east1 has mastered all the scientific wisdom of the ,west1 and who now believes that his long search after the true philosophy has ended happily at last1 beneath the roof of the ,grlitz shoemaker4 ,he1 too1 will sometimes pronounce a ,greek or an ,oriental word1 and is surprised to find how nearly ,behmen divines its significance1 from the mere sound and the movement of the lips in the formation of its syllables4#bbi ,when ,walter utters the word ,idea1 ,behmen springs up in a transport1 and declares that the sound presented to him the image of a heavenly virgin of surpassing beauty4 ,the conversation wanders on--about some theosophic question1 it may be1 or the anxious times1 or the spread of ,behmen's writings through ,silesia and ,saxony1 with the persecutions or the praises following2 while good ,frau ,behmen1 after putting a youngster or two to bed1 is busy downstairs in the kitchen1 preparing a frugal supper4 ,jacob ,behmen was born at the village of ,alt-,seidenberg1 near ,grlitz1 in the year #aege4 ,as a child1 he was grave and thoughtful beyond his years4 ,the wonders of fairy tradition were said to have become objects of immediate vision to the boy1 as were the mysteries of religion1 in after years1 to the man4 ,among the weather-stained boulders of a haunted hill1 the young herd-boy discovered the golden hoard of the mountain folk--fled in terror1 and could never again find out the spot4#bcj ,while not yet twenty1 ,behmen saw life as a travelling apprentice4 ,the tender conscience and the pensive temperament of the village youth shrank from the dissolute and riotous companionship of his fellow-craftsmen4 ,like ,george ,fox1 whom at this period he strongly resembled1 he found the ,church scarcely more competent than the world to furnish the balm which should soothe a spirit at once excited and despondent4 ,among the clergy1 the shameful servility of some1 the immoral life of others1 the bigotry of almost all1 repelled him on every hand4 ,the pulpit was the whipping-post of imaginary ,papists and ,calvinists4 ,the churches were the fortified places in the seat of war4 ,they were spiritually what ours were literally in ,king ,stephen's days1 when the mangonel and the cross-bow bolts stood ready on the battlemented tower1 when military stores were piled in the crypt1 and a moat ran through the churchyard4 ,the ,augsburg ,confession and the ,formula ,concordi were appealed to as though of inspired authority4 ,the names of ,luther and ,melanchthon were made the end of controversy and of freedom4 ,the very principle of ,protestantism was forsaken when ecclesiastics began to prove their positions1 not by ,scripture1 but by ,articles of ,faith4 ,so ,behmen wandered about1 musing1 with his ,bible in his hand1 and grieved sore because of the strife among ,christian brethren1 because evil everywhere was spreading and fruitful1 and goodness so rare and so distressed2 because he saw1 both near and far away1 such seeming waste and loss of human souls4 ,a profound melancholy took possession of him--partly that the truth which would give rest was for himself so hard to find1 but most for the sight of his eyes which he saw1 when he looked abroad upon ,god's rational creatures4 ,on his return from his travels he settled in ,grlitz1 married early1 and worked hard at his trade4 ,everywhere these anxious questing thoughts about life's mystery are with him1 disquieting4 ,he reads many mystical and astrological books1 not improbably1 even thus early1 ,schwenkfeld and ,paracelsus4#bca ,but the cloudy working of his mind is not soon to give place to sunshine and clear sky4 ,he is to be found still with the pelican and the bittern in the desolate places where the salt-pits glisten1 and the nettles breed1 and the wild beasts lie down1 and the cedar work is uncovered1--among the untimely ruins of that ,city of ,hope which had almost won back ,christendom in the resistless prime of ,luther4 ,at last1 upon an ever-memorable day1 as he sat meditating in his room1 he fell1 he knew not how1 into a kind of trance4 ,the striving1 climbing sorrows of his soul had brought him to this luminous table-land4 ,a halcyon interval succeeded to the tempest4 ,he did not seek1 he gazed2 he was surrounded by an atmosphere of glory4 ,he enjoyed for seven days an unruffled soul-sabbath4 ,he looked into the open secret of creation and providence4 ,such seemed his ecstasy4 ,in ,amadis of ,greece an enchanter shuts up the heroes and princesses of the tale in the ,tower of the ,universe1 where all that happened in the world was made to pass before them1 as in a magic glass1 while they sat gazing1 bound by the age-long spell4 ,so ,behmen believed that the principles of the ,universal ,process were presented to his vision as he sat in his study at ,grlitz4 ,we may say that it was the work of all his after days to call to mind1 to develop for himself1 and to express for others1 the seminal suggestions of that and one following glorious dream4 ,behmen was twenty-five years of age when the subject of this first illumination4 ,he stated that he was thrown into his trance while gazing on the dazzling light reflected from a tin vessel1 as the rays of the sun struck into his room4 ,distrusting at first the nature of the vision1 he walked out into the fields to dissipate the phantasmagoria2 but the strange hues and symbols were still present1 and seemed to point him to the heart and secret of the universe4 ,for several years his gift lay hidden4 ,behmen was known as a quiet1 meditative1 hard-working man1 fond of books2 otherwise scarcely distinguishable from other cobblers4 ,ten years after the first manifestation he believed himself the recipient of a second1 not1 like the former1 mediated by anything external2 and revealing1 with greater fulness and order1 what before lay in comparative confusion4 ,to fix this communication in a form which might be of abiding service to him1 he began to write his ,aurora4 ,but he shall tell his own story1 as he did tell it1 one-and-twenty years later1 to his friend ,caspar ,lindern4 #8,i saw and knew1' he says1 #8the ,being of all ,beings1 the ,byss 7,grund7 and the ,abyss3 item1 the birth of the ,holy ,trinity2 the origin and primal state of this world and of all creatures through the ,divine ,wisdom4 ,i knew and saw in myself all the three worlds1--i4e4 7#a7 the divine angelic or paradisiacal world2 then1 7#b7 the dark world1 as the original of nature1 as to the fire2 and 7#c7 this external visible world1 as a creation and out-birth1 or as a substance spoken forth out of the two inner spiritual worlds4 ,moreover1 ,i saw and had cognizance of the whole ,being in good and in evil--how each had its origin in the other1 and how the ,mother did bring forth2--and this all moved me not merely to the height of wonder1 but made me to rejoice exceedingly4 7,incredible as it may appear1 this passage has a meaning1 which may become apparent to some readers after a perusal of what is said farther on1 in explanation of ,behmen's system47 #8,soon it came strongly into my mind that ,i should set the same down in writing1 for a memorial1 albeit ,i could hardly compass the understanding thereof in my external man1 so as to write it on paper4 ,i felt that with such great mysteries ,i must set to work as a child that goes to school4 ,in my inward man ,i saw it well1 as in a great deep1 for ,i saw right through as into a chaos in which everything lay wrapped1 but the unfolding thereof ,i found impossible4 #8,yet from time to time it opened itself within me1 as in a growing plant4 ,for the space of twelve years ,i carried it about within me--was1 as it were1 pregnant therewith1 feeling a mighty inward impulse1 before ,i could bring it forth in any external form2 till afterwards it fell upon me1 like a bursting shower that hitteth wheresoever it lighteth1 as it will4 ,so it was with me1 and whatsoever ,i could bring into outwardness that ,i wrote down4 #8,thereafter the sun shone on me a good while1 yet not steadily and without interval1 and when that light had withdrawn itself ,i could scarce understand my own work4 ,and this was to show man that his knowledge is not his own1 but ,god's1 and that ,god in man's soul knoweth what and how he will4 #8,this writing of mine ,i purposed to keep by me all my life1 and not to give it into the hands of any man4 ,but it came to pass in the providence of the ,most ,high1 that ,i entrusted a person with part of it1 by whose means it was made known without my knowledge4 ,whereupon my first book1 the ,aurora1 was taken from me1 and because many wondrous things were therein revealed1 not to be comprehended in a moment by the mind of man1 ,i had to suffer no little at the hands of the worldly-wise--7von den ,vernunft-weisen74 #8,for three years ,i saw no more of this said book1 and thought it verily clean dead and gone1 till some learned men sent me copies therefrom1 exhorting me not to bury my talent4 ,to this counsel my outward reason was in no wise willing to agree1 having suffered so much already4 ,my reason was very weak and timorous at that time1 the more so as the light of grace had then been withdrawn from me some while1 and did but smoulder within1 like a hidden fire4 ,so ,i was filled with trouble4 ,without was contempt1 within1 a fiery driving2 and what to do ,i knew not1 till the breath of the ,most ,high came to my help again1 and awoke within me a new life4 ,then it was that ,i attained to a better style of writing1 likewise to a deeper and more thorough knowledge4 ,i could reduce all better to outward form--as1 indeed1 my book concerning ,the ,threefold ,life through the ,three ,principles doth fully show1 and as the godly reader whose heart is opened will see4 #8,so1 therefore1 have ,i written1 not from book-learning1 or the doctrine and science of men1 but from my own book which was opened within me1--the book of the glorious image of ,god1 which it was vouchsafed to me to read3 'tis therein ,i have studied--as a child in its mother's house1 that sees what its father doth1 and mimics the same in its child's-play4 ,i need no other book than this4 #8,my book has but three leaves--the three principles of ,eternity4 ,therein ,i find all that ,moses and the prophets1 ,christ and his apostles1 have taught4 ,therein ,i find the foundation of the world and all mystery1--yet1 not ,i1 but the ,spirit of the ,lord doth it1 in such measure as ,he pleaseth4 #8,for hundreds of times have ,i prayed him that if my knowledge were not for his glory and the edifying of my brethren1 he will take it from me1 only keeping me in his love4 ,but ,i have found that with all my earnest entreaty the fire within me did but burn the more1 and it is in this glow1 and in this knowledge1 that ,i have produced my works4444 #8,let no man conceive of me more highly than he here seeth1 for the work is none of mine2 ,i have it only in that measure vouchsafed me of the ,lord2 ,i am but his instrument wherewith he doeth what he will4 ,this1 ,i say1 my dear friend1 once for all1 that none may seek in me one other than ,i am1 as though ,i were a man of high skill and intellect1 whereas ,i live in weakness and childhood1 and the simplicity of ,christ4 ,in that child's work which he hath given me is my pastime and my play2 'tis there ,i have my delight1 as in a pleasure-garden where stand many glorious flowers2 therewith will ,i make myself glad awhile1 till such time as ,i regain the flowers of ,paradise in the new man4'#bcb ,this letter alludes to the way in which the ,aurora was made public without the knowledge of its author4 ,the friend to whom he showed it was ,karl von ,endern1 who1 struck by its contents1 caused a copy to be taken1 from which others were rapidly multiplied4 ,the book fell into the hands of ,gregory ,richter1 the chief pastor in ,grlitz4 ,well may ,behmen say that the ,aurora contained some things not readily apprehended by human reason4 ,a charitable man would have forgiven its extravagances1 catching some glimpses of a sincere and religious purpose2 a wise man would have said nothing about it2 a man the wisest of the wise would have been the last to pretend to understand it4 ,but ,richter--neither charitable nor wise exceedingly1 nor even moderately stocked with good sense--fell into a blundering passion1 and railed at ,behmen from the pulpit1 as he sat in his place at church1 crimson1 but patient1 the centre of all eyes4 ,behmen had already rendered himself obnoxious to ,richter by a temperate but firm remonstrance against an act of ecclesiastical oppression4 ,now1 his pretensions seem openly to militate against that mechanical religious monopoly with which ,richter imagined himself endowed1--a privilege as jealously watched and as profitably exercised by such men as that of the muezzins of the mosque of ,bajazet1 who are alone entitled to supply the faithful with the praying compasses that indicate the orthodox attitude4 ,the insolent1 heretical1 blasphemous cobbler shall find no mercy4 ,richter loudly calls for the penalties of law1 to punish a fanatic who has taught 7as he declares7 that the ,son of ,god is ,quicksilver6 ,grlitz magistrates1 either of the ,shallow family1 or1 it may be1 overborne by the blustering ,rector1 pronounce ,behmen #8a villain full of piety1' and banish him the town4 ,but by the next day the tide would appear to have turned1 and the exile is brought back with honour4 ,the shoemaker's booth is the scene of a little ovation1 while ,richter fumes at the parsonage4 ,behmen1 however1 must give up the manuscript of the ,aurora1 and is required for the future to stick to his last4 ,his book1 as it became known1 procured him many influential friends among men of learning and men of rank throughout ,lusatia4 ,he was exhorted not to hide his talent1 and the ensuing five years became a period of incessant literary activity4#bcc ,the scholarship of friends like ,kober and ,walther assisted him to supply some of the defects of his education2 the liberality of others provided for his moderate wants1 and enabled him to forsake his business for his books4#bcd ,once more did his old enemy1 the primarius ,richter1 appear against him1 with a pamphlet of virulent pasquinades in ,latin verse4 ,behmen issued an elaborate reply1 entering minutely into every charge1 sending the clerical curses #8home to roost1' and praying for the enlightenment of his persecutor with exasperating good temper4#bce ,the magistrates1 fluttered and anxious1 requested him to leave ,grlitz4 ,knightly friends opened their castle gates to him2 he preferred retirement at ,dresden4 ,there1 a public disputation he held with some eminent divines and men of science1 was said to have excited general admiration4 ,he returned to ,grlitz in his last illness1 to die in the midst of his family4 ,he expired early on ,sunday morning1 on the twenty-first of ,november1 #afbd1 in his fiftieth year4 ,he asked his son ,tobias if he heard the beautiful music1 and bade those about him set the doors open that the sounds might enter4 ,after receiving the sacrament1 he breathed his last1 at the hour of which a presentiment of dissolution had warned him4 ,his last words were1 #8,now ,i am going to ,paradise6#8#bcf ,note to page #hj4 ,behmen's learned friends were accustomed thus to test the insight they so revered1 and would occasionally attempt to mislead his sagacity by wrong terms and entrapping questions2 but always1 we are assured1 without success4 ,see ,ein ,schreiben von einem vornehmen ,patritio und ,rathsverwandten zu ,grlitz wegen seel4 ,jac4 ,behmen's ,person und ,schriften1 appended to ,franckenberg's ,life of ,behmen4 ,the rationale of this peculiar significance of letters and syllables he gives in the following passage3-- ,when man fell into sin1 he was removed from the inmost birth and set in the other two1 which presently encompassed him1 and mingled their influences with him and in him 7inqualireten mit ihme und in ihme71 as in their own peculiar possession2 and man received the spirit and the whole generation of the sidereal1 and also of the external birth4 ,therefore he now speaks all words according to the indwelling generative principle of nature4 ,for the spirit of man1 which stands in the sidereal birth1 and combines with all nature1 and is as all nature itself1 shapes the word according to the indwelling principle of birth4 ,when he sees anything he gives it a name answering to its peculiar property or virtue2 and if he does this he must fashion the word in the form1 and generate it with his voice in the way in which the thing he names generates2 and herein lies the kernel of the whole understanding of the ,godhead4--,aurora1 cap4 xix4 #gd-gf4 ,on this principle he examines1 syllable by syllable1 the opening words of ,genesis--not those of the ,hebrew1 but the ,german version 7671 as follows3--#8,am ,anfang schuff ,gott1' c4 ,these words we must very carefully consider4 ,the word ,,am takes its rise in the heart1 and goes as far as the lips4 ,there it is arrested1 and goes sounding back to whence it came4 ,now1 this shows that the sound went forth from the heart of ,god1 and encompassed the entire locus of the world2 but when it was found to be evil1 then the sound returned to its place again4 ,the word ,,an pushes forth from the heart to the mouth1 and has a long stress4 ,but when it is pronounced1 it closes in its sedes in the midst with the roof of the mouth1 and is half without and half within4 ,this signifies that the heart of ,god felt repugnance at the corruption of the world1 and cast the corrupt nature from him1 but again seized and stayed it in the midst by his heart4 ,just as the tongue arrests the word1 and retains it half without and half within1 so the heart of ,god would not utterly reject the enflamed ,salitter1 but would defeat the schemes and malice of the ,devil1 and finally restore the other4--,aurora1 cap4 xviii4 #dh-eb4 ,a similar precious piece of nonsense is to be found1 cap4 xviii4 #gb1 c4 of which ,barmherzig is the thema4 ,he declares1 in another place1 that when the spiritual ,aurora shall shine from the rising of the sun to the going-down of the same1 ,,ra4 ,,ra4 ,r4,p4 shall be driven into banishment1 and with him ,,am4 ,r4 ,p4 ,these are secret words1 he says1 only to be understood in the language of nature4--,aurora1 xxvi4 #abj4 ,behmen was indebted to his conversations with men like ,kober and ,walther for much of his terminology1 and probably to the suggestions awakened by such intercourse for much of the detailed application of his system4 ,see ,lebens-lauff1 #bj2 and compare the ,clavis1 or ,schlssel etlicher vornehmen ,puncten1 c4 ,footnote #bbh3 ,the personal appearance of ,behmen is thus described by his friend and biographer1 ,abraham von ,franckenberg1 in the biography prefixed to his ,works1 #bg4 ,footnote #bbi3 ,see ,note on p4 #hh4 ,footnote #bcj3 ,lebens-lauff1 #d4 ,footnote #bca3 ,see his own account of his mental conflict and melancholy1 issuing in the rapturous intuition which solved all his doubts1 ,aurora1 cap4 xix4 #a-ac4 ,he acknowledges having read many astrological books4 ,aurora1 cap4 xxv4 #dc3 ,ja1 lieber1 ,leser1 ich verstehe der ,astrologorum ,meinung auch wol1 ich habe auch ein paar zeilen in ihren ,schrifften gelesen1 und weiss wol wie sie den ,lauf der ,sonnen und ,sternen schreiben1 ich verachte es auch nicht1 sondern halte es meisten ,theil fr gut und recht4 ,compare also cap4 x4 #bg3 ,ich habe viel hoher ,meister ,schrifften gelesen1 in ,hoffnung den ,grund und die rechte ,tieffe darinnen zu finden1 aber ich habe nichts funden als einen halb-todten ,geist1 c4 ,in a letter to ,caspar ,lindern he mentions sundry mystical writers concerning whom his correspondent appears to have desired his opinion1--admits that several of them were men of high spiritual gifts1 not to be despised1 though in many respects capable of amendment1--says that they were of good service in their time1 and would probably express themselves otherwise did they write now1--shows where he thinks ,schwenkfeld wrong in affirming ,christ's manhood to be no creature1 and speaks of ,weigel as erring in like manner by denying the ,saviour's true humanity4--,theosoph4 ,sendbr4 #eb-fj4 ,footnote #bcb3 ,theosoph4 ,sendbr4 xii4 #h-bj4 ,footnote #bcc3 ,a full account of the persecution raised by ,gregory ,richter against ,behmen1 was drawn up by ,cornelius ,weissner1 a doctor of medicine1 and is appended by ,franckenberg to his biography4 ,a young man1 who had married a relative of ,behmen's1 had been so terrified by the threatenings of divine wrath launched at him by ,richter1 about some trifling money matter1 that he fell into a profound melancholy4 ,behmen comforted the distressed baker1 and ventured to remonstrate with the enraged primarius1 becoming ever after a marked man4 ,for seven years after the affair of the ,aurora1 in #afab1 ,behmen refrained from writing4 ,everything he published subsequently was produced between the years #afai and #afbd1 inclusive4 ,footnote #bcd3 ,thus he thanks ,christian ,bernard for a small remittance of money4--,theos4 ,sendbr4 ix4 ,sept4 #ab1 #afbj4 ,footnote #bce3 ,apologia wider den ,primarium zu ,grlitz ,gregorium ,richter1 written in #afbd4 ,footnote #bcf3 ,vide ,corn4 ,weissner's ,wahrhafte ,relation1 c41 and ,franckenberg's account of his last hours1 #bi4 ,,chapter ,,vii4 ,when ,i myself from mine own self do quit1 ,and each thing else2 then all-spreaden love ,to the vast ,universe my soul doth fit1 ,makes me half equall to all-seeing ,jove4 ,my mighty wings high stretch'd then clapping light1 ,i brush the stars and make them shine more bright4 ,then all the works of ,god with close embrace ,i dearly hug in my enlarged arms1 ,all the hid pathes of heavenly love ,i trace1 ,and boldly listen to his secret charms4 ,then clearly view ,i where true light doth rise1 ,and where eternal ,night low-pressed lies4 ,,henry ,,more4 ,,willoughby',s ,,essay--,,fifth ,,evening4 #e4 ,jacob ,behmen--his ,materials and ,style of ,workmanship4 ,it has been too much the custom to regard ,jacob ,behmen as a kind of speculative ,melchisedek--a prodigy without doctrinal father or mother4 ,let us endeavour to form a correct estimate of the debt he owes to his mystical predecessors4 ,the much-pondering shoemaker consulted the writings of ,schwenkfeld and ,weigel in his distress4 ,he found these authors crying unceasingly1 #8,barren are the schools2 barren are all forms2 barren--worse than barren1 these exclusive creeds1 this deadly polemic letter4' ,weigel bids him withdraw into himself and await1 in total passivity1 the incoming of the divine ,word1 whose light reveals unto the babe what is hidden from the wise and prudent4 ,by the same writer he is reminded that he lives in ,god1 and taught that if ,god also dwell in him1 then is he even here in ,paradise--the state of regenerate souls4 ,paracelsus extols the power of faith to penetrate the mysteries of nature1 and shows him how a plain man1 with his ,bible only1 if he be filled with the ,spirit and carried out of himself by divine communication1 may seem to men a fool1 but is in truth more wise than all the doctors4 ,weigel says that man1 as body1 soul1 and spirit1 belongs to three worlds--the terrestrial1 the astral1 and the celestial4 ,both ,weigel and ,paracelsus teach him the doctrine of the microcosm4 ,they assure him that as divine illumination reveals to him the mysteries of his own being1 he will discern proportionately the secrets of external nature4 ,they teach that all language1 art1 science1 handicraft1 exists potentially in man2 that all apparent acquisition from without is in reality a revival and evolution of that which is within4 ,these instructors furnish the basis of ,behmen's mysticism4 ,having drunk of this somewhat heady vintage1 he is less disposed than ever to abandon his search4 ,he will sound even those abysmal questions so often essayed1 and so often1 after all1 resigned1 as beyond the range of human faculties4 ,if1 according to the promise1 importunate prayer can bring him light1 then shall light be his4 ,when he asks for an answer from above to his speculative enquiry into the nature of the ,trinity1 the processes of creation1 the fall of angels1 the secret code of those warring forces whose conflict produces the activity and vicissitudes of life1 he does not conceive that he implores any miraculous intervention4 ,provision was made1 he thought1 for knowledge thus beyond what is written1 in the very constitution of man's nature4 ,such wisdom was but the realization1 by the grace of ,god1 of our inborn possibilities4 ,it was making actual what had otherwise been only potential4 ,it was bringing into consciousness an implicit acquaintance with ,god and nature which was involved in the very idea of man as the offspring of the ,creator and the epitome of creation4 ,but of what avail is light on any minor province of enquiry1 while the fundamental perplexity is unsolved1--,whence and what is evil1 and why so masterful8 ,how could ,king ,vortigern build his great fortress upon ,salisbury ,plain1 when every day's work was overthrown in the night by an earthquake--the result of that nocturnal combat in the bowels of the earth between the blood-red and the milk-white dragons8 ,and how1 pray1 was ,behmen to come to rest about his own doubts--far less erect a system1--till he had reconciled the contradiction at the root of all8 ,the eternal opposites must harmonize in some higher unity4 ,here ,paracelsus is ,behmen's ,merlin4 ,the doctrine of ,development by ,contraries was passed1 in the torch-race of opinion1 from ,sebastian ,frank to ,paracelsus1 and from him to ,weigel4 ,according to this theory1 ,god manifests himself in opposites4 ,the peace of ,unity develops into the strife of the ,manifold4 ,all things consist in ,yea and ,nay4 ,the light must have shadow1 day night1 laughter tears1 health sickness1 hope fear1 good evil1 or they would not be what they are4 ,only by resistance1 only in collision1 is the spark of vitality struck out1 is power realized1 and progress possible4 ,of this hypothesis ,i shall have more to say hereafter4 ,it is the chief estate of ,behmen's inheritance4 ,theosophy bequeathed him1 in addition1 sundry lesser lands2--namely1 the ,paracelsian ,triad of ,sulphur1 ,salt1 and ,mercury2 the doctrine of the vitality of the world1 with the #8,fifth ,element1' or #8,breath of ,life1' for ,mundane ,soul2 the theory of sympathies1 stellar influence1 signatures2 and the alchemico-astrotheologico jargon of the day4 ,such1 then1 were ,behmen's principal materials4 ,his originality is displayed in a most ingenious arrangement and development of them2 especially in their application to theology and the interpretation of ,scripture4 ,the description furnished us by ,behmen himself of the deciding epoch of his life1 indicates the kind of illumination to which he laid claim4 ,the light thus enjoyed was not shed upon a mind from which all the inscriptions of memory had been effaced1 to produce that blank so coveted by the mystics of a former day4 ,the cloud of glory magnified and refracted the results of those theosophic studies to which he confesses himself addicted4 ,the topographer of ,fairyland1 ,ludwig ,tieck1 tells us that when the ,elf-children scatter gold-dust on the ground1 waving beds of roses or of lilies instantly spring up4 ,they plant the seed of the pine1 and in a moment mimic pine-trees rise under their feet1 carrying upward1 with the growth of their swaying arms1 the laughing little ones4 ,so swiftly1 so magically--not by labouring experiment and gradual induction1 but in the blissful stillness of one ecstatic and consummate week1--arose the ,forms and ,principles of ,behmen's system1 and with them rose the seer4 ,but how1 when the season of vision is over1 shall he retain and represent the complex intricacies of the ,universal ,organism in the heart of which he found himself8 ,memory can only recal the mystery in fragments4 ,reflection can with difficulty supplement and harmonize those parts4 ,language can describe but superficially and in succession what the inner eye beheld throughout and at once4 ,the fetters of time and space must fall once more on the recovered consciousness of daily life4 ,we have heard ,behmen describe the throes he underwent1 the difficulties he overcame1 as he persevered in the attempt to give expression to the suggestions he received4#bcg ,how long it is before he sees ,the lovely members of the mighty whole-- ,till then confused and shapeless to his soul1-- ,distinct and glorious grow upon his sight1 ,the fair enigmas brighten from the ,night4 ,to us1 who do not share ,behmen's delusion1 who see in his condition the extraordinary1 but nowise the supernatural1 it is clear that this difficulty was so great1 not from the sublime character of these cosmical revelations1 but because of the utter confusion his thoughts were in4 ,glimpses1 and snatches1 and notions of possible reply to his questions1 raying through as from holes in a shutter1 reveal the clouds of dust in that unswept brain of his1 where medical recipes and theological doctrines1 the hard names of alchemy and the super-subtile fancies of theosophy1 have danced a whirlwind saraband4 ,yet he believed himself not without special divine aid in his endeavours to develop into speech the seed of thought deposited within him4 ,he apologises for bad spelling1 bad grammar1 abbreviations1 omissions1 on the ground of the impetuosity with which the divine impulse hurried forward his feeble pen4#bch ,unfortunately for a hypothesis so flattering1 he improves visibly by practice1 like ordinary folk4 ,it is scarcely necessary to observe that ,behmen and the mystics are partly right and partly wrong in turning from books and schools to intuition1 when they essay to pass the ordinary bounds of knowledge and to attain a privileged gnosis4 ,it is true that no method of human wisdom will reveal to men the hidden things of the divine kingdom4 ,but it is also true that dreamy gazing will not disclose them either4 ,scholarship may not scale the heights of the unrevealed1 and neither assuredly may ignorance4 ,there is nothing to choose between far-seeing ,lynceus and a common sailor of the ,argo1 when the object for which they look out together is not yet above the horizon4 ,the latter1 at all events1 should not regard the absence of superior endowment as an advantage4 ,in the more high-wrought forms of theopathetic mysticism we have seen reason regarded as the deadly enemy of rapture4 ,the surpassing union which takes place in ecstasy is dissolved on the first movement of reflection4 ,self-consciousness is the lamp whereby the ill-fated ,psyche at once discerns and loses the celestial lover1 whose visits cease with secrecy and night4 ,but ,behmen devoutly employs all the powers of a most active mind to combine1 to order1 to analyse1 to develop1 the heavenly data4 ,protestant mysticism generally is1 like ,behmen's1 communicative4 ,the mysticism of the ,reformation and of the ,counter-,reformation afford1 in this respect1 a striking contrast4 ,that of the ,romanists is1 for the most part1 a veiled thing1 not to be profaned by speech4 ,it is an ineffable privilege which description would deprive of its awe4 ,it is commonly a contrivance employed for effect--a flash1 and darkness4 ,it is a distinction1 in some cases1 for services past2 an individual preparation1 in others1 for services to come4 ,the special revelation of the ,protestant is a message to some man for his fellow-men4 ,it at least contemplates something practical4 ,it is generally reformatory4 ,the vision of the ,romish saint is a private token of favour1 or a scar of honour1 or a decoration from the court of heaven1 like a cross or star4 ,the illumination of ,behmen differs1 again1 from that of ,swedenborg1 in that he does not profess to have held communication with spirits1 or to have passed into other worlds and states of being4 ,while his doctrine is1 in many respects1 less subjective than that of ,swedenborg1 his mode of vision1 so entirely internal1 is more so4 ,the three-leaved book1 says ,behmen1 is within me2 hence all my teaching4 ,in man are the three gates opening on the three worlds4 ,behmen's heaven is not wholly above the sky4 ,the subterranean regions cannot contain his hell4 ,the inner and spiritual sphere underlies everywhere the material and outward4#bci ,as with those hollow balls of carved ivory that come to us from the ,east1 one is to be discerned within the other through the open tracery4 ,the world is like some kinds of fruit--a plum or apple1 for instance1--and has its rind-men1 its pulp-men1 and its core1 or kernel-men2 yet all with the same faculties1--only the first live merely on the surface of things2 the last perceive how the outer form is determined by the central life within4 ,man intersects the spiritual1 sidereal1 and terrestrial worlds1 as a line from the centre to the outermost of three concentric circles4 ,behmen would say that his insight arose from his being aided by ,divine ,grace to live along the whole line of his nature1 with a completeness attained by few4 ,he travels to and fro on his radius4 ,when recipient of celestial truth he is near the centre2 when he strives to give utterance and form to such intimations1 he approaches the circumference4 ,when asked how he came to know so much about our cosmogony1 and about the origin and conomy of the angelic world1 he would answer1 #8,because ,i have lived in that region of myself which opens out upon those regions4 ,i need not change my place to have entrance into the heavenly sphere4 ,i took no ,mahomet's flight4 ,the highest and the inmost1 in the deepest sense1 are one4'#bdj ,so it is as though man stood at a spot where three rivers are about to join2 as though to drink of the water of each was to give him knowledge of the kind of country through which each had passed2 how one ran embrowned out of marshy lakes--through wealthy plains--under the bridges of cities1--washing away the refuse of manufactures2 while the second came ruddy from rocks1 red with their iron rust1--came carrying white blossoms and silver-grey willow leaves from glens far up the country1 deepfolded in hanging woods2 and the water of the third1 ice-cold and hyaline1 presented to the soul1 as it touched the lips1 visions of the glacier-portcullis from under whose icicles it leaped at first1 and of those unsullied tracts of heavenward snow which fed its childhood at the bidding of the sun1 and watched it from the heights of eternal silence4 99 99 99 99 99 ,the ,aurora was the firstfruit of the illumination thus realized4 ,he composed it1 he reminds us1 for himself alone1 to give him a hold against any refluent doubt that might threaten to sweep him back into the waves4 ,it is the worst written of all his treatises4 ,with respect to it1 the answer of ,shakspeare's ,roman shoemaker gives to ,marullus may be adopted by our ,teuton--#8,truly1 sir1 in respect of a fine workman1 ,i am but1 as you would say1 a cobbler4' ,yet this botched performance best renders us the genuine ,behmen1 as he was when first the afflatus came1 before greater leisure for reading and study1 and intercourse with men of station or scholarship had given him culture4 ,this ,aurora1 then1 over which ,karl von ,endern pored in his simplicity till he rose therefrom with a bewildered admiration and a sense of baffled amazement1 physically expressed by a feverish headache1--over whose pages ,gregory ,richter galloped with scornful hoof1 striking out pishes and pshaws and bahs over its flinty ruggedness1--this ,aurora--a dawn opening for ,behmen with such threatening weather within and without--what kind of book does it appear to us8 ,it is at first with curiosity1 then with impatience1 and ere long with the irritation of inevitable fatigue1 that we read those wordy pages ,behmen wrote with such a furious impetus4 ,how wide the distance between him and his readers now6 ,behold him early in his study1 with bolted door4 ,the boy must see to the shop to-day2 no sublunary cares of awl and leather1 customers and groschen1 must check the rushing flood of thought4 ,the sunshine streams in--emblem1 to his #8high-raised phantasy1' of a more glorious light4 ,as he writes1 the thin cheeks are flushed1 the grey eye kindles1 the whole frame is damp and trembling with excitement4 ,sheet after sheet is covered4 ,the headlong pen1 too precipitate for calligraphy1 for punctuation1 for spelling1 for syntax1 dashes on4 ,the lines which darken down the waiting page are1 to the writer1 furrows into which heaven is raining a driven shower of celestial seed4 ,on the chapters thus fiercely written the eye of the modern student rests1 cool and critical1 wearily scanning paragraphs digressive as ,juliet's nurse1 and protesting with contracted eyebrow1 that this easy writing is abominably hard to read4 ,we survey this monument of an extinct enthusiasm1--this structure1 many-chambered1 intricate1 covering so broad a space1--as does the traveller the remains of the ,pompeian baths2--there are the cells and channels of the hypocaust1 dusty and open to the day1 the fires long since gone out1 and all that made the busy echoing halls and winding passages so full of life--the laughter1 the quarrel1 the chatter of the vestibule1 imagination must supply1 while ,signor ,inglese1 beneath a large umbrella and a straw hat1 doth gaze and muse1 with smarting eyes and liquefying body4 ,behmen does not suffer much more in this respect than all minds of his class must suffer4 ,imagination1 with its delicate sympathy1 will know how to make allowance for him2 but reason will not attempt to rescue him from condign sentence of unreadableness4 ,it is obvious1 after all1 that the good man's inspiration was not born of the mania ,plato describes as #8divine transport2' that it was akin rather to that morbid activity which is but #8human distemper4' ,it is the prerogative of genius to transmit through the dead page1 with a glow that can never become quite cold1 some rays of that central heat of heart which burned when the writer held the pen4 ,the power of ,behmen does not reach so far4 ,that rapidity which was to him the witness of the ,spirit1 leaves for us only the common signs of unpardonable haste1--is tediously visible in negligence1 disorder1 repetitions1 and diffuseness4 ,as might be expected1 ,behmen is often best in those parts of his writings to which he himself would have assigned less value4 ,in many of his letters1 in some of his prefaces1 and interspersed throughout all his works1 exhortations are to be found which in their pungency and searching force recal the burning admonitions of ,richard ,baxter4 ,these appeals1 summoning to religious simplicity and thoroughness1 exposing the treacheries of the heart1 encouraging the feeble-minded1 awakening the sleeper1 would be as eloquent and pathetic as they are earnest and true1 did he oftener know where to stop4 ,such passages1 however1 are preludes or interludes neighboured by heavy monologue1 monotonous and protracted beyond all patience4 ,we descend from those serene uplands1 where the air is redolent of the cedars of ,lebanon1 and the voices we hear recal the sounds of ,hebrew prophecy or psalm1 to the poor flats of his mortal speculation--muddy1 we must say it1 in the finest weather1 where chalky streams wind their slow length by stunted pollards1 over levels of interminable verbiage4 ,the same ideas incessantly recur1 sometimes almost in the same words4 ,such repetition contributes not a little to the discouragement and perplexity of the reader1 even when most pertinaciously bent on exploring these recesses1--as in threading his dim way through the catacombs1 the investigator loses count by the resemblance of so many passages to each other1 and seems to be returning constantly to the same spot4 ,with all his imagination1 ,behmen has little power of elucidation1 scarcely any original illustration4 ,the analogies suggested to him are seldom apt to his purpose1 or such as really throw light on his abstractions4 ,to a mind active in such direction illustrative allusions are like the breed of ponies celebrated in the ,pirate1 that graze wild on the ,shetland hills1 from among which the islander catches1 as he needs1 the first that comes to hand1 puts on the halter1 canters it his journey1 and lets it go1 never to know it more4 ,but ,behmen1 when he has laid hold of a similitude1 locks the stable door upon it--keeps it for constant service--and at some times rides the poor beast to death4 ,the obscurity of his writings is increased by his arbitrary chemico-theological terminology1 and the hopeless confusion in which his philosophies of mind and matter lie entangled4 ,his pages resemble a room heaped in disorder1 with the contents of a library and laboratory together4 ,in this apartment you open a folio divine1 and knock over a bottle of nitric acid2--you go to look after the furnace1 and you tumble over a pile of books4 ,you cannot divest yourself of the suspicion that when you have left the place and locked the door behind you1 these strange implements will assume an unnatural life1 and fantastically change places1--that the books will some of them squeeze themselves into the crucible1 and theology will simmer on the fire1 and that the portly alembic will distil a sermon on predestination4 ,the ,aurora is broken every here and there by headings in capital letters--promising and conspicuous sign-posts1 on which are written1 #8,,mark6#8--#8,,now ,,mark6#8--#8,,understand ,,this ,,aright6#8--#8,,the ,,gate ,,of ,,the ,,great ,,mystery6#8--#8,,mark ,,now ,,the ,,hidden ,,mystery ,,of ,,god6#8--#8,,the ,,deepest ,,depth6#8--and similar delusive advertisements1 pointing the wayfarer1 alas6 to no satisfactory path of extrication1--places rather of deeper peril1--spots like those in the lowlands of ,northern ,germany1 verdurous and seemingly solid1 but concealing beneath their trembling crust depths of unfathomable mire1 whence 7like fly from treacle-jar7 the unwary traveller is happy to emerge1 miserably blinded and besmeared1 with a hundred-weight of mud weighing down either limb4 ,often does it seem as though now1 surely1 a goodly period were at hand1 and ,behmen were about to say something summary and transparent3 the forest opens--a little cleared land is discernible--a solitary homestead or a charcoal-burner's hut appears to indicate the verge of this interminable ,ardennes forest of words--but only a little further on1 the trees shut out the sky again2 it was but an interstice1 not the limit2 and the wild underwood and press of trunks embarrass and obscure our course as before4 ,it is some poor relief when ,behmen pauses and fetches breath to revile the ,devil1 and in homely earnest calls him a damned stinking goat1 or asks him how he relishes his prospects2 when he stops to anticipate objections and objurgate the objectors1 dogmatizing anew with the utmost navet1 and telling them to take care1 for they will find him right to a certainty at the last day2 or1 finally1 when he refreshes himself by a fling at the ,papists1 quite ,lutheran in its heartiness4 ,for in ,behmen's mysticism there was nothing craven1 effeminate1 or sentimental4 ,he would contend to the death for the open ,bible4 ,all spiritual servitude was his abhorrence4 ,very different was the sickly mysticism for a short time in vogue in ,germany at a later period of the seventeenth century4 ,behmen was no friend to what was narrow or corrupt in the ,lutheranism of his day4 ,but a ,lutheran he remained1 and a genuine ,protestant4 ,sickly and servile natures could only sigh over the grand religious battle of those days1 and would have made away their birthright--liberty1 for that mess of pottage--peace4 ,they began by regarding the strife between tyranny and freedom with unmanly indifference4 ,they ended by exercising for the last time their feeble private judgment1 and securing themselves with obsequious haste in the shackles of the infallible ,church4 ,footnote #bcg3 ,while regarding as infallibly certain the main features of the doctrine communicated to him1 ,behmen is quite ready to admit the imperfect character both of his knowledge and his setting forth thereof4 ,light was communicated to him1 he said1 by degrees1 at uncertain intervals1 and never un-mingled with obscurity4--,aurora1 cap4 vii4 #aa2 cap4 x4 #bf1 and often elsewhere4 ,footnote #bch3 ,aurora1 x4 #dd1 #de4 ,footnote #bci3 ,see ,aurora1 cap4 xix4 #bf-de2 cap4 xxiii4 #hf4 ,after speaking of the revolt of ,lucifer as the cause of the present imperfection and admixture of natural evil in the world1 by corrupting the influence of the ,fountain-,spirits throughout our department of the universe1 and of the blind and endangered condition of man consequent thereon1 he adds1--#8,but thou must not suppose that on this account the heavenly light in the ,fountain-,spirits of ,god is utterly extinct4 ,no2 it is but a darkness which we1 with our corrupt eyesight1 cannot apprehend4 ,but when ,god removes the darkness which thus broods above the light1 and thine eyes are opened1 then thou seest even on the spot where thou sittest1 standest1 or dost lie in thy room1 the lovely face of ,god1 and all the gates that open upon heaven4 ,thou needest not first lift thine eyes upwards to heaven1 for it is written1 #8,the word is near thee1 even on thy lips and in thine heart2' ,deut4 xxx4 #ad2 ,rom4 x4 #h4 ,so near thee1 indeed1 is ,god1 that the birth of the ,holy ,trinity takes place in thine heart also1 and there all three persons are born1--,father1 ,son and ,holy ,ghost4'--,aurora1 cap4 x4 #eg1 #eh4 ,footnote #bdj3 #8,the spirit of man1' says ,behmen1 #8contains a spark from the power and light of ,god4' ,the ,holy ,ghost is #8creaturely' within it when renewed1 and it can therefore search into the depths of ,god and nature1 as a child in its father's house4 ,in ,god1 past1 present1 and future2 breadth1 depth1 and height2 far and near1 are apprehended as one1 and the holy soul of man sees them in like manner1 although 7in the present imperfect state7 but partially4 ,for the devil sometimes succeeds in smothering the seed of inward light4--,aurora1 ,vorrede1 #if-aje4 ,according to ,behmen1 ,stephen1 when he saw the heavens opened1 and ,christ at the right hand of ,god1 was not spiritually translated into any distant upper region1--#8he had penetrated into the inmost birth--into the heaven which is everywhere4'--,aurora1 cap4 xix4 #dh4 ,similarly1 he declares that he had not ascended into heaven1 and seen with the eye of the flesh the creative processes he describes1 but that his knowledge comes from the opening within him of the gate to the inner heavenly world1 so that the divine sun arose and shone within his heart1 giving him infallible inward certainty concerning everything he announces4 ,if an angel from heaven had told him such things1 he must have doubted4 ,it might have been ,satan in a garb of light3 it would have been an external testimony3 it would have been beyond his comprehension2 but this light and impulse from within precludes all doubt4 ,the holy ,soul is one spirit with ,god1 though still a creature2 sees as the angels see1 and far more1 since they discern only heavenly things1 but man has experience both of heaven and hell1 standing as he does midway between the two4--,aurora1 cap4 xi4 #fh-gb and cap4 xii4 #aag4 ,comp4 also cap4 xxv4 #df-dh4 ,,chapter ,,viii4 1 4 1 1 1 4 1 4 1 4#bda ,,synesius4 ,,willoughby',s ,,essay--,,sixth ,,evening4 #f4 ,jacob ,behmen4--,sketch and ,estimate of his ,system4 ,so our ,behmen1 rejoicing in his supernatural light1 is prepared to answer more questions than ever the ,northern hero1 ,ganglar1 put to the throned phantoms in the palace roofed with golden shields4 ,let us listen to some of his replies4 ,we have been long in the penumbra--now for the depth of the shadow4 ,to begin with1 ,behmen must have an #8immanent1' as distinguished from the revealed ,trinity4 ,he attempts to exhibit the principle of that threefold mode of the divine existence1 concerning which we could have known nothing1 apart from ,revelation1 and which ,revelation discloses only in its practical connexion with the salvation of man4 ,his theory of the ,trinity is not one whit more unsubstantial than many suggested by modern philosophical divines of high repute4 ,in the ,abyss of the divine nature1 the ,nothing of unrevealed ,godhead1 ,behmen supposes that there exists ,desire--a going forth1 on the part of what is called the ,father4 ,the object and realization of such tendency is the ,son4 ,the bond and result of this reciprocal love is the ,holy ,spirit4#bdb ,here a marked difference must be noted between ,behmen and recent ,german speculation4 ,with ,hegel1 for example1 humanity is an indispensable link in the ,trinitarian process4 ,god depends on man for his self-consciousness and development4 ,the deity of ,behmen1 on the contrary1 is self-sufficing1 and the circle of the divine blessedness does not stand indebted to man for its completion4 ,but does not every inward suppose an outward8 ,as1 therefore1 there is an ,eternal ,spirit1 so also is there an ,eternal ,nature4 ,god is not mere being2 ,he is ,will4 ,this ,will manifests itself in an external universe4 ,the ,eternal ,nature1 or ,mysterium ,magnum1 may be described as the external correlative of the divine ,wisdom4 ,in other words1 what are ,ideas in the divine ,wisdom1 assume external form1 as natural properties1 in the ,eternal ,nature4 ,suso and ,spenser sing the praises of the heavenly ,wisdom4 ,behmen1 too1 personifies this attribute as the eternal ,virgin4 ,but ,nature is distinguished from the maiden ,wisdom as the prolific ,mother of the ,universe4 ,in the ,eternal ,nature1 are seven #8,forms of ,life1' or #8,active ,principles1' or #8,fountain-,spirits' 7,quellgeister71 or #8,mothers of ,existence1'--typified in the seven golden candlesticks of the ,apocalypse1 and in the many examples of that significant number4 ,these ,forms reciprocally generate and are generated by each other4 ,each one of them is at once the parent and offspring of all the rest4 ,as ,king ,arthur for his knights1 so ,behmen has a kind of round table for them1 that no one may hold precedence4 ,he compares them to a skeleton globe1 or a system of wheels revolving about a common centre4 ,this heart or centre is the ,son of ,god1 as the sun is the heart and lord of the seven planets4 ,the antitheses which these various qualities present to each other1 in their action and reaction1 are harmonized in the ,supreme ,unity4 ,the opposition and reconciliation of ideal principles manifest the divine fulness1--constitute a play of love and life in the ,divine ,nature1 the blessedness of ,godhead4 ,but the simultaneous action of these qualities becomes concrete in the visible universe4 ,on our planet their operation has been corrupted by moral evil1 and is therefore accompanied by painful strife2 so that1 with harsh clangour1 the great wheel of life is turned by hostile forces4 ,the shortest method will be at once to catalogue the mighty ,seven--the besiegers of that ,thebes1 your patience4 ,i4 ,the ,astringent ,quality4 ,this first ,fountain-,spirit is the principal of all contractive force4 ,it is desire1 and draws1 producing hardness1 solidity1 c4 ,rocks are hard because this quality is dominant1 or primus in them1 as ,behmen phrases it4 ,in organic nature it produces the woody fibre4 ,it predominates in the planet ,saturn1 in salt1 in bone1 in wolves4 ,,ii4 ,the ,sweet ,quality4 ,the second is the antagonist of the first1--the principle of expansion and movement4 ,the pliant forms of plants1 fluids1 quicksilver1--and1 among animals1 the subtle fox1 are examples of its characteristic supremacy4 ,,iii4 ,the ,bitter ,quality4 ,this is the principle generated from the conflict of those two contraries1 the first and second4 ,it is manifest in the anguish and strife of being1--in the alterations of the revolving wheel of life4 ,it may become heavenly rapture or hellish torment4 ,its influence is dominant in sulphur1 in the planet ,mars1 in war1 in dogs4 ,it produces red colours1 and reigns in choleric temperaments4 ,,iv4 ,the ,quality of ,fire4 ,the first three qualities belong more especially to the kingdom of the ,father--of wrath1 necessity1 death4 ,the last three to the kingdom of the ,son--of love1 freedom1 life4 ,the fourth quality is the intermediate or transition point between the two members of this antithesis of evolution4 ,in the quality of ,fire1 light and darkness meet2 it is the root of the soul of man2 the source1 on either side1 of heaven and hell1 between which our nature stands4 ,in this lower material world1 it is manifest in the principle of growth4 ,in the sidereal world1 its planet is the central sun4 ,it produces yellow colours2 reigns1 among metals1 in gold1--among animals1 in the lion4 ,v4 ,the ,quality of ,love4 ,this principle1 in its higher operations1 is the source of wisdom and glory4 ,it predominates in all sweet things1 in birds1 in the intercourse of the sexes2 and its star is ,venus4 ,behmen1 in some places1 assigns this quality especially to the gracious ,son4 ,,vi4 ,the ,quality of ,sound4 ,hence1 in heaven1 the songs of the angels1 the harmony of the spheres2 in man1 the five senses1 understanding1 and the gift of speech4 ,this quality is primus in jovial temperaments1 and produces blue colours4 ,,vii4 ,the ,quality of ,corporeity1 or ,essential ,substance4 ,this is the quality by which all the rest come to manifestation4 ,it falls1 with the preceding1 more peculiarly under the province of the ,holy ,spirit1 as the searching and formative principle4 ,it is the source in the heavenly world of the beautiful forms of ,paradise1 as the preceding is of its sweet sounds4 ,on earth it is the plastic power ruling matter--the operative spirit of nature4#bdc 99 99 99 99 99 ,it is curious to observe how ,behmen's theory takes hold of ,chemistry with one hand1 and ,theology with the other4 ,paracelsus pronounced all matter composed of salt1 mercury1 and sulphur4 ,behmen adds1 #8,it is even so1 considering salt as the representative of the astringent or attractive principle--mercury1 of the fluent or separative1--and sulphur1 of nature's pain in the resultant process of production4' ,again1 the ,father is the dark or fiery principle2 the ,son1 the principle of light or grace2 and the ,holy ,ghost1 the creative1 formative1 preserving principle--the outbirth or realization of the two former4 ,there are no materials so incongruous that a dexterous use of imaginative or superficial analogies cannot combine them4 ,in this way1 a medley of terms from the nomenclature of every science may be catalogued and bracketed in symmetrical groups of twos and threes4 ,behmen was too much in earnest1 however1 to carry such artificial method very far4 ,he was more concerned about thought than orderly form4 ,he could not postulate a fact to fill a gap in a synopsis4 ,though he mingles in much confusion the sciences of mind and matter1 he does not confound their subjects1 and regard them as different states of one substance4 ,he would not affirm1 with ,schelling1 that matter was mind dormant2 and mind1 matter realized and self-conscious4 ,we have seen that ,behmen assigns the first three principles to the dark kingdom of the ,father4 ,when he describes that as a realm of wrath and darkness1 he speaks chiefly from the human point of view4 ,god is love4 ,the ,father regarded as the wrath-principle1 cannot strictly be called ,god4 ,but the very principle which makes love what it is1 becomes1 in respect to sin1 so much wrath4 ,yet1 independently of man1 and of such wrath as he may know1 ,god would still have manifested himself in contraries4 ,the divine ,one1 the unmanifested ,subject1 seeking an object--desiring1 as it were1 to find himself1 becomes what1 for lack of better terms1 ,behmen has to call a craving darkness1 or burning sense of want4 ,not that ,deity suffers pain2 but a certain passion must form the base of action4 ,realizing that object1 the darkness becomes light4 ,that light--the ,son--had not been1 but for the darkness--the ,father4 ,then from the two1 which are one1 arise1 in the ,holy ,spirit1 the archetypal ,forms of the universe4 ,thus1 from the depth of the divine nature itself spring these opposites1 ,power and ,grace1 ,wrath and ,love1 ,darkness and ,light2 and thence1 by a combination of forces1 the manifestation of ,god in the quickened1 changeful universe4 ,but for such antithesis ,god had remained unrevealed4 ,without so much of antagonism as is essential to action1 the ,divine ,being had not realized the glory of his nature4 ,at the same time1 ,behmen carefully excludes the notion of modern pantheism1 that the ,divine ,idea develops itself by a process1 and grows as the world grows4#bdd #8,i have to relate in succession1' he would say1 #8what takes place simultaneously in ,god1--to describe separately what is one in ,him4 ,he needs no method1 no medium4 ,the ,eternal ,nature is not his instrument for creating the visible universe4 ,thought and realization1 with ,god1 take place together1 and are in ,him identical4' ,so1 in describing a landscape1 we have to relate severally the sounds and appearances of birds and clouds1 hills and waters4 ,but to him who is on the spot1 the birds sing1 the waters shine1 the clouds fly1 the trees bow on the hill1 and the corn waves along the valley1 at one and the same time4 ,his senses are the focus of the whole3 he sits in the centre4 ,but description must travel the circumference4 ,we now arrive once more at ,behmen's #8,yea and ,nay'--that theory of antithesis before noticed3 his explanation of the origin of ,evil4 ,these ,contraries are his trade-winds1 whereby he voyages to and fro1 and traverses with such facility the whole system of things4 ,he teaches that the ,divine ,unity1 in its manifestation or self-realization1 parts into two principles1 variously called ,light and ,darkness1 ,joy and ,sorrow1 ,fire and ,light1 ,wrath and ,love1 ,good and ,evil4 ,without what is termed the ,darkness and the ,fire1 there would be no ,love and ,light4 ,evil is necessary to manifest ,good4 ,not that anything is created by ,god for evil4 ,in everything is both good and evil3 the predominance decides its use and destiny4 ,what is so much pain and evil in hell1 is1 in heaven1 so much joy and goodness4 ,the bitter fountain and the sweet flow originally from one divine ,source4 ,the angels and the devils are both in ,god1 of whom1 and in whom1 all live and move4 ,but from their divine basis1 or root1 the former draw joy and glory1 the latter shame and woe4 ,the point of collision is the gate of anguish and of bliss4 ,thus ,behmen1 from far away1 echoes ,heraclitus1 and declares ,strife the father of all things4 ,what were ,virtue1 he would ask1 without temptation8 ,in life's warfare lies its greatness4 ,our full wealth of being is only realized by a struggle for very life4 ,not till the height of the conflict between ,siegfried and the dragon--not till the mountain is all flames and earthquake with that fearful fight1 do the dwarfs bring out their hoard1 and untold riches glitter round the victor4 ,behmen was by no means the first to devise a hypothesis so plausible4 ,we meet with it in quarters widely remote--in the pantheism of ,jelaleddin ,rumi and of ,john ,scotus ,erigena4 ,but nowhere does it occupy so central a place1 undergo such full development1 receive such copious illustration1 as in the theosophy of the ,grlitz shoemaker4 ,like most of those attempts to explain the inexplicable which have proved more than usually attractive1 this theory has its truth and its falsehood4 ,it is true that the harmonious development of life is neither more nor less than a successive reconciliation of contraries4 ,the persistent quality1 representing our individuality and what is due to the particular self1 must not exist alone4 ,the diffusive quality1 or fluent1 having regard only to others1 must not exist alone4 ,the extreme of either defeats itself4 ,each is necessary to1 or1 as ,behmen would say1 lies in the other4 ,the two factors are reconciled1 and consummated in a higher unity when the command is obeyed--#8,thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself4' ,towards this standard all moral development must tend4 ,pairs of principles1 like the ,personal and the ,relative1 the ,ideal and the ,actual1 c4--at once twin and rival--where each is the complement of the other1 are very numerous4 ,they are designed for union1 as heat and cold combine to produce a temperate or habitable clime4 ,had ,behmen confined his theory of contraries within such limits1 we might have questioned his expressions2--we must1 ,i think1 have admitted his principle4 ,but when he takes good and evil as the members of such an antithesis1 he is deceived by an apparent likeness4 ,it would be a strange thing should any one declare courage and meekness1 lowliness and aspiration1 the work of ,god and the work of man1 incapable of harmony4 ,it is still more strange to hear any man pronounce any harmony possible between good and evil1 sin and holiness4 ,the former set of terms belong to one family1 the latter are reciprocally destructive1 totally incompatible4 ,here lies ,behmen's fallacy4 ,to regard goodness as a quality which would remain inert and apathetic were it not endowed with individuality and consistence by evil1 and goaded to activity by temptation1 is altogether to mistake its nature4 ,an adequate conception of ,virtue must require that it be benignly active within its allotted range4 ,the popular saying that a man should have enough of the devil in him to keep the devil from him1 expresses ,behmen's doctrine4 ,but the proverb has truth only as it means that of two evils we should choose the less3 supposing imperfection inevitable1 better too much self-will than too much pliability4 ,it is true that greatness of soul is never so highly developed or so grandly manifest as amid surrounding evils4 ,but it is not true that the good is intrinsically dependent on the evil for its very being as goodness4 ,no one will maintain that ,he in whom there was no sin lacked individuality and character1 or that he was indebted to the hostility of scribes and ,pharisees for his glorious perfectness4 ,indeed1 such a position would subvert all our notions of right and wrong2 for ,evil--the awakener of dormant virtue--would be the great benefactor of the universe4 ,sin would be the angel troubling that stagnant ,bethesda--mere goodness1 and educing hidden powers of blessing4 ,moreover1 we must not argue from the present to the original condition of man4 ,nor can any one reasonably rank among the causes by which he professes to account for sin1 that which ,god has seen fit to do in order to obviate its consequences4 ,to say1 #8where sin abounded1 grace did much more abound1' is not to explain the origin of evil4 ,once more1 if evil be a necessary factor in our development1 that world from which all evil will be banished cannot be an object of desire4 ,heaven seems to grow wan and insipid4 ,to exhort us to root out the evil of our nature is to enjoin a kind of suicide4 ,it is to bid us annihilate the animating1 active seed of moral progress4 ,so death is life1 and life death4 ,again1 if man's nature be progressive and immortal1 his immortality must be one of unending conflict4 ,modern ,pantheism escapes this conclusion by annihilating personality1 and by resolving the individual into the ,all4 ,a poor solution1 surely--dis-solution4 ,to ,behmen1 no consequence could have been more repugnant4 ,no man could hold more strongly than did he1 the doctrine of a future and eternal state1 determined by the deeds done in the body4 ,yet such a cessation of personality might be logically urged from the theory which seemed to him triumphantly to remove so much perplexity4#bde ,a tale of chivalry relates how fair ,astrid wandered in the moonlight1 seeking flowers for the wreath she was twining1 but always1 when the last had just been woven in1 the garland would drop asunder in her hands1 and she must begin again her sad endeavour1 ever renewed and ever vain4 ,human speculation resembles that ghostly maiden4 ,each fresh attempt has all but completed the circuit of our logic4 ,but one link remains1 and in the insertion of that the whole fabric falls to pieces4 ,it is a habit with fevered ,reason to dream that she has solved the great mystery of life4 ,and when ,reason does so dream1 her wild-eyed sister1 ,imagination1 is sober and self-distrustful in comparison4 ,neither the theist nor the pantheist can claim ,behmen as exclusively his own4 ,he would perhaps have reckoned their dispute among those which he could reconcile4 ,certain it is1 that he holds1 in combination1 the doctrine which teaches a ,god within the world1 and the doctrine which proclaims a ,god above it4 ,says the pantheist1 #8,do you believe in a ,god who is the heart and life of the universe1 the soul of that vast body1 the world8' ,behmen answers1 #8,yes2 but ,i do not believe in a ,god who is a mere vital force--a ,god of necessary process--a ,god lost in the matter ,he has evolved4' ,says the theist1 #8,do you believe in a ,god who has ,personality and ,character2 who creates of self-conscious free-will2 who rules1 as ,he pleases1 the work of his hands8' ,behmen answers1 #8,yes2 but ,i do not relegate my ,deity beyond the skies4 ,i believe that ,he is the life of all creatures1 all substance2 that ,he dwelleth in me2 that ,i am in ,his heaven1 if ,i love ,him1 wherever ,i go2 that the universe is born out of ,him and lives in ,him4' ,like ,erigena1 ,behmen supposed that the #8,nothing1' out of which ,god made all things1 was his own unrevealed abstract nature1 called1 more properly1 ,non-being4 ,and1 now1 to ,behmen's version of the story of our world4 ,he tells us how ,god created three circles1 or kingdoms of spirits1 corresponding to the three persons of the ,trinity4 ,to each a monarch and seven princes were assigned1 corresponding to the seven ,qualities or ,fountain-,spirits4 ,one of these angelic sovereigns1 ,lucifer1 fell1 through pride1 and all his kingdom with him4 ,straightway1 as the inevitable consequence of sin1 the operation of all the seven ,qualities throughout his dominion became perverted and corrupt4 ,the ,fiery principle1 instead of being the root of heavenly glory1 became a principle of wrath and torment4 ,the ,astringent quality1 instead of ministering due stability1 or coherence1 became hard and stubborn2 the ,sweet1 foul and putrescent2 the ,bitter1 fierce and raging4 ,so with all the rest4 ,now1 it so happened that the seventh ,quality of ,lucifer's realm coincided1 in space1 with this world of ours4 ,this earth1 therefore1--once a province of the heavenly world1--was broken up into a chaos of wrath and darkness1 roaring with the hubbub of embattled elements4 ,before man was created1 nature had fallen4 ,the creative word of ,god brought order into the ruins of this devastated kingdom4 ,out of the chaos ,he separated sun and planets1 earth and elements4#bdf ,in the ,black ,forest lies a lake1 bordered deep with lilies4 ,as the traveller gazes on that white waving margin of the dark waters1 he is told that those lilies1 on the last moonlighted midnight1 assumed their spirit-forms1--were white-robed maidens1 dancing on the mere2 till1 at a warning voice1 they resumed1 ere daybreak1 the shape of flowers4 ,similarly1 on ,behmen's strange theory1 all our natural has been previously spiritual beauty4 ,the material of this world was1 erewhile1 the fine substance of an angel realm4 ,all our fair scenes are as much below the higher forms of celestial fairness1 as are the material flowers of lower rank in loveliness than the phantom dancers of that haunted lake4 ,the #8,heavenly ,materiality1' or #8,glassy ,sea1' of the angelic kingdom1 was a marvellous mirror of perfect shapes and colours1 of sounds and virtues4 ,therein arose1 in endless variety1 the ideal ,forms of heaven--jubilant manifestations of the divine fulness1 gladdening the spirits of the praising angels with a blessedness ever new4 ,all the growth and productive effort of our earth is an endeavour to bring forth as then it brought forth4 ,every property of nature1 quickened from its fall by the divine command--#8,be fruitful and multiply1' strives to produce in time as it did in eternity4#bdg ,but for that fall1 this earth had never held perilous sands nor cruel rocks2 never put forth the poisonous herb1 nor bred the ravenous beast2 and never would earthquake1 pestilence1 or tempest1 the deadly outbreaks of water or of fire1 have accompanied the warfare of disordered elements4 ,the final fires will redeem nature1 purging away the dross1 and closing the long strife of time4 ,adam was created to be the restoring angel of this world4 ,his nature was twofold4 ,within1 he had an angelic soul and body1 derived from the powers of heaven4 ,without1 he had a life and body derived from the powers of earth4 ,the former was given him that he might be separate from1 and superior to the world4 ,he was endowed with the latter1 that he might be connected with1 and operative in the world4 ,his external nature sheltered his inner from all acquaintance with the properties of our corrupted earth4 ,his love and his obedience surrounded him with a perpetual paradise of his own4 ,he could not feel the fierceness of fire1 the rigour of cold2 he was inaccessible to want or pain4 ,he was designed to be the father of a like angelic-human race1 who should occupy and reclaim the earth for ,god1--keeping down the ever-emerging ,curse1 and educing and multiplying the ,blessing which ,god had implanted4 ,but the will of ,adam gradually declined from the inward paradisiacal life towards the life of this world4 ,he commenced his downward course by desiring to know the good and evil of the world about him4 ,then ,eve was fashioned out of him1 and the distinction of sex introduced4 ,this was a remedial interposition to check his descent4 ,it was deemed better that he should love the feminine part of his own nature rather than the external world4#bdh ,each step of decline was mercifully met by some new aid on the part of ,god1 but all in vain4 ,he ate of the earthly tree1 and the angelic life within him became extinct4 ,behmen contends stoutly that no arbitrary trial or penalty was imposed on ,adam4 ,no divine wrath visited his sin on his descendants4 ,his liability to suffering and death was the natural consequence 7according to the divine order7 of his breaking away from ,god1 and falling from the angel to the animal life4 ,it is characteristic of ,behmen's theology to resolve acts of judgment1 or of sovereign intervention1 as much as possible1 into the operation of law4 ,thus1 he will not believe that ,god inflicts suffering on lost souls or devils4 ,their own dark and furious passions are their chain and flame4 ,he shares this tendency in common with most of the ,protestant mystics4 ,and ,i am by no means prepared to say that our mystics are altogether wrong on this matter4 ,no sooner had man fallen1 than the mercy of ,god implanted in him the seed of redemption4 ,he lodged in the depths of our nature a hidden gift of the ,spirit1 the inner light1 the internal #8serpent-bruiser1' the light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world4 ,all our beginnings of desire towards ,god and heaven are the working of this indwelling seed of life4 ,thus1 salvation is wholly of grace4 ,at the same time1 it rests with us whether we will realize or smother the nascent blessing4 ,man is the arbiter of his own destiny1 and voluntarily develops1 from the depths of his nature1 his heaven or his hell4 ,lessons of self-abandonment1 similar to those of the ,theologia ,germanica1 are reiterated by ,jacob ,behmen4 ,we are never to forget the #8,nothingness' of man1 the #8,all' of ,god4 ,he pronounces means and ordinances good only as they lead us directly to ,god1--as they prepare us to receive the divine operation4 ,with ,behmen1 as with the mystics of the fourteenth century1 redemption is our deliverance from the restless isolation of ,self1 or ,ownhood1 and our return to union with ,god4 ,it is a new birth1 a divine life1 derived from ,christ1 the true vine4#bdi ,but to this idea the theosophists add another4 ,they have a physical as well as a spiritual regeneration1 and believe in the revival1 within the regenerate1 of a certain internal or angelic body4 ,the ,lutheran doctrine of consubstantiation gave much encouragement to such fancies4 ,according to ,weigel1 ,christ had a twofold body--one truly human2 another1 called the heavenly1 a procession from the divine nature4 ,furthermore1 theosophy extends the influence of redemption to external nature4 ,in the latter-day1 #8the time of the ,lilies1' all men will be the true servants of ,christ1 our race will have recovered its lost lordship over nature1 and the ,philosopher's ,stone will be discovered4 ,that is1 man will be able to extract from every substance its hidden perfectness and power4 ,the strongly subjective bent of ,behmen's mind has its good as well as its evil4 ,he never long loses sight of his great aim--the awakening and sustenance of the inward life4 ,that life was imperilled by formalism1 by fatalism1 by dogmatical disputes1 by the greedy superstition of the gold-seeker4 ,so ,behmen warns men incessantly1 that no assent to orthodox propositions can save them4#bej ,he argues against the ,hyper-,calvinist1 and against what he regarded as the ,antinomian consequence of the doctrine of #8imputed righteousness4'#bea ,he was a man of peace1--little disposed to add one more to so many controversies2 seldom entering the lists unless challenged4#beb ,he justly condemned as profitless the ,millenarian speculations in which some about him were entangled4#bec ,he had no sympathy with those who endeavoured to make ancient ,jewish prophecy the fortune-teller of the present day4 ,he declared that the true ,philosopher's ,stone1 to be coveted by all1 was #8the new life in ,christ ,jesus4'#bed ,only by victory over ,self could any win victory over nature4 ,to the selfish and the godless no secrets would be revealed4 ,such men were continually within reach of wonders they might not grasp4 ,so the sinful ,sir ,launcelot slept by the ruined chapel1 and had neither grace nor power to awake1 though before him stood the holy vessel of the ,sangreall on its table of silver4 ,the treatise on the ,three ,principles abounds in counsels and exhortation designed to promote practical holiness4 ,the ,bchlein vom heiligen ,gebet is a collection of prayers for the private use of #8awakened and desirous souls1' somewhat after the manner of those in ,doddridge's ,rise and ,progress of ,religion4 ,when ,behmen finds that ,scripture contradicts his scheme1 on some minor point1 he will frequently1 instead of resorting to a forced allegorical interpretation1 break away without disguise from the authority of its text4 ,thus1 he says more than once1 concerning passages in the ,mosaic account of the creation1 #8,it is evident that the dear man ,moses did not write this1 for it is contrary to1' c41 c4#bee ,such1 then1 is the track of ,behmen's journeying across the speculative wilderness1 following the fiery pillar of an imaginary illumination--a pillar1 be it observed1 much like that column of glory which1 as we stand upon the sea-shore1 descends to us from the setting sun1--a luminous line which moves as we move1 and which1 whatever point we occupy1 glows from the ripples at our feet up to the fiery horizon beneath which day is sinking4 ,behmen's work was done chiefly among the educated4 ,had his mission been to the lower orders1 we should probably have heard of him as the founder of a sect4 ,his object was1 however1 at once to awaken the life and expound the philosophy of religion1 within the ,lutheran ,church4 ,he called attention to aspects of ,christian truth which the systematic theology of that day had too much overlooked4 ,the extensive circulation of his books1 and the general welcome given to the main positions of his doctrine1 show that his teaching supplied a real want in those times4 ,there can be little doubt that one considerable class of minds1 repelled by the assumption or the harshness of the current orthodoxy1 was attracted once more to religion under the more genial form in which ,behmen presented it4 ,others were shaken from the sleep of formalism by his vehement expostulations4 ,when the ,creed had so largely superseded the ,word1--when ,protestants were more embittered against each other than brave against the common foe1 the broader1 deeper doctrine of ,behmen would offer to many a blessed refuge4 ,for gold and precious stones shine among his wood and stubble4 ,the darker aspect which some theologians had given to the ,divine ,sovereignty seemed to pass away1 as the trembler studied ,behmen's reassuring page4 ,apart from scientific technicalities1 and the nomenclature of his system1 ,behmen's style and spirit were mainly moulded upon ,luther's ,german ,bible4 ,any one who will take the trouble to look1 not into the ,aurora1 but into the ,book of the ,three ,principles1 will find1 along with much clouded verbosity and a certain crabbed suggestiveness1 a racy idiomatic cast of expression1 a hearty manliness of tone1 indicating very plainly that ,behmen had studied man1 and the book which manifests man4 ,though his voice is1 for us1 so faint and distant1 we feel how near he must have come to the hearts of his time4 ,through volumes of speculative vapour1 glance and glow the warm emotions of the man1 in his apostrophes1 appeals1 and practical digressions4 ,his philosophy is never that of the artificial abstraction-monger1 or the pedantic book-worm4 ,he writes of men and for them as though he loved them4 ,modern idealism expresses itself with a grace to which the half-educated craftsman was a total stranger4 ,but its rhetorical adornment is a painted flame compared with ,behmen's fire4 ,unlike the earlier mystics1 his theosophy embraces the whole of man4 ,unlike so much recent speculation1 it is wrought out more by the aspiration of the soul than the ambition of the intellect4 ,amidst the fantastic disorder of his notions1 and the strange inequalities of his insight--now so clear and piercing1 now so puerile or perverse1--a single purpose stands unquestionable1--he desired to justify the ways of ,god to men4 ,his life was a waking dream2 but never did mystical somnambulist more sincerely intend service to man and praise to ,god4 ,note to page #ajg4 ,behmen derives ,qualitt from quallen1 or quellen 7our well71 and understands by it the characteristic virtue or operation of anything4 ,thus the seven ,qualities are the seven ,fountain-,spirits--the prolific sources of their several species of influence4 ,aurora1 i4 #c4 ,the notion of pain 7qual7 in giving birth enters also into his conception of ,quality4 ,the description of these seven ,qualities occupies 7amidst many digressions7 a considerable portion of the ,aurora1 and is repeated1 with additions and varieties of expression1 throughout all his larger works4 ,the summary here given is derived principally from the account in the ,aurora1 and the ,tabula ,principiorum1 ,wercke1 vol4 iv4 p4 #bfh4 ,similar classifications and definitions are contained in the three first chapters of the ,drei ,principien1 and with more clearness and precision in the ,mysterium ,magnum1 cap4 vi4 ,compare also especially ,aurora1 cap4 iv4 #h1 #i2 xiv4 #hi1 c42 and xiii4 #gj-gh4 ,these seven ,fountain-,spirits1 or ,mothers of ,nature1 are a contrivance really novel4 ,paracelsus bequeathed to ,behmen the term ,mysterium ,magnum1 applying