tortures, that he may rise above the world of illusion, and attain
to absorption in the Universal Spirit. He sacrifices the body that
the soul may see. Similar views, though varying much in detail,
have flourished at the heart of all the great religions, and have
formed almost the sole substance of some of the smaller. Nor
has Christianity escaped. An exaggerated and uncompromising
asceticism has won for many Christian saints their honours on
earth and their assurance of special privileges in heaven.

Contrast with this sterner and narrower type, the mystic who
loves the natural world because he believes it to be, like
himself, a genuine manifestation of the ultimately Real, and to
be akin to his own inmost life. He, too, acknowledges the need
for the discipline of the body--he, too, has his _askesis_--but he
cherishes the old Greek ideal which does not call for a sacrifice
of sense as such, but for a wise abstinence from those sensual
pleasures, or over-indulgences in pleasure, which endanger the
balance of the powers of the body and the mind. The nature-
mystic, more particularly, maintains that there is no form of
human knowledge which may not be of service to him in
attaining to deeper insight and fuller experience in his
intercourse with nature. He is therefore a student, in the best
sense of the word--not a slave to mere erudition, but an alert and
eager absorber of things new and old according to his abilities
and opportunities. He tries to survey life as a whole, and to
bring his complete self, body and soul, to the realisation of its
possibilities. And he looks to nature for some of his purest joys
and most fruitful experiences. He knows that the outward shows
of heaven and earth are manifestations of a Reality which
communes with him as soul with soul.