mysticism beside it as of equal rank, and even as being the more
fruitful and promising movement."[1]


[1] Professor WILHELM WINDELBAND, Ph.D.: "Present-Day Mysticism,"
_The Quest_, vol. iv. (1913), P. 205.


Alchemy, with its four Aristotelian or scholastic elements and its
three mystical principles--sulphur, mercury, salt,--must be cited as
the outstanding product of the combined influence of mysticism and
scholasticism: of mysticism, which postulated the unity of the Cosmos,
and hence taught that everything natural is the expressive image and
type of some supernatural reality; of scholasticism, which taught men
to rely upon deduction and to restrict experimentation to the smallest
possible limits.

The mind naturally proceeds from the known, or from what is supposed
to be known, to the unknown. Indeed, as I have already indicated,
it must so proceed if truth is to be gained. Now what did the men
of the Middle Ages regard as falling into the category of the known?
Why, surely, the truths of revealed religion, whether accepted upon
authority or upon the evidence of their own experience. The realm
of spiritual and moral reality: there, they felt, they were on firm
ground. Nature was a realm unknown; but they had analogy to guide,
or, rather, misguide them. Nevertheless if, as we know, it misguided,
this was not, I think, because the mystical doctrine of the
correspondence between the spiritual and the natural is unsound, but
because these ancient seekers into Nature's secrets knew so little,
and so frequently misapplied what they did know. So alchemical