Evelyn Underhill

Extract

We are commemorating the centenary of the birth of a personality remarkable in herself and remarkable also as a mirror of some great questions about the understanding of God, man and the world. A quaint episode in literary history focuses these questions as they emerged in Evelyn Underhill's life. She had published in 1911, when she was thirty-seven years old, a very learned and also very readable book with the title Mysticism. It sold well from the start, and its execellenc was acclaimed by critics as different as Dean Inge and Dom John Chapman. But an acquaintance who was not at the time an intimate friend wrote to say that he had not yet, as he had hoped, been able to make a thorough study of the whole work; but as a second printing of it was imminent he made two proposals, and he presented them in a tone just a little reminiscent of Hitler addressing the President of Czechoslovakia. I quote Baron von Hugel:

(1) Either, you rest content, so far as my little help is concerned with these corrections proposed for the first four chapters – yet with the extension that you go through all the passages concerning (a) the supposed identity of man's soul and God, (b) the supposed non-necessity of institutional, historical, etc. religion for many or for some; and you would strictly weigh and reconsider them all. Or,

(2) you would get your publisher to defer the reprinting till the beginning of February, in which case I willingly undertake to give January to a careful study of your entire book.