Page:The World and the Individual, First Series (1899).djvu/566

Rh Kette of the type now in question. But if one insists that such a doctrine is inevitably self-contradictory and vain, — where shall one still look for escape from this fate which besets, so far, all of the views as to the Real?

Shall one turn to Mysticism? Mysticism, viewed in its philosophical aspect, as we have viewed it in these lectures, knows of a One that is to be in no sense really Many. Every Kette must, then, for the mystic, prove an illusion. But, unfortunately for the mystic, the inevitableness of an infinite process is nowhere more manifest than in the movement of his own thought while, weary of finitude, this thought indulges endlessly its sad luxury of a troubled contemplation of its own defects. For this thought, as finite, is, by hypothesis, nothing real at all. Yet it reveals, in its own negative way, the road to absolute peace and truth. This road, however, is a path in the essentially pathless wilderness. This revelation is explicitly an absolute darkness. While you think, you have not won the truth; for thought is illusion. But if you merely cease to think, you have thereby won nothing at all. The Absolute is really known as such by contrast with your illusion. It is so far just the Other. You seek it in thought, and find it not. But perhaps the ineffable experience comes. Ich bin Gott geworden, says the Schwester Katrei of the tract usually (and, as the critics now tell us, wrongly) attributed to Meister Eckhart. This experience, whenever it comes, — why is it said to be an experience of Being? Viewed from without, it seems a mere transient state of feeling in somebody's mind. But no; it shall be no mere feeling, for it reveals all that thought had ever sought. The peace that passeth understanding fulfils all the needs of understanding. Hence, in this peace thought finds itself satisfied, and ceases. Therefore is Being here attained. Yet if this be the mystical insight, — what has been gained? Thought the deceiver, thought the illusory, bears witness to its own refutation and to its own fulfilment in the peace of the Absolute; for only when this evidence is given of the final satisfaction of all thought’s demands is the truth known. And thus the sole