Chapter I

Mysticism in English Literature

By

Caroline F. E. Spurgeon

"Many are the thyrsus-bearers, but few are the mystics"

Phædo

Mysticism in English Literature

Note

The variety of applications of the term "mysticism" has forced me to

restrict myself here to a discussion of that philosophical type of

mysticism which concerns itself with questions of ultimate reality. My

aim, too, has been to consider this subject in connection with great

English writers. I have had, therefore, to exclude, with regret, the

literature of America, so rich in mystical thought.

I wish to thank Mr John Murray for kind permission to make use of an

article of mine which appeared in the _Quarterly Review_, and also Dr

Ward and Mr Waller for similar permission with regard to certain

passages in a chapter of the _Cambridge History of English Literature_,

vol. ix.

I am also indebted to Mr Bertram Dobell, Messrs Longmans, Green, Mrs

Coventry Patmore and Mr Francis Meynell for most kindly allowing me to

quote from the works respectively of Thomas Traherne, Richard Jefferies,

Coventry Patmore, and Francis Thompson.

C.F.E.S.

_April_ 1913.

Contents

I. Introduction

Definition of Mysticism. The Early Mystical Writers. Plato.

Plotinus. Chronological Sketch of Mystical Thought in England.

II. Love and Beauty Mystics

Shelley, Rossetti, Browning, Coventry Patmore, and Keats.

III. Nature Mystics

Henry Vaughan, Wordsworth, Richard Jefferies.

IV. Philosophical Mystics

(i) _Poets._--Donne, Traherne, Emily Brontë, Tennyson.

(ii) _Prose Writers._--William Law, Burke, Coleridge, Carlyle.

V. Devotional and Religious Mystics

The Early English Writers: Richard Rolle and Julian; Crashawe,

Herbert, and Christopher Harvey; Blake and Francis Thompson.

Bibliography

Index

Mysticism in English Literature

Chapter I

Introduction

Mysticism is a term so irresponsibly applied in English that it has

become the first duty of those who use it to explain what they mean by

it. The _Concise Oxford Dictionary_ (1911), after defining a mystic as

"one who believes in spiritual apprehension of truths beyond the

understanding," adds, "whence _mysticism_ (n.) (often contempt)."

Whatever may be the precise force of the remark in brackets, it is

unquestionably true that mysticism is often used in a semi-contemptuous

way to denote vaguely any kind of occultism or spiritualism, or any

specially curious or fantastic views about God and the universe.

The word itself was originally taken over by the Neo-platonists from the

Greek mysteries, where the name of μύστης given to the initiate,

probably arose from the fact that he was one who was gaining a knowledge

of divine things about which he must keep his mouth shut (μύω = close

lips or eyes). Hence the association of secrecy or "mystery" which still

clings round the word.

Two facts in connection with mysticism are undeniable whatever it may

be, and whatever part it is destined to play in the development of

thought and of knowledge. In the first place, it is the leading

characteristic of some of the greatest thinkers of the world--of the

founders of the Eastern religions of Plato and Plotinus, of Eckhart and

Bruno, of Spinoza, Goethe, and Hegel. Secondly, no one has ever been a

lukewarm, an indifferent, or an unhappy mystic. If a man has this

particular temperament, his mysticism is the very centre of his being:

it is the flame which feeds his whole life; and he is intensely and

supremely happy just so far as he is steeped in it.

Mysticism is, in truth, a temper rather than a doctrine, an atmosphere

rather than a system of philosophy. Various mystical thinkers have

contributed fresh aspects of Truth as they saw her, for they have caught

glimpses of her face at different angles, transfigured by diverse

emotions, so that their testimony, and in some respects their views, are

dissimilar to the point of contradiction. Wordsworth, for instance,

gained his revelation of divinity through Nature, and through Nature

alone; whereas to Blake "Nature was a hindrance," and Imagination the

only reality. But all alike agree in one respect, in one passionate

assertion, and this is that unity underlies diversity. This, their

starting-point and their goal, is the basic fact of mysticism, which, in

its widest sense, may be described as an attitude of mind founded upon

an intuitive or experienced conviction of unity, of oneness, of

alikeness in all things. From this source springs all mystical thought,

and the mystic, of whatever age or country, would say in the words of

Krishna--

There is true knowledge. Learn thou it is this:

To see one changeless Life in all the Lives,

And in the Separate, One Inseparable.

_The Bhagavad-Gîtâ_, Book 18.

This fundamental belief in unity leads naturally to the further belief

that all things about us are but forms or manifestations of the one

divine life, and that these phenomena are fleeting and impermanent,

although the spirit which informs them is immortal and endures. In other

words, it leads to the belief that "the Ideal is the only Real."

