Part II, and it has been possible to welcome a great general move-

ment going on in ever-increasing volume for the past third of a century, in, the direction of the ideas that motived the writing of this book a broadening out of the conception of mental prayer and contemplation, till contemplation should become once again what it was in olden times, the recognized goal of the spiritual life, the normal full growth of grace in the regenerate soul. We must now turn, more briefly, to the problem envisaged in Part I, the nature of the mystical experience itself in its highest and most complete manifestation, and the validity of the claim of the great mystics in regard to their most characteristic experience. What that claim is, is set forth unmistakably in the Prologue, in the words of certain mystics voicing their own experiences; while in the Epilogue the evidence of the great Christian mystics, pre-eminently St John of the Gross, is accepted as proof of validity. The claim was formulated as the experimental perception of the Being and Presence of God
xliv AFTERTHOUGHTS
in the soul; or the entering of the soul into conscious direct contact with God.
This I had ventured to put forward as the outstanding problem of mysticisnij the issue on which mysticism, properly so called, as an element in the philosophy of religion, must ultimately stand or fall. And so it was a disappointment to find that P. Garrigou- Lagrange seems to pass this question by completely. It is matter for regret that P. Poulain pressed much too far this direct perception of God, making it the essential element of states truly mystical, so that he would not accord the name to any kind of prayer or any religious experience from which the perception of God's Being is absent. But there are many experiences certainly mystical without such direct sense of God.
I cannot but think that Poulain's really most valuable book is marred by the defects of his temperament; he was by profession a mathematician, and he proceeds in mystical theology by a mathe- matical method of clear-cut definitions, propositions, and proofs, of which the subject-matter is not patient. A great deal of the obscurity and divergences reigning in the sphere of mystical theology are due to a too rigid and mechanical pressing of theories to their extreme conclusions. Thus, in reacting against this exaggeration of Poulain's, Saudreau goes too far in the opposite direction, maintaining that the experimental perception of God is not an element of the mystical experience at all; he holds that the expressions of the mystics that seem to assert some such thing are to be taken as figures of speech, metaphors, and signify that the Presence of God is not directly perceived, but only inferred from the effects of love, devotion, surrender felt in the soul. 1 He seems to make an exception for St John of the Cross's substantial touches, placing them apart as a practically unique experience. 2 It was disconcerting to find Garrigou-Lagrange endorsing this position of Saudreau in more than once place, 3 and citing, with an evident sense of relief, words of Cardinal Billot, that the immediate perception of God by the mystics was an invention of P. Poulain. 4 This, of course, is not the
1 One of the principal pieces cited in support of this interpretation is St Bernard's account of Ms mystic experience (text, pp. 101-102). But other passages of St Bernard (pp. 104-106) are in line with the statements of the great mystics.
Saudreau deals with the matter witfi great fulness in an appendix of fifty pages to the second edition of L'&at Mystique (1921). Farges stoutly defends, against Saudreau, the position that the language of the mystics cannot be explained away as metaphorical, and that their claim of an experimental perception of God, a certain immediate apprehension, is philosophically and theologically sound (Mystical Phenomena, pp. 58 ff., 266 ff., 611 fT.).
2 The Mystical State, p. 95.
3 Op. cit. pp. 301, 331, 576 ('perfectly conformable to St Thomas's principles'). * Ibid. p. """"*
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case; In the pieces cited from Fr Baker (text, pp. 1 1 - 1 2) the very words 'real experimental perception of God's presence' occur. Though Poulain is mistaken in making such experience the characteristic feature of all grades of infused contemplation and of all mystical states, the claim of the great mystics is, in one way or another, that in the heights of the mystic experience they have got into immediate conscious contact with the Being of God be it expressed as experi- mental perception of His Presence in the soul, or as substantial touch, or as passive union, or as intellectual intuition: all this, be it noted, is something quite different from the vision of God's Essence as supposed to have been granted to Moses and St Paul (text, pp. 55-62). In order to have clearly before his mind the nature of the claim of the mystics, let the reader go over the set of citations in the Prologue and the series of pieces from St John of the Gross in the Epilogue: he will see that it really is what is set forth above, and that the language cannot reasonably be explained away as figurative or metaphorical. The claim may be unfounded, an illusion; but that is what it is.
