CHRISTIAN MYSTICISM. 



63 



independent of forms of faith, and is identical in the Buddhist, 

 Mohammedan, or Christian, is turned into a revelation of the 

 truths of some particular creed. The same is true of philo- 

 sophy. Nearly all speculative mystics have been influenced by 

 Neoplatonism, and have adopted the i)hilosophy of Plotinus as 

 the framework of their theology. But this does not prove that 

 the mystic, as such, has had the Neopla tonic philosophy revealed 

 to him as the truth about God, the world, and himself. The 

 dogmatic system, or philosophic system, imposed by the intellect 

 upon the consciousness, is really extraneous and irrelevant. 

 We shall (so we are told) get nearer to the heart of mysticism 

 by neglecting the dogmatics and the philosophy of the mystics, 

 and attending only to what they seemed to hear while they 

 were " hearkening what the Lord God will say concerning me." 



There is much truth in all this. But, on the other hand, it is 

 a blunder in psychology to suppose that there is or can be any 

 " pure " experience in which the intellect has no part. Certainly 

 no record exists, or could exist, of any such pure " experience ; 

 ■ so that if we wish to banish all intellectual constructions from 

 our survey, we shall be unable to use any of the great mystical 

 literature which was usually composed a considerable time after 

 the experiences described, and which invariably bears the marks 

 of analytic and synthetic thought. We shall be restricted to 

 our own private experiences of ecstasy, if we have had any 

 such ; and w^e shall soon be convinced that it would be easier to 

 reconstruct a vision of a sunset exactly as we saw it on a given 

 day last year, than to reproduce the exact forms and colours of 

 a heavenly vision seen by us during prayer. Perhaps in such 

 visions there is no form — nothing clear or definite at all ; 

 perhaps all the outlines are drawn afterwards by the intellect. 



But why should we be so anxious to get rid of the results of 

 reflexion ? Why should we suppose that the original undiffer- 

 entiated, formless vision is higher and more trustworthy than 

 the same experience after it has been thought over and studied ? 

 It seems to me mere superstition to suppose that the vision was 

 inspired, but that we spoil it as soon as we subject it to thought 

 and scrutiny. There is no higher guarantee of the truth or 

 value of a sudden illumination than of the truth of a dosrma or 

 of a philosophy. All the mystics have been afraid of self- 

 deception in their visions. And the most emotional and least 

 intellectual have suffered most from these vagaries of the imagina- 

 tion. No, there is nothing sacred or infallible in pure intuition, 

 and strictly there is no such thing. We must, therefore, give up 

 the attempt to separate the mystic's memories of what he 



