book deals with contemplation and the contemplative life, which

Ruysbroeck calls the 'inward life 5 . And still above the heights of contemplation and union to which the inward life rises, are further and higher heights unfolded in Book iii. on the 'superessential life'. Though he does not use the imagery of 'fecundity', for him also, as for St Bernard, the final state, the result of the highest contempla- tion, is that the contemplative is inspired with zeal to labour actively for God's glory.
In contemplation God comes to us without ceasing and demands of us both action and fruition, in such a way that the one never im- pedes but always strenghtens the other. And therefore the most in- ward man lives his life in these two ways, namely, in work and in rest. And in each he is whole and undivided, and he is perpetually called by God to renew both the rest and the work (Adornment^ ii. 65) .
In the prologue to the Sparkling Stone he lays down that 'the man who would live in the most perfect state of Holy Church must be a good and zealous man, an inward and ghostly man, an uplifted and God-seeing man, and an outflowing man to all in common. 5 What is meant by an 'outflowing man' is explained in the final chapter, as following the highest contemplation, that of the super- essential life:
The man who is sent down by God from these heights into the
1 Ruysbroeck's works were written in old Flemish. The best edition is the French translation, made from the critical edition of the Flemish by the French Benedictines of Wisques; it is to be in four volumes, whereof three have appeared (Brussels: Vromont). Three of the principal treatises have been well translated into English from the Flemish in a volume published in 1916 (London: Dent). There are also other translations in English.
THE CONTEMPLATIVE LIFE 211
world is full of truth and rich in all virtues. He possesses a rich and generous ground, which is set in the richness of God: and therefore he must always spend himself on those who are in need of him. He is a living and willing instrument of God, with which God works whatsoever He will, and howsoever He will. And he remains ready and willing to do in the virtues all that God commands, and strong and courageous in suffering all that God allows to befall him. And by this he possesses an universal life, for he is ready alike for con- templation and for action, and is perfect in both of them. And none can have this universal life save the God-seeing man [Le. the one who has been raised to the superessential or highest mystical life].
Here we have the same idea as is contained in St Bernard's 'fecundity'., that the highest mystical experience has as one of its effects the sending back him who attains it to the active life with an enhanced zeal to work for the good of others.
St Teresa is the same: the Seventh Mansion of the Interior Castle is devoted to the spiritual marriage, and though she does not speak of fecundity, she does say that the effect of the marriage is to cause in the soul an intense longing to serve God by striving to gain souls for Him (c. 3).
St John of the Cross
He strikes another note, out of harmony with the trend of the Western tradition, but akin to that of Cassian and the East.
[In the state of the spiritual marriage] of a truth the soul is now lost to all things, and gained only to love, and the mind is no longer occupied with anything else. It is, therefore, deficient in what con- cerns the active life and other external duties, that it may apply itself in earnest to the one thing which the Bridegroom has pronounced necessary. ... When the soul has reached the state of unitive love, it is not requisite it should occupy itself in other and exterior duties unless they be matters of obligation which might hinder, were it but for a moment, the life of love in God, though they may minister greatly to His service; because an instant of pure love is more precious in the eyes of God and the soul, and more profitable to the Church, than all other good works together, though it may seem as if nothing were done. ... f m
When the soul, then, in any degree possesses the spirit ot solitary love, we must not interfere with it. We should inflict a grievous wrong upon it, and upon the Church also, if we were to occupy it, were it only for a moment, in exterior or active duties, however important they might be. Let those men of zeal, who think by their preaching and exterior works to convert the world, consider that they would be much more edifying to the Church, and more pleasing unto God to say nothing of the good example they would give if
212 WESTERN MYSTICISM
they would spend at least one-half their time in prayer, even though they may not have attained to unitive love. Certainly they would do more, and with less trouble, by one single good work than by a thousand, because of the merit of their prayer and the spiritual strength it supplies (Spiritual Canticle, note prefatory to Stanza xxix.).
There is no need to pursue the subject through later writers: what has been adduced suffices to delineate the great Western tradition on the contemplative life and the necessary admixture with it of the active life. In modern times this life has come to be called the 'mixed life 5 , and the ideal expressed by St John of the Cross, the old Oriental conception, has tended to come into general acceptance as the ideal of the contemplative life. The current modern concep- tion of the contemplative life is well summed up by Bishop Hedley in the sentence: Tor a contemplative life both social recreation and apostolic work must be reduced to their lowest degree.' 1
It will be recognized that such a conception of a contemplative life is fundamentally different from that of St Gregory. But in another place Bishop Hedley reverts to the older idea. The final chapter of the posthumous Spiritual Retreat for Priests is addressed to the Benedictine priests of the English Congregation; and with the pastoral and educational activities to which they are devoted clearly in view, and with full cognizance of the facts, the Bishop says to them: J It is a life of contemplation to which our vows bind us. The religious state is always one of contemplation, more or less'. It is not to be doubted that Cardinal Manning 2 and Cardinal Mercier 3 would say the like to all secular priests; and we have seen that St Gregory does say it to them quite emphatically; also that he teaches that contemplation is open to all to the devout laity as well as to clergy. This is Bishop Hedley' s sense, too.
It is the very aim of the teaching of Fr Baker and his school that 'extraordinary' prayer (contemplation) should be an ordinary state for Christian souls; for priests, for religious, for devout layfolk, and for the poor and unlearned, who love God with all their heart, 4
Here is a problem none the less interesting because it is of prac- tical import for wide circles, for all priests, be they secular or regular, for devout souls of all conditions whose endeavour is to live a life of union with God. The old tradition of the Christian Church was
1 Dublin Review, 1876, art. on Fr Baker's Sancta Sophia; re-edited by the present writer as a Catholic Truth Society tract, under the title 'Prayer and Contempla- tion' (1916).
* The Eternal Priesthood.
3 Retreats to his Seminarists and to his Clergy.
4 Prayer and Contemplation, p. 12.
THE CONTEMPLATIVE LIFE 213
that contemplation is open to all such, as a thing that may be aspired to and grasped, being the objective of a spiritual life earnestly lived. The modern idea is rather that contemplation is a thing practically out of reach of all save a very restricted number of specially called and favoured souls, a thing to be wondered at from afar, but hardly to be aspired to without presumption. The process of this change of attitude is traced by Dom John Chapman in the article on 'Mysticism 5 already referred to. 1 The solution of the problem must depend on a right understanding of what 'contemplation' is. This ascertained, - it will be possible to form just judgements on the derivative terms 'contemplative prayer 5 , 'a contemplative', 'con- templative state', 'contemplative life'. This book has been written in the conviction that the teaching on contemplation and the con- templative life of the three Doctors would prove not only intellect- ually illuminating, but also practically helpful; and therefore, with this practical purpose in view, an attempt is here made to determine the meanings to be attached to these terms.
Contemplation
Contemplation at its highest limit is identical with the mystical experience, and involves the claim of the mystics, made in such passages as those cited in the Prologue, to an experimentSl percep- tion of God's Being and Presence. These are the elevations named the spiritual marriage, or passive union, or the intellectual ecstasy spoken of by St Augustine. The validity of such claims has been vindicated in the Epilogue. But there must be true contemplation that falls short of such heights.
We have seen that St Gregory, among the qualifications of the pastor of souls, requires him to soar aloft in contemplation, and that he reckons it a bar to the pastoral office if one 'knows not the light of heavenly contemplation.' 2 Now it is not to be supposed that St Gregory, shrewd knower of men that he was, imagined that all pastors of souls, all bishops even, do, or ought to, or could, enjoy contemplation of the kind we have heard him describe, evidently his own experiences. Not in his time, nor in any time, have bishops and priests commonly been so spiritually favoured as to be raised to these heights of prayer.
