Such a theory is, after all, ignoble, because it does not seek Truth

alone, at all costs. The first object of religious inquiry is not

moral expediency, not edification, not what we may deem productive

of the most wholesome impressions, not what we wish to find true;

but what _is_ true. Let us seek the Truth, and if faithful to what

we can find of _that_, these other things will be added to us. Mere

good nature is a spurious charity. The cause of religion can never

be served by acquiescence in a falsehood. The Christianity offered

by Schleiermacher is a glass which mirrors every man—a source of

motive, never beyond our own level—a provision which is always what

we like and expect. Now, it may so happen that the kind of religion

we should like is not that which is the true—not that, therefore,

which is good for us. We need a religion adapted to us, but yet high

above us, to raise us up. The untrained eye does not at the first

view appreciate the old masters of art. If we are sincere in seeking

God’s truth, we must count on having to receive some things that do

not at once commend themselves to our judgment, but into which we

shall grow up, in the process of spiritual education. Now, for this

kind of self-transcendence Schleiermacher makes no preparation, and

his easy entrance does, in reality, preclude progress. We are not

surprised to see the Romish priest considering first, not what is

truth or fact, but what statement will bring the greatest number

within the pale of the Church, what will produce the most edifying

impression, what will do least violence to the current

preconceptions. The children of the day should disdain the slightest

approach to such facile complaisance. If Christ did not rise from

the dead, Christianity is a lie. On this question no inquiry must be

spared—our minds must be thoroughly made up. But to allow the name

of Christian to men who do not regard this fact as established,

looks as though we were afraid of inquiry,—as politic governments

will seem hot to see offences which it would be dangerous to punish.

I justify my means by my end—I am wanting in truth and manhood, if,

having myself rejected some doctrine, I yet appear to hold it,

because I think it morally expedient that it should be generally

received. I am guilty of a similar pious fraud if I yield up as

non-essential some fact on which the Christian faith must hang, in

order to recall certain wanderers to the fold of a nominal

Christianity. Schleiermacher’s sincerity can only be saved at the

expense of his judgment. This was the weak point of his accomplished

intellect—a weakness shared by many a German divine,—he regarded

external facts as of small moment compared with inward feeling. The

continual evaporation of outward reality in sentiment is the

vitiating principle in his system.[400]

Side by side with the advocates of faith and feeling in the

religious province, appeared German Romanticism in the field of

art and literature. The Romanticists were the enthusiastic

champions of the Ideal against Realism, the assailants of all

artificial method and servile conventionality, the sworn foes

everywhere of that low-minded, prosaic narrowness which Germany

calls Philistinism.[401]

Schelling gave them a poetical philosophy, and young

Schleiermacher’s _Discourses on Religion_ were, for a time, their

Bible. French Encyclopedism and German Rationalism had professed a

summary explanation for every mystery, had exiled the supernatural,

and ridiculed the Middle Age. In the pages of the _Athenæum_ and the

_Europa_, Romanticism undertook the defence of mediæval

superstition, extolled its fist-law, its wager by battle, its

‘earnest’ religious wars; and confounding clear thought and definite

expression with the pert self-complacence of Rationalism, announced

itself enamoured of every mystical obscurity, for the very shadow’s

sake.

The evils against which the Romanticists contended were many of them

real; much they laughed at, well deserving ridicule; but with their

truth they mingled a world of fantastic folly. Voltaire was, in many

things, as shallow as he was transparent,—_therefore_ the muddy

obscurity of every visionary who rhapsodized about the All, must be

profound as the ‘everlasting deeps.’ Conventionalism,

utilitarianism, logic-grinding, old formulas,—all were to be

dethroned by the inspired votaries of intellectual intuition. The

most startling extravagance or desperate paradox of opinion was

hailed with the loudest plaudits, as most surely fraught with the

divine afflatus. The Romanticists essayed to harmonize the ideal and

the real. For the most part, they succeeded only in confounding

their spheres; and ending by absorbing the real in the ideal. In

their hands, philosophy became imaginative and rhetorical,—a very

garden of gay fancies; while poetry grew metaphysical and analytic.

Where they should have created, they dissect; where they should have

inquired, they imagine.[402]

It is a cardinal doctrine with Romanticism that the common should be

regarded as the wondrous, and the wondrous as the common. The land

of faëry is to be our beaten business track; its dreamy speech, a

household language; its spirit-glances, our familiar looks. At the

same time, the objects and appliances of everyday existence are to

be informed with supernatural significance, and animated with a

mysterious life. So, in _Sartor Resartus_ (a book which is simply

the Evangel of Romanticism, in its more vigorous form), Mr. Carlyle

reminds the reader that his ‘daily life is girt with Wonder,’ and

that his ‘very blankets and breeches are Miracles.’ Thus our life is

to be at once a trophy and a bazaar; like old Westminster Hall,

where the upper story was gorgeous with blazonry and proud with the

ensigns of chivalrous romance, and the ground-floor laid out in

shops.

Ere long, Romanticists like Creuzer and Görres, began to resolve the

old mythologies into allegorical science: while Romanticists like

Frederick Schlegel, were resolving religion into poetry, and

morality into æsthetics. Dante and Tasso, Camoens and Goethe, had

intermingled classic and romantic myths as a poetic decoration, or a

fanciful experiment. With the Romanticists (so frequently mastered

by their own materials), such admixture became actual earnest. They

announced the approach of a new Religion of Humanity and Art. They

summoned flower-spirits from the Ganges, braceleted crocodiles from

the Nile, monstrous forms from the Talmud and the Koran, to fill its

incongruous pantheon of symbols. The novel wonders of animal

magnetism were to constitute its miracles. Thus, like Proclus, they

could make philosophy superstitious, they could not make

superstition philosophical. They attempted the construction of a

true and universal religion, by heaping together the products of

every recorded religious falsity, and bowing at all shrines in turn.

Like Iamblichus, they sought in theurgy for a sign; and in their

credulous incredulity, grew greedy of every supranaturalism except

the scriptural. In a moment of especial inspiration, Frederick

Schlegel, writing in the _Athenæum_, declared that the only

opposition which the new religion of philanthropy and good taste was

likely to encounter, would spring from the few Christians proper

still in existence; but even they, when the Aurora actually shone,

would fling aside their prejudice, fall down, and worship.[403]

Such anticipations appear ridiculous enough. But against ridicule,

to which they were peculiarly sensitive, the Romanticists possessed

a ready safeguard. This resource consisted in their doctrine of

Irony. After advancing a paradox, or pushing a fancy to the edge of

absurdity, let the author turn round, and abandon his own creation;

or dissipate it, with a serene smile; or assuming another tone, look

down upon it, as questionable, from some new and superior height.

Thus, if any dullard begins gravely to criticise, he shall have only

laughter for his pains, as one too gross for the perception of

humour; while at the same time, the reader is given to understand

that beneath that jest there _does_ lie, nevertheless, a kernel of

most earnest and momentous truth. According to the Ironic theory,

such saying and unsaying is not convenient merely (as a secret door

of escape behind the tapestry), but in the highest degree artistic.

For what is Art, but a sublime play? Does not loftiest genius ever

sport, godlike, with its material, remote and riddling to the lower

apprehension of common minds? In _Sartor Resartus_ the English

public have been familiarized with this ingenious device. After

professing to translate, from the paper-bags of Teufelsdröckh, some

ultra-transcendental sally, Mr. Carlyle makes a practice of

addressing the reader, admits that he may well feel weary and

perplexed, confesses that he himself does not always see his way in

these ‘strange utterances,’ calls them a farrago whose meaning must

be mainly conjectured, and finally leaves it pleasantly uncertain

how much is delirium, how much inspiration.

But no artifice could save Romanticism, in the hands of its most

extravagant representatives, from the condign catastrophe. This

sensuous æsthetic religion, this effeminate symbolism, with its

gallery of arbitrary and incongruous types from the dreams of all

time,—this worship of Art as Deity, could tend but in one direction.

The men who began with sentimental admiration for the Church of

Rome, ended by passing their necks beneath her yoke; and the artist

terminates miserably in the bigot. They had contemned the

Reformation, on æsthetic grounds, as unromantic: they came to dread

it on superstitious grounds as unsafe. Romanticism, so sanguine and

so venturous in its revolutionary youth, grew anile in its premature

decrepitude; mumbled its _credos_; cursed its heretics—and died.

It was at the opening of the present century that the great rush to

Rome took place: a significant lesson, indicating the constant issue

of that subjective poetical religionism which divorces Truth from

Beauty, which craves religious fancies and neglects religious facts,

till it falls a victim to the greatest religious fallacy. Then was

celebrated the perversion of Frederick Schlegel, of Adam Müller, of

Zachariah Werner—‘a born mystic,’ as Carlyle rightly styles him.

Tieck, who must stand acquitted of the follies of the school; and

August Wilhelm Schlegel (despite some crotchets, immeasurably

superior to Frederick) retained their Protestantism.

Novalis, for by this name Friedrich von Hardenberg is most known, is

perhaps as fair a representative of Romanticism as can be found. He

had no occasion, like some of the party, to affect, as so much art,

the language of the mystics whom he studied with such devotion.

Novalis was to the manner born. To none was the realm of reverie and

fable—visited by most of us only at intervals—more completely a

familiar, daily dwelling-place. Scarcely to the morbid phantasy of

Hoffmann was the ordinary life more visibly inwrought with the

mysterious. Poetry was his practical staff of every-day existence;

and practical life, to him, all poetry. The creations of his fancy

were his Holy Writ; and Holy Writ the most divine creation of the

fancy. Werner regretted that men should ever have employed two

distinct terms to designate Art and Religion. With Novalis they are

perfectly identical. It is his wont to deal with spiritual truth by

analogies drawn from physics, and to investigate physics by his

mystical axioms concerning spiritual truth. A mind so desultory and

discursive was quite unequal to the formation of a system. But to

what sort of system such a confusion of thought must lead, if ever

methodically elaborated, has not patient, hard-working Jacob Behmen

already shown us? Where other men are satisfied with tracing a

resemblance, Novalis announces an identity. What others use as an

illustration, he will obey as a principle. With him, as with the old

theosophists, the laws of the universe are the imaginative analogies

which link together all its regions, seen and unseen,—analogies bred

in his own heated brain.

