Christian Mysticism Part 9

[Footnote 171: See Harnack, vol. iii. pp. 242, 243. St. Augustine accepts this statement, which he repeats word for word.]

[Footnote 172: Compare also Hooker: "Of Thee our fittest eloquence is silence, while we confess without confessing that Thy glory is unsearchable and beyond our reach."]

[Footnote 173: Unity is a characteristic or simple condition of real being, but it is not in itself a principle of being, so that "the One"

could exist substantially by itself. To personify the barest of abstractions, call it G.o.d, and then try to imitate it, would seem too absurd a fallacy to have misled any one, if history did not show that it has had a long and vigorous life.]

[Footnote 174: Cf. Sir W. Hamilton (_Discussions_, p. 21): "By abstraction we annihilate the object, and by abstraction we annihilate the subject of consciousness. But what remains? Nothing. When we attempt to conceive it as reality, we hypostatise the zero."]

[Footnote 175: The Hon. P. Ramanathan, C.M.G., Attorney-General of Ceylon, _The Mystery of G.o.dliness_. This interesting essay was brought to my notice by the kindness of the Rev. G.U. Pope, D.D., University Teacher in Tamil and Telugu at Oxford.]

[Footnote 176: Hunt's summary of the philosophy of the Vedanta Sara (_Pantheism and Christianity_, p. 19) may help to ill.u.s.trate further this type of thought. "Brahma is called the universal soul, of which all human souls are a part. These are likened to a succession of sheaths, which envelop each other like the coats of an onion. The human soul frees itself by knowledge from the sheath. But what is this knowledge? To know that the human intellect and all its faculties are ignorance and delusion. This is to take away the sheath, and to find that G.o.d is all. Whatever is not Brahma is nothing. So long as a man perceives himself to be anything, he is nothing. When he discovers that his supposed individuality is no individuality, then he has knowledge. Man must strive to rid himself of himself as an object of thought. He must be only a subject. As subject he is Brahma, while the objective world is mere phenomenon."]

[Footnote 177: We may compare with them the following maxims, which, enclosed in an outline of Mount Carmel, form the frontispiece to an early edition of St. Juan of the Cross:--

"To enjoy Infinity, do not desire to taste of finite things.

"To arrive at the knowledge of Infinity, do not desire the knowledge of finite things.

"To reach to the possession of Infinity, desire to possess nothing.

"To be included in the being of Infinity, desire to be thyself nothing whatever.

"The moment that thou art resting in a creature, thou art ceasing to advance towards Infinity.

"In order to unite thyself to Infinity, thou must surrender finite things without reserve."

After reading such maxims, we shall probably be inclined to think that "the Infinite" as a name for G.o.d might be given up with advantage.

There is nothing Divine about a _tabula rasa_.]

[Footnote 178: Cf. Richard of St. Victor, _de Praep. Anim._ 83, "ascendat per semetipsum super semetipsum."]

[Footnote 179: The same is true of our att.i.tude towards external nature. We are always trying to rise from the shadow to the substance, from the symbol to the thing symbolised, and so far the followers of the negative road are right; but the life of Mysticism (on this side) consists in the process of spiritualising our impressions; and to regard the process as completed is to lose shadow and substance together.]

[Footnote 180: It may be objected that I have misused the term _via negativa_, which is merely the line of argument which establishes the transcendence of G.o.d, as the "affirmative road" establishes His immanence. I am far from wishing to depreciate a method which when rightly used is a safeguard against Pantheism, but the whole history of mediaeval Mysticism shows how mischievous it is when followed exclusively.]

[Footnote 181: See Vaughan, _Hours with the Mystics_, vol. i. p. 58.]

[Footnote 182: Seth, _Hegelianism and Personality_, states this more strongly. He argues that "the ultimate goal of Realism is a thorough-going Pantheism." G.o.d is regarded as the _summum genus_, the ultimate Substance of which all existing things are accidents. The genus inheres in the species, and the species in individuals, as an ent.i.ty common to all and _identical in each_, an ent.i.ty to which individual differences adhere as accidents.]

