Chapter V: Devotional and Religious Mystics (2)

But Francis Thompson's most entirely mystical utterance is the famous Ode--_The Hound of Heaven_--where he pictures with a terrible vividness and in phrase of haunting music the old mystic idea of the Love chase.[83] It is the idea expressed by Plotinus when he says, "God ... is present with all things, though they are ignorant that He is so. For they fly from Him, or rather from themselves. They are unable, therefore, to apprehend that from which they fly" (_Ennead_, vi. § 7). We see the spirit of man fleeing in terror "down the nights and down the days" before the persistent footsteps of his "tremendous Lover," until, beaten and exhausted, he finds himself at the end of the chase face to face with God, and he realises there is for him no escape and no hiding-place save in the arms of God Himself.

The voices of the English poets and writers form but one note in a mighty chorus of witnesses whose testimony it is impossible for any thoughtful person to ignore. Undoubtedly, in the case of some mystics, there has been great disturbance both of the psychic and physical nature, but on this account to disqualify the statements of Plotinus, St Augustine, Eckhart, Catherine of Siena, Catherine of Genoa, Blake, and Wordsworth, would seem analogous to Macaulay's view that "perhaps no person can be a poet, or can even enjoy poetry without a certain unsoundness of mind." Our opinion about this must depend on what we mean by "soundness of mind." To some it may appear possible that the mystics and poets are as sound as their critics. In any case, the unprejudiced person to-day would seem driven to the conclusion that these people, who are, many of them, exceptionally great, intellectually and morally, are telling us of a genuine experience which has transformed life for them. What, then, is the meaning of this experience? What explanation can we give of this puzzling and persistent factor in human life and history? These are not easy questions to answer, and only a bare hint of lines of solution dare be offered.

It is of interest to note that the last word in science and philosophy tends to reinforce and even to explain the position of the mystic. The latest of European philosophers, M. Bergson, builds up on a mystical basis the whole of his method of thought, that is, on his perception of the simple fact that true duration, the real time-flow, is known to us by a state of feeling which he calls intuition, and not by an intellectual act.

He says something like this. We find as a matter of practice that certain problems when presented to the intellect are difficult and even impossible to solve, whereas when presented to our experience of life, their solution is so obvious that they cease to be problems. Thus, the unaided intellect might be puzzled to say how sounds can grow more alike by continuing to grow more different. Yet a child can answer the question by sounding an octave on the piano. But this solution is reached by having sensible knowledge of the reality and not by logical argument. Bergson's view, therefore, is that the intellect has been evolved for practical purposes, to deal in a certain way with material things by cutting up into little bits what is an undivided flow of movement, and by looking at these little bits side by side. This, though necessary for practical life, is utterly misleading when we assume that the "points" thus singled out by the intellect represent the "thickness" of reality. Reality is fluidity, and we cannot dip up its substance with the intellect which deals with surfaces, even as we cannot dip up water with a net, however finely meshed. Reality is movement, and movement is the one thing we are unable intellectually to realise.

In order to grasp reality we must use the faculty of contact or immediate feeling, or, as Bergson calls it, intuition. Intuition is a different order of knowledge, it is moulded on the very form of life, and it enables us to enter into life, to be one with it, to live it. It is "a direction of movement: and, although capable of infinite development, is simplicity itself." This is the mystic art, which in its early stages is a direction of movement, an alteration of the quality and intensity of the self. So Bergson, making use of and applying the whole range of modern psychology and biology, tells us that we must develop intuition as a philosophical instrument if we are to gain any knowledge of things in themselves; and he is thus re-echoing in modern terms what was long ago stated by Plotinus when he said--

Knowledge has three degrees--opinion, science, illumination. The
means or instrument of the first is sense, of the second dialectic,
of the third intuition. To the last I subordinate reason. It is
absolute knowledge founded on the identity of the mind knowing with
the object known. (_Letter to Flaccus._)

We have discovered that sense knowledge, however acute, has to be corrected by the intellect, which tells us that the sun does not go round the earth, although it appears to our observation to do this. So possibly, in turn, the intellect, however acute, may have to be corrected by intuition, and the impotence of brain knowledge in dealing with the problem of life is leading slowly to the perception that to _know_ in its true sense is not an intellectual process at all.

