There is not a single idea in the fourteenth and fifteenth century mysticism which cannot be read far earlier in Augustine and Bernard, even in Aquinas and Scotus.

It could never be anything but a sporadic phenomenon because it was so intensely individual.

While it satisfied the spiritual needs of many, it could never amalgamate with other forces of the time, either social or intellectual.

As a philosophy or a creed it led not so much to solipsism as to a complete abnegation of the reason.

Moreover it was slightly morbid, liable to mistake giddiness of starved nerve and emotion for a moment of vision and of union with God.