Attraction and Repulsion, Benson and Energy, Love and Hate, are necessary to Human existence.

From these contraries spring what the religious call Good and Evil.

Good is the passive that obeys Reason. Evil is the active springing from Energy. Good is Heaven. Evil is Hell.

With these startling remarks Blake opens what is the most intelligible and concise of all the prophetic books, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. Swinburne calls it the greatest of Blake's books, and ranks it as about the greatest work "produced by the eighteenth century in the line of high poetry and spiritual speculation." We may think Swinburne's praise excessive, but at any rate it is well worth reading (Essay on Blake, 1906 edn., pp. 226-252). Certainly, if one work had to be selected as representative of Blake, as containing his most characteristic doctrines clothed in striking form, this is the book to be chosen. Place a copy of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell in the hands of any would-be Blake student (an original or facsimile copy, needless to say, containing Blake's exquisite designs, else the book is shorn of half its force and beauty); let him ponder it closely, and he will either be repelled and shocked, in which case he had better read no more Blake, or he will be strangely stirred and thrilled, he will be touched with a spark of the fire from Blake's spirit which quickens its words as the leaping tongues of flame illuminate its pages. The kernel of the book, and indeed of all Blake's message, is contained in the following statements on p. 4, headed "The Voice of the Devil."

All Bibles or sacred codes have been the causes of the following Errors:—

1. That man has two real existing principles, viz. a Body and a Soul.

2. That Energy, called Evil, is alone from the Body; and that reason, called Good, is alone from the Soul.

3. That God will torment Man in Eternity for following his Energies.

But the following Contraries to these are True:—

1. Man has no Body distinct from his Soul, for that called Body is a portion of Soul discerned by the five Senses, the chief inlets of Soul in this age.

2. Energy is the only life and is from the Body, and Reason is the bound or outward circumference of Energy.

3. Energy is Eternal Delight.

Blake goes on to write down some of the Proverbs which he collected while walking among the fires of hell. These "Proverbs of Hell" fill four pages of the book, and they are among the most wonderful things Blake has written. Finished in expression, often little jewels of pure poetry, they are afire with thought and meaning, and inexhaustible in suggestion. Taken all together they express in epigrammatic form every important doctrine of Blake's. Some of them, to be fully understood, must be read in the light of his other work. Thus, "The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom," or, "If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise," are expressions of the idea constantly recurrent with Blake that evil must be embodied or experienced before it can be rejected.[80] But the greater number of them are quite clear and present no difficulty, as for instance the following:—

A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees.

He whose face gives no light shall never become a star.

No bird soars too high, if he soars with his own wings.

What is now proved was once only imagined.

As the air to a bird or the sea to a fish, so is contempt to the contemptible.

Exuberance is Beauty.

Everything possible to be believed is an image of truth.

There are two tendencies of Blake's mind, both mystical—that is, rooted in unity—the understanding of which helps, on the one hand, to clear much in his writing that seems strange and difficult; and, on the other, reveals a deep meaning in remarks apparently simple to the point of silliness. These are his view of the solidarity of mental and spiritual as compared with physical things, and his habit of concentrating a universal truth into some one small fact.

For Blake, mental and spiritual things are the only real things. Thought is more real than action, and spiritual attitude is more real than thought. It is the most real thing about us, and it is the only thing that is of any importance. The difference between Blake's attitude and that of the ordinary practical man of the world is summed up in his characteristic pencil comment in his copy of Bacon's Essays on the remark, "Good thoughts are little better than good dreams," in the Essay on Virtue. Blake writes beside this, "Thought is act." This view is well exemplified in the Job illustrations, where Blake makes quite clear his view of the worthlessness, spiritually, of Job's gift to the beggar of part of his last meal, because of the consciously meritorious attitude of Job's mind.[81]

If this attitude be remembered it explains a good many of the most startling and revolutionary views of Blake. For instance, in the poems called "Holy Thursday" in the Songs of Innocence and Experience, he paints first of all with infinite grace and tenderness the picture of the orphan charity children going to church, as it would appear to the ordinary onlooker.

The hum of multitudes was there but multitudes of lambs, Thousands of little boys & girls raising their innocent hands.

* * * * *

Beneath them sit the aged men, wise guardians of the poor; Then cherish pity, lest you drive an angel from your door.

But in short, scathing words and significant change of metre he reverses the picture to show his view of it, when, in the companion song of "Experience," he asks—

Is this a holy thing to see In a rich and fruitful land, Babes reduc'd to misery, Fed with cold and usurous hand?

