a native Indian judge who I believe is still living.  His object is to explain and commend to Western readers the mystical philosophy of his own country:[175]—­“He who in perfect rest rises from the body and attains the highest light, comes forth in his own proper form.  This is the immortal soul.  The ascent is by the ladder of one’s thoughts.  To know God, one must first know one’s own spirit in its purity, unspotted by thought.  The soul is hidden behind the veil of thought, and only when thought is worn off, becomes visible to itself.  This stage is called knowledge of the soul.  Next is realised knowledge of God, who rises from the bosom of the soul.  This is the end of progress; differentiation between self and others has ceased.  All the world of thought and senses is melted into an ocean without waves or current.  This dissolution of the world is also known as the death of the sinful or worldly ‘I,’ which veils the true Ego.  Then the formless Being of the Deity is seen in the regions of pure consciousness beyond the veil of thought.  Consciousness is wholly distinct from thought and senses; it knows them; they do not know it.  The only proof is an appeal to spiritual experience.”  In the highest stage one is absolutely inert, “knowing nothing in particular.[176]”

Most of this would have been accepted as precious truth by the mediaeval Church mystics.[177] The words nakedness, darkness, nothingness, passivity, apathy, and the like, fill their pages.  We shall find that this time-honoured phraseology was adhered to long after the grave moral dangers which beset this type of Mysticism had been recognised.  Tauler, for instance, who lays the axe to the root of the tree by saying, “Christ never arrived at the emptiness of which these men talk,” repeats the old jargon for pages together.  German Mysticism really rested on another basis, and when Luther had the courage to break with ecclesiastical tradition, the via negativa rapidly disappeared within the sphere of his influence.

But it held sway for a long time—­so long that we cannot complain if many have said, “This is the essence of Mysticism.”  Mysticism is such a vague word, that one must not quarrel with any “private interpretation” of it; but we must point out that this limitation excludes the whole army of symbolists, a school which, in Europe at least, has shown more vitality than introspective Mysticism.  I regard the via negativa in metaphysics, religion, and ethics as the great accident of Christian Mysticism.  The break-up of the ancient civilisation, with the losses and miseries which it brought upon humanity, and the chaos of brutal barbarism in which Europe weltered for some centuries, caused a widespread pessimism and world-weariness which is foreign to the temper of Europe, and which gave way to energetic and full-blooded activity in the Renaissance and Reformation.  Asiatic Mysticism is the natural refuge of men who have lost faith in civilisation,