or
subjective, Mysticism is based on a positive belief in the existence
of life within life, of deep correspondences and affinities, not less
real than those to which the common superficial consciousness of
mankind bears witness. I agree with this statement about the basis of
Mysticism, but I prefer to use the word symbol of that which has a
real, and not merely a conventional affinity to the thing
symbolised.[320] The line is by no means easy to draw. An aureole is
not, properly speaking, a _symbol_ of saintliness,[321] nor a crown of
royal authority, because in these instances the connexion of sign with
significance is conventional. A circle is perhaps not a symbol of
eternity, because the comparison appeals only to the intellect. But
falling leaves are a symbol of human mortality, a flowing river of the
"stream" of life, and a vine and its branches of the unity of Christ
and the Church, because they are examples of the same law which
operates through all that God has made. And when the Anglian noble, in
a well-known passage of Bede, compares the life of man to the flight
of a bird which darts quickly through a lighted hall out of darkness,
and into darkness again, he has found a symbol which is none the less
valid, because light and darkness are themselves only symbolically
connected with life and death. The writer who denies that Mysticism is
symbolic, means that the discovery of arbitrary and fanciful
resemblances or types is no part of healthy Mysticism.[322] In this he
is quite right; and the importance of the distinction which he wishes
to emphasise will, I hope, become clear as we proceed. It is not
possible always to say dogmatically, "_This_ is genuine Symbolism, and
_that_ is morbid or fantastic"; but we do assert that there is a true
and a false Symbolism, of which the true is not merely a legitimate,
but a necessary mode of intuition; while the latter is at best a
frivolous amusement, and at worst a degrading superstition.[323]

But we shall handle our subject very inadequately if we consider only
the symbolical value which may be attached to external objects. Our
thoughts and beliefs about the spiritual world, so far as they are
conceived under forms, or expressed in language, which belong properly
only to things of time and space, are of the nature of symbols. In
this sense it has been said that the greater part of dogmatic theology
is the dialectical development of mystical symbols. For instance, the