Bonaventura resembles Albertus in reverting more decidedly than the Victorines to the Dionysian tradition.  He expatiates on the passivity and nakedness of the soul which is necessary in order to enter into the Divine darkness, and elaborates with tiresome pedantry his arbitrary schemes of faculties and stages.  However, he gains something by his knowledge of Aristotle, which he uses to correct the Neoplatonic doctrine of God as abstract Unity.  “God is ’ideo omnimodum,’” he says finely, “quia summe unum.”  He is “totum intra omnia et totum extra”—­a succinct statement that God is both immanent and transcendent.  His proof of the Trinity is original and profound.  It is the nature of the Good to impart itself, and so the highest Good must be “summe diffusivum sui,” which can only be in hypostatic union.

The last great scholastic mystic is Gerson, who lived from 1363 to 1429.  He attempts to reduce Mysticism to an exact science, tabulating and classifying all the teaching of his predecessors.  A very brief summary of his system is here given.

Gerson distinguishes symbolical, natural, and mystical theology, confining the last to the method which rests on inner experiences, and proceeds by the negative road.  The experiences of the mystic have a greater certainty than any external revelations can possess.

Gerson’s psychology may be given in outline as follows:  The cognitive power has three faculties:  (1) simple intelligence or natural light, an outflow from the highest intelligence, God Himself; (2) the understanding, which is on the frontier between the two worlds; (3) sense-consciousness.  To each of these three faculties answers one of the affective faculties:  (1) synteresis;[231] (2) understanding, rational desire; (3) sense-affections.  To these again correspond three activities:  (1) contemplation; (2) meditation;[232] (3) thought.

Mystical theology differs from speculative (i.e. scholastic), in that mystical theology belongs to the affective faculties, not the cognitive; that it does not depend on logic, and is therefore open even to the ignorant; that it is not open to the unbelieving, since it rests upon faith and love; and that it brings peace, whereas speculation breeds unrest.

The “means of mystical theology” are seven:  (i.) the call of God; (ii.) certainty that one is called to the contemplative life—­all are not so; (iii.) freedom from encumbrances; (iv.) concentration of interests upon God; (v.) perseverance; (vi.) asceticism; but the body must not be maltreated if it is to be a good servant; (vii.) shutting the eye to all sense perceptions.[233]

Such teaching as this is of small value or interest.  Mysticism itself becomes arid and formal in the hands of Gerson.  The whole movement was doomed to failure, inasmuch as scholasticism was philosophy in chains, and the negative road was Mysticism blindfolded.  No fruitful reconciliation between philosophy and piety could be thus achieved.  The decay of scholasticism put an end to these attempts at compromise.  Henceforward the mystics either discard metaphysics, and develop their theology on the devotional and ascetic side—­the course which was followed by the later Catholic mystics; or they copy Erigena in his independent attitude towards tradition.