Thus, according to Novalis, he is the true Archimage of Idealism,

‘who can transform external things into thoughts, and thoughts into

external things.’ ‘The poet,’ he says, ‘is the true enchanter: by

identifying himself with an object he compels it to become what he

will.’ ‘Experience is magical, and only magically explicable.’

‘Physics is the theory of imagination.’ ‘Religion, Love, Nature,

Politics, all must be treated mystically.’ On such a principle alone

can we account for the ultra-Neoplatonist rodomontade he utters in

praise of mathematics. He declares the genuine mathematician the

enthusiast _par excellence_—mathematics is the life of the gods—it

is religion—it is virtual omniscience. Mathematical books are to be

read devoutly, as the word of God.[404]

The suggestive and sparkling aphorisms of Novalis should be read

with due allowance. Some contain admirable thoughts, pointedly

expressed; others are curiously perverse or puerile. Now they

breathe the lofty stoical spirit we find in Schleiermacher’s

monologues. Presently, Fichte seems forgotten; the strain of Titanic

self-assertion is relaxed, and Novalis languidly reclines with the

Lotos-eaters among the flowers. In one page life is but ‘a battle

and a march,’ in another, the soul’s activity is an eating poison;

love, a sickness; life, the disease of the spirit—a brief fever, to

be soothed by the slumber of mystical repose, and healed at last by

healthful, restful death. In this latter mood he woos the sleepy

abstraction of the oriental mysticism. Action is morbid, in his

eyes; to dream is to overcome. All activity ceases, he says, when

Knowledge enters. The condition of Knowlege is Eudæmonia—saintly

calm of contemplation.[405] Such is the aspiration dimly discernible

through the florid obscurity of his _Hymns to Night_. Shutting out

the garish outer world of the Actual, forgetting all its tinsel

glories and its petty pains, the enthusiast seems to rise into that

mystic meditative Night, whose darkness reveals more truth than the

searching brightness of the daylight, and in whose recesses his

transported spirit celebrates its bridal with the Queen of

Heaven—the æsthetic Mary, the Eternal Beauty.

Now that the assailants of Revelation have grown so extremely pious,

we find them zealously enlisting certain modifications of mysticism

on their side. Modern spiritualism revives the tactics of ancient

philosophy. It borrows from Christianity (as did Porphyry) a higher

moral tone than it could otherwise have reached, and then pretends

to look down upon the ethics of the scriptures. The religious

sentiment so variously evolved in every age and country, is brought

forth to overwhelm the religious truth revealed in Christ. A

philosophic church is set up. The hope full of immortality is

depreciated as low and selfish. Quietism abased itself so profoundly

that it would scarcely lift its eyes toward that hope. Spiritualism

exalts itself so ambitiously, that it will not stoop to make that

hope its own. In the seventeenth century, mysticism was in sad

earnest on this question of disinterestedness: in the nineteenth,

such indifference is the pretence of a preposterous

self-sufficiency.

But the device which failed so signally, some fourteen centuries

ago, cannot now prevail, though the hostile approach is more

artfully contrived. That antichristian sentimentalism which is too

refined for the medium of a book, and for the morality of the Bible,

was discomfited as soon as seen, and received its _coup de grace_

from the ‘_Eclipse of Faith_,’ amidst universal laughter. But this

repetition of old ideas is, after all, the most mortifying and

damnatory fact. To think; that the advocates of a philosophic

religious sentiment, in opposition to the old Book, should exhibit

as little novelty as their enemies,—that even after throwing off the

Biblical fetters, no progress should be visible,—that the haunting

Past should be with them still,—that after making their escape from

antiquated Paul and John, they should find themselves in company

with antiquated Proclus and Plotinus!

The theosophy of Swedenborg was original. Mysticism has produced

nothing really new in that direction since his day, and the northern

seer still walks alone within his circle. Franz Baader re-clothes

the bones of Behmen’s system from the materials of modern science;

and Oetinger, a student both of Behmen and of Swedenborg, attempts

to arrange a divine system of science by the mystical interpretation

of scripture. Even the ‘holy vegetation’ of oriental mysticism has

been reproduced. Schelling bids man know God ‘in silent

not-knowing,’ as the plant reveals eternal beauty in ‘stillest

existence and without reflection.’ Such counsel means much more than

the maxim, ‘Il ne faut pas voyager pour voir, mais pour ne pas

voir,’ so frequent with John of the Cross and Fénélon. Laurence

Oken, a physiologist of note and a disciple of Schelling, sees in

the snail an exalted symbol of mind slumbering deeply within itself.

He beholds in that creature an impersonation of majestic wisdom: it

is ‘the prophesying goddess sitting on the tripod.’ What reflection,

what earnestness, what timidity, what confidence! The same Oken

travesties Behmen, when he makes red = fire, love, Father; blue =

air, truth, belief, Son; green = water, formation, hope, Ghost;

yellow = earth, Satan. He imagined that he wrote his

Physio-philosophy in a kind of inspiration. Here, again, we see that

this intellectual intuition, professedly so keen, so spontaneous, so

free from every formula, does yet continually repeat itself.

Great and various have been the services rendered by mysticism

throughout the history of the Christian Church. It has exposed

pretence, it has demanded thoroughness. It has sought, amidst

surrounding formalism, what was deemed the highest form of

spirituality. Its strain has been sometimes of a mood so high as to

‘create a soul within the ribs of death.’

But it has been influential for good in proportion to its temperance

in the doctrine concerning the outward rule and the inner light.

Wherever it has been extravagant in this respect—has thrown off

common sense or decency—been turbulent, licentious, or ‘high

fantastical,’ there good men and thoughtful have stood mournfully

aloof from it, while formal men or designing have made its follies a

plea for tightening the cords of spiritual oppression. It has won

acceptance from men when it has been sufficiently moderate to urge

intelligible arguments, and to appeal sincerely (if not always

warrantably) to that outward Revelation which is commonly received.

But the world has rarely been disposed to receive boastful

professions of spirituality or freedom, vague declamation and

rhapsodical denunciation of reason or the schools, in the place of

those definite expressions of opinion which, though sometimes

narrow, are at least readily apprehensible. Incalculable must be the

advantage of any man or party who can manifest a clear meaning over

those who cannot.

There is danger in the present day, lest in the reaction against

logical formalism and prescription, an extravagant value should be

set on faith for its own sake. The Romanist makes mere faith, blind

and implicit, a saving virtue. The spiritualist falls into the same

error when he says, ‘Only be in earnest—get faith in an idea—in

something, at any rate—and all will be well.’ But faith is a

principle, not an instinct. Among the many claimants for my belief,

I must make an intelligent choice. It is of some consequence whether

the ‘idea’ on which I am mounted be false or true. It can be good

for no man to be recklessly earnest in the devil’s work.

Mysticism has generally apprehended religion rather on its divine

than on its human side. It makes haste to lose humanity, and to be

glorified. Grievous afflictions have reminded some of the mystical

aspirants that they were human still. The spiritual pride of others

has betrayed them, first to ostentatious sanctity, and then to

shameful sin. Among those who would surpass humanity, some have

fallen disgracefully, others ludicrously, below it. There have been

those whose transformation proved to be downward to a lower sphere,

not upward to an element more rare. They fare like Lucius in the

_Golden Ass_ to whom Fotis has given the wrong witch-salve. He

extends his arms, he sways himself to and fro, he expects the next

moment to find himself changing into a bird. But his hands and feet

grow horny, his thickening, irritated skin shoots forth hairs, and

behold him metamorphosed into an ass. The theatrical devotion, so

frequent among the ornaments of Roman saintship, overlooks common

duties, sometimes despises necessary helps, generally mistakes

altogether the nature of true greatness. The Christianity exhibited

in the New Testament differs most conspicuously from the Mystical

Theology in being so much more human. It addresses man as he is; it

addresses all; it appeals to the whole nature of every man. It knows

nothing of class-religion. It does not bid men exhaust themselves in

efforts to live only in the _apex_ of their being—that ἄνθος νόου of

which Plotinus speaks.

The history of mysticism shows us, farther, that the attempt to

escape all figure or symbol, in our apprehensions of divine truth,

is useless, or worse than useless. Such endeavour commonly ends in

substituting for a figure which, though limited and partial, has

life and heart in it, some vague abstraction, cold and lifeless,—and

itself, perhaps, ultimately a figure, after all. It is one thing to

remember that language is _but_ language,—that behind all the

expressions of love or power lies an infinity that cannot be

expressed. It is another to leave behind (as many mystics have

striven to do) even the vital breathing metaphors of Holy Writ, and

restlessly to peer beyond, into the Unutterable—the Illimitable.

Surely the words ‘King,’ ‘Shepherd,’ ‘Father,’ express more truth

concerning God than the ‘pure Act’ of philosophy. When I speak of

God as near or distant, pleased or displeased, the change may be in

me rather than in Him. But in practical result—in the effects I

feel—it is to me _as though_ such change of disposition were real.

And mysticism must freely grant me this, if it would not play into

the hands of scholasticism, its hereditary foe. There is a sickly

dread of anthropomorphism abroad among us, which is afraid of

attributing to God a heart.

Mysticism has often spoken out bravely and well against those who

substitute barren propositions for religious life,—who reject the

kindly truth to make a tyrant of some rigid theory or system. But

there is danger also on the other side. An imaginative, brainsick

man, may substitute religious vagaries, whims, conceits, for

religious truth. Men may be led as far astray by mere feeling as by

mere logic. While the man of method makes an idol of his theory, the

enthusiast may make an idol of his passion or his fancy. To this

latter snare we have seen mysticism repeatedly fall a prey. The

fanatic and the formalist both essay to build a temple to the Holy

Spirit. The formalist is satisfied with raising the structure; and a

sorry taper, here and there, makes darkness visible. The fanatic

kindles so many lights, and with so little care, that he burns his

edifice to the ground, as did the Florentines their Church of the

San Spirito, from excessive illumination.

Anatomists tell us of what they term vicarious secretion in the

bodies of men. One organ is found, in some cases of injury, to

produce the secretion proper to another; and so we survive the hurt.

I think some process of the kind must supervene for the benefit of

our minds. With many of the mystics, I doubt not, the heart

performed, in their spiritual œconomy, the functions of the head. A

careful scrutiny of the mystical theology will show, I am confident,

that several of its prominent doctrines are, in fact, most valuable

correctives, and probably took or maintained their place as such.

