_Antinöus._--"What do you call Mysticism? And do you use the word in a
good or a bad sense?"
_Nöus._--"In the latter only; as far, at least, as we are now
concerned with it. When a man refers to _inward feelings_ and
_experiences_, of which mankind at large are not conscious, as
evidences of the truth of any opinion--such a man I call a Mystic: and
the grounding of any theory or belief on accidents and anomalies of
individual sensations or fancies, and the use of peculiar terms
invented, or perverted from their ordinary significations, for the
purpose of expressing these _idiosyncrasies_ and pretended facts of
interior consciousness, I name Mysticism. Where the error consists
simply in the Mystic's attaching to these anomalies of his individual
temperament the character of _reality_, and in receiving them as
permanent truths, having a subsistence in the Divine Mind, though
revealed to himself alone; but entertains this persuasion without
demanding or expecting the same faith in his neighbours--I should
regard it as a species of enthusiasm, always indeed to be deprecated,
but yet capable of co-existing with many excellent qualities both of
head and heart. But when the Mystic by ambition or still meaner
passions, or (as sometimes is the case) by an uneasy and self-doubting
state of mind which seeks confirmation in outward sympathy, is led to
impose his faith, as a duty, on mankind generally: and when with such
views he asserts that the same experiences would be vouchsafed, the
same truths revealed, to _every man_ but for his secret wickedness and
unholy will--such a Mystic is a Fanatic, and in certain states of the
public mind a dangerous member of society. And most so in those ages
and countries in which Fanatics of elder standing are allowed to
persecute the fresh competitor. For under these predicaments,
Mysticism, though originating in the singularities of an individual
nature, and therefore essentially anomalous, is nevertheless highly
_contagious_. It is apt to collect a swarm and cluster _circum fana_,
around the new _fane_: and therefore merits the name of Fanaticism, or
as the Germans say, _Schwärmerey_, that is, _swarm-making_."
* * * * *
We will return to the harmless species--the enthusiastic Mystics;--a
species that may again be subdivided into two ranks. And it will not
be other than germane to the subject, if I endeavour to describe them
in a sort of allegory, or parable. Let us imagine a poor pilgrim
benighted in a wilderness or desert, and pursuing his way in the
starless dark with a lantern in his hand. Chance or his happy genius
leads him to an Oasis or natural Garden, such as in the creations of
my youthful fancy I supposed Enos[160] the Child of Cain to have
found. And here, hungry and thirsty, the way-wearied man rests at a
fountain; and the taper of his lantern throws its light on an
over-shadowing tree, a boss of snow-white blossoms, through which the
green and growing fruits peeped, and the ripe golden fruitage glowed.
Deep, vivid, and faithful are the impressions, which the lovely
Imagery comprised within the scanty circle of light, makes and leaves
on his memory! But scarcely has he eaten of the fruits and drunk of
the fountain, ere scared by the roar and howl from the desart he
hurries forward: and as he passes with hasty steps through grove and
glade, shadows and imperfect beholdings and vivid fragments of things
distinctly seen blend with the past and present shapings of his brain.
Fancy modifies sight. His dreams transfer their forms to real objects;
and these lend a substance and an _outness_ to his dreams. Apparitions
greet him; and when at a distance from this enchanted land, and on a
different track, the dawn of day discloses to him a caravan, a troop
of his fellow-men, his memory, which is itself half fancy, is
interpolated afresh by every attempt to recall, connect, and _piece
out_ his recollections. His narration is received as a madman's tale.
He shrinks from the rude laugh and contemptuous sneer, and retires
into himself. Yet the craving for sympathy, strong in proportion to
the intensity of his convictions, impels him to unbosom himself to
abstract auditors; and the poor Quietist becomes a Penman, and, all
too poorly stocked for the writer's trade, he borrows his phrases and
figures from the only writings to which he has had access, the sacred
books of his religion. And thus I shadow out the enthusiast Mystic of
the first sort; at the head of which stands the illuminated Teutonic
theosopher and shoemaker, honest Jacob Behmen, born near Gorlitz, in
Upper Lusatia, in the 17th of our Elizabeth's reign, and who died in
the 22nd of her successor's.