And so, when I found P. Garrigou-Lagrange denying it, and P. Joret passing it over in his book on 'Contemplation according to St Thomas,' and other Dominicans ruling it out, I began wondering if there was any place for this claim of the mystics within the limits of Thomist theology and psychology. And therefore I experienced a sense of relief and of joy when a friend put in my hands the tractate of P&re Gardeil, La Structure de la Connaissance Mystique. 1 Gardeil is a veteran theologian of the Dominicans, and his tractate impresses me greatly as a masterly and convincing exposition, marked by singular modesty withal, showing how St Thomas's theological doctrine and the witness of the great mystics can really be worked together into a single structure without any watering down of what the mystics have to tell of their experiences. The following formulation of the great question of mysticism leaves nothing to be desired:
Can we touch God in this life by an immediate contact, and have of Him an experience truly direct and substantial? The saints affirm it, and their descriptions of the prayer of union, of ecstasy, of the spiritual marriage, are all full of this sort of quasi-experimental perception of God within us (p. 47).
To this vital question of mysticism, thus posed with the utmost clarity, Gardeil gives an affirmative answer, and he holds that the
1 It is a reprint, 95 pp., of four articles in the Revue Thomiste, 1924.
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mystics' claim lies within the lines of St Thomas's theology. But it takes him nearly a hundred pages to work up to this conclusion pages, be it said, of quite extraordinary interest. The foundations are laid in the fullest and most literal assertion of the principle of philosophy no less than theology, of the presence of the Creator, the First Cause, in all creatures, and especially in rational creatures; and of the in-dwelling of the Holy Ghost, and of the Blessed Trinity, in the soul that is in the state of grace' This presence of God is stressed to its fullest meaning, as not merely by His Immensity or Power, but as being the substantial presence of God by His Essence in the TunxT, or centre, or essence of the soul. He shows that of two kinds of knowledge or consciousness, and of these two only, St Thomas uses the term 'perception', 'percipere 5 ; viz. of the soul's consciousness of itselfa matter of everyday psychology and of the mystic's consciousness of God as present in his soul. Gardeil's theory is based on the analogy of these two kinds of perception, or awareness, to which the term 'cognition 5 is not applicable. For 'cognition* in our present state of union of soul and body, 'know- ledge 3 , is dependent on sense-impressions, phantasrnata, intelligible species, concepts, abstract and general ideas derived from material things; whereas the soul's perception of itself is direct, without such intermediate forms; and so is it with the souFs perception in the mystic experience of God present in it the perception is direct, quasi-experimental, as the mystics say. This perception of God is, according to the principles of St Thomas's theology, to be ascribed to the 'supra-conceptual' 'supra-intentional' is Gardens technical scholastic term 1 working of the Gift of Wisdom, which is for Thomists the operating force in the higher grades of contemplation. And Gardeil consequently rejects two theories that have been in these controversies put forward to meet the difficulty inherent in the idea of the mind working without concepts or species; for non- conceptual activities of the mind are as great a bugbear to modern psychologists,, as non-intentional activities without intelligible species are to scholastic psychologists.
The first of the theories rejected turns on a point of highly technical scholastic psychology; still, as it looms large in the Mystical Phenomena of Mgr Farges, lately translated into English and likely to be widely read, it is worth while to take note of Gardeil's utter rejection. Farges maintains, as the teaching of St Thomas, that in contemplation the place of the ordinary means of knowledge, viz., phantasrnata, concepts, ideas, species, is taken by 'impressed
1 'Intentional knowledge' means that the object known is presented to the mind not directly, but by the means of a representative idea (p, 5).
AFTERTHOUGHTS xlvii
species' infused in the mind by God. Garrigou-Lagrange contests this at length, and Gardeil pronounces it alien to the tradition of the mystics and to sane philosophy and theology, especially that of St Thomas (p. 74). Readers of Sancta Sophia will remember that Fr Baker has recourse to a similar theory (pp. 505-7, 520, 532 1 ); but it will be noted that he does so only in compliance with what he conceived to be the dicta of the schools, that the soul cannot in this life operate without the means of 'species 5 . Had he realized that the best Thomist teaching declares the highest mystical states to be independent of such need, he would surely have felt relieved at being freed from the necessity of postulating such a theory, in no way demanded by the personal experience of mystics.
