the stronger, are the strong’s undoing. It is not _fear_ of our
fellow‐man, which we should wish to see diminished; for fear
rouses those who are strong to become terrible in turn themselves,
and preserves the hard‐earned and successful type of humanity.
What is to be dreaded by us more than any other doom is not fear,
but rather the great disgust, not fear, but rather the great
pity—disgust and pity for our human fellows.... The _morbid_ are
our greatest peril—not the ‘bad’ men, not the predatory beings.
Those born wrong, the miscarried, the broken—they it is, the
_weakest_, who are undermining the vitality of the race, poisoning
our trust in life, and putting humanity in question. Every look of
them is a sigh,—‘Would I were something other! I am sick and tired
of what I am.’ In this swamp‐soil of self‐contempt, every
poisonous weed flourishes, and all so small, so secret, so
dishonest, and so sweetly rotten. Here swarm the worms of
sensitiveness and resentment; here the air smells odious with
secrecy, with what is not to be acknowledged; here is woven
endlessly the net of the meanest of conspiracies, the conspiracy
of those who suffer against those who succeed and are victorious;
here the very aspect of the victorious is hated—as if health,
success, strength, pride, and the sense of power were in
themselves things vicious, for which one ought eventually to make
bitter expiation. Oh, how these people would themselves like to
inflict the expiation, how they thirst to be the hangmen! And all
the while their duplicity never confesses their hatred to be
hatred.”(220)
Poor Nietzsche’s antipathy is itself sickly enough, but we all know what
he means, and he expresses well the clash between the two ideals. The
carnivorous‐minded “strong man,” the adult male and cannibal, can see
nothing but mouldiness and morbidness in the saint’s gentleness and self‐
severity, and regards him with pure loathing. The whole feud revolves
essentially upon two pivots: Shall the seen world or the unseen world be
our chief sphere of adaptation? and must our means of adaptation in this
seen world be aggressiveness or non‐resistance?
The debate is serious. In some sense and to some degree both worlds must
be acknowledged and taken account of; and in the seen world both
aggressiveness and non‐resistance are needful. It is a question of
emphasis, of more or less. Is the saint’s type or the strong‐man’s type
the more ideal?
It has often been supposed, and even now, I think, it is supposed by most
persons, that there can be one intrinsically ideal type of human
character. A certain kind of man, it is imagined, must be the best man
absolutely and apart from the utility of his function, apart from
economical considerations. The saint’s type, and the knight’s or
gentleman’s type, have always been rival claimants of this absolute
ideality; and in the ideal of military religious orders both types were in
a manner blended. According to the empirical philosophy, however, all
ideals are matters of relation. It would be absurd, for example, to ask
for a definition of “the ideal horse,” so long as dragging drays and
running races, bearing children, and jogging about with tradesmen’s
packages all remain as indispensable differentiations of equine function.
You may take what you call a general all‐round animal as a compromise, but
he will be inferior to any horse of a more specialized type, in some one
particular direction. We must not forget this now when, in discussing
saintliness, we ask if it be an ideal type of manhood. We must test it by
its economical relations.
I think that the method which Mr. Spencer uses in his Data of Ethics will
help to fix our opinion. Ideality in conduct is altogether a matter of
adaptation. A society where all were invariably aggressive would destroy
itself by inner friction, and in a society where some are aggressive,
others must be non‐resistant, if there is to be any kind of order. This is
the present constitution of society, and to the mixture we owe many of our
blessings. But the aggressive members of society are always tending to
become bullies, robbers, and swindlers; and no one believes that such a
state of things as we now live in is the millennium. It is meanwhile quite
possible to conceive an imaginary society in which there should be no
aggressiveness, but only sympathy and fairness,—any small community of
true friends now realizes such a society. Abstractly considered, such a
society on a large scale would be the millennium, for every good thing
might be realized there with no expense of friction. To such a millennial
society the saint would be entirely adapted. His peaceful modes of appeal
would be efficacious over his companions, and there would be no one extant
to take advantage of his non‐resistance. The saint is therefore abstractly
a higher type of man than the “strong man,” because he is adapted to the
highest society conceivable, whether that society ever be concretely
possible or not. The strong man would immediately tend by his presence to
make that society deteriorate. It would become inferior in everything save
in a certain kind of bellicose excitement, dear to men as they now are.
