The true mystic then, in the full sense of the term, is one who _knows_
there is unity under diversity at the centre of all existence, and he
knows it by the most perfect of all tests for the person concerned,
because he has felt it. True mysticism--and this cannot be
over-emphasised--is an experience and a life. It is an experimental
science, and, as Patmore has said, it is as incommunicable to those who
have not experienced it as is the odour of a violet to those who have
never smelt one. In its highest consummation it is the supreme adventure
of the soul: to use the matchless words of Plotinus, it is "the flight
of the Alone to the Alone."
As distinguished, therefore, from the mystical thinker or philosopher,
the practical mystic has direct knowledge of a truth which for him is
absolute. He consequently has invariably acted upon this knowledge, as
inevitably as the blind man to whom sight had been granted would make
use of his eyes.
Among English writers and poets the only two who fulfil this strict
definition of a mystic are Wordsworth and Blake. But we are not here
concerned primarily with a study of those great souls who are mystics
in the full and supreme sense of the word.
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