verbal and graphic automatisms, and such marvels as “levitation,”
stigmatization, and the healing of disease. These phenomena, which
mystics have often presented (or are believed to have presented),
have no essential mystical significance, for they occur with no
consciousness of illumination whatever, when they occur, as they
often do, in persons of non‐mystical mind. Consciousness of
illumination is for us the essential mark of “mystical” states.
252 The Interior Castle, Fifth Abode, ch. i., in Œuvres, translated by
Bouix, iii. 421‐424.
253 BARTOLI‐MICHEL: Vie de Saint Ignace de Loyola, i. 34‐36. Others have
had illuminations about the created world, Jacob Boehme, for
instance. At the age of twenty‐five he was “surrounded by the divine
light, and replenished with the heavenly knowledge; insomuch as
going abroad into the fields to a green, at Görlitz, he there sat
down, and viewing the herbs and grass of the field, in his inward
light he saw into their essences, use, and properties, which was
discovered to him by their lineaments, figures, and signatures.” Of
a later period of experience he writes: “In one quarter of an hour I
saw and knew more than if I had been many years together at an
university. For I saw and knew the being of all things, the Byss and
the Abyss, and the eternal generation of the holy Trinity, the
descent and original of the world and of all creatures through the
divine wisdom. I knew and saw in myself all the three worlds, the
external and visible world being of a procreation or extern birth
from both the internal and spiritual worlds; and I saw and knew the
whole working essence, in the evil and in the good, and the mutual
original and existence; and likewise how the fruitful bearing womb
of eternity brought forth. So that I did not only greatly wonder at
it, but did also exceedingly rejoice, albeit I could very hardly
apprehend the same in my external man and set it down with the pen.
For I had a thorough view of the universe as in a chaos, wherein all
things are couched and wrapt up, but it was impossible for me to
explicate the same.” Jacob Behmen’s Theosophic Philosophy, etc., by
EDWARD TAYLOR, London, 1691, pp. 425, 427, abridged. So George Fox:
“I was come up to the state of Adam in which he was before he fell.
The creation was opened to me; and it was showed me, how all things
had their names given to them, according to their nature and virtue.
I was at a stand in my mind, whether I should practice physic for
the good of mankind, seeing the nature and virtues of the creatures
were so opened to me by the Lord.” Journal, Philadelphia, no date,
p. 69. Contemporary “Clairvoyance” abounds in similar revelations.
Andrew Jackson Davis’s cosmogonies, for example, or certain
experiences related in the delectable “Reminiscences and Memories of
Henry Thomas Butterworth,” Lebanon, Ohio, 1886.
254 Vie, pp. 581, 582.
255 Loc. cit., p. 574.
256 Saint Teresa discriminates between pain in which the body has a part
and pure spiritual pain (Interior Castle, 6th Abode, ch. xi.). As
for the bodily part in these celestial joys, she speaks of it as
“penetrating to the marrow of the bones, whilst earthly pleasures
affect only the surface of the senses. I think,” she adds, “that
this is a just description, and I cannot make it better.” Ibid., 5th
Abode, ch. i.
257 Vie, p. 198.
258 Œuvres, ii. 320.
259 Above, p. 21.
260 Vie, pp. 229, 200, 231‐233, 243.
261 MÜLLER’S translation, part ii. p. 180.
262 T. DAVIDSON’S translation, in Journal of Speculative Philosophy,
1893, vol. xxii. p. 399.
263 “Deus propter excellentiam non immerito Nihil vocatur.” Scotus
Erigena, quoted by ANDREW SETH: Two Lectures on Theism, New York,
1897, p. 55.
264 J. ROYCE: Studies in Good and Evil, p. 282.
265 Jacob Behmen’s Dialogues on the Supersensual Life, translated by
BERNARD HOLLAND, London, 1901, p. 48.
266 Cherubinischer Wandersmann, Strophe 25.
267 Op. cit., pp. 42, 74, abridged.
268 From a French book I take this mystical expression of happiness in
God’s indwelling presence:—
“Jesus has come to take up his abode in my heart. It is not so much
a habitation, an association, as a sort of fusion. Oh, new and
blessed life! life which becomes each day more luminous.... The wall
before me, dark a few moments since, is splendid at this hour
because the sun shines on it. Wherever its rays fall they light up a
conflagration of glory; the smallest speck of glass sparkles, each
grain of sand emits fire; even so there is a royal song of triumph
in my heart because the Lord is there. My days succeed each other;
yesterday a blue sky; to‐day a clouded sun; a night filled with
strange dreams; but as soon as the eyes open, and I regain
consciousness and seem to begin life again, it is always the same
figure before me, always the same presence filling my heart....
