we give any
account or furnish any likeness, although the mysterious and
sweet-tasting wisdom comes home so clearly to the inmost parts of our
soul. Fancy a man seeing a certain kind of thing for the first time in
his life. He can understand it, use and enjoy it, but he cannot apply a
name to it, nor communicate any idea of it, even though all the while
it be a mere thing of sense. How much greater will be his
powerlessness when it goes beyond the senses! This is the peculiarity
of the divine language. The more infused, intimate, spiritual, and
supersensible it is, the more does it exceed the senses, both inner and
outer, and impose silence upon them....

The soul then feels as if placed in a vast and profound solitude, to
which no created thing has access, in an immense and boundless desert,
desert the more delicious the more solitary it is. There, in this abyss
of wisdom, the soul grows by what it drinks in from the well-springs of
the comprehension of love, ... and recognizes, however sublime and
learned may be the terms we employ, how utterly vile, insignificant,
and improper they are, when we seek to discourse of divine things by
their means."[252]

[251] M. ReCeJac, in a recent volume, makes them essential. Mysticism
he defines as "the tendency to draw near to the Absolute morally AND BY
THE AID OF SYMBOLS." See his Fondements de la Connaissance mystique,
Paris, 1897, p. 66. But there are unquestionably mystical conditions
in which sensible symbols play no part.

[252] Saint John of the Cross: The Dark Night of the Soul, book ii.
ch. xvii., in Vie et Oeuvres, 3me edition, Paris, 1893, iii. 428-432.
Chapter xi. of book ii. of Saint John's Ascent of Carmel is devoted to
showing the harmfulness for the mystical life of the use of sensible
imagery.

I cannot pretend to detail to you the sundry stages of the Christian
mystical life.[253] Our time would not suffice, for one thing; and
moreover, I confess that the subdivisions and names which we find in
the Catholic books seem to me to represent nothing objectively
distinct. So many men, so many minds: I imagine that these
experiences can be as infinitely varied as are the idiosyncrasies of
individuals.

[253] In particular I omit mention of visual and auditory
hallucinations, verbal and graphic automatisms, and such marvels as
"levitation," stigmatization, and the healing of disease. These
phenomena, which mystics have often presented (or are belie