And on the other hand, Gardeil argues at great length against the view which we have just seen to be maintained by Saudreau and endorsed by Garrigou-Lagrange, that God's presence is not directly perceived in the mystic experience, but only inferred from its effects on the soul. This Gardeil rejects as an inadequate account of the phenomenon, and he strongly asserts, as St Thomas's real and most profound teaching on the subject, the immediacy of the soul's per- ception of God in the state of full union, that of St Teresa's Fifth Mansion, and Sixth and Seventh. These last twenty-five pages of his tractate are, for me, beyond all compare the most illuminating and most satisfying treatment of the mystical problem from the side of pure theology.
12. The Mystic Experience and Psychology
This matter of the immediate perception of God in the mystic experience is so vital that I feel emboldened to try to sketch another line of approach laid down by another Dominican theologian, Pere Noel, the translator and editor of the works of John Tauler, the great Dominican German preacher and mystic of the fourteenth century. Buried away in the middle of the fourth volume, 1911, is a striking 'Expose* doctrinal (pp. 316-57) of the teaching of Tauler and the other masters of the Rhenish mystical school concerning the 'fund' or 'apex' of the soul, its very essence. The subject has been touched on in the text, pp. 1 39-140, and a passage from Blosius is there given, which sufficiently explains the idea underlying the doctrine. Noel's thesis is that this teaching of the e fund' of the spirit is a proper development of St Thomas's conception, taken over from St Augustine, of the 'mens', as being the essence of the soul, the root
1 Also in the Exposition of the Cloud.
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of its powers or faculties, 1 The feature of the study that Is especially to our purpose may be set forth thus:
While the soul is united to the body, the man, the composite being, is dependent for his knowledge as human being on the bodily senses, St Thomas's axiom standing firm, that nothing is in the intellect that was not first in sense, the intellectual concepts being derived from phantasmata by processes of abstraction, ratiocination, and so forth. But the soul, c mens', is 'an incorporeal principle, sub- sisting of itself,' having as a spirit its own proper operation, that is, a process of intelligence. This power of intellection, independently of bodily senses and phantasmata, the soul will exercise between death and the resurrection as a separated spirit it will see God intuitively, directly without intermediary. This power of intuition the soul possesses radically even when united to the body, and exercises, but in a rudimentary way. It has an intuitive perception of itself, indeterminately, and also it can have an indeterminate perception of God present within it. 'There is thus a sort of doubling of the "ego". On the one side is the "man", with an exterior know- ledge, which he can form for himself by abstraction, clear, precise, evident; and on the other an incorporeal subsistent principle, which also knows, but imperfectly and confusedly, without abstracting, in an intuitive way: and these two modes work alongside of each other, simultaneously, no confusion being possible 1 (op. cit. p. 335).
But the 'mens*, the fund or essence of the soul, is capable of greater things than this: it is the seat of the image of God and of the Holy Trinity; and, according to P. Noel, it is the region in which works the supernatural virtue of faith. It is also capable of special illuminations from God 3 and it is the field of the higher mystic experiences. Noel sums up the constant burden of Tauler's teaching on this subject, which he declares to be wholly conformable to St Thomas's mind:
Do you wish to live truly of the divine life, to submit yourself fully to the illuminations of the Primary Truth, to experience the direct irradiations of the Divinity? Leave matter and the senses, go forth from this visible world, quit creatures, pass over the matter that encloses you, the sensations that hold you in, the imaginations that keep you captive, the thoughts and sublime concepts which you take for the Primary Truth, but which are only a magnificent though fragile scaffolding of your reason. Raise yourself above your reason, above your human intelligence which nourishes itself on phantasms, images, sensible species; descend into the fund and the
1 See article by Gardeil, *Le "Mens" d'apres S. Augustin et S. Thomas d*Aquin% Revue des Sciences philosophtques et thfalogiquesy 1924.
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inmost recess of your soul: there you will find the pure and sub- sistent spirit; there you will find the dwelling-place of God; there you will find God. This spirit by nature resembles God, God has made it for Himself. There God descends by grace and love, and only there can He descend. We are accessible to the visit of God only by those summits of our soul that, like Himself, are wholly spiritual (p. 351). There the divine Essence places itself, without intermediary of any kind, in face of the intelligence (p. 340).
