I only describe
the tangle; I do not delight in it. Like most people with a taste
for Catholic tradition, I am too much of a rationalist for that;
for Catholics are almost the only people now defending reason.
But I am not talking of the true relations of reason and mystery,
but of the historical fact that mystery has invaded the peculiar
realms of reason; especially the European realms of the motor
and the telephone. When we have a man like Mr. William Archer,
lecturing mystically on dreams and psychoanalysis, and saying
it is clear that God did not make man a reasonable creature,
those acquainted with the traditions and distinguished record
of that dry and capable Scot will consider the fact a prodigy.
I confess it never occurred to me that Mr. Archer was of such stuff
as dreams are made of; and if he is becoming a mystic in his old age
(I use the phrase in a mystical and merely relative sense)
we may take it that the occult oriental flood is rising fast,
and reaching places that are not only high but dry.
But the change is much more apparent to a man who has chanced
to stray into those orient hills where those occult streams
have always risen, and especially in this land that lies
between Asia, where the occult is almost the obvious, and Europe,
where it is always returning with a fresher and younger vigour.
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