to ecstatic trances, the pathological nature of which was not
understood. The blank trance was a real experience; and as it could
be induced by a long course of ascetical exercises and fervid
devotions, it was naturally regarded as the crowning reward of
sanctity on earth. Nor would it be at all safe to reject the
evidence, which is very copious,[19] that the "dreamy state" may
issue in permanent spiritual gain. The methodical cultivation of it,
which is at the bottom of most of the strange austerities of the
ascetics, was not only (though it was partly) practised in the hope
of enjoying those spiritual raptures which are described as being
far more intense than any pleasures of sense[20]: it was the hope of
stirring to its depths the subconscious mind and permeating the
whole with the hidden energy of the divine Spirit that led to the
desire for visions and trances. Lastly, I think we must give a place
to the intellectual attraction of an uncompromising monistic theory
of the universe. Spiritualistic monism, when it is consistent with
itself, will always lean to semi-pantheistic mysticism rather than
to such a compromise with pluralism as Lotze and his numerous
followers in this country imagine to be possible.

But it is possible to go a long way with the mystics and yet to
maintain that under no conditions whatever can a finite being escape
from the limitations of his finitude and see God or the world or
himself "with the same eye with which God sees" all things. The old
Hebrew belief, that to see the face of God is death, expresses the
truth under a mythical form. That the human mind, while still "in
the body pent," may obtain glimpses of the eternal order, and enjoy
foretastes of the bliss of heaven, is a belief which I, at least,
see no reason to reject. It involves no rash presumption, and is not
contrary to what may be readily believed about the state of immortal