Further, if unity lies at the root of things, man must have some share

of the nature of God, for he is a spark of the Divine. Consequently, man

is capable of knowing God through this godlike part of his own nature,

that is, through his soul or spirit. For the mystic believes that as the

intellect is given us to apprehend material things, so the spirit is

given us to apprehend spiritual things, and that to disregard the spirit

in spiritual matters, and to trust to reason is as foolish as if a

carpenter, about to begin a piece of work, were deliberately to reject

his keenest and sharpest tool. The methods of mental and spiritual

knowledge are entirely different. For we know a thing mentally by

looking at it from outside, by comparing it with other things, by

analysing and defining it, whereas we can know a thing spiritually only

by becoming it. We must _be_ the thing itself, and not merely talk about

it or look at it. We must be in love if we are to know what love is; we

must be musicians if we are to know what music is; we must be godlike if

we are to know what God is. For, in Porphyry's words: "Like is known

only by like, and the condition of all knowledge is that the subject

should become like to the object." So that to the mystic, whether he be

philosopher, poet, artist, or priest, the aim of life is to become like

God, and thus to attain to union with the Divine. Hence, for him, life

is a continual advance, a ceaseless aspiration; and reality or truth is

to the seeker after it a vista ever expanding and charged with ever

deeper meaning. John Smith, the Cambridge Platonist, has summed up the

mystic position and desire in one brief sentence, when he says, "Such as

men themselves are, such will God Himself seem to them to be." For, as

it takes two to communicate the truth, one to speak and one to hear, so

our knowledge of God is precisely and accurately limited by our capacity

to receive Him. "Simple people," says Eckhart, "conceive that we are to

see God as if He stood on that side and we on this. It is not so: God

and I are one in the act of my perceiving Him."

This sense of unity leads to another belief, though it is one not always

consistently or definitely stated by all mystics. It is implied by Plato

when he says, "All knowledge is recollection." This is the belief in

pre-existence or persistent life, the belief that our souls are

immortal, and no more came into existence when we were born than they

will cease to exist when our bodies disintegrate. The idea is familiar

in Wordsworth's _Ode on the Intimations of Immortality_.

Finally, the mystic holds these views because he has lived through an

experience which has forced him to this attitude of mind. This is his

distinguishing mark, this is what differentiates him alike from the

theologian, the logician, the rationalist philosopher, and the man of

science, for he bases his belief, not on revelation, logic, reason, or

demonstrated facts, but on _feeling_, on intuitive inner knowledge.

He has felt, he has seen, and he is therefore convinced; but his

experience does not convince any one else. The mystic is somewhat in the

position of a man who, in a world of blind men, has suddenly been

granted sight, and who, gazing at the sunrise, and overwhelmed by the

glory of it, tries, however falteringly, to convey to his fellows what

he sees. They, naturally, would be sceptical about it, and would be

inclined to say that he is talking foolishly and incoherently. But the

simile is not altogether parallel. There is this difference. The mystic

is not alone; all through the ages we have the testimony of men and

women to whom this vision has been granted, and the record of what they

have seen is amazingly similar, considering the disparity of personality

and circumstances. And further, the world is not peopled with totally

blind men. The mystics would never hold the audience they do hold, were

it not that the vast majority of people have in themselves what William

James has called a "mystical germ" which makes response to their

message.

James's description of his own position in this matter, and his feeling

for a "Beyond," is one to which numberless "unmystical" people would

subscribe. He compares it to a tune that is always singing in the back

of his mind, but which he can never identify nor whistle nor get rid of.

"It is," he says, "very vague, and impossible to describe or put into

words.... Especially at times of moral crisis it comes to me, as the

sense of an unknown something backing me up. It is most indefinite, to

be sure, and rather faint. And yet I know that if it should cease there

would be a great hush, a great void in my life."[1]

This sensation, which many people experience vaguely and intermittently,

and especially at times of emotional exaltation, would seem to be the

first glimmerings of that secret power which, with the mystics, is so

finely developed and sustained that it becomes their definite faculty of

vision. We have as yet no recognised name for this faculty, and it has

been variously called "transcendental feeling," "imagination," "mystic

reason," "cosmic consciousness," "divine sagacity," "ecstasy," or

"vision," all these meaning the same thing. But although it lacks a

common name, we have ample testimony to its existence, the testimony of

the greatest teachers, philosophers, and poets of the world, who

describe to us in strangely similar language--

That serene and blessed mood

In which ... the breath of this corporeal frame,

And even the motion of our human blood,

Almost suspended, we are laid asleep

In body, and become a living soul:

While with an eye made quiet by the power

Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,

We see into the life of things.

