The “Overplus” of Reality

Man and the Supernatural

Indeed that which, beyond all else, spiritual genius never fails to give us, is this realistic sense of the overplus of Reality; a perfection exceeding in its totality and splendor all possible human apprehension.

— Evelyn Underhill, Man and the Supernatural

I stumbled across the quotation from Evelyn Underhill the other day in an anthology of her writings (Daily Readings with a Modern Mystic) and was immediately struck by the whimsy of the word “overplus.” Clearly this...