To delineate a Mystic of the second and higher order, we need only
endow our pilgrim with equal gifts of nature, but these developed and
displayed by all the aids and arts of education and favourable
fortune. _He_ is on his way to the Mecca of his ancestral and national
faith, with a well-guarded and numerous procession of merchants and
fellow-pilgrims, on the established track. At the close of day the
caravan has halted: the full moon rises on the desert: and he strays
forth alone, out of sight but to no unsafe distance; and chance leads
_him_ too, to the same oasis or Islet of Verdure on the Sea of Sand.
He wanders at leisure in its maze of beauty and sweetness, and thrids
his way through the odorous and flowering thickets into open spots of
greenery, and discovers statues and memorial characters, grottos, and
refreshing caves. But the moonshine, the imaginative poesy of nature,
spreads its soft shadowy charm over all, conceals distances, and
magnifies heights, and modifies relations: and fills up vacuities with
its own whiteness, counterfeiting substance; and where the dense
shadows lie, makes solidity imitate hollowness; and gives to all
objects a tender visionary hue and softening. Interpret the moonlight
and the shadows as the peculiar genius and sensibility of the
individual's own spirit: and here you have the other sort: a Mystic,
an Enthusiast of a nobler breed--a Fenelon. But the residentiary, or
the frequent visitor of the favoured spot, who has scanned its
beauties by steady day-light, and mastered its true proportions and
lineaments, he will discover that both pilgrims have indeed been
there. _He_ will know, that the delightful dream, which the latter
tells, is a dream of truth; and that even in the bewildered tale of
the former there is truth mingled with the dream.
But the Source, the Spring-head, of the Charges which I anticipate,
lies deep. Materialism, conscious and avowed Materialism, is in ill
repute: and a confessed Materialist therefore a rare character. But if
the faith be ascertained by the fruits: if the predominant, though
most often unsuspected, persuasion is to be learnt from the
influences, under which the thoughts and affections of the man move
and take their direction; I must reverse the position. ONLY NOT ALL
ARE MATERIALISTS. Except a few individuals, and those for the most
part of a single sect: every one, who calls himself a Christian, holds
himself to have a soul as well as a body. He distinguishes mind from
matter, the _subject_ of his consciousness from the _objects_ of the
same. The former is his mind: and he says, it is immaterial. But
though _subject_ and _substance_ are words of kindred roots, nay,
little less than equivalent terms, yet nevertheless it is exclusively
to sensible _objects_, to bodies, to modifications of matter, that he
habitually attaches the attributes of reality, of substance. Real and
tangible, substantial and material, are synonyms for him. He never
indeed asks himself, what he means by Mind? But if he did, and tasked
himself to return an honest answer--as to what, at least, he had
hitherto meant by it--he would find, that he had described it by
negatives, as the opposite of bodies, for example, as a somewhat
opposed to solidity, to visibility, and the like, as if you could
abstract the capacity of a vessel, and conceive of it as a somewhat by
itself, and then give to the emptiness the properties of containing,
holding, being entered, and so forth. In short, though the proposition
would perhaps be angrily denied in words, yet _in fact_ he thinks of
his _mind_, as a _property_, or _accident_ of a something else, that
he calls a _soul_ or _spirit_: though the very same difficulties must
recur, the moment he should attempt to establish the difference. For
either this soul or spirit is nothing but a thinner body, a finer mass
of matter: or the attribute of self-subsistency vanishes from the soul
on the same grounds, on which it is refused to the mind.