Formerly the day was dulled by the absence of the Lord. I used to
wake invaded by all sorts of sad impressions, and I did not find him
on my path. To‐day he is with me; and the light cloudiness which
covers things is not an obstacle to my communion with him. I feel
the pressure of his hand, I feel something else which fills me with
a serene joy; shall I dare to speak it out? Yes, for it is the true
expression of what I experience. The Holy Spirit is not merely
making me a visit; it is no mere dazzling apparition which may from
one moment to another spread its wings and leave me in my night, it
is a permanent habitation. He can depart only if he takes me with
him. More than that; he is not other than myself: he is one with me.
It is not a juxtaposition, it is a penetration, a profound
modification of my nature, a new manner of my being.” Quoted from
the MS. “of an old man” by WILFRED MONOD: Il Vit: six méditations
sur le mystère chrétien, pp. 280‐283.
269 Compare M. MAETERLINCK: L’Ornement des Noces spirituelles de
Ruysbroeck, Bruxelles, 1891, Introduction, p. xix.
270 Upanishads, M. MÜLLER’S translation, ii. 17, 334.
271 SCHMÖLDERS: Op. cit., p. 210.
272 Enneads, BOUILLIER’S translation, Paris, 1861, iii. 561. Compare pp.
473‐477, and vol. i. p. 27.
273 Autobiography, pp. 309, 310.
274 Op. cit., Strophe 10.
275 H. P. BLAVATSKY: The Voice of the Silence.
276 SWINBURNE: On the Verge, in “A Midsummer Vacation.”
277 Compare the extracts from Dr. Bucke, quoted on pp. 398, 399.
278 As serious an attempt as I know to mediate between the mystical
region and the discursive life is contained in an article on
Aristotle’s Unmoved Mover, by F. C. S. SCHILLER, in Mind, vol. ix.,
1900.
279 I abstract from weaker states, and from those cases of which the
books are full, where the director (but usually not the subject)
remains in doubt whether the experience may not have proceeded from
the demon.
280 Example: Mr. John Nelson writes of his imprisonment for preaching
Methodism: “My soul was as a watered garden, and I could sing
praises to God all day long; for he turned my captivity into joy,
and gave me to rest as well on the boards, as if I had been on a bed
of down. Now could I say, ‘God’s service is perfect freedom,’ and I
was carried out much in prayer that my enemies might drink of the
same river of peace which my God gave so largely to me.” Journal,
London, no date, p. 172.
281 RUYSBROECK, in the work which Maeterlinck has translated, has a
chapter against the antinomianism of disciples. H. DELACROIX’S book
(Essai sur le mysticisme spéculatif en Allemagne au XIVme Siècle,
Paris, 1900) is full of antinomian material. Compare also A. JUNDT:
Les Amis de Dieu au XIVme Siècle, Thèse de Strasbourg, 1879.
282 Compare PAUL ROUSSELOT: Les Mystiques Espagnols, Paris, 1869, ch.
xii.
283 See CARPENTER’S Towards Democracy, especially the latter parts, and
JEFFERIES’S wonderful and splendid mystic rhapsody, The Story of my
Heart.
284 In chapter i. of book ii. of his work Degeneration, “MAX NORDAU”
seeks to undermine all mysticism by exposing the weakness of the
lower kinds. Mysticism for him means any sudden perception of hidden
significance in things. He explains such perception by the abundant
uncompleted associations which experiences may arouse in a
degenerate brain. These give to him who has the experience a vague
and vast sense of its leading further, yet they awaken no definite
or useful consequent in his thought. The explanation is a plausible
one for certain sorts of feeling of significance; and other
alienists (WERNICKE, for example, in his Grundriss der Psychiatrie,
Theil ii., Leipzig, 1896) have explained “paranoiac” conditions by a
laming of the association‐organ. But the higher mystical flights,
with their positiveness and abruptness, are surely products of no
such merely negative condition. It seems far more reasonable to
ascribe them to inroads from the subconscious life, of the cerebral
activity correlative to which we as yet know nothing.
285 They sometimes add subjective _audita et visa_ to the facts, but as
these are usually interpreted as transmundane, they oblige no
alteration in the facts of sense.
