MYSTICS
iENAISSANCt
aMIDOI-F steiner
(* DEC 12 1911 *
• jn."t
BV 5075 .S83 1911
Steiner, Rudolf, 1861-1925
Mystics of the renaissance
and their relation to
MYSTICS OF THE
RENAISSANCE
AND
THEIR RELATION TO MODERN THOUGHT
INCLUDING
MEISTER ECKHART, TAULER, PARACELSUS,
JACOB BOEHME, GIORDANO BRUNO,
AND OTHERS
BY
RUDOLF STEINER
Ph.D. (Vienna)
t^X OF Ff\lxcc
* DEC 12 1911 *
'isiski list:^
AUTHORISED TRANSLATION FROM THE GERMAN BY
BERTRAM KEIGHTLEY, M.A. (Cantab.)
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
^be Iknfcftcrbocftcr press
1911
Copyright, igii
BY
MAX GYSI
MAX GYSI, Editor,
' Adyar," Park Drive,
London, N. W.
Ube ftnlcberbocfier press, Tlevp ^ovk
CONTENTS
Foreword ....
Introduction
Meister Eckhart
Friendship with God [Tauler,
AND RuYSBROECK] .
Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa
Agrippa von Nettesheim and
PHRASTUs Paracelsus .
Suso
Theo-
Afterword
PAGE
V
52
81
133
182
Valentine Weigel and Jacob Boehme 223
Giordano Bruno and Angelus Silesius 246
. 269
Ill
FOREWORD
The matter which I am laying before
the public in this book formed the
content of lectures which I delivered
during last winter at the Theosophical
Library in Berlin. I had been requested
by Grafin and Graf Brockdorff to speak
upon Mysticism before an audience for
whom the matters thus dealt with con-
stitute a vital question of the utmost
importance. Ten years earlier I could
not have ventured to fulfil such a re-
quest. Not that the realm of ideas, to
which I now give expression, did not
even then live actively within me. For
these ideas are already fully contained
in my Philosophy of Freedom (Berlin,
1894. Emil Felber). But to give ex-
vi FOREWORD
pression to this world of ideas in such
wise as I do to-day, and to make it the
basis of an exposition as is done on the
following pages — to do this requires
something quite other than merely to
be immovably convinced of the intel-
lectual truth of these ideas. It demands
an intimate acquaintance with this realm
of ideas, such as only many years of life
can give. Only now, after having en-
joyed that intimacy, do I venture to
speak in such wise as will be found in
this book.
Any one who does not approach my
world of ideas without preconceptions
is sure to discover therein contradiction
after contradiction. I have quite re-
cently (Berlin, 1900. S. Cronbach) dedi-
cated a book upon the world conceptions
of the nineteenth century to that great
naturalist, Ernst Haeckel, and closed it
FOREWORD vii
with a defence of his thought- world.
In the following expositions, I speak
about the Mystics, from Master Eckhart
to Angelus Silesius, with a full measure of
devotion and acquiescence. Other "con-
tradictions," which one critic or another
may further count up against me, I shall
not mention at all. It does not surprise
me to be condemned from one side as a
"Mystic" and from the other as a
"Materialist." When I find that the
Jesuit Father Miiller has solved a diffi-
cult chemical problem, and I therefore in
this particular matter agree with him
unreservedly, one can hardly condemn
me as an adherent of Jesuitism without
being reckoned a fool by those who have
insight.
Whoever goes his own road, as I do,
must needs allow many a misunder-
standing about himself to pass. That,
viii FOREWORD
however, he can put up with easily
enough. For such misunderstandings
are, in the main, inevitable in his eyes,
when he recalls the mental type of those
who misjudge him. I look back, not
without htmiorous feelings, upon many
a ''critical" judgment that I have suf-
fered in the course of my literary career.
At the outset, matters went fairly well.
I wrote about Goethe and his philosophy.
What I said there appeared to many to be
of such a nature that they could file it
in their mental pigeon-holes. This they
did by saying: ''A work such as Rudolf
Steiner's Introduction to Goethe s Writings
upon Natural Science may, without hesi-
tation, be described as the best that has
been written upon this question."
When, later, I published an inde-
pendent work, I had already grown a
good bit more stupid. For now a well
FOREWORD ix
meaning critic offered the advice: "Before
he goes on reforming further and gives
his Philosophy of Freedom to the world,
he should be pressingly advised first to
work himself through to an understanding
of these two philosophers [Htmie and
Kant] . " The critic imf ortunately knows
only so much as he is himself able to read
in Kant and Hume; practically, there-
fore, he simply advises me to learn to see
no more in these thinkers than he him-
self sees. When I have attained that, he
will be satisfied with me. Then when
my Philosophy and Freedom appeared, I
was found to be as much in need of cor-
rection as the most ignorant beginner.
This I received from a gentleman who
probably nothing else impelled to the
writing of books except that he had not
understood innimierable foreign ones.
He gravely informs me that I should have
X FOREWORD
noticed my mistakes if I had *'made
more thorough studies in psychology,
logic, and the theory of knowledge";
and he enumerates forthwith the books
I ought to read to become as wise as
himself: "Mill, Sigwart, Wundt, Riehl,
Paulsen, B. Erdmann." What amused
me especially was this advice from a
man who was so "impressed" with the
way he "understood" Kant that he
could not even imagine how any man
could have read Kant and yet judge
otherwise than himself. He therefore
indicates to me the exact chapters in
question in Kant's writings from which
I may be able to obtain an understanding
of Kant as deep and as thorough as
his own.
I have cited here a couple of typical
criticisms of my world of ideas. Though
in themselves unimportant, yet they
FOREWORD XI
seem to me to point, as symptoms, to
facts which present themselves to-day
as serious obstacles in the path of any
one aiming at literary activity in regard
to the higher problems of knowledge.
Thus I must go on my way, indifferent,
whether one man gives me the good ad-
vice to read Kant, or another hunts me
as a heretic because I agree with Haeckel.
And so I have also written upon Mysti-
cism, wholly indifferent as to how a faith-
ful and believing materialist may judge
of me. I would only like — so that prin-
ters' ink may not be wasted wholly with-
out need — to inform any one who may,
perchance advise me to read Haeckel's
Riddle of the Universe, that during the
last few months I have delivered about
thirty lectures upon the said work.
I hope to have shown in this book
that one may be a faithful adherent of
xii FOREWORD
the scientific conception of the world
and yet be able to seek out those paths
to the Soul along which Mysticism,
rightly understood, leads. I even go
further and say: Only he who knows the
Spirit, in the sense of true Mysticism, can
attain a full understanding of the facts
of Nature. But one must not confuse
true Mysticism with the ''pseudo-mys-
ticism" of ill-ordered minds. How Mys-
ticism can err, I have shown in my
Philosophy of Freedom (page 131 et
seq.).
Rudolf Steiner.
Berlin, September, 1901.
MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
Mystics of the Renaissance
INTRODUCTION
There are certain magical formulae
which operate throughout the centuries
of Man's mental history in ever new
ways. In Greece one such formula
was regarded as an oracle of Apollo. It
runs: "Know Thyself.*' Such sentences
seem to conceal within them an unend-
ing life. One comes upon them when fol-
lowing the most diverse roads in mental
life. The further one advances, the more
one penetrates into the knowledge of
things, the deeper appears the significance
of these formulae. In many a moment
of our brooding and thinking, they flash
2 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
out like lightning, illuminating our whole
inner being. In such moments there
quickens within us a feeling as if we
heard the heart-beat of the evolution of
mankind. How close do we not feel
ourselves to personalities of the past,
when the feeling comes over us, through
one of their winged words, that they are
revealing to us that they, too, had had
such moments!
We feel ourselves then brought into
intimate touch with these personalities.
For instance, we learn to know Hegel
intimately when, in the third volume
of his Lectures on the Philosophy of
History we come across the words:
"Such stuff, one may say, the abstrac-
tions that we contemplate when we
allovvT the philosophers to quarrel and
battle in our study, and make it out to
be thus or so^ — mere verbal abstractions !
INTRODUCTION 3
No! No! These are deeds of the world-
spirit and therefore of destiny. Therein
the Philosophers are nearer to the Master
than are those who feed themselves with
the crumbs of the spirit; they read or
write the Cabinet Orders in the original
at once; they are constrained to write
them out along with Him. The Philoso-
phers are the Mystae who, at the crisis
in the inmost shrine, were there and took
part." When Hegel said this, he had
experienced one of those moments just
spoken of. He uttered the phrases when,
in the course of his remarks, he had
reached the close of Greek philosophy;
and through them he showed that once,
like a gleam of lightning, the meaning
of the Neoplatonic philosophy, of which
he was just treating, had flashed upon
him. In the instant of this flash, he had
become intimate with minds like Plotinus
4 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
and Proklus; and we become intimate
with him when we read his words.
We become intimate, too, with that
solitary thinker, the Pastor of Zschopau,
M. Valentin Weigel, when we read the
opening words of his little book Know
Thyself, written in 1578: "We read in the
wise men of old the useful saying, 'Know
Thyself,* which, though it be right well
used about worldly manners, as thus:
* regard well thyself, what thou art, seek
in thine own bosom, judge thyself and
lay no blame on others,' a saying, I
repeat, which, though thus used of human
life and manners, may well and appro-
priately be applied by us to the natural
and supernatural knowing of the whole
man; so indeed, that man shall not only
consider himself and thereby remember
how he should bear himself before people,
but that he shall also know his own
INTRODUCTION 5
nature, inner and outer, in spirit and in
Nature; whence he cometh and whereof
he is made, to what end he is ordained.'*
So, from points of view pecuHar to him-
self, Valentin Weigel attained to insight
which in his mind summed itself up in
this oracle of Apollo.
A similar path to insight and a like re-
lation to the saying ''Know Thyself*' may
be ascribed to a series of deep-natured
thinkers, beginning with Master Eckhart
( 1 250-1 327), and ending with Angelus
Silesius (i 624-1 677), among whom may
be found also Valentin Weigel himself.
All these thinkers have in common a
strong sense of the fact that in man's
knowing of himself there rises a sun
which illuminates something very differ-
ent from the mere accidental, separated
personality of the beholder. What Spi-
noza became conscious of in the ethereal
6 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
heights of pure thought, — viz., that ''the
human soul possesses an adequate know-
ledge of the Eternal and Infinite Being
of God," — that same consciousness lived
in them as immediate feeling; and self-
knowledge was to them the path leading
to this Eternal and Infinite Being. It
was clear to them that self-knowledge in
its true form enriched man with a new
sense, which unlocked for him a world
standing in relation to the world acces-
sible to him without this new sense as
does the world of one possessing physical
sight to that of a blind man.
It would be difficult to find a better
description of the import of this new sense
than the one given by J. G. Fichte in his
Berlin Lectures (1813):
''Imagine a world of men born blind,
to whom all objects and their relations
are known only through the sense of
INTRODUCTION . 7
touch. Go amongst them and speak to
them of colours and other relations,
which are rendered visible only through
light. Either you are talking to them
of nothing, — and if they say this, it is
the luckier, for thus you will soon see
your mistake, and, if you cannot open
their eyes, cease your useless talking,^ — •
or, for some reason or other, they will
insist upon giving some meaning or other
to what you say; then they can only
interpret it in relation to what they
know by touch. They will seek to
feel, they will imagine they do feel
light and colour, and the other inci-
dents of visibility, they will invent
something for themselves, deceive them-
selves with something within the world
of touch, which they will call colour.
Then they will misunderstand, distort,
and misinterpret it."
8 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
The same thing appHes to what the
thinkers we are speaking of sought after.
They beheld a new sense opening in self-
knowledge, and this sense yielded, ac-
cording to their experiences, views of
things which are simply non-existent
for one who does not see in self-knowledge
what distinguishes it from all other kinds
of knowing. One in whom this new sense
has not been opened, believes that self-
knowing, or self -perception, is the same
thing as perception through the outer
senses, or through any other means
acting from without. He thinks : ' ' Know-
ing is knowing, perceiving is perceiving."
Only in the one case the object is some-
thing lying in the world outside, in the
other this object is his own soul. He
finds words merely, or at best, abstract
thoughts, in that which for those who see
more deeply is the very foundation of
INTRODUCTION 9
their inner life; namely, in the propo-
sition: that in every other kind of
knowing or perception we have the ob-
ject perceived outside of ourselves, while
in self-knowledge or self-perception we
stand within that object; that we see
every other object coming to us already
complete and finished off, while in our-
selves we, as actors and creators, are weav-
ing that which we observe within us.
This may appear to be nothing but a
merely verbal explanation, perhaps even
a triviality; it may appear, on the other
hand, as a higher light which illuminates
every other cognition. One to whom it
appears in the first way, is in the po-
sition of a blind man, to whom one says:
there is a gHttering object. He hears the
words, but for him the glitter is not there.
He might unite in himself the whole sum
of knowledge of his time; but if he
10 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
does not feel and realise the significance
of self-knowledge, then it is all, in the
higher sense, a blind knowledge.
The world, outside of and independent
of us, exists for us by communicating
itself to our consciousness. What is thus
made known must needs be expressed in
the language peculiar to ourselves. A
book, the contents of which were offered
in a language unknown to us, would for
us be without meaning. Similarly, the
world would be meaningless for us did
it not speak to us in our own tongue ; and
the same language which reaches us
from things, we also hear from within
ourselves. But in that case, it is we our-
selves who speak. The really important
point is that we should correctly appre-
hend the transposition which occurs when
we close our perception against external
things and listen only to that wnich then
INTRODUCTION ii
speaks from within. But to do this
needs this new sense. If it has not been
awakened, we beHeve that in what is
thus told us about ourselves we are hear-
ing only about something external to us ;
we fancy that somewhere there is hidden
something which is speaking to us in the
same way as external things speak. But
if we possess this new sense, then we
know that these perceptions differ essen-
tially from those relating to external
things. Then we realise that this new
sense does not leave what it perceives
outside of itself, as the eye leaves the
object it sees; but that it can take up
its object wholly into itself, leaving no
remainder. If I see a thing, that thing
remains outside of me; if I perceive my-
self, then I myself enter into my per-
ception. Whoever seeks for something
more of himself than what is perceived,
12 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
shows thereby that for him the real con-
tent in the perception has not come to
Hght. Johannes Tauler (i 300-1361), has
expressed this truth in the apt words:
"If I were a king and knew it not, then
should I be no king. If I do not shine
forth for myself in my own self -percep-
tion, then for myself I do not exist. But
if for myself I do shine out, then I pos-
sess myself also in my perception, in my
own most deeply original being. There
remains no residue of myself left outside
of my perception.'*
J. G. Fichte, in the following words,
vigorously points to the difference be-
tween self -percept ion and every other
kind of perception: ''The majority of
men could be more easily brought to be-
lieve themselves a lump of lava in the
moon than an 'ego.' Whoever is not
at one with himself as to this, under-
INTRODUCTION 13
stands no thorough-going philosophy and
has need of none. Nature, whose ma-
chine he is, will guide him in all the
things he has to do without any sort of
added help from him. For philosophising,
self-reliance is needed, and this one can
only give to oneself. We ought not to
want to see without the eye; but also we
ought not to maintain that it is the eye
which sees."
Thus the perception of oneself is also
the awakening of oneself. In our cog-
nition we combine the being of things
with our own being. The communi-
cations, which things make to us in our
own language, become members of our
own selves. An object in front of me
is not separated from me, once I have
known it. What I am able to receive
from it becomes part and parcel of my
own being. If-, now, I awaken my own
14 AIYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
self, if I become aware of the content of
my own inner being, then I also awaken
to a higher mode of being, that which
from without I have made part of my
own being. The light that falls upon
me at my awakening falls also upon
whatever I have made my own from the
things of the outside world. A light
springs up within me and iiltmiines me,
and with me all that I have cognised of
the world. Whatever I might know would
remain blind knowledge, did not this
light fall upon it. I might search the
world through and through with my
perception; still the world would not be
that which in me it must become, unless
that perception were awakened in me to
a higher mode of being.
That which I add to things through
this awakening is not a new idea, is not
an enrichment of the content of my
INTRODUCTION 15
knowing; it is an uplifting of the know-
ledge, of the cognition, to a higher level,
where everything is suffused with a new
glory. So long as I do not raise my con-
sciousness to this level, all knowledge con-
tinues to be for me, in the higher sense,
valueless. The things are there without
my presence. They have their being
in themselves. What possible meaning
could there be in my linking with their
being, which they have outside and apart
from me, another spiritual existence in
addition, which repeats the things over
again within me? If only a mere repeti-
tion of things were involved, it would be
senseless to carry it out. But, really, a
mere repetition is only involved so long as
I have not awakened, along with my own
self, the mental content of these things
upon a higher level. When this occurs,
then I have not merely repeated within
i6 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
myself the being of things, but I have
brought it to a new birth on a higher
level. With the awakening of my self,
there is accomplished a spiritual re-birth
of the things of the world.
What the things reveal in this re-birth
did not previously belong to them. There,
without, stands the tree. I take it up in-
to my consciousness. I throw my inner
light upon that which I have thus con-
ceived. The tree becomes in me more
than it is outside. That in it which finds
entrance through the gate of the senses is
taken up into a conscious content. An
ideal replica of the tree is within me, and
that has infinitely more to say about the
tree than what the tree itself, outside, can
tell me. Then, for the first time there
shines out from within me, towards the
tree, what the tree is. The tree is now
no longer the isolated being that it is out
INTRODUCTION 17
there in space. It becomes a link in
the entire conscious world that lives in
me. It links its content with other ideas
that are in me. It becomes a member of
the whole world of ideas that embraces
the vegetable kingdom; it takes its
place, fiirther, in the series of all that
lives.
Another example: I throw a stone
in a horizontal direction away from me.
It moves in a curved line and after some
time falls to the ground. I see it in
successive moments of time in different
places. Through observation and re-
flection I acquire the following: During
its motion the stone is subject to different
influences. If it were subject only to
the influence of the impulse which I im-
parted to it, it would go on flying for
ever in a straight line, without altering
its velocity. But now the earth exerts an
i8 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
influence upon it. It attracts the stone
towards itself. If, instead of throw-
ing the stone, I had simply let it go, it
would have fallen vertically to earth;
and its velocity in doing so would have
constantly increased. From the mutual
interaction of these two influences arises
that which I actually see.
Let us assume that I could not in
thought separate the two influences, and
from this orderly combination put to-
gether again in thought what I see: in
that case, the matter would end with the
actual happening. It would be mentally
a blind staring at what happened; a per-
ception of the successive positions which
the stone occupies. But in actual fact,
matters do not stop there. The whole
occurrence takes place twice. Once out-
side, and then my eye sees it; then my
mind causes the whole happening to
INTRODUCTION 19
repeat itself again, in a mental or con-
scious manner. My inner sense must be
directed upon the mental occurrence,
which my eye does not see, and then it
becomes clear to that sense that I, by
my own inner power, awaken that occur-
rence as a mental one.
Again, another sentence of J. G.
Fichte's may be quoted which brings
this fact clearly before the mind.
''Thus the new sense is the sense for
the spirit; that for which there exists
only spirit and absolutely nothing else,
and for which also the 'other,' the given
being, assumes the form of spirit and
transforms itself into spirit, for which
therefore being in its own proper form
has actually disappeared. . . . There
has been the faculty of seeing with
this sense ever since men have existed,
and all that is great and excellent in the
20 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
world, which alone upholds humanity,
originates in what has been seen by means
of this sense. It is, however, not the
case that this sense has been perceived
or known in its difference and its con-
trast with that other, ordinary sense.
The impressions of the two senses melted
into one another, life fell apart into these
two halves without a bond of union."
The bond of imion is created by the
fact that the inner sense grasps in its
spirituality the spiritual element which
it awakens in its intercourse with the
outer world. That which we take up
into our consciousness from outside
things thereby ceases to appear as a
mere meaningless repetition. It appears
as something new over against that which
only external perception can give. The
simple occurrence of throwing the stone,
and my perception thereof, appear in a
INTRODUCTION si
higher light when I make clear to myself
the kind of task which my inner sense
has to perform in regard to the whole
thing. In order to fit together in thought
the two influences and their modes of
action, an amount of mental content is
needed which I must already have ac-
quired when I cognise the flying stone.
I therefore apply a spiritual content
already stored up within me to something
that confronts me in the external world.
And this occurrence in the external
world fits itself into the spiritual content
already present. It reveals itself in its
own special individuality as an expres-
sion of this content.
Through the understanding of my
inner sense, there is thus disclosed to
me the nature of the relation that
obtains between the content of this
sense and the things of the external
22 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
world. Fichte would say that without
the understanding of this sense, the
world falls apart for me into two halves:
into things outside of me, and into pic-
tures of these things within me. The
two halves become united when the
inner self understands itself and con-
sequently recognises clearly what sort of
illumination it throws upon things in
the cognitive process. And Fichte could
also venture to say that this inner sense
sees only Spirit. For it perceives how
the Spirit enlightens the sense-world by
making it part and parcel of the spiritual
world. The inner sense causes the outer
sense-world to arise within itself as a
spiritual being on a higher level. An ex-
ternal object is completely known when
there is no part of it which has not thus
undergone a spiritual re-birth. Thus
every external object fits itself into a
INTRODUCTION 23
spiritual content, which, when it has
been grasped by the inner sense, shares
the destiny of self-knowledge. The spiri-
tual content, which belongs to an object
through its illumination from within,
merges itself wholly, like the very self,
into the world of ideas, leaving no re-
mainder behind.
These developments contain nothing
which is susceptible or even in need of
logical proof. They are nothing but
the results of inner experience. Who-
ever calls into question this content,
shows only that he is lacking in this
inner experience. It is impossible to
dispute with him; as little could one
discuss colour with a blind man.
It must not, however, be contended
that this inner experience is made pos-
sible only through the special endowment
of a few chosen people. It is a common
24 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
property. Every one can enter upon
the path to this experience who does
not of his own will shut himself against
it. This closing up of oneself against
it, is, however, common enough. And in
dealing with objections raised in this di-
rection, one always has the feeling that
it is not so much a matter of people
being unable to attain this inner ex-
perience, as of their having hopelessly
blocked the entrance to it with all kinds
of logical spiders' webs. It is almost as
if some one looking through a telescope
and discovering a new planet should
yet deny its existence because his calcu-
lations have shown that there can be no
planet in that position.
But with all this there is still in most
people the clearly marked feeling that
all that really lies in the being of things
cannot be completely given in what the
INTRODUCTION 25
outer senses and the analysing under-
standing can cognise. They then be-
lieve that the remainder so left over must
be just as much in the external world as
are the things of our perceptions them-
selves. They think that there must be
something which remains unknown to
cognition. What they ought to attain
by again perceiving with the inner sense,
on a higher plane, the very object which
they have already cognised and grasped
with the understanding, — this they trans-
fer as something inaccessible and unknown
into the external world. Then they talk
of the limits of knowledge which prevent
our reaching the ''thing -in -itself." They
talk of the unknown "being" of things.
That this very ''being" of things shines
out when the inner sense lets its light
fall upon the things, is what they will
not recognise. The famous "Ignora-
26 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
bimus" speech of the scientist, Du Bois-
Reymond, in the year 1876, furnished
a particularly blatant example of this
error. We are supposed to be able to
get in every direction only so far as to
be able to see in all natural processes
the manifestations of "matter." What
''matter" itself is, we are supposed to
be unable to know. Du Bois-Reymond
contends that we shall never succeed in
penetrating to wherever it is that "mat-
ter" leads its ghostly life in space. The
reason why we cannot get there lies,
however, in the fact that there is nothing
whatsoever to be looked for there. Who-
ever speaks like Du Bois-Reymond must
have a feeling that the knowledge of
Nature yields results which point to a
something further and other which Na-
ture-knowledge itself cannot give. But
he refuses to follow the road,— the road
INTRODUCTION 27
of inner experience, which leads to this
other. Therefore he stands at a com-
plete loss before the question of "mat-
ter" as before a dark riddle. In him who
treads the path of inner experience, ob-
jects attain to a new birth; and that in
them which remains unknown to outer
experience then shines forth.
