MYSTICISM : TRUE NATURE AND VALUE 



V.B.SHARPEMA. 



MYSTICISM: ITS TRUE NATURE 
AND VALUE 



IMPRIM POTEST. 
JACOBUS AUGUSTINUS, 

ARCHIEP. S. ANDR. ET EDIMBURGEN. 



EDIMBURGI, DIE 18 Julii 1910. 



MYSTICISM: 

ITS TRUE NATURE AND VALUE 

WITH A TRANSLATION OF THE "MYSTICAL 
THEOLOGY" OF DIONYSIUS, AND OF THE 
LETTERS TO CAIUS AND DOROTHEUS 

(l, 2 AND 5) 
BY 

A. B. SHARPE, M.A. 






" O 0IOS yVO<po$ (TTL TO ClTTpOCriTOV 0(0? V 

6 6eo$ Aeyerat." 

Dionysius, Ep. 5 ad Dorotheum, 

" Aliis loquor communia, aliis specialia ; aliquibus in signis 
et figuris dulciter appareo ; quibusdam vero in multo lumine 
revelo mysteria." De Imitatione Christir^r^ ipn/o 

ST - BASIL S SCHOLASTICATE 




LONDON 

SANDS & COMPANY 
15 KING STREET, COVENT GARDEN 
AND EDINBURGH 

ST. LOUIS MO. 
B. HERDER 




FEB - 9 1958 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER I 

TWO IDEAS OF MYSTICISM 

PAGES 

Knowledge is either experimental or theoretical, but is 
limited by sense-experience Natural knowledge 
of God, through reason or revelation, is theoretical ; 
it cannot be experimental Experimental know 
ledge of God always desired Mystical theology 
Two points of view, the natural and the super 
natural They are not naturally opposed, but 
complementary Natural mysticism is the attempt 
either to transcend the limitations of sense or to find 
transcendental knowledge within them Funda 
mental difference between these two methods 
Neither is more than a mental attitude Super 
natural mysticism implies the transcendence of 
God, on the one hand ; and on the other hand, the 
inability of the natural powers alone to attain to 
immediate knowledge of Him Catholic idea of 
mysticism True mysticism rightly said to be 
empirical Compared with sensation The intel 
lectual principles of mystical knowledge not 
essentially different from those of ordinary know 
ledge What is to be understood by the Super 
natural The Via Remotionis Supernatural 
llumination not contrary to nature Its method 
Natural theories to account for supernatural 
mysticism Reasons for rejecting them Theo 
logical and evidential value of the subject . . 1-49 



viii CONTENTS 

CHAPTER II 

SUPERNATURAL MYSTICISM 

PAGES 

Origin of the term Mysticism in the Church In 
Greek philosophy Dionysius Social conditions 
which bring mysticism into prominence Spurious 
mysticism . . . 50-60 

CHAPTER III 

THE NATURE OF MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE 

Mystical experience essentially supernatural Three 
modes of relation of creatures to the Creator 
" Natural " contemplation Passivity Mystical 
cognition and sensation Mystical and ordinary 
religious experience Mystical certitude Mystical 
experience indescribable Necessity of prepara 
tion Gerson Eckhart, Tauler Three stages 
St Teresa Visions and locutions Self-delusion . 61-87 

CHAPTER IV 

THE OBJECT OF MYSTICAL KNOWLEDGE 

Mystical "vision," how to be understood How the 
soul can see God The Beatific Vision Doctrine 
of St Thomas St Paul s visions Transiency of 
mystical state Spiritual marriage The lumen 
gloriae St Augustine s classification Uncer 
tainty of sensible and imaginary impressions as 
compared with intellectual vision All three truly 
supernatural : . .. 88-104 

CHAPTER V 

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF MYSTICISM 

The object of mystical contemplation perceived by a 
natural process, and therefore capable of analysis 
No theory on the subject formulated by mystica 



CONTENTS ix 

PAGES 

writers Three different views, (i) Existence of 
a special mystical faculty. This theory is super 
fluous. (2) That all apparently mystical states are 
merely automatic, and generally of pathological 
origin. This implies the presupposition that 
genuine mysticism is impossible. (3) That mysti 
cal communications really take place, but are 
apprehended by the same psychical process which 
transmits automatic suggestion. This practically 
coincides with the view of ecclesiastical authority 
Difficulty of distinguishing, how caused . . 105-121 

CHAPTER VI 

EVIL 

Affinity of the problem with mysticism The solution 
of mystics often appears unsatisfactory to others 
Evil due to created freewill Independence of the 
Divine will Evil negative Practical character 
of mystical solution compared with the philo 
sophical or theoretical Schopenhauer, Hartmann 
and " Ethical " religions Benefits of mysticism in 
this respect not restricted to mystics . . . 122-135 

CHAPTER VII 

IMMANENCE AND TRANSCENDENCE 

Terms explained Spinoza, Hegel and Mysticism 
The "ground Immanence and transcendence 
not ontologically distinct 136-145 

CHAPTER VIII 
PLOTINUS 

Philosophy and mysticism of Plotinus Two possible 

views of his relation to Christian mysticism . . 146-158 



x CONTENTS 

CHAPTER IX 

HERETICAL MYSTICS 

PAGES 

Distinction clear between true and spurious mysti 
cism " Pragmatic " test, twofold application 
Mysticism, theosophy and theology Intrinsicdis- 
tinction between mystical experience and deduc 
tions from it Doctrines not to be guaranteed by 
mystical origin Necessary features of genuine 
mysticism The Beghards Boehme Sweden- 
borg Quietism Distinction between doctrines 
and mystical experiences equally applied to 
orthodox mystics St Teresa St John of the 
Cross Margaret Mary Alacoque . . .159-176 

CHAPTER X 

MYSTICISM, PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION 

Obstacles to philosophical treatment of mysticism in 
its transcendental aspect Experimental evidence 
of mysticism in support of natural theology 
The object of mysticism beyond the reach of 
explanation per causas Mysticism a form of 
religious experience, but not one guaranteed to 
Christians Its relation to " institutional" religion, 
and to ordinary religious experience as continuous 
with and interpenetrated by it The Imitation 
of Christ Mystical experience perhaps occasion 
ally granted to non-mystics ... . 177-192 

CHAPTER XI 

DIONYSIUS 

History of the Dionysian writings Authorship and 
character Can they be considered forgeries- 
Modern theories, etc. , . 193-206 



CONTENTS xi 

CHAPTER XII 
THE "MYSTICAL THEOLOGY" OF DIONYSIUS THE AREOPAGITE 

CHAP. PAGES 

I. What the Divine Darkness is. 

II. How to be united with, and to give praise 
to Him who is the cause of all things 
and above all. 

HI. What is affirmed of God, and what is 
denied of Him. 

IV. That He who is the supreme cause of all 
sensible things is Himself no part of 
those things. 

V. That He who is the supreme cause of all 
intelligible things is Himself no part of 
those things. 
LETTER 

I. To Caius the Monk The ignorance by 
means of which God is known is above 
sense-knowledge, not below it. 

II. To the Same In what sense God is above 
the principle of divinity. 

V. To Dorotheus the Deacon The divine 

darkness further explained. 207-229 



MYSTICISM : ITS TRUE NATURE 
AND VALUE 

CHAPTER I 

TWO IDEAS OF MYSTICISM 

MYSTICISM, in the wide and somewhat loose 
sense in which the term is commonly used, 
may be considered as the final outcome of a 
congenital desire for knowledge which appears 
in all animate creatures. In children and 
savages, as also in the lower animals, it takes 
the rudimentary form of sensitive curiosity ; 
in more fully developed rational natures it 
becomes the desire to understand the inner 
nature of things, and finally extends itself to 
that obscure region, dimly recognised by all 
men, which lies beyond the sphere of things, 
and of the senses by which things are per 
ceived. But knowledge is of two kinds 



2 MYSTICISM 

abstract and concrete, or experimental and 
theoretical. We know for certain in one way 
that there are coins in the Bank of England, 
but we know that there are similar coins in 
our own pockets in quite another way : in 
the one we have the direct evidence of our 
senses, and in the other the senses indeed 
have their necessary part, but not by way of 
direct contact with the object of our know 
ledge. It is scarcely necessary to remark 
that these two kinds of knowledge go hand 
in hand : the theoretical in the last resort 
depends on the experimental ; and certain as 
we may be of the correctness of our theoreti 
cal knowledge, we are seldom content without 
putting it in practice, when it is in our power 
to do so, and thus proving it by experiment. 
There is, however, a point at which the experi 
mental test ceases to be possible, and that 
point is fixed by the limits of our senses : we 
cannot know anything experimentally which 
is not sensible, or capable of being embodied 
in sensible things, as a mechanical or chemical 
principle is embodied in the substances with 
which experiments are made. But our senses 



TWO IDEAS OF MYSTICISM 3 

take us only a very short distance into the 
nature of things what things are " in them 
selves " on what principle they are what they 
are what is the inward nature of the perpetual 
changes they undergo ; on such questions as 
these we can theorise freely, and can no 
doubt reach some conclusions which we are 
able to regard as absolutely certain. But we 
must be content with theoretical certainty at 
most, since experiment in these matters is out 
of our power. But theory itself founded as 
it necessarily is on experimental knowledge 
must also have a limit, which it reaches when 
it has exhausted the implications of sense 
experience when it has, so to speak, used up 
the raw material of thought supplied by sensa 
tion. We can make no theory about a thing 
we have never seen or with which we have 
never been brought into contact by any of 
the organs of sense. Such a thing is merely 
x\ we must know what x stands for, before 
we can say anything at all about it. Our 
imagination may make it stand for anything 
we please, but what we make it represent 
can only be some sense impression that we 



4 MYSTICISM 

recall from the past, or some idea that we 
have at some time abstracted from our sense 
knowledge. 

Now we obviously reach the limit of 
theoretical knowledge when we come to the 
end (which from another point of view is 
the beginning) of everything. Here we are 
indeed far beyond the bounds of sense : but 
we can go no farther. There may be a great 
deal beyond the end, or before the beginning, 
of what we understand by everything ; but 
we can find out nothing about it for we 
have no means of doing so. We cannot, 
properly speaking, even imagine anything 
about it ; for imagination can only repeat for 
us what we already know ; and that can have 
no place beyond the beginning of all know- 
able things. When we see a stream of water, 
we can be quite certain that it has a source, 
and we may be able to perceive indications of 
the source s nature and immediate surroundings: 
but the stream can tell us nothing of what 
lies beyond its source of the geography of the 
country, the character of the inhabitants, their 
political organisation and the like. All these 



TWO IDEAS OF MYSTICISM 5 

are beyond the beginning of the stream ; we 
can find out what they are only by going there 
and seeing for ourselves, or by getting some 
one who has been there to tell us about them. 
Now the limit of our theoretical knowledge 
in this world is reached when we attain to 
the concept of a First Cause, or the necessary 
being which produces, underlies and upholds 
the contingent and changeable universe ; and 
that cause and necessary being, needless to 
say, is God. We have an absolute theoretical 
certainty of the existence of God, depending 
ultimately on facts of experience ; and we 
have, or may have, many practical evidences 
of His power, wisdom and goodness. More 
over, He has by various means told us things 
about Himself which we could not otherwise 
have known. But direct experimental know 
ledge of Him we have and can have none, 
in the ordinary course of things. We cannot 
see Him, or touch Him, or hear Him. Yet 
the more certain men are of His existence, 
the more conscious they are of His love and 
goodness, and the more deeply their minds 
are penetrated by the idea of His perfection, 



6 MYSTICISM 

the more they inevitably long for some such 
experimental knowledge of Him as, within 
our earthly experience, the senses alone can 
obtain for us. But this, from the nature of 
the case, is impossible ; God is no more to 
be directly apprehended by our senses than 
an idea, a thought or an emotion. 

Is there then no third way by which we may 
not only know but feel the presence of God 
by which all that He is to us may become not 
merely theoretical certainty, but a fact of direct 
experience? Is there, that is to say, any 
means by which, though we cannot bring Him 
down to the world of sense, we may ourselves, 
in virtue of our partially spiritual nature, ascend 
to the spiritual world and there behold Him ? 

It is the desire and the search for such a 
means of approach to God that has produced 
Mysticism or " Mystical Theology," which in 
its general aspect is the experience, real or 
supposed, of actual quasi-physical contact with 
God an experience undoubtedly known in 
reality by many, though by many more it 
has beyond question been merely imagined. 

"Speculative" or Dogmatic Theology is 



TWO IDEAS OF MYSTICISM 7 

like the theory of optics, which tells us what 
the eye is, and how it sees ; mystical theology 
is the sight itself, with all that it involves of 
exercise and training. Speculative theology 
is a science ; mystical theology is an art. 

There are two points of view from which 
this art may be regarded, the natural and 
the supernatural. They do not by any 
means necessarily exclude one another ; each, 
indeed, in point of fact, implies the other. 
But neglect of the supernatural side of 
mysticism has led to an altogether mistaken 
notion of what mysticism has always, until 
very recently, been held to mean ; and it 
must be admitted that forgetfulness of the 
natural side, consisting of the limitations, 
necessities and obligations of humanity, has 
too often been the cause of degenerate and 
extravagant superstition, with its many attend 
ant evils. 

Viewed simply on its natural side, mysti 
cism appears as an attempt, more or less 
successful, to pass through or overleap the 
barrier of material things, and so to enter 
the presence from the sight of which we are 



8 MYSTICISM 

ordinarily excluded by our subjection to the 
senses. There are two ways in which this 
attempt may be and has been made. One 
is by an endeavour to pass beyond the finite 
and sensible world by the concentration upon 
one point of those mental or spiritual forces 
which in every individual man appear to 
belong more to the world of permanent 
reality than to that of transient appearance 
in which our bodily life is spent. The mind 
resolutely casts out all figures and ideas of 
sensible things ; it empties itself, by a power 
ful effort, of all its acquired furniture, and 
strives in its own original nakedness to behold 
the naked reality that exists behind the many- 
coloured vesture of sense. Plotinus, Proclus 
and their disciples, travelling by this difficult 
road, found, or seemed to find, the springs 
of being in the abstract and absolute unity 
which lies behind the ever-expanding variety 
of the created w r orld. But whether in that 
remote and desolate region to which they 
penetrated they found anything which they 
had not brought with them from the world 
of light, colour and warmth which they 



TWO IDEAS OF MYSTICISM 9 

sought to abandon, may be considered doubt 
ful. That they did not is at any rate the 
view of those whose object is the same, but 
who adopt a method the reverse of theirs. 
That method, by some considered the only 
true one, is to look for mystical knowledge 
not beyond, but in the material, intellectual 
and emotional life in which our lot is cast. 
It regards this world as but a small frag 
ment of a much larger whole, and as made 
up of many elements, all of which are not 
discoverable, so at least as to be clearly 
distinguished by either our bodily or our 
intellectual faculties. But every part of it 
is, in this view, connected with and symbolic 
of something infinitely greater than itself. It 
embodies and illustrates the operation of vast 
cosmic laws ; it gives evidence of a divine 
benevolence which reaches further than our 
utmost vision can follow ; it is lit by a ray 
from the sun of perfect beauty that lies 
below the horizon of earthly existence. Thus 
" a man s reach must exceed his grasp " as 
he goes through life ; his mind constructs 
from the " broken arc" of natural experience 



io MYSTICISM 

the " perfect round" of heavenly beatitude; 
in the discords of earth his ear catches 
echoes of celestial harmonies, and the darkest 
places of this world are invested with " clouds 
of glory" for those who thus "see into the 
life of things." 

Thus mysticism has been called "the 
attempt to realise the presence of the living 
God in the soul and in nature, or, more 
generally, the attempt to realise in thought 
and feeling the immanence of the temporal 
in the eternal, and of the eternal in the 
temporal." 1 

No one can dispute the universal right of 
defining terms according to taste and fancy ; 
and those who define or describe mysticism 
in this way have a perfect right to do so. 
But if this is mysticism, then surely we 
ought to have another name for the other 
method the "tremendous journey towards 
the mysterious Isles of Fire, the Icelands of 
abstraction and of love " undertaken by Philo, 
Plotinus or Proclus. 2 

1 W. R. Inge, "Christian Mysticism," Bampton Lectures, 
Lect. I. 

2 Maeterlinck, Ruysbroeck and the Mystics. Introd. 



TWO IDEAS OF MYSTICISM n 

There would seem to be little in common 
between the suggestive and symbolic aspect 
of things in which the world appears as the 
true manifestation of God, and that in which 
the same world is felt to be the one great 
obstacle which conceals the eternal reality 
from the sight. 

But whichever method may be considered 
the right one, mysticism, considered as a 
purely natural phenomenon (i.e., as consisting 
in a peculiar exercise of the natural powers), 
is necessarily limited to the interaction of 
human reason and emotion and those natural 
objects with which reason and emotion are 
concerned; and in which suggestions of 
something supernatural may be more or less 
clearly perceived. Mysticism so understood is 
merely a certain attitude of the mind towards 
its surroundings ; and what it perceives is 
proved, it is thought, to be thereby really 
there. Its outlook may be partial, and its 
ideas consequently one-sided, and the expres 
sion of them may need correction. But it is 
all true, whether as fact or as symbol which 
may, though itself literally untrue, yet be 



12 MYSTICISM 

more true than the literal truth. "The true 
is, for us, the good." 1 All that can be dis 
cerned in the nature which half conceals and 
half reveals the Deity, so far as it is beautiful, 
attractive and ennobling, is in some sense 
true, and in some degree a vision of God. 
Such visions, therefore, as seen by different 
minds and by whatever method, need only 
to be compared, correlated and mutually 
adjusted, in order to form all that from this 
point of view can be rightly called a body 
of Mystical Theology. 

The second view which may be taken of 
the subject as a whole is that of Dionysius, 
and of the long succession of mystics who 
have consciously or unconsciously adopted 
the principles laid down in his Mystical 
Theology. Its basis is a profound con 
viction of the uniqueness and incommuni- 
cability of the Divine nature. However 
exalted creatures may be in nature, and 
however perfect in relation to their place 
and function, there is a chasm between them 
and their Divine Creator which cannot be 
1 Inge, op. tit., Lect. VII. 



TWO IDEAS OF MYSTICISM 13 

closed or bridged even in thought. How 
ever sharply any one form of existence may 
be distinguished from all others, this dis 
tinction cannot even approach the funda 
mental character of the distinction between 
all creatures on the one side and their 
Creator on the other. There cannot even, 
properly speaking, be so near a rapproche 
ment of the two as to make a real distinction 
possible God can be related, in His essence, 
to creatures only by a fiction of the mind : 
they are to His absolute independence and 
self-sufficiency as nothing. But on the other 
hand, God is not separated from Creation by 
time or space by which His being is, indeed, 
not affected in any way. 

All creatures are in a state of immediate de 
pendence upon Him, and it is only in virtue of 
this dependence that they exist. In a certain 
sense, therefore, God is immediately present 
among and in creatures : they are the continual 
offspring of His power and wisdom ; and where 
these are at work, there God in His uncreated 
essence must also be. Consequently, God is 
in a true sense immanent in creation ; He is 



14 MYSTICISM 

not indeed mixed with it, and it is and must 
be the one thing that in His uncreated being 
He cannot resemble ; yet all creation has the 
distant likeness to Him which mere being 
imparts ; and in all its parts reflects, however 
dimly, His wisdom and beauty. Therefore 
that God is may be clearly known from the 
" visible things " of creation. But what God is 
in Himself, no man can know, unless God Him 
self reveals it to him. To see the reflection 
of Divine beauty is one thing : to see God 
is another. For all man s natural knowledge 
comes from creatures, and by way of sensa 
tion : and God is the one being that is not 
a creature, and of whom sensation can directly 
tell us nothing. 

This being so, the only direct, immediate or 
experimental knowledge of God that man can 
attain to must be supernaturally bestowed upon 
him. Naturally, man is enclosed within the 
iron walls of sense and sensible things, through 
which no sound or ray of light can penetrate ; 
their solid metal vibrates, so to speak, and the 
warmth from without is felt in the air they 
enclose. But all is silence and darkness, 



TWO IDEAS OF MYSTICISM 15 

unless the solid barrier is removed by some 
power greater than man s. To supernatural 
mysticism it seems that such power is from 
time to time exerted for man s benefit ; the 
walls of his prison are parted, for a moment 
at least, and he sees something of what lies 
outside. And if any true vision of God has 
ever been obtained by those who have sought 
it through the exertion of their natural powers 
whether negatively, as the Neoplatonist 
ascetics, or positively, as the nature mystics 
and symbolists it has come directly, not from 
the exertion of those powers, but from His 
spontaneous bounty alone. 

Such is the theory of mysticism which 
obtains in the Catholic Church. It does not 
dispute the genuineness or the attractiveness 
of the symbolical view of life, nor does it deny 
the necessity of personal effort as a condition 
(though not the cause) of the supernatural 
vision ; but it holds that merely natural con 
templation is based on association and feeling, 
and is incapable of leading the soul beyond 
the confines of the material world. Natural 
symbolism will make known much of God s 



16 MYSTICISM 

action and of His nature; but it cannot bring 
man face to face with Him. The supernatural 
conception of mysticism, moreover, admits fully 
the existence of a constant need and desire in 
mankind for God, even far beyond the Christian 
pale ; it is also ready to admit, where sufficient 
evidence can be shown, that this desire has 
in any given case received some degree of 
satisfaction in the only way in which such 
satisfaction is possible. God s condescension 
is not to be confined within any narrower 
limits than those He has Himself imposed : 
and there is nothing contrary to possibility in 
the Alexandrian opinion that such a mystical 
knowledge of God had been attained by some 
Neoplatonists as many Christians had failed to 
reach. The one point insisted on is that such 
knowledge is and must be essentially super 
natural ; that is, that it cannot be obtained by 
means of any created thing, or by any effort 
of the human powers, since the thing known 
is itself, in Dionysius words, eVe/ceWa TTCLVTW 
beyond all that man can of himself see or know. 
The first thing that strikes one about these 
two general views of the subject would seem 



TWO IDEAS OF MYSTICISM 17 

to be their quite obvious incompatibility. 
More than one praiseworthy attempt has been 
made to treat them together, as two varieties 
of the same thing. But the only way in which 
this can possibly be done is by taking one 
as the genuine theory of Mysticism, and the 
other as spurious. 

Mysticism might conceivably be either natural 
or supernatural ; it cannot possibly be both. 
If God can be seen or known in and by 
nature, then the supernatural contemplation of 
Him as essentially apart from and above all 
creatures can only be a delusion. For the 
two methods are directly opposed to one 
another ; and two opposite processes cannot 
possibly have an identical result. If, on the 
other hand, the Dionysian method of abstrac 
tion can, by the aid of Divine Grace, enable 
man to transcend created nature and to behold 
the absolute uncreated existence, then the 
method which looks for an intuition of God 
in nature may indeed have a high value as 
poetry or romance, or as a way of appreciating 
the evidence for God s existence ; but it 
cannot, in that case, be mysticism. However 



i8 MYSTICISM 

strongly based on experience, or however 
deeply emotional in its mental reactions, it 
is in the last analysis merely a process of 
inference ; and any appearance it may give 
rise to of intuitive knowledge must be capable 
of analysis into the component parts of an in 
ductive syllogism. "The mystic," it has been 
said, "is the only thorough-going empiricist;" 1 
and indeed, in regard to his transcendental 
intuitions he can be nothing else. In the 
vision claimed by supernatural mysticism 
and there alone the "that" and the "what" 
are identical ; essence and existence are one 
in God, and experimental knowledge of His 
existence must necessarily preclude all dis 
cursive reasoning as to His essence. Hence 
both the certitude of mystics as to the reality 
of their knowledge, and their total incapacity 
to explain it. Thorough empiricism is really 
possible only at the two ends of the scale 
of human experience in mystical contempla 
tion and in sensation. In sensation, as in 
mysticism, empiricism is the only possible 
attitude ; sensations in themselves, and as 

1 Royce, The World and the Individual , vol. i. ch. i. 



TWO IDEAS OF MYSTICISM 19 

they appear grouped in consciousness, are 
complete and immediate ; they cannot be 
explained, idealised or analysed. But the 
moment sensations become the subject of 
thought, pure empiricism is no longer possible; 
sense-experience must depend for its continuity 
upon some kind of ideal constructions ; and 
the poetry and romance of life and nature, 
and even the "Ascensio mentis in Deum per 
scalam rerum creatarum," are no more than 
modes of the mind s perpetual wrestling with 
its environment. It is only when "the wheel 
has come full circle " in the intuition of mysti 
cism that the unquestionable immediacy, finality 
and certainty of sensation are brought back in 
the higher sphere of the intelligence. 

Such, at least, is the contention on behalf 
of supernatural mysticism ; and the only real 
alternative to it is complete surrender of all 
that mysticism has been held to connote. 
For a confused consciousness of the divine or 
the supernatural, as symbolised or suggested 
by certain fragmentary aspects of nature, or 
art, or social existence, is at bottom a per 
fectly different thing from the direct vision of 



20 MYSTICISM 

and intercourse with a divine person. " I talk 
not with thy dreams," supernatural mysticism 
replies to the imaginative outpourings of the 
nature mystic, the philanthropist or the lover. 1 
Beautiful or pathetic or true as those dreams 
may be, they have no other origin than that 
of dreams which are none of those things ; 
and if supernatural mysticism is only another 
kind of dream if its origin can be traced 
to the same turbid stream of mingled experi 
ence and thought well then, there is no such 
thing as true mysticism ; we must revert to 
the opinion of those to whom mysticism was 

1 St John of the Cross brings the two methods into sharp 
contrast. "While created things furnish to the soul traces 
of the Beloved, and exhibit the impress of His beauty and 
magnificence, the love of the soul increases, and consequently 
the pain of His absence ; for the greater the soul s knowledge of 
God, the greater is the desire to see Him, and its pain when it 
cannot ; and while there is no remedy for this pain except in 
the presence of the Beloved, the soul, distrustful of every 
other remedy, prays for the fruition of His presence." It says, 
in effect : " Entertain me no more with any knowledge of Thee or 
with Thy communications or impressions of Thy grandeur, for 
these do but increase my longing and the pain of Thy absence ; 
for Thy presence alone can satisfy my will and desire. The 
will cannot be satisfied with anything less than the vision of 
God, and therefore the soul prays that He may be pleased to 
give Himself to it perfectly in truth, in the consolation of love." 
Spiritual Canticle^ Explanation of Stanza VI. 



TWO IDEAS OF MYSTICISM 21 

only a name for an ignoble kind of self-delu 
sion, and relegate both name and thing to 
the secular lumber - room which has already 
received such outworn mental furniture as 
astrology, alchemy and necromancy. Roman 
ticism will doubtless always hold a certain 
place in human thought and feeling ; for 
whatever new aspects nature and life may 
have in store, there can hardly fail at any 
time to be numbers of men and women 
whose sensibility is more readily awakened 
by the contact of their surroundings than by 
interior reflection. But mysticism is, as we 
have seen, either supernatural or nothing. 
Our enquiry must therefore be directed to 
the conditions which supernatural mysticism 
claims for itself, with the view of deter 
mining whether or not its pretensions have a 
sufficient basis in observable facts to entitle 
to credence those transcendental experiences 
for which we can have no evidence beyond 
the bare word of the mystic himself. We 
shall have therefore to consider whether and 
how far the Dionysian principles are identi 
cal with those which are discernible in the 



12 MYSTICISM 

ordinary course of nature ; whether mystical 
states, as described by those who have ex 
perienced them, are compatible with the 
nature and normal action of the human 
faculties ; and whether those states if we 
find them to rest on a solid theory, and to 
be in harmony with the verified results of 
psychological investigation may or may not 
be adequately accounted for by merely natural 
agency. 

As to these three questions, which will be 
discussed in some detail further on, it will 
be sufficient to note here first, that ordinary 
cognition and reflection require as their 
starting - point some contact with external 
matter (what such contact, externality and 
matter may be in themselves we need not, 
for our present purpose, enquire) by means 
of which the mind may form ideas, to be 
subsequently dealt with by way of reflection. 
Consequently, ideas or thoughts which are 
not related in this manner and degree to 
external material things are simply incon 
ceivable in the natural order : and if it is 
granted that the mind may by any means so 



TWO IDEAS OF MYSTICISM 23 

abstract itself from the external world that 
it has no image of any external thing before 
it, either directly as a " phantasm," or in 
directly as an abstract idea formed on a basis 
of sense-experience, then, naturally speaking, 
it has nothing before it but an absolute blank. 
But this is precisely the condition in which 
the mind is conceived by supernatural mystics 
to be during the time generally a very 
brief one of contemplation. So far as the 
natural world and all images derived from it 
are concerned, there is nothing but a blank. 
But the void is filled by the divine presence, 
and by supernatural agency. We are not, 
however, led to suppose by anything mystical 
writers tell us that the state of mere negative 
abstraction ever actually exists. 1 One may 
well doubt whether it is possible that it should ; 

1 Cf. Schopenhauer. " If something is none of all the things 
we know, it is certainly for us, speaking generally, nothing. 
But it does not follow from this that it is absolutely nothing, 
that from every possible point of view and in every possible 
sense it must be nothing, but only that we are limited to a 
completely negative knowledge of it, which may very well lie 
in the limitations of our point of view. Now it is just here that 
mysticism proceeds positively, and therefore it is just from this 
point that nothing but mysticism remains." World as Will 
and Idea^ iv. 48. 



