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 5085 
 
MYSTICISM AND IDEALISM 
 
 J. LOEWENBERG 
 
 [Reprint from the University of California Chronicle, Vol. XVIII, No. 1] 
 
MYSTICISM AND IDEALISM"^ 
 
 J. LOEWENBERG 
 
 It requires not a little temerity to approach the subject 
 of mysticism. The topic is so complex, so vast, so elusive. 
 It is well-nigh impossible to say anything with which 
 friend or foe of mysticism would not heartily disagree. 
 Whatever opinion one may hold of it, one is sure to be 
 told that one has misunderstood it. If he confesses to 
 being alien to the mystic temperament, his right to speak 
 of it is justly challenged, and if he is personally intimate 
 with the mystic experience its ineffable character lends 
 itself to no intelligible discourse. Whether inside or out- 
 side the charmed circle, speech seems equally ineffectual. 
 With regard to death we are in the same predicament. 
 While we are still living, our indirect opinions of it can 
 lay claim to little validity, and once we are dead we do 
 not talk. But just as we cannot, as intelligent beings, 
 renounce the right to endeavor, however unsuccessfully, to 
 penetrate the mystery of death, to interpret its meaning, to 
 grasp its significance, so in the case of mysticism it is 
 impossible for us to refrain from the attempt to understand, 
 albeit imperfectly, a spiritual phenomenon which has deep- 
 ened and enriched the inner life of the race and without 
 which its religions and its arts would have remained lament- 
 ably impoverished. 
 
 * An address before the Philosophical Union of the University 
 of California, December 10, 1915. 
 
 ;i2757« 
 
The analogy between mysticism and death, however, is 
 not altogether perfect, for the mystics, unlike the dead, 
 speak and act, although their words and practices have, 
 to the uninitiated, little meaning, little relevancy. The 
 uninitiated find the mystic utterances so unfathomable that 
 for an appreciation of them they, for the most part, depend 
 upon the numerous interpretations of mysticism undertaken 
 from so many angles, such as the psychological, patho- 
 logical, religious, aesthetic, philosophical. The result is 
 that most information concerning mysticism is, at the best, 
 third hand. Is it a wonder, then, that ' ' doctors disagree ' ' 
 and that the prevalent opinions about what constitutes 
 mysticism are so numerous, conflicting, and often far from 
 enlightening ? 
 
 It is fortunate that, in our interpretation of mysticism, 
 we are able, in a large measure, to follow the guidance of 
 Professor Hocking's profound book, The Meaning of God 
 in Human Experience. In sincerity, sympathy, and sanity 
 of judgment, few accounts of mysticism can compare with 
 his. Although Part V of Mr. Hocking's work forms the 
 general background of this paper, I have essayed no exposi- 
 tion of our author's views. To expound him with hhv 
 degree of adequacy is a task from which many men more 
 enterprising than myself might well shrink. The book is 
 so unique in style and composition that it admits of nu 
 summary restatement. Any attempt at a precise restate- 
 ment of Mr. Hocking's views would be sure to fail because 
 of his method. He unites so intimately lyrical and reflec- 
 tive qualities that the reader is often at a loss to tell what 
 the author sets forth as personal conviction due to solitary 
 meditation and what as argument claiming objective valid- 
 ity. But the reader without attending to precision or 
 exactness soon yields to the spell of Mr. Hocking's seduc- 
 tive style and ere long finds himself sharing the author's 
 mood. And if a work of art may be judged by the 
 genuine mood it creates and sustains. The Meaning of God 
 in Human Experience, besides being eminently profound, 
 
has also the merits of an artistic creation. As one reads 
 it the appreciation of being admitted to the author's inti- 
 mate meditations makes one so sensitive that to disturb 
 their continuity and lyrical charm by interposing questions 
 and doubts would seem nothing short of rude pedantry. 
 Please do not ask me therefore to give you a literal review 
 or synopsis of his discussion of mysticism. I must pre- 
 suppose a knowledge of the text and, using it as background, 
 deal with the whole topic in my own way. Measuring 
 mysticism by a frankly rationalistic standard, you must, 
 of course, not be surprised to find my attitude towards it 
 rather critical. I am second to none in profound apprecia- 
 tion of the supreme value of the mystic mood for religion 
 and art and life generally, but here I must assess its strictly 
 philosophic worth and significance,_ and its strictly philo- 
 sophic v.orth and significance we shall find to lie in its 
 decidedly non-mystical character. So without further 
 apologies, but with fear and trembling, let me address 
 myself to my task. 
 
