former conception, that of Realism. Both are abstractions; both, if analyzed, go to pieces upon their own inner contradictions; both have had a long history; both express a fragment of the whole truth about Being; both stand for perfectly human and common-sense tendencies, merely pushed to technical extremes. Both can only be judged by means of their dialectic. No Theory of Knowledge can prove either of them sound or unsound except by undertaking directly an ontological analysis and criticism of what each one of them means. Our present purpose, however, is simply to understand their general drift and their historical importance.
The realistic predicate, independence of any external knowing process, could be applied to very various conceived objects, to souls, to matter, to God, etc. On the contrary, the mystic meaning of what it is to be implies the absolute and immediate inner finality and simplicity of the object to which the predicate real can be directly given. Yet, on the other hand, this reality of the mystic, if viewed from without and taken as a subject, to which this predicate is given (in other words, if viewed in a way that the mystic himself calls a false way) — this reality appears to you, while you look on, to be only this or that state of the mystic’s mind, his sensations when he fasts or takes ether, his feelings in a trance, or the feelings that he usually has towards God, or towards life. Hence, as you, from without, view the mystics, and their faiths and feelings, they seem diverse enough. And what the mystics talk about as the Absolute, the subjects to which they apply their predicate real, will appear to you, thus seen from without, as very various