It is owing to a false idea that we can bear to see this so-called "charity" at all, for we—

reduce the man to want a gift, and then give with pomp.

The real evil is that we can suffer the need of the crust of bread to exist. This is a view which is gradually beginning to be realised to-day.

Blake is peculiarly daring and original in his use of the mystical method of crystallising a great truth in an apparently trivial fact. We have seen some of these truths in the Proverbs, and the Auguries of Innocence is nothing else but a series of such facts, a storehouse of deepest wisdom. Some of these have the simplicity of nursery rhymes, they combine the direct freshness of the language of the child with the profound truth of the inspired seer.

If the Sun & Moon should Doubt They'd immediately Go Out.

It would scarcely be possible to sum up more completely than does this artless couplet the faith—not only of Blake—but of every mystic. Simple, ardent, and living, their faith is in truth their life, and the veriest shadow of doubt would be to them a condition of death. They are the only people in the world who are the "possessors of certainty." They have seen, they have felt: what need they of further proof? Logic, philosophy, theology, all alike are but empty sounds and barren forms to those who know.

To Francis Thompson the presence of the Divine in all things is the one overwhelming fact. As a result of this sense, the consciousness that everything is closely related, closely linked together, is ever present in his poetry. It is the vision of this truth, he believes, which will be the revelation of a new heaven and a new earth.

When to the new eyes of thee All things by immortal power, Near or far, Hiddenly To each other linked are, That thou canst not stir a flower Without troubling of a star.

The Mistress of Vision.

His "Divine intoxication," his certainty of the presence of God, is the more remarkable when it is realised through what depths of want and degradation and suffering Thompson passed, and what his life was for many years. His father, a north-country doctor, wished him to follow the profession of medicine, but the son could not bear it, and so he ran away from home with—for sole wealth—a Blake in one pocket and an Aeschylus in the other. In his struggle for life in London, fragile in body and sensitive in soul, he sank lower and lower, from selling boots to errand-boy, and finally for five years living as a vagabond without home or shelter, picking up a few pence by day, selling matches or fetching cabs, and sleeping under the archways of Covent Garden Market at night. At last, in the very depth of his misery, he was sought out and rescued by the editor of the paper to whom he had sent Health and Holiness and some of his poems. This saved him, his work brought him good friends, and he was enabled to write his wonderful poetry. These terrible experiences, which would have quenched the faith of the ordinary man and led him to despair, with the poet mystic sought expression in those six triumphant verses found among his papers when he died,[82] verses charged with mystic passion, which assert the solid reality of spiritual things, and tell us that to the outcast and the wanderer every place was holy ground, Charing Cross was the gate of heaven, and that he beheld—

Christ walking on the water Not of Gennesareth, but Thames!

Through all that he writes there breathes the spirit of mystic devotion and aspiration, but the following characteristics and beliefs may be specially noted.

(1) His reverence of childhood. He sees in the child something of the divinity which Vaughan and Wordsworth saw, and his poems to children, such as Daisy and The Poppy, have a special quality of passionate worship all their own.

(2) His attitude towards the beauty of woman. This is entirely mystical, and is akin to the view of Plato and of Donne. He shares their belief that love is but the power to catch sight of the beauty of the soul, which shines through and actually moulds the beauty of face and body.

How should I gauge what beauty is her dole, Who cannot see her countenance for her soul, As birds see not the casement for the sky? And, as 'tis check they prove its presence by, I know not of her body till I find My flight debarred the heaven of her mind.

Her Portrait.

(3) His attraction towards the continual change and renewal of nature, not only of the movement of life to death, but of death to life. He broods over the changing cycles of the year, winter and spring, decay and re-birth, and he sees in them a profound and far-reaching symbolism. This is magnificently expressed in the Ode to the Setting Sun, where he paints a picture, unmatched in English verse, of the sun sinking to rest amid the splendours gathered round him in his fall. The poem is charged with mystic symbolism, the main thought of which is that human life, ending apparently in death, is but the prelude of preparation for a more glorious day of spiritual re-birth.

For birth hath in itself the germ of death, But death hath in itself the germ of birth. It is the falling acorn buds the tree, The falling rain that bears the greenery, The fern-plants moulder when the ferns arise. For there is nothing lives but something dies, And there is nothing dies but something lives.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



Bibliography



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



General

Underhill, Evelyn. Mysticism, Methuen, 1911. (See the valuable Bibliography of mystical works, pp. 563-585.) The Mystic Way, Dent, 1913.

Jones, Rufus M. Studies in Mystical Religion, Macmillan, 1909.