It is impossible to suppose that he regarded such contemplation as the condition of a fruitful ministry, still less as the condition of exercising the pastoral office. Consequently, unless we are to think
1 Hastings^ Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, ix. 100.
2 Regula Pastomlis, i. 1 1, ii. 5.
214 WESTERN MYSTICISM
he was spinning theories out of all touch with reality and merely setting up a quite unrealizable ideal, which in a book intended as an eminently practical instruction for pastors is unthinkable, we must take it that he recognized lower grades of contemplation within the reach of ordinary fervent and devout priests, which all may be expected to attain to.
The easiest and most satisfactory manner of answering the ques- tion thus posed, will be to have recourse to the digression on the first steps in contemplation, that so unexpectedly meets us at the middle of the last and highest of the mystical treatises of St John of the Gross. 1 We read:
In order to have a better knowledge of the^state of beginners, we must keep in mind that it is one of meditation and of acts of re- flection. It is necessary to furnish the soul in this state with matter for meditation, that it may make reflections and interior acts, and avail itself of the sensible spiritual heat and fervour, for this is necessary in order to accustom the senses and desires to good things., that, being satisfied by the sweetness thereof, they may be detached from the world.
When this is in some degree effected, God begins at once to introduce the soul into the state of contemplation, and that very quickly, especially religious, because these, having renounced the world, quickly fashion their senses and desires according to God; they have therefore to pass at once from meditation to contempla- tion. This passage, then, takes place when the discoursive acts and meditation fail, when sensible sweetness and first fervours cease, when the soul cannot make reflections as before, nor find any sensible comfort, but is fallen into aridity. ... Souls in this state are not to be forced to meditate or to apply themselves to discoursive reflections laboriously effected, neither are they to strive after sweet- ness and fervour, for if they did so, they would be thereby hindering the principal agent, Who is God Himself. ... The soul must be lovingly intent upon God, without distinctly eliciting other acts be- yond those to which He inclines it; making no efforts of its own, purely, simply, and lovingly intent upon God, as a man who opens his eyes with loving attention ( 33-36).
This fading away of images in the mind at prayer, and failure in ability for discoursive meditation, and drying up of sensible sweet- ness with consequent aridity, St John calls 'the Dark Night of Sense'. It marks the transition from the state of beginners to that of proficients, as the 'Dark Night of the Spirit' marks the transition
1 The Living Flame, stanza in, 29-77, ed. 1912,* stanza iii. line 3, 4-16, ed. 1864.
THE CONTEMPLATIVE LIFE 215
from the state of proficients to that of the perfect. The 'Dark Night of Sense' forms the first book of the treatise called The Dark Night of the Soul.
The night of sense is common and the lot of many: these are the beginners. The night of the spirit is the portion of very few. [It is what Fr Baker calls 'the Great Desolation 3 : Pere Grou also speaks of it in many places, Manuel des Ames interieures.] The night of sense is of ordinary occurrence. Recollected persons enter the dark night sooner than others after they have begun their spiritual course. In general there elapses no great length of time after they have begun, before they enter the night of sense, and most of them do enter it, for they generally surfer aridities (i. 8) .
During the aridities of the night of sense God is drawing the soul out of the way of sense into that of spirit, from meditation to con- templation. . . . God is leading them by the road of contemplation, which knows no imagination or reasoning. Persons in this state will do enough if they keep patience and persevere in prayer; all they have to do is to keep their soul unembarrassed and at rest from all thoughts and all knowledge, contenting themselves simply with directing their attention lovingly and calmly towards God; and all this without anxiety or effort, or desire to feel and taste His presence. For all such efforts disquiet the soul, and distract it from the calm repose and sweet tranquillity of contemplation, to which they are now admitted (i. 10).
The foregoing words of St John, who, if any one, had tasted what contemplation is, and certainly cannot be suspect of any low ideas about it, suffice to make it clear that besides the supreme heights of the spiritual marriage, there was for him a lowlier kind of prayer, which he recognized as being in truth contemplation: the beginnings of it, but still essentially the thing itself. Many pass into the dark night of sense, though usually without realizing what it is; they do not imagine they are passing through a spiritual state that bears so formidable a name! We are apt to think, when ability to make a set discoursive meditation, with the workings of imagination and reasoning, fails us, and sensible devotion and spiritual sweetness dry up, and aridity invades the soul, that it is a sign of failure; but St John assures us that it is a sign of progress, if only we behave ourselves duly, for the prayer we can now exercise is contemplation 'arid contemplation' he calls the prayer of aridity, and c dini and secret contemplation', and says that such souls are in 'the dark and arid night of "contemplation 5 . This is strangely at variance with the popular idea, which associates contemplation with inundations of spiritual joy and light.
2l6 WESTERN MYSTICISM
In order to make St John's meaning clear, the following words from the Ascent of Mount Carmel should be kept in view:
This attention, or general loving knowledge of God, is necessary when the spiritual man passes from the state of meditation to that of contemplation. If the soul were without this knowledge or sense of God's presence at that time, the result would be that it would have nothing and do nothing every act of the worship of God would be wanting. If the soul be idle, not occupied either with its intellectual faculties in meditation and reflection, or with its spiritual faculties in contemplation and pure knowledge, it is impossible to say it is occupied at all (ii. 14).
This shows that he will have no quietism in prayer.
Modern writers on mystical theology commonly distinguish two kinds of contemplation, the one acquired, active, ordinary; the other infused, passive, extraordinary. Of course, according to Catholic teaching, all contemplation, all prayer, is made by the help of God's grace, and without this help we cannot pray at all But the more elementary kind of contemplation is exercised by the help of ordinary grace that we may count on receiving if we dispose our- selves properly for it; so that by a course of self-discipline and train- ing in prayer, and perseverant practice in concentration of mind, in recollection, introversion and devotion, we can prepare ourselves for acquired or ordinary contemplation, and put ourselves into a state in which God usually will bestow on us the prayer of ordinary contemplation. But the higher kinds of contemplation, passive union, spiritual marriage, are entirely beyond the power of the soul to prepare for or to bring about, being, according to the theologians, wholly the operation of God, working on the soul by an extra- ordinary grace.
There is a tendency among quite recent authors to react against this distinction of the two kinds of contemplation, as unused by and unknown to the older writers on mystical theology. The distinction, in fact, seems to have been first drawn in the fifteenth century by Denis the Carthusian. 1 But this surely does not matter; what matters is, whether the distinction corresponds to realities and conduces to clearness of thought. Now it cannot be doubted that anyone who, after reading the passages just given, wherein St John describes the elementary contemplation of beginners, should then read the later portion of the Spiritual Canticle (stanzas xxii.-xl.), or the Living Flame, would recognize that the contemplation spoken of in the latter, and that spoken of in the former, are divided by a difference not merely of degree, but of kind. The one is simple and of quite ordinary 1 So Pourrat, Spiritualite Chr&ienne, ii. 476.
THE CONTEMPLATIVE LIFE 217
occurrence, being easily within the reach of very many souls who cultivate seriously the spiritual life and the practice of prayer; the other is most rare, being in heights scaled by few, and (if real) must surely be due to a very special enablement and grace from God. Thus it cannot be doubted that the distinction is founded on fact and is useful, even if the passage from lower to higher is so graded that it be not possible to draw a line of demarcation at any precise point. [But see 'Afterthoughts'.]
Thus it is of acquired, active, ordinary contemplation that we must understand the early writers to be speaking, when they say that contemplation is the natural and normal issue of the spiritual life; and Bishop Hedley when he says that 'the end and object of the man of prayer is to attain to contemplation*; 1 and above all, St Gregory when he says that all bishops, all pastors, all rulers of souls, should be hung aloft in contemplation.
