20 MYSTICISM AND LOGIC 



The possibility of this universal love and joy in all 

 that exists is of supreme importance for the conduct and 

 happiness of life, and gives inestimable value to the 

 mystic emotion, apart from any creeds which may be 

 built upon it. But if we are not to be led into false 

 beliefs, it is necessary to realise exactly what the mystic 

 emotion reveals. It reveals a possibility of human nature 

 a possibility of a nobler, happier, freer life than any 

 that can be otherwise achieved. But it does not reveal 

 anything about the non-human, or about the nature of 

 the universe in general. Good and bad, and even the 

 higher good that mysticism finds everywhere, are the 

 reflections of our own emotions on other things, not part 

 of the substance of things as they are in themselves. 

 And therefore an impartial contemplation, freed from all 

 pre-occupation with Self, will not judge things good or 

 bad, although it is very easily combined with that feeling 

 of universal love which leads the mystic to say that the 

 whole world is good. 



The philosophy of evolution, through the notion of 

 progress, is bound up with the ethical dualism of the 

 worse and the better, and is thus shut out, not only from 

 the kind of survey which discards good and evil alto 

 gether from its view, but also from the mystical belief in 

 the goodness of everything. In this way the distinction 

 of good and evil, like time, becomes a tyrant in this 

 philosophy, and introduces into thought the restless 

 selectiveness of action. Good and evil, like time, are, it 

 would seem, not general or fundamental in the world of 

 thought, but late and highly specialised members of the 

 intellectual hierarchy. 



Although, as we saw, mysticism can be interpreted so 

 as to agree with the view that good and evil are not 

 intellectually fundamental, it must be admitted that here 



