speak of "asceticism," they have in their minds such severe
"buffeting" of the body as was practised by many ancient hermits and
mediaeval monks. Is this an integral part of the mystic's "upward
path"? We shall find reason to conclude that, while a certain degree
of austere simplicity characterises the outward life of nearly all the
mystics, and while an almost morbid desire to suffer is found in many
of them, there is nothing in the system itself to encourage men to
maltreat their bodies. Mysticism enjoins a dying life, not a living
death. Moreover, asceticism, when regarded as a virtue or duty in
itself, tends to isolate us, and concentrates our attention on our
separate individuality. This is contrary to the spirit of Mysticism,
which aims at realising unity and solidarity everywhere. Monkish
asceticism (so far as it goes beyond the struggle to live unstained
under unnatural conditions) rests on a dualistic view of the world
which does not belong to the essence of Mysticism. It infected all the
religious life of the Middle Ages, not Mysticism only.[20]

The second stage, the illuminative life, is the concentration of all
the faculties, will, intellect, and feeling, upon God. It differs from
the purgative life, not in having discarded good works, but in having
come to perform them, as Fenelon says, "no longer as virtues," that is
to say, willingly and almost spontaneously. The struggle is now
transferred to the inner life.

The last stage of the journey, in which the soul presses towards the
mark, and gains the prize of its high calling, is the unitive or
contemplative life, in which man beholds God face to face, and is
joined to Him. Complete union with God is the ideal limit of religion,
the attainment of which would be at once its consummation and
annihilation. It is in the continual but unending approximation to it
that the life of religion subsists.[21] We must therefore beware of
regarding the union as anything more than an infinite process, though,
as its end is part of t