We find more, for he seems, at times, to have presupposed with exactitude the work of most of his unknown predecessors. Just as Plotinus begins his stern journey at the crossroad where Plato, fearing, paused and knelt down, so we might say that Ruysbroeck awakened from a slumber of several centuries; not, indeed, the same kind of thought (for that kind of thought never sleeps), but the same kind of language as that which had fallen asleep on the mountains where Plotinus forsook it, dazzled by that blaze of light, and with his hands before his eyes, as if in presence of an immense conflagration. But the organic method of their thought differs strangely. Plato and Plotinus are before all things princes in the sphere of dialectic. They reach mysticism by the science of reasoning. They use the discursive faculties of their mind, and seem to distrust their intuitive or contemplative faculties. Reasoning beholds itself in the mirror of reasoning, and endeavours to remain indifferent to every other reflection. It continues its course like a river of fresh water in the midst of the sea, with the presentiment of a speedy absorption. In our author we find, on the contrary, the habits of Asiatic thought; the intuitive faculty reigns alone above the discursive purification of ideas by means of words. The fetters of the dream have fallen off. Is it for this reason less sure? None can tell. The mirror of the human intellect is entirely unknown in this book, but there is another mirror, darker and more profound, which we hide in the inmost depths of our being; no detail can be seen distinctly, and words will not remain on its surface; the intellect would break it if it could for a moment cast thereon the reflection of its merely secular light; but something else is seen there from time to time. Is it the soul? is it God Himself? is it both at once? We shall never know; yet these all but invisible appearances are the only real rulers of the life of the most unbelieving among us. Here you will perceive nothing but the dark reflections on the mirror, and, as its treasure is inexhaustible, these reflections are not like anything we have experienced in ourselves, but, in spite of all, they have an amazing certainty. And this is why I know nothing more terrifying than this honest book. There is no psychological idea, no metaphysical experience, no mystical intuition, however abstruse, profound, and surprising they may be, which it would be impossible to reproduce if necessary, and to cause to live for a moment in ourselves, that we might be assured of their human identity; but here on earth we are like a blind father who can no longer recall the faces of his children. None of these thoughts has the childlike or brotherly look of a thought of this earth; we seem to have lost our experience of God, and yet everything assures us that we are not entered into the house of dreams. Must we exclaim with Novalis that