Mysticism

Use in the book

The Staël discussion begins with the inmost recesses of mind and objects to nonreligious mystical expression that borrows the authority of conscience. Its prohibition on excessive inwardness is itself qualified by an exception for the heart, followed by renewed uncertainty. The separate condemnation of philosophical, quasi-physiological mysticité remains a compressed judgment. The later definition takes the mystic as inwardly devout and explains mystical quality as hidden devotion, fervent, private and singular. Its semantic emphasis is inwardness and concealment, not a claim that every unusual experience is a revelation.

Places to read

1. II, p. 806, entry 3, ¶1A criticism of nonreligious inward expression ends with a qualified exception.
2. II, p. 806, entry 5, ¶1Philosophical and quasi-physiological mystical quality is rejected in a fragment.
3. II, p. 851, entry 1, ¶1Mystic and mystical quality are explicitly glossed through inward devotion.

Translation in this edition

The English translation renders mysticisme as mysticism, mysticité as mystical quality and the personal mystique as mystic. It preserves the uncertainty after the heart exception and brackets conjectural [devotion] and [private] in the later definition. The Staël work and quoted wording are not externally established.