In such wise the inner being of man
obtains light not only as regards itself
but also as regards external things. From
this point of view an endless per-
spective opens out before man's know-
ledge. Within him shines a light whose
illiunination is not restricted to that
which is within him. It is a sun which
lights up all reality at once. Something
makes its appearance in us which links
us with the whole world. No longer are
we simply isolated, chance human beings,
no longer this or that individual. The
28 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
entire world reveals itself in us. It un-
veils to us its own coherence; and it
unveils to us how we ourselves as in-
dividuals are bound up with it. From
out of self-knowledge is born knowledge
of the world. And our own limited
individuality merges itself spiritually into
the great interconnected world-whole,
because in us something has come to
life that reaches out beyond this in-
dividuality, that embraces along with
it everything of which this individuality
forms a part.
Thinking which does not block up its
own road to inner experience with logical
preconceptions always comes, in the
long run, to a recognition of the entity
that rules in us and connects us with the
entire world, because through this entity
we overcome the opposition of ''inner"
and ''outer" in regard to man. Paul
INTRODUCTION 29
Asmus, the keen-sighted philosopher, who
died young, expressed himself as follows
about this position {cp. his book Das Ich
und das Ding an Sich, p. 14 et seq.): —
''Let us make it clear by an example:
imagine a piece of sugar; it is square,
sweet, impenetrable, etc., etc., these are
one and all qualities which we under-
stand; one thing, however, hovers be-
fore us as something totally different,
that we do not understand, that is so
different from ourselves that we cannot
penetrate into it without losing ourselves ;
from the mere surface of which thought
starts back afraid. This one thing is
the imknown bearer of all these qualities ;
the thing-in-itself, which constitutes the
inmost self of the object. Thus Hegel
rightly says that the entire content of
our perception is related as mere acci-
dent to this obscure subject, while we,
30 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
without penetrating into its depths,
merely attach determinations to what
it is in itself, — which ultimately, since
we do not know the thing itself, remain
merely subjective and have no objective
value. Conceptual thought, on the other
hand, has no such unknowable subject,
whose determinations might be mere
accidents, but the objective subject falls
within the concept. If I cognise any-
thing, then it is present in its entire
fulness in my conception; I am at home
in the inmost shrine of its being, not
because it has no proper being-in-itself
of its own, but because it compels me to
re-think its concept, in virtue of that
necessity of the concept which hovers
over us both and appears subjectively
in me and objectively in the concept
itself. Through this re-thinking there
reveals itself to us at the same time, as
INTRODUCTION 31
Hegel says, — just as this is our own sub-
jective activity — the true nature of the
object." So can speak only a man who is
able to illuminate the life of thought
with the light of inner experience.
In my Philosophy of Freedom (Berlin,
1894, Verlag Emil Felber), starting from
other points of view, I have also pointed
out the root-fact of the inner life (p. 46) :
*'It is therefore unquestionable: in our
thinking we hold the world-process by
one corner, where we must be present,
if it is to come about at all. And that
is just the very thing we are here con-
cerned with. That is just the reason
why things seem to confront me so
mysteriously: that I am so without any
share in their coming into existence. I
simply find them there; in thinking,
however, I know how it is done. Hence
one can find no more original starting
32 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
point for a consideration of the world-
process than that of thought."
For one who looks thus upon the inner
life of man, it is also obvious what is the
meaning of human cognition within the
whole world-process. It is not a mere
empty accompaniment to the rest of the
world happenings. It would be such if
it represented merely an ideal repetition
of what is outwardly present. But
in cognition something is accomplished
which accomplishes itself nowhere in
the outer world: the world -process sets
before itself its own spiritual being. The
world-process would be to all eternity
a mere half -thing, if it did not attain to
this confrontation. Therewithal man's
inner experience finds its place in the
objective world-process; and without it
that process would be incomplete.
It is 'apparent that only the life which
INTRODUCTION 33
is ruled by the inner sense, man's highest
spiritual life in its most proper sense, — it
is this life only which can thus raise
man above himself. For only in this life
does the being of things unveil itself
before itself. The matter lies quite
differently in regard to the lower per-
ceptive power. For instance, the eye
which meditates the seeing of an object
is the theatre of a process which, in con-
trast to the inner life, is exactly like any
other external process. My organs are
members of the spacial world like other
things, and their perceptions are pro-
cesses in time like any others. Further,
their being only appears when they are
sunk into the inner life. I thus live a
double life; the life of an object among
other objects, which lives within its
own embodiment and perceives through
its organs what lies outside this embodi-
34 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
ment; and above this life a higher life,
that knows no such inside and outside,
that extends, stretching and bridging
over both the outside world and itself.
I shall therefore be forced to say: at one
time I am an individual, a limited "self*;
at another time I am a general, universal
''Self." This, too, Paul Asmus has ex-
pressed in excellent words {cp. his book:
Die indogermanischen Religionen in den
Hauptpunkten Hirer Entwickelung, p. 29
of Vol. I.):
''The activity of merging ourselves
in something else, is what we call ' think-
ing'; in thinking, the ego has fulfilled
its concept, it has given itself up as
a single thing; therefore, in thinking
do we find ourselves in a sphere which is
alike for all, for the principle of separate-
ness which is involved in the relation of
our 'self to that which is other than
INTRODUCTION 35
itself has vanished in the activity of
the self-cancening of the single *self/
and there remains then only the_* Self-
hood' common to all."
Spinoza has exactly the same thing in
view when he describes, as the highest
activity of knowing, that which'' advances
from an adequate conception of the real
natiire of some of the attributes of God
to an adequate knowledge of the nature
of things." This advancing is no other
than the illimiination of things with the
light of inner experience. Spinoza de-
scribes in glowing colours the life in this
inner experience: "The highest virtue of
the soul is to know God, or to obtain in-
sight into things in the third — the highest
— mode of knowing. This virtue is the
greater, the more the soul knows things
by this method of knowing ; thus he who
can grasp things in this mode of knowing
36 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
attains the highest human perfection
and consequently becomes filled with the
highest joy, accompanied, moreover, by
the conceptions of himself and of virtue.
Thus there arises from this mode of
knowing the highest peace of soul that
is possible."
He who knows things in this way,
transforms himself within himself; for
his single separated ''self" becomes
at such moments absorbed by the uni-
versal "Self"; all beings appear not to
a single limited individual in subordin-
ated importance, they appear to ''them-
selves." On this level there remains no
difference between Plato and me; what
separated us belongs to a lower level of
cognition. We are separated only as
individuals; the individual which works
within us is one and the same. But
about this fact it is impossible to argue
INTRODUCTION 37
with one who has no experience of it.
He will everlastingly emphasise: Plato
and you are two. That this duality,
that all multiplicity, is reborn as unity
in the outbursting life of the highest
level of knowledge: that cannot be
proved, that must be experienced. Para-
doxical as it may sound, it is the truth:
the idea which Plato conceived and the
like idea which I conceive are not two
ideas. It is one and the same idea. And
there are not two ideas: one in. Plato's
head and one in mine ; but in the higher
sense Plato's head and mine interpene-
trate each other; all heads interpenetrate
which grasp one and the same idea; and
this idea is only once there as a single
idea. It is there; and the heads all go
to one and the same place in order to
have this idea in them.
The transformation that is brought
38 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
about in the whole being of man when he
learns to see things thus, is indicated in
beautiful words by the Hindu poem, the
Bhagavad-Gita, about which Wilhelm
von Humboldt said that he was thank-
ful to the fate which had allowed him to
live long enough to become acquainted
with this work. In this poem, the inner
light declares: "An eternal ray from my-
self, having attained a distinct existence
in the world of personal life, draws
around itself the five senses and the in-
dividual soul, which belong to nature.
When the spirit, shining from above, em-
bodies itself in space and time, or when
it quits embodiment, it seizes upon
things and carries them away with it,
as the zephyr seizes the perfumes of the
flowers and bears them away with it.
The inner light rules the ear, touch,
taste and smell, as also the emotions:
INTRODUCTION 39
it knits together the Hnk between itself
and the objects of the senses. The
ignorant know not when the inner light
shines forth or is extinguished, nor when
it is married to objects; only he who
partakes of the inner light can know
thereof."
So strongly does the Bhagavad-Gita
insist upon the transformation of the
man, that it says of the wise man that
he can no longer err, no longer sin. If,
apparently, he errs or sins, then he
must illuminate his thoughts or his ac-
tions with a light wherein that no longer
appears as error or as sin which to the
ordinary consciousness appears as such.
"He who has raised himself and whose
knowledge is of the purest kind, he kills
not, nor does he stain himself, even
though he should have slain another."
This points only to the same basic mood
40 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
of the soul flowing from the highest
knowledge, of which Spinoza, after having
described it in his Ethics, breaks out into
the passionate words: "Here is con-
cluded that which I aimed to bring for-
ward in regard to the power of the soul
over its affections or in regard to the free-
dom of the soul. Hence it is clear how
very greatly the wise man is superior to
the ignorant, and how much more power-
ful than he who is ruled only by his lusts.
For the ignorant is not merely driven
hither and thither by external causes in
many ways and never attains to the
true peace of soul, but he also lives in
ignorance of himself, of God and of
things, and when his suffering ceases,
his existence ceases also; while on the
other hand, the wise man, as such, feels
hardly any disturbance in his spirit and
ever enjoys the true peace of the soul.
INTRODUCTION 41
Even if the road which I have outlined
as leading thereto appears very difficult,
still it can be found. And well may it
be difficult, because it is so seldom found.
For how could it be possible, if salvation
lay close at hand and could be found
without great trouble, that it should be
neglected by almost all? Yet all that
is noble is as difficult as it is rare/'
Goethe has indicated in monumental
form the point of view of the highest
knowledge in the words: "If I know my
relation to myself and to the outer
world, I call it truth. And thus every
one can have his own truth, and yet it
is always one and the same." Each
has his own truth: because each is an
individual, separate being, beside and
along with others. These other beings
act upon him through his organs. From
the individual standpoint at which he
42 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
is placed, and according to the consti-
tution of his power of perception, he
builds up his own truth for himself in
intercourse with the things around him.
He acquires his relation to things. If,
then, he enters into self-knowledge, if
he learns to know his relation to himself,
then his special separate truth is merged
in the universal Truth; and this uni-
versal Truth is in all the same.
The understanding of the raising of
the individual, of the single self, into the
Universal Self in the personality, is re-
garded by deeper natures as the secret
which reveals itself in the inmost heart
of man as the root-mystery of life. And
Goethe has found an apt expression for
this: "And so long as thou hast not that,
this: Die and Become! Then thou art
but a melancholy guest upon this dark
earth."
INTRODUCTION 43
Not a mere repetition in thought, but
a real part of the world-process, is that
which goes on in man's inner life. The
world would not be what it is if the factor
belonging thereto in the human soul did
not play its part. And if one calls the
highest which is attainable by man the
Divine, then one must say that this
Divine is not present as something ex-
ternal, to be repeated pictorially in the
human mind, but that this Divine is
awakened in man. Angelus Silesius has
found the right words for this: *'I
know that without me God can live no
instant; if I become nothing, He must
of necessity give up the ghost." ''With-
out me God may make no single smallest
worm: if I do not sustain it with Him,
then it must straightway perish." Only
he can make such an assertion who
presupposes that in man something
44 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
comes to light, without which external
being cannot exist. If everything per-
taining to the "worm" were there present
without man, then one could not possibly
say that it must perish if man did not
sustain it.
The innermost kernel of the world
comes to life as spiritual content in self-
knowledge. The experience of self-know-
ledge means for man working and weaving
within the kernel of the world. He who
is permeated with self-knowledge natur-
ally carries out his own action in the
light of self-knowledge. Himian action
is — in general — determined by motives.
Robert Hamerling, the poet-philosopher,
has rightly said {Atomistik des Willens,
p. 213):
"A man can indeed do what he wills
• — ^but he cannot will whatever he
pleases, because his will is determined
INTRODUCTION 45
by motives. He cannot will what-
ever he pleases? Look again at these
words more closely. Is there any
sensible meaning in them? Freedom of
the will ought then to consist in being
able to will something without reason,
without motive. But what does willing
mean other than the 'having a reason*
for preferring to do or endeavour to
attain this, rather than that? To will
something without reason, without mo-
tive, would mean to will something 'with-
out willing it.' The concept of motive
is inseparably bound up with that of will-
ing. Without a definite motive the will
is an empty potentiality: only through
a motive does it become active and real.
It is therefore quite correct that man's
will is in so far not free as its direction
is always determined by the strongest
motive."
46 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
For all action that is not accomplished
in the light of self-knowledge, the
motive, the reason for action, must
needs be felt as a constraint. But the
matter is otherwise when the reason or
motive is taken up into self-knowledge.
Then this reason becomes a part of the
self. The willing is no longer deter-
mined; it determines itself. The law-
abidingness, the motives of willing, now
no longer rule over the one who wills,
but are one and the same with this
willing. To illuminate the laws of one's
action with the light of self -observation
means to overcome all constraint of
motive. By so doing, will transfers itself
into the realm of freedom.
It is not all human action which bears
the marks of freedom. Only such action
is free action which in its every part is
lighted up with the glow of self-observa-
INTRODUCTION 47
tion. And because self -observation raises
the individual self up to the Universal Self,
therefore free action is that which flows
from the Universal Self. The old con-
troversy whether man's will is free or sub-
ject to a universal law, to an unalterable
necessity, is a problem wrongly stated.
All action is bound which is done by
a man as an individual; all action free
which is accomplished after his spiritual
re-birth. Man, therefore, is not, in general,
either free or bound. He is both the one
and the other. He is bound before his
re-birth ; and he can become free through
this re-birth. The individual upward
development of man consists in the
transformation of unfree willing into
will possessing the character of freedom.
The man who has realised the law-abid-
ingness of his action as his own, has
overcome the constraint of this law-
48 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
abidingness and therewith of un-freedom.
Freedom is not from the outset a fact
of himian existence, but a goal thereof.
With the attainment of free action,
man resolves a contradiction between
the world and himself. His own deeds
become deeds of universal being. He
feels himself in the fullest harmony with
this universal being. He feels every
discord between himself and another as
the outcome of a not yet fully awakened
self. But such is the fate of the self,
that only in its separation from the
whole can it find its contact with this
whole. Man would not be man if he
were not shut off as an individual self
from everything else; but also he is not
man in the highest sense if he does not,
as such a shut-off and isolated self, widen
himself out again into the Universal
Self. It belongs through and through to
INTRODUCTION 49
the nature of man that it should over-
come an inherent contradiction which has
lain therein from the beginning.
Any one who regards spirit as, in the
main, logical understanding, may well
feel his blood run cold at the idea that
objects should be supposed to undergo
their re-birth in spirit. He will compare
the fresh, living flower, outside there in
its fulness of coloiir, with the cold, faded,
schematic thought of the flower. He will
feel himself particularly ill at ease with
the conception that the man who draws
his motives from the solitude of his own
self-consciousness is more free than the
original, naive personality which acts
from its immediate impulses, from the
fulness of its own nature. To one who
sees only one-sided logic, another man
who sinks himself into his own inner
being will appear like a mere walking
50 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
scheme of concepts, like a mere ghost
in contrast with the man who remains in
his own natural individuality.
Such objections to the re-birth of things
in spirit are especially to be heard from
those whose power of perception fails in
the presence of things with a purely
spiritual content; although they are well
provided with healthy organs of sense-
perception and with impulses and passions
full of life. As soon as they are called
upon to perceive the purely spiritual, the
power to do so fails them ; they can deal
only with mere conceptual husks, when
even they are not limited to empty
words. They remain, therefore, in what
concerns spiritual content, men of "dry,
abstract understanding." But the man
who in things purely spiritual possesses
a gift of perception like that in things
of the senses, finds life assuredly not the
INTRODUCTION 51
poorer when he has enriched it with its
spiritual content. If I look out upon a
flower, why should its rich colours lose
aught whatever of their freshness, because
not only does my eye see the colours, but
my inner sense also perceives the spiritual
being of the flower? Why should the
life of my personality become poorer,
because I do not follow my passions and
impulses in spiritual blindness, but il-
luminate them throughout with the light
of higher knowledge? Not poorer, but
fuller, richer, is that life which is given
back again in the spirit.
MEISTER ECKHART
The world of Meister Eckhart's con-
ceptions is aglow through and through
with the feeling that things become re-
born as higher entities in the spirit of
man. Like the greatest Christian theo-
logian of the Middle Ages, St. Thomas
Aquinas, who lived from 1225 till 1274,
Meister Eckhart belonged to the Domin-
ican Order. Eckhart was an unqualified
admirer of St. Thomas; and this will
seem the more intelligible when we fix
our gaze upon Eckhart's whole manner
of conceiving things. He believed him-
self to be as completely in hannony with
the teachings of the Christian Church as
he assumed a like agreement on the part
52
MEISTER ECKHART 53
of St. Thomas. Eckhart had neither
the desire to take aught away from the
content of Christianity, nor the wish to
add anything to it; but he desired to
bring forward this content anew in his
own way. It forms no part of the
spiritual needs of a personaHty such as
he was to set up new truths of this or
the other kind in the place of old ones.
Such a personality has grown completely
intertwined with the content which it
has received from tradition; but it craves
to give to this content a new form, a new
life.
Eckhart desired, without doubt, to
remain an orthodox Christian. The
Christian truths were his own; only he
desired to regard these truths in another
way from that, for instance, in which
St. Thomas Aquinas had done. St.
Thomas accepted two sources of know-
54 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
ledge: Revelation, in matters of faith,
and Reason, in those of research. Reason
recognises the laws of things, that is, the
spiritual in nature. Reason can raise it-
self above nature and grasp in the spirit
from one side the Divine Being under-
lying nature. But it does not attain in
this way to merging itself in the full be-
ing of God. A still higher truth-content
must come to meet it. That is given
in the Holy Scripture, which reveals
what man cannot attain to through him-
self. The truth-content of the Scripture
must be accepted by man; Reason can
defend it. Reason can seek to understand
it as well as possible through its powers
of knowing; but never can Reason en-
gender that truth from within the spirit
of man. Not what the spirit perceives
is the highest truth, but what has come
to this spirit from without.
MEISTER ECKHART 55
St. Augustine declares himself unable
to find within himself the source for that
which he should believe. He says: "I
would not believe in the Gospel, did not
the authority of the Catholic Church
move me thereto.'' That is in the same
spirit as the Evangelist, who points to
the external testimony: "That . . .
which we have heard, which we have
seen with our eyes, which we have looked
upon, and our hands have handled, of
the Word of Life; . . . that which we
have seen and heard declare we unto you,
that ye also may have fellowship with
us." But Meister Eckhart would rather
impress upon man the words of Christ:
''It is expedient for you that I go away:
for if I go not away, the Comforter will
not come unto you"; and he explains
these words by saying: ''Ji^st as if he
had said: Ye have set too much joy
56 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
Upon my present appearance, therefore
the full joy of the Holy Ghost cannot
come to you."
Eckhart thinks that he is speaking
of no God other than that God of whom
Augustine, and the Evangelist, and
Thomas, speak, and yet this testimony
as to God is not his testimony, their
witness is not his. ''Some people want
to see God with the same eyes they see
a cow withal, and want to love God as
they would love a cow. So they love
God for the sake of outer riches and
inner comfort; but such folk do not
rightly love God. . . . Simple folk
fancy they should behold God as though
He stood there and they here. But it
is not so. God and I are one in the act
of knowing {im Erkennen).'" What un-
derlies such expressions in Eckhart's
mouth is nothing else than the experience
MEISTER ECKHART 57
of the inner sense; and this experience
shows him things in a higher Hght. He
therefore beUeves himself to have no
need of an external light in order to at-
tain to the highest insight: *'A Master
says: God became man, whereby the
whole hiiman race is uplifted and made
worthy. Thereof may we be glad that
Christ our brother of His own strength
rose above all the choirs of angels and
sitteth at the right hand of the Father.
That Master spake well; but, in truth,
I would give little for it. What would it
help me, had I a brother who was a rich
man, and I therewithal a poor man?
What would it help me, had I a brother
who was a wise man, and I were a
fool? . . . The Heavenly Father be-
getteth His Only-Begotten Son in Him-
self and in me. Wherefore in Himself
and in me? I am one with Him; and
58 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
He has no power to shut me out. In the
self -same work, the Holy Ghost receives
its being and proceeds from me, as from
God. Wherefore? I am in God, and if
the Holy Ghost takes not its being from
me, neither does it take it from God. In
no wise am I shut out.**
When Eckhart recalls the saying of
St. Paul: "Put ye on Jesus Christ," he
means to imply in this saying the mean-
ing: Sink yourselves into yourselves, dive
down into self -contemplation : and from
out the depths of your being, God will
shine forth to meet you; He illumines
all things for you; you have found Him
within you; you have become united
with God's Being. *'God became man,
that I might become God.**
In his booklet upon Loneliness, Eckhart
expresses himself as follows upon the re-
lation of the outer perception to the
MEISTER ECKHART 59
inner: "Here thou must know that the
Masters say that in every man there
are two kinds of man: the one is called
the outer man, and yet he acts through
the power of the soul. The other man is
called the inner man, that is, that which
is within the man. Now thou must
know that every man who loveth God
maketh no more use of the powers of
the soul in the outer man than so far as
the five senses absolutely require; and
that which is within turns not itself to
the five senses, save in so far as it is the
guide and conductor of the five senses, and
shepherds them, so that they follow not
after their craving to bestiality.*' One
who speaks in such wise of the inner man
can no longer direct his gaze upon a Being
of things lying outside himself ; for he sees
clearly that from no kind or species of the
outer world can this Being come to him.
6o MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
An objector might urge: What can it
matter to the things of the outer world,
what you add to them out of your own
mind? Do but rely upon your own
senses. They alone give you informa-
tion of the outer world. Do not adul-
terate, by a mental addition, what your
senses give you in purity, without ad-
mixture, as the image of the outer world.
Your eye tells you what colour is; what
your mind knows about colour, of that
there is nothing whatever in colour
itself. To this, from Meister Eckhart's
standpoint, the answer would have to
be: The senses are a physical apparatus;
therefore what they have to tell us about
objects can concern only that which is
physical in the objects. And this phy-
sical factor in the objects communicates
itself to me in such wise that in myself
a physical process is set going.
MEISTER ECKHART 6l
Colour, as a physical process of the
outer world, sets up a physical process
in my eye and brain. Thereby I per-
ceive colour. But in this manner I can
perceive of colour only so much as is
physical, sensuous. Sense-perception cuts
out everything non-sensuous from ob-
jects. Objects are thus by sense-percep-
tion stripped of everything about them
which is non-sensuous. If I then ad-
vance to the spiritual, the ideal content,
I in fact only reinstate in the objects
what sense-perception has shut out there-
from. Thus sense-perception does not
exhibit to me the deepest Being of ob-
jects, it rather separates me from that
being. But the spiritual, the ideal con-
ception, seizing upon them again, unites
me with that being. It shows me that
objects are inwardly of exactly the same
spiritual (geistigen) nature as I myself.
62 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
The barrier between myself and the
outer world falls through this spiritual
conception of things. I am separated
from the external world in so far as I am
a thing of the senses among other things
of the senses. Colour and my eye are
two different entities. My brain and a
plant are two different things. But the
ideal content of the plant and of colour
belong together with the ideal content
of my brain and eye alike to a single
ideal entity.
This way of looking at things must not
be confused with the very widespread
anthropomorphising conception of the
world, which imagines that it grasps the
objects of the outer world by ascribing
to them qualities of a physical nature,
which are supposed to resemble the
qualities of the human soul. This view
asserts: When we meet another human
MEISTER ECKHART 63
being, we perceive in him only sensuous
characteristics. I cannot see into my
fellow-man's inner life. I infer from
what I see and hear of him, his inner
life, his soul. Thus the soul is never
anything which I can directly perceive;
I perceive a soul only within myself.
My thoughts, my imaginations, my feel-
ings, no man sees. Now just as I have
such an inner life, alongside of the life
which can be outwardly perceived, so,
too, all other beings must have such an
inner life.
