e universal.

But that one ripple on the boundless deep
Feels that the deep is boundless, and itself
For ever changing form, but evermore
One with the boundless motion of the deep.

We know that Tennyson had been studying the philosophy of Lao-Tsze about
this time; yet, though this is, as it were, grafted on to the poet's
mind, still we may take it as being his genuine and deepest conviction.
The nearest approach to a definite statement of it to be found in his
poems is in the few stanzas called _The Higher Pantheism_, which he sent
to be read at the first meeting of the Metaphysical Society in 1869.

Speak to Him thou for He hears, and Spirit with Spirit can meet--
Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than hands and feet.

* * * * *

And the ear of man cannot hear, and the eye of man cannot see;
But if we could see and hear, this Vision--were it not He?

In William Law, Burke, Coleridge, and Carlyle, we have a succession of
great English prose-writers whose work and thought is permeated by a
mystical philosophy. Of these four, Law is, during his later life, by
far the most consistently and predominantly mystical.

As has been indicated, there were many strains of influence which in the
seventeenth century tended to foster mystical thought in England. The
group of Cambridge Platonists, to which Henry More belonged, gave new
expression to the great Neo-platonic ideas, but in addition to this a
strong vein of mysticism had been kept alive in Amsterdam, where the
exiled Separatists had gone in 1593. They flourished there and waxed
strong, and sent back to England during the next century a continual
stream of opinion and literature. To this source can be traced the ideas
which inspired alike the Quakers, the Seekers, the Behmenists, the
Familists, and numberless other sects who all embodied a reaction
against forms and ceremonies, which, in ceasing to be understood, had
become lifeless. These sects were, up to a certain point, mystical in
thought, for they all believed in the "inner light," in the immediate
revelation of God within the soul as the all-important experience.

The persecutions of the Quakers under Charles II. tended to withdraw
them from active philanthropy, and to throw them more in the direction
of a personal and contemplative religion. It was then that the writings
of Madame Bourignon, Madame Guyon, and Fenelon became popular, and