it to the ,chaos whence he supposed light and darkness1 heaven and hell1 to derive their origin4 ,but ,behmen's furniture or fitting-up of the idea is wholly original4 ,of the early ,gnostics he could know nothing1 and his ,heptarchy of ,nature is totally distinct from theirs4 ,basilides has seven intellectual and moral impersonations1--the first rank of successive emanations of seven1 comprised in his mystical ,abraxas4 ,saturninus has seven star-spirits--the lowest emanations in his scheme1 and bordering on matter4 ,ancient ,gnosticism devised these agencies to bridge the space between the supreme ,spirit and ,hyle4 ,but ,behmen recognises no such gulph1 and requires no such media4 ,with him1 the thought becomes at once the act of ,god4 ,matter is not a foreign inert substance1 on which ,god works1 like a sculptor4 ,the material universe exhibits1 incorporate1 those very attributes which constitute the divine glory4 ,nature is not merely of1 but out of1 ,god4 ,did there lie no divineness in it1 the ,divine ,being would 7on ,behmen's theory7 be cut off from contact with it4 ,with the ,sephiroth of the ,cabbala ,behmen may possibly have had acquaintance4 ,but1 in the ,cabbala1 each ,sephira is dependent on that immediately above it1 as in the hierarchies of ,proclus and ,dionysius ,areopagita4 ,behmen's seven equal ,qualities1 reciprocally producing and produced1 are not links in a descending chain1--they are expressions for the collective possibilities of being4 ,compare with them the seven lower ,sephiroth of the ,cabbala1 called ,might1 ,beauty1 ,triumph1 ,glory1 ,foundation1 and ,kingdom4 ,here we have mere arbitrary personifications of the magnificence displayed in creation4 ,behmen's qualities are arbitrary1 it is true4 ,they might have been different in name1 in nature1 in number1 and the fundamental principles of the system still retained4 ,but who could have resisted the obvious advantages of the sacred planetary number1 seven8 ,behmen1 however1 goes much deeper than the ,cabbalists4 ,he does not idly hypostatise visible attributes4 ,his attractive and diffusive ,qualities are the results of generalisation4 ,his ,fountain-,spirits are the seminal principles of all being4 ,they are1 he believes1 the vital laws of universal nature4 ,they are ,energies operative1 through innumerable transformations1 in every range of existence1--in heaven1 on earth1 and under the earth4 ,note to page #ajh4 ,in the following passage1 ,behmen endeavours to explain himself1 and repels the charge of material pantheism4 #8,i know the sophist will accuse me for saying that the power of ,god is in the fruits of the earth1 and identifies itself with the generative processes of nature4 ,but1 harkye1 friend1 open thine eyes a moment4 ,i ask thee--,how hath ,paradise existence in this world84444 ,is it in this world or without it8 ,in the power of ,god1 or in the elements8 ,is the power of ,god revealed or hidden84444 ,tell me1 doth not ,god live in time also8 ,is ,he not all in all8 ,is it not written1 8,am not ,i ,he that filleth all things10 and 8,thine is the kingdom1 the power1 and the glory1 for ever80 #8,here ,i bethink myself4 ,i would stand clear of all blame from your misconception4 ,i say not that ,nature is ,god1 far less that the fruits of the earth are ,he4 ,i say ,god gives to all life its power--be that power used for good or evil1--gives power to every creature according to its desire4 ,he ,himself is all1 yet is not in all natures to be called ,god1 but only where there is light1 in respect of that 7nach dem ,liechte7 wherein ,he ,himself dwells1 and shines with power throughall his nature4 ,he communicates his power to all his nature and works 7allen seinen ,wesen und ,wercken71 and everything appropriates that power of his according to its property4 ,one appropriates darkness1 another light3 the appetite of each demands what is proper to it1 and the whole substance is still all of ,god1 whether good or evil4 ,for from ,him1 and through ,him1 are all things2 and what is not of his love is of his wrath4 #8,paradise is still in the world1 but man is not in ,paradise1 unless he be born again of ,god2 in that case he stands therein in his new birth1 and not with the ,adam of the four elements1' c41 c4--,de ,signatura ,rerum1 cap4 viii4 #de-dg4 ,note to page #aag4 ,in his practical writings1 and especially in his letters1 ,behmen handles well the great theme of the life of ,christ in us4 ,the prayer of salutation in most of his letters is--#8,the open fountain in the heart of ,christ ,jesus refresh and illumine us ever4' ,hear him1 on this matter1 in a letter to ,n4 ,n41 dated #afbc3-- #8,that man is no ,christian who doth merely comfort himself with the suffering1 death1 and satisfaction of ,christ1 and doth impute it to himself as a gift of favour1 remaining still himself a wild beast1 and unregenerate4444 ,i say1 therefore1 that no show of grace imputed from without can make a true ,christian4 ,sin is not forgiven him by the speaking of a word once for all from without1 as a lord of this world may give a murderer his life by an outward act of favour4 ,no1 this availeth nothing with ,god4 #8,there is no grace whereby we can come to adoption1 save simply in the blood and death of ,christ4 ,for ,him alone hath ,god appointed to be a throne of grace in ,his own love1 which ,he hath set in ,him1 in the sweet name ,jesus 7from ,jehovah74 ,he is the only sacrifice ,god accepteth to reconcile ,his anger4 #8,but if this said sacrifice is to avail for me1 it must be wrought in me4 ,the ,father must communicate or beget ,his ,son in my desire-of-faith 7,glaubensbegierde71 so that my faith's hunger may apprehend ,him in ,his word of promise4 ,then ,i put ,him on1 in ,his entire process of justification1 in my inward ground2 and straightway there begins in me the killing of the wrath of the devil1 death1 and hell1 from the inward power of ,christ's death4 #8,for ,i can do nothing2 ,i am dead to myself2 but ,christ worketh in me when ,he ariseth within4 ,so am ,i inwardly dead1 as to my true man2 and ,he is my life2 the life ,i live1 ,i live in ,him1 and not in mine-hood 7,meinheit71 for grace slays my will and establisheth itself lord in place of my self-hood 7,ichheit71 so that ,i am an instrument of ,god wherewith ,he doth what ,he will4 #8,henceforth ,i live in two kingdoms2--with my outward mortal man1 in the vanity of time1 wherein the yoke of sin yet liveth1 which ,christ taketh on ,himself in the inward kingdom of the divine world1 and helpeth my soul to bear it4444 ,the ,holy ,scripture everywhere testifieth that we are justified from sin1 not by meritorious works of ours1 but through the blood and death of ,christ4 ,many teach this1 but few of them rightly understand it4' ,the other kingdom which1 in his haste1 ,behmen forgot to specify1 is the inward world of spiritual and eternal life1 which he calls ,paradise4--,theosophische ,sendbriefe1 xlvi4 #g1 c4 ,he inveighs frequently against an antinomian ,calvinism4 ,but if any one will compare this letter with ,calvin's ,institutes ,,iii4 i4 and ,,iii4 ii4 #bd1 he will find that1 on the doctrine of union with ,christ1 ,calvin and ,behmen1 in spite of all their differences1 hold language precisely similar4 ,note to page #aag4 ,behmen was well entitled to teach that lesson of tolerance which his age had so forgotten4 ,in one of his letters he says1 #8,i judge no man2 that anathematizing one of another is an empty prating4 ,the ,spirit of ,god ,himself judgeth all things4 ,if ,he be in us1 why need we trouble ourselves about such idle chatter8 ,on the contrary1 ,i rejoice much rather in the gifts of my brethren1 and if any of them have received another gift to utter than have ,i1 why should ,i therefore condemn them8 ,doth one herb1 or flower1 or tree1 say to another1 ,thou art sour and dark2 ,i cannot stand in thy neighbourhood8 ,have they not all one common ,mother1 whence they grow8 ,even so do all souls1 all men1 proceed from ,one4 ,why boast we of ourselves as the children of ,god1 if we are no wiser than the flowers and herbs of the field1' c4--,theos4 ,sendbr4 #ab1 #ce1 #cf4 ,again1 in the same letter 7 #fa71 #8,doth not a bee gather honey out of many flowers2 and though some flowers be far better than others1 what cares the bee for that8 ,she takes what serves her purpose4 ,should she leave her sting in the flower1 if its juices are not to her taste1 as man doth in his disdainfulness8 ,men strive about the husk1 but the noble life-juice they forsake4' ,exhortations to try the spirits1 and warnings like those adverted to1 not lightly to take whatever fancies may enter the brain1 for special revelation1 are given in ,theos4 ,send4 xi4 #fd4 ,the test he gives for decision between a true and a false claim to revelation1 is the sincerity of desire for the divine--not self-glory2 a genuine charity towards man2 a true hunger1 #8not after bread1 but ,god4'-,compare ,aurora1 cap4 xix4 #gg4 ,note to page #aah4 ,carriere1 in an excellent summary of ,behmen's doctrine1 is inclined to idealize his expressions on this point4 ,he would regard ,behmen's language concerning the fall and restitution of nature as symbolical1 and understand him only in a subjective sense4 ,but such1 ,i feel persuaded1 was not ,behmen's meaning4 ,the idea that man1 himself disordered1 sees nature and the world as out of joint1--that the restoration of light within him will glorify the universe without1 is comparatively modern4 ,the original design of man1 in ,behmen's system1 requires a restitution in which man shall be once more the angelic lord of life1--the summoner and monarch of all its potencies4 ,carriere has pointed out1 with just discrimination1 the distinction between ,behmen's position and that of ,german pantheism in our times4 ,but on some points he seems to me to view him too much with the eyes of the nineteenth century1 and his judgment is1 on the whole1 too favourable4 ,see his ,phil4 ,weltanschauung der ,reformationzeit1 chap4 xi4 ,the ,de ,signatura ,rerum abounds in examples of that curious admixture of chemical or astrological processes and phenomena with the facts of the gospel narrative1 to which allusion has been made4 ,the following specimen may suffice3-- #8,adam had brought his will into the poison of the external ,mercury4 ,so1 then1 must ,christ1 as ,love1 yield up his will also in the venomous ,mercury4 ,adam ate of the evil tree2 ,christ must eat of the wrath of ,god2 and as it came to pass inwardly in the spirit1 so must it also outwardly in the flesh4 ,and even thus is it in the philosophic work4 ,mercury1 in the philosophic work1 signifieth the ,pharisees1 who cannot endure the dear child4 ,when he sees it1 it gives him trembling and anguish4 ,thus trembles ,venus also1 before the poison of the wrathful ,mercury3 they are1 one with the other1 as though a sweat went from them1 as the ,artista will see4 ,mars saith1 #8,i am the fire-heart in the body3 ,saturn is my might1 and ,mercury is my life3 ,i will not endure ,love4 ,i will swallow it up in my wrath4' ,he signifies the ,devil1 in the wrath of ,god2 and because he cannot accomplish his purpose1 he awakens ,saturn1 as the ,impression1 who signifies the secular government1 and therewith seeks to seize ,venus1 but cannot succeed2 for she is to him a deadly poison4 ,mercury can still less bear the prospect of losing his dominion1--as the high priests thought ,christ would take away their dominion1 because ,he said ,he was the ,son of ,god4 ,so ,mercury is greatly troubled about the child of ,venus1' c41 c4--,de ,signatura ,rerum1 cap4 xi4 #ah-bb4 ,note to page #aah4 ,a word or two should find place here concerning the fate of ,behmen's doctrine4 ,his friends1 ,balthasar ,walther and ,abraham von ,franckenberg1 were indefatigably faithful to his memory4 ,the son of the very ,richter who had so persecuted him1 became their fellow-labourer in the dissemination of his writings4 ,throughout the latter half of the seventeenth century1 ,germans1 ,swiss1 ,hollanders1 ,englishmen1 were busy with translations1 commentaries1 or original works1 in exposition and development of his philosophy4 ,gichtel published the first complete edition of his writings in #afhb1 and afterwards went off on his own account into one of the craziest phases of mysticism4 ,orthodox ,lutheranism long continued to assail the doctrine1 as it had assailed the man4 ,but the genial piety of ,spener1 and the large charity of ,arnold--that generous advocate of ecclesiastical outcasts--did justice to the devout earnestness of the theosophist4 ,in ,france1 ,st4 ,martin became at once a translator and a disciple4 ,his best representative in ,england is ,william ,law4 ,that nonjuring clergyman was elevated and liberalised by his intercourse with the mind of the ,german mystic1 and well did he repay the debt4 ,law may be said to have introduced ,behmen to the ,english public1 both by his services as a translator1 and by original writings in advocacy of his leading principles4 ,as might be expected1 the educated and more practical ,englishman frequently expresses the thoughts of the ,teuton with much more force and clearness than their originator could command4 ,several other ,englishmen1 then and subsequently1 speculated in the same track4 ,but they met with small encouragement1 and their names are all but forgotten4 ,here and there some of their books are to be found among literary curiosities1 whose rarity is their only value4 ,if any would make acquaintance with ,behmen's theology1 unvexed by the difficulties of his language or the complexity in which he involves his system1 let them read ,law4 ,the practical aspect of ,behmen's doctrines concerning the fall and redemption are well exhibited in his lucid and searching treatise entitled ,the ,spirit of ,prayer2 or1 ,the ,soul rising out of the ,vanity of ,time into the ,riches of ,eternity4 ,in ,germany ,behmen became the great mystagogue of the ,romantic school4 ,novalis and ,tieck are ardent in their admiration2 but they are cold to ,frederick ,schlegel4 ,this unconscious caricature of ,romanticism 7always in some frantic extreme or other7 places ,behmen above ,luther and beside ,dante4 ,a plain translation of the ,bible1 like that of ,luther1 he could scarcely account a benefit4 ,but a symbolical interpretation1 like that of ,behmen1 was a ,promethean gift4 ,christian art was defective1 he thought1 because it wanted a mythology4 ,in ,behmen's theosophy he saw that want supplied4 ,alas1 that ,thorwaldsen did not execute a statue of the ,astringent ,quality--that ,cornelius did not paint the ,fiery--that ,tieck has never sung the legend of the ,mysterium ,magnum--and that a ,gallery of the ,seven ,mothers should be still the desideratum of ,europe6 ,hegel condescends to throw to ,behmen some words of patronising praise1 as a distant harbinger of his own philosophical ,messiahship4 ,carriere declares that ,schelling borrowed many choice morsels from his terminology without acknowledgment4 ,franz ,baader published a course of lectures on ,behmen--revived and adapted him to modern thought1 and developed a theosophy1 among the most conspicuous of recent times1 altogether upon ,behmen's model4 ,baader assures us that had ,schelling thought less of ,spinosa and more deeply studied ,behmen1 his philosophy would have been far more rich in valuable result than we now find it4 ,carriere1 pp4 #gba-gbe4--;,hegel's ,encyclopdie1 ,vorr4 z4 zweiten ,aufl4 p4 #bb4 ,hoffman's ,franz ,baader im ,verhltnisse zu ,spinosa1 c4 p4 #bc4 ,the judgment of ,henry ,more concerning ,behmen is discriminating and impartial4 #8,but as for ,jacob ,behmen ,i do not see but that he holds firm the fundamentals of the ,christian religion1 and that his mind was devoutly united to the ,head of the ,church1 the crucified ,jesus1 to whom he breathed out this short ejaculation with much fervency of spirit upon his death-bed1--,thou crucified ,lord ,jesus1 have mercy on me1 and take me into thy kingdom4444 #8,but the case seems to me to stand thus3--,there being two main ways whereby our mind is won off to assent to things3 viz41 the guidance of reason1 or the strength and vigour of fancy2 and according to the complexion or constitution of the body1 we being led by this faculty rather than by that1 suppose1 by the strength or fulness of fancy rather than the closeness of reason 7neither of which faculties are so sure guides that we never miscarry under their conduct2 insomuch that all men1 even the very best of them that light upon truth1 are to be deemed rather fortunate than wise71 ,jacob ,behmen1 ,i conceive1 is to be reckoned in the number of those whose imaginative faculty has the pre-eminence above the rational2 and though he was an holy and good man1 his natural complexion1 notwithstanding1 was not destroyed1 but retained its property still2 and therefore his imagination being very busy about divine things1 he could not without a miracle fail of becoming an enthusiast1 and of receiving divine truths upon the account of the strength and vigour of his fancy3 which being so well qualified with holiness and sanctity1 proved not unsuccessful in sundry apprehensions1 but in others it fared with him after the manner of men1 the sagacity of his imagination failing him1 as well as the anxiety of reason does others of like integrity with himself4 #8,which things ,i think very worthy of noting1 that no man's writings may be a snare to any one's mind2 that none may be puzzled in making that true which of itself is certainly false2 nor yet contemn the hearty and powerful exhortations of a zealous soul to the indispensable duties of a ,christian1 by any supposed deviations from the truth in speculations that are not so material nor indispensable4 ,nay1 though something should fall from him in an enthusiastic hurricane that seems neither suitable to what he writes elsewhere1 nor to some grand theory that all men in their wits hitherto have allowed for truth1 yet it were to be imputed rather to that pardonable disease that his natural complexion is obnoxious to1 than to any diabolical design in the writer2 which rash and unchristian reproach is as far from the truth1 if not further1 as ,i conceive1 than the credulity of those that think him in everything infallibly inspired4--,mastix1 his ,letter to a private ,friend1 appended to the ,enthusiasmus ,triumphatus1 c41 p4 #bid 7#afef74 ,it will be sufficient to enumerate the mere names of several minor mystics1 whose fancies are of little moment in the history of mystical doctrine4 ,in the sixteenth century appeared ,david ,joris1 a ,dutchman1 who had almost fatal ecstasies and visions1 and wrote and exhorted men1 in mystical language1 to purity and self-abandonment4 ,also ,postel1 a ,frenchman1 more mad than the former1 who believed in a female devotee1 named ,johanna1 as the second ,eve1 through whom humanity was to be regenerated4 ,guthmann1 ,lautensack1 and ,conrad ,sperber1 were theosophists who mingled1 in hopeless confusion1 religious doctrine and alchemic process1 physics and scripture1 tradition1 vision1 fancy1 fact4 ,during the first half of the seventeenth century1 ,brunswick was agitated by one ,engelbrecht1 a sickly hypochondriacal weaver1 who imagined himself translated to heaven and hell1 and commissioned to expound and preach incessantly4 ,during the latter part of the same century1 the madman ,kuhlmann roved and raved about ,europe1 summoning sovereigns to his bar3 ,conrad ,dippel improvised a medley of ,paracelsus1 ,schwenkfeld1 and ,behmen2 and ,john ,george ,gichtel1 a fanatical ,quietist1 bathed his soul in imaginary flames1 believed himself destined to illumine all mankind1 founded the sect of the ,angel-,brethren1 and seems to have ended in sheer madness4 ,an account of these and other mystics1 even less notable1 will be found in ,arnold's ,kirchen-und,ketzergeschichte1 ,th4 iii4 ,footnote #bda3 ,the initiate mind saith this and saith that1 as it circles around the unspeakable ,depth4 ,thou art the bringer-forth1 thou too the offspring2 thou the illuminer1 thou the illuminate2 thou art the manifest1 thou art the hidden one1--hid by thy glories4 ,one1 and yet all things1 one in thyself alone1 yet throughout all things6 ,footnote #bdb3 ,von den drei ,principien des ,gttlichen ,wesens1 cap4 vii4 #bb1 c41 cap4 ix4 #cj1 et passim4 ,aurora1 cap4 ii4 #da2 cap4 xxiii4 #fa-hb4 ,compare ,aurora1 cap4 xx4 #di1 c4 ,drei ,princip4 cap4 vii4 #be4 ,aurora1 cap4 x4 #eh4 ,also cap4 iii4 throughout4 ,there he describes the way in which every natural object--wood1 stone1 or plant1 contains three principles1--the image1 or impress of the divine ,trinity2 first1 the ,power 7,krafft7 whereby it possesses a body proper to itself2 secondly1 the sap 7,safft7 or heart2 thirdly1 the peculiar virtue1 smell1 or taste proceeding from it2 this is its spirit 7 #dg74 ,so1 in the soul of man1 do ,power1 and ,light1 and a ,spirit of ,understanding--the offspring of both--correspond to the three persons of the ,trinity 7 #db74 ,footnote #bdc3 ,see ,note on p4 #abj4 ,footnote #bdd3 ,see ,note on p4 #aba4 ,footnote #bde3 ,here ,i am much indebted to the masterly discussion of the theory in question1 contained in ,mller's ,lehre von der ,snde1 ,buch ii4 cap4 #d4 ,footnote #bdf3 ,aurora1 cap4 ix4 #db2 cap4 xviii4 #aj-ae2 cap4 xxiii4 #ib1 c4 ,the remarks in the text1 concerning ,behmen's position as between theism and pantheism1 are only true if the word theism be there understood as equivalent to deism4 ,for theism1 understanding by it belief in a personal deity1 does not remove ,god from the universe4 ,theism ought to represent the true mean between the deism which relegates a divine ,mechanician far from the work of his hands1 and the pantheism which submerges him beneath it4 ,footnote #bdg3 ,aurora1 cap4 iv4 #aj1 #aa4 ,comp4 #ae1 and also cap4 xxi4 #cg4 ,footnote #bdh3 ,aurora1 cap4 v4 #d2 cap4 xvii4 #af4 ,footnote #bdi3 ,aurora41 #bg2 cap4 xiv4 #ajd2 cap4 x4 #db1 #fe2 xix4 #ej4 ,footnote #bej3 ,for example1 in the ,drei ,principien1 cap4 xxvi4 #ac-cd1 and in the ,aurora1 cap4 xii4 #fe4 ,footnote #bea3 ,see ,note on p4 #aba4 ,footnote #beb3 ,theos4 ,sendbr4 #df1 #ea-ed4 ,see also ,note on page #abb4 ,footnote #bec3 ,behmen supposed the latter day not far distant 7,aurora1 iv4 #b71 but his remarks on the vanity of eschatological speculations generally might be read with advantage by some of our modern interpreters of prophecy4 ,see the letters to ,paul ,kaym1 ,theos4 ,send4 viii4 and xi4 ,footnote #bed3 ,theos4 ,sendbr4 x4 #bj4 ,see also ,note on page #abc4 ,footnote #bee3 ,aurora1 cap4 xx4 #a2 xxii4 #bf4 ,see also second ,note on page #abc4 ,,chapter ,,ix4 ,o sola1 mica1 rama lamahi1 ,volase1 cala1 maja1 mira1 salame1 ,viemisa molasola1 ,rama1 ,afasala4 ,mirahel1 ,zorabeli1 ,assaja6 ,citation for all ,spirits1 from the ,,black ,,raven4 ,a strict regard for historical accuracy compels me to state that the following conversation took place in the drawing-room1 and not in the library4 ,by such an arrangement1 that bright feminine presence was secured which1 according to ,gower1 deprived mysticism itself of half its obscurity4 #8,did ,jacob ,behmen frighten you away8' asked ,willoughby of ,mrs4 ,atherton1 somewhat remorsefully4 #8,i think ,atherton and ,gower will bear me out in saying that it was not easy to render the worthy shoemaker entertaining4' ,,mrs4 ,,atherton4 ,mr4 ,gower was telling us just before you came in1 that he found him1 from your account1 a much more imaginative personage than he had supposed--quite a poetical philosopher4 ,,gower4 ,behmen holds a poet's doctrine1 surely1 when he represents all nature as struggling towards an ideal1--striving to bring forth now1 as it once did--ere ,lucifer had fallen1--longing and labouring1 in fellowship with our human aspiration4 ,,willoughby4 ,such a notion must tend to remove from the mind that painful sense we sometimes have of the indifference of nature to our thoughts and doings4 ,,atherton4 ,to remove that feeling from the imagination1 at least4 ,,willoughby4 ,and that is enough2 for only in imagination can it have existence4 ,man is so much greater than nature4 ,,gower4 ,it does1 indeed1 make all the difference to poets and artists1 whether they read sympathy or apathy in the face of creation4 ,think of the various forms and agencies of nature--of the swart ,cyclopean forces under the earth--of the deftly-woven threadwork of the tissues--of vapour-pageantries1 and cloud-cupolas1 and fairy curls of smoke--of the changeful polity of the seasons1 advancing and disgracing frost or sunshine--of the waves lashing at the land1 and the land growing into the waves1--of all these ministries as working1 like thoughtful man1 toward a divine standard2 as rejoicing1 in their measure1 through every descending range of being1 under the restoring hand of the ,divine ,artificer1 and panting to recover the order and the beauty of the ,paradise which shines above1--of the ,eden which once blossomed here below4 ,think of the earth1 resigning herself each winter to her space of sleep1 saying inwardly1 #8,i have wrought another year to bring the offspring of my breast nearer to the heavenly pattern hidden in my heart4 ,i rest1 another circuit nearer to the final consummation4' ,then there is that upper ,paradise--substantial1 yet ethereal1--as full of beauty1 for finer senses1 as earth's fairest spots for more gross1 without aught that is hurtful or discordant4 ,fill up ,behmen's outline4 ,picture the heavenly hills and valleys1 whispering one to another in odorous airs1--a converse only broken sweetly1 from time to time1 by the floating tones of some distant angel-psalm1 as the quiet of a lake by a gliding swan4 ,there run rivers of life--the jubilant souls of the meditative glens through which they wend4 ,there are what seem birds1 gorgeous as sunset clouds1 and less earthly1--animal forms1 graceful as the antelope1 leaping among crags more lustrous than diamond1--creatures mightier than leviathan2 and mild-eyed as the dove couching among immortal flowers1 or bathing in the crystal sea4 ,the very dust is dazzling and priceless1 intersown with the sapphire1 the sardonyx1 the emerald of heaven2 and all the ground and pavement of that world branching with veins as of gold and silver1 an arborescent glory1 instinct with mysterious life4 ,,willoughby4 ,thank you1 ,gower4 ,,gower4 ,thank you1 ,willoughby4 ,you are my informant4 ,i never read a line of ,behmen on my own account1 and1 what is more1 never will4 ,,kate4 ,helen and ,i want you very much to tell us something about the ,rosicrucians4 ,,atherton4 ,you have read ,zanoni---- ,,kate4 ,and we are all the more curious in consequence4 ,how much of such a story may ,i think true8 ,,atherton4 ,as an ideal portraiture of that ambition which seeks lordship within the marches of the unseen world1 ,i think ,zanoni perfect4 ,,mrs4 ,,atherton4 ,the ,rosicrucians pretended1 did they not1 that they could prolong life indefinitely1--laid claim to all sorts of wonderful power and knowledge8 ,have you not once or twice met with a person1 or heard of one1 who would certainly have been suspected of being a ,rosicrucian by superstitious people8 ,i mean1 without any pretence on his part1 merely from a singular appearance1 or a mysterious manner1 or uncommon cleverness4 ,,atherton4 ,oh1 yes2 such men would keep up the ,rosicrucian tradition bravely among the common folk4 ,,willoughby4 ,and among great folk1 too1 if they took the pains4 ,,mrs4 ,,atherton4 ,i was thinking of ,colonel ,napier's description of ,george ,borrow1 which we were reading the other day4 ,he pictures him youthful in figure1 yet with snow-white hair2 inscrutable1 therefore1 as to age1 as the ,wandering ,jew2 he has deep-black mesmeric eyes1 terrible to dogs and ,portuguese2 he is silent about himself to the most tantalizing height of mystery1 no man knowing his whence or whither2 he is master of information astoundingly various1 speaks with fluency ,english1 ,french1 ,german1 ,spanish1 ,greek1 ,hindee1 ,moultanee1 the gipsy tongue1 and more beside1 for aught ,i know4 ,so equipped1 within and without1 he might have set up for a ,zanoni almost anywhere1 and succeeded to admiration4 ,,atherton4 ,how small the charlatans look beside such a specimen of true manhood4 ,but where shall we find the distance wider between the ideal and the actual than in this very province of supernatural pretension8 ,what a gulf between the high personage our romance imagines and that roving1 dare-devil buccaneer of science1 or that shuffling quacksalver which our matter-of-fact research discovers4 ,don't you agree with me1 ,willoughby8 ,,willoughby4 ,altogether4 ,only compare the two sets of figures--what we fancy1 and what we find4 ,on the one side you picture to yourself a man ,platonically elevated above the grossness and entanglement of human passions1 disdaining earth1 dauntlessly out-staring the baleful eyes of that nameless horror--the ,dweller on the ,threshold2 commanding the prescience and the power of mightiest spirits2 and visited1 like ,shelley's ,witch of ,atlas1 as he reads the scrolls of some ,saturnian ,archimage1 by universal ,pan1 who comes with homage #8out of his everlasting lair1'-- #8,where the quick heart of the great world doth pant4' ,this is the theurgist1 as imagination paints him4 ,now turn1 on the other side1 to the actual gallery of theosophic and theurgic worthies1 as history reveals them4 ,baptista ,porta dwells in a house which is the triumph of legerdemain1--the palace of ,puck1 the most intricate nest of traps1 surprises1 optical delusions1 grotesque transformations1--throwing host and guests into paroxysms of laughter or of fear4 ,you see ,cornelius ,agrippa1 in threadbare bravery1 with his heart upon his sleeve1 and every expression by turns upon his brow1 save that of the ,platonic serenity4 ,paracelsus swears worse than my uncle ,toby's comrades in ,flanders1 and raves about his ,homunculus4 ,but from such men we cannot withhold sympathy1 respect1 even a certain admiration4 ,in that eighteenth century1 behold that grand magnet for all the loose and dupable social particles in every class and country--the soi-disant ,count ,cagliostro1 with his ,seraphina1 his ,egyptian ,lodge1 his elixirs and red powder1 his magical caraffes1 his phosphorous glories1 his ,pentagon and ,columbs1 his ,seven ,planetary ,spirits1 his ,helios1 ,mene1 ,tetragrammaton4 ,in that age of professed ,illuminism1 in the times of ,voltaire and ,diderot1 when universal ,aufklrung was to banish every medival phantasm1 you see ,father ,gassner1 with his miraculous cures1 followed by crowds through ,swabia and ,bavaria2--,mesmer attracting ,paris and ,vienna to his darkened rooms and hidden music1 to be awe-stricken by the cataleptic horrors there achieved2--the ,count ,st4 ,germain declaring himself three hundred years old1 and professing the occult science of diamond-manufacturing ,brahmins2--the coffee-house keeper1 ,schrpfer1 deluding ,leipsic and ,frankfort with his pretended theurgic art2--and ,st4 ,maurice1 swindling the sceptical wits and rous who flutter in the drawing-rooms of ,mesdames ,du ,maine and ,de ,tencin1 pretending to open converse for them with sylphs and ,salamanders1 invoking the genius ,alal1 and finally subsiding into the ,bastille4 ,such are some among the actual caricatures of the artistic conception embodied in the character of ,zanoni4 ,,atherton4 ,truly a bad symptom of the general disease1 when men grow unable to see that the highest dignity lies close at hand4 ,,willoughby4 ,as though man could never exhibit magnanimity unless in some thrilling dramatic #8situation4' ,,gower4 ,or could not believe in the unseen world save by help of necromancers1 miracle-mongers1 and clairvoyantes4 ,,atherton4 ,the ancient saying abides true1--,he that ruleth his own spirit is greater than he that taketh a city1--greater than even he who should carry the cloud-capital of the whole world of spirits1 pull down its meteor-flag1 and make all the weird garrison his thralls4 ,i think1 if ,i were a preacher1 ,i should some day take up the phase of man's mental history we have now reviewed as a practical exposition of ,christ's words--#8,nevertheless1 in this rejoice not that the spirits are subject unto you1 but rather that your names are written in heaven4' ,,kate4 ,i should like to know1 after all1 precisely who and what these ,rosicrucians were4 ,when did they make their first appearance8 ,,willoughby4 ,they were originally neither more nor less than the #8,mrs4 ,harris' of a ,lutheran pastor4 ,,mrs4 ,,atherton4 ,mr4 ,willoughby6 ,,atherton4 ,fact1 ,lily4 ,willoughby never said anything truer4 ,,willoughby4 ,allow me to tell you the story4--,about the year #afaj1 there appeared anonymously a little book1 which excited great sensation throughout ,germany4 ,it was entitled1 ,the ,discovery of the ,brotherhood of the ,honourable ,order of the ,rosy ,cross1 and dedicated to all the scholars and magnates of ,europe4#bef ,it commenced with an imaginary dialogue between the ,seven ,sages of ,greece1 and other worthies of antiquity1 on the best method of accomplishing a general reform in those evil times4 ,the suggestion of ,seneca is adopted1 as most feasible1 namely1 a secret confederacy of wise philanthropists1 who shall labour everywhere in unison for this desirable end4 ,the book then announces the actual existence of such an association4 ,one ,christian ,rosenkreuz1 whose travels in the ,east had enriched him with the highest treasures of occult lore1 is said to have communicated his wisdom1 under a vow of secresy1 to eight disciples1 for whom he erected a mysterious dwelling-place called ,the ,temple of the ,holy ,ghost4 ,it is stated further1 that this long-hidden edifice had been at last discovered1 and within it the body of ,rosenkreuz1 untouched by corruption1 though1 since his death1 one hundred and twenty years had passed away4 ,the surviving disciples of the institute call on the learned and devout1 who desire to co-operate in their projects of reform1 to advertise their names4 ,they themselves indicate neither name nor place of rendezvous4 ,they describe themselves as true ,protestants4 ,they expressly assert that they contemplate no political movement in hostility to the reigning powers4 ,their sole aim is the diminution of the fearful sum of human suffering1 the spread of education1 the advancement of learning1 science1 universal enlightenment1 and love4 ,traditions and manuscripts in their possession have given them the power of gold-making1 with other potent secrets2 but by their wealth they set little store4 ,they have arcana1 in comparison with which the secret of the alchemist is a trifle4 ,but all is subordinate1 with them1 to their one high purpose of benefiting their fellows both in body and soul4 ,,mrs4 ,,atherton4 ,no wonder the book made some noise4 ,,willoughby4 ,i could give you conclusive reasons1 if it would not tire you to hear them1 for the belief that this far-famed book was written by a young ,lutheran divine named ,valentine ,andre4 ,he was one of the very few who understood the age1 and had the heart to try and mend it4 ,you see him1 when his college days are over1 starting on his travels--his old mother giving him her tearful #8,god bless you1' as she puts into his hand all the treasure of her poverty1--a rusty old coin1 and twelve kreuzer4 ,from the cottage-door her gaze follows with many a prayer the good son1 whose beloved form lessens along the country road4 ,years after1 he comes back1 bringing with him the same old coin1 and with it several hundred gulden4 ,he has seen the world1 toiling1 with quick observant eye and brave kindly heart1 through south and western ,germany1 among the ,alps1 through ,italy and ,france4 ,he has been sometimes in clover as a travelling tutor1 sometimes he has slept and fared hard1 under vine-hedges1 in noisy1 dirty little inns1 among carriers1 packmen1 and travelling apprentices4 ,the candidate becomes pastor1 and proves himself wise in men as well as books4 ,a philanthropist by nature1 he is not one of those dreamers who hate all that will not aid their one pet scheme1 and cant about a general brotherhood which exempts them from particular charity4 ,wherever the church1 the school1 the institute of charity have fallen into ruin or disorder by stress of war1 by fraud1 or selfish neglect1 there the indefatigable ,andre appears to restore them4 ,he devises new plans of benevolence1--appealing1 persuading1 rebuking4 ,he endures the petulence of disturbed indolence1 the persecution of exposed abuse2 bearing with1 and winning over1 all sorts of hopeless crabbed people1 thrusting men's hands into their pockets1 they know not how4 ,he is an arch bore in the eyes of miserly burgomasters and slumberous brother clergy--a very patron-saint for the needy and distressed1 the orphan and the widow4 ,to this robust practical benevolence was added a genial humour1 not uncommon in minds of strength like his1 and a certain trenchant skill in satirical delineation which renders some of his writings among the most serviceable to the historian of those times4 ,,gower4 ,oh1 how ,i love that man6 ,,willoughby4 ,well1 this ,andre writes the ,discovery of the ,rosicrucian ,brotherhood1 a jeu-d'esprit with a serious purpose1 just as an experiment to see whether something cannot be done by combined effort to remedy the defect and abuses--social1 educational1 and religious1 so lamented by all good men4 ,he thought there were many ,andres scattered throughout ,europe--how powerful would be their united systematic action6 ,,kate4 ,but why mix up with his proposal all this idle fabling about ,rosenkreuz and his fraternity8 ,,willoughby4 ,but for that spice of romance1 this notion of his could never have done more than chip the shell or sprawl helpless in the nest4 ,the promise of supernatural powers awakened universal attention--fledged1 and gave it strength to fly through ,europe4 ,,mrs4 ,,atherton4 ,but the hoax could not last long1 and would1 after all1 encourage those idle superstitions which were among the most mischievous of the errors he was trying to put down4 ,,willoughby4 ,so indeed it proved4 ,but his expectation was otherwise4 ,he hoped that the few nobler minds whom he desired to organize would see through the veil of fiction in which he had invested his proposal2 that he might communicate personally with some such1 if they should appear2 or that his book might lead them to form among themselves a practical philanthropic confederacy1 answering to the serious purpose he had embodied in his fiction4 ,let the empty charlatan and the ignoble gold-seeker be fooled to the top of their bent1 their blank disappointment would be an excellent jest2 only let some few1 to whom humanity was more dear than bullion1 be stimulated to a new enterprise4 ,,gower4 ,the scheme was certain1 at any rate1 to procure him some amusement4 ,,willoughby4 ,many a laugh1 you may be sure1 he enjoyed in his parsonage with his few friends who were in the secret1 when they found their fable everywhere swallowed greedily as unquestionable fact4 ,on all sides they heard of search instituted to discover the ,temple of the ,holy ,ghost4 ,printed letters appear continually1 addressed to the imaginary brotherhood1 giving generally the initials of the candidate1 where the invisibles might hear of him1 stating his motives and qualifications for entrance into their number1 and sometimes furnishing samples of his cabbalistic acquirements4 ,still1 no answer4 ,not a trace of the ,temple4 ,profound darkness and silence1 after the brilliant flash which had awakened so many hopes4 ,soon the mirth grew serious4 ,andre saw with concern that shrewd heads of the wrong sort began to scent his artifice1 while quacks reaped a rogue's harvest from it4 ,the reality was ridiculed as fiction1 and the fiction hailed as reality4 ,society was full of the rotten combustible matter which his spark had kindled into a conflagration he could not hope to stay4 ,a cloud of books and pamphlets issued from the press1 for and against the fraternity1 whose actual house lay beneath the ,doctor's hat of ,valentine ,andre4 ,medical practitioners of the old school1 who denounced the spagiric method1 and to whom the name of ,paracelsus was an abomination1 ridiculed the ,rosicrucian secrets1 and scoffed at their offer of gratuitous cures4 ,orthodox divines1 like ,libavius1 swinging a heavy club1 cruelly demolished the little book1--which1 of a truth1 was not fit to sustain rough handling4 ,they called down fire from heaven on its unknown authors1 and declared that their rosa should be rota--their rose1 the wheel4 ,meanwhile a number of enthusiasts became volunteer expositors of the principle and aim of this undiscoverable brotherhood4 ,andre saw his scheme look as ridiculous in the hands of its credulous friends as it seemed odious in those of its enemies4 ,a swarm of impostors pretended to belong to the ,fraternity1 and found a readier sale than ever for their nostrums4 ,andre dared not reveal himself4 ,all he could do was to write book after book to expose the folly of those whom his handiwork had so befooled1 and still to labour on1 by pen and speech1 in earnest aid of that reform which his unhappy stratagem had less helped than hindered4 ,,mrs4 ,,atherton4 ,and was no society ever actually formed8 ,,willoughby4 ,i believe not2 nothing1 at least1 answering in any way to ,andre's design4 ,confederacies of pretenders appear to have been organized in various places2 but ,descartes says he sought in vain for a ,rosicrucian lodge in ,germany4 ,the name ,rosicrucian became by degrees a generic term1 embracing every species of occult pretension1--arcana1 elixirs1 the philosopher's stone1 theurgic ritual1 symbols1 initiations4 ,in general usage the term is associated more especially with that branch of the secret art which has to do with the creatures of the elements4 ,,atherton4 ,and from this deposit of current mystical tradition sprang1 in great measure1 the ,freemasonry and ,rosicrucianism of the eighteenth century1--that golden age of secret societies4 ,then flourished associations of every imaginable kind1 suited to every taste4 ,the gourmand might be sure of a good dinner in one2 the alchemist might hope to catch his secret in a second2 the place-hunter might strengthen his interest in the brotherhood of a third2 and1 in all1 the curious and the credulous might be fleeced to their hearts' content4 ,some lodges belonged to ,protestant societies1 others were the implements of the ,jesuits4 ,some were aristocratic1 like the ,strict ,observance2 others democratic1 seeking in vain to escape an ,argus-eyed police4 ,some--like the ,illuminati under ,weishaupt1 ,knigge1 and ,von ,zwackh1 numbering 7among many knaves7 not a few names of rank1 probity1 and learning--were the professed enemies of mysticism and superstition4 ,others existed only for the profitable juggle of incantations and fortune-telling4 ,the lodges contended with each other and among themselves2 divided and subdivided2 modified and remodified their constitutions2 blended and dispersed2 till1 at last1 we almost cease to hear of them4 ,the best perished at the hands of the ,jesuits1 the worst at the hands of the police4 ,,willoughby4 ,at ,vienna1 the ,rosicrucians and ,freemasons were at one time so much the rage that a modification of the mason's apron became a fashionable part of female dress1 and chatelaines were made of miniature hammers1 circles1 and plumblines4 ,,kate4 ,very pretty1 some of them1 ,i dare say4 ,,atherton4 ,do you remember1 ,gower1 that large old house we saw at ,vienna1 called the ,stift8 ,,gower4 ,perfectly1 and the ,stift-gasse1 too1 leading to it1 for there ,i got wet through4 ,,atherton4 ,that building is the relic of a charity founded by a professed ,rosicrucian4 ,he took the name of ,chaos 7after their fashion7--every brother changing his name for some such title as ,sol1 ,aureus1 ,mercurius1 and so on1 according to his taste4 ,he came to ,vienna in the seventeenth century1 and somehow1 whether by his alchemy or not ,i cannot say1 acquired both fortune and nobility4 ,ferdinand ,,iii4 made him ,hofkammerath1 and prefixed a ,von to the ,chaos4 ,this good man founded an institution for orphans1 who were once educated in that house1 since converted into a military academy1 and bearing still1 in its name and neighbourhood1 traces of the original endowment4 ,,mrs4 ,,atherton4 ,andre would have taken some comfort could he but have seen at least that practical fruit of his ,rosicrucian whim4 ,how his heart would have rejoiced to hear the hum of the orphan school-room1 and to see their smoking platters6 ,,kate4 ,my curiosity is not yet satisfied4 ,i should like to know something more about those most poetical beings1 the creatures of the elements1--,sylph1 ,undine1 and ,co4 ,,atherton4 ,on this subject1 ,kate1 ,i am happy to be able to satisfy you4 ,i can conduct you at once to the fountain-head4 ,i will read you the process enjoined in the ,comte de ,gabalis for attaining to converse with some of these fanciful creations4 7,taking down a little book47 ,here is the passage4#beg 7,reads47 #8,if we wish to recover our empire over the salamanders1 we must purify and exalt the element of fire we have within us1 and restore the tone of this chord which desuetude has so relaxed4 ,we have only to concentrate the fire of the world1 by concave mirrors1 in a globe of glass4 ,this is the process all the ancients have religiously kept secret2 it was revealed by the divine ,theophrastus4 ,in such a globe is formed a solar powder1 and this1 self-purified from the admixture of other elements1 and prepared according to the rules of art1 acquires1 in a very short time1 a sovereign virtue for the exaltation of the fire within us1 and renders us1 so to speak1 of an igneous nature4 ,henceforth the inhabitants of the fiery sphere become our inferiors4 ,delighted to find our reciprocal harmony restored1 and to see us drawing near to them1 they feel for us all the friendship they have for their own species1 all the respect they owe to the image and vicegerent of their ,creator1 and pay us every attention that can be prompted by the desire of obtaining at our hands that immortality which does not naturally belong to them4 ,the salamanders1 however1 as they are more subtile than the creatures of the other elements1 live a very long time1 and are therefore less urgent in seeking from the sage that affection which endows them with immortality4444 #8,it is otherwise with the sylphs1 the gnomes1 and the nymphs4 ,as they live a shorter time1 they have more inducement to court our regard1 and it is much easier to become intimate with them4 ,you have only to fill a glass vessel with compressed air1 with earth1 or with water1 close it up1 and leave it exposed to the sun's rays for a month4 ,after that time1 effect a scientific separation of the elements1 which you will easily accomplish1 more especially with earth or water4 ,it is wonderful to see what a charm each of the elements thus purified possesses for attracting nymphs1 sylphs1 and gnomes4 ,after taking the smallest particle of this preparation every day for a few months1 you see in the air the flying commonwealth of the sylphs1 the nymphs coming in crowds to the waterside1 and the guardians of hidden treasure displaying their stores of wealth4 ,thus1 without magical figures1 without ceremonies1 without barbarous terms1 an absolute power is acquired over all these people of the elements4 ,they require no homage from the philosopher1 for they know well that he is their superior4444 ,thus does man recover his natural empire1 and become omnipotent in the region of the elements1 without aid of dmon1 without illicit art4' ,of course you have all learnt from ,undine that the creatures of the elements are supposed to obtain a soul1 and become immortal by alliance with one of our race4 ,there is a double advantage1 too1 for these happy philosophers may not only raise their nymph or sylphide to a share with them in the happiness of heaven1 if they reach it1 but if the sage should be so unfortunate as not to be predestined to an immortality of blessedness1 his union with one of these beings will operate on himself conversely1--that is1 will render his soul mortal1 and deliver him from the horrors of the endless second death4 ,so ,satan misses his prey in either sphere4 ,,willoughby4 ,i never knew before that these cabbalists were ,calvinists4 ,,atherton4 ,this touch of ,jansenism excites the same astonishment in the author of the ,comte de ,gabalis4 ,a delightful wag1 that ,abb ,villars6 ,the philosophers are described by the ,count as the instructors and the saviours of the poor elementary folk1 who1 but for their assistance in forming liaisons with mortals1 would inevitably at last fall into the hands of their enemy1 the devil4 ,as soon1 he says1 as a sylph has learnt from us how to pronounce cabbalistically the potent name ,,nehmahmihah1#beh and to combine it1 in due form1 with the delicious name ,,eliael1 all the powers of darkness take to flight1 and the sylph enjoys1 unmolested1 the love he seeks6 ,,willoughby4 ,how universal seems to have been the faith in the magical efficacy of certain words1 from the earliest to the latest times1 among the more sober as well as the most extravagant theurgists4 ,a long list of them might be drawn up4 ,there is the ,indian ,o-,u-,m2 there are the ,ephesian letters2 with ,demogorgon1 #8dreaded name1' as ,milton reminds us2 the barbarous words1 too1 which the ,chaldean oracles and ,psellus declare must on no account be ,hellenised4 ,,gower4 ,and the word ,,agla1 ,i remember1 in ,colin de ,plancy1 which1 when duly pronounced1 facing the east1 makes absent persons appear1 and discovers lost property4#bei ,i suppose the potency is in proportion to the unintelligibility of the terms4 ,,atherton4 ,the ,comte de ,gabalis tells us how the ,salamander ,oramasis enabled ,shem and ,japhet to restore the patriarch ,noah to his former vigour by instructing them how to pronounce six times alternately1 walking backward1 the tremendous name ,,jabamiah4 ,but the word above every word is the ,,shemhamphorash of the ,talmud4#bfj ,the latter rabbins say that ,moses was forty days on ,mount ,sinai1 to learn it of the angel ,saxael4 ,solomon achieved his fiend-compelling wonders by its aid4 ,jesus of ,nazareth1 they say1 stole it from the ,temple1 and was enabled by its virtue to delude the people4 ,it is now1 alas6 lost2 but could any one rightly and devoutly pronounce it1 he would be able to create therewith a world4 ,even approximate sounds and letters1 supplied by rabbinical conjecture1 give their possessor power over the spirit-world1 from the first-class archangel to the vulgar ghost3 he can heal the sick1 raise the dead1 and destroy his enemies4 ,,willoughby4 ,it is curious to see some of these theosophists1 who cry out so against the letter1 becoming its abject bondsmen among the puerilities of the ,cabbala4 ,they protest loudly that the mere letter is an empty shell--and then discover stupendous powers lying intrenched within the curves and angles of a ,hebrew character4 ,,atherton4 ,our seventeenth century mystics1 even when most given to romancing1 occupied but a mere corner of that land of marvel in which their ,jewish contemporaries rejoiced4 ,the ,jews1 in their dmonology1 leave the most fantastic conceptions of all other times and nations at an immeasurable distance4 ,their affluence of devils is amazing4 ,think of it6--,rabbi ,huna tells you that every rabbi has a thousand dmons at his left hand1 and ten thousand at his right3 the sensation of closeness in a room of ,jewish assembly comes from the press of their crowding multitudes3 has a rabbi a threadbare gabardine and holes in his shoes1 it is from the friction of the swarming devilry that everywhere attends him4#bfa ,,gower4 ,to return to societies--did you ever hear1 ,willoughby1 of the ,philadelphian ,association8#bfb ,,willoughby4 ,that founded by ,pordage1 do you mean--the doctor who fought the giant so stoutly one night8 ,,gower4 ,the same4 ,i picked up a book of his at a stall the other day4 ,,kate4 ,who was he8 ,pray tell us the story of the battle4 ,,gower4 ,a ,royalist clergyman who took to medicine under the ,protectorate4 ,the story is simply this4--,pordage1 whose veracity even his enemies do not impugn1 declares that he woke from sleep one night1 and saw before his bed a giant #8horrible and high1' with an enormous sword drawn in one hand1 and an uprooted tree in the other4 ,the monster evidently means mischief4 ,the ,doctor seizes his walking-stick4 ,round swings the lumbering tree-trunk1 up goes the nimble staff---- ,,atherton4 ,what became of the bedposts8 ,,gower4 ,hush1 base materialist6 ,the weapons were but the symbols of the conflict1 and were symbolically flourished4 ,the real combat was one of spirit against spirit--wholly internal2 what would now be called electro-biological4 ,each antagonist bent against his foe the utmost strength of will and imagination4 ,,willoughby4 ,somewhat after the manner of the ,astras which the ,indian gods hurled at each other--spells of strong volition1 which could parch their object with heat1 freeze him with cold1 lash him with hail1 shut him up in immobility1 though hundreds of miles away4 ,,atherton4 ,surpassing powers those1 indeed2 not even requiring the present eye and will of the operator to master the imagination of the subject mind4 ,,kate4 ,and the battle in the bedroom8 ,,gower4 ,lasted half an hour2 when the giant1 finding ,dr4 ,pordage a tough customer1 took his departure4 ,,willoughby4 ,pordage was a great student and admirer of ,behmen2 but1 unlike his master1 an inveterate spirit-seer4 ,i dare say he actually had a dream to the effect you relate4 ,,gower4 ,but he and the whole ,philadelphian ,society--a coterie of some twenty ghost-seers--profess to have seen apparitions of angels and devils1 in broad daylight1 every day1 for nearly a month4 ,,mrs4 ,,atherton4 ,what were they like8 ,,gower4 ,the chief devils drove in chariots of black cloud1 drawn by inferior dmons in the form of dragons1 bears1 and lions4 ,the spirits of wicked men were the ugliest of all1--cloven-footed1 cats-eared1 tusked1 crooked-mouthed1 bow-legged creatures4 ,,atherton4 ,did the ,philadelphians profess to see the spirits with the inward or the bodily eye8 ,,gower4 ,with both4 ,they saw them in whole armies and processions1 gliding in through wall or window-pane--saw them as well with the eyes shut as open4 ,for1 by means of the sympathy between soul and body1 the outer eye1 says ,pordage1 is made to share the vision of the inner4 ,when we cease to use that organ1 the internal vision is no less active4 ,i should add that the members were conscious of a most unpleasant smell1 and were troubled with a sulphurous taste in the mouth while such appearances lasted4 ,,willoughby4 ,mrs4 ,leade is one of the most conspicuous of their number1--a widow of good family from ,norfolk1 who forsook the world and retired into her inmost self1 holding intercourse with spirits and writing her revelations4 ,,gower4 ,she1 ,i believe1 carried to its practical extreme the ,paracelsian doctrine concerning the magical power of faith4 ,,willoughby4 ,that is her one idea4 ,by union with the divine will1 she says1 the ancient believers wrought their miracles4 ,faith has now the same prerogative3 the will of the soul1 wholly yielded to ,god1 becomes a resistless power1 can bind and loose1 bless and ban1 throughout the universe4 ,had any considerable number among men a faith so strong1 rebellious nature would be subdued by their holy spells1 and ,paradise restored4 ,,atherton4 ,some of the ,german ,romanticists have revived this idea--never1 perhaps1 wholly dead4 ,some stir was made for awhile by the theory that the power of miracle was native in man--and haply recoverable4 ,,willoughby4 ,such a doctrine is but one among the many retrogressions of the medival school4 ,footnote #bef3 ,see1 concerning the history of this book1 and its author1 ,valentine ,andre1 ,j4 ,g4 ,buhle1 ,ueber den ,ursprung und die ,vornehmsten ,schiksale der ,orden der ,rosenkreuzer und ,freymaurer 7,gttingen1 #ahjd71 chapp4 iii4 and iv4 ,arnold gives a full account of the controversy1 and extracts1 which appear to indicate very fairly the character of the ,fama ,fraternitatis1 ,kirchen-und-,ketzergeschichte1 ,th4 ii4 ,buch xvii4 cap4 #ah4 ,the derivation of the name ,rosicrucian from ros and crux1 rather than rosa and crux1 to which ,brucker alludes 7,hist4 ,phil4 ,per4 ,,iii4 ,pars i4 lib4 #c1 cap4 #c71 is untenable4 ,by rights1 the word1 if from rosa1 should no doubt be ,rosacrucian2 but such a malformation1 by no means uncommon1 cannot outweigh the reasons adduced on behalf of the generally-received etymology4 ,see ,buhle1 pp4 #agd1 c4 ,footnote #beg3 ,le ,comte de ,gabalis1 ou ,entretiens sur les ,sciences ,secrtes 7,metz1 an cinq4 rpublicain71 pp4 #ec-ef4 ,the following passage is a sample of those high-sounding promises with which the pretenders to the ,rosicrucian science allured the neophyte3-- #8,you are about to learn 7says the ,count to the author7 how to command all nature3 ,god alone will be your master2 the philosophers alone your equals4 ,the highest intelligences will be ambitious to obey your desire2 the demons will not dare to approach the place where you are2 your voice will make them tremble in the depths of the abyss1 and all the invisible populace of the four elements will deem themselves happy to minister to your pleasures4444 ,have you the courage and the ambition to serve ,god alone1 and to be lord over all that is not ,god8 ,have you understood what it is to be a man8 ,are you not weary of serving as a slave1--you1 who were born for dominion8#8--7p4 #bg47 ,footnote #beh3 ,comte de ,gabalis1 p4 #ahe4 ,see the story of ,noah's calamity1 and the salamander ,oromasis1 p4 #adj4 ,footnote #bei3 ,see ,colin de ,plancy's ,dictionnaire ,infernal1 ,art4 ,cabale4 ,horst furnishes a number of such words1 ,zauberbibliothek1 vol4 ,,iii4 xvi4 #b4 ,footnote #bfj3 ,horst inserts in his ,zauberbibliothek the whole of a once famous cabbalistic treatise1 entitled ,semiphoras et ,shemhamphoras ,salomonis ,regis1 a medley of astrological and theurgic doctrine and prescription4 ,the word ,shemhamphorash is not the real word of power1 but an expression or conventional representative of it4 ,the ,rabbis dispute whether the genuine word consisted of twelve1 two-and-forty1 or two-and seventy-letters4 ,their ,gematria or cabbalistic arithmetic1 endeavours partially to reconstruct it4 ,they are agreed that the prayers of ,israel avail now so little because this word is lost1 and they know not #8the name of the ,lord4' ,but a couple of its real letters1 inscribed by a potent cabbalist on a tablet1 and thrown into the sea1 raised the storm which destroyed the fleet of ,charles ,v4 in #aedb4 ,write it on the person of a prince 7a ticklish business1 surely71 and you are sure of his abiding favour4 ,eisenmenger gives a full account of all the legends connected therewith1 ,entdecktes ,judenthum1 vol4 i4 pp4 #aeg1 #dbd1 #eha1 c4 7,ed4 #agaa74 ,the rationale of its virtue1 if we may so call it1 affords a characteristic illustration of the cabbalistic principle4 ,the ,divine ,being was supposed to have commenced the work of creation by concentrating on certain points the primal universal ,light4 ,within the region of these was the appointed place of our world4 ,out of the remaining luminous points1 or foci1 he constructed certain letters--a heavenly alphabet4 ,these characters he again combined into certain creative words1 whose secret potency produced the forms of the material world4 ,the word ,shemhamphorash contains the sum of these celestial letters1 with all their inherent virtue1 in its mightiest combination4--,horst1 ,zauberbibliothek1 vol4 iv4 p4 #aca4 ,footnote #bfa3 ,see ,das transcendentale magie und magische ,heilarten im ,talmud1 von ,dr4 ,g4 ,brecher1 p4 #eb4 ,eisenmenger1 ,entdecktes ,judenthum1 ii4 pp4 #dde1 c4 ,the ,tractat ,berachoth says the devils delight to be about the ,rabbis1 as a wife desireth her husband1 and a thirsty land longeth after water1--because their persons are so agreeable4 ,not so1 rejoins ,eisenmenger1 but because both hate the gospel and love the works of darkness4--7p4 #ddg47 ,footnote #bfb3 ,see ,horst's ,zauberbibliothek1 vol4 i4 pp4 #cad-cbg4 ,,book ,,the ,,ninth ,,the ,,spanish ,,mystics ,,chapter ,i4 ,it is no flaming lustre1 made of light1 ,no sweet concert nor well-timed harmony1 ,ambrosia1 for to feast the appetite1 ,of flowery odour mixed with spicery1-- ,no soft embrace1 or pleasure bodily2 ,and yet it is a kind of inward feast1 ,a harmony that sounds within the breast1 ,an odour1 light1 embrace1 in which the soul doth rest4 ,a heavenly feast no hunger can consume2 ,a light unseen yet shines in every place2 ,a sound no time can steal2 a sweet perfume ,no winds can scatter2 an entire embrace ,that no satiety can e'er unlace2 ,engraced into so high a favour there1 ,the saints with all their peers whole worlds outwear1 ,and things unseen do see1 and thing unheard do hear4 ,,giles ,,fletcher4 ,gower fulfilled his promise1 and read1 on two successive evenings1 the following paper on the ,mysticism of the ,counter-,reformation1 as illustrated principally by its two ,spanish champions1 ,st4 ,theresa and ,st4 ,john of the ,cross3-- ,i4 ,saint ,theresa4 ,on the revival of letters the mysticism of ,alexandria reappeared in ,florence4 ,that lamp which1 in the study of ,ficinus1 burnt night and day before the bust of ,plato1 proclaimed1 in reality1 the worship of ,plotinus4 ,the erudite feebleness of ,alexandrian eclecticism lived again in ,gemisthus ,pletho1--blended1 as of old1 ,platonic ideas1 oriental emanations1 and ,hellenic legend1--dreamed of a philosophic worship1 emasculated and universal1 which should harmonize in a common vagueness all the religions of the world4 ,nicholas of ,cusa re-adapted the allegorical mathematics which had flourished beneath the ,ptolemies and restored the ,pythagoras of the ,neo-,platonists4 ,pico of ,mirandola 7the admirable ,crichton of his time7 sought to reconcile the dialectics of ,aristotle with the oracles of ,chalda1 and to breathe into withered scholasticism the mysterious life of ,cabbalistic wisdom4 ,an age so greedy of antiquity was imposed on by the most palpable fabrications2 and ,greece beheld the servile product of her second childhood reverenced as the vigorous promise of her first4 ,patricius sought the sources of ,greek philosophy in writings attributed to ,hermes and ,zoroaster4 ,he wrote to ,gregory ,,xiv4 proposing that authors such as these should be substituted for ,aristotle in the schools1 as the best means of advancing true religion and reclaiming heretical ,germany4 ,the position of these scholars with regard to ,protestantism resembles1 not a little1 that of their ,alexandrian predecessors when confronted by ,christianity4 ,they were the philosophic advocates of a religion in which they had themselves lost faith4 ,they attempted to reconcile a corrupt philosophy and a corrupt religion1 and they made both worse4 ,the love of literature and art was confined to a narrow circle of courtiers and literati4 ,while ,lutheran pamphlets in the vernacular set all the ,north in a flame1 the philosophic refinements of the ,florentine dilettanti were aristocratic1 exclusive1 and powerless4 ,their intellectual position was fatal to sincerity2 their social condition equally so to freedom4 ,the despotism of the ,roman emperors was more easily evaded by a philosopher of ancient times than the tyranny of a ,visconti or a ,d',este1 by a scholar at ,milan or ,ferrara4 ,it was the fashion to patronise men of letters4 ,but the usual return of subservience and flattery was rigorously exacted4 ,the ,italians of the fifteenth century had long ceased to be familiar with the worst horrors of war1 and ,charles ,,viii41 with his ferocious ,frenchmen1 appeared to them another ,attila4 ,each ,italian state underwent1 on its petty scale1 the fate of ,imperial ,rome4 ,the philosophic and religious conservatism of ,florence professed devotion to a church which reproduced1 with most prolific abundance1 the superstitions of by-gone ,paganism1--of that very ,paganism in whose behalf the ,neo-,platonist philosopher entered the lists against the ,christian father4 ,to such men1 the earnest religious movement of the ,north was the same mysterious1 barbaric1 formidable foe which primitive ,christianity had been to the ,alexandrians4 ,the old conflict between ,pagan and ,christian--the man of taste and the man of faith--the man who lived for the past1 and the man who lived for the future1 was renewed1 in the sixteenth century1 between the ,italian and the ,german4 ,the ,florentine ,platonists1 moreover1 not only shared in the weakness of their prototypes1 as the occupants of an attitude radically false2 they failed to exhibit in their lives that austerity of morals which won respect for ,plotinus and ,porphyry1 even among those who cared nothing for their speculations4 ,had ,romanism been unable to find defenders more thoroughly in earnest1 the shock she then received must have been her deathblow4 ,she must have perished as ,paganism perished4 ,but1 wise in her generation1 she took her cause out of the hands of that graceful and heartless ,deism1 so artificial and so self-conscious1--too impalpable and too refined for any real service to gods or men4 ,she needed men as full of religious convictions as were these of philosophical and poetic conceits4 ,she needed men to whom the bland and easy incredulity of such symposium-loving scholars was utterly inconceivable--abhorrent as the devil and all his works4 ,and such men she found4 ,for by reason of the measure of truth she held1 she was as powerful to enslave the noblest as to unleash the vilest passions of our nature4 ,it was given her1 she said1 to bind and to loose4 ,it was time1 she knew1 to bind up mercy and to loose revenge4 ,a succession of ferocious sanctities fulminated from the chair of ,st4 ,peter4 ,science was immured in the person of ,galileo4 ,the scholarship1 so beloved by ,leo1 would have been flung into the jaws of the ,inquisition by ,caraffa4 ,every avenue1 open once on sufferance1 to freer thought and action1 was rigorously blocked up4 ,princes were found willing to cut off the right hand1 pluck out the right eye of their people1 that ,rome might triumph by this suicide of nations4 ,but nowhere did she find a prince and a people alike so swift to shed blood at her bidding1 as among that imperious race of which ,philip ,,ii4 was at once the sovereign and the type4 ,in ,spain was found1 in its perfection1 the chivalry of persecution3 there dwelt the aristocracy of fanaticism4 ,it was long doubtful whether the ,roman or the ,spanish ,inquisition was the more terrible for craft1 the more ingenious in torments1 the more glorious with blood4 ,but ,spain was not merely the political and military head of the ,counter-,reformation4 ,she contributed illustrious names to relume the waning galaxy of saints4 ,pre-eminent among these luminaries shine ,ignatius ,loyola1 ,theresa1 and ,john of the ,cross4 ,the first taught ,rome what she had yet to learn in the diplomacy of superstition4 ,education and intrigue became the special province of his order3 it was the training school of the teachers3 it claimed and merited the monopoly of the vizard manufacture4 ,rome found in ,theresa her most famous seeress2 in ,john1 her consummate ascetic4 ,it was not in the upper region of mysticism that the narrow intellect and invincible will of ,loyola were to realize distinction4 ,he had his revelations1 indeed1--was rapt away to behold the mystery of the ,trinity made manifest1 and the processes of creation detailed4 ,but such favours are only the usual insignia so proper to the founder of an order4 ,compared with ,st4 ,francis the life of ,ignatius is poor in vision and in miracle4 ,but his relics have since made him ample amends4 ,bartoli enumerates a hundred miraculous cures4#bfc ,john and ,theresa were mystics par excellence3 the former1 of the most abstract theopathetic school2 the latter1 with a large infusion of the theurgic element1 unrivalled in vision--angelic and dmoniacal4 ,but one principle is dominant in the three1 and is the secret of the saintly honours paid them4 ,in the alarm and wrath awakened by the ,reformation1 ,rome was supremely concerned to enforce the doctrine of blind obedience to ecclesiastical superiors4 ,these ,spanish saints lived and laboured and suffered to commend this dogma to the ,church and to all mankind4 ,summoned by the ,rule of ,obedience1 they were ready to inflict or to endure the utmost misery4 ,their natures were precisely of the kind most fitted to render service and receive promotion at that juncture4 ,they were glowing and ductile4 ,their very virtues were the dazzle of the red-hot brand1 about to stamp the brow with slavery4 ,each excellence displayed by such accomplished advocates of wrong1 withered one of the rising hopes of mankind4 ,their prayers watered with poisoned water every growth of promise in the field of ,europe4 ,their ,herculean labours were undertaken1 not to destroy1 but to multiply the monsters which infested every highway of thought4 ,wherever the tears of ,theresa fell1 new weeds of superstition sprang up4 ,every shining austerity endured by ,john gilded another link in the chain which should bind his fellows4 ,the jubilant bells of their devotion rang the knell of innumerable martyrs4 ,in the fourteenth century1 mysticism was often synonymous with considerable freedom of thought4 ,in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries1 it was allowed to exist only as it subserved the ecclesiastical scheme4 ,the problem was1--how to excite the feeling and imagination of the devotee to the highest pitch1 and yet to retain him in complete subjection to the slightest movement of the rein4 ,of this problem ,john and ,theresa are the practical and complete solution4 ,all their fire went off by the legitimate conducting-rod3 every flash was serviceable3 not a gleam was wasted4 ,once mysticism was a kind of escape for nature4 ,the mystic left behind him much of the coarse externalism necessary to his ,church1 and found refuge in an inner world of feeling and imagination4 ,but now the ,church1 by means of the confessor1 made mysticism itself the innermost dungeon of her prison-house4 ,every emotion was methodically docketed2 every yearning of the heart minutely catalogued4 ,the sighs must always ascend in the right place3 the tears must trickle in orthodox course4 ,the prying calculations of the casuist had measured the sweep of every wave in the heaving ocean of the soul4 ,the instant terrible knife cut off the first spray of love that shot out beyond the trimly-shaven border of prescription4 ,strong feelings were dangerous guests1 unless they knew 7like the old ,romans7 when to go home and slay themselves1 did that ,tiberius1 the director1 but bestow on them a frown4 ,in ,france1 too1 mysticism was to fall under the same yoke2 but the ,frenchman could never reach the hard austerity of the ,spaniard4 ,the sixteenth century produced ,st4 ,francis de ,sales on the north1 and ,st4 ,john of the ,cross on the south1 of the ,pyrnes4 ,with the former1 mysticism is tender1 genial1 graceful2 it appeals to every class2 it loves and would win all men4 ,with the latter1 it is a dark negation--a protracted suffering--an anguish and a joy known only to the cloister4 ,de ,sales was to ,john1 as a mystic1 what ,henry ,,iv4 was to ,philip as a ,catholic ,king4 ,even in ,italy1 the ,counter-,reformation was comparatively humane and philanthropic with ,carlo ,borromeo4 ,in ,spain alone is it little more1 at its very best1 than a fantastic gloom and a passionate severity4 ,but everywhere the principle of subserviency is in the ascendant4 ,the valetudinarian devotee becomes more and more the puppet of his spiritual doctor4 ,the director winds him up4 ,he derives his spiritless semblance of life wholly from the priestly mechanism4 ,it may be said of him1 as of the sick man in ,massinger's play1 ,that he lives he owes ,to art1 not ,nature2 she has given him o'er4 ,he moves1 like the fairy king1 on screws and wheels ,made by his doctor's recipes1 and yet still ,they are out of joint1 and every day repairing4 ,theresa was born at ,avila1 in the year #aeae1 just two years 7as ,ribadeneira reminds us7 before #8that worst of men1' ,martin ,luther4#bfd ,the lives of the saints were her nursery tales4 ,cinderella is matter of fact2 ,jack and the ,beanstalk commonplace1 beside the marvellous stories that must have nourished her infantine faculty of wonder4 ,at seven years old she thinks eternal bliss cheaply bought by martyrdom2 sets out with her little brother on a walk to ,africa1 hoping to be despatched by the ,moors1 and is restored to her disconsolate parents by a cruel matter-of-fact uncle1 who meets them at the bridge4 ,her dolls' houses are nunneries4 ,these children construct in the garden1 not dirt pies1 but mud-hermitages2 which1 alas6 will always tumble down4 ,as she grows up1 some gay associates1 whose talk is of ribbons1 lovers1 and bull-fights1 secularise her susceptible mind4 ,she reads many romances of chivalry1 and spends more time at the glass4 ,her father sends her1 when fifteen1 to a convent of ,augustinian nuns in ,avila1 to rekindle her failing devotion4 ,a few days reconcile her to the change1 and she is as religious as ever4 ,then1 what with a violent fever1 ,jerome's ,epistles1 and a priest-ridden uncle1 she resolves on becoming a nun4 ,her father refuses his consent2 so she determines on a pious elopement1 and escapes to the ,carmelite convent4 ,there she took the vows in her twentieth year4#bfe ,we find her presently vexed1 like so many of the ,romanist female saints1 with a strange complication of maladies1--cramps1 convulsions1 catalepsies1 vomitings1 faintings1 c4 c4 ,at one time she lay four days in a state of coma2 her grave was dug1 hot wax had been dropped upon her eyelids1 and extreme unction administered2 the funeral service was performed2 when she came to herself1 expressed her desire to confess1 and received the sacrament4#bff ,it is not improbable that some of the trances she subsequently experienced1 and regarded as supernatural1 may have been bodily seizures of a similar kind4 ,but at this time she was not good enough for such favours2 so the attacks are attributed to natural causes4 ,it is significant that the miraculous manifestations of the ,romish ,church should have been vouchsafed only to women whose constitution 7as in the case of the ,catharines and ,lidwina7 was thoroughly broken down by years of agonizing disease4 ,after three years 7thanks to ,st4 ,joseph7 ,theresa was restored to comparative health1 but remained subject all her life1 at intervals1 to severe pains4#bfg ,on her recovery1 she found her heart still but too much divided between ,christ and the world4 ,that is to say1 she was glad when her friends came to see her1 and she enjoyed witty and agreeable chat1 through the grating1 with ladies whose conversation was not always confined to spiritual topics4 ,grievously did her conscience smite her for such unfaithfulness1 and bitterly does she regret the laxity of her confessors1 who failed to tell her that it was a heinous crime4 ,in her twenty-fourth year she resumed the practice of mental prayer1 and for the next twenty years continued it1 with many inward vicissitudes1 and alternate tendernesses and desertions on the part of the ,divine ,bridegroom4 ,her forty-fourth year is memorable as the season of her entrance on those higher experiences1 which have made her name famous as the great revivalist of supernatural prayer and mystical devotion in the sixteenth century4 ,the ,saint ,bartholomew's day of #aefb was a day of glory for our saint4 ,then was consecrated the new ,convent of ,st4 ,joseph1 at ,avila1 established in spite of so much uproar and opposition2 that convent wherein the primitive austerity of the ,carmelite ,order was to be restored1--where ,theresa is presently appointed prioress 7against her will1 as usual71--where there shall be no chats at the grating1 no rich endowment2 but thirteen #8fervent virgins' shall dwell there1 discalceated 7that is sandalled not shod71 serge-clad1 flesh-abhorring1 couched on straw1 and all but perpetually dumb4#bfh ,the remainder of her life1 from about her fiftieth year1 would appear to have been somewhat less fertile in marvellous experiences4 ,she was now recognised as the foundress of the ,reformed ,carmelites1 and could produce warrant from ,rome1 authorizing her to found as many convents of the ,bare-footed as she pleased4 ,she was harassed by the jealous intrigues of the old #8mitigated' ,order1 but indefatigably befriended by ,john of the ,cross1 and other thorough-going ascetics4 ,she lived to see established sixteen nunneries of the ,reformed1 and fourteen monasteries for friars of the same rule4 ,she has left us a long history of her foundations1 of all the troubles and difficulties she overcame2 showing how funds were often not forthcoming1 but faith was2 how apathy and opposition were done away2 and how busy she must have been 7too busy for many visions72 all of which let whomsoever read that can4 99 99 99 99 99 ,in the year #aefb1 when ,theresa had successfully commenced the reformation of her ,order1 she wrote her life1 at the bidding of her confessor4 ,in this autobiography her spiritual history is laid bare without reserve4 ,the narrative was published by her superiors1 and therein the heretic may listen to what she whispered in the ear of her director during the years most prolific in extravagance4 ,we can thus discern the working of the confessional4 ,commanded to disclose her most secret thoughts1 we see her nervously afraid of omitting to indicate the minutest variations of the religious thermometer1 of approaching the committal of that sin which ,romanist devotees only can commit--concealment from a confessor4 ,she searches for evil in herself1 and creates it by the search4 ,the filmiest evanescence of the feeling has to be detained and anatomized1 and changes into something else under the scrutiny4 ,it is as though she had let into her crucifix a piece of looking-glass1 that she might see reflected every transport of devotion1 and faithfully register the same in her memory against the next shrift4 ,after some excess of rapture1 she must set to work at her technical analysis2 observe what faculties were dormant1 and what still active--what regions of the mind were tenanted by divinity1 and what still left to the possession of her sinful self4 ,her intellect was never strong4 ,she confesses that she found her understanding rather in the way than otherwise4#bfi ,under this omnipresent spiritual despotism it fell prostrate utterly4 ,when she has been favoured with a vision1 she is not to know whether it has steamed up from hell or been let down from heaven1 until the decision of her confessor fills her with horror or delight4 ,the cloister is her universe4 ,her mind1 unformed1 and uninformed1 is an empty room1 papered with leaves from her breviary4 ,she knew little of that charity which makes gracious inroads on the outer world2 which rendered human so many of her sister-saints2 which we admire and pity in ,madame de ,chantal1 admire and love in ,madame ,guyon4 ,no feet-washing do we read of1 open or secret2 no hospital-tending1 no ministry among the poor4 ,the greater activity of her later years brought her in contact with scarcely any