_Tintern Abbey._

"Harmony" and "Joy," it may be noted, are the two words used most

constantly by those who have experienced this vision.

The mystic reverses the ordinary methods of reasoning: he must believe

before he can know. As it is put in the _Theologia Germanica_, "He who

would know before he believeth cometh never to true knowledge." Just as

the sense of touch is not the faculty concerned with realising the

beauty of the sunrise, so the intellect is not the faculty concerned

with spiritual knowledge, and ordinary intellectual methods of proof,

therefore, or of argument, the mystic holds, are powerless and futile

before these questions; for, in the words of Tennyson's Ancient Sage--

Thou canst not prove the Nameless, O my son,

Nor canst thou prove the world thou movest in:

Thou canst not prove that thou art body alone,

Nor canst thou prove that thou art spirit alone,

Nor canst thou prove that thou art both in one:

Thou canst not prove thou art immortal, no,

Nor yet that thou art mortal--nay, my son,

Thou canst not prove that I who speak with thee

Am not thyself in converse with thyself,

For nothing worthy proving can be proven,

Nor yet disproven.

Symbolism is of immense importance in mysticism; indeed, symbolism and

mythology are, as it were, the language of the mystic. This necessity

for symbolism is an integral part of the belief in unity; for the

essence of true symbolism rests on the belief that all things in Nature

have something in common, something in which they are really alike. In

order to be a true symbol, a thing must be partly the same as that which

it symbolises. Thus, human love is symbolic of divine love, because,

although working in another plane, it is governed by similar laws and

gives rise to similar results; or falling leaves are a symbol of human

mortality, because they are examples of the same law which operates

through all manifestation of life. Some of the most illuminating notes

ever written on the nature of symbolism are in a short paper by R. L.

Nettleship,[2] where he defines true mysticism as "the consciousness

that everything which we experience, every 'fact,' is an element and

only an element in 'the fact'; i.e. that, in being what it is, it is

significant or symbolic of more." In short, every truth apprehended by

finite intelligence must by its very nature only be the husk of a deeper

truth, and by the aid of symbolism we are often enabled to catch a

reflection of a truth which we are not capable of apprehending in any

other way. Nettleship points out, for instance, that bread can only be

itself, can only _be_ food, by entering into something else,

assimilating and being assimilated, and that the more it loses itself

(what it began by being) the more it "finds itself" (what it is intended

to be). If we follow carefully the analysis Nettleship makes of the

action of bread in the physical world, we can see that to the man of

mystic temper it throws more light than do volumes of sermons on what

seems sometimes a hard saying, and what is at the same time the ultimate

mystical counsel, "He that loveth his life shall lose it."

It is worth while, in this connection, to ponder the constant use Christ

makes of nature symbolism, drawing the attention of His hearers to the

analogies in the law we see working around us to the same law working in

the spiritual world. The yearly harvest, the sower and his seed, the

leaven in the loaf, the grain of mustard-seed, the lilies of the field,

the action of fire, worms, moth, rust, bread, wine, and water, the

mystery of the wind, unseen and yet felt--each one of these is shown to

contain and exemplify a great and abiding truth.

This is the attitude, these are the things, which lie at the heart of

mysticism. In the light of this, nothing in the world is trivial,

nothing is unimportant nothing is common or unclean. It is the feeling

that Blake has crystallised in the lines:

To see a world in a grain of sand

And a Heaven in a wild flower,

Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand

And Eternity in an hour.

The true mystic then, in the full sense of the term, is one who _knows_

there is unity under diversity at the centre of all existence, and he

knows it by the most perfect of all tests for the person concerned,

because he has felt it. True mysticism--and this cannot be

over-emphasised--is an experience and a life. It is an experimental

science, and, as Patmore has said, it is as incommunicable to those who

have not experienced it as is the odour of a violet to those who have

never smelt one. In its highest consummation it is the supreme adventure

of the soul: to use the matchless words of Plotinus, it is "the flight

of the Alone to the Alone."

As distinguished, therefore, from the mystical thinker or philosopher,

the practical mystic has direct knowledge of a truth which for him is

absolute. He consequently has invariably acted upon this knowledge, as

inevitably as the blind man to whom sight had been granted would make

use of his eyes.

Among English writers and poets the only two who fulfil this strict

definition of a mystic are Wordsworth and Blake. But we are not here

concerned primarily with a study of those great souls who are mystics

in the full and supreme sense of the word. For an examination of their

lives and vision Evelyn Underhill's valuable book should be consulted.

Our object is to examine very briefly the chief English writers--men of

letters and poets--whose inmost principle is rooted in mysticism, or

whose work is on the whole so permeated by mystical thought that their

attitude of mind is not fully to be understood apart from it.

