Chapter III

What pale dictatress in the air
Feeds, smiling sadly, her fine ghostlike form,
With earth’s real blood and breath, the beauteous life
She makes despised for ever?

BROWNING.

These lines hovered in Gower’s memory that night, as he walked home after the conversation just recorded. He thought how applicable they were to asceticism,—especially to that intense asceticism of the mind which, not content with wasting the body and searing the sense, prides itself on starving Reason and blinding Imagination,—which eschews all form and figure, and affects naked truth, without a medium or an envelope. His was a nature which saw everything in figure. His mind moved everywhere among pictures. For him to dispense with metaphor and parable—with significant raiment and dramatic action for his ideas, would have been almost equivalent to dispensing with ideas altogether. So he quickened his steps; for the starless, unfeatured night seemed to him too much to resemble the blank and bleak Abstraction of the severer mystics,—that tyrannous curfew of warm natural life and of all bright thoughts.

He soon reached his abode, where a blithe fire awaited him, radiating its almost animated welcome over easel, busts, and books. Assuming light study vesture, he leaned back in his arm-chair, enjoying slippered ease. He would not light his lamp, but reclining in the very mood for reverie, watched the fire—now the undisputed magician of his studio,—as it called up or dismissed, with its waving flame, the distorted shadows of familiar things on wall and ceiling. He himself was soon occupied in like manner, waywardly calling forth, linking, severing, a company of shadows out of the past.

In a half-waking, half-dreaming twilight, Gower seemed to see the dusky form of the Indian, crouched on his mat beside a holy river, awaiting divine insensibility. There was the Yogi, gathered up in his patch of shade, like an insect rolled under a leaf; while, above, the beating sun-glare trampled over the plains, strewn with his reflected rays, as over an immeasurable threshing-floor.

Then he dreamed that he stood in a Persian garden, and before him were creeping plants, trained on wires slanting upward to a point, and in and out and up and down this flower-minster, hung with bells, darted those flying jewels, the humming-birds: the sun’s rays as they slanted on their glancing coats seemed to dash off in a spray of rainbow colours. Some pierced the nectaries of the flowers with their fine bills; others soared upward, and as they were lost in the dazzling air, the roses swung their censers, and the nightingales sang an assumption-hymn for them. Yet this scene changed incessantly. Every now and then the pinnacle of flowers assumed giant size,—was a needle of rock, shooting up out of a chasm of hanging vegetation; and innumerable spirits—winged souls of Sufis, were striving to reach the silent glistening peak. There was a flutter and a pulsing in the sky—as with summer lightning at night,—and the palpitation of some vast eyelid made light and darkness succeed each other with quick throbs. Now it was the pyramid of flowers, now the star-crowned point of rock. So time and space were surpassed—sported with. Instants were ages, he thought, and cycles ran their round in a moment. The vault of heaven was now a hanging flower-cup; and presently the feather of a humming-bird expanded to a sunset of far-streaming gold and purple.

A leaping flame caused these alternations in Dreamland, as it lit or left in shadow his closed eyes.

Then he stood on the desolate Campagna, where before him stretched the ruins of the Roman aqueducts. The broken arches, dotting at intervals the far waste of withered green, drew no more water from the hills for the million-mouthed City in the horizon. Their furrowed, beaten age held in its wrinkles only roots of maidenhair, and sometimes little rain-pools along the crevices,—the scornful charity of any passing shower. In a moment the wilderness grew populous with the sound of voices and the clangour of tools.—A swarm of workmen, clustered about the broken links of the chain, were striving to piece them together again—to bind up the mighty artery, and set it flowing as of old. But an insatiable morass sucked down the stones they brought. Waggons full of gods (such as moved in the old triumphs), of statues monstrous, bestial, many-limbed, from all the temples of the nations, were unladen, with sacrifice and augury, and the idols deposited on the treacherous quagmire, only to sink down, a drowning mass, with bowing heads and vainly-lifted arms. Then the whole undulating plain appeared to roll up in vapour, and a wind, carrying in it a sound of psalms, and driving before it a snowy foam of acacia blossoms, swept clear the field of vision. No; the old influence was to flow no more from the Olympian Houses above that blue line of hills. Great Pan was dead. The broken cisterns would hold no water.

He stood next before the mouth of a cavern, partly overhung with a drooping hair of tropical plants. At his side was a nun, who changed, as is the wont of dreams, into a variety of persons. At one time, she was St. Theresa, then Christina Mirabilis, and presently Gower thought he recognised Theresa once more. He followed his conductress into the cavern, in the gloom of which a hermit rivulet was pattering along, telling its pebble beads. As they passed on, the night-birds in the black recesses of the rock shrieked and hooted at them. As he touched the dank sides of the passage, from time to time his hand would rest on some loathly wet lump, shuffling into a cranny, or some nameless, gelid shape fell asunder at his touch, opening gashes in itself where lay, in rows, seeds of great tarantula eye-balls, that ran away dissolved in venomous rheum. Bat-like things flapped down from funnel-shaped holes: polypi felt after his face with slimy fingers: crabs, with puffed human faces, slid under his tread; and skinny creatures, as it were featherless birds, with faces like a horse’s skull, leaned over and whinnied at him. ‘These,’ said Theresa, ‘are the obscene hell-brood whose temptations make so terrible the entrance on the Higher Life.’