Noel seems to be aware that he is sailing over very deep water, and that some may deem his position in parts dangerous; but he is firm that he is exposing the mind not only of Tauler but of St Thomas. And his study bears the fullest Dominican authorization, P. Gardeil being one of the censors. It is in its entirety worthy of the best consideration of those interested in mystical problems. 1
I need not say what a pleasure it is to find how Bear the little sketch offered (text, pp. 199-205) of the theological and psycho- logical bases of mysticism comes to the principles so solidly estab- lished by such eminent Dominican theologians as PP. Gardeil and Noel.
The Dominican approach to the consideration of mysticism is primarily from the side of theology; but Pere Joseph Marechal, S.J., approaches it from the side of phenomenal psychology. He is professor of psychology at Louvain and is well versed in the methods and the literature of modern experimental psychology, and he brings all this knowledge to bear on the subject of contemplation and mystical experience. His contributions have been articles in various philosophical periodicals, and of these he has republished three very substantial studies in a recent volume, Etudes sur la Psychologie des Mystiques (pp. 267; 1924). He is conversant with the most recent treatment of the phenomena of mysticism at the hands of modern psychologists, as William James and H. Delacroix. He declares that on the phenomenal side all the experiences of the mystics lie within the range of psychological science, except the very highest, that of full union, as described in St Teresa's Fifth Mansion, and in the similar narrations of other mystics. The idea of non-conceptual workings of the mind is abhorrent to psychologists, and so their disposition is to reduce the state of mystical union to a mental blank, a mere unconsciousness. But while admitting that this may be true of certain kinds of quasi-mystical absorption, especially oriental, often deliberately induced by methods akin to hypnotism, Marechal has no difficulty in showing that as an
1 Some illuminating notes of Noel, as on pp. 50 and 60, on the 'mens*, and the 'fund' or 'apex* of the spirit, deserve to be read.
1 AFTERTHOUGHTS
account of the ecstatic unions of the great mystics, such an idea is wholly inadequate and untrue, their ecstasies being highly wrought states of religious consciousness and of spiritual activity. As he says, if the merely psychological explanations be accepted, then must the whole body of testimony of the mystics be rejected. He holds that the true scientific attitude is to accept that testimony, even though it be something transcending the data of psychology.
He sums up in the language of psychology the affirmations of the mystics under two heads, negative and positive (op. cit. p. 245):
1. The affirmation of negative characteristics which separate radically the ecstatic state from psychological states, normal or abnormal, of ordinary life: the effacement of the empiric self, the abandonment of imagery and spatiality, the absence of all multi- plicity, that is, in a word, the cessation of conceptual thought.
The ecstasy is negative.
2. On the other hand, the affirmation that this suspension of conceptual thought is not complete unconsciousness, but rather an enlargement, an intensification, or even a higher form, of intellectual activity.
The ecstasy Is positive.
But these two affirmations are contradictory on every imaginable hypothesis, save one: viz., that the human intelligence can arrive, in certain conditions, to an intuition proper to it; in other words, that the intelligence, in place of constructing analogically and approximatively its object in materials derived from the senses, can sometimes attain this object in an immediate assimilation.
The general run of psychologists will, he says, recoil from this consequence, and prefer to expurgate the documents of mysticism of one or other of these affirmations Mar ally, and that considerations derived from ontology and theology must be brought in to supplement those of experimental psychology.
13. The Vision of God
The accounts offered by the different authorities as to what takes place in the highest mystic states are very perplexing, because they all differ so greatly in the theories put forward, and also because all claim to be following St Thomas, and all cite him extensively in support of their views. Marechal holds that the characteristic feature of the higher mystic states, and the one that separates them from "ordinary contemplation' such as the Dionysian 'darkness 9 is that there takes place in them an active, and not merely sym-
AFTERTHOUGHTS 11
bolical, presentation of God to the soul, with its psychological correlative of an immediate intuition of God by the soul (p. 253). Here, he says, we have a definition, clear and sufficient, of super- natural mysticism. And in an article, C L' Intuition de Dieu dans la Mystique Chretienne' (Recherches de Science Religieuse, 1914), to be reproduced in Vol. II of the Etudes, he interprets this intuition of God as the vision of the Divine Essence, spoken of by St Augustine and St Thomas (text, pp. 55-62).
