Him."

One more point must be mentioned before we leave St. Augustine. In
spite of, or rather because of, his Platonism, he had nothing but
contempt for the later Neoplatonism, the theurgic and theosophic
apparatus of Iamblichus and his friends. I have said nothing yet about
the extraordinary development of magic in all its branches, astrology,
necromancy, table-rapping, and other kinds of divination, charms and
amulets and witchcraft, which brought ridicule upon the last struggles
of paganism. These aberrations of Nature-Mysticism will be dealt with
in their later developments in my seventh Lecture. St. Augustine,
after mentioning some nonsensical incantations of the "abracadabra"
kind, says, "A Christian old woman is wiser than these philosophers."
In truth, the spirit of Plato lived in, and not outside Christianity,
even in the time of Porphyry. And on the cultus of angels and spirits,
which was closely connected with theurgic superstition, St.
Augustine's judgment is very instructive. "Whom should I find," he
asks, "to reconcile me to Thee? Should I approach the angels? With
what prayers, with what rites? Many, as I hear, have tried this
method, and have come to crave for curious visions, and have been
deceived, as they deserved.[209]"

In spite of St. Augustine's Platonism and the immense influence which
he exercised, the Western Church was slow in developing a mystical
theology. The Greek Mysticism, based on emanation, was not congenial
to the Western mind, and the time of the German, with its philosophy
of immanence, was not yet. The tendency of Eastern thinkers is to try
to gain a view of reality as a whole, complete and entire: the form
under which it most readily pictures it is that of _space_. The West
seeks rather to discover the universal laws which in every part of the