A lover has notoriously this sense of the continuous
being of his idol, even when his attention is addressed to other
matters and he no longer represents her features. He cannot
forget her; she uninterruptedly affects him through and through.
I spoke of the convincingness of these feelings of reality, and I
must dwell a moment longer on that point. They are as convincing
to those who have them as any direct sensible experiences can be,
and they are, as a rule, much more convincing than results
established by mere logic ever are. One may indeed be entirely
without them; probably more than one of you here present is
without them in any marked degree; but if you do have them, and
have them at all strongly, the probability is that you cannot
help regarding them as genuine perceptions of truth, as
revelations of a kind of reality which no adverse argument,
however unanswerable by you in words, can expel from your belief.
The opinion opposed to mysticism in philosophy is sometimes
spoken of as RATIONALISM. Rationalism insists that all our
beliefs ought ultimately to find for themselves articulate
grounds.
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