bsidiary--even if it is to be
allowed at all. Its claims will be noted later.

Now Nature Mysticism is based on sense perception, and this in
itself is a form of intuition. It is immediate, for the "matter" of
sensation presents itself directly to the consciousness affected; it
simply asserts itself. It is independent of the conscious exercise
of the reasoning powers. It does not even permit of the
distinction between subject and object; it comes into the mind
as "a given." When conscious thought grips this "given," it can
put it into all manner of relations with other "givens." It may
even to some extent control the course of subsequent sensations
by the exercise of attention and in accordance with a conscious
purpose. But thought cannot create a sensation. The sensation is
thus at the base of all mental life. It furnishes material for the
distinction between subject and object--between the outer and
the inner. The conscious processes, thus primed, rise through
the various stages of contemplation, reflection, abstraction,
conception, and reasoning.

The study of sense perception is thus seen to be a study of
primary mystical intuition. But the similarity, or essential bond,
between the two may be worked at a deeper level. When an
external object stimulates a sensation, it produces a variety of
changes in the mind of the percipient. Most of these may remain
in the depths of subconscious mental life, but they are none the
less real as effectual agents of change. Now what is here
implied? The external object has somehow or other got "inside"
the percipient mind--has penetrated to it, and modified it.
In other words, a form of mystical communion has been
established. The object has penetrated into the mind, and the
mind has come into living touch with the Real external to itself.
The object and the subject are to this extent fused in a mystic
union. How could the fusion take place unless the two were
linked in some fundamental harmony of being? Other and
higher modes of mystical union may be experienced; but sense
perception contains them all in germ. How vain, then, the
absolutist's attempt to sever himself from the sphere of sense!

Intuition, we have seen, must be deemed to be independent of
conscious reasoning processes. But this is not to say that it is
independent of reason, either objectively or subjectively. Not
objectively, for if the world is a cosmos, it must be rationally
constituted. Not subjectively, fo