But we are not so much concerned here with the rich and variegated garments the impulse of religion puts on, or with its possible transmutations, as with the simple and naked shape of those impulses when bared of all garments. It was peculiarly important to present the impulse of mysticism naked because, of all the fundamental human impulses, that is the one most often so richly wrapped round with gorgeous and fantastic garments that, alike to the eye of the ordinary man and the acute philosopher, there has seemed to be no living thing inside at all. It was necessary to strip off all these garments, to appeal to simple personal direct experience for the actual core of fact, and to show that that core, so far from being soluble by analysis into what science counts as nothing, is itself, like every other natural organic function, a fact of science. It is enough here, where we are concerned only with the primary stuff of art, the bare simple technique of the human dance, to have brought into as clear a light as may be the altogether natural mechanism which lies behind all the most magnificent fantasies of the mystic impulse, and would still subsist and operate even though they were all cast into the flames. That is why it has seemed necessary to dwell all the time on the deep-lying harmony of the mystic’s attitude with the scientific man’s attitude. It is a harmony which rests on the faith that they are eternally separate, however close, however intimately coöperative. When the mystic professes that, as such, he has knowledge of the same order as the man of science, or when the scientist claims that, as such, he has emotion which is like that of the man of religion, each of them deceives himself. He has introduced a confusion where no confusion need be; perhaps, indeed, he has even committed that sin against the Holy Ghost of his own spiritual integrity for which there is no forgiveness. The function of intellectual thought—which is that of the art of science—may, certainly, be invaluable for religion; it makes possible the purgation of all that pseudo-science, all that philosophy, good or bad, which has poisoned and encrusted the simple spontaneous impulse of mysticism in the open air of Nature and in the face of the sun. The man of science may be a mystic, but cannot be a true mystic unless he is so relentless a man of science that he can tolerate no alien science in his mysticism. The mystic may be a man of science, but he will not be a good man of science unless he understands that science must be kept for ever bright and pure from all admixture of mystical emotion; the fountain of his emotion must never rust the keenness of his analytic scalpel. It is useless to pretend that any such rustiness can ever convert the scalpel into a mystical implement, though it can be an admirable aid in cutting towards the mystical core of things, and perhaps if there were more relentless scientific men there would be more men of pure mystic vision.