Naturally it is with the poets we find the most complete and continuous

expression of mystical thought and inspiration. Naturally, because it

has ever been the habit of the English race to clothe their profoundest

thought and their highest aspiration in poetic form. We do not possess a

Plato, a Kant, or a Descartes, but we have Shakespeare and Wordsworth

and Browning. And further, as the essence of mysticism is to believe

that everything we see and know is symbolic of something greater,

mysticism is on one side the poetry of life. For poetry, also, consists

in finding resemblances, and universalises the particulars with which it

deals. Hence the utterances of the poets on mystical philosophy are

peculiarly valuable. The philosopher approaches philosophy directly, the

poet obliquely; but the indirect teaching of a poet touches us more

profoundly than the direct lesson of a moral treatise, because the

latter appeals principally to our reason, whereas the poet touches our

"transcendental feeling."

So it is that mysticism underlies the thought of most of our great

poets, of nearly all our greatest poets, if we except Chaucer, Dryden,

Pope, and Byron. Shakespeare must be left on one side, first, because

the dramatic form does not lend itself to the expression of mystical

feeling, and secondly, because even in the poems there is little real

mysticism, though there is much of the fashionable Platonism.

Shakespeare is metaphysical rather than mystical, the difference being,

roughly, that the metaphysician seeks to know the beginnings or causes

of things, whereas the mystic feels he knows the end of things, that all

nature is leading up to union with the One.

We shall find that mystical thought, and the mystical attitude, are

curiously persistent in English literature, and that although it seems

out of keeping with our "John Bull" character, the English race has a

marked tendency towards mysticism. What we do find lacking in England is

the purely philosophical and speculative spirit of the detached and

unprejudiced seeker after truth. The English mind is anti-speculative;

it cares little for metaphysics; it prefers theology and a given

authority. English mystics have, as a rule, dealt little with the

theoretical side of mysticism, the aspect for instance with which

Plotinus largely deals. They have been mainly practical mystics, such as

William Law. Those of the poets who have consciously had a system and

desired to impart it, have done so from the practical point of view,

urging, like Wordsworth, the importance of contemplation and meditation,

or, like Blake, the value of cultivating the imagination; and in both

cases enforcing the necessity of cleansing the inner life, if we are to

become conscious of our divine nature and our great heritage.

For the sake of clearness, this thought may first be traced very briefly

as it appears chronologically; it will, however, be considered in

detail, not in order of time, but according to the special aspect of

Being through which the writer felt most in touch with the divine life.

For mystics, unlike other thinkers, scientific or philosophical, have

little chronological development, since "mystic truths can neither age

nor die." So much is this the case that passages of Plotinus and

Tennyson, of Boehme and Law, of Eckhart and Browning, may be placed side

by side and be scarcely distinguishable in thought. Yet as the race

evolves, certain avenues of sensation seem to become more widely opened

up. This is noticeable with regard to Nature. Love, Beauty, Wisdom, and

Devotion, these have been well-trodden paths to the One ever since the

days of Plato and Plotinus; but, with the great exception of St Francis

of Assisi and his immediate followers, we have to wait for more modern

times before we find the intense feeling of the Divinity in Nature which

we associate with the name of Wordsworth. It is in the emphasis of this

aspect of the mystic vision that English writers are supreme. Henry

Vaughan, Wordsworth, Browning, Richard Jefferies, Francis Thompson, and

a host of other poet-seers have crystallised in immortal words this

illuminated vision of the world.

The thought which has been described as mystical has its roots in the

East, in the great Oriental religions. The mysterious "secret" taught by

the Upanishads is that the soul or spiritual consciousness is the only

source of true knowledge. The Hindu calls the soul the "seer" or the

"knower," and thinks of it as a great eye in the centre of his being,

which, if he concentrates his attention upon it, is able to look

outwards and to gaze upon Reality. The soul is capable of this because

in essence it is one with Brahman, the universal soul. The apparent

separation is an illusion wrought by matter. Hence, to the Hindu, matter

is an obstruction and a deception, and the Eastern mystic despises and

rejects and subdues all that is material, and bends all his faculties on

realising his spiritual consciousness, and dwelling in that.

This type of thought certainly existed to some extent in both Greece

and Egypt before the Christian era. Much of Plato's thought is mystical

in essence, and that which be points out to be the motive force of the

philosophic mind is also the motive force of the mystic, namely, the

element of attraction, and so of love towards the thing which is akin to

him. The illustration of the dog being philosophic because he is angry

with a stranger but welcomes his friend,[3] though at first it may seem,

like many of Plato's illustrations, far-fetched or fanciful, in truth

goes to the very root of his idea. Familiarity, akinness, is the basis

of attraction and affection. The desire of wisdom, or the love of

beauty, is therefore nothing but the yearning of the soul to join itself

to what is akin to it. This is the leading conception of the two great

mystical dialogues, the Symposium and the Phædrus. In the former,

Socrates, in the words of the stranger prophetess Diotima, traces the

path along which the soul must travel, and points out the steps of the

ladder to be climbed in order to attain to union with the Divine. From

beauty of form and body we rise to beauty of mind and spirit, and so to

the Beauty of God Himself.

