- “And yet, she has not spoke so long!
- What if heaven be that, fair and strong
- At life’s best, with our eyes upturned
- Whither life’s flower is first discerned,
- We fixed so, ever should so abide?
- What if we still ride on, we two,
- With life forever old yet new,
- Changed not in kind but in degree,
- The instant made eternity,
- And heaven just prove that I and she
- Ride, ride together, forever ride.”
The language is here not that of the mediaeval or of the Hindoo mystics. But the ontology is in essence one with theirs.
In fine, mysticism is, as a conception of Being, the logically precise and symmetrical correspondent of realism. In its innermost conceptual constitution it is the mirror picture, so to speak, of its opponent. Each doctrine seeks an Absolute finality, — a limit which is conceived solely by virtue of its contrast with the process whereby our ideas tend towards that limit. Realism seeks this limiting object, this true Being, as somewhat Independent of Ideas. Mysticism, declaring that independent Being is self-contradictory and so impossible, seeks Being within the very life of the knowing process. Each doctrine is a conscious abstraction. Neither can tell what it means by its goal. Each is sure that its goal is. Practically, the two doctrines are related as are positive and negative quantities in mathematics. “Submit to the facts,” says Realism. “They are without. You can do nothing to make them different by merely knowing them.” “Know,” says Mysticism. “The truth is nigh thee, even
