In the writings of the mystics, ingenuity ex hausts itself in the invention of phrases to express the close ness of this union. Mysticism differs, therefore, from ordinary pantheism in that its inmost motive is religious ; but, whereas religion is ordinarily occupied by a practical problem and de velops its theory in an ethical reference, mysticism displays a pre dominatingly speculative bent, starting from the divine nature rather than from man and his surroundings, taking the symbolism of religious feeling as literally or metaphysically true, and strain ing after the present realization of an ineffable union. The union which sound religious teaching represents as realized in the sub mission 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 par ticular system. It may be the outgrowth of many differing modes of thought and feeling. 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 unfrequently 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. Mysticism appears in various phases in all the higher religions known to history. Its distinctive characteristics emerge in the religions of India and Persia as well as in the faith of Islam. These subjects are dealt with elsewhere; but its relation to Judaism and the religions of Greece requires special mention here. For oppo site reasons, neither the Greek nor the Jewish mind lent itself readily to mysticism : the Greek, because of its clear and sunny naturalism ; the Jewish, because of its rigid monotheism and its turn towards worldly realism and statutory observance. It is only with the exhaustion of Greek and Jewish civilization that mysti cism becomes a prominent factor in Western thought. It appears, therefore, contemporaneously with Christianity, and is a sign of the world-weariness and deep religious need that mark the decay of the old world. 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. Accordingly, the last age of Greek philosophy is theosophical in character, and its ultimate end is a practical satisfaction. Neoplatonism seeks this in the ecstatic in tuition of the ineffable One. The systematic theosophy of Plo tinus and his successors does not belong to the present article, except so far as it is the presupposition of their mysticism ; but, inasmuch as the mysticism of the mediaeval Church is directly derived from Neoplatonism through the speculations of the pseudo-Dionysius, Neoplatonic mysticism fills an important section in any historical review of the subject.
Neoplatonism appears in the first half of the 3rd century, and has its greatest representative in Plotinus. He develops the Platonic philosophy into an elaborate system by means of the doctrine of emanation. The One, the Good, and the Idea of the Good were identical in Plato's mind, and the Good was therefore not deprived of intelligible essence. It was not separated from the world of ideas, of which it was represented as either the crown or the sum. By Plotinus, on the contrary, the One is explicitly exalted above the van and the "ideas"; it tran scends existence altogether (irketva Tijs ovalas), and is not cog nizable by reason. Remaining itself in repose, it rays out, as it were, from its own fullness an image of itself, which is called pas, and which constitutes the system of ideas of the intelligi ble world. The soul is in turn the image or product of the vows, and the soul by its motion begets corporeal matter. The soul thus faces two ways—towards the vas, from which it springs, and towards the material life, which is its own product. Ethical en deavour consists in the repudiation of the sensible ; material exist ence is itself estrangement from God. (Porphyry tells us that
Plotinus was unwilling to name his parents or his birthplace, and seemed ashamed of being in the body.) Beyond the Kathipacs, or virtues which purify from sin, lies the further stage of complete identification with God (oix f co ailaprlas Eivat, dtXX6, 066v 61:vat). To reach the ultimate goal, thought itself must be left behind; for thought is a form of motion, and the desire of the soul is for the motionless rest which belongs to the One. The union with transcendent deity 'is not so much knowledge or vision as ecstasy, coalescence, contact
drXwats, acbii, Ennead., vi. 9. 8-9). But in our present state of existence the moments of this ecstatic union must be few and short.
It will be seen from the above that Neoplatonism is not mysti cal as regards the faculty by which it claims to apprehend philo sophic 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. The sys tem culminates in a mystical act, and in the sequel, especially with Iamblichus and the Syrian Neoplatonists, mystical practice tended more and more to overshadow the theoretical groundwork.
It was probably about the end of the sth century, just as ancient philosophy was dying out in the schools of Athens, that the speculative mysticism of Neoplatonism made a definite lodgment in Christian thought through the literary forgeries of the pseudo-Dionysius (see DIONYSIUS THE AREOPA GITE). The doctrines of Christianity were by that time so firmly established that the Church could look upon a symbolical or mystical interpretation of them without anxiety. The author of the Theologia mystica and the other works ascribed to the Areopagite proceeds, therefore, to develop the doctrines of Proclus with very little modification into a system of esoteric Christianity. God is the nameless and supra-essential One, elevated above goodness itself. Hence "negative theology," which ascends from the creature to God by dropping one after another every determinate predicate, leads us nearest to the truth. The return to God
&oats) is the consummation of all things and the goal indicated by Christian teaching. The same doctrines were preached with more of churchly fervour by Maximus the Confessor (58o-622).
St. Maximus represents almost the last speculative activity of the Greek Church, but the influence of the pseudo Dionysian writings were transmitted to the West in the 9th cen tury by Erigena, in whose speculative spirit both the scholasti cism and the mysticism of the middle ages have their rise. Erigena translated Dionysius into Latin along with the commentaries of Maximus, and his system is essentially based upon theirs. 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 author ity ; the two are immediately identical for Erigena. In this he agrees with the speculative mystics everywhere, and differentiates himself from the scholastics who followed him. The chief repre sentatives of scholasticism aim at demonstrating that the content of revelation and the teaching of reason are identical, but this is only an equation of two things which have been dealt with on the supposition that they are separate. Mysticism, on the other hand, is marked on its speculative side by even an overweening con fidence in human reason ; and this is pre-eminently visible in the work of Erigena. Nor need this be wondered at if we consider that the unity of the human mind with the divine is its underlying presupposition. Hence where reason is discarded by the mystic it is merely reason overleaping itself ; it occurs at the end and not at the beginning of his speculations. Even then there is no appeal to authority ; nothing is accepted from without. The appe41 is still to the individual, who, if not by reason then.by some higher faculty, claims to realize absolute truth and to taste absolute blessedness.