In this imaginative plan of the world we may recognize stages according to the increasing weakness of the systems, depending on the number and quality of the hypotheses. For example, the progression is apparent between Plotinus and the frenzied creations of the Gnostics and the Cabalists. With the latter, we come into a world of unbridled fancy which, in place of human romances, invents cosmic romances. Here appear the allegorical beings mentioned above, half concept, half symbol; the ten Sephiros of the Cabala, immutable forms of being; the _syzygies_ or couples of Gnosticism--soul and reflection, depth and silence, reason and life, inspiration and truth, etc.; the absolute manifesting itself by the unfolding of fifty-two attributes, each unfolding comprising seven _eons_, corresponding to the 364 days of the year, etc. It would be wearisome to follow these extravagant thoughts, which, though the learned may treat them with some respect, have for the psychologist only the interest of pathologic evidence. Moreover, this form of mystic imagination presents too little that is new for us to speak of it without repeating ourselves. To conclude: The mystic imagination, in its alluring freedom, its variety, and its richness, is second to no form, not even to esthetic invention, which, according to common prejudice, is the type _par excellence_. Following the most venturesome methods of analogy, it has constructed conceptions of the world made up almost wholly of feelings and images--symbolic architectures. FOOTNOTES: [99] _Philosophy of the Unconscious_, I, part 2, ch. IX. [100] J. Darmesteter, in Recejac, _Essai sur les fondements de la connaissance mystique_, p. 124. [101] In such notions may perhaps be best found the genesis of the present superstitions in regard to "lucky" and "unlucky" numbers, like the number 13, which have such persistence. (Tr.) [102] See Part Two, chapter II. [103] Groos, _Die Spiele der Thiere_, pp. 308-312. [104] Mabilleau, _op. cit._, p. 132. [105] If we leave out oriental influences and the Mysteries, which, according to Aristotle, were not dogmatic teaching, but a show, an assemblage of symbols, acting by evocation, or suggestion, following the special mode of mystic imagination that we already know. [106] Recejac, _op. cit._, pp. 139 ff. [107] One at once calls to mind Plotinus, whose highest philosophy is a kind of indescribable ecstacy. (Tr.) [108] Hartmann, _op. cit._, vol. I, part 2, chapter IX. CHAPTER IV THE SCIENTIFIC IMAGINATION