In
order to be a true symbol, a thing must be partly the same as that which
it symbolises. Thus, human love is symbolic of divine love, because,
although working in another plane, it is governed by similar laws and
gives rise to similar results; or falling leaves are a symbol of human
mortality, because they are examples of the same law which operates
through all manifestation of life. Some of the most illuminating notes
ever written on the nature of symbolism are in a short paper by R. L.
Nettleship,[2] where he defines true mysticism as "the consciousness
that everything which we experience, every 'fact,' is an element and
only an element in 'the fact'; i.e. that, in being what it is, it is
significant or symbolic of more." In short, every truth apprehended by
finite intelligence must by its very nature only be the husk of a deeper
truth, and by the aid of symbolism we are often enabled to catch a
reflection of a truth which we are not capable of apprehending in any
other way. Nettleship points out, for instance, that bread can only be
itself, can only _be_ food, by entering into something else,
assimilating and being assimilated, and that the more it loses itself
(what it began by being) the more it "finds itself" (what it is intended
to be).
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