Collingwood - Underhill - Inge Symposium Can the New Idealism Dispense With Mysticism

Symposium: Can the New Idealism Dispense with Mysticism?Author(s): Evelyn Underhill, R. G. Collingwood and W. R. IngeReviewed work(s):Source: Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volumes, Vol. 3, Relativity,Logic, and Mysticism (1923), pp. 148-184Published by: Wiley on behalf of The Aristotelian SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4106460 .

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148

VII.--SYMPOSIUM : CAN THE NEW IDEALISM DISPENSE WITH MYSTICISM ?

By EVELYN UNDERHILL, R. G. COLLINGWOOD, and W. R. INGE.

I.-By EVELYN UNDERHILL.

IN so far as the New Idealism sets out to give a satisfactory account of Reality, it cannot, I think, dispense with the values and experiences commonly called " mystical." By the New Idealism is here meant that philosophy of spirit which is also a

philosophy of change. Whilst differing in many respects, the

systems of Croce and Gentile-and also, indeed, those of Bergson and many new Realists-seem to agree here. They share a fundamental principle, however variously it may be expressed. History, the process in which we find ourselves, not any intuition of things which lie beyond ourselves, is the raw material of all these philosophies. Here, on this level, and not elsewhere, they claim to experience the universe. For them, thinking and reality are the same. The result has been defined by Ruggiero as "a

metaphysic of absolute immanence " (Modern Philosophy, p. 362) and is said by Gentile to " disclose the reality which is not, but which creates itself, and is that which it creates-a reality which waits for us to construct it." (Atto Puro pp. 230-31.) I am not a philosopher, and this may be the reason why the act of

knowing a reality which is by declaration non-existent seems so full of difficulty. Even were this problem solved for me, however -as it may be in the course of this symposium-I should still feel that in order to account at all (and then indeed not fully) for the richness and variousness of our experience, we require the

recognition of two distinct yet most clearly interwoven realities;



CAN THE NEW IDEALISM DISPENSE WITH MYSTICISM ? 149

namely the durational or successive and the abiding. How such realities can co-exist may be for ever beyond the span of human

consciousness; but that they thus exist is a conclusion which seems forced upon us by all the deepest apprehensions of all men.

Whilst the New Idealism appears to be concerned only with the first of these realities, mysticism of course has as its special

province the second. It declares an unchanging Existent Per-

fection to be the substance of that which is; and, more than

this, asserts the possible intuitive contact of the self with this

abiding and transcendent Real. Such experienced contact or

communion, as we find it described by mystics of all types, is

always the experience of a Wholeness, a unity, including, har-

monizing and transcending all partial interpretations of the world. The opposition to the New Idealism therefore seems at first sight complete. The question we have to ask is whether this opposition be inevitable ; or whether on one hand a complete philosophy of life does not require the element which is apprehended by the human mind as permanence (for whether this our principle of permanence may not include the active rest of God's duration is beyond our province to inquire) if it is to give immanent Spirit, as experienced in succession, its true meaning and worth. On the other hand, we may ask whether the mystic's contribution to human knowledge will not be more fully understood when harmonized with the contributions of those who see duration and change as truly real. Christian metaphysic, which has always declared God as the one Reality to be, and fully to

be, both immanent and transcendent Spirit, suggests the possibility of a synthesis between these two aspects of truth.

We can claim for those whom we call mystics-and, in a lesser degree, for innumerable artists and contemplative souls- that experience at its fullest and deepest does include the immediate apprehension of an unchanging Reality, and that this

apprehension, in one form or another, is the sheet-anchor of the



150 EVELYN UNDERHILL.

religious consciousness. St. Augustine speaks for all these when he says "With the mind's eye we have been able to behold.

something not susceptible of change . . . I have now had the

perception of something unchangeable . . . my mind withdrew its thoughts from experience, extracting itself from the contra-

dictory throng of sensuous images, that it might find out what that light was wherein it was bathed . . . and thus with the flash of one hurried glance it attained to the vision of That Which Is . . . When by reason of its retreats and advances in wisdom, the human soul confesses itself changeable, it finds that above itself is the Truth unchangeable." (Augustine, Enar. in Ps. XLI, Conf. VII. 27, Lib. de div. Quest. 83.) The claim of Plotinus is even more uncompromising. "We behold It

alone, in all its simplicity and purity, on which all things depend, to which all good things look, from which they derive their being, life and thought." (En. I. 6, 7.) This character then, which we may call generally the intuition of Eternal Life, must be ac-

cepted as distinctive alike of Eastern and of Western mysticism. No fact of man's mental life is more certain than this. No

philosophy of change, taken alone, can find room for it, or explain its persistent presence in human experience; its overwhelming authority for those to whom it comes. As a matter of fact, the new idealism denounces, but does not attempt seriously to

explain or refute, the declarations of the mystic. Thus Croce

says that mysticism is merely the name of " the human tendency to get behind the given "-a statement which raises the huge question of what, as a fact, is given for our fullest human awareness-or, alternatively, that form of error in which "the last semblance of thought is abandoned, and the immediate actuality of life [which surely is given ?] is regarded as the only truth."

(Logica III.) For Gentile, mysticism requires " the annihilation of the subject before an unknown transcendent Object (Discorsi di relizione, p. 78). And here again, the mystic would answer



CAN THE NEW IDEALISM DISPENSE WITH MYSTICISM 151

that " unknown" is the last word which he could truthfully apply to the " Mighty Beauty " he has seen. Noting that these definitions seem to envisage specific mystical experiences rather than the view of reality for which mysticism stands, and that none deal adequately with the mystic's fundamental claim, we

may place beside them the impressive conclusion of Wittgen- stein; arrived at, not by the processes of intuition, but by those of the strictest intellectual discipline. " The solution of the riddle of space and time lies outside space and time . . . not how the world is, is the mystical, but that it is." And again, though this riddle must be held non-existent for logical thought, since its answer cannot be expressed ; still for our fullest deepest consciousness, embracing and transfusing the world with which

logic can deal, " there remains indeed the Inexpressible. This shows itself ; it is the mystical." (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, pp. 185, 187.) Here, surely, we have a view of reality far richer in content as well as less arrogant in tone than those put forward

by the new idealists.

Mysticism then, whether despised or revered, must be ac-

knowledged to deal with the ultimate, and deal with it by way of intuitive apprehension. The characters so far noted are refusal to equate the world of succession with this ultimate, or be satisfied with the " given " universe of sense and thought; and an appeal to a Transcendent Otherness, discerned by intui-

tion-or, as empirical mysticism usually prefers to say, by love- as alone fully real. We, then, must ask first whether such an

appeal to the Transcendent is (a) necessary and (b) fruitful for

the human mind: next, whether this appeal inevitably involves

Croce's "getting behind the given" and "abandonment of

thought," or Gentile's " annihilation of the subject" ? Can it be, on the contrary, that the "given" world of succession is

not known rightly unless this abiding fact is realized as truly

given too; and that this apprehension is essential not to the




annihilation but to the completest self-fulfilment of the subject ?

