Page:The World and the Individual, First Series (1899).djvu/98

Rh is a marked modern instance in a part of his doctrine, of one result of mystical influence.

Any fair-minded student ought, therefore, to want to comprehend what philosophical Mysticism has meant to those who have held it, and especially how it stands opposed to Realism. But the mystical conception of Being is one peculiarly liable to be misunderstood. It is usually not rightly distinguished from the realistic view of Being. A student often, after a brief study of this or that mystical treatise, accordingly comes away displeased. “Mere sentimentality,” such a student often says. “This mystical view seems to hold that the only real object is some voiceless and incomprehensible Absolute, and further, that when you feel uncommonly entranced or enraptured, you get some strange revelation as to the nature of the real, and so become one with the Absolute. Now it is plain,” he continues, “that such views have nothing to do with common sense, or with the physical world, or with matter, or with the facts of daily life. For can one say that this wall, and yonder stars, and my neighbors, and even my own daily self, are the Atmân of the Hindoos, or are the Mystic Absolute, or are anything else that you feel when you are in a trance? Now these objects yonder are well known to be real. Reality means for everybody a character that they possess. Hence the mystic needs no further notice. He substitutes his feelings for the solid facts. He is simply a man who prefers not to think about reality, but merely to revel in his own feelings.”

This criticism is obvious, but it is the external view of a realistic metaphysic. It leaves the matter uncomprehended. And nobody, I must hold, can understand a large