{"collection":"scripture-revelation","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_75994/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_75994","id":"gutenberg_75994","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/75994","summary":null,"tags":["Category: History - Early Modern (c. 1450-1750)","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Category: Religion/Spirituality","Mysticism"],"text":"MYSTICS OF THE\n                              RENAISSANCE\n\n                                  AND\n\n                   THEIR RELATION TO MODERN THOUGHT\n\n                               INCLUDING\n\n                 MEISTER ECKHART, TAULER, PARACELSUS,\n                     JACOB BOEHME, GIORDANO BRUNO,\n                              AND OTHERS\n\n\n                                  BY\n\n                            RUDOLF STEINER\n                            Ph.D. (Vienna)\n\n\n               AUTHORISED TRANSLATION FROM THE GERMAN BY\n                   BERTRAM KEIGHTLEY, M.A. (Cantab.)\n\n                    [Illustration: Printer\u2019s Logo]\n\n                          G. P. PUTNAM\u2019S SONS\n                          NEW YORK AND LONDON\n                        The Knickerbocker Press\n                                 1911\n\n\n                            COPYRIGHT, 1911\n                                  BY\n                               MAX GYSI\n\n                           MAX GYSI, Editor,\n                         \u201cAdyar,\u201d Park Drive,\n                             London, N. W.\n\n                   The Knickerbocker Press, New York\n\n\n\n\n                               CONTENTS\n\n                                                        PAGE\n\n    FOREWORD                                              v\n\n    INTRODUCTION                                          1\n\n    MEISTER ECKHART                                      52\n\n    THE FRIENDSHIP OF GOD                                81\n\n    CARDINAL NICHOLAS OF CUSA                           133\n\n    AGRIPPA VON NETTESHEIM AND THEOPHRASTUS PARACELSUS  182\n\n    VALENTINE WEIGEL AND JACOB BOEHME                   223\n\n    GIORDANO BRUNO AND ANGELUS SILESIUS                 246\n\n    AFTERWORD                                           269\n\n\n\n\n                               FOREWORD\n\nThe matter which I am laying before the public in this book formed\nthe content of lectures which I delivered during last winter at the\nTheosophical Library in Berlin. I had been requested by Gr\u00e4fin and\nGraf Brockdorff to speak upon Mysticism before an audience for whom\nthe matters thus dealt with constitute a vital question of the utmost\nimportance. Ten years earlier I could not have ventured to fulfil such\na request. Not that the realm of ideas, to which I now give expression,\ndid not even then live actively within me. For these ideas are already\nfully contained in my _Philosophy of Freedom_ (Berlin, 1894. Emil\nFelber). But to give expression to this world of ideas in such wise\nas I do to-day, and to make it the basis of an exposition as is done\non the following pages--to do this requires something quite other than\nmerely to be immovably convinced of the intellectual truth of these\nideas. It demands an intimate acquaintance with this realm of ideas,\nsuch as only many years of life can give. Only now, after having\nenjoyed that intimacy, do I venture to speak in such wise as will be\nfound in this book.\n\nAny one who does not approach my world of ideas without preconceptions\nis sure to discover therein contradiction after contradiction. I have\nquite recently (Berlin, 1900. S. Cronbach) dedicated a book upon the\nworld conceptions of the nineteenth century to that great naturalist,\nErnst Haeckel, and closed it with a defence of his thought-world.\nIn the following expositions, I speak about the Mystics, from Master\nEckhart to Angelus Silesius, with a full measure of devotion and\nacquiescence. Other \u201ccontradictions,\u201d which one critic or another may\nfurther count up against me, I shall not mention at all. It does not\nsurprise me to be condemned from one side as a \u201cMystic\u201d and from the\nother as a \u201cMaterialist.\u201d When I find that the Jesuit Father M\u00fcller has\nsolved a difficult chemical problem, and I therefore in this particular\nmatter agree with him unreservedly, one can hardly condemn me as an\nadherent of Jesuitism without being reckoned a fool by those who have\ninsight.\n\nWhoever goes his own road, as I do, must needs allow many a\nmisunderstanding about himself to pass. That, however, he can put\nup with easily enough. For such misunderstandings are, in the main,\ninevitable in his eyes, when he recalls the mental type of those who\nmisjudge him. I look back, not without humorous feelings, upon many a\n\u201ccritical\u201d judgment that I have suffered in the course of my literary\ncareer. At the outset, matters went fairly well. I wrote about Goethe\nand his philosophy. What I said there appeared to many to be of such\na nature that they could file it in their mental pigeon-holes. This\nthey did by saying: \u201cA work such as Rudolf Steiner\u2019s _Introduction to\nGoethe\u2019s Writings upon Natural Science_ may, without hesitation, be\ndescribed as the best that has been written upon this question.\u201d\n\nWhen, later, I published an independent work, I had already grown\na good bit more stupid. For now a well meaning critic offered the\nadvice: \u201cBefore he goes on reforming further and gives his _Philosophy\nof Freedom_ to the world, he should be pressingly advised first to work\nhimself through to an understanding of these two philosophers [Hume and\nKant].\u201d The critic unfortunately knows only so much as he is himself\nable to read in Kant and Hume; practically, therefore, he simply\nadvises me to learn to see no more in these thinkers than he himself\nsees. When I have attained that, he will be satisfied with me. Then\nwhen my _Philosophy and Freedom_ appeared, I was found to be as much in\nneed of correction as the most ignorant beginner. This I received from\na gentleman who probably nothing else impelled to the writing of books\nexcept that he had not understood innumerable foreign ones. He gravely\ninforms me that I should have noticed my mistakes if I had \u201cmade more\nthorough studies in psychology, logic, and the theory of knowledge\u201d;\nand he enumerates forthwith the books I ought to read to become as wise\nas himself: \u201cMill, Sigwart, Wundt, Riehl, Paulsen, B. Erdmann.\u201d What\namused me especially was this advice from a man who was so \u201cimpressed\u201d\nwith the way he \u201cunderstood\u201d Kant that he could not even imagine how\nany man could have read Kant and yet judge otherwise than himself. He\ntherefore indicates to me the exact chapters in question in Kant\u2019s\nwritings from which I may be able to obtain an understanding of Kant as\ndeep and as thorough as his own.\n\nI have cited here a couple of typical criticisms of my world of ideas.\nThough in themselves unimportant, yet they seem to me to point, as\nsymptoms, to facts which present themselves to-day as serious obstacles\nin the path of any one aiming at literary activity in regard to the\nhigher problems of knowledge. Thus I must go on my way, indifferent,\nwhether one man gives me the good advice to read Kant, or another\nhunts me as a heretic because I agree with Haeckel. And so I have\nalso written upon Mysticism, wholly indifferent as to how a faithful\nand believing materialist may judge of me. I would only like--so that\nprinters\u2019 ink may not be wasted wholly without need--to inform any\none who may perchance advise me to read Haeckel\u2019s _Riddle of the\nUniverse_, that during the last few months I have delivered about\nthirty lectures upon the said work.\n\nI hope to have shown in this book that one may be a faithful adherent\nof the scientific conception of the world and yet be able to seek out\nthose paths to the Soul along which Mysticism, rightly understood,\nleads. I even go further and say: Only he who knows the Spirit, in\nthe sense of true Mysticism, can attain a full understanding of the\nfacts of Nature. But one must not confuse true Mysticism with the\n\u201cpseudo-mysticism\u201d of ill-ordered minds. How Mysticism can err, I have\nshown in my _Philosophy of Freedom_ (page 131 _et seq._).\n\n\n                                                    RUDOLF STEINER.\n\nBERLIN, _September, 1901_.\n\n\n\n\n                             INTRODUCTION\n\nThere are certain magical formul\u00e6 which operate throughout the\ncenturies of Man\u2019s mental history in ever new ways. In Greece one such\nformula was regarded as an oracle of Apollo. It runs: \u201cKnow Thyself.\u201d\nSuch sentences seem to conceal within them an unending life. One comes\nupon them when following the most diverse roads in mental life. The\nfurther one advances, the more one penetrates into the knowledge of\nthings, the deeper appears the significance of these formul\u00e6. In many\na moment of our brooding and thinking, they flash out like lightning,\nilluminating our whole inner being. In such moments there quickens\nwithin us a feeling as if we heard the heart-beat of the evolution\nof mankind. How close do we not feel ourselves to personalities of\nthe past, when the feeling comes over us, through one of their winged\nwords, that they are revealing to us that they, too, had had such\nmoments!\n\nWe feel ourselves then brought into intimate touch with these\npersonalities. For instance, we learn to know Hegel intimately when,\nin the third volume of his _Lectures on the Philosophy of History_ we\ncome across the words: \u201cSuch stuff, one may say, the abstractions that\nwe contemplate when we allow the philosophers to quarrel and battle in\nour study, and make it out to be thus or so--mere verbal abstractions!\nNo! No! These are deeds of the world-spirit and therefore of destiny.\nTherein the Philosophers are nearer to the Master than are those who\nfeed themselves with the crumbs of the spirit; they read or write the\nCabinet Orders in the original at once; they are constrained to write\nthem out along with Him. The Philosophers are the Myst\u00e6 who, at the\ncrisis in the inmost shrine, were there and took part.\u201d When Hegel\nsaid this, he had experienced one of those moments just spoken of. He\nuttered the phrases when, in the course of his remarks, he had reached\nthe close of Greek philosophy; and through them he showed that once,\nlike a gleam of lightning, the meaning of the Neoplatonic philosophy,\nof which he was just treating, had flashed upon him. In the instant\nof this flash, he had become intimate with minds like Plotinus and\nProklus; and we become intimate with him when we read his words.\n\nWe become intimate, too, with that solitary thinker, the Pastor of\nZschopau, M. Valentin Weigel, when we read the opening words of his\nlittle book _Know Thyself_, written in 1578: \u201cWe read in the wise men\nof old the useful saying, \u2018Know Thyself,\u2019 which, though it be right\nwell used about worldly manners, as thus: \u2018regard well thyself, what\nthou art, seek in thine own bosom, judge thyself and lay no blame on\nothers,\u2019 a saying, I repeat, which, though thus used of human life and\nmanners, may well and appropriately be applied by us to the natural and\nsupernatural knowing of the whole man; so indeed, that man shall not\nonly consider himself and thereby remember how he should bear himself\nbefore people, but that he shall also know his own nature, inner and\nouter, in spirit and in Nature; whence he cometh and whereof he is\nmade, to what end he is ordained.\u201d So, from points of view peculiar to\nhimself, Valentin Weigel attained to insight which in his mind summed\nitself up in this oracle of Apollo.\n\nA similar path to insight and a like relation to the saying \u201cKnow\nThyself\u201d may be ascribed to a series of deep-natured thinkers,\nbeginning with Master Eckhart (1250-1327), and ending with Angelus\nSilesius (1624-1677), among whom may be found also Valentin Weigel\nhimself.\n\nAll these thinkers have in common a strong sense of the fact that in\nman\u2019s knowing of himself there rises a sun which illuminates something\nvery different from the mere accidental, separated personality of the\nbeholder. What Spinoza became conscious of in the ethereal heights\nof pure thought,--_viz._, that \u201cthe human soul possesses an adequate\nknowledge of the Eternal and Infinite Being of God,\u201d--that same\nconsciousness lived in them as immediate feeling; and self-knowledge\nwas to them the path leading to this Eternal and Infinite Being. It was\nclear to them that self-knowledge in its true form enriched man with a\nnew sense, which unlocked for him a world standing in relation to the\nworld accessible to him without this new sense as does the world of one\npossessing physical sight to that of a blind man.\n\nIt would be difficult to find a better description of the import\nof this new sense than the one given by J. G. Fichte in his Berlin\nLectures (1813):\n\n\u201cImagine a world of men born blind, to whom all objects and their\nrelations are known only through the sense of touch. Go amongst\nthem and speak to them of colours and other relations, which are\nrendered visible only through light. Either you are talking to them of\nnothing,--and if they say this, it is the luckier, for thus you will\nsoon see your mistake, and, if you cannot open their eyes, cease your\nuseless talking,--or, for some reason or other, they _will_ insist\nupon giving some meaning or other to what you say; then they can only\ninterpret it in relation to what they know by touch. They will seek to\nfeel, they will imagine they do feel light and colour, and the other\nincidents of visibility, they will invent something for themselves,\ndeceive themselves with something within the world of touch, which\nthey will call colour. Then they will misunderstand, distort, and\nmisinterpret it.\u201d\n\nThe same thing applies to what the thinkers we are speaking of sought\nafter. They beheld a new sense opening in self-knowledge, and this\nsense yielded, according to their experiences, views of things which\nare simply non-existent for one who does not see in self-knowledge\nwhat distinguishes it from all other kinds of knowing. One in whom\nthis new sense has not been opened, believes that self-knowing, or\nself-perception, is the same thing as perception through the outer\nsenses, or through any other means acting from without. He thinks:\n\u201cKnowing is knowing, perceiving is perceiving.\u201d Only in the one case\nthe object is something lying in the world outside, in the other this\nobject is his own soul. He finds words merely, or at best, abstract\nthoughts, in that which for those who see more deeply is the very\nfoundation of their inner life; namely, in the proposition: that in\nevery other kind of knowing or perception we have the object perceived\noutside of ourselves, while in self-knowledge or self-perception we\nstand within that object; that we see every other object coming to us\nalready complete and finished off, while in ourselves we, as actors\nand creators, are weaving that which we observe within us. This may\nappear to be nothing but a merely verbal explanation, perhaps even a\ntriviality; it may appear, on the other hand, as a higher light which\nilluminates every other cognition. One to whom it appears in the first\nway, is in the position of a blind man, to whom one says: there is\na glittering object. He hears the words, but for him the glitter is\nnot there. He might unite in himself the whole sum of knowledge of\nhis time; but if he does not feel and realise the significance of\nself-knowledge, then it is all, in the higher sense, a blind knowledge.\n\nThe world, outside of and independent of us, exists for us by\ncommunicating itself to our consciousness. What is thus made known must\nneeds be expressed in the language peculiar to ourselves. A book, the\ncontents of which were offered in a language unknown to us, would for\nus be without meaning. Similarly, the world would be meaningless for us\ndid it not speak to us in our own tongue; and the same language which\nreaches us from things, we also hear from within ourselves. But in that\ncase, it is we ourselves who speak. The really important point is that\nwe should correctly apprehend the transposition which occurs when we\nclose our perception against external things and listen only to that\nwhich then speaks from within. But to do this needs this new sense. If\nit has not been awakened, we believe that in what is thus told us about\nourselves we are hearing only about something external to us; we fancy\nthat somewhere there is hidden something which is speaking to us in the\nsame way as external things speak. But if we possess this new sense,\nthen we know that these perceptions differ essentially from those\nrelating to external things. Then we realise that this new sense does\nnot leave what it perceives outside of itself, as the eye leaves the\nobject it sees; but that it can take up its object wholly into itself,\nleaving no remainder. If I see a thing, that thing remains outside\nof me; if I perceive myself, then I myself enter into my perception.\nWhoever seeks for something more of himself than what is perceived,\nshows thereby that for him the real content in the perception has not\ncome to light. Johannes Tauler (1300-1361), has expressed this truth\nin the apt words: \u201cIf I were a king and knew it not, then should I be\nno king. If I do not shine forth for myself in my own self-perception,\nthen for myself I do not exist. But if for myself I do shine out,\nthen I possess myself also in my perception, in my own most deeply\noriginal being. There remains no residue of myself left outside of my\nperception.\u201d\n\nJ. G. Fichte, in the following words, vigorously points to the\ndifference between self-perception and every other kind of perception:\n\u201cThe majority of men could be more easily brought to believe themselves\na lump of lava in the moon than an \u2018ego.\u2019 Whoever is not at one with\nhimself as to this, understands no thorough-going philosophy and\nhas need of none. Nature, whose machine he is, will guide him in all\nthe things he has to do without any sort of added help from him. For\nphilosophising, self-reliance is needed, and this one can only give to\noneself. We ought not to want to see without the eye; but also we ought\nnot to maintain that it is the eye which sees.\u201d\n\nThus the perception of oneself is also the awakening of oneself. In\nour cognition we combine the being of things with our own being. The\ncommunications, which things make to us in our own language, become\nmembers of our own selves. An object in front of me is not separated\nfrom me, once I have known it. What I am able to receive from it\nbecomes part and parcel of my own being. If, now, I awaken my own\nself, if I become aware of the content of my own inner being, then I\nalso awaken to a higher mode of being, that which from without I have\nmade part of my own being. The light that falls upon me at my awakening\nfalls also upon whatever I have made my own from the things of the\noutside world. A light springs up within me and illumines me, and with\nme all that I have cognised of the world. Whatever I might know would\nremain blind knowledge, did not this light fall upon it. I might search\nthe world through and through with my perception; still the world would\nnot be that which in me it must become, unless that perception were\nawakened in me to a higher mode of being.\n\nThat which I add to things through this awakening is not a new idea, is\nnot an enrichment of the content of my knowing; it is an uplifting of\nthe knowledge, of the cognition, to a higher level, where everything is\nsuffused with a new glory. So long as I do not raise my consciousness\nto this level, all knowledge continues to be for me, in the higher\nsense, valueless. The things are there without my presence. They have\ntheir being in themselves. What possible meaning could there be in my\nlinking with their being, which they have outside and apart from me,\nanother spiritual existence in addition, which repeats the things over\nagain within me? If only a mere repetition of things were involved, it\nwould be senseless to carry it out. But, really, a mere repetition is\nonly involved so long as I have not awakened, along with my own self,\nthe mental content of these things upon a higher level. When this\noccurs, then I have not merely repeated within myself the being of\nthings, but I have brought it to a new birth on a higher level. With\nthe awakening of my self, there is accomplished a spiritual re-birth of\nthe things of the world.\n\nWhat the things reveal in this re-birth did not previously belong\nto them. There, without, stands the tree. I take it up into my\nconsciousness. I throw my inner light upon that which I have thus\nconceived. The tree becomes in me more than it is outside. That in it\nwhich finds entrance through the gate of the senses is taken up into a\nconscious content. An ideal replica of the tree is within me, and that\nhas infinitely more to say about the tree than what the tree itself,\noutside, can tell me. Then, for the first time there shines out from\nwithin me, towards the tree, what the tree is. The tree is now no\nlonger the isolated being that it is out there in space. It becomes\na link in the entire conscious world that lives in me. It links its\ncontent with other ideas that are in me. It becomes a member of the\nwhole world of ideas that embraces the vegetable kingdom; it takes its\nplace, further, in the series of all that lives.\n\nAnother example: I throw a stone in a horizontal direction away from\nme. It moves in a curved line and after some time falls to the ground.\nI see it in successive moments of time in different places. Through\nobservation and reflection I acquire the following: During its motion\nthe stone is subject to different influences. If it were subject only\nto the influence of the impulse which I imparted to it, it would go\non flying for ever in a straight line, without altering its velocity.\nBut now the earth exerts an influence upon it. It attracts the stone\ntowards itself. If, instead of throwing the stone, I had simply let it\ngo, it would have fallen vertically to earth; and its velocity in doing\nso would have constantly increased. From the mutual interaction of\nthese two influences arises that which I actually see.\n\nLet us assume that I could not in thought separate the two influences,\nand from this orderly combination put together again in thought what\nI see: in that case, the matter would end with the actual happening.\nIt would be mentally a blind staring at what happened; a perception of\nthe successive positions which the stone occupies. But in actual fact,\nmatters do _not_ stop there. The whole occurrence takes place twice.\nOnce outside, and then my eye sees it; then my mind causes the whole\nhappening to repeat itself again, in a mental or conscious manner. My\ninner sense must be directed upon the mental occurrence, which my eye\ndoes not see, and then it becomes clear to that sense that I, by my own\ninner power, awaken that occurrence as a mental one.\n\nAgain, another sentence of J. G. Fichte\u2019s may be quoted which brings\nthis fact clearly before the mind. \u201cThus the new sense is the sense\nfor the spirit; that for which there exists only spirit and absolutely\nnothing else, and for which also the \u2018other,\u2019 the given being, assumes\nthe form of spirit and transforms itself into spirit, for which\ntherefore _being_ in its own proper form has actually disappeared....\nThere has been the faculty of seeing with this sense ever since men\nhave existed, and all that is great and excellent in the world, which\nalone upholds humanity, originates in what has been seen by means of\nthis sense. It is, however, not the case that this sense has been\nperceived or known in its difference and its contrast with that other,\nordinary sense. The impressions of the two senses melted into one\nanother, life fell apart into these two halves without a bond of union.\u201d\n\nThe bond of union is created by the fact that the inner sense grasps\nin its spirituality the spiritual element which it awakens in its\nintercourse with the outer world. That which we take up into our\nconsciousness from outside things thereby ceases to appear as a mere\nmeaningless repetition. It appears as something new over against that\nwhich only external perception can give. The simple occurrence of\nthrowing the stone, and my perception thereof, appear in a higher\nlight when I make clear to myself the kind of task which my inner sense\nhas to perform in regard to the whole thing. In order to fit together\nin thought the two influences and their modes of action, an amount of\nmental content is needed which I must already have acquired when I\ncognise the flying stone. I therefore apply a spiritual content already\nstored up within me to something that confronts me in the external\nworld. And this occurrence in the external world fits itself into the\nspiritual content already present. It reveals itself in its own special\nindividuality as an expression of this content.\n\nThrough the understanding of my inner sense, there is thus disclosed\nto me the nature of the relation that obtains between the content of\nthis sense and the things of the external world. Fichte would say that\nwithout the understanding of this sense, the world falls apart for me\ninto two halves: into things outside of me, and into pictures of these\nthings within me. The two halves become united when the inner self\nunderstands itself and consequently recognises clearly what sort of\nillumination it throws upon things in the cognitive process. And Fichte\ncould also venture to say that this inner sense sees only Spirit. For\nit perceives how the Spirit enlightens the sense-world by making it\npart and parcel of the spiritual world. The inner sense causes the\nouter sense-world to arise within itself as a spiritual being on a\nhigher level. An external object is completely known when there is no\npart of it which has not thus undergone a spiritual re-birth. Thus\nevery external object fits itself into a spiritual content, which,\nwhen it has been grasped by the inner sense, shares the destiny of\nself-knowledge. The spiritual content, which belongs to an object\nthrough its illumination from within, merges itself wholly, like the\nvery self, into the world of ideas, leaving no remainder behind.\n\nThese developments contain nothing which is susceptible or even in need\nof logical proof. They are nothing but the results of inner experience.\nWhoever calls into question this content, shows only that he is lacking\nin this inner experience. It is impossible to dispute with him; as\nlittle could one discuss colour with a blind man.\n\nIt must not, however, be contended that this inner experience is made\npossible only through the special endowment of a few chosen people.\nIt is a common property. Every one can enter upon the path to this\nexperience who does not of his own will shut himself against it. This\nclosing up of oneself against it, is, however, common enough. And in\ndealing with objections raised in this direction, one always has the\nfeeling that it is not so much a matter of people being unable to\nattain this inner experience, as of their having hopelessly blocked the\nentrance to it with all kinds of logical spiders\u2019 webs. It is almost as\nif some one looking through a telescope and discovering a new planet\nshould yet deny its existence because his calculations have shown that\nthere can be no planet in that position.\n\nBut with all this there is still in most people the clearly marked\nfeeling that all that really lies in the being of things cannot\nbe completely given in what the outer senses and the analysing\nunderstanding can cognise. They then believe that the remainder so\nleft over must be just as much in the external world as are the\nthings of our perceptions themselves. They think that there must be\nsomething which remains unknown to cognition. What they ought to\nattain by again perceiving with the inner sense, on a higher plane,\nthe very object which they have already cognised and grasped with\nthe understanding,--this they transfer as something inaccessible and\nunknown into the external world. Then they talk of the limits of\nknowledge which prevent our reaching the \u201cthing-in-itself.\u201d They talk\nof the unknown \u201cbeing\u201d of things. That this very \u201cbeing\u201d of things\nshines out when the inner sense lets its light fall upon the things, is\nwhat they will not recognise. The famous \u201cIgnorabimus\u201d speech of the\nscientist, Du Bois-Reymond, in the year 1876, furnished a particularly\nblatant example of this error. We are supposed to be able to get\nin every direction only so far as to be able to see in all natural\nprocesses the manifestations of \u201cmatter.\u201d What \u201cmatter\u201d itself is, we\nare supposed to be unable to know. Du Bois-Reymond contends that we\nshall never succeed in penetrating to wherever it is that \u201cmatter\u201d\nleads its ghostly life in space. The reason why we cannot get there\nlies, however, in the fact that there is nothing whatsoever to be\nlooked for there. Whoever speaks like Du Bois-Reymond must have a\nfeeling that the knowledge of Nature yields results which point to a\nsomething further and other which Nature-knowledge itself cannot give.