but #8religious' persons4 ,her ascetic zeal was directed1 not for1 but against1 the mitigation of suffering4 ,it made many monks and nuns uncomfortable2 but ,i am not aware that it made any sinners better1 or any wretched happy4 ,peter of ,alcantara is her admiration2 he who for forty years never slept more than one hour and a half in the twenty-four1 and then in a sitting posture1 with his head against a wooden peg in the wall2 who ate in general only every third day2 and who looked1 she says1 as if he were made of the roots of trees 7hecho de reyzes de arboles#bgj74 ,lodged in her monastic cranny of creation1 she convulses herself with useless fervours1 absolutely ignorant of all things and persons non-ecclesiastical4 ,her highest ambition is to reduce the too-palpable reality of herself to the minutest possible compass1 and to hide herself--a kind of parasitical insect or entozon--in the personality of her confessor4 ,yet1 complete as is this suicide1 she is never sure that she is sufficiently dead1 and incessantly asks him if he is quite sure that she is sincere4 ,such a life is an object of compassion more than blame4 ,she was herself the victim of the wicked system to which her name was to impart a new impulse4 ,the spasmodic energy she at last displays about her ,reformation is not native strength4 ,she was surrounded from the first by those who saw clearly what ,rome needed at that time1 who beheld in her first almost accidental effort the germ of what they desired1 and in herself a fit instrument4 ,a whisper from one of these guides would be translated by such an imagination into a direct commission from heaven4 ,they had but to touch a spring1 and her excitable nature was surrounded with the phantasmagoria of vision2 one scene produced another1 and that unfolded into more--all1 the reiteration and expansion of the bent once given to her fixed idea4 ,theresa experienced her first rapture while reciting the ,veni ,creator1 when she heard these words spoken in the interior of her heart--#8,i will have thee hold converse1 not with men1 but angels4#8#bga ,she had been conscious1 on several previous occasions1 of supernatural excitements in prayer1 and was much perplexed thereby1 as indeed were several of her confessors4 ,here were irresistible devotional seizures for which they had no rule ready4 ,they suspected an evil spirit1 advised a struggle against such extraordinary influences4 ,but the more she resists1 the more does the ,lord cover her with sweetnesses and glories1 heap on her favours and caresses4 ,at last the celebrated ,francis ,borgia comes to ,avila4 ,the ,jesuit bids her resist no more2 and she goes on the mystical way rejoicing4 ,the first rapture took place shortly after her interviews with the future ,general of the ,society of ,jesus4 ,a word on this system of spiritual directorship4 ,it is the vital question for mystics of the ,romish communion4 ,nowhere is the duty of implicit self-surrender to the director or confessor more constantly inculcated than in the writings of ,theresa and ,john of the ,cross1 and nowhere are the inadequacy and mischief of the principle more apparent4 ,john warns the mystic that his only safeguard against delusion lies in perpetual and unreserved appeal to his director4 ,theresa tells us that whenever our ,lord commanded her in prayer to do anything1 and her confessor ordered the opposite1 the ,divine guide enjoined obedience to the human2 and would influence the mind of the confessor afterwards1 so that he was moved to counsel what he had before forbidden6#bgb ,of course4 ,for who knows what might come of it if enthusiasts were to have visions and revelations on their own account8 ,the director must draw after him these fiery and dangerous natures1 as the lion-leaders of an ,indian pageantry conduct their charge1 holding a chain and administering opiates4 ,the question between the orthodox and the heterodox mysticism of the fourteenth century was really one of theological doctrine4 ,the same question in the sixteenth and seventeenth was simply one of ecclesiastical interests4#bgc ,the condemned quietists were merely mystics imperfectly subservient--unworkable raw material1 and as such flung into the fire4 ,out of the very same substance1 duly wrought and fashioned1 might have come a saint like ,theresa4 ,by the great law of ,romish policy1 whatever cannot be made to contribute to her ornament or defence is straightway handed over to the devil4 ,accordingly1 the only mysticism acknowledged by that ,church grows up beneath her walls1 and invigorates1 with herbs of magic potency1 her garrison1--resembles the strip of culture about some eastern frontier town1 that does but fringe with green the feet of the ramparts2 all the panorama beyond1 a wilderness2--for ,bedouin marauders render tillage perilous and vain4 ,thus1 ,o mystic1 not a step beyond that shadow2 or hell's black squadrons1 sweeping down1 will carry thee off captive to their home of dolour6 ,the confessions of ,theresa are a continual refutation of her counsels4 ,she acknowledges that she herself had long and grievously suffered from the mistakes of her early directors4 ,she knew others also who had endured much through similar incompetency4 ,the judgment of one conductor was reversed by his successor4 ,she exhorts her nuns to the greatest care in the selection of a confessor1--on no account to choose a vain man or an ignorant4 ,she vindicates their liberty to change him when they deem it desirable4#bgd ,john of the ,cross1 too1 dilates on the mischief which may be done by an inexperienced spiritual guide4 ,at one time ,theresa was commanded to make the sign of the cross when ,christ manifested ,himself to her1 as though the appearance had been the work of some deceiving spirit4#bge ,her next guide assured her that the form she beheld was no delusion4 ,dreadful discovery1 yet joyful6 ,she had attempted to exorcise her ,lord2 but the virtue of obedience had blotted out the sin of blasphemy4 ,thus does each small infallibility mould her for his season1 and then pass her on to another4 ,her soul1 with despair stamped on one side and glory imaged on the other1 spins dizzy in the air2 and whether1 when it comes down1 heaven or hell shall be uppermost1 depends wholly upon the twist of the ecclesiastical thumb4 ,but to return to her marvellous relations2 and1 first of all1 to those of the infernal species4 ,on one occasion1 she tells us1 she was favoured with a brief experience of the place she merited in hell3--a kind of low oven1 pitch dark1 miry1 stinking1 full of vermin1 where sitting and lying were alike impossible2 where the walls seemed to press in upon the sufferer--crushing1 stifling1 burning2 where in solitude the lost nature is its own tormentor1 tearing itself in a desperate misery1 interminable1 and so intense1 that all she had endured from racking disease was delightful in comparison4#bgf ,at another time1 while smitten for five hours together with intolerable pains1 the ,lord was pleased to make her understand that she was tempted by the devil2 and she saw him at her side like a very horrible little negro1 gnashing his teeth at her4 ,at last she contrived to sprinkle some holy water on the place where he was4 ,that moment he and her pains vanished together1 and her body remained as though she had been severely beaten4 ,it is as well to know that holy water will be found incomparably your best weapon in such cases4 ,the devils will fly from the cross1 but may presently return4 ,the drops the ,church has blest1 do their business effectually4 ,two nuns1 who came into the room after the victory just related1 snuffed up the air of the apartment with manifest disgust1 and complained of a smell of brimstone4 ,once the sisters heard distinctly the great thumps the devil was giving her1 though she1 in a #8state of recollection1' was unconscious of his belabouring4 ,the said devil squatted one day on her breviary1 and at another time had all but strangled her4#bgg ,she once saw1 with the eye of her soul1 two devils1 encompassing1 with their meeting horns1 the neck of a sinful priest2 and at the funeral of a man who had died without confession1 a whole swarm of devils tearing and tossing the body and sporting in the grave4 ,but much more numerous1 though as gross as these1 are her visions of celestial objects4 #8,being one day in prayer1' she tells us1 #8our ,lord was pleased to show me his sacred hands1 of excessive and indescribable beauty2 afterwards his divine face1 and finally1 at mass1 all his most sacred humanity4' ,at one of his appearances1 he drew out with his right hand1 the nail which transfixed his left1 some of the flesh following it4 ,three times did she behold in her raptures the most sublime of all visions--the humanity of ,christ in the bosom of the ,father2 very clear to her mind1 but impossible to explain4 ,while reciting the ,athanasian ,creed the mystery of the ,trinity was unfolded to her1 with unutterable wonderment and comfort4 ,our ,lord paid her1 one day1 the compliment of saying1 that if ,he had not already created heaven1 ,he would have done so for her sake alone4#bgh ,some of her #8,memorable ,relations' are among the most curious examples on record of the materialization of spiritual truth4 ,with all the mystics1 she dwells much on the doctrine of ,christ in us4 ,but while some of them have exaggerated this truth till they bury under it all the rest1 and others have authenticated by its plea every vagary of special revelation1 in scarcely any does it assume a form so puerile and so sensuous as with ,st4 ,theresa4 ,repeatedly does she exhort religious persons to imagine ,christ as actually within the interior part of their soul4 ,the superstition of the mass contributed largely in her case to render this idea concrete and palpable4 ,in a hymn1 composed in a rapturous inspiration after swallowing the consecrated wafer1 she describes ,god as her prisoner4#bgi ,she relates in the following passage how she saw the figure of ,christ in a kind of internal looking-glass4 #8,when reciting the hours one day with the nuns1 my soul suddenly lapsed into a state of recollection1 and appeared to me as a bright mirror1 every part of which1 back and sides1 top and bottom1 was perfectly clear4 ,in the centre of this was represented to me ,christ our ,lord1 as ,i am accustomed to see him4 ,i seemed to see him in all the parts of my soul also1 distinctly as in a mirror1 and at the same time this mirror 7,i do not know how to express it7 was all engraven in the ,lord himself1 by a communication exceeding amorous which ,i cannot describe4 ,i know that this vision was of great advantage to me1 and has been every time ,i have called it to mind1 more especially after communion4 ,i was given to understand1 that when a soul is in mortal sin1 this mirror is covered with a great cloud1 and grows very dark1 so that the ,lord cannot be seen or represented in us1 though he is always present as the ,author of our being4 ,in heretics1 this mirror is as it were broken1 which is much worse than to have it obscured4'#bhj ,here the simplicitas and nuditas of other mystics become a kind of concrete crystal1 inhabited by a divine miniature4 ,in a ,clara de ,montfaucon1 this sensuous supra-naturalism goes a step further1 and good ,catholics read with reverence1 how a ,lilliputian ,christ on the cross1 with the insignia of the passion1 was found1 on a post-mortem examination1 completely formed inside her heart4#bha ,similar in its character was a vision with which ,theresa was sometimes favoured1 of a pretty little angel1 with a golden dart1 tipped with fire1 which he thrust 7to her intolerable pain7 into her bowels1 drawing them out after it1 and when thus eviscerated1 she was inflamed with a sweet agony of love to ,god4#bhb ,a multitude more of such favours might be related3--how the ,lord gave her a cross of precious stones--a matchless specimen of celestial jewellery to deck his bride withal2 how1 after communion one day1 her mouth was full of blood1 that ran out over her dress1 and ,christ told her it was his own--shed afresh1 with great pain1 to reward her for the gratification her devotion had afforded him2 how 7doubtless in imitation of ,catherine of ,siena7 she saw and heard a great white dove fluttering above her head2 and how1 finally1 she repays the attentions of the ,jesuit ,borgia1 by repeated praises of the ,order2 by recording visions of ,jesuits in heaven bearing white banners1--of ,jesuits1 sword in hand1 with resplendent faces1 gloriously hewing down heretics2 and by predicting the great things to be accomplished through the zeal of that body4#bhc ,enough6 ,note to page #aei4 ,the dispute which agitated the ,romish ,church for more than half a century 7#afgj-agcj71 concerning the ,mistica ,ciudad de ,dios1 attributed to ,maria d',agreda1 furnishes a striking instance in proof of the character here ascribed to the controversies of the period4 ,this monstrous book was given to the world as the performance of a ,spanish nun1 at the dictation of the ,virgin1 or of ,god2--both assertions are made1 and the difference is not material4 ,its object is to establish1 by pretended special revelation1 all the prerogatives assigned to the ,queen of ,heaven1 on the basis of her ,immaculate ,conception4 ,it is replete with the absurdities and indecencies of prurient superstition4 ,dufresnoy applies to it1 with justice1 the words of ,john of ,salisbury1--#8,erumpit impudens et in facie erubescentium populorum genialis thori revelat et denudat arcana4' ,it states that the embryo of the ,virgin was formed on a ,sunday1 seventeen days before the ordinary time1--relates how1 at eighteen months1 the infant demands a nun's habit from ,st4 ,anna1 of the colour worn by the ,franciscans1--how she sweeps the house1 and has nine hundred angels to wait upon her4 ,the partizans of the book maintained1 not only that the work itself was a miracle from beginning to end1 but that its translation was miraculous also1--a ,french nun receiving instantaneously the gift of the ,spanish tongue1 that these disclosures from heaven might pass the ,pyrenees4 ,such was the mass of corruption about which the gadflies and the #8shard-borne beetles' of the ,church settled in contending swarms4 ,this was the book on whose wholesomeness for the flock of ,christ his ,vicars could not venture to decide--eventually1 rather evading reply than pronouncing sentence4 ,no such scruple concerning the unwholesomeness of the ,bible4 ,the ,abb ,dufresnoy handles the question broadly1 but most of the combatants are furious1 this side or that1 from some small party motive4 ,the ,french divines censure the book1 for fear it should encourage ,quietism--their great bugbear at that time4 ,the ,spanish ecclesiastics1 jealous of the honour done their countrywoman1 retorted with a ,censura ,censur4 ,but about the habit the battle was hottest4 ,every ,carmelite must reject the book with indignation1 for had they not always believed1 on the best authority1 that the ,virgin wore a dress of their colour8 ,the ,franciscans again1 and the religious of ,st4 ,clare1 would defend it as eagerly1 for did not its pages authorize anew from heaven their beloved ashen hue8 ,again1 did not these revelations represent the ,almighty as adopting the ,scotist doctrine8 ,on this great question1 of course1 ,scotist and ,thomist would fight to the death4 ,some account of the controversy1 and an examination of the book1 will be found in ,dufresnoy1 ,trait ,historique et ,dogmatique sur les ,apparitions1 les ,visions et les ,rvlations particulires1 tom4 ,,ii4 chap4 xi4 7#agea74 ,the same spirit betrays itself in the instance of ,molinos4 ,even after he had written his ,guida ,spirituale1 he was patronized by the ,jesuits because he had employed his pen against ,jansenism1 and the ,franciscans approved his book1 while the ,dominicans rejected it1 because he had delighted the one party and disgusted the other by speaking somewhat disparagingly of ,thomas ,aquinas4 ,footnote #bfc3 ,alban ,butler1 ,july #ca4 ,footnote #bfd3 ,ribadeneira1 ,flos ,sanctorum1 ,appendix1 p4 #ce 7,ed4 #afei74 ,footnote #bfe3 ,los ,libros de la ,b4 ,m4 ,teresa de ,jesus1 ,vida1 capp4 i4 iii4 ,this edition of #afae contains the ,camino de la ,perfecion1 and the ,castillo espiritual1 with the ,life4 ,the ,foundations1 at which ,i have only glanced in the ,french1 are devoted to business1 not mysticism4 ,footnote #bff3 ,vida1 cap4 v4 p4 #bf4 ,footnote #bfg3 ,teresa confesses that during the first year of her seizure her disorder was such as sometimes completely to deprive her of her senses3--,tan grave1 que casi me privava el sentido siempre1 y algunas vezes del todo quedava sin el4--,pp4 #ag4 ,footnote #bfh3 ,vida1 cap4 xxxvi4 ,footnote #bfi3 ,vida1 p4 #hc4 ,footnote #bgj3 ,vida1 cap4 xxvii4 p4 #aif4 ,footnote #bga3 ,vida1 cap4 xxiv4 p4 #aga4 ,footnote #bgb3 ,vida1 cap4 xxvi4 p4 #ahf4 ,siempre que el ,seor me mandava alguna cosa en la oracion1 si el confessor me dezia otra1 me tornava el ,seor a dezir que le obedeciesse3 despues su ,magestad le bolvia para que me lo tornasse a mandar4 ,she speaks in the very same page of bad advice given her by one of her confessors4 ,footnote #bgc3 ,see ,note on p4 #afd4 ,footnote #bgd3 ,vida1 p4 #he2 ,camino de ,perfecion1 capp4 #d and #e4 ,footnote #bge3 ,vida1 cap4 xxix41 p4 #bji4 ,footnote #bgf3 ,vida1 cap4 xxxii4 ,footnote #bgg3 ,ibid41 cap4 xxxi4 ,footnote #bgh3 ,vida1 pp4 #aih1 #cja1 #bji1 #cba4 ,this last communication is not related by herself3 we have it on the authority of ,ribadeneira3--,itidem ei rursus apparens dixit3 ,clum nisi creassem1 ob te solam crearem4--,vita ,teresi1 p4 #da4 ,footnote #bgi3 ,originally3 ,mas causa en mi tal passion ,ver ,dios mi prisionero ,que muero porque no muero4 ,footnote #bhj3 ,vida1 cap4 xl4 p4 #cbd4 ,footnote #bha3 ,the biographers of the saints differ both as to the time of her death 7#acjh1 #abii1 #acic1 are dates assigned71 and as to the number and nature of the miraculous formations discovered within her heart4 ,ribadeneira's account is by no means the most extravagant4 ,he says3--,aperto ejus corde amplo et concavo1 eidem repererunt impressa ,dominic passionis insignia1 nempe crucifixum cum tribus clavis1 lancea1 spongia1 et arundine hinc1 et illinic flagris1 virgis1 columna1 corona spinea2 atque hc insignia ,dominic ,passionis1 nervis validis durisque constabant4--,vida ,s4 ,clar1 p4 #afa4 ,footnote #bhb3 ,vida1 cap4 xxix1 p4 #bac4 ,speaking of the delicious anguish1 she says3--,no es dolor corporal1 sino espiritual1 aunque no dexa de participar el cuerpo algo1 y aun harto4 ,es un requiebro tan suave que passa entre el almo y ,dios que suplico yo a su bondad lo d a gustar a quien pensare que miento4 ,footnote #bhc3 ,vida1 cap4 xxxviii4 pp4 #cjj1 #cja2 and xl4 #cbh4 ,,chapter ,,ii4 ,indeed1 when persons have been long softened with the continual droppings of religion1 and their spirits made timorous and apt for impression by the assiduity of prayer1 and perpetual alarms of death1 and the continual dyings of mortification1--the fancy1 which is a very great instrument of devotion1 is kept continually warm1 and in a disposition and aptitude to take fire1 and to flame out in great ascents2 and when they suffer transportations beyond the burdens and support of reason1 they suffer they know not what1 and call it what they please4--,,jeremy ,,taylor4 ,i4 ,saint ,theresa--7,,continued74 ,what disinterested love is to the mysticism of ,fnelon1 that is supernatural passive prayer to the mysticism of ,st4 ,theresa4 ,she writes to describe her experience in the successive stages of prayer2 to distinguish them1 and to lay down directions for those who are their subjects4 ,she professes no method whereby souls may be conducted from the lowest to the highest degree4 ,on the contrary1 she warns all against attempting to attain1 by their own efforts1 that blissful suspension of the powers which she depicts in colours so glowing4 ,unlike ,dionysius1 she counsels no effort to denude the soul of thought3 she does not1 with ,tauler1 bid the mystic laboriously sink into the ground of his being4 ,she is emphatically a ,quietist2 quite as much so as ,molinos1 far more so than ,fnlon4 ,spiritual consolation and spiritual desertion are to be alike indifferent4 ,by a singular inconsistency1 while tracing out the way of perfection1 she forbids the taking of a step in that path4#bhd ,you will be borne along1 she would say1 if you wait1 as far as is fitting4 ,her experience receives its complexion1 and some of her terminology is borrowed from the ,lives of the ,saints4 ,of the past career of ,mystical ,theology she is utterly ignorant4 ,she hears1 indeed1 of a certain time-honoured division of the mystical process into ,purgative1 ,illuminative1 and ,unitive2 but she does not adopt the scheme4 ,the ,platonic and philosophic element is absent altogether from her mysticism4 ,her metaphysics are very simple3--the soul has three powers--,understanding1 ,memory1 and ,will4 ,now one1 now another1 now all of these1 are whelmed and silenced by the incoming flood of ,divine communication4 ,in addition to sundry chapters in her ,life on the various kinds of prayer1 she has left two treatises1 ,the ,way of ,perfection 7,camino de ,perfecion7 and ,the ,castle of the ,soul 7,castillo ,interior7--verbose1 rambling1 full of repetitions4 ,for the conventual mind there is no rotation of crops2 and the barrenness which limits such monotonous reproduction supervenes very soon4 ,from these sources1 then1 we proceed to a brief summary of her theopathy4 ,there are in her scale four degrees of prayer4 ,the first is ,simple ,mental ,prayer1--fervent1 inward1 self-withdrawn2 not exclusive of some words1 nor unaided by what the mystics called discursive acts1 i4e41 the consideration of facts and doctrines prompting to devotion4 ,in this species there is nothing extraordinary4 ,no mysticism1 so far4 ,,second ,,degree3--,the ,prayer of ,quiet called also ,pure ,contemplation4 ,in this state the ,will is absorbed1 though the ,understanding and ,memory may still be active in an ordinary way4 ,thus the nun may be occupied for a day or two in the usual religious services1 in embroidering an altar-cloth1 or dusting a chapel2 yet without the ,will being engaged4 ,that faculty is supposed to be1 as it were1 bound and taken up in ,god4 ,this stage is a supernatural one4 ,those who are conscious of it are to beware lest they suffer the unabsorbed faculties to trouble them4 ,yet they should not exert themselves to protract this #8recollection4' ,they should receive the wondrous sweetness as it comes1 and enjoy it while it lasts1 absolutely passive and tranquil4 ,the devotee thus favoured often dreads to move a limb1 lest bodily exertion should mar the tranquillity of the soul4 ,but happiest are those who1 as in the case just mentioned1 can be ,marys and ,marthas at the same time4#bhe ,,third ,,degree3--,the ,prayer of ,union1 called also ,perfect ,contemplation4 ,in this prayer1 not the ,will only1 but the ,understanding and ,memory also1 are swallowed up in ,god4 ,these powers are not absolutely inactive2 but we do not work them1 nor do we know how they work4 ,it is a kind of celestial frenzy--#8a sublime madness1' says ,theresa4 ,in such a transport she composed her ecstatic hymn1 without the least exercise of the understanding on her part4 ,at this stage the contemplatist neither thinks nor feels as a human being4 ,the understanding is stunned and struck dumb with amazement4 ,the heart knows neither why it loves1 nor what4 ,all the functions of the mind are suspended4 ,nothing is seen1 heard1 or known4 ,and wherefore this sudden blank8 ,that for a brief space 7which seems always shorter than it really is7 the ,living ,god may1 as it were1 take the place of the unconscious spirit--that a divine vitality may for a moment hover above the dead soul1 and then vanish without a trace2 restoring the mystic to humanity again1 to be heartened and edified1 perhaps for years to come1 by the vague memory of that glorious nothingness4#bhf ,some simple nun might ask1 #8,how do you know that ,god did so plenarily enter into you1 if you were conscious of nothing whatever8' #8,my daughter1' replies the saint1 #8,i know it by an infallible certainty 7una certidumbre7 that ,god alone bestows4'#bhg ,after this nothing remains to be said4 ,,fourth ,,degree3--,the ,prayer of ,rapture1 or ,ecstasy4 ,this estate is the most privileged1 because the most unnatural of all4 ,the bodily as well as mental powers are sunk in a divine stupor4 ,you can make no resistance1 as you may possibly1 to some extent1 in the ,prayer of ,union4 ,on a sudden your breath and strength begin to fail2 the eyes are involuntarily closed1 or1 if open1 cannot distinguish surrounding objects2 the hands are rigid2 the whole body cold4 ,alas6 what shall plain folk do among the rival mystics6 ,swedenborg tells us that bodily cold is the consequence of defective faith3 ,theresa represents it as the reward of faith's most lofty exercise4 ,were you reading1 meditating1 or praying1 previous to the seizure1 the book1 the thought1 the prayer1 are utterly forgotten4 ,for that troublesome little gnat1 the memory 7esta maraposilla importuna de la memoria71 has burnt her wings at the glory4 ,you may look on letters--you cannot read a word2 hear speech--you understand nothing4 ,you cannot utter a syllable1 for the strength is gone4 ,with intense delight1 you find that all your senses are absolutely useless--your spiritual powers inoperative in any human mode4 ,the saint is not quite certain whether the understanding1 in this condition1 understands2 but she is sure that1 if it does1 it understands without understanding1 and that its not understanding cannot be understood4 ,time of this beatific vacuum1--very long1 if half an hour2 though obviously a difficult point to decide1 as you have no senses to reckon by4 ,remarkable were the effects of the rapture on the body of the saint4 ,an irrepressible lifting force seemed to carry her off her feet 7they preserve the right foot in ,rome to this day73 it was the swoop of an eagle2 it was the grasp of a giant4 ,in vain1 she tells us1 did she resist4 ,generally the head1 sometimes the whole body1 was supernaturally raised into the air6 ,on one occasion1 during a sermon on a high day1 in the presence of several ladies of quality1 the reckless rapture took her4 ,for in vain had she prayed that these favours might not be made public4 ,she cast herself on the ground4 ,the sisters hastened to hold her down2 yet the upward struggling of the divine potency was manifest to all4 ,imagine the rush of the sisterhood1 the screams of the ladies of quality1 the pious ejaculations from the congregation1--watching that knot of swaying forms1 wrestling with miracle1 and the upturned eyes1 or open-mouthed amazement1 of the interrupted preacher6#bhh ,the state of rapture is frequently accompanied by a certain #8great pain' 7gran pena71 a sweet agony and delicious torment1 described by ,theresa in language as paradoxical as that which ,juliet in her passion applies to the lover who has slain her cousin-- ,beautiful tyrant6 fiend angelical6 ,dove-feathered raven6 wolfish-ravening lamb6 ,after some two or three hours' endurance of this combined spiritual and corporeal torture1 the sisters would find her almost without pulsation1 the bones of the arms standing out 7las canillas muy abiertas71 her hands stiff and extended3 in every joint were the pains of dislocation3 she was apparently at the point of death4#bhi ,this mysterious #8pain' is no new thing in the history of mysticism4 ,it is one of the trials of mystical initiation4 ,it is the depth essential to the superhuman height4 ,with ,st4 ,theresa1 the physical nature contributes towards it much more largely than usual2 and in her map of the mystic's progress it is located at a more advanced period of the journey4 ,st4 ,francis of ,assisi lay sick for two years under the preparatory miseries4 ,catharine of ,siena bore five years of privation1 and was tormented by devils beside4 ,for five years1 and yet again for more than three times five1 ,magdalena de ,pazzi endured such #8aridity1' that she believed herself forsaken of ,god4 ,balthazar ,alvarez suffered for sixteen years before he earned his extraordinary illumination4#bij ,theresa1 there can be little doubt1 regarded her fainting-fits1 hysteria1 cramps1 and nervous seizures1 as divine visitations4 ,in their action and reaction1 body and soul were continually injuring each other4 ,the excitement of hallucination would produce an attack of her disorder1 and the disease again foster the hallucination4 ,servitude1 whether of mind or body1 introduces maladies unknown to freedom4 ,elephantiasis and leprosy--the scourge of modern ,greece--were unknown to ancient ,hellas4 ,the cloister breeds a family of mental distempers1 elsewhere unheard of4 ,the mystics generally1 from ,dionysius downward1 inculcate earnest endeavours to denude the mind of images1 to suspend its reflex or discursive operations4 ,theresa goes a step farther1 and forbids her pupils to strive towards such a state4 ,if such a favour is to be theirs1 it will be wrought in them as by enchantment4 ,passivity here reaches its extreme4 ,on this ground a charge of ,quietism might have been brought against ,theresa with more justice than against ,fnlon1 or even ,molinos4 ,the ,guida ,spirituale of ,molinos was designed to assist the mystic in attaining that higher contemplation of ,god which rises above the separate consideration of particular attributes4 ,this indistinct and dazzled apprehension of all the perfections together is the very characteristic of ,theresa's ,prayer of ,rapture4 ,molinos cites her very words4 ,the introduction to his condemned manual contains some very strong expressions4 ,but nothing of his own is so extravagant as the passages from ,dionysius and ,theresa4 ,who then is the ,quietist--,molinos or ,theresa8 ,both write books to mark out the mystic's pathway4 ,theresa adds the caution1 #8,sit still4' ,manifestly1 then1 the excess of passivity lies with her4 ,the oars of ,molinos are the sails of ,theresa1--erected1 like the broad paddles of the ,indian1 to catch the breeze1 and urge onward the canoe without an effort4#bia ,but the followers of ,molinos were found guilty of neglecting ceremonial gewgaws for devout abstraction1--of escaping those vexatious observances so harassing to patients and so lucrative to priests4 ,so ,rome condemned him1 and not ,theresa1 as the ,quietist heretic4 ,for his head the thundercloud2 for hers the halo4#bib ,here the reader may naturally ask1 #8,how do these mystics reconcile such extremes of abstraction and such extremes of sensuousness8 ,if the state above symbols and above reasoning--above all conscious mental operations1 distinctions1 or figures1 be so desirable 7as they all admit71--must not crucifixes1 images1 and pictures of saints1 yea1 the very conception of our ,saviour's humanity itself1 be so many hindrances8' ,to this ,theresa would answer1 #8,i thought so once4 ,but ,i was happily led to see my error ere long4 ,in the ,prayer of ,rapture1 all recognition of ,christ's humanity--as1 indeed1 of everything else--is doubtless obliterated4 ,but1 then1 we do not effect this4 ,there is no effort on our part to remove from our minds the conception of ,christ's person4 ,the universal nescience of ,rapture is supernaturally wrought1 without will of ours4'#bic ,john of the ,cross1 who carries his negative1 imageless abstraction so far1 is fain 7as a good son of the ,church7 to insert a special chapter in commendation of images1 pictures1 and the sensuous aids to devotion generally4 ,it was unfortunate for the flesh and blood of ,molinos that he failed to do the same4#bid ,in the seventeenth century the ,quietists were accused of rejecting the idea of ,christ's humanity1 as a corporeal image which would only mar their supersensuous contemplation of abstract deity4 ,bossuet attempted to fasten the charge on ,fnlon3 it was one of the hottest points of their controversy4 ,fnlon completely clears himself4 ,from the evidence within my reach1 ,i am disposed to acquit ,molinos also4#bie ,theresa relates with peculiar pleasure those passages in the marvellous history of the soul in which surpassing heights of knowledge1 or of virtue1 are supposed to be realized1 on the instant1 without processes or media4 ,no transition is too violent for her faith4 ,she is impatient of all natural growth2 will acknowledge no conditions of development4 ,the sinner turns into a seraph in the twinkling of an eye4 ,the splendid symmetry of all the ,christian virtues can arise1 like the palace of ,aladdin1 in a single night4 ,in one particular kind of ,rapture--the ,flight of the ,soul 7,buelo del ,espiritu71 the soul is described by her as1 in a manner1 blown up4 ,it is discharged heavenwards by a soundless but irresistible explosive force from beneath1 swift as a bullet 7con la presteza que sale la pelota de un arcabuz74 ,thus transported the spirit is taught without the medium of words1 and understands mysteries which long years of search could not even have surmised4#bif ,visions are intellectual or representative4 ,the former is a consciousness of spiritual proximity1 indescribable1 unaccompanied by any appearances4 ,the representative or imaginative vision1 presents some definite form or image4#big ,there is a kind of supernatural tuition1 she tells us1 in which the ,lord suddenly places in the centre of the soul1 what he wishes it to understand1 without words or representation of any kind4 ,this privilege ,theresa compares very truly to an ability to read without having learnt letters1 or to nutriment derived from food without eating it4#bih ,in other instances certain efficacious words 7the #8substantial words' of ,john71 are spoken divinely in the centre of the soul1 and immediately produce there the actual effects proper to their significance4#bii ,if something is thus inwardly spoken about humility1 for example1 the subject of such words is that moment completely humble4 ,so the soul is supplied with virtues as the tables volantes of ,louis ,,xv4 with viands1--a spring is touched1 and presto6 the table sinks and re-appears--spread4 ,note to page #afh4 ,theresa compares the four degrees of prayer to four ways of watering the soul-garden3 the first1 to drawing water out of a well2 the second1 to raising it by means of a rope with buckets 7less laborious and more plentiful72 the third1 to the introduction of a rivulet2 and the fourth1 to a copious shower1 whereby ,god ,himself abundantly waters the garden1 without any effort of ours4--,cap4 xi4 p4 #fg4 ,the second degree is fully described in the fourteenth chapter of her life1 and in the thirty-first of the ,camino de ,perfecion4 ,the difference between the first degree and the three others is simply that generic distinction between ,meditation and ,contemplation with which the earlier mystics have made us familiar4 ,theresa's second1 third1 and fourth degrees of prayer are her more loose and practical arrangement of the species of contemplation4 ,she identifies ,mystical ,theology with ,prayer1 employing the latter term in a very comprehensive sense4 ,so also does ,st4 ,francis de ,sales3--,en somme1 l'oraison et thologie mystique n'est autre chose qu'une conversation par laquelle l'me s'entretient amoureusement avec ,dieu de sa trs-aimable bont pour s'unir et joindre icelle4--,trait de l',amour de ,dieu1 livre vi4 chap4 i4 ,he likens the soul in the prayer of ,quiet when the will is engaged but the other powers free1 to an infant which can see and hear and move its arms1 while adhering to the breast4 ,the babe which removes its little mouth from the bosom to see where its feet are1 resembles those who are distracted in the prayer of ,quiet by self-consciousness1 and disturb their repose by curiosity as to what the mind is doing the while4--,ibid4 chap4 x4 ,note to page #agj4 ,vida1 capp4 xviii4 xix43--,estandoassi el alma buscando a ,dios1 siente con un deleyte grandissimo y suave casi desfallecerse toda con una manera de desmayo1 que le va faltando el huelgo1 y todas las fueras corporales1 demanera que sino es con mucha pena1 no puede aun menear las manos2 los ojos se le cierran sin querer1 los cerrar1 y si los tiene abiertos no vee casi nada2 ni si lee1 acierta a dezir letra ni casi atina a conocerla bien2 vee que ay letra1 mas como el entendimiento no ayuda1 no sabe leer1 aunque quiera4 ,oye1 mas no entiende lo que oye4 ,assi que de los sentidos no se aprovecha nada1 sino es para no la acabar de dexar a su plazer1 y assi antes la daan4 ,hablar1 es por de mas1 que no atina a formar palabra2 ni ay fuera ya que atinasse1 para poderla pronunciar3 porque toda la fuera exterior se pierde1 y se aumenta en las del alma1 para mejor poder gozar de su gloria4 ,el deleyte exterior que se siente es grande1 y muy conocido4--,p4 #aah4 ,as to the elevation of the body in the air during rapture1 it is common enough in the annals of ,romish saintship1 and a goodly page might be filled with the mere names of the worthies who are represented as overcoming not only sin1 but gravitation4 ,maria d',agreda was seen1 times without number1 poised on nothing in a recumbent attitude1 in an equilibrium so delicate1 that by blowing1 even at a distance1 she was made to waft this way or that1 like a feather4 ,dominic of ,jesu ,maria had the honour of being blown about1 while in this soap-bubble condition1 by the heretic-slaying breath of ,philip ,,ii4 ,grres furnishes a long list of examples1 and believes them all2 ,die ,christliche ,mystik1 ,buch4 v4 iv4 #b4 ,it is curious to see how ,francis de ,sales1 who follows ,theresa somewhat closely in his chapter on the ,prayer of ,quietude1 grows wisely cautious as he treats of ,rapture1 softens down extravagance1 avoids theurgy1 and keeps to piety1 and admirably substitutes practical devotion for the unintelligibility and the materialism of the ,spanish saint4 ,he enumerates three kinds of ,rapture or ecstasy 7ravissement and extase are identical71--that of the intellect1 that of the affection1 and that of action1--manifested1 respectively1 by glory1 by fervour1 and by deed1--realized by admiration1 by devotion1 and by operation4 ,on the last he dwells most fully2 on that he concentrates all his exhortations4 ,to live without profaneness1 he says1 without falsehood1 without robbery1 to honour parents1 to obey law1 to reverence ,god1--this is to live according to the natural reason of man4 ,but to embrace poverty1 to hail reproach and persecution as blessings1 and martyrdom as joy1 by unceasing self-renunciation1 to forsake the world1 surmount its opinion1 deny its rule1--this is to live1 not humanly1 but superhumanly2--to live out of ourselves and above ourselves1 by supernatural energy1--this is to enjoy the noblest ecstasy1 not of a moment1 but of a life-time4 ,many saints have died without enjoying ecstatic trance--all have lived the ecstatic life4--,trait de l',amour de ,dieu1 livre vii4 chapp4 iii4 and vii4 ,note to page #agj4 ,this pain is described by ,theresa in the twentieth chapter of the ,life1 and in the ,castillo ,interior1 ,morada vi4 capp4 #a and #b4 ,in the former place she gives a kind of rationale thereof1 in the following words3--,parece me que esta assi el alma1 que ni del cielo le viene consuelo1 ni esta en el2 ni de la tierra le quiere1 ni esta en ella2 sino como crucificada entre el cielo y la tierra1 padeciendo sin venirle socorro di ningun cabo4 ,porque el que le viene del cielo 7que es como he dicho una noticia de ,dios tan admirable1 muy sobre todo lo que podemos dessear7 es para mas tormento1 porque acreciento el desseo de manera que a mi parecer la gran pena algunas vezes quita el sentido1 sino que dura poco sin el4 ,parecen unos transitos de la muerte1 salvo que trae consigo un tan contento este padecer1 que no se yo a que lo comparar4--,p4 #ace4 ,the ,castillo ,interior describes the mystic's progress under the emblem of a ,castle1 divided into seven apartments2 the inmost1 where ,god resides1 representing the centre of the soul 7termed the apex by some2 the ,ground by others72 and each of these successive abodes1 from the outermost to the central1 corresponding to the advancing stages of discipline and privilege through which the mystic passes4 ,the liability to the pain in question supervenes at the sixth apartment1 prior to the last and most glorious stage attainable on earth4 ,victor ,gelenius of ,treves 7writing #afdf7 has seven degrees1 and places this stage of misery and privation in the fourth1 as the transition between the human and superhuman kinds of devotion4 ,it is the painful weaning-time1 wherein the soul passes 7in an agony of strange bewilderment7 from a religion which employs the faculties we possess1 to that which is operated in us in a manner altogether incomprehensible and divine4 ,whatever division be adopted1 such alone is the legitimate locality for this portion of the mystical experience4 ,here ,gelenius and ,john of the ,cross are perfectly agreed1 though their graduation and nomenclature are different4 ,note to page #aga4 ,this pain is the #8pressura interna' of ,tauler3 the #8horribile et indicibile tormentum' of ,catharine of ,genoa2 the #8purgatory' of ,thomas ,jesu2 the #8languor infernalis' of ,harphius2 the #8terrible martyrium' of ,maria ,vela1 the ,cistercian2 the #8divisio natur ac spiritus' of ,barbanson2 the #8privation worse than hell' of ,angela de ,foligni4 ,see ,card4 ,bona's ,via ,compendii ad ,deum1 cap4 #aj4 ,angel de ,fulginio ,visiones1 cap4 xix4 ,these sufferings are attributed by the mystics to the surpassing nature of the truths manifested to our finite faculties 7as the sun-glare pains the eye71--to the anguish involved in the surrender of every ordinary religious support or enjoyment1 when the soul1 suspended 7as ,theresa describes it7 between heaven and earth1 can derive solace from neither1--to the intensity of the aspirations awakened1 rendering those limitations of our condition here which detain us from ,god an intolerable oppression1--and to the despair by which the soul is tried1 being left to believe herself forsaken by the ,god she loves4 ,on this subject ,john of the ,cross and ,theresa are most extravagant4 ,in contrast with their folly stands the good sense of ,fnlon4 ,the middle ground is occupied by the comparative moderation of ,francis de ,sales4 ,the privation described by ,john is preparatory to a state of complete de-humanization1 in which we shall know1 feel1 do1 nothing in the mortal manner1 as our whole nature suffers a divine transformation4 ,the privation of which ,fnlon speaks is simply a refining process1 to purify our love more thoroughly from self4 ,the causes and the various species of this pain are detailed at length by ,john of the ,cross in the ,nuit ,obscure1 liv4 ii4 chapp4 v4 vi4 vii4 ,de ,sales says speaking of the #8blessure d'amour3#8--,mais1 ,theotrine1 parlant de l'amour sacr1 il y a en la practique d'iceluy une sorte de blesseure que ,dieu luy-meme faict quelquesfois pour sa souveraine bont1 comme la pressant et solicitant de l'aymer2 et lors elle s'eslance de force comme pour voler plus haut vers son divin object2 mais demeurant courte parce qu'elle ne peut pas tant aymer comme elle desire1 o ,dieu6 elle sent une douleur qui n'a point d'esgale4444 ,la voil donc rudement tourmente entre la violence de ses eslans et celle de son impuissance4--,trait de l',amour de ,dieu1 liv4 vi4 ch4 xiii4 ,theresa declares that the intensity of this delicious agony is such as frequently to endanger life4--,castillo ,int4 vi4 c4 xi4 ,francis de ,sales1 in whom the sufferings in question assume a highly sentimental character1 adduces instances in which they proved fatal4 ,the soul1 springing forward to obey the attraction of the ,well-beloved1 sooner than be detained by the body amid the miseries of this life1 tears herself away1 abandons it1 and mounts alone1 like a lovely little dove1 to the bosom of her celestial spouse4 ,st4 ,theresa herself1 he says1 made it known1 after her departure1 that she died of an impetuous assault of love1 too violent for nature to sustain4--,trait de l',amour de ,dieu1 liv4 vii4 chapp x4-xii4 ,we may contrast the obscure and feverish utterances of ,theresa1 and the amorous phraseology of ,de ,sales1 on this topic1 with the lucid and cautious language of ,fnlon4 ,la sainte indiffrence1 qui n'est jamais que le dsintressement de l'amour1 devient dans les plus extrmes preuves ce que les saints mystiques ont nomm abandon1 c'est--dire1 que l'me dsintresse s'abandonne totalement et sans rserve ,dieu pour tout ce qui regarde son intrt propre2 mais elle ne renonce jamais ni aucune des choses qui intressent la gloire et le bon plaisir du bien-aim4444 ,cette abngation de nous-mmes n'est que pour l'intrt propre1 et ne doit jamais empcher l'amour dsintress que nous nous devons nous-mmes comme au prochain1 pour l'amour de ,dieu4 ,les preuves extrmes o cet abandon doit tre exerc sont les tentations par lesquelles ,dieu jaloux veut purifier l'amour1 en ne lui faisant voir aucune ressource ni aucune esprance pour son intrt mme ternel4 ,ces preuves sont reprsentes par un trs-grand nombre des saints comme un purgatoire terrible1 qui peut exempter du purgatoire de l'autre vie les mes qui le souffrent avec une entire fidlit4444 ,ces preuves ne sont que pour un temps4 ,plus les mes y sont fidles la grce pour se laisser purifier de tout intrt propre par l'amour jaloux1 plus ces preuves sont courtes4 ,c'est d'ordinaire la rsistance secrte des mes la grce sous des beaux prtextes1 c'est leur effort intress et empress pour retenir les appuis sensibles dont ,dieu veut les priver1 qui rend leurs preuves si longues et si douloureuses3 car ,dieu ne fait point souffrir sa crature pour la faire souffrir sans fruit1 ce n'est que pour la purifier et pour vaincre ses rsistances4--,explic4 des ,maximes des ,saints1 ,art4 ,,viii4 ,note to page #agb4 ,see the passage already cited 7page #aff1 note71 where ,theresa expressly forbids any attempt on our part to suspend the powers of the mind4 ,effort to produce inaction appears to her a contradiction in terms4 ,yet such effort ,dionysius expressly enjoins2 and1 indeed1 without it1 how can the swarming words or images that float about the mind be excluded8 ,the #8phantasmata irruentia1' to be barred out1 are the images of sensible objects1 according to the old theory of perception--the #8imagines rerum sensibilium et corporearum4' ,bona expresses the spirit of the old ,platonist mysticism in the ,romish ,church1 when he says1 #8,hc omnia abdicanda et extirpanda prorsus sunt1 ut ,deum inveniamus4'--,via ,compendii ad ,deum1 p4 #bf4 ,theresa is quite agreed with all the mystics as to the previous heart-discipline1 and the ascetic process essential to the higher forms of contemplation4 ,the mystics generally rank the #8contemplatio caliginosa' much above the #8contemplatio pura3' the more indistinct our apprehensions1 the more divine4 ,john of the ,cross comes next1 in this respect1 after ,dionysius4 ,molinos borrows his doctrine1 that as the distance between the ,infinite and all our sensuous images1 conclusions1 and finite conceptions must be infinite after all1 such things embarrass rather than aid our contemplation4 ,but even he does not soar into a darkness so absolute as that of ,dionysius4 ,he says expressly1 in the introduction to his ,spiritual ,guide3--#8,in answer to the objection that the will must be inactive where no clear conception is given to the understanding1--that a man cannot love what he can take no cognizance of1 my reply is this3 ,although the understanding does not distinctively recognise certain images and conceptions1 by a discursive act or mental conclusion1 it apprehends1 nevertheless1 by a dim and comprehensive faith4 ,and though this knowledge be very cloudy1 vague1 and general1 yet it is far more clear and perfect than any sensuous or scientific apprehensions that man can devise in this life1 since all corporeal images must be immeasurably remote from ,god4' ,see ,arnold's ,kirchen-und-,ketzergeschichte1 th4 ,,iii4 ch4 xvii41 where the ,introduction is inserted entire4 ,theresa also admits that during the ecstatic pain the soul adores no particular attribute of ,god1 but1 as it were1 all his perfections collectively4 ,bien entiende que no quiere sino a su ,dios1 mas no ama cosa particular del1 sino todo junto lo quiere1 y no sabe lo que quiere4--,vida1 cap4 xx4 p4 #ace4 ,but it is a sore trial to her when her fancy is limed1 and the key to her chamber of vision1 for a season1 lost4 ,when we leave ,dionysius and ,john1 and come to the ,french mystics1 how great the difference6 ,the soul hangs no longer in a lightless void1 trembles no more on the verge of swooning ecstacy4 ,this #8,visio caliginosa' becomes1 not merely a comprehensible thing1 but so clarified1 humanized1 and we may say ,christianized1 as to come within the range of every devout consciousness4 ,the #8indistinct contemplation' of ,st4 ,francis de ,sales is a summary and comprehensive view of ,divine truth or the ,divine ,nature1--simple1 emotional1 jubilant1 as distinguished from the detailed and partial views of searching ,meditation4 ,as he fancifully expresses it1 this simplicity of contemplation does not pluck the rose1 the thyme1 the jessamine1 the orange-flower1 inhaling the scent of each separately1--this the flower-gatherer ,meditation does2--,contemplation rejoices in the fragrance distilled from them all4 ,an example perfectly explains his meaning4 ,o que bien-heureux sont ceux qui1 aprs avoir discouru 7the discursive acts above spoken of7 sur la multitude des motifs qu'ils ont d'aymer ,dieu1 reduisans tous leurs regards en une seule veu et toutes leurs penses en une seule conclusion1 arrestant leur esprit en l'unit de la contemplation1 l'exemple de ,s4 ,augustin ou de ,s4 ,bruno1 prononant secrettement en leur ame1 par une admiration permanente1 ces paroles amoureuses3 ,o bont6 bont6 bont6 tousjours ancienne et tousjours nouvelle6--,trait de l',amour de ,dieu1 liv4 vi4 chap4 v4 ,every religious man must remember times when he was the subject of some such emotion1 when the imagination bodied forth no form1 the reason performed no conscious process1 but1 after some train of thought1 at the sight of some word1 or while gazing on some scene of beauty1 an old truth seemed to overwhelm him 7as though never seen till then7 with all its grandeur or endearment1--times when he felt the poverty of words1 and when utterance1 if left at all1 could only come in the fervid1 broken syllables of reiterated ejaculation4 ,in such melting or such tumult of the soul1 there is no mysticism4 ,even ,deism1 in a susceptible ,rousseau1 cannot escape this passion4 ,he speaks of a bewildering ecstasy awakened by nature1 which would overcome him with such force1 that he could but repeat1 in almost delirious transport1 #8,o ,great ,being6 ,o ,great ,being6' ,neither is it mystical to prefer the kindling masterful impulse of a faith which possesses us1 rather than we it1 to the frigid exactitude of lifeless prescription4 ,the error of the mystics lay in the undue value they attached to such emotions1 and their frequent endeavours to excite them for their own sake2 in transferring what was peculiar to those seasons to the other provinces of life2 and in the constant tendency of their religionism to underrate the balanced exercise of all our faculties1 neglecting knowledge and action in a feverish craving for evanescent fervours4 ,fnlon1 speaking of the negative character of pure and direct contemplation1 teaches a doctrine widely different from that of ,dionysius1 even while referring with reverence to his name4 ,he is careful to state that the attributes of ,god do not1 at such times1 cease to be present to the mind1 though no sensible image be there1 no discursive act performed2 that the essence1 without the attributes1 would be the essence no longer2 that1 in the highest contemplation1 the truths of revelation do not cease to be admissible to the mind2 that the humanity of ,christ1 and all his mysteries1 may then be distinctly present1--seen simply1 lovingly1 as faith presents them1 only that there is no systematic effort to impress the several details on the imagination1 or to draw conclusions from them4--,explic4 des ,maximes des ,saints1 art4 xxvii4 ,note to page #agc4 ,see the clear and guarded language of the twenty-eighth article in the ,maximes des ,saints1 and the ,troisime ,lettre en rponse divers ,ecrits1 ,seconde ,partie4 ,the language of ,molinos on this point is as follows3--#8,although the humanity of ,christ is the most perfect and most holy mean of access to ,god1 the highest mean of our salvation1 yea the channel through which alone we receive every blessing for which we hope1 yet is the humanity not the supreme good1 for that consists in the contemplation of ,god4 ,but as ,jesus ,christ is what he is more through his divine nature than his human1 so that man contemplates ,christ continually and thinks of ,him1 who thinks on ,god1 and hath regard constantly to ,him4 ,and this is the case more especially with the contemplative man1 who possesses a faith more purified1 clear1 and experimental4'--,arnold1 loc4 cit41 p4 #ahc4 ,such a passage proves merely thus much1 that ,molinos shared in the general tendency of the authorised medival mysticism1--a tendency leading the contemplatist to see ,christ in ,god1 rather than ,god in ,christ1 and placing him in danger of resolving ,redemption into self-loss in the abstract ,godhead4 ,similar expressions are frequent in ,tauler1 in ,ruysbroek1 in ,suso1 in the ,german theology4 ,now we know by what these same men say at other times1 that it was not their intention to disparage or discard the humanity of ,christ4 ,similar allowance must be made for ,molinos--quite as far from such practical ,docetism as they were4 ,the words just quoted should be compared with the title of the sixteenth chapter in his first book3 #8,how in the inward recollection1 or drawing in of our powers1 we may enter into the internal ,ground1 through the most holy ,humanity of ,jesus ,christ4' ,a gross and materialised apprehension of the bodily sufferings of the ,saviour had become general in the ,romish ,church4 ,they were dramatized in imagination and in fact1 into a harrowing spectacle of physical anguish4 ,the end was lost sight of in the means4 ,to such sensible representations--such excesses of over-wrought sentiment1 ,molinos was doubtless unfriendly2 and so1 also1 the more refined and elevated mysticism of that communion has generally been4 ,molinos is nearer to the spiritual ,tauler than to the sensuous ,theresa4 ,where he speaks of passivity and acquiescence in desertion 7 #e71 of contemplation 7 #ag1 #ah71 of self-abandonment 7 #cj71 of the divine vocation and elevation necessary to the attainment of the contemplative heights1 where he says that we must not1 without the direction of an experienced adviser1 seek to raise ourselves from one stage to a higher 7 #bd71 he does but repeat what the most orthodox mystics had said before him4 ,holy indifference to spiritual enjoyments and manifestations1 and complete passivity1 are not more earnestly enjoined by ,john of the ,cross than by ,molinos4 ,yet one main charge against the ,quietists was1 that they made mysticism a human method1 and proposed to raise to mystical perfection all who were ready to go through their process4 ,the accusations brought against ,quietism by ,berthier in his ,discours sur le ,non-,quitisme de ,s4 ,theresa1 and in his tenth letter on the works of ,john of the ,cross1 are self-destructive4 ,in one place he finds the ,quietists guilty of making #8their pretended spiritual man' an insensible kind of being1 who remains always apathetic--dans une inaltration et une inaction entiere en la prsence de ,dieu4 ,in another1 he represents them as offering to teach contemplation to all 7irrespective of the director's consent1 he fears7 by reducing it to a method4 ,either way the unhappy ,quietists cannot escape3 they must always do too much or too little4 ,it was against the artificial methods of devotion1 so much in vogue1 that ,molinos protested1 when he called his readers away from the puerile manuals and bead-counting of the day1 to direct and solitary communion with ,god4 ,several of the articles of condemnation are such as would have been drawn out against a man suspected of ,protestantism4 ,on the question of the humanity of ,christ1 the proposition professedly deduced from the doctrines of ,molinos1 and censured accordingly1 runs thus--#8,we must do no good works of our own motion1 and render no homage to ,our ,lady1 the ,saints1 or ,christ's humanity1' c4--,art4 xxxv4 ,footnote #bhd3 ,vida1 pp4 #ga and #ge4 ,in the latter passage1 ,theresa says expressly3--,en la mystica ,teologia1 que comence a dezir1 pierde de obrar el entendimiento1 porque le suspende ,dios1 como despues declarar mas1 si supiere1 y el me diere para el lo su favor4 ,presumir1 ni pensar de suspenderle nosotros1 es lo que digo no se haga1 ni se dexe de obrar con el1 porque nos quedaremos bouos y frios1 y ni haremos lo uno ni lo otro4 ,que quando el ,seor le suspende1 y haze parar1 dale de que se espante1 y en que se ocupe1 y que sin discurrir entienda mas en un credo que nosotros podemos entendir con todas nuestras diligencias de tierra en muchos aos4 ,footnote #bhe3 ,see ,note on p4 #age4 ,footnote #bhf3 ,vida1 cap4 xvii4 and ,castillo ,interior1 ,moradas ,quintas1 cap4 i4 ,footnote #bhg3 ,castillo ,interior1 p4 #ehj4 ,footnote #bhh3 ,see second ,note on p4 #age4 ,footnote #bhi3 ,see ,note on p4 #agf4 ,footnote #bij3 ,see ,note on p4 #agg4 ,footnote #bia3 ,see ,note on p4 #agh4 ,footnote #bib3 ,see the account of the proceedings against ,molinos and his followers1 in ,arnold1 th4 ,,iii41 c4 xvii41 and more fully in an ,appendix to the ,english translation of ,madame ,guyon's ,autobiography4 ,footnote #bic3 ,vida1 chap4 xxii43--,quando ,dios quiere suspender todas las potencias 7como en los modos de oracion que quedan dichos hemos visto7 claro est que aunque no queramos se quita esta presencia4444 ,mas que nosotros de maa y con cuydado nos acostumbremos a no procurar con todas nuestras fueras traer delante siempre 7y pluguiesse al ,seor fuesse siempre7 esta sacratissima humanidad esto digo que no me parece bien1 y que es andar el alma en ayre1 como dizen3 porque parece no trae arrimo1 por mucho que la parezca anda llena de ,dios4--,p4 #aed4 ,footnote #bid3 ,the words of ,john are3--,mais il faut remarquer que quand je dis qu'il est propos d'oublier les espces et les connaissances des objets matriels1 je ne prtends nullement parler de ,jsus-,christ ni de son humanit sacre4 ,quoique l'me n'en ait pas quelquefois la mmoire dans sa plus haute contemplation et dans le simple regard de la divinit1 parce que ,dieu lve l'esprit cette connaissance confuse et surnaturelle1 nanmoins il ne faut jamais ngliger exprs la reprsentation de cette adorable humanit ni en effacer le souvenir ou l'ide1 ni en affaiblir la connaissance4--,la ,monte du ,mont ,carmel1 liv4 ,,iii4 chap4 #a4 ,i have used the ,french translation of his works1 edited by the ,abb ,migne1 in his ,bibliothque ,universelle du ,clerg4 #ahde4 ,the chapter on images is the fourteenth of the same book4 ,father ,berthier 7,lettres sur les uvres de ,s4 ,jean de la ,croix7 attempts to show the difference between the mysticism of his author and that of the false mystics4 ,he succeeds only in pointing out a manifest disagreement between the opinions of ,john and those which he himself believes 7or pretends to believe7 are those of ,quietism--the accusations1 in fact1 against the ,quietists--the exaggerated conclusions drawn by their enemies4 ,footnote #bie3 ,see ,note on p4 #ahj4 ,footnote #bif3 ,castillo ,interior4 ,morada vi41 c4 v4 ,footnote #big3 ,ibid41 capp4 viii41 ix41 x4 ,footnote #bih3 ,vida1 cap4 xxvii41 pp4 #aia1 c4 ,here the supernatural illumination without means or mode1 longed for by so many mystics1 is professedly realised4 ,molinos puts forward no claim so dangerous as this special revelation4 ,theresa is confident that this most inexplicable species of communication is beyond the reach of any delusion1 and inaccessible altogether to the father of lies4 ,her language concerning the absolute passivity of those who are its subjects1 is as strong as it could be4 ,no ,quietist could push it farther4 ,it so happens that the saint1 in his chapter1 contravenes expressly the three criteria1 afterwards laid down by ,fnlon1 to distinguish the true mysticism from the false4 ,the genuine contemplation according to him is not purely infused1 not purely gratuitous 7i4e41 without correspondence on the part of the soul to the grace vouchsafed71 not miraculous4 ,with ,theresa this form of passive contemplation is all three4 ,so much more ,quietist was the mysticism authorised than the mysticism condemned by ,rome4 ,see ,maximes des ,saints1 art4 xxix4 ,what ,fnlon rejects in the following section as false1 answers exactly to the position of ,theresa4 ,fnlon supports his more refined and sober mysticism by the authority of preceding mystics4 ,he finds among them ample credentials1 and indeed more than he wants4 ,their extravagances he tacitly rejects4 ,not that1 as a good ,catholic1 he could venture openly to impugn their statements1 but their fantastic extremes1 and choice wonders1 find a place with him rather as so much religious tradition1 or extraordinary history1 than as forming any essential part of the mysticism he himself represents and commends4 ,footnote #bii3 ,vida1 cap4 xxv4 ,,chapter ,,iii4 ,and those that endeavour after so still1 so silent1 and demure condition of minde1 that they would have the sense of nothing there but peace and rest1 striving to make their whole nature desolate of all ,animal ,figurations whatsoever1 what do they effect but a clear ,day1 shining upon a barren ,heath1 that feeds neither ,cow nor ,horse1--neither ,sheep nor ,shepherd is to be seen there1 but only a waste1 silent ,solitude1 and one uniform parchednesse and vacuity4 ,and yet while a man fancies himself thus wholly divine1 he is not aware how he is even then held down by his ,animal ,nature2 and that it is nothing but the stillnesse and fixednesse of ,melancholy that thus abuses him1 instead of the true divine ,principle4--,,henry ,,more4 ,,ii4 ,st4 ,john of the ,cross4 ,little ,john of the ,cross--a hero1 like ,tydeus1 small in body1 but great in soul--was in the prime of life when ,theresa was growing old4 ,early distinguished by surpassing austerity and zeal1 he was selected by the ,saint as her coadjutor in the great work of ,carmelite reform4 ,the task was no easy one1 though sanctioned by the highest spiritual authority4 ,this troculus service--the picking the teeth of the gorged ecclesiastical crocodile--has always been a somewhat delicate and dangerous affair4 ,the great jaws closed with a horrible crash one day on poor ,madame ,guyon1 as she was working away with her solitary bill and the best intentions4 ,on ,john1 too1 busy at a little scavenger's work1 those jaws had once almost met1 and at least knocked him fluttering into a hollow tooth1--in other words1 a dark and noisome dungeon at ,toledo4 ,but what between ,st4 ,theresa's intercession and that of the ,mother of ,god1 he is let fly again4 ,vicar-provincial of ,andalusia1 he plies his task anew1 with admirable intrepidity and self-devotion2 courts hatred and opprobrium on every side2 flourishes his whip2 overturns secularities2 and mouses for flaws of regulation4 ,he succeeds in excavating in every direction spiritual catacombs and mummy-caves1 where1 swathed up in long rows1 the religious dumb and withered line the cloister-walls--motionless--satisfactori ly dead4 ,next to ,ignatius ,loyola1 he was1 perhaps1 the greatest soul-sexton that ever handled shovel4 ,john of the ,cross obtained this distinctive name through his love of crosses4 ,he was consumed by an insatiable love of suffering4 ,it was his prayer that not a day of his life might pass in which he did not suffer something4 ,again and again does he exhort the monk1 saying--#8,whatsoever you find pleasant to soul or body1 abandon2 whatsoever is painful1 embrace it4' #8,take pains1' he says1 #8to give your name an ill savour2 burrow deep and deeper under heaped obloquy1 and you are safe4'#cjj ,thus is the odour of sanctity best secured2 and the disguised saint resembles that eastern prince who concealed himself from his pursuers beneath a heap of onions1 lest the fragrance of his perfumes should betray him4 ,the man who is truly dead and self-abandoned will not only thus disguise his virtues before others2 he will be unconscious of them himself4 ,the whole life of ,john was an attempt towards a practical fulfilment of such precepts4 ,the party of his enemies gained the upper hand in the chapter1 and the evening of his days was clouded by the disgrace of which he was covetous4 ,he passed existence in violent extremes1 now gazing with delight on some celestial mirage1 swimming in seas of glory that waft him to the steps of the burning throne1--and anon hurled down into the abyss1 while vampyre wings of fiends #8darken his fall1 with victory1' and his heart itself is a seething hell-cauldron1 wherein demon talons are the raking fleshhooks4 ,the piety of ,john is altogether of the ,romanist type4 ,in his doctrine of humility1 truth is not to be considered1 but expediency1--that is1 an edifying display of self-vilification4 ,on his own principles1 ,john ought to have persuaded himself1 and assured others1 that he was a self-indulgent1 pleasure-loving drone1--though perfectly aware of the contrary4 ,st4 ,paul is content to bid men think of themselves not more highly than they ought to think4 ,john of the ,cross is not satisfied unless they think worse than they ought1--unless they think untruly1 and labour to put a pious fraud upon themselves4 ,john disturbs the equilibrium of ,quietism4 ,there is quite as much self-will in going out of the way of a blessing to seek a misery1 as in avoiding a duty for the sake of ease4 ,many men will readily endure a score of mortifications of their own choosing1 who would find it hard to display tolerable patience under a single infliction from a source beyond their control4 ,this extreme of morbid asceticism is more easy1 because more brilliant in its little world1 than the lowly fortitude of ordinary ,christian life4 ,how many women1 at this hour1 in poverty1 in pain1 in sorrow of heart1 are far surpassing ,st4 ,theresa in their self-sacrifice and patience1 unseen and unpraised of men4 ,banished to the little ,convent of ,pegnuela1 he completed among the crags of the ,sierra ,morena his great mystical treatises1 ,the ,obscure ,night1 and ,the ,ascent of ,carmel4 ,he follows in the steps of the ,pseudo-,dionysius4 ,he describes the successive denudations of the soul as it passes1--the shadow of itself1 into the infinite shade of the ,divine ,dark4#cja ,we have seen how instantaneously ,theresa could attain at times this oblivious self-reduction4 ,her soul falls prostrate1 with the ordinary attire of faculties1 but rises1 stripped of all in a moment4 ,not more dexterously was the fallen ,andrew ,fairservice stripped in a twinkling by the ,highlanders1 so that he who tumbled down a well-clothed1 decent serving-man1 stood up #8a forked1 uncased1 bald-pated1 beggarly-looking scarecrow4' ,john of the ,cross describes with almost scientific method the process of spiritual unclothing1--preaches a series of sermons on the successive removal of each integument1--and perorates on the blessed reduction of the soul to a supernatural state of nature4 ,the #8,obscure ,night1' would be the most fitting title for both treatises2 for the night of mysticism is their sole subject1 and ,mount ,carmel does but figure as a frontispiece1 in compliment to the ,order probably4 ,sundry verses head the works as texts2 the first of these1 with its exposition1 will sufficiently indicate the character of the whole4 ,en una noche escura ,con ansias en amores inflammada ,o dichosa ventura6 ,sal sin ser notada ,estando ya mi casa sosegada4 #8',twas in a darksome night1 inflamed with restless love1 ,o fortune full of bliss1 ,i ventured forth unmarked1 what time my house was still4' ,the ,saint interprets his stanza1 in substance1 as follows3-- ,here the soul says1 #8,i went out unhindered by sensuality or the devil4 ,i went out1 that is1 of myself--out from my own poor and feeble manner of knowing1 loving1 and tasting ,god4 ,i went out1 unassisted by any action of my own powers2 while my understanding was wrapped in darkness2 while will and memory were overwhelmed by affliction4 ,i went out1 abandoning myself in pure faith to darkness--that is1 to the night of my spirit and my natural powers4 #8,this going forth has crowned me with happiness2 for ,i have been straightway elevated to operations entirely divine--to most familiar intercourses with ,god2 in other words1 my understanding has passed from a human to a divine condition4 ,uniting myself to ,god by this purgation1 my knowledge is no longer weak and limited as formerly2 but ,i know by the divine wisdom1 to which ,i am conjoined4 #8,my will also has gone out of itself1 and become in a sort divine2 for being united to the ,divine ,love1 it does not love any longer by its own former powers1 but by the powers of the ,divine ,spirit4 ,thus1 its acts of love towards the ,creator are rendered no more in a human manner4 #8,my memory is filled with images of heavenly glory4 ,all my powers1 in short1 and all my affections1 are renovated by the ,night of the spirit and the despoliation of the old man1 in such sort that their very nature seems changed1 and they can relish only spiritual and divine delights4'#cjb ,thus1 the soul is to resemble the wondrous eastern tree of the old travellers1 which by daylight stands leafless and flowerless1 but after sundown puts forth countless white blossoms1 shining in the darkness like the drops of a silver fountain2 and when the sun is risen again1 sheds all its beauty1 and stands bare and barren as before4 ,when all our natural powers1 slain and buried1 lie dead under the midnight2--then arise1 instead of them1 certain divine substitutes1 which will1 and love1 and know1 as the ,infinite does1 not as men4 ,the ,,first ,,night is that of the ,sense3 the long process of vigil and austerity which1 with the caduceus of asceticism1 tames and lulls to slumber the ,argus-eyed monster of the flesh4#cjc ,a painful work1 but not without meet recompence4 ,new pleasures1 even of the sense1 are supernaturally vouchsafed to the steadfast votary4 ,the wearied eye and the unvisited ear are regaled by glorious visions and seraphic melody2 yea1 the parched tongue1 and haggard1 bleeding flesh1 are made to know delights of taste and touch1 that melt with most delicious pleasure through the frame1 and beggar with their transport all the joys of banquets or of love4 ,but rejoice not1 ,o mystic6 for even now1 lest thou shouldst grow greedy of these high luxuries1 there strides towards thee the darkness of-- ,the ,,second ,,night--the ,night of the ,spirit4 ,here all caresses are withdrawn4 ,the deserted soul cannot think1 or pray1 or praise1 as of old4 ,the great pains are to begin4 ,pitiless purgation and privation absolute are about to make the second night not night only1 but midnight4 ,you seem to descend1 ,god-abandoned1 alive into hell4 ,make no resistance3 utter no cry for comfort4 ,solace is a ,tantalus' bough1 which will wave itself away as you stretch forth your hand4 ,acquiesce in all3 be in your desertion as absolutely passive as in your rapture4 ,so1 from the bright glassy edge and summit of this awful fall1 you shoot down helpless1 blind1 and dizzy1--down through the surging cataract1 among the giant vapour columns1 amid the eternal roar1 to awake at the boiling foot1 and find that you yet live1 in your tossing shallop1--or rather1 you no longer1 for you yourself are dead--so much mere ballast in the bottom of the boat3 a divine and winged ,radiance has taken your place1 who animates rather than steers1 guiding1 in your stead1 by mysterious impulse4#cjd ,to the higher faculty1 then1 there are already visible1 after the first horrors1 breaking gleams of a super-celestial dawn4 ,visions are seen2 forms of glory come and go3 gifts of subtlest discernment are vouchsafed3 substantial words are spoken within1 which make you1 in that moment1 all they mean4#cje ,but all such particular and special manifestations you are peremptorily to reject1 come they from ,god or come they from the ,devil2--not even to reflect upon and recall them afterwards1 lest grievous harm ensue4 ,for the philosophy of ,john is summary4 ,two ideas alone have room there--,all and ,nothing4 ,whatsoever is created is finite3 whether actual or ideal1 it bears no proportion to the ,all1--it cannot therefore be helpful to any on their way to the ,all4 ,the ,something is no link between the opposites of ,all and ,nothing4 ,therefore1 if any view of a particular divine perfection1 any conception of ,deity1 or image of saint or angel1 be even supernaturally presented to the mind1 reject it4 ,you are aiming at the highest--at loss in the ,all4 ,everything definite and particular--all finite apprehension1 must be so much negation of the ,infinite1--must limit that ,all4 ,you should pass beyond such things to blend immediately with the ,universal1--to attain that view of ,god which is above means--is unconditioned--is1 from its illimitable vastness1 an anguish of bliss1--a glory which produces the effect of darkness4#cjf ,but why1 it will be asked1 does ,god grant these favours of vision to the saints at all1 if it is their duty to disregard them8 ,john answers1 #8,because some transition stage is unavoidable4 ,but the higher you attain1 the less of such manifestation will you meet with4 ,this portion of your progress is a grand stair-case hung with pictures2--hurry up the steps1 that you may enter the darkened chamber above1 where divine ignorance and total darkness shall make you blest4 ,if in doubt about a vision1 there is always your confessor1 to whom1 if you have not constant resort1 woe be to you6 ,but you are safe1 at any rate1 in not receiving and cherishing such inferior bestowments4 ,to reject them will be no sin--no loss4 ,for the beneficial effects they are designed to produce will be wrought by ,god internally1 if you only abide passive1 and refuse to exert about such signs those lower faculties which can only hinder your advance4'#cjg ,such a reply is but a fence of words against a serious difficulty4 ,he should be the last to talk of necessary intermediate steps who proclaims the rejection of everything mediate1--who will have the mystic be reduced to the ,nothing and rapt to the ,all1 by a single entrancing touch4#cjh ,but much higher than any visions of the picture-gallery are certain manifestations 7sometimes granted in this state7 of divine truth in its absolute nakedness4 ,these are glimpses of the veritas essentialis nude in se ipsa1 beyond all men1 and angels1 and heavenly splendours1 which ,tauler bids the mystic long for4 ,john forbids us to seek them--for effort would unseal our slumber4 ,they come altogether without consent of ours4 ,though we are not to hold ourselves so negative towards them as we should towards more palpable and inferior favours4 ,the ,quietists were charged with excluding all human co-operation in the mystical progress4 ,john must plead guilty on this count4 ,his writings abound with reiterated declarations that the soul does absolutely nothing in its night1--with prohibitions against seeking any supernatural favour or manifestation whatever4#cji ,urganda the fairy could find no way of raising the paladins she loved above the common lot of mortals1 save that of throwing them into an enchanted sleep4 ,so ,galaor1 ,amadis1 and ,esplandian1 sink into the image of death beneath her kindly wand4 ,such is the device of ,john--and so does he lull and ward venturous ,understanding1 learned ,memory1 and fiery ,will4 ,faith is the night which extinguishes ,understanding2 ,hope1 ,memory2 and ,love1 ,will4 ,the very desire after supernatural bestowments1 7though for no other purpose has everything natural been doomed to die7 would be a stirring in the torpor--a restless1 not a perfect sleep4 ,the serenest ,quiet may be ruffled by no such wish4 ,this1 therefore1 is ,john's fundamental principle4 ,all faculties and operations not beyond the limits of our nature must cease1 that we may have no natural knowledge1 no natural affection2 but find1 magically substituted1 divine apprehensions and divine sentiments quite foreign to ourselves4 ,then1 still farther1 we are desired to ignore even supernatural manifestations1 if they represent to us anything whatever2 that we may rise1 or sink 7it is the same71 to that swooning gaze on the ,infinite ,ineffable1 wherein our dissolving nature sees1 hears1 knows1 wills1 remembers nothing4#caj ,the ,,third ,,night--that of the ,memory and the ,will4#caa ,here1 not only do all the #8trivial fond records' that may have been inscribed upon remembrance vanish utterly1 but every trace of the divinest tokens and most devout experience4 ,the soul sinks into profound oblivion4 ,the flight of time is unmarked1 bodily pain unfelt1 and the place of ,memory entirely emptied of its stored #8species and cognitions1'--of everything particular and distinct4 ,the patient forgets to eat and drink1--knows not whether he has done or not done1 said or not said1 heard or not heard this or that4 #8,strange exaltation this1' cries the objector1 #8which imbrutes and makes a blank of man--sinks him below idiotic ignorance of truth and virtue6' ,john is ready with his answer4 ,this torpor1 he replies1 is but transitory4 ,the perfect mystic1 the adept established in union1 has ceased to suffer this oblivion4 ,passing through it1 he acquires a new and divine facility for every duty proper to his station4 ,he is in the supernatural state1 and his powers have so passed into ,god that the ,divine ,spirit makes them operate divinely1--all they do is divine4 ,the ,spirit makes such a man constantly ignorant of what he ought to be ignorant2 makes him remember what he ought to remember2 and love what is to be loved--,god only4 ,transformed in ,god1 these powers are human no more4#cab ,in the same way the night of will extinguishes joy1--joy in sensible good1 in moral excellence1 in supernatural gifts1 that the soul may soar to a delight above delight1 be suspended as in a limitless expanse of calm1 far beyond that lower meteoric sky which is figured over with wonders and with signs4 ,thus ,john's desired contemplatio infusa is always1 at the same time1 a contemplatio confusa4 ,at his culminating point the mystic is concealed as #8on the secret top of ,horeb2' he ascends by a hidden scale1 cloaked with darkness 7por la secreta escala--a escuras y enzelada74 ,mark the advantage of this enclouded state4 ,the ,devil1 it is said1 can only get at what is passing in our mind by observing the operations of the mental powers4 ,if1 therefore1 these are inactive and absorbed1 and a divine communication goes on1 in which they have no part whatever1 ,satan is baffled4 ,these highest manifestations1 absolutely pure1 nude1 and immediate he cannot counterfeit or hinder4 ,the soul is then blissfully incognito and anonymous4 ,this secrecy preserves the mystic from malign arts1 as the concealment of their real names was thought the safeguard of ancient cities1 since hostile sooth-sayers1 ignorant of the true