He who under the influence of true love rising upward from these

begins to see that beauty, is not far from the end. And the true

order of going or being led by another to the things of love, is to

use the beauties of earth as steps along which he mounts upwards

for the sake of that other beauty, going from one to two, and from

two to all fair forms, and from fair forms to fair practices, and

from fair practices to fair notions, until from fair notions he

arrives at the notion of absolute beauty, and at last knows what

the essence of beauty is. This ... is that life above all others

which man should live, in the contemplation of beauty absolute.[4]

That is a passage whose music re-echoes through many pages of English

literature, especially in the poems of Spenser, Shelley, and Keats.

Plato may therefore be regarded as the source of speculative mysticism

in Europe, but it is Plotinus, his disciple, the Neo-platonist, who is

the father of European mysticism in its full sense, practical as well as

speculative, and who is also its most profound exponent. Plotinus (A.D.

204-270), who was an Egyptian by birth, lived and studied under Ammonius

Sakkas in Alexandria at a time when it was the centre of the

intellectual world, seething with speculation and schools, teachers and

philosophies of all kinds, Platonic and Oriental, Egyptian and

Christian. Later, from the age of forty, he taught in Rome, where he was

surrounded by many eager adherents. He drew the form of his thought both

from Plato and from Hermetic philosophy (his conception of Emanation),

but its real inspiration was his own experience, for his biographer

Porphyry has recorded that during the six years he lived with Plotinus

the latter attained four times to ecstatic union with "the One."

Plotinus combined, in unusual measure, the intellect of the

metaphysician with the temperament of the great psychic, so that he was

able to analyse with the most precise dialectic, experiences which in

most cases paralyse the tongue and blind the discursive reason. His

sixth Ennead, "On the Good or the One," is one of the great philosophic

treatises of the world, and it sums up in matchless words the whole

mystic position and experience. There are two statements in it which

contain the centre of the writer's thought. "God is not external to any

one, but is present in all things, though they are ignorant that he is

so." "God is not in a certain place, but wherever anything is able to

come into contact with him there he is present" (_Enn._ vi. 9, §§ 4, 7).

It is because of our ignorance of the indwelling of God that our life is

discordant, for it is clashing with its own inmost principle. We do not

know ourselves. If we did, we would know that the way home to God lies

within ourselves. "A soul that knows itself must know that the proper

direction of its energy is not outwards in a straight line, but round a

centre which is within it" (_Enn._ vi. 9, § 8).

The whole Universe is one vast Organism (_Enn._ ix. 4, §§ 32, 45), and

the Heart of God, the source of all life, is at the centre, in which all

finite things have their being, and to which they must flow back; for

there is in this Organism, so Plotinus conceives, a double circulatory

movement, an eternal out-breathing and in-breathing, the way down and

the way up. The way down is the out-going of the undivided "One" towards

manifestation. From Him there flows out a succession of emanations. The

first of these is the "Nous" or Over-Mind of the Universe, God as

thought. The "Mind" in turn throws out an image, the third Principle in

this Trinity, the Soul of all things. This, like the "Nous," is

immaterial, but it can act on matter. It is the link between man and

God, for it has a lower and a higher side. The lower side _desires_ a

body and so creates it, but it is not wholly incarnate in it, for, as

Plotinus says, "the soul always leaves something of itself above."

From this World Soul proceed the individual souls of men, and they

partake of its nature. Its nature is triple, the animal or sensual soul,

closely bound to the body, the logical reasoning human soul, and the

intellectual soul, which is one with the Divine Mind, from whence it

comes and of which it is an image.

Souls have forgotten then: divine origin because at first they were so

delighted with their liberty and surroundings (like children let loose

from their parents, says Plotinus), that they ran away in a direction as

far as possible from their source. They thus became clogged with the

joys and distractions of this lower life, which can never satisfy them,

and they are ignorant of their own true nature and essence. In order to

return home, the soul has to retrace the path along which she came, and

the first step is to get to know herself, and so to know God. (See

_Enn._ vi. 9, § 7.) Thus only can she be restored to the central unity

of the universal soul. This first stage on the upward path is the

purgative life, which includes all the civic and social virtues, gained

through general purification, self-discipline, and balance, with, at the

same time, a gradual attainment of detachment from the things of sense,

and a desire for the things of the spirit.