Contemplative Prayer
By contemplative prayer is meant the kind of prayer in which or by which contemplation is exercised. It has to be clearly assertedj in the first place, that vocal prayer may be contemplative, and this whether it be private vocal prayer or the public prayer of the Divine Office, Such is quite definitely the teaching of Gassian (see Benedictine Monachism, p. 70) : C A verse of a psalm may be the occasion of glowing prayer (contemplation) while we are singing'. What the chanting of the Office was for the monks of the Middle Ages may be under- stood from the 'Instituta Patrum', a ninth-century manual on the manner of chanting. 2 After a number of practical instructions the old monk concludes thus:
It is in the presence of the Holy Trinity and all the angels that we both chant and sing. So with compunction of heart, with lowly fear, with devout mind, with fervour of spirit, inflamed with inmost long- ing for the things above, raised by the words which we employ to the contemplation of heavenly mysteries, with sweetness of feeling, with purity of soul, with pleasing gravity, with befitting cheerfulness, in suave melodies, in delicious passages, with musical voices and gladness ineffable, let us sing joyfully to God our Maker.
Such singing of the Office assuredly is contemplative prayer, At the page referred to of Benedictine Monachism it is shown that in modern times such apostles of mental prayer as St Teresa and Fr Baker assert strongly that contemplation may be arrived at by
1 Prayer and Contemplation, p. 42.
2 Printed in Gerbert's Scriptores, i.; translation by D. Alphegc Shebbeare in Downside Review, 1919.
2l8 WESTERN MYSTICISM
vocal prayer; the former declaring that while saying the 'Our Father 5 we may be raised to perfect contemplation. 1
Those familiar with Sancta Sophia will know the place held in Fr Baker's scheme for the life of prayer by 'forced acts' of the will. It is his theory of mental or interior prayer, that if a soul has the propension for contemplative prayer, at no long time after its entrance on a spiritual course of prayer will it feel drawn to quit discoursive meditation and cease from the operations of the imagina- tion and reasoning in its prayer, so that the prayer becomes almost wholly the working of affections and acts of the will. When this becomes its habitual prayer, the soul, according to him, has entered on the ways of contemplation, and exercises contemplative prayer.
A soul that by a divine call, as being in a state of maturity for it, relinquished! meditation to the end to betake herself to a more sublime exercise, which is that of immediate acts or affections of the will, only then begins to enter into the ways of contemplation; for the exercises of the will are the sublimest that any soul can practise, and all the difference that hereafter follows is only in regard of the greater or lesser promptitude, or in regard of the degrees of purity wherewith a soul produces such acts. The whole latitude of internal prayer of the will, which is contemplative prayer, may be com- prehended under these two distinct exercises: (i) forced acts or affections of the will, (2) aspirations. 2
Under the name 'Prayer of Simplicity', or Trayer of Simple Regard', borrowed from Bossuet, 3 Pere Poulain in the second chapter of his book, The Graces of Interior Prayer, treats of acquired or ordinary contemplation, for which, as he says, Trayer of Sim- plicity' is only another name. He gives clear and excellent explana- tion and instruction, and recommends all who feel the enablement to respond to it by passing from meditation to the prayer of con- templation. Prayer of this kind he regards as a quite usual state of prayer. 4
1 Way ofPerfectwri) xxv. I.
2 Sancta Sophia^ p. 431. As an assistance to souls practising the prayer of acts, various collections of such acts have been provided. Those most easily accessible in English are by Blosius (The Oratory of the Faithful Soul, Art and Book Co., Lon- don), and by Dame Gertrude More, grand-daughter of B. Thomas, and disciple of Fr Baker. Her collection appeared as an appendix to Sancta Sophia, and also separately in various forms (see Benedictine Monachism ) p. 118). Quite recently, a small pocket volume, containing a new collection of several hundred such acts, has been compiled by Dom Anselm Rutherford, Acts for Mental Prayer (Downside Abbey, 1921).
8 See the excellent opuscule of Bossuet printed at end of Pere Grou's Manuel des Ames Int&rieures (also in the English translation).
4 This chapter has been separately printed by the present writer as a Catholic Truth Society tract, The Prayer of Simplicity. Exception has been taken to it as departing from the traditional teaching found in St John of the Cross. But the
THE CONTEMPLATIVE LIFE
From what has been said it is seen that affective prayer, whether vocal or mental, forced acts of the will, aspirations, the prayer of simplicity, ail are forms of contemplative prayer. Much sound in- struction on such contemplation will be found scattered through the pages of Pere Grou's Manuel and Maximes, both translated into English.
It has to be observed, however, t.hat mere passing moments of such prayer could not merit the name of contemplation. Moments or minutes of 'loving attention to God' are a common experience of good souls in their ordinary religious exercises. In order to merit the name contemplative prayer or contemplation, the prayer has to be sustained; Pere Poulain lays down that for it to be the prayer of simplicity or contemplation, the loving attention and regard has to be maintained for a notable time, not less than a quarter of an hour; 1 Fr Baker asks for half an hour. On this point, and on the others treated of here, much excellent instruction is to be found in the two little Catholic Truth Society tracts already many times referred to: Bishop Hedley's Prayer and Contemplation and Pere Poulain j s Prayer of Simplicity.
A Contemplative
The obvious definition of a * contemplative' is, 'one who practises contemplation*. Such exercise of contemplation would have to be understood as no mere isolated experience, but as an object system- atically pursued. But if there be two kinds of contemplation, ordinary (acquired, active) and extraordinary (infused, passive), it follows that there will be two kinds of contemplatives. In one of his minor treatises, still in manuscript, on the 'Variety of Spirits in Religion', Fr Baker distinguishes and defines the two kinds of con- templatives, calling them 'perfect' and 'imperfect' contemplatives respectively. The perfect contemplatives are those with a strong interior spirit and propensity for contemplative exercises, and who in the midst of business can keep the mind in singleness and fixed on God; they are those who experience the higher mystic states and \
departure from St John lies not in the conception of the prayer of simplicity itself, which agrees fully with St John's elementary contemplation, but in the misunder- standing and misplacing of the 'night of sense', which P&re Poulain will not take as the simple and elementary thing St John means by it. Moreover he uses^the word 'mystical' in a restricted sense, not applying it to ordinary contemplation, but making mystical prayer equivalent to infused, passive, or extraordinary con- templation. In this his usage differs from that commonly accepted.
1 There is a mistake in the English translation at p. 18 of the Catholic Truth Society tract; it reads: 'they should continue for an hour or more.' The French is: *un quart d'heure ou davantage. 1
22O WESTERN MYSTICISM
extraordinary contemplation. Fr Baker's description of imperfect contemplatives is so much to the point that it is reproduced here:
The imperfect contemplative spirit commonly in his business is full of multiplicity; yet for all that, when the businesses are laid aside, and he betakes himself to his recollection [or set exercise of mental prayer] at the season for it, he, having as it were a natural and habitual propension towards God and His immediate presence, with a loathing, or at least a neglect or disesteem of all creatures, doth easily surmount all multiplicity of images that could be occa- sioned by his precedent employments, whereon the soul had never fixed her love, as who was not, nor could be, satisfied or much de- lighted with them; and therefore he now easily getteth an unity and simplicity in soul, which is an emptying or casting out of all images of creatures. Whereupon in such unity and simplicity of soul, overcoming multiplicity which is distraction, he easily findeth and treateth with the unity and simplicity of God, which imme- diately appeareth unto him.
All contemplatives, perfect and imperfect, agree in this, which is it that distinguisheth their way from the other ways, that they imme- diately, without the means of images or creatures, apply themselves to God, or to seek union with Him by the powers of their soul, but especially by the most noble power of it, called the will.
In Sancta Sophia there is a chapter similarly laying down the prin- ciple that in the character of the prayer habitually exercised lies the distinction between contemplative and active spirits:
Though ail internal dispositions of souls may conveniently enough be ranged under these two states, yet we are not to conceive that each soul is by its temper entirely and absolutely either contempla- tive or active; for, on the contrary, the most part are of a disposition mixed between both, and partaking somewhat, more or less, of each. But they receive the denomination from that whereto the propension is more strong. ... Now that wherein diversity of spirits is principally discerned is their prayer, . . . The prayer of the con- templative life is a quiet affective prayer of the heart alone; that of the active life, the busy methods of discoursive meditation. 1
It cannot be questioned that in thus distinguishing between con- templation and meditation or consideration, and in making the exclusion of images the determining note of contemplation, Fr Baker and St John of the Gross are in the full current of Catholic tradition from the beginning. In regard to SS Augustine, Gregory, Bernard, this has appeared in the foregoing pages with an abund- ance of proof that leaves no room for doubt. And in the article on 1 Sancta Sophia f p. 37.
