MYSTICISM AND LOGIC 

 AND OTHER ESSAYS 



MYSTICISM AND LOGIC 



METAPHYSICS, or the attempt to conceive the 

 world as a whole by means of thought, has been 

 developed, from the first, by the union and conflict of 

 two very different human impulses, the one urging men 

 towards mysticism, the other urging them towards 

 science. Some men have achieved greatness through 

 one of these impulses alone, others through the other 

 alone : in Hume, for example, the scientific impulse 

 reigns quite unchecked, while in Blake a strong hostility 

 to science co-exists with profound mystic insight. But 

 the greatest men who have been philosophers have felt 

 the need both of science and of mysticism : the attempt 

 to harmonise the two was what made their life, and what 

 always must, for all its arduous uncertainty, make 

 philosophy, to some minds, a greater thing than either 

 science or religion. 



Before attempting an explicit characterisation of the 

 scientific and the mystical impulses, I will illustrate 

 them by examples from two philosophers whose great- 

 ness lies in the very intimate blending which they 

 achieved. The two philosophers I mean are Heraclitus 

 and Plato. 