*4 MYSTICISM 

and certainly the mystic does not suppose 
himself to create a mental blank, which, after 
being so created, is supernaturally filled. On 
the contrary, the fundamental notion of the 
mystical state is " Rapture" the mind does 
not extricate itself, but is taken out of its 
normal relations with the external world by 
that very presence and influence which supplies 
their place. The mystical knowledge of God 
is, in regard to all natural knowledge and 
light, merely " Ignorance" and " Darkness"; 
and this is the only condition under which 
such knowledge could conceivably be imparted. 
The soul, as it were, looks over the extreme 
edge of the phenomenal world, and has no 
use whatever for anything belonging to that 
world : if it had any, it could not really be 
at the edge, but would be the subject of a 
delusion. Mystical knowledge, therefore, in 
no way contradicts the principles which appear 
necessarily to govern the ordinary cognition 
of human beings ; it does not even imply 
emancipation from them, it merely transfers 
them to another sphere. 

But a word must be said as to the nature 



TWO IDEAS OF MYSTICISM 25 

of this sphere. It is, of course, what is 
commonly called the supernatural : and the 
supernatural sphere is conceived unquestion 
ably by the mystic as distinct from and ex 
cluding the natural. The supernatural begins 
where the natural ends. If this is denied, 
then of course there is an end of super 
natural mysticism as a genuine thing and, 
by consequence, as we have seen, of any 
thing whatever that can be clearly connoted 
by the term. Mr Inge, indeed, in his other 
wise admirable Bampton Lectures, strongly 
opposes this theory ; on what grounds it is 
not easy to see. He, with other modern 
upholders of mysticism, in the sense in which 
it is understood by them, regards the pheno 
menal world interpreted by reason as a true 
manifestation of the divine ideas and nature ; 
it is the imperfection of human reason, caused 
by sin and ignorance, that prevents men in 
general from " seeing the world as God sees 
it" as, in fact, it really exists in the mind of 
God and as being spiritual in its nature, by 
reason of its creation by His thought and will. 
We may pass over the latent Spinozism of 



26 MYSTICISM 

these and similar phrases, which, taken literally, 
would seem to identify spirit and matter, the 
created universe and God. The point where 
this theory manifestly falls short of true 
mysticism is that it takes something created, 
no matter what, for its final object. Super 
natural mysticism, as we have said already, 
has no objection to offer to the notion that 
something of the nature and will of God can 
be discerned in all created things, that He 
is truly reflected in them, and that this 
reflection can be distinguished with increasing 
clearness as we draw near to the perfect 
human state. 1 All this is as true from the 
point of view of supernatural myticism as 
from that of its rival. 

But " realisation in thought and feeling " is 
not experimental knowledge of God : thought 
and feeling may perceive quod est that 
He exists, in the plenitude of the divine 
attributes ; but they cannot see quid est 
what He is in His own absolute being. At 
most, natural mysticism is a true vision of 
creation : what supernatural mysticism claims 

1 Cf. Sitmma, i. 2. i. i. and 2. c. : also r. 12. 6. c. 



TWO IDEAS OF MYSTICISM 27 

to be is the vision of the Creator. The two 
views, so far from being mutually exclusive, 
are mutually complementary : the error lies 
in denial of the possibility of the supernatural 
knowledge, not in assertion of the natural. 
Moreover, there is really no difference of 
principle or method between the two ; the 
difference is in the object at which each, in 
point of fact, aims. For there is, after all, 
only one way in which the being of God 
can be inferred from visible things ; and that 
is the Via Remotionis the negative road 
which "nature mystics" depreciate as at most 
insufficient for its assumed purpose. What 
ever is known by the senses can, indeed, or 
perhaps even must suggest a train of reason 
ing, conscious or subconscious, which ends in 
the concept of a spiritual and personal reality 
underlying the manifestations of nature. But 
this can only be attained by abstracting from 
the impressions which furnish the suggestion ; 
the concept itself is formed by the reason, 
though it is more or less confused, and reaches 
up to a sphere which neither reason nor sense 
can enter. But it is not intuitive or empirical ; 



28 MYSTICISM 

it is an idea evolved or constructed by a 
rational process which in no way differs from 
other rational processes : it is not an illumi 
nation from without. In other words, it is 
no more mystical than our thoughts about any 
matter of ordinary business or domestic economy, 
from which it differs only in its subject-matter. 

Take, for example, the elevated emotions 
produced by the contemplation of the magni 
ficent panorama of sunset. What we see is 
a shifting arrangement of colours blue, red, 
purple and green. What we extract from it 
is a particular sense of beauty, and thence, by 
association of ideas, a confused concept of all 
the beautiful things in the world. 

From this it is easy and natural to pass to 
thoughts of the mysteriously elusive principle 
of beauty, of the source of that principle and 
of the creation in which it is embodied, and, 
lastly, of the nature of that source, and of the 
absolute moral and spiritual beauty to which 
its works testify. But this train of thought is 
in reality a train of negations. We practically 
consider that beauty is not essentially of any 
colour it is a principle not embodied in any 



TWO IDEAS OF MYSTICISM 29 

one form it cannot be self-caused, but must 
have a source outside itself. This source 
indeed is God ; but He is not beautiful in the 
same way as the sunset He is not blue or 
red or green, nor is His beauty dependent on 
any material constitution. But He is that 
incomprehensible reality which gives beauty 
to the colours of the sunset, and to all the 
good and beautiful things, of whatever kind, 
in the universe : He is not any one of those 
things, nor yet all of them together, but He 
contains in Himself the principle of them all : 
they are all, as scholastics say, eminenter in 
Him. 

When we have reached this point we have 
got rid of everything that our senses tell us 
of, and have erected for our contemplation a 
purely abstract conception, upon which the 
lights of sunset still seem to play, and which 
therefore retains something of their charm so 
long as the impression lasts, but in itself is 
stripped of every image that in this world 
we know as beautiful. 1 The solemn and pious 
or romantic feelings which a brilliant sunset 
1 Cf. Illingworth, Divine Immanence, ch, iii. 



30 MYSTICISM 

calls into being are based on an inference 
of a nature in no respect differing from that 
of Paley s inference of a watchmaker from a 
watch. Natural mysticism is concerned with 
ideas and theories, not with actual experi 
ences. Its method is identical with the Via 
Remotionis of speculative theology, of which 
the mystical or practical parallel is the with 
drawal of the intelligence, under divine guid 
ance, from the contemplation of any sensible 
image whatever, and its illumination, not by 
an abstract idea, but by an actual presence. 

Secondly, it should be observed that the 
mode in which this illumination takes place is 
not to be considered abnormal in itself, though 
it obviously depends on abnormal conditions. 

The mental faculties act, or may act, in the 
ordinary way. The difference between the 
mystical and the merely natural states lies, as 
we have seen, in the object of the faculties, 
not, so far as can be judged, in their mode 
of action. The reason and intelligence under 
ordinary circumstances work upon a basis of 
sensation ; the reactions of the mind depend 
ultimately upon the cumulative reactions of 



TWO IDEAS OF MYSTICISM 31 

the body ; or, in other words, the mind can 
only act upon material furnished originally by 
the senses. In mystical states this material 
groundwork is, of course, absent, and in that 
fact lies their supernatural character. The 
place of the material is supplied by the presence 
and action of supernatural divine agency, but 
the mental and bodily reactions certainly need 
not differ essentially in character from those 
ordinarily set up by sensation. It would be 
perfectly true to say that the mind, or soul, 
can only act in one way ; and that consequently 
any theory which requires that it should act 
in a different way is thereby made absolutely 
incredible. For such a theory would imply a 
self-contradiction, which is the one absolutely 
incredible thing. It would be like saying that 
one sees a sound, or hears an odour. If the 
soul were to act as a mere passive receptacle, 
and yet be conscious of that which it received, 
it would be an unmeaning contradiction of 
itself, such as could not possibly exist or be 
conceived. Consciousness is active ; the mind 
can no more be a mere unresponsive receptacle 
than the body can experience sensation with- 



32 MYSTICISM 

out being itself alive and active. The fact of 
consciousness necessarily implies the normal 
mental activity of the subject, with all the 
physical concomitants necessary to it. But 
the connection between consciousness and 
sensation the mode in which one is trans 
ferred to the other is still very obscure and 
the subject of many divergent theories : at any 
rate, there appears to be nothing impossible, 
or even irregular, in the idea that conscious 
ness and intelligence may follow their normal 
course on a basis of supersensible ideas, pre 
sented to them, not by means of sense, but by 
supernatural and divine interposition. 

If we can be conscious of the presence of 
a spiritual being by means of an inference from 
the sensations excited by his bodily presence, 
as we are conscious in our friend s presence 
of a spiritual personality inferred from sensible 
evidences, then it is at least quite conceivable 
that God may cause Himself to be apprehended 
as immediately present merely by stimulating 
the consciousness in the same way in which it 
is ordinarily stimulated by the idea (the species 
intelligibilis) abstracted from sense-impressions, 



TWO IDEAS OF MYSTICISM 33 

which in this case may be given ready made 
instead of being constructed by the intellect. 1 
There is equally, of course, no a priori impossi 
bility in such communications being made by 
agencies other than divine, and it is difficult to 
see why any one who believes in the existence 
of created spiritual personalities other than 
human should regard them as being incapable 
under any circumstances of exercising direct 
influence upon mankind. All stories of angelic 
visitations, or of diabolical possession, may not 
be true ; and writers such as Gorres, Schram 
and Ribet may be over-systematic and over- 
minute in dealing with this subject. But there 
can be no a priori reason for dismissing it as 
merely superstitious. 

Of the visions and locutions, " imaginary " 
or " intellectual," by means of which mystical 
communications have not infrequently been 
conveyed, there is no need to speak here. 

1 Cf. Bergson, Matiere et Memoire, p. 33 : " Que la 
mature puisse etre. perc,u sans le concours d un systeme 
nerveux, sans organes de sens, cela n est pas theoriquement 
inconcevable." If this abstract direct perceptibility of matter 
by the soul be conceded, it would seem to follow a fortiori that 
the soul may perceive that which is immaterial, like the soul 
itself, without any intermediate sensation. 



34 MYSTICISM 

They are not essential to mystical experi 
ence, and are held by mystical authorities 
to be of quite secondary importance at best. 
It is plain that the mode of communication 
we have been considering is quite capable of 
strongly affecting the imagination, and may do 
so either by creating fresh imaginary figures, 
or by recalling past impressions derived from 
such things as pictures and statues. Some 
of the visions of St Teresa, Julian of Norwich, 
Anne Catherine Emmerich and many others 
are frankly admitted to be of the latter 
kind. 

Thirdly, the phenomena of mystical con 
templation cannot be considered capable of 
explanation by any theory which excludes the 
supernatural. Two such theories have been 
suggested. The apparently infused super 
natural object of contemplation has been 
thought to be merely an image drawn by 
the normal process of the understanding from 
past conscious experience ; the supposed divine 
illumination is held to be, in fact, the result 
of self-delusion. Again, there are certain 
resemblances between mystical states and 



TWO IDEAS OF MYSTICISM 35 

those induced by diseased conditions or drugs, 
which have suggested the theory that mystical 
states are really pathological, and are only 
abnormal in that sense. But in spite of such 
obvious resemblances as might naturally be 
expected to occur in all abnormal conditions 
of individual organisms of the same species, 
there are marked differences which absolutely 
preclude the possibility of explaining mystical 
conditions in any of these ways. 

First, there is in these states (apart from 
the occurrence of visions) no figure or image 
whatever, such as necessarily occurs in any 
natural process of reasoning or imagination. 
Recorded mystical experiences, various as 
they are in type, uniformly fail to connect 
themselves with any preceding thought or 
experience of a natural kind. The assertion, 
frequently made, that they must be so con 
nected is nothing but an arbitrary assumption ; 
the evidence is all the other way. Then the 
visions or hallucinations proceeding from a 
drugged or otherwise pathological condition 
are characterised, as it seems, invariably, by 
monstrous or grotesque visual appearances, or 



36 MYSTICISM 

by strange physical sensations which, though 
in some persons they have apparently exer 
cised some power of spiritual suggestion, 
belong distinctly to the order of natural 
dreams : their physical origin is manifest, 
though its precise locality is, naturally, not 
always ascertainable. 1 Moreover, mystics have 
always been remarkable for sanity and placidity 
even when invalids ; the neurotic temperament 
which belongs to pathological states of con 
sciousness is conspicuously rare, even if not 
entirely absent among them. Such a tempera 
ment can hardly be thought compatible with 
the "straightforwardness, simplicity and daunt 
less courage " of St Teresa, or the " tremendous 
moral force " of St John of the Cross, 2 or with 
the energetic activity and the tender human 
sympathy of St Catherine of Siena. More 
over, it is worth noticing in this connection 
that for the practical purposes of canonisation 
and beatification a clearly recognisable dis 
tinction is and has always been perceived 
by ecclesiastical authority depending more 

1 See the instances given by James, Varieties of Religious 
Experience (Mysticism}. 

8 Inge, "Christian Mysticism," Lect. VI. 



TWO IDEAS OF MYSTICISM 37 

on common sense than on any psychological 
theory between experiences which may be 
classed as pathological, and those which must 
be considered supernatural. 1 

On the whole, therefore, it seems hardly too 
much to say that none of the proposed explana 
tions would have any weight whatever, apart 
from the reluctance to admit the existence and 
possibility of supernatural experience which, 
by a natural swing of the pendulum, has 
superseded in our day the former too great 
readiness to seek a supernatural cause for 
any uncommon event. 

But, it may be said, what does all this 
matter ? The subject can be of direct interest 
only to those who have, or believe themselves 
to have, mystical experience of the supernatural 
kind : and they are very few in number even 
if any of them are still extant. Moreover, 
mysticism, in that sense, is not part of the 
Christian religion ; it is quite possible to be 
not merely a good Christian, but even a saint, 
without so much as knowing anything about 
the matter. Why not leave it to those, if 

1 See Benedict XIV. De Canonis. 



38 MYSTICISM 

any there are, who are the subjects of these 
abnormal experiences, and whose conviction 
as to the nature of them is already unshake- 
able, and to those experts who from time to 
time may have to form a judgment about 
them ? For the ordinary run of people there 
can be no use in considering a subject which 
in no way concerns either their faith or their 
duty. Now it is quite true that comparatively 
few are called to supernatural contemplation ; 
it is equally true that neither the faith nor the 
practical duty of Christians in general can in 
any way depend on " private revelations" or 
on mystical knowledge of any kind. Never 
theless, the subject has a distinct interest and 
importance of its own for all who desire to 
form a clear and correct judgment as to 
the true attitude of the Catholic Church in 
regard to human life in general, or who 
wish to appreciate fully the whole range of 
the evidence to be adduced in favour of her 
claims. For on the one hand, since mysticism 
is a constant feature - - though not equally 
prominent at all times of Christian life, it 
cannot rightly be neglected by any who 



TWO IDEAS OF MYSTICISM 39 

wish to form a just estimate of the character 
of that life as a whole ; and on the other 
hand, mysticism has a distinct evidential value 
whether considered in itself or in its relation 
to other factors of the Catholic system, which 
is by no means confined to those who have 
experimental knowledge of it. I will try to 
establish these two points. 

i. Christianity, as fully represented and 
embodied in the Catholic Church, appeals to 
human nature as a whole, not to any part or 
aspect of it. That is to say, the Church 
deals with human nature in its completeness, 
apart from all individual, national or racial 
characteristics. It is therefore necessary that 
every factor in that nature should find itself 
recognised, and a place provided for it, with 
appropriate guidance and discipline, in due 
relation and harmony with all else that goes 
to make up humanity, in the system of 
the Church. In this sense the Church has 
affinities with all forms of religion and philo 
sophy ; for in each of them some modicum 
at least of truth is to be found, which, if the 
Church is truly what she represents herself 



40 MYSTICISM 

to be, will be acknowledged and co-ordinated 
with other truths in the complete body of 
her doctrine. Error, even in its extremest 
forms, is not "a lie that is all a lie"- it is 
truth torn from its natural place in the scheme 
of things, and so seen in false perspective ; 
truth is only true when seen in its due relation 
to the whole. Men are misled, not by that 
which does not exist a thing we may well 
believe to be impossible but by following 
that which is true without regard to its com 
plementary truths. This fact is nowhere so 
evident as in the case of mysticism, which, 
like liberty, has given the shelter of its name 
to almost every conceivable aberration of 
moral conduct. The desire for God, pursued 
often by the most extravagant methods and 
disguised under the most unlikely pretexts, is 
the real motive-power of all human activity 
whatsoever. Mysticism, on its purely human 
side, is one road by which men seek for the 
heart s rest which all, even in spite of them 
selves, desire. Whether within or without the 
Church men will strive to see God, because 
they must ; the methods they adopt may be 




TWO IDEAS OF MYSTICISM 41 

determined by varying temperaments or cir 
cumstances, but among them has always been 
and must always be the " inner way " the 
way of abstraction and contemplation, the 
effort to pass beyond the many-coloured dome 
of life into the " white radiance" of true reality 
beyond it. 

Now if the Church had nothing to say to 
this deeply rooted and constantly manifest 
human desire, she would surely fall far short 
of the place that she claims, and has held 
successfully from the first. Still more, if, like 
some, she had condemned, as merely pre 
sumptuous and delusive, the efforts of mankind 
to realise in some faint degree now the very 
life which she promises hereafter, she would 
have come perilously near to denying her own 
authority and commission. She would have 
said in effect to mankind, You are made for 
God ; you are to look forward to the super 
natural enjoyment of Him in Eternity, and 
there is no limit to the favours which He can 
and may bestow on you here and now. But 
one thing you may not have, one thing He 
shall not do for you and that the one which 



42 MYSTICISM 

you most desire you shall not have the 
briefest or slightest foretaste here of the 
blessedness that is to be yours hereafter ; God 
Himself, though He may do miracles of all 
sorts but this, shall not pierce the crust of 
material things which hides Him from you, or 
show you the faintest spark of the radiance 
that lies beyond it -- " d efense a Dieu de 
faire miracles en ce lieu." But the Church has 
never done anything of the kind. Mystical 
knowledge has always been fully recognised by 
her as possible, and as existing whether in 
the Hebrew prophets, the Apostles of Christ, 
or the contemplatives of successive ages since 
their day. Even for mystics, as such, with 
out her pale she has had no condemnation ; 
she has condemned their misbelief, but has 
kept silence about their mysticism ; and in 
her theology and philosophy the phenomena of 
mysticism have been dealt with and explained 
in accordance with the methods which were 
applied to all other phases of human experi 
ence. Not only a professed mystic like 
Dionysius, but a Clement, an Augustine, a 
Thomas Aquinas, has each had his word to 



TWO IDEAS OF MYSTICISM 43 

say and his ray, more or less brilliant, of light 
to contribute to the sum total of the Church s 
wisdom, ever growing with the increasing ex 
perience of the human race. The aspirations 
of man towards immediate knowledge of God 
and union with Him are therefore recognised 
and adopted by the Church as a true part of 
that multifarious human energy which it is 
her function to direct, regulate and enlighten. 
Such aspirations are to find full satisfaction 
hereafter for those who are willing to be 
guided in their exercise ; they are partially to 
be satisfied here, in a certain degree by the 
" natural " contemplation which is the common 
right of all Christians, and in a fuller measure, 
and after a higher and more perfect manner, 
in the supernatural contemplation which is the 
privilege of comparatively few. Thus the 
truth that underlies in different ways and 
degrees the mystical theories and ascetic 
practices of Neoplatonist, Gnostic or Buddhist, 
Parsee or Mohammedan, is cleared from its 
surroundings of mythological or theosophical 
imagination and set in its place in the harmony 
of truths which are made known by nature and 



44 MYSTICISM 

by revelation, and preserved in the dogmatic 
structure of the Church s faith. 

What scholastic philosophy has done for 
mysticism is to make clear the distinction 
between its natural and supernatural parts. 
St Augustine, no less than Dionysius, did 
indeed call attention to the necessarily super 
natural character of any direct contemplation 
of the divine nature, but it was St Thomas 
whose analysis of the nature of the intellectual 
faculties in man made clear the reason why 
this must be so. Man s way of knowledge is 
inextricably involved with his bodily organism, 
since body and soul are not two substances 
but one. Consequently, immediate knowledge 
of that which is purely spiritual or immaterial 
cannot come to him by any exercise of his 
natural powers, but only by a " rapture " or 
"ecstasy" in which he is made to transcend 
his own present nature, and for a moment to 
enjoy the beatitude habitual to those who have 
attained the goal of their desires in the eternal 
vision of God. No instance of the way in 
which the magisterium of the Church has dealt 
with the impulses and feelings of humanity is 



TWO IDEAS OF MYSTICISM 45 

clearer or more illuminating than this : or 
more plainly illustrates the co-ordination and 
mutual support of the truths of nature and 
grace in that comprehensive view of man s 
nature which is possible only to an organisa 
tion which, as being both fully human and at 
the same time truly divine, is able to maintain 
a perfect balance between the natural and the 
supernatural. 

It is therefore plain that mystical theology is 
not the least precious of the Church s treasures. 
It resembles the way of life technically called 
religious in its relation to the general life of 
the faithful : it belongs not indeed to the 
esse, but to the bene esse of the Church- 
it is necessary not to its existence, but to its 
integrity. The mere existence of the religious 
life, in its various forms, is undoubtedly a 
source of joy and consolation and a moral 
support to countless persons who are very 
far from having a " vocation " themselves. In 
the same way, the recognition of the life of 
mystical contemplation is an encouragement 
and happiness to many who (like the present 
writer) know nothing of it by personal experi- 



46 MYSTICISM 

ence : and it can hardly be doubted that its 
value in this respect would be more widely 
and deeply appreciated if its nature were 
better understood than it is. It completes the 
circle of the Church s adaptation to human 
needs, and brings together in the unity of a 
divinely human institution every temperament, 
as well as every class, occupation and moral 
character ; and is in this aspect an important 
factor in that kind of moral evidence of the 
justice of the Church s claims which is supplied 
by the practical services she has rendered, and 
is daily rendering, to humanity in general. 

2. The direct evidential value, as distinct 
from this indirect testimony of the Church s 
mystical theology, arises from its experimental 
character, as contrasted with the theoretical 
nature of " speculative " theology. The 
symmetry and completeness of the body of 
Catholic doctrine is admitted on all hands ; it 
is even said by some to be too complete and 
perfect to have any real bearing on a state 
of things so fragmentary and unsystematic as 
that of the world in which we have to live. 

The question is, Is it really true? And to 



TWO IDEAS OF MYSTICISM 47 

this question the answer is often given that 
nobody knows, because it cannot be sub 
mitted to any practical test. The complaint 
is, indeed, an unjust one, even on its own 
grounds. For the consistency of Catholic 
doctrine not merely with itself (though even 
that is something), but with other depart 
ments of knowledge, in which fresh forms of 
truth are continually emerging, really con 
stitutes a practical test of the most stringent 
kind, and one which has been constantly 
repeated under ever - varying conditions from 
the first. But this is not a test of the kind 
which leaps to the eyes ; it does not impress 
by any external signs, or arrest the attention 
of the careless and uninterested. It needs to 
be pondered and considered in the light of a 
degree of knowledge which is not universally 
possessed before its full significance can be 
appreciated. But the experience of the mystic 
is of quite a different character ; though its 
testimony is perhaps less weighty in reality 
than that of the failure of twenty centuries of 
discovery to shake the credibility of revelation, 
it is more easily recognised and appeals to a 



48 MYSTICISM 

different and less purely rational order of in 
telligence. Mystics are, in fact, to the religion 
of the multitude very much what the pioneers 
of natural science are to the popular interest in 
that subject. The mystics are the experi 
mentalists of religion. We cannot all be 
Newtons or Faradays or Huxleys ; but our 
outlook on life is wider, and our apprecia 
tion of the wonders of nature is deeper for 
researches, of the nature and truth of which 
our knowledge may be somewhat vague and 
imperfect. So, though few indeed may have 
the gift or the merits of the great mystics, 
what they have seen is an assurance for all 
of the reality of the invisible universe, and 
of the truth of those experiences by which 
all, whether mystics or not, are enabled in 
some degree to share with them the know 
ledge and the enjoyment of divine things. 
For this purpose it is necessary indeed that 
the accounts given by mystics of their ex 
periences should be as credible, at least, as 
those which scientific experts give of their 
researches. But that this is really the case 
no one who will give unprejudiced considera- 



TWO IDEAS OF MYSTICISM 49 

tion to the question can seriously doubt. It is 
most unfortunate that the only two English 
authors who have dealt specifically with this 
aspect of the subject should have written under 
the influence of a parti pris which, notwith 
standing the erudition and acumen displayed 
by them, has deprived their judgment of all 
value. 



CHAPTER II 

SUPERNATURAL MYSTICISM 

MYSTICISM has often been described, but seldom 
defined ; and the definitions have not always 
been satisfactory. Yet in order to have any 
clear understanding of what is meant by a 
word used in so many different senses, it is 
very necessary to begin with a definition of 
the precise idea which it originally connoted, 
and which underlies and forms the connecting 
link among its various applications. Etymo- 
logically, mystics are those who have been 
initiated into the mysteries or esoteric rites 
of Greek religion ; the /uLvarrai, ^e^v^evoi, or 
fully instructed persons who were privileged 
to take part in the ceremonies periodically 
performed in honour of a god, from par 
ticipation in which the general public was 
excluded. Any one or anything belonging 

50 



SUPERNATURAL MYSTICISM 51 

to the celebration of these sacred rites was 
Mystic " even to the " Mystica vannus 
lacchi " of Virgil ; and the two prominent 
ideas connected with the word were conse 
quently first, special knowledge obtained by 
instruction (t*vew), and secondly, an obliga 
tion or other necessity of secrecy in regard 
to it (wo). 1 The mystics are, in fact, the 
inner circle of the devotees of any cult ; they 
are possessed of knowledge which partakes 
of the nature of revelation rather than of 
acquired science, and which is imparted in 
consideration of some special aptitude, natural 
or acquired, such as is not found in the general 
run of mankind. It is further implied that the 
knowledge is of a transcendental kind, such 
as may be supposed to be necessary for the 
devout worship of a divine being ; this, how 
ever, though obviously part of the original 
meaning of the term, is not always signified 
in its later uses. But the one idea common 
to all uses is that of special knowledge con 
fined to a corps d dlite of persons with a peculiar 

1 "Mysticum interpretatur absconditum," Gerson, Myst. 
Theol.) i. 



52 MYSTMCISM 

aptitude for its acquisition. Thus the early 
Christian Church conceived itself to hold the 
position of a body of mystics with regard to 
mankind in general : its members were the 
depositaries of a revelation (Arcanum) not, 
at least in all points, accessible to the outside 
world; they were initiated by the "illumin 
ating " rite of baptism, and thereby admitted 
to participation in the other sacraments, or 
mysteries, of the Christian religion. Thus 
St Paul (Phil. iv. 12) speaks of himself as 
fjLfjLvtjfjLvog ; and in the Greek liturgies the 
priest is directed to say the " secret" prayers 
lULva-TiKw? in silence. Hence, in later times, 
any art or handicraft which made use of 
traditional methods came to be known as a 
"Mystery." Its secrets were imparted to the 
novice at or after his initiation into the guild 
or company by which it was carried on, and 
under which he had served an apprenticeship : 
such "arts and mysteries" are still professed, 
though not always practised, by the guilds 
which have survived to the present day. 

But in the Church there has always been 
a circle within a circle ; within the body of 



SUPERNATURAL MYSTICISM 53 

the initiated a body of those who have under 
gone a further initiation ; among the instructed 
some favoured ones who have received fuller 
instruction. 1 And whereas initiation into the 
Christian community has been entrusted by 
divine authority to the Church itself, the 
further illumination of the selected is received 
directly from God. Hence has arisen by a 
natural transference the popular application 
of the term to any view or conception of the 
transcendental or the unseen, to anything 
" vague, vast and sentimental " ; and hence 
again the note of condemnation or contempt 
which was attached in England to the idea 
of mysticism, as it was to its distant rela 
tion "enthusiasm," during the century ended 
some fifty years ago a " mystic" during that 
period being considered much the same thing 
as a visionary or a sentimentalist. The word 
has since then recovered from its temporary 

1 Cf. Harnack, Mission and Expansion of Christianity , vol. i. 
p. 237. Christianity gained special weight from the fact that, 
in the first place, it had mysterious secrets of its own, which it 
sought to fathom only to adore them once again in silence ; and 
secondly, that it preached to the perfect in another and a deeper 
sense than it did to simple folk. 



54 MYSTICISM 

degradation ; and though it is still used some 
what loosely, it no longer carries any burden 
of offensiveness. The laxity of use from which 
it still suffers consists in the emphasising of 
one part of its full connotation to the practical 
exclusion of the other : any knowledge or 
experience, real or imaginary, which is beyond 
the scope of ordinary sense-experience, is apt 
to be called mystical. But such knowledge 
is not mystical in the proper or strict sense, 
unless it is held also to be imparted, and not 
acquired by the independent exercise of the 
natural powers. It would, of course, be absurd 
to contend that the conventional meaning of 
a word, in many cases an enrichment rather 
than a perversion, has not at least as good 
a claim to acceptance as its etymological one. 
But where, as in this case, the conventional 
uses of the word have obscured the nature 
of the thing for which it originally stood, it 
is necessary to determine the sense in which 
the word is to be used in the discussion of 
the thing. 

