Henry William Clark

“ Here the process of things, having got as far as man, is linked up into one whole as man climbs up into God. Through the mystical experience the completely unified system which reason insists upon having is brought about — not perceived but brought about. The mystical experience finishes, one may venture to say, the creative process, and car- ries things back to God. Mysticism, then, when it understands itself aright and explains itself truly, remains entirely reasonable just because it does not attempt to substitute itself for reason, but does what, according to reason, requires to be done. ”

“ A real unity — the unity which reason, when it knows itself and its desires, calls for — is a unity vital and organic, a unity wherein the initial Being sends itself forth, passes through stage upon stage, becoming in a sense other than itself in the passing and yet remaining itself all the while, and at last returns upon itself, settles down upon itself, once more. What is demanded is a unity which is a self-contained, rounded whole. The entire process, though projected out of the initial Being, must be within the initial Being, too ”

“ It supplies reason with the final fact, and, in doing this, justifies itself in reason's eyes. The mystical experience is reasonable, although not a process of reason, nor something put in place of a process of reason. It does not interpret the system of things — it completes it. And inasmuch as this completing of the system of things is precisely what reason waits for, mysticism links itself with reason in separating itself from reason and in realizing what its own particular mission is ”

“ But this is precisely what thought, reason, cannot do, because the ultimate stage is not reached. In man, as thought discerns him, life is still as it were a loose thread, and is not bound back to the beginning of things again. No mere accounting for man puts this right. You may account for man, theorize as satisfactorily as you like as to how he came to be ”

“ And when reason looks for this latter vision, it cannot attain it, because the wholeness of things is not worked out. Life, as man reveals it, may be traceable downward from its source; but life, in its human individualism, is not using its individualism in order to carry life on to a goal which is one with its source. ”

“ The final fact, which reason wants to read off, that is, is not there for reason to read — and, not being there, must be made. Reason, having carried its reading off of the existing facts as far as possible, must confess that what is wanted now is the emergence of a new fact, of a new constructive process which shall continue and com- plete the unfinished process: reason itself leads us up to the point of seeing that something more — something which is not an exercise of reason, but an exercise of life — must take place if reason's own perfect work is to become possible ”