communion with the Ground of things.

But the mystic who champions symbolism may object that the
definition of that term must not be taken so narrowly, and that
there is the wider sense in which it is taken by writers on
aesthetics. Some such definition as this may be attempted: A
symbol is something which does not merely "stand for"
something else, but one which, while it has a meaning of its
own, points onward to another thing beyond itself, and suggests
an ideal content which of itself it cannot fully embody. But are
we really cleared of our difficulty by substituting "suggests" for
"stands for"? Again it must be insisted that the mystic aims at
direct communion, not with that which is "suggested," but that
which "is." An object may be low or high in the scale of
existence, may be rich or poor in content--but it is what it is,
and, as such, and in and for itself, may be the source of an
intuition. The man lying on the bank of the mill-stream and
meditating on the water-wheel wanted the secret of the wheel
itself, not what the wheel "suggested." Jefferies, yearning for
fuller soul-life, and sensitive to nature's aspects, felt that the
life was there--that the universe _is_ the life--that the life is
intuited in and through the universe, though not grasped as
yet by the conscious reasoning processes.

As an interesting example, the symbol of the cross may be
briefly considered. Why should a form so simple and so familiar
have acquired an astonishingly wide range and be generally
regarded as symbolic of life? Much has to be learnt before the
problem is solved. One thing seems fairly certain--the choice
has not been wholly arbitrary; there has been at work an