I
Religion is a large word, of good import and of evil import, and with the general discussion of religion we are not in this place concerned. Its quintessential core—which is the art of finding our emotional relationship to the world conceived as a whole—is all that here matters, and it is best termed “Mysticism.” No doubt it needs some courage to use that word. It is the common label of abuse applied to every pseudo-spiritual thing that is held up for contempt. Yet it would be foolish to allow ourselves to be deflected from the right use of a word by the accident of its abuse. “Mysticism,” however often misused, will here be used, because it is the correct term for the relationship of the Self to the Not-Self, of the individual to a Whole, when, going beyond his own personal ends, he discovers his adjustment to larger ends, in harmony or devotion or love.
It has become a commonplace among the unthinking, or those who think badly, to assume an opposition of hostility between mysticism and science.[[70]] If “science” is, as we have some reason to believe, an art, if “mysticism” also is an art, the opposition can scarcely be radical since they must both spring from the same root in natural human activity.