The name was first applied in the sense in 
which we have now defined it by Dionysius 



SUPERNATURAL MYSTICISM 55 

whoever the author known under that name 
may have been. The thing, however, was 
undoubtedly known and recognised in the 
Church from the beginning. The apostles 
were certainly mystics in the fullest sense ; 
and the mystical tendencies of sub-apostolic 
times are evidenced and fairly represented by 
the " Shepherd" of Hermas, and the writings 
and authentic acts of many of the early 
martyrs. The self-chosen title of St Ignatius, 
&-000/00?, the God-bearer, implies a claim to 
the possession of mystical experience of the 
most far-reaching kind. But mysticism or 
at least the temperament which seeks know 
ledge by means of illumination rather than 
discursive reasoning belongs essentially to 
human nature, and appears, under one form 
or another, wherever thought is free. 

Thus, to leave the Eastern theosophy out of 
account, a mystical element appears, in greater 
or less degree, in all Greek philosophy, if the 
mere negations of Pyrrhonism may be excepted. 
Before Socrates, Greek philosophers were 
seers rather than reasoners : the apophtheg- 
matic character of their utterances affects to 



56 MYSTICISM 

be the result rather of intuition than of reason 
ing : and the dialectic of Plato, and even the 
logical precision of Aristotle, led in the end, 
theoretically at least, to that pure contem 
plation in which alone Aristotle conceived 
that beatitude consists. In the later Platonic 
schools mysticism tended more and more to 
replace discursive reasoning ; contemplation 
rather than reasoned knowledge became more 
and more definitely the object of philosophy, 
and ascetic self-discipline appeared a surer way 
than argument to attain this end. Plotinus 
(whom M. Maeterlinck calls "the one analyti 
cal mystic "), and Proclus after him, present 
the doctrines of later Neoplatonism in a sys 
tematic form, and are free from the magical 
and theurgic extravagances into which it 
degenerated in other hands. 

The two streams of Christian and Platonic 
mysticism flowed together at Alexandria, 
where Philo had already grafted the flower 
of Neoplatonic mysticism upon the stock of 
Judaic theism. Together they produced a 
school of religious philosophy in which 
Christian faith sought, with more or less 



SUPERNATURAL MYSTICISM 57 

success, to ally itself with the dialectic of 
Platonism, on the one hand, and on the 
other with the quest for direct illumination 
that characterised the later development of 
the Platonic schools. The mystical theology 
of Dionysius represents, on the whole, the 
permanent results of this combination. In 
this treatise we have a kind of grammar 
of mysticism in which principles alone are 
formulated, disengaged alike from the experi 
ence and argumentation through which they 
had been evolved, and awaiting the fuller 
clothing of concrete personal experience subse 
quently imparted to them by later mystical 
writers. Though received at first with sus 
picion, the writings of Dionysius soon attained 
a position of authority not less commanding 
in its day than that of St Thomas in later 
times. We could scarcely have had either 
the Sentences or the Summa without them ; 
and their echoes may be heard, even when, 
as is not often the case, their direct influence 
may not be detected, in every mystical writer 
since the time of their appearance. 

It is probably a mistake to look for any 



58 MYSTICISM 

direct filiation, or continuity of historical suc 
cession, among the mystical writers of suc 
cessive ages and periods. Here, as elsewhere, 
it can scarcely be doubted that the most 
important part of history is that which has 
never been written. Mystical teachers and 
writers were forced into prominence by circum 
stances ; but it is more than probable that 
circumstances had no influence on the general 
craving for knowledge of the unseen and 
abiding reality which underlies the endless 
vicissitudes of human life, as they could 
have none upon the sources from which that 
need is supplied. Such circumstances were 
the ceaseless wars which " made Europe one 
vast camp " in the fourteenth and fifteenth 
centuries, and the intellectual and moral 
upheavals of the age of the Renaissance 
and the Reformation ; and in our own day 
the breaking up of old traditions and institu 
tions, and the birth of new principles, ideas 
and customs the forerunners, as it would 
seem, of a new order of things the character 
of which no man can yet forecast. In such 
times, when the instability of human things, 



SUPERNATURAL MYSTICISM 59 

or the feebleness of human reason, is forced 
with special insistence upon men s notice, 
the teaching of the mystic has an attractive 
force which in quieter periods it seems to 
lack; and it is at such times that a Gerson, 
a Tauler, a Ruysbroeck or a Teresa is 
moved to tell of the " inner way" in which 
true peace of mind may be found amid 
the illusion, instability and restlessness of 
outward life. But it can hardly be doubted 
that in all times alike there are countless 
elect souls to whom mystical knowledge is 
as the air they breathe, but who are more 
than content to be "mute and inglorious" 
to the end of their days. 

It would have been strange if such an 
abiding demand of humanity in general had 
never been met with a counterfeit supply. 
Parallel with the current of true mysticism 
there has been a nearly continuous succes 
sion of the spurious kind in which, though 
conscious imposture is perhaps hardly to be 
found or suspected, a greater or less degree 
of illusion is easily discernible. It would 
indeed scarcely be possible to say how far 



60 MYSTICISM 

the Pythagorean contemplatives or the Neo- 
platonist ecstatics come under this head ; 1 
the latter, at least, have nothing in common 
with the theosophic extravagances of Gnostics, 
Montanists and later sects, whose militant 
propagandism seems strangely at variance 
with their professed principles. The initial 
inconsistency of the supposition that the 
deposfaim of revelation needs to be super 
seded, amplified or modified by mystical com 
munications imparted to a single irresponsible 
person a Priscilla, a Mohammed, a Joachim, 
a Boehme or an Irving of itself goes far 
to discredit the doctrines professedly so 
received. We shall consider later the criteria 
by which the true is to be distinguished 
from the false or doubtful mysticism ; it is 
enough for the present to remark that 
mysticism forms no exception to the rule, 
that the value of precious things is attested 
by the abundance of their imitators. 

1 Tauler credits " Proclus and Plato" with a true mystical 
knowledge of God {Sermon on St John Baptist). 



CHAPTER III 

THE NATURE OF MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE 

THE characteristic by which mystical states 
or experiences of every kind are distinguished 
from other states and experiences which have 
points of resemblance to them is that they 
are directly and immediately supernatural. 
Mystical contemplation is the highest and 
closest of those human relations with God of 
which the opposite extreme is represented by 
the condition of simple dependence, necessarily 
involved in mere created existence. Im 
mediately above this comes the recognition 
by self-conscious beings of this dependence ; 
and after that, as a necessary consequence, the 
rational deduction of the personal, infinite and 
simple nature of God. Above this again 
comes the sense of indirect personal relations 

with God, through the medium of our created 

61 



62 MYSTICISM 

environment, and most completely and perfectly 
through the operation of grace. With this 
consciousness comes also inevitably the desire 
to cultivate these relations and maintain them 
at their highest point of efficacy ; and thus 
both reason and free-will are drawn into the 
universal accord in which each element, from 
the lowest to the highest, fills its allotted place 
and discharges its most congenial function. 
Rational beings who, by failing to recognise 
these relations, choose to hold the position of 
the irrational and inanimate part of creation 
are, as rational beings, out of accord with the 
general scheme : yet the loss is theirs only ; 
the scheme is not affected by their failure to 
occupy the place which they might hold. 
They cannot but suffer individually from the 
consequences of their choice which is to 
assimilate the rational to the irrational, the 
spiritual to the material ; but the scheme holds 
good for them as for the irrational beings 
whose place they have elected to share. 

But the crown and summit of the whole 
system is that direct intercourse of the soul 
with God, which, ordinarily at least, pre- 



THE NATURE OF MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE 63 

supposes the sacramental life of grace, but 
is itself something more than that. 

It is a state in which the natural and 
ordinary action of the soul is modified, and 
in which even the organic functions of the 
body are to a certain extent in abeyance. 

We may therefore distinguish the three 
conditions thus. First, the mere subjection, 
unconscious or involuntary, to the divine 
will, which no created being can escape. 
Next, the conscious realisation of this general 
dependence, which includes all that is meant 
by natural religion, and is enriched and 
amplified by the knowledge which revelation 
imparts, and the elevation of the natural 
faculties which is the effect of divine grace. 
To this state belongs the kind of contempla 
tion known as natural or acquired (in the 
sense that it is obtained by the exercise of 
the natural powers). This state is sometimes 
called mystical. But it is not truly so ; for 
it implies the exercise of natural powers on 
natural objects, though under supernatural 
guidance, but not the supersession of their 
natural objects by special and supernatural 



64 MYSTICISM 

influence. The mind in this state, illumin 
ated by faith, but by the exercise of its own 
reasoning power, conceives an idea say of 
the Trinity, the Incarnation, the Sacramental 
presence of Christ, or the wonders of divine 
providence and contemplates it with satisfac 
tion, and even with delight and enthusiasm. 
The practice of ordinary meditation will lead, 
if not uniformly, at least occasionally to con 
templation of this kind. Its object is not 
immediately supernatural, though the action 
of the mind takes place with supernatural 
assistance ; and it does not differ in kind, nor 
indeed always in degree, from such pleasurable 
contemplation as is induced by mastering a 
scientific problem, following out a logical argu 
ment, or even reading a poem or a novel. In 
all these instances alike there are the same 
elements intellectual study, the development 
of a concept or idea, and the " affective" con 
templation of it. 1 Such meditation and con- 

1 St Teresa, Castle, 4. i. 4. "Sweetness in devotion . . . 
is natural, although ultimately it comes from the grace of God. 
We shall find that many temporal matters give us the same 
pleasure, such as unexpectedly coming into a large fortune, 
meeting with a friend, or succeeding in any important affair." 



THE NATURE OF MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE 65 

templation, when their object is divine truth, 
are indeed the highest exercise of the natural 
powers. And the special supernatural impulse 
and support under which it takes place must 
be clearly distinguished from the mere divine 
concursus, which is common to all human acts. 

But the object of this contemplation is not 
in itself directly supernatural ; it is produced 
according to the general laws which can be 
observed in all human thought and feeling. 
That is, such contemplation is not in the true 
sense mystical. 

The essentially supernatural character of 
the truly mystical state is perhaps best illus 
trated by the passivity which all writers on 
the subject hold to be its most characteristic 
feature. God is not discovered by the mystic ; 
indeed this special manifestation of Him may 
not, strictly speaking, be even sought. He 
makes Himself known " experimentally "; and 
the person so favoured contributes nothing, at 
least directly, to this result. 1 In all natural 

1 Such criticism as that of Mr Inge (" Christian Mysticism," 
pp. HI, 112) would be perfectly just if mystical contemplation 
were held to be a merely natural process. All the human mind 
can do towards attaining it is merely negative, and in the 

E 



66 MYSTICISM 

cognition i.e., in the acquisition of anything 
that may rightly be called knowledge, however 
complex, recondite or elementary there must 
always be a preponderating element of mental 
activity. There must be not merely sensa 
tion and intelligent consciousness, but " apper 
ception " the active direction of the mind to 
the object before it, together with the complex 
process of analysis, abstraction, distinction and 
comparison which underlies the simplest act of 
cognition. Such activity is involved in the 
perception of a tree, a house or a flower, in 
the reproduction by the help of imagination or 
memory of an idea ; or in the recognition of 
an acquaintance. But in all mystical states 
this process is absent. God takes possession 
of the mental powers and focusses them upon 
Himself, and those which from their nature 
cannot be so focussed are left idle. Memory, 
imagination, or will may or may not be in 
use, according to the nature of the experi 
ence, but the discursive reason is necessarily in 

natural order the result of such mere negation or abstraction is 
zero. But it is just because of this that true mysticism is per 
ceived to be supernatural. The blank can really be filled only 
by divine agency, not by human "hypostatisation." 



THE NATURE OF MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE 67 

abeyance. In point of fact, mystical cognition 
is to the soul precisely what sensation is to 
the body. 

We do not reason in order to ascertain 
whether we feel heat or cold, pain or pleasure ; 
we are simply aware of the fact. Sensation 
cannot be defined, or even described, other 
wise than in terms of other sensations ; and 
its occurrence is not susceptible of proof, other 
wise than by very inconclusive circumstantial 
evidence. One cannot prove directly that 
one has a toothache, or that the subject in a 
hypnotic trance has no sensation of the pins 
thrust into his flesh by the operator ; we have 
only his word for it. In the same way, 
mystical experience is a matter of direct con 
tact between God and the soul ; its conditions 
may possibly be ascertainable up to a certain 
point, as those of sensation are, but it cannot 
be precisely either defined, explained or 
proved. 1 It follows that the mystical experi- 

1 " Une ame recueillie sous le regard de Dieu peut, a Paide de 
rimagination, se representer Dieu present en elle. . . . Mais 
cette image de Dieu, dont nous sommes les auteurs, ne 
ressemble en rien d la re alite que la contemplation mystique 
nous fait sentir. C est Dieu lui-meme, et non plus son image 
que nous apergevons." Lejeune, Vie Mystique, p. 10. 



68 MYSTICISM 

ence is not to be obtained by any means 
within the power of the person who desires 
it. It is, obviously, no more possible to ensure 
experience of this kind by any deliberate 
course of action than it is to obtain a particular 
kind of weather by the exercise of one s own 
powers. Here lies, in fact, the great practical 
difference between mystical states and those 
which belong to the ordinary economy of 
divine grace, a difference which hardly seems 
to have been always clearly present to the 
minds of some writers on the subject. 

By the fulfilment of certain conditions the 
devout Christian can attain with certainty to 
the enjoyment of an abundant measure of 
grace, sufficient or more than sufficient for all 
his needs. The effects of prayer and of the 
sacraments are certain, and are within the reach 
of all who choose to make use of these means 
of spiritual advancement. Moreover, the 
rational appreciation of the mysteries of the 
Christian faith is open to all, independently 
of natural ability or acquired skill ; they 
offer an abundantly sufficient field to the 
reason and imagination of all men, whether 



THE NATQRE OF MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE 69 

lettered or unlettered, whether intellectually 
acute or dull ; they adapt themselves, like 
the objects of universal desire in the life of 
the senses, to the capacity and character of 
each separate individual. The joys and con 
flicts and anxiety of the life of grace are 
equally real to the refined and learned and 
to the rude and ignorant, and, fundamentally, 
they are the same for all ; but there can be 
no doubt that they are apprehended under 
somewhat different forms by persons of 
different character and education as the 
satisfaction of the desire for food conveys an 
identical pleasure to the epicure and the 
ploughman alike, but the kind of food pre 
ferred (as distinct from its chemical qualities) 
is different in each case. 

But there are no conditions by the fulfil 
ment of which mystical experience may be 
ensured ; and its character, unlike that of 
ordinary religious experience, in no way 
depends on either the efforts or the natural 
endowments of the person who undergoes 
it. The mystic is the mere recipient of the 
favours bestowed on him ; he can do nothing 



70 MYSTICISM 

towards either procuring them or determining 
their special character. Mysticism is there 
fore to be conceived as the raptus or 
ecstasis of St Paul and St Thomas : l it 
is outside the natural sphere of human life, 
and in respect of all natural experience it 
has consequently no place or function ; for it 
all natural objects of perception are involved 
in "darkness" and "ignorance," and the 
ordinary functions of sense and intellect are 
for the time being directed by the " new 
supernatural aptitude " of which St John of 
the Cross speaks. "Our Lord," says St 
Teresa, "does not require the faculties or 
senses to open the door of the heart to Him ; 
they are all asleep." "We can do nothing," 
she adds, "on our part." 

"Simple unity with God," says Ruysbroeck, 
"can be felt and possessed by none, save by 
those who stand before the immense bright 
ness, without reason and without restraint." 

1 2 Cor. vii. ; Summa, 2. 2. 175 i. c., and cf. St Bernard (De 
Inter. Domo). " Necesse est ad cor altum ascendere et mentis 
excessu per divinam revelationam addiscere, quid sit illud ad 
quod adspirare vel studere oporteat, et ad qualem sublimitatis 
habitum animum suum componere et assuescere debeat." 

8 Ruysbroeck, De Calculo. 



THE NATURE OF MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE 71 

Thus the consciousness of free rational beings 
returns to that simplicity of divine relations 
which, at the other end of the scale of 
creation, appears as the perfect mechanical 
fulfilment by inanimate and irrational creatures 
of their divinely appointed destiny. The 
human intellect has, in some sense, arrived 
at the goal of its desires when it can say 
"ut jumentum factus sum apud Te." 

Another obviously necessary consequence of 
the passive condition of the soul which marks 
all truly mystical states is the certainty as 
to the real character of those states which 
accompanies them. Here, again, there is an 
exact parallel in sense - experience. Sensation 
is, as we have remarked, incapable of being 
defined or proved ; the one thing that we 
know about it is that it occurs. Whatever 
the conditions may be, and whether there is 
an adequate cause present or not, the one 
indubitable fact in sensation is the certainty 
of the experience. A person may feel cold 
in circumstances which cause others to feel 
hot ; or he may not feel anything under 
conditions which cause most people to feel 



72 MYSTICISM 

a great deal or again in some peculiar 
affections of the nerves he may feel intense 
pain without any apparent cause. Yet his 
sensations are in every case undeniably facts. 
This is precisely the case of the mystic : he 
is certain of the divine communication, though 
he cannot prove it ; and his conviction that 
it is divine is unshakeable. 1 

It must, however, be clearly understood that 
this subjective certitude is not to be taken 
for a proof that the experience so certified is 
a genuinely mystical one. Benedict XIV., 
in his treatise De Canonisation* > gives a long 
list of natural conditions which may give rise 
to apparently mystical experiences such as 
nervous excitement, hysteria, memory associa 
tion and disease. 42 Professor James gives a 
nearly identical list of such causes. Certainty 
is a conditio sine qua non without it, no mysti 
cal experience can be considered genuine, 3 but 
it is not therefore inconsistent with decep 
tion. Precisely the same thing, of course, may 

1 James, Varieties^ loc. cit. 

2 Heroic Virtue (Oratorian translation), vol. iii. ch. x. 

3 St Teresa, Castle, 5. i. 9 : "A soul which does not feel this 
assurance has not been united to God entirely." 



THE NATURE OF MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE 73 

be said about sensation. A sensation is a 
fact of experience, and differs altogether from 
the most vivid imaginary presentment of the 
same fact ; we can never mistake one for the 
other. But we may be widely mistaken as 
to the cause of our sensations ; and we may, 
on the other hand, be deluded by memory or 
imagination as to the actual occurrence of sensa 
tions in the past. We may so vividly imagine 
certain sensations as to think that we must 
have actually experienced them at some time ; 
as some people are said to have told a fictitious 
story so often that they have come to believe 
it. But in such cases the clear realisation of 
a definite and particular sensation is certainly 
absent. In the same way delusions as to 
past supposed mystical experiences are by no 
means unknown. But in such cases there 
is a complete absence of the circumstantiality 
which is characteristic of all accounts of genuine 
experiences ; and on the other hand, there is 
generally a definiteness and descriptive plausi 
bility in accounts of the memory-created ex 
periences themselves which is invariably absent 
from the genuine ones. 



74 MYSTICISM 

The reason of this is to be found in another 
feature of genuine mysticism, namely, the 
impossibility of describing the experiences 
of mystical states in anything like detail. In 
the case of visions it is true that certain 
salient features of the appearances are dis 
tinctly remembered and described ; and in 
" locutions" the phrases heard or understood 
can be repeated from memory. But these, 
as will be more fully explained later, are the 
" accidents" of mysticism. 1 Its essence is 
direct contact with a transcendental reality ; 
and this, from its nature, is incapable of 
being described in the terms of ordinary 
sense-experience to which human language 
is necessarily limited/ 2 Mysticism can make 

1 "These (corporeal) visions, inasmuch as they are visions 
of created things, between which and God there is no congruity 
or proportion, cannot subserve the understanding as proximate 
means of divine union." Asc. of Car me I, ii. xxiv. "These super 
natural visitations are nothing else but the motes of the Spirit." 
Ib. ii. xix. 

St Teresa only knows such visions from hearsay. " Of bodily 
apparitions I can say nothing ; for the person I mentioned 
(herself) never experienced anything of this kind herself, and 
therefore could not speak about it with certainty." Castle, 
6. 9. 3. 

2 Cf. Bossuet s Instr. sur les tats tfOraison. "Eleves a 
une oraison dont ils ne pouvaient expliquer les sublimite s par le 



THE NATURE OF MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE 75 

no use of the terms of sense - experience 
to describe what is supersensible ; and its 
opportunities are far too limited to enable 
it to construct a descriptive terminology of 
its own. The consciousness of the actual 
divine presence admits of no description ; 
only the bare fact can be stated, apart 
from its effect on the person who experi 
ences it. 

But though the mystical vision of God is 
a thing which cannot be obtained by natural 

langage commun, ils ont e*te obliges d enfler leur style pour nous 
donner quelque idee de leurs transports." And St Teresa 
(Castle, 7. i. 9) : "By some mysterious manifestation of the 
truth, the three Persons of the most Blessed Trinity reveal 
themselves, etc. Thus that which we hold as a doctrine of faith 
the soul now, so to speak, understands by sight, although it 
beholds the Blessed Trinity by neither bodily nor spiritual eyes." 
And again (Castle, 6. 5. 9) : " These visions, and many other 
things impossible to describe, are revealed by some wonderful 
intuition that I cannot explain. "On returning to itself, the 
mind can recall what has been seen, but is unable to describe 
it." B. Angela of Foligno : " Divine operations went on in my 
soul which were so ineffable that neither angel nor saint could 
relate or explain them." 

St John of the Cross (Asc. ii. 28) : " Moses was unable to 
describe what he learned of God in that particular knowledge 
and so gave utterance to ordinary words. Though, at times, 
when this knowledge is vouchsafed to the soul, words are 
uttered, yet the soul knows full well that it has in no wise 
expressed what it felt because it is conscious that there are no 
words of adequate signification." 



76 MYSTICISM 

means, being God s free gift, and altogether 
beyond the sphere of nature, it is neverthe 
less not only possible but, ordinarily speaking, 
necessary to prepare for it to make the 
soul fit, so far as that is possible, for the 
guest whom it hopes to receive. 1 Though 
no amount of preparation can ensure His 
coming, it is nevertheless not to be hoped 
for unless the soul has been made ready for 
Him. This preparation is merely negative 
in regard to the supernatural state to which 
it is preliminary, consisting as it does in the 
purification of the soul from actual sin, from 
worldly desires and negligent habits. But 
in itself it is, of course, positive enough, and 
its benefits are definite and substantial. It 
is, indeed, nothing less than the fullest 
Christian life, the fulfilment of all the con 
ditions of salvation, and even of eminent 
sanctity. Mystical states, as we may see 
more clearly later on, are not by any means 
necessary to holiness, and it is at least ideally 

1 Gerson, Myst. Theol., Cons. xxx. " Mystica theologia 
acquiritur per scholam affectus et per exercitium vehemens 
moralium virtutum, disponentium animam ad purgationem." 



THE NATURE OF MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE 77 

possible to attain the highest sanctity with 
out any mystical experience whatever, in the 
true or Dionysian sense. 1 The first four of 
St Teresa s " mansions " are mainly occupied 
by this preparation for the favours to be 
received in the last three. The " Fourth 
Mansion" consists of a blending of the 
natural and supernatural in the " prayer of 
recollection" and the " prayer of quiet"; the 
subsequent prayer of union" and "spiritual 
marriage " are wholly supernatural. 

The precise nature of mystical contempla 
tion as distinguished from other spiritual or 
intellectual functions more or less connected 
with and resembling it is defined in practi 
cally the same way, though with a varying 
amount of detail, by all mystical writers. It 
is perhaps most clearly and briefly expressed 
by Gerson, who follows substantially Hugo 
of St Victor, and the more elaborately sub 
divided but essentially identical method of 
Richard, his successor. The powers of the 
soul, Gerson says, are divisible into cognitive 
and affective ; mystical theology is the object 

1 See Poulain, Des Graces cPOraison, and Asc. ii. v. 8. 



78 MYSTICISM 

of the latter, as speculative theology is of the 
former. The cognitive powers are those of 
intelligence, reason and sense-perception ; the 
affective appetite, will and synderesis, or the 
natural perception and consequent desire of 
good. St Thomas considered this last to 
be not a power, but a natural intellectual 
habit ; and though Gerson, like other mysti 
cal writers, speaks of it as a potentia animae, 
he expressly guards himself against the sup 
position that he is constructing a system of 
real psychological distinctions. The powers 
are distinct, he says, not in reality but in 
name ; for his immediate purpose, however, 
he finds it convenient to treat them as if 
they were really distinct in nature. 1 

The two sets of faculties work together. 
Their first or last function is mere cogitation 
the discursive consideration of the objects 
of sense : then comes meditation, or the con 
centrated application of the reason to these 
objects, and the production by it of abstract 
ideas ; these, again, can be contemplated by 
the simple intelligence apart from sense- 

1 Myst TheoL, Cons. ix. ; cf. Summa Theol., i. 79. 12. 



THE NATURE OF MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE 79 

perception. So far all is natural ; the cogni 
tive and affective faculties act mutually on one 
another, and on the objects presented to them. 
But above all natural objects is the divine 
presence, which is known by special divine 
favour not as an abstract idea resulting from 
meditation, 1 but as the immediate object ofi 
love, in the rapture or exaltation of the soul; 
above itself which is the effect of love whether 
natural or supernatural. Thus "he that is 
joined to the Lord is one spirit." 

It is plain that according to this analysis 
the experimental knowledge, vision, or con 
templation of God takes place through the 
agency of the natural powers of the soul ; the 
supernatural factor is the gratuitous divine 
communication which the soul receives. Some 
obscurity, however, has been caused by the 
language of some of the more speculative 
mystics on this point. Eckhart, and after him 

1 Myst. TheoL, Cons, xliii. " In anima contemplativa amor, et 
mystica theologia et oratio perfecta aut idem sunt, aut se 
invicem praesupponunt. Nam, ut patet ex praedictis, mystica 
theologia est cognitio experimentalis habita de Deo per 
conjunctionem affectus spiritualis cum eodem quae nimirum 
adhaesio fit per extaticum amorem, teste beato Dionysio." 



8o MYSTICISM 

Tauler, speak of the "ground" of the soul 
its core or essence, to which the correspond 
ing " ground " or nature of the Godhead com 
municates itself in virtue of a certain natural 
affinity which exists between the two. This 
"ground" of the soul is also called the 
"spark" (scintilla, fimkelein) or "apex" 
as the purest or highest part, and the fittest 
therefore to be the medium of the divine 
self - communication. Eckhart s pantheistic 
tendencies seem to have led him to assimilate 
the "spark" to the divine nature, as homo 
geneous if not in some sense identical with 
it. Tauler keeps clear of this mistake ; and 
with Gerson the scintilla or apex mentis is 
merely a name for the intellect, which is the 
contemplative faculty. 1 With Ruysbroeck the 
"ground" is the mirror in which the Divine 
Being is reflected ; St John of the Cross calls 
it the "substance of the soul," or again the 
"eye of the soul, which is the understanding," 
and the recipient of the divine illumination. 
But the light may be so excessive as to 
cause darkness ; and so we come back to the 

1 See Inge, "Christian Mysticism," Appendix C. 



THE NATURE OF MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE 81 

Dionysian phraseology, in which darkness and 
ignorance are the means of seeing and know 
ing. But all this is evidently the language 
of practical devotion, and not (except perhaps 
in the case of Eckhart) of speculative theology, 
still less of analytical psychology. What it 
amounts to is no more than the doctrine that 
the soul has a faculty by means of which it 
can, when God so pleases, contemplate Him 
directly and even become united to Him. We 
shall consider in the next chapter what the 
nature of the process on its human side may 
be supposed to be. 

It is somewhat strange that such writers as 
Hugo and Richard of St Victor, St Bona- 
venture and Gerson should be spoken of as 
having attempted to " reconcile" mysticism with 
scholasticism. They were never at variance, 
and no reconciliation was either necessary 
or possible, unless in the sense in which 
all theory may be considered as attempting 
to reconcile fact with itself. Scholasticism set 
itself to give a reasoned account of man s 
nature and total environment ; mysticism was 
one of the great facts which it was bound 



82 MYSTICISM 

to take into consideration ; and the Platonic 
elements in the earlier mysticism came into 
it in no other way than this. But mysticism 
is not itself either Platonic or Aristotelian ; 
on its natural side it is simply human, and 
falls into its inevitable place in the order of 
things which all systems of philosophy seek 
to analyse and explain. 1 Mysticism is always 
recognisably the same thing, whether we meet 
it in a Platonic or a scholastic dress. 

What, then, may be called the normal 
course of mysticism proceeds first by way of 
devout preparation in the discharge of ordi 
nary Christian duties and the use of ordinary 
means of grace ; next, it leads the soul into 
the immediate presence of God, as an experi 
enced reality, and not merely as a concept or 
imagination ; and the third stage, described 
in various terms by various writers, consists 
of a progressive union with God a union 

1 Eckhart is said to have drawn his philosophy mainly from 
St Thomas. Of Dionysius, who is too often treated as a mere 
Platonist, Corderius says : " Observatu dignissimum, quomodo 
S. Dionysius primus Scholasticae Theologiae jecerit funda- 
menta, quibus ceteri deinceps theologi earn quae de Deo 
rebusque divinis in Scholis traditur doctrinam omnem in- 
aedificarunt." Observationes Generates in Dion.) 12. 