The next step is to rise up to mind (_Enn._ v. 1, § 3) to the world of

pure thought, the highest unity possible to a self-conscious being. This

is often called the illuminative life, and it might be summed up as

concentration of all the faculties--will, intellect, feeling--upon God.

And lastly comes the unitive life, which is contemplation, the intense

desire of the soul for union with God, the momentary foretaste of which

has been experienced by many of the mystics. This last stage of the

journey home, the supreme Adventure, the ascension to the One above

thought, this cannot be spoken of or explained in words, for it is a

state beyond words, it is "a mode of vision which is ecstasy." When the

soul attains to this state, the One suddenly appears, "with nothing

between," "and they are no more two but one; and the soul is no more

conscious of the body or of whether she lives or is a human being or an

essence; she knows only that she has what she desired, that she is where

no deception can come, and that she would not exchange her bliss for the

whole of Heaven itself" (paraphrased from _Enn._ vi. 7, § 24).

The influence of Plotinus upon later Christian mysticism was immense,

though mainly indirect, through the writings of two of his spiritual

disciples, St Augustine (354-450), and the unknown writer, probably of

the early sixth century, possibly a Syrian monk, who ascribes his works

to Dionysius the Areopagite, the friend of St Paul. The works of

"Dionysius" were translated from Greek into Latin by the great Irish

philosopher and scholar, John Scotus Erigena (Eriugena), and in that

form they widely influenced later mediæval mysticism.

The fusion of Eastern mysticism with Christianity finally brought about

the great change which constitutes the difference between Eastern and

Western mysticism, a change already foreshadowed in Plato, for it was

in part the natural outcome of the Greek delight in material beauty, but

finally consummated by the teachings of the Christian faith. Eastern

thought was pure soul-consciousness, its teaching was to annihilate the

flesh, to deny its reality, to look within, and so to gain

enlightenment. Christianity, on the other hand, was centred in the

doctrine of the Incarnation, in the mystery of God the Father revealing

Himself in human form. Hence the human body, human love and

relationships became sanctified, became indeed a means of revelation of

the divine, and the mystic no longer turned his thoughts wholly inwards,

but also outwards and upwards, to the Father who loved him and to the

Son who had died for him. Thus, in the West, mystical thought has ever

recognised the deep symbolism and sacredness of all that is human and

natural, of human love, of the human intellect, and of the natural

world. All those things which to the Eastern thinker are but an

obstruction and a veil, to the Western have become the very means of

spiritual ascent[5]. The ultimate goal of the Eastern mystic is summed

up in his assertion, "I am Brahman," whereas the Western mystic

believes that "he who sees the Infinite in all things, sees God."

In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the mystical tradition was

carried on in France by St Bernard (1091-1153), the Abbot of Clairvaux,

and the Scotch or Irish Richard of the Abbey of St Victor at Paris, and

in Italy, among many others, by St Bonaventura (1221-1274), a close

student of Dionysius, and these three form the chief direct influences

on our earliest English mystics.

England shares to the full in the wave of mystical experience, thought,

and teaching which swept over Europe in the fourteenth and early

fifteenth centuries, and at first the mystical literature of England, as

also of France, Germany, Italy, and Sweden, is purely religious or

devotional in type, prose treatises for the most part containing

practical instruction for the inner life, written by hermits, priests,

and "anchoresses." In the fourteenth century we have a group of such

writers of great power and beauty, and in the work of Richard Rolle,

Walter Hilton, Julian of Norwich, and the author of the _Cloud of

Unknowing_, we have a body of writings dealing with the inner life, and

the steps of purification, contemplation, and ecstatic union which throb

with life and devotional fervour.

From the time of Julian of Norwich, who was still alive in 1413, we

find practically no literature of a mystical type until we come to

Spenser's _Hymns_ (1596), and these embody a Platonism reached largely

through the intellect, and not a mystic experience. It would seem at

first sight as if these hymns, or at any rate the two later ones in

honour of Heavenly Love and of Heavenly Beauty, should rank as some of

the finest mystical verse in English. Yet this is not the case. They are

saturated with the spirit of Plato, and they express in musical form the

lofty ideas of the _Symposium_ and the _Phædrus_: that beauty, more

nearly than any other earthly thing, resembles its heavenly prototype,

and that therefore the sight of it kindles love, which is the excitement

and rapture aroused in the soul by the remembrance of that divine beauty

which once it knew. And Spenser, following Plato, traces the stages of

ascent traversed by the lover of beauty, until he is caught up into

union with God Himself. Yet, notwithstanding their melody and their

Platonic doctrine, the note of the real mystic is wanting in the

_Hymns_, the note of him who writes of these things because he knows

them.