\nBut he refuses to follow the road,--the road of inner experience,\nwhich leads to this other. Therefore he stands at a complete loss\nbefore the question of \u201cmatter\u201d as before a dark riddle. In him who\ntreads the path of inner experience, objects attain to a new birth;\nand that in them which remains unknown to outer experience then shines\nforth.\n\nIn such wise the inner being of man obtains light not only as regards\nitself but also as regards external things. From this point of view an\nendless perspective opens out before man\u2019s knowledge. Within him shines\na light whose illumination is not restricted to that which is within\nhim. It is a sun which lights up all reality at once. Something makes\nits appearance in us which links us with the whole world. No longer\nare we simply isolated, chance human beings, no longer this or that\nindividual. The entire world reveals itself in us. It unveils to us\nits own coherence; and it unveils to us how we ourselves as individuals\nare bound up with it. From out of self-knowledge is born knowledge of\nthe world. And our own limited individuality merges itself spiritually\ninto the great interconnected world-whole, because in us something has\ncome to life that reaches out beyond this individuality, that embraces\nalong with it everything of which this individuality forms a part.\n\nThinking which does not block up its own road to inner experience\nwith logical preconceptions always comes, in the long run, to a\nrecognition of the entity that rules in us and connects us with the\nentire world, because through this entity we overcome the opposition\nof \u201cinner\u201d and \u201couter\u201d in regard to man. Paul Asmus, the keen-sighted\nphilosopher, who died young, expressed himself as follows about this\nposition (_cp._ his book _Das Ich und das Ding an Sich_, p. 14 _et\nseq._):--\u201cLet us make it clear by an example: imagine a piece of sugar;\nit is square, sweet, impenetrable, etc., etc., these are one and all\nqualities which we understand; one thing, however, hovers before us\nas something totally different, that we do not understand, that is\nso different from ourselves that we cannot penetrate into it without\nlosing ourselves; from the mere surface of which thought starts back\nafraid. This one thing is the unknown bearer of all these qualities;\nthe thing-in-itself, which constitutes the inmost self of the object.\nThus Hegel rightly says that the entire content of our perception is\nrelated as mere accident to this obscure subject, while we, without\npenetrating into its depths, merely attach determinations to what it is\nin itself,--which ultimately, since we do not know the thing itself,\nremain merely subjective and have no objective value. Conceptual\nthought, on the other hand, has no such unknowable subject, whose\ndeterminations might be mere accidents, but the objective subject\nfalls within the concept. If I cognise anything, then it is present\nin its entire fulness in my conception; I am at home in the inmost\nshrine of its being, not because it has no proper being-in-itself of\nits own, but because it compels me to re-think its concept, in virtue\nof that necessity of the concept which hovers over us both and appears\nsubjectively in me and objectively in the concept itself. Through this\nre-thinking there reveals itself to us at the same time, as Hegel\nsays,--just as this is our own subjective activity--the true nature of\nthe object.\u201d So can speak only a man who is able to illuminate the life\nof thought with the light of inner experience.\n\nIn my _Philosophy of Freedom_ (Berlin, 1894, Verlag Emil Felber),\nstarting from other points of view, I have also pointed out the\nroot-fact of the inner life (p. 46): \u201cIt is therefore unquestionable:\nin our thinking we hold the world-process by one corner, where we must\nbe present, if it is to come about at all. And that is just the very\nthing we are here concerned with. That is just the reason why things\nseem to confront me so mysteriously: that I am so without any share in\ntheir coming into existence. I simply find them there; in thinking,\nhowever, I know how it is done. Hence one can find no more original\nstarting point for a consideration of the world-process than that of\nthought.\u201d\n\nFor one who looks thus upon the inner life of man, it is also\nobvious what is the meaning of human cognition within the whole\nworld-process. It is not a mere empty accompaniment to the rest of the\nworld happenings. It would be such if it represented merely an ideal\nrepetition of what is outwardly present. But in cognition something\nis accomplished which accomplishes itself nowhere in the outer world:\nthe world-process sets before itself its own spiritual being. The\nworld-process would be to all eternity a mere half-thing, if it did not\nattain to this confrontation. Therewithal man\u2019s inner experience finds\nits place in the objective world-process; and without it that process\nwould be incomplete.\n\nIt is apparent that only the life which is ruled by the inner sense,\nman\u2019s highest spiritual life in its most proper sense,--it is this life\nonly which can thus raise man above himself. For only in this life does\nthe being of things unveil itself before itself. The matter lies quite\ndifferently in regard to the lower perceptive power. For instance,\nthe eye which meditates the seeing of an object is the theatre of a\nprocess which, in contrast to the inner life, is exactly like any other\nexternal process. My organs are members of the spacial world like other\nthings, and their perceptions are processes in time like any others.\nFurther, their being only appears when they are sunk into the inner\nlife. I thus live a double life; the life of an object among other\nobjects, which lives within its own embodiment and perceives through\nits organs what lies outside this embodiment; and above this life\na higher life, that knows no such inside and outside, that extends,\nstretching and bridging over both the outside world and itself. I shall\ntherefore be forced to say: at one time I am an individual, a limited\n\u201cself\u201d; at another time I am a general, universal \u201cSelf.\u201d This, too,\nPaul Asmus has expressed in excellent words (_cp._ his book: _Die\nindogermanischen Religionen in den Hauptpunkten ihrer Entwickelung_, p.\n29 of Vol. I.):\n\n\u201cThe activity of merging ourselves in something else, is what we\ncall \u2018thinking\u2019; in thinking, the ego has fulfilled its concept, it\nhas given itself up as a single thing; therefore, in thinking do we\nfind ourselves in a sphere which is alike for all, for the principle\nof separateness which is involved in the relation of our \u2018self\u2019 to\nthat which is other than itself has vanished in the activity of the\nself-cancelling of the single \u2018self,\u2019 and there remains then only the\n\u2018Self-hood\u2019 common to all.\u201d\n\nSpinoza has exactly the same thing in view when he describes, as the\nhighest activity of knowing, that which \u201cadvances from an adequate\nconception of the real nature of some of the attributes of God to an\nadequate knowledge of the nature of things.\u201d This advancing is no other\nthan the illumination of things with the light of inner experience.\nSpinoza describes in glowing colours the life in this inner experience:\n\u201cThe highest virtue of the soul is to know God, or to obtain insight\ninto things in the third--the highest--mode of knowing. This virtue\nis the greater, the more the soul knows things by this method of\nknowing; thus he who can grasp things in this mode of knowing attains\nthe highest human perfection and consequently becomes filled with the\nhighest joy, accompanied, moreover, by the conceptions of himself and\nof virtue. Thus there arises from this mode of knowing the highest\npeace of soul that is possible.\u201d\n\nHe who knows things in this way, transforms himself within himself;\nfor his single separated \u201cself\u201d becomes at such moments absorbed\nby the universal \u201cSelf\u201d; all beings appear not to a single limited\nindividual in subordinated importance, they appear to \u201cthemselves.\u201d\nOn this level there remains no difference between Plato and me; what\nseparated us belongs to a lower level of cognition. We are separated\nonly as individuals; the individual which works within us is one and\nthe same. But about this fact it is impossible to argue with one who\nhas no experience of it. He will everlastingly emphasise: Plato and you\nare two. That this duality, that all multiplicity, is reborn as unity\nin the outbursting life of the highest level of knowledge: that cannot\nbe proved, that must be experienced. Paradoxical as it may sound, it\nis the truth: the idea which Plato conceived and the like idea which\nI conceive are not two ideas. It is one and the same idea. And there\nare not two ideas: one in Plato\u2019s head and one in mine; but in the\nhigher sense Plato\u2019s head and mine interpenetrate each other; all heads\ninterpenetrate which grasp one and the same idea; and this idea is only\nonce there as a single idea. It is there; and the heads all go to one\nand the same place in order to have this idea in them.\n\nThe transformation that is brought about in the whole being of man\nwhen he learns to see things thus, is indicated in beautiful words by\nthe Hindu poem, the Bhagavad-G\u00eet\u00e2, about which Wilhelm von Humboldt\nsaid that he was thankful to the fate which had allowed him to live\nlong enough to become acquainted with this work. In this poem, the\ninner light declares: \u201cAn eternal ray from myself, having attained a\ndistinct existence in the world of personal life, draws around itself\nthe five senses and the individual soul, which belong to nature. When\nthe spirit, shining from above, embodies itself in space and time,\nor when it quits embodiment, it seizes upon things and carries them\naway with it, as the zephyr seizes the perfumes of the flowers and\nbears them away with it. The inner light rules the ear, touch, taste\nand smell, as also the emotions: it knits together the link between\nitself and the objects of the senses. The ignorant know not when the\ninner light shines forth or is extinguished, nor when it is married to\nobjects; only he who partakes of the inner light can know thereof.\u201d\n\nSo strongly does the Bhagavad-G\u00eet\u00e2 insist upon the transformation of\nthe man, that it says of the wise man that he can no longer err, no\nlonger sin. If, apparently, he errs or sins, then he must illuminate\nhis thoughts or his actions with a light wherein that no longer appears\nas error or as sin which to the ordinary consciousness appears as such.\n\u201cHe who has raised himself and whose knowledge is of the purest kind,\nhe kills not, nor does he stain himself, even though he should have\nslain another.\u201d This points only to the same basic mood of the soul\nflowing from the highest knowledge, of which Spinoza, after having\ndescribed it in his _Ethics_, breaks out into the passionate words:\n\u201cHere is concluded that which I aimed to bring forward in regard to the\npower of the soul over its affections or in regard to the freedom of\nthe soul. Hence it is clear how very greatly the wise man is superior\nto the ignorant, and how much more powerful than he who is ruled only\nby his lusts. For the ignorant is not merely driven hither and thither\nby external causes in many ways and never attains to the true peace of\nsoul, but he also lives in ignorance of himself, of God and of things,\nand when his suffering ceases, his existence ceases also; while on the\nother hand, the wise man, as such, feels hardly any disturbance in his\nspirit and ever enjoys the true peace of the soul. Even if the road\nwhich I have outlined as leading thereto appears very difficult, still\nit can be found. And well may it be difficult, because it is so seldom\nfound. For how could it be possible, if salvation lay close at hand and\ncould be found without great trouble, that it should be neglected by\nalmost all? Yet all that is noble is as difficult as it is rare.\u201d\n\nGoethe has indicated in monumental form the point of view of the\nhighest knowledge in the words: \u201cIf I know my relation to myself and\nto the outer world, I call it truth. And thus every one can have his\nown truth, and yet it is always one and the same.\u201d Each has his own\ntruth: because each is an individual, separate being, beside and along\nwith others. These other beings act upon him through his organs. From\nthe individual standpoint at which he is placed, and according to the\nconstitution of his power of perception, he builds up his own truth\nfor himself in intercourse with the things around him. He acquires his\nrelation to things. If, then, he enters into self-knowledge, if he\nlearns to know his relation to himself, then his special separate truth\nis merged in the universal Truth; and this universal Truth is in all\nthe same.\n\nThe understanding of the raising of the individual, of the single self,\ninto the Universal Self in the personality, is regarded by deeper\nnatures as the secret which reveals itself in the inmost heart of man\nas the root-mystery of life. And Goethe has found an apt expression for\nthis: \u201cAnd so long as thou hast not that, this: Die and Become! Then\nthou art but a melancholy guest upon this dark earth.\u201d\n\nNot a mere repetition in thought, but a real part of the world-process,\nis that which goes on in man\u2019s inner life. The world would not be what\nit is if the factor belonging thereto in the human soul did not play\nits part. And if one calls the highest which is attainable by man the\nDivine, then one must say that this Divine is not present as something\nexternal, to be repeated pictorially in the human mind, but that this\nDivine is awakened in man. Angelus Silesius has found the right words\nfor this: \u201cI know that without me God can live no instant; if I become\nnothing, He must of necessity give up the ghost.\u201d \u201cWithout me God\nmay make no single smallest worm: if I do not sustain it with Him,\nthen it must straightway perish.\u201d Only he can make such an assertion\nwho presupposes that in man something comes to light, without which\nexternal being cannot exist. If everything pertaining to the \u201cworm\u201d\nwere there present without man, then one could not possibly say that it\nmust perish if man did not sustain it.\n\nThe innermost kernel of the world comes to life as spiritual content in\nself-knowledge. The experience of self-knowledge means for man working\nand weaving within the kernel of the world. He who is permeated with\nself-knowledge naturally carries out his own action in the light of\nself-knowledge. Human action is--in general--determined by motives.\nRobert Hamerling, the poet-philosopher, has rightly said (_Atomistik\ndes Willens_, p. 213):\n\n\u201cA man can indeed do what he wills--but he cannot will whatever he\npleases, because his will is determined by motives. He cannot will\nwhatever he pleases? Look again at these words more closely. Is there\nany sensible meaning in them? Freedom of the will ought then to consist\nin being able to will something without reason, without motive. But\nwhat does willing mean other than the \u2018having a reason\u2019 for preferring\nto do or endeavour to attain this, rather than that? To will something\nwithout reason, without motive, would mean to will something \u2018without\nwilling it.\u2019 The concept of motive is inseparably bound up with that of\nwilling. Without a definite motive the will is an empty potentiality:\nonly through a motive does it become active and real. It is therefore\nquite correct that man\u2019s will is in so far not free as its direction is\nalways determined by the strongest motive.\u201d\n\nFor all action that is not accomplished in the light of self-knowledge,\nthe motive, the reason for action, must needs be felt as a constraint.\nBut the matter is otherwise when the reason or motive is taken up\ninto self-knowledge. Then this reason becomes a part of the self.\nThe willing is no longer determined; it determines itself. The\nlaw-abidingness, the motives of willing, now no longer rule over\nthe one who wills, but are one and the same with this willing. To\nilluminate the laws of one\u2019s action with the light of self-observation\nmeans to overcome all constraint of motive. By so doing, will transfers\nitself into the realm of freedom.\n\nIt is not all human action which bears the marks of freedom. Only such\naction is free action which in its every part is lighted up with the\nglow of self-observation. And because self-observation raises the\nindividual self up to the Universal Self, therefore free action is\nthat which flows from the Universal Self. The old controversy whether\nman\u2019s will is free or subject to a universal law, to an unalterable\nnecessity, is a problem wrongly stated. All action is bound which is\ndone by a man as an individual; all action free which is accomplished\nafter his spiritual re-birth. Man, therefore, is not, in general,\neither free or bound. He is both the one and the other. He is bound\nbefore his re-birth; and he can become free through this re-birth. The\nindividual upward development of man consists in the transformation\nof unfree willing into will possessing the character of freedom. The\nman who has realised the law-abidingness of his action as his own,\nhas overcome the constraint of this law-abidingness and therewith of\nun-freedom. Freedom is not from the outset a fact of human existence,\nbut a goal thereof.\n\nWith the attainment of free action, man resolves a contradiction\nbetween the world and himself. His own deeds become deeds of universal\nbeing. He feels himself in the fullest harmony with this universal\nbeing. He feels every discord between himself and another as the\noutcome of a not yet fully awakened self. But such is the fate of\nthe self, that only in its separation from the whole can it find its\ncontact with this whole. Man would not be man if he were not shut off\nas an individual self from everything else; but also he is not man in\nthe highest sense if he does not, as such a shut-off and isolated self,\nwiden himself out again into the Universal Self. It belongs through\nand through to the nature of man that it should overcome an inherent\ncontradiction which has lain therein from the beginning.\n\nAny one who regards spirit as, in the main, logical understanding,\nmay well feel his blood run cold at the idea that objects should be\nsupposed to undergo their re-birth in spirit. He will compare the\nfresh, living flower, outside there in its fulness of colour, with the\ncold, faded, schematic thought of the flower. He will feel himself\nparticularly ill at ease with the conception that the man who draws\nhis motives from the solitude of his own self-consciousness is more\nfree than the original, na\u00efve personality which acts from its immediate\nimpulses, from the fulness of its own nature. To one who sees only\none-sided logic, another man who sinks himself into his own inner being\nwill appear like a mere walking scheme of concepts, like a mere ghost\nin contrast with the man who remains in his own natural individuality.\n\nSuch objections to the re-birth of things in spirit are especially to\nbe heard from those whose power of perception fails in the presence of\nthings with a purely spiritual content; although they are well provided\nwith healthy organs of sense-perception and with impulses and passions\nfull of life. As soon as they are called upon to perceive the purely\nspiritual, the power to do so fails them; they can deal only with mere\nconceptual husks, when even they are not limited to empty words. They\nremain, therefore, in what concerns spiritual content, men of \u201cdry,\nabstract understanding.\u201d But the man who in things purely spiritual\npossesses a gift of perception like that in things of the senses,\nfinds life assuredly not the poorer when he has enriched it with its\nspiritual content. If I look out upon a flower, why should its rich\ncolours lose aught whatever of their freshness, because not only does\nmy eye see the colours, but my inner sense also perceives the spiritual\nbeing of the flower? Why should the life of my personality become\npoorer, because I do not follow my passions and impulses in spiritual\nblindness, but illuminate them throughout with the light of higher\nknowledge? Not poorer, but fuller, richer, is that life which is given\nback again in the spirit.\n\n\n\n\n                            MEISTER ECKHART\n\nThe world of Meister Eckhart\u2019s conceptions is aglow through and through\nwith the feeling that things become reborn as higher entities in the\nspirit of man. Like the greatest Christian theologian of the Middle\nAges, St. Thomas Aquinas, who lived from 1225 till 1274, Meister\nEckhart belonged to the Dominican Order. Eckhart was an unqualified\nadmirer of St. Thomas; and this will seem the more intelligible when\nwe fix our gaze upon Eckhart\u2019s whole manner of conceiving things. He\nbelieved himself to be as completely in harmony with the teachings of\nthe Christian Church as he assumed a like agreement on the part of\nSt. Thomas. Eckhart had neither the desire to take aught away from the\ncontent of Christianity, nor the wish to add anything to it; but he\ndesired to bring forward this content anew in his own way. It forms no\npart of the spiritual needs of a personality such as he was to set up\nnew truths of this or the other kind in the place of old ones. Such a\npersonality has grown completely intertwined with the content which it\nhas received from tradition; but it craves to give to this content a\nnew form, a new life.\n\nEckhart desired, without doubt, to remain an orthodox Christian. The\nChristian truths were his own; only he desired to regard these truths\nin another way from that, for instance, in which St. Thomas Aquinas had\ndone. St. Thomas accepted two sources of knowledge: Revelation, in\nmatters of faith, and Reason, in those of research. Reason recognises\nthe laws of things, that is, the spiritual in nature. Reason can raise\nitself above nature and grasp in the spirit from one side the Divine\nBeing underlying nature. But it does not attain in this way to merging\nitself in the full being of God. A still higher truth-content must come\nto meet it. That is given in the Holy Scripture, which reveals what man\ncannot attain to through himself. The truth-content of the Scripture\nmust be accepted by man; Reason can defend it, Reason can seek to\nunderstand it as well as possible through its powers of knowing; but\nnever can Reason engender that truth from within the spirit of man. Not\nwhat the spirit perceives is the highest truth, but what has come to\nthis spirit from without.\n\nSt. Augustine declares himself unable to find within himself the source\nfor that which he should believe. He says: \u201cI would not believe in the\nGospel, did not the authority of the Catholic Church move me thereto.\u201d\nThat is in the same spirit as the Evangelist, who points to the\nexternal testimony: \u201cThat ... which we have heard, which we have seen\nwith our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled,\nof the Word of Life; ... that which we have seen and heard declare\nwe unto you, that ye also may have fellowship with us.\u201d But Meister\nEckhart would rather impress upon man the words of Christ: \u201cIt is\nexpedient for you that I go away: for if I go not away, the Comforter\nwill not come unto you\u201d; and he explains these words by saying:\n\u201cJust as if he had said: Ye have set too much joy upon my present\nappearance, therefore the full joy of the Holy Ghost cannot come to\nyou.\u201d\n\nEckhart thinks that he is speaking of no God other than that God of\nwhom Augustine, and the Evangelist, and Thomas, speak, and yet this\ntestimony as to God is not his testimony, their witness is not his.\n\u201cSome people want to see God with the same eyes they see a cow withal,\nand want to love God as they would love a cow. So they love God for the\nsake of outer riches and inner comfort; but such folk do not rightly\nlove God.... Simple folk fancy they should behold God as though He\nstood there and they here. But it is not so. God and I are one in\nthe act of knowing (_im Erkennen_).\u201d What underlies such expressions\nin Eckhart\u2019s mouth is nothing else than the experience of the inner\nsense; and this experience shows him things in a higher light. He\ntherefore believes himself to have no need of an external light in\norder to attain to the highest insight: \u201cA Master says: God became man,\nwhereby the whole human race is uplifted and made worthy. Thereof may\nwe be glad that Christ our brother of His own strength rose above all\nthe choirs of angels and sitteth at the right hand of the Father. That\nMaster spake well; but, in truth, I would give little for it. What\nwould it help me, had I a brother who was a rich man, and I therewithal\na poor man? What would it help me, had I a brother who was a wise man,\nand I were a fool?... The Heavenly Father begetteth His Only-Begotten\nSon in Himself and in me. Wherefore in Himself and in me? I am one\nwith Him; and He has no power to shut me out. In the self-same work,\nthe Holy Ghost receives its being and proceeds from me, as from God.\nWherefore? I am in God, and if the Holy Ghost takes not its being from\nme, neither does it take it from God. In no wise am I shut out.\u201d\n\nWhen Eckhart recalls the saying of St. Paul: \u201cPut ye on Jesus Christ,\u201d\nhe means to imply in this saying the meaning: Sink yourselves into\nyourselves, dive down into self-contemplation: and from out the depths\nof your being, God will shine forth to meet you; He illumines all\nthings for you; you have found Him within you; you have become united\nwith God\u2019s Being. \u201cGod became man, that I might become God.\u201d\n\nIn his booklet upon _Loneliness_, Eckhart expresses himself as follows\nupon the relation of the outer perception to the inner: \u201cHere thou\nmust know that the Masters say that in every man there are two kinds\nof man: the one is called the outer man, and yet he acts through the\npower of the soul. The other man is called the inner man, that is, that\nwhich is within the man. Now thou must know that every man who loveth\nGod maketh no more use of the powers of the soul in the outer man than\nso far as the five senses absolutely require; and that which is within\nturns not itself to the five senses, save in so far as it is the guide\nand conductor of the five senses, and shepherds them, so that they\nfollow not after their craving to bestiality.\u201d One who speaks in such\nwise of the inner man can no longer direct his gaze upon a Being of\nthings lying outside himself; for he sees clearly that from no kind or\nspecies of the outer world can this Being come to him.\n\nAn objector might urge: What can it matter to the things of the outer\nworld, what you add to them out of your own mind? Do but rely upon your\nown senses. They alone give you information of the outer world. Do not\nadulterate, by a mental addition, what your senses give you in purity,\nwithout admixture, as the image of the outer world. Your eye tells\nyou what colour is; what your mind knows about colour, of that there\nis nothing whatever in colour itself. To this, from Meister Eckhart\u2019s\nstandpoint, the answer would have to be: The senses are a physical\napparatus; therefore what they have to tell us about objects can\nconcern only that which is physical in the objects. And this physical\nfactor in the objects communicates itself to me in such wise that in\nmyself a physical process is set going.\n\nColour, as a physical process of the outer world, sets up a physical\nprocess in my eye and brain. Thereby I perceive colour. But in this\nmanner I can perceive of colour only so much as is physical, sensuous.\nSense-perception cuts out everything non-sensuous from objects. Objects\nare thus by sense-perception stripped of everything about them which is\nnon-sensuous. If I then advance to the spiritual, the ideal content,\nI in fact only reinstate in the objects what sense-perception has\nshut out therefrom. Thus sense-perception does not exhibit to me the\ndeepest Being of objects, it rather separates me from that being. But\nthe spiritual, the ideal conception, seizing upon them again, unites me\nwith that being. It shows me that objects are inwardly of exactly the\nsame spiritual (_geistigen_) nature as I myself.\n\nThe barrier between myself and the outer world falls through this\nspiritual conception of things. I am separated from the external world\nin so far as I am a thing of the senses among other things of the\nsenses. Colour and my eye are two different entities. My brain and a\nplant are two different things. But the ideal content of the plant and\nof colour belong together with the ideal content of my brain and eye\nalike to a single ideal entity.\n\nThis way of looking at things must not be confused with the very\nwidespread anthropomorphising conception of the world, which imagines\nthat it grasps the objects of the outer world by ascribing to them\nqualities of a physical nature, which are supposed to resemble the\nqualities of the human soul. This view asserts: When we meet another\nhuman being, we perceive in him only sensuous characteristics. I\ncannot see into my fellow-man\u2019s inner life. I infer from what I see and\nhear of him, his inner life, his soul. Thus the soul is never anything\nwhich I can directly perceive; I perceive a soul only within myself.\nMy thoughts, my imaginations, my feelings, no man sees. Now just as I\nhave such an inner life, alongside of the life which can be outwardly\nperceived, so, too, all other beings must have such an inner life.