Mysticism in English Literature Part 8

for that G.o.d loveth it_. And so All-thing hath the Being by the love of G.o.d." Later, she adds, "Well I wot that heaven and earth, and all that is made is great and large, fair and good; but the cause why it shewed so little to my sight was for that I saw it in the presence of Him that is the Maker of all things: for to a soul that seeth the Maker of all, all that is made seemeth full little."

"In this Little Thing," she continues, "I saw three properties. The first is that G.o.d made it, the second is that G.o.d loveth it, the third, that G.o.d keepeth it. But what is to me verily the Maker, the Keeper, and the Lover--I cannot tell; for till I am Substantially oned to Him, I may never have full rest nor very bliss: that is to say, till I be so fastened to Him, that there is right nought that is made betwixt my G.o.d and me" (_Revelations_, pp. 10, 18).

Julian's vision with regard to sin is of special interest. The problem of evil has never been stated in terser or more dramatic form.

After this I saw G.o.d in a Point, that is to say, in mine understanding which sight I saw that He is in all things. I beheld and considered, seeing and knowing in sight, with a soft dread, and thought: _What is sin?_ (_Ibid_, p. 26).

Here is the age-old difficulty. G.o.d, so the mystic sees, is "in the Mid-point of all thing," and yet, as Julian says, it is "dertain He doeth no sin." The solution given to her is that "sin is no deed," it "hath no part of being," and it can only be known by the pain it is cause of. Sin is a negation, a failure, an emptiness of love, but pain _is_ something it is a purification. Sin brings with it pain, "to me was shewed no harder h.e.l.l than sin"; but we must go through the pain in order to learn, without it we could never have the bliss. As a wave draws back from the sh.o.r.e, in order to return again with fuller force; so sin, the lack of love, is permitted for a time, in order that an opening be made for an inrush of the Divine Love, fuller and more complete than would otherwise be possible. It is in some such way as this, dimly shadowed, that it was shown to Julian that sin and pain are necessary parts of the scheme of G.o.d. Hence G.o.d does not blame us for sin, for it brings its own blame or punishment with it, nay more, "sin shall be no shame to man, but worship," a bold saying, which none but a mystic would dare utter. When G.o.d seeth our sin, she says, and our despair in pain, "His love excuseth us, and of His great courtesy He doeth away all our blame, and beholdeth us with ruth and pity as children innocent and unloathful."

It would be pleasant to say more of Julian, but perhaps her own words have sufficed to show that here we are dealing with one of the great mystics of the world. Childlike and yet rashly bold, deeply spiritual, yet intensely human, "a simple creature, unlettered," yet presenting solutions of problems which have racked humanity, she inherits the true paradoxical nature of the mystic, to which is added a beauty and delicacy of thought and expression all her own.

There were many other mystical works written about this time in England.

Of these the best known and the finest is _The Scale, or Ladder, of Perfection_, by Walter Hylton, the Augustinian, and head of a house of canons at Thurgarton, near Newark, who died in 1396. This is a practical and scientific treatise of great beauty on the spiritual life.[66] An interesting group of writings are the five little treatises, almost certainly by one author (_c._ 1350-1400), to be found in Harleian 674, and other MSS. Their names are _The Cloud of Unknowing, The Epistle of Prayer, The Epistle of Discretion, The Treatise of Discerning Spirits_, and _The Epistle of Privy Counsel_. We find here for the first time in English the influence and spirit of Dionysius, and it is probably to the same unknown writer we owe the first (very free) translation of the _Mystical Theology_ of Dionysius, _Deonise Hid Divinite_, which is bound up with these other ma.n.u.scripts.

These little tracts are written by a practical mystic, one who was able to describe with peculiar accuracy and vividness the physical and psychological sensations accompanying mystical initiation. _The Cloud of Unknowing_ is an application in simple English of the Dionysian teaching of concentration joined to the practice of contemplation taught by Richard of St Victor, and it describes very clearly the preliminary struggles and bewilderment of the soul. The _Epistle of Privy Counsel_ (still in MS.) is the most advanced in mystical teaching: the writer in it tries to explain very intimately the nature of "onehede with G.o.d,"

and to give instruction in simple and yet deeply subtle terms as to the means for attaining this.

There is a mystical strain in other writings of this time, the most notable from the point of view of literature being in the fourteenth-century alliterative poem of _Piers the Plowman_.[67] This is mystical throughout in tone, more especially in the idea of the journey of the soul in search of Truth, only to find, after many dangers and disciplines and adventures, that--

If grace graunte the to go in this wise, Thow shalt see in thi-selve Treuthe sitte in thine herte In a cheyne of charyte as thow a childe were.[68]

Moreover, the vision of Dowel, Dobet, and Dobest, bears a definite a.n.a.logy to the three stages of the mystic's path, as will be seen if the description of the qualities of these three are examined, as they are given in B., Pa.s.sus viii. 11. 78-102.

