nature, but on this account to disqualify the statements of Plotinus, St
Augustine, Eckhart, Catherine of Siena, Catherine of Genoa, Blake, and
Wordsworth, would seem analogous to Macaulay's view that "perhaps no
person can be a poet, or can even enjoy poetry without a certain
unsoundness of mind." Our opinion about this must depend on what we mean
by "soundness of mind." To some it may appear possible that the mystics
and poets are as sound as their critics. In any case, the unprejudiced
person to-day would seem driven to the conclusion that these people, who
are, many of them, exceptionally great, intellectually and morally, are
telling us of a genuine experience which has transformed life for them.
What, then, is the meaning of this experience? What explanation can we
give of this puzzling and persistent factor in human life and history?
These are not easy questions to answer, and only a bare hint of lines of
solution dare be offered.

It is of interest to note that the last word in science and philosophy
tends to reinforce and even to explain the position of the mystic. The
latest of European philosophers, M. Bergson, builds up on a mystical
basis the whole of his method of thought, that is, on his perception of
the simple fact that true duration, the real time-flow, is known to us
by a state of feeling which he calls intuition, and not by an
intellectual act.

He says something like this. We find as a matter of practice that
certain problems when presented to the intellect are difficult and even
impossible to solve, whereas when presented to our experience of life,
their solution is so obvious that they cease to be problems. Thus, the
unaided intellect might be puzzled to say how sounds can grow more alike
by continuing to grow more different. Yet a child can answer the
question by sounding an octave on the piano. But this solution is