A random quote from the golden age

"As a fact, the mystical tendency in religion is not the last, the mature, result, not yet the last refuge of piety. Mysticism is the always young, it is the childlike, it is the essentially immature aspect of the deeper religious life. Its ardor, its pathos, its illusions, and its genuine illuminations have all the characters of youth about them, characters beautiful but capricious." -- Josiah Royce, THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY (1913), from chapter viii, "The modern mind and the Christian ideas".

The brief passage, something of an aside in context, reminds me of another work from my postulated golden age, PETER AND WENDY (1911) by J.M. Barrie.

In both instances, our author was reacting against the earlier romantic idealization of childhood. At one point, Barrie wanted to call his novel The boy who couldn't grow up. Not "wouldn't". Couldn't. Pan's magical condition is not a choice of his and is at least as much a curse as a blessing.

Just so, I gather, for Royce about mysticism. I am not alleging any influence here, and it is a small point in the context of the book, but it is a neat parallel.

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