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In an exhibition of old historical paintings once seen in Amsterdam, there hung on one wall a portrait of Sabattai Zevi, the wild dreamer, self-appointed Messiah, and fantastic leader of a cult whose career along with his own was abruptly ended by disillusionment and disaster. On the opposite wall there hung a portrait of Baruch Spinoza, philosopher and ethicist, whose career brought the fruits of wisdom to humanity. There they were, these two portraits facing each other--the one a type illustrating the defects of an unbalanced and unphilosophic kind of mysticism; the other a type of spiritual intuition and rational intellect active in man, yet balancing each other and benefiting each other.

-- Notebooks Category 16: The Sensitives > Chapter 3 : Philosophy, Mysticism, and The Occult > # 27