English Mystics #249428

This book makes no claim to present a detailed and exhaustive criticism of mystical writings in the English tongue, nor to offer a complete or incomplete anthology from these. Its mainjustification, if it have one, is the belief that English Mysticism, while it does and must, in its main features, resemble all genuine mysticism, yet has distinct characters of its own, which shine clearly and obviously in those writers whose debt to non — English predecessors is small or none, and break through that foreign influence even where it exists, showing by elaboration or addition the marked features of the indigenous attitude. As additional justification I would plead that this English contribution is not less individual and valuable than that of the Platonist Christian writers, of the great Latin Mystics (of classical and later ages), of the Flemings or Germans. This is, no doubt, a daring claim.