§ 28. THE NEW MYSTICISM. 230
prescriptions and scholastic dialectics. The mystics led the people back from the clangor and tinkling of ecclesiastical symbolisms to the refreshing springs of water which spring up into everlasting life.
Compared with the mysticism of the earlier Middle Ages and the French quietism of the seventeenth century, represented by Madame Guyon, Fenelon and their predecessor the Spaniard Miguel de Molinos, German mysticism likewise has its own distinctive features. The religion of Bernard expressed itself in passionate and rapturous love for Jesus. Madame Guyon and Fenelon set up as the goal of religion a state of disinterested love, which was to be reached chiefly by prayer, an end which Bernard felt it scarcely possible to reach in this world.
The mystics along the Rhine agreed with all genuine mystics in striving after the direct union of the soul with God. They sought, as did Eckart, the loss of our being in the ocean of the Godhead, or with Tauler the undisturbed peace of the soul, or with Ruysbroeck the impact of the divine nature upon our nature at its innermost point, kindling with divine love as fire kindles. With this aspiration after the complete apprehension of God, they combined a practical tendency. Their silent devotion and meditation were not final exercises. They were^ moved by warm human sympathies, and looked with almost reverential regard upon the usual jDursuits and toil of men. They approaclied close to the idea that in the faithful devotion to daily tasks man may realize the highest type of religious experience.
By preaching, by writing and circulating devotional works, and especially by their own examples, they made known the secret and the peace of the inner life. In the regions along the lower Rhine, the movement manifested itself also in the care of the sick, and notably in schools for the education of the young. These schools proved to be preparatory for the German Reformation by training a body of men of wider outlook and larger sympathies than the mediaeval convent was adapted to rear.
For the understanding of the spirit and meaning of Ger-
240 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1294-1517.
man mysticism, no help is so close at hand as the_comparisqp between it and mediieval scholasticiiim. This religious movement was the antithesis of the tlieology of the ScliOQlmfiXi ; Eckart and Taulej' of Tlioinas Aquinas,^the German Theology of the endless argumentation of Duns Scotus, the Imitation of Christ of the cumbersome exhaustiveness of Albertus Magnus. Roger Bacon had felt revulsion from the hairsplitting casuistries of the Schoolmen, and given expression to it before Eckart began his activity at Cologne. Scholasticism had trodden a beaten and dusty highway. The German mystics walked in secluded and shady pathways. For a catalogue of dogmatic maxims they substituted the quiet expressions of filial devotion and assurance. The speculative element is still prominent in Eckart, but it is not indulged for the sake of establishing doctrinal rectitude, but for the nurture of inward experience of God's operations in the soul. Godliness with th^se men was not a system of careful definitions, it was a state of spiritual communion; not an elaborate construction of speculative thought, but j^ simple faith j,nd walk with God. Not processes of logic but the insight of devotion was their guide. ^ As Loofs has well said, German mysticism emphasized above all dogmas and all external works the necessity of the new birth. ^
It also had its dangers. Socrates had urged men not to rest hopes upon the Delphian oracle, but to listen to the voice in their own bosoms. The mystics, in seeking to hear the voice of God speaking in their own hearts, ran peril of magnifying individualism to the disparagement of what was common to all and of mistaking states of the overwrought imagination for revelations from God.^
Although the German mystical writers have not been
1 It is quite in keeping with this contrast that Pfleiderer, in his Eeligionsphilosophie, excludes the German mystics from a place in the history of German philosophy on the ground that their thinking was not distinctly systematic. He, however, gives a brief statement to Eckart, but excludes Jacob Boehme. 2 Dogmengfisch., p. 631.
» NicoU, Garden of X7US, p. 31, says, " We study the mystics to learn from them. It need not be disguised that there are great diflSculties in the way. The mystics are the most individual of writers," etc.