But if we turn from the abstract question to the actual situation, we find
that the individual saint may be well or ill adapted, according to
particular circumstances. There is, in short, no absoluteness in the
excellence of sainthood. It must be confessed that as far as this world
goes, any one who makes an out‐and‐out saint of himself does so at his
peril. If he is not a large enough man, he may appear more insignificant
and contemptible, for all his saintship, than if he had remained a
worldling.(221) Accordingly religion has seldom been so radically taken in
our Western world that the devotee could not mix it with some worldly
temper. It has always found good men who could follow most of its
impulses, but who stopped short when it came to non‐resistance. Christ
himself was fierce upon occasion. Cromwells, Stonewall Jacksons, Gordons,
show that Christians can be strong men also.
How is success to be absolutely measured when there are so many
environments and so many ways of looking at the adaptation? It cannot be
measured absolutely; the verdict will vary according to the point of view
adopted. From the biological point of view Saint Paul was a failure,
because he was beheaded. Yet he was magnificently adapted to the larger
environment of history; and so far as any saint’s example is a leaven of
righteousness in the world, and draws it in the direction of more
prevalent habits of saintliness, he is a success, no matter what his
immediate bad fortune may be. The greatest saints, the spiritual heroes
whom every one acknowledges, the Francises, Bernards, Luthers, Loyolas,
Wesleys, Channings, Moodys, Gratrys, the Phillips Brookses, the Agnes
Joneses, Margaret Hallahans, and Dora Pattisons, are successes from the
outset. They show themselves, and there is no question; every one
perceives their strength and stature. Their sense of mystery in things,
their passion, their goodness, irradiate about them and enlarge their
outlines while they soften them. They are like pictures with an atmosphere
and background; and, placed alongside of them, the strong men of this
world and no other seem as dry as sticks, as hard and crude as blocks of
stone or brickbats.
In a general way, then, and “on the whole,”(222) our abandonment of
theological criteria, and our testing of religion by practical common
sense and the empirical method, leave it in possession of its towering
place in history. Economically, the saintly group of qualities is
indispensable to the world’s welfare. The great saints are immediate
successes; the smaller ones are at least heralds and harbingers, and they
may be leavens also, of a better mundane order. Let us be saints, then, if
we can, whether or not we succeed visibly and temporally. But in our
Father’s house are many mansions, and each of us must discover for himself
the kind of religion and the amount of saintship which best comports with
what he believes to be his powers and feels to be his truest mission and
vocation. There are no successes to be guaranteed and no set orders to be
given to individuals, so long as we follow the methods of empirical
philosophy.
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This is my conclusion so far. I know that on some of your minds it leaves
a feeling of wonder that such a method should have been applied to such a
subject, and this in spite of all those remarks about empiricism which I
made at the beginning of Lecture XIII.(223) How, you say, can religion,
which believes in two worlds and an invisible order, be estimated by the
adaptation of its fruits to this world’s order alone? It is its _truth_,
not its utility, you insist, upon which our verdict ought to depend. If
religion is true, its fruits are good fruits, even though in this world
they should prove uniformly ill adapted and full of naught but pathos. It
goes back, then, after all, to the question of the truth of theology. The
plot inevitably thickens upon us; we cannot escape theoretical
considerations. I propose, then, that to some degree we face the
responsibility. Religious persons have often, though not uniformly,
professed to see truth in a special manner. That manner is known as
mysticism. I will consequently now proceed to treat at some length of
mystical phenomena, and after that, though more briefly, I will consider
religious philosophy.
LECTURES XVI AND XVII. MYSTICISM.
