PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.
This work has been some time out of print. It was my hope that the Second Edition might have been brought within a single volume. But that has not been practicable.
The present edition has been revised by the Author, and some fifty pages of new matter have been introduced. This new matter will be found mainly in the Sixth Chapter of the Sixth Book. In that enlarged treatment of the topic of “German Mysticism in the Fourteenth Century” the reader will meet with a slight recurrence of former trains of thought, which the Author might have been inclined to suppress, but with which I have not deemed it well to intermeddle. It will be seen that the design of the supplementary matter is, in part, as a reply to criticisms which seemed to call for some such explanation; and, in part, that points touched upon elsewhere might be given with more fulness.
To see this Second Edition through the press has been the work of one whose intelligent sympathy and patient effort assisted and encouraged the Author, in many ways, in the prosecution of his studies, and who now finds the solace of her loneliness in treasuring up the products of his mind, and in cherishing the dear ones he has left to her wise love and oversight.
If Mysticism be often a dream, it is commonly a dream in the right direction. Its history presents one of the most significant chapters in the story of humanity.
Robert Vaughan.
September 7th, 1860.