Andrew Seth Pringle-Pattison

“ All existence is a theophany, and as God is the beginning of all things, so also is He the end. Erigena teaches the restitution of all things under the form of the Dionysian adunatio or deificatio. These are the permanent outlines of what may be called the philosophy of mysticism in Christian times, and it is remarkable with how little variation they are repeated from age to age. ”

“ In Erigena mysticism has not yet separated itself in any way from the dogma of the Church. There is no revulsion, as later, from dogma as such, nor is more stress laid upon one dogma than upon another; all are treated upon the same footing, and the whole dogmatic system is held, as it were, in solution by the philosophic medium in which it is presented. No distinction is drawn, indeed, between what is reached by reason and what is given by authority ”

“ Whereas Plato's main problem had been the organization of the perfect state, and Aristotle's intellect had ranged with fresh interest over all departments of the knowable, political speculation had become a mockery with the extinction of free political life, and knowledge as such had lost its freshness for the Greeks of the Roman Empire. Knowledge is nothing to these men if it does not show them the infinite reality which is able to fill the aching void within. ”

“ We are unable, for example, to recognize slight differences in weight when the weights compared are heavy, though we should be perfectly able to make the distinction if the weights compared were both light. Ordinary observation would lead us, therefore, to the conclusion that the greater the intensity of the original stimulus at work the greater must be the increase of stimulus in order that there may be a perceptible difference in the resulting sensation. ”

“ Scripture deals, he maintains, in none but the simplest precepts, nor does it aim at anything beyond the obedient mind; it tells nought of the divine nature but what men may profitably apply to their lives. The greater part of the treatise is devoted to working out this line of thought; and in so doing Spinoza consistently applies to the interpretation of the Old Testament those canons of historical exegesis which are often regarded as of comparatively recent growth. The treatise thus constitutes the first document in the modern science of Biblical criticism. ”

“ By a series of experiments, therefore, it will be possible, in the case of any particular individual, to determine the least observable difference in intensity between two sensations of any particular sense. This least observable difference is called by Fechner the Unterschiedsschwelle or “difference-threshold,” that is to say, the limit of the discriminative sensibility of the sense in question. That such a “threshold,” or least observable difference, exists is plain from very simple examples. ”

“ However absolute a philosopher's idealism may be, he is erroneously styled a mystic if he moves towards his conclusions only by the patient labour of the reason. Hegel therefore, to take an instance, can no more fitly be classed as a mystic than Spinoza can. ”

“ Persian literature after that date, and especially Persian poetry, is full of an ardent natural pantheism, in which a mystic apprehension of the unity and divinity of all things heightens the delight in natural and in human beauty. ”

“ A number of the younger men in Amsterdam—many of them students of medicine or medical practitioners—had also come to regard him as their intellectual leader. A kind of philosophical club had been formed, including among its members Simon de Vries, John Bresser, Louis Meyer, and others who appear in Spinoza’s correspondence. Originally meeting in all probability for more thoroughgoing study of the Cartesian philosophy, they looked naturally to Spinoza for guidance, and by and by we find him communicating systematic drafts of his own views to the little band of friends and students. ”

“ But what was matter of immanent assumption with Erigena is in them an equating of two things which have been dealt with on the hypothesis that they are separate, and which, therefore, still retain that external relation to one another. This externality of religious truth to the mind is fundamental in scholasticism, while the opposite view is equally fundamental in mysticism. Mysticism is not the voluntary emission of reason and its subjection to an external authority. In that case, all who accept a revelation without professing to understand its content would require to be ranked as mystics ”

“ It will be seen from the above that Neoplatonism is not mystical as regards the faculty by which it claims to apprehend philosophic truth. It is first of all a system of complete rationalism; it is assumed, in other words, that reason is capable of mapping out the whole system of things. But, inasmuch as a God is affirmed beyond reason, the mysticism becomes in a sense the necessary complement of the would-be all-embracing rationalism. ”

