Chapter V

Devotional and Religious Mystics All mystics are devotional and all are religious in the truest sense of the terms. Yet it seems legitimate to group under this special heading those writers whose views are expressed largely in the language of the Christian religion, as is the case with our earliest mystics, with Crashaw and Francis Thompson and it applies in some measure to Blake. But beyond this, it seems, in more general terms, to apply specially to those who are so conscious of God that they seem to live in His presence, and who are chiefly concerned with approaching Him, not by way of Love, Beauty, Wisdom, or Nature, but directly, through purgation and adoration. This description, it is obvious, though it fits fairly well the other writers here included, by no means suffices for Blake. For he possessed in addition a philosophy, a system, and a profound scheme of the universe revealed to him in vision. But within what category could Blake be imprisoned? He outsoars them all and includes them all. We can only say that the dominant impression he leaves with us that is of his vivid, intimate consciousness of the Divine presence and his attitude of devotion. We have seen that the earliest mystical thought came into this country by way of the writings of "Dionysius" and of the Victorines (Hugh and Richard of St Victor), and it is this type of thought and belief cast into the mould of the Catholic Church that we find mainly in the little group of early English mystics, whose writings date from the middle of the thirteenth to the beginning of the fifteenth century.[52] These early Catholic mystics are interesting from a psychological point of view, and they are often subtle exponents of the deepest mystical truths and teachings, and in some cases this is combined with great literary power and beauty. One of the earliest examples of this thought in English literature is the tender and charming lyric by Thomas de Hales, written probably before 1240. Here is perhaps the first expression in our poetry of passionate yearning of the soul towards Christ as her true lover, and of the joy of mystic union with Him. A maid of Christ, says the poet, has begged him to "wurche a luve ron" (make a love-song), which he does; and points out to her that this world's love is false and fickle, and that worldly lovers shall pass away like a wind's blast. Hwer is Paris and Heleyne That weren so bright and feyre on bleo: Amadas, Tristram and Dideyne Yseudé and allé theo: Ector with his scharpé meyne And Cesar riche of wor[l]des feo? Heo beoth iglyden ut of the reyne, So the schef is of the cleo. As the corn from the hill-side, Paris and Helen and all bright lovers have passed away, and it is as if they had never lived. But, maid, if you want a lover, he continues, I can direct you to one, the fairest, truest, and richest in the whole world. Henry, King of England, is his vassal, and to thee, maid, this lover sends a message and desires to know thee. Mayde to the he send his sonde And wilneth for to beo the cuth. And so the poem goes on to express in simple terms of earthly love, the passionate delight and joy and peace of the soul in attaining to union with her God, in whose dwelling is perfect bliss and safety. This poem is a delicate example of what is called "erotic mysticism," that is the love and attraction of the soul for God, and of God for the soul, expressed in the terms of the love between man and woman. It is a type of expression characteristic of the great mystics of the Catholic Church, especially in the Middle Ages,[53] and we find a good deal of it in our earliest mystical writers. One of the most charming examples of it other than this lyric, is the chapter "Of Love" in the _Ancren Riwle_, or Rule for Anchoresses, written probably early in the thirteenth century. An account is there given, quite unsurpassed for delicate beauty, of the wooing of the soul by God.[54] On the whole, however, this type of mysticism is rare in England, and we scarcely meet it again after these early writers until we come to the poems of Crashaw. The finest expression of it is the Song of Solomon, and it is easy to see that such a form of symbolism is specially liable to degradation, and is open to grave dangers, which it has not always escaped. Yet, in no other terms known to man is it possible so fully to express the sense of insatiable craving and desire as well as the rapture of intimate communion felt by the mystic towards his God, as in the language of that great passion which, in its purest form, is the best thing known to man and his highest glory. "I saw Him, and sought Him, I had Him and I wanted Him." Could any words more completely express the infinity of love's desire, ever unsatisfied even in possession, than does this love-cry from the heart of Julian the anchoress of Norwich? The intensity and freshness of religious feeling of a mystical type in England in the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries are often not realised, partly owing to the fact that much of the religious writing of this time is still in manuscript. The country was full of devotees who had taken religious vows, which they fulfilled either in the many monasteries and convents, or often in single cells, as "hermit" or "anchoress." Here they lived a life devoted to contemplation and prayer, and to the spiritual assistance of those who sought them out. The hermits, of whom there were a large number, were apparently free to move from one neighbourhood to another, but the woman recluse, or "anchoress," seldom or never left the walls of her cell, a little house of two or three rooms built generally against the church wall, so that one of her windows could open into the church, and another, veiled by a curtain, looked on to the outer world, where she held converse with and gave counsel to those who came to see her. Sometimes a little group of recluses lived together, like those three sisters of Dorsetshire for whom the _Ancren Riwle_ was written, a treatise which gives us so many homely details of this type of life. Richard Rolle (_c._ 1300-1349), of Hampole, near Doncaster, and the Lady Julian, a Benedictine nun of Norwich (1342-_c._1413), are the two most interesting examples of the mediæval recluse in England. Both seem to have had a singular charm of character and a purity of mystical devotion which has impressed itself on their writings. Richard Rolle, who entered upon a hermit's life at nineteen on leaving Oxford, had great influence both through his life and work on the whole group of fourteenth-century religious writers, and so on the thought of mediæval England. His contemporaries thought him mad, they jeered at him and abused him, but he went quietly on his way, preaching and writing. Love forced him to write; love, he said, gave him wisdom and subtlety, and he preached a religion of love. Indeed the whole of his work is a symphony of feeling, a song of Love, and forms a curious reaction against the exaltation of reason and logic in scholasticism. He wrote a large number of treatises and poems, both in Latin and English, lyrical songs and alliterative homilies, burning spiritual rhapsodies and sound practical sermons, all of which were widely known and read. Certain points about Rolle are of special interest and distinguish him from other mystics and seers. One is that for him the culminating mystical experience took the form of melody, rhythm, harmony. He is the most musical of mystics, and where others "see" or "feel" Reality, he "hears" it. Hence his description of his soul's adventures is peculiarly beautiful, he thinks in images and symbols of music, and in his writings we find some of the most exquisite passages in the whole literature of mysticism, veritable songs of spiritual joy. In the _Fire of Love_, perhaps the finest of his more mystical works, he traces in detail his journey along the upward path. This is very individual, and it differs in some important respects from other similar records. He passed through the stage of "purgation," of struggle between the flesh and spirit, of penitence and aspiration, through "illumination," until he reached, after nearly three years, the third stage of contemplation of God through love.[55] In this condition, after about a year, "the door of heaven yet biding open," he experienced the three phases to which he gives the names of "calor, canor, dulcor," heat, song, and sweetness. "Heat soothly I call when the mind truly is kindled in Love Everlasting, and the heart on the same manner to burn not hopingly, but verily is felt."[56] This "burning" seems to have been for him a real physical sensation, a bodily condition induced by the adventure of the spirit. This is not unusual in mystical states, and possibly the cryptic notes made by Pascal record a similar experience.[57] He continued in this warmth for nine months, when suddenly he felt and heard the "canor," the "spiritual music," the "invisible melody" of heaven. Here is his description of his change from "burning love" to the state of "songful love." Whilst ... I sat in chapel, in the night, before supper, as I my psalms sung, as it were the sound of readers or rather singers about me I beheld. Whilst also, praying to heaven, with all desire I took heed, suddenly, in what manner I wot not, in me the sound of song I felt; and likeliest heavenly melody I took, with me dwelling in mind. Forsooth my thought continually to mirth of song was changed: and as it were the same that loving I had thought, and in prayers and psalms had said, the same in sound I showed, and so forth with [began] to sing that [which] before I had said, and from plenitude of inward sweetness I burst forth, privily indeed, alone before my Maker.[58] The sweetness of this inward spiritual song is beyond any sound that may be heard with bodily ears, even lovers can only catch snatches of it. "Worldly lovers soothly words or ditties of our song may know, for the words they read: but the tone and sweetness of that song they may not learn."[59] The final stage of "sweetness" seems really to include the other two, it is their completion and fruition. The first two, says Rolle, are gained by devotion, and out of them springs the third.