Rational Mysticism and New Testament Christianity/III

by Henry William Clark

Does this conception of mysticism assist us in bringing reason and mysticism nearer together? At first it may but seem to thrust them further apart. Yet it is in thus realizing the part it plays as a part which is not reason's part nor a substitute for reason's part — in thus drawing away from reason — that mysticism comes back into a true and harmonious relation with reason again.

The mystical experience, we have seen, is not in strictness a matter of knowledge, of apprehension; it is a becoming, a veritable act, the final stage in the movement of things working itself out. It is the penultimate passing into the ultimate, — the end, so far as it has hitherto been reached, linking itself back to and up with the beginning again, and so making the real and ordained end, completing the whole. It is the actual construction of the final fact. And it is precisely the construction of a final fact that reason requires to come upon, or to have presented to it and to recognize, if it is to attain a satisfactory view of things, and if its system is to be complete.

For reason, in its reading off of the facts of the world, with a view to the apprehension of a unified system of things, comes at last to a point at which it perceives (if its eyes be open) that the necessary facts are not all there to be read off. At any rate the last fact is lacking; and so the unity of things cannot be apprehended, because it does not in reality exist. Reason, for example, may, with its theories of evolution, pass beneath the surface of things and believe itself to have hit upon the underlying chain of method whereby all that exists has come to be; but this by no means gives it the perfect unity it craves. A mere similarity of method and process all through is not unity at all, though it is true that the word "unity" is not infrequently used in the very loose sense implied. To reach that sort of unity is merely to discover that the programme of things has never been changed — and that is not enough. That kind of unity is like the unity reached by repeated striking of the same note on the keyboard of the piano. It is mere similarity of pattern; and you do not, by having a number of things exactly alike, make one whole. A unity in the pattern implies no unity of essential being. Reason demands, for its own satisfaction, a unity of a deeper and more vital kind. A real unity — the unity which reason, when it knows itself and its desires, calls for — is a unity vital and organic, a unity wherein the initial Being sends itself forth, passes through stage upon stage, becoming in a sense other than itself in the passing and yet remaining itself all the while, and at last returns upon itself, settles down upon itself, once more. What is demanded is a unity which is a self-contained, rounded whole. The entire process, though projected out of the initial Being, must be within the initial Being, too; and so far as there is separateness, it must be only such as is caused by the initial Being choosing to travel outside itself. There must be something more than a series of elements connected together in the same way: the elements of the series (it is by metaphor that one comes nearest to making the point clear) must have beneath them, so to say, a guide-rail from which they do not swerve, and which, however long may be its radius and however wide its sweep, curves back again to its starting-point, so that in the end the idea of separateness in the elements is lost in the idea of the fundamental Being which has sent them forth from itself, which has manifested itself through them, and which through the last of them brings all home once more. It is true that reason has sometimes contented itself with reaching what seemed to be a satisfactory theory of the method whereby the previous stages of things have been worked out, and when it has discovered a similarity of method throughout, has declared unity to be found. But if it read its own requirements aright, reason cannot be thus content. It cannot be satisfied with merely discovering how things have come to be. Things themselves (not simply the methods of their becoming) must be unified. What reason wants is to apprehend a unity vital and organic — to perceive how all that is has not only followed out an unchanging programme, but is all through actually the initial Being coming out from itself and returning home upon itself again.

This means that reason, taking up the process of things at the point it has reached in man, its last stage (its last stage for the present, that is), must not stop at accounting for that stage, but must apprehend also how that stage becomes, merges into, the really last stage — in other words, how life in man turns again to its source. Not till it apprehends this will a true unity be reached for thought. Reason must apprehend, not only the penultimate stage, as we called it before, but the ultimate. But this is precisely what thought, reason, cannot do, because the ultimate stage is not reached. In man, as thought discerns him, life is still as it were a loose thread, and is not bound back to the beginning of things again. No mere accounting for man puts this right. You may account for man, theorize as satisfactorily as you like as to how he came to be; but that is a very different thing from seeing everything, man included, as one whole. And when reason looks for this latter vision, it cannot attain it, because the wholeness of things is not worked out. Life, as man reveals it, may be traceable downward from its source; but life, in its human individualism, is not using its individualism in order to carry life on to a goal which is one with its source. The final fact, which reason wants to read off, that is, is not there for reason to read — and, not being there, must be made. Reason, having carried its reading off of the existing facts as far as possible, must confess that what is wanted now is the emergence of a new fact, of a new constructive process which shall continue and com- plete the unfinished process: reason itself leads us up to the point of seeing that something more — something which is not an exercise of reason, but an exercise of life — must take place if reason's own perfect work is to become possible; and in the end, reason has to watch and wait for something to happen rather than to stop at finding an explanation of what has happened already. In order to obtain for thought the unity which we demand, we must first develop the real and final unity of life. Or, as previously said, it is the final fact of things, constructed or in process of construction, that reason requires to come upon or to have presented to it, if it is to reach a view of things in which it can rest. Reason itself calls to man, "Be something more than you are — make the final fact — in order that I may write the last chapter of my book, and not be put to shame."

And in the mystical experience, according to our former interpretation of it, the final fact is in process of being made. Here life returns upon its source. Here the process of things, having got as far as man, is linked up into one whole as man climbs up into God. Through the mystical experience the completely unified system which reason insists upon having is brought about — not perceived but brought about. The mystical experience finishes, one may venture to say, the creative process, and car- ries things back to God. Mysticism, then, when it understands itself aright and explains itself truly, remains entirely reasonable just because it does not attempt to substitute itself for reason, but does what, according to reason, requires to be done. It supplies reason with the final fact, and, in doing this, justifies itself in reason's eyes. The mystical experience is reasonable, although not a process of reason, nor something put in place of a process of reason. It does not interpret the system of things — it completes it. And inasmuch as this completing of the system of things is precisely what reason waits for, mysticism links itself with reason in separating itself from reason and in realizing what its own particular mission is; and in speaking of "rational mysticism" we do but call the mystical experience by a title to which it has a perfectly valid claim.