Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 17.djvu/146

134 MYSTICISM union as an ever-present fact, and dilates on its meta physical implications. Towards the end of Ruysbroeck s life, in 1378, he was visited by the fervid lay-preacher Gerhard Groot (1340-84), who was so impressed by the life of the community at Vauvert that he conceived the idea of founding a Christian brotherhood bound by no monastic vows, but living together in simplicity and piety with all things in common, after the apostolic pattern. This was the origin of the Brethren of the Common Lot (or Common Life). The first house of the Brethren was founded at Deventer by Gerhard Groot and his youth ful friend Florentius Radewyn. Similar brother -houses soon sprang up in different places throughout the Low Countries and Westphalia, and even Saxony. Thomas a Kempis (1380-1471), to whom the brotherhood chiefly owes its fame, forms the subject of a separate article. Mystics It has been customary for Protestant writers to represent and the ^ e m ystics of Germany and Holland as precursors of the tioi ^ R e f rma tion. In a sense this is true ; and the direct influence of Tauler and the Deutsche Theologie upon Luther has already been referred to. But it conveys a false im pression if it is understood to mean that these men pro tested against the doctrines of the church in the way the Reformers felt themselves called upon to do. There is no sign that Tauler, for example, or Ruysbroeck, or Thomas a Kempis had felt the dogmatic teaching of the church jar in any single point upon their religious consciousness. Nevertheless, mysticism did prepare men in a very real way for a break with the traditional system. Mysticism instinctively recedes from formulas that have become stereotyped and mechanical into the perennially fresh experience of the individual. In the first place, therefore, it brings into prominence only those broad and universal doctrines which it finds to be of vital and present moment for the inward life, while others, though they may have an important place in the churchly system, are (uncon sciously) allowed to slip into temporary forgetfulness. It is thus we must explain that almost total absence of dis tinctively Romish doctrine in Thomas a Kempis which makes the Imitation as acceptable to the Protestant as to the devout Catholic. In the second place, mysticism accustoms men to deal with their experience for themselves at first hand, and to test the doctrines presented to them by that standard. This growth of spiritual freedom is especially to be marked in the German mystics. It is to be noted, however, that mysticism affords in itself no founda tion for a religious community. Its principle is pure inward ness, but it possesses no norm by which the extravagances of the individual may be controlled. Thus, when the Reformers appeared to do their work, the mystics were found opposing the new authority of Scripture to the full as bitterly as they had opposed the old authority of the church. To the thoroughgoing mystic individualist the one standard is as external as the other. When Cellarius was called upon by Luther to substantiate his positions by reference to Scripture, he struck the table with his fist and declared it an insult to speak so to a man of God. A germ of reason may be discerned in this indignation, but none the less we must recognize that, while mysticism showed itself capable at the Reformation of dissolving society into anarchy and atomism, it showed itself per fectly destitute of a reconstructive power. The same people who would claim the pre-Reformation mystics as Protestants in disguise are indignant at the way in which the later mystics oppose, or hold aloof from, the Reforma tion movement. But the truth seems to be that, in both cases, mysticism was true to its principle. Without some fixed letter to attach itself to, it sinks away into utter form lessness ; but its relation to the system is always more or less one of opposition to what it regards as external. The wild doctrines of Thomas Miinzer and the Zwickau Later prophets, merging eventually into the excesses of the German Peasants War and the doings of the Anabaptists in m y stics - Miinster, first roused Luther to the dangerous possibilities of mysticism as a disintegrating force. He was also called upon to do battle for his principle against men like Schwenkfeld (1490-1561) and Sebastian Frank (1500-45), 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 Scrip ture to be but a mythical representation of eternal truth. Valentin Weigel (1533-88), who stands under manifold obligations to Frank, represents also the influence of the semi-mystical physical speculation that marked the transi tion from scholasticism to modern times. The final break down of scholasticism as a rationalized system of dogma may be seen in Nicolaus of Cusa (1401-64), who received his education, like Thomas a Kempis, at Deventer, and after wards rose to be a cardinal of the church. He 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 com bines what the understanding separates ; hence Nicolaus 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 ccelus," 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. Nicolaus s doctrines were of influence upon Giordano Bruno and other physi cal philosophers of the 15th and 16th centuries. All these physical theories are blended with a mystical theo- sophy, of which the most remarkable example is, perhaps, the chemico-astrological speculations of Paracelsus (1493- 1541). The influence of Nicolaus of Cusa and Paracelsus mingled in Valentin Weigel with that of the Deutsche Theologie, Osiander, Schwenkfeld, and Frank. Weigel, in turn, handed on these influences to Jacob Boehme (1575- I624:),philosopkus teutonicus,and father of the chief develop ments of theosophy in modern Germany. See BOEHME. Mysticism did not cease within the Catholic Church at Other the Reformation. In St Theresa (1515-82) and John forms of of the Cross the counter-reformation can boast of saints m ^ sti 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, their mysticism moves in that comparatively narrow round, and consists simply in the heaping up of these sensuous ex periences. 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, there fore, 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 Francois de Sales (1567-1622); and in the quietism of Madame Guyon (1648-1717) and Miguel de Molinos (1627-96) there is again a sufficient implication of mys tical 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 Fenelon and Bossuet. In the 17th century mysticism is represented in the philosophical field by the so-called Cambridge Platonists, and especially by Henry More (1614-87), in whom the