 It is a pity that the word "mysticism" should have 
 become a name to cover such a variety of things. As Evelyn ^/^ 
 Underhill, perhaps the most modern interpreter of mysti- 
 cism, says, "a word which is impartially applied to the 
 performances of mediums and the ecstasies of the saints, 
 to ' menticulture ' and sorcery, dreamy poetry and medieval 
 art, to prayer and palmistry, the doctrinal excesses of 
 Gnosticism and the tepid speculations of the Cambridge 
 Platonists .... soon ceases to have a useful meaning. ' '^ 
 Recent writers have endeavored to purge mysticism from 
 all these accidental associations and to fix its essential 
 meaning by declaring it to be a way of intense or enhanced 
 living. So Miss Underhill characterizes it as "an organic 
 life process, a something which the whole self does .... a 
 definite state or form of an enhanced life."^ Delacroix 
 interprets it in the same way. Mysticism for him is " a new 
 
 1 Mysticism, London, 1910, p. 
 
 2 Ibid., p. 96. 
 
level of life power," "an organizing power," "a higher 
 variation of life." Similarly, Rufus M. Jones, who s];eaks 
 of the mystical experience as "a unifying, fusing, inten- 
 sifying inward event. "^ Hocking, too, emphasizes the life 
 of the mystic rather that his teaching. " Mj^sticism, " he 
 says, "we shall define, not by its doctrine but by its deed. 
 .... It is a way of dealing with God .... affecting first the 
 mystic's being and then his thinking."* 
 
 Mysticism, as Professor Hocking further interprets it, 
 is not only a life-enhancing and life-heightening power, 
 but is a universally human attitude shared by some individ- 
 uals at rare intervals and by other individuals more fre- 
 quently. The most ^ential elements of the mystic 's attitude 
 Hocking finds in common worship. Indeed, "mysticism 
 and common worship," so he asserts, "do stand or faU 
 together."^ The mystic impulse should thus not be looked 
 upon as a matter of special temperament. "There are 
 mystics in all temperaments," Hocking continues, "the 
 spiritual ambition of the mystic is the prerogative of no 
 one particular type of human nature."'' "Wherever one finds 
 worship, there one finds mysticism. The difference between 
 the common worshiper and the traditional mystic would 
 then seem to be one of degree : the latter 's life work con- 
 sists in what to the former is but a passing mood. The 
 insatiable hunger for the immediate contemplation of ab- 
 solute reality makes of the individual who has such hunger 
 a perpetual worshiper. The longing for coming face to face 
 with the eternal and innermost being of things, sporadic 
 and diffused in all human beings, is permanent and special- 
 ized in the mystic. Those, then, in whom the will to worship 
 is the dominant and ruling passion — "the specialists in 
 
 3 ' ' Mysticism in Present-Day Eeligion, ' ' Harvard Theological 
 Beview for April, 1915. The above citations from Delacroix are 
 taken from this article. 
 
 4 The Meaning of God in Human Experience, New Haven, London 
 and Oxford, 1912, p. 355. 
 
 5 Ibid., p. 356, 
 
 6 Ibid., p. 361, 
 
worship ' ' — are, according to Hocking, the mystics by birth, 
 the mystics of genius, the mystics by profession. 
 
 What is more precisely the art of worship? Hocking 
 describes it as "a spontaneous impulse for spiritual self- 
 preservation .... for the ultimate judgment of life and 
 for the renewal of the worth of life."^ The one who is 
 engaged in the act of worship — intermittently or perman- 
 ently — fixes his attention upon the higher and spiritual i 
 values of life, seeks these values in a realm other than the / 
 ordinary world he lives in, and derives from this higher I 
 level the meaning and the worth of his very existence. 
 Through his act of worship, the worshiper endeavors to 
 establish a spiritual relation with a higher level of life, 
 and this relation, evanescent in its effect in the rare wor- 
 shiper, is sustained in the typical mystic. But this relation 
 — the final aim of worship — whether evanescent or sus- 
 tained, has always been assumed to be of a peculiar nature. 
 » It is not an intellectual relation. It is rather an experience 
 ' 'touched with emotion,' a personal passion, an immediate 
 • communion, which, like all immediate and emotional experi- 
 ences, cannot be described in general terms to those who 
 have not had such experiences. This experience is by all- 
 mystics of all ages declared to be essentially ineffable, and 
 altogether too much has been made of the ineffable character 
 of the mystic experience, which, perhaps, more than any- 
 thing else, has contributed to envelop it in a shroud of 
 mystery. The mystic experience is not mysterious because ^ 
 ineffable. It shares ineffableness with all affective and^ 
 sensational experience, A toothache and the sensation of 
 a color are not mysterious, yet they are as ineffable as the 
 'mystic union' with God. He who has never felt a tooth- 
 ache, he who is color-blind, and he who has never shared 
 the mystic impulse — to him all these experiences are equally 
 incommunicable. 
 