THE NATURE OF MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE 83 

which is not merely a matter of conviction, 
the mere union of will which is the privilege 
of all devout persons, but a fact of experience 
consciously realised. " In it," says St John 
of the Cross, "the soul seems to be God 
rather than itself, and indeed is God by 
participation, though in reality preserving its 
own natural substance as distinct from God 
as it did before, although transformed in Him." 
St Teresa s well-known subdivision of this 
last or supernatural stage is threefold the 
prayer of quiet or recollection in its higher 
form, in which the sense of the divine 
presence is communicated to the soul and 
contemplated passively by it ; the prayer of 
union, which is "a foretaste of heaven," arid 
in which the soul " seems to have left its 
mortal covering (though this is not really the 
case) to abide more entirely in God " ; and 
lastly, the " spiritual marriage," in which the 
soul is no longer absorbed or lost in God, 
but recovers the exercise of its powers, though 
in an exalted and supernatural way, and 
"sees and understands somewhat of the grace 
received in a strange and wonderful manner 



84 MYSTICISM 

by means of intellectual vision." Thus "the 
three persons of the most Blessed Trinity 
reveal themselves ; the doctrine which we hold 
by faith, the soul now, so to speak, understands 
by sight." It is remarkable that St Teresa, 
like all other mystics, in spite of the minuteness 
and particularity of her classification, is able to 
tell us little or nothing of the actual content 
of these blissful experiences. She exhausts 
herself in passionate insistence on the delight 
they impart to the soul ; but as to the precise 
cause and nature of it she has nothing to say ; 
and as little can she convey what is to be 
understood by the "intellectual vision," which 
is neither of the bodily nor of the spiritual 
eyes. The reason is, as we have already seen, 
that these things are indescribable, for want 
of existing words in which to describe them 
or of natural experience with which to compare 
them. Each fragment of mystical knowledge 
is like a aVa^ Xeyopwov in the language of 
human understanding. 

Visions and locutions, or voices, may or may 
not occur in the states of union ; they do not 
occur in any other. Visions are imaginary 



THE NATURE OF MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE 85 

i.e., quasi - sensible figures pictured to the 
imagination without causing actual sensation 
or spiritual ; the latter are of two kinds, one 
of corporeal substances perceived, according 
to St John of the Cross, "in a certain light 
emanating from God," in which the distant 
things of heaven and earth may be seen ; 
and the other kind consists of incorporeal 
existences, perceived after the same super 
natural manner. 

Locutions in like manner may be either 
mentally formed phrases representing thoughts 
or impressions produced by divine grace in 
the soul while in a state of recollection, or they 
may be formed in the mind by direct super 
natural agency. 

But visions and locutions are, it must be 
repeated, not necessarily a part of mystical 
experience ; and all mystical writers agree in 
asserting that they are, in any case, the least 
important part. In practice all authorities 
teach that they are to be entirely disregarded. 
It is true that the experience of such mystics 
as B. Margaret Mary Alacoque, Blessed Julian 
of Norwich or Anne Catherine Emmerich 



86 MYSTICISM 

appears to consist entirely of visions and 
voices. But in these three cases, and in 
countless others, it will be found that the 
mode in which thoughts were conveyed to, 
and emotions excited in the person is of quite 
secondary importance. In these cases, the 
communications come through visions of our 
Lord seen under various aspects, and declaring 
His will and desires in formally understood 
words. But it was not the mere vision or 
quasi-vocal communication in itself that gave 
value to the experience, or constituted its 
title to acceptance as genuine, either in the 
mind of the actual recipient or in the opinion 
of those who afterwards had to pronounce 
judgment on the nature of the case. It was 
always the manifestation of the love and 
patience of the divine humanity that was both 
the source of consolation and the guarantee 
of reality. 

The possibility of self-delusion in such a 
matter (without considering the possibility of 
diabolical deception) is, of course, almost in 
exhaustible, and no mystical writer fails to 
warn his readers against this danger ; which, 



THE NATURE OF MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE 87 

it may be well to remark, in the processes of 
beatification and canonisation is kept constantly 
in view, and, as has been already noticed, is 
strongly insisted on by Benedict XIV. in his 
treatise on the subject. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE OBJECT OF MYSTICAL KNOWLEDGE 

MYSTICAL contemplation is the sight of God. 
It cannot be called anything else, though obvi 
ously sight or vision is not quite an appro 
priate word to describe a process essentially 
different from any of those to which the term 
is commonly applied. We speak of " seeing" 
indeed, not only when we mean the exercise 
of a bodily organ of sense, but also, by a 
metaphor, when we mean the intellectual per 
ception of an idea, or a truth presented to 
us from without. But mystical sight is neither 
of these. It is not bodily sight, because God 
is invisible ; and it is not intellectual percep 
tion, because in mystical contemplation it is 
not an idea that is seen, but a living reality. 
In meditation the thoughts or ideas abstracted 
from the subject under consideration are con- 

88 



THE OBJECT OF MYSTICAL KNOWLEDGE 89 

templated ; but in mystical or supernatural 
contemplation it is God Himself that is the 
object perceived, not any idea of Him or any 
thoughts about Him. It is a unique mode 
of perception, corresponding to the unicity of 
that which is perceived. Nevertheless, it has 
this point of similarity to bodily sight, that the 
object is directly and immediately perceived ; 
it is analogously to the soul what sight is to 
the body. All language in which such vision 
may be described suffers from the difficulty 
and liability to misapprehension which besets 
it whenever it deals with transcendental 
realities. Thus the persons of the Blessed 
Trinity can only be spoken of in metaphorical 
or analogous terms ; paternity, filiation, pro 
cession, have in this connection meanings 
very different from those which belong to the 
words in their ordinary use. The mystical 
sight of God, then, is not sight of the bodily 
kind, nor is it in any way like ordinary in 
tellectual perception : it is something entirely 
separate and different from all normal experi 
ences of body and soul. The soul, indeed, 
still exercises its natural powers, or some of 



90 MYSTICISM 

them ; but it exercises them under entirely 
abnormal conditions, created by the character 
of the object with which it has to deal. 

This object is God : but we naturally ask 
how the soul can see God how we can 
suppose God so to present Himself to the 
soul as to be directly perceived by it. For 
the proper function of the soul is to think, 
understand and will : and those functions pre 
suppose abstract ideas, singly or combined, as 
their objects. But ex hypothesi it is not an 
abstract idea that the mystic contemplates : 
God does not present Himself in the shape 
of a concept or a proposition, for if He did 
so, He would not be directly present ; the 
object of contemplation would not be God, 
but only the contemplative s idea or thought 
about Him. But then what else but an idea 
or proposition can it conceivably be that the 
soul perceives in the " intellectual vision"? 
It appears to be the difficulty of determin 
ing this point that has led many to suppose 
that the immediate and external character of 
mystical vision is a delusion ; that it is really 
no more than the contemplation of an idea 



THE OBJECT OF MYSTICAL KNOWLEDGE 91 

or an image drawn from the recesses of past 
experience and thought, by some unconscious 
or subconscious process. Certainly there 
would be much to be said for this view if 
we were really unable to detect any possible 
affinity between the soul and the mystical 
object of its intellectual perception ; though, 
even so, the persistent testimony of genera 
tions of mystics to the fact might well cause 
one to hesitate before accepting an explanation 
which explains it away. 

The difficulty, it should be noticed in the 
first place, is not confined to mystical theology. 
It is just as urgent if we ask how any rational 
creature can see God at any time and under 
any conditions. How can the blessed see 
Him eternally in Heaven? They are still 
rational beings ; they undergo, intellectually 
at least, no radical change when they pass 
from time to eternity; and yet the whole of 
their beatitude consists in the vision of God, 
not by any means in merely thinking about 
Him. If then we are to reject the mystics 
account of their contemplative vision on this 
ground, we must equally reject the doctrine 



92 MYSTICISM 

of the Church and the statements of Scripture 
as to the beatific vision hereafter which 
practically amounts to rejection of Christianity 
altogether. 1 

But it need hardly be said that there is 
no such obvious lacuna in the account which 
Christianity gives of itself as would entitle 
any one to reject it as inadequate. The 
modus of the beatific vision can be explained 
quite sufficiently to show its entire consistency 
with what we know of the necessary relations 
between the human intelligence and its natural 
object ; and the same explanation removes the 
difficulty which at first sight seems insur 
mountable - - of attributing to the object of 
mystical knowledge any higher degree of 
external reality than belongs to the ordinary 
" Universal." 

This difficulty, we have seen, consists in 

1 Corderius points out that since the soul is capable of 
exercising certain functions without the direct co-operation of 
the senses, and is able to exist in a disembodied state, a purely 
spiritual vision is not contrary to its nature. He adds that 
the mystical vision is not so precisely "quidditative" as the 
beatific />., the divine essence (which no creature can fully 
comprehend) is much less clearly known in the one than in the 
other. (" Quaestio Mystica," in Dion. Myst. TheoL, c. v.) 



THE OBJECT OF MYSTICAL KNOWLEDGE 93 

the disparity between the human intellect and 
the divine personality. What we want to 
understand is the principle on which it may 
be supposed that the intellect becomes directly 
conscious of the divine presence without 
reasoning or abstraction, when its natural 
function is simply to reason or abstract, and 
not to perceive by immediate intuition. 

St Thomas Aquinas considers the question 
at great length, and his conclusion is sub 
stantially this. The vision of God by the 
blessed in Heaven is not mere vision, but 
union ; they see God as He is in Himself, 
not from a distance as sensible objects are 
seen, nor by a discursive intellectual process 
as intelligible ideas are perceived, but, so to 
speak, from within. They are not, it is need 
less to say, pantheistically merged in God, 
but united to Him by His supernatural action, 
so that the consciousness in the soul of the 
divine presence is akin to, and in some 
sense bound up with, its consciousness of 
itself. Therefore as our self - consciousness 
is intellectual and yet immediate, so also the 



94 MYSTICISM 

beatific vision of God is both immediate 
and intellectual. 

In scholastic language, the species intelligi- 
bilis or abstract idea on which the mind works 
is practically the " form " of the mind, the mind 
itself (considered apart from its action, as in 
potentia), standing in the place of " matter"; this 
is the normal method of the intellect s opera 
tion. But for those who see God, He becomes 
Himself the "form" to the soul s " matter," so 
that He is known directly, as the soul knows 
its own natural ideas. 1 Even so, however, 
though the action of the intellect is normal 
in kind, it is in degree far above the ordinary 
and natural sphere of the intellect. It there 
fore requires a special divine assistance to 
enable it to work in this lofty atmosphere ; 
and this assistance (which St Thomas calls 
the lumen gloriae and considers a created 
"quality," of the nature of grace) is imparted 
by the fact of the mystical union. 

1 Cf. Blosius, Spiritual Mirror, xi. i. " This mystical denuded 
union takes place when a soul is carried above itself by the 
grace of God, and through the brilliancy of the divine light 
shining on the mind is united to God without any medium, and 
is transformed and changed into Him." 



THE OBJECT OF MYSTICAL KNOWLEDGE 95 

The difference between the visio beatificans 
of heaven, and the mystical vision of persons 
still living on earth, is merely that the one 
is habitual and permanent, and the other 
transient and exceptional ; and whereas the, 
union of the blessed extends to the risen body 
by a kind of reaction, so that the body takes 
part in the vision with the soul with which it 
is substantially united, the divine vision for the 
" viator" is restricted to the soul, and involves 
as a pre-requisite the temporary abstraction of 
the soul from the processes of the body. 

Thus St Paul "knew not" whether his 
mystical vision was " in the body or out of 
the body " i.e., the body had no part in the 
union, though it could not but be affected 
by the psychical state (probably in the direc 
tion of quiescence rather than of any special 
activity). The Apostle was not conscious for 
the time of anything that took place in the 
body. It was a transient visitation of the 
lumen gloriae. 

There is no need, for our present purpose, 
to take this explanation (which perhaps will 
scarcely be intelligible to any one who is 



96 MYSTICISM 

unacquainted with the terminology of scholas 
ticism) as a true account. The reader may, 
if he will, consider it as a mere hypothesis. 
What it does, whether true or not, is to show 
that an analysis of intellectual processes can be 
constructed which is perfectly consistent with 
the admission of direct and objective intellectual 
intuition of a transcendental reality ; and this 
is all that is required to remove the apparent 
disparity between the intellect and its mystical 
object. 

It is worth while, however, to notice how 
entirely St Thomas s theoretical account corre 
sponds with the descriptions given by mystics 
of their actual experiences. 

First, the state of actual vision is always 
transient. St Teresa says it lasts not more 
than half an hour at most : St John of the 
Cross that the actual" union of the faculties 
of the soul with God must in this life be 
transient of necessity ; though there is an 
" habitual " vision, which is also supernatural, 
but permanent, and may be considered as the 
consequence of the actual union, and of the 
nature of an exalted faith in the permanent 



THE OBJECT OF MYSTICAL KNOWLEDGE 97 

(or "immanent " ) divine presence in the soul. 1 
This element of permanence we shall consider 
later. 

Next, it is a state of union, or "spiritual 
marriage" at least in its complete or most 
fully conscious form ; and it is evident that 
the union of quasi-matter and quasi-form 
described by St Thomas (compared by him, 
after Albertus, to the union between soul and 
body) is happily expressed by this figure, so 
constantly made use of by mystics. St 
Teresa could not distinguish between herself 
and God while in the state of rapture ; and 
St John of the Cross says that "the soul 
seems to be God rather than itself, and indeed 
is God by participation." 2 

14 Dopo questa visione sente sempre 1 anima Iddio nel suo 
interne, mai non si separa da quella divina compagnia, ne mai 
piu perda una certa unione abituale con essolei questo pero 
non si intende, che sia in quel modo, che accade la prima volta 
e altre volte che Iddio le vuole rinovare il predetto favore ; 
perche se fosse cosi, non sarebbe possibile trattare con gli 
uomini, anzi ne pure vivere. Ma sebene non vide sempre 
Iddio con tanta luce e tanto gaudio, lo spirito pero si trova 
sempre in sua compagnia." (Scaramelli. Dottrina di S. G. della 
Croce. Tratt. iii. Art. 2) and cf. St Paul s reference to 
habitual union, i Cor. vi. 10 ; Gal. ii. 20. 

3 Cf. St Augustine, Conf. vii. x. " Tu assumpsisti me, ut 
viderer esse quod viderem, et nondum me esse qui viderem." 

G 



98 MYSTICISM 

It is only in regard to this highest mystical 
state of intellectual vision that the difficulty 
we have been considering arises. Intellectual 
impressions or states of consciousness, and 
images or figures of any kind are not strictly 
manifestations of the divine essence ; they 
are indeed supernatural manifestations of the 
presence of God, and as such differ in kind 
from the impressions or ideas produced sub 
jectively by natural means, 1 but they are not 
the "face to face" visions. We shall consider 
in the next chapter the psychological problem 
involved in supernatural manifestations of this 
kind ; at present we are only concerned with 
the actual content of the objects of mystical 
perception. 

Thirdly, the "lumen gloriae" has a very 
distinct place in the experience of mystics. 
St Augustine speaks of the "changeless light" 
seen only by the eye of the soul, and different 
in kind, not merely in degree, from that which 

1 Cf. St John of the Cross, Asc. ii. 5. "The fitting dis 
position for that union is, not that the soul should understand, 
taste, feel or imagine anything on the subject of the nature of 
God, or any other thing whatever, but only that pureness and 
love which is perfect resignation, and complete detachment 
from all things for God alone." 



THE OBJECT OF MYSTICAL KNOWLEDGE 99 

all men see. 1 According to St John of the 
Cross, it is (like natural light) not itself the 
object of vision, but the means through which 
divine things are seen, and is the super 
natural consequence of the " darkness " of faith 
in regard to all merely natural objects. St 
Teresa says that it " hardly shines at all in 
the first mansions " ; but in the later ones it is 
a light "so unearthly that if during his whole 
lifetime any one had been trying to picture this 
and the wonders seen, he could not have 
succeeded"; and in the "spiritual marriage" 
the revelation of the Blessed Trinity is "pre 
ceded by an illumination which shines on the 
spirit like a most dazzling cloud of light." 
Ruysbroeck says "this light is not God, 
but is a mediator between the seeing thought 
and God. It is a light-ray from God in it 
God shows Himself immediately, not accord 
ing to the mode of His persons, but in the 
simplicity of His nature and essence." (The 
contrast between the unity of a common 
principle and the variety of individual experi- 

1 " Non hanc vulgarem et conspicuam omni carni, nee quasi 
eodem genere grandior erat, etc." (i. c.) 



TOO MYSTICISM 

ence is here remarkably significant.) Julian 
of Norwich speaks of the "gracious light of 
Himself," by which God wills that we should 
have understanding. 

St Augustine 1 distinguishes three kinds of 
vision corporal, " spiritual," which is here the 
same as "imaginary," and intellectual. Of the 
first kind was the vision of Balthasar in the 
Book of Daniel ; the second is exemplified in 
the vision of St Peter at Joppa ; the third kind 
was experienced by St Paul in his vision of the 
"third heaven." But Balthasar was certainly 
not a mystic, and the revelation to St Peter, 
though of a higher kind, was of the nature of 
a grace gratis data it was not for St Peter s 
benefit, but for those to whom he was to be 
sent. Such visions therefore are not essentially 
mystical, though certainly supernatural, and 
though manifestations of both kinds (especially 
the second) frequently accompany mystical ex 
periences. Julian of Norwich says that her 
visions were of all three kinds : of the purely 
intellectual she can say only "the number of 
the words passed my understanding, and all 

1 De Gen ad ////., xii. vii. seq. 



THE OBJECT OF MYSTICAL KNOWLEDGE 101 

my might; for they were in the highest, as 
to my sight. For therein is comprehended 
I cannot tell what, but the joy that I saw 
passeth all that heart can think, or soul desire." 
This threefold classification is the generally 
accepted one among mystical writers. It 
represents clearly enough the whole range 
of the objects of mystical vision. These are, 
first, as we have seen, the actual conscious 
ness of God in virtue of a formal union of 
the intellect with Him, which is the highest 
and perfect form of contemplation ; secondly, 
the stimulation of the intellect in a super 
natural manner, in such a way as to produce 
the direct consciousness of the divine presence 
whether by means of an imaginary figure 
or sound of some sort, or by the production 
of a direct intellectual impression without 
any medium whatever, either in the senses 
or in the imagination ; l and thirdly, by the 

1 Cf. Poulain, Des Grdces cfOraison. " Dieu a deux fac,ons 
possibles de se faire connaitre, Tune a la maniere des creatures, 
par une espece cre ee, Tautre sans espece ; il peut en jouer le r61e. 
Or, disent les theologiens, ce dernier mode constitue la vision 
intuitive, celle du ciel ; Pautre est le propre de la contemplation 
mystique." (It must be understood that this "species," or 
impression, need not be anything visual, auditory, or otherwise 
sensible ; it cannot be anything merely natural.) 



io2 MYSTICISM 

supernatural but real manifestation of a 
sensible image of some kind such as was 
seen not only by Balthasar but by Abraham 
when in the theophany in which he "saw 
three and adored one," the Blessed Trinity 
was mystically exhibited to him under sensible 
quasi - human forms. It is obvious, as St 
John of the Cross points out at great length, 
that certainty as to the divine character of 
these experiences varies inversely with the 
degree of sensibility or quasi-sensibility which 
belongs to them. Sensible and imaginary 
impressions can arise from several kinds of 
natural causes ; and it is consequently seldom, 
if ever, safe to say that they are certainly 
supernatural or divine in origin. The direct 
impression of the divine presence conveys, 
St Teresa says, as its chief characteristic 
an irrefragable feeling of certitude ; and the 
highest state of union is no more to be mis 
understood or evaded than the self-conscious 
ness which is the underlying condition and 
guarantee of all human experience, natural 
as well as supernatural. 

Lastly, it must be noticed that however 



THE OBJECT OF MYSTICAL KNOWLEDGE 103 

closely what may be called the lower kind 
of mystical experience may approach the 
ordinary experience of the senses in character, 
it must always be considered as entirely dis 
tinct from naturally caused sensations or ideas. 
The " knowledge of invisible things" from 
visible and created things is true knowledge, 
legitimately obtained ; but it is not mystical. 
Nor is the moral union of the heart with 
God, or " union of conformity" of which 
spiritual writers speak, at all the same thing 
as the mystical union. The former must 
certainly exist before the latter can take 
place, but the two are not identical in any 
way. Knowledge obtained through philosophy, 
natural science, historical research or social 
or practical experience may and should deepen 
and strengthen, and may even be the means 
of creating an apprehension of God s reality 
and presence in the world and beyond it ; 
and in proportion as men conform their actions 
and affections to the divine model and law, their 
devotion to the service of God and their 
happiness in it doubtless increase. But such 
knowledge and devotion and affection are 



io 4 MYSTICISM 

natural in themselves, though brought about 
by the supernatural influence of grace : they 
are not of the same kind (however high 
they may be in degree) as the supernatural 
knowledge and consequent affection which 
are properly called mystical. No service can 
be done to either by confusing them together. 



CHAPTER V 

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF MYSTICISM 

NEXT in order after the object of mystical 
contemplation we have to consider the mode 
in which that contemplation takes place. We 
have seen that the presence of God may be 
made known to the mystical consciousness in 
three ways by formal union, by an intel 
lectual impression, or species, with or with 
out an imaginative representation or figure, 
and thirdly, by means of a representation of 
a sensible kind. The object of contemplation 
is unquestionably supernatural ; but of what 
sort is the process, whether intellectual or 
physiological, by which the object is per 
ceived? Is it also supernatural i.e., do the 
faculties of mind or body act in any other 
way or by any other principle than that in 



106 MYSTICISM 

which or by which they are accustomed to 
act? 

The subject is necessarily a somewhat 
obscure one, comparatively little being certainly 
known as to the nature of the mind s action, 
and of its relation to that of the senses. But 
some quite overwhelming evidence, such as 
does not seem to be either forthcoming or 
even conceivable, would be necessary to prove 
that either the mind or the body or both 
together can, under any circumstances in this 
world, act otherwise than according to the 
accustomed methods and principles, which in 
their general plan at least are well enough 
ascertained. We have already seen strong 
reason for considering the supernatural ele 
ment of mysticism to consist mainly in its 
object ; that element in the perceiving sub 
ject being no more than the illumination and 
assistance of the natural faculties by divine 
grace, and not their supersession by any new 
power or faculty, or by the addition of any 
otherwise unknown function to those already 
possessed by them. As in the ordinary 
operation of divine grace so in its exceptional 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF MYSTICISM 107 

operation, the natural faculties are indeed 
assisted and guided ; but they continue to act 
according to the laws which they follow in 
the absence of any supernatural aid. The 
actions, both physical and intellectual, of a 
person under the influence of grace do not 
differ in kind from those of one who is out 
side that influence, and are open to precisely 
the same kind of investigation. Faith, for 
example, is not a sixth sense, or an extra 
intellectual faculty ; it is merely the action of 
the intellect and will directed towards a par 
ticular subject, and dealing with a particular 
set of evidences, and is in itself no more 
mysterious than other modes of voluntary and 
intellectual activity. On Christian principles, 
indeed, faith is held to be due to supernatural 
assistance by means of a divinely infused 
virtue ; but the modus operandi is obviously 
by no means changed by that infusion ; the 
force of motiva credibilitatis and the weight 
of divine authority are estimated by faith in 
the same way as similar evidence is estimated 
in purely secular matters. 

The supernatural character of mysticism is, 



io8 MYSTICISM 

therefore, at least no bar to the investigation 
in a purely natural sense of the mental pro 
cesses it may involve. Such enquiries as that 
of M. Delacroix, or of Professor W. James, 
whatever may be thought of their conclusions, 
are in no way excluded or discountenanced by 
acceptance of the supernatural explanation. 

Dionysius, and later mystical writers, have 
not troubled themselves with any psycho 
logical theory in explanation of their experi 
ences ; they were, indeed, hardly in a position 
to do so. All that they were concerned with 
was to relate facts ; though, naturally, they 
tended to relate them with so much attention 
to sequence and classification as to produce 
what is in effect a kind of theory, or systeme 
psychologique privilegit. But their accounts, 
though in some cases (of which St Teresa and 
St John of the Cross are the chief examples) 
they are perfectly systematic so far as they 
go, 1 do not address themselves to any con 
sideration of the mode, whether partially 

1 Mr Inge remarks the general tendency among mystical 
writers of the supernatural kind to schematism. 1 1 may perhaps 
be explained as a natural attempt to minimise the insuperable 
difficulty of describing such experiences as theirs. 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF MYSTICISM 109 

natural or wholly supernatural, in which the 
supernatural effects are produced. So far as 
they are concerned, the divine modus operandi 
may be considered an open question. 

Three different views have been held on this 
point. 

i. It has been supposed that man is en 
dowed with some kind of special faculty by 
which he is enabled both to know God as 
existing, and in the higher stages of spirituality 
to enter into direct personal relation with Him. 
This faculty has often been supposed to be a 
distinct element in human nature. The vov$ 
or spiritual part, which is designed exclusively 
for intercourse with the divine, is distinct 
from the V^ x*? o r intellect, which is concerned 
with created things both being distinct again 
from the animal nature in mankind. 1 This 
view, sometimes called trichotomy, has been 
condemned by the Church as put forward by 
the Apollinarian heretics, and again in recent 
times as held by Gtinther ; it was held in 
a professedly modified form by Occam, with- 

1 The Pauline division into body, soul and spirit (i Thess. 
v.) must be understood to refer to the twofold function of the 
rational soul, not to two distinct substances. 



no MYSTICISM 

out explicit and authoritative condemnation, 
though with much opposition. Again, the 
supposed faculty is held to be an endowment 
or power of the one soul, co-ordinate with 
but distinguishable from its faculties of reason 
and will. 

In both forms, however, this theory seems to 
be gratuitous; since on the one hand no powers 
are attributed to the supposed special faculty 
which are not in one way or another exercised 
by the intellect under ordinary circumstances ; 
and on the other hand, there can be no reason 
for supposing that God is unable, if He so 
desires, to communicate directly with man 
through his natural intellect, without having 
to create a special faculty for the reception 
of divine communications. 

2. Directly opposed to this view is another, 
which holds the supposed mystical communi 
cations to have no external source, but to 
be wholly subjective experiences, due to the 
automatic working of the subconscious or 
"subliminal" self. 1 Much apparently uncon- 

1 W. James, Varieties of Religious Experience ; Delacroix, 
Mysticisme. Cf. Vaughan, Plours with the My sties , i. 158. 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF MYSTICISM in 

trovertible evidence has been adduced to 
show that the field of psychical experience 
extends far beyond that of actual conscious 
ness ; and that from time to time an auto 
matic transference takes place from one to 
the other. Ideas appear to arise in the 
conscious intelligence without giving any 
indication of their origin, in sense or reason ; 
they are evidently not consciously made by 
the intelligence, nor are they attributable to 
any external source which can be recognised 
by means of sense - perception. Thus they 
have all the appearance of purely spiritual 
communications proceeding from an external 
and transcendental region. The theory we 
are now considering holds that, on the 
principle that entia non sunt multiplicands 
prater necessitate, we are not justified in 
investing these experiences with any tran 
scendental character, if, as is thought to be 
the case, they can be sufficiently accounted 
for by other means. 

The question is, therefore, whether the 
theory of automatism does really provide a 
sufficient explanation of the facts. 



ii2 MYSTICISM 

It seems hardly possible to deny that most 
of the characteristic features of the states 
recorded by Catholic mystical writers as ex 
perienced by themselves, have been at various 
times produced in the experience of others 
who are neither Catholics nor mystics. The 
essential features of passivity, of incommuni- 
cableness, and of manifest reality are evident 
in many of the cases cited by James, some 
of which are the result of alcoholic stimulation, 
others of the influence of anaesthetics, and others 
again of pathological states ; while some are 
apparently spontaneous. 1 Moreover, numbers 
of heretical and even immoral systems of 
religion or theosophy have depended for their 
authority on experiences which seem to exhibit 
characteristically mystical qualities, but which 
cannot, from the point of view of Catholic 
orthodoxy, be held to be genuine, and either 
must be considered purely natural, or else 
must be attributed to diabolical influence. 
This latter was the opinion of Gdrres, who 
made out a complete system of diabolical 
mysticism parallel in some sort with the divine. 