Further, in Bergson's theory of the nature of mind, and in his theory of rhythm, he seems to indicate the lines of a technical explanation of some part of the mystic experience.[84] The soul, or the total psychic and mental life of man, he says, is far greater than the little bit of consciousness of which we are normally aware, and the brain acts as a sheath or screen, which allows only a point of this mental life to touch reality. The brain or the cerebral life is therefore to the whole mental life as the point of a knife is to the knife itself. It limits the field of vision, it cuts in one direction only, it puts blinkers on the mind, forcing it to concentrate on a limited range of facts. It is conceivable that what happens with the mystics is that their mental blinkers become slightly shifted, and they are thus able to respond to another aspect or order of reality. So that they are swept by emotions and invaded by harmonies from which the average man is screened. Life having for them somewhat changed in direction, the brain is forced to learn new movements, to cut along fresh channels, and thus to receive sensations which do not directly minister to the needs of physical life. "Our knowledge of things," says Bergson, "derives its form from our bodily functions and lower needs. By unmaking that which these needs have made, we may restore to Intuition its original purity, and so recover contact with the Real." It is possibly this very unmaking and remaking, this readjustment which we see at work in the lives of the great mystics, and which naturally causes great psychic and even physical disturbances.

Bergson's theory of rhythm is peculiarly illuminating in this connection. The intellect, he says, is like a cinematograph. Moving at a certain pace, it takes certain views, snapshots of the continuous flux of reality, of which it is itself a moving part. The special views that it picks out and registers, depend entirely upon the relation between its movement and the rhythm or movement of other aspects of the flux. It is obvious that there are a variety of rhythms or tensions of duration. For example, in what is the fraction of a second of our own duration, hundreds of millions of vibrations, which it would need thousands of our years to count, are taking place successively in matter, and giving us the sensation of light. It is therefore clear that there is a great difference between the rhythm of our own duration and the incredibly rapid rhythms of physical matter. If an alteration took place in our rhythm, these same physical movements would make us conscious--not of light--but of some other thing quite unknown.

"Would not the whole of history," asks Bergson, "be contained in a very short time for a consciousness at a higher degree of tension than our own?" A momentary quickening of rhythm might thus account for the sensation of timelessness, of the "participation in Eternity" so often described by the mystic as a part of the Vision of God.

Again, Bergson points out that there is nothing but movement; that the idea of _rest_ is an illusion, produced when we and the thing we are looking at are moving at the same speed, as when two railway trains run side by side in the same direction. Here, once more, may not the mystic sensation of "stillness," of being at one with the central Life, be owing to some change having taken place in the spiritual rhythm of the seer, approximating it to that of the Reality which he is thus enabled to perceive, so that the fretful movement of the individual mind becomes merged in the wider flow of the whole, and both seem to be at rest?

Thus, the most recent philosophy throws light on the most ancient mystic teaching, and both point to the conclusion that our normal waking consciousness is but one special type of many other forms of consciousness, by which we are surrounded, but from which we are, most of us, physically and psychically screened. We know that the consciousness of the individual self was a late development in the race; it is at least possible that the attainment of the consciousness that this individual self forms part of a larger Whole, may prove to be yet another step forward in the evolution of the human spirit. If this be so, the mystics would appear to be those who, living with an intensity greater than their fellows, are thus enabled to catch the first gleams of the realisation of a greater self. In any case, it would seem certain, judging from their testimony, that it is possible, by applying a certain stimulus, to gain knowledge of another order of consciousness of a rare and vivifying quality. Those who have attained to this knowledge all record that it must be felt to be understood, but that, so far as words are of use, it is ever of the nature of a reconciliation; of discord blending into harmony, of difference merging into unity.

Bibliography

NOTE.--The literature on mysticism is growing very large, and the following is only a small selection from the general works on it. In the case of individual writers, references are given only where there might be difficulty about editions. Thus no references are given to the works of Burke, Carlyle, Wordsworth, Shelley, Tennyson, Browning, etc.

General

Underhill, Evelyn. _Mysticism_, Methuen, 1911. (See the valuable Bibliography of mystical works, pp. 563-585.) _The Mystic Way_, Dent, 1913.

