The Mystical Element of Religion, as studied in Saint Catherine of Genoa and her friends, Volume 2 (of 2)Hügel, Friedrich, Freiherr von
Religion
The Mystical Element of Religion, as studied in Saint Catherine of Genoa and her friends, Volume 2 (of 2)
Hügel, Friedrich, Freiherr von
Catherine, of Genoa, Saint, 1447-1510
And if thus our recent studies of morbid mentalities have been able
to throw a flood of light upon the mechanism and character of the
healthy mind, a mind more difficult to analyze precisely because
of the harmonious interaction of its forces, there is nothing very
surprising if man, in the past, learnt to know his own fundamental
nature better in and through periods of abnormal excitation than in
those of normal balance. And the resultant doctrines in the case in
question only required, and demand again and again, a careful pruning
and harmonizing to show forth an extraordinary volume of abiding
truth. The insuppressible difference between mind and matter, and the
distinction between the fully recollected soul (intuitive reason), and
explicit reasoning; the immeasurable superiority of mind over matter,
and the superiority of that full reason over this “thin” reasoning;
the certainty, involved in all our inevitable mental categories and
assumptions and in all our motives for action, of this mind and
intuition being more like the cause of all things than are those
other inferior realities and activities; the indestructibleness of
the postulates and standards of objective and infinite Beauty, Truth,
Goodness, of our consciousness of being intrinsically bound to them,
and of our inmost humanity and its relative greatness being measurable
by just this our consciousness of this our obligation, and hence
by the keenness of our sense of failure, and by our striving after
purification and the realization of our immanental possibilities: all
this remains deeply fruitful and true.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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