also called upon to do battle for his principle against men like Caspar Schwenkfeld (1490–1561) and Sebastian Franck (1500–1545), the latter of whom developed a system of pantheistic mysticism, and went so far in his opposition to the letter as to declare the whole of the historical element in Scripture to be but a mythical representation of eternal truth. Valentin Weigel (1533–1588), who stands under manifold obligations to Franck, represents also the influence of the semi-mystical physical speculation that marked the transition from scholasticism to modern times. The final breakdown of scholasticism as a rationalized system of dogma may be seen in Nicolas (or Nicolaus) of Cusa (1401–1464), who distinguishes between the intellectus and the discursively acting ratio almost precisely in the style of later distinctions between the reason and the understanding. The intellect combines what the understanding separates; hence Nicolas teaches the principle of the coincidentia contradictoriorum. If the results of the understanding go by the name of knowledge, then the higher teaching of the intellectual intuition may be called ignorance—ignorance, however, that is conscious of itself, docta ignorantia. “Intuitio,” “speculatio,” “visio sine comprehensione,” “comprehensio incomprehensibilis,” “mystica theologia,” “tertius caelus,” are some of the terms he applies to this knowledge above knowledge; but in the working out of his system he is remarkably free from extravagance. Nicolas’s doctrines were of influence upon Giordano Bruno and other physical philosophers of the 15th and 16th centuries. All these physical theories are blended with a mystical theosophy, of which the most remarkable example is, perhaps, the chemico-astrological speculations of Paracelsus (1493–1541). The influence of Nicolas of Cusa and Paracelsus mingled in Valentin Weigel with that of the Deutsche Theologie, Andreas Osiander, Schwenkfeld and Franck. Weigel, in turn, handed on these influences to Jakob Boehme (1575–1624), philosophus teutonicus, and father of the chief developments of theosophy in modern Germany (see Boehme).
Mysticism did not cease within the Catholic Church at the Reformation. In St Theresa (1515–1582) and John of the Cross the counter-reformation can boast of saints second to none in the calendar for the austerity of their mortifications and the rapture of the visions to which they were admitted. But, as was to be expected, Other Forms of Mysticism. their mysticism moves in that comparatively narrow round, and consists simply in the heaping up of these sensuous experiences. The speculative character has entirely faded out of it, or rather has been crushed out by the tightness with which the directors of the Roman Church now held the reins of discipline. Their mysticism represents, therefore, no widening or spiritualizing of their theology; in all matters of belief they remain the docile children of their Church. The gloom and harshness of these Spanish mystics are absent from the tender, contemplative spirit of François de Sales (1567–1622); and in the quietism of Mme Guyon (1648–1717) and Miguel de Molinos (1627–1696) there is again a sufficient implication of mystical doctrine to rouse the suspicion of the ecclesiastical authorities. Quietism, name and thing, became the talk of all the world through the bitter and protracted controversy to which it gave rise between Fénelon and Bossuet.
In the 17th century mysticism is represented in the philosophical field by the so-called Cambridge Platonists, and especially by Henry More (1614–1687), in whom the influence of the Kabbalah is combined with a species of Christianized Neoplatonism. Pierre Poiret (1646–1719) exhibits a violent reaction against the mechanical philosophy of Descartes, and especially against its consequences in Spinoza. He was an ardent student of Tauler and Thomas à Kempis, and became an adherent of the quietistic doctrines of Mme Bourignon. His philosophical works emphasize the passivity of the reason. 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 members 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 (1743–1803), who were also students of Boehme, is of a much more elevated and spiritual type. The “Cherubic Wanderer,” and other poems, of Johann Scheffler (1624–1677), known as Angelus Silesius, are more closely related in style and thought to Eckhart 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 assumption of supernatural guidance. Stripped of its definitely miraculous character, the doctrine of the inner light may be regarded as the familiar mystical protest against formalism, literalism, and scripture-worship. Swedenborg, though selected by Emerson in his Representative Men as the typical mystic, belongs rather to the history of spiritualism than to that of mysticism as understood 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 writings. Accordingly, his supernatural revelations resemble a course of lessons in celestial geography more than a description of the beatific vision.
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. In this usage the word would be equivalent to the more recent and scarcely less abused term, transcendentalism, and as such it is used even by a sympathetic writer like Carlyle; but this looseness of phraseology only serves to blur important distinctions. 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. It would be much nearer the truth to take both as types of a thoroughgoing rationalism. In either case it is of course open to 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 Récéjac 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. Récéjac’s interesting work, Les Fondements 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, where philosophy despairs of itself, exults in its own overthrow, and yet revels in the “mysteries” of a speculative Christianity, as in J. G. Hamann (1730–1788), the term mysticism may be fitly applied. So, again, it 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 definition 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. Schelling’s explicit appeal in the Identitäts-philosophie to an intellectual intuition of the Absolute, is of the essence of mysticism, both as an appeal to a suprarational faculty and as a claim not merely to know but to realize God. The opposition of the reason to the understanding, as formulated by S. T. Coleridge, is not free from the first of these faults. The later philosophy of Schelling and the philosophy of Franz von Baader, both largely founded upon Boehme, belong rather to theosophy (q.v.) than to mysticism proper.
Authorities.—Besides the sections on mysticism in the general histories of philosophy by Erdmann, Ueberweg and Windelband, and in works on church history and the history of dogma, reference may be made for the medieval period to Heinrich Schmid, Der Mysticismus in seiner Entstehungsperiode (1824); Charles Schmidt, Essai sur les mystiques du 14ᵐᵉ siècle (1836); Ad. Helfferich, Die christliche Mystik (1842); L. Noack, Die christliche Mystik des
