Mysticism in English Literature

phical

motions. These writers, as a rule, though not always, are themselves markedly intellectual, and their primary concern therefore is with truth or wisdom. Thus Donne, William Law,

l. The idea is a mystical one, derived from Pythagorean philosophy, and has great possibilities, which Donne entirely fails to utilise; for, instead of following the soul upwards on its way, he depicts it as merely jumping about from body to body, and we are conscious of an entire lack of any lift or grandeur of thought. This poem helps us

aw, in his treatment of love, and in his conception of woman. The mystic's postulate-if we could know ourselves, we should know all-is often on Donne's lips, as f

selves least; Me

ndes s

, no more than

colour. Onel

e, know

ur Sense

alogy prevailing throughout nature is with him very strong. The mystery of continual flux and change particularly attracts him, as it did the Budd

tho

beauty worthy

nsener, that she

in to love, a

es (but ill) la

ough the river

ters, and to-d

he Soule. The second

's potential greatness, and

our selves in o

nne with much mo

beames with a c

into our selv

arkes of virtu

doth about our

Mr Rolan

belief in progress is unquenchable. He fully shares the mystic's view that "man, to get

nly that Donne believes it, but that he has in some measure experienced it; whereas with his imitators it degenerated into little more than a fashionable "conceit." The Undertaking expresses the discovery he has made of this higher and deeper kind of love; and in the Ecstasy he describes the union of the souls o

o way to

et be

tuall

r to the v

es, not

Countess of Huntingdon[30] he expla

with such fatal

es it selfe wit

sion as can only be defined by negatives, for it is above apprehension, and his language here i

his prose Meditations, a kind of spiritual autobiography and notebook, were only discovered and printed

oicing in this beauty if we are really to live. By love alone is God to be approached and known, he says, but this love must not be finite. "He must be loved in all with an unlimited love, even

clothed with the heavens, and crowned with the stars:.... Till you can sing and rejoice

own: till you delight in God for being good to all: you never enjoy the world.... The world is a mirror of infinite beauty, yet no man sees it. It is a Temple of Majest

ating, in company wit

e object, b

eaven: 'tis a

of Keats's worship of beauty, and he expresses this in an original and lyrical prose of quite peculiar and haunting beauty. He has embodied his main ideas, wi

nd of an imaginative philosophy, expressed in pithy and telling for

or to live beside them

t those that speak

objects, but do not e

ike apples, one bein

soul to the rays of the sun, which carry light in them unexpressed until they meet an object (Meditations, second century, No. 78). But Traherne's most interesting contr

and every c

did

in celest

ng. A number of his poems are devoted to this topic (The Salutation, Wonder, Eden, Innocenc

s of the street were as precious as gold: the gates were at first the end of the world. The green trees when I saw them first ... transported and ravished me, their sweetness and unusual beauty made my heart to leap, and almost mad with ecstasy, they were such strange and wonderful things. The Men! O what venerable and reverend creatures did the aged seem! Immorta

continuity, and of eternity expressed in time. Traherne's account of the gradual dimming of this early radiance, and his enforced change of values is equally unusual. Only with great difficulty did his elders persuade him "that the tinselled ware upon a hobby-horse was a fine thing" and that a purse of

ess, he must "become, as it were, a little child again," get free of "the burden and cumb

ar, fed on bread and water, and, like George Fox, wore a leather suit. Thus released from all worldly cares, he says, through

were bounded by her family, the old servant Tabby, the dogs, and the moors. For the greater part of her thirty years of life she did the work of a servant in the little parsonage house on the edge of the graveyard. She can have read little of philosophy or metaphysics, and probably had never heard of the mystics; she was brought up in a narrow, crude, and harshly material creed; yet her own inner experience, her touch with the secret of life, enabled her to write the remarkable series of poems the peculiar and haunting quality of which has as yet scarcel

Reality behind all forms. This, and her description of ecstasy, of the all-sufficing joy of the inner life of one who has tasted this experience, mark her out as being among those who have seen, and who know. In The Priso

rn winds, with even

of heaven that brin

ive tone, and sta

and change, that k

of peace-a soundl

istress, and fier

hes my breast-u

r dream, till Ear

isible; the Unseen

is gone, my inw

st free-its home,

, it stoops and da

s the check-in

s to hear, and the

ns to throb, the br

flesh, and the fles

only have been written by one who in some measure had knowledge of it. This, together with the exquisite little poem The Visionary, which describe

