Book III of the Ascent of Mount Carmel be read, and the difference

springs to the eye; indeed the active emptying of the mind and the silencing of the faculties is the burden of the whole treatise.
In these points of difference from St Teresa, St John is, I venture to maintain, in conformity with the older ideas, abundantly evi- denced by the great Masters whose teaching makes the stuff of this book. For Augustine, for Gregory, for Bernard, the beginnings of contemplation, the getting under way, is a striving and a struggle of mind and soul to transcend earthly things and fix its gaze on heavenly; 4 and the first step is the stripping the mind of all images and the 'hushing' of the faculties. 5
It is recognized by Poulain and Farges that with St Teresa came in a new idea of the supernatural character of contemplation, and they maintain that her definition is to be accepted, as not so much an innovation, as an advance in precision of conception and ex- pression concerning the nature of contemplation. And, in fact, her definition of contemplation has come to be commonly accepted. This I believe it was that led to the introduction of the term
1 Instances will be found in de Besse's Appendix; many more might be cited, see note, p. xxvi.
2 Op. cit. p. 45.
8 Dark Night, Bk. i. c. ix. Many similar pieces might be cited, as Ascent, Bk. n. c. xiv.
4 Compare St Gregory: *There is in contemplation a great effort of the mind, when it raises itself up to heavenly things, when it tries to pass over all that is outwardly seen, when it narrows itself that it may be enlarged' (text, p. 66).
* See text, pp. 31-34, 69-71; see also the pieces from Dionysius, p. 6.
XX AFTERTHOUGHTS
'acquired contemplation 3 , to denote grades of contemplation not consciously 'supernatural 5 in St Teresa's sense, but which may, by the help of co-operating grace, be brought about in great measure by the efforts and exercisings of the soul in self-discipline, recollec- tion and prayer: i.e. contemplation that falls short of St Teresa's prayer of quiet, such as the prayer of loving attention, or of sim- plicity. Kinds of prayer are spoken of simply as 'contemplation' by the older writers, which would not satisfy St Teresa's test; and this fact should not be lost sight of when the recall to the tradition of the earlier centuries is made.
No one can question that St Teresa's own experiences in con- templation and mystical union were of the highest; or that her accounts of her states of prayer probably surpass all others in pre- cision and in graphic delineation of things most difficult to express. But it cannot be denied that there was something in her physical and psychological make-up which rendered her temperamentally peculiarly responsive to onrushes of spiritual influence, and liable to ecstasy, rapture, flights of the spirit, 1 To this, it may be thought, may be attributed her emphasizing, perhaps over-emphasizing, this element as the essential mark of contemplation. It was a pleasure to find in a remarkable tractate, to be spoken of later on, by P&re Gardeil, one of the most distinguished of living Dominican theo- logians, the name 'supernatural contemplation' deliberately given to the prayer of loving attention, or of simplicity, with the note added: 'we take this term (supernatural contemplation) in its ob- vious sense, and not in the restricted sense that St Teresa gives it.* 2
Pere Joret thinks that the divergence of views among the theo- logians is in large measure due to the fact that many later writers have been inclined to standardize St Teresa's accounts of her own experiences, as the one universal way of progress in prayer. The charismatic or quasi-charismatic gifts she received have been generalized into absolute tests of the various degrees of prayer. Thus 9 she speaks as if certain intellectual visions of the Sacred Humanity and of the Holy Trinity which she enjoyed were a constant factor of entry on the Spiritual Marriage; whereas St John and other older mystics record nothing of the kind. Moreover, sanctifying grace in her case led to exterior consequences, the result in large measure of her temperament, physical and psychic. Therefore it is a mistake to look for the same phenomena in all mystics. 3
1 It is to be remembered that St John of the Gross declares such things to be results of a certain weakness of body or spirit (Dark Night, n. i); and that St Teresa herself, when she got to her Seventh Mansion, found that they ceased.
z Structure de la Connaissance Mystique* p. 25.
