Hours with the Mystics: A Contribution to the History of Religious Opinion

by Robert Alfred Vaughan

Note to page 158.

The treatise by Hugo, entitled De Vanitate Mundi, is a dialogue between teacher and scholar, in which, after directing his pupil to survey the endless variety and vicissitude of life, after showing him the horrors of a shipwreck, the house of Dives, a marriage feast, the toils and disputes of the learned, the instructor bids him shelter himself from this sea of care in that ark of God, the religious life. He proceeds to describe that inner Eye, that oculus cordis, whose vision is so precious. ‘Thou hast another eye,’ he says (lib. i. p. 172), ‘an eye within, far more piercing than the other thou speakest of,—one that beholds at once the past, the present, and the future; which diffuses through all things the keen brightness of its vision; which penetrates what is hidden, investigates what is impalpable; which needs no foreign light wherewith to see, but gazes by a light of its own, peculiar to itself (luce aliena ad videndum non indigens, sed sua ac propria luce prospiciens).

Self-collection is opposed (p. 175) to distraction, or attachment to the manifold,—is declared to be restauratio, and at the same time elevatio. The scholar inquires, ‘If the heart of man be an ark or ship, how can man be said to enter into his own heart, or to navigate the universe with his heart? Lastly, if God, whom you call the harbour, be above, what can you mean by such an unheard-of thing as a voyage which carries the ship upwards, and bears away the mariner out of himself?’ The teacher replies, ‘When we purpose elevating the eye of the mind to things invisible, we must avail ourselves of certain analogies drawn from the objects of sense. Accordingly, when, speaking of things spiritual and unseen, we say that anything is highest, we do not mean that it is at the top of the sky, but that it is the inmost of all things. To ascend to God, therefore, is to enter into ourselves, and not only so, but in our inmost self to transcend ourselves. (Ascendere ergo ad Deum hoc est intrare ad semet ipsum, et non solum ad se intrare, sed ineffabili quodam modo in intimis etiam se ipsum transire, p. 176.)

Hugo, like Richard, associates this illumination inseparably with the practices of devotion. The tree of Wisdom within is watered by Grace. It stands by Faith, and is rooted in God. As it flourishes, we die to the world, we empty ourselves, we sigh over even the necessary use of anything earthly. Devotion makes it bud, constancy of penitence causes it to grow. Such penitence (compunctio) he compares to digging in search of a treasure, or to find a spring. Sin has concealed this hoard—buried this water-source down beneath the many evils of the heart. The watching and the prayer of the contrite spirit clears away what is earthly, and restores the divine gift. The spirit, inflamed with heavenly desire, soars upward—becomes, as it ascends, less gross, as a column of smoke is least dense towards its summit, till we are all spirit; are lost to mortal ken, as the cloud melts into the air, and find a perfect peace within, in secret gazing on the face of the Lord. De Arca morali, lib. iii. cap. 7.

Note to page 162.

See the introductory chapters of the Benjamin Minor, or De prep. anim. ad contemp. fol. 34, &c.—Richard rates this kind of interpretation very highly, and looks for success therein to Divine Illumination. (De eruditione interioris hominis, cap. vi. fol. 25.) A passage or two from an appendix to his Treatise on Contemplation, may serve, once for all, as a specimen of his mystical interpretation. It is entitled Nonnullæ allegoriæ tabernaculi fœderis. ‘By the tabernacle of the covenant understand the state of perfection. Where perfection of the soul is, there is the indwelling of God. The nearer we approach perfection, the more closely are we united with God. The tabernacle must have a court about it. Understand by this the discipline of the body; by the tabernacle itself, the discipline of the mind. The one is useless without the other. The court is open to the sky, and so the discipline of the body is accessible to all. What was within the tabernacle could not be seen by those without. None knows what is in the inner man save the spirit of man which is in him. The inner man is divided into rational and intellectual; the former represented by the outer, the latter by the inner part of the tabernacle. We call that rational perception by which we discern what is within ourselves. We here apply the term intellectual perception to that faculty by which we are elevated to the survey of what is divine. Man goes out of the tabernacle into the court in the exercise of works. He enters the first tabernacle when he returns to himself. He enters the second when he transcends himself. Self-transcendence is elevation into Deity. (Transcendendo sane seipsum elevatur in Deum.) In the former, man is occupied with the consideration of himself; in the latter, with the contemplation of God.

‘The ark of the covenant represents the grace of contemplation. The kinds of contemplation are six, each distinct from the rest. Two of them are exercised with regard to visible creatures, two are occupied with invisible, the two last with what is divine. The first four are represented in the ark, the two others are set forth in the figures of the cherubim. Mark the difference between the wood and the gold. There is the same difference between the objects of imagination and the objects of reason. By imagination we behold the forms of things visible, by ratiocination we investigate their causes. The three kinds of consideration which have reference to things, works, and morals, belong to the length, breadth, and height of the ark respectively. In the consideration of form and matter, our knowledge avails a full cubit. (It is equivalent to a cubit when complete.) But our knowledge of the nature of things is only partial. For this part, therefore, we reckon only half a cubit. Accordingly, the length of the ark is two cubits and a half.’... And thus he proceeds concerning the crown, the rings, the staves, the mercy-seat, the cherubim, &c.—Fol. 63, &c.

Note to page 163.

The three heavens within the mind are described at length. (De Contemp. lib. iii. cap. 8.) In the first are contained the images of all things visible; in the second lie the definitions and principles of things seen, the investigations made concerning things unseen; in the third are contemplations of things divine, beheld as they truly are—a sun that knows no going down,—and there, and there alone, the kingdom of God within us in its glory.—Cap. x. fol 52.

The eye of Intelligence is thus defined (cap. ix.):—Intelligentiæ siquidem oculus est sensus ille quo invisibilia videmus: non sicut oculo rationis quo occulta et absentia per investigationem quærimus et invenimus; sicut sæpe causas per effectus, vel effectus per causas, et alia atque alia quocunque ratiocinandi modo comprehendimus. Sed sicut corporalia corporeo sensu videre solemus visibiliter potentialiter et corporaliter; sic utique intellectualis ille sensus invisibilia capit invisibiliter quidem, sed potentialiter, sed essentialiter. (Fol. 52.) He then goes on to speak of the veil drawn over this organ by sin, and admits that even when illuminated from above, its gaze upon our inner self is not so piercing as to be able to discern the essence of the soul. The inner verities are said to be within, the upper, beyond the veil. ‘It may be questioned, however, whether we are to see with this same eye of Intelligence the things beyond the veil, or whether we use one sense to behold the invisible things which are divine, and another to behold the invisible things of our own nature. But those who maintain that there is one sense for the intuition of things above and another for those below, must prove it as well as they can. I believe that in this way they introduce much confusion into the use of this word Intelligence,—now extending its signification to a speculation which is occupied with what is above, and now confining it to what is below, and sometimes including both senses. This twofold intuition of things above and things below, whether we call it, as it were, a double sense in one, or divide it, is yet the instrument of the same sense, or a twofold effect of the same instrument, and whichever we choose, there can be no objection to our saying that they both belong to the intellectual heaven.’ There is certainly much of the confusion of which he complains in his own use of the word,—a confusion which is perhaps explained by supposing that he sometimes allows Intelligence to extend its office below its proper province, though no other faculty can rise above the limits assigned to it. Intelligence may sometimes survey from her altitude the more slow and laborious processes of reason, though she never descends to such toil.