THE CONTEMPLATIVE LIFE 221
'Catholic Mysticism 5 already referred to, Dom John Chapman shows that the same was the universally accepted idea in West and East alike from Clement of Alexandria onwards until the sixteenth century. 1 Meditation, the thinking out of a point by dint of imagina- tion and reasoning, is the very antithesis of the traditional idea of contemplation.
Contemplative State
As the 'state of perfection' is one wherein those who embrace it are bound to 'aim at perfection', and to take reasonable measures to make progress in the endeavour to attain to it, so the Contempla- tive state' may be defined as one wherein is the obligation of aiming at contemplation and of taking reasonable measures calculated to bring the soul to it, first in the lower grade, and then, if the call and enablement come, in the higher. Of these measures, the prin- cipal and indispensable one is the serious cultivation of contempla- tive prayer.
In this sense, the monastic state is a contemplative state : St Thomas says so (Summa 2 2 ae , clxxxviiL 2) ; and Benedictine tradition says so, the latest witness being, as we have just seen, the English Benedictine spiritual writer, Bishop Hedley. (See Benedictine Monachism p. no.)
Contemplative Life
And finally we come again to that from which this investigation started, and ask if it be possible to attach a definite historical mean- ing to the term 'contemplative life', concerning which the great authorities have been found to differ among themselves so materially.
In the first place, it has to be observed that their differences are due in large measure to an ambiguity in the use of the term. 'Con- templative life' has two meanings. It has an objective meaning: a manner of corporate life ordinated with the primary object of facilitating and promoting the exercise of contemplation, by re- moval or reduction of the usual obstacles. And it has a subjective or personal meaning, according to which, whatever be the external conditions, that man is leading a contemplative life who effectively practises contemplation. In this sense, whatever be his calling or manner of life, a contemplative is leading a contemplative life: it is a matter of personal experience, not of external conditions.
The first is the modern technical sense of 'contemplative life',
whereby many Orders of women, pre-eminently the Carmelites and
Poor Clares, and among men the Carthusians and Trappists, are
said to lead a contemplative life. But the second is the old Western
1 Hastings's Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, ix.
222 WESTERN MYSTICISM
meaning, as defined by St Gregory and endorsed by St Bernard. According to this conception, the test of a contemplative life does not lie in the absence of activity, but in the presence of contempla- tion; it is a life in which the good works of the active life have their place, provided the contemplation be there as a reality, Fr Baker's imperfect contemplatives lead St Gregory's contemplative life. According to this, the historical Western sense, it may be said that a contemplative life is one in which contemplative prayer is prac- tised in an adequate measure. To Fr Baker's mind, what suffices for this is, in addition to the obligatory vocal prayer of the Office, two half-hours a day, or at least one, of contemplative mental prayer: and this is all he asks for. For the rest, the time may be spent in the ordinary avocations and duties of our state of life. 1
If what has been set forth in these pages, based as it is on the utterances of well-accredited teachers, be a correct appreciation., there is contemplation that is a simple thing. This it is that the old writers mean, when they take for granted that contemplation is the natural aim and the normal issue of a spiritual life; it is the element- ary grades of contemplation and contemplative prayer that they have in mind. Such contemplation is practised by countless souls who know nothing of the divisions and definitions of interior prayer, and who would be as much surprised on learning that they were exercising contemplation, as was Moli^re's 'bourgeois gentilhomme 3 on learning that he had been speaking prose all his life. There is a strong current running in these days along the way of return to the old tradition, and a principal motive of the writing of this book has been the hope that it may help on this return.
The Eastern tradition on contemplative life, contemplation, mysticism, has differed from the old authentic Western tradition, and has during these past few centuries obscured it even in the West. As differing from the Eastern tradition, the Western may be stated somehow thus: There are four elements in religion: the institu- tional or external element of Church, sacraments, and public worship; the intellectual element of doctrine and dogma and theo- logy; the mystical element of will and emotion and personal religious experience; and the element of service of others. A fully developed, properly balanced, personal religious life must be the result of an harmonious blending of these four elements, not one of which may be neglected except at the cost of a one-sided, distorted, enfeebled type of religion. In regard to the mystical element itself, it is not to be cultivated as a thing apart from the every-day duties of life:
* See citations from 'The Alphabet* (manuscript) in Benedictine Monachism, p. 108.
THE CONTEMPLATIVE LIFE 223
our life may not be divided into water-tight compartments; it is only by means of self-discipline in the spiritual formation of our own characters, and of the discipline of life in our relations with our fellow men; it is only by bearing ourselves bravely and overcoming in our appointed station in the great battle of life it is only thus that those most intimate personal relations of our souls with God, which are the mystical element of religion, will attain to their highest and noblest and most fruitful consummation. Nor are these things the preserve of the intellectual and the educated, or of any spiritually leisured class; they are open to all to the poor and the unlettered and the lowly workers, who spend their lives in alterna- tion between the conscientious performance of their daily round of humble duties and the regular recourse to God in affective prayer and rudimentary contemplation a union so commonly met with among the peasantry in Catholic districts. And so again we learn that mysticism, like religion itself, is within the reach of all: c lt is not too hard for thee, neither is it far off. It is not in heaven, that thou shouldst say, Who shall go up for us to heaven, and bring it unto us? ... But it is very nigh unto thee, in thy mouth, and in thy heart, that thou mayest do it.'
APPENDIX
APPENDIX
ONE criticism likely to be passed upon this book will be that its scope is too exclusively limited to Christian and even Catholic mysticism. The answer is that the book was not intended to be a treatment of mysticism in general, but a study of a particular phase of mysticism, that represented by SS Augustine, Gregory, and Bernard, supplemented by St John of the Cross. What has been brought together as the outcome of this study may, however, be illuminated and enforced by a comparison with other kinds of mystical or quasi-mystical experiences, not in the same way religious in character, yet bearing some superficial resemblance to the fully mystical experiences of the great Catholic mystics. It will evidently be of interest and of value to present some first-hand materials for forming a judgement on such experiences.
Consequently in this Appendix are given: (i) Authentic Cases of Nature Ecstasy; (2) Intellectual Ecstasies of Plotinus as described by himself.
i. Mature Ecstasy
By 'nature ecstasy' is meant an exaltation of mind, without ab- normal physical concomitants, akin to ecstasy, non-religious in the manner of its production, and non-religious, or vaguely religious, in its content. That such nature ecstasies frequently occur is a well- established fact. In a lower grade they may be produced by drugs (we think of de Quincey's opium reveries) or by ether or nitrous oxide. William James relates how he experimented on himself with nitrous oxide and the effect it had upon him:
The keynote of the expe rience is the tremendously exciting sense of an intense metaphysical illumination. Truth lies open to the view in depth beneath depth of almost blinding evidence. The mind sees all the logical relations of being with an apparent subtlety and instantaneity to which its normal consciousness offers no parallel. 1
This is interesting: we seem to have vision and insight in the metaphysical order analogous to those of mysticism in the religious order and produced by artificial physical means. And is not the experience just coloured by temperament? as a mind attuned to metaphysics has metaphysical intuitions, so will a mind attuned 1 The Will to Believe, and other Essays, p. 294; cf. Varieties^ p. 387.
228 WESTERN MYSTICISM
to religion have religious intuitions. William James himself supplies the answer. We have listened (p. 12) to the 'babblings 3 of Pascal in the effort to seize and fix the impressions of his mystical experi- ence; and Williamjam.es supplies a page of the babblings whereby
he tried to do the same while coming to from the gas-intoxication. Here are some of them:
What's a mistake but a kind of take?
Sober 3 drunk, -unk, astonishment.
Reconciliation of opposites; sober, drunk, all the same.
Good and evil reconciled in a laugh!
