Page:The World and the Individual, First Series (1899).djvu/163

144 presence of a single and absolutely immediate truth is an object whereof we can say: It is?

Just such a view is of the essence of philosophical, or of the truly significant historical Mysticism. By this term I now mean, as you know from our second lecture, not a vaguely applied name for superstition in general, or for beliefs in spirits, in special revelations, and in magic, but a perfectly recognizable speculative tendency, observable in very various ages and nations, and essentially characterized by the meaning that it gives to the ontological predicate.

For the mystic, according to the genuinely historical definition of what constitutes speculative Mysticism, to be real means to be in such wise Immediate that, in the presence of this immediacy, all thought and all ideas, absolutely satisfied, are quenched, so that the finite search ceases, and the Other is no longer another, but is absolutely found. The object which fulfils this definition, and which is therefore worthy to be called real, is of necessity in itself One and only One; since variety, when consciously faced, calls forth thought, and arouses demands for characterization and explanation. In countless ways, however, this One real object of the mystic’s quest may be approached, by those finite thinkers who, in their ignorance, still seek their Other, — in countless ways, whose only common character is that, the nearer you come to the goal, the less the varieties and oppositions of the world of ordinary thinking distract you, and the more you are in possession of something that is present,