Obstacles to Mystical Experience

There is a familiar statement to the effect that all men are born either Platonists or Aristotelians. Dean Inge adapts this by saying, "Everyone is naturally either a mystic or a legalist." The distinction is the same as that between illumination and tradition, between prophet and priest. This pamphlet concerns the former, the mystic who knows religion as directly experienced. Interest in formulations of doctrines, or of intellectual interpretations of the direct experience itself, is merel...