[60] Rolle's description of it, of the all-pervading holy joy, rhythm, and melody, when the soul, "now become as it were a living pipe," is caught up into the music of the spheres, "and in the sight of God ... joying sounds,"[61] deserves to be placed beside what is perhaps the most magnificent passage in all mystical literature, where Plotinus tells us of the choral dance of the soul about her God.[62] Enough has been said to show that Rolle is a remarkable individual, and one of the most poetic of the English religious mystical writers, and it is regrettable that some of his other works are not more easily accessible. Unfortunately, the poem with which his name is generally associated, _The Pricke of Conscience_, is entirely unlike all his other work, both in form and matter. It is a long, prosaic and entirely unmystical homily in riming couplets, of a very ordinary mediæval type, stirring men's minds to the horrors of sin by dwelling on the pains of purgatory and hell. It would seem almost certain, on internal evidence, that the same hand cannot have written it and the _Fire of Love_, and recent investigation appears to make it clear that Rolle's part in it, if any, was merely of the nature of compilation or translation of some other work, possibly by Grosseteste.[63] Of the life of the Lady Julian we know very little, except that she was almost certainly a Benedictine nun, and that she lived for many years in an anchoress's cell close to the old church of St Julian at Conisford, near Norwich. But her character and charm are fully revealed in the little book she has left of _Revelations of Divine Love_, which contains a careful account of a definite psychological experience through which she passed on the 8th day of May 1373, when she was thirty years of age. She adds to this record of fact certain commentaries and explanations which, she says, have been taught her gradually in the course of the subsequent twenty years. This experience, which lasted altogether between five and six hours, was preceded by a seven days' sickness most vividly described, ending in a semi-rigidity of the body as if it were already half dead, and it took the form of sixteen "Shewings" or "Visions." These, she says, reached her in three ways, "by bodily sight, by word formed in mine understanding" (verbal messages which took form in her mind), "and by spiritual sight." But of this last, she adds, "I may never fully tell it."[64] It is impossible here to do justice to this little book, for it is one of the most important documents in the history of mysticism. There is no mention in it of any preliminary "purgative" stage, nor of any ultimate experience of ecstasy; it is simply--if one may so put it--a narrative of certain intimate talks with God, once granted, when, during a few hours of the writer's life, He explained various difficulties and made clear to her certain truths. The impression left of the nearness of God to the soul was so vivid and sustaining, that it is not possible to read the record of it, even now, across six hundred years, without feeling strangely stirred by the writer's certainty and joy. Her vision is of Love: Love is its meaning, and it was shown her for Love; she sees that God is Love and that God and man are one. "God is nearer to us than our own soul, for man is God, and God is in all." If we could only know ourselves, our trouble would be cleared away, but it is easier to come to the knowing of God than to know our own soul.[65] "Our passing life here that we have in our sense-soul knoweth not what our Self is," and the cause of our disease is that we rest in little things which can never satisfy us, for "our Soul may never have rest in things that are beneath itself." She actually saw God enfolding all things. "For as the body is clad in the cloth, and the flesh in the skin, and the bones in the flesh, and the heart in the whole, so are we, soul and body, clad in the Goodness of God, and enclosed." She further had sight of all things that are made, and her description of this "Shewing" is so beautiful and characteristic that it must be given in her own words. "In this same time our Lord shewed me a spiritual sight of His homely loving.... He shewed me a little thing, the quantity of an hazel-nut, in the palm of my hand; and it was as round as a ball. I looked thereupon with the eye of my understanding, and thought: _What may this be_? And it was answered generally thus: _It is all that is made_. I marvelled how it might last, for methought it might suddenly have fallen to naught for little[ness]. And I was answered in my understanding: _It lasteth, and ever shall [last] for that God loveth it_. And so All-thing hath the Being by the love of God." Later, she adds, "Well I wot that heaven and earth, and all that is made is great and large, fair and good; but the cause why it shewed so little to my sight was for that I saw it in the presence of Him that is the Maker of all things: for to a soul that seeth the Maker of all, all that is made seemeth full little." "In this Little Thing," she continues, "I saw three properties. The first is that God made it, the second is that God loveth it, the third, that God keepeth it. But what is to me verily the Maker, the Keeper, and the Lover--I cannot tell; for till I am Substantially oned to Him, I may never have full rest nor very bliss: that is to say, till I be so fastened to Him, that there is right nought that is made betwixt my God and me" (_Revelations_, pp. 10, 18). Julian's vision with regard to sin is of special interest. The problem of evil has never been stated in terser or more dramatic form. After this I saw God in a Point, that is to say, in mine understanding which sight I saw that He is in all things. I beheld and considered, seeing and knowing in sight, with a soft dread, and thought: _What is sin?_ (_Ibid_, p. 26). Here is the age-old difficulty. God, so the mystic sees, is "in the Mid-point of all thing," and yet, as Julian says, it is "dertain He doeth no sin." The solution given to her is that "sin is no deed," it "hath no part of being," and it can only be known by the pain it is cause of. Sin is a negation, a failure, an emptiness of love, but pain _is_ something it is a purification. Sin brings with it pain, "to me was shewed no harder hell than sin"; but we must go through the pain in order to learn, without it we could never have the bliss. As a wave draws back from the shore, in order to return again with fuller force; so sin, the lack of love, is permitted for a time, in order that an opening be made for an inrush of the Divine Love, fuller and more complete than would otherwise be possible. It is in some such way as this, dimly shadowed, that it was shown to Julian that sin and pain are necessary parts of the scheme of God. Hence God does not blame us for sin, for it brings its own blame or punishment with it, nay more, "sin shall be no shame to man, but worship," a bold saying, which none but a mystic would dare utter. When God seeth our sin, she says, and our despair in pain, "His love excuseth us, and of His great courtesy He doeth away all our blame, and beholdeth us with ruth and pity as children innocent and unloathful." It would be pleasant to say more of Julian, but perhaps her own words have sufficed to show that here we are dealing with one of the great mystics of the world. Childlike and yet rashly bold, deeply spiritual, yet intensely human, "a simple creature, unlettered," yet presenting solutions of problems which have racked humanity, she inherits the true paradoxical nature of the mystic, to which is added a beauty and delicacy of thought and expression all her own. There were many other mystical works written about this time in England. Of these the best known and the finest is _The Scale, or Ladder, of Perfection_, by Walter Hylton, the Augustinian, and head of a house of canons at Thurgarton, near Newark, who died in 1396. This is a practical and scientific treatise of great beauty on the spiritual life.[66] An interesting group of writings are the five little treatises, almost certainly by one author (_c._ 1350-1400), to be found in Harleian 674, and other MSS. Their names are _The Cloud of Unknowing, The Epistle of Prayer, The Epistle of Discretion, The Treatise of Discerning Spirits_, and _The Epistle of Privy Counsel_. We find here for the first time in English the influence and spirit of Dionysius, and it is probably to the same unknown writer we owe the first (very free) translation of the _Mystical Theology_ of Dionysius, _Deonise Hid Divinite_, which is bound up with these other manuscripts. These little tracts are written by a practical mystic, one who was able to describe with peculiar accuracy and vividness the physical and psychological sensations accompanying mystical initiation. _The Cloud of Unknowing_ is an application in simple English of the Dionysian teaching of concentration joined to the practice of contemplation taught by Richard of St Victor, and it describes very clearly the preliminary struggles and bewilderment of the soul. The _Epistle of Privy Counsel_ (still in MS.) is the most advanced in mystical teaching: the writer in it tries to explain very intimately the nature of "onehede with God," and to give instruction in simple and yet deeply subtle terms as to the means for attaining this. There is a mystical strain in other writings of this time, the most notable from the point of view of literature being in the fourteenth-century alliterative poem of _Piers the Plowman_.[67] This is mystical throughout in tone, more especially in the idea of the journey of the soul in search of Truth, only to find, after many dangers and disciplines and adventures, that-- If grace graunte the to go in this wise, Thow shalt see in thi-selve Treuthe sitte in thine herte In a cheyne of charyte as thow a childe were.[68] Moreover, the vision of Dowel, Dobet, and Dobest, bears a definite analogy to the three stages of the mystic's path, as will be seen if the description of the qualities of these three are examined, as they are given in B., Passus viii. 11. 