8 Contemplation, p. 294.
AFTERTHOUGHTS XXi
Poulain and Farges very nearly take St Teresa as practically the final authority, who has spoken the last word, and almost the first word, on the degrees of prayer; and this though she often protests that she relates only what happened to herself, that different souls are led by God in different ways, so that what she exposes is only a way, not the way, and is not to be made into a general law. The Dominican writers are disposed to take St Thomas, St John of the Cross, and St Teresa, as their authorities; but even this, I venture to think, affords too narrow a basis on which to erect the structure of mystical theology. The testimony of a large number of the representative mystics throughout the ages ought to be systematic- ally studied and formulated, after the manner in which SS. Augustine, Gregory, and Bernard are studied in this book. Only by a comparative method, by the analysis and synthesis of the accounts given by a wide circle of mystics, and viewed from the standpoints alike of theology and of modern psychology, can a broad enough foundation be laid for such a superstructure of mystical theology as will satisfy all desires.
Though there has been a progress in the formulation of mystical theology as a science, the mystical experience itself has not pro- gressed; though the older writers do not use the later terminology of 'union' and 'transformation', they knew these things as experi- ences. St Augustine's descriptions of intellectual ecstasy and, in- deed, St Gregory's of contemplation though couched in less developed terminology than that of St Teresa and St John, refer to experiences no whit inferior to theirs, nor to those of Ruysbroeck and later mystics.
Before entering on the discussion of details, the reader will, we believe, be glad to have a broad statement of the whole subject, which, though made by a highly competent authority, has hitherto been overlooked in current discussions.
5. Bishop Hedley on Contemplation
It so happens that fifty years ago these questions of theory in regard to contemplation and mystical prayer were treated of by the late Bishop Hedley of Newport, who made on them a pro- nouncement remarkable for its clear and profound exposition of theological principles, and remarkable as forestalling, twenty years before the tide of reversion to tradition had begun to flow, the great lines of doctrine commonly accepted now. He was a Benedictine, a good theologian, a Thomist with first-hand knowledge of his St Thomas 3 and he was familiar with the standard spiritual and
XXU AFTERTHOUGHTS
mystical writers: moreover, he was a spiritual man, a man of prayer. Appearing in a quarterly periodical, his study has been lost to sight, and has not found place in recent discussions; but it deserves to be brought forward, for it is learned, sane, and sober, and perhaps may offer a basis of conciliation on some of the points in dispute. Therefore no apology is needed for directing attention to its most vital passages. 1
Contemplation is the queen and sovereign act among all the acts of the heart of man. For the perfect flower of the heart is the act of charity; and contemplation is charity or love when it is actual, constant, pure, and flowing under the pressure of the Holy Spirit, Contemplation is not ordinary prayer. Yet it is not one of those , extraordinary gifts which humble souls may not aspire to. It is the very aim of the teaching of Fr Baker and his school that 'extra- ordinary' prayer should be an ordinary state for Christian souls; for priests, for religious, for devout lay folk, and for the poor and unlearned who love God with all their heart. It is true that few arrive at true 'interior* prayer until after many years of patient exercise. But still, in the sense that, with due perseverance and by the help of God, it will come at last, we may say that it is 'ordinary'. It is thus that it differs from ecstasy, rapture, visions and other miraculous supernatural favours. These no one has a right to aspire to or expect.
The whole progress of the 'art' of prayer is supernatural, and depends on the ever-present help of God, Yet because this help, or grace, is always ready, and (up to a certain, not easily determined, point) a matter upon which man may calculate with certainty, we may proceed in our speculation concerning prayer almost as if it were a natural art, depending for its perfection upon the energy of the human will in asceticism and concentration. Not that any one advances in prayer unless, amongst other things, he is fully im- pressed that God alone can give him the gift of prayer. But the laws of God j s gifts and of His grace have become, as a fact, not as a right, the laws of the human soul, when the soul is regenerate.
