no novelties except those involved in the profoundly interesting personal temperaments of individual mystics.
Our concern lies here in observing that the philosophical Mystic, whatever his personal type, and whatever his nation or tongue, always uses the same general metaphysical and dialectical devices. His theoretical weapon is some reductio ad absurdum of Realism. His polemic is against the sharp outlines of the world of Independent Beings, against the fallacies of all finite ideas, and against the possibility of worldly satisfaction. With the author of the Imitation of Christ, he reminds you that if you could see all created things together, it would be but a vain show, and hence he bids you forsake every creature. With Spinoza, he tells you that only in the Eternal is there joy alone, and that all else, being but imagination, perishes. With Eckhart he explains that the very creed of the Church, as ordinarily understood, is but allegory, and that even the Trinity is only, as it were, a superficial emanation from the Godhead, while the true Godhead, the Deitas, never “looked upon deed,” never dreamed of diversity, but is a “simple stillness” that you can find within your heart whenever you have won the ultimate virtue, and have forsaken all things for the wilderness of Being.
In general, the mystic knows only Internal Meanings, precisely as the realist considers only External Meanings. But the mystic, nevertheless, condemns all finite ideas, just because they have no absolute internal meaning. He bids you look within; but he desires first wholly to transform your inner nature. He compares your heart to the Bethlehem, where God may at any