78-102. * * * * * Crashaw, George Herbert, and Christopher Harvey all alike sound the personal note in their religious poems. All three writers describe the love of the soul for God in the terms of passionate human love: Crashaw with an ardour which has never been surpassed, Herbert with a homely intimacy quite peculiar to him, and Christopher Harvey with a point and epigrammatic setting which serve only to enhance the deep feeling of the thought. In many a lyric of flaming passion Crashaw expresses his love-longing for his God, and he describes in terms only matched by his spiritual descendant, Francis Thompson, the desire of God to win the human soul. Let not my Lord, the mighty lover Of soules, disdain that I discover The hidden art Of his high stratagem to win your heart, It was his heavnly art Kindly to crosse you In your mistaken love, That, at the next remove Thence he might tosse you And strike your troubled heart Home to himself.[69] The main feature of Herbert's poetry is the religious love lyric, the cry of the individual soul to God. This is the mystical quality in his verse, which is quieter and far less musical than Crashaw's, but which possesses at times a tender fragrance and freshness, as in the little poem _Love_. Christopher Harvey, the friend of Izaak Walton and the admirer of Herbert, has in his poems some lines which breathe almost as rapturous a passion of spiritual love as anything in Crashaw. Such is his epigram on the _Insatiableness of the Heart_. The whole round world is not enough to fill The heart's three corners; but it craveth still. Onely the Trinity, that made it, can Suffice the vast-triangled heart of man.[70] Or again, in a later epigram in the same poem (_The School of the Heart_), he puts the main teaching of Plotinus and of all mystics into four pregnant lines-- My busie stirring heart, that seekes the best, Can find no place on earth wherein to rest; For God alone, the Author of its blisse, Its only rest, its onely center is. But it is Crashaw who, of these three, shares in fullest measure the passion of the great Catholic mystics, and more especially of St Teresa, whom he seems almost to have worshipped. His hymn to her "name and honor" is one of the great English poems; it burns with spiritual flame, it soars with noble desire. Near the beginning of it, Crashaw has, in six simple lines, pictured the essential mystic attitude of action, not necessarily or consciously accompanied by either a philosophy or a theology. He is speaking of Teresa's childish attempt to run away and become a martyr among the Moors. She never undertook to know What death with love should have to doe; Nor has she e're yet understood Why to shew love, she should shed blood Yet though she cannot tell you why, She can LOVE, and she can DY. Spiritual love has never been more rapturously sung than in this marvellous hymn. Little wonder that it haunted Coleridge's memory, and that its deep emotion and rich melody stimulated his poet's ear and imagination to write _Christabel_.[71] Crashaw's influence also on Patmore, more especially on the _Sponsa Dei_, as well as later on Francis Thompson, is unmistakable. William Blake is one of the great mystics of the world; and he is by far the greatest and most profound who has spoken in English. Like Henry More and Wordsworth, he lived in a world of glory, of spirit and of vision, which, for him, was the only real world. At the age of four he saw God looking in at the window, and from that time until he welcomed the approach of death by singing songs of joy which made the rafters ring, he lived in an atmosphere of divine illumination. The material facts of his career were simple and uneventful. He was an engraver by profession, poet and painter by choice, mystic and seer by nature. From the outer point of view his life was a failure. He was always crippled by poverty, almost wholly unappreciated in the world of art and letters of his day, consistently misunderstood even by his best friends, and pronounced mad by those who most admired his work. Yet, like all true mystics, he was radiantly happy and serene; rich in the midst of poverty. For he lived and worked in a world, and amongst a company, little known of ordinary men:-- With a blue sky spread over with wings, And a mild Sun that mounts & sings; With trees & fields full of Fairy elves, And little devils who fight for themselves-- * * * * * With Angels planted in Hawthorn bowers, And God Himself in the passing hours.[72] It is not surprising that he said, in speaking of Lawrence and other popular artists who sometimes patronisingly visited him, "They pity me, but 'tis they are the just objects of pity, I possess my visions and peace. They have bartered their birthright for a mess of pottage." The strength of his illumination at times intoxicated him with joy, as he writes to Hayley (October 23, 1804) after a recurrence of vision which had lapsed for some years, "Dear Sir, excuse my enthusiasm or rather madness, for I am really drunk with intellectual vision whenever I take a pencil or graver into my hand." This is the "divine madness" of which Plato speaks, the "inebriation of Reality," the ecstasy which makes the poet "drunk with life."[73] In common with other mystics, with Boehme, St Teresa, and Madame Guyon, Blake claimed that much of his work was written under direct inspiration, that it was an automatic composition, which, whatever its source, did not come from the writer's normal consciousness. In speaking of the prophetic book _Milton_, he says-- I have written this poem from immediate dictation, twelve or sometimes twenty or thirty lines at a time, without pre-meditation and even against my will. The time it has taken in writing was thus rendered non-existent, and an immense poem exists which seems to be the labour of a long life, all produced without labour or study. Whatever may be their source, all Blake's writings are deeply mystical in thought, and symbolic in expression, and this is true of the (apparently) simple little _Songs of Innocence_, no less than of the great, and only partially intelligible, prophetic books. To deal at all adequately with these works, with the thought and teaching they contain, and the method of clothing it, would necessitate a volume, if not a small library, devoted to that purpose. It is possible, however, to indicate certain fundamental beliefs and assertions which lie at the base of Blake's thought and of his very unusual attitude towards life, and which, once grasped, make clear a large part of his work. It must be remembered that these assertions were for him not matters of belief, but of passionate knowledge--he was as sure of them as of his own existence. Blake founds his great myth on his perception of unity at the heart of things expressing itself in endless diversity. "God is in the lowest effects as [in] the highest causes. He is become a worm that he may nourish the weak.... Everything on earth is the word of God, and in its essence is God."[74] In the _Everlasting Gospel_, Blake emphasises, with more than his usual amount of paradox, the inherent divinity of man. God, speaking to Christ as the highest type of humanity, says-- If thou humblest thyself, thou humblest me. Thou also dwellst in Eternity. Thou art a man: God is no more: Thy own humanity learn to adore, For that is my Spirit of Life.[75] Similarly the union of man with God is the whole gist of that apparently most chaotic of the prophetic books, _Jerusalem_. The proof of the divinity of man, it would seem, lies in the fact that he desires God, for he cannot desire what he has not seen. This view is summed up in the eight sentences which form the little book (about 2 inches long by 1½ inches broad) in the British Museum, _Of Natural Religion_. Here are four of them. Man's perceptions are not bounded by organs of perception, he perceives more than sense (tho' ever so acute) can discover. None could have other than natural or organic thoughts if he had none but organic perceptions. Man's desires are limited by his perceptions, none can desire what he has not perceiv'd. The desires and perceptions of man untaught by anything but organs of sense, must be limited to objects of sense. The solution of the difficulty is given in large script on the last of the tiny pages of the volume: Therefore God becomes as we are, that we may be as he is. According to Blake, the universe as we know it, is the result of the fall of the one life from unity into division. This fall has come about through man seeking separation, and taking the part for the whole. (See Jacob Boehme's view, pp. 94, 95 above, which is identical with that of Blake.) "Nature," therefore, or the present form of mental existence, is the result of a contraction of consciousness or "selfhood," a tendency for everything to shrink and contract about its own centre. This condition or "state" Blake personifies as "Urizen" (=Reason) a great dramatic figure who stalks through the prophetic books, proclaiming himself "God from Eternity to Eternity," taking up now one characteristic and now another, but ever of the nature of materialism, opaqueness, contraction. In the case of man, the result of this contraction is to close him up into separate "selfhoods," so that the inlets of communication with the universal spirit have become gradually stopped up; until now, for most men, only the five senses (one of the least of the many possible channels of communication) are available for the uses of the natural world. Blake usually refers to this occurrence as the "flood ": that is, the rush of general belief in the five senses that overwhelmed or submerged the knowledge of all other channels of wisdom, except such arts as were saved, which are symbolised under the names of Noah (=Imagination) and his sons. He gives a fine account of this in _Europe_ (p. 8), beginning-- Plac'd in the order of the stars, when the five senses whelm'd In deluge o'er the earth-born man, then turn'd the fluxile eyes Into two stationary orbs, concentrating all things. The ever-varying spiral ascents to the heavens of heavens Were bended downward, and the nostrils' golden gates