These doctrines, some of which by no means commend themselves to the

non-mystical mind, are the preservatives of the mystic from his

peculiar dangers. Mysticism leads to an excessive and morbid

introspection. How necessary, then, that doctrine of

‘unconsciousness’ reiterated by John of the Cross and

Fénélon,—itself an extreme, but indispensable to counteract its

opposite. Mysticism has taught many to expect a perceptible inward

guidance. How necessary, then, the doctrine of ‘quiet,’—that the

soul should be abstracted in a profound stillness, lest the hasty

impulses of self should be mistaken for a divine monition. Mysticism

exalts the soul to a fervour and a vision, fraught with strange

sweetnesses and glories. How necessary, then, that doctrine of the

more elevated Quietism which bids the mystic pass beyond the

sensible enjoyments and imaginative delights of religion—escape from

the finer senses of the soul, as well as the grosser senses of the

body, into that state of pure and imageless contemplation which has

no preference or conception of its own. If Quietism is not to become

a fantastic selfishness, a sensuous effeminacy, a voice must cry,

‘Haste through the picture-gallery—haste through the

rose-garden—dare the darkness, wherein the glory hides!’

The lawless excesses of which mysticism has been occasionally guilty

should not serve to commend spiritual despotism. The stock

alternative with the Church of Rome has been—‘Accept these fanatical

outbreaks as divine, or submit to our rule.’ Unfortunately for this

very palpable sophism, the most monstrous mystical extravagance,

whether of pantheism, theurgy, or miracle, is to be found in the

Romish Church. Angelus Silesius, Angela de Foligni, and Christina

Mirabilis, are nowhere surpassed in their respective extremes. The

best of the Romish mystics are questionable Romanists. Tauler and

Madame Guyon were more Protestant than they were aware. Even the

submissive Fénélon is but a half-hearted son of the Church, beside

that most genuine type of her saintship—the zealous Dominic.

Innocent folk are sometimes inclined to think better of a system

which could produce a man like Fénélon. They forget that, as a

product of the system, Fénélon was a very inferior specimen—little

better than a failure.

There is a considerable class, in these restless, hurrying, striving

days, who would be much the better for a measure of spiritual

infusion from the Quietism of Madame Guyon. She has found an

excellent expositor and advocate in Mr. Upham. The want of leisure,

the necessity for utmost exertion, to which most of us are subject,

tends to make us too anxious about trifles, presumptuously eager and

impatient. We should thank the teacher who aids us to resign

ourselves, to be nothing, to wait, to trust. But it is to be feared

that such lessons will have the greatest charm for those who need

them least—for pensive, retiring contemplatists, who ought rather to

be driven out to action and to usefulness. There is a danger lest

passivity should be carried too far—almost as though man were the

helpless object about which light and darkness were contending,

rather than himself a combatant, armed by God against the powers of

night. It seems to me, too, better to watch against, and suppress as

they arise, our selfish tendencies and tempers—our envy, pride,

indifference, hate, covetousness—than to be always nervously trying

(as Fénélon does) to catch that Proteus, SELF, in the abstract.

Finally, in the mischievous or unsuccessful forms of mysticism we

have the recorded result of a series of attempts to substitute the

inner light for the outer. When mysticism threw off external

authority altogether, it went mad—as we have seen in the

revolutionary pantheism of the Middle Age. When it incorporated

itself more and more in revealed truth, it became a benign power—as

on the eve of the Reformation. The testimony of history, then, is

repeatedly and decisively uttered against those who imagine that to

set aside the authority of Scripture would be to promote the

religious life of men. The Divine Spirit is with us yet; and the

healing, elevating wisdom of the inspired page unexhausted still.

The hope of our age lies, not in a conceited defiance of controul,

but in our ability more fully to apprehend the counsels God Himself

has given us. Argument may be evaded. To speak in the name of

religion may seem to beg the question. But to resist the verdict of

the past is not the part of any thoughtful man. He who hopes to

succeed in superseding letter by spirit—in disseminating a gospel

more spiritual than that of scripture, by somehow dispensing with

the vehicle which all truth requires for its conveyance,—who hopes

to succeed in any attempt approaching this, where more powerful

minds, sometimes more favourably situated, have met only with

defeat—such a fanatic must be dismissed with pity as totally

incurable.

It grows late. Good night all. If I can get back earlier I will.

Yours,

HENRY ATHERTON.

Footnote 398:

Goethe:

Held our eyes no sunny sheen,

How could sunshine e’er be seen?

Dwelt no power divine within us,

How could God’s divineness win us?

Footnote 399:

See F. H. Jacobi, _Von den Göttlichen Dingen und ihrer Offenbarung_

(1811), where the principles of the Faith-Philosophy are expounded,

though after a desultory, disjointed manner:—more especially pp.

70-93.

Footnote 400:

To Schleiermacher the theology of his country owes great and lasting

obligation for having led the intellectual promise of his time to a

momentous crisis of transition. His genius at once kindled the

enthusiasm of youth, and allowed a space to its scepticism. As much

opposed as Hamann or Jacobi to the contemptuous Rationalism which then

held the scorner’s chair, he did not, like them, couch a polemic lance

against philosophy. But real and important as was his advance beyond

the low and superficial anti-supranaturalism which preceded him, the

followers of Schleiermacher found it impossible to rest where he did.

From among his pupils have sprung the greatest names in this

generation of German divines, and they have admitted, with scarcely an

exception, that he conceded so much for the sake of peace as to render

his position untenable. Their master led them to an elevation whence

they discerned a farther height and surer resting-place than he

attained. For a more detailed account of Schleiermacher and his

theological position, the reader is referred to an article by the

Author in the _British Quarterly Review_ for May, 1849.

Footnote 401:

The principles of the genuine Romanticism (as distinguished from its

later and degenerate form) are ably enunciated by Tieck, in a comic

drama, entitled _Prince Zerbino; or, Travels in Search of Good Taste_.

One Nestor, a prosaic pedant, who piques himself on understanding

everything, and on his freedom from all enthusiasm and imaginative

nonsense, is introduced into the wondrous garden of the Goddess of

Poesy. There he sees, among others, Dante and Ariosto, Cervantes and

Sophocles. He complains of not finding Hagedorn, Gellert, Gesner,

Kleist, or Bodmer; and the Goddess then points him out—as a true

German bard—stout old Hans Sachs. Dante appears to him a crusty old

fogie; Tasso, a well-meaning man, but weak; and Sophocles, whom he was

disposed to respect as a classic, when blamed for the obscurity of his

choruses, turns upon him like a bear. The conceited impertinence, the

knowing air, and the puzzle-headedness of the Philistine, are hit off

to admiration. This Garden of Poesy seems to him a lair of savages, an

asylum for lunatics, where all his smug conventionalisms are trampled

on, and every canon of his criticism suffers flagrant violation. Genii

take him away, and give him something substantial to eat—earth to

earth. The tables and chairs begin to talk to him. They congratulate

themselves on being delivered from their old free life in the woods,

and cut out into _useful_ articles of furniture, so fulfilling the

purpose of their being. He gets on much better with them than with the

poets, and thinks them (himself excepted) the most sensible creatures

in the world.

Footnote 402:

See Julian Schmidt, _Geschichte der Deutschen National Literatur im

19n Jahrhundert_, th. I. c. vi.

Footnote 403:

Schmidt, p. 60.

Footnote 404:

Novalis, _Schriften_, th. ii. pp. 152, 159, 221.

Footnote 405:

_Ibid._, p. 158.

CHAPTER II.

La raison, dit saint Augustin, ne se soumettroit jamais, si elle ne

jugeoit qu’il y a des occasions où elle doit se soumettre. Il est

donc juste qu’elle se soumette quand elle juge qu’elle doit se

soumettre; et qu’elle ne se soumette pas, quand elle juge avec

fondement qu’elle ne doit pas le faire: mais il faut prendre garde à

ne pas se tromper.—PASCAL.

Gower ceased reading. A few irregular remarks and questions followed the

short silence. Willoughby expressed his wish that Atherton were with

them, and was echoed by the lady of Ashfield. Kate received Atherton’s

bulky letter from Gower’s hands, and began to look it over for herself,

as we always do with newspapers, however fully read aloud. Mrs.

Lowestoffe was cutting out some ingenious paper figures, destined to

throw little Kate into rapturous glee, and her husband had just

petitioned for music, when the deep bark of Lion was heard in the

court-yard; then the muffled sound of hoofs and wheels over the snow,

and a tearing peal of the bell.

It was Atherton, who, released sooner than he had hoped, had followed

his epistle at speed, sweeping with the wind, through the whitening

hills, for two-thirds of the December day.

In half an hour he was among his guests—had refreshed him after his

journey—been upstairs to kiss his sleeping child—and now appeared,

blithesome and ruddy, diffusing smiles. Enthroned in his favourite

arm-chair, he amused them with the story of what he had seen, and heard,

and done; nothing uncommon, certainly, but full of life and humour in

his style of telling. On his way home that, day he had met with an

entertaining companion in the railway carriage, a little spherical old

gentleman, exhibiting between upper and nether masses of fur a narrow

segment of face,—gruff and abrupt in speech—ferocious about stoppages

and windows,—who had been in India, and knew everybody who was ‘anybody’

there.

‘We talked,’ said Atherton, ‘about Brahmins and Buddhists, about the

Bhilsa Topes and Major Cunningham, about the civil service, and what

not. On every topic he was surprisingly well informed, and gave me, in

his brief way, just the facts I wanted to know. A propos of Ceylon and

the famous cinnamon breezes, he said that when he was on board the

Bungagunga Indiaman, they stood one day out at sea, some miles off the

island, when the wind was blowing, mark you, right _on_ the land. A

group among the passengers began to dispute about these said

breezes—were they a poetic fiction, or an olfactory fact? With that, my

old gentleman slips away slyly, rubs a little oil of cinnamon on the

weather hammock nettings, and has the satisfaction of presently seeing

the pro-cinnamon party in full triumph, crying, with distended nostrils

and exultant sniffs, ‘There! don’t you smell them now?’ One of them, he

told me (his multitudinous envelopes shaking the while), actually

published an account when he got home, relating his own experience of

those spicy gales, said to perfume the ocean air so far away.’

GOWER. Amusing enough. Just the blunder, by the way, of our

mystics,—mistaking what exists only on board their own personality for

something real that operates from without. Their pleasurable emotions

can be nothing less than precious odours—miraculous benisons, breathed

from some island of the blest.

