outgrew it; introspective Mysticism
never valued it. The use of visible things as stimulants to piety is
another matter; it has its place in the systems of the Catholic
mystics, but as a very early stage in the spiritual ascent. What I
have said as to the inconsistency of a high sacramental doctrine with
the favourite injunctions to "cast away all images," which we find in
the mediaeval mystics, is, I think, indisputable.]

[Footnote 331: The most recent developments of German idealistic
philosophy, as set forth in the cosmology of Lotze, and still more of
Fechner, may perhaps be described as an attempt to preserve the truth
of Animism on a much higher plane, without repudiating the
universality of law.]

[Footnote 332: I refer especially to Huysmans' two "mystical" novels,
_En Route_ and _La Cathedrale_. The naked Fetishism of the latter book
almost passes belief. We have a Madonna who is good-natured at Lourdes
and cross-grained at La Salette; who likes "pretty speeches and little
coaxing ways" in "paying court" to her, and who at the end is
apostrophised as "our Lady of the Pillar," "our Lady of the Crypt." It
may perhaps be excusable to resort to such expedients as these in the
conversion of savages; but there is something singularly repulsive in
the picture (drawn apparently from life) of a profligate man of
letters seeking salvation in a Christianity which has lowered itself
far beneath educated paganism. At any rate, let not the name of
Mysticism be given to such methods.]

[Footnote 333: I refer especially to the horrors connected with the
belief in witchcraft, on which see Lecky, _Rationalism in Europe_,
vol. i. "Remy, a judge of Nancy, boasted that he had put to death
eight hundred witches in sixteen years." "In the bishopric of
Wartzburg, nine hundred were burnt in one year." As late as 1850, some
French peasants burnt alive a woman named Bedouret, whom they supposed
to be a witch.]

[Footnote 334: The degradation of Mysticism in the Roman Church since
the Reformation may be estimated by comparing the definitions of
Mysticism and Mystical Theology current in the Middle Ages with the
following from Ribet, who is recognised as a standard authority on the
subject: "La Theologie mystique, au point de vue subjectif et
experimental, nous semble pouvoir etre definie; une attraction
surnaturelle et passive de l'ame vers Dieu, provenant d'une
illumination et d'un embrasement interieurs, qui previennent la
reflex