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Full text of "Jacob Boehme: his life and teaching. Or Studies in theosophy"

GIFT OF 

SEELEY W. MUDD 

and 

GEORGE I. COCHRAN MEYER ELSASSER 

DR.JOHNR. HAYNES WILLIAM L. HONNOLD 

JAMES R. MARTIN MRS. JOSEPH F. SARTORI 

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UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 

SOUTHERN BRANCH 



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JOHN FISKE 



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MAR 6 1929 



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MAY 8 1946 
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JACOB BOEHME. 



JACOB BOEHME 



HIS LIFE AND TEACHING. 



STUDIES 'IN THEOSOPHY. 



BY THE LATE 

DR. HANS LASSEN MARTENSEN, 

Metropolitan of Denmark. 



TRANSLATED FROM THE DANISH DY 

T. RHYS EVANS. 



HODDER AND STOUGHTON, 
27, PATERNOSTER ROW. 

MDCCCLXXXV. 
{All rights reserved.] 

82595 






Printed by Hazell, Watson, & Viney, Limited, London and Aylesbury. 



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AUTHOR'S PREFACE. 



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HEN during my younger days I was absorbed 
in the study of mediaeval mysticism, and 
listened, with the deep attention of a seeker, to the 
discourses of Master Eckart and Tauler, now in their 
quiet cloisters, and again under the arches of their 
churches, I was led forward, almost inevitably, from 
mysticism to theosophy, and, consequently, to Jacob 
Bohme. The first impression was not attractive. 
It was true that the light of the Reformation was 
here, shining with its great and universal energies ; 
but this light had to force its rays into the narrow- 
ness and obscurity of a shoemaker's room, where 
there was very much to obstruct the illumination. 
Bohme's style and method of treatment struck me as 
intolerable and not to be entertained. A longer ac- 
quaintance with him and closer attention could not, 
however, but convince me that his works contained 
very attractive passages, passages, indeed, of fasci- 
nating beauty combined with surprising depth, vivid 
and revealing lightning, and new light. I read several 



AUTHOR'S PREFACE. 



of his chief treatises, and, notwithstanding the hard 
nuts that had to be cracked, it seemed to me not 
wholly improbable that the result of a more pro- 
tracted study would be, that youthful love would 
lead me to attempt a work that should have Bohme 
as its subject. Nothing, however, came of this ; 
and, so far as I was personally concerned, the 
undertaking would certainly have been premature. 
Other tasks imposed their claim upon me ; my 
immediate relation to Bohme gradually faded away, 
although modern philosophy and theology still kept 
mc in contact with his ideas, during the whole of my 
life. It is now for the first time, at the eleventh 
hour, so to speak, when my whole journey draws 
near its close and must shortly be completed, that 
I again find myself in direct relation with Bohme and 
his writings. A point in Bohme which has formed 
the subject of much philosophical discussion, and 
with which I had long been occupied, compelled me 
to return to the fountain head, to seek for myself 
grounds of more solid and independent conviction. 
I, therefore, undertook the perusal of his complete 
works, no insurmountable task, seeing that they 
comprise only seven volumes in Schiebler's edition. 
I was induced, in consequence of this, to record my 
interpretation of Jacob Bohme as a whole. 



AUTHOR'S PREFACE. 



I have given the name of Studies to this volume, 
in order to indicate that it was composed especially 
for my own instruction, and that it urges no claim to 
exhaustiveness and completeness. I have called 
them theosophical studies, to imply that my main 
object of interest has not been Bohme as a simply 
historical phenomenon, but the actual problems to 
the solution of which he has offered so remarkable 
and world-renowned a contribution, and which he 
has so powerfully stirred into activity. 

However great may be the interest that I feel 
in Bohme as the highly-enlightened layman, the 
great prodigy in the spiritual and intellectual world, 
the unexplained psychological enigma, the pious 
soul who, with all his profound knowledge, made it 
his single aim to advance in earnest, practical Chris- 
tianity, in the appropriation of " the pearl of great 
price, and the gracious lily," far greater than my 
interest in purely historical reminiscences is that 
which I feel in the great subject for which he lived, 
the subject which belongs to every age, and will 
always shape itself in souls that are able and 
willing to devote themselves to it. I am interested 
in the fountains from which he drew, and which still 
flow for us, when we are willing to heed them, and 
thus to gain deeper comprehension of Divine things 
and greater earnestness in our religious life. Under 



viii A UTHOR S PREFA CE. 

these circumstances it will scarcely be thought unpar- 
donable that, in these studies, I have frequently deve- 
loped my own view, my own conviction of the truth. 

The method of treatment pursued by Jacob Bohme 
presents this difficulty, that it is impossible to delineate 
him by mere quotations, seeing that they contribute 
little to our comprehension of him ; but that one 
is bound to reproduce him with a certain degree of 
freedom. And here the objection is obviously close 
at hand that this plan is very perilous, and that it is 
to be feared that the narrator will introduce some- 
thing of his own, and give the subject an admixture 
of his own subjectivity ; that, instead of an interpre- 
tation, one may give a mosaic of one's own ; as, for 
instance, has so often been urged against the in- 
numerable commentaries on Faust and on Dante's 
" Divina Commedia." There is certainly a measure 
of truth in this objection ; but it cannot be helped ! 
No one can interpret an intellectual subject unless 
through the medium of his own consciousness, which 
is, so to speak, the mirror in which one is compelled 
to behold and to interpret what shows itself, with 
regard to which, however, it can by no means be 
asserted that all mirrors are equally good. 

But to the man who has no confidence in a 
specific interpretation, and is afraid of missing what 



AUTHOR'S PREFACE. 



he calls the pure objectivity, no other counsel can 
be given than that he himself should go to the 
fountain head, and then reproduce it for himself. 
For, if he wishes to understand what he has read, 
to say nothing of expounding it to others, we 
believe we can answer for the fact that he will be 
compelled to reproduce it ! 

And, herewith, I entrust this volume to the circle 
of benevolent readers, capable of these inquiries, 
into whose hands it may fall. And I append a 
reference to the words of the Apostle : " Prove all 
things : hold fast that which is good ! " (i Thess. 
v. 21). 



TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. 



ENGLISH readers are already in possession of 
Bishop Martensen's treatises on " Christian 
Dogmatics " and " Christian Ethics." It would be 
superfluous to mention the profound esteem in which 
these treatises are held, or the immense stimulus 
which they have given to thought upon the subjects 
with which they deal. Their value is confessedly 
European. " Jacob Bohme " completes the triad of 
the author's most important works, and was his 
own favourite production. It is, however, simply a 
fragment of that larger history of Protestant mystic- 
ism which Martensen often thought of writing, but 
which the world will never see from his pen. 

The value of the present work consists partly in 
its clear and comprehensive summary of Bohme's 
views, and partly in the keen and thoughtful criticism 
to which those views are subjected. 

Theosophy is, at present, a somewhat discredited 
term, but it is needless to say that, in the case of Jacob 
Bohme, the term involves no suspicion of chicanery, 



TRANSLATOR S PREFACE. 



juggling, or crazy eccentricity. Dr. Martensen wisely 
deprecates the hostile attitude so frequently adopted by 
dogmatic theologians towards those who work along 
freer, or at least less formal, lines. Professional soldiers 
have often distrusted irregular troops and guerilla 
chiefs who, nevertheless, have rendered extraordinary 
service to the common cause. Thus, also, men 
destitute of all formal scientific training have often 
generated fresh and powerful ideas which became the 
parents of the great discoveries which enriched 
succeeding centuries. In like manner, a just appre- 
ciation of the constitution of the human mind, 
and of the action upon it of the Spirit of God, will 
render it easily explicable that a man who simply 
surrenders himself to devout meditation upon Divine 
things, may be enabled to recover truths that had 
been long in abeyance, to kindle a deeper practical 
devotion, and valuably to enlarge the field of our 
religious knowledge. The delightful freshness, the 
rapid flashings of a genius never separated from 
reverence, and the profound belief in the living voice 
of God which characterise many of these thinkers, 
appear to be elements which the Church of Christ 
can never too gratefully recognize. 

These are some of the reasons which induced Dr. 
Martensen to offer to the public his generous but 
impartial estimate of the great sixteenth century 
mystic. 



TRANSLATOR S PREFACE. 



The reader may disagree with individual points of 
Bohme's teaching, and may still find portions of it 
unintelligible ; he may find himself occasionally at 
variance with Dr. Martensen's speculative opinions. 
But the books with which we most absolutely agree 
do not always form our most profitable reading, and, 
in the humble opinion of the translator, the circum- 
stances just alluded to will not impair the suggestive 
and practical value of this treatise. 

It only remains to add, that the quotations from 
Bohme's own works have been taken from William 
Law's curious and valuable edition of Bohme's 
works (4 vols, quarto, London, 1 781). The quaint 
and antique flavour of Law's substantially accurate 
translation seems more in harmony with its subject- 
matter than would be the case with any attempt to 
give it a more modern dress. 

T. Rhys Evans. 

Brighton, Sept. 1885. 



CONTENTS. 



l'AGE 

Jacob Bohme, his Life and Teaching . . . i 

bohme and theosophy 1 7 

Postulates for Bohme' s Theosophy . . .26 
The Problem 36 

I. 

God and the Uncreated Heaven. 

The Still Mystery. The Abyss and the Uncreated Wil. 
The Imagination and the Eternal Idea. The 
Potential Trinity .56 

The Manifestation through the Eternal Nature. The 
Seven Natural Properties. The Actual Trinity. 
The Glory of God. The Uncreated Heaven . . 67 

Critical Retrospect. 

The Relation to the Ethical Conception of God . . 99 

The Relation between the Eternal Nature and the Eternal 

Spirit 110 

The Dark Nature- Principle in God 126 

The Illicit Anthropomorphism 142 

The Glory of God. The Uncreated Heaven . . .151 

II. 

God and the Created World. 

The Creation. The Wherefore and the Means of Creation 171 
Creation and Cosmogony. The Unfathomable Mystery . 176 



xvi CONTENTS. 

PACK 

Creation and Emanation 184 

The Seven Natural Properties and the Seven Spirits in 

the Apocalypse 187 

The Angels. Derivative Eternity and Time . . 195 

The Fall of Lucifer and the Appalling " Turba " . . 204 
Tohu Vabohu. The Mosaic History of Creation . .213 

Adam and the Fall of Adam 228 

The Creation of Woman. Androgyny .... 233 

The Present World 250 

The Atonement. Redemption in Christ. The New- 
Adam. The Incarnation 261 

The Process of Christ 271 

The Exalted Christ 275 

The Appropriation of Grace. Regeneration . . . 281 

The Last Things 298 

Heaven and Hell. The Unchangeable Will after Death . 298 
The Magical State after Death. The Regions Beyond . 303 
Is it true of all souls after death, that they cannot change 

their will ? 315 

The Multiplicity of the Future World . . . .324 

The Consummation 327 

Postscript (Z' Envoi) 338 



JACOB BOHME was, as is well known, a shoe- 
maker. But, in addition to this, he was a theo- 
sophist indeed, the greatest and most famous 
of all theosophists in the world, and has gained the 
cognomen ; philosophus Teutonicus . An attempt 
will be made in the sequel to explain the meaning 
of theosophy. Here we simply observe provisionally, 
that theosophy signifies wisdom in God, in the 
Spirit of God (not in the spirit of the world), an 
intuitive apprehension of Divine and natural mys- 
teries, on the basis of God's revelation in Holy 
Scripture and in the book of nature. Jacob Bohme, 
, who applied himself to this kind of wisdom, has had 
to pass, not only during his lifetime, but also after 
his death, through honour and dishonour, good 
report and evil report. Many have regarded him 
as a visionary, and have placed his teaching in the 
history of human follies. In many libraries his 
writings are to be found under the rubric " Fanatici." 
Others have extolled him to the skies, and have 
believed that they have found in him all the treasures 
of knowledge and all enigmas solved. Others again, 
who recognise and admire his greatness, are still 
of opinion that a query and a corrective must be 
applied to many passages in his discourse concerning 



JACOB BOHME. 



-f 



the Divine mysteries, and that his precious pearls 
and pure gold need to be cleansed from adherent 
shells and scoriae. But he always remains one of 
the most remarkable phenomena in the history of 
the human mind. A humble peasant, without learn- 
ing or scientific education, who combined with 
simple Christian faith and piety the most profound 
philosophical speculation ; who was upborne and 
encircled by a gigantic imagination ; whose works 
may, it is true, be called chaotic and shapeless, but 
in which, as one roams through their labyrinths, one 
is constantly and irresistibly persuaded that a stream 
flows through them, which has its source in the 
eternal hills ; labyrinths in which one is surprised, 
amid the obscurity and gloom, by lightning which 
now gladdens and anon appals by the glimpses it 
affords us of Time and Eternity, of the Divine, 
human, and demonic depths. Among the great 
spirits of mankind Bohme occupies, it is true, a 
lonely and isolated place. His defective education 
excludes him, as it were, from polite society, and 
exposes him to a degree of contempt. It would be 
a mistake, nevertheless, to suppose that Bohme has 
exercised no influence whatever upon intellectual 
development. During his lifetime he endeavoured 
to recall the clergy of the State Church, who had 
entered arid paths, to a deeper and more living 
apprehension of the doctrines of the faith ; he 
sought to promote a true and practical Christianity 
which should not be confined to the " sphere of the 
letter " : in this he coincides with the nobler pietism. 
However futile, in many respects, his attempt may 
have been, and however much the theologians of 



HIS LIFE. 3 

a later period may have tried to exclude him, 
our own nineteenth century, no less than the 
eighteenth, exhibits theological works which bear 
direct or indirect testimony that their authors 
have not found it beneath their dignity to learn 
of the unscientific but highly-enlightened layman. 
Philosophy also, in so far as it has entered into the 
realities of life by which we mean not only the 
sensible and tangible, but the super-sensible realities 
which this science sometimes, and by no means least 
of all in our own day, ignores or regards as non- 
existent (" I do not see them ; therefore they do not 
exist ! ") 'philosophy also shows the influences of 
this " powerful mind," as Hegel calls him. We 
may especially mention Schelling and Franz Baader, 
different as these thinkers are from one another, and 
different as is their relation to Bohme. There is 
also the important French author St. Martin, himself 
a theosophist and a disciple of Bohme. 

Although Bohme's doctrine, at his own epoch, and 
during the following century, found no slight echo 
even beyond the limits of Germany e.g., in Eng- 
land, where the unfortunate Charles I. was greatly 
interested in it, still it has never become the 
foundation of a religious sect. Bohme himself 
adhered to the Lutheran Church, and died in its 
communion. But, without becoming the founder of 
a sect or a partisan things utterly abhorrent to 
his spirit, he has often gathered round him a quiet 
congregation which has rejoiced in the light that 
he kindled in the Divine mysteries, and has been 
edified by his exhortations on the way of salvation 
and the practice of earnest Christianity. And it is 



JACOB BOHME. 



undeniable that there are few men whose life and 
thought so pregnantly express the saying of the 
Apostle, that " in God we live, and move, and have 
our being " ; and that whether we regard him on 
the side of mind or temper, the lines of Angelus 
Silesius are applicable to him : 

" In water lives the fish, the plant in the earth, 
The bird in the air, in the firmament the Sun. 
The salamander must subsist in fire, 
And the Heart of God is Jacob Bohme's element." 

It is this man who has exercised, and will continue 
to exercise, a quiet attraction over speculative minds 
and religious dispositions, although it must be ad- 
mitted that his special fascination will be expe- 
rienced only by those who are at the same time 
religiously and speculatively constituted. 

We will now relate the usual particulars concern- 
ing Bohme's life, following the biography of Franken- 
berg, which consists, in large measure, of information 
from the mouth of Bohme himself. A few points 
are added from Bohme's writings. Although these 
particulars are tolerably well known, they ought not 
to be omitted here. 

Jacob Bohme was born in 1575 at Old Seiden- 
berg, a village near Gorlitz. His parents were poor 
peasants, who were only able to procure for him the 
usual religious school teaching, together with some 
instruction in reading and writing. At an early age 
he was compelled, with other boys, to watch the 
cattle in the fields. He was a quiet, introspective 
lad, whose face bore somewhat of the dreamy ex- 
pression which is frequent in poetic natures. Indeed, 



HIS LIFE. 5 

when very young, he was marked by a certain 
visionary element, by inward visions, which for him- 
self assumed the character' of outwardness and reality. 
Thus, when a shepherd boy, he once climbed to the 
top of a mountain called the " Land's Crown " ; and 
here he saw a vaulted entrance composed of four red 
stones, and leading into a cavern. When he had 
toiled through the brushwood that surrounded the 
entrance, he beheld in the depth of the cave a vessel 
filled with money. He was seized with inward 
panic, as if at something diabolical, and ran away in 
alarm. Subsequently he often returned to the spot, 
accompanied by other boys. But entrance and 
cavern had alike vanished ! 

As he was not well qualified for agricultural 
and rural pursuits, he was apprenticed to a shoe- 
maker. Here also something remarkable happened 
to him. One day, when the master and his wife were 
out, and he was alone in the house, a stranger 
entered the shop and asked for a pair of shoes. As 
Jacob did not consider himself empowered to con- 
clude a bargain, seeing that his master had given 
him no express authority for this, he tried to release 
himself from the dilemma by demanding a high price 
for the shoes, in the hope that the man would be 
disinclined to' buy. But the man paid the sum 
required, and, when he had gone out into the street, 
shouted, " Jacob, come forth ! " Surprised that the 
stranger should know his name, Jacob obeyed the 
call, and now the stranger looked at him with a 
kindly, earnest, deep, soul-piercing gaze, and said, 
" Jacob, thou art as yet but little, but the time will 
come when thou shalt be great, and become another 



JACOB BOH ME. 



man, and the world shall marvel at thee. Therefore, 
be pious, fear God, and reverence His Word ; 
especially read diligently the Holy Scriptures, where 
thou hast comfort and instruction ; for thou must 
endure much misery and poverty, and suffer persecu- 
tion. But be courageous and persevere, for God 
loves, and is gracious unto thee." Thereupon the 
stranger clasped his hand and disappeared. Whether 
all this is to be accepted as an actual occurrence or 
partly as a vision, we leave an open question. 

After this experience Jacob became even more 
pensive and serious, and devoted himself to pure 
morality and devout meditation ; nor could he re- 
frain from words of confession and admonition when 
the other journeymen on the work-bench indulged 
in loose conversation about sacred things. Naturally, 
they would not listen to his exhortations ; and to 
make an end of the disputes that followed, his master 
dismissed him, saying that he would have no "house- 
prophet " to bring discord and trouble into the house. 
And thus Bohme was compelled to go forth into the 
wide world as a travelling journeyman. During his 
wanderings, he discovered that the period was full of 
theological conflicts, and that the Evangelical Church 
was split into parties that mutually vilified each 
other, and made on him the impression of a Babel. 
He was afflicted with profound solicitude, and fell 
into manifold doubts, against which he had to 
struggle by seeking for himself in Holy Scripture 
some firm foundation on which he might stand and 
have full assurance. In addition to the reading of 
the Scriptures, he was diligent in prayer, and clave 
especially to Luke xi. : " How much more shall 



HIS LIFE. 7 

your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them 
that ask Him ! " And thus it befell him when, 
during his wanderings, he was again engaged by a 
master that, amid the labour of his hands, he was 
lifted into a condition of blessed peace, a Sabbath 
of the soul, that lasted for seven days, and during 
which he was, as it were, inwardly surrounded by a 
Divine light. Outwardly, there was nothing notice- 
able about him. But " the triumph that was then 
in my soul I can neither tell nor describe. I can 
only liken it to a resurrection from the dead." It 
was a foretaste of the tranquillity that was to be 
vouchsafed him in contemplation. 

In the year 1594 he returned to Gorlitz, became 
a master-shoemaker in 1599, and married a trades- 
man's daughter, with whom he lived in happy union 
for thirty years, and who bore him four children. 
In the year 1600 he had another remarkable expe- 
rience. Sitting one day in his room, his eye fell 
upon a burnished pewter dish, which reflected the 
sunshine with such marvellous splendour that he 
fell into an inward ecstasy, and it seemed to him 
as if he could now look into the principles and 
deepest foundations of things. He believed that it 
was only a fancy, and in order to banish it from 
his mind he went out upon the green. But here 
he remarked that he gazed into the very heart of 
things, the very herbs and grass, and that actual 
nature harmonized with what he had inwardly seen. 
He said nothing about this to any one, but praised and 
thanked God in silence. He continued in the honest 
practice of his craft, was attentive to his domestic 
affairs, and was on terms of good-will with all men. 

Ten years later (16 10) he again had another 



8 JACOB BOHME. 

remarkable inward experience. He suddenly dis- 
covered that what he had previously seen only 
chaotically, fragmentarily, and in isolated glimpses, 
he now beheld as a coherent whole and in more 
definite outlines. He felt an inward yearning, a 
fire-like impulse to write it down. It was, how- 
ever, by no means his intention to publish it, for he 
regarded himself as far too simple and illiterate to 
write books for the learned world. He simply 
wished to write it down for himself, as a " Memorial " 
for his own use. For it happened that his visions 
occasionally vanished from him, and that he could 
not afterwards recall what he had thought. He 
sought to obviate this by composing a " Memorial " ; 
and he wrote it in the morning before the toil of 
the workshop began, and in the evening when he 
could no longer fit his last. The work that sprang 
from this was his famous " Morning Redness," or, as 
a friend entitled it, "Aurora," " the Root or Mother 
of Philosophy, Astrology, and Theology on the 
proper basis, or description of Nature." He was 
not completely master of himself when he wrote it ; 
it was like a heavy shower that sweeps past ; what 
it strikes, it strikes. It was not until his later years, 
as he himself says, that he acquired greater clearness 
and a better style. 

But even before this book was finished according 
to his own statement it still lacked some thirty 
sheets, it was destined to bring heavy persecution 
upon him. A nobleman, Carl von Endern, who 
possessed religious and philosophical tastes, happened 
to see the manuscript at Bohme's house, borrowed 
it for a few days, and, seized with great enthusiasm, 



HIS LIFE. 9 

had some copies made of it, which came into cir- 
culation. A copy also fell into the hands of the 
parish clergyman at Gorlitz, Pastor-Primarius 
Gregorius Richter, a man who was full of hie- 
rarchical arrogance, had only an outward appre- 
hension of the dogmatics of that age, and was 
incapable of understanding Bohme's " Aurora." 
And inasmuch as he was antagonistically disposed 
towards Bohme on private grounds, he felt peculiarly 
called to attack him. In a sermon on false prophets 
he assailed him by name, and invoked the action 
of the authorities against him, as otherwise the 
Divine chastisement would fall upon the town. 
Bohme, who, being a regular churchgoer, was him- 
self present in the church, stationed himself by 
the door at the close of the service, and humbly 
asked the clergyman wherein he had erred, saying 
that he would willingly receive instruction. But the 
Primarius threatened to have him arrested, unless 
he instantly took himself away. On the next day 
Bohme was summoned before the magistrates, who 
had suffered themselves to be overawed by Richter. 
He was ordered to leave the town, and was not 
even granted time to set his house in order. Bohme, 
who had the deepest reverence for authority, replied : 
" Yes, dear sirs, it shall be done ; since it cannot 
be otherwise, I am content." But as the magistrates 
meanwhile began to reflect that they had gone too 
far, they called him back on the next morning. He 
was obliged, however, to deliver up the manuscript 
of " Aurora," was forbidden to write books in future, 
and was given to understand that, as a shoemaker, 
he must stick to his last. 



io JACOB BOHME. 

There now consequently came a pause in Bohme's 
literary activity. But the persecution had given 
fame to his " Aurora," and many thoughtful men 
began to notice him, and came into personal rela- 
tions with him. He gained learned and influential 
friends, especially chymists and physicians, noble- 
men also, who sought his acquaintance, because 
they felt themselves attracted by his spirit ; they 
supported him with corn and money, as his shoe- 
making business gradually declined. Among his 
learned friends may be particularly mentioned the 
director of the Chymical Laboratory at Dresden, 
Dr. Walther, who had made many journeys to the 
East, and who once spent three weeks in Bohme's 
little cottage, in order to have the opportunity of un- 
disturbed conversation with him, also the physician 
at Gorlitz, Dr. Tobias Kober. Intercourse with 
these learned friends exercised a refining influence 
upon Bohme himself, and he learned from them 
many Latin technical terms, which he afterwards 
employed in his writings. He was far from despis- 
ing culture ; he greatly lamented that he was not 
acquainted with the ancient languages, and that he 
had not mastered the art of dialectic. But, as a 
compensation for this deficiency, his friends often 
marvelled at his spontaneous natural sense. During 
his walks with Dr. Kober, who was a disciple of 
Paracelsus, Bohme could often, when Kober put 
him to the test, divine from the form and colour 
of a plant its hidden properties, and infer the 
meaning of a foreign word from its mere sound. 
When he once heard the Greek word Idea, he 
became as if electrified, and exclaimed : " I see 



HIS LIFE. ii 

a pure and heavenly maiden ! " This pure and 
heavenly maiden plays a great part in Bohme's 
writings, where she is also designated as the heavenly 
Sophia or Wisdom, who reflects the glory of God, 
of the world, and of man. 

The five years during which Bohme felt himself 
compelled to obey the injunction of the authorities, 
and not to meddle with book-writing, were very 
grievous years for him. He often fell into deep 
melancholy, for he thought that his conscience 
accused him of obeying man rather than God ; he 
also thought that the light which had been kindled 
within him was in danger of being quenched, because 
he did not let it shine before men ; and he often 
meditated with dismay on the parable of the talents, 
and the servant who wrapped his pound in a 
napkin. His friends continually admonished him 
not to set his light under a bushel, but upon a 
candlestick, that it might give light to all in the 
house. At length he gained courage to break 
silence. He says himself: " I had resolved to do 
nothing in future, but to be quiet before God in 
obedience, and to let the devil, with all his host, 
sweep over me. But it was with me as when a seed 
is hidden in the earth. It grows up in storm and 
rough weather, against all reason. For in winter- 
time all is dead, and reason says : It is all over 
with it ! But the precious seed within me sprouted 
and grew green, oblivious of all storms, and, amid 
disgrace and ridicule, it has blossomed forth into a 
lily ! " 

Between 1619 and his death in 1624, he com- 
posed a series of writings, which, however, were not 



T2 JACOB BOHME. 

published by himself. Among the most remarkable 
of these, in a speculative respect, we may mention : 
" Concerning the Three Principles," " Concerning 
the Three-fold Life of Man," " Concerning the 
Birth and Designation of all Existences {Signatura 
Rerum)" "On the Election of Grace," " Mys- 
terium Magnum " (which contains an exposition of 
the Book of Genesis, through which he develops his 
own ideas) ; " Forty Questions on the Soul," pro- 
posed by Dr. Walther, and answered to his satis- 
faction by Bohme, to which is added an appendix ; 
" The Inward Eye." The whole forms an outline 
draught of a Psychology {fsychologia vera) ; more- 
over, " Concerning the Incarnation of Christ." 
Other of his writings have a predominantly practical 
and edifying character, e.g., " Dialogue between an 
Enlightened and an Unenlightened Soul." We 
may also mention his polemical works against Bal- 
thazar Tilken, a Silesian nobleman, in which Bohme 
redargues the false view of Predestination ; " Two 
Scruples " against Esaias Stiefel and Ezekiel Meth, 
citizens of Langensalze, who had been led astray 
into a naturalistic and visionary pantheism, and who 
boasted of their (false) identity with God and Christ ; 
also a pamphlet against Gregorius Richter, which 
will be noticed below. Finally, we must mention 
his Theosophic Epistles, which treat of the occasion 
of his writings, and of his personal relations. For 
the rest we refer the reader to the edition of Bohme's 
"Collected Writings," by Schiebler, 7 vols., 1831. 
Literary-historical sketches of the works will be 
found in Fechner : " Jacob Bohme, his Life and 
Writings," a prize essay, 1857. 



HIS LIFE. 13 

Yet once again before his death Bohme was to 
be subjected to a new ordeal. His book, " The 
Way to Christ," had been printed by his friends, and 
the approbation with which it was widely received 
stirred up once more his irreconcilable opponent, 
Gregorius Richter. Richter not only attacked him 
from the pulpit, but published an Invective, full of 
abuse and anathema. Amongst other things occurs 
this passage : " There are as many blasphemies 
in this shoemaker's book as there are lines ; it 
smells of shoemaker's pitch and filthy blacking. 
May this insufferable stench be far from us. The 
Arian poison was not so deadly as this shoemaker's 
poison," etc. This time, however, Bohme did not 
remain passive, but published a written defence to 
the magistrates against the accusations in question, 
and wrote a special controversial pamphlet against 
Gregorius Richter, in which he refutes his libel, 
point by point, and does it, as Hamberger remarks, 
with an earnestness that inspires holy awe, and, at 
the same time, with a most hearty gentleness and love 
which stream forth from the depths of his nature. 
The magistrates, who had again allowed themselves 
to be influenced by Richter, did not accept Bohme' s 
defence, but notified him that he had made himself 
liable to be treated as a heretic by the Emperor, 
and that it would be most expedient for himself, the 
country, the town, and the magistrates, that he 
should go into voluntary exile. 

Bohme remained at Gorlitz for two months, and 
then proceeded to the Electoral Court at Dresden, 
where for a considerable time attention had been 
fixed upon him, and whither he had been invited to 



i 4 JACOB BOH ME. 

repair. Here a conference took place between 
Bohme and several eminent theologians, among them 
the great dogmatist John Gerhard. Bohme excited 
the admiration of all. Dr. Gerhard said : " I would 
not take the whole world, and help to condemn this 
man!" And his colleague Meissner said: "My good 
brother, neither would I ! Who knows what stands 
behind this man ? How can we judge what we have 
not understood ? May God convert the man if he is 
in error. He is a man of marvellously high mental 
gifts, who at present can be neither condemned nor 
approved." Thus these learned and upright theo- 
logians declared themselves incompetent to judge 
Bohme. When the Elector asked their opinion, they 
begged for indulgence and patience until the spirit of 
the man should express itself more plainly. 

In August 1624 Gregorius Richter died, and 
before his death had to lament that one of his sons 
had become a zealous adherent of Bohme, and had 
transcribed and circulated his writings. But Bohme 
himself was very shortly to follow his antagonist to 
the grave. While he was staying in Silesia at the 
house of one of his noble friends, to whose estate he 
had journeyed in order to spend a few months, he 
fell into a burning fever, which developed into mortal 
gastric disease. He had a presentiment of his 
approaching end, and, at his own request, was 
carried back to Gorlitz, where he was attended by 
Dr. Kober. After an illness of about a fortnight 
he asked for the sacrament, which the new clergy- 
man, who trod in Richter's footsteps, would only 
administer on condition that Bohme subscribed the 
Lutheran Confession of Faith, a wholly superfluous 



HIS LIFE. 15 

demand with which Bohme was able in all sincerity 
to comply. He awaited death with composure. On 
Sunday, November 2 1 st, shortly after midnight, or 
early in the morning, he called his son Tobias, and 
asked him if he did not hear that sweet, harmonious 
music. As Tobias heard nothing, Bohme begged him 
to set wide the door that he might the better hear it ; 
then he asked what was the hour, and when he was 
told that it had just struck two, he said : " My time is 
not yet ; three hours hence is my time." After some 
silence he exclaimed : " Oh, Thou strong God of 
Sabaoth, deliver me according to Thy will ! " and, 
immediately afterwards : " Thou crucified Lord Jesus 
Christ, have mercy upon me, and take me to Thy- 
self into Thy kingdom ! " A little later, he gave 
instructions where some of his manuscripts would be 
found, and expressed the hope that the noble friend 
whom he had visited in Silesia would provide for his 
widow, but also assured her that she must speedily 
follow him (as indeed took place, for she died of the 
plague in the very next year). At six in the 
morning, he suddenly bade them farewell with a 
smile, and said : " Now I go hence into Paradise," 
whereupon he yielded up his spirit. 

Frankenberg writes of him : " His bodily appear- 
ance was somewhat mean ; he was small of stature, 
had a low forehead but prominent temples, a rather 
aquiline nose, a scanty beard, grey eyes sparkling 
into heavenly blue, a feeble but genial voice. He 
was modest in his bearing, unassuming in conver- 
sation, lowly in conduct, patient in suffering, and 
gentle-hearted. He was accustomed to write in his 
friends' albums : 



1 6 JACOB BOHME. 



" To whom Time and Eternity 
Harmoniously as one agree, 
His soul is safe, his life's amended, 
His battle's o'er, his strife is ended." 

As a proof of his loving disposition, an incident, 
which is recorded in one of his letters, deserves to 
be emphasized. He had a dead brother who had 
left a little girl, of whom Jacob took tender care. 
Absorbed though he was in his works and deep 
speculations, it was his habit to walk out, once a 
week, to the village where the little girl was living, 
that he might have a glimpse of her. 

His friends placed upon his grave a cross with 
significant symbols : a lamb (" veni "), an eagle 
(" vidi "), a lion ("vici"). The inscription is: "Here 
rests Jacob Bohme, born of God, died in Christ, 
sealed with the Holy Spirit," to which are appended 
his dying words. The cross was soon removed 
from the grave by orthodox fanaticism and the 
wantonness of the rabble. But in 1875, the tercen- 
tenary of his birth, a monument was erected to him, 
and a great festival was held, which was attended by 
an assembly not only of scholars, but also of laymen, 
amongst them a great number of shoemakers, who 
desired to honour the memory of their famous 
brother of the last. On this occasion one could not 
but be reminded that God is no Respecter of 
persons, and that He often selects His chief instru- 
ments from the humbler classes of society. 

Hamberger has written a short and popular re- 
miniscence of this event. 

From the outward let us now turn to the inward, 
and contemplate Bohme as a Theosophist. 



BOHME AND THEOSOPHY. 
I. 

THEOSOPHY, as we have said, is wisdom 
in God, a wisdom which has God not only 
as its subject, but as its principle ; it has for its 
basis the Divine revelation in Scripture and in 
nature, and it springs from an inward illumination 
by the Spirit of God, which makes the contents 
cf the revelation apprehensible. Its form is not 
that of reflective thought, although this is not ex- 
cluded, but, first and foremost, that of intuition, 
immediate perception, central apprehension of God 
and existence. Theosophy might thus seem to be 
a branch of Speculative Theology. But although, 
under certain narrower limitations, this may be 
true, Theosophy seeks to embrace far more than 
Theology. Out of the idea of God it seeks to 
apprehend the world, in all the circles of the universe 
to see things as they are in God ; it seeks to be a 
pJdlosophia sacra in contradiction to a pliilosophia 
prof ana. It embraces nature and history ; seeks 
to present a philosophy of nature in the light of the 
Divine idea, just as it also strives to give a philo- 
sophy of history, a representation of the principles 
of the kingdom of God, as these are developed 
from the first super-historical commencement of the 

2 



iS JACOB BOHME. 



kingdom of God, from the creation and fall of 
the angels, and of man throughout the various 
periods of time, a persistent struggle between the 
light and the darkness, until the final judgment 
and the consummation of all things. In its inter- 
pretation of Christianity, it does not limit itself 
to its practical ethico-religious import for man, but 
seeks to apprehend its cosmical meaning, its sig- 
nificance for the universe, and to prove that the 
principles of Christianity are identical with those 
by which the world itself subsists, and on which 
the foundation of the world is laid, that Chris- 
tianity is the focus for all world-forces and world- 
powers. 

In so far as Theosophy is assigned a place in 
the history of philosophy, and is not excluded 
as an unscientific or super-scientific vagary, it 
belongs to that department of philosophy which 
Schelling has styled positive philosophy, in contrast 
to a negative, purely rational, non-postulating philo- 
sophy, which seeks its principle out of reason itself. 
The difference between Theosophy and purely rational 
Philosophy may be thus indicated, in terms borrowed 
from Leibnitz : " Theosophy pursues the path of 
light " (" In Thy light we shall see light ") ; " while 
purely rational Philosophy pursues the path of 
gloom, because it simply roams among dim shadows 
with its own faintly-glimmering light." 

II. 

ALTHOUGH Theosophy has been broadly described 
as mysticism, it must be more rigorously defined as 



BOHME AND THE Q SOPHY. 19 

objective, theoretical mysticism as contrasted with 
subjective practical mysticism ; it is the mysticism 
of the mind as distinguished from that of the heart. 
Mediaeval mysticism, by which Luther also was 
influenced, is subjective and practical, is the mys- 
ticism of the heart, although in some of the great 
mystics, like Eckart, it passes over into Theosophy. 

Practical mysticism starts from the soteriological 
standpoint, seeks the union of the individual soul 
with God, and immediate communion of love with 
God by means of the absorption of prayer, and 
detachment from the world ; it often manifests 
hostility to nature. Tauler passed once through the 
convent garden, and drew his cap over his eyes, 
in order that the flowers might not disturb him in 
his abstractly spiritual meditations. Theosophy, on 
the contrary, is eagerly attracted towards nature, 
and Bohme often says how pleasant it is to wander 
among the flowers on a fine summer's day, because 
it is then clearly perceptible how everything sprouts 
and grows, blooms, and emits fragrance in the living 
and all-replenishing power of God. As the mys- 
ticism of the mind, Theosophy is attracted, not only 
to the microcosm, but to the macrocosm, to the 
universe and universal life in all its multiplicity, but 
in all this multiplicity it beholds only one God, 
the Living and Triune. 

But, on the other hand, it must be emphasized, 
that there is no genuine theosophy which is not 
qualified by the mysticism of the heart, by a regard 
for the salvation and perfection of the individual, 
and by personal relation to God in believing and 
prayerful love. Genuine theosophy cannot rest 



20 JACOB BOHME. 



satisfied in its interpretation of the macrocosm, with 
a reflection like that which the poet places in the 
mouth of Faust, when he beholds the sign of the 
macrocosm : 

" Here all things live and work, and, ever blending, 
Weave one vast whole from Being's ample range ! 
Here powers celestial, rising and descending, 
Their golden buckets ceaseless interchange ; 
Their flight on rapture-breathing pinions winging, 
From heaven to earth their genial influence bringing. 
Through the wide whole their chimes melodious ringing."* 

A view like this, which is also met with among 
pantheists, very inadequately characterizes Bohme. 
In the macrocosm and its harmonies which he 
regards as interrupted by the discords of sin in 
this great All, he seeks, beyond all else, to see the 
Living God Himself. But only the pure in heart 
can see God. Theosophy is, as St. Martin and 
Franz Baader so often repeat, a philosophy of 
prayer, a philosophy which is contingent not only 
upon intellectual toil, but upon prayer. This per- 
sonal life in God, as the qualification for philoso- 
phizing, is very frequently emphasized by Bohme. 
He admonishes all who desire to peruse his writings, 
that they must not do so with naked if never so 
acute speculation (which seeks only abstract know- 
ledge devoid of religious and ethical interest), because 
in this spirit they must remain outside them, and 
will only succeed in catching a glimpse of one detail 
and another, of no kind of utility in themselves, 
but only to make a boast of. He writes only for 
the children of God and for sincere seekers ; for to 

* Faust. Miss Swanwick's translation. 



BOHME AND THEOSOPHY. 



such alone belongs the pearl. For his own part, 
he has often prayed God that He would take this 
knowledge from him, unless it might tend to the 
Divine glory and to the edification of himself and 
his brethren. He testifies that, from the outset, 
he did not seek to know anything concerning the 
Divine mysteries. He has, from the first, sought 
only the Heart of Jesus Christ, that he might there 
hide himself from the wrath of God and the malice 
of the devil. Then met him the gracious Maiden 
from Paradise, and offered him her love, and showed 
him the way to Paradise. And first he must needs 
pass through the world, and the Kingdom of Hell. 
This gracious Maiden, who plays so great a part in 
his apprehension of God, is the Eternal Idea, the 
precious Sophia, the heavenly Wisdom, who not 
only reveals to him the Divine mysteries, but 
espouses his soul, reforms him by leading him to 
God and Christ, consoles him in all his anxiety and 
distress, and conducts him to peace and salvation. 

III. 

If, then theosophic knowledge is knowledge in God, 
and is founded upon Divine illumination, it is of 
prime interest to inquire whether, as has often been 
alleged, it claims to be inspired and infallible ? 
This charge is not altogether without foundation. 
Unequivocal passages are to be found in Bohme 
in which he expounds his doctrine in a prophetic 
tone, and says, for example : " It is not I who 
know this. It is Christ who knows it in me." 
Or, as where he says to his opponents, "You say 



22 JACOB BOHME. 

truly enough that I was not present at the creation 
of the world, and that I consequently cannot 
describe it ; but the Spirit who is in me was present, 
and now reveals it at this time." A vague and 
fermenting prophetic tendency has often displayed 
itself in the Church, and something of this may be 
found in Bohme and he, and particularly his ad- 
herents, unquestionably speak at times as if he had 
inaugurated a new period of revelation, which was 
described by the Church theologians as a period of 
enthusiasm and visionary reliance upon the inward 
light. But, on the other hand, it should not be over- 
looked that in Bohme this never developed into secta- 
rianism, and that he says in other passages of his 
writings that several of his works, and particularly the 
"Aurora," present the doctrine imperfectly, but that 
he gradually attained greater clearness ; that he had 
striven after a better style ; that he does indeed 
behold the Truth within him, but as if in a chaos, 
where everything lies in a complication which he 
finds it excessively hard to disentangle into shape. 

On the whole, the essential proposition of theo- 
sophy and also of Bohme may be said to be 
this : that it is only in the Spirit of God and in His 
Wisdom (Idea) that we can search the depths of 
God, and that it is as unreasonable to seek to appre- 
hend God without God, as to seek to see the sun 
except by means of the sun itself, by the aid of the 
light that issues from the sun. But, most assuredly, 
we should be unable, either in the sensible or in the 
spiritual world, to see the sun by means of the sun 
itself, unless our eyes were fashioned for the sun, 
and were kindred with the sun. This capacity of 



BOHME AND THEOSOPHY. 23 

ours to see the sun, to apprehend God, is based by 
Theosophy upon the fact that man is created in the 
image of God. Theosophy certainly admits that 
man's standpoint in the world has been dislocated by 
the Fall, that man has been thrust out of his original 
place at the centre of the creation, has been banished 
from its centre to its circumference, a fact which is 
fraught with the most serious results for human 
knowledge in the natural and sinful state. Just as 
when I wish to survey a region in the physical 
world, but am unable to do so, if I am placed in a 
position where the view is obstructed, so also in the 
spiritual world. The natural man has been placed 
by the Fall, in a position where he has lost the 
right view-point and the true horizon, where he 
cannot but see many things confusedly, and is 
inevitably deceived by optical illusions (a doctrine 
which Baader has enforced with reference to the 
Kantian antinomies of Time and Space). That 
philosophers imagine that they occupy the stand- 
point from which truth is apprehensible proves 
nothing. The optical illusions still remain, and 
simply change their character ad infinitum. For, 
no matter how persistently the knowledge of the 
natural man may change its standpoint, it never 
escapes from the worldly and circumferential. It is 
only by a new creation, by regeneration in Christ, 
that this dislocation is removed, and man is led back 
to his proper locus, to the place where he is truly 
set right, because he regains his true horizon. Only 
here can he acquire the spiritual central perception, 
when the Spirit of God is pleased to bestow it upon 
him. For the spiritual gifts are various, and the 



24 JACOB BOHME. 



revelation of the Spirit is given to every man for 
him to profit withal. 

Moreover, Theosophy pins itself to Holy Scripture. 
Certainly, with regard to Bohme, we must here again 
make an admission to the orthodox theologians who 
charge him with handling the Scriptures arbitrarily. 
Thus, we find passages in which he says : " The 
dear Moses has here a veil before his eyes." Or : 
" Moses indeed writes quite correctly, but who under- 
stands him ? " Whereupon he himself gives a novel 
exposition, wholly irreconcilable with the text, but 
suitable to his own purposes ! Again, his typical 
treatment of Scripture exposes him to no little 
censure. Still, it must be confessed that he lives 
and breathes in the fundamental perception of Scrip- 
ture, and that his soul is a soil in which the seed of 
the Word sprouts and grows, becomes green, and 
bears abundant fruit, a soil in which the Divine 
Word, to use an expression of his own, has hap- 
pened to qualificere, i.e., to unfold its properties and 
powers, has become active and productive. The 
chief aim of his investigation of Scripture, as it is 
the aim of all theosophy, is not to cling to the 
letter, or to the merely historical, but to press 
through the letter and the history to the eternal 
postulates for the word and the history, the eternal 
principles which are active in them : to effect a 
cohesion between the historical and the meta- 
physical. The same remark applies to his relation 
to church doctrine. The individual theosophist can 
be a believing professor of the Church Creed, just as 
Bohme, for instance, sincerely confessed his adherence 
to the Lutheran Church. Theosophy, as such, is 



BOHME AND THEOSOPHY. 25 

super-confessional, precisely because it moves in 
super-historical principles, in the radical conceptions 
which Scripture postulates rather than expresses, or 
from which it only partially lifts the veil in isolated 
passages. For this reason, Franz Baader, although 
a Catholic, was able to call. Bohme, with whom he 
was congenial, his real teacher. 



POSTULATES FOR BOHME'S 
THEOSOPHY. 

IV. 

IT is not with Bohme that Theosophy makes its 
first appearance in history. It dates back to 
pre-Christian times, and is found already among the 
Hebrew people. " Not only salvation, but also 
wisdom comes from the Jews," says Franz Baader. 
We are alluding to the Jewish Kabbala, a theosophic 
tradition, which has propagated and developed itself 
by the side of the historical revelation. It dates 
back to the patriarchs, to Moses, who must have 
had a deeper knowledge of the mysteries of God 
than was entrusted to men in general ; and it has 
been augmented throughout the ages. The writings 
themselves belong, for the most part, to a later 
period. Some of the books were not composed 
until the time of Christ. One important work, 
" Sohar," or " Lustre," which contains the theo- 
sophical conversations of Rabbi Simeon with his 
disciples, was commenced in the second century after 
Christ, and was not completed until the twelfth cen- 
tury. But it must here be observed that from the 
composition of the books at a later period no certain 
conclusion can be drawn as to the antiquity of their 
contents. A doctrine may be orally transmitted 



POSTULATES FOR BOHME'S THEOSOPHY. 27 

for long periods of time before being committed 
to writing, although in the Middle Ages it was 
liable to be coloured by more distinctly Christian 
influences. 

The Kabbala has a theoretical and a practical 
division. The theoretical portion consists of tra- 
ditions with regard to the Being of God, Trinity, 
the Fall of the angels and of the devil, the origin of 
darkness and matter, the Mosaic history of creation, 
which the Kabbala regards not as a history of 
creation in the most absolute sense of the term, but 
as the history of a renovated cosmic order, a resti- 
tution of the world which had been transformed into 
chaos (Tohu Vabohu) by the Fall of the angels. 
It treats of the creation and fall of man, of Redemp- 
tion, and of the consummation of the world by the 
Messiah. The practical portion has for its subject 
the cleansing of souls, sanctification, and union with 
God. 

The religious philosophy of Philo of Alexandria 
may also be classed with Jewish theosophy. 

Although some have regarded the heretical 
Gnosticism, with which the early Church had to 
contend, as a species of Christian theosophy, we 
must maintain that these systems are rather to be 
viewed as caricatures of Christian theosophy, as 
rank offshoots, which have not borne, nor can bear, 
any fruit for the Christian spirit. They are medleys 
of Greek and Oriental Paganism with the admixture 
of distorted Christian and Kabbalistic ingredients. 

The germs of a genuine theosophy are to be 
found, however, in the Middle Ages, in the great 
John Scotus Erigena, blended, it is true, with Neo- 



28 JACOB BOHME. 



platonic and Areopagitic speculation, also in Thomas 
Aquinas. But the Middle Ages were more pro- 
pitious to the culture of subjective mysticism than 
to that of Theosophy properly so called, although 
the latter is not left without witness among the 
more spcculatively-gifted Mystics. We must men- 
tion as special forerunners of Bohme the whole 
band of German Mystics, Eckart, Tauler, Suso, and 
the author of the " Theologia Germanica," who may 
also be said to have contributed to the Reformation. 
Impossible as it may be to ascertain whether Bohme 
had read their works, still, an indirect influence from 
mediaeval Mysticism, as well as from the Kabbala, 
which about the time of the Reformation had come 
into more general knowledge (Pico of Mirandola, 
Reuchlin), can scarcely be denied. 

V. 

But a leading postulate for Bohme is his epoch 
itself, and the multifarious agitation that was 'taking 
place in the minds of men, an agitation that had 
begun long before Luther, and which continued after 
him. Not only the religious consciousness, but the 
general consciousness of man, had been emancipated. 
And, simply to lay stress upon what relates to our 
present subject, the human mind was not only 
searching the Holy Scriptures, for the contents of 
which a new sense had been revealed ; it was also 
searching the book of nature with new and vigorous 
scrutiny, which indeed may be done in various 
ways. Here, then, must be mentioned the great 
Bacon of Verulam, who gave such powerful impulses 



POSTULATES FOR BOHME' S THEOSOPHY. 29 

to the whole natural science of modern times, which 
is based upon the inductive method, upon observa- 
tion, and experiment. Still, it is not Bacon who 
must be regarded as a presupposing cause for 
Bohme, whose contemporary he was, and to whom 
he furnishes the most pronounced contradiction. 
Bohme had a quite different postulate for his inter- 
pretation of nature. During the period of transition 
to the Reformation, and subsequently, there had 
sprung up a natural philosophy, which assumed, 
among many of its votaries, a theosophic stamp, 
and remained in cohesion with ideas that had arisen 
during the Middle Ages. This mystical natural 
philosophy, which is strongly influenced by the 
Kabbala, busies itself with subjects which, as a rule, 
wholly evade experimental and exact research, on 
which account they are usually regarded as chimerical 
by natural inquirers of the Baconian school. One 
characteristic feature of this Natural Philosophy is 
Magic, on which subject Agrippa of Rettesheim wrote 
a large treatise, " Philosophia Sacra." What Mys- 
ticism is with regard to the soul's relation to God, 
Magic is with regard to the mind's relation to Nature. 
Just as Mysticism seeks to place itself in relation 
to God without means, so Magic would set itself in 
relation to the penetralia of Nature without material 
means. Magic is a Nature-Mysticism in which man 
places himself in immediate relation with the spirit 
in Nature, with the mysterious Divine forces, and, 
indeed, with God Himself, wfiose mystery is the 
innermost thing in Nature. 

There is a will, an energy which, in virtue of a 
higher spiritual relation, is enabled to produce real 



30 JACOB BOHME. 



effects in Nature, without the agency of material 
means. By magic man is enabled partially to regain 
that dominion over nature which was lost at the 
Fall, and which must assuredly be conceived as 
something far more and far higher than the Baconian 
itnperium in naturam. There is both a white 
magic and a black magic, according to the good 
and evil spirits with which man has placed himself 
en rapport. There is a perceptive and an active 
magic (i.e., a visio et actio in distans). The magical 
operations which transcend the usual conditions 
of our perception and activity closely depend upon 
powers which exist in all of us, but which, in our 
habitual state, are fettered. According to Para- 
celsus, they depend upon an inward corporeity, 
which, in his opinion, we bear within us and carry 
with us after death. In contrast to our elemental 
body (composed of the four elements), which is 
dissolved in death, he accepts a sidereal body, 
which attracts to itself the influence of the stars, 
and from which, even in this life, effects of power 
may proceed. In combination with this, the magical 
operations depend upon an energetic strength of 
will and a vigorous imagination. He often mentions, 
as magical means, prayer with seeking and knock- 
ing, faith which moves mountains ; nor can he 
sufficiently emphasize the value of strong imagina- 
tion when it is kindled in a moral disposition, and 
can thus produce the most marvellous effects.* 



* Rocholl, " Beitrage zu einer Geschichte deutscher Theo- 
sophie," . 93 ; Carriere, " Die philosophische Weltanschauung 
der Reformationszeit," 83. Many researches of modern 
science prove that magic is not in every sense to be viewed 



POSTULATES FOR BOHME'S THEOSOPHY. 31 

The mystical natural philosophy, which embraces 
Magic, also includes AlcJiymy. An attempt is made 
to transmute metals by chymical processes, to 
separate the impure and pure in order, through 
continuous transmutations, finally to arrive at the 
precious essence (residuum). The Alchymists, who 
seek the Philosopher's Stone, prosecute their work 
with prayer and invocation of the " holy Name." 
The legitimate Alchymist practises his art not for 
the sake of worldly emolument, but in order to 
pierce more deeply into the mystery of nature. He 
regards it as closely akin to the transmutation 
which is to be effected in man by Regeneration 
in Christ ; and, indeed, views it in connection with 
the history of the Kingdom of God, the consumma- 
tion of which is brought about through processes 
of Digestio?i, Fermentation, Putrefaction (corruption 
of all that pertains to the old, dead, sinful nature), 
and Sublimation (refinement and exaltation of the 
good that had been buried beneath the earthly 
cerements). An attempt is also made to discover, 
by the aid of chymistry, a universal specific for 
the healing of disease. 

This natural philosophy also embraces Astrology, 
and knowledge of the influence of the stars and 
constellations upon human fortunes, upon the innate 
character and temperament of men. 

The elements of all this are found in Bohme. 
He is particularly influenced by Paracelsus, the 
celebrated physician, who has greatly injured his 

as visionary. Cf. what J. H. Fichte (in his "Anthropology 
and Psychology") has said with regard to the inward cor- 
poreity and the plastically-working imagination. 



32 JACOB BOHME 



historic fame by his insufferable boastfulness, but 
who, after all, was far higher than a common char- 
latan. Franz Baader calls him the " Eagle " among 
physicians. Bohme was influenced not only by his 
ideas, but by his certainly barbarous terminology. 
From Paracelsus he derives the three fundamental 
categories, Salt, Mercury, Sulphur, which are not, 
however, to be understood as the salt, mercury, and 
sulphur that are to be found at the apothecary's, 
but as the spirit within these (" for there is no body 
without a spirit "), which is also able to manifest 
itself in a higher corporeity than this gross and 
material one. From him Bohme derives also the 
term " Tincture," which again does not mean an 
artificial drug in fluid form, but a substantia intra 
substantiam, a mediating nature between spirit and 
corporeity, a more subtle volatile energy, which 
works both physically and spiritually. It is the 
Tincture which gives to metals their lustre, and 
to flowers their pleasant colour and fragrance. 
When the Tincture vanishes, pallor and decay 
supervene. A poem, we may say, in harmony with 
this view, may be excellently composed and elabo- 
rated, but, if it lacks the Tincture, it produces no 
effect. In addition to Tincture, we may also 
specify the words Limbus (the procreative 
power), Matrix (the conceiving power), etc., etc. 

VI. 

But what we must specially invite attention to 
is the fact that, in this natural philosophy, Bohme 
is confronted by a living intuition of nature. The 



POSTULATES FOR BOHME'S THEOSOPHY. 33 

universe is regarded as a total organism, of which 
man is the microcosm the epitome or concentra- 
tion of the universe ; the universe, or macrocosm, 
is an extension and development of that which exists 
in man in a state of concentrated unity. " The 
philosopher," says Paracelsus, " finds nothing else 
in heaven and earth save what he also finds in 
man ; the physician finds nothing in man except 
what is also possessed by heaven and earth." There 
is a living unity, cohesion, and reciprocal influence 
between the microcosm and the macrocosm. " If 
thou eatest a piece of bread," says Paracelsus, " thou 
dost taste therein heaven and earth, and all the 
stars ; " viz. : in so far as all these have co-operated 
to produce the bread, and their effects are in the 
bread ; consequently, in the very simplest things 
we stand in relation to cosmical potencies. All 
existing things in nature are encircled by a magical 
band ; they influence one another by attraction and 
repulsion, sympathy and antipathy. Nor is nature 
a mere object, in such a manner as that man alone 
as microcosm is to be regarded as subject. No! 
a universal subjective life is diffused throughout 
nature. Will and imagination are everywhere at 
work, although not self-conscious, but plastically- 
working will and imagination. The whole of nature 
is pervaded by magic. The higher seeks the 
lower, in order to impart itself to it ; the lower 
craves the higher, in order to participate in it ; the 
sun desires to bestow itself upon the earth, the earth 
yearns for the sun and opens its matrix to it. 
Nevertheless, there exist in nature, not only sym- 
pathetic, but also antipathetic forces. There is 

3 



34 JACOB BOHME. 

conflict and hostility. Theosophical natural philo- 
sophy recognizes that" a disturbance has entered 
nature, in consequence of the revolt of the creation 
against God, whereby the Temperature, i.e., the 
harmonic concord, of the forces has been disor- 
ganized, and forces that were once united have now 
become mutually antagonistic. It is true that other 
thinkers of this period, standing outside the Christian 
consciousness of sin and redemption, interpret 
nature as a total organism, but as an organism 
which is purely harmonious {e.g., Giordano Bruno). 
But Theosophy is not exclusively optimistic ; it 
recognizes in the macrocosm not only harmonies, 
but also discords. It is by redemption that all 
things are finally to be restored to "Temperature." 
And this is the object of the world's development 
until the consummation of all things. 

We have now endeavoured, in a very brief and 
cursory way, to give a sketch of this natural philo- 
sophy, which certainly conflicts with modern science 
at very many points, and the weaknesses of which 
are so often complained of, when it attempts the 
task of explaining details in nature. Confessedly, it 
will be useless to seek to give a philosophical ex- 
planation of individual natural phenomena, or, as 
Bohme says, " to explain them according to the 
spirit," unless one is in possession of the natural 
science which has its starting-point in Bacon. But, 
at the same time, we venture to observe that, with 
all due recognition of experimental physical science, 
one is under no necessity of accepting the meta- 
physical conclusions which some students of nature 
deduce from their researches. And however visionary 



POSTULATES FOR BOHME' S T7TE0 SOPHY. 35 

this old mystical natural philosophy may be, and 
however fruitless and untenable many of its results, 
it has given powerful expression to one idea, the 
validity of which can be questioned only by death 
and soullessness. We refer to that idea of Life, 
both in the macrocosm and the microcosm, which 
was of such high significance for Jacob Bohme. It 
is true that he possesses this idea, so to say, a priori, 
and in an eminent degree. But when we search 
for the predisposing causes and suggestions of his 
theory, we are bound to repeat that this idea, kindled 
in his inward man, was strengthened and developed 
by the view which confronted him in this philosophy. 
If we wish to understand Bohme, we must fix our 
attention upon this idea of Life, for it is the radical 
condition for the comprehension of his theosophical 
fundamental-problem. 



THE PROBLEM. 
VII. 

THE fundamental task which Bohme has set him- 
self is to apprehend God, and in this light to 
apprehend the world. The God whom Bohme seeks 
to know is not any kind of a God, an unknown God, 
such as is sought after the fashion of earthly 
philosophers, without any presuppositions whatever, 
while the thinker, like Robinson Crusoe, speculates 
in perfect isolation, gazing out from the solitary 
island of his own thought into the abstract infinity 
of the ocean and horizon. The God, whom Bohme 
seeks to know, is the God of Christianity, the God of 
revelation and of the Church, in whom he believes, 
the God who is Holiness and Love, whose mani- 
festation he is absolutely certain of, but whose 
depths he desires to explore. It has been said that 
it was Bohme's fundamental task to know God as 
the Triune, and to apprehend the similitude of the 
Trinity in the whole creation. This, indeed, it is 
admissible to urge, and we may add that his 
eminent significance for Protestant theology is shown 
by this very fact, that whereas the Reformation had 
contented itself with reviewing and refashioning 
the dogmas that belong to practical soteriology, 
Bohme took up the speculative dogmas which the 



THE PROBLEM. 37 

Reformation had passively accepted from Catholi- 
cism, at the head of which stands the doctrine of 
the Trinity. In this respect, Bohme pointed back 
to the Eastern Church which has absorbed itself in 
the mysteries of the Trinity and of the Incarnation. 
Nevertheless, Bohme' s original individuality is attested 
by the fact that to assign the Trinity as his funda- 
mental problem, without more minute qualifications 
would be to characterize him with extreme inade- 
quacy. The problem which is of cardinal importance 
for Bohme is : the apprehension of the God of Reve- 
lation as the Living God. The idea of Life is his 
fundamental idea, which he tries to work out both 
in the conception of God and in the conception of 
the world ; and his theosophical follower Oetinger 
was moving very closely along his master's path 
when he wrote his " Theologia ex idea, vitae deducta." 
It will, therefore, be well for us provisionally to look 
away from the subject of the Trinity, and, undis^ 
turbed by Trinitarian conceptions, to think only of 
Life and the Living God. 

If we endeavour to form a conception of life, we 
must necessarily conceive unity in a multiplicity 
which is not reduced to unity from without, but which 
unfolds itself from an internal unity, and must con- 
sequently, from the very beginning, be enveloped in 
it, as an undeveloped irX^payfjua, e.g., a seed-corn. Of 
that empty unity which is barren, and out of which 
nothing can be born, Bohme seeks to know nothing, 
and he here agrees with the poet, who says : 



" Kein Lebendiges ist ein Eins, 
Immer ist's ein Vieles." 



82695 



38 JACOB BOHME. 

The more fully Life corresponds to its name, the 
more will this unity in multiplicity manifest itself as 
a self-productive unity, as self-movement, self-evolu- 
tion by its own native powers ; it will reveal itself 
as its own cause, its own effect, its own goal. The 
movement of Life is teleological, or full of design, 
for Life is a will, a tendency which, through the 
medium of its own properties and powers, seeks to 
produce itself as its own object, as self-consistent 
and harmonious unity. For Bohme, the idea of Life 
is inseparable from the idea of Manifestation. Life 
is an unfolding from darkness to light, from the 
hidden, indefinite, and unknowable to the manifested, 
definite, and knowable. But Life and Manifestation 
can only be conceived of as a movement between 
contrasts, and as the mediation of these. Without 
contrasts, there is neither life nor manifestation. 
Without contrast, without another, there is only 
eternal immobility, stillness, and repose, in which 
nothing can be distinguished or perceived. Inas- 
much, then, as Bohme seeks to know God as the 
Original Life and the Source of Life, he, at the same 
time, seeks to know Him as the Spirit that mani- 
fests Itself to Itself, by means of its own inward 
contrasts, seeks to apprehend, separate, and combine 
the momenta in the process of the Divine Life and 
Manifestation, which has no beginning in time nor 
any end in time, but in which God produces Him- 
self, from eternity to eternity, in a blessed and 
incessantly self-renewing cycle. 