The end and object of the man of prayer is to attain to con- templation. Yet here we must make careful reservations. We may desire and sigh for contemplation; yet we must be well aware that, in ourselves, we have no power or means to attain to it; and we must not conceal from ourselves that even the virtues and gifts of a sanctified soul do not give us directly the key which will admit us to contemplation. Neither mortification, nor purity of heart, nor humility, nor meditation of point after point, nor the most strenuous exercise of affective aspiration, nor all of these together, can ever produce a state near enough to contemplation to pass into that perfect state by its own force and weight.
1 It was an article in the Dublin Review, 1876, on the re-edition of Fr Baker's Sancta Sophia or Holy Wisdom, It was reprinted in 1916 as a Catholic Truth Society- tract, under the title Prayer and Contemplation.
AFTERTHOUGHTS XX111
Contemplation is the state in which ordinary prayer becomes perfect. It is not a miraculous state. It is merely the perfection of ordinary supernatural prayer; ordinary, in this sense, that God ordinarily gives it to those who remove obstacles and take the requisite means.
Contemplation is a great and a 'perfect' state of prayer. To arrive at it, sanctifying or habitual grace is not enough; faith, hope, and charity are not enough; there is also required that touch of the finger of God's right hand, and that quick response of the soul thereto, which imply the active operation of the seven great^gifts of the Holy Ghost. And among the gifts which confer the^ privilege of contemplation gifts which every one not in mortal sin possesses, but which so few stir up within them the chief are, the gift of knowledge, the gift of understanding, and the gift of wisdom. It is the Gifts of the Holy Spirit which pour on the soul that exquisite and subtle light, that rapture of attention, that spiritual sensibility, as if new senses had been given us, which combine to elevate ordinary meditation and affection into contemplation.
Bishop Hedley gives an account of the act of contemplation. After citing half a dozen descriptions, he makes the following synthesis:
There is a state of mental prayer, ordinarily^ preceded by less perfect states, which has the following characteristics:
1. It dispenses, to a very great extent, with the use of sensible images or pictures in the mind. Instead of "pictures', the soul seems overshadowed by a spreading, silent sense as of something near at hand, vague in outline, colourless and dim; such a sense as might fall upon one who watches intently some dark curtain which hides an awful presence. t ^
2. It dispenses with reasoning, or what is called 'discourse . In the state of prayer which is called contemplation, the mind remains steadfast and fixed in one simple gaze.
3. This intuition is accompanied by ardent love. An intuition by which we gaze upon our last end and only good, not in any abstract way,' but as, here and now, our complete joy and perfect bliss, means an intuition of love. ^
4. Whilst contemplation lasts, the soul does not perceive what she is doing. She is so engaged with God that she does not turn in reflection upon herself. She does not need to invent motives she has attained, for a time, the object and end of all motive. Hence the dictum of the desert, that *he who was conscious he was praying, was not yet arrived at perfect prayer'.
Contemplation is 'perfect' prayer, comparatively with the states that precede it; but in itself it is merely the first resting-place of a mountain region in which height reaches beyond height until human thought refuses to follow.