Such a position, it will at once be seen, is quite different from that of the Dominican theologians. They seem to fight shy of this item of St Thomas's teaching, so as to place it outside the pale of discussion on the theory of mysticism: Gardeil, I think, makes no reference to it at all; Garrigou-Lagrange considers St Paul's vision to be a grace so extraordinary as to transcend anything spoken of by St Teresa or St John of the Gross; 1 Joret says that St Thomas restricts it to the two cases of Moses and St Paul 2 a statement which, I think, cannot be sustained. Mgr Farges correctly interprets St Thomas's mind: the vision of God's Essence is possible in this life, but in a state of rapture, and not only to Moses and St Paul; but it is an exceedingly rare grace, and it is miraculous c miraculose' St Thomas uses of it more than once. 3
And hence arises an objection to Marechal's definition of super- natural mysticism: it would place the essence of mysticism, the real thing, within the borders of the definitely miraculous. He makes this definition apply only to the 'higher mystical states'; he does not make it clear where he draws the line between 'ordinary Dionysian contemplation* and the ^higher states,* whether the prayer of union of St Teresa's Fifth Mansion falls below or above the line: certainly I can see in it nothing to suggest a vision of the divine Essence. St Thomas and St Augustine hold that the condition of such vision is an entire alienation of the senses in a vehement ecstasy, a rapture so profound as to be a deathlike trance. 4
It was a surprise to find Mar6chal claiming that the whole tradi- tion of the mystics until the sixteenth century was that the mystic experience is the vision or intuition of God's Essence. The statement is counter to what we see to be the teaching of St Gregory and St Bernard (text, pp. 87-88, 119-120); it is counter to the explicit judgement of St John of the Gross (text, pp. 61-62), who certainly thought that his own elevations in contemplation never had been
1 Perfection et Contemplation, p. 333.
2 Contemplation Mystique, pp. 23-4, 243, 304.
3 The only discussion in English of this curious point of theology is that of Farges, op. cit. pp. 58-80.
4 See St Augustine, text, pp. 51, 57.
Hi AFTERTHOUGHTS
such; I do not recollect this claim to be made by St Teresa; It is not found in the series given in the Prologue, of the accounts of their mystical experiences recorded by the mystics. For it must be insisted on definitely that the direct intuition or vision of the divine Essence would be something greatly more than the experimental perception of God's Being and Presence in the soul, or the sub- stantial touches, or the unions, by which the mystics do describe their experience; it is also quite different from visions, even in- tellectual, such as those which St Ignatius and St Teresa had of the Holy Trinity.
There seem to be four or five definite personal claims on the part of accredited Christian mystics to have had such vision of the divine Essence (see Poulain, c, xviii., Nos. 60, 75, 76, 77, 78; and Farges, p. 63). The most arresting is that of B. Angela of Foligno, who declared it to have been made known to her that the un- utterable manifestation of God, which she had over and over again, is really the good possessed by the blessed in heaven that, and nothing else though in less measure, the least in heaven possessing it more fully than any one ever could on earth (* Vision 5 VIII).
When dealing with this question of the Vision of God's Essence I was careful to say that I was not concerned with the truth or the possibility of the idea put forward by St Augustine and taken up by St Thomas, but only with the ascertaining what their idea was (text, p. 55). In view, however, of the prominence given to that idea in recent discussions, especially those of P. Mar6chal, it seems to be desirable to go into the subject itself. So far as the view is current, that even in this life, in certain conditions, the divine Essence can be, and has been, seen by man, it rests mainly on St Thomas; but I believe it is true to say that in all his treatment of it, direct or incidental, he simply follows St Augustine, repro- ducing his arguments and applying his method of treatment: it is a simple adoption and endorsement of St Augustine's idea, without any contribution of St Thomas's own. Consequently this whole piece of theological thought and theory has its intellectual basis in the motives that caused St Augustine to adopt it. These motives are given in full in the passages cited from St Augustine, text, pp. 53-59. It will therein be seen that the two cases relied on by St Augustine for his affirmative answer, the two cases in which he holds that the essential vision of God has certainly been given, are Moses and St PauL St Paul figures much more largely with St Thomas; but it will be seen that for St Augustine the real strength of the case lies in Moses. St Paul, describing his mystical experience (2 Cor. xii.), speaks of
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visions and revelations, and says he was caught up (rapt) to the 'third heaven', to 'Paradise 5 . What these expressions mean is very uncertain; St Thomas offers various interpretations (2-2, q. clxxv. a. 3). But St Paul does not claim to have seen anything, but to have heard 'unspeakable words'. There is nothing whatsoever to suggest that he had any vision of God's Essence. St Augustine seizes on the words 'whether in the body or out of the body I know not/ as offering an escape from the force of God's word to Moses, 'Thou canst not see My Face, for man shall not see Me and live' (Exod. xxxiii. 20) : St Paul was thrown into a rapture or trance so profound that his soul had for the time being left his body, and he was not 'alive' in the full sense of the word (see St Augustine's argumenta- tion). Thus St Paul's case comes in only secondarily, as affording a means of surmounting a difficulty; and St Thomas in one place (de Veritate, q. xiii. a. 2) recognizes that the strength of the case lies in Moses, for he argues that as Moses, the minister of the Old Testa- ment, had this privilege, it would be improbable that St Paul, the minister of the New, should not have had the like.