 The approach to God exemplified in every act of worship 
 is, then, the peculiar mystic approach. In its uniqueness 
 7 Ibid., p. 366, 
 
and immediacy and ineffableness, this approach, when its 
 consummation— the union with -the Absolute — is reached, 
 partakes of the nature of passion, but is strangely at vari- 
 
 • ance with the way of reflection. Reflection is communicable, 
 discursive, articulate, and mysticism has, therefore, always 
 displayed a marked hostility towards reflective thought, i 
 The well-known mystical saying, "Believe not those prat- 
 tlers who boast that they know God. Who knows him — is 
 silent,"® pithily expresses the anti-intell^ctualism of the 
 mystic. Miss Underbill emphasizes the contrast between 
 the mystic and the philosopher thus: "Where the philos- f 
 opher guesses and argues, the mystic lives and looks ; and i 
 speaks consequently the disconcerting language of first- 
 hand experience, not the neat dialectic of the schools. 
 Hence, whilst the Absolute of the metaphysicians remains 
 a diagram — impersonal and unattainable — the Absolute of 
 the mystic is lovable, attainable, alive."" Upon closer 
 scrutiny the contra.st between reflection and worship dis--t 
 closes itself to be the ancient and the modern conflict 
 between mediacy and immediacy, between theory and prac- 
 tice, between abstract and concrete experience, between 
 discursive and intuitive knowledge, between argument and 
 vision, between thought and deed, between reasoning and 
 living. Directly and concretely and practically — through , 
 the worshipful deed and through the worshipful life — the 
 mystic claims that he ultimately rises to a higher level of 
 existence and there attains the vision and the certainty of 
 an Absolute Reality. The thinker, on the other hand, seems 
 to the mystic to offer nothing but sterile principles, useless 
 abstractions, and lifeless theories. "We come to you not 
 
 ' as thinkers, but as doers" — so Evelyn Underbill interprets 
 the message of the mystics. 
 
 In the preference for "doing" to "thinking," and in 
 the sundering of practice from theory, the mystic reveals 
 
 8 Quoted from J. Royce, The World and the Individual, New York, 
 1912, vol. I, p. 148. 
 
 9 Mysticism, p. 28. 
 
himself, curiously enough, as the ally of cormnon sense, 
 strange and weird though the mystic's particular doings 
 and practices may appear to it. To pronounce contempt for 
 abstractions and to stigmatize theory as useless belongs to 
 the very prerogative of a so-called ' practical ' and common- 
 sense point of view.^° Mysticism and common sense, intent 
 upon the practically significant deeds to which life should 
 be devoted', are at one in rejecting philosophic speculation 
 as abstract, barren and useless. "Why speculate? To spec- 
 ulate upon life seems a waste of the time that should be 
 spent in living; to think upon the world threatens to imperil 
 one's chances for doing something in it. Only mysticism 
 is more definite in its pronouncements regarding the kind 
 of practical life which has supreme value. Common sense, 
 on the other hand, beyond a vague counsel to be practical, 
 is reticent about both the meaning of the practical life and 
 how best to live it. 
 
 What both common sense and mysticism fail to appre- 
 ciate, however, is the theoretical implications of their prac- 
 tical attitudes. The question "What is practical?" is 
 itself a theoretical question. To walk on one's head, for 
 instance, is far from being a practical activity, yet its 
 non-practicality can only be exhibited by means of a well 
 defined theory of life with which walking on one's head is 
 incompatible. Behind all practical admonitions lies con- 
 cealed a theory. The reason why one should live in con- 
 formity either with the Golden Rule or with the Categorical 
 Imperative or with the dictates of common sense or with the 
 promptings of one's mystic impulse is because the lest or^ 
 the right kind of life is thus attained. But what the best 
 or the right kind of life is is a matter of controversy and 
 can be decided on theoretical grounds only. In vain, then, 
 
 ^ 10 The practical man's negative attitude towards theory often 
 expresses itself in an amusing fashion. Thus, President Wilson's 
 nomination was for a long time opposed by many politicians who 
 seriously questioned the practical efficacy of a mere 'theorist,' a 
 mere 'professor,' and "Professor Wilson" became a derogatory 
 epithet which many newspapers then adopted. 
 
10 
 
 does one attempt to evade theory. The practical derives its 
 very practical significance from being consonant with a 
 
 •certain implied theory. Indeed, by practical can be meant 
 
 • nothing else than what furthers a certain end or fulfills a 
 certain purpose regarded as valuable. But the value of 
 the end in question must be justified. No end has axiomatic 
 value — not even life itself. And the justification of any 
 