Jones, Rufus M. _Studies in Mystical Religion_, Macmillan, 1909.

James, William. _The Varieties of Religious Experience_, Longmans Green, 1905.

Inge, W. R. _Christian Mysticism_, Methuen, 1899. _Studies of English Mystics_, Murray, 1905. _Light, Life and Love._ Selections from the German mystics. With Introduction. Methuen, 1904.

Hügel, Baron F. von. _The Mystical Element in Religion_, 2 vols.. Dent, 1909.

Delacroix, H. _Études d'Histoiré et de Psychologie du Mysticisme_, Paris, 1908.

Récéjac, E. _Essai sur les fondements de la Connaissance Mystique_, Paris, 1897 (translated by S. C. Upton, London, 1899).

Gregory, Eleanor C. _A Little Book of Heavenly Wisdom._ Selections from some English prose mystics, with Introduction. Methuen, 1902.

Foreign Influences

Plato (_c._ 427-347 B.C.). _Opera_, ed. J. Burnet, 5 vols. (Bibliotheca Scriptorum Classicorum Oxoniensis), 1899-1907.

Plato (Eng. trans.) _The Dialogues_, translated by B. Jowett, 5 vols., Oxford, 3rd ed., 1892.

Plotinus (A.D. 204-270). _Plotini Ennéades, præsmisso Porphyrii de vita Plotini deque ordine librorum ejus libello_, edidit R. Volkmann, 2 vols., Leipzig, 1883-84. (Eng. trans.) There is no complete English translation of the _Enneads_, only _Select Works_, translated by T. Taylor, 1817; re-issued, George Bell, 1895. (French trans.) _Les Ennéades de Plotin_, translated by M.-N. Bouillet, 3 vols., Paris, 1857-61. (This is complete and very good, but out of print.) The best critical account of Plotinus is in _The Evolution of Theology in the Greek Philosophers_, by Edward Caird, 2 vols., Maclehose, 1904.

Dionysius the Areopagite. _Works_, translated Parker, 1897.

Jacob Boehme (1575-1624). _Works_ (incomplete), 4 vols., 1764-81. Reprint of complete works in progress, ed. C. J. Barker, published J. Watkins. (See Bibliography to chap. xii. of _Cambridge History of English Literature_, vol. ix.)

Emmanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772). _Works_, published by the Swedenborg Society, London. Selections, _A Compendium of the Theological Writings_, ed. Warren, 1901.

English Writers

Thomas de Hales (fl. 1250). _A Luve Ron_, (printed in) Morris's Old English Miscellany (E.E.T.S.), 1872.

Richard Rolle (1290?-1349). _Richard Rolle and his Followers_, ed. Horstmann, 2 vols., Sonnenschein, 1895-6. _The Fire of Love, and the Mending of Life_, ed. R. Harvey (E.E.T.S.), 1896.

Anonymous (_c._ 1350-1400). _The Cloud of Unknowing_, ed. Evelyn Underhill, J. Watkins, 1912.

All printed, with other early English mystical treatises, in _The Cell of Self-Knowledge_, ed. E. G. Gardner, Chatto & Windus, 1910. _The Epistle of Prayer_, _The Epistle of Discretion_, _The Treatise of Discerning Spirits_

Anonymous. _The Epistle of Privy Counsel_, in MS., British Museum, Harleian, 674 and 2473.

(William Langland, or other authors.? _c._ 1362-1399). _The Vision of William Concerning Piers the Plowman_, ed. Skeat, 2 vols., Oxford, 1886. Jusserand, J. J. _Piers Plowman: a Contribution to the History of English Mysticism._ Translated from the French by M. E. R., 1894.

Walter Hylton (d. 1396). _The Scale of Perfection_, ed. Guy, 1869; ed. Dalgairns, 1870. _The Song of Angels_, printed by Gardner, in _The Cell of Self-Knowledge_, 1910.

Julian of Norwich (1342-1413?). _Revelations of Divine Love_, ed. Warrack, Methuen, 1912.

Richard Crashaw (1613? 1649). _Poems_, ed. A. R. Waller, Cambridge 1904.

John Donne (1573-1631). _Poetical Works_, ed. Grierson, 2 vols., Oxford, 1912.