James, William. The Varieties of Religious Experience, Longmans Green, 1905.

Inge, W. R. Christian Mysticism, Methuen, 1899. Studies of English Mystics, Murray, 1905. Light, Life and Love. Selections from the German mystics. With Introduction. Methuen, 1904.

Huegel, Baron F. von. The Mystical Element in Religion, 2 vols.. Dent, 1909.

Delacroix, H. Etudes d'Histoire et de Psychologie du Mysticisme, Paris, 1908.

Recejac, E. Essai sur les fondements de la Connaissance Mystique, Paris, 1897 (translated by S. C. Upton, London, 1899).

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



Foreign Influences

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

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

Plotinus (A.D. 204-270). Plotini Enneades, praesmisso Porphyrii de vita Plotini deque ordine librorum ejus libello, edidit R. Volkmann, 2 vols., Leipzig, 1883-84. (Eng. trans.) There is no complete English translation of the Enneads, only Select Works, translated by T. Taylor, 1817; re-issued, George Bell, 1895. (French trans.) Les Enneades de Plotin, translated by M.-N. Bouillet, 3 vols., Paris, 1857-61. (This is complete and very good, but out of print.) The best critical account of Plotinus is in The Evolution of Theology in the Greek Philosophers, by Edward Caird, 2 vols., Maclehose, 1904.

Dionysius the Areopagite. Works, translated Parker, 1897.

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

Emmanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772). Works, published by the Swedenborg Society, London. Selections, A Compendium of the Theological Writings, ed. Warren, 1901.



English Writers

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

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

Anonymous (c. 1350-1400). The Cloud of Unknowing, ed. Evelyn Underhill, J. Watkins, 1912.

All printed, with other early English mystical treatises, in The Cell of Self-Knowledge, ed. E. G. Gardner, Chatto & Windus, 1910. The Epistle of Prayer, The Epistle of Discretion, The Treatise of Discerning Spirits

Anonymous. The Epistle of Privy Counsel, in MS., British Museum, Harleian, 674 and 2473.

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

Walter Hylton (d. 1396). The Scale of Perfection, ed. Guy, 1869; ed. Dalgairns, 1870. The Song of Angels, printed by Gardner, in The Cell of Self-Knowledge, 1910.

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

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

John Donne (1573-1631). Poetical Works, ed. Grierson, 2 vols., Oxford, 1912.

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

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

Henry More (1614-1687). Complete Poems, ed. Grosart, 1878. Life, by R. Ward, 1710, reprinted Theosophical Society, ed. Howard, 1911.

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

Thomas Traherne (c. 1636-1674). Poetical Works, ed. Dobell, 1903. Centuries of Meditations, ed. Dobell, 1908. Poems of Felicity, ed. Bell, Oxford, 1910.

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

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

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

S. T. Coleridge (1772-1834). Complete Poetical Works, ed. E. H. Coleridge, 2 vols., Oxford, 1912. Biographia Literaria, ed. J. Shawcross, 2 vols., Oxford, 1907.

Emily Bronte (1818-1848). Complete Poems, ed. Shorter, Hodder and Stoughton, 1910. The Three Brontes, by May Sinclair, Hutchinson, 1912.

Coventry Patmore (1823-1896). Poems, G. Bell, 1906. The Rod, the Root, and the Flower, 1895. Memoirs and Correspondence of C. Patmore, by B. Champneys, 1900.

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

Francis Thompson (1859-1907). New Poems, Burns and Oates, 1897. Selected Poems, 1908. Sister Songs, 1908.



Index



Aeschylus Alchemists Allen, H. E., Authorship of the Prick of Conscience Ammonias Sakkas Ancren Riwle

Bacon, Francis, Essays Beauty; moon the symbol of; Plato on; truth and; worship of Behmenists. (See also under Boehme) Bergson, mystical basis of his thought; study of; theory of rhythm Bhagavad-Gita Blake, William; Auguries of Innocence; Europe; Everlasting Gospel; Illustrations to Job; imagination of; in-debtedness to Boehme; greatness of; Marriage of Heaven and Hell; Milton; Of Natural Religion; Songs of Innocence; study of; view of Nature; Vision of Last Judgment Boehme, Jacob; Coleridge on; influence of; Law's use of; study of; view of evil Bourignon, Madame Bradley, A. C., Shakespearian Tragedy Bronte, Charlotte ——- Emily; Last Lines; Philosopher; Prisoner; study of; Visionary Browne, Sir Thomas Browning, Elizabeth Barrett; Aurora Leigh Browning, Robert; Asolando; Bean-stripe; his central teaching; Death in the Desert; his intellectuality; his love-mysticism; Paracelsus; on pre-existence; Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau ; Rabbi ben Ezra; on religion and science; resemblance to Eckhart; Ring and the Book; Statue and Bust; study of; his view of evil Bruno, Giordano Bunyan, John Burke, Edmund; Present Discontents; study of Byron