shut, Turn'd outward, barr'd, and petrify'd against the infinite. The only way out of this self-made prison is through the Human Imagination, which is thus the Saviour of the world. By "Imagination" Blake would seem to mean all that we include under sympathy, insight, idealism, and vision, as opposed to self-centredness, logical argument, materialism and concrete, scientific fact. For him, Imagination is the one great reality, in it alone he sees a human faculty that touches both nature and spirit, thus uniting them in one. The language of Imagination is Art, for it speaks through symbols so that men shut up in their selfhoods are thus ever reminded that nature herself is a symbol. When this is once fully realised, we are freed from the delusion imposed upon us from without by the seemingly fixed reality of external things. If we consider all material things as symbols, their suggestiveness, and consequently their reality, is continually expanding. "I rest not from my great task," he cries-- To open the eternal worlds, to open the immortal eyes Of man inwards into the worlds of thought, into eternity, Ever expanding in the bosom of God, the human imagination. In Blake's view the qualities most sorely needed by men are not restraint and discipline, obedience or a sense of duty, but love and understanding. "Men are admitted into heaven, not because they have curbed and governed their passions, or have no passions, but because they have cultivated their understandings." To understand is three parts of love, and it is only through Imagination that we _can_ understand. It is the lack of imagination that is at the root of all the cruelties and all the selfishness in the world. Until we can feel for all that lives, Blake says in effect, until we can respond to the joys and sorrows of others as quickly as to our own, our imagination is dull and incomplete: Each outcry of the hunted Hare A fibre from the Brain does tear A Skylark wounded in the wing A Cherubim does cease to sing. _Auguries of Innocence._ When we feel like this, we will go forth to help, not because we are prompted by duty or religion or reason, but because the cry of the weak and ignorant so wrings our heart that we cannot leave it unanswered. Cultivate love and understanding then, and all else will follow. Energy, desire, intellect; dangerous and deadly forces in the selfish and impure, become in the pure in heart the greatest forces for good. What mattered to Blake, and the only thing that mattered, was the purity of his soul, the direction of his will or desire, as Law and Boehme would have put it. Once a man's desire is in the right direction, the more he gratifies it the better; Abstinence sows sand all over The ruddy limbs & flaming hair, But Desire Gratified Plants fruits of life & beauty there.[76] Only an extraordinarily pure nature or a singularly abandoned one could confidently proclaim such a dangerous doctrine. But in Blake's creed, as Swinburne has said, "the one thing unclean is the belief in uncleanness." It is easy to see that this faculty which Blake calls "Imagination" entails of itself naturally and inevitably the Christian doctrine of self-sacrifice. It is in _Milton_ that Blake most fully develops his great dogma of the eternity of sacrifice. "One must die for another through all eternity"; only thus can the bonds of "selfhood" be broken. Milton, just before his renunciation, cries-- I will go down to self-annihilation and eternal death Lest the Last Judgment come and find me unannihilate, And I be seiz'd and giv'n into the hands of my own Selfhood. For, according to Blake, personal love or selfishness is the one sin which defies redemption. This whole passage in _Milton_ (Book i., pp. 12, 13) well repays study, for one feels it to be alive with meaning, holding symbol within symbol. Blake's symbolism, and his fourfold view of nature and of man, is a fascinating if sometimes a despairing study. Blake has explained very carefully the way in which the visionary faculty worked in him:-- What to others a trifle appears Fills me full of smiles or tears; For double the vision my Eyes do see, And a double vision is always with me. With my inward Eye, 'tis an old Man grey, With my outward, a Thistle across my way. * * * * * Now I a fourfold vision see, And a fourfold vision is given to me; 'Tis fourfold in my supreme delight, And threefold in soft Beulah's night, And twofold Always. May God us keep From Single vision & Newton's sleep![77] He says twofold always, for everything was of value to Blake as a symbol, as a medium for expressing a still greater thing behind it. It was in this way that he looked at the human body, physical beauty, splendour of colour, insects, animate, states, and emotions, male and female, contraction and expansion, division and reunion, heaven and hell. When his imagination was at its strongest, his vision was fourfold, corresponding to the fourfold division of the Divine Nature, Father, Son, Spirit, and the fourth Principle, which may be described as the Imagination of God, without which manifestation would not be possible.[78] These principles, when condensed and limited so as to be seen by us, may take the form of Reason, Emotion, Energy and Sensation, or, to give them Boehme's names, Contraction, Expansion, Rotation, and Vegetative life. These, in turn, are associated with the four states of humanity or "atmospheres," the four elements, the four points of the compass, the four senses (taste and touch counting as one), and so on. Blake seemed, as it were, to hold his vision in his mind in solution, and to be able to condense it into gaseous, liquid, or solid elements at whatever point he willed. Thus we feel that the prophetic books contain meaning within meaning, bearing interpretation from many points of view; and to arrive at their full value, we should need to be able--as Blake was--to apprehend all simultaneously,[79] instead of being forced laboriously to trace them out one by one in succession. It is this very faculty of "fourfold vision" which gives to these books their ever-changing atmosphere of suggestion, elusive and magical as the clouds and colours in a sunset sky, which escape our grasp in the very effort to study them. Hence, for the majority even of imaginative people, who possess at the utmost "double vision," they are difficult and often wearisome to read. They are so, because the inner, living, vibrating ray or thread of connection which evokes these forms and beings in Blake's imagination, is to the ordinary man invisible and unfelt; so that the quick leap of the seer's mind from figure to figure, and from picture to picture, seems irrational and obscure. To this difficulty on the side of the reader, there must in fairness be added certain undeniable limitations on the part of the seer. These are principally owing to lack of training, and possibly to lack of patience, sometimes also it would seem to defective vision. So that his symbols are at times no longer true and living, but artificial and confused. Blake has visions, though clouded and imperfect, of the clashing of systems, the birth and death of universes, the origin and meaning of good and evil, the function and secret correspondences of spirits, of states, of emotions, of passions, and of senses, as well as of all forms in earth and sky and sea. This, and much more, he attempts to clothe in concrete forms or symbols, and if he fails at times to be explicit, it is conceivable that the fault may lie as much with our density as with his obscurity. Indeed, when we speak of Blake's obscurity, we are uncomfortably reminded of Crabb Robinson's naive remark when recording Blake's admiration for Wordsworth's _Immortality Ode_: "The parts ... which Blake most enjoyed were the most obscure--at all events, those which I least like and comprehend." Blake's view of good and evil is the characteristically mystical one, in his case much emphasised. The really profound mystical thinker has no fear of evil, for he cannot exclude it from the one divine origin, else the world would be no longer a unity but a duality. This difficulty of "good" and "evil," the crux of all philosophy, has been approached by mystical thinkers in various ways (such as that evil is illusion, which seems to be Browning's view), but the boldest of them, and notably Blake and Boehme, have attacked the problem directly, and carrying mystical thought to its logical conclusion, have unhesitatingly asserted that God is the origin of Good and Evil alike, that God and the devil, in short, are but two sides of the same Force. We have seen how this is worked out by Boehme, and that the central point of his philosophy is that all manifestation necessitates opposition. In like manner, Blake's statement, "Without Contraries is no progression," is, in truth, the keynote to all his vision and mythology. Attraction and Repulsion, Benson and Energy, Love and Hate, are necessary to Human existence. From these contraries spring what the religious call Good and Evil. Good is the passive that obeys Reason. Evil is the active springing from Energy. Good is Heaven. Evil is Hell. With these startling remarks Blake opens what is the most intelligible and concise of all the prophetic books, _The Marriage of Heaven and Hell_. Swinburne calls it the greatest of Blake's books, and ranks it as about the greatest work "produced by the eighteenth century in the line of high poetry and spiritual speculation." We may think Swinburne's praise excessive, but at any rate it is well worth reading (_Essay on Blake_, 1906 edn., pp. 226-252). Certainly, if one work had to be selected as representative of Blake, as containing his most characteristic doctrines clothed in striking form, this is the book to be chosen. Place a copy of _The Marriage of Heaven and Hell_ in the hands of any would-be Blake student (an original or facsimile copy, needless to say, containing Blake's exquisite designs, else the book is shorn of half its force and beauty); let him ponder it closely, and he will either be repelled and shocked, in which case he had better read no more Blake, or he will be strangely stirred and thrilled, he will be touched with a spark of the fire from Blake's spirit which quickens its words as the leaping tongues of flame illuminate its pages. The kernel of the book, and indeed of all Blake's message, is contained in the following statements on p. 4, headed "The Voice of the Devil." All Bibles or sacred codes have been the causes of the following Errors:-- 1. That man has two real existing principles, viz. a Body and a Soul. 2. That Energy, called Evil, is alone from the Body; and that reason, called Good, is alone from the Soul. 3. That God will torment Man in Eternity for following his Energies. But the following Contraries to these are True:-- 1. Man has no Body distinct from his Soul, for that called Body is a portion of Soul discerned by the five Senses, the chief inlets of Soul in this age. 2. Energy is the only life and is from the Body, and Reason is the bound or outward circumference of Energy. 