George Herbert (1593-1633). _Poems_, ed. Grosart, 1891; Oxford edition, 1907.

Christopher Harvey (1597-1663). _Poems_, ed. Grosart, 1874.

Henry More (1614-1687). _Complete Poems_, ed. Grosart, 1878. _Life_, by R. Ward, 1710, reprinted Theosophical Society, ed. Howard, 1911.

Henry Vaughan (1622-1695). _Poems_, ed. Chambers, 2 vols., 1896.

Thomas Traherne (_c._ 1636-1674). _Poetical Works_, ed. Dobell, 1903. _Centuries of Meditations_, ed. Dobell, 1908. _Poems of Felicity_, ed. Bell, Oxford, 1910.

William Law (1686-1761). _Works_, 9 vols., 1753-76, reprinted privately by G. Moreton, 1892-3. _The Liberal and Mystical Writings of William Law_, ed. W Scott Palmer, 1908. (See Bibliography to chap xii. of _Cambridge History of English Literature_, vol. ix., 1912.)

William Blake (1757-1827). _Works_, ed. Ellis and Yeats, 3 vols., Quaritch, 1893.

William Blake. _Poetical Works_ (including Prophetic Books), ed, Ellis, 2 vols., Chatto and Windus, 1906. _Poetical Works_ (exclusive of Prophetic Books), ed. Sampson, Oxford, 1905. (The best text of the poems.) _Life_, Gilchrist, 2 vols., Macmillan, 1880. _William Blake_, by A. C. Swinburne, Chatto and Windus (new ed.), 1906. _William Blake, Mysticisme et Poésie_, par P. Berger, Paris, 1907.

S. T. Coleridge (1772-1834). _Complete Poetical Works_, ed. E. H. Coleridge, 2 vols., Oxford, 1912. _Biographia Literaria_, ed. J. Shawcross, 2 vols., Oxford, 1907.

Emily Brontë (1818-1848). _Complete Poems_, ed. Shorter, Hodder and Stoughton, 1910. _The Three Brontës_, by May Sinclair, Hutchinson, 1912.

Coventry Patmore (1823-1896). _Poems_, G. Bell, 1906. _The Rod, the Root, and the Flower_, 1895. _Memoirs and Correspondence of C. Patmore_, by B. Champneys, 1900.

Richard Jefferies (1848-1887). _The Story of my Heart_, 1883, (reprinted) Longmans, 1907.

Francis Thompson (1859-1907). _New Poems_, Burns and Oates, 1897. _Selected Poems_, 1908. _Sister Songs_, 1908.

Index

Aeschylus Alchemists Allen, H. E., _Authorship of the Prick of Conscience_ Ammonias Sakkas _Ancren Riwle_

Bacon, Francis, _Essays_
Beauty; moon the symbol of;
Plato on;
truth and;
worship of
Behmenists. (_See_ also under Boehme)
Bergson, mystical basis of his thought;
study of;
theory of rhythm
_Bhagavad-Gîtâ_
Blake, William;
_Auguries of Innocence_;
_Europe_;
_Everlasting Gospel_;
Illustrations to _Job_;
imagination of;
in-debtedness to Boehme;
greatness of;
_Marriage of Heaven and Hell_;
_Milton_;
_Of Natural Religion_;
_Songs of Innocence_;
study of;
view of Nature;
_Vision of Last Judgment_
Boehme, Jacob;
Coleridge on;
influence of;
Law's use of;
study of;
view of evil
Bourignon, Madame
Bradley, A. C., _Shakespearian Tragedy_
Brontë, Charlotte
----- Emily; _Last Lines_;
_Philosopher_;
_Prisoner_;
study of;
_Visionary_
Browne, Sir Thomas
Browning, Elizabeth Barrett;
_Aurora Leigh_
Browning, Robert;
_Asolando_;
_Bean-stripe_;
his central teaching;
_Death in the Desert_;
his intellectuality;
his love-mysticism;
_Paracelsus_;
on pre-existence;
_Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau_ ;
_Rabbi ben Ezra_;
on religion and science;
resemblance to Eckhart;
_Ring and the Book_;
_Statue and Bust_;
study of;
his view of evil
Bruno, Giordano
Bunyan, John
Burke, Edmund;
_Present Discontents_;
study of
Byron

