at the wheel "suggested." Jefferies, yearning for
fuller soul-life, and sensitive to nature's aspects, felt that the
life was there--that the universe _is_ the life--that the life is
intuited in and through the universe, though not grasped as
yet by the conscious reasoning processes.

As an interesting example, the symbol of the cross may be
briefly considered. Why should a form so simple and so familiar
have acquired an astonishingly wide range and be generally
regarded as symbolic of life? Much has to be learnt before the
problem is solved. One thing seems fairly certain--the choice
has not been wholly arbitrary; there has been at work an
intuitional, subconscious factor. Is it possible that the negativing
of a line in one direction by a line in another direction raises
subliminally a sense of strain, then of effort, then of purposeful
will, and so, lastly, of life? Probably a piece of pure
imagination! And yet there must be some real power in the
symmetrical form itself to account for its symbolic career.
Conscious reason, obscurely prompted by this power, evolved
the symbolic use; and the strange interminglings of intuition,
rational action, and force of circumstance, during the long
course of civilised history, have accomplished the rest.

The train of reflection thus started will add special point to a
passage from an early letter of Kingsley's, quoted by Inge in a
slightly curtailed form, but here given in full. "The great
Mysticism is the belief that is becoming every day stronger with
me, that all symmetrical natural objects, aye, and perhaps all
forms, colours, and scents which show organisation or
arrangement, are types of some truth or existence, of a grade
between the symbolical type and the mystic type. When I walk
the fields I am oppressed every now and then with an innate
feeling, that everything I see has a meaning, if I could but
understand it. And this feeling of being surrounded with truths
which I cannot grasp, amounts to indescribable awe sometimes!
Everything seems to be full of God's reflex, if we could but see
it."

The passage is of profound significance when taken as a whole,
and will serve as a remarkable description of the genuine mystic
experience which can be prompted by nature, without going to
the length of "vision," still less of ecstasy. But the stress now
lies on the words--"a grade between the symbolical type and the
mystic type." Kingsley evidently realised the insufficiency o