rity. Individual Englishmen and Frenchmen may hate Germany, but German hatred of the Allies, especially England, seems to be active and effective in its results. Even if England had outwitted Germany in the game of diplomacy, why should Germany be so unsportsmanlike as to rave over "perfidious Albion"? Once again we see the truth of the contention that Germany's chief trouble is her lack of sportsmanship. Love is always generous, sportsmanlike, gentle, and manly. 4. Visional. We have seen the two universal-minded poets teaching us the meaning of the Vocation of Man; two philosophers of the same nation have shown us the sacredness and universality of the Law of Righteousness as opposed to the pseudo-imperative of a merely self-preserving and narrow national "duty" interpreted by a bureaucracy; we have found two great German theologians teaching us of Love as the unifying principle of religion, and thus bringing us back to the central meaning of the revelation and cosmic activity of Jesus. And now, when we come to the final apocalyptic stage of the manly-religious Mystic Way, we are once more indebted to Germans. Johannes Weiss and Schweitzer would be the last to claim equality with the great men we have spoken of; but they have brought, through their vocation as New Testament critics, a new vision of values in the revelational philosophy of Jesus. I call this stage the Vision of Immediacy; and I believe that it transvaluates the meaning of the stages that precede it. The world needs a Vocation, an Ethics, a Love, an Apocalyptic Vision, each an attitude of progressive immediacy. Weiss and Schweitzer have shown incontestably that Christ emphasized the apocalyptic aspect of His Mission, and that the early church was true to His teaching. Jesus expected the end of the world and His own coming in largest cosmic fashion some time within the generation of men then on the earth. He did not profess to know the day or the hour; but from first to last He used but transfigured the message of His predecessor, John the Baptist "Repent ye, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand." And this is the message in this day of catastrophe and cataclysm. We can hear as seldom before the groaning and travailing of the whole creation. The cry, "Kill and conquer," drowns out the voice of the angel choir with its "Peace on earth to men of good-will." The men of good-will toward mankind are not in charge of the destinies of Germany. The German Kultur-bringers deceive themselves by thinking or pretending to think that they may pick and choose which human souls they may value and which despise. They call this attitude super-moral "patriotism." Not so. Inasmuch as ye have done harm to these my brethren, even these least, ye have done it unto Me, says the strong Son of God who came to bring peace and a sword. Men will and perhaps should fight until they learn to repent and love. Men will fight until peace is the product of the fight for perfection. Men will fight until the Hymns of Hate, uttered or unuttered, English or German, give place to the Law of Love written in the hearts of men and therefore on the statute books of the nations. The dominant Liberal Protestantism of Germany has been foremost in putting the Kingdom of God as the prime object of Christ's endeavors, and therefore the conscious goal of Christians. German scholars have lately been showing the intense futurism of the work of Jesus. Yet it is the German bureaucracy that has dealt a staggering blow to that international law which represents the efforts of the nations towards humaneness and the righteousness of the Kingdom of God. The Messiah was due to come in Christ's day. The sufficient Cause was present in a Life, a Death, and a Resurrection; but the wicked wills of man have kept it back until now. God has "all the time that is," but how do we dare to retard the Course of Things? Let all the nations answer; but especially must the Cultured Nation give its account at the last day, if not sooner. The Conscience of the World, acting as Grand Jury of Humanity, has brought in a true bill against Germany. The Trial Jury of Germany's own has judged her guilty. Not a German "von Gott," but the God of all men will pronounce sentence and put it into execution. "Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?" THOMAS P. BAILEY. University of the South. THE MYSTICAL INTERPRETATION OF ART The foundation for any clear discussion of a subject lies in an understanding of terms. In discussing a subject having anything to do with mysticism this is especially true, as mysticism has been a much abused and misunderstood term, even by schol ars. Mysticism is a phase of thought, or rather, perhaps of feeling, which from its very nature is hardly susceptible of exact definition. It is not a name applicable to any particular system of thought. It has been called a doctrine, but it is scarcely that, for mystics have never formulated any doctrine to which they would all subscribe. It may be the outgrowth of many differing modes of thought and feeling. In the absence of any formulated definition, we may, tentatively, suggest the following, and then, after a historical survey, we can see if this carries us safely through: Mysticism may be called the belief that the unity of the