AFTERTHOUGHTS
6. Intellect and Will in Contemplation
Bishop Hedley here shows himself the Thomist he was, in that he makes contemplation to be primarily an act of the intellect 'the soul fully intent on God, gazing and loving', he describes it, the loving consequent on the seeing. For St Thomas it is in its essence a simple intuition of truth, terminating in an affection of the will. 1 But for another school or tradition, represented by St Bonaventure, contemplation and mystic union lies primarily in the affective order, and is a matter of love, an act of the will, the operations of the intellect being superseded and transcended. For St Thomas, too, the highest and truest knowledge we can have of God in this life is that He utterly transcends any knowledge or idea we can have concerning Him. 2 This is what the author of the old English mystical book the Cloud means by the 'Cloud of Unknowing'. His idea is that the soul in contemplation is set between two clouds, one above it, the other below it. The cloud above it, between it and God, impenetrable, is the 'Cloud of Unknowing', against which the soul in contemplation ever beats with 'secret blind stirrings of love 9 in the will, inarticulate actuations, or else single words, 'God' or 'Love', poured out in swift repetition, like sparks from a burning brand. The cloud below the soul, between it and all creatures, is the 'Cloud of Forgetting', into which it seeks to thrust down all images, thoughts, ideas of creatures, and all words, thus emptying the mind of everything that could disturb it in 'the work' it is about. This 'treading down of the thought of all creatures and holding them under the cloud of forgetting' is man's travail, with the help of grace. But 'the devout stirring of love that is wrought in the will' 'is the work of only God'. 'Therefore do thy work, and surely I promise thee He will not fail in His' (c. xxvi.). Though the 'stirrings' are the movements of grace, still it is the constant burden of the Cloud and of its companion Epistle of Privy Counsel that they are a 'work' in which the will, or the soul, is industriously at work: 'a naked intent stretching unto God', *a longing desire evermore working'. 3
1 Contemplatlo pertinet ad ipsum simplicem intuitum veritatis, ... et in affectu terminatur (Summa, 2-2*^ q. 180, a. 3).
2 Hoc est ultimum ad quod pertingere possumus circa cognitionem divinam in hac vita, quod Deus est supra omne id quod a nobis cogitari potest (De Div. Norn., i. lect. 3: cited by Jorct).
8 Epistle of Privy Counsel, i. This Epistle is printed for the first time in Dom Justin McCann's edition of The Cloud (Orchard Books, No. 4, 1924, Burns, Gates and Washbourne). In the same volume is printed, also for the first time, the sub- stantive portions of Fr Augustine Baker's Secretion sive Mysticum* an exposition of The Cloud.
AFTERTHOUGHTS XXV
In his Exposition of the Cloud Fr Baker describes the 'stirrings of love' as
certain forced but very facile elevations of the will, that bluntly or blindly heaves itself up towards God, apprehended only according to the general notion of faith, and applies and unites itself unto Him, with a conformity of the will to the Will of God in all things, applying the will unto Him. and holding it fast unto Him so long as corporeal frailty will permit. These exercises of love the soul herself (howsoever helped or moved by God) worketh and is the agent. 1
And so he classes them as 'active* exercises, albeit 'they do not lie in man's power to exercise at his pleasure^ but depend upon the power of God, who moves and enables the soul to them 5 (p. 319): that is, the will does produce them., though in virtue of a special enablement Fr Baker calls these stirrings 'aspirations': 2
Aspirations are an exercise by which we immediately aspire to a perfect union with God. In them there is much good love and a kind of union, but not perfect love or perfect union. Aspirations are a certain greedy longing or thirsting after God out of love; but when the soul is come to be united to Him, then do they cease: she being come to enjoy and possess that Good which by her aspirations she aspired and tended unto. But such union ceasing for it doth not always last she reneweth her aspirations, by them aspiring to a new union. The which perfect union consisteth in the coupling of the powers of the soul by love and affection to the Spirit of God, all images of creatures being for the time driven and held without. ... The said union I intend to be an active union. For as to the passive union, our author professeth that he will not treat of it, as being a matter too high for him to undertake the expressment of it. 3
These pieces from the Cloud and Fr Baker's Exposition have been cited as of interest in themselves, and as showing that both writers are in the line of those who make contemplation lie rather in the will than in the intellect. Fr Baker says: 4
God only can move the will to this exercise of love, and He doth it immediately, without help of the imagination or understanding. No creature can do it; they can only work in a man's will by causing or using some image in the imagination, the which appear- ing in. the understanding they seek to move the will thereby. The
1 Exposition (see preceding note), pp. 296-301.
* Ibid. pp. 314-1 7: see the full teaching on this subject ia Sancta Sophia, p. 509 ff.
