tes of mind so
well. Her avowal (made in a letter to Father Rodrigue Alvarez) of her
complete unconsciousness of her body is quite in harmony with those
states of rapture. She wrote a number of spiritual love-songs which are
said to be conspicuous for their ardour and beauty; probably they have
never been translated from the original Spanish.

Finally there is the famous Madame Guyon (1648-1717), who--in addition
to many other works--wrote a very detailed autobiography. She lived with
her husband, whom she treated with coldness, finding her sole joy in her
spiritual intercourse with God. "I desire only the divine love which
thrills the soul with inexpressible bliss, the love which seems to melt
my whole being." God burns her with His fire and still trembling with
delight, she says to Him: "Oh, Lord! The greatest libertine, if Thou
didst make him experience Thy love as Thou didst make me experience it,
would forswear carnal pleasure and strive only after Thy divine love."
"I was like a person intoxicated with wine or love, unable to think of
anything but my passion," etc. The fact that she sought in this love the
pleasure of the senses is very apparent.

We are not concerned here with the problem of how far these women may be
regarded as pathological cases; all of them were filled with a vague
feminine desire for self-surrender, which they projected on a celestial
being, either because they did not come into contact with a suitable
terrestrial object, or because the impulse was abnormal from the
beginning. But their spiritual love never rose above empty
sentimentality and hysterical rapture. All of them, and some of them
were highly gifted, were thrilled with the love of Jesus, they had
visions of the "sweet wounds of the Saviour," and so on; but their
emotion did not kindle the smallest spark of creative power. The Queen
of Heaven, on the other hand, was a free creation of spiritually loving
poets and monks.

The women imitated metaphysical love and distorted it; sexual impulse,
arrogantly attempting to reach beyond the earth, reigned in the place of
spiritual, deifying love.

I have included these phenomena not for their own sakes, but to indicate
my boundary-line, for very frequently these women are cited as genuine
mystics. Even Schopenhauer mentions these "saints" in one breath with
German mystics and Indian philosophers; he calls Madame Guyon "a great
and beautiful soul whose memory I venerate." And yet there c