It would take some space to support this view in detail. Any one

desirous of testing it might read the account of transport of the soul

when rapt into union with the One as given by Plotinus (_Enn._ vi. 9,

§ 10), and compare it with Spenser's description of a similar experience

(_An Hymne of Heavenly Beautie_, 11. 253-273). Despite their poetic

melody, Spenser's words sound poor and trivial. Instead of preferring to

dwell on the unutterable ecstasy, contentment, and bliss of the

experience, he is far more anxious to emphasise the fact that "all that

pleased earst now seemes to paine."

The contradictory nature of his belief is also arresting. In the early

part of the _Hymne of Heavenly Beautie_, in-speaking of the glory of God

which is so dazzling that angels themselves may not endure His sight, he

says, as Plato does,

The meanes, therefore, which unto us is lent

Him to behold, is on his workes to looke,

Which he hath made in beauty excellent.

This is the view of the true mystic, that God may be seen in all His

works, by the eye which is itself purified. Yet, in the last stanza of

this beautiful Hymn, this is how Spenser views the joy of the union of

the soul with its source, when it looks

at last up to that Soveraine Light,

From whose pure beams al perfect beauty springs,

That kindleth love in every godly spright

Even the love of God; _which loathing brings

Of this vile world and these gay-seeming things_.

This is not the voice of the mystic. It is the voice of the Puritan,

who is also an artist, who shrinks from earthly beauty because it

attracts him, who fears it, and tries to despise it. In truth, the

dominating feature in Spenser's poetry is a curious blending of

Puritanism of spirit with the Platonic mind.

In the seventeenth century, however, England is peculiarly rich in

writers steeped in mystical thought.

First come the Quakers, headed by George Fox. This rediscovery and

assertion of the mystical element in religion gave rise to a great deal

of writing, much of it very interesting to the student of religious

thought. Among the _Journals_ of the early Quakers, and especially that

of George Fox, there are passages which charm us with their sincerity,

quaintness, and pure flame of enthusiasm, but these works cannot as a

whole be ranked as literature. Then we have the little group of

Cambridge Platonists, Henry More, John Smith, Benjamin Whichcote, and

John Norris of Bemerton. These are all Platonic philosophers, and among

their writings, and especially in those of John Norris, are many

passages of mystical thought clothed in noble prose. Henry More, who is

also a poet, is in character a typical mystic, serene, buoyant, and so

spiritually happy that, as he told a friend, he was sometimes "almost

mad with pleasure." His poetical faculty is, however, entirely

subordinated to his philosophy, and the larger portion of his work

consists of passages from the _Enneads_ of Plotinus turned into rather

obscure verse. So that he is not a poet and artist who, working in the

sphere of the imagination, can directly present to us mystical thoughts

and ideas, but rather a mystic philosopher who has versified some of his

discourses. At this time also many of the "metaphysical poets" are

mystical in much of their thought. Chief among these is John Donne, and

we may also include Henry Vaughan, Traherne, Crashaw, and George

Herbert.

Bunyan might at first sight appear to have many of the characteristics

of the mystic, for he had certain very intense psychic experiences which

are of the nature of a direct revelation of God to the soul; and in his

vivid religious autobiography, _Grace Abounding_, he records sensations

which are akin to those felt by Rolle, Julian, and many others. But

although psychically akin, he is in truth widely separated from the

mystics in spirit and temperament and belief. He is a Puritan,

overwhelmed with a sense of sin, the horrors of punishment in hell, and

the wrath of an outside Creator and Judge, and his desire is aimed at

escape from this wrath through "election" and God's grace. But he is a

Puritan endowed with a psychopathic temperament sensitive to the point

of disease and gifted with an abnormally high visualising power. Hence

his resemblance to the mystics, which is a resemblance of psychical

temperament and not of spiritual attitude.

In the eighteenth century the names of William Law and William Blake

shine out like stars against a dark firmament of "rationalism" and

unbelief. Their writings form a remarkable contrast to the prevailing

spirit of the time. Law expresses in clear and pointed prose the main

teachings of the German seer Jacob Boehme;[6] whereas Blake sees visions

and has knowledge which he strives to condense into forms of picture and

verse which may be understood of men. The influence of Boehme in the

eighteenth and nineteenth centuries is very far-reaching. In addition to

completely subjugating the strong intellect of Law, he profoundly

influenced Blake. He also affected Thomas Erskine of Linlathen, and

through him, Carlyle, J. W. Farquhar, F. D. Maurice, and others. Hegel,

Schelling, and Schlegel are alike indebted to him, and through them,

through his French disciple St Martin, and through Coleridge--who was

much attracted to him--some of his root-ideas returned again to England

in the nineteenth century, thus preparing the way for a better

understanding of mystical thought. The Swedish seer Emmanuel Swedenborg

(1688-1772) was another strong influence in the later eighteenth and the

nineteenth centuries. Swedenborg in some ways is curiously material, at

any rate in expression, and in one point at least he differs from other

mystics. That is, he does not seem to believe that man has within him a

spark of the divine essence, but rather that he is an organ that

reflects the divine life. He is a recipient of life, but not a part of

life itself. God is thought of as a light or sun outside, from which

spiritual heat and light (= love and wisdom) flow into men. But, apart

from this important difference Swedenborg's thought and teaching are

entirely mystical. He believes in the substantial reality of spiritual

things, and that the most essential part of a person's nature, that

which he carries with him into the spiritual world, is his love. He

teaches that heaven is not a place, but a condition, that there is no

question of outside rewards or punishments, and man makes his own heaven

or hell; for, as Patmore pointedly expresses it--

Ice-cold seems heaven's noble glow

To spirits whose vital heat is hell.

He insists that Space and Time belong only to physical life, and when

men pass into the spiritual world that love is the bond of union, and

thought or "state" makes presence, for thought is act. He holds that

instinct is spiritual in origin; and the principle of his science of

correspondences is based on the belief that everything outward and

visible corresponds to some invisible entity which is its inward and

spiritual cause. This is the view echoed by Mrs Browning more than once

in _Aurora Leigh_--

There's not a flower of spring,

That dies in June, but vaunts itself allied

By issue and symbol, by significance

And correspondence, to that spirit-world

Outside the limits of our space and time,

Whereto we are bound.

In all this and much more, Swedenborg's thought is mystical, and it has

had a quite unsuspected amount of influence in England, and it is

diffused through a good deal of English literature.

Blake knew some at least of Swedenborg's books well; two of his friends,

C. A. Tulk and Flaxman, were devoted Swedenborgians, and he told Tulk

that he had two different states, one in which he liked Swedenborg's

writings, and one in which he disliked them. Unquestionably, they

sometimes irritated him, and then he abused them, but it is only

necessary to read his annotations of his copy of Swedenborg's _Wisdom of

the Angels_ (now in the British Museum) to realise in the first place

that he sometimes misunderstood Swedenborg's position and secondly,

that when he did understand it, he was thoroughly in agreement with it,

and that he and the Swedish seer had much in common. Coleridge admired

Swedenborg, he gave a good deal of time to studying him (see Coleridge's

letter to C. A. Tulk, July 17, 1820), and he, with Boehme, were two of

the four "Great Men" unjustly branded, about whom he often thought of

writing a "Vindication" (Coleridge's Notes on Noble's Appeal, _Collected

Works_, ed. Shedd, 1853 and 1884, vol. v. p. 526).

Emerson owes much to Swedenborg,[7] and Emerson's thought had much

influence in England. Carlyle also was attracted to him (see his letter

from Chelsea, November 13, 1852); Mrs Browning studied him with

enthusiasm and spent the winter of 1852-3 in meditation on his

philosophy (_Letters_, vol. ii. p. 141), which bore fruit four years

later in _Aurora Leigh_.

Coventry Patmore is, however, the English writer most saturated with

Swedenborg's thought, and his _Angel in the House_ embodies the main

features of Swedenborg's peculiar views expressed in _Conjugial Love_,

on sex and marriage and their significance. It is not too much to say

that Swedenborg influenced and coloured the whole trend of Patmore's

thought, and that he was to him what Boehme was to Law, the match which

set alight his mystical flame. He says Swedenborg's _Heaven and Hell_

"abounds with perception of the truth to a degree unparalleled perhaps

in uninspired writing," and he asserts that he never tires of reading

him, "he is unfathomably profound and yet simple."[8]

Whatever may be the source or reason, it is clear that at the end of the

eighteenth century we begin to find a mystical tinge of thought in

several thinkers and writers, such as Burke, Coleridge, and Thomas

Erskine of Linlathen. This increases in the early nineteenth century,

strengthened by the influence, direct and indirect, of Boehme,

Swedenborg, and the German transcendental philosophers and this mystical

spirit is very marked in Carlyle, and, as we shall see, in most of the

greatest nineteenth-century poets.

In addition to those writers which are here dealt with in detail, there

is much of the mystic spirit in others of the same period, to name a few

only, George Meredith, "Fiona Macleod," Christina Rossetti, and Mrs

Browning; while to-day writers like "A. E.," W. B. Yeats, and Evelyn

Underhill are carrying on the mystic tradition.