Over and over again in these lectures I have raised points and left them
open and unfinished until we should have come to the subject of Mysticism.
Some of you, I fear, may have smiled as you noted my reiterated
postponements. But now the hour has come when mysticism must be faced in
good earnest, and those broken threads wound up together. One may say
truly, I think, that personal religious experience has its root and centre
in mystical states of consciousness; so for us, who in these lectures are
treating personal experience as the exclusive subject of our study, such
states of consciousness ought to form the vital chapter from which the
other chapters get their light. Whether my treatment of mystical states
will shed more light or darkness, I do not know, for my own constitution
shuts me out from their enjoyment almost entirely, and I can speak of them
only at second hand. But though forced to look upon the subject so
externally, I will be as objective and receptive as I can; and I think I
shall at least succeed in convincing you of the reality of the states in
question, and of the paramount importance of their function.
First of all, then, I ask, What does the expression “mystical states of
consciousness” mean? How do we part off mystical states from other states?
The words “mysticism” and “mystical” are often used as terms of mere
reproach, to throw at any opinion which we regard as vague and vast and
sentimental, and without a base in either facts or logic. For some writers
a “mystic” is any person who believes in thought‐transference, or spirit‐
return. Employed in this way the word has little value: there are too many
less ambiguous synonyms. So, to keep it useful by restricting it, I will
do what I did in the case of the word “religion,” and simply propose to
you four marks which, when an experience has them, may justify us in
calling it mystical for the purpose of the present lectures. In this way
we shall save verbal disputation, and the recriminations that generally go
therewith.
1. _Ineffability._—The handiest of the marks by which I classify a state
of mind as mystical is negative. The subject of it immediately says that
it defies expression, that no adequate report of its contents can be given
in words. It follows from this that its quality must be directly
experienced; it cannot be imparted or transferred to others. In this
peculiarity mystical states are more like states of feeling than like
states of intellect. No one can make clear to another who has never had a
certain feeling, in what the quality or worth of it consists. One must
have musical ears to know the value of a symphony; one must have been in
love one’s self to understand a lover’s state of mind. Lacking the heart
or ear, we cannot interpret the musician or the lover justly, and are even
likely to consider him weak‐minded or absurd. The mystic finds that most
of us accord to his experiences an equally incompetent treatment.
2. _Noetic quality._—Although so similar to states of feeling, mystical
states seem to those who experience them to be also states of knowledge.
They are states of insight into depths of truth unplumbed by the
discursive intellect. They are illuminations, revelations, full of
significance and importance, all inarticulate though they remain; and as a
rule they carry with them a curious sense of authority for after‐time.
These two characters will entitle any state to be called mystical, in the
sense in which I use the word. Two other qualities are less sharply
marked, but are usually found. These are:—
3. _Transiency._—Mystical states cannot be sustained for long. Except in
rare instances, half an hour, or at most an hour or two, seems to be the
limit beyond which they fade into the light of common day. Often, when
faded, their quality can but imperfectly be reproduced in memory; but when
they recur it is recognized; and from one recurrence to another it is
susceptible of continuous development in what is felt as inner richness
and importance.
4. _Passivity._—Although the oncoming of mystical states may be
facilitated by preliminary voluntary operations, as by fixing the
attention, or going through certain bodily performances, or in other ways
which manuals of mysticism prescribe; yet when the characteristic sort of
consciousness once has set in, the mystic feels as if his own will were in
abeyance, and indeed sometimes as if he were grasped and held by a
superior power. This latter peculiarity connects mystical states with
certain definite phenomena of secondary or alternative personality, such
as prophetic speech, automatic writing, or the mediumistic trance. When
these latter conditions are well pronounced, however, there may be no
recollection whatever of the phenomenon, and it may have no significance
for the subject’s usual inner life, to which, as it were, it makes a mere
interruption. Mystical states, strictly so called, are never merely
interruptive. Some memory of their content always remains, and a profound
sense of their importance. They modify the inner life of the subject
between the times of their recurrence. Sharp divisions in this region are,
however, difficult to make, and we find all sorts of gradations and
mixtures.