\n\nThus concludes one who occupies the standpoint of the anthropomorphising\nconception of the world. What I perceive externally in the plant, must\nequally be the outer side of something inward, of a soul, which I must\nadd in my imagination to what I actually perceive. And since for me\nthere exists but one single inner world, namely, my own, therefore I\ncan conceive of the inner world of other beings only as resembling my\nown inner world. Along this line of argument one comes to a sort of\nuniversal ensouling of all nature (Pan-psychism).\n\nThis view depends, however, on a failure to recognise what the awakened\ninner sense really gives us. The spiritual (_geistig_) content of an\nexternal object, which reveals itself to me in my inner self, is not\nanything added in or by thought to the outer perception. It is just as\nlittle this as is the spirit of another man. I perceive this spiritual\ncontent through the inner sense just in the same way as I perceive its\nphysical content through the external senses. And what I call my inner\nlife in the above sense (_i.e._, thoughts, feelings, etc.), is not at\nall in the higher sense, my spirit (_Geist_). This so-called inner\nlife is only the outcome of purely sensuous processes, and belongs to\nme only as a purely individual personality, which is nothing more than\nthe result of its physical organisation. If I transfer this inner life\nto outer things, I am, as a matter of fact, thinking in the air.\n\nMy personal soul-life, my thoughts, memories, and feelings, are in me,\nbecause I am a nature-being organised in such and such a way, with a\nperfectly definite sense-apparatus, with a perfectly definite nervous\nsystem. I have no right to transfer this my human soul to other things.\nI should only be entitled to do so if I happened to find anywhere a\nsimilarly organised nervous system. But my individual soul is not\nthe highest spiritual element in me. This highest spiritual element\nmust first be awakened through the inner sense; and this awakened\nspiritual element in me is also one and the same with the spiritual\nelement in all things. The plant appears immediately in its own proper\nspirituality to this spiritual element,--I have no need to endow it\nwith a spirituality like unto my own.\n\nAll talk about the unknown \u201cthing-in-itself\u201d loses any kind of\nmeaning with this conception of the world; for it is just that very\n\u201cthing-in-itself\u201d which reveals itself to the inner sense. All such\ntalk originates simply in the fact that those who talk thus are unable\nto recognise in the spiritual contents of their own inner being the\n\u201cthings-in-themselves.\u201d They think that they know in their own inner\nselves mere shadows and schemes without being,--\u201cmere concepts and\nideas\u201d of things. But as they still have a sort of premonition of the\n\u201cthing-in-itself,\u201d they therefore believe that this \u201cthing-in-itself\u201d\nis concealing itself, and that there are limits set to man\u2019s power of\nknowing. One cannot prove to such as are entangled in this belief,\nthat they must grasp the \u201cthing-in-itself\u201d in their own inner being,\nfor even if one were to put it before them, they would still never\nrecognise or admit this \u201cthing-in-itself.\u201d But it is just this\nrecognition with which we are concerned.\n\nAll that Meister Eckhart says is saturated with this recognition.\n\u201cOf this take a comparison: A door opens and shuts upon a hinge. If,\nnow, I compare the outer plank of this door to the outer man, I must\nthen compare the hinge to the inner man. Now, when the door opens and\nshuts, the outer plank moves to and fro, while yet the hinge remains\nconstantly immovable and is in no way changed thereby. In like manner\nit is here also.\u201d As an individual sense-being, I can investigate\nthings in all directions--the door opens and shuts,--if I do not\nspiritually give birth within me to the perceptions of the senses, then\ndo I know nothing of their nature--the hinge does not move!\n\nThe illumination brought about through the inner sense is, according\nto Eckhart\u2019s view, the entrance of God into the soul. The light of\nknowledge which flames up through this entrance, he calls the \u201clittle\nspark of the soul.\u201d The point in man\u2019s inner being at which this\n\u201cspark\u201d flames up is \u201cso pure, so lofty, and so noble in itself, that\nno creature can be therein, but only God alone dwells therein with His\npurely Divine Nature.\u201d Whosoever has kindled this \u201cspark\u201d in himself,\nno longer sees only as sees the ordinary man with his outer senses,\nand with his logical understanding which orders and classifies the\nimpressions of the senses, but he sees how things are in themselves.\nThe outer senses and the classifying understanding separate the\nindividual man from other things; they make of him an individual\nin space and time, who also perceives the other things in space\nand time. The man illuminated by the \u201cspark\u201d ceases to be a single\nseparated being. He annihilates his separateness. All that brings\nabout the difference between himself and things ceases to be. That\nhe, as a single being, is that which perceives, no longer comes into\nconsideration. Things and he himself are no longer separated. Things,\nand with them, God, see themselves in him. \u201cThis spark is in very deed\nGod, in that it is a single oneness and bears within it the imagery of\nall creatures, image without image, and image upon image.\u201d\n\nEckhart proclaims in the most magnificent words the extinction of the\nisolated being: \u201cIt is therefore to be known, that according to things\nit is one and the same to know God and to be known by God. Therein do\nwe know God and see, that He makes us to see and to know. And as the\nair, which enlighteneth, is nothing other than what it enlightens; for\nthe air giveth light, because it is enlightened; even so do we know\nthat we are known, and that He maketh us to know Himself.\u201d\n\nOn this foundation Meister Eckhart builds up his relation to God. It\nis a purely spiritual one, and cannot be modelled according to any\nimage borrowed from human individual experience. Not as one separated\nindividual loves another can God love his creation: not as an architect\nbuilds a house can God have created it. All such thoughts vanish before\nthe inner vision. It belongs to God\u2019s very being that He should love\nthe world. A God who could love or not love at pleasure, is imagined\naccording to the likeness of the individual man. \u201cI speak in good truth\nand in eternal truth and in everlasting truth, that God must needs ever\npour Himself forth in every man who has reached down to his true root\nto the utmost of possibility, so wholly and completely that in His life\nand in His being, in His nature and in His Godhead, He keeps nothing\nback; He must ever pour all forth in fruitful wise.\u201d And the inner\nillumination is something that the soul must necessarily find when it\nsinks itself deep into the basis of its being.\n\nFrom this it is already obvious that God\u2019s communication to humanity\ncannot be conceived after the fashion of the revelation of one human\nbeing to another. This communication may also be cut off, for one man\ncan shut himself off from another; but God _must_, by virtue of His\nvery nature, reveal Himself. \u201cIt is a sure and certain truth, that\nit is a necessity for God to seek us, exactly as if His very Godhead\ndepended upon it. God can as little dispense with us as we with Him.\nEven though we turn away from God, yet God can never turn away from\nus.\u201d Consequently, man\u2019s relation to God cannot be conceived of as\nthough something image-like, something taken from the individual human\nbeing, were contained therein.\n\nEckhart is thus conscious that it belongs to the perfectness of\nthe Root-Being of the world to find Itself in the human soul. This\nRoot-Being indeed would be imperfect, incomplete, if it lacked that\npart of its unfoldment which comes to light in the soul. What happens\nin man belongs to the Root-Being; and if it did not happen, then the\nRoot-Being would be but a part of Itself. In this sense, man can feel\nhimself as a necessary part of the Being of the universe. This Eckhart\nexpresses by describing his feelings towards God as follows: \u201cI thank\nnot God that He loveth me, for He may not do otherwise; whether He will\nit or no, His nature yet compelleth Him.... Therefore will I not pray\nto God to give me anything, nor will I praise Him for that which He\nhath given me....\u201d\n\nBut this relationship of the soul to the Root-Being must not be\nconceived of as if the soul in its individual nature were declared\nto be identical with this Root-Being. The soul which is entangled in\nthe sense-world, and so in the finite, has as such not yet got within\nitself the content of the Root-Being. The soul must first develop that\ncontent within itself. It must annihilate itself as an isolated being;\nand Meister Eckhart most aptly characterises this annihilation as\n_Entwerdung_ (un-becoming or involution). \u201cWhen I come to the root of\nthe Godhead, none ask me whence I come and where I have been, and none\ndoth miss me, for here there is an _Entwerdung_.\u201d Again, the following\nphrase speaks very clearly about this relation: \u201cI take a cup of water\nand lay therein a mirror and set it under the disc of the sun. The sun\ncasts out its shining light on the mirror and yet doth not pass away.\nThe reflecting of the mirror in the sun is sun in the sun, and yet the\nmirror remains what it is. So is it about God. God is in the soul with\nHis very nature and being and Godhead, and yet He is not the soul. The\nreflecting of the soul in God, is God in God, and yet the soul is still\nthat which it is.\u201d\n\nThe soul which gives itself up to the inner illumination knows in\nitself not only what this same soul was before its illumination; but it\nalso knows that which this soul only became through this illumination.\n\u201cWe must be united with God in being; we must be united with God\nuniquely; we must be united with God wholly. How shall we be united\nwith God in being? That must happen in the beholding and not in the\n_Wesung_. His being may not become our being, but it shall be our\nlife.\u201d Not an already existent life--a _Wesung_--is to be known in the\nlogical sense; but the higher knowing--the beholding--shall itself\nbecome life; the spiritual, the ideal must be so felt by the beholder,\nas ordinary daily life is felt by individual human nature.\n\nFrom such starting points, Meister Eckhart also builds up a pure\nconception of Freedom. In its ordinary life the soul is not free; for\nit is interwoven with the realm of lower causes, and accomplishes that\nto which it is impelled by these lower causes. But by \u201cbeholding\u201d or\n\u201cvision\u201d it is raised out of the domain of these causes, and acts no\nlonger as a separated individual soul. The root of being is laid bare\nin this soul, and that can be moved to action by naught save by itself.\n\u201cGod does not compel the will; rather He sets the will free, so that\nit wills not otherwise than what God Himself wills; and the spirit\ndesires not to will other than what God wills: and that is not its\nun-freedom: it is its true and real freedom. For freedom is that we\nare not bound, but free and pure and unmixed, as we were in our first\noutpouring, as we were set free in the Holy Ghost.\u201d\n\nIt may be said of the illuminated man that he is himself the being\nwhich from within itself determines what is good and what is evil. He\ncan do naught absolutely, but accomplish the good. For he does not\nserve the good, but the good realises and lives itself out in him. \u201cThe\nrighteous man serveth neither God, nor the creature; for he is free,\nand the nearer he is to righteousness, the more he is Freedom\u2019s very\nself.\u201d What then, for Meister Eckhart, can evil be? It can be only\naction under the influence of the lower mode of regarding things;--the\nacting of a soul which has not passed through the state of _Entwerdung_\n(un-becoming). Such a soul is selfish in the sense that it wills only\nitself. It could not bring its willing outwardly into accord with moral\nideals. The soul having vision cannot in this sense be selfish. Even if\nit willed itself, it yet could will only the lordship of the ideal; for\nit has made itself into this very ideal. It can no longer will the ends\nof the lower nature, for it has no longer aught in common with this\nlower nature. To act in conformity with moral ideals implies for the\nsoul which has vision, no compulsion, no deprivation.\n\n\u201cThe man who standeth in God\u2019s will and in God\u2019s love, to him it is a\ncraving to do all good things that God willeth, and leave undone all\nevil things that are contrary to God. And it is impossible for him\nto leave undone anything that God will have done. Even as walking is\nimpossible to one whose legs are bound, just so it would be impossible\nfor a man who standeth in God\u2019s will to do aught unvirtuous.\u201d\n\nEckhart moreover expressly guards himself against the idea that, with\nthis view of his, free license is given for anything and everything\nthat the individual may will. The man possessing vision is indeed\nto be recognised by the very fact that as a separated individual he\nno longer wills anything. \u201cCertain men say: If I have God and God\u2019s\nfreedom, then I may just do whatever I please. Such understand wrongly\nthis saying. So long as thou canst do aught that is contrary to God\nand His commandment, so long thou hast not God\u2019s love; even though thou\nmayest well deceive the world, as if thou hadst.\u201d Eckhart is convinced\nthat to the soul which dives down into its own root, the most perfect\nmorality will shine forth from that root to meet it; that there all\nlogical conception, and all acting in the ordinary sense, ceases, and\nan entirely new ordering of human life makes its appearance.\n\n\u201cFor all that the understanding can grasp, and all that desiring can\ndesire, is verily not God. Where understanding and desiring end, there\nit is dark, there shineth God. There that power unfolds in the soul\nwhich is wider than the wide heavens.... The bliss of the righteous\nand the bliss of God is one bliss; for there is the righteous full of\nbliss, where God is full of bliss.\u201d\n\n\n\n\n                         THE FRIENDSHIP OF GOD\n\nIn Johannes Tauler (1300-1361), Heinrich Suso (1295-1365), and Johannes\nRuysbroeck (1293-1381), one makes acquaintance with men whose life and\nwork exhibit in a very striking manner those \u201cmotions of the soul\u201d to\nwhich such a spiritual path as that of Meister Eckhart is calculated to\ngive rise in natures of depth and power. While Eckhart seems like a man\nwho, in the blissful experiencing of spiritual re-birth, speaks of the\nnature of Knowledge as of a picture which he has succeeded in painting;\nthese others, followers of his, appear rather like pilgrims, to whom\ntheir inner re-birth has shown a new road which they fain would\ntread, but whose goal seems to vanish before them into the illimitable\ndistance. Eckhart dwells more upon the glories of his picture; they\nupon the difficulties of the new path.\n\nTo understand the difference between personalities like Eckhart and\nTauler, one must see quite clearly how a man stands towards his higher\ncognitions. Man is interwoven with the sense-world and the laws of\nnature by which that sense-world is ruled. He is himself a product of\nthat world. He lives because its forces and its materials are at work\nin him; nay, he perceives this sense-world and judges of it by laws,\naccording to which both he himself and that world are alike built up.\nIf he turns his eyes upon an object, not only does the object present\nitself to him as a complex of interacting forces, ruled by nature\u2019s\nlaws, but the eye, with which he sees the object is itself a body\nbuilt up according to just such laws and of just such forces; and the\nseeing, too, takes place by similar laws and forces. If we had reached\nthe goal of natural science, we should be able to follow out this play\nof the forces of nature according to natural laws right up into the\nhighest regions of thought-formation,--but in the very act of doing\nthis, we raise ourselves _above_ this play of forces. For do we not\nstand above and beyond all the \u201cuniformities which make up the laws of\nnature,\u201d when we over-see the whole and recognise how we ourselves fit\ninto nature? We _see_ with our eyes according to laws of nature. But we\nknow also the laws, according to which we see.\n\nWe can take our stand upon a higher summit and overlook at once\nboth ourselves and the outer world in their mutual interplay. Is\nthere not here a something working in us, which is higher than the\nsensuous-organic personality working with Nature\u2019s forces and according\nto Nature\u2019s laws? In such activity does there still remain any wall\nof division between our inner selves and the outer world? That which\nhere judges and gains for itself insight is no longer our separated\npersonality; it is rather the general world-being, which has torn down\nthe barrier between the inner and outer worlds and now embraces both\nalike. As true as it is that, judged by the outer appearance, I still\nremain the same separated individual when I have thus torn down this\nbarrier, so true is it also that, judged according to essential being,\nI am no longer this separated unit. Henceforth there lives in me the\nfeeling that there speaks in my soul the All-Being, which embraces both\nmyself and the entire world.\n\nThis is what Tauler felt, when he said: \u201cMan is just as if he were\nthree men--his animal man as he is according to the senses; then his\nrational man and lastly, his highest, godlike man.... The one is the\nouter, animal, sensuous man; the other is the inner, understanding man,\nwith his understanding and reasoning powers; the third man is spirit,\n(_Gem\u00fcth_--lit. emotional, feeling nature), the very highest part of\nthe soul.\u201d[1] How far this third man is above the first and second,\nEckhart has expressed in the words: \u201cThe eye through which I see God,\nthat is the same eye with which God sees me. My eye and God\u2019s eye, that\nis one eye and one knowing and one feeling.\u201d\n\n  [1] _Cp._ W. Preger: _Geschichte der Deutschen Mystik_, vol. iii, p.\n  161.\n\nBut in Tauler another feeling is active as well as this. He has\nfought his way through to a real vision of the spiritual, and does\nnot constantly confuse, as do the false materialists and the false\nidealists, the sensibly-natural with the spiritual. If, with his\ndisposition, Tauler had become a scientist, he would have insisted upon\nexplaining all that is natural, including the _whole_ of man, both the\nfirst and the second, purely upon natural lines. He would never have\ntransferred purely spiritual forces into nature itself. He would never\nhave talked of a \u201cpurposefulness\u201d in nature conceived of according to\nmen\u2019s notions. He knew that there, where we perceive with our senses,\nno \u201ccreative ideas\u201d are to be found. Far rather he was most keenly\nconscious of the fact that man is a purely natural being. And as he\nfelt himself to be, not a scientist, but a devotee of moral life, he\ntherefore felt most keenly the contrast which reveals itself between\nthis natural being of man and that vision of God which arises naturally\nand within nature, but as spirituality. And just in that very contrast\nthe meaning of life presented itself to his eyes. Man finds himself\nas a single being, a creature of nature. And no science can reveal to\nhim anything else about this life than that he is such a creature of\nnature. As a creature of nature he cannot get outside of the sphere of\nnatural creation. In it he must remain. And yet his inner life leads\nhim outside and beyond it. He must have confidence in that which no\nscience of outer nature can give him or show to him.\n\nIf he calls only this nature Being or \u201cthat which is,\u201d then he must\nbe able to reach out to the vision which recognises as the higher,\nNon-being, or \u201cthat which is not.\u201d Tauler seeks for no God who is\npresent in the same sense as a natural force; he seeks no God who has\ncreated the world in the sense of human creation. In him lives the\nclear insight that the conception of creation even of the Fathers of\nthe Church is only idealised human creating. It is clear to him that\nGod is not to be found as nature\u2019s working and her laws are found, by\nscience. Tauler is well aware that we must not add in thought anything\nto nature as God. He knows that whoever thinks God, in his sense, no\nlonger thinks thought-content, as does one who has grasped nature\nin thought. Therefore, Tauler seeks not to think God, but to think\ndivinely, to think as God thinks. The knowledge of nature is not\n_enriched_ by the knowledge of God, but _transformed_. The knower of\nGod does not know a different thing from the knower of nature, but he\nknows in a different way. Not one single letter can the knower of God\nadd to the knowledge of nature; but through his whole knowing of nature\nthere shines a new light.\n\nWhat root-feelings will take possession of a man\u2019s soul who\ncontemplates the world from this point of view, will depend upon how\nhe regards that experience of the soul which brings about spiritual\nre-birth. Within this experience, man is wholly a natural being, when\nhe considers himself in his interaction with the rest of nature; and\nhe is wholly a spiritual being when he considers the conditions into\nwhich this re-birth has brought him. Thus we can say with equal\ntruth, the inmost depth of the soul is still natural; as also it is\nalready divine. Tauler emphasised the former in accordance with his own\ntendency of thought. However far we may penetrate into our souls, we\nstill remain separated individual human beings, said he to himself. But\nyet in the very depths of the soul of the individual being there gleams\nforth the All-Being.\n\nTauler was dominated by the feeling: Thou canst not free thyself from\nseparateness, nor purify thyself from it. Therefore the All-Being in\nits purity can never make its appearance within thee, it can only shed\nits light into the depths of thy soul. Thus in its depths only a mere\nreflection, a picture of the All-Being comes into existence. Thou\ncanst so transform thy separated personality that it reproduces the\nAll-Being as a picture; but this All-Being itself does not shine forth\nin thee. Starting from such conceptions, Tauler came to the idea of\na Godhead that never merges wholly into the human world, never flows\nquite completely into it. More, he attaches importance to his not being\nconfused with those who maintain that man\u2019s inmost being is itself\ndivine. He says: \u201cThe Union with God is taken by foolish men in a\nfleshly sense, and they say that they shall be transformed into divine\nnature; but such is false and an evil heresy. For even in the very\nhighest, most inward Union with God, God\u2019s nature and God\u2019s being still\nremain lofty, yea, higher than the loftiest; that passeth into a divine\nabyss, where never yet was creature.\u201d\n\nTauler wishes, and rightly, to be called a good Catholic in the sense\nof his age and of his priestly calling. He has no desire to oppose\nany other conception to Christianity. He desires only to deepen and\nspiritualise that Christianity through his way of looking at it. He\nspeaks as a pious priest of the content of Holy Writ. But this same\nscripture still becomes in the world of his conceptions a means for the\nexpression of the inmost experiences of his soul. \u201cGod worketh all his\nworks in the soul and giveth them to the soul; and the Father begetteth\nHis only begotten Son in the soul, as truly as He begetteth Him in\neternity, neither more, nor less. What is born when one says: God\nbegetteth in the soul? Is it a likeness of God, or a picture of God, or\nis it somewhat of God? Nay: it is neither picture nor likeness of God,\nbut the same God and the same Son whom the Father begetteth in eternity\nand naught else than the blissful divine word, that is the second\nperson in the Trinity, Him the Father begetteth in the soul, ... and\nthereof the soul hath thus great and special dignity.\u201d[2] The stories\nof scripture become for Tauler the garment in which he clothes the\nhappiness of the inner life. \u201cHerod, who drove out the child and sought\nto slay him, is a likeness of the world, which yet seeketh to kill this\nchild in a believing man, therefore one should and must flee therefrom,\nif we do desire to keep that child alive in us, but that child is the\nenlightened believing soul of each and every man.\u201d\n\n  [2] _Cp._ Preger: _History of German Mysticism_, vol. iii., p. 219\n  _et seq._\n\nAs Tauler directs his gaze mainly upon the natural man, he is\ncomparatively less concerned to tell us what happens when the higher\nman enters into the natural man, than to discover the paths which\nthe lower forces of the personality must follow if they are to be\ntransmuted into the higher life. As a devotee of the moral life, he\ndesires to show to men the roads to the All-Being. He has unconditional\nfaith and trust that the All-Being shines forth in man, if man will\nso order his life that there shall be in him a shrine for the Divine.\nBut this All-Being can never shine forth while man shuts himself up\nin his mere natural separated personality. Such a man, separated off\nin himself, is merely one member of the world: a single creature, in\nTauler\u2019s language. The more man shuts himself off within this his being\nas a member of the world, so much the less can the All-Being find place\nin him. \u201cIf man is in reality to become one with God, then all energies\nand powers even of the inner man must die and become silent. The will\nmust turn away even from the Good and from all willing, and become void\nof willing.\u201d \u201cMan must escape from all his senses and turn inwards all\nhis powers, and come into a forgetting of all things and of himself.\u201d\n\u201cFor the true and eternal Word of God is uttered only in the desert,\nwhen the man hath gone out from himself and from all things and is\nquite untrammelled, desolate and alone.\u201d\n\nWhen Tauler stood at his zenith, the problem which occupied the central\npoint of his mental life was: How can man overcome and kill out in\nhimself his separated existence, so as to live in perfect unison\nwith the All-life? For one in this position, all feelings towards\nthe All-Being concentrate themselves into this one thing: Awe before\nthe All-Being as that which is inexhaustible, endless. He says to\nhimself: whatever level thou hast reached, there remain still higher\nperspectives, still more exalted possibilities. Thus clear and defined\nas is to him the direction in which he has to turn his steps, it is\nequally clear to him that he can never speak of a goal: for a new\ngoal is only the beginning of a new path. Through such a new goal man\nreaches a certain level of evolution: but evolution itself continues\nillimitably. And what that evolution may attain upon some more distant\nlevel, it can never know upon its present stage. There is no _knowing_\nthe final goal: only a _trusting_ in the path, in evolution itself.\nThere is knowing for everything which man has already attained. It\nconsists in the penetration of an already present object by the powers\nof our spirit. For the higher life of man\u2019s inner being, there is no\nsuch knowing. Here the powers of our spirit must first transfer the\nobject itself into the realm of the existent; they must first create\nfor it an existence, constituted as is natural existence.\n\nNatural Science follows the evolution of beings from the simplest up\nto the most perfected, to man himself. This evolution lies before us\nas already completed. We know it, by penetrating it with the powers\nof our spirit. When evolution has reached humanity, man then finds\nnothing further there before him as its continuation. He himself\naccomplishes the further unfoldment. Henceforward he _lives_ what for\nearlier stages he only _knows_. He creates, according to the object,\nthat which, for what has gone before, he only copies in accordance\nwith its spiritual nature. That truth is not one with the existent in\nnature, but naturally embraces both the existent and the non-existent:\nof this truth Tauler is filled to overflowing in all his feelings. It\nhas been handed down to us that Tauler was led to this fulfilling by an\nilluminated layman, a \u201cFriend of God from the Mountains.\u201d\n\nWe have here a mysterious story. As to where this \u201cFriend of God\u201d\nlived there exist only conjectures; as to who he was, not even these.\nHe seems to have heard much of Tauler\u2019s way of preaching, and to have\nresolved accordingly to journey to Tauler, who was then working as\na preacher in Strassburg, in order to fulfil a certain duty by him.\nTauler\u2019s relation to the Friend of God, and the influence which the\nlatter exercised upon the former, are to be found described in a text\nwhich is printed along with the oldest editions of Tauler\u2019s sermons\nunder the title, \u201cThe Book of the Master.