Thus concludes one who occupies the
standpoint of the anthropomorphising
conception of the world. What I per-
ceive externally in the plant, must equally
be the outer side of something inward, of a
soul, which I must add in my imagination
to what I actually perceive. And since
for me there exists but one single inner
64 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
world, namely, my own, therefore I can
conceive of the inner world of other
beings only as resembling my own inner
world. Along this line of argument one
comes to a sort of universal ensouling of
all nature (Pan-psychism) .
This view depends, however, on a
failure to recognise what the awakened
inner sense really gives us. The spiritual
{geistig) content of an external object,
which reveals itself to me in my inner
self, is not anything added in or by
thought to the outer perception. It is
just as little this as is the spirit of another
man. I perceive this spiritual content
through the inner sense just in the same
way as I perceive its physical content
through the external senses. And what
I call my inner life in the above sense
{i.e., thoughts, feelings, etc.), is not at
all in the higher sense, my spirit {Geist).
MEISTER ECKHART 65
This so-called inner life is only the out-
come of purely sensuous processes, and
belongs to me only as a purely individual
personality, which is nothing more than
the result of its physical organisation.
If I transfer this inner life to outer things,
I am, as a matter of fact, thinking in the
air.
My personal soul -life, my thoughts,
memories, and feelings, are in me, be-
cause I am a nature-being organised in
such and such a way, with a perfectly
definite sense-apparatus, with a perfectly
definite nervous system. I have no right
to transfer this my human soul to other
things. I should only be entitled to do
so if I happened to find an3rwhere a
similarly organised nervous system. But
my individual soul is not the highest
spiritual element in me. This highest
spiritual element must first be awakened
66 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
through the inner sense; and this awak-
ened spiritual element in me is also one
and the same with the spiritual element
in all things. The plant appears im-
mediately in its own proper spirituality
to this spiritual element, — I have no need
to endow it with a spirituality like unto
my own.
All talk about the unknown ''thing-in-
itself" loses any kind of meaning with
this conception of the world; for it is
just that very ''thing-in-itself " which
reveals itself to the inner sense. All
such talk originates simply in the fact
that those who talk thus are unable to
recognise in the spiritual contents of
their own inner being the ''things-in-
themselves . ' ' They think that they know
in their own inner selves mere shadows
and schemes without being, — ''mere
concepts and ideas" of things. But as
MEISTER ECKHART 67
they still have a sort of premonition of
the ''thing-in-itself," they therefore be-
lieve that this ''thing-in-itself" is conceal-
ing itself, and that there are limits set
to man's power of knowing. One cannot
prove to such as are entangled in this
beHef, that they must grasp the ''thing-
in-itself" in their own inner being, for
even if one were to put it before them,
they would still never recognise or admit
this ''thing-in-itself." But it is just this
recognition with which we are concerned.
All that Meister Eckhart says is
saturated with this recognition. "Of
this take a comparison: A door opens
and shuts upon a hinge. If, now, I
compare the outer plank of this door to
the outer man, I must then compare the
hinge to the inner man. . Now, when the
door opens and shuts, the outer plank
moves to and fro, while yet the hinge
68 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
remains constantly immovable and is in
no way changed thereby. In like manner
it is here also." As an individual sense-
being, I can investigate things in all direc-
tions — the door opens and shuts,- — if I do
not spiritually give birth within me to the
perceptions of the senses, then do I know
nothing of their nature — the hinge does
not move !
The illumination brought about through
the inner sense is, according to Eck-
hart's view, the entrance of God into
the soul. The light of knowledge which
flames up through this entrance, he calls
the "little spark of the soul." The
point in man's inner being at which this
"spark" flames up is "so pure, so lofty,
and so noble in itself, that no creature
can be therein, but only God alone dwells
therein with His purely Divine Nature."
Whosoever has kindled this "spark" in
MEISTER ECKHART 69
himself, no longer sees only as sees the
ordinary man with his outer senses, and
with his logical understanding which
orders and classifies the impressions of
the senses, but he sees how things are in
themselves. The outer senses and the
classifying understanding separate the
individual man from other things; they
make of him an individual in space and
time, who also perceives the other things
in space and time. The man illuminated
by the "spark'* ceases to be a single
separated being. He annihilates his sep-
arateness. All that brings about the
difference between himself and things
ceases to be. That he, as a single being,
is that which perceives, no longer comes
into consideration. Things and he him-
self are no longer separated. Things,
and with them, God, see themselves in
him. "This spark is in very deed God,
70 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
in that it is a single oneness and bears
within it the imagery of all creattires,
image without image, and image upon
image."
Eckhart proclaims in the most mag-
nificent words the extinction of the iso-
lated being: ''It is therefore to be
known, that according to things it is one
and the same to know God and to be
known by God. Therein do we know
God and see, that He makes us to see
and to know. And as the air, which
enlighteneth, is nothing other than what
it enlightens; for the air giveth light,
because it is enlightened; even so do we
know that we are known, and that He
maketh us to know Himself."
On this foundation Meister Eckhart
builds up his relation to God. It is a
purely spiritual one, and cannot be
modelled according to any image bor-
MEISTER ECKHART 71
rowed from human individual experience.
Not as one separated individual loves
another can God love his creation: not
as an architect builds a house can God
have created it. All such thoughts van-
ish before the inner vision. It belongs
to God's very being that He should love
the world. A God who could love or
not love at pleasure, is imagined ac-
cording to the likeness of the individual
man. ''I speak in good truth and in
eternal truth and in everlasting truth,
that God must needs ever pour Himself
forth in every man who has reached down
to his true root to the utmost of possi-
bility, so wholly and completely that in
His life and in His being, in His nature
and in His Godhead, He keeps nothing
back; He must ever pour all forth in
fruitful wise." And the inner illumina-
tion is something that the soul must
^2 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
necessarily find when it sinks itself deep
into the basis of its being.
From this it is already obvious that
God's communication to htmianity can-
not be conceived after the fashion of
the revelation of one himian being to
another. This communication may also
be cut off, for one man can shut himself
off from another ; but God must, by virtue
of His very nature, reveal Himself. ''It
is a sure and certain truth, that it is a
necessity for God to seek us, exactly as
if His very Godhead depended upon it.
God can as little dispense with us as we
with Him. Even though we turn away
from God, yet God can never turn away
from us.'* Consequently, man's relation
to God cannot be conceived of as though
something image-like, something taken
from the individual himian being, were
contained therein.
MEISTER ECKHART 73
Eckhart is thus conscious that it be-
longs to the perfectness of the Root-Being
of the world to find Itself in the human
soul. This Root -Being indeed would be
imperfect, incomplete, if it lacked that
part of its unfoldment which comes to
light in the soul. What happens in man
belongs to the Root-Being; and if it did
not happen, then the Root-Being would
be but a part of Itself. In this sense,
man can feel himself as a necessary part
of the Being of the universe. This Eck-
hart expresses by describing his feelings
towards God as follows: ''I thank not
God that He loveth me, for He may not
do otherwise; whether He will it or no,
His nature yet compelleth Him. . . .
Therefore will I not pray to God to give
me anything, nor will I praise Him for
that which He hath given me. ..."
But this relationship of the soul to the
74 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
Root-Being must not be conceived of as
if the soul in its individual nature were
declared to be identical with this Root-
Being. The soul which is entangled in
the sense-world, and so in the finite, has
as such not yet got within itself the con-
tent of the Root-Being. The soul must
first develop that content within itself.
It must annihilate itself as an isolated
being; and Meister Eckhart most aptly
characterises this annihilation as Ent-
werdung (un-becoming or involution) .
''When I come to the root of the God-
head, none ask me whence I come and
where I have been, and none doth miss
me, for here there is an E?itwerdung.''
Again, the following phrase speaks very
clearly about this relation: " I take a cup
of water and lay therein a mirror and set
it under the disc of the sun. The sun
casts out its shining light on the mirror
MEISTER ECKHART 75
and yet doth not pass away. The reflect-
ing of the mirror in the sun is sun in the
sun, and yet the mirror remains what it
is. So is it about God. God is in the
soul with His very nature and being and
Godhead, and yet He is not the soul.
The reflecting of the soul in God, is God
in God, and yet the sotil is still that
which it is."
The soul which gives itself up to the
inner illimiination knows in itself not
only what this same soul was before
its illimiination; but it also knows
that which this soul only became
through this illimiination. ^'We must
be united with God in being; we
must be united with God uniquely;
we must be united with God wholly.
How shall we be united with God
in being? That must happen in the
beholding and not in the Wesung.
76 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
His being may not become our being,
but it shall be our life." Not an already
existent life — a Wesung — is to be known
in the logical sense ; but the higher know-
ing — the beholding — shall itself become
life; the spiritual, the ideal must be so
felt by the beholder, as ordinary daily
life is felt by individual human nature.
From such starting points, Meister
Eckhart also builds up a pure conception
of Freedom. In its ordinary life the
soul is not free; for it is interwoven with
the realm of lower causes, and accom-
plishes that to which it is impelled by
these lower causes. But by ' ' beholding ' '
or "vision" it is raised out of the domain
of these causes, and acts no longer as a
separated individual soul. The root of
being is laid bare in this soul, and that
can be moved to action by naught save
by itself. ''God does not compel the
MEISTER ECKHART 77
will; rather He sets the will free, so that
it wills not otherwise than what God
Himself wills; and the spirit desires not
to will other than what God wills: and
that is not its un-freedom: it is its true
and real freedom. For freedom is that
we are not bound, but free and pure and
unmixed, as we were in our first out-
pouring, as we were set free in the Holy
Ghost."
It may be said of the illuminated
man that he is himself the being which
from within itself determines what is
good and what is evil. He can do naught
absolutely, but accomplish the good. For
he does not serve the good, but the good
realises and lives itself out in him. *'The
righteous man serveth neither God, nor
the creature; for he is free, and the nearer
he is to righteousness, the more he is
Freedom's very self." What then, for
78 MYSTICvS OF THE RENAISSANCE
Meister Eckhart, can evil be? It can
be only action under the influence of the
lower mode of regarding things;- — the
acting of a soul which has not passed
through the state of Entwerdung (un-
becoming). Such a soul is selfish in the
sense that it wills only itself. It could
not bring its willing outwardly into
accord with moral ideals. The soul
having vision cannot in this sense be
selfish. Even if it willed itself, it yet
could will only the lordship of the
ideal; for it has made itself into this
very ideal. It can no longer will the
ends of the lower nature, for it has no
longer aught in common with this lower
nature. To act in conformity with moral
ideals implies for the soul which has
vision, no compulsion, no deprivation.
"The man who standeth in God's will
and in God's love, to him it is a craving
MEISTER ECKHART 79
to do all good things that God willeth,
and leave undone all evil things that
are contrary to God. And it is impos-
sible for him to leave undone anything
that God will have done. Even as
walking is impossible to one whose legs
are bound, just so it would be impossible
for a man who standeth in God's will to
do aught unvirtuous."
Eckhart moreover expressly guards
himself against the idea that, with this
view of his, free license is given for any-
thing and everything that the individual
may will. The man possessing vision
is indeed to be recognised by the very
fact that as a separated individual he
no longer wills anything. ** Certain men
say: If I have God and God's freedom,
then I may just do whatever I please.
Such understand wrongly this saying. So
long as thou canst do aught that is con-
8o MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
trary to God and His commandment, so
long thou hast not God's love; even
though thou mayest well deceive the
world, as if thou hadst." Eckhart is
convinced that to the soul which dives
down into its own root, the most per-
fect morality will shine forth from that
root to meet it ; that there all logical con-
ception, and all acting in the ordinary
sense, ceases, and an entirely new order-
ing of human life makes its appearance.
"For all that the understanding can
grasp, and all that desiring can desire,
is verily not God. Where understanding
and desiring end, there it is dark, there
shineth God. There that power unfolds
in the soul which is wider than the wide
heavens. . . . The bliss of the righteous
and the bliss of God is one bliss ; for there
is the righteous full of bliss, where God
is full of bliss.'*
THE FRIENDSHIP OF GOD
In Johannes Tauler ( 1 300-1 36 i),Heinrich
Suso ( 1 295-1 365), and Johannes Ruys-
broeck (1293--1381), one makes acquaint-
ance with men whose Hfe and work
exhibit in a very striking manner those
''motions of the soul" to which such a
spiritual path as that of Meister Eck-
hart is calculated to give rise in natures
of depth and power. While Eckhart
seems like a man who, in the blissful
experiencing of spiritual re-birth, speaks
of the nature of Knowledge as of a
picture which he has succeeded in paint-
ing; these others, followers of his, appear
rather like pilgrims, to whom their inner
re-birth has shown a new road which they
6 81
82 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
fain would tread, but whose goal seems
to vanish before them into the illimitable
distance. Eckhart dwells more upon the
glories of his picture; they upon the
difficulties of the new path.
To understand the difference between
personalities like Eckhart and Tauler,
one must see quite clearly how a man
stands towards his higher cognitions.
Man is interwoven with the sense- world
and the laws of nature by which that
sense-world is ruled. He is himself a
product of that world. He lives because
its forces and its materials are at work
in him; nay, he perceives this sense-
world and judges of it by laws, according
to which both he himself and that world
are alike built up. If he turns his eyes
upon an object, not only does the object,
present itself to him as a complex of
interacting forces, ruled by nature's laws,
THE FRIENDSHIP OF GOD 83
but the eye, with which he sees the object
is itself a body built up according to just
such laws and of just such forces ; and the
seeing, too, takes place by similar laws
and forces. If we had reached the goal
of natural science, we should be able to
follow out this play of the forces of nature
according to natural laws right up into
the highest regions of thought -format ion,
— but in the very act of doing this, we
raise ourselves above this play of forces.
For do we not stand above and beyond
all the "uniformities which make up the
laws of nature," when we over-see the
whole and recognise how we ourselves
fit into nature? We see with our eyes
according to laws of nature. But we
know also the laws, according to which
we see.
We can take our stand upon a higher
siimmit and overlook at once both
84 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
ourselves and the outer world in their
mutual interplay. Is there not here
a something working in us, which is
higher than the sensuous-organic per-
sonality working with Nature's forces
and according to Nature's laws? In
such activity does there still remain any
wall of division between our inner selves
and the outer world? That which here
judges and gains for itself insight is no
longer our separated personality; it is
rather the general world -being, which
has torn down the barrier between the
inner and outer worlds and now embraces
both alike. As true as it is that, judged
by the outer appearance, I still remain
the same separated individual when I
have thus torn down this barrier, so true
is it also that, judged according to es-
sential being, I am no longer this sep-
arated unit. Henceforth there lives in
THE FRIENDSHIP OF GOD 85
me the feeling that there speaks in my
soul the All -Being, which embraces both
myself and the entire world.
This is what Tauler felt, when he
said: ''Man is just as if he were three
men^ — his animal man as he is according
to the senses; then his rational man and
lastly, his highest, godlike man. . . .
The one is the outer, animal, sensuous
man ; the other is the inner, understanding
man, with his understanding and rea-
soning powers; the third man is spirit,
(Gemilth — lit. emotional, feeling nature),
the very highest part of the soul." ^ How
far this third man is above the first and
second, Eckhart has expressed in the
words: ''The eye through which I see
God, that is the same eye with which God
sees me. My eye and God's eye, that
' Cp. W. Preger: Geschichte der Deutschen Mystik, vol. iii,
p. 161.
86 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
is one eye and one knowing and one
feeling."
But in Tauler another feeling is active
as well as this. He has fought his way
through to a real vision of the spiritual,
and does not constantly confuse, as
do the false materialists and the false
idealists, the sensibly-natural with the
spiritual. If, with his disposition, Tauler
had become a scientist, he would have
insisted upon explaining all that is
natural, including the whole of man, both
the first and the second, purely upon
natural lines. He would never have
transferred purely spiritual forces into
nature itself. He would never have
talked of a " purposef ulness " in nature
conceived of according to men's notions.
He knew that there, where we perceive
with our senses, no "creative ideas'*
are to be found. Far rather he was most
THE FRIENDSHIP OF GOD 87
keenly conscious of the fact that man is
a purely natural being. And as he felt
himself to be, not a scientist, but a de-
votee of moral life, he therefore felt most
keenly the contrast which reveals itself
between this natural being of man and
that vision of God which arises naturally
and within nature, but as spirituality.
And just in that very contrast the mean-
ing of life presented itself to his eyes.
Man finds himself as a single being, a
creature of nature. And no science can
reveal to him anything else about this
life than that he is such a creature of
nature. As a creature of nature he
cannot get outside of the sphere of
natural creation. In it he must remain.
And yet his inner life leads him outside
and beyond it. He must have confi-
dence in that which no science of outer
nature can give him or show to him.
88 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
If he calls only this nature Being or
'Hhat which is," then he must be able
to reach out to the vision which re-
cognises as the higher, Non-being, or
''that which is not.** Tauler seeks for
no God who is present in the same sense
as a natural force; he seeks no God who
has created the world in the sense of
human creation. In him lives the clear
insight that the conception of creation
even of the Fathers of the Church is only
idealised human creating. It is clear to
him that God is not to be found as
nature's working and her laws are found,
by science. Tauler is well aware that
we must not add in thought anything to
nature as God. He knows that whoever
thinks God, in his sense, no longer thinks
thought-content, as does one who has
grasped nature in thought. Therefore,
Tauler seeks not to think God, but to
THE FRIENSDHIP OF GOD 89
think divinely, to think as God thinks.
The knowledge of nature is not enriched
by the knowledge of God, but transformed.
The knower of God does not know a
different thing from the knower of nature,
but he knows in a different way. Not
one single letter can the knower of God
add to the knowledge of nature; but
through his whole knowing of nature
there shines a new light.
What root-feelings will take possession
of a man's soul who contemplates the
world from this point of view, will depend
upon how he regards that experience
of the soul which brings about spiritual
re-birth. Within this experience, man
is wholly a natural being, when he con-
siders himself in his interaction with
the rest of nature; and he is wholly a
spiritual being when he considers the
conditions into which this re-birth has
90 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
brought him. Thus we can say with
equal truth, the inmost depth of the
soul is still natural; as also it is already
divine. Tauler emphasised the former
in accordance with his own tendency of
thought. However far we may penetrate
into our souls, we still remain separated
individual htiman beings, said he to him-
self. But yet in the very depths of the
soul of the individual being there gleams
forth the All-Being.
Tauler was dominated by the feeling:
Thou canst not free thyself from separate-
ness, nor purify thyself from it. There-
fore the All-Being in its purity can never
make its appearance within thee, it can
only shed its light into the depths of thy
soul. Thus in its depths only a mere
reflection, a picture of the All-Being
comes into existence. Thou canst so
transform thy separated personality that
\
THE FRIENDSHIP OF GOD 91
it reproduces the All-Being as a picture;
but this All-Being itself does not shine
forth in thee. Starting from such con-
ceptions, Tauler came to the idea of a
Godhead that never merges wholly into
the himian world, never flows quite com-
pletely into it. More, he attaches im-
portance to his not being confused with
those who maintain that man's inmost
being is itself divine. He says: ''The
Union with God is taken by fooHsh men
in a fleshly sense, and they say that they
shall be transformed into divine nature ;
but such is false and an evil heresy. For
even in the very highest, most inward
Union with God, God's nature and God's
being still remain lofty, yea, higher than
the loftiest; that passeth into a divine
abyss, where never yet was creature."
Tauler wishes, and rightly, to be called
a good Catholic in the sense of his age
y
92 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
and of his priestly calling. He has no
desire to oppose any other conception to
Christianity. He desires only to deepen
and spiritualise that Christianity through
his way of looking at it. He speaks as
a pious priest of the content of Holy Writ.
But this same scripture still becomes in
the world of his conceptions a means for
the expression of the inmost experiences
of his soul. "God worketh all his works
in the soul and giveth them to the soul;
and the Father begetteth His only begotten
Son in the soul, as truly as He begetteth
Him in eternity, neither more, nor less.
What is born when one says: God
begetteth in the soul? Is it a likeness
of God, or a picture of God, or is it some-
what of God? Nay: it is neither picture
nor likeness of God, but the same God
and the same Son whom the Father be-
getteth in eternity and naught else than
THE FRIENDSHIP OF GOD 93
the blissful divine word, that is the second
person in the Trinity, Him the Father
begetteth in the soul, . . . and thereof
the soul hath thus great and special
dignity."' The stories of scripture be-
come for Tauler the garment in which he
clothes the happiness of the inner life.
''Herod, who drove out the child and
sought to slay him, is a likeness of the
world, which yet seeketh to kill this
child in a believing man, therefore one
should and must flee therefrom, if we do
desire to keep that child alive in us, but
that child is the enlightened believing soul
of each and every man.'*
As Tauler directs his gaze mainly upon
the natural man, he is comparatively less
concerned to tell us what happens when
the higher man enters into the natural
^Cp. Preger: History of German Mysticism, vol. iii..
p. 219 e^ seg_.
94 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
man, than to discover the paths which
the lower forces of the personaHty must
follow if they are to be transmuted into
the higher life. As a devotee of the
moral life, he desires to show to men the
roads to the All-Being. He has uncon-
ditional faith and trust that the All-Being
shines forth in man, if man will so order
his life that there shall be in him a shrine
for the Divine. But this All-Being can
never shine forth while man shuts him-
self up in his mere natural separated
personality. Such a man, separated off
in himself, is merely one member of the
world: a single creature, in Tauler's
language. The more man shuts himself
off within this his being as a member of
the world, so much the less can the All-
Being find place in him. ''If man is in
reality to become one with God, then all
energies and powers even of the inner
THE FRIENDSHIP OF GOD 95
man must die and become silent. The
will must turn away even from the Good
and from all willing, and become void
of willing." "Man must escape from
all his senses and turn inwards all his
powers, and come into a forgetting of all
things and of himself." "For the true
and eternal Word of God is uttered only
in the desert, when the man hath gone
out from himself and from all things
and is quite untrammelled, desolate and
alone."
When Tauler stood at his zenith, the
problem which occupied the central point
of his mental life was: How can man
overcome and kill out in himself his
separated existence, so as to live in per-
fect unison with the All-life? For one
in this position, all feelings towards the
All-Being concentrate themselves into
this one thing: Awe before the All-
96 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
Being as that which is inexhaustible,
endless. He says to himself: whatever
level thou hast reached, there remain
still higher perspectives, still more exalted
possibilities. Thus clear and defined as
is to him the direction in which he has
to turn his steps, it is equally clear to
him that he can never speak of a goal:
for a new goal is only the beginning of a
new path. Through such a new goal
man reaches a certain level of evolution:
but evolution itself continues inimit-
ably. And what that evolution may
attain upon some more distant level, it
can never know upon its present stage.
There is no knowing the final goal: only
a trusting in the path, in evolution it-
self. There is knowing for everything
which man has already attained. It
consists in the penetration of an already
present object by the powers of our
THE FRIENDSHIP OF GOD 97
spirit. For the higher hfe of man's
inner being, there is no such knowing.
Here the powers of our spirit must first
transfer the object itself into the realm
of the existent; they must first create
for it an existence, constituted as is
natural existence.
Natural Science follows the evolution
of beings from the simplest up to the
most perfected, to man himself. This
evolution lies before us as already com-
pleted. We know it, by penetrating
it with the powers of our spirit. When
evolution has reached humanity, man
then finds nothing further there before
him as its continuation. He himself
accomplishes the further unfoldment.
Henceforward he lives what for earlier
stages he only knows. He creates, ac-
cording to the object, that which, for
what has gone before, he only copies
98 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
in accordance with its spiritual nature.
That truth is not one with the existent
in nature, but naturally embraces both
the existent and the non-existent: of this
truth Tauler is filled to overflowing in
all his feelings. It has been handed
down to us that Tauler was led to this
fulfilling by an illuminated layman, a
** Friend of God from the Mountains."
We have here a mysterious story.