That sounds like nonsense, but is pure 0/zsense.
Only one of them has a religious refrain:
Medical school; divinity school, school! SCHOOL! Oh my God, oh God, oh God!
William James himself pronounces these utterances the veriest nonsense at best, they look like Hegelianism gone mad c a pessi- mistic fatalism, depth within depth of impotence and indifference, reason and silliness united, not in a higher synthesis, but in the fact that whatever you choose it is all one this is the upshot of a revela- tion that began so rosy bright 5 . But not such is the upshot of the revelation of the mystics.
Above this is the higher grade of nature ecstasies not produced by artificial means. There are certain regularly cited cases, as Wordsworth and Tennyson.
Wordsworth's occurs in the 'Lines composed above Tintern Abbey'; Tennyson's is as follows:
I have never had any revelations through anaesthetics but a kind of waking trance this for lack of a better word I have frequently had, quite up from boyhood, when I have been alone. This has come upon me through repeating my own name two or three times to myself silently, till all at once, as it were out of the intensity of consciousness of individuality, individuality itself seemed to dissolve and fade away into boundless being, and this not a confused state, but the clearest of the clearest, and the surest of the surest, the weirdest of the weirdest, utterly beyond words, where death was an almost laughable impossibility, the loss of personality (if so it were) seeming no extinction, but the only true life. I am ashamed of my feeble description. Have I not said the state is utterly beyond words?
And elsewhere;
By God Almighty! there is 'no delusion in the matter! It is no nebulous ecstasy, but a state of transcendant wonder, associated
APPENDIX 229
with absolute clearness of mind (Memoirs of Alfred Tennyson., cited by
James and Inge, op. cit).
Here is another example:
I had spent the evening in a great city, with two friends, reading and discussing poetry and philosophy. We parted at midnight. I had a long drive in my hansom to my lodging. My mind, deeply under the influence of the ideas, images, and emotions called up hy the reading and talk, was calm and peaceful. I was in a state of quiet, almost passive enjoyment, not actually thinking, but letting ideas, images, and emotions flow of themselves, as it were, through my mind. All at once, without warning of any kind, I found myself wrapped in a flame-coloured cloud. For an instant I thought of fire, an immense conflagration somewhere close by in that great city; the next, I knew that the fire was within myself. Directly after- ward there carne upon me a sense of exultation, of immense joyous- ness accompanied or immediately followed by an intellectual illumi- nation impossible to describe. Among other things, I did not merely come to believe, but I saw that the universe is not composed of dead matter, but is, on the contrary, a living Presence; and I be- came conscious in myself of eternal life. I saw that all men are im- mortal; that the cosmic order is such that without any peradventure all things work together for the good of each and all. The vision lasted a few seconds and was gone; but the memory of it and the sense of the reality of what it taught has remained during the quarter of a century which has since elapsed.
This is an account of his own experience by Dr R. M. Bucke in the book Cosmic Consciousness (1901), wherein he collects a number of similar experiences, one of Balzac. A description by J. A. Symonds of trances he used to experience in youth is often cited; but William James declares them suggestive of pathology, 1 and indeed they seem like complete mental collapse.
Instead of adducing a number of cases, I propose concentration on that of Richard Jefferies, who is not mentioned in this connexion by James, nor by any writer known to me, except Mr E. I. Watkin, who devotes a chapter to him, but from a somewhat different point of view, 2 I cannot but think that in Richard Jefferies we have the nature ecstasy at its highest and best, and the most nearly resem- bling the religious mystical experience; and so, for our purpose, it will be most instructive. The material is all to be found in the little book The Story of my Heart* '
Jefferies's mental attitude was extraordinary, probably unique.
* Varieties, p. 386.
* Philosophy of Mysticism.
9 The references are to the Pocket Edition.
230 WESTERN MYSTICISM
He rejected as vain things all creeds, religions, philosophies, science, accumulations of civilization. He rejected impatiently all idea of design, intelligence, providence in the world, being overwhelmed by the problem of evil. Passages shock by their even blatant atheism. But for all that, it is hard to resist the feeling that his atheism was on the surface, and that deep down there existed a fund of beliefs that save him from the stigma of irreligion or even non-religion. He had a profound belief in the soul, in immortality, in deity super- deity he calls it and he was full of the sense of the supernatural enveloping him. The consuming craving and endeavour of his life was to get into touch with this super-nature, super-deity, he so ardently believed in. This was the cause of his nature ecstasies, descriptions of which will now be cited to afford matter of com- parison and contrast with those the Christian mystics have given of their experiences.
Sometimes I have concentrated myself, and driven away by con- tinued will all sense of outward appearances, looking straight with the full power of my mind inwards on myself. I find F am there; an T I do not wholly understand or know something is there distinct from earth and timber, from flesh and bones. Recognizing it, I feel on the margin of a life unknown, very near, almost touching it: on the verge of powers which if 1 could grasp would give me an immense breadth of existence, an ability to execute what I now only conceive; most probably of far more than that. To see that C P is to know that I am surrounded with immortal things (p. 36).
This passage strikingly recalls the prescriptions of St Gregory for the first step in contemplation, namely, recollection and intro- version, whereby the soul strives to see itself as it is in itself, stript of all phantasms of things bodily or spiritual (p. 70) . This shows that the process is no Asiatic or neo-Platonic infusion, but the natural process whereby the soul tries to enter into itself and get into touch with higher realities.
JefTeries relates how in the earliest morning he would go to some elms where he could see across the fields to the distant hills over which the sun rose:
I looked at the hills, at the dewy grass, and then up through the elm branches to the sky. In a moment all that was behind me the house, the people, the sounds seemed to disappear, and to leave me alone. Involuntarily I drew a long breath, then I breathed slowly. My thought, or inner consciousness, went up through the illumined sky, and I was lost in a moment of exaltation. This only lasted a very short time, perhaps only part of a second, and while it
APPENDIX 231
lasted there was no formulated wish. I was absorbed; I drank the beauty of the morning; I was exalted. When it ceased I did wish for some increase or enlargement of my existence to correspond with the largeness of feeling I had momentarily enjoyed(p. 54)*
These feelings would come upon him whenever he put himself in favourable conditions under an oak or an elm, by some fir trees, in a grassy hollow, on the seashore anywhere in nature and he used to seek and find the experience daily:
It was a necessity to have a few minutes of this separate life daily (p. 55); these pilgrimages [to the fir trees] gave me a few sacred minutes daily; the moment seemed holy when the thought or desire came in its full force (p. 58).
[On London Bridge in the bright morning summer sun] I felt the presence of the immense powers of the universe; I felt out into the depths of the ether. So intensely conscious of the sun, the sky, the limitless space, I felt too in the midst of eternity then, in the midst of the supernatural, among the immortal, and the greatness of the material realized the spirit. By these I saw my soul; by these I knew the supernatural to be more intensely real than the sun. I touched the supernatural, the immortal, there that moment (p. 61).
One midsummer I went out of the road into the fields, and sat down on the grass between the yellowing wheat and the green haw- thorn bushes. The sun burned in the sky, the wheat was full of a luxuriant sense of growth, the grass high, the earth giving its vigour to tree and leaf, the heaven blue. The vigour and growth, the warmth and light, the beauty and richness of it entered into me; an ecstasy of soul accompanied the delicate excitement of the senses: the soul rose with the body. Rapt in the fullness of the moment, I prayed there with all that expansion of mind and frame; no words, no definition, inexpressible desire of physical life, of soul-life, equal to and beyond the highest imagining of my heart (p. 77).
Elsewhere he gives expression to his prayer. After a passage asserting that the existance of evil shows there is no deity, no god, in nature, he says:
I conclude that there is an existence, a something higher than sou l higher, better, and more perfect than deity. Earnestly I pray to find this something better than a god. There is something superior, higher, more good. For this I search, labour, think, and pray. With the whole force of my existence, with the whole force of my thought, mind, and soul, I pray to find this Highest Soul, this greater than deity, this better than god. Give me to live the deepest soul-life now and always with this Soul. For want of words I write soul, but I think that it is something beyond soul (p. 51).