LOWESTOFFE. They seem to me a most monotonous set of gentry—those same

mystics. Accept my congratulations on your having nearly done with them.

As far as I understand them, they go round one old circuit for ever, in

varying forms,—just like your gold fish there, Mrs. Atherton, now

looking so big about it, and the next moment tapered off to a mere tail.

See that fellow now, magnified almost to the size of his glass world,

with his huge eyes, like a cabbage rose in spectacles; and now, gone

again on his way round and round,—always the same, after all.

ATHERTON. And yet religious extravagances, with all their inordinate

Quixotism, or worse, are full of instruction. Your favourite botanical

books should hint that much to you; for the vegetable physiologists all

say that no little light has been thrown on the regularly developed

organism by the study of monstrous and aberrant forms of growth.

LOWESTOFFE. There is something in that. But these irregularities you

speak of have repeatedly broken out in the conduct, have they not, as

well as in imagination or opinion?

ATHERTON. They have. The dazzling splendour of a superhuman knowledge or

a superhuman fervour, has often distorted the common rule of right and

wrong,——

GOWER. As they say the Northern Lights disturb the direction of the

needle.

KATE. Yet those glimmers and flashes are of service in the arctic

night,—better than total darkness.

LOWESTOFFE. Right, Miss Merivale. I fully admit the plea.

WILLOUGHBY. I think we must allow the substantial justice of Mr.

Lowestoffe’s complaint. There is a sameness in these mystics. Each one

starts, to so large an extent, on his own account, with the same bias

and the same materials. He reiterates, after his manner, the same

protest, and the same exaggeration. The same negations, the same

incoherence, the same metaphors, have attempted in every age the

utterance of the unutterable.

ATHERTON. So science began to make steady progress as soon as it

confined itself within the limits of the knowable, and ceased to publish

fancy maps of the _terra incognita_. Theosophy was perpetually

transgressing those limits, and hence its waste of ingenuity in vain

gyrations.

GOWER. There is one point, Atherton, on which I could wish you had dwelt

more at large in your letter. Do we not find, the most prolific source

of mysticism in the idea that there is a special faculty for the

discernment of spiritual truth,—that there is a kind of soul within the

soul which may unite with God, leaving behind it all the ordinary powers

of the mind,—a potency, in fact, altogether independent of knowledge,

understanding, judgment, imagination, &c., and never amenable to any of

them? We have encountered this doctrine over and over again, sometimes

in a qualified, sometimes in an uncontrollable form. Hugo’s ‘Eye of

Contemplation’ is such a faculty. Tauler adopts the principle when he

separates the Ground of the Soul from all its acts and powers. It lies

at the root of the inexpressible experiences so precious to the Spanish

mystics, when every function of the soul underwent divine suspension. It

appears again in the divorce declared (by Coleridge, for example)

between the Understanding—the reasoning faculty, which deliberates and

judges, and the Intuitive Reason, which discerns religious and

philosophic truth directly.

ATHERTON. You make out a strong case, certainly. Declare intuition

absolute, with an undivided irresponsible prerogative of this kind, and

what check is provided against any possible vagary of mysticism?

MRS. ATHERTON. I do not clearly understand the question at issue. Pray

explain before you go farther.

GOWER. Allow me to make the attempt. I am afraid we are growing

prosy—speaking for myself, at least. Old travellers used to report that

the Danube, near its conjunction with the Drave, flowed in a stream

quite separate from its tributary, though the same banks confined them

both. The two currents were said to be perfectly distinct in colour, and

their waters of quality so opposite, that the fish caught in the one

were never to be found in the other. Now the question is, whether Reason

and Understanding in the mind of man, do, in a similar way, reciprocally

exclude each other.

ATHERTON. Gower says no; and the failures of mysticism powerfully

support his position. I agree with him. I think we have all within us

what I may call Intuition, the poetical, and Understanding, the

practical man; but that each of the two is the better for close

fellowship with his brother. Let not Intuition disdain common-sense, and

think irrationality a sign of genius. And you, Gower, would be the last

to give the reins to logic only, and live by expediency, arithmetic, and

mensuration.

MRS. ATHERTON. Thank you.

WILLOUGHBY. But there was occasion, surely, for Coleridge’s exhortation

to rise above the dividual particular notions we have gathered about us,

to the higher region of the Universal Reason.

ATHERTON. By all means, let us clear our minds of prejudice, and seek

the True for its own sake.

LOWESTOFFE. But I do not find that those who profess to have ascended to

the common ground of Universal Reason, are one whit more agreed among

themselves, than those who are disputing in the lists of logic about

evidence.

WILLOUGHBY. They are not, I grant. They would attribute their want of

unanimity, however, to the fact that some of them have not sufficiently

purged their intuitional eyesight from everything personal and

particular.

LOWESTOFFE. Who is to be judge in the matter? Who will say how much

purging will suffice to assure a man that he has nowhere mistaken a

‘wholesome Prejudice’ for a divine intuition?

WILLOUGHBY. He must exercise his judgment——

GOWER. Exactly so; his critical, sifting faculty—his understanding. But

that is contrary to the theory in question, which represents

Understanding as utterly incapable in the Intuitional sphere. According

to Jacobi, it is the instinct of the logical faculty to contradict the

intuitional—as the bat repudiates the sunshine.

ATHERTON. If the Christianity of mere logic hardens into a formula, the

Christianity of mere intuition evaporates in a phantom.

WILLOUGHBY. But do not let us forget how limited is the logical faculty.

GOWER. So, for that matter, is the intuitional. Undeveloped by culture

from without, its voice is incoherent, various, scarce audible

oftentimes.

WILLOUGHBY. What logic can prove to me the Eternity of the Divine

Nature? Is not that a transcendental truth?

ATHERTON. I grant it. But my understanding, observing and reasoning, has

shown me convincingly that I must receive that truth on pain of

believing an absurdity. In this way, the Understanding is satisfied (as

Pascal observes it always should be), and acquiesces in a truth beyond

itself. But if I have not thus used my Understanding as far as it will

go, I am traversing the transcendental region without the passport it

should give me,—I cannot render a reason—I only oracularly affirm—I am

fast turning mystic.

LOWESTOFFE. But how this Intuition sees to work, or finds means to work,

without contact with the other faculties of the mind, I cannot conceive.

Has it a set of finer senses of its own? Has no one ever defined it?

GOWER. Several definitions have been attempted. I think Mark Antony’s

the best. He delivered it when he gave drunken Lepidus that hoaxing

description of the crocodile. A mind with any depth of insight will

understand at once the fine symbolism of Shakspeare, and see that he is

depicting Intuition. ‘It is shaped, sir, like itself; and it is as broad

as it hath breadth; it is just so high as it is, and moves with its own

organs; it lives by that which nourishes it; and, the elements once out

of it, it transmigrates.’

ATHERTON. In fact, Intuition is not to be termed one among or above the

faculties of the mind. It is rather, like consciousness, related to them

as species to individuals. As the man is, so are his intuitions.

Previous observation, training, judgment, all combine to bring the mind

to that point from which Intuition takes its survey, more or less

extended.

LOWESTOFFE. Good. Our inner and our outer world contradict that

separatist theory every day, by their action and reaction on each other.

The man who dreads the internal light as an illusive Will-o’-the-Wisp,

has often consulted his own inward bent, far more than he supposes, in

choosing what authority he shall receive. The man who professes to

transcend the external altogether is still moulded by it in a thousand

unimagined modes.

WILLOUGHBY. The imperfect character of our recollection should make us

very cautious, I admit. So much that has been imported into the mind

looks native and spontaneous after a lapse of time. Many an idea,

promulged as the dictum of Intuition—as having its source in the

immemorial depths of our being, has been subsequently traced, even by

its own author, to the external world.

GOWER. That gaberlunzie, Memory (whose wallet has so many holes), would

step in oftener, if he did his duty, and say, like Edie Ochiltree, ‘I

mind the biggin o’ it.’

ATHERTON. It seems to me so unfair and ungrateful that after having been

so largely indebted, from the first, to the outer world, any man should

pretend, at a certain point, to deny utterly that indispensable

coadjutor in his inward development.

GOWER. You remind me of the affectation of the author in _Humphrey

Clinker_, who professed such an antipathy to green fields as made him

careful to sit with his back to the window all dinner-time,—though he

had, in fact, passed his childhood with the asses on the village common.

LOWESTOFFE. Let us, then, celebrate the reconciliation of the

pair—Reason and Understanding, if the terms are to be retained. So only

can our nature realize its full productiveness,—as the richest mines lie

always near the junction of two dissimilar rocks.

ATHERTON. I think spiritualism, which complains that religion is

separated too widely from common life, will scarcely mend the matter by

teaching men that they use one faculty, or set of faculties, about their

week-day business, and a quite distinct one in their worship.

GOWER. As though we were to leave our understandings—like the sandals of

old—at the door of our holy places.

ATHERTON. Enough on this question, I have only one remark to add. We

have seen mysticism endeavouring to exclude all distinct form or

expression, all vivid figure, from its apprehensions of spiritual truth;

as if such clearness and warmth belonged to our meaner nature—were low

and sensuous.

GOWER. Confounding spirituality with abstraction.

ATHERTON. Spiritualism now repeats the same error—is the revival of an

old mistake in a new form. It shrinks from distinctness, mistaking it, I

suppose, for so much gross materialism, or artificial formalism. It

shuns, as far as possible, actual outward persons and events—as though

reality were carnality—as though the fewer facts we acknowledged, the

less formal we were sure to be—as though we were spiritual in proportion

as we resolved sacred narrative into symbols of inward states or

emotions, forsook history for reverie, and evidence for hazy sentiment.

The Spanish Quietists were well nigh enjoining the exclusion of the

conception of Christ’s humanity from their higher contemplation, as an

image too substantial and earthy. Spiritualism, in its tendency to

escape from objective facts to subjective experience, displays a

similarly unnatural timidity—a morbid aversion to that manly exercise of

our whole nature on religious questions which we put forth on others.

GOWER. Thinking, I conclude, that the opposite to spirituality is, not

sensuality or earthliness—but external reality.

WILLOUGHBY. Why look at me? You don’t suppose I have a word to say in

defence of such a curious confusion of thought?

LOWESTOFFE (_who has been turning over the leaves of a Shakspeare while

listening_.) If any one of you should ever take it into his head to

write a book about mysticism——

ATHERTON. Forbid it, my good genius!

