f
symbolism to meet his demands, while he shrank from the
vagueness of what was called Mysticism. Objects for him had a
meaning in their own right, and he was casting about for a
fitting term to express this fact. He also distinctly states that to
him, "Everything seems to be full of God's reflex." Once grant
that Nature Mysticism, as denned and illustrated in the
preceding chapters, is a genuine form of Mysticism, and his
difficulty would be solved. The natural objects which stirred his
emotions would be acknowledged as part and parcel of the
ultimate Ground itself, and therefore competent to act, not as
substitutes for something else not really present, but in their
own right, and of their own sovereign prerogative. Nature, in
short, is not a mere stimulus for a roving fancy or teeming
imagination: it is a power to be experienced, a secret to be
wrested, a life to be shared.

The famous "Canticle of the Sun" of St. Francis d'Assisi gives
naive and spontaneous expression to the same truth. Natural
objects, for this purest of mystics, were no bare symbols, nor
did they gain their significance by suggesting beyond
themselves. He addressed them as beings who shared with him
the joy of existence. "My Brother the Sun"--"my Sister the
Moon"--"our Mother the Earth"--"my Brother the Wind"--"our
Sister Water"--"Brother Fire." The same form of address is
maintained for things living and things lifeless. And it is
obvious that the endearing terms of relationship are more than
metaphors or figures of speech. His heart evidently goes with
them: he genuinely claims kinship. Differences dissolve in a
sense of common being. It would be an anachronism to read
into these affectionate names the more fully developed
mysticism of Blake, or Shelley, or Emerson. But the absence of
any tinge of symbolic lore is noteworthy.

Kingsley, as was just seen, was feeling about for something
more satisfactory than mystic symbolism; so also was Emerson.
"Mysticism" (he writes) "consists in the mistake of an
accidental and individual symbol for an universal one. . . . The
mystic must be steadily told, 'All that you say is just as true
without the tedious use of that symbol as with it.'" Emerson's
uneasiness is manifest. He is rebelling, but is not quite sure of
his ground. At one time he inclines to think the mystic in fault
because he "nails a symbol to one sense, which was a true sense
for a moment, but soon becomes old and false." At another ti