THE average man has seldom understood the Mystic. He conceives the Mystic Life, with its ceaseless spiritual activity, and its restlessness which knows no stay till it reaches its goal, as a life of tranquillity, if not of indolence and ease. He has no conception of what it really is, and for that, perhaps, he should not be blamed. But not content with misinterpreting the mystic’s life, he presently becomes more daring; he asserts that mysticism is essentially ‘unpractical,’ and that one whose aim is to reach the state of union with God must necessarily be as a fool in his relations with the world. Here the average man is grossly, inexcusably mistaken. His error has again and again been exposed, confuted, disproved by example after example to the contrary. Yet, for all that, it seems to thrive in the average mind. Now, if the story of one man’s career could suffice to destroy the mistaken idea that the mystic is an unpractical dreamer, that man would surely be the Majorcan Ramón Lull, the ‘Apostle of Africa.’ Lull lived far back in the thirteenth century, not lo............