Deferring the consideration of the actual gifts of mysticism to

philosophy, we observe first that its critics invariably confuse its essence with the excesses to which it has always been liable; the tendency to vapour off into an ecstatic feeling-state without communicable content, to reject the time-world, to de-humanize

experience, to confuse a blank placidity with " pure immediacy." But they neglect its affirmative side, its positive and ontological character, its steady witness to that " Being which gives Becoming all its worth "; experienced again and again by the richest and

deepest souls, not as a blank but as a "Simultaneity which is the fullest expression of a Supreme Richness-unspeakable Concreteness--overwhelming Aliveness." (F. von Hiigel, Eternal

Life, p. 383.) They ignore too the greatness of those personalities in whom this consciousness has been dominant, its transfiguring and illuminating power, the heroisms and sacrifices, the vigorous and devoted lives of action which it has inspired. They have not yet answered the declaration of Baron von Hiigel; that it will not "suffice to refer this experience to the operation, within us, of Spirit in the making-to the gradual and painful coming to self-consciousness of the one concrete Universe (of which we form an integral part) precisely through our spirits and their growth. For we have no other instance of an unrealized

perfection producing such pain and joy, such volitions, such

endlessly varied and real results; and all by means of just this vivid and persistent impression that this Becoming is an already realized Perfection." (Ibid, p. 385.)

This positive aspect of mysticism, its cumulative witness to a real Whole, beyond and always enticing our slowly expanding experience, must surely be kept in mind in all attempts to estimate its value and reply to its critics. We need not, in claiming such

value, also claim that such mystical apprehension involves a full

experience of ultimate truth. It is enough if we insist that it




gives a higher synthesis, a closer approximation to ultimates, than those other systems by which man seeks to apprehend the universe. When the idealist charges the mystic (a) with " getting behind the given," we are obliged on this basis to answer

that, for the religious consciousness (using this term in its widest

sense) the Transcendent and Abiding is exactly that which is

"given "; and given as really and most vividly apprehended by the self's concrete wholeness, if inexpressible by mere speech. If expressibility be indeed the criterion of the real, as some

philosophers have dared to suggest--and this leads us to the

strange spectacle of a Real World laboriously keeping pace with the expanding vocabulary of man-not only our mystical but our

highest aesthetic and passional experiences, must be discredited; for it is notorious that in all these supreme ways of human

knowing and feeling, only a part of that which is apprehended can be expressed; and that the more complete and soul-satis-

fying the experience the more its realization approximates to the

mystic's " silence where all lovers lose themselves." Yet in all, a reality exceeding our analytic and descriptive powers " shows itself," as Wittgenstein says, to transcendental feeling ; enriching, yet humbling, the perceiving self. It is hardly strange that

language evolved for the purpose of dealing with the data of sense should find difficulty in conveying these, the data of spirit; since propositions cannot express anything higher than themselves. The insistence of the mystics on the " unconditioned "

character of their vision-" neither This nor That "-is not

really an attempt at definition, but a humble confession of the

inadequacy of speech. Nevertheless news of this Otherness, this

unchanging Real over against all mere succession-though we must conceive the best of these reports as conveying only a fraction of the original experience-is the contribution which

mysticism, under the many symbolisms it is driven to adopt, makes to philosophy. The wonder surely is not that these reports




tell so little; but-when we consider our human situation and

resources--that they tell so much. The reports are always oblique, but so are the reports of all artists; of whom it is

probably true to say that the greater the vesthetic values which

they seek to communicate, the more oblique is the method involved. The shiny, easy, neatly-finished picture merely tells us about a shiny, easy, neatly-finished world. And as in all

deep aesthetic apprehension, so here, sympathy, humility and attention are essential if we are to receive the message at all.

(b) Far from involving either "abandonment of the last semblance of thought" or " the annihilation of the subject" (notions only relevant to exclusively oriental and negative form of mysticism, and doubtfully true even of these) apprehension of the mystical fact has again and again been declared and indeed shown to enhance the subject; to unify, inspire and crown man's deepest thought and will, and place the self in fuller and truer relation with the objective world. Says Plotinus, "the

Beauty Supreme, the absolute and primal, fashions its lovers to

beauty and makes them also worthy of love." (En. I, 6.) Says St. Augustine of his achievement of Reality: " My life shall be a real life, being wholly full of Thee." Ruysbroeck, perhaps the

greatest experimental mystic of the West, says of this fruition of reality that by it " We are satisfied and overflowing, and

beyond ourselves eternally fulfilled." It is in fact the universal declaration of the mystics that in this experience a capacity of the self, unfilled by any experience of the temporal order, is satisfied and life is raised to a higher term. So that we do not " get behind " the given-unless this word is to be applied only to the primary data of sense-but more deeply apprehend and assimilate its richness. When Gentile (Discorsi di religione, p. 78) says that mysticism involves the affirmation that " Where God is we are not; in so far as He is, we are not," we are surely bound to reply that the real affirmation of the mystic is rather,




"Where God is not, nothing is." This view is of course in

harmony with that of traditional idealism; which has steadily declared its belief in a steadfast unchanging Ground of the

Universe, whether this Eternal Real were described as Absolute or as God. Hegel's conviction of the final reality of absolute

Spirit, self-existent and self-conscious, really concedes, philoso- phically, all that mysticism requires. It gives " Spirit, self- subsistent and definite; which exists for itself, knows itself, and

is its own object " (Phenomenology, Eng. Trans., 1907, p. 17). The modern acceptance of Time as real in its own

right--an accept-

ance which seems intimately connected with excessive development of the other side of Hegel's thought, that which identifies

reality with History and Becoming-is supposed to require the rejection of this abiding Reality, a total capitulation to the flux: a sad example of the impoverishment which comds of

divorcing method from intuition. But, as the late Dr. Bosanquet has pointed out, the aim of the greatest philosophies has ever been to make more of experience, not less. Thought (save for the inevitable side-trackings of mere cleverness) has moved towards a

continuously greater recognition of experience, in its widest

sense, as the very stuff of philosophy, (Meeting of Extremes,

pp. 2 and 65) and to an increasing sense that reality must be at the very least all that our fullest categories involve. Therefore we may justly suspect any system which subtracts from experience in its wholeness; or puts forward a claim to say what the

universe is not. Though relativists assure us that we are debarred

by our situation from all knowledge of wholes, the "Whole "

which is conceived by abstract thought must be of such a nature

that all relative views and experiences, whether scientific,

aesthetic, ethical or mystical, can be accommodated within it.

Those only may be excluded which we can demonstrate to be

false. Mysticism can without difficulty find room within its " universe that thinks and knows " for all these values. Indeed,




it alone seems able to give us a landscape wide enough to accom- modate all our mental and spiritual experiences. It can afford to admit the proximate reality of time and change; the over-

ruling activity of mind ; the factualness of things ; but it protests against the loss of depth and awe resulting from making the transient the measure of the real. At its best and noblest it finds in the transcendent the worth and meaning of the immanent ; and in the immanent a graded revelation of the transcendent. On the other hand, the new idealism fails to account for whole tracts of experience connected with man's most intense and fruitful willing, loving and conceiving; even though their existence be virtually acknowledged. Thus Croce can say on one hand, "A universal more universal than that which is

present in the individual act is non-existent or exists only as an

impotent abstraction "; and on the other hand, in regard to ethics, that " the true and high compassion is that which one

practises by setting the whole of oneself in harmony with the ends of reality." What are these "ends" if pure succession, mere change, be the substance of the real ? Can they be more than a bunch of transcendental carrots balanced in front of the nose of our hurrying cosmos ? Are we to identify them with that " tendency to deity " which Professor Alexander finds within the

