(3) And, finally, as to the relations between the Contemplative forms of Prayer, and Acts and variously complete States of Pure Love; and, again, of such Prayer and Love, and Abnormal or Miraculous conditions: it is clear that, if there is no true Contemplation without much Pure Love, there can be much Pure Love without Contemplation.
Abbé Gosselin well sums up the ordinary Catholic teaching. “Meditation consists of discursive acts which are easily distinguished from each other, both because of the kind of strain and shock with which they are produced, and because of the diversity of their objects. It is the ordinary foundation of the interior life and the ordinary prayer of beginners, whose imperfect love requires to be thus excited and sustained by distinct and reflective acts. Contemplation consists, strictly speaking, in direct ‘non-reflex’ acts,—acts so simple and peaceful as to have nothing salient by which the soul could distinguish one from the other. It is called by the Mystical Saints ‘a simple and loving look,’ as discriminating it from meditation and the latter’s many methodic and discursive acts, and as limiting it to a simple and loving consideration and view of God and of divine things, certified and rendered present to the soul by faith. It is the ordinary prayer of perfect souls, or at least of those that have already made much progress in the divine love. For the more purely a soul loves God, the less it requires to be sustained by distinct, reflective acts; reasoning becomes a fatigue and an embarrassment to it in its prayer—it longs but to love and to contemplate the object of its love.”
Or as Fénelon puts it: “‘Passivity,’ ‘Action,’ is not precisely itself Pure Love, but is the mode in which Pure Love operates.… ‘Passivity,’ ‘Action,’ is not precisely the purity of Love, but is the effect of that purity.”[177] Yet, as M. Gosselin adds, “It must be admitted that without Contemplation the soul can arrive at a very high perfection; and that the most discursive meditation, and hence still more all prayer as it becomes effective, often includes certain direct acts which form an admixture and beginning of contemplation.”[178]
And as to any supposed necessary relations between the very highest contemplation and the most complete state of Pure Love on the one hand, and anything abnormal or miraculous on the other hand, Fénelon, in this point remarkably more sober than Bossuet, well sums up the most authoritative and classical Church-teaching on the matter: “‘Passive’ Contemplation is but Pure Contemplation: ‘Active’ Contemplation being one which is still mixed with hurried and discursive acts. When Contemplation has ceased to have any remnant of this hurry, of this ‘activity,’ it is entirely ‘Passive,’ that is, peaceful, in its acts.” “This free and loving look of the soul means acts of the understanding,—for it is a look; and acts of the will, for the look is a loving one; and acts produced by free-will, without any strict necessity, for the look is a free look.” “We should not compare Passive Contemplation,” as did Bossuet, “to prophecy, or to the gift of tongues or of miracles; nor may we say that this mystical state consists principally in something wrought by God within us without our co-operation, and where, consequently, there neither is nor can be any merit. We must, on the contrary, to speak correctly, say that the substance of such Passive Prayer, taken in its specific acts, is free, meritorious, and operated within us by a grace that acts together with us.” “It is the attraction to the acts which the soul now produces which, as by a secondary and counter-effect, occasions a quasi-incapacity for those acts which it does not produce. Now this attraction is not of a kind to deprive the soul of the use of its free-will: we see this from the nature of the acts which this attraction causes the soul to produce. Whence I conclude that this same attraction does not, again, deprive it of its liberty with regard to the acts which it prevents. The attraction but prevents the latter in the way it produces the other,—by an efficacious influence that involves no sheer necessity.” “‘Passivity,’ if it comes from God, ever leaves the soul fully free for the exercise of the distinct virtues demanded by God in the Gospel; the attrait is truly divine only in so far as it draws the soul on to the perfect fulfilment of the evangelical counsels and promises concerning all the virtues.” “The inspiration of the Passive state is but an habitual inspiration for the interior acts of evangelical piety. It renders the Passive soul neither infallible nor impeccable, nor independent of the Church even for its interior direction, nor exempt from the obligation of meriting and growing in virtue.… The inspiration of the passive soul differs from that of actively just souls only in being purer; that is, more exempt from all natural self-seeking, more full, more simple, more continuous, and more developed at each moment. We have, throughout, ever one and the same inspiration, which but grows in perfection and purity in proportion as the soul renounces itself more, and becomes more sensitive to the divine impressions.”[179]
Thus we get an impressive, simple and yet varied, conception of spirituality, in which a real continuity, and a power and obligation of mutual understanding and aid underlies all the changes of degree and form, from first to last. For from first to last there are different degrees, but of the same supernatural grace acting in and upon the same human nature responsive in different degrees and ways. From first to last there is, necessarily and at every step, the Supernatural: at no point is there any necessary presence of, or essential connection with, the Miraculous or the Abnormal.
4. Spinoza, Leibniz, Kant.
Theology and Philosophy have not ceased to occupy themselves, at least indirectly, with the substance of these great questions, since they furnished the subject-matter to Bossuet and Fénelon in their memorable controversy; somewhat over-subtle although some of it was in its earlier phases, owing to Fénelon’s chivalrous anxiety to defend, as far as possible, the very expressions, often so nebulous and shifting, of his cousin, Madame Guyon.
(1) Indeed about twenty years before that controversy, Spinoza had, in his Theologico-Political Treatise, and then, more impressively still, in his Ethics, made a brilliant assault upon all, especially all religious, self-seeking. Also on this point these writings showed that strange, pathetic combination of grandly religious intuitions and instincts with a Naturalistic system which, logically, leaves no room for those deepest requirements of that great soul; and here they revealed, in addition, considerable injustice towards the, doubtless very mixed and imperfect, motives of average humanity.
True intuition speaks in his Treatise (published in 1670) in the words: “Since the love of God is man’s supreme beatitude and the final end and scope of all human actions: it follows that only that man conforms to the divine law, who strives to love God, not from fear of punishment, nor from the love of some other thing, such as delights, fame, and so forth, but from this motive alone, that he knows God, or that he knows the knowledge and love of God, to be his supreme end.” But a little further back we learn that “the more we know the things of Nature, the greater and the more perfect knowledge of God do we acquire”; a frank application of the pure Pantheism of his reasoned system.
In his Ethics, again, a noble intuition finds voice where he says: “Even if we did not know our Mind,” our individual soul, “to be eternal, we should still put Piety and Religion and, in a word, all those virtues that are to be referred to magnanimity and generosity, first in our esteem.” But he is doubtless excessive in his picturing of the downright, systematic immorality of attitude of ordinary men—the “slaves” and “mercenaries.” “Unless this hope of laying aside the burdens of Piety and Religion after death and of receiving the price of their service, and this fear of being punished by dire punishments after death were in men, and if they, contrariwise, believed that their minds would perish with their bodies: they would let themselves go to their natural inclination and would decide to rule all their actions according to their lust.” And he is doubtlessly, though nobly, excessive in his contrary ideal: “He who loves God cannot strive that God shall love him in return,”—an ideal which is, however, certainly in part determined by his philosophy, which knows no ultimate abiding personality or consciousness either in God or man.