286 Compare Professor W. WALLACE’S Gifford Lectures, in Lectures and
Essays, Oxford, 1898, pp. 17 ff.
287 Op. cit., p. 174, abridged.
288 Ibid., p. 186, abridged and italicized.
289 Discourse II. § 7.
290 As regards the secondary character of intellectual constructions,
and the primacy of feeling and instinct in founding religious
beliefs, see the striking work of H. FIELDING, The Hearts of Men,
London, 1902, which came into my hands after my text was written.
“Creeds,” says the author, “are the grammar of religion, they are to
religion what grammar is to speech. Words are the expression of our
wants; grammar is the theory formed afterwards. Speech never
proceeded from grammar, but the reverse. As speech progresses and
changes from unknown causes, grammar must follow” (p. 313). The
whole book, which keeps unusually close to concrete facts, is little
more than an amplification of this text.
291 For convenience’ sake, I follow the order of A. STÖCKL’S Lehrbuch
der Philosophie, 5te Auflage, Mainz, 1881, Band ii. B. BOEDDER’S
Natural Theology, London, 1891, is a handy English Catholic Manual;
but an almost identical doctrine is given by such Protestant
theologians as C. HODGE: Systematic Theology, New York, 1873, or A.
H. STRONG: Systematic Theology, 5th edition, New York, 1896.
292 It must not be forgotten that any form of _dis_order in the world
might, by the design argument, suggest a God for just that kind of
disorder. The truth is that any state of things whatever that can be
named is logically susceptible of teleological interpretation. The
ruins of the earthquake at Lisbon, for example: the whole of past
history had to be planned exactly as it was to bring about in the
fullness of time just that particular arrangement of débris of
masonry, furniture, and once living bodies. No other train of causes
would have been sufficient. And so of any other arrangement, bad or
good, which might as a matter of fact be found resulting anywhere
from previous conditions. To avoid such pessimistic consequences and
save its beneficent designer, the design argument accordingly
invokes two other principles, restrictive in their operation. The
first is physical: Nature’s forces tend of their own accord only to
disorder and destruction, to heaps of ruins, not to architecture.
This principle, though plausible at first sight, seems, in the light
of recent biology, to be more and more improbable. The second
principle is one of anthropomorphic interpretation. No arrangement
that for _us_ is “disorderly” can possibly have been an object of
design at all. This principle is of course a mere assumption in the
interests of anthropomorphic Theism.
When one views the world with no definite theological bias one way
or the other, one sees that order and disorder, as we now recognize
them, are purely human inventions. We are interested in certain
types of arrangement, useful, æsthetic, or moral,—so interested that
whenever we find them realized, the fact emphatically rivets our
attention. The result is that we work over the contents of the world
selectively. It is overflowing with disorderly arrangements from our
point of view, but order is the only thing we care for and look at,
and by choosing, one can always find some sort of orderly
arrangement in the midst of any chaos. If I should throw down a
thousand beans at random upon a table, I could doubtless, by
eliminating a sufficient number of them, leave the rest in almost
any geometrical pattern you might propose to me, and you might then
say that that pattern was the thing prefigured beforehand, and that
the other beans were mere irrelevance and packing material. Our
dealings with Nature are just like this. She is a vast _plenum_ in
which our attention draws capricious lines in innumerable
directions. We count and name whatever lies upon the special lines
we trace, whilst the other things and the untraced lines are neither
named nor counted. There are in reality infinitely more things
’unadapted’ to each other in this world than there are things
’adapted’; infinitely more things with irregular relations than with
regular relations between them. But we look for the regular kind of
thing exclusively, and ingeniously discover and preserve it in our
memory. It accumulates with other regular kinds, until the
collection of them fills our encyclopædias. Yet all the while
between and around them lies an infinite anonymous chaos of objects
that no one ever thought of together, of relations that never yet
attracted our attention.
The facts of order from which the physico‐theological argument
starts are thus easily susceptible of interpretation as arbitrary
human products. So long as this is the case, although of course no
argument against God follows, it follows that the argument for him
will fail to constitute a knock‐down proof of his existence. It will
be convincing only to those who on other grounds believe in him
already.
293 For the scholastics the _facultas appetendi_ embraces feeling,
desire, and will.
294 Op. cit., Discourse III. § 7.
295 In an article, How to make our Ideas Clear, in the Popular Science
Monthly for January, 1878, vol. xii. p. 286.