universe; or with the " unrealized ideal " which plays so large a

part in the ethics of modern idealism ? And if so, what and whence are their sanctions, and whence is this conception of the "ends" of reality-surely not discoverable on the surface of the "given," yet so deeply implanted in the mind--supposed to be derived ? Is not the very notion of the " unrealized ideal" a tacit homage to the realized Perfection of mystical philosophy ? Does it not point to those existent absolute values for which the New Idealism-declaring a reality which "does not exist, but creates itself "-finds no room ? The mystical synthesis, linking man's persistent intuition of Eternal Life with




the passionate effort to actualize a beauty, perfection and love, conceived by him as already existent, does find room for these absolute values. It justifies thus the sense of " Otherness" which haunts the artist, poet and saint, and is conveyed to us in their deepest creations; that humble, profound, yet joyful sense of mystery, which is a characteristic of the greatest souls. Those who reject it are bound to explain these patent facts of experience; and to deal in some way with the known truth-hard to rationalize on a realistic or new idealistic basis-that pure succession cannot give man spiritual satisfaction. All intense religious experience-more than this, all experience in which transcendental feeling is involved-appears to be accompanied by a marked slowing-down of consciousness, a retreat to some deeper levels of apprehension where reality is experienced not merely as succession but as existence: a genuine escape from the

tyranny of " clock-time," though not a transcendence of duration. It is on these deeper levels that all man's greatest creative work seems to be prepared; and this forces us to admit that, at

least, there may be something more than self-hypnotization involved in the special working of the contemplative consciousness. Its simplifications may well give real access to fresh levels of experience, and its findings deserve at any rate our critical

respect. If we are to be satisfied by a merely pathological account of it, not religious genius alone but all discovering minds must be consigned to the asylum. If realism requires us to pay respectful attention to the reports of the senses as giving us (in spite of admitted variations and imperfections) real news of a real

universe, the contemplative may reasonably claim an equally respectful attention for the reports of intuition, in spite of its admitted variations and imperfections; especially in view of the

unity of witness to be discovered in it. There is surely nothing per se more respectable in the specialized consciousness which functions by means of the optic or aural nerve than in that sub-




stantial wholeness of consciousness which functions in the state of contemplation; whether this contemplation be that of artist or saint. In this still intentness, with its transcendence of

multiplicity, and in the peculiar fruitfulness of this quiet brooding state-a fact which we can all verify in some degree, if we

analyse our best moments even of aesthetic apprehension, and which the "explanations " of psychology fail to discredit-we

may perhaps find the origin of the tendency of thought to

regard "the static as more original than the moving " (Wildon Carr, Philosophy of Change, p. 189); a tendency which can

ultimately land us in that refusal of all reality to the time-

process, with which mysticism is often charged. But this

refusal is not required by the mystic; who here again is only

trying to describe his experience, and asks for " and " rather

than "either---or." As to the claim of psychology, that all mystical and con-

templative states with their content must be dismissed because

they can be pathologically or even alcoholically simulated, we must remember that those derangements of our internal chem-

istry which can produce the illusion of mystic certitude can also

produce the less desirable illusion of snakes in the corner of the room. Yet no one has so far suggested that this " alcoholic revelation " discounts the reality of all snakes. We believe, on this point, that we are able to distinguish between the reports of sober realist and drunk idealist; so too we may surely claim

ability to distinguish between the experiences of Plotinus and of St. Augustine and those of the last hysterical young lady from Paris or Geneva ? " The soul is not deceived in its happi- ness " says Plotinus. (En. VI. 7.)

Finally, a philosophy which undertakes to " deal with the whole of experience" must take notice not only of man's persistent and strikingly consistent intuition of the Abiding Perfect, and that sense of dependence upon it which is characteristic of




religious experience in all places and times, not only of the declaration of certain admittedly rare spirits (Plotinus, Augustine, Dionysius, Jacopone da Todi, Kabir, Ruysbroeck) that they have enjoyed at first hand the Vision of that which Is; not only of the extent in which the more limited inspirations of artists,

poets and prophets appear to support this claim, "in Thatness

seeing beyond Thatness, and in company discerning the Comrade himself" (Kabir); not only of the pronounced impoverishment of life which results from making the expressible the measure of the apprehensible-sucking as it were all the dim and nameless

jewels of the spirit into the maw of some metaphysical vacuum- cleaner-but of yet another class of experiences. As men

specially susceptible to beauty in line, colour, or tone can, by a dedication of their attention, achieve a wholly new range of

perceptions-growing as it were along a special line and develop- ing latent susceptibilities-so those who have been touched by the passion for the Transcendent, and given it their attention

(i.e., their will and love) are found to grow in a certain direction and develope an entirely new quality of life. By orientation to this level of existence, serial changes are set going, resulting in a veritable " spiritual organization and transfigurement " of man

(F. von Hiigel, op. cit. 390). But it has never been found that the most devoted belief in mere self-evolving spirit, any deifying of the flux, will produce this effect. Here, surrender even to the loftiest ideals of the temporal order is not enough : for there the soul is again thrown back upon the question, whence these loftiest ideals and longings--so far transcending the demands and responses of the time-world-come. The deepening passion characteristic of the development of all the higher religions is one with the self's deepening consciousness of a concrete Real. Thus it looks as though the experience of the Abiding were indeed bound up with the fullest self realization, the fullest expansion of the inmost powers of man, and as if no philosophy which left




this out could be accepted as adequate to his situation. The insistence on the prime importance of humility, common to all such rich and deep spiritual developments, appears to be the emotional expression of the profoundly felt truth that these ex-

periences are supra-rational; and that attempts to square them with a reason developed through the frictions and demands of the here-and-now will inevitably frustrate themselves. " Where intellect must stay without, love and desire can enter in " says Ruysbroeck. This is declared by mysticism to be a statement of fact, not a pious aspiration: and it adds, in the words of the same great master, that the world into which the self thus obtains entrance is above reason and beyond reason. " To know it we must be in it, beyond the mind and above our created being: in that eternal Point, where all our lives begin and end." (Seven Cloisters, Cap. 19.)




II.-By R. G. COLLINGWOOD.

BY the "new idealism" Miss Underhill seems to mean the

philosophy of Croce and Gentile. Her thesis is therefore a criticism of these writers, and I shall try to discover how far they are really open to her criticisms. This is a question of fact, and is solely concerned with the actual content of their philosophy, and especially that of Gentile, for reasons stated below.

By " mysticism" I take her to mean an intuitive or immediate consciousness of the supreme reality as one, eternal, and

spiritual. The question therefore arises whether these philosophers differ from mysticism in content, i.e., in having a different view of the nature of reality, or in form, i.e., in not regarding the ultimate reality as capable of being apprehended intuitively. I am not certain what she means by " dispense with," but she

might mean (i) ignore, leave out of the picture of human life, or

(ii) dissociate oneself from, decline to identify oneself with. Thus a philosophy which denied that mysticism was a necessary element in human life would dispense with it, or try to, in the first sense; a philosophy which held that the proper method of

philosophical thought was distinct from the method followed

by mysticism would dispense with it, or try to, in the second. The first sense may be at once dismissed. No philosopher

worthy of the name ignores religion or tries to construct a view of human life in which it has no part whatever: and both Croce and Gentile identify mysticism with religion. Croce, it is true, does not in his systematic philosophy represent religion as one

of the " necessary forms of the spirit," but he certainly tries to

give us, even here, a philosophical account of religion, though a

slight and not altogether satisfactory one. The only necessary M



162 R. G. COLLINGWOOD.

forms of the spirit which he recognizes are art, history regarded as identical with philosophy, economic action, and moral action.

