conception of God and salvation. The faculty of
contemplation, according to Roman Catholic teaching, is acquired
"_either_ by virtue _or_ by gratuitous favour." The dualism of natural
and supernatural thus allows men to claim independent merit, while the
interventions of God are arbitrary and unaccountable.]

[Footnote 230: Those who are interested to see how utterly defenceless
this theory leaves us against the silliest delusions, may consult with
advantage the _Dictionary of Mysticism_, by the Abbe Migne (_passim_),
or, if they wish to ascend nearer to the fountain-head of these
legends, there are the sixty folio volumes of _Acta Sanctorum_,
compiled by the Bollandists. Goerres and Ribet are also very full of
these stories.]

[Footnote 231: See Appendix C.]

[Footnote 232: The difference between contemplation and meditation is
explained by all the mediaeval mystics. Meditation is "discursive,"
contemplation is "mentis in Deum suspensae elevatio." Richard of St.
Victor states the distinction epigrammatically--"per meditationem
rimamur, per contemplationem miramur." ("Admiratio est actus
consequens contemplationem sublimis veritatis."--Thomas Aquinas.)]

[Footnote 233: This arbitrary schematism is very characteristic of
this type of Mysticism, and shows its affinity to Indian philosophy.
Compare "the eightfold path of Buddha," and a hundred other similar
classifications in the sacred books of the East.]

[Footnote 234: The date usually given, 1260, is probably too late; but
the exact year cannot be determined.]

[Footnote 235: Prof. Karl Pearson (_Mina_, 1886) says, "The Mysticism
of Eckhart owes its leading ideas to Averroes." He traces the doctrine
of the [Greek: Nous poietikos] from Aristotle, _de Anima_, through
the Arabs to Eckhart, and finds a close resemblance between the
"prototypes" or "ideas" of Eckhart and the "Dinge an sich" of Kant.
But Eckhart's affinities with Plotinus and Hegel seem to me to be
closer than those which he shows with Aristotle and Kant. On the
connexion with Averroes, Lasson says that while there is a close
resemblance between the Eckhartian doctrine of the "Seelengrund" and
Averroes' _Intellectus Agens_ as the universal principle of reason in
all men (monopsychism), they differ in this--that with Averroes
personality is a phase or accident, but with Eckhart the eternal is
immanent in the personality in such a way that the personality itself
has a part in eternity (_Meister Eckhart