The conception of God which is sought by Bohme 
thus presents the most direct contrast to the con- 
ception of the Mystics. While Mysticism, from 



THE PROBLEM. 39 

Dionysius Areopagiticus down to Schleiermacher, de- 
fines God as the unvarying nameless One, for whom 
every designation is inadequate, and who transcends 
every conception, because every conception contains 
contrasts, while God is above all contrasts, Bohme 
demands a God who manifests Himself in differences, 
in contrasts, in definite relations ; and only this God 
is to him the true God. And while Mysticism ex- 
cludes from the Being of God the faintest trace of 
corporeity, demanding that all symbolical images must 
be swept far from God (wherein, however, it is incon- 
sistent, seeing that it designates God now as pure 
Light, and again as pure Darkness !), Bohme teaches 
an eternal nature in God, and ascribes to God 
Fancy, or, as he terms it, Imagination {imago), an 
image-shaping, form-fashioning energy, of which 
more will be said below. A more definite oppo- 
sition between two views would not be possible. 

VIII. 

Bohme is conscious that when he seeks to appre- 
hend the Being of Beings, in Life and Manifesta- 
tion, everything that applies merely to the created 
and finite life which is fettered in limitations, and the 
vital source of which is only derivative, must be ex- 
cluded. Whether he has always succeeded in this 
exclusion is another question. But it is with this 
intention that he seeks to apprehend what has been 
termed the theogonistic process, the eternal Genera- 
tion and Self-production of God. He seeks in this 
nothing but what the Church has sought, and has 
effected in its doctrines of the Trinity, of the eternal 



4 o JACOB BOHME. 

generation of the Son from the Father, and of 
the Procession of the Spirit from the Father and 
the Son, doctrines of which the Athanasian 
Symbol is the great memorial. But Bohme seeks 
it in his own way ! He cannot confine himself to 
the conception of the Trinity which is presented to 
him in church-tradition, although he sincerely sub- 
scribes to this. The Church representation moves 
only in abstract conceptions, in scholastic formulae, 
and although it alludes to Generation, Birth, and 
Procession, it is not clearly perceptible that we have 
here, in any full sense, the Living God. The 
doctrine of Scripture and the unanimous Church 
doctrine is that God is a Spirit (John iv. 24). But 
if Spirit is to exist in life and power and luminous 
manifestation, it must hold within itself its other, its 
contrast. But the contrast of Spirit is Nature, the 
unconscious, but nevertheless self-moving, instinc- 
tively-working principle. Only when there is in 
God an eternal Nature can we know Him as the 
absolutely-perfect Spirit. Bohme's problem is, con- 
sequently, not only a problem of unity and triplicity 
(problem of Trinity), but a problem of unity and 
duality (of Spirit and nature, seeing that God must 
be conceived of as at the same time Spirit and 
Nature), and this is the problem which for Bohme 
occupies the first rank. In the Divine Unity there 
must be an original and eternal Duality, in which 
nature is the medium and instrument for Spirit, is, 
indeed, a resisting and counter-principle, so that the 
Spirit, through the conquest of this counter-principle, 
may succeed in manifesting its own energy. It is 
only when the theogonistic process moves through a 



THE PROBLEM. 41 

reciprocity of relation between these two principles, 
the principle of Spirit and the principle of Nature 
that we dare hope to realize a Living Trinity. 
With the postulate of the eternal Nature in God, 
Bohme promises us an apprehension of the Being of 
all Beings, an apprehension which will not consist 
simply of abstract and lifeless conceptions, as in the 
Church Theology, but will be an apprehension " in 
the highest sensuousness," i.e., in keenest perception, 
wealth of colour, and rich fulness of tone. 



IX. 

Nature in God ! Many who have been accus- 
tomed to the idea of the pure spirituality of God 
will be appalled, and will fear that we wish to 
introduce materialistic views, especially as at the 
same time they hear mention of Salt, Mercury, Sul- 
phur, the Sour, the Bitter, etc. But we would call 
attention to the fact that these definitions are figura- 
tive and symbolical, and that when Nature is affirmed 
in God, it is, in comparison with what we call Nature, 
something infinitely more subtile and super-material, 
is not matter at all, but rather a source for matter, 
a plenitude of living forces and energies. Nor is 
the idea of Nature in God so foreign as may appear 
at first sight. The religious consciousness believes 
in the Almighty God. Should it, therefore, be so 
alien and remote a thought, that in the depth of 
the Omnipotence there lies a irXyjpcDiJLa of Nature, a 
totality of forces which the Almighty Will can place 
outside Itself in what assumes the aspect of a certain 
separate independence, even prior to the creation of 



42 JACOB BOHME. 

this world ? Readers with any degree of philosophical 
knowledge will certainly be familiar with the thought 
that in every existing thing there is a distinction 
between an ideal and a real aspect. The ideal is 
that which we can absorb in our consciousness, in 
our thought ; the real is that which is never thus 
absolutely merged in thought, but which at the 
same time is inseparable from thought, if thought is 
to gain figure and plastic shape. Thought gives 
things their form ; but the form demands matter, 
material, substratum, in order that it may be able 
to impress itself upon this, as it is often illustrated 
by the example of a work of art, which never achieves 
perfection by the mere form alone, or by the mere 
material alone, but by the happy wedding of both. 

It is the constantly repeated endeavour of philo- 
sophy to reconcile idealism and realism, the world 
of thought and the world of things, idea and reality. 
An un-ideated reality is as unsatisfactory to our 
mind as is an unreal and amorphous idea. It is 
Bohme's intention to reconcile idealism and realism 
in the conception of God, to apprehend in God at 
the same time an ideal and a real side, an aspect 
of spirit and an aspect of Nature, an inward and 
an outward. For, inasmuch as it holds true of every 
being that this dualism is found within it, must 
not this also apply in the most eminent degree to 
the Being of Beings, to God ? 

Moreover, other thinkers besides Bohme have 
held this idea of a Nature in God, although with 
modifications. That is to say, they interpret Nature 
in God as the Nature which is known to us, this 
material universe in which we live. The personal 



THE PROBLEM. 43 

God is thus the ideal principle of the world, and the 
world itself is God's real aspect, His body. Although 
this doctrine is not simple pantheism, it must be 
defined as semi-pantheism, or as a pantheism of 
personality. For, on this view, God, as Spirit, is 
only the self-conscious centre of the world, is only 
the self-conscious unity in a world, that is mapped 
out in time and space. Thus in Giordano Bruno, who 
holds that there must be matter in God, as that where- 
in God fashions out His ideas. But he interprets 
this " fashioning " as the same that manifests itself 
to us in our well-known material universe. In this 
connection Schelling claims special notice, in his cele- 
brated "Treatise on Human Freedom" (1809), which 
vividly recalls Bohme, while, however, Schelling takes 
his own path, and one very different from Bohme's. 
God is here the ideal-principle of the world, is self- 
conscious, self-reflected, self-equipped Intelligence ; 
but He requires an eternal Nature as His substra- 
tum, a Nature which, as a blindly-working, resisting 
medium, is destined to be overcome and trans- 
figured in Spirit, and which Spirit requires in order 
that it may manifest itself, actualize itself, and 
acquire reality and shape. According to Schelling, 
the Deity proceeds from eternity under two initia : 
an ideal beginning as the self-conscious Spirit, and 
a real beginning as the obscure Nature-basis. 
Through this permanent reciprocity of relation be- 
tween the Spirit and the obscure basis (in which 
latter evil has its root, although not as, ab initio, 
evil), the various stages of natural life are developed, 
the various periods of history are evolved with the 
contrast between Sin and Redemption ; a self- 



44 JACOB BOH ME. 

unfolding epic or drama with its crises and con- 
flicts ; a cosmogony, prosecuting itself throughout 
all time ; a cosmogony which is also a theogonistic 
process. For although, viewed upon His ideal side, 
God is certainly, from the very beginning, self- 
conscious Intelligence, still He does not become a 
complete living and actual Personality until the close 
of the development. It is as the result of this 
development that the " Becoming One " becomes 
realized Love. This view was stated and defended 
by Schelling with strenuous polemic [in his famous 
" Denkmal "] against the attack of Jacobi. Schelling 
affirms that a Theism without Naturalism, the doc- 
trine of a Natureless God, is a sapless, powerless, 
marrowless Theism ; while Jacobi, for his part, con- 
tinued to protest against a developing God, and to 
maintain God as, from all eternity, self-complete and 
free from the world, without, however, being quite 
able to confute Schelling. 

In one respect all who occupy the Christian 
standpoint will agree with Jacobi ; viz., in protesting 
against a God who develops through temporal exist- 
ence, and who needs to pass through a history in 
order to become actual. Christianity cannot admit 
that the temporal world is necessarily indispensable 
to the Being of God, but proclaims a God who is 
perfect and blessed in Himself from all eternity, and 
whose love is not the result of the world's develop- 
ment, but its postulate. It is the God of Chris- 
tianity whom Bohme is desirous of apprehending, 
and he consequently states the problem in much 
higher terms than does Schelling in his " Treatise." 
But, inasmuch as Christianity does not teach a sapless 



THE PROBLEM. 45 

and powerless Theism, a natureless God (a fact to 
which Holy Scripture testifies on every page), Bohme 
supposes an eternal Nature in God, prior to the 
Creation. True, the difficulty here presents itself 
that this eternal Nature in God lies outside our expe- 
rience, and thus cannot become the object of our 
immediate perception, much less of so-called exact 
natural research. And natural research takes this 
convenient opportunity of lodging the charge of 
visionariness, a charge, however, which shows at 
once that those who make it do not at all compre- 
hend what is here being discussed. Those whose 
line of thought is Christian or, in any degree, con- 
sistently theistic, will, when they have gained a 
general grasp of the gist of the problem, feel the 
necessity of conceiving God as the God who lives 
not merely in the temporal world, but also in Him- 
self, will be formally compelled to think in God an 
analogon to what we call Nature, although this 
by no means involves their agreement at all points 
with the mode in which Bohme has worked out the 
problem. 

We are well aware that Bohme's doctrine has 
been variously interpreted, even by thinkers of con- 
siderable repute, a circumstance which has been 
partly occasioned by the defects in Bohme's mode 
of statement, inasmuch as he constantly speaks in 
symbols drawn from this present world. Hegel has 
interpreted Bohme in a purely pantheistic sense. But 
it has become very generally known that Hegel, not- 
withstanding his admiration for Bohme's speculative 
power, had but a very superficial acquaintance with 
his writings, and, moreover, was disposed to " Hege- 



46 JACOB BOHME. 

lianize " him, and to make him a herald of his own. 
Others interpret Bdhme's doctrine as a pantheism of 
personality, and suppose that his view of Nature in 
God was essentially the same as Schelling's, in the 
above-mentioned " Treatise." For our own part, we 
maintain that careful study of Bohme will establish 
Franz Baader's conclusion that Bohme's God (as 
stated above) is the God who is perfect in Himself, 
prior to creation and the world. We base this 
view, not so much upon isolated passages, as upon 
Bohme's general train of ideas. Still, if individual 
passages are demanded, we may quote the well- 
known paragraph in the " Signatura Rerum" (16. 2), 
" For God has not brought forth creation that He 
should be thereby perfect, but for His own manifes- 
tation, that is, for the great joy and glory. Not that 
this joy first began with the creation. No ! for it 
was from Eternity, in the great Mystery, yet only 
as a spiritual melody and sport in itself. The crea- 
tion is the same sport out of Himself, an instrument 
of the Eternal Spirit, a great harmony of manifold 
instruments which are all tuned into one harmony." 
Or, in another passage, where it is asked : " What 
was, prior to the existence of the angels and the 
creation ? " and the reply is : " God was, alone with 
light and fire ; or God was, alone with two fire- 
centres (the lucid and the dark fire-centre). And 
the angels and the souls of men and all creatures 
lay in an idea or spiritual model in which God from 
eternity beheld His works." 

X. 

But while Bohme seeks to apprehend God in 



THE PROBLEM. 47 



His inward life of manifestation, he also seeks to 
apprehend Him in His manifestation in the world ; 
out of the Self-Perfect God he desires to grasp and 
to explain the created world with all its contrasts. 
What most afflicts his soul, as he contemplates the 
world, is the pervading conflict of everything with 
all else, one thing struggling with, buffeting, biting, 
pushing, crushing another. Evil, not only in the 
human world, but in the whole world, evil in its 
cosmical sense, is the burden that so heavily weighs 
upon his mind. He is incessantly struggling with 
this " dark point." " For it cannot be said that fire 
is in God, much less that air, water, and earth are 
in Him ; only it is plain that all things have pro- 
ceeded out of that Original. Neither can it be 
said that Death, Hell-fire, or Sorrowfulness is in God ; 
but it is known that these things have come out 
of that Original. For God has made no devil out 
of Himself, but angels to live in joy. Therefore, 
the source or fountain of the cause must be sought ; 
viz. : what is the prima materia, or first matter of 
evil ? and that in the originality of God as well 
as in the creatures. For all is out of God " (" De 
Tribus Princip.," 1, 5). Bohme fell into deep dejec- 
tion and gloom, when he saw that there was good 
and evil in all things, and that the ungodly as well 
as the pious prospered in this world. No Scripture 
could console him, and he fell into heathenish 
thoughts. Finally, however, he penetrated, "through 
violent tempests and through the Gates of Hell, to 
the innermost Birth or Geniture of the Deity" 
("Aurora," 19, 4-13). And he discovered the 
Foundation of Hell, not indeed manifested but in 



48 JACOB BOHME. 

mystery, not as a reality but as a possibility. He 
searches the depths of wickedness and of Satan, but 
also the depths of the Redemption, whereby the 
world, which had lost its " Temperature " by reason 
of the fall of Lucifer and of Adam, is once more 
to be restored by Christ to " Temperature " (or 
proper arrangement and harmony of powers), 
restored to that proper place which is well-pleasing 
unto God. 

XI. 

As it is our purpose in the following pages to 
attempt a sketch and a criticism of the solution of 
this problem which has been given by Bohme, we 
do not forget that, in the solution of a philosophical 
problem, account must be taken not only of the 
subject matter, the result to which the inquiry has 
led, but also of the form, the scientific basis. It is 
tolerably well known that in a formal and dialec- 
tical respect Jacob Bohme is exceedingly imperfect, 
although it is also known that on points of detail 
he has a firm dialectical grip. This pervading defect 
is largely occasioned by the fact that Bohme is in 
an ecstatic condition, in which he is overwhelmed 
by his subject, by its vast riches, which he cannot 
succeed in appropriating by any calm and delibe- 
rately reasoned process of thought, for which reason 
his mode of treatment often becomes unintelligible 
and chaotic. He sees everything, as it were, in a 
complexity which it is extremely hard to unravel. 
He is himself a theogonistic nature, who desires to 
give birth to the conception of God, which stirs and 



THE PROBLEM. 49 

throbs and travails within him, revolves within him 
like an incessantly-whirling wheel, a wheel of Ezekiel 
which seeks to escape from within him to the light 
of day, and often causes him grievous birth-pangs. 
He himself is conscious of the inadequacy of his 
representation, and, accordingly, is for ever repeating 
himself, and explaining over again what he has 
explained many times before, while the reader is 
impatient for the argument to advance. But amid 
his diffuse explanations and descriptions the reader 
gains only too frequently the impression of a vast, 
wind-swept, and roaring forest, wherein he can neither 
understand nor hear a word. Still, among these 
defects, we must not ignore what he has actually 
given us. When it is said of him that he is a 
nature that seeks to give birth to wisdom, but 
cannot do so because he is unable to struggle out 
of the chaotic and extreme abundance that over- 
whelms him, and at the mercy of which he lies 
(Schelling), this criticism must be qualified by the 
fact that it was not a system, but an idea, which he 
brought to the birth, and that by this birth some- 
thing was placed in the intellectual world which was 
not previously present, and without the presupposi- 
tion of which it would be impossible to explain 
some of the most profound intellectual movements 
of modern times. But what, undeniably, makes the 
comprehension of these ideas difficult, is the fact 
that Bohme constantly employs physical categories 
(like salt, mercury, sulphur, etc.), where mental 
categories, either logical or ethical, ought to have 
been used ; and that his great wealth of poetic 
imagery and symbolism continually conceals his 

4 



50 JACOB BOHME. 

thought, instead of revealing it. It is absolutely 
necessary to fasten upon certain recurring main 
thoughts, abiding thoughts that keep their place 
and, so to speak, light up the multiplicity of the 
ever-changing phantasmagoria of thoughts and 
figures, which, as so many have complained, so 
often glimmer before one's eyes and beat tumul- 
tuously about one's head, while at the same time 
it is impossible to grasp them firmly. There is 
in Bohme's writings a twofold light : the restless, 
flickering, and fancifully-glittering which often dazzles 
the eye, and the calmly-beaming light which shines 
through the former, and to which the lines may be 
justly applied : 

" Wie durch des Nordlicht's bewegliche Strahlen 
Ewige Sterne schimmern ! " 

It is these " eternal stars," breaking through the 
dazzling confusion of splendour, to which one must 
look ; or, to change the illustration, it is upon these 
notes, these voices from a higher spiritual world, 
which at certain intervals ring so clearly through the 
roaring forest, that one's attention must be fixed. 

It is one conspicuous excellence in Bohme's mode 
of treatment that by philosophizing in his mother 
tongue, by the side of the " barbaric," he has enriched 
the former with no small number of highly expressive 
words, which have been adopted by later thinkers. 
The readers of ScJielling's above-mentioned " Treatise 
on Human Freedom," in 1 809. were surprised and 
enraptured by a wealth of new and previously- 
unheard expressions and turns of speech in their 
mother tongue. But all of these belong to Bohme, 



THE PROBLEM. 51 



or are fashioned on the model of his symbolic 
language. Bohme himself lays great stress upon 
the fact that he philosophizes in his mother tongue. 
He laments over those who have really beheld 
nothing of the truth, but in whom pride has spoiled 
everything, because they will not use their native 
speech, but fancy that they must paste and lard their 
discourse with foreign words, to prove that they 
are learned men ! He thus apostrophizes the 
mother tongue : " But hearken, thou simple mother 
who dost bring into the world children that are 
ashamed of thee and despise thee ! Thus saith the 
Spirit who is thy Father : ' Be not discouraged ! I 
am thy strength and thy might, and I will give thee 
a comforting draught in thine old age. Because all 
thy children, whom thou hast brought forth and 
nursed, despise thee, and will not cherish thee in 
thine extreme old age, I will console thee in thine 
age, and will give thee a young son ; he shall abide 
in thy house as long as thou livest, and shall nurse 
thee and comfort thee against all the uproar and 
boastfulness of thy proud children.' " 

Finally, we will venture to remark, in Bohme's 
favour, that logic, however great the value that may 
be assigned to it, is by no means the chief thing in 
philosophy. It is the secondary thing, the medium 
by which perception is made clearer. The first 
thing, upon which all true philosophical progress 
depends, is speculative, intelligent perception, In- 
tuition, without which all logic is barren, as experience 
amply proves. The keenest inquiry of a critic of 
Bohme will, therefore, not be " Has he reasoned cor- 
rectly ? " but " Has he seen aright ? " Meanwhile 



52 JACOB BOHME. 



however, if any should hold that Bohme's standpoint 
must be defined, on account of its defective form, 
as a pre-scientific standpoint, that is, a standpoint 
which lies in advance of science properly so called, 
and that he is simply a precursor of Christian 
science, we shall offer no contradiction. Ancient 
philosophy presents similar phenomena ; e.g., Pytha- 
goras. But the main question is, whether philosophy 
and theology can avoid taking notice of his ideas. 

As we are now about to describe the solution 
which Bohme has attempted of the all-embracing 
problem, we refer the reader to the original treatises 
in Schiebler's edition ; to Hamberger's well-known 
and excellent work : " Systematic Epitome of 
Bohme's Doctrine ;" and to Franz Baader's collected 
works, especially his " Lectures on Jacob Bohme." 
Other works will be occasionally cited, as they may 
bear upon the matter in hand. A synopsis of 
Bohme-literature lies beyond our present field. 

Our discussion will fall under two main sections : 

I. God and the Uncreated Heaven. 

II. God and the Created World. 



I. 

GOD AND THE UNCREATED 
HEAVEN. 

XII. 

BOHME frequently repeats that, in order to under- 
stand and to represent the Generation of God 
(the Theogonistic process), one must always keep it 
in mind that this does not take place in a temporal 
manner, in Succession, but in an eternal manner, 
in Simultaneity, or, all at once, in an infinite cycle 
or circular movement. But this is precisely where 
the difficulty lies for our human thought, which is 
chained to the fragmentary and piecemeal, and to 
that which advances in succession : " If I had the 
tongue of an angel and thou the intelligence of an 
angel, we should understand one another very well. 
But now I must speak in an earthly fashion with my 
half-dead understanding, and since I am only a 
spark, a particle of the whole, I cannot describe to 
thee the whole Deity in a circle all at once. I 
must set one thing after another, that thou mayest 
at last behold the whole. Yes ! I must even speak 
sometimes in a diabolical manner, as if the Light 
were kindled out of darkness, and as if Deity had a 
beginning ! Otherwise I cannot instruct thee. But 
it is not so ; God has no beginning ; or more truly, 



54 JACOB BOHME. 



He has an eternal beginning and an eternal end. 
Therefore, I exhort the reader not to understand 
me in an earthly sense, but to interpret everything 
in a high and supernatural way." 

When one reads Bohme's description of the theo- 
gonistic process, it undeniably appears as though God 
passed through a history, marked at many points by 
tumultuous and chequered scenes, a history with 
crises and conflicts between light and darkness, with 
appalling throes and bursts of apprehension, but also 
with brilliant victories and spoils. It should, how- 
ever, be remembered here that Bohme thinks, like 
a poet, in figures and symbols, and cannot think 
in any other way ; that he is compelled to write, as 
Oetinger says, "optice et phcenomenologice." He 
does not mean that God becomes through a temporal 
history ; but he wishes to consider and point out the 
eternal momenta in the Divine Life-movement, and 
in the process of the Divine Self-consciousness, 
where all is, at one and the same time, Being and 
Self-production. Without an eternal life-movement, 
God would be only dead existence ; for it is only 
death that is without " process." And without 
eternal existence and unchangeable self-resemblance, 
God would be only mere movement that had re- 
verted to time and history. Therefore, inasmuch as 
Bohme desires to point out the various momenta in 
the Being of Beings, he isolates and separates the 
individual " moment," seeks to apprehend this in 
and for itself and to show what condition and quality 
belong to this " moment " when it is conceived of, 
as severed from its cohesion with the whole, and, as 
it were, left to itself. 



GOD AND THE UNCREATED HEA VEN 55 

But he also demands that, in contrast to this 
isolation, this " moment " shall be placed in that 
rhythmic movement and harmony of the whole, in 
which it has often an entirely different character 
from that which it possesses when it is viewed in 
abstract isolation. " Just as a sour or bitter apple 
is constrained by the sun, so that it becomes pleasant 
to eat, thus also does God retain His attributes, but 
they manifest themselves in a pleasant manner. 
When the sour or bitter is viewed in itself, when it 
is isolated (separated) for the taste, it is viewed 
abstractly ; in reality, when it is subjected to the 
constraining power of the sun, and is in combination 
with other qualities, it does not express itself qua 
sour or qua bitter, although these elements are con- 
tributory to the whole. The bitter quality also 
certainly exists in God, not, however, like the gall in 
a man, but as an everlasting power, a triumphant 
fountain of joy." One must always keep in mind, 
while reading Jacob Bohme, that he continually 
moves, with a stream of metaphors, in the represen- 
tation of isolated (severed) momenta, which repre- 
sentation, however, has significance only for our 
thought, because it has no corresponding reality. 
It is necessary, on this account, constantly to correct 
and supplement his description by transposing the 
successive into the simultaneous, by referring the 
separated and specially prominent elements back to 
the whole, to the circular movement (from which they 
have been separated for our instruction), and by seeing 
what part they play in the whole. It will then often 
appear that that which, on an abstract consideration, 
was tumultuous and chequered is, in reality, in the 



56 JACOB BOHME. 



deepest calm, is only in latency, in concealment. 
(A thought which applies very forcibly to his 
description of the seven natural properties or funda- 
mental forces) If we neglect this, as many neglect 
it, and pay the penalty by falling into hopeless con- 
fusion, we do not comply with Bohme's stipulation, 
which is, that he is not to be interpreted in an 
earthly, but in a high and supernatural manner. 



XIII. 

THE ABYSS AND THE ETERNAL WILL. THE 

IMAGINATION AND THE ETERNAL IDEA. 

THE POTENTIAL TRINITY. 

THE first link in Bohme's theosophic train of 
thought is the unit which he designates as the Abyss, 
where all as yet is in indifference. Here as yet 
there is no ground, cause, or basis, no centre, no 
principle, nothing defining or defined, because 
ground, cause or basis, can only appear when the 
different, the definite appears. Here there is neither 
light nor darkness, light nor fire, neither good nor 
evil ; here there is neither height nor depth, great 
nor small, thick nor thin. Here is everything and 
nothing. For all is stillness, in which nothing 
actual stirs. In this stillness lies the whole Trinity, 
Father, Son, and Spirit, who have not yet come 
forth. Bohme " must speak in diabolical fashion 
as if God had a beginning, or else he cannot instruct 
us ; " here lies the whole creation, with everything 
that is in heaven or upon earth. This abyss, which 
is everything and nothing, Bohme often designates 



GOD AND THE UNCREATED HE A VEN 57 

as the " mysterium magnum" and also as the 
Eternal Chaos, with regard to which it must be 
observed that chaos, in Theosophy, does not signify 
disorder and confusion, but a complex TrXrjpcofxa, 
which has not yet developed itself. An egg, for 
example, from which a bird comes forth, is called 
in Theosophy, the chaos of the bird. 

But in the recesses of this abyss, this mysterium 
magnum, there is a bottomless unoriginated Will, 
which Will, however, we are not to explore more 
closely, because it would disturb us, and fill us with 
confusion. We can readily comprehend that it would 
disturb us to search into this Night of Indifference, 
to seek conditions and varieties where no such 
things exist. On the other hand, it is precisely this 
Will which Bohme desires to explore when it steps 
out of the night, determines itself to its own mani- 
festation, and assigns to itself progressive conditions 
or determinations. In connection with this Will, 
Bohme also often speaks of a great, enormous Eye, 
in which all marvels, all shapes, colours, and figures 
lie concealed. But this Eye sees nothing, because 
it only looks out into an undefined, illimitable 
infinity, where it meets with no object. 

XIV. 

" A Will is thin or obscure, as it were nothing ; 
therefore, it is desirous, it willeth to be somewhat, 
that it might be manifest in itself." But still, this 
Will demands or desires only itself, for there is 
nothing else for it to desire ; it seeks to possess 
itself and its irXijpojfxa, and to manifest itself in 



58 JACOB BOHME. 



itself. The first thing it does is to fashion for itself 
a Mirror, in which it can behold itself. Of what 
quality, now, is this Mirror ? One would be most 
readily disposed to think of it as a reason-mirror, 
a thought-mirror ; and there are those whom this 
mirror has reminded of the eternal, universally- 
valid, and necessary laws of thought, without which 
God cannot see Himself and His real side, the 
ontological determinations which form the main 
subject of Hegel's logic. Or one might, per oppo- 
sitionem, think of Kant, whose entire theoretic 
philosophy is a doctrine of the mirror, certainly 
only a miniature mirror in comparison with Bohme's, 
viz. : the doctrine of the forms of thought and 
intuition in which not God but man beholds himself 
and the whole world of experience (with which Kant 
combines the thought* or " thing unthinkable," that 
the mirror can never show us things as they are 
in themselves, but only their surface or phenomenon, 
which, indeed, certainly applies to the earthly, 
material mirrors we have upon our walls). We 
cannot, however, pronounce any of these explana- 
tions to be satisfactory. Bohme's mirror is not only 
a reason-mirror, a thought-mirror, but also a mirror 
of imagination and of fancy, a combination of reason 
and imagination ; and, if philosophical parallels be 
demanded, one must immediately think of Schelling's 
intellectual intuition, transferred to God. Bohme's 
mirror shows infinitely more than mere logical 
forms. To the imaginative Eye that looks into 
the mirror, it reveals the whole TrXTJpcjfia, shapes, 
colours, and figures ; indeed as we shall find in 
the sequel, it reflects an image of the Triune God 



GOD AND THE UNCREATED HE A VEN 59 

Himself. There is nothing either in heaven or upon 
earth which did not, at the beginning, become mani- 
fest in this mirror. Bohme designates this mirror 
as God's visibility, or as the eternal Wisdom, the 
eternal Idea. And he also calls this idea a Maiden. 
One must be prepared for very frequent shiftings 
of metaphor and symbol in Bohme ! What just 
now was a mirror, is now a maiden who stands, in 
the dawn of eternity, before the God who gives 
Himself up to Self-manifestation, and who, so to 
speak, allures Him to manifest Himself, by showing 
Him the exceeding riches of His glory. The 
eternal Idea, or Sophia, is described as a maiden, 
because it engenders nothing, but only receives and 
reflects the image. Although co-eternal with God, 
it is not God of God, but simply the friend of God. 
It is, however, impersonal and selfless, because it 
is only an' instrument for God's manifestation. We 
shall see in the sequel that it furnishes a contrast 
to the eternal Nature (which is also God's instrument, 
although subordinate to the idea), and that it will 
manifest itself to us, in union with the eternal 
nature, as the Glory of God, wherein the mirroring 
first finds its consummation.* 



* " For the nothing causes the willing that it is desirous, 
and the desiring is an Imagination wherein the Will in the 
Looking-glass of Wisdom discovers itself, and so it imagines 
out of the abyss into itself, and makes to itself in the imagina- 
tion a ground in itself, and impregnates itself with the 
Imagination out of the Wisdom, viz. : out of the virgin-like 
looking-glass, which, there, is a mother without generating, 
without willing." 

"If the looking-glass of Wisdom were not, then could no 
fire or light be generated ; it all takes its original from the 
looking-glass of Deity." " Incarn. Christ.," II., cc. ii., iii. 



6o JACOB BOHME. 



XV. 

The mirror in God is not complete at the outset, 
but fashions itself during the very process of mirror- 
ing. 

What first takes place is only this, that there 
arises an abstract outline of that which, in the sequel, 
is to become full of vivid life and wealth of colour. 
The bottomless incomprehensible Will, which only 
is one, is nothing and yet everything, apprehends 
and discovers itself, and the unity beholds itself as 
trinity, and the trinity beholds itself as unity. Thus, 
the first only Will, without beginning, which is 
neither evil nor good, generates in itself the one 
eternal good as a comprehensible Will, which is the 
Son of the abysmal, bottomless will, wherein this 
primal Will apprehends and finds itself, and which 
is co-eternal with the unoriginated Will (God of 
God) ("Election," I., c. x.). And the unsearchable 
bottomless Will goes forth through its eternally found 
or invented Will, and brings itself into an eternal 
Visibility of itself. And that first bottomless Will 
is called Father, and the second, the conceived or 
generated Will, is called Son. And the exit of the 
bottomless Will, through the conceived Ens, or Being, 
or Son, is called Spirit, for it drives out the con- 
ceived Ens, or Being, forth from itself into a moving 
or life of the Will, as a life of the Father and the 
Son ; but that which is gone forth, or, as Bohme 
also calls it, the fourth effect (or operation), is called 
the Wisdom or Visibility of God, wherein Father, 
Son, and Spirit (not one individual of these, but the 



GOD AND THE UNCREATED HE A VEN. 61 

whole triad) ever behold and discover themselves. 
Bohme develops this more fully by sayingthat al 
the energies or forces of the Father are concentrated 
in the Son ; but the Spirit breathes them forth and 
diffuses them, "just as when the sun's rays shed 
themselves out of the sun's magick fire, and mani- 
fest the power, virtue, or influence of the sun:" In 
the Divine Visibility or Wisdom, the Spirit of God 
plays with the radiated powers as with one single 
power (wherein the multiplicity is consequently 
restored to unity). The Wisdom is neither great 
nor small, has neither beginning nor end, but is 
infinite, and its form is inexpressible. It stands 
before God as a Virgin, is still and speechless (and, 
therefore, must not be confounded with the Son, 
who is the Word). Nor is it to be confounded 
with the Spirit, for it is passive, while the Spirit 
is active. In this mirror the Holy Trinity beholds 
itself and all the wonders of eternity (the riches of 
the Glory of God), which have neither beginning 
nor end. 

XVI. 

BUT in all that has been hitherto considered, in 
this first mirroring, we have not yet reached the 
Living God. " It is a life, and still it is no life, a 
figure of life and an image of life" (" Six Theosoph. 
Points," I., vii.). God beholds Himself thus far only 
as a potentiality of becoming Trinitarian, and He 
beholds in the mirror only a wealth of potential glories 
or miracles, which are not yet realized. He is also 
absorbed in an immediate mystic contemplation, 



62 JACOB BOHME. 

wherein the distinctions are only self-entangled, but 
are not yet actual and separate contrasts, on which 
account, moreover, Bohme expressly asserts that as 
yet there are only three operations, but not three 
Persons, which means, in clearer language, that, 
hitherto, we have no real self-consciousness. For 
real Trinity and real thinking Self-consciousness are 
inseparable conceptions. Here are no Divine attri- 
butes, for attributes can be found only where there 
is another, a contrasted, by which they can be 
qualified. Here as yet everything is only a Magia, 
the simple mirrored image without reality. This 
mirroring, which is a life and yet no life, a Spirit 
and yet no Spirit, is consequently as yet no actual 
personal self-consciousness ; it is but a dim and 
dreamy self-consciousness. The Maiden stands 
before God as if in a vision, a morning-dream of 
Eternity, which prophetically reveals to Him what 
He can become, what He can make Himself. 

How then does God become the living and actual 
Triune? According to Bohme, this happens only by 
means of the eternal Nature, which, as a medium of 
manifestation, provides a contrast to the Maiden, 
the eternal Idea. When God, in the tranquil delight 
of contemplation, beholds Himself and His wonders, 
as the Maiden displays them to Him in the mirror, 
the Will grows eager, and desires that what it sees 
in the mirror shall become something more than 
an image, shall become actual, as when an artist 
longs to realize the vision, the image that reveals 
itself to him in his inward soul. And not only 
does the Will become eager, but the Wisdom, 
Sophia, surges about it, and yearns for the mani- 



GOD AND THE UNCREATED HE A VEN 63 

festation of the marvels of Wisdom, although she 
herself is all these marvels. In this union of the 
joy of contemplation and of desire, of imagination 
and desire, the eternal nature hidden in God is 
aroused, and now comes forward as the contrast or 
Contrarium of the Idea. The generation of the 
eternal Nature depends upon the magic of the 
desire, and is the power of summoning non-existence 
into existence, without the use of material means. 
All effective magic depends upon desire and ima- 
gination, and whatever is born and comes into 
being arises, in the last resort, from desire and 
imagination. 

XVII. 

It is one of Bohme's most characteristic features 
that he interprets Spirit even the absolute Spirit of 
God as desire and imagination, will and fancy. 
He is here in diametrical opposition to those who 
entirely exclude fancy from God. A God, destitute 
of fancy, who is only pure reason, pure thought, bare 
and blank intelligence, is, for Bohme, an abstract being 
and not an actual living Spirit. And undoubtedly, 
a God destitute of fancy could not have produced a 
world like the world we know, like the world in 
which Bohme lived and had his intuitions, inasmuch 
as this world, both in nature and history, is moulded 
and everywhere influenced by fancy, is actively per- 
vaded by the principium individnationis, which 
manifests itself in an inexhaustible wealth of indi- 
vidual forms that are incapable of being merged in 
general conceptions. But there could not have been 



64 JACOB BOHME. 



Fancy in God unless there were Nature in God, and 
Bohme, by the very fact that he speaks of a mirror 
of Imagination, already points to Nature as a potency 
in God Himself. For Fancy is precisely, in the form 
of ideality, the connecting link between Spirit and 
Nature.* Precisely because God is the unity of 
Spirit and Nature, not merely reason, but also fancy, 
must be ascribed to Him, which fancy, however, is 
certainly to be conceived of as illuminated and 
irradiated by Wisdom. 

We notice in passing that we get here the root 
of Bohme's psychology. According to Bohme, the 
Will is the inmost thing in man, the principle of our 
personality ; and, Fancy the form-fashioning and 
image-shaping energy, not excluding but presup- 
posing reason and wisdom, is the necessary com- 
plement of the Will. It is impossible to will, or to 
hate, or to love the purely abstract, but only that 
which presents itself in an image and shape. No 
act of the Will is possible without imagination. A 
Will must have an object ; but an object that is 
posited by the Will lies in the future, must be 
pictured by the imagination, and must hover before 
it. A Will must determine itself according to 
motives, love or hatred, hope or fear, good or evil, 
and all of these things are imaginations. The 
difference between human characters depends upon 
this, wherein do they set their imagination or their 
desire, their aspiration, their will, which is in- 
separable from the imagination ? " Where thy 



* Portig, "Religion und Kunst," ii., 273; Froschhammer, 
" Die Phantasie als Weltprincip." 



THE STILL MYSTERY. 65 

treasure is, where thy spiritual and volitional image 
is, there also will thy heart be ! " Now, if man is 
created in the image of God, it follows, from Bohme's 
train of thought, that a corresponding relation must 
also be found in God (on the scale, however, of 
eternity and absolute perfection). 

XVIII. 

Consequently, the Nature which is hidden t in 
God is aroused and bursts into activity, [through 
the medium of] desire and imagination. This 
eternal Nature must not be interpreted as Matter 
in God. For matter is nothing original, but is 
simply a product. We grasp Bohme's meaning more 
accurately when (with St. Martin and Franz Baader) 
we define nature as a spirituous potency. This 
spirituous potency is impersonal and selfless, yet, 
according to Bohme, it is a Will that has issued forth 
and separated itself from unity, a Will that multiplies 
itself in an infinite plenitude of powers, a living 
fountain of forces, that pour forth in an infinity of 
many thousand times ten thousand particular wills. 
For life consists of many wills. Each of the forces 
in the eternal Nature has its own will, and each of 
these wills is against the other. And life would 
be sheer hostility, unless all these powers of life 
gained a gracious Lord, under whose control they 
may abide, and who is able to break their strength 
and their will. But in Nature there is merely a blind, 
not a self-conscious Will. 

With the bursting forth of the eternal Nature there 
occurs an obscuration, which furnishes a contrast to 

5 



66 THE STILL MYSTERY. 

the pure light and spirituality. But this obscuration 
is a necessary condition, in order that the light may 
succeed in manifesting its splendour. We may also 
say that, with the eternal Nature, the thick presents 
itself in contrast to the thin. The thin is mere 
ideality, pure spirituality ; the thick is Nature, the 
condition in virtue of which the thin, viz., the Spirit, 
can gain life and fulness, sap and power. And now, 
for the first time, we get actual contrasts and actual 
manifestations. 

Bohme is never weary of enforcing the necessity 
of contrasts in order to life and manifestation. All 
things, not merely earthly and diabolic, but also 
heavenly and Divine, consist of Yes and No. The 
Eternal Will of Unity is the eternal Yes ; but this 
Yes cannot be manifested without the eternal No, 
which provides a contradiction to the Unity, and 
posits multiplicity and variety. And yet we cannot 
affirm that the Yes and No are sundered, that they 
are two things by the side of one another. They 
are only one thing, but they separate themselves into 
two beginnings, into two centra, each of which wills 
and energizes within itself. The eternal Will must 
pass out of itself, and lead itself into particularity, 
otherwise there were no shape or intelligibility, and all 
powers would be simply one power. Intelligence is 
based upon multiplicity and variety, wherein the 
one property beholds and tests the other. A thing 
has nothing in itself that it can will, unless it doubles 
itself. It cannot perceive itself in mere unity ; it 
can perceive itself only in duality. Where there is 
no contrast, there is only a perpetual issuing forth, 
but no ingoing and retrocession into self. 



THE MANIFESTATION, ETC. 67 



XIX. 

MANIFESTATION THROUGH THE ETERNAL NATURE. 

THE SEVEN NATURAL PROPERTIES. THE 

ACTUAL TRINITY. THE GLORY OF GOD. 

THE UNCREATED HEAVEN. 

In order to become manifest to Himself as the 
Living God, God has consequently been obliged to 
found an eternal distinction, an eternal contrast in 
Himself. The Divine Will has had to divide itself 
into two, has been compelled, if we may so speak, 
to contraposit an anti-Divine Will (that is, a Will 
derived from, and yet sundered from Unity) as a 
condition for its Life of Manifestation. We have, 
accordingly, two centra in God, the Nature-Will 
and the Spirit- Will. The Nature- Will may be more 
closely defined as the Particular Will, the Self- Will 
in contrast to the Universal Will, which wills the one 
and the whole, as the No-W'Al in contrast to the 
Yes-Wi\\, as the Will of Dissimilarity in contrast 
to the Will of Similarity. The object of the process 
of Life and Manifestation which we are now to 
consider is that the Nature-Will may be sub- 
ordinated to the Spirit-Will, as its obedient instru- 
ment and medium of manifestation. The first part 
of the process shows a relation of contrast, indeed, 
a hostile relation between Nature and Spirit ; the 
second part, on the contrary, shows Nature as the 
willing servant of God and of the Idea, for the 
shaping forth of the Glory of God. The process is 
more clearly defined by the seven fundamental 
Forces, or Natural Forms or Properties, by which last 



68 THE SEVEN NATURAL PROPERTIES. 

expression Bohme means the form-giving, nature- 
fashioning energy. Nothing can gain shape in 
nature without the aid of these seven forces. In 
these seven Natural Properties we shall perceive 
two ternaries or triads : the first, the negative, dark 
ternary, where Nature shows what it is capable of 
by itself, shows that, notwithstanding all its power, 
it remains an unsatisfied hunger, and an anxiously 
eager restlessness ; the second, the positive, bright 
ternary, in which Nature has surrendered its inde- 
pendence, and is transfigured into the Light, in 
order to the fashioning of the eternal harmonies. 
The fourth Natural Property, or the Lightning 
Flash, is the central point, or the transition from 
the darkness to the light. Four is the centre of 
Seven. 

XX. 

THE first Natural Property is the introspective 
Desire which demands only itself. " It has harsh- 
ness, sharpness, hardness, cold, and substance," and 
finds its symbolical expression in Salt. To adopt a 
scientific phrase, we call it Contraction. It is the 
austere, self-contained, and gloomy property which 
desires to be alone, and will not endure anything 
outside it, but seeks to absorb everything into itself, 
and to have everything for itself, as when we say of 
a man, that he has a gloomy, self-contained tempera- 
ment, and that he hardens himself in austerity and 
rigour against everything that is outside him. 

The second Natural Property is the outward- 
looking Desire or Movement, which seeks to go 
forth into multiplicity, the symbolic expression of 



THE SEVEN NATURAL PROPERTIES. 69 

which is Mercury, but which we call, scientifically, 
Expansion, the tendency to self-diffusion and self- 
propagation in all directions. These two Properties 
are now in dead antagonism to each other. The one 
tends outwards ; the other tends inwards. The one 
seeks to 'compress itself, and to compress everything 
into itself; the other seeks to manifest itself, and to 
outpour itself on every side. The more the one tends 
inwards, the more does the other tend outwards. 
The one seeks to be still ; the other is loud and 
noisy. The one seeks to draw itself back into 
itself; the other seeks to run, to go forward, and to 
fly out into the wide and remote. These conflicting 
forces are inseparable, cannot escape one another, 
but are inevitably forced into collision. This conflict 
finally becomes an oscillation or whirling, the revo- 
lution of a wheel, a movement that cannot come to 
an end, but which, nevertheless, leads to no goal, and 
there ensues an appalling restlessness and Anguish. 
This restlessness and anguish is the third Natural 
Property. "One cannot remain in oneself, and yet 
can go nowhither ! " Both of the two opposites 
desire to go their own way, but they cannot get loose 
from one another. They desire to be separated, but 
their union is indissoluble, and they continue to 
oscillate about, in company, in wild confusion; and 
in a kind of frenzy. Anguish is here a symbolic 
expression which designates the unsolved dispute, 
dissension, and tension ; this again is symbolized by 
Sulphur. We call this Property Rotation. The 
first ternary is, thus, Contraction, Expansion, Rota- 
tion, but unharmonious ; a contradiction which 
Nature itself cannot solve. 



THE SEVEN NATURAL PROPERTIES. 



How then is Nature to be liberated from this 
torture ? Nature, in its own strength, is powerless 
(Natura quaerit se, sed non invenit). The contra- 
diction can only be removed by that which is higher 
than Nature, by that which is above and outside of 
Nature, by God, the Eternal Freedom. Nature's 
inmost essence is need of God, " indigentia Dei, in- 
digentia gratiae," a hunger and restlessness, which 
can only be stilled, satisfied, and calmed by freedom. 
There is aroused in Nature an anxious yearning after 
freedom. On the other hand, freedom yearns after 
Nature, in order that, through Nature, it may mani- 
fest itself. God is Holiness and Love, but before 
Holiness and Love can be manifested, there must be 
something that needs love and grace, something that 
needs to be released from its torture. The higher 
desires the lower ; the lower desires the higher. 
Nature, however, will not, immediately, give up its 
unruliness, and subordinate itself to the Idea. A 
conquest must take place here, when Freedom, the 
Spirit, lets its light stream into the darkness and 
confusion of Nature, and a tremor, terror, and shock 
passes through the whole of Nature. The Lightning, 
which is the fourth Natural Property, the first contact 
of Spirit and Nature, breaks forth as, at once, a joyous 
and appalling surprise. By the Lightning that which 
is gross, dark, and selfish in the desire of Nature is 
consumed. The Natural Properties, so to speak, 
faint away, sink out of their selfishness, and become 
quite meek and gentle. They accept the Will of 
the Light, wholly surrender themselves to it, become 
as those who have no power of their own, and desire 
only the power of the Light. The Lightning itself 



THE SEVEN NATURAL PROPERTIES. 71 

becomes altogether terrified, and is transformed into 
a light which is absolutely white and mildly beam- 
ing. Here, for the first time, we notice a doctrine 
that pervades Bohme's writings, and is full of very 
profound practical applications, viz. : that every life 
must be born twice, in order that Nature may tra- 
verse the path to the light and to freedom through 
the lightning, as the kindled fire. Hence the old 
maxim, which so often recurs in theosophy : Per ignem 
ad lucent ; or, since the Lightning, as the fourth 
Natural Property, has for its theosophic-symbolical 
designation a Cross per crucem ad lucent a thought 
that has such significance for created Nature, and espe- 
cially for the Christian Life (" We must through much 
tribulation enter into the Kingdom of God "). Bohme 
constantly insists that every life is born in fear, is 
enjoyed in freedom, and again perishes in anguish. 
We have defined the first ternary as the dark 
ternary, and may, when we view it as a unit, de- 
scribe it as the Dark Principle in God, but also as 
the Fire-Principle. For there is, already, Fire in the 
Darkness, but it is latent ; it is first kindled by the 
inbeaming of the Light, by the Lightning, as at 
the collision of flint and steel. Fire is Bohme's 
symbol for the Nature-Will, the rigid, strong, con- 
suming power ; the Light, the Spirit- Will, the mild 
nourishing power is Love and Gentleness. Bohme, 
however, speaks, in many passages, of a heavenly 
Fire, which is bright and gentle, and fundamentally 
different from the dark, dry, and consuming Fire. 



72 THE SEVEN NATURAL PROPERTIES. 

XXI. 

With the conquest and clarification of the dark, 
anti-Divine Principle or Property, begins the posi- 
tive, the good and bright ternary. The same three 
Natural Properties that we find in the dark ternary 
(Contraction, Expansion, Rotation) repeat them- 
selves in the bright ternary, but are now trans- 
figured. The savage, refractory, and formless have 
vanished. Life has now gained shape, goal, and 
definite limits ; or, as Bohme expresses it, all now 
is Gentleness. The bright ternary begins with the 
fifth Natural Property. Here the powers are con- 
centrated into the unity of Wisdom. This Natural 
Property Bohme also designates as the gentle Love, 
the clear Water-Spirit, under whose peaceable do- 
minion the powers are now collected ; hostility has 
vanished, the one power rejoices over the other. 
They gain a liking for each other, and rejoice with 
each other over the violent transition that has taken 
place, and " because the dear child is now born." 
Water and Spirit, Water and Light are designations 
for this principle or property, which subdues, ripens, 
and moulds the severe and sharp element in nature. 
And as Bohme's metaphysic is pervaded by practical 
applications, we must here recal that even upon 
earth there occurs a birth of Water and Spirit, 
and that the fire of concupiscence and of the passions, 
the wild emotions that spring from the dark fire- 
root in our nature, need to be quenched and sub- 
dued by the cooling streams of heavenly gentleness 
and love, which release us from the torture of the 
fire. 



THE SEVEN NATURAL PROPERTIES. 73 

The sixth Natural Property is intelligible Sound. 
The powers that are concentrated in the fifth 
natural property are now led forth into intelligible 
separation ; they become distinct and audible. 
When the Psalmist (xix. 4) says of the manifestation 
of the Glory of God in created nature : " Their line 
is gone out through all the earth, and their words to 
the end of the world," and when the Apostle 
(Rom. x. 18) gives this a higher application, 
Bohme already discovers something analogous to 
this in Eternity, in the Divine life of inward mani- 
festation. There is here a great concord of intelli- 
gible sounds, of tones ; and the audible has in 
correspondence with it the visible ; sound-figures and 
light- figures. But in comparison with what are 
called tones upon earth, are called song and sound, 
which are very coarse, the heavenly tones are ex- 
tremely subtile, as when the soul inwardly sports in 
itself, and hears within pleasant and sweet tones, 
but outwardly hears nothing. No human ear can 
perceive the heavenly tones that sound and play 
before God in His Life of inward Manifestation. 
The angels alone can perceive anything of this. But 
this their perception or hearing is determined by 
the character of their world, the peculiarity of their 
dwelling-place. The seventh Natural Property is 
the concluding one. All the foregoing powers and 
energies are here gathered into a harmonious whole. 
This seventh and last Natural Property Bohme calls 
the Essential, e.g., Wisdom shaped into reality, life, 
and corporeity. The Wisdom, the Image which 
God beheld from the beginning in the Mirror, in His 
eternal Imagination, and which He desired to behold 



74 THE SEVEN NATURAL PROPERTIES. 

in actuality, is now realized. Bohme also designates 
this as God's Corporeity (His aspect of reality, His 
encircling periphery), the Heavenly Salnitter, the 
Abode of God, the House of the Holy Trinity, 
the Uncreated Heaven, the Kingdom, in regard 
to which Bohme agrees with the Kabbala, which 
asserts in God seven Natural Properties, the last of 
which is the Kingdom {Malkuth). The Uncreated 
Heaven possesses unspeakable beauty. " To de- 
scribe it I have neither pen nor tongue. Even if 
this Maiden (Wisdom) happen to lead anything of 
it into our heart, yet the whole man is too cold and 
dark for us to be able to utter of it even so much as 
a vestige {scintilla)." 

XXII. 

IN order not to misunderstand this doctrine of 
the Seven Natural Properties, it will be needful to 
keep in mind Bohme's frequently reiterated declara- 
tion, that this process takes place not in time, but 
in eternity. It is only our feeble mind which is 
compelled to place one thing after another, because, 
otherwise, we could not comprehend it. But the 
real state of the case is different. In eternity there 
is no temporal succession, but everything is in 
circular movement ; nothing is first, nothing last 
in point of time; but everything is simultaneous, 
and each individual natural property presupposes all 
the others, because there is here a constant reciprocity 
and mutual influence. And in eternity one thing 
does not stand outside another, as in our relation 
of material space, but the one thing is in the other, 



THE SEVEN NATURAL PROPERTIES. 75 

and yet is different from it (v. "Aurora," x., 40). 
The reality, in contrast to the abstract momenta, is 
here only the seventh natural property wholeness, 
the complete, the Uncreated Heaven, the Kingdom, 
or harmony. If we were permitted to gaze in 
immediately upon these regions, we should behold 
nothing but the seventh natural property, or the 
Glory of God. All the rest lies in concealment. 
But it must be noted, on the other hand, that if we 
wish to understand this harmony, we must, for the 
purposes of contemplation, analyse the individual 
momenta in this movement each by itself, just as 
we pay attention to the individual tones and transi- 
tions in a musical composition or a painting ; and 
then we discern a variety of deeper, higher, stronger, 
and more gentle tones, or of darker and lighter 
colours, and, indeed, discover even discords, which 
are most admirably fused into ineffable harmony. 
It is this analysis, this separation of momenta which 
Bohme has attempted in his doctrine of the seven 
Natural Properties. The Natural Properties, or 
fundamental forces, are, as would not otherwise 
have been expected, the same as those which we 
know in created nature. Created nature, according 
to Bohme, is a derivatum of the uncreated, and 
ultimately consists (however numerous may be the 
intermediate links) of these uncreated principles. 
Thus, we have Contraction, Expansion, Rotation ; 
we have the Lightning and the Light ; we have 
sound and tones with figures and colours the 
elements of a natural world, in which are found 
intelligibility, severance, and separation. A natural 
world, whether uncreated or created, would certainly 



76 CENTRUM NATURE. 

be unthinkable if God were only the thin " spiritus " 
which Deism imagines ; if He were only pure 
Thought ; if He had no fancy, and could not perceive ; 
if He had no " sensorium " (as also Newton has 
emphatically urged); or if God, as Bohme expresses 
it, were only an all -knowing, but not also an all- 
seeing, all-hearing, all-tasting, all-feeling, all-smell- 
ing God (v. " Aurora," c. 3). In the next place, 
we have this natural world in its consummation 
as the Uncreated Heaven, the riches of the Glory 
of God, a pattern of the Glory of the Creation when 
it is brought to perfection. We have, finally, what 
we have hitherto been debarred from expressing, 
because it belongs to the Trinitarian process : the 
Living Word of God as the Word of Power. 

XXIIL 

The Self-manifestation of the actual, living, and 
triumphant Trinity is effected through the process 
here described. We must not, however, leave the 
Nature-process before dwelling on one single point 
of it, which may be called, in more senses than one, 
tlie dark point. 

The reader will doubtless have discovered that 
the most difficult point, but also the point which 
peculiarly rivets attention, is what we have called 
(following Baader) the first, negative ternary, but 
what Bohme calls " centrum naturae." In order to 
comprehend this phrase, it must be observed, that 
by " centrum " Bohme means not simply the mid- 
point in a circle, but also the whole circle, not a 
mathematical circle, nor a mathematical mid-point, 



CENTRUM NATURAE. n 

but a circle the mid-point of which is everywhere, 
" cujus centrum ubique," active at all points, domi- 
nating and penetrating the whole region. The 
contrast of the Nature-centre is the Light-centre, 
or Life-centre. There are in God two " centra," 
or two regions, of which, however, only one, the 
bright region, is manifested, while the other remains 
in the deepest concealment. The two centra repeat 
themselves in the creation. But in one half of 
the creation, as we shall see in the sequel, only the 
dark centrum and the dark region has come into 
manifestation, and the bright centrum has retired 
into concealment, by reason of sin. 

" Centrum naturae " is thus, in Bohme, the first 
thing in nature, that original variance and conflict 
between opposing forces with which life begins, and 
which cannot lead it farther than anguish, a tension, 
vibration, or gyration of the forces, which is designated 
now as an apprehensive darkness, now as a fire 
which is not yet kindled, but smoulders in the 
depths, and which only the Lightning is able to 
bring out of this restlessness into subordination to 
the higher principle, the Light which shines into 
it in which subordination it finds rest. This 
" centrum naturae " Bohme also calls the " Wheel of 
Nature," the "Wheel of Life," the "Wheel of 
Anguish." By this he means what that apostle, to 
whom, on the score of his doctrine of faith and 
works, Luther assigned a very low place, but whom 
Oetinger regards as the most profound of all the 
apostles, and whom Schelling mentions as one 
who was highly privileged to gaze into the first 
beginning of Nature, and the primal sources of life, 



78 CENTRUM NATURE. 

what the Apostle James calls the " Wheel of 
Birth " {jpoyos ttJs yev<rea)<s, James iii. 6). The 
"Wheel of Birth" does not mean simply the revolving 
of life and of the forces of life in general, which is 
so justly comparable to a circling wheel, and which 
is liable to be brought into disorder by sin. The 
" Wheel of Birth," in a stricter sense, is the " Wheel 
of coming into existence," the "Wheel of Becoming;" 
the first magical life-circle, which is the beginning 
of all natural and creaturely Birth and Becoming ; 
the first restlessly circling movement, which is the 
womb and basis of the life that is working itself 
into shape. It is a secretly-burning wheel, because 
" life is fire " (ignis ubique latet). In Bohme, 
image succeeds image, and metaphor metaphor ; 
he, therefore, designates it by another symbol 
as the Dark Fire-root, which never dares to catch 
fire and to burst into fierce flames (whereby the 
whole of life would be brought into confusion), but 
is destined to remain in latency, in concealment, 
in subordination to the higher principle. It is only 
by means of this subordination that the Dark Fire- 
root itself can be calmed and maintained in that 
order which accords with the harmony of the whole. 
What is called the "Wheel of Birth" may be 
described, under another figure, as the Hearth of 
Life, or the Mother and Nurse of Life. But the 
child, i.e. t the Life, which, arising from this dark 
womb of fire, presents itself in its appointed forms 
and shapes, is far nobler than the mother, whose 
function is simply ministerial. 

The " Wheel of Birth," which never stands still, 
does not occur simply in God as a foundation for 



CENTRUM NATURE. yg 

the eternal Nature-process ; it is also present in the 
whole created universe, and, indeed, in every single 
creature, in harmony with the character of this 
creature. In Nature it is Fire ; in the world of 
souls and spirits it is Desire. Fire and Desire are, 
at bottom, one and the same thing. We are taught 
by experience that in proportion as fire gains un- 
restricted power and scope, it grows fiercer, becomes 
increasingly a consuming and devouring fire, and 
finally, indeed, may become unquenchable. 

Among the ancient heathen sages, Heraclitus was 
aware of this Wheel in the universe, when he spoke 
of an unwearied incessantly-coursing Fire (aAca/xarov 
rrvp), by the quenching of which the universe 
was produced. But this " Wheel of Birth " in the 
whole creation was viewed far more clearly, and in 
a great and holy connection, by the prophet 
Ezekiel, when he was permitted to behold the 
Glory of God in the vision which is recorded in the 
first and tenth chapters of his book, passages 
which are so vitally important in Theosophy. Ezekiel 
gives us the ideas, says Oetinger, only we must 
remember that Holy Scripture shows us the Glory 
of God in that aspect of it which is turned towards 
the Creation. The prophet first saw or heard a 
whirlwind out of the north (which may suggest to 
us the Almighty Will of God as the impelling 
power), and he beheld a thick cloud, and a fire in- 
folding itself, circling and whirling about itself. 
We must think of this cloud as quivering with flame, 
and as if made one with the whirling Fire. In 
this Fire, which runs and whirls in itself, Ave have 
the " Wheel of Birth." It must also be observed 



80 CENTRUM NATURE. 

that the self- infolding Fire had a "brightness about 
it," and there was the appearance as of burning 
brass (amber ?) out of the midst of the fire. The 
brightness that the prophet beheld round about the 
whirling fire is the splendour of light into which the 
fire is to be transfigured, and the " burning brass " 
out of the midst of the fire betokens the lightning, 
and the transition of the fire into the light. Out of 
the midst of this whirling and self-circling Fire, 
this " Wheel of Birth," this " centrum naturae," pro- 
ceed the actual forms of life, the living creatures or 
cherubim, who represent the creation and the powers 
of the creation, and who have, themselves, a glowing 
and radiant appearance. The prophet observes that 
each of them has four faces, those of a lion, ox, 
eagle, and man, emblems of all that is strong and 
royal in creation ; and he beholds " their wings 
full of eyes " (Ezek. x. 1 2). Two of their wings 
were stretched upward ; with the other two they veil 
their creaturely nothingness. The noise of their 
wings was as the noise of great waters, as the 
Voice of the Almighty. He beholds the marvellous 
four wheels that move by the side of the cherubim, 
and his vision inspires a holy awe. For in each of 
the wheels there was another wheel equally large, 
so that each wheel could, without turning, direct 
itself towards the four corners of the earth, and 
could always go forward ; and their felloes were full 
of eyes, as a sign that these wheels, which are 
emblematic of the circularity of movement in the 
Divine cosmical order, are intended to serve the 
living, omniscient, and wise God. The cherubim go 
round about between the wheels, and these princes 



CENTRUM NATURAE. 8 1 

of life stretch out the hands which they have under 
their wings, and take coals out of the fire, coals from 
the Hearth of Life, from the " centrum naturae," in 
order to execute the Lord's Will, whether it be to 
make alive, or to perform the judgments of the 
Lord, and to afflict the sinful world with great out- 
bursts of the terrible power of God. Nevertheless, all 
that has been mentioned thus far is but the substratum, 
the basis for the highest, is simply the Vehicle 
{Merkabali). Far above all this, the prophet beholds 
a Firmament, and above the Firmament a Throne, 
and, upon the Throne, the Lord in the appearance of 
a man, with a brightness round about Him, like the 
appearance of the bow that is in the cloud in the 
day of rain. We have only imperfectly recalled the 
vision in question. A more minute description and 
exposition would lead us too far, and into a quite 
different line of meditation. We simply wish to 
emphasize the fact that here, once more, we find 
Bohme's fundamental categories : Darkness, Fire, 
and Light, the last of these as the gentle brightness, 
which encircles the whirling fire, and the brightness 
of the rainbow. In Ezekiel, moreover, the Fire 
proceeds out of the Darkness, and the Light out 
of the Fire. 