“ In the midst of these unhappy surroundings religion became more inward in men of real piety and the desire grew among them to draw closer the bonds that united them to one another. Thus arose the society of the Friends of God (Gottesfreunde) The “Gottesfreunde.” in the south and west of Germany, spreading as far as Switzerland on the one side and the Netherlands on the other. They formed no exclusive sect. They often took opposite sides in politics and they also differed in the type of their religious life; but they uniformly desired to strengthen one another in living intercourse with God. ”

“ But such a temper of mind is much more akin to scepticism than to mysticism; it is characteristic of those who either do not feel the need of philosophizing their beliefs, or who have failed in doing so and take refuge in sheer acceptance. ”

“ The distinguishing characteristic of scholasticism is the acceptance by reason of a given matter, the truth of which is independent of rational grounds, and which remains a presupposition even when it cannot be understood. Scholasticism aims, it is true, in its chief representatives, at demonstrating that the content of revelation and the teaching of reason are identical. ”

“ It appears in connexion with the endeavour of the human mind to grasp the divine essence or the ultimate reality of things, and to enjoy the blessedness of actual communion with the Highest. The first is the philosophic side of mysticism; the second, its religious side. The first effort is theoretical or speculative; the second, practical. The thought that is most intensely present with the mystic is that of a supreme, all-pervading, and indwelling power, in whom all things are one. Hence the speculative utterances of mysticism are always more or less pantheistic in character. ”

“ God is used throughout as equivalent to Nature (Deus sive natura) . The philosophical standpoint comprehends the necessity of all that is—a necessity that is none other than the necessity of the divine nature itself. ”

“ In 1880 a statue was erected to Spinoza at the Hague by international subscription among his admirers, and more recently the cottage in which he lived at Rhijnsburg has been restored and furnished with all the discoverable Spinoza relics.
Spinoza’s philosophy is a thoroughgoing pantheism, which has both a naturalistic and a mystical side. The foundation of the system is the doctrine of one infinite substance, of which all finite existences are modes or limitations (modes of thought or modes of extension) . God is thus the immanent cause of the universe ”

“ The union which sound religious teaching represents as realized in the submission of the will and the ethical harmony of the whole life is then reduced to a passive experience, to something which comes and goes in time, and which may be of only momentary duration. Mysticism, it will be seen, is not a name applicable to any particular system. ”

“ Most frequently it appears historically, in relation to some definite system of belief, as a reaction of the spirit against the letter. When a religion begins to ossify into a system of formulas and observances, those who protest in the name of heart-religion are not infrequently known by the name of mystics. At times they merely bring into prominence again the ever-fresh fact of personal religious experience; at other times mysticism develops itself as a powerful solvent of definite dogmas. ”

“ God ceases to be an object to him and becomes an experience. In the writings of the mystics, ingenuity exhausts itself in the invention of phrases to express the closeness of this union. Mysticism differs, therefore, from ordinary pantheism in that its inmost motive is religious ”

“ His enthusiasm for the natural sciences may have been the only ground for the reputation he had acquired of instilling atheistic notions into the minds of his pupils along with the Latin which he taught them. But it is quite possible that his scientific studies had bred in him, as in many others at that time, a materialistic, or at least a naturalistic, turn of mind; indeed, we should expect as much in a man of Van den Ende’s somewhat rebellious temperament. We do not know whether his influence was brought to bear in this sense upon Spinoza ”

“ It was largely a devotional aid to the realization of present union with God; and, so far as it was theoretical, it was a theory of the faculties by which such a union is attainable. Mysticism was pieced on somewhat incongruously to a scholastically accepted theology; the feelings and the intellect were not brought together. But in Eckhart the attitude of the churchman and traditionalist is entirely abandoned. Instead of systematizing dogmas, he appears to evolve a philosophy by the free exercise of reason. His system enables him to give a profound significance to the doctrines of the Church ”

“ The Short Treatise is of much interest to the student of Spinoza’s philosophical development, for it represents, as Martineau says, “the first landing-place of his mind in its independent advance.” Although the systematic framework of the thought and the terminology used are both derived from the Cartesian philosophy, the intellectual milieu of the time, the early work enables us, better than the Ethics to realize that the inspiration and starting-point of his thinking is to be found in the religious speculations of his Jewish predecessors. ”