\u201d Therein a Friend of God,\nin whom some seek to recognise the same who came into relations with\nTauler, gives an account of a \u201cMaster,\u201d whom some assert to be Tauler\nhimself. He relates how a transformation, a spiritual re-birth, was\nbrought about in a certain \u201cMaster\u201d and how the latter, when he felt\nhis death drawing near, called his friend to him and begged him to\nwrite the story of his \u201cenlightenment,\u201d but yet to take care that no\none should ever learn of whom the book speaks. He asks this on the\nground that all the knowledge that proceeds from him is yet not really\nfrom him. \u201cFor know ye that God hath brought all to pass through me,\npoor worm, and that what it is, is not mine, it is of God.\u201d\n\nA learned controversy which has connected itself with the occurrence\nis not of the very smallest importance for the essence of the matter.\nAn effort was made to prove on one side[3] that the Friend of God\nnever existed, but that his existence was fiction and that the books\nascribed to him come from another hand (Rulman Merswin). On the other\nhand Wilhelm Preger has sought with many arguments (in his _History of\nGerman Mysticism_) to support the existence, the genuineness of the\nwritings, and the correctness of the facts that relate to Tauler.\n\n  [3] Denifle: _Die Dichtungen des Gottesfreundes im Oberlande_.\n\nI am here under no obligation to throw light by presumptuous\ninvestigation upon a relationship as to which any one, who understands\nhow to read the writings[4] in question, will know that it should\nremain a secret.\n\n  [4] The writings in question are, among others: _Von eime\n  eigenwilligen weltwisen manne, der von eime heiligen weltpriestere\n  gewiset wart uffe demuetige gehorsamme_, 1338; _Das Buch von den\n  zwei Mannen_; _Der gefangene Ritter_, 1349; _Die geistliche stege_,\n  1350; _Von der geistlichen Leiter_, 1357; _Das Meisterbuch_, 1369;\n  _Geschichte von zwei f\u00fcnfzehnj\u00e4hrigen Knaben_.\n\nIf one says of Tauler, that at a certain stage of his life a\ntransformation took place in him, that will be amply sufficient.\nTauler\u2019s personality need no longer be in any way considered in this\nconnection, but only a personality \u201cin general.\u201d As regards Tauler,\nwe are only concerned with the fact that we must understand his\ntransformation from the point of view set forth in what follows. If\nwe compare his later activity with his earlier, the fact of this\ntransformation is obvious without further search. I will leave aside\nall outer circumstances and relate the inner occurrences in the soul of\nthe \u201cMaster\u201d under \u201cthe influence of the layman.\u201d What my reader will\nunderstand by the \u201clayman\u201d and the \u201cMaster\u201d depends entirely upon his\nown mentality; what I myself think about it is a matter as to which I\ncannot know for whom it is of any weight.\n\nA Master is instructing his disciples as to the relationship of the\nsoul to the All-Being of things. He speaks of the fact that when man\nplunges into the abysmal depths of his soul, he no longer feels the\nnatural, limited forces of the separated personality working within\nhim. Therein the separated man no longer speaks, therein speaks God.\nThere man does not see God, or the world; there God sees Himself. Man\nhas become one with God. But the Master knows that this teaching\nhas not yet awakened to full life in him. He thinks it with his\nunderstanding: but he does not yet live in it with every fibre of his\npersonality. He is thus teaching about a state of things which he has\nnot yet completely lived through in himself. The description of the\ncondition corresponds to the truth; yet this truth has no value if it\ndoes not gain life, if it does not bring itself forth in reality as\nactually existent.\n\nThe \u201clayman\u201d or \u201cFriend of God\u201d hears of the Master and his teachings.\nHe is no less saturated with the truth which the Master utters than\nthe Master himself. But he possesses this truth not as a matter of\nthe understanding; he has it as the whole force of his life. He\nknows that when this truth has come to a man from outside, he can\nhimself give utterance to it, without even in the least living in\naccordance with it. But in that case he has nothing other in him than\nthe natural knowledge of the understanding. He then speaks of this\nnatural knowledge as if it were the highest, equivalent to the working\nof the All-Being. It is not so, because it has not been acquired in a\nlife that has approached to this knowledge as a transformed, a reborn\nlife. What one acquires only as a natural man, that remains only\nnatural,--even when one afterwards expresses in words the fundamental\ncharacteristic of the higher knowledge. Outwards, from within the very\nnature itself, must the transformation be accomplished.\n\nNature, which by living has evolved itself to a certain level, must\nevolve further through life; something new must come into existence\nthrough this further evolution. Man must not only look backwards upon\nthe evolution which already lies behind him--claim as the highest that\nwhich shapes itself according thereto in his spirit--but he must look\nforward upon the uncreated: his knowledge must be a beginning of a new\ncontent, not an end to the content of evolution which already lies\nbefore it. Nature advances from the worm to the mammal, from the mammal\nto man, not in a conceptual but in an actual, real process. Man has to\nrepeat this process not in his mind alone. The mental repetition is\nonly the beginning of a fresh, real evolution, which, however, despite\nits being spiritual, is real. Man, then, does not merely know what\nnature has produced; he continues nature; he translates his knowledge\ninto living action. He gives birth within himself to the spirit, and\nthis spirit advances thence onwards from level to level of evolution,\nas nature itself advances. Spirit begins a natural process upon a\nhigher level.\n\nThe talk about the God who contemplates Himself in man\u2019s inner being,\ntakes on a different character in one who has recognised this. He\nattaches little importance to the fact that an insight already attained\nhas led him into the depths of the All-Being; instead, his spiritual\nnature acquires a new character. It unfolds itself further in the\ndirection determined by the All-Being. Such a man not only looks at\nthe world differently from one who merely understands: he lives his\nlife otherwise. He does not talk of the meaning which life already has\nthrough the forces and laws of the world: but he gives anew a fresh\nmeaning to his life. As little as the fish already has in itself what\nmakes its appearance on a later level of evolution as the mammal, as\nlittle has the understanding man already in himself what shall be\nborn from him as the higher man. If the fish could know itself and\nthe things around it, it would regard the being-a-fish as the meaning\nof life. It would say: the All-Being is like the fish: in the fish\nthe All-Being beholds itself. Thus would the fish speak as long as it\nremained constant to its understanding kind of knowledge. In reality it\ndoes not remain constant thereto. It reaches out beyond its knowledge\nwith its activity. It becomes a reptile and later a mammal. The meaning\nwhich it gives to itself in reality reaches out beyond the meaning\nwhich mere contemplation gives to it.\n\nIn man also this must be so. He gives himself a meaning in reality; he\ndoes not halt and stand still at the meaning he already has, which his\ncontemplation shows him. Knowledge leaps out beyond itself, if only it\nunderstands itself aright. Knowledge cannot deduce the world from a\nready-made God; it can only unfold itself from a germ in the direction\ntowards a God. The man who has understood this will not regard God as\nsomething that is outside of him; he will deal with God as a being who\nwanders with him towards a goal, which at the outset is just as unknown\nas the nature of the mammal is unknown to the fish. He does not aim to\nbe the knower of the hidden, or of the self-revealing existent God, but\nto be the friend of the divine doing and working, which is exalted over\nboth being and non-being.\n\nThe layman, who came to the Master, was a \u201cFriend of God\u201d in this\nsense, and through him the Master became from a contemplator of the\nbeing of God, one who is \u201calive in the spirit,\u201d one who not only\ncontemplated, but lived in the higher sense. The Master now no longer\nbrought forth concepts and ideas of the understanding from his inner\nnature, but these concepts and ideas burst forth from him as living,\nactualised spirit. He no longer merely edified his hearers; he shook\nthe very foundations of their being. He no longer plunged their souls\ninto their inner being; he led them into a new life. This is recounted\nto us symbolically: about forty people fell down through his preaching\nand lay as if dead.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nAs a guide to such a new life, we possess a book about whose author\nnothing is known. Luther first made it known in print. The philologist,\nFranz Pfeiffer, has recently printed it according to a manuscript of\nthe year 1497, with a modern German translation facing the original\ntext. What precedes the book indicates its purpose and its goal: \u201cHere\nbegins the man from Frankfurt and saith many very lofty and very\nbeautiful things about a perfect life.\u201d Upon this follows the \u201cPreface\nabout the man from Frankfurt\u201d: \u201cAl-mighty, Eternal God hath uttered\nthis little book through a wise, understanding, truthful, righteous\nman, his friend, who in former days was a German nobleman, a priest and\na custodian in the German House of Nobles at Frankfurt; it teacheth\nmany a lovely insight into Divine Wisdom, and especially how and\nwhereby one may know the true, righteous friends of God, and also the\nunrighteous, false, free-thinkers, who are very hurtful to Holy Church.\u201d\n\nBy \u201cfree-thinkers\u201d one may perhaps understand those who live in a\nmerely conceptual world, like the \u201cMaster\u201d described above before his\ntransformation by means of the \u201cFriend of God,\u201d and by the \u201ctrue,\nrighteous friends of God,\u201d such as possess the disposition of the\n\u201clayman.\u201d One may further ascribe to the book the intention of so\nworking upon its readers as the \u201cFriend of God from the Mountains\u201d did\nupon the Master. It is not known who the author was. But what does that\nmean? It is not known when he was born and died, or what he did in his\nouter life. That the author aimed to preserve eternal secrecy about\nthese facts of his outer life, belongs naturally to the way in which\nhe desired to work. It is not the \u201cI\u201d of this or the other man, born\nat a definite point of time, who is to speak to us, but the \u201cI-ness\u201d\nin the depths whereof \u201cthe separateness of individualities\u201d (in the\nsense of Paul Asmus\u2019 saying[5]) must first unfold itself. \u201cIf God took\nto Himself all men who are or who have ever been, and became man in\nthem, and they became God in Him, and it did not happen to me also,\nthen my fall and my turning away would never be made good, unless it\nalso happened in me too. And in this restoration and making good, I\nneither can nor may nor should do anything thereto save a mere pure\nsuffering, so that God alone doeth and worketh all things in me, and\nI suffer Him and all His works and His divine will. But if I will not\nsubmit to this, but possess myself with egotism, _i.e._, with mine,\nand I, to me, for me, and the like, that hinders God so that He cannot\nwork His work in me purely alone and without hindrance. Therefore my\nfall and my turning away remain thus not made good.\u201d The \u201cman from\nFrankfurt\u201d aims to speak not as a separated individual; he desires\nto let God speak. That he yet can do this only as a single, distinct\npersonality he naturally knows full well; but he is a \u201cFriend of God,\u201d\nthat means a man who aims not at presenting the nature of life through\ncontemplation, but at pointing out the beginning of a new evolutionary\npathway through the living spirit.\n\n  [5] _Vide ante_, page 34.\n\nThe explanations in the book are various instructions as to how one\ncomes to this pathway. The root-thought returns again and again: man\nmust strip off everything that is connected with that which makes him\nappear as a single, separate personality. This thought seems to be\nworked out only in respect of the moral life; it should be extended,\nwithout further ado, to the higher life of knowledge as well. One must\nannihilate in oneself whatever appears as separateness: then separated\nexistence ceases; the All-Life enters into us. We cannot master this\nAll-Life by drawing it towards us. It comes into us, when we reduce\nthe separateness in us to silence. We have the All-Life least of all\njust then, when we so regard our separated existence as if the Whole\nalready dwelt within it. This first comes to light in the separated\nexistence when this separated existence no longer claims for itself to\nbe anything. This pretension on the part of the separated existence our\ntext terms \u201cassumption.\u201d\n\nThrough \u201cassumption\u201d the self makes it impossible for itself that\nthe Universal Self should enter into it. The self then puts itself\nas a part, as something imperfect, in the place of the whole, of the\nperfect. \u201cThe perfect is a being, that in itself and in its being has\nconceived and resolved all beings, and without which and apart from\nwhich there is no true being, and in which all things have their being;\nfor it is the being of all things and is in itself unchangeable and\nimmovable, and changes and moves all other things. But the divided and\nthe imperfect is that which has sprung from out of this perfect, or\nbecomes, just as a ray or a light that flows forth from the sun or\na light and shines upon something, this or that. And that is called\nthe creature, and of all these divided things none is the perfect.\nTherefore also is the perfect none of the divided.... When the perfect\ncometh, the divided is despised. But when does it come? I say: When\nso far as is possible it is known, felt, tasted in the soul; for the\ndefect lies wholly in us and not in it. For just as the sun illuminates\nthe whole world and is just as near to the one as to the other, yet\na blind man sees it not. But that is no defect of the sun but of the\nblind man.... If my eye is to see anything, it must become cleansed, or\nbe already cleansed from all other things.... Now one might be inclined\nto say: In so far then as it is unknowable and inconceivable for all\ncreatures, and since the soul is also a creature, how can it then be\nknown in the soul? Answer: Therefore is it said, the creature shall be\nknown _as a creature_.\u201d\n\nThis is as much as to say that all creatures shall be regarded as\ncreated and creation and not regard themselves as I-ness and self-ness,\nwhereby this knowing is made impossible. \u201cFor in whatever creature this\nperfect one shall be known, there all creature-being, created-being,\nI-ness, self-ness, and everything of the kind must be lost, be and\nbecome naught.\u201d[6] The soul must therefore look within itself; there\nit finds its I-ness, its self-ness. If it remains standing there, it\nthereby cuts itself off from the perfect. If it regards its I-ness only\nas a thing lent to it as it were, and annihilates it in spirit, it will\nbe seized upon by the stream of the All-Life, of Perfection.\n\n  [6] Chap. i., _Book of the Man from Frankfurt_.\n\n\u201cWhen the creature assumes to itself somewhat of good, as Being, Life,\nKnowledge, Power, in short, aught of that which one calls good and\nthinks that it is that, or that it belongs to it or comes from it, so\noften and so much as that happens, does the creature turn away.\u201d \u201cThe\ncreated soul of man has two eyes. The one is the possibility of seeing\nin eternity; the other of seeing in time and in creation.\u201d \u201cMan should\ntherefore stand and be quite free without himself, that is without\nself-ness, I-ness, me, mine, for me and the like, so that he as little\nseeks and thinks of himself and what is his in all things as if it did\nnot exist; and he should therefore also think little of himself, as if\nhe were not, and as if another had done all his deeds.\u201d[7]\n\n  [7] Chap. xv., _Book of the Man from Frankfurt_.\n\nOne must also take account of the fact in regard to the writer of\nthese sentences, that the thought-content, to which he gives a\ndirection by his higher ideas and feelings, is that of a believing\npriest in the spirit of his own time. We are here concerned not with\nthe thought-content, but with the direction, not with the thoughts\nbut with the way of thinking. Any one who does not live as he does in\nChristian dogmas, but in the conceptions of natural science, finds in\nhis sentences other thoughts; but with these other thoughts he points\nin the same direction. And this direction is that which leads to the\novercoming of the self-hood, by the Self-hood itself. The highest light\nshines for man in his Ego. But this light only then imparts to his\nconcept-world the right reflection, when he becomes aware that it is\nnot his own self-light, but the universal world-light.\n\nHence there is no more important knowledge than self-knowledge; and\nthere is equally no knowledge which leads so completely out beyond\nitself. When the \u201cself\u201d knows itself aright, it is already no longer\na \u201cself.\u201d In his own language, the writer of the book in question\nexpresses this as follows: \u201cFor God\u2019s \u2018own-ness\u2019 is void of this and\nthat, void of self-ness and I-ness; but the nature and own-ness of the\ncreature is that it seeketh and willeth itself and its own and \u2018this\u2019\nand \u2018that\u2019; and in all that it does or leaves undone, it seeketh to\nreceive its own benefit and profit.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhen, now, the creature or the man loseth his own-ness and his\nself-ness and himself, and goeth out from himself, then God entereth in\nwith His Own-ness, that is with his Self-hood.\u201d[8] Man soars upwards,\nfrom a view of his \u201cEgo\u201d which makes the latter appear to him as his\nvery being, to a view such that it shows him his Ego as a mere organ,\nin which the All-Being works upon itself. In the concept-sphere of our\ntext, this means: \u201cIf man can attain thereto that he belongeth unto God\njust as a man\u2019s hand belongeth to him, then let him content himself and\nseek no further.\u201d[9] That is not intended to mean that when man has\nreached a certain stage of his evolution he shall stand still there,\nbut that, when he has got as far as is indicated in the above words,\nhe should not set on foot further investigations into the meaning of\nthe hand, but rather make use of the hand, in order that it may render\nservice to the body to which it belongs.\n\n  [8] Chap. xxiv, _Book of the Man from Frankfurt_.\n\n  [9] _Ibid._, Chap. liv.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nHEINRICH SUSO and JOHANNES RUYSBROEK possessed a type of mind which\nmay be characterised as genius for feeling. Their feelings are drawn\nby something like instinct in the same direction in which Eckhart\u2019s\nand Tauler\u2019s feelings were guided by their higher thought-life. Suso\u2019s\nheart turns devoutly towards that Root-Being which embraces the\nindividual man just as much as the whole remaining world, and in whom\nforgetting himself, he yearns to lose himself as a drop of water in the\nmighty ocean. He speaks of this his yearning towards the All-Being, not\nas of something that he desires to embrace in thought; he speaks of it\nas a natural impulse, that makes his soul drunken with desire for the\nannihilation of its separated existence and its re-awakening to life in\nthe all-efficiency of the endless life. \u201cTurn thine eyes to this being\nin its pure naked simplicity, so that thou mayest let fall this and\nthat manifold being. Take being in itself alone, that is unmoved with\nnot-being; for all not-being denies all being. A thing that is yet to\nbecome, or that has been, is not now in actual presence.\u201d\n\n\u201cNow, one cannot know mixed being or not-being except by some mark of\nbeing as a whole. For if one will understand a thing, the reason first\nencounters being, and that is a being that worketh all things. It is\na divided being of this or that creature,--for divided being is all\nmingled with something of other-ness, with a possibility of receiving\nsomething. Therefore the nameless divine being must so be a _whole_\nbeing in itself, that it sustaineth all divided beings by its presence.\u201d\n\nThus speaks Suso in the autobiography which he wrote in conjunction\nwith his pupil Elsbet St\u00e4glin. He, too, is a pious priest and lives\nentirely in the Christian circle of thought. He lives therein as if it\nwere quite unthinkable that anybody with his mental tendency could live\nin any other world. But of him also it is true that one can combine\nanother concept-content with his mental tendency. This is clearly borne\nout by the way in which the content of the Christian teaching has\nbecome for him actual inner experience, and his relation to Christ has\nbecome a relation between his own spirit and the eternal truth in a\npurely ideal, spiritual way.\n\nHe composed a \u201c_Little Book of Eternal Wisdom_.\u201d In this he makes the\n\u201cEternal Wisdom\u201d speak to its servant, in other words to himself:\n\u201cKnowest thou me not? How art thou so cast down, or hast thou lost\nconsciousness from agony of heart, my tender child? Behold it is\nI, merciful Wisdom, who have opened wide the abyss of fathomless\ncompassion which yet is hidden from all the saints, tenderly to receive\nthee and all repentant hearts; it is I, sweet Eternal Wisdom, who was\nthere poor and miserable, so as to bring thee to thy worthiness; it is\nI, who suffered bitter death, that I might make thee to live again!\nI stand here pale and bleeding and lovely, as I stood on the lofty\ngallows of the cross between the stern judgment of my Father and thee.\nIt is I, thy brother; look, it is I, thy spouse! I have therefore\nwholly forgotten all thou hast done against me, as if it had never\nbeen, if only thou turnest wholly to me and separatest thyself no more\nfrom me.\u201d\n\nAll that is bodily and temporal in the Christian conception has become\nfor Suso, as one sees, a spiritual-ideal process in the recesses of his\nsoul. From some chapters of Suso\u2019s biography mentioned above, it might\nappear as if he had let himself be guided not by the mere action of his\nown spiritual power, but through external revelations, through ghostly\nvisions. But he expresses his meaning quite clearly about this. One\nattains to the truth through reasonableness, not through any kind of\nrevelation. \u201cThe difference between pure truth and two-souled visions\nin the matter of knowledge I will also tell you. An immediate beholding\nof the bare Godhead, that is right pure truth, without all doubt; and\nevery vision, so that it be reasonable and without pictures and the\nmore like it be unto that bare beholding, the purer and nobler it is.\u201d\n\nMeister Eckhart, too, leaves no doubt that he puts aside the view which\nseeks to be spiritual in bodily-spacial forms, in appearances which one\ncan perceive by any senses. Minds of the type of Suso and Eckhart are\nthus opponents of such a view, as that which finds expression in the\nspiritualism which has developed during the nineteenth century.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nJOHANNES RUYSBROEK, the Belgian mystic, trod the same path as Suso. His\nspiritual way found an active opponent in Johannes Gerson (born 1363),\nwho was for some time Chancellor of the University of Paris and played\na momentous r\u00f4le at the Council of Constance. Some light is thrown upon\nthe nature of the mysticism which was practised by Tauler, Suso and\nRuysbroek, if one compares it with the mystic endeavours of Gerson, who\nhad his predecessors in Richard de St. Victor, Bonaventura, and others.\n\nRuysbroek himself fought against those whom he reckoned among the\nheretical mystics. As such he considered all those who, through an\neasy-going judgment of the understanding, hold that all things proceed\nfrom one Root-Being, who therefore see in the world only a manifoldness\nand in God the unity of this manifoldness. Ruysbroek does not count\nhimself among these, for he knew that one cannot attain to the\nRoot-Being by the contemplation of things, but only by raising oneself\nfrom this lower mode of contemplation to a higher one.\n\nSimilarly, he turned against those who seek to see without further\nado, in the individual man, in his separated existence (in his\ncreature-being), his higher nature also. He deplored not a little the\nerror which confuses all differences in the sense-world, and asserts\nlight-mindedly that things are different only in appearance, but that\nin their being they are all alike. This would amount, for a way of\nthinking like Ruysbroek\u2019s, to the same thing as saying: That the fact\nthat the trees in an avenue seem to our seeing to come together does\nnot concern us. In reality they are everywhere equally far apart,\ntherefore our eyes ought to accustom themselves to see correctly.\nBut our eyes see aright. That the trees run together depends upon a\nnecessary law of nature; and we have nothing to reproach our seeing\nwith, but on the contrary to recognise in spirit why we see them thus.\n\nMoreover, the mystic does not turn away from the things of the senses.\nAs things of the senses, he accepts them as they are, and it is\nclear to him that through no judgment of the understanding can they\nbecome otherwise. But in spirit he passes beyond both senses and\nunderstanding, and then only does he find the unity. His faith is\nunshakable that he can develop himself to the beholding of this unity.\nTherefore does he ascribe to the nature of man the divine spark which\ncan be brought to shine in him, to shine by its own light.\n\nPeople of the type of Gerson think otherwise. They do not believe in\nthis self-shining. For them, what man can behold remains always a\nsomething external, that from some side or other must come to them\nexternally. Ruysbroek believed that the highest wisdom must needs shine\nforth for mystic contemplation. Gerson believed only that the soul can\nilluminate the content of an external teaching (that of the Church).\nFor Gerson, Mysticism was nothing else but possessing a warm feeling\nfor everything that is revealed in this teaching. For Ruysbroek, it was\na faith, that the content of all teaching is also born in the soul.\nTherefore Gerson blames Ruysbroek in that the latter imagines that not\nonly has he the power to behold the All-Being with clearness, but that\nin this beholding there expresses itself an activity of the All-Being.\nRuysbroek simply could not be understood by Gerson. Both spoke of two\nwholly different things. Ruysbroek has in his mind\u2019s eye the life of\nthe soul that lives itself into oneness with its God; Gerson, only a\nsoul-life that seeks to love the God whom it can never actually live\nin itself. Like many others, Gerson fought against something that was\nstrange to him only because he could not grasp it in experience.\n\n\n\n\n                       CARDINAL NICHOLAS OF CUSA\n\nA gloriously shining star in the sky of the thought-life of the Middle\nAges is Nicholas Chrysippus of Cusa (at Trevis, 1401-1464). He stands\nupon the summit of the knowledge of his time. In mathematics he\naccomplished remarkable work. In natural science he may be described as\nthe forerunner of Copernicus, for he took up the standpoint that the\nearth is a moving celestial body like others. He had already broken\naway from a view upon which even a hundred years later the great\nastronomer, Tycho Brahe, based himself, when he hurled against the\nteaching of Copernicus the sentence: \u201cThe earth is a gross, heavy mass\ninapt for movement; how, then, can Copernicus make a star of it and\nrun it about in the air?\u201d The same man who thus not only embraced all\nthe knowledge of his time, but also extended it further, possessed in\naddition, in a high degree, the power of awakening this knowledge in\nthe inner life, so that it not only illuminates the external world, but\nalso mediates for man that spiritual life, which from the profounder\ndepths of his soul he needs must long after.\n\nIf we compare Nicholas with such spirits as Eckhart or Tauler, we\nobtain a remarkable result. Nicholas is the scientific thinker,\nstriving to lift himself from research about the things of the world\non to the level of a higher perception; Eckhart and Tauler are the\nfaithful believers, who seek the higher life from within the content\nof this faith. Eventually Nicholas arrives at the same inner life as\nMeister Eckhart; but the inner life of the former has a rich store of\nknowledge as its content.\n\nThe full significance of this difference becomes clear when we reflect\nthat for the student of science the danger lies very near at hand of\nmisunderstanding the scope of that species of knowing which enlightens\nus regarding the various special departments of knowledge. He can\nvery readily be misled into believing that there really is only one\nsingle kind or mode of knowledge; and then he will either over- or\nunder-rate this knowledge which leads us to the goal in the various\nspecial sciences. In the one case he will approach the subject-matter\nof the highest spiritual life as he would a problem in physics, and\nproceed to deal with it by means of concepts such as he would apply to\ngravitation or electricity. Thus, according as he believes himself to\nbe more or less enlightened, the world will appear to him as a blindly\nworking machine, or an organism, or as the teleological structure of\na personal God: perhaps even as a form which is ruled and pervaded by\na more or less clearly conceived \u201cWorld-Soul.