d
of the spiritual life. It is a rare gift, bestowed by supernatural
grace. Richard says that the first stage of contemplation is an
expansion of the soul, the second an exaltation, the third an
_alienation_. The first arises from human effort, the second from
human effort assisted by Divine grace, the third from Divine grace
alone. The predisposing conditions for the third state are devotion
(_devotio_), admiration (_admiratio_), and joy (_exaltatio_); but
these cannot _produce_ ecstasy, which is a purely supernatural
infusion.

This sharp opposition between the natural and the supernatural, which
is fully developed first by Richard of St. Victor, is the
distinguishing feature of Catholic Mysticism. It is an abandonment of
the great aim which the earlier Christian idealists had set before
themselves, namely, to find spiritual law in the normal course of
nature, and the motions of the Divine Word in the normal processes of
mind. St. John's great doctrine of the Logos as a cosmic principle is
now dropped. Roman Catholic apologists[227] claim that Mysticism was
thus set free from the "idealistic pantheism" of the Neoplatonist, and
from the "Gnostic-Manichean dualism" which accompanies it. The world
of space and time (they say) is no longer regarded, as it was by the
Neoplatonist, as a fainter effluence from an ideal world, nor is human
individuality endangered by theories of immanence. Both nature and man
regain a sort of independence. We once more tread as free men on solid
ground, while occasional "supernatural phenomena" are not wanting to
testify to the existence of higher powers.

We have seen that the Logos-doctrine (as understood by St. Clement) is
exceptionally liable to perversion; but the remedy of discarding it is
worse than the disease. The unscriptural[228] and unphilosophical
cleft between natural and supernatural introduces a more intractable
dualism than that of Origen. The faculty which, according to this
theory, possesses immediate intuition into the things of God is not
only irresponsible to reason, but stands in no relation to it. It
ushers us into an entirely new world, where the familiar criteria of
truth and falsehood are inapplicable. And what it reveals to us is not
a truer and deeper view of the actual, but a wholly independent cosmic
principle which invades the world of experience as a disturbing force,
spasmodically subverting the laws of nature in order to show its power
over them.[229] For