The essentials of mysticism, and other essaysUnderhill, Evelyn
Religion
The essentials of mysticism, and other essays
Underhill, Evelyn
Mysticism
If we are asked wherein such education should consist, I think we must
reply that its demands are not satisfied by teaching the child any
series of religious doctrines divorced from practical experience. He is
full of energies demanding expression. Our object is so to train those
energies that they shall attain their full power and right balance; and
enable him to set up relations with the spiritual world in which he
truly lives. The first phase in this education will consist in a
definite moral training, which is like the tilling and preparation of
the earth in which the spiritual plant is to grow: and as regarding the
special objects of this training I will take the definition of a great
spiritual writer, a definition remarkable for its sanity and moderation:
“If we would discover and know that Kingdom of God which is hidden in
us, we must lead a life that is virtuous within, well ordered without,
and fulfilled with true charity.” What does that imply? It implies the
cultivation of self-control, order, and disinterestedness. Order is a
quality which all spiritual writers hold in great esteem; for they are
far from being the ecstatic, unbalanced, and mood-ridden creatures of
popular fancy. Now the untrained child has all the disorderly ways, the
uncontrolled and self-interested instincts of the primitive man. He is a
vigorous young animal, reacting promptly and completely to the stimulus
of fear or of greed. The history of human society, the gradual exchange
of license for law, self-interest for group-interest, spasmodic activity
for orderly diligence must be repeated in him if he is to take his place
in that human society. But if we would also prepare in him the way of
spirit, the aim of this training must be something higher than that
convenient social morality, that spirit of fair play, truth, justice,
mutual tolerance, which public school discipline seeks to develop. That
morality is relative and utilitarian. The morality in which alone the
life of the spirit can flourish is absolute and ideal. It is sought, not
because it makes life secure, or promotes the greatest happiness of the
greatest number, but for its own sake. Yet in spite of this, the social
order, in the form in which the child comes in contact with it, may be
made one of the best instruments for producing those characters demanded
by the spiritual life. For what, after all, is the exchanging of
self-interest for group-interests but the beginning of love? And what is
at the root of the spirit of give and take but humility? See how the
approaches to the spiritual kingdom are found in the midst of the common
life: what easy opportunity we have of initiating our children into
these central virtues of the soul. The spiritual writers tell us that
from love and humility all other virtues come; that on the moral side
nothing else is required of us. And we, if we train wisely, may lead the
young into them so gently and yet so deeply that their instinctive
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