\u201d In the other case he\nnotes that the knowledge, of which alone he has any experience, is\nadapted only to the things of the sense-world; and then he will become\na sceptic, saying to himself: We can know nothing about things which\nlie beyond the world of the senses. Our knowledge has a limit. For\nthe needs of the higher life we have no choice but to throw ourselves\nblindly into the arms of faith untouched by knowledge. And for a\nlearned theologian like Nicholas of Cusa, who was also a scientist,\nthis second danger lay peculiarly near at hand. For he emerged, along\nthe lines of his learned training, from Scholasticism,--the way of\nconceiving things which was dominant in scientific life within the\nMedi\u00e6val Church; a mode of thought that St. Thomas Aquinas (1227-1274),\nthe \u201cPrince of Scholastics,\u201d had brought to its highest perfection. We\nmust take this mode of conceiving things as the background, when we\ndesire to portray the personality of Nicholas of Cusa.\n\nScholasticism is, in the highest degree, a product of human sagacity;\nand in it the logical capacity celebrated its highest triumphs. Any one\nwho is striving to work out concepts in their sharpest, most clear-cut\noutlines, ought to go to the Scholastics for instruction. They afford\nus the High School for the technique of thinking. They possess an\nincomparable skill in moving in the field of pure thinking. It is easy\nto under-value what they were able to achieve in this field; for it\nis only with difficulty accessible to man as regards most departments\nof knowledge. The majority rise to its level only in the domains of\nnumbers and calculation, and in reflecting upon the connection of\ngeometrical figures.\n\nWe can count by adding in thought a unity to a number, without needing\nto call to our help sense-conceptions. We calculate also, without such\nconceptions, in the pure element of thought. In regard to geometrical\nfigures, we know that they never perfectly coincide with any sensible\nperception. There is no such thing within sensible reality as an\n\u201cideal\u201d circle. Yet our thinking concerns itself with the purely\nideal circle. For things and processes which are more complicated than\nforms of number and space, it is more difficult to find the ideal\ncounterparts. This has even led so far that it has been contended, from\nvarious sides, that in the separated departments of knowledge there is\nonly so much of real science as there is of measuring and counting.\n\nThe truth about this is that most men are not capable of grasping the\npure thought-element where it is no longer concerned with what can be\ncounted or measured. But the man who cannot do that for the higher\nrealms of life and knowledge, resembles in that respect a child, which\nhas not yet learned to count otherwise than by adding one pea to\nanother. The thinker who said there was just so much real science in\nany domain as there was mathematics in it, was not very much at home in\nthe matter. One ought rather to demand that everything which cannot be\nmeasured or counted should be handled just as ideally as the forms of\nnumber and space. And the Scholastics in the fullest way did justice to\nthis demand. They sought everywhere the thought-content of things, just\nas the mathematician seeks it in the field of what is measurable and\ncountable.\n\nIn spite of this perfected logical art, the Scholastics attained\nonly to a one-sided and subordinate conception of Knowledge. Their\nconception is this: that in the act of knowing, man creates in himself\nan image of what he is to know. It is obvious, without further\ndiscussion, that with such a conception of the knowing process all\nreality must be located outside of the knowing. For one can grasp, in\nknowing, not the thing itself, but only an image of that thing.\n\nAlso, in knowing himself man cannot grasp himself, but again, what he\ndoes know of himself is only an image of himself. It is entirely from\nout of the spirit of Scholasticism that an accurate student thereof[10]\nsays: \u201cMan has in time no perception of his ego, of the hidden ground\nof his spiritual being and life, ... he will never attain to beholding\nhimself; for either, estranged for ever from God, he will find in\nhimself only a fathomless, dark abyss, an endless emptiness, or else,\nmade blessed in God, he will find on turning his gaze inwards just that\nvery God, the sun of whose mercy is shining within him, whose image\nand likeness shapes itself in the spiritual traits of his nature.\u201d\n\n  [10] K. Werner, in his book upon _Frank Suarez and the Scholasticism\n  of the Last Centuries_, p. 122.\n\nWhoever thinks like this about all knowing, has only such a conception\nof knowing as is applicable to external things. The sensible factor in\nanything always remains external for us; therefore we can only take up\ninto our knowledge pictures of whatever is sensible in the world. When\nwe perceive a colour or a stone, we are unable, in order to know the\nbeing of the colour or the stone, to become ourselves the colour or\nthe stone. Just as little can the colour or the stone transform itself\ninto a part of our own being. It may, however, be questioned whether\nthe conception of such a knowing-process, wholly directed to what is\nexternal in things, is an exhaustive one.\n\nFor Scholasticism, all human knowing does certainly in the main\ncoincide with this kind of knowing. Another admirable authority on\nScholasticism[11] characterises the conception of knowledge with which\nwe are concerned in this direction of thought in the following manner:\n\u201cOur spirit, allied in earth-life with the body, is primarily focussed\nupon the surrounding bodily world, but ordered in the direction of the\nspiritual therein: the beings, natures, forms of things, the elements\nof existence, which are related to our spirit and offer to it the rungs\nfor its ascent to the super-sensuous; the field of our knowledge is\ntherefore the realm of experience, but we must learn to understand what\nit offers, to penetrate to its meaning and thought, and thereby unlock\nfor ourselves the world of thought.\u201d\n\n  [11] Otto Willman, in his _History of Idealism_, vol. ii., p. 395.\n\nThe Scholastic could not attain to any other conception of knowledge,\nfor the dogmatic content of his theology prevented his doing so. If he\nhad directed the gaze of his spiritual eye upon that which he regards\nas an image only, he would then have seen that the spiritual content of\nthings reveals itself in this supposed image; he would then have found\nthat in his own inner being the God not alone images Himself, but that\nHe lives therein, is present there in His own nature. He would have\nbeheld in gazing into his own inner being, not a dark abyss, an endless\nemptiness, but also not merely an image of God; he would have felt that\na life pulses within him, which is the very life of God itself; and\nthat his own life is verily just God\u2019s life.\n\nThis the Scholastic dared not admit. The God must not, in his opinion,\nenter into him and speak forth from him; God must only be in him\nas an image. In reality, the Godhead must be external to the self.\nAccordingly, also, it could not reveal itself from within through\nthe spiritual life, but must reveal itself from outside, through\nsupernatural communication. What is aimed at in this, is just exactly\nwhat is least of all attained thereby. It is sought to attain to the\nhighest possible conception of the Godhead. In reality, the Godhead\nis dragged down and made a thing among other things; only that these\nother things reveal themselves to us naturally, through experience;\nwhile the Godhead is supposed to reveal Itself to us supernaturally.\nA difference, however, between the knowledge of the divine and of\nthe created is attained in this way: that as regards the created,\nthe external thing is given in experience, so that we have knowledge\nof it; while as regards the divine, the object is not given to us in\nexperience; we can reach it only in faith.\n\nThe highest things, therefore, are for the Scholastic not objects\nof knowledge, but mainly of faith. It is true that the relation\nof knowledge to faith must not be so conceived, according to the\nScholastic view, as if in a certain domain only knowledge, and in\nanother only faith reigned. For \u201cthe knowledge of that which is, is\npossible to us, because it, itself, springs from a creative element;\nthings are for the spirit, because they are from the spirit; they\nhave something to tell us, because they have a meaning which a higher\nintelligence has placed in them.\u201d[12] Because God has created the\nworld according to thoughts, we too are able, when we grasp the\nthoughts of the world, to seize also upon the traces of the Divine in\nthe world, through scientific reflection. But what God is, according\nto His own being, we can learn only from that revelation which He has\ngiven to us in supernatural ways, and in which we must believe. What\nwe ought to think about the highest things, must be decided not by\nany human knowledge, but by faith; and \u201cto faith belongs all that is\ncontained in the writings of the New and of the Old Testament, and in\nthe divine traditions.\u201d[13]\n\n  [12] Otto Willman, _History of Idealism_, vol. ii., p. 383.\n\n  [13] Joseph Kleutgen, _Die Theologie der Vorzeit_, vol. i., p. 39.\n\nIt is not our task here to present and establish in detail the relation\nof the content of faith to the content of knowledge. In truth, all\nand every faith-content originates from some actual inner human\nexperience that has once been undergone. Such an experience is then\npreserved, as far as its outer form goes, without the consciousness\nof how it was acquired. And people maintain in regard to it that it\ncame into the world by supernatural revelation. The content of the\nChristian faith was simply accepted by the Scholastics. Science, inner\nexperience, had no business to claim any rights over it. As little\nas science can create a tree, just so little dared Scholasticism to\ncreate a conception of God; it was bound to accept the revealed one\nready-made and complete, just as natural science has to accept the\ntree ready-made. That the spiritual itself can shine forth and live in\nman\u2019s inner nature, could never, never be admitted by the Scholastic.\nHe therefore drew the frontier of the rightful power of knowledge at\nthe point where the domain of outer experience ceases. Human knowledge\nmust not dare to beget out of itself a conception of the higher beings;\nit is bound to accept a revealed one. The Scholastics naturally could\nnot admit that in doing so they were accepting and proclaiming as\n\u201crevealed\u201d a conception which in truth had really been begotten at an\nearlier stage of man\u2019s spiritual life.\n\nThus, in the course of its development, all those ideas had vanished\nfrom Scholasticism which indicated the ways and means by which man had\nbegotten, in a natural manner, his conceptions of the divine. In the\nfirst centuries of the development of Christianity, at the time of the\nChurch Fathers, we see the doctrinal content of theology growing bit\nby bit by the assimilation of inner experiences. In Johannes Scotus\nErigena, who stood at the summit of Christian theological culture\nin the ninth century, we find this doctrinal content being handled\nentirely as an inner living experience. With the Scholastics of the\nfollowing centuries, this characteristic of an inner, living experience\ndisappears altogether: the old doctrinal content becomes transposed\ninto the content of an external, supernatural revelation.\n\nOne might, therefore, understand the activity of the mystical\ntheologians, Eckhart, Tauler, Suso and their associates, in the\nfollowing sense: they were stimulated by the doctrines of the Church,\nwhich were contained in its theology, but had been misinterpreted,\nto bring to birth afresh from within themselves, as inner living\nexperience, a similar content.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nNicholas of Cusa sets out to mount from the knowledge one acquires in\nthe isolated sciences up to the inner living experiences. There can be\nno doubt that the excellent logical technique which the Scholastics\nhave developed, and for which Nicholas himself was educated, forms a\nmost effective means of attaining to these inner experiences, even\nthough the Scholastics themselves were held back from this road by\ntheir positive faith. But one can only understand Nicholas fully when\none reflects that his calling as a priest, which raised him to the\ndignity of Cardinal, prevented him from coming to a complete breach\nwith the faith of the Church, which found an expression appropriate\nto the age in Scholasticism. We find him so far along the road, that\na single step further would necessarily have carried him out of the\nChurch. We shall therefore understand the Cardinal best if we complete\nthe one step more which he did not take; and then, looking backwards,\nthrow light upon what he aimed at.\n\nThe most significant thought in Nicholas\u2019s mental life is that of\n\u201clearned ignorance.\u201d By this he means a form of knowing which occupies\na higher level as compared with ordinary knowledge. In the lower sense,\nknowledge is the grasping of an object by the mind, or spirit. The\nmost important characteristic of knowing is that it gives us light\nabout something outside of the spirit, that therefore it directs its\ngaze upon something different from itself. The spirit, therefore, is\nconcerned in the knowing-process with things thought of as outside\nitself. Now what the spirit develops in itself about things is the\nbeing of those things. The things are spirit. Man sees the spirit so\nfar only through the sensible encasement. What lies outside the spirit\nis only this sensible encasement; the being of the things enters into\nthe spirit. If, then, the spirit turns its attention to this being of\nthe things, which is of like nature with itself, then it can no longer\ntalk of knowing; for it is not looking at anything outside of itself,\nbut is looking at something which is part of itself; is, indeed,\nlooking at itself. It no longer knows; it only looks upon itself. It\nis no longer concerned with a \u201cknowing,\u201d but with a \u201cnot-knowing.\u201d\nNo longer does man \u201cgrasp\u201d something through the mind; he \u201cbeholds\nwithout conceiving\u201d his own life. This highest stage of knowing is, in\ncomparison with the lower stages, a \u201cnot-knowing.\u201d\n\nBut it is obvious that the essential being of things can only be\nreached through this stage of knowing. Thus Nicholas of Cusa in\nspeaking of his \u201clearned not-knowing\u201d is really speaking of nothing\nelse but \u201cknowing\u201d come to a new birth, as an inner experience. He\ntells us himself how he came to this inner experience. \u201cI made many\nefforts to unite the ideas of God and the world, of Christ and the\nChurch, into a single root-idea; but nothing satisfied me until at\nlast, on my way back from Greece by sea, my mind\u2019s vision, as if by\nan illumination from above, soared up to that perception in which God\nappeared to me as the supreme Unity of all contradictions.\u201d To a\ngreater or lesser extent this illumination was due to influences derived\nfrom the study of his predecessors. One recognises in his way of\nlooking at things a peculiar revival of the views which we meet with in\nthe writings of a certain Dionysius. The above-mentioned Scotus Erigena\ntranslated these writings into Latin, and speaks of their author as the\n\u201cgreat and divine revealer.\u201d\n\nThe works in question are first mentioned in the first half of the\nsixth century. They were ascribed to that Dionysius, the Areopagite,\nnamed in the Acts of the Apostles, who was converted to Christianity\nby St. Paul. When these writings were really composed may here be left\nan open question. Their contents worked powerfully upon Nicholas as\nthey had already worked upon Scotus Erigena, and as they must also\nhave been in many ways stimulating for the way of thinking of Eckhart\nand his colleagues. This \u201clearned not-knowing\u201d is in a certain way\npreformed in these writings. Here we can only indicate the essential\ntrait in the way of conceiving things found in these works. Man\nprimarily knows the things of the sense-world. He forms thoughts about\nits being and action. The Primal Cause of all things must lie higher\nthan these things themselves. Man therefore must not seek to grasp\nthis Primal Cause by means of the same concepts and ideas as things.\nIf he therefore ascribes to the Root-Being (God) attributes which\nhe has learned to know in lower things, such attributes can be at\nbest auxiliary conceptions of his weak spirit, which drags down the\nRoot-Being to itself, in order to conceive it.\n\nIn truth, therefore, no attribute whatsoever which lower things\npossess can be predicated of God. It must not even be said that God\n\u201cis.\u201d For \u201cbeing\u201d too is a concept which man has formed from lower\nthings. But God is exalted above \u201cbeing\u201d and \u201cnot-being.\u201d The God to\nwhom we ascribe attributes, is therefore not the true God. We come to\nthe true God, when we think of an \u201cOver-God\u201d above and beyond any God\nwith such attributes. Of this \u201cOver-God\u201d we can know nothing in the\nordinary sense. In order to attain to Him, \u201cknowing\u201d must merge into\n\u201cnot-knowing.\u201d\n\nOne sees that at the root of such a view there lies the consciousness\nthat man himself is able to develop a higher knowing, which is no\nlonger mere knowing--in a purely natural manner--on the basis of what\nhis various sciences have yielded him. The Scholastic view declared\nknowledge to be impotent to such a development; and, at the point where\nknowledge is supposed to cease, it called in to the help of knowledge\na faith basing itself upon external revelation. Nicholas of Cusa was\nthus upon the road to develop out of knowledge itself that which the\nScholastics had declared to be unattainable for knowledge.\n\nWe thus see that, from Nicholas of Cusa\u2019s point of view, there can be\nno question of there being only one kind or mode of knowing. On the\ncontrary, for him, knowing clearly divides itself into two, first into\nsuch knowing as mediates our acquaintance with external objects, and\nsecond into such as is itself the object of which one gains knowledge.\nThe first mode of knowing is dominant in the sciences, which teach us\nabout the things and occurrences of the outer world; the second is\nin us when we ourselves live in the knowledge we have acquired. This\nsecond kind of knowing grows out of the first. Now, however, it is\nstill one and the same world with which both these modes of knowing\nare concerned; and it is one and the self-same man who is active in\nboth. Hence the question must arise, whence comes it that one and the\nself-same man develops two different kinds of knowledge of one and the\nsame world.\n\nAlready, in connection with Tauler, the direction could be indicated\nin which the answer to this question must be sought. Here in Nicholas\nof Cusa this answer can be still more definitely formulated. In the\nfirst place, man lives as a separated (individual) being amidst other\nseparated beings. In addition to the effects which the other beings\nproduce on each other, there arises in his case the (lower) knowledge.\nThrough his senses he receives impressions from other beings, and works\nup these impressions with his inner spiritual powers. He then turns his\nspiritual gaze away from external things, and beholds himself as well\nas his own activity. In so doing self-knowledge arises in him. But so\nlong as he remains on this level of self-knowledge, he does not, in the\ntrue sense of the word, behold himself. He can still believe that some\nhidden being is active within him, whose manifestations and effects are\n_only_ that which appears to him to be his own activities. But now the\nmoment may come in which, through an incontrovertible inner experience,\nit becomes clear to the man that he experiences, in what he perceives\nor feels within himself, not the manifestation or effect of any hidden\npower or being, but this very being itself in its most essential and\nintimate form. Then he can say to himself: In a certain way I find all\nother things ready given, and I myself, standing apart from and outside\nof them, add to them whatever the spirit has to tell about them. But\nwhat I thus creatively add to the things in myself, therein do I myself\nlive; that is myself, my very own being. But what is that which speaks\nthere in the depths of my spirit? It is the knowledge which I have\nacquired of the things of the world. But in this knowledge there speaks\nno longer an effect, a manifestation; that which speaks expresses\nitself wholly, holding back nothing of what it contains. In this\nknowledge, there speaks the world in all its immediacy. But I have\nacquired this knowledge of things and of myself, as one thing among\nother things. From out my own being I myself speak, and the things,\ntoo, speak.\n\nThus, in truth, I am giving utterance no longer only to my own being;\nI am also giving utterance to the being of things themselves. My \u201cego\u201d\nis the form, the organ in which the things express themselves about\nthemselves. I have gained the experience that in myself I experience\nmy own essential being; and this experience expands itself in me to\nthe further one that in myself and through myself the All-Being Itself\nexpresses Itself, or in other words, knows Itself. I can now no longer\nfeel myself as a thing among other things; I can now only feel myself\nas a form in which the All-Being lives out Its own life.\n\nIt is thus only natural that one and the same man should have two\nmodes of knowing. Judging by the facts of the senses, he is a thing\namong other things, and, in so far as he is that, he gains for himself\na knowledge of these things; but at any moment he can acquire the\nhigher experience that he is really the form in which the All-Being\nbeholds Itself. Then man transforms himself from a thing among other\nthings into a form of the All-Being--and, along with himself, the\nknowledge of things transforms itself into the expression of the very\nbeing of things. But as a matter of fact this transformation can only\nbe accomplished through man. That which is mediated in the higher\nknowledge does not exist as long as this higher knowledge itself is not\npresent. Man becomes only a real being in the creation of this higher\nknowledge; and only through man\u2019s higher knowledge can things also\nbring their being forth into real existence.\n\nIf, therefore, we demand that man shall add nothing to things through\nhis inner knowledge, but merely give expression to whatever already\nexists in the things outside of himself, that would really amount to a\ncomplete abnegation of all higher knowledge. From the fact that man,\nin respect of his sensible life, is merely one thing among others,\nand that he only attains to the higher knowledge when he himself\naccomplishes with himself, as a being of the senses, the transformation\ninto a higher being, it follows that he can never replace the one\nkind of knowledge by the other. His spiritual life consists, on the\ncontrary, in a ceaseless oscillation between these two poles of\nknowledge--between knowing and seeing. If he shuts himself off from\nthe seeing, he abandons the real nature of things: if he seeks to shut\nhimself off from sense-perception, he would shut out from himself the\nthings whose nature he seeks to know. It is these very same things\nwhich reveal themselves alike in the lower knowing and the higher\nseeing; only in the one case they reveal themselves according to their\nouter appearance; in the other according to their inner being. Thus\nit is not due to the things themselves that, at a certain stage, they\nappear only as external things; but their doing so is due to the fact\nthat man must first of all raise and transform himself to the level\nupon which the things cease to be external and outside.\n\nIn the light of these considerations, some of the views which natural\nscience has developed during the nineteenth century appear for the\nfirst time in the right light. The supporters of these views tell us\nthat we hear, see, and touch the objects of the physical world through\nour senses. The eye, for instance, transmits to us a phenomenon of\nlight, a colour. Thus we say that a body emits red light, when with the\nhelp of the eye we experience the sensation \u201cred.\u201d But the eye can give\nus this same sensation in other cases also. If the eyeball is struck or\npressed upon, or if an electric spark is allowed to pass through the\nhead, the eye has a sensation of light.\n\nIt is thus evident that even in the cases in which we have the\nsensation of a body emitting red light, something may really be\nhappening in that body which has no sort of resemblance to the colour\nwe sensate. Whatever may be actually happening \u201coutside of us\u201d in\nspace, so long as what happens is capable of making an impression\non the eye, there arises in us the sensation of light. Thus what we\nexperience _arises in us_, because we possess organs constituted in\na particular manner. What happens outside in space, remains outside\nof us; we know only the effects which the external happenings call\nup in us. Hermann Helmholtz (1821-1893) has given a clearly outlined\nexpression to this thought:\n\n\u201cOur sensations are simply effects which are produced in our organs\nby external causes, and the manner in which such an effect will show\nitself depends, naturally enough, altogether upon the kind of apparatus\nupon which the action takes place. In so far as the quality of our\nsensation gives us information as to the peculiar nature of the\nexternal action which produces the sensation, so far can the sensation\nbe regarded as a sign or symbol of this external action, but not as an\nimage or reproduction of it. For we expect in a picture some kind of\nresemblance to the object it represents; thus in a statue, resemblance\nof form; in a drawing, resemblance in the perspective projection of\nthe field of view; in a painting, resemblance of colour in addition.\nA symbol, however, is not required to have any sort of resemblance to\nthat which it symbolises. The necessary connection between the object\nand the symbol is limited to this: that the same object coming into\naction under the same conditions shall call up the same symbol, and\nthat therefore different symbols shall always correspond to different\nobjects. When berries of a certain kind in ripening produce together\nred colouration and sugar, then red colour and a sweet taste will\nalways find themselves together in our sensation of berries of this\nform.\u201d[14]\n\n  [14] _Cp._ Helmholtz, _Die Thatsachen der Wahrnehmung_, p. 12 _et\n  seq._ I have characterised this kind of conception in detail in\n  my _Philosophie der Freiheit_, Berlin, 1894, and in my _Welt- und\n  Lebensanschauungen im Neunzehnten Jahrhundert_, vol. ii., p. i., etc.\n\nLet us follow out step by step the line of thought which this view\nmakes its own. It is assumed that something happens outside of me in\nspace; this produces an effect upon my sense-organs; and my nervous\nsystem conducts the impression thus made to my brain. There another\noccurrence is brought about. I experience the sensation \u201cred.\u201d Now\nfollows the assertion: therefore the sensation \u201cred\u201d is not outside,\nnot external to me; it is _in_ me. All our sensations are merely\nsymbols or signs of external occurrences of whose real quality we\nknow nothing. We live and move in our sensations and know nothing of\ntheir origin. In the spirit of this line of thought, it would thus be\npossible to assert that if we had no eyes, colour would not exist; for\nthen there would be nothing to translate this, to us, wholly unknown\nexternal happening into the sensation \u201cred.\u201d\n\nFor many people this line of thought possesses a curious attraction;\nbut nevertheless it originates in a complete misconception of the\nfacts under consideration. (Were it not that many of the present day\nscientists and philosophers are blinded even to absurdity by this line\nof thought, one would need to say less about it. But, as a matter of\nfact, this blindness has ruined in many respects the thinking of the\npresent day.) In truth, since man is but one object or thing among\nother things, it naturally follows that if he is to have any experience\nof them at all, they must make an impression upon him somehow or other.\nSomething that happens outside the man must cause something to happen\nwithin him, if in his visual field the sensation \u201cred\u201d is to make its\nappearance.\n\nThe whole question turns upon this: What is without? what within?\nOutside of him something happens in space and time. But within there\nis undoubtedly a similar occurrence. For in the eye there occurs such\na process, which manifests itself to the brain when I perceive the\ncolour \u201cred.\u201d This process which goes on \u201cinside\u201d me, I cannot perceive\ndirectly, any more than I can directly perceive the wave motions\n\u201coutside\u201d which the physicist conceives of as answering to the colour\n\u201cred.\u201d But really it is only in this sense that I can speak of an\n\u201cinside\u201d and an \u201coutside\u201d at all. Only on the plane of sense-perception\ncan the opposition between \u201coutside\u201d and \u201cinside\u201d hold good.