As to where this ''Friend of God" lived
there exist only conjectures; as to who
he was, not even these. He seems to
have heard much of Tauler 's way of
preaching, and to have resolved accord-
ingly to journey to Tauler, who was
then working as a preacher in Strass-
burg, in order to fulfil a certain duty
by him. Tauler's relation to the Friend
of God, and the influence which the
latter exercised upon the former, are to
THE FRIENSDHIP OF GOD 99
be found described in a text which is
printed along with the oldest editions
of Tauler's sermons under the title,
''The Book of the Master." Therein
a Friend of God, in whom some seek to
recognise the same who came into re-
lations with Tauler, gives an account of
a " Master," whom some assert to be Tau-
ler himself. He relates how a transfor-
mation, a spiritual re-birth, was brought
about in a certain *' Master" and how the
latter, when he felt his death drawing
near, called his friend to him and begged
him to write the story of his ''enlight-
enment," but yet to take care that no
one should ever learn of whom the book
speaks. He asks this on the ground
that all the knowledge that proceeds
from him is yet not really from him.
"For know ye that God hath brought
all to pass through me, poor worm, and
100 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
that what it is, is not mine, it is of
God."
A learned controversy which has con-
nected itself with the occurrence is
not of the very smallest importance for
the essence of the matter. An effort
was made to prove on one side^ that the
Friend of God never existed, but that
his existence was fiction and that the
books ascribed to him come from an-
other hand (Rulman Merswin). On the
other hand Wilhelm Preger has sought
with many arguments (in his History of
German Mysticism) to support the exist-
ence, the genuineness of the writings, and
the correctness of the facts that relate
to Tauler.
I am here under no obligation to throw
light by presumptuous investigation upon
a relationship as to which any one, who
^Denifle: Die Dictungen des GoUesjreu7ides itn Oherlande.
THE FRIENDSHIP OF GOD loi
understands how to read the writings^
in question, will know that it should
remain a secret.
If one says of Tauler, that at a certain
stage of his life a transformation took
place in him, that will be amply sufficient.
Tauler 's personality need no longer be
in any way considered in this connec-
tion, but only a personality "in general."
As regards Tauler, we are only concerned
with the fact that we must understand
his transformation from the point of
view set forth in what follows. If we
compare his later activity with his earlier,
the fact of this transformation is obvious
without further search. I will leave
' The writings in question are, among others : Von eime
eigenwilligen weltwisen manne, der von eime heiligen welt-
priestere gewiset wart life demuetige gehorsamme, 1338; Das
Buck von den zwei Mannen; Der gefangene Ritter, 1349;
Die geistliche stege, 1350; Von der geistlicJien Letter, 1357;
Das Meisterbuch, 1369; Geschichte von zwei fimfzehnjahz-
igen Knaben.
102 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
aside all outer circumstances and relate
the inner occurrences in the soul of the
''Master" under **the influence of the
layman." What my reader will
understand by the "layman" and the
''Master" depends entirely upon his own
mentality; what I myself think about
it is a matter as to which I cannot know
for whom it is of any weight.
A Master is instructing his disciples
as to the relationship of the soul to
the All-Being of things. He speaks of the
fact that when man plunges into
the abysmal depths of his soul, he no
longer feels the natural, limited forces of
the separated personality working within
him. Therein the separated man no
longer speaks, therein speaks God. There
man does not see God, or the world; there
God sees Himself. Man has become one
with God. But the Master knows that
THE FRIENDSHIP OF GOD 103
this teaching has not yet awakened to
full life in him. He thinks it with his
understanding: but he does not yet live
in it with every fibre of his personality.
He is thus teaching about a state of
things which he has not yet completely
lived through in himself. The descrip-
tion of the condition corresponds to the
truth; yet this truth has no value if
it does not gain life, if it does not
bring itself forth in reality as actually
existent.
The ''layman** or ''Friend of God**
hears of the Master and his teachings.
He is no less saturated with the truth
which the Master utters than the Master
himself. But he possesses this truth
not as a matter of the understanding;
he has it as the whole force of his life.
He knows that when this truth has come
to a man from outside, he can himself
I04 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
give utterance to it, without even in the
least living in accordance with it. But
in that case he has nothing other in him
than the natural knowledge of the un-
derstanding. He then speaks of this
natural knowledge as if it were the
highest, equivalent to the working of
the All-Being. It is not so, because it
has not been acquired in a life that has
approached to this knowledge as a trans-
formed, a reborn life. What one ac-
quires only as a natural man, that
remains only natural, — even when
one afterwards expresses in words the
fundamental characteristic of the higher
knowledge. Outwards, from within the
very nature itself, must the transform-
ation be accomplished.
Nature, which by living has evolved
itself to a certain level, must evolve
further through life ; something new must
THE FRIENDSHIP OF GOD 105
come into existence through this ftirther
evolution. Man must not only look
backwards upon the evolution which
already lies behind him — claim as the
highest that which shapes itself ac-
cording thereto in his spirit — but he
must look forward upon the uncreate:
his knowledge must be a beginning of a
new content, not an end to the content
of evolution which already lies before
it. Nature advances from the worm to
the mammal, from the mammal to man,
not in a conceptual but in an actual,
real process. Man has to repeat this
process not in his mind alone. The
mental repetition is only the beginning
of a fresh, real evolution, which, however,
despite its being spiritual, is real. Man,
then, does not merely know what nature
has produced; he continues nature; he
translates his knowledge into living ac-
io6 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
tion. He gives birth within himself to
the spirit, and this spirit advances thence
onwards from level to level of evolution,
as nature itself advances. Spirit begins
a natural process upon a higher level.
The talk about the God who contem-
plates Himself in man's inner being, takes
on a different character in one who has
recognised this. He attaches little im-
portance to the fact that an insight
already attained has led him into the
depths of the All-Being; instead, his
spiritual nature acquires a new charac-
ter. It unfolds itself further in the
direction determined by the All-Being.
Such a man not only looks at the world
differently from one who merely under-
stands: he lives his life otherwise. He
does not talk of the meaning which life
already has through the forces and laws
of the world: but he gives anew a fresh
THE FRIENDSHIP OF GOD 107
meaning to his life. As little as the fish
already has in itself what makes its
appearance on a later level of evolution
as the mammal, as little has the under-
standing man already in himself what
shall be born from him as the higher
man. If the fish could know itself and
the things around it, it would regard
the being-a-fish as the meaning of life.
It would say: the All-Being is like the
fish: in the fish the All-Being beholds
itself. Thus would the fish speak as
long as it remained constant to its under-
standing kind of knowledge. In reality
it does not remain constant thereto.
It reaches out beyond its knowledge
with its activity. It becomes a reptile
and later a mammal. The meaning
which it gives to itself in reality reaches
out beyond the meaning which mere
contemplation gives to it.
io8 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
In man also this must be so. He
gives himself a meaning in reality; he
does not halt and stand still at the
meaning he already has, which his
contemplation shows him. Knowledge
leaps out beyond itself, if only it under-
stands itself aright. Knowledge cannot
deduce the world from a ready-made
God; it can only unfold itself from a
germ in the direction towards a God.
The man who has understood this will
not regard God as something that is out-
side of him ; he will deal with God as a be-
ing who wanders with him towards a goal,
which at the outset is just as unknown
as the nature of the mammal is unknown
to the fish. He does not aim to be the
knower of the hidden, or of the self -reveal-
ing existent God, but to be the friend
of the divine doing and working, which
is exalted over both being and non-being.
THE FRIENDSHIP OF GOD 109
The layman, who came to the Master,
was a "Friend of God" in this sense,
and through him the Master became
from a contemplator of the being of
God, one who is ''alive in the spirit,*'
one who not only contemplated, but
lived in the higher sense. The Master
now no longer brought forth concepts
and ideas of the understanding from
his inner nature, but these concepts and
ideas burst forth from him as living,
actuahsed spirit. He no longer merely
edified his hearers; he shook the very
foundations of their being. He no
longer plunged their souls into their
inner being; he led them into a new life.
This is recounted to us symbolically:
about forty people fell down through
his preaching and lay as if dead.
H: H< *
no MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
As a guide to such a new life, we
possess a book about whose author
nothing is known. Luther first made it
known in print. The philologist, Franz
Pfeiffer, has recently printed it ac-
cording to a manuscript of the year
1497, with a modern German trans-
lation facing the original text. What
precedes the book indicates its pur-
pose and its goal: "Here begins the
man from Frankfurt and saith many
very lofty and very beautiful things
about a perfect life." Upon this follows
the ''Preface about the man from Frank-
furt": "Al-mighty, Eternal God hath
uttered this little book through a wise,
understanding, truthful, righteous man,
his friend, who in former days was a
German nobleman, a priest and a custo-
dian in the German House of Nobles at
Frankfurt; it teacheth many a lovely
THE FRIENDSHIP OF GOD 1 1 1
insight into Divine Wisdom, and es-
pecially how and whereby one may
know the true, righteous friends of God,
and also the unrighteous, false, free-
thinkers, who are very hurtful to Holy
Church."
By ''free-thinkers" one may perhaps
understand those who live in a merely
conceptual world, like the "Master"
described above before his transformation
by means of the "Friend of God," and
by the "true, righteous friends of God,"
such as possess the disposition of the
"layman." One may further ascribe to
the book the intention of so working
upon its readers as the "Friend of God
from the Mountains" did upon the
Master. It is not known who the
author was. But what does that mean?
It is not known when he was born and
died, or what he did in his outer life.
112 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
That the author aimed to preserve
eternal secrecy about these facts of his
outer life, belongs naturally to the way
in which he desired to work. It is not
the "I" of this or the other man, born
at a definite point of time, who is to
speak to us, but the "I-ness" in the
depths whereof ''the separateness of indi-
vidualities** (in the sense of Paul Asmus*
saying must first unfold itself. "If God
took to Himself all men who are or who
have ever been, and became man in them,
and they became God in Him, and it did
not happen to me also, then my fall and
my turning away would never be made
good, unless it also happened in me too.
And in this restoration and making good,
I neither can nor may nor should do any-
thing thereto save a mere pure suffering,
so that God alone doeth and worketh
' Vide ante, page 34.
THE FRIENDSHIP OF GOD 113
all things in me, and I suffer Him and
all His works and His divine will. But
if I will not submit to this, but possess
myself with egotism, i.e., with mine, and
I, to me, for me, and the like, that hinders
God so that He cannot work His work in
me purely alone and without hindrance.
Therefore my fall and my turning away
remain thus not made good." The
^'man from Frankfurt" aims to speak
not as a separated individual; he desires
to let God speak. That he yet can do
this only as a single, distinct personality
he naturally knows full well; but he is
a "Friend of God," that means a man
who aims not at presenting the nature
of life through contemplation, but at
pointing out the beginning of a new
evolutionary pathway through the living
spirit.
The explanations in the book are
8
114 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
various instructions as to how one comes
to this pathway. The root-thought
X returns again and again: man must
strip off everything that is connected
with that which makes him appear as a
single, separate personahty. This thought
seems to be worked out only in respect
of the moral life; it should be extended,
without further ado, to the higher life
of knowledge as well. One must anni-
hilate in oneself whatever appears as
separateness : then separated existence
ceases; the All-Life enters into us. We
cannot master this All-Life by drawing
it towards us. It comes into us, when
we reduce the separateness in us to
silence. We have the All-Life least of
all just then, when we so regard our
separated existence as if the Whole
already dwelt within it. This first comes
to light in the separated existence when
THE FRIENDSHIP OF GOD 115
this separated existence no longer claims
for itself to be anything. This preten-
sion on the part of the separated existence
our text terms ''assumption."
Through ' ' asstmiption " the self makes
it impossible for itself that the Uni-
versal Self should enter into it. The
self then puts itself as a part, as some-
thing imperfect, in the place of the whole,
of the perfect. "The perfect is a being,
that in itself and in its being has conceived
and resolved all beings, and without
which and apart from which there is no
true being, and in which all things have
their being; for it is the being of all
things and is in itself unchangeable and
immovable, and changes and moves all
other things. But the divided and the
imperfect is that which has sprung from
out of this perfect, or becomes, just as a
ray or a light that flows forth from the
ii6 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
sun or a light and shines upon something,
this or that. And that is called the
creature, and of all these divided things
none is the perfect. Therefore also is
the perfect none of the divided. . . .
When the perfect cometh, the divided is
despised. But when does it come? I
say: When so far as is possible it is
known, felt, tasted in the soul; for the
defect lies wholly in us and not in it.
For just as the sun illuminates the
whole world and is just as near to the
one as to the other, yet a blind man sees
it not. But that is no defect of the sun
but of the blind man. ... If my eye
is to see anything, it must become
cleansed, or be already cleansed from all
other things. . . . Now one might be
inclined to say: In so far then as it is
unknowable and inconceivable for all
creatures, and since the soul is also a
THE FRIENDSHIP OF GOD 117
creature, how can it then be known in
the soul? Answer: Therefore is it said,
the creature shall be known as a creature.'"
This is as much as to say that all
creatures shall be regarded as created
and creation and not regard themselves
as I-ness and self-ness, whereby this
knowing is made impossible. ''For in
whatever creature this perfect one shall
be known, there all creature-being, cre-
ated-being, I-ness, self-ness, and every-
thing of the kind must be lost, be and
become naught."' The soul must there-
fore look within itself; there it finds
its I-ness, its self-ness. If it remains
standing there, it thereby cuts itself off
from the perfect. If it regards its I-ness
only as a thing lent to it as it were, and
annihilates it in spirit, it will be seized
upon by the stream of the All-Life, of
^ Chap, i., Book oj the Man from Frankfurt.
Ii8 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
Perfection. ''When the creature as-
sumes to itself somewhat of good, as
Being, Life, Knowledge, Power, in short,
aught of that which one calls good and
thinks that it is that, or that it belongs
to it or comes from it, so often and so
much as that happens, does the creature
turn away.'* "The created soul of man
has two eyes. The one is the possibiUty
of seeing in eternity; the other of seeing
in time and in creation.'' "Man should
therefore stand and be quite free without
himself, that is without self-ness, I-ness,
me, mine, for me and the like, so that
he as little seeks and thinks of himself
and what is his in all things as if it did
not exist; and he should therefore also
think little of himself, as if he were not,
and as if another had done all his
deeds."'
' Chap. XV., Book of the Man from Frankfurt.
THE FRIENDSHIP OF GOD 1 19
One must also take account of the
fact in regard to the writer of these
sentences, that the thought-content,
to which he gives a direction by his
higher ideas and feehngs, is that of a
believing priest in the spirit of his own
time. We are here concerned not with
the thought-content, but with the di-
rection, not with the thoughts but with
the way of thinking. Any one who does
not live as he does in Christian dogmas,
but in the conceptions of natural science,
finds in his sentences other thoughts;
but with these other thoughts he points
in the same direction. And this direc-
tion is that which leads to the over-
coming of the self -hood, by the Self -hood
itself. The highest light shines for man
in his Ego. But this light only then
imparts to his concept-world the right
reflection, when he becomes aware that
I20 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
it is not his own self-light, but the
universal world- light.
Hence there is no more important
knowledge than self-knowledge ; and there
is equally no knowledge which leads so
completely out beyond itself. When the
''self" knows itself aright, it is already
no longer a "self." In his own language,
the writer of the book in question ex-
presses this as follows: "For God's
'own-ness' is void of this and that, void
of self-ness and I-ness; but the nature
and own-ness of the creature is that it
seeketh and willeth itself and its own
and 'this' and 'that'; and in all that
it does or leaves undone, it seeketh to
receive its own benefit and profit.
"When, now, the creature or the man
loseth his own-ness and his self-ness and
himself, and goeth out from himself, then
God entereth in with His Own-ness, that
THE FRIENDSHIP OF GOD 121
is with his Self -hood ." ' Man soars up-
wards, from a view of his "Ego" which
makes the latter appear to him as his
very being, to a view such that it
shows him his Ego as a mere organ, in
which the All-Being works upon itself.
In the concept-sphere of our text, this
means: '*If man can attain thereto that
he belongeth unto God just as a man's
hand belongeth to him, then let him z'
content himself and seek no further."^
That is not intended to mean that
when man has reached a certain stage
of his evolution he shall stand still
there, but that, when he has got as far
as is indicated in the above words, he
should not set on foot further investiga-
tions into the meaning of the hand, but
rather make use of the hand, in order
/
^ Chap, xxiv, Book of the Man from Frankfurt.
^ Ibid., Chap. liv.
122 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
that it may render service to the body
to which it belongs.
Heinrich Suso and Johannes Ruys-
BROEK possessed a type of mind which
may be characterised as genius for feeHng.
Their feeHngs are drawn by something
Hke instinct in the same direction in
which Eckhart's and Tauler's feeHngs
were guided by their higher thought-
Hfe. Suso's heart turns devoutly towards
that Root-Being which embraces the in-
dividual man just as much as the whole
remaining world, and in whom forgetting
himself, he yearns to lose himself as a
drop of water in the mighty ocean. He
speaks of this his yearning towards the
All-Being, not as of something that he
desires to embrace in thought; he speaks
of it as a natural impulse, that makes
THE FRIENDSHIP OF GOD 123
his soul drunken with desire for the
annihilation of its separated existence
and its re-awakening to life in the all-
efficiency of the endless life. ''Turn
thine eyes to this being in its ptire naked
simplicity, so that thou mayest let fall
this and that manifold being. Take
being in itself alone, that is unmoved
with not-being; for all not-being denies
all being. A thing that is yet to become,
or that has been, is not now in actual
presence.'*
''Now, one cannot know mixed being
or not-being except by some mark of
being as a whole. For if one will under-
stand a thing, the reason first encounters
being, and that is a being that worketh
all things. It is a divided being of this
or that creature, — for divided being is
all mingled with something of other-ness,
with a possibility of receiving something.
/
124 MYSTICS OF THE RENALSSANCE
Therefore the nameless divine being
must so be a whole being in itself, that
it sustaineth all divided beings by its
presence.'*
Thus speaks Suso in the autobiography
which he wrote in conjunction with his
pupil Elsbet Staglin. He, too, is a pious
priest and lives entirely in the Christian
circle of thought. He lives therein as
if it were quite unthinkable that anybody
with his mental tendency could live in
any other world. But of him also it is
true that one can combine another con-
cept-content with his mental tendency.
This is clearly borne out by the way
in which the content of the Christian
teaching has become for him actual
inner experience, and his relation to
Christ has become a relation between his
own spirit and the eternal truth in a
purely ideal, spiritual way.
THE FRIENDSHIP OF GOD 125
He composed a ''Little Book of Eternal
Wisdom.'' In this he makes the "Eter-
nal Wisdom" speak to its servant, in
other words to himself: "Knowest thou
me not? How art thou so cast down, or
hast thou lost consciousness from agony
of heart, my tender child? Behold it
is I, merciful Wisdom, who have opened
wide the abyss of fathomless compas-
sion which yet is hidden from all the
saints, tenderly to receive thee and all
repentant hearts; it is I, sweet Eternal
Wisdom, who was there poor and miser-
able, so as to bring thee to thy worthiness;
it is I, who suffered bitter death, that I
might make thee to live again! I stand
here pale and bleeding and lovely, as I
stood on the lofty gallows of the cross
between the stem judgment of my Father
and thee. It is I, thy brother; look, it
is I, thy spouse! I have therefore wholly
126 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
forgotten all thou hast done against me,
as if it had never been, if only thou
turnest wholly to me and separatest thy-
self no more from me.'*
All that is bodily and temporal in the
Christian conception has become for
Suso, as one sees, a spiritual-ideal process
in the recesses of his soul. From some
chapters of Suso's biography mentioned
above, it might appear as if he had let
himself be guided not by the mere action
of his own spiritual power, but through
external revelations, through ghostly
visions. But he expresses his meaning
quite clearly about this. One attains
to the truth through reasonableness,
not through any kind of revelation.
''The difference between pure truth and
y two-souled visions in the matter of
knowledge I will also tell you. An im-
mediate beholding of the bare Godhead,
THE FRIENDSHIP OF GOD 127
that Is right pure truth, without all
doubt; and every vision, so that it be
reasonable and without pictures and the
more like it be unto that bare beholding,
the purer and nobler it is."
Meister Eckhart, too, leaves no doubt
that he puts aside the view which seeks
to be spiritual in bodily-spacial forms,
in appearances which one can perceive
by any senses. Minds of the type of
Suso and Eckhart are thus opponents of
such a view, as that which finds express-
ion in the spiritualism which has devel-
oped during the nineteenth century.
Johannes Ruysbroek, the Belgian
mystic, trod the same path as Suso. His
spiritual way found an active opponent
in Johannes Gerson (born 1363), who
was for some time Chancellor of the
128 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
University of Paris and played a mo-
mentous role at the Council of Constance.
Some light is thrown upon the nature
of the mysticism which was practised by
Tauler, Suso and Ruysbroek, if one
compares it with the mystic endeavours
of Gerson, who had his predecessors in
Richard de St. Victor, Bonaventura, and
others.
Ruysbroek himself fought against those
whom he reckoned among the heretical
mystics. As such he considered all those
who, through an easy-going judgment of
the understanding, hold that all things
proceed from one Root-Being, who there-
fore see in the world only a manifoldness
and in God the unity of this manifoldness.
Ruysbroek does not count himself among
these, for he knew that one cannot attain
to the Root-Being by the contemplation
of things, but only by raising oneself from
THE FRIENDSHIP OF GOD 129
this lower mode of contemplation to a
higher one .
Similarly, he turned against those who
seek to see without further ado, in the
individual man, in his separated exist-
ence (in his creature-being), his higher
nature also. He deplored not a little
the error which confuses all differences
in the sense- world, and asserts light-
mindedly that things are different only
in appearance, but that in their being
they are all alike. This would amount,
for a way of thinking like Ruysbroek's, to
the same thing as saying: That the
fact that the trees in an avenue seem to
our seeing to come together does not
concern us. In reality they are every-
where equally far apart, therefore our
eyes ought to accustom themselves to
see correctly. But our eyes see aright.
That the trees run together depends
130 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
upon a necessary law of nature; and we
have nothing to reproach our seeing
with, but on the contrary to recognise in
spirit why we see them thus.
Moreover, the mystic does not turn
away from the things of the senses. As
things of the senses, he accepts them as
they are, and it is clear to him that
through no judgment of the under-
standing can they become otherwise.
But in spirit he passes beyond both
senses and understanding, and then only
does he find the unity. His faith is
unshakable that he can develop himself
to the beholding of this unity. There-
fore does he ascribe to the nature of
man the divine spark which can be
brought to shine in him, to shine by
its own light.
People of the type of Gerson think
otherwise. They do not beheve in this
THE FRIENDSHIP OF GOD 131
self -shining. For them, what man can
behold remains always a something ex-
ternal, that from some side or other must
come to them externally. Ruysbroek
believed that the highest wisdom must
needs shine forth for mystic contem-
plation. Gerson believed only that the
soul can illuminate the content of an
external teaching (that of the Church).
For Gerson, Mysticism was nothing
else but possessing a warm feeling for
everything that is revealed in this
teaching. For Ruysbroek, it was a
faith, that the content of all teaching
is also born in the soul. Therefore
Gerson blames Ruysbroek in that the
latter imagines that not only has he the
power to behold the All-Being with
clearness, but that in this beholding
there expresses itself an activity of the
All-Being. Ruysbroek simply could not
132 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
be understood by Gerson. Both spoke
of two wholly different things. Ruys-
broek has in his mind's eye the life of
the soul that lives itself into oneness
with its God; Gerson, only a soul-life
that seeks to love the God whom it can
never actually live in itself. Like many
others, Gerson fought against something
that was strange to him only because he
could not grasp it in experience.
CARDINAL NICHOLAS OF CUSA
A GLORIOUSLY shining star in the sky
of the thought-life of the Middle Ages
is Nicholas Chrysippus of Cusa (at
Trevis, 1401-1464). He stands upon the
summit of the knowledge of his time.
