age, he loves mutually exclusive expressions. Mysticism blurs
outlines, and makes the transparent opaque."

The Germans have two words for what we call Mysticism--_Mystik_ and
_Mysticismus_, the latter being generally dyslogistic. The long chapter
in Nordau's _Degeneration_, entitled "Mysticism," treats it throughout
as a morbid state. It will be observed that the last sentence quoted
flatly contradicts one of the statements copied from Lasson's essay. But
Nordau is not attacking religious Mysticism, so much as that unwholesome
development of symbolic "science, falsely so called," which has usurped
the name in modern France. Those who are interested in Mysticism should
certainly study the pathological symptoms which counterfeit mystical
states, and from this point of view the essay in _Degeneration_ is
valuable. The observations of Nordau and other alienists must lead us to
suspect very strongly the following kinds of symbolical representation,
whether the symbols are borrowed from the external world, or created by
the imagination:--(a) All those which include images of a sexual
character. It is unnecessary to illustrate this. The visions of monks
and nuns are often, as we might expect, unconsciously tinged with a
morbid element of this kind. (b) Those which depend on mere verbal
resemblances or other fortuitous correspondences. Nordau shows that the
diseased brain is very ready to follow these false trains of
association. (c) Those which are connected with the sense of smell,
which seems to be morbidly developed in this kind of degeneracy. (d)
Those which in any way minister to pride or self-sufficiency.

22. _Harnack_. "Mysticism is rationalism applied to a sphere above
reason."

I have criticised this definition in my first Lecture, and have
suggested that the words "rationalism" and "reason" ought to be
transposed. Elsewhere Harnack says that the distinctions between
"Scholastic, Roman, German, Catholic, Evangelical, and Pantheistic
Mysticism" are at best superficial, and in particular that it is a
mistake to contrast "Scholasticism and Mysticism" as opposing forces
in the Middle Ages. "Mysticism," he proceeds, "is Catholic piety in
general, so far as this piety is not merely ecclesiastical obedience,
that is, _fides implicita_. The Reformation element which is ascribed
to it lies simply in this, that Mysticism, when developed in a
particular direction, is led to discern the inherent responsibility of
the soul, o