 , value will be found to involve a complete theory of life and 
 of the world. Of mysticism this is particularly true. In 
 extolling a practical and exalted life of worship as sup- 
 remely valuable, mysticism is moved by motives which are 
 theoretical as they are passionate. The value of worship 
 is for the mystic not merely subjective. To be sure, worship 
 and its concomitant results bring the individual serenity 
 and an inward peace that passeth understanding, but the 
 niaanjiis , and value of this subjective state is derived, not 
 from the experience itself which the mystic obtains in 
 worship, but from the object w hich is discovered and ap- 
 propriated at thefinal stage of the mystic's worshipful' 
 quest. The supreme value and validity of the mystic 
 experience is, after all, cognitive. Worship surpasses all 
 else in value, because it finally' institutes an immediate 
 acquaintance with the deepest reality, with the Absolute, 
 with God. Did not the mystic experience terminate in 
 such cognition, worship would be devoid of all worth and 
 significance. ' But to confer upon worship a 'supreme worth 
 and validity because by its means reality ^is discoverable 
 is to hold a certain view or theory of reality .■' Reality must 
 be of such a nature as to conform to the mystic insight, 
 and, which is more important, to the mystic insight alone. 
 It is because reality is of a certain spiritual structure that 
 to its discovery there leads but one path, namely, the mystic 
 one. Were reality of a different texture — a fabric of ?< > 
 and molecules, for example — the mystic vision might •— ** 
 possess the value of an emotional experience, but Cwum 
 scarcely claim objective validity. It is this claim to objec- 
 
 X tive validity which commits the mystic to a theory of the 
 universe, in the light of which the mystic life and its 
 
strange practices become full of philosophic meaning and 
 import. 
 
 The mystic's negative attitude toward other forms of 
 , cognition arises froip his special theory of the Real. In all 
 ages mystics have been emphatic in denouncing other than 
 mystical means of communicating with God. "Worship is 
 by them looked upon, not as one of many legitimate methods 
 of approaching the Absolute, but as the method. But reality, 
 to be inaccessible to sense and reflection alik'e,^ must be of 
 a certain determinate and definite character. Because 
 reality is known or postulated to be alien to the stufE of 
 which sense and reflection are made, sensible and reflective 
 knowledge are stigmatized as invalid. To reject these forms 
 of cognition, mysticism must Imow. beforehand the sort • 
 of reality for the reach of which they prove ineffectual. To 
 quote Hocking, "This and that, he [the mystic] says, are 
 not God : It is not these that I seek. ' '" The mystic must 
 , then know what he seeks in order to identify the object of 
 • his search when he has found it. It is impossible to begin 
 the quest without in some measure defining both the object 
 of the quest and the direction the search should take. And 
 about both the mystics have never been in any doubt. 
 The object of the mystic's search is perfectly definite: It 
 is That Which Is, Pure Being, or Ultimate Reality. Ulti- 
 mate Reality, however, is at once identified with the Abso- 
 lute, or God ; and the Absolute or God is further identified 
 with the One and "Whole, Immutable and Perfect. And 
 b ecause sense and reflection furnish but discrete fragme nts « 
 and bi ts of experience . and ne ver the One and the Whole, 
 they must quite consistently be di.scarded as guides to the 
 Ultimate. "V\^hat they give is nothing but appearances. « 
 Ultimate Reality must thus be looked for in an experience 
 radically different from and other than sense and reflection. 
 This necessitates an elaborate purging from sense and reflec- 
 tion, and when this is accomplished the One and the "Whole 
 
 The Meaning of God in Human Experience, p. 365. 
 
12 
 
 stands revealed to an immediate, unique, and ineffable 
 experience. 
 
 It will already be noted that the mystic's fundamental 
 assumption — that ultimate reality is One and Whole and 
 that this One and Whole must be of a spiritual character 
 in order to be discoverable by a spiritual experience — forms 
 
 , the very tenets of Absolute Idealism. Only in philosophic 
 idealism they are not assumptions, but the result of an 
 elaborate and systematic process of reflective thought. 
 Mysticism must begin by assuming the general idealistic 
 thesis if the mystic quest have any meaning at all. For 
 the mystic's adventure is no leap into the Unknown, he 
 ventures upon no strange and unmapped seas; far too 
 
 ► certain is he even of his landing place — a reality which is 
 One and Whole and spiritual revealahle to a spiritual ex- 
 perience. To be sure, his successful arrival — his later union 
 with the Absolute — gives ' pragmatic ' sanction to his quest 
 — his idea 'worked' — but it is impossible to grant the mystic 
 a legitimate right to assume the essentially idealistic nature 
 of reality ere his mystic experience has disclosed it to him 
 — this experience being the only certain and valid' test. 
 
 Thus, prior to those practices of the mystic which are 
 to terminate in a luminous vision of the Real, the Real 
 already has that character which such vision alone can 
 confer upon it. At the outset of the mystic's search is a 
 theoretic assumption — illegitimate on the mystic's own 
 grounds-^-that a new sort of knowledge yet to be won will 
 directly reveal a definite kind of reality. All knowledge 
 other than tl^gjo ne not yet attained, however, is stigmatized 
 by him as invalid, intact, illusory. The knowledge, then, 
 which directs the mystic's quest, the knowledge that a 
 definite kind of reality will be present to an immediate ex- 
 perience must itself be illusory. And yet it cannot be illu- 
 sory, without destroying both the object and the direction of , 
 
 * the mystic search. Such is the mystic dilei ma. Thus, the , 
 
 » general theory of Absolute Idealism — formulated and 
 proved by means of the circuitous and "illusory" route 
 
13 
 
 of reflection — is the mystic's necessary presupposition, a 
 presupposition assuming certainty for him only after he 
 has won the rare and difficult experience of which he is 
 in quest. Without this presupposition the whole mystic 
 enterprise is unintelligible, not only to us but to himself. 
 With this presupposition the mystic 's ' ' adventure ' ' becomes 
 full of meaning and significance. But the mystic is in 
 the paradoxical situation of the queen in Alice in Wonder- 
 land, who at the well-known trial-scene commands, "Sent- 
 ence first — iVerdict afterwards." 
 