What Fire is in the outward region, Desire is in 
the inward. Thus, from the intellectual and spiritual 
standpoint, the "Wheel of Birth," or the "centrum 
naturae," is the restlessness of Desire. Modern 
thinkers disagree with Bohme on this point, assign- 
ing instinct as the deepest root in natural life, and 
restricting desire to self-conscious life. Bohme, on 
the contrary, speaks of a blind desire, which turns 

6 



82 CENTRUM NATURE. 

both inwards and outwards, and is in continual rest- 
lessness, a thought which reminds us of what 
Schopenhauer, who at many points agrees with 
Bohme, only, however, immediately to forsake him 
and to pursue a totally different path, calls " the 
tendency towards, or struggle for life." For if we 
ask what is it that this blind craving, which does 
not desire this or that, but is the mother and the 
nurse of all desire, really seeks in its restlessness, 
the only reply is, that it desires itself, desires to be 
satiated and filled ; it desires life (" vehementer cupio 
vitam "). Desire is the foundation of Egoism, of 
Self-ness, of that in us whereby we separate our- 
selves from everything else, centre in ourselves, 
establish ourselves as mid-point, and exclude all 
else. Egoism gathers itself into itself, but is soon 
impelled to go forth again from itself, to spread 
itself in the manifoldness of life, but in a selfish 
manner. In none of these movements can it find 
satisfaction, but it is in perpetual restlessness a 
fact of which every man can convince himself in 
proportion as he lives in his own egoism, separated 
from a Higher One, in whom he may, as it were, 
forget himself. This restlessness and torture can only 
be quieted and subdued when freedom, wisdom, love, 
and light descend into it ; and then it becomes the 
helpful basis for life and for the activities of love. 
For love cannot exist without a powerful egoism 
which surrenders itself to it, and denies and sacrifices 
itself. Without the astringent and contractile force 
of Egoism the self-imparting power of love would 
lead only to a vague absorption in, and fusion with, 
the illimitable. Without the austere and sharp 



CENTRUM NATURE. 83 

element in Egoism, the gentleness of love would 
degenerate into vapid and effeminate sentimentalism. 
Life is wholesome and sound only when the rest- 
lessness of Egoism, with its keen, sharp, vehement, 
and passionate element, its hungering and thirsting, 
is subordinated to higher forces and powers by 
which it is permanently quieted, and which it helps 
to nurture. In the normal condition, this restless- 
ness of Desire and Egoism is only like the pendulum 
of a clock, or like the beating of our pulse, which 
is not noticed unless we expressly direct our atten- 
tion towards it ; whereas we are compelled to notice 
it in fever, because the fire then makes itself plainly 
perceptible. It is this Desire and Fire, in the sense 
here referred to, that the apostle is thinking of when 
he admonishes us, in a series of practical precepts, to 
keep our tongue in check, to guard ourselves against 
sins of the tongue, because an impure tongue, kindled 
by hell, can set on fire the " Wheel of Birth," 
introduce disorder into the natural foundation and 
root of life, can produce a pernicious inflammation in 
the orbit of these blind forces, which may then spread 
itself into the whole life of the soul, penetrate the 
entire intellectual and spiritual constitution, and 
throw it into confusion, and indeed, we might add, 
can also set on fire the whole body, as when we 
picture to ourselves a man who is disturbed, over- 
whelmed, and dominated by blind passions. It is 
Desire and Fire that Bohme is thinking of when 
he traces in the " centrum naturae," not only the 
Foundation of Life, but also the Foundation of 
Hell. 



84 CENTRUM NATURE. 



XXIV. 

DESIRE and Fire, according to Bohme, form the 
foundation of Hell, as well as of Life. The possi- 
bility of the origin of evil here confronts us in the 
midst of the theogonistic process. This is the 
problem which, at an earlier period, made Bohme 
so melancholy. Evil cannot exist in God as evil, 
nor can it be congenital with man, or with any 
other creature ; these ideas must be rejected as 
impious and monstrous. And yet, in one form or 
another, everything must have its origin in God, 
and it remains eternally true that " all is God's ! " 
Here now is displayed a " centrum naturae " in God, 
that contrarium in God, that blind nature-will, with 
conflict and tension of the forces, which cannot lead 
beyond an unappeased restlessness and anguish, but 
which has, nevertheless, issued forth from Unity, and 
is necessary in order to the manifestation of Light 
and Love. In God, this dark will is continually 
vanquished and outshone by the Light, and simply 
remains at bottom as a tendency, which is con- 
tinually vanquished and willingly allows itself to 
be vanquished ; for the Life of God is an endless 
and uninterrupted life (C W V a/caraXvro?. Heb. 
vii. 1 6), in which all the forces are bound together 
by an incorruptible and indestructible bond, which 
can never, to all eternity, be broken, in which all 
disorder is unthinkable, in which every mediation 
of the forces, at every transition, must necessarily 
succeed. In creation, on the other hand, life is a 
disintegrate life. Here, the forces may fall into 



CENTRUM NATURAE. 85 

disorder, for a rupture of their bond is possible a 
rupture, indeed, that can only take place in an 
intelligent creation, which, in a false desire, seeks to 
centralize itself in itself, instead of in God, makes 
that which ought to be subordinate supreme, and 
makes what should be the servant the ruler. 
Accordingly, there is a " periculum vitae " for the 
intelligent creation, viz., the danger of allowing 
itself a false and negative combination of the forces, 
and of suffering that which ought to be repressed 
to spring up and to come forth. For the unfallen 
creation, this dangerous moment is the moment of 
choice and temptation. When, therefore, such a 
creation, instead of sacrificing its abstract inde- 
pendence, and constituting itself a servant of God 
and of the Light, sets itself up as Lord, and places 
itself in opposition to the Light, there occurs a 
pause and a stoppage in the process of Life. The 
higher Divine principle, the principle of Life, which 
ought to stream freely into the lower created life, is 
now arrested and pushed back, and thus a process 
of obscuration takes place ; for the creation, resist- 
ing the light, and desirous of centering in itself, is 
compelled, more and more, to gather itself together 
in itself, the result of which is, that it only becomes 
darker and darker, and inevitably sinks into itself, as 
into an abyss, for now it can nowhere find founda- 
tion or solid footing. 

Moreover, in addition to the obscuration, there 
occurs a false " kindling." For when the greedy 
egoism is minded, now and again, to rise out of its 
abyss, and to ascend, in order to outstretch its dark 
huge wings over the illimitable, it becomes inflamed 



86 CENTRUM NATURE. 

(in consequence of the pause and confusion that has 
occurred in the process of Life), it becomes more 
and more fiery and fiercely-flaming, and moves in a 
whirl of sparks and devouring flames. Then the 
" Wheel of Birth " is set on fire, and the Light from 
above, which has been forced back, and the free 
shining of which is prevented by unrighteousness, 
flashes amidst this turba with judicial and punitive 
lightning. The " Wheel of Birth " now becomes, in 
the most literal sense, a " Wheel of Anguish." In- 
stead of the anguish, tension, and collision of the 
forces being soothed and tranquillized by the Light, 
instead of the anxious restlessness forming a simple 
point of transition to the birth of the higher life, the 
anguish, which was intended to be simply a " mo- 
mentum," now becomes chronic, the restlessness 
becomes a permanent condition, a perennial birth- 
pang and a perennial death-pang, without attaining 
actual birth or actual death. This is what Franz 
Baader calls " the Wheel of Ixion." According to 
the legend, Ixion was a king who, for his arrogance 
and presumption, was hurled by the lightning of 
Zeus into Tartarus, where he was bound to an eter- 
nally revolving wheel, a wheel, however, which 
paused, when Orpheus appeared in the lower world. 
The Devil and Hell, consequently, make their 
appearance when the negative ternary, in separation 
from the light, becomes actual in an intelligent 
creation, and happens to work in false independence, 
instead of remaining in obedient concealment, 
latency, and potentiality. We now understand what 
Bohme means when he repeats so often in his 
writings, that the man who would follow him must 



CENTRUM NATURAE. 87 

be well equipped, and that he will assuredly discover 
that the matter is serious. " For we must pass 
through the Kingdom of Hell ; and I myself 
should sometimes have fainted unless God and the 
gracious Wisdom had kept by me." He tells us 
again and again, that what has been described above 
became actual in Lucifer, when he fell from God. 
Lucifer opened his " centrum naturae," instead of 
keeping it eternally closed. He sought to rise 
above God, and, therefore, his light was quenched, 
and he became a spirit of darkness, a horrible fire- 
spirit, a spirit of stinking sulphur, and was cast 
out into exile. The same thing happened to 
Adam, although, God be praised ! not in the same 
manner as to Lucifer (this difference we shall 
not be able to explain until later), because for 
Adam and his children there is still grace and 
succour. " O ye children of men," says Bohme so 
often, " this is earnest and serious ! Hell is quite 
near, indeed, it is within you ! Repent and seek 
the new Birth ! Live circumspectly, and let the 
Spirit be Lord, so that the fire may not be kindled. 
O worldly security and confidence, the devil waits 
for you ! O pride, thou art the fire of Hell ! O 
self-reliance and revenge, thou art the terrible wrath 
of God ! O power and longing after worldly honour, 
Hell hath made thee blind ! O beauty, thou art a 
dark valley!" etc., etc., etc. Bohme very frequently 
designates this "centrum naturae " as the Fire-pregnant 
Triangle. We are to conceive of this Triangle as 
quite dimly burning, not as flaming. The Triangle, 
moreover, includes precisely the same momenta as 
the " Wheel of Birth." This dangerous Triangle 



CENTRUM NATURAE. 



exists in the eternal Nature of God ; but in God it is 
eternally outshone and covered up by the Light. 
It exists in every creature, in every man. But it 
should be our aim to let the Spirit be Lord, so that 
the Triangle may be kept in concealment, and may 
not come to light, and that the fire break not out. 
As in God, so also in every true Christian, the 
Triangle is to be quenched by the Light, by the Love 
of Christ, the wisdom, gentleness, and humility of 
the Holy Ghost. We shall be in complete harmony 
with Bohme if we give a deeper meaning to the 
refrain of one of our old watchmen's songs : " Watch 
Light and Fire ! " 

Another designation for the " centrum naturae " 
is the Life-Worm. Omnis vita a verme. The 
Worm is the same as the " Wheel of Birth." Viewed 
objectively, it is the Fire, viz., the self-infolding Fire 
which Ezekiel beheld in his vision. Viewed sub- 
jectively, it is the restlessness of Desire. As long 
as the Worm is held in subjection by the power of 
the Light, as long as it ministers to the Life, its 
restlessness furnishes the contrast, by the vanquishing 
and ruling of which Life acquires true repose and 
harmony internal, just as health and the feeling 
of health depend upon the suppression of an oppos- 
ing tendency, which, if it had free scope, would 
disturb the unity of life, and introduce disease. 
But if, on the contrary, the Worm emerges from 
its fettered and concealed condition, and acquires 
self-conscious volition, it becomes terrible. We 
have daily evidence of the manner in which a desire 
can grow, how, by every indulgence of it, it becomes 
stronger and more powerful, z.e., more full of craving 



CENTRUM NATURAE. 



hunger. Moreover, we say of a man, that this or 
that is his Worm, by which we mean a tendency 
or inclination within him, in which his Ego is 
specially conspicuous, and in which he specially 
seeks satiety for his self-love. In proportion as the 
Worm, which at the outset is impersonal, becomes 
a personal entity, the more it reaches the point at 
which it must be said, that it is not so much the 
personality that is lord over the Worm, as the 
Worm that is lord of the individual. And when 
the Worm attains absolute dominion, it becomes 
the dark Worm of Hell, or, as it may also be 
termed, the burning and gnawing Worm of Hell, 
of which Scripture says that it " dieth not." " Their 
Worm dieth not, and their fire is not quenched." 

But furthermore, to these considerations (to which 
we have been necessarily led in the midst of the state- 
ment of the concept of God and of the doctrine of the 
Trinity, where it is not usual to discuss the doctrine of 
Evil) it must be added that Bohme specifies the " cen- 
trum naturae" as not only the foundation of Hell, but 
also as the foundation of the Wrath of God. By 
the Wrath of God is generally understood the Divine 
displeasure against sin. Although Bohme also pre- 
supposes this, he nevertheless directs special atten- 
tion to the physical aspect of the Wrath of God, to 
the power of the Wrath of God, the contents of the 
forces which, when they are unloosed, become de- 
structive. As the eternal nature in the first ternary 
is the contrarium of God, is the anti-Divine principle, 
so this nature, as a principle of power (for nature 
or fire does not cease to be powerful because it is 
full of craving and hunger), is the principle, the cha- 



go CENTRUM NATURE. 

racter of which is severity and rigour ; and it thus 
provides the " contrarium " to the Love of God, 
which is His essential definition as God. God, as 
God, is pure Light, absolute Goodness and Bene- 
volence ; but viewed in relation to His power in the 
" centrum naturae," He is a Consuming Fire. In 
God Himself, in His life of inward self-manifestation, 
wrath as such never appears. Sternness and severity 
lie in complete concealment within the harmony of 
the whole. But, when God comes into relation with 
the created and sinful world, a severance takes place, 
and God manifests Himself in duality, both accord- 
ing to His Love and according to His Wrath. 
And here we may recal the words of the apostle : 
" The Wrath of God is revealed from heaven against 
all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who 
hold the truth in unrighteousness." The apostle 
is here alluding to the power of the Wrath of God, 
and we cannot but reflect upon the forces that 
are sent forth to spread destruction and ruin, as a 
punishment for the sins of men. We may think of 
the cherubim in Ezekiel, chap, x., who move between 
the wheels, and take a coal out of the fire, which is 
to be cast over Jerusalem, as a righteous judgment 
upon it. We may also recal the words of Scripture, 
that " we by nature are the children of wrath," 
words which signify not only that the Divine dis- 
pleasure rests upon us, or even that the Divine 
chastisement must ever go forth against us, but also 
that within ourselves there is the power of wrath and 
rigour, viz., our wild desires and fiery dispositions, 
whereby we belong to the Kingdom of Wrath. In 
a little unfinished work of Bohme's, which is called 



CENTRUM NATURJB. 91 

" Theosophical Questions, or 177 Questions on 
Divine Revelation," of which, however, Bohme had 
only answered fifteen before he was removed by- 
death, occurs the following : " Had the Foundation 
of Hell a beginning in time, or did it exist from 
eternity ? Does it endure eternally or not ? " And 
the answer is, " The Foundation has been from 
eternity, but not in manifestation, for the wrath of 
God has existed from eternity, although not as 
wrath, but it has existed, just as fire is latent in 
a tree or stone, until it is aroused." The rousing, 
the kindling, or the opening of the Dragon's mouth 
took place at the Fall of Lucifer, as in a creature in 
whom self-will or the " No " turned itself away from 
the " Yes." But because this secondary cause has 
sprung from an eternal foundation, and has an eternal 
will, it can by no means pass away. Oetinger, who 
in his work on the " Princess Antonia's Doctrinal 
Picture (Lehrtafel)," has attempted a solution of the 
whole 177 Questions, diverges from Bohme in his 
reply to this last-mentioned and most difficult 
eschatological question (whether Hell can ever pass 
away ?) ; we shall return to it in the sequel.* 



* Antonia was a princess in Wurtemberg (+ 1679), who 
caused a large picture, representing the Kabbalistic doctrine 
in episodes, symbols, and metaphors, to be painted and hung 
in the church at the Baths of Deinach and Wildbad. The 
painting has two divisions, a House and a Garden. The 
House represents the Old Testament dispensation ; the Garden 
the New Testament dispensation, with Christ as its central 
figure. The princess had this picture set up in the church, in 
order that it might induce visitors to the baths to seek health 
for their inward man at the heavenly fountains. 

Oetinger (+ 1782) gave an interpretation of this picture, re- 
marking, however, at the same time, that there is a certain 



Q2 CENTRUM NATURE. 



XXV. 

As we are now leaving " the dark point," let us 
not omit to repeat what Bohme reiterates again and 
again, that God is light, and in Him is no darkness. 
" But now, thou mayest say, is there in God also a 
contrary Will or opposition among or between the 
Spirits of God ? I answer : No ! though I show 
here their earnest birth, how earnestly and severely 
the Spirits of God are generated, whereby every one 
may very well understand the great earnest severity 
of God ; yet it does not therefore follow that there 
is a disunion or discord among them. In God all 
the spirits triumph as one spirit, and one spirit 
always mitigates and loves the other, and so there 
is nothing but mere joy and delight. But their 
severe Birth or Geniture, which is effected or done 
in secret, must be so " ( " Aurora," ch. x.). 



incongruity in the idea of representing these things in a 
painting. A painting is still ; but the Divine things are full 
of life and movement, are in a perpetual process, in a "per- 
petuo fieri." A far better symbol of the sources and powers 
of life is to be found in the natural springs themselves, in their 
great multiplicity and variety, salt-springs and sulphur- 
springs, sour, bitter, and sweet (James iii. u), which suggest 
the contrasts in the eternal Nature in God, and indeed, as 
Oetinger says, actually include somewhat of that eternal 
nature, on which account it is that they effect such marvellous 
results upon our bodies. He whose health is distempered 
will discover here that which will restore him to "tempera- 
ture ; " he who suffers from too much acid will find a species 
of earth which absorbs the acid ; he who suffers from an 
internal stoppage will find the solvent forces, etc. 

The Princess Antonia was celebrated for her learning. 
She read Hebrew fluently, and was deeply versed in the 
Kabbala. 



THE ACTUAL TRINITY. 93 



XXVI. 

And now to return to the doctrine of the 
Trinity. For the whole natural process, which 
has been indicated, forms the medium for the mani- 
festation of the Trinity. We began with the Abyss, 
in which a Will arose. This Will sought and found 
a mirror (the Eternal Idea), in which it beheld 
itself as a possibility of becoming three-fold in an 
infinite nXrfpwfJLa. But there were, as yet, no real 
and actual differences in God. The whole lay 
simply in a Magia, as a mere image. In order 
to life, reality, and actual development, there was 
need of a " contrarium," and this " contrarium " is 
the eternal Nature. The eternal Will, united with 
the idea, posits out of itself the eternal Nature, and 
thereby gains life, actuality, definition, and attributes. 
Now, in so far as the one eternal Will enthrones itself 
as Lord over the fire and the might-principle 
(the primary' qualities), God exists as the Father. 
In so far as the one eternal Will constitutes itself as 
Lord and Bearer of the Light-principle, which 
gathers into its unity the plenitude of power that 
proceeds from the Father, God exists as the Son. 
Without the Son, the Father would be only a dark 
valley. But the Father, in His infinite yearning for 
manifestation and love, begets the Son through the 
Fire (through the fourth natural property), through 
the Lightning, begets Him as the Word of Power, 
In so far as the Father is contemplated without the 
Son, His character is severity. The Son is gentleness, 
is the Father's Heart, Love, Light, and Beneficence. 



94 THE ACTUAL TRINITY. 

He unlocks a second " Principium," and is, as it 
were, the Janitor in the Holy Trinity. For it is 
when the Son unlocks the second " Principium " 
that Love first becomes a flowing current, and 
everything is enabled to stand in the fire of pure 
and heavenly Love. He reconciles the austere and 
angry Father, and makes Him loving and com- 
passionate. It is only in His union with the Son 
that the Father is Love and Compassion ; for in 
the Son's " centrum " there is nothing but pure joy, 
love, and delight. But from the Father and the 
Son proceeds the Spirit, for, when the light of God 
is born in the Father, so, in the kindling of the light 
in the fifth property, there goes forth a Spirit, rich 
in love, odorous, and of pleasant taste. The Spirit 
is the eternal Will, in so far as this sets itself as 
Lord over the principles of Fire and Light in their 
union, and develops, shapes, and fashions the mani- 
foldness which is contained in the Son, confirms 
and ratifies the eternal Birth of the Trinity. The 
Holy Spirit is an Artist (Sculptor, Modeller), 
fashioning, shaping, and completing. And thus 
God is one single inseparable Being, but is three- 
fold in variety of Person, one God, one Will, one 
Heart, one Desire, one Joy, one Beauty, one Lord, 
one Omnipotence, one Plenitude of all things, with- 
out beginning, without end (" Three Principles," 
sect. 35). 

Bohme consequently implies, that the one eternal 
Will, which arose in the Abyss, unfolds itself into 
absolute personality, by means of the eternal Nature. 
He cleaves to the unity. There is only one God, 
only one absolute Personality. But in the one 



THE GLORY OF GOD. 95 

absolute Personality, there are three Will-centres, 
three centres of manifestation, three springs of 
movement, by which Bdhme means what church 
doctrine calls Persons or Hypostases. Until we have 
reached the idea of the eternal Nature, we cannot 
speak of Three Persons or " centra." These are 
simply beheld in the mirror as possibilities. They 
can gain manifestation, as " centra," only in the 
eternal Nature, which implies varieties, and the dis- 
charge of its own characteristic function or office 
by each of the three Persons. 

But to God as the one central Being in three 
centres of manifestation, there corresponds an infinite 
Periphery, which is a fourth composite part of the 
Trinity. Bohme teaches that there is in God not 
simply a Ternary, but also a Quaternary. By 
" Ternary " we are now thinking of the Trinity, 
not of the other " ternaries " that have been dis- 
cussed in the nature-process. But a fourth element 
belongs to the Trinity, not a fourth Person, but an 
impersonal thing, which is different from God and 
is yet inseparable from Him, viz., the eternal pro- 
duct which is developed through the process, and 
which we have already spoken of as the seventh 
Natural Property, the Glory of God, the Uncreated 
Heaven, which Bohme sometimes also designates 
as the essential, i.e., as Wisdom evolved into 
actuality, the Maiden that generates nothing, but 
merely reflects, or beams back the Triune God, His 
image and His whole developed riches. In the 
" still mystery " the Maiden stood before God, and 
displayed to Him all His hidden wonders ; and 
now she shines forth in manifestation. The Maiden, 



96 THE UNCREATED HEAVEN. 

the Wisdom, the Glory, the Uncreated Heaven, the 
diffused extension of the Power of God is visibly 
symbolized, in the created world, by the starry sky. 
Whereas theology usually counts only Three in 
God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and then 
proceeds at once to the Created World, Bohme 
says, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, these Three ; 
but the fourth is the Glory of God, God's own 
Uncreated Heaven ; and only after this can we 
begin to speak of the Created World. Bohme (and 
still more his disciple Oetinger) sharply rebukes the 
theologians, because they pass immediately and at 
once from the Triune God to the Creation and the 
Created World, deal so loosely and superficially 
with the conception of the Glory of God (8da), 
and defraud God of His Heaven, notwithstanding 
the fact that, in the New Testament, everything 
points to this, and, so to speak, converges upon it. 
Bohme and Oetinger remind us that in the New 
Testament God is called " the Lord of Glory " 
(Eph. i. 7). He is not called the Creator of Glory, 
for the Glory is uncreated. He is called the Father 
of lights, from whom cometh every good gift and 
every perfect gift. This Light is not created light, it 
is not stars or created spirits ; it is Uncreated Light, 
the seven lamps of Fire burning eternally before the 
Throne, the seven Spirits of God, i.e., the seven 
eternal fundamental powers that penetrate and 
illuminate the infinite multiplicity of the riches of 
the Glory of God. God energizes in the Created 
World with the powers of His Glory, and reveals 
Himself both according to His wrath and according 
to His love. In a certain degree, and under various 



THE UNCREATED HEAVEN. 97 

symbols, God revealed His Glory to the prophets. 
But, as Oetinger strongly emphasizes, no one pro- 
phet ever beheld the Glory of God exactly like 
another, and no two saints have precisely the same 
vision of it. 

In harmony with the above exposition we must 
draw a distinction, even in the life of the Divine 
inward manifestation, between an internal and an 
external, an esoteric and an . exoteric, between 
mystery and revelation. The internal is that primal 
" still mystery " in which as yet God exists, so to 
speak, only in mystic self-contemplation, and in the 
magical self-mirroring, the tranquil wisdom, where 
God, in pure introspection, converses only with 
Himself, without expressing Himself, or rather, 
simply ponders within Himself what He can be- 
come (\6yos ivSiddeTos).' The external is mani- 
festation through the eternal nature, where the will 
is active, where God expresses Himself in the 
Word, as the Word of Power (\0y05 irpofyopiKoi). 
When it is said of the created world, in the 
Psalms, " The heavens declare the glory of God, 
and the firmament showeth forth His handiwork," 
this is but a later analogy of what had previously 
occurred in the Uncreated Heaven, through which 
the Word and the Spirit resound. God is the true ' 
God only as He is the unity of the internal and 
external, of Mystery and Manifestation. There is 
here an eternal going-forth and an eternal entering- 
in. God eternally goes forth out of His inwardness 
to manifest Himself in externality, and from this 
externality He again returns, enriched, into the 
tranquil inwardness. This, however, Bohme does 

7 



98 THE UNCRE X ATE_D HEAVEN. 

%. 

not explain more fully, because it is impossible for 
us to know God outside nature. Outside nature, 
the Deity is called Majesty ; but within nature He 
is called Father, Son, and Holy Ghost ; Wonderful,. 
Counsel, Power ! " for whatsoever is without nature 
could in no wise help me. I could not in eternity 
either see, feel, or find it, because I am in nature 
and generated from nature (" Dreifaches Leben," 
iv., cap. 86-88). Bohme can recognise nothing as 
living, unless it be in nature, in these concrete 
differences and varieties. He ends, therefore, with 
an Unutterable, an Ineffable ! 

Thus far the highly-enlightened layman, whose 
doctrine of God, the Being of all beings, we have 
now endeavoured to reproduce ! Let us proceed to 
inquire how far we can formally accept this 
doctrine. 



CRITICAL RETROSPECT. 

xxvii. ;. 

THE RELATION TO THE ETHICAL CONCEPTION 
OF GOD. 

IF we compare the doctrine of the Trinity, here 
set forth, with the Church doctrine, as the latter 
is presented to us in the Athanasian symbol, we 
perceive an immense difference. 

Let us, however, first emphasize the unity and 
harmony of the two doctrines. Bohme presupposes 
the truth of the Church doctrine of the Trinity, 
wishes to be in agreement with it, and believes 
himself to be so. He demands One God in Three 
Persons, unity in trinity, trinity in unity. As it has 
been objected that the Persons do not attain com- 
plete independence in Bohme's scheme, . we must 
repeat that Person and Personality are not the same 
thing. There is only one God," one Divine Being, 
one absolute Personality. But the one absolute 
Personality sets itself in a three-fold form of exist- 
ence, or of being (Person, Hypostasis). In each 
of these three forms of existence there is the whole 
God, the postulate (pre-assumption) of the other 
two forms of existence or hypostases. The Father 
is not the Father prior to the Son and the Spirit, 



ioo CRITICAL RETROSPECT. 

etc., etc. And that this is the sense of the Church 
doctrine is evident from the Athanasian symbol, 
which expressly states : 

" The Father eternal, the Son eternal, and the 
Holy Ghost eternal, and yet they are not 
three eternals, but one eternal, as also there 
are not three incomprehensibles, nor three 
uncreated, but one uncreated, and one in- 
comprehensible. The Father is Lord, the 
Son Lord, and the Holy Ghost Lord, and 
yet not three Lords, but one Lord. For 
like as we are compelled by the Christian 
verity to acknowledge every Person by Him- 
self to be God and Lord, so are we forbidden 
by the Catholic religion to say : There be 
three Gods or three Lords." 
On the other hand, stress must be laid upon the 
fact that Bohrrre nowhere reduces the Persons to 
mere forces or attributes. So long as the question 
is simply that of abstract harmony with the Church 
doctrine, then, whatever defects of detail there may 
be in his evolution of the doctrine, it is scarcely 
possible to point out any vital contradiction. 
But what is characteristic of Bohme, and what 
constitutes the chief 'interest of his conception of 
God, and distinguishes it from many other specula- 
tive expositions, is his deviation from the Church 
doctrine when he states his acceptance of it in fresh 
terms. 

) For if we compare Bohme's doctrine of the 
Trinity with that which is contained in the other- 
wise so admirable Athanasian symbol, the latter 
displays to us the most abstract metaphysic, a God 



RELATION TO ETHICAL VIEW OF GOD. 101 

for mere thought, in whom there is nothing sym- 
pathetic for the heart of man and for his religious 
and ethical consciousness. Bohme, on the contrary, 
reveals to us a living Trinitarian God, a God in 
whom there is a Nature, a God who eternally pro>- 
duces not only Himself, but also His Heaven, and 
in .whose Life, independent of the Created World, 
there is, at the same time, an inward and an outward, 
an esoteric-and an exoteric mystery and manifestation. 
And since this God is a Spirit, Bohme shows us 
that this Spirit is the ethical Spirit, that this Triune 
God is the God of goodness, is the eternal Love, 
of which there is absolutely no hint whatever in 
the Athanasian symbol, which moves exclusively in 
purely logical categories. By this relation of his 
to the human heart and affections, Bohme's doctrine 
of the Trinity is in coherence with the Reformation, 
and with the Evangelical Church. We have, indeed, 
affirmed that Theosophy contains a super-confessional 
element, as is proved, so far as Bohme is con- 
cerned, by the fact that his greatest and most 
congenial exponent, Franz Baader, is a Roman 
Catholic. Still it must be added that Bohme, not- 
withstanding the free attitude which he adopts 
towards all narrowness and literalism of creed, points 
back, precisely here in his doctrine of the Trinity, to 
that characteristic form of the religious consciousness 
which was kindled into activity by the Reformation. 

XXVIII. 

It has been justly said that the Reformation, in 
so far as dogmatics are concerned, bequeathed an 
unfinished task, inasmuch as it only developed 



102 CRITICAL RETROSPECT. 

from its fundamental principle the anthropologico- 
soteriological dogmas, i.e., the religious tenets that 
deal with sin and grace and man's need of redemp- 
tion, but left uatouched the more distinctively theo- 
logical doctrines. It accepted the doctrine of the 
Trinity, simply as an inheritance transmitted from 
the past, and the consequence was that there occurred 
a "hiatus" between the anthropological and the theo- 
logical. The new principle, penetrated and inspired 
only the anthropological side, while the theological 
remained absolutely untouched. Consequently, in 
the course of time, the doctrine of the Trinity began 
to stand in foreign relations to human consciousness 
and was treated with ever-increasing indifference, 
an indifference which, in the case of many thinkers, 
passed over into avowed hostility. If the doctrine 
of the Trinity is to become actually significant to 
the religious consciousness, and is to be brought 
into union with it, the doctrine itself must assume 
an ethical character, the Triune God must become 
the God of goodness, must become Love, a fact 
which, had been previously recognized by such 
mediaeval thinkers as Richard of St. Victor. Trie 
Apostles' Creed appeals to' us to form this concep- 
tion of God. The pre-assumption is that there is 
one God who is Saving Love. But this One Saving 
Love reveals Himself to us in three causalities who 
effect our salvation : the Father, Son, and Holy 
Ghost. The problem which Christian faith under- 
takes is to conceive- these Three in unity, and the 
unity in trinity,- to conceive of God as .the One 
who in Himself is Love, amid Trinitarian varieties. 
Nothing would be more subversive of the faith than 



RELATION TO ETHICAL VIEW OF GOD. 103 

to suppose that God only manifested Himself to 
us as Love, revealed Himself to us under three 
masks, but that in Himself He was not Love, was 
perhaps in His appalling solitude something wholly- 
other than Love. And yet, even among the Re- 
formers themselves, when they discuss the doctrine 
of Election, one finds a distinction drawn between 
the revealed Will and the secret Will of God : there 
is a revealed Will, in accordance with which God 
desires that all men shall come to the knowledge 
of the truth, and shall be saved, and a secret, 
unsearchable Will, in accordance with which He wills 
that some men shall be lost, because He does not 
extend to them the mighty aid of His grace in . 
accepting salvation. Nor is it in Calvin alone that 
we find this dualism between the revealed Will and 
the secret Will, which latter Will transcends and 
prevails over the Will of Love, and is higher than 
this, an unsearchable, super-ethical Wisdom into 
which we may not and dare not intrude ; we find 
the same thing in some passages of Luther. For 
Luther, who is no friend of speculation, enjoins us 
again and again to confine ourselves to the God 
who is preached (Deus praedicatus), to contemplate 
God in Christ, in the Christ who lies as a child 
in Mary's bosom, and hangs upon the Cross of 
Calvary, and to feel absolute confidence that such 
as we see 'God in Christ, such is God in Himself. 
Nevertheless, in his work " De Servo Arbitrio " 
Luther speaks of the Hidden Will, in the sense 
above alluded to. But if this painful dualism is 
to be overcome, it must lead us to strive after the 
knowledge of the ethical, after the apprehension of 



1 04 CRITIC A L ' RETROSPECT. 

Love as the Being or Nature* of God, as God in 
Himself, who has nothing higher above Him ; it 
must lead us to strive after a comprehension of the 
ethical as the ruling factor, the hegemonic, in God, 
and to view the logical and physical, the Wisdom 
and the Power, as attributes of Goodness and Love ; 
it must conduct us not simply to a logical and 
physical, but to an ethical Trinity. 

While the Apostolic symbol already . demands 
this ethical conception of God (which does not 
exclude, but includes, the logical and physical), this 
demand is even more firmly defined by the religious 
consciousness which was evoked at the Reformation. 
The personality, which is regenerated and redeemed 
in Christ, and which moves in the contrast between 
sin and grace, must necessarily behold the principle 
and eternal pattern of this contrast in God Himself 
a fact which certainly does not imply that it must 
behold sin in God Himself. But it does imply that 
one must behold the contrasts of the Divine mani- 
festation which stream into human consciousness, 
and the unison of these contrasts in God's own 
inward life. It must behold in the inner Life of 
God the contrast between -Law and Gospel, between 
the ethically necessitated and the ethically free, 
between Holiness and Grace, Righteousness and 
Mercy, and also the unity and harmony of these 
contrasts. Man is created in the image of God, 
and must consequently have his eternal pattern in 
God. But this especially applies to the new man, 
who is regenerated in Christ, and who is destined to 
be ever increasingly developed into likeness with 
God. In proportion as we are enabled to indicate 



RELATION TO ETHICAL VIEW OF GOD. 105 

in God Himself the contrasts of manifestation, which 
constitute the regenerated personality, those of which 
that personality has the most vivid experience, and 
in which it lives and moves, and in proportion as 
we succeed in bringing these contrasts and their 
union into association with the trinitarian, the triune 
in God, the doctrine of the Trinity gains, in human 
interest, and is brought more closely home to .us, 
although some mystery will always cling to it, some 
* veil that we cannot lift. This is the problem which 
forces itself with growing urgency upon all modern 
theology and upon all philosophy of religion that 
really deserves the name* And,- although under 
certain limitations, Bohme may be regarded as a 
pioneer of this endeavour. The Living God, whom 
he seeks to apprehend, is none other than the God 
of the Gospel, in whom he believes as his Rock 
and his Redeemer. He is anxious to state a 
conception of God . that may fill that hiatus between 
the theological and anthropological sides of the 
dogmatic development which was bequeathed" by 
the Reformation ; he seeks to unite the theological 
and the anthropological. It is true that he does 
not seek this by the method of scientific reflection, 
but only in an instinctive, immediate, and' simple- 
hearted manner. He seeks the Living God, but 
always pre-supposes that this God is .the God 



* Among modern theologians, there is no one who has so 
clearly and profoundly pointed out tha,t the doctrine of the 
Trinity must be developed in this direction, if it is to fulfil the 
principle of the Reformation, or who has himself offered so 
weighty a contribution to the solution of the problem, as Dorner 
in his* remarkable treatise: " Christliche Glaubenslehre," 
1879. 



106 CRITICAL RETROSPECT. 

of .Christian revelation, whom he knows in his 
evangelical consciousness. The central point in 
his conception of God is God as Love. And, as 
must be very specially emphasized, he rediscovers 
.in the Life of God Himself the very contrast in 
which the regenerated human personality moves. 
There is certainly somewhat here that needs clearing 
up, and that presents itself only in vague fermen- 
tation. Close regard must be paid to Bohme's 
intention. One main contrast, which we have 
already noticed in God, and which merits the closest 
attention, is the contrast between the "Wrath of God 
and the Love of God. Bohme speaks of a recon- 
ciliation in God ; the Soh propitiates the severe and 
wrathful Father. Bohme himself, this devout soul, 
knows from his own experience, from the conflicts 
and anxieties of his own inward life, the wrath of 
God and the power of the wrath of God, the love of 
God and the might of that love, the severity and 
the compassion of God ; he finds in God 'the union 
of these attributes, and gives them a Trinitarian appli- 
cation, inasmuch- as the Father is the Bearer of the 
principle of severity (the Fire-principle) ; the Son is 
the Bearer of the principle of gentleness (the Light- 
principle) ; and the Spirit is the Bearer of the union 
of both. In the eternal nature in God Bohme sees a 
pattern for created nature. But everything that is 
simply nature must be born twice, must be transmuted. 
From careful study of Bohme's statements of the 
conception of God (of which we have been able to 
give only a brief outline) " one gains a prevailing 
impression that his God is, in His inmost Beiqg, 
kindred to man, as man is kindred to God. And 



RELATION TO ETHICAL VIEW OF GOD. 107 

we recognize, throughout, the pulse-beat of a be- 
lieving man, who is anxious about his own salvation 
and that of his fellow-men. His speculation streams 
forth from the deepest practical inspiration, for he 
has fled to the Heart of God in order to hide 
himself from the fury and tempest of the Devil. 
And, in the course, of his metaphysical elucidations 
of the Being of God, he glances aside at the terrible 
Fall of Lucifer and Adam, and exhorts men ' to 
Work * out their salvation with fear and trembling. 
This practical momentum, this reference to salvation 
with which Bohme's speculations are saturated, may 
be regarded as the mystical element in him. But 
it is Protestant ethical mysticism, not ' pantheistic 
mysticism, as is so frequently the case with the 
mediaeval mystics. 

*We have, at the same time, serious objections to 
urge against Bohme's doctrine objections which, if 
they are proved to .be well grounded, will show that 
this doctrine is not to be immediately accepted as 
the truth, but that it needs to be purified and 
"transmuted." It is true that there are thinkers of 
considerable reputation who are of opinion that 
the perfect truth is here presented, and that the 
fundamental view is correct, . simply needing to 
be restated in a more scientific form. We, how- 
ever, cannot but maintain that the fundamental 
view suffers from indistinctness, and this in very 
important particulars. The limitation in Bohme's 
theory is, that he postulates the ethical concep- 
tion of God instead of working it out as his 
express subject. And the consequence of this is 
that his gold is mixed with slag. We detect 



108 CRITICAL RETROSPECT. 

Bohme's weakness at the very point where he is 
peculiarly strong,; viz., in his treatment of the 
eternal Nature as the instrument of the Spirit. Our 
objection, stated briefly and generally, is this : that 
although Bohme, in his deepest intention and in 
harmony with the inmost yearning of his heart, 
seeks the ethical, and regards Love as the highest 
thing in God, he is nevertheless so, engrossed with 
the eternal Nature that this, in point of fact, gains 
undue predominance over the ethical, and improper 
independence of it. Although the Living God 
whom he seeks " My soul thirsteth after God, after 
the Living God " is Spirit, ethical Spirit, absolute 
Personality, still Bohme is so enamoured of the 
natural form of life, that the Spirit, and the inde- 
pendent life of the Spirit, do not receive their due. 
He overlooks the fact that^in relation to the Spirit, 
life is only the secondary thing, only the predicate, 
although certainly a necessary- predicate, and that 
life, viewed purely in and for itself, is merely a 
physical category. Thus in St. John's Gospel it is 
not said : " In the beginning was the life?* but : " In 
the beginning was the Word" which points Xo God 
as Spirit. Not until after this statement do we 
read: "In this (Word) was the Life." Briefly, 
according to our judgment, Idealism, or Spirituality, 
does not receive its full rights in Bohme ; Realism, 
the natural aspect, remains unduly predominant. 

Vast as may be the wealth comprised in the idea 
of life, we are not disposed to agree uncon- 
ditionally with Bohme and Oetinger, that Theology 
is to be deduced from the idea of life (" theologia 
ex idea vitae deducta"). For self-consciousness, 



RELATION TO ETHICAL VIEW OF GOD. 109 

spirit, love is not capable of being deduced imme- 
diately from life, but is a higher thing, an uncondi- 
tional primary, which has life in itself, and takes 
shape therein. In any case, spiritual life - must not 
be deduced from natural life. The idea of " The 
Living God " implies not only that there is a nature 
in God by means of which He can summon into 
existence round about Him a growing and flourishing 
life, but also that in God, in His own independent 
Life, .there is spirituality. To desire the Living God 
is to desire the Personal God, the absolute Ego'in 
the absolute TrXTJpcojAd, which is not, however, to be 
so imagined as that the absolute Ego first gradually 
evolves itself out of* the TrX^poifxa as out of a chaos, 
but that the absolute Ego, in full independence, 
posits "and shapes the nh/jpcofjia out of itself, out of 
the depths of its own being. To desire the Living 
God is to desire the ethical God, the God who is 
not only Might, but Righteousness and Goodness, the 
God to. whom prayer can be made. The spontaneous 
religious consciousness demands this, nor will it give 
the name of the Living God either to a God who 
becomes in time, or to a God who is deaf and dumb. 
And the history of philosophy shows that the same 
demands have been made by the men who have 
maintained, in this domain, the conception of the 
Living God. In the history of modern philosophy 
we may allude to Jacobi, as a memorable witness 
for the Living God. When Jacobi says to Fichte, 
who denied the personality of God : " Blessed is the 
man for whom the' old simple assurance By the 
Living God ! ' is always the highest," he means the 
God of goodness and righteousness, who from all 



ilo CRITICAL RETROSPECT. 

eternity says / to Himself, and whose arm is Hot 
shortened. Thus it must certainly be recognized, 
as Jacobi did hot recognize, that if the manifestation 
of- the Living God is to be complete, there must 
also be a nature in God, for, otherwise, He would 
lack organs of manifestation, and we could not 
speak of "an arm which is not shortened." . 

We will now consider more closely Bohme's 
definition of the relation between the Eternal Nature 
and the Eternal Spirit. 

XXIX. 

RELATION BETWEEN THE ETERNAL NATURE 
AND THE ETERNAL SPIRIT. 

It must be admitted that, when Bohme pourtrays 
God in the Still Mystery, in inward contemplation, 
and makes the transition to Nature "subsequent to 
and dependent upon this, he ranks Spirit above 
Nature, and defines it as prior to Nature. But the 
truth herein expressed is again obscured by the fact 
that this condition is as yet to be viewed as merely 
potential, that God possesses Himself only^ as a 
possibility, and that the varieties in God are not 
actual, and, consequently, we have not yet arrived at 
a Triune God. We cannot as yet, as he says, speak 
of three Persons, but only of three energies or 
operations.. The varieties and differences are, so to 
speak, involved and entangled in each other. . We 
are at present only in the undefined Unity. God, 
as yet, exists only in a vague " unio mystica " 
with Himself. It is Life, and yet not life, only a 
figure or schema of life. God does not become the 



ETERNAL NATURE AND ETERNAL SPIRIT in 

Living God until the eternal Nature arises ; the 
general process does not begin until the eternal 
Nature bursts forth. It is only by mesfris of Nature 
that God becomes trinitarian. In the Still Mystery 
and the inward self-contemplation, God is absorbed 
in mystic introspection, in Half-dreamy, half-darkened 
self-consciousness. What we lack is, that God is not, 
from the outset, pure and perfect self-consciousness, 
which is not merely dreamy and imaginative, but 
meditative and apprehensive in the undarkened 
clearness of the varieties and separations. 

. This, then, is our present objection, that Spirit 
although Bohme ranks it above Nature, and although 
it is Spirit itself that posits Nature is permitted to 
borrow its life from Nature. Now, while we admit 
that Spirit cannot attain complete life or perfect 
energy without Nature, we must still regard the 
doctrine that Spirit without Nature is merely poten- 
tial, a life and yet no life, a shadow and- figure of 
life as conflicting with the essential character of 
Spirit. We cannot but maintain that the personal 
God, even prior to Nature (employing the expres- 
sion prior not in a temporal sense, but to denote the 
relation of superiority and. subordination), is the 
Living God. Life is energy, self-movem.ent, self- 
mediation, as the result of an inward force, for 
mechanical movement is not life. Indeed, the 
more . powerful is this inward indwelling force, the 
more independent and perfect is the life. But 
the same thing' applies to Spirit. Self-movement 
and self-development with conscious self-determina- 
tion must be predicated of Spirit ; and the greater 
the indwelling power, the more Spirit moves and 



ii2 CRITICAL RETROSPECT. 

energizes "from within itself and by itself, indepen- 
dent of all else, . the greater, mightier, and more 
living is Spirit. The highest Spirit, the Spirit of 
all spirits, the absolute Spirit of God is He who, 
without limitation,, and in perfect independence of 
aught else, by His own inward power, energizes 
Himself and all things, and is, consequently, from 
the very beginning, " primo actu," the Living God, 
who posits living nature out of Himself, as His 
medium and instrument.' 

Bohme repeatedly affirms that Life depends upon 
contrast (" contrarium "), but the " contrari.um " with- 
out which God cannot be living and actual is, on 
Bohme's view, nothing but Nature. We, however, 
bearing in mind the Christian conception of God, 
must maintain that the eternal Spirit, purely as 
Spirit, has its own "contraria"- independently of 
nature. God as Spirit, or God in the Still Mystery, 
is, for Bohme, only universal will, or the will of 
unity, the mystic freedom which, at root, wills 
nothing, and can only become a definite Will through 
the agency of Nature. According to Bohme, God 
first acquires His Egoism by His -conquest of Nature. 
But, from the standpoint of revealed truth, it must 
be maintained that God, apart from, and outside of, 
Nature, is self-concentrated Egoism (which is cer- 
tainly very different from simply natural Egoism 
with its morbid restlessness), viz., the holy self- 
harmonious Egoism which is inseparable from 
eternal Love. God, as absolute Personality, is at 
the same time Individual Being, distinguishing* itself 
from all else, and He is also Universal. and General 
Being, the Being that in itself is good and true, the 



ETERNAL NATURE AND ETERNAL SPIRIT. 113 

Being whose volition is all-valid, the Universal Will ; 
and this contrast between God as Individual Will 
and as Universal Will (with its corresponding con- 
trast between God as .SV^-consciousness and all- 
consciousness) finds its harmonious reconciliation in 
the absolute Spirit. 

And if we meditate upon the ethical Being of 
God, is it not true that this ethical Being 
contains its own immanent contrasts ? as, e.g., the 
contrast between the ethically necessitated and the 
ethically free, between the Glory and the Love of 
God, between His Independence and Self-exaltation 
(which may also be defined as God's righteousness 
towards Himself) and His Goodness, Self-abnegation, 
and Self-communication ? Does not Scripture point 
out to us the contrast in the ethical Being of God 
between the jealous God, who wills and asserts His 
own Honour, and the long-suffering God, the God 
of Love, Compassion, and Consolation, the union of 
Severity and Gentleness in the same God ? We 
will not enter here upon the doctrine of the Divine 
attributes ; but we maintain that God, as Spirit, 
possesses life and contrasts in Himself, independently 
of, and prior to, nature. We deny that God, as 
Bohme teaches, first acquires attributes by the 
agency of nature, although this denial by no means 
excludes the fact that each determination in the 
spiritual and ethical Being of God has, and must 
have, a corresponding might-or nature-side. 

XXX. 

OUR objection to Bohme's definition of the relation 
between the eternal nature and the eternal spirit 

8 



H4 CRITICAL RETROSPECT. 

thus starts more precisely from this : that God as 
Spirit is represented as first acquiring His power 
(for a Spirit that lies in obscure self-consciousness 
has no power of its own) by vanquishing a nature 
which, at the outset, confronted Him in antagonism. 
We have to emphasize the fact that God, as the 
absolute Spirit, must be self-powerful, self-conscious, 
and self-defining, prior to the nature which He 
posits out of Himself; and that there can be no 
single momentum in His being which is not irradiated 
and encircled in perfect clearness by this self-con- 
sciousness. We must insist that God be conceived 
as Causa Sui, or, as it may also be expressed, that 
He be conceived under the title of Aseitas (Self- 
caused, independent Being) ; otherwise He is not 
apprehended as the absolute or all-perfect Being. 
Undoubtedly, every philosophical system demands 
that God be thought of as Causa Sui ; but, in 
point of fact, He is so apprehended only in the 
ethical conception which regards Him as absolute 
Personality. For Causa Sui, or Aseitas (which must 
be construed not as a single attribute, but as the 
pervading element in all the attributes of God), 
implies not simply the negative truth that God has 
not His cause in any other than Himself, and that 
He exists in virtue of an internal necessity, but 
also that He posits Himself, produces Himself, as 
His own absolute operation and His own absolute 
object. But Self-positing, Self-production is un- 
thinkable otherwise than as Self-consciousness and 
Self-determination. It is only when God is con- 
ceived as the perfect Personality, as the one Good, 
as the eternal Love, who has Wisdom and Power 



ETERNAL NATURE AND ETERNAL SPIRIT 115 

as His attributes, that He can be livingly appre- 
hended as Causa Sui, as His own efficient cause 
(Causa efficiens), as His own final cause (Causa 
finalis), as His own teleological self-movement, which 
posits from within itself all the requisite means for 
its manifestation, and is, accordingly, of itself, by 
itself, and to itself. We are deeply conscious of 
the difficulties which hinder us from conceiving the 
Aseitas of God, this self-positing, but also eternally 
self-presupposing Ego, which is more precisely de- 
fined in its threefold relation to itself and to its 
TTk-qpoifxa. But however difficult it may be to 
apprehend the Divine Aseitas, which is the funda- 
mental condition for the Absolute, we must, never- 
theless, imagine what we cannot formulate, and what 
is lost from our gaze in excess of light. The dif- 
ficulty of thinking and imagining the Eternal 
Self-Existent One, who has life in Himself, and has 
power and potency ceaselessly to renew and to restore 
Himself, depends essentially upon the fact that we 
have to exclude from this conception the element of 
time, and that, nevertheless, our thought and imagi- 
nation cannot dispense with a beginning. The 
Self-existent One incessantly produces Himself, but 
never produced Himself for the first time. He 
incessantly posits Himself as the absolute Ego in 
threefold relation, but yet He never said / to Him- 
self for the first time. He produces Himself as His 
own result, but the result is equally eternal with 
the self-production. He lives in an absolute Present, 
from which succession, past and future, is excluded; 
and yet, as truly as He is the Living God in cease- 
less movement, the elements of tune must be in 



n6 CRITICAL RETROSPECT. 

Him, although they are eternally abrogated. In 
His perfect and blessed Life-movement, He never 
ceases to begin, never ceases to end, never ceases 
to go out of Himself, never ceases to return into 
Himself; and in this harmoniously flowing move- 
ment He never ceases to be in perfect rest and 
undisturbed tranquillity, at once the Living and 
the Unchangeable God. Even though there be 
something here which we cannot grasp, and which 
we hope to approach more closely when we ourselves 
shall have exchanged time for eternity, and thus, 
released from our present enthralled condition, shall 
be more fully able to live and think in the forms 
of eternity, we are nevertheless under the necessity 
of conceiving even now (unless everything about 
us is to slip into confusion) the Self-Powerful, the 
Self- Existent, the Self-Producing. And for this very 
reason we ought to guard ourselves most carefully 
against the admission of definitions which imperil 
the conception of the Self-Mightiness and the Self- 
Production. 

The final and insuperable word on this subject is 
the word of the Lord to Moses : " I am that I am ! 
say unto the children of Israel : / am hath sent 
me ! " This word, however, must be interpreted in 
a living sense, and not in a dead one. When a 
creature says : " I am that I am," the phrase merely 
expresses the simple identical proposition, that this 
created individuality remains, amid all changes, the 
same and not another. But, when it is uttered by 
God, its meaning is infinitely vaster. It implies not 
only the identity of His Being, but that He Himself 
is the Principle of His Being. He hereby defines 



ETERNAL NATURE AND ETERNAL SPIRIT. 117 

Himself as the Absolute, the All-Perfect, the Funda- 
mental Being, as the One who was before all things, 
the One who is, and who is to be, and this not 
only of necessity, but also with freedom, complete 
self-consciousness, and self-determination. That God 
is the Being existent from all eternity does not 
mean that He happens upon Himself as the neces- 
sary Being, prior to His self-determination. Nor 
does it mean that He meets with eternal truths, 
eternal laws, unalterable by God Himself, as a 
necessity imposed upon Him from without (which 
would imply the subjection of God to Fate !) ; 
nor does it mean that He arbitrarily ordains 
these universally-valid laws. It means that all 
the momenta in His Being are free, and have 
His absolute Will as their principle ; that this 
necessity, this universal validity, these eternal laws 
are the internal attributes, the internal essential 
determinations of His Will. It means that these 
laws are not outside God, but in God, inherent in 
His nature. Consequently, when we say that His 
Being is one with His eternal Self-production, we 
imply that God or the Absolute is the Absolute 
Personality. For only absolute Personality is sus- 
ceptible of these predicates, which are totally inap- 
plicable to the creature ; viz., Causa Sui and Aseitas. 

XXXI. 

PANTHEISM is unable to apprehend God as Causa 
Sui, or as the eternally Self-positing and Self- 
producing. In Spinoza, Causa Sui is essentially 
only a negative conception. It merely asserts that 



n8 CRITICAL RETROSPECT. 

God has not His cause in another, outside of God. 
The God of Spinoza is not His own cause, does not 
energize Himself and produce Himself, but is simply 
abstract lifeless Being, a blindly necessary substance. 
Life and process are lacking in Spinoza : in his 
God there is no living fountain, no spring of self- 
production and self-renewal. That Spinoza cannot 
conceive Causa Sui is due to the fact that he ex- 
cludes the idea of teleological cause. For absolute 
cause, as living and active, must be that which 
energizes itself, as its own absolute goal. Nor can 
the higher teleological Pantheism of Schelling and 
Hegel (whose God is a becoming God) define God 
as Causa Sui, or as efficient or teleological cause. 
It recognizes only a blind and passive basis, whether 
it be an obscure nature-basis, as in Schelling, or a 
logical basis, as in Hegel, from which God comes 
forth in an infinite process, in which process, how- 
ever, God never succeeds in actualizing Himself, 
because there subsists an eternal dualism between the 
ideal and the real. It is only the ethical conception 
of God, the conception which views God as the eter- 
nally self-realizing, and in Himself eternally realized 
Goodness and Love, that can hold God to be His 
own cause (causa efficiens et causa finalis). And, 
high as Bohme stands above all pantheistic concep- 
tions of God (inasmuch as he defines God as Spirit 
in inward self-contemplation, independent of temporal 
existence, and prior to the eternal nature itself), still 
he is clearly influenced here by the pantheistic typus, 
as is proved by the fact that, instead of beginning 
with God mighty in Himself, and existing from the 
very first, instead of allowing self-consciousness and 



ETERNAL NATURE AND ETERNAL SPIRIT, ng 

Love to mediate themselves by their own instrumen- 
tality, he begins by defining God as potentiality, as 
dreamy self-consciousness, which requires the aid of 
Nature, before it can gain life, reality, and power of 
its own. 

XXXII. 

And in connection with this stands another point 
to which we cannot assent ; viz., that Bohme regards 
the first link in the theogonistic process as an Abyss, 
a Chaos, an undeveloped TrXajpcJixa, wherein nature 
and spirit repose as yet in complete indifference, 
where there is neither light nor darkness, good nor 
evil, and where all varieties and differences are 
dormant. We are well aware that Bohme does not 
hold that this Abyss is to be hypostatized as inde- 
pendent and outside the other momenta ; and we 
also know that the idea of temporal succession must 
be excluded. Nevertheless, Bohme demands that we 
begin by thinking and picturing to ourselves this 
mysterium magnum, this stillness without reality, 
this indifference of Spirit and Nature, God and the 
World, because the whole creation is germinally 
enfolded in this, and Father, Son, and Spirit are 
here, although at present quiescent. We maintain, 
on the contrary, that we are not called upon to 
embark on a train of thought of this heathen, pan- 
theistic, and cosmogonic type, and that we shall gain 
nothing by doing so. If we would conceive of the 
ethical God, the God of Christianity, who is Love, 
we must begin by conceiving of God as the Being who 
is real and actual from the very outset. In the true 



120 CRITICAL RETROSPECT. 

God, actuality is prior to potentiality, and embraces 
the conception of all potentialities, while in the World, 
infinitude, potentiality always precedes actuality. 
Pantheistic thought transfers to God Himself this 
earthly cosmogonic relation, in which the world 
springs out of chaos. We shall find it easier to 
grasp the truth that God is the self-existent Being 
(Aseitas) if we assign to Him a postulate inherent in 
His very Being, a ground out of which He comes 
forth (cf. Schelling's "Treatise on Freedom"). But 
it remains totally inexplicable how a God, who is 
Love, can come forth out of Bohme's " Abyss." 
Bohme says that in this Abyss there arises a Will, 
which proceeds to define itself as eternal Freedom 
and eternal God. But, here, precisely the same diffi- 
culty recurs. Whence this Will ? We say : The 
Abyss with the vague emergence of a Will is not 
the first thing ; nor ought it to be conceived of as 
the first. The first thing is the eternally self-pre- 
dicating Spirit in its supremacy over all its possi- 
bilities, a predication and a postulate which is hidden 
from us in the light of eternity. " Say unto the 
children of Israel : ' 7" am hath sent me ! ' " 

Kant says in his " Critique of Reason : " " The 
thought is unavoidable, and yet intolerable, that 
a Being, whom we conceive as the Highest among 
all possible beings, says to Himself, as it were : ' I 
am from eternity to eternity ; outside Me there is 
nothing except that which by My Will has become 
something; but whence am I? Here everything 
sinks beneath us ! " The intolerable, however, con- 
sists simply in this, that Kant here makes the 
Highest Being think in the category of finite 



ETERNAL NATURE AND ETERNAL SPIRIT 121 

causality, in accordance with which whatever exists 
had a prior cause. He might with equal justice 
have made the Highest Being think in the category 
of finite purpose (finite teleology), and ask Himself: 
" Wherefore am I, and to what end ? " For, in the 
sphere of finitude, we ask such questions as these. 
The truth, however, is, notwithstanding Kant's un- 
demonstrate'd and indemonstrable assertion of the 
inapplicability of our categories to the Unconditioned, 
that we have in God the absolute cause and the 
absolute goal, where all further question of Whence 
and Whither must cease. For we have here reached 
that from which everything has its origin, and unto 
which everything is, that which gives to all else its 
purpose and its meaning, that precisely which makes 
it possible for us to ask the questions whence and 
whither. But assuredly we have not reached this, 
unless God is the absolute Personality, the Good, 
the Eternal Love. 

Schelling, in his " Philosophy of Revelation," says 
that, if our thought is to find its satisfaction, we 
must venture upon the question : Wherefore is 
Thought ? To what purpose is it ? This and all 
kindred questions will be answered if we are 
able to point out an absolute Final Cause. This 
is given to us only in the Good. Thought is not 
the final end ; but Thought, Beauty, Life, Nature, 
Order, and Design exist because of the existence of 
the Good, which can only be real in a Will ; they 
exist because Love is, and is to be. Here there 
can no longer be the question : " Cui bono ? " for 
we have named the absolutely valid and valuable, 
which conditions all other values, or that with 



122 CRITICAL RETROSPECT. 

reference to which all else is. To ask what lies 
above this is a contradiction in terms, because it 
is to ask for that which is higher than the Highest. 
In the same way, it is self- contradictory to ask what 
is the cause of that which is the cause of all else. 
This " Cause of all " is described by Plato as the 
Good, which in the visible world brings forth light, 
and in the invisible extends to us the truth. God 
as the absolute Personality who, in the teleological 
cycle of eternity, where beginning and end coincide, 
is His own efficient cause, His own final cause, and 
who possesses in Himself all the means that are 
requisite for His manifestation is the only Self- 
Intelligible Being. When the Highest Being asks 
Himself (according to Kant) : "Whence am I?" the 
reply (according to Bohme) must be : "I am from 
the Abyss, and have established or grounded Myself." 
But if this were the whole explanation, God would 
not be Self-Intelligible. God can be the Self- 
Grounded only when, in addition to being His own 
basis, He is His own Cause. We must, therefore, 
constantly insist that the delineation of the Chris- 
tian conception of God does not begin with an 
obscure depth, in which (as Bohme says) there is 
neither good nor evil, but that it begins ethically 
with Love, with the eternal absolutely-perfect 
Spirit a doctrine which does not prevent, but rather 
demands, that, previous to the delineation of the 
Christian conception, as in the Fore-Court of the 
Gentiles, a series of preliminary and preparatory 
inquiries should be instituted concerning the lower 
conceptions of God, which are, so to speak, only the 
rudiments (crrot^eta) of the true, and also concern- 



ETERNAL NATURE AND ETERNAL SPIRLT. 123 

ing the relation between the ethical, logical, and 
physical elements. 

XXXIII. 