Crashaw, George Herbert, and Christopher Harvey all alike sound the personal note in their religious poems. All three writers describe the love of the soul for G.o.d in the terms of pa.s.sionate human love: Crashaw with an ardour which has never been surpa.s.sed, Herbert with a homely intimacy quite peculiar to him, and Christopher Harvey with a point and epigrammatic setting which serve only to enhance the deep feeling of the thought.

In many a lyric of flaming pa.s.sion Crashaw expresses his love-longing for his G.o.d, and he describes in terms only matched by his spiritual descendant, Francis Thompson, the desire of G.o.d to win the human soul.

Let not my Lord, the mighty lover Of soules, disdain that I discover The hidden art Of his high stratagem to win your heart, It was his heavnly art Kindly to crosse you In your mistaken love, That, at the next remove Thence he might tosse you And strike your troubled heart Home to himself.[69]

The main feature of Herbert's poetry is the religious love lyric, the cry of the individual soul to G.o.d. This is the mystical quality in his verse, which is quieter and far less musical than Crashaw's, but which possesses at times a tender fragrance and freshness, as in the little poem _Love_.

Christopher Harvey, the friend of Izaak Walton and the admirer of Herbert, has in his poems some lines which breathe almost as rapturous a pa.s.sion of spiritual love as anything in Crashaw. Such is his epigram on the _Insatiableness of the Heart_.

The whole round world is not enough to fill The heart's three corners; but it craveth still.

Onely the Trinity, that made it, can Suffice the vast-triangled heart of man.[70]

Or again, in a later epigram in the same poem (_The School of the Heart_), he puts the main teaching of Plotinus and of all mystics into four pregnant lines--

My busie stirring heart, that seekes the best, Can find no place on earth wherein to rest; For G.o.d alone, the Author of its blisse, Its only rest, its onely center is.

But it is Crashaw who, of these three, shares in fullest measure the pa.s.sion of the great Catholic mystics, and more especially of St Teresa, whom he seems almost to have worshipped. His hymn to her "name and honor" is one of the great English poems; it burns with spiritual flame, it soars with n.o.ble desire. Near the beginning of it, Crashaw has, in six simple lines, pictured the essential mystic att.i.tude of action, not necessarily or consciously accompanied by either a philosophy or a theology. He is speaking of Teresa's childish attempt to run away and become a martyr among the Moors.

She never undertook to know What death with love should have to doe; Nor has she e're yet understood Why to shew love, she should shed blood Yet though she cannot tell you why, She can LOVE, and she can DY.

Spiritual love has never been more rapturously sung than in this marvellous hymn. Little wonder that it haunted Coleridge's memory, and that its deep emotion and rich melody stimulated his poet's ear and imagination to write _Christabel_.[71] Crashaw's influence also on Patmore, more especially on the _Sponsa Dei_, as well as later on Francis Thompson, is unmistakable.

William Blake is one of the great mystics of the world; and he is by far the greatest and most profound who has spoken in English. Like Henry More and Wordsworth, he lived in a world of glory, of spirit and of vision, which, for him, was the only real world. At the age of four he saw G.o.d looking in at the window, and from that time until he welcomed the approach of death by singing songs of joy which made the rafters ring, he lived in an atmosphere of divine illumination. The material facts of his career were simple and uneventful. He was an engraver by profession, poet and painter by choice, mystic and seer by nature. From the outer point of view his life was a failure. He was always crippled by poverty, almost wholly unappreciated in the world of art and letters of his day, consistently misunderstood even by his best friends, and p.r.o.nounced mad by those who most admired his work. Yet, like all true mystics, he was radiantly happy and serene; rich in the midst of poverty. For he lived and worked in a world, and amongst a company, little known of ordinary men:--

With a blue sky spread over with wings, And a mild Sun that mounts & sings; With trees & fields full of Fairy elves, And little devils who fight for themselves--

With Angels planted in Hawthorn bowers, And G.o.d Himself in the pa.s.sing hours.[72]

It is not surprising that he said, in speaking of Lawrence and other popular artists who sometimes patronisingly visited him, "They pity me, but 'tis they are the just objects of pity, I possess my visions and peace. They have bartered their birthright for a mess of pottage." The strength of his illumination at times intoxicated him with joy, as he writes to Hayley (October 23, 1804) after a recurrence of vision which had lapsed for some years, "Dear Sir, excuse my enthusiasm or rather madness, for I am really drunk with intellectual vision whenever I take a pencil or graver into my hand." This is the "divine madness" of which Plato speaks, the "inebriation of Reality," the ecstasy which makes the poet "drunk with life."[73]

In common with other mystics, with Boehme, St Teresa, and Madame Guyon, Blake claimed that much of his work was written under direct inspiration, that it was an automatic composition, which, whatever its source, did not come from the writer's normal consciousness. In speaking of the prophetic book _Milton_, he says--

I have written this poem from immediate dictation, twelve or sometimes twenty or thirty lines at a time, without pre-meditation and even against my will. The time it has taken in writing was thus rendered non-existent, and an immense poem exists which seems to be the labour of a long life, all produced without labour or study.