* See piece cited from Cloud, c. xxvi, text, p. 8. On passive unions see Sancta Sophia, pp. 520 and 531 ff,
4 Exposition, p, 381; cf. Sancta Sophia* p. 507.
XXVI AFTERTHOUGHTS
will being moved by God, will immediately apply itself to God and suffer no thought to go between her and God, or to hinder her union with Him.
An interesting question presents itself: What is the relation be- tween Fr Baker's aspirations and St John's loving attention? Do they speak of different kinds of contemplation, or is the difference one of nuance, of emphasis? At first sight they seem to have in mind different states of prayer. Fr Baker lays down clearly that in aspira- tions the soul, moved by God, itself actuates, until, if so be, there is question of passive union, a rare and extraordinary action of God on the soul. St John on his side urges that 'the soul must be lovingly intent upon God, without distinctly eliciting other acts beyond those to which He inclines it; making no efforts of its own, purely, simply, and lovingly intent upon God 5 (text, p. 214); and in the piece to be cited just now (p. xxvii.), he says that in loving attention the faculties labour no more, but are all in repose: and similar words occur with great frequency. Yet does he take for granted that there is a certain working of the soul: persons in this state must at least direct their attention lovingly and calmly to- wards God (text, p. 215), and the attention must be kept fixed (pp. 2 1 5-216) ; by custom the loving attention can come to be secured more or less at will (below, p. xxxii.).
St John's solicitude concerns the protest he makes against the manner of direction prevalent in his time, whereby souls were kept tied down to discoursive meditation and explicit acts. That which he is insistent on excluding from the prayer of souls being led by God into the practice of loving attention, is all discourse of the understanding, all meditation and reflection, all images, pictures, forms, all seeking for sensible devotion and fervour, and all acts couched in set forms of words. Whether he would class as acts to be excluded those hardly articulate stirrings of love, those blind upheavings of the soul to God, that are the staple of Fr Baker's aspirations, is at the least very doubtful. After going through again, with this particular point in mind, the section in the Living Flams and the Dark Night of Sense, the conclusion borne in upon me by many indications is that such aspirations fall within the idea of St John's prayer of loving attention, which, be it noted, he habit- ually declares to be infused contemplation. 1 Thus, almost in the same words as Fr Baker, he speaks of the soul's 'earnest longing after God' and its 'thirst for God' (Night of Sense, xi, i, 2). Towards the end of the section in the Living Flame, while speaking of the
1 Dark Night, I. x. 7; xii. i; xxv. I.
AFTERTHOUGHTS XXV11
mind's emptiness of all distinct perceptions in memory, imagination, understanding, and emotion during the loving attention, he turns to the will: he addresses those directors whom he is objurgating,
You will say, perhaps, that the will, if the understanding have no distinct perceptions, will be idle and without love, because we can love nothing that we do not know. That is true as to the natural actions of the soul. But in the matter of infused contemplation it is not at all necessary for the soul to have distinct knowledge, because God is then communicating to it loving knowledge, which is at the same time heat and light indistinctly, and then according to the state of the understanding love also is in the will. As the knowledge is general and dim, so the will also loves generally and indistinctly. There is no reason, therefore, to be afraid of the will's idleness in this state, for if it ceases to elicit acts directed by particular know- ledge, so far as they depend on itself, God inebriates it with infused love through the knowledge which contemplation ministers. These acts of the will which are consequent upon infused contemplation are so much the nobler, the more meritorious, and the sweeter, the nobler the source, God, who infuses this love and kindles it in the soul. Though the soul have no particular comfort in God, distinctly apprehended, though it does not make distinct acts of love, it does find more comfort in Him in that general secret and dim infusion, than if it were under the influence of distinct acts of knowledge.
Speaking of a far higher grade of contemplation, St John says that 'the will burns with the fire of love, longs for God, praises Him and gives Him thanks, worships and honours Him, and prays to Him in the sweetness of love' (text, pp. 149-150). I think, therefore, it may be said that St John, in regard to the earlier stages of infused contemplation, does not differ in substance from the author of the Cloud and Fr Baker, though he lays more stress than they on the aspect of tranquil repose in contemplation. And it seems that for him, too, contemplation lies rather in the will than in the intellect.