It may be noticed, from an historical point of view, 
that Bohme's doctrine of the Abyss is closely related 
to that of the Kabbala, which also commences with 
" God in indifference," Ensoph (not anything), out 
of which the varieties, the Sephirim or Lights, then 
stream forth. It also reminds us of the Gnostic 
Bytkos, the groundless Abyss which is wedded to 
Silence, the first syzygy in the Valentinian system. 
This Bythos (/3v0bss) the Gnostics designate as npo- 
irdrcop, Father before Father, and as irpoap-^T], 
beginning before beginning. They thus conceive of 
God from the outset as in potentid, an obscure 
possibility out of which He evolves Himself into 
actuality. But this is precisely the conception which 
must not be entertained, if one wishes to think the 
ethical conception of God. The ethical God, or 
God as the fundamentally Good, as Love, can have 
neither father nor mother, for Love is the principle 
of all paternity and maternity ; and it can, con- 
sequently, recognize no irpoTrdroip, from whom the 
actual God-Father, who is the fountain of absolute 
goodness, is generated. When Bohme makes God, 
as the eternal Love, proceed out of an abyss in 
which there is neither good nor evil, he states what 
is inconceivable ; for unless the fundamentally good, 
the holy Will of Love is actual from the very 
outset, it will never be able to become so. We 
repeat : The ethical is the highest ontological, the 



124 CRITICAL RETROSPECT. 

highest and the primal Being, not simply potential, 
but actual Being. It is utterly inconceivable that 
the ethical, that Love, should be allowed to rest in 
the absolute, as a potentiality which does not become 
a reality until a later moment, and that, conse- 
quently, a moment should be affirmed in God (even 
if only in idea) when Love is only a demand, a 
" shall be," an unfulfilled craving. Love must, on 
the contrary, be posited as that which, from the very 
beginning, is the eternally complete reality. The 
commencement must be ethical. Unless we begin 
with Consummate Love in perfect reality, we shall 
never find it. Bohme is influenced here by a theo- 
sophem which is of Pagan origin, and which clashes 
with his own most heart-felt and fundamental idea. 
We can only express our astonishment that Baader 
and Hamberger seem to approve of this " Abyss in 
which there is neither good nor evil." With Schel- 
ling, it is quite another matter ! For this Gnostic 
theosophem of the " Abyss," the absolute Indiffer- 
ence, and God in potentiality, harmonized, during 
his earlier period, with his own doctrine of the 
" Becoming God." But Aristotle long ago attacked 
those who supposed that God was generated out 
of the night (yepvr)cn<s Ik vvktos). And it is the 
abiding service of Jacobi to have maintained, in 
opposition to Schelling's doctrine of the Abyss, 
that the Personal God, the God of Goodness, is, 
from the outset, the absolutely real, that He does 
not develop Himself from incompleteness to com- 
pleteness, from potentiality to reality, but is abso- 
lutely perfect from the beginning. So far as we 
are concerned, we add : Every philosophy that seeks 



ETERNAL NATURE AND ETERNAL SPIRIT 125 

to conceive the absolute, the unconditioned Primal 
and Self-Existent, has its unfathomable mystery. 
Our mystery is the Holy Love which postulates 
nothing outside itself, but which possesses in and 
under itself all things both potential and actual ; our 
mystery is the Light wherein is no darkness, and 
which streams from eternity. But this Mystery 
is all-revealing and all-explaining. 

Our objections to Bohme's interpretation of the 
relation between the Eternal Nature and the Eternal 
Spirit may be thus summarized : (1) that he regards 
the absolute Spirit as only potential, until nature 
supplies contrast, life, and actuality ; (2) that the 
Spirit first acquires its power by vanquishing a 
nature that previously confronted it in hostility ; and, 
finally, (3) that his theogonistic process begins with 
an indifference of Spirit and Nature, of the ethical 
and the physical (" there is neither good nor evil "). 
Taken as a whole, our objection is that he ranks 
Nature too highly, and ascribes to it too great import- 
ance, by making it a necessary condition for the 
self-conscious Life of God. The importance of 
Nature is, as will be more fully shown in the sequel, 
more subordinate and limited, inasmuch as it is a 
condition and a medium only for God's outwardly- 
directed energy, for the shaping of the Glory of God, 
for the external and phenomenal aspect of the Life of 
God, as an outgoing manifestation, a manifestatio ad 
extra, prior to creation, and is, secondly, a condition 
and medium for Creation and the Created World. 
The answer to the question whether nature in God 
conditions the self-consciousness of God, or whether 
it is, in absolute dependence upon His self-conscious- 



126 CRITICAL RETROSPECT. 

ncss and will, merely a medium for His activity, 
lays the foundation of a grave contradiction within 
Theosophy itself. But, furthermore, we have to urge 
a peculiar objection with reference to the dark 
nature-principle in God. We have already alluded 
to this as the " dark point " in Bohme. Its enuncia- 
tion formed an episode in the doctrine of the Trinity. 
It must also furnish a chapter to our critical review. 



XXXIV. 

THE DARK NATURE-PRINCIPLE IN GOD. 

THE dark antagonistic Nature-principle in God, 
by the conquest of which God first becomes the 
Living God, and which can only be brought into the 
proper relation of subordination by means of conflict, 
can only thus be placed in its right stratum, is 
the previously-mentioned negative ternary (Contrac- 
tion, Expansion, Rotation). It has been variously 
designated as the "centrum naturae," " the Wheel of 
Anguish," " the dimly-burning Triangle," " Fire," 
" Desire," and " the Foundation of Hell." We must 
here recal Bohme's fundamental view, that without 
contrast there is no Life and no Manifestation, but 
simply passive repose. The principle, which Bohme 
finds in God, makes its appearance in philosophy 
under a more general heading, as the Principle of 
Negativity, the " No- " Principle, the Principle of 
Negation, which is the condition for Spirit and Life, 
the forward-impelling element in the process, with- 
out which the whole world would stagnate, and 
remain in dead and motionless tranquillity. " Who 



THE DARK NATURE-PRINCIPLE IN GOD. 127 

knows peace," says Bohme, " who has not known 
conflict ? Who knows joy who has not known 
pain ? " and he transfers this same antithesis to God. 
The principle of Negativity pervades the entire 
history of philosophy from the earliest times to the 
latest. It has been revived, in recent times, by 
Schelling. " Heaven," he says in his letter to 
Eschenmayer, " rests upon Hell. Heaven is the 
supreme peace and concord of the forces. Hell is 
discord and dissension. Real concord is vanquished 
discord. Heaven would be lifeless without Hell. 
There is no possible feeling or perception of Heaven 
without Hell, without the permanent conquest of the 
Hell of dissension. Just as there is no feeling of 
health without the conquest of sickness, which is on 
the point of manifesting itself, but is continually 
forced back. If God is to live in a man, the Devil 
must die in the man." In many ways Schelling has 
urged that gentleness, mildness, and love are use- 
less unless they come forward and arise on the 
foundation of strength, severity, and wrath, because 
it is only thus that they can acquire the stamp of 
definite character ; he urges that it is impossible for 
us to feel respect for the sheepish gentleness which 
is found in many men, and that we can respect and 
admire only that gentleness which shines forth out 
of vanquished and subdued passions. He has often 
repeated that the noblest manifestation of beauty of 
soul is that which is afforded by tranquil strength 
amid the tempest of the passions. Not only in his 
" Treatise on Freedom," but in many other passages, 
he reminds us of Jacob Bohme, as when he says that 
everything that exists is conceived and born in 



128 CRITICAL RETROSPECT 

strife, or when he says of God : " We cannot doubt 
that the Deity is enthroned over a world of terrors, 
and that God, so far as concerns what is hidden in 
Him, must be called, not figuratively but actually, the 
Dreadful and Terrible." Hegel, akin to Heraclitus, 
who said that " war is the father of all things," has 
bestowed the highest eulogy on the Principle of 
Relativity, and asserts that Contradiction is the 
driving-wheel in the process of life and spirit ; he 
praises and extols Bohme for having apprehended 
the principle of Negativity Contradiction in God 
Himself. 

But the Christian view can recognize the principle 
of Negativity as necessary to development only 
when the Negative is defined as Contrast, not as 
Contradiction. In modern philosophy great con- 
fusion and arbitrariness is observable in the use of 
these categories ; contrasts are frequently viewed as 
contradictions, and contradictions as contrasts. Con- 
trasts are necessary differences which emerge from 
the essence of the thing, and which mutually 
demand one another ; e.g., Nature and Spirit, Neces- 
sity and Freedom, Self-assertiveness and Self- 
surrender, Solemnity and Gladness, Severity and 
Gentleness. But Contradiction is that which -is 
repugnant to the essence of the thing, and makes 
its appearance when the contrast oversteps its 
limits, assumes false independence, combats its 
" other," and thereby becomes unlicensed and illegi- 
timate. No moral character can be conceived 
without inward contrasts. But a character that is 
full of inward contradictions cannot be approved. 
A Created World connot be conceived otherwise 



THE DARK NATURE-PRINCIPLE IN GOD. 129 

than as a world of contrasts, but, when a created 
world displays, like our own, a multitude of con- 
tradictions, we infer that disorder has entered this 
world. If not simply contrast, but also contra- 
diction be necessary to the manifestation of Life, 
sin and evil must be necessary to the development 
of the world. This, indeed, is the opinion of 
Schelling, Hegel, and many others. Evil, it is 
true, is defined not as the goal, but as the necessary 
medium for the manifestation of the good. This 
Evil, this Negative, is itself only a momentum in the 
process, wherein it is incessantly posited, in order to 
be incessantly denied and compelled to minister to 
the manifestation of the light. 

The Christian view must indubitably recognize 
the possibility of evil, if God is to create a world 
of freedom. But, on the other hand, the actuality 
of Evil, the real contradiction, can never be acknow- 
ledged as reasonable, or as necessarily pertinent to a 
world brought forth by the Holy God. This would 
be in diametrical opposition to the nature of the 
Creator, and of the Creation in the Divine Image. 

XXXV. 

Bohme can by no means be accused of teaching 
the necessity of Evil. But, on the other hand, it is 
impossible to praise him for consistency in his 
opposition to the false doctrine. He vehemently 
defends himself against the view that the Fall of 
Lucifer and Adam was necessary, and that they 
could not have resisted the temptation. Again and 
again he says emphatically, that they fell by their 

9 



130 CRITICAL RETROSPECT. 

own fault, especially Lucifer, who applied himself 
to " the selfish art," gave himself to a false imagina- 
tion, and thereby introduced appalling confusion 
("turba ") into the world. But we also find passages 
in Bohme the tendency of which is wholly different, 
as when he says in his preface to " The Three Prin- 
ciples : " " In all creatures there is a poison and 
malignity ; and it must be so ; otherwise there were 
no life and no mobility, nor would there be any 
colour nor virtue, thickness nor thinness, or any 
perception whatever ; but all would be as nothing. 
In this high consideration it is found that all is 
through and from God Himself, and that it is His 
own substance, and that He has created it out of 
Himself. And the Evil belongs to the Forming and 
mobility, and the good to the Love, and the austere, 
severe, or contrary will belongs to the Joy." We are 
quite willing to accept the declaration of Baader, 
Hamberger, and Hofmann, that passages like these, 
in which Bohme has expressed himself somewhat 
incautiously, are not to be unfairly pressed, but must 
be construed by Bohme's predominant view ; we 
readily acknowledge that Bohme's intention was 
right. Nevertheless, it seems undeniable that Bohme 
was not perfectly clear upon this point and the 
great importance of it (which, indeed, is much 
easier for us moderns, who have encountered so 
many philosophical stumbling-blocks in the applica- 
tion of this principle of relativity), and that he did 
not establish a thorough-going distinction between 
contrast and contradiction, inasmuch as passages are 
to be found in his works which compel one to say : 
" The good that he would, he does not ; but the evil 



THE DARK NA TURE-PRINCIPLE IN GOD. 131 

which he would not, that he does." The most 
erroneous point in Bohme appears to us to be that 
in his very conception of God there seems to be a 
prelude to the doctrine of the necessity of evil in 
order to the manifestation of the Light. 

XXXVI. 

If Bohme's conception of God be viewed in its 
completeness, and grasped in one intuition, it may 
seem as if all on this subject were in due order. 
The "Centrum Naturae," "Wheel of Birth," or 
" Worm," which we will now express by the one term 
" Nature-Egoity," with its tendency towards self- 
centralization, with its yearning after another and 
higher than itself, with its consequent self-circling 
restlessness, is in its normal bed, and is co-operant to 
the manifestation of the Life and the Light. The 
multiplicity of powers are all transfigured in the 
Light, find pleasure in one another, rejoice over and 
bless one another ; and yet each one of them pos- 
sesses in latency the quality which belongs to it in 
consequence of its " sharp birth," and which is con- 
cealed in it like a kernel. Just as a sour or bitter 
green apple is constrained by the sun so that it be- 
comes pleasant to eat, and still one tastes all its pro- 
perties, so also in God, in the eternal nature. But 
before this harmony is reached, a perilous prelude 
has to be gone through. 

The " Nature-egoity," in its intrinsic power, places 
itself from the beginning in a hostile relation towards 
the Light, towards the heavenly Idea which God 
desires to shape in Nature. There is an appalling con- 



132 CRITICAL RETROSPECT. 

flict, and terrible anguish, and it is only subsequently 
that a violent transition takes place. Consequently, 
we have as the first momentum in the process a 
hostile contrast in God, which is not different from 
a contradiction ; and this we cannot but regard as 
incompatible with the Being of God as the Holy 
and absolutely-perfect One. Franz Baader, indeed, 
remarks that Bohme himself has helped to obscure 
his subject, by beginning his representation with the 
three first natural Properties, or the negative ternary. 
According to Baader, one ought to start from the 
central property, that is, the fourth natural Property 
or the Lightning, and the three previous ones 
should be viewed as merely abstract momenta. But 
even if we begin with the Lightning we begin with 
a violent breach, with the vanquishing of a hostile 
contrast. That the contrast at the outset is hostile is, 
moreover, the view of Hamberger, when he says : 
" Nature as such does not simply furnish a contrast 
to Spirit ; on the contrary, they both stand in con- 
tradiction to each other, and are mighty powers 
which oppose one another with the utmost vehe- 
mence." This is the view which we are combating. 
However far we are from accusing Bohme of Mani- 
chaeism, we cannot but hold that this doctrine verges 
upon Manichaeism. For this hostile contrast cannot 
fail to give the impression that something exists by 
the side of God. If unity is to be maintained, 
God must posit Nature out of Himself ; He may 
posit as conflicting with Him, as non-Divine ; but 
He cannot posit it as ^;z/z-Divine. If it be ob- 
served that He posits this contradiction in Himself, 
in order that He may have something to vanquish ; 



THE DARK NATURE-PRINCIPLE IN GOD. 133 

that Nature, refractory and insubordinate at the 
outset, finally yields, first says " No !" and at the 
next moment says " Yes ! I will subordinate myself, 
so that I may be liberated from my torture," we 
cannot avoid the conclusion that this supposed 
episode in God Himself forms a prelude for the 
doctrine of the necessity of Evil in order to the 
development of the world. If it be urged that the 
blind nature principle in God cannot be called evil, 
since it is only a blind will, not a self-conscious one^ 
we must reply that Nature sustains a relation to the 
ethical, and must be viewed in its light, and that 
what is hostile to the ethical cannot be found in the 
Holy God. And if it be said that this contradiction 
of nature against spirit is eternally quenched by the 
light, we must retort, that it might be said with 
equal justice that it is as eternally posited ; for we 
are not discussing a past history in God, but an 
incessantly self-repeating process. But this view, 
that contradiction is posited in order to be eternally 
vanquished, is precisely the fundamental idea of 
Hegel and Heraclitus (" War is the Father of all 
things "). And on this point it is- difficult to dis- 
tinguish between them and Bohme.. 

If God, as the Being of all beings, is to be con- 
ceived as the Union of Spirit and Nature, He must 
be so conceived that nature, although it- possesses 
a life of its own, is still absolutely subordinated to 
spirit, and is its willing servant, instrument, and 
medium. It does not begin with rebellion against 
spirit, but with cheerful subordination. Bohme says 
in many passages : " In order that the Holiness and 
Grace of God may be manifested, there must be 



134 CRITICAL RETROSPECT. 

something that needs grace and love." This state- 
ment we can readily accept ; and if Bohme had 
continued along these lines, there would have been 
no ground for opposition. We can illustrate our 
meaning more clearly by a reference to Romans 
viii. 1 8, where the apostle speaks of " the earnest 
expectation of the creature, and the whole creation 
groaning and travailing in pain together." From 
this created nature we may transfer our thought 
to the Nature in God. Earnest expectation or 
longing is the fundamental characteristic of the 
creation, even apart from the corruption which has 
entered through sin. But this longing would diffuse 
itself vaguely in the Infinite (" Expansion "), unless 
there were a contrasting force, a force of Egoity 
or Self-ness, with a tendency to concentrate itself 
and to abide in itself ("Contraction"). But until 
the longing has found rest and is tranquillized in the 
Higher, Nature, the Creation, is in perpetual rest- 
lessness (" Rotation "), because it cannot find peace 
and satisfaction in itself. It whirls about itself as 
if in travail, because it possesses only a possibility 
of the Light, but is itself unable to produce it. The 
Light must descend into it from above and quiet its 
longing. 

We find in the Eternal Nature the same funda- 
mental forces, self-ness, longing, and the unsatisfied, 
self-circling, anxious restlessness, which is tranquillized 
by the Light that streams into it, and fills the poverty 
of Nature with its riches. Nature is eternally 
posited as the non-Divine, which needs God, and 
the essence of which is indigentia Dei ; and this again 
repeats itself at a later stage, when God posits 



THE DARK NATURE-PRINCIPLE IN GOD. 135 

outside Himself a created world and a creaturely 
existence, and the longing of Nature is eternally- 
stilled. But although Nature's longing is eternally- 
stilled, yet the restlessness of the Nature-Life must 
continue to circle in the Abyss ; for, where there is 
no perception of the natural self-ness, its poverty 
and helplessness in itself, and its ceaseless longing, 
there can be no perception of love and grace, 
light and peace. We may here recal the " Self- 
infolding Fire " in Ezekiel, the " Wheel of Birth " 
in the Epistle of James, Bohme's "Worm," " Triangle," 
etc., etc., all of which symbols retain their truth 
when they are kept within proper limits, and present 
themselves, from the outset, in that legitimate manner 
which harmonizes with the Being of God. 

Where Bohme differs from this is that, in his 
view, the harmony, the super- and sub-ordination, is 
only effected by means of a struggle, that the first 
momentum in the nature process is or at any rate 
must be conceived as being a wild, refractory, titanic 
effort at independence, which is not checked and 
changed into longing until a subsequent moment. 
Our best efforts have not succeeded in gaining 
any other impression from Bohme's confused and 
stormy description of the centrum natures ; nor do 
Baader and Hamberger assist us to any other con- 
struction. We find the same train of thought in 
Schelling, who, independently of Bohme, or without 
naming him, develops the same idea in his own 
way, begins with wild desire, and does not suffer 
longing to enter nature until a later period, and 
reminds us that the prescient, ancient world expresses 
this second momentum, this entrance of longing into 



136 CRITICAL RETROSPECT. 

Nature by the poetic idea, that the World's Egg, 
which is born of Night, breaks and parts asunder, 
and Eros comes into being. 

We venture to remark that longing and egoity, 
and therewith also restlessness, must be regarded 
as a single indivisible act, and that, on the pre- 
assumption of the ethical nature of God, egoity 
can never (even in idea) appear in the eternal nature 
in the shape of wild and refractory desire. The 
Christian conception of God recognises in God only 
harmonious contrasts. In the creation, and in our 
own life, we certainly perceive nature as a hostile 
contrast to spirit ; for the flesh lusteth against the 
spirit, and the spirit against the flesh. But this we 
lament as disorder ; we do not regard it as normal. 
And we see that in Christ, from the very first, 
Nature is the obedient instrument for the Spirit ; 
undoubtedly, He is tempted ; the possibility of evil 
rises in Him ; He perceives the possibility of pre- 
ferring His own Ego to the Father's Will, the 
cosmical principle to the holy principle. But this 
temptation, in which the possibility of evil is van- 
quished and never attains reality, belongs to His 
development in Humiliation, and finds no place in 
His Exaltation. When He says to the rich young 
man : " Why callest thou Me good ? None is good 
save God," He implies that He is subjected as yet 
to temptation and persecution. But God is not 
tempted. He is aTreipaaTos kclkcop. In Him there 
is no conflict ; from the very first, His glory consists 
of eternal harmonies. 



THE DARK NATURE-PRINCIPLE IN GOD. 137 



XXXVII. 

We maintain that this view of ours is in full 
harmony with Scripture, which says : "God is Light, 
and in Him is no darkness at all" (1 John i. 5). 
Darkness is not the same as natural obscurity or 
dimness. Darkness is the hostile contrast to Light, 
and according to the Scripture, Light and Darkness 
can have no fellowship (2 Cor. vi. 14). Obscurity 
is not a hostile contrast, just as little as unconscious 
life is a hostile contrast to self-conscious life, but, on 
the contrary, is a dim longing after it. There is a 
pitch-dark night, which is hostile to light and to the 
day ; and it is this hostile night that is referred to in 
the old proverb that " the Night is no man's friend," 
and that, in the night, deeds of darkness are con- 
cocted. But there is also a dim and yearning night, 
which longs for the morning-dawn, and eagerly 
desires to conceive the light. The opinion of 
Bohme and his disciples, that they do ample justice 
to the passage in St. John, by saying that the 
darkness is eternally quenched by the light, is un- 
satisfactory. For in order to be eternally quenched, 
the darkness must either be eternal in itself, or must 
be eternally posited by God. But Holiness cannot 
posit that which is hostile to itself, in order to 
swallow it up. And if there be, from the very 
beginning, a hostile principle by the side of Holiness, 
we fall into a semi-Manichaean Dualism, which 
must be totally rejected. And when, in Bohme's 
defence, appeal is made to Isaiah xlv. 7 : " I form 
the light and create darkness, I make peace and 



138 CRITICAL RETROSPECT. 

create evil; I, the Lord, do all these things," it 
must be observed that darkness, in this verse, is 
synonymous with misfortune, and that we must 
understand by it the calamities in which the Wrath 
of God manifests itself, His punitive righteousness. 
Compare it with the passage in Amos : " Shall there 
be evil (trouble) in a city, and I the Lord have not 
done it ? " Nor do we forget that the words : " I 
form the light and create darkness ! " may perhaps 
contain a protest against that Persian dualism which 
taught two fundamental principles Good and Evil. 
The words inform us that everything, even evil, 
must be deduced from Unity, from the one God ; 
and this is exactly what Bohme means. But all 
depends on the answer to the following question : 
Through what mediating definitions and conditions 
do we thus deduce it ? 

Another form of defence of Bohme is, that the 
darkness exists in God not actually, but potentially. 
Here, again, everything depends on the more precise 
explanation of this assertion. It may certainly be 
admitted that every contrast, when it is conceived 
as torn out of the harmony, and allowed to pursue 
its own one-sided tendency, becomes contradiction, 
and engenders darkness. Consequently, if the sub- 
ordinate element in God were able to assume 
isolated independence, appalling darkness would 
arise in God. But this is absolutely impossible, for 
His Life is an indissoluble life. The potential 
darkness is thus a possibility which can never be 
realized, and we can only speak of it in the abstract. 
But if, on the contrary, the meaning be, that the 
subordinate in God perpetually desires to attain an 



THE DARK NA TURE-PRINCIPLE IN GOD. 139 

isolated independence and self-will, and tends ever 
towards the wild and unrestrained, which is as 
eternally vanquished, then it is not wholly inde- 
fensible to say that God has the Devil in His Life, 
but perpetually represses him. Then the " Founda- 
tion of Hell " is found also in God, even although, 
as Bohme teaches, it is first manifested in the 
creation. 

In reality, the " Foundation or Possibility of 
Hell " must be sought in the free creation, yet as a 
possibility which indeed can, but ought not to, become 
reality, and can only become so by the fault and 
sin of the creation. 



XXXVIII. 

We, therefore, return to the position that the 
ethical conception of God permits the principle of 
Negativity only as a principle of contrast, not of 
Contradiction, and that on this point Bohme is not 
clear. Franz Baader says that Bohme's doctrine 
may be expressed in the following lines, which are 
suggestive of Angelus Silesius : 

" Licht und Liebe sich entziinden 
Wo sich Strang' und Milde finden ; 
Zorn und Finsterniss entbrennen 
Wo sich Streng' und Milde trennen." 

[ " Light and Love catch fire where Stern and Gentle meet ; 
Wrath and Darkness burn where Stern and Gentle part."] 

But these lines can be brought into unison with the 
ethical conception of God only when the contrasts 
are viewed as harmonious. In and for themselves, 
moreover, the stern and gentle are only contrasts, 



1 4 o CRITICAL RETROSPECT. 

not contradictions. If we are to accept these lines 
from our own standpoint, we must maintain that 
the contrast between stern and gentle is already 
given in God, when He is viewed purely as Spirit. 
God, as a Personality, is severity and self-exaltation, 
is holiness and righteousness, is the jealous God 
who vindicates His own honour, and is also gentle- 
ness, self-surrender, and love. The one set of 
attributes implicates the other. But this ethical 
element in the Being of God has also a correspond- 
ing physical element as its instrument and medium. 
To ethical severity, holiness, and righteousness, 
there correspond severe natural forces, which are 
especially manifested in the relation which God 
sustains to the world when His wrath is revealed 
from heaven. Ethical gentleness and love have 
corresponding natural forces which diffuse blessings 
in the physical sphere of the created world, give life 
and growth, and without which barrenness, dearth, 
and decay would intrude. But, both in the ethical 
and in the physical sphere, gentleness can only 
work on the basis of severity. Where there is no 
severity, strength and might,, gentleness whether 
conceived ethically or physically becomes insipid, 
and dissolves into mawkishness and vagueness. 
This conception of the union of severity and 
gentleness in God pervades the whole of Holy 
Scripture. Thus we find it both in Ezekiel and in 
the Apocalypse. The vision of Ezekiel, which 
begins with a whirlwind from the north and a cloud 
whence fire issues, and which ends with Him who 
sits upon the Throne in the appearance of a man, 
with a rainbow about Him, is best interpreted in an 



THE DARK NATURE-PRINCIPLE IN GOD. 141 

ethical sense, as suggestive of the chastising right- 
eousness and the love of God. Still, it would be 
a grave error if we failed also to discern in the 
vision a representation of real physical forces and 
potencies, both of the creative power of God, and 
of the power of His wrath. And the delineation of 
" Him who sits upon the Throne " demands special 
attention (Ezek. viii. 2). For He revealed Himself 
to the Seer, "from the appearance of His loins even 
downward fire : and from His loins even upward 
as the appearance of brightness." The brightness 
indicates gentleness, the fire severity. The same 
remark may be made respecting " Him that sitteth 
upon the Throne " (Apocalypse iv. 3 : " And He 
that sat was to look upon like a jasper and a 
sardine stone ''). Jasper, which is described as 
crystalline, indicates the Light-side in God, gentle- 
ness ; and the sardine, which has the appearance of 
fire and blood, indicates severity. God possesses 
(to speak for a moment in Bohme's categories) at 
the same time a Light-side and a Fire-side. He is 
at once the gentle and gracious, and the severe 
and dreadful God. " Out of the Throne proceeded 
lightnings, and thunderings, and voices," which 
symbolize the severe judgments of the righteous- 
ness of God ; but " before the Throne there was a 
sea of glass, a crystal sea," which betokens the 
waters of Light and of Life. 

Here, once more, we discover the same contrast. 
And before the throne there burned seven lamps of 
fire, the Seven Spirits of God, which indicate the 
harmony of the Glory of God, and the consummate 
unity of the contrasts. 



i 4 2 CRITICAL RETROSPECT. 

It is only in this sense that we can accept 
Bohme's doctrine in accordance with the above- 
quoted lines of Baader. 

XXXIX. 

THE ILLICIT ANTHROPOMORPHISM. 

If we glance back upon the course of our previous 
exposition not only of the dark Nature-Principle, 
but of the general relation between Nature and 
Spirit in God, we have already stated, as our chief 
objection, that Bohme assigns too high a position 
to Nature by making it a necessary condition for 
the personal self-consciousness of God, instead of 
placing it in absolute dependence upon the self-con- 
sciousness and self-determination of God, as a 
medium for the Divine energy. We are now pre- 
pared to state this objection in another form, which 
will perhaps conduce to greater clearness. We 
gather all our objections into this one : that Bohme 
has been guilty of an illicit anthropomorphism in his 
conception of God. Not that we reject anthropo- 
morphisms in general ; without them we should be 
absolutely unable to speak of God. We are per- 
fectly in accord with Bohme when he starts from the 
position that man is created in the Image of God, 
and must consequently be able to know God. We 
must, however, lay emphasis upon the fact, which 
Bohme has overlooked, that man is not the direct, 
but the inverted image of God, which implies that 
the relation between Nature and Spirit in man is the 
converse of that relation which exists in God. 

Man, the created creaturely being, has to develop 



THE ILLICIT ANTHROPOMORPHISM. 143 

himself from Nature to Spirit, from outwardness to 
inwardness, from a fixed, and in many respects a 
fettered, condition to freedom. Our consciousness 
develops itself out of a prescribed natural basis, an 
obscure natural ground, as out of an abyss of night, 
and out of which we emerge and evolve ourselves by 
the impulsion of dim instincts. No creature is Sui 
Causa ; every creature is caused, produced, and posited 
by its Creator. None of us, therefore, can have per- 
fect self-knowledge, because there is always something 
impenetrable to our sight in the nocturnal abyss of 
our condition. None of us possess complete self- 
determination, for we are determined in a multitude 
of ways both from within and without. This limita- 
tion is necessary, if God would produce a creature 
after His own Image. For there is one thing which 
is impossible even to God, viz., to bestow upon His 
creatures Aseitas, or original self-existence. He 
can give His creatures a derivative or deduced inde- 
pendence, an independence which is conditioned by 
dependence. Only on condition that we subordinate 
and energize our nature (so far as this can be our 
legitimate task) in progressive development do we 
succeed in taking possession of ourselves in an 
ethical sense. But in God we are impressed by the 
absolute contrast of this. God, in His absolute 
autonomic self- manifestation, moves from above 
downwards, from Spirit to Nature. Man, on the 
contrary, whose autonomy is an assigned and de- 
duced autonomy, which can only gradually succeed 
in gaining power, moves from below upwards, from 
Nature to Spirit, just as he also moves from out- 
wardness to inwardness, from the phenomenal to 



144 CRITICAL RETROSPECT. 

the essential. That which for God is the last thing, 
viz., Nature and the phenomenal aspect of His 
Being, is for man the first thing ; what for God is 
the first thing, viz., complete spirituality, is for man 
the last thing, and the goal of his development. We 
may certainly concede that Bohme has in view the 
ethical conception of God when he teaches that 
God, out of pure Love, introduces Himself into 
Trinity, and that Bohme, prior to his construction of 
Nature, apprehends God as Spirit in the inward self- 
mirroring. But this is wholly vitiated by the fact 
that God, as Spirit, is regarded as potential, not 
actual, a Life which is not Life, but a mere figure 
and schema of Life. It is only through conflict with 
Nature that God first becomes the Living God, and 
attains complete possession of Himself. In reality, 
God, according to Bohme's view, unfolds Himself, 
through Nature and its manifestation, into Spirit ! 
And this is what we call the illicit anthropomor- 
phism. Nor will it excite much surprise that there 
are those who have pronounced Bohme's standpoint 
to be that of an idealized Naturalism (Sengler, Peip). 
We must, therefore, agree with Molitor (who thus 
criticizes Bohme, and blames him for viewing man as 
the direct instead of the inverted image of God), that 
the difference between the Divine and the human 
life-process, according to Bohme, is only quantitative, 
is simply a difference of degree, since what takes 
place in man under the terms of finitude and tem- 
porality take place in God in infinity and in a time- 
less manner.* 

* In a letter addressed to Delitzsch, and printed in the 
"Biblical Psychology" of the latter. Also, in his work 



ILLICIT ANTHROPOMORPHISM. 145 

We may also take this opportunity of mention- 
ing Giinther, who, in his doctrine of creation, defines 
the created universe as " the Contraposition of God," 
by which he means that the creation, which is not of 
itself, is "Not- God," the contrast of God, that which 
is not similar in essence to God. 

We shall not enter on a criticism of Giinther's 
doctrine, but will simply remark that he urges, with 
invincible argument, that the Life of God cannot be 
interpreted in complete accordance with the type of 
created life, and that we fully agree with him when, 
in his struggle against pantheism, he steadily points 
to the Aseitas of God, and refers to the Archangel 
Michael, who warred with Lucifer, because this arch- 
dragon sought to withstand God, as though he too 
were of himself and by himself. Michael, with the 
flashing eye and the glittering sword, demands : 
" Who is like God ? Who is as the Lord ? Who 
is like Him who is of Himself ? " Michael points 
to God as the Only One, the Incomparable. And 
for this very reason that God is of Himself and that 
all is of Him, creatures made in the Divine Image 
cannot bear a direct resemblance to Him, but there 
must be, in their likeness, a contraposed element, a 
birth-mark of dependency. It is undoubtedly im- 
portant that this contraposed element and essential 
unlikeness should be kept within due limitations, so 
as not to exclude the true resemblance. The 



" Philosophy and Tradition." After Baader, Molitor is 
probably the greatest modern theosophist. His relation to 
the Kabbala is very similar to Baader's relation to Bohme, 
"Vorschule zur Speculativen Theologie. Creations-und In- 
carnations-theorie." 

10 



146 ILLICIT ANTHROPOMORPHISM. 

creature must be receptive of God. We are the 
offspring of God. God will take up His abode with 
His creatures. Indeed, the Eternal Word of God, 
the Son, will become man. The doctrine of the 
Creation must not come into collision with the 
doctrine of the Incarnation, as might easily happen, 
unless the contraposition were rightly limited. 

That aspect of the relation between Nature and 
Spirit, which becomes false when Bohme applies it 
to God, remains true when it is applied within the 
domain of creation. If we follow Bohme in his 
roamings through the Kingdoms of Creation, we are 
often astonished at the appropriate and striking 
applications which he makes of his principles. And if 
we descend into our own inward being, we shall also 
discover that Bohme's theogonistic process is capable 
of being transferred into a psychological process 
within ourselves. We evolve ourselves as if out of 
an abyss, an obscure nature-depth, and our higher 
ideal consciousness is, at the outset, only vague and 
dreamy, as if in a Magia. But natural Egoity, 
Desire, is the principle which brings life, movement, 
and real existence. In the Natural Ego we shall 
easily be able to discover the negative Ternary, the 
self-concentrated Egoity, the vague and self-diffusive 
yearning, and the self-circling restlessness. The Ego 
seeks, first, to concentrate in itself, to be its own mid- 
point, to condense itself. But then, because it 
cannot be self-sufficient, it strives and stretches out 
beyond itself, and moves in the direction of diffusion. 
The natural man now seeks to be self-sufficient, 
shuts himself up to himself, and now plunges out 
into the manifoldness of universal life ; but not even 



ILLICIT ANTHROPOMORPHISM. 147 

here can he find satisfaction ; so he returns into 
himself. And now occurs this In and Out, this 
Up and Down, this Back and Fore, which Bohme 
characterises as the vibrating movement, the revolv- 
ing of the wheel, restlessness. The restlessness is 
immediately caused by the fact that the higher 
moral and religious world shines into the soul, that 
the soul's own yearning urges it to surrender to this, 
but that the natural Ego will not surrender, is afraid 
of dying and losing itself ; this restlessness is poten- 
tiated into anguish, until a violent transition takes 
place in the Lightning. In the Lightning the 
natural obscurity is removed, the clearness of self- 
consciousness is revealed, and a distinction is 
marked out between the higher and the lower 
sphere, between Light and Darkness, Light and Fire. 
For the created spirit, liberty of choice now emerges, 
and all now depends on what I set my imagination 
upon ! I can imagine back into my Ego, can desire 
to centre in myself, and be master of myself. Then 
arises a Turba, or confusion, and a false kindling 
into evil lusts and passions. Or, I can set my 
imagination upon the higher religious and moral 
world, upon the Kingdom of God, can resign myself 
to the travail of the new birth, and to the burning 
up of my Egoism ; and then the motto is verified : 
" Per crucem ad lucem." Then, also, the world of 
light is kindled in me, and the light which is 
kindled continues to unfold its inward riches through 
various degrees of sanctification unto perfection. 
But, even in perfection, the Natural Ego has not in 
every sense vanished, nor is it destined to do so. 
The sinful Egoism has been consumed, but Egoity 



148 ILLICIT ANTHROPOMORPHISM. 

must remain, as the obedient basis for the holy life ; 
as the perception of a self-life, different from that of 
God, but also of the inadequacy and nothingness of 
this self-life, and its infinite need of God. The 
blessed Life in God is not a vague absorption in 
God without any perception of self and personality. 
When I say, " It is not I that live, but God liveth 
in me," I must, nevertheless, be conscious of an Ego, 
which would be able to live even without God 
(although assuredly only in unblessedness). The 
"Wheel of Birth" continues to revolve to all eternity. 
But woe to the man who in the hour of the Light- 
ning imagines back into himself, and abides in this 
false imagination, because for him the " Wheel of 
Birth " is transformed into an Ixion's Wheel ! (Cf. 
Fr. Baader's treatise, "Vom Blitz als Vater des 
Lichts.") 

What is here stated has also an important appli- 
cation to intellectual production in the departments 
of Art and Science. An idea may stir in the depths 
of the mind with fermenting restlessness; its momenta 
may struggle with each other in mutual attraction 
and repulsion, unable to escape from one another, 
and yet not fusing into harmonious unity. And this 
restlessness may be potentiated into the distinct 
anguish of production in severe pangs, which are 
only ended by a violent transition in the shape of 
the Lightning, out of which the Light-image arises, 
in order that it may subsequently be fashioned in 
Light. It is true that easy births sometimes occur. 
But, in every real production, something can always 
be pointed out, that corresponds to the Lightning, the 
happy light-flashing moment, the swift conception 



ILLICIT ANTHROPOMORPHISM. 149 

of genius at the instant of the Lightning, which is 
decisive of the whole work. And it is erroneous to 
suppose that in proportion to the profundity and 
value of a production is the tranquillity with which it 
is created, as if the stamp of a great masterpiece 
were that it is created tout doncement, without 
inward fermentation and travail-pangs. It is pre- 
cisely the deepest thinkers and writers who know 
most of fermentations and pangs, and of the light- 
ning as the parent of the light. In Fr. Baader, 
eg., we get scarcely anything but these lightning 
flashes ; the light-image appears in his work, but is 
never elaborated, because new lightnings at once 
beset him. In Baader's case one cannot help wish- 
ing that the lightning flashes had been less frequent, 
and that the light-images had been more completely 
worked out and finished. He says himself that the 
lightning quivers and darts in zig-zag erratic courses, 
while the light, on the contrary, shines with steady 
radiance. It is this that we seek, and it is only in 
this that we can find peace and tranquillity after 
inward struggles and anxieties. 

Bdhme's Natural Properties have also a bearing 
upon society and history. It is through ferment, 
conflict, and birth-pangs that human society moves 
forward to higher organic forms of comparative peace 
and perfection. There are historical epochs (among 
which our own may be fairly classed) which stand 
in Bohme's third Natural Form, that of restlessness 
and anxiety, inasmuch as contrasting forces clash 
with each other, resultlessly, and, indeed, without 
effecting any real progress whatsoever, despite all 
the toil, whirling, qualm, and tumult. In our epoch 



150 ILLICIT ANTHROPOMORPHISM. 

the Lightning has to be long and anxiously awaited. 
And when it comes, it will reveal whether it comes 
for judgment, for a further " turba," or whether it 
will pass over into the tranquillizing light. 



XL. 

BOHME deserves our admiration for developing 
in psychological delineations, profound and based 
upon living experience that which he considers 
to be the central thing in the creature : tJie Birth of 
the new man. He describes natural life and natural 
human life as a life of anguish and continual rest- 
lessness ; he depicts, in his pious and practical 
treatises, the gloomy torture-chamber in which the 
soul finds itself, and from which, burdened as it is by 
sin, it cannot pierce through to the light ; he speaks 
of the sharp transition, and the blessed peace and 
joy that come, when the world of light is kindled in 
the soul. But the immediate transference of this to 
God is wholly inadmissible. In a certain sense, Bohme 
was well aware of this ; but it is not enough simply 
to perceive that what in man exists in finitude and 
temporality exists in God in an infinite and super- 
temporal manner. It is equally necessary that the 
various momenta in the Life of God should be 
placed in their due relation to one another, and in 
their proper order. Bohme presents us with all the 
momenta of the conception of God ; but in his 
evolution and mediation of these momenta, we miss 
the due relation, the proper order. 



THE GLORY OF GOD. 151 



XLI. 

THE GLORY OF GOD. THE UNCREATED 

HEAVEN. 

The fact that, in the preceding pages, we have 
lodged very serious objections against Bohme's 
doctrine, by no means prevents us from recognizing 
in his conception of God some fundamental defini- 
tions which, when properly construed, afford valuable 
fruit for theology and for the philosophy of religion. 
Among these we reckon not simply the general 
conception of Nature in God, but also the contrast 
between an internal and external in God Himself, 
the contrast between mystery and manifestation. 
For although Bohme views God, in the still mystery, 
as mere potentiality (a course that we cannot approve), 
yet the contrast between an internal and external 
phenomenal manifestation in God Himself, quite 
independently of the created world, remains perfectly 
valid. Connected with this is the fact that Bohme 
teaches not simply a Ternary, but a Quaternary ; 
that he does not, like theology, count three, God, 
the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and then posit 
the created world as the fourth. Bohme posits 
as the fourth the Glory of God, conceived as an 
objectivity different from God, and yet inseparable 
from Him ; prior to, and independent of, the created 
world ; the first and eternal production of the 
Triune God ; the mirror from which His riches 
are reflected upon Him. The Glory of God is a 
conception which has been greatly neglected by 



i 5 2 THE GLORY OF GOD. 

theology. And as we are studying Bohme not 
merely as an historical curiosity, but, above all, 
that we may come into contact with his ideas, and 
appropriate all of them that are valid, although 
perhaps independently of the forms in which Bohme 
expressed them, we must be permitted, conformably 
to the character of this volume as a free study, to 
take occasion from Bohme to offer a few suggestions 
as to this conception. 

XLII. 

WHETHER we speak of the Glory of God, or the 
glory of man, or the glory of the world and the king- 
doms of the world, we always understand by Glory 
the external and splendid form in which the invisible 
essence becomes visible and phenomenal. Now, 
because the being of the world and of man, in its 
separation from God, is without durability and 
strength, so is the glory of the world and of man 
transient as a flower of the field, and always 
devoured by the worm of death and corruption. 

The Uncreated Glory of God, on the contrary, is 
incorruptible. What, then, do we understand by 
the Glory of God ? The most precise definition 
that we can offer is : The Glory of God is the 
splendid manifestation of all the perfections of the 
Triune God, of all the attributes of God reduced to 
unity, the corresponding inward reflection of which 
in God Himself is the Divine Blessedness, the 
Divine consciousness and enjoyment of absolute 
perfection. Most theological statements of the con- 
ception of Glory are capable of reduction to this 



THE GLORY OF GOD. 153 

view ; and thus, at root, the Glory of God becomes 
identical with what is also called the Majesty of 
God. But this does not exhaust the conception. 
God possesses not merely a subjective personal 
Glory, which is one with His Being ; He also 
possesses an impersonal objective Glory, in which 
there is a reflection of Himself, and which throws a 
splendour back upon Him. 

XLIII. 

The difference between what we have here called 
personal and impersonal glory may be easily illus- 
trated in relation to man. A man's personal glory 
is his inward perfection, his intellectual endowments, 
his moral excellence, in so far as these shine forth 
into the outer world, and display themselves to the 
spectator as a luminous image. A man's impersonal 
glory, on the contrary, consists of his possessions, 
his various property, his houses and fields, wealth, 
power, and reputation in the world, his costly gar- 
ments, and the distinctions that are conferred upon 
him by society. In Holy Scripture, Joseph says to 
his brethren : " Ye shall tell my father of all my 
glory in Egypt," i.e., my power and honour, the 
dignities with which I am invested. Job says 
(xxix. 20) : " My glory was fresh in me ; " and he 
is thinking of his wife and children, and his former 
wealth. It is said in Proverbs (xiv. 28): "In a 
multitude of people is the king's honour " {glory) ; 
and when it is said in the New Testament that 
Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like the 
lilies of the field, the allusion is to the sumptuous 
character of Solomon's raiment. 



154 THE GLORY OF GOD. 

And if we mount higher, we shall find this 
difference between personal and impersonal glory 
in Jesus Christ. We read in John's Gospel : " We 
beheld His Glory, the Glory as of the Only-Begotten 
of the Father." Here it is the personal glory that 
is spoken of, Christ's inward perfection of being, 
which shines forth in the form of a servant, unre- 
cognizable by the worldly eye (for the worldly eye 
was sealed, as we read in Isaiah, " He was without 
form (glory) or comeliness ''), but discernible by 
the eye of the spirit and of faith. And we behold 
the personal glory of Christ in a very special sense, 
when the external becomes, so to speak, a trans- 
parent vehicle for the inward. When He says to 
Martha : " If thou wouldest believe, thou shouldest 
see the Glory of God," He is referring to the 
personal glory that God has bestowed upon Him, 
to that union of the Love and Power of God which 
is now to be displayed in the resurrection of Lazarus. 
We also perceive a similar " transparency " in the 
Transfiguration upon the mountain, when " His face 
did shine as the sun, and His raiment was white as 
the light." And we also remark it in the appear- 
ances of the Risen Christ, and in His Ascension 
into Heaven. 

But it must not be forgotten that Christ also 
possesses an impersonal Glory, an external Glory, 
over which He is Lord. He says of Himself, that 
He will come in His Glory with the angels, and 
that He will sit upon the Throne of His Glory, and 
judge the nations. Unquestionably, the " Throne 
of His Glory " is a symbolical expression ; but, 
unless it is to be regarded as an empty phrase, it 



THE GLORY OF GOD. 155 

points to a sphere of Power which is assigned to 
Him, and in which He rules. Is this sphere of 
Power to be sought simply in the created world ? 
The High-priestly prayer of Christ directs us to a 
higher world. When He prays : " Father ! I will 
that they also whom Thou hast given me be with 
me where I am : that they may behold my Glory 
which Thou hast given me ; for Thou lovedst me 
before the foundation of the world," He is speaking 
of something more than a personal glory, and of 
something more than glory in the created world. 
"To behold His Glory" involves the necessity that 
they " must be with Him, where He is." And this 
where, this sphere or region in which He is, and in 
which they are to be with Him, is closely connected 
with the Glory which they are to behold. This wJiere, 
this sphere, this theatre of His manifestation is eternal, 
uncreated, before the foundation of the world was 
laid ; it is prior to the relations of created space, 
to these materialized and corrupted space-relations. 
And if we ascend to God Himself and, indeed, 
we have already reached this supreme conception, 
to the Triune God before the foundation of the world 
was laid, to God's own inward Life of Manifestation, 
prior to Creation and Redemption, we can again 
distinguish between the personal and the impersonal 
Glory. The personal Glory is the majesty of God, 
for all these perfections belong to Him. But there 
is also an impersonal Glory, a sphere which Bohme 
calls " the House and Dwelling-place of the Holy 
Trinity." We read in Scripture, " God, dwelling in 
the Light, which no man can approach unto, whom 
no man hath seen or can see." The immediate 



156 THE GLORY OF GOD. 

reference of this passage is to the Father, but we 
may also interpret it of the whole Trinity, which 
the apostle, here, as in many other passages, 
embraces under the potency of the Father. Now 
are these words intended to tell us nothing else 
but that God is absolutely incomprehensible to 
us ? This view would wholly overlook the fact 
that there are no absolute mysteries, but that in 
every mystery there is always some revelation, 
some light which shines forth upon us, just as 
St. Paul says that believers see " only through a 
glass darkly and know only in part." Are we not 
rather to suppose that these words actually reveal 
something to us ; show us, that God dwells in 
Light, has a dwelling-place of Light ? on which 
point we may recal the words of the Psalmist : 
" Who coverest Thyself with Light as with a 
garment," even although this Light may be im- 
penetrable to us, and far above our understanding. 
The Light in which God dwells we can only con- 
ceive of as an uncreated light. Concerning this 
Uncreated Light there was much discourse among 
those monks of Mount Athos, known as the Hesy- 
chiasts, who believed that they had beheld it in the 
moments of their most rapt contemplation. We 
will not enter into this more deeply, but simply 
ask : Is this uncreated Light nothing but a purely 
mystical, indistinguishable unity; or are we to picture 
it to ourselves as breaking into rays and beams ? 
Scripture tells us that God is the Father of Lights, 
which is the same as the Father of Glory, and 
teaches us that there are distinctions in the one 
Light. Would it be discordant with Scripture to 



THE GLORY OF GOD. 157 

suppose that the Light in which God dwells is a 
seven-fold Light? an assumption to which we are 
led by the Seven Lamps in the Apocalypse, of 
which Bohme says that they do not stand by the 
side of one another, but are in one another. Would 
it be discordant with Scripture to suppose that this 
Light, with its seven beams, its seven fundamental 
powers, revea4s itself in a natural infinity of shapes 
and forms, and consequently in a world and kingdom 
of Light, as the impersonal Glory of God, His eternal 
possession, at once the sphere for His eternal energy 
and the product of His eternal energy ? This, at all 
events, is the opinion of the theosophists, and is the 
essential meaning of the Bohme-Baader Quaternary. 
The eternal uncreated Kingdom of Light is the 
fourth element of the Holy Trinity, different from 
God Himself, and yet pertaining to His essence. 
So far as we are concerned, we conclude that on 
this point Theosophy is right when we abide by its 
fundamental idea, and that Scripture here, as in 
other places, is more theosophical than many sup- 
pose. But as we have now to attempt to establish 
this thought upon our own premises, we will begin 
by submitting two questions for the reader's con- 
sideration. 

XLIV. 

The first question we propose for consideration is 
this : " Has God a Heaven ? " Now, we say that 
God is in Heaven, and we pray to our Father iv 
tois ovpavols. By Heaven we conceive a locality, 
a sphere or region, where existence has attained 



158 THE GLORY OF GOD. 

absolute perfection ; and when we speak of Heavens, 
we imagine a system of spheres, higher regions, 
which God wholly fills with His Presence ; and 
although God is omnipresent, still we say that 
Heaven is His proper and peculiar abode, His 
House, because it is only there that God absolutely 
dwells in His own, only there does He dwell in the 
absolute fulness of His perfection, which is not frag- 
mentary and partial, as upon earth, but is in unity, 
integrity, completeness, and harmony.* 

But when we thus ask, Has God a Heaven ? our 
question means more precisely : Has He an Un- 
created Heaven, or merely a Created Heaven ? Does 
He simply dwell in the company of the holy angels 
and the spirits of just men made perfect, without 
possessing a peculiar habitation of His own ? May 
we not ask whether the allegation that " God must 
create, in order to prepare for Himself an abode," 
does not represent God in a state of far too great 
dependence upon the created world ? and whether 
it is more worthy and accurate to suppose that God 
prepares a dwelling-place for Himself, before He pre- 
pares an abode for the blessed angels and for man ? 
This dwelling-place, this Uncreated Heaven, which 
must be conceived of as prior to the Created Heavens, 
is what we have defined above as the objective, 

* Cf. Dante, " Div. Comm.," Inf., i., 130, 131. 
" In tutte parti impera e quivi regge, 
Quivi e la sua cittade e l'alto seggio." 

Translation : 

" He governs everywhere, and there He reigns, 
There is His city and His lofty throne." 



THE GLORY OF GOD. 159 

impersonal side of the Glory of God, an eternal 
World of Light, different from God, and yet in- 
separable from Him. 

The second question that we have to ask is : 
" How do we apprehend Beauty in God?" We speak 
of the Good, the True, the Beautiful, the original 
essence of which qualities must be sought in God. 
Now, it is not difficult to apprehend the good and 
the true in God, seeing that He Himself is the Only- 
Good, and the Only-Wise. But if God, according 
to the usual conception, is only mere and bare Spirit, 
Spirit without Nature, Natureless Spirit, it may be very 
hard to discover Beauty in Him. It is true that men 
have sometimes spoken of a purely spiritual Beauty. 
But however certain it may be that Beauty cannot 
be imagined without spirituality, it is at least equally 
certain that Beauty cannot be imagined without 
corporeity. A merely spiritual Beauty, from which 
all corporeity, all externality, and all the phenomenal 
is excluded, is an abstraction which will scarcely 
commend itself to any man who possesses a keen 
perception of Beauty. Accordingly, others have 
supposed that Beauty is absolutely indiscoverable 
in God, and that it is a conception that belongs 
only to the finite created world. And inasmuch as 
this world of the senses is also a world of perishable- 
ness, others have held that the Beautiful is to be 
found only in the perishable, that it only arises 
when the transient is touched and illuminated by 
the rays of eternity. In this connection we may 
quote Goethe's well-known distich : 

" 'Warum bin ich verganglich, O Zeus?' so fragte die 
Schonheit. 



160 THE GLORY OF GOD. 

' Macht ich doch,' sagte der Gott, ' nur das Vergangliche 
schon,' "* 

and also the following lines, not by Goethe, which 

express the contrast between eternal but abstract 

ideas and transient but beautiful forms : 

" Sage, was sind die gediegenen, kalten 
Gottinnen, welche die Evvigkeit druckt, 
Gegen die bluhenden, weichen Gestalten, 
Welche der Reiz der Verganglichkeit schmiickt/'t 

But we ask whether Christians are prepared to 
abandon the claim that there must also be an 
incorruptible and imperishable Beauty, which is to 
be found in God Himself ; and whether we can relin- 
quish our hope that the Heaven or Heavens into 
which the blessed enter will reveal to them an in- 
corruptible beauty ? In this case, however, we shall 
require another conception of God than the purely 
spiritualistic. We shall be unable to find Beauty 
in God, if He is merely to be conceived of as 
thinking and willing ; we shall only find it when 
God is also regarded as imagining, image-forming, 
figure- shaping, and, indeed, when He Himself exists 
in a definite shape. We, therefore, discover the 
source of Beauty in the Divine Fancy or Imagination, 
a conception which is certainly unthinkable, unless 
there be a Nature in God. We cannot find Beauty 

* Translation of above: 
" ' Why am I transient, O Zeus ? ' thus asked Beauty. 
' Because I made,' replied the god, ' only the transient 
beautiful.' " 
t Translation : 

" Say what are the pure, cold goddesses 
Whom Eternity oppresses 
In comparison with the blooming, tender forms 
Whom the charm of transience adorns." 



THE GLORY OF GOD. 161 

in His purely unseen being, but only in the visible 
and phenomenal element which belongs to His inward 
Life of Manifestation. Or, in other words, Beauty 
must be sought in the Glory of God. Thus, the Son 
is called " The Brightness of the Father's Glory, and 
the express image of His Person " ; here it is the 
personal glory that is referred to. The Son is the 
Revelation of the Father's hidden perfection ; and, 
in the eternal generation, the Son shines forth like 
a radiant image, or, as Delitzsch has expressed it, 
it is God's supersensuous, spiritual Fire- and Light- 
nature itself that here rises like a sun. In this 
there is a phenomenal element, and in this there 
must be a momentum of Beauty, even although it 
transcend our faculties of apprehension. But if the 
idea of Beauty is to be adequately construed, there 
must also be a Kingdom of Beauty, a world of 
beautiful individual shapes and forms. This King- 
dom of Beauty we find in the impersonal Glory. 
Although we may hesitate to say, directly and 
distinctly, God is beautiful, while we have no hesita- 
tion in saying, God is good, or, God is all-wise, yet no 
one will shrink from affirming that God's Heaven, 
the surroundings of God, are beautiful, the Brightness 
that shines around Him as His garment is beautiful, 
Scripture, however, does not speak of Beauty, but 
of Glory. Glory is higher and more comprehensive 
than Beauty, for Glory includes the Sublime as well 
as the Beautiful. Having propounded these ques- 
tions, we proceed to ask : How do zve deduce the 
conception of the Uncreated Heaven from the ethical 
conception of God ? 



II 



1 62 THE GLORY OF GOD. 



XLV. 

We start from God as Trinitarian Love. That is 
our postulate, and we shall not here develop it 
further, because we are not now considering the 
mutual relation of the Hypostases, but the Glory of 
God, the fourth element in the Trinity. Now, if we 
imagine God to be Love, independently of the 
Creation, there is no object for His Love except 
Himself. The Trinitarian relation, therefore, is 
God's relation of Love towards Himself. That this 
is without egotism, without selfishness in its evil 
sense, depends partly on the fact that, in the Trini- 
tarian relation, God confronts Himself as another ; 
partly on the fact that when God loves Himself, He 
loves the All- worthy, the in itself worthy, which is His 
substance, loves Himself in a universal manner. 

How then are we to conceive of this Self-Love of 
God ? It will be most accurately regarded as God's 
intellectual, contemplative Love to Himself, self- 
contemplation in holy joy. We have here what 
Bohme calls the still mystery, where as yet all 
exists in inwardness, with this exception, that we 
cannot follow Bohme in his definition of this "still 
mystery" as a half-unconscious, dreamlike condition, 
but are, on the contrary, bound to interpret this still 
mystery of Love (the primal thing in God) as a 
state which is fully conscious from the outset. 

But if we pierce a little more deeply into this 
mystery, we shall reach a fourth thing, impersonal, 
distinct from the Three Persons, and yet inseparable 
from them. When God recognizes and views Him- 
self with holy delight, He* apprehends not only 



THE GLORY OF GOD. 163 

Himself, but also His contents, His TrXyjpojjxa. This 
irXtjpcjjxa which is best thought of as a TrX-qpcofxa 
of ideas, streaming forth in multiplicity from the 
Father is gathered by the Son into intellectual 
unity, and is shaped by the Spirit into a world of 
ideas, distinct from God, and yet inseparable from 
Him. We have here what Bohme calls Wisdom, 
viz., the impersonal objective Wisdom that displays 
itself before God Himself, distinct from subjective 
Wisdom, or Wisdom as an attribute which appears 
especially in the Son. It is of this objective imper- 
sonal Wisdom that Bohme says, that it stands like a 
maiden before the Triune God, generating nothing, 
but reflecting all the splendour and riches of Deity. 
Here already then we have the Glory of God, but 
only in an abstract and purely ideal sense ; and here 
already we have the Light in which God dwells, His 
House, His Heaven, but viewed only from the ideal 
side. Theosophy has also defined this Wisdom as a 
Veil enwrapping and encircling God, but a veil on 
which His self- manifestation is contingent, a splen- 
dour that encompasses Him, or, to use Bohme's 
words, a mirror that surrounds Him, in which the 
Triune God beholds the marvels that lie in the abyss 
of His Being. 

But can we stop short at the view that the Love 
of God to Himself is a simply intellectual, contem- 
plative, meditative Love ? Simply contemplative 
Love is, even when it is a Living Love, a merely 
inward, introspective, and ideal thing. But an 
inward demands an outward, the esoteric requires the 
exoteric. Even in man we demand that Love shall 
be practical, not merely contemplative. The con- 



1 64 THE GLORY OF GOD. 

ception of ethical spirit carries with it the necessity 
of being practical, active, productive, and widely 
energetic. And this must apply pre-eminently to 
God, as the Ethical Spirit in an absolute sense. An 
inert, simply meditative, and observant Love is only 
half Love, is entangled in abstractions. Now, if God 
is to be conceived of as Active Love, there is a very 
strong temptation to pass over immediately to the 
creation of the world. To this temptation many 
thinkers, and indeed Christian thinkers, have yielded. 
But, upon this view, the Created World becomes 
essentially necessary to God, and is not created 
purely out of His free Love ! For then God is inde- 
pendent of the world only in so far as He is Contem- 
plative Love, consequently only in half of His Being. 
In the other half, He is fettered to the creaturely 
world, because He needs it for the purpose of ener- 
gizing and operating upon it. But if the creaturely 
world is metaphysically indispensable to God, if it is 
a necessary appurtenance of His own Being and His 
proper Existence, the Love and Grace of God to- 
wards the creation are not truly free. 

If we shrink from taking this dangerous . step, 
which is plainly semi-pantheistic, and if we ask : 
How are we to conceive of God's Love to Himself 
as practical and energetic, independently of the 
creaturely world ? the reply is : God's active Love 
to Himself in contrast to self-contemplation, to 
intellectual and meditative Love is Self-Glorifica- 
tion. This Self-Glorification is evidenced by the 
fact that God, by the necessity of His Being, eter- 
nally produces and energizes an absolutely perfect 
product, an objectivity which reflects the riches of 



THE GLORY OF GOD. 165 

His Being. This perfect product is energized by 
means of the eternal Idea, through the eternal 
Nature which God posits out of Himself, out of the 
depth of Omnipotence. This formula brings us back 
to Jacob Bohme, whose fundamental idea remains 
valid, notwithstanding the flaws in its detailed develop- 
ment, to which we have already called attention. 
This thing, which is eternally and incessantly ener- 
gized, is the impersonal Glory of God, the objectivity 
that encircles Him, and is at once an ideal world 
and a natural world in incorruptible beauty. It is 
God's Uncreated Heaven, not merely in living but 
in corporeal reality, the externality or corporeity of 
God, the imperishable garment of light which God 
eternally produces, and in which He arrays Himself. 
In this His Heaven dwells God the All-Perfect, who 
does not need the creaturely temporal world, and, 
if He creates it, creates it only out of the pure free- 
dom of His Love and Grace. 

Self-contemplation and Self-glorification are con- 
sequently the momenta in the Divine Self-Love, 
through which the Uncreated Heaven arises before 
the Triune God. It is true that to describe this 
Uncreated Heaven transcends all human faculty. 
Our own corporeity and that which surrounds us is 
so grossly material, so clogged by heaviness, dark- 
ness, death, and corruption, that we must always 
experience immense difficulty in conceiving a cor- 
poreity which is absolutely penetrated and irradiated 
by Spirit. No description can possibly be adequate. 
We have already cited Bohme's words : " Beloved 
mind ! behold, consider this ; this now is God and 
His Heavenly Kingdom, even the eternal Element 



1 66 THE GLORY OF GOD. 

and Paradise, and it stands thus in the eternal 
original from Eternity to Eternity. Now, what Joy, 
Delight, and Pleasantness is therein, I have no pen 
that can describe it ; neither can I express it, for the 
earthly tongue is much too insufficient to do it. We 
will defer it until we come into the bosom of the 
Maiden " {v. " Three Principles," xiv., 89). Bohme, 
notwithstanding this caveat, often attempts very de- 
tailed descriptions, so detailed, indeed, that he some- 
times falls over into the materialism which has exposed 
him to so many reproaches. Rocholl has certainly 
hit the truth when he says of Bohme's too adven- 
turous descriptions, that all intrusion into the recesses 
of the Holy of Holies is " terribly presumptuous," 
and that every delineation of the mysteries of the 
Eternal Nature will inevitably invest the subject 
with something grossly material (just as the purest 
light seen through a turbid atmosphere becomes a 
dusky red) ; that our human speech is fashioned to 
disentangle things from one another, and to place 
them in relations of mutual outwardness and inde- 
pendence, a function wholly unadapted to the 
subject in hand, where all things stand in a magical 
inter-weaving, inter-cohesion, inter-implication, while 
earthly descriptions change them into an " outside 
one another," " by the side of each other," or " after 
each other," and consequently wrench asunder that 
which ought to be treated as inseparable unity. 