I am persuaded, however, that the dogmatism of the Corpuscular School,
though it still exerts an influence on men's notions and phrases, has
received a mortal blow from the increasingly _dynamic_ spirit of the
physical sciences now highest in public estimation. And it may safely
be predicted that the results will extend beyond the intention of
those, who are gradually effecting this revolution. It is not
chemistry alone that will be indebted to the genius of Davy, Oersted,
and their compeers: and not as the founder of physiology and
philosophic anatomy alone, will mankind love and revere the name of
John Hunter. These men have not only _taught_, they have compelled us
to admit, that the immediate objects of our _senses_, or rather the
grounds of the visibility and tangibility of all objects of sense,
bear the same _relation_ and similar proportion to the _intelligible_
object--that is, to the object which we actually _mean_ when we say,
"It is such or such a thing," or "I have seen this or that,"--as the
paper, ink, and differently combined straight and curved lines of an
edition of Homer bear to what we understand by the words Iliad and
Odyssey. Nay, nothing would be more easy than so to construct the
paper, ink, painted capitals, and the like, of a printed disquisition
on the eye, or the muscles and cellular texture (the flesh) of the
human body, as to bring together every one of the sensible and
ponderable _stuffs_ or elements, that are _sensuously_ perceived in
the eye itself, or in the flesh itself. Carbon and nitrogen, oxygen
and hydrogen, sulphur, phosphorus, and one or two metals and metallic
bases, constitute the whole. It cannot be these, therefore, that we
mean by an _eye_, by our _body_. But perhaps it may be a particular
_combination_ of these? But here comes a question: In this term do you
or do you not include the _principle_, the _operating cause_, of the
combination? If _not_, then detach this eye from the body. Look
steadily at it--as it might lie on the marble slab of a dissecting
room. Say it were the eye of a murderer, a Bellingham: or the eye of a
murdered patriot, a Sidney!--Behold it, handle it, with its various
accompaniments or constituent parts, of tendon, ligament, membrane,
blood-vessel, gland, humours; its nerves of sense, of sensation, and
of motion. Alas! all these names like that of the organ itself, are so
many Anachronisms, figures of speech to express that which has been:
as when the Guide points with his finger to a heap of stones, and
tells the traveller, "That is Babylon, or Persepolis."--Is this cold
jelly _the light of the body_? Is this the _Micranthropos_ in the
marvellous microcosm? Is this what you _mean_ when you well define the
eye as the telescope and the mirror of the soul, the seat and agent of
an almost magical power?
Pursue the same inquisition with every other part of the body, whether
integral or simply ingredient; and let a Berzelius or a Hatchett be
your interpreter, and demonstrate to you what it is that in each
actually meets your senses. And when you have heard the scanty
catalogue, ask yourself if _these_ are indeed the living _flesh_, the
_blood_ of life? Or not far rather--I speak of what, as a man of
common sense, you really _do_, not what, as a philosopher, you _ought_
to believe--is it not, I say, far rather the distinct and
individualized agency that by the given combinations utters and
bespeaks its presence? Justly and with strictest propriety of
language may I say, _speaks_. It is to the coarseness of our senses,
or rather to the defect and limitation of our percipient faculty, that
the _visible_ object appears the same even for a moment. The
characters, which I am now shaping on this paper, abide. Not only the
forms remain the same, but the particles of the colouring stuff are
fixed, and, for an indefinite period at least, remain the same. But
the particles that constitute the _size_, the visibility of an organic
structure[162] are in perpetual flux. They are to the combining and
constitutive power as the pulses of air to the voice of a discourser;
or of one who sings a roundelay. The same words may be repeated; but
in each second of time the articulated air hath passed away, and each
act of articulation appropriates and gives momentary form to a new and
other portion. As the column of blue smoke from a cottage chimney in
the breathless summer noon, or the steadfast-seeming cloud on the
edge-point of a hill in the driving air-current, which momently
condensed and recomposed is the common phantom of a thousand
successors;--such is the flesh, which our _bodily_ eyes transmit to
us; which our palates taste; which our hands touch.
But perhaps the material particles possess this combining power by
inherent reciprocal attractions, repulsions, and elective affinities;
and are themselves the joint artists of their own combinations? I will
not reply, though well I might, that this would be to solve one
problem by another, and merely to shift the mystery. It will be
sufficient to remind the thoughtful querist, that ever herein consists
the essential difference, the contra-distinction, of an organ from a
machine; that not only the characteristic shape is evolved from the
invisible central power, but the material mass itself is acquired by
assimilation. The germinal power of the plant transmutes the fixed air
and the elementary base of water into grass or leaves; and on these
the organific principle in the ox or the elephant exercises an alchemy
still more stupendous. As the unseen agency weaves its magic eddies,
the foliage becomes indifferently the bone and its marrow, the pulpy
brain, or the solid ivory. That what you see _is_ blood, _is_ flesh,
is itself the work, or shall I say, the translucence, of the invisible
Energy, which soon surrenders or abandons them to inferior powers (for
there is no pause nor chasm in the activities of Nature), which repeat
a similar metamorphosis according to _their_ kind;--these are not
fancies, conjectures, or even hypotheses, but _facts_; to deny which
is impossible, not to reflect on which is ignominious. And we need
only reflect on them with a calm and silent spirit to learn the utter
emptiness and unmeaningness of the vaunted Mechanico-corpuscular
Philosophy, with both its twins, Materialism on the one hand, and
Idealism, rightlier named _Subjective Idolism_, on the other: the one
obtruding on us a World of Spectres and Apparitions; the other a mazy
Dream!