\n\nThe recognition of this leads me to assume the existence \u201coutside\u201d of\na process in space and time, although I do not directly perceive it at\nall. And the same recognition further leads me to postulate a similar\nprocess within myself, although I cannot directly perceive that either.\nBut, as a matter of fact, I habitually postulate analogous occurrences\nin space and time in ordinary life which I do not directly perceive;\nas, for instance, when I hear piano-playing next door, and assume that\na human being in space is seated at the piano and is playing upon it.\nAnd my conception, when I speak of processes happening outside of,\nand within me, is just the same. I assume that these processes have\nqualities analogous to those of the processes which do fall within the\nprovince of my senses, only that, because of certain reasons, they\nescape my direct perception.\n\nIf I were to attempt to deny to these processes all the qualities which\nmy senses show me in the domains of space and time, I should in reality\nand in truth be trying to think of something not unlike the famous knife\nwithout a handle, whose blade was wanting. Therefore, I can only say\nthat space and time processes take place \u201coutside\u201d me; these bring\nabout space and time processes \u201cwithin\u201d me; and both are necessary if\nthe sensation \u201cred\u201d is to appear in my field of vision. And, in so far\nas this \u201cred\u201d is not in space and time, I shall seek for it equally in\nvain, whether I seek \u201cwithout\u201d or \u201cwithin\u201d myself. Those scientists and\nphilosophers who cannot find it \u201coutside,\u201d ought not to want to find it\n\u201cinside\u201d either. For it is not \u201cinside,\u201d in exactly the same sense in\nwhich it is not \u201coutside.\u201d To declare that the total content of that\nwhich the sense-world presents to us is but an inner world of sensation\nor feeling, and then to endeavour to tack on something \u201cexternal\u201d or\n\u201coutside\u201d to it, is a wholly impossible conception.\n\nHence, we must not speak of \u201cred,\u201d \u201csweet,\u201d \u201chot,\u201d etc., as being\nsymbols, or signs, which as such are only aroused within us, and to\nwhich \u201coutside\u201d of us something totally different corresponds. For\nthat which is really set going within us, as the effect of some\nexternal happening, is something altogether other than what appears in\nthe field of our sensations. If we want to call that which is within us\na symbol, then we can say: These symbols make their appearance within\nour organism, in order to mediate to us the perceptions which, as such,\nin their immediacy, are neither within nor outside of us, but belong,\non the contrary, to that common world, of which my \u201cexternal\u201d world and\nmy \u201cinternal\u201d world are only parts. In order to be able to grasp this\ncommon world, I must, it is true, raise myself to that higher plane\nof knowledge, for which an \u201cinner\u201d and an \u201couter\u201d no longer exist. (I\nknow quite well that people who pride themselves on the gospel that\nour entire world of experience builds itself up out of sensations and\nfeelings of unknown origin will look contemptuously upon these remarks;\nas, for instance, Dr. Erich Adikes in his book, _Kant contra Haeckel_,\nobserves condescendingly: \u201cAt first people like Haeckel and thousands\nof his type philosophise gaily away without troubling themselves about\ntheory of knowledge or critical self-reflection.\u201d Such gentlemen have\nno inkling of how cheap their own theories of knowledge are. They\nsuspect the lack of critical self-reflection only in others. Let us\nleave to them their \u201cwisdom.\u201d)\n\nNicholas of Cusa expresses some very telling thoughts bearing directly\nupon this very point. The clear and distinct way in which he holds\napart the lower and the higher knowledge enables him, on the one side,\nto arrive at a full and complete recognition of the fact that man as a\nsense-being can only have in himself processes which, as effects, must\nnecessarily be altogether unlike the corresponding external processes;\nwhile, on the other side, it guards him against confusing the inner\nprocesses with the facts which make their appearance in the field of\nour perceptions, and which, in their immediacy, are neither outside nor\ninside, but altogether transcend this opposition of \u201cin\u201d and \u201cout.\u201d\n\nBut Nicholas was hampered in the thorough carrying through of these\nideas by his \u201cpriestly garments.\u201d So we see how he makes a fine\nbeginning with the progress from \u201cknowing\u201d to \u201cnot-knowing.\u201d At the\nsame time we must also note that in the domain of the higher knowledge,\nor \u201cignorance,\u201d he unfolds practically nothing but the content of the\ntheological teaching which the Scholastics also give us. Certainly he\nknows how to expound this theological content in a most able manner. He\npresents us with teachings about Providence, Christ, the creation of\nthe world, man\u2019s salvation, the moral life, which are kept thoroughly\nin harmony with dogmatic Christianity. It would have been in accordance\nwith his mental starting point, to say: I have confidence in human\nnature that after having plunged deeply into the science of things in\nall directions, it is capable of transforming from within itself this\n\u201cknowing\u201d into a \u201cnot-knowing,\u201d in such wise that the highest insight\nshall bring satisfaction. In that case, he would not simply have\naccepted the traditional ideas of the soul, immortality, salvation,\nGod, creation, the Trinity, and so forth, as he actually did, but he\nwould have represented his own.\n\nBut Nicholas personally was, however, so saturated with the conceptions\nof Christianity that he might well believe himself to have awakened in\nhimself a \u201cnot-knowing\u201d of his own, while yet he was merely bringing to\nlight the traditional views in which he was brought up. But he stood\nupon the verge of a terrible precipice in the spiritual life of man. He\nwas a _scientific_ man. Now science, primarily, estranges us from the\ninnocent harmony in which we live with the world so long as we abandon\nourselves to a purely na\u00efve attitude towards life. In such an attitude\nto life, we dimly feel our connection with the world-whole.\n\nWe are beings like others, forming links in the chain of Nature\u2019s\nworkings. But with knowledge we separate ourselves off from this\nwhole; we create within us a mental world, wherewith we stand alone and\nisolated over against Nature. We have become enriched; but our riches\nare a burden which we bear with difficulty; for it weighs primarily\nupon ourselves alone. And we must now, by our own strength, find the\nway back again to Nature. We have to recognise that we ourselves\nmust now fit our wealth into the stream of world activities, just as\npreviously Nature herself had fitted in our poverty. All evil demons\nlie in wait for man at this point. His strength can easily fail\nhim. Instead of himself accomplishing this fitting in, he will, if\nhis strength thus fails, seek refuge in some revelation coming from\nwithout, which frees him again from his loneliness, which leads back\nonce more to the knowledge that he feels a burden, into the very womb\nof being, into the Godhead. Like Nicholas of Cusa, he will believe\nthat he is travelling his own road; and yet in reality he will be only\nfollowing the path which his own spiritual evolution has pointed out\nfor him.\n\nNow there are--in the main--three roads which one can follow, when\nonce one has reached the point at which Nicholas had arrived: the one\nis positive faith, forcing itself upon us from without; the second\nis despair; one stands alone with one\u2019s burden, and feels the whole\nuniverse tottering with oneself; the third road is the development of\nthe deepest, most inward powers of man. Confidence, trust in the world\nmust be one of our guides upon this third path; courage, to follow that\nconfidence whithersoever it may lead us, must be the other.\n\n\n\n\n                      AGRIPPA VON NETTESHEIM AND\n                        THEOPHRASTUS PARACELSUS\n\nBoth Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim (1487-1535) and\nTheophrastus Paracelsus (1493-1541) followed the same road along which\npoints Nicholas of Cusa\u2019s way of conceiving things. They devoted\nthemselves to the study of Nature, and sought to discover her laws by\nall the means in their power and as thoroughly as possible. In this\nknowledge of Nature, they saw the true basis of all higher knowledge.\nThey strove to develop this higher knowledge from within the science or\nknowledge of Nature by bringing that knowledge to a new birth in the\nspirit.\n\nAgrippa von Nettesheim led a much varied life. He sprang from a noble\nfamily and was born in Cologne. He early studied medicine and law, and\nsought to obtain clear insight into the processes of Nature in the\nway which was then customary within certain circles and societies, or\neven among isolated investigators, who studiously kept secret whatever\nof the knowledge of Nature they discovered. For these purposes he\nwent repeatedly to Paris, to Italy, and to England, and also visited\nthe famous Abbot Trithemius of Sponheim in W\u00fcrzburg. He taught at\nvarious times in learned institutions, and here and there entered the\nservice of rich and distinguished people, at whose disposal he placed\nhis abilities as a statesman and a man of science. If the services\nthat he rendered are not always described by his biographers as\nunobjectionable, if it is said that he made money under the pretence of\nunderstanding secret arts and conferring benefits on people thereby,\nthere stands against this his unmistakable, unresting impulse to\nacquire honestly the entire knowledge of his age, and to deepen this\nknowledge in the direction of a higher cognition of the world.\n\nWe may see in him very plainly the endeavour to attain to a clear and\ndefinite attitude towards natural science on the one hand, and to\nthe higher knowledge on the other. But he only can attain to such an\nattitude who is possessed of a clear insight as to the respective roads\nwhich lead to one and to the other kind of knowledge. As true as it is\non the one hand that natural science must eventually be raised into the\nregion of the spirit, if it is to pass over into higher knowledge; so,\nalso, it is true on the other, that this natural science must, to begin\nwith, remain upon its own special ground, if it is to yield the right\nbasis for the attainment of a higher level. The \u201cspirit in Nature\u201d\nexists only for spirit. So surely as Nature in this sense is spiritual,\nso surely too is there _nothing_ in Nature, of all that is perceived by\nmy bodily organs, which is immediately spiritual. There exists nothing\nspiritual which can appear to my eye as spiritual.\n\nTherefore, I must not seek for the spirit as such in Nature; but that\nis what I am doing when I interpret any occurrence in the external\nworld immediately as spiritual; when, for instance, I ascribe to a\nplant a soul which is supposed to be only remotely analogous to that of\nman. Further, I again do the same when I ascribe to spirit itself an\nexistence in space and time; as, for instance, when I assert of the\nhuman soul that it continues to exist in time without the body, but\nyet after the manner of a body; or again, when I even go so far as to\nbelieve that, under any sort of conditions or arrangements perceivable\nby the senses, the spirit of a dead person can show itself.\n\nSpiritualism, which makes this mistake, only shows thereby that it has\nnot attained to a true conception of the spirit at all, but is still\nbent upon directly and immediately \u201cseeing\u201d the spirit in something\ngrossly sensible. It mistakes equally both the real nature of the\nsensible and also that of the spirit. It de-spiritualises the ordinary\nworld of sense, which hourly passes before our eyes, in order to give\nthe name of spirit immediately to something rare, surprising, uncommon.\nIt fails to understand that that which lives as the \u201cspirit in nature\u201d\nreveals itself to him who is able to perceive spirit in the collision\nof two elastic balls, for instance; and not only in occurrences which\nare striking from their rarity, and which cannot all at once be grasped\nin their natural sequence and connection.\n\nBut the spiritist further drags the spirit down into a lower sphere.\nInstead of explaining something that happens in space, and that he\nperceives through his senses only, in terms of forces and beings which\nin their turn are spacial and perceptible to the senses, he resorts to\n\u201cspirits,\u201d which he thereby places exactly on a level with the things\nof the senses. At the very root of such a way of viewing things, there\nlies a lack of the power of spiritual apprehension. We are unable\nto perceive spiritual things spiritually; we therefore satisfy our\ncraving for the spiritual with mere beings perceptible to the senses.\nTheir own inner spirit reveals to such men nothing spiritual; and\ntherefore they seek for the spiritual through the senses. As they see\nclouds flying through the air, so they would fain see spirits hastening\nalong. Agrippa von Nettesheim fought for a genuine science of Nature,\nwhich shall explain the phenomena of Nature, not by means of spirits\nphenomenalising in the world of the senses, but by seeing in Nature\nonly the natural, and in the spirit only the spiritual.\n\nOf course, Agrippa will be entirely misunderstood if one compares _his_\nnatural science with that of later centuries which dispose of wholly\ndifferent experiences. In such a comparison, it might easily seem that\nhe was still actually and entirely referring to the direct action of\nspirits, things which only depend upon natural connections or upon\nmistaken experience. Such a wrong is done to him by Moriz Carri\u00e8re when\nhe says, not in any malicious sense, it is true:\n\n\u201cAgrippa gives a huge list of things which belong to the Sun, the Moon,\nthe Planets and the fixed stars, and receive influences from them; for\ninstance: to the Sun are related Fire, Blood, Laurel, Gold, Chrysolite;\nthey confer the gifts of the Sun: Courage, Cheerfulness, and Light....\nAnimals have a natural sense, which, higher than human understanding,\napproaches the spirit of prophecy.... Men can be bewitched to love and\nhate, to sickness and health. Thieves can be bewitched so that they\ncannot steal at some particular place, merchants, that they cannot do\nbusiness, mills, that they cannot work, lightning flashes, that they\ncannot strike. This is brought about through drinks, salves, images,\nrings, incantations; the blood of hyenas or basilisks is adapted to\nsuch a purpose--it reminds one of Shakespeare\u2019s witches\u2019 cauldron.\u201d\nNo; it does not remind one of that, if one understands Agrippa aright.\nHe believed--it goes without saying--in many facts which in his time\neverybody regarded as unquestionable. But we still do the same to-day.\nOr do we imagine that future centuries will not relegate much of\nwhat we now regard as \u201cundoubted fact\u201d to the lumber-room of \u201cblind\u201d\nsuperstition?\n\nI am convinced that in our knowledge of facts there has been a real\nprogress. When once the \u201cfact\u201d that the earth is round had been\ndiscovered, all previous conjectures were banished into the domain of\n\u201csuperstition\u201d; and the same holds good of certain truths of astronomy,\nbiology, etc. The doctrine of natural evolution constitutes an advance,\nas compared with all previous \u201ctheories of creation,\u201d similar to that\nmarked by the recognition of the roundness of the earth as contrasted\nwith all previous speculations as to its form. Nevertheless, I am\nvividly conscious that in our learned scientific works and treatises\nthere is to be found many a \u201cfact\u201d which will seem to future centuries\nto be just as little of a fact as much that Paracelsus and Agrippa\nmaintain; but the really important point is not _what_ they regarded as\n\u201cfact,\u201d but _how_, in what spirit, they interpreted their \u201cfacts.\u201d\n\nIn Agrippa\u2019s time, there was little understanding or sympathy\nfor the \u201cnatural magic\u201d he represented, which sought in Nature\nthe natural--the spiritual only in the spirit; men clung to the\n\u201csupernatural magic,\u201d which sought the spiritual in the realm of the\nsensible, and which Agrippa combated. Therefore the Abbot Trithemius\nof Sponheim was right in giving him the advice to communicate his\nviews only as a secret teaching to a few chosen pupils who could rise\nto a similar idea of Nature and spirit, because one \u201cgives only hay\nto oxen and not sugar as to singing birds.\u201d It may be that Agrippa\nhimself owed to this same Abbot his own correct point of view. In his\n_Steganography_, Trithemius has produced a book in which he handled\nwith the most subtle irony that mode of conceiving things which\nconfuses nature with spirit.\n\nIn this book he apparently speaks of nothing but supernatural\noccurrences. Any one reading it as it stands must believe that the\nauthor is talking of conjurations of spirits, of spirits flying through\nthe air, and so on. If, however, one drops certain words and letters\nunder the table, there remain--as Wolfgang Ernst Heidel proved in the\nyear 1676--letters which, combined into words, describe purely natural\noccurrences. (In one case, for instance, in a formula of conjuration,\none must drop the first and last words entirely, and then cancel from\nthe remainder the second, fourth, sixth, and so on. In the words left\nover, one must again cancel the first, third, fifth letters and so on.\nOne next combines what is then left into words; and the conjuration\nformula resolves itself into a purely natural communication.)\n\nHow difficult it was for Agrippa to work himself free from the\nprejudices of his time and to rise to a pure perception is proved by\nthe fact that he did not allow his \u201cOccult Philosophy\u201d (_Philosophia\nOcculta_), already written in 1510, to appear before the year 1531,\nbecause he considered it unripe. Further evidence of this fact is given\nby his work \u201cOn the Vanity of the Sciences\u201d (_De Vanitate Scientiarum_)\nin which he speaks with bitterness of the scientific and other\nactivities of his time. He there states quite clearly that he has only\nwith difficulty wrenched himself free from the phantasy which beholds\nin external actions immediate spiritual processes, in external facts\nprophetic indications of the future, and so forth.\n\nAgrippa advances to the higher knowledge in three stages. He treats\nas the first stage the world as it is given for the senses, with its\nsubstances, its physical, chemical and other forces. He calls Nature,\nin so far as it is looked at on this level, \u201celementary Nature.\u201d On\nthe second stage, one contemplates the world as a whole in its natural\ninterconnection, as it orders things according to measure, number,\nweight, harmony, and so forth. The first stage proceeds from one thing\nto the next nearest. It seeks for the causes of an occurrence in its\nimmediate surroundings. The second stage regards a single occurrence\nin connection with the entire universe. It carries through the idea\nthat everything is subject to the influence of all other things in the\nentire world-whole. In its eyes this world-whole appears as a vast\nharmony, in which each individual item is a member. Agrippa terms the\nworld, regarded from this point of view, the \u201castral\u201d or \u201cheavenly\u201d\nworld. The third stage of knowing is that wherein the spirit, by\nplunging deep into itself, perceives immediately the spiritual, the\nRoot-Being of the world. Agrippa here speaks of the world, of soul and\nspirit.\n\nThe views which Agrippa develops about the world, and the relation of\nman to the world, present themselves to us in the case of Theophrastus\nParacelsus, in a similar manner, only in more perfected form. It is\nbetter, therefore, to consider them in connection with the latter.\n\nParacelsus characterises himself aptly, when he writes under his\nportrait: \u201cNone shall be another\u2019s slave, who for himself can remain\nalone.\u201d His whole attitude towards knowledge is given in these words.\nHe strives everywhere to go back himself to the deepest foundations\nof natural knowledge, in order to rise by his own strength to the\nloftiest regions of cognition. As Physician, he will not, like his\ncontemporaries, simply accept what the ancient investigators, who then\ncounted as authorities,--Galen or Avicenna, for instance, asserted\nlong ago; he is resolved to read for himself directly in the book of\nNature. \u201cThe Physician must pass Nature\u2019s examination, which is the\nworld, and all its origins. And the very same that Nature teaches him,\nhe must command to his wisdom, but seek for nothing in his wisdom, only\nand alone in the light of Nature.\u201d He shrinks from nothing, in order\nto learn to know Nature and her workings in all directions. For this\npurpose he made journeys to Sweden, Hungary, Spain, Portugal, and the\nEast. He can truly say of himself: \u201cI have followed the Art at the\nrisk of my life, and have not been ashamed to learn from wanderers,\nexecutioners and sheep-shearers. My doctrine was tested more severely\nthan silver in poverty, fears, wars and hardships.\u201d\n\nWhat has been handed down by ancient authorities has for him no value,\nfor he believes that he can attain to the right view only if he\nhimself experiences the upward climb from the knowledge of Nature to\nthe highest insight. This living, personal experience puts into his\nmouth the proud utterance: \u201cHe who will follow truth, must come into\nmy monarchy.... After me; not I after you, Avicenna, Rhases, Galen,\nMesur! After me; not I after you, O ye of Paris, ye of Montpellier, ye\nof Swabia, ye of Meissen, ye of Cologne, ye of Vienna and of what lies\non the Danube and the Rhine; ye islands in the sea, thou Italy, thou\nDalmatia, thou Athens, thou Greek, thou Arab, thou Israelite; after me,\nnot I after you! Mine is the Monarchy.\u201d\n\nIt is easy to misunderstand Paracelsus because of his rough exterior,\nwhich sometimes conceals a deep earnestness behind a jest. Does he\nnot himself say: \u201cBy nature I am not subtly woven, nor brought up on\nfigs and wheat-bread, but on cheese, milk and rye-bread, wherefore I\nmay well be rude with the over-clean and superfine; for those who were\nbrought up in soft clothing and we who were bred in pine needles do not\neasily understand one another. When in myself I mean to be kindly, I\nmust therefore often be taken as rude. How can I not be strange to one\nwho has never wandered in the sun?\u201d\n\nIn his book about Winkelmann, Goethe has described the relation of\nman to Nature in the following beautiful sentence: \u201cWhen the healthy\nnature of man acts as a whole; when he feels himself as one with a\ngreat, beautiful, noble and worthy whole; when the sense of harmonious\nwell-being gives him a pure and free delight; then would the Universe,\nif it could be conscious of its own feeling, burst forth in joy at\nhaving attained its goal, and contemplate with wondering admiration the\nsummit of its own becoming and being.\u201d With a feeling such as finds\nexpression in these sentences, Paracelsus is simply saturated. From out\nof its depths the riddle of humanity takes shape for him. Let us watch\nhow this happens in Paracelsus\u2019s sense.\n\nAt the outset, the road by which Nature has travelled to attain her\nloftiest altitude is hidden from man\u2019s power of comprehension. She\nhas climbed, indeed, to the summit; but the summit does not proclaim:\nI feel myself as the whole of Nature; it proclaims, on the contrary:\nI feel myself as this single, separated human being. That which in\nreality is an achievement of the whole universe, feels itself as a\nseparated, isolated being, standing alone by itself. This indeed is\nthe true being of man, _viz._, that he must needs feel himself to\nbe something quite different from what, in ultimate analysis, he\nreally is. And if that be a contradiction, then must man be called a\ncontradiction come to life.\n\nMan is the universe in his own particular way; he regards his oneness\nwith the universe as a duality: he is the very same that the universe\nis; but he is the universe as a repetition, as a single being. This\nis the contrast which Paracelsus feels as the Microcosm (Man) and the\nMacrocosm (Universe). Man, for him, is the universe in miniature. That\nwhich makes man regard his relationship to the world in this way, that\nis his spirit. This spirit appears as if bound to a single being, to a\nsingle organism: and this organism belongs, by the very nature of its\nwhole being, to the mighty stream of the universe. It is one member,\none link in that whole, having its very existence only in relation\nwith all the other links or members thereof. But spirit appears as\nan outcome of this single, separated organism, and sees itself at\nthe outset as bound up only with that organism. It tears loose this\norganism from the mother earth out of which it has grown. So, for\nParacelsus, a deep-seated connection between man and the universe lies\nhidden in the basic foundations of being, a connection which is hidden\nthrough the presence of \u201cspirit.\u201d That spirit which leads us to higher\ninsight by making knowledge possible, and leads on this knowledge to a\nnew birth on a higher level--this has, as its first result for us men,\nto veil from us our own oneness with the whole.\n\nThus the nature of man resolves itself for Paracelsus in the first\nplace into three factors: our sensuous-physical nature, our organism\nwhich appears to us as a natural being among other natural beings and\nis of like nature with all other natural beings; our concealed or\nhidden nature, which is a link in the chain of the whole universe, and\ntherefore is not shut up within the organism or limited to it, but\nradiates and receives the workings of energy upon and from the entire\nuniverse; and our highest nature, our spirit, which lives its life in\na purely spiritual manner. The first factor in man\u2019s nature Paracelsus\ncalls the \u201celementary body\u201d; the second, the ethereal-heavenly, or\n\u201castral body\u201d; and the third he names \u201cthe Soul.\u201d\n\nThus in the \u201castral\u201d phenomena, Paracelsus recognises an intermediate\nstage between the purely physical and the properly spiritual or\nsoul-phenomena. Therefore these astral activities will come into view\nwhen the spirit or soul, which veils or conceals the natural basis\nof our being, suspends its activity. In the dream-world we see the\nsimplest phenomena of this realm. The pictures which hover before us in\ndreams, with their remarkably significant connection with occurrences\nin our environment and with states of our inner nature, are products\nof our natural basis or root-being, which are obscured by the brighter\nlight of the soul. For example, when a chair falls over beside my bed\nand I dream a whole drama ending with a shot fired in a duel; or when I\nhave palpitation of the heart and dream of a boiling cauldron, we can\nsee that in these dreams natural operations come to light which are\nfull of sense and meaning, and disclose a life lying between the purely\norganic functions and the concept-forming activity which is carried on\nin the full, clear consciousness of the spirit. Connected with this\nregion are all the phenomena belonging to the domain of hypnotism and\nsuggestion; and in the latter are we not compelled to recognise an\ninteraction between human beings, which points to some connection or\nrelation between beings in Nature, which is normally hidden by the\nhigher activity of the mind? From this starting point we can reach an\nunderstanding of what Paracelsus meant by the \u201castral\u201d body. It is the\nsum total of those natural operations under whose influence we stand,\nor may in special circumstances come to stand, or which proceed from\nus, without our souls or minds coming into consideration in connection\nwith them, but which yet cannot be included under the concept of purely\nphysical phenomena. The fact that Paracelsus reckons as truths in this\ndomain things which we doubt to-day, does not come into the question,\nfrom the point of view which I have already described.\n\nStarting from the basis of these views as to the nature of man,\nParacelsus divides him into seven factors or principles, which are the\nsame as those we also find in the wisdom of the ancient Egyptians,\namong the Neoplatonists and in the Kabbalah. In the first place, man\nis a physical-bodily being, and therefore subject to the same laws\nas every other body. He is, in this respect, therefore, a purely\n\u201celementary\u201d body. The purely physical-bodily laws combine into an\norganic life-process, and Paracelsus denotes this organic sequence of\nlaw by the terms \u201c_arch\u00e6us_\u201d or \u201c_spiritus vit\u00e6_.\u201d Next, the organic\nrises into a region of phenomena resembling the spiritual, but which\nare not yet properly spiritual, and these he classifies as \u201castral\u201d\nphenomena. From amidst these astral phenomena, the functions of the\n\u201canimal soul\u201d make their appearance. Man becomes a being of the senses.\n\nThen he connects together his sense impressions according to their\nnature, by his understanding or mind, and the \u201chuman soul\u201d or\n\u201creasoning soul\u201d becomes alive in him. He sinks himself deep into his\nown mental productions, and learns to recognise \u201cspirit\u201d as such, and\nthus he has risen at length to the level of the \u201cspiritual soul.