Religion, in that case, is not a pure form of the spirit but a mixed

form, a compound of elements drawn from various sources, and therefore unstable, because these elements are liable to separate out and pursue each its own way, and confused, because the different elements impose conflicting claims on the mind and this

gives rise to a division of the mind against itself. This is not by any means altogether false as an account of certain characteristics

of religion. For instance, religion is not wholly unconcerned

with philosophy, like art; for it always contains a philosophical element. But it cannot allow this philosophical element to

have its head and take command, for then what was religion would simply become philosophy. Thus religion has not that

singleness of aim which marks a true form of the spirit it contains a number of conflicting tendencies, to each of which it must say, nec tecum possum vivere, nec sine te.

This is the view of religion expressed in Croce's earlier works, and it evidently belongs to that rigid and abstract formalism

which has given us the doctrine of the four " Forms of the

Spirit." This doctrine represents not the vital and fertile

element of Croce's philosophy, but its barren and mechanical

side ; and the greatness both of Croce himself and of his followers

is shown by the extent to which they extricate themselves from

its blighting influence. Croce himself, in his later works, partly modifies and partly ignores it: his abler successors break away from it altogether. But when this doctrine is no longer treated

as a philosophical first principle, the depreciatory view of religion which is its corollary vanishes. For that view was only adopted because there was no room for religion in the formal scheme of

the Philosophy of the Spirit. This happens in Croce himself in such passages as the following.

"Religion is nothing but the need for an orientation towards the




concept and the value of life and reality as a whole. Without

religion, without this orientation, no one can live; or at least one lives in division and perplexity of spirit, lives unhappily. A religion which coincides with philosophical truth is no doubt better than a mythological religion; but any religion, however

mythological, is better than none." (Cultura e vita morale, p. 37.) Here, in a work written without special reference to the writer's formal philosophical views, we reach the germ of a new attitude to religion, which those views had suppressed.

This hint of a new attitude to religion is in Croce no more than a hint; but in Gentile it blossoms into a complete new

philosophy of religion*. This is best expressed in the essay Le Forme assolute dello Spirito, in the volume Il Modernismo e i

Rapporti tra Religione e Filosofia (1909). Religion, on this view, is a permanent and necessary form of the spirit. In so far as the spirit simply asserts itself, careless of the existence and the nature of any object for its thought, it expresses itself as art. Art is thus purely subjective and free imagination. In so far as it renounces this freedom of caprice and imagination and surrenders itself to its object, this object being of course the absolute object, the supreme reality, it expresses itself as religion. To art belong all the virtues of self-assertion, to religion those of loyalty, humility, self-denial. But neither of these forms exists by itself. Each as described is an abstraction, a limiting case, represents not anything that really exists but something that would exist if its opposite could (per impossibile) be anni- hilated. Actual human life is always a synthesis of art and

religion, and so far as this synthesis is really effected and the two elements co-exist harmoniously in the mind, their combined

functioning is philosophy. Hence the concrete life of religion is properly called not religion merely but religion and art at once,

* Not altogether new, in so far as it only restates the fundamental doctrine of Hegel's Philosophie des Geistes.

M2




that is, philosophy. And the same is true of the concrete life of art. So far as any human being succeeds in living and in

satisfying somehow the various needs of his mind, so far as he at all finds peace and salvation, he is, certainly, in possession of

religion; but not of religion alone. He is, though he may not call himself by that name, a philosopher. His religion is not the only force at work within him: it is supplemented and

compensated by the force of art. If he were solely religious, if

religion were the only thing he cared for, his personality would be simply swallowed up in the object of his worship. This, Miss Underhill reminds us, does not happen to the mystic.* Certainly it does not, and Gentile never suggests that it does. But the reason why it does not is that the religious impulse to lose oneself in God is balanced by the artistic impulse to assert and express oneself, to find oneself in the very act of self- surrender.

So far, the difference between Gentile's view and that for which Miss Underhill is contending is a mere matter of words.

Each is agreed that there is one single and whole spiritual life, which is the true life of man and is actually achieved by human

beings in this world; each is agreed that in this life we at once lose ourselves in the contemplation of an absolute object and in

that self-surrender find ourselves. Gentile calls this life philosophy, and Miss Underhill calls it mysticism. That is not in

itself an important difference. For Gentile does not mean that this life is a privilege of those who have taken a University degree in philosophy, nor does Miss Underhill mean that it is confined to people who get their names mentioned in learned works on

Mysticism. What then is the point on which they differ ? It appears

from Miss Underhill's opening paragraphs to be this. Gentile's

* She seems even to deny that there is in mysticism a tendency for it to happen; but she would no doubt disclaim any intention of denying this.




philosophy, she thinks, denies outright the existence of any such absolute object of thought as that which the mystics contemplate. This absolute object is one, eternal, and unchanging: Gentile's

philosophy, she tells us, is a philosophy of change. It agrees here, she says, with that of Bergson. Its absolute reality is an absolute flux. Hence it stands in the sharpest opposition to all mysticism, whose insistence that its own object is lifted above the flux of things cannot be lightly passed over or explained away.

In this matter I am heartily at one with Miss Underhill. I do think that if we accept a philosophy of change we must describe the experience of the mystics as a peculiar form of hallucination, and it is a hallucination whose origin we shall find it very difficult to explain. But I venture to accuse her of a radical misunder-

standing of Gentile's philosophy when she identifies it with the

philosophies of change. I know that the same view was lately expressed by Dr. Bosanquet, and it is just because of my deep respect and affection for his memory that I welcome the oppor- tunity of clearing up a question on which I believe him to have made a mistake, without being forced to engage in controversy with one who can no longer reply. For the point is one of some

importance and concerns our whole valuation of a philosophy which, whatever its shortcomings, is one of the most remarkable of the present day. And I confine myself to Gentile, because it is in his hands that the tendency common to him and Croce reveals its features most clearly, and that this tendency first

gives rise to a considered and consistent philosophy of religion. Reality, for Gentile, is history. Now history is not, as Miss

Underhill assumes, a synonym for change. Change is, if I may put it this way, a realistic concept, history an idealistic. That which changes is a mere object, which need not know that it is

changing, and indeed which no one need know to be changing. The philosophy of change is a " metaphysic of being," that is, a

philosophy which tries to describe the world as a thing in itself




without raising the question how it comes to be known. And there can be little doubt that the philosophy of change makes the

world unknowable. That which has a history, on the other hand, is a mind, for matter may change but it cannot be said to have a

history. And this mind knows its own history. It is simply by

knowing its own history that, in Gentile's view, it comes to have

a history at all. Hence Gentile's philosophy is a " metaphysic of knowledge," that is to say, a philosophy which never loses

sight of the question " how do we come to know what we know ? "