name to conjure by1 could not then entice away their tutelary gods4#cac ,such then is the teaching of the ,mount ,carmel and the ,obscure ,night1 starred with numerous most irrelevant quotations from the psalms and the prophecies1 as though ,david and ,isaiah were ,quietists1 and spent their days in trying to benumb imagination1 banish the sensuous images which made them poets1 and tone down all distinct ideas to a lustreless1 formless neutral tint4 ,the ,spanish painters have not more anachronisms than the ,spanish mystics2 and ,i think of ,murillo's #8,moses striking the ,rock1' where ,andalusian costumes make gay the desert1 ,andalusian faces stoop to drink1 and ,andalusian crockery is held out to catch the dashing streams4 ,in ,john of the ,cross we behold the final masterpiece of ,romanist mysticism1 and the practice 7if here the term be applicable7 of supernatural theopathy is complete4 ,the ,art of ,sinking in ,religion--the divinity of diving1 could go no deeper4 ,the natives of ,south ,america say that the lobo or seal has to swallow great stones when he wishes to sink to the river-bed--so little natural facility has he that way4 ,we sinners1 too1 have no native alacrity for the mystical descent3 our gravitation does not tend towards that depth of nothing2 and huge and hard are the stones 7not bread7 with which this mystagogue would lade us to bring us down4 ,and when1 in imagination at least1 at the bottom1 we are smothered in an obscure night of mud4 ,what a granite boulder is this to swallow1--to be told that the faintest film of attachment that links you with any human being or created thing will frustrate all your aim1 and be stout as a cable to hold back your soul1--that with all your mind1 and soul1 and strength1 you must seek out and adore the ,uncomfortable1 for its own sake--that1 drowned and dead1 you must lie far down1 hidden1 not from the pleasant sunshine only1 but from all sweet gladness of faith and hope and love--awaiting1 in obstruction1 an abstraction4 ,this resurrection to a supersensuous serenity1 wherein divine powers supersede your own1 is a mere imagination--a change of words2 the old hallucination of the mystic4 ,after going through a certain amount of suffering1 the devotee chooses to term whatever thoughts or feelings he may have1 his own no longer3 he fancies them divine4 ,it is the same man from first to last4 ,admitting its great fundamental error--this unnaturalness1--as though grace came in to make our flesh and blood a senseless puppet pulled by celestial wires1--it must be conceded that the mysticism of ,john takes the very highest ground4 ,it looks almost with contempt upon the phantoms1 the caresses1 the theurgic toys of grosser mystics4 ,in this respect1 ,john is far beyond ,theresa4 ,he has a purpose2 he thinks he knows a way to it2 and he pursues it1 unfaltering1 to the issue4 ,he gazes steadily on the grand impalpability of the ,areopagite1 and essays to mount thither with a holy ardour of which the old ,greek gives no sign4 ,and this1 too1 with the vision-craving sentimental ,theresa at his side1 and a coarsely sensuous ,romanism all around him4 ,no wonder that so stern a spiritualism was little to the taste of some church-dignitaries in soft raiment4 ,it is impossible not to recognize a certain grandeur in such a man4 ,miserably mistaken as he was1 he is genuine throughout as mystic and ascetic4 ,every bitter cup he would press to the lips of others he had first drained himself4 ,his eagerness to suffer was no bravado--no romancing affectation1 as with many of his tribe4 ,in his last illness at ,pegnuela he was allowed his choice of removal between two places4 ,at one of them his deadly enemy was prior4 ,he bade them carry him thither1 for there he would have most to endure4 ,that infamous prior treated with the utmost barbarity the dying saint1 on whom his implacable hatred had already heaped every wrong within his power4#cad ,let1 then1 a melancholy admiration be the meed of ,john--not because the mere mention of the cross was sufficient1 frequently1 to throw him into an ecstasy1--not because his face was seen more than once radiant with a lambent fire from heaven1--these are the vulgar glories of the calendar1--but because1 believing in mystical death1 he did his best to die it1 and displayed in suffering and in action a self-sacrificing heroism which could only spring from a devout and a profound conviction4 ,we find in him no sanctimonious lies1 no mean or cruel things done for the honour of his ,church--perhaps he was not thus tempted or commanded as others have been1--and so1 while he must have less merit with ,rome as a monk1 let him have the more with us as a man4 ,note to page #ahh4 ,monte du ,carmel1 liv4 ,,ii4 ch4 ii4 and iv42 also ,la ,nuit ,obscure1 ,i4 viii4 and ,,ii4 ch4 v4-ix4 ,this night is far more dark and painful than the first and third2 and while the first is represented as common to many religious aspirants1 the second is attained but by a few4 ,si quelqu'un demande pourquoi l'me donne le nom de nuit obscure la lumire divine qui dissipe ses ignorances1 je rponds que cette divine sagesse est non-seulement la nuit de l'me1 mais encore son supplice1 pour deux raisons3 la premire est1 parce que la sublimit de la sagesse divine surpasse de telle sorte la capacit de l'me1 que ce n'est que nuit et tnbres pour elle2 la seconde1 la bassesse et l'impuret de l'me sont telles1 que cette sagesse la remplit de peines et d'obscurits4--,p4 #eic4 ,mais le plus grand supplice de l'me est de croire que ,dieu la hait1 la dlaisse1 et la jette pour cette raison dans les tnbres4444 ,en effet1 lorsque la contemplation dont ,dieu se sert pour purifier l'me la mortifie en la dpouillant de tout1 l'me prouve1 avec une vivacit pntrante1 toute l'horreur que cause la mort1 et toutes les douleurs et tous les gmissements de l'enfer1 c4444 ,on peut dire avec probabilit1 qu'une me qui a pass par ce purgatoire spirituel1 ou n'entrera pas dans le purgatoire de l'autre monde1 ou n'y demeurera pas longtemps4--,p4 #eig4 ,but the most characteristic passage on this subject is the following3 it contains the essence of his mysticism3--,les affections et les connaissances de l'esprit purifi et lev la perfection sont d'un rang suprieur aux affections et aux connaissances naturelles1 elles sont surnaturelles et divines2 de sorte que1 pour en acqurir les actes ou les habitudes1 il est ncessaire que celles qui ne sortent point des bornes de la nature soient teintes4 ,c'est pourquoi il est d'une grande utilit en cette matire que l'esprit perde dans cette nuit obscure ses connaissances naturelles1 pour tre revtu de cette lumire trs-subtile et toute divine1 et pour devenir lui-mme1 en quelque faon1 tout divin dans son union avec la sagesse de ,dieu4 ,cette nuit ou cette obscurit doit durer autant de temps qu'il en faut pour contracter l'habitude dans l'usage qu'on fait de cette lumire surnaturelle4 ,on doit dire la mme chose de la volont3 elle est oblige de se dfaire de toutes ses affections qui l'attachent aux objets naturels1 pour recevoir les admirables effets de l'amour qui est extrmement spirituel1 subtil1 dlicat1 intime1 qui surpasse tous les sentiments naturels et toutes les affections de la volont1 qui est enfin tout divin2 et afin qu'elle soit toute transforme en cette amour par l'union qui lui est accorde dans la perte de tous ses biens naturels4 ,il faut encore que la mmoire soit dnue des images qui lui forment les connaissances douces et tranquilles des choses dont elle se souvient1 afin qu'elle les regarde comme des choses trangres1 et que ces choses lui paraissent d'une manire diffrente de l'ide qu'elle en avait auparavant4 ,par ce moyen1 cette nuit obscure retirera l'esprit du sentiment commun et ordinaire qu'il avait des objets crs1 et lui imprimera un sentiment tout divin1 qui lui semblera tranger2 en sorte que l'me vivra comme hors d'elle-mme1 et leve au-dessus de la vie humaine2 elle doutera quelquefois si ce qui se passe en elle n'est point un enchantement1 ou une stupidit d'esprit2 elle s'tonnera de voir et d'entendre des choses qui lui semblent fort nouvelles1 quoiqu'elles soient les mmes que celles qu'elle avait autrefois entre les mains4 ,la cause de ce changement est parce que l'me doit perdre entirement ses connaissances et ses sentiments humains1 pour prendre des connaissances et des sentiments divins2 ce qui est plus propre de la vie future que de la vie prsente4--,p4 #fja4 ,note to page #aia4 #8,pour rpondre cette objection1 je dis que plus la mmoire est unie ,dieu1 plus elle perd ses connaissances distinctes et particulires1 jusqu' ce qu'elle les oublie entirement3 ce qui arrive lorsque l'me est tablie dans l'union parfaite4 ,c'est pourquoi elle tombe d'abord dans un grand oubli1 puisque le souvenir des espces et des connassances s'vanouit en elle4 ,ensuite elle se comporte l'gard des choses extrieures avec une ngligence si notable et un si grand mpris d'elle-mme1 qu'tant toute abme en ,dieu1 elle oublie le boire et le manger1 et elle ne sait si elle a fait quelque chose ou non1 si elle a vu ou non2 si on lui a parl ou non4 ,mais lorsqu'elle est affermie dans l'habitude de l'union1 qui est son souverain bien1 elle ne souffre plus ces oubliances dans les choses raisonnables1 dans les choses morales1 ni dans les choses naturelles3 au contraire1 elle est plus parfaite dans les oprations convenables son tat1 quoiqu'elle les produise par le ministre des images et des connaissances que ,dieu excite d'une faon particulire dans la mmoire4 ,car lorsque l'habitude de l'union1 qui est un tat surnaturel1 est forme1 la mmoire et les autres puissances quittent leurs oprations naturelles et passent jusqu' ,dieu1 qui est leur gard un terme surnaturel4 ,en sorte que la mmoire tant toute transforme en ,dieu1 ses oprations ne lui sont plus imprimes1 et ne demeurent plus attaches elle4 ,la mmoire et les autres facults de l'me sont occupes de ,dieu avec un empire si absolu1 qu'elles semblent tre toutes divines1 et que c'est lui-mme qui les meut par son esprit et par sa volont divine1 et qui les fait oprer en quelque faon divinement3 8,puisque celui10 dit l',aptre1 8qui s'unit au ,seigneur1 devient un mme esprit avec lui0 7#a ,cor4 vi4 #ag74 ,il est donc vritable que les oprations de l'me1 tant unies totalement ,dieu1 sont toutes divines4'--,monte du ,carmel1 liv4 ,,iii4 ch4 i4 ,note to page #aib4 ,la ,nuit ,obscure1 liv4 ,,ii4 ch4 xvii4 xviii43--#8,l'esprit malin ne peut connatre ce qui se passe dans la volont que par les oprations de ces puissances4 ,ainsi1 plus les communications de ,dieu son spirituelles1 intrieures1 et loignes des sens1 moins il peut dcouvrir et les pntrer'4--,p4 #fba4 ,evil angels may counterfeit those supernatural communications which are vouchsafed through the agency of the good4 ,but the infused passive contemplation1 in which neither the understanding1 the imagination1 nor the sense1 exercise their representative office1 is secret and safe4 #8,quand ,dieu la 7l'me7 comble immdiatement par lui-mme de ses grces spirituelles1 elle se drobe entirement la vue de son adversaire1 parce que ,dieu1 qui est son souverain ,seigneur1 demeure en elle1 et ni les bons ni les mauvais anges ne peuvent y avoir entre1 ni dcouvrir les communications intimes et secrtes qui se font entre ,dieu et l'me4 ,elles sont toutes divines1 elles sont infiniment leves1 elles sont en quelque sorte les sacrs attouchements des deux extrmits qui se trouvent entre ,dieu et l'me dans leur union3 et c'est l o l'me reoit plus de biens spirituels qu'en tous les autres degrs de la contemplation 7,cant4 ,i4 #a74 ,c'est aussi ce que l'pouse demandait1 quand elle priait l',epoux divin de lui donner un saint baiser de sa bouche'4--,chap4 xxiii4 p4 #fbc4 ,thus1 this culminating point of negation is at least1 to some extent1 a safeguard4 ,the extinction of knowledge1 by confining ourselves to the incomprehensible 7,lettres ,spirituelles1 p4 #gbd71 and of joy1 by renouncing spiritual delights1 the refusal to entertain any extraordinary manifestations that assume a definite form or purport1 does at the same time shut out all that region of visionary hallucination in which many mystics have passed their days4 ,it is indisputably true that the more the mystic avoids1 rather than craves1 the excitements of imagination1 sentiment1 and miracle1 the safer must he be from the delusions to which he is exposed1 if not by the juggle of lying spirits1 by the fever of his own distempered brain4 ,no one who obeys ,john's great maxim1 #8,il ne faut pas voyager pour voir1 mais pour ne pas voir1' will trouble the holy darkness of his church by any erratic novelties of light4 ,indeed1 against such danger careful provision is made by that law which is with him the sine qu non of mystical progress1--,ne regardez jamais votre suprieur1 quel qu'il soit1 que comme ,dieu mme1 puisqu'il vous est donn comme lieutenant de ,dieu4'--,prcautions ,spirituelles1 p4 #gcd4 ,footnote #cjj3 ,his exhortations here carry ascetic self-abnegation far beyond the ,quietist indifference of ,fnlon or ,madame ,guyon4 ,they were satisfied--he1 always1 and she throughout her later life--to seek a state of calm1 to hail joy or sorrow alike1 with the trustful equanimity of perfect resignation4 ,john is too violent--too much enamoured of miseries1 to await the will of ,providence4 ,his ambition will command events1 and make them torments4 #8,au reste1 le meilleur moyen1 le plus mritoire et le plus propre pour acqurir les vertus2 le moyen1 dis-je1 le plus sr pour mortifier la joie1 l'esprance1 la crainte et la douleur1 est de se porter toujours aux choses non pas les plus faciles1 mais les plus difficiles2 non pas les plus savoureuses1 mais les plus insipides2 non pas les plus agrables1 mais les plus dsagrables2 non pas celles qui consolent1 mais celles qui causent de la peine2 non pas aux plus grandes1 mais aux plus petites2 non pas aux plus sublimes et aux plus prcieuses1 mais aux plus basses et aux plus mprisables4 ,il faut enfin dsirer et rechercher ce qu'il y a de pire1 et non ce qu'il y a de meilleur1 afin de se mettre1 pour l'amour de ,jsus ,christ1 dans la privation de toutes les choses du monde1 et d'entrer dans l'esprit d'une nudit parfaite4444 #8,premirement1 il faut que celui qui veut rprimer cette passion tche de faire les choses qui tournent son dshonneur1 et il aura soin de se faire mpriser aussi par le prochain4 #8,secondement1 il dira lui-mme et fera dire aux autres les choses qui lui attirent du mpris4'--,monte du ,carmel1 liv4 ,,ii4 ch4 xiii4 ,footnote #cja3 ,dionysius is very clearly followed into his darkness in ,la ,monte du ,carmel1 liv4 ,,ii4 chap4 viii42 and his ,hierarchies reappear in ,la ,nuit ,obscure1 liv4 ,,ii4 ch4 xii4 ,footnote #cjb3 ,la ,nuit ,obscure1 liv4 ,,ii4 ch4 iv42 et passim4 ,footnote #cjc3 ,this first ,night is treated of at length in the first book of the ,monte du ,carmel1 and in the first of the ,nuit ,obscure4 ,the supernatural sensuous enjoyments1 alluded to1 are described in the ,monte du ,carmel1 liv4 ,,ii4 ch4 xi4 ,they are placed in the second ,night1--the compensation not taking place immediately2 and their recipient is on no account to rely on them1 or desire their continuance 7p4 #ddd74 ,by #8sense1' ,john understands1 not the body merely1 but the least disorder of the passions1 and all those imperfections so common to beginners which arise from an undue eagerness for religious enjoyments1 such1 for example1 as what he calls spiritual avarice1 spiritual luxury1 spiritual gourmandise1 c4 ,footnote #cjd3 ,see ,note on p4 #aie4 ,footnote #cje3 ,monte du ,carmel1 liv4 ,,ii4 ch4 xxv4-xxxii4 ,footnote #cjf3 ,ibid4 ch4 viii4 and vi4 ,footnote #cjg3 ,ibid4 ch4 xvii4 and liv4 ,,iii4 ch4 xii4 ,footnote #cjh3 ,what a scope for the indignant eloquence of ,bossuet1 had ,fnlon proclaimed as possible such a sudden equipment with all imaginable virtues as this3--,quelques-unes de ces connaissances et de ces touches intrieures que ,dieu rpand dans l'me l'enrichissent de telle sorte qu'une seule suffit1 non-seulement pour la dlivrer tout d'un coup des imperfections qu'elle n'avait pu vaincre durant tout le cours de sa vie1 mais aussi pour l'orner des vertus chrtiennes et des dons divins4--,monte du ,carmel1 liv4 ,,ii4 ch4 xxvi4 p4 #dhd4 ,footnote #cji3 ,in the chapter just cited1 ,john says expressly1 #8,elle ne saurait cependant s'lever ces connaissances et ces touches divines par sa co-opration1' and describes these gifts as coming from ,god1 #8subitement et sans attendre le consentement de la volont4'--,p4 #dhe4 ,so again1 quite as strongly1 liv4 ,,ii4 chap4 xi4 p4 #dde4 ,he discountenances the attempt to seek perfection by the #8voies surnaturelles1' yet his books are an introduction to the mystical evening1 and a guide through the mystical midnight4 ,footnote #caj3 ,la ,nuit ,obscure1 liv4 ,,ii4 ch4 ix42 especially the passage cited in note on p4 #aie4 ,footnote #caa3 ,this night occupies the third book of the ,monte du ,carmel4 ,footnote #cab3 ,see ,note on p4 #aif4 ,footnote #cac3 ,see second ,note on p4 #aif4 ,footnote #cad3 ,see the life of the saint in ,alban ,butler1 ,nov4 #bd4 ,,book ,,the ,,tenth ,,quietism4 ,,chapter ,i4 ,love6 if thy destined sacrifice am ,i1 ,come1 slay thy victim1 and prepare thy fires2 ,plunged in thy depths of mercy let me die ,the death which every soul that lives desires6 ,,madame ,,guyon4 #8,do you remember1' said ,atherton to ,willoughby1 when he had called to see him one morning1 #8the hunt we once had after that passage in ,jeremy ,taylor1 about ,bishop ,ivo's adventure8 ,coleridge relates the story without saying exactly where it is1 and his daughter states in a note that she had been unable to find the place in ,taylor4' #8,i recollect it perfectly2 and we discovered it1 ,i think1 in the first part of his sermon ,on the ,mercy of the ,divine ,judgments4 ,ivo1 going on an embassy for ,st4 ,louis1 meets by the way a grave1 sad woman1 doesn't he8--with fire in one hand1 and water in the other2 and when he inquires what these symbols may mean1 she answers1 8,my purpose is with fire to burn ,paradise1 and with my water to quench the flames of hell1 that men may serve ,god without the incentives of hope and fear1 and purely for the love of ,god40 #8,well1 ,gower has painted her portrait for us1--,queen ,quietude1 he calls her3 and it is to be hung up here over my chimney-piece1 by the next evening we meet together4' 99 99 99 99 99 ,the evening came4 ,atherton was to read a paper on #8,madame ,guyon and the ,quietist ,controversy1' and ,gower was to exhibit and explain his allegorical picture4 ,this painting represented a female figure1 simply clad in sombre garments1 sitting on a fragment of rock at the summit of a high hill4 ,on her head hung a garland1 half untwined1 from neglect1 which had been fantastically woven of cypress1 bound about with heart's-ease4 ,many flowers of the heart's-ease had dropped off1 withered2 some were lying unheeded in her lap4 ,her face was bent downward2 its expression perfectly calm1 and the cast of sadness it wore rather recorded a past1 than betrayed a present sorrow4 ,her eyes were fixed pensively1 and without seeming to see them1 on the thin hands which lay folded on her knees4 ,no anxious effort of thought contracted that placid brow2 no eager aspiration lifted those meekly-drooping eyelids4 ,at her feet lay1 on her right1 the little brazier in which she had carried her fire1 still emitting its grey curls of smoke2 and1 on her left1 the overturned water-urn--a ,fortunatus-purse of water1--from whose silver hollow an inexhaustible stream welled out1 and leaping down1 was lost to sight among the rocks4 ,behind her lay two wastes1 stretching from east to west4 ,the vast tracts1 visible from her far-seeing mountain1 were faintly presented in the distance of the picture4 ,but they were never looked upon2 her back was toward them2 they belonged to a past never remembered4 ,in the east stretched level lands1 covered far as the eye could reach with cold grey inundation4 ,here and there coal-black ridges and dots indicated the highest grounds still imperfectly submerged2 and in some places clouds of steam1 water-spouts1 and jets of stones and mire1--even boulders of rock1 hurled streaming out of the waters into the air1--betrayed the last struggles of the ,fire-,kingdom with the invasion of those illimitable tides4 ,so have her enchantments slain the ,giant of ,fire1 and laid him to rest under a water-pall4 ,the place of dolours and of endless burning--so populous with ,sorrows--is to be a place of great waters1 where the slow vacant waves of the far-glittering reaches will come and go among the channels and the pools1 and not even the bittern shall be there1 with his foot to print the ooze1 with his wing to shadow the sleeping shallows1 with his cry to declare it all a desolation4 ,in the western background1 the saintly art of ,queen ,quietude has made a whole burnt-offering of the cedar shades1 and flowery labyrinths1 and angel-builded crystal domes of ,paradise4 ,most fragrant holocaust that ever breathed against the sky6 ,those volumes of cloud along the west1 through which the sun is going down with dimmed and doubtful lustre 7as though his had been the hand which put the torch to such a burning7--they are heavy with spicy odours4 ,such sweet wonders of the ,eden woodlands cannot but give out sweetness in their dying4 ,the heavens grow dusk and slumbrous with so much incense4 ,a dreamy faintness from the laden air weighs down the sense4 ,it seems time to sleep--for us1 for all nature1 to sleep1 weary of terrestrial grossness and of mortal limitation1--to sleep1 that all may awake1 made new2 and so1 transformed divinely to the first ideal1 have divine existence only1 and ,god be all and in all4 ,for ,god is love1 and when hope and fear are dead1 then love is all4 ,somewhat thus did ,gower describe his picture2 whereon1 in truth1 he had expended no little art1--such a haze of repose1 and likewise of unreality1 had he contrived to throw over this work of fancy2 and such a tone had he given1 both to the work of the fire on the one side1 and to that of the water on the other4 ,the fire did not seem a cruel fire1 nor the water an inhospitable water4 ,golden lines of light from the sun1 and rose-red reflections from clouds whose breasts were feathered with fire1 rested on the heads of the waves1 where the great flood lay rocking4 ,the very ruins of ,paradise1--those charred tree-trunks--those dusty river-beds--that shrivelled boskage and white grass1--did not look utterly forlorn4 ,some of the glassy walls still stood1 shining like rubies in the sunset1 and glittering at their basements and their gateways with solid falls and pools of gold and silver1 where their rich adornment had run down molten to their feet4 ,the ,destroyer was the ,purifier2 and the waiting sigh for renewal was full of trust4 #8,a better frontispiece1' said ,atherton1 #8,i could not have for my poor paper4 ,i might have been raised to a less prosaic strain1 and omitted some less relevant matter1 had ,i been able to place your picture before me while writing4 ,for upon this question of disinterested love1 and so of quietude1 our mysticism now mainly turns4 ,with ,fnlon and ,madame ,guyon1 mysticism hovers no longer on the confines of pantheism4 ,it deals less with mere abstractions4 ,it is less eager to have everything which is in part done away1 that the perfect may come1 even while we are here4 ,it is more patient and lowly1 and will oftener use common means4 ,its inner light is not arrogant--for submissive love is that light2 and it flames forth with no pretension to special revelations and novel gospels2 neither does it construct any inspired system of philosophy4 ,it is less feverishly ecstatic1 less grossly theurgic1 than in the lower forms of its earlier history4 ,comparative health is indicated by the fact that it aspires chiefly to a state of continuous resignation1--covets less starts of transport and instantaneous transformations4 ,it seeks1 rather1 a long and even reach of trustful calm1 which shall welcome joy and sorrow with equal mind1--shall live in the present1 moment by moment1 passive and dependent on the will of the ,well-,beloved4 ,,willoughby4 ,with ,madame ,guyon1 too1 ,i think the point of the old antithesis about which the mystics have so much to say is shifted2--,i mean that the contrast lies1 with her1 not between ,finite and ,infinite--the finite ,affirmation1 the infinite ,negation1--between sign and thing signified--between mode and modelessness--mediate and immediate1--but simply between ,god and ,self4 ,,atherton4 ,and so mysticism grows somewhat more clear1 and reduces itself to narrower compass4 ,,gower4 ,and1 just as it does so1 is condemned by ,rome4 ,,atherton4 ,no doubt the attempt to reach an unattainable disinterestedness was less dangerous and less unwholesome than the strain after superhuman knowledge and miraculous vision4 ,,mrs4 ,,atherton4 ,i have just opened on one of her verses in ,cowper here1 which exactly expresses what ,mr4 ,willoughby was suggesting3-- ,the love of ,thee flows just as much ,as that of ebbing self subsides2 ,our hearts1 their scantiness is such1 ,bear not the conflict of two rival tides4 ,stay2 here is one ,i marked1 which goes farther still4 ,it is an allegorical poem4 ,love has bidden her embark1 and then withdraws the vessel1--leaves her floating on the rushes and water-flowers1 and spreads his wings for flight1 heedless of her cries and prayers4 ,at last she says1-- ,be not angry2 ,i resign ,henceforth all my will to thine3 ,i consent that thou depart1 ,though thine absence breaks my heart2 ,go then1 and for ever too2 ,all is right that thou wilt do4 ,this was just what ,love intended1 ,he was now no more offended2 ,soon as ,i became a child1 ,love returned to me and smiled3 ,never strife shall more betide ',twixt the bridegroom and his bride4 ,,atherton4 ,yes1 this is the pure love1 the holy indifference of ,quietism4 ,,willoughby4 ,may not this imaginary surrender of eternal happiness--or1 at least1 the refusal to cherish ardent anticipations of heaven1 really invigorate our spiritual nature1 by concentrating our religion on a present salvation from sin8 ,,atherton4 ,i think it possibly may1 where contemplation of heaven is the resource of spiritual indolence or weariness in well-doing1--where the mind is prone to look forward to the better world1 too much as a place of escape from the painstaking1 and difficulty1 and discipline of time4 ,but where the hope of heaven is of the true sort--to put it out of sight is grievously to weaken1 instead of strengthening1 our position4 ,i think we should all find1 if we tried1 or were unhappily forced to try1 the experiment of sustaining ourselves in a religion that ignored the future1 that we were lamentably enfeebled in two ways4 ,first of all1 by the loss of a support--that heart and courage which the prospect of final victory gives to every combatant2 and then1 secondly1 by the immense drain of mental energy involved in the struggle necessary to reconcile ourselves to that loss4 ,there can be no struggle so exhaustive as this1 for it is against our nature1--not as sin has marred 7so ,madame ,guyon thought71 but as ,god has made it4 ,fearful must be the wear and tear of our religious being1 in its vital functions1--and this1 not to win1 but to abandon an advantage4 #8,he that hath this hope purifieth himself4' ,so far from being able to dispense with it1 we find in the hope of salvation1 the helmet of our ,christian armour4 ,it is no height of ,christian heroism1 but presumption rather1 to encounter1 bare-headed1 the onslaughts of sin and sorrow--even though the sword of the ,spirit may shine naked in our right hand4 ,but we should1 at the same time1 remember that our celestial citizenship is realised by present heavenly-mindedness3--a height and purity of temper1 however1 which grows most within as we have the habit of humbly regarding that kingdom as a place prepared for us4 ,we should not limit our foretastes of heaven to intervals of calm4 ,we may often be growing most heavenly amid scenes most unlike heaven4 ,,willoughby4 ,in persecution1 for example4 ,,atherton4 ,we should not think that we catch its glory only in happy moments of contemplation1 though such musing may well have its permitted place4 ,let us say also that every victory over love of ease1 over discontent1 over the sluggish coldness of the heart1 over reluctance to duty1 over unkindly tempers1 is in fact to us an earnest and foretaste of that heaven1 where we shall actively obey with glad alacrity1 where we shall be pleased in all things with all that pleases ,god1 where glorious powers shall be gloriously developed1 undeadened by any lethargy1 unhindered by any painful limitation2 and where that ,love1 which here has to contend for very life1 and to do battle for its rightful enjoyments1 shall possess us wholly1 and rejoice and reign among all the fellowships of the blest throughout the everlasting day4 ,,gower4 ,but all this while we have been very rude4 ,here is ,madame ,guyon come to tell us her story1 and we have kept her1 ,i don't know how long1 standing at the door4 ,,kate4 ,yes1 let us hear your paper first1 ,mr4 ,atherton3 we can talk afterwards1 you know4 ,so ,atherton began to read4 ,,quietism4 ,part ,i4--,madame ,guyon4 ,i4 ,jeanne ,marie ,bouvires de la ,mothe was born on ,easter-eve1 ,april #acth1 #afdh1 at ,montargis4 ,her sickly childhood was distinguished by precocious imitations of that religious life which was held in honour by every one around her4 ,she loved to be dressed in the habit of a little nun4 ,when little more than four years old1 she longed for martyrdom4 ,her school-fellows placed her on her knees on a white cloth1 flourished a sabre over her head1 and told her to prepare for the stroke4 ,a shout of triumphant laughter followed the failure of the child's courage4 ,she was neglected by her mother1 and knocked about by a spoiled brother4 ,when not at school1 she was the pet or the victim of servants4 ,she began to grow irritable from ill-treatment1 and insincere from fear4 ,when ten years old1 she found a ,bible in her sick room1 and read it1 she says1 from morning to night1 committing to memory the historical parts4 ,some of the writings of ,st4 ,francis de ,sales1 and the ,life of ,madame de ,chantal1 fell in her way4 ,the latter work proved a powerful stimulant4 ,there she read of humiliations and austerities numberless1 of charities lavished with a princely munificence1 of visions enjoyed and miracles wrought in honour of those saintly virtues1 and of the intrepidity with which the famous enthusiast wrote with a red-hot iron on her bosom1 the characters of the holy name ,jesus4 ,the girl of twelve years old was bent on copying these achievements on her little scale4 ,she relieved1 taught1 and waited on the poor2 and1 for lack of the red-hot iron or the courage1 sewed on to her breast with a large needle a piece of paper containing the name of ,christ4 ,she even forged a letter to secure her admission to a conventual establishment as a nun4 ,the deceit was immediately detected2 but the attempt shows how much more favourable was the religious atmosphere in which she grew up1 to the prosperity of convents than to the inculcation of truth4 ,with ripening years1 religion gave place to vanity4 ,her handsome person and brilliant conversational powers fitted her to shine in society4 ,she began to love dress1 and feel jealous of rival beauties4 ,like ,st4 ,theresa1 at the same age1 she sat up far into the night1 devouring romances4 ,her autobiography records her experience of the mischievous effects of those tales of chivalry and passion4 ,when nearly sixteen1 it was arranged that she should marry the wealthy ,m4 ,guyon4 ,this gentleman1 whom she had seen but three days before her marriage1 was twenty-two years older than herself4 ,the faults she had were of no very grave description1 but her husband's house was destined to prove for several years a pitiless school for their correction4 ,he lived with his mother1 a vulgar and hard-hearted woman4 ,her low and penurious habits were unaffected by their wealth2 and in the midst of riches1 she was happiest scolding in the kitchen about some farthing matter4 ,she appears to have hated ,madame ,guyon with all the strength of her narrow mind4 ,m4 ,guyon loved his wife after his selfish sort4 ,if she was ill1 he was inconsolable2 if any one spoke against her1 he flew into a passion2 yet1 at the instigation of his mother1 he was continually treating her with harshness4 ,an artful servant girl1 who tended his gouty leg1 was permitted daily to mortify and insult his wife4 ,madame ,guyon had been accustomed at home to elegance and refinement1--beneath her husband's roof she found politeness contemned and rebuked as pride4 ,when she spoke1 she had been listened to with attention1--now she could not open her mouth without contradiction4 ,she was charged with presuming to show them how to talk1 reproved for disputatious forwardness1 and rudely silenced4 ,she could never go to see her parents without having bitter speeches to bear on her return4 ,they1 on their part1 reproached her with unnatural indifference towards her own family for the sake of her new connexions4 ,the ingenious malignity of her mother-in-law filled every day with fresh vexations4 ,the high spirit of the young girl was completely broken4 ,she had already gained a reputation for cleverness and wit--now she sat nightmared in company1 nervous1 stiff1 and silent1 the picture of stupidity4 ,at every assemblage of their friends she was marked out for some affront1 and every visitor at the house was instructed in the catalogue of her offences4 ,sad thoughts would come--how different might all this have been had she been suffered to select some other suitor6 ,but it was too late4 ,the brief romance of her life was gone indeed4 ,there was no friend into whose heart she could pour her sorrows4 ,meanwhile1 she was indefatigable in the discharge of every duty1--she endeavoured by kindness1 by cheerful forbearance1 by returning good for evil1 to secure some kinder treatment--she was ready to cut out her tongue that she might make no passionate reply--she reproached herself bitterly for the tears she could not hide4 ,but these coarse1 hard natures were not so to be won4 ,her magnanimity surprised1 but did not soften minds to which it was utterly incomprehensible4#cae ,her best course would have been self-assertion and war to the very utmost4 ,she would have been justified in demanding her right to be mistress in her own house--in declaring it incompatible with the obligations binding upon either side1 that a third party should be permitted to sow dissension between a husband and his wife--in putting her husband1 finally1 to the choice between his wife and his mother4 ,m4 ,guyon is the type of a large class of men4 ,they stand high in the eye of the world--and not altogether undeservedly--as men of principle4 ,but their domestic circle is the scene of cruel wrongs from want of reflection1 from a selfish1 passionate inconsiderateness4 ,they would be shocked at the charge of an act of barbarity towards a stranger1 but they will inflict years of mental distress on those most near to them1 for want of decision1 self-control1 and some conscientious estimate of what their home duties truly involve4 ,had the obligations he neglected1 the wretchedness of which he was indirectly the author1 been brought fairly before the mind of ,m4 ,guyon1 he would probably have determined on the side of justice1 and a domestic revolution would have been the consequence4 ,but ,madame ,guyon conceived herself bound to suffer in silence4 ,looking back on those miserable days1 she traced a father's care in the discipline she endured4 ,providence had transplanted ,self from a garden where it expanded under love and praise1 to a highway where every passing foot might trample it in the dust4 ,a severe illness brought her more than once to the brink of the grave4 ,she heard of her danger with indifference1 for life had no attraction4 ,heavy losses befel the family--she could feel no concern4 ,to end her days in a hospital was even an agreeable anticipation4 ,poverty and disgrace could bring no change which would not be more tolerable than her present suffering4 ,she laboured1 with little success1 to find comfort in religious exercises4 ,she examined herself rigidly1 confessed with frequency1 strove to subdue all care about her personal appearance1 and while her maid arranged her hair--how1 she cared not--was lost in the study of ,thomas ,kempis4 ,at length she consulted a ,franciscan1 a holy man1 who had just emerged from a five years' solitude4 #8,madame1' said he1 #8you are disappointed and perplexed because you seek without what you have within4 ,accustom yourself to seek ,god in your heart1 and you will find ,him4' ,,ii4 ,these words of the old ,franciscan embody the response which has been uttered in every age by the oracle of mysticism4 ,it has its truth and its falsehood1 as men understand it4 ,there is a legend of an artist1 who was about to carve from a piece of costly sandal-wood an image of the ,madonna2 but the material was intractable--his hand seemed to have lost its skill--he could not approach his ideal4 ,when about to relinquish his efforts in despair1 a voice in a dream bade him shape the figure from the oak-block which was about to feed his hearth4 ,he obeyed1 and produced a masterpiece4 ,this story represents the truth which mysticism upholds when it appears as the antagonist of superstitious externalism4 ,the materials of religious happiness lie1 as it were1 near at hand--among affections and desires which are homely1 common1 and of the fireside4 ,let the right direction1 the heavenly influence1 be received from without2 and heaven is regarded with the love of home1 and home sanctified by the hope of heaven4 ,the far-fetched costliness of outward works--the restless1 selfish bargaining with asceticism and with priestcraft for a priceless heaven1 can never redeem and renew a soul to peace4 ,but mysticism has not stopped here2 it takes a step farther1 and that step is false4 ,it would seclude the soul too much from the external2 and1 to free it from a snare1 removes a necessary help4 ,like some overshadowing tree1 it hides the rising plant from the force of storms1 but it also intercepts the appointed sunshine--it protects1 but it deprives--and beneath its boughs hardy weeds have grown more vigorously than precious grain4 ,removing1 more or less1 the counterpoise of the letter1 in its zeal for the spirit1 it promotes an intense and morbid self-consciousness4 ,roger ,north tells us that when he and his brother stood on the top of the ,monument1 it was difficult for them to persuade themselves that their weight would not throw down the building4 ,the dizzy elevation of the mystic produces sometimes a similar overweaning sense of personality4 ,often instead of rising above the infirmities of our nature1 and the common laws of life1 the mystic becomes the sport of the idlest phantasy1 the victim of the most humiliating reaction4 ,the excited and overwrought temperament mistakes every vibration of the fevered nerves for a manifestation from without2 as in the solitude1 the silence1 and the glare of a great desert1 travellers have seemed to hear distinctly the church bells of their native village4 ,in such cases an extreme susceptibility of the organ1 induced by peculiarities of climate1 gives to a mere conception or memory the power of an actual sound2 and1 in a similar way1 the mystic has often both tempted and enraptured himself--his own breath has made both the #8airs from heaven1' and the #8blasts from hell2' and the attempt to annihilate ,self has ended at last in leaving nothing but ,self behind4 ,when the tide of enthusiasm has ebbed1 and the channel has become dry1 simply because humanity cannot long endure a strain so excessive1 then that magician and master of legerdemain1 the ,fancy1 is summoned to recal1 to eke out1 or to interpret the mystical experience2 then that fantastic acrobat1 ,affectation1 is admitted to play its tricks--just as1 when the waters of the ,nile are withdrawn1 the canals of ,cairo are made the stage on which the jugglers exhibit their feats of skill to the crowds on either bank4 ,,iii4 ,to return to ,madame ,guyon4 ,from the hour of that interview with the ,franciscan she was a mystic4 ,the secret of the interior life flashed upon her in a moment4 ,she had been starving in the midst of fulness2 ,god was near1 not far off2 the kingdom of heaven was within her4 ,the love of ,god took possession of her soul with an inexpressible happiness4 ,beyond question1 her heart apprehended1 in that joy1 the great truth that ,god is love--that ,he is more ready to forgive1 than we to ask forgiveness--that ,he is not an austere being whose regard is to be purchased by rich gifts1 tears1 and penance4 ,this emancipating1 sanctifying belief became the foundation of her religion4 ,she raised on this basis of true spirituality a mystical superstructure1 in which there was some hay and stubble1 but the corner stone had first been rightly laid1 never to be removed from its place4 ,prayer1 which had before been so difficult1 was now delightful and indispensable2 hours passed away like moments--she could scarcely cease from praying4 ,her trials seemed great no longer2 her inward joy consumed1 like a fire1 the reluctance1 the murmur1 and the sorrow1 which had their birth in self4 ,a spirit of confiding peace1 a sense of rejoicing possession1 pervaded all her days4 ,god was continually present with her1 and she seemed completely yielded up to ,god4 ,she appeared to feel herself1 and to behold all creatures1 as immersed in the gracious omnipresence of the ,most ,high4 ,in her adoring contemplation of the ,divine presence1 she found herself frequently unable to employ any words1 or to pray for any particular blessings4#caf ,she was then little more than twenty years of age4 ,the ardour of her devotion would not suffer her to rest even here4 ,it appeared to her that self was not yet sufficiently suppressed4 ,there were some things she chose as pleasant1 other things she avoided as painful4 ,she was possessed with the notion that every choice which can be referred to self is selfish1 and therefore criminal4 ,on this principle1 sop's traveller1 who gathered his cloak about him in the storm1 and relinquished it in the sunshine1 should be stigmatized as a selfish man1 because he thought only of his own comfort1 and did not remember at the moment his family1 his country1 or his ,maker4 ,it is not regard for self which makes us selfish1 but regard for self to the exclusion of due regard for others4 ,but the zeal of ,madame ,guyon blinded her to distinctions such as these4 ,she became filled with an insatiable desire of suffering4#cag ,she resolved to force herself to what she disliked1 and deny herself what was gratifying1 that the mortified senses might at last have no choice whatever4 ,she displayed the most extraordinary power of will in her efforts to annihilate her will4 ,every day she took the discipline with scourges pointed with iron4 ,she tore her flesh with brambles1 thorns1 and nettles4 ,her rest was almost destroyed by the pain she endured4 ,she was in very delicate health1 continually falling ill1 and could eat scarcely anything4 ,yet she forced herself to eat what was most nauseous to her2 she often kept wormwood in her mouth1 and put coloquintida in her food1 and when she walked she placed stones in her shoes4 ,if a tooth ached she would bear it without seeking a remedy2 when it ached no longer1 she would go and have it extracted4 ,she imitated ,madame ,chantal in dressing the sores of the poor1 and ministering to the wants of the sick4 ,on one occasion she found that she could not seek the indulgence offered by her ,church for remitting some of the pains of purgatory4 ,at that time she felt no doubt concerning the power of the priest to grant such absolution1 but she thought it wrong to desire to escape any suffering4 ,she was afraid of resembling those mercenary souls1 who are afraid not so much of displeasing ,god1 as of the penalties attached to sin4 ,she was too much in earnest for visionary sentimentalism4 ,her efforts manifest a serious practical endeavour after that absolute disinterestedness which she erroneously thought both attainable and enjoined4 ,she was far from attaching any expiatory value to these acts of voluntary mortification1 they were a means to an end4 ,when she believed that end attained1 in the entire death of self1 she relinquished them4 ,,iv4 ,situated as ,madame ,guyon was now1 her mind had no resource but to collapse upon itself1 and the feelings so painfully pent up became proportionately vehement4 ,she found a friend in one ,mre ,granger2 but her she could see seldom1 mostly by stealth4 ,an ignorant confessor joined her mother-in-law and husband in the attempt to hinder her from prayer and religious exercises4 ,she endeavoured in everything to please her husband1 but he complained that she loved ,god so much she had no love left for him4 ,she was watched day and night2 she dared not stir from her mother-in-law's chamber or her husband's bedside4 ,if she took her work apart to the window1 they followed her there1 to see that she was not in prayer4 ,when her husband went abroad1 he forbade her to pray in his absence4 ,the affections even of her child were taken from her1 and the boy was taught to disobey and insult his mother4 ,thus utterly alone1 ,madame ,guyon1 while apparently engaged in ordinary matters1 was constantly in a state of abstraction2 her mind was elsewhere1 rapt in devout contemplation4 ,she was in company without hearing a word that was said4 ,she went out into the garden to look at the flowers1 and could bring back no account of them1 the eye of her reverie could mark nothing actually visible4 ,when playing at piquet1 to oblige her husband1 this #8interior attraction' was often more powerfully felt than even when at church4 ,in her ,autobiography she describes her experience as follows3-- #8,the spirit of prayer was nourished and increased from their contrivances and endeavours to disallow me any time for practising it4 ,i loved without motive or reason for loving2 for nothing passed in my head1 but much in the innermost of my soul4 ,i thought not about any recompence1 gift1 or favour1 or anything which regards the lover4 ,the ,well-beloved was the only object which attracted my heart wholly to ,himself4 ,i could not contemplate ,his attributes4 ,i knew nothing else but to love and to suffer4 ,oh1 ignorance more truly learned than any science of the ,doctors1 since it so well taught me ,jesus ,christ crucified1 and brought me to be in love with ,his holy cross6 ,in its beginning ,i was attracted with so much force1 that it seemed as if my head was going to join my heart4 ,i found that insensibly my body bent in spite of me4 ,i did not then comprehend from whence it came2 but have learned since1 that as all passed in the will1 which is the sovereign of the powers1 that attracted the others after it1 and reunited them in ,god1 their divine centre and sovereign happiness4 ,and as these powers were then unaccustomed to be united1 it required the more violence to effect that union4 ,wherefore it was the more perceived4 ,afterwards it became so strongly riveted as to seem to be quite natural4 ,this was so strong that ,i could have wished to die1 in order to be inseparably united without any interstice to ,him who so powerfully attracted my heart4 ,as all passed in the will1 the imagination and the understanding being absorbed in it1 in a union of enjoyment1 ,i knew not what to say1 having never read or heard of such a state as ,i experienced2 for1 before this1 ,i had known nothing of the operations of ,god in souls4 ,i had only read ,philothea 7written by ,st4 ,francis de ,sales71 with the ,imitation of ,christ 7by ,thomas ,kempis71 and the ,holy ,scriptures2 also the ,spiritual ,combat1 which mentions none of these things4'#cah ,in this extract she describes strange physical sensations as accompanying her inward emotion4 ,the intense excitement of the soul assumes1 in her over-strained and secluded imagination1 the character of a corporeal seizure4 ,the sickly frame1 so morbidly sensitive1 appears to participate in the supernatural influences communicated to the spirit4 ,on a subsequent occasion1 she speaks of herself as so oppressed by the fulness of the ,divine manifestations imparted to her1 as to be compelled to loosen her dress4 ,more than once some of those who sat next her imagined that they perceived a certain marvellous efflux of grace proceeding from her to themselves4 ,she believed that many persons1 for whom she was interceding with great fervour1 were sensible at the time of an extraordinary gracious influence instantaneously vouchsafed1 and that her spirit communicated mysteriously1 #8in the ,lord1' with the spirits of those dear to her when far away4 ,she traced a special intervention of ,providence in the fact1 that she repeatedly #8felt a strong draught to the door' just when it was necessary to go out to receive a secret letter from her friend1 ,mre ,granger2 that the rain should have held up precisely when she was on her road to or from mass2 and that at the very intervals when she was able to steal out to hear it1 some priest was always found performing1 or ready to perform the service1 though at a most unusual hour4#cai ,v4 ,imaginary as all this may have been1 the ,church of ,rome1 at least1 had no right to brand with the stigma of extravagance any such transference of the spiritual to the sensuous1 of the metaphysical to the physical4 ,the fancies of ,madame ,guyon in this respect are innocent enough in comparison with the monstrosities devised by ,romish marvel-mongers to exalt her saints withal4 ,st4 ,philip ,neri was so inflamed with love to ,god as to be insensible to all cold1 and burned with such a fire of devotion that his body1 divinely feverish1 could not be cooled by exposure to the wildest winter night4 ,for two-and-fifty years he was the subject of a supernatural palpitation1 which kept his bed and chair1 and everything moveable about him1 in a perpetual tremble4 ,for that space of time his breast was miraculously swollen to the thickness of a fist above his heart4 ,on a post-mortem examination of the holy corpse1 it was found that two of the ribs had been broken1 to allow the sacred ardour of his heart more room to play6 ,the doctors swore solemnly that the phenomenon could be nothing less than a miracle4 ,a divine hand had thus literally #8enlarged the heart' of the devotee4#cbj ,st4 ,philip enjoyed1 with many other saints1 the privilege of being miraculously elevated into the air by the fervour of his heavenward aspirations4 ,the ,acta ,sanctorum relates how ,ida of ,louvain--seized with an overwhelming desire to present her gifts with the ,wise ,men to the child ,jesus--received1 on the eve of the ,three ,kings1 the distinguished favour of being permitted to swell to a terrific size1 and then gradually to return to her original dimensions4 ,on another occasion1 she was gratified by being thrown down in the street in an ecstacy1 and enlarging so that her horror-stricken attendant had to embrace her with all her might to keep her from bursting4 ,the noses of eminent saints have been endowed with so subtile a sense that they have detected the stench of concealed sins1 and enjoyed1 as a literal fragrance1 the well-known odour of sanctity4 ,st4 ,philip ,neri was frequently obliged to hold his nose and turn away his head when confessing very wicked people4 ,in walking the streets of some depraved ,italian town1 the poor man must have endured all the pains of ,coleridge in ,cologne1 where1 he says1 #8,i counted two-and-seventy stenches1 ,all well-defined1 and several stinks6' ,maria of ,oignys received what theurgic mysticism calls the gift of jubilation4 ,for three days and nights upon the point of death1 she sang without remission her ecstatic swan-song1 at the top of a voice whose hoarseness was miraculously healed4 ,she felt as though the wing of an angel were spread upon her breast1 thrilling her heart with the rapture1 and pouring from her lips the praises1 of the heavenly world4 ,with the melodious modulation of an inspired recitative1 she descanted on the mysteries of the ,trinity and the incarnation--improvised profound expositions of the ,scripture--invoked the saints1 and interceded for her friends4#cba ,a nun who visited ,catharina ,ricci in her ecstasy1 saw with amazement her face transformed into the likeness of the ,redeemer's countenance4 ,st4 ,hildegard1 in the enjoyment and description of her visions1 and in the utterance of her prophecies1 was inspired with a complete theological terminology hitherto unknown to mortals4 ,a glossary of the divine tongue was long preserved among her manuscripts at ,wiesbaden4#cbb ,it is recorded in the life of ,st4 ,veronica of ,binasco1 that she received the miraculous gift of tears in a measure so copious1 that the spot where she knelt appeared as though a jug of water had been overset there4 ,she was obliged to have an earthen vessel ready in her cell to receive the supernatural efflux1 which filled it frequently to the weight of several ,milan pounds6 ,ida of ,nivelles1 when in an ecstasy one day1 had it revealed to her that a dear friend was at the same moment in the same condition4 ,the friend also was simultaneously made aware that ,ida was immersed in the same abyss of divine light with herself4 ,thenceforward they were as one soul in the ,lord1 and the ,virgin ,mary appeared to make a third in the saintly fellowship4 ,ida was frequently enabled to communicate with spiritual personages1 without words1 after the manner of angelic natures4 ,on one occasion1 when at a distance from a priest to whom she was much attached1 both she and the holy man were entranced at the same time2 and1 when wrapt to heaven1 he beheld her in the presence of ,christ1 at whose command she communicated to him1 by a spiritual kiss1 a portion of the grace with which she herself had been so richly endowed4 ,to ,clara of ,montfaucon allusion has already been made4 ,in the right side of her heart was found1 completely formed1 a little figure of ,christ upon the cross1 about the size of a thumb4 ,on the left1 under what resembled the bloody cloth1 lay the instruments of the passion--the crown of thorns1 the nails1 c4 ,so sharp was the miniature lance1 that the ,vicar-,general ,berengarius1 commissioned to assist at the examination by the ,bishop of ,spoleto1 pricked therewith his reverend finger4 ,this marvel was surpassed in the eighteenth century by a miracle more piquant still4 ,veronica ,giuliani caused a drawing to be made of the many forms and letters which she declared had been supernaturally modelled within her heart4 ,to the exultation of the faithful--and the everlasting confusion of all ,jews1 ,protestants1 and ,turks--a post-mortem examination disclosed the accuracy of her description1 to the minutest point4 ,there were the sacred initials in a large and distinct ,roman character1 the crown of thorns1 two flames1 seven swords1 the spear1 the reed1 c4--all arranged just as in the diagram she had furnished4#cbc ,the diocese of ,lige was edified1 in the twelfth century1 by seeing1 in the person of the celebrated ,christina ,mirabilis1 how completely the upward tendency of protracted devotion might vanquish the law of gravitation4 ,so strongly was she drawn away from this gross earth1 that the difficulty was to keep her on the ground4 ,she was continually flying up to the tops of lonely towers and trees1 there to enjoy a rapture with the angels1 and a roost with the birds4 ,in the frequency1 the elevation1 and the duration of her ascents into the air1 she surpassed even the high-flown devotion of ,st4 ,peter of ,alcantara1 who was often seen suspended high above the fig-trees which overshadowed his hermitage at ,badajos--his eyes upturned1 his arms outspread--while the servant sent to summon him to dinner1 gazed with open mouth1 and sublunary cabbage cooled below4 ,the limbs of ,christina lost the rigidity1 as her body lost the grossness1 common to vulgar humanity4 ,in her ecstasies she was contracted into the spherical form--her head was drawn inward and downward towards her breast1 and she rolled up like a hedgehog4 ,when her relatives wished to take and secure her1 they had to employ a man to hunt her like a bird4 ,having started his game1 he had a long run across country before he brought her down1 in a very unsportsmanlike manner1 by a stroke with his bludgeon which broke her shin4 ,when a few miracles had been wrought to vindicate her arostatic mission1 she was allowed to fly about in peace4#cbd ,she has occupied1 ever since1 the first place in the ornithology of ,roman-catholic saintship4 ,such are a few of the specimens which might be collected in multitudes from ,romanist records1 showing how that communion has bestowed its highest favour on the most coarse and materialised apprehensions of spiritual truth4 ,extravagant inventions such as these--monstrous as the adventures of ,baron ,mnchausen1 without their wit--have been invested with the sanction and defended by the thunder of the ,papal chair4 ,yet this very ,church of ,rome incarcerated ,molinos and ,madame ,guyon as dangerous enthusiasts4 ,,vi4 ,madame ,guyon had still some lessons to learn4 ,on a visit to ,paris1 the glittering equipages of the park1 and the gaieties of ,st4 ,cloud1 revived the old love of seeing and being seen4 ,during a tour in the provinces with her husband1 flattering visits and graceful compliments everywhere followed such beauty1 such accomplishments1 and such virtue1 with a delicate and intoxicating applause4 ,vanity--dormant1 but not dead--awoke within her for the last time4 ,she acknowledged1 with bitter self-reproach1 the power of the world1 the weakness of her own resolves4 ,in the spiritual desertion which ensued1 she recognised the displeasure of her ,lord1 and was wretched4 ,she applied to confessors--they were miserable comforters1 all of them4 ,they praised her while she herself was filled with self-loathing4 ,she estimated the magnitude of her sins by the greatness of the favour which had been shown her4 ,the bland worldliness of her religious advisers could not blind so true a heart1 or pacify so wakeful a conscience4 ,she found relief only in a repentant renewal of her self-dedication to the ,saviour1 in renouncing for ever the last remnant of confidence in any strength of her own4 ,it was about this period that she had a remarkable conversation with a beggar1 whom she found upon a bridge1 as1 followed by her footman1 she was walking one day to church4 ,this singular mendicant refused her offered alms--spoke to her of ,god and divine things--and then of her own state1 her devotion1 her trials1 and her faults4 ,he declared that ,god required of her not merely to labour as others did to secure their salvation1 that they might escape the pains of hell1 but to aim at such perfection and purity in this life1 as to escape those of purgatory4 ,she asked him who he was4 ,he replied1 that he had formerly been a beggar1 but now was such no more2--mingled with the stream of people1 and she never saw him afterwards4#cbe ,the beauty of ,madame ,guyon had cost her tender conscience many a pang4 ,she had wept and prayed over that secret love of display which had repeatedly induced her to mingle with the thoughtless amusements of the world4 ,at four-and-twenty the virulence of the small-pox released her from that snare4 ,m4 ,guyon was laid up with the gout4 ,she was left1 when the disorder seized her1 to the tender mercies of her mother-in-law4 ,that inhuman woman refused to allow any but her own physician to attend her1 yet for him she would not send4 ,the disease1 unchecked1 had reached its height1 when a medical man1 passing that way1 happened to call at the house4 ,shocked at the spectacle ,madame ,guyon presented1 he was proceeding at once to bleed her1 expressing1 in no measured terms1 his indignation at the barbarity of such neglect4 ,the mother-in-law would not hear of such a thing4 ,he performed the operation in spite of her threats and invectives1 leaving her almost beside herself with rage4 ,that lancet saved the life of ,madame ,guyon1 and disappointed the relative who had hoped to see her die4 ,when at length she recovered1 she refused to avail herself of the cosmetics generally used to conceal the ravages of the disorder4 ,throughout her suffering she had never uttered a murmur1 or felt a fear4 ,she had even concealed the cruelty of her mother-in-law4 ,she said1 that if ,god had designed her to retain her beauty1 ,he would not have sent the scourge to remove it4 ,her friends expected to find her inconsolable--they heard her speak only of thankfulness and joy4 ,her confessor reproached her with spiritual pride4 ,the affection of her husband was visibly diminished2 yet the heart of ,madame ,guyon overflowed with joy4 ,it appeared to her1 that the ,god to whom she longed to be wholly given up had accepted her surrender1 and was removing everything that might interpose between ,himself and her4#cbf ,,vii4 ,the experience of ,madame ,guyon1 hitherto1 had been such as to teach her the surrender of every earthly source of gratification or ground of confidence4 ,yet one more painful stage on the road to self-annihilation remained to be traversed4 ,she must learn to give up cheerfully even spiritual pleasures4 ,in the year #afgd1 according to the probable calculation of ,mr4 ,upham1 she was made to enter what she terms a state of desolation1 which lasted1 with little intermission1 for nearly seven years4#cbg ,all was emptiness1 darkness1 sorrow4 ,she describes herself as cast down1 like ,nebuchadnezzar1 from a throne of enjoyment1 to live among the beasts4 #8,alas6' she exclaimed1 #8is it possible that this heart1 formerly all on fire1 should now become like ice8' ,the heavens were as brass1 and shut out her prayers2 horror and trembling took the place of tranquillity2 hopelessly oppressed with guilt1 she saw herself a victim destined for hell4 ,in vain for her did the church doors open1 the holy bells ring1 the deep-voiced intonations of the priest arise and fall1 the chanted psalm ascend through clouds of azure wandering incense4 ,the power and the charm of the service had departed4 ,of what avail was music to a burning wilderness athirst for rain8 ,gladly would she have had recourse to the vow1 to the pilgrimage1 to the penance1 to any extremity of self-torture4 ,she felt the impotence of such remedies for such anguish4 ,she had no ear for comfort1 no eye for hope1 not even a voice for complaint4 ,during this period the emotional element of religion in her mind appears to have suffered an almost entire suspension4 ,regarding the loss of certain feelings of delight as the loss of the divine favour1 she naturally sank deeper and deeper in despondency4 ,a condition by no means uncommon in ordinary ,christian experience assumed1 in her case1 a morbid character4 ,our emotions may be chilled1 or kindled1 in ever-varying degrees1 from innumerable causes4 ,we must accustom ourselves to the habitual performance of duty1 whether attended or not with feelings of a pleasurable nature4 ,it is generally found that those powerful emotions of joy which attend1 at first1 the new and exalting consciousness of peace with ,god1 subside after awhile4 ,as we grow in religious strength and knowledge1 a steady principle supplies their place4 ,we are refreshed1 from time to time1 by seasons of heightened joy and confidence1 but we cease to be dependent upon feeling4 ,at the same time1 there is nothing in ,scripture to check our desire for retaining as constantly as possible a sober gladness1 for finding duty delightful1 and the #8joy of the ,lord' our strength4 ,these are the truths which the one-sided and unqualified expressions of ,madame ,guyon at once exaggerate and obscure4 ,during this dark interval ,m4 ,guyon died4 ,his widow undertook the formidable task of settling his disordered affairs4 ,her brother gave her no assistance2 her mother-in-law harassed and hindered to her utmost2 yet ,madame ,guyon succeeded in arranging a chaos of papers1 and bringing a hopeless imbroglio of business matters into order1 with an integrity and a skill which excited universal admiration4 ,she felt it was her duty2 she believed that ,divine assistance was vouchsafed for its discharge4 ,of business1 she says1 she knew as little as of ,arabic2 but she knew not what she could accomplish till she tried4 ,minds far more visionary than hers have evinced a still greater aptitude for practical affairs4 ,the #bbnd of ,july1 #afhj1 is celebrated by ,madame ,guyon as the happy era of her deliverance4 ,a letter from ,la ,combe was the instrument of a restoration as wonderful1 in her eyes1 as the bondage4 ,this ecclesiastic had been first introduced by ,madame ,guyon into the path of mystical perfection4 ,his name is associated with her own in the early history of the ,quietist movement4 ,he subsequently became her ,director1 but was always more her disciple than her guide4 ,his admiration for her amounted to a passion4 ,incessant persecution and long solitary imprisonment combined1 with devotional extravagance1 to cloud with insanity at last an intellect never powerful4 ,this feeble and affectionate soul perished1 the victim of ,quietism1 and perhaps of love4 ,it should not be forgotten1 that before the inward condition of ,madame ,guyon changed thus remarkably for the better1 her outward circumstances had undergone a similar improvement4 ,she lived now in her own house1 with her children about her4 ,that ,sycorax1 her mother-in-law1 dropped gall no longer into her daily cup of life4 ,domestic tormentors1 worse than the goblins which buffeted ,st4 ,antony1 assailed her peace no more4 ,an outer sky grown thus serene1 an air thus purified1 may well have contributed to chase away the night of the soul1 and to give to a few words of kindly counsel from ,la ,combe the brightness of the day-star4 ,our simple-hearted enthusiast was not so absolutely indifferent as she thought herself to the changes of this transitory world4 ,,viii4 ,madame ,guyon had now triumphantly sustained the last of those trials1 which1 like the probation of the ancient mysteries1 made the porch of mystical initiation a passage terrible with pain and peril4 ,henceforward1 she is the finished ,quietist3 henceforward1 when she relates her own experience1 she describes ,quietism4 ,at times1 when the children did not require her care1 she would walk out into a neighbouring wood1 and there1 under the shade of the trees1 amidst the singing of the birds1 she now passed as many happy hours as she had known months of sorrow4 ,her own language will best indicate the thoughts which occupied this peaceful retirement1 and exhibit the principle there deepened and matured4 ,she says here in her ,autobiography-- #8,when ,i had lost all created supports1 and even divine ones1 ,i then found myself happily necessitated to fall into the pure divine1 and to fall into it through all which seemed to remove me farther from it4 ,in losing all the gifts1 with all their supports1 ,i found the ,giver4 ,oh1 poor creatures1 who pass along all your time in feeding on the gifts of ,god1 and think therein to be most favoured and happy1 how ,i pity you if ye stop here1 short of the true rest1 and cease to go forward to ,god1 through resignation of the same gifts6 ,how many pass all their lives this way1 and think highly of themselves therein6 ,there are others who1 being designed of ,god to die to themselves1 yet pass all their time in a dying life1 and in inward agonies1 without ever entering into ,god through death and total loss1 because they are always willing to retain something under plausible pretexts1 and so never lose self to the whole extent of the designs of ,god4 ,wherefore1 they never enjoy ,god in his fulness1--a loss that will not perfectly be known until another life4'#cbh ,she describes herself as having ceased from all self-originated action and choice4 ,to her amazement and unspeakable happiness1 it appeared as though all such natural movement existed no longer1--a higher power had displaced and occupied its room4 #8,i even perceived no more 7she continues7 the soul which ,he had formerly conducted by ,his rod and ,his staff1 because now ,he alone appeared to me1 my soul having given up its place to ,him4 ,it seemed to me as if it was wholly and altogether passed into its ,god1 to make but one and the same thing with ,him2 even as a little drop of water cast into the sea receives the qualities of the sea4' ,she speaks of herself as now practising the virtues no longer as virtues--that is1 not by separate and constrained efforts4 ,it would have required effort not to practise them4#cbi ,somewhat later she expresses herself as follows3-- #8,the soul passing out of itself by dying to itself necessarily passes into its divine object4 ,this is the law of its transition4 ,when it passes out of self1 which is limited1 and therefore is not ,god1 and consequently is evil1 it necessarily passes into the unlimited and universal1 which is ,god1 and therefore is the true good4 ,my own experience seemed to me to be a verification of this4 ,my spirit1 disenthralled from selfishness1 became united with and lost in ,god1 its ,sovereign1 who attracted it more and more to ,himself4 ,and this was so much the case1 that ,i could seem to see and know ,god only1 and not myself4444 ,it was thus that my soul was lost in ,god1 who communicated to it ,his qualities1 having drawn it out of all that it had of its own4444 ,o happy poverty1 happy loss1 happy nothing1 which gives no less than ,god ,himself in his own immensity1--no more circumscribed to the limited manner of the creation1 but always drawing it out of that to plunge it wholly into ,his divine ,essence4 ,then the soul knows that all the states of self-pleasing visions1 of intellectual illuminations1 of ecstasies and raptures1 of whatever value they might once have been1 are now rather obstacles than advancements2 and that they are not of service in the state of experience which is far above them2 because the state which has props or supports1 which is the case with the merely illuminated and ecstatic state1 rests in them in some degree1 and has pain to lose them4 ,but the soul cannot arrive at the state of which ,i am now speaking1 without the loss of all such supports and helps4444 ,the soul is then so submissive1 and perhaps we may say so passive1--that is to say1 is so disposed equally to receive from the hand of ,god either good or evil1--as is truly astonishing4 ,it receives both the one and the other without any selfish emotions1 letting them flow and be lost as they came4'#ccj ,these passages convey the substance of the doctrine which1 illustrated and expressed in various ways1 pervades all the writings of ,madame ,guyon4 ,this is the principle adorned by the fancy of her ,torrents and inculcated in the practical directions of her ,short ,method of ,prayer4 ,such is the state to which ,quietism proposes to conduct its votaries4 ,in some places1 she qualifies the strength of her expressions1--she admits that we are not at all times equally conscious of this absolute union of the soul with its centre1--the lower nature may not be always insensible to distress4 ,but the higher1 the inmost element of the soul is all the while profoundly calm1 and recollection presently imparts a similar repose to the inferior nature4 ,when the soul has thus passed1 as she phrases it1 out of the ,nothing into the ,all1 when its feet are set in #8a large room' 7nothing less1 according to her interpretation1 than the compass of ,infinity71 #8a substantial or essential word' is spoken there4 ,it is a continuous word--potent1 ineffable1 ever uttered without language4 ,it is the immediate unchecked operation of resident ,deity4 ,what it speaks1 it effects4 ,it is blissful and mysterious as the language of heaven4 ,with ,madame ,guyon1 the events of ,providence are ,god1 and the decisions of the sanctified judgment respecting them are nothing less than the immediate voice of ,god in the soul4 ,she compares the nature thus at rest in ,god to a tablet on which the divine hand writes1--it must be held perfectly still1 else the characters traced there will be distorted or incomplete4 ,in her very humility she verges on the audacity which arrogates inspiration4 ,if she1 passive and helpless1 really acts no more1 the impulses she feels1 her words1 her actions1 must all bear the impress of an infallible divine sanction4 ,it is easy to see that her speech and action--always well-meant1 but frequently ill-judged1--were her own after all1 though nothing of her own seemed left4 ,she acknowledges that she was sometimes at a loss as to the course of duty4 ,she was guided more than once by random passages of the ,bible1 and the casual expressions of others1 somewhat after the fashion of the ,sortes ,virgilian and the omens of ancient ,rome4 ,her knowledge of ,scripture1 the native power of her intellect1 and the tenderness of her conscience1 preserved her from pushing such a view of the inward light to its worst extreme4 ,,ix4 ,the admixture of error in the doctrine which ,madame ,guyon was henceforward to preach with so much self-denying love1 so much intrepid constancy1 appears to us to lie upon the surface4 ,the passages we have given convey1 unquestionably1 the idea of a practical substitution of ,god for the soul in the case of the perfectly sanctified4 ,the soul within the soul is ,deity4 ,when all is desolate1 silent1 the divine ,majesty arises1 thinks1 feels1 and acts1 within the transformed humanity4 ,it is quite true that1 as sanctification progresses1 ,christian virtue becomes more easy as the new habit gains strength4 ,in many respects it is true1 as ,madame ,guyon says1 that effort would be requisite to neglect or violate certain duties or commands rather than to perform them4 ,but this facility results from the constitution of our nature4 ,we carry on the new economy within with less outcry1 less labour1 less confusion and resistance than we did when the revolution was recent1 but we carry it on still--working with divine assistance4 ,god works in man1 but not instead of man4 ,it is one thing to harmonize1 in some measure1 the human will with the divine1 another to substitute divine volitions for the human4 ,every man has within him ,conscience--the judge often bribed or clamoured down2 ,will--the marshal2 ,imagination--the poet2 ,understanding--the student2 ,desire--the merchant1 venturing its store of affection1 and gazing out on the future in search of some home-bound argosy of happiness4 ,but all these powers are found untrue to their allegiance4 ,the ermine--the baton--the song--the books--the merchandize1 are at the service of a usurper--,sin4 ,when the ,spirit renews the mind1 there is no massacre--no slaughterous sword filling with death the streets of the soul's city1 and making man the ruin of his former self4 ,these faculties are restored to loyalty1 and reinstated under ,god4 ,then ,conscience gives verdict1 for the most part1 according to the divine statute-book1 and is habitually obeyed4 ,then the lordly ,will assumes again a lowly yet noble vassalage4 ,then the dream of ,imagination is a dream no longer1 for the reality of heaven transcends it4 ,then the ,understanding burns the magic books in the market-place1 and breaks the wand of its curious arts--but studies still1 for eternity as well as time4 ,the activity of ,desire amasses still1 according to its nature1--for some treasure man must have4 ,but the treasure is on earth no longer4 ,it is the advantage of such a religion that the very same laws of our being guide our spiritual and our natural life4 ,the same self-controul and watchful diligence which built up the worldly habits towards the summits of success1 may be applied at once to those habits which ripen us for heaven4 ,the old experience will serve4 ,but the mystic can find no common point between himself and other men4 ,he is cut off from them1 for he believes he has another constitution of being1 inconceivable by them--not merely other tastes and a higher aim4 ,the object of ,christian love may be incomprehensible1 but the affection itself is not so4 ,it is dangerous to represent it as a mysterious and almost unaccountable sentiment1 which finds no parallel in our experience elsewhere4 ,our faith in ,christ1 as well as our love to ,christ1 are similar to our faith and love as exercised towards our fellow-creatures4 ,regeneration imparts no new faculty1 it gives only a new direction to the old4 ,x4 ,quietism opposed to the mercenary religion of the common and consistent ,romanism around it1 the doctrine of disinterested love4 ,revolting from the coarse machinery of a corrupt system1 it took refuge in an unnatural refinement4 ,the love inculcated in ,scripture is equally remote from the impracticable indifference of ,quietism and the commercial principle of ,superstition4 ,long ago1 at ,alexandria1 ,philo endeavoured to escape from an effete and carnal ,judaism to a similar elevation4 ,the ,persian ,sufis were animated with the same ambition in reaction against the frigid legalism of the creed of ,islam4 ,extreme was opposed to extreme1 in like manner1 when ,quietism1 disgusted with the unblushing inconsistencies of nominal ,christianity1 proclaimed its doctrine of perfection--of complete sanctification by faith4 ,this is not a principle peculiar to mysticism4 ,it is of little practical importance4 ,it is difficult to see how it can be applied to individual experience4 ,the man who has reached such a state of purity must be the last to know it4 ,if we do not1 by some strange confusion of thought1 identify ourselves with ,god1 the nearer we approach ,him the more profoundly must we be conscious of our distance4 ,as1 in a still water1 we may see reflected the bird that sings in an overhanging tree1 and the bird that soars towards the zenith--the image deepest as the ascent is highest--so it is with our approximation to the ,infinite ,holiness4 ,madame ,guyon admits that she found it necessary jealously to guard humility1 to watch and pray--that her state was only of #8comparative immutability4' ,it appears to us that perfection is prescribed as a goal ever to be approached1 but ever practically inaccessible4 ,whatever degree of sanctification any one may have attained1 it must always be possible to conceive of a state yet more advanced1--it must always be a duty diligently to labour towards it4 ,quietist as she was1 few lives have been more busy than that of ,madame ,guyon with the activities of an indefatigable benevolence4 ,it was only self-originated action which she strove to annihilate4 ,in her case1 especially1 ,quietism contained a reformatory principle4 ,genuflexions and crossings were of little value in comparison with inward abasement and crucifixion4 ,the prayers repeated by rote in the oratory1 were immeasurably inferior to that ,prayer of ,silence she so strongly commends--that prayer which1 unlimited to times and seasons1 unhindered by words1 is a state rather than an act1 a sentiment rather than a request1--a continuous sense of submission1 which breathes1 moment by moment1 from the serene depth of the soul1 #8,thy will be done4'#cca ,as contrasted with the mysticism of ,st4 ,theresa1 that of ,madame ,guyon appears to great advantage4 ,she guards her readers