Mysticism in English Literature

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Excerpt: ...there But never yet hath dipt into the abysm. Tennyson, like Wordsworth, emphasises the truth that the only way in which man can gain real knowledge and hear the "Nameless" is by diving or sinking into the centre of his own being. There is a great deal of Eastern philosophy and mysticism in the Ancient Sage, as, for instance, the feeling of the unity of all existence to the point of merging the personality into the universal. But that one ripple on the boundless deep Feels that the deep is boundless, and itself For ever changing form, but evermore One with the boundless motion of the deep. We know that Tennyson had been studying the philosophy of Lâo-Tsze about this time, yet, though this is, as it were, grafted on to the poet's mind, still we may take it as being his genuine and deepest conviction. The nearest approach to a definite statement of it to be found in his poems is in the few stanzas called The Higher Pantheism, which he sent to be read at the first meeting of the Metaphysical Society in 1869. Speak to Him thou for He hears, and Spirit with Spirit can meet- Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than hands and feet. And the ear of man cannot hear, and the eye of man cannot see, But if we could see and hear, this Vision-were it not He? In William Law, Burke, Coleridge, and Carlyle, we have a succession of great English prose-writers whose work and thought is permeated by a mystical philosophy. Of these four, Law is, during his later life, by far the most consistently and predominantly mystical. As has been indicated, there were many strains of influence which in the seventeenth century tended to foster mystical thought in England. The group of Cambridge Platonists, to which Henry More belonged, gave new expression to the great Neo-platonic ideas, but in addition to this a strong vein of mysticism had been kept alive in Amsterdam, where the exiled Separatists had gone in 1593. They flourished there and waxed strong, and...