Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 17.djvu/142

130 MYSTICISM fresh fact of personal religious experience ; at other times mysticism develops itself as a powerful solvent of definite dogmas. A review of the historical appearances of mysticism will serve to show how far the above characteristics are to be found, separately or in combination, in its different phases. Eastern In the East, mysticism is not so much a specific pheno- systems. menon as a natural deduction from the dominant philosophic systems, and the normal expression of religious feeling in the lands in which it appears. Brahmanic pantheism and Buddhistic nihilism alike teach the unreality of the seeming world, and preach mystical absorption as the highest goal ; in both, the sense of the worth of human personality is lost. India consequently has always been the fertile mother of practical mystics and devotees. The climate itself en courages to passivity, and the very luxuriance of vegetable and animal life tends to blunt the feeling of the value of life. Silent contemplation and the total deadening of consciousness by perseverance for years in unnatural atti tudes are among the commonest forms assumed by this mystical asceticism. But the most revolting methods of self - torture and self - destruction are also practised as a means of rising in sanctity. The sense of sin can hardly be said to enter into these exercises ; that is, they are not undertaken as penance for personal transgression. They are a despite done to the principle of individual or separate existence. The so-called mysticism of the Persian Sufis is less intense and practical, more airy and literary in character. Sufism (probably derived from cro<os) appears in the 9th century among the Mohammedans of Persia as a kind of reaction against the rigid monotheism and formalism of Islam (see MOHAMMEDANISM, vol. xvi. p. 594). It is doubtless to be regarded as a revival of ancient habits of thought and feeling among a people who had adopted the Koran, not by affinity, but by compulsion. 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. Such is the poetry of Hafiz and Saadi, whose verses are chiefly devoted to the praises of wine and women. Even the most licentious of these have been fitted by Mohammedan theologians with a mystical interpretation. The delights of love are made to stand for the raptures of union with the divine, the tavern symbolizes an oratory, and intoxication is the be wilderment of sense before the surpassing vision. Very often, if not most frequently, it cannot be doubted that the occult religious significance depends on an artificial exegesis ; but there are also poems of Hafiz, Saadi, and other writers, religious in their first intention. These are unequivocally pantheistic in tone, and the desire of the soul to escape and rest with God is expressed with all the fervour of Eastern poetry. This speculative mood, in which nature and beauty and earthly satisfaction appear as a vain show, is the counterpart of the former mood of sensuous enjoyment. For opposite 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 mysticism becomes a prominent factor in Western thought. It appears, there fore, 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 Aris totle 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. Neo-Platonism seeks this in the ecstatic intuition of the ineffable One. The systematic theosophy of Plotinus 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 de rived from Neo-Platonism through the speculations of the Pseudo-Dionysius, Nee-Platonic mysticism fills an import ant section in any historical review of the subject. Neo-Platonism owes its form to Plato, but its under- Neo-Pla- lying motive is the widespread feeling of self - despair tonism. and the longing for divine illumination characteristic of the age in which it appears. Before the rise of Neo- Platonism proper we meet with various mystical or semi- mystical expressions of the same religious craving. The contemplative asceticism of the Essenes of Judaea may be mentioned, and, somewhat later, the life of the Therapeutae on the shores of Lake Mceris. In Philo, Alexandrian Judaism had already seized upon Plato as " the Attic Moses," and done its best to combine his speculations with the teaching of his Jewish prototype. Philo s God is described in terms of absolute transcendency ; his doctrine of the Logos or Divine Sophia is a theistical transformation of the Platonic world of ideas ; his allegorical interpretation of the Old Testament represents the spiritualistic dissolu tion of historical Judaism. Philo s ethical ideal is renun ciation, contemplation, complete surrender to the divine influence. Apollonius of Tyana and the so - called Neo- Pythagoreans drew similar ethical consequences from their eclectic study of Plato. Wonder-workers like Alexander of Aboniteichos exhibit the grosser side of the longing for spiritual communion. The traits common to Neo-Platonism and all these speculations are well summed up by Zeller (PJdlos. der Griechen, iii. 2. 214) as consisting in " (1) the dualistic opposition of the divine and the earthly ; (2) an abstract conception of God, excluding all knowledge of the divine nature ; (3) contempt for the world of the senses, on the ground of the Platonic doctrines of matter and of the descent of the soul from a superior world into the body; (4) the theory of intermediate potencies or beings, through whom God acts upon the world of phenomena ; (5) the re quirement of an ascetic self-emancipation from the bondage of sense and faith in a higher revelation to man when in a state called enthusiasm." Neo-Platonism appears in the ^ first half of the 3d century, and has its greatest repre sentative in Plotinus (204-269 A.D.). 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 vov? and the " ideas " ; it transcends existence altogether (eVe/ceii/a TTJS ova-las), and is not cognizable by reason. Remaining itself in repose, it rays out, as it were, from its own fulness an image of itself, which is called voOs, and which constitutes the system of ideas or the intelligible world. The soul is in turn the image or product of the vous, and the soul by its motion begets corporeal matter. The soul thus faces two ways towards the voi!s, 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