LOWESTOFFE. I have a motto for him—a motto by ‘sweet Bully Bottom,’

quite in the past-all-utterance mystical strain.

‘I have had a most rare vision. I have had a dream—past the wit of man

to say what dream it was. Man is but an ass if he go about to expound

this dream. Methought I was, there is no man can tell what. Methought I

was, and methought I had. But man is but a patched fool, if he will

offer to say what methought I had. The eye of man hath not heard, the

ear of man hath not seen; man’s hand is not able to taste, his tongue to

conceive, nor his heart to report, what my dream was. I will get Peter

Quince to write a ballad of this dream: it shall be called Bottom’s

Dream, because it hath no bottom.

CHAPTER III.

What pale dictatress in the air

Feeds, smiling sadly, her fine ghostlike form,

With earth’s real blood and breath, the beauteous life

She makes despised for ever?

BROWNING.

These lines hovered in Gower’s memory that night, as he walked home

after the conversation just recorded. He thought how applicable they

were to asceticism,—especially to that intense asceticism of the mind

which, not content with wasting the body and searing the sense, prides

itself on starving Reason and blinding Imagination,—which eschews all

form and figure, and affects naked truth, without a medium or an

envelope. His was a nature which saw everything in figure. His mind

moved everywhere among pictures. For him to dispense with metaphor and

parable—with significant raiment and dramatic action for his ideas,

would have been almost equivalent to dispensing with ideas altogether.

So he quickened his steps; for the starless, unfeatured night seemed to

him too much to resemble the blank and bleak Abstraction of the severer

mystics,—that tyrannous curfew of warm natural life and of all bright

thoughts.

He soon reached his abode, where a blithe fire awaited him, radiating

its almost animated welcome over easel, busts, and books. Assuming light

study vesture, he leaned back in his arm-chair, enjoying slippered ease.

He would not light his lamp, but reclining in the very mood for reverie,

watched the fire—now the undisputed magician of his studio,—as it called

up or dismissed, with its waving flame, the distorted shadows of

familiar things on wall and ceiling. He himself was soon occupied in

like manner, waywardly calling forth, linking, severing, a company of

shadows out of the past.

In a half-waking, half-dreaming twilight, Gower seemed to see the dusky

form of the Indian, crouched on his mat beside a holy river, awaiting

divine insensibility. There was the Yogi, gathered up in his patch of

shade, like an insect rolled under a leaf; while, above, the beating

sun-glare trampled over the plains, strewn with his reflected rays, as

over an immeasurable threshing-floor.

Then he dreamed that he stood in a Persian garden, and before him were

creeping plants, trained on wires slanting upward to a point, and in and

out and up and down this flower-minster, hung with bells, darted those

flying jewels, the humming-birds: the sun’s rays as they slanted on

their glancing coats seemed to dash off in a spray of rainbow colours.

Some pierced the nectaries of the flowers with their fine bills; others

soared upward, and as they were lost in the dazzling air, the roses

swung their censers, and the nightingales sang an assumption-hymn for

them. Yet this scene changed incessantly. Every now and then the

pinnacle of flowers assumed giant size,—was a needle of rock, shooting

up out of a chasm of hanging vegetation; and innumerable spirits—winged

souls of Sufis, were striving to reach the silent glistening peak. There

was a flutter and a pulsing in the sky—as with summer lightning at

night,—and the palpitation of some vast eyelid made light and darkness

succeed each other with quick throbs. Now it was the pyramid of flowers,

now the star-crowned point of rock. So time and space were

surpassed—sported with. Instants were ages, he thought, and cycles ran

their round in a moment. The vault of heaven was now a hanging

flower-cup; and presently the feather of a humming-bird expanded to a

sunset of far-streaming gold and purple.

A leaping flame caused these alternations in Dreamland, as it lit or

left in shadow his closed eyes.

Then he stood on the desolate Campagna, where before him stretched the

ruins of the Roman aqueducts. The broken arches, dotting at intervals

the far waste of withered green, drew no more water from the hills for

the million-mouthed City in the horizon. Their furrowed, beaten age held

in its wrinkles only roots of maidenhair, and sometimes little

rain-pools along the crevices,—the scornful charity of any passing

shower. In a moment the wilderness grew populous with the sound of

voices and the clangour of tools.—A swarm of workmen, clustered about

the broken links of the chain, were striving to piece them together

again—to bind up the mighty artery, and set it flowing as of old. But an

insatiable morass sucked down the stones they brought. Waggons full of

gods (such as moved in the old triumphs), of statues monstrous, bestial,

many-limbed, from all the temples of the nations, were unladen, with

sacrifice and augury, and the idols deposited on the treacherous

quagmire, only to sink down, a drowning mass, with bowing heads and

vainly-lifted arms. Then the whole undulating plain appeared to roll up

in vapour, and a wind, carrying in it a sound of psalms, and driving

before it a snowy foam of acacia blossoms, swept clear the field of

vision. No; the old influence was to flow no more from the Olympian

Houses above that blue line of hills. Great Pan was dead. The broken

cisterns would hold no water.

He stood next before the mouth of a cavern, partly overhung with a

drooping hair of tropical plants. At his side was a nun, who changed, as

is the wont of dreams, into a variety of persons. At one time, she was

St. Theresa, then Christina Mirabilis, and presently Gower thought he

recognised Theresa once more. He followed his conductress into the

cavern, in the gloom of which a hermit rivulet was pattering along,

telling its pebble beads. As they passed on, the night-birds in the

black recesses of the rock shrieked and hooted at them. As he touched

the dank sides of the passage, from time to time his hand would rest on

some loathly wet lump, shuffling into a cranny, or some nameless, gelid

shape fell asunder at his touch, opening gashes in itself where lay, in

rows, seeds of great tarantula eye-balls, that ran away dissolved in

venomous rheum. Bat-like things flapped down from funnel-shaped holes:

polypi felt after his face with slimy fingers: crabs, with puffed human

faces, slid under his tread; and skinny creatures, as it were

featherless birds, with faces like a horse’s skull, leaned over and

whinnied at him. ‘These,’ said Theresa, ‘are the obscene hell-brood

whose temptations make so terrible the entrance on the Higher Life.’

The long cavern had not yet made a single winding, and he turned, as the

darkness increased, to have a last look at the entrance, whence the

outer sunshine still twinkled after them. He could see a green hill that

faced the mouth, lying off like a bright transparency. Or was it a spot

brought into the disc of his great rock-telescope, from some planet of

perpetual summer—one of those that play in the hair of the sun?

Christina, impatient of this sinful looking back, urged him onward. A

palm-branch she carried grew luminous, and its plume of flame dropping

sparks, became their torch. She paused to point out to him some plants

growing in a black mould. Birds had carried in thus far the seeds from

which they sprang; but there had been no sun-light to give them colour,

and their form was uncertain and defectively developed. ‘Behold,’ said

she, ‘these saintly flowers. Mark that holy pallor! The sun never

stained their pureness with those gaudy hues men admire. Yon garish

world can show no such perfectness: see them, they are hueless,

scentless, well-nigh formless!’ ‘Sickly, blanched abortions!’ exclaimed

the dreamer, so loudly that he almost awoke. ‘We want more life, not

less—fuller—sunnier!’ Christina crossed herself piously to hear

abstraction thus blasphemed. And now the passage, widening, opened on

the central hall of rock, that branched out into depths of darkness

every way, and was fretted with gleaming stalactites. There were amber

volutes and brittle clusters of tawny bubbles; lily-bells of stone,

flowers with sparry thorns and twining stream-like stems; creamy falls

from slabs of enamel, motionless, yet seeming ever to drop from ledge to

ledge; membranous curtains, and net-work, and traceries; tissues and

lawnlike folds of delicate marble; while in the centre, reaching to the

misty summit of the dome, stood a huge sheaf of pillars, like alabaster

organ-pipes. A solemn music trembled and swelled, and as its rising

volume shook the air, voices sang—‘Weep for the sins of men!’ There was

a wild burst of sound; then sudden silence; and, above and around,

nothing was audible but a universal trickling and running, a dripping

and dropping and plashing, while the palm-torch flashed on innumerable

tear-drops, hanging on every pendant point and jutting ledge, or sliding

down the glistening rock.

After a while, it seemed to be Theresa who spoke to him and said, ‘Here

in these depths is warmth, when the world above is locked in ice; and

when the surface is parched, here dwells chaste coolness, safe encelled.

Our fire seems numbness to a blinded world; and we are frost to its

dog-day rages.’ With that a spell seemed to come over her hearer. The

spirit of the words became his spirit. The fate of an empire seemed as

nothing in his eyes beside his next prospect of rapture, or his success

in straining out another half-pint of tears. In a moment he was turned

to stone. He had become a gargoyle high up on Strasburg Cathedral, and

was spouting water from his lolling tongue at the circling birds.

Gower next found himself, on a cold grey morning in spring, in a vine

country, where men and women were toiling up the steep hills on either

side a river, carrying baskets of earth. Last winter’s rain had swept

away the thin soil to the bone, and they must lay a new one about their

vine-sticks. In the midst of their miserable labour, these poor people

saw standing among them a majestic stranger, wrapped in a robe. Gower

thought he recognised Swedenborg at once. ‘Stay,’ cried the seer, ‘God

hath made a soil already for you. Build no other. Your own stony hearts

have made the hill seem to you as iron.’ They heard: each seemed to take

a stone out of his bosom, and hurl it down the steep; when straightway

every foot sank deep into a rich and kindly earth, and a shout of joy

broke forth, echoed far among the cloudy gorges.

Once more Gower thought he stood upon the shoulder of a volcano, among

the clinking scoriæ. It was growing dark. A strange shape of fire was

suddenly at his side, helmed with a flaring cresset, under the light of

which the rocky projections around glowed like the burnished beaks of

galleys. Over his shoulders hung a mantle of azure flame, fringed with

sparks and tasselled with brushes of fire. On his breast was what seemed

a hauberk of some emerald incandescence, that brightened or paled with

every sinuous motion of the lithe frame, as when the wind comes and goes

about an ignited tree-trunk in a burning forest. The form said—‘I am the

Flame-king: behold a vision of my works’—and passed his hand before the

eyes of the dreamer. Gower saw columns of steam shot up from an Indian

sea, with stones and mire, under a great canopy of smoke. Then all was

calm: a new island had been born; and the waves licked the black

fire-cub. Next he saw a burning mountain, lighting, at the dead of

night, glaciers and snowy precipices—as the fire-cross of a great

festival lights the shafts and arches of some darkened cathedral.

