ymbolism
presupposes two principal elements--imagination and feeling; turned in
a metaphysical direction, it presupposes imagination and a very small
rational element. This substitution involves appreciable deviation
from the primitive type. The construction is of greater logical
regularity. Besides, and this is the important characteristic, the
subject-matter--though still resembling symbolic images--tends to
become concepts: such are vivified abstractions, allegorical beings,
hereditary entities of spirits and of gods. In short, metaphysical
mysticism is a transition-form towards metaphysical rationalism,
although these two tendencies have always been inimical in the history
of philosophy, just as in the history of religion.

In this imaginative plan of the world we may recognize stages according
to the increasing weakness of the systems, depending on the number and
quality of the hypotheses. For example, the progression is apparent
between Plotinus and the frenzied creations of the Gnostics and the
Cabalists. With the latter, we come into a world of unbridled fancy
which, in place of human romances, invents cosmic romances. Here appear
the allegorical beings mentioned above, half concept, half symbol; the
ten Sephiros of the Cabala, immutable forms of being; the _syzygies_ or
couples of Gnosticism--soul and reflection, depth and silence, reason
and life, inspiration and truth, etc.; the absolute manifesting itself
by the unfolding of fifty-two attributes, each unfolding comprising
seven _eons_, corresponding to the 364 days of the year, etc. It would
be wearisome to follow these extravagant thoughts, which, though the
learned may treat them with some respect, have for the psychologist only
the interest of pathologic evidence. Moreover, this form of mystic
imagination presents too little that is new for us to speak of it
without repeating ourselves.

To conclude: The mystic imagination, in its alluring freedom, its
variety, and its richness, is second to no form, not even to esthetic
invention, which, according to common prejudice, is the type _par
excellence_. Following the most venturesome methods of analogy, it has
constructed conceptions of the world made up almost wholly of feelings
and images--symbolic architectures.

FOOTNOTES:

[99] _Philosophy of the Unconscious_, I, part 2, ch. IX.

[100] J. Darmesteter, in Recejac, _Essai sur les fondements de la
connaissance mystique_, p. 124.

[101] In such notion