Their great internal agreement, along with the firmness and certainty of their utterances, proves all the more that they speak from real inward experience, from an experience which certainly is not accessible to all, but is possessed only by a few favoured individuals, and therefore has received the name of the work of grace, the reality of which, however, for the above reasons, is not to be doubted. But in order to understand all this one must read the mystics themselves, and not be contented with second-hand reports of them; for every one must himself be comprehended before one judges concerning him. Thus to become acquainted with quietism I specially recommend Meister Eckhard, the ''Deutsche Theologie," Tauler, Madame de Guion, Antoinette Bourignon, the English Bunyan, Molinos,[1] and Gichtel. In the same way, as practical proofs and examples of the profound seriousness of asceticism, the life of Pascal, edited by Reuchlin, together with his history of the Port-Royal, and also the Histoire de Sainte Elisabeth, par le comte de Montalembert, and La vie de Rancé, par Chateaubriand, are very well worth reading, but yet by no means exhaust all that is important in this class. Whoever has read such writings, and compared their spirit with that of ascetism and quietism as it runs through all works of Brahmanism and Buddhism, and speaks in every page, will admit that every philosophy, which must in consistency reject that whole mode of thought, which it can only do by explaining the representatives of it to be either impostors or madmen, must just on this account necessarily be false. But all European systems, with the exception of mine, find themselves in this position. Truly it must be an extraordinary madness which, under the most widely different circumstances and persons possible, spoke with such agree-
- ↑ Michælis de Molinos manuductio spiritualis; hispanice 1675, italice 1680, latine 1687, gallice in libro non adeo raro, cui titulus: Rccueil de diverses pièces concernant le quiétisme, ou Molinos et ses disciples. Amstd., 1688.
