s way of negation. The
Infinite was the not-finite; the Absolute was precisely what the
contingent was _not_. The perfect was free of every mark of
imperfection. Behind all manifestations was the essential Substance
which made the manifestations. The completely Real was above all
mutation and process. "For one to assign," therefore, "to God any
human attributes," as Spinoza, the supreme apostle of this negative way
has said, "is to reveal that he has no true idea of God." It has taken
all the philosophical and spiritual travail of the centuries to
discover that there may be a concrete Infinite, an organic Absolute, an
immanent Reality, and that the way to share in this comprehending Life
is at least as much a way of affirmation as of negation, a way that
leads not into "the Dark" but into the Light, and not into a
"fathomless nothing," but into an abundant and radiant life.

Mysticism, as a type of religion, has further staked its precious
realities too exclusively upon the functions of what to-day we call the
sub-conscious. Impressed with the divine significance of "inward
bubblings," the mystic has made too slight an account of the testimony
of Reason and the contribution of history. The subconscious functions
are very real and very important aspects of personal life, and can
never again be ignored in any full account of personality. They
influence every thought, feeling, attitude, volition, opinion, mood,
and insight, and are thus operative in all the higher as well as in all
the lower phases of human life and character. Metaphorically, but only
metaphorically, we speak of the sub-conscious as a vast zone, an
indefinable margin, surrounding the narrow focus of attention, and we
may {xxix} figuratively, but only figuratively, call it the subliminal
"region" where all our life-gains, and often the gains of the race, are
garnered. The contributions from this mental underworld are
inestimable--we could not be men without them--but this subconscious
zone is a source of things bad as well as good, things silly as well as
things wise, of rubbish as well as of treasures, and it is diabolical
as well as divine. It seems in rare moments to connect, as though it
were a hidden inland stream, with the "immortal sea which brought us
hither," and we feel at times, through its incomes, as though we were
aware of _tides_ from beyond our own margin. And, in fact, I believe
we are.

But obviously we cannot assume that wha