n spoken of by monkish mystics as
the privilege of beginners. Amiel expresses exactly the same regret as
Wordsworth: "Shall I ever enjoy again those marvellous reveries of
past days?..." See the whole paragraph on p. 32 of Mrs. Humphry Ward's
translation.]

[Footnote 390: These objections are pressed by Lotze, and not only by
avowed Pessimists. Lotze abhors what he calls "sentimental symbolism"
because it interferes with his monadistic doctrines. I venture to say
that any philosophy which divides man, as a being _sui generis_, from
the rest of Nature, is inevitably landed either in Acosmism or in
Manichean Dualism.]

[Footnote 391: This is perhaps the best place to notice the mystical
treatise of James Hinton, entitled _Man and his Dwelling-place_, which
is chiefly remarkable for its attempt to solve the problem of evil.
This writer pushes to an extremity the favourite mystical doctrine
that we surround ourselves with a world after our own likeness, and
considers that all the evil which we see in Nature is the "projection
of our own deadness." Apart from the unlikelihood of a theory which
makes man--"the roof and crown of things"--the only diseased and
discordant element in the universe, the writer lays himself open to
the fatal rejoinder, "Did Christ, then, see no sin or evil in the
world?" The doctrines of sacrifice (vicarious suffering) as a blessed
law of Nature ("the secret of the universe is learnt on Calvary"), and
of the necessity of annihilating "the self" as the principle of evil,
are pressed with a harsh and unnatural rigour. Our blessed Lord laid
no such yoke upon us, nor will human nature consent to bear it. The
"atonement" of the world by love is much better delineated by R.L.
Nettleship, in a passage which seems to me to exhibit the very kernel
of Christian Mysticism in its social aspect. "Suppose that all human
beings felt permanently to each other as they now do occasionally to
those they love best. All the pain of the world would be swallowed up
in doing good. So far as we can conceive of such a state, it would be
one in which there would be no 'individuals' at all, but an universal
being in and for another; where being took the form of consciousness,
it would be the consciousness of 'another' which was also 'oneself'--a
_common_ consciousness. Such would be the 'atonement' of the world."]

[Footnote 392: Charles Kingsley is another mystic of the same school.]

[Footnote 393: Browning, _Paracelsus_