ABSTRACT
During the Middle Ages and the Renaissance there is the spurious mysticism of the Brethren of the Free Spirit, the occult propaganda of Paracelsus, the Rosicrucians, the Christian Kabalists; and the innumerable pantheistic, Manichean, mystery-making, and Quietist heresies which made war upon Catholic tradition. In the case of mysticism, which deals largely with the unutterable, and where language at once exact and affirmative is particularly hard to find, such a course is almost certain to help us. The starting-point of all magic and of all magical religion— the best and purest of occult activities— is, as in mysticism, man’s inextinguishable conviction that there are other planes of being than those which his senses report to him. Though certain parts of this enormous claim seem able to justify themselves in experience, the whole of it cannot be admitted. The last phrase in particular is identical with the promise which we have seen to be characteristic of mysticism.
