Page:The World and the Individual, First Series (1899).djvu/208

Rh Now so easy is it, from a merely external point of view, to see the formal defect of the outcome of this train of thinking, that the great difficulty in expounding the mystic position, is, not to destroy its illusions, but rather first dramatically to create them in the hearer’s mind, to the end that he may at least historically appreciate the meaning of the mystical definition of Being. But remember, in any case, that if it is thus easy from without to make naught of the mystic’s result, it is also fair to add that this refutation is itself made easy through the mystic’s own explicit confession. His doctrine has the honesty of reflective thought about it. He tells you where his own paradoxes are to be found. And the value of dealing with him lies not in refuting him, for in effect he already himself provides the whole refutation; but in comprehending both why he has inspired mankind, and why he creates the illusion that his empty, swept, and garnished dwelling is the very house of God. And yet after our foregoing account, it should not now be hard to see wherein the illusion and the truth of Mysticism are to be found.

The mystic asserts that the real cannot be wholly independent of knowledge. Herein he is right. He asserts that the reality of which you think and speak is first of all a reality meant by you. This is profoundly true. He declares that within yourself lies the sole motive that leads you to distinguish truth from error, reality from unreality, the world from the instant’s passing contents. And in all this the mystic, whether Hindoo or Christian, is a representative of the simple facts about Being, — facts which everybody concerned