hey may, the nature-mystic's position demands not only that
man may hold communion with nature, but that, in and through
such communion, he is in living touch with the Ground of
Existence.

CHAPTER III

MYSTIC INTUITION AND REASON

So much for the nature-mystic's relation to the concept of the
Absolute. It would be interesting to discuss, from the same
point of view, his relations to the rival doctrines of the monists,
dualists, and pluralists. But to follow up these trails with any
thoroughness would lead us too far into the thickets and
quagmires of metaphysics. Fortunately the issues are not nearly
so vital as in the case of the Absolute; and they may thus be
passed by without serious risk of invalidating subsequent
conclusions. It may be worth our while, however, to note that
many modern mystics are not monists, and that the supposed
inseparable connection between Mysticism and Monism is
being thrown overboard. Even the older mystics, when wrestling
with the problem of evil, were dualists in their own
despite. Of the moderns, so representative a thinker as Lotze
suggested that Reality may run up, not into one solitary peak,
but into a mountain chain. Hoeffding contends that we have not
yet gained the right to career rough-shod over the antinomies of
existence. James, a typical modern mystic, was an avowed
pluralist. Bergson emphasises the category of Becoming, and, if
to be classed at all, is a dualist. Thus the nature-mystic is happy
in the freedom to choose his own philosophy, so long as he
avoids the toils of the Absolute. For, as James remarks,
"oneness and manyness are absolutely co-ordinate. Neither is
primordial or more excellent than the other."

It remains, then, to subject to criticism the third principle of
Mysticism, that of intuitional insight as a mode of knowing
independent of the reasoning faculties, at any rate in their
conscious exercise. Its root idea is that of directness and
immediacy; the word itself prepares us for some power of
apprehending at a glance--a power which dispenses with all
process and gains its end by a flash. A higher stage is known as
vision; the highest is known as ecstasy. Intuition has its own
place in general psychology, and has acquired peculiar
significance in the domains of aesthetics, ethics, and theology;
and the same root idea is preserved throughout--that of
immediacy of insight. The characteristic of passivity on which
certain mystics would insist is su