from extreme holiness; and tells us how one saint had the power of becoming invisible, another of walking through closed doors, and a third of flying through the air.  “Natural Mysticism” deals with divination, lycanthropy, vampires, second sight, and other barbarous superstitions.  “Diabolical Mysticism” includes witchcraft, diabolical possession, and the hideous stories of incubi and succubae.  It is not my intention to say any more about these savage survivals, as I do not wish to bring my subject into undeserved contempt[335].  “These terrors, and this darkness of the mind,” as Lucretius says, “must be dispelled, not by the bright shafts of the sun’s light, but by the study of Nature’s laws[336].”

Some of these fables are quite obviously due to a materialisation of conventional symbols.  These symbols are the picture language into which the imagination translates what the soul has felt.  A typical case is that of the miniature image of Christ, which is said to have been found embedded in the heart of a deceased saint.  The supposed miracle was, of course, the work of imagination; but this does not mean that those who reported it were deliberate liars.  We know now that we must distinguish between observation and imagination, between the language of science and that of poetical metaphor; but in an age which abhorred rationalism this was not so clear[337].  Rationalism has its function in proving that such mystical symbols are not physical facts.  But when it goes on to say that they are related to physical facts as morbid hallucinations to realities, it has stepped outside its province.

Proceeding a little further as we trace the development of natural or objective religion, we come to the belief in magic, which in primitive peoples is closely associated with their first attempts at experimental science.  What gives magic its peculiar character is that it is based on fanciful, and not on real correspondences.  The uneducated mind cannot distinguish between associations of ideas which are purely arbitrary and subjective, and those which have a more universal validity.  Not, of course, that all the affinities seized upon by primitive man proved illusory; but those which were not so ceased to be magical, and became scientific.  The savage draws no distinction between the process by which he makes fire and that by which his priest calls down rain, except that the latter is a professional secret; drugs and spells are used indifferently to cure the sick; astronomy and astrology are parts of the same science.  There is, however, a difference between the magic which is purely naturalistic and that which makes mystical claims.  The magician sometimes claims that the spirits are subject to him, not because he has learned how to wield the forces which they must obey, but because he has so purged his higher faculties that the occult sympathies of nature have become apparent to him.  His theosophy claims to be a spiritual illumination, not a scientific