For birth hath in itself the germ of death,
      But death hath in itself the germ of birth. 
    It is the falling acorn buds the tree,
    The falling rain that bears the greenery,
      The fern-plants moulder when the ferns arise. 
      For there is nothing lives but something dies,
    And there is nothing dies but something lives.

But Francis Thompson’s most entirely mystical utterance is the famous Ode—­The Hound of Heaven—­where he pictures with a terrible vividness and in phrase of haunting music the old mystic idea of the Love chase.[83] It is the idea expressed by Plotinus when he says, “God ... is present with all things, though they are ignorant that He is so.  For they fly from Him, or rather from themselves.  They are unable, therefore, to apprehend that from which they fly” (Ennead, vi.  Sec. 7).  We see the spirit of man fleeing in terror “down the nights and down the days” before the persistent footsteps of his “tremendous Lover,” until, beaten and exhausted, he finds himself at the end of the chase face to face with God, and he realises there is for him no escape and no hiding-place save in the arms of God Himself.

The voices of the English poets and writers form but one note in a mighty chorus of witnesses whose testimony it is impossible for any thoughtful person to ignore.  Undoubtedly, in the case of some mystics, there has been great disturbance both of the psychic and physical nature, but on this account to disqualify the statements of Plotinus, St Augustine, Eckhart, Catherine of Siena, Catherine of Genoa, Blake, and Wordsworth, would seem analogous to Macaulay’s view that “perhaps no person can be a poet, or can even enjoy poetry without a certain unsoundness of mind.”  Our opinion about this must depend on what we mean by “soundness of mind.”  To some it may appear possible that the mystics and poets are as sound as their critics.  In any case, the unprejudiced person to-day would seem driven to the conclusion that these people, who are, many of them, exceptionally great, intellectually and morally, are telling us of a genuine experience which has transformed life for them.  What, then, is the meaning of this experience?  What explanation can we give of this puzzling and persistent factor in human life and history?  These are not easy questions to answer, and only a bare hint of lines of solution dare be offered.

It is of interest to note that the last word in science and philosophy tends to reinforce and even to explain the position of the mystic.  The latest of European philosophers, M. Bergson, builds up on a mystical basis the whole of his method of thought, that is, on his perception of the simple fact that true duration, the real time-flow, is known to us by a state of feeling which he calls intuition, and not by an intellectual act.