Cambridge Platonists Carlyle, Thomas influence of Emerson on; Heroes; nature of his mysticism; Sartor Resartus; study of Catherine of Genoa Chaucer Christ, use of symbolism Christianity and mysticism Cloud of Unknowing Coleridge, S. T. Crashaw's influence on; Dejection; Destiny of Nations; Frost at Midnight; Kant's influence; Lay Sermon; Letter to Tulk; Neo-platonic influence; Religious Musings; study of; Swedenborg's influence Crashaw, Richard influence of; St Teresa

Descartes Deonise Hid Divinite Dionysius the Areopagite, Mystical Theology Donne, John Ecstasy; Letter to Woodward; Letters to Countess of Huntingdon; Negative Love; Of our Sense of Sinne; Poem on Eliz. Drury; Progress of the Soul; Soul's Joy; study of; Undertaking Dryden

E., A. Eckhart Emerson, R. W. English national character and mysticism Entbehrung Epistle of Discretion Epistle of Privy Counsel Erskine, Thos., of Linlathen Evil, see under Good and Evil

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

Godwin, Mary, see Shelley, Mrs——William Goethe doctrine of Entbehrung; influence on Carlyle Good and Evil, problem of Gosse, Edmund, on Patmore's Sponsa Dei Greek delight in beauty Grierson, H. J. C., Donne's Poems Grosseteste Guyon, Madame

Hartley, David Harvey, Christopher, School of the Heart Hegel Herbert, George Hindu mysticism Hinton, James, Mystery of Pain Hugh of St Victor Hylton, Walter Scale or Perfection

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

James, William Jefferies, Richard Story of My Heart; study of Julian, Lady Revelations of Divine Love

Kant Keats, George Keats Endymion; Letter to Taylor; Ode on Nightingale; Ode on Grecian Urn; Plato's influence on; Revision of Hyperion; study of

Knowledge, mental and spiritual supremacy of intuition over intellectual, (see also under Truth) Krishna

Lamb, Charles Lao-Tsze Law, William Appeal to all that doubt; Boehme's influence on; early studies; Serious Call; Spirit of Prayer; study of; Way to Divine Knowledge Lawrence, Sir Thomas Love, human and divine in Ancren Riwle; Blake on; Boehme on; Browning on; Coleridge on; Crashaw on; Donne on; Herbert on; Keats on; Lady Julian on; Patmore on; Richard Rolle on; Shelley on; Thomas de Hales on; Francis Thompson on; Traherne on

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

Pain, problem of Pascal, Blaise Patmore, Coventry Angel in the House Bow set in the Cloud Child's Purchase and The Toys Conjugial Love Crashaw's influence on Dieu et ma Dame Memoirs Precursor Religio Poetae Sod, Boot, and Flower Sponsa Dei study of Piers Plowman Plato influence on Donne Plotinus Shelley Spenser Vaughan on beauty on love Phaedrus, Republic Symposium system of Platonists, Cambridge Plotinus Enneads Letter to Flaccus Plato's influence on system of Pope Porphyry Pratt, J. B., Religious Philosophy of William James Pre-existence, belief in Pythagoras

Quakers. Quia amore langueo

Religion and Science Rhythm, Beigson's theory of Richard of St Victor Benjamin Minor Robinson, Henry Crabb Rolle, Richard Fire of Lone Pricke of Conscience study of Rossetti, Christina Rossetti, D. G. Hand and Soul House of Life sensuousness of study of Ruysbroeck

St Augustine City of God influence of Plotinus on St Bernard of Clairvaux St Bonaventura St Catherine of Siena St Francis of Assisi Fioretti St John of the Cross St Martin St Paul St Teresa Schelling Scotus Eriugena, John Seekers Separatists Shakespeare Shelley, Mrs (Mary Godwin) Shelley; Adonais; Epipsychidion; Hymn to Intellectual Beauty; imagination of; influence of Plato; Julian and Maddalo; love mysticism of; Prometheus; Revolt of Islam; Rosalind and Helen; study of Smith, John, the Platonist Society, unity in Socrates Song of Solomon Spenser, Edmund, Hymns; Plato's influence on Spinoza Stewart, J., Myths of Plato Sunlight, Jefferies' sensitiveness to Suso Swedenborg Heaven and Hell,; influence of; thought of; Wisdom of Angels Swinburne, A. C., Essay on Blake Symbolism

