Page:The World and the Individual, First Series (1899).djvu/201

182 Mystic is really different from nothing, it is so by virtue of the fact that it stands in real contrast with our own real but imperfect Being. We too then are. If our life behind the veil is, as the mystic says, our goal, if already, even as we are, we are one with the Knower, then the absolute meaning does not ignore, but so far recognizes as real, even by virtue of the contrast, our present imperfect meaning.

It follows that if Mysticism is to escape from its own finitude, and really is to mean by its absolute Being anything but a Mere Nothing, its account of Being must be so amended as to involve the assertion that our finite life is not mere illusion, that our ideas are not merely false, and that we are already, even as finite, in touch with Reality.