20 MYSTICISM AND LOGIC 



logic ; but most of them were less anxious to understand 

 the world of science and daily life than to convict it of 

 unreality in the interests of a super-sensible " real " 

 world. 



It is in this way that logic has been pursued by those of 

 the great philosophers who were mystics. But since they 

 usually took for granted the supposed insight of the 

 mystic emotion, their logical doctrines were presented 

 with a certain dryness, and were believed by their dis- 

 ciples to be quite independent of the sudden illumination 

 from which they sprang. Nevertheless their origin clung 

 to them, and they remained to borrow a useful word 

 from Mr. Santayana " malicious " in regard to the 

 world of science and common sense. It is only so that 

 we can account for the complacency with which philo- 

 sophers have accepted the inconsistency of their doctrines 

 with all the common and scientific facts which seem best 

 established and most worthy of belief. 



The logic of mysticism shows, as is natural, the defects 

 which are inherent in anything malicious. The impulse 

 to logic, not felt while the mystic mood is dominant, 

 reasserts itself as the mood fades, but with a desire to 

 retain the vanishing insight, or at least to prove that it 

 was insight, and that what seems to contradict it is illu- 

 sion. The logic which thus arises is not quite dis- 

 interested or candid, and is inspired by a certain hatred 

 of the daily world to which it is to be applied. Such an 

 attitude naturally does not tend to the best results. 

 Everyone knows that to read an author simply in order 

 to refute him is not the way to understand him ; and to 

 read the book of Nature with a conviction that it is all 

 illusion is just as unlikely to lead to understanding. If 

 our logic is to find the common world intelligible, it must 

 not be hostile, but must be inspired by a genuine accept- 