These four characteristics are sufficient to mark out a group of states of
consciousness peculiar enough to deserve a special name and to call for
careful study. Let it then be called the mystical group.
‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
Our next step should be to gain acquaintance with some typical examples.
Professional mystics at the height of their development have often
elaborately organized experiences and a philosophy based thereupon. But
you remember what I said in my first lecture: phenomena are best
understood when placed within their series, studied in their germ and in
their over‐ripe decay, and compared with their exaggerated and degenerated
kindred. The range of mystical experience is very wide, much too wide for
us to cover in the time at our disposal. Yet the method of serial study is
so essential for interpretation that if we really wish to reach
conclusions we must use it. I will begin, therefore, with phenomena which
claim no special religious significance, and end with those of which the
religious pretensions are extreme.
The simplest rudiment of mystical experience would seem to be that
deepened sense of the significance of a maxim or formula which
occasionally sweeps over one. “I’ve heard that said all my life,” we
exclaim, “but I never realized its full meaning until now.” “When a
fellow‐monk,” said Luther, “one day repeated the words of the Creed: ‘I
believe in the forgiveness of sins,’ I saw the Scripture in an entirely
new light; and straightway I felt as if I were born anew. It was as if I
had found the door of paradise thrown wide open.”(224) This sense of
deeper significance is not confined to rational propositions. Single
words,(225) and conjunctions of words, effects of light on land and sea,
odors and musical sounds, all bring it when the mind is tuned aright. Most
of us can remember the strangely moving power of passages in certain poems
read when we were young, irrational doorways as they were through which
the mystery of fact, the wildness and the pang of life, stole into our
hearts and thrilled them. The words have now perhaps become mere polished
surfaces for us; but lyric poetry and music are alive and significant only
in proportion as they fetch these vague vistas of a life continuous with
our own, beckoning and inviting, yet ever eluding our pursuit. We are
alive or dead to the eternal inner message of the arts according as we
have kept or lost this mystical susceptibility.
A more pronounced step forward on the mystical ladder is found in an
extremely frequent phenomenon, that sudden feeling, namely, which
sometimes sweeps over us, of having “been here before,” as if at some
indefinite past time, in just this place, with just these people, we were
already saying just these things. As Tennyson writes:
“Moreover, something is or seems,
That touches me with mystic gleams,
Like glimpses of forgotten dreams—
“Of something felt, like something here;
Of something done, I know not where;
Such as no language may declare.”(226)
Sir James Crichton‐Browne has given the technical name of “dreamy states”
to these sudden invasions of vaguely reminiscent consciousness.(227) They
bring a sense of mystery and of the metaphysical duality of things, and
the feeling of an enlargement of perception which seems imminent but which
never completes itself. In Dr. Crichton‐Browne’s opinion they connect
themselves with the perplexed and scared disturbances of self‐
consciousness which occasionally precede epileptic attacks. I think that
this learned alienist takes a rather absurdly alarmist view of an
intrinsically insignificant phenomenon. He follows it along the downward
ladder, to insanity; our path pursues the upward ladder chiefly. The
divergence shows how important it is to neglect no part of a phenomenon’s
connections, for we make it appear admirable or dreadful according to the
context by which we set it off.
Somewhat deeper plunges into mystical consciousness are met with in yet
other dreamy states. Such feelings as these which Charles Kingsley
describes are surely far from being uncommon, especially in youth:—
“When I walk the fields, I am oppressed now and then with an
innate feeling that everything I see has a meaning, if I could but
understand it. And this feeling of being surrounded with truths
which I cannot grasp amounts to indescribable awe sometimes....
Have you not felt that your real soul was imperceptible to your
mental vision, except in a few hallowed moments?”(228)
A much more extreme state of mystical consciousness is described by J. A.
Symonds; and probably more persons than we suspect could give parallels to
it from their own experience.