The long cavern had not yet made a single winding, and he turned, as the darkness increased, to have a last look at the entrance, whence the outer sunshine still twinkled after them. He could see a green hill that faced the mouth, lying off like a bright transparency. Or was it a spot brought into the disc of his great rock-telescope, from some planet of perpetual summer—one of those that play in the hair of the sun? Christina, impatient of this sinful looking back, urged him onward. A palm-branch she carried grew luminous, and its plume of flame dropping sparks, became their torch. She paused to point out to him some plants growing in a black mould. Birds had carried in thus far the seeds from which they sprang; but there had been no sun-light to give them colour, and their form was uncertain and defectively developed. ‘Behold,’ said she, ‘these saintly flowers. Mark that holy pallor! The sun never stained their pureness with those gaudy hues men admire. Yon garish world can show no such perfectness: see them, they are hueless, scentless, well-nigh formless!’ ‘Sickly, blanched abortions!’ exclaimed the dreamer, so loudly that he almost awoke. ‘We want more life, not less—fuller—sunnier!’ Christina crossed herself piously to hear abstraction thus blasphemed. And now the passage, widening, opened on the central hall of rock, that branched out into depths of darkness every way, and was fretted with gleaming stalactites. There were amber volutes and brittle clusters of tawny bubbles; lily-bells of stone, flowers with sparry thorns and twining stream-like stems; creamy falls from slabs of enamel, motionless, yet seeming ever to drop from ledge to ledge; membranous curtains, and net-work, and traceries; tissues and lawnlike folds of delicate marble; while in the centre, reaching to the misty summit of the dome, stood a huge sheaf of pillars, like alabaster organ-pipes. A solemn music trembled and swelled, and as its rising volume shook the air, voices sang—‘Weep for the sins of men!’ There was a wild burst of sound; then sudden silence; and, above and around, nothing was audible but a universal trickling and running, a dripping and dropping and plashing, while the palm-torch flashed on innumerable tear-drops, hanging on every pendant point and jutting ledge, or sliding down the glistening rock.

After a while, it seemed to be Theresa who spoke to him and said, ‘Here in these depths is warmth, when the world above is locked in ice; and when the surface is parched, here dwells chaste coolness, safe encelled. Our fire seems numbness to a blinded world; and we are frost to its dog-day rages.’ With that a spell seemed to come over her hearer. The spirit of the words became his spirit. The fate of an empire seemed as nothing in his eyes beside his next prospect of rapture, or his success in straining out another half-pint of tears. In a moment he was turned to stone. He had become a gargoyle high up on Strasburg Cathedral, and was spouting water from his lolling tongue at the circling birds.

Gower next found himself, on a cold grey morning in spring, in a vine country, where men and women were toiling up the steep hills on either side a river, carrying baskets of earth. Last winter’s rain had swept away the thin soil to the bone, and they must lay a new one about their vine-sticks. In the midst of their miserable labour, these poor people saw standing among them a majestic stranger, wrapped in a robe. Gower thought he recognised Swedenborg at once. ‘Stay,’ cried the seer, ‘God hath made a soil already for you. Build no other. Your own stony hearts have made the hill seem to you as iron.’ They heard: each seemed to take a stone out of his bosom, and hurl it down the steep; when straightway every foot sank deep into a rich and kindly earth, and a shout of joy broke forth, echoed far among the cloudy gorges.

Once more Gower thought he stood upon the shoulder of a volcano, among the clinking scoriæ. It was growing dark. A strange shape of fire was suddenly at his side, helmed with a flaring cresset, under the light of which the rocky projections around glowed like the burnished beaks of galleys. Over his shoulders hung a mantle of azure flame, fringed with sparks and tasselled with brushes of fire. On his breast was what seemed a hauberk of some emerald incandescence, that brightened or paled with every sinuous motion of the lithe frame, as when the wind comes and goes about an ignited tree-trunk in a burning forest. The form said—‘I am the Flame-king: behold a vision of my works’—and passed his hand before the eyes of the dreamer. Gower saw columns of steam shot up from an Indian sea, with stones and mire, under a great canopy of smoke. Then all was calm: a new island had been born; and the waves licked the black fire-cub. Next he saw a burning mountain, lighting, at the dead of night, glaciers and snowy precipices—as the fire-cross of a great festival lights the shafts and arches of some darkened cathedral. Avalanches fell, looking, under the glare, like sliding continents of ruby, and were shut down in their chasm-caskets with a noise of thunder. He beheld the burning of brave palaces, of captured cities, of prairies where the fire hunts alone, and the earth shakes with the trample of a myriad hoofs flying from the destroyer.