“ This is the reward of those who are dead to the body and the world. Asceticism is thus the counterpart of medieval mysticism; and, by his example as well as by his teaching in such passages, St Bernard unhappily encouraged practices which necessarily resulted in self-delusion. Love grows with the knowledge of its object, he proceeds, and at the highest stage self-love is so merged in love to God that we love ourselves only for God's sake or because God has loved us. ”

“ The histories of philosophy may quite correctly describe his theory as the logical development of Descartes’s doctrines of the one Infinite and the two finite substances, but Spinoza himself was never a Cartesian. He brought his pantheism and his determinism with him to the study of Descartes from the mystical theologians of his race.
Early in 1661 Spinoza’s host removed to Rhijnsburg near Leiden, the headquarters of the Collegiant brotherhood, and Spinoza removed with him. The house where they lived at Rhijnsburg is still standing, and the road bears the name of Spinoza Lane. ”

“ Physical science enables us, at least in the case of some of the senses, to measure with accuracy the objective amount of the stimulus, and introspection enables us to state the nature of the subjective resujt. ”

“ St Bernard's mysticism is of a practical cast, dealing mainly with the means by which man may attain to the knowledge and enjoyment of God. Reason has three stages, in the highest of which the mind is able, by abstraction from earthly things, to rise to contemplation or the vision of the divine. ”

“ Remaining itself in repose, it rays out, as it were, from its own fullness an image of itself, which is called νοῦς, and which constitutes the system of ideas of the intelligible world. The soul is in turn the image or product of the νοῦς, and the soul by its motion begets corporeal matter. The soul thus faces two ways—towards the νοῦς, from which it springs, and towards the material life, which is its own product. Ethical endeavour consists in the repudiation of the sensible; material existence is itself estrangement from God. ”

“ In like manner (though with less accuracy, owing to the disturbing nature of the conditions) we can fix the sensational maximum, or upper limit of sensibility, in the different senses, that is to say, the point beyond which no increase of stimulus produces any appreciable increase of sensation. We thus determine, as Wundt puts it, the limit-values between which changes of intensity in the stimulus are accompanied by changes in sensation. But the central inquiry of psycho-physics remains behind. ”

“ But it would be false to say that these men protested against the doctrines of the Church in the way the Reformers felt themselves called upon to do. There is no sign that Tauler, for example, or Ruysbroeck, or Thomas à Kempis had felt the dogmatic teaching of the Church jar in any single point upon their religious consciousness. Nevertheless, mysticism did prepare men in a very real way for a break with the traditional system. Mysticism instinctively recedes from formulas that have become stereotyped and mechanical. ”

“ Transfused into their writings, his spirit has had a large share in moulding the philosophic thought of the 19th century, and it has also been widely influential beyond the schools. Instead of his atheism Hegel speaks of his acosmism, and Novalis dubs him a God-intoxicated man. Schleiermacher’s fine apostrophe is well known, in which he calls upon us to “offer a lock of hair to the manes of the holy and excommunicated Spinoza.”
Spinoza’s personal appearance is described by Colerus from the accounts given him by many people at the Hague who knew him familiarly. ”

“ The Augustinian The Victorines. monastery of St Victor near Paris became the headquarters of mysticism during the 12th century. It had a wide influence in awakening popular piety, and the works that issued from it formed the textbooks of mystical and pietistic minds in the centuries that followed. Hugh's pupil, Richard of St Victor, declares, in opposition to dialectic scholasticism, that the objects of mystic contemplation are partly above reason, and partly, as in the intuition of the Trinity, contrary to reason. ”

“ Philosophy since the end of the 18th century has frequently shown a tendency to diverge into mysticism. This has been especially so in Germany. The term mysticism is indeed often extended by popular usage and philosophical partisanship to the whole activity of the post-Kantian idealists. ”