Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/45

34 K. PEARSON : MEISTER ECKEHART, THE MYSTIC. the action of all human faculties. Seclusion from mankind, renunciation of all sensuous pleasure, the rejection of all human knowledge and all human means of investigating truth are the preparations for the trance and the consequent eternal birth (ewiye gebtirt). Physiologically there can be small doubt that such overwrought emotions as this trance denotes cannot be conducive of physical health. 1 To this, of course the mystic may reply that health is only a secondary consideration in matters of religious welfare. A greater evil than that of danger to health is the social danger which may arise from ignorant fanatics, who suppose themselves to have attained the "higher knowledge" by divine inspira- tion. They are acquainted with absolute truth and are acting according to the w r ill of God. More than once in the world's history the cry has gone up from such men that all human knowledge is vain, and the populace believing them have destroyed the weapons of intellect and checked for a time human progress. What test have we, when once we discard reason and appeal to emotion, of the truth of our own or others' assertions ? To borrow the language of theo- logy, who shall be sure that God and not the Devil has been born afresh into the soul ? Harmless perhaps to the educated, whom it calls upon to renounce their knowledge, Eckehart's doctrine becomes in the hands of the ignorant a most dangerous weapon. In the place of laborious toil, by which truth alone can be won, it allows the individual con- sciousness to claim inspired insight ; the emotions of the individual alone tell him whether he is in possession of the " higher knowledge," and there ceases to be a standard of truth outside individual caprice. Brilliant as are portions of Eckehart's phenomenology, and powerful as his language often is when expatiating on the goal of his practical theo- logy, there hangs over the whole a strangely oppressive atmosphere of possible fanaticism which warns the thinker against trusting in any such version of Christianity, 2 in any such perversion of the ideas of Averroes. 1 That great religious excitement might product- the desired trai< hardly lie doubted. Tin- mvstics .-i-eni at h-ast In have lirni acquainted with such ec-tatical phases. Cp. the curious talc n|' Svs/- / I fni M /.'/. liiirt>. s Tiilif>'r (I>. .I/., ii. 4nT)). Numerous in-tances nccur also in the Life of Tauler (Knglish trans, l.y Winkworth, 1857). 2 On the effects of an extreme I'm-in of l rebirth ' under tin- influence of strong emotional excitement, <p. I >ol linger, / . 333, 340, The whole intellectual and moral character is ruined."