History is thus by definition something known. It is not

merely a process, it is a known process. But the mind which

knows a process can only do so by somehow detaching itself from

and rising above this process. If it were wholly immersed in the

process, it would, perhaps, be changing, but it could never know

that it was changing. And this unknowable process would therefore not really be a process at all ; it would not be a change in the

mind, for the mind would no longer possess that continuity without which no change can take place. One mind would

perish at every instant and another would come into being; and

that is not change in a mind. Hence change in a mind must be

change for that mind; change of which that mind is conscious ; and to be conscious of it, the mind must be somehow raised above

it. How is this apparent contradiction to be realized ? How is

the mind to be at once in change and out of change ? Only if the

mind originates change in itself. For then, as the source and

ground of change, it will not be subject to change; while on the other

hand, as undergoing change through its own free act, it will exhibit

change. This double aspect of the mind as active and passive is the very heart of Gentile's philosophy. It is his favourite dis-

tinction of act and fact. The act is out of time in the sense that

it creates time, just as it is supernatural in the sense that it

creates nature; the fact is temporal, natural, subject to all those

laws which constitute its finiteness. But between the act and




the fact there is no division: the distinction is only an ideal distinction. In creating the fact, the act realizes itself, and does not live apart in a heaven of its own from which it issues mandates for the creation of facts ; it lives in the facts which it creates, and can say to the fact, " Thou art my son, this day have I begotten thee."*

This identity of act and fact, which is the immanence of which so much is said by Croce, is necessary for the following reason. If the active or creative mind were merely active and creative, if what it created were something other than itself, then this other, this created object, would be a mere flux of appearances without

permanence, solidity, or substance. Only the permanent can

change; and therefore the principle of permanence, the un-

changing reality, must be immanent in the very process of change, or this process could not take place. If the changing were one

thing and the unchanging another, if that which changed were not also permanent and that which is permanent were not also

changing, then both the permanent and the changing would be

illusory. If the permanent and creative principle is called God and the changing creation is called the World, we thus reach the formula that it is only the presence of God in the world that makes the world real, and only his self-expression in the act of

creating the world that makes God actual. Whether formulae of this kind, so notoriously common in mystical writings, are

really at variance with the spirit of mysticism, I do not take upon myself to say. But they are of the essence of Gentile's philosophy.

Miss Underhill says, however, that mysticism also requires transcendence, and that Gentile denies all transcendence, and hence denies a fundamental principle of mysticism. Her paper suggests that she regards transcendence and mysticism as

* " Autoctisi," "self-creation," is one of Gentile's favourite words for this " pure act."




synonymous, but we all know from her works that this is not her

view, and that she really regards transcendence as one aspect of

mysticism, complementary to immanence. Now here again there is some danger of a quarrel about words. Gentile gives the name

religion or mysticism to the element of transcendence or the

losing of the mind in its object, an element, as he tells us, of all human life but not the only element. To the element of immanence he gives the name of art. And these two elements are

always actually found together in the synthesis which is philosophy. In this synthesis, therefore, transcendence is always present, but is never the last word; it is dialectically present as one of the two elements whose tension constitutes the life of the

whole, but the last word lies with the synthesis which is neither

mere transcendence nor mere immanence, but the principle called by De Ruggiero absolute immanence. Here the word absolute is not loosely used for " pure," as Miss Underhill seems to think: it is used in a well-defined technical sense. The

absolute, in this sense, is that which has reconciled its own

opposite to itself, and therefore no longer stands in opposition to it. This usuage is quite common in the Italian idealists,

especially in De Ruggiero. But it goes back to a very respectable

antiquity. Thus the metaphysic of absolute immanence is the

philosophy whose primary principle, that of immanence, has

overcome its own abstractness by including in itself its own

opposite, namely, the principle of transcendence. And the only sense in which Gentile ever denies all transcendence is that he

denies in toto its right to be considered as the ultimate solution of the problem of philosophy. Thus Gentile is as convinced of the necessity of transcendence as Miss Underhill herself, and differs from her, here again, in the use of words only. That

reconciliation of the opposing principles of immanence and

transcendence which both regard as possible, necessary, and

indeed actual, she calls mysticism, and he calls it philosophy.




This broad agreement between Gentile and his critic is recog- nized by Miss Underhill herself when she comes to mention Hegel. Hegel's Absolute Spirit, she says, is all that mysticism requires; though she takes this back by adding that, so far as Hegel identifies reality with history and becoming, he falls into the modern error of regarding time as ultimately real. This is an accusation which would surprise Hegel as much as it would Gentile. For both alike, reality is the absolute spirit; so far there is no difference between them. For both alike, time is created by this absolute spirit in the process of its own activity; it is a product of that activity, not its condition. Here again, Hegel and Gentile are in perfect agreement. Bergsonism is as repugnant to Hegel as it can possibly be to Gentile; and how repugnant it is to him can be judged from De Ruggiero's strong remarks on its spiritual emptiness in Modern Philosophy (E.T.), p. 370. Here, as usual, the views of Gentile are pretty well in agreement with those

expressed by De Ruggiero. Miss Underhill, in fact, seems anxious to detect differences between the idealism of Hegel and that of the modern Italians where in fact none exist. I do not mean that there are no differences ; but the views to which she takes excep- tion in the Italians are really not " new "-the Italians would be

indignant at being labelled " new idealists," as if their philosophy were something different from the well-established tradition of

post-Kantian idealism-but are the commonplaces of the post- Kantian tradition. It is indeed simply because they are common-

places that she has not quite understood them; for Gentile's books are written for the student who is presumed to have been

already well drilled in the philosophy of Kant and his successors. Hence the argument which I have set forth and described as the heart of Gentile's philosophy is for the most part rather assumed than stated by himself. It is the common ground of all idealism, and he takes for granted the reader's knowledge of it. Had he not done so, had he written a philosophical book for the



170 P. G. COLLINGWOOD.

untrained reader, he would have laid upon it an emphasis which he nowhere actually gives it. Thus his books are easy for the non-Italian reader to misunderstand: and this is especially the case if the reader approaches them with Bergson in his mind. Gentile never takes it into his head to point out his own diver-

gences from Bergson; he evidently sees no reason why he should do so, because he rightly thinks that there is between them no common ground. Hence I do not know that he even mentions the French philosopher in the whole course of his works.

The only divergence of view which I have so far been able to

find between Miss Underhill and Gentile is that, for Gentile, the

absolute spirit which is the ground of time and change subjects itself to these laws and does not impose them upon a reality outside itself; whereas I gather that Miss Underhill wants an absolute which is not merely the creator of time and change, but is not itself bound by the laws of its own making and is therefore to be described as unchanging. This negative qualification of the absolute goes beyond the positive qualification by which it is described as the author and ground of change. But I may be

wrong in thinking that Miss Underhill would insist on this negative term; and if she does, I feel bound to remind her that she has

(rightly, I think) denounced those philosophies which claim to

say what the universe is not. But I suspect that there may be graver differences not yet

brought to light. In the first place, when she asks whether this

*or that philosophy can dispense with mysticism, the phrase

conveys to my mind the following suggestion. I do not know

whether Miss Underhill would endorse the suggestion or not.