Avalanches fell, looking, under the glare, like sliding continents of

ruby, and were shut down in their chasm-caskets with a noise of thunder.

He beheld the burning of brave palaces, of captured cities, of prairies

where the fire hunts alone, and the earth shakes with the trample of a

myriad hoofs flying from the destroyer.

Then he stood on the mountain side, as before; but it was broad day, and

beneath him lay in the sun a sky-like bay, white houses, and the

parti-coloured fields under the haze, like a gay escutcheon, half-hidden

by a gauzy housing. Beside him, in place of the Flame-king, stood a

shining One fantastically clad in whatsoever the sunshine loves best to

inform and turn to glory. The mantle slanting from his shoulders shone

like a waterfall which runs gold with sunlight; his breast mirrored a

sunset; and translucent forest-leaves were woven for his tunic. His

cheek glowed, delicate as the finely-cut camelia, held against the sun.

‘I am King Sunlight,’ he said. ‘Mine is the even kindliness of the

summer-time. I make ready harvest-home and vintage. I triumph in the

green-meshed tropic forests, with their fern-floors, and

garland-galleried tree-tops, where stand the great trunks which,

interlaced with their thick twining underwood, are set like fishers’

stakes with their nets, in those aerial tides of heavy fragrance. There

I make all things green threaten to shoot faster than the cumbered river

can run through the wilds of verdure. I drive Winter away, as though I

were his shepherd, and he leaves fragments of his fleece in snow-patches

among the hills, when I pursue him. I love no flaming ascents, no

tossing meteoric splendours. I overgrow the strife-scars and fire-rents,

which my Titan brother makes, with peace-breathing green. I urge thee to

no glittering leap against the rapids of thy natural mortal element.

With my shining in thy heart, thou shalt have peace, whether thine

outward life raise or sink thee,—as he who rows in the glory-wake under

a sunrise, is bright and golden whether on the crest of the wave or in

the hollow. I put courage into the heart of the Lady in _Comus_, when

alone in the haunted wood.—A quite true story, by the way,’ continued

the Phantom, with a sudden familiarity, ‘for those of you mortals who

can receive it. Wilt thou come with me, and work humbly at what lies

next thy hand, or wait to surpass humanity, or go travelling to find

Michael’s sword to clear thy land withal? With my shining in thy heart,

every flinty obstacle shall furnish thee with new fire; and in thine

affliction I will bring thee from every blasted pine an Ariel swift to

do thee service: so shall thy troubles be thy ministers. Shall it be the

splendour, or the inward sunshine?’

As Gower turned from the approaching Flame-king, he clasped the hand of

Sunlight with such vehemence that he awoke.

It was one o’clock. He hastened to bed, and there slept soundly: I am

sure he had dreamed more than enough for one night.

From the very church-tower which struck one that winter morning, the

ensuing spring heard a merry peal of bells,—such a rocking and a ringing

as never since has shaken those old stones. I daresay Willoughby would

tell you that the bells made so merry because he had just finished his

romance. Don’t believe him: suspect rather, with your usual sagacity,

that Lionel Gower and Kate Merivale had something to do with it.

INDEX.

Abelard, i. 142, 149.

Absorption, Mystical, i. 86.

Abstraction, Doctrine of Hugo concerning, i. 157;

of Ruysbroek, 328;

of the Quietists, ii. 172;

not to be mistaken for spirituality, 365.

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

Affliginiensis, John, i. 334.

Agrippa, Cornelius, i. 44; ii. 61;

his _Vanity of Arts and Sciences_, 62;

his doctrine of the Microcosm, 65.

Alcantara, Peter of, ii. 157, 221.

Alchemy in the sixteenth century, ii. 58;

Theological, 77.

Alexandria, Rise of its Philosophic School, i. 66, 74;

Fusion of Religions there, 72;

Eclecticism, 75;

its Mysticism revived at Florence, ii. 147.

Algazzali, ii. 5.

Alvarez, Balthazar, ii. 171.

Amalric of Bena, i. 131.

Ammonius Saccas, his Eclecticism, i. 74.

Anabaptists of Munster, ii. 37.

Andreä, Valentine, ii. 132.

Angela de Foligni, i. 362.

Angelus Silesius, ii. 5;

his Pantheism, 6;

his Extravagance of Negation, 18;

Analogies with Emerson, 22.

Anselm, i. 141, 149.

Antony, St., i. 109.

Apathy, i. 58;

styled Poverty of Spirit, 331.

Apollonius of Tyana, i. 71.

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

Areopagita, Dionysius, see Dionysius.

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

Asceticism, Oriental, i. 56;

of Plotinus, 71;

of Neo-Platonism, 76;

of the Fathers of the Desert, 109;

mistakes the Design of Christianity, 143;

its services to Priestcraft, 365;

of the Friends, ii. 309;

discouraged by the Mysticism of Swedenborg, 328.

Astras, Indian, ii. 143.

Athos, Mount, Monks of, i. 355.

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

Augustine, i. 131, 146.

_Aurora_ of Behmen, ii. 97.

Baader, Franz, ii. 351.

Bagvat-Gita, i. 51.

Barclay, his _Apology_, ii. 300.

Beghards, i. 184.

Behmen, Jacob, i. 39;

his early life, ii. 80;

his illumination, 83, 93, 95;

his _Aurora_, 86;

his debt to predecessors, 90;

his style, 99;

genial and manly character of his Mysticism, 102;

his Fountain-Spirits, 104, 120;

his Theory of Contraries, 109;

his doctrine of the Fall, 115;

estimate of his position, 118;

compared with Swedenborg, 326.

Bernard, his personal appearance, i. 134;

life at Clairvaux, 135;

moderation of his Mysticism, 136;

character and extent of his influence, 140;

undue limitation of Reason in his Theology, 141;

definition of Faith, 142;

doctrine concerning Contemplation, 143;

concerning Disinterested Love, 144;

definition of Union, 144;

Sermons on Canticles, 145;

his mystical Interpretation, 145.

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

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

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

281.

Bokelson, John, ii. 38.

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

Bonaventura, i. 149, 154.

Bossuet, his ignorance of Mysticism, ii. 252, _note_;

appointed to the Commission of Inquiry concerning Mme. Guyon, 255;

prejudges the cause of Mme. Guyon, 256, _note_;

his treatment of Fénélon, 257;

his panegyric on the Spanish Mystics, 259;

his _Instructions on the States of Prayer_, 261;

his jealousy of Fénélon, 264;

his treachery, 268;

his _Account of Quietism_, 268;

his hypocrisy, 270, _note_;

his misrepresentations, 278.

Bourignon, Antoinette, ii. 286, 289.

Brigitta, St., i. 361.

Buddhism, its Mysticism, i. 56;

its Monasticism, 56.

Bustami, ii. 11.

Cabasilas, Archbishop of Thessalonica, i. 356.

Cabbala, ii. 55, 142.

Cagliostro, ii. 130.

Callenberg, Lady Clara von, ii. 293;

her death, 295.

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

Carlstadt, ii. 43;

opposed by Luther, 51.

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

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

Cevennes, Protestants of the, ii. 313.

Christina Ebner, of Engelthal, i. 223.

Christina Mirabilis, ii. 221.

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

Clairvaux, Monastery of, described, i. 132.

Coleridge, i. 87;

Analogies of Plotinus with, 87;

his intuitive reason, 88.

Contemplation, doctrine of Philo concerning, i. 66;

of Bernard, 143;

of Hugo, 156;

Richard’s six stages of, 162;

the ‘indistinct’ of St. Frances de Sales, ii. 179;

of Fénélon, 280.

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

Cornelius Agrippa, see Agrippa.

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

Counter-Reformation, ii. 149;

character of its Mysticism, 151.

Cross, John of the, see John.

Cyr, St., ii. 248.

David of Dinant, i. 131.

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

Descartes, i. 43.

Desert, Fathers of the, i. 109.

Desmarets, de St. Sorlin, ii. 244.

D’Etrées, ii. 243.

Dionysius Areopagita, first appearance of the writings under that name,

i. 111;

Theology of the Pseudo-Dionysius, 113-115, 278;

influence of his Mysticism on the Middle Ages, 119;

in the East and in the West contrasted, 130;

identified with St. Denys of France, 120;

followed by Molinos, ii. 171;

by John of the Cross, 185.

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

ii. 281.

Dippel, ii. 125.

Director, the Spiritual, ii. 158.

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

Dominicans, Reformatory Preachers among the, i. 224.

Ebner, Christina, of Engelthal, i. 223;

Margaret, 216.

Eckart, his preaching, i. 188, 193;

compared with Tauler, 192, 254, 282, 302;

his story of the beggar, 197;

probable motive of his heresy, 204;

analogies with Hegel, 206, 212;

sources of his Pantheism, 210, 282;

compared with Fichte, 212;

two classes of followers, 330, _note_.

Eclecticism. Alexandrian, i. 74.

Ecstasy, doctrine of Plotinus concerning, i. 77, 78;

of Porphyry, 97;

of Iamblichus, 104;

of Richard of St. Victor, 163;

described by Said, ii. 19;

Theresa’s prayer of, 169;

corporeal effects of, 169;

the ‘ecstatic life’ of Francis de Sales, 176.

Edwards, President, i. 169.

Egotheism, i. 331.

Emanation, Neo-Platonist doctrine of, i. 80;

in the theology of Dionysius, 113;

in the teaching of Eckart, 278;

in the Persian Mysticism, ii. 23.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo, i. 306; ii. 8;

analogies with Angelus Silesius and the Sufis, 9, 20, 22;

his doctrine of Intuition, 18.

Endern, Karl von, ii. 98.

Engelbrecht, ii. 125.

England, Mysticism in, ii. 301.

English Platonists, see Platonism.

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

Ethics, of Aristotle, i. 121;

of Monasticism, 122.

Faith, how defined by Bernard, i. 142;

justification by, ii. 31;

to what extent apprehended by the Mystics, 31;

to be distinguished from sanctification, 35;

Paracelsian doctrine of, 73, 90, 144;

how opposed to Sight, 240;

Error of Spiritualism concerning, 352.

Faith-Philosophy in Germany, ii. 341.