individual, or the human soul, with the absolute, or God, is possible. Correlative to this we may say that a mystic is one who believes in the immediate revelation of the truth. Professor Rufus Jones of Haverford College in his Studies in Mystical Religion1 thus carefully defines his term: "I shall use the word mysticism to express the type of religion which puts the emphasis on immediate awareness of relation with God, in direct and intimate consciousness of the Divine Presence. It is religion in its most acute, intense, and living stage." While mysticism is thus religious in that it aims for actual communion with the Supreme Being. It is also philosophical in that it is an attempt of the human mind to grasp the ultimate reality of things. But its religious character is paramount, in that "it demands a faculty above reason, and becomes triumphant where philosophy despairs." In this sense it is also transcendental. Mystical writers of the past have so little cared for a formal declaration of their own ideas that we can readily understand 1Introduction, p. xv. 2Prof. Andrew Seth in the Encyclopedia Britannica, under "Mysticism," why the term mysticism has become synonymous with vagueness or mysteriousness, and it has been given so wide a scope that the Hindoo ecstatics, the Neo-Platonists, the morbid mediæval ascetics and the Quakers have all been put in the same class. The error of such a classification is apparent. It arose from a notion prevalent at all times concerning mystics. It seems to have been believed that the mystical ideal is not a life of ethical energy among mankind, but an inward life, spent wholly in contemplation and devout communion. That there have been mystics who held this extreme view must be true. Dionysius and Scotus Erigena believed that unity with God, with its eternal rest, was held to be unconditionally higher than the world, and that life should not strive to enter into the fullness of the world, but rather to retire from it into the unity superior to all plurality and movement, separation and unrest. Thomas à Kempis and other ascetics held a similar attitude. With this type of mysticism in mind, Rudolf Eucken wrote, "Mysticism holds that the essence of all wisdom consists in becoming increasingly absorbed in the eternal being." George Santayana, believing that the ideal mysticism consisted in the throwing off of the human, thus criticises the mystical attitude: "The mystics declare that to God there is no distinction in the value of things-only our human prejudice makes us prefer a rose to an oyster, or a lion to a monkey. To the mystic, the definite constitution of his own mind is hateful. A passionate negation, the motive of which, although morbid, is in spite of itself perfectly human, absorbs all his energies, and his ultimate triumph is to attain the absoluteness of indifference. And what is true of mysticism in general is true also of its manifestation in æsthetics."4 Thus Santayana understands that the mystic finds beauty in everything, that taste is abolished, and, "for the ascending series of æsthetic satisfactions we have substituted (by the mystic) a monotonous judgment of identity." Coomeraswamy, the Hindoo mystic, gives us the answer to 3Main Currents of Modern Thought, p. 244. 4Sense of Beauty, p. 127. this false implication, when he acknowledges that the mystic believes Beauty to exist everywhere, but prefers to state that Beauty may be discovered anywhere, for, if it were true that—putting it crudely-Beauty is everywhere, then we could pursue it with our camera and scales, after the fashion of experimental psychologists. Santayana simply refers again to the mysticism of the Middle Ages, the mysticism of Bernard Clairvaux, who wrote, "As the little drop of water poured into a large measure of wine seems to lose its own nature entirely and to take on both the taste and the colour of the wine, or as iron heated red hot loses its own appearance and glows like fire, or as air filled with sunlight is transformed into the same brightness so that it does not so much appear to be illuminated as to be itself light-so must all human feeling towards the Holy One be self-dissolved in unspeakable wise, and wholly transfused into the will of God. For how shall God be all in all if anything of man remains in man?"5 If the above views expressed mysticism in the truest sense, it would seem that Santayana was right in saying that the mystical attitude toward art was one of indifference. Without depreciating the value of the mysticism of the ages of faith, it is clear, however, that there is quite another sort of mysticism, not opposed to the kind we have referred to, but which, while sympathizing with it, interprets the mystic idea in a more humane way. "Mysticism," according to Dr. J. Rendel Harris, an eminent mystical writer of England, now living, "consists in a union according to which the outward life in the world is conformed to an inward life with God."6 This is not new to the twentieth century, nor is this concept of mysticism confined to a few religious mystics; it can be found. throughout the writings of most mystics, but philosophic writers on the subject have generally failed to see it. If mysticism were not capable of this practical interpretation, De diligendo Deo, c. 10. |