3. Energy is Eternal Delight. Blake goes on to write down some of the Proverbs which he collected while walking among the fires of hell. These "Proverbs of Hell" fill four pages of the book, and they are among the most wonderful things Blake has written. Finished in expression, often little jewels of pure poetry, they are afire with thought and meaning, and inexhaustible in suggestion. Taken all together they express in epigrammatic form every important doctrine of Blake's. Some of them, to be fully understood, must be read in the light of his other work. Thus, "The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom," or, "If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise," are expressions of the idea constantly recurrent with Blake that evil must be embodied or experienced before it can be rejected.[80] But the greater number of them are quite clear and present no difficulty, as for instance the following:-- A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees. He whose face gives no light shall never become a star. No bird soars too high, if he soars with his own wings. What is now proved was once only imagined. As the air to a bird or the sea to a fish, so is contempt to the contemptible. Exuberance is Beauty. Everything possible to be believed is an image of truth. There are two tendencies of Blake's mind, both mystical--that is, rooted in unity--the understanding of which helps, on the one hand, to clear much in his writing that seems strange and difficult; and, on the other, reveals a deep meaning in remarks apparently simple to the point of silliness. These are his view of the solidarity of mental and spiritual as compared with physical things, and his habit of concentrating a universal truth into some one small fact. For Blake, mental and spiritual things are the only real things. Thought is more real than action, and spiritual attitude is more real than thought. It is the most real thing about us, and it is the only thing that is of any importance. The difference between Blake's attitude and that of the ordinary practical man of the world is summed up in his characteristic pencil comment in his copy of Bacon's _Essays_ on the remark, "Good thoughts are little better than good dreams," in the Essay on Virtue. Blake writes beside this, "Thought _is_ act." This view is well exemplified in the Job illustrations, where Blake makes quite clear his view of the worthlessness, spiritually, of Job's gift to the beggar of part of his last meal, because of the consciously meritorious attitude of Job's mind.[81] If this attitude be remembered it explains a good many of the most startling and revolutionary views of Blake. For instance, in the poems called "Holy Thursday" in the _Songs of Innocence and Experience_, he paints first of all with infinite grace and tenderness the picture of the orphan charity children going to church, as it would appear to the ordinary onlooker. The hum of multitudes was there but multitudes of lambs, Thousands of little boys & girls raising their innocent hands. * * * * * Beneath them sit the aged men, wise guardians of the poor; Then cherish pity, lest you drive an angel from your door. But in short, scathing words and significant change of metre he reverses the picture to show his view of it, when, in the companion song of "Experience," he asks-- Is this a holy thing to see In a rich and fruitful land, Babes reduc'd to misery, Fed with cold and usurous hand? It is owing to a false idea that we can bear to see this so-called "charity" at all, for we-- reduce the man to want a gift, and then give with pomp. The real evil is that we can suffer the need of the crust of bread to exist. This is a view which is gradually beginning to be realised to-day. Blake is peculiarly daring and original in his use of the mystical method of crystallising a great truth in an apparently trivial fact. We have seen some of these truths in the Proverbs, and the _Auguries of Innocence_ is nothing else but a series of such facts, a storehouse of deepest wisdom. Some of these have the simplicity of nursery rhymes, they combine the direct freshness of the language of the child with the profound truth of the inspired seer. If the Sun & Moon should Doubt They'd immediately Go Out. It would scarcely be possible to sum up more completely than does this artless couplet the faith--not only of Blake--but of every mystic. Simple, ardent, and living, their faith is in truth their life, and the veriest shadow of doubt would be to them a condition of death. They are the only people in the world who are the "possessors of certainty." They have seen, they have felt: what need they of further proof? Logic, philosophy, theology, all alike are but empty sounds and barren forms to those who know. To Francis Thompson the presence of the Divine in all things is the one overwhelming fact. As a result of this sense, the consciousness that everything is closely related, closely linked together, is ever present in his poetry. It is the vision of this truth, he believes, which will be the revelation of a new heaven and a new earth. When to the new eyes of thee All things by immortal power, Near or far, Hiddenly To each other linkèd are, That thou canst not stir a flower Without troubling of a star. _The Mistress of Vision._ His "Divine intoxication," his certainty of the presence of God, is the more remarkable when it is realised through what depths of want and degradation and suffering Thompson passed, and what his life was for many years. His father, a north-country doctor, wished him to follow the profession of medicine, but the son could not bear it, and so he ran away from home with--for sole wealth--a Blake in one pocket and an Aeschylus in the other. In his struggle for life in London, fragile in body and sensitive in soul, he sank lower and lower, from selling boots to errand-boy, and finally for five years living as a vagabond without home or shelter, picking up a few pence by day, selling matches or fetching cabs, and sleeping under the archways of Covent Garden Market at night. At last, in the very depth of his misery, he was sought out and rescued by the editor of the paper to whom he had sent _Health and Holiness_ and some of his poems. This saved him, his work brought him good friends, and he was enabled to write his wonderful poetry. These terrible experiences, which would have quenched the faith of the ordinary man and led him to despair, with the poet mystic sought expression in those six triumphant verses found among his papers when he died,[82] verses charged with mystic passion, which assert the solid reality of spiritual things, and tell us that to the outcast and the wanderer every place was holy ground, Charing Cross was the gate of heaven, and that he beheld-- Christ walking on the water Not of Gennesareth, but Thames! Through all that he writes there breathes the spirit of mystic devotion and aspiration, but the following characteristics and beliefs may be specially noted. (1) His reverence of childhood. He sees in the child something of the divinity which Vaughan and Wordsworth saw, and his poems to children, such as _Daisy_ and _The Poppy_, have a special quality of passionate worship all their own. (2) His attitude towards the beauty of woman. This is entirely mystical, and is akin to the view of Plato and of Donne. He shares their belief that love is but the power to catch sight of the beauty of the soul, which shines through and actually moulds the beauty of face and body. How should I gauge what beauty is her dole, Who cannot see her countenance for her soul, As birds see not the casement for the sky? And, as 'tis check they prove its presence by, I know not of her body till I find My flight debarred the heaven of her mind. _Her Portrait._ (3) His attraction towards the continual change and renewal of nature, not only of the movement of life to death, but of death to life. He broods over the changing cycles of the year, winter and spring, decay and re-birth, and he sees in them a profound and far-reaching symbolism. This is magnificently expressed in the _Ode to the Setting Sun_, where he paints a picture, unmatched in English verse, of the sun sinking to rest amid the splendours gathered round him in his fall. The poem is charged with mystic symbolism, the main thought of which is that human life, ending apparently in death, is but the prelude of preparation for a more glorious day of spiritual re-birth. For birth hath in itself the germ of death, But death hath in itself the germ of birth. It is the falling acorn buds the tree, The falling rain that bears the greenery, The fern-plants moulder when the ferns arise. For there is nothing lives but something dies, And there is nothing dies but something lives. But Francis Thompson's most entirely mystical utterance is the famous Ode--_The Hound of Heaven_--where he pictures with a terrible vividness and in phrase of haunting music the old mystic idea of the Love chase.