against attempting to form any image of ,god4 ,she aspires to an intellectual elevation--a spiritual intuition1 above the sensuous region of theurgy1 of visions1 and of dreams4 ,she saw no ,jesuits in heaven bearing white banners among the heavenly throng of the redeemed4 ,she beheld no ,devil1 #8like a little negro1' sitting on her breviary4 ,she did not see the ,saviour in an ecstasy1 drawing the nail out of ,his hand4 ,she felt no large white dove fluttering above her head4 ,but she did not spend her days in founding convents--a slave to the interests of the clergy4 ,so they made a saint of ,theresa1 and a confessor of ,madame ,guyon4 ,,xi4 ,in the summer of #afha1 ,madame ,guyon1 now thirty-four years of age1 quitted ,paris for ,gex1 a town lying at the foot of the ,jura1 about twelve miles from ,geneva4 ,it was arranged that she should take some part in the foundation and management of a new religious and charitable institution there4 ,a period of five years was destined to elapse before her return to the capital4 ,during this interval1 she resided successively at ,gex1 ,thonon1 ,turin1 and ,grenoble4 ,wherever she went1 she was indefatigable in works of charity1 and also in the diffusion of her peculiar doctrines concerning self-abandonment and disinterested love4 ,strong in the persuasion of her mission1 she could not rest without endeavouring to influence the minds around her4 ,the singular charm of her conversation won a speedy ascendency over nearly all with whom she came in contact4 ,it is easy to see how a remarkable natural gift in this direction contributed both to the attempt and the success4 ,but the ,quietest had buried nature1 and to nature she would owe nothing1--these conversational powers could be1 in her eyes1 only a special gift of utterance from above4 ,this mistake reminds us of the story of certain monks upon whose cloister garden the snow never lay1 though all the country round was buried in the rigour of a northern winter4 ,the marvellous exemption1 long attributed by superstition to miracle1 was discovered to arise simply from certain thermal springs which had their source within the sacred inclosure4 ,it is thus that the warmth and vivacity of natural temperament has been commonly regarded by the mystic1 as nothing less than a fiery impartation from the altar of the celestial temple4 ,at ,thonon her apartment was visited by a succession of applicants from every class1 who laid bare their hearts before her1 and sought from her lips spiritual guidance or consolation4 ,she met them separately and in groups1 for conference and for prayer4 ,at ,grenoble1 she says she was for some time engaged from six o'clock in the morning till eight at evening in speaking of ,god to all sorts of persons1--#8friars1 priests1 men of the world1 maids1 wives1 widows1 all came1 one after another1 to hear what ,i had to say4'#ccb ,her efforts among the members of the ,house of the ,novitiates in that city1 were eminently successful1 and she appears to have been of real service to many who had sought peace in vain1 by the austerities and the routine of monastic seclusion4 ,meanwhile1 she was active1 both at ,thonon and ,grenoble1 in the establishment of hospitals4 ,she carried on a large and continually increasing correspondence4 ,in the former place she wrote her ,torrents1 in the latter1 she published her ,short ,method of ,prayer1 and commenced her ,commentaries on the ,bible4#ccc ,but alas6 all this earnest1 tireless toil is unauthorized4 ,bigotry takes the alarm1 and cries the ,church is in danger4 ,priests who were asleep--priests who were place-hunting--priests who were pleasure-hunting1 awoke from their doze1 or drew breath in their chase1 to observe this woman whose life rebuked them--to observe and to assail her2 for rebuke1 in their terminology1 was scandal4 ,persecution hemmed her in on every side2 no annoyance was too petty1 no calumny too gross1 for priestly jealousy4 ,the inmates of the religious community she had enriched were taught to insult her--tricks were devised to frighten her by horrible appearances and unearthly noises--her windows were broken--her letters were intercepted4 ,thus1 before a year had elapsed1 she was driven from ,gex4 ,some called her a sorceress2 others1 more malignant yet1 stigmatized her as half a ,protestant4 ,she had indeed recommended the reading of the ,scriptures to all1 and spoken slightingly of mere bowing and bead-counting4 ,monstrous contumacy--said1 with one voice1 spiritual slaves and spiritual slave-owners--that a woman desired by her bishop to do one thing1 should discover an inward call to do another4 ,at ,thonon the priests burnt in the public square all the books they could find treating of the inner life1 and went home elated with their performance4 ,one thought may have embittered their triumph--had it only been living flesh instead of mere paper6 ,she inhabited a poor cottage that stood by itself in the fields1 at some distance from ,thonon4 ,attached to it was a little garden1 in the management of which she took pleasure4 ,one night a rabble from the town were incited to terrify her with their drunken riot1--they trampled down and laid waste the garden1 hurled stones in at the windows1 and shouted their threats1 insults1 and curses1 round the house the whole night4 ,then came an episcopal order to quit the diocese4 ,when compelled subsequently1 by the opposition she encountered1 to withdraw secretly from ,grenoble1 she was advised to take refuge at ,marseilles4 ,she arrived in that city at ten o'clock in the morning1 but that very afternoon all was in uproar against her1 so vigilant and implacable were her enemies4 ,note to page #bad4 ,autobiography1 chapp4 viii4 and x4 ,in describing her state of mind at this time1 she says1--#8,this immersion in ,god immerged all things4 ,i could no more see the saints1 nor even the blessed ,virgin1 out of ,god2 but ,i beheld them all in ,him4 ,and though ,i tenderly loved certain saints1 as ,st4 ,peter1 ,st4 ,paul1 ,st4 ,mary ,magdalen1 ,st4 ,theresa1 with all those who were spiritual1 yet ,i could not form to myself images of them1 nor invoke any of them out of ,god4' ,here a genuine religious fervour1 described in the language of mystical theology1 has overcome superstition1 and placed her1 unconsciously1 in a position similar to that of ,molinos with regard to these professedly subordinate objects of ,romanist worship4 ,it may be observed1 in passing1 that while ,rome pretends to subordinate saint-worship1 she denounces those of her children who really do so1 as heretical1 i4e41 reformatory1 in their tendency4 ,madame ,guyon was enabled at this period to enjoy a habitual inward prayer1--#8a prayer of rejoicing and possession1 wherein the taste of ,god was so great1 so pure1 unblended1 and uninterrupted1 that it drew and absorbed the powers of the soul into a profound recollection1 without act or discourse4 ,for ,i had now no sight but of ,jesus ,christ alone4 ,all else was excluded1 in order to love with the greater extent1 without any selfish motives or reasons for loving4' ,with much good sense1 she declares this continual and immediate sense of the ,divine presence far safer and higher than the sensible relish of ecstasies and ravishments1--than distinct interior words or revelations of things to come1--so often imaginary1 so apt to divert our desires from the ,giver to the gifts2--this is the revelation of ,jesus ,christ1 which makes us new creatures1 the manifestation of the ,word within us1 who cannot deceive1--the life of true and naked faith1 which darkens all self-pleasing lights1 and reveals the minutest faults1 that pure love may reign in the centre of the soul4 ,thus1 while inheriting the phraseology of the mystics 7and we discern in these accounts of her early experience the influence of her later readings in mystical theology71 she is less sensuous than ,theresa1 less artificial than ,john4 ,like the latter1 she assigns to love the office of annihilating the will1 to faith that of absorbing the understanding1 #8so as to make it decline all reasonings1 all particular brightnesses and illustrations4' ,the ,annihilation of the ,will1 or the ,union in the ,will of ,god1 consists1 with her1 simply in a state of complete docility1 the soul yielding itself up to be emptied of all which is its own1 till it finds itself by little and little detached from every self-originated motion1 and placed #8in a holy indifference for willing2--wishing nothing but what ,god does and wills4'--,p4 #gj4 ,note to page #bah4 ,she describes herself1 when at ,thonon1 as causing sundry devils to withdraw with a word4 ,but the said devils1 like some other sights and sounds which terrified her there1 were probably the contrivance of the monks who persecuted her1 with whom expertness in such tricks was doubtless reckoned among the accomplishments of sanctity4 ,when at the same place 7she was then a little past thirty71 ,madame ,guyon believed that a certain virtue was vouchsafed her--a gift of spiritual and sometimes of bodily healing1 dependent1 however1 for its successful operation1 on the degree of susceptibility in the recipients4--,autobiography1 part ,,ii4 c4 xii4 ,there also she underwent some of her most painful and mysterious experiences with regard to ,father ,la ,combe4 ,she says1--#8,our ,lord gave me1 with the weaknesses of a child1 such a power over souls1 that with a word ,i put them in pain or in peace1 as was necessary for their good4 ,i saw that ,god made ,himself to be obeyed1 in and through me1 like an absolute ,sovereign4 ,i neither resisted ,him nor took part in anything4444 ,our ,lord had given us both 7herself and ,la ,combe7 to understand that ,he would unite us by faith and by the cross4 ,ours1 then1 has been a union of the cross in every respect1 as well as by what ,i have made him suffer1 as by what ,i have suffered for him4444 ,the sufferings which ,i have had on his account were such as to reduce me sometimes to extremity1 which continued for several years4 ,for though ,i have been much more of my time far from him than near him1 that did not relieve my suffering1 which continued till he was perfectly emptied of himself1 and to the very point of submission which ,god required of him4444 ,he hath occasioned me cruel pains when ,i was near a hundred leagues from him4 ,i felt his disposition4 ,if he was faithful in letting ,,self be destroyed1 ,i was in a state of peace and enlargement4 ,if he was unfaithful in reflection or hesitation1 ,i suffered till that was passed over4 ,he had no need to write me an account of his condition1 for ,i knew it2 but when he did write1 it proved to be such as ,i had felt it4'--,ibid4 p4 #ea4 ,she says that frequently1 when ,father ,la ,combe came to confess her1 she could not speak a word to him2 she felt take place within her the same silence toward him1 which she had experienced in regard to ,god4 ,i understood1 she adds1 that ,god wished to teach me that the language of angels might be learnt by men on earth1--that is1 converse without words4 ,she was gradually reduced to this wordless communication alone1 in her interviews with ,la ,combe2 and they imagined that they understood each other1 #8in a manner ineffable and divine4' ,she regarded the use of speech1 or of the pen1 as a kind of accommodation on her part to the weakness of souls not sufficiently advanced for these internal communications4 ,here ,madame ,guyon anticipates the ,quakers4 ,compare ,barclay's ,apology1 ,prop4 xi4 #f1 #g4 ,shortly after her arrival in ,paris1 she describes herself as favoured1 from the plenitude which filled her soul1 with #8a discharge on her best-disposed children to their mutual joy and comfort1 and not only when present1 but sometimes when absent4' #8,i even felt it1' she adds1 #8to flow from me into their souls4 ,when they wrote to me1 they informed me that at such times they had received abundant infusions of divine grace4'--,ibid4 part ,,iii4 c4 i4 ,note to page #bbc4 ,autobiography1 part ,i4 c4 xiii4 ,here ,madame ,guyon has found confessors blind guides1 and confessions profitless2 and furthermore1 she is encouraged and instructed in the inward life by a despised layman4 ,there is every reason to believe that the experience of ,madame ,guyon1 and the doctrines of the beggar1 were shared to some extent by many more4 ,madame ,guyon speaks as ,theresa does of the internal pains of the soul as equivalent to those of purgatory4 7c4 xi47 ,the teaching of the quondam mendicant concerning an internal and present instead of a future purgatory1 was not in itself contrary to the declarations of orthodox mysticism4 ,but many were beginning to seek in this perfectionist doctrine a refuge from the exactions of the priesthood4 ,with creatures of the clergy like ,theresa1 or with monks like ,john of the ,cross1 such a tenet would be retained within the limits required by the ecclesiastical interest4 ,it might stimulate religious zeal--it would never intercept religious obedience4 ,but it was not always so among the people--it was not so with many of the followers of ,molinos4 ,the jealous vigilance of priestcraft saw that it had everything to fear from a current belief among the laity1 that a state of spiritual perfection1 rendering purgatory needless1 was of possible attainment--might be reached by secret self-sacrifice1 in the use of very simple means4 ,if such a notion prevailed1 the lucrative traffic of indulgences might totter on the verge of bankruptcy4 ,no devotee would impoverish himself to buy exemption hereafter from a purifying process which he believed himself now experiencing1 in the hourly sorrows he patiently endured4 ,it was at least possible--it had been known to happen1 that the soul which struggled to escape itself--to rise beyond the gifts of ,god1 to ,god--to ascend1 beyond words and means1 to repose in ,him1--which desired only the ,divine will1 feared only the ,divine displeasure1--which sought to ignore so utterly its own capacity and power1 might come to attach paramount importance no longer to the powers of the priesthood and the ritual of the ,church4 ,those aspirations which had been the boast of ,rome in the few1 became her terror in the many4 ,the ,quietest might believe himself sincere in orthodoxy1 might choose him a director1 and might reverence the sacraments4 ,but such abasement and such ambition--distress so deep1 and aims so lofty--would often prove alike beyond the reach of the ordinary confessional4 ,the oily syllables of absolution would drop in vain upon the troubled waves of a nature thus stirred to its inmost depths4 ,and if it could receive peace only from the very hand of ,god1 priestly mediation must begin with shame to take a lower place4 ,the value of relics and of masses1 of penances and paternosters1 would everywhere fall4 ,an absolute indifference to self-interest would induce indifference also to those priestly baits by which that self-interest was allured4 ,such were the presentiments which urged the ,jesuits of ,rome to hunt down ,molinos1 with all the implacability of fear4 ,the craft was in danger4 ,hinc ill lachrym4 ,note to page #bbd4 ,see the ,life and ,religious ,opinions and ,experience of ,madame de la ,mothe ,guyon1 c41 by ,thomas ,c4 ,upham 7,new ,york1 #ahea72 vol4 i4 p4 #aec4 ,mr4 ,upham1 in this and in some other parts of his excellent biography1 appears to me to have fallen into the same error with ,madame ,guyon4 ,he perceives her mistake in regarding the absence of joy as evidence of the absence of the divine favour4 ,but he contrasts the state in which we are conscious of alacrity and joy in religion--as one in which we still live comparatively by sight1 with that condition of privation in which all such enjoyment is withdrawn--a state wherein we are called to live1 not by sight1 but by pure and naked faith4 ,now1 faith and sight are not thus opposed in ,scripture4 ,in the ,new ,testament1 faith is always practical belief in what ,god has revealed2 and sight1 as the opposite course of life1 always so much unbelief--undue dependence on things seen and temporal4 ,it is quite true that too much stress should not be laid by us on the intensity or the displays of mere emotion1--since religion is a principle rather than a sentiment4 ,but not a few have been nursed in dangerous delusion by supposing that when they feel within them scarce a trace of any of those desires or dispositions proper to every ,christian heart--when they have no glimpse of what they incorrectly term #8sight'--then is the time to exercise what they suppose to be faith1--that is1 to work themselves up to the obstinate persuasion that they personally are still the children of ,god4 ,it may well be questioned1 moreover1 whether we have any scriptural ground for believing that it is usual with the ,almighty1 for the growth of our sanctification1 to withdraw ,himself1--the only source of it4 ,to these supposed hidings of ,his face ,madame ,guyon1 and every ,quietist1 would patiently submit1 as to the sovereign and inscrutable caprice of the divine ,bridegroom of the soul4 ,rather should we regard such obscurations as originating with ourselves and not with ,him1 and at once make the lost sense of ,his gracious nearness the object of humble and earnest search4 #8,restore unto me the joy of thy salvation6' ,madame ,guyon describes her #8state of total privation' in the twenty-first chapter of the ,autobiography1 part ,i4 ,footnote #cae3 ,see the first six chapters of her ,autobiography4 ,this life was published posthumously at ,cologne1 in #agbj4 ,i have used an anonymous ,english translation1 published at ,bristol1 in #aggb4 ,footnote #caf3 ,see ,note on p4 #bch4 ,footnote #cag3 ,autobiography1 chap4 x4 ,footnote #cah3 ,autobiography1 chap4 xii4 p4 #hg4 ,footnote #cai3 ,see second ,note on p4 #bch4 ,footnote #cbj3 ,grres1 ,die ,christliche ,mystik1 b4 ,,iv4 c4 i4 ,footnote #cba3 ,grres1 ,die ,christliche ,mystik1 pp4 #gj-gc4 ,footnote #cbb3 ,specimens of the language may be seen in ,grres1 p4 #aeb4 ,footnote #cbc3 ,grres1 ,die ,christliche ,mystik1 pp4 #dfe1 c4 ,footnote #cbd3 ,ibid4 pp4 #ecb1 c4 ,footnote #cbe3 ,see ,note on p4 #bci4 ,footnote #cbf3 ,autobiography1 part ,i4 c4 xv4 ,footnote #cbg3 ,see ,note on p4 #bdj4 ,footnote #cbh3 ,autobiography1 part ,i4 c4 xxviii4 p4 #afc4 ,footnote #cbi3 ,this spontaneity she likens to a fountain1 as compared with a pump2 love in the heart prompts every issue of life3 outward occasions and stimulants are no longer awaited2 and a glad inward readiness gives facility in every duty1 patience under every trial4 ,such also is the teaching of ,fnlon here--the genuine doctrine of spiritual life4 ,but the enemies of ,quietism were not slow to represent this #8practising the virtues no longer as virtues1' as a dangerous pretence for evading the obligations of virtue altogether4 ,footnote #ccj3 ,upham1 vol4 ,i4 pp4 #bfb1 #bfc4 ,footnote #cca3 ,this ,prayer of ,silence became hers at an early period in her religious career1 not as the result of direct effort in pursuance of a theory1 but simply as the consequence of overpowering emotion4 ,she says1 #8,i had a secret desire given me from that time to be wholly devoted to the disposal of my ,god1 let it be what it would4 ,i said1 #8,what couldst ,thou demand of me1 that ,i would not willingly sacrifice or offer ,thee8 ,oh1 spare me not4' ,i could scarce hear speak of ,god1 or our ,lord ,jesus ,christ1 without being almost ravished out of myself4 ,what surprised me the most1 was the great difficulty ,i had to say the vocal prayers ,i had been used to say4 ,as soon as ,i opened my lips to pronounce them1 the love of ,god seized me so strongly that ,i was swallowed up in a profound silence1 and a peace not to be expressed4 ,i made fresh essays1 but still in vain4 ,i began1 but could not go on4 ,and as ,i had never before heard of such a state1 ,i knew not what to do4 ,my inability therein still increased1 because my love to ,god was still growing more strong1 more violent1 and more overpowering4 ,there was made in me1 without the sound of words1 a continual prayer1 which seemed to me to be the prayer of our ,lord ,jesus ,christ ,himself2 a prayer of the ,word1 which is made by the ,spirit1 which1 according to ,st4 ,paul1 #8asketh for us that which is good1 perfect1 and conformable to the will of ,god4'--,autobiography1 part ,i4 c4 xiii4 ,here we find genuine devout fervour1 emancipating itself1 very naturally in private1 from allotted forms of prayer2 but no mysticism1 till we come to the last sentence--even that1 admitting a favourable explanation4 ,footnote #ccb3 ,autobiography1 part ,,ii4 c4 xvii4 #8,god supplied me1' she adds1 #8with what was pertinent and satisfactory to them all1 after a wonderful manner1 without any share of my study or meditation therein4 ,nothing was hid from me of their interior state1 and of what passed within them4 ,here1 ,o my ,god6 thou madest an infinite number of conquests1 known to ,thyself only4 ,they were instantly furnished with a wonderful facility of prayer4 ,god conferred on them ,his grace plentifully1 and wrought marvellous changes in them4 ,the most advanced of these souls found1 when with me1 in silence1 a grace communicated to them1 which they could neither comprehend nor cease to admire4 ,the others found an unction in my words1 and that they operated in them what ,i said to them4 ,they said they had never experienced anything like it4 ,friars of different orders1 and priests of merit1 came to see me1 to whom our ,lord granted very great favours1 as indeed he did to all without exception1 who came in sincerity4 ,one thing was surprising1 and that was1 that ,i had not a word to say to such as came only to watch my words and to criticise them4 ,even when ,i thought to try to speak to them1 ,i felt that ,i could not1 and that ,god would not have me do it4444 ,i felt that what ,i spoke flowed from the fountain1 and that ,i was only the instrument of ,him who made me speak4'--,p4 #hf4 ,footnote #ccc3 ,the little book to which she gave the name of ,the ,torrents1 was written1 she tells us1 at the suggestion of ,la ,combe4 ,when she took up her pen she knew not what she was to say1 but soon came thoughts and words abundantly--as1 indeed1 they were sure to do4 ,she compares the different kinds of spiritual progress to the mountain streams she had seen hurrying down the sides of the ,alps4 ,she describes the varieties in the gravitation of devout souls toward ,god--the ocean which they seek4 ,some proceed slowly1 by means of meditations1 austerities1 and works of charity1--dependent mostly on outward appliances1--deficient in spontaneity and ardour1--little exercised by inward experience4 ,another class flow in a fuller stream1--grow into laden rivers--haste with more strength and speed2 but these are apt to dwell1 with too much complacence1 on those rich gifts for which they are conspicuous4 ,a third order 7and to these she herself belonged7 dash out from the poverty of the rocks1 impetuous1 leaping over every obstacle1 unburdened by wealthy freightage1 inglorious in the eyes of men1 but simple1 naked1 self-emptied1 with resistless eagerness foaming up out of abysmal chasms that seemed to swallow them1 and finding1 soonest of all1 that ,sea divine1 wherein all rivers rest4 ,her commentaries on ,scripture were written with extraordinary rapidity4 ,the fact that she consulted no book except the ,bible in their composition must doubtless have contributed to their speed3 certainly not1 as she fancied1 to their excellence4 ,no writers are so diffuse as the mystics1 because no others have written so fast1 imagining headlong haste an attribute of inspiration4 ,the transcriber could not copy in five days what she had written in one night4 ,we may conjecture that the man must have been paid by the day4 ,the commentary on the ,canticles was written in a day and a half1 and several visits received beside4--,autobiography1 part ,,ii4 c4 xxi4 ,,chapter ,,ii4 ,o ,mensch wiltu geimpffet werdn1 ,und sein versetzt in d'himlisch erdn6 ,so mustu vor dein sten wilt1 ,gantz hawen ab1 das frchte milt ,frkommen nach ,gotts ebenbildt4#ccd ,,hymn ,,of ,,the ,,fourteenth ,,century4 ,part ,,ii4--,the ,quietist ,controversy4 ,i4 ,in the year #afhf1 ,madame ,guyon returned to ,paris1 and entered the head-quarters of persecution4 ,rumours reached her1 doubtless1 from beyond the ,alps1 of cruel measures taken against opinions similar to her own1 which had spread rapidly in ,italy4 ,but she knew not that all these severities originated with ,louis ,,xiv4 and his ,jesuit advisers1--that her king1 while revoking the ,edict of ,nantes1 and dispatching his dragoons to extirpate ,protestantism in ,france1 was sending orders to ,d',estres1 his ambassador at ,rome1 to pursue with the utmost rigour ,italian ,quietism--and that the monarch1 who shone and smiled at ,marly and ,versailles1 was crowding with victims the dungeons of the ,roman ,inquisition4 ,the leader of ,quietism in ,italy was one ,michael de ,molinos1 a ,spaniard1 a man of blameless life1 of eminent and comparatively enlightened piety4 ,his book1 entitled ,the ,spiritual ,guide1 was published in #afge1 sanctioned by five famous doctors1 four of them ,inquisitors1 and one a ,jesuit1 and passed1 within six years1 through twenty editions in different languages4 ,his real doctrine was probably identical in substance with that of ,madame ,guyon4#cce ,it was openly favoured by many nobles and ecclesiastics of distinguished rank2 by ,d',etrees among the rest4 ,molinos had apartments assigned him in the ,vatican1 and was held in high esteem by ,infallibility itself4 ,but the ,inquisition and the ,jesuits1 supported by all the influence of ,france1 were sure of their game4 ,the audacity of the ,inquisitors went so far as to send a deputation to examine the orthodoxy of the man called ,innocent ,,xi42 for even the tiara was not to shield the patron of ,molinos from suspicions of heresy4 ,the courtier-cardinal ,d',etrees found new light in the missives of his master4 ,he stood committed to ,quietism4 ,he had not only embraced the opinions of ,molinos1 but had translated into ,italian the book of ,malaval1 a ,french ,quietist1 far more extreme than ,molinos himself4#ccf ,yet he became1 at a moment's notice1 the accuser of his friend4 ,he produced the letter of ,louis rebuking the faithless sloth of the pontiff who could entertain a heretic in his palace1 while he1 the eldest son of the ,church1 toiled incessantly to root out heresy from the soil of ,france4 ,he read before the ,inquisitorial ,tribunal extracts from the papers of ,molinos4 ,he protested that he had seemed to receive1 in order at the proper juncture more effectually to expose1 these abominable mysteries4 ,if these professions were false1 ,d',etrees was a heretic2 if true1 a villain4 ,the ,inquisitors1 of course1 deemed his testimony too valuable to be refused4 ,in the eyes of such men1 the enormous crime which he pretended was natural1 familiar1 praiseworthy4 ,depths of baseness beyond the reach of ordinary iniquity1 are heights of virtue with the followers of ,dominic and ,loyola4 ,guilt1 which even a bad man would account a blot upon his life1 becomes1 in the annals of their zeal1 a star4 ,the ,spanish ,inquisitor-,general1 ,valdes1 who raised to the highest pitch his repute for sanctity1 secured the objects of his ambition1 averted the dangers which threatened him1 and preserved his ill-gotten wealth from the grasp of the crown1 simply by his activity as a persecutor1 made a practice of sending spies to mix 7under pretence of being converts or inquirers7 among the suspected ,lutherans of ,valladolid and ,seville4 ,desmarets de ,st4 ,sorlin denounced1 and caused to be burnt1 a poor harmless madman1 named ,morin1 who fancied himself the ,holy ,ghost4 ,counselled by the ,jesuit confessor of ,louis1 ,father ,canard1 he pretended to become his disciple1 and then betrayed him4 ,this ,desmarets1 be it remembered1 had written a book called ,les ,dlices de l',esprit1 happily characterised by a ,french wit1 when he proposed for dlices to read dlires4 ,those immoral consequences which the enemies of ,madame ,guyon professed to discern in her writings are drawn openly in the sensual and blasphemous phraseology of this religious extravaganza4 ,but because ,desmarets was a useful man to the ,jesuits--because he had drawn away some of the nuns of the ,port ,royal--because he had given the flames a victim--because he was protected by ,canard1--the same ,archbishop of ,paris who imprisoned ,madame ,guyon1 honoured with his sanction the ravings of the licentious visionary4#ccg ,so little had any sincere dread of spiritual extravagance to do with the hostility concentrated on the disciples of ,quietism4 ,the greater portion of the priesthood feared only lest men should learn to become religious on their own account4 ,the leaders of the movement against ,madame ,guyon were animated by an additional motive4 ,they knew they should delight his ,most ,christian ,majesty by affording him another opportunity of manifesting his zeal for orthodoxy2 and they wished to strike at the reputation of ,fnlon through ,madame ,guyon4 ,the fate of ,molinos decided hers1 and hers that of the ,archbishop of ,cambray4 ,the only crime brought home to the followers of ,molinos was a preference for the religion of the heart to that of the rosary2 the substitution of a devout retirement for the observance of certain superstitious forms and seasons4 ,his condemnation was determined4 ,after an imprisonment of two years he was exhibited in the ,temple of ,minerva1 his hands bound1 and a lighted taper between them4 ,a plenary indulgence was granted to all who should be present2 a vast concourse listened to the sentence2 hired voices cried1 #8,to the fire6 to the fire6' the mob was stirred to a frenzy of fanaticism4 ,his last gaze upon the world beheld a sea of infuriate faces1 the pomp of his triumphant adversaries1--then to the gloom and solitude of the dungeon in which he was to languish till death bestowed release4#cch ,,ii4 ,at ,paris1 ,madame ,guyon became the centre of a small but illustrious circle1 who listened with delight to her exposition of that ,quietism to which the tender earnestness of her language1 and her manner lent so indescribable a charm4 ,there were the ,duke and ,duchess of ,beauvilliers1 the ,duke and ,duchess of ,chevreuse1 the ,duchess of ,bethune1 and the ,countess of ,guiche4 ,the daughters of ,colbert and of ,fouquet forgot the long enmity of their fathers in a religious friendship1 whose tie was yet more closely drawn by their common admiration for ,madame ,guyon4#cci ,but letters filled with complaints against ,la ,combe and ,madame ,guyon poured in upon ,harlay1 ,archbishop of ,paris4#cdj ,he procured the arrest of ,la ,combe1 who spent the remainder of his days in various prisons4 ,a little calumny and a forged letter obtained from the king a lettre de cachet confining ,madame ,guyon to an apartment in the ,convent of ,st4 ,marie4 ,the sisters were strongly prejudiced against her1 but her gentle patience won all hearts1 and her fair jailors soon vied with each other in praises of their fascinating prisoner4 ,an examination elicited nothing decidedly unfavourable4 ,not a stain could be detected in her character2 she offered to submit all her papers and her writings to investigation4 ,the intercession of ,madame ,miramion and other friends with ,madame de ,maintenon1 procured her release1 after a captivity of eight months4 ,the most dangerous enemy ,madame ,guyon had as yet was her own half-brother1 ,pre ,la ,mothe4 ,he had calumniated her in secret while in ,switzerland2 he was still more active now she was in ,paris4 ,he wished to become her ,director1 but ,la ,combe was in the way4 ,the artifices of ,la ,mothe procured his arrest4 ,he advised ,madame ,guyon1 with hypocritical protestations of friendship1 to flee to ,montargis from the scandalous reports he himself had circulated1 and from adversaries he himself had raised up4 ,then she would have been at his mercy--he would have pointed to her flight as a proof of guilt1 and her own property and the guardianship of her children might have been secured for himself4 ,he injured her as a relation only could4 ,people said her cause must be a bad one1 since her own brother was constrained1 from regard to the credit of religion1 to bear witness against her4 ,a woman who had committed sacrilege at ,lyons1 and had run away from the ,convent of ,penitents at ,dijon1 was employed by him to forge letters which should damage the character of ,madame ,guyon2 to personate one of her maids1 and to go from confessor to confessor throughout ,paris1 asserting that after living sixteen or seventeen years with her mistress1 she had quitted her at last1 in disgust at her abominable life4 ,,iii4 ,released from the ,convent of ,st4 ,marie1 ,madame ,guyon was conducted by her court friends to express her thanks to ,madame de ,maintenon at ,st4 ,cyr4 ,this institution had been founded1 ten years previously1 for the education of the daughters of noble but impoverished families4 ,the idea originated with ,madame de ,maintenon3 it was executed with royal speed and magnificence by ,louis1 and ,st4 ,cyr became her favourite resort4 ,in fifteen months two thousand six hundred workmen raised the structure1 on a marshy soil1 about half a league from ,paris4 ,the genius of ,mansart presided over the architecture4 ,the style of the ordinances was revised by ,boileau and ,racine4 ,there three hundred young ladies of rank1 dressed in gowns of brown crape1 with white quilted caps1 tied with ribbons whose colour indicated the class to which they belonged in the school1 studied geography and drawing1 heard mass1 sang in the choir1 and listened to preachments from the lips of ,madame ,brinon--who discoursed1 so swore some of the courtiers1 as eloquently as ,bourdaloue himself4 ,tired out with the formal splendours of ,versailles1 ,madame de ,maintenon was never so happy as when playing the part of lady abbess at ,st4 ,cyr4 ,often she would be there by six in the morning1 would herself assist at the toilette of the pupils1 would take a class throughout the day1 would give the novices lessons on spiritual experience2 nothing in its routine was dull1 nothing in its kitchen was mean4 ,she hated ,fontainebleau1 for it tore her from her family at ,st4 ,cyr4 ,for the private theatricals of ,st4 ,cyr1 ,racine wrote ,esther1 at the request of ,madame de ,maintenon4 ,happy was the courtier who could obtain permission to witness one of these representations1 who could tell with triumph to envious groups of the excluded1 what an admirable ,ahasuerus ,madame de ,caylus made1 what a spirited ,mordecai was ,mademoiselle de ,glapion1 how the graceful ,mademoiselle de ,veillenne charmed the audience in the prayer of ,esther--in short1 how far the ,esther surpassed the ,phedra2 and the actresses excelled the ,raisins and the ,chammels of the ,parisian boards4 ,louis himself drew up the list of admissions1 as though it were for a journey to ,marly--he was the first to enter--and stood at the door1 with the catalogue of names in one hand and his cane held across as a barrier in the other1 till all the privileged had entered4#cda ,but the fashion of asceticism which grew with every year of ,maintenon's reign threw its gloom over ,st4 ,cyr4 ,the absolute vows were introduced1 and much of the monotonous austerity of conventual life4 ,religious excitement was the only resource left to the inmates if they would not die of ennui4 ,this relief was brought them by ,madame ,guyon4 ,madame de ,maintenon was touched with pity for the misfortunes of ,madame ,guyon1 with admiration for such patience1 such forgetfulness of self1--she found in the freshness and fervour of her religious conversation1 a charm which recalled the warmer feelings of youth2 which was welcome1 for its elevation1 after the fatigue and anxiety of state1 for its sweetness1 as contrasted with the barren minuti of rigid formalism4 ,she invited her constantly to her table--she encouraged her visits to ,st4 ,cyr--she met with her1 and with ,fnlon1 at the ,htels de ,chevreuse and ,beauvilliers1 where a religious coterie assembled three times a week to discuss the mysteries of inward experience4 ,thus1 during three or four years of favour with ,madame de ,maintenon1 ,madame ,guyon became in effect the spiritual instructress of ,st4 ,cyr1 and found herself at ,paris surrounded by disciples whose numbers daily increased1 and whom she withdrew from the licentious gaieties of the capital4 ,at ,st4 ,cyr the young ladies studied her books1 and listened to her as an oracle--the thoughtless grew serious--the religious strained every faculty to imitate the attainments of one in whom they saw the ideal of devotion4 ,in ,paris1 mystical terminology became the fashionable language--it was caught up and glibly uttered by wits and rous--it melted from the lips of beauties who shot languishing glances at their admirers1 while they affected to be weary of the world1 and who coquetted while they talked significantly of holy indifference or pure love4 ,libertines1 like ,treville1 professed reform1 and wrote about mysticism1--atheists turned ,christians1 like ,corbinelli1 now became ,quietists1 and might be seen in the salon of ,madame le ,maigre1 where ,corbinelli shone1 the brilliant expositor of the new religious romanticism4#cdb ,,iv4 ,during this period1 ,madame ,guyon became acquainted with ,fnlon4 ,at their first interview she was all admiration1 he all distrust4 #8,her mind1' she says1 #8had been taken up with him with much force and sweetness2' it seemed to be revealed to her that he should become one of her spiritual children4 ,fnlon1 on his part1 thought she had neglected her duty to her family for an imaginary mission4 ,but he had inquired concerning her life at ,montargis1 and heard only praise4 ,after a few conversations his doubts vanished3 he had proposed objections1 requested explanations1 pointed out unguarded expressions in her books--she was modest1 submissive1 irresistible4#cdc ,there was a power in her language1 her manner1 her surviving beauty1 which mysteriously dissipated prejudice2 which even ,nicole1 ,bossuet1 ,boileau1 ,gaillard1 could not withstand when they conversed with her1--which was only overcome when they had ceased to behold her face1 when her persuasive accents sounded no longer in their ears4 ,she recalled to the thoughts of ,fnlon his youthful studies at ,st4 ,sulpice2--there he had perused the mystical divines in dusty tomes1 clasped and brazen-cornered1--now he beheld their buried doctrine raised to life in the busy present1 animating the untaught eloquence of a woman1 whom a noble enthusiasm alone had endowed with all the prerogatives of genius1 and all the charms of beauty4 ,this friendship1 which events rendered afterwards so disastrous for himself1 was beneficial to ,madame ,guyon4 ,fnlon taught her to moderate some of her spiritual excesses4 ,her extravagance reached its culminating point at ,thonon4 ,at ,paris1 influenced doubtless by ,fnlon1 as well as by more frequent intercourse with the world1 she no longer enjoys so many picturesque dreams1 no more heals the sick and casts out devils with a word1 and no longer--as in her solitude there--suffers inward anguish consequent on the particular religious condition of ,father ,la ,combe when he is three hundred miles off4#cdd ,it is curious to observe how the acquaintance of ,fnlon with ,madame ,guyon began with suspicion and ripened into friendship1 while that of ,bossuet1 commencing with approval1 and even admiration1 ended in calumny and persecution4 ,bossuet declared to the ,duc de ,chevreuse that while examining her writings1 for the first time1 he was astonished by a light and unction he had never before seen1 and1 for three days1 was made to realize the divine ,presence in a manner altogether new4 ,bossuet had never1 like ,fnlon1 studied the mystics4#cde ,v4 ,the two most influential ,directors at ,st4 ,cyr were ,godet des ,marais1 ,bishop of ,chartres1 and ,fnlon4 ,these two men form a striking contrast4 ,godet was disgusting in person and in manners--a sour ascetic--a spiritual martinet--devoted to all the petty austerities of the most formal discipline4 ,fnlon was dignified and gentle1 graceful as a courtier1 and spotless as a saint--the most pure1 the most persuasive1 the most accomplished of religious guides4 ,no wonder that most of the young inmates of ,st4 ,cyr adored ,fnlon1 and could not endure ,godet4 ,madame de ,maintenon wavered between her two confessors2 if ,fnlon was the more agreeable1 ,godet seemed the more safe4 ,godet was miserably jealous of his rival4 ,he was not sorry to find that the new doctrines had produced a little insubordination within the quiet walls of ,st4 ,cyr--that ,fnlon would be compromised by the indiscretion of some among his youthful admirers4 ,he brought a lamentable tale to ,madame de ,maintenon4 ,madame du ,peron1 the mistress of the novices1 had complained that her pupils obeyed her no longer4 ,they neglected regular duties for unseasonable prayers4 ,they had illuminations and ecstasies4 ,one in the midst of sweeping her room would stand1 leaning on her broom1 lost in contemplation3 another1 instead of hearing lessons1 became inspired1 and resigned herself to the operation of the ,spirit4 ,the under-mistress of the classes stole away the enlightened from the rest1 and they were found in remote corners of the house1 feasting in secret on the sweet poison of ,madame ,guyon's doctrine4 ,the precise and methodical ,madame de ,maintenon was horrified4 ,she had hoped to realize in her institute the ideal of her ,church1 a perfect uniformity of opinion1 an unerring mechanism of obedience4 ,we wished1 said she1 to promote intelligence1 we have made orators2 devotion1 we have made ,quietists2 modesty1 we have made prudes2 elevation of sentiment1 and we have pride4 ,she commissioned ,godet to reclaim the wanderers1 to demand that the books of ,madame ,guyon should be surrendered1 setting herself the example by publicly delivering into his hand her own copy of the ,short ,method4 ,she requested ,madame ,guyon to refrain from visiting ,st4 ,cyr4 ,she began to doubt the prudence or the orthodoxy of ,fnlon4#cdf ,what would the king say1 if he heard of it--he1 who had never liked ,fnlon--who hated nothing so much as heresy--who had but the other day extinguished the ,quietism of ,molinos8 ,she had read to him some of ,madame ,guyon's exposition of the ,canticles2 and he called it dreamy stuff4 ,doctrines really dangerous to purity were insinuated by some designing monks1 under the name of ,quietism4 ,the odium fell on the innocent ,madame ,guyon2 and her friends would necessarily share it4 ,malicious voices charged her with corrupting the principles of the ,parisian ladies4 ,madame ,guyon replied with justice1--#8,when they were patching1 and painting1 and ruining their families by gambling and by dress1 not a word was said against it2 now that they have withdrawn from such vanities1 the cry is1 that ,i have ruined them4' ,rumour grew more loud and scandalous every day3 the most incredible reports were most credited4 ,the schools1 too1 had taken up the question of mysticism1 and argued it with heat4 ,nicole and ,lami had dissolved an ancient friendship to quarrel about it1--as ,fnlon and ,bossuet were soon to do4 ,no controversy threatened to involve so many interests1 to fan so many passions1 to kindle so many hatreds1 as this variance about disinterestedness1 about indifference1 about love4 ,the politic ,madame de ,maintenon watched the gathering storm1 and became all caution4 ,at all costs1 she must free herself from the faintest suspicion of fellowship with heresy4 ,she questioned1 on the opinions of ,madame ,guyon1 ,bossuet and ,noailles1 ,bourdaloue1 ,joly1 ,tiberge1 ,brisacier1 and ,tronson2 and the replies of these esteemed divines1 uniformly unfavourable1 decided her4 ,it would be necessary to disown ,madame ,guyon3 her condemnation would become inevitable4 ,fnlon must be induced to disown her too1 or his career was at a close2 and ,madame de ,maintenon could smile on him no longer4#cdg ,madame ,guyon1 alarmed by the growing numbers and vehemence of her adversaries1 had recourse to the man who afterwards became her bitterest enemy4 ,she proposed to ,bossuet that he should examine her writings4 ,he complied2 held several private interviews with her1 and expressed himself1 on the whole1 more favourably than could have been expected4 ,but these conferences1 which did not altogether satisfy ,bossuet1 could do nothing to allay the excitement of the public4#cdh ,,vi4 ,madame ,guyon now requested the appointment of commissioners1 who should investigate1 and pronounce finally concerning her life and doctrine4#cdi ,three were chosen--,bossuet2 ,noailles1 ,bishop of ,chalons2 and ,tronson1 ,superior of ,st4 ,sulpice4 ,noailles was a sensible1 kind-hearted man2 ,tronson1 a worthy creature1 in poor health1 with little opinion of his own2 ,bossuet1 the accredited champion of the ,gallican ,church1 accustomed to move in an atmosphere of flattery--the august dictator of the ecclesiastical world--was absolute in their conferences4 ,they met1 from time to time1 during some six months1 at the little village of ,issy1 the country residence of the ,superior of ,st4 ,sulpice4 ,when ,madame ,guyon appeared before them1 ,bossuet alone was harsh and rude2 he put the worst construction on her words2 he interrupted her2 now he silenced her replies1 now he burlesqued them2 now he affected to be unable to comprehend them2 now he held up his hands in contemptuous amazement at her ignorance2 he would not suffer to be read the justification which had cost her so much pains2 he sent away her friend1 the ,duke of ,chevreuse4 ,this ominous severity confused and frightened her4#cej ,she readily consented to retire to a convent in the town of ,meaux1 there to be under the surveillance of ,bossuet4 ,she undertook this journey in the depth of the most frightful winter which had been known for many years2 the coach was buried in the snow1 and she narrowly escaped with life4 ,the commissioners remained to draw up1 by the fireside1 certain propositions1 which should determine what was1 and what was not1 true mysticism4 ,these constitute the celebrated ,articles of ,issy4 ,bossuet repeatedly visited ,madame ,guyon at ,meaux4 ,the great man did not disdain to approach the sick-bed of his victim1 as she lay in the last stage of exhaustion1 and there endeavour to overreach and terrify her4 ,he demanded a submission1 and promised a favourable certificate4 ,the submission he received1 the certificate he withheld4 ,he sought to force her1 by threats1 to sign that she did not believe in the ,incarnation4 ,the more timid she appeared1 the more boisterous and imperative his tone4 ,one day1 he would come with words of kindness1 on another1 with words of fury2 yet1 at the very time1 this ,pilate could say to some of his brethren1 that he found no serious fault in her4 ,he declared1 on one occasion1 that he was actuated by no dislike--he was urged to rigorous measures by others2 on another1 that the submission of ,madame ,guyon1 and the suppression of ,quietism1 effected by his skill and energy1 would be as good as an archbishopric or a cardinal's hat to him4 ,justice and ambition contended within him2 for a little while the battle wavered1 till presently pride and jealousy brought up to the standard of the latter1 reinforcements so overwhelming1 that justice was beaten for ever from the field4 ,after six months' residence at ,meaux1 ,madame ,guyon received from ,bossuet a certificate attesting her filial submissiveness to the ,catholic faith1 his satisfaction with her conduct1 authorizing her still to participate in the sacrament of the ,church1 and acquitting her of all implication in the heresy of ,molinos4#cea ,meanwhile1 ,fnlon had been added to the number of the commissioners at ,issy4 ,he and ,bossuet were still on intimate terms2 but ,bossuet1 like all vain men1 was a dangerous friend4 ,he knew how to inspire confidence which he did not scruple to betray4 ,madame ,guyon1 conscious of the purity of her life1 of the orthodoxy of her intention1 persuaded that such a man must be superior to the meaner motives of her persecutors1 had placed in the hands of ,bossuet her most private papers1 not excluding the ,autobiography1 which had not been submitted even to the eye of ,fnlon4 ,to ,bossuet1 ,fnlon had1 in letters1 unfolded his most secret thoughts--the conflicts and aspirations of his spiritual history1 so unbounded was his reliance on his honour1 so exalted his estimate of the judgment of that powerful mind in matters of religion4 ,the disclosures of both were distorted and abused to crush them2 both had to rue the day when they trusted one who could sacrifice truth to glory4 ,at ,issy1 the deference and the candour of ,fnlon were met by a haughty reserve on the part of ,bossuet4 ,the meekness of ,fnlon and the timidity of ,madame ,guyon only inflamed his arrogance2 to bow to him was to be overborne2 to confront him was at once to secure respect1 if not fairness4 ,the ,articles were already drawn up when the signature of ,fnlon was requested4 ,he felt that he should have been allowed his fair share in their construction2 as they were1 he could not sign them2 he proposed modifications2 they were acceded to2 and the thirty-four ,articles of ,issy appeared in ,march1 #afie1 with the name of ,fnlon associated with the other three4#ceb ,,vii4 ,to any one who reads these ,articles1 and the letter written by ,fnlon to ,madame de la ,maisonfort1 after signing them1 it will be obvious that the ,quietism of ,fnlon went within a moderate compass4 ,when he comes to explain his meaning1 the controversy is very much a dispute about words4 ,he did not1 like ,madame ,guyon1 profess to conduct devout minds by a certain method to the attainment of perfect disinterestedness4 ,he only maintained the possibility of realizing a love to ,god1 thus purified from self4 ,he was as fully aware as his opponents1 that to evince our love to ,god by willingness to endure perdition1 was the same thing as attesting our devotion to ,him by our readiness to hate ,him for ever4 ,this is the standing objection against the doctrine of disinterested love4 ,the great ,nonconformist divine1 ,john ,howe1 urges it with force4 ,it is embodied in the thirty-second of the ,articles in question4 ,but it does not touch ,fnlon's position4 ,his assertion is1 that we should will our own salvation only because ,god wills it2 that1 supposing it possible for us to endure hell torments1 retaining the grace of ,god and our consciousness that such suffering was according to ,his will1 and conducive to ,his glory1 the soul1 animated by pure love1 would embrace even such a doom4#cec ,it is but the supposition of an impossible case1--a supposition1 moreover1 which involves a very gross and external conception of hell4 ,it could find no place in a mysticism like that of ,behmen or ,swedenborg1 where hell is regarded1 much more truly1 less as an infliction from without1 than as the development of dominant evil from within4 ,the ,quietism of ,fnlon does not preclude the reflex actions of the mind1 or confine the spirit of the adept to the sphere of the immediate4 ,it forbids only the introspection of self-complacency4#ced ,it does not merge distinct acts in a continuous operation1 nor discourage effort for self-advancement in holiness1 or for the benefit of others--it only teaches us to moderate that impatience which has its origin in self1 and declares that our own co-operation becomes1 in certain cases1 unconscious--is1 as it were1 lost in a #8special facility4'#cee ,the indefatigable benevolence of his life abundantly repudiates the slanderous conclusion of his adversaries1 that the doctrine of indifference concerning the future1 involves indifference likewise to moral good and evil in the present4 ,bossuet himself is often as mystical as ,fnlon1 sometimes more so4#cef ,st4 ,francis de ,sales and ,madame de ,chantal said the very same things1--not to mention the unbridled utterances of the earlier and the medival mystics canonized by the ,church of ,rome4 ,could the controversy have been confined to the real question1 no harm would have been done4 ,it would have resembled the duel1 in ,ben ,jonson's play1 between ,fastidious ,brisk and ,signor ,puntarvolo1 where the rapiers cut through taffeta and lace1 gold embroidery and satin doublets1 but nowhere enter the skin4 ,certain terms and certain syllogisms1 a well-starched theory1 or an argument trimmed with the pearls of eloquence--might have been transfixed or rent by a dexterous pen1 on this side or on that1 but the prize of the conqueror would not have been court favour1 nor the penalty of the conquered1 exile4 ,theologians might have written1 for a few1 the learned history of a logical campaign1 but the eyes of ,europe would never have been turned to a conflict for fame and fortune raging in the ,vatican and at ,versailles1 enlisting every religious party throughout ,roman-catholic ,christendom1 and involving the rise or fall of some of the most illustrious names among the churchmen and nobility of ,france4 ,,viii4 ,the writings of ,madame ,guyon had now been condemned1 though without mention of her name2 ,bossuet had intimated that he required nothing further from her2 she began to hope that the worst might be over1 and returned with her friends from ,meaux to ,paris1 to live there as much retired as possible4 ,this flight1 which he chose to call dishonourable1 irritated ,bossuet4 ,she had suffered him to see that she could trust him no longer4 ,he endeavoured to recover the certificate he had given4 ,an order was procured for her arrest4 ,the police observed that a house in the ,faubourg ,st4 ,antoine was always entered by a pass-key4 ,they made their way in1 and found ,madame ,guyon4 ,they brought away their prisoner1 ill as she was1 and the king was induced1 with much difficulty1 to sign an order for her incarceration at ,vincennes4 ,the despot thought a convent might suffice1--not so the persecutors4#ceg ,bossuet had been for some time occupied in writing a work which should demolish with a blow the doctrine of ,madame ,guyon1 and hold her up to general odium4 ,it consisted of ten books1 and was entitled ,instructions on the ,states of ,prayer4 ,he showed the manuscript to ,fnlon1 desiring him to append a statement1 approving all it contained1 which should accompany the volume when published4 ,fnlon refused4 ,six months ago he had declared that he could be no party to a personal attack on ,madame ,guyon3 the ,instructions contained little else4 ,that tremendous attack was no mere exposure of unguarded expressions--no mere deduction of dangerous consequences1 possibly unforeseen by a half-educated writer2 it charged ,madame ,guyon with having for her sole design the inculcation of a false spirituality1 which abandoned1 as an imperfection1 faith in the divine ,persons and the humanity of ,christ2 which disowned the authority of ,scripture1 of tradition1 of morality2 which dispensed with vocal prayer and acts of worship2 which established an impious and brutal indifference between vice and virtue1 between everlasting hate of ,god and everlasting love2 which forbade resistance to temptation as an interruption to repose2 which taught an imaginary perfection extinguishing the nobler desires only to inflame the lower1 and clothing the waywardness of self-will and passion with the authority of inspiration and of prophecy4 ,fnlon knew that this accusation was one mass of falsehood4 ,if ,bossuet himself believed it1 why had he suffered such a monster still to commune2 why had he been so faithless to his high office in the ,church1 as to give his testimonials declaring the purity of her purpose and the soundness of her faith1 when he had not secured the formal retraction of a single error8 ,to sign his approval of that book1 would be not merely a cowardly condemnation of a woman whom he knew to be innocent--it would be the condemnation of himself4 ,his acquaintance with ,madame ,guyon was matter of notoriety4 ,it would be to say that he--a student of theology1 a priest1 an archbishop1 the preceptor of princes--had not only refrained from denouncing1 but had honoured with his friendship1 the teacher of an abominable spiritualism which abolished the first principles of right and wrong4 ,it would be to declare1 in fact1 such a prelate far more guilty than such a heretic4 ,and ,bossuet pretended to be his friend--,bossuet1 who had laid the snare which might have been the triumph of the most malignant enemy4 ,it was not a mere question of persons--,madame ,guyon might die in prison--he himself might be defamed and disgraced--he did not mean to become her champion--surely that was enough1 knowing what he knew1--let her enemies be satisfied with his silence--he could not suffer another man to take his pen out of his hand to denounce as an emissary of ,satan one whom he believed to be a child of ,god4#ceh ,such was ,fnlon's position4 ,he wished to be silent concerning ,madame ,guyon4 ,to assent to the charges brought against her would not have been even a serviceable lie1 if such a man could have desired to escape the wrath of ,bossuet at so scandalous a price4 ,every one would have said that the ,archbishop of ,cambray had denounced his accomplice out of fear4 ,neither was he prepared to embrace the opposite extreme and to defend the personal cause of the accused1 many of whose expressions he thought questionable1 orthodox as might be her explanation1 and many of whose extravagances he disapproved4 ,his enemies wished to force him to speak1 and were prepared to damage his reputation whether he appeared for or against the prisoner at ,vincennes4 ,at length it became necessary that he should break silence2 and when he did1 it was not to pronounce judgment concerning the oppressed or her oppressors1 it was to investigate the abstract question1--the teaching of the ,church on the doctrine of pure love4 ,he wrote the ,maxims of the ,saints4 ,,ix4 ,this celebrated book appeared in ,january1 #afig1 while ,fnlon was at ,cambray1 amazing the ,flemings of his diocese by affording them1 in their new archbishop1 the spectacle of a church dignitary who really cared for his flock1 who consigned the easier duties to his vicars1 and reserved the hardest for himself2 who entered their cottages like a father1 listened with interest to the story of their hardships or their griefs2 who consoled1 counselled1 and relieved them2 who partook of their black bread as though he had never shared the banquets of ,versailles1 and as though ,paris were to him1 as to themselves1 a wonderful place far away1 whose streets were paved with gold4 ,madame ,guyon was in confinement at the village of ,vaugirard1 whither the compassion of ,noailles had transferred her from ,vincennes1 resigned and peaceful1 writing poetry and singing hymns with her pious servant-girl1 the faithful companion of her misfortunes4 ,bossuet was visiting ,st4 ,cyr--very busy in endeavouring to purify the theology of the young ladies from all taint of ,quietism--but quite unsuccessful in reconciling ,madame de la ,maisonfort to the loss of her beloved ,fnlon4 ,the ,maxims of the ,saints was an exposition and vindication of the doctrines of pure love1 of mystical union1 and of perfection1 as handed down by some of the most illustrious and authoritative names in the ,roman-catholic ,church1 from ,dionysius1 ,clement1 and ,augustine1 to ,john of the ,cross and ,francis de ,sales2--it explained their terminology2--it placed in juxtaposition with every article of legitimate mysticism its false correlative--the use and the abuse2--and was1 in fact1 though not expressly1 a complete justification 7on the principles of his ,church7 of that moderate ,quietism held by himself1 and in substance by ,madame ,guyon4#cei ,the book was approved by ,tronson1 by ,fleury1 by ,hbert1 by ,pirot1 a doctor of the ,sorbonne1 by ,pre ,la ,chaise1 the ,king's ,confessor1 by the ,jesuits of ,clermont1--but it was denounced by ,bossuet2 it was nicknamed the ,bible of the ,little ,church2 ,pontchartrain1 the comptroller-general1 and ,maurice ,le ,tellier1 ,archbishop of ,reims1 told the ,king that it was fit only for knaves or fools4 ,louis sent for ,bossuet4 ,the ,bishop of ,meaux cast himself theatrically at the feet of majesty1 and1 with pretended tears1 implored forgiveness for not earlier revealing the heresy of his unhappy brother4 ,a compromise was yet possible2 for ,fnlon was ready to explain his explanations1 and to suppress whatever might be pronounced dangerous in his pages4 ,but the eagle of ,meaux had seen the meek and dove-like ,fnlon--once almost more his disciple than his friend--erect the standard of independence1 and assume the port of a rival4 ,his pride was roused4 ,he was resolved to reign alone on the ecclesiastical ,olympus of the ,court1 and he would not hear of a peace that might rob him of a triumph4 ,did ,fnlon pretend to shelter himself by great names1--he1 ,bossuet1 would intrench himself within the awful sanctuary of the ,church2 he represented religion in ,france2 he would resent every attack upon his own opinions as an assault on the ,catholic faith2 he had the ear of the ,king1 with whom heresy and treason were identical2 success was all but assured1 and1 if so1 war was glory4 ,such tactics are not peculiar to the seventeenth century4 ,in our own day1 every one implicated in religious abuses identifies himself with religion1--brands every exposure of his misconduct as hostility to the cause of ,god1--invests his miserable personality with the benign grandeur of the ,gospel1--and stigmatizes as troublers in ,israel all who dare to inquire into his procedure1--while innumerable dupes or cowards sleepily believe1 or cautiously pretend to do so1 that those who have management in a good object must themselves be good4 ,x4 ,fnlon now requested the royal permission to appeal to ,rome2 he obtained it1 but was forbidden to repair thither to plead in person the cause of his book1 and ordered to quit the ,court and confine himself to his diocese4 ,the ,king went to ,st4 ,cyr1 and expelled thence three young ladies1 for an offence he could not in reality comprehend1--the sin of ,quietism4#cfj ,intrigue was active1 and the ,duke de ,beauvilliers was nearly losing his place in the royal household because of his attachment to ,fnlon4 ,the ,duke--noble in spirit as in name1 and worthy of such a friendship1--boldly told ,le ,grand ,monarque that he was ready to leave the palace rather than to forsake his friend4 ,six days before the banishment of ,fnlon1 ,louis had sent to ,innocent ,,xii4 a letter1 drawn up by ,bossuet1 saying in effect that the ,maxims had been condemned at ,paris1 that everything urged in its defence was futile1 and that the royal authority would be exerted to the utmost to execute the decision of the pontifical chair4 ,bossuet naturally calculated that a missive1 thus intimating the sentence ,infallibility was expected by a great monarch to pronounce1--arriving almost at the same time with the news of a disgrace reserved only for the most grave offences1--would secure the speedy condemnation of ,fnlon's book4 ,at ,rome commenced a series of deliberations destined to extend over a space of nearly two years4 ,two successive bodies of adjudicators were impanelled and dissolved1 unable to arrive at a decision4 ,a new congregation of cardinals was selected1 who held scores of long and wearisome debates1 while rumour and intrigue alternately heightened or depressed the hopes of either party4#cfa ,to write the ,maxims of the ,saints was a delicate task4 ,it was not easy to repudiate the mysticism of ,molinos without impugning the mysticism of ,st4 ,theresa4 ,but the position of these judges was more delicate yet4 ,it was still less easy to censure ,fnlon without rendering suspicious1 at the least1 the orthodoxy of the most shining saints in the ,calendar4 ,on the one hand1 there might be risk of a schism2 on the other pressed the urgency and the influence of a powerful party1 the impatience1 almost the menaces of a great king4 ,the real question was simply this1--,is disinterested love possible8 ,can man love ,god for ,his own sake alone1 with a love1 not excluding1 but subordinating all other persons and objects1 so that they shall be regarded only in ,god who is ,all in ,all8 ,if so1 is it dangerous to assert the possibility1 to commend this divine ambition1 as ,fnlon has done8 ,but the discussion was complicated and inflamed by daily slander and recrimination1 by treachery and insinuation1 and by the honest anger they provoke2 by the schemes of personal ambition1 by the rivalry of religious parties1 by the political intrigues of the ,state1 by the political intrigues of the ,church2 by the interests of a crew of subaltern agents1 who loved to fish in muddy waters2 and by the long cherished animosity between ,gallican and ,ultramontanist4 ,couriers pass and repass continually between ,rome and ,cambray1 between ,rome and ,paris4 ,the ,abb ,bossuet writes constantly from ,rome to the ,bishop of ,meaux2 the ,abb de ,chanterac from the same city to the ,archbishop of ,cambray4 ,chanterac writes like a faithful friend and a good man2 he labours day and night in the cause of ,fnlon2 he bids him be of good cheer and put his trust in ,god4 ,the letters of the ,abb ,bossuet to his uncle are worthy a familiar of the ,inquisition4 ,after circulating calumnies against the character of ,madame ,guyon1 after hinting that ,fnlon was a partaker of her immoralities as well as of her heresy1 and promising1 with each coming post1 to produce fresh confessions and new discoveries of the most revolting licentiousness1 he sits down to urge ,bossuet to second his efforts by procuring the banishment of every friend whom ,fnlon yet has at ,court2 and to secure1 by a decisive blow in ,paris1 the ruin of that #8wild beast1' ,fnlon1 at ,rome4 ,bossuet lost no time in acting on the suggestion of so base an instrument4#cfb ,,xi4 ,at ,paris a hot war of letters1 pamphlets1 and treatises1 was maintained by the leaders1 whose quarrel everywhere divided the city and the court into two hostile encampments4 ,fnlon offered a resistance ,bossuet had never anticipated1 and the veteran polemic was deeply mortified to see public opinion doubtful1 whether he or a younger rival had won the laurels in argument and eloquence4 ,in an evil hour for his fame he resolved to crush his antagonist at all costs2 he determined that the laws of honourable warfare should be regarded no more1 that no confidence should be any longer sacred4 ,in the summer of #afih the storm burst upon the head of the exile at ,cambray4 ,early in ,june1 ,fnlon heard that the ,abb de ,beaumont1 his nephew1 and the ,abb de ,langeron1 his friend1 had been dismissed in disgrace from the office of sub-preceptors to the young ,duke of ,burgundy2 that ,dupuy and ,de ,leschelles1 had been banished the ,court because of their attachment to him2 that his brother had been expelled from the marine1 and a son of ,madame ,guyon from the guards2 that the retiring and pacific ,fleury had narrowly escaped ignominy for a similar cause3 that the ,dukes of ,beauvilliers1 ,chevreuse1 and ,guiche1 were themselves menaced1 and the prospect of their downfall openly discussed2 and that to correspond with him was hereafter a crime against the ,state4 ,within a month1 another ,job's messenger brought him tidings that ,bossuet had produced a book entitled ,an ,account of ,quietism--an attack so terrible that the dismay of his remaining friends had almost become despair4 ,bossuet possessed three formidable weapons--his influence as a courtier1 his authority as a priest1 his powers as an author4 ,he wielded them all at once1 and all of them dishonourably4 ,if he was unfair in the first capacity1 when he invoked the thunders of royalty to ruin the cause of a theological opponent--if he was unfair in the second1 when he denounced forbearance and silenced intercession as sins against ,god1--he was yet more so in the third1 when he employed all his gifts1 to weave into a malignant tissue of falsehood and exaggeration the memoirs of ,madame ,guyon1 the correspondence of ,fnlon with ,madame de ,maintenon1 and his former confidential letters to himself--letters on spiritual matters to a spiritual guide--letters which should have been sacred as the secresy of the ,confessional4 ,the sensation created by the ,account of ,quietism was prodigious4 ,bossuet presented his book to the ,king1 whose approval was for every parasite the authentication of all its slanders4 ,madame de ,maintenon1 with her own hand1 distributed copies among the courtiers2 in the salon of ,marly nothing else was talked of2 in the beautiful gardens groups of lords and ladies1 such as ,watteau would have loved to paint1 were gathered on the grass1 beside the fountains1 beneath the trees1 to hear it read2 it was begged1 borrowed1 stolen1 greedily snatched1 and delightedly devoured2 its anecdotes were so piquant1 its style so sparkling1 its bursts of indignant eloquence so grand2 gay ladies1 young and old1 dandies1 wits1 and libertines1 found its scandal so delicious1--,madame ,guyon was so exquisitely ridiculous1--,la ,combe1 so odious a ,tartuffe1--,fnlon1 so pitiably displumed of all his shining virtues2 and1 what was best of all1 the insinuations were worse than the charges1--the book gave much and promised more1--it hinted at disclosures more disgraceful yet1 and gave free scope to every malicious invention and every prurient conjecture4#cfc ,,xii4 ,the generous ,fnlon1 more thoughtful for others than for himself1 at first hesitated to reply even to such a provocation1 lest he should injure the friends who yet remained to him at ,versailles4 ,but he was soon convinced that their position1 as much as his1 rendered an answer imperative4 ,he received ,bossuet's book on the #hth of ,july1 and by the #acth of ,august his defence had been written1 printed1 and arrived at ,rome1 to gladden the heart of poor ,chanterac1 to stop the mouth of the enemy1 and to turn the tide once more in behalf of his failing party4 ,this refutation1 written with such rapidity1 and under such disadvantages1 was a masterpiece1--it redeemed his character from every calumny1--it raised his reputation to its height1--it would have decided a fair contest completely in his favour4 ,it was composed when his spirit was oppressed by sorrow for the ruin of his friends1 and darkened by the apprehension of new injuries which his justification might provoke1--by a proscribed man at ,cambray1 remote from the assistance and appliances most needful1--without a friend to guide or to relieve the labour of arranging and transcribing documents and of verifying dates1 where scrupulous accuracy was of vital importance1--when it was difficult to procure correct intelligence from ,paris1 and hazardous to write thither lest he should compromise his correspondents1--when even his letters to ,chanterac were not safe from inspection1--when it would be difficult to find a printer for such a book1 and yet more so to secure its circulation in the metropolis4 ,as it was1 ,d',argenson1 the lieutenant of police1--a functionary pourtrayed by his contemporaries as at once the ugliest and most unprincipled of men1--seized a package of seven hundred copies at the gates of ,paris4 ,the ,reply appeared1 however1 and was eagerly read4 ,even the few who were neutral1 the many who were envious1 the host who were prejudiced1 could not withhold their admiration from that lucid and elegant style--that dignified and unaffected eloquence2 numbers yielded1 in secret1 at least1 to the force of such facts and such arguments2 while all were astonished at the skill and self-command with which the author had justified his whole career without implicating a single friend2 and leaving untouched the shield of every other adversary1 had concentrated all his force on exposing the contradictions1 the treachery1 and the falsehood of ,bossuet's accusation4#cfd ,the controversy now draws to a close4 ,bossuet published ,remarks on the ,reply of ,fnlon1 and ,fnlon rejoined with ,remarks on the ,remarks of ,bossuet4 ,sixty loyal doctors of the ,sorbonne censured twelve propositions1 in the ,maxims1 while ,rome was yet undecided4 ,towards the close of the same year 7#afih7 ,louis wrote a letter to the ,pope1 yet more indecently urgent than his former one1 demanding a thorough condemnation of so dangerous a book2 and this epistle he seconded by depriving ,fnlon1 a few weeks afterwards1 of the title and pension of preceptor--that pension which ,fnlon had once nobly offered to return to a treasury exhausted by ambitious wars4#cfe ,innocent ,,xii4 had heard1 with indignant sorrow1 of the arbitrary measures adopted against ,fnlon and his friends4 ,he was mortified by the arrogance of ,louis1 by the attempts so openly made to forestall his judgment4 ,he was accustomed to say that ,cambray had erred through excess of love to ,god2 ,meaux1 by want of love to his neighbour4 ,but ,louis was evidently roused1 and it was not safe to provoke him too far4 ,after a last effort at a compromise1 the ,pope yielded2 and the cardinals pronounced a condemnation1 far less complete1 however1 than the vehemence of the accusers had hoped to secure4 ,twenty-three propositions extracted from the ,maxims1 were censured1 but the ,pontiff openly declared that such censure did not extend to the explanations which the ,archbishop of ,cambray had given of his book4 ,this sentence was delivered on the #abth of ,march1 #afii4 ,the submission of ,fnlon is famous in history4 ,he received the intelligence as he was about to ascend the pulpit2 he changed his subject1 and preached a sermon on the duty of submission to superiors4#cff ,bossuet endeavoured1 in vain1 to represent the obedience which was the first to pronounce the sentence of self-condemnation1 as a profound hypocrisy4 ,,xiii4 ,madame ,guyon lingered for four years a solitary prisoner in the dungeons of the ,bastille4 ,in the same tower was confined the ,man of the ,iron ,mask1 and she may have heard1 in her cell1 the melancholy notes of the guitar with which her fellow-prisoner beguiled a captivity whose horrors had then lasted seven-and-thirty years4 ,there1 a constitution never strong1 was broken down by the stony chill of rigorous winters1 and by the noxious vapours which steamed from the stagnant moat in summer4#cfg ,she was liberated in #agjb1 and sent to ,blois1--a picturesque old city1 whose steep and narrow streets1 cut into innumerable steps1 overlook the ,loire1--crowned on the one side by its fine church1 and on the other by the royal chateau1 memorable for the murder of the ,guises2 its massive proportions adorned by the varying tastes of successive generations1 then newly beautified after the designs of ,mansart1 and now a ruin1 the delight of every artist4 ,there she lived in quiet1 sought out from time to time by visitors from distant provinces and other lands1--as patient under the infirmity of declining age as beneath the persecutions of her earlier years1--finding1 as she had always done1 some sweet in every bitter cup1 and a theme for praise in every trial1 purified by her long afflictions1 elevated by her hope of glory1 full of charity and full of peace1 resigned and happy to the last4 ,her latest letter is dated in #agag1--;,bossuet had departed1 and ,fnlon1--and before the close of that year1 she also1 the subject of such long and bitter strife1 had been removed beyond all the tempests of this lower world4 ,in the judicial combats of ancient ,germany1 it was the custom to place in the centre of the lists a bier1 beside which stood the accuser and the accused1 at the head and at the foot1 leaning there for some time in solemn silence before they laid lance in rest and encountered in the deadly shock4 ,would that religious controversialists had oftener entered and maintained their combat as alike in view of that final appeal in the unseen world of truth--with a deeper and more abiding sense of that supreme tribunal before which so many differences vanish1 and where none but he who has striven lawfully can receive a crown4 ,bossuet was regarded as the champion of ,hope1 and drew his sword1 it was said1 lest sacrilegious hands should remove her anchor4 ,fnlon girded on his arms to defend the cause of ,charity4 ,alas6 said the ,pope--heart-sick of the protracted conflict--they forget that it is ,faith who is in danger4 ,among the many witty sayings which the dispute suggested to the lookers-on1 perhaps one of the most significant is that attributed to the daughter of ,madame de ,svign4 #8,m4 de ,cambray1' said she1 #8pleads well the cause of ,god1 but ,m4 de ,meaux yet better that of religion1 and cannot fail to win the day at ,rome4' ,fnlon undertook to show that his semi-,quietism was supported by the authority of ecclesiastical tradition1 and he was unquestionably in the right4 ,he might have sustained1 on ,romanist principles1 a doctrine much less moderate1 by the same argument4 ,but it was his wish to render mysticism as rational and as attractive as possible2 and no other advocate has exhibited it so purified from extravagance1 or secured for it so general a sympathy4 ,the principle of #8holy indifference1' however1 must be weighed1 not by the virtues of ,fnlon1 but according to the standard of ,scripture1--and such an estimate must1 we believe1 pronounce it mistaken4 ,,xiv4 ,the attempt to make mysticism definite and intelligible must always involve more or less of inconsistency4 ,nevertheless1 the enterprise has been repeatedly undertaken2 and it is a remarkable fact1 that such efforts have almost invariably originated in ,france4 ,mysticism and scholasticism--the spirit of the cloud and the spirit of the snow--reign as rivals throughout the stormy region of the ,middle ,age4 ,the reaction against the extreme of each nourished its antagonist4 ,hugo and ,richard of ,st4 ,victor endeavoured to effect a union1 and to reconcile these contending products of the heart and brain4 ,in that ascetic abstraction1 which hides in darkness all the objects of sense1 they sought to develop1 from the dull and arid stem of school divinity1 the most precious blossoms of the feeling2 and their mysticism resembles those plants of the cactus-tribe which unfold1 from their lustreless and horny leaves1 gorgeous flowers1 that illumine1 with phosphoric radiance1 the darkness of the tropical night4 ,the ,victorines were succeeded in the same path by ,bonaventura1 a ,frenchman by education1 if not by birth1 more a schoolman than a mystic2 and1 in the fifteenth century1 by ,gerson4 ,these are mystics who have no tales to tell of inspiration and of vision--their aim is to legitimize rapture1 to define ecstasy1 to explain the higher phenomena of the spirit on the basis of an elaborate psychology1 to separate the delusive from the real in mysticism1 and to ascertain the laws of that mystical experience1 of which they acknowledged themselves to be but very partially the subjects4 ,with this view1 ,gerson introduced into mysticism1 strange to say1 the principle of induction2 and proposed1 by a collection and comparison of recorded examples1 to determine its theory1 and decide its practice4 ,in the ,maxims of the ,saints1 ,fnlon carries out the idea of ,gerson1 as far as was requisite for his immediate purpose4 ,both are involved in the same difficulty1 and fall into the same contradiction4 ,what ,molinos was to ,fnlon1 ,ruysbroek was to ,gerson4 ,fnlon wished to stop short