shut it off from being THAT --it is as if he
lessened it. So we deny the "this," negating the negation which it
seems to us to imply, in the interests of the higher affirmative
attitude by which we are possessed. The fountain-head of Christian
mysticism is Dionysius the Areopagite.

He describes the absolute truth by negatives exclusively.

[263] Muller's translation, part ii. p. 180.

"The cause of all things is neither soul nor intellect; nor has it
imagination, opinion, or reason, or intelligence; nor is it reason or
intelligence; nor is it spoken or thought. It is neither number, nor
order, nor magnitude, nor littleness, nor equality, nor inequality, nor
similarity, nor dissimilarity. It neither stands, nor moves, nor
rests.... It is neither essence, nor eternity, nor time. Even
intellectual contact does not belong to it. It is neither science nor
truth. It is not even royalty or wisdom; not one; not unity; not
divinity or goodness; nor even spirit as we know it," etc., ad
libitum.[264]

[264] T. Davidson's translation, in Journal of Speculative Philosophy,
1893, vol. xxii., p. 399.

But these qualifications are denied by Dionysius, not because the truth
falls short of them, but because it so infinitely excels them. It is
above them. It is SUPER-lucent, SUPER-splendent, SUPER-essential,
SUPER-sublime, SUPER EVERYTHING that can be named. Like Hegel in his
logic, mystics journey towards the positive pole of truth only by the
"Methode der Absoluten Negativitat."[265]

[265] "Deus propter excellentiam non immerito Nihil vocatur." Scotus
Erigena, quoted by Andrew Seth: Two Lectures on Theism, New York,
1897, p. 55.

Thus come the paradoxical expressions that so abound in mystical
writings. As when Eckhart tells of the still desert of the Godhead,
"where never was seen difference, neither Father, Son, nor Holy Ghost,
where there is no one at home, yet where the spark of the soul is more
at peace than in itself."[266] As when Boehme writes of the Primal
Love, that "it may fitly be compared to Nothing, for it is deeper than
any Thing, and is as nothing with respect to all things, forasmuch as
it is not comprehensible by any of them. And because it is nothing
respectively, it is therefore free from all things, and is that only
good, which a man cannot express or utter what it is, there being
nothing to which it may be compared, to express it by."[267] Or as
when Angelus Silesius sings:--