\u201d\nFinally, he must come to recognise that in this spiritual soul he is\nexperiencing the ultimate basis of universal being; the spiritual soul\nceases to be individual, to be separated. Then arises the knowledge\nof which Eckhart spoke when he felt no longer that _he_ was speaking\nwithin himself, but that in him the Root-Being was uttering Itself.\nThe condition has come about in which the All-Spirit in man beholds\nItself. Paracelsus has stamped the feeling of this condition with the\nsimple words: \u201cAnd that is a great thing whereon to dwell: there is\nnaught in heaven or upon earth that is not in Man. And God who dwelleth\nin Heaven, He also is in Man.\u201d\n\nWith these seven principles of human nature, Paracelsus aims at\nexpressing nothing else than the facts of inner and outer experience.\nThe fact remains unquestioned that, what for human experience\nsubdivides itself into a multiplicity of seven factors, is in higher\nreality a unity. But the higher insight exists just for the very\npurpose of exhibiting the unity in all that appears as multiplicity\nto man, owing to his bodily and spiritual organisation. On the level\nof the highest insight, Paracelsus strives to the utmost to fuse the\nunitary Root-Being of the world with his own spirit. But he knows that\nman can only cognise Nature in its spirituality, when he enters into\nimmediate intercourse with that Nature. Man does not grasp Nature by\npeopling it from within himself with arbitrarily assumed entities; but\nby accepting and valuing it as it is, as Nature. Paracelsus therefore\ndoes not seek for God or for spirit in Nature; but Nature, just as it\ncomes before his eyes, is for him wholly, immediately divine. Must one\nthen first ascribe to the plant a soul after the kind of a human soul,\nin order to find the spiritual?\n\nHence Paracelsus explains to himself the development of things, so far\nas that is possible with the scientific means of his age, altogether\nin such wise that he conceives this development as a sensible-natural\nprocess. He makes all things to proceed from the root-matter, the\nroot-water (Yliaster). And he regards as a further natural process the\nseparation of the root-matter (which he also calls the great Limbus)\ninto the four elements: Water, Earth, Fire and Air. When he says that\nthe \u201cDivine Word\u201d called forth the multiplicity of beings from the\nroot-matter, one must understand this also only in such wise as perhaps\nin more recent natural science one must understand the relationship\nof Force to Matter. A \u201cSpirit,\u201d in a matter-of-fact sense, is not yet\npresent at this stage. This \u201cSpirit\u201d is no matter-of-fact basis of the\nnatural process, but a matter-of-fact result of that process.\n\nThis Spirit does not create Nature, but develops itself out of Nature.\nNot a few statements of Paracelsus might be interpreted in the opposite\nsense. Thus when he says: \u201cThere is nothing which does not possess and\ncarry with it also a spirit hidden in it and that lives not withal.\nAlso, not only has _that_ life, which stirs itself and moves, as men,\nanimals, the worms in the earth, the birds in the sky and the fishes in\nwater, but all bodily and actual things as well.\u201d\n\nBut in such sayings Paracelsus only aims at warning us against that\nsuperficial contemplation of Nature which fancies it can exhaust the\nbeing of a thing with a couple of \u201cstuck-up\u201d concepts, according to\nGoethe\u2019s apt expression. He aims not at putting into things some\nimaginary being, but at setting in motion all the powers of man to\nbring out that which in actual fact lies in the thing.\n\nWhat matters is not to let oneself be misled by the fact that\nParacelsus expresses himself in the spirit of his time. It is far more\nimportant to recognise what things really hovered before his mind when,\nlooking upon Nature, he expresses his ideas in the forms of expression\nproper to his age. He ascribes to man, for instance, a dual flesh, that\nis, a dual bodily constitution. \u201cThe flesh must also be understood,\nthat it is of two kinds, namely the flesh that comes from Adam and the\nflesh which is not from Adam. The flesh from Adam is a gross flesh,\nfor it is earthly and nothing besides flesh, that can be bound and\ngrasped like wood and stone. The other flesh is not from Adam, it is\na subtle flesh and cannot be bound or grasped, for it is not made of\nearth.\u201d What is the flesh that is from Adam? It is everything that man\nhas received through natural development, everything, therefore, that\nhas passed on to him by heredity. To that is added, whatever man has\nacquired for himself in his intercourse with the world around him in\nthe course of time.\n\nThe modern scientific conceptions of inherited characteristics and\nthose acquired by adaptation easily emerge from the above-cited thought\nof Paracelsus. The \u201cmore subtle flesh\u201d that makes man capable of his\nintellectual activities, has not existed from the beginning in man.\nMan was \u201cgross flesh\u201d like the animal, a flesh that \u201ccan be bound and\ngrasped like wood and stone.\u201d In a scientific sense, therefore, the\nsoul is also an acquired characteristic of the \u201cgross flesh.\u201d What\nthe scientist of the nineteenth century has in his mind\u2019s eye when he\nspeaks of the factors inherited from the animal world, is just what\nParacelsus has in view when he uses the expression, \u201cthe flesh that\ncomes from Adam.\u201d\n\nNaturally I have not the least intention of blurring the difference\nthat exists between a scientist of the sixteenth and one of the\nnineteenth century. It was, indeed, this latter century which for\nthe first time was able to see, in the full scientific sense, the\nphenomena of living beings in such a connection that their natural\nrelationship and actual descent, right up to man, stood out clearly\nbefore one\u2019s eyes. Science sees only a natural process where Linn\u00e6us\nin the eighteenth century saw a spiritual process and characterised it\nin the words: \u201cThere are counted as many species of living beings, as\nthere were created different forms in the beginning.\u201d While thus in\nLinn\u00e6us\u2019s time, the Spirit had still to be transferred into the spacial\nworld and have assigned to it the task of spiritually generating\nthe forms of life, or \u201ccreating\u201d them: the natural science of the\nnineteenth century could give to Nature what belonged to Nature, and\nto Spirit what belonged to Spirit. To Nature is even assigned the task\nof explaining her own creations; and the Spirit can plunge into itself\nthere, where alone it is to be found, in the inner being of man.\n\nBut although in a certain sense Paracelsus thinks according to the\nspirit of his age, yet he has grasped the relationship of man to Nature\nin a profound manner, especially in relation to the idea of Evolution,\nof Becoming. He did not see in the Root-Being of the universe something\nwhich in any sense is there as a finished thing, but he grasped the\nDivine in the process of Becoming. Thereby he was enabled truly to\nascribe to man a self-creative activity. For if the divine root of\nbeing is, as it were, given once for all, then there can be no question\nof any truly creative activity in man. It is not man, living in time,\nwho then creates, but it is God, who is from Eternity, that creates.\nBut for Paracelsus there is no such God from Eternity. For him there\nis only an eternal happening, and man is one link in this eternal\nhappening. What man forms, was previously in no sense existent. What\nman creates, is, as he creates it, a new, original creation. If it is\nto be called divine, it can only be so-called in the sense in which it\nis a human creation. Therefore Paracelsus can assign to man a r\u00f4le in\nthe building of the universe, which makes him a co-architect in its\ncreation. The divine root of being is _without_ man, not that which it\nis _with_ man.\n\n\u201cFor nature brings nothing to light, which as such is perfect, but\nman must make it perfect.\u201d This self-creative activity of man in the\nbuilding of the universe is what Paracelsus calls Alchemy. \u201cThis\nperfecting is Alchemy. Thus the Alchemist is the baker, when he bakes\nbread, the vintager, when he makes wine, the weaver, when he makes\ncloth.\u201d Paracelsus aims at being an Alchemist in his own domain as a\nPhysician. \u201cTherefore I may well write so much here about Alchemy, that\nye may well understand it, and experience that which it is and how\nit is to be understood; and not find a stumbling-block therein that\nneither Gold nor Silver shall come to thee therefrom. But have regard\nthereunto, that the Arcana [curative means] be revealed unto thee....\nThe third pillar of medicine is Alchemy, for the preparation of the\nmedicines cannot come to pass without it, because Nature cannot be made\nuse of without Art.\u201d\n\nIn the strictest sense, therefore, the eyes of Paracelsus are directed\nto Nature, in order to overhear from herself what she has to say about\nthat which she brings forth. He seeks to explore the laws of chemistry,\nso that, in his sense, he may work as an Alchemist. He pictures\nto himself all bodies as compounded out of three root-substances:\nSalt, Sulphur, and Mercury. What he thus names, naturally does not\ncoincide with that which later chemistry solely and strictly calls\nby these names; just as little as that which Paracelsus conceives of\nas the root-substance is such in the sense of our later chemistry.\nDifferent things are called by the same names at different times.\nWhat the ancients called the four elements: Earth, Water, Air, and\nFire, we still have to-day. But we call these four \u201celements\u201d no\nlonger \u201celements,\u201d but states of aggregation and have for them the\ndesignations: solid, liquid, gaseous and etheric. The Earth, for\ninstance, was for the ancients not earth, but the \u201csolid.\u201d\n\nAgain, we can clearly recognise the three root-substances of Paracelsus\nin contemporary conceptions, though not in present names of like sound.\nFor Paracelsus, dissolution in a liquid and burning are the two most\nimportant chemical processes which he utilises. If a body be dissolved\nor burnt, it breaks up into its parts. Something remains behind as\ninsoluble; something dissolves, or is burnt. What is left behind is\nto him of the nature of Salt; the soluble (liquid) of the nature of\nMercury; while he terms Sulphur-like the part that can be burnt.\n\nAll this, taken as relating to material things, may leave the man cold\nwho cannot look out beyond such natural processes; whoever seeks at all\ncosts to grasp the spirit with his senses, will people these processes\nwith all sorts of ensouling beings. He, however, who like Paracelsus\nknows how to regard them in connection with the whole, which permits\nits secret to become revealed in man\u2019s inner being,--he accepts them,\nas the senses offer them; he does not first re-interpret them; for just\nas the occurrences of Nature lie before us in their sensible reality,\nso too do they, in their own way, reveal to us the riddle of existence.\nThat which through their sensible reality they have to unveil from\nwithin the soul of man, stands, for him who strives after the light of\nhigher knowledge, far higher than all supernatural wonders that man\ncan invent or get revealed to him about their suppositious \u201cspirit.\u201d\nThere is no \u201cSpirit of Nature,\u201d capable of uttering loftier truths\nthan the mighty works of Nature herself, when our soul links itself\nin friendship with that Nature and listens to the revelations of her\nsecrets in intimate and tender intercourse. Such friendship with Nature\nwas what Paracelsus sought.\n\n\n\n\n                   VALENTINE WEIGEL AND JACOB BOEHME\n\nIn the view of Paracelsus, what mattered most was to acquire ideas\nabout Nature which should breathe the spirit of the higher insight\nthat he represented. A thinker related to him, who applied the same\nmode of conceiving things to his own nature especially, is VALENTINE\nWEIGEL (1533-1588). He grew up out of Protestant theology in a like\nsense to that in which Eckhart, Tauler, and Suso grew up out of Roman\nCatholic theology. He has predecessors in Sebastian Frank and Caspar\nSchwenckfeldt. These two, as contrasted with the orthodox Churchmen\nclinging to external profession, pointed downwards to the deepening of\nthe inner life. For them it is not that Jesus whom the Gospels preach\nwho is of value, but the Christ who can be born in every man as his\ndeeper nature, and become for him the Saviour from the lower life and\nthe guide to ideal uplifting.\n\nWeigel performed silently and humbly the duties of his office as\nclergyman in Zschopau. It was only from the writings he left behind,\nprinted first in the seventeenth century, that the world learned\nanything of the significant ideas which had come to him about the\nnature of man.[15]\n\n  [15] The following, from among his writings, may be named: _Der\n  g\u00fcldene Griff, das ist alle Ding ohne Irrthumb zu erkennen, vielen\n  Hochgelehrten unbekandt, und doch allen Menschen nothwendig zu\n  wissen; Erkenne dich selbst; Vom Ort der Welt._\n\nWeigel feels himself driven to gain a clear understanding of his\nrelation to the teaching of the Church; and that leads him on further\nto investigate the basic foundations of all knowledge. Whether man can\nknow anything through a confession of faith, is a question as to which\nhe can only give himself an account when he knows _how_ man knows.\nWeigel starts from the lowest kind of knowing. He asks himself: How do\nI know a sensible object, when it presents itself before me? Thence he\nhopes to be able to mount upwards to a point of view whence he can give\nhimself an account of the highest knowledge.\n\nIn cognition through the senses, the instrument (the sense-organ) and\nthe object, the \u201ccounterpart\u201d (_Gegenwurf_) stand opposed. \u201cSince\nin natural perception there must be two things, as the object or\n\u2018counterpart,\u2019 which is to be known and seen by the eye; and the eye,\nor the perceiver, which sees or knows the object, so do thou hold\nover against each other: whether the knowledge comes forth from the\nobject to the eye; or whether the judgment, or the cognition, flows out\nfrom the eye into the object.\u201d[16] Weigel now says to himself: If the\ncognition (or knowledge) flowed from the \u201ccounterpart\u201d (or thing) into\nthe eye, then of necessity from one and the same thing a similar and\nperfect cognition must come to all eyes. But that is not the case, for\neach man sees according to the measure of his own eyes. Only the eyes,\nnot the \u201ccounterpart\u201d (or object) can be in fault, in that various and\ndifferent conceptions are possible of one and the same thing. To clear\nup the matter, Weigel compares seeing with reading. If the book were\nnot there, I naturally could not read it; but it might still be there,\nand yet I could read nothing in it, if I did not understand the art of\nreading. The book therefore must be there; but, from itself it can give\nme not the smallest thing; I must draw forth everything I read from\nwithin myself. That is also the nature of sensible perception. Colour\nis there as the \u201ccounterpart,\u201d but it can give the eye nothing from out\nof itself. The eye must recognise, from out of itself, what colour is.\nAs little as the content of the book is in the reader, just so little\nis colour in the eye. If the content of the book were in the reader, he\nwould not need to read it. Yet in reading, this content does not flow\nout from the book, but from the reader. So is it also with the sensible\nobject. What the sensible thing before him is; that does not flow from\noutside into the man, but from within outwards.\n\n  [16] _Der g\u00fcldene Griff_, p. 26 et seq.\n\nStarting from these thoughts, one might say: If all knowledge flows\nout from man into the object, then one does not know what is in the\nobject, but only what is in man. The detailed working out of this line\nof thought, brought about the view of Immanuel Kant (1724-1804).[17]\n\n  [17] The error in this line of thought will be found explained in my\n  book, _The Philosophy of Freedom_, Berlin, 1894. Here I must limit\n  myself to mentioning that Valentine Weigel, with his simple, robust\n  way of conceiving things, stands far higher than Kant.\n\nWeigel says to himself: Even if the knowledge flows out from man, it\nis still only the being of the \u201ccounterpart\u201d (or object) which comes\nto light in this indirect way through man. As I learn the content of\nthe book by reading it, and not by my own content, so also I learn\nthe colour of the \u201ccounterpart\u201d through the eye, not any colour to\nbe found in the eye, or in myself. (Thus Weigel arrives by a road of\nhis own at a result that we have already encountered in Nicholas of\nCusa. Cp. pages 151-160). In this way Weigel attained to clearness as\nto the nature of sense-perception. He arrived at the conviction that\neverything which external things have to tell us can only flow forth\nfrom our own inner nature itself. Man cannot remain passive when he\ntries to know sensible objects and seeks merely to allow them to act\nupon him; but he must assume an active attitude, and bring forth the\nknowledge from within himself. The counterpart (or object) merely\nawakens the knowledge in the spirit. Man rises to higher knowledge when\nhis spirit becomes its own \u201ccounterpart.\u201d One can see from sensible\ncognition that no cognition can flow into man from outside. Therefore\nthere can be no such thing as an external revelation, but only an inner\nawakening.\n\nAs now the external counterpart waits till there comes into its\npresence man, in whom it can express its being, so too must man wait,\nwhen he seeks to be his own \u201ccounterpart\u201d (or object) until the\nknowledge of his own being shall be awakened in him. If, in cognition\nthrough the senses, man must assume an active attitude in order that\nhe may bring to meet the \u201ccounterpart\u201d its own being, so in the higher\nknowing, man must hold himself passive, because he is himself now the\n\u201ccounterpart.\u201d He must admit its being into himself. Therefore the\ncognition of the spirit appears to him as enlightenment from above. In\ncontrast to cognition through the senses, Weigel therefore terms the\nhigher cognition the \u201cLight of Mercy\u201d This \u201cLight of Mercy\u201d is, in\nreality, nothing other than the self-knowledge of the spirit in man, or\nthe re-birth of knowledge on the higher level of beholding.\n\nNow just as Nicholas of Cusa, in following up his road from knowing to\nbeholding, does not really bring about the re-birth of the knowledge\nhe has gained, on the higher level, but only the faith of the Church\nin which he was brought up appears deceptively before him as such a\nre-birth, so is it also the case with Weigel. He guides himself to the\nright road, but loses it again in the very moment in which he steps\nupon it. He who will travel the road that Weigel points out, can regard\nthe latter as his guide only as far as the starting-point.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nWhat rings out to meet us from the works of the Master-Shoemaker of\nG\u00f6rlitz, JACOB BOEHME (1575-1624), sounds like the joyous outburst of\nNature admiring her own being upon the summit of her evolution. A man\nappears before us whose words have wings, woven out of the inspiring\nfeeling of having seen knowledge shining within him as Higher Wisdom.\nJacob Boehme describes his own state as Piety which strives only to be\nWisdom, and as a Wisdom that seeks to live only in Piety: \u201cAs I was\nwrestling and fighting in God\u2019s behalf, behold a wondrous light shone\ninto my soul, such as was quite foreign to savage nature; therein I\nfirst knew what God and man were, and what God had to do with men.\u201d\n\nJacob Boehme no longer feels himself as a separated being expressing\nits insights; he feels himself as an organ of the great All-Spirit,\nspeaking in him. The limits of his personality do not appear to him as\nthe limits of the Spirit that speaks from within him. This Spirit is\nfor him present everywhere. He knows that \u201cthe Sophist will blame him\u201d\nwhen he speaks of the beginning of the world and its creation: \u201cthe\nwhile I was not thereby and did not myself see it. To him be it said\nthat in the essence of my soul and body, when I was not yet the \u2018I,\u2019\nbut when I was still Adam\u2019s essence, I was there present and myself\nsquandered away my glory in Adam.\u201d\n\nOnly in external similes is Boehme able to indicate how the light broke\nforth in his inner being. When once as a boy he finds himself on the\ntop of a mountain, he sees above him a place where large red stones\nseem to shut up the mountain; the entrance is open and in its depth he\nsees a vessel full of gold. A shudder runs through him; and he goes on\nhis way without touching the treasure. Later on he is apprenticed to\na shoemaker in G\u00f6rlitz. A stranger steps into the shop and demands a\npair of shoes. Boehme is not allowed to sell them in the absence of his\nmaster. The stranger departs, but after a while calls the apprentice\nout of the shop and says to him: \u201cJacob, thou art little, but thou wilt\nsome day become quite another man, over whom the world will break out\ninto wonder.\u201d In riper years, Jacob Boehme sees the reflection of the\nbright sun in a tin vessel: the view that thus presents itself to him\nseems to him to unveil a profound secret. Even after the impression of\nthis appearance, he believes himself to be in possession of the key to\nthe riddles of Nature.\n\nHe lives as a spiritual anchorite, humbly earning his living by his\ntrade, and between whiles, as though for his own recollection, he notes\ndown the harmonies which resound in his inner being when he feels the\nSpirit in himself. The zealotry of priestly fervour makes life hard\nfor the man; he, who desires naught but to read the Scripture which\nthe light of his inner nature illuminates for him, is persecuted and\ntortured by those to whom only the external writ, the rigid, dogmatic\nconfession of faith, is accessible.\n\nOne world-riddle remains as a disquieting presence in Jacob Boehme\u2019s\nsoul, driving him on to knowledge. He believes himself to be in his\nspirit enfolded in a divine harmony; but when he looks around him, he\nsees discord everywhere in the divine workings. To man belongs the\nlight of Wisdom; and yet he is exposed to error; in him lives the\nimpulse to the good, and yet the discord of evil sounds throughout\nthe whole of human development. Nature is governed by its own great\nlaws; yet its harmony is disturbed by happenings of no purport, and\nthe warfare of the elements. How is this discord in the harmonious\nworld-whole to be understood? This question tortures Jacob Boehme. It\nstrides into the centre of the world of his thought. He strives to gain\na view of the world as a whole, which shall include the discordant.\nFor how can a conception which leaves the actual present discord\nunexplained explain the world? The discord must be explained out of the\nharmony, the evil out of the good itself. Let us restrict ourselves,\nin speaking of these things, to the good and the evil, wherein the\nlack of harmony in the narrower sense finds its expression. For,\nfundamentally, Jacob Boehme also restricts himself to this. He can do\nso, for Nature and man appear to him as a single entity. He sees in\nboth similar laws and processes. The purposeless seems to him an evil\nsomething in Nature, just as evil seems to him something purposeless in\nman. Similar fundamental forces rule both here and there. To one who\nhas known the origin of evil in man, the source of evil in Nature also\nlies open and clear.\n\nNow, how can the evil as well as the good flow forth from the very\nsame Root-Being? Speaking in Jacob Boehme\u2019s sense, one would give\nthe following answer. The Root-Being does not live out its existence\nin itself. The multiplicity of the world shares in this existence.\nAs the human body lives its life, not as a single member, but as a\nmultiplicity of members, so also the Root-Being. And as human life is\npoured out into this multiplicity of members, so too the Root-Being\nis poured out into the manifoldness of the things of this world. As\ntrue as it is that the entire man has only one life, so true is it\nthat every member has its own life. And as little as it contradicts\nthe whole harmonious life of a man, that his hand should turn itself\nagainst his own body and wound it, so little is it impossible that the\nthings of the world, which live the life of the Root-Being in their own\nway, should turn themselves against each other. Thus the Root-Being, in\ndividing itself among different lives, confers upon each such life the\ncapacity to turn itself against the whole.\n\nIt is not from the good that evil streams forth, but from the way in\nwhich the good lives. As the light is only able to shine when it\npierces the darkness, so the good can bring itself to life only when it\npermeates its opposite. From out of the \u201cfathomless abyss\u201d of darkness\nthere streams forth the light; from the \u201cgroundlessness\u201d of the\nindifferent there is brought to birth the Good. And as in the shadow\nonly the brightening demands a pointing to the light; but the darkness,\nas a matter of course, is felt as that which weakens the light; so too\nin the world, it is only the law-abiding character that is sought for\nin all things; and the evil, the purposeless, is accepted as a matter\nof course, intelligible in itself. Thus, in spite of the fact that for\nJacob Boehme the Root-Being is the All, still nothing in the world can\nbe understood, unless one has an eye both to the Root-Being and its\nopposite at once. \u201cThe good has swallowed up into itself the evil or\nthe hideous.... Every being has in itself good and evil, and in its\nunfoldment, as it passes over into division, it becomes a contradiction\nof qualities, as one seeks to overcome the other.\u201d\n\nHence it is altogether in accordance with Jacob Boehme\u2019s view to see\nin everything, and in every process of the world, both good and evil;\nbut it is not in accord with his meaning, without more ado to seek\nthe Root-Being in the mingling of good and evil. The Root-Being must\nswallow up the evil; but the evil is not a part of the Root-Being.\nJacob Boehme seeks the Root-Being of the world; but the world itself\nhas sprung forth from the \u201cfathomless abyss\u201d through the Root-Being.\n\u201cThe external world is not God, and eternally will not be called God,\nbut only a being wherein God manifests Himself.... When one says: God\nis all, God is heaven and earth, and also the outer world, so is that\ntrue: for from him and in him all stands originally rooted. But what am\nI to do with such a saying, which is no religion?\u201d\n\nWith such a view in the background, Jacob Boehme\u2019s conceptions as\nto the being of the whole world built themselves up in his mind, so\nthat he makes the orderly world emerge in a series of steps from the\n\u201cfathomless abyss.\u201d This world builds itself up in seven natural forms.\nIn dark astringency the Root-Being receives form, dumbly shut up within\nitself and motionless. This astringency Boehme grasps under the symbol\nof Salt. In employing such designations he leans upon Paracelsus, who\nhad borrowed from chemical processes his names for the processes of\nNature. By swallowing up its opposite, the first nature-form passes\nover into the form of the second; the astringent, the motionless, takes\non movement; Power and Life enter into it. Quicksilver (Mercury) is\nthe symbol for this second form. In the struggle of Rest and Motion,\nof Death with Life, the third form of Nature unveils itself (Sulphur).\nThis Life battling within itself, becomes manifest to itself; it lives\nthenceforward no longer an outer battle of its members; there quivers\nthrough it as it were a unifying glowing flash, itself lighting up\nits own being (Fire). This fourth form of Nature rises to the fifth,\nthe living battle of the parts resting in themselves (Water). On this\nlevel, as upon the first, there is present an inner astringency and\ndumbness; only it is not an absolute rest, a silence of the inner\nopposites, but an interior movement of the opposites. It is not the\nmotionless resting in itself, but the moved, that which has been\nkindled by the fire-flash of the fourth stage. Upon the sixth level,\nthe Root-Being itself becomes aware of itself as such inner life.\nLiving beings endowed with senses represent this form of Nature.\nJacob Boehme calls it the \u201cClang\u201d or Call, and in so doing adopts\nthe sense-perception of sound as the symbol for sense-perception in\ngeneral. The seventh form of Nature is the Spirit, raising itself on\nthe basis of its sense-perceptions (Wisdom). He finds himself again as\nhimself, as the Root-Being, within the world that has grown up out of\nthe \u201cfathomless abyss,\u201d shaping itself out of the harmonious and the\ndiscordant. \u201cThe Holy Ghost brings the Glory of this Majesty into the\nbeing, wherein the Godhead stands revealed.