Yet even Rocholl himself, with many other 
modern thinkers, has tried his hand if not at 
detailed, still at vivid descriptions, a fact which 
shows the attractive power which this subject 
exercises upon us when our minds have once 



THE GLORY OF GOD. 167 

become familiarized with it. We are not, indeed, 
to attempt an intrusion into the sanctuary ; we are 
incapable of doing so ; it is the Light which no 
man can approach unto. On the contrary, we are 
enjoined by Scripture to postulate it, and also to 
point out the necessity of our pre-assumption, where- 
by we separate ourselves from those who wholly 
ignore it. We can only speak of it in symbols of 
more or less perfect correspondence. It will have 
been observed that, in these symbols and images, it 
is now the Eternal Being, and now the Eternal 
Movement that predominates. The Uncreated 
Heaven may thus be conceived of as a Starry 
Heaven, of which the Created Heaven with which 
we are familiar is but a feeble copy, a shining 
Firmament (the outspreading of His Strength, Rakia). 
Relatively more perfect symbols of this eternal 
nature-world which is absolutely transparent to 
Spirit, God's own Paradise, those symbols indeed 
may be which vividly express not only the eternal 
tranquillity, but also the movement in its exhaustless 
multiplicity, the symbols which express the process. 
And Rocholl has quite correctly perceived that the 
approximately best symbol of the Uncreated Heaven 
and its harmonious unity is Music* In the evolu- 
tion of harmonies in the upper and lower notes, and 
their mutual conflict, in the solution of strife and 
tension into blessed calm, in the transmutation of 
the ever-recurring theme into new phases, in the 
constant re-appearance of the motif, of the question 

* Thus also it was finely imagined by Dante. Music and 
the myriad gleamings of precious stones form his symbolic 
expression of the life of the Paradiso. Translator's Note. 



1 68 THE GLORY OF GOD. 

which seeks a reply through every evolution of the 
notes, and which leads the reply into a new process, 
in this we see a temporal symbol of the eternal 
Rhythm, the eternal circular movement in God's 
Heaven, where melodious colours and radiant notes 
are interwoven with each other ; where nothing 
lies in stagnant repose, but all is in motion ; where 
unity and harmony are eternally effected by means 
of the contrasted movements and actions. 

And let us lay special stress upon the " melodious 
colours and radiant notes." What is separated and 
parcelled out in the earthly world is in union above. 
A truth that reminds us of the Vision of St. Martin, 
of which he says : " I saw flowers that sounded ; I 
heard notes that shone." The quality of this Nature 
is quintessential ; it holds in unity all that is par- 
celled out among the four elements. 

This, however, is only a faint symbol, a stammer- 
ing utterance, a feeble groping. Yet this, at least, 
may be said, that if we could gaze into this 
harmony, observe and hear it, it would be the same 
to our imagination as the Peace of God which 
passeth understanding is to the heart of the Chris- 
tian who has received grace. Harmony is a word 
which Holy Scripture does not know. But what we 
call Harmony, the Bible calls Peace. 

XLVI. 

If the validity of this conception be granted, the 
theosophic doctrine, that the Uncreated Heaven forms 
the pre-assumption and foundation of the whole 
Created World, will not be judged baseless. The 



THE GLORY OF GOD. 169 

created universe hovers in this Uncreated Heaven, 
which encircles the created, permeates it, is both 
within it and without. From this springs everything 
which, whether in spiritual or physical sense, is called 
Blessing. If this word is not a mere empty sound, 
it implies that super-terrestrial, heavenly forces exert 
an influence upon lower nature, bestowing good, 
imparting strength, bringing life and prosperity. 
Every good and perfect gift descends from above, 
from the Father of Lights, from His Heaven, His 
radiant Glory. Created life and created light would, 
both physically and spiritually, fade quickly away 
and be quenched if they lost connection and com- 
munication with the heavenly vital forces and the 
heavenly Light. This Uncreated Heaven, the 
Heaven of Heavens, Heaven itself (Heb. ix. 24), 
as the Scripture calls it, thereby distinguishing 
it from the created heavens, is not divided from 
us by material distances in space ; for it is not 
subject to the laws of this material world. It is, 
in its very nature, all-pervading and everywhere at 
hand, certainly in different modes in relation to 
the different circles of Creation and the various 
qualities of created things. God's Heaven and 
Paradise may be absolutely near us, may invisibly 
encompass us, as is confirmed by those glimpses 
into Heaven which have been vouchsafed to indivi- 
dual saints under extraordinary conditions. 

But, amid the usual circumstances of earthly life, 
there is a veil which prevents us from seeing it. 
This veil is the material world of the senses, this 
parti-coloured veil with the visible heaven and earth, 
with flowers and stars, with images, figures, and 



170 THE GLORY OF GOD. 

enigmatical symbols, a Veil which is treated by 
many as if it were the thing itself, the finality to 
which one must cling, inasmuch as they do not 
know that the true and abiding realities are first 
found behind or within the veil (Heb. vi. 20), behind 
what they term the Laws and Forces of Nature. 

It may also be said that the Veil is this flesh of 
ours, our gross corporeity, which is subjected, like 
the whole physical world, to heaviness and darkness, 
corruption, and death, and in which, in rebellion to 
the glory which encircles us, we move, as it were, 
with closed eyes and sealed ears. 

We must not, however, pursue these conjectures ; 
they would lead us from the first things into the 
last things into Eschatology. And up to this 
point of our inquiry, we have not yet grasped the 
idea of the Creation, nor, indeed, even the thought of 
a created world. 



II. 

GOD AND THE CREATED WORLD. 
XLVII. 

CREATION. THE WHEREFORE AND THE 

MEANS OF CREATION. 

THAT God creates means not only that He 
energizes and realizes an eternal object, but 
that He produces a life outside Himself, places a 
spirit-world over against Himself in relative inde- 
pendence, and a nature-world as a qualification and 
presupposition for the spirit-world. That God 
creates implies further, that He produces a world 
which is to be developed from imperfection to per- 
fection ; a development which has to proceed through 
time and temporality, consequently gradually and 
fragmentarily, quite differently from the Glory of God 
or the Uncreated Heaven, which is produced by the 
inward working of God, and stands in absolute per- 
fection from eternity to eternity. The Uncreated 
Heaven is an indissoluble life ; the Created World is 
a disintegrable life (but a life which by the Divine 
aid is to evolve itself into indissolubleness), while 
decomposableness, disintegrability, lability are abso- 
lutely impossible in the Glory of God. 

While the eternal inward energy of God depends 
upon a necessity of His Being, Creation must depend 



172 CREATION. 



upon a free resolution. It must have been possible for 
God not to have created, viz., in the sense that creation 
is not, like His inward energizing, necessary to His 
own perfect metaphysical Being or Existence. 

XLVIII. 

Wherefore, then, has God created the world, since 
He did not create it for His own perfection ? Bohme 
replies : " We can only say in answer to this that it 
pleased the Trinity to have children in Its own like- 
ness" ("Forty Questions," i., 279). Consequently, 
God created the world out of love, seeing that He 
conceived the idea of another existence, which is not 
God, but which needs God, and is able, through free 
surrender, to be transfigured into likeness to Him. 
It is impossible for Glory and Love to be manifested 
unless there be something that needs Glory and Love. 
This thought, one of Bohme's fundamental thoughts, 
has already found application in the Inward Life of 
God, viz., with regard to the nature in God which 
needed to be released from its torture ; but it gains 
new and more striking application when one thinks of 
actual creaturely existences in derivative independence 
over against God, and yet helpless, needy, and poor, 
hungering and thirsting after the freedom and fulness 
of life, which God alone can bestow upon them, and 
by which He, in turn, can acquire a derived self- 
glorification. God creates the world with perfect 
freedom. It is the good pleasure of His Will to 
create it. He is, so to speak, not compelled to 
create it, although creation harmonizes with His 
Being, which is Love. 



CREATION. 173 



XLIX. 

" The Eternal God in Trinity has created all things 
with and by His eternal Word, out of Himself." 
Creation ex ?iihilo, in its usual signification, Bohme 
rejects. He accepts it, however, in the sense, that 
God has not created the world out of any alien 
material, has not drawn from any other fountain 
but His own. God has possessed in Himself, from 
all eternity, means for His creation. He has created 
the world out of the Eternal Nature, in which there 
is a countless multiplicity of forces, and out of the 
Eternal Wisdom, in which there is a countless mul- 
tiplicity of thoughts. " The Wisdom is the true 
Divine Chaos, wherein all things lie, viz , a Divine 
Imagination, in which the Ideas of Angels and Souls 
have been seen from Eternity in a Divine type and 
resemblance, yet not then as creatures, but in re- 
semblance, as when a man beholds his face in a 
glass." In His eternal Wisdom, God has the Form 
for the Created World ; in His eternal Nature He 
has its matter ; not as though there were matter in 
God Himself, but rather an energetic potency, which 
is the fons originis of matter. We may also say 
that the world is created, according to Bohme's view, 
out of the seven Natural Properties or Forms which 
compose the Glory of God, and which themselves 
contain the mediation of Idea and Nature.* 



* " De Triplici Vita," iii., 40: "Now this world, with all 
that belongs to it, as well as man, is created as an Outbirth 
out of the Eternal Nature ; understand, out of the seven seals 
of the Eternal Nature." 



174 CREATION. 



The question arises how the Wisdom, in which 
God beholds the whole created world as future, is 
related to the essential Wisdom, which we have 
previously considered, and which is an indispensable 
condition for the Uncreated Heaven itself, viewed 
under the ideal aspect. Hamberger says, that the 
Wisdom in which God sees the created world, i.e., 
the World's Idea, is the same as what Plato calls 
" The Divine World of Ideas," and that it is quite 
possible to distinguish it from the essential Wisdom 
or Uncreated Heaven. This last is pure life and 
actuality. The World's idea, the idea of Creation 
is, on the contrary, " without life and without being," 
and only gains life and existence by being actualized. 
Undoubtedly, one must draw a distinction here ; for, 
if the World's idea were immediately one with the 
Uncreated Heaven, God would have no other sub- 
stance than the created world a conclusion which 
utterly clashes with our premisses. There cannot, 
however, be a double Wisdom in God ; it must be 
the same Wisdom. On this point, Bohme gives us 
no further guidance. The only mode, in which we 
can picture the relation, is, that when God grasps 
the thought of another existence outside Himself, 
this must also display itself to Him in inward ob- 
jectivity. He beholds, in His essential Wisdom or 
Uncreated Heaven, not merely an infinite wealth of 
eternal reality, but also an infinite wealth of eternal 
possibility, possibility of creating, out of this nX^pcofjia, 
a world outside Himself, and of gaining thereby a 
derivative Glory. The essential Wisdom certainly 
includes far more than the " World's Idea." God 
has His own substance and His own Glory, inde- 



CREATION. 175 



pendently of the Glory that He is able to bestow 
upon Himself in a created world. But the essential 
Wisdom includes the " World's Idea " as its momen- 
tum. The exceeding wealth of Glory in the Inward 
Life of God also contains resources or means for 
the creation of a world outside of God. So, we 
think, in any case, the matter must be viewed. 
This " World's Idea," this thought of the possibility 
of a created world, is depicted, in the Old Testament, 
as an objectivity which displayed itself to God 
before the times of the actual world. In Proverbs 
viii. 22, Wisdom is introduced as saying: "The 
Lord possessed me in the beginning* of His way, 
before His works of old. I was set up from ever- 
lasting, or ever the earth was. When there were no 
depths, I was brought forth, when there were no 
fountains abounding with water. When He esta- 
blished the clouds above, when He strengthened 
the fountains of the deep, then was I by Him, as 
one brought up with Him, and I was daily His 
delight, rejoicing always before Him, rejoicing in 
the habitable parts of His earth, and my delights 
were with the sons of men." Like a maiden child 
she played, from the beginning, before God upon 
His earth, not this earth of ours, which then was 
non-existent, but God's earth. Before the times of 
this world, she rejoiced before God in the eternal 
nature, in the Uncreated Heaven, and revealed to 
Him, in a circle of visions, all that might become 
real in a future nature- and spirit-world, if He willed 
it, if He would bestow His ratification on the as yet 
shadowy and transient visions that she evoked befoi e 
Him, if He would call the non-existent existent. 



176 CREATION AND COSMOGONY. 

Above all, she revealed to Him the lovely creation 
which might become His image, the link between 
Nature and Spirit, and in which she found her 
highest delight, viz., Man. This passage plays an 
important part in Theosophy. Schelling also speaks 
of it with the greatest enthusiasm. It impresses 
him like a breeze from some, sacred morning dawn, 
and he says that, even if he met with it in a profane 
author, he would pronounce it to be inspired. 



L. 

CREATION AND COSMOGONY. THE UNFATHOM- 
ABLE MYSTERY. 

In a certain sense, the whole created world, with 
stars and elements, men and spirits, pre-existed in 
God, although not in a palpable and tangible 
manner. It was in God, as Bohme expresses it, 
" essentially," but not " corporeally." The whole 
Universe stood in the Wisdom of God as in a self- 
entwined, self-implicated Mirror of Love, and the 
Wisdom rejoiced with itself in virtue thereof. But 
now, when the Will of God defines itself in the 
Word, and utters the eternal Fiat, a new thing 
arises. For that which in God had been implicit 
and self-entwined in unity now steps out in separa- 
tion, fragmentarily, and in division. That which is 
unknown in the Inward Life of God begins now to 
show itself. Creatures manifest themselves, coming 
forward after one another, and outside one another ; 
their whole life moving in the relations of succession 
and mutual independence, i.e., in the forms of Time 



CREATION AND COSMOGONY. 177 

and Space, while in God and the Uncreated Heaven, 
everything stands in an eternal " Now " and " Here," 
in which "near" and "distant" are unknown, 
where beginning, middle, and end are blended 
together in the circle of eternity. In the creaturely 
world, Beginning, Middle, and End fall outside of 
one another, and need to be harmonized. Conse- 
quently, we have here a wholly new form of Exist- 
ence, which fills us, as we ponder it, with increasing 
surprise. Not only the seven Natural Properties, 
but even the Triune God, Father, Son, and Holy 
Spirit, here manifest themselves in separation, and, 
as it were, in division ; for God shows Himself in 
various times of revelation, where Beginning, Middle, 
and End are outside of one another. We are not, 
however, to suppose that the Inward and Blessed 
Life of God is disturbed by this revelation outwards, 
or that, by suffering these innumerable forces and 
powers to come forward out of Himself, God thereby 
loses them and is impoverished ; for His depth is 
inexhaustible. As an analogy, we may think of a 
man who may indeed impart his thoughts to others, 
and publish works, and produce external effects, 
without, on that account, being compelled to lose his 
thought or productive power. For he may retain 
within himself the springs of production, and live a 
secret life of his own. 



LI. 

CREATION is inseparable from Cosmogony. The 
World is created by God by the eternal Fiat ; but, 
nevertheless, it may be said that the world is born 

12 



178 CREATION AND COSMOGONY. 

" out of God," if only this " out of God " be rightly 
understood. It must, on no account, be confounded 
with the Birth of the Son from the Father. The 
Son is not created ; He is God of God, Light of 
Light. The World, although it is taken out of God, 
" cannot be called God, but the expressed and 
formed Word of God, a mirror of the Spirit which is 
called God, wherewith the Spirit manifests itself."* 

The World does not arise immediately from God, 
but from the seven Natural Properties, from that 
which is the Externality in God. It is summoned 
forth from non-existence to existence, from possi- 
bility to reality. It is generated out of the Cen- 
trum NaturcB as its matrix, out of the lower Natural 
Properties, and is shaped by the higJur Natural 
Properties, while the Creative Will presides over the 
whole, understands the whole, seeing that the eternal 
Nature and the eternal Idea are only the instruments 
of this Will. And as all created things are born 
and formed, so also do they form themselves, give 
themselves shapes, and incorporate themselves. God 
can only create a living thing ; every living thing 
must then develop itself. Thus, then, the life of the 
created World advances through continuous births. 
As all the creatures are summoned forth from the 
eternal " Centrum Naturae," the Hearthstone of Life, 
so also every living creature has its own partial 
" Centrum Naturae," or " Wheel of Birth," and has to 
develop itself from this, to grow and elaborate itself, 
according to the destiny assigned to it by the 
Wisdom. 

* "Mysterium Magnum," viii., 25. 



CREATION AND COSMOGONY. 179 

" The same one only substance of the Divine 
Operation, which has ever been from eternity, God 
has comprehended and moved with the Science of 
His abyssal Will, and comprised it in the Word of 
His speaking, and expressed it forth out of the 
first Principle of the painful dark world, and out 
of the holy light-flaming Love-world, as a Type, 
Model, or Representation of the inward spiritual 
world. 

"And that is now the outward visible world 
with the stars and elements, not so to be under- 
stood, that it was in a palpable substance before in 
Distinction. It was the Mysterium Magnum, wherein 
all things stood in the Wisdom in a Spiritual Form 
in the Science of the Fire and Light, in a wrestling 
sport of Love. 

" It was not in creaturely spirits, but in the science 
or root of such a Model and Representation, wherein 
the Wisdom has thus in the Power sported with 
itself. This Model, Idea, or Representation, the 
one only Will has comprised in the Word, and let 
the Science or Root out of the only one Will go 
free, so that every power in the separation intro- 
duced itself into a Self-Will in the Science, which 
was left free, into a Form according to its property."* 

We must, consequently, represent to ourselves 
that the bond which in the Inner Life of God 
held the forces entwined in unity is unloosed by the 
Creative Fiat, and that now every power is released 
and left free to express itself according to its own 
will. There thus arises, at the creation, a countless 



* " De Elect. Gratiae," iv., 21-24. 



180 CREATION AND COSMOGONY. 

number of relative " centra," of particular wills, which 
determine themselves each after its own character. 
Still, no strife or confusion occurs here. The Unity 
of Wisdom rules the whole, and at the beginning 
of the Creation, before the Fall of Lucifer, every- 
thing stands as yet in " temperature." We often 
find in Bohme the symbol of a field full of flowers 
on a fine summer's day. Each of the flowers has 
its own distinctive colour. But they are not in 
conflict with each other ; they rather serve to 
enhance one another's glory. This is an earthly- 
parable of the Creation in a state of temperature. 
Every creature is fashioned by the seven Natural 
Properties, but some special Property is paramount 
in each creature, in each individuality, without 
necessitating the repudiation of the others. 

Some creatures bear more of the stamp of severity, 
and are most allied to the lower Natural Properties ; 
others bear more of the stamp of Gentleness and 
Light. But, since the Creation has passed out of 
temperature, God is revealed in some according to 
the power of His Wrath, His severe and terrible 
Might ; in others He is revealed in the character 
of His Love. 

LII. 

ALTHOUGH Bohme points out the factors of the 
Creation, and even enters upon a descriptive sketch 
of it, he is far from supposing that he has fully 
grasped the meaning of Creation. He regards it, 
on the contrary, as an unfathomable mystery. He 
says explicitly : " What is here hidden from us is 



CREATION AND COSMOGONY. 181 

that we know, not that which first moved God to 
create ; we know well the making of the soul, but 
how that which was in its essence from eternity is 
become movable, we know no ground of that, for 
it has nothing that could awaken that ; and it has 
an Eternal Will, which is without beginning and 
unchangeable." * 

What he finds unfathomable is the first movement 
to Creation in the God who is unchangeable from 
eternity. When God moves Himself to Creation, 
a beginning is posited ; but how can anything 
begin in the Unchangeable, in whom time does 
not exist ? " How came it," asks Bohme, " that 
God hath moved Himself, when, nevertheless, He 
is an unchangeable God ? " This God has kept in 
His own power. We must not search deeper here, 
for this confuses us. Bohme also finds unfathom- 
able that which has been called the transition, the 
leap from the Infinite to the Finite, from the circle 
of Eternity to temporal division and succession, 
from circular movement to linear movement. Pan- 
theism treats this matter very lightly, by denying 
the problem of Creation and accepting simply an 
eternal Universe, wherein the changeable has existed 
from eternity together with the unchangeable, the 
temporal together with the eternal ; by denying the 
reality of the world, regarding the temporal as a 
phantasm, which has only a vanishing value for 
thought. Bohme cannot treat the subject so lightly. 
The enigma to him is the actual transition, the 
actual transposition of the essential into the sub- 

* " Forty Questions on the Soul," i., 344. 



1 82 CREATION AND COSMOGONY. 

stantial, of that which has stood in eternity, destitute 
of a beginning, into a beginning thing, a moving 
thing, into actual self-moving, self-incorporating 
existence. This is the greatest miracle that Eternity 
has wrought, that it has shaped the eternal into 
corporeal (actually and, indeed, physically existing) 
spirits, which no understanding can grasp, no sense 
perceive, and which we cannot fathom. The core 
of the mystery is gathered into the creative Fiat. 
Notwithstanding Bohme's opposition to Creation 
ex nihilo, he seems compelled, in a certain sense, 
to have recourse to it here. Ex NiJiilo would 
then imply : " only by the magic of the Word and 
Will," not, however, excluding the possibility that 
there may be eternal essences in God, which undergo 
a change or transposition by this magic of the Word 
and Will. 

Dr. Walther had asked " whence the Soul pro- 
ceeded originally at the beginning of the World ? " 
and Bohme replies : " No created spirit can posit 
itself, nor, therefore, can it fathom itself. We 
behold, indeed, our Potter, our Maker, but we know 
not our Making. A child knows its father and 
mother well, but it knows not how its father made it ; 
it is also as highly graduated as its father, but it 
is hidden to it how it was in the seed, in the wonder, 
a spirit in the wonder. The soul grows like a bough 
of the tree of humanity ; but the first movement 
to creation is not to be named. It is a mystery 
which God has reserved for Himself" ("Questions," i). 

To those who pore over the mystery of Creation, 
Bohme recommends patience, humility, and obedience, 
or else " our proceeding from God avails nothing." 



CREATION AND COSMOGONY. 183 

By this he implies : Pantheism profits not. Let 
none climb above the Cross, the unfathomable 
mystery, or, if he does, he will fall into Hell to the 
Devil. God ivill have children tiear Him, and not 
lords. 

In these closing words, Bohme has clearly and 
simply expressed the canon of theonomic thought, 
as against all false autonomies. The philosophers, 
who claim for human self-consciousness absolute 
autonomy or self-legislation, deny their creatureliness, 
their created being, seek to be lords instead of 
children, to place themselves on an equality with 
God, or even to enthrone their understanding in 
the place of God. Notwithstanding the authority of 
ever so many great names, it is palpably absurd to 
ascribe absolute autonomy to a self-consciousness 
which is born out of a dim natural abyss, and is 
continually supported by an obscure natural basis 
(of which it never becomes master, and which it 
cannot see through), and which, after having 
pondered and inquired upon this earth for a number 
of years, is again to be quenched in the night of 
death, wholly ignorant whether this night be the 
end, or a new awakening. 

Birth and Death, and the whole night-side of our 
existence, establish the fact that God will not 
have lords but children. What these would-be lords 
lack, and what we all lack, is Aseitas, Self-Existent 
Being, which belongs to God alone. God alone 
possesses absolute autonomy. Unless one possesses 
Aseitas, one ought, with Jacob Bohme, to possess 
humility. 



1 84 CREA TION AND EMANA TION. 

LIII. 

CREATION AND EMANATION. 

It will be obvious, from what has been said above, 
that the often -repeated assertion, that Bohme does 
not really teach Creation, but Emanation,* must be 
rejected, or, in any case, greatly modified. Emana- 
tion means that the World is a necessary effluence 
or radiation from God. But Bohme teaches very 
distinctly, that God creates with perfect freedom ; 
if Bohme had taught simply Emanation, he would 
not have invented a crux for the thought in the 
shape of Creation. The doctrine of Emanation 
never leads to anything which is really other than 
God ; it raises no question of anything that conflicts 
with God, no question of physical or moral evil. 
Thus we find Emanation in Leibnitz, in his doctrine 
of monads, where the finite monads are represented 
as radiations, outgleams, effulgences, and corrusca- 
tions from God, or the Primitive Monad. But by 
this we never emerge from God Himself, and 
Leibnitz's doctrine of Monads, viewed from this 
standpoint, is as pantheistic as Spinoza's doctrine 
in which the relation between God and the world 
is simply one between cause and result. Bohme, 
on the contrary, distinctly teaches that the Creation 
does not proceed from the pure, clear Deity (the 
Heart and Light of God), but from the Eternal 
Nature, or, as it may be more concretely expressed, 
from the seven Natural Properties, from the Glory of 

* Stockl, " Geschichte der Philosophie des Mittelalters." 



CREA TION A ND EM A NA TION. 1 85 

God, from the Externality in God, consequently from 
that in God which is not God Himself, and from 
which it is summoned forth by the Creative Fiat. 
And yet one cannot help recognizing that there 
are passages in Bohme which, when isolated and 
wrenched from their general context, may be adduced 
as evidence that he teaches an Emanation or Evolu- 
tion, an unfolding of the world out of God. Thus 
he says : " Whatever God is in His eternal un- 
beginning generation and dominion, of that also is 
the Creation, but not in the omnipotence and power, 
but like an apple which grows upon the tree, which 
is not the tree itself, but grows from the power of 
the tree." * In harmony with this illustration, then, 
the world has grown out of God, as an apple out 
of the tree, and is the progeny of God. Bohme is 
more felicitous when he gives us the symbol of a 
mother, who has seed in herself. So long as she 
has seed in herself, it belongs to her ; but when a 
child grows from it, the seed is no longer hers, but 
becomes the property of the child. f Here the 
ottierness, the independence of the Creation, is more 
distinctly emphasized. But in many other places, 
Bohme says, that the creatures have " issued forth " 
from God ; and it might seem that we have no need 
of further testimony. We recal, however, a saying 
of Oetinger's that to press single passages, in- 
cautious expressions of Bohme, which have not been 
sufficiently hedged and guarded, is simply to prove 
that one has no proper love for symbolism. Still, 
we would not quote this remark as if it were a 

* " Signatura Rerum," xvi., 1. t "Aurora," iv., 51. 



1 86 CREA TION A ND EM A NA TION. 

mark of any unimaginative dulness towards sym- 
bolism to acknowledge that Bohme (who is a 
passionate lover of Life, and whose favourite illus- 
trations are those of being born, growing, flowering, 
and bearing fruit, a lover of the Scripture parables 
of the Sower, the Tree and the Branches, and the 
welling fountains) has often moved with far too great 
partiality in the categories of Life, and has failed 
to raise into their proper place the categories of 
Spirit ; that he often speaks of the generation of 
the world and of the creatures (cosmogony), without 
laying sufficient weight upon the fact, that this 
generation is conditioned by a determination of 
the creative spirit ; that everything stands for him 
in a perpetuo fieri, while he does not always and 
at all points lay stress upon the creative unsearch- 
able Fiat, which, however, he does emphasize in 
many passages. It is undesirable that Bohme's 
writings almost everywhere bear the trace of a 
turbid ferment, which has not clarified, and that, 
in more senses than one, he requires to be rewritten. 
But it would be highly unreasonable to overlook his 
unmistakable fundamental thought and ground- 
intention, which is that of Christian Theism. The 
question, however, finally resolves itself into this, 
whether Creation and Generation, Creation and Cos- 
mogony, are mutually-exclusive conceptions ? a 
position which it is extremely difficult to maintain, 
seeing that we are daily encircled by innumerable 
births, and that we yet say of the things born that 
they are the " creatures of God." This question 
also arises, whether Creation ex nihilo, in the usual 
sense of the term, is the interpretation which has 



THE SEVEN NATURAL PROPERTIES, ETC. 187 

unqualified right to be called Christian ? This, it 
is true, is the opinion of many, but it cannot be 
substantiated by Scripture. For yutr) ovra (in Rom. 
iv. 7) is not the same as ovk ovra ; jxi) ovra is not 
that which in no sense whatever exists, but that 
which only in a certain limited sense does not exist, 
is not existent actuality, but only possibility ; while 
ovk ovra implies that which does not exist in any 
sense whatsoever. 

Since Bohme teaches that God, with His un- 
searchable' 'Fiat, produces the world by means of 
the seven Natural Properties, which are the creative 
forces, we must allude to another objection, viz., that 
the doctrine of the seven Natural Properties is 
unauthorized by Holy Scripture. Theosophy ap- 
peals, however, to the seven Spirits in the Apocalypse. 
We have, therefore, to inquire how far this appeal 
is justified, and how far it is not. 



LIV. 

THE SEVEN NATURAL PROPERTIES AND THE 
SEVEN SPIRITS IN THE APOCALYPSE. 

We will examine the often-quoted and classical 
passage Apocalypse i. 4, in which the seven churches 
are saluted with the following greeting : " Grace be 
unto you and peace from Him which is, and which 
was, and which is to come, and from the seven 
Spirits which are before His throne, and from Jesus 
Christ, who is the faithful Witness," etc., etc. 

Now, what is to be understood by the seven 
Spirits ? We will not pause to refute interpretations 



1 88 THE SE VEN NA TURA L PR OPERTIES, ETC. 

that are clearly preposterous, as that the seven 
Spirits are Angels. For " grace and peace " from 
creatures cannot be brought into immediate relation 
with that which comes from God and Jesus Christ. 
In Apocalypse iv. 5, we again discover the seven 
Spirits, namely, as seven lamps burning before the 
throne ; and we also find the cherubim and the 
twenty-four elders, who all worship. But the seven 
Spirits do not worship ; they are immediately united 
with God Himself ; they are supercreaturely, un- 
created Spirits, although certainly impersonal Spirits. 
A far more probable interpretation is that the seven 
Spirits form an expression or designation for the 
Holy Spirit, whose powers they are, and in whom 
they have their personal unity. Reference has also 
been made sometimes to Isaiah xi. 2, which describes 
the powers and gifts that are to descend upon the 
Messiah : " The Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon 
Him, the Spirit of Wisdom and Understanding, the 
Spirit of Counsel and Might, the Spirit of Knowledge 
and of the Fear of the Lord." This explanation, 
however, is inadequate. We must certainly admit 
that the seven Spirits have an ethical aspect, and 
that they are conditioned by holiness ; but they must 
also have an aspect of strength, of Nature. This is 
clear, when we note the connection between this first 
salutation and the whole sequel which is to be 
unrolled in the Visions, and which shows us that the 
Holy Spirit is here designated, not simply as the 
Holy Spirit, but also as the Spirit of Glory (1 Peter 
iv. 14). And why is the Spirit assigned this peculiar 
place before Jesus Christ, instead of being simply 
suffered to follow Him, if the intention is merely to 



THE SEVEN NATURAL PROPER'! IAS, ETC. 189 

designate the Holy Spirit as such, as the Spirit that 
works in the Kingdom of grace and redemption, in 
the Church ? The final goal, to which the Apoca- 
lypse points, is the Kingdom of God, not simply as 
the Kingdom of Grace, but as the Kingdom of Glory 
and Victory. But the Kingdom of Glory is the 
union of the Kingdoms of Grace and of Might. 
And it is the purpose of all the visions in the 
Apocalypse to show that the Kingdom of Grace and 
Holiness, which is now subjected to such great 
persecutions and tribulations, has, nevertheless, at its 
service world-conquering powers and forces, with 
which God will establish His cause to His own 
Glory, and to the Glory of Christ, to whom the 
Father has given all power in heaven and upon 
earth. This is what is told to the churches for 
their consolation, when Grace and Peace are brought 
to them from Him which is, and which was, and 
which is to come (wherein we must think especially 
of the Father, whose power embraces everything, 
even the future, and who is faithful to His promises) ; 
and from the seven Spirits, which are not only 
Spirits of grace and peace, but also strong Spirits, 
Spirits of Power ; and from Jesus Christ, who cometh 
with clouds, and before whom all kindreds of the 
earth shall wail. There can be no doubt but that 
the Spirit, in whom the seven Spirits have their 
personal unity, is the same Spirit who addresses the 
churches in the epistles. But this Spirit, who 
addresses the churches, is here to be apprehended, 
not merely in His significance for the Church and for 
the society of the saints, but also in His cosmical 
significance. The cosmical significance of this Spirit 



1 90 THE SE VEN NA TURA L PR OPERTIES, ETC. 

is disclosed to the reader even more plainly by the 
fact, that the seven Spirits point back to the seven 
Eyes in the prophecies of Zechariah, where mention 
is made of the Building of the Temple, which is to 
be triumphantly accomplished, and where the seven 
Eyes are to watch over the sacred enterprise, a sym- 
bol of watchful and protective Providence. 

When the reader is led back to the Old Testament 
circle of thought, he is reminded of the activity of 
the Spirit before the manifestation of Christ. He is 
reminded of the Spirit of God, who, as the Creative 
Spirit, brooded over the waters, worked mightily, as 
the Spirit of Power, in the heroes of Israel, and, as 
the Spirit of Wisdom, imparted Himself to the 
prophets. The potencies and powers with which 
the Spirit of God worked in the Creation and 
Government of the World, before the manifestation 
of Christ, are the same with which He works still. 
He still works as the world-ruling and creative 
Spirit, who produces new conditions upon the earth, 
and who, indeed, even when the fashion of this world 
passes away, will produce, by means of His mighty 
workings, that which is the final vista of prophecy : 
a new Heaven and a new Earth, with the Resurrec- 
tion of our Body. 

This is still more apparent when we consider the 
seven Spirits in their relation to Jesus Christ. They 
stand in immediate relation to God and the Father, 
who is the Father of Glory, the Father of Lights, 
the Father of the seven Lamps which burn before 
the throne, and are the fundamental forces in His 
Glory. But they also occupy an altogether unique 
relation towards the Lord Jesus Christ. If they are 



THE SEVEN NATURAL PROPERTIES, ETC. 191 

able to bring grace and peace, and to co-operate 
towards the victorious establishment of the Kingdom 
of Peace, this is simply because they belong to Christ, 
and because their energy is determined by Him who 
loved us, and washed us from our sins with His blood. 
Jesus Christ is " He that hath the seven Spirits " 
(Apocalypse iii. 1), because the Father has given 
unto Him all power in heaven and upon earth. 
Just as it is He also who sends the Spirit, who will 
not speak of Himself, but will simply glorify Christ. 
That these potencies are not merely ethical, but 
cosmical potencies, is evidenced in the fifth chapter, 
where Jesus Christ is named as " the Lamb, having 
seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven 
Spirits of God, sent forth into all the earth." The 
horns symbolize the powers by which the hostile 
powers of the world are crushed, and the Eyes sym- 
bolize the Wisdom which corresponds to the power ; 
they remind us of the seven Eyes in Zechariah, 
which run to and fro through the whole earth, as if 
searching out and having the care and super- 
intendence of all things. The Lamb who is also 
the Lion ! thus holds in His Hand the world- 
directing, world-ruling potencies, and avails Himself 
of them as media through which to work. And 
this same One, who is the Lion and the Lamb, is 
also the Eternal Logos, " by whom all things are 
made, and without Him was not anything made 
that was made." He is " the Firstborn of every 
creature, by whom were all things created that are 
in heaven and that are in earth." He must, con- 
sequently, have the seven Spirits from the begin- 
ning ; He did not first acquire them by His Incarna- 



i 9 2 THE SEVEN NATURAL PROPERTIES, ETC. 

tion. And it is only because, as the Lord of Glory, 
He possesses these seven Spirits, these metaphysical 
and cosmical potencies, that He can hold the seven 
Stars in His hand, and walk in the midst of the 
seven candlesticks ; only for this reason can He 
reveal Himself so majestically to the seer, as " He 
whose eyes are as a flame of fire, and His voice as 
the sound of many waters." Or, in other words, it 
is only because He is the Lord of the whole Creation 
that He can be the Lord of the Church, and that 
the Church can absolutely rely upon Him. Without 
the seven Spirits, He would be unable to establish 
the Kingdom, or to fulfil His mighty promises. 

If what has here been advanced be essentially 
correct, we may proceed to say : Within, in the 
Inner Life of God, the seven Spirits are the uncreated 
potencies, or fundamental forces, which constitute the 
Divine Glory ; Without, in God's relation to the 
created world, they are the cosmical, creative, sus- 
taining, and world-governing potencies, the prin- 
cipia both of natural life and of historical world-life, 
principles of which God avails Himself as His 
instruments, organs, and media. If we stop short 
at these general considerations, it must be said that 
this is precisely the idea of Theosophy. This is what 
the Kabbala implies with its seven " Sephiroth ' ; 
this is what Bohme means by his seven Natural 
Properties, or fontal spirits of life ; this is what 
Schelling means (although he takes no notice of 
the Apocalypse or of the number seven) in his 
" Philosophy of Revelation," with its potencies. For 
the Schellingian " potencies " are, at the same time, 
principles in the Inner Life of God, and it is by 



THE SEVEN NATURAL PROPERTIES, ETC. 193 

their emergence, separation, and tension, that they 
become cosmical potencies. Thus it may be said 
in general that, on this point, Theosophy by no 
means lacks Scriptural corroboration. But, un- 
deniably, a difficulty presents itself when it is asked 
what special functions, what special activities are to 
be ascribed to each of the seven Spirits ? Here 
Scripture is silent, and gives us no reply. An 
endeavour may be made to combine the passages 
in the Apocalypse with the passages in Ezekiel ; 
but the intimations of Scripture still remain im- 
perfect. This, at least, must be admitted, that 
Scripture itself leads our meditation into a path 
where it becomes our problem to apprehend more 
closely the uncreated potencies through which the 
Will of God works in its manifestation, and to 
which Scripture itself makes unmistakable allusion. 
But the validity of this or that conjectural interpre- 
tation, which ventures into details, must demonstrate 
itself by its own internal truth and necessity, and by 
its harmony with the Biblical view, taken as a whole. 
Proofs from single passages of Scripture are in- 
admissible here. That which Scripture, notwith- 
standing its veiled suggestions, suffers us to lack 
on these points, the theosophers have attempted to 
supply by recourse to the Book of Nature. 

LV. 

IT will be vain to seek in Bohme a thorough-going 
Natural Philosophy, although he makes some attempt 
at this. Oetinger, who makes free use of Bohme 
and the Kabbala, has treated Natural Philosophy 

13 



1 94 CREA TION A ND EM A NA TION. 

with greater explicitness. Although Oetinger desires 
to hold fast by the naTve and simple physics of 
" Abel, Noah, and the other patriarchs," which he 
highly recommends to learned natural inquirers in 
order that they may not be led astray from life and 
from a living intuition of Nature by their mathe- 
matical abstractions, he was, nevertheless, very con- 
versant with the natural science of his age, and 
himself made chemical experiments. In practice, 
the seven Natural Properties are reducible to a 
duality, viz., to the contrast between Darkness and 
Light, Fire and Light, the severer and the milder 
potencies, a contrast which, as we have seen, may 
be discerned in Ezekiel. The same thing is repeated 
in the Natural Philosophy of Schelling, where the 
fundamental contrast is that between the Real and 
the Ideal, between Weight (gravity, heaviness) and 
Light, a contrast which is carried, with many trans- 
formations, through the various stages of natural 
life, and thence makes its way into history. And 
the more Schelling was induced, on more mature 
reflection, to abandon his pantheistic standpoint, 
and to seek a higher unity of Theism and Natural- 
ism, so much the more was he led back to Jacob 
Bohme. At this point Franz Baader already stood. 
Baader's Natural Philosophy is an attempt to develop 
Bohme's fundamental idea, that every life has a 
double " centrum," a Nature-czxxXxum and a Life- 
ox Light-centrum ; that it begins with the first, and 
is consummated in the second ; and that every life, 
in order to realize its destiny, must be born twice. 



THE ANGELS 
LVI. 

DERIVED ETERNITY AND TIME. 

THE Work of Creation unfolds itself through a 
diversity of circles of creation. The first 
circle of creation which God produces is the Angelic 
World, a Kingdom of pure Spirits of Light. Here 
Bohme specifies the three Archangels, Michael, 
Lucifer, and Uriel, each of whom has his own 
kingdom with a multiplicity of angels. Michael is 
the symbol of the Father, Lucifer of the Son, Uriel 
of the Holy Ghost. They have under them seven 
other Throne-angels with the heavenly hosts. The 
Angels dwell in a wonderful natural world, the 
perfection of which far transcends that of our earth ; 
it is akin to God's own Paradise, the Uncreated 
Heaven, and by this it is encircled. 

The Angels are created out of Fire and Light, 
for no creature can come into being without having 
in itself the fiery Triangle, the obscure nature-basis. 
They are Spirits, although not destitute of corporeity. 
Bohme says that some angels are light-brown in 
colour, that others have the appearance of lightning, 
that others are of a shining white, others of 
heavenly blue, others are like clearest crystal, 
whereby allusion is made to the seven Natural 



196 THE ANGELS. 



Properties, and to the contrast between the severer 
and milder qualities which predominate in the 
various angelic classes. It is as with the flowers 
in a meadow : each has its specific colour. So also 
with the holy Angels. But everything stands in 
" temperature." The astringent and sharp in their 
nature is transfigured in the light and love of God. 

But what must be specially emphasized is that 
the life of the Angels is not fettered by the limita- 
tions of time and space, as our human life is in this 
material world ; their existence is temporally and 
spatially free. They have indeed their locus, their 
proper place and region, but are not restricted to it ; 
they can exist where they please, and are raised 
above the contrast between near and far. They 
roam among one another in the three kingdoms, 
and hold communion of love with each other in 
common joy. And yet each of them retains its 
own region as its property and possession. In a 
similar manner, they are free from time. Although 
they may acquire a history by reason of the trial 
which they have to undergo, and by means of which 
their relation to God is to be established and 
confirmed ; and although they may acquire a relation 
to time by becoming God's fellow-labourers and 
ministers in later natural creations, and by their 
participation in the history of man, they are, 
nevertheless, from the beginning, without history, 
and without temporal succession. They live in the 
circle of eternity, in the undivided Trkr\pu>\La. of Life ; 
the momenta of their life are not parcelled out, but 
exist in simultaneity. Their life-employment is 
adoration of God, blessed contemplation of His 



DERIVED ETERNITY AND TIME. 197 

glory, and reciprocal love. They live their life in a 
derived or derivative eternity. 

LVII. 

A DERIVED, a deduced Eternity ! Jacob Bohme 
does not employ the term, but it harmonizes with 
his thought ; and this thought is not without validity. 
Primitive original Eternity belongs only to Him 
who alone hath immortality, because He is self- 
existent, and " Aseitas " is His attribute. The 
creature can only possess an eternal life which is 
imparted to it, and is the gracious gift of God ; can 
live only in an eternity which is deduced from the 
eternity of God, and participates in this. We are 
certainly able, as Christians, to have eternal life in 
faith during this temporal order ; but still, we look 
forward, as the phrase is, "to exchange time for 
eternity," to exchange this form of existence, where 
everything is fragmentary and sundered into succes- 
sion, for a fuller and richer form of being, where 
everything is simultaneous, whole, and undivided. 
But this eternity, which for us lies in the future, we 
cannot designate otherwise than as a derivative and 
communicated eternity, which participates in the 
Eternity of God, and receives its contents from 
this. 

But now, instead of looking forward, we look 
back into the morning of creation and ask, When 
did the derived Eternity begin ? When were the 
angels born ? Bohme replies, " The creation of 
the angels had a beginning ; but the powers of which 
they are created had no beginning." Does this 



198 THE ANGELS. 



mean that the angels have a temporal beginning, 
or that they have an eternal beginning ? A tem- 
poral beginning is very hard to imagine, because 
the angels were not created to live in the forms of 
time and succession, but in those of Eternity and 
Circularity. Not to mention the fact that, if tem- 
poral beginning means that they were created in 
time, time must have elapsed before they were 
created. Time is nothing in itself, but is only a 
form for existence ; and then it must be asked, 
What temporal existences preceded the angelic ? 
The whole representation of the angels includes the 
idea that they were created with the natural world 
that belongs to them, their heaven and glory, all at 
once.* 

Or does it mean they have an eternal beginning, 
that they sprang from that movement in the unchange- 
able God which Bohme regards as unsearchable, but 
which does not presuppose time, as if a space of 
time had elapsed in God Himself before He began 
to create, a movement which, consequently, was 
itself eternal ? But if we say this, we say, they are 
not created at any point of time ; there has been 
no time when there were not angels before the 
throne of God, no time when the Hallelujah of 
creatures did not ascend to the Eternal One who 
alone hath immortality. And then it will be asked, 
Is not this Pantheism ? If the world which here 
means the angelic world is thus made co-eternal 
with God Himself, is not this a denial of the concep- 

* We are thinking here only of the primitive Hierarchies ; for 
it is certainly conceivable that later hierarchies might have 
arisen. 



DERIVED ETERNITY AND TIME. 199 

tion of creation ? We are unable to perceive this. 
Creation is an act of the freedom of God, who does 
not need a world, but wills it out of pure love ; and 
this freedom and love are not impoverished by the 
supposition that no time elapsed in God before the 
world was created ; nor are they magnified by the 
supposition that God, whose resolution to create 
must certainly have been eternal, arbitrarily post- 
poned the execution of His design. 

The main point here, in a metaphysical respect, 
is this, that the Eternity of the Angels and the 
Eternity of God are essentially dissimilar. The 
eternity of the angels is posited, assigned by God ; 
they lack " Aseitas ; " and this is the important 
point if a fundamental distinction is to be drawn 
between God and the angels. These created beings, 
the angels, know themselves to be in absolute 
dependence upon God, as brought into existence 
by Him, although they have no recollection of a 
temporal origin. We cannot avoid calling attention 
to the fact that Dorner, in his excellent dogmatic 
treatise, has been led to the same view, independently 
of Bohme, and, following his own train of thought, 
he expresses himself thus : 

" We have no right to say that there may not 
have existed, prior to this palpable world which is 
subjected to time, a world which stood in the light 
of Eternity, a world of pure spirits, even although 
they had not entered into history, and were as yet 
exempt from succession, but who stood in the 
simultaneity of all the elements that pertained to 
their existence, and surrounded the throne of God ; 
a kingdom prior to the creation of our world, in 



200 THE ANGELS. 



which the creative love of God, which would not 
endure to be without a world, had always its abode ; 
a kingdom of which it cannot be said that there 
was a time when it was not, because there was no 
time before it was, and because for this kingdom 
itself there had as yet arisen no Time, no Succession, 
no Becoming."* 

Dr. Dorner reminds us that many passages of 
Scripture seem to point to such a heavenly world 
which belongs to the throne of God ; e.g.> the 
living creatures (a>a) in Ezekiel and in the Apoca- 
lypse, the representatives of created life, Cherubim 
and Seraphim. We may add the seven Angels 
who stand before God (Apocalypse viii. 2), and are 
not to be confounded with the seven Spirits who, 
as we have seen, are uncreated. With respect to 
the throne we note that Jewish Mysticism regards 
it as the point of transition from the Divine to the 
creaturely. j" 

Can one imagine the throne of God as coming 
into existence in time ? 



LVIII. 

But in whatever manner one may interpret Bohme, 
and answer the question as to the temporal or 
eternal origin of the angels, it remains clear that, 
for Bohme, the fundamental type of the angelic 
life is not that of time, but of eternity ; that for 



* Dorner, " System der christlichen Glaubenslehre," I., s. 
471. 

t Molitor, "Philosophic und Tradition," ii., S. 183. 



DERIVED ETERNITY AND TIME. 20 x 

him the primal circle of creation is a Spirit-world, 
standing in derivative eternity in which there is as 
yet neither time nor history. It is incontestably 
his view that the angels are prior to man, indeed, 
prior to this earth ; and here he is in harmony with 
the declaration of Scripture (Job xxxviii. 7) that, 
when the corner-stone of the earth was laid, "the 
morning stars sang together, and all the sons of 
God shouted for joy." The creation of the angels 
is certainly included in the general description : " In 
the beginning God created the heaven and the 
earth." But it is altogether arbitrary to assign 
the creation of the angels to the Mosaic creative 
days. The angels were prior to the whole history 
of the creation of this earth of ours, which Moses 
narrates, while he maintains absolute silence with 
regard to the angels. When the morning-stars and 
the angels are compared in Job, it must be remem- 
bered that, according to Scripture, there is a 
mysterious connection between the angels and the 
stars. 

If we take our standpoint with Bohme in this 
beginning, we gain the best position with regard 
to this temporal world, and acquire a living view 
of the unity of the universe. Thus, the first circle 
of Creation is a spirit-world in a derived Eternity. 
The final circle of Creation into which the whole 
pours itself, Perfection, the Future World, is also 
a derived Eternity, but one far richer than the 
former, because it embraces the heavenly Jerusalem 
with the Church of Christ. But in the midst lies 
the temporal world, the region where means and 
object, where beginning, middle, and end, past, 



202 THE ANGELS. 



present, and future are outside one another, while 
in eternity all these are within one another ; where 
the predominant feature is not rhythmic circulation, 
circular movement, but linear movement, progressive 
serial movement ; where that congeries of events and 
actions occurs which we call history. This middle 
world, accordingly, has not always existed, nor will 
it always continue to exist. Its significance is 
simply that of being an intermediate world, a world 
of transition to eternity. This theory releases us 
from the dreary and nebulous conception of the 
infinity and boundlessness of the world. The cur- 
rent ideas of the infinity of the universe with 
unlimited time without beginning or end and 
illimitable space are only valid in a purely abstract 
view of the world, when one looks wholly aside from 
its teleological, purposeful, and conditioned elements, 
and regards this abstract conception of the world 
exclusively through logical, mathematical, and physi- 
cal categories, as, for instance, when one discusses 
the infinite divisibility of matter. But if we are 
to apprehend the living, actual, teleologically-defined 
world (the characteristic of which is to be not only 
a natural world, but a world of spirits and souls), 
we need finiteness and limitation, we require a 
terminus a quo and a terminus ad quern. We 
demand of every work of art that it shall be finished 
and symmetrically rounded off in itself, and that 
therein it shall have its own inward infinity. Should 
then the universe, which must, most assuredly, be 
the most consummate work of art, lack this sym- 
metrical self-completeness, be without object or 
limitation, begin and end in mist ? We ask with 



DERIVED ETERNITY AND TIME. 203 

Schelling : " Which is the more perfect, an endless 
series of worlds, an eternal circle of existences with 
no goal of perfection, or a universe which issues 
forth into something definite and consummate ? " * 
Bohme expressly teaches, and is here in close 
accord with Scripture, that the Universe begins 
with something definite and perfect, and issues 
into something definite and perfect ; and that, for 
this reason, it must be self-limited. But how, then, 
did this temporal world, this middle world between 
two eternal worlds, which may be well compared 
to an island floating in a vast ocean with eternity 
behind it, before, above, beneath, and around it, 
how did this world come into being ? That, in 
some mode or other, Time must have proceeded 
out of Eternity is obvious, for whence else could 
it have come ? The clearest conception that we 
can frame is, that it arose by a new creative deter- 
mination, a new creative act, in relation to which 
the angelic world, in its derived eternity, would 
then be placed as an antecedent world, and would 
thereby receive a qualification of time. According 
to Bohme, this process did not take place so peace- 
fully and harmoniously as one might be disposed 
to imagine, or as, indeed, it would have done if the 
work of creation had advanced along strictly normal 
lines. He points to the suggestions which are pre- 
sented to us in Revelation itself, and teaches that time 
originated in a Fall from Eternity. This temporal 
world arose, at the outset, as an Eternity broken and 
shattered, flung into confusion and disorder. Bohme 

* Schelling, "Werke," i., book 9, 97. 



204 THE ANGELS. 



directs our attention to a great catastrophe in the 
morning of creation, a rebellion in the Spirit- 
world ! And this forms the starting-point of a 
long history. 



LIX. 

THE FALL OF LUCIFER, AND THE APPALLING 
" TURBA." 

Lucifer, in the angelic world and amongst the 
primitive hierarchies, was a mighty Spirit of Light ; 
he was, indeed, the mightiest of all created spirits : 
he had above him only the Son of God, and he 
ruled over a domain of natural worlds, which for us 
is indeterminable, but of which this earth of ours 
formed a part, standing then in marvellous beauty 
and glory. But Lucifer did not maintain himself 
as a Spirit of Light, did not continue in the truth ; 
he conspired against God, and a multitude of his 
subordinate angels shared his fall, the effects of 
which also extended to the natural world that was 
subject to him. 

We here face the mystery of the Origin of Evil ; 
and the first thing on which we must fix our 
attention is the Temptation. Bohme certainly 
indicates the possibility of temptation more pro- 
foundly than other thinkers have done by his 
doctrine of the two centra, the Nature-centrum and 
the Light-centrum, Egoism and Love. A being 
that can be tempted must have within himself two 
contrasting principles, according to either of which 



THE FALL OF LUCLFER. 205 

he may determine himself. It is necessary that 
even the angels should be tempted and proved, in 
order that their holiness may not be simply nature, 
but may be conditioned by their own free-will. 
Temptation takes place in the fourth Natural 
Property, where Fire and Light, Darkness and Light 
are separated. It is the will of God that the 
creature shall sacrifice the Fire-principle, Egoism 
and Selfishness, to the Light-principle; shall sacrifice 
the Fire-life, the " Own "-life, by absolutely surrender- 
ing it to the Light, to the Life of Love. With this 
Will Lucifer would not comply. He beheld his 
beauty, for he was marvellously beautiful ; he 
regarded his power, for he was a most powerful Lord ; 
and he passed into the realm of false imagination. 
Instead of setting his imagination upon God, and 
serving Him in obedience and meekness, he fixed 
his imagination upon himself, envied the Son of 
God, who was even more beautiful and mighty than 
he ; he looked upon the created world and under- 
stood its foundation. Then he fancied that he also 
could become a God, and rule over all things by the 
power of fire, that he could become a Fire-Lord 
with a Fire-regime ; and that, by bringing his own 
thoughts into shape, he could destroy what God had 
made, and replace it by something altogether new. 
The Fire-ground burned within him and sought 
to be manifested, and the darkness in him sought 
to become creaturely. He opened his "centrum 
naturae," and thereupon his Light was quenched. 
The beautiful star was wholly darkened. The foun- 
dation of Hell, hidden from all eternity, was now 
revealed. He aroused in himself Hell and the 



2o6 THE ANGELS. 



principle of the Wrath of God ; the three first 
natural properties that now have dominion over 
him. His torment consists in this : that he per- 
petually climbs up to destroy the Heart of God, 
but, as often as he reaches the height, he is plunged 
back into the deepest abyss. (" He that exalteth 
himself shall be abased ! ") 

Exhaustive knowledge of the Temptation and 
Fall in the angelic world is certainly impossible 
for us, because the angelic world and that potent 
angelic prince, whom we firmly renounce in Chris- 
tian Baptism, is too high for our comprehension, 
particularly as we can form but a very imperfect 
conception of the power that was bestowed upon 
him by the Creator. But the general metaphysic 
which is here necessary is accurately given in 
Bohme's doctrine of the two centra. It might 
certainly seem incredibly absurd that a creature 
could desire to undertake a conflict against its 
Creator, and to enter upon an utterly hopeless 
opposition. But if we reflect upon all the absurdi- 
ties, all the hopeless revolts against God and His 
world-order, and all the illusions of possible victory 
to which highly-gifted human spirits so often 
abandon themselves, we cannot deem it incredible 
that a corresponding event, on a higher scale, should 
have taken place in the angelic world. " Lucifer," 
says Bohme, " knew well that he himself was not 
God, and he foresaw the judgment of God ; but he 
had no sensible perception of it, but only a bare 
knowledge (something merely theoretical) ; his sen- 
sible perception was only of the Fire-ground that 
burned within him, and incited him to wish some- 



THE FALL OF LUCIFER. 207 

thing altogether new, to uplift himself above all 
kingdoms and above the whole Deity." * 

In additional explanation of the illusion to which 
he abandoned himself may perhaps be adduced the 
fact on which we have previously touched, viz., 
that the angels stand in derivative Eternity, and that 
thus the illusion lay ready to Lucifer's mind, when 
the Fire-principle tempted him, that he was not created; 
that a primitive eternity was also his possession ; 
and that he might enter, as a veritable God, an 
Anti-God, into conflict with the Most High. This 
is a feature, at all events, which the great poets 
have ascribed to Lucifer. Thus, for instance, Byron, 
whose Lucifer in Cain distinctly says that " he 
does not believe that God created him," whereupon 
he proceeds to question and argue away all moral 
attributes in God, and grants validity only to the 
conception of might. Another trait which the poets 
have assigned to Lucifer is his confidence in his 
own immortality, his belief that God cannot annihi- 
late him ; and that thus he may enter into conflict 
with God with impunity. In Milton, Satan says : 
" What tho' the field be lost ? All is not lost ! 
Since, by fate, the strength of gods and this empy- 
real substance cannot fail ! " 

Already in the pre-Christian world, a similar 
Titanic thought is expressed by the Prometheus of 
iEschylus. It is the consciousness of being spirits, 
for to be a spirit is to be immortal, imperishable, 
and unquenchable, that emboldens the devil and 
the demons in their defiance. In their spiritual 

" Mysterium Magnum," ix., 9; "Aurora," xiv. 



208 THE ANGELS. 



consciousness, by which they are certainly in kinship 
with God, they delude themselves into the idea that 
an absolute autonomy belongs to them, and they 
reject all Theonomy. They simply forget that they 
are not self-existent, that they do not possess the 
attribute of " Aseitas," that their Eternity is not 
primitive but derived ; and that the final meaning 
of their unquestioned deathlessness is merely this, 
" their Fire is not quenched." 



LX. 

According to the view that predominates in 
Bohme, the reality of evil must be traced back 
exclusively to the free-will and choice of the 
creature. He insists again and again that the idea 
that it was impossible for Lucifer to have resisted 
temptation, is inadmissible. Lucifer, like the other 
Throne Angels, had the light of the Majesty of 
God before him. If he had centred his imagina- 
tion upon this, he would have continued to be an 
angel. But he withdrew himself from the Love, and 
passed into the Wrath of God. It is true that God 
foresaw his fall, but He was unable to prevent it. 
True also that the realm of imagination had existed 
from all eternity, and that it provided him with the 
opportunity of falling. It was, nevertheless, abso- 
lutely and entirely of his own free-will, and without 
constraint, that Lucifer entered the realm of false 
imagination. The pervading thought in Bohme's 
doctrine of the Election of Grace is that the intelli- 
gent creature possesses in itself the "centrum " in 



THE FALL OF LUCIFER. 209 

which good and evil originate. It is false to suppose 
that it is not the will of God to admit all into 
heaven. It is His will that all should be assisted. 
But every being arouses Heaven or Hell within 
itself. What thou stirrest up within thee, whether 
it be Fire or Light, is accepted by its like, either 
by the Fire of the Wrath of God, or by the heavenly 
Light- Fire of Love. If one will be a devil, the 
wrath of God will have him ; if one will be an angel, 
God chooses him to be an angel. If a man has 
entered into wickedness and selfishness, the wrath of 
God judicially confirms him in his choice. If a man 
has entered into the word of the Covenant, God 
confirms him to be a child of Heaven. 

It follows from this view that what has been 
called the Mystery of Evil, or the Sinful Fall, is one 
with the Mystery of Freedom of Choice. No other 
reply than this can be given to the question why 
Lucifer placed himself in hostility to the Will of 
God. Because he willed it so, because he willed to 
centre in himself. The same reply must be given 
when the question of Adam's Fall is proposed. No 
other reason for this can be assigned except the 
will itself; it cannot be supposed that outside the 
will some other cause is to be sought, which is 
hidden only from us, which we do not know, but 
which we may perhaps discover some day. The 
fact is that there is absolutely no other cause. 
Shakspeare felt this when he made Julius Caesar 
say : " The cause is in my will " {Julius Ccesar, Act ii., 
sc. 2), and placed the same reply in the mouth of 
Shylock in the Merchant of Venice. For, if the 
cause were outside the will, a will- coercing cause, 

14 



2io THE ANGELS 



then will were not will, were not the power to 
initiate a new beginning, were not a primal thing 
and a principiating element. 

At the outset, the electing will lies in indifference ; 
it has not yet characterized itself, is impelled by no 
motive. It is certainly necessary that various motives 
should present themselves to the will, in order that 
it may choose from amongst them. Here, now, the 
great significance of Fancy or Imagination displays 
itself. Every motive presents itself to the electing 
will as a phantasmal image of the good, be it a 
real good or only an apparent good. The image on 
which the free-will dwells with pleasure assumes 
more and more magic of colouring, grows definitely 
into shape, and becomes magically influential. And 
when, at length, the free creature wholly fixes his 
desire upon it, surrenders himself to it, and takes it 
to himself, this image becomes a fructifying and 
impelling power for life or death. If the will has 
chosen, it is no longer free. The motive for Lucifer 
was the phantasmal image of his own greatness and 
glory, and of the novelty which he desired that his 
revolution should introduce into God's world. 

We have said that this is Bohme's fundamental 
view ; for it is undeniable that isolated expressions 
are to be found which suggest that Evil could not 
but become actual. These utterances harmonize 
with Bohme's conviction of the necessity of contrasts 
for the manifestation of life, wherein, as we have 
already pointed out, he sometimes fails to distinguish 
between contrast and contradiction, between possi- 
bility and reality. But if we dismiss from our 
regard these contradictions and inconsistencies 



THE FALL OF LUCLFER. 



(which must be viewed as partly casual expressions), 
and keep to Bohme's distinctly-marked and general 
meaning and intention, we cannot but admit that 
no philosopher has given a truer and more profound 
explanation of Evil. Evil is, as is well known, the 
weakest point in philosophical systems ; it is, so to 
speak, their "partie honteuse." The majority of 
philosophical systems regard evil and sin as neces- 
sarily attached to finiteness a view by which God 
is made the origin of Evil, or by which Evil is 
abolished as Evil, and, from a higher standpoint, is 
resolved into defectiveness and mere semblance. 
According to Bohme's doctrine, rightly understood 
and cleared from its obscurities, it is not the reality 
of Evil, but simply its possibility which is associated 
with finiteness, and with the conception of a free 
creature. According to Bohme, Evil is not a 
semblance, but an actual abnormality which has 
entered the creation ; for it is the result of a real 
separation, an actual rending asunder from unity 
and wholeness ; it depends upon the perversion 
of the originally moral and good powers, a per- 
verted relation of supremacy and subordination ; 
depends upon the fact that the creature is in anta- 
gonism to God, and posits itself as a false centrum, 
which seeks to gather about itself, both from within 
and from without, a multiplicity of forces, which 
constitute its sphere of power. 

