SOURCE: "Laurence Oliphant's Sympneumata," in The Arena, Boston, Vol. XX, No. IV, October, 1898, pp. 526-34.

In the following excerpt, British critic Sara Underwood discusses the spiritual ideals described in Sympneumata.

In the future, when men shall know more of life's spiritual side than the majority of us can yet comprehend, the world will understand better the higher meaning of the lives of some men and women who have been accounted misled fanatics, deluded enthusiasts, or harmless maniacs. Such mystics as Joan of Arc, Emmanuel Swedenborg, Jacob Boehme, Balzac, and William Blake the poet-artist, are among the exceptional souls who, professing to have received revelations from the unseen, have borne witness to the spiritual life, through new teaching of truth whose appeal to the reason, backed by the power of the mystics' own strong individuality, has profoundly impressed the whole thinking world. Among the various later-day mystics who have...