Then he stood on the mountain side, as before; but it was broad day, and beneath him lay in the sun a sky-like bay, white houses, and the parti-coloured fields under the haze, like a gay escutcheon, half-hidden by a gauzy housing. Beside him, in place of the Flame-king, stood a shining One fantastically clad in whatsoever the sunshine loves best to inform and turn to glory. The mantle slanting from his shoulders shone like a waterfall which runs gold with sunlight; his breast mirrored a sunset; and translucent forest-leaves were woven for his tunic. His cheek glowed, delicate as the finely-cut camelia, held against the sun. ‘I am King Sunlight,’ he said. ‘Mine is the even kindliness of the summer-time. I make ready harvest-home and vintage. I triumph in the green-meshed tropic forests, with their fern-floors, and garland-galleried tree-tops, where stand the great trunks which, interlaced with their thick twining underwood, are set like fishers’ stakes with their nets, in those aerial tides of heavy fragrance. There I make all things green threaten to shoot faster than the cumbered river can run through the wilds of verdure. I drive Winter away, as though I were his shepherd, and he leaves fragments of his fleece in snow-patches among the hills, when I pursue him. I love no flaming ascents, no tossing meteoric splendours. I overgrow the strife-scars and fire-rents, which my Titan brother makes, with peace-breathing green. I urge thee to no glittering leap against the rapids of thy natural mortal element. With my shining in thy heart, thou shalt have peace, whether thine outward life raise or sink thee,—as he who rows in the glory-wake under a sunrise, is bright and golden whether on the crest of the wave or in the hollow. I put courage into the heart of the Lady in _Comus_, when alone in the haunted wood.—A quite true story, by the way,’ continued the Phantom, with a sudden familiarity, ‘for those of you mortals who can receive it. Wilt thou come with me, and work humbly at what lies next thy hand, or wait to surpass humanity, or go travelling to find Michael’s sword to clear thy land withal? With my shining in thy heart, every flinty obstacle shall furnish thee with new fire; and in thine affliction I will bring thee from every blasted pine an Ariel swift to do thee service: so shall thy troubles be thy ministers. Shall it be the splendour, or the inward sunshine?’

As Gower turned from the approaching Flame-king, he clasped the hand of Sunlight with such vehemence that he awoke.

It was one o’clock. He hastened to bed, and there slept soundly: I am sure he had dreamed more than enough for one night.

From the very church-tower which struck one that winter morning, the ensuing spring heard a merry peal of bells,—such a rocking and a ringing as never since has shaken those old stones. I daresay Willoughby would tell you that the bells made so merry because he had just finished his romance. Don’t believe him: suspect rather, with your usual sagacity, that Lionel Gower and Kate Merivale had something to do with it.

INDEX.

Abelard, i. 142, 149.

Absorption, Mystical, i. 86.

Abstraction, Doctrine of Hugo concerning, i. 157;
of Ruysbroek, 328;
of the Quietists, ii. 172;
not to be mistaken for spirituality, 365.

Adolf Arnstein, his Chronicle, i. 181, 213, 243, 319, 340.

Affliginiensis, John, i. 334.

Agrippa, Cornelius, i. 44; ii. 61;
his _Vanity of Arts and Sciences_, 62;
his doctrine of the Microcosm, 65.

Alcantara, Peter of, ii. 157, 221.

Alchemy in the sixteenth century, ii. 58;
Theological, 77.

Alexandria, Rise of its Philosophic School, i. 66, 74;
Fusion of Religions there, 72;
Eclecticism, 75;
its Mysticism revived at Florence, ii. 147.

Algazzali, ii. 5.

Alvarez, Balthazar, ii. 171.

Amalric of Bena, i. 131.

Ammonius Saccas, his Eclecticism, i. 74.

Anabaptists of Munster, ii. 37.

Andreä, Valentine, ii. 132.

Angela de Foligni, i. 362.

Angelus Silesius, ii. 5;
his Pantheism, 6;
his Extravagance of Negation, 18;
Analogies with Emerson, 22.

Anselm, i. 141, 149.

Antony, St., i. 109.

Apathy, i. 58;
styled Poverty of Spirit, 331.

Apollonius of Tyana, i. 71.

Aquinas, Thomas, his Classification of Virtues, i. 123.

Areopagita, Dionysius, see Dionysius.

Aristotle, Mischievous Influence of his Ethics, i. 120.

Asceticism, Oriental, i. 56;
of Plotinus, 71;
of Neo-Platonism, 76;
of the Fathers of the Desert, 109;
mistakes the Design of Christianity, 143;
its services to Priestcraft, 365;
of the Friends, ii. 309;
discouraged by the Mysticism of Swedenborg, 328.

Astras, Indian, ii. 143.

Athos, Mount, Monks of, i. 355.

Atonement, Swedenborg’s doctrine of, ii. 332.

Augustine, i. 131, 146.

_Aurora_ of Behmen, ii. 97.

Baader, Franz, ii. 351.

Bagvat-Gita, i. 51.

Barclay, his _Apology_, ii. 300.

Beghards, i. 184.

Behmen, Jacob, i. 39;
his early life, ii. 80;
his illumination, 83, 93, 95;
his _Aurora_, 86;
his debt to predecessors, 90;
his style, 99;
genial and manly character of his Mysticism, 102;
his Fountain-Spirits, 104, 120;
his Theory of Contraries, 109;
his doctrine of the Fall, 115;
estimate of his position, 118;
compared with Swedenborg, 326.

Bernard, his personal appearance, i. 134;
life at Clairvaux, 135;
moderation of his Mysticism, 136;
character and extent of his influence, 140;
undue limitation of Reason in his Theology, 141;
definition of Faith, 142;
doctrine concerning Contemplation, 143;
concerning Disinterested Love, 144;
definition of Union, 144;
Sermons on Canticles, 145;
his mystical Interpretation, 145.

Berulle, Cardinal, defends St. Francis de Sales, ii. 281,

Black Death, in the fourteenth century, i. 313.

Blosius, Ludovic, passage from his _Institutio spiritualis_, i. 24; ii.
281.

Bokelson, John, ii. 38.

Bona, Cardinal, i. 24; ii. 178.

Bonaventura, i. 149, 154.