In mathematics he accomplished re-
markable work. In natural science he
may be described as the forerunner of
Copernicus, for he took up the stand-
point that the earth is a moving celestial
body like others. He had already broken
away from a view upon which even a
hundred years later the great astronomer,
Tycho Brahe, based himself, when he
hurled against the teaching of Coper-
nicus the sentence: "The earth is a
133
134 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
gross, heavy mass inapt for movement;
how, then, can Copernicus make a
star of it and run it about in the air?"
The same man who thus not only em-
braced all the knowledge of his time, but
also extended it further, possessed in
addition, in a high degree, the power of
awakening this knowledge in the inner
life, so that it not only illuminates the
external world, but also mediates for
man that spiritual life, which from the
profounder depths of his soul he needs
must long after.
If we compare Nicholas with such
spirits as Eckhart or Tauler, we obtain
a remarkable result. Nicholas is the
scientific thinker, striving to lift himself
from research about the things of the
world on to the level of a higher percep-
tion; Eckhart and Tauler are the faith-
ful believers, who seek the higher life
CARDINAL NICHOLAS OF CUSA 135
from within the content of this faith.
Eventually Nicholas arrives at the same
inner life as Meister Eckhart; but the
inner life of the former has a rich store
of knowledge as its content.
The full significance of this difference
becomes clear when we reflect that for
the student of science the danger lies
very near at hand of misunderstanding
the scope of that species of knowing
which enlightens us regarding the various
special departments of knowledge. He
can very readily be misled into believing
that there really is only one single kind
or mode of knowledge; and then he will
either over- or under-rate this knowledge
which leads us to the goal in the various
special sciences. In the one case he
will approach the subject-matter of the
highest spiritual life as he would a prob-
lem in physics, and proceed to deal with
136 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
it by means of concepts such as he would
apply to gravitation or electricity. Thus,
according as he believes himself to be
more or less enlightened, the world will
appear to him as a blindly working
machine, or an organism, or as the
teleological structure of a personal God:
perhaps even as a form which is ruled and
pervaded by a more or less clearly con-
ceived ''World-Soul.'* In the other case
he notes that the knowledge, of which
alone he has any experience, is adapted
only to the things of the sense-world;
and then he will become a sceptic, saying
to himself: We can know nothing about
things which lie beyond the world of the
senses. Our knowledge has a limit.
For the needs of the higher life we have
no choice but to throw ourselves blindly
into the arms of faith untouched by
knowledge. And for a learned theo-
CARDINAL NICHOLAS OF CUSA 137
logian like Nicholas of Cusa, who was
also a scientist, this second danger lay
peculiarly near at hand. For he emerged,
along the lines of his learned training,
from Scholasticism, — the way of conceiv-
ing things which was dominant in scien-
tific life within the Mediaeval Church; a
mode of thought that St. Thomas Aquinas
(1227-1274), the ''Prince of Scholastics,"
had brought to its highest perfection.
We must take this mode of conceiving
things as the background, when we
desire to portray the personality of
Nicholas of Cusa.
Scholasticism is, in the highest degree,
a product of human sagacity; and in it
the logical capacity celebrated its highest
triumphs. Any one who is striving to
work out concepts in their sharpest,
most clear-cut outlines, ought to go to
the Scholastics for instruction. They
138 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
afford us the High School for the tech-
nique of thinking. They possess an
incomparable skill in moving in the field
of pure thinking. It is easy to under-
value what they were able to achieve
in this field; for it is only with difficulty
accessible to man as regards most de-
partments of knowledge. The majority
rise to its level only in the domains of
numbers and calculation, and in reflect-
ing upon the connection of geometrical
figures.
We can count by adding in thought a
unity to a number, without needing to
call to our help sense-conceptions. We
calculate also, without such concep-
tions, in the pure element of thought.
In regard to geometrical figures, we know
that they never perfectly coincide with
any sensible perception. There is no
such thing within sensible reality as an
CARDINAL NICHOLAS OF CUSA 139
"ideal" circle. Yet our thinking con-
cerns itself with the purely ideal circle.
For things and processes which are more
complicated than forms of number and
space, it is more difficult to find the ideal
counterparts. This has even led so far
that it has been contended, from various
sides, that in the separated departments
of knowledge there is only so much of
real science as there is of measuring and
counting.
The truth about this is that most men
are not capable of grasping the pure
thought-element where it is no longer
concerned with what can be counted or
measured. But the man who cannot do
that for the higher realms of life and
knowledge, resembles in that respect a
child, which has not yet learned to count
otherwise than by adding one pea to
another. The thinker who said there
140 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
was just so much real science in any
domain as there was mathematics in it,
was not very much at home in the matter.
One ought rather to demand that every-
thing which cannot be measured or
counted should be handled just as ideally
as the forms of number and space. And
the Scholastics in the fullest way did
justice to this demand. They sought
everywhere the thought-content of things,
just as the mathematician seeks it in the
field of what is measurable and countable.
In spite of this perfected logical art,
the Scholastics attained only to a one-
sided and subordinate conception of
Knowledge. Their conception is this:
that in the act of knowing, man creates
in himself an image of what he is to
know. It is obvious, without further
discussion, that with such a conception
of the knowing process all reality must
CARDINAL NICHOLAS OF CUSA 141
be located outside of the knowing. For
one can grasp, in knowing, not the thing
itself, but only an image of that thing.
Also, in knowing himself man cannot
grasp himself, but again, what he does
know of himself is only an image of
himself. It is entirely from out of the
spirit of Scholasticism that an accurate
student thereof^ says: *^Man has in
time no perception of his ego, of the
hidden ground of his spiritual being
and life, ... he will never attain to
beholding himself; for either, estranged
for ever from God, he will find in himself
only a fathomless, dark abyss, an endless
emptiness, or else, made blessed in God,
he will find on turning his gaze inwards
just that very God, the sun of whose
mercy is shining within him, whose image
^ K. Werner, in his book upon Frank Suarez and the
Scholasticism of the Last Centuries, p. 122.
142 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
and likeness shapes itself in the spiritual
traits of his nature/^
Whoever thinks like this about all
knowing, has only such a conception of
knowing as is applicable to external
things. The sensible factor in anything
always remains external for us; therefore
we can only take up into our knowledge
pictures of whatever is sensible in the
world. When we perceive a colour or a
stone, we are unable, in order to know
the being of the colour or the stone, to
become ourselves the colour or the stone.
Just as little can the colour or the
stone transform itself into a part of our
own being. It may, however, be ques-
tioned whether the conception of such a
knowing-process, wholly directed to what
is external in things, is an exhaustive one.
For Scholasticism, all human knowing
does certainly in the main coincide with
CARDINAL NICHOLAS OF CUSA 143
this kind of knowing. Another admi-
rable authority on Scholasticism' char-
acterises the conception of knowledge
with which we are concerned in this
direction of thought in the following
manner: *^Our spirit, allied in earth-
life with the body, is primarily focussed
upon the surrounding bodily world,
but ordered in the direction of the
spiritual therein: the beings, natures,
forms of things, the elements of exist-
ence, which are related to our spirit
and offer to it the rungs for its ascent
to the super-sensuous; the field of our
knowledge is therefore the realm of ex-
perience, but we must learn to understand
what it offers, to penetrate to its meaning
and thought, and thereby unlock for
ourselves the world of thought.''
^Otto Willman, in his History of Idealism, vol. ii.,
P- 395-
144 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
The Scholastic could not attain to
any other conception of knowledge, for
the dogmatic content of his theology
prevented his doing so. If he had di-
rected the gaze of his spiritual eye upon
that which he regards as an image only,
he would then have seen that the spiritual
content of things reveals itself in this
supposed image; he would then have
found that in his own inner being the
God not alone images Himself, but that
He lives therein, is present there in His
own nature. He would have beheld in
gazing into his own inner being, not a
dark abyss, an endless emptiness, but
also not merely an image of God; he
would have felt that a life pulses within
him, which is the very life of God itself;
and that his own life is verily just God's
life.
This the Scholastic dared not admit.
CARDINAL NICHOLAS OF CUSA 145
The God must not, in his opinion, enter
into him and speak forth from him;
God must only be in him as an image.
In reahty, the Godhead must be external
to the self. Accordingly, also, it could
not reveal itself from within through
the spiritual life, but must reveal itself
from outside, through supernatural com-
munication. What is aimed at in this,
is just exactly what is least of all attained
thereby. It is sought to attain to the
highest possible conception of the God-
head. In reality, the Godhead is dragged
down and made a thing among other
things; only that these other things
reveal themselves to us naturally, through
experience; while the Godhead is sup-
posed to reveal Itself to us supematu-
rally. A difference, however, between
the knowledge of the divine and of the
created is attained in this way: that as
10
146 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
regards the created, the external thing
is given in experience, so that we have
knowledge of it; while as regards the
divine, the object is not given to us in
experience; we can reach it only in faith.
The highest things, therefore, are for
the Scholastic not objects of knowledge,
but mainly of faith. It is true that
the relation of knowledge to faith must
not be so conceived, according to the
Scholastic view, as if in a certain domain
only knowledge, and in another only
faith reigned. For "the knowledge of
that which is, is possible to us, because
it, itself, springs from a creative element;
things are for the spirit, because they
are from the spirit ; they have something
to tell us, because they have a meaning
which a higher intelligence has placed
in them.'" Because God has created
' Otto Willman, History of Idealism, vol. ii., p. 383.
CARDINAL NICHOLAS OF CUSA 147
the world according to thoughts, we too
are able, when we grasp the thoughts
of the world, to seize also upon the
traces of the Divine in the world, through
scientific reflection. But what God is,
according to His own being, we can learn
only from that revelation which He has
given to us in supernatural ways, and
in which we must believe. What we
ought to think about the highest things,
must be decided not by any himian
knowledge, but by faith; and "to faith
belongs all that is contained in the
writings of the New and of the Old
Testament, and in the divine traditions." ^
It is not our task here to present and
establish in detail the relation of the
content of faith to the content of know-
ledge. In truth, all and every faith-
^ Joseph Kleutgen, Die Theologie der Vorzeit, vol. i.,
P- 39.
148 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
content originates from some actual
inner himian experience that has once
been undergone. Such an experience is
then preserved, as far as its outer form
goes, without the consciousness of how
it was acquired. And people maintain
in regard to it that it came into the
world by supernatural revelation. The
content of the Christian faith was simply-
accepted by the Scholastics. Science,
inner experience, had no business to
claim any rights over it. As little as
science can create a tree, just so little
dared Scholasticism to create a concep-
tion of God; it was bound to accept the
revealed one ready-made and complete,
just as natural science has to accept
the tree ready-made. That the spiritual
itself can shine forth and live in man's
inner nature, could never, never be ad-
mitted by the Scholastic. He therefore
CARDINAL NICHOLAS OF CUSA 149
drew the frontier of the rightful power
of knowledge at the point where the
domain of outer experience ceases. Hu-
man knowledge must not dare to beget
out of itself a conception of the higher
beings; it is bound to accept a revealed
one. The Scholastics naturally could
not admit that in doing so they were
accepting and proclaiming as ''revealed*'
a conception which in truth had really
been begotten at an earlier stage of
man's spiritual life.
Thus, in the course of its development,
all those ideas had vanished from Scholas-
ticism which indicated the ways and
means by which man had begotten, in a
natural manner, his conceptions of the
divine. In the first centuries of the
development of Christianity, at the time
of the Church Fathers, we see the
doctrinal content of theology growing
150 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
bit by bit by the assimilation of inner
experiences. In Johannes Scotus Eri-
gena, who stood at the summit of Christ-
ian theological culture in the ninth
century, we find this doctrinal content
being handled entirely as an inner liv-
ing experience. With the Scholastics
of the following centuries, this charac-
teristic of an inner, living experience
disappears altogether: the old doctrinal
content becomes transposed into the
content of an external, supernatural
revelation.
One might, therefore, understand the
activity of the mystical theologians,
Eckhart, Tauler, Suso and their asso-
ciates, in the following sense: they were
stimulated by the doctrines of the Church,
which were contained in its theology,
but had been misinterpreted, to bring
to birth afresh from within themselves,
CARDINAL NICHOLAS OF CUSA 151
as inner living experience, a similar
content.
Nicholas of Cusa sets out to mount
from the knowledge one acquires in the
isolated sciences up to the inner living
experiences. There can be no doubt that
the excellent logical technique which the
Scholastics have developed, and for which
Nicholas himself was educated, forms a
most effective means of attaining to
these inner experiences, even though the
Scholastics themselves were held back
from this road by their positive faith.
But one can only understand Nicholas
fully when one reflects that his calling as
a priest, which raised him to the dignity
of Cardinal, prevented him from coming
to a complete breach with the faith of
the Church, which found an expression
152 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
appropriate to the age in Scholasticism.
We find him so far along the road, that
a single step further would necessarily
have carried him out of the Church.
We shall therefore understand the Card-
inal best if we complete the one step
more which he did not take; and
then, looking backwards, throw light
upon what he aimed at.
The most significant thought in Nicho-
las's mental life is that of "learned
ignorance/' By this he means a form
of knowing which occupies a higher level
as compared with ordinary knowledge.
In the lower sense, knowledge is the
grasping of an object by the mind, or
spirit. The most important character-
istic of knowing is that it gives us light
about something outside of the spirit,
that therefore it directs its gaze upon
something different from itself. The
CARDINAL NICHOLAS OF CUSA 153
spirit, therefore, is concerned in the
knowing-process with things thought of
as outside itself. Now what the spirit
develops in itself about things is the
being of those things. The things are
spirit. Man sees the spirit so far only
through the sensible encasement. What
lies outside the spirit is only this sensible
encasement; the being of the things
enters into the spirit. If, then, the
spirit turns its attention to this being of
the things, which is of like nature with
itself, then it can no longer talk of
knowing ; for it is not looking at anything
outside of itself, but is looking at some-
thing which is part of itself; is, indeed,
looking at itself. It no longer knows;
it only looks upon itself. It is no longer
concerned with a "knowing," but with
a ''not-knowing." No longer does man
"grasp" something through the mind;
154 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
he ^'beholds without conceiving" his
own life. This highest stage of knowing
is, in comparison with the lower stages,
a "not-knowing/'
But it is obvious that the essential
being of things can only be reached
through this stage of knowing. Thus
Nicholas of Cusa in speaking of his
''learned not-knowing" is really speaking
of nothing else but '' knowing" come to a
new birth, as an inner experience. He
tells us himself how he came to this
inner experience. '*I made many efforts
to unite the ideas of God and the world,
of Christ and the Church, into a single
root-idea; but nothing satisfied me until
at last, on my way back from Greece by
sea, my mind's vision, as if by an il-
Itmiination from above, soared up to
that perception in which God appeared
to me as the supreme Unity of all con-
CARDINAL NICHOLAS OF CUSA 155
tradictions." To a greater or less extent
this illumination was due to influences
derived from the study of his prede-
cessors. One recognises in his way of
looking at things a peculiar revival of
the views which we meet with in the
writings of a certain Dionysius. The
above-mentioned Scotus Erigena trans-
lated these writings into Latin, and
speaks of their author as the ''great and
divine revealer.**
The works in question are first men-
tioned in the first half of the sixth
century. They were ascribed to that
Dionysius, the Areopagite, named in the
Acts of the Apostles, who was converted
to Christianity by St. Paul. When these
writings were really composed may here
be left an open question. Their con-
tents worked powerfully upon Nicholas
as they had already worked upon Scotus
156 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
Erigena, and as they must also have
been in many ways stimulating for the
way of thinking of Eckhart and his
colleagues. This ' ' learned not-knowing ' *
is in a certain way preformed in these
writings. Here we can only indicate
the essential trait in the way of con-
ceiving things found in these works.
Man primarily knows the things of the
sense- world. He forms thoughts about its
being and action. The Primal Cause of
all things must lie higher than these things
themselves. Man therefore must not seek
to grasp this Primal Cause by means of the
same concepts and ideas as things. If
he therefore ascribes to the Root-Being
(God) attributes which he has learned to
know in lower things, such attributes can
be at best auxiliary conceptions of his
weak spirit, which drags down the Root-
Being to itself, in order to conceive it.
CARDINAL NICHOLAS OF CUSA 157
In truth, therefore, no attribute what-
soever which lower things possess can
be predicated of God. It must not even
be said that God *' is. " For * ' being ' ' too
is a concept which man has formed from
lower things. But God is exalted above
"being" and "not-being." The God
to whom we ascribe attributes, is there-
fore not the true God. We come to the
true God, when we think of an "Over-
God" above and beyond any God with
such attributes. Of this "Over-God"
we can know nothing in the ordinary
sense. In order to attain to Him , ' ' know-
ing" must merge into "not-knowing."
One sees that at the root of such a view
there lies the consciousness that man him-
self is able to develop a higher knowing,
which is no longer mere knowing — in a
purely natural manner — on the basis of
what his various sciences have yielded
158 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
him. The Scholastic view declared
knowledge to be impotent to such a
development; and, at the point where
knowledge is supposed to cease, it called
in to the help of knowledge a faith
basing itself upon external revelation.
Nicholas of Cusa was thus upon the road
to develop out of knowledge itself that
which the Scholastics had declared to
be unattainable for knowledge.
We thus see that, from Nicholas of
Cusa's point of view, there can be no
question of there being only one kind or
mode of knowing. On the contrary, for
him, knowing clearly divides itself into
two, first into such knowing as mediates
our acquaintance with external objects,
and second into such as is itself the
object of which one gains knowledge.
The first mode of knowing is dominant
in the sciences, which teach us about
CARDINAL NICHOLAS OF CUSA 159
the things and occurrences of the outer
world; the second is in us when we our-
selves live in the knowledge we have
acquired. This second kind of knowing
grows out of the first. Now, however,
it is still one and the same world with
which both these modes of knowing are
concerned; and it is one and the self-
same man who is active in both. Hence
the question must arise, whence comes it
that one and the self-same man develops
two different kinds of knowledge of one
and the same world.
Already, in connection with Tauler,
the direction could be indicated in which
the answer to this question must be
sought. Here in Nicholas of Cusa this
answer can be still more definitely formu-
lated. In the first place, man lives as
a separated (individual) being amidst
other separated beings. In addition to
i6o MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
the effects which the other beings produce
on each other, there arises in his case
the (lower) knowledge. Through his
senses he receives impressions from other
beings, and works up these impressions
with his inner spiritual powers. He
then turns his spiritual gaze away from
external things, and beholds himself as
well as his own activity. In so doing
self-knowledge arises in him. But so
long as he remains on this level of self-
knowledge, he does not, in the true sense
of the word, behold himself. He can
still believe that some hidden being is
active within him, whose manifestations
and effects are only that which appears
to him to be his own activities. But
now the moment may come in which,
through an incontrovertible inner ex-
perience, it becomes clear to the man that
he experiences, in whq,t he perceives or
CARDINAL NICHOLAS OF CUSA i6i
feels within himself, not the manifestation
or effect of any hidden power or being,
but this very being itself in its most
essential and intimate form. Then he
can say to himself: In a certain way I
find all other things ready given, and I
myself, standing apart from and outside
of them, add to them whatever the
spirit has to tell about them. But what
I thus creatively add to the things in
myself, therein do I myself live; that is
myself, my very own being. But what
is that which speaks there in the depths
of my spirit? It is the knowledge which
I have acquired of the things of the
world. But in this knowledge there
speaks no longer an effect, a manifest-
ation; that which speaks expresses itself
wholly, holding back nothing of what
it contains. In this knowledge, there
speaks the world in all its immediacy.
IX
i62 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
But I have acquired this knowledge of
things and of myself, as one thing among
other things. From out my own being
I myself speak, and the things, too,
speak.
Thus, in truth, I am giving utterance
no longer only to my own being ; I am also
giving utterance to the being of things
themselves. My "ego" is the form, the
organ in which the things express them-
selves about themselves. I have gained
the experience that in myself I experience
my own essential being; and this ex-
perience expands itself in me to the
further one that in myself and througn
myself the All-Being Itself expresses
Itself, or in other words, knows Itself.
I can now no longer feel myself as a
thing among other things ; I can now only
feel myself as a form in which the All-
Being lives out Its own life.
CARDINAL NICHOLAS OF CUSA 163
It is thus only natural that one and
the same man should have two modes
of knowing. Judging by the facts of the
senses, he is a thing among other things,
and, in so far as he is that, he gains for
himself a knowledge of these things; but
at any moment he can acquire the higher
experience that he is really the form in
which the All-Being beholds Itself. Then
man transforms himself from a thing
among other things into a form of the
All-Being — and, along with himself, the
knowledge of things transforms itself
into the expression of the very being of
things. But as a matter of fact this
transformation can only be accomplished
through man. That which is mediated
in the higher knowledge does not exist
as long as this higher knowledge itself
is not present. Man becomes only a
real being in the creation of this higher
i64 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
knowledge; and only through man's
higher knowledge can things also bring
their being forth into real existence.
If, therefore, we demand that man
shall add nothing to things through his
inner knowledge, but merely give ex-
pression to whatever already exists in
the things outside of himself, that would
really amount to a complete abnegation
of all higher knowledge. From the fact
that man, in respect of his sensible life,
is merely one thing among others, and
that he only attains to the higher know-
ledge when he himself accomplishes with
himself, as a being of the senses, the
transformation into a higher being, it
follows that he can never replace the
one kind of knowledge by the other.
His spiritual life consists, on the contrary,
in a ceaseless oscillation between these
two poles of knowledge — between know-
CARDINAL NICHOLAS OF CUSA 165
ing and seeing. If he shuts himself off
from the seeing, he abandons the real
nature of things: if he seeks to shut
himself off from sense-perception, he
would shut out from himself the things
whose nature he seeks to know. It is
these very same things which reveal
themselves alike in the lower knowing
and the higher seeing; only in the one
case they reveal themselves according
to their outer appearance; in the other
according to their inner being. Thus it
is not due to the things themselves that,
at a certain stage, they appear only as
external things; but their doing so is
due to the fact that man must first of
all raise and transform himself to the
level upon which the things cease to be
external and outside.
In the light of these considerations,
some of the views which natural science
i66 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
has developed during the nineteenth
century appear for the first time in the
right Hght. The supporters of these
views tell us that we hear, see, and touch
the objects of the physical world through
our senses. The eye, for instance, trans-
mits to us a phenomenon of light, a
colour. Thus we say that a body emits
red light, when with the help of the
eye we experience the sensation "red."
But the eye can give us this same sen-
sation in other cases also. If the eyeball
is struck or pressed upon, or if an electric
spark is allowed to pass through the
head, the eye has a sensation of light.
It is thus evident that even in the
cases in which we have the sensation of
a body emitting red light, something
may really be happening in that body
which has no sort of resemblance to the
colour we sensate. Whatever may be
CARDINAL NICHOLAS OF CUSA 167
actually happening "outside of us" in
space, so long as what happens is capable
of making an impression on the eye,
there arises in us the sensation of light.
Thus what we experience arises in us,
because we possess organs constituted
in a particular manner. What happens
outside in space, remains outside of us;
we know only the effects which the
external happenings call up in us. Her-
mann Helmholtz (i 821-1893) has given
a clearly outlined expression to this
thought :
"Our sensations are simply effects
which are produced in our organs by
external causes, and the manner in which
such an effect will show itself depends,
naturally enough, altogether upon the
kind of apparatus upon which the action
takes place. In so far as the quality
of our sensation gives us information as
i68 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
to the peculiar nature of the external
action which produces the sensation, so
far can the sensation be regarded as a
sign or symbol of this external action,
but not as an image or reproduction of
it. For we expect in a picture some
kind of resemblance to the object it
represents; thus in a statue, resemblance
of form; in a drawing, resemblance in
the perspective projection of the field
of view; in a painting, resemblance of
colour in addition. A symbol, how-
ever, is not required to have any sort
of resemblance to that which it sym-
bolises. The necessary connection be-
tween the object and the symbol is
limited to this: that the same object
coming into action under the same con-
ditions shall call up the same symbol,
and that therefore different symbols
shall always correspond to different ob-
CARDINAL NICHOLAS OF CUSA 169
jects. When berries of a certain kind
in ripening produce together red coloiira-
tion and sugar, then red colour and a
sweet taste will always find themselves
together in our sensation of berries of
this form/*'
Let us follow out step by step the line
of thought which this view makes its
own. It is assumed that something
happens outside of me in space; this
produces an effect upon my sense-organs;
and my nervous system conducts the
impression thus made to my brain.