On this question of intellect or will Pere Joret makes a welcome concession, or distinction: 'For St Thomas, contemplation consists in an intellectual act; love is there; but what constitutes the essence of contemplation is the simple gaze on divine truth: without this intuition one may well enjoy a certain mystic union, but one does not properly "contemplate".' 1 This is helpful. St John distinguishes contemplation and union: the former is the characteristic of the state of proficients, the latter of the state of the perfect: 'Souls begin to enter the Dark Night when God is drawing them out of the state of beginners, which is that of those who meditate on the spiritual
1 Contemplation, p. 165.
XXV111 AFTERTHOUGHTS
road, and is leading them into that of proficients, the state of con- templatives, that having passed through it, they may arrive at the state of the perfect, which is that of the divine union with God.' 1
I have to confess to an abiding uneasy sense when reading the Dominican writers as to whether St Thomas has in mind really the same thing as St John and the mystics pure and simple. It would be a great contribution to the study of mysticism if some Dominican theologian were to draw out in set form a bare statement of what St Thomas says on the act of contemplation itself and on union, without bringing it into relation with St Teresa or St John or any other mystic, and without theological considerations derived from the theology of the Gifts. Such misgivings as I feel are engendered by the sense that the Dominicans seem to consider that there is some intimate connexion between the study of speculative theology, and contemplation. This comes to the surface often in P. Joret's book (which on the whole I like better than that of P. Garrigou- Lagrange); as where he says that the combination of asceticism, liturgy, and theological study, makes a greater Dominican house 'the ideal abode of contemplation* (p. 1 74) : an idea surely very different from that of the Egyptian hermits in Cassian (see text, p. 204).
7. Points of Mystical Theology
PASSIVITY. Of the various points at issue around contemplation, the question of 'passivity' is probably the one that lies nearest to the root of the matter. Passivity has commonly come nowadays to be taken as the test of real contemplation. By passivity is meant that contemplation itself is wholly the act of God, the soul lying passive in the hands of God, receiving the gift and not resisting the divine action; yet accepting and responding by a vital act. The following words, taken from a review of Mgr Farge*s book, well express the currently received idea:
Mystical or supernatural contemplation is a divine gift, the result of God's action upon the soul, which is passive. There is that lower kind of contemplation which is called acquired, and which differs specifically from mystical contemplation, and may be de- scribed as active. The essential difference between asceticism and mysticism, and between mystical contemplation and every other form of prayer, however perfect, is the element of passivity which constitutes the former state, and that of activity which constitutes the latter.
*Dark Night, i. i.
AFTERTHOUGHTS XXIX
There is common agreement that such passivity is the mark of the mystical experience in its strictest and fullest acceptation, so that it receives the name, among others, of 'passive union 5 ; but the hard-and-fast limiting of the term 'mystical 3 to such highest states of prayer as are in the strict sense passive, seems, as has been seen, to be due to the influence of St Teresa. I do not think it will be found that any such rigid line of demarcation emerges from the passages on contemplation brought together in this book from the writings of the three great contemplative Doctors of the West: there appears to be in them a clear sense of the working of the soul, of will and of intellect, in contemplation, 1 It would be of interest to institute a study, from this point of view, of the medieval mystics, the Victorines, SS Thomas and Bonaventure, and the German mystics of the fourteenth century. We have seen that the Cloud, and Fr Baker after it, speak of ordinary contemplation as a working of the soul wherein the will is agent.
I can hardly think that anyone, after reading Fr Baker's Exposition of the Cloud, or the chapters in Sancta Sophia on e Con- templation' and 'Aspirations', will class 'aspirations' as 'acquired contemplation'; yet does he speak of them as an active exercise, as 'active mystical contemplation', and as leading up to a 'perfect active mystical union', which in turn is likely to obtain from God the extraordinary grace of a passive union.