It is that philosophy, by its very nature as discursive thinking, is incapable of reaching ultimate truths, since these can only be

reached by a kind of intellectual intuition; and this disability on the part of philosophy attaches with especial force to those

philosophies which most emphatically renounce all claim to the




possession of such intuition. Now it is notorious that all idealism since Kant has maintained that ultimate truth is to be reached, if at all, only by hard thinking, by the critical development of rational theory, and not by any kind of intellectual intuition. There are to-day philosophies which still claim such an intuition, but none of these are idealistic, and Miss Underhill's selection of an object for attack suggests that she thinks the intuition of the

mystic to be a revelation of ultimate truth which the modern idealist misses by his own fault; while the intuitionist like

Bergson stands a chance of achieving it. Now if it is true that ultimate truths are to be reached by the

path of intuition, and not by the " labour of the notion," then

certainly all idealism is futile. So is all scientific and historical

thinking. And the only thing left for the person who wants to

get at the truth is to return like Nebuchadnezzar to the level of the instinctive animals and s'installer dans le 'mouvement, instead of trying to raise himself above it in order to understand it. I

do not know if Miss Underhill means to recommend the example of Nebuchadnezzar, but such counsel is a good deal in fashion

to-day. If on the other hand she means to recommend not the instinctive or infra-rational intuition of a Bergson but some

supra-rational intuition, I can only reply that I want further

particulars of it. Is it the intuitive vo&; of Aristotle ; and does she really mean us to go back to that as an ideal of know-

ledge? If so, then modern philosophy is indeed bankrupt. But if not, what is it ? Whatever it is, it is intuitive: and that means that it cannot explain or indeed express itself; and so it is perhaps useless for us to demand a description of it. It is as indescribable in itself as it is unable to describe the truths it

apprehends. It can only be the non-existent way of apprehending the non-existent.

But, I may be told, this intuitive thought is actually enjoyed by the mystics. It is non-existent; it is a quite familiar ex-




perience, and its object is the ultimate reality. To this I should

reply that I have no doubt either of the existence or of the

validity of the mystical experience. But I have the gravest doubts about its intuitive or immediate character. It is a

common thing that people who have certain experiences should

be unable to give an account of them, and it is hardly less common

that they should give a wrong account. If you ask an artist

how he composes his works of art, you may get for answer, " I

don't know " ; or you may, and often do, get a description which

is demonstrably false, and recognizably derived not from genuine

introspection but from some philosophy or psychology in fashion

at the moment. I suggest that this, which is so flagrantly true

of artists, may perhaps be true of mystics also; and that we

ought carefully to distinguish between the real mystical experience and the account of that experience which the mystic himself

gives when asked for one. Now Christian mysticism-I am not

entitled to express an opinion about other kinds-grew up in

close contact with a theory of knowledge derived from Greek

sources and culminating in the theory of intuitive vovi3 as the

method of apprehending ultimate realities. This being the

theory accepted by all psychologists of the period, there was every inducement for the mystic, when trying to give an account of the

psychology of his own mystical experience, to describe it as an

intellectual intuition. And this does not prove that it really was

an intellectual intuition, any more than the way in which artists

describe their own psychology in terms of Schopenhauer proves that Schopenhauer's philosophy is the true account of the

aesthetic experience. Nor on the other hand does the fact that

the theory of ,vois is discredited, as it certainly is, prove that the

mystical experience is an illusion. All it proves is that the mystical experience is not really immediate.

We need then to distinguish between mystical experiences and

descriptive theories of them. The mystics of history have com-




monly described their experiences in terms of a philosophy now out of date, a philosophy which no competent person now accepts. This need not induce us to throw mysticism overboard as an

illusion, but it saddles us with the serious duty of re-describing it in terms of our own philosophy. Modern idealism maintains that all experience is mediate, and therefore it is bound to show that mystical experience is mediate too, and that the traditional

account of it as intuitive mutilates and distorts it. I do not think that this is a difficult task. It is easy to show that all sorts of

processes of thought have been going on in the mystic's mind, and that the only reason why he overlooked their presence was that he tried his utmost to bring his experience within the narrow frame of the intuitive theory of knowledge. That theory once

destroyed mysticism is easier, not harder, to welcome as a

genuine form of experience. I ought perhaps to close with a rough sketch of the way in

which a modern idealistic philosophy might carry out this pro- gramme. I am aware that in doing so I recklessly expose myself to criticism; but criticism is what I want. Mysticism, then, is a thing which an idealistic philosophy cannot dispense with, in the sense that it cannot frame a view of human life without

including it. The function of mysticism in such a view will be not to take the place of scientific or philosophical thought but to have a place of its own. Its peculiarity is perhaps to be sought in the fact that in it the mediation which is actually present is not wholly explicit: the mind reaches truths, but does not know how it has reached them. It may even think that it has not reached them by any path, that is by any describable process of

thinking; but this, if it is believed, is wrongly believed. The truths in question are reached somehow, and it is the business of scientific or philosophical thought to lay bare this concealed

process, to render explicit the mediation which in the mystical experience itself was only implicit. " Substantial truth," said




Hegel, and every idealist will agree, "is not dependent for its

first revelation upon philosophy." In the mystical experience substantial truth is actually attained, and it remains for philosophy to explain how it was attained. If the mystic likes to hug the idea that his truths were revealed to him by a miracle which

no philosophy can explain or describe, such a self-deception is

his own affair. That is not mysticism, but a superstitious belief

about mysticism. The necessity of mystical experience lies in

the principle that we discover new truths neither by the inference

of the logic-books nor by the intuition of Aristotle, but by an act

of mind which reaches out beyond the given, grasps the

new thought as it were in the dark, and only after that con-

solidates its new conquest by building up to it a bridge of reasoned

proof. But the building of this bridge, which is the task of

reflection, is only the bringing out into visibility on the sensitive

plate of what has already been recorded upon it, the rendering

explicit of a mediation or proof which was already there implicitly. The darkness and obscurity which all mystics recognize as a

feature of their own experience, by whatever name they call it

(inexpressible, ineffable, etc.), is nothing but the implicitness of

thought in the mystical experience. Thus the mystical experience is never complete in itself, it always requires to be explicated and tested by philosophical reflection, which alone can say what it

is that in our mystical experience we have discovered, and indeed

whether we have discovered anything at all, and have not been

merely the victims of an illusion. For taken by itself, the

mystical experience may always be illusory, and this is fully admitted by Miss Underhill when she speaks of " the excesses to

which it has always been liable." To check these excesses

something other than mysticism is obviously necessary, and this

we find in the discipline, without which mysticism would be mere

vapouring, of conscious critical thought. This thought is

philosophy, and it is the business of philosophy to criticize



CAN THE NEW IDEALISM DISPENSE WITH MYSTICISM 1? 175

mysticism, not the business of mysticism to criticize philosophy. But, as the old verse has it, which is philosopher and which is

mystic, " God bless us all, that's quite another thing."*

* Miss Underhill appeals for an explanation of the saying that reality is not (does not exist) but creates itself. The word " exist" here means to exist in a perfectly pure undifferentiated and unchanging self-identity. This is the technical sense of the word fixed by Hegel in the first category of his logic. When Gentile says that reality does not exist he is only saying that it is not a mere empty undifferentiated one, but that it has within it articulations, processes, activities. He is denying rather the adequacy of the category than its abstract applicability.



176 W. R. INGE.

III.-By W. R. INGE.