There another occurrence is brought
about. I experience the sensation *^red."
Now follows the assertion: therefore the
sensation "red" is not outside, not ex-
* Cp. Helmholtz, Die Thatsachen der Wahrnehmung,
p. 12 et seq. 1 have characterised this kind of conception
in detail in my Philosophie der Freiheit, Berlin, 1894, and
in my Welt- und Lehensanschauungen im Neunzehntcn
Jahrhundert, vol. ii., p. i., etc.
170 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
ternal to me; it is in me. All our sensa-
tions are merely symbols or signs of
external occurrences of whose real quality
we know nothing. We live and move in
our sensations and know nothing of their
origin. In the spirit of this line of
thought, it would thus be possible to
assert that if we had no eyes, colour
would not exist; for then there would be
nothing to translate this, to us, wholly
unknown external happening into the
sensation "red.'*
For many people this line of thought
possesses a curious attraction; but
nevertheless it originates in a complete
misconception of the facts under con-
sideration. (Were it not that many of
the present day scientists and philoso-
phers are blinded even to absurdity
by this line of thought, one would need
to say less about it. But, as a matter
CARDINAL NICHOLAS OF CUSA 1 7 1
of fact, this blindness has ruined in many
respects the thinking of the present day.)
In truth, since man is but one object or
thing among other things, it naturally
follows that if he is to have any experience
of them at all, they must make an im-
pression upon him somehow or other.
Something that happens outside the
man must cause something to happen
within him, if in his visual field the sen-
sation "red" is to make its appearance.
The whole question turns upon this:
What is without? what within? Outside
of him something happens in space and
time. But within there is undoubtedly
a similar occurrence. For in the eye
there occurs such a process, which mani-
fests itself to the brain when I perceive
the colour "red.** This process which
goes on "inside" me, I cannot perceive
directly, any more than I can directly
172 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
perceive the wave motions "outside'*
which the physicist conceives of as
answering to the colour ''red/' But
really it is only in this sense that I can
speak of an "inside" and an "outside"
at all. Only on the plane of sense-per-
ception can the opposition between
"outside" and "inside" hold good.
The recognition of this leads me to
assume the existence "outside" of a
process in space and time, although I
do not directly perceive it at all. And
the same recognition further leads me
to postulate a similar process within
myself, although I cannot directly per-
ceive that either. But, as a matter of
fact, I habitually postulate analogous
occurrences in space and time in ordinary
life which I do not directly perceive; as,
for instance, when I hear piano-playing
next door, and assume that a human being
CARDINAL NICHOLAS OF CUSA 173
in space is seated at the piano and is
playing upon it. And my conception,
when I speak of processes happening
outside of, and within me, is just the
same. I asstime that these processes have
quaUties analogous to those of the pro-
cesses which do fall within the province
of my senses, only that, because of
certain reasons, they escape my direct
perception.
If I were to attempt to deny to
these processes all the qualities which
my senses show me in the domains of
space and time, I should in reality and
in truth be trying to think something
not unlike the famous knife without
a handle, whose blade was wanting.
Therefore, I can only say that space and
time processes take place ''outside"
me; these bring about space and time
processes ''within" me; and both are
>>
J »
174 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
necessary if the sensation "red" is to
appear in my field of vision. And, in
so far as this "red" is not in space and
time, I shall seek for it equally in vain,
whether I seek "without" or "within"
myself. Those scientists and philoso-
phers who cannot find it "outside,
ought not to want to find it "inside
either. For it is not "inside," in exactly
the same sense in which it is not "out-
side." To declare that the total content
of that which the sense-world presents
to us is but an inner world of sensation
or feeling, and then to endeavour to tack
on something "external" or "outside"
to it, is a wholly impossible conception.
Hence, we must not speak of "red,"
"sweet," "hot," etc., as being symbols, or
signs, which as such are only aroused with-
in us, and to which "outside " of us some-
thing totally different corresponds. For
CARDINAL NICHOLAS OF CUSA 175
that which is really set going within us,
as the effect of some external happening,
is something altogether other than what
appears in the field of our sensations.
If we want to call that which is within
us a symbol, then we can say: These
symbols make their appearance within
our organism, in order to mediate to us
the perceptions which, as such, in their
immediacy, are neither within nor out-
side of us, but belong, on the contrary,
to that common world, of which my
''external" world and my "internal"
world are only parts. In order to be
able to grasp this common world, I must,
it is true, raise myself to that higher
plane of knowledge, for which an "inner"
and an "outer" no longer exist. (I
know quite well that people who pride
themselves on the gospel that our entire
world of experience builds itself up out
176 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
of sensations and feelings of unknown
origin will look contemptously upon
these remarks; as, for instance, Dr.
Erich Adikes in his book, Kant contra
Haeckel, observes condescendingly: ^'At
first people like Haeckel and thousands
of his type philosophise gaily away
without troubling themselves about
theory of knowledge or critical self-
reflection." Such gentlemen have no
inkling of how cheap their own theories
of knowledge are. They suspect the
lack of critical self-reflection only in
others. Let us leave to them their
''wisdom.")
Nicholas of Cusa expresses some very
telling thoughts bearing directly upon this
very point. The clear and distinct way
in which he holds apart the lower and
the higher knowledge enables him, on
the one side, to arrive at a full and com-
CARDINAL NICHOLAS OF CUSA 177
plete recognition of the fact that man
as a sense-being can only have in himself
processes which, as effects, must neces-
sarily be altogether unlike the corres-
ponding external processes; while, on
the other side, it guards him against
confusing the inner processes with the
facts which make their appearance in
the field of our perceptions, and which,
in their immediacy, are neither outside
nor inside, but altogether transcend this
opposition of *'in*' and "out/*
But Nicholas was hampered in the
thorough carrying through of these ideas
by his ''priestly garments." So we see
how he makes a fine beginning with
the progress from *' knowing" to "not-
knowing." At the same time we must
also note that in the domain of the higher
knowledge, or "ignorance," he unfolds
practically nothing but the content of
12
178 MYSTICS OP THE RENAISSANCE
the theological teaching which the Scho-
lastics also give us. Certainly he knows
how to expound this theological content
in a most able manner. He presents us
with teachings about Providence, Christ,
the creation of the world, man's salvation,
the moral life, which are kept thoroughly
in harmony with dogmatic Christianity.
It would have been in accordance with
his mental starting point, to say: I have
confidence in human nature that after
having plunged deeply into the science
of things in all directions, it is capable
of transforming from within itself this
"knowing** into a "not-knowing," in
such wise that the highest insight shall
bring satisfaction. In that case, he
would not simply have accepted the
traditional ideas of the soul, immor-
tality, salvation, God, creation, the
Trinity, and so forth, as he actually
CARDINAL NICHOLAS OF CUSA 179
did, but he would have represented his
own.
But Nicholas personally was, however,
so saturated with the conceptions of
Christianity that he might well believe
himself to have awakened in himself a
"not-knowing** of his own, while yet
he was merely bringing to light the
traditional views in which he was brought
up. But he stood upon the verge of a
terrible precipice in the spiritual life
of man. He was a scientific man. Now
science, primarily, estranges us from the
innocent harmony in which we live with
the world so long as we abandon our-
selves to a purely naive attitude towards
life. In such an attitude to life, we
dimly feel our connection with the world -
whole.
We are beings like others, forming
links in the chain of Nature's workings.
i8o MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
But with knowledge we separate ourselves
off from this whole; we create within us
a mental world, wherewith we stand
alone and isolated over against Nature.
We have become enriched ; but our riches
are a burden which we bear with diffi-
culty; for it weighs primarily upon our-
selves alone. And we must now, by
our own strength, find the way back
again to Nature. We have to recognise
that we ourselves must now fit our
wealth into the stream of world activities,
just as previously Nature herself had
fitted in our poverty. All evil demons
lie in wait for man at this point. His
strength can easily fail him. Instead
of himself accomplishing this fitting in,
he will, if his strength thus fails, seek
refuge in some revelation coming from
without, which frees him again from his
loneliness, which leads back once more
CARDINAL NICHOLAS OF CUSA i8i
the knowledge that he feels a burden,
into the very womb of being, into the
Godhead. Like Nicholas of Cusa, he
will believe that he is travelling his own
road; and yet in reality he will be only
following the path which his own spiritual
evolution has pointed out for him.
Now there are — in the main — three
roads which one can follow, when once
one has reached the point at which
Nicholas had arrived : the one is positive
faith, forcing itself upon us from with-
out; the second is despair; one stands
alone with one*s burden, and feels the
whole universe tottering with oneself;
the third road is the development of the
deepest, most inward powers of man.
Confidence, trust in the world must be
one of our guides upon this third path;
courage, to follow that confidence whither-
soever it may lead us, must be the other.
AGRIPPA VON NETTESHEIM AND
THEOPHRASTUS PARACELSUS
Both Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von
Nettesheim (1487 -1535) and Theo-
phrastus Paracelsus (i 493-1 541) followed
the same road along which points Nicho-
las of Cusa's way of conceiving things.
They devoted themselves to the study
of Nature, and sought to discover her
laws by all the means in their power and
as thoroughly as possible. In this know-
ledge of Nature, they saw the true basis
of all higher knowledge. They strove
to develop this higher knowledge from
within the science or knowledge of Nature
by bringing that knowledge to a new
birth in the spirit.
182
NETTESHEIM AND PARACELSUS 183
Agrippa von Nettesheim led a much
varied life. He sprang from a noble
family and was bom in Cologne. He
early studied medicine and law, and
sought to obtain clear insight into the
processes of Nature in the way which
was then customary within certain circles
and societies, or even among isolated
investigators, who studiously kept secret
whatever of the knowledge of Nature
they discovered. For these purposes
he went repeatedly to Paris, to Italy, and
to England, and also visited the famous
Abbot Trithemius of Sponheim in Wiirz-
burg. He taught at various times in
learned institutions, and here and there
entered the service of rich and distin-
guished people, at whose disposal he
placed his abilities as a statesman and a
man of science. If the services that he
rendered are not always described by his
1 84 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
biographers as unobjectionable, if it is
said that he made money under the pre-
tence of understanding secret arts and
conferring benefits on people thereby,
there stands against this his unmistakable,
unresting impulse to acquire honestly
the entire knowledge of his age, and to
deepen this knowledge in the direction
of a higher cognition of the world.
We may see in him very plainly
the endeavour to attain to a clear and
definite attitude towards natural science
on the one hand, and to the higher know-
ledge on the other. But he only can
attain to such an attitude who is pos-
sessed of a clear insight as to the respec-
tive roads which lead to one and to the
other kind of knowledge. As true as it
is on the one hand that natural science
must eventually be raised into the region
of the spirit, if it is to pass over into
NETTESHEIM AND PARACELSUS 185
higher knowledge; so, also, it is true on
the other, that this natural science must,
to begin with, remain upon its own special
ground, if it is to yield the right basis
for the attainment of a higher level.
The "spirit in Nature" exists only for
spirit. So surely as Nature in this sense
is spiritual, so surely too is there nothing
in Nature, of all that is perceived by my
bodily organs, which is immediately
spiritual. There exists nothing spiritual
which can appear to my eye as spiritual.
Therefore, I must not seek for the spirit
as such in Nature ; but that is what I am
doing when I interpret any occurrence
in the external world immediately as
spiritual; when, for instance, I ascribe
to a plant a soul which is supposed to be
only remotely analogous to that of man.
Further, I again do the same when I
ascribe to spirit itself an existence in
1 86 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
space and time; as, for instance, when I
assert of the hiiman soul that it continues
to exist in time without the body, but
yet after the manner of a body; or again,
when I even go so far as to believe that,
under any sort of conditions or arrange-
ments perceivable by the senses, the
spirit of a dead person can show itself.
Spiritualism, which makes this mistake,
only shows thereby that it has not at-
tained to a true conception of the spirit
at all, but is still bent upon directly and
immediately ''seeing" the spirit in some-
thing grossly sensible. It mistakes
equally both the real nature of the sen-
sible and also that of the spirit. It
de-spiritualises the ordinary world of
sense, which hourly passes before our
eyes, in order to give the name of spirit
immediately to something rare, sur-
prising, uncommon. It fails to under-
NETTESHEIM AND PARACELSUS 187
stand that that which lives as the "spirit
in nature" reveals itself to him who is
able to perceive spirit in the collision
of two elastic balls, for instance; and not
only in occurrences which are striking
from their rarity, and which cannot all
at once be grasped in their natural
sequence and connection.
But the spiritist further drags the
spirit down into a lower sphere. Instead
of explaining something that happens in
space, and that he perceives through his
senses only, in terms of forces and beings
which in their turn are spacial and per-
ceptible to the senses, he resorts to
''spirits," which he thereby places exactly
on a level with the things of the senses.
At the very root of such a way of viewing
things, there lies a lack of the power of
spiritual apprehension. We are unable
to perceive spiritual things spiritually;
i88 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
we therefore satisfy our craving for the
spiritual with mere beings perceptible
to the senses. Their own inner spirit
reveals to such men nothing spiritual;
and therefore they seek for the spiritual
through the senses. As they see clouds
flying through the air, so they would
fain see spirits hastening along. Agrippa
von Nettesheim fought for a genuine
science of Nature, which shall explain
the phenomena of Nature, not by means
of spirits phenomenalising in the world
of the senses, but by seeing in Nature only
the natural, and in the spirit only the
spiritual.
Of course, Agrippa will be entirciy
misunderstood if one compares his natural
science with that of later centuries which
dispose of wholly different experiences.
In such a comparison, it might easily
seem that he was still actually and
NETTESHEIAd AND PARACELSUS 189
entirely referring to the direct action of
spirits, things which only depend upon
natural connections or upon mistaken
experience. Such a wrong is done to
him by Moriz Carriere when he says,
not in any malicious sense, it is true:
''Agrippa gives a huge list of things
which belong to the Sun, the Moon, the
Planets and the fixed stars, and receive
influences from them; for instance: to
the Sun are related Fire, Blood, Laurel,
Gold, Chrysolite; they confer the gifts
of the Sun: Courage, Cheerfulness, and
Light. . . . Animals have a natural
sense, which, higher than himian under-
standing, approaches the spirit of pro-
phecy. . . . Men can be bewitched to
love and hate, to sickness and health.
Thieves can be bewitched so that they
cannot steal at some particular place,
merchants, that they cannot do business,
190 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
mills, that they cannot work, lightning
flashes, that they cannot strike. This is
brought about through drinks, salves, im-
ages, rings, incantations; the blood of hy-
enas or basilisks is adapted to such a
purpose' — it reminds one of Shakespeare's
witches' cauldron." No; it does not
remind one of that, if one understands
Agrippa aright. He believed- — it goes
without saying — in many facts which in
his time everybody regarded as unques-
tionable. But we still do the same to-day.
Or do we imagine that future centuries
will not relegate much of what we now re-
gard as "undoubted fact*' to the lumber-
room of "blind" superstition?
I am convinced that in our knowledge
of facts there has been a real progress.
When once the "fact" that the earth is
round had been discovered, all previous
conjectures were banished into the do-
NETTESHEIM AND PARACELSUS 191
main of "superstition"; and the same
holds"good of certain truths of astronomy,
biology, etc. The doctrine of natural
evolution constitutes an advance, as com-
pared with all previous ''theories of
creation," similar to that marked by
the recognition of the roundness of the
earth as contrasted with all previous
speculations as to its form. Neverthe-
less, I am vividly conscious that in our
learned scientific works and treatises
there is to be found many a "fact**
which will seem to future centuries to be
just as little of a fact as much that Para-
celsus and Agrippa maintain; but the
really important point is not what they
regarded as "fact," but hoWy in what
spirit, they interpreted their "facts."
In Agrippa 's time, there was little
understanding or sympathy for the
"natural magic" he represented, which
192 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
sought in Nature the natural — the
spiritual only in the spirit ; men clung
to the "supernatural magic," which
sought the spiritual in the realm of the
sensible, and which Agrippa combated.
Therefore the Abbot Trithemius of
Sponheim was right in giving him the
advice to communicate his views only
as a secret teaching to a few chosen
pupils who could rise to a similar idea
of Nature and spirit, because one ''gives
only hay to oxen and not sugar as to
singing birds.'* It may be that Agrippa
himself owed to this same Abbot his
own correct point of view. In his
Steganography, Trithemius has produced
a book in which he handled with the
most subtle irony that mode of con-
ceiving things which confuses nature with
spirit.
In this book he apparently speaks of
NETTESHEIM AND PARACELSUS 193
nothing but supernatural occurrences.
Any one reading it as it stands must
believe that the author is talking of conju-
rations of spirits, of spirits flying through
the air, and so on. If, however, one
drops certain words and letters under
the table, there remain — as Wolfgang
Ernst Heidel proved in the year 1676 — •
letters which, combined into words, de-
scribe purely natural occurrences. (In
one case, for instance, in a formula of
conjuration, one must drop the first
and last words entirely, and then cancel
from the remainder the second, fourth,
sixth, and so on. In the words left
over, one must again cancel the first,
third, fifth letters and so on. One next
combines what is then left into words;
and the conjtiration formula resolves
itself into a purely natural communi-
cation.)
13
194 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
How difficult it was for Agrippa to
work himself free from the prejudices of
his time and to rise to a pure perception
is proved by the fact that he did not
allow his "Occult Philosophy" {Philoso-
phia Occulta), already written in 15 lo,
to appear before the year 1531, because
he considered it unripe. Further evi-
dence of this fact is given by his work
' * On the Vanity of the Sciences ' ' {De Vani-
tate Scientiarum) in which he speaks
with bitterness of the scientific and
other activities of his time. He there
states quite clearly that he has only with
difficulty wrenched himself free from the
phantasy which beholds in external ac-
tions immediate spiritual processes, in
external facts prophetic indications of
the future, and so forth.
Agrippa advances to the higher know-
ledge in three stages. He treats as the
NETTESHEIM AND PARACELSUS 195
first stage the world as it is given for
the senses, with its substances, its phy-
sical, chemical and other forces. He
calls Nature, in so far as it is looked at
on this level, "elementary Nature." On
the second stage, one contemplates the
world as a whole in its natural inter-
connection, as it orders things according
to measure, number, weight, harmony,
and so forth. The first stage proceeds
from one thing to the next nearest. It
seeks for the causes of an occurrence in
its immediate surroimdings. The second
stage regards a single occurrence in
connection with the entire universe.
It carries through the idea that every-
thing is subject to the influence of all
other things in the entire world-whole.
In its eyes this world-whole appears as
a vast harmony, in which each individual
item is a member. Agrippa terms the
196 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
world, regarded from this point of view,
the ' ' astral " or " heavenly ' ' world . The
third stage of knowing is that wherein
the spirit, by plunging deep into itself,
perceives immediately the spiritual, the
Root-Being of the world. Agrippa here
speaks of the world, of soul and spirit.
The views which Agrippa develops
about the world, and the relation of man
to the world, present themselves to us
in the case of Theophrastus Paracelsus,
in a similar manner, only in more per-
fected form. It is better, therefore, to
consider them in connection with the
latter.
Paracelsus characterises himself aptly,
when he writes under his portrait:
''None shall be another's slave, who for
himself can remain alone.'' His whole
attitude towards knowledge is given in
these words. He strives everywhere to
NETTESHEIM AND PARACELSUS 197
go back himself to the deepest founda-
tions of natural knowledge, in order to
rise by his own strength to the loftiest
regions of cognition. As Physician, he
will not, like his contemporaries, simply
accept what the ancient investigators,
who then counted as authorities, — Galen
or Avicenna, for instance, asserted long
ago; he is resolved to read for himself
directly in the book of Nature. **The
Physician must pass Nature's examina-
tion, which is the world, and all its
origins. And the very same that
Nature teaches him, he must command
to his wisdom, but seek for nothing in
his wisdom, only and alone in the light
of Nature." He shrinks from nothing,
in order to learn to know Nature and
her workings in all directions. For this
purpose he made journeys to Sweden,
Hungary, Spain, Portugal, and the East.
198 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
He can truly say of himself: '*I have
followed the Art at the risk of my life,
and have not been ashamed to learn
from wanderers, executioners and sheep-
shearers. My doctrine was tested more
severely than silver in poverty, fears,
wars and hardships."
What has been handed down by ancient
authorities has for him no value, for he
believes that he can attain to the right
view only if he himself experiences the
upward climb from the knowledge of
Nature to the highest insight. This
living, personal experience puts into his
mouth the proud utterance: ''He who
will follow truth, must come into my
monarchy. . . . After me; not I after
you, Avicenna, Rhases, Galen, Mesur!
After me; not I after you, ye of Paris,
ye of Montpellier, ye of Swabia, ye of
Meissen, ye of Cologne, ye of Vienna and
NETTESHEIM AND PARACELSUS 199
of what lies on the Danube and the
Rhine; ye islands in the sea, thou Italy,
thou Dalmatia, thou Athens, thou Greek,
thou Arab, thou Israelite; after me, not
I after you! Mine is the Monarchy."
It is easy to misunderstand Paracelsus
because of his rough exterior, which
sometimes conceals a deep earnestness
behind a jest. Does he not himself say:
''By nature I am not subtly woven, nor
brought up on figs and wheat-bread, but
on cheese, milk and rye-bread, wherefore
I may well be rude with the over-clean
and superfine ; for those who were brought
up in soft clothing and we who were
bred in pine needles do not easily under-
stand one another. When in myself I
mean to be kindly, I must therefore often
be taken as rude. How can I not be
strange to one who has never wandered
in the sun?"
200 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
In his book about Winkelmann, Goethe
has described the relation of man to
Nature in the following beautiful sen-
tence: "When the healthy nature of
man acts as a whole; when he feels him-
self as one with a great, beautiful, noble
and worthy whole; when the sense of
harmonious well-being gives him a pure
and free delight ; then would the Universe,
if it could be conscious of its own feeling,
burst forth in joy at having attained its
goal, and contemplate with wondering
admiration the summit of its own be-
coming and being/' With a feeling
such as finds expression in these sen-
tences, Paracelsus is simply saturated.
From out of its depths the riddle of
humanity takes shape for him. Let us
watch how this happens in Paracelsus's
sense.
At the outset, the road by which
NETTESHEIM AND PARACELSUS 201
Nature has travelled to attain her loftiest
altitude is hidden from man's power
of comprehension. She has climbed, in-
deed, to the stmimit; but the summit
does not proclaim: I feel myself as the
whole of Nature; it proclaims, on the
contrary: I feel myself as this single,
separated human being. That which in
reality is an achievement of the whole
universe, feels itself as a separated,
isolated being, standing alone by itself.
This indeed is the true being of man,
viz., that he must needs feel himself to
be something quite different from what,
in ultimate analysis, he really is. And
if that be a contradiction, then must
man be called a contradiction come to
life.
Man is the universe in his own
particular way; he regards his oneness
with the universe as a duality: he is
202 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
the very same that the universe is; but
he is the universe as a repetition, as
a single being. This is the contrast
which Paracelsus feels as the Microcosm
(Man) and the Macrocosm (Universe).
Man, for him, is the universe in minia-
ture. That which makes man regard
his relationship to the world in this way,
that is his spirit. This spirit appears
as if bound to a single being, to a single
organism: and this organism belongs, by
the very nature of its whole being, to the
mighty stream of the universe. It is
one member, one link in that whole,
having its very existence only in relation
with all the other links or members
thereof. But spirit appears as an out-
come of this single, separated organism,
and sees itself at the outset as bound up
only with that organism. It tears loose
this organism from the mother earth
NETTESHEIM AND PARACELSUS 203
out of which it has grown. So, for
Paracelsus, a deep-seated connection be-
tween man and the universe lies hidden
in the basic foundations of being, a
connection which is hidden through the
presence of ** spirit/* That spirit which
leads us to higher insight by making
knowledge possible, and leads on this
knowledge to a new birth on a higher
level' — this has, as its first result for us
men, to veil from us our own oneness
with the whole.
