[Footnote 402: I had written these words before the publication of Principal Caird's _Sermons_, which contain, in my judgment, the most powerful defence of what I have called Christian Mysticism that has appeared since William Law. On p. 14 he says: "Of all things good and fair and holy there is a spiritual cognisance which precedes and is independent of that knowledge which the understanding conveys." He shows how in the contemplation of nature it is "by an organ deeper than intellectual thought" that "the revelation of material beauty flows in upon the soul." "And in like manner there is an apprehension of God and Divine things which comes upon the spirit as a living reality which it immediately and intuitively perceives." ... "There is a capacity of the soul, by which the truths of religion may be apprehended and appropriated." See the whole sermon, entitled, _What is Religion?_ and many other parts of the book.] [Footnote 403: Cf. Hegel (_Philosophy of Religion_, vol. ii. p. 8): "The Beautiful is essentially the Spiritual making itself known sensuously, presenting itself in sensuous concrete existence, but in such a manner that that existence is wholly and entirely permeated by the Spiritual, so that the sensuous is not independent, but has its meaning solely and exclusively in the Spiritual and through the Spiritual, and exhibits not itself, but the Spiritual."] [Footnote 404: Some reference ought perhaps to be made to Drummond's _Natural Law in the Spiritual World_. But Mysticism seeks rather to find spiritual law in the natural world--and some better law than Drummond's Calvinism. (And I cannot help thinking that, though Evolution explains much and contradicts nothing in Christianity, it is in danger of proving an _ignis fatuus_ to many, especially to those who are inclined to idealistic pantheism. There can be no progress or development in God, and the cosmic process as we know it cannot have a higher degree of reality than the categories of time and place under which it appears. As for the millennium of perfected humanity on this earth, which some Positivists and others dream of,--Christianity has nothing to say against it, but science has a great deal.) See below, p. 328.] [Footnote 405: In the Life of Charles Darwin there is an interesting letter, in which he laments the gradual decay of his taste for poetry, as his mind became a mere "machine for grinding out general laws" from a mass of observations. The decay of religious _feeling_ in many men of high character may be accounted for in the same way. The really great man is conscious of the sacrifice which he is making. "It is an accursed evil to a man," Darwin wrote to Hooker, "to become so absorbed in any subject as I am in mine." The common-place man is _not_ conscious of it: he obtains his heart's desire, if he works hard enough, and God sends leanness withal into his soul.]