I DO not know who chose the title of this discussion, nor what he meant by it. Miss Underhill, following Dr. Bosanquet, takes Croce and Gentile as the representatives and protagonists of the New Idealism. Mr. Collingwood says that Croce and Gentile would be indignant at being called New Idealists, but he takes their philosophy as the subject of his paper on New Idealism. So I suppose we must infer that there are no New Idealists; and, it appears from Mr. Collingwood's paper, no mystics either, except a few incompetent thinkers who still study Plato and his successors. Mr. Collingwood argues that Dr. Bosanquet and Miss Underhill have quite misunderstood Croce and Gentile. On the other hand, Miss Underhill and I would agree that Mr.

Collingwood has not understood Mysticism. Further, if Dr.

Bosanquet and Miss Underhill are right in their interpretation of what they call the New Idealism, the question whether the New Idealism can dispense with Mysticism seems to me absurd. It is like asking whether democracy can dispense with autocracy. For the two philosophies, or views of reality, seem to be at

opposite poles. If the mystics are right, Croce and Gentile, as

interpreted by Miss Underhill, are wrong. If on the other hand Mr. Collingwood is right in his view of Mysticism, one need not be a New Idealist in order to dispense with it.

Mr. Collingwood says that Croce and Gentile are not New

Idealists, because their idealism is as old as Kant and Hegel. If so, we might still keep the name New Idealism, to distinguish post-Kantian philosophy from what is sometimes called the Idealism of the Greeks. This is a distinction which certainly needs to be drawn. Adamson makes the fundamental principle of Idealism the attribution of an existential character to truth,




and the regarding of objects of intellectual apprehension as

constituting a realm of existence, over against which, he adds

unnecessarily, the world of concrete facts stands in inexplicable opposition. This is the Idealism of Plato. On the other hand, modern Idealism asserts with Kant that there are none but

thinking beings. This modern Idealism is sometimes called Mentalism. According to this theory, all reality is mental; material things, if they are not apprehended by mind, are nothing at all. The two philosophies thus lumped together by the name Idealism differ more than is always realized. Plato's Ideas are real because they are eternal and unchanging, whereas the objects of sense-perception change and pass. The Ideas are not real because they are the thoughts of any subject. It is true that Platonism is constrained to hold that they are the thoughts of God. The multiplicity of the Ideas must be gathered into a

system, and they must, Platonists have thought, be subsumed under a unity. They cannot owe anything to human minds, which can only apprehend them imperfectly; but they may be said to be the content of the mind of God. The later Platonists

taught quite distinctly that reality consists in a unity in duality of the divine mind and the realm of objective existence, the

intelligible world. The divine mind does not create the in-

telligible world, but cannot be separated from it. Subject and

object in the intelligible world are co-extensive and completely harmonized, though their unity in duality points to a " One

beyond existence," the Absolute. The fact that the existence of Ideas, for the Platonist, does not depend on our knowing them, makes a real gulf between Platonism, which tends to what might be called a kind of transcendental pantheism, and post-Kantian MIentalism.

But I imagine that the title of this discussion was determined by Dr. Bosanquet's book on the meeting of extremes in philosophy, and that whoever chose the subject wished to consider whether

N



178 W. R. INGE.

the school of thought which Dr. Bosanquet, rightly or wrongly, associates with the names of Croce and Gentile, can come to

terms with Mysticism--another meeting of extremes, I suppose. Whether Dr. Bosanquet or Mr. Collingwood is right in his inter-

pretation of the Italians, I am quite incompetent to judge, since

I am a very poor Italian scholar. But the type of philosophy which Dr. Bosanquet and Miss Underhill call New Idealism

certainly exists, and it recognizes its antipathy to Mysticism, as Miss Underhill has shown. I do not forget that, according to Mr. Collingwood, " both Croce and Gentile identify Mysticism with religion," and desire to find a place for religion in their scheme of human life. But the place which they assign to it is a place which Mysticism scornfully refuses to accept. "Religion," says Mr. Collingwood, "has not that singleness of aim which marks a true form of the spirit "; and therefore, I suppose, Mysticism, which is identified with religion, "has not that

singleness of aim which marks a true form of the spirit." Now

singleness of aim is the very heart of Mysticism, whether specu- lative or experimental. No one, it would be safe to say, was ever a mystic without singleness of aim. Croce, however, Mr.

Collingwood tells us, advanced beyond this position, and came to see in religion " the need for an orientation towards the concept and the value of life and reality as a whole." How religion can be the need for an orientation is not very easy to understand, and the statement which follows, that " any religion is better than none," is highly disputable. Gentile, it would seem, has

developed these hints into a philosophy of religion, in which the close connexion between religion and art is insisted on. Having only Mr. Collingwood's summary to go upon, I can only say that it seems to me much further from the philosophy of Mysticism than Mr. Collingwood thinks.

Mr. Collingwood makes his own opinion of the mystics clear when he says: " It is notorious that all Idealism since Kant has




maintained that ultimate truth is to be reached, if at all, only by hard thinking, by the critical development of rational theory and not by any kind of intellectual intuition." Surely it is

impossible to say that all modern idealists are supporters of this

very crude rationalism. And when we read on in the hope of

discovering what place is left for Mysticism in his scheme, we find only that whereas " the mystics of history have commonly described their experiences in terms of a philosophy now out of

date, a philosophy which no competent person now accepts, we are saddled with the serious duty of redescribing it in terms of our own philosophy," But what is " our own philosophy "? I thought there were at least half a dozen, including, for example, those of Gentile and Bergson, who, we are told, " have no common

ground." I do not profess to be a competent person, and therefore I am not ashamed of holding the philosophy which no com-

petent person accepts. It is your misfortune and not my fault that you have to listen to a speaker who does not think that the old Greeks and their Christian disciples were fools. But this at any rate I can say, that anyone who thinks that divine truth is to be reached " by hard thinking only " is out of court as a critic of Mysticism, not understanding its fundamental pre- suppositions.

I will quote three out of the many definitions of Mysticism. Professor Frank Granger says: " Mysticism is that attitude of mind which divines and moves towards the spiritual in the common things of life, not a partial and occasional operation of the mind under the guidance of far-fetched analogies." Dr. Rufus Jones: " Mysticism is that type of religion which puts the emphasis on immediate awareness of relation with God, on direct and immediate consciousness of the divine presence. It is religion in its most acute, direct, and living stage." Professor

Moberly: " It is an inward light which makes itself manifest as

character; a direct communion of love which is also to the



180 W. R. INGE.

fullest extent wholly rational at once and wholly practical; it

is as much knowledge as love, and love as knowledge; it is as

truly contemplation as activity, and activity as contemplation." This claim to immediate revelation or inspiration is a stumb-

ling-block to Mr. Collingwood, as it is to many others. " Ideas

must be given through something," and the mystics, he thinks, claim that their knowledge of God is given through nothing. But the mystical experience must be carefully distinguished from

what the Catholic theologians call " ontologism," the theory that the existence of God is guaranteed by the very nature of the mind of man, which has a direct consciousness of the Divine

in nature. The best Catholic theologians say that our belief in

the existence of God is of the nature of a valid inference, a reason-

able basis for faith. Faith is a venture ; it begins as the resolution

to stand or fall by the noblest hypothesis. The man who has

made this resolution embarks upon a life of strict discipline, which involves the consecration of all his faculties. Mysticism does not divide human nature into a bundle of separate faculties, one of which may be cultivated and another starved. There is

no such thing as " pure " intellect, or " pure " feeling. The

man must be saved entire, or not at all. This discipline is com-

monly called purification or purgation, because to our experience it takes the form of stripping off alien accretions which impede the free activity of the soul. As we advance in this discipline, the true nature of existence becomes more and more clear to us.