 With the mystic's presupposition of the nature of 
 reality in mind, the details of his attempt to institute an 
 immediate acquaintance with the Absolute become intellig- 
 ible. The mystic's approach to the Reality is a long 
 pilgrimage of which "union" with the AlDSolute is the 
 consummation. A process of complex preparation must be 
 initiated — an active and strenuous inward pursuit — before 
 that complete state of illumination can be secured in which 
 the soul of the mystic is immediately aware of Absolute 
 Truth. This process of preparation is of an intensely 
 dramatic character and is usually characterized as a nega- 
 tive way, because it consists in first detaching onesel f from . 
 things finite, from the objects of sense and reflection, from 
 the whole world of space and time. "Into this house (of 
 his innermost self)," says Tauler, "must man now go and 
 completely desist from and abandon his sensations, and all 
 sensible things, such as are brought into the soul and 
 perceived by the senses and the imagination. And he 
 must also put away all the ideas and forms, even the con- 
 ceptions of reason, and all activity of his own reason. "^- 
 The necessity for this "essay in detachment" — to use 
 Hocking's apt phrase— is perfectly consistent with the 
 mystic's "theoretic" assumption. The reality which the 
 mystic seeks having been defined as absolutely other than 
 the objects of ViJ^se and reason, tKe road to it must indeed 
 be a road far removed from these cognitive processes. If, 
 
 Quoted by Hocking, ibid., p. 373. 
 
14 
 
 as the mystic believes, sense and reflection can report only 
 isolated facts or abstract law, transitory states or tradi- 
 tional concepts; if sense and reflection can never reveal a 
 living whole, a transcendent unity, an immutable spirit, 
 what can the mystic, seeking his Absolute, do but rid him- 
 self of these cognitive impediments? "He who believes 
 that 'if God is to come in, the creatures must go out' must 
 make his drastic choice," says Hocking.^^ It will not do 
 to contemplate a land route if the object of one's desire is 
 located on a "green isle in the sea" or, to vary the meta- 
 phor, it is absurd to consult a map of the earth if what 
 one seeks is hidden in the interior of a different planet. 
 *The mystic sets out on a definite voyage in pursuit of a 
 ♦definite object. He knows not only what he seeks, but 
 *he knows the ways which lead away from and those which 
 lead towards it. The mystic's preparation is, therefore, 
 marke.d by a characteristic absence from wavering and 
 hesitancy. Definite as the object of his quest, is his pro- 
 cedure in initiating and completing it. The ways which 
 lead away from the Absolute the mystic knows must not 
 be trodden. "The darkness of the cave of sense" and the 
 "wilderness of intellectual theories"^* — both must be 
 shunned. Thus, the via negativa or the ' ' purgative stage ' ' 
 in the traditional mystical ascent is not only consistent 
 with, but is an inevitable part of, the mystic "theory" of 
 the Real. 
 
 It may be here remarked, in passing, that the via 
 negativa is not an exclusively mystic road, but is one which 
 not only idealism but all philosophy has trodden. From 
 Thales on, philosophy has recognized that reality is not 
 what it seems and it does not seem what it is, and that 
 the seeker after truth must first purge himself from the 
 » prejudices and errors of sense and common sense ere he 
 *can hope to meditate upon the eternal verities. The paral- 
 
 13 Ibid., p. 374. 
 
 14 Koyee, The Problem of Christianity, New York, 1913, vol. II, 
 p. 258. 
 
15 
 
 lelism between the stages in the mystical ascent and those 
 of philosophic reflection is a subject worthy of a detailed 
 examination, but lack of space forbids more than a mere 
 mention of it. Students of Descartes, to point at one illust- 
 ration, whose philosophy is indeed far removed from mysti- 
 cism, will easily distinguish in the ' ' Cartesian Ascent ' ' the 
 'purgative,' the 'meditative' and the 'illuminative' or the 
 'intuitive' phases. And to Hegel's vision, to name an 
 absolute idealist, there leads no other path than the negative 
 path. His Phenomenology of Spirit — called by Hegel him- 
 self his ' ' Voyage of Discovery ' ' — consists of a series of 
 progressive purgations — necessary rungs on the ladder 
 which leads up to his own philosophic vision. Indeed, 
 without intellectual purgation there can be no sound 
 thinking. 
 