e that they hold the secret of the universe, and her crystall

nd more grief than I can tell: The earth that wakes one human

Life-of the oneness of God and man, has never been more nobly expresse

ithin m

ever-pre

t in me

Life-have p

e-embrac

animates et

and bro

s, dissolves, cr

th and man

universes c

wert le

nce would ex

th the mystical temperament, but, on the contrary, he had a long and bitter struggle with his own doubts an

trust that

e final go

rapture in Nature

m not in w

wing, or in

ng only-experience. He states his position quite clearly in In Memoriam, cxxiv. As is well known, he had from time to time a certain peculiar experience, which he describes fully both in prose and verse, a touch a

e away into boundless being, and this not a confused state, but the clearest of the clearest, the surest of the surest, utterly beyond words

experience which is descr

once it see

oul was flas

his was wound

eal heights

that which i

lsations of

e conclusion of

of the night

ill; and many a

h he walks on s

strikes his eyeb

trikes his fore

a, his very h

en he feels h

self no visio

God a A visio

ose a

ls." They are also the central lines in his own philosophy, for it was the experience of this "vision" that inspired al

t; but it is in the most philosophical as well as one of the latest, of his poems, The Ancient Sage, that we find this attitude most fully expressed. Tennyson wrote of it: "The whole poem is very personal. The passages about 'Faith' and 'the Passion of the Past'

is the swall

stirs the surf

hath dipt in

is by diving or sinking into the centre of his own being. There is a great deal of Eastern philosophy and mysticism in the Anci

ripple on the

deep is bound

nging form,

oundless motio

mind, still we may take it as being his genuine and deepest conviction. The nearest approach to a definite statement of it to be found in hi

He hears, and Spirit

eathing, and nearer

annot hear, and the

and hear, this Vis

ose-writers whose work and thought is permeated by a mystical philosophy. Of these four

ive in Amsterdam, where the exiled Separatists had gone in 1593. They flourished there and waxed strong, and sent back to England during the next century a continual stream of opinion and literature. To this source can be traced the ideas which inspired alike the Quakers, the Seekers, the Behmenists, the Familists, and num

the teachings of Jacob Boehme, whose works had been translated into English between the years 1644 and 1692, can be traced, in diverse ways. They impressed themselves on the thought of the founders of the Society of Friends, they produced a distinct "Behmenist" sect, and it would seem that the idea of the three laws of motion first reached Newton throu

speech, and of life. Sincerity implies courage, and Law was a brave man, never shirking the logical outcome of his convictions, from the day when he ruined his prospects at Cambridge, to the later years when he suffered his really considerable reputation to be eclipsed by his espousal of an uncomprehended and unpopul

e author of one of the best loved and most widely read practical and ethical treatises in the language, A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy

te he was a "diligent reader" of mystical books, and that he had studied, among others, Dionysius the Areopagite,

rained peasant shoemaker of G?rlitz, is one of the most amazing phenomena in the history of mysticism, a history which does not lack wonders. His work has so much influenced later mystical thought and philosophy that a little space must be devoted to him here. He lived outwardly the quiet, hard-working life of a simp

the trinity in unity; and the central point of his philosophy is the fundamental postulate that all manifestation necessitates opposition. He asserted the uniformity of law throughout all existence, physical and spiritual, and this law, w

traction, and anguish, which in modern terms are contraction, expansion, and rotation. The first two are in deadly antagonism, and being forced into collision, form an endless whirl of movement. These two forces with their resultant effect are to be found all through manifested nature, within man and without, and are called by different names: good, evil and life, God, the devil and the world, homogeneity, heterogeneity, strain, or the three laws of motion, centripetal and centrifugal force, resulting in rotation. They are the outcome of the "nature" or "no" will, and are the basis of all manifestation. They are the "power" of Go

ne which can only be apprehended by living it. Will, or desire, is the radical force in man as it is in nature and in the Godhead, and until that is turned towards the light, any purely historical

ter thought, for it is a clear and fine exposition of his attitude with regard more especially to the nature of man, the unity of all nature, and the quality of fire or desire. The later book is really

f Boehme's teaching which Law

circumference, and he lives in a false imagination. Every quality is equally good, for there is nothing evil in God from whom all comes; but evil appears to be through separation. Thus strength and desire in the divine nature are necessary and magnificent qualities, but when, as in the creature, they are separated from love, they appear as evil.[34] The analogy of the fruit is, in this connection a favourite one with both Law and Boehme. When a fruit is unripe (i.e. incomplete) it is sour, bitter, astringent, unwholesome; but when it has been longer exposed to the sun and air it becomes sweet, luscious, and good to eat. Yet it is the same fruit, and the astringent qualities are not lost or destroyed, but transmut

