第 14 节
作者:翱翔1981      更新:2021-02-27 00:27      字数:2980
  through which the mind looks out upon a more extensive and
  inclusive world。  The difference of the views seen from the
  different mystical windows need not prevent us from entertaining
  this supposition。  The wider world would in that case prove to
  have a mixed constitution like that of this world; that is all。
  It would have its celestial and its infernal regions; its
  tempting and its saving moments; its valid experiences and its
  counterfeit ones; just as our world has them; but it would be a
  wider world all the same。  We should have to use its experiences
  by selecting and subordinating and substituting just as is our
  custom in this ordinary naturalistic world; we should be liable
  to error just as we are now; yet the counting in of that wider
  world of meanings; and the serious dealing with it; might; in
  spite of all the perplexity; be indispensable stages in our
  approach to the final fullness of the truth。
  '287' They sometimes add subjective audita et visa to the facts;
  but as these are usually interpreted as transmundane; they oblige
  no alteration in the facts of sense。
  In this shape; I think; we have to leave the subject。  Mystical
  states indeed wield no authority due simply to their being
  mystical states。  But the higher ones among them point in
  directions to which the religious sentiments even of non…
  mystical men incline。  They tell of the supremacy of the ideal;
  of vastness; of union; of safety; and of rest。  They offer us
  HYPOTHESES; hypotheses which we may voluntarily ignore; but which
  as thinkers we cannot possibly upset。  The supernaturalism and
  optimism to which they would persuade us may; interpreted in one
  way or another; be after all the truest of insights into the
  meaning of this life。
  〃Oh; the little more; and how much it is; and the little less;
  and what worlds away!〃  It may be that possibility and permission
  of this sort are all that are religious consciousness requires to
  live on。  In my last lecture I shall have to try to persuade you
  that this is the case。  Meanwhile; however; I am sure that for
  many of my readers this diet is too slender。 If supernaturalism
  and inner union with the divine are true; you think; then not so
  much permission; as compulsion to believe; ought to be found。
  Philosophy has always professed to prove religious truth by
  coercive argument; and the construction of philosophies of this
  kind has always been one favorite function of the religious life;
  if we use this term in the large historic sense。  But religious
  philosophy is an enormous subject; and in my next lecture I can
  only give that brief glance at it which my limits will allow。