 Thus the "purgative" process is one of self-detach- 
 ment from what the mystic knows the real is not. Appear- 
 ance and reality are concepts' unhesitatingly used by him 
 to designate two distinct levels of existence, from the first 
 of which he must completely divest himself if he is ever 
 to reach the latter. To consider farther the details of the 
 "Mystic Way" lies beyond the scope of this paper. It 
 is sufficient to add that upon the removal of the appearances • 
 of outer sense and discursive thought there follows the 
 phase of "meditation" — a concentrated, attentive 'gazing' 
 upon "the divine things in which he [the mystic] already 
 believes," a complete abandonment "to the contemplation 
 of them," and the attainment of "a certain inner state of 
 delightful contemplation, while conflict and complexity 
 gives way to peace. "^^ This is preliminary to the final, 
 the 'illuminative' or 'unitive' stage — the terminus of the 
 mystic's journey, the result of which is characterized by 
 Hocking thus: "The mystic has been knocking at the 
 door of his world, an outsider, preparing himself inwardly 
 
 15 J. Eoyce, "George Fox as Mystic," Harvard Theological 
 Bevieiv, vol. VI, January, 1913. 
 
and outwardly .... What he reports is, that he has been 
 admitted; that from being an outsider, knocking at the 
 door of things, he has ceased to be an outsider and a sub- 
 ordinate. He uses the words 'illumination,' 'union,' some- 
 times 'deification,' to express what has come to him. In 
 some way he is admitted to the council of the maker of 
 this world of things. He has become an understander of 
 the heart of it. And in evidence of his truth he is able to, 
 walk about among things and men — do we say an alien? — 
 on the contrary, as one for the first time fully present and 
 at home, able to recognize himself and God in whatever 
 declares itself, able to open himself to the whole of experi- 
 ence. This is what the mystic reports. "^^ 
 
 Upon the psychological nature of the mystic experience 
 it is not relevant here to express any opinion. Professor 
 Hocking has dealt with it lengthily and sympathetically and 
 has tried to bring it "within the range of law." For the 
 rhythm, the disconnection, and the solitude which character- 
 ize the mystic experience, he finds numerous analogies in 
 normal mental life. From the epistemological point of 
 
 • view, the experience — whatever its psychology — can mean 
 ' nothing more than a peculiar and personal verification on 
 
 • the mystic's part of his preconceived "theory" or "hypo- 
 thesis" of the Real. He reports that he has at last found 
 what he has set out to find. We must here not be deterred 
 
 ^ by the mystic's "negative" narrative of his pilgrimage. 
 His account of the Absolute as " an undifferentiated One, ' ' 
 ' ' the Silent desert of the Godhead where no one is at home, ' ' 
 "an abysmal Dark," "a nameless Nothing," is a mere 
 
 'rhetorical device. These expressions connote a Being whose, 
 perfection, whose glory, whose finality, no particular name 
 can denote. "The Absolute is the very opposite of a mere 
 nothing," says Royce, "for it is fulfillment, attainment, 
 peace, the goal of life, the object of desire, the end of 
 knowledge .... The light above the light is, to our deluded 
 
 16 The Meaning of God in Human Experience, pp. 
 
17 
 
 vision, darkness. It is our finite realm that is falsity, the 
 mere nothing. The Absolute is All Truth. "^^ 
 
 But the mystic postulates from the very beginning of 
 his quest and in advance of that ineffable insight which 
 alone constitutes the mystic test of truth, the identity of 
 all Truth with the Absolute, of all Reality with the Perfect 
 One, of all That Is with a Divine Being. To the discovery 
 and attainment of such an assumed identity, the mystic's 
 life of worship is devoted. Thus, it is a definite "thesis" 
 of the nature of reality with which the mystic must begin, 
 and as the ''proof" of such thesis he offers his unique 
 and indescribable experience. But until this peculiar proof, 
 the "mystic union," is actually achieved, the mystic can- 
 not escape the charge of entertaining an unverified hypo- 
 thesis of the Real, an hypothesis, moreover, because it is 
 not yet verified by the only form of cognition having 
 validity, must be looked upon as being on a par with all 
 that which he stigmatizes as "illusory." Without this 
 particular hypothesis, however, both as his starting point 
 and his goal, the mystic life and its practices are robbed 
 of all meaning and significance. 
 
 A certain type of idealism, then, the type embodied in 
 the doctrine that Reality is Absolute, One, Whole, and 
 Spirit, accessible to the spiritual nature of man, is implied 
 in the mystic's endeavor — nay, in a sort of axiomatic 
 fashion is deliberately assumed in the mystic's practical 
 and meaningful life of worship. But this idealistic doctrine, 
 if it has any truth, has the truth which the labor of reflec- 
 tion alone can sustain. It is a doctrine which means to be 
 an interpretation of the universe in its entirety and com- 
 plexity, and as such presupposes a complete and systematic 
 and critical examination of the problems of life and of 
 the world. Its method is reflective and argumentative, i.e., 
 it consists in convincing rationally that the idealistic inter- 
 pretation can most successfully cope with the universal 
 