“Suddenly,” writes Symonds, “at church, or in company, or when I
was reading, and always, I think, when my muscles were at rest, I
felt the approach of the mood. Irresistibly it took possession of
my mind and will, lasted what seemed an eternity, and disappeared
in a series of rapid sensations which resembled the awakening from
anæsthetic influence. One reason why I disliked this kind of
trance was that I could not describe it to myself. I cannot even
now find words to render it intelligible. It consisted in a
gradual but swiftly progressive obliteration of space, time,
sensation, and the multitudinous factors of experience which seem
to qualify what we are pleased to call our Self. In proportion as
these conditions of ordinary consciousness were subtracted, the
sense of an underlying or essential consciousness acquired
intensity. At last nothing remained but a pure, absolute, abstract
Self. The universe became without form and void of content. But
Self persisted, formidable in its vivid keenness, feeling the most
poignant doubt about reality, ready, as it seemed, to find
existence break as breaks a bubble round about it. And what then?
The apprehension of a coming dissolution, the grim conviction that
this state was the last state of the conscious Self, the sense
that I had followed the last thread of being to the verge of the
abyss, and had arrived at demonstration of eternal Maya or
illusion, stirred or seemed to stir me up again. The return to
ordinary conditions of sentient existence began by my first
recovering the power of touch, and then by the gradual though
rapid influx of familiar impressions and diurnal interests. At
last I felt myself once more a human being; and though the riddle
of what is meant by life remained unsolved, I was thankful for
this return from the abyss—this deliverance from so awful an
initiation into the mysteries of skepticism.
“This trance recurred with diminishing frequency until I reached
the age of twenty‐eight. It served to impress upon my growing
nature the phantasmal unreality of all the circumstances which
contribute to a merely phenomenal consciousness. Often have I
asked myself with anguish, on waking from that formless state of
denuded, keenly sentient being, Which is the unreality?—the trance
of fiery, vacant, apprehensive, skeptical Self from which I issue,
or these surrounding phenomena and habits which veil that inner
Self and build a self of flesh‐and‐blood conventionality? Again,
are men the factors of some dream, the dream‐like unsubstantiality
of which they comprehend at such eventful moments? What would
happen if the final stage of the trance were reached?”(229)
In a recital like this there is certainly something suggestive of
pathology.(230) The next step into mystical states carries us into a realm
that public opinion and ethical philosophy have long since branded as
pathological, though private practice and certain lyric strains of poetry
seem still to bear witness to its ideality. I refer to the consciousness
produced by intoxicants and anæsthetics, especially by alcohol. The sway
of alcohol over mankind is unquestionably due to its power to stimulate
the mystical faculties of human nature, usually crushed to earth by the
cold facts and dry criticisms of the sober hour. Sobriety diminishes,
discriminates, and says no; drunkenness expands, unites, and says yes. It
is in fact the great exciter of the _Yes_ function in man. It brings its
votary from the chill periphery of things to the radiant core. It makes
him for the moment one with truth. Not through mere perversity do men run
after it. To the poor and the unlettered it stands in the place of
symphony concerts and of literature; and it is part of the deeper mystery
and tragedy of life that whiffs and gleams of something that we
immediately recognize as excellent should be vouchsafed to so many of us
only in the fleeting earlier phases of what in its totality is so
degrading a poisoning. The drunken consciousness is one bit of the mystic
consciousness, and our total opinion of it must find its place in our
opinion of that larger whole.
Nitrous oxide and ether, especially nitrous oxide, when sufficiently
diluted with air, stimulate the mystical consciousness in an extraordinary
degree. Depth beyond depth of truth seems revealed to the inhaler. This
truth fades out, however, or escapes, at the moment of coming to; and if
any words remain over in which it seemed to clothe itself, they prove to
be the veriest nonsense. Nevertheless, the sense of a profound meaning
having been there persists; and I know more than one person who is
persuaded that in the nitrous oxide trance we have a genuine metaphysical
revelation.