And so we are thrown back on the case of Moses, and on St Augustine's line of argument whereby he arrives at the conclusion that, in spite of God's apparent refusal of the request as impossible (Exod. xxxiii.), the wording of Num. xii. 8 shows that it after- wards was granted, and Moses did see God e in that substance whereby He is God, 3 in His divine Essence. The argument is Scrip- tural, based on the texts Num. xii. 8 and Exod. xxxiii. 13, 18, 20. Augustine used an Old Latin version, a literal translation of the Septuagint Greek in these verses. A comparison of these texts with the Vulgate or the Authorised, or better still, the Revised Version, will show that in the points critical for Augustine's argument, the Hebrew text differs from the Greek and OldLatin (for Num. xii. 8, see text, pp. 55-56) . It will be seen that the crucial point for Augustine's argument is the term 'in specie' (Gk. kv &$&)> in Num. xii. 8, to which he gives its full philosophical force of 'essence': but there is no equivalent in the Hebrew; the Vulgate 'palam', and R.V. 'mani- festly', correctly render the text. As for the last clause of the text 'claritatem Domini vidit,' 'claritas' is &>a in the Gk., but 'simili- tude' in A.V. and 'form' in R.V. A very competent Hebraist tells me the word probably signifies e some sort of real manifestation, God allowing Himself to be seen under this or that visible form, a theophany.' To take either 'species' or 'claritas' as meaning the divine Essence is to depart altogether from the sense of the Hebrew words.
Thus it \yould seem that the whole conception of Moses, or of
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St Paul, having had the vision of God's Essence, is built upon St Augustine's misinterpretation of a mistranslation of a biblical text.
The biblical texts adverse to any such idea are very cogent. Be- sides that of Exodus just cited, 'Man shall not see Me and live/ St Paul declares that God 'dweileth in light unapproachable, whom no man hath seen, nor can see 5 (i Tim. vi. 16); and St John: No man hath seen God at any time' (i. 18, I Ep. iv. 12). What men have seen has always been some figure or form, as in the theo- phanies, never the divine Essence Itself. In face of this biblical evidence, and of the grave philosophical difficulties involved, it may well be thought that but for St Augustine's ill-founded speculation, accepted and endorsed by St Thomas, the idea of the vision of God's Essence by any man would not have found a place in theo- logical tradition.
14. Summary of Results
In concluding this survey of debates in progress among the theo- logians, it may be of use to gather up into definite propositions the impressions and conclusions that seem, at any rate to the present writer, to emerge.
1. It cannot be held that the mystic experience claimed by the mystics is ordinarily the vision of the divine Essence, such as, according to SS, Augustine and Thomas, was granted to Moses and St Paul. Such vision, if it ever has been granted to man in this life, is the rarest of all mystical favours, and is definitely miraculous (St Thomas).
2. Quite different from such vision of God's Essence is the 'per- ception' of His Being and Presence, experimental, direct, which, in one way or another, the mystics do claim as the culmination of their experiences in the higher kinds of contemplation. Such 'supra- conceptual', 'supra-intentional', perception is within the lines of Thomistic psychology and theology (so P. Gardeil), and is to be accepted as a religious fact on the consistent evidence of the great Christian mystics. To this perception, and to nothing short of it, should be given the name 'Mystical Experience'.
3. Pere Poulain, goes too far in making this experience the essential feature of mystical states and of infused contemplation, ruling out of the domain of mysticism, and of contemplation proper, all states, all prayer, not marked by such perception of God. There are in fact frequent phases of prayer and contemplation, really infused and mystical, from which such experience is absent.
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4. In reacting against Poulain, Abbe Saudreau has gone too far in the opposite direction, maintaining that such perception of God is no part of the mystical experience; that God's Presence is not directly perceived, but only inferred from the fervour, sweetness, devotion experienced in mystical states of prayer; and that any direct perception of God is found only in a very small number of cases, almost unique, for which he creates the special category of { angelic contemplation' ('super-eminent 9 , Garrigou-Lagrange) .
So much on the speculative question, What takes place in the higher mystical experiences? To turn now to the practical side:
5. The 'contemplative life,' objectively taken as an external manner of life ordered with the one object of facilitating con- templation, from which is excluded to the utmost possible all works and activities that could distract or impede the soul in advancing to that goal such a life as that of Carthusians, Garmelite nuns, Poor Clares is a very special vocation, the call of but few, and requiring quite peculiar gifts of character and temperament.
6. But 'contemplation,' even the high kinds of it, if easier in such a life, is by no means restricted to it. In theory it lies open to all, and may be found and exercised in any state of life whatsoever. This is most definitely the teaching of SS. Augustine, Gregory, Bernard, and of St Thomas according to the Dominican theologians.
7. That contemplation lies open to all, all at any rate who ar,e trying to lead seriously a good Christian life, is literally and un- reservedly true of the initial grades of contemplation, spoken of under the names prayer of loving attention, of faith, of simplicity, of simple regard. Such prayer is, according to St John of the Cross, infused contemplation; and it ought to be, and is, ordinarily within the reach of men of good will laying themselves out to lead a spiritual life priests, religious, good lay folk living the devout life' as laid down by St Francis of Sales. All these are to be instructed and encouraged so as to be able and ready to respond to any enablement of grace for exercising such prayer, according to the conditions of their state of life.
8. Speaking in the abstract, it cannot be said that any one is debarred from the higher, and even highest, grades of contempla- tion. And for one who has entered on the course of the spiritual life, and especially for any one who is exercising the prayer of loving attention, the higher kinds of contemplation and mystical experience are legitimate and proper objects of aspiration, desire and humble prayer, in the same kind of way that heroic sanctity is a good object of prayer.
9. But that every one, or every baptized person, is intended
Ivi AFTERTHOUGHTS
according to the normal way of God's Providence, to reach these higher mystical states, in such sense that the fact of not doing so always spells sqme initial infidelity to grace, or is to be attributed to spiritual sloth, or implies some kind of failure, is, I believe, a teaching to be rejected, though it seems to be held by some of the Dominican theologians (Arintero and Garrigou-Lagrange) . The life of the vast majority of devout servants of God is cast, by virtue of the vocation in which they are called by God's Providence and Will, in conditions of this workaday world wherein the very per- formance of God's Will in the duties of their state renders impossible those opportunities for such prayer and recollection as are the ordinary means of attaining to grades of contemplation above that of the prayer of loving attention.
10. Yet who will question that such as these may, by living their lives in the perfect performance of God's Will in all the duties of their state of life, attain to the perfection of charity, even in an heroic degree; and that, without being raised to the higher mystical states? We have had it on the authority of St Teresa and St Alphonsus, and of St Benedict before them, that perfect love of God, and perfect union with Him, may be attained by entire re- nunciation of our own will, and perfect conformity to God's Will, and this without the mystic union. And the same seems to be Our Lord's lesson in the Gospels.
1 1 . Consequently the teaching seems to be very questionable that stresses the idea that the normal thing, the thing according to God's intention, is that every one should pass through the Night of the Spirit, and attain to the highest mystical state of the Spiritual Marriage, as described by St Teresa in the Seventh Mansion, or by St John of the Cross in the Canticle and the Living Flame, on the ground that this is the ordinarily appointed means of attaining to the perfection of charity. It may be difficult to lay hold on the flaw in the chain of reasoning as presented by P. Garrigou-Lagrange; but the religious sense recoils from the conclusions and implications.
12. I hope it may not be deemed over venturesome for one not pledged by profession to any particular Catholic theological school to wonder if the rigid methods of speculative theology that are being applied, really are helpful towards explaining the nature^and the facts of mystical theology and of contemplation. We all believe that the Holy Ghost is really and by His Substance dwelling in the souls of the just, of all who are in God's grace and friendship. We know that He sheds abroad in the hearts of such the love of God (Rom. v. 5), and with love the other infused virtues and the Gifts and Fruits of the Spirit. And we know that all prayer, and all
AFTERTHOUGHTS Ivii
contemplation, is due to His working in us. We know, too, that the mystic experience and union is the culmination of the working of the Holy Spirit in souls conspicuously generous in self-denial and in devotion, and pliable in responding to His inspirations and guidance. We know that all true mystical graces are the working of the Holy Ghost.
Many would be best satisfied to leave it there, without seeking to specify the functions of the individual Gifts of Intelligence, Know- ledge and Wisdom in bringing about the result. There are no doubt minds to whom such schematizations and the diagrams pro- vided by P. Garrigou-Lagrange may appeal; but there are others to whom they do not. I confess myself one of the latter; and I have a feeling that many of the difficulties that have arisen in the discussions under survey are occasioned by an undue pressing of theological theories.
P. Joret in his chapter s Les Dons du Saint-Esprit,' wherein he gives a lucid exposition of St Thomas's doctrine on the Gifts, is careful to point out that what is of Faith is no more than such Scriptural ideas as have just been set forth; all else is matter only of theological speculation (op. cit. p. 40). Not that there is any difficulty about the general idea that contemplation is due prin- cipally to the Gift of Wisdom. But that the mystical life' is dis- tinguished from the 'ascetical 5 in that the latter is marked by the 'human 5 , the former by the 'supra-human' mode of the operation of the Gifts, does seem a piece of very speculative theology.
So far on questions of principle; there remain a few questions of definition and terminology.
13. It seems that the term 'acquired contemplation 5 , as contrasted with infused, had better be abandoned. St John of the Cross knows of no prayer intermediate between discoursive meditation (in- cluding affective prayer and acts) and infused contemplation, the prayer of loving attention. But it should be recognized that in this prayer, although infused by God, there is an element of effort on the part of the will, in placing the mind in the state of recollection and attention, and in keeping the attention fixed on God by re- calling it when it wanders, or reviving it when it fades away.
14. The words 'ordinary' and 'extraordinary' are applied to prayer and contemplation in such different ways by accredited writers, that it seems impossible to conciliate them; it is a matter of definition.
15. 'Mystical' also is used in very different ways. P. Poulain's use is much too restricted and rigid. On the other side, some uses are unduly loose; bouts of sensible devotion should not be spoken
Iviii AFTERTHOUGHTS
of as mystical contemplation. Of all the definitions proposed, Fr Henry Browne's (above, pp. xxix-xxx.) seems the most distinctive: Prayer is mystical which is made without discourse of the faculties, without phantasmata or images, almost without words; the will, as Fr Baker puts it, 'heaving itself up, blindly and bluntly, to God' (above, p. xxv.), and the mind working in a way outside the ordinary laws of phenomenal psychology.
1 6. An agreed terminology in mystical theology is greatly to be desired. If the above psychological test of mystical prayer be accepted, the prayer of loving attention, of faith, is not only infused but mystical: but nothing less than it is mystical. The term 'mystical experience* could be usefully restricted to that experimental per- ception of God, however expressed, that is the real claim of the mystics in their higher states of contemplation and union, the assertion, on the validity of which depends the religious and philoso- phical importance of mysticism properly so called.
Above all, it is greatly to be desired that the use of the words 'mysticism', 'mystical', be strictly confined to this religious and philosophical meaning, all current vague, misleading, improper uses, which bring the whole subject into confusion and disrepute, being rigorously eschewed. Essential mysticism should not be identified with occasional accidental concomitants, as visions, reve- lations, raptures, or other psycho-physical phenomena. In particular. Catholic writers should refrain from giving the title mystical to curious experiences and manifestations bordering on those of Spiritism; to intimations, second sight, telepathy; or to religious 'queer stories'. For all such phenomena there is an accepted scientific term: they are 'psychic', not 'mystic'. This word should be jealously reserved for its proper traditional religious sense, given it in the beginning by 'Dionysius' the secret knowledge or perception of God in contemplation.
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CONTENTS
PAGE
PREFACE v
AFTERTHOUGHTS ix
Current controversies on mystical theology Prayer of Faith Acquired contemplation St Teresa and St John of the Cross Bishop Hedley on contemplation Intellect and will in contemplation Points of mystical theology Mixed contemplation Practical agreements General call to mystic union The mystic experience and theology The mystic experience and psychology The vision of God Summary of results.