Atherton. A mixture truly. We must not blindly praise it in our hatred of formalism. We must not vaguely condemn it in our horror of extravagance.
Gower. What you have both been saying indicates at once three of the causes we are in search of,—indeed, the three chief ones, as I suppose: first of all, the reaction you speak of against the frigid formality of religious torpor; then, heart-weariness, the languishing longing for repose, the charm of mysticism for the selfish or the weak; and, last, the desire, so strong in some minds, to pierce the barriers that hide from man the unseen world—the charm of mysticism for the ardent and the strong.
Atherton. That shrinking from conflict, that passionate yearning after inaccessible rest, how universal is it; what wistful utterance it has found in every nation and every age; how it subdues us all, at times, and sinks us into languor.
Willoughby. Want of patience lies at the root—who was it said that he should have all eternity to rest in?
Atherton. Think how the traditions of every people have embellished with their utmost wealth of imagination some hidden spot upon the surface of the earth, which they have pourtrayed as secluded from all the tumult and the pain of time—a serene Eden—an ever-sunny Tempe—a vale of Avalon—a place beyond the sterner laws and rougher visitations of the common world—a fastness of perpetual calm, before which the tempests may blow their challenging horns in vain—they can win no entrance. Such, to the fancy of the Middle Age, was the famous temple of the Sangreal, with its dome of sapphire, its six-and-thirty towers, its crystal crosses, and its hangings of green samite, guarded by its knights, girded by impenetrable forest, glittering on the onyx summit of Mount Salvage, for ever invisible to every eye impure, inaccessible to every failing or faithless heart. Such, to the Hindoo, was the Cridavana meadow, among the heights of Mount Sitanta, full of flowers, of the song of birds, the hum of bees—‘languishing winds and murmuring falls of waters.’ Such was the secret mountain Kinkadulle, celebrated by Olaus Magnus, which stood in a region now covered only by moss or snow, but luxuriant once, in less degenerate days, with the spontaneous growth of every pleasant bough and goodly fruit. What places like these have been to the popular mind, even such a refuge for the Ideal from the pursuit of the Actual—that the attainment of Ecstasy, the height of Contemplation, the bliss of Union, has been for the mystic.
Gower. So those spiritual Lotos-eaters will only
——hearken what the inner spirit sings,
There is no joy but calm;
or, in their ‘fugitive and cloistered virtue,’ as Milton calls it, say,
——let us live and lie reclined