232 WESTERN MYSTICISM
The expression 'super-deity 3 will shock: yet it is the very ex- pression also of 'Dionysius 5 : 6 the all-transcending super-essentially super-existing super-deity,' Jefferies was but feeling after, if haply he might find, the transcendental God of the mystics and of the theologians, only he knew it not. For all the somewhat thin atheism, who will say that that soul was irreligious? Mr Watkin's chapter on Richard Jefferies is of much interest; he claims him as being, in spite of himself, a religious mystic. Especially interesting is the statement on the last page, given as being a certain fact, that on his death-bed the knowledge of God and of Jesus Christ came to him, and when c he came to die that divine name uttered in fervent prayer was among the last words to pass his lips.' 1
2. Intellectual Ecstasy of Plotinus
Mention has been made more than once of Plotinus in the fore- going pages, in connection with St Augustine., over whom he exercised a great influence,, and for whom he was as pre-eminently 'the Philosopher' as Aristotle was for St Thomas. St Augustine's language in describing his ecstasies is reminiscent of Plotinus, and Plotnms 5 s own ecstasies hold a prominent and even unique position in the history of mysticism. Therefore the material for forming an estimate of these ecstasies will be laid before the reader. I have to confess that I can lay no claim to any first-hand acquaintance with Plotinus; such knowledge as I possess is derived almost wholly from Dean Inge's Gifford Lectures, The Philosophy of Plotinus (1918).
Plotinus was born in Egypt in the first years of the third century; he studied at Alexandria under Ammomus Saccas, the founder of the neo-Platonic school of philosophy, and about the year 250 he migrated to Rome, where he lectured until his death. He is the most authentic and copious exponent of neo-Platonism. We are not concerned with his philosophy, but only with his ecstasies. The prin- cipal passages wherein he speaks of the ecstsasies, which were cer- tainly genuine personal experiences of Plotimis's own, are brought together and discussed by Dean Inge (ii. 125-62), and also by Rev. W. Montgomery, the joint editor with Dr Gibbs of St Augustine's Confessions in the Cambridge 'Patristic Texts', in an unpublished paper, *St Augustine and Plotinus', reprinted from Transactions of the London Society for the Study of Religion (1914). The following critique of the ecstasies is from this paper:
It is an axiom of neo-Platonism that the highest being must be absolutely simple, excluding all diiferentiation. It is another axiom
1 Philosophy of Mysticism, p. 388.
APPENDIX 233
that like can be known only by like. Now, the highest form of ordinary thought involves differentiation, at the very least the differentiation of subject and object in consciousness. Therefore the highest being, the primal One, can only be known by transcending the ordinary process of thought and leaving behind the duality of consciousness. But it is strictly by transcending, not by negating thought that we arrive at it. It lies beyond thought, but, so to speak, on the same line produced; though the production involves its passing through a critical point at which its character is changed. The character of the neo-Platonic ecstasy is, in short, determined by the fact that it comes as the culminating point of a process of the most intense thought. Ethics also enters into the matter, inasmuch as it is the ethical will which keeps thought to its task in these high efforts. The special effort of strenuous thought, working upwards and inwards from phenomena to the ultimate principle of things, con- stitues the Ascent And the point on which I wish to insist is that the ecstasy, coming as the culminating point of this ascent, has its character determined by what goes before, and is widely different from a trance produced by mechanical hypnotism or any other negation of thought (op. cit. 1 77) .
The following is, says Mr Montgomery, c the most determined attempt of Plotinus to describe the indescribable 9 :
[During the vision] the beholder was in himself one, having in himself no difference either in relation to himself or in regard to other things. There was no movement in him such as wrath or de- sire, or any intellection; nor was he, so to say, wholly himself, but as though in a rapture or enthusiasm, he was wholly quiescent and alone, in a condition of unmoved calm, with no inclination outward from his own essence, nor even any movement of revolution about himself, but wholly in repose, and, as it were, identified with re- pose; and perhaps this is hardly to be called vision; it is rather another kind of seeing, an ecstasy, a becoming absolutely simple, an abandonment of self, a desire for contact, a state of calm and of knowledge leading to harmonization (Ennead, vi. ix. 1 1) (ibid. 179.)
The following pieces are selected from Dean Inge's versions of the principal passages wherein Plotinus describes his ecstasies (loc. cit. 132-42); he has somewhat modernized them and stript them of technicalities.
The preliminary step is recollection and introversion:
It is impossible for any one who has in his soul any extraneous image to conceive of the One while that image distracts his attention. The soul must forsake all that is external, and turn itself wholly to
234 WESTERN MYSTICISM
that which is within; it will not allow itself to be distracted by any- thing external, but will ignore them all, as at first by not attending to them, so now at last by not seeing them; it will not even know itself; and so it will come to the vision of the One and will be united with it; and then, after a sufficient converse with it, it will return and bring word, if it be possible, to others of its heavenly inter- course.
For last clause compare St Augustine and St Gregory, p. 175, The union itself is thus characterized:
Because the soul is different from God, and yet springs from him, she loves him of necessity. It is natural for the soul to love God and to desire union with him. Yonder is the true object of our love, which it is possible to grasp, and to live with and truly to possess, since no envelope of flesh separates us from it. He who has seen it knows what I say, that the soul then has another life, when it comes to God, and having come possesses him, and knows, when in that state, that it is in the presence of the Dispenser of true life, and that it needs nothing further. On the contrary, it must put off all else, and stand in God alone, which can only be when we have pruned away all else that surrounds us. We must then hasten to depart hence, to detach ourselves as much as we can from the body to which we are unhappily bound, to endeavour to embrace God with ail our being, and to leave no part of ourselves which is not in contact with him. Then we can see God and ourselves, as far as is permitted: we see ourselves glorified, full of spiritual light, or rather we see ourselves as pure, subtle, ethereal light; we become divine, or rather we know ourselves to be divine. In the vision of God that which sees is not reason, but something greater than and prior to reason. We ought not to say that the seer will see, but he will be that which he sees, if indeed it be possible any longer to dis- tinguish seer and seen, and not boldly to affirm that the two are one. In this state the seer does not see or distinguish or imagine two things; he becomes another, he ceases to be himself and to belong to himself. He belongs to God and is one with him. If a man could preserve the memory of what he was when he was mingled with the divine, he would have in himself an image of God, for he was then one with God. 1
The soul is above Being while in communion with the One. If then a man sees himself to have become one with the One, he has in himself a likeness of the One, and if he passes out of himself, as an image to its archetype, he has reached the end of his journey. And when he comes down from his vision, he can again awaken the virtue that is in him, and seeing himself fitly adorned in every part, he can again mount upward through virtue to spirit, and through wisdom to God. Such is the life of the gods and of godlike
1 These ideas might be strangely paralleled from Ruysbroeck and St John of the Cross.
APPENDIX 235
and blessed men; a liberation from all earthly bonds, a life that
takes no pleasure in earthly things, a flight of the alone to the
Alone.
The foregoing pieces are taken from Ennead, vi. ix. 7 onwards; in them the intellectual element of the ecstasy or contemplation is paramount, but elsewhere other elements are emphasized as ecstatic love:
[It is in view of the very highest] that the soul takes fire and is carried away by love. The fullest life is the fullest love; and the love comes from the celestial light which streams forth from the absolute One, the absolute Good, the supreme Principle which made life and made spirit (vi. vii. 23). In this vision of the One 'the spirit is in love' (vovg epcav), and is inebriated with the intoxication of love (vi. vii. 35).
The idea of the 'spiritual marriage 5 is foreshadowed in the following:
The soul sees the One suddenly appearing in itself, for there is nothing between, nor are they any longer two, but one; for you cannot distinguish between them while the vision lasts: it is that union of which the union of earthly lovers, who wish to blend their being with each other, is a copy (vr. vii. 34).