We come into possession of new data for that intellectual synthesis which we are always, and rightly, striving to form. Thus the

second stage in the mystical ascent is called illumination. We

begin to breathe the air of the eternal spiritual world. Our

apprehension of this higher world is strictly limited by the extent

of our inner spiritual progress. We can know only that in which

we participate. This is the foundation of the mystical theory of knowledge, and the axiom on which the whole mystical philo-



CAN THE NEW IDEALISM DISPENSE WITH MYSTICISM I 181

sophy of religion is built. The soul of man is capax deitatis, but it is only by lifelong effort and concentration that it can fully enter into its heritage. Those who have attained to " illumination" do not claim to have any new or abnormal faculty for

apprehending the Divine. If there is any " mystical faculty," it is one which, as Plotinus says, " all possess but few use." It is not however necessary or desirable to speak of a mystical faculty at all. In the stage of illumination the eternal world is like an atmosphere breathed by the soul. Truly, the mystic at this stage can no more feel any doubt about the existence of the kingdom of ultimate values in which he lives. As compared with the early stages of the life of faith, he may say that he has " knowledge "; Clement of Alexandria is not afraid of the word " Gnostic." It is by thinkers who have reached this stage that the noblest philosophies of religion are formulated. The main facts are now for the first time in the possession of the philosopher. But there is no standing still in the spiritual life. The soul, in

the fine words of Plotinus, "is always attaining and always aspiring." Within the " illuminated " tract of the soul's journey, progress is made chiefly by "love." It is the " spirit in love "

(vov 'p&iwv) which attains to the beatific vision. Love is the

hierophant of the supreme mysteries; and from time to time

(so those who have penetrated furthest into the lonely regions of the spiritual Himalayas aver) the separation between subject and object seems to break down. They are, for a brief space, fully identified with what they behold and contemplate. Per-

sonality seems to be transcended, and complete immediacy attained. This experience, however, is not an essential part of the mystical scheme. It is exceedingly rare, and we need not theorize about it.

The basis of this philosophy is experiential. Like all genuine philosophy, it is an attempt to co-ordinate known facts. But it seems to me to postulate just that doctrine of transcendence



182 W. R. INGE.

which the New Idealism, if I understand it rightly, denies.

Nothing could be more devastating to the mystic than to be

persuaded that his own mind is the creator of the vision of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty which draws him upward. Ascende per te ipsum supra te ipsum is the call which he hears. No doubt it is his creed that what he knows must be, in a sense, part of

himself; but he envisages this higher knowledge as a gift from

above, transforming his own personality. The Spirit, the In-

dwelling Christ, or whatever he calls it, is a Power quite inde-

pendent of himself, and in no sense whatever the product of his

own mental activity. For this reason, the philosophy of Mys- ticism seems to me to belong to the older Idealism, and to be

antipathetic to post-Kantian Mentalism. Its affinity with

Platonism is notorious; the modern revolt against the Greeks

has also been, to some extent, a revolt against Mysticism. The

psychologists will deny this; but in my opinion the psychologist who studies Mysticism must do so from outside, and without

real understanding. The psychologist, as such, studies states

of consciousness. The mystic cares nothing about states of

consciousness; he is only interested in distinguishing genuine intuition from subjective fancies. If he thought that all his vision

was subjective, he would soon follow Mr. Gigadibs who has " tested

his first plough, and studied his last chapter of St. John."

Whether the New Idealism is or is not a philosophy of change is the main point in dispute between the readers of the two papers which you have just heard. I am not competent to join in this

controversy. But it seems to be clear that for Croce and

Gentile the basis of reality is historical. The universe is for them, as Dr. Bosanquet says, an advance in time, a succession of events.

He quotes from Croce: "From the cosmic point of view, at

which we are now placing ourselves, reality displays itself as a

continual growing upon itself; nor can a real regress be con-

ceived, because evil, being that which is not, is unreal, and that




which is, is always and exclusively good. Cosmic progress then is itself also an object of affirmation, not problematic but

apodeictic." I am surprised that Dr. Bosanquet, who justly protests against " the narrow basis of humanism " on which this

conception of progress rests, does not also call attention to an obvious logical fallacy. If evil is unreal, the escape from it is

also unreal; there is nothing to escape from. A progress from

that which is not is an unreal progress. Croce proceeds: " The Spirit, an infinite possibility over-

flowing into infinite actuality, has drawn, and is drawing every moment, the cosmos out of chaos, has collected the diffused life

into the concentrated life of the organism, has effected the

transition from animal to human life, has created and is creating modes of life even more lofty. The infinity of our desire is a

proof of the infinity of that progress. The plant dreams of the

animal, the animal of man, and man of the superman; this, too, is reality, if it is reality that in every movement of history man

surpasses himself." A certain amount of petulance is pardonable in face of such

nonsense as this. What is called progress is that kind of evolu-

tionary change which is assumed to be for the advantage of the

species which calls it progress. Of course the universe contains

every kind of evolution and involution, the two processes balancing each other. In the world of time, or of Space-Time, which is here in question, what goes up must come down; what

is born must die. Whether an animal dreams of man I do not

know; if he does, it can be only when his dinner has disagreed with him. I can imagine a historian in the planet Venus writing more or less in this style: " On planet Number 3 of our system the disappearance of the great saurians was followed by the

gradual emergence of the Hominidae, the most ingenious, cruel

and destructive of the large apes. For a short time-about ten

thousand years-they established a veritable tyranny over the



184 W. R. INGE.

planet, exterminating many of the other mammals and enslaving the rest. Their career was terminated when they found out how to

disrupt the atom, a discovery which they characteristically used to

extirpate each other and to reduce the earth to the desert condition in which our first colonists found it. The extinction of this noxious

species is often appealed to by our theologians as the strongest

argument for the providential government of the universe." What is the motive which underlies this ridiculous and un-

scientific theory of progress ad infinitum, which, we are told, has

taken the place of beliefs no longer held by competent persons ?

Clearly, it is the desire to introduce value into the time-process, which the New Idealists hold to be absolute. Since time is

always hurling its own products into nothingness, and since, ex hypothesi, there is no unchanging and eternal world from which

transitory manifestations of the Good, the True, and the Beau- tiful derive such reality and such value as they possess, the

process of change must itself be a value; in other words, all

change must be from worse to better. And since there is no

judge of worse and better except the species to which we happen to belong, all developments of human society, whether intrinsic

or merely environmental, must be improvements, and from this

happy conviction we may infer that the whole universe, including

God, if there is such a Being, is moving steadily in the right direction. " This work," says Croce, " is never completed, nor

even will be." New Idealists and New Realists seem to agree in repudiating a perfection in the universe which is apprehended

through religious experience and philosophical speculation, outside the scenes of temporal events. This, however, is the

creed of Mysticism.

My conclusion is not that the new Idealism can or cannot

dispense with Mysticism, but that Mysticism can very well

dispense with it.

HIIARRIs' s Sos, Ltd., Printers in Ordinary to HIis Majesty, St. Martin's Lane, W.C.2.



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Collingwood - Underhill - Inge Symposium Can the New Idealism Dispense With Mysticism