Cambridge Platonists
Carlyle, Thomas
influence of Emerson on;
_Heroes_;
nature of his mysticism;
_Sartor Resartus_;
study of
Catherine of Genoa
Chaucer
Christ, use of symbolism
Christianity and mysticism
_Cloud of Unknowing_
Coleridge, S. T.
Crashaw's influence on;
_Dejection_;
_Destiny of Nations_;
_Frost at Midnight_;
Kant's influence;
_Lay Sermon_;
_Letter to Tulk_;
Neo-platonic influence;
_Religious Musings_;
study of;
Swedenborg's influence
Crashaw, Richard
influence of;
_St Teresa_

Descartes
_Deonise Hid Divinite_
Dionysius the Areopagite, _Mystical Theology_
Donne, John
_Ecstasy_;
_Letter to Woodward_;
_Letters to Countess of Huntingdon_;
_Negative Love_;
_Of our Sense of Sinne_;
_Poem on Eliz. Drury_;
_Progress of the Soul_;
_Soul's Joy_;
study of;
_Undertaking_
Dryden

E., A. Eckhart Emerson, R. W. English national character and mysticism _Entbehrung_ _Epistle of Discretion_ _Epistle of Privy Counsel_ Erskine, Thos., of Linlathen Evil, _see_ under _Good and Evil_

Familists Farquhar, J. W. Fénelon Fichte Fire, views of, held by Law and Boehme Flaxman Fox, George

Godwin, Mary, _see_ Shelley, Mrs----William Goethe doctrine of _Entbehrung_; influence on Carlyle Good and Evil, problem of Gosse, Edmund, on Patmore's _Sponsa Dei_ Greek delight in beauty Grierson, H. J. C., _Donne's Poems_ Grosseteste Guyon, Madame

Hartley, David Harvey, Christopher, _School of the Heart_ Hegel Herbert, George Hindu mysticism Hinton, James, _Mystery of Pain_ Hugh of St Victor Hylton, Walter _Scale or Perfection_

Imagination
a creative force;
attainment of truth through;
love and;
reality of;
the "saviour of the world,"
Inge, W. R., _Selections from the German Mystics_
Intuition

James, William
Jefferies, Richard
_Story of My Heart_;
study of
Julian, Lady
_Revelations of Divine Love_

Kant
Keats, George
Keats
_Endymion_;
_Letter to Taylor_;
_Ode on Nightingale_;
_Ode on Grecian Urn_;
Plato's influence on;
_Revision of Hyperion_;
study of

Knowledge, mental and spiritual supremacy of intuition over intellectual, (_see_ also under _Truth_) Krishna

Lamb, Charles
Lâo-Tsze
Law, William
_Appeal to all that doubt_;
Boehme's influence on;
early studies;
_Serious Call_;
_Spirit of Prayer_;
study of;
_Way to Divine Knowledge_
Lawrence, Sir Thomas
Love, human and divine
in _Ancren Riwle_;
Blake on;
Boehme on;
Browning on;
Coleridge on;
Crashaw on;
Donne on;
Herbert on;
Keats on;
Lady Julian on;
Patmore on;
Richard Rolle on;
Shelley on;
Thomas de Hales on;
Francis Thompson on;
Traherne on

Macaulay
Macleod, Fiona
Man, divinity and greatness of;
unity with God
Maurice, F. D.
Meredith, George
Metaphysical Society
Moonlight, Keat's sensitiveness to
More, Henry
Mysticism, ascetic;
basic fact of;
beginnings in East;
Bergson's contributions to;
English character and;
erotic;
experiences of melody in;
happiness and
Hindu
meaning of the word
methods of, (_see_ also under _Love_, _Vision_, and _Imagination_, etc.)
of beauty
pathways to, (_see_ also under _Vision_, etc.)
philosophical
religious thinkers and, (_see_ also under names of authors)
Nature, views and interpretation of
Neo-platonists
Nettleship, R. L., _Philosophical Remains_
Newton, debt to Boehme
Norris, John, of Bemerton