 17 The World and the Individual, vol. I, p. 171. 
 
18 
 
 problems of life. If it can succeed in exhibiting that it 
 alone is a complete and coherent and self-consistent inter- 
 pretation of the universe, then and only then may idealism 
 lay claim to validity. The view of reality assumed by 
 
 * mysticism is a result o f articu l ate an d ela borate reflecti on, 
 and is not merely a point of departure. 
 ^ Absolute Idealism, with the general thesis of which 
 mysticism begins, permits of a variety of formulation and 
 interpretation. To the general abstract notion that Reality 
 is Absolute and One and Whole and spiritual, knowable to 
 a spiritual insight, aU absolute idealists may be said to 
 subscribe, but they will not agree upon the kind of absolute- 
 ness, unity, wholeness, and spirituality that may belong to 
 reality, and upon the ways of knowing such reality, 
 ysticism, however, begins and ends with an abstract and 
 
 « vague unity, wholeness, and spirituality of its Absolute. 
 We glean from the mystic, either before or after his ' ' illum- 
 ination," nothing beyond the bare fact that the Absolute 
 somehow is One, is All, is Perfection. In what does the 
 absoluteness of reality consist? Hoiv is the unity of the 
 world to be interpreted ? What is the nature of its whole- 
 ness? What constitutes its spirituality? How must one 
 conceive of its infinity and perfection? Why, if reality is 
 absolute, one, and whole, and spirit, does it present con- 
 tradictory and discrepant features? With these, and with 
 countless other questions, philosophic idealism seeks to 
 grapple. For the mystic who either still seeks or who 
 has already found absolute reality, these questions do not 
 
 ' exist, because he does not ask them, and in ignoring these 
 
 , questions the mystic is, from his point of view, again quite 
 consistent. When one is yearning to be united with a 
 lovable and living reality, when one hopes and somehow 
 knows that in such a union all will be well, when the 
 fading away of the "doubter and the doubt" constitutes 
 the solution of all problems, it is ill to prolong the agony 
 of thinking, escape from which is the mystic's supreme 
 attempt. "He wishes to be, rather than to think," is 
 
19 
 
 Hocking 's characterization of the typical mystic 's attitude. 
 But the intellectual and spiritual travail of the ages, the 
 united and sustained philosophic effort of the centuries, 
 may be required to disclose the wealth and the depth and 
 the complexity of the questions which mysticism ignores and 
 which its "theory" of the real assumed in its practice 
 persistently invites. 
 
 If the view of mysticism here developed be at all correct, 
 the objects of the mystic quest must be held to be identical 
 with that form of reality which is the reflective outcome 
 of many types of absolute idealism. Only, in the latter the 
 outcome is not assumed, as it is in mysticism, at the begin- 
 ning, but is the result of a rational attempt to interpret 
 the world in its totality and complexity. The proof of such 
 interpretation does not depend upon a knowledge wholly 
 unique, exclusive, and ineffable, but upon a knowledge 
 which is both articulate and demonstrable. The mystics, 
 together with other anti-intellectualists, appear to identify 
 reason or reflection with the power of forming abstract 
 ideas or with the process of framing definitions, making 
 divisions, classifications, and generalizations. Reason for 
 them is essentially artificial and analytical, working piece- 
 meal, obtaining but bits and fragments. "To understand 
 life by concepts," says William James, "is to arrest its 
 movement, cutting it up into bits, as if with scissors, and 
 immobilizing these in our logical herbarium [where they are 
 kept] as dried specimens."^® Evelyn Underbill, voicing the 
 mystic protest against intellectualism, rejects an intellec- 
 tualistic Absolute as " a meaningless diagram, a superfluous 
 complication of thought. Every effort made by philosophy 
 to go forth in search of it is merely the metaphysical 
 squirrel running round the conceptual cage."^^ But the 
 function of anaylsis is only one aspect of the complex life 
 of thought. Thought appears in its most significant work 
 as synthetic, constructive, inventive. In its synthetic 
 
 18 Pluralistic Universe, New York, 1909, p. 244. 
 
 19 Mysticism, p. 16. 
 
capacity, thought has to do, not with parts but with wholes, 
 
 • not with dividing but with unifying, not with definition 
 
 • but with insight. Ever since Plato, the distinction between 
 thought as analytical and thought as synthetic has been 
 emphasized, and in Kant, but more particularly in his 
 followers, the term "understanding" is employed for the 
 former, while the latter alone is the principal function of 
 "reason." This technical matter can not be here pursued 
 further. It is pertinent only to call attention to a different 
 view of the nature of r eason, which, if true, would remove 
 in a large measure the mystic's ob jection to philosophic 
 idealism. For reason, too, can have 'visions,' 'insights,' 
 'intuitions.' And one may add that to this function of 
 reason is due all constructive work of science. Science is 
 not a matter merely of analysis, classification, and abstrac- 
 tion. It is to the intuitive or imaginative mind of the 
 scientist that we owe the invention of successful hypotheses 
 and the discovery of scientific laws. Science and philos- 
 ophy alike depend upon synthetic insights and intuitive 
 visions. "Reason," as Royce says, "means simply broader 
 intuition, the sort of seeing that grasps many views in one, 
 that surveys life as it were from above, tliat sees, as the 
 wanderer views the larger landscape from a mountain- 
 top."-" 
 