1 James, op. tit., Lectures XVI. and XVII. 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF MYSTICISM 113 

But in the case of Catholic mystics and 
it may probably be admitted, in other cases 
exhibiting nearly similar features there is no 
question of any such stimulus as that given 
by alcohol or drugs. Nor can their state be 
properly called pathological, unless in the very 
wide and somewhat fanciful sense in which 
the so-called inspirations of genius have been 
supposed to be so. Abnormal it certainly is ; 
and there is no direct evidence to show that 
this abnormal state is not, as in some of 
the cases quoted by James, the spontaneous 
result of some obscure and possibly congenital 
abnormality of nervous constitution. 1 At the 
same time it must be noted that, as has 
already been pointed out, the great mystics 
show no signs of such abnormality, but are, 
on the contrary, rather remarkable for their 
mental and physical sanity in the ordinary 
affairs of life. Such mystics as St Bernard, 
St Catherine of Siena, St Teresa and St John 
of the Cross seem to be distinguished from 
the ordinary run of people in busines matters, 
only by their superior acumen. If indeed it 

1 See Benedict XIV., Heroic Sanctity, and see ch. i. pp. 35, 36. 

H 



ii 4 MYSTICISM 

is to be assumed that no personal God exists ; 
or that God cannot communicate directly with 
the soul ; or that man has no soul which can 
receive such communications then, no doubt, 
the hypothesis, at present certainly unverifi- 
able, of automatism may fairly be held to be 
the most probable explanation of the problem. 
But if no such presupposition is entertained ; 
and still more if it is held, on independent 
grounds, that a God exists who is able, if 
He so chooses, to influence the soul of man 
directly and immediately, there seems to be 
no reason to deny that those cases of tran 
scendental illumination, for which no physical 
cause can be assigned, may, with a degree 
of probability which approaches certainty, be 
attributed to divine agency. For here the 
question ceases to be a matter merely of 
psychological investigation : the moral proba 
bility of deception has also to be considered 
that is to say, the probability that God 
would permit those who must be considered 
most deserving of His consideration to be 
the victims of a delusion as humiliating as 
the reality simulated by it would be ennobling. 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF MYSTICISM 115 

If we start with the Christian presupposition 
of the nature of God it is impossible to believe 
the conviction universally entertained by the 
mystics of their immediate intercourse with 
God to be ill-founded : at the same time the 
theory of automatism seems to furnish at 
least a highly probable explanation of many 
quasi - mystical states to which this moral 
argument does not appear to be applicable. 
Those, on the other hand, who start with a 
contrary presupposition, or with none, are 
obviously free to apply the theory impartially 
to all cases alike. 

3. The third view is a conciliation of 
the subjective and objective theories, first put 
forward definitely by Maine de Biran, 1 and 
adopted in a general way by Gorres. In this 

1 Vie de V Esprit : sub fin. Cf. Delacroix, p. 406. "Comme 
il est difficile de me connaitre 1 identite psychologique des 
phenomnes de subconscience, qu ils se presentent dans le 
Christianisme ou dans d autres religions ; ou bien sans d autres 
formes que la forme religieuse, beaucoup d esprits desireux de 
concilier le fait et la doctrine tendent a faire droit aux exigences 
de la psychologic, en expliquant psychologiquement la passivite 
religieuse, et a celles de la theologie, en maintenant que ce jeu 
de lois psychologiques represente le plan d action divine sur les 
ames ; de sorte que le subconscient serait le vehicule de la grace 
divine." 



n6 MYSTICISM 

view the experience of the mystic is real, and 
consists, as he rightly believes, in immediate 
intuition of and communication with the divine 
being. But the manner in which the soul 
becomes conscious of the supernatural experi 
ence is natural, and from a certain point is 
the same as that in which it becomes conscious 
of the impressions automatically derived from 
the "transmarginal " sphere. That is to say, 
the soul undergoes a certain unconscious modi 
fication 1 (in the one case by means of a sense- 
impression, in the other by means of a 
purely spiritual communication), of which it 
subsequently becomes conscious by the very 
obscure process to which the title of automatism 
has been given in order to express its essentially 
non-volitional character. The way, whatever 
it may be, in which we become conscious of 
ideas derived from unnoticed sense-impressions 
may be identical with that in which the mystic 
becomes conscious of the immediate divine 
presence. He can give no account of the 
coming of this presence ; suddenly he knows 
that it is there and he can say no more. In 

1 Cf. Maher, Psychology, p. 357. 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF MYSTICISM 117 

the same way the mind becomes suddenly 
conscious of the solution of a difficult problem, 
of an artistic effect and the manner of its pro 
duction, or of an overmastering moral impulse, 
without being able to explain or account for 
its origin. There is certainly a strong apparent 
similarity between the flashes of inspiration 
which are held to constitute or indicate genius 
and the mystical intuition of an objective divine 
presence and of communications proceeding 
from a divine person ; and the view which 
regards the rise of the ideas into consciousness 
as identical in method in every case seems 
to have much in its favour. The absence 
of any genuine (as distinct from imaginary) 
sensible impressions in the one case as com 
pared with the fundamental importance of 
sense-impressions in the other need present 
no difficulty, so long as we admit the sub 
stantial reality of the soul, and refrain from 
identifying physiological with psychological 
conditions. It is not more difficult and it may 
even appear less so to conceive of a psychical 
state produced, whether consciously or un 
consciously, by direct spiritual agency, than to 



u8 MYSTICISM 

conceive of a psychical state resulting from 
a sense-impression. In the view now before 
us, the only difference between the two classes 
of experience is that a true mystical state is 
originated in the psychical sphere ; pseudo- 
mystical or merely natural states have their 
origin in sense - impression, like all merely 
natural psychical states ; but the psychical 
machinery by which a conscious state is 
produced we may consider to be the same in 
both cases. 

It may be added that this distinction 
coincides practically with that which has been 
constantly made by ecclesiastical authority 
in dealing with the various types of apparently 
abnormal spiritual experience on which it has 
had to pronounce an opinion from time to 
time. 1 The possibility, or rather the strong 
probability, of deception of one kind or 
another has always been kept prominently in 
view ; and it is only after much hesitation that 
any such case has been pronounced genuine. 
Each has been, as a rule, the subject of pro 
longed investigation and consideration ; cases 

1 See Benedict XIV., De Canon, passim. 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF MYSTICISM 119 

eventually found to be spurious have had their 
orthodox defenders, and genuine ones their 
equally orthodox antagonists. St Catherine 
of Siena, St John of the Cross, St Teresa, 
B. Margaret Mary Alacoque, and a host of 
others have had to undergo a more or less 
prolonged period of doubt, suspicion and even 
reprobation, before their experiences were 
accepted as genuine ; and on the other hand, 
neither Molinos nor Madame Guyon lacked 
patronage in high places. It is enough, how 
ever, for practical purposes (and no other 
purpose can here be entertained) to distinguish 
genuine experiences from delusions. It is of 
little importance to know the nature of the 
delusion, which it is admitted might be 
either natural or directly diabolical in origin. 
Psychological considerations need not enter 
into the investigation ; until very recently, 
indeed, it was scarcely possible that they 
should ; but the fact of self-deception has 
always been familiar enough, however little 
may have been known about its nature. 

Abnormal experiences may, therefore, be 
either genuine or cases of delusion, whether 



120 MYSTICISM 

natural or supernatural, and the theory last 
mentioned supplies a rational basis for this 
classification to which it seems difficult to 
take exception. At the same time, it must 
be remembered that the criterion which has 
mainly been made use of by Ecclesiastical 
authority is, and probably will always be, the 
external or " pragmatic " one of orthodoxy and 
morality. But mysticism which is orthodox 
and moral need not necessarily be genuine, 
though that which is heretical and immoral 
must necessarily be spurious ; and in the large 
number of cases of the former kind no 
authoritative pronouncement has been made 
or appears to be possible. But in such cases 
there is little practical need for authority ; a 
doubtfully genuine mystic may be accepted or 
rejected by individual opinion, and so long 
as his faith and morals are beyond question, 
neither acceptance nor rejection can do any 
harm. It may also be suggested that the 
difficulty of a decision may be considerably 
increased by the occurrence of abnormal states 
of different kinds in the experience of the same 
individual. The passage from real mystical 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF MYSTICISM 121 

experiences to spurious ones seems to be far 
from an improbable occurrence and the con 
verse process, though doubtless less probable, 
can hardly be considered impossible, though 
nothing could well be more difficult than to 
trace such a transition. But the opinion ex 
pressed of the Methodists by William Law is 
applicable to a large class of mystical preten 
sions "I think that they have the Spirit 
of God, but they have greatly mingled their 
own spirit with it." 1 

1 The probable function of the "subliminal" consciousness 
and the nature of the union involved in the lumen gloirae are 
well though briefly described by Dr Chandler (Anglican Bishop 
of Bloemfontein) ; though it is, of course, incorrect to speak, as 
he does, of the " spark of the divine nature which is present in 
us from the beginning, and which makes us spiritual creatures 
with an organ of spiritual intuition" Ara Cceli, pp. 115-119. 



CHAPTER VI 

EVIL 

THE question, often felt to be a very dis 
tressing one, of the cause and inner nature of 
evil and of its place in the universal scheme 
of things, has a special affinity with the 
principle of mysticism. It would seem only 
natural to suppose that those who are admitted 
to the special divine intimacy which is the 
privilege of mystics should have something to 
say about the way in which the unsatisfactory 
condition of this world is to be reconciled 
with the existence of an omnipotent and 
benevolent Creator, of whose nature they have 
a deeper knowledge than others, and of whose 
relation to a suffering creation they may there 
fore be expected to have a fuller comprehen 
sion than the rest of mankind. 



122 



EVIL 123 

This expectation is one that is often con 
sidered to be unfulfilled ; though mystical 
writers do as a rule deal more or less fully 
with the subject, their account is often thought 
to be inadequate, and even unmeaning. They 
are agreed that evil whether considered as 
sin or as the suffering consequent upon it- 
has no substantive existence ; it is the nega 
tion of good and no more. There can be 
no Summum Malum, St Thomas declares, for 
this reason. As to how evil comes into being, 
and what is its place and meaning in a uni 
verse that must be considered wholly good, 
they are by no means explicit. They know 
but they cannot explain how they know 
that evil has no permanence and no substantial 
reality : that it neither mars the perfect good 
ness and omnipotence of God, nor troubles 
the peace of those who are united with Him 
that in the end all will somehow be perfectly 
well. 1 This no doubt is quite satisfactory to 

1 Cf. Blessed Angela of Foligno. "I felt myself in such 
fulness of charity, and I understood with such joy in that power 
and will and justice of God, that I understood not only those 
things about which I had asked, but I was satisfied as to the 
salvation offered to every creature, and about the devil and the 



i2 4 MYSTICISM 

the mystic who receives the supernatural 
assurance ; but it is hardly applicable by way 
of argument or explanation to the perplexities 
of others in this matter. 

Nevertheless, it is quite possible to con 
struct a theodicy, or vindication of the divine 
justice, upon the basis of the principle which 
lies at the root of supernatural mysticism. 
Indeed it is scarcely possible to do so in any 
other way. That principle, as we have seen, 
is the absoluteness, or the infinite perfection 
and independence, of the divine nature. All 

damned and all things. But all this I cannot explain in words." 
(In Catholic Mysticism, by A. Thorold.) 

Cf. also Julian of Norwich, ch. xxxii. "One point of our 
Faith is, that many creatures shall be damned as the angels 
which be now fiends, and many in earth that died out of 
the faith of Holy Church, and also many that hath received 
Christendom, and liveth unchristian lives, and so die out of 
charity. All these shall be damned to Hell without end, as 
Holy Church teacheth me to believe ; and standing all this, 
methought it was impossible that all manner of thing should 
be well, as our Lord shewed in this time. And as to this, I 
had no other answer but this : 4 That, that is impossible to 
thee, is not impossible to me ; I shall save my word in all 
things and I shall make all things well for this is the great 
deed that our Lord God shall do ; in which deed He shall 
save His word in all things, and He shall make well all that 
is not well. But what the deed shall be and how it shall be 
done, there is no creature beneath Christ that knoweth it, nor 
shall know it till it be done. " 



EVIL 125 

depends on God, but He Himself on nothing 
but Himself. Consequently, His motive in 
creating is in Himself His own " glory" or 
pleasure"; and this is the only absolutely 
good motive which can be conceived for any 
action on the part of either the Creator or the 
creature. But if God is " glorified" by the 
creation of this world ; if His power and 
justice are manifested in the reward of the 
good and the punishment of the wicked ; then 
certainly the act of creation is good, its 
motive is fulfilled. Evil is the work of the 
creature, not of the Creator, whose justice and 
mercy alike it is the means of exhibiting. 

Further, the goodness of the act of creation 
is not vitiated by the fact that it involves the 
self-caused misery, temporal or eternal, of the 
human race. At first sight this does appear 
to be a grave difficulty, in the way of re 
conciling omnipotence with perfect goodness ; 
for, it is asked, if God could create a world 
in which no evil could exist, or could even 
abstain from creating this one, why did He 
not do so ? Or if He could not do either, 
how can He be omnipotent? But evil is the 



126 MYSTICISM 

work of created free-will, not of God : if, there 
fore, God had abstained from the creation of 
this world (or what is the same thing, had 
made it different) because of man s actions 
foreseen either as possible or as certain, then 
God would not have acted as God, but in 
contravention of His very nature. There 
would have been a corner of the possible 
universe from which He would have been ex 
cluded, a good act which He might not do : 
He would have been limited by and dependent 
on the free actions of His possible creatures. 
But such an idea is absolutely inconceivable : 
God cannot at the same time be perfect and 
limited, or dependent and independent, or 
supreme and subject to the will of His 
creatures ; and if He could act in subordina 
tion to anything external to Himself, He would 
no longer exist He would have destroyed 
Himself. To remove the centre of a circle 
is to destroy both centre and circle, and if 
God were not the centre of the circle of the 
universe, neither He nor it could exist. 

Thus the difficulty of reconciling the exist 
ence of evil with the omnipotence and good- 



EVIL 127 

ness of a divine creator disappears as soon 
as the essential nature of God is realised in 
respect of its independence and supremacy. 
Hence also appears the negative character of 
evil, which is recognised by all systems of 
thought that admit a supreme being by the 
Stoic Cleanthes and the Neoplatonist Plotinus 
no less than by St Augustine and St Thomas. 
Evil is the absence of certain possible or 
ideal elements in certain parts of creation, 
not the existence in them of something hostile 
or extraneous. Sin is the perversion of the 
free-will, not its inhibition ; pain is the dis 
order of the organism or the faculties, not 
a fresh element in their constitution ; suffer 
ing, whether mental or bodily, is a mode of 
natural self-consciousness, not consciousness of 
a different kind from that which experiences 
pleasure. Moreover, if evil in the ordinary 
(not the " metaphysical ") sense is held to 
be identical with sin and its consequences 
as it must be on Christian principles then 
sin and suffering are two mutually counter 
balancing factors in the harmonious inter 
action of all the elements of the universe ; 



128 MYSTICISM 

evil is an accident of that which is specifi 
cally good ; it is provided for in the universal 
scheme of things, as the expansion and con 
traction of the main-spring is provided for 
in the mechanism of a watch it is an irregu 
larity of detail which subserves the regularity 
of the whole. 

The only alternatives to this view are 
either an impossible Manichean dualism, or 
some form of philosophical pessimism, such as 
the original underlying principle of Buddhism, 
or those which are adopted respectively by 
Schopenhauer and Hartmann, or such as is 
really latent, though not acknowledged, in the 
" substance" of Spinozism or the idealistic 
absolute of Bradley. The subordinate dualism 
of Christianity relieves the Creator of what 
may be called responsibility for evil, while 
its fundamental monism provides a place for 
evil in the scheme of things no less secure 
than that which it finds in the supposed 
universal substance or the absolute. 

As a philosophical statement of the Christian 
view of evil this can hardly be unacceptable 
to any one. But it must be admitted that 



EVIL 129 

it fails to go to the root of the matter, even 
when combined, as it should be, with the 
doctrines of the Incarnation and the Atone 
ment as constituting a manifestation of divine 
mercy superimposed upon that of the divine 
justice which appears in the natural universe. 
No merely speculative account of evil can 
be entirely satisfactory, even apart from the 
necessary incompleteness of any speculation 
on so purely transcendental a subject, so long 
as evil is not merely known, but felt. What 
gives this problem its peculiar poignancy is 
the fact that evil is primarily a matter of 
experience ; it is but cold comfort for those 
who suffer to know that their pains do not 
disturb the harmony of the universe or dis 
prove the goodness of its Creator. " There 
never yet was a philosopher that could endure 
the toothache patiently," and it seems improb 
able that any rational explanation of the origin 
and nature of evil, however unexceptionable 
on philosophical or theological grounds, will 
ever subdue the human instinct of rebellion 
against the prevailing law of suffering. 

But mysticism stands on a different plane 



130 MYSTICISM 

from that of philosophy or speculative the 
ology ; it is an experience as direct and as 
real as even the most entirely corporal forms 
of suffering, and it is consequently able to 
provide a real counterpoise to all pains of 
mind or body far different from the some 
what empty consolations of philosophy, or 
even from those of the deepest human 
sympathy ; with which latter it has never 
theless something in common. It is probably, 
indeed, in genuine human sympathy that the 
only real consolation inadequate enough 
for unavoidable suffering is to be found by 
natural means ; it does not indeed diminish 
or shorten the pain, but a kind of set-off is 
provided by the regard and affection which 
the sympathy implies. There is no consola 
tion, but rather the reverse, in an enemy s 
sympathy ; but the joy of friendship manifested 
in sympathy is felt to be a distinct gain due 
to the suffering which has given it occasion. 
In somewhat the same way, though in an 
infinitely higher degree, the joy of union 
with God is a consolation which mystics 
consider to be cheaply bought at the price 



EVIL 131 

of any pain. Argument and explanation 
become, as compared with such delights as 
the mystic knows, of very minor importance ; 
the " familiar friendship" of God is a practical 
argument, more persuasive than any other 
could possibly be, for His absolute goodness 
and infinite power, no matter what difficulties 
may be found in the way of reconciling them 
with earthly appearances within the narrow 
range of human thought and knowledge. 

This eminently practical solution of the 
problem of evil is implicitly contained in 
what has been called the " mystical paradox." 
Mystics constantly assert that it would be 
better to be united to God in hell, than to 
be separated from Him in heaven. 1 Either 

1 E.g., St Teresa : "A soul is suffering sorrow and disquiet, 
the mind is darkened and dry, but is set at peace, freed from 
all trouble and filled with light, merely by hearing the words, 
Be not troubled. These deliver it from all pain, although 
before, if the whole world and all its learned men had united to 
persuade it there was no cause for grief, it could not, in spite of 
their efforts, have got rid of its sadness." (Castle, vi. 3.) "Souls 
that have reached the state I speak of ... care nothing for 
their own pain or glory ; if they are anxious not to stay long in 
purgatory, it is more on account of its keeping them from the 
presence of God than because of its torments." (Ib. vi. 7.) 

B. Angela of Foligno (loc. cit.} : " If I knew for certain that 
I was damned, I could not possibly grieve nor labour less, nor 



1 32 MYSTICISM 

is, of course, actually simply inconceivable ; 
the paradox is merely a strong assertion of 
the absolute dependence of the creature upon 
the will of the Creator, and the entire con 
tentment which a soul that has once realised 
that dependence must feel in occupying its 
divinely ordained place in the universe, what 
ever it may be. 

The point of view is shifted : the universe 
is envisaged from its true centre, which is 
God, not from the false and imaginary centre 
of self. A faint likeness to this conception 
may be perceived in the "contemplation of 
the kernel of things" extolled by Schopen 
hauer; in Hartmann s doctrine that the "ends 
of the unconscious " should be made our own, 
and in the notion advocated by Comte and 
by the " ethical religions " of the present day, 

be less zealous in prayer for the honour of God, so perfectly did 
I understand His justice." 

Ruysbroeck : " Lord, I am Thine, I should be Thine as gladly 
in Hell as in Heaven, if in that way I could advance Thy glory." 
Adornment of the Spiritual Marriage. 

B. Margaret Mary Alacoque : " Je ne sais si je me trompe, 
mais il me semble que je voudrais aimer mon amour crucifie 
d un amour aussi ardent que celui des Seraphins, mais je ne 
serais pas fachee que ce fut dans Tenfer que je 1 aimasse de la 
sorte." Vie par ses Contemporaines. 



EVIL 133 

that life is to be viewed and transacted from 
the standpoint of humanity, or of posterity. 
The idea, thus stripped of its personal aspect, 
becomes utterly unreal and ineffective ; but 
in the mystical consciousness it furnishes the 
only antidote ever yet discovered (and that, 
it would seem, a complete one) to the bitter 
sense of wrong and injustice which the evils 
of life are apt to engender. To regard the 
world and oneself from the point of view of 
the whole human race, so as to act altruisti 
cally for the benefit of others, or to expend 
devotion on the idea of duty is one thing ; 
to be so united with God that the thought 
of self is lost and forgotten is quite another. 
One is an artificial pose in regard to blood 
less abstractions which have no vitality ; the 
other is the actual grasp of the very root 
and vital principle of things. 

Thus the mystic translates into real and 
living experience the theoretical principle 
adduced by Christian philosophy as the explana 
tion of the existence and nature of evil, and 
furnishes what for practical purposes may fairly 
be called an experimental test of its validity. 



134 MYSTICISM 

On the other hand, the mystical attitude 
towards evil is strongly corroborated by its 
exact and obviously unpremeditated agreement 
with the only metaphysical theory which pro 
vides anything like an adequate account of 
the origin and nature of evil. 

It may be noted finally, that the consola 
tions of mysticism in this matter are by no 
means to be confined strictly to mystics. In 
the first place, the blind trust in the divine 
goodness, which is probably for many the only 
practical resource in the pains and anxieties 
of life, loses altogether its prima facie appear 
ance of unreasonableness when it is founded 
on real, even though vicarious experience. 
The logical position of the Christian who 
believes in the goodness and omnipotence of 
God, in spite of appearances to the contrary, 
merely because he would otherwise be unable 
to believe in God at all, certainly leaves 
much to be desired. But if it is reinforced 
by the consideration that those who know 
Him best have found, by direct experience 
which cannot be gainsaid, that He is both 
omnipotent and good, the position is really 



EVIL 135 

no less reasonable than that of those who are 
convinced of the insularity of Great Britain 
without having personally circumnavigated it. 

Secondly, the mystical attitude towards the 
problem is quite consistent with the absence in 
any particular individual of mystical experience 
properly so called. There are doubtless in 
numerable Christians whose conviction of the 
power and goodness of God is not less in 
degree than that of the mystic, though their 
conviction is founded on theoretical rather than 
directly experimental grounds. The certainty 
of faith, supported as it nearly always is by 
a strong sense of the care and protection of 
divine Providence, and by the experience of 
favours granted in answer to prayer, is in no 
way less strong in some respects it is even 
stronger, than that which is based directly on 
mystical knowledge. 

But even in this case the mystical experience 
of others, whether recorded in Holy Scripture 
or in the lives of the Saints, or by living 
contemporaries, provides an aid to faith, or 
"motive of credibility" which cannot rightly 
be overlooked, 



CHAPTER VII 

IMMANENCE AND TRANSCENDENCE 

THE supernatural character of mysticism de 
pends upon the double aspect in which God s 
presence in creation may be considered. In 
one point of view God is everywhere present 
in creation, and thus may be approached by 
all men, even while they are confined physically 
to the material sphere of the senses. There 
is between God and His creatures no local 
interval, and no intelligible intermediation 
such as the Gnostics conceived to exist. The 
world is not revolving apart from God, for 
gotten and neglected ; nor is it brought into 
relation with Him only through a hierarchy 
or chain of subordinate spiritual existences 
or emanations. God is rightly, in this sense, 
said to be " immanent " in the world as the 
constant efficient cause from which everything 

136 



IMMANENCE AND TRANSCENDENCE 137 

in every moment of existence derives its 
being ; as the supreme ruler of all that is ; 
and as the intelligent designer of all forms 
of being, together with all their permutations 
and combinations. He is everywhere per 
essentiam presentiam et potentiam? On the 
other hand, God is by nature absolutely 
distinct and separate from all created exist 
ence, not merely in the way in which one 
created being may differ in kind from another, 
but by the unique nature of His being, 
which is absolute and self - dependent, and 
thus altogether incommensurable with created 
things, which are necessarily dependent and 
derived. Though all creatures are in the 
similitude of God by virtue of the being which 
is communicated to them by Him, they are 
all absolutely unlike Him in His independence; 
no imaginable greatness or perfection in any 
creature can give it any sort of resemblance 
to this essential and fundamental attribute 
of the divine nature. Therefore God can 
only be known by intellectual separation 

1 Summa, I. viii. 3, and cf. St John of the Cross, Ascent , ii. 5, 
and Spiritual Canticle^ xi. 2. 



138 MYSTICISM 

from all creatures : He cannot be expressed 
in terms of anything but Himself, or brought 
under any category which has any other 
content there is no " formula " for God, no 
class to which He may be said to belong. 

If God is considered as intelligent, wise, 
beautiful or powerful, He is still none of 
those things in the same sense in which they 
can be predicated of creatures, who can only 
be intelligent, wise or beautiful by participa 
tion, as their very existence is only participa 
tion in the being of God. The speculative 
knowledge that God exists is the recogni 
tion, theoretically, of a unique kind of being ; 
but the experimental knowledge, which is 
mysticism, is immediate experience or appre 
hension of that which is essentially different 
from all else, and must therefore be appre 
hended or experienced after a wholly different 
manner from that in which we experience 
created existence. That is to say that God 
is transcendent ; and it is only in a sense 
consistent with His transcendence that He 
can truly be said to be immanent in creation. 

There are two other senses in which God 



IMMANENCE AND TRANSCENDENCE 139 

has been held to be immanent : one of them the 
conception of Spinoza, the other of Eckhart and 
Hegel. The former holds that God and nature, 
or spirit and matter, are identical the same 
thing, namely " substance," in two different 
aspects. This notion is immanence in its 
strictly etymological sense ; God is in nature 
and remains in it ; He cannot be outside it, 
for there is no outside ; and He cannot be 
distinct from it, for He is constituted by the 
sum total of its parts and their relations, of 
which He is in fact the underlying unity 
and reality. Much the same relation to the 
world of phenomena is attributed by Bradley 
to the absolute. 

The other view regards nature as a mode 
of God s being, a necessary phase or moment 
in His self-realisation. Nature is identical 
with God, but God is more than nature (not 
quantitatively but intensively), inasmuch He 
is both prior and posterior to nature, in the 
order of thought, though not necessarily in 
the order of time. This, however, is not 
really transcendence ; for God in this view 
is ontologically one with nature, so far as it 



i 4 o MYSTICISM 

goes ; creation is a necessary part of God, 
and He transcends nature only in the sense 
of being more than, not different from nature. 

Under either of these two conceptions God 
is " given" in nature, and experience of nature 
is experience of God. There is no place 
therefore for vision, "rapture" or " ecstasy," 
the object of which would be merely the 
non-existent. All the mystic could do would 
be to reflect upon his sensible experience, 
and compound a syncretised Deity of the 
" threads and patches " of individual sensation, 
thought and feeling. 

It is a very different process that the 
supernatural mystic expounds, so far as the 
limitations of human language will allow him. 
God is substantially or essentially present in 
the soul, as He is in all created things ; but 
the mystic does far more than merely reflect 
on this truth. What he seeks is the super 
natural union of likeness, begotten by love, 
which is the union of the human will with 
the divine. He seeks to realise the unfelt 
natural presence of God in creation, not by 
resting in any aspect of nature, even its most 



IMMANENCE AND TRANSCENDENCE 141 

abstract one, as mere being, but by entering 
into a personal relationship with the concealed 
presence which is the source of being. Where 
as Spinoza saw natura naturans in natura 
naturata, and Hegel pure being evolving 
itself through the maze of the becoming, the 
supernatural mystic cuts himself loose at one 
blow from all phenomenal entanglements, and 
"passes free and untrammelled by all that is 
seen and all that sees " into the " intangible and 
invisible" presence of Him who is " beyond all 
things." 1 This appears to be the true inter 
pretation of the doctrine of the "ground" 
(Grund) of the soul, which is prominent in 
the German mysticism of the fourteenth century, 
and to which reference has already been made. 
This doctrine, as it appears in Eckhart, Tauler 
and Ruysbroeck, and the German Theology, 
is somewhat confused, and has led to some 
apparent misunderstanding. 2 There are two 

1 See Dion., Myst. Theol, c. i. 

2 E.g., Tauler (Sermon of St John Baptist] : " There is no past 
or present here ; and no created light can reach or shine into 
this divine ground ; for here only is the dwelling-place of God 
and His sanctuary. This divine abyss can be fathomed by no 
creatures ; it can be filled by none and it satisfies none ; God 



i 4 2 MYSTICISM 

" grounds," spoken of respectively as " created " 
and "uncreated," and the two seem to be 
treated as almost interchangeable whence 
these writers seem occasionally to speak of 
the essence or substance of the soul as if it 
were uncreated, and a part of the divine 
essence. But the general principles of at least 
Tauler and Ruysbroeck certainly require us 
to understand the created ground to be the 
substance of the human soul, as distinguished 
from its faculties the principle in virtue of 
which it not merely acts, but is ; and the 
uncreated ground is then to be understood 
as that substantial or immanent" presence 
of God which is to be found in all created 
things alike, as the background and support 
without which they could have no existence 
at all. The close contact (as for want of a 
better word it must be called) between the 
two is obvious. The created ground is the 
essence of the soul, a thing which cannot be 
directly known, but only inferred from its 

only can fill it in His infinity. For this abyss belongs only to 
the divine abyss, of which it is written Abyssus abyssum 
invocat. " And compare the German Theology, ch. i. : " He 
is the substance of all things." 