Pain, problem of
Pascal, Blaise
Patmore, Coventry
_Angel in the House_
_Bow set in the Cloud_
_Child's Purchase_ and _The Toys_
_Conjugial Love_
Crashaw's influence on
_Dieu et ma Dame_
_Memoirs_
_Precursor_
_Religio Poetæ_
_Sod, Boot, and Flower_
_Sponsa Dei_
study of
_Piers Plowman_
Plato
influence on Donne
Plotinus
Shelley
Spenser
Vaughan
on beauty
on love
_Phædrus_,
_Republic_
_Symposium_
system of
Platonists, Cambridge
Plotinus
_Enneads_
_Letter to Flaccus_
Plato's influence on
system of
Pope
Porphyry
Pratt, J. B., _Religious Philosophy of William James_
Pre-existence, belief in
Pythagoras

Quakers. _Quia amore langueo_

Religion and Science
Rhythm, Beigson's theory of
Richard of St Victor
_Benjamin Minor_
Robinson, Henry Crabb
Rolle, Richard
_Fire of Lone_
_Pricke of Conscience_
study of
Rossetti, Christina
Rossetti, D. G.
_Hand and Soul_
_House of Life_
sensuousness of
study of
Ruysbroeck

St Augustine _City of God_ influence of Plotinus on St Bernard of Clairvaux St Bonaventura St Catherine of Siena St Francis of Assisi _Fioretti_ St John of the Cross St Martin St Paul St Teresa Schelling Scotus Eriugena, John Seekers Separatists Shakespeare Shelley, Mrs (Mary Godwin) Shelley; _Adonais_; _Epipsychidion_; _Hymn to Intellectual Beauty_; imagination of; influence of Plato; _Julian and Maddalo_; love mysticism of; _Prometheus_; _Revolt of Islam_; _Rosalind and Helen_; study of Smith, John, the Platonist Society, unity in Socrates _Song of Solomon_ Spenser, Edmund, _Hymns_; Plato's influence on Spinoza Stewart, J., _Myths of Plato_ Sunlight, Jefferies' sensitiveness to Suso Swedenborg _Heaven and Hell_,; influence of; thought of; _Wisdom of Angels_ Swinburne, A. C., _Essay on Blake_ Symbolism

Tauler
Taylor, Keats's letter to
Tennyson
_Ancient Sage_;
_Higher Pantheism_;
_Holy Grail_;
_In Memoriam_;
study of
Thelwall
_Theologia Germanica_
Thomas de Hales, _Luve Ron_
Thompson, Francis;
Crashaw's influence on;
_Daisy_;
_Health and Holiness_;
_Hound of Heaven_;
_Ode to Setting Sun_;
_Poppy_;
study of
Thought, reality of
Time
Traherne, T.
_Approach_;
_Centuries of Meditations_;
_Eden_;
_Innocence_;
_Rapture_;
_Salutation_;
study of;
_Wonder_
Transcendentalists
_Treatise of Discerning Spirits_
Truth, beauty and;
imagination and;
intellect and;
steps towards. _See_ also under _Knowledge_
Tulk, C. A.

Underhill, Evelyn, _Mysticism_ _Upanishads_

Vaughan, Henry
_Affliction_;
_Hidden Flower_;
_Quickness_;
_Retreate_;
_Resurrection and Immortality_;
_World_;
study of
Vision, faculty and ecstasy of
pain and
physical condition and
renunciation and

Watts-Dunton, Theodore, article on Rossetti
Whichcote, Benjamin
Will, power of
Wordsworth, William
attainment of vision
debt to Vaughan
Duddon Sonnets
_Excursion_
fallacy of usual conception of
mediation of
_Ode on Intimations of Immortality_
_Prelude_
_Recluse_
_Solitary Reaper_
_Stepping Westward_
study of
_Tintern Abbey_
value of common things
view of Nature

Yeats, W. B.

Footnotes

[1] "The Religious Philosophy of William James," by J. B. Pratt, _Hibbert Journal_, Oct. 1911, p. 232.

[2] On "Spirit," in _Philosophical Remains of R. L. Nettleship_, ed. A. C. Bradley, 1901, pp. 23-32.

[3] _Republic_, ii. 376.

[4] _Symposium_, 211, 212.