Bossuet, his ignorance of Mysticism, ii. 252, _note_;
appointed to the Commission of Inquiry concerning Mme. Guyon, 255;
prejudges the cause of Mme. Guyon, 256, _note_;
his treatment of Fénélon, 257;
his panegyric on the Spanish Mystics, 259;
his _Instructions on the States of Prayer_, 261;
his jealousy of Fénélon, 264;
his treachery, 268;
his _Account of Quietism_, 268;
his hypocrisy, 270, _note_;
his misrepresentations, 278.

Bourignon, Antoinette, ii. 286, 289.

Brigitta, St., i. 361.

Buddhism, its Mysticism, i. 56;
its Monasticism, 56.

Bustami, ii. 11.

Cabasilas, Archbishop of Thessalonica, i. 356.

Cabbala, ii. 55, 142.

Cagliostro, ii. 130.

Callenberg, Lady Clara von, ii. 293;
her death, 295.

Canticles, Bernard’s Sermons on the, i. 145.

Carlstadt, ii. 43;
opposed by Luther, 51.

_Carmel, Mount, the Ascent of_, by John of the Cross, ii. 185, 192.

Catherine of Siena, i. 364; ii. 171.

Cevennes, Protestants of the, ii. 313.

Christina Ebner, of Engelthal, i. 223.

Christina Mirabilis, ii. 221.

_City of God, Mystical_, of Maria d’Agreda, ii. 164.

Clairvaux, Monastery of, described, i. 132.

Coleridge, i. 87;
Analogies of Plotinus with, 87;
his intuitive reason, 88.

Contemplation, doctrine of Philo concerning, i. 66;
of Bernard, 143;
of Hugo, 156;
Richard’s six stages of, 162;
the ‘indistinct’ of St. Frances de Sales, ii. 179;
of Fénélon, 280.

Contraries, Behmen’s Theory of, ii. 109.

Cornelius Agrippa, see Agrippa.

Correspondences, Swedenborg’s doctrine of, ii. 321.

Counter-Reformation, ii. 149;
character of its Mysticism, 151.

Cross, John of the, see John.

Cyr, St., ii. 248.

David of Dinant, i. 131.

Denys, St., of France, identified with the Pseudo-Dionysius, i. 120.

Descartes, i. 43.

Desert, Fathers of the, i. 109.

Desmarets, de St. Sorlin, ii. 244.

D’Etrées, ii. 243.

Dionysius Areopagita, first appearance of the writings under that name,
i. 111;
Theology of the Pseudo-Dionysius, 113-115, 278;
influence of his Mysticism on the Middle Ages, 119;
in the East and in the West contrasted, 130;
identified with St. Denys of France, 120;
followed by Molinos, ii. 171;
by John of the Cross, 185.

Dionysius the Carthusian, his definition of mystical theology, i. 24;
ii. 281.

Dippel, ii. 125.

Director, the Spiritual, ii. 158.

Dominic of Jesu Maria, his miraculous elevation, ii, 176.

Dominicans, Reformatory Preachers among the, i. 224.

Ebner, Christina, of Engelthal, i. 223;
Margaret, 216.

Eckart, his preaching, i. 188, 193;
compared with Tauler, 192, 254, 282, 302;
his story of the beggar, 197;
probable motive of his heresy, 204;
analogies with Hegel, 206, 212;
sources of his Pantheism, 210, 282;
compared with Fichte, 212;
two classes of followers, 330, _note_.

Eclecticism. Alexandrian, i. 74.

Ecstasy, doctrine of Plotinus concerning, i. 77, 78;
of Porphyry, 97;
of Iamblichus, 104;
of Richard of St. Victor, 163;
described by Said, ii. 19;
Theresa’s prayer of, 169;
corporeal effects of, 169;
the ‘ecstatic life’ of Francis de Sales, 176.

Edwards, President, i. 169.

Egotheism, i. 331.

Emanation, Neo-Platonist doctrine of, i. 80;
in the theology of Dionysius, 113;
in the teaching of Eckart, 278;
in the Persian Mysticism, ii. 23.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo, i. 306; ii. 8;
analogies with Angelus Silesius and the Sufis, 9, 20, 22;
his doctrine of Intuition, 18.

Endern, Karl von, ii. 98.

Engelbrecht, ii. 125.

England, Mysticism in, ii. 301.

English Platonists, see Platonism.

Erigena, John Scotus, i. 131, 146, 279; ii. 110, 113.

Ethics, of Aristotle, i. 121;
of Monasticism, 122.

Faith, how defined by Bernard, i. 142;
justification by, ii. 31;
to what extent apprehended by the Mystics, 31;
to be distinguished from sanctification, 35;
Paracelsian doctrine of, 73, 90, 144;
how opposed to Sight, 240;
Error of Spiritualism concerning, 352.

Faith-Philosophy in Germany, ii. 341.

Fénélon, ii. 173;
his first interview with Mme. Guyon, 250;
signs the Articles of Issy, 258;
his Quietism, 258;
difficulties of his position, 263;
his _Maxims of the Saints_, 263;
appeals to Rome, 265;
his friends disgraced, 268;
his reply to Bossuet’s _Account of Quietism_, 270;
his submission, 272.

Feridoddin Attar, ii. 21.

Fichte, his Idealism compared with that of the East, i. 60;
his definition of a Mystic, 60;
compared with Eckart, 212.

Flagellants, i. 316.

Florence, Revival of Neo-Platonism in, ii. 149.

Foligni, Angela de, i. 362.

Fountain-Spirits of Behmen, ii. 104, 120.

Fox, George, his early history, ii. 303;
his narrowness and his benevolence, 304;
his asceticism, 309;
principal defect of his Theology, 313.