 A ' ' vision ' ' of reality is thus not the exclusive preroga- 
 tive of the mystic. Vision of an intellectual sort is a • 
 philosophic attitude par excellence. If philosophy is taken 
 
 ■ to mean a science or an art of interpretation and apprecia- 
 tion, and not merely one of description and classification, 
 can it be aught else than an expression of vision? In the 
 matter of vision, metaphysics allies itself with poetry or 
 with art in general, rather than with the positive or natural 
 /Sciences. To both the poet and the metaphysician reality 
 
 '-• throws out but dim suggestions which they have a right t 
 to interpret. The meaning of interpretation is nothing 
 else than the ability to see far beyond or behind these 
 
 20 The Sources of Beligious Insight, New York, 1912, p. 86. 
 
21 
 
 suggestions. True, the poet and the metaphysician employ- 
 different methods in interpreting the suggestions which 
 reality hints to them. But the right and the will to inter- 
 pret is grounded in both cases on a vision. Whence, then, 
 the deeper reality or meaning of things? Whence the 
 search or quest for a deeper reality or meaning? This 
 very search is grounded upon a particular vision or inner 
 experience — neither mystical nor mysterious — which must 
 come to every philosopher. This vision is the first and 
 primary condition of every philosophy. This simply means 
 that the philosopher or poet "sees" things in a way dif- 
 ferent from common sense. On account of such a vision, 
 Thales, I fancy, is entitled to be called the Father of 
 Philosophy; he asked questions about the universe which 
 nobody before him thought of asking. He had a vision 
 that the world was not what it appeared to him. 
 It is in such a general sense that we may also speak o^ 
 'metaphysical imagination,' but there is nothing exclusiye 
 about it, and in this sense it is indeed true that any or 
 anybody's philosophy is due to a vision. Which and 
 whose vision is the right or the true vision is, of course, 
 a different question, to be decided on different gr^ads^.^^J^j^ 
 This interpretation of a philosophic vision not in op- s^^)^^ 
 position to reason, but being the very life of reason, would ^. q^^^ 
 apply to mysticism as well. The whole-idea with which the • r'^rp 
 mystic begins his quest, without which, as has been shown, 
 the entire mystic enterprise would be meaningless, the 
 initiation, rather than the completion, of the "Mystic * 
 Way," constitutes his really philosophic vision. Vague 
 and abstract, to be sure, is this vision, but it is perfectly 
 determinate. For the mystic, it will be remembered, does 
 not set out to seek for an indefinite somewhat. His object 
 is clearly defined : a Reality, One and Absolute and Spirit- 
 fl ual, discoverable by a spiritual seeker. He in a measure \/ 
 already possesses that which he seeks. His quest is a quest 
 for verification of a definite hypothesis. It is the intellect- 
 ual hypothesis — the non-mystical starting point of the 
 
 /; 
 
mystic — and not its ineffable esoteric and purely personal 
 verification which is a vision possessing genuine philosophic 
 significance. 
 
 And because the mystic has this whole-idea, because he 
 begins with this intellectual vision for which he seeks non- 
 intellectual confirmation, because his starting point is an 
 idealistic hypothesis, mysticism will always demand philo- 
 •^ojghic__attention. Mysticism cannot articulate what it 
 finds, but what it seeks is a verification of a determinate 
 hypothesis which it has in common with philosophic ideal- 
 ism. Both the idealist and the mystic share in the same 
 implicit doctrine, but while the mystic vanishes from a 
 definite relatively exoteric hypothesis into an ineffable 
 esoteric immediacy, the idealist progresses to a mediate 
 explicit interpretation of the universe. The difference 
 between them may well be illustrated by the story of a 
 French professor who, at the opening of a course in meta- 
 physics, summed up his whole philosophic doctrine by 
 means of three gestures. He said "L'Idealisme," raising 
 his hand towards heaven, ' ' Le Materialisme, ' ' pointing his 
 finger downward, and ' ' Le Spiritualisme, ' ' pressing his 
 hand to his heart. "These gestures," he continued, "con- 
 tain my whole metaphysical system, but it will require more 
 than one year to develop their profound meaning, to under- 
 stand the wealth of their implications, and to justify the 
 theory of the universe they express." In relation to 
 philosophic idealism, we may conclude, mysticism remains 
 but an inarticulate hint, a subtle shrug, a silent gesture, 
 whose full and deep meaning and whose vast and rich 
 significance the intellectual travail of generations of men 
 cannot completely exhaust. 
 
TTF 
 
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