\u201d\n\nIt is with such views that Jacob Boehme seeks to fathom that world\nwhich for him, according to the knowledge of his time, was reckoned as\nthe actual world of fact. For him all is fact which is so regarded by\nthe natural science of his time and by the Bible. His way of conceiving\nthings is one thing, his world of facts quite another. One can imagine\nthe former applied to a totally different knowledge of facts. And thus\nthere appears before our eyes a Jacob Boehme as he might stand at the\nparting of the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries. Such a one would\nnot saturate with his way of conceiving things the six days\u2019 creation\nwork of the Bible and the fight of the angels and the devils, but\nLyell\u2019s geological knowledge and the facts of Haeckel\u2019s _The History\nof Creation_. He who can penetrate into the spirit of Jacob Boehme\u2019s\nwritings must arrive at this conviction.[18]\n\n  [18] We may here name the most important of Boehme\u2019s writings: _Die\n  Morgenr\u00f6the im Aufgang_; _Die drei Prinzipien g\u00f6ttlichen Lebens\n  oder \u00fcber das dreifache Leben des Menschen_; _Das umgewandte Auge_;\n  _\u201cSignatura rerum\u201d oder von der Geburt und Bezeichnung aller Wesen_;\n  _Das \u201cMysterium Magnum_.\u201d\n\n\n\n\n                  GIORDANO BRUNO AND ANGELUS SILESIUS\n\nIn the first decennium of the sixteenth century, the scientific\ngenius of Nicholas Copernicus (1473-1543) thinks out in the castle of\nHeilsberg, in Prussia, an intellectual structure which compels the\nmen of subsequent epochs to look up to the starry heavens with other\nconceptions than those which their forefathers in antiquity and the\nMiddle Ages had. To them the earth was their dwelling-place, at rest in\nthe centre of the Universe. The stars, however, were for them beings of\na perfect nature, whose motion took place in circles because the circle\nis the representative of perfection.\n\nIn that which the stars showed to human senses they beheld something of\nthe nature of soul, something spiritual. It was one kind of speech that\nthe things and processes upon earth spoke to man; quite another, that\nof the shining stars, beyond the moon in the pure \u00e6ther, which seemed\nlike some spiritual nature filling space. Nicholas of Cusa had already\nformed other ideas.\n\nThrough Copernicus, earth became for man a brother-being in face of the\nother heavenly bodies, a star moving like others. All the difference\nthat earth has to show for man he could now reduce to this: that earth\nis his dwelling-place. He was no longer forced to think differently\nabout the events of this earth and those of the rest of universal\nspace. The world of his senses had expanded itself into the most remote\nspaces. He was compelled henceforth to allow that which penetrated his\neye from the \u00e6ther to count as sense-world just as much as the things\nof earth. He could no longer seek in the \u00e6ther in sensuous fashion for\nthe Spirit.\n\nWhoever, henceforth, strove after higher knowledge, must needs come to\nan understanding with this expanded world of the senses. In earlier\ncenturies, the brooding mind of man stood before a world of facts. Now\nhe was confronted with a new task. No longer could the things of earth\nonly express this nature from within man\u2019s inner being. This inner\nnature of his was called on to embrace the spirit of a sense-world,\nwhich fills the All of Space everywhere alike.\n\nThe thinker of Nola, PHILOTHEO GIORDANO BRUNO (1548-1600) found himself\nfaced by such a problem. The senses have conquered the universe of\nspace; henceforth the Spirit is no more to be found in space. Thus man\nwas guided from without to seek henceforward for the Spirit there alone\nwhere from out of profound inner experiences those glorious thinkers\nsought it, whose ranks our previous expositions have led before us.\nThese thinkers drew upon a view of the world to which, later on, the\nadvance of natural knowledge forces humanity. The sun of those ideas,\nwhich later should shine upon a new view of Nature, with them still\nstands below the horizon; but their light already appears as the early\ndawn at a time when men\u2019s thoughts of Nature itself still lay in the\ndarkness of night.\n\nThe sixteenth century gave the heavenly spaces to natural science\nfor the sense-world to which it rightfully belongs; by the end of\nthe nineteenth century, this science had advanced so far that, even\nwithin the phenomena of plant, animal, and human life, it could assign\nto the world of sensible facts that which belongs to it. Neither,\nthen, in the \u00e6ther above, nor in the development of living creatures,\ncan this natural science henceforth seek for anything but sensible,\nmatter-of-fact processes. As the thinker in the sixteenth century\nhad to say: \u201cThe earth is a star among other stars, subject to the\nsame laws as other stars\u201d; so must the thinker of the nineteenth\ncentury say: \u201cMan, whatever may be his origin and his future, is\nfor anthropology only a mammal, and further, that mammal whose\norganisation, needs and diseases are the most complex, whose brain,\nwith its marvellous capacities, has reached the highest level of\ndevelopment.\u201d[19]\n\n  [19] Paul Topinard: _Anthropologie_, Leipzig, 1888, p. 528.\n\nFrom such a standpoint, attained through natural science, there can\nno longer occur any confusion between the spiritual and the sensible,\nprovided man understands himself rightly. Developed natural science\nmakes it impossible to seek in Nature for a Spirit conceived of after\nthe fashion of something material, just as healthy thinking makes\nit impossible to seek for the reason of the forward movement of the\nclock-hand, not in mechanical laws (the Spirit of inorganic Nature),\nbut in a special Daimon, supposed to bring about the movements of the\nhands. Ernst Haeckel was quite right in rejecting, as a scientist, the\ngross conception of a God conceived of in material fashion. \u201cIn the\nhigher and more abstract forms of religion, the bodily appearance is\nabandoned and God is worshipped as pure Spirit, devoid of body. \u2018God\nis a Spirit, and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and\nin truth.\u2019 But, nevertheless, the soul-activity of this pure Spirit\nremains quite the same as that of the anthropomorphic personal God. In\nreality, even this immaterial Spirit is not thought of as bodiless, but\nas invisible, like a gas. We thus arrive at the paradoxical conception\nof God as a gaseous vertebrate.\u201d[20]\n\n  [20] Haeckel, _Riddle of the Universe_.\n\nIn reality, the matter-of-fact, sensible existence of something\nspiritual may be assumed only when immediate sensible experience shows\nsomething spiritual, and only such a degree of the spiritual may be\nassumed as can be perceived in this manner. That first rate thinker, B.\nCarneri, ventured to say (in his book: _Empfindung und Bewusstsein_,\np. 15): \u201cThe dictum: No spirit without matter, but also no matter\nwithout spirit,--would entitle us to extend the question to the plant\nalso, nay, even to any block of stone taken at random, wherein there\nseems very little to speak in favour of these correlative conceptions.\u201d\nSpiritual occurrences as matters of fact are the results of various\ndoings of an organism; the Spirit of the world is not present in the\nworld in a material sense, but precisely after a spiritual fashion.\nMan\u2019s soul is a sum of processes in which Spirit appears most\nimmediately as fact. In the form of such a soul, however, Spirit is\npresent in man only. And it implies that one misunderstands Spirit,\nthat one commits the worst sin against Spirit, to seek for Spirit in\nthe form of Soul elsewhere than in man, to imagine other beings thus\nensouled as man is. Whoever does this, only shows that he has not\nexperienced Spirit within himself; he has only experienced that outer\nform of appearance of Spirit, the Soul, which reigns in him. But that\nis just the same as though one regarded a circle drawn with a pencil as\nthe real, mathematically ideal circle. Whoever experiences in himself\nnothing other than the soul-form of the Spirit, feels himself thereupon\ndriven to assume also such a soul-form in non-human things, in order\nthat thereby he may not need to remain rooted in the materiality of\nthe gross senses. Instead of thinking of the Root-Being of the world\nas Spirit, he thinks of it as World-Soul, and postulates a general\nensoulment of Nature.\n\nGiordano Bruno, upon whom the new Copernican view of Nature forced\nitself, could grasp Spirit in the world, from which it had been\nexpelled in its old form, in no other manner than as World-Soul. On\nplunging into Bruno\u2019s writings (especially his deeply thoughtful book:\n_De Rerum Principiis et Elementis et Causis_) one gets the impression\nthat he thought of things as ensouled, although in varying degree. He\nhas not, in reality, experienced in himself the Spirit, therefore he\nconceives Spirit after the fashion of the human soul, wherein alone he\nhas encountered it. When he speaks of Spirit, he conceives of it in\nthe following way: \u201cThe universal reason is the inmost, most effective\nand most special capacity, and a potential part of the World-Soul; it\nis something one and identical, which fills the All, illuminates the\nuniverse and instructs Nature how to bring forth her species as they\nought to be.\u201d In these sentences Spirit, it is true, is not described\nas a \u201cgaseous vertebrate,\u201d but it is described as a being that is like\nto the human soul. \u201cLet now a thing be as small and tiny as you please,\nit yet has within it a portion of spiritual substance, which, when it\nfinds a substratum adapted thereto, reaches out to become a plant, an\nanimal, and organises itself to any body you choose that is ordinarily\ncalled ensouled. For Spirit is to be found in all things, and there\ndoes not exist even the tiniest little body which does not embrace in\nitself such a share thereof as causes it to come to life.\u201d\n\nBecause Giordano Bruno had not really experienced the Spirit, as\nSpirit, in himself, he could therefore confuse the life of the Spirit\nwith the external mechanical processes, wherewith Raymond Lully\n(1235-1315) wanted to unveil the secrets of the Spirit in his so-called\n\u201cGreat Art\u201d (_Ars Magna_). A recent philosopher, Franz Brentano,\ndescribes this \u201cGreat Art\u201d thus: \u201cConcepts were to be inscribed upon\nconcentric, separately revolving discs, and then the most varied\ncombinations produced by turning them about.\u201d Whatever chance brings\nup in the turning of these discs, was shaped into a judgment about the\nhighest truths. And Giordano Bruno, in his manifold wanderings through\nEurope, made his appearance at various seats of learning as a teacher\nof this \u201cGreat Art.\u201d He possessed the daring courage to think of the\nstars as worlds, perfectly analogous to our earth; he widened the\noutlook of scientific thinking beyond the confines of earth; he thought\nof the heavenly bodies no longer as bodily spirits; but he still\nthought of them as soul-like spirits. One must not be unjust towards\nthe man whom the Catholic Church caused to pay with death the penalty\nfor his advanced way of thinking. It required something gigantic to\nharness the whole space of heaven in the same view of the universe\nwhich hitherto had been applied only to things upon earth, even though\nBruno did still think of the sensible as soul-like.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nIn the seventeenth century there appeared Johann Scheffler, called\nANGELUS SILESIUS (1624-1677), a personality in whom there once\nmore shone forth, in mighty harmony of soul, what Tauler, Weigel,\nJacob Boehme, and others, had prepared. Gathered, as it were, into\na spiritual focus and shining with enhanced light-giving power,\nthe ideas of the thinkers named make their appearance in his book:\n\u201cCherubinischer Wandersmann. Geistreiche Sinn- und Schlussreime.\u201d And\neverything that Angelus Silesius utters appears as such an immediate,\ninevitable, natural revelation of his personality, that it is as though\nthis man had been called by a special providence to embody wisdom in\na personal form. The simple, matter-of-course way in which he lives\nwisdom, attains its expression by being set forth in sayings which,\neven in respect of their art and their form, are worthy of admiration.\nHe hovers like some spiritual being over all earthly existence; and\nwhat he says is like the breath of another world, freed beforehand from\nall that is gross and impure, wherefrom human wisdom generally only\ntoilsomely works itself free.\n\nHe only is truly a knower, in the sense of Angelus Silesius, who\nbrings the eye of the All to vision in himself; he alone sees his\naction in the true light who feels that this action is wrought in\nhim by the hand of the All: \u201cGod is in me the fire, and I in him the\nlight; are we not in most intimate communion one with another?\u201d--\u201cI\nam as rich as God; there can be no grain of dust that I--believe me,\nman,--have not in common with Him.\u201d--\u201cGod loves me above Himself; if\nI love Him above myself: I so give Him as much as He gives me from\nHimself.\u201d--\u201cThe bird flies in the air, the stone rests on the earth;\nin water lives the fish, my spirit in God\u2019s own hand.\u201d--\u201cArt thou born\nof God, then bloometh God in thee; and His Godhead is thy sap and thy\nadornment.\u201d--\u201cHalt! whither runnest thou? Heaven is in thee: seekest\nthou God otherwhere, thou missest Him ever and ever.\u201d\n\nFor one who thus feels himself in the All, every separation ceases\nbetween self and another being; he no longer feels himself as a single\nindividual; rather does he feel all that there is of him as a part of\nthe world, his own proper being, indeed, as that World-Whole itself.\n\u201cThe world, it holds thee not; thou art thyself the world that holds\nthee, in thee, with thee, so strongly captive bound.\u201d--\u201cMan has never\nperfect bliss before that unity has swallowed up other-ness.\u201d--\u201cMan is\nall things; if aught is lacking to him, then in truth he knoweth not\nhis own riches.\u201d\n\nAs a sense-being, man is a thing among other things, and his\nsense-organs bring to him, as a sensible individuality, sense-news of\nthe things in space and time outside of him; but when Spirit speaks in\nman, then there remains no without and no within; nothing is here and\nnothing is there that is spiritual; nothing is earlier and nothing\nis later; space and time have vanished in the contemplation of the\nAll-Spirit. Only so long as man looks forth as an individual, is he\nhere and the thing there; and only so long as he looks forth as an\nindividual, is this earlier, and this later. \u201cMan, if thou swingest\nthy spirit over time and place, so each moment canst thou be in\neternity.\u201d--\u201cI am myself eternity when I leave time behind, and self in\nGod and God in self together grasp.\u201d--\u201cThe rose that here thine outer\neye doth see, it so hath bloomed in God from all eternity.\u201d--\u201cIn centre\nset thyself, so see\u2019st thou all at once: what then and now occurred,\nhere and in heaven\u2019s realm.\u201d--\u201cSo long for thee, my friend, in mind\nlies place and time: so long graspest thou not what\u2019s God, nor what\neternity.\u201d--\u201cWhen man from manifoldness withdraws, and inward turns\nto God, so cometh he to unity.\u201d The summit has thus been climbed,\nwhereon man steps forth beyond his individual \u201cI\u201d and abolishes every\nopposition between the world and himself. A higher life begins for him.\nThe inner experience that comes over him appears to him as the death\nof the old and a resurrection in a new life. \u201cWhen thou dost raise\nthyself above thyself and lettest God o\u2019errule; then in thy spirit\nhappens ascension into heaven.\u201d--\u201cThe body in the spirit must arise,\nthe spirit, too, in God: if thou in him, my man, will live for ever\nblessed.\u201d--\u201cSo much mine \u2018I\u2019 in me doth \u2019minish and decrease; so much\ntherefore to power cometh the Lord\u2019s own \u2018I.\u2019\u201d\n\nFrom such a point of view, man recognises his meaning and the meaning\nof all things in the realm of eternal necessity. The natural All\nappears to him immediately as the Divine Spirit. The thought of a\ndivine All-Spirit, who could still have being and sub-existence over\nand beside the things of the world, vanishes away as a superseded\nconception. This All-Spirit appears so outpoured into things, so\nbecomes one in being with the things, that it could no longer be\nthought at all, if even one single member were thought away from its\nbeing. \u201cNaught is but I and thou; and if we twain were not; then is\nGod no more God, and heaven falleth in.\u201d--Man feels himself as a\nnecessary link in the world-chain. His doing has no longer aught of\narbitrariness or of individuality in it. What he does is necessary in\nthe whole, in the world-chain, which would fall to pieces if this his\ndoing were to fall out from it. \u201cGod may not make without me a single\nlittle worm: if I with him uphold it not, straightway must it burst\nasunder.\u201d--\u201cI know that without me God can no moment live: if I come to\nnaught, he needs must give up the ghost.\u201d--Upon this height, man for\nthe first time sees things in their real being. He no longer needs to\nascribe from outside to the smallest thing, to the grossly sensible,\na spiritual entity. For just as this minutest thing is, in all its\nsmallness and gross sensibility, it is a link in the Whole. \u201cNo grain\nof dust is so vile, no mote can be so small: the wise man seeth God\nmost gloriously therein.\u201d--\u201cIn a mustard seed, if thou wilt understand\nit, is the image of all things above and beneath.\u201d\n\nMan feels himself free upon this height. For constraint is there only\nwhere a thing can constrain from without. But when all that is without\nhas flowed into the within, when the opposition between \u201cI and world,\u201d\n\u201cWithout and Within,\u201d \u201cNature and Spirit,\u201d has disappeared, man then\nfeels all that impels him as his own impulse. \u201cShut me, as strongly\nas thou wilt, in a thousand irons: I still will be quite free and\nunfettered.\u201d--\u201cSo far as my will is dead, so far must God do what I\nwill; I myself prescribe to him the pattern and the goal.\u201d--At this\npoint cease all moral obligations, coming from without: man becomes to\nhimself measure and goal. He is subject to no law; for the law, too,\nhas become his being. \u201cFor the wicked is the law; were there no command\nwritten, still would the pious love God and their neighbour.\u201d\n\nThus, on the higher level of knowledge, the innocence of Nature is\ngiven back to man. He fulfils the tasks that are set him in the\nfeeling of an external necessity. He says to himself: Through this iron\nnecessity it is given into thy hand to withdraw from this very iron\nnecessity the link which has been allotted to thee. \u201cYe men, learn but\nfrom the meadow flower: how ye shall please God and be beautiful as\nwell.\u201d--\u201cThe rose exists without why and because, she blooms because\nshe blooms; she takes no heed of herself, asks not if men see her.\u201d The\nman who has arisen upon the higher level feels in himself the eternal,\nnecessary pressure of the All, as does the meadow flower; he acts,\nas the meadow flower blooms. The feeling of his moral responsibility\ngrows in all his doing into the immeasurable. For that which he does\nnot do is withdrawn from the All, is a slaying of that All, so far as\nthe possibility of such a slaying lies with him. \u201cWhat is it, not to\nsin? Thou need\u2019st not question long: go, the dumb flowers will tell it\nthee.\u201d--\u201cAll must be slain. If thou slayest not thyself for God, then\nat last eternal death shall slay thee for the enemy.\u201d\n\n\n\n\n                               AFTERWORD\n\nNearly two and a half centuries have passed since Angelus Silesius\ngathered up the profound wisdom of his predecessors in his _Cherubinean\nWanderer_. These centuries have brought rich insights into Nature.\nGoethe opened a vast perspective to natural science. He sought to\nfollow up the eternal, unchangeable laws of Nature\u2019s working, to that\nsummit where, with like necessity, they cause man to come into being,\njust as on a lower level they bring forth the stone.[21] Lamarck,\nDarwin, Haeckel, and others, have laboured further in the direction\nof this way of conceiving things. The \u201cquestion of all questions,\u201d\nthat in regard to the natural origin of man, found its answer in the\nnineteenth century; and other related problems in the realm of natural\nevents have also found their solutions. To-day men comprehend that it\nis not necessary to step outside of the realm of the actual and the\nsensible in order to understand the serial succession of beings, right\nup to man, in its development in a purely natural manner.\n\n  [21] Cp. my book: _Goethe\u2019s Weltanschauung_, Weimar, 1897.\n\nAnd, further, J. G. Fichte\u2019s penetration has thrown light into the\nbeing of the human ego, and shown the soul of man where to seek itself\nand what it is.[22] Hegel has extended the realm of thought over all\nthe provinces of being, and striven to grasp in thought the entire\nsensible existence of Nature, as also the loftiest creations of the\nhuman spirit.[23]\n\n  [22] Cp. ante, and the section upon Fichte in my book: _Welt- und\n  Lebensanschauungen im neunzehnten Jahrhundert_, vol. i., Berlin, S.\n  Cronbach.\n\n  [23] Cp. my presentation of Hegel in _Welt- und Lebensanschauungen\n  im neunzehnten Jahrhundert_, vol. i.\n\nHow, then, do those men of genius whose thoughts have been traced in\nthe preceding pages, appear in the light of a world-conception which\ntakes into account the scientific achievements of the centuries that\nfollowed their epoch? They still believed in a \u201csupernatural\u201d story of\ncreation. How do their thoughts appear when confronted with a \u201cnatural\u201d\nhistory of creation, which the science of the nineteenth century has\nbuilt up?\n\nThis natural science has given to Nature naught that did not belong\nto her; it has only taken from her what did not belong to her. It has\nbanished from Nature all that is not to be sought in her, but is to be\nfound only in man\u2019s inner being. It sees no longer any being in Nature\nthat is like unto the human soul, and that creates after the manner of\nman. It no longer makes the organic forms to be created by a man-like\nGod; it follows up their development in the sense-world according to\npurely natural laws. Meister Eckhart, as well as Tauler, and also Jacob\nBoehme with Angelus Silesius, would needs feel the deepest satisfaction\nin contemplating this natural science. The spirit in which they desired\nto behold the world has passed over in the fullest sense to this view\nof Nature, when it is rightly understood. What they were still unable\nto do, _viz._: to bring the facts of Nature themselves into the light\nwhich had risen for them, that, undoubtedly, would have been their\nlonging, if this same natural science had been laid before them. They\ncould not do it; for no geology, no \u201cnatural history of creation\u201d told\nthem about the processes in Nature. The Bible alone told them in its\nown way about such processes. Therefore they sought, so far as they\ncould, for the spiritual where alone it is to be found: in the inner\nnature of man.\n\nAt the present time, they would have quite other aids at hand than\nin their own time, to show that an actually existing Spirit is to be\nfound only in man. They would to-day agree unreservedly with those who\nseek Spirit as a fact not in the root of Nature, but in her fruit.\nThey would admit that Spirit as perceivable is a result of evolution,\nand that upon lower levels of evolution such Spirit must not be sought\nfor. They would understand that no \u201ccreative thought\u201d ruled in the\nforthcoming of the Spirit in the organism, any more than such a\n\u201ccreative thought\u201d caused the ape to evolve from the marsupials.\n\nOur present age cannot speak about the facts of Nature as Jacob Boehme\nspoke of them. But there exists a point of view, even in this present\nday, which brings Jacob Boehme\u2019s way of regarding things near to a view\nof the world that takes account of modern natural science. There is no\nneed to lose the Spirit, when one finds in Nature only the natural.\nMany do, indeed, believe to-day that one must needs lose oneself in\na shallow and prosaic materialism, if one simply accepts the \u201cfacts\u201d\nwhich natural science has discovered. I myself stand fully upon the\nground of this same natural science. I have, through and through, the\nfeeling that, in a view of Nature such as Ernst Haeckel\u2019s, only he can\nlose himself amid shallows who himself approaches it with a shallow\nthought-world. I feel something higher, more glorious, when I let the\nrevelations of the \u201cnatural history of creation\u201d work upon me, than\nwhen the supernatural miracle stories of the confessions of faith force\nthemselves upon me. In no \u201choly book\u201d do I know aught that unveils for\nme anything as lofty as the \u201csober\u201d fact, that every human germ in\nthe mother\u2019s womb repeats in brief, one after the other, those animal\ntypes which its animal ancestors have passed through. If only we fill\nour hearts with the glory of the facts that our senses behold, then\nwe shall have little left over for \u201cwonders\u201d which do not lie in the\ncourse of Nature. If we experience the Spirit in ourselves, then we\nhave no need of such in external Nature.\n\nIn my _Philosophy of Freedom_, (Berlin, 1894) I have described my\nview of the world, which has no thought of driving out the Spirit,\nbecause it beholds Nature as Darwin and Haeckel beheld her. A plant,\nan animal, gains nothing for me if I people it with souls of which my\nsenses give me no information. I do not seek in the external world for\na \u201cdeeper,\u201d \u201cmore soulful\u201d being of things; nay, I do not even assume\nit, because I believe that the insight which shines forth for me in\nmy inner being guards me against it. I believe that the things of\nthe sense-world are, in fact, just as they present themselves to us,\nbecause I see that a right self-knowledge leads us to this: that in\nNature we should seek nothing but natural processes. I seek no Spirit\nof God in Nature, because I believe that I perceive the nature of the\nhuman spirit in myself. I calmly admit my animal ancestry, because I\nbelieve myself to know that there, where these animal ancestors have\ntheir origin, no spirit of like nature with soul can work. I can only\nagree with Ernst Haeckel when he prefers the \u201ceternal rest of the\ngrave\u201d to an immortality such as is taught by some religions.[24] For I\nfind a dishonouring of Spirit, an ugly sin against the Spirit, in the\nconception of a soul continuing to exist after the manner of a sensible\nbeing.\n\n  [24] Cp. Haeckel\u2019s _Riddle of the Universe_.\n\nI hear a shrill discord when the scientific facts in Haeckel\u2019s\npresentation come up against the \u201cpiety\u201d of the confessions of some\nof our contemporaries. But for me there rings out from confessions of\nfaith, which give a discord with natural facts, naught of the spirit\nof the higher piety which I find in Jacob Boehme and Angelus Silesius.\nThis higher piety stands far more in full harmony with the working\nof the natural. There lies no contradiction in the fact of saturating\noneself with the knowledge of the most recent natural science, and at\nthe same time treading the path which Jacob Boehme and Angelus Silesius\nhave sought. He who enters on that path in the sense of those thinkers\nhas no need to fear losing himself in a shallow materialism when he\nlets the secrets of Nature be laid before him by a \u201cnatural history\nof creation.\u201d Whoever has grasped my thoughts in this sense will\nunderstand with me in like manner the last saying of the _Cherubinean\nWanderer_, with which also this book shall close: \u201cFriend, it is even\nenough. In case thou more wilt read, go forth, and thyself become the\nbook, thyself the reading.\u201d\n\n                                THE END\n\n\n\n\nTRANSCRIBERS\u2019 NOTES\n\nAll obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected, while\noriginal spellings and inconsistent hyphenation have been preserved to\nmaintain the authenticity of the original text.\n\nIn the text version of this book, underscores were used to indicate\na word originally printed in _italics_. All words/phrases originally\nprinted as small caps have been converted to capital letters.\n\nThe following changes have been implemented to improve the clarity and\nflow of the text:\n\n  Page 105: \u201cuncreate\u201d changed to \u201cuncreated\u201d: _but he must look forward\n  upon the uncreated: his knowledge must be a beginning_\n\n  Page 155: \u201cless\u201d changed to \u201clesser\u201d: _To a greater or lesser extent\n  this illumination_\n\n  Page 173: \u201cof\u201d added: _I should in reality and in truth be trying to\n  think of something not unlike_\n\n  Page 181: \u201cto\u201d added: _which leads back once more to the knowledge_\n\n  Page 254: \u201cof\u201d added: _Instead of thinking of the Root-Being of the\n  world as Spirit_\n\nThe chapter headings have been synchronized with the Table of Contents\nfor consistency.\n\nNew original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the\npublic domain.","title":"Mystics of the Renaissance and their relation to modern thought, including Meister Eckhart, Tauler, Paracelsus, Jacob Boehme, Giordano Bruno, and others","tradition":"scripture-revelation","translated_text":null,"word_count":40361}