Francis, St., de Sales, ii. 152;
his ‘indistinct contemplation,’ 179;
his _Introduction à la Vie Dévote_, 246, _note_.

Francis, St., of Assisi, ii. 171.

Franciscans, Millenarian, i. 185.

Frank, Sebastian, ii. 47.

Fratricelli, i. 184.

Free Spirit, Brethren of the, i. 184.

Friends, Journal of the Early, ii. 305.

Friends of God, i. 224.

Gabalis, Comte de, ii. 138.

Gamahea, ii. 75, 77.

Gassner, ii. 130.

Gelenius, Victor, his Mystical Degrees, ii. 177.

Gematria, ii. 141, _note_.

Gerlacus, Petrus, i. 367, _note_.

Germain, Count St., ii. 130.

Gerson, Chancellor, charges Ruysbroek with Pantheism, i. 338;
his Mystical Theology, 369.

Gichtel, i. 38; ii. 123, 125.

Gnomes, ii. 139.

God, distinguished from Godhead, by Eckart, i. 190;
Friends of, 224.

Godet des Marias, ii. 252.

Greek Church, Mysticism in, i. 109;
stereotyped character of its Theology, 122.

Groot, Gerard, i. 334, _note_.

Guru, i. 59.

Guthmann, ii. 125.

Guyon, Madame, early religious life, ii. 207;
spiritual desertion, 222;
self-loss in God, 227;
Prayer of Silence, 233;
compared with St. Theresa, 234;
her activity, 235;
her _Torrents_, 236, _note_;
persecution, 237;
first interview with Fénélon, 250;
her doctrine at St. Cyr, 253;
Bossuets conduct to her, 255;
Flight from Meaux, and imprisonment, 260;
at Vaugirard, 263;
in the Bastille, 272;
dies at Blois, 272.

Hamann, ii. 341.

Hardenberg, Friedrich von, see Novalis.

Harlay, Archbishop of Paris, ii. 246.

Harphius, ii. 177, 282.

Heaven, described by Swedenborg, ii, 330.

Hegel, analogies with Eckart, i. 206, 212;
opinion of Eckart, 206.

Heresies, Mystical, in the fourteenth century, i. 201, 209, 257, 329.

Hermann of Fritzlar, i. 181;
his _Heiligenleben_, 181, _note_.

Hesychasts, i. 355.

Hierarchies, of Iamblichus, i. 101;
of Proclus, 105;
of Dionysius, 114;
Hugo’s Commentary on, 155.

Hildegard, Abbess, i. 146; ii. 219.

Hindooism, its Mysticism, i. 55.

Hugo of St. Victor, character of his Mysticism, i. 154;
his Commentary on the Hierarchies of Dionysius, 155;
defines Meditation, 155;
his Eye of Contemplation, 158;
defines Abstraction, 158.

Iamblichus, his Theurgy, i. 100;
his Hierarchies, 101;
his twofold life of the Soul, 102;
his doctrine concerning Ecstasy, 104;
his mistakes repeated by Romanticism, ii. 346.

Ida of Louvain, ii. 218.

Ida of Nivelles, ii, 220.

Identity, Schelling’s Philosophy of, i. 44.

Illuminati, ii. 136, 281.

_Imitatio Christi_, The, i. 367.

India, Pantheism of, i. 55.

Indifference, Eckart’s Doctrine of, i. 188, 194;
of Quietism, ii. 205, 239.

Intelligence, use of the word by Richard of St. Victor, i. 162.

Interpretation, mystical, i. 33;
of Philo, 64;
of Bernard, 145;
of Richard of St. Victor, 161;
of Swedenborg, ii. 323.

Intuition, ‘intellectual,’ Schelling’s doctrine of, i. 88;
resemblance to that of Richard, 163.

Intuition, exaggeration of its claims by the Mystics, i. 168;
doctrine of Emerson concerning, ii. 18;
not an isolated faculty, 364.

Irony, Romanticist doctrine of, ii. 346.

Issy, the Conferences at, ii. 255;
the articles of, 256, 258.

Jacobi, ii. 341.

Jean d’Avila, ii. 281.

Jelaleddin Rumi, ii. 12, 14, 15, 17, 110.

Jerusalem, Church of the New, ii. 335.

Jews, persecution of the, i. 315;
their demonology, ii. 142.

John of the Cross, ii. 182;
his asceticism, 183;
his _Dark Night_, 185;
estimate of his Mysticism, 192.

Joris, David, ii. 125.

Jubilation, the gift of, ii. 219.

Juneid, ii. 11.

Justin Martyr, ii. 42.

Kant, his practical Reason, i. 89.

Kathari, i. 184.

Kober, ii. 80.

Krüdener, Madame de, ii. 288;
opinion of Madame de Genlis concerning, 289, _note_.

Kuhlmann, i. 38; ii. 125.

Labadie, ii. 291.

La Combe, ii. 226.

Lautensack, ii. 125.

Law, William, ii. 124, 288.

Leade, Joanna, ii. 144.

Light, doctrine of the Universal, ii. 309.

Louis the Fourteenth at St. Cyr, ii. 249, 265;
urges the Pope to condemn Fénélon, 271.

Love, disinterested, doctrine of Bernard, concerning, i. 145;
of Eckart, 193;
of Tauler, 303, 309;
of Ruysbroek, 334, _note_;
of the Sufis, ii. 10, 17;
the central doctrine of Quietism, 204;
Fénélon’s doctrine of, 258;
its truth and its exaggeration, 283.