[83] It is the idea expressed by Plotinus when he says, "God ... is present with all things, though they are ignorant that He is so. For they fly from Him, or rather from themselves. They are unable, therefore, to apprehend that from which they fly" (_Ennead_, vi. § 7). We see the spirit of man fleeing in terror "down the nights and down the days" before the persistent footsteps of his "tremendous Lover," until, beaten and exhausted, he finds himself at the end of the chase face to face with God, and he realises there is for him no escape and no hiding-place save in the arms of God Himself. The voices of the English poets and writers form but one note in a mighty chorus of witnesses whose testimony it is impossible for any thoughtful person to ignore. Undoubtedly, in the case of some mystics, there has been great disturbance both of the psychic and physical nature, but on this account to disqualify the statements of Plotinus, St Augustine, Eckhart, Catherine of Siena, Catherine of Genoa, Blake, and Wordsworth, would seem analogous to Macaulay's view that "perhaps no person can be a poet, or can even enjoy poetry without a certain unsoundness of mind." Our opinion about this must depend on what we mean by "soundness of mind." To some it may appear possible that the mystics and poets are as sound as their critics. In any case, the unprejudiced person to-day would seem driven to the conclusion that these people, who are, many of them, exceptionally great, intellectually and morally, are telling us of a genuine experience which has transformed life for them. What, then, is the meaning of this experience? What explanation can we give of this puzzling and persistent factor in human life and history? These are not easy questions to answer, and only a bare hint of lines of solution dare be offered. It is of interest to note that the last word in science and philosophy tends to reinforce and even to explain the position of the mystic. The latest of European philosophers, M. Bergson, builds up on a mystical basis the whole of his method of thought, that is, on his perception of the simple fact that true duration, the real time-flow, is known to us by a state of feeling which he calls intuition, and not by an intellectual act. He says something like this. We find as a matter of practice that certain problems when presented to the intellect are difficult and even impossible to solve, whereas when presented to our experience of life, their solution is so obvious that they cease to be problems. Thus, the unaided intellect might be puzzled to say how sounds can grow more alike by continuing to grow more different. Yet a child can answer the question by sounding an octave on the piano. But this solution is reached by having sensible knowledge of the reality and not by logical argument. Bergson's view, therefore, is that the intellect has been evolved for practical purposes, to deal in a certain way with material things by cutting up into little bits what is an undivided flow of movement, and by looking at these little bits side by side. This, though necessary for practical life, is utterly misleading when we assume that the "points" thus singled out by the intellect represent the "thickness" of reality. Reality is fluidity, and we cannot dip up its substance with the intellect which deals with surfaces, even as we cannot dip up water with a net, however finely meshed. Reality is movement, and movement is the one thing we are unable intellectually to realise. In order to grasp reality we must use the faculty of contact or immediate feeling, or, as Bergson calls it, intuition. Intuition is a different order of knowledge, it is moulded on the very form of life, and it enables us to enter into life, to be one with it, to live it. It is "a direction of movement: and, although capable of infinite development, is simplicity itself." This is the mystic art, which in its early stages is a direction of movement, an alteration of the quality and intensity of the self. So Bergson, making use of and applying the whole range of modern psychology and biology, tells us that we must develop intuition as a philosophical instrument if we are to gain any knowledge of things in themselves; and he is thus re-echoing in modern terms what was long ago stated by Plotinus when he said-- Knowledge has three degrees--opinion, science, illumination. The means or instrument of the first is sense, of the second dialectic, of the third intuition. To the last I subordinate reason. It is absolute knowledge founded on the identity of the mind knowing with the object known. (_Letter to Flaccus._) We have discovered that sense knowledge, however acute, has to be corrected by the intellect, which tells us that the sun does not go round the earth, although it appears to our observation to do this. So possibly, in turn, the intellect, however acute, may have to be corrected by intuition, and the impotence of brain knowledge in dealing with the problem of life is leading slowly to the perception that to _know_ in its true sense is not an intellectual process at all. Further, in Bergson's theory of the nature of mind, and in his theory of rhythm, he seems to indicate the lines of a technical explanation of some part of the mystic experience.[84] The soul, or the total psychic and mental life of man, he says, is far greater than the little bit of consciousness of which we are normally aware, and the brain acts as a sheath or screen, which allows only a point of this mental life to touch reality. The brain or the cerebral life is therefore to the whole mental life as the point of a knife is to the knife itself. It limits the field of vision, it cuts in one direction only, it puts blinkers on the mind, forcing it to concentrate on a limited range of facts. It is conceivable that what happens with the mystics is that their mental blinkers become slightly shifted, and they are thus able to respond to another aspect or order of reality. So that they are swept by emotions and invaded by harmonies from which the average man is screened. Life having for them somewhat changed in direction, the brain is forced to learn new movements, to cut along fresh channels, and thus to receive sensations which do not directly minister to the needs of physical life. "Our knowledge of things," says Bergson, "derives its form from our bodily functions and lower needs. By unmaking that which these needs have made, we may restore to Intuition its original purity, and so recover contact with the Real." It is possibly this very unmaking and remaking, this readjustment which we see at work in the lives of the great mystics, and which naturally causes great psychic and even physical disturbances. Bergson's theory of rhythm is peculiarly illuminating in this connection. The intellect, he says, is like a cinematograph. Moving at a certain pace, it takes certain views, snapshots of the continuous flux of reality, of which it is itself a moving part. The special views that it picks out and registers, depend entirely upon the relation between its movement and the rhythm or movement of other aspects of the flux. It is obvious that there are a variety of rhythms or tensions of duration. For example, in what is the fraction of a second of our own duration, hundreds of millions of vibrations, which it would need thousands of our years to count, are taking place successively in matter, and giving us the sensation of light. It is therefore clear that there is a great difference between the rhythm of our own duration and the incredibly rapid rhythms of physical matter. If an alteration took place in our rhythm, these same physical movements would make us conscious--not of light--but of some other thing quite unknown. "Would not the whole of history," asks Bergson, "be contained in a very short time for a consciousness at a higher degree of tension than our own?" A momentary quickening of rhythm might thus account for the sensation of timelessness, of the "participation in Eternity" so often described by the mystic as a part of the Vision of God. Again, Bergson points out that there is nothing but movement; that the idea of _rest_ is an illusion, produced when we and the thing we are looking at are moving at the same speed, as when two railway trains run side by side in the same direction. Here, once more, may not the mystic sensation of "stillness," of being at one with the central Life, be owing to some change having taken place in the spiritual rhythm of the seer, approximating it to that of the Reality which he is thus enabled to perceive, so that the fretful movement of the individual mind becomes merged in the wider flow of the whole, and both seem to be at rest? Thus, the most recent philosophy throws light on the most ancient mystic teaching, and both point to the conclusion that our normal waking consciousness is but one special type of many other forms of consciousness, by which we are surrounded, but from which we are, most of us, physically and psychically screened. We know that the consciousness of the individual self was a late development in the race; it is at least possible that the attainment of the consciousness that this individual self forms part of a larger Whole, may prove to be yet another step forward in the evolution of the human spirit. If this be so, the mystics would appear to be those who, living with an intensity greater than their fellows, are thus enabled to catch the first gleams of the realisation of a greater self. In any case, it would seem certain, judging from their testimony, that it is possible, by applying a certain stimulus, to gain knowledge of another order of consciousness of a rare and vivifying quality. Those who have attained to this knowledge all record that it must be felt to be understood, but that, so far as words are of use, it is ever of the nature of a reconciliation; of discord blending into harmony, of difference merging into unity. Bibliography NOTE.