322 SCIENCE AND MYSTICISM 



ledge only. The intimate knowledge will not submit to 

 codification and analysis; or, rather, when we attempt 

 to analyse it the intimacy is lost and it is replaced by 

 symbolism. 



For an illustration let us consider Humour. I suppose 

 that humour can be analysed to some extent and the 

 essential ingredients of the different kinds of wit 

 classified. Suppose that we are offered an alleged joke. 

 We subject it to scientific analysis as we would a chemical 

 salt of doubtful nature, and perhaps after careful con- 

 sideration of all its aspects we are able to confirm that 

 it really and truly is a joke. Logically, I suppose, our 

 next procedure would be to laugh. But it may certainly 

 be predicted that as the result of this scrutiny we shall 

 have lost all inclination we may ever have had to laugh 

 at it. It simply does not do to expose the inner workings 

 of a joke. The classification concerns a symbolic know- 

 ledge of humour which preserves all the characteristics 

 of a joke except its laughableness. The real appreciation 

 must come spontaneously, not introspectively. I think 

 this is a not unfair analogy for our mystical feeling for 

 Nature, and I would venture even to apply it to our 

 mystical experience of God. There are some to whom 

 the sense of a divine presence irradiating the soul is one 

 of the most obvious things of experience. In their view 

 a man without this sense is to be regarded as we regard 

 a man without a sense of humour. The absence is a kind 

 of mental deficiency. We may try to analyse the ex- 

 perience as we analyse humour, and construct a theology, 

 or it may be an atheistic philosophy, which shall put 

 into scientific form what is to be inferred about it. But 

 let us not forget that the theology is symbolic knowledge 

 whereas the experience is intimate knowledge. And as 

 laughter cannot be compelled by the scientific exposition 