Loyola, Ignatius, ii. 150.

Ludolph, the Carthusian, i. 232, 235.

Luther, Martin, his vantage ground as compared with the Mystics, i.
304; ii. 32-35;
his reply concerning the Zwickau Fanatics, 45;
his encounter with them, 47;
his protest against the Mysticism of Carlstadt, 51.

Macarius, i. 111.

Mahmud, passage from his _Gulschen Ras_, ii. 24.

Maintenon, Madame de, at St. Cyr, ii. 248;
her interest in Mme. Guyon, 249;
her caution, 254.

Maisonfort, Madame de la, ii. 258, 282.

Malaval, ii. 243.

Margaret Ebner, i. 216.

Maria d’Agreda, controversy concerning her _Mystical City of God_, ii.
164;
her elevations in the air, 176.

Maria of Oignys, ii. 219.

Marsay, de, ii. 291;
his retirement to Schwartzenau, 292;
his marriage, 293;
his asceticism and melancholy, 294;
his last years, 295.

Maurice, St., ii. 130.

_Maxims of the Saints_, ii. 263, 280.

Meditation, how defined by Hugo, i. 155.

Merswin, Rulman, his _Book of the Nine Rocks_, i. 321, 336.

Mesmer, ii. 130.

Messalians, ii. 11.

Microcosm, ii. 65.

Molinos, his _Guida Spirituale_, ii. 171, 242;
charges against him, 180;
his fate, 245.

Monasticism, Buddhist, i. 56;
its Ethics, 121;
promoted by Bernard, 140.

Montanus, i. 284.

Montfaucon, Clara de, ii. 163, 220.

More, Henry, his opinion of Behmen, ii. 124;
his mysticism, 315;
his opinion of the Quakers, 317, _note_.

Morin, ii. 244.

Münzer, ii. 44.

Muscatblut, i. 335.

Mysticism, the instructive character of its history, i. 13, 260;
derivation and history of the word, 17;
definitions, 21;
its causes, 27-33;
its classifications, 35;
theopathetic, 36;
theosophic, 39;
theurgic, 45;
in the early East, 51;
of the Neo-Platonists, 63;
in the Greek Church, 109;
in the Latin Church, 127;
opposed to Scholasticism, 142;
reconciled, 154;
Truth at its root, 164;
its exaggeration of the truth concerning experimental evidence, 167;
German, in the fourteenth century, 235; ii. 30;
Persian, in the Middle Ages, 3;
Theosophic, in the Age of the Reformation, 29;
revolutionary, 37;
before and after the Reformation, 41;
in Spain, 147;
of the Counter-Reformation, 150;
of Madame Guyon, 207;
in France and in Germany compared, 275;
in England, 299;
of Swedenborg, 321;
its recent modifications, 339;
its services to Christianity, 351;
its prevalent misconceptions, 353;
its correctives, 355.

Names, of magical virtue, ii. 140.

Neo-Platonism, eclectic and mystical, i. 70;
difference between it and Platonism proper, 76;
its doctrine of Emanation, 80;
influence on Christianity, 85;
process of degeneration, 91;
its Theurgy, 103;
expires with Proclus, 105;
introduced into the Church by Dionysius, 113;
confounds Universals with Causes, 117;
its power in the Middle Ages, 129;
its reformatory influence in the West, 132;
Persian, ii. 4;
revived on the eve of the Reformation, 55;
at Florence, 149.

Neri, St. Philip, ii. 218.

Nicholas of Basle, i. 239;
becomes the spiritual guide of Tauler, 240;
his labours and fate, 359.

Night, mystical, of the Sufis, ii. 14;
of John of the Cross, 185, 195;
of Novalis, 349.

Nihilism, i. 332;
of Angelus Silesius, ii. 17.

Nirwana, Buddhist Absorption, i. 56.

Nördlingen, Henry of, i. 216.

Norris of Bemerton, ii. 315.

Novalis, his Aphorisms, ii. 349;
his _Hymns to Night_, 349.

Numenius, i., 65, 121;
his hypostatic emanations, 82.

Nymphs, ii. 139.

Oetinger, ii. 351.

Oken, ii. 351.

Omphalopsychi, i. 356.

Origen, i. 302.

Pachymeres, his definition of mystical Theology, i. 24.

Pains, the mystical, ii. 170, 176.

Pantheism, Indian, i. 55;
Buddhist, 56;
Neo-Platonist, 78;
its necessitarian Ethics, 91;
of Dionysius Areopagita, 119;
of Erigena, 131;
of Eckart, 157, 160, 217;
among the people in the fourteenth century, 201, 209, 257, 278, 331;
of Angelus Silesius, ii. 6;
of Emerson, 8, 22;
of the Sufis, 20;
cannot claim Behmen, 112, 121.

Paracelsus, i. 44; ii. 71;
his four pillars of Medicine, 73;
his Theory of Contraries, 74;
of Signatures, 76;
his Green Lion, 78;
influence on Behmen, 91.

Parzival and Titurel, i. 186.

Passivity, i. 274; ii. 166, 190, 195.

Pazzi, Magdalena de, ii, 171.

Perfection, doctrine of, ii. 232;
awakens the alarm of the priesthood, 240.

Persia, Neo-Platonism in, ii. 4;
the seat of Sufism, 5;
its mystical poetry, 16, 24.

Petrucci, Cardinal, ii, 277.

Philadelphian Association, the, ii. 142.

