In the 17th century mysticism is represented in the philo sophical field by the so-called Cambridge Platonists, and especially by Henry More (1614-1687), in whom the influence of the Kab balah is combined with a species of Christianized Neoplatonism. Pierre Poiret (1646-1719), an ardent student of Tauler and Thomas a Kempis, exhibits a violent reaction against the mechani cal philosophy of Descartes, and especially against its conse quences in Spinoza. The first influence of Boehme was in the direction of an obscure religious mysticism. J. G. Gichtel (1638 1710), the first editor of his complete works, became the founder of a sect called the Angel-Brethren. All Boehme's works were translated into English in the time of the Commonwealth, and regular societies of Boehmenists were formed in England and Holland. Later in the century he was much studied by the mem bers of the Philadelphian Society, John Pordage, Thomas Bromley, Jane Lead, and others. The mysticism of William Law (1686 1761) and of Louis Claude de Saint Martin in France 1803), who were also students of Boehme, is of a much more elevated and spiritual type. The "Cherubic Wanderer," and other poems, of Johanh Scheffler (1624-1677), known as Angelus Silesius, are more closely related in style and thought to Eck hart than to Boehme.
The religiosity of the Quakers, with their doctrines of the "inner light" and the influence of the Spirit, has decided affinities with mysticism; and the autobiography of George Fox (1624 1691), the founder of the sect, proceeds throughout on the as sumption of supernatural guidance. Stripped of its definitely miraculous character, the doctrine of the inner light may be re garded as the familiar mystical protest against formalism, liberal ism, and scripture-worship. Swedenborg, though selected by Emer son in his Representative Men as the typical mystic, belongs rather to the history of spiritualism than to that of mysticism as under stood in this article. He possesses the cool temperament of the man of science rather than the fervid Godward aspiration of the mystic proper; and the speculative impulse which lies at the root of this form of thought is almost entirely absent from his writ ings. Accordingly, his supernatural revelations resemble a course of lessons in celestial geography more than a description of the beatific vision.
anyone to maintain that the apparent completeness of synthesis really rests on the subtle intrusion of elements of feeling into the rational process. But in that case it might be difficult to find a systematic philosopher who would escape the charge of mysticism; and it is better to remain by long-established and serviceable distinctions.
So, again, when Recejac defines mysticism as "the tendency to draw near to the Absolute in moral union by symbolic means," the definition, as developed by him, is one which would apply to the philosophy of Kant. Recejac's interesting work, Les Fonde ments de la connaissance mystique (Eng. trans. 1899), though it touches mysticism at various points, and quotes from mystic writers, is in fact a protest against the limitations of experience to the data of the senses and the pure reason to the exclusion of the moral consciousness and the deliverances of "the heart." But such a position is not describable as mysticism in any recognized sense. On the other hand, the term is in place where the movement of revulsion from a mechanical philosophy takes the form rather of immediate assertion than of reasoned demonstration, and where the writers, after insisting generally on the spiritual basis of phenomena, either leave the position without further defini tion or expressly declare that the ultimate problems of philosophy cannot be reduced to articulate formulas. Examples of this are men like Novalis, Carlyle and Emerson, in whom philosophy may be said to be impatient of its own task.