Tauler Taylor, Keats's letter to Tennyson Ancient Sage; Higher Pantheism; Holy Grail; In Memoriam; study of Thelwall Theologia Germanica Thomas de Hales, Luve Ron Thompson, Francis; Crashaw's influence on; Daisy; Health and Holiness; Hound of Heaven; Ode to Setting Sun; Poppy; study of Thought, reality of Time Traherne, T. Approach; Centuries of Meditations; Eden; Innocence; Rapture; Salutation; study of; Wonder Transcendentalists Treatise of Discerning Spirits Truth, beauty and; imagination and; intellect and; steps towards. See also under Knowledge Tulk, C. A.

Underhill, Evelyn, Mysticism Upanishads

Vaughan, Henry Affliction; Hidden Flower; Quickness; Retreate; Resurrection and Immortality; World; study of Vision, faculty and ecstasy of pain and physical condition and renunciation and

Watts-Dunton, Theodore, article on Rossetti Whichcote, Benjamin Will, power of Wordsworth, William attainment of vision debt to Vaughan Duddon Sonnets Excursion fallacy of usual conception of mediation of Ode on Intimations of Immortality Prelude Recluse Solitary Reaper Stepping Westward study of Tintern Abbey value of common things view of Nature

Yeats, W. B.



Footnotes



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

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

[3] Republic, ii. 376.

[4] Symposium, 211, 212.

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

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

[7] See his essay on him in Representative Men.

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

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

[10] See his article on Rossetti in the Nineteenth Century for March 1883.

[11] House of Life, Sonnet xvii.

[12] House of Life, Sonnets i., xxvii., lxxvii.

[13] See Religio Poetae, p. 1.

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

[15] The Angel in the House. Bk. ii. prelude ii.

[16] The Angel in the House, canto viii. prelude iv.

[17] See pp. 113, 114 below.

[18] The Child's Purchase and The Toys, poems, I vol., 1906, pp. 287, 354.

[19] Seligio Poetae, 1893, p. 163.

[20] Religio Poetae, 1893, p. 44.

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

[22] See the illuminating description of this essentially mystic feeling given by J. Stewart in The Myths of Pinto, Introduction, pp. 39 et seq.

[23] The Story of my Heart, pp. 87, 88.

[24] Ibid., p. 76.

[25] The Story of my Heart, p. 199.

[26] Ibid., p. 71.

[27] Ibid., p. 74.

[28] See Compendium of Philosophy, a mediaeval digest of the Abhidhamma, translated by S. Z. Aung and Mrs Rhys Davids, 1910, 152 f.

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

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

[31] Centuries of Meditations, ed. Dobell, 1908, pp. 20, 21.

[32] Centuries of Meditations, pp. 156-58.

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

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

[35] An Appeal, Work's, vol. vi. pp. 27, 28.

[36] The Spirit of Prayer, Works, vol. vii. pp. 23, 24.

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

[38] See The Spirit of Prayer, Works, vol. vii. pp. 150, 151.

[39] An Appeal, Works, vol. vi. p. 169.

[40] Ibid., pp. 19, 20.

[41] Ibid., pp. 69, 80.

[42] The Spirit of Prayer, Works, vol. vii. pp. 23, 27.

[43] The Way to Divine Knowledge, Works, vol. vii. p. 60.

[44] The Spirit of Prayer, Works, vol. vii. p. 68. See also ibid., pp. 91, 92

[45] An Appeal, Works, vol. vi. pp. 132, 133.



[47] An Appeal, Works, vol. vi. p. 115.

[48] The Destiny of Nations, II. 16-18.

[49] Frost at Midnight, 11. 60-62.

[50] Sartor Resartus, Book i. chap. xi.

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

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

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

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

[55] Fire of Love, Bk. 1. cap xvi. p. 36.

[56] Ibid., Bk. i. cap. xv. p. 33.

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

[58] Fire of Love, Bk. i. cap. xvi. p. 36.

[59] Ibid., Bk. ii. cap. iii. and xii.

[60] Fire of Love, Bk. i. cap. xv.

[61] Ibid., Bk. ii. cap. vii.

[62] Enneads, vi. Sec.Sec. 8, 9.

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

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

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

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

[67] See Piers Plowman, by J. J. Jusserand, 1894

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

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

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

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

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

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

[74] Notes to Lavater.

[75] From version [Greek: g]2 in Poetical Works, ed. John Sampson, 1905, p. 253.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

THE END