Whatever may be their source, all Blake's writings are deeply mystical in thought, and symbolic in expression, and this is true of the (apparently) simple little _Songs of Innocence_, no less than of the great, and only partially intelligible, prophetic books. To deal at all adequately with these works, with the thought and teaching they contain, and the method of clothing it, would necessitate a volume, if not a small library, devoted to that purpose. It is possible, however, to indicate certain fundamental beliefs and a.s.sertions which lie at the base of Blake's thought and of his very unusual att.i.tude towards life, and which, once grasped, make clear a large part of his work. It must be remembered that these a.s.sertions were for him not matters of belief, but of pa.s.sionate knowledge--he was as sure of them as of his own existence.

Blake founds his great myth on his perception of unity at the heart of things expressing itself in endless diversity. "G.o.d is in the lowest effects as [in] the highest causes. He is become a worm that he may nourish the weak.... Everything on earth is the word of G.o.d, and in its essence is G.o.d."[74]

In the _Everlasting Gospel_, Blake emphasises, with more than his usual amount of paradox, the inherent divinity of man. G.o.d, speaking to Christ as the highest type of humanity, says--

If thou humblest thyself, thou humblest me.

Thou also dwellst in Eternity.

Thou art a man: G.o.d is no more: Thy own humanity learn to adore, For that is my Spirit of Life.[75]

Similarly the union of man with G.o.d is the whole gist of that apparently most chaotic of the prophetic books, _Jerusalem_.

The proof of the divinity of man, it would seem, lies in the fact that he desires G.o.d, for he cannot desire what he has not seen. This view is summed up in the eight sentences which form the little book (about 2 inches long by 1 inches broad) in the British Museum, _Of Natural Religion_. Here are four of them.

Man's perceptions are not bounded by organs of perception, he perceives more than sense (tho' ever so acute) can discover.

None could have other than natural or organic thoughts if he had none but organic perceptions.

Man's desires are limited by his perceptions, none can desire what he has not perceiv'd.

The desires and perceptions of man untaught by anything but organs of sense, must be limited to objects of sense.

The solution of the difficulty is given in large script on the last of the tiny pages of the volume:

Therefore G.o.d becomes as we are, that we may be as he is.

According to Blake, the universe as we know it, is the result of the fall of the one life from unity into division. This fall has come about through man seeking separation, and taking the part for the whole. (See Jacob Boehme's view, pp. 94, 95 above, which is identical with that of Blake.) "Nature," therefore, or the present form of mental existence, is the result of a contraction of consciousness or "selfhood," a tendency for everything to shrink and contract about its own centre.

This condition or "state" Blake personifies as "Urizen" (=Reason) a great dramatic figure who stalks through the prophetic books, proclaiming himself "G.o.d from Eternity to Eternity," taking up now one characteristic and now another, but ever of the nature of materialism, opaqueness, contraction. In the case of man, the result of this contraction is to close him up into separate "selfhoods," so that the inlets of communication with the universal spirit have become gradually stopped up; until now, for most men, only the five senses (one of the least of the many possible channels of communication) are available for the uses of the natural world. Blake usually refers to this occurrence as the "flood ": that is, the rush of general belief in the five senses that overwhelmed or submerged the knowledge of all other channels of wisdom, except such arts as were saved, which are symbolised under the names of Noah (=Imagination) and his sons. He gives a fine account of this in _Europe_ (p. 8), beginning--

Plac'd in the order of the stars, when the five senses whelm'd In deluge o'er the earth-born man, then turn'd the fluxile eyes Into two stationary orbs, concentrating all things.

The ever-varying spiral ascents to the heavens of heavens Were bended downward, and the nostrils' golden gates shut, Turn'd outward, barr'd, and petrify'd against the infinite.

The only way out of this self-made prison is through the Human Imagination, which is thus the Saviour of the world. By "Imagination"

Blake would seem to mean all that we include under sympathy, insight, idealism, and vision, as opposed to self-centredness, logical argument, materialism and concrete, scientific fact. For him, Imagination is the one great reality, in it alone he sees a human faculty that touches both nature and spirit, thus uniting them in one. The language of Imagination is Art, for it speaks through symbols so that men shut up in their selfhoods are thus ever reminded that nature herself is a symbol. When this is once fully realised, we are freed from the delusion imposed upon us from without by the seemingly fixed reality of external things. If we consider all material things as symbols, their suggestiveness, and consequently their reality, is continually expanding. "I rest not from my great task," he cries--

To open the eternal worlds, to open the immortal eyes Of man inwards into the worlds of thought, into eternity, Ever expanding in the bosom of G.o.d, the human imagination.

In Blake's view the qualities most sorely needed by men are not restraint and discipline, obedience or a sense of duty, but love and understanding. "Men are admitted into heaven, not because they have curbed and governed their pa.s.sions, or have no pa.s.sions, but because they have cultivated their understandings." To understand is three parts of love, and it is only through Imagination that we _can_ understand. It is the lack of imagination that is at the root of all the cruelties and all the selfishness in the world. Until we can feel for all that lives, Blake says in effect, until we can respond to the joys and sorrows of others as quickly as to our own, our imagination is dull and incomplete: