Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 17.djvu/141

Rh MYSTICISM 129 ness of actual communion with the Highest. The first is the philosophic side of mysticism ; the second, its religious side. The first effort is theoretical or speculative ; the second, practical. The thought that is most intensely present with the mystic is that of a supreme, all-pervading, and indwelling power, in whom all things are one. Hence ^ Q speculative utterances of mysticism are always more or less pantheistic in character. On the practical side, mysticism maintains the possibility of direct intercourse with this Being of beings intercourse, not through any external media such as an historical revelation, oracles, answers to prayer, and the like, but by a species of ecstatic transfusion or identification, in which the individual be comes in very truth &quot; partaker of the divine nature.&quot; God (-eases to be an object to him and becomes an experience. In the writings of the mystics, ingenuity exhausts itself in the invention of phrases to express the closeness of this union. Mysticism differs, therefore, from ordinary pan theism in that its inmost motive is religious. Pantheism, considered merely as such, may be either an elevating or a degrading theory ; it expresses merely the resolution of all things into one metaphysical power or substance. But the mystic is animated not merely by the desire of intellectual harmony ; he seeks the deepest ground of his own being, in order that he may cast aside whatever separates him from the true life. This religious impulse is shown in the fact that, whereas pantheism, as such, seems to lead logically to passive acquiescence in things as they are all things being already as divine as it is their nature to be -mysticism, on the contrary, is penetrated by the thought of alienation from the divine. Even where it preaches most our essential unity with God, its constant and often painful effort is directed towards overcoming an admitted alienation. In other words, the identity with God which it teaches is not a mere natural identity, as in ordinary pantheism, but one which is the goal of achievement. These considerations do not serve, however, to differen tiate mysticism sufficiently from the general course of religious thought. Alienation from, and yet implicit one ness with, the divine are the two poles on which all religious speculation and practice revolve. It follows from the above that mysticism is distinguished from other religious theories of the relation of man to God by the intensity with which it realizes the divine factor in the relation. The realization is so vivid that, though the theory takes its rise in the needs of the individual, the individual tends in the sequel to be lost altogether in the excess of the divine light. All relations tend to become unreal for the mystic except that between himself and God ; his very sense of personality is weakened. The mystical ideal, therefore, is not a life of ethical energy among mankind; it is the eye turned wholly inwards, the life spent in contemplation and devout communion. The type of character to which mysticism is allied is passive, sensuous, and feminine, rather than inde pendent, masculine, and ethically vigorous. In full-blown mysticism the individual may be said to be deprived of the rights which belong to him as an ethical personality. The speculative bias, it will be seen, is much stronger in the mystic than in the generality of religious persons ; and his speculative insight, it may be added, is usually much finer than theirs. The ordinary man, in religious matters as in others, constantly speaks of the infinite in such a way as virtually to make it finite. As Spinoza says, he passes confidently from finite to infinite and contrariwise, but never attempts to bring the two ideas together. Now mysticism does bring them together, but unfortunately in such a way as to paralyse the individual for action. Ultimately stated, the explanation of this result is to be found in the mistaken categories under which the relation is conceived. The con ception of a universal substance or ground of things is naturally the first resort of the mind awakened to specu lation ; and it is a form which constantly recurs when men are roused afresh to philosophical activity. Nevertheless, the conception is evidently rude. It expresses properly a relation existing between material things in space ; and, when applied elsewhere, is necessarily inadequate, analogical, metaphorical. But it is characteristic of mysticism that it does not distinguish between what is metaphorical and what is susceptible of a literal interpretation. Hence it is prone to treat a relation of ethical harmony as if it were one of substantial identity, or chemical fusion ; and, taking the sensuous language of religious feeling literally, it bids the individual aim at nothing less than an interpenetration of essence. And, as this goal is unattainable while reason and the consciousness of self remain, the mystic begins to consider these as impediments to be cast aside. Our consciousness of self is the condition under which we possess a world to know and to enjoy ; but it likewise isolates us from all the world beside. Reason is the revealer of nature and of God ; but, by its very act, reason seems to separate the things reasoned about. Hence mysticism demands a faculty above reason, by which the subject shall be placed in immediate and complete union with the object of his desire, a union in which the consciousness of self has dis appeared, and in which, therefore, subject and object are one. This is the intuition or ecstasy or mystical swoon which appears alike among the Hindus, the Neo-Platonists, and the mediaeval saints. And here it will be observed that the original acceptance of metaphor as speculative truth has terribly avenged itself ; for, with the renunciation of self- conscious reason, the divine has been degraded into an object of sense, and its highest realization has come to be placed either in a state of brutish torpor or in a moment of equally unnatural nervous excitation. Not that mysticism always appears in this extreme form, but such is the goal towards which it constantly tends. If the sensuous meta phors of unsophisticated religious feeling be put forward as a metaphysical theory of the supersensuous, it is only to be expected that the practice deduced from such a theory will be a sophisticated or morbid development of sense, a strain put upon the bodily organs to make them yield a realization of the theory and achieve what is impossible to the sane and conscious reason. The morbid play of the nerves is objectified by the over-driven brain and treated as a sensuous union of the created with the creative spirit, an actual seeing, nay, tasting, of the divine essence. To sum up, then, we may say that, compared with pan theism, mysticism is dependent upon a specifically religion.-} impulse ; but, whereas religion is ordinarily occupied with a practical problem and develops its theory in an ethical reference, mysticism displays a predominatingly speculative bent, starting from the divine nature rather than from man and his surroundings, taking the symbolism of religious feeling as literally or metaphysically true, and straining- after the present realization of an ineffable union. The union which sound religious teaching represents as realize* I in the submission of the will and the ethical harmony of the whole life is then reduced to a passive experience, to some thing which comes and goes in time, and which may be of only momentary duration. From these general remarks it will be sufficiently apparent that mysticism is not a name applicable to any particular system. It may be the outgrowth of many differing modes of thought and feeling. Most frequently it appears historically, in relation to some definite system of belief, as a reaction of the spirit against the letter. When a religion begins to ossify into a system of formulas and observances, those who protest in the name of heart-religion are not unfrequently known by the name of mystics. At times they merely bring into prominence again the ever- XYTT. --17