Fénélon, ii. 173;

his first interview with Mme. Guyon, 250;

signs the Articles of Issy, 258;

his Quietism, 258;

difficulties of his position, 263;

his _Maxims of the Saints_, 263;

appeals to Rome, 265;

his friends disgraced, 268;

his reply to Bossuet’s _Account of Quietism_, 270;

his submission, 272.

Feridoddin Attar, ii. 21.

Fichte, his Idealism compared with that of the East, i. 60;

his definition of a Mystic, 60;

compared with Eckart, 212.

Flagellants, i. 316.

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

Foligni, Angela de, i. 362.

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

Fox, George, his early history, ii. 303;

his narrowness and his benevolence, 304;

his asceticism, 309;

principal defect of his Theology, 313.

Francis, St., de Sales, ii. 152;

his ‘indistinct contemplation,’ 179;

his _Introduction à la Vie Dévote_, 246, _note_.

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

Franciscans, Millenarian, i. 185.

Frank, Sebastian, ii. 47.

Fratricelli, i. 184.

Free Spirit, Brethren of the, i. 184.

Friends, Journal of the Early, ii. 305.

Friends of God, i. 224.

Gabalis, Comte de, ii. 138.

Gamahea, ii. 75, 77.

Gassner, ii. 130.

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

Gematria, ii. 141, _note_.

Gerlacus, Petrus, i. 367, _note_.

Germain, Count St., ii. 130.

Gerson, Chancellor, charges Ruysbroek with Pantheism, i. 338;

his Mystical Theology, 369.

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

Gnomes, ii. 139.

God, distinguished from Godhead, by Eckart, i. 190;

Friends of, 224.

Godet des Marias, ii. 252.

Greek Church, Mysticism in, i. 109;

stereotyped character of its Theology, 122.

Groot, Gerard, i. 334, _note_.

Guru, i. 59.

Guthmann, ii. 125.

Guyon, Madame, early religious life, ii. 207;

spiritual desertion, 222;

self-loss in God, 227;

Prayer of Silence, 233;

compared with St. Theresa, 234;

her activity, 235;

her _Torrents_, 236, _note_;

persecution, 237;

first interview with Fénélon, 250;

her doctrine at St. Cyr, 253;

Bossuets conduct to her, 255;

Flight from Meaux, and imprisonment, 260;

at Vaugirard, 263;

in the Bastille, 272;

dies at Blois, 272.

Hamann, ii. 341.

Hardenberg, Friedrich von, see Novalis.

Harlay, Archbishop of Paris, ii. 246.

Harphius, ii. 177, 282.

Heaven, described by Swedenborg, ii, 330.

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

opinion of Eckart, 206.

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

Hermann of Fritzlar, i. 181;

his _Heiligenleben_, 181, _note_.

Hesychasts, i. 355.

Hierarchies, of Iamblichus, i. 101;

of Proclus, 105;

of Dionysius, 114;

Hugo’s Commentary on, 155.

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

Hindooism, its Mysticism, i. 55.

Hugo of St. Victor, character of his Mysticism, i. 154;

his Commentary on the Hierarchies of Dionysius, 155;

defines Meditation, 155;

his Eye of Contemplation, 158;

defines Abstraction, 158.

Iamblichus, his Theurgy, i. 100;

his Hierarchies, 101;

his twofold life of the Soul, 102;

his doctrine concerning Ecstasy, 104;

his mistakes repeated by Romanticism, ii. 346.

Ida of Louvain, ii. 218.

Ida of Nivelles, ii, 220.

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

Illuminati, ii. 136, 281.

_Imitatio Christi_, The, i. 367.

India, Pantheism of, i. 55.

Indifference, Eckart’s Doctrine of, i. 188, 194;

of Quietism, ii. 205, 239.

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

Interpretation, mystical, i. 33;

of Philo, 64;

of Bernard, 145;

of Richard of St. Victor, 161;

of Swedenborg, ii. 323.

Intuition, ‘intellectual,’ Schelling’s doctrine of, i. 88;

resemblance to that of Richard, 163.

Intuition, exaggeration of its claims by the Mystics, i. 168;

doctrine of Emerson concerning, ii. 18;

not an isolated faculty, 364.

Irony, Romanticist doctrine of, ii. 346.

Issy, the Conferences at, ii. 255;

the articles of, 256, 258.

Jacobi, ii. 341.

Jean d’Avila, ii. 281.

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

Jerusalem, Church of the New, ii. 335.

Jews, persecution of the, i. 315;

their demonology, ii. 142.

John of the Cross, ii. 182;

his asceticism, 183;

his _Dark Night_, 185;

estimate of his Mysticism, 192.

Joris, David, ii. 125.

Jubilation, the gift of, ii. 219.

Juneid, ii. 11.

Justin Martyr, ii. 42.

Kant, his practical Reason, i. 89.

Kathari, i. 184.

Kober, ii. 80.

Krüdener, Madame de, ii. 288;

opinion of Madame de Genlis concerning, 289, _note_.

Kuhlmann, i. 38; ii. 125.

Labadie, ii. 291.

La Combe, ii. 226.

Lautensack, ii. 125.

Law, William, ii. 124, 288.

Leade, Joanna, ii. 144.

Light, doctrine of the Universal, ii. 309.

Louis the Fourteenth at St. Cyr, ii. 249, 265;

urges the Pope to condemn Fénélon, 271.

Love, disinterested, doctrine of Bernard, concerning, i. 145;

of Eckart, 193;

of Tauler, 303, 309;

of Ruysbroek, 334, _note_;

of the Sufis, ii. 10, 17;

the central doctrine of Quietism, 204;

Fénélon’s doctrine of, 258;

its truth and its exaggeration, 283.

Loyola, Ignatius, ii. 150.

Ludolph, the Carthusian, i. 232, 235.

Luther, Martin, his vantage ground as compared with the Mystics, i.

304; ii. 32-35;

his reply concerning the Zwickau Fanatics, 45;

his encounter with them, 47;

his protest against the Mysticism of Carlstadt, 51.

Macarius, i. 111.

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

Maintenon, Madame de, at St. Cyr, ii. 248;

her interest in Mme. Guyon, 249;

her caution, 254.

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

Malaval, ii. 243.

Margaret Ebner, i. 216.

Maria d’Agreda, controversy concerning her _Mystical City of God_, ii.

164;

her elevations in the air, 176.

Maria of Oignys, ii. 219.

Marsay, de, ii. 291;

his retirement to Schwartzenau, 292;

his marriage, 293;

his asceticism and melancholy, 294;

his last years, 295.

Maurice, St., ii. 130.

_Maxims of the Saints_, ii. 263, 280.

Meditation, how defined by Hugo, i. 155.

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

Mesmer, ii. 130.

Messalians, ii. 11.

Microcosm, ii. 65.

Molinos, his _Guida Spirituale_, ii. 171, 242;

charges against him, 180;

his fate, 245.

Monasticism, Buddhist, i. 56;

its Ethics, 121;

promoted by Bernard, 140.

Montanus, i. 284.

Montfaucon, Clara de, ii. 163, 220.

More, Henry, his opinion of Behmen, ii. 124;

his mysticism, 315;

his opinion of the Quakers, 317, _note_.

Morin, ii. 244.

Münzer, ii. 44.

Muscatblut, i. 335.

Mysticism, the instructive character of its history, i. 13, 260;

derivation and history of the word, 17;

definitions, 21;

its causes, 27-33;

its classifications, 35;

theopathetic, 36;

theosophic, 39;

theurgic, 45;

in the early East, 51;

of the Neo-Platonists, 63;

in the Greek Church, 109;

in the Latin Church, 127;

opposed to Scholasticism, 142;

reconciled, 154;

Truth at its root, 164;

its exaggeration of the truth concerning experimental evidence, 167;

German, in the fourteenth century, 235; ii. 30;

Persian, in the Middle Ages, 3;

Theosophic, in the Age of the Reformation, 29;

revolutionary, 37;

before and after the Reformation, 41;

in Spain, 147;

of the Counter-Reformation, 150;

of Madame Guyon, 207;

in France and in Germany compared, 275;

in England, 299;

of Swedenborg, 321;

its recent modifications, 339;

its services to Christianity, 351;

its prevalent misconceptions, 353;

its correctives, 355.

Names, of magical virtue, ii. 140.

Neo-Platonism, eclectic and mystical, i. 70;

difference between it and Platonism proper, 76;

its doctrine of Emanation, 80;

influence on Christianity, 85;

process of degeneration, 91;

its Theurgy, 103;

expires with Proclus, 105;

introduced into the Church by Dionysius, 113;

confounds Universals with Causes, 117;

its power in the Middle Ages, 129;

its reformatory influence in the West, 132;

Persian, ii. 4;

revived on the eve of the Reformation, 55;

at Florence, 149.

Neri, St. Philip, ii. 218.

Nicholas of Basle, i. 239;

becomes the spiritual guide of Tauler, 240;

his labours and fate, 359.

Night, mystical, of the Sufis, ii. 14;

of John of the Cross, 185, 195;

of Novalis, 349.

Nihilism, i. 332;

of Angelus Silesius, ii. 17.

Nirwana, Buddhist Absorption, i. 56.

Nördlingen, Henry of, i. 216.

Norris of Bemerton, ii. 315.

Novalis, his Aphorisms, ii. 349;

his _Hymns to Night_, 349.

Numenius, i., 65, 121;

his hypostatic emanations, 82.

Nymphs, ii. 139.

Oetinger, ii. 351.

Oken, ii. 351.

Omphalopsychi, i. 356.

Origen, i. 302.

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

Pains, the mystical, ii. 170, 176.

Pantheism, Indian, i. 55;

Buddhist, 56;

Neo-Platonist, 78;

its necessitarian Ethics, 91;

of Dionysius Areopagita, 119;

of Erigena, 131;

of Eckart, 157, 160, 217;

among the people in the fourteenth century, 201, 209, 257, 278, 331;

of Angelus Silesius, ii. 6;

of Emerson, 8, 22;

of the Sufis, 20;

cannot claim Behmen, 112, 121.

Paracelsus, i. 44; ii. 71;

his four pillars of Medicine, 73;

his Theory of Contraries, 74;

of Signatures, 76;

his Green Lion, 78;

influence on Behmen, 91.

Parzival and Titurel, i. 186.

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

Pazzi, Magdalena de, ii, 171.

Perfection, doctrine of, ii. 232;

awakens the alarm of the priesthood, 240.