Thus the nature of man resolves itself
for Paracelsus in the first place into three
factors: our sensuous-physical nature,
our organism which appears to us as a
natural being among other natural beings
and is of like nature with all other natural
beings; our concealed or hidden nature,
which is a link in the chain of the whole
universe, and therefore is not shut up
204 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
within the organism or limited to it,
but radiates and receives the workings
of energy upon and from the entire
universe; and our highest nature, our
spirit, which lives its life in a purely
spiritual manner. The first factor in
man*s nature Paracelsus calls the ''ele-
mentary body " ; the second, the ethereal-
heavenly, or ''astral body"; and the
third he names "the Soul.'*
Thus in the "astral" phenomena,
Paracelsus recognises an intermediate
stage between the purely physical and
the properly spiritual or soul-phenomena.
Therefore these astral activities will come
into view when the spirit or soul, which
veils or conceals the natural basis of
our being, suspends its activity. In the
dream-world we see the simplest phe-
nomena of this realm. The pictures
which hover before us in dreams, with
NETTESHEIM AND PARACELSUS 205
their remarkably significant connection
with occurrences in our environment
and with states of our inner nature, are
products of our natural basis or root-
being, which are obscured by the brighter
light of the soul. For example, when a
chair falls over beside my bed and I
dream a whole drama ending with a shot
fired in a duel; or when I have palpi-
tation of the heart and dream of a
boiling cauldron, we can see that in
these dreams natural operations come
to light which are full of sense and
meaning, and disclose a life lying be-
tween the purely organic functions and
the concept-forming activity which is
carried on in the full, clear consciousness
of the spirit. Connected with this region
are all the phenomena belonging to the
domain of hypnotism and suggestion;
and in the latter are we not compelled
2o6 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
to recognise an interaction between hu-
man beings, which points to some con-
nection or relation between beings in
Nature, which is normally hidden by the
higher activity of the mind? From this
starting point we can reach an under-
standing of what Paracelsus meant by
the *' astral" body. It is the simi total
of those natural operations under whose
influence we stand, or may in special
circumstances come to stand, or which
proceed from us, without our souls or
minds coming into consideration in con-
nection with them, but which yet cannot
be included under the concept of purely
physical phenomena. The fact that
Paracelsus reckons as truths in this do-
main things which we doubt to-day,
does not come into the question, from
the point of view which I have already
described.
NETTESHEIM AND PARACELSUS 207
Starting from the basis of these views
as to the nature of man, Paracelsus
divides him into seven factors or prin-
ciples, which are the same as those we
also find in the wisdom of the ancient
Egyptians, among the Neoplatonists and
in the Kabbalah. In the first place,
man is a physical-bodily being, and
therefore subject to the same laws as
every other body. He is, in this respect,
therefore, a purely ''elementary" body.
The purely physical-bodily laws combine
into an organic life-process, and Para-
celsus denotes this organic sequence of
law by the terms ''archceus'' or '' spiritus
vitcey Next, the organic rises into a
region of phenomena resembling the
spiritual, but which are not yet properly
spiritual, and these he classifies as "as-
tral" phenomena. From amidst these
astral phenomena, the functions of the
2o8 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
** animal soul** make their appearance.
Man becomes a being of the senses.
Then he connects together his sense
impressions according to their nature,
by his understanding or mind, and the
"human soul" or ''reasoning soul" be-
comes alive in him. He sinks himself
deep into his own mental productions,
and learns to recognise "spirit" as such,
and thus he has risen at length to the
level of the "spiritual soul." Finally,
he must come to recognise that in
this spiritual soul he is experiencing the
ultimate basis of universal being; the
spiritual soul ceases to be individual, to
be separated. Then arises the knowledge
of which Eckhart spoke when he felt no
longer that he was speaking within
himself, but that in him the Root-Being
was uttering Itself. The condition has
come about in which the All-Spirit in
NETTESHEIM AND PARACELSUS 209
man beholds Itself. Paracelsus has
stamped the feeling of this condition with
the simple words: "And that is a great
thing whereon to dwell: there is naught
in heaven or upon earth that is not in
Man. And God who dwelleth in Heaven,
He also is in Man.'*
With these seven principles of htiman
nature, Paracelsus aims at expressing
nothing else than the facts of inner and
outer experience. The fact remains
unquestioned that, what for human ex-
perience subdivides itself into a multi-
plicity of seven factors, is in higher
reality a unity. But the higher insight
exists just for the very purpose of exhibit-
ing the unity in all that appears as multi-
plicity to man, owing to his bodily and
spiritual organisation. On the level of
the highest insight, Paracelsus strives to
the utmost to fuse the unitary Root-
210 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
Being of the world with his own spirit.
But he knows that man can only cognise
Nature in its spirituality, when he enters
into immediate intercourse with that
Nature. Man does not grasp Nature
by peopling it from within himself with
arbitrarily assumed entities; but by ac-
cepting and valuing it as it is, as Nature.
Paracelsus therefore does not seek for
God or for spirit in Nature; but Nature,
just as it comes before his eyes, is for
him wholly, immediately divine. Must
one then first ascribe to the plant a soul
after the kind of a himian soul, in order
to find the spiritual?
Hence Paracelsus explains to himself
the development of things, so far as that
is possible with the scientific means of
his age, altogether in such wise that he
conceives this development as a sensible-
natural process. He makes all things
NETTESHEIM AND PARACELSUS 211
to proceed from the root-matter, the
root-water (YHaster). And he regards
as a further natural process the separa-
tion of the root-matter (which he also
calls the great Limbus) into the four
elements: Water, Earth, Fire and Air.
When he says that the ''Divine Word"
called forth the multiplicity of beings
from the root-matter, one must under-
stand this also only in such wise as per-
haps in more recent natural science one
must understand the relationship of
Force to Matter. A "Spirit," in a
matter-of-fact sense, is not yet present at
this stage. This "Spirit" is no matter-
of-fact basis of the natural process, but
a matter-of-fact result of that process.
This Spirit does not create Nature,
but develops itself out of Nature. Not
a few statements of Paracelsus might be
interpreted in the opposite sense. Thus
212 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
when he says: "There is nothing which
does not possess and carry with it also
a spirit hidden in it and that lives not
withal. Also, not only has that life,
which stirs itself and moves, as men, ani-
mals, the worms in the earth, the birds
in the sky and the fishes in water, but
all bodily and actual things as well.'*
But in such sayings Paracelsus only
aims at warning us against that super-
ficial contemplation of Nature which
fancies it can exhaust the being of a
thing with a couple of "stuck-up" con-
cepts, according to Goethe's apt expres-
sion. He aims not at putting into
things some imaginary being, but at
setting in motion all the powers of man
to bring out that which in actual fact
lies in the thing.
What matters is not to let oneself be
misled by the fact that Paracelsus ex-
NETTESHEIM AND PARACELSUS 213
presses himself in the spirit of his time.
It is far more important to recognise
what things really hovered before his
mind when, looking upon Nature, he
expresses his ideas in the forms of ex-
pression proper to his age. He ascribes
to man, for instance, a dual flesh, that
is, a dual bodily constitution. "The
flesh must also be understood, that it is
of two kinds, namely the flesh that comes
from Adam and the flesh which is not
from Adam. The flesh from Adam is a
gross flesh, for it is earthly and nothing
besides flesh, that can be bound and
grasped like wood and stone. The other
flesh is not from Adam, it is a subtle
flesh and cannot be bound or grasped,
for it is not made of earth." What is
the flesh that is from Adam? It is
everything that man has received through
natural development, everything, there-
214 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
fore, that has passed on to him by
heredity. To that is added, whatever
man has acquired for himself in his
intercourse with the world around him
in the course of time.
The modern scientific conceptions of
inherited characteristics and those ac-
quired by adaptation easily emerge from
the above- cited thought of Paracelsus.
The ''more subtle flesh" that makes man
capable of his intellectual activities, has
not existed from the beginning in man.
Man was ''gross flesh" like the animal,
a flesh that "can be bound and grasped
like wood and stone." In a scientific
sense, therefore, the soul is also an ac-
quired characteristic of the "gross flesh."
What the scientist of the nineteenth
century has in his mind's eye when he
speaks of the factors inherited from the
animal world, is just what Paracelsus
NETTESHEIM AND PARACELSUS 215
has in view when he uses the expression,
"the flesh that comes from Adam."
Naturally I have not the least intention
of blurring the difference that exists
between a scientist of the sixteenth and
one of the nineteenth century. It was,
indeed, this latter century which for the
first time was able to see, in the full
scientific sense, the phenomena of living
beings in such a connection that their
natural relationship and actual descent,
right up to man, stood out clearly before
one*s eyes. Science sees only a natural
process where Linnaeus in the eighteenth
century saw a spiritual process and
characterised it in the words: "There
are counted as many species of living"
beings, as there were created different
forms in the beginning." While thus
in Linnaeus's time, the Spirit had still
to be transferred into the spacial world
2i6 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
and have assigned to it the task of spirit-
ually generating the forms of life, or
'* creating*' them: the natural science of
the nineteenth century could give to
Nature what belonged to Nature, and
to Spirit what belonged to Spirit. To
Nature is even assigned the task of ex-
plaining her own creations; and the
Spirit can plunge into itself there, where
alone it is to be found, in the inner being
of man.
But although in a certain sense Para-
celsus thinks according to the spirit of
his age, yet he has grasped the relation-
ship of man to Nature in a profound
manner, especially in relation to the
idea of Evolution, of Becoming. He did
not see in the Root-Being of the universe
something which in any sense is there
as a finished thing, but he grasped the
Divine in the process of Becoming.
NETTESHEIM AND PARACELSUS 217
Thereby he was enabled truly to ascribe
to man a self-creative activity. For
if the divine root of being is, as it were,
given once for all, then there can be no
question of any truly creative activity
in man. It is not man, living in time,
who then creates, but it is God, who is
from Eternity, that creates. But for
Paracelsus there is no such God from
Eternity. For him there is only an
eternal happening, and man is one link
in this eternal happening. What man
forms, was previously in no sense existent.
What man creates, is, as he creates it, a
new, original creation. If it is to be
called divine, it can only be so-called in
the sense in which it is a human creation.
Therefore Paracelsus can assign to man
a r61e in the building of the universe,
which makes him a co-architect in its
creation. The divine root of beings is
2i8 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
without man, not that which it is with
man.
''For nature brings nothing to light,
which as such is perfect, but man must
make it perfect . ' ' This self -creative activ-
ity of man in the building of the universe
is what Paracelsus calls Alchemy. ''This
perfecting is Alchemy. Thus the Al-
chemist is the baker, when he bakes
bread, the vintager, when he makes wine,
the weaver, when he makes cloth."
Paracelsus aims at being an Alchemist
in his own domain as a Physician.
"Therefore I may well write so much
here about Alchemy, that ye may well
understand it, and experience that which
it is and how it is to be understood; and
not find a stumbling-block therein that
neither Gold nor Silver shall come to
thee therefrom. But have regard there-
unto, that the Arcana [curative means]
NETTESHEIM AND PARACELSUS 219
be revealed unto thee. . . . The third
pillar of medicine is Alchemy, for the
preparation of the medicines cannot
come to pass without it, because Nature
cannot be made use of without Art."
In the strictest sense, therefore, the
eyes of Paracelsus are directed to Nature,
in order to overhear from herself what
she has to say about that which she
brings forth. He seeks to explore the
laws of chemistry, so that, in his sense,
he may work as an Alchemist. He pic-
tures to himself all bodies as compounded
out of three root -substances: Salt, Sul-
phur, and Mercury. What he thus
names, naturally does not coincide with
that which later chemistry solely and
strictly calls by these names; just as
little as that which Paracelsus conceives
of as the root-substance is such in the
sense of our later chemistry. Different
220 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
things are called by the same names at
different times. What the ancients
called the four elements: Earth, Water,
Air, and Fire, we still have to-day.
But we call these four "elements" no
longer "elements," but states of aggre-
gation and have for them the designa-
tions: solid, liquid, gaseous and etheric.
The Earth, for instance, was for the
ancients not earth, but the "solid."
Again, we can clearly recognise the
three root-substances of Paracelsus in
contemporary conceptions, though not
in present names of like sound. For
Paracelsus, dissolution in a liquid and
burning are the two most important
chemical processes which he utilises.
If a body be dissolved or burnt, it breaks
up into its parts. Something remains
behind as insoluble; something dissolves,
or is burnt. What is left behind is to
NETTESHEIM AND PARACELSUS 221
him of the nature of Salt; the soluble
(liquid) of the nature of Mercury; while
he terms Sulphur-like the part that can
be burnt.
All this, taken as relating to material
things, may leave the man cold who
cannot look out beyond such natural
processes; whoever seeks at all costs to
grasp the spirit with his senses, will
people these processes with all sorts of
ensouling beings. He, however, who like
Paracelsus knows how to regard them
in connection with the whole, which
permits its secret to become revealed in
man's inner being,— he accepts them, as
the senses offer them; he does not first
re-interpret them; for just as the oc-
currences of Nature lie before us in their
sensible reality, so too do they, in their
own way, reveal to us the riddle of
existence. That which through their
222 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
sensible reality they have to unveil
from within the soul of man, stands, for
him who strives after the light of higher
knowledge, far higher than all super-
natural wonders that man can invent
or get revealed to him about their
suppositious ''spirit." There is ^no
''Spirit of Nature," capable of uttering
loftier truths than the mighty works of
Nature herself, when our soul links itself
in friendship with that Nature and listens
to the revelations of her secrets in inti-
mate and tender intercourse. Such
friendship with Nature was what Para-
celsus sought.
VALENTINE WEIGEL AND JACOB
BOEHME
In the view of Paracelsus, what mat-
tered most was to acquire ideas about
Nature which should breathe the spirit
of the higher insight that he represented.
A thinker related to him, who applied
the same mode of conceiving things to
his own nature especially, is valentine
WEIGEL ( 1 533-1 588). He grew up out
of Protestant theology in a like sense to
that in which Eckhart, Tauler, and Suso
grew up out of Roman Catholic theology.
He has predecessors in Sebastian Frank
and Caspar Schwenckfeldt. These two,
as contrasted with the orthodox Church-
men clinging to external profession,
223
224 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
pointed downwards to the deepening of
the inner Hfe. For them it is not that
Jesus whom the Gospels preach who is
of value, but the Christ who can be born
in every man as his deeper nature, and
become for him the Saviour from the
lower life and the guide to ideal uplifting.
Weigel performed silently and humbly
the duties of his office as clergyman in
Zschopau. It was only from the writings
he left behind, printed first in the seven-
teenth century, that the world learned
anything of the significant ideas which
had come to him about the nature of
man.^
Weigel feels himself driven to gain a
clear understanding of his relation to the
* The following, from among his writings, may be
named: Der gulde?ie Griff, das ist alle Ding oJme Irr thumb
zu erkennen, vielen Ilochgelehrten unbekandt, and dock alien
Menschen nothwendig zu wis sen; Erkenne dich selbst; Vom
Ort der Welt.
WEIGEL AND BOEHME 225
teaching of the Church; and that leads
him on further to investigate the basic
foundations of all knowledge. Whether
man can know anything through a con-
fession of faith, is a question as to which
he can only give himself an account when
he knows how man knows. Weigel starts
from the lowest kind of knowing. He
asks himself: How do I know a sensible
object, when it presents itself before me?
Thence he hopes to be able to mount up-
wards to a point of view whence he can
give himself an account of the highest
knowledge.
In cognition through the senses, the
instrument (the sense-organ) and the
object, the "counterpart" {Gegenwurf)
stand opposed. ''Since in natural per-
ception there must be two things, as the
object or 'counterpart,' which is to be
known and seen by the eye; and the eye,
226 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
or the perceiver, which sees or knows the
object, so do thou hold over against each
other: whether the knowledge comes
forth from the object to the eye; or
whether the judgment, or the cognition,
flows out from the eye into the object/''
Weigel now says to himself: If the
cognition (or knowledge) flowed from
the "counterpart" (or thing) into the
eye, then of necessity from one and the
same thing a similar and perfect cogni-
tion must come to all eyes. But that
is not the case, for each man sees accord-
ing to the measure of his own eyes. Only
the eyes, not the ''counterpart*' (or
object) can be in fault, in that various
and different conceptions are possible of
one and the same thing. To clear up
the matter, Weigel compares seeing with
reading. If the book were not there, I
^ Der giildene Griff, p. 26 et seq.
WEIGEL AND BOEHME 22^
naturally could not read it; but it might
still be there, and yet I could read nothing
in it, if I did not understand the art of
reading. The book therefore must be
there; but, from itself it can give me not
the smallest thing; I must draw forth
everything I read from within myself.
That is also the nature of sensible per-
ception. Colour is there as the ' ' counter-
part," but it can give the eye nothing
from out of itself. The eye must recog-
nise, from out of itself, what colour is.
As little as the content of the book is in
the reader, just so little is colour in the
eye. If the content of the book were in
the reader, he would not need to read it.
Yet in reading, this content does not
flow out from the book, but from the
reader. So is it also with the sensible
object. What the sensible thing before
him is; that does not flow from outside
228 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
into the man, but from within out-
wards.
Starting from these thoughts, one
might say: If all knowledge flows out
from man into the object, then one does
not know what is in the object, but only
what is in man. The detailed working
out of this line of thought, brought about
the view of Immanuel Kant (1724-1804).^
Weigel says to himself: Even if the
knowledge flows out from man, it is still
only the being of the "counterpart" (or
object) which comes to light in this in-
direct way through man. As I learn the
content of the book by reading it, and
not by my own content, so also I
learn the colour of the "counterpart"
^The error in this line of thought will be found ex-
plained in my book, The Philosophy of Freedom, Berlin,
1894. Here I must limit myself to mentioning that Val-
entine Weigel, with his simple, robust way of conceiving
things, stands far higher than Kant.
WEIGEL AND BOEHME 229
through the eye, not any colour to be
found in the eye, or in myself. (Thus
Weigel arrives by a road of his own at a
result that we have already encountered
in Nicholas of Cusa. Cp. pages 1 51-160).
In this way Weigel attained to clearness
as to the nature of sense-perception. He
arrived at the conviction that everything
which external things have to tell us can
only flow forth from our own inner nature
itself. Man cannot remain passive when
he tries to know sensible objects and
seeks merely to allow them to act upon
him; but he must assume an active atti-
tude, and bring forth the knowledge from
within himself. The counterpart (or
object) merely awakens the knowledge
in the spirit. Man rises to higher know-
ledge when his spirit becomes its own
''counterpart.'* One can see from
sensible cognition that no cognition can
230 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
flow into man from outside. Therefore
there can be no such thing as an external
revelation, but only an inner awakening.
As now the external counterpart waits
till there comes into its presence man, in
whom it can express its being, so too must
man wait, when he seeks to be his own
''counterpart ** (or object) until the know-
ledge of his own being shall be awakened
in him. If, in cognition through the
senses, man must assimie an active atti-
tude in order that he may bring to meet
the "counterpart** its own being, so in
the higher knowing, man must hold him-
self passive, because he is himself now
the ''counterpart.'* He must admit its
being into himself. Therefore the cog-
nition of the spirit appears to him as
enlightenment from above. In contrast
to cognition through the senses, Weigel
therefore terms the higher cognition the
WEIGEL AND BOEHME 231
''Light of Mercy/' This "Light of
Mercy" is, in reaHty, nothing other than
the self-knowledge of the spirit in man,
or the re-birth of knowledge on the higher
level of beholding.
Now just as Nicholas of Cusa, in fol-
lowing up his road from knowing to
beholding, does not really bring about
the re-birth of the knowledge he has
gained, on the higher level, but only the
faith of the Church in which he was
brought up appears deceptively before
him as such a re-birth, so is it also the case
with Weigel. He guides himself to the
right road, but loses it again in the very
moment in which he steps upon it. He
who will travel the road that Weigel
points out, can regard the latter as
his guide only as far as the starting-
point.
* * *
232 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
What rings out to meet us from the
works of the Master-Shoemaker of Gor-
Htz, Jacob Boehme (i 575-1624), sounds
hke the joyous outburst of Nature ad-
miring her own being upon the summit
of her evolution. A man appears before
us whose words have wings, woven out
of the inspiring feeHng of having seen
knowledge shining within him as Higher
Wisdom. Jacob Boehme describes his
own state as Piety which strives only
to be Wisdom, and as a Wisdom that
seeks to live only in Piety: "As I was
wrestling and fighting in God^s behalf, be-
hold a wondrous light shone into my soul,
such as was quite foreign to savage nature ;
therein I first knew what God and man
were, and what God had to do with men."
Jacob Boehme no longer feels himself
as a separated being expressing its in-
sights; he feels himself as an organ of
WEIGEL AND BOEHME 22,2>
the great All-Spirit, speaking in him.
The limits of his personality do not appear
to him as the limits of the Spirit that
speaks from within him. This Spirit is
for him present everywhere. He knows
that "the Sophist will blame him" when
he speaks of the beginning of the world
and its creation: *'the while I was not
thereby and did not myself see it. To
him be it said that in the essence of my
soul and body, when I was not yet the
'I,' but when I was still Adam's essence,
I was there present and myself squandered
away my glory in Adam.'*
Only in external similes is Boehme
able to indicate how the light broke forth
in his inner being. When once as a boy
he finds himself on the top of a moun-
tain, he sees above him a place where
large red stones seem to shut up the
mountain; the entrance is open and in
234 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
its depth he sees a vessel full of gold. A
shudder runs through him ; and he goes
on his way without touching the treasure.
Later on he is apprenticed to a shoemaker
in Gorlitz. A stranger steps into the
shop and demands a pair of shoes.
Boehme is not allowed to sell them in the
absence of his master. The stranger
departs, but after a while calls the ap-
prentice out of the shop and says to him :
"Jacob, thou art little, but thou wilt
some day become quite another man,
over whom the world will break out into
wonder." In riper years, Jacob Boehme
sees the reflection of the bright sun in a
tin vessel: the view that thus presents
itself to him seems to him to unveil a
profound secret. Even after the impres-
sion of this appearance, he believes him-
self to be in possession of the key to the
riddles of Nature.
WEIGEL AND BOEHME 235
He lives as a spiritual anchorite, hum-
bly earning his living by his trade, and
between whiles, as though for his own
recollection, he notes down the harmonies
which resound in his inner being when he
feels the Spirit in himself. The z ealotry
of priestly fervour makes life hard for
the man; he, who desires naught but to
read the Scripture which the light of
his inner nature illtmiinates for him, is
persecuted and tortured by those to
whom only the external writ, the rigid,
dogmatic confession of faith, is accessible.
One world -riddle remains as a disquiet-
ing presence in Jacob Boehme's soul,
driving him on to knowledge. He be-
lieves himself to be in his spirit enfolded
in a divine harmony; but when he looks
around him, he sees discord everywhere
in the divine workings. To man belongs
the light of Wisdom ; and yet he is exposed
236 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
to error; in him lives the impulse to the
good, and yet the discord of evil sounds
throughout the whole of human develop-
ment. Nature is governed by its own
great laws; yet its harmony is disturbed
by happenings of no purport, and the
warfare of the elements. How is this
discord in the harmonious world -whole to
be understood? This question tortures
Jacob Boehme. It strides into the centre
of the world of his thought. He strives
to gain a view of the world as a whole,
which shall include the discordant. For
how can a conception which leaves the
actual present discord unexplained ex-
plain the world? The discord must be
explained out of the harmony, the evil
out of the good itself. Let us restrict
ourselves, in speaking of these things, to
the good and the evil, wherein the lack
of harmony in the narrower sense finds
WEIGEL AND BOEHME 237
its expression. For, fundamentally, Ja-
cob Boehme also restricts himself to
this. He can do so, for Nature and man
appear to him as a single entity. He sees
in both similar laws and processes. The
purposeless seems to him an evil some-
thing in Nature, just as evil seems to
him something purposeless in man. Simi-
lar fundamental forces rule both here
and there. To one who has known the
origin of evil in man, the source of evil in
Nature also lies open and clear.
