circumstances and in these particular individuals exactly as it does manifest itself;—must, I say, unless the individual were to elevate himself above the mere natural thinking-power to free and clear Thought; and so foreclose this necessity. If this do not happen, then the necessary consequence is as follows:—every blind power of Nature is constantly active, although invisibly and unconsciously to man; it is therefore to be anticipated that this thinking-power, as the essential nature of this individual, should have already manifested itself in many shapes within him, and thus from time to time have passed through his mind without its principle being discovered, or any distinct resolution being taken as to its adoption. Thus he goes on passively, or listening attentively to the voice of Nature thinking within him; till at last the true centre-thought of the whole reveals itself; and he is not a little astonished to find unity, light, connexion, and confirmation spread over all his previous fancies; never imagining for a moment that these earlier fancies were but shapes or branches of that ever-active thought which has now come forth into light, with which they must therefore unquestionably harmonize. He satisfies himself of the truth of the whole by its sufficiency to afford an explanation of all the parts; for he does not know that they are only parts of this whole, and have only an existence by means of the whole. He accepts Imagination as Truth because it coincides with so many earlier Imaginations, which, without any suspicion on his part, have come to him from the same source.
Since this imagination of the Mystic is but a thinking-power of Nature, it returns upon Nature, attaches itself to her soil, and attempts to exercise an activity there; in one word, Mysticism is, and always must be, a Philosophy of Nature (‘Natur-Philosophie.’) It is necessary that we should carefully consider these latter remarks, in order strictly to distinguish between Mysticism and something
