Faith and Love

Summary

Preface

If one wishes to say something secret to a few in a large, mixed company, and when one is not sitting close to another, one must speak in a special language. This special language can be foreign either in its tone or in its images. The latter will be a metaphoric and cryptic language.

Many have thought that one should use a learned language to speak of delicate, abusable things, for example, that one should write in Latin about such matters. But the attempt should be made to see if one cannot speak in the customary language of the land, so that only those can understand who should understand. Every true mystery excludes the profane by itself. Whoever understands it is of his own accord, and with good reason, an initiate.

A mystical expression is one more stimulus for thought. All truth is ancient. The attraction of novelty resides only in the variation of expression. The more contrasting the appearance, the greater the joy of recognition.

What one loves one finds everywhere and sees similarities to it everywhere. The greater the love the wider and more varied the resembling world. My beloved is the abbreviation of the universe, the universe the elongation of my beloved. To its friend the sciences offer everything, flowers and mementoes for his beloved.

But whence the serious mystical-political philosophy? The inspired expresses his higher life in all his functions; hence he philosophizes too, and indeed in a more lively manner than usual, in a more poetic vein.