Philo, i. 63;
his views on the Contemplative Life, 66;
his mystical interpretation, 67.

Pico of Mirandola, ii. 148.

Platonism, distinguished from Neo-Platonism, i. 76;
combined with Christianity assumes five distinct phases, 147;
in England, ii. 315.

Plotinus, his early history and asceticism, i. 71;
hears Ammonius Saccas, 74;
object and character of his philosophy, 76;
doctrine concerning knowledge, 80;
concerning Ecstasy, 81;
influence on Christianity, 85;
analogies with Schelling and Coleridge, 87;
necessitarian character of his Ethics, 91;
his Trinity, 93.

Poiret, Peter, ii. 287, 290.

Pordage, ii. 142.

Porphyry, his position, i. 94;
moderates the doctrine of Plotinus concerning Ecstasy, 97;
his modern imitators, ii. 350.

Postel, ii. 125.

Prayer, Theresa’s Four Degrees of, ii. 167;
of Silence, Mme. Guyon’s, 233.

Proclus, i. 105; influence of his philosophy on Dionysius, 112, 114;
his endeavour renewed by Romanticism, ii. 346.

Protestantism, its Mystics compared with those of Rome, ii. 95, 308,
_note_.

Quakers, see George Fox;
their asceticism, ii. 309;
their doctrine of the Universal and Saving Light, 309;
of perceptible spiritual influence, 313;
of Silence and Quiet, 314;
opinion of Henry More concerning, 317.

Quiet, Theresa’s prayer of, ii. 167.

Quietism, licentious form of it in the fourteenth century, i. 258;
of Molinos and Theresa, ii. 172;
charged with excluding the conception of Christ’s Humanity, 172;
misrepresentations of its enemies, 173, _note_;
of John of the Cross, 190;
its doctrine of pure love, 204;
its holy indifference, 205;
its reaction against mercenary religion, 232;
of Fénélon, 258;
in the hands of the Inquisition, 276;
its doctrine of disinterested Love discussed, 283;
practical, among the Quakers, 314;
in the present day, 356.

Rabia, ii. 10.

Ranters, ii. 306.

Rapture, see Ecstasy.

Realism, i. 130, 149.

Reason, how enlisted in the service of Mysticism, i. 40;
how far forsaken by Plotinus, 80;
Intuitive, of Coleridge, 88;
Practical, of Kant, 89;
unduly subordinated by Bernard 141;
erroneously divorced from Understanding, ii. 361.

Redemption, doctrine of Behmen concerning, ii. 116;
of Swedenborg, 332;
misconceptions of, 334.

Reformation, relation of Mysticism to the, ii. 33.

Reformers, their relation to the Mystics, ii. 41.

Regeneration, Tauler’s doctrine of, i. 246;
mistake of Mme. Guyon concerning, ii. 230.

Reimar of Zweter, i. 186.

‘Relations, Memorable,’ of Swedenborg, ii. 329.

Reminiscence, Platonic, i. 77.

Ricci, Catherine, ii. 219.

Richard of St. Victor, his Mystical Interpretation, i. 161;
his Degrees of Contemplation, 162;
his Doctrine of Ecstasy, 163.

Richter, Primarius, at Görlitz, ii. 86, 98.

Romanism, turns Mysticism to account, i. 365; ii. 355.

Romanticism, Tieck, its best representative, ii. 343, _note_;
opposes Rationalism, 344;
its philosophy of life, 345;
its doctrine of Irony, 346;
subsides in Superstition, 347.

Rome, Church of, her Mystics compared with those of Protestantism, ii.
95;
her debt to Mysticism, 149;
Fénélon no fair sample of her Mystics, 356.

Rosenkreuz, ii. 132.

Rosicrucians, ii. 128;
pretended discovery of the, 132, 136.

Rousseau, J. J., ii. 179.

Ruysbroek, his _Spiritual Nuptials_, i. 321;
visited by Tauler at the Convent of Grünthal, 325;
his doctrines concerning the Trinity, Abstraction, Union, 326, 329;
his protest against false Mystics, 330, _note_;
his doctrine concerning disinterested Love, 334, _note_;
charged by Gerson with Pantheism, 338;
compared with contemporary Mystics, 338.

Salamanders, ii. 138.

Schelling, compared with Behmen, i. 41;
his Philosophy of Identity, 44;
analogies of Plotinus with, 87;
indebted to Behmen, ii. 124;
his doctrine of Unconsciousness, 351.

Schlegel, Frederick, his admiration of Behmen, ii. 124;
his Romanticism, 345;
his extravagance, 346.

Schlegel, A. W., ii. 348.

Schleiermacher, ii. 341, 343, _note_.

Scholasticism, opposed to Mysticism, i. 142;
reconciled, 154.

Schröpfer, ii. 130.

Schwenkfeld, ii. 50.

Science, its mystical character in the Middle Age, i. 41;
in the Age of the Reformation, ii. 53;
union with Religion, 67.

Self-annihilation, Tauler concerning, i. 250;
of the Sufis and Angelus Silesius, ii. 16.

Self-love, ii. 214.

Shemhamphorash, ii. 141.

Silence, Quaker practice of, ii. 314;
Mme. Guyon’s Prayer of, 233.

Sleep, sacred, i. 102.

Societies, secret, ii. 136.

Soul, its twofold life, according to Iamblichus, i. 102;
Spark of the, 190;
Ground of the, Tauler’s doctrine concerning, 246, 255, 291;
Theresa’s Flight of the, ii. 174.

