The Birmingham age-herald., 1924-08-08
Hunger For Mystery
By DR. FRANK CRANE

A certain part of the world is ever grOping | into the unknowable. Il
 The cry of the soul is not for the know only, for facts and evident truths. but for mystery also.
 Unless thing is little fuzzy with magic and miracle it is not to mankind's taste.
 What multitudes to this day in the East are exploring the astral fogs of strange re- ligiOns | The forests of India and the noun tains of;Thibet are full of men seeking in the clouds of their own thought the secret of wis dom, climbing the bluest peaks of the soul
 The western world has it's struggles of faith. All our cults of worship are probing into the unknown. Roman Catholicism and Professionalism alike e<are, at the core, mystical adventufes. Human nature must have them. I You might tear down all the eathedrals; you could not eradicate the church without taking the human heart to pieces. Beef and beer are not enough. To eat, drink, breed and fight do not satisfy. We feed also t upon the stars.
 Half of life is daytime: the other half is night. Our hunger is for shadows as well as for light.
 It is singular, the undying fame of mys- tieal books. It seems one must dip his pen in the ink of Obscurity and write dim sound ing words to capture the imaginations of men. Much of Dante is unintelligible, much of Swinbnrne, of Browning, of Maeterlinck l is as unSclear in meaning as the surf sounding on the rocks, as the flutter and cry of birds. That is why the world loves them. 4 book that instructs us; book that haunts us, is eternal,
 Speaking of book of Ruysbroeck. the Bel. gian monk and mystic. AIaeterlinck says: ] You must not expect 6 liiterary work: you will perceive nothing more than the convulsive flight of tiDsy eagle, blind and blood-stain- led, above snowy summits.n And again, in reading the book you will have the sensa- tion of uniform fall into a fathomless abyss, between black, smooth walls.''
 {, Such nutriment of clouds and darkness feyery soul must have. The problem is to get some kind of faith" some sort of meat of the unknown that will fit with the intelli- l gence. that will float fairly above one's world Iof common sense, and not descend to befog and confuse it.
 t We cannot reject thes Supernatural. be- cause every one of us is himself supernatural
 If we will not believe in love or Jah we will believe in luck; if we reject the high obsearities of love we will be found haunting t!e altars of lust many who reject prayer are not ashamed of tabIe-rappings; those fo whom the visions of poetry are shut vii creep to clairvoyant5 houses, chain their lfreeborn minds to absurd prejudices and faS- ten the tenacles of their souls to hocus- pocus and hoOdoos.
 Those who neglect the intelligent cul,iva- tion of the mystical in themselves are ns badly off as they that give themselves wholly to dreams. They are one-sided and easy dupes.
 Il l quote again from Materlinck's work, Emerson and Other Essays :'' I Every man is a silent mystic. a thousand times more transcendental than those who have limited themselves by words. It is ever of importance to remember this; you are con cerned here with a profound science anil not with dream. Dreatas have no roots. while the incandescent floger of metaphysics blooms here and has Aaols in Persia, India, I Egypt and Greece" '+s .ss -