of the spiritualism condemned as heretical in ,molinos2 ,gerson1 to avoid the pantheism he thought he saw in ,ruysbroek4 ,both impose checks1 which1 if inefficacious1 amount to nothing2 if effective1 are fatal to the very life of mysticism1--both hold doctrines1 to which they dare not give scope2 and both are1 to some extent1 implicated in the consequences they repudiate by the principles they admit4 ,mysticism in ,france contrasts strikingly1 in this respect1 with mysticism in ,germany4 ,speaking generally1 it may be said that ,france exhibits the mysticism of sentiment1 ,germany the mysticism of thought4 ,the ,french love to generalize and to classify4 ,an arrangement which can be expressed by a word1 a principle which can be crystallized into a sparkling maxim1 they will applaud4 ,but with them conventionalism reigns paramount--society is ever present to the mind of the individual--their sense of the ludicrous is exquisitely keen4 ,the ,german loves abstractions for their own sake4 ,to secure popularity for a visionary error in ,france1 it must be lucid and elegant as the language--it must be at least an ingenious and intelligible falsehood2 but in ,germany1 the most grotesque inversions of thought and of expression will be found no hindrance to its acceptability1 and the most hopeless obscurity may be pronounced its highest merit4 ,in this respect1 ,german philosophy sometimes resembles ,lycophron1 who was so convinced that unintelligibility was grandeur1 as to swear he would hang himself if a man were found capable of understanding his play of ,cassandra4 ,almost every later ,german mystic has been a secluded student--almost every mystic of modern ,france has been a brilliant conversationalist4 ,the genius of mysticism rises1 in ,germany1 in the clouds of the solitary pipe2 in ,france1 it is a fashionable ,ariel1 who hovers in the drawing-room1 and hangs to the pendants of the glittering chandelier4 ,if ,jacob ,behmen had appeared in ,france1 he must have counted disciples by units1 where in ,germany he reckoned them by hundreds4 ,if ,madame ,guyon had been born in ,germany1 rigid ,lutheranism might have given her some annoyance2 but her earnestness would have redeemed her enthusiasm from ridicule1 and she would have lived and died the honoured precursor of modern ,german ,pietism4 ,the simplicity and strength of purpose which characterize so many of the ,german mystics1 appear to much advantage beside the vanity and affectation which have so frequently attended the manifestations of mysticism in ,france4 ,in ,germany1 theosophy arose with the ,reformation1 and was as much a theology as a science4 ,in ,france1 where the ,reformation had been suppressed1 and where superstition had been ridiculed with such success1 the same love of the marvellous was most powerful with the most irreligious--it filled the antechamber of ,cagliostro with impatient dandies and grandees1 trembling1 and yet eager to pry into the future--too enlightened to believe in ,christ1 yet too credulous to doubt the powers of a man before whose door fashion drew1 night after night1 a line of carriages which filled the street4 ,note to page #bde4 ,a full account of the proceedings against the ,quietists will be found in the narrative above referred to and in ,arnold's ,kirchen-und-,ketzer ,geschichte1 th4 ,,iii4 cap4 xvii4 ,the motive of ,pre ,la ,chaise in urging this prosecution appears to have been twofold3 partly1 to start heretics whom his ,most ,christian ,majesty might magnificently hunt1 and still more to weaken the ,spanish party and embarrass the ,pope1 who was suspected of leaning toward the house of ,austria4 ,the audacity of the ,jesuits--so formidable always1 from their numbers1 their union1 their unscrupulousness1 and now emboldened by support so powerful1 struck all ,rome with terror4 ,a man widely reputed for sanctity1 throughout a period of twenty years--an honoured guest within the walls of the ,vatican--who had long enjoyed1 and not yet forfeited1 the warm friendship of the ,head of the ,church--was suddenly declared the most dangerous enemy to the faith of ,christendom4 ,to accomplish the ruin of this victim1 a venerable pontiff was threatened with the most grievous insult which infallibility could suffer4 ,within a month1 two hundred persons were thrown into the dungeons of the ,inquisition1--and many of these were eminent for rank1 for learning1 or for piety4 ,only the grossly stupid or the scandalously dissolute could feel themselves secure4 ,to hint a question concerning the justice of a single step in prosecutions remarkable1 even at ,rome1 for the baseness and illegality of their agents and their acts--to live a quiet and retiring life--to appear infrequently at confession or at mass1--these were circumstances sufficient to render any man suspected of ,quietism2 and if the informer were hungry1 or a private enemy alert1 from suspicion to conviction was but a step4 ,but the persecutors were destined to meet with many mortifications in their course4 ,molinos and his friend ,petrucci--a bishop1 and afterwards a cardinal--defended themselves1 on their first summons1 with such skill and intrepidity1 that the writings which had been circulated against them were condemned as libellous4 ,the case of ,petrucci represents that of the great majority against whom the charge of ,quietism was brought4 ,not an accusation could be substantiated1 save this1--that blameless as his life might be1 he had grown remiss in some of those outward observances which are the pride of ,pharisaic sanctity4 ,thus defeated at the outset1 the ,jesuits were reinforced and rendered victorious by the falsehoods of ,d',etrees1 who refused to hear a word ,molinos had to say in defence of his own writings4 ,the ,count and ,countess ,vespiniani were arrested1 with other persons1 to the number of seventy4 ,they were accused of omitting the exterior practices of religion1 and of giving themselves to solitude and prayer4 ,the ,countess bravely answered1 that she had discovered her manner of devotion only to her confessor2 he must have betrayed her2 who but idiots would confess1 if confession was made the engine of the persecutor--if no secret was sacred--if to confess might be to lie at the mercy of a villain8 ,henceforward she would confess to ,god alone4 ,a rank so high must be respected4 ,words so bold were dangerous4 ,so the ,vespiniani were set free4 ,the circular letter sent out against the ,quietists was treated with indifference by most of the ,italian bishops--not unleavened1 many of them1 by this obnoxious kind of piety4 ,nay1 worse6 for once1 an epistle from the ,inquisition was published4 ,the unfortunate letter escaped somehow--was translated into ,italian--all ,rome was reading it4 ,the world looked in on the procedure of the ,holy ,office1 to the shame and bitter vexation of its holy men4 ,it was said that the ,inquisition collected some twenty thousand letters1 or copies of letters1 sent and received by ,molinos1 and that when he was arrested1 twenty crowns' worth of letters addressed to him were seized at the post-office4 ,so extended was the influence of the heretic--so little likely1 therefore1 to perish with him4 ,some ecclesiastics had the candour to admit that most of the ,quietists showed themselves better instructed than their accusers1 and confronted their judges so ably1 with passages1 authorities1 and arguments1 that they could only be silenced by authority and force4 ,the letter of ,cardinal ,caraccioli to ,innocent1 about the ,quietists1 represents them as persons who attempt passive mental prayer and #8contemplatio1' without the previous preparation of the #8via purgativa4' ,dreadful to relate1 some of them had been known to leave their rosaries unfingered1 to refuse to make the sign of the cross1 to declare crucifixes rather in their way than otherwise6 ,they trusted rather to their inward attraction than to directors4 ,some1 though laymen1 and though married1 communed daily--an ominous sign--for it betokened the lowering 7in their minds1 at least7 of that high partition wall1 which ,rome had made so strong1 between clergy and laity--between the religious par excellence and the vulgar herd of ,christians1 who were to be saved only through the former4 ,see ,bausset's ,histoire de ,fnlon1 liv4 ii42 ,pices ,justificatives1 ,no4 ,,ii4 ,note to page #bei4 ,fnlon could with ease bring from the arsenal of tradition even more proofs than he needed for the establishment of his doctrine4 ,no prevarication or sophistry could conceal the fact that ,bernard1 ,albertus ,magnus1 ,francis de ,sales1 ,theresa1 ,catharine of ,genoa1 and other saints1 had used language concerning pure love1 authenticating more than all that ,fnlon was solicitous to defend4 ,thus much was proven1--even subtracting those passages which ,fnlon unwittingly cited from an edition of ,de ,sales' ,entretiens1 said to be full of interpolations4 ,the spiritual history of ,friar ,laurent and of ,francis de ,sales furnished actual examples of the most extreme case ,fnlon was willing to put4 ,bossuet's true answer was the reply he gave on the question to ,madame de la ,maisonfort1--such rare and extraordinary cases should be left out of our consideration1 they should not be drawn within the range of possible experience1 even for ,christians considerably advanced4 7,phelipeaux1 liv4 i4 pp4 #afe-agf47 ,in dispute with ,fnlon1 instead of admitting the fact1 as with ,la ,maisonfort1 the polemic gets uppermost1 and he tries very dishonestly to explain away the language of ,de ,sales1 while he misrepresents and garbles that of ,fnlon4 ,see ,cinquime ,lettre en ,rponse divers ,ecrits2 ,premire ,lettre en ,rponse celle de ,m4 ,l',evque de ,meaux2 ,maximes des ,saints1 art4 v4 ,fnlon draws a subtile distinction between the object of love and the motive of love4 ,that love in ,god which renders him our eternal blessedness1 is among the objects of our love--for ,god has so revealed himself1 but is not the motive of it4 7,max4 des ,saints1 art4 iv47 ,do we desire happiness less1 he asks1 because we desire it from a worthy motive1--i4e41 as desired by ,god8 ,do we extinguish hope by exalting and regulating it8 7,entretiens sur la ,religion2 uvres1 tom4 i4 p4 #ce47 ,if any one of us knew that he should be annihilated at death1 ought he less to love the infinitely ,good8 ,is not eternal life a gift which ,god is free to grant or to withhold8 ,shall the love of the ,christian who is to have eternal life be less than that of him who anticipates annihilation1 just because the love of ,god to him is so much more8 ,shall such a gift serve only to make love interested8 7,sur le ,pur ,amour1 xix4 ,compare also ,max4 des ,saints1 art4 #aj1 #aa1 #ab2 ,correspondance1 let4 #dc47 ,fnlon is very careful to state that disinterested love is put to its most painful proof only in rare and extreme cases1--that the love which is interested is not a sin1 only a lower religious stage1 and that he who requires that staff is to beware how he throws it aside prematurely1 ambitious of a spiritual perfection which may be beyond his reach4 ,bossuet endeavoured to show that if ,fnlon's doctrine were true1 any love except the disinterested was a crime4 7,instructions et ,avis1 c41 xx42 ,sur le ,pur ,amour1 p4 #cbi2 ,max4 des ,saints1 art4 iii41 and sundry qualifications of importance1 concerning self-abandonment in the #8preuves extrmes1' art4 ix47 ,note to page #bei4 ,such is the explanation in the letter to ,la ,maisonfort4 ,but ,fnlon is not always--perhaps1 could not possibly be--quite consistent with himself on this most delicate of questions4 ,beyond a doubt1 the attempt practically to apply this doctrine concerning reflex acts constitutes the morbid element in his system--is the one refinement above all others fatally unnatural4 ,there is great truth in ,fnlon's warnings against nervous1 impatient introspection4 ,against an evil so prevalent1 and so constantly fostered by the confessional and the directors1 it was high time that some one should protest4 ,but1 alas6 not only does ,fnlon himself uphold1 most zealously1 that very directorship1 but this strain after a love perfectly disinterested tempts the aspirant to be continually hunting inwardly after traces of the hated self1 which will never quite vanish4 ,happy1 according to ,fnlon1 is that religionist who can sacrifice1 not only himself1 but the sacrifice of himself--who burns the burnt offering--who gives up the consciousness of having given himself up--and who has reached1 without knowing it1 the pinnacle of ,christian perfection4 ,the reader will find specimens of his more guarded language in the letter referred to in the ,instructions et ,avis1 c4 xx42 ,max4 des ,saints1 art4 xiii42 ,lettres ,spirituelles1 xiii4 ,this last1 a letter to ,sur ,charlotte de ,st4 ,cyprien1 is of importance1 as containing definitions of mystical terms1 similar in substance to those given in the ,maximes1 and moreover1 highly approved by ,bossuet1 a year after the conferences at ,issy4 ,the strongest expressions are found in the ,instructions et ,avis1 xxii4 xxiii4 ,he says1--,pour consommer le sacrifice de purification en nous des dons de ,dieu1 il faut donc achever de dtruire l'holocauste2 il faut tout perdre1 mme l'abandon aperu par lequel on se voit livr sa perte4--,p4 #cdb4 ,compare the allusion to the unconscious prayer of ,st4 ,anthony1 ,max4 des ,saints1 art4 xxi4 ,note to page #bei4 ,l'activit que les mystiques blment n'est pas l'action relle et la co-opration de l'me la grce2 c'est seulement une crainte inquite1 ou une ferveur empresse qui recherche les dons de ,dieu pour sa propre consolation4--,lettres ,spirituelles1 xiii4 ,so also1 in the letter to ,la ,maisonfort1 he shows that the state of passivity does not preclude a great number of distinct acts4 ,this is what the mystics call co-operating with ,god without activity of our own--a subtlety which those may seek to understand who care4 ,fnlon means to forbid a selfish isolation1 which1 on pretence of quietude1 neglects daily duty4 ,true repose in ,god calmly discharges such obligations as they come4 ,we have seen an example of this in ,st4 ,theresa4 ,fnlon is not prepared to go the length of ,john of the ,cross1 who denies our co-operation altogether4--,maximes des ,saints1 art4 xxx4 and xxix4 ,ils ne font plus d'actes empresss et marqus par une secousse inquite3 ils font des actes si paisibles et si uniformes1 que ces actes1 quoique trs-rels1 trs-successifs1 et mme interrompus1 leur paraissent ou un seul acte sans interruption1 ou un repos continuel4 ,fnlon is at any time ready to endorse all the counsels of ,john of the ,cross1 as to the duty of leaving behind 7outre-passer7 all apparitions1 sounds1 tastes1 everything visionary1 sensuous1 or theurgic4 ,with the grosser forms of mysticism he has no sympathy4 ,he even endeavours to represent ,st4 ,theresa as an advocate of the purer and more refined mysticism1 adducing the scarce-attainable seventh ,morada1 and overlooking the sensuous character of the preceding six4 ,theresa might1 in the abstract1 rate the visionless altitude above the valley of vision2 but she preferred1 for herself1 unquestionably1 the valley to the mountain4 7,max4 des ,saints1 xix42 ,lettres ,spirituelles1 xiv4 xvi4 xvii47 ,in a letter on extraordinary gifts1 he repeats the precept of ,john--#8,aller toujours par le non-voir2' and #8outre-passer les grands dons1 et marcher dans la pure foi comme si on ne les avait pas reus4' ,he consigns the soul1 in like manner1 to a blank abstraction--to what ,luther would have called #8a void tedium4' ,tout ce qui est got et ferveur sensible1 image cre1 lumire distincte et aperue1 donne une fausse confiance1 et fait une impression trop vive2 on les reoit avec joie1 et on les quitte avec peine4 ,au contraire1 dans la nudit de la pure foi1 on ne doit rien voir2 on n'a plus en soi ni pense ni volont2 on trouve tout dans cette simplicit gnrale1 sans s'arrter rien de distinct2 on ne possde rien1 mais on est possd4--,lettre xxiii4 ,the very acts of which ,contemplation is made up1 are1 says ,fnlon--#8,si simples1 si directs1 si paisibles1 si uniformes1 qu'ils n'ont rien de marqu par o l'me puisse les distinguer4'--,max4 des ,saints1 art4 xxi4 ,what such acts can be1 must remain for ever a mystery unfathomable4 ,it is for these inexplicable #8actes distincts' that the convenient #8facilit spciale' is provided4 7,correspondance1 lettre #dc2 comp4 ,lettres ,spirituelles1 xiii4 #ddh47 ,fnlon is also careful to guard his mysticism against the pretences of special revelation and any troublesome insubordination on the part of the #8inner light1' or l'attrait intrieur4 ,the said #8attrait1' he justly observes1 #8n'est point une inspiration miraculeuse et prophtique1 qui rende l'me infaillible1 ni impeccable1 ni indpendante1 de la direction des pasteurs2 ce n'est que la grce1 qui est sans cesse prvenante dans tous les justes1 et qui est plus spciale dans les mes leves par l'amour dsintress1' c4--,loc4 cit4 p4 #dej2 ,max4 des ,saints1 art4 xxix4 and vii4 ,note to page #bfb4 ,fnlon gives his reasons for refusing to affix his approval to ,bossuet's book1 in letters to ,tronson and ,madame de ,maintenon1 and in the ,rponse4 7,correspondance1 lettres #eb1 #ec1 #eg2 ,rponse la ,relation1 chap1 v47 ,it was a strong point for ,fnlon against ,bossuet that the latter had administered to ,madame ,guyon the sacraments1 and granted her a favourable certificate1 after reading the very books in which he professed afterwards to discover the most flagitious designs4 ,in thinking better1 therefore1 of her intentions than of her language1 ,fnlon was no more her partisan or defender than ,bossuet himself had been1 up to that point4 ,the act of submission ,bossuet made her sign was not a retractation of error1 but simply a declaration that she had never held any of the errors condemned in the pastoral letter1--that she always meant to write in a sense altogether orthodox1 and had no conception that any dangerous interpretation could be put upon the terms which1 in her ignorance1 she had employed4 7,rponse la ,relation1 chap4 i47 ,phelipeaux sees in everything ,fnlon wrote--the notes for the ,maxims--the memoranda he sent to ,bossuet1 only one purpose--an insane resolve to defend ,madame ,guyon at all costs4 ,he chooses to imagine that every step taken by her was secretly dictated by ,fnlon4 ,in fact1 however1 from the time the first suspicions arose1 ,fnlon began to withdraw from ,madame ,guyon his former intimacy4 ,nothing could exceed his caution in the avoidance of all implication with one whose language was susceptible of such fatal misconstruction4 ,he could probably have taken no better course4 ,he endeavoured to retain the controversy about the real question1 that she might be forgotten4 ,but it soon became evident that he himself was the party attacked1 and with a virulence for which the scandals attributed to ,madame ,guyon furnished an instrument too tempting to be neglected4 ,the charges against ,madame ,guyon increased in magnitude--not with her resistance1 for she made none--but with that of ,fnlon4 7,rponse1 xxiii4 lxxxiv4 lx47 ,note to page #bfd4 ,the motives with which ,fnlon wrote and published the ,maxims are fully stated by himself4 ,it was not to defend ,madame ,guyon1 but to rescue the doctrine of pure love1 threatened with destruction by the growing prejudice against the religion of the #8inward way4' ,it was not to excuse the ,quietists1 but to preserve1 by due distinctions1 souls attached to the true mysticism1 from the illusions of the false4 ,it was to give their full and legitimate scope to those venerable principles which a heretical ,quietism was said to have abused4 ,mysticism was not to be extinguished by denying the truth it contained4 ,let1 then1 the true be separated from the false4 ,the ,maxims were believed by ,fnlon to contain no position contrary to the articles of ,issy4 ,the passages which cannot be reconciled with the limitations imposed by those articles are not his own1 but quotations from ,de ,sales and others4 ,the ,andalusian ,illuminati had rendered the greatest saints suspected4 ,theresa1 ,alvarez1 ,john of the ,cross1 stood in need of defenders4 ,ruysbroek1 whom ,bellarmine called the great contemplatist2 ,tauler1 the ,apostle of ,germany1 had required and had found champions1 the one in ,dionysius the ,carthusian1 the other in ,blosius4 ,the ,cardinal ,berulle felt compelled to enter the lists on behalf of ,st4 ,francis de ,sales1 for suspicions had been cast upon the wisdom of that eminent saint4 ,such examples might well alarm all those whose religion was embued with mysticism1--all those to whom a faith of that type was a necessity4 ,let it be openly declared where the path of safety lies1 and where the dangers commence4 ,the ,maxims were to furnish a via media between the extreme of those who repudiated mystical theology altogether1 and the excesses of the false mystics4 ,the doctrines stigmatized as false throughout the ,maxims1 are what ,fnlon supposed to be the tenets of ,molinos1 judging from the sixty-eight propositions condemned at ,rome4 ,the ,faux1 therefore1 which opposes to the ,vrai is1 for the most part1 a mere chimera--made up of doctrines really believed by scarcely any one1--only taught1 perhaps1 now and then1 by designing priests to women1 for the purposes of seduction4 ,see the #8,avertissement' to the ,maxims2 ,premire ,lettre en ,rponse1 c4 p4 #aaa2 ,correspondance1 lettre #ei2 and the letter on the ,maxims1 to the ,pope1 ,phelipeaux1 p4 #bci4 ,note to page #bfe4 ,among the expelled was the brilliant1 unmanageable ,madame de la ,maisonfort--the last woman in the world to have been shut up in the small monotony of ,st4 ,cyr4 ,the history of mysticism at ,st4 ,cyr is a miniature of its history at large4 ,the question by which it is tried is simply practical4 ,will it subordinate itself8 ,if so1 let it flourish4 ,if not1 root it out4 ,jean d',avila1 in his ,audi1 ,filia1 et ,vide1 has a section entitled ,des ,fausses ,rvlations4 ,the whole question turns on this point4 ,is the visionary obedient to director1 superior1 c48 ,if so1 the visions are of ,god4 ,if not1 the visions are of the ,devil4 7uvres du ,b4 ,jean ,d',avila1 ,audi1 ,filia1 et ,vide1 chapp4 #ej-ee47 ,madame ,guyon1 in becoming a religious instructress1 as she did1 only followed examples honoured by the ,romish ,church4 ,angela de ,foligni1 the two ,catharines of ,siena and of ,genoa1 ,st4 ,theresa1 and others1 had become the spiritual guides of numbers1 both men and women1 lay and ecclesiastic4 ,at another juncture the kind of revival introduced by ,madame ,guyon might have met with encouragement4 ,but her tendency was precisely that of which the times were least tolerant1 and her disposition to follow her inward attraction rather than the counsels of prelates was magnified to proportions so portentous as to exclude all hope4 ,the mysticism of ,fnlon1 judged by the test of obedience1 should certainly have been spared4 ,with an anxiety almost nervous1 he inculcates wherever he can1 those precepts of abject servility towards the director which are so agreeable to his ,church4 ,wherever the director is in question1 we lose sight of ,fnlon1 we see only the priest4 ,but neither his own sincere professions of submission1 nor his constant effort to place every one else under the feet of some ecclesiastic or other1 could save him from a condemnation pronounced1 not on religious1 but political grounds4 ,in this respect ,fnlon was anything but the esprit fort which the scepticism of a later age so fervently admired4 ,his letters on religious subjects abound in directions for absolute obedience1 and in warnings against the exercise of thought and judgment on our own account4 ,though ,madame de la ,maisonfort knew herself utterly unfit for the religious vocation which ,madame de ,maintenon wished her to embrace1 ,fnlon could tell her that her repugnance1 her anguish1 her tears1 were nothing1 opposed to the decision of five courtly ecclesiastics1 affirming that she had the vocation4 ,he writes to say1 ,la vocation ne se manifeste pas moins par la dcision d'autrui que par notre propre attrait4--,correspondance1 lettre #ai4 ,see also ,lettres ,spirituelles1 #ah1 #ai1 #afi4 ,the inward attraction presents some perplexity4 ,in one instance it is only another word for taste 7,ibid4 #ce71 and in another place the attraction of grace is equivalent to an act of observation and judgment 7,ibid4 #agf74 ,here1 with so many mystics1 ,fnlon can only follow the #8moi1' from which he fancies he escapes 7#dda74 ,the knot of these interior difficulties is cut by the directorship4 ,if ,fnlon speaks uncertainly as to what is the inward attraction1 and what is not1 much more would the majority of mystics be sorely perplexed in their own case4 ,the mystic1 bewildered and wearied with intense self-scrutiny1 sees all swim before his eyes4 ,he can be sure of nothing4 ,whatever alternative he chooses1 he has no sooner acted on the choice than he finds self in the act1 and fancies the other road the right one4 ,he is distressed by finding inclination and inward attraction changing1 while he gazes1 into each other1 and back again1 times without number4 ,he is afraid to do what he likes--this may be self-pleasing4 ,he is afraid to do what he does not like--for this may be perverseness--some culpable self-will1 at least4 ,the life of a devotee1 so conscientious and so unfortunate1 is rendered tolerable only by the director4 ,the man who can put an end to this inward strife about trifles--which are anything but trifles to the sufferer--is welcomed as an angel from heaven4 ,casuistry1 the creature of the confessional1 renders its parent a necessity4 ,fnlon laments the abuses of the system1 but he will rather believe that miracles will be continually wrought1 to rescue the faithful from such mischiefs1 than question 7as bolder mystics1 like ,harphius had done7 the institution itself4 ,even the mistakes and bad passions of superiors will be wrought into blessings for the obedient4 7,sur la ,direction1 pp4 #fgg1 #fgh47 ,footnote #ccd3 ,o man1 wouldst thou be grafted1 and to the heavenly soil transplanted8 then must thou first thy branches wild hew quite away1 that kindly fruits may come forth in ,god's image4 ,footnote #cce3 ,as far as his doctrine differs from that of ,madame ,guyon1 it is for the worse1 because he approaches more nearly the extreme language of some of the orthodox mystics in his communion4 ,footnote #ccf3 ,this ,dialogue of ,malaval's1 which goes much beyond the mysticism of ,molinos1 was approved by the ,sorbonne1 and found so conformable to the teachings of ,st4 ,theresa1 that the translation of it was dedicated to the bare-footed ,carmelites4 ,the unobtrusive and not unqualified mysticism of ,molinos was stigmatised by the new epithet of ,quietism1 and condemned as deadly error4 ,the extravagant and wonder-working mysticism of ,theresa was extolled as the angelic life4 ,see the ,account of ,molinos and the ,quietists1 appended to the ,autobiography of ,madame ,guyon3 translated1 ,i believe1 from a ,french work1 entitled1 ,recueil de ,diverses ,pices concernant le ,quitisme et les ,quitistes4 ,footnote #ccg3 ,michelet1 ,priests1 ,women1 and ,families1 p4 #gd4 ,footnote #cch3 ,see ,note on p4 #bgf4 ,footnote #cci3 ,upham1 vol4 ii4 pp4 #c1 c4 ,we find among these persons of rank a religion of some vitality--no court-fashion merely4 ,it was to the ,introduction la ,vie ,dvote 7#afjh7 of ,st4 ,francis de ,sales that ,romanism was indebted for such hold as it really had on the upper classes4 ,none of the great ecclesiastical writers of ,france--not even that darling of the fifteenth century1 the ,imitatio ,christi1 could win the ears of people of the world4 ,in the ,introduction1 however1 religion appeared neither ruthlessly stern1 nor hopelessly fantastical4 ,it was not1 on the one side1 scowling1 unkempt1 sordid1 morose2 it was not1 on the other1 impalpable1 supersensuous1 utterly unintelligible1 as well as undesirable1 to worldly common sense4 ,fashion and devotion met2 piety and politeness embraced each other4 ,the ,introduction leaves to others the pains and raptures of the mystic4 ,it is written for the ,marthas1 not the ,marys4 ,its readers1 personified in ,philothea1 are not supposed to be covetous of any extraordinary gifts4 ,de ,sales possessed a lively fancy1 and the tender religious sentiment of his book1 graced and lightened by its rainbow illustrations1 was a bright-winged ,psyche1 welcome everywhere4 ,these illustrations are drawn1 sometimes from the farms1 the flower-valleys1 and the snow-peaks of his native ,savoy2 sometimes from fabulous natural history1 from classic story1 from the legends of the ,church1 or the forms and usages of the world1--oftenest of all1 from the ways of infants and children1 and from the love of mothers4 ,st4 ,beuve happily characterises the work1 as #8un livre qui1 sur la table d'une femme comme il faut ou d'un gentilhomme poli de ce temps-l1 ne chassait pas absolument le volume de ,montaigne1 et1 attendait1 sans le fuir1 le volume d',urf4'--,causeries du ,lundi1 tom4 vii4 p4 #baf4 ,footnote #cdj3 ,this ,harlay had owed his archbishopric to his libertinism in the days of ,madame de ,montespan4 ,his sun was now setting1 ingloriously enough1 under the decent rgime of the ,maintenon1 and there was nothing for it but to atone for the scandals of his life and diocese by exemplary rigour in matters of doctrine4 ,the letters sent1 and the documents shown him1 were the fabrication of ,la ,mothe and his creature the scrivener ,gautier4 ,they forged a letter from ,marseilles1 pretending that ,la ,combe had slept in the same chamber with ,madame ,guyon--and also eaten meat in ,lent4 ,la ,combe was further accused of having embraced and taught the heresy of ,molinos4 ,the real letters which followed ,madame ,guyon from the scenes of her former activity breathe no suspicion of her character or motives4 ,the ,bishop of ,geneva1 in a letter quoted by ,fnlon1 declared that his only complaint against her was the indiscreet zeal with which she everywhere propagated truths which she believed serviceable to the ,church4 ,with that exception1 #8he esteemed her infinitely1 and entertained for her the highest imaginable regard4' ,this was in #afhc4 ,in #afhh he prohibited her books4 ,but even in #afie1 the same bishop repeats his praise of her piety and morals1 and declares that his conscience never would have suffered him to speak of her in other than respectful language4--,see ,memoirs for the ,history of ,madame de ,maintenon 7,london1 #ageg71 vol4 ,,iii4 bk4 xi4 c4 #b4 ,autobiography1 part ,,iii4 chapp4 i4 ii4 iii4 ,fnlon's ,rponse la ,relation sur le ,quitisme1 chap4 i4 ,footnote #cda3 ,memoirs for the ,history of ,madame de ,maintenon1 bk4 ix4 ,madame ,guyon's doctrine entered ,st4 ,cyr while the absolute vows were yet under discussion4 ,footnote #cdb3 ,memoirs for the ,history of ,madame de ,maintenon1 bk4 xi4 chap4 v4 ,footnote #cdc3 ,autobiography1 part ,,iii4 chap4 ix4 ,fnlon declares that her explanations at these interviews were such as to satisfy him of the harmlessness and orthodoxy of her intention4 ,she appeared to him often extravagant or questionable in expression1 from her ignorance2 but so favoured of ,god1 that the most learned divine might gather spiritual wisdom from her lips4 ,she told him of certain instantaneous supernatural communications1 which came and vanished1 she knew not how4 ,yet1 like ,john of the ,cross1 she did not rest on these1 but passed on into the obscure path of pure faith4 ,for this he praised her1 and believed that though these experiences were illusory1 a spirit so lowly and so obedient had been faithful to grace throughout1 such involuntary deception notwithstanding4--,rponse la ,relation sur le ,quitisme1 chap4 i4 #aj-ac4 ,footnote #cdd3 ,she still speaks1 however1 of the #8sense' vouchsafed her of the state of the souls given to her1 even when they were at a distance2 and of communication in ,god with those to whom the ,lord united her by the tie of spiritual maternity4 ,autobiography1 part ,,iii4 ch4 viii4 ,nothing was more likely to open her eyes to the questionable character of some of her experiences1 and to the unguarded nature of many of her expressions1 than the kindly yet searching inquiries of a man like ,fnlon1 qualified by temperament to enter into her feelings1 and a master in mystical theology4 ,mr4 ,upham seems to me greatly to overrate the influence of ,madame ,guyon on ,fnlon4 ,to her fancy1 her imagination might at times depict him as a spiritual son3 he was1 in fact1 a friendly judge4 ,footnote #cde3 ,when called to separate the true mysticism from the false in the writings of ,madame ,guyon1 ,bossuet was not only ignorant of ,tauler1 ,ruysbroek1 ,harphius1 and others2 he had not even read ,francis de ,sales or ,john of the ,cross4 ,fnlon1 at his request1 sent him a collection of passages from ,suso1 ,harphius1 ,ruysbroek1 ,tauler1 ,catharine of ,genoa1 ,st4 ,theresa1 ,john of the ,cross1 ,alvarez1 ,de ,sales1 and ,madame de ,chantal4 ,with just indignation does ,fnlon expose the artifice by which ,bossuet afterwards attempted to turn this confidence against him4--,rponse la ,relation sur le ,quitisme1 chap4 ii4 #ah-bg4 ,footnote #cdf3 ,history of ,madame de ,maintenon1 bk4 ,,xi4 chap4 vii4 ,footnote #cdg3 ,history of ,madame de ,maintenon1 bk4 ,,xi4 chap4 vii4 ,bausset1 ,histoire de ,fnlon1 liv4 ii4 p4 #bie4 ,the high opinion entertained of ,fnlon by ,madame de ,maintenon was1 as yet1 unshaken4 ,she knew that though the friend of ,madame ,guyon1 he was not her advocate4 ,but she was called to side with the man of charity or the man of zeal--the liberal man or the bigot2 and the issue could not long be doubtful4 ,fnlon early saw the signs of danger4 ,we find him striving to moderate the enthusiasm of ,madame de la ,maisonfort--to reconcile her to the regulations of ,godet--to repress her indiscreet zeal in behalf of her cousin1 ,madame ,guyon4--,correspondance de ,fnlon1 ,lettres #bd1 #bf1 #bi1 #cj4 ,footnote #cdh3 ,autobiography1 part ,,iii4 chap4 xiii4 ,phelipeaux gives in full the correspondence on both sides1 ,relation de l',origine1 du ,progrs et de la ,condamnation du ,quitisme rpandu en ,france 7#agcb71 liv4 i4 pp4 #gc1 c4 ,his account abounds in misrepresentations1 and does little more1 in the first part1 than echo the ,relation sur le ,quitisme of ,bossuet1 to whom the abb was devoted4 ,but his minuteness of detail1 and the copious insertion of important letters and documents on either side1 give to the heavy narrative considerable value4 ,in a subsequent interview between ,bossuet and ,madame ,guyon1 she declared herself unable to pray for any particular thing--the forgiveness of her sins1 for instance4 ,to do so was to fail in absolute abandonment and disinterestedness4 ,bossuet was shocked4 ,madame ,guyon promised and meant1 to be all submission2 but conscience would be unmanageable at times4 ,bossuet writes her long1 sensible1 hard-headed letters1 in which1 without much difficulty1 he exposes her error1 and leaves her no ground to stand on4 ,she1 however1 must still humbly suggest that the exercise of love embraces all petitions1 and that as there is a love without reflexion1 so there may be a prayer without reflexion--a substantial prayer1 comprehending all others4--,phelipeaux1 p4 #aaa4 ,footnote #cdi3 ,her request was made to ,madame de ,maintenon for commissioners1 half clerical1 half lay1 to examine into the scandals which had been set afloat against her character4--,phelipeaux1 liv4 i4 p4 #aad4 ,autobiography1 part ,,iii4 chap4 xv4 ,footnote #cej3 ,autobiography1 chapp4 xvi4 xvii4 ,see also her letter to the three commissioners1 in ,phelipeaux1 p4 #aag4 ,harlay heard with indignation of this ,conference at ,issy1 to decide upon a heresy which had been unearthed in his diocese4 ,he endeavoured to rouse the suspicions of ,louis1 but in vain4 ,he determined himself to condemn the writings of ,madame ,guyon1 before the ,commissioners could come to a decision4 ,madame de ,maintenon informed ,bossuet1 who paid a visit without loss of time to his metropolitan1 complimented him on the censure he was about to fulminate1 gave every explanation1 and took his departure with polite assurances that the verdict of ,issy would but reiterate the condemnation pronounced by the vigilant ,archbishop of ,paris4 ,so completely was the cause of ,madame ,guyon prejudged4--,phelipeaux1 p4 #abe4 ,footnote #cea3 ,autobiography1 part ,,iii4 chapp4 xviii4 xix4 ,rponse la ,relation1 c41 ,i4 ii4 #c4 ,upham1 vol4 ,,ii4 chapp4 x4 and xi4 ,footnote #ceb3 ,the articles at first proposed to ,fnlon for his signature were thirty in number4 ,the #abth and #acth1 the #ccrd and #cdth1 were wanting4 ,he said that he could only sign these thirty articles as they were1 #8par dfrence1' and against his persuasion4 ,two days afterwards1 when the four additional articles were laid before him1 he declared himself ready to sign them with his blood4 ,the #cdth article is the most important of the four1 as bearing directly on the most critical question arising from the doctrine of disinterested love4 ,it allows that doctrine expressly1 if words have meaning1 and occupies all the ground ,fnlon himself was concerned to maintain in its defence4 7,entretiens sur la ,religion1 ,fn4 uvres1 tom4 i4 p4 #cd47 ,the article is in substance as follows3--,on peut inspirer aux mes peines et vraiment humbles un consentement la volont de ,dieu1 quand mme1 par une supposition trs-fausse1 au lieu des biens ternels promis aux justes1 il les tiendrait dans les tourments ternels1 sans nanmoins les priver de sa grce et de son amour4--,rponse la ,relation1 c41 chap4 iii4 ,phelipeaux1 liv4 i4 pp4 #aca1 #ace-acg4 ,footnote #cec3 ,see ,note on p4 #bgh4 ,footnote #ced3 ,see second ,note on p4 #bgh4 ,footnote #cee3 ,see ,note on p4 #bgi4 ,footnote #cef3 ,witness the panegyrics of ,bossuet on ,theresa and ,john of the ,cross4 ,compare also their different verdicts on the former4 ,fnlon says1 writing to ,madame de ,maintenon1 #8,quelque respect et quelque admiration que j'aie pour ,sainte ,thrse1 je n'aurais jamais voulu donner au public tout ce qu'elle a crit4'--,correspondance1 #ca4 ,bossuet1 writing to ,madame ,guyon1 says1 #8,je n'ai jamais hsit un seul moment sur les tats de ,sainte ,thrse1 parceque je n'y ai rien trouv1 que je ne trouvasse aussi dans l',ecriture1' c4--,phelipeaux1 liv4 i4 p4 #ajd4 ,in the ,instructions sur les ,etats d',oraison1 ,bossuet1 in speaking of the passive state1 had allowed of certain miraculous suspensions 7impuissances7 from which ,fnelon shrinks--which he would have located in some section ,faux of his ,maxims--and to which ,noailles refused his approval4--,rponse la ,relation1 xxviii4 and lxii4 ,footnote #ceg3 ,her letter to ,bossuet furnishes a fair justification of this retreat to ,paris4--,phelipeaux1 liv4 i4 p4 #aeb4 ,it gratifies our curiosity to learn from this authority what books were seized when ,desgrs1 the detective1 entered the little house in the ,faubourg ,st4 ,antoine1 in the name of the king4 ,there were some plays of ,molire1 some romances1 such as ,john of ,paris and ,richard ,lion-heart1 but these1 said ,madame ,guyon1 belonged to the lacqueys of her son1 a lieutenant in the guards4 ,but she acknowledged a ,griseldis and ,don ,quixote as her books4 ,it is pleasing to find our fair saint1 so far of like passions with ourselves1 amused with ,sancho1 and pitying ,griseldis1--herself a patient sufferer at the hands of blinded1 pitiless men4 ,footnote #ceh3 ,see ,note on p4 #bhj4 ,footnote #cei3 ,see second ,note on p4 #bhj4 ,footnote #cfj3 ,bausset1 ,histoire de ,fnlon1 liv4 iii4 p4 #de4 ,see also ,note on p4 #bha4 ,footnote #cfa3 ,bausset1 ,hist4 de ,fnlon1 liv4 iii4 #dg4 ,a minute1 though very partial account of all the squabbles and intrigues at ,rome1 from first to last1 may be read in ,phelipeaux4--,see also ,memoirs of ,madame de ,maintenon1 xi4 #ai4 ,corr4 de ,fnlon1 lettre #ajh4 ,footnote #cfb3 ,bausset1 iii4 #dh-ej2 ,aim-,martin1 ,etudes sur la ,vie de ,fnlon1 p4 #ad4 ,footnote #cfc3 ,bausset1 #ec-d2 ,mem4 of ,maintenon1 ,,xi4 #bj2 ,aim-,martin1 #ae4 ,footnote #cfd3 ,bausset1 #ei-fa4 ,the means to which ,bossuet could stoop--the falsehoods he could coolly repeat1 after detection1 as though nothing had happened--the misquotation1 and misrepresentation--the constant reply to awkwardly pressing arguments by malicious personalities--all these things are exposed in ,fnlon's ,lettres en ,rponse1 and in the ,rponse itself4 ,they are bad enough2 but the student of controversy is accustomed to this imperturbable lying1 to these arts of insinuation4 ,the most detestable feature of all in the part played by ,bossuet1 lies in that sleek cant and tearful unction with which he calumniates--as though it almost broke his heart to write what he exults in writing4 ,well might ,fnlon request that he would not weep over him so profusely while he tore him in pieces1 and desire fewer tears and more fair play6 ,see the ,preface to the ,rponse2 ,rponse1 #ei2 and ,rponse aux ,remarques1 vi4 ,footnote #cfe3 ,bausset1 iii4 #fh1 #fi2 ,upham1 vol4 ii4 p4 #bhi4 ,footnote #cff3 ,bausset1 #gg1 #gh4 ,footnote #cfg3 ,upham1 vol4 ii4 ch4 #ah4 ,,chapter ,,iii4 ,all opinions and notions1 though never so true1 about things spiritual1 may be the very matter of heresy1 when they are adhered to as the principle and end1 with obstinacy and acquiescence2 and1 on the contrary1 opinions and speculations1 however false1 may be the subject of orthodoxy1 and very well consist with it1 when they are not stiffly adhered to1 but only employed in the service of disposing the soul to the faith of entire resignation1 which is the only true orthodoxy wherein there can be no heresy nor capital errours4--,,poiret4 ,,willougby4 ,i think1 ,atherton1 you have been somewhat too indulgent on that question of disinterested love4 ,to me it appears sheer presumption for any man to pretend that he loves ,god without any regard to self1 when his very being1 with its power to know and love1 is a gift--when he has nothing that he did not receive1--when his salvation is wholly of favour1 and not of merit1--and when1 from the very first1 he has been laid under an ever-increasing weight of obligation beyond all estimate4 ,on this matter ,oliver ,cromwell appears to me a better divine than ,fnlon1 when he writes1 #8,i have received plentiful wages beforehand1 and ,i know that ,i shall never earn the least mite4' ,,gower4 ,yet ,fnlon bases disinterested love on the doctrine which denies to man all possibility of merit4 ,,atherton4 ,i think ,willoughby looks at ,fnlon's teaching concerning disinterested love too much apart from his times and his ,church4 ,grant that this disinterestedness is a needless and unattainable refinement1 savouring of that high-flown1 ultra-human devotion so much affected by ,romish saintship--still it has its serviceable truth1 as opposed to the servile and mercenary religionism which the ,romanist system must ordinarily produce4 ,,willoughby4 ,it is the less of two evils1 perhaps2 but1 let divines say what they will1 men cannot abjure self as such a doctrine requires4 ,man may ask it of his fellow-men1 but ,god does not require it of them1 when he tells them ,he would have all men to be saved4 ,that inalienable desire of individual well-being1 to which ,god appeals1 these theologians disdain4 ,,gower4 ,but man comes into this world to live for something higher than happiness4 ,,willoughby4 ,that depends on what you mean by the word4 ,of course1 life has a purpose far above that snug animalism which some men call happiness4 ,in opposition to that1 the outcry revived of late against happiness1 as a motive1 has its full right4 ,but ,i mean by happiness1 man's true well-being--that of his higher1 not his lower nature--that of his nature1 not for a moment1 but for ever4 ,with such happiness1 duty1 however stern1 must always ultimately coincide4 ,i say1 man was formed to desire such a realisation of the possibilities of his nature1 that to bid him cease or slacken in this desire is a cruelty and a folly1 and that the will of ,god ought never for an instant to be conceived as hostile to such well-being4 ,if ,he were1 why hear we of ,redemption8 ,and ,i may point with reverence to the ,incarnate ,perfectness1 #8who1 for the joy that was set before him1 endured the cross2' he would die to know the blessedness of restoring to us our life4 ,only the most sublime self-sacrifice could account such a result a recompense2 and that recompense he did not refuse to keep constantly in view4 ,,atherton4 ,your dispute is very much a question of words4 ,true self-annihilation certainly does not consist in being without a personal aim1 but in suppressing all that within us which would degrade that aim below the highest4 ,,gower4 ,the ,quietists are right in undervaluing1 as they do1 mere pleasurable feeling in religion4 ,,atherton4 ,quite so3 in as far as they mean to say by such depreciation that ,god may be as truly near and gracious in spiritual sorrow as in spiritual joy1--that inward delights and blissful states of mind are not to be put virtually in the place of ,christ1 as a ground of trust--that the witness of the ,spirit does not evince itself in the emotional nature merely1 but is realised in the general consciousness of a divine life1 which is its own evidence4 ,but ,i think the ,quietists too much overlook the fact that peace1 rising at times to solemn joy1 is after all1 the normal state of the ,christian life1 and as such1 always a legitimate object of desire4 ,,gower4 ,as to disinterested love1 once more1 may we not take ,bunyan as a good example of the mean between our two extremes8 ,when in prison1 and uncertain whether he might not soon be condemned to die1 the thought came into his mind3--,suppose ,god should withdraw ,himself at the very last moment--fail to support me at the gallows--abandon me4 ,but he resisted the temptation like a man4 ,he tells how he said within himself1 #8,if ,god doth not come in 7to comfort me71 ,i will leap off the ladder even blindfold into eternity1 sink or swim1 come heaven1 come hell4 ,it was my duty1' he declared1 #8to stand to ,his word1 whether ,he would ever look upon me1 or save me at the last1 or not4' ,,willoughby4 ,i can understand ,bunyan4 ,he was driven to that self-abandonment1 and his faith made its brave stand there2 he did not seek it4 ,but the ,quietists would have us cultivate1 as the habit of ,christian perfection1 that self-oblivion which is1 in fact1 only our resource in the hottest moment of temptation4 ,why shut ourselves up in the castle-keep1 if not an outwork has been carried8 ,,atherton4 ,what a torrent of cant and affectation must have been set a flowing when ,quietism became the fashion for awhile6 ,what self-complacent chatter about self-annihilation2 and how easily might the detail of spiritual maladies and imaginary sins be made to minister to display6 ,is it not thus ,pope describes ,affectation8--how she ,faints into airs1 and languishes with pride1 ,on the rich quilt sinks with becoming woe ,wrapt in a gown for sickness1 and for show4 ,,gower4 ,that reminds me of ,zoilus1 pretending to be ill1 that he might exhibit to his friends the new purple counterpane just come from ,alexandria4 ,,willoughby4 ,but ,i can imagine some1 in earnest1 seeking refuge in ,quietism--doing so rather in desperation than in aspiration--heart sick1 weary of the world4 ,such would find but cold comfort4 ,in vain would they be surrounded with offers of supersensible manifestations1 divine touches1 tastes1 illapses--ethereal1 super-angelic--not to say superhuman1 fare4 ,craving some tangible consolation1 some food adapted to their nature1 they would be mocked with these pictures of a feast1--with promise of the sustenance proper only to some other race of creatures4 ,,atherton4 ,as though one should feed a sick lion on gingerbread and liqueurs4 ,,gower4 ,or one might liken such poor disappointed creatures to the lamb brought into the churches on ,st4 ,agnes' day1 reclined on its cushion fringed with gold1 its ears and tail decked with gay ribbon1--bleating to church music--petted and adorned1 in a manner to it most unintelligible and unsatisfying--and seeming1 to the ear of the satirist1 to cry all the while1-- ,alack1 and alas6 ,what's all this white damask to daisies and grass6 ,,kate4 ,helen and ,i were much interested in that old book you lent us1 ,mr4 ,atherton1 ,the ,life of ,mistress ,antonia ,bourignon1#cfh an excellent woman1 shamefully persecuted4 ,,atherton4 ,i think so4 ,she took upon herself1 you see1 to rebuke the ,church as well as the world4 ,,mrs4 ,,atherton4 ,and had large property left her1 which excited the cupidity of those ,fathers of the ,oratory1 who gave her such trouble4 ,,gower4 ,i never heard of her before4 ,,atherton4 ,her ,quietism was very similar to that of ,madame ,guyon1 but she was not1 like her1 mixed up with a controversy famous in history4 ,she found1 however1 a faithful ,fnlon in her accomplished disciple1 ,peter ,poiret1#cfi a liberal and large-minded ,quietist1 whose mysticism may be said to occupy a position between that of the ,german ,theology and our ,english ,platonists4 ,,willoughby4 ,i greatly enjoyed reading some parts of his ,divine conomy4 ,tennyson's stanza expresses the spirit of his theology3-- ,our little systems have their day2 ,they have their day and cease to be3 ,they are but broken lights of ,thee1 ,and ,thou1 ,o ,lord1 art more than they4 ,,atherton4 ,yet his six volumes add one more to our many systems4 ,the vitiating element1 in a theology otherwise very fairly balanced1 is the extreme to which he carries the doctrine of passivity4 ,in religion1 he will have the understanding utterly inert4#cgj ,,willoughby4 ,yet he uses1 very effectively1 in his writings1 the faculty he calls on us to resign4 ,,atherton4 ,it is very common with mysticism to demand1 in that way1 a sacrifice which it does not make itself4 ,with ,poiret1 ,philosophy1 ,criticism1 and ,rhetoric1 are the curse of the ,church--the sources of all false theology4 ,,willoughby4 ,still there is much truth in his assertion that all positive religion accomplishes its purpose only as it leads to a filial subjection of the soul to ,god--as it conducts men1 beyond itself1 to immediate intercourse with ,deity4 ,,atherton4 ,william ,law has the same idea3 it constitutes1 with him1 the natural basis of all revealed religion4 ,,willoughby4 ,it is mainly on this ground1 ,i suppose1 that ,poiret adopts an eschatology more mild than that of the ,calvinism which he forsook4 ,he is not without his hopes concerning heathens hereafter4 ,he believes in a state of purification after death1 for those who departed1 in a state of grace1 but not yet ripe for the full enjoyment of heaven4 ,,atherton4 ,it is significant that the first step taken by ,protestant ,mysticism1 after departing from ,calvinistic1 ,lutheran1 or ,anglican orthodoxy1 should always be an endeavour to mitigate the gloom which hangs over the doctrine of the future state4 ,,mrs4 ,,atherton4 ,i have also been reading ,m4 ,eynard's ,life of ,madame de ,krdener4 ,she appears to me an inferior ,madame ,guyon--falling very short of her predecessor in real elevation of soul and power of mind1 and decidedly more credulous4 ,,atherton4 ,she was never chastened by trials so severe as those which befel ,madame ,guyon or ,antoinette ,bourignon4 ,i do not think her insincere altogether1--she meant well1 and often deceived herself2 but she never thoroughly conquered her inordinate vanity and love of display4 ,when her novel of ,valerie had outlived its day of puffery--when she had ceased to shine in the world of fashion1 she achieved distinction as a seeress and guide of souls at the ,hotel ,montchenu4 ,,willoughby4 ,a tuft-hunting sort of ,quietism1 hers4 ,what a picture ,talleyrand gives of the evening religious service in her drawing-room1 when the allies were in ,paris4 ,the ,emperor ,alexander was a frequent visitor1 prominent among notabilities from every court in ,europe4 ,m4 ,empeytaz1 in his gown1 prayed and preached2 ,madame de ,krdener1 with her blue eyes and long dark locks1 would converse on the interior life1 with guest after guest1 in the inner apartment1 or haply come forward and deliver a prophecy4#cga ,,atherton4 ,she had all the tact of a woman of the world1 an impressive manner1 and a fascinating gift of utterance4 ,her mysticism received its prophetic impulse chiefly from the predictions of a pretended clairvoyante1 managed by a knave4#cgb ,,mrs4 ,,atherton4 ,jung ,stilling and ,swedenborg had also their share in giving that bent to her enthusiasm4 ,i think she may have done good in some quarters4 ,,atherton4 ,very likely4 ,the world is seldom the worse for the shock it receives when some one speaks out a strong belief in unseen realities1 even though not always in the wisest way4 ,note to page #bhf4 ,an anonymous work1 entitled ,an ,apology for ,me4 ,antonia ,bourignon 7,lond4 #afii71 contains an account of her life4 ,it was not her design to found a sect1 for she taught that of sects there were too many3 exclusive formulas and hostile systems had corrupted ,christendom1 and made it a very ,babel4 ,she wished to forsake the world1 with a few associates1 bound by no vows1 distinguished by no habit1 working with their hands1 and giving themselves to prayer and meditation4 ,she was much resorted to by religious persons of every communion1 as a guide to the higher degrees of the ,christian life4 ,she believed that special light was granted her for the interpretation of ,scripture1 and that it was her mission to recall the ,church from formalism and human notions to spirituality and ,quietist devotion4 ,she appears to have been truly successful in awakening and stimulating religious aspiration in very many minds1 till the storm of persecution1 raised by her sweeping censure of the ecclesiastical world1 drove her from one hiding-place to another1 throughout ,schleswig and ,holstein4 ,she died1 at last1 impoverished and deserted1 concealed in a wretched lodging at ,amsterdam4 ,her letters are those of a pious and sensible woman1 clear-headed1 precise1 and decided in vexatious business details1 and singularly free from all obscureness or rhapsody4 ,swammerdam1 the naturalist1 was one of her disciples4 ,her ,quietism was a welcome doctrine to many among ,romanists1 ,lutherans1 and ,calvinists4 ,her bitterest persecutors were found among the clergy of every denomination4 ,the ,jesuits of ,frederickstadt wished for fuel to burn her4 ,the priests of the ,oratory at ,mechlin defrauded her of her property4 ,lutheran and ,calvinist pastors alike1 wrote1 spoke1 and preached against her with such virulence that the zealous populace of ,flensburg were ready to tear her in pieces for the glory of ,god4 7,life1 pp4 #caj-cac4 ,comp4 ,letters1 xxii4 xxiii4 xxiv43 ,a ,collection of ,letters written by ,mrs4 ,a4 ,bourignon1 ,lond4 #agjh47 ,note to page #bhg4 ,poiret was a ,calvinistic clergyman1 who1 after his acquaintance with ,antoinette ,bourignon1 and much reading of mystical writers1 relinquished his office4 ,in his retirement he wrote a number of theological works1 of which the best known is his system of divinity1 entitled ,the ,divine conomy4 ,he possessed a goodly measure of that scholarship and philosophic culture which1 as a mystic1 he at once uses and depreciates4 ,our higher faculty--the understanding1 or intellect1 he calls it--is not 7like what he terms #8reason'7 a limited capability2 but #8being made for ,god is in a manner infinite1 so as to be able to exert infinite acts1 that is1 to raise itself up to the contemplation of ,god as incomprehensible1 infinite1 and above all particular forms of conceiving him4' ,if1 therefore1 we make an absolute surrender of this faculty to ,god1 and so1 by a passive #8implicit faith1' yield ourselves up to whatsoever ,he may be pleased to communicate to us1 we receive ,him #8in a manner worthy of ,him1 above all particular and bounded conception1 light1 and sentiment4' ,then1 he says1 we practically own this fundamental truth1 #8that ,god is infinite and incomprehensible2 that he is a ,light1 a ,good1 a ,wisdom1 a ,power1 a ,justice1--in a word1 a ,being above all comprehension and thought4' ,he bids us remember that our apprehensions of ,god1 however true1 as derived from his own word and from particular communications of his own1 are necessarily partial and imperfect1 so that #8a true and pure faith1 while embracing the particular divine lights1 will not regard chiefly the particular forms1 but the infinite ,god that is annexed to them1 and comprehends in himself infinitely more than the particulars he has disclosed to us4' 7,div4 con4 vol4 v4 chap4 iv4 #cg-da47 ,what is true in this doctrine has seldom been denied--viz4 that beyond our highest apprehension of ,god1 his nature extends infinitely4 ,we know but parts of his ways4 ,we know that infinity lies behind all our #8bounded conceptions2' but what that infinity is1 no surrender of the ,intellect can disclose to us4 ,note to page #bhg4 ,here ,poiret shall speak for himself3-- #8,the ,understanding1 to pass into the order of faith1 must have these two conditions2 the first1 that it be empty1 and shut to all ideas of worldly things1 both heavenly and earthly2 the second1 that it keep itself open before ,god after an indeterminate and general manner1 not particularly fixing upon anything4 ,this being supposed1 with the faith of desire afore-mentioned1 ,god causes to rise in the soul his divine light1 which is his eternal substantial word1 which does himself modify 7if ,i may so say71 or rather fills and quickens the understanding of the soul1 and enlightens it as he pleases4'--,div4 con4 p4 #ic4 #8,it will be objected1 it may be1 to what has been said1 that this second condition required here of the intellect that means to be enlightened by ,faith1 is a state of idleness--time lost2 and that it is an absurd thing not to make use of the understanding and faculties ,god has given us1 nor so much as endeavour to excite in our minds good and bright thoughts4 ,here are several things tacked together1 and most of them beside the purpose4 ,for at present ,i am not treating of the means by which one may be introduced1 or rather brought1 as it were1 to the threshold of faith1 as ,i may say2 nor of that imperfect and beginning faith1 by me styled active4 ,nor yet do ,i say1 that when one has been enlightened by the light of ,god1 one is not to fix one's mind to the consideration of the lights held out by ,god3 but what ,i say is this3 ,i suppose a man has already had some glimpse of the divine light by the call of preventing grace1 and that he has actively co-operated with it1 by turning his understanding towards it1 with particular desires of such and such lights2 and1 moreover1 that1 to confirm himself therein1 he has deduced in his reason and his other inferior faculties1 notions1 ratiocinations1 images1 and words1 and other particular exercises wherein he has been exercised long enough to be capable of ascending to the state of pure and altogether divine faith4 ,upon this supposition1 the question is1 whether one whose faith has as yet been but weak1 and the small light he has had clouded and mixed with great darkness1 prejudices1 and errors1 designing to clear the principles of the fight he has from the aforesaid mixture1 and desiring to see this divine light in its purity and more fully1--whether1 ,i say1 to this end he ought to apply thereto the activity of his understanding1 of his meditations1 reflections1 and reasonings2 or else1 whether1 all this apart1 he ought to offer his understanding in vacuity and silence to the ,son of ,god1 the ,sun of ,righteousness1 and the true ,light of ,souls8 ,and this last is what we affirm1 and against which the objections alleged are of no force4'--,p4 #ajj4 #8,thus have ,i shown what ,god requires of the intellect in matters of faith--viz4 a fund of mind wherein neither reason nor imagination do at all act1 but where ,god only may be1 and act brightly as ,he pleases1 the soul meanwhile not adhering to the particular manners of ,god's acting1 but merely because it is ,god acting1 and ,god infinite and incomprehensible1 who can dispose of ,his infinite ways above our understanding4'--,p4 #ajd4 ,antoinette ,bourignon found in ,poiret a learned and philosophical disciple4 ,he was to her1 in some respects1 what ,robert ,barclay was to ,george ,fox4 ,but her writings appear also to have awakened a response1 of a more practical kind1 in many devout minds of whom the world knew nothing4 ,throughout ,germany and ,holland1 ,france and ,switzerland1 and in ,england also1 were scattered little groups of friends who nourished a hidden devotion by the study of pietist or mystical writers4 ,arndt and ,spener1 ,bourignon and ,guyon1 ,labadie and ,yvon1 ,thomas ,kempis1 ,de ,sales1 or translations from the ,spanish mystics1 furnished the oil for their inward flame4 ,some withdrew altogether from the more active duties of life2 others were separatists from the religion established around them4 ,in some cases they held meetings for worship among themselves2 in others1 the struggles of a soul towards the higher life were only revealed to one or two chosen intimates4 ,whenever we can penetrate behind the public events which figure in history at the close of the seventeenth and the opening of the eighteenth century1 indications are discernible which make it certain that a religious vitality of this description was far more widely diffused than is commonly supposed4 ,a single example will be sufficiently suggestive4 ,one ,m4 de ,marsay1 who threw up his ensign's commission in the ,french army1 and retired1 with two friends1 into seclusion1 after the manner recommended by ,antoinette ,bourignon1 left behind him an unpublished ,autobiography4 ,a copy from a translation of this curious narrative1 in the possession of ,mr4 ,tindall ,harris1 has been kindly placed at my disposal by that gentleman4 ,the copy was executed in #aggc1 by some one who had known ,de ,marsay personally4 ,m4 de ,marsay was born at ,paris1 in #afhh1 of ,protestant parents4 ,a taste for devotional reading was fostered1 in early youth1 by the piety of his mother4 ,jurieu's well-known work on ,divine ,love found its place among such studies2 but none of the mystical writers4 ,when he had entered the army1 sometimes half the day1 and often half the night also1 was devoted to reading1 meditation1 and prayer4 ,at one time he maintained an inward prayer for three or four days without intermission1 though the regiment was on the march1 and the troops under arms day and night4 ,he fondly imagined that such a state would continue all his life4 ,when the reaction came1 his efforts to overcome the natural exhaustion and regain his spiritual joy were so strenuous and painful that his delicate frame gave way1 and symptoms of consumption appeared4 ,his distress at this time was similar to that of ,madame ,guyon1 and of many others1 at the earlier period of their entrance on the #8inward way4' ,thomas ,kempis was in his hand2 but he could not yet understand the lesson which the more experienced mystics so earnestly inculcate1--that spiritual pleasures may be sought too greedily1--that we should persevere and trust1 whether in sensible delight or obscuration1 whether in fulness or #8aridity4' ,he lay sick at ,lisle for three months1 calmly looking for death1 and then1 to the surprise of all1 recovered4 ,meanwhile his friend1 ,lieutenant ,cordier1 has been reading ,bourignon's ,lux in ,tenebris1 in the camp before ,bethune4 ,he writes to ,de ,marsay1 saying that he was now convinced the devotion they had hitherto practised together was as nothing2 that he had resolved to quit the army and retire to some desert1 there to live a life of poverty and devotion4 ,m4 ,barratier1 the chaplain of their regiment1 was of like mind2 if ,de ,marsay would read ,madame ,bourignon1 he would probably arrive at the conclusion1 and join them4 ,so indeed it proved4 ,de ,marsay bought her nineteen volumes1 and determined to live her #8poor and evangelical life4' ,after many delays1 he succeeded in obtaining his discharge 7diligently reading1 meanwhile1 ,theresa's ,life1 and ,john of the ,cross72 and at last1 behold the three friends1 in the spring of #agaa1 settled in a solitude such as they desired1 at ,schwartzenau1 on the estate of the ,countess ,witgenstein4 ,they rise at four1 and begin the day by reading a chapter in the ,bible4 ,cordier and ,de ,marsay work in the field1 and ,barratier has breakfast ready for them at seven o'clock1--dry bread1 of their own baking1 and cold water4 ,till noon they spin1 card1 or knit wool2 ,cordier goes out on some errand2 or ,de ,marsay collects leaves1 instead of straw1 for their beds4 ,at noon they dine1 and ,barratier 7the cook and housekeeper7 boils them the same food all the week through4 ,one week it is pease1 with bread2 another week1 barley2 next1 wheat1 groats1 or oatmeal pap2 and for drink sometimes1 #8as a special treat1' boiled groats1 in milk4 ,after dinner one of them reads aloud from ,bourignon's writings4 ,work again till four1 and in the field till seven1 when they sit down to supper1 before a dish of pulse or salad1 groats or turnips4 ,work again1 in-doors1 till nine1 and then to bed4 ,it was a rule that they should only speak to each other when it was absolutely necessary4 ,they had no regular hours for prayer1 but endeavoured 7as ,bourignon counsels7 to do everything in a spirit of prayer1 by living consciously in the presence of ,god1 and referring all ceaselessly to ,him4 ,yet in this ,paradise of asceticism ,de ,marsay is not happy4 ,the endeavour to retain constantly a general sense of the divine presence was far less unnatural and arduous than those protracted prayers and meditations at which he used to labour4 ,but he has little enjoyment1 and the clamorous demands of a large appetite sorely disturb his pious thoughts4 ,see him1 one day1 sitting on the stump of a tree--the picture of despair4 ,his soul is in the abyss4 ,god seems to have abandoned him to himself4 ,what has he done8 ,he has eaten a potato between meals6 ,only by the most ample confession1 the most contrite self-abasement1 can he recover peace4 ,terrible tyranny of the misguided conscience over the feeble judgment6 ,here was a moral power that might have made a hero2 and it only drives a slave4 ,but the revulsion must come2 and simultaneously the three anchorites remit their silence and their introversion1 and 7the spell once broken7 chatter incessantly2 now one1 and now another1 bursting into fits of unmeaning1 involuntary laughter4 ,yet1 through all such mortifying discouragement1 all terror and temptation1 ,de ,marsay makes his way4 ,he does but yield himself1 in his helplessness1 the more absolutely to ,god1 to be delivered from his spiritual adversaries1 if ,he wills1 or to be abandoned to the countless possibilities of evil1 within him and about him4 ,bourignon brought him to this point4 ,so far she essays to guide souls in the #8interior way2' after that1 the ,divine ,conductor leads them each as ,he will4 ,with poor ,cordier it fared not so well4 ,they had relaxed their rule1 he said3 he would leave them1 and live entirely alone4 ,so he was carried from extreme to extreme1 till he reached a spurious resignation--a passivity which did not resist evil--a self-forgetfulness which ceased to recognise in himself his most dangerous enemy4 ,from the height of spiritual pride he was precipitated into licence4 ,a woman living near1 with great affectation of sanctity1 beguiled him into marriage4 ,this female ,tartuffe stood afterwards revealed in her real iniquity2 and ,cordier eventually returned to the world and a godless libertinism4 ,the ,countess ,witgenstein gave shelter1 about this time1 to a ,lady ,clara de ,callenberg1 who had suffered much domestic unhappiness on account of her pietism4 ,this lady1 considerably his senior1 ,de ,marsay saw1 wooed1 and won4 ,our pair of ascetics resolved to live a life of absolute continence1 and ,de ,marsay renders hearty thanks that 7in spite of many temptations7 they received grace to adhere to their determination4 ,the good man's manner of reasoning is curious4 ,the first thought of a change of life occurred to him one day1 when sitting1 #8in great calmness of mind1' under a tree1 with his knitting-tackle4 #8,it was shown to me1--if it was true that ,i was willing to be the property of ,god without exception1 it was his will that ,i should give ,him the first proof thereof1 in marrying the ,lady ,clara de ,callenberg4' ,barratier married them1 and so the original association was finally dissolved4#cgc ,the marriage was a very happy one1 their principal outward trial arising from the frequent indisposition of his wife1 who ruined her constitution by the miserable austerity of her diet4 ,they were all but penniless2 yet in this they rejoiced1 as so much exercise of faith2 and1 indeed1 such moderate means as they required were generally found forthcoming from one quarter or another4 ,de ,marsay did not always remain in their hut at ,schwartzenau2 he journeyed to ,switzerland to visit his mother1 and again to ,paris to see his brother1 passing through ,blois with letters to ,madame ,guyon1 who died shortly before he reached that city4 ,he travelled also repeatedly1 in company with his wife1 everywhere finding little circles of devout persons who received them with open arms4 ,his narrative is full of the difficulties he found in ascertaining the divine will4 ,again and again does he discover1 after an interval of years1 that steps taken in the full persuasion that they were divinely directed1 were1 in reality1 self-moved and erroneous4 ,he fears to relax a severity1 lest it should be self-indulgence2 he fears to prolong it1 lest it should be self-righteousness4 ,after making one sacrifice1 an additional one suggests itself as possible1 and the longer the thought is entertained1 the more hopeless is peace of mind1 till conscience has compelled that also2 and all this1 sometimes from first to last1 in fear and darkness4 ,after dividing most of their little store among the poor1 and selling their cottage as too large1 ,madame de ,marsay can know no rest from her fears till the greater part of the money received has been also given away1--that the command may be obeyed1 #8,sell all that thou hast4' ,yet1 through all self-made troubles1 the genuineness of their religion shines out4 ,he is ever humble1 thankful1 trustful4 ,the reading of ,madame ,guyon weans him still farther from #8sensible religious delights2' he enters calmly into the state of #8dark faith2' begins to attach less importance to austerities2 loses much of his stiffness2 will attend public worship1 and commune4 ,it is instructive to mark how few of those concerning whom he writes as having entered on the higher religious life1 are found holding on in that course4 ,after an interval of absence1 he returns to a neighbourhood where he had known several such4 ,he finds most of them in darkness and disappointment4 ,they know not where their souls are1 or what has come to them4 ,some are sunk in apathy4 ,there are those who retain the form1 though their fire has gone out long ago4 ,others have plunged from high profession into vices the most shameless4 ,yet a remnant are preserved through all the dangers of the way4 ,those perplexities and doubts which so frequently clouded the pathway of ,de ,marsay1 were probably his safeguard4 ,in a life of such excessive introspection1 a proper self-distrust must almost necessarily take the form of morbid scrupulosity4 ,even he had some narrow escapes1 for which he does well to sing his lowly ,non nobis ,domine6 ,he came afterwards to see how injurious was that withdrawment from all public worship 7habitual with himself and his wife71 in the case of those who had children4 ,the offspring of such parents either grew up with a contempt for the ordinances of religion1 or1 finding their position as separatists hurtful to their advancement in the world1 conformed1 from interested motives4 ,in #agca1 ,count ,zinzendorf came to ,schwartzenau1 and fascinated the ,de ,marsays for a time4 ,but ,de ,marsay--so melancholy1 and so given to solitude--was not one long #8to find good for his soul' in connexion with any religious community whatever4 ,the ,moravian converts met at first at his house1 and he preached to them two or three times1 with remarkable acceptance4 ,but he detected pleasure to sense and self in such exercise of his gifts1 and left them1 resolving to yield himself up to the way of dark faith--to #8die off from all the creatures'--to be as one excommunicate1 and perishing in the wilderness of spiritual desertion for his unfaithfulness4 ,his difficulties were not diminished by mystical metaphysics4 ,there is the ,ground of his soul1 and its inward attraction1 to be followed1 whatever reason1 prudence1 reflection1 and even that which seems conscience1 may urge or thunder against it4 ,whether the attraction be false or true1 is exceedingly hard to determine2--the issue frequently proves it the former1 and that the common-sense folk about him were right after all4 ,he arrives at a state--the wished-for state1 in fact--free from all form1 image1 object of hope1 c4--a total blank of the senses and powers1 and yet complains bitterly of the misery of that condition4 ,reason1 internal sense1 hope1--all have been abandoned1 and yet1 out of the internal ground there arises nothing in the shape of light or encouragement4 ,the most harassing secular life1 in which he would have been driven to look out of himself to ,christ1 had been truer and happier than this morbid introversion4 ,a single passage in his history 7and there are several like it7 is better than a treatise in illustration of the dangers which beset the notion of perceptible spiritual guidance4 ,he is at ,berleberg 7#agbf71 and hears of emigration thence to ,pennsylvania4 ,as he lies awake one night1 it is strongly impressed upon his mind that he ought to go3 he and his wife might realize a complete solitude in that land of cheapness and freedom4 ,for there was too much of the creature for him1 even at ,schwartzenau4 ,they resolve1 despite the earnest dissuasion of their friends1 to join the next band of emigrants4 ,news arrives that the greater part of those who last went out1 died on the voyage1 of disease or want4 ,de ,marsay finds nothing here to stagger him--for should he shrink from any such hazard8 ,again1 it is shown him clearly that his wife will die if they sail--he seems to see her dead4 ,they resolve1 nevertheless1 to yield themselves up to death2 and spend wretched tearful days1 nerved to that determination4 ,at last1 when again alone and in stillness1 he receives an impression that it is not the will of ,god that he should go4 ,he communicates the joyful tidings to his wife4 ,she replies that she will go without him1 unless she also receives a similar inward monition for herself4 ,such impression she happily obtains1 and they remain4 ,the sacrifice had been made1 however1 said ,de ,marsay1 the ,isaac offered--but the victim was not to be actually slain4 ,finally1 he discovers that his original impulse to go to ,america was #8muddy and impure1' arising from his excessive attachment to seclusion4 ,so is it continually where men's whims and fancies are identified with the oracles of an imagined perceptible guidance4 ,after many alternations--now rising to a love that casts out fear1 and anon receding into gloom--his mind is mellowed and liberalized with advancing years4 ,he no longer conceives it necessary to die to the creature by forsaking his religious friends4 ,he lives at ,wolfenbttel1 with ,major ,botticher1 the husband of his niece1 and has abandoned every ascetic singularity4 ,he believes in the mystical states 7for he has lived them71 but he is no longer in any one of them4 ,he looks away from himself only to ,christ4 ,he no longer identifies the mysteries of the interior way with spirituality4 ,he has friendly intercourse with ministers--attends church--rejoices in the good work doing among ,reformed and ,lutherans everywhere4 ,madame de ,marsay died in #agdb1 in great mental distress2 throughout several weeks previously having imagined herself abandoned and condemned4 ,but her husband rejoiced in his assurance of her glorious rest4 ,his end was a contrast to his distressful life4 #8,i swim and bathe in joy1' said he1 #8that ,i shall now soon obtain what1 through the grace of our ,saviour1 ,i have so long and ardently wished and hoped for4' ,footnote #cfh3 ,see ,note on p4 #bhi4 ,footnote #cfi3 ,see ,note on p4 #bij4 ,footnote #cgj3 ,see ,second ,note on p4 #bij4 ,footnote #cga3 ,see ,revelations from the ,life of ,prince ,talleyrand2 and compare ,eynard1 ,vie de ,madame de ,krdener1 chap4 xvii4 ,madame de ,genlis writes of her1 #8,me4 de ,krdener disait les choses les plus singulires avec un calme qui les rendait persuasives2 elle tait certainement de trs bonne foi2 elle me parut tre aimable1 spirituelle et d'une originalit trs piquante4'--,p4 #cj4 ,footnote #cgb3 ,see the whole story of the pastor ,fontaine and ,maria ,kummerin1 in ,eynard4 ,footnote #cgc3 ,barratier subsequently became minister to the ,french church in ,halle4 ,,book ,,the ,,eleventh ,,mysticism ,,in ,,england ,,chapter ,i4 ,is virtue then1 unless of ,christian growth1 ,mere fallacy1 or foolishness1 or both8 ,ten thousand sages lost in endless woe1 ,for ignorance of what they could not know8 ,that speech betrays at once a bigot's tongue2 ,charge not a ,god with such outrageous wrong4 ,truly not ,i--the partial light men have1 ,my creed persuades me1 well employed1 may save2 ,while he that scorns the noonday beam1 perverse1 ,shall find the blessing1 unimproved1 a curse4 ,,cowper4 ,one morning1 ,willoughby1 calling on ,atherton1 found him and ,gower looking over an old-fashioned little volume4 ,,willoughby4 ,what have you there1 ,atherton8 ,,atherton4 ,a curious old book--,the ,history of ,hai ,ebn ,yokhdan1 by ,abu ,jaafer ,ebn ,tophail--an ,arabian philosopher of ,spain1 writing in the twelfth or thirteenth century3 #8done into ,english' by ,simon ,ockley4 ,,gower 7to ,willoughby74 ,i happened to be looking through ,barclay's ,apology--found him referring to this ,history of ,yokhdan2 and1 behold1 ,atherton fetches me down1 from one of his topmost dust-of-erudition strata there1 the very book4 ,it appears that good ,barclay was so hard put to it1 to find examples for the support of his doctrine concerning the ,universal and ,saving ,light1 that he has pressed this shadowy philosophical romance into the service1 as an able-bodied unexceptionable fact3--sets up a fanciful ornament from the ,moorish arabesques of ,toledo as a bulwark for his theory4 ,,willoughby4 ,who1 then1 may this ,hai ,ebn ,yokhdan be8 ,,atherton4 ,simply a mystical ,robinson ,crusoe4 ,the book relates how a child was exposed in an ark upon the sea1 drifted to a ,fortunate ,island in the ,indian ,ocean1 was there suckled by a roe1 dresses himself with skins and feathers1 builds a hut1 tames a horse1 rises to the discovery of #8,one supreme and necessarily self-existent ,being1' and does1 at last1 by due abstinence and exclusion of all external objects1 attain to a mystical intuition of ,him--a contemplation of the divine essence1 and a consciousness that his own essence1 thus lost in ,god1 is itself divine3--all this1 by the unaided inner ,light4 ,a ,mussulman hermit who is landed on the island1 there to retire from mankind1 finds him2 teaches him to speak2 and