the seed of everything that can grow in us; "it is the only workman in nature, and everything is its work;" it is the true magic power. And this will or desire is always active; every man's life is a continual state of prayer, and if we are

wardly is, and can do.... The mysteries of religion, therefore, are no higher, nor deeper than the mysteries of nature.[41] God Himself is subject to this law. There is no question of God's mercy or of His wrath,[42] for it is an eternal principle that we can only r

nothing of goodness or holiness, but they have their ground and reason in the nature of the thing, and are as "absolutely necessary to

ich Law and Boehme held, for instance, about fire, can only be understood

eparated from Light and Air, is the heavenly Fire of Eternity: Fire kindled in any material Thing is only Fire breaking out of its created, compacted state; it is nothing else but the awakening the Spiritual Properties of that Thing, which being thus stirred up, strive to get rid of that material Creation under which they are imprisoned ... and were not these spiritual Properties imprisoned in Matter, no material Thing could be made to burn.... Fire is n

nched or compressed, as in the case of a flint, which is in a state of death "because its fire is bound, compacted, shut

e only one way of kindling life. You might as well write the word "flame" on the outside of a flint and expe

oken off by the Strokes of a Steel upon it. This must of all Necessity be done to your Soul, its impri

o some previous condition, and must be generated in pain

about Light and Darkness, or Air, Water, and Earth, interpreting them all in the same w

y rarely to be found in his earlier work. It should be read by those who would see Law under a little known aspect, and who do not realise that we have a

ystical foundations of their belief, and who, through their writings, for over a hund

speeches and of their enduring value is owing to the fact that his arguments are based on a sense of oneness and continuity, of oneness in the social organism and of continuity

e from the lowest to the highest. "Society is in

between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born. Each contract of each particular state is but a clause in the great prim?val contract of eternal society, link

seems more in keeping with its surroundings when we hear it thundered out anew forty years later by the raw Scotch preacher-

It is on this he makes his appeal for high principle and noble example to the great families with hereditary trusts and fortun

arily believes that all reforms must come from within, and that, as Burke points out in the Present Discontents, good government depends not upon laws but upon individuals. Blake, in a characteristic phrase, says: "He who would do good to another must do it in minute particulars; general good is the plea of

arly years, as we know from Lamb, he was steeped in the writings of the Neo-platonists and these, together wit

and that at the same time the conviction was slowly gaining ground with him that an act of the will is necessary in order to bring man into contact with reality. Coleridge believed in a Spirit of the universe wi

Mind, one omn

most holy n

m H

nconscious, o

of our uni

we can achieve, "our

ow ou

rtions of one w

nite act of will, when the "drowséd soul" begins to feel dim recollections of it

ntered

ehold, and kn

usive consci

nihilated i

ntity: God

lwall in 1797, "The universe itself, what but an immense heap of little things?... My mind feels as if it ached to behold and know somet

ts the bodil

, one migh

ant min

as well as to see, and it is the loss of this power of feeling which Coleridge deplores in those bitter

el, how beaut

the name of the "dark night of the soul." This is an experience, not common to all mystics, but very marked in some, who, like St John of the Cross and Madame Guyon, are intensely devotional and ecstatic. It seems to

a pang, void,

owsy, unimpas

o natural out

or sigh

of reality, which he felt as early as 1794, was strengthened by his study of the German transcendental philosophers, and in March 1801 h

e power by which man apprehends God directly, and, in his view, imagination is the faculty, which in the light of this i

al language,

from eternit

and all things

man "transcendental" thinkers; but partly also through a definite psychical experience which befell him in Edinburgh when he was twenty-six, and which from that day changed for him the whole of his outlook on life. He speaks of it himself as "a Spiritual New-birth, or Baphometic Fire-baptism." It came to him after a period of great wretchedness, of torture with doubt and despair, and-what is significant-"during three weeks of total sleeplessness." These are conditions which would be likely to reduce his body to the state of weakness and sensitiveness which seems often antecedent to psychic experien

n the bottomless shoreless flood of Action, and lives through perpetual metamorphoses." Everything in the world is an embodiment of this great Force, this "Divine Idea," hence everything

know and see is but an envelope or clothing encasing something more vital which is invisible within. Just as books are the most miraculous things men can make, because a book "is the purest embodiment a Thought of man can have," so great men are the highest embodimen

ssively known to us." Hence it is clear that the first condition of the great man is that he should be sincere, that he should believe. "The merit of originality is not novelty: it is sincerity. The believing man is the original man." It is equally nece

ithin him to the utmost of his power. It is what he is here for, and only so can he bring help and light to his fellow-men.[51] And Carlyle, with Browning, belie