Let the Mechanic or Corpuscular Scheme, which in its absoluteness and
strict consistency was first introduced by Des Cartes, be judged by
the results. By its fruits shall it be known.
In order to submit the various phenomena of moving bodies to
geometrical construction, we are under the necessity of abstracting
from corporeal substance all its _positive_ properties, and obliged to
consider bodies as differing from equal portions of space[163] only by
figure and mobility. And as a _fiction of science_, it would be
difficult to overvalue this invention. It possesses the same merits in
relation to Geometry that the atomic theory has in relation to
algebraic calculus. But in contempt of common sense, and in direct
opposition to the express declarations of the inspired historian
(_Genesis i._) and to the tone and spirit of the Scriptures
throughout, Des Cartes propounded it as _truth of fact_: and instead
of a World _created_ and filled with productive forces by the Almighty
_Fiat_, left a lifeless Machine whirled about by the dust of its own
Grinding: as if Death could come from the living Fountain of Life;
Nothingness and Phantom from the Plenitude of Reality! the
Absoluteness of Creative Will!
Holy! Holy! Holy! let me be deemed mad by all men, if such be thy
ordinance: but, O! from _such_ madness save and preserve me, my God!
When, however, after a short interval, the genius of Kepler, expanded
and organized in the soul of Newton, and there (if I may hazard so
bold an expression) refining itself into an almost celestial
clearness, had expelled the Cartesian _vortices_;[164] then the
necessity of an active power, of positive forces present in the
material universe, forced itself on the conviction. For as a Law
without a Law-giver is a mere abstraction; so a _Law_ without an Agent
to realize it, a _Constitution_ without an abiding Executive, is, in
fact, not a Law but _an Idea_. In the profound emblem of the great
tragic poet, it is the powerless Prometheus fixed on a barren Rock.
And what was the result? How was this necessity provided for? God
himself--my hand trembles as I write! Rather, then, let me employ the
word, which the religious feeling, in its perplexity suggested as the
substitute--the _Deity itself_ was declared to be the real agent, the
actual gravitating power! The law and the law-giver were identified.
God (says Dr. Priestley) not only does, but _is_ every thing. _Jupiter
est quodcunque vides._ And thus a system, which commenced by excluding
all life and immanent activity from the visible universe and
evacuating the natural world of all nature, ended by substituting the
Deity, and reducing the Creator to a mere anima mundi: a scheme that
has no advantage over Spinosism but its inconsistency, which does
indeed make it suit a certain Order of intellects, who, like the
_pleuronectæ_ (or flat fish) in ichthyology which have both eyes on
the same side, never see but half of a subject at one time, and
forgetting the one before they get to the other are sure not to detect
any inconsistency between them.
And what has been the consequence? An increasing unwillingness to
contemplate the Supreme Being in his _personal_ attributes: and thence
a distaste to all the peculiar doctrines of the Christian Faith, the
Trinity, the Incarnation of the Son of God, and Redemption. The young
and ardent, ever too apt to mistake the inward triumph in the
detection of error for a positive love of truth, are among the first
and most frequent victims to this epidemic _fastidium_. Alas! even the
sincerest seekers after light are not safe from the contagion. Some
have I known, constitutionally religious--I speak feelingly; for I
speak of that which for a brief period was my own state--who under
this unhealthful influence have been so estranged from the heavenly
_Father_, the _Living_ God, as even to shrink from the personal
pronouns as applied to the Deity. But many do I know, and yearly meet
with, in whom a false and sickly _taste_ co-operates with the
prevailing fashion: many, who find the God of Abraham, Isaac, and
Jacob, far too _real_, too substantial; who feel it more in harmony
with their indefinite sensations
To worship Nature in the hill and valley,
Not knowing what they love:--
and (to use the language, but not the sense or purpose of the great
poet of our age) would fain substitute for the Jehovah of their Bible
A sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air;
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things!