CHRISTIAN MYSTICISM. 



67 



T must not expatiate on this attractive theme. Soul contem- 

 plates nature, and in contemplating creates. The image of the 

 universal soul (a Christian would say of the Spirit that breathed 

 upon the waters) floats over all nature, and is reflected in it. 

 We seize resemblances ; we recognize the likeness of that which 

 we desire to see, and a peculiar thrill of joy passes through us. 

 A whole network of obscure sympathies and symbols surrounds 

 us : now and then we see something clearly, at other times an 

 d/jLuSpa avfjurdOeia ; generally we see nothing, to our own 

 misfortune. 



But what is soul ? Is it a fixed entity at all ? Can we draw 

 a line where our souls leave off and the universal soul or Divine 

 Spirit begins ? Is not the soul a wanderer over all fields of 

 being, from top to bottom ? Has it not affinities with the 

 Absolute, with the Eternal World of Spirit, with the sphere 

 of its own proper activities, and, below itself, with matter ? 

 Potentially it is all things : a microcosm. And what is its rela- 

 tion to the objects of its perception, to which it stands, as we have 

 said, as a kind of Creator ? Does it create the values which it 

 perceives ? Are truth, beauty and goodness only facts for the 

 soul — psychical products only valid within the soul's range of 

 activity ? Surely not. The soul, if it affirms anything deci- 

 sively, repudiates this dignity for its own subjective activity. 

 Things are what they are, not at all because we think them so — 

 no, not when our thoughts are most inspired. The glories which 

 we see in nature are glories which the soul confers upon that 

 all but non-existent abstraction, " matter " ; but whence does 

 the soul draw them ? Does she find them in herself ? Are 

 they her own qualities ? No, they are not ; of that we feel 

 quite sure. And therewith goes, for us, the whole base philo- 

 sophy of pragmatism, which makes the human soul the measure 

 of all things. ISTo, the soul sees good and bad, fair and ugly, 

 true and false, in itself and its surroundings, because the objects 

 of its thought are indeed so. It recognizes an order of reality 

 above itself, a sphere of existence which owes nothing to soul, 

 and to which soul owes everything. When we contemplate the 

 eternal laws of God, we are engaged with something above our- 

 selves, something more thoroughly real than the world as it 

 reveals itself to our souls, something of which the soul itself is 

 but a pale reflexion. So the soul-life carries us up of necessity 

 beyond itself. Not here is our final home. The world of spirit, 

 which for the mystical thinker is the sole world of ultimate 

 reality, is called the Koo-fio^ vorjro^ of Plotinus, Spirit by most 

 moderns, heaven in religious language. We are driven to admit 



F 2 