The soul loves God, wishing to be united to him, being as it were the desire of a noble virgin to be united to a noble Love (vi. ix. 9)
Plotinus speaks also of the ecstatic bliss of the union:
When, after having sought the One, the soul finds itself in its presence, it goes to meet it and contemplates it instead of itself. What itself is when it gazes, it has no leisure to see. When in this state the soul would exchange its present condition for nothing, no, not for the very heaven of heavens; for there is nothing better, nothing more blessed than this. It judges rightly and knows that it has what it desired, and that there is nothing higher. It is not deceived in its happiness; it fears no evil while it is with the One, or even while it sees him; though all else perish around it, it is con- tent, if it can only be with him: so happy is it (VT. vii. 34).
Again:
In order to attain to the Good we must mount up to the supernal regions, leaving behind in the ascent all that is foreign to the deity, so that by ourself alone we behold It alone in all its simplicity and purity, that upon which all things depend, to which all things look, from which they derive their being and life and thought. This then,
WESTERN MYSTICISM
if any one beholds, what transports of joy does he feel, with what ardour does he desire to be united with it, how is he ravished with delight (i. vi. 7) (Montgomery, op. cit. 184).
As Dean Inge rightly says:
An examination of pathological symptoms, such as fill the now popular books on 'religious experience', would not be of any help
towards understanding the passages just quoted.
He says further:
The influence of the psychological school on the philosophy of religion seems to me to be on the whole mischievous. Psychology treats mental states as the data of a science. But intuition changes its character completely when treated in this way. This is why a chilling and depressing atmosphere seems to surround the psychology of religion. The whole method is external; it is a science not of validity but of origins; in limiting itself to the investigation of mystical vision as a state of consciousness, it excludes all con- sideration of the relation which the vision may bear to objective truth. There are some, no doubt, who regard this last question as either meaningless or unanswerable; but such are not likely to trouble themselves about the philosophy of Plotinus (Plotinus, il 142).
To judge from the foregoing extracts, Plotinus's ecstasies have all the characteristics of authentic personal experiences. He had such ecstasies but rarely, four times during the six years that his biographer Porphyry lived with him. No attempt will here be made to arrive at any judgement on their character. Only it will be pointed out that St Augustine accepted them as fully religious mystical experiences. His words, already cited in Latin (p. 43), are:
What joys, what fruition of the highest and true Good, what breath of serenity and eternity are in the vision and contemplation of Truth, why should I tell? Certain great and incomparable souls have told it, as far as they thought it should be told, whom we believe to have seen and to see these things (de Quantitate Animae, 76) .
There is little room for doubt that here he has in mind the descriptions of ecstasy given by Plotinus. The expression 'great and incomparable souls' finds its counterpart in other expressions he uses of Plotinus and the neo-Platonists: as e great and almost inspired men' (magni homines et pene divini, de Ordine, ii. 28). 1 If this appear extravagant, it is to be remembered that at this time, just after his conversion, he confidently looked to neo-Platomsm to supply the philosophy of Christian belief (c. Academicos, iii. 43, see p. 205).
1 Compare the language he uses of Pythagoras: 'Venerabilis ac prope divina Pythagorae disciplina* (de Ordine, ii. 53).
APPENDIX 237
ADDITION
A criticism passed on the Appendix by more than one reviewer is to the effect that the cases of natural and intellectual ecstasy should not have been merely stated and left alone, buf should have been discussed and dealt with. This I refrained from attempting, partly from a sense of insufficient equipment in theology and psychology, and partly in the hope that others more competent might come forward to deal with the problems involved. This hope has been in some measure realized.
But as a preliminary to any such discussion, it is well to emphasize the fact that more and more clearly and fully is it coming to be recognized that there need be nothing miraculous or supernatural in ecstasy, rapture, or trance in themselves; on the physical and psychological side they are often induced in purely natural ways; if there be any supernatural element in them, it arises from that which takes place during them. Religious ideas more easily and more powerfully than others cause such concentration and absorp- tion of mind as passes into ecstasy; but often it is quite non-religious in its origin. It is not questioned that ecstasy often is caused super- naturally, in order, as St Augustine says, that 'to the spirit may be shown what is to be shown' (p. 51). But even then the physical and psychological side of the ecstasy is natural. It is recognized, too, that some people are so made physically and psychologically as to be temperamentally apt for ecstsasies. This whole matter of ecstasy is treated with knowledge and discernment by Fr Henry Browne in various places of his excellent book on mysticism, Darkness or Light, a book characterized by a well-balanced sound judgement, that I have read with almost entire agreement (see its Index).
These considerations may call for a modification of P. Garrigou- Lagrange's position in ranging ecstasy among the extraordinary elements, like the charismata of the Gorinthians, as prophecies, miracles, revelations, visions, and so forth. It is not a thing to be desired or prayed for; but it is not in itself miraculous. It is a question if ecstasy be not the usual accompaniment of certain phases of contemplation. For St Augustine ecstasy is the condition of the highest mystical experiences (p. 53). Fr Baker's words on ecstasy were remarkable at that date:
In ecstasies there is an alienation and suspension of the use of the outward senses, which I have styled supernatural graces of God; not as if the like might not be produced by a natural way, for history informs us of some that, by a wonderful intention of mind upon philosophical verities, have* 4 drawn the operations of the spirit so
238 WESTERN MYSTICISM
much inward that the exercise of the outward senses has been suspended, and an ecstasy ensued; and, therefore, no doubt the like may even naturally happen in the contemplating of divine verities; in which case, the imagination being full of divine and spiritual images only, no wonder if during such a suspension there be repre- sented internal discoursings with God and angels, &c., which to the persons may seem to have been real. However, even in these circumstances, an ecstasy so following according to the exigence and disposition of natural causes may properly be termed supernatural, since the preceding contemplation, which caused it, did proceed from a more than ordinary supernatural grace, and the imagina- tions occurring during such an ecstasy are no doubt ordered by an especial and supernatural providence of God (Sancta Sophia, p. 530).
The old treatment of natural ecstasy and contemplation of a religious character outside of Christianity, as made by theologians before the great advances of recent times in the study of comparative religion and of experimental psychology and mental physiology, is no longer adequate, and the subject has not yet received from theo- logians the consideration it calls for. Consequently the remarks of those who have ventured on this not yet properly explored ground are naturally tentative in character. I know of three Catholic theo- logians who since the publication of this book have faced the prob- lem all of them Jesuits. The first was Fr Thomas Slater, a very competent theologian, who In reviewing the book took up the case of Plotinus. 1 After citing some of the pieces given above he says:
There is a tone of sincerity and of personal experience in these descriptions written by a pagan philosopher. ... But what is the relation between these and the mystical experiences of St Augustine and other Christian saints? Are the claims of Plotinus or of some Indian mystic equally valid with those of St Teresa, St Augustine, St Gregory, and St Bernard? All Christians must admit that God loves all men and illumines every man that cometh into the world. The Spirit breatheth where He will, and He can choose his friends wherever He will, as He chose holy Job of old. ... Our faith does not require that we should at once reject the claims made by non- Catholic or non-Christian mystics. . . . But really it is not necessary to have recourse to preternatural influences In order to explain the ecstasies of Plotinus. The natural powers of the human soul are quite sufficient to explain them. They were merely the natural effect of philosophical contemplation. After careful preparation, the follower of Plato made the ascent of the ladder of being, concentrated his attention on the contemplation of the One, the True, and the Good, and if circumstances were favourable he was occasionally
1 The review was three articles in the Catholic Times, Jan. 1923; it has been reprinted, 'The Mystics' Quest', in a volume, Points of Church Law, Mysticism, and Morality.
APPENDIX 239
rewarded by the vision of perfect Beauty fashioned by himself. Un- less 1 am mistaken, that is the simple explanation of the ecstasies of Plotimis and of many another so-called mystic (op. cit. pp. 149-53).
Whether this be a fully satisfying account of Plotinus' language each one must judge for himself; it will be satisfying to those who think that there is nothing more than this in any mystical experience.
