book is brought in here not in order that any kind of critique may

be made of the value of its contents, but that it may serve as a standard of comparison. Because, whether a spiritual life made up of such experiences be an advance on that of SS Augustine, Gregory, and Bernard, or not, there can be no question that it is something quite different.
Now this type of mysticism^ abounding in revelations and visions, so usual in later times, set in with St Gertrude and the two Mech- tilds in the century after St Bernard. They were the recipients of communications and messages, seers of pictorial panoramic visions. And from that time forth these elements have tended to enter more and more into the experiences of Catholic mystics, and have almost come to be identified with mysticism itself.
And here it may be of interest to note the fact that the line of great seers of visions and hearers of revelations is made up almost wholly of women: the names of Gertrude and the Mechtilds have just been mentioned; other well-known instances are Hildegard, Elizabeth of Schonau, Bridget of Sweden, Angela of Foligno, Catherine of Siena, Maria Magdalena de Pazzi, and in modem times, Margaret Mary Alacoque and Catherine Emerich, Of course from SS Peter and Paul and John downwards men too have seen visions and heard words. But it seems to be the case that nearly always it has been women who have had elaborate pictorial visions, often succeeding each other in a sort of panoramic series. 1 It is not suggested that the visions are any the worse for that; but it does seem that there is something in the mental or psychic make-up of women that renders them susceptible to this kind of quasi-mystical experience.
The entire absence of any such element of vision, locution, revela- tion, from the mysticism of SS Bernard, Gregory, and Augustine, is again a characteristic distinguishing it from more modern types.
1 Fr Herbert Thurston, S.J., in a paper contributed to the Society for Psychical Research (Proceedings, vol. xxxiL), has pointed out that similarly, though there are a great number of apparently well-authenticated cases of 'stigmatization* in women, St Francis has been the only case among men, at least until one in our day.
CHARACTERISTICS 127
(4) In various places in her writings St Teresa describes the phenomena of the state of rapture or trance as experienced by her- self. Its effects on the body are such that there is for the time being complete bodily collapse (Interior Castle, 'Sixth Mansion', iv.; Life, xx.).
Neither in St Gregory nor St Bernard did we find trace of any such violent rapture as St Teresa speaks o Nor did we in St Augustine's accounts of his own experiences; but it may be ques- tioned whether, in the supreme ecstasy in which he believed that the Being of God may be seen, he did not intend some such physical condition, in that he held the soul to be, for the time being, gone forth from the body.
(5) Besides the phenomena of rapture and trance, there have at all times in the history of mysticism been a variety of lesser psycho- physical concomitants of mystic states. The inpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost caused in the Apostles a physical state that bore the outward semblance of intoxication. The enthusiasm and excite- ment of highly-wrought religious emotion, as at 'revivals', always tends to manifest itself in physical expression of many kinds. Again, mystical states and psycho-physical experiences are often produced by a set process of self-hypnotization, as was the case of the Hesy- chast monks of Mount Athos, who by auto-hypnotism and suggestion induced at will their vision of 'the uncreated light*. Concentration of mind on a religious idea, or on other ideas, often causes physical effects on the body. The history of religious experience and of mysticism, both true and false, is full of such psycho-physical phenomena. 1 But they find no place in the descriptions given of their experiences by our three Doctors; there is no suggestion of anything more than a deep absorption of mind in prayer, such that consciousness is lost of external things and of the operations of the mind itself.
(6) Yet another point wherein SS Augustine, Gregory, and Bernard differ from later mystical writers. Those familiar with modern treatises on mystical theology, as those of Schram and Gorres, will know the great part played by the Evil One. Such subjects as diabolical obsession and possession have won a recog- nized place in these books. There is a constant fear of, a constant guarding against the intrusions of the Devil in prayer and in every turn of the spiritual life. We recall the case of St Teresa: she relates how once her spiritual state was investigated by a number of learned theologians who examined her personally, and after much con-
1 Fr Thurston discusses the psycho-physical concomitants of mystical states in a long series of articles in the Month, 1919-21.
128 WESTERN MYSTICISM
ferring together came to the unanimous conclusion that she was being deceived by Satan and that her prayer was his work (Life,