ever expanding and charged with ever
deeper meaning. John Smith, the Cambridge Platonist, has summed up the
mystic position and desire in one brief sentence, when he says, "Such as
men themselves are, such will God Himself seem to them to be." For, as
it takes two to communicate the truth, one to speak and one to hear, so
our knowledge of God is precisely and accurately limited by our capacity
to receive Him. "Simple people," says Eckhart, "conceive that we are to
see God as if He stood on that side and we on this. It is not so: God
and I are one in the act of my perceiving Him."

This sense of unity leads to another belief, though it is one not always
consistently or definitely stated by all mystics. It is implied by Plato
when he says, "All knowledge is recollection." This is the belief in
pre-existence or persistent life, the belief that our souls are
immortal, and no more came into existence when we were born than they
will cease to exist when our bodies disintegrate. The idea is familiar
in Wordsworth's _Ode on the Intimations of Immortality_.

Finally, the mystic holds these views because he has lived through an
experience which has forced him to this attitude of mind. This is his
distinguishing mark, this is what differentiates him alike from the
theologian, the logician, the rationalist philosopher, and the man of
science, for he bases his belief, not on revelation, logic, reason, or
demonstrated facts, but on _feeling_, on intuitive inner knowledge.

He has felt, he has seen, and he is therefore convinced; but his
experience does not convince any one else. The mystic is somewhat in the
position of a man who, in a world of blind men, has suddenly been
granted sight, and who, gazing at the sunrise, and overwhelmed by the
glory of it, tries, however falteringly, to convey to his fellows what
he sees. They, naturally, would be sceptical about it, and would be
inclined to say that he is talking foolishly and incoherently. But the
simile is not altogether parallel. There is this difference. The mystic
is not alone; all through the ages we have the testimony of men and
women to whom this vision has been granted, and the record of what they
have seen is amazingly similar, considering the disparity of personality
and circumstances. And further, the world is not peopled with totally
blind men. The mystics would never hold the audience they do hold, were
it not that the vast majority of people have in themselves what Wi