Nevertheless, in spite of all the disturbances it 
occasions, Evil continues, in the main, to be power- 
less; continues to be only an effort which never 
achieves its purpose ; continues to be merely sub- 
jective, and can never bring itself into objectivity 



212 THE ANGELS. 



The devil, notwithstanding all his disturbing 
power, is still only the slave of God ; is compelled 
in the Divine economy to be the instrument of God, 
and, in self-despite, to contribute to the Glory of 
God. 

LXI. 

WHEN Lucifer, by his self-kindling, loses his normal 
relation to God, he drags down with him in his Fall 
his subordinate Nature-world, which has its centre 
in this earth. The then-existing Natural World 
was, according to Bohme, thin and subtile, and there 
was a magical connection between Spirit and 
Nature. Spirit is the unity of Nature, the uniting 
dynamic centre of the Natural forces; and when a 
disturbance, an explosion so to speak, takes place at 
the centre, it is transmitted throughout the whole 
circle. There now occurs in Nature an appalling 
Turba ! The bond of the forces is broken ; and, 
instead of harmoniously co-operating, every force is 
now left to itself, and seeks to effectuate itself in 
a particularistic fashion. Thus arises a state of 
Chaos, which bears the fundamental stamp of the 
wrath of God, with the fierce consuming fire, 
materialization, darkness, and death. But it is not 
the Will of God that confusion should be the final 
condition He, therefore, introduces a reaction. 
God submerges the whole under water, and begins 
a new creation. This forms the subject-matter of 
the Mosaic history of Creation, which describes 
the new creation of the earth. The various stages 
in the advancing history of Creation, the Days of 



TOHU VABOHU. 213 

Creation, are to be interpreted as the stages of a 
progressive struggle between God and the Powers 
of Darkness, whereby the fettered Light-forces are 
restored to their former relation, until the whole 
work culminates in Man. 

It is now that what we call Time, successively- 
advancing Teleology, makes its appearance. Ac- 
cording to Bohme, Time begins at the Fall of 
Lucifer, and the Divine reaction that was then 
induced. The fundamental meaning of Time is the 
struggle of the Light against the Darkness, both 
in the spiritual and physical world, until the perfect 
triumph of the Light. In the same way, Daub, in 
his Judas Iscariot, has viewed the origination of 
Time and Space as a consequence of the Fall of 
Lucifer. On which point we observe, what Daub 
omits to notice, that other normal relations of Time 
and Space would have arisen if Lucifer, and 
subsequently Adam, had not fallen. Time would 
then have been the form for a rhythmic evolution, 
and Space the form for corporeal relations, con- 
ditioned, strictly and throughout, by idea and spirit. 

LXII. 

TOHU VABOHU. THE MOSAIC HISTORY OF 
CREATION. 

If we ask whether Bohme's interpretation of the 
Mosaic history of Creation has any foundation in 
Holy Scripture, it must be with the understanding 
that we do not expect to find in Scripture other 
than isolated and obscure suggestions upon this 



2i 4 TOHU VABOHU. 



subject. It is well known that Scripture is very 
reserved in its information with reference to the 
devil and the demonic kingdom. This especially 
applies to the Old Testament. It is in the New 
Testament, when Christ appears, and when men can 
endure a fuller explanation of the powers of dark- 
ness, that the demonic kingdom first comes more 
distinctly into the foreground. The interpretation 
of the Mosaic history of the Creation, now to be 
stated, can be spoken of only as a hypothesis, 
which can be imposed upon no one as an article 
of faith, but which relies upon data of Holy 
Scripture combined with the conclusions of Natural 
Science. The question is whether this hypothesis 
can explain what, otherwise, we should be unable 
to explain. 

If, with Lindberg and others, we ventured to 
read : " In the beginning God had created the 
heaven and the earth, but the earth had become 
without form and void (Tohu Vabohu), and darkness 
was upon the face of the deep," the matter would 
be as good as settled. For it would then have 
been the distinct teaching of Revelation, that a 
great change had taken place upon the earth, a 
catastrophe, which would naturally direct the mind 
to a catastrophe in the spiritual world, as a pre- 
supposition of that in the natural world. But we 
dare not trust so disputed a rendering, and, there- 
fore, we abide by the old : " The earth was without 
form and void " (Tohu Vabohu). The most accurate 
interpretation, then, seems certainly to be that which 
is the general one in theology, that the earth had 
been, from the very first, in an unformed condition, 



TOHU VABOHU. 215 

had been a chaotic mass, " in prima materia," which, 
in itself, was spiritless, and needed to receive life from 
the Spirit; and that the Creator, who willed to deve- 
lop His work from the imperfect to the perfect, and 
whose Spirit brooded over the face of the waters, 
fashioned and finished this formless matter through 
a series of creative periods, until it had attained 
the perfection for which it was destined. On this 
interpretation, the only question is that of a primal 
creation, which proceeds quite normally. 

A closer consideration of the remarkable second 
verse in the Bible : " And the earth was without 
form and void, and darkness was upon the face of 
the deep," may, however, excite doubt as to the 
correctness of this view. " Tohu Vabohu," and it 
is obvious that this mere verbal sound contains 
something sinister and terrible, means not simply 
the imperfect and the as yet undeveloped ; but, 
when this expression occurs in other parts of Holy 
Scripture, it includes the idea of the disturbance and 
destruction of a previously orderly condition, with 
the implied notion of the wrath and punitive 
righteousness of God (Isa. xxxiv. 11 ; Jer. iv. 23*). 
It is by no means unjustifiable to ask : Can 
Tohu Vabohu be an immediate product of creative 
activity ? Is it not, on the contrary, the expression 
for a "turba" which has entered in? If it is an 
immediate product of creative activity, why, then, 
is not Tohu Vabohu reckoned among the creative 
days themselves as the work of the first day ? 
Why do we not read : " And God said, Let the 

* Delitzsch, " Commentar iiber die Genesis," S. 104. 



216 TOHU VABOHU. 

earth be without form and void ; let there be Tohu 
Vabohu " ? But to this is added the sentence of 
Scripture : " There was darkness over the face of 
the deep, and the Spirit of God moved upon the 
waters." Again, then, we must ask : Is the dark- 
ness an immediate product of the creative activity ? 
To assert this is equally discordant with Scrip- 
ture. Darkness, in Scripture, signifies Evil. It 
makes its appearance with sin, and the physical 
darkness is the counterpart of the ethical. In so 
far as darkness, in Scripture, is traced back to God, 
it is as a manifestation of the wrath of God. The 
judgment day is depicted in the Bible as a dark 
day. Darkness and Death, Darkness and Hell are 
closely cognate conceptions. Nor do we read : 
" God said, Let there be darkness ! " but " God 
said, Let there be Light : and He divided the 
light from the darkness." That God divided the 
Light from the Darkness implies that both, the 
Light and the Darkness, are realities ; for only 
realities can be divided. It is a great and an 
unscriptural error to treat the Darkness as a mere 
deficiency, an absence of Light. According to 
Scripture, Light and Darkness are contradictory 
principles, conflicting forces ; Darkness is the power 
which is hostile to Light. We also read that God 
called the Light good, while He did not say that 
the Darkness was good. That God divided the 
Light from the Darkness shows that the Light 
must have been imprisoned in the Darkness, and 
overwhelmed by it ; and we recollect that the 
Apostle says, with a manifest allusion to the his- 
tory of Creation : " God, who commanded the light 



TOHU VABOHU. 217 

to shine out of the darkness, hath shined in our 
hearts " (2 Cor. iv. 6). The creative days advance 
from light to light, until at length Paradise appears 
as a home of light, destined for the Light-creature, 
who is made in the image of God, viz., Man. The 
more attentively we study the darkness, the Tohu 
Vabohu, the " deep," which betokens a bottomless 
abyss, and the " waters," which seem to denote the 
troubled agitation, or "turba," in which the earth 
was placed, the more are we strengthened in the 
conviction that all this cannot have belonged to 
God's original creative order ; but that it represents 
a state in which the earth, created of God, 
became the scene of a catastrophe, a revolt in the 
spiritual world, which had transplanted itself to 
nature as an appalling tempest in the morning of 
time. And whether Lindberg's rendering, " The 
earth had become without form and void," be philo- 
logically defensible or not, this is, nevertheless, the 
conception to which we are led back. 

If we ask what Natural Science teaches us with 
regard to the history of the earth's development, we 
naturally abide by the simple facts which those, who 
are conversant with nature, believe themselves to 
have discovered, reserving our own opinion as to 
the metaphysical or supersensuous aspect of the 
subject. Moreover, we can cite here only the barest 
generalities ; they are, however, sufficient for our 
purpose. It is unanimously stated that the fashion- 
ing of the earth did not proceed by the path of 
peacefully progressive evolution, but by that of the 
most violent and tempestuous revolutions, as a 
contest between creation and confusion, between 



218 TOHU VABOHU. 

the powers of life and death. It is stated that a 
power of Death, bordering on the incredible, exer- 
cised a widely-extended dominion in the ante- 
diluvian world. We hear of destroyed fauna and 
flora, perished worlds of plants and animals ; multi- 
tudinous swarms of living creatures, which made their 
appearance contemporaneously with the formation of 
the mountains, surged forward in all heights and 
depths, but suddenly met their death, some by 
floods and deluges, some by precipitated masses 
of the self-shaping mountains, by which they were 
buried, others by torrents of fire that burst forth 
with fury from volcanoes, all of which reminds us 
irresistibly of Bohme's three first Natural Properties, 
his Negative Ternary, which is here conspicuous in 
its utmost ferocity. And a similar experience repeats 
itself in subsequent geological periods, an emerging 
world of living creatures, animals, and plants, and, 
almost instantly, the whole transformed into a huge 
field of death, with desolation and silence, and the 
doom of petrifaction.* 

With regard to the animals of these early worlds, 
we are informed that many of them, especially the 
so-called Saurians, Ichthyosaurus, Megalosaurus, 
Plesiosaurus, etc., etc., were enormous monsters ; and 
that the joy of rapine and murder, coupled with 
the most exquisite torments, such as human 
imagination were scarcely able to invent, was an 
essential feature of this animal world. Unless 
one were well aware that naturalists aim at the 



Wagner, " Geschichte der Urwelt," i., 376; Keerl, " Der 
Mensch das Ebenbild Gottes," 531. 



TOHU VABOHU. 219 



utmost possible exactness of research, one would 
be tempted to regard many of their descriptions as 
visionary and romantic. It is said that the mouth 
of the Megalosaurus, a colossal lizard, whale-like in 
size, was furnished with teeth like razors and saws ; 
that its head was so huge, and its jaws could open 
so wide, that with a single bite of its teeth it could 
crush an animal of the size of an ox. Of the 
Plesiosaurus Cuvier says : " If anything could justify 
those hydras and other monsters whose shapes recur 
so frequently in the monuments of the middle ages, 
it would undoubtedly be the Plesiosaurus." These 
descriptions also remind us of the mythological 
Dragon. # Keerl, whose acquaintance with physical 
researches in this domain is acknowledged by natur- 
alists, writes concerning the Saurians : " At the 
sight of these incredible remains and these gigantic 
weapons, one can hardly refrain from imagining the 
appalling battles between these sea-serpents, who 
inhabited the same waters, pursued the same prey, 
and were forced by their growing multitude into 
ever closer proximity. What a moment when these 
scaly masses clashed against each other, and when 
their furious wrathful movements troubled the ocean 
depths!" Again: " This enmailed race of Saurians 
not only occupied the great waters ; even the air 
was allotted for the extension of their dominion. 
Flying serpents swept hissing through the air, and 
fed upon fish and insects, on which they pounced 
like swallows. Swarms of such winged creatures 
in the air, hosts of such monstrous Ichthyosaurians 

* Steffens, " Religionsphilosophie," i., 213. 



220 TOHU VABOHU. 



and Plesiosaurians in the ocean depths, and giant 
crocodiles on the banks of the lakes and rivers of 
that epoch composed the marvellous population of 
our earth." These monsters were swept away, and 
were compelled to make room for a Creative Work 
of which God said that it was good. 

We will not venture further into these dreary- 
regions, where, for naturalists themselves, there is a 
chaos of uncertainty and doubt amid an infinity of 
hypotheses. We are well aware that many of the 
hypotheses of natural science have already expe- 
rienced, and that others are destined to experience, 
the same fate as the destroyed and buried fauna 
and flora. Accordingly, we hold fast simply to that 
which is generally acknowledged. No one denies 
that in the antediluvian world death ruled as a 
destructive and disturbing power, or that the animal 
world was full of horrible monstrosities. And now we 
ask, Is this in character with a creative history that 
unrolled itself along normal lines ? Can this be in 
harmony with that God whose essence is Holiness, 
Wisdom, and Love ; who has Omnipotence as His 
instrument ? Must it not rather be founded in the 
condition of a nature which is not of that God who 
is a Lover of Life, while these revolutions would 
force us to the conclusion that He takes delight in 
death and in the ruin of the creation ? It is quite 
inadequate to seek to explain this by saying, that 
God, in His creative work, advances from the less 
perfect to the more perfect ; that the Creator Him- 
self was obliged to undertake certain crude and 
tentative experiments, before the perfect could appear ; 
that these races of living creatures, so quickly and 



TOHU VABOHU. 



suddenly destroyed, these perished fauna and flora 
are the postulate for that which was intended to be 
permanent ; and that, without this postulate, the latter 
could not have come into being. This assertion, 
that a life that was to be permanent could not arise 
without the postulate of Death, is precisely the 
assertion which requires proof. No necessity for 
this, no definite creative purpose therein has been 
even faintly indicated, or can be indicated. We 
ask : Why, then, was God unable to allow His 
creatures to advance in calmly progressive evolution ? 
Whence the necessity for all this revolution ? We 
can readily understand that God, whose Will it is 
that the Creation shall develop itself, and, in a 
certain sense, produce itself, suffers the Creation to 
advance from the imperfect to the perfect. But 
these monstrosities, this violent and destructive 
death, this reciprocal murder and poisoning are not 
simply imperfection, not merely contrast, but con- 
tradiction of life ; they constitute a hostile principle 
within Nature itself. There are naturalists who 
deny God and creation, and start from blindly- 
working nature. But since even these affirm that 
this nature is the highest (although unconscious) 
reason, it is incumbent upon them to explain how 
all this irrationality, the presence of which in nature 
they cannot deny, came about ; and why this reason 
was compelled first to produce these worlds destined 
to death and destruction, these " crude experiments," 
as they call them, and why it did not at once 
produce the normal. They do not attempt to 
explain this, but are accustomed to point, with a 
kind of blind credulity, to the actual facts as that 



222 TOHU VABOHU. 



which, as a matter of course, must be rationally 
necessary. We who believe in God and Creation, 
and acknowledge a Divine revelation in the Mosaic 
record of creation, cannot, and dare not, deduce all 
this confusion, all these graves, and all this murder 
from God. The disturbance must have originated in 
the Creation itself, in the free creation, in the 
created spirit-world. Only in Spirit can Evil 
originate ; and who will undertake to prove that 
spirit cannot also introduce disturbing energies into 
nature, seeing that nature is the extended body of 
spirit ? 

We cannot but hold that God has established His 
Creation upon a double possibility, the possibility 
of a sinless, peaceful, harmonious evolution ; and an 
evolution through sin and death. In this latter 
evolution, a multiplicity of potencies and forces 
which, in the normal development, would have 
remained in latency and concealment, in mere 
possibility, are liberated into reality and destructive 
energy ; and this explains why nature bears the 
stamp of mixture and struggle, because now the 
forces, as Bohme phrases it, have passed " out of 
temperature." W T e are very far from supposing that 
the demoniac powers can create ; this would be a 
Manichaean admission : but it is not Manichaean to 
admit that the forces, working in false isolation, can 
produce deformities, both by false admixtures and 
by false separations and divisions, and that these 
phenomena presented themselves in the ante- 
diluvian world upon a colossal and gigantic scale. 



TOHU VABOHU. 223 



LXIII. 

If we combine what has here been set forth, what 
we have stated above on the subject of Tohu Vabohu, 
Darkness and the Deep, the Mosaic history of 
Creation must be regarded as the restoration of a 
world which was sunk in ruins, in Tohu Vabohu, 
as a progressive contest between God and the powers 
of darkness that sought to check and hinder the 
work of God, where every Light-Creature that God 
produces must be regarded as a prey which is 
snatched away from the hostile powers. This, in- 
deed, says Stefifens, is enigmatical ; this struggle is 
the very history of nature and the earth. The 
thought occurs in almost all the writings of Stefifens 
that the creation of the earth must be apprehended 
as a progressive manifestation of the Divine Will 
during its contest with an arresting and obstructing 
principle, which arresting and obstructing principle 
must itself be a Will. 

The World which thus comes into being cannot 
but bear the stamp and signature of conflict, cannot 
but possess, as Bohme says, the stamp of Love and 
Wrath ; or, as Steffens expresses it, it must be a 
mixture of Glory and Terror. When, therefore, it is 
often repeated in the history of the Creation that 
" God saw what He had made, and it was good," 
the word " good " is not to be taken absolutely, but 
simply in a relative sense, viz., that it is good as a 
means of attaining the design of the new Creation. 
It is at the conclusion, when God looks upon the 
whole, that He first pronounces that it is very 



224 TOHU VABOHU. 

good. Consequently, the creative days advance 
from light to light by the continuous conquest of 
the darkness until at length the goal is reached in 
Eden, in Paradise, as the perfect abode of light for 
the creature of light, whom it was the will of God 
to fashion in His own image, and for whose sake the 
entire conflict is sustained, and the whole work 
undertaken, namely man. 

In Paradise there is nothing mixed, nothing 
impure ; all stands in " temperature." But one 
must not imagine that all the rest of the earth was 
also a Paradise. The old serpent still sits in the 
midst of the Creation ; how otherwise could he have 
entered into the Paradise which man was appointed 
not only to till, but also to guard ? Outside Eden, 
there was confusion, there were wild and venomous 
beasts and destructive forces. But it was the 
vocation of man to spread Paradise over the whole 
earth by subduing and overcoming the hostile and 
restrictive, and finally, as if by a kind of exorcism, 
to expel the demonic powers themselves. 

It must certainly be acknowledged that this series 
of revolutions, which is brought to light by geology, 
is not mentioned in the Mosaic account of the 
Creation. But on this point of the silence of the 
Bible there is room for the often-misapplied 
maxim, that it is not the purpose of the Bible to 
give us instruction in natural science ; it simply 
aims to represent, in brief and sharp outlines, God's 
advancing work of creation, in order to point to 
what, for Scripture, is the chief consideration, Para- 
dise and Man. On the subject of the Fall and 
Confusion of the Devil, and the struggle between the 



TOHU VABOHU. 225 

Light and the Darkness, it confines itself to obscure 
allusions, which can only be understood when the 
work of Redemption is studied as a whole. 

However many enigmas may remain before we 
can comprehend the history of Creation, the inter- 
pretation here given serves to strengthen a postulate 
which is essential to the Christian view of the world, 
viz., the indissoluble connection between Sin and 
Death. (" Death entered into the world by sin," 
that is, the Death which is not merely a change, a 
transfiguration into the higher, but Death with its 
bitter sting.) The chief enigma, which also confronts 
us elsewhere, is the wide scope, the immense range 
that God has conceded to the power of the creature ; 
for it sometimes appears to our feeble vision as if 
God had endowed His creatures with an overmeasure 
of freedom and independence. To this we can only 
reply, as the Christian Theodicy formally replies, 
it was the will of God that there should be a 
kingdom of freedom and love, and that this 
should be effected along the path of freedom. God 
was, accordingly, compelled, so to speak, to agree to 
the double possibility, to consent to all the misuses 
of freedom, assured that, through the whole process, 
He would bring to victory the kingdom of light 
and love, because, in relation to the misuse of 
freedom, Omnipotence reserved to itself its " Thus 
far, and no farther ! " 

LXIV. 

THIS interpretation of the Mosaic history of Creation 
as a history of renovation and new creation is met 

15 



226 TOHU VABOHU. 



with prior to Jacob Bohme, although it is far from 
being universal. We find it, in the Middle Ages, 
among the Anglo-Saxons. It is said in a document 
of King Edgar, in the tenth century, that, because 
God had banished the angels from the earth after 
their fall, which had reduced the earth to chaos, He 
has appointed kings, in order that righteousness may- 
reign. And in the seventh century, the celebrated 
Anglo-Saxon poet Caedmon begins his Scriptural 
poem by describing the earth as having become 
formless and void, in consequence of the fall of the 
angels. He must here have had some tradition to 
guide him; and this doctrine cannot have been so 
strange to the Church as many suppose. But in 
Jacob Bohme we find it stated with the greatest 
profundity and force, for the precise reason that in 
him it forms part of a rigorously coherent system. 
Through him and after him it has gained no small 
circulation, not only among theologians, but also 
among philosophers and naturalists. 

In imitation of Caedmon, Grundtvig has given 
expression to this view in a Biblical-historical 
poem.* 

It may be safely said that, as the relations between 
theology and natural science become more intimate, 
the question here stated will rise into prominence by 
an internal necessity. We recall a controversy 
maintained in our own Danish literature, between 

* I can only venture on a rough literal rendering of 
Grundtvig's lines : " World dead ; empty and desolate ; Hell- 
wilderness ; Gloom and darkness ; the Shadow-kingdom ; the 
World's corpse; Winter night; rocks bare; goblins cold; 
dead forces ; Work thereafter ; Angels fell ; confusion all ; 
Spirit brooded over the deep." Tr. 



TOHU VABOHU. 227 

Mynster and H. C. Oersted, on the subject of 
the treatise of the latter on "Mind in Nature." 
In opposition to H. C. Oersted, who had asserted 
that the laws of nature are eternal laws of reason, 
Mynster laid stress upon the irrational element in 
many natural phenomena, and affirmed the old 
Scriptural text, " Death entered into the world by 
sin." Oersted retorts that this proposition conflicts 
with our " definite knowledge " : 

" Our numerous researches into the internal struc- 
ture of the globe and the laws of its development 
have proved that, long before man made his appear- 
ance upon earth, there occurred a multiplicity of 
great and startling changes, during which entire 
species, and indeed generations, of animals perished ; 
that, during these times, many creatures devoured 
others ; moreover, distinct traces of disease have 
been found in the bones of animals of the ante- 
diluvian world. And, thus, there is clear proof that 
physical evil, destruction, disease, and death are 
older than the ' Sinful Fall ' " (in which expression, 
however, Oersted is only thinking of the Fall of 
Man). 

To this Mynster replies: "We shall, on no account, 
permit ourselves to attack the rights of natural 
science, nor will we question results that have 
been established with adequate validity ; but since 
an attempt is made to lead us back into these 
Pre-Adamite regions, we have already observed that 
we recognize an Apostasy anterior to that of man ; 
and, disinclined as we are to riot in hypotheses, 
for which there is a wide field in a darkness which 
is illumined by so few rays, still we are at a loss 



228 ADAM AND THE FALL OF ADAM. 

to know what can prevent us from maintaining that 
moral evil, which we cannot accept as original, that 
is, as ' concreated/ or as a necessary path of progress 
for spiritual beings has also introduced disorder 
into the physical world." 

We have quoted these utterances of two men, so 
eminent in our Danish literature, because they briefly 
and plainly indicate the very kernel of this great 
controversy. From Mynster's remarks (rendered 
with extreme generality) it would certainly not be 
legitimate to infer that he absolutely accepted 
Bohme's view. He was not fond of " rioting in 
hypotheses." But it is undeniable that his ex- 
pressions tend in this direction, and a further 
development of the thought which he formulates 
would necessarily end in this, although perhaps with 
some modifications. Mynster confined himself to 
the apologetical and practical part of the subject, 
viz., that natural science is unable to refute the 
Scriptural proposition that Death entered into the 
world by sin ; but that, on the contrary, this pro- 
position is confirmed, throughout its whole extent, 
by the facts which natural science has disinterred 
from the shadowy and uncertain regions of the ante- 
diluvian world. 

LXV. 

ADAM AND THE FALL OF ADAM. 

Man is a microcosm, a little world, an epitome of 
the great universe ; a " microdeus," a little God. 
Man is created in the image of God, and consists 
of three principles, soul, spirit, and body. The 



ADA M AND THE FALL OF ADAM. 229 

soul descends from the dark fire-principle, and 
points back to the Father as the Bearer or Conveyer 
of this principle. The spirit descends from the 
light-principle, and points back to the Son. The 
body descends from this world of the senses, 
which is the third principle. Bohme also accepts 
this third principle in another sense, viz., as the 
Union of Fire and Light in God, which is fashioned 
by the Holy Spirit, and perfected in the Corporeity 
of God, or His Uncreated Heaven. But he most 
frequently means by the third principle the created, 
visible, physical world, which is destined to become 
a copy of the Heavenly Glory of God. Occasionally, 
also, he interprets the whole man from the standpoint 
of the Soul. The soul is tripartite, although there 
are not three souls, but only one soul. The soul, in 
its strictest and most literal sense, is the Man 
himself, the individual, the contrast to Spirit as the 
universal. The Soul, viewed apart from the Spirit, 
is darkness and fire, natural " Self-ness." In the 
Soul is the glowing Triangle, the Worm, the rest- 
lessness of the Ego, with its passions and lusts, and 
the dark torture- chamber. But there is also in the 
Soul a yearning after the light, after the idea, or 
God. The Soul has an aptitude or native turn 
for the idea, and is destined to receive into itself 
the idea and God. So far the Soul is Spirit, 
angelic. When the Soul, which is endowed with 
free-will, sets its desire and imagination upon the 
Light, and wholly surrenders itself to it, it is truly 
spiritual. The austere and savage elements are 
appeased and tranquillized by the Light ; the Ego 
sacrifices itself in love, and the soul is blessed. 



230 ADAM A ND THE FALL OF ADA M. 

Truth or falseness of spirituality depends upon truth 
or falseness of imagination. For Bohme, spirit and 
idea, spirit and eye, spirit and vision, are inseparable. 
So also are spirit and word, spirit and voice. 
Dumb spirits are half-dead spirits. The body of 
man is destined to become the temple of the spirit, 
the spirit's instrument for its activity in the external 
world. In so far as the soul is the principle of 
corporeity, it is designated as the " rational soul in 
the bestial life," or as the " bestial soul." * 

Thus, there are three Principles in Man, and three 
Kingdoms. " When thou seest a man stand before 
thee, thou mayest say, * Here stand now the three 
worlds ! ' the dark Fire-World, the heavenly Light- 
World, and this World of the Senses. With the 
soul, man stands in the abyss of Hell ; with the 
spirit, he stretches upward into Heaven ; and in 
his body he has an extract of this whole world of 
the senses. To whichever of these three worlds 
thou dost surrender thyself, this comes to rule in 
thee ; and thou takest on (or dost receive) its pro- 
perties. Take heed to thyself, therefore ! for what 
we make of ourselves, that we are ; what we awaken 
in us, that lives and moves in us." f 

LXVI. 

If we now return from these psychological elements 
to the first man, Adam, whom God had fashioned 
out of the dust, into whom He had breathed the 
breath of life, and who had become a living soul ; 

* " Mysterium Magnum," xv., 15. 
t " Sex Puncta Theosoph.," viii., 21. 



ADAM AND THE FALL OF ADAM. 231 

in him the three principles stood " in temperature," 
in perfect concordance. Certainly, he had in himself 
the dark Fire-principle, that principle which had 
become enkindled in Lucifer, aftd for which Lucifer 
had sought to procure the supremacy ; he had also 
the principle of the sense- world ; but neither of these 
was independent. They were both, so to speak, 
quenched and illuminated by the Light-principle, 
and were in unqualified subordination to it. He 
had a clear apprehension alike of Divine, human, 
and natural things. He understood the speech of 
God and of the angels, just as he understood the 
language of nature, as is shown by the fact that he 
gave names to the creatures. He beheld the sense- 
world in quite another manner than we do ; for, 
for him, all the visible was illuminated by the 
invisible. In animals, trees, and plants he discerned 
the figures (signature) of their internal properties, 
and the outward did not reveal itself to him, as it 
does to us, in a false independence, but always in 
unity with the inward. # His body had not the 
gross and coarse materiality of ours. It may rather 
be compared with the corporeity of Christ after the 
Resurrection, when He passed through the closed 
doors. His dominion over nature was not 
mechanical, but magical. In this paradisiacal state, 
Adam knew nothing of time. 

LXVII. 

Since Adam's life was a disintegrable life, it was 
needful that he, like the angels, should be tempted 

" Signatura Rerum," vii., 2. 



232 ADAM AND THE FALL OF ADAM. 

and tried, in order that by the conquest of tempta- 
tion he might acquire indissolubleness, imperish- 
ableness, and blessedness. It was a severe conflict ; 
for all three principles contended for mastery over 
him. Each of them sought to have dominion and 
to exercise government over him. The Heart of 
God desired to have him in Paradise and to dwell 
in him, for it said, " This is My likeness and 
similitude ! " Likewise, the kingdom of cruelty and 
darkness (the principle of Lucifer) sought to have 
him, for it said, " He is mine, and has issued forth 
out of my fountain-source, out of the eternal temper 
of darkness (out of the three first Natural Properties) ; 
I will be in him, he shall live under my dominion, 
I will display through him great and mighty power!" 
Finally, the kingdom of the World said, " He is 
mine, for he bears my likeness, lives in me, and 
I in him ; he must obey me ! I have all my 
members in him, and he in me ; and I am stronger 
and greater than he. He shall be my steward, and 
shall display my strength and my marvels." * 

Then Adam permitted himself to be excited by 
the devil into false lust, and set his desire and 
imagination upon the great world. He became 
foolishly fond of the world of the senses, and its 
glory. The World and the Spirit of the World 
{spiritus mundi) grew mighty in him. And as he 
became foolishly fond of the earthly visions, he went 
back into a false reflection. For he desired to 
ascertain how it was when the " temperature " was 
dissolved ; how the properties, the wet and the dry, 

* " De Tribus Princ," xi., 33. 



THE CREATION OF WOMAN. 233 

the hard and the soft, the bitter and sweet, tasted 
in their diversity from each other. He fell ; and the 
temperature was dissolved. Then the Maiden, the 
heavenly Idea, departed from him. The Divine 
Image in him grew pale ; and he became earthly. 
The Fall of Adam, however, is very different 
from that of Lucifer. Lucifer placed himself in 
direct opposition and hostility to God, man only in 
indirect. Man did not wish to oppose himself to 
God, he only wished for earthly enjoyments and 
possessions ; but, in order to secure these, he cer- 
tainly was compelled to yield to the devil, and 
became disobedient to God. But, precisely because 
his opposition to God was indirect, he can be saved. 
In comparison with Lucifer, the sinful fall of man 
is simply an indecision; and we note here the prelude 
of that indecision which is a peculiar characteristic 
of man, whether we study the history of the world 
or of the individual. Man's relation to God and to 
the devil is that of indecision ; for man is inclined 
to serve two masters. Certainly, he inevitably ends 
by wholly surrendering himself either to the Light 
or to the Darkness. But no man goes to Hell in 
a straight and vertical line. He is attracted on 
two sides ; but the tendency towards hell or towards 
heaven becomes increasingly predominant. 

LXVIII 

The Creation of Woman. Androgyny. 

ANOTHER feature of Bohme's doctrine of the Sinful 
Fall is that this takes place in several different 



234 THE CREATION OF WOMAN. 

momenta, and is not limited to the fact that man 
ate of the Tree of Knowledge. 

According to Bohme, Adam had already sinned 
prior to the creation of Eve. Namely, Adam was 
originally androgynous, or the unity of man and 
woman, which does not imply that he was her- 
maphrodite (hermaphrodism being the caricature of 
androgyny, the merely outward junction of the 
already separated masculine and feminine). Adam 
was a higher unity of man and woman, a union of 
severity and gentleness, strength and beauty, which 
union was subsequently sundered into the contrast 
between man and woman. Certainly, he had a 
bride. But this bride, this wife of his youth, to 
whom he became unfaithful, was the pure, chaste 
maiden, the heavenly Sophia, Wisdom, that dwelt 
in him. For, as Theosophy so frequently re-iterates, 
Wisdom, the Idea, can, at the same time, diffuse 
itself throughout all created space, can pervade, and 
most subtilely permeate all things, and can also con- 
centrate itself, and dwell absolutely in one individual 
soul. In union with this heavenly spouse, Adam 
was to have multiplied himself in a supernatural 
way, and was to have produced out of himself 
beings like himself, in whom the maiden could dwell. 
But when Adam assembled the animals and gave 
them names, he saw that they were paired ; he was 
then seized with an earthly lust to propagate himself 
in a " bestial " fashion. Then the Sinful Fall had 
already commenced ; for he had now set his imagi- 
nation upon the natural world and the nature-spirit, 
" spiritus mundi," over which he was to have been 
highly exalted. The heavenly, pure, modest, and 



THE CREATION OF WOMAN. 235 

chaste Virgin departed from him, and returned into 

the aether; the Divine Image grew pale; and Adam 

became absolutely powerless.- Then the Lord 

caused a deep sleep to fall upon him. For God 

saw that, if a greater calamity and crime was to be 

averted, if Adam was not to sink still lower, there 

was no other expedient than that of giving him a 

woman as his helpmeet. Thus, Adam slept away 

from the heavenly world, and awoke in the earthly. 

During his sleep a great change had occurred. 

The woman had been taken out of his side, out of 

his rib. God had closed up the place with flesh, 

which flesh leads us to think of the belly, which is 

the most fleshy part of the human body (KotXta 

1 Cor. vi. 1 3), where the difference between male 

and female is specially localized. During the 

slumber, He had made hard bones, and had brought 

into separation the organs that belong to sexual 

distinction as well as those that belong to the 

vegetative processes. When Adam awoke from 

sleep, the heavenly maiden had vanished. But there 

stood beside him the woman, the wife, Eve. Eve 

was lovely and graceful, but she was a " cagastric " 

person, i.e., she was subject to the influence of the 

stars, the elements, and the spirit of nature ; she 

was an earthly woman. Adam also had become 

earthly, and she suited him. They mirrored 

themselves in one another. He set his imagination 

upon her ; she set hers upon him. They did not, 

however, notice as yet that they were naked ; this 

they did not discover until the sin was complete. 

Eve allowed herself to be deluded by the serpent, 

into which creature the devil had insinuated himself, 



236 THE CREATION OF WOMAN. 

in order to be able to tempt and seduce her. She 
ate of the fruit of the forbidden tree, and gave her 
husband thereof. When they had tasted this fruit 
unto death, and now both of them had death in their 
life, they could no longer remain in Paradise. 

From this time forth, they begat children, and 
lived in manifold earthly miseries and troubles in this 
great world, to which they had surrendered them- 
selves, and by the spirit of which they were now 
constrained. They consoled themselves, however, 
with the promise, as yet dimly understood, " The 
seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent's head ! " 
Nor was the relation to the maiden, the heavenly 
Sophia, in every sense abolished. For she, the 
heavenly, chaste, modest, and pure maiden, could 
not forget her favourite, her Adam. Sometimes she 
displayed herself to him by night as a constellation 
shining before him at an infinite distance, reminding 
him of the eternal, heavenly, paradisiacal regions, 
stirring in him wondrous yearnings and mighty 
thoughts. Sometimes she sought him at lonely 
hours, and met him in solitary paths ; just as even 
now she seeks those true lovers who are willing to 
prepare for her an abode in their hearts. 

LXIX. 

THIS is a brief abstract of the theosophic doctrine 
of Androgyny. It will naturally be regarded by 
many as romantic and visionary. It deserves, how- 
ever, very careful inquiry what it was that could 
have led profound thinkers into a conception which, 
at the first glance, is so visionary. The conception 



THE CREATION OF WOMAN. 2tf 

occurs as far back as the Jewish Kabbala. It is 
also found in Plato, albeit only in jest and in heathen 
vagueness ; for it is said, in the " Symposium," that 
our human nature was not constituted of yore as it is 
now, but quite otherwise : that there were then 
men-women, who united in themselves the male and 
female sex. They had a highly ambitious spirit, 
and in their arrogance attacked the very gods them- 
selves. Zeus, however, would not destroy them, but 
resolved to make them into weaker beings. So he 
cut them in two, just as one slices a fruit. As 
men were now severed into two pieces, each ran 
lovingly towards its other half; they missed one 
another, embraced one another, and aspired to grow 
together again. So far Plato. But turning from 
this jest to Christian authors who have viewed the 
matter seriously and from the standpoint of revela- 
tion, we may mention, in the middle ages, the great 
John Scotus Erigena. He says explicitly that on 
account of man's guilt, because he would not abide 
by the order decreed by God in which case he 
would have multiplied himself according to the 
angelic manner, magically his nature was divided, 
halved into man and woman ; and he sank into 
this " bestial mode of propagation, like the cattle." * 
Visionary as this may be thought at present, yet, 



* "Homo reatu suae praevaricationis obrutus, naturae suae 
divisionem in masculum et feminam est passus, et quoniam ille 
divinum modum multiplications suae observare noluit, in 
pecorinam corruptibilemque ex masculo et femina numerosita- 
tem justo judicio redactus est. Quae divisio in Christo aduna- 
tionis sumpsit exordium, qui in se ipso humanae restaurationis 
exemplum veraciter ostendit, et futurae resurrectionis simili- 
tudinem praestitit." " De Divisione Naturae," II., 6. 



238 THE CREATION OF WOMAN. 

with a little meditation, it will be perceived that the 
problem of sex, the question why the human being 
must be man and woman, is not so easy to solve as 
it appears to the majority of people, to whom it 
seems absolutely self-evident. Neither Erigena nor 
Bohme was able to free himself from the idea that 
the sexual relation, " with its bestial propagation," is 
degrading to man, who is created in the image of 
God ; that man, who, as the image of God, provides 
a contrast to the rest of the creation, must also 
have been intended to furnish a contrast to 
the whole of nature and to the " bestial propa- 
gation." And is it so absolutely gratuitous and 
unreasonable on the part of these thinkers, and of 
those who have attached themselves to them, to 
inquire whether they may not, at root, claim as on 
their side all races of men, since they are all 
ashamed of, and blush at, the " bestial " element in 
the sexual relation, and strive, in every possible way, 
to throw a veil over it ? Is the supposition to be 
at once unceremoniously branded as visionary, that 
there is something in the sexual relation that by 
rights ought not to have been in it ? How comes 
it, then, that not only in Christendom, but also in 
heathenism, peculiar sanctity has been ascribed to 
pure virginity ? that celibacy, notwithstanding the 
many errors that have attached themselves to it, 
presents itself again and again as something that 
harmonizes with a higher order of things, because 
it liberates man from a relation of thraldom that 
binds him to a lower world ? Why do we see in 
the child an emblem of purity and innocence, if not 
because the child is sexless, because this contrast 



THE CREATION OF WOMAN. 239 

between man and woman has not yet distinctively 
appeared ? Why does the Bride, in her glowing pas- 
sion for her lover, cry (Solomon's Song, c. 8) : " O 
that thou wert as my brother ! " unless because she 
has some suspicion that sexual contrast is a barrier 
to true love ? And does it not indeed happen that 
natural selfishness, egoism, and lust are excited by 
the sexual inclination, even if manifoldly disguised ? 
What, then, becomes of innocence ? Both Erigena 
and Baader refer to a saying of Christ, which cer- 
tainly includes a whole world of metaphysics, "They 
which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that 
world, and the resurrection from the dead, neither 
marry nor are given in marriage, neither can they 
die any more : for they are equal unto the angels " 
(Luke xx. 36). That they are equal to the angels 
in no sense implies that they cease to be human 
beings, but that they, as human beings, shall be 
equal unto the angels. They are to be sexless, 
raised above the contrast of sex ; like the angels, 
who are not men and women, do not propagate 
themselves by procreation and birth, like ourselves ; 
which recalls to us the saying of an old Thibetan 
myth, " Those who do not die have no need to 
beget children ! " But how, then, are we to picture 
to ourselves this exaltation above sexual contrast, 
if they are still to continue to be human ; are not to 
be transformed into angels, but reach precisely that 
perfection for which they were destined as human ? 
The answer is : Sexual contrast is not simply to 
vanish, but is to be transfigured into a higher unity. 
Each of the saved is to be androgynous, is to 
combine the essence of the male and female nature, 



*40 THE CREATION OF WOMAN. 

and is to attain therewith the true complete human 
being. Now, if it is the destiny of man to become 
androgynous, and, by his exaltation above sexual 
contrast, to become equal to the angels, he must 
also have commenced by being androgynous. For 
that which is the goal of a process of development 
must be somehow already present at the beginning 
of the development. Man, accordingly, must begin 
in sexual indifference. The differentiation, or separa- 
tion into sexual contrast in man and woman, is a 
secondary and subsequently introduced process, and 
one belonging to an intermediate stage. Men did 
not begin as the only natural creatures characterized 
by sexual distinction ; the animals made their 
appearance in pairs, as a plurality of lies and s/ies. 
Man was created, at the outset, as a unity, as one 
single human being, who included in himself all 
humanity ; and it was at a subsequent moment 
that the severance took place. This is the line of 
thought which lies at the foundation in Erigena 
and Bohme, and, according to them, and also 
according to the old Jewish tradition of the 
Kabbala, this severance was conditioned by a 
Sinful Fall. 

LXX. 

Notwithstanding this, we have one cardinal objec- 
tion to make against this doctrine. What we are 
doubtful of is this, whether the severance into man and 
woman, and consequently the entire racial life, is to 
be viewed as conditioned by a sinful Fall ? We are 
unable to harmonize this with Holy Scripture. We 



THE CREATION OF WOMAN. 241 

are well aware that the concession must be 
made, and it is a concession often overlooked by 
theologians that man does not begin as a pair, like 
the other animals ; and that Adam, prior to the crea- 
tion of Eve, was androgynous, or man-woman. For 
whence came the woman ? Here we must abide by 
Scripture, taking no notice of those who hold that 
not only Theosophy, but Scripture itself is in many 
places visionary, but being well assured that these 
things can be dealt with only upon a Scriptural basis. 
Whence came the woman ? She was not created 
out of the earth ; still less did God create her out. of 
nothing ; but " God took one of the ribs of Adam, 
and closed up the flesh instead thereof." In what- 
ever way this is interpreted, and no one will inter- 
pret it in a purely sensuous fashion, for it evidently 
contains a mystical meaning, the main point is this, 
that she was taken out of Adam. This was not the 
mode of procedure in the animal world ; for, from 
the very outset, the animals made their appearance 
in pairs. Here, on the contrary, the first human 
pair makes its appearance by a severance out of the 
one Man, the primitive man ; for the man also first 
becomes Man, in the more rigid sexual sense, when 
the woman appears. Consequently, before the crea- 
tion of the woman, Adam had the woman in himself; 
or, he had in himself that out of which the woman 
was fashioned. When Adam gave names to the 
animals, he must, as yet, have been androgynous ; 
must have possessed, both in a corporeal and spiri- 
tual sense, the contrast between the male and female ; 
must, in Bohme's phrase, have possessed the two 
" tinctures," the masculine and the feminine, the 

16 



242 THE CREATION OF WOMAN. 

stern and gentle, the fire-Spirit and the water- 
Spirit, strength and gracefulness in combination. 
He was the whole complete human being. It is 
needless and useless to tell us that we can form but 
a very abstract conception of this first man. That 
cannot be helped ; we must, nevertheless, think of 
him as the postulate of the race, and not allow him 
to be etherealized into an idea. If we picture to 
ourselves the creation of the animals, we can conceive 
that the whole earth lay in travail-pangs ; and that 
everywhere, north and south, east and west, under 
the poles and under the equator, animals swarmed 
forth. * But in Paradise, according to Genesis ii. 7, 
there appeared only one being, a royal being, 
destined to rule over the whole of nature. At this 
point, Scripture is not against Bohme, but is on his 
side. But we cannot discover his Scriptural author- 
ity for permitting the severance which now took 
place to be occasioned by a sinful Fall, and for 
viewing the creation of woman as, at best, a counter- 
active measure, a remedial provision against a 
disturbance which had taken place. Scripture does 
not give us the remotest hint that Adam was 
intended to propagate himself " magically," but 
points out the sexual relation, with which we are 
acquainted, as the original one. Indeed, God blesses 
it, and says, "Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish 
the earth! " Nor do we find the faintest suggestion 
that Adam was tempted and had fallen into sin when 
he gave names to the creatures. It is true that Bohme 
and Baader have supposed that they find such a 

* Keerl. 



THE CREATION OF WOMAN. 243 

suggestion in the word of the Lord, " It is not good 
that the man should be alone ! " " God had pre- 
viously said that all was very good, as He now 
says that there is that which is not good ; something 
must have meanwhile entered in, which ought not to 
have entered in, and which must now be counter- 
acted." * 

We cannot, however, admit that this argument is 
satisfactory. In the words quoted we can find only 
this meaning, It is not good that the work of 
creation should pause at this stage. If man is to 
attain his perfection, the severance must take place. 
Man requires a helpmeet, stands in need of society 
and sympathy. There must be man and woman. 

Nor does Scripture give us the slightest indication 
that Adam's sleep_.was the result of a sinful Fall. 
We see nothing to prevent us, in company with 
many church teachers, from considering this sleep 
as a blessed sleep, an almost ecstatic absorption into 
the bosom of the eternal love. It was God who 
caused the sleep to fall upon Adam. And we 
understand that, if God was to effect a new creation 
with regard to him, it was necessary that he should 
be placed in an unconscious state, in order that this 
creation might take place. The words of Psalm 
cxxi. were fulfilled in Adam : " God giveth His 
beloved sleep ! " We cannot but imagine that 
Adam had an unconscious yearning and longing after 
something, he himself knew not what, but which 
was in reality a yearning after an Alter Ego, a Thou. 
In his slumber, God gave him this good gift ; and 

* Baader, " Ueber das Zweite Capitel der Genesis." 



244 THE CREATION OF WOMAN. 

when he awoke, the corporeal Alter Ego stood before 
him, destined to become the mother of the living ; 
and he himself had become another, felt himself to be 
another, and exclaimed in rapture : " This is now 
bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh ! " Eve 
was no "cagastric" person, neither was she "iliastric," 
or semi-paradisiacal ; she was wholly paradisiacal, 
even as Adam was. It was not until they had 
eaten of the tree, that they both became " cagastric," 
or earthly. 

And, in reference to the sexual relation itself, it 
is quite clear that there is something here which 
ought not to have been. But the question is 
whether, but for the entrance of sin, the " bestial " 
element would not have been absolutely quenched 
by the higher and spiritual elements of the relation. 
This is Augustine's view,* which is shared by many 
of the great scholastics, especially by Thomas 
Aquinas. It is obvious that, at the Fall, the sexual 
relation must have assumed another character than 
that which it previously possessed, must have be- 
come materialized, inasmuch as man sank, by the 
Fall, into a false dependence upon natural instincts, 
and became the slave of nature. That we are a 
fallen race is peculiarly and precisely demonstrated 
by the sexual relation, with its accompanying dis- 
grace and shame. 

Augustinus, "De Genesi," ad litteram lib. ix., c. 3, 6. 
" Non video quod prohibere potuerit, ut essent eis etiam in 
paradiso honorabiles nuptiae et torus immaculatus : hoc Deo 
praestante fideliter justeque viventibus, eique obedienter 
sancteque servientibus, ut sine ullo inquieto ardore libidinis, 
sine ullo labore et dolore pariendi, fetus ex eorum semine 
gignerentur" Migne, " Patrologia Latina," xxxiv. 



2 HE CREATION OF WOMAN 245 



LXXI. 

But why, then, must the separation take place ? why 
must the woman be created, unless a Sinful Fall had 
made it necessary ? We have no other answer than 
this, Man was destined to have become equal to 
the angels, as was pointed out above ; and man, at 
the outset, was androgynous. But he was to attain 
his eternal goal through an ethical development. 
Now, an ethical development is the more complete 
the richer it is in contrasts, to which truth belongs 
also the contrast between nature and spirit. But 
the development of man from nature to spirit is 
impossible without woman, and the birth of children. 
We can imagine no more complete ethical develop- 
ment than that from the helpless and nature-fettered 
condition of childhood to the highest spirituality 
under the educating guidance of grace, so that the 
most extreme contrasts in existence may finally 
be harmonized in man. A moral world, furnished 
with the richest contrasts, can make its appearance 
only with woman, or with the contrast between man 
and woman, to which we add the third, the child. 
Without the woman, the family cannot arise ; and 
the family is the basis of the nation, of society, of 
the state with the whole infinity of contrasts which 
this embraces ; the family is also the basis of the 
church and congregation. The contrast between 
man and woman is reflected in all the moral circles 
of life. We may also say, Man is to reach his 
ethical goal through history, through a social evolu- 
tion of successive generations ; and, so long as 



246 THE CREATION OF WOMAN. 

there is time and history, children must be born, 
there must be sexual life, family life, man and 
woman. But sexual life is at home only in this 
earthly intermediate sphere, which lies between the 
two extreme points : Adam in his androgynous 
relation and the resurrection, when those who are 
counted worthy become equal to the angels, and 
are again restored to the androgynous state, enriched 
with the harvests of a previous history which is far 
richer and more copious than that of the angels. 
For it is only in a very circumscribed sense that the 
angels possess a history. They have to undergo a 
test of obedience, and the good angels participate in 
the history of man as ministering spirits. But the 
paramount conception we form of them is as exist- 
ing in the blessed circles of a derived Eternity. To 
those blessed circles of eternity man also aspires, 
but he has previously to undergo development 
through time, in which there must be sexual life, 
and in which human beings must marry and be 
given in marriage. For this reason, woman must be 
created. Consequently, if we view man from the 
standpoint of sexual life, we have to distinguish the 
following momenta : 

1. Adam as androgynous. 

2. Sexual life in paradise after the creation of 
Eve. 

3. Sexual life after the sinful Fall. 

4. Death. 

5. The androgynous condition in the resurrec- 
tion, where sexual life has ceased, but where the 
type of the masculine and feminine is still preserved. 



THE CREATION OF WOMAN. 247 



LXXII. 

Although we cannot accept the doctrine of Bohine 
and Baader as to the reason for the creation of 
woman, we are in absolute harmony with their 
demand that the sexual relation shall be viewed in 
the light of androgyny, and ethically treated in 
accordance therewith. This does not involve the 
recommendation of celibacy and false asceticism. 
But it does mean that the relation between man 
and woman is not exhausted by the act of propa- 
gation, whereby one does not rise above the man- 
animal and the woman-animal. It means that man 
and woman, in their relation of love, are to aid one 
another in becoming whole and complete human 
beings, seeing that each of them, apart, is only 
semi-human. The man is to assist the woman by 
liberating her from one-sided womanhood, and she 
is to assist him by liberating him from one-sided 
manhood, both of which are swayed by egoism and 
egoistic lusts. 

But this will be possible only when both of 
them are combined in the maiden, in the heavenly 
Idea, which displays to them the ideal of man, and 
which will wed itself to each of them ; or, as it may 
be expressed in a manner universally intelligible to 
Christians, they must both be united in Christ, who 
has restored to us the heavenly Idea which had 
departed at the Sinful Fall, and who has once more 
introduced into our souls the true human ideal. In 
marriage, the united ones are not simply to pro- 
pagate themselves and to continue to beget children, 
are not to continue to bring unsolved problems into 



248 ANDROGYNY. 



the world, every child is an unsolved problem while 
they absolutely fail to solve their own problem, but 
remain unchangeably what they are. But marriage 
is to produce in them this transformation, that they 
assist one another to beget the child of God in 
themselves, to become themselves regenerated as 
children of God, and thereby to be ripened for 
eternity and for their higher form of existence. 
Every human being is destined to become andro- 
gynous, and can be developed into this even in 
the unwedded state, if he or she is married to Christ, 
in whom the ideal existence of the man and woman 
is combined. The Apostle says, " Whom (Christ) 
we preach, warning every man and teaching every 
man in all wisdom ; that we may present every 
man perfect in Christ Jesus" (Col. i. 28). Christ 
will make us perfect and complete men. But a 
combination of the essence of the man and of the 
woman is necessary for human perfection. 

LXXIII. 

The doctrine of androgyny has not simply an 
ethical meaning ; it has also its significance for 
poetry and art. The highest human beauty must 
be androgynous. Certainly, we cannot picture to 
ourselves the human being unless in masculine or 
feminine form, and must conceive of Adam himself, 
in his androgynous condition, as man. But if the 
masculine or feminine form is to be beautiful in the 
highest sense of the term, it must rise above the 
sexual contrast, and express a combination of the 
nature of the man and woman. Franz Baader has 



ANDROGYNY. 249 



affirmed that Raphael's Sistine Madonna is androgy- 
nous, and that in this creation the artist has achieved 
his supreme victory. We leave the question open 
whether Baader is right in his assertion that Raphael 
here won his supreme triumph. But Baader's 
meaning must be, that in this woman we behold 
the contrast between the masculine and feminine 
harmonized ; that we are impressed with unqualified 
self-surrender and world-conquering strength, gentle- 
ness, and severity, blessed joy and holy solemnity ; 
that in this figure every trace of female animalism 
is extinguished, and that every sensual lust and 
craving is silenced in the spectator, while, at the 
same time, the figure reveals to us a transcendent 
loveliness before which we stand enraptured as if 
in a vision. 

And on this subject one must undoubtedly assent 
to Baader's remark that the artists and poets whose 
art is centred in sexual love have been quite too 
little alive to the fact that sexual love ought to be 
lifted above itself into the androgynous, ought to be 
transfigured into the true and complete human ; and 
that they devote their artistic and poetical resources 
far too exclusively to the delineation of the man- 
animal and woman-animal with their appetites, 
sufferings, and passions a course which fully 
satisfies the taste of the great public, itself consist- 
ing, in a preponderant measure, of simply man- 
animals and woman-animals. 

And now let this be sufficient upon so difficult 
a subject. We end by quoting a sentence of 
Steffens, uttered in another, but a kindred sense : 
" The time has not yet come, language has not yet 



250 THE PRESENT WORLD. 

acquired the requisite purity, clearness, and depth 
to permit us to speak freely, and without, in some 
respect or other, provoking misunderstanding, upon 
a subject in which the deepest enigma of existence 
is concentrated." 

LXXIV. 

The Present World. 

And now for the first time, after all the preceding 
discussions on themes that lie beyond the region of 
experience, we have reached this present world, of 
which we have experimental knowledge, this world 
with men and women, with sin and death and all 
kinds of miseries, but the world also into which 
Christ has come to redeem us. Bohme, in harmony 
with the Apostle (Romans viii.), teaches that the 
creature is subjected to the bondage of corruption, 
and sighs after redemption ; and that this is a 
consequence of the Fall both of Lucifer and of 
Adam. By the dissolution of "temperature," Nature 
has become materialized. The physical world has 
assumed the character of the gross, coarse, and 
material, the hard and impenetrable, rigid and stiff; 
and, on the other hand, it has assumed the character 
of the fluid and volatile, of that which evaporates 
and vanishes like smoke ; and this contrast has not 
been brought into actual harmony. The four ele- 
ments, Fire, Air, Water, and Earth, which, previous 
to the Fall, were only one element (" quinta 
essentia "), and which then appeared only in har- 
monious contrasts, now stand against one another 
in painfully eager desire. They anxiously desire 



THE PRESENT WORLD. 251 

to return to unity, but are compelled to struggle 
and fight with each other in an empty resultless 
circle ; while, at the same time, God sustains them 
by a powerful bond to which they are subjected, 
natural law. Everything in this earthly nature is 
exposed, by the influence of the stars, to great 
changefulness. Now there are storms of rain and 
snow, now there is dead calm ; at one time it 
is hot, at another cold ; now there is sunshine, 
and now there is cloud ; but nothing is per- 
manent. 

" The whole of Nature is pervaded by anguish, a 
birth-pang, a death-pang, an agony of silent expecta- 
tion, and everywhere thou dost find thyself in a 
world of unreconciled contrasts. Throughout all 
nature runs a discord between life and death, fire 
and light. We behold at once the manifestation of 
the wrath of God and of the love of God. Thou 
dost behold huge, monstrous, and desolate rocks and 
stones, which testify to the power of death and dark- 
ness and the might of the kingdom of death ; but 
thou seest also noble and precious stones, carbuncles, 
rubies, and emeralds, which cannot but have de- 
scended from the kingdom of Light. Thou beholdest 
in the vegetable world curse, decay, and corruption, 
but dost also behold the power of blessing, which 
brings forth the most beautiful verdure and the most 
delicious fruits. In the animal world thou seest 
venomous and savage animals ; seest also useless 
fantastic beasts, which the nature-spirit, ' spiritus 
mundi,' has fashioned out of the kingdom of phan- 
tasy, monkeys and strange birds which do nought 
else but torment and vex other creatures ; but 



252 THE PRESENT WORLD. 

thou seest also friendly, gentle, tame, and useful 
animals." * 

When simple men regard this nature subjected to 
vanity, they say : " All this has God created out of 
nothing, the one thing with the other ! " But they 
know not what occurred before all this came into 
being. 

LXXV. 

What has been said of nature repeats itself in the 
world of man. Man has sunk, through sin, into a 
false dependence upon nature, and the human body 
has become materialized. It is not a simply and 
willingly obedient instrument, but is, in many 
respects, a burden, which occasions us many suffer- 
ings and troubles. With this immersion in nature 
and dependence upon natural instincts is closely 
connected the fact that the animal world, in a certain 
sense, projects itself, so to speak, into the human 
world. For, by Adam's most lamentable and 
terrible Fall, man has become the property of the 
nature-spirit, " spiritus mundi," and has acquired a 
tendency towards the bestial, which presents a glaring 
contrast to the dignity for which he was designed. 
Every man has, as it were, an animal in his life, a 
lion, wolf, dog, fox, serpent, toad, ape, or vain 
peacock, or such-like. There are also men who 
have within them some good and upright animal or 
other. The animal form does not manifest itself in 
their body, but is figured in their disposition. Bohme 

* "Drei Princ." 



THE PRESENT WORLD. 253 

can here appeal to Holy Scripture, inasmuch as 
Christ calls Herod a fox, and the Pharisees vipers ; 
the prophet Daniel and John (in the Apocalypse) 
call the tyrants and the kingdoms of this world by 
the names of wild animals, bears and leopards. 
They thus suggest to us that, in this world, the 
human is strongly tainted with the bestial, and, 
indeed, that it sometimes totally assumes the 
character of bestiality, as will be particularly seen in 
the times of the Antichrist, when the beast will arise 
from the sea and the abyss. But we are all to 
take heed lest the beast-image in us (the greedy 
hound, the crafty fox, the lustful goat, the deceitful 
cat, the venomous toad, the foolish monkey, etc.) 
gain the mastery, and wholly quench the human in 
us ; and are to make it our aim that the beast-image 
may be brought to vanish entirely in penitence and 
conversion, and may thus give place to the Divine 
image, the maiden. 

For we are to give good attention to this fact, 
that all three principles are active in this world, and 
that what every man is and how it will fare with 
him in the life to come depends upon which of the 
three principles it is that has dominion over him. 
The majority of men are ruled by the third prin- 
ciple, by this phenomenal world, which wholly 
engrosses their ambition, and in which they live 
for their daily provision, for enjoyments and luxuries, 
honour and distinction. Some devote themselves to 
worldly arts, and sciences, and politics, and are enabled 
hereby to win great power, reputation, and celebrity. 
Still, this great world is, in comparison with the 
heavenly light-world which is behind it and shines 



254 THE PRESENT WORLD. 

into it, only like vapour and mist. Other men have 
entirely surrendered themselves to the dark Fire- 
principle ; they live in arrogance, envy, and perni- 
cious scheming, and some of them aspire to become 
tyrants, who exercise a fire-government. Others 
again, but by far the fewest, stand in the Light- 
principle. For although man, by the Sinful Fall, 
lost communion with the Light, there is still in the 
human heart a yearning for the Light, a hunger 
and thirst after the Living God. The law is written 
upon man's heart, and there are pagans who have 
striven to live in purity ("Aurora," 20, 2 2, 23). 
Bohme has conceptions of heathenism which are 
far higher than those current in his time. Mytho- 
logy is not to be unceremoniously regarded as the 
work of the devil, as many regard it who incessantly 
say " Devil ! devil ! " and know neither what God 
nor devil is (" Mysterium Magnum "). It is true 
that the heathen worshipped the powers of nature, 
and adored natural properties, fragments of the Glory 
of God, since they forgot God Himself ; but when 
they were animated by strong faith, God sometimes 
spoke to them through nature. 

LXXVI. 

As Time begins with the dissolution of " Tempera- 
ture," so must it end with its restoration. Con- 
sequently, the essential import of history is that it 
is a history of redemption. That it is the will of 
God to redeem and regenerate the world was 
manifested immediately after the Fall in the promise, 
" The seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent's 



THE PRESENT WORLD. 255 

head ! " it was manifested in the covenants with 
Abraham and Moses ; and by the fact that " God 
spoke at sundry times and in divers manners by the 
prophets." Moreover, a succession of children of 
God and of the Light passes through time from the 
beginning, and has its contrast in that succession of 
children of the world which began with Cain. But 
when the fulness of the times had come, God sent 
His Son, born of a woman. In Christ, the Word 
which was in the world from the beginning, and 
which spoke to Adam and Eve concerning that 
Bruiser of the Serpent who was to come, has become 
man. The Lord has entered into the form of a 
servant, whereat all the angels marvel ; and this is 
the greatest miracle that has happened from all 
eternity ; for it is against Nature : it must then 
indeed be Love.* 

LXXVII. 

