characteristic of some of the greatest thinkers of the world--of the
founders of the Eastern religions of Plato and Plotinus, of Eckhart and
Bruno, of Spinoza, Goethe, and Hegel. Secondly, no one has ever been a
lukewarm, an indifferent, or an unhappy mystic. If a man has this
particular temperament, his mysticism is the very centre of his being:
it is the flame which feeds his whole life; and he is intensely and
supremely happy just so far as he is steeped in it.

Mysticism is, in truth, a temper rather than a doctrine, an atmosphere
rather than a system of philosophy. Various mystical thinkers have
contributed fresh aspects of Truth as they saw her, for they have caught
glimpses of her face at different angles, transfigured by diverse
emotions, so that their testimony, and in some respects their views, are
dissimilar to the point of contradiction. Wordsworth, for instance,
gained his revelation of divinity through Nature, and through Nature
alone; whereas to Blake "Nature was a hindrance," and Imagination the
only reality. But all alike agree in one respect, in one passionate
assertion, and this is that unity underlies diversity. This, their
starting-point and their goal, is the basic fact of mysticism, which, in
its widest sense, may be described as an attitude of mind founded upon
an intuitive or experienced conviction of unity, of oneness, of
alikeness in all things. From this source springs all mystical thought,
and the mystic, of whatever age or country, would say in the words of
Krishna--

There is true knowledge. Learn thou it is this:
To see one changeless Life in all the Lives,
And in the Separate, One Inseparable.
_The Bhagavad-Gîtâ_, Book 18.