296 Pragmatically, the most important attribute of God is his punitive
justice. But who, in the present state of theological opinion on
that point, will dare maintain that hell fire or its equivalent in
some shape is rendered certain by pure logic? Theology herself has
largely based this doctrine upon revelation; and, in discussing it,
has tended more and more to substitute conventional ideas of
criminal law for a priori principles of reason. But the very notion
that this glorious universe, with planets and winds, and laughing
sky and ocean, should have been conceived and had its beams and
rafters laid in technicalities of criminality, is incredible to our
modern imagination. It weakens a religion to hear it argued upon
such a basis.
297 John Caird: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion, London
and New York, 1880, pp. 243‐250, and 291‐299, much abridged.
298 A. C. FRASER: Philosophy of Theism, second edition, Edinburgh and
London, 1899, especially part ii. chaps. vii. and viii.; A. SETH
[PRINGLE‐PATTISON]: Hegelianism and Personality, Ibid., 1890,
passim.
The most persuasive arguments in favor of a concrete individual Soul
of the world, with which I am acquainted, are those of my colleague,
Josiah Royce, in his Religious Aspect of Philosophy, Boston, 1885;
in his Conception of God, New York and London, 1897; and lately in
his Aberdeen Gifford Lectures, The World and the Individual, 2
vols., New York and London, 1901‐02. I doubtless seem to some of my
readers to evade the philosophic duty which my thesis in this
lecture imposes on me, by not even attempting to meet Professor
Royce’s arguments articulately. I admit the momentary evasion. In
the present lectures, which are cast throughout in a popular mould,
there seemed no room for subtle metaphysical discussion, and for
tactical purposes it was sufficient, the contention of philosophy
being what it is (namely, that religion can be transformed into a
universally convincing science), to point to the fact that no
religious philosophy has actually convinced the mass of thinkers.
Meanwhile let me say that I hope that the present volume may be
followed by another, if I am spared to write it, in which not only
Professor Royce’s arguments, but others for monistic absolutism
shall be considered with all the technical fullness which their
great importance calls for. At present I resign myself to lying
passive under the reproach of superficiality.
299 Idea of a University, Discourse III. § 7.
300 Newman’s imagination so innately craved an ecclesiastical system
that he can write: “From the age of fifteen, dogma has been the
fundamental principle of my religion: I know no other religion; I
cannot enter into the idea of any other sort of religion.” And
again, speaking of himself about the age of thirty, he writes: “I
loved to act as feeling myself in my Bishop’s sight, as if it were
the sight of God.” Apologia, 1897, pp. 48, 50.
301 The intellectual difference is quite on a par in practical
importance with the analogous difference in character. We saw, under
the head of Saintliness, how some characters resent confusion and
must live in purity, consistency, simplicity (above, p. 280 ff.).
For others, on the contrary, superabundance, over‐pressure,
stimulation, lots of superficial relations, are indispensable. There
are men who would suffer a very syncope if you should pay all their
debts, bring it about that their engagements had been kept, their
letters answered, their perplexities relieved, and their duties
fulfilled, down to one which lay on a clean table under their eyes
with nothing to interfere with its immediate performance. A day
stripped so staringly bare would be for them appalling. So with
ease, elegance, tributes of affection, social recognitions—some of
us require amounts of these things which to others would appear a
mass of lying and sophistication.
302 In Newman’s Lectures on Justification, Lecture VIII. § 6, there is a
splendid passage expressive of this æsthetic way of feeling the
Christian scheme. It is unfortunately too long to quote.
303 Compare the informality of Protestantism, where the “meek lover of
the good,” alone with his God, visits the sick, etc., for their own
sakes, with the elaborate “business” that goes on in Catholic
devotion, and carries with it the social excitement of all more
complex businesses. An essentially worldly‐minded Catholic woman can
become a visitor of the sick on purely coquettish principles, with
her confessor and director, her “merit” storing up, her patron
saints, her privileged relation to the Almighty, drawing his
attention as a professional _dévote_, her definite “exercises,” and
her definitely recognized social _pose_ in the organization.
304 Above, p. 362 ff.
305 A fuller discussion of confession is contained in the excellent work
by FRANK GRANGER: The Soul of a Christian, London, 1900, ch. xii.
306 Example: “The minister at Sudbury, being at the Thursday lecture in
Boston, heard the officiating clergyman praying for rain. As soon as
the service was over, he went to the petitioner and said, ‘You
Boston ministers, as soon as a tulip wilts under your windows, go to
church and pray for rain, until all Concord and Sudbury are under
water.’ ” R. W. EMERSON: Lectures and Biographical Sketches, p. 363.
