Evelyn Underhill (6 December 1875 – 15 June 1941)

“We are all the kindred of the mystics. Strange and far away from us though they seem, they are not cut off from us by some impassable abyss. They belong to us; the giants, the heroes of our race. As the achievement of genius belongs not to itself only but also to the society that brought it forth; the supernal accomplishment of the mystics is ours also our guarantee of the end to which immanent love, the hidden steersman is moving us on the path toward the Real. They come back to us from an encounter with life’s most august secret, filled with amazing tidings which they can hardly tell. We, longing for some assurance, urge them to pass on their revelation, but they cannot, only fragments of the Symbolic Vision. According to their strength and passion, these lovers of the Absolute have not shrunk from the suffering. Beauty and agony have called, and have awakened a heroic response. For them the winter is over. Life new, unquenchable and lovely comes to meet them with the dawn.”