IMMANENCE AND TRANSCENDENCE 143 

operations, a purely spiritual and intelligible 
entity, removed from all direct experience ; 
and the uncreated ground is another purely 
spiritual entity, also incapable of being natur 
ally experienced, which is the basis of the 
created ground s existence the ground of 
the ground, in fact. But when the mystical 
union of the soul with God takes place, the 
two grounds become in a certain sense one. 
God is realised as the foundation of the soul s 
being, and the soul s perception of its own 
essence is, in fact, the perception of its unity 
with the essential divine nature. Eckhart 
seems, at times, to have identified the two 
grounds in an ontological and not merely 
mystical unity ; and the others, in the fervour 
of devotional experience, as was perhaps 
natural, have not always kept the distinction 
perfectly clear. But their view is, on the 
whole, intelligible enough, and far removed 
from any affinity with pantheism. But the 
struggle with the sense-implications of language 
perpetually besets mystical writers, and never 
ceases to involve their meaning in obscurity. 
The ordinary processes of the mind can be 



144 MYSTICISM 

expressed in words only by way of metaphor, 
and the meaning of the language of psychology 
is not always to be easily apprehended. Much 
more must the application of language to 
that which is beyond thought, and in some 
sense its negation, be difficult and liable to 
misunderstanding. 

It will be clear enough, however, from what 
has been said that the terms " immanent" and 
" transcendent," as applied to the divine nature, 
are not mutually exclusive, but indicate merely 
two aspects of the same thing. The tran 
scendence of God is immanent, and His 
immanence is transcendent. By immanence 
is to be understood the divine accessibility 
to the human soul, and by transcendence the 
essential independence of the divine nature of 
all created things and persons. The words, 
if used rightly, must be used in the Kantian 
or subjective sense of two ways in which God 
may be apprehended by us, not as indicat 
ing two modes of His existence. God may 
be known to exist, and His nature partially 
understood, by the Baconian " interrogation " of 
His handiwork ; thus our knowledge of God 



IMMANENCE AND TRANSCENDENCE 145 

through nature is an immanent knowledge. 
But the conception of God so arrived at 
is of a being who wholly transcends nature, 
and whose essential distinctness from all that 
is not eternally Himself is a fundamental 
attribute of His being. Thus our knowledge 
of God is transcendent as well as immanent, 
since while we conceive Him as manifested by 
nature, we conceive Him also, and in the same 
act, as essentially distinct and separate from 
nature. This, however, is not the same thing 
as saying that God is in nature and also 
beyond it, but the exact contrary ; God has 
neither two modes of being nor two modes of 
action ; He is totum inter omnia, et totum 
extra His action, like His existence, is 
either wholly immanent or wholly transcen 
dent, according to the point of view adopted. 
To contrast the two, in an ontological sense, 
is really to make a cross-division as if we 
were to contrast His omnipotence with His 
power to create a universe. It is not to be 
wondered at that a fancied distinction between 
God s immanental and transcendental actions 
should have led to strange results. 



CHAPTER VIII 

PLOTINUS 

THE experimental knowledge of God by means 
of special divine illumination must, according 
to the view we are advocating, be considered 
to be the prerogative of Christianity. For 
since the fulness of divine knowledge, so far 
as it is attainable by human beings in this 
life, is to be found in the Christian religion 
alone, it is evidently inconceivable that such 
knowledge should either fail to be found there 
in its highest form, which is mysticism, or that 
it should exist elsewhere in equal perfection. 
This view is, for the most part, fully borne out 
by a comparison of Christian mysticism with 
such few instances of non-Christian religious 
experience as may by any straining of the 
epithet be called mystical. So also the 

mystical pretensions of persons outside the 

146 



PLOTINUS 147 

pale of the Catholic Church, and those which, 
though made on the behalf of Catholics, the 
Church holds to be spurious, are manifestly 
untenable on the principles laid down by 
Catholic authority as to the necessary char 
acter and results of true mysticism. 

There is, however, one case which it is 
difficult not to regard as an exception to this 
rule that of Plotinus. This remarkable 
figure stands out as the sole instance in 
which all the conditions of true mysticism 
(with the necessary exception of faith) seem 
to have been fulfilled by one who was neither 
a Catholic nor a Christian, but the father of 
Neoplatonism, in its later and fully-developed 
form. Plotinus was born about the year 204, 
and studied at Alexandria under Ammonius 
Saccas, but at the age of forty went to Rome, 
where he taught until the last year of his 
life, the Emperor Gallienus being one of his 
disciples, and died in Campania in the year 
269. He was much sought after in Rome 
as a kind of spiritual director ; his habits of 
life were ascetic, as indeed would naturally 
be the case with one who so despised material 



i 4 8 MYSTICISM 

things as to be "like one who was ashamed 
of being in the body, and therefore could not 
bear to speak of his birth, or parents or 
country." 1 

His philosophy insists strongly on the 
transcendence of God, the supreme unity and 
absolute Good, which is above all being and 
all thought. Beneath the One are intelligence 
(vow), with which the Platonic ideas are identi 
fied, and the soul tyvxh), which is the pro 
duct of intelligence, and in its turn produces 
corporeal things by impressing form upon 
indeterminate, unqualified matter. Thus the 
body is in the soul, rather than the soul in 
the body ; all things are held together by 
the One, which continually draws the manifold 
to itself. Man s part is to rise up from the 
diversity and degradation of matter, through 
thought, into union with the one and absolute 
Good. We are not, however, now concerned 
with Plotinus s philosophy, but with its practical 
consequence. It is in the final stage of the 
soul s upward course, its union with God and 

1 Porphyry, Life of Plotinus. 



PLOTINUS 149 

rest in Him, that the system of Plotinus 
becomes purely mystical. 

The nature of this union is described in 
the sixth Ennead. Like Dionysius after him 
Plotinus does not bring out very clearly the 
notion of special supernatural assistance, or 
grace, as a necessary condition of mystical 
vision. But, also like Dionysius, he insists 
strongly on the distinction between mystics 
and the uninitiated (M fj.efj.vYiiJ.evoi, compare 
Dion., Myst. Theol., i); and he speaks, as 
Dionysius does not, of the " call " and 
" drawing" of the supreme Good, whereby 
the soul is brought into union with it. 1 This 
union with God, or vision of Him, takes 
place in the substance of the soul"; it is 
rather contact than mere knowledge, though 
knowledge is a necessary preliminary to it. 
It is ecstasy, unity, the projection of the soul 
out of itself, 2 in virtue of the affinity which 



d?) 6 faxy SLUKCI Kal 8 0ws v$ Trap^ei * a fHireabv aurou 
KIVC?, otfrot Set" OavfJidfciv ci TOLavrijv Suvaiiiv %et I:\KOV irpbs auro 
KCU dva/caXotf/Lcej ov K irdffijt ir\dvr}s t iVa 
Enn. vi. 7. 

2 otf Ota^a,, d\XA dXXoy rp<57roj TOV 
^Tt5o<rtj aurou Kal t<f>c<ris irpfc a^v . 

(Ktlvov fj.?)8& Kara v6f\aiV) &<nrep ra &\\a VOIJT&, dXXct /card 
Kpelrrova, Ib. 9. 



150 MYSTICISM 

the soul has to the One by its own unity, 
as a self-centred monad (TO V^x?? * v K&TPOV). 
Like Dionysius again, Plotinus enlarges on 
the abstraction from all that is manifold which 
is needful before union with the One can be 
attained. The soul in that union despises 
even thought, which previously had been its 
delight (SiaKeirai Tore w? KIU rov voetv Kara(j>poviv t 
o TOV a\\ov xpwov wrird&ro) ; much more all 
material things : for there is movement, or 
unrest even in thought, whereas the one is 
unmoved, so that the soul that abides in the 
one finds absolute rest, and abandons all 
things. It is as if one entered a splendid 
mansion and admired the beauty of its adorn 
ment ; but when the master of the house 
appears, one cannot but forget all those objects 
of admiration in the joy of seeing Him, who 
comes under no similitude of Himself, but as 
the object of true vision. For this Master of 
the house is no man, but God ; and makes 
Himself known not by means of common sight, 
but as filling the soul which beholds Him. 
Again, it is not beautiful things that the soul 
beholds in this vision, nor beauty itself, nor 



PLOTINUS 151 

the whole band (xpw) of virtues ; as if one 
entered the vestibule of a temple, and saw 
there the statues and similitudes of the God, 
but afterwards going within the sanctuary, saw 
no more any statue or picture, but the divine 
being Himself. This union between the soul 
and God resembles in its clearness the union 

of earthly lovers (e/oa<rrcu /cat epu)fA.VOt crvyKplvcu 

6e\oi>T$) ; the soul will have no other thing, 
good or bad ; but itself alone will enjoy Him 
alone (<Va Mfyrai /xoV>; yttoVoi/). 

Thus we find in Plotinus the most advanced 
conceptions of the great Christian mystics. 
There is no vision or locution ; all is abstract 
or purely spiritual. But Plotinus tells us 
almost in identical phraseology of the Mansions 
of St Teresa, 1 of the prayer of quiet, of St 
John s dark night of faith, and of the spiritual 
marriage; the "ground" (/ceW/ooi/) of the soul 
is with him as familiar and as necessary an 
idea as it is with the German mystics. 

Quotations might be multiplied and coin- 

1 " Ne croirait-on pas entendre encore Plotin, quand la sainte 
fille (St Teresa) nous recommande de porter les yeux vers le 
centre qui est le palais ou \iabite ce grand roi? " St Hilaire, 
LEcole d Alexandrie. 



152 MYSTICISM 

cidences noted to almost any extent. But 
what has been said will be enough to show 
the character of Plotinus s mysticism and its 
marvellous agreement with the true super 
natural type. The question therefore arises 
whether we are to consider Plotinus a genuine 
supernatural mystic or not ; and if he must 
be held to be so, we are immediately con 
fronted with the further question of his true 
relation to Christian mysticism. For unless 
all supernatural mystics, Christian and Neo- 
platonist alike, are subject to a common delu 
sion, it would seem difficult to assign the 
same origin to the mystical experience depicted 
by Plotinus as to the "mystical theology" of 
Dionysius, or of St Teresa and St John of 
the Cross. 

It must be remembered that Plotinus was, 
during the most important part of his career, 
in close contact with Christianity, and that 
not in any outlying region of the faith, where 
distinctions of creed might be obscured in 
the minds of an unlettered people, but in 
Rome itself. Moreover, during his residence 
at Rome he must have witnessed the pro- 



PLOTINUS 153 

scription and persecution of Christians under 
Decius, and the admission of Christianity to 
the privileges of a religio licita by his pupil 
Gallienus. He can, therefore, have been 
ignorant neither of the exclusiveness of the 
Christian religion, nor of the influence it was 
able to exert over both those within and those 
without its pale. He seems, in point of fact, 
to have disregarded Christianity altogether ; 
he was neither a convert, like Victorinus a 
century after him, nor an opponent, like his 
disciple Porphyry. Yet he must have in 
some fashion deliberately rejected Christianity; 
it cannot have escaped his notice. But 
the reason why such an anima naturaliter 
Christiana should have resisted the attraction 
of a faith which had so much in common with 
his own system cannot even be conjectured. 

We can only choose between two theories 
of the cause of his affinity to the mystical 
theologians of the Church. The first would 
represent him as affected by the deliberate 
approximation to Christianity which the later 
Neoplatonism undoubtedly exhibited, and which 
we can hardly be mistaken in regarding as a 



154 MYSTICISM 

desperate effort on the part of Paganism to 
fight the growing power of the Church on 
its own ground with its own weapons. To 
this cause are attributed the quasi-Trinitarian 
doctrine of Neoplatonism, the revival of 
Mithraism, and the life of Apollonius of 
Tyana by Philostratus. 1 It may well have 
been the case that it seemed advisable to 
meet the widespread mysticism of the early 
Church naive and simple-minded as it often 
was, as, for example, in the visions of Hermas 
with a theory not less mystical but founded 
on what professed to be a higher Gnosis. 
Plotinus, indeed, has none of the character 
istics of a merely speculative theorist ; his 
work bears all the signs of personal experi 
ence, and Porphyry tells us that four times 
during his six years association with Plotinus 
his master attained to the state of mystical 
union. 

It is scarcely possible to attribute conscious 
insincerity to a character so striking and 
majestic as that of Plotinus : the spirit of his 
writings is of itself almost sufficient to clear him 

1 See Bigg, Christian Platonists of Alexandria, Lect. VII. 



PLOTINUS 155 

of any suspicion of mere vulgar charlatanism. 
But it is not actually impossible that his 
mystical experience may have been of the 
natural order, and due not to any super 
natural illumination, but by way of automatic 
suggestion, to the direct tendency of the philo 
sophical system in which he was absorbed. 
It may have been no more than a strong 
emotional realisation of intellectual principles 
obtained by remarkable philosophical acumen. 
Certainly one may notice apart from the 
quietism suggested by some passages an 
element of mere negative abstraction in his 
system, which is indeed necessitated by the 
highly abstract and practically impersonal 
nature which he attributes to the One, but 
which makes a very marked contrast with the 
warmth of personal relationship thefamz/iaris 
amicitia Jesu which one finds in Christian 
mysticism. 1 

1 The distinction made by St Hilaire (op. tit.) is only verbal, 
and might with equal truth be reversed. " Les mystiques 
chre tiens different de Plotin en ce que soutenus par la foi, pour 
!a plupart du moins, ils n ont trouve dans 1 extase que 1 union 
mentale et spirituale avec Dieu, tandis que Plotin y a trouve 
Dieu meme. L ame de sainte Therese se marie a Dieu, comme 
celle de saint Francois de Sales de Gerson et des autres ; Tame 
de Plotin se transforme en Dieu, ou plutot elle est Dieu." 



156 MYSTICISM 

As has been already remarked, the theory 
now popular of automatism furnishes a much 
needed explanation of the close resemblance 
borne to supernatural mysticism by the various 
kinds of mysticism which, on Christian prin 
ciples, cannot be accepted as supernatural in 
any other sense than that of a possible con 
nection with diabolical agency. 

There is nothing to prevent us from holding 
this theory about the mysticism of Plotinus ; 
but it must be admitted that the direct 
evidence for it is of the scantiest possible 
description. 

The alternative is to accept the experience 
of Plotinus as one of those manifestations of 
divine grace outside its regular channels, the 
occurrence of which has from time to time 
been quite unmistakable. The number of 
instances has never been large enough to 
entitle them to be considered anything but 
exceptions to the prevailing rule ; and the 
Church has never felt it her business to pro 
nounce judgment upon the spiritual state 
of individuals outside her boundaries, strictly 
as she is compelled to reject as false all 



PLOTINUS 157 

doctrines contrary to her own. But the 
principle that "he that is not against us is 
for us " may perhaps be applied here ; and if 
so, we may consider Plotinus as an involuntary 
witness to the truth of the Christian view of 
mysticism, and the reality of the experience 
of Christian mystics. Why, if this is the 
case, Plotinus (and possibly Porphyry as well) 
should have been favoured with special divine 
illumination it is, of course, impossible to say. 
We have no data that could be of any service 
to us in an attempt to assign a reason for 
such an exceptional dispensation of divine 
Providence. But it must be remembered that 
mystical experience is not of itself an evidence 
of sanctity, still less of final perseverance. It 
is possible to suppose that an individual may 
have been favoured with the grace of mystical 
knowledge for the purpose of his conversion, 
and may have failed to correspond with the 
divine intention ; as the Magi might, if they 
had chosen, have failed to follow the guidance 
of the star. 1 

1 This seems to have been St Augustine s view of Neo- 
platonism, and especially of Plotinus, whom he calls "mag- 
nus ille Platonicus." "Si Platonici, vel quicunque alii ista 



158 MYSTICISM 

Whatever explanation we adopt, the fact 
is that the system of Plotinus, on its mysti 
cal side, is practically identical with that of 
Dionysius and of all Christian mystics, though 
it has nothing whatever of all that gives 
Christianity its power to attract or influence 
or console. 1 

senserunt, cognoscentes Deum, sicut Deum glorificarent, et 
gratias agerent, nee evanescerent in cogitationibus suis, nee 
populorum erroribus partim auctores fierent, partim resistere 
non auderent, profecto confiterentur et illis immortalibus ac 
beatis, et nobis mortalibus ac miseris, ut immortales ac beati 
esse possimus, unum Deum deorum colendum, qui et noster 
est et illorum." Civ. Dei. x. 3. 

1 Quod enim ante omnia tempora, et super omnia tempora 
incommunicabiliter manet unigenitus Filius tuus coaeternus 
tibi, et quia de plenitudine ejus accipiunt animae ut beatae 
sint, et quia participatione manentis in se renovantur ut 
sapientes sint ; est ibi ; quod autem secundum tempus pro 
impiis mortuus est non est ibi. St Aug., Conf. vii. ix. 



CHAPTER IX 

HERETICAL MYSTICS 

IF Plotinus furnishes a solitary, or almost 
solitary instance of a system which, starting 
from false or inadequate principles, arrives at 
a method of mystical contemplation scarcely 
to be distinguished from genuine mysticism, 
the historical cases of an apparently converse 
process are too numerous to count. The 
names of those who, beginning as more or 
less orthodox Christians, have ended as 
extravagant visionaries, or as maintainers of 
principles opposed, not merely to Catholic 
orthodoxy, but even to all sane, human con 
victions, are freely scattered over the pages 
of history. True mysticism has undoubtedly 
been gravely prejudiced by the existence, fre 
quently side by side with it, of extravagances 

59 



160 MYSTICISM 

which claimed an equal and apparently identi 
cal authority with that of true mysticism. 
There are, nevertheless, very real and clearly 
marked distinctions between the two, and 
there is really no reason whatever for the 
common condemnation in which sometimes 
both are hastily included. 

The external or "pragmatic" test is easy 
of application to all such cases in two ways. 
First, it is obvious that, from the Catholic 
point of view at least, tenets which directly 
contradict the rule of faith cannot have a 
divine origin, or be in any sense true. 
Secondly, as has been already remarked, it 
is incredible that a fresh revelation should 
be given with the divine purpose of super 
seding that which was once for all delivered 
to the saints ; or, even if it could be granted 
that such a fresh revelation were conceivable, 
that it should be given in a less public and 
tangible fashion, and be of less universal 
application, than that which it endeavours to 
supplant. Theosophy is not theology, either 
mystical or speculative, but the degenerate off 
spring of a false theory of mysticism ; and its 



HERETICAL MYSTICS 161 

method is nothing but a corrupting influence, 
both in theology and in philosophy. Its philo 
sophical tendency is apparent in the tran 
scendentalism alike of Kant, Jacobi, Fichte, 
Schelling and Hegel, and of Schopenhauer 
and Hartmann, 1 who practically agree in 
taking crude emotional data as the basis of 
a rational explanation of things. The 
" categorical imperative," the " Indifferenz- 
punkt," " self-objectivisation " no less than 
the Will and the Unconscious, are instances 
of the a priori idealism from which such 
Neoplatonists as Plotinus and Proclus were 
entirely free. In theology there is scarcely 
any aberration of human credulity, or ex 
travagance of human fantasy, that is not 
directly attributable to the same source. 
Montanus, Priscillian and the Fraticelli, 
Luther, Calvin and George Fox, Boehme, 
Swedenborg and Irving, unlike as they are 
to one another in many respects, agree in 
founding themselves on unreasoned, and 
generally irrational intuitions. Mysticism, in 

1 Cf. Hartmann, "Philosophy of the Unconscious" (The 
Unc. in the Human Mind^ ch. ix.)- 

L 



i6 2 MYSTICISM 

the Catholic view, cannot but be discredited 
whenever it enters into competition with the 
magisterium of the Church whenever it 
leaves its true sphere of the personal and 
experimental, and becomes dogmatic and 
didactic. 

But one naturally looks further for some 
intrinsic distinction which may differentiate 
spurious from true mysticism ; one wishes 
to judge of its character, not merely by 
the practical test of its fruits, but by the 
nature of its principles, considered in them 
selves and apart from all consequences or 
relations with particular philosophical or theo 
logical doctrines. Such a distinction is readily 
to be found in the essential features of true 
mysticism, which we have seen to be of such 
a nature as to be incapable of presentation 
in the form of abstract doctrine. The essence 
of mysticism is, as we have seen, the actual 
experimental vision or knowledge of God, 
and in itself is necessarily ineffable and in 
describable ; it may be either real, or imaginary 
and delusive, but it cannot be either true or 
false, in the sense in which a doctrine must 



HERETICAL MYSTICS 163 

be one or the other. It is, of course, quite 
conceivable that a doctrine or a matter of 
fact may be revealed in mystical vision ; but 
the doctrine or fact is not, and cannot be, 
mystical, simply because it belongs not to 
the mystical or supernatural sphere, but to 
that of the sensible and intelligible world. 
A false doctrine or statement for which 
mystical authority is claimed may be either 
a real divine communication, misunderstood 
and misreported, or a deduction from a true 
mystical experience, or a mere delusion of 
the senses or the imagination. Any doctrine 
so put forward is open to criticism like any 
other statement, and cannot be accepted 
merely on the authority attributed to it by 
an individual who may possibly be the 
victim of his own imagination or misunder 
standing. But it is evident that where the 
doctrine constitutes the whole of the experi 
ence, there is really no question at all of 
mysticism. The intelligence of the person to 
whom the doctrine is supposed to be made 
known may have led him to discover a 
truth, or the reverse ; he may or may not 



1 64 MYSTICISM 

have been under the guidance of divine grace 
in conceiving it ; but there is no ground 
whatever for supposing such a person to have 
received a genuine mystical communication. 
Since, in such a case, the doctrine purports 
to be the bare description of the supposed 
mystical vision, it is by that very fact con 
victed of error ; true mystical experience 
cannot be described or translated into terms 
of the non-mystical. Dionysius s paradoxical 
canon is here precisely in point " If any 
one, seeing God, knows what he sees, it is 
by no means God that he sees, but something 
created and knowable." 

A deduction, on the other hand, from a 
mystical experience, or series of experiences, 
may quite conceivably be a mistaken one, 
even though the experiences themselves may 
be real. There can be no reason for sup 
posing that the favour of mystical vision 
implies any subsequent immunity from intel 
lectual error or, for that matter, from moral 
lapse. Neither Moses nor St Paul was, or 
supposed himself to be, so safeguarded by the 
mystical favours bestowed on him. St John 



HERETICAL MYSTICS 165 

of the Cross insists at great length on the 
possibility of misunderstanding divine com 
munications, as well as on the danger of mis 
taking for them those which come from another 
source, and concludes, as do all mystical writers, 
that much importance should not be attached 
to such experiences. 1 

Doctrines, then, which claim mystical 
authority, must be judged to be true or false 
according to the support they receive from the 
conclusions of reason or the truths of revela 
tion ; their claim to be in themselves mystical 
experiences is refuted by the fact that they 
are doctrines, or theories about God, whereas 
mysticism is concerned not with doctrines or 
theories which belong to the domain, not of 
mystical, but of speculative theology but 
solely with God Himself. The experience, 
of whatever kind, upon which such doctrines 
are founded, may or may not be genuinely 
mystical, and must be judged of apart from 
the doctrine for which its authority is claimed, 
according to its alleged character, and the 
condition of the person by whom it is under- 

1 Ascent, II. xviii. and xix. 



166 MYSTICISM 

gone. Thus visions experienced by persons 
in a state of alcoholism, nervous or brain 
disease, or artificially produced anaesthesia, are 
manifestly to be attributed to those agencies ; 
visions or imaginations of the state of man 
kind or of particular individuals, or of the 
material universe, however vast, picturesque 
or symbolical they may be, are certainly not 
mystical, but are generally due to natural 
emotion, mental excitement, automatic sug 
gestion, or some similar cause. Those only 
are to be considered even possibly mystical 
which include a direct consciousness of the 
divine presence, which are preceded by no 
emotion or excitement, which can be probably 
traced to no physical or mental cause, and 
which are not capable of being fully described 
in words. 

We may illustrate the principles thus 
obtained by one or two of the best - known 
instances of spurious mysticism. We may 
take first the sect variously known as 
Christian Brethren, Beghards or Fraticelli, 
who flourished in the fourteenth and fifteenth 
centuries, and were condemned as heretics 



HERETICAL MYSTICS 167 

at the Council of Vienna. They were said 
to be constantly subject to visions and 
ecstasies, and were accused (no doubt with 
some exaggeration, but probably not without 
grave cause) of immoral practices of the 
grossest kind. They were influenced, more 
or less directly, by the speculative pantheism 
of Amalric of Bena, and professed to regard 
matter as a secondary and comparatively 
unimportant aspect of spirit ; so that when 
the spiritual aspect of the universe was truly 
apprehended, material things and conduct in 
regard to them became altogether indifferent. 
Such spiritual apprehension was held to be 
a natural process, and open to all human 
beings at will. One of the charges brought 
against this sect by Pope Clement V. at 
Vienne was that they held the Beatific vision 
to be attainable by the natural powers of 
mankind, without any need for the inter 
vention of the lumen gloriae. They thus 
denied what we have seen to be a funda 
mental postulate of true mysticism ; they 
were not really mystics, but imaginative or 
" temperamental " theosophists. Their so- 



168 MYSTICISM 

called mysticism was akin, on the one hand, 
to what some modern writers have called sym 
bolism or " nature - mysticism," and on the 
other, to the humanism of the Renaissance, 
their practical view of life being pretty nearly 
identical with that of Lorenzo Valla s treatise 
on Pleasure. Visions and ecstasies allied with 
doctrines of this kind must obviously be 
taken as the consequence of such doctrines 
rather than as their cause, and can be con 
sidered only as a neuropathic form of sensu 
ality, as far removed from true mysticism 
as anything could possibly be. 

Of a very different character were the 
strange transcendental imaginations of the 
pious shoemaker, Jacob Boehme. His mind 
appears to have been constantly fixed on the 
idea of God ; and by a purely natural process 
there arose in it, together with many sane 
and devout reflections, a kind of philosophi 
cal statement of the problems of existence, 
transferred in strange and bizarre phraseology 
to the divine nature. These ideas Boehme 
declared to be " opened" to him; they came, 
he could not say how, into his mind, and 



HERETICAL MYSTICS 169 

had upon him the effect of a communication 
from an external source. But there is no 
need, indeed there is no possibility of accept 
ing his explanation of their origin. A medita 
tive and abstractive mind, without authoritative 
guidance or restraint, will naturally and almost 
inevitably find in the abstract idea of the 
divine nature a repetition of the influences 
it sees at work in the surrounding world. 
Thus the Abyss, the Potential Trinity, the 
relation of Being to Not-being, the Will, the 
Imagination, the Maiden Idea and the moving 
Fire, and the like, are undoubtedly no more 
than the pseudo - philosophical forms under 
which Boehme conceived and contemplated 
the universe, and which rose by some process 
of auto-suggestion into his consciousness as 
he contemplated the idea of God, and thus 
appeared to him in some sense identical with 
it. Boehme has affinities as probably all 
naturally contemplative minds must have 
with Gnosticism and Neoplatonism on the 
one hand, and on the other, with modern 
idealism with Jacobi, Schelling and Hegel, 
and with Schopenhauer and Hartmann. But 



170 MYSTICISM 

with true mysticism he has none whatever ; 
he may be thought to claim a revelation as 
the authority for his system, but to mystical 
theology-- the experimental, ineffable know 
ledge of God he makes no pretension. 

The theosophy of Swedenborg may be classed 
with Boehme s, inasmuch as both pretend to 
direct knowledge of transcendental realities. 
But whereas Boehme, with all his strange 
terminology, is philosophical and intellectual, 
Swedenborg does no more than embody, in 
crude, allegorical form, certain phases of 
Protestant theology. His visions do, indeed, 
profess to be statements of fact, and not allegori 
cal or imaginary to be, in fact, a revelation. 
But even if this claim were admitted, if one 
could seriously accept, for example, the story 
of the angels protracted attempts to convert 
Luther from his doctrine of justification, and 
their daily fluctuations of ill-success, we should 
still have nothing like a true mystical experi 
ence. The spiritual, ineffable divine presence 
has no place in Swedenborg s gallery, and 
indeed would be sadly incongruous there. 
Swedenborg s symbolical interpretation of 



HERETICAL MYSTICS 171 

Scripture, elaborate and dogmatic in tone as 
it is, has really nothing to do with mystical 
theology properly so called. 

Quietism has appeared to many writers to 
be a genuine example of mysticism : the 
doctrines of Molinos and Madame Guyon have 
been identified with those of St Teresa, and 
the condemnation of the former has been 
attributed to the recalcitrance of their authors 
against ecclesiastical authority, as contrasted 
with the docility of St Teresa and St John 
of the Cross. But the doctrine of " dis 
interested love," as interpreted by the Quietists, 
is quite a different thing from the mystical 
passivity of St Teresa, to which it has been 
likened. With her, as with other mystics, 
passivity consists in a concentration of the 
faculties upon God, not, indeed, always in 
successive "acts," but at least in one con 
tinuous act ; whereas the Quietist would have 
the soul renounce its very personality and 
conscious existence, and that not merely 
during the condition of ecstatic contempla 
tion, but as a permanent state. Madame 
Guyon is never tired of declaring that her 



1 72 MYSTICISM 

soul " has no inclination or tendency for 
anything whatsoever"; she is " in such an 
abandonment " that she is obliged to reflect 
in order to know "if she has a being and 
subsistence." " I have to make an effort to 
think if I am and what I am ; if there are 
in God creatures and anything subsisting." 

Whatever may be thought of the opinions 
or conduct of the opponents of Quietism, of 
Segneri, D Estrees, Bossuet, La Chaise and 
De la Combe, it cannot be doubted that its 
distinctive doctrine, no less than the con 
demned propositions extracted from the Guida 
Spirituale, is contradictory, not only of divine 
revelation, but of the elementary facts of human 
nature. But it is in no sense mystical : it is a 
theory founded professedly on mystical experi 
ence, but it is not and cannot be the experi 
ence itself. Madame Guyon herself says of a 
mystical state which she declares herself to 
have experienced that it was " too simple, 
pure and naked for me to be able to speak 
of it. The most elevated dispositions are 
those of which one can say nothing." One 
is tempted to exclaim, O si sic omnia I But 



HERETICAL MYSTICS 173 

the difference between mystical contemplation, 
and theories more or less directly founded 
upon it, could scarcely be better illustrated 
than by Madame Guyon s account of herself. 

