Mys"ti*cism (?), n. [Cf. F.
mysticisme.] 1. Obscurity of
doctrine.
2. (Eccl. Hist.) The doctrine of the
Mystics, who professed a pure, sublime, and wholly disinterested
devotion, and maintained that they had direct intercourse with the
divine Spirit, and aquired a knowledge of God and of spiritual things
unattainable by the natural intellect, and such as can not be
analyzed or explained.
3. (Philos.) The doctrine that the
ultimate elements or principles of knowledge or belief are gained by
an act or process akin to feeling or faith.