BOHME'S view of the world is thus conditioned 
by the Sinful Fall. His pessimism and optimism 
depend upon this contrast. We must particularly 
emphasize his conception of man's lofty destiny, and 
of man's significance, not only for the earth, but for 
the universe, for the whole creation. For Bohme, 
man is the central creature in God's world, the all- 
concluding creature, at whose advent the whole 
creative work first reached its goal ; the being who 
ideally and in design is the first, although in the 
order of execution he comes last. It can, therefore, 

* "Three Principles in Man," xviii., 43. 



256 THE PRESENT WORLD. 

be viewed as merely accidental when it appears from 
some isolated passages as if it were Bdhme's opinion 
that man was created only to fill the place that had 
become void by the Fall of Lucifer. Bohme's 
fundamental view is obviously that which is also 
found in other theosophists, especially in St. Martin 
and Baader, that man was destined to be the 
mediator between heaven and earth, between spirit 
and nature, the creature in whom, after the comple- 
tion of the creative work, God might find His 
Sabbath rest, and into whom God might enter with 
His whole nXrjpwfjLa, for which reason the concep- 
tion of man points forward to the conception of the 
Incarnation. 

It is true that this exaltation of man was not yet 
firmly established in the first Adam ; he was to be 
developed into it ; it was possible for him to lose 
it, and he lost it ! It is in consequence of this 
that the whole present world, not only the human 
world, but nature, which by the Fall of Man became 
subject to corruption, reveals so painful a contrast 
to its true destiny. And man, when his eyes are 
opened to his actual state, cannot but view himself 
as a dethroned king, who by his fall has drawn his 
whole kingdom with him into misery, a king in 
exile. It is in Christ, the new Adam, that man's 
dignity is first re-established, and this completely. 
For Bohme Jesus Christ has not simply an ethical, 
but a cosmical significance. Christ is not only the 
Head of the human race, but of the whole creation, 
by whom and for whom all things are created, that 
in Him they may all be gathered together in one ; 
to whom also the angelic world is made subject 



THE PRESENT WORLD. 257 

(Col. i. ; Eph. i. ; Heb. i.). By Him not only the 
human world but nature also is to be redeemed ; 
for, through Him, at His second coming, shall 
arise new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth 
righteousness. 

Certainly, Bohme represents Christ essentially only 
as the Atoner and Redeemer, whose coming is occa- 
sioned by sin. Bohme lives and breathes in the 
Reformation-period consciousness of sin and grace. 
But his conception of Christ's cosmical significance, 
which is his all-pervading postulate, leads necessarily 
to the theory that, even if sin had not occurred, 
Christ would yet have come, not indeed as the 
Saviour who was crucified, but as the Consummator 
of man and of the whole creation. 

This ancient theologoumenon, occurring as early 
as Irenaeus, and more copiously developed by many 
of the mediaeval theologians, is repeated by no small 
number of modern thinkers, although many, with 
great inconsistency, as it seems to us, decline to 
accept it.* 

But how does this view of the cosmical signi- 
ficance of man and of Christ, which is also, in the 
main, the view of Scripture, and the recognition of 
which no theologian will be able to evade without 
doing violence to Scripture (Eph. i., Col. i.), how 
does this view stand against the so-called modern 
view of the world ? How is it consistent with the 
Copernican system, which is said to be so dangerous 
to the Bible and to the Biblical view ? With regard 

Cf. Baader's Letter to Molitor, " Uber das Versehensein 
des Menschen im Namen Jesu vor der Welt Schopfung." 
Werke, iv. 

17 



258 THE PRESENT WORLD. 

to Bohme, we remark that he is acquainted with, 
and accepts the Copernican system. " The Sun," he 
says, "has its own royal place to itself, and does 
not go away from that place where it came to be at 
the first, although some suppose that it runs round 
about the globe in a day and a night. But this 
opinion is false" ("Aurora," xxv., 65). He is not, 
however, in the slightest degree affected by this, 
as if it imperilled the Biblical view of man's central 
position in the universe. Nor is there really any 
contradiction between the Bible and the Copernican 
system. But there is a contradiction between the 
Bible and a certain application which has been 
made of this system, a certain argument which some 
have fancied that they could construct upon it, but 
of which the system itself is absolutely innocent. 

LXXVIII. 

Because the Copernican System has given us a 
view of the world, and opened to us the vista of 
an outward infinity, there are those who have sup- 
posed that they could prove, from the insignificance 
of the earth, the untenableness of the Biblical view. 
This earth, and with it also man and Christ, is only 
a vanishing point in this immensity ; and it is highly 
immodest of man to ascribe such importance to 
himself and to the earth. The revelation which 
confirms man in such immodesty cannot, therefore, 
be true. 

The retort, however, is obvious, that this rational- 
istic-fantastic argument from the insignificance of the 
earth depends upon a confusion between the quanti- 



THE PRESENT WORLD. 259 

tative and the qualitative, between external and 
internal greatness, outward and inward infinity. 
The fact is overlooked that, although physical 
centrality does not belong to man and to the earth, 
it is very possible that metaphysical and invisible 
centrality may. In so far as we are capable of 
tracing the wisdom of God in Nature and Revela- 
tion, we return to the discovery that God pre- 
eminently reveals His glory, not in the outward 
infinity, but in the inward ; that His path proceeds 
from outwardness to inwardness, from the externally 
great to the small and outwardly insignificant, which, 
in internal respects, is the fullest of meaning, and 
has the whole nXijpofJLa intensively concentrated in it. 
That which is despised by the world, by those who 
judge everything according to the outward appear- 
ance, that hath God chosen. These words may 
also be applied to the earth, this Bethlehem of the 
universe. But, because man has sunk into false 
dependence upon nature, he is readily disposed to 
estimate the spiritual according to an external and 
material standard. He allows himself to be over- 
awed by material mass, by that which is great to 
the man of the senses. He forgets that when the 
question arises as to that which is the greatest in 
value, the world of thought and speech is infinitely 
higher than the silent and unconscious natural 
worlds ; and hence he falls into self-depreciation 
by reason of his false modesty and servility to 
nature. With great truth does St. Martin say to 
man : " Dost thou dare to measure thy being and 
thy destiny with thy bodily eye ? Beware, lest this 
admiration- rousing, seductive, terrible spectacle of 



260 THE PRESENT WORLD. 

immeasurable space and the countless bodies that 
float in it crush thy thought, which shows thee thy 
body as wholly vanishing ! Step into thy rights, 
and separate thyself from these over-awing but 
dumb existences by the superiority of thy thought 
and speech ! " 

This same view of the centrality of man and of 
the earth is also to be found, although discussed 
along different lines of proof, in thinkers like Schel- 
ling, Hegel, Steffens, Schubert, etc.* 

After the famous treatise of Fontenelle, " Entretien 
de la Plurality des Mondes " (Paris, 1686), the idea 
that the heavenly spheres must necessarily be in- 
habited by rational beings gained wide acceptance ; 
and arguments were drawn from it against the 
dignity and centrality of man. This whole assump- 
tion, however, depends upon a purely subjective 
speculation as to what must necessarily have been 
the purpose of God in creating this infinity of 
spheres, viz., to people them, as, in the contrary 



* "Astronomy," says Steffens, "is rapidly approaching 
the time when our planetary system will be recognized as the 
most highly organized point in the universe ; and the time 
is not distant when our earth will be recognized, not, 
indeed, as the phenomenal but as the internal spiritually- 
viewed central point in the planetary system, just as man is 
141 the Total-Organism." Hegel expresses the same thought, 
certainly in his own peculiar method. On this whole question, 
see Lutterhed's " Baaders Lehre vom Weltgebaude," 1866. 
A closely associated question is whether the earth's physical 
position in the universe was at the beginning the same as 
now, or whether a displacement, an expulsion from the central 
point has occurred, to which Schelling alludes, as well as 
Schaden in his "Orion." For the rest, I refer the reader to 
my treatise in Heiberg's Urania, "The Church-Year and the 
World- Year." 



REDEMPTION B Y CHRIST, ETC. 261 

case, He would have made something wholly super- 
fluous. We will not enter into barren prolixities, 
but will limit ourselves to the observation that, when 
it has been experimentally proved that these star- 
dwellers are not creatures of imagination, such as 
one reads of in romances, but that they actually 
exist, we shall be prepared to enter upon the dis- 
cussion of their ability to affect the centrality of 
man. Of this there is not the remotest prospect. 
Revelation speaks of only two classes of created 
spirits : angels and men. We shall continue to 
abide by this postulate, One earth, one human 
race, one Christ to whom also the angels are subject ; 
who is the image of the visible God, and the first- 
born of every creature ; for by Him were all things 
created that are in heaven and that are in earth, 
visible and invisible, whether they be thrones or 
dominions or principalities or powers ; all things 
were created by Him and for Him (Col. i. 15, 16). 

LXXIX. 

RECONCILIATION AND REDEMPTION BY CHRIST 

THE NEW ADAM THE INCARNATION THE 

NEW ADAM. 

BOHME expresses a firm belief (in harmony with the 
creed of the Church) in the historical Christ, who 
was revealed in the fulness of the times. 

" Beloved mind ! we write no conceits and tales ; 
it is earnest, and it is as much as our bodies and 
souls are worth : we must give a strict account of it, 
as being the talent that is committed to us. If any 
will be scandalized at it, let them take heed what 



262 REDEMPTION B Y CHRIST, ETC. 

they do : truly it is high time to awake from sleep, 
for the Bridegroom comes. 

I. We Christians believe and acknowledge that 
the Eternal Word of God the Father became a true 
self-subsisting Man (with Body and Soul) in the 
body (womb or life) of the Virgin Mary, without 
man's interposing. For we believe that He was 
conceived by the Holy Ghost, and born of the Body 
of the Virgin, without any blemishing of her virgin 
chastity. 

II. Also we believe that, in His human Body, He 
died and was buried. 

III. Also we believe that He descended into Hell, 
and has broken the bands of the devil, wherewith 
he held men captive, in pieces, and redeemed the 
soul of man. 

IV. Also we believe that He willingly died for 
our iniquities, and reconciled His Father, and has 
brought us into favour with Him. 

V. Also we believe that He rose again from the 
dead on the third day, and ascended into Heaven, 
and there sits at the Right Hand of God. 

VI. Also we believe that He shall come again at 
the Last Day to judge the living and the dead, and 
take His Bride with Him, and condemn the ungodly. 

VII. Also we believe that He has a Christian 
Church here upon earth, which is begotten in His 
blood and death, and so made one Body with many 
members, which He cherishes, and governs with His 
Spirit and Word, and unites it continually by the 
Baptism of His own appointing and by the Sacra- 
ment of His Body and Blood, to be one only Body 
in Himself. 



REDEMPTION BY CHRIST, ETC. 263 

VIII. Also we believe that He protects and 
defends the same, and keeps it in one mind." 

We find in Bohme no thorough-going Christology. 
He lays especial stress upon the points which possess 
for him a metaphysical, but assuredly, at the same 
time, a most profound religious interest. He sees in 
Christ the great mystery of godliness, God manifest 
in the flesh. By the Incarnation, there has arisen 
one Person of Deity and Humanity, of the essence 
of Mary and the essence of God. The Being of God 
and the human being has become one being, one 
Fulness {Tr\r\po)\x.(x) of God. It is one of Bohme's 
most characteristic features, that he predominantly 
conceives of Christ as the New Adam, who has 
restored what was lost and flung into confusion by 
the first Adam. 

LXXX. 

The Virgin Mary was the daughter of Joachim and 
Anna, a pure Virgin. She was not, however, an 
ordinary woman, like other daughters of Eve. She 
was the " daughter of the Covenant." The whole 
of the ancient covenant pointed to her, when it 
pointed to Him who was to be born. In Nazareth, 
she received the Annunciation ; and when she said 
to the angel : " Be it unto me according to thy 
word ! " she conceived. The Eternal Word passed 
into her flesh and blood, together with the heavenly 
Virgin Sophia, by the power of the Holy Ghost ; 
and the Divine Fiat stood in her matrix. The 
Eternal Word, who passed into her to become flesh, 
did not, on that account, cease to abide in the Father, 



264 REDEMPTION BY CHRIST, ETC. 

without any separation. But the Word was in the 
heavenly Maiden, and drew Mary's essences to Itself, 
and arrayed Itself in her flesh. For nine months 
Jesus was shaped in her womb, a complete man, 
with soul, spirit, and flesh. The child possessed, at 
one and the same time, the essence of His Mother 
Mary, the essence of the Word, and of the Heavenly 
Virgin. But this whole conception and birth was 
without sin. It was by this very conception and 
birth that Mary first became an absolutely pure 
maiden, attained perfect virginity, because she " put 
on " the Heavenly Virgin, who penetrated her 
essences. She achieved perfection as a shining 
morning-star. But we must not forget, that, not- 
withstanding this her exaltation, she was yet only 
able to become righteous and to be saved through 
her Son. 

There are those who have supposed that the 
Eternal Word, who entered into Mary in order to 
become flesh, brought with It not only the Heavenly 
Virgin through whom Christ became a Heavenly 
Man, but also brought from heaven the soul of Christ. 
But this is false. The soul of Christ is of the 
essence of the Virgin Mary, but this human soul 
became absolutely penetrated and pervaded by the 
Eternal Word and the heavenly Virgin. What 
better should I be if Christ had brought His soul 
with Him from Heaven ? What would then become 
of the promise concerning the seed of the woman, 
the Bruiser of the Serpent ? For then, indeed, He 
would have been unable to be like us, and to be 
tempted at all points like ourselves, would have been 
unable to suffer in our stead and to bear our sin. 



REDEMPTION BY CHRIST, ETC. 265 

Then He would not have become our Brother, would 
not have become the Son of Man.* 

LXXXI. 

Christ is thus, in a double sense, the Son of the 
Virgin. He is the Son of the earthly Virgin Mary, 
and He is the Son of the heavenly Virgin, who 
united herself with Mary. But, from another stand- 
point, we may employ another metaphor, and say 
that the heavenly Virgin is wedded to Him, is 
indissolubly joined to Him. It was this very 
heavenly Virgin or Idea who departed from Adam 
when he became unfaithful to her, the bride of his 
youth, when he fell and the Divine Image grew pale 
in him, and who, subsequently, revealed herself to 
him in far-off visions that awoke his longings. This 
heavenly Idea has absolutely entered into the Second 
Adam, who is to restore her to us. 

It has often been described as one of the most 
obscure points in Bohme, how the relation between 
Christ and the heavenly Virgin is to be apprehended? 
Some have supposed that in reality, viewed in the 
proper light and apart from poetic colouring, the 
Virgin is not distinguishable from Christ, and that she 
is Christ Himself, who in Scripture is certainly called 
Wisdom. We, however, do not thus read Bohme. 
It is, indeed, undeniable, that Christ designates Him- 
self as Wisdom (Luke vii. 34), and that Christ " is of 
God made unto Wisdom." But the personal 
Wisdom, the Word, the Wisdom that expresses and 

* " Three Principles in Man," xviii. 



266 REDEMPTION BY CHRIST, ETC. 

reveals itself, and the Father is one thing ; the 
impersonal, objective Wisdom, the Idea, which is the 
servant of the Word, is another thing. And if we 
are to indicate more precisely what significance the 
latter has for Christ, we must formally construe it 
as a Spirit-being, a Light-being, which is united 
with Him, is the shining spirit-image always hover- 
ing about Him, and wherein, as in a mirror and 
inward heaven, He beholds the visions of the 
Kingdom of God, beholds the true world-ideal, the 
ideal of man and of the Church, beholds His own 
ideal as the Head of the human race, which He 
is to realize. An analogy of this is often found in 
the life of the regenerated, into which also Bohme 
introduces the heavenly Virgin. The Virgin is the 
ideal of the Kingdom of God, and, therewith, of 
man, which Christ introduces into our souls. It is 
noticeable that what Bohme, speaking of the life of 
the regenerated, attributes to the Virgin, Christians, 
as a rule, are wont to ascribe to the Holy Ghost. 
But, together with this, it must be observed that, for 
Bohme, the Virgin is not the Holy Ghost, but the 
gift of the Holy Ghost, of which Christ and the Holy 
Ghost certainly constitute the principle. This is the 
gift of Grace, in its most general and comprehensive 
sense, which pervades all special gifts of Grace, and 
places the special gift of Grace in its right relation 
to the Kingdom of God. The more completely the 
heavenly Idea is wedded to a man, and gains life and 
power in his personality, the more possible will it be 
to say of that man, that Christ through faith dwells 
in his heart, and that he has put on the wedding- 
garment. 



REDEMPTION B Y CHRIST, ETC. 267 

When Bohme speaks from his own personal ex- 
perience, he describes the Eternal Sophia as his 
heavenly Genius, given to him of the Lord to lead 
and direct him. He laments that he cannot always 
embrace and hold the Virgin, that his heart some- 
times falls into sins. " But the Virgin has promised 
to be faithful to me, and never to forsake me in 
any adversity ; she will come to my succour in 
her Son ; I am to cleave fast to Him ; He will 
bring me back to her in Paradise. Therefore, on 
these terms, I will venture it, and I will go through 
thorns and thistles, through all kinds of jeering and 
infamy as well as I can, until I find again my 
fatherland, where my dearest Virgin dwells. I rely 
upon her faithful promise, when she appeared to 
me, that she would turn all my mournings into 
great joy ; when I lay upon the mountain at 
midnight, so that all the trees fell upon me, and 
all the storms and winds beat upon me, and Anti- 
christ gaped at me with his open jaws to devour 
me, then she came and comforted me, and married 
herself to me." [It is the ideal that went forth 
from Christ, and includes his own personal life- 
problem, which has wedded itself to him.] " There- 
fore, I am but the more cheerful, and care not for 
Antichrist ! " # 

It is asked whether any parallel to Bohme's 
doctrine of the Virgin is to be found in philosophy. 
We might refer to the Logos in Philo, which is not 
a personal Being, as God is, but the fulness of 
thought, the world's ideal, which makes its abode 

* "The Three Principles," xiv., 52. 



268 REDEMPTION BY CHRIST, ETC. 

in a man's soul, and is a guide and conductor to 
God ; to the Universal Idea in Plato, which embraces 
all models and archetypes of that which makes its 
appearance in the actual world ; to the world-soul 
in the Stoics ; to the ideal-world in the Neoplatonists, 
which is an effulgence of God, and which, as Wisdom, 
has entered into the human soul, in order to lead 
it to purity and to that higher vision in which it 
wholly absorbs itself in the Divine depths. 

All these, however, are but faint analogies ; for 
the Maiden, in Bohme, has quite other postulates 
and surroundings. She is, as we have seen, the 
World's idea, which is not different from the idea 
of the Kingdom of God, and which, prior to the 
creation, played before the Face of God, wedded 
itself to man, who is created in the image of God, 
departed from him because of sin, was restored to 
him in Christ, and now variously individualizes itself 
in different human personalities. 

LXXXII. 

As the first Adam, before the Sinful Fall, was 
androgynous, so also must the second Adam be. 
Not, however, in a physical sense, for this would 
conflict with Luke ii. 21. After the fashion of the 
external world, Christ was a man. When the Word 
was to be arrayed in flesh, one of the two forms 
had to be selected, the masculine or the feminine. 
Christ was to be a hero, a warrior, the Bruiser of 
the Serpent ; therefore He assumed masculine 
features ; but it is clear from Bohme's whole delinea- 
tion that Christ, in a spiritual sense, that the Love 



REDEMPTION BY CHRIST, ETC. 269 

of Christ, was androgynous ; for He was destined 
to restore the sundered properties to " temperature," 
and to conduct us to that grade of life " where 
there is neither man nor woman " (Gal. iii. 28). 
And with this view we must certainly coincide. 
The Love of Christ would not be the complete 
Divine-Human Love if this Love had simply the 
properties of the man, and not those of the woman 
also. Although we cannot fail to recognize in Christ 
the highest excellencies of the masculine character, 
a world-subduing, world-conquering heroism, still, 
we cannot call Him a masculine character, in so 
far as this presents a contrast to the feminine. 
For we also find in Him the highest attributes of 
feminine virtue, infinite self-devotion and affec- 
tionateness of disposition, the incorruptible ornament 
of a meek and quiet spirit, purity and chastity of 
sentiment, the observance of the most delicate 
fundamental moral conditions, and the woman's 
characteristic capacity for passive obedience, strength 
of endurance, and self-abnegation full of unspeakable 
fidelity. 

The Divine Love to man is pictured in the Bible 
not only as a father's love, but also as a mother's 
love. " Can a woman forget her sucking child, that 
she should not have compassion on the son of her 
womb ? Yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget 
thee, saith the Lord " (Isa. xlix. 15). And Christ 
says to Jerusalem : " How often would I have 
gathered thy children together, even as a hen 
gathereth her chickens under her wings ! " (Matt. 
xxiii. 37). Here most assuredly we have the 
metaphor of the mother's love in its infinite 



270 REDEMPTION BY CHRIST, ETC. 

solicitude. And if we think of the Crucified Christ, 
it is not enough to see in His Love simply that 
of the hero, the King, who sacrifices Himself for 
His people, for all races ; we must also see in it 
the mother's love which vainly seeks to gather her 
rebellious and wandering children under her wings, 
and now leads Him to pour forth His blood in 
order to save them, and to draw them to Himself 
beneath the Cross. 

The Apostle Paul, who was undoubtedly a heroic 
character, and one in whom the principle of strength, 
the fire-principle, was powerfully energetic, compares 
himself, in the Epistle to the Galatians, to a travail- 
ing mother : " My little children ! of whom I 
travail in birth again, until Christ be formed in 
you ! " In i Thessalonians, he compares himself 
to a nurse who cherishes her children. In ancient 
Christian art, androgynous pictures of the Crucified 
One are to be met with. These, indeed, may be 
regarded as very naive and paradoxical, and, if one 
please, lacking in taste. Archaeologists and art- 
critics have here attempted manifold historical and 
learned elucidations, but with total failure to arrive 
at unanimity. But we ask the question whether 
any meaning can be found in these symbols, except 
in virtue of the conception alluded to above ? It 
will scarcely be doubted by any one that Christ, 
after the resurrection, was androgynous, even in 
a physical sense. 



THE PROCESS OF CHRIST. 271 



LXXXIII. 

THE PROCESS OF CHRIST. 

The central point in the work of Christ is the 
Atonement and Redemption. It would have been 
of little benefit to us if, without the occurrence of 
any actual change in the world, God had simply 
proclaimed that He is gracious and merciful to us. 
Life in the creation is veritably disturbed, and 
" Temperature " has been lost. Thus, then, a new 
process of life and suffering must be initiated, in 
order that actual healing may take place, and 
" temperature " be re-established. In the " Process 
of Christ," Bohme lays special stress upon two 
points : the Temptation and Death, with the history 
of the Passion. All three principles are present in 
Christ, precisely as in Adam : the Light-principle, 
the dark Fire-principle, and the principle of this 
world ; but in Him the last-mentioned is in proper 
subordination. He must, however, be tempted of 
the devil, in order that He may be able to prevail 
in that trial in which Adam did not prevail. 
During this struggle, Christ wholly fixed His imagi- 
nation upon the Father and the Kingdom of Light, 
vanquished the temptations of the senses and those 
of arrogance and ambition, and fulfilled the law in 
our stead. But this is not sufficient. He must 
bear the wrath of God in our stead, must bring the 
sacrifice of propitiation, must quench wrath with 
love. It must here be repeated that Bohme inter- 
prets wrath not merely on its ethical side, but also, 
and quite as fully, on its material side. The material 



272 THE PROCESS OF CHRIST. 

side of wrath consists of the first three natural 
properties which are released into independence. 
All the disturbing and destructive forces, all suffer- 
ings and pains which have been evoked by the sin 
of man, and which men have to bear as the penalty 
of sin, pour in upon Christ, and He conquers them, 
and quenches wrath by His voluntary self-devotion 
in the Passion. 

" He said that He was a King of Love ; then 
the worldly magistrate thought, ' He will take 
away our might ! ' and the priests thought, This 
man is too mean for us ; we will have a Messiah 
who may bring us to worldly dominion ; we will 
not receive him ; he is too poor for us ; we will 
rather abide in our power, respect, and authority, 
and abandon this beggarly King with his love- 
kingdom.' "* 

Thus, then, they made Him prisoner ; and in every 
momentum of the Passion-history which Bohme 
treats with great minuteness, and often allegorically, 
some form of wrath came into manifestation, and 
was always vanquished by love. The aim of the 
" Process of Christ " is, " that Self might cease in 
the humanity, and God's Spirit might be all in all, 
and the Self only His instrument"! 

For this reason it was necessary that Christ 
should surrender Himself unto death, in order that 
He might vanquish it from within. His outward 
body, which was in the likeness of sinful flesh, 
must die upon the Cross, to the end that the power 



* " Signatura Rerum," x., 79. 
t Ibid., xi., 10. 



THE PROCESS OF CHRIST. 273 

of His heavenly Blood, the power of eternal life, 
might come to rule in inward and outward humanity. 

" And when Christ was upon the Cross, it came 
about thereby that God's speaking Word stood still 
now in the human property ; and the new-born 
Essentiality, which was dead in Adam, but was again 
quickened in Christ, cried out with the same, ' My 
God, my God ! why hast Thou forsaken me ? ' 
For the anger of God was by the soul's property 
entered into the image of the Divine Essentiality, 
and had devoured the image of God, because this 
image was to bruise the head of God's wrath in the 
Fire-soul. Thus must not only the selfishness of 
the human property, viz., the soul's own self-will 
to live in the Fire's might, die and be drowned 
in the image of Love, but also the image, of Love 
itself must resign and give itself in unto the wrath 
of Death. All must fall down into Death, in order 
to arise in God's will and mercy through Death in 
the Paradisiacal source in the resignation, that God's 
Spirit might be all in all."* 

When Bohme says that the Essentiality, which 
was dead in Adam, and was again quickened in 
Christ, cried, " My God, my God ! why hast Thou 
forsaken me ? " we believe that we can approximately 
understand this marvellously profound but obscure 
expression, if we take " Essentiality " to mean the 
Spirit in distinction from the soul, that which is, 
in the most rigid sense, the Divinely-imaged in 
human nature, that which makes it capable of love, 
and of union with the Idea, the Virgin. 

* " Signatura Rerum," xi., 28, 84. 



2?4 THE PROCESS OF CHRIST. 

It is not only that the body must die upon the 
Cross, and not only the soul-element which craves 
self-preservation and earthly enjoyments, but also 
the spiritual Ego, the Will of Love, the Will towards 
the Kingdom of God, which He is to establish. 
This also must die as Egoism, as something which 
was Christ's own, because Love is to have nothing 
as its own, as its possession. It was necessary that 
even His Work and His Kingdom should sink into 
death before Him, when God's speaking Word stood 
still. It may be truly said that Christ, during the 
whole of His active Life, sought to have nothing 
as His own, but all as the Father's, that He did 
not seek His own Glory, but the Father's. But it 
is precisely this which is now, in the Passion and 
Death, to constitute His trial, when He has to 
sacrifice everything. Christ's Soul-life and Spirit- 
life were not, however, annihilated in this sacrificial 
Death ; only the humanity in Him had wholly 
surrendered its own Will. But this was absolutely 
merged in the First Will, in the Father's Will, as 
in the First Root. When He had absolutely sur- 
rendered everything into the hands of the Father, 
Love had swallowed up wrath, and wrath itself was 
sunk in death. " Temperature " was restored in 
Him, who had acted vicariously for the fallen 
creation. 

" Thou dear, seeking Heart, that floatest about 
as in a dark pool, where thou canst not see in 
or out, cleave fast to the Crucified Christ ! Forgive 
them that trespass against thee (thy debtors), and 
entreat God that He, for Christ's sake, will forgive 
thee thy trespasses ; then He will hear thee, and 



THE EXALTED CHRIST. 275 

thou shalt be led into the ' Process of Christ/ 
which ends in Light and the Kingdom of Light." 

LXXXIV. 

THE EXALTED CHRIST. 

The Saviour rose from the grave, at the midnight 
hour, in a paradisiacal body, in which His earthly 
body was, as it were, swallowed up, on which 
account, moreover, He was able to manifest it to 
His disciples, as a testimony that it was He Himself. 
That the stone was rolled away from the sepulchre 
was only for a sign to the disciples and to the 
Jews ; for Christ Himself it was unnecessary. He 
was able to pass, in bodily shape, through closed 
doors, through all things. 

By the Resurrection of Christ it is demonstrated 
that He is true Lord over Heaven, Earth, and Hell ; 
and that all power is given to Him in heaven and 
upon earth. " Let this be told you, all ye Jews, 
Turks, and heathen ! it profits you nothing that 
you expect another. Beware only, lest the Fire of 
Wrath and Judgment descend upon you ! " 

During forty days, He manifested Himself to the 
disciples at various times, and became visible to 
them ; and finally He ascended into Heaven, and 
sat down at the Right Hand of the Father. Heaven 
is the inward basis and foundation of this visible 
world, and the Right Hand of God is the Might of 
His Omnipotence. 



276 THE EXALTED CHRIST. 



LXXXV. 

Where then is Christ, and where is the Right 
Hand of the Father ? Bohme is in absolute agree- 
ment with the old Lutheran dogmatic which teaches 
that " dextera Dei ubique est," and that Christ is 
in no definite place. Luther combats the mediaeval 
scholasticism : " They invent a phantom Heaven, 
where stands a golden throne, and Christ sits at 
the right hand of the Father in a chorister's mantle 
and with a golden crown ! " " They talk childishly 
about heaven, and want Christ to have a place in 
heaven, like a stork that has a nest in a tree ! " 
But, however correct it may be that all material 
space-limitations, borrowed from this world of the 
senses, must be rejected, and that Christ is not 
circumscribed by any definite and fixed place in 
heaven, this Lutheran definition is, nevertheless, 
inadequate, and it must be regarded as a defect in 
Bohme, that he did not pass beyond Lutheran 
idealism, and that he did not here maintain his 
own realism. We cannot imagine any actual 
existence, cannot conceive of the heavenly indi- 
viduality of Christ, without some relation to space, 
a fact, however, which by no means implies that 
these material space definitions, under which we are 
held, are the only ones possible. Even although 
the Right Hand of God, His Omnipotence, is every- 
where, does it follow from this that the seat at the 
Right Hand of God is everywhere ? When Luther 
says that Christ is not in a single spot, but that He 
is everywhere, this ubiquity becomes a diffused and 



THE EXALTED CHRIST. 277 

indefinite extension throughout the whole creation, 
not visibly distinguishable from a pantheistic Imma- 
nence with a pantheistic nature Christ although 
this is very far from Luther's thought. We main- 
tain, notwithstanding Luther's polemical utterances, 
that which was perfectly true in mediaeval realism, 
although it may have been arrayed sometimes in 
puerile forms, that there must be a Central Place 
for the Omnipotence and Glory of God, a Holy of 
Holies in Heaven itself, wherein the perfect Presence 
dwells ; and that we cannot imagine the omnipresent 
Power of God, unless this be also centralized in 
itself. Oetinger, indeed, goes farther than Bohme, 
when he speaks of a concentrated ubiquity. We 
do not hesitate to say that Christ is where the 
Throne is, and where the seven Spirits or Lamps 
stand before the Throne. The Throne is precisely 
the central place in the inmost sanctuary. But 
He is not circumscribed there as if in an earthly 
space. From thence He can penetrate all things 
with His powers and gifts ; can make Himself 
actually present where He wills; can "be with us 
unto the end of the world ; " can, by means of the 
Word, the Sacraments, and the Holy Ghost, come 
with the Father and take up His abode with us ; 
and can walk in the Church in the midst of the 
seven golden candlesticks, that is, can be the centre 
of His Church. The higher region can penetrate 
the lower, while the lower cannot penetrate the 
higher, although the higher region is quite close 
to us, hovers around us, and encircles us. For 
there can be no question here of material distances. 
As the One who is in the midst of the Uncreated 



278 THE EXALTED CHRIST. 

Heaven, He is also the centre of the whole creation, 
He is the centre of the Church. 

LXXXVI. 

In his interpretation of the incident of the Ascension 
itself, when " He was taken up, and a cloud received 
Him out of the disciples' sight," as Scripture relates, 
Bohme opposes the scholastic view which " counts 
and measures how many hundred thousand miles 
it is to the Heaven whither Christ is gone" ("The 
Three Principles," xxv., 101). Because Heaven is 
the internal ground and basis of the outer world, 
Bohme teaches, in harmony with Lutheran theo- 
logians, that Heaven is quite near us, and that 
(as has been expressed, for instance, by old Philip 
Nicolai) one does not need to undertake a 
journey after death in order to reach Heaven, 
but that those who are counted worthy to enter 
in simply require to open their eyes. It may 
be regarded as a view of the Ascension of Christ, 
which has become more and more general among 
Protestants, that the way to Heaven does not 
lie through infinite expanses of starry space, 
a mediaeval conception which many opponents of 
Christianity in our days give themselves the trouble 
to confute, as though it were the only conception 
possible. The old dogmatists rightly interpreted 
the Ascension of Christ (which, in so far as it was 
visible, scarcely requires to be considered as a 
movement persisting over a longer time) as a sign, 
a crr)ixeLOv (SeiKTiKws), which was necessary for the 
disciples, in order to acquaint them with the fact 



THE EXALTED CHRIST. 279 

that the Work of Christ was now concluded, and 
that He had now exchanged life in the earthly 
sphere, wherein is sin and death, darkness and 
heaviness, for Heaven, the imperishable Kingdom 
of Light, where He will henceforward exercise His 
invisible activity. For Christ Himself this visible 
uplifting was unnecessary. It is scarcely too bold 
to suppose that He, whose corporeity was now 
wholly transfigured in order that He might enter 
into Heaven, might have remained where He stood, 
have become invisible to the disciples, and might 
then have been in Heaven, as a movement ad extra 
ad intra, a return to the mysterious regions that 
lie behind this world. 

And yet, although we thus reject material space- 
determinations with their measures of length and 
miles, we are again compelled to posit, even in 
Heaven itself, space-determinations of another and 
a higher kind. For it is expressly stated in Scripture 
that " He has passed into the Heavens, and has 
entered into Heaven itself," which latter can only 
be the Heaven of Heavens, where the throne stands. 
Indeed, it is said of the beggar Lazarus that the 
angels carried him into Abraham's bosom. Here, 
consequently, we have both movement and space- 
relation, which, for good reasons, we are incapable 
of apprehending more closely, so long as our eyes 
are shrouded by the veil of materiality. We may 
say, There is a cloud which conceals these regions 
from our sight, and this cloud is essentially our 
flesh, our own material nature. We can only affirm : 
What is here corporeity must there be extension 
and extended relation. A single question then 



280 THE EXALTED CHRIST. 

remains : Whether this material corporeity which 
continually dies and passes into corruption is the 
only corporeity which is possible and real ? Scrip- 
ture tells us that there is a spiritual and heavenly 
body, from which it follows that there must be 
for this appropriate space-relations. If Christ has 
a transfigured and glorified corporeity (which is an 
articulus fidei statitis ant cadentis), there must also be a 
region that corresponds with this. Now, although 
this region or these regions must, in comparison with 
our material region, be called spaceless, super-spatial, 
yet absolute spacelessness cannot be attributed to 
them. For, if it be true that in the Father's House 
there are many mansions, and that we must picture 
to ourselves in Heaven the Throne with the seven 
Lamps, then also quantitative and phenomenal 
relations must prevail in Heaven. Upon this point, 
the necessity of a Locality in the other world, 
Bohme has not entered more minutely, although, 
as he so energetically maintains the Uncreated 
Heaven, this is the very point on which he might 
be expected to dilate. He has not gone farther 
than the old Lutheran dogmatic, which, in its 
struggle with mediaeval scholasticism, the essential 
contents of which are embodied by Dante, sacrificed 
the substance with the accidents. We shall return 
to the subject in discussing Bohme's Eschatology 



REGENERA TION. 281 

LXXXVIL 

THE APPROPRIATION OF GRACE REGENERATION. 

" On the day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit was 
poured forth from the centre of the Trinity, and 
all the doors of the wonders of God were opened, 
for the Spirit of God passed into the essences of 
men, into their inmost basis of life, filled them, and 
spoke out of all the centres. Hearts, mouths, and 
ears were opened, and the Apostles spoke in the 
tongues of the peoples. Then the ' Process of 
Christ* began to repeat itself in human souls, for 
all that Christ has done outside us is to repeat 
itself within us, and we ourselves are to return into 
' Temperature,' and pass out of the ' Turba ' in 
which we are buried."* 

Regeneration is accomplished by the Spirit of 
Christ and the means of grace, the Word and the 
Sacraments. But however high a place Bohme 
may assign to the Word and the Sacraments, he 
repeatedly insists that the object and matter of 
chief importance is what is to be effected by these 
means, viz. : Regeneration, the new man after the 
similitude of Christ. For this reason he contends 
so strongly against Babel, the existing Church, in 
which the Sacraments are only outwardly used, the 
Word is only outwardly preached and heard, with- 
out the true dispositions of the heart, without the 
inward doors being really opened. 

It profits nothing," he says to the clergy, " that 

* " The Three Principles," xxvi., 4, 5. 



282 REGENERATION. 

you shout and bawl from the pulpit; if you have not 
the right hammer to strike the clock that awakens 
the hearts, you are really dumb for those who hear 
you. The spirit and power of Christ must be in 
your words, so that your hearers may be able to 
observe Christ in your words, and to hear the Voice 
of the Good Shepherd. In Babel one finds only 
the historical faith. It is mere childishness to think 
to be saved by a simply historical faith, as is heard 
every Sunday in the churches. They suppose that 
it is enough to admit and agree that Christ died 
for our sins, and that His righteousness is imputed 
to us, and that then they may continue as they are, 
and go on in their old worldliness and sin." In 
many parts of his writings, Bohme is exceedingly 
violent against Babel. He strives against all these 
nominal Christians, sham Christians, Christians of 
habit, all these clergy, who are only sounding brass 
and tinkling cymbals, slow-bellies, etc., etc. Similar 
lamentations are well known in every period of 
earnest Church-revival. 

There is no use in Babel. You are not saved 
by a merely historical faith by which you imagine 
that you can throw the robe of grace around you, 
while, within, you continue to be a wild beast. 
Consider, O man ! that we can stand in three 
principles, the dark fire-principle, or the devilish 
principle, the principle of this world, with the world's 
lusts and appetites ; but that it behoves us to enter 
into the Light-principle and into the Kingdom of 
Light, which we lost by Adam's fall, and which 
Christ has brought back to us. The important 
matter is that the Light and the World of Light 



REGENERATION. 283 

should be kindled in you. Consider that we in 
this world are as if in a field. We all grow in 
secret, and when our hour-glass has run out, and 
this outward body becomes a corpse, and this 
outward world is taken from us, then it shall be 
made manifest whether the new man has been 
born and has grown in you, or whether it is 
only the old man that has been growing, with his 
old attributes, pride, envy, covetousness, and 
wrath. Then shall it be seen whether you belong 
to the children of the Spirit of God, or to those 
who have comforted themselves in stone churches 
with an imputed righteousness, and still have con- 
tinued to be greedy dogs, vain peacocks, lustful 
goats, and other such pernicious beasts. A great 
change must take place in you. You must die with 
Christ, die away from your sinful egoism and 
selfishness, your evil propensities, that Christ may 
arise in you. There must be a violent transition 
into the fourth natural property, into the Lightning, 
so that you may come out of the wrath of God, 
out of the torture-chamber, in which you are secretly 
a captive. 

" Per ignem, per crucem ad lucem ! " 

LXXXVIII. 

PERHAPS there are some who will ask here whether 
Bohme has forgotten that Regeneration takes place 
at Baptism, that Baptism is a bath of Regeneration. 
He has not forgotten this. He teaches that God, by 
baptism, introduces His Covenant of Grace into 
humanity, that the whole man, both soul, spirit, and 



284 REGENERA TION. 

body, needs to be baptized, needs a fresh unction, a 
new " tincture," so that a new life may bloom and 
flourish. The heavenly element is imparted through 
the element of water, by means of the Word, and it 
is the whole Trinity that baptizes. The Father 
baptizes with Fire unto repentance and conversion, 
and assails the soul with the Law, with His severe 
righteousness, whereby the foundation is laid for 
repentance and sorrow over sin. 

The Son baptizes with Love and Grace, with the 
gentle Light, quenches the Father's wrath, and heals 
the soul by the Forgiveness of sins. 

The Holy Ghost baptizes with a new Life, and 
bestows the right understanding and the true belief, 
which we recognise and accept as such. 

And all this is not metaphorical. An essential 
operation takes place, a union of the essence of 
Grace and the essence of man. The sinful human 
nature acquires a new tincture, a new life stratum, 
which, however, cannot unfold its power until faith 
is added. 

But what does it avail us that there is preaching 
in Babel concerning Baptism and the Covenant of 
Baptism, when there is no regular preaching con- 
cerning Faith ? 

" We are taught an imputed righteousness and an 
imputed grace ; but what Faith is, how it is born, 
what it is in its essence and nature, and how it appro- 
priates the merit of Christ, these are points on 
which the majority are absolutely dumb ! Therein 
are they blind ; and there remains a simply histori- 
cal faith, which gives us only nominal Christians. 
To believe is not merely to accept as true, to agree 



REGENERATION. 285 

that the matter stands thus and thus ; it is not 
simply a thought, a knowledge, which even devils 
possess ; nay, to believe is to partake of grace, to 
partake of the being of God ; and in order to this a 
great and mighty earnestness is requisite. Faith is 
a strong desire, a hunger and thirst after Christ and 
the Spirit of Christ, and the setting of the whole 
imagination upon that which one desires, the intro- 
duction of it into, and the embodiment of it in 
oneself. In Faith, the soul leads its will out of this 
corrupted flesh, with all its perishableness, and leads 
it into the Gate that is opened in Christ. Christ 
then draws my will, which I surrender to Him, into 
His Will : He ' tinctures ' my will with the highest 
tincture of the Divine Will, and guides it to God. 
Then steps He forward with His Will before God, 
and in His Will is my will, and I become accepted 
as a child of grace" (" Epistles,"46). 

For Bohme, Faith is, consequently, the most 
profound act of the will ; still, no one can believe 
simply by his own power. If I am to believe, the 
Spirit of Christ, the desire of Christ, the Will of 
Christ must believe in my desire and will. Not 
that this is to be understood as implying a fatalistic 
election of grace. Although faith itself is an effect 
of grace, yet the natural man has the choice whether 
he will surrender himself, and let himself be grasped 
by grace, or whether he will resist grace. Bohme 
frequently repeats the Lord's words to Jerusalem : 
" Ye would not ! " 



286 REGENERA TION. 



LXXXIX. 

The objection has been raised against Bdhme that he 
does not assign its due place to the doctrine of 
justification by Faith, that kernel of the Lutheran 
Creed, because he does not establish a thorough- 
going distinction between Justification and Sanctifi- 
cation. This distinction is undeniably of great 
importance, when the question is asked : Upon what 
do I base my assurance that I am admitted into the 
grace of God ? If I base this assurance upon my 
sanctification, I base it upon an insecure foundation ; 
for my sanctification is an unfinished fragment, in 
which there is both progress and retrogression. I 
can have firm assurance only when it is built exclu- 
sively upon the Grace of God, who, for Christ's sake, 
is willing to forgive me my sins and to accept me 
as His child. I am then recognized as just before 
God, not on the ground of any merit or work of 
mine, but because I appropriate in faith the merit of 
Christ, which God, in His Grace, imputes to me. 
This faith is not, in the remotest degree, my own 
merit. It is simply the organ by which I receive 
grace : it is, so to speak, merely the hand with 
which I reach after and grasp grace. This is the 
only source from which sanctification can first pro- 
ceed, as an endeavour after righteousness and per- 
fection of life. 

It must certainly be admitted that Bohme has 
not deemed it of great consequence to develop this 
distinction. And it must also be granted that 
his doctrine of an indwelling grace, an indwelling 



REGENERATION. 287 

righteousness, is open to misconception, unless 
close attention be paid to his precise meaning. But 
it must not be overlooked, on the other hand, that 
he really wishes to supply a corrective against an 
abstract and mechanical distinction, a false separa- 
tion and illegitimate severance of Justification and 
Sanctification, which had become very general. For 
it was supposed by many that if one simply accepted 
justification by Faith as an axiom to which one 
gave one's assent, one could then array oneself in 
the robe of grace, without the necessity of any 
earnest spiritual desire for sanctification, and without 
coming into any really living fellowship with Christ. 
The inmost meaning of Bohme's polemic is this : 
that it is unavailing so to distinguish between 
Justification and Sanctification as thereby to deny 
their necessary connection, and to make Sanctifica- 
tion appear as an accidental appendage, which, at a 
pinch, may be dispensed with. 

For Bohme, justifying Faith is no external 
dogma, but a life-momentum in the soul, which must 
not be separated from the other life-momenta, but 
must continue to form an integral part of the " pro- 
cess of life." His meaning is : As truly as Faith is 
a will, which grasps Christ, so truly must the whole 
Christ and communion with Him be the object of 
this will. I cannot earnestly will to participate in 
the atonement of Christ, the restoration of the 
broken covenant, and the removal of guilt, without 
also wishing to participate in His redemption, in 
the actual cleansing and liberation from sin and 
sinful propensities, and without also setting my will 
upon the new life. I cannot believe in Christ as 



288 REGENERATION. 

my Justification, and set my imagination upon His 
glorious Light-image, without also forsaking the 
devil-image and the world-image, and banishing 
these false images from my soul. 

It is thus, as it seems to us, that Bohme must be 
understood, when his main intention is regarded, 
and when isolated and unguarded expressions in the 
course of his polemic are not unduly pressed. He 
has never denied that the whole fountain-spring of 
our justification is Christ, the Crucified and Risen 
(Justitia extra nos posita). He shows most clearly, 
in many passages, that he builds his salvation, his 
assurance of the grace of God not upon anything 
in himself, but exclusively upon the compassion of 
God in Christ, upon the Sufferings and Death of 
Christ (the central point in his Christology), in 
which we are wholly to absorb ourselves, and abso- 
lutely to develop our will. And he proved this, 
even in his dying hour, by praying : " Thou Cruci- 
fied Lord Jesus Christ ! have compassion upon me, 
and take me into Thy Kingdom!" But he demands 
that Faith shall be regarded as an earnest and 
serious thing. Without saying so, and perhaps 
without being fully conscious of it, he thus points 
back to the original doctrine of Faith, held by the 
Reformers and by our Church, viz. : that it is not 
simply knowledge and assent (notitia, assensus), but 
a hearty reliance upon the Grace of God in Christ, 
a grasping of grace as it is also a grasping of Christ. 
But if Faith be this, there must also in Faith be an 
actual union with Christ. Nor is it astonishing that 
Bohme was unable to rest satisfied with the position 
that Justification is only an external act of judg- 



REGENERA TION. 



ment, by which man is declared just, without the 
occurrence of any kind of inward change, without 
any real communication of the Righteousness of 
Christ, were it only in a small beginning, like a 
grain of mustard-seed, what Luther, in his preface 
to the Epistle to the Romans, calls " the beginning 
of the Gifts or of the Spirit." This is what Bohme 
expresses by saying that Christ " tinctures " our will 
and, in order to lead it into a higher form of life, 
imparts to it a living power, which, during the 
progress of life, may become an indwelling grace. 
If the will is tinctured by Christ, justifying Faith 
must contain the germs of Sanctification, must be, 
not only a living, but also a vitalizing, sanctifying 
Faith, containing in itself the new principle of 
obedience. Then must there subsist between Christ 
and the believer a unio mystica, which is to grow 
and increase during the development of life. 

Bohme's leading idea is life. What he is urging 
in the present connection is, that Christianity in the 
individual man must be life, in its complete move- 
ment, in its " process." It is the living Christian 
personality, the whole Christian man that he brings 
before us in his doctrine of Regeneration, the scope 
of which he regards as stretching through the whole 
life. 

XC. 

It is for this reason that he returns so often to the 
conflicts of the Christian life, which continue until 
this life's end. We have in our nature two wills, 
the one, the quiet gracious will, which is the will of 
the new man ; and the other, the restless pernicious 

19 



290 REGENERATION. 

thistle, which is the old Adamite will : and these are 
always at strife with each other. We have a lily- 
child and a thistle-child within us, and the storms of 
this life sweep often so tempestuously over the lily, 
that it might seem at times as though the lily must 
utterly perish. But, by the grace of God, it grows 
and becomes green, so that, at last, it may blossom 
in eternity, when this body falls off like a husk. 
It is simply a question of perseverance in the con- 
flict, and of resistance to temptation, in the name of 
Jesus. For we are tempted now by our own proud 
ego, which is veritably a thistle, now by the devil, 
and now by our flesh. As a resource against every- 
thing that would hinder our salvation, he recom- 
mends prayer in the name of Jesus. For the name 
of Jesus is a gate, and whatever is spoken through 
this gate reaches the ear of God ; He hears it. By 
means of prayer, the soul soars up above the centrum 
of anxiety, the abyss of hell, the spirit of this world, 
and penetrates into the other principle, into the Light, 
into Christ, into the Heart of God. But if you 
would pray, you must first cleanse yourself of all 
your abominations, and must next examine yourself, 
whether there be anything you more highly desire 
than God's compassion. But if God's compassion is 
the highest thing to you, and if your prayer is 
earnest, you shall prevail. For to pray is not only 
to desire, but to work in the strength of God. In 
true prayer the soul becomes a hungry magical fire 
which draws the Being of God out of the Incarnation 
into itself, and the soul becomes clothed with a 
Light-body, in which it can find rest, while in the 
world it has only anxiety ("Epistles," xi., v.). 



REGENERATION. 291 

Bohme often returns in his meditations to those 
states of anxiety in which the soul falls into doubt of 
its salvation, when sins oppress, and the soul is dis- 
consolate, when the devil and hell storm in against 
it, and would tempt it to despair. His own 
experience has made him acquainted with such 
conditions, for he himself is in a perpetual process, 
in order that his gold may be refined, that the hard 
rocks in which it is imprisoned may be burst asunder, 
and that the lily within him may succeed in growing. 
We have already heard him concerning the hour 
when he lay on the mountain at midnight, when all 
the trees fell over him, the storm swept about him, 
and Antichrist opened his jaws to devour him, and 
when, finally, the Sophia came, and comforted him. 
He advises to all men the course that he himself 
pursued : on no account to lose faith, on no condi- 
tion to relinquish the strong resolution to be saved. 
" Even if thou hast no strength in thy heart, and the 
devil binds thy tongue, thou shalt yet let God's 
promises to thee be more certain to thee than thy 
own heart. And even if thine own heart says nay ! 
that shall not appal thee. Thou shalt hold fast to 
this resolve : ' Lord ! I will not lose Thee ! Do with 
me as Thou wilt, I will be Thine ! ' Then will He 
have compassion upon thee, and thou shalt enter 
into the will of God, and then thou art God's child, 
and Christ's goods belong to thee, and His merits 
are thy merits. His Life, Death, and Resurrection 
are all thine, and thou art a member of His Body, 
and His Spirit is thy spirit. He leads thee in right 
paths, and all that thou doest, thou doest unto God " 
(" Incarnation of Christ "). 



292 REGENERA TION. 

To Bohme's teaching with regard to despondency, 
on which subject he displays a profound knowledge 
of the human heart, belongs his " Treatise on the 
Four Complexions," written as a direction to an 
ever-sorrowful and anxious heart. By the Four 
" Complexions " he understands what we call the 
Four Temperaments, which he compares to the four 
elements : the sanguine to air, the choleric to fire, 
the phlegmatic to water, the melancholy to earth, 
which is cold, dry, dark, and hungry after light. 
The complexions do not belong to the eternal essence 
of the soul, but possess a merely temporal signifi- 
cance. They are only inns, places of abode, in 
which the various souls must dwell during this out- 
ward life. They are given to man at his conception 
and birth, and it depends upon the influence of the 
stars and the nature-spirit which temperament one 
receives. Bohme now especially applies this to 
consolation and advice for the melancholy tempera- 
ment. The melancholy temperament is dark and 
dry, and is prone to consume itself inwardly in its 
own being. It abides always in the House of Sorrow, 
and is continually afraid of the wrath of God and 
the power of wrath. Souls that dwell in this inn, 
where they often lament that God has forgotten 
them, that they are forsaken, without comfort, and 
cannot receive grace, are to take note that there are 
many anxieties which do not come from the devil, 
but from the natural temperament. They are to 
know that in this dark chamber they certainly have 
the devil for a neighbour, since he dwells in dark- 
ness, but that he cannot hurt them, if they only hold 
fast to the promise of God, and believe although 



REGENERA TION. 293 

they do not see. They are to know that it is the 
will of God to try them in this dark chamber, and 
that they are to fight and wrestle with themselves, 
reflecting that this is for their profit ; and that while 
the soul dwelleth in the House of Sorrow, it is not 
in the House of Sin, but that it is a great sin to 
yield to false imaginations, such as delude us into 
the idea that God will not be gracious to us. 

As remedies against the anxieties of the melan- 
choly nature, Bohme advises industry, for idleness 
only nourishes sorrow. Nor should a soul in the 
melancholy chamber give itself up too much to 
solitude, but should seek the society of men, and 
converse with them, in order to lose its heavy 
thoughts. It ought not to read too many books, 
least of all such as treat of election by grace ; but 
in all questions of this character it should attach 
itself simply to Holy Scripture. It is not to 
surrender itself to speculations and inquiries. But 
if a soul in the dark chamber is naturally endowed 
with a mind and thoughts that are deep, so that 
it must search and cannot avoid inquiry, then let it, in 
the fear of God and with constant prayer, seek for the 
opening of the centre of nature in itself, for it will 
see therein its own ground and cause ; and then all 
fear and sorrow will vanish away from it, and it will 
find rest. This testimony Bohme gives from his own 
experience ; for he himself, in this world, dwelt in the 
melancholy inn. 

XCI. 

We will close this description by recalling a simple 
picture of life under sin and wrath, and life under 



294 REGENERATION. 

grace, in the following of Christ, which Bohme has 
sketched in a " Dialogue between an Enlightened 
and Unenlightened Soul," in a letter to a soul that 
hungers and thirsts after the love of Christ. 

There was a poor soul had wandered out of 
Paradise and come into the kingdom of this world ; 
and there the devil met with it and represented 
to it that, if it would break its will off from the 
Will of God, and from God lead its will into nature 
and the creatures, and open its centrum natures, 
it would be able to know all things, and become 
its own lord upon the earth, and rule in the world 
with great might. The devil showed it a serpent 
biting itself in the tail, which had precisely the 
appearance of a Fire-wheel (a symbol of the centrum 
natures, the Worm /), and said to it, " Thou art 
thyself such a Fire-Wheel, such a Mercurius in 
Vulcano ; if thou only wilt arouse it in thee by 
breaking off thy will from the Will of God, thou 
shalt bring all things into thy power." The soul let 
itself thus be seduced, opened its centrum natures, 
and went out of " temperature " ; and now awoke in 
the soul all the properties of nature, and each of 
them introduced itself with its own lust and craving. 
The Wheel of Birth burst into flames, and there 
arose a desire to uplift itself over all, to rule over 
all, and to despise humility, viz., Pride and Haughti- 
ness. There arose a desire to draw all things to 
itself and to possess all, Covetousness. There was 
kindled a stinging, thorny lust in the fiery life, 
a poison of hell, Envy. And there awoke a 
torment like fire, which would murder and destroy 
all that which would not be subject to this pride, 



REGENERATION. 295 

viz., Wrath. The whole Foundation of Hell was 
manifested in this soul, the devil brought it on from 
one vice to another, and the soul lost God, and 
Paradise, and the Kingdom of Heaven, and became 
a Worm, like the Fire-serpent which the devil had 
shown it. 

In this plight, it met our dear Lord Jesus Christ, 
who was come into the world to destroy the works 
of the devil, and He looked upon it with His 
compassion, and called it back. It was to repent 
and be converted, and then He would deliver it 
from the monstrous deformed shape, and bring it 
into Paradise again. Then the soul considered 
itself, and was affrighted with the greatest possible 
anguish, for God's righteous judgment was manifested 
in it. Then said the Lord Jesus Christ, with the 
voice of His grace, " Repent, and forsake vanity, 
and thou shalt attain my grace ! " 

Now, therefore the soul went before God, and 
intreated for grace, and was strongly persuaded in 
itself, that the satisfaction and atonement of the 
Lord Jesus Christ did belong to it. But since 
the serpent-symbol was not abolished, and the soul 
did not observe that it was still monstrous, and that 
it had preserved all its old evil inclinations in their 
false natural right, it could not attain peace. For, 
when it sought to pray and lead its will into God, 
then all its thoughts fled away from God, and went 
into earthly things. The devil tempted it in all 
manner of ways, and said to it in its restlessness, 
" Why dost thou torment thyself ? Behold the 
world, how it lives in jollity and mirth, yet it will 
be saved well enough for all that ! Hath not Christ 



296 REGENERATION. 

paid the ransom and satisfied for all men ? Thou 
needest only to comfort thyself that it is done for 
thee, and then thou shalt be saved. Thou canst 
not possibly in this world come to have any feeling 
of God ; take care for thy body, and look after 
temporal glory. Salvation comes well enough at 
the last!" 

But with all this the soul could not find rest. 
And it knew not that itself was a monster. Now 
would it betake itself to the pleasures of the world, 
and now it yearned after God, and did not know 
that this its longing came from God, from Christ, 
who sought to lead it from the world unto Himself. 
Then it resolved to be free from all business cares 
and the hindrances of the world, and betake itself 
to some private solitary place, to perform true 
repentance ; and it thought also to be bountiful and 
pitiful to the poor. But neither in solitude could it 
find rest, but sank down into the deepest misery, 
became sick with apprehension and anxiety, and 
could not find a single consolation. 

Then happened it, by the providence of God, 
that in the solitude an enlightened and regenerate 
soul came to it, and thoroughly acquainted it with 
the fact that it bore the monstrous shape of the 
devil, and that its error was in fancying that it 
could believe without forsaking its own will and 
dying. And when the Unenlightened Soul asked, 
"What, then, am I to do, so that I may attain peace?" 
the Enlightened Soul replied, " Thou shalt do 
absolutely nothing, but thou shalt wholly forsake 
thine own will ; and then, thereby, all thine evil 
propensities will grow weak and faint, and ready 



REGENERATION. 297 

to die, and thou wilt sink down again into that one 
thing from which thou art sprung originally. For 
now thou liest captive in the creatures, and if thy 
will forsaketh them, the creatures, with their evil 
inclinations, will die in thee, which, for the present, 
stay and hinder thee that thou canst not come to 
God. We must not allow ourselves to be held 
captive by the creatures, whereby we are unable 
to follow Christ. For this reason also we must 
forgive our enemies, for, so long as we hate men, 
we are held captive in hostile creatures, and our 
will is not free." 

And when now the soul began to practise this 
course with much earnestness, when it wholly ab- 
sorbed itself in Christ's Suffering and Death, in 
deep repentance and off-dying, yet it did not all 
at once come to peace ; but at last God let His 
face shine upon it, and it was enabled to pray and 
to rejoice exceedingly, because it was released from 
Death and Hell. And although it fell subsequently 
into great contempt, and was assaulted by the shame 
and reproach of the world, and although the devil 
tempted it, and said, " It is only an imagination 
that thou hast partaken of the grace of God ; it 
is not of God ! " nevertheless, the soul, without 
letting itself be captured by the creatures, went 
its way through inward and outward tribulation, 
through joy and anxiety; and the Lord Jesus Christ 
went with it, until at last it entered into the great 
Kingdom of Grace. 

We see that Bohme has sought to indicate, in 
this simple sketch, the difference between a spurious 
and a real conversion, between an outward appro- 



298 THE LAST THINGS. 

priation of the Righteousness of Christ and that 
faith in the atonement of Christ which is inseparable 
from a thorough resolution to forsake sin, and to 
enter upon the new life. 

XCII. 

THE LAST THINGS. 

As we now proceed to notice Bohme's doctrine of 
the Last Things, we cannot refrain from wishing 
that he had, on this subject also, supplied a corrective 
to the church theology of his day ; for he does not 
essentially pass beyond the old Lutheran dogmatic, 
the eschatology of which has well-known defects ; 
still, his detailed development of the subject has its 
own peculiar character, and leads us back to the 
depths of his fundamental view. 

XCIII. 

HEAVEN AND HELL THE UNCHANGEABLE WILL 

AFTER DEATH. 

WHITHER does the soul go when it is separated 
from the body ? He who rightly understands the 
three Principles has no need to ask this question. 
In this life man can stand in three principles. The 
first principle, the dark Fire-principle, is eternal, 
because it has its root in the eternal centrum natures, 
in the Wrath of God. The second principle, the 
Light-principle, is also eternal, because it has its 
root in the eternal Love of God. The third prin- 
ciple, this external world, is temporal ; and when the 
body, which attaches us to this external world, is 



HEA VEN AND HELL. 299 

broken asunder and becomes a corpse, the soul must 
stand in one of the two eternal principles, in Heaven 
or Hell. 

Here, during this present life, the soul has still a 
choice, and can let itself be born again. Here it 
can still change its will ; but after the death of the 
body it has no longer anything in which it can 
change its will. Here it can break its images in 
pieces, and set its will upon another ; but after 
death this is no longer possible. For it must then 
retain what it has taken along with it in its desire 
and imagination. That wherein it has developed its 
will during this life, that does it retain, nor can it 
be released therefrom. It has entered into the still 
Eternity ; it dwells in a " Magia" and gains a 
simultaneous view of its whole life and of all its 
deeds, not indeed in reality, but in their figures or 
images in the magic mirroring. The quality which 
was strongest in the soul during this life grows even 
stronger yonder. This is a great consolation to 
believers ; for if thou here dost struggle earnestly 
against thine evil habits and subdue them, thou hast 
still to lament and sigh that thou canst not always 
accomplish what thou willingly wouldst ; so thou art 
to know that much that here was only smoking flax 
becomes a mighty flame yonder, when this corruptible 
body is laid aside with its evil vapours. 

But, in the ungodly, the evil quality which was 
strongest here becomes even stronger yonder. Anti- 
christian Souls do not ask for the Gate of Christ, 
but only sink deeper in their false opinions. They 
wrap themselves up in these, and again unwrap 
themselves, because they have nothing to hold fast by. 