[Footnote 183: McTaggart, _Studies in Hegelian Dialectic_, p. 159 sq., argues that Hegel means that the Absolute Idea exists eternally in its full perfection. There can be no _real_ development in time. "Infinite time is a false infinite of endless aggregation." The whole discussion is very instructive and interesting.]

[Footnote 184: So La.s.son says well, in his book on Meister Eckhart, "Mysticism views everything from the standpoint of teleology, while Pantheism generally stops at causality."]

[Footnote 185: As, for instance, Leslie Stephen tries to do in his _Agnostic's Apology_.]

[Footnote 186: The system of Spinoza, based on the canon, "Omnis determinatio est negatio," proceeds by wiping out all dividing lines, which he regards as illusions, in order to reach the ultimate truth of things. This, as Hegel showed, is acosmism rather than Pantheism, and certainly not "atheism." The method of Spinoza should have led him, as the same method led Dionysius, to define G.o.d as [Greek: hyperousios aoristia]. He only escapes this conclusion by an inconsistency. See E.

Caird, _Evolution of Religion_, vol. i. pp. 104, 105.]

[Footnote 187: There is a third system which is called pantheistic; but as it has nothing to do with Mysticism, I need not try to determine whether it deserves the name or not. It is that which deifies physical law. Sometimes it is "materialism grown sentimental,"

as it has been lately described; sometimes it issues in stern Fatalism. This is Stoicism; and high Calvinism is simply Christian Stoicism. It has been called pantheistic, because it admits only one Will in the universe.]

LECTURE IV

[Greek: "Edizesamen emeouton."]

HERAc.l.i.tUS.

"La philosophie n'est pas philosophie si elle ne touche a l'abime; mais elle cesse d'etre philosophie si elle y tombe."

COUSIN.

"Denn Alles muss in Nichts zerfallen, Wenn es im Sein beharren will."

GOETHE.

"Seek no more abroad, say I, House and Home, but turn thine eye Inward, and observe thy breast; There alone dwells solid Rest.

Say not that this House is small, Girt up in a narrow wall: In a cleanly sober mind Heaven itself full room doth find.

Here content make thine abode With thyself and with thy G.o.d.

Here in this sweet privacy May'st thou with thyself agree, And keep House in peace, tho' all Th' Universe's fabric fall."

JOSEPH BEAUMONT.

"The One remains, the many change and pa.s.s: Heaven's light for ever shines; earth's shadows fly: Life, like a dome of many-coloured gla.s.s, Stains the white radiance of Eternity."

Sh.e.l.lEY.

CHRISTIAN PLATONISM AND SPECULATIVE MYSTICISM

2. IN THE WEST

"Know ye not that ye are a temple of G.o.d, and that the Spirit of G.o.d dwelleth in you?"--1 COR. iii. 16.

We have seen that Mysticism, like most other types of religion, had its cradle in the East. The Christian Platonists, whom we considered in the last Lecture, wrote in Greek, and we had no occasion to mention the Western Churches. But after the Pseudo-Dionysius, the East had little more to contribute to Christian thought. John of Damascus, in the eighth century, half mystic and half scholastic, need not detain us. The Eastern Churches rapidly sank into a deplorably barbarous condition, from which they have never emerged. We may therefore turn away from the Greek-speaking countries, and trace the course of Mysticism in the Latin and Teutonic races.

Scientific Mysticism in the West did not all pa.s.s through Dionysius.

Victorinus, a Neoplatonic philosopher, was converted to Christianity in his old age, about 360 A.D. The story of his conversion, and the joy which it caused in the Christian community, is told by St.

Augustine[188]. He was a deep thinker of the speculative mystical type, but a clumsy and obscure writer, in spite of his rhetorical training. His importance lies in his position as the first Christian Neoplatonist who wrote in Latin.