I have included these phenomena not for their own sakes, but to indicate
my boundary-line, for very frequently these women are cited as genuine
mystics. Even Schopenhauer mentions these "saints" in one breath with
German mystics and Indian philosophers; he calls Madame Guyon "a great
and beautiful soul whose memory I venerate." And yet there can be no
doubt that it is not the fictitious object of love which is conclusive,
but the emotion of the lover: the sensualist can approach God and the
Virgin with inflamed senses, but to the lover every woman is divine.
The result of this chapter is as far as our investigation is concerned,
negative. The deifying love of man has no parallel phenomenon in the
emotional life of woman.
(_b_) SEXUAL MYSTICS.
Sexual mysticism is a contradiction in itself, because true mysticism
has nothing whatever to do with sexuality. But frequently suppressed
sexuality, secretly luxuriating, takes possession of the whole soul, and
a religious construction is put on the results.
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