The question remains, are these professedly 
mystical experiences genuinely supernatural or 
not? On the whole, one is inclined to think 
that they may be. They seem to have had no 
emotional state immediately preceding them ; 
they are apparently indescribable and unsought ; 
they produce subjective conviction of a direct 
divine influence ; and they do not appear to 
have any real tendency to suggest the false 
or questionable doctrines founded on them. 
We may therefore perhaps safely admit that 
Quietistic mystical experiences may well have 
been genuine and supernatural ones ; and in 
that case, that the doctrines founded upon 
them were due to mistaken inferences from 
them. There is, at any rate, no reason for 
regarding the Quietist doctrine as necessarily 
connected with mysticism, or as necessarily 
discrediting the mystical experiences if such 
they were which gave rise to them. 

A precisely similar distinction must of course 



174 MYSTICISM 

be made between the approved teaching of 
orthodox mystics, and the incommunicable 
experiences on which it was founded. The 
reforming zeal of St Teresa and St John of 
the Cross had to win its way on its own 
merits against powerful opposition ; it was 
very far from being considered as guaranteed 
by the spiritual and personal favours which 
gave birth to it. The frequent and extra 
ordinary visions of Margaret Mary Alacoque, 
again, and the widespread popular devotion 
resulting from them, gained acceptance only 
by degrees, and after much opposition. The 
essentially mystical side of her life, which has 
been somewhat obscured in general estimation 
by the prominence very naturally given to her 
visions and revelations, is easily distinguish 
able amid the more striking but less evidently 
supernatural occurrences in which it abounds, 
and follows the lines uniformly characteristic 
of genuine mysticism. 1 

1 "Tous les matins, lorsque je m eveille, il me semble trouver 
mon Dieu present, auquel mon coeur s unit comme & son 
principe et a sa seule plenitude ; ce qui me donne une soif si 
ardente d aller k 1 oraison, que les moments que je mets a 
m habiller me durent des heures. J y vais le plus souvent sans 



HERETICAL MYSTICS 175 

Thus the alleged difficulty of distinguishing 
false from true mysticism is reduced to that 
of discerning whether any alleged mystical 
state or experience is truly reported by its 
subject or not ; and this difficulty is again 
greatly reduced by observing the regularity 
with which certain features appear in all 
mystical experience that may be considered 
genuine. The element of uncertainty still 
remaining arises from our frequently inadequate 
knowledge of the circumstances of any alleged 
experience such as that of Madame Guyon 
above mentioned together with the a priori 

autre preparation que celle que mon Dieu fait en moi. ... II 
me semble quelquefois que mon esprit s eloigne de moi, pour 
s aller unir et perdre dans 1 immense grandeur de son Dieu. . . . 
Mon entendement demeure dans un aveuglement si grand, 
qu il n a aucune lumiere ni connaissance que celle que le divin 
Soleil de justice lui communique de temps en temps. C est en 
ce temps que j emploie toutes mes forces pour Pembrasser, 
non pas des bras du corps, mais des interieurs, qui sont les 
puissances de mon ame. . . . J eprouve encore des attraits si 
puissants, qu il me semble que ma poitrine est toute traversee 
de rasoirs, ce qui m ote souvent le pouvoir de soupirer, n ayant 
de mouvement que pour respirer avec bien de la peine. La 
partie inferieure ne voit ni ne connait ce qui se passe en la 
partie superieure de mon ame, qui s oublie elle-meme et n a 
d autre de"sir que de s unir et se perdre dans son Dieu. . . . 
Voilk les plus ordinaires occupations de mon oraison, non pas 
que je fais, mais que mon Dieu fait en moi, sa chetive creature." 
Vie par Ses Contemporaines Vie et CEuvres, t. i. 



176 MYSTICISM 

discredit necessarily thrown by heretical or 
immoral inferences upon the source to which 
they are ascribed. Where the alleged mystical 
state fulfils the conditions which admit of its 
being attributed to a supernatural cause, and 
the inferences based on it are in accord with 
the principles of religion and morality, there 
is practically no room for doubt. 



CHAPTER X 

MYSTICISM, PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION 

PHILOSOPHY is the explanation of facts ; and 
since mysticism is undoubtedly a fact, it 
necessarily has a certain relation to philo 
sophy, and falls within its legitimate scope. 
But mysticism, unlike other facts of which 
philosophy has to take account, is not a 
normal function of the human faculties, and 
is not open to direct investigation. It can 
only be dealt with through the reports of 
mystical contemplatives, and no analysis of 
mystical states is attainable except such as 
is furnished by the mystics themselves, ill- 
equipped as they most frequently are for such 
a purpose. Mysticism is indeed the exact 
parallel of sensation, in its immediate and 
intuitive character. But whereas sensation is 
common to mankind, and the investigator is 

177 M 



178 MYSTICISM 

therefore able to consider it directly, as repre 
sented in his own consciousness, as well as 
indirectly, through the reports of other people, 
as to mysticism he is mostly restricted to the 
latter method, and to a number of examples 
which, as compared with examples of sensation, 
is exceedingly small. Thus though the nature 
of mystical experience seems naturally to be 
as legitimate a subject of enquiry as that of 
sensation, the limitations under which the 
enquiry has to be pursued are so great as 
practically to destroy the parallelism altogether. 
And seeing how little it has so far been 
possible to discover in regard to the nature 
and cause of sensation, in spite of the com 
paratively numerous existing facilities for the 
purpose, it is not surprising that philosophy 
should have little or nothing to say about 
mysticism, which offers so much narrower a 
field for investigation. 

Those writers, therefore, who have con 
sidered mysticism of the true or supernatural 
kind from the point of view of philosophy, 
have probably acted wisely in declining to 
consider the transcendental aspects of the 



MYSTICISM, PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION 179 

matter, and confining themselves to conjectural 
expositions of the psychological processes in 
volved in mystical states. Mystical theology 
has, however, one point of contact with philo 
sophy, in its bearing on natural theology, 
offering as it does an experimental verifica 
tion of the rational proof of the existence of 
God, and of the "substantial" human soul. 
Such experimental evidence has been thought 
by some to be furnished by the doubtful 
phenomena of spiritualism ; but it may fairly 
be contended that the very much less question 
able evidence of mysticism is considerably 
more worthy of acceptance. 

It must be added, however, that even if 
mysticism were more open to investigation 
than it is, it would still in its essence be 
beyond the purview of philosophy, as belong 
ing exclusively to a region of which philosophy 
itself must stop short. The " science of 
causes " cannot deal inductively with the First 
Cause the causa causarum, but must be con 
tent in all cases with noting its effects ; and 
in regard to that particular effect on the human 
soul which constitutes mysticism, philosophy 



i8o MYSTICISM 

can do little more than barely recognise its 
occurrence. 1 That species of philosophy which 
refuses to accept the existence of a tran 
scendental First Cause cannot, as we have 
already seen, treat mysticism on its tran 
scendental side as anything but a delusion 
relying, as it must, in the absence of direct evi 
dence, merely on a negative presupposition. 

With religion, however, mysticism stands 
on common ground, being itself a form of 
religious experience. Its object is indeed the 
object of all religion, properly so called, since 
it is nothing less than the actual vision of God, 
which is the final consummation of all that is 
sought by religious practices of any kind. But 

1 Such attempts as that of M. Re ce jac to formulate a purely 
metaphysical theory of mysticism necessarily part company 
with the Christian, and even with the Theistic principles on 
which true mysticism is based. From their point of view, the 
" universal mysticism " consists of " tous les moyens de tran- 
scendance qui tendent a egaler ^experience aux desirs de la 
liberte"; hence it is required "que la charactere symbolique 
de nos rapports avec 1 Absolu serait franchement reconnu, 
c est-a-dire qu on renonce a 1 intuition directe d une essence 
divine, universelle et infinie." (Re ce jac, Fondements de la 
Connaissance Mystique, pp. 4, 5 ; 184.) A tendency in the 
same direction appears in Professor Inge s Personal Idealism 
and Mysticism, where mysticism is described as " a type of 
religion which puts the inner light above human authority, and 
finds its sacraments everywhere." 



MYSTICISM, PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION i8r 

whereas mysticism attains in this world to 
some degree of immediate and experimental 
knowledge of God, religion in general remits 
this final reward to a future state of existence. 
Here God is known indirectly, or theoretically, 
through His works ; His direct influence is 
perceived in the action of divine grace, and 
His supernatural presence is recognised by 
faith in the transubstantiated elements of the 
Eucharist. But the direct intuition of the divine 
being itself is not among the advantages 
guaranteed by the Church to its members. 
We have thus to consider the frequently 
propounded question of the relation between 
mysticism and what is called "institutional" 
religion that is, a religion the doctrines of 
which are defined, and of which the practices 
are rigorously enjoined by a supreme and un 
questionable authority. The two are often 
regarded as being, to a very great extent, 
mutually incompatible ; the tendency of mys 
ticism is, it is thought, to depreciate the 
external obligations, and to disregard the 
doctrines imposed by organised religious 
authority. 



i8 2 MYSTICISM 

Something has already been said on this 
point. The alleged opposition between mys 
ticism and scholasticism (which deals mainly 
with the doctrine and discipline imposed by 
external authority) has been seen to be purely 
imaginary. The same may undoubtedly be 
said of the alleged antagonism between the 
practical system of the Church, which follows 
certain prescribed methods in regard both to 
the obligatory elements of Christian life and 
those left free to individual devotion, and 
the inner life of contemplation, for which no 
rules are laid down beyond such as may be 
drawn from the recorded practices of pious 
persons. 

The fact is that human nature has a two 
fold aspect, and consequently a twofold set 
of needs. On the one hand, man is a "social 
animal," and cannot even exist, much less 
lead a truly human life, in isolation ; some 
kind of social organisation is an absolute neces 
sity for him, in regard alike to his material, 
intellectual and moral requirements. On the 
other hand, the life of every man is individual 
and personal; he is self-conscious and re- 



MYSTICISM, PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION 183 

flective, as well as active and responsive : the 
social activities necessary to human life do 
not exhaust the "abysmal depths of person 
ality," which nevertheless can only exist in a 
social environment. The ideally perfect con 
dition is one in which full play is allowed to 
both sides of human nature in which social 
needs are fully provided for, and individual 
thought, feeling and enterprise are hampered 
by no restrictions but such as are needed 
for their due protection. Probably no State 
has ever existed, or can ever exist, in which 
this perfect balance is maintained ; in the 
Church, however, the restrictions imposed, 
deeply as they affect the external activities 
of the individual, are merely the necessary 
safeguards of spiritual liberty. 

Thus in the Church, as to a great extent 
in the State, compliance with the obligations 
imposed by external authority is no more 
than the necessary condition of the exercise 
of personal liberty. Freedom for the citizen 
implies a condition of things in which his life 
and property are duly protected, not one in 
which he is left entirely to shift for himself; 



184 MYSTICISM 

and in like manner, religious or spiritual free 
dom is only possible under circumstances in 
which the fundamental needs of spiritual life 
are supplied, and its energies rightly directed. 
A man may not, in a rightly ordered State, 
preach sedition or commit suicide ; that is, 
he is not allowed to violate the conditions 
under which alone he and his neighbours can 
freely exercise their natural powers. In like 
manner, the Church forbids her members to 
neglect the means of grace, or to teach heresy. 
But freedom to enjoy life, natural or super 
natural, is not interfered with, but safeguarded 
in each case. 

It is, indeed, undeniable that one aspect 
of human nature is from time to time unduly 
emphasised at the other s expense. The 
" Friends of God" and the disciples of Molinos, 
like the many forms of Protestantism, un 
doubtedly were led by their principles to make 
light of Christian institutions and of Church 
authority. On the other hand, a too exclusive 
attention to the external and legislative aspects 
of religion frequently produces such an intel 
lectual aridity as may be observed in the later 



MYSTICISM, PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION 185 

and degenerate scholastics, or such a material 
istic formalism as gave rise to the religious 
notions upheld by Febronius and put in practice 
by the Emperor Joseph ; or to the extravagant 
ideas of the spiritual authority of the State 
which were entertained by Hobbes. But it 
should be observed that this depreciation of 
external obligations has never resulted simply 
from mysticism, rightly understood, but only 
from speculative principles alleged to be de 
duced from mysticism, and wrongly identified 
with it. True mysticism cannot come into 
collision with Church ordinances of any kind, 
simply because it belongs to a totally different 
sphere ; it can no more be the subject of 
Church legislation than the height, weight 
or ear for music of the population can be 
the subject of State decrees. 

It is, unfortunately, within the power of 
human beings a power too frequently exer 
cised to separate things that are naturally and 
properly united. Faith and chanty, public 
spirit and domestic affection, respect for 
authority and individual enterprise, are all 
complementary virtues. But in point of fact 



186 MYSTICISM 

faith exists without charity, public men are 
not invariably models of domestic virtue, nor 
are the most enterprising spirits always the 
most law-abiding. But it would be absurd 
to maintain that there is any natural opposi 
tion between the two factors of any of these 
pairs of excellences ; and it is really not less 
absurd to imagine any natural antagonism 
between mysticism and spiritual authority, or 
that they can be mutually opposed otherwise 
than by the practical inadequacy due to the 
infirmities of human nature. 

It has been abundantly shown that mysticism 
is in a true sense different in kind, and not 
merely in degree, from prayer and contempla 
tion of the natural order. But it does not 
by any means follow that the two are to be 
regarded as radically distinct, or as mutually 
independent. On the contrary, there is a 
connection between them which may per 
haps be characterised as that of continuity, 
as distinct from identity. The soul, it will be 
remembered, has, ordinarily speaking, to go 
through a preparation before the life of mysti 
cal contemplation can be entered upon ; and 



MYSTICISM, PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION 187 

this preparation is nothing more than exercise 
in the lower, or more commonplace methods 
of devotion and piety. All religion is an 
approach to God, and mysticism represents, 
not a short cut, but an advanced stage of the 
journey the more advanced the stage, the 
more frequent or constant is the mystical 
condition. The traveller sets out on his 
journey with no sight of his distant goal before 
him ; he knows only that he is on the right 
road, and he recognises features in the land 
scape which others who have made the journey 
before him have noted, and which assure him 
of his progress in the right direction. But it 
is not till he nears his journey s end that he 
catches sight, indistinctly at first and inter 
mittently, of the city he is bound for. The 
distant towers and spires grow clearer and 
clearer as he approaches them ; they are seen 
no longer in glimpses, vanishing and reappear 
ing at the turns of the road ; till at last 
the whole mass of buildings comes into full 
sight, even while some distance remains to 
be travelled before the pilgrim can pass 
through the gates and take his well-earned 



r88 MYSTICISM 

rest. It is one thing to see the finger-posts 
and to observe the landmarks by the way 
side, and quite another to see the city stand 
ing graceful and sunlit, like a welcoming host, 
at the road s end. Yet both are incidents of 
the same journey, and the end cannot be 
reached without the beginning. 

The relation between the two states may be 
very clearly seen in the Imitation of Christ 
a book which probably owes much of its vast 
popularity to its constant recurrence to the 
elementary duties of religion and morality, and 
its insistence on the necessity of their per 
formance as the prerequisite of the more 
exalted spiritual states. The "purgative," 
" illuminative " and " unitive " ways are seen, 
so to speak, together, and are dealt with as 
aspects or constituents of the Christian life 
as a whole, to the completeness of which all 
three are necessary, and, in different ways, 
of equal importance. The purely mystical 
passages are comparatively few and short ; 
and the abundance of practical directions the 
book contains has sometimes caused its 
mystical character to be entirely overlooked 



MYSTICISM, PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION 189 

This disproportion, however, is quite suffici 
ently to be accounted for by the character 
of the work, which is that of a directory of 
spiritual life in general, and not a scientific 
treatise on any particular department of it. 
In such a book attempts at describing the in 
describable phenomena of mysticism would 
obviously have been out of place, whereas 
the practical details of the lower and pre 
liminary states admit of and require minute 
explanation. But the tone of the whole book 
is mystical, and the most commonplace duties 
and the most humiliating strivings with tempta 
tion are in a manner illuminated and glorified 
by the brilliancy of the result to which they 
tend. Thus, in point of fact, the higher and 
the lower elements, the mystical and the non- 
mystical, the purgative, the illuminative and 
the unitive, are blended in actual human ex 
perience. The proportion may indeed vary 
almost indefinitely ; with some, the mystical 
consciousness would seem to be almost habitual, 
and with others a rare and exceptional privilege. 
But in greater or less degree, all the elements 



190 MYSTICISM 

of Christian life are present in its highest and 
most perfect form. 

From this we are led to the consideration 
of a question of very great interest, in regard 
to which a speculative opinion may be con 
sidered allowable for which no direct evidence 
can be adduced. Since the higher walks of 
spirituality are thus inevitably interpenetrated 
by the lower, and since no height of mystical 
contemplation will wholly emancipate the con 
templative from the humble necessities of 
penance and of temptation, is it not possible 
to suppose that the lower life need not 
wholly exclude the higher, but however dry 
and commonplace and, generally speaking, un- 
spiritual it may be, may nevertheless be 
enriched by some occasional and transient 
participation in the privilege of the more 
perfect state ? It is admitted by all spiritual 
writers that the mystical life does not exclude 
the vicissitudes of the ordinary or non-mystical 
states. 1 Little or nothing is said by them, 



.g.) Suarez, De Orat., i. 2. 11 ; and cf. Devine, Manual of 
Mystical Theology, ch. i., and Macarius, Christian Perfection, 
v. 13, 14. 



MYSTICISM, PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION 191 

however, as to the possibility of some measure 
of the higher life entering into the lower 
of some passing foretaste of " infused " con 
templation being granted to those whose lives 
are, as a whole, by no means of the contem 
plative order. Yet it seems natural to suppose 
that such may be the case. If there is no 
incongruity in the recurrence in the unitive 
life of the distinctive features of the purgative, 
there can hardly be any in the occasional 
occurrence of the converse process ; and it 
seems not unreasonable to suppose that such 
a largesse of spiritual favours, of which the 
best are unworthy, may be occasionally granted 
even to the most undeserving. It can hardly 
be denied that an aspect which it is difficult 
to distinguish from that of genuine mysticism 
seems at times to belong to some of the inward 
experiences of ordinary persons who have ne 
thought or knowledge of the contemplative 
life. Such states of consciousness are, indeed, 
too transitory and elusive to be judged of 
with any degree of certainty ; and it may be 
that they are really no more than the product 
of purely natural feeling. Proof is either way 



i 9 2 MYSTICISM 

out of the question. But it is at least an 
allowable opinion that the mystical element 
in religion " may extend beyond the limits 
within which alone evidence of any direct 
kind is attainable ; and such an opinion must 
unquestionably be nearer the truth than that 
which would equalise all religious experience 
by denying to mysticism its genuinely super 
natural character. 



CHAPTER XI 

DIONYSIUS 

THE authority of the Dionysian writings is 
for us (whatever may have been the case in 
earlier and less critical times) derived rather 
from the use made of them to express the 
received doctrines of the Church than from 
any view that may be entertained of the 
identity or position of the writer. Their 
history is a curious one. They first received 
public notice at a conference held at Con 
stantinople in the year 533 between repre 
sentatives of orthodoxy under Hypatius, Bishop 
of Ephesus, and those of a Monophysite sect 
called after and headed by Severus, patriarch 
of Antioch. The Severians at this conference 
appealed to the writings of Dionysius the 
Areopagite as upholding the Monophysite 

doctrine, but their quotations were disallowed 

193 N 



i 9 4 MYSTICISM 

by Hypatius as probably spurious. From 
that time forward an increasing importance 
was attached to the works attributed to the 
Areopagite, not only by heretical writers, but 
also by orthodox Catholics, among whom 
may be mentioned Eulogius, patriarch of 
Alexandria in 580, Pope Gregory the Great, 
and Maximus, the author of lengthy scholia 
on the Dionysian books ; and Dionysius was 
referred to by the Lateran Council in 649 as 
an authority against Monothelitism. On the 
introduction of the Dionysian writings into 
France in the eighth century the idea arose 
that the author was identical with St Denys 
of France ; and Hilduin, abbot of St Denys 
at Paris, subsequently did much to promote 
the authority of the Areopagite by means of 
this patriotic identification, which, it need 
hardly be said, has no historical value 
whatever. 

The works of Dionysius were first trans 
lated into Latin by Hilduin, and somewhat later 
by John Scotus Eriugena ; other translations 
were made by John Sarrazenus, Grosseteste, 
Thomas Vercellensis, Ambrosius Camaldu- 



DIONYSIUS 195 

lensis, Marsilio Ficino and Balthasar Corderius. 
Commentaries were written by Hugo of St 
Victor, Albertus Magnus, St Thomas Aquinas 
and Dionysius the Carthusian ; and the great 
scholastics make copious references to Diony 
sius notably St Thomas Aquinas. Dionysius 
was called, with some pardonable exaggeration, 
the founder of the Scholastic method, by 
Corderius, who gives an imposing list of St 
Thomas s references to him. 

Doubts began once more to be cast on 
the genuineness of the Dionysiaca by writers 
of the Renaissance period : the question was 
raised by Lorenzo Valla, and was for long a 
subject of vehement controversy, which can 
hardly be said even yet to be at an end, 
though the opinion of the most recent and 
most competent scholars is on the negative 
side. The arguments on each side may be 
briefly summarised as follows : 

1. The style is not that of the sub-apostolic 
age, but closely resembles that of later Neo- 
platonist writers. 

2. The correspondence of ideas between the 
works of Dionysius and those of Neoplatonist 



196 MYSTICISM 

authors, more especially of Proclus, is very 
close ; moreover, extracts from Proclus s work 
De Subsistentia Malorum appear, as has been 
pointed out by Professors Stiglmayer and 
Koch, in the treatise of Dionysius, De Divinis 
Nominibus. 

3. No mention is made of the Dionysian 
writings by any author earlier than the sixth 
century: nor are they mentioned by Eusebius or 
St Jerome in their catalogues of ecclesiastical 
authors. The writings in which they were 
thought to have been referred to before that 
period have now been proved to be of much 
more recent date. 

4. Certain rites and ceremonies are men 
tioned as customary in the writer s time which 
were unknown to the contemporaries of the 
Areopagite. Other anachronisms are the men 
tion of monks ; the use of the word uTroWaov? 
(substantia) in its later or post-Nicene sense ; 
a reference to ecclesiastical tradition as apxdia 
7ra/oa<$o (Tf9= u the ancient tradition"; a quotation 
of the well-known phrase of St Clement of 
Rome, "My love is crucified" (Div. Norn., 4), 
though St Clement s martyrdom did not take 



DIONYSIUS 197 

place till after the death of St Timothy, to 
whom the Treatise de Div. Nom. is dedi 
cated, and who is, moreover, addressed by the 
author as 7ra?9=" child" at a supposed time 
when the designation could scarcely have been 
appropriate. 

None of these arguments were altogether 
unknown to antiquity, though some of them 
have been considerably strengthened by modern 
research. They were replied to at some 
length by Monsignor (afterwards Archbishop) 
Darboy, who fairly reproduces all the con 
siderations that have been adduced in favour 
of the Dionysian authorship from St Maximus 
onwards. 

i. It is contended that the style is due 
to the early philosophical education of the 
Areopagite, which would naturally have im 
parted to it many of the characteristics of 
Neoplatonism ; it may fairly be considered as 
agreeing with the presumed date of the 
author. 

2 & 3. The correspondences between the 
Dionysiaca and Proclus may be due to plagi 
arism on the part of the Neoplatonist, rather 



198 MYSTICISM 

than of the Areopagite. Georgius Pachymeres, 
when advancing this opinion, suggests that 
the Dionysian works may have been sup 
pressed by the Athenian philosophers who 
borrowed from them for their own purposes. 
4. The anachronisms found in Dionysius 
are capable of being explained away. Thus, 
it is fairly certain that the essentials of such 
ceremonies as the blessing of the baptismal 
water, triple immersion at baptism, and the 
rites for blessing the Holy Oils were in use 
in Apostolic or sub-Apostolic times, though 
not then committed to writing ; the strange 
ceremony of anointing the dead, mentioned 
by Dionysius, is found to have been a Jewish, 
and therefore probably also an early Christian 
custom. Monks (therapeutcz) need not be under 
stood to mean coenobites or hermits, and a 
class so called certainly existed in Philo s 
time. The use of " uTrcxrraw," in its earlier 
and untechnical sense of "person," is paralleled 
from Heb. i., and the word is used in the same 
sense by Alexander, the predecessor of St 
Athanasius. The quotation from St Ignatius 
may have been added in a recension by the 



DIONYSIUS 199 

author, or may have been the work of a copyist; 
and a parallel to the phrase " apxdia TrapaSovi? " 
may be found in 2 Thess. ii. 14. The desig 
nation of St Timothy as " child" is justified 
by an elaborate calculation of the comparative 
ages of Dionysius and St Timothy. 

On the whole, it may be held that though 
the Dionysian authorship is not absolutely dis 
proved, the balance of probability is strongly 
against it. Who the writer, if not Dionysius, 
may have been, or when he may have lived, 
it is quite impossible to say. Various dates 
have been suggested ; but the use apparently 
made of the writings of Proclus seem to point 
to one not earlier than 462. Hipler s theory 
that the author was a theologian of the fourth 
century whose works were, by a misunder 
standing, attributed to Dionysius, found some 
favour at the time of its production (1861), 
but is now generally rejected. It is indeed 
difficult to suppose that the direct statements 
of the author to the effect that he had been 
a disciple of St Paul, that he remembered 
the eclipse at the time of the Crucifixion, and 
that he was present with St Peter and his 



200 MYSTICISM 

otherwise unknown master Hierotheus at the 
interment of the Blessed Virgin, are made 
with any other purpose than that of support 
ing his identity, whether real or assumed. 

It is of some practical importance to con 
sider whether the value of the books is in any 
way discredited by the unauthentic character 
which may with at least great probability be 
attributed to them. 

In the first place, it would probably be un 
fair to regard them simply as a forgery. As 
Monsignor Darboy has remarked, no possible 
motive can be assigned for a forgery of this 
kind. They could hardly, like the forgeries 
of Chatterton, have been intended to reflect 
credit on their supposed discoverer, or to be 
a source of profit to him ; and the supposition 
that they may have been intended to give 
support to the cause of orthodoxy is hardly 
consistent with their subject-matter, which is 
not directly concerned with any of the contro 
versies belonging to the time of their appear 
ance. Moreover, though perfectly orthodox, 
they were first quoted in favour of heretics, 
to whose views they gave no real support. It 



DIONYSIUS 201 

must be remembered that our present ideas of 
literary propriety had by no means obtained 
acceptance in the sixth century ; and our 
modern device of making fiction a vehicle 
for historical, philosophical or theological 
speculation had not yet been discovered. 
Romances were, however, not unknown, and 
pseudonymous works of a historical and theo 
logical character existed in some numbers. 
We may fairly consider that the Dionysiaca 
combined both characters. The author would 
seem to have intended to give the Christian 
rendering of the philosophico-religious system 
evolved by Plotinus and later Neoplatonism ; 
and he may have sought to gain a hearing 
for his views by publishing them under the 
name of one who had held positions of honour 
both in the Pagan and in the Christian world. 
For the sake of verisimilitude the appropriate 
contemporary references were rather crudely 
inserted. Whatever, therefore, we may think 
of the artistic character of the work, we have 
no more right to fix upon it the moral stigma of 
forgery than to condemn on similar grounds such 
works as Waverley, John Inglesant or En Route. 



202 MYSTICISM 

But in any case, the work is of a character 
which cannot be affected by the authority 
attributed to its author, as, for example, a 
historical work professedly written by a con 
temporary would be. The Dionysian books 
must stand on their own merits, no matter 
by whom or at what time they were written : 
what they say is true or false for all times 
and all persons. Their authority, for us, lies 
not in their authenticity, as the works of 
any particular writer, but in the fact that 
they have been adopted by the Church as 
truly representative of certain phases of her 
doctrine, and as containing nothing contrary to 
it : it is, in fact, the accumulated authority of 
the long list of approved writers whose work 
has been based on, or in accordance with them. 

This is more especially the case with the 
Mystical Theology and the three letters con 
nected with it. These deal simply with the 
relations between God, the world of created 
things, and the soul of man. They depend 
on no references to persons, places or events, 
but appeal to that perception of the inner 
truth of things which is alike in all ages and 



DIONYSIUS 203 

all countries, and which probably no man is 
altogether without. 

The other extant works of Dionysius are 
the Divine Names, the Celestial Hierarchy, 
the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, and six letters 
on different subjects, in addition to the three 
here translated. The Treatise of Divine 
Names deals with the unique, transcendental 
nature of God, which of its superabundant 
fulness creates all that is external to God, 
and gives to each order of being its proper 
degree of the divine likeness, and its function 
of communicating a share of the divine gifts 
to the order below it. It is hardly necessary 
to remark that we have here the Christian 
rendering of the Neoplatonic " one," the Neo- 
platonic and Gnostic doctrines of emanation, 
and the Gnostic " Pleroma," or fulness, touched 
on in a manner somewhat like the Dion- 
ysian treatment by St John and St Paul. (St 
John i. ; Eph. i. 23 ; iii. 19 ; Coloss. i. 19 ; ii. 9.) 