Persia, Neo-Platonism in, ii. 4;

the seat of Sufism, 5;

its mystical poetry, 16, 24.

Petrucci, Cardinal, ii, 277.

Philadelphian Association, the, ii. 142.

Philo, i. 63;

his views on the Contemplative Life, 66;

his mystical interpretation, 67.

Pico of Mirandola, ii. 148.

Platonism, distinguished from Neo-Platonism, i. 76;

combined with Christianity assumes five distinct phases, 147;

in England, ii. 315.

Plotinus, his early history and asceticism, i. 71;

hears Ammonius Saccas, 74;

object and character of his philosophy, 76;

doctrine concerning knowledge, 80;

concerning Ecstasy, 81;

influence on Christianity, 85;

analogies with Schelling and Coleridge, 87;

necessitarian character of his Ethics, 91;

his Trinity, 93.

Poiret, Peter, ii. 287, 290.

Pordage, ii. 142.

Porphyry, his position, i. 94;

moderates the doctrine of Plotinus concerning Ecstasy, 97;

his modern imitators, ii. 350.

Postel, ii. 125.

Prayer, Theresa’s Four Degrees of, ii. 167;

of Silence, Mme. Guyon’s, 233.

Proclus, i. 105; influence of his philosophy on Dionysius, 112, 114;

his endeavour renewed by Romanticism, ii. 346.

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

_note_.

Quakers, see George Fox;

their asceticism, ii. 309;

their doctrine of the Universal and Saving Light, 309;

of perceptible spiritual influence, 313;

of Silence and Quiet, 314;

opinion of Henry More concerning, 317.

Quiet, Theresa’s prayer of, ii. 167.

Quietism, licentious form of it in the fourteenth century, i. 258;

of Molinos and Theresa, ii. 172;

charged with excluding the conception of Christ’s Humanity, 172;

misrepresentations of its enemies, 173, _note_;

of John of the Cross, 190;

its doctrine of pure love, 204;

its holy indifference, 205;

its reaction against mercenary religion, 232;

of Fénélon, 258;

in the hands of the Inquisition, 276;

its doctrine of disinterested Love discussed, 283;

practical, among the Quakers, 314;

in the present day, 356.

Rabia, ii. 10.

Ranters, ii. 306.

Rapture, see Ecstasy.

Realism, i. 130, 149.

Reason, how enlisted in the service of Mysticism, i. 40;

how far forsaken by Plotinus, 80;

Intuitive, of Coleridge, 88;

Practical, of Kant, 89;

unduly subordinated by Bernard 141;

erroneously divorced from Understanding, ii. 361.

Redemption, doctrine of Behmen concerning, ii. 116;

of Swedenborg, 332;

misconceptions of, 334.

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

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

Regeneration, Tauler’s doctrine of, i. 246;

mistake of Mme. Guyon concerning, ii. 230.

Reimar of Zweter, i. 186.

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

Reminiscence, Platonic, i. 77.

Ricci, Catherine, ii. 219.

Richard of St. Victor, his Mystical Interpretation, i. 161;

his Degrees of Contemplation, 162;

his Doctrine of Ecstasy, 163.

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

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

Romanticism, Tieck, its best representative, ii. 343, _note_;

opposes Rationalism, 344;

its philosophy of life, 345;

its doctrine of Irony, 346;

subsides in Superstition, 347.

Rome, Church of, her Mystics compared with those of Protestantism, ii.

95;

her debt to Mysticism, 149;

Fénélon no fair sample of her Mystics, 356.

Rosenkreuz, ii. 132.

Rosicrucians, ii. 128;

pretended discovery of the, 132, 136.

Rousseau, J. J., ii. 179.

Ruysbroek, his _Spiritual Nuptials_, i. 321;

visited by Tauler at the Convent of Grünthal, 325;

his doctrines concerning the Trinity, Abstraction, Union, 326, 329;

his protest against false Mystics, 330, _note_;

his doctrine concerning disinterested Love, 334, _note_;

charged by Gerson with Pantheism, 338;

compared with contemporary Mystics, 338.

Salamanders, ii. 138.

Schelling, compared with Behmen, i. 41;

his Philosophy of Identity, 44;

analogies of Plotinus with, 87;

indebted to Behmen, ii. 124;

his doctrine of Unconsciousness, 351.

Schlegel, Frederick, his admiration of Behmen, ii. 124;

his Romanticism, 345;

his extravagance, 346.

Schlegel, A. W., ii. 348.

Schleiermacher, ii. 341, 343, _note_.

Scholasticism, opposed to Mysticism, i. 142;

reconciled, 154.

Schröpfer, ii. 130.

Schwenkfeld, ii. 50.

Science, its mystical character in the Middle Age, i. 41;

in the Age of the Reformation, ii. 53;

union with Religion, 67.

Self-annihilation, Tauler concerning, i. 250;

of the Sufis and Angelus Silesius, ii. 16.

Self-love, ii. 214.

Shemhamphorash, ii. 141.

Silence, Quaker practice of, ii. 314;

Mme. Guyon’s Prayer of, 233.

Sleep, sacred, i. 102.

Societies, secret, ii. 136.

Soul, its twofold life, according to Iamblichus, i. 102;

Spark of the, 190;

Ground of the, Tauler’s doctrine concerning, 246, 255, 291;

Theresa’s Flight of the, ii. 174.

Spain, Mysticism in, ii. 150, 152.

Spark of the Soul, i. 190.

Sperber, ii. 125.

Spirit, perceptible Influence of the, i. 272;

as taught by the Quakers, ii. 313;

witness of the, 314;

Swedenborg’s doctrine concerning the, 331.

Spiritualism, its revival of antiquated errors, ii. 350;

its morbid dread of historic reality, 365.

Staupitz, ii. 33.

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

Strasburg, Godfrey of, i. 186;

rival houses in, 187;

under the Interdict, 213;

Revolution in, 218;

Black Death in, 313;

the Flagellants in, 317;

resists the Imperial Impost, 319.

Sufis, the, ii. 3;

their early leaders, 11;

analogies with Emerson, 16;

with Angelus Silesius, 17;

their doctrine concerning disinterested love, 17;

their allegorical lyrics, 24.

Suso, Heinrich, i. 341;

his austerities, 344;

his _Horologe of Wisdom_, 345;

pursued as a poisoner, 348;

his adventure with the robber, 351.

Swedenborg, Emanuel, ii. 321;

comprehensive character of his Mysticism, 322;

his doctrine of correspondences, 323;

position of Man in his System, 325;

scientific character of his Mysticism, 326;

opposed to Asceticism, 328;

his Memorable Relations, 329;

his descriptions of the unseen World, 330;

his doctrine of Spiritual Influence, 331;

of the Work of Christ, 332;

of the New Jerusalem, 335.

Sylphs, ii. 139.

Symbolism, of Philo, i. 64;

of Dionysius, 114;

of Richard of St. Victor, 161;

how far necessary, ii. 353.

Sympathies, Science of, ii. 63.

Synderesis, i. 256, 327.

Talmud, its Theurgy, ii. 141.

Tanchelm, i. 38.

Tauler, i. 192, 216, 224, 265;

Sermon on the Image of God, 226;

his cautions to Mystics, 228;

disappearance for two years, 230;

his restoration, 234;

he issues circulars and treatises comforting the excommunicated, 236;

passages from his Sermons, 244-251, 290;

concerning the ‘Ground’ of the Soul, 246, 255, 291;

excellences and defects of his Theology, 251;

elevated character of his Mysticism, 253;

prepares the way for the Reformation, 253;

compared with Eckart, 254, 302;

his doctrine of Abandonment, and the state above Grace, 255;

his internal Trinity, 255;

on Work of Christ, 300;

summoned before the Emperor, 318;

retires to Cologne, 319.

Tears, gift of, ii. 220.

Theologia Germanica, i. 148, 288, 367.

Theologia Mystica, i. 21;

definitions, 23.

Theosophy, i. 40;

in the age of the Reformation, ii. 29, 69, _note_;

of Swedenborg, 321.

Therapeutæ, i. 66, 67.

Theresa, St., her early life, ii. 153;

her reform of the Carmelite order, 155;

sensuous character of her Mysticism, 162;

her four degrees of Prayer, 167;

her Raptures, 170;

her Torments, 170;

compared with Madame Guyon, 234.

Theurgy, i. 46;

of Neo-Platonism, 105;

Lutheran, ii. 59;

Modern, 130;

Rabbinical, 141.

Thomas à Kempis, i. 367.

Tieck, ii. 343, _note_, 348.

Tophail, Abu Jaafer Ebn, ii. 299.

Trinity, of Plotinus, i. 93;

Tauler’s doctrine of the internal, 256, 291;

doctrine of Ruysbroek concerning, 326;

of Behmen, ii. 103, 104, _note_;

of Swedenborg, 332.

Understanding, its relation to Reason, ii. 361;

not to be discarded in religion, 365.

Undine, ii. 138.

Union, doctrine of Plotinus concerning, i. 81;

of Bernard, 144;

of Richard of St. Victor, 163;

of Ruysbroek, 329;

Prayer of, ii. 168;

Swedenborg’s doctrine concerning, 334.

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

Valdes, ii. 244.

Veronica of Binasco, ii. 220.

Vespiniani, Countess, ii. 277.

Victor, St., see Hugo and Richard.

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

Vincula, Theurgic, ii. 59.

Virtues, divided into human and superhuman, i. 121;

how classified by Aquinas, 123.

Visions, intellectual and representative, ii. 174;

doctrine of John of the Cross concerning, 189.

‘Visio caliginosa,’ ii. 179.

Walter, Balthasar, ii. 80.

Weigel, Valentine, ii. 51;

studied by Behmen, 90, 92, 117.

Werner, Zachariah, ii. 347.

Wessel, John, ii. 33.

Wolfram von Eschenbach, i. 186.

Woolman, John, ii. 305.

Words, ‘substantial,’ ii. 175, 229.

Yogis, the, i. 57.

Yokhdan, Hai Ebn, history of, ii. 299;

his practice of contemplation, 311.

Yvon, ii. 291.

Zanoni, ii. 128.

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

Zinzendorf, ii. 308.

Zwickau, the fanatics of, ii. 44.

THE END.

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● Transcriber’s Notes:

○ Text that was in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).

○ Footnotes have been moved to follow the chapters in which they are

referenced.