better realise the infinity of the sky by looking at it through the
twigs of a tree?

For the craving itself, in its old mystic form, we can have
nothing but sympathy. Some of its expressions are wonderfully
touching, but their pathos must not blind us to the maimed
character of the world-view on which they rest. Grant that the
sphere of sense is limited and therefore imperfect, let it at any
rate be valid up to the limit it does actually attain. The rippling
weir and the mill-wheel did produce some sort of effect upon
the beholder, and therefore must have been to that extent real.
What do we gain by flinging away the chance to learn, even
though the gain be small? And if, as the nature-mystic claims,
the gain be great, the folly is proportionately intensified.

Coleridge is quoted as an exponent of the feeling of the stricter
mystics.

"It were a vain endeavour,
Though I should gaze for ever
On the green light that lingers in the West;
I may not hope from outward forms to win
The passion and the life whose fountains are within."

This, however, is too gentle and hesitating, too tinged with love
of nature, to convey the fierce conviction of the consistent
devotee of the Absolute, of the defecated transparency of pure
Being. If, as is urged by Récéjac, we find among some of the
stricter mystics a very deep and naive feeling for nature, such
feeling can only be a sign of inconsistency, a yielding to the