Whether and how much Fr Baker's road differs from St John's we cannot say: St John has spoken as no one else has of the initial stages of contemplation, infused contemplation; and he has spoken as few others have of the highest heights of the spiritual life; but he has hardly spoken of the intermediate stages, Fr Baker's road is different from St Teresa's, yet does it reach the same goal. It is a gradual ascent, without break of continuity, from discoursive meditation, through affective prayer and forced acts of the will, to aspirations and contemplation, and to active union. It is the road he travelled along himself, and we know that it brought him to the 'passive union purely intellectual', which is the Fifth and Sixth of St Teresa's Mansions; and into the 'great desolation', which is St John's 'night of the spirit'; 2 and we may surely believe that it led him through that into the 'state of perfection' portrayed in the last chapter of Sancta Sophia, which is nothing less than St Teresa's Seventh Mansion, the state which she and St John call the 'spiritual marriage' or 'transforming love'. These three concluding chapters of Sancta Sophia treat of the same heights of the spiritual life, of
1 See, for instance, pp. 34, 65, 70-71, and passim. * Fr Baker's Confessions^ pp. 59-81.
XXX AFTERTHOUGHTS
prayer and contemplation and union, as are spoken of in the most advanced pages of St Teresa, St John of the Cross, or B. John Ruysbroeck. And in so far as Fr Baker's road of approach may differ somewhat from theirs, it only shows that more than one path leads to the summit of God's mountain, and that it is a miscon- ception, to map it out as if there were only a single track.
On the matter of passivity, it is worth noting that P&re Joret declines to follow the extreme ideas of some recent writers: he points out that not until St Teresa's Sixth Mansion does prayer become completely passive; in the Fourth and Fifth, 'quiet' and "union*, some effort is needed; yet is such prayer 'mystical contemplation'. 1
MYSTICAL. So much on passivity. Another term much contro- verted is the word 'mystical' . One school of mystical theologians limits its use strictly to contemplation that is fully passive this is the position of Poulain and Farges; another school, to which belong de Besse and Saudreau, extend it so as to include the prayer of loving attention or of simplicity. On this question excellent words have been written in a recent book, Darkness or Light, by Fr Henry Browne, S ,J. } to which we shall revert more than once. He sets up a psychological rather than a theological test for 'mystical'. The natural, normal, mode of operation of the mind during its present state of union with the body, is by sense impressions, images, con- cepts, 'intelligible species', reasoning; when it operates in another mode, without these means it is acting mystically. Fr Browne says: *In theory it is necessary, unless we want to be lost in hopeless con- fusion, to state firmly that, as soon as one ceases to use discourse of the faculties, so soon one's prayer begins to be passive and one is really entering on the mystic road' (op, cit. p. 138). This seerns to afford a true and easily applicable discriminant delimiting the frontier between mystical and non-mystical prayer. According to it, the prayer of loving attention, or of simplicity, is rudimentary mystical prayer.
The unduly rigid idea of 'mystical* is responsible for Poulain' s difficulties over St John's 'Night of Sense' : the description of the *loving attention' quite tallies,, as he sees, with the prayer of sim- plicity; yet St John calls it 'infused contemplation'. As Poulain's position is that the prayer of simplicity is tf acquired', not 'infused', and therefore not mystical, he has to postulate in the Night of Sense 'a latent quietude* that distinguishes it from the prayer of sim- plicity, and makes it a rudimentary mystical state, in the restricted
1 Contemplation p 105. The four 'Waterings' of the Life correspond to the Third Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth 'Mansions' of the Castle.
AFTERTHOUGHTS XXXI
sense of 'mystical* (op. cit, c. xv,). But we have seen that this is a misconception.
ORDINARY AND EXTRAORDINARY. These terms again give rise to much controversy. We have heard Bishop Hedley make a syn- thesis, almost a paradox: contemplation is extraordinary prayer, but it ought to be an ordinary state for Christian souls. Some writers use 'ordinary' as meaning usual; among them de Besse: his