Fr Henry Browne has in Darkness or Light a chapter of over forty pages on 'Natural Contemplation 5 , which carries the thing a step further than Fr Slater. He limits the enquiry to 'natural contempla- tion', considered as the culmination of natural religion:
What, he asks, are we to think of those souls and surely there may be many who though cut off from the light of Christian Faith have yet honestly sought communion with the God revealed to them by their own nature arid by the world around? Is there such a thing as natural contemplation; and what assistance is offered by God's Providence to non-Christians who in good faith practise such mystic prayer? (p. 41).
He has not in mind special cases: 'Our enquiry does not relate merely to a few cases of those on whom God may have chosen to confer exceptional favours. We are thinking rather of masses per- haps large masses of human kind' (p. 47). He speaks of Plato and Plotinus, of the religions of India, both Brahmanism and Buddhism, and their contemplatives and mystics. He thus concludes:
When the spirit of man in its native weakness, without the saving grace of regeneration, uses its natural freedom and intelligence to draw towards the Author of its being, what kind of help does God extend to it, not as belonging to any covenant with a fallen race, but still as viewing His creatures with friendly sympathy and fatherly compassion? When the human soul in silence and solitude seems to call upon the Author of all beauty and grandeur in nature, tries to commune with Him at least as present in His works what is the response which is vouchsafed to such a contemplative by God? There seems to us to be no difficulty in believing that the merciful God may extend to natural contemplatives, within the province of their own psychology, a strengthening and steadying influence, which will enable them to put their cognitive and appetitive faculties to the best account: and this without elevating them beyond the confines of their own nature. Thus natural contemplation may sometimes be carried to a point which has a sublimity of its own, even when without any real relation to Christian mysticism or Christian faith (p. 83).
Fr Browne adds in a note that in thus confining the case to natural religion and natural contemplation, he has no idea of limiting
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God's operation to aids in the natural order even among Pagans- how far God may or does grant supernatural aids Is a matter which concerns the theologians.
The theological problem lies in this: it is the firm unanimous teaching of all the Catholic mystics and theologians alike, that con- templation, and especially the higher mystical states are super- natural in the strict sense of the word, the work of God Himself, the result of the indwelling of the Holy Ghost in the soul, and of the divine graces and gifts He bestows. But the experiences of all the mystics, non-Christian as well as Christian, are couched in the same language; all make, in one way or another, the same claim of entering into immediate relation and contact with the Divinity or with Ultimate Reality. The resemblance, the identity, of the descriptions are unmistakable for any one who will read the experi- ences on the one side and the other; for instance, Fr Browne says that the experience of Plotinus strongly suggests the mystical union of St Teresa and St John of the Cross (p. 62). Non-Catholic writers assume and assert the full identity of all such higher experiences, Catholic, Protestant, Mohammedan, Hindu. Has Catholic theology a place for fully supernatural religious mystical experiences outside of Catholic Christianity? Does God in fact bestow His mystical graces beyond the pale of His Church?
Frs Slater and Browne pass by this issue, while guardedly leaving it open; but Pere Marechal, S J., does explicitly face it. It should be said that he is more than psychologist; he is a scholastic meta- physician of standing, the author of a comprehensive work in six volumes, Le Point de Depart de la Metapkjsigue; he is also a good theologian.
The three essays contained in the volume of Etudes sur la Psychologie des Mystiques, 1924, had all appeared in periodicals before the War. In the second and third essays he deals with the question in hand; and he announces that the greater part of the second volume will be devoted to this very question of 'comparative mysticism', with special regard to India and to Islam. The treatment in Vol. I is therefore but a sketch. In two places (pp. 144 ft, 222 ff.) are given, for purpose of comparison, texts on mystical experience selected from sources of all origins. Finally, on the last page are formulated the definite questions:
Are there outside of Catholicism, among dissident Christians, true supernatural ecstasies?
Since every one admits that, if they are in good faith, the bap- tized participate in the grace of Christ, nothing stands in the way.
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as matter of principle, of their enjoying, as a personal privilege, the very highest mystical favours.
But contemplatives outside the pale of Christianity Mussulmans, Brahmans, Buddhists or mere philosophers without positive religion?
We recognize gladly that there are some such whose lives or writings carry such a stamp of sincerity and of elevation of soul, that it would be repugnant to deny to their ecstasies all religious value. We must remember, too, that natural contemplation can have a high religious efficacity, as it improves the moral life and so prepares the way for supernatural grace.
Granted (sans doute) : but does not Catholic theology teach that supernatural grace, whatever be the way of its bestowal, is not denied to any soul of good will? Then why deny that God can manifest Himself sometimes more directly still, outside the pale of Christianity, to some devout ascetic, who seeks Him with groping, with humble and perseverant energy, even though by methods of strange and touching 'bizarrerie'?
Friendly reader, let us hope it may be so! (p. 257).
We may remark in passing that Fr A. B. Sharpe In Mysticism, its True Nature and Value (1910) in his chapter on Plotinus hovers be- tween the two alternatives, whether his ecstasies are to be looked on as natural, in Fr Slater's sense; or are to be taken as fully super- natural religious ecstasies: and he shows himself quite prepared to accept the second alternative.
To return to P. Mar probl&me de la grace mystique en Islam 5 , has appeared in an article, fifty pages long, in the Recherches de Science Religieuse, I923- 1 It is an account of the life, writings, prayers, mystical experiences, of Mansour al-Hallaj, put to death A.D. 922 as a heretic by the Mohammedan religious authorities. It is in all a wonderful and most arresting story, but any attempt to summarize it would be impossible here. 2 Hallaj's accounts of his mystical experiences, and his teaching and prayers, are in language hardly distinguishable from that of the ^Christian mystics. A special feature is his devotion, to Jesus Christ, not of course as the Word made Flesh, but as the greatest and most perfect creation of God's grace. Marshal thus sums up the articles of his creed:
The One transcendent God, the great Rewarder; a supernatural destiny, attaining to an immediate possession of the divine Essence, a destiny made possible only by a special grace, the grace of benev- olent love; a knowledge and veneration of Jesus as the model of
1 An English translation is being prepared of P. Marshal's essays, including this one.
* See art. *Hallaf in Hastings's Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethtcs.
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holiness, the perfect type of union with God, and the Prince of the spiritual kingdom of grace.
This belief Hallaj got from the Koran, but the Koran got it from the Scriptures. And there are in it the essential elements of an act of faith. P. Marshal comments in the four concluding pages of the article:
Let us now place ourselves definitely in the point of view of Catholic theology.
To the Christian, who knows by Scripture and by personal experi- ence, something of the Saviour's divine love, it will hardly be con- ceivable that an appeal to Jesus, even distant, will be rejected by Him, or that a homage imperfect but sincere, will remain without answer. So far as it is possible to conjecture the invisible realities from exterior indications, it seems that 'the mystic martyr of Islam', by his heroic fidelity in embracing the partial truth that had filtered down to him, must have drawn to himself the merciful predilection of that Jesus, who is not only the supreme human creation of divine grace, as Hallaj believed Him, but the Author and Finisher of that grace.
That God can give particular revelations and mystical gifts, even very eminent ones, to 'negative misbelievers 9 , kept outside the visible body of the Church by invincible ignorance, is not in doubt, according to received doctrine and we speak of graces strictly supernatural. What, then, did Hallaj need in order to make an act of supernatural faith? Only the enlightening motion, wholly interior, which should put his mind in perfect consonance with the supernatural revealed truth: the 'grace of faith', which God refuses to no sincere mind to which is proposed the object of faith.
He adds: Perhaps other cases, more difficult than that of Hallij, more difficult than that of Islamism in general, may be resolved by the same principles. 1
1 On Mohammedan Mysticism may be read C. Field, Mystics and Saints of Islam (London, 1910); R. A. Nicholson, Studies in Islamic Mysticism (Cambridge, 1921); R. P. Masani The Conference of the Birds, a Sufi, allegory of Farid-ud-din Attar (Oxford, 1924).
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