MYSTICISM
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MYSTICS
of Nitzsch, in his System d. christUchen Lehre. Mys- ticism, then, in the objective sense, is the divine ele- ment imparted to man by external or internal com- munication (for instance, in the sacraments), and in the subjective sense it is special experience, visions, etc., subject to particular conditions and processes; for al- though man is by nature susceptible of and intended for the reception of divine communications, yet a certain conduct, sometimes an ascetic self-renouncement, an ab- straction of partly the sensual and partly the spiritual identity, is requisite in order to render us capable of rocciviug and understanding these supernatural com- munications in this natural state of existence. It fol- lows that, strictly speaking, every religious person, as such, is a Mystic, etc. Says Mill, "Whether in theVedas, in the Platonists, or in the Hegelians, mysticism is neither more nor less than ascribing objective existence to the subjective creations of our own faculties, to ideas or feelings of the mind ; and believing that, by retaining and contemplating those ideas of its own making, it can read in them what takes place in the world without" {Logic, bk. v, ch. iii, § 5). The inner life of religion is always mystical. Mysticism is a one-sided manifesta- tion of this force. Sack also, in his Polemik (p. 288), considers true mysticism as the inner portion of the Christian spiritual life, and fanatical mysticism as an exaggeration and a misconception of the reasonable views of the Church. We concede that mj'sticism in the proper sense, as the immediate life of the very es- sence of religion, is to be found in the mystery of revela- tion, and is in so far the very truth of religion. The soul's yearning for the invisible finds the object of its aspiration in a sacramental union with objects of its de- sire. Jacob's realization of the divine presence at Bethel was as the mystic ladder of communication on which the angels of God passed to and fro between earth and heaven. By a deeper generalization, Solomon saw in the wisdom of God the bond of union that connects the spirit of the universe with the Spirit of God. The re- ligious idea had at that early date its obverse side of mystic impress. In the cognate theology of St. John the Word is the middle term between earth and heaven, and being God from the beginning, he is still the Light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world. Hence the mystic principle is inseparable from true re- ligion, so far as it sets the Invisible before the eye of faith and enables the soul to anticipate the future for which it was created. Hence, also, the less true forms of religion have one and all embodied the mystic prin- ciple as involving the very essence of religion. Thera- peutic contemplation was the obverse of Mosaic ordi- nance; the Cabala refined upon the Talmud; and Per- sian Sufism is as the spirit of which the Koran is the letter. In the Church of the 6th century the pseudo- Dionysian mysticism was a reaction upon the dogmatic ruling forced upon the Church by heresy ; much as the mysticism of the A lombrados, or Illuminati, of Spain in the IGth century was called forth by the I'igid ortho- doxy of the Inquisition, and Jansenistic and Quietistic tenets by Jesuitism. Mysticism has been the most usual form in which the expiring flame of religion has flickered up from its embers.
We nuist not forget, however, that mysticism, as a special and historical religious manifestation, is an ex- ceptional form of tlie inner religious life, even indicating a certain one-sided tentlency in it, from which real mys- ticism is to be distinguished. If we consider the es- sence and life of religion in its general manifestation, we ilnd it to appear as a healthy reciprocal action of the objective consciousness of the existence of God and of self-consciousness. Thus we give the name of iiii/sticism to the predominating relation of subjective life to God revealing himself in it, and of pietism to the predomi- nating relation of God in the subjective life. The Mys- tic aims at becoming absorbed in God by contemplation, the Pietist at imparting the divine character to all his actions. In the former, the consciousness of moral per-
sonality is cast in the shade; in the latter, the rest in God, the solemn contemplation of his objective majesty, predominates. Hence the former inclines to pantheism. Where the personality is not simply spiritually sacrificed, but great importance is attached to transcendent contem- plation of God, man loses with the clear perception of his own personality that also of the personality of God, The other tendency, on the contrary, inclines to dualism, and even to polytheism, although never degenerating so far ;vhere monotheism is recognised. When man reflects in a one-sided, methodical manner on the exhibition of the divine in its subjective action, instead of acting before God with a simple consciousness of God, he is led to a lasting disunion of his consciousness ; i. e. to a dis- tinction between the idea of the divine and his life. This partiality, degenerating into morbidness, leads on the one side into mysticism, on the other into pietism. The Mystic loses his clear self-consciousness in obscure, arbitrary, ascetic, and ecstatic conceptions, or rather in a passive experience of the divine ; moral piety would be the remedy. Pietism, on the contrary, loses itself in self-made subjective religious laws and self-torments; its natural remedy would be a healthy mj'sticism. The Mystic loses himself in God, and cherishes the desire to passively suffer God to act in him, instead of giving himself personally over to a personal God, and thus find- ing himself glorified; while the Pietist loses the inward presence of God because he does not liberate the feeling of his personality from subjective, egotistical limits and religious self-contemplation by subjecting it to the per- sonality of God. Thus, dogmatically defined, mysti- cism would be religion with an excessive oljjective ten- dency, or religion in the form of a central life of feeling, of immediate thought, of contemplative and intuitive knowledge, which, accompanied by an ascetic tendency, seeks principally to lose itself ciu negationis in the De- ity. Compared with the religious and the ethical ele- ment in human life, or with the consciousness of night and that of day time, mysticism is a leaning towards the first form of consciousness. " If we were required to define mj'sticism," says Stowell, "we should call it the setting up of personal thoughts and feelings as the standard of truth or as the rule of action. By mysti- cal views of the spiritual life we understand such views of that life as are adjusted by this standard or ordered by this rule. The relation of such views to our present theme will be found in the fact that men ascribe this inward standard of truth and rule of action to the direct inspiration of the Holy Spirit. The mystical views may be regarded under different aspects, as (1) specula- tive, (2) contemplative, (3) imaginative, or (4) practi- cal. Speculative mysticism has found its place in the schools of philosophy and of morals ; contemplative mysticism has been the resource of the meditative, the tranquil, or the enthusiastic; imaginative mysticism deludes the visionary; practical mysticism misleads the fanatic." For a historical development of mystical views, see Mystics. (J. H. W.)