an ineffable glory whose true names are all only negative. Addressing the Eternal, the poet says: —
- “Tu sine littore.
- Tu sine tempore.”
Shoreless and timeless is the depth of true Being. Contrasting the present life with the perfect life, one has the wholly negative antithesis:
- “Hic breve vivitur
- Hic breve plangitur
- Hic breve fletur;
- Non breve vivere
- Non breve plangere
- Retribuetur.”
To be sure, Bernard’s hymn is a very treasure-house of brilliant sensuous characterizations of the joys of the home of peace; but just these characterizations, as we but now observed, are metaphorical, and are as such intended to be false. They hint at some final immediacy; and this justifies their use of sensuous language. They mean the ineffable, but their intended truth lies, above all, in the antitheses and in the negations that they merely illustrate: —
- “Nescio, nescio
- Quae jubilatio
- Lux tibi qualis.”
The Nescio, nescio of Bernard, is identical in meaning with the Neti, Neti; it is not so; it is not so, of the sage Yâjnavalkya. In the very contrast of the finite with the ineffable this mysticism lives, whether it be Hindoo or Christian Mysticism: —
