is at variance with mysticism, although the picturesque forms of the Roman Church, the candles, incense, music, the great cathedrals, with the light from the outside, sifted through the stained glass windows, are capable of producing something of the same mood. This, however, is rather from the side of art than of religion.

There is nothing in which all writers on mysticism agree more fully than the necessity of fleeing from the haunts of men. For all the bustle and turmoil, competition and ambition that make up the business, political and social life are utterly incompatible with the transcendental mood. All men who have experienced this mood feel instinctively this truth. Thus Plato tells us in the "Phaedo" that

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thought is best when the mind is gathered unto herself and none of these things trouble her; neither sounds nor sights nor pain nor any pleasure; when she has as little as possible to do with the body and has no bodily sense or feeling, but is aspiring after being.”

In this and other passages, Plato has not

only practically founded the via negativa of mediæval saints-but he gives expression to one of the most common phases of soul experience on the part of those who strive to live the intellectual and the spiritual life. Not only do we find the same feeling in Neo-Platonists and Stoics, in mediæval saints, and in Buddhists and Sufis of the Oriental world, but also in men of our own time, in the midst of the full tide of western civilization. Says Goethe, "Men must retire from the world from time to time, for the world with its loud and superficial activity interferes with the awakening for the best." "The man," says Schiller, "who wants to be himself, who strives for inner harmony, must live as a stranger to his surroundings, a stranger to his time; he must remove himself from the belittling influences of the ambitions of the multitude, scorn all participation in the quest for outward success; fill himself with what the best and finest of all ages have dreamed and accomplished; he must dwell in the idea of the beautiful."

This impulse to solitude is one of the most

characteristic features of all great poets, artists, philosophers and saints. Even men who have played a great part in active affairs of life, like Petrarch and Goethe, feel that "nostalgie d'un bonheur inconnu," which seems so inconsistent with the busy world.

This mood, however, is by no means the same as that spirit of aloofness which comes from snobbishness, Pharasaism, or cynical and blasé selfishness. It is not the same as that felt by Alceste in Molière's "Misanthrope," who, disgusted by the universal insincerity of mankind, would fain, as he says, be left alone,

"Dans ce petit coin sombre avec mon noir chagrin."

Nor is it the cold heartless spirit of the Stoics, who think only of self, who work out their own salvation with fear and trembling with no thought of their fellow men.

The true "reine Entfremdung," as Goethe calls it, means that state of mind, half mystical, in which our hearts may be full of love and compassion for humanity; in which we

may move in and out among men; and yet feel an exaltation, a lifting up, a sense of oneness with the Infinite. We may look out

upon the scene of the world, the eager struggling multitude, with all its haste and confusion, its meanness, and its cruelty, with a feeling of pity for those who are caught in its grip, and a sense of nearness to God, a feeling as if we gazed on all these things against the background of eternity. It was this feeling of mystical or spiritual aloofness, which caused Dante to Dante to cry out in his

"Paradiso,”

O insensata cura dei mortali,

Quanto son difettivi sillogismi

Quei che ti fanno in basso batter l'ali.1

There are different degrees of the transcendental experience; some vague, evanescent, passing away and leaving but little effect behind other than that of a pleasant dream. There come flashes, probably to every man in

1 O fond anxiety of mortal men!

How vain and inconclusive arguments

Are those, which make thee beat thy wings below.

Par. XI, I.

the course of his lifetime; it may be in reading poetry, or listening to a sermon, or walking over the fields or through the woods. "One look at the face of heaven and earth," says Emerson, "lays all petulance at rest and soothes us to wiser conviction; and again, "we know that the secret of the world is profound; but who or what shall be our interpreter, we know not. A mountain ramble, a new style of face, a new poem, may put the key into our hands."

Many and varied are these openings into the Infinite; birth and death-the coming into the world from the unknown, the flitting across the lighted chamber of life, and the passing out once more into the unknown beyondhow can they help filling us with the sense of the infinite mystery by which we are surrounded? And many are the phases of nature and art, and literature and life, that arouse the sense of the Infinite; single words or short phrases fraught with a sudden and mighty transcendental meaning, like those heard by St. Francis on that fateful day of 1209 in the