[5] This distinction between East and West holds good on the whole, although on the one side we find the heretical Brahmin followers of _Bhakti_, and Ramananda and his great disciple, Kabir, who taught that man was the supreme manifestation of God; and on the other, occasional lapses into Quietism and repudiation of the body. See _The Mystic, Way_, by E. Underhill, pp 22-28.

[6] For an account of Boehme's philosophy, see pp. 91-93 below.

[7] See his essay on him in _Representative Men._

[8] _Memoirs and Correspondence of C. Palmore_, by B. Champneys, 1901, vol. ii. pp. 84, 85.

[9] _Selections from the German Mystics_, ed. Inge (Methuen, 1904), p. 4.

[10] See his article on Rossetti in the _Nineteenth Century_ for March 1883.

[11] _House of Life_, Sonnet xvii.

[12] _House of Life_, Sonnets i., xxvii., lxxvii.

[13] See _Religio Poetæ_, p. 1.

[14] _Memoirs_, ed. Champneys, i. 146.

[15] _The Angel in the House._ Bk. ii. prelude ii.

[16] _The Angel in the House_, canto viii. prelude iv.

[17] See pp. 113, 114 below.

[18] _The Child's Purchase_ and _The Toys_, poems, I vol., 1906, pp. 287, 354.

[19] _Seligio Poetæ_, 1893, p. 163.

[20] _Religio Poetæ_, 1893, p. 44.

[21] The "Ring" of Eternity is a familiar mystical symbol which Vaughan doubtless knew in other writers; for instance as used by Suso or Ruysbroeck. See _Mysticism_, by E. Underhill, p. 489 and note.

[22] See the illuminating description of this essentially mystic feeling given by J. Stewart in _The Myths of Pinto_, Introduction, pp. 39 _et seq._

[23] _The Story of my Heart_, pp. 87, 88.

[24] _Ibid._, p. 76.

[25] _The Story of my Heart_, p. 199.

[26] _Ibid._, p. 71.

[27] _Ibid._, p. 74.

[28] See _Compendium of Philosophy_, a mediæval digest of the Abhidhamma, translated by S. Z. Aung and Mrs Rhys Davids, 1910, 152 f.

[29] We cannot agree with Prof Grierson, who, in his fine recent edition of the poet (_Donne's Poems_, Oxford, 1912, vol ii., pp. cxxxv.-vi.), holds that the style and tone of this song point to Donne not being the author. For these very qualities it would seem indubitably to be his.

[30] Surely also by Donne, but see Grierson, vol. ii., pp. cxxxviii-ix.

[31] _Centuries of Meditations_, ed. Dobell, 1908, pp. 20, 21.

[32] _Centuries of Meditations_, pp. 156-58.

[33] _Life of Tennyson_, by his son, 1905, p. 268; see also pp 818, 880.

[34] This is the idea, essentially mystical, and originating with Boehme, which is worked out in the suggestive little book, _The Mystery of Pain_, by James Hinton.

[35] _An Appeal, Work's_, vol. vi. pp. 27, 28.

[36] _The Spirit of Prayer_, _Works_, vol. vii. pp. 23, 24.

[37] _Cf._ St Augustine, "To will God entirely is to have Him" (_City of God_, Book xi. chap, iv.), or Ruysbroek's answer to the priests from Paris who came to consult him on the state of their souls: "You are as you desire to be."

[38] See _The Spirit of Prayer_, _Works_, vol. vii. pp. 150, 151.

[39] _An Appeal, Works_, vol. vi. p. 169.

[40] _Ibid._, pp. 19, 20.

[41] _Ibid._, pp. 69, 80.

[42] _The Spirit of Prayer_, _Works_, vol. vii. pp. 23, 27.

[43] _The Way to Divine Knowledge, Works_, vol. vii. p. 60.

[44] _The Spirit of Prayer_, _Works_, vol. vii. p. 68. See also _ibid._, pp. 91, 92

[45] _An Appeal, Works_, vol. vi. pp. 132, 133.

[47] _An Appeal, Works_, vol. vi. p. 115.

[48] _The Destiny of Nations_, II. 16-18.

[49] _Frost at Midnight_, 11. 60-62.

[50] _Sartor Resartus_, Book i. chap. xi.

[51] See _Sartor_, Book iii. chap. iv.

[52] The mystical desire for close contact with God is expressed in English as early as before 1170, in Godric's song to the Virgin.