In the other two treatises, the Angelic 
hierarchy in its ninefold choirs, and the vari 
ous orders of the Church, from bishop to 
penitent, are described. These are the more 



204 MYSTICISM 

striking and important examples of the creative 
energy that flows out from the one personal 
God, as the primeval Creator, and as the in 
carnate Head of the Church. In these books 
God is considered as in a true sense immanent 
in the creatures which He nevertheless trans 
cends ; as in the Mystical Theology, the necessity 
is insisted on of rising above the created mani 
festations of the divine power and excellence, 
for those who desire to obtain some knowledge 
of the Creator as He is in Himself. 

The influence of Neoplatonism, in both 
terminology and method, is obvious enough 
in the Dionysian writings, and through them 
has directly or indirectly passed into nearly 
all the mystical literature of subsequent ages. 
But, as we have already seen, the pantheistic 
doctrines of Neoplatonism are entirely rejected 
by Dionysius, and are indeed incompatible 
with his view of creation and of the relations, 
actual or possible, between God and the soul. 
It may therefore be plausibly surmised that 
the main object of the author was to present 
the orthodox Christian view of the funda 
mental questions with which all philosophy 



DIONYSIUS 205 

and theology has to deal, in the form which 
would be most acceptable to the contemporary 
philosophic mind, and in terms of that mode 
of thought which was "in the air" at the 
time of writing. In much the same way Aris- 
totelianism was christianised by St Thomas, 
and many apologetic works of the last fifty 
years have sought to express the concepts of 
Christian theology in terms of the current 
physiology and psychology. 1 

Dionysius refers to several works of his own 
which seem to have remained entirely un 
known, and which are by some thought to 
have had no real existence. These are 
Theological Outlines, Sacred Hymns, Symbolic 
Theology, The Just Judgment of God, The Soul, 
and The Objects of Sense and Intellect. 

A full account of the Dionysian writings is 
given by Professor Stiglmayer in the American 
Catholic Encyclopedia ; a less recent one is 
to be found in the Dictionary of Christian 
Biography. The available evidence for the 

1 "These works were intended to show that all which the 
Platonic school had gathered of truth in all parts of the world 
and in all ages, is to be found in a far purer and more complete 
form in Christianity." Gorres, Mystique Divine Naturelle et 
Diabolique (tr. par Ste Foix), vol. i. p. 67. 



206 MYSTICISM 

authorship is discussed in Darboy s CEuvres 
de St Denys, Lupton s introduction to Dean 
Colet s Paraphrase of Dionysius, and Barden- 
hewer s Patrologie. 

Modern translations have been published 
in German by Engelhart (1823) and Storf 
(Kirchlicke Hierarchie, 1877), and in French 
by Darboy (CEuvres de St Denys, 1845) and 
Dulac (1865). In English a translation was 
completed in 1895 by Rev. J. Parker; and 
a translation of the Mystical Theology was 
published in London in 1653, in a volume 
of sermons by John Everard, D.D., entitled 
Some Gospel Treasures opened: or the Holiest 
of all Unvailing whereunto is added the 
Mystical Divinity of Dionysius the Areopagite, 
spoken of Acts xvii. 34. 

The most recent, and the most accessible 
edition of the text of Dionysius is that of 
Corderius, S.J., published at Antwerp 1634, 
and frequently reprinted, together with Latin 
translation, translator s notes, the commentary 
of St Maximus and the paraphrase of Pachy- 
meres ; the same edition is included in 
Migne s Greek Patrology. 



CHAPTER XII 

THE MYSTICAL THEOLOGY OF DIONYSIUS THE 
AREOPAGITE 

CHAPTER I 

What the Divine Darkness is 

SUMMARY. (i) Address to the Blessed Trinity. (2) Those 
to whom mystical knowledge is open must be distin 
guished from those who do not realise the transcen 
dental character of the divine nature, and still more, 
from those who liken the Creator to the creature in 
idolatry: whereas in God all qualities of created 
existence are to be found eminenter though at 
the same time such qualities cannot strictly be predi 
cated of Him, who is above all created things. In 
other words, God transcends creation, but all the 
perfections of creatures are derived from Him, and 
constitute a certain likeness to Him. Hence the 
Gospel is both great and small i.e., it declares the 
manifold variety and complexity of God s works, but 
His own absolute simplicity and unity. (3) Therefore 
those who would see God must pass beyond the 
limits of creation, into a state which is beyond human 
knowledge and light and speech, and must therefore, 
from the point of view of created beings, be called 
207 



208 MYSTICISM 

one of ignorance, darkness and silence; as Moses 
was commanded to separate himself from all impurity 
before entering the Divine presence, so those who 
would now enter that presence must separate them 
selves from all created things. 

MOST exalted Trinity, Divinity above all know 
ledge, whose goodness passes understanding, 
who dost guide Christians to divine wisdom ; 
direct our way to the summit of thy mystical 
oracles, most incomprehensible, most lucid 
and most exalted, where the simple and pure 
and unchangeable mysteries of theology are 
revealed in the darkness, clearer than light, 
of that silence in which secret things are 
hidden ; a darkness that shines brighter than 
light, that invisibly and intangibly illuminates 
with splendours of inconceivable beauty the 
soul that sees not. Let this be my prayer ; 
but do thou, dear Timothy, diligently giving 
thyself to mystical contemplation, leave the 
senses, and the operations of the intellect, 
and all things sensible and intelligible, - and 
things that are and things that are not, that 
thou mayest rise as may be lawful for thee, 
by ways above knowledge to union with Him 



MYSTICAL THEOLOGY OF DIONYSIUS 209 

who is above all knowledge and all being ; 
that in freedom and abandonment of all, thou 
mayest be borne, through pure, entire and 
absolute abstraction of thyself from all things, 
into the supernatural radiance of the divine 
darkness. 

But see that none of the uninitiated 1 hear 
these things. I mean those who cleave to 
created things, and suppose not that anything 
exists after a supernatural manner, above 
nature ; but imagine that by their own natural 
understanding they know Him who has made 
darkness His secret place. But if the principles 
of the divine mysteries are above the under- 

1 The Uninitiated -The two classes of uninitiated here re 
ferred to are, first, the less spiritually minded among Christians, 
and secondly, the heathen. Corderius considers that by the 
first non-Christian philosophers rather than Christians of any 
kind are intended : but the Neoplatonist contemplatives could 
hardly be described in the terms here used, and they only could 
have been the "philosophers" in question. The distinction 
drawn by some between the words by which the two classes 
are designated (^77x01 = not fully instructed, and d/iwrr<u = not 
formally admitted) is perhaps fanciful, but is probably the true 
explanation of the classification intended. The impotence of 
the natural faculties in mystical contemplation is here stated as 
a first principle of mystical theology. Compare St John of the 
Cross, Asc. ii. 4 : "It is clearly necessary for the soul aiming 
at its own supernatural transformation to be in darkness and 
far removed from all that relates to its natural condition." 



210 MYSTICISM 

standing of these, what is to be said of those 
yet more untaught, who call the absolute First 
Cause of all after the lowest things in nature, 
and say that He is in no way above the images 
which they fashion after various designs ; of 
whom they should declare and affirm that in 
Him as the cause of all, is all that may be 
predicated positively of created things ; while 
yet they might with more propriety deny 
these predicates to Him, as being far above 
all ; holding that here denial is not contrary 
to affirmation, since He is infinitely above all 
notion of deprivation, and above all affirma 
tion and negation. 

Thus the divine Bartholomew says that 
Theology is both much and very little, and 
that the Gospel is great and ample, and yet 
short. His sublime meaning is, I think, that 
the beneficent cause of all things says much, 
and says little, and is altogether silent, as 
having neither (human) speech nor (human) 
understanding, since He is essentially above 
all created things, and manifests Himself un 
veiled, and as He truly is to those only who 
pass beyond all that is either pure or impure, 



MYSTICAL THEOLOGY OF DIONYSIUS 211 

who rise above the highest height of holy 
things, who abandon all divine light and sound 
and heavenly speech, and are absorbed into 
that darkness where, as the Scripture says, 
He truly is, who is beyond all things. 

It was not without a deeper meaning that 
the divine Moses was commanded first to be 
himself purified, and then to separate himself 
from the impure ; and after all this purifica 
tion heard many voices of trumpets, and saw 
many lights shedding manifold pure beams : 
and that he was thereafter separated from the 
multitude and together with the elect priests 
came to the height of the divine ascents. 
Yet hereby he did not attain to the presence 
of God Himself; he saw not Him (for He 
cannot be looked upon), but the place where 
He was. This, I think, signifies that the 
divinest and most exalted of visible and 
intelligible things are, as it were, suggestions 
of those that are immediately beneath Him 
who is above all, whereby is indicated the 
presence of Him who passes all understand 
ing, and stands, as it were, in that spot which 
is conceived by the intellect as the highest 



2i2 MYSTICISM 

of His holy places ; then that they who are 
free and untrammelled by all chat is seen and 
all that sees enter into the true mystical dark 
ness of ignorance, whence all perception of 
understanding is excluded, and abide in that 
which is intangible and invisible, being wholly 
absorbed in Him who is beyond all things, 
and belong no more to any, neither to them 
selves nor to another, but are united in their 
higher part to Him who is wholly unin 
telligible, and whom, by understanding nothing, 
they understand after a manner above all 
intelligence. 



CHAPTER 1 1 

How to be united with, and to give praise to Him who is the 
cause of all things and above all 

SUMMARY. Therefore God is only to be known in a 
supernatural manner, by abstraction from all that is 
natural. Natural sight and knowledge are useless 
for the purpose of seeing and knowing what is above 
nature : the supernatural can only be perceived in 
entire separation from all that is merely natural. In 
this sense, natural light and knowledge merely obscure 
the vision; we can see God only in a "luminous 
darkness " which is darkness because of the absence of 
created light, luminous because of the divine presence 
there made known. As, in order to form our concep 
tion of God, we add together the divine attributes 
(in speculative theology), so (in mystical theology) 
we must subtract them, from the lowest to the highest, 
in order to arrive at the essential nature of God. 1 

WE desire to abide in this most luminous 
darkness, and without sight or knowledge, to 

1 The Divine Attributes. God s attributes, such as wisdom, 
justice, goodness, etc., are human conceptions in themselves. 
We know them as they are manifested in the works of God, not 
as they exist in Himself. God is not, so to speak, the mere 
sum of His attributes, but the simple divine essence, which in 

213 



2i4 MYSTICISM 

see that which is above sight or knowledge, 
by means of that very fact that we see not 
and know not. For this is truly to see and 
know, to praise Him who is above nature in 
a manner above nature, by the abstraction of 
all that is natural ; as those who would make 
a statue out of the natural stone abstract all 
the surrounding material which hinders the 
sight of the shape lying concealed within, and 
by that abstraction alone reveal its hidden 
beauty. 1 It is needful, as I think, to make 
this abstraction in a manner precisely opposite 

different aspects is each of the divine attributes. Thus we 
truly say that God is love, justice, mercy, etc. ; but we could 
not truly say that love, justice, mercy, etc., together constitute 
God. Therefore those who, in any sense, see God in Himself 
must contrive to go behind all those created forms in which 
His perfection is manifested. (See Summa Theol. I. xiii. 2, 3.) 
1 This illustration is used by Plotinus (de Pulcritudine, vii.), and 
is adduced as an argument against the identity of the author 
with the Areopagite by upholders of the contrary view. It 
expresses very precisely the attitude of mysticism towards the 
immanence of God, though it cannot be pressed as an illustra 
tion of the nature of immanence. The statue is revealed by 
abstracting superfluous material, as God is made known by 
abstracting all that is not God. But the residuum, which is 
the statue, is of the same nature as the abstracted superfluity ; 
whereas the abstraction of what is natural leaves only the 
supernatural, or divine. Compare St John of the Cross, ii. 5 : 
" In every soul God dwells and is substantially present . . . the 
soul, when it has driven away from itself all that is contrary to 
the Divine Will, becomes transformed in God by love." 



MYSTICAL THEOLOGY OF DIONYSIUS 215 

to that in which we deal with the Divine 
attributes ; for we add them together, begin 
ning with the primary ones, and passing from 
them to the secondary, and so to the last ; 
but here we ascend from the last to the first, 
abstracting all, so as to unveil and know that 
which is beyond knowledge, and which in all 
things is hidden from our sight by that which 
can be known, and so to behold that super 
natural darkness which is hidden by all such 
light as is in created things. 



CHAPTER III 

What is affirmed of God, and what is denied of Him 

SUMMARY. (i) The Being of God and the Names of God 
are expounded in the Theological Outlines and the 
treatise of Divine Names respectively, and the method 
according to which God is spoken of in terms of 
sensible things is treated of in the Symbolical 
Theology^ It was obvious that there was less to be 
said of the divine nature itself than of the different 
ways in which it may be partially expressed in human 
speech. So here we pass in contemplation of God 
not merely to economy of words, but beyond speech 
itself. (2) In affirming God s nature we must compare 
it with what is beneath it ; but in denying of it that 
which it is not, we must distinguish all things from 
it, according to their degrees of remoteness. Thus 
we add in the one case, and subtract in the other. 

IN our Outlines of Theology we have declared 
those matters which are properly the subject 
of Positive Theology ; in what sense the holy 
divine nature is one, and in what sense three ; 
what it is that is there called Paternity, and 

1 See preceding chapter. 
216 



MYSTICAL THEOLOGY OF DIONYSIUS 217 

what Filiation ; and what the doctrine of the 
Holy Ghost signifies ; how from the uncreated 
and undivided good those blessed and perfect 
Lights have come forth, yet remained one 
with the divine nature, with each other, and 
in themselves, undivided by coeternal abiding 
in propagation ; how Jesus though immaterial 
became material in the truth of human nature ; 
and other things taken from Scripture we have 
expounded in the same place. Again in the 
Book of Divine Names (we have shown) how 
God is called good, how Being, how Life 
and Wisdom and Virtue, with other names 
spiritually applied to Him. Then in the 
treatise of Symbolical Theology we saw what 
names have been transferred to Him from 
sensible things what is meant by the divine 
forms and figures, limbs, instruments, localities, 
adornments, fury, anger and grief; drunkenness, 
oaths and curses, sleep and waking, with other 
modes of sacred and symbolical nomenclature. 
I think you will have understood why the 
last are more diffuse than the first; for the 
exposition of theological doctrine and the 
explanation of the divine names are neces- 



2i8 MYSTICISM 

sarily shorter than the treatise on symbolism. 
Because in proportion as we ascend higher 
our speech is contracted to the limits of our 
view of the purely intelligible ; and so now, 
when we enter that darkness which is above 
understanding, we pass not merely into brevity 
of speech, but even into absolute silence, and 
the negation of thought. Thus in the other 
treatises our subject took us from the highest 
to the lowest, and in the measure of this 
descent our treatment of it extended itself; 
whereas now we rise from beneath to that 
which is the highest, and accordingly our 
speech is restrained in proportion to the 
height of our ascent ; but when our ascent 
is accomplished, speech will cease altogether, 
and be absorbed into the ineffable. But why, 
you will ask, do we add in the first and begin 
to abstract in the last ? The reason is that 
we affirmed that which is above all affirmation 
by comparison with that which is most nearly 
related to it, and were therefore compelled to 
make a hypothetical^ affirmation ; but when 

1 "Hypothetical" (or comparative), i.e., setting one thing 
below another. God is infinitely higher than the highest created 
thing : and He is to be distinguished from all forms of created 



MYSTICAL THEOLOGY OF DIONYSIUS 319 

we abstract that which is above all abstraction, 
we must distinguish it also from those things 
which are most remote from it. Is not God 
more nearly life and goodness than air or a 
stone ; must we not deny more fully that He 
is drunken or enraged, than that He can be 
spoken of or understood ? 

existence, high and low alike : yet He is more truly life than a 
stone (comparative or hypothetical affirmation) : He is more 
absolutely not passionate than ineffable (comparative abstrac 
tion or negation). Thus in affirmation " more " is predicated of 
what is nearer to God; in negation, of what is remoter from Him 
(Corderius). In the hierarchy of creation, the higher the form 
of existence, the greater its resemblance to God : yet in all 
there is the infinite difference of the creature from the Creator. 
We have here the Theistic or Christian rendering of the 
Neoplatonic and Gnostic doctrines of emanation. 



CHAPTER IV 

That He who is the supreme cause of all sensible things is 
Himself no part of those things 

SUMMARY. The Creator is not a mere lifeless and 
unintelligent abstraction ; yet He is wholly distinct 
from all forms of sensible existence. 

WE say that the cause of all things, who is 
Himself above all things, is neither without 
being nor without life, nor without reason nor 
without intelligence ; * nor is He a body ; 
nor has He form or shape, or quality or 
quantity or mass ; He is not localised or 
visible or tangible ; He is neither sensitive 
nor sensible ; He is subject to no disorder 
or disturbance arising from material passion ; 
He is not subject to failure of power, or to the 

1 The supreme, universal, or first cause cannot be identified 
with any of its effects, or with all of them together. The 
simplicity of the divine nature implies entire distinction from 
all created things. (See Summa Theol. i. 3. 8.) 

220 



MYSTICAL THEOLOGY OF DIONYSIUS 221 

accidents of sensible things ; He needs no 
light; He suffers no change or corruption 
or division, or privation or flux ; and He 
neither has nor is anything else that belongs 
to the senses. 



CHAPTER V 

That He who is the supreme cause of all intelligible things is 
Himself no part of those things 

SUMMARY. The Creator is distinct from all merely 
intelligible forms of existence, being neither one of 
them nor all of them together. 

AGAIN, ascending, we say that He is neither 
soul nor intellect ; nor has He imagination, 
nor opinion or reason ; He has neither speech 
nor understanding, and is neither declared nor 
understood ; He is neither number nor order, 
nor greatness nor smallness, nor equality nor 
likeness nor unlikeness ; He does not stand 
or move or rest; He neither has power nor 
is power ; nor is He light, nor does He live, 
nor is He life ; He is neither being nor age 
nor time ; nor is He subject to intellectual 
contact ; He is neither knowledge nor truth, 
nor royalty nor wisdom ; He is neither one 



222 



MYSTICAL THEOLOGY OF DIONYSIUS 223 

nor unity, nor divinity, nor goodness ; * nor 
is He spirit, as we understand spirit ; He is 
neither sonship nor fatherhood nor anything 
else known to us or to any other beings, either 
of the things that are or the things that are 
not ; nor does anything that is, know Him as 
He is, nor does He know anything that is as it 
is ; He has neither word nor name nor know 
ledge ; He is neither darkness nor light nor 
truth nor error ; He can neither be affirmed 
nor denied ; 2 nay, though we may affirm or 
deny the things that are beneath Him, we can 
neither affirm nor deny Him; for the perfect 
and sole cause of all is above all affirma 
tion, and that which transcends all is above all 
subtraction, absolutely separate, and beyond 
all that is. 

1 Neither one nor, etc. See Letter II. to Caius, where the 
sense is explained in which this statement is to be understood. 
There is a sense in which God is His own nature ; z>., as it is 
in itself, not in the inadequate sense in which alone it may be 
conceived or experienced by us. See Summa TheoL i. 3. 3, 
where it may be remarked that St Thomas says, not " Deus 
est Deitas," but "Deus est sua Deitas." 

2 He can neither be affirmed nor denied. The divine nature 
cannot be adequately (though it may be truly) defined, either 
positively or negatively. 



LETTER I 

To Cat us the Monk 

SUMMARY. The discursive operation of the intellect not 
only is not the means by which God is to be 
experimentally known, but actually precludes such 
knowledge : the mind knows God by a supernatural 
operation, which transcends its natural functions. 

DARKNESS is destroyed by light, especially by 
much light ; ignorance is destroyed by know 
ledge, especially by much knowledge. You 
must understand this as implying not priva 
tion, but transcendence ; l and so you must 
say with absolute truth, that the ignorance 
which is of God is unknown by those who 
have the created light and the knowledge of 
created things, and that His transcendent 



1 Transcendence (uTepoxiKws). The ignorance by which man 
sees God is more, not less, than natural knowledge it is not 
ignorance of the objects of natural knowledge, but the rejection 
of such knowledge as out of relation to the supernatural sphere 
in which God is experimentally known. 

224 



MYSTICAL THEOLOGY OF DIONYSIUS 225 

darkness is obscured by any light, and itself 
obscures all knowledge. And if any one, 
seeing God, knows what he sees, it is by no 
means God that he so sees, but something 
created and knowable. For God abides 
above created intellect and existence, and is 
in such sense unknowable and non-existent 
that He exists above all existence and is 
known above all power of knowledge. Thus 
the knowledge of Him who is above all that 
can be known is for the most part ignorance. 



LETTER II 

To the Same 

SUMMARY. God is above and beyond that divinity and 
goodness which we know, which we seek to imitate, 
and of which we are made partakers, as being their 
source and fountain head. 

How can He who is beyond all things be also 
above the very principle of divinity and of 
goodness ? By divinity and goodness must 
be understood the essence of the gift which 
makes us good and divine, or that unapproach 
able semblance of the supreme goodness and 
divinity whereby we also are made good and 
divine. For since this is the principle of 
deification and sanctification for those who are 
so deified and sanctified, then He who is the 
essential principle of all principles (and there 
fore the principle of divinity and goodness) is 
above that divinity and goodness by means 

226 



MYSTICAL THEOLOGY OF DIONYSIUS 227 

of which we are made good and divine : l 
moreover, since He is inimitable and incom 
prehensible, He is above imitation and com 
prehension as He is above those who imitate 
and partake of Him. 

1 Inimitable^ etc. Man s goodness and sanctity can resemble 
God s only analogically, not absolutely. We cannot imitate 
the unique pre-eminence of God, though we may endeavour 
with eventual success to fulfil His will perfectly, as He perfectly 
fulfils His own will. 



LETTER V 

70 Dorotheus the Deacon 

SUMMARY. Since God transcends all things, both sensible 
and intelligible, He can be known only by separation 
from the senses and the intellect. Thus the inaccess 
ible light in which He dwells is darkness by reason 
of its excess. 

THE divine darkness is the inaccessible light 
in which God is said to dwell. And since 
He is invisible by reason of the abundant 
outpouring of supernatural light, it follows 
that whosoever is counted worthy to know 
and see God, by the very fact that he neither 
sees nor knows Him, attains to that which 
is above sight and knowledge, and at the 
same time perceives that God is beyond l all 
things both sensible and intelligible, saying 



1 Beyond all things (verb, Trdrra), not " in " or " with " all things, 
as it has been translated, but "after" them *>., from the 
human point of view, in which the natural comes before and is 
nearer than the supernatural. 

228 



MYSTICAL THEOLOGY OF DIONYSIUS 229 

with the Prophet, " Thy knowledge is become 
wonderful to me ; it is high, and I cannot 
reach to it." In like manner, St Paul, we 
are told, knew God, when he knew Him to 
be above all knowledge and understanding ; 
wherefore he says that His ways are unsearch 
able and His judgments inscrutable, His gifts 
unspeakable, and His peace passing all under 
standing ; as one who had found Him who is 
above all things, and whom he had perceived 
to be above knowledge, and separate from 
all things, being the Creator of all. 



INDEX OF PROPER NAMES 



ABRAHAM, 102 

Alacoque, Margaret Mary, 85, 

119, 132, 174 

Albertus Magnus, 57, 97, 195 
Alexander, 198 
Amalric of Bena, 167 
Ambrosius Camaldulensis, 194 
Ammonius Saccas, 147 
Angela, B., of Foligno, 75, 123, 131 
Apollinarians, 109 
Apollonius of Tyana, 154 
Aquinas, St Thomas, 27, 42, 57, 

70, 78, 93, 94, 97, 123, 127, 

137, 195, 205, 214, 220, 223 
Aristotle, 56, 205 
Augustine, St, 42, 44, 97, 98, 

100, 127, 157, 158 

BALTHASAR, 100, 102 
Bardenhewer, 206 
Bartholomew, St, 210 
Beghards, 166 seq. 
Benedict XIV., 37, 72, 87, 113, 

118 

Bergson, H., 33 
Bernard, St, 70, 113 
Bigg, 154 

Biran, Maine de, 115 
Blosius, 94 

Boehme, J., 161, 168 seq. 
Bona venture, St, 81 
Bossuet, 74, 75, 172 
Bradley, 128, 139 
Buddhism, 128 

CAIUS, letters to, 224, 226 
Calvin, 161 
Chaise, Pere la, 172 



Chandler, 121 
Cleanthes, 127 
| Clement of Alexandria, 42 
Clement, St, of Rome, 196 
Clement V., 167 
Colet, Dean, 206 
Corderius, 82, 91, 195, 206, 209 

DARBOY, 197, 200, 206 

Decius, Emperor, 153 

De la Combe, 172 

Delacroix, 108, no, 115 

Denys, St, 194 

D Estre"es, 172 

Devine, 190 

Dionysius, Areopagite, 13, 44, 

57, 82, 141, 149, 150, 152, 158, 

164, 193 seq. 

Mystical Theology, 207 seq. 

Dionysius Carthusianus, 195 
Dorotheus, letter to, 228 
Dulac, 206 

ECKHART, 79, 81, 82, 139, 143 
Emmerich, Anne Catherine, 34, 

85 

Engelhart, 206 
Eriugena, J. S., 194 
Eulogius, 194 
Eusebius, 196 
Everard, John, 206 

FEBRONIUS, 185 

Fichte, 161 

Ficino, Marsilio, 195 

Fox, 161 

" Friends of God," 184 



231 



232 



INDEX OF PROPER NAMES 



GALLIENUS, Emperor, 147, 153 
Gerson, 51, 59, 76, 77, 78 
Gnosticism, 203 
Gorres, 33, 115, 205 
Gregory the Great, 194 
Grosseteste, 194 
Gunther, 109 
Guyon, Madame, 171 sey., 175 

HARNACK, 53 

Hartmann, 128, 161, 169 

Hegel, 139, 141, 161, 169 

Hennas, 55 

Hierotheus, 200 

Hilduin, 194 

Hipler, 199 

Hobbes, 185 

Hugo of St Victor, 77, 81, 195 

Hypatius, 193, 194 

IGNATIUS, St, 55 
Illingworth, 30 
Imitation of Christ, 188, 189 
Inge, 11, 12, 26, 65, 1 80 
Irving, 60, 161 

JACOBI, 161, 169 

James, 36, 72, I08 ( lio, 112, 

"3 

Jerome, St, 196 

Joachim of Fiore, 60 

John, St, 203 

John of the Cross, St, 20, 36, 70, 

74, 75, 83, 85, 96, 97, 98, 99, 

102, 113, 119, 151, 152, 165, 

171, 174, 209, 214 
Joseph II., 185 
Julian of Norwich, 34, 85, 100, 

124 

KANT, 144, 161 
Koch, 196 

LAW, William, 121 
Lejeune, 67 
Lupton, 206 
Luther, 161 

MACARIUS, 190 
Maeterlinck, n, 56 



Maher, 116 
Maximus, St, 194, 197 
Migne, 206 
Mohammed, 60 
Molinos, 119, 171, 184 
Monophysites, 193 
Monothelites, 194 
Montanus, 161 
Moses, 165, 211 

NEOPLATONISM, 56, 60, 127, 147, 
152, 153, 154, 169, 195, 197, 

201, 203, 2O9 

OCCAM, 109 

PACHYMERES, 198 

Paley, 30 

Parker, 206 

Paul, St, 52, 70, 95, 97, 109, 165, 

199, 203, 229 
Peter, St, 100, 199 
Philo, 11, 56, 198 
Philostratus, 154 
Plato, 56, 57, 60 
Plotinus, 8, 10, 56, 127, 146^., 

161, 201, 214 
Porphyry, 148, 153, 157 
Poulain, 101 
Priscilla, 60 
Priscillian, 161 
Proclus, 8, 10, 56, 161, 196, 197 

RECEJAC, 180 
Ribet, 33 

Richard of St Victor, 77, 81 
Royce, 19 

Ruysbroeck, 59, 70, 99, 132 141, 
142 

ST HILAIRE, Barthelemy, 151, 

155 

Sarrazenus, John, 194 

Scaramelli, 97 

Schelling, 169 

Schopenhauer, 23, 128, 161, 169 

Schram, 33 

Segneri, 172 

Severus, 193 

Socrates, 55, 56 



INDEX OF PROPER NAMES 



Spinoza, 26, 128, 139, 141 
Stiglmayer, 196, 205 
Storf, 206 
Snarez, 190 
Swedenborg, 161, 170 

TAULER, 59, 60, 80, 141, 142 
Teresa, St, 34, 59, 64, 70, 74, 77, 
83, 86, 96, 97, 99, 102, 113, 
119, 131, 151, 152, 171, 174 



Theologia Germanica, 141, 142 
Thomas Vercellensis, 194 
Thorold, A., 124 
Timothy, St, 197, 199, 208 

VALLA, Lorenzo, 168, 195 
Vaughan, no 
Victorinus, 153 
Vienne, Council of, 167 
Virgil, 51 



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he National Catholic Congress. 
Leeds, 1910. 



OFFICIAL REPORT. 



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Report of the XlXth Eucharistic 

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SHARPE, A.B. 
%sticism. 



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