discovers1 to his devout amazement1 that this ,ebn ,yokhdan has attained1 first by deduction from the external world1 and then1 abandoning that1 by immediate intuition1 to the very truth concerning ,god which he has learnt through the medium of the ,koran--the tee-totum mysticism of spinning dervishes included4#cgd ,,gower4 ,barclay1 citing his ,arab1 points the moral as teaching #8that the best and most certain knowledge of ,god1 is not that which is attained by premises premised1 and conclusions deduced2 but that which is enjoyed by conjunction of the ,mind of ,man with the ,supreme ,intellect1 after the mind is purified from its corruption and is separated from all bodily images1 and is gathered into a profound stillness4'#cge ,,willoughby4 ,and the simple-hearted apologist of the ,friends never suspected that this story was a philosopher's conjecture--,abu ,tophail's ideal of what the inner light might be supposed to teach a man1 in total seclusion8 ,,atherton4 ,not he4 ,at any rate1 ,yokhdan figures in the first half-dozen editions of the ,apology4 ,i believe1 in none later4 ,,gower4 ,a curious sight1 to see the ,arabian ,sufi and the ,english ,quaker keeping company so lovingly4 ,,willoughby4 ,and yet how utterly repugnant to our ,english natures1 that contemplative ,oriental mysticism4 ,,gower4 ,in practice1 of course4 ,but in the theory lies a common ground4 ,,atherton4 ,our island would be but a spare contributor to a general exhibition of mystics4 ,the ,british cloister has not one great mystical saint to show4 ,mysticism did not1 with us1 prepare the way for the ,reformation4 ,john ,wycliffe and ,john ,tauler are a striking contrast in this respect4 ,in the time of the ,black ,death1 the ,flagellants could make no way with us4 ,whether coming as gloomy superstition1 as hysterical fervour1 or as pantheistic speculation1 mysticism has found our soil a thankless one4 ,,gower4 ,i should like to catch a ,hegelian1 in good condition1 well nourished with the finest of thrice-bolted philosophic grain1 duly ignorant of ,england1 and shut him up to determine1 from the depths of his consciousness1 what would be the form which mysticism must necessarily assume among us4 ,,atherton4 ,he would probably be prepared to prove to us priori that we could not possibly evolve such a product at all4 ,,gower4 ,most likely4 ,the torches of the ,bacchantes1 flung into the ,tiber1 were said still to burn2 but what whirling enthusiast's fire could survive a plunge into the ,thames8 ,there could be nothing for it but sputtering extinction1 and then to float--a sodden lump of pine and pitch1 bobbing against the stolid sides of barges4 ,,willoughby4 ,the sage might be pardoned for prophesying that our mysticism would appear in some time of religious stagnation--a meteoric flash spasmodically flinging itself this way and that1 startling with its radiance deep slimy pools1 black rich oozing reaches of plurality and sinecure4 ,remembering the very practical mysticism of the ,munster ,anabaptists1 he might invest our mystical day-star with such #8trains of fire and dews of death2' or depict it as a shape of terror1 like his who #8drew ,priam's curtain at the dead of night2' heralding horrors2 and waking every still cathedral close to dread the burning fate that befell1 #8the topless towers of ,ilium4' ,,atherton4 ,it certainly would have been hard to foresee that mysticism in ,england would arise just when it did--would go so far1 and no farther3--that in the time of the ,commonwealth1 when there was fuller religious freedom by far1 and1 throughout the whole middle class1 a more earnest religious life than at any former period of our history1--when along the ranks of triumphant ,puritanism the electric light of enthusiasm played every here and there upon the steel which won them victory1 and was beheld with no ominous misgiving1 but hailed rather as ,pentecostal effluence1--that1 at such a juncture1 ,quakerism should have appeared to declare this liberty insufficiently free1 this spirituality too carnal1 this enthusiasm too cold1--to profess to eject more thoroughly yet the world1 the flesh1 and the devil1--to take its place in the confused throng contending about the #8bare-picked bone' of ,hierarchy1 and show itself not to be tempted for a moment by wealth1 by place1 by power1--to commit many follies1 but never a single crime1--to endure enumerable wrongs1 but never to furnish one example of resistance or revenge4 ,,willoughby4 ,well done1 old ,england6 ,it is gratifying to think that1 on our shores1 mysticism itself is less fantastic than its wont1--labours benignly1 if not always soberly2 and is represented1 not by nightmared visionaries1 or fury-driven persecutors1 but by the holy1 tender-hearted1 much-enduring ,george ,fox4 ,the ,muggletonians1 ,fifth-,monarchy men1 and ,ranters of those days were the exceptional mire and dirt cast up by the vexed times1 but assuredly not the representatives of ,english mysticism4 ,,atherton4 ,the elements of ,quakerism lie all complete in the personal history of ,fox2 and the religious sect is1 in many respects1 the perpetuation of his individual character2--the same intellectual narrowness1 incident to an isolated1 half-disciplined mind1 and the same large1 loving heart of charity for all men4 ,remember how he describes himself as #8knowing pureness and righteousness at eleven years of age2' carefully brought up1 so that from his childhood all vice and profaneness were an abomination to him4 ,then there were his solitary musings and sore inward battles1 as he walked about his native ,drayton many nights by himself3 his fastings oft2 his much walking abroad in solitary spots many days2 his sitting1 with his ,bible1 in hollow trees and lonesome places1 till night came on4 ,because the religious teachers to whom he applied in his temptations to despair were unhappily incompetent to administer relief1 he concludes too hastily that the system of ministerial instruction is more often a hindrance than a help to #8vital godliness4' ,because #8priest ,stevens' worked up some of his remarks in conversation into his next ,sunday's sermon1--because the #8ancient priest' at ,mansetter1 to whom he next applied1 could make nothing of him1 and in despair recommended tobacco and psalm-singing 7furthermore violating his confidence1 and letting young ,george's spiritual distresses get wind among a bevy of giggling milk-lasses71--because1 after travelling seven miles to a priest of reputed experience at ,tamworth1 he found him after all #8but like an empty hollow cask1'--because horticultural ,dr4 ,cradock of ,coventry fell into a passion with him for accidentally trampling on the border of his flower-bed1--because one ,macham1 a priest in high account1 offered him physic and prescribed blood-letting1--therefore the institution of a clerical order was an error and a mischief1 mainly chargeable with the disputings of the church1 and the ungodliness of the world4 ,so1 in his simplicity1 he regarded it as a momentous discovery to have it opened to him #8that being bred at ,oxford or ,cambridge was not enough to fit and qualify men to be ministers of ,christ4'#cgf ,,gower4 ,we may hold that without joining the ,society of ,friends4 ,,atherton4 ,in like manner he argues that because believers are the temple of the ,spirit1 and many venerate places superstitiously1 or identify church-going with religion1 therefore #8steeple-houses' are a sinful innovation1 diffusing1 for the most part1 darkness rather than light4 ,because it appeared to him that in his study of the ,scriptures he knew ,christ #8only as the light grew'--by inward revelation--#8as he that hath the key did open1' therefore the doctrine of the inward ,light is proclaimed to all as the central principle of ,redemption4 ,,gower4 ,true4 ,this proneness to extremes has led his followers often to attach undue importance to the mere externals of a protest against externalism4 ,those peculiarities of dress and speech are petty formalities unworthy of their main principle4 ,in his #8,epistle to gathered ,churches into outward forms upon the ,earth1' ,fox can see scarce a vestige of spiritual religion anywhere beyond the pale of the ,society of ,friends4 ,,atherton4 ,yet ascetic and narrow on many points as he unquestionably was1 and little disposed to make concession to human weakness1 in practical charity he was most abundant4 ,oppression and imprisonment awakened the benevolent1 never the malevolent impulses of his nature1--only adding fervour to his plea for the captive and the oppressed4 ,his tender conscience could know no fellowship with the pleasures of the world2 his tender heart could know no weariness in seeking to make less its sum of suffering4 ,he is a ,cato-,howard4 ,you see him in his early days1 refusing to join in the festivities of the time called ,christmas2 yet1 if a stranger to the mirth1 never to the mercy1 of that kindly season4 ,from house to house he trudges in the snow1 visiting poor widows1 and giving them money4 ,invited to marriage merry-makings1 he will not enter the house of feasting2 but the next day1 or soon after1 we find him there1 offering1 if the young couple are poor1 the effectual congratulation of pecuniary help4 ,in the prison-experiences of ,george ,fox are to be found the germs of that modern philanthropy in which his followers have distinguished themselves so nobly4 ,in ,derby ,jail he is #8exceedingly exercised' about the proceedings of the judges and magistrates--concerning their putting men to death for cattle1 and money1 and small matters1--and is moved to write to them1 showing the sin of such severity2 and1 moreover1 #8what an hurtful thing it was that prisoners should lie so long in jail2 how that they learned badness one of another in talking of their bad deeds2 and therefore speedy justice should be done4'#cgg ,,willoughby4 ,how the spirit of benevolence pervades all the ,journals of the early ,friends4 ,look at ,john ,woolman1 who will neither write nor have letters written to him by post1 because the horses are overwrought1 and the hardships of the postboys so great4 ,when farthest gone in rhapsody1 this redeeming characteristic was never wanting to the ,quakers4 ,it may be said of some of them1 as was said of dying ,pope--uttering1 between his wanderings1 only kindness--#8humanity seems to have outlasted understanding4' ,,atherton4 ,as to doctrine1 again1 consider how much religious extravagance was then afloat1 and let us set it down to the credit of ,fox that his mystical excesses were no greater4 ,at ,coventry he finds men in prison for religion who declared1 to his horror1 that they were ,god4 ,while at ,derby1 a soldier who had been a ,baptist1 comes to him from ,nottingham1 and argues that ,christ and the prophets suffered no one of them externally1 only internally4 ,another company1 he says1 came to him there1 who professed to be triers of spirits1 and when he questioned them1 #8were presently up in the airy mind1' and said he was mad4 ,the priests and magistrates were not more violent against him than the ,ranters1 who roved the country in great numbers1 professing to work miracles1 forbidding other enthusiasts to preach1 on pain of damnation2 and in comparison with whom1 ,fox was soberness itself4 ,rice ,jones1 the ,ranter1 from ,nottingham1 prophesies against him with his company4 ,at ,captain ,bradford's house1 ,ranters come from ,york to wrangle with him4 ,in the ,peak country they oppose him1 and #8fall a-swearing4' ,at ,swanington1 in ,leicestershire1 they disturb the meeting--hound on the mob against the ,friends2 they sing1 whistle1 and dance2 but their leaders are confounded everywhere by the power of the ,lord1 and many of their followers1 says the ,journal1 'were reached and convinced1 and received the ,spirit of ,god2 and are come to be a pretty people1 living and walking soberly in the truth of ,christ4'#cgh ,such facts should be remembered in our estimate4 ,fox's inner light does not profess to supersede1 nor does it designedly contradict1 the external light of ,revelation4 ,but hand me his ,journal a moment4 ,here is a curious passage4 ,it shows what a narrow escape ,fox had of being resolved into an ,english ,jacob ,behmen4 ,he says1 #8,now 7he was about four-and-twenty at the time7 was ,i come up in spirit1 through the flaming sword1 into the paradise of ,god4 ,all things were new2 and all the creation gave another smell unto me than before1 beyond what words can utter4 ,i knew nothing but pureness and innocency and righteousness1 being renewed up into the image of ,god by ,christ ,jesus2 so that ,i say ,i was come up to the state of ,adam which he was in before he fell4 ,the creation was opened to me2 and it was showed me how all things had their names given them1 according to their nature and virtue4 ,and ,i was at a stand in my mind whether ,i should practise physic for the good of mankind1 seeing the nature and virtues of the creatures were so opened to me by the ,lord4 ,but ,i was immediately taken up in spirit to see into another or more stedfast state than ,adam's in innocency1 even into a state in ,christ ,jesus1 that should never fall4 ,and the ,lord showed me that such as were faithful to ,him in the power and light of ,christ1 should come up into that state in which ,adam was before he fell2 in which the admirable works of the creation1 and the virtues thereof may be known1 through the openings of that divine word of wisdom and power by which they were made4 ,great things did the ,lord lead me into1 and wonderful depths were opened unto me1 beyond what can by words be declared2 but as people come into subjection to the ,spirit of ,god1 and grow up in the image and power of the ,almighty1 they may receive the word of wisdom that opens all things1 and come to know the hidden unity in the ,eternal ,being4#8#cgi ,here he has arrived on life's road where two ways meet2--had he taken the wrong alternative1 and wandered down that shadowy and mysterious theosophic avenue1 ignorant that it was no thoroughfare1 what a different history6 ,imagine the intrepid1 heart-searching preacher--the redoubted #8man in leather breeches'--transformed into the physician1 haply peruked and habited in black1 dispensing inspired prescriptions1 and writing forgotten treatises on ,qualities and ,signatures1 ,sympathies and ,antipathies4 ,what a waste of that indomitable energy6 ,,willoughby4 ,how destructive to human life might his very benevolence have proved4 ,,gower4 ,whatever direction the mysticism of a man like ,fox might have taken1 it must have been always actively benevolent4 ,his mysticism is simple--no artificial stages of abstraction1 mounting step by step above the finite1 to a solitary superhuman sanctity4 ,it is beneficent--his many and various spiritual distresses were permitted by ,god1 he tells us1 #8in order that he might have a sense of all conditions--how else should he speak to all conditions8#8#chj ,,willoughby4 ,truly1 metaphysical refinements and ,platonic abstraction could have no charm for this most practical of mystics4 ,what a contrast here is his pietism to that of ,zinzendorf--as abundant in sentiment as ,fox is devoid of it4 ,,gower4 ,nicholas of ,basle is more like ,fox than any of the ,german mystics--much more so than ,tauler4 ,,atherton4 ,fox is1 as you say1 eminently practical in one sense1 yet not enough so in another4 ,in one respect ,behmen and ,law are more practical than he1 because more comprehensive4 ,they endeavour to infuse a higher spiritual life into forms and communities already existing4 ,fox will have no steeple-houses1 vestments1 forms of prayer1 no ministry1 regularly paid and highly educated4 ,such a code is not practical1 for it rests on an abstraction3 it does not legislate for men as they are4 ,formalism does not lie in these outward things themselves--it consists in the spirit in which they are used4 ,here1 you see1 the mystic1 who will always go beneath the surface to the reality1 is too superficial4 ,formalism cannot be expelled by any such summary process4 ,the evil lies deeper4 ,,willoughby4 ,so with the asceticism of the ,friends4 ,the worldly spirit is too subtile to be exorcised by a strict outward separation between church and world4 ,how much easier is total abstinence from scenes of amusement than temperance in money-getting4 ,,gower4 ,yet ,i know men and women who pique themselves on their separateness from the world1 because they were never seen at a concert1 whose covetousness1 insincerity1 or censorious speech1 proclaim them steeped in worldliness to the very lips4 ,,willoughby4 ,what say you1 ,atherton1 to the doctrine of the ,universal ,light8 ,in their theory on this matter the mystics seem to divide into two classes4 ,with the mystics of the fourteenth century there is still left in fallen man a native tendency ,godward1 on which grace lays hold4 ,with ,behmen and ,fox1 on the contrary1 the inward ,seed is a supernatural gift1 distinct from conscience1 reason1 or any relics of natural goodness--the hidden word of promise1 inspoken into all men1 in virtue of the redeeming work of ,christ4#cha ,,atherton4 ,i do not believe that fallen man required a divine bestowment of this kind--a supernatural soul within the soul1 to give him a moral sense1 and make him responsible4 ,but ,i am so far a believer in the doctrine that ,i would not go beyond what is written1 and rigidly confine all the benefits of ,christ's redemption to those only who have had access to the ,christian ,scriptures4 ,the words of the ,apostle are still applicable1--#8,is he the ,god of the ,jews only1 is he not of the ,gentiles also8' ,i cannot suppose that all ,pagan minds1 past and present1 have been utterly and for ever abandoned by the ,divine ,spirit1 because the dispensation under which they have been placed is so much less privileged than our own4 ,god has light enough to be ,himself1 in the twilight1 even as in the noonday4 ,did ,he rule the rising and falling of ancient nations1 working all things toward the fulness of time2--did ,he care for the bodies of those heathen1 with seedtime and harvest for his witness1 and shall we suppose that ,he debarred ,himself from all access to their souls8 ,,willoughby4 ,yet no doctrine we can hold on this question materially lessens the mystery of that dark fact--the prevalence of ,evil4 ,,atherton4 ,i am afraid not4 ,whether we call that better part of man the light of nature1 conscience1 or the internal ,word1 we must admit that it accomplished next to nothing for the restoration of the vast majority4 ,we must not judge of the moral effects of heathendom by the philosophic few merely2 we must remember the state of the superstitious many4 ,and mysticism will be the first to admit that an inoperative ,christ 7like that of the ,antinomian1 for example7 is a deceptive phantom or a vain formula4 ,our own position1 however1 is the same1 let our theory or our hope1 concerning others1 be what it may4 ,whatever it may be possible 7under the constitution of our nature7 for the ,spirit of ,god to make known inwardly to that man who is shut out from external teaching1 it is quite certain that we shall receive no inward communications of gracious influence1 while we neglect those outward means which are of divine appointment4 ,note to page #cjj4 ,the full title of the work referred to runs as follows3 ,the ,improvement of ,human ,reason1 exhibited in the ,life of ,hai ,ebn ,yokhdan3 written in ,arabick about #ejj years ago1 by ,abn ,jaafer ,ebn ,tophail4 ,in which is demonstrated by what methods one may1 by the mere ,light of ,nature1 attain the knowledge of things ,natural and supernatural2 more particularly the knowledge of ,god and the affairs of another ,life4 ,newly translated from the original ,arabick by ,simon ,ockley1 c4 #agjh4 ,ockley adds an ,appendix1 to guard the book from abuse by the ,quakers1 wherein he proposes to examine #8the fundamental error' of his author--viz4 that #8,god has given such a power or faculty to man whereby he may1 without any external means1 attain to the knowledge of all things necessary to salvation1 and even to the ,beatifick ,vision itself1 whilst in the state4' ,the following is a specimen of the mystical progress which our ,arabian ,defoe describes his ,crusoe as making1--precisely that with which ,ebn ,tophail was well acquainted1 but which no real solitary ,ebn ,yokhdan could ever have struck out for himself4 #8,he began1 therefore1 to strip himself of all bodily properties1 which he had made some progress in before1 during the time of the former exercise1 when he was employed in the imitation of the heavenly bodies2 but there still remained a great many relicks1 as his circular motion 7motion being one of the most proper attributes of body71 and his care of animals and plants1 compassion upon them1 and industry in removing whatever inconvenienced them4 ,now1 all these things belong to corporeal attributes1 for he could not see these things at first1 but by corporeal faculties2 and he was obliged to make use of the same faculties in preserving them4 ,therefore he began to reject and remove all those things from himself1 as being in nowise consistent with that state which he was now in search of4 ,so he continued1 after confining himself to rest in the bottom of his cave1 with his head bowed down and his eyes shut1 and turning himself altogether from all sensible things and the corporeal faculties1 and bending all his thoughts and meditations upon the necessarily self-existent ,being1 without admitting anything else besides him2 and if any other object presented itself to his imagination1 he rejected it with his utmost force2 and exercised himself in this1 and persisted in it to that degree1 that sometimes he did neither eat nor stir for a great many days together4 ,and whilst he was thus earnestly taken up in contemplation1 sometimes all manner of beings whatsoever would be quite out of his mind and thoughts1 except his own being only4 #8,but he found that his own being was not excluded from his thoughts2 no1 not at such times when he was most deeply immersed in the contemplation of the first1 true1 necessarily self-existent ,being2 which concerned him very much1--for he knew that even this was a mixture in this simple vision1 and the admission of an extraneous object in that contemplation4 ,upon which he endeavoured to disappear from himself1 and be wholly taken up in the vision of that true ,being2 till at last he attained it2 and then both the heavens and the earth1 and whatsoever is between them1 and all spiritual forms1 and corporeal faculties1 and all those powers which are separate from matter1 and all those beings which know the necessarily self-existent ,being1 all disappeared and vanished1 and were as if they had never been2 and amongst these his own being disappeared too1 and there remained nothing but this one1 true1 perpetually self-existent ,being1 who spoke thus in that saying of his 7which is not a notion superadded to his essence73--8,to whom now belongs the kingdom8 ,to this ,one1 ,almighty ,god40#chb ,which words of his ,hai ,ebn ,yokhdan understood and heard his voice2 nor was his being unacquainted with words1 and not being able to speak1 any hindrance at all to the understanding him4 ,wherefore he deeply immersed himself into this state1 and witnessed that which neither eye hath seen nor ear heard1 nor hath it ever entered into the heart of man to conceive4'-- #hc1 #hd4 ,footnote #cgd3 ,see ,note on p4 #caj4 ,footnote #cge3 ,barclay's ,apology1 propp4 v4 and vi4 #bg1 p4 #aid4 ,fourth ,edition1 #agja4 ,footnote #cgf3 ,fox's ,journal1 pp4 #gf-hc4 ,footnote #cgg3 ,fox's ,journal1 vol4 i4 p4 #acj4 ,footnote #cgh3 ,fox's ,journal1 vol4 i4 pp4 #aji1 #abi1 #bcb4 ,vaughan's ,hist4 of ,england under the ,house of ,stuart1 p4 #eci4 ,footnote #cgi3 ,journal1 vol4 i4 p4 #ie4 ,footnote #chj3 ,journal1 p4 #hi4 ,this theopathetic mysticism is emphatically transitive4 ,every inward manifestation speedily becomes a something to be done1 a testimony to be delivered4 ,the ,quaker is #8exercised1' not that he may deck himself in the glory of saintship1 but to fit him for rendering service1 as he supposes1 to his fellows4 ,the early followers of ,fox often caricatured the acted symbolism of the ,hebrew prophets with the most profane or ludicrous unseemliness4 ,yet stark-mad as seemed the fashion of their denunciations1 their object was very commonly some intelligible and actual error or abuse4 ,footnote #cha3 ,barclay's ,apology1 propp4 v4 and vi4 #af4 ,sewell's ,history1 p4 #edd4 7,barclay's ,letter to ,paets72 also p4 #fdf 7,the ,christian ,doctrine of the ,people called ,quakers1 c41 published #afic74 ,compare ,j4 ,j4 ,gurney's ,observations on the ,distinguishing ,views and ,practices of the ,society of ,friends1 chap4 i4 p4 #ei4 ,footnote #chb3 ,koran4 ,,chapter ,,ii4 ,and to such ,enthusiasm as is but the triumph of the soul of man1 inebriated1 as it were1 with the delicious sense of the divine life1 that blessed ,root1 and ,original of all holy wisdom and virtue1 ,i am as much a friend as ,i am to the vulgar fanatical ,enthusiasm a professed enemy4--,,henry ,,more4 ,,willoughby4 ,there is no mysticism in the doctrine of an immediate influence exercised by the ,spirit of ,god on the spirit of man4 ,,atherton4 ,certainly not4 ,it would be strange if the ,creator1 in whom we live and move1 should have no direct access to the spirits of his own creatures4 ,,gower4 ,does not your admission indicate the line between the true and the false in that aspiration after immediate knowledge1 intercourse1 or intuition1 so common among the mystics8 ,it is true that the divine influence is exerted upon us directly4 ,but it is not true that such influence dispenses with rather than demands--suspends rather than quickens1 the desires and faculties of our nature4 ,so it appears to me at least4 ,,atherton4 ,and to me also4 ,,willoughby4 ,and again 7to continue your negatives1 ,gower7 it is not true1 as some of the mystics tell us1 that we can transcend with advantage the figurative language of ,scripture2 or gaze directly on the ,divine ,subsistence1--that we can know without knowledge1 believe without a promise or a fact1 and so dispense1 in religious matters1 with modes and media4 ,,atherton4 ,agreed4 ,for ourselves1 ,i believe we shall always find it true that the letter and the spirit do reciprocally set forth and consummate each other1-- #8,like as the wind doth beautify a sail1 ,and as a sail becomes the unseen wind4' ,we see truth in proportion as we are true4 ,the outward written word in our hands directs us to the unseen ,word so high above us1 yet so near4 ,the story of ,christ's life and death is our soul's food4 ,we find that we may--we must1 sit in spirit at his feet1 who so spake1 so lived1 so died4 ,and1 having been with him1 we find a new power and attraction in the words2 we are led by the ,spirit of ,christ in the keeping of those commandments1 concerning which he said1 #8,the words ,i speak unto you1 they are spirit and they are life4' ,,willoughby4 ,so ,plotinus is right1 in a sense1 after all2--like only can know like4 ,our likeness to ,christ is our true knowledge of him4 ,,atherton4 ,yes4 ,but we become partakers of the unseen life and light of ,god only through the manifestation of that life and light1 ,christ ,jesus4 ,it is on this point that the theology of ,fox is so defective4 ,,willoughby4 ,his doctrine that the influence of the ,spirit is perceptible1 as well as immediate1 is still more questionable1 surely8 ,,gower4 ,perceptible6 aye1 and physically perceptible1 he will have it1 in some cases1--manifested in a tremulous agitation of the frame4 ,,willoughby4 ,true4 ,the convulsive movements among the ,protestant peasantry of the ,cevennes are a similar instance4 ,this spasmodical religious excitement is in a high degree infectious when many are assembled together4 ,,atherton4 ,yet we should not reject the doctrine of perceptible spiritual guidance because it is so liable to abuse4 ,my objection is that ,i have never seen satisfactory proof adduced4 ,do not let us think1 however1 that we escape from the danger of self-delusion by denying this doctrine1 and can afford to be careless accordingly4 ,you often see persons who would think the ,quaker belief a dangerous superstition1 unscrupulously identifying their personal or party interests with the cause of ,god1 as though they believed themselves divinely commissioned1 and could not possibly be liable to deception4 ,,willoughby4 ,here you see the value of the ,quaker doctrine concerning stillness and quiet4 ,the soul must be withdrawn in a silent waiting1 and so hearken for the divine voice4 ,the impulses which stir in the unallayed tumult of the feelings are the promptings of passion or of self1 not of ,god4 ,wherever the belief in perceptible guidance is entertained1 this practice of tranquil tarrying should accompany it1 as its proper safeguard4 ,,atherton4 ,the ,quakers are wrong1 ,i think1 in separating particular movements and monitions as divine4 ,but1 at the same time1 the #8witness of the ,spirit1' as regards our state before ,god1 is something more1 ,i believe1 than the mere attestation to the written word4 ,,willoughby4 ,the traditional asceticism of the ,friends is their fatal defect as a body4 ,,atherton4 ,and their proneness to hazard good principles by pushing them to some repulsive extreme4 ,thus1 they propose to abolish physical force by yielding everything to it2--to put an end to war by laying ,europe at the feet of a great military power1--by apologizing for the oppressor and reviling those who resist him4 ,,gower4 ,i believe the man who says to me1 ,i am trying to love my neighbour as myself3 ,i suspect him who professes to love him better4 ,his profession is worse than worthless unless he be consistent1 and will allow himself to be swindled with impunity4 ,,atherton4 ,we may well be suspicious when we see this super-,christian morality defended by arguments which can only be valid with the meanest and most grovelling selfishness4 ,such ethics are1 in promise1 more than human2 in performance--less4 ,,willoughby4 ,but1 leaving this question1 ,i am sure no sect which systematically secludes itself from every province of philosophy1 literature1 and art1 can grow largely in numbers and in influence in a state of society like ours4 ,,gower4 ,our ,english ,platonists contrast strongly1 in this respect1 with ,george ,fox and his followers4 ,,willoughby4 ,how incomprehensible must have been the rude fervour and symbolic prophesyings of the ,quakers to the refined scholarship and retiring devotion of men like ,more and ,norris1 ,gale and ,cudworth4 ,but can you call them mystics8 ,,atherton4 ,scarcely so1 except in as far as ,platonism is always in a measure mystical4 ,a vein of mysticism peeps out here and there in their writings4 ,cold rationalism they hate4 ,they warm1 with a ready sympathy1 to every utterance of the tender and the lofty in the aspirations of the soul4 ,but their practical ,english sense shows itself in their instant rejection of sentimentalism1 extravagance1 or profanity4 ,this is especially the case with ,more--as shrewd in some things as he was credulous in others1 and gifted with so quick an eye for the ridiculous4 ,,gower4 ,delightful reading1 those racy pages of his1 running over with quaint fancies4 ,,atherton4 ,more's position as regards mysticism is1 in the main1 that of a comprehensive and judicial mind4 ,he goes a considerable distance with the enthusiast1--for he believes that love for the supreme ,beautiful and ,good may well carry men out of themselves2 but for fanatical presumption he has no mercy4#chc ,,willoughby4 ,the ,romanist type of mysticism would be the most repugnant of all1 ,i should think1 to these somewhat free-thinking ,english scholars4 ,,atherton4 ,so ,i have found4 ,more has no notion of professing to give up his reason1 like ,poiret2 still less of awaiting a suspension of our powers1 like ,john of the ,cross4 ,he believes that #8the ,spirit doth accomplish and enlarge our humane faculties4'#chd ,,gower4 ,yet ,norris is less remote than ,more from the ,romish mysticism1 is he not8 ,i mean that his ,platonism seemed to me a little more monastic1 and less philosophical4 ,,atherton4 ,he has1 it must be confessed1 his four gradations of love--akin to the class-religion of the ,romish ,church2--as though a certain degree were incumbent on all ,christians1 but higher stages of devout affection 7above mere duty7 were set before the eminently religious4#che ,yet let us do full justice to the good sense of that excellent man4 ,the ,quietist doctrine of unconsciousness appears to him an unnatural refinement4 ,he cannot conceive how it should be expected that a man was to be #8such an ,america to himself1' as not to know what his own wishes and attainments are4 ,the infused virtue of the ,spanish mystics appears to his discriminating eye #8as great a paradox in divinity1 as occult qualities in philosophy4#8#chf ,,willoughby4 ,and none of them1 ,i think1 distress themselves1 as did ,fnlon1 about purely disinterested love4 ,,atherton4 ,they are too close followers of ,plato to do that4 ,they do not disguise their impatience of the bodily prison-house4 ,neither have they any love for the divine ignorance and holy darkness of ,dionysius4 ,they are eager to catch every ray of knowledge--to know and to rejoice1 to the utmost that our mortality may1 upon its heavenward pilgrimage4#chg ,footnote #chc3 ,let the reader consult his ,enthusiasmus ,triumphatus1 or read his caustic observations upon the ,anima ,magica ,abscondita1 and his ,second ,lash of ,alazonomastix4 ,among the high-flyers of his day1 there appear to have been some who spoke of being #8godded with ,god1' and #8,christed with ,christ1' much after the manner of some of ,eckart's followers4 ,footnote #chd3 #8,but now seeing the ,logos or steady comprehensive wisdom of ,god1 in which all ,ideas and their respects are contained1 is but universal stable reason1 how can there be any pretence of being so highly inspired as to be blown above reason itself1 unlesse men will fancy themselves wiser than ,god1 or their understandings above the natures and reasons of things themselves4'--,preface to the ,conjectura ,cabbalistica4 ,footnote #che3 ,see ,norris's ,miscellanies 7#afii73 ,an ,idea of ,happiness3 enquiring wherein the greatest happiness attainable by ,man in this ,life does consist1 pp4 #cbf-cda4 ,footnote #chf3 ,miscellanies1 p4 #bgf 7in a ,discourse on ,rom4 xii4 #c71 and p4 #ccd4 ,footnote #chg3 ,norris says1 in his ,hymn to ,darkness-- #8,the blest above do thy sweet umbrage prize1 ,when cloyed with light1 they veil their eyes4 ,the vision of the ,deity is made ,more sweet and beatific by thy shade4 ,but we poor tenants of this orb below ,don't here thy excellencies know1 ,till death our understandings does improve1 ,and then our wiser ghosts thy silent night-walks love4' ,in the writings of ,henry ,more we can see1 by a notice here and there1 how ,quakerism looked in the eyes of a retired scholar1 by no means indiscriminately adverse to enthusiasm4 ,the word enthusiasm itself1 he always uses more in the classical than the modern sense4 #8,to tell you my opinion of that sect which are called ,quakers1 though ,i must allow that there may be some amongst them good and sincere-hearted men1 and it may be nearer to the purity of ,christianity for the life and power of it than many others1 yet ,i am well assured that the generality of them are prodigiously melancholy1 and some few perhaps possessed with the devil4' ,he thinks their doctrine highly dangerous1 as mingling with so many good and wholesome things an abominable #8slighting of the history of ,christ1 and making a mere allegory of it1--tending to the utter overthrow of that warrantable though more external frame of ,christianity which ,scripture itself points out to us4' ,yet he takes wise occasion1 from the very existence of such a sect1 to bid us all look at home1 and see that we do not content ourselves with the mere ,tabernacle without the ,presence and ,power of ,god therein4--,mastix1 his ,letter to a ,friend1 p4 #cjf4 ,,book ,,the ,,twelfth ,,emanuel ,,swedenborg ,,chapter ,i4 ,what if earth ,be but the shadow of heaven1 and things therein ,each to other like1 more than on earth is thought4 ,,milton4 ,here follow extracts from a section in ,atherton's ,note-book1 entitled #8,remarks on ,swedenborg4' ,the doctrine of ,correspondence is the central idea of ,swedenborg's system4 ,everything visible has belonging to it an appropriate spiritual reality4 ,the history of man is an acted parable2 the universe1 a temple covered with hieroglyphics4 ,behmen1 from the light which flashes on certain exalted moments1 imagines that he receives the key to these hidden significances1--that he can interpret the ,signatura ,rerum4 ,but he does not see spirits1 or talk with angels4 ,according to him1 such communications would be less reliable than the intuition he enjoyed4 ,swedenborg takes opposite ground4 #8,what ,i relate1' he would say1 #8comes from no such mere inward persuasion4 ,i recount the things ,i have seen4 ,i do not labour to recall and to express the manifestation made me in some moment of ecstatic exaltation4 ,i write you down a plain statement of journeys and conversations in the spiritual world1 which have made the greater part of my daily history for many years together4 ,i take my stand upon experience4 ,i have proceeded by observation and induction as strict as that of any man of science among you4 ,only it has been given me to enjoy an experience reaching into two worlds--that of spirit1 as well as that of matter4' ,a mysticism like that of ,tauler strives1 and strives in vain1 to escape all image and #8figuration4' ,a mysticism like that of ,swedenborg clothes every spiritual truth in some substantial envelope1 and discerns a habitant spirit in every variety of form4 ,the follower of ,plato essays to rise from the visible to the invisible4 ,but he spurns each ladder in succession by which he has ascended4 ,the follower of ,swedenborg seeks a similar ascent2 but he never flings away1 as common1 the husk which guards the precious spiritual kernel4 ,he will not shun the material1 or diminish his relations to it4 ,rather will he surround himself by those objects and those ties of earth which1 spiritually regarded1 speak constantly of heaven4 ,to look thus on life1 ,i need not enter the school of ,swedenborg4 ,but in this freedom from asceticism1--this tendency to see the spiritual1 not beyond1 but in1 the natural1--the mysticism of ,swedenborg1 like that of ,behmen1 has advanced far beyond its medival type4 ,religion no longer plays the despot toward science2 the flesh is no longer evil2 this beautiful world no longer yielded over to that father of lies who called it his4 ,as regards the scriptures1 ,i find ,swedenborg less one-sided than mystics like ,frank1 ,weigel1 or the more extreme among the ,quakers4 ,he displays no inclination to depreciate the letter of scripture in favour of the inward teaching of the ,word4 ,without this #8book-revelation1' he tells us1 man would have remained in gross ignorance concerning his ,maker and his future destinies4 ,the literal sense of the word is the basis of the spiritual and celestial sense2 and the word1 for this very reason1 holy in every syllable4 ,he sets up no doctrine based on arbitrary or fantastical interpretations4 ,his doctrinal system is drawn from the literal sense1 and calmly1 if not always satisfactorily deduced1 by citation1 exegesis1 and comparison of passages1 without any mysticism whatever4 ,thus the balance between the letter and the spirit is maintained in his theology with a fairness almost unparalleled in the history of mysticism4#chh ,according to ,swedenborg1 all the mythology and the symbolisms of ancient times were so many refracted or fragmentary correspondences--relics of that better day when every outward object suggested to man's mind its appropriate divine truth4 ,such desultory and uncertain links between the seen and the unseen are so many imperfect attempts toward that harmony of the two worlds which he believed himself commissioned to reveal4 ,the happy thoughts of the artist1 the imaginative analogies of the poet1 are exchanged with ,swedenborg for an elaborate system4 ,all the terms and objects in the natural and spiritual worlds are catalogued in pairs4 ,this method appears so much formal pedantry4 ,our fancies will not work to order4 ,the meaning and the life with which we continually inform outward objects1--those suggestions from sight and sound1 which make almost every man at times a poet1--are our own creations1 are determined by the mood of the hour1 cannot be imposed from without1 cannot be arranged like the nomenclature of a science4 ,as regards the inner sense of scripture1 at all events1 ,swedenborg introduces some such yoke4 ,in that province1 however1 it is perhaps as well that those who are not satisfied with the obvious sense should find some restraint for their imagination1 some method for their ingenuity1 some guidance in a curiosity irresistible to a certain class of minds4 ,if an objector say1 #8,i do not see why the ass should correspond to scientific truth1 and the horse to intellectual truth1' ,swedenborg will reply1 #8,this analogy rests on no fancy of mine1 but on actual experience and observation in the spiritual world4 ,i have always seen horses and asses present and circumstanced1 when1 and according as1 those inward qualities were central4'#chi ,but ,i do not believe that it was the design of ,swedenborg rigidly to determine the relationships by which men are continually uniting the seen and unseen worlds4 ,he probably conceived it his mission to disclose to men the divinely-ordered correspondences of scripture1 the close relationship of man's several states of being1 and to make mankind more fully aware that matter and spirit were associated1 not only in the varying analogies of imagination1 but by the deeper affinity of eternal law4 ,in this way1 he sought to impart an impulse rather than to prescribe a scheme4 ,his consistent followers will acknowledge that had he lived in another age1 and occupied a different social position1 the forms under which the spiritual world presented itself to him would have been different4 ,to a large extent1 therefore1 his ,memorable ,relations must be regarded as true for him only1--for such a character1 in such a day1 though containing principles independent of personal peculiarity and local colouring4 ,it would have been indeed inconsistent1 had the ,protestant who 7as himself a ,reformer7 essayed to supply the defects and correct the errors of the ,reformation1--had he designed to prohibit all advance beyond his own position4 ,there is great depth and beauty in that idea of ,dante's1 according to which he represents himself as conscious of ascending from heaven to heaven in ,paradise1 not by perception of a transit through space1 but by seeing his ,beatrice grow more and more lovely3-- ,io non m'accorsi del salire in ella2 ,ma d'esserv' entro mi fece assai fede ,la donna mia ch' io vidi far pi bella4 ,what is an imagination with ,dante1 acquires1 in the theosophy of ,swedenborg1 the constancy of law4 ,according to him1 the more ,i have of goodness in me1 the more shall ,i discern of the loveliness belonging to the form of a good angel4 ,if ,i am evil1 the hideous forms of evil natures will not be repulsive to me2 and if ,i were placed in heaven1 the glory would afflict me with pain4 ,to three persons1 in three different states of holiness and knowledge1 a fourth would present three several aspects in the spiritual world4 ,thus1 spirits see as they themselves are2 their character modifies their vision2 their nature creates for them their world4 ,all this seems so much mere idealism1 extended from this life into the next4 ,i ask1 ,where is the absolute truth1 then8 ,my ,german neighbour quietly inquires1 #8,is there1 or is there not1 any ,ding an sich8' ,the ,swedenborgian replies1 #8,swedenborg is no idealist1 as you suspect4 ,the absolute truth is with ,god2 and the more goodness and wisdom the creatures have from him1 the more truly do they see4 ,the reality external to self1 ,i do not take away2 yea1 rather ,i establish it on a divine basis4 ,for the reality is even this divine order1 which the ,omniscient hath established and maintains1--that form and vision shall answer exactly to spirit and insight4 ,such correspondence is but partial in this masquerading world of ours1 so full of polite pretences and seemly forms4 ,but in the spiritual world every one appears by degrees only what he is4 ,he gravitates towards that circle or association of spirits where all see as much as he does4 ,his character is written1 past all disguise1 in his form2 and so #8the things spoken in the ear in closets are proclaimed upon the housetops4' ,humanity stands high with ,behmen1 higher yet with ,swedenborg4 ,the ,divine ,humanity is at once the ,lord and pattern of all creation4 ,the innumerable worlds of space are arranged after the human form4 ,the universe is a kind of constellation ,homo4 ,every spirit belongs to some province in ,swedenborg's #8,grand ,man1' and affects the correspondent part of the human body4 ,a spirit dwelling in those parts of the universe which answer to the heart or the liver1 makes his influx felt in the cardiac or hepatic regions of ,swedenborg's frame before he becomes visible to the eye4 ,evil spirits1 again1 produced their correspondent maladies on his system1 during the time of his intercourse with them4 ,hypocrites gave him a pain in the teeth1 because hypocrisy is spiritual toothache4 ,the inhabitants of ,mercury correspond to a province of memory in the #8grand man3' the ,lunarians to the ensiform cartilage at the bottom of the breast-bone4 ,with ,swedenborg likeness is proximity3 space and time are states of love and thought4 ,hence his journeys from world to world2--passing through states being equivalent to travelling over spaces4 ,thus it took him ten hours to reach one planet1 while at another he arrived in two1 because a longer time was required to approximate the state of his mind to that of the inhabitants of the former4#cij ,the thoughts of ,swedenborg have never to struggle for expression1 like those of the half-educated ,behmen4 ,the mind of the ,swedish seer was of the methodical and scientific cast4 ,his style is calm and clear4 ,he is easily understood in detail4 ,the metaphors of poets are objects of vision with him3 every abstraction takes some concrete form3 his illustrations are incessant4 ,he describes with the graphic minuteness of ,defoe4 ,nothing is lost in cloud4 ,with a distinct and steady outline he pourtrays1 to the smallest circumstance1 the habitations1 the amusements1 the occupations1 the penalties1 the economy1 the marriages of the unseen world4 ,he is never amazed1 he never exaggerates4 ,he is unimpassioned1 and wholly careless of effect4 ,those of his followers with whom ,i have come in contact1 partake of their master's philosophy4 ,they are liberal in spirit1 and nowise impatient of unbelief in others4 ,swedenborg never pants and strives--has none of the tearful vehemence and glowing emotion which choke the utterance of ,behmen4 ,he is never familiar in this page1 and rhapsodical in that4 ,always serene1 this imperturbable philosopher is the ,olympian ,jove of mystics4 ,he writes like a man who was sufficient to himself2 who could afford to wait4 ,he lived much alone2 and strong and deep is the stream of this mysticism which carries no fleck of foam4 ,other mystics seem to know times of wavering1 when enthusiasm burns low4 ,to ,swedenborg sunrise and sunset are not more constant and familiar than the divine mission which he claims4 ,other mystics are overpowered by manifestations from the unseen world4 ,horror seizes them1 or a dizzy joy1 or the vision leaves them faint and trembling4 ,they have their alternations2 their lights and shadows are in keeping2 they will topple headlong from some sunny pinnacle into an abysmal misery4 ,but ,swedenborg is #8in the spirit' for near two score years1 and in his easy chair1 or at his window1 or on his walks1 holds converse1 as a matter of course1 with angels and departed great ones1 with patriarchs and devils4 ,he can even instruct some of the angels1 who have had experience only of their own world1 and are guileless accordingly4 ,footnote #chh3 ,see ,swedenborg's ,true ,christian ,religion1 chap4 iv4 ,footnote #chi3 ,see ,e4 ,swedenborg1 a ,biography1 by ,j4 ,g4 ,wilkinson1 p4 #ii2 a succinct and well-written account of the man1 and the best introduction to his writings ,i have met with4 ,footnote #cij3 ,wilkinson1 pp4 #ahg1 #aah4 ,,chapter ,,ii4 ,we have but faith3 we cannot know2 ,for knowledge is of things we see2 ,and yet we trust it comes from ,thee1 ,a beam in darkness3 let it grow4 ,let knowledge grow from more to more1 ,but more of reverence in us dwell2 ,that mind and soul1 according well1 ,may make one music as before1 ,but vaster4 ,,tennyson4 ,i find ,swedenborg1 in the midst of his spiritual interviews and voluminous authorship1 taking his part for some time in the ,diet of #agfa1 and presenting three memorials with high repute for practical sagacity4 ,he publishes #8,a ,new ,method of finding the ,longitude1' simultaneously with the #8,apocalypse ,revealed4' ,he appears to have possessed a remarkable power of inward respiration4 ,he says that he received from the ,lord a conformation enabling him to breathe inwardly for a long time1 without the aid of the external air1 while his outward senses continued their operation4#cia ,swedenborg is strongly opposed to ascetic practice in every form4 ,he contradicts all the cloistered contemplative mystics1 when he declares that #8man cannot be formed for heaven except by means of the world4' ,he represents the #8religious1' and devotees who have renounced the world for pious meditation1 as by no means agreeable or enviable personages in the other life4 ,they are of a sorrowful temper1 despising others1 discontented at not having been honoured with superior happiness1 selfish1 turning away from offices of charity 7the very means of conjunction with heaven71 soon betaking themselves to solitary places4 ,truly1 many of the first in the heaven of the ,romish calendar are the last in the heaven of ,swedenborg4 ,and ,i doubt not that his arrangement is1 in such cases1 the more near the truth of the two4 ,for1 as he justly says1 #8a life of charity towards our neighbour 7which consists in doing what is just and right in every employment7 can only be exercised in general as man is engaged in some employment4' ,such a life1 he declares1 tends heavenward1--not so a life of piety without a life of charity4#cib #8,in heaven1' says ,swedenborg1 #8instruction is committed1 not to memory1 but to life2#8--a goodly saying4 ,swedenborg's #8,christian ,religion' is a system of theology1 calm and orderly throughout1 illustrated with plates--the ,memorable ,relations4 ,i interpret these marvellous narratives much as ,swedenborg does the ,mosaic record4 ,i do not question their historic truth1 for ,swedenborg4 ,such things he saw and heard2 for to such a mind all abstraction takes substantial form4 ,his mental transitions are journeys4 ,every proposition has its appropriate scenery2 every group of verities incorporates itself in a drama1 and becomes a speech and action4 ,but ,i put an inner sense into these ,relations1 and so reading them1 find charming allegories1 just in moral and elegant in style4 ,what ,swedenborg tells us about a future state ,i am certainly not in a position to contradict1 for ,i know nothing about such matters4 ,the general conviction of the ,christian world seems to me true in the main1--that the silence of the scriptures concerning such details is an argument for their inspiration--was wisely designed to check curiosity and to exercise faith4 ,yet it cannot be denied that after all ,swedenborg's disclosures1 the ,christian conflict1 and the motives to that holy warfare1 remain very much as the ,bible presents them4 ,selfishness is still the root of evil2 ,god the sole foundation of truth and goodness2 faith alone1 working by love1 can overcome the world4 ,if the arrangements he relates as finding place in heaven and hell1 be regarded as the unconscious creation of his own brain1 an extraordinary genius for legislature must be allowed him by all4 ,there is generally an obvious fitness in the economy he describes4 ,here and there he is whimsical and ,quevedo-like4 ,sometimes a certain grim satire peeps out4 ,as regards individuals1 we suspect prejudice or caprice4 ,he represents ,melanchthon as faring but poorly1 for a long time1 in the other world1 because he would not let go his doctrine of justification by faith4 ,he elevates ,mahomet in his heaven1 and lowers ,paul4 ,who does not think of ,dante1 carrying the feud of ,guelph and ,ghibelline beyond the grave8#cic ,it shocks such preconceived ideas as we may most of us have formed concerning heaven1 to find it represented as so like earth4 ,that in the spiritual world there should be towns and cities1 gymnasia and theological discussions1 sermons and book-writing1 courts of law1 and games1 yea marriage1 of a refined species1 the progeny whereof are inward joys and virtues2--all this is novel4#cid ,our notions here are mostly taken from ,milton1 and his1 in considerable measure1 from ecclesiastical and scholastic tradition4 ,after the sublimity of the poet1 the homely circumstantialities of the theosophist appear cruelly prosaic4 ,yet ,swedenborg's view of the future state may be regarded as1 in many respects1 a wholesome corrective to the popular conception4 ,the truth1 ,i should dimly surmise1 may lie between the two4 ,the general apprehension does perhaps make the transition at death too abrupt2 forgets too much the great variety of degrees and societies of spirits which must distinguish the inhabitants of hell and heaven1--how completely the inward tendency will make the grief or the joy1--how little mere change of scene and mode of existence can constitute the bliss or woe1--and how various must be the occupations and enjoyments of a world which is to consummate1 not our adoration merely1 but active love and knowledge4 ,very beautiful is ,swedenborg's description of infants in heaven1 and the instruction they receive #8from angels of the female sex1 who in the life of the body1 loved infants tenderly1 and at the same time loved ,god4'#cie ,even wicked men1 immediately after death1 are kindly received by good angels--such mercy is there for our poor mortality at the last trying hour4 ,but the evil nature of such persons soon resumes its former ascendancy4 ,the society of those pure associates grows irksome1 and is forsaken by the sinful for evil companionship similar to themselves4 ,swedenborg cannot be considered mystical in his doctrine concerning spiritual influence--that customary seat of mysticism4 ,such influence he pronounces immediate on the divine part1 but not perceptible on ours1 nor such as to exclude the necessity of instruction and the use of means4 ,the good we do1 ,god alone worketh in us2 but we are conscious only of effort on our own part1 though believing that we receive divine assistance4 ,there is to be no tarrying1 he says1 for magical grace2 no crying #8,wash me6' while the divinely given means of purification lie unused at our side4 ,the proprium1 or own-hood of every angel1 spirit1 or man1 is only evil4 7,all angels and devils were once good and bad men47 ,to live only from ,god and not from self1 is the true purity4 ,every man is an organ of life1 deriving his life and free-will from ,god1 and receptive of the ,divine influx--enjoying more or less1 as he opens or closes his nature thereto4 ,if the lower regions of his spiritual nature be closed against this influx1 ,god is still in him1 but he is not in ,god4#cif ,swedenborg declares that the ,church has been corrupted by the doctrine of three divine persons existing from eternity4 ,he maintains that such a belief must in reality involve the conception of three several gods1 however loudly those who hold it may profess to acknowledge the ,divine ,unity4 ,in his theology1 the ,father1 ,son1 and ,spirit1 are #8the three essentials of one ,god1 which make ,one1 like ,soul1 ,body1 and ,operation in man4' ,the doctrine of ,swedenborg concerning the work of ,christ appears to have received its peculiar complexion1 at least in great measure1 from his repugnance to ,calvinism4 ,he saw that the theology of the ,reformation had unduly elaborated into doctrine1 the forensic and pecuniary metaphors of ,scripture1 concerning justification and redemption4 ,in his reaction1 he is too much inclined to give to those figures a meaning considerably short of that which a consistent interpretation must assign them4 ,yet the results at which he arrives are not so decidedly opposed to those reached by the theology usually termed evangelical1 as might have been anticipated4 ,but the process of redemption in ,swedenborg's system differs widely4 ,he says he cannot believe that the ,father1 in his wrath1 condemned the human race1 and in his mercy sent his ,son to bear their curse2 that out of love for his suffering ,son he cancelled the sentence of damnation1 yet only in favour of those for whom the ,son should intercede1 who was thus to be a perpetual ,mediator in the presence of the ,father4#cig ,he declares it a fundamental error of the ,church to believe the passion of the ,cross to be redemption itself4 ,he pronounces imputed righteousness a subversion of the divine order4--,so much for what he denies4 ,on the other hand1 he affirms that in the fulness of time1 ,jehovah assumed humanity to redeem and save mankind4 ,both in the spiritual regions and among men1 evil had been gradually outgrowing and threatening to overpower good4 ,the equilibrium between the heavenly and hellish worlds was lost4 ,it was as though a dyke had been broken down1 and sin were about to overflow the universe4 ,then ,god took to himself our nature1 to subjugate the hells and to restore to order the heavens4 ,every victory gained by ,christ over the temptations which assailed ,him1 distanced and enfeebled the powers of evil everywhere4 ,it was the driving back of ravenous beasts to their dens1--the delivery and feeding of his flock1 both men and angels4 ,this victory of the ,saviour is our victory1 is that redemption in virtue of which we are able1 believing in ,him1 to resist and vanquish evil4 ,mediation1 ,intercession1 ,atonement1 ,propitiation1 are forms of speech #8expressive of the approach which is opened to ,god1 and of the grace communicated from ,god1 by means of ,his ,humanity4' ,thus ,swedenborg also believes in a violated order and an impending perdition2 in the redemption of the race from such a fate by the incarnate ,one2 in the vindication or restoration of the divine law and order by his conflict and victory on our behalf2 and in a life lived for us1 which becomes also a life quickened in us4 ,he appears to object to the idea of sacrifice as necessarily concentrating the work of redemption in the shedding of the ,saviour's blood4 ,such may have been the limited conception of sacrifice in the theology he opposed2 but that error could be no good reason for explaining away the idea of sacrifice altogether4 ,the language of ,christ concerning himself must be strangely misinterpreted if no such idea is to be found there4 ,but that sacrifice was constituted by his whole life1 as well as by its last act--the laying down thereof4 ,the distinction drawn by some divines between the active and passive obedience--as though the death alone were our atonement1 and the life alone our example--is a most unhappy refinement4 ,in ,swedenborg's doctrine concerning union with ,christ there is nothing mystical4 ,from the passionate and sensuous union of some mystics1 and from the pantheistic confusion of others1 he is completely free4 ,it is to be regretted that the work of redemption should still be so partially regarded by opposing sections of the ,church4 ,on the one side are those who hold the doctrine of an exact satisfaction 7the commercial theory72 who suppose that1 in virtue of imputed righteousness1 ,god sees in his people no sin2 and who would say that men may1 rather than that they must1 be exhorted to maintain good works4 ,this covert and generally theoretical antinomianism is happily rare4 ,yet there are some well-meaning men1 desirous of doing a reforming work among us1 who actually imagine such an extreme as this to be the ordinary evangelical doctrine4 ,on the other side are those whose tendency is to resolve the historical into the inward ,christ4 ,from any such leaning ,swedenborg is more free than ,george ,fox4 ,on this side1 too1 stand those with whom ,christ's work is rather a first sample of restored humanity than the way of restoration1 and who seem to suppose that in admitting ,god to be just1 they make ,him cruel4 ,in this extreme aversion to acknowledge an external law1 and an external danger consequent on its violation1 ,swedenborg does not share4 ,but1 like most of the mystics1 he conceives of redemption as wrought for us only as it is wrought in us2 takes justification for granted1 if we have but sanctification2 and regards our sins as remitted just in proportion as we are reclaimed from them4 ,if we must lean towards some extreme1 this is the more safe1 because containing the larger measure of truth4 ,it appears to me that the #8divine order' requires that man be accepted of ,god in a way consistent with the divine righteousness2 and so also as1 at the very same time1 to become conformed to that righteousness4 ,the sacred writers constantly combine those two aspects of redemption which our systems are so prone to separate4 ,on the one side1 ,christ's example is pressed upon us1 even in those very acts which are peculiar to ,himself as divine4 ,on the other1 the blood of ,christ is represented as sanctifying us--purging our consciences from dead works to serve the living ,god2 while it is also stated expressly that ,he died1 the just for the unjust4 ,similar as ,swedenborg's theology is in its spirit to that of ,behmen1 ,i find him expressly stating that he had never read the ,german theosophist4 ,concerning the ,church of the ,new ,jerusalem1 ,swedenborg says1 #8,since the ,lord cannot manifest himself in person 7to the world71 which has just been shown to be impossible1 and yet ,he has foretold that ,he would come and establish a ,new ,church1 which is the ,new ,jerusalem1 it follows that ,he will effect this by the instrumentality of a man1 who is able not only to receive the doctrines of that ,church in his understanding1 but also to make them known by the press4 ,that the ,lord manifested ,himself before me ,his servant1 that ,he sent me on this office1 and afterwards opened the sight of my spirit1 and so let me into the spiritual world1 permitting me to see the heavens and the hells1 and also to converse with angels and spirits2 and this now continually for many years1 ,i attest in truth2 and farther1 that from the first day of my call to this office1 ,i have never received anything appertaining to the doctrines of that ,church from any angel1 but from the ,lord alone1 whilst ,i was reading the ,word4'--,true ,christian ,religion1 #ggi4 ,footnote #cia3 ,wilkinson1 pp4 #gi1 #acj4 ,footnote #cib3 ,heaven and ,hell1 #cfj4 ,footnote #cic3 ,true ,christian ,religion1 #gif4 ,footnote #cid3 ,see the description of the heavenly palaces1 of divine worship in heaven1 and of the angelic employments1 ,heaven and ,hell1 #ahc1 #bba1 #chg4 ,true ,christian ,religion1 #fid1 #fig4 ,also concerning marriages in heaven1 ,heaven and ,hell1 #cff-chf4 ,footnote #cie3 ,heaven and ,hell1 #cbi-cde4 ,footnote #cif3 ,true ,christian ,religion1 chap4 vi4 #f1 #g2 ,heaven and ,hell1 #eib4 ,footnote #cig3 ,true ,christian ,religion1 chap4 ii4 #a-g4 ,i give here ,swedenborg's idea of the evangelical theology4 ,see especially #acb-ace1 where he represents himself as correcting the false doctrine of certain spirits in the other world concerning the ,divine ,nature4 ,,book ,,the ,,thirteenth ,,conclusion ,,chapter ,i4 ,wr nicht das ,auge sonnenhaft1 ,wie knnten wir zur ,sonne blicken8 ,wr nicht in uns des ,gottes eigne ,kraft1 ,wie knnt uns ,gttliches entzcken8#cih ,,goethe4 ,early in ,december1 ,atherton was called away from ,ashfield by some matters of business4 ,his solitary evenings were spent in the chief inn of a quiet cathedral town1 and solaced by the drawing up of a kind of summary1 which was to indicate the main results arrived at by so much reading and talking about the mystics4 ,this final review was despatched in a letter to ,gower1--was read aloud by him to a full auditory 7comprising1 beside its ordinary members1 ,mr4 and ,mrs4 ,lowestoffe1 who had come up to spend ,christmas71--and is here inserted4 ,old ,red ,dragon1 ,snorumbury4 ,,my ,,dear ,,gower1 ,i had purposed keeping this concluding paper1 which you asked of me1 till ,i could rejoin you once more1 and we might read and talk over it together4 ,but ,i cannot say how long ,i may be detained here3 so ,i send it you at once1 that our mystical inquiries may be wound up before the ,christmas merry-makings begin4 ,in the present day1 there are few who will acknowledge the name of mystic4 ,indeed1 ,mysticism is now held in combination with so many modifying or even counteracting elements1 that a very strongly-marked or extreme expression of it is scarcely possible4 ,yet in many and very diverse forms of religious opinion1 a mystical tendency may be discerned4 ,it is apparent in the descendant of ,irving1 with his supernatural gifts2 among some of the followers of ,fox1 where the inner light eclipses the outer2 in the disciple of ,swedenborg1 so familiar with the world of spirits4 ,the mystical tendency is present1 also1 wherever the subjective constituent of religion decidedly overbalances the objective4 ,it is to be found whereever the religionist 7under whatever pretence7 refuses to allow the understanding to judge concerning what falls within its proper province4 ,thus1 ,i tend toward mysticism1 if ,i invest either my religious intuitions or my particular interpretation of scripture1 with a divine halo--with a virtual infallibility--and charge with profanity the man whose understanding is dissatisfied with my conclusions4 ,the #8evangelical' is wrong1 if he hastily condemns1 as #8carnal1' him who does not find his express doctrines in the ,bible2--if1 instead of attempting to satisfy the understanding of the objector with reasons1 he summarily dismisses it1 by misquoting the passage1 #8the natural man discerneth not the things of the spirit4' ,the #8spiritualist' errs1 in precisely the same way1 when he assumes that his intuitions are too holy to be questioned by the logical faculty1--proclaims his religious sentiment above criticism1 and pronounces every objection the utterance of a pedantic formalism1 or a miserable conventionality4 ,so to do1 is to confound the childlike and the childish1--to forget that we should be1 in malice1 children2 but in understanding1 men4 ,if the intuition of the one man1 or the faith of the other1 be removed from the sphere of knowing1 and the court of evidence1--be an impulse or an instinct1 rather than a conviction1 and be rendered inaccessible utterly to the understanding1 then is the bridge broken down between them and their fellows4 ,the common tongue of interpretation and the common ground of argument are taken altogether away4 ,for such faith no reason can be rendered to him who has it not4 ,in ,germany1 it may be questioned whether the efforts of the #8faith-philosophers' were not more injurious than helpful to the cause which they espoused4 ,they endeavoured to shelter religion from ,rationalism by relegating it to the province of feeling or sentiment4 ,hamann and ,jacobi#cii might have withstood ,rationalism on its own ground4 ,but these defenders abandoned1 without a blow1 the fortifications of an impregnable argument1 and shut themselves up in the citadel--faith4 ,both were soon eclipsed by the deservedly great name of ,schleiermacher4 ,his position was a stronger one than theirs1 and more comprehensive2 yet1 in the issue1 scarcely more satisfactory4 ,in ,schleiermacher's theology1 the individual #8,christian consciousness' is made the test according to which more or less of the recorded history of the ,saviour is to be received4 ,the supposed facts of ,christianity contract or expand according to the supposed spiritual wants of the individual ,christian4 ,thus1 if any say1 #8,certain of the miracles1 the resurrection and ascension of ,christ1 do not make a part of my ,christian consciousness1--,i can realize spiritual communion with ,christ1 independently of these accessories1'--,schleiermacher tells him he may dispense with believing them4 ,here1 again1 too much is conceded3 portions of the very heart are set aside as non-essentials4 ,christianity is a living whole1 and cannot be thus dismembered without peril to life4 ,this baptism of ,schleiermacher is rapid and sweeping1 and the veriest sceptics are ,christianized in spite of themselves4 ,men whose ,christianity is historic1 much as ,mahommedanism is historic1 turn out excellent ,christians1 notwithstanding4 ,such a theory is1 after all1 ignoble1 because it does not seek ,truth alone1 at all costs4 ,the first object of religious inquiry is not moral expediency1 not edification1 not what we may deem productive of the most wholesome impressions1 not what we wish to find true2 but what is true4 ,let us seek the ,truth1 and if faithful to what we can find of that1 these other things will be added to us4 ,mere good nature is a spurious charity4 ,the cause of religion can never be served by acquiescence in a falsehood4 ,the ,christianity offered by ,schleiermacher is a glass which mirrors every man--a source of motive1 never beyond our own level--a provision which is always what we like and expect4 ,now1 it may so happen that the kind of religion we should like is not that which is the true--not that1 therefore1 which is good for us4 ,we need a religion adapted to us1 but yet high above us1 to raise us up4 ,the untrained eye does not at the first view appreciate the old masters of art4 ,if we are sincere in seeking ,god's truth1 we must count on having to receive some things that do not at once commend themselves to our judgment1 but into which we shall grow up1 in the process of spiritual education4 ,now1 for this kind of self-transcendence ,schleiermacher makes no preparation1 and his easy entrance does1 in reality1 preclude progress4 ,we are not surprised to see the ,romish priest considering first1 not what is truth or fact1 but what statement will bring the greatest number within the pale of the ,church1 what will produce the most edifying impression1 what will do least violence to the current preconceptions4 ,the children of the day should disdain the slightest approach to such facile complaisance4 ,if ,christ did not rise from the dead1 ,christianity is a lie4 ,on this question no inquiry must be spared--our minds must be thoroughly made up4 ,but to allow the name of ,christian to men who do not regard this fact as established1 looks as though we were afraid of inquiry1--as politic governments will seem hot to see offences which it would be dangerous to punish4 ,i justify my means by my end--,i am wanting in truth and manhood1 if1 having myself rejected some doctrine1 ,i yet appear to hold it1 because ,i think it morally expedient that it should be generally received4 ,i am guilty of a similar pious fraud if ,i yield up as non-essential some fact on which the ,christian faith must hang1 in order to recall certain wanderers to the fold of a nominal ,christianity4 ,schleiermacher's sincerity can only be saved at the expense of his judgment4 ,this was the weak point of his accomplished intellect--a weakness shared by many a ,german divine1--he regarded external facts as of small moment compared with inward feeling4 ,the continual evaporation of outward reality in sentiment is the vitiating principle in his system4#djj ,side by side with the advocates of faith and feeling in the religious province1 appeared ,german ,romanticism in the field of art and literature4 ,the ,romanticists were the enthusiastic champions of the ,ideal against ,realism1 the assailants of all artificial method and servile conventionality1 the sworn foes everywhere of that low-minded1 prosaic narrowness which ,germany calls ,philistinism4#dja ,schelling gave them a poetical philosophy1 and young ,schleiermacher's ,discourses on ,religion were1 for a time1 their ,bible4 ,french ,encyclopedism and ,german ,rationalism had professed a summary explanation for every mystery1 had exiled the supernatural1 and ridiculed the ,middle ,age4 ,in the pages of the ,athenum and the ,europa1 ,romanticism undertook the defence of medival superstition1 extolled its fist-law1 its wager by battle1 its #8earnest' religious wars2 and confounding clear thought and definite expression with the pert self-complacence of ,rationalism1 announced itself enamoured of every mystical obscurity1 for the very shadow's sake4 ,the evils against which the ,romanticists contended were many of them real2 much they laughed at1 well deserving ridicule2 but with their truth they mingled a world of fantastic folly4 ,voltaire was1 in many things1 as shallow as he was transparent1--therefore the muddy obscurity of every visionary who rhapsodized about the ,all1 must be profound as the #8everlasting deeps4' ,conventionalism1 utilitarianism1 logic-grinding1 old formulas1--all were to be dethroned by the inspired votaries of intellectual intuition4 ,the most startling extravagance or desperate paradox of opinion was hailed with the loudest plaudits1 as most surely fraught with the divine afflatus4 ,the ,romanticists essayed to harmonize the ideal and the real4 ,for the most part1 they succeeded only in confounding their spheres2 and ending by absorbing the real in the ideal4 ,in their hands1 philosophy became imaginative and rhetorical1--a very garden of gay fancies2 while poetry grew metaphysical and analytic4 ,where they should have created1 they dissect2 where they should have inquired1 they imagine4#djb ,it is a cardinal doctrine with ,romanticism that the common should be regarded as the wondrous1 and the wondrous as the common4 ,the land of fary is to be our beaten business track2 its dreamy speech1 a household language2 its spirit-glances1 our familiar looks4 ,at the same time1 the objects and appliances of everyday existence are to be informed with supernatural significance1 and animated with a mysterious life4 ,so1 in ,sartor ,resartus 7a book which is simply the ,evangel of ,romanticism1 in its more vigorous form71 ,mr4 ,carlyle reminds the reader that his #8daily life is girt with ,wonder1' and that his #8very blankets and breeches are ,miracles4' ,thus our life is to be at once a trophy and a bazaar2 like old ,westminster ,hall1 where the upper story was gorgeous with blazonry and proud with the ensigns of chivalrous romance1 and the ground-floor laid out in shops4 ,ere long1 ,romanticists like ,creuzer and ,grres1 began to resolve the old mythologies into allegorical science3 while ,romanticists like ,frederick ,schlegel1 were resolving religion into poetry1 and morality into sthetics4 ,dante and ,tasso1 ,camoens and ,goethe1 had intermingled classic and romantic myths as a poetic decoration1 or a fanciful experiment4 ,with the ,romanticists 7so frequently mastered by their own materials71 such admixture became actual earnest4 ,they announced the approach of a new ,religion of ,humanity and ,art4 ,they summoned flower-spirits from the ,ganges1 braceleted crocodiles from the ,nile1 monstrous forms from the ,talmud and the ,koran1 to fill its incongruous pantheon of symbols4 ,the novel wonders of animal magnetism were to constitute its miracles4 ,thus1 like ,proclus1 they could make philosophy superstitious1 they could not make superstition philosophical4 ,they attempted the construction of a true and universal religion1 by heaping together the products of every recorded religious falsity1 and bowing at all shrines in turn4 ,like ,iamblichus1 they sought in theurgy for a sign2 and in their credulous incredulity1 grew greedy of every supranaturalism except the scriptural4 ,in a moment of especial inspiration1 ,frederick ,schlegel1 writing in the ,athenum1 declared that the only opposition which the new religion of philanthropy and good taste was likely to encounter1 would spring from the few ,christians proper still in existence2 but even they1 when the ,aurora actually shone1 would fling aside their prejudice1 fall down1 and worship4#djc ,such anticipations appear ridiculous enough4 ,but against ridicule1 to which they were peculiarly sensitive1 the ,romanticists possessed a ready safeguard4 ,this resource consisted in their doctrine of ,irony4 ,after advancing a paradox1 or pushing a fancy to the edge of absurdity1 let the author turn round1 and abandon his own creation2 or dissipate it1 with a serene smile2 or assuming another tone1 look down upon it1 as questionable1 from some new and superior height4 ,thus1 if any dullard begins gravely to criticise1 he shall have only laughter for his pains1 as one too gross for the perception of humour2 while at the same time1 the reader is given to understand that beneath that jest there does lie1 nevertheless1 a kernel of most earnest and momentous truth4 ,according to the ,ironic theory1 such saying and unsaying is not convenient merely 7as a secret door of escape behind the tapestry71 but in the highest degree artistic4 ,for what is ,art1 but a sublime play8 ,does not loftiest genius ever sport1 godlike1 with its material1 remote and riddling to the lower apprehension of common minds8 ,in ,sartor ,resartus the ,english public have been familiarized with this ingenious device4 ,after professing to translate1 from the paper-bags of ,teufelsdrckh1 some ultra-transcendental sally1 ,mr4 ,carlyle makes a practice of addressing the reader1 admits that he may well feel weary and perplexed1 confesses that he himself does not always see his way in these #8strange utterances1' calls them a farrago whose meaning must be mainly conjectured1 and finally leaves it pleasantly uncertain how much is delirium1 how much inspiration4 ,but no artifice could save ,romanticism1 in the hands of its most extravagant representatives1 from the condign catastrophe4 ,this sensuous sthetic religion1 this effeminate symbolism1 with its gallery of arbitrary and incongruous types from the dreams of all time1--this worship of ,art as ,deity1 could tend but in one direction4 ,the men who began with sentimental admiration for the ,church of ,rome1 ended by passing their necks beneath her yoke2 and the artist terminates miserably in the bigot4 ,they had contemned the ,reformation1 on sthetic grounds1 as unromantic3 they came to dread it on superstitious grounds as unsafe4 ,romanticism1 so sanguine and so venturous in its revolutionary youth1 grew anile in its premature decrepitude2 mumbled its credos2 cursed its heretics--and died4 ,it was at the opening of the present century that the great rush to ,rome took place3 a significant lesson1 indicating the constant issue of that subjective poetical religionism which divorces ,truth from ,beauty1 which craves religious fancies and neglects religious facts1 till it falls a victim to the greatest religious fallacy4 ,then was celebrated the perversion of ,frederick ,schlegel1 of ,adam ,mller1 of ,zachariah ,werner--#8a born mystic1' as ,carlyle rightly styles him4 ,tieck1 who must stand acquitted of the follies of the school2 and ,august ,wilhelm ,schlegel 7despite some crotchets1 immeasurably superior to ,frederick7 retained their ,protestantism4 ,novalis1 for by this name ,friedrich von ,hardenberg is most known1 is perhaps as fair a representative of ,romanticism as can be found4 ,he had no occasion1 like some of the party1 to affect1 as so much art1 the language of the mystics whom he studied with such devotion4 ,novalis was to the manner born4 ,to none was the realm of reverie and fable--visited by most of us only at intervals--more completely a familiar1 daily dwelling-place4 ,scarcely to the morbid phantasy of ,hoffmann was the ordinary life more visibly inwrought with the mysterious4 ,poetry was his practical staff of every-day existence2 and practical life1 to him1 all poetry4 ,the creations of his fancy were his ,holy ,writ2 and ,holy ,writ the most divine creation of the fancy4 ,werner regretted that men should ever have employed two distinct terms to designate ,art and ,religion4 ,with ,novalis they are perfectly identical4 ,it is his wont to deal with spiritual truth by analogies drawn from physics1 and to investigate physics by his mystical axioms concerning spiritual truth4 ,a mind so desultory and discursive was quite unequal to the formation of a system4 ,but to what sort of system such a confusion of thought must lead1 if ever methodically elaborated1 has not patient1 hard-working ,jacob ,behmen already shown us8 ,where other men are satisfied with tracing a resemblance1 ,novalis announces an identity4 ,what others use as an illustration1 he will obey as a principle4 ,with him1 as with the old theosophists1 the laws of the universe are the imaginative analogies which link together all its regions1 seen and unseen1--analogies bred in his own heated brain4 ,thus1 according to ,novalis1 he is the true ,archimage of ,idealism1 #8who can transform external things into thoughts1 and thoughts into external things4' #8,the poet1' he says1 #8is the true enchanter3 by identifying himself with an object he compels it to become what he will4' #8,experience is magical1 and only magically explicable4' #8,physics is the theory of imagination4' #8,religion1 ,love1 ,nature1 ,politics1 all must be treated mystically4' ,on such a principle alone can we account for the ultra-,neoplatonist rodomontade he utters in praise of mathematics4 ,he declares the genuine mathematician the enthusiast par excellence--mathematics is the life of the gods--it is religion--it is virtual omniscience4 ,mathematical books are to be read devoutly1 as the word of ,god4#djd ,the suggestive and sparkling aphorisms of ,novalis should be read with due allowance4 ,some contain admirable thoughts1 pointedly expressed2 others are curiously perverse or puerile4 ,now they breathe the lofty stoical spirit we find in ,schleiermacher's monologues4 ,presently1 ,fichte seems forgotten2 the strain of ,titanic self-assertion is relaxed1 and ,novalis languidly reclines with the ,lotos-eaters among the flowers4 ,in one page life is but #8a battle and a march1' in another1 the soul's activity is an eating poison2 love1 a sickness2 life1 the disease of the spirit--a brief fever1 to be soothed by the slumber of mystical repose1 and healed at last by healthful1 restful death4 ,in this latter mood he woos the sleepy abstraction of the oriental mysticism4 ,action is morbid1 in his eyes2 to dream is to overcome4 ,all activity ceases1 he says1 when ,knowledge enters4 ,the condition of ,knowlege is ,eudmonia--saintly calm of contemplation4#dje ,such is the aspiration dimly discernible through the florid obscurity of his ,hymns to ,night4 ,shutting out the garish outer world of the ,actual1 forgetting all its tinsel glories and its petty pains1 the enthusiast seems to rise into that mystic meditative ,night1 whose darkness reveals more truth than the searching brightness of the daylight1 and in whose recesses his transported spirit celebrates its bridal with the ,queen of ,heaven--the sthetic ,mary1 the ,eternal ,beauty4 ,now that the assailants of ,revelation have grown so extremely pious1 we find them zealously enlisting certain modifications of mysticism on their side4 ,modern spiritualism revives the tactics of ancient philosophy4 ,it borrows from ,christianity 7as did ,porphyry7 a higher moral tone than it could otherwise have reached1 and then pretends to look down upon the ethics of the scriptures4 ,the religious sentiment so variously evolved in every age and country1 is brought forth to overwhelm the religious truth revealed in ,christ4 ,a philosophic church is set up4 ,the hope full of immortality is depreciated as low and selfish4 ,quietism abased itself so profoundly that it would scarcely lift its eyes toward that hope4 ,spiritualism exalts itself so ambitiously1 that it will not stoop to make that hope its own4 ,in the seventeenth century1 mysticism was in sad earnest on this question of disinterestedness3 in the nineteenth1 such indifference is the pretence of a preposterous self-sufficiency4 ,but the device which failed so signally1 some fourteen centuries ago1 cannot now prevail1 though the hostile approach is more artfully contrived4 ,that antichristian sentimentalism which is too refined for the medium of a book1 and for the morality of the ,bible1 was discomfited as soon as seen1 and received its coup de grace from the #8,eclipse of ,faith1' amidst universal laughter4 ,but this repetition of old ideas is1 after all1 the most mortifying and damnatory fact4 ,to think2 that the advocates of a philosophic religious sentiment1 in opposition to the old ,book1 should exhibit as little novelty as their enemies1--that even after throwing off the ,biblical fetters1 no progress should be visible1--that the haunting ,past should be with them still1--that after making their escape from antiquated ,paul and ,john1 they should find themselves in company with antiquated ,proclus and ,plotinus6 ,the theosophy of ,swedenborg was original4 ,mysticism has produced nothing really new in that direction since his day1 and the northern seer still walks alone within his circle4 ,franz ,baader re-clothes the bones of ,behmen's system from the materials of modern science2 and ,oetinger1 a student both of ,behmen and of ,swedenborg1 attempts to arrange a divine system of science by the mystical interpretation of scripture4 ,even the #8holy vegetation' of oriental mysticism has been reproduced4 ,schelling bids man know ,god #8in silent not-knowing1' as the plant reveals eternal beauty in #8stillest existence and without reflection4' ,such counsel means much more than the maxim1 #8,il ne faut pas voyager pour voir1 mais pour ne pas voir1' so frequent with ,john of the ,cross and ,fnlon4 ,laurence ,oken1 a physiologist of note and a disciple of ,schelling1 sees in the snail an exalted symbol of mind slumbering deeply within itself4 ,he beholds in that creature an impersonation of majestic wisdom3 it is #8the prophesying goddess sitting on the tripod4' ,what reflection1 what earnestness1 what timidity1 what confidence6 ,the same ,oken travesties ,behmen1 when he makes red fire1 love1 ,father2 blue air1 truth1 belief1 ,son2 green water1 formation1 hope1 ,ghost2 yellow earth1 ,satan4 ,he imagined that he wrote his ,physio-philosophy in a kind of inspiration4 ,here1 again1 we see that this intellectual intuition1 professedly so keen1 so spontaneous1 so free from every formula1 does yet continually repeat itself4 ,great and various have been the services rendered by mysticism throughout the history of the ,christian ,church4 ,it has exposed pretence1 it has demanded thoroughness4 ,it has sought1 amidst surrounding formalism1 what was deemed the highest form of spirituality4 ,its strain has been sometimes of a mood so high as to #8create a soul within the ribs of death4' ,but it has been influential for good in proportion to its temperance in the doctrine concerning the outward rule and the inner light4 ,wherever it has been extravagant in this respect--has thrown off common sense or decency--been turbulent1 licentious1 or #8high fantastical1' there good men and thoughtful have stood mournfully aloof from it1 while formal men or designing have made its follies a plea for tightening the cords of spiritual oppression4 ,it has won acceptance from men when it has been sufficiently moderate to urge intelligible arguments1 and to appeal sincerely 7if not always warrantably7 to that outward ,revelation which is commonly received4 ,but the world has rarely been disposed to receive boastful professions of spirituality or freedom1 vague declamation and rhapsodical denunciation of reason or the schools1 in the place of those definite expressions of opinion which1 though sometimes narrow1 are at least readily apprehensible4 ,incalculable must be the advantage of any man or party who can manifest a clear meaning over those who cannot4 ,there is danger in the present day1 lest in the reaction against logical formalism and prescription1 an extravagant value should be set on faith for its own sake4 ,the ,romanist makes mere faith1 blind and implicit1 a saving virtue4 ,the spiritualist falls into the same error when he says1 #8,only be in earnest--get faith in an idea--in something1 at any rate--and all will be well4' ,but faith is a principle1 not an instinct4 ,among the many claimants for my belief1 ,i must make an intelligent choice4 ,it is of some consequence whether the #8idea' on which ,i am mounted be false or true4 ,it can be good for no man to be recklessly earnest in the devil's work4 ,mysticism has generally apprehended religion rather on its divine than on its human side4 ,it makes haste to lose humanity1 and to be glorified4 ,grievous afflictions have reminded some of the mystical aspirants that they were human still4 ,the spiritual pride of others has betrayed them1 first to ostentatious sanctity1 and then to shameful sin4 ,among those who would surpass humanity1 some have fallen disgracefully1 others ludicrously1 below it4 ,there have been those whose transformation proved to be downward to a lower sphere1 not upward to an element more rare4 ,they fare like ,lucius in the ,golden ,ass to whom ,fotis has given the wrong witch-salve4 ,he extends his arms1 he sways himself to and fro1 he expects the next moment to find himself changing into a bird4 ,but his hands and feet grow horny1 his thickening1 irritated skin shoots forth hairs1 and behold him metamorphosed into an ass4 ,the theatrical devotion1 so frequent among the ornaments of ,roman saintship1 overlooks common duties1 sometimes despises necessary helps1 generally mistakes altogether the nature of true greatness4 ,the ,christianity exhibited in the ,new ,testament differs most conspicuously from the ,mystical ,theology in being so much more human4 ,it addresses man as he is2 it addresses all2 it appeals to the whole nature of every man4 ,it knows nothing of class-religion4 ,it does not bid men exhaust themselves in efforts to live only in the apex of their being--that of which ,plotinus speaks4 ,the history of mysticism shows us1 farther1 that the attempt to escape all figure or symbol1 in our apprehensions of divine truth1 is useless1 or worse than useless4 ,such endeavour commonly ends in substituting for a figure which1 though limited and partial1 has life and heart in it1 some vague abstraction1 cold and lifeless1--and itself1 perhaps1 ultimately a figure1 after all4 ,it is one thing to remember that language is but language1--that behind all the expressions of love or power lies an infinity that cannot be expressed4 ,it is another to leave behind 7as many mystics have striven to do7 even the vital breathing metaphors of ,holy ,writ1 and restlessly to peer beyond1 into the ,unutterable--the ,illimitable4 ,surely the words #8,king1' #8,shepherd1' #8,father1' express more truth concerning ,god than the #8pure ,act' of philosophy4 ,when ,i speak of ,god as near or distant1 pleased or displeased1 the change may be in me rather than in ,him4 ,but in practical result--in the effects ,i feel--it is to me as though such change of disposition were real4 ,and mysticism must freely grant me this1 if it would not play into the hands of scholasticism1 its hereditary foe4 ,there is a sickly dread of anthropomorphism abroad among us1 which is afraid of attributing to ,god a heart4 ,mysticism has often spoken out bravely and well against those who substitute barren propositions for religious life1--who reject the kindly truth to make a tyrant of some rigid theory or system4 ,but there is danger also on the other side4 ,an imaginative1 brainsick man1 may substitute religious vagaries1 whims1 conceits1 for religious truth4 ,men may be led as far astray by mere feeling as by mere logic4 ,while the man of method makes an idol of his theory1 the enthusiast may make an idol of his passion or his fancy4 ,to this latter snare we have seen mysticism repeatedly fall a prey4 ,the fanatic and the formalist both essay to build a temple to the ,holy ,spirit4 ,the formalist is satisfied with raising the structure2 and a sorry taper1 here and there1 makes darkness visible4 ,the fanatic kindles so many lights1 and with so little care1 that he burns his edifice to the ground1 as did the ,florentines their ,church of the ,san ,spirito1 from excessive illumination4 ,anatomists tell us of what they term vicarious secretion in the bodies of men4 ,one organ is found1 in some cases of injury1 to produce the secretion proper to another2 and so we survive the hurt4 ,i think some process of the kind must supervene for the benefit of our minds4 ,with many of the mystics1 ,i doubt not1 the heart performed1 in their spiritual conomy1 the functions of the head4 ,a careful scrutiny of the mystical theology will show1 ,i am confident1 that several of its prominent doctrines are1 in fact1 most valuable correctives1 and probably took or maintained their place as such4 ,these doctrines1 some of which by no means commend themselves to the non-mystical mind1 are the preservatives of the mystic from his peculiar dangers4 ,mysticism leads to an excessive and morbid introspection4 ,how necessary1 then1 that doctrine of #8unconsciousness' reiterated by ,john of the ,cross and ,fnlon1--itself an extreme1 but indispensable to counteract its opposite4 ,mysticism has taught many to expect a perceptible inward guidance4 ,how necessary1 then1 the doctrine of #8quiet1'--that the soul should be abstracted in a profound stillness1 lest the hasty impulses of self should be mistaken for a divine monition4 ,mysticism exalts the soul to a fervour and a vision1 fraught with strange sweetnesses and glories4 ,how necessary1 then1 that doctrine of the more elevated ,quietism which bids the mystic pass beyond the sensible enjoyments and imaginative delights of religion--escape from the finer senses of the soul1 as well as the grosser senses of the body1 into that state of pure and imageless contemplation which has no preference or conception of its own4 ,if ,quietism is not to become a fantastic selfishness1 a sensuous effeminacy1 a voice must cry1 #8,haste through the picture-gallery--haste through the rose-garden--dare the darkness1 wherein the glory hides6' ,the lawless excesses of which mysticism has been occasionally guilty should not serve to commend spiritual despotism4 ,the stock alternative with the ,church of ,rome has been--#8,accept these fanatical outbreaks as divine1 or submit to our rule4' ,unfortunately for this very palpable sophism1 the most monstrous mystical extravagance1 whether of pantheism1 theurgy1 or miracle1 is to be found in the ,romish ,church4 ,angelus ,silesius1 ,angela de ,foligni1 and ,christina ,mirabilis1 are nowhere surpassed in their respective extremes4 ,the best of the ,romish mystics are questionable ,romanists4 ,tauler and ,madame ,guyon were more ,protestant than they were aware4 ,even the submissive ,fnlon is but a half-hearted son of the ,church1 beside that most genuine type of her saintship--the zealous ,dominic4 ,innocent folk are sometimes inclined to think better of a system which could produce a man like ,fnlon4 ,they forget that1 as a product of the system1 ,fnlon was a very inferior specimen--little better than a failure4 ,there is a considerable class1 in these restless1 hurrying1 striving days1 who would be much the better for a measure of spiritual infusion from the ,quietism of ,madame ,guyon4 ,she has found an excellent expositor and advocate in ,mr4 ,upham4 ,the want of leisure1 the necessity for utmost exertion1 to which most of us are subject1 tends to make us too anxious about trifles1 presumptuously eager and impatient4 ,we should thank the teacher who aids us to resign ourselves1 to be nothing1 to wait1 to trust4 ,but it is to be feared that such lessons will have the greatest charm for those who need them least--for pensive1 retiring contemplatists1 who ought rather to be driven out to action and to usefulness4 ,there is a danger lest passivity should be carried too far--almost as though man were the helpless object about which light and darkness were contending1 rather than himself a combatant1 armed by ,god against the powers of night4 ,it seems to me1 too1 better to watch against1 and suppress as they arise1 our selfish tendencies and tempers--our envy1 pride1 indifference1 hate1 covetousness--than to be always nervously trying 7as ,fnlon does7 to catch that ,proteus1 ,,self1 in the abstract4 ,finally1 in the mischievous or unsuccessful forms of mysticism we have the recorded result of a series of attempts to substitute the inner light for the outer4 ,when mysticism threw off external authority altogether1 it went mad--as we have seen in the revolutionary pantheism of the ,middle ,age4 ,when it incorporated itself more and more in revealed truth1 it became a benign power--as on the eve of the ,reformation4 ,the testimony of history1 then1 is repeatedly and decisively uttered against those who imagine that to set aside the authority of ,scripture would be to promote the religious life of men4 ,the ,divine ,spirit is with us yet2 and the healing1 elevating wisdom of the inspired page unexhausted still4 ,the hope of our age lies1 not in a conceited defiance of controul1 but in our ability more fully to apprehend the counsels ,god ,himself has given us4 ,argument may be evaded4 ,to speak in the name of religion may seem to beg the question4 ,but to resist the verdict of the past is not the part of any thoughtful man4 ,he who hopes to succeed in superseding letter by spirit--in disseminating a gospel more spiritual than that of scripture1 by somehow dispensing with the vehicle which all truth requires for its conveyance1--who hopes to succeed in any attempt approaching this1 where more powerful minds1 sometimes more favourably situated1 have met only with defeat--such a fanatic must be dismissed with pity as totally incurable4 ,it grows late4 ,good night all4 ,if ,i can get back earlier ,i will4 ,yours1 ,,henry ,,atherton4 ,footnote #cih3 ,goethe3 ,held our eyes no sunny sheen1 ,how could sunshine e'er be seen8 ,dwelt no power divine within us1 ,how could ,god's divineness win us8 ,footnote #cii3 ,see ,f4 ,h4 ,jacobi1 ,von den ,gttlichen ,dingen und ihrer ,offenbarung 7#ahaa71 where the principles of the ,faith-,philosophy are expounded1 though after a desultory1 disjointed manner3--more especially pp4 #gj-ic4 ,footnote #djj3 ,to ,schleiermacher the theology of his country owes great and lasting obligation for having led the intellectual promise of his time to a momentous crisis of transition4 ,his genius at once kindled the enthusiasm of youth1 and allowed a space to its scepticism4 ,as much opposed as ,hamann or ,jacobi to the contemptuous ,rationalism which then held the scorner's chair1 he did not1 like them1 couch a polemic lance against philosophy4 ,but real and important as was his advance beyond the low and superficial anti-supranaturalism which preceded him1 the followers of ,schleiermacher found it impossible to rest where he did4 ,from among his pupils have sprung the greatest names in this generation of ,german divines1 and they have admitted1 with scarcely an exception1 that he conceded so much for the sake of peace as to render his position untenable4 ,their master led them to an elevation whence they discerned a farther height and surer resting-place than he attained4 ,for a more detailed account of ,schleiermacher and his theological position1 the reader is referred to an article by the ,author in the ,british ,quarterly ,review for ,may1 #ahdi4 ,footnote #dja3 ,the principles of the genuine ,romanticism 7as distinguished from its later and degenerate form7 are ably enunciated by ,tieck1 in a comic drama1 entitled ,prince ,zerbino2 or1 ,travels in ,search of ,good ,taste4 ,one ,nestor1 a prosaic pedant1 who piques himself on understanding everything1 and on his freedom from all enthusiasm and imaginative nonsense1 is introduced into the wondrous garden of the ,goddess of ,poesy4 ,there he sees1 among others1 ,dante and ,ariosto1 ,cervantes and ,sophocles4 ,he complains of not finding ,hagedorn1 ,gellert1 ,gesner1 ,kleist1 or ,bodmer2 and the ,goddess then points him out--as a true ,german bard--stout old ,hans ,sachs4 ,dante appears to him a crusty old fogie2 ,tasso1 a well-meaning man1 but weak2 and ,sophocles1 whom he was disposed to respect as a classic1 when blamed for the obscurity of his choruses1 turns upon him like a bear4 ,the conceited impertinence1 the knowing air1 and the puzzle-headedness of the ,philistine1 are hit off to admiration4 ,this ,garden of ,poesy seems to him a lair of savages1 an asylum for lunatics1 where all his smug conventionalisms are trampled on1 and every canon of his criticism suffers flagrant violation4 ,genii take him away1 and give him something substantial to eat--earth to earth4 ,the tables and chairs begin to talk to him4 ,they congratulate themselves on being delivered from their old free life in the woods1 and cut out into useful articles of furniture1 so fulfilling the purpose of their being4 ,he gets on much better with them than with the poets1 and thinks them 7himself excepted7 the most sensible creatures in the world4 ,footnote #djb3 ,see ,julian ,schmidt1 ,geschichte der ,deutschen ,national ,literatur im #ain ,jahrhundert1 th4 ,i4 c4 vi4 ,footnote #djc3 ,schmidt1 p4 #fj4 ,footnote #djd3 ,novalis1 ,schriften1 th4 ii4 pp4 #aeb1 #aei1 #bba4 ,footnote #dje3 ,ibid41 p4 #aeh4 ,,chapter ,,ii4 ,la raison1 dit saint ,augustin1 ne se soumettroit jamais1 si elle ne jugeoit qu'il y a des occasions o elle doit se soumettre4 ,il est donc juste qu'elle se soumette quand elle juge qu'elle doit se soumettre2 et qu'elle ne se soumette pas1 quand elle juge avec fondement qu'elle ne doit pas le faire3 mais il faut prendre garde ne pas se tromper4--,,pascal4 ,gower ceased reading4 ,a few irregular remarks and questions followed the short silence4 ,willoughby expressed his wish that ,atherton were with them1 and was echoed by the lady of ,ashfield4 ,kate received ,atherton's bulky letter from ,gower's hands1 and began to look it over for herself1 as we always do with newspapers1 however fully read aloud4 ,mrs4 ,lowestoffe was cutting out some ingenious paper figures1 destined to throw little ,kate into rapturous glee1 and her husband had just petitioned for music1 when the deep bark of ,lion was heard in the court-yard2 then the muffled sound of hoofs and wheels over the snow1 and a tearing peal of the bell4 ,it was ,atherton1 who1 released sooner than he had hoped1 had followed his epistle at speed1 sweeping with the wind1 through the whitening hills1 for two-thirds of the ,december day4 ,in half an hour he was among his guests--had refreshed him after his journey--been upstairs to kiss his sleeping child--and now appeared1 blithesome and ruddy1 diffusing smiles4 ,enthroned in his favourite arm-chair1 he amused them with the story of what he had seen1 and heard1 and done2 nothing uncommon1 certainly1 but full of life and humour in his style of telling4 ,on his way home that1 day he had met with an entertaining companion in the railway carriage1 a little spherical old gentleman1 exhibiting between upper and nether masses of fur a narrow segment of face1--gruff and abrupt in speech--ferocious about stoppages and windows1--who had been in ,india1 and knew everybody who was #8anybody' there4 #8,we talked1' said ,atherton1 #8about ,brahmins and ,buddhists1 about the ,bhilsa ,topes and ,major ,cunningham1 about the civil service1 and what not4 ,on every topic he was surprisingly well informed1 and gave me1 in his brief way1 just the facts ,i wanted to know4 ,a propos of ,ceylon and the famous cinnamon breezes1 he said that when he was on board the ,bungagunga ,indiaman1 they stood one day out at sea1 some miles off the island1 when the wind was blowing1 mark you1 right on the land4 ,a group among the passengers began to dispute about these said breezes--were they a poetic fiction1 or an olfactory fact8 ,with that1 my old gentleman slips away slyly1 rubs a little oil of cinnamon on the weather hammock nettings1 and has the satisfaction of presently seeing the pro-cinnamon party in full triumph1 crying1 with distended nostrils and exultant sniffs1 #8,there6 don't you smell them now8' ,one of them1 he told me 7his multitudinous envelopes shaking the while71 actually published an account when he got home1 relating his own experience of those spicy gales1 said to perfume the ocean air so far away4' ,,gower4 ,amusing enough4 ,just the blunder1 by the way1 of our mystics1--mistaking what exists only on board their own personality for something real that operates from without4 ,their pleasurable emotions can be nothing less than precious odours--miraculous benisons1 breathed from some island of the blest4 ,,lowestoffe4 ,they seem to me a most monotonous set of gentry--those same mystics4 ,accept my congratulations on your having nearly done with them4 ,as far as ,i understand them1 they go round one old circuit for ever1 in varying forms1--just like your gold fish there1 ,mrs4 ,atherton1 now looking so big about it1 and the next moment tapered off to a mere tail4 ,see that fellow now1 magnified almost to the size of his glass world1 with his huge eyes1 like a cabbage rose in spectacles2 and now1 gone again on his way round and round1--always the same1 after all4 ,,atherton4 ,and yet religious extravagances1 with all their inordinate ,quixotism1 or worse1 are full of instruction4 ,your favourite botanical books should hint that much to you2 for the vegetable physiologists all say that no little light has been thrown on the regularly developed organism by the study of monstrous and aberrant forms of growth4 ,,lowestoffe4 ,there is something in that4 ,but these irregularities you speak of have repeatedly broken out in the conduct1 have they not1 as well as in imagination or opinion8 ,,atherton4 ,they have4 ,the dazzling splendour of a superhuman knowledge or a superhuman fervour1 has often distorted the common rule of right and wrong1---- ,,gower4 ,as they say the ,northern ,lights disturb the direction of the needle4 ,,kate4 ,yet those glimmers and flashes are of service in the arctic night1--better than total darkness4 ,,lowestoffe4 ,right1 ,miss ,merivale4 ,i fully admit the plea4 ,,willoughby4 ,i think we must allow the substantial justice of ,mr4 ,lowestoffe's complaint4 ,there is a sameness in these mystics4 ,each one starts1 to so large an extent1 on his own account1 with the same bias and the same materials4 ,he reiterates1 after his manner1 the same protest1 and the same exaggeration4 ,the same negations1 the same incoherence1 the same metaphors1 have attempted in every age the utterance of the unutterable4 ,,atherton4 ,so science began to make steady progress as soon as it confined itself within the limits of the knowable1 and ceased to publish fancy maps of the terra incognita4 ,theosophy was perpetually transgressing those limits1 and hence its waste of ingenuity in vain gyrations4 ,,gower4 ,there is one point1 ,atherton1 on which ,i could wish you had dwelt more at large in your letter4 ,do we not find1 the most prolific source of mysticism in the idea that there is a special faculty for the discernment of spiritual truth1--that there is a kind of soul within the soul which may unite with ,god1 leaving behind it all the ordinary powers of the mind1--a potency1 in fact1 altogether independent of knowledge1 understanding1 judgment1 imagination1 c41 and never amenable to any of them8 ,we have encountered this doctrine over and over again1 sometimes in a qualified1 sometimes in an uncontrollable form4 ,hugo's #8,eye of ,contemplation' is such a faculty4 ,tauler adopts the principle when he separates the ,ground of the ,soul from all its acts and powers4 ,it lies at the root of the inexpressible experiences so precious to the ,spanish mystics1 when every function of the soul underwent divine suspension4 ,it appears again in the divorce declared 7by ,coleridge1 for example7 between the ,understanding--the reasoning faculty1 which deliberates and judges1 and the ,intuitive ,reason1 which discerns religious and philosophic truth directly4 ,,atherton4 ,you make out a strong case1 certainly4 ,declare intuition absolute1 with an undivided irresponsible prerogative of this kind1 and what check is provided against any possible vagary of mysticism8 ,,mrs4 ,,atherton4 ,i do not clearly understand the question at issue4 ,pray explain before you go farther4 ,,gower4 ,allow me to make the attempt4 ,i am afraid we are growing prosy--speaking for myself1 at least4 ,old travellers used to report that the ,danube1 near its conjunction with the ,drave1 flowed in a stream quite separate from its tributary1 though the same banks confined them both4 ,the two currents were said to be perfectly distinct in colour1 and their waters of quality so opposite1 that the fish caught in the one were never to be found in the other4 ,now the question is1 whether ,reason and ,understanding in the mind of man1 do1 in a similar way1 reciprocally exclude each other4 ,,atherton4 ,gower says no2 and the failures of mysticism powerfully support his position4 ,i agree with him4 ,i think we have all within us what ,i may call ,intuition1 the poetical1 and ,understanding1 the practical man2 but that each of the two is the better for close fellowship with his brother4 ,let not ,intuition disdain common-sense1 and think irrationality a sign of genius4 ,and you1 ,gower1 would be the last to give the reins to logic only1 and live by expediency1 arithmetic1 and mensuration4 ,,mrs4 ,,atherton4 ,thank you4 ,,willoughby4 ,but there was occasion1 surely1 for ,coleridge's exhortation to rise above the dividual particular notions we have gathered about us1 to the higher region of the ,universal ,reason4 ,,atherton4 ,by all means1 let us clear our minds of prejudice1 and seek the ,true for its own sake4 ,,lowestoffe4 ,but ,i do not find that those who profess to have ascended to the common ground of ,universal ,reason1 are one whit more agreed among themselves1 than those who are disputing in the lists of logic about evidence4 ,,willoughby4 ,they are not1 ,i grant4 ,they would attribute their want of unanimity1 however1 to the fact that some of them have not sufficiently purged their intuitional eyesight from everything personal and particular4 ,,lowestoffe4 ,who is to be judge in the matter8 ,who will say how much purging will suffice to assure a man that he has nowhere mistaken a #8wholesome ,prejudice' for a divine intuition8 ,,willoughby4 ,he must exercise his judgment---- ,,gower4 ,exactly so2 his critical1 sifting faculty--his understanding4 ,but that is contrary to the theory in question1 which represents ,understanding as utterly incapable in the ,intuitional sphere4 ,according to ,jacobi1 it is the instinct of the logical faculty to contradict the intuitional--as the bat repudiates the sunshine4 ,,atherton4 ,if the ,christianity of mere logic hardens into a formula1 the ,christianity of mere intuition evaporates in a phantom4 ,,willoughby4 ,but do not let us forget how limited is the logical faculty4 ,,gower4 ,so1 for that matter1 is the intuitional4 ,undeveloped by culture from without1 its voice is incoherent1 various1 scarce audible oftentimes4 ,,willoughby4 ,what logic can prove to me the ,eternity of the ,divine ,nature8 ,is not that a transcendental truth8 ,,atherton4 ,i grant it4 ,but my understanding1 observing and reasoning1 has shown me convincingly that ,i must receive that truth on pain of believing an absurdity4 ,in this way1 the ,understanding is satisfied 7as ,pascal observes it always should be71 and acquiesces in a truth beyond itself4 ,but if ,i have not thus used my ,understanding as far as it will go1 ,i am traversing the transcendental region without the passport it should give me1--,i cannot render a reason--,i only oracularly affirm--,i am fast turning mystic4 ,,lowestoffe4 ,but how this ,intuition sees to work1 or finds means to work1 without contact with the other faculties of the mind1 ,i cannot conceive4 ,has it a set of finer senses of its own8 ,has no one ever defined it8 ,,gower4 ,several definitions have been attempted4 ,i think ,mark ,antony's the best4 ,he delivered it when he gave drunken ,lepidus that hoaxing description of the crocodile4 ,a mind with any depth of insight will understand at once the fine symbolism of ,shakspeare1 and see that he is depicting ,intuition4 #8,it is shaped1 sir1 like itself2 and it is as broad as it hath breadth2 it is just so high as it is1 and moves with its own organs2 it lives by that which nourishes it2 and1 the elements once out of it1 it transmigrates4' ,,atherton4 ,in fact1 ,intuition is not to be termed one among or above the faculties of the mind4 ,it is rather1 like consciousness1 related to them as species to individuals4 ,as the man is1 so are his intuitions4 ,previous observation1 training1 judgment1 all combine to bring the mind to that point from which ,intuition takes its survey1 more or less extended4 ,,lowestoffe4 ,good4 ,our inner and our outer world contradict that separatist theory every day1 by their action and reaction on each other4 ,the man who dreads the internal light as an illusive ,will-o'-the-,wisp1 has often consulted his own inward bent1 far more than he supposes1 in choosing what authority he shall receive4 ,the man who professes to transcend the external altogether is still moulded by it in a thousand unimagined modes4 ,,willoughby4 ,the imperfect character of our recollection should make us very cautious1 ,i admit4 ,so much that has been imported into the mind looks native and spontaneous after a lapse of time4 ,many an idea1 promulged as the dictum of ,intuition--as having its source in the immemorial depths of our being1 has been subsequently traced1 even by its own author1 to the external world4 ,,gower4 ,that gaberlunzie1 ,memory 7whose wallet has so many holes71 would step in oftener1 if he did his duty1 and say1 like ,edie ,ochiltree1 #8,i mind the biggin o' it4' ,,atherton4 ,it seems to me so unfair and ungrateful that after having been so largely indebted1 from the first1 to the outer world1 any man should pretend1 at a certain point1 to deny utterly that indispensable coadjutor in his inward development4 ,,gower4 ,you remind me of the affectation of the author in ,humphrey ,clinker1 who professed such an antipathy to green fields as made him careful to sit with his back to the window all dinner-time1--though he had1 in fact1 passed his childhood with the asses on the village common4 ,,lowestoffe4 ,let us1 then1 celebrate the reconciliation of the pair--,reason and ,understanding1 if the terms are to be retained4 ,so only can our nature realize its full productiveness1--as the richest mines lie always near the junction of two dissimilar rocks4 ,,atherton4 ,i think spiritualism1 which complains that religion is separated too widely from common life1 will scarcely mend the matter by teaching men that they use one faculty1 or set of faculties1 about their week-day business1 and a quite distinct one in their worship4 ,,gower4 ,as though we were to leave our understandings--like the sandals of old--at the door of our holy places4 ,,atherton4 ,enough on this question1 ,i have only one remark to add4 ,we have seen mysticism endeavouring to exclude all distinct form or expression1 all vivid figure1 from its apprehensions of spiritual truth2 as if such clearness and warmth belonged to our meaner nature--were low and sensuous4 ,,gower4 ,confounding spirituality with abstraction4 ,,atherton4 ,spiritualism now repeats the same error--is the revival of an old mistake in a new form4 ,it shrinks from distinctness1 mistaking it1 ,i suppose1 for so much gross materialism1 or artificial formalism4 ,it shuns1 as far as possible1 actual outward persons and events--as though reality were carnality--as though the fewer facts we acknowledged1 the less formal we were sure to be--as though we were spiritual in proportion as we resolved sacred narrative into symbols of inward states or emotions1 forsook history for reverie1 and evidence for hazy sentiment4 ,the ,spanish ,quietists were well nigh enjoining the exclusion of the conception of ,christ's humanity from their higher contemplation1 as an image too substantial and earthy4 ,spiritualism1 in its tendency to escape from objective facts to subjective experience1 displays a similarly unnatural timidity--a morbid aversion to that manly exercise of our whole nature on religious questions which we put forth on others4 ,,gower4 ,thinking1 ,i conclude1 that the opposite to spirituality is1 not sensuality or earthliness--but external reality4 ,,willoughby4 ,why look at me8 ,you don't suppose ,i have a word to say in defence of such a curious confusion of thought8 ,,lowestoffe 7who has been turning over the leaves of a ,shakspeare while listening47 ,if any one of you should ever take it into his head to write a book about mysticism---- ,,atherton4 ,forbid it1 my good genius6 ,,lowestoffe4 ,i have a motto for him--a motto by #8sweet ,bully ,bottom1' quite in the past-all-utterance mystical strain4 #8,i have had a most rare vision4 ,i have had a dream--past the wit of man to say what dream it was4 ,man is but an ass if he go about to expound this dream4 ,methought ,i was1 there is no man can tell what4 ,methought ,i was1 and methought ,i had4 ,but man is but a patched fool1 if he will offer to say what methought ,i had4 ,the eye of man hath not heard1 the ear of man hath not seen2 man's hand is not able to taste1 his tongue to conceive1 nor his heart to report1 what my dream was4 ,i will get ,peter ,quince to write a ballad of this dream3 it shall be called ,bottom's ,dream1 because it hath no bottom4 ,,chapter ,,iii4 ,what pale dictatress in the air ,feeds1 smiling sadly1 her fine ghostlike form1 ,with earth's real blood and breath1 the beauteous life ,she makes despised for ever8 ,,browning4 ,these lines hovered in ,gower's memory that night1 as he walked home after the conversation just recorded4 ,he thought how applicable they were to asceticism1--especially to that intense asceticism of the mind which1 not content with wasting the body and searing the sense1 prides itself on starving ,reason and blinding ,imagination1--which eschews all form and figure1 and affects naked truth1 without a medium or an envelope4 ,his was a nature which saw everything in figure4 ,his mind moved everywhere among pictures4 ,for him to dispense with metaphor and parable--with significant raiment and dramatic action for his ideas1 would have been almost equivalent to dispensing with ideas altogether4 ,so he quickened his steps2 for the starless1 unfeatured night seemed to him too much to resemble the blank and bleak ,abstraction of the severer mystics1--that tyrannous curfew of warm natural life and of all bright thoughts4 ,he soon reached his abode1 where a blithe fire awaited him1 radiating its almost animated welcome over easel1 busts1 and books4 ,assuming light study vesture1 he leaned back in his arm-chair1 enjoying slippered ease4 ,he would not light his lamp1 but reclining in the very mood for reverie1 watched the fire--now the undisputed magician of his studio1--as it called up or dismissed1 with its waving flame1 the distorted shadows of familiar things on wall and ceiling4 ,he himself was soon occupied in like manner1 waywardly calling forth1 linking1 severing1 a company of shadows out of the past4 ,in a half-waking1 half-dreaming twilight1 ,gower seemed to see the dusky form of the ,indian1 crouched on his mat beside a holy river1 awaiting divine insensibility4 ,there was the ,yogi1 gathered up in his patch of shade1 like an insect rolled under a leaf2 while1 above1 the beating sun-glare trampled over the plains1 strewn with his reflected rays1 as over an immeasurable threshing-floor4 ,then he dreamed that he stood in a ,persian garden1 and before him were creeping plants1 trained on wires slanting upward to a point1 and in and out and up and down this flower-minster1 hung with bells1 darted those flying jewels1 the humming-birds3 the sun's rays as they slanted on their glancing coats seemed to dash off in a spray of rainbow colours4 ,some pierced the nectaries of the flowers with their fine bills2 others soared upward1 and as they were lost in the dazzling air1 the roses swung their censers1 and the nightingales sang an assumption-hymn for them4 ,yet this scene changed incessantly4 ,every now and then the pinnacle of flowers assumed giant size1--was a needle of rock1 shooting up out of a chasm of hanging vegetation2 and innumerable spirits--winged souls of ,sufis1 were striving to reach the silent glistening peak4 ,there was a flutter and a pulsing in the sky--as with summer lightning at night1--and the palpitation of some vast eyelid made light and darkness succeed each other with quick throbs4 ,now it was the pyramid of flowers1 now the star-crowned point of rock4 ,so time and space were surpassed--sported with4 ,instants were ages1 he thought1 and cycles ran their round in a moment4 ,the vault of heaven was now a hanging flower-cup2 and presently the feather of a humming-bird expanded to a sunset of far-streaming gold and purple4 ,a leaping flame caused these alternations in ,dreamland1 as it lit or left in shadow his closed eyes4 ,then he stood on the desolate ,campagna1 where before him stretched the ruins of the ,roman aqueducts4 ,the broken arches1 dotting at intervals the far waste of withered green1 drew no more water from the hills for the million-mouthed ,city in the horizon4 ,their furrowed1 beaten age held in its wrinkles only roots of maidenhair1 and sometimes little rain-pools along the crevices1--the scornful charity of any passing shower4 ,in a moment the wilderness grew populous with the sound of voices and the clangour of tools4--,a swarm of workmen1 clustered about the broken links of the chain1 were striving to piece them together again--to bind up the mighty artery1 and set it flowing as of old4 ,but an insatiable morass sucked down the stones they brought4 ,waggons full of gods 7such as moved in the old triumphs71 of statues monstrous1 bestial1 many-limbed1 from all the temples of the nations1 were unladen1 with sacrifice and augury1 and the idols deposited on the treacherous quagmire1 only to sink down1 a drowning mass1 with bowing heads and vainly-lifted arms4 ,then the whole undulating plain appeared to roll up in vapour1 and a wind1 carrying in it a sound of psalms1 and driving before it a snowy foam of acacia blossoms1 swept clear the field of vision4 ,no2 the old influence was to flow no more from the ,olympian ,houses above that blue line of hills4 ,great ,pan was dead4 ,the broken cisterns would hold no water4 ,he stood next before the mouth of a cavern1 partly overhung with a drooping hair of tropical plants4 ,at his side was a nun1 who changed1 as is the wont of dreams1 into a variety of persons4 ,at one time1 she was ,st4 ,theresa1 then ,christina ,mirabilis1 and presently ,gower thought he recognised ,theresa once more4 ,he followed his conductress into the cavern1 in the gloom of which a hermit rivulet was pattering along1 telling its pebble beads4 ,as they passed on1 the night-birds in the black recesses of the rock shrieked and hooted at them4 ,as he touched the dank sides of the passage1 from time to time his hand would rest on some loathly wet lump1 shuffling into a cranny1 or some nameless1 gelid shape fell asunder at his touch1 opening gashes in itself where lay1 in rows1 seeds of great tarantula eye-balls1 that ran away dissolved in venomous rheum4 ,bat-like things flapped down from funnel-shaped holes3 polypi felt after his face with slimy fingers3 crabs1 with puffed human faces1 slid under his tread2 and skinny creatures1 as it were featherless birds1 with faces like a horse's skull1 leaned over and whinnied at him4 #8,these1' said ,theresa1 #8are the obscene hell-brood whose temptations make so terrible the entrance on the ,higher ,life4' ,the long cavern had not yet made a single winding1 and he turned1 as the darkness increased1 to have a last look at the entrance1 whence the outer sunshine still twinkled after them4 ,he could see a green hill that faced the mouth1 lying off like a bright transparency4 ,or was it a spot brought into the disc of his great rock-telescope1 from some planet of perpetual summer--one of those that play in the hair of the sun8 ,christina1 impatient of this sinful looking back1 urged him onward4 ,a palm-branch she carried grew luminous1 and its plume of flame dropping sparks1 became their torch4 ,she paused to point out to him some plants growing in a black mould4 ,birds had carried in thus far the seeds from which they sprang2 but there had been no sun-light to give them colour1 and their form was uncertain and defectively developed4 #8,behold1' said she1 #8these saintly flowers4 ,mark that holy pallor6 ,the sun never stained their pureness with those gaudy hues men admire4 ,yon garish world can show no such perfectness3 see them1 they are hueless1 scentless1 well-nigh formless6' #8,sickly1 blanched abortions6' exclaimed the dreamer1 so loudly that he almost awoke4 #8,we want more life1 not less--fuller--sunnier6' ,christina crossed herself piously to hear abstraction thus blasphemed4 ,and now the passage1 widening1 opened on the central hall of rock1 that branched out into depths of darkness every way1 and was fretted with gleaming stalactites4 ,there were amber volutes and brittle clusters of tawny bubbles2 lily-bells of stone1 flowers with sparry thorns and twining stream-like stems2 creamy falls from slabs of enamel1 motionless1 yet seeming ever to drop from ledge to ledge2 membranous curtains1 and net-work1 and traceries2 tissues and lawnlike folds of delicate marble2 while in the centre1 reaching to the misty summit of the dome1 stood a huge sheaf of pillars1 like alabaster organ-pipes4 ,a solemn music trembled and swelled1 and as its rising volume shook the air1 voices sang--#8,weep for the sins of men6' ,there was a wild burst of sound2 then sudden silence2 and1 above and around1 nothing was audible but a universal trickling and running1 a dripping and dropping and plashing1 while the palm-torch flashed on innumerable tear-drops1 hanging on every pendant point and jutting ledge1 or sliding down the glistening rock4 ,after a while1 it seemed to be ,theresa who spoke to him and said1 #8,here in these depths is warmth1 when the world above is locked in ice2 and when the surface is parched1 here dwells chaste coolness1 safe encelled4 ,our fire seems numbness to a blinded world2 and we are frost to its dog-day rages4' ,with that a spell seemed to come over her hearer4 ,the spirit of the words became his spirit4 ,the fate of an empire seemed as nothing in his eyes beside his next prospect of rapture1 or his success in straining out another half-pint of tears4 ,in a moment he was turned to stone4 ,he had become a gargoyle high up on ,strasburg ,cathedral1 and was spouting water from his lolling tongue at the circling birds4 ,gower next found himself1 on a cold grey morning in spring1 in a vine country1 where men and women were toiling up the steep hills on either side a river1 carrying baskets of earth4 ,last winter's rain had swept away the thin soil to the bone1 and they must lay a new one about their vine-sticks4 ,in the midst of their miserable labour1 these poor people saw standing among them a majestic stranger1 wrapped in a robe4 ,gower thought he recognised ,swedenborg at once4 #8,stay1' cried the seer1 #8,god hath made a soil already for you4 ,build no other4 ,your own stony hearts have made the hill seem to you as iron4' ,they heard3 each seemed to take a stone out of his bosom1 and hurl it down the steep2 when straightway every foot sank deep into a rich and kindly earth1 and a shout of joy broke forth1 echoed far among the cloudy gorges4 ,once more ,gower thought he stood upon the shoulder of a volcano1 among the clinking scori4 ,it was growing dark4 ,a strange shape of fire was suddenly at his side1 helmed with a flaring cresset1 under the light of which the rocky projections around glowed like the burnished beaks of galleys4 ,over his shoulders hung a mantle of azure flame1 fringed with sparks and tasselled with brushes of fire4 ,on his breast was what seemed a hauberk of some emerald incandescence1 that brightened or paled with every sinuous motion of the lithe frame1 as when the wind comes and goes about an ignited tree-trunk in a burning forest4 ,the form said--#8,i am the ,flame-king3 behold a vision of my works'--and passed his hand before the eyes of the dreamer4 ,gower saw columns of steam shot up from an ,indian sea1 with stones and mire1 under a great canopy of smoke4 ,then all was calm3 a new island had been born2 and the waves licked the black fire-cub4 ,next he saw a burning mountain1 lighting1 at the dead of night1 glaciers and snowy precipices--as the fire-cross of a great festival lights the shafts and arches of some darkened cathedral4 ,avalanches fell1 looking1 under the glare1 like sliding continents of ruby1 and were shut down in their chasm-caskets with a noise of thunder4 ,he beheld the burning of brave palaces1 of captured cities1 of prairies where the fire hunts alone1 and the earth shakes with the trample of a myriad hoofs flying from the destroyer4 ,then he stood on the mountain side1 as before2 but it was broad day1 and beneath him lay in the sun a sky-like bay1 white houses1 and the parti-coloured fields under the haze1 like a gay escutcheon1 half-hidden by a gauzy housing4 ,beside him1 in place of the ,flame-king1 stood a shining ,one fantastically clad in whatsoever the sunshine loves best to inform and turn to glory4 ,the mantle slanting from his shoulders shone like a waterfall which runs gold with sunlight2 his breast mirrored a sunset2 and translucent forest-leaves were woven for his tunic4 ,his cheek glowed1 delicate as the finely-cut camelia1 held against the sun4 #8,i am ,king ,sunlight1' he said4 #8,mine is the even kindliness of the summer-time4 ,i make ready harvest-home and vintage4 ,i triumph in the green-meshed tropic forests1 with their fern-floors1 and garland-galleried tree-tops1 where stand the great trunks which1 interlaced with their thick twining underwood1 are set like fishers' stakes with their nets1 in those aerial tides of heavy fragrance4 ,there ,i make all things green threaten to shoot faster than the cumbered river can run through the wilds of verdure4 ,i drive ,winter away1 as though ,i were his shepherd1 and he leaves fragments of his fleece in snow-patches among the hills1 when ,i pursue him4 ,i love no flaming ascents1 no tossing meteoric splendours4 ,i overgrow the strife-scars and fire-rents1 which my ,titan brother makes1 with peace-breathing green4 ,i urge thee to no glittering leap against the rapids of thy natural mortal element4 ,with my shining in thy heart1 thou shalt have peace1 whether thine outward life raise or sink thee1--as he who rows in the glory-wake under a sunrise1 is bright and golden whether on the crest of the wave or in the hollow4 ,i put courage into the heart of the ,lady in ,comus1 when alone in the haunted wood4--,a quite true story1 by the way1' continued the ,phantom1 with a sudden familiarity1 #8for those of you mortals who can receive it4 ,wilt thou come with me1 and work humbly at what lies next thy hand1 or wait to surpass humanity1 or go travelling to find ,michael's sword to clear thy land withal8 ,with my shining in thy heart1 every flinty obstacle shall furnish thee with new fire2 and in thine affliction ,i will bring thee from every blasted pine an ,ariel swift to do thee service3 so shall thy troubles be thy ministers4 ,shall it be the splendour1 or the inward sunshine8' ,as ,gower turned from the approaching ,flame-king1 he clasped the hand of ,sunlight with such vehemence that he awoke4 ,it was one o'clock4 ,he hastened to bed1 and there slept soundly3 ,i am sure he had dreamed more than enough for one night4 ,from the very church-tower which struck one that winter morning1 the ensuing spring heard a merry peal of bells1--such a rocking and a ringing as never since has shaken those old stones4 ,i daresay ,willoughby would tell you that the bells made so merry because he had just finished his romance4 ,don't believe him3 suspect rather1 with your usual sagacity1 that ,lionel ,gower and ,kate ,merivale had something to do with it4 ,,index4 ,abelard1 i4 #adb1 #adi4 ,absorption1 ,mystical1 i4 #hf4 ,abstraction1 ,doctrine of ,hugo concerning1 i4 #aeg2 of ,ruysbroek1 #cbh2 of the ,quietists1 ii4 #agb2 not to be mistaken for spirituality1 #cfe4 ,adolf ,arnstein1 his ,chronicle1 i4 #aha1 #bac1 #bdc1 #cai1 #cdj4 ,affliginiensis1 ,john1 i4 #ccd4 ,agrippa1 ,cornelius1 i4 #dd2 ii4 #fa2 his ,vanity of ,arts and ,sciences1 #fb2 his doctrine of the ,microcosm1 #fe4 ,alcantara1 ,peter of1 ii4 #aeg1 #bba4 ,alchemy in the sixteenth century1 ii4 #eh2 ,theological1 #gg4 ,alexandria1 ,rise of its ,philosophic ,school1 i4 #ff1 #gd2 ,fusion of ,religions there1 #gb2 ,eclecticism1 #ge2 its ,mysticism revived at ,florence1 ii4 #adg4 ,algazzali1 ii4 #e4 ,alvarez1 ,balthazar1 ii4 #aga4 ,amalric of ,bena1 i4 #aca4 ,ammonius ,saccas1 his ,eclecticism1 i4 #gd4 ,anabaptists of ,munster1 ii4 #cg4 ,andre1 ,valentine1 ii4 #acb4 ,angela de ,foligni1 i4 #cfb4 ,angelus ,silesius1 ii4 #e2 his ,pantheism1 #f2 his ,extravagance of ,negation1 #ah2 ,analogies with ,emerson1 #bb4 ,anselm1 i4 #ada1 #adi4 ,antony1 ,st41 i4 #aji4 ,apathy1 i4 #eh2 styled ,poverty of ,spirit1 #cca4 ,apollonius of ,tyana1 i4 #ga4 ,aquinas1 ,thomas1 his ,classification of ,virtues1 i4 #abc4 ,areopagita1 ,dionysius1 see ,dionysius4 ,aristotle1 ,mischievous ,influence of his ,ethics1 i4 #abj4 ,asceticism1 ,oriental1 i4 #ef2 of ,plotinus1 #ga2 of ,neo-,platonism1 #gf2 of the ,fathers of the ,desert1 #aji2 mistakes the ,design of ,christianity1 #adc2 its services to ,priestcraft1 #cfe2 of the ,friends1 ii4 #cji2 discouraged by the ,mysticism of ,swedenborg1 #cbh4 ,astras1 ,indian1 ii4 #adc4 ,athos1 ,mount1 ,monks of1 i4 #cee4 ,atonement1 ,swedenborg's doctrine of1 ii4 #ccb4 ,augustine1 i4 #aca1 #adf4 ,aurora of ,behmen1 ii4 #ig4 ,baader1 ,franz1 ii4 #cea4 ,bagvat-,gita1 i4 #ea4 ,barclay1 his ,apology1 ii4 #cjj4 ,beghards1 i4 #ahd4 ,behmen1 ,jacob1 i4 #ci2 his early life1 ii4 #hj2 his illumination1 #hc1 #ic1 #ie2 his ,aurora1 #hf2 his debt to predecessors1 #ij2 his style1 #ii2 genial and manly character of his ,mysticism1 #ajb2 his ,fountain-,spirits1 #ajd1 #abj2 his ,theory of ,contraries1 #aji2 his doctrine of the ,fall1 #aae2 estimate of his position1 #aah2 compared with ,swedenborg1 #cbf4 ,bernard1 his personal appearance1 i4 #acd2 life at ,clairvaux1 #ace2 moderation of his ,mysticism1 #acf2 character and extent of his influence1 #adj2 undue limitation of ,reason in his ,theology1 #ada2 definition of ,faith1 #adb2 doctrine concerning ,contemplation1 #adc2 concerning ,disinterested ,love1 #add2 definition of ,union1 #add2 ,sermons on ,canticles1 #ade2 his mystical ,interpretation1 #ade4 ,berulle1 ,cardinal1 defends ,st4 ,francis de ,sales1 ii4 #bha1 ,black ,death1 in the fourteenth century1 i4 #cac4 ,blosius1 ,ludovic1 passage from his ,institutio spiritualis1 i4 #bd2 ii4 #bha4 ,bokelson1 ,john1 ii4 #ch4 ,bona1 ,cardinal1 i4 #bd2 ii4 #agh4 ,bonaventura1 i4 #adi1 #aed4 ,bossuet1 his ignorance of ,mysticism1 ii4 #beb1 note2 appointed to the ,commission of ,inquiry concerning ,mme4 ,guyon1 #bee2 prejudges the cause of ,mme4 ,guyon1 #bef1 note2 his treatment of ,fnlon1 #beg2 his panegyric on the ,spanish ,mystics1 #bei2 his ,instructions on the ,states of ,prayer1 #bfa2 his jealousy of ,fnlon1 #bfd2 his treachery1 #bfh2 his ,account of ,quietism1 #bfh2 his hypocrisy1 #bgj1 note2 his misrepresentations1 #bgh4 ,bourignon1 ,antoinette1 ii4 #bhf1 #bhi4 ,brigitta1 ,st41 i4 #cfa4 ,buddhism1 its ,mysticism1 i4 #ef2 its ,monasticism1 #ef4 ,bustami1 ii4 #aa4 ,cabasilas1 ,archbishop of ,thessalonica1 i4 #cef4 ,cabbala1 ii4 #ee1 #adb4 ,cagliostro1 ii4 #acj4 ,callenberg1 ,lady ,clara von1 ii4 #bic2 her death1 #bie4 ,canticles1 ,bernard's ,sermons on the1 i4 #ade4 ,carlstadt1 ii4 #dc2 opposed by ,luther1 #ea4 ,carmel1 ,mount1 the ,ascent of1 by ,john of the ,cross1 ii4 #ahe1 #aib4 ,catherine of ,siena1 i4 #cfd2 ii4 #aga4 ,cevennes1 ,protestants of the1 ii4 #cac4 ,christina ,ebner1 of ,engelthal1 i4 #bbc4 ,christina ,mirabilis1 ii4 #bba4 ,city of ,god1 ,mystical1 of ,maria d',agreda1 ii4 #afd4 ,clairvaux1 ,monastery of1 described1 i4 #acb4 ,coleridge1 i4 #hg2 ,analogies of ,plotinus with1 #hg2 his intuitive reason1 #hh4 ,contemplation1 doctrine of ,philo concerning1 i4 #ff2 of ,bernard1 #adc2 of ,hugo1 #aef2 ,richard's six stages of1 #afb2 the #8indistinct' of ,st4 ,frances de ,sales1 ii4 #agi2 of ,fnlon1 #bhj4 ,contraries1 ,behmen's ,theory of1 ii4 #aji4 ,cornelius ,agrippa1 see ,agrippa4 ,correspondences1 ,swedenborg's doctrine of1 ii4 #cba4 ,counter-,reformation1 ii4 #adi2 character of its ,mysticism1 #aea4 ,cross1 ,john of the1 see ,john4 ,cyr1 ,st41 ii4 #bdh4 ,david of ,dinant1 i4 #aca4 ,denys1 ,st41 of ,france1 identified with the ,pseudo-,dionysius1 i4 #abj4 ,descartes1 i4 #dc4 ,desert1 ,fathers of the1 i4 #aji4 ,desmarets1 de ,st4 ,sorlin1 ii4 #bdd4 ,d',etres1 ii4 #bdc4 ,dionysius ,areopagita1 first appearance of the writings under that name1 i4 #aaa2 ,theology of the ,pseudo-,dionysius1 #aac-aae1 #bgh2 influence of his ,mysticism on the ,middle ,ages1 #aai2 in the ,east and in the ,west contrasted1 #acj2 identified with ,st4 ,denys of ,france1 #abj2 followed by ,molinos1 ii4 #aga2 by ,john of the ,cross1 #ahe4 ,dionysius the ,carthusian1 his definition of mystical theology1 i4 #bd2 ii4 #bha4 ,dippel1 ii4 #abe4 ,director1 the ,spiritual1 ii4 #aeh4 ,dominic of ,jesu ,maria1 his miraculous elevation1 ii1 #agf4 ,dominicans1 ,reformatory ,preachers among the1 i4 #bbd4 ,ebner1 ,christina1 of ,engelthal1 i4 #bbc2 ,margaret1 #baf4 ,eckart1 his preaching1 i4 #ahh1 #aic2 compared with ,tauler1 #aib1 #bed1 #bhb1 #cjb2 his story of the beggar1 #aig2 probable motive of his heresy1 #bjd2 analogies with ,hegel1 #bjf1 #bab2 sources of his ,pantheism1 #baj1 #bhb2 compared with ,fichte1 #bab2 two classes of followers1 #ccj1 note4 ,eclecticism4 ,alexandrian1 i4 #gd4 ,ecstasy1 doctrine of ,plotinus concerning1 i4 #gg1 #gh2 of ,porphyry1 #ig2 of ,iamblichus1 #ajd2 of ,richard of ,st4 ,victor1 #afc2 described by ,said1 ii4 #ai2 ,theresa's prayer of1 #afi2 corporeal effects of1 #afi2 the #8ecstatic life' of ,francis de ,sales1 #agf4 ,edwards1 ,president1 i4 #afi4 ,egotheism1 i4 #cca4 ,emanation1 ,neo-,platonist doctrine of1 i4 #hj2 in the theology of ,dionysius1 #aac2 in the teaching of ,eckart1 #bgh2 in the ,persian ,mysticism1 ii4 #bc4 ,emerson1 ,ralph ,waldo1 i4 #cjf2 ii4 #h2 analogies with ,angelus ,silesius and the ,sufis1 #i1 #bj1 #bb2 his doctrine of ,intuition1 #ah4 ,endern1 ,karl von1 ii4 #ih4 ,engelbrecht1 ii4 #abe4 ,england1 ,mysticism in1 ii4 #cja4 ,english ,platonists1 see ,platonism4 ,erigena1 ,john ,scotus1 i4 #aca1 #adf1 #bgi2 ii4 #aaj1 #aac4 ,ethics1 of ,aristotle1 i4 #aba2 of ,monasticism1 #abb4 ,faith1 how defined by ,bernard1 i4 #adb2 justification by1 ii4 #ca2 to what extent apprehended by the ,mystics1 #ca2 to be distinguished from sanctification1 #ce2 ,paracelsian doctrine of1 #gc1 #ij1 #add2 how opposed to ,sight1 #bdj2 ,error of ,spiritualism concerning1 #ceb4 ,faith-,philosophy in ,germany1 ii4 #cda4 ,fnlon1 ii4 #agc2 his first interview with ,mme4 ,guyon1 #bej2 signs the ,articles of ,issy1 #beh2 his ,quietism1 #beh2 difficulties of his position1 #bfc2 his ,maxims of the ,saints1 #bfc2 appeals to ,rome1 #bfe2 his friends disgraced1 #bfh2 his reply to ,bossuet's ,account of ,quietism1 #bgj2 his submission1 #bgb4 ,feridoddin ,attar1 ii4 #ba4 ,fichte1 his ,idealism compared with that of the ,east1 i4 #fj2 his definition of a ,mystic1 #fj2 compared with ,eckart1 #bab4 ,flagellants1 i4 #caf4 ,florence1 ,revival of ,neo-,platonism in1 ii4 #adi4 ,foligni1 ,angela de1 i4 #cfb4 ,fountain-,spirits of ,behmen1 ii4 #ajd1 #abj4 ,fox1 ,george1 his early history1 ii4 #cjc2 his narrowness and his benevolence1 #cjd2 his asceticism1 #cji2 principal defect of his ,theology1 #cac4 ,francis1 ,st41 de ,sales1 ii4 #aeb2 his #8indistinct contemplation1' #agi2 his ,introduction la ,vie ,dvote1 #bdf1 note4 ,francis1 ,st41 of ,assisi1 ii4 #aga4 ,franciscans1 ,millenarian1 i4 #ahe4 ,frank1 ,sebastian1 ii4 #dg4 ,fratricelli1 i4 #ahd4 ,free ,spirit1 ,brethren of the1 i4 #ahd4 ,friends1 ,journal of the ,early1 ii4 #cje4 ,friends of ,god1 i4 #bbd4 ,gabalis1 ,comte de1 ii4 #ach4 ,gamahea1 ii4 #ge1 #gg4 ,gassner1 ii4 #acj4 ,gelenius1 ,victor1 his ,mystical ,degrees1 ii4 #agg4 ,gematria1 ii4 #ada1 note4 ,gerlacus1 ,petrus1 i4 #cfg1 note4 ,germain1 ,count ,st41 ii4 #acj4 ,gerson1 ,chancellor1 charges ,ruysbroek with ,pantheism1 i4 #cch2 his ,mystical ,theology1 #cfi4 ,gichtel1 i4 #ch2 ii4 #abc1 #abe4 ,gnomes1 ii4 #aci4 ,god1 distinguished from ,godhead1 by ,eckart1 i4 #aij2 ,friends of1 #bbd4 ,godet des ,marias1 ii4 #beb4 ,greek ,church1 ,mysticism in1 i4 #aji2 stereotyped character of its ,theology1 #abb4 ,groot1 ,gerard1 i4 #ccd1 note4 ,guru1 i4 #ei4 ,guthmann1 ii4 #abe4 ,guyon1 ,madame1 early religious life1 ii4 #bjg2 spiritual desertion1 #bbb2 self-loss in ,god1 #bbg2 ,prayer of ,silence1 #bcc2 compared with ,st4 ,theresa1 #bcd2 her activity1 #bce2 her ,torrents1 #bcf1 note2 persecution1 #bcg2 first interview with ,fnlon1 #bej2 her doctrine at ,st4 ,cyr1 #bec2 ,bossuets conduct to her1 #bee2 ,flight from ,meaux1 and imprisonment1 #bfj2 at ,vaugirard1 #bfc2 in the ,bastille1 #bgb2 dies at ,blois1 #bgb4 ,hamann1 ii4 #cda4 ,hardenberg1 ,friedrich von1 see ,novalis4 ,harlay1 ,archbishop of ,paris1 ii4 #bdf4 ,harphius1 ii4 #agg1 #bhb4 ,heaven1 described by ,swedenborg1 ii1 #ccj4 ,hegel1 analogies with ,eckart1 i4 #bjf1 #bab2 opinion of ,eckart1 #bjf4 ,heresies1 ,mystical1 in the fourteenth century1 i4 #bja1 #bji1 #beg1 #cbi4 ,hermann of ,fritzlar1 i4 #aha2 his ,heiligenleben1 #aha1 note4 ,hesychasts1 i4 #cee4 ,hierarchies1 of ,iamblichus1 i4 #aja2 of ,proclus1 #aje2 of ,dionysius1 #aad2 ,hugo's ,commentary on1 #aee4 ,hildegard1 ,abbess1 i4 #adf2 ii4 #bai4 ,hindooism1 its ,mysticism1 i4 #ee4 ,hugo of ,st4 ,victor1 character of his ,mysticism1 i4 #aed2 his ,commentary on the ,hierarchies of ,dionysius1 #aee2 defines ,meditation1 #aee2 his ,eye of ,contemplation1 #aeh2 defines ,abstraction1 #aeh4 ,iamblichus1 his ,theurgy1 i4 #ajj2 his ,hierarchies1 #aja2 his twofold life of the ,soul1 #ajb2 his doctrine concerning ,ecstasy1 #ajd2 his mistakes repeated by ,romanticism1 ii4 #cdf4 ,ida of ,louvain1 ii4 #bah4 ,ida of ,nivelles1 ii1 #bbj4 ,identity1 ,schelling's ,philosophy of1 i4 #dd4 ,illuminati1 ii4 #acf1 #bha4 ,imitatio ,christi1 ,the1 i4 #cfg4 ,india1 ,pantheism of1 i4 #ee4 ,indifference1 ,eckart's ,doctrine of1 i4 #ahh1 #aid2 of ,quietism1 ii4 #bje1 #bci4 ,intelligence1 use of the word by ,richard of ,st4 ,victor1 i4 #afb4 ,interpretation1 mystical1 i4 #cc2 of ,philo1 #fd2 of ,bernard1 #ade2 of ,richard of ,st4 ,victor1 #afa2 of ,swedenborg1 ii4 #cbc4 ,intuition1 #8intellectual1' ,schelling's doctrine of1 i4 #hh2 resemblance to that of ,richard1 #afc4 ,intuition1 exaggeration of its claims by the ,mystics1 i4 #afh2 doctrine of ,emerson concerning1 ii4 #ah2 not an isolated faculty1 #cfd4 ,irony1 ,romanticist doctrine of1 ii4 #cdf4 ,issy1 the ,conferences at1 ii4 #bee2 the articles of1 #bef1 #beh4 ,jacobi1 ii4 #cda4 ,jean d',avila1 ii4 #bha4 ,jelaleddin ,rumi1 ii4 #ab1 #ad1 #ae1 #ag1 #aaj4 ,jerusalem1 ,church of the ,new1 ii4 #cce4 ,jews1 persecution of the1 i4 #cae2 their demonology1 ii4 #adb4 ,john of the ,cross1 ii4 #ahb2 his asceticism1 #ahc2 his ,dark ,night1 #ahe2 estimate of his ,mysticism1 #aib4 ,joris1 ,david1 ii4 #abe4 ,jubilation1 the gift of1 ii4 #bai4 ,juneid1 ii4 #aa4 ,justin ,martyr1 ii4 #db4 ,kant1 his practical ,reason1 i4 #hi4 ,kathari1 i4 #ahd4 ,kober1 ii4 #hj4 ,krdener1 ,madame de1 ii4 #bhh2 opinion of ,madame de ,genlis concerning1 #bhi1 note4 ,kuhlmann1 i4 #ch2 ii4 #abe4 ,labadie1 ii4 #bia4 ,la ,combe1 ii4 #bbf4 ,lautensack1 ii4 #abe4 ,law1 ,william1 ii4 #abd1 #bhh4 ,leade1 ,joanna1 ii4 #add4 ,light1 doctrine of the ,universal1 ii4 #cji4 ,louis the ,fourteenth at ,st4 ,cyr1 ii4 #bdi1 #bfe2 urges the ,pope to condemn ,fnlon1 #bga4 ,love1 disinterested1 doctrine of ,bernard1 concerning1 i4 #ade2 of ,eckart1 #aic2 of ,tauler1 #cjc1 #cji2 of ,ruysbroek1 #ccd1 note2 of the ,sufis1 ii4 #aj1 #ag2 the central doctrine of ,quietism1 #bjd2 ,fnlon's doctrine of1 #beh2 its truth and its exaggeration1 #bhc4 ,loyola1 ,ignatius1 ii4 #aej4 ,ludolph1 the ,carthusian1 i4 #bcb1 #bce4 ,luther1 ,martin1 his vantage ground as compared with the ,mystics1 i4 #cjd2 ii4 #cb-ce2 his reply concerning the ,zwickau ,fanatics1 #de2 his encounter with them1 #dg2 his protest against the ,mysticism of ,carlstadt1 #ea4 ,macarius1 i4 #aaa4 ,mahmud1 passage from his ,gulschen ,ras1 ii4 #bd4 ,maintenon1 ,madame de1 at ,st4 ,cyr1 ii4 #bdh2 her interest in ,mme4 ,guyon1 #bdi2 her caution1 #bed4 ,maisonfort1 ,madame de la1 ii4 #beh1 #bhb4 ,malaval1 ii4 #bdc4 ,margaret ,ebner1 i4 #baf4 ,maria d',agreda1 controversy concerning her ,mystical ,city of ,god1 ii4 #afd2 her elevations in the air1 #agf4 ,maria of ,oignys1 ii4 #bai4 ,marsay1 de1 ii4 #bia2 his retirement to ,schwartzenau1 #bib2 his marriage1 #bic2 his asceticism and melancholy1 #bid2 his last years1 #bie4 ,maurice1 ,st41 ii4 #acj4 ,maxims of the ,saints1 ii4 #bfc1 #bhj4 ,meditation1 how defined by ,hugo1 i4 #aee4 ,merswin1 ,rulman1 his ,book of the ,nine ,rocks1 i4 #cba1 #ccf4 ,mesmer1 ii4 #acj4 ,messalians1 ii4 #aa4 ,microcosm1 ii4 #fe4 ,molinos1 his ,guida ,spirituale1 ii4 #aga1 #bdb2 charges against him1 #ahj2 his fate1 #bde4 ,monasticism1 ,buddhist1 i4 #ef2 its ,ethics1 #aba2 promoted by ,bernard1 #adj4 ,montanus1 i4 #bhd4 ,montfaucon1 ,clara de1 ii4 #afc1 #bbj4 ,more1 ,henry1 his opinion of ,behmen1 ii4 #abd2 his mysticism1 #cae2 his opinion of the ,quakers1 #cag1 note4 ,morin1 ii4 #bdd4 ,mnzer1 ii4 #dd4 ,muscatblut1 i4 #cce4 ,mysticism1 the instructive character of its history1 i4 #ac1 #bfj2 derivation and history of the word1 #ag2 definitions1 #ba2 its causes1 #bg-cc2 its classifications1 #ce2 theopathetic1 #cf2 theosophic1 #ci2 theurgic1 #de2 in the early ,east1 #ea2 of the ,neo-,platonists1 #fc2 in the ,greek ,church1 #aji2 in the ,latin ,church1 #abg2 opposed to ,scholasticism1 #adb2 reconciled1 #aed2 ,truth at its root1 #afd2 its exaggeration of the truth concerning experimental evidence1 #afg2 ,german1 in the fourteenth century1 #bce2 ii4 #cj2 ,persian1 in the ,middle ,ages1 #c2 ,theosophic1 in the ,age of the ,reformation1 #bi2 revolutionary1 #cg2 before and after the ,reformation1 #da2 in ,spain1 #adg2 of the ,counter-,reformation1 #aej2 of ,madame ,guyon1 #bjg2 in ,france and in ,germany compared1 #bge2 in ,england1 #bii2 of ,swedenborg1 #cba2 its recent modifications1 #cci2 its services to ,christianity1 #cea2 its prevalent misconceptions1 #cec2 its correctives1 #cee4 ,names1 of magical virtue1 ii4 #adj4 ,neo-,platonism1 eclectic and mystical1 i4 #gj2 difference between it and ,platonism proper1 #gf2 its doctrine of ,emanation1 #hj2 influence on ,christianity1 #he2 process of degeneration1 #ia2 its ,theurgy1 #ajc2 expires with ,proclus1 #aje2 introduced into the ,church by ,dionysius1 #aac2 confounds ,universals with ,causes1 #aag2 its power in the ,middle ,ages1 #abi2 its reformatory influence in the ,west1 #acb2 ,persian1 ii4 #d2 revived on the eve of the ,reformation1 #ee2 at ,florence1 #adi4 ,neri1 ,st4 ,philip1 ii4 #bah4 ,nicholas of ,basle1 i4 #bci2 becomes the spiritual guide of ,tauler1 #bdj2 his labours and fate1 #cei4 ,night1 mystical1 of the ,sufis1 ii4 #ad2 of ,john of the ,cross1 #ahe1 #aie2 of ,novalis1 #cdi4 ,nihilism1 i4 #ccb2 of ,angelus ,silesius1 ii4 #ag4 ,nirwana1 ,buddhist ,absorption1 i4 #ef4 ,nrdlingen1 ,henry of1 i4 #baf4 ,norris of ,bemerton1 ii4 #cae4 ,novalis1 his ,aphorisms1 ii4 #cdi2 his ,hymns to ,night1 #cdi4 ,numenius1 i41 #fe1 #aba2 his hypostatic emanations1 #hb4 ,nymphs1 ii4 #aci4 ,oetinger1 ii4 #cea4 ,oken1 ii4 #cea4 ,omphalopsychi1 i4 #cef4 ,origen1 i4 #cjb4 ,pachymeres1 his definition of mystical ,theology1 i4 #bd4 ,pains1 the mystical1 ii4 #agj1 #agf4 ,pantheism1 ,indian1 i4 #ee2 ,buddhist1 #ef2 ,neo-,platonist1 #gh2 its necessitarian ,ethics1 #ia2 of ,dionysius ,areopagita1 #aai2 of ,erigena1 #aca2 of ,eckart1 #aeg1 #afj1 #bag2 among the people in the fourteenth century1 #bja1 #bji1 #beg1 #bgh1 #cca2 of ,angelus ,silesius1 ii4 #f2 of ,emerson1 #h1 #bb2 of the ,sufis1 #bj2 cannot claim ,behmen1 #aab1 #aba4 ,paracelsus1 i4 #dd2 ii4 #ga2 his four pillars of ,medicine1 #gc2 his ,theory of ,contraries1 #gd2 of ,signatures1 #gf2 his ,green ,lion1 #gh2 influence on ,behmen1 #ia4 ,parzival and ,titurel1 i4 #ahf4 ,passivity1 i4 #bgd2 ii4 #aff1 #aij1 #aie4 ,pazzi1 ,magdalena de1 ii1 #aga4 ,perfection1 doctrine of1 ii4 #bcb2 awakens the alarm of the priesthood1 #bdj4 ,persia1 ,neo-,platonism in1 ii4 #d2 the seat of ,sufism1 #e2 its mystical poetry1 #af1 #bd4 ,petrucci1 ,cardinal1 ii1 #bgg4 ,philadelphian ,association1 the1 ii4 #adb4 ,philo1 i4 #fc2 his views on the ,contemplative ,life1 #ff2 his mystical interpretation1 #fg4 ,pico of ,mirandola1 ii4 #adh4 ,platonism1 distinguished from ,neo-,platonism1 i4 #gf2 combined with ,christianity assumes five distinct phases1 #adg2 in ,england1 ii4 #cae4 ,plotinus1 his early history and asceticism1 i4 #ga2 hears ,ammonius ,saccas1 #gd2 object and character of his philosophy1 #gf2 doctrine concerning knowledge1 #hj2 concerning ,ecstasy1 #ha2 influence on ,christianity1 #he2 analogies with ,schelling and ,coleridge1 #hg2 necessitarian character of his ,ethics1 #ia2 his ,trinity1 #ic4 ,poiret1 ,peter1 ii4 #bhg1 #bij4 ,pordage1 ii4 #adb4 ,porphyry1 his position1 i4 #id2 moderates the doctrine of ,plotinus concerning ,ecstasy1 #ig2 his modern imitators1 ii4 #cej4 ,postel1 ii4 #abe4 ,prayer1 ,theresa's ,four ,degrees of1 ii4 #afg2 of ,silence1 ,mme4 ,guyon's1 #bcc4 ,proclus1 i4 #aje2 influence of his philosophy on ,dionysius1 #aab1 #aad2 his endeavour renewed by ,romanticism1 ii4 #cdf4 ,protestantism1 its ,mystics compared with those of ,rome1 ii4 #ie1 #cjh1 note4 ,quakers1 see ,george ,fox2 their asceticism1 ii4 #cji2 their doctrine of the ,universal and ,saving ,light1 #cji2 of perceptible spiritual influence1 #cac2 of ,silence and ,quiet1 #cad2 opinion of ,henry ,more concerning1 #cag4 ,quiet1 ,theresa's prayer of1 ii4 #afg4 ,quietism1 licentious form of it in the fourteenth century1 i4 #beh2 of ,molinos and ,theresa1 ii4 #agb2 charged with excluding the conception of ,christ's ,humanity1 #agb2 misrepresentations of its enemies1 #agc1 note2 of ,john of the ,cross1 #aij2 its doctrine of pure love1 #bjd2 its holy indifference1 #bje2 its reaction against mercenary religion1 #bcb2 of ,fnlon1 #beh2 in the hands of the ,inquisition1 #bgf2 its doctrine of disinterested ,love discussed1 #bhc2 practical1 among the ,quakers1 #cad2 in the present day1 #cef4 ,rabia1 ii4 #aj4 ,ranters1 ii4 #cjf4 ,rapture1 see ,ecstasy4 ,realism1 i4 #acj1 #adi4 ,reason1 how enlisted in the service of ,mysticism1 i4 #dj2 how far forsaken by ,plotinus1 #hj2 ,intuitive1 of ,coleridge1 #hh2 ,practical1 of ,kant1 #hi2 unduly subordinated by ,bernard #ada2 erroneously divorced from ,understanding1 ii4 #cfa4 ,redemption1 doctrine of ,behmen concerning1 ii4 #aaf2 of ,swedenborg1 #ccb2 misconceptions of1 #ccd4 ,reformation1 relation of ,mysticism to the1 ii4 #cc4 ,reformers1 their relation to the ,mystics1 ii4 #da4 ,regeneration1 ,tauler's doctrine of1 i4 #bdf2 mistake of ,mme4 ,guyon concerning1 ii4 #bcj4 ,reimar of ,zweter1 i4 #ahf4 #8,relations1 ,memorable1' of ,swedenborg1 ii4 #cbi4 ,reminiscence1 ,platonic1 i4 #gg4 ,ricci1 ,catherine1 ii4 #bai4 ,richard of ,st4 ,victor1 his ,mystical ,interpretation1 i4 #afa2 his ,degrees of ,contemplation1 #afb2 his ,doctrine of ,ecstasy1 #afc4 ,richter1 ,primarius1 at ,grlitz1 ii4 #hf1 #ih4 ,romanism1 turns ,mysticism to account1 i4 #cfe2 ii4 #cee4 ,romanticism1 ,tieck1 its best representative1 ii4 #cdc1 note2 opposes ,rationalism1 #cdd2 its philosophy of life1 #cde2 its doctrine of ,irony1 #cdf2 subsides in ,superstition1 #cdg4 ,rome1 ,church of1 her ,mystics compared with those of ,protestantism1 ii4 #ie2 her debt to ,mysticism1 #adi2 ,fnlon no fair sample of her ,mystics1 #cef4 ,rosenkreuz1 ii4 #acb4 ,rosicrucians1 ii4 #abh2 pretended discovery of the1 #acb1 #acf4 ,rousseau1 ,j4 ,j41 ii4 #agi4 ,ruysbroek1 his ,spiritual ,nuptials1 i4 #cba2 visited by ,tauler at the ,convent of ,grnthal1 #cbe2 his doctrines concerning the ,trinity1 ,abstraction1 ,union1 #cbf1 #cbi2 his protest against false ,mystics1 #ccj1 note2 his doctrine concerning disinterested ,love1 #ccd1 note2 charged by ,gerson with ,pantheism1 #cch2 compared with contemporary ,mystics1 #cch4 ,salamanders1 ii4 #ach4 ,schelling1 compared with ,behmen1 i4 #da2 his ,philosophy of ,identity1 #dd2 analogies of ,plotinus with1 #hg2 indebted to ,behmen1 ii4 #abd2 his doctrine of ,unconsciousness1 #cea4 ,schlegel1 ,frederick1 his admiration of ,behmen1 ii4 #abd2 his ,romanticism1 #cde2 his extravagance1 #cdf4 ,schlegel1 ,a4 ,w41 ii4 #cdh4 ,schleiermacher1 ii4 #cda1 #cdc1 note4 ,scholasticism1 opposed to ,mysticism1 i4 #adb2 reconciled1 #aed4 ,schrpfer1 ii4 #acj4 ,schwenkfeld1 ii4 #ej4 ,science1 its mystical character in the ,middle ,age1 i4 #da2 in the ,age of the ,reformation1 ii4 #ec2 union with ,religion1 #fg4 ,self-annihilation1 ,tauler concerning1 i4 #bej2 of the ,sufis and ,angelus ,silesius1 ii4 #af4 ,self-love1 ii4 #bad4 ,shemhamphorash1 ii4 #ada4 ,silence1 ,quaker practice of1 ii4 #cad2 ,mme4 ,guyon's ,prayer of1 #bcc4 ,sleep1 sacred1 i4 #ajb4 ,societies1 secret1 ii4 #acf4 ,soul1 its twofold life1 according to ,iamblichus1 i4 #ajb2 ,spark of the1 #aij2 ,ground of the1 ,tauler's doctrine concerning1 #bdf1 #bee1 #bia2 ,theresa's ,flight of the1 ii4 #agd4 ,spain1 ,mysticism in1 ii4 #aej1 #aeb4 ,spark of the ,soul1 i4 #aij4 ,sperber1 ii4 #abe4 ,spirit1 perceptible ,influence of the1 i4 #bgb2 as taught by the ,quakers1 ii4 #cac2 witness of the1 #cad2 ,swedenborg's doctrine concerning the1 #cca4 ,spiritualism1 its revival of antiquated errors1 ii4 #cej2 its morbid dread of historic reality1 #cfe4 ,staupitz1 ii4 #cc4 ,stilling1 ,jung1 i4 #ci2 ii4 #bhi4 ,strasburg1 ,godfrey of1 i4 #ahf2 rival houses in1 #ahg2 under the ,interdict1 #bac2 ,revolution in1 #bah2 ,black ,death in1 #cac2 the ,flagellants in1 #cag2 resists the ,imperial ,impost1 #cai4 ,sufis1 the1 ii4 #c2 their early leaders1 #aa2 analogies with ,emerson1 #af2 with ,angelus ,silesius1 #ag2 their doctrine concerning disinterested love1 #ag2 their allegorical lyrics1 #bd4 ,suso1 ,heinrich1 i4 #cda2 his austerities1 #cdd2 his ,horologe of ,wisdom1 #cde2 pursued as a poisoner1 #cdh2 his adventure with the robber1 #cea4 ,swedenborg1 ,emanuel1 ii4 #cba2 comprehensive character of his ,mysticism1 #cbb2 his doctrine of correspondences1 #cbc2 position of ,man in his ,system1 #cbe2 scientific character of his ,mysticism1 #cbf2 opposed to ,asceticism1 #cbh2 his ,memorable ,relations1 #cbi2 his descriptions of the unseen ,world1 #ccj2 his doctrine of ,spiritual ,influence1 #cca2 of the ,work of ,christ1 #ccb2 of the ,new ,jerusalem1 #cce4 ,sylphs1 ii4 #aci4 ,symbolism1 of ,philo1 i4 #fd2 of ,dionysius1 #aad2 of ,richard of ,st4 ,victor1 #afa2 how far necessary1 ii4 #cec4 ,sympathies1 ,science of1 ii4 #fc4 ,synderesis1 i4 #bef1 #cbg4 ,talmud1 its ,theurgy1 ii4 #ada4 ,tanchelm1 i4 #ch4 ,tauler1 i4 #aib1 #baf1 #bbd1 #bfe2 ,sermon on the ,image of ,god1 #bbf2 his cautions to ,mystics1 #bbh2 disappearance for two years1 #bcj2 his restoration1 #bcd2 he issues circulars and treatises comforting the excommunicated1 #bcf2 passages from his ,sermons1 #bdd-bea1 #bij2 concerning the #8,ground' of the ,soul1 #bdf1 #bee1 #bia2 excellences and defects of his ,theology1 #bea2 elevated character of his ,mysticism1 #bec2 prepares the way for the ,reformation1 #bec2 compared with ,eckart1 #bed1 #cjb2 his doctrine of ,abandonment1 and the state above ,grace1 #bee2 his internal ,trinity1 #bee2 on ,work of ,christ1 #cjj2 summoned before the ,emperor1 #cah2 retires to ,cologne1 #cai4 ,tears1 gift of1 ii4 #bbj4 ,theologia ,germanica1 i4 #adh1 #bhh1 #cfg4 ,theologia ,mystica1 i4 #ba2 definitions1 #bc4 ,theosophy1 i4 #dj2 in the age of the ,reformation1 ii4 #bi1 #fi1 note2 of ,swedenborg1 #cba4 ,therapeut1 i4 #ff1 #fg4 ,theresa1 ,st41 her early life1 ii4 #aec2 her reform of the ,carmelite order1 #aee2 sensuous character of her ,mysticism1 #afb2 her four degrees of ,prayer1 #afg2 her ,raptures1 #agj2 her ,torments1 #agj2 compared with ,madame ,guyon1 #bcd4 ,theurgy1 i4 #df2 of ,neo-,platonism1 #aje2 ,lutheran1 ii4 #ei2 ,modern1 #acj2 ,rabbinical1 #ada4 ,thomas ,kempis1 i4 #cfg4 ,tieck1 ii4 #cdc1 note1 #cdh4 ,tophail1 ,abu ,jaafer ,ebn1 ii4 #bii4 ,trinity1 of ,plotinus1 i4 #ic2 ,tauler's doctrine of the internal1 #bef1 #bia2 doctrine of ,ruysbroek concerning1 #cbf2 of ,behmen1 ii4 #ajc1 #ajd1 note2 of ,swedenborg1 #ccb4 ,understanding1 its relation to ,reason1 ii4 #cfa2 not to be discarded in religion1 #cfe4 ,undine1 ii4 #ach4 ,union1 doctrine of ,plotinus concerning1 i4 #ha2 of ,bernard1 #add2 of ,richard of ,st4 ,victor1 #afc2 of ,ruysbroek1 #cbi2 ,prayer of1 ii4 #afh2 ,swedenborg's doctrine concerning1 #ccd4 ,universals1 confounded with ,causes1 by ,neo-,platonism1 i4 #aga4 ,valdes1 ii4 #bdd4 ,veronica of ,binasco1 ii4 #bbj4 ,vespiniani1 ,countess1 ii4 #bgg4 ,victor1 ,st41 see ,hugo and ,richard4 ,victor1 ,st41 the school of1 i4 #aec4 ,vincula1 ,theurgic1 ii4 #ei4 ,virtues1 divided into human and superhuman1 i4 #aba2 how classified by ,aquinas1 #abc4 ,visions1 intellectual and representative1 ii4 #agd2 doctrine of ,john of the ,cross concerning1 #ahi4 #8,visio caliginosa1' ii4 #agi4 ,walter1 ,balthasar1 ii4 #hj4 ,weigel1 ,valentine1 ii4 #ea2 studied by ,behmen1 #ij1 #ib1 #aag4 ,werner1 ,zachariah1 ii4 #cdg4 ,wessel1 ,john1 ii4 #cc4 ,wolfram von ,eschenbach1 i4 #ahf4 ,woolman1 ,john1 ii4 #cje4 ,words1 #8substantial1' ii4 #age1 #bbi4 ,yogis1 the1 i4 #eg4 ,yokhdan1 ,hai ,ebn1 history of1 ii4 #bii2 his practice of contemplation1 #caa4 ,yvon1 ii4 #bia4 ,zanoni1 ii4 #abh4 ,zerbino1 ,prince1 by ,tieck1 ii4 #cdc1 note4 ,zinzendorf1 ii4 #cjh4 ,zwickau1 the fanatics of1 ii4 #dd4 ,,the ,,end4 ,,printed ,,by ,,ballantyne1 ,,hanson ,,and ,,co4 ,,london ,,and ,,edinburgh ,transcriber's ,notes3 ,text that was in italics is enclosed by underscores 7italics74 ,footnotes have been moved to follow the chapters in which they are referenced4