--The literature on mysticism is growing very large, and the following is only a small selection from the general works on it. In the case of individual writers, references are given only where there might be difficulty about editions. Thus no references are given to the works of Burke, Carlyle, Wordsworth, Shelley, Tennyson, Browning, etc. General Underhill, Evelyn. _Mysticism_, Methuen, 1911. (See the valuable Bibliography of mystical works, pp. 563-585.) _The Mystic Way_, Dent, 1913. Jones, Rufus M. _Studies in Mystical Religion_, Macmillan, 1909. James, William. _The Varieties of Religious Experience_, Longmans Green, 1905. Inge, W. R. _Christian Mysticism_, Methuen, 1899. _Studies of English Mystics_, Murray, 1905. _Light, Life and Love._ Selections from the German mystics. With Introduction. Methuen, 1904. Hügel, Baron F. von. _The Mystical Element in Religion_, 2 vols.. Dent, 1909. Delacroix, H. _Études d'Histoiré et de Psychologie du Mysticisme_, Paris, 1908. Récéjac, E. _Essai sur les fondements de la Connaissance Mystique_, Paris, 1897 (translated by S. C. Upton, London, 1899). Gregory, Eleanor C. _A Little Book of Heavenly Wisdom._ Selections from some English prose mystics, with Introduction. Methuen, 1902. Foreign Influences Plato (_c._ 427-347 B.C.). _Opera_, ed. J. Burnet, 5 vols. (Bibliotheca Scriptorum Classicorum Oxoniensis), 1899-1907. Plato (Eng. trans.) _The Dialogues_, translated by B. Jowett, 5 vols., Oxford, 3rd ed., 1892. Plotinus (A.D. 204-270). _Plotini Ennéades, præsmisso Porphyrii de vita Plotini deque ordine librorum ejus libello_, edidit R. Volkmann, 2 vols., Leipzig, 1883-84. (Eng. trans.) There is no complete English translation of the _Enneads_, only _Select Works_, translated by T. Taylor, 1817; re-issued, George Bell, 1895. (French trans.) _Les Ennéades de Plotin_, translated by M.-N. Bouillet, 3 vols., Paris, 1857-61. (This is complete and very good, but out of print.) The best critical account of Plotinus is in _The Evolution of Theology in the Greek Philosophers_, by Edward Caird, 2 vols., Maclehose, 1904. Dionysius the Areopagite. _Works_, translated Parker, 1897. Jacob Boehme (1575-1624). _Works_ (incomplete), 4 vols., 1764-81. Reprint of complete works in progress, ed. C. J. Barker, published J. Watkins. (See Bibliography to chap. xii. of _Cambridge History of English Literature_, vol. ix.) Emmanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772). _Works_, published by the Swedenborg Society, London. Selections, _A Compendium of the Theological Writings_, ed. Warren, 1901. English Writers Thomas de Hales (fl. 1250). _A Luve Ron_, (printed in) Morris's Old English Miscellany (E.E.T.S.), 1872. Richard Rolle (1290?-1349). _Richard Rolle and his Followers_, ed. Horstmann, 2 vols., Sonnenschein, 1895-6. _The Fire of Love, and the Mending of Life_, ed. R. Harvey (E.E.T.S.), 1896. Anonymous (_c._ 1350-1400). _The Cloud of Unknowing_, ed. Evelyn Underhill, J. Watkins, 1912. All printed, with other early English mystical treatises, in _The Cell of Self-Knowledge_, ed. E. G. Gardner, Chatto & Windus, 1910. _The Epistle of Prayer_, _The Epistle of Discretion_, _The Treatise of Discerning Spirits_ Anonymous. _The Epistle of Privy Counsel_, in MS., British Museum, Harleian, 674 and 2473. (William Langland, or other authors.? _c._ 1362-1399). _The Vision of William Concerning Piers the Plowman_, ed. Skeat, 2 vols., Oxford, 1886. Jusserand, J. J. _Piers Plowman: a Contribution to the History of English Mysticism._ Translated from the French by M. E. R., 1894. Walter Hylton (d. 1396). _The Scale of Perfection_, ed. Guy, 1869; ed. Dalgairns, 1870. _The Song of Angels_, printed by Gardner, in _The Cell of Self-Knowledge_, 1910. Julian of Norwich (1342-1413?). _Revelations of Divine Love_, ed. Warrack, Methuen, 1912. Richard Crashaw (1613? 1649). _Poems_, ed. A. R. Waller, Cambridge 1904. John Donne (1573-1631). _Poetical Works_, ed. Grierson, 2 vols., Oxford, 1912. George Herbert (1593-1633). _Poems_, ed. Grosart, 1891; Oxford edition, 1907. Christopher Harvey (1597-1663). _Poems_, ed. Grosart, 1874. Henry More (1614-1687). _Complete Poems_, ed. Grosart, 1878. _Life_, by R. Ward, 1710, reprinted Theosophical Society, ed. Howard, 1911. Henry Vaughan (1622-1695). _Poems_, ed. Chambers, 2 vols., 1896. Thomas Traherne (_c._ 1636-1674). _Poetical Works_, ed. Dobell, 1903. _Centuries of Meditations_, ed. Dobell, 1908. _Poems of Felicity_, ed. Bell, Oxford, 1910. William Law (1686-1761). _Works_, 9 vols., 1753-76, reprinted privately by G. Moreton, 1892-3. _The Liberal and Mystical Writings of William Law_, ed. W Scott Palmer, 1908. (See Bibliography to chap xii. of _Cambridge History of English Literature_, vol. ix., 1912.) William Blake (1757-1827). _Works_, ed. Ellis and Yeats, 3 vols., Quaritch, 1893. William Blake. _Poetical Works_ (including Prophetic Books), ed, Ellis, 2 vols., Chatto and Windus, 1906. _Poetical Works_ (exclusive of Prophetic Books), ed. Sampson, Oxford, 1905. (The best text of the poems.) _Life_, Gilchrist, 2 vols., Macmillan, 1880. _William Blake_, by A. C. Swinburne, Chatto and Windus (new ed.), 1906. _William Blake, Mysticisme et Poésie_, par P. Berger, Paris, 1907. S. T. Coleridge (1772-1834). _Complete Poetical Works_, ed. E. H. Coleridge, 2 vols., Oxford, 1912. _Biographia Literaria_, ed. J. Shawcross, 2 vols., Oxford, 1907. Emily Brontë (1818-1848). _Complete Poems_, ed. Shorter, Hodder and Stoughton, 1910. _The Three Brontës_, by May Sinclair, Hutchinson, 1912. Coventry Patmore (1823-1896). _Poems_, G. Bell, 1906. _The Rod, the Root, and the Flower_, 1895. _Memoirs and Correspondence of C. Patmore_, by B. Champneys, 1900. Richard Jefferies (1848-1887). _The Story of my Heart_, 1883, (reprinted) Longmans, 1907. Francis Thompson (1859-1907). _New Poems_, Burns and Oates, 1897. _Selected Poems_, 1908. _Sister Songs_, 1908. Index Aeschylus Alchemists Allen, H. E., _Authorship of the Prick of Conscience_ Ammonias Sakkas _Ancren Riwle_ Bacon, Francis, _Essays_ Beauty; moon the symbol of; Plato on; truth and; worship of Behmenists. (_See_ also under Boehme) Bergson, mystical basis of his thought; study of; theory of rhythm _Bhagavad-Gîtâ_ Blake, William; _Auguries of Innocence_; _Europe_; _Everlasting Gospel_; Illustrations to _Job_; imagination of; in-debtedness to Boehme; greatness of; _Marriage of Heaven and Hell_; _Milton_; _Of Natural Religion_; _Songs of Innocence_; study of; view of Nature; _Vision of Last Judgment_ Boehme, Jacob; Coleridge on; influence of; Law's use of; study of; view of evil Bourignon, Madame Bradley, A. C., _Shakespearian Tragedy_ Brontë, Charlotte ----- Emily; _Last Lines_; _Philosopher_; _Prisoner_; study of; _Visionary_ Browne, Sir Thomas Browning, Elizabeth Barrett; _Aurora Leigh_ Browning, Robert; _Asolando_; _Bean-stripe_; his central teaching; _Death in the Desert_; his intellectuality; his love-mysticism; _Paracelsus_; on pre-existence; _Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau_ ; _Rabbi ben Ezra_; on religion and science; resemblance to Eckhart; _Ring and the Book_; _Statue and Bust_; study of; his view of evil Bruno, Giordano Bunyan, John Burke, Edmund; _Present Discontents_; study of Byron Cambridge Platonists Carlyle, Thomas influence of Emerson on; _Heroes_; nature of his mysticism; _Sartor Resartus_; study of Catherine of Genoa Chaucer Christ, use of symbolism Christianity and mysticism _Cloud of Unknowing_ Coleridge, S. T. Crashaw's influence on; _Dejection_; _Destiny of Nations_; _Frost at Midnight_; Kant's influence; _Lay Sermon_; _Letter to Tulk_; Neo-platonic influence; _Religious Musings_; study of; Swedenborg's influence Crashaw, Richard influence of; _St Teresa_ Descartes _Deonise Hid Divinite_ Dionysius the Areopagite, _Mystical Theology_ Donne, John _Ecstasy_; _Letter to Woodward_; _Letters to Countess of Huntingdon_; _Negative Love_; _Of our Sense of Sinne_; _Poem on Eliz. Drury_; _Progress of the Soul_; _Soul's Joy_; study of; _Undertaking_ Dryden E., A. Eckhart Emerson, R. W. English national character and mysticism _Entbehrung_ _Epistle of Discretion_ _Epistle of Privy Counsel_ Erskine, Thos., of Linlathen Evil, _see_ under _Good and Evil_ Familists Farquhar, J. W. Fénelon Fichte Fire, views of, held by Law and Boehme Flaxman Fox, George Godwin, Mary, _see_ Shelley, Mrs----William Goethe doctrine of _Entbehrung_; influence on Carlyle Good and Evil, problem of Gosse, Edmund, on Patmore's _Sponsa Dei_ Greek delight in beauty Grierson, H. J. C., _Donne's Poems_ Grosseteste Guyon, Madame Hartley, David Harvey, Christopher, _School of the Heart_ Hegel Herbert, George Hindu mysticism Hinton, James, _Mystery of Pain_ Hugh of St Victor Hylton, Walter _Scale or Perfection_ Imagination a creative force; attainment of truth through; love and; reality of; the "saviour of the world," Inge, W. R., _Selections from the German Mystics_ Intuition James, William Jefferies, Richard _Story of My Heart_; study of Julian, Lady _Revelations of Divine Love_ Kant Keats, George Keats _Endymion_; _Letter to Taylor_; _Ode on Nightingale_; _Ode on Grecian Urn_; Plato's influence on; _Revision of Hyperion_; study of Knowledge, mental and spiritual supremacy of intuition over intellectual, (_see_ also under _Truth_) Krishna Lamb, Charles Lâo-Tsze Law, William _Appeal to all that doubt_; Boehme's influence on; early studies; _Serious Call_; _Spirit of Prayer_; study of; _Way to Divine Knowledge_ Lawrence, Sir Thomas Love, human and divine in _Ancren Riwle_; Blake on; Boehme on; Browning on; Coleridge on; Crashaw on; Donne on; Herbert on; Keats on; Lady Julian on; Patmore on; Richard Rolle on; Shelley on; Thomas de Hales on; Francis Thompson on; Traherne on Macaulay Macleod, Fiona Man, divinity and greatness of; unity with God Maurice, F. D. Meredith, George Metaphysical Society Moonlight, Keat's sensitiveness to More, Henry Mysticism, ascetic; basic fact of; beginnings in East; Bergson's contributions to; English character and; erotic; experiences of melody in; happiness and Hindu meaning of the word methods of, (_see_ also under _Love_, _Vision_, and _Imagination_, etc.) of beauty pathways to, (_see_ also under _Vision_, etc.) philosophical religious thinkers and, (_see_ also under names of authors) Nature, views and interpretation of Neo-platonists Nettleship, R. L., _Philosophical Remains_ Newton, debt to Boehme Norris, John, of Bemerton Pain, problem of Pascal, Blaise Patmore, Coventry _Angel in the House_ _Bow set in the Cloud_ _Child's Purchase_ and _The Toys_ _Conjugial Love_ Crashaw's influence on _Dieu et ma Dame_ _Memoirs_ _Precursor_ _Religio Poetæ_ _Sod, Boot, and Flower_ _Sponsa Dei_ study of _Piers Plowman_ Plato influence on Donne Plotinus Shelley Spenser Vaughan on beauty on love _Phædrus_, _Republic_ _Symposium_ system of Platonists, Cambridge Plotinus _Enneads_ _Letter to Flaccus_ Plato's influence on system of Pope Porphyry Pratt, J. B., _Religious Philosophy of William James_ Pre-existence, belief in Pythagoras Quakers. _Quia amore langueo_ Religion and Science Rhythm, Beigson's theory of Richard of St Victor _Benjamin Minor_ Robinson, Henry Crabb Rolle, Richard _Fire of Lone_ _Pricke of Conscience_ study of Rossetti, Christina Rossetti, D. G. _Hand and Soul_ _House of Life_ sensuousness of study of Ruysbroeck St Augustine _City of God_ influence of Plotinus on St Bernard of Clairvaux St Bonaventura St Catherine of Siena St Francis of Assisi _Fioretti_ St John of the Cross St Martin St Paul St Teresa Schelling Scotus Eriugena, John Seekers Separatists Shakespeare Shelley, Mrs (Mary Godwin) Shelley; _Adonais_; _Epipsychidion_; _Hymn to Intellectual Beauty_; imagination of; influence of Plato; _Julian and Maddalo_; love mysticism of; _Prometheus_; _Revolt of Islam_; _Rosalind and Helen_; study of Smith, John, the Platonist Society, unity in Socrates _Song of Solomon_ Spenser, Edmund, _Hymns_; Plato's influence on Spinoza Stewart, J., _Myths of Plato_ Sunlight, Jefferies' sensitiveness to Suso Swedenborg _Heaven and Hell_,; influence of; thought of; _Wisdom of Angels_ Swinburne, A. C., _Essay on Blake_ Symbolism Tauler Taylor, Keats's letter to Tennyson _Ancient Sage_; _Higher Pantheism_; _Holy Grail_; _In Memoriam_; study of Thelwall _Theologia Germanica_ Thomas de Hales, _Luve Ron_ Thompson, Francis; Crashaw's influence on; _Daisy_; _Health and Holiness_; _Hound of Heaven_; _Ode to Setting Sun_; _Poppy_; study of Thought, reality of Time Traherne, T. _Approach_; _Centuries of Meditations_; _Eden_; _Innocence_; _Rapture_; _Salutation_; study of; _Wonder_ Transcendentalists _Treatise of Discerning Spirits_ Truth, beauty and; imagination and; intellect and; steps towards. _See_ also under _Knowledge_ Tulk, C. A. Underhill, Evelyn, _Mysticism_ _Upanishads_ Vaughan, Henry _Affliction_; _Hidden Flower_; _Quickness_; _Retreate_; _Resurrection and Immortality_; _World_; study of Vision, faculty and ecstasy of pain and physical condition and renunciation and Watts-Dunton, Theodore, article on Rossetti Whichcote, Benjamin Will, power of Wordsworth, William attainment of vision debt to Vaughan Duddon Sonnets _Excursion_ fallacy of usual conception of mediation of _Ode on Intimations of Immortality_ _Prelude_ _Recluse_ _Solitary Reaper_ _Stepping Westward_ study of _Tintern Abbey_ value of common things view of Nature Yeats, W. B. Footnotes [1] "The Religious Philosophy of William James," by J. B. Pratt, _Hibbert Journal_, Oct. 1911, p. 232. [2] On "Spirit," in _Philosophical Remains of R. L. Nettleship_, ed. A. C. Bradley, 1901, pp. 23-32. [3] _Republic_, ii. 376. [4] _Symposium_, 211, 212. [5] This distinction between East and West holds good on the whole, although on the one side we find the heretical Brahmin followers of _Bhakti_, and Ramananda and his great disciple, Kabir, who taught that man was the supreme manifestation of God; and on the other, occasional lapses into Quietism and repudiation of the body. See _The Mystic, Way_, by E. Underhill, pp 22-28. [6] For an account of Boehme's philosophy, see pp. 91-93 below. [7] See his essay on him in _Representative Men._ [8] _Memoirs and Correspondence of C. Palmore_, by B. Champneys, 1901, vol. ii. pp. 84, 85. [9] _Selections from the German Mystics_, ed. Inge (Methuen, 1904), p. 4. [10] See his article on Rossetti in the _Nineteenth Century_ for March 1883. [11] _House of Life_, Sonnet xvii. [12] _House of Life_, Sonnets i., xxvii., lxxvii. [13] See _Religio Poetæ_, p. 1. [14] _Memoirs_, ed. Champneys, i. 146. [15] _The Angel in the House._ Bk. ii. prelude ii. [16] _The Angel in the House_, canto viii. prelude iv. [17] See pp. 113, 114 below. [18] _The Child's Purchase_ and _The Toys_, poems, I vol., 1906, pp. 287, 354. [19] _Seligio Poetæ_, 1893, p. 163. [20] _Religio Poetæ_, 1893, p. 44. [21] The "Ring" of Eternity is a familiar mystical symbol which Vaughan doubtless knew in other writers; for instance as used by Suso or Ruysbroeck. See _Mysticism_, by E. Underhill, p. 489 and note. [22] See the illuminating description of this essentially mystic feeling given by J. Stewart in _The Myths of Pinto_, Introduction, pp. 39 _et seq._ [23] _The Story of my Heart_, pp. 87, 88. [24] _Ibid._, p. 76. [25] _The Story of my Heart_, p. 199. [26] _Ibid._, p. 71. [27] _Ibid._, p. 74. [28] See _Compendium of Philosophy_, a mediæval digest of the Abhidhamma, translated by S. Z. Aung and Mrs Rhys Davids, 1910, 152 f. [29] We cannot agree with Prof Grierson, who, in his fine recent edition of the poet (_Donne's Poems_, Oxford, 1912, vol ii., pp. cxxxv.-vi.), holds that the style and tone of this song point to Donne not being the author. For these very qualities it would seem indubitably to be his. [30] Surely also by Donne, but see Grierson, vol. ii., pp. cxxxviii-ix. [31] _Centuries of Meditations_, ed. Dobell, 1908, pp. 20, 21. [32] _Centuries of Meditations_, pp. 156-58. [33] _Life of Tennyson_, by his son, 1905, p. 268; see also pp 818, 880. [34] This is the idea, essentially mystical, and originating with Boehme, which is worked out in the suggestive little book, _The Mystery of Pain_, by James Hinton. [35] _An Appeal, Work's_, vol. vi. pp. 27, 28. [36] _The Spirit of Prayer_, _Works_, vol. vii. pp. 23, 24. [37] _Cf._ St Augustine, "To will God entirely is to have Him" (_City of God_, Book xi. chap, iv.), or Ruysbroek's answer to the priests from Paris who came to consult him on the state of their souls: "You are as you desire to be." [38] See _The Spirit of Prayer_, _Works_, vol. vii. pp. 150, 151. [39] _An Appeal, Works_, vol. vi. p. 169. [40] _Ibid._, pp. 19, 20. [41] _Ibid._, pp. 69, 80. [42] _The Spirit of Prayer_, _Works_, vol. vii. pp. 23, 27. [43] _The Way to Divine Knowledge, Works_, vol. vii. p. 60. [44] _The Spirit of Prayer_, _Works_, vol. vii. p. 68. See also _ibid._, pp. 91, 92 [45] _An Appeal, Works_, vol. vi. pp. 132, 133. [47] _An Appeal, Works_, vol. vi. p. 115. [48] _The Destiny of Nations_, II. 16-18. [49] _Frost at Midnight_, 11. 60-62. [50] _Sartor Resartus_, Book i. chap. xi. [51] See _Sartor_, Book iii. chap. iv. [52] The mystical desire for close contact with God is expressed in English as early as before 1170, in Godric's song to the Virgin. [53] See _Mysticism_, by E. Underhill, pp. 162-166. [54] _The Ancren Riwle_, ed. J. Morton, Camden Society, 1853, pp. 397-403. [55] _Fire of Love_, Bk. 1. cap xvi. p. 36. [56] _Ibid._, Bk. i. cap. xv. p. 33. [57] See _Mysticism_, by E. Underhill, pp. 228, 229. [58] _Fire of Love_, Bk. i. cap. xvi. p. 36. [59] _Ibid._, Bk. ii. cap. iii. and xii. [60] _Fire of Love_, Bk. i. cap. xv. [61] _Ibid._, Bk. ii. cap. vii. [62] _Enneads_, vi. §§ 8, 9. [63] See _The Authorship of the Prick of Conscience_, by H. E. Allen, Radcliffe College Monographs, No. 15, Ginn and Co., 1910. [64] _Revelations_, ed. Warrack, pp. 21, 178. All the quotations which follow are taken from this edition of the _Revelations_. [65] _Revelations_, p. 135. It Is interesting to compare the words of other mystics upon this point; as for instance Richard of St Victor in _Benjamin Minor_, cap. 75, or Walter Hylton in _The Scale of Perfection_. Note the emphasis laid upon it by Wordsworth, who indicates self-knowledge as the mark of those who have attained the "unitive" stage; see p. 66 above. [66] Dr. Inge gives an excellent detailed account of it in _Studies of English Mystics_, 1906, pp. 80-123. [67] See _Piers Plowman_, by J. J. Jusserand, 1894 [68] B., Passus v., 614-616. [69] _Poems_, ed. Waller, 1904, p. 283. [70] _Poems_, ed. Grosart, 1874, p. 134. [71] See _Additional Table Talk of S. T. O._, ed. T. Ashe, 1884, p. 322. [72] _Poems_, ed. Sampson, p. 305. [73] See _Mysticism_, by E. Underhill, pp. 282-286, and specially the passage from the _Fioreth_ of St Francis of Assisi, chap, xlviii., quoted on p. 285. [74] Notes to Lavater. [75] From version γ2 in _Poetical Works_, ed. John Sampson, 1905, p. 253. [76] _Poems_, ed. Sampson, p. 173. [77] _Poems_, ed Sampson, pp. 305-6, 309-10. Blake is here praying that we may be preserved from the condition of mind which sees no farther than the concrete facts before it; a condition he unfairly associated with the scientific mind in the abstract, and more especially with Newton. [78] This is the principle called occasionally by Blake, and always by Boehme, the "Mirror," or "Looking Glass." Blake's names for these four principles, as seen in the world, in contracted form, are Urizen, Luvah, Urthona, and Tharmas. [79] Possibly in some such way as Mozart, when composing, heard the whole of a symphony. "Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts _successively_, but I hear them as it were all at once" (Holmes's _Life and Correspondence of Mozart_ 1845, pp 317-18) [80] _Cf._, for instance, "To be an error, and to be cast out, is a part of God's design" (_A Vision of the Last Judgment_, Gilchrist's Life, ii. p. 195); and Illustrations 2 and 16 to the Book of Job, see the commentary on them in _Blake's Vision of the Book of Job_, by J. H. Wicksteed, 1910, p. 21 and note 4. It is interesting to note that, as Mr Bradley points out (_Shakesperian Tragedy_, pp. 37, 39, 324, 325), it is a cognate idea which seems to underlie Shakesperian tragedy, and to make it bearable. [81] See the whole exposition of the Job illustrations by Wicksteed, and specially p. 37. [82] _In no Strange Land._ Selected Poems, 1908, p. 130. [83] For other examples of the expression of this idea of the "Following Love," the quest of the soul by God, especially in the anonymous Middle English poem of _Quia amore langueo_, see _Mysticism_, by Evelyn Underhill, pp. 158-162. [84] The following remarks are much indebted to a valuable article on _Bergson and the Mystics_, by Evelyn Underhill, in the _English Review_, Feb. 1912, which should be consulted for a fuller exposition of the light shed by Bergson's theories on the mystic experience.