300 HE A VEN AND HELL. 

The ungodly grow into the shape of their ruling 
passion {e.g. : a hound-temper, a serpent-temper, 
and so forth). 

The ungodly have no light, neither the light of 
this world nor the light of God. Their own ever- 
mounting fire is their light. God is with them only 
according to His wrath, with terrible lightning. 

All their sins stand before them, and produce in 
their essences remorse, eternal despair, and a hostile 
will against God. For such a soul there is no 
remedy. It cannot come into the light of God, can- 
not come into Heaven. And even if St. Peter had 
left many thousand keys upon earth, not a single 
one of them could open Heaven for it. For the soul 
is separated from the Bond of Christ, and there is a 
whole birth between it and God, as it is said of the 
rich man in the Gospel, " There is a great gulf 
fixed : so that they which would pass from hence to 
you, cannot ; neither can they pass to us that would 
come from thence" (Luke xvi. 26). Such a soul 
after death is like one who lies and dreams that 
he is in great agony and dread, and everywhere seeks 
help, yet no help can find. Finally, it despairs 
and surrenders itself altogether to the devil. Then 
it reverts to the three first natural properties, and is 
as if in a dark torture-chamber. It is in continual 
apprehension of the final judgment of God, " like an 
imprisoned malefactor who continually listens when 
anything stirs, as if the executioner should come 
and execute judgment." Those souls, on the contrary, 
that have died in the Lord, are in blessed rest, in ever- 
increasing gladness and refreshment, and in delight- 
ful expectation of the future. Their works do follow 



HEA VEN AND HELL. 301 

them in a figure and shadow ; and although they 
also have sinful deeds, yet these are forgiven them, 
and are blotted out by the atonement of Christ ; and 
they realize that there is greater joy in Heaven over 
one sinner that repenteth than over ninety-and-nine 
just persons who need no repentance. Such a godly 
soul, fallen asleep in the Lord, is like one who lies 
in sweet slumber, surrounded by heavenly images, 
and rests peacefully. It is in the bosom of the 
Virgin ; and from the Virgin the splendour of the 
Holy Trinity shines forth into it. Its lily grows 
green, and blossoms in expectation of the Resurrec- 
tion. 

XCIV. 

The matter, consequently, rests thus : After death, 
when we have done with this outward world, when 
our saeculum and our constellation, the time allotted 
to us, our hour-glass, has run out, we stand in one 
of the two eternal principles. Not that we are to 
suppose that there is need of any long journey when 
we part company with this world. " For far-off and 
near is all one and the same thing with God. And 
at that place where the body dies, there is Heaven 
and Hell. God and the devil are there, yet each of 
them in his own kingdom. When the body comes 
to be broken, then the holy soul is already in Heaven, 
the damned soul in Hell. It needs no going out or 
in " (" The Three Principles," xix., 62-67). Even 
here upon earth, believers roam in Heaven ; but their 
eyes are held by this flesh, and they do not see the 
heavenly, but, as if with blindfolded eyes, they hold 
fast in faith by what they do not see. And here 



302 HEA VEN AND HELL. 

already do the ungodly walk in Hell, although they 
do not see it ; for their eyes are holden and blinded 
by the distractions of this world and the many things 
in which they take delight. 

There are, however, souls that have only attained 
a half-regeneration, whose faith is mixed with doubt, 
or whose faith is like tinder which has been unable 
to be kindled, because of the damp and moisture 
which comes from sin and the world, from worldly 
affairs and distractions, so that it has never been 
properly lighted. 

Some of these come at last to repentance, and in 
their anxious apprehension they hang by a thread, 
and seek to lay hold of the Kingdom of Heaven. 
These stand neither in Hell nor in Heaven. They 
stand in the Gate, where Fire and Light sever them- 
selves, and are held by their Turba, that always seeks 
the fire. For such souls, clinging to Christ by a 
feeble thread, Heaven may finally be opened. But 
what it is thus to stand at the Gate^and in a Turba, 
I leave it to him to try who wilfully persists in 
sin until his end, and then first desires to be saved. 
What such souls must undergo, how they are held 
and tormented, tempted and afflicted, and how woe- 
fully they groan, is utterly indescribable. The world 
does not believe it ; it is far too clever, and under- 
stands nothing. Would God that no one experienced 
this ; I would willingly keep silent about it ! * 

We have here attempted to give a very high 
abstract of Bohme's doctrine of the Intermediate 
State. We will now submit the doctrine to criticism, 
and inquire how far we can accept it. 

* " Answers to XL Questions on the Soul," c, xxiv. 



THE REGIONS BEYOND. 303 



XCV. 

THE MAGICAL CONDITION AFTER DEATH. THE 

REGIONS BEYOND. 

If we first take a general view of the physical 
aspect of the subject the doctrine of Bohme con- 
cerning the form of existence in which souls abide 
after death one must certainly agree with his de- 
scription of the state after death as a state of Inward- 
ness and of the kingdom beyond as a Kingdom 
of Inwardness, in which there is not this outward 
corporeity, in which, indeed, there is no real cor- 
poreity, inasmuch as this does not make its appear- 
ance until the Resurrection and final Consummation. 
But in so far as it may be urged, however, that an 
absolute non-corporeity is unthinkable, because spirit 
and nature, the inward and the outward, cannot be 
entirely separated, Bohme teaches, in many places, 
that there is an inward and finer corporeity imper- 
ceptible to our senses, a corporeity which we do 
not acquire beyond, but take with us from this 
world. He teaches, in fact, with Paracelsus, that 
behind our material body, which he calls the 
elemental, because it is taken from the four elements, 
there is a finer body imperceptible to sense, which 
he calls the sidereal ; and, indeed, that behind this 
sidereal body, which we retain for only a brief period 
after death, there is a Light-body, which the pious 
and blessed develop into greater perfection as their 
heavenly attire. We will not venture to plunge 
farther into these surmises, because they lead us into 
obscure subtleties. We simply maintain the unavoid- 
able necessity of agreement with Bohme on this 



304 THE REGIONS BEYOND. 

point, that the soul may exist hereafter in a certain 
intermediate corporeity, a figure of corporeity, as 
he often terms it or, as modern students have 
called it, a symbolical body, which can only make 
itself known by shining and sounding, and which is 
destined to be succeeded by an actual body, when 
the hour of the Resurrection arrives. * 

So also must we agree with the description of the 
form of consciousness which belongs to the departed. 
They are in a " magia" that is, they are self- 
conscious in a condition of relative non-corporeity ; 
they perceive and comprehend, independently of 
a material sense-apparatus, a view which, un- 
doubtedly, stands in diametrical opposition to the 
materialistic view which affirms that there can be no 
other form of consciousness than that which is con- 
ditioned by these physical organs, this brain-con- 
sciousness, and the therewith-associated, discursive, 
fragmentary, and lacunated knowledge with which 
we must be contented upon earth. 

As a symbol of this " magical " consciousness, 
Bohme refers us to the Dream. He teaches that 
blessed souls rest in sweet slumber, encircled by 
blessed images, and that the ungodly are in anxious 
and disturbed dreams, seeking help, but unable to 
find it. We are here reminded of Hamlet's words in 
the famous monologue : 

" To die, to sleep, 
To sleep : perchance to dream : ay ! there's the rub ! 
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come, 
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, 
Must give us pause." 

* J. B. Fichte, "Anthropologic" 



THE REGIONS BEYOND. 305 

Both Bohme and Shakspeare have, with profound 
divination, alluded to the Dream, this natural con- 
trast to our day-consciousness, as a symbol of the 
form of consciousness that awaits us after death. 
In dreams we are relatively independent of the 
material senses. In a wider sense, we may give the 
name of Dream to every state in which perspicuous 
images rise before us with the stamp of reality, with- 
out the co-operation of the material sense-apparatus, 
and in which, instead of sense-perception, another 
faculty is prominent, viz.: the faculty of imagination. 
It matters not how many empty, meaningless, and 
confused dreams may now occur ; no one will 
deny the possibility of visions that are fashioned by 
objective, plastically-working imagination. 

This view, moreover, is corroborated by Holy 
Scripture, in so far as Scripture alludes to the night 
and to sleep. Scripture refers us to night ; when it 
speaks of things beyond, as to a quiet midnight 
hour, moonlight, or starlight, or lighted by a 
faintly-glowing midnight sun, it does not tell us. 
The Lord speaks only of a night when no man can 
work. And this means work in an outward direc- 
tion ; for the fundamental character of the night is 
that of inwardness. In Scripture, moreover, the 
dead are called " those that are asleep " ( 1 Thess. 
iv. 1 3). Seeing, then, that this state of sleep is a 
sleep accompanied by consciousness, we cannot but 
be led to the dream, as the form of consciousness, 
which includes the religious and ethical content of 
Eternity. The dream, however, is but an imper- 
fect symbol of the future. The future is not a 
one-sided dream, such as we are acquainted with, and 

20 



306 THE REGIONS BEYOND. 

which stands in contrast to the awakened under- 
standing. On the contrary, the future dream is 
characterized by the most alert wakefulness. We 
can here only recall the Gospel narrative of Dives 
and Lazarus. Each of the conspicuous personages, 
the rich man, Lazarus, and Abraham, we must con- 
ceive of as in a relative non-corporeity ; and yet we 
must suppose them to be most intensively conscious, 
inasmuch as everything stands out in bodily shape, 
in lifelike distinctness, which is precisely the defini- 
tion of the " magical." In the rich man, desire and 
imagination display themselves as the source of his 
torment. Instead of speaking of the state of the 
departed as a dream-state, it would be more correct 
to speak of it as a " magical " state. The departed 
are in a " magia," even although we must admit that 
our conception of this state can be only imperfect 
and approximate. 

XCVI. 

As a symbol of the " magical " condition after death, 
modern inquirers have pointed to the dream which 
takes place in the Mesmeric sleep, to the so-called 
clairvoyant and ecstatic states, in which the soul is, 
as it were, rapt from the body. Although there is 
no slight dissimilarity between these states, it is, 
nevertheless, true of the highest clairvoyance, that 
the soul lives an inward life, and that everything in 
these clairvoyants betokens the most inward and 
intense consciousness. The limitations of time and 
space are here abolished in the most unusual and 
extraordinary manner. So far are these clairvoyants 



THE REGIONS BEYOND. 307 

from losing their memory, that a more distant past 
is illuminated for them, and a not-immediate future 
is unrolled before them. Moreover, the contrast 
between near and far is extraordinarily abolished 
for them. It is as though their whole being were 
concentrated into a single focus, in which past, 
present, future, near and remote are blended. In 
this condition, their attitude towards the external 
world is, in the strictest sense, like that of the dead. 
Although, at the outset, before they fall into this 
state, they are sensitive to the most delicate sounds, 
and even to distant tones inaudible to others, they 
cannot now be aroused by the rumbling of wagons 
or the thunder of artillery. Nor can any human 
voice reach them, except that of the person with 
whom they are en rapport* 

We are compelled to postulate in them an inward 
sense, a sensorium which must be supposed to exist 
in us all, although in a fettered condition, and not 
destined to be liberated and to gain power until 
death, on which account these clairvoyants are 
described as anticipations of the state after death. 
Thus, for instance, by Franz Baader and Schelling. 
Of the condition itself after death, it is said, in 
Schelling's " Clara," that the blessed are " in a 
sleeping wakefulness and a wakeful slumber." In 
their very slumber, the departed are attracted into 
a wakeful state, in comparison with which this our 
earthly consciousness is but as a sleep and a vague 
dream. And while our earthly life is in a continual 



* Schelling's Werke, i., 9, 67 ; Passavant, " Uber Lebens- 
magnetismus;" Haddock, "Somnolismus and Psycheisraus." 



#>8 THE REGIONS BEYOND. 

change between day and night, the externality of 
the day and the inwardness of the night, it is only 
the saved who are received yonder into " a night- 
like day and a day-like night." Is this the reason, 
asks Clara, why the moonlight so sweetly touches 
our heart with its tremulousness, and fills us with 
surmises of the nearness of the spirit-world ? 

When magnetic and mesmeric states are desig- 
nated as anticipations of the future condition, it is not 
superfluous to observe that these states, viewed in 
and for themselves, ought by no means to be over- 
valued. For the very reason that an organ, the 
proper function of which lies only in the world 
beyond, becomes active here, these states are not 
only extraordinary, but abnormal. Stress, moreover, 
must be laid upon the fact that in the magnetic 
conditions with which we are acquainted, the 
essential contents of Eternity are absent. The 
clairvoyant looks only into the present world. When 
anything of an ethical and religious character occurs 
in magnetic states, it is very frequently turbid, con- 
fused, and uncertain. The resemblance is thus only 
formal ; it applies simply to the form of conscious- 
ness. It is a resemblance which has at the same 
time its obvious limitations. 

XCVII. 

We are certainly very far from being able to com- 
prehend the " magical " conditions ; nor ought we to 
expect to be able, by any kind of mental effort here 
upon earth, to gain any adequate knowledge of the 
Life Beyond. Nevertheless, we must maintain, in 



THE REGIONS BEYOND. 309 

accordance with what reflection and Scripture teach 
us with regard to those regions, that the material 
relations of Time and Space are abolished, even 
although these may be conceived in various degrees 
and stages. For those who have exchanged time for 
eternity, the successive, the incessant sequence, the 
constant severance and separation, the lacunated, 
tardy, and protracted, the intolerable delays and 
restraints, which are the cardinal features of our 
development in time, must be replaced by circu- 
larity and simultaneity, where everything exists all 
at once, whole and complete. Those beyond live in 
a derivative eternity, be it blessed or unblessed. 
But although the form of Eternity is paramount, 
there is still time. For the intermediate state is a 
period of expectation, during which all souls await 
the last and final Judgment with the Resurrection of 
the Body, a state in which the " magical " is to 
become the most perfect reality. 

XCVIII. 

And the same thing applies to the relation to 
space. Even now, when we speak of the relation 
between this world and the world beyond, the 
relation beween earth and heaven, material space- 
limitations must be abolished, and we are compelled 
to admit objectively magical relations. The higher 
heavenly regions must be presupposed as encircling 
and penetrating the lower, in a supermaterial 
manner. Nor can one avoid agreeing with Bohme 
when he says that the distance between heaven and 
earth cannot be defined by miles or by any kind of 



310 THE REGIONS BEYOND. 

earthly standard of measurement, and that we are 
not to suppose that we need to take a long journey 
when we go hence, because everything is near us. 
This abrogation of space-relations is also shown in 
those to whom it has been granted, according to 
Scripture, to gaze into heaven even during their 
residence upon earth. They were in a " magia " ; 
and, although they were still in the body, they were 
rapt away from the body. 

In order to gaze into heaven, they did not need 
to change their place, to surmount opposing barriers, 
or to traverse intervening distances. 

Thus Stephen, who in his dying hour saw the 
heavens opened and the Son of Man at the right 
hand of God, did not need to gaze through vast 
expanses of sky ; but what he saw, he saw immedi- 
ately at hand. 

Thus Paul, who was caught up to the third 
heaven, did not know whether he was in the body 
or out of the body ; but he did not require, in any 
material sense, to change his place. 

The disciples stood and gazed into Heaven when 
Christ was taken up, and the cloud had hidden Him 
from their eyes. But the essential veil which pre- 
vented them from seeing Him was their own flesh, 
this material body. If this veil could have fallen 
aside, or if its limiting, oppressive, and darkening 
power had been only momentarily suspended, as 
in the case of Stephen and Paul they would have 
been enabled to gaze into Heaven. 

A passage in the Old Testament, which shows 
that the heavenly is not separated from us by 
material distances, is 2 Kings vi. 15, where it is 



THE REGIONS BEYOND. 311 

narrated that the prophet Elisha sent his servant out 
of the city, and that this servant, when he beheld the 
city, compassed by a host with horses and chariots, 
was afraid, and said, " Alas ! my master, how shall 
we do ? " Then said the prophet, " Fear not : for 
they that be with us are more than they that be with 
them ! " and Elisha prayed and said, " Lord ! I pray 
Thee, open his eyes, that he may see ! " And behold, 
the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire 
round about Elisha ! 

This passage shows that heavenly forces and 
powers may be quite close to us, but that our eyes 
are holden. 

XCIX. 

BUT if it applies to the relation between earth and 
Heaven, so no less does it apply to Heaven itself, 
that material space-relations have no validity there. 
On this subject we will limit ourselves to the con- 
sideration of Heaven, because it is the perfect and 
normal, and is far more accessible to our thought 
than Hell. It is to Heaven that those words of 
Bohme, " Far off and near is all one and the same 
thing with God ! " have their closest application. 
As we must imagine existence in Heaven to be 
absolutely free from time, seeing that, as Master 
Eckart says of eternity, " everything stands in a 
present now" so we must also say that everything 
in Heaven stands in an immediate here. In Heaven 
this is perfectly true : " quod petis, hie est ! " The 
separation between near and far, under which we so 
often sigh, is abolished ; all that belongs to the 
consummation and fulness of life must be conceived 



312 THE REGIONS BEYOND. 

as being together. Separation, impenetrability, in- 
superable distances cannot be imagined in Heaven ; 
for although the existences are outside one another 
and beside one another, they are no less in one 
another. An analogy to this is found in the healthy 
organism, where indeed the members are outside 
one another, and yet are not in abstract separation, 
but are also in one another, as is plainly evidenced 
by the fact that when one member suffers, the whole 
body suffers. 

Nevertheless, however true this may be, when we 
speak of Heaven in general terms as the perfect 
place, Scripture compels us to recognize in Heaven 
itself a contrast between near and far, here and 
yonder. For Scripture teaches us of many heavens, 
and, consequently, of higher and lower regions in 
Heaven itself. 

And here we must complain, as an essential defect 
in Bohme, that he construes Heaven only in general 
terms, without noticing the contrasts and varieties 
which Heaven includes, or heeding the glimpses and 
suggestions afforded by Scripture on this subject. 
We shall see very shortly that this defect in the 
physical is accompanied by a remarkably significant 
defect in the ethical. Here, however, we will simply 
lay stress on the fact that Paul speaks of the third 
heaven to which he was caught up ; and that it is 
said of Christ, our High Priest, that He has passed 
through the heavens into Heaven itself, which can 
be interpreted only as the highest, the Uncreated 
Heaven ; and that, in the Lord's Prayer, we pray 
not merely to our Father in Heaven, but to our 
Father in the Heavens. 



THE REGIONS BEYOND. 3:3 

It is true that we are not now to attempt to 
frame a topography and, as it were, to design a map 
of the regions beyond, as some have attempted to 
do, whose efforts may be easily shown to be fruitless, 
and may indeed easily provoke our ridicule. But 
just as it is wrong to desire to know more than can 
be known on these subjects, so it is no less blame- 
worthy to desire to know less than, on the basis of 
revelation, can and must be known. We are, there- 
fore, not to slight the intimations that are afforded 
us by revelation, even though our comprehension of 
them may be but fragmentary, and even though 
these very intimations should compel us to modify 
our preconceived views. Thus, we are not to reject 
the suggestion which Scripture gives us with regard 
to what has been called the " Configuration of the 
Universe," the World-Edifice, the situation and rela- 
tion of the circles of creation, which remains so 
incomplete in Bohme, notwithstanding the great and 
solid foundation which he has laid. 

Scripture refers us to the tabernacle in Israel, 
which Moses made " according to the pattern which 
the Lord showed him on the mount," and in which 
we, in common with more ancient teachers, discern 
a symbol of the whole creation in its relation to 
God. In the tabernacle was the Holy of Holies, 
with the perfect presence of the grace of God ; next, 
the Holy Place ; and finally, the Fore-Court. To the 
Fore-Court then corresponds this earth, with its 
encircling, visible, starry heaven. To the Holy Place 
correspond the created, but to us invisible Heavens, 
which form a habitation for the blessed Spirit-world, 
holy angels and men, who, in harmony with their 



314 THE REGIONS BEYOND. 

nature, and in relation to their communicated perfec- 
tion, gaze adoringly into the Holy of Holies, where 
is the throne of God, the central seat of His self- 
concentrated glory, the innermost centre of that 
Glory itself. And, according to the intimations of 
Scripture, there are also created spirits who are 
allowed to dwell in the Uncreated Heaven. 

We add that, outside of the Heavens, Scripture 
speaks not only of hell, but also of Hades, which it 
places under the earth {KarayOovLoC) ; and from 
this also we must exclude material space-determina- 
tions, and must, consequently, conceive of it as a 
non-material cosmical "Below." And the fact must 
be emphasized that, according to Scripture, there is 
in Hades also a Paradise, which, in a certain sense, 
may be ranked as heaven. It is this which is also 
called " Abraham's bosom " ; this which the Lord 
promised to the penitent thief, and to which He 
Himself descended, according to His words : " This 
day shalt thou be with Me in Paradise." Many 
ancient church teachers hold that Christians who 
are saved must first enter this Paradise, in order 
that they may traverse absolutely the same path 
which the Lord Himself has trodden. 

Thus, there are both lower and higher regions ; 
and a distinction between near and far, here and 
tJiere will be valid even in these regions. For the 
inhabitants of the lower heavens, there must thus be 
an appointed limit, a " thus far ! " in relation to the 
higher and the highest Heaven. We can but 
suppose that this limitation depends upon the degree 
of their own spiritual perfection. By this their 
dominion over near and far is conditioned. Their 



THE FUTURE WORLD. 315 

Jiere and yonder is defined in accordance with the 
limitation of their spiritual attainment, in accordance 
with what they still lack. It is only thus that we 
are capable of understanding our Lord's words with 
regard to the " Father's House, and the many man- 
sions." 

But on this whole subject of the Created Heavens, 
the many mansions, and the intermediate regions, 
Bohme gives us nothing, or tantamount to nothing. 
He is aware of only two regions beyond : Heaven 
and Hell ; and this is in entire correspondence with 
his doctrine that, after death, there are only two 
states, Salvation and Damnation. This latter doc- 
trine, again, harmonizes with his assertion that, after 
death, the soul can no longer change its will. This 
assertion must be examined more closely, for it leads 
us back to a highly important article of our Christian 
Faith, to which Bohme has not done justice. 

C. 

DOES IT APPLY TO ALL SOULS AFTER DEATH THAT 
THEY CANNOT CHANGE THEIR WILL ? THE 
MULTIPLICITY OF THE FUTURE WORLD. 

BOHME bases his doctrine that the soul cannot 
change its will after death upon the argument that, 
after death, it has nothing in which it can change its 
will. Everyone is there entangled in the spiritual 
contents, the imaginations that he brings with him 
from this lower world ; and he can only roll and 
unroll these among themselves. Bohme thus seems 
to assert that no new problem can be presented to 
the soul in the world beyond, that after the lay- 



3i6 THE FUTURE WORLD. 

ing aside of the body it can acquire no new material 
for its energy, and that it must, therefore, continue 
in its then existent state. 

But it appears that weighty objections can be 
urged against this view. However true it may be 
that the soul takes with it its will-contents from this 
lower world, and that this fact must decide its im- 
mediate destiny, how does he know that the world 
and the scenes that surround the soul may not set 
it new tasks, inasmuch as time is not, in every 
sense, excluded ; and on this account something of 
the third principle may still be active in the world 
above ? How does he know that, in that higher 
world, there may not be new manifestations of the 
Divine Will, with regard to which the soul may have 
to determine itself ? And how does he know but 
that fresh problems may arise out of the native 
depths of the soul itself ? The spiritual contents 
we bear within us are far richer than those which 
are absorbed by this lower world ; and the distinc- 
tion between the day-side and the night-side of the 
soul is very correctly drawn. Why, then, is it inad- 
missible that there should be that in this nocturnal 
depth which in the world above will burst into clear 
consciousness, with new and unsuspected problems, 
which most certainly must be viewed in connection 
with the state of consciousness in which the soul 
then finds itself ? 

Meanwhile, we need not sustain ourselves by our 
own conjectures and arguments ; we may decide 
the matter by an authority which is unimpeachable 
by Christians, viz., the article of Christ's descent 
into the regions of the dead. If the Gospel is 



THE FUTURE WORLD. 317 

preached to the dead, who had been unable to hear 
it as an effectual call, and if there are those who 
received the joyful message beyond the grave, there 
must be souls there who have changed their wills, 
have been converted, and have become believers after 
death. And since the energies that issue forth from 
Christ in the kingdom of the dead cannot be con- 
ceived as simply momentary and limited to a single 
group of those who were unable to know the Gospel 
upon earth, the possibility stands open that many 
souls may change their will after death. Although 
Bohme confesses the descent of Christ, according to 
the Apostles' Creed, he has absolutely no compre- 
hension of this article, a defect which he shares 
with the general dogmatic of his period. 

The old orthodox view in the Lutheran Church 
ascribes to the descent of Christ a judicial, but no 
redemptive significance. He descended in order to 
vanquish the devil, and to shatter the power and 
kingdom of the devil (Hase, " Libri Symb. F. C," 
788). Bohme rejects this doctrine without suggest- 
ing an alternative. He calls it erroneous to suppose 
that the Soul of Christ, apart from the body, 
descended into Hell ; and that He there, in His 
Divine strength, sustained a conflict with devils, 
bound them in chains, and thus shattered Hell. He 
teaches, on the contrary, that, at the moment when 
Christ laid aside the kingdom of this world, His 
Soul penetrated into death and the wrath of God, 
and wrath now became reconciled in love. Thus, 
then, the devils were held captive in the wrath in 
themselves, together with all wicked souls, and 
death was destroyed, and life sprang up through 



318 THE FUTURE WORLD. 

death. Here there is really no Descent ; but 
Christ's victory over the devil and hell takes place 
at once upon the Cross. 

The profound eschatological meaning of the 
Descent is wholly hidden from Bdhme, and his 
doctrine of the Intermediate State could not fail to 
be unsatisfactory, because it lacked this important 
foundation. From this indistinctness spring also 
many strange and baseless utterances on the subject 
of the salvation of heathens, Turks, and Jews. 
Bbhme says in many places that heathens, Turks, 
and Jews can be saved, even although they have 
not known the Christ who has come in the flesh, 
provided they have only stood in the otlier principle, 
in the Light-principle, and have sought God with 
earnestness. God, then, considers them as children, 
who know not what they say. It does not depend 
on knowledge, but on the will. 

We would not depreciate the deep human feeling 
that expresses itself in these utterances. But, from 
an eschatological standpoint, they are altogether 
inadequate. If it be sufficient for salvation to stand 
in the Light-principle (in the non-incarnated Logos), 
the question arises : Why is the Incarnation neces- 
sary ? a necessity which Bohme, in accordance with 
his fundamental view, . most vigorously maintains. 
The difficulty is removed only by the Article which 
he did not understand, and which both asserts that 
no man cometh to the Father except by the Son, 
Christ come in the flesh, and also embraces Jews, 
Turks, heathen, embraces all men who have lived 
here upon earth in innocent ignorance of the way 
of salvation. 



THE FUTURE WORLD. 319 



CI. 

Bohme's one-sidedness upon this article has found 
its corrective within Theosophy itself in Oetinger. 
Oetinger apprehends the Descent of Christ not only 
in its judicial, but in its redemptive aspect, teaches 
that Christ has conquered the devil and death, and 
brought all to its consummation, that He has 
revealed Himself in the invisible Kingdom as the 
Vanquisher of the devil, and has preached the 
gospel and life to the captives. 

Oetinger often refers to the three first centuries, 
when Church teachers held the correct view. Upon 
this presupposition he founds his Scriptural Medita- 
tions on the subject of the Intermediate State, in 
which he is also influenced by Swedenborg, the 
Northern seer, who alternately attracts and repels 
him, and in whom he is resolute to accept only 
that which is good and consonant with Scripture. 
He thus succeeds in formulating a doctrine which 
furnishes a counterpart to Bohme's, viz. : the doctrine 
of an infinite multiplicity and variety of states 
after death, although the contrast between believers 
and unbelievers, saved and unsaved, remains the 
fundamental contrast. 

He agrees with Bohme in the view that souls 
take with them from this world the plastic image 
and form-fashioning imagination, and that unbe- 
lievers and the ungodly suffer from appalling penal 
fantasies, generated by themselves. The souls are 
certainly outside the body. But all the organs of 
the body, the ears, the eyes, the tongue, etc., have 
bequeathed their form to the souls, which, conse- 



3 2o THE FUTURE WORLD. 

quently, are surrounded by things that belong to 
these physical organs. Colours, words, sounds, fire, 
and other physical forms are round about them. 
They behold mountains and hills before them, 
forests and fields around them, after the pattern of 
those that they were acquainted with in this world. 
In short, they take with them the form of their 
previous condition, precisely as they have surrendered 
themselves to this with their whole appetite, or, as 
Bohme would say, with their imagination and desire. 
But, in contrast to the orthodox monotony, 
Oetinger teaches that there exist, after death, 
innumerable varieties of souls, conditions, abodes, 
and shapes, torments and horrors, countless varieties 
in fancy and imagination, in understanding and con- 
ceptions, and that there are many kinds of Schools 
after death. This view of schools after death 
Bohme utterly rejects. Oetinger, on the contrary, 
preached a sermon on the sorrowful school of the 
ungodly, and the joyous school of believers after 
death. The idea of a school suggests not simply 
better instruction, but, above all, the purification and 
amelioration of the Will. 

On the subject of the possibility cf Repentance 
after death, Oetinger teaches : There are amongst 
the dead those who have never heard the Gospel ; 
next, such as have heard it, but became indifferent 
and never formed a decision ; but there are also 
others who in every possible way disregarded the 
call of the Gospel, and rejected it with contumely. 
For the two former classes, there is a possibility of 
forgiveness and salvation in the world beyond, but 
the last must endure their punishment, and must 



THE FUTURE WORLD. 321 

pay the uttermost farthing. Moreover, the first also, 
the indifferent classes, must bear the judgment of 
which Jesus speaks (John iii. 19) for a considerable 
period after their death. 

With regard to the ungodly, Oetinger teaches 
that their soul is a " Wheel of Birth " which has 
been set on fire, or, in other words, it is a Worm 
that dieth not. That the Soul is called a Worm 
implies that it is nothing but an indescribably 
restless self-torturing energy (Bohme's third natural 
property, or desire), which burns like a fire, and yet 
is never reduced to ashes. But this restless self- 
torturing energy of the soul receives countless 
modifications, according to the sins and vices of men 
during this life. 

Concerning the saved, who take with them what 
God has here bestowed upon them, the grace-gift of 
eternal life {irapaO-qKiq^ 2 Tim. i. 12), he teaches 
that they advance from class to class, from grade to 
grade, from Abraham's bosom, or the lower Para- 
dise, to the higher heavenly region. After death 
we shall most certainly not at once be at home 
with the Lord, but there are many degrees of 
progress. Jesus guides us from station to station 
with His shepherd's staff. Oetinger agrees with 
Swedenborg that one does not come into the arms 
of Jesus immediately after death, but that one is first 
grasped by His mighty Hand. He censures the 
clergy, because in their sermons they cut off all 
development and progress in the Intermediate State, 
and thus make this into a wilderness ; and he 
thinks it perilous for the clergy to beguile the 
common people with the error, that they are to enter 

21 



322 THE FUTURE WORLD. 

into complete salvation immediately after death, 
and that they are at once to embrace Jesus, whereas 
they ought to remember that the Lord Himself, who 
has left us an example, ascended from the lowest to 
the highest. The clergy are indisposed to form a 
proper conception of the state after death, and 
most of them are silent on the subject, because one 
exposes oneself to odium by stating any other 
doctrine of the Future State than the one commonly 
received. 

But the currently-accepted doctrine is that, 
immediately after death, one passes either into 
Heaven or into Hell, without successive transitions. 
It should, however, be observed that those who 
came next to the Apostles, Irenaeus, Tertullian, 
Cyprian, Chrysostom, etc., hold quite another view ; 
for they all teach the doctrine of gradual transitions. 

It must be added that, although Oetinger teaches 
a general Resurrection in a transfigured corporeity at 
the end of the world, he, nevertheless, supposes that 
there are some souls which attain the Resurrection 
of the body prior to the general Resurrection, and, 
at the same time, attain perfection, because they are 
ripe for it, souls which may be compared to fruit 
which the gardener is able to pluck from the tree 
before the harvest, before the time of the general 
ripening. 

This first resurrection goes on throughout the 
centuries, and there are, even now before the time, 
many souls that are made perfect. 

Whether this idea can be reconciled with Apo- 
calypse xx. 5, we simply suggest for closer con- 
sideration. 



THE FUTURE WORLD. 323 

CII. 

As a special argument in favour of his doctrine of 
the great diversity of souls and of spiritual states 
after death, Oetinger adduces the many spiritual 
manifestations from the other world which were 
accepted in his time as well-authenticated, and in 
which he sees a sign and testimony against the 
negligent silence of the clergy with respect to the 
Intermediate State, on which account he very fre- 
quently alludes to such manifestations in his sermons. 
He leads us here into a domain into which we 
are also led by Swedenborg, and, after Oetinger's 
time, no less by Jung-Stilling's well-known treatise, 
" Theorie der Geisterkunde," as well as by the book 
that caused so much excitement in its day, " Die 
Seherin von Prevorst," and also by the so-called 
spiritualism of our own period. For our own part, 
we are not disposed to resort to these arguments. 
But, seeing that Bohme also accepts manifestations 
and phenomena of spirits that move about houses or 
show themselves in churchyards, although Bohme 
does not deduce from these what Oetinger deduces, 
we will, as it were, in the form of an appendix, 
examine the hypothetical meaning that can be 
ascribed to this argument in favour of Oetinger's 
doctrine. 

When one speaks of spirit-manifestations from 
the other world, one is usually met by the uncritical 
cry that such things are absolutely impossible ! 
But one must not allow oneself to be overawed by 
this cry. Unless one professes pure materialism, 
and denies the conceptions of spirit and the spirit- 



324 THE FUTURE WORLD. 

world, one cannot deny the possibility that spirit 
may be able to manifest itself to spirit ; nor is it 
possible to perceive what natural laws can prevent 
a purely spiritual " commercium." 

Kant whom no one will describe as a credulous 
or uncritical man expresses himself (within the 
limits of his philosophy) upon this subject in a 
manner that merits great attention. 

He confesses that he knows just as little how a 
man's soul goes out of this world (that means, what 
its condition is after death), as he knows how it 
comes into this world (that means, its precise relation 
to generation and propagation) ; indeed, that he does 
not even know how a man's soul is present in this 
world, that is, how an immaterial nature can be 
active in, and by means of, a body. Then he goes 
on to say : " In consequence of this ignorance, I do 
not presume to deny all truth to the many kinds of 
spirit-manifestations, although with the usual, if 
somewhat remarkable, reservation of challenging 
each single instance, according, nevertheless, some 
credence to spiritual manifestations on the whole." 

This modest, but by no means uncritical standpoint 
is precisely the one which it would become others 
also to accept. 

The hypothetical meaning which belongs to 
Oetinger's argument is thus the following : If the 
facts are correct, and the manifestations in question, 
or even some of them, are adequately substantiated, 
this supplies additional evidence in favour of the 
theory that there are many kinds of spirits in the 
other world, that there are various degrees and 
stages in relation to Light and Darkness a con- 



THE FUTURE WORLD. 325 

tribution to the establishment of the conception of 
non-finality in the Intermediate State. The kinds 
of spirits or souls which manifest themselves upon 
earth after death belong, if one analyses the domi- 
nant impression one receives from what is related of 
them in the above-mentioned books, neither to 
Heaven nor to Hell, neither to the perfect Light nor 
to the perfect Darkness, but to the twilight ; the 
predominant impression that we gain from most of 
the descriptions is that these souls are homeless, 
that they have not succeeded in finding their abode 
in Heaven or in Hell ; that, upon the whole, they 
cannot properly establish themselves in the world 
beyond, where their condition may be compared, 
metaphorically speaking, to that of those who roam 
about in a dark valley from which no exit is dis- 
coverable, or to that of wanderers in a forest where 
they cannot find the right path, but seek it while 
they feel the impossibility of finding it. 

An explanation of the fact that they find them- 
selves again attracted to this earth must be sought 
in the impurity that oppresses them, in the law of 
moral gravitation which drags them back to the 
earth and to earthly concerns, as that in which they 
feel themselves at home, and which is their proper 
element. A striking feature in many of them is that 
they experience a necessity of confessing to earthly 
beings this or that sin or misdeed which particularly 
burdens them, as, for instance, it is related of Czar 
Peter that he manifested himself to Dr. Dippel, and 
self-accusingly bewailed the perennity of his murderous 
crimes. 

Nothing is more preposterous than to suppose 



326 THE FUTURE WORLD. 

that by coming into closer relations with these souls 
one would be able to gain deeper insight into the 
mysteries of the world beyond, and perhaps even to 
apprehend eternal truths, which one cannot already 
know from Revelation. These spirits are incapable 
of divining mysteries, they reveal themselves most 
frequently as beings totally adrift, full of ignorance, 
folly, and error with regard to the means that can 
promote their own amelioration, and they often say 
things that cannot but strike us as ridiculous. If 
any reliance can be placed in the information which 
the spiritualism of our day gives on the subject of 
spirit-manifestations, one can arrive at no other 
conclusion than that these spirits are, as a rule, what 
we are wont to call spiritless, that they are cha- 
racterised by " poverty of spirit " in the worst sense 
of the term. 

If one would draw inferences, one cannot but 
suppose that there are in the other world peripheral 
regions, which form the habitation of a multitude of 
spirits, whose imagination, in so far as it is not 
pre-occupied with sins, is filled only with trivialities, 
finite, temporal, subordinate interests which they 
cannot let go. And, at bottom, this can excite no 
surprise except among those who have established 
themselves in the idea so often found in funeral 
hymns that the spirit of every one who departs 
this life is lifted in ethereal clearness to the blessed 
regions. It is unreasonable to seek the spirit after 
death where it was not before death. But it must 
arouse great astonishment, that there should be those 
who suppose that these spirit-phenomena, with which 
spiritualism makes us acquainted, are to be regarded 



THE CONSUMMATION. 327 

as a consoling substitute for that Christian faith in 
immortality which many have lost. To have the 
prospect of joining such society is a miserable con- 
solation ! 

We have been somewhat minute in our account 
of Oetinger's view, because it contains so important 
a corrective of Bohme's, and betokens a new 
momentum of development in Protestant eschatology, 
which has attained wider expansion only in the 
dogmatic of the present century. Personally, we 
base nothing upon the phenomena in question, but 
let them stand aside altogether. We build only 
and advise others to do the same upon that 
authentic Word of the Lord wherein one cannot go 
wrong : " They have Moses and the prophets : let 
them hear them ! " 

cm. 

THE CONSUMMATION. 

We return from this digression to epitomize Bohme's 
doctrine of the Consummation of all things. Of the 
history and fortunes of the Church in the Last 
Times, Bohme says but little ; he is here far 
surpassed by Oetinger, who is influenced by Bengel's 
meditations on the Apocalypse, and has a keener 
eye for the ways of God throughout the ages. Bohme 
has an eye only for the conclusion. His doctrine 
may thus be briefly summarized. God has from 
eternity moved Himself twice : the first time to the 
creation of the world, which belongs to the Father ; 
the second time to the Incarnation, which belongs 
to the Son ; but, at the end of the world, He will 



328 THE CONSUMMATION. 

move Himself for the third time, in the nature of 
the Holy Ghost, when the Holy Ghost is to reveal 
Himself not only as the Spirit of the Church, but as 
the Creator Spirit with the seven spirits or lamps, 
and then the third principle or this world shall be 
abolished and return into aether, and the dead shall 
arise. After the world has enjoyed a spring-tide 
in the " thousand years' reign," a season of " peace 
upon earth " during which all religious dissensions 
are to cease, and when Christ is to rule over the 
Church like a shepherd over his flock, the Philo- 
sopher's Stone, by which we shall be enabled to 
know all things and to extract from the metals their 
spirit and heart, will be discovered, and the world 
will perish by fire. This fire is not an ordinary 
fire ; it is Fire from the " centrum naturce" which 
sets the world on a blaze from within, and bursts 
forth at every point. 

And now occurs the Last Judgment, the Final 
Crisis, sundering, and separation. The mixture of 
good and evil, love and wrath, which is the funda- 
mental characteristic of the present world, is now to be 
abolished. The twilight is to cease ; everything is to 
be sharply separated into light and darkness. Out 
of this crisis, in which everything that cannot endure 
the ordeal by fire must sink into the darkness, the 
new world arises in unspeakable glory. Heaven and 
earth are united, and believers ascend to perfect 
blessedness. Everything is penetrated and filled 
with the Light of God. 

When Christ is revealed in His majesty, as the 
Judge, the devil and the ungodly are seized with 
indescribable despair ; and, as being eternally con- 



THE CONSUMMATION. 329 

demned, must sink, with their character and with all 
their deeds, into the deepest darkness. But believers 
arise in a transfigured corporeity after the likeness of 
the Risen Christ. They are now no longer as in 
the Intermediate State in a mere " magia," but in 
a spiritual-corporeal reality. Their bodies are 
palpable, and yet spiritual and incorruptible, free 
from time and space, like the Body of Christ, in 
which He passed through closed doors. The risen 
are androgynous ; the earthly relations of sex and 
family endure only in recollection. 

In reality, each one man or woman has in 
himself or herself the perfect combination of masculine 
and feminine. They are now, for the first time, 
perfect human beings, who neither marry nor are 
given in marriage, but are equal to the angels. 
They live under Christ, who has now delivered up 
the Kingdom to the Father, and is no longer our 
Redeemer, but continues to be our Head and 
Brother. The whole of this blessed world now 
abides in perfect and unchangeable " temperature" in 
indissoluble harmony of spirit and nature. And all 
spirits, angels and men, are now the willing instru- 
ments and ministers of God, in complete unison with 
God and each other. 

CIV. 

BOHME's doctrine of the conclusion of the world is 
often met by the objection that his doctrine of 
eternal damnation conflicts with his premises. The 
idea of Redemption certainly suggests that the 
creation, disturbed by sin, is to be restored to 



330 THE CONSUMMATION. 

" temperature." It seems quite natural to expect 
that, at the close of the system, Evil, as evil, must 
be annihilated, must be reduced into a mere possi- 
bility as a ministering basis for the Kingdom of 
God, just as the dark nature-principle in God Him- 
self is only the ministering basis for the manifesta- 
tion of the Light. But, according to Bohme, who 
is here in harmony with Church doctrine, the devil 
and the damned remain out of " temperature," and 
cannot be restored to it. 

However the case may stand with regard to 
scientific consistency, Bohme holds very deliberately 
by his doctrine of the eternity of Hell. Whenever 
the question is presented to him whether Hell must 
not, at some time or other, come to an end, and 
Salvation become universal throughout the whole 
creation, he replies that this is not to be thought of, 
and that it is totally in conflict with the Foundation 
of Hell. If the devil were again to become an angel, 
he must again draw out of God's unity and love ; his 
fire-life, his life of pride must be transformed into 
humility. But this the devil and the devils will not, 
cannot do ; for there is no inclination in them and no 
desire for repentance and humility. Their whole life 
is nothing else than a " Nay ! " against God's "Yea!" 
is nothing else but poison and stench ; and when 
they hear of love and humility, they flee away, for 
love is death to their false life. And what is here 
said of devils applies equally to ungodly, condemned 
men. 

Bohme thus essentially takes his stand upon a 
basis which goes back into the mystery of free-will. 
He maintains that the free-will of the creature can 



THE CONSUMMATION. 331 

attain such a degree of obduracy and darkness 
that a change of the will is no longer possible, be- 
cause freedom of choice is lost, since the divine image 
in these creatures has absolutely paled, and has be- 
come a lifeless, powerless, inoperative " Figure." 
They cannot will anything but evil ; their free-will 
has become an unalterable necessity ; and this self- 
darkened will, in which freedom of choice is irre- 
vocably lost, Bohme regards as the Foundation of Hell, 
just as the Foundation of Heaven is the good will, 
in which Love is a holy necessity. Both to heaven 
and hell there belongs, in the strictest sense, a fixed, 
fortified, and no longer changing Will. It is not 
God who arbitrarily assigns the eternal punishments 
of Hell. The ungodly have themselves unlocked 
Hell, have kindled the fire of Hell within them- 
selves, and must now abide by their choice as irre- 
vocable. They will not be in Heaven : will not 
have fellowship with God and be saved. 

Leibnitz states essentially the same thought in his 
observations on the possibility of an eternal Hell. 
He combats the usual conception that the ungodly 
are placed in Hell by an arbitrary fiat of God 
against their own will, and that they suffer a punish- 
ment which is regarded as too severe by those who 
deny the eternity of Hell, a punishment which the 
ungodly would eagerly flee from were it possible, 
just as a criminal would flee who, against his will, 
has been placed in rigorous, perpetual captivity as 
a punishment for his crimes. 

It must be maintained, on the contrary, that it is 
the ungodly themselves who build the prison, from 
which there is no exit, because they themselves are 



332 THE CONSUMMATION. 

never willing to leave it. When a soul, says Leibnitz, 
dies in a temper of hostility against God, it falls of 
itself, by a kind of voluntariness or spontaneity, into 
the abyss of destruction, just like a weight that has 
torn itself loose, and no longer has any support. It 
will no longer have anything to do with God. It 
desires to be damned. He adds that, according to 
the view of many pious men, the hatred borne by 
the damned towards God is so great, that they 
absolutely will not implore His grace ; and it is 
precisely thus that they adjudge themselves to 
eternal misery, and abide in it. 

As a consequence of Bohme's conception of the 
will of the creature, eternal damnation consists in 
this : that the damned certainly perceive that after 
the last catastrophe (the final Judgment or Crisis) 
it is absolutely hopeless to contend against God, 
but that they are, nevertheless, compelled incessantly 
to contend against Him, even although this is not 
an actual struggle, but a hunger after it, a yearning 
to give themselves a reality which they can never 
attain. They cannot be annihilated, because a spirit 
cannot die. A spirit must incessantly move and 
energize, but, because the damned cannot acquire 
motives for a new movement of the will towards 
humility and love by means of repentance, they 
must continue endlessly to prosecute and repeat 
their false movement of the w'll. 

A question that may be proposed here, and which 
has its significance, even on the assumption that 
Hell has an end, is this : Where is Hell, when the 
new order of nature is established, when all has 
become Heaven, and the Kingdom of Glory has 



THE CONSUMMATION. m 

arrived ? There appears to be no room for it, and 
the quest after a locality seems vain. Bohme does 
not enter more closely into this subject. But we 
may refer to Schelling, who proposed this question 
to himself, and answered it in a manner which is in 
constructive harmony with Bohme's view. Schelling 
affirms that Hell is in the most utterly deep abyss, 
below or under nature, so that Hell is the sub- 
stratum of nature, just as nature is the substratum 
of Heaven, of the world of the blessed spirits. 
According to Schelling, evil no longer exists 
in actual relation to God and the universe ; it 
continues to exist only in itself. It has now 
what it wants absolute isolation, and, conse- 
quently, separation from the general and Divine 
World. It is delivered over to the agonies of its 
own egoism, to the hunger of selfishness. 

CV. 

When Bohme, in order to support his doctrine of 
eternal damnation, points to the mystery of the 
created will and to that self-darkening in which 
freedom of choice is lost, it immediately occurs to us 
to point, in contrast, to the mystery of Divine love, to 
the Fatherly power of God, and to ask whether that 
which is possible for the creature may not be possible 
for God ; whether God is unable to change the will 
of the creature, not, indeed, by physical means, but 
along the path of freedom and educating develop- 
ment, which does not exclude, but includes, the most 
serious and severe punishment and chastisements. 
One naturally asks whether the Divine image, which 



334 THE CONSUMMATION. 

lies in these lost spirits like a lifeless corpse, may 
not once more be recalled to life by these chastise- 
ments and by the influences of Divine grace, and 
freedom of choice be restored to them, so that they 
may rediscover the motives of humility and love. 

A human teacher, it is true, may come to the 
conclusion that he must give up some of those who 
were entrusted to his care, and confess that all his 
toil for them has been fruitless and wasted. But is 
God to be conceived of as a Teacher who is unable 
to overcome the will of the creature, and must 
partially abandon His object, the universal, all- 
embracing Kingdom of Love ? This is the thought 
which forms the starting-point of those who deny 
the doctrine of eternal damnation. However in- 
adequately they may be able to explain how the 
restoration of the devil and of ungodly men to God 
is to be effected, yet this ' restoration is an assump- 
tion, a postulate, and, so to speak, an article of 
secret hope, which they hold in virtue of the power 
of the eternal Love of God. 

CVI. 

Within Theosophy itself, we first mention Oetinger 
as having laid down a doctrine which contrasts with 
Bohme's. His starting-point is, that God's essence 
is Love ; and that the Wrath of God, in comparison 
with His Love, endureth but for a moment. Un- 
doubtedly, everything must be fulfilled which Scripture 
teaches with reference to the Lord's second coming, 
the Final Judgment, and the separation between 
believers and unbelievers, saved and unsaved. 



THE CONSUMMATION. 335 

Oetinger does not deny the reality of hell, but 
teaches it in the most definite way with all its terrors. 
Still, he emphasizes, with his utmost power, the idea 
that this reality must some time come to an end. 
He imagines that the catastrophe which we are 
accustomed to regard as the final one (when Christ 
comes to judge the quick and the dead) is the 
beginning of a series of aeons, in which also run 
the aeons of the damned, which for us stretch into 
the infinite distance, and which are closed by the 
fact that Christ delivers up the kingdom to the 
Father. Then, for the first time, the words will 
be completely fulfilled : " The last enemy that shall 
be destroyed is Death." So long as Hell endures, 
these words remain unfulfilled. For Hell is precisely 
this Kingdom of Death, and Death is very far from 
being merely physical death. 

Oetinger lays stress on the point that the word 
alojvLOS (eternal) also means, in Scripture, that which 
is indefinite in duration, e.g., a " mystery hidden from 
the eternal ages ; " and that in the expression " eternal 
damnation," the word " eternal " must not be con- 
strued in the same sense as when one speaks of 
eternal life. Eternal life must be without end, 
because it is grounded in God Himself, who has no 
end ; but " eternal " damnation can only mean that 
of which the end is undefined ; for sin and death 
have not their ground in God and in communion 
with God, but have only a temporal beginning in 
the will of the creature, and must consequently come 
to an end at some time or other. 

An important passage in Scripture to which 
Oetinger appeals is Psalm cxlv. 10: " All Thy 



336 THE CONSUMMATION. 

works shall praise Thee ! " These words are not 
fulfilled until even the damned offer praise in Hell, 
thank God for their punishment, and recognise and 
confess all their unrighteousness and all their false- 
hoods, and that God alone is right. They are not 
fulfilled until this cry goes up from the whole 
creation : " Blessing and honour, and glory and 
power be unto Him that sitteth upon the throne, 
and unto the Lamb for ever and ever ! " (Apocal. v. 

13). 

Oetinger is well aware that he is here at issue 
with the Augsburg Confession, but believes that 
Scripture is entirely on his side. He thinks that 
the Church doctrine upon this point rests upon a 
misinterpretation of the word Eternity. 

In a similar manner, Franz Baader opposes 
Bohme's doctrine upon this subject. No one has 
ever expressed himself more strongly than Baader in 
favour of the reality of Hell ; no one has more 
vividly depicted the infernal state. He is vehement 
in his opposition to those who shrink back effemi- 
nately from the reality of Hell, and change the 
conception of Hell into that of Purgatory. But he 
considers the conception of an endless Hell to be 
wholly untenable, and is, indeed, of opinion that it 
leads necessarily to Pantheism and Atheism. He 
specially accentuates the fact that in Hades much 
can again be made good, and that here grace still 
goes before justice. But in Hell, justice goes before 
grace. And here it is true, that no one escapes 
before " he has paid the uttermost farthing " (a 
passage also quoted by Oetinger), and before the 
severe judgment of righteousness has been accom- 



THE CONSUMMATION. 337 

plished. Here all the deeds of the wicked are 
burned in the fire, and the ungodly must pass 
through the sulphur-pool and the stifling smoke, 
that ascends throughout the aeons. But the Divine 
Righteousness is not without measure or without 
limits. The punishments of Hell are not infinites, 
but indefinites. Their duration is indeterminable. 
But Death and Hell must be absolutely vanquished 
at some period or other ; or else the last enemy is 
not destroyed, and Scripture remains unfulfilled. 
How the restoration is to take place he certainly does 
not tell us. Hamberger represents the transition in 
such a way as that the hosts of Lucifer will gradually 
rebel against him, and stretch out their hands for 
mercy ; and that, at length, Lucifer will find himself 
left utterly alone, and will then, as the last creature, 
entreat mercy. He will then acquire a place un- 
determinable by us in the Blessed Kingdom.* 

For our own part, we cannot but hold that each 
of the views here brought forward presents us with 
unsurmounted difficulties, especially on careful 
investigation of all the declarations of Scripture 
that bear upon this subject. We shall not, however, 
discuss the matter more fully here, as we have 
lengthily and explicitly stated our view elsewhere 
(" Dogmatics "). 

But, in so far as concerns our old theosophist 
Bohme, it is unquestionable that, whenever he hears 
of a general and universal restoration and an end of 
Hell, he shakes his head, and says : " This is not 
to be thought of! It is at variance with the 

* Hamberger, " Gott und seine Offenbarungen," 479. 

22 



tf8 L'ENVOI. 

Foundation of Hell. The devil cannot, and will not, 
become humble. Never, to all eternity, will he 
betake himself to repentance and conversion. 
Neither he nor any of his adherents will be saved ! " 
When the agonies of the ungodly are dilated upon, 
he repeats the words of Christ to Jerusalem, "Ye 
would not ! " The Lord does not say, " Ye could 
not ! " but " Ye would not ! " and, because they 
continue in the evil of their sins, they cannot. 

But by way of admonition to himself and others, 
and in order to excite rejoicing over the Gospel of 
Christ in this world of troubles, where everything 
depends upon grasping the proffered grace, he 
ofttimes repeats: "A Lily blossoms upon the moun- 
tains and valleys in all the ends of the earth. He 
that seeketh findeth ! Amen." 

l'envoi. 

As I have now completed this sketch, which is 
certainly rather of an introductory than of a conclu- 
sive character, the opportunity might now appear to 
be naturally presented of instituting a series of 
inquiries with regard to the relations of Theosophy 
to Theology and Philosophy, of defending Theosophy 
against its assailants both theological and philosophi- 
cal, and of proposing terms of accommodation 
between them. But I have no intention of attempt- 
ing this. I shall confine myself to a very few 
words. 

With regard to Theology I make the general 
remark, that in my judgment a judgment which has 
been greatly confirmed by these studies, Church 



D ENVOI. 339 

Theology is not wise in assuming a hostile attitude 
towards Theosophy and in endeavouring to exclude 
it altogether (a course, however, .which has not been 
adopted by all the representatives of theology). 

It is not wise in this course, because it hereby 
deprives itself of a most valuable leavening influence, 
a source of renewal and rejuvenescence, which Theo- 
logy so greatly needs, exposed as it is to the danger 
of stagnating in barren and dreary scholasticism and 
cold and trivial criticism. 

So far as the charge of a " non- Scriptural" 
element in Theosophy, that is, its discrepancies 
with current exegesis, is concerned, there is cer- 
tainly no one who is prepared to assert the infalli- 
bility of theosophical exegesis. It must, however, 
be obvious to every theologian who has a more than 
superficial acquaintance with Theosophy, that it has 
aroused and attracted attention to a circle of Scrip- 
tural conceptions which theology has disregarded or 
to which it has devoted very slight pains, because 
it is not in possession of the categories which are 
requisite for their treatment. As one great instance, 
among many, may be mentioned the conception of 
the Glory of God and the Uncreated Heaven. No 
one will deny that these are fundamental conceptions 
in Holy Scripture, while in theology they are scarcely 
even accessory notions, and, indeed, are referred to 
in many theological systems as " dark points," which 
it is best to avoid. And yet it will hardly be denied 
that it is the duty of the theologian to bring to light 
the fundamental conceptions of Scripture, and to 
offer some explanation of them. 

Next, as to the outcry against the " unscientific 



340 V ENVOI. 

element in Theosophy. No one denies a measure 
of truth in this outcry ; for the matter is so abso- 
lutely clear as not to require diffuse and tautological 
repetitions, repetitions which are very far from 
proving that the man who takes delight in them is a 
genuinely scientific theologian. No one denies that 
mediate or reflective knowledge, and thorough-going 
analysis and combination of conceptions, or what 
may be called, in a wider sense, the scholastic 
element, is indispensable to theology. But it is 
very illusory to suppose that this scholasticism has 
any value of its own, when it lacks the emotion of 
the mystic or the immediate intuition of that new 
and higher world of experience of the heavenly 
realities which Revelation unveils for us. 

Church history shows also that it is scarcely 
possible to point out a single important dogmatic 
work which has been able to restrict its operations 
within the narrow domain of the School, and to 
dispense with the influence of a fortifying element 
either of mysticism, or of Theosophy, or of both 
combined. Thus it merits attention that the most 
important, epoch-making dogmatic work of this 
century " The Dogmatic " of Schleiermacher has 
undoubtedly kept itself free, indeed far too free, from 
Theosophy, but is remarkable, on the other hand, 
for an experimental mysticism, the presence of 
which manifests itself in Schleiermacher as early as 
his " Reden iiber die Religion." That Schleier- 
macher's " Dogmatic" has been enabled to exert such 
widely-spread and living influence until the present 
day is due, not simply to its admirable dialectic or to 
its intellectual standpoint (in which there is so much 



U ENVOI. 341 

that must now be regarded as obsolete) ; it is essen- 
tially due to the vivid perspicuous image of Christ, 
the living experimental consciousness of the Grace 
of God in Christ, and the mystical relation of Love 
to the Saviour, which are among its strongly-marked 
characteristics. Schleiermacher's " Dogmatic " was 
destined greatly against the author's will, but by 
an obvious necessity to lead younger theologians 
who had studied it attentively to speculative theo- 
logy and Theosophy, as was evidenced by subsequent 
dogmatic works. And it must be regarded as a 
sign of retrogression, not of progress, that there 
should now be any who occupy a position in which 
they do nothing else but repristinate the old ortho- 
dox theology. It must undoubtedly be admitted 
as expedient that ecclesiastical tradition should be 
preserved, and ecclesiastical testimony maintained, 
in opposition to neo-rationalism and all its cognate 
systems. But in such circles there can be no 
real progress in the Christian apprehension of 
truth. 

With regard to philosophers and other disputants, 
who attack not only Theosophy, but also theology, 
and even Christianity itself, in the name of modern 
science, I shall simply confine myself to quoting 
a sentence from Bohme's doctrine of knowledge 
or apprehension, which is extremely a propos amid 
existing controversies with respect to Divine 
things. 

" Every spirit," he says, " sees no further than 
into its mother, out of which it has its original, and 
wherein it stands ; for it is impossible for any spirit, 
in its own natural power, to look into another 



342 L % ENVOI. 

Principle, and behold it, except it be regenerated 
therein" ("The Three Principles," vii., i). 

This sentence closely applies to the literature of 
the present day, in which naturalistic, materialistic, 
and atheistic spirits continually appear, with attacks 
and objections against Christianity. One ought to 
feel absolutely no surprise at this, but to remember 
that these spirits cannot speak with regard to Divine 
things otherwise than they do. They can only 
testify of that which they have seen and heard in 
their mother, i.e., in blind nature or unconscious 
reason. All that lies beyond this must necessarily 
strike them as fantastic and visionary. It is 
perfectly true that one may sometimes be tempted 
to impatience by hearing these objections urged 
with a strong assumption of superiority. Even 
Bohme sometimes allowed himself to be carried 
away by impatience, when he had to defend 
Theosophy against its opponents, whom he desig- 
nates as sophists, " who butted against his doctrine 
like cows against a freshly-painted stable door, and 
rejected all that their calvish understanding could 
not grasp." Such diatribes, however, are useless ; 
they convert no one. For the spirits "will con- 
tinue to gaze into their mother, and, according to 
circumstances, to speak about, scream, and cackle 
out of their mother," i.e., out of that principle which 
for them is the constitutive, the fundamentally- 
determinant, and out of which they are spiritually 
born. And thus it is often one's best plan to refuse 
to enter into any discussion, but simply to place the 
recognised truth before those who are able to be in- 
fluenced by it, or, to speak with Bohme, " to write 



V ENVOI. 343 

simply for seekers and for children of God, and for 
the rest, to leave the spirits to shout or cackle in the 
name of what they call ' science,' which means their 
mother, as they will continue to do so long as the 
course of this world abides." As this sentence of 
Bdhme's is not to be construed fatalistically, it must 
depend upon the inward leadings and inward deci- 
sions of the spirit whether opponents will be able 
to accept the one word which sums up the whole 
matter: "Ye must be born again;" whether this can 
flash in upon them like lightning, or whether they 
will persist in regarding it as visionary, in which 
case they will remain in their darkness and in secret 
anxiety. Bohme's meaning is this : that only those 
who are regenerated by the principle of which our 
Lord spoke to Nicodemus, who came to Him by 
night, can understand one another in discourse 
concerning Divine things, and that otherwise, how- 
ever loudly they may speak or shout, they remain 
mutually dumb to one another ; that only those who 
speak out of this principle can discourse of the 
Wisdom in God, which is a Wisdom in Mystery, 
and descends from Him in whom all the treasures of 
wisdom and knowledge are hidden, hidden, not in 
order that they may remain secret, but in order that 
they may ever increasingly be made manifest, and 
appropriated by us. 

We shall do well to lay to heart what Bohme 
says in all gentleness : " Dost thou not understand 
these Scriptures ? Then do not behave thyself like 
Lucifer ! Do not give thyself to arrogance and scorn, 
but seek from God the humble heart ! Thereby thou 
wilt attain this, that a little mustard-seed of the 



344 V ENVOI. 

growth of Paradise will be brought into thy heart, 
and out of it will spring a great tree. Thus it has 
been with the present author ; for he is a very 
simple person in comparison with the learned. But 
Christ says : ' My strength is made perfect in 
weakness ' (2 Cor. xii. 9)." 



THE ENDy' 



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