Spain, Mysticism in, ii. 150, 152.

Spark of the Soul, i. 190.

Sperber, ii. 125.

Spirit, perceptible Influence of the, i. 272;
as taught by the Quakers, ii. 313;
witness of the, 314;
Swedenborg’s doctrine concerning the, 331.

Spiritualism, its revival of antiquated errors, ii. 350;
its morbid dread of historic reality, 365.

Staupitz, ii. 33.

Stilling, Jung, i. 39; ii. 289.

Strasburg, Godfrey of, i. 186;
rival houses in, 187;
under the Interdict, 213;
Revolution in, 218;
Black Death in, 313;
the Flagellants in, 317;
resists the Imperial Impost, 319.

Sufis, the, ii. 3;
their early leaders, 11;
analogies with Emerson, 16;
with Angelus Silesius, 17;
their doctrine concerning disinterested love, 17;
their allegorical lyrics, 24.

Suso, Heinrich, i. 341;
his austerities, 344;
his _Horologe of Wisdom_, 345;
pursued as a poisoner, 348;
his adventure with the robber, 351.

Swedenborg, Emanuel, ii. 321;
comprehensive character of his Mysticism, 322;
his doctrine of correspondences, 323;
position of Man in his System, 325;
scientific character of his Mysticism, 326;
opposed to Asceticism, 328;
his Memorable Relations, 329;
his descriptions of the unseen World, 330;
his doctrine of Spiritual Influence, 331;
of the Work of Christ, 332;
of the New Jerusalem, 335.

Sylphs, ii. 139.

Symbolism, of Philo, i. 64;
of Dionysius, 114;
of Richard of St. Victor, 161;
how far necessary, ii. 353.

Sympathies, Science of, ii. 63.

Synderesis, i. 256, 327.

Talmud, its Theurgy, ii. 141.

Tanchelm, i. 38.

Tauler, i. 192, 216, 224, 265;
Sermon on the Image of God, 226;
his cautions to Mystics, 228;
disappearance for two years, 230;
his restoration, 234;
he issues circulars and treatises comforting the excommunicated, 236;
passages from his Sermons, 244-251, 290;
concerning the ‘Ground’ of the Soul, 246, 255, 291;
excellences and defects of his Theology, 251;
elevated character of his Mysticism, 253;
prepares the way for the Reformation, 253;
compared with Eckart, 254, 302;
his doctrine of Abandonment, and the state above Grace, 255;
his internal Trinity, 255;
on Work of Christ, 300;
summoned before the Emperor, 318;
retires to Cologne, 319.

Tears, gift of, ii. 220.

Theologia Germanica, i. 148, 288, 367.

Theologia Mystica, i. 21;
definitions, 23.

Theosophy, i. 40;
in the age of the Reformation, ii. 29, 69, _note_;
of Swedenborg, 321.

Therapeutæ, i. 66, 67.

Theresa, St., her early life, ii. 153;
her reform of the Carmelite order, 155;
sensuous character of her Mysticism, 162;
her four degrees of Prayer, 167;
her Raptures, 170;
her Torments, 170;
compared with Madame Guyon, 234.

Theurgy, i. 46;
of Neo-Platonism, 105;
Lutheran, ii. 59;
Modern, 130;
Rabbinical, 141.

Thomas à Kempis, i. 367.

Tieck, ii. 343, _note_, 348.

Tophail, Abu Jaafer Ebn, ii. 299.

Trinity, of Plotinus, i. 93;
Tauler’s doctrine of the internal, 256, 291;
doctrine of Ruysbroek concerning, 326;
of Behmen, ii. 103, 104, _note_;
of Swedenborg, 332.

Understanding, its relation to Reason, ii. 361;
not to be discarded in religion, 365.

Undine, ii. 138.

Union, doctrine of Plotinus concerning, i. 81;
of Bernard, 144;
of Richard of St. Victor, 163;
of Ruysbroek, 329;
Prayer of, ii. 168;
Swedenborg’s doctrine concerning, 334.

Universals, confounded with Causes, by Neo-Platonism, i. 171.

Valdes, ii. 244.

Veronica of Binasco, ii. 220.

Vespiniani, Countess, ii. 277.

Victor, St., see Hugo and Richard.

Victor, St., the school of, i. 153.

Vincula, Theurgic, ii. 59.

Virtues, divided into human and superhuman, i. 121;
how classified by Aquinas, 123.

Visions, intellectual and representative, ii. 174;
doctrine of John of the Cross concerning, 189.

‘Visio caliginosa,’ ii. 179.

Walter, Balthasar, ii. 80.

Weigel, Valentine, ii. 51;
studied by Behmen, 90, 92, 117.

Werner, Zachariah, ii. 347.

Wessel, John, ii. 33.

Wolfram von Eschenbach, i. 186.

Woolman, John, ii. 305.

Words, ‘substantial,’ ii. 175, 229.

Yogis, the, i. 57.

Yokhdan, Hai Ebn, history of, ii. 299;
his practice of contemplation, 311.

Yvon, ii. 291.

Zanoni, ii. 128.

Zerbino, Prince, by Tieck, ii. 343, _note_.

Zinzendorf, ii. 308.

Zwickau, the fanatics of, ii. 44.

THE END.

PRINTED BY BALLANTYNE, HANSON AND CO.

LONDON AND EDINBURGH

● Transcriber’s Notes:
○ Text that was in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).
○ Footnotes have been moved to follow the chapters in which they are
referenced.