[53] See _Mysticism_, by E. Underhill, pp. 162-166.

[54] _The Ancren Riwle_, ed. J. Morton, Camden Society, 1853, pp. 397-403.

[55] _Fire of Love_, Bk. 1. cap xvi. p. 36.

[56] _Ibid._, Bk. i. cap. xv. p. 33.

[57] See _Mysticism_, by E. Underhill, pp. 228, 229.

[58] _Fire of Love_, Bk. i. cap. xvi. p. 36.

[59] _Ibid._, Bk. ii. cap. iii. and xii.

[60] _Fire of Love_, Bk. i. cap. xv.

[61] _Ibid._, Bk. ii. cap. vii.

[62] _Enneads_, vi. §§ 8, 9.

[63] See _The Authorship of the Prick of Conscience_, by H. E. Allen, Radcliffe College Monographs, No. 15, Ginn and Co., 1910.

[64] _Revelations_, ed. Warrack, pp. 21, 178. All the quotations which follow are taken from this edition of the _Revelations_.

[65] _Revelations_, p. 135. It Is interesting to compare the words of other mystics upon this point; as for instance Richard of St Victor in _Benjamin Minor_, cap. 75, or Walter Hylton in _The Scale of Perfection_. Note the emphasis laid upon it by Wordsworth, who indicates self-knowledge as the mark of those who have attained the "unitive" stage; see p. 66 above.

[66] Dr. Inge gives an excellent detailed account of it in _Studies of English Mystics_, 1906, pp. 80-123.

[67] See _Piers Plowman_, by J. J. Jusserand, 1894

[68] B., Passus v., 614-616.

[69] _Poems_, ed. Waller, 1904, p. 283.

[70] _Poems_, ed. Grosart, 1874, p. 134.

[71] See _Additional Table Talk of S. T. O._, ed. T. Ashe, 1884, p. 322.

[72] _Poems_, ed. Sampson, p. 305.

[73] See _Mysticism_, by E. Underhill, pp. 282-286, and specially the passage from the _Fioreth_ of St Francis of Assisi, chap, xlviii., quoted on p. 285.

[74] Notes to Lavater.

[75] From version γ2 in _Poetical Works_, ed. John Sampson, 1905, p. 253.

[76] _Poems_, ed. Sampson, p. 173.

[77] _Poems_, ed Sampson, pp. 305-6, 309-10. Blake is here praying that we may be preserved from the condition of mind which sees no farther than the concrete facts before it; a condition he unfairly associated with the scientific mind in the abstract, and more especially with Newton.

[78] This is the principle called occasionally by Blake, and always by Boehme, the "Mirror," or "Looking Glass." Blake's names for these four principles, as seen in the world, in contracted form, are Urizen, Luvah, Urthona, and Tharmas.

[79] Possibly in some such way as Mozart, when composing, heard the whole of a symphony. "Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts _successively_, but I hear them as it were all at once" (Holmes's _Life and Correspondence of Mozart_ 1845, pp 317-18)

[80] _Cf._, for instance, "To be an error, and to be cast out, is a part of God's design" (_A Vision of the Last Judgment_, Gilchrist's Life, ii. p. 195); and Illustrations 2 and 16 to the Book of Job, see the commentary on them in _Blake's Vision of the Book of Job_, by J. H. Wicksteed, 1910, p. 21 and note 4. It is interesting to note that, as Mr Bradley points out (_Shakesperian Tragedy_, pp. 37, 39, 324, 325), it is a cognate idea which seems to underlie Shakesperian tragedy, and to make it bearable.

[81] See the whole exposition of the Job illustrations by Wicksteed, and specially p. 37.

[82] _In no Strange Land._ Selected Poems, 1908, p. 130.

[83] For other examples of the expression of this idea of the "Following Love," the quest of the soul by God, especially in the anonymous Middle English poem of _Quia amore langueo_, see _Mysticism_, by Evelyn Underhill, pp. 158-162.

[84] The following remarks are much indebted to a valuable article on _Bergson and the Mystics_, by Evelyn Underhill, in the _English Review_, Feb. 1912, which should be consulted for a fuller exposition of the light shed by Bergson's theories on the mystic experience.