307 AUGUSTE SABATIER: Esquisse d’une Philosophie de la Religion, 2me
éd., 1897, pp. 24‐26, abridged.
308 My authority for these statistics is the little work on Müller, by
FREDERIC G. WARNE, New York, 1898.
309 The Life of Trust; Being a Narrative of the Lord’s Dealings with
George Müller, New American edition, N. Y., Crowell, pp. 228, 194,
219.
310 Ibid., p. 126.
311 Op. cit., p. 383, abridged.
312 Ibid., p. 323.
313 I cannot resist the temptation of quoting an expression of an even
more primitive style of religious thought, which I find in Arber’s
English Garland, vol. vii. p. 440. Robert Lyde, an English sailor,
along with an English boy, being prisoners on a French ship in 1689,
set upon the crew, of seven Frenchmen, killed two, made the other
five prisoners, and brought home the ship. Lyde thus describes how
in this feat he found his God a very present help in time of
trouble:—
“With the assistance of God I kept my feet when they three and one
more did strive to throw me down. Feeling the Frenchman which hung
about my middle hang very heavy, I said to the boy, ‘Go round the
binnacle, and knock down that man that hangeth on my back.’ So the
boy did strike him one blow on the head which made him fall.... Then
I looked about for a marlin spike or anything else to strike them
withal. But seeing nothing, I said, ‘LORD! what shall I do?’ Then
casting up my eye upon my left side, and seeing a marlin spike
hanging, I jerked my right arm and took hold, and struck the point
four times about a quarter of an inch deep into the skull of that
man that had hold of my left arm. [One of the Frenchmen then hauled
the marlin spike away from him.] But through GOD’S wonderful
providence! it either fell out of his hand, or else he threw it
down, and at this time the Almighty GOD gave me strength enough to
take one man in one hand, and throw at the other’s head: and looking
about again to see anything to strike them withal, but seeing
nothing, I said, ‘LORD! what shall I do now?’ And then it pleased
GOD to put me in mind of my knife in my pocket. And although two of
the men had hold of my right arm, yet GOD Almighty strengthened me
so that I put my right hand into my right pocket, drew out the knife
and sheath, ... put it between my legs and drew it out, and then cut
the man’s throat with it that had his back to my breast: and he
immediately dropt down, and scarce ever stirred after.”—I have
slightly abridged Lyde’s narrative.
314 As, for instance, In Answer to Prayer, by the BISHOP OF RIPON and
others, London, 1898; Touching Incidents and Remarkable Answers to
Prayer, Harrisburg, Pa., 1898 (?); H. L. HASTINGS: The Guiding Hand,
or Providential Direction, illustrated by Authentic Instances,
Boston, 1898 (?).
315 C. HILTY: Glück, Dritter Theil, 1900, pp. 92 ff.
316 “Good Heaven!” says Epictetus, “any one thing in the creation is
sufficient to demonstrate a Providence, to a humble and grateful
mind. The mere possibility of producing milk from grass, cheese from
milk, and wool from skins; who formed and planned it? Ought we not,
whether we dig or plough or eat, to sing this hymn to God? Great is
God, who has supplied us with these instruments to till the ground;
great is God, who has given us hands and instruments of digestion;
who has given us to grow insensibly and to breathe in sleep. These
things we ought forever to celebrate.... But because the most of you
are blind and insensible, there must be some one to fill this
station, and lead, in behalf of all men, the hymn to God; for what
else can I do, a lame old man, but sing hymns to God? Were I a
nightingale, I would act the part of a nightingale; were I a swan,
the part of a swan. But since I am a reasonable creature, it is my
duty to praise God ... and I call on you to join the same song.”
Works, book i. ch. xvi., CARTER‐HIGGINSON translation, abridged.
317 JAMES MARTINEAU: end of the sermon “Help Thou Mine Unbelief,” in
Endeavours after a Christian Life, 2d series. Compare with this page
the extract from Voysey on p. 275, above, and those from Pascal and
Madame Guyon on p. 286.
318 Souvenirs de ma Jeunesse, 1897, p. 122.
319 Op. cit., Letter XXX.
320 Above, p. 248 ff. Compare the withdrawal of expression from the
world, in Melancholiacs, p. 151.
321 Above, pp. 24, 25.