own fashion, and partly on a categorical imperative which is really the voice of “irreligious moralism,” as Pfleiderer calls it.  The words are justified by such a sentence as this from Herrmann:  “Religious faith in God is, rightly understood, just the medium by which the universal law becomes individualised for the particular man in his particular place in the world’s life, so as to enable him to recognise its absoluteness as the ground of his self-certainty, and the ideal drawn in it as his own personal end.”  Thus the school which has shown the greatest animus against Mysticism unconsciously approaches very near to the atheism of Feuerbach.  Indeed, what worse atheism can there be, than such disbelief in the rationality of our highest thoughts as is expressed in this sentence:  “Metaphysics is an impassioned endeavour to obtain recognition for thoughts, the contents of which have no other title to be recognised than their value for us”?  As if faith in God had any other meaning than a confidence that what is of “value for us” is the eternally and universally good and true!  Herrmann’s attitude towards reason can only escape atheism by accepting in preference the crudest dualism, “behind which” (to quote Pfleiderer again) lies concealed simply “the scepticism of a disintegrating Nominalism.”

24. Victor Cousin.  “Mysticism is the pretension to know God without intermediary, and, so to speak, face to face.  For Mysticism, whatever is between God and us hides Him from us.”  “Mysticism consists in substituting direct inspiration for indirect, ecstasy for reason, rapture for philosophy.”

25. R.A.  Vaughan.  “Mysticism is that form of error which mistakes for a Divine manifestation the operations of a merely human faculty.”

This poor definition is the only one (except “Mysticism is the romance of religion”) to be found in Hours with the Mystics, the solitary work in English which attempts to give a history of Christian Mysticism.  The book has several conspicuous merits.  The range of the author’s reading is remarkable, and he has a wonderful gift of illustration.  But he was not content to trust to the interest of the subject to make his book popular, and tried to attract readers by placing it in a most incongruous setting.  There is something almost offensive in telling the story of men like Tauler, Suso, and Juan of the Cross, in the form of smart conversations at a house-party, and the jokes cracked at the expense of the benighted “mystics” are not always in the best taste.  Vaughan does not take his subject quite seriously enough.  There is an irritating air of superiority in all his discussions of the lives and doctrines of the mystics, and his hatred and contempt for the Roman Church often warp his judgment.  His own philosophical standpoint is by no means clear, and this makes his treatment of speculative Mysticism less satisfactory than the more popular parts of the book.  It is also a pity that he has neglected the English representatives of Mysticism; they are quite as interesting in their way as Madame Guyon, whose story he tells at disproportionate length.  At the same time, I wish to acknowledge considerable obligations to Vaughan, whose early death probably deprived us of even better work than the book which made his reputation.