Now, how can the evil as well as the
good flow forth from the very same Root-
Being? Speaking in Jacob Boehme 's
sense, one would give the following an-
swer. The Root -Being does not live out
its existence in itself. The multiplicity
of the world shares in this existence. As
the human body lives its life, not as a
single member, but as a multiplicity of
238 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
members, so also the Root-Being. And
as human life is poured out into this
multiplicity of members, so too the Root-
Being is poured out into the manifoldness
of the things of this world. As true as
it is that the entire man has only one
life, so true is it that every member has
its own life. And as little as it contra-
dicts the whole harmonious life of a man,
that his hand should turn itself against
his own body and wound it, so little is
it impossible that the things of the world,
which live the life of the Root-Being in
their own way, should turn themselves
against each other. Thus the Root-
Being, in dividing itself among different
lives, confers upon each such life the
capacity to turn itself against the whole.
It is not from the good that evil streams
forth, but from the way in which the good
lives. As the light is only able to shine
WEIGEL AND BOEHME 239
when it pierces the darkness, so the good
can bring itself to life only when it per-
meates its opposite. From out of the
''fathomless abyss'' of darkness there
streams forth the light ; from the ' ' ground-
lessness" of the indifferent there is
brought to birth the Good. And as in
the shadow only the brightening demands
a pointing to the Hght; but the darkness,
as a matter of course, is felt as that which
weakens the light; so too in the world,
it is only the law-abiding character that
is sought for in all things; and the evil,
the purposeless, is accepted as a matter
of course, intelligible in itself. Thus, in
spite of the fact that for Jacob Boehme
the Root-Being is the All, still nothing
in the world can be understood, unless
one has an eye both to the Root-Being
and its opposite at once. ''The good
has swallowed up into itself the evil or
240 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
the hideous. . . . Every being has in
itself good and evil, and in its unfold-
ment, as it passes over into division, it
becomes a contradiction of qualities, as
one seeks to overcome the other.'*
Hence it is altogether in accordance
with Jacob Boehme's view to see in every-
thing, and in every process of the world,
both good and evil ; but it is not in accord
with his meaning, without more ado to
seek the Root-Being in the mingling of
good and evil. The Root-Being must
swallow up the evil ; but the evil is not a
part of the Root-Being. Jacob Boehme
seeks the Root-Being of the world; but
the world itself has sprung forth from the
''fathomless abyss** through the Root-
Being. ''The external world is not God,
and eternally will not be called God, but
only a being wherein God manifests
Himself. . . . When one says: God is
WEIGEL AND BOEHME 241
all, God is heaven and earth, and also
the outer world, so is that true: for from
him and in him all stands originally
rooted. But what am I to do with such
a saying, which is no religion?**
With such a view in the background,
Jacob Boehme's conceptions as to the
being of the whole world built themselves
up in his mind, so that he makes the
orderly world emerge in a series of steps
from the ''fathomless abyss/' This
world builds itself up in seven natural
forms. In dark astringency the Root-
Being receives form, dumbly shut up
within itself and motionless. This as-
tringency Boehme grasps under the
symbol of Salt. In employing such
designations he leans upon Paracelsus,
who had borrowed from chemical pro-
cesses his names for the processes of
Nature. By swallowing up its opposite,
16
242 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
the first nature-form passes over into the
form of the second; the astringent, the
motionless, takes on movement; Power
and Life enter into it. Quicksilver (Mer-
cury) is the symbol for this second form.
In the struggle of Rest and Motion,
of Death with Life, the third form of
Nature unveils itself (Sulphur). This
Life battling within itself, becomes mani-
fest to itself; it lives thenceforward no
longer an outer battle of its members;
there quivers through it as it were a
unifying glowing flash, itself lighting
up its own being (Fire). This fourth
form of Nature rises to the fifth, the
living battle of the parts resting in
themselves (Water). On this level, as
upon the first, there is present an inner
astringency and dumbness; only it is
not an absolute rest, a silence of the inner
opposites, but an interior movement of
WEIGEL AND BOEHME 243
the opposites. It is not the motionless
resting in itself, but the moved, that
which has been kindled by the fire-flash
of the fourth stage. Upon the sixth
level, the Root-Being itself becomes aware
of itself as such inner life. Living beings
endowed with senses represent this form
of Nature. Jacob Boehme calls it the
"Clang*' or Call, and in so doing adopts
the sense-perception of sound as the
symbol for sense-perception in general.
The seventh form of Nature is the Spirit,
raising itself on the basis of its sense-
perceptions (Wisdom). He finds him-
self again as himself, as the Root-Being,
within the world that has grown up out
of the "fathomless abyss,*' shaping itself
out of the harmonious and the discordant.
"The Holy Ghost brings the Glory of
this Majesty into the being, wherein the
Godhead stands revealed."
244 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
It IS with such views that Jacob
Boehme seeks to fathom that world
which for him, according to the knowledge
of his time, was reckoned as the actual
world of fact. For him all is fact which
is so regarded by the natural science of
his time and by the Bible. His way of
conceiving things is one thing, his world
of facts quite another. One can imagine
the former applied to a totally different
knowledge of facts. And thus there
appears before our eyes a Jacob Boehme
as he might stand at the parting of the
nineteenth and the twentieth centuries.
Such a one would not saturate with his
way of conceiving things the six days'
creation work of the Bible and the fight
of the angels and the devils, but Lyell's
geological knowledge and the facts of
Haeckel's The History of Creation. He
who can penetrate into the spirit of Jacob
WEIGEL AND BOEHME 245
Boehme*s writings must arrive at this
conviction. '
^ We may here name the most important of Boehme's
writings: Die Morgenrothe im Aufgang; Die drei Prinzi-
pien gottlichen Lebens oder iiher das dreifache Leben des
Menschen; Das umgewandte Auge; *' Signafura rerum"
oder von der Geburt und Bezeichnung aller Wesen; Das
' * Mysterium Magnum. ' '
GIORDANO BRUNO AND ANGELUS
SILESIUS
In the first decennium of the sixteenth
century, the scientific genius of Nicholas
Copernicus (1473-1543) thinks out in
the castle of Heilsberg, in Prussia, an
intellectual structure which compels the
men of subsequent epochs to look up to
the starry heavens with other concep-
tions than those which their forefathers
in antiquity and the Middle Ages had.
To them the earth was their dwelling-
place, at rest in the centre of the Universe.
The stars, however, were for them beings
of a perfect nature, whose motion took
place in circles because the circle is the
representative of perfection.
246
BRUNO AND SILESIUS 247
In that which the stars showed to
human senses they beheld something of
the nature of soul, something spiritual.
It was one kind of speech that the things
and processes upon earth spoke to man;
quite another, that of the shining stars,
beyond the moon in the pure aether,
which seemed like some spiritual nature
filling space. Nicholas of Cusa had al-
ready formed other ideas.
Through Copernicus, earth became for
man a brother-being in face of the other
heavenly bodies, a star moving like
others. All the difference that earth has
to show for man he could now reduce
to this: that earth is his dwelling-place.
He was no longer forced to think differ-
ently about the events of this earth and
those of the rest of universal space. The
world of his senses had expanded itself
into the most remote spaces. He was
248 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
compelled henceforth to allow that which
penetrated his eye from the aether to
count as sense-world just as much as the
things of earth. He could no longer
seek in the aether in sensuous fashion for
the Spirit.
Whoever, henceforth, strove after
higher knowledge, must needs come to
an understanding with this expanded
world of the senses. In earlier centuries,
the brooding mind of man stood before
a world of facts. Now he was confronted
with a new task. No longer could the
things of earth only express this nature
from within man's inner being. This
inner nature of his was called on to em-
brace the spirit of a sense- world, which
fills the All of Space everywhere alike.
The thinker of Nola, Philotheo Gior-
dano Bruno (1548- 1600) found himself
faced by such a problem. The senses
BRUNO AND SILESIUS 249
have conquered the universe of space;
henceforth the Spirit is no more to be
found in space. Thus man was guided
from without to seek henceforward for
the Spirit there alone where from out of
profound inner experiences those glori-
ous thinkers sought it, whose ranks our
previous expositions have led before us.
These thinkers drew upon a view of the
world to which, later on, the advance of
nattiral knowledge forces humanity. The
sun of those ideas, which later should shine
upon a new view of Nature, with them
still stands below the horizon ; but their
light already appears as the early dawn
at a time when men's thoughts of Nature
itself still lay in the darkness of night.
The sixteenth century gave the heav-
enly spaces to natural science for the
sense-world to which it rightfully belongs ;
by the end of the nineteenth century, this
250 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
science had advanced so far that, even
within the phenomena of plant, animal,
and human life, it could assign to the
world of sensible facts that which belongs
to it. Neither, then, in the ^ther above,
nor in the development of living creatures,
can this natural science henceforth seek
for anything but sensible, matter-of-fact
processes. As the thinker in the six-
teenth century had to say: ''The earth
is a star among other stars, subject to the
same laws as other stars*'; so must the
thinker of the nineteenth century say:
"Man, whatever may be his origin and
his future, is for anthropology only a
mammal, and further, that mammal
whose organisation, needs and diseases
are the most complex, whose brain, with
its marvellous capacities, has reached the
highest level of development."'
^ Paul Topinard : Anthropologie, Leipzig, 1888, p. 528.
BRUNO AND SILESIUS 251
From such a standpoint, attained
through natural science, there can no
longer occur any confusion between the
spiritual and the sensible, provided man
understands himself rightly. Developed
natural science makes it impossible to
seek in Nature for a Spirit conceived of
after the fashion of something material,
just as healthy thinking makes it im-
possible to seek for the reason of the
forward movement of the clock-hand,
not in mechanical laws (the Spirit of
inorganic Nature), but in a special
Daimon, supposed to bring about the
movements of the hands. Ernst Haeckel
was quite right in rejecting, as a scientist,
the gross conception of a God conceived
of in material fashion. ''In the higher
and more abstract forms of religion, the
bodily appearance is abandoned and God
is worshipped as pure Spirit, devoid of
252 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
body. 'God is a Spirit, and they that
worship him must worship him in spirit
and in truth/ But, nevertheless, the
soul-activity of this pure Spirit remains
quite the same as that of the anthropo-
morphic personal God. In reality, even
this immaterial Spirit is not thought of
as bodiless, but as invisible, like a gas.
We thus arrive at the paradoxical con-
ception of God as a gaseous vertebrate." '
In reality, the matter-of-fact, sensible
existence of something spiritual may be
assumed only when immediate sensible
experience shows something spiritual, and
only such a degree of the spiritual may
be assumed as can be perceived in this
manner. That first rate thinker, B.
Carneri, ventured to say (in his book:
Empfindung und Bewusstsein, p. 15):
"The dictum: No spirit without matter,
^ Haeckel, Riddle of the Universe.
BRUNO AND SILESIUS 253
but also no matter without spirit, — would
entitle us to extend the question to the
plant also, nay, even to any block of
stone taken at random, wherein there
seems very little to speak in favour of
these correlative conceptions. ' * Spiritual
occurrences as matters of fact are the
results of various doings of an organism;
the Spirit of the world is not present in
the world in a material sense, but precisely
after a spiritual fashion. Man's soul is
a sum of processes in which Spirit ap-
pears most immediately as fact. In the
form of such a soul, however, Spirit is
present in man only. And it implies
that one misunderstands Spirit, that one
commits the worst sin against Spirit, to
seek for Spirit in the form of Soul else-
where than in man, to imagine other
beings thus ensouled as man is. Who-
ever does this, only shows that he has
254 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
not experienced Spirit within himself;
he has only experienced that outer form
of appearance of Spirit, the Soul, which
reigns in him. But that is just the same
as though one regarded a circle drawn
with a pencil as the real, mathematically
ideal circle. Whoever experiences in him-
self nothing other than the soul-form of
the Spirit, feels himself thereupon driven
to assume also such a soul-form in non-
human things, in order that thereby he
may not need to remain rooted in the
materiality of the gross senses. Instead
of thinking the Root-Being of the world
as Spirit, he thinks of it as World-Soul,
and postulates a general ensoulment of
Nature.
Giordano Bruno, upon whom the new
Copernican view of Nature forced itself,
could grasp Spirit in the world, from
which it had been expelled in its old form,
BRUNO AND SILESIUS 255
in no other manner than as World-Soul.
On plunging into Bruno's writings (es-
pecially his deeply thoughtful book:
De Rerum Principiis et Elementis et
Causis) one gets the impression that he
thought of things as ensouled, although
in varying degree. He has not, in reality,
experienced in himself the Spirit, there-
fore he conceives Spirit after the fashion
of the human soul, wherein alone he has
encountered it. When he speaks of
Spirit, he conceives of it in the following
way: ''The universal reason is the in-
most, most effective and most special
capacity, and a potential part of the
World-Soul ; it is something one and iden-
tical, which fills the All, illuminates the
universe and instructs Nature how to
bring forth her species as they ought to
be." In these sentences Spirit, it is true,
is not described as a "gaseous verte-
256 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
brate," but it is described as a being that
is like to the human soul. ''Let now a
thing be as small and tiny as you please,
it yet has within it a portion of spiritual
substance, which, when it finds a sub-
stratum adapted thereto, reaches out
to become a plant, an animal, and or-
ganises itself to any body you choose
that is ordinarily called ensouled. For
Spirit is to be found in all things, and
there does not exist even the tiniest little
body which does not embrace in itself
such a share thereof as causes it to come
to life."
Because Giordano Bruno had not
really experienced the Spirit, as Spirit,
in himself, he could therefore confuse
the life of the Spirit with the external
mechanical processes, wherewith Ray-
mond Lully (1235-13 1 5) wanted to unveil
the secrets of the Spirit in his so-called
BRUNO AND SILESIUS 257
"Great Art*' (Ars Magna). A recent
philosopher, Franz Brentano, describes
this ''Great Art'' thus: ''Concepts were
to be inscribed upon concentric, sepa-
rately revolving discs, and then the most
varied combinations produced by turning
them about." Whatever chance brings
up in the turning of these discs, was
shaped into a judgment about the highest
truths. And Giordano Brimo, in his mani-
fold wanderings through Europe, made
his appearance at various seats of learning
as a teacher of this "Great Art." He
possessed the daring courage to think of
the stars as worlds, perfectly analogous
to our earth; he widened the outlook of
scientific thinking beyond the confines
of earth; he thought of the heavenly
bodies no longer as bodily spirits; but
he still thought of them as soul-like
spirits. One must not be unjust towards
17
258 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
the man whom the Catholic Church
caused to pay with death the penalty for
his advanced way of thinking. It re-
quired something gigantic to harness the
whole space of heaven in the same view
of the universe which hitherto had been
applied only to things upon earth, even
though Bruno did still think of the sen-
sible as soul-like.
:{: « 4:
In the seventeenth century there ap-
peared Johann Scheffler, called Angelus
SiLESius ( 1 624-1 677), a personality in
whom there once more shone forth, in
mighty harmony of soul, what Tauler,
Weigel, Jacob Boehme, and others, had
prepared. Gathered, as it were, into a
spiritual focus and shining with enhanced
light-giving power, the ideas of the
thinkers named make their appearance
in his book: " Cherubinischer Wanders-
BRUNO AND SILESIUS 259
mann. Geistreiche Sinn- und Schluss-
reime/' And everything that Angelas
Silesius utters appears as such an im-
mediate, inevitable, natural revelation of
his personality, that it is as though this
man had been called by a special provi-
dence to embody wisdom in a personal
form. The simple, matter-of-course way
in which he lives wisdom, attains its
expression by being set forth in say-
ings which, even in respect of their art
and their form, are worthy of admiration.
He hovers like some spiritual being over
all earthly existence; and what he says
is like the breath of another world, freed
beforehand from all that is gross and
impure, wherefrom htmian wisdom gen-
erally only toilsomely works itself free.
He only is truly a knower, in the sense
of Angelus Silesius, who brings the eye
of the All to vision in himself; he alone
260 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
sees his action in the true Hght who feels
that this action is wrought in him by
the hand of the All: "God is in me the
fire, and I in him the light; are we not
in most intimate communion one with
another?"— ''I am as rich as God; there
can be no grain of dust that I — ^believe
me, man, — ^have not in common with
Him."- — ''God loves me above Himself;
if I love Him above myself : I so give Him
as much as He gives me from Himself." —
''The bird flies in the air, the stone rests
on the earth; in water lives the fish, my
spirit in God's own hand."— "Art thou
born of God, then bloometh God in thee;
and His Godhead is thy sap and thy
adornment."—' ' Halt ! whither runnest
thou? Heaven is in thee: seekest thou
God otherwhere, thou missest Him ever
and ever."
For one who thus feels himself in the
BRUNO AND SILESIUS 261
All, every separation ceases between self
and another being; he no longer feels
himself as. a single individual; rather
does he feel all that there is of him
as a part of the world, his own proper
being, indeed, as that World- Whole itself.
"The world, it holds thee not; thou art
thyself the world that holds thee, in
thee, with thee, so strongly captive
bound." — ''Man has never perfect bliss
before that unity has swallowed up other-
ness."- — "Man is all things; if aught is
lacking to him, then in truth he knoweth
not his own riches."
As a sense-being, man is a thing among
other things, and his sense-organs bring
to him, as a sensible individuality, sense-
news of the things in space and time out-
side of him; but when Spirit speaks in
man, then there remains no without and
no within; nothing is here and nothing
262 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
is there that is spiritual; nothing is
earlier and nothing is later; space and
time have vanished in the contemplation
of the All-Spirit. Only so long as man
looks forth as an individual, is he here
and the thing there; and only so long as
he looks forth as an individual, is this
earlier, and this later. **Man, if thou
swingest thy spirit over time and place,
so each moment canst thou be in eter-
nity." — ''I am myself eternity when I
leave time behind, and self in God and
God in self together grasp."' — "The rose
that here thine outer eye doth see, it so
hath bloomed in God from all eternity."
— "In centre set thyself, so see'st thou
all at once: what then and now occurred,
here and in heaven's realm." — "So long
for thee, my friend, in mind lies place
and time: so long graspest thou not
what 's God, nor what eternity. "^ — ■
BRUNO AND SILESIUS 263
"When man from manifoldness with-
draws, and inward turns to God, so Com-
eth he to unity/* The stmimit has thus
been climbed, whereon man steps forth
beyond his individual **!'* and abolishes
every opposition between the world and
himself. A higher life begins for him.
The inner experience that comes over
him appears to him as the death of the
old and a resurrection in a new life.
''When thou dost raise thyself above thy-
self and lettest God overrule; then in thy
spirit happens ascenvsion into heaven.**
■ — "The body in the spirit must arise, the
spirit, too, in God: if thou in him, my
man, will live for ever blessed."- — "So
much mine 'I* in me doth *minish and
decrease; so much therefore to power
Cometh the Lord's own 'I.'**
From such a point of view, man recog-
nises his meaning and the meaning of all
264 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
things in the realm of eternal necessity.
The natural All appears to him immedi-
ately as the Divine Spirit. The thought
of a divine All-Spirit, who could still
have being and sub-existence over and
beside the things of the world, vanishes
away as a superseded conception. This
All-Spirit appears so outpoured into
things, so becomes one in being with the
things, that it could no longer be thought
at all, if even one single member were
thought away from its being. ** Naught
is but I and thou; and if we twain were
not ; then is God no more God, and heaven
falleth in." — Man feels himself as a
necessary link in the world-chain. His
doing has no longer aught of arbitrariness
or of individuality in it. What he does
is necessary in the whole, in the world-
chain, which would fall to pieces if this
his doing were to fall out from it. "God
BRUNO AND SILESIUS 265
may not make without me a single little
worm: if I with him uphold it not,
straightway must it burst asunder. '*^ —
*'I know that without me God can no
moment live: if I come to naught, he
needs must give up the ghost." — Upon
this height, man for the first time sees
things in their real being. He no longer
needs to ascribe from outside to the
smallest thing, to the grossly sensible, a
spiritual entity. For just as this mi-
nutest thing is, in all its smallness and
gross sensibility, it is a link in the Whole.
''No grain of dust is so vile, no mote can
be so small: the wise man seeth God
most gloriously therein."- — "In a mus-
tard seed, if thou wilt imderstand it,
is the image of all things above and
beneath."
Man feels himself free upon this height.
For constraint is there only where a thing
<<
II
266 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
can constrain from without. But when
all that is without has flowed into the
within, when the opposition between
I and world,'* "Without and Within,'*
Nature and Spirit," has disappeared,
man then feels all that impels him as his
own impulse. "Shut me, as strongly as
thou wilt, in a thousand irons: I still
will be quite free and unfettered.'' —
"So far as my will is dead, so far must
God do what I will ; I myself prescribe to
him the pattern and the goal." — At this
point cease all moral obligations, coming
from without: man becomes to himself
measure and goal. He is subject to no
law; for the law, too, has become his
being. "For the wicked is the law; were
there no command written, still would
the pious love God and their neighbour."
Thus, on the higher level of knowledge,
the innocence of Nature is given back to
BRUNO AND SILESIUS 267
man. He fulfils the tasks that are set
him in the feeling of an external necessity.
He says to himself: Through this iron
necessity it is given into thy hand to
withdraw from this very iron necessity
the link which has been allotted to thee.
''Ye men, learn but from the meadow
flower: how ye shall please God and be
beautiful as well." — ''The rose exists
without why and because, she blooms
because she blooms; she takes no heed
of herself, asks not if men see her." The
man who has arisen upon the higher level
feels in himself the eternal, necessary
pressure of the All, as does the meadow
flower; he acts, as the meadow flower
blooms. The feeling of his moral respon-
sibility grows in all his doing into the
immeasurable. For that which he does
not do is withdrawn from the All, is a
slaying of that All, so far as the possi-
268 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
bility of such a slaying lies with him.
^'What is it, not to sin? Thou need'st
not question long: go, the dumb flowers
will tell it thee." — "All must be slain.
If thou slayest not thyself for God, then
at last eternal death shall slay thee for
the enemy."
AFTERWORD
Nearly two and a half centuries have
passed since Angelas Silesius gathered up
the profound wisdom of his predecessors
in his Cheruhinean Wanderer. These cen-
turies have brought rich insights into
Nature. Goethe opened a vast per-
spective to natural science. He sought
to follow up the eternal, unchangeable
laws of Nature's working, to that summit
where, with like necessity, they cause
man to come into being, just as on a
lower level they bring forth the stone. ^
Lamarck, Darwin, Haeckel, and others,
have laboured further in the direction
of this way of conceiving things. The
'Cp. my book: Goethe's Weltanschauung^ Weimar, 1897.
269
270 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
*' question of all questions," that in
regard to the natural origin of man,
found its answer in the nineteenth
century; and other related problems
in the realm of natural events have
also found their solutions. To-day men
comprehend that it is not necessary to
step outside of the realm of the actual
and the sensible in order to understand
the serial succession of beings, right up
to man, in its development in a purely
natural manner.
And, further, J. G. Fichte's penetra-
tion has thrown light into the being of
the human ego, and shown the soul of
man where to seek itself and what it is.'
Hegel has extended the realm of thought
over all the provinces of being, and striven
to grasp in thought the entire sensible
* Cp. ante, and the section upon Fichte in my book:
Welt- und Lebens-anschauungen im neunzehnten Jahrhundert,
vol. i., Berlin, S. Cronbach.
AFTERWORD 271
existence of Nature, as also the loftiest
creations of the human spirit.'
How, then, do those men of genius
whose thoughts have been traced in the
preceding pages, appear in the light of a
world-conception which takes into ac-
count the scientific achievements of the
centuries that followed their epoch?
They still believed in a ''supernatural"
story of creation. How do their thoughts
appear when confronted with a "natural '*
history of creation, which the science of
the nineteenth century has built up?
This natural science has given to
Nature naught that did not belong to
her; it has only taken from her what did
not belong to her. It has banished from
Nature all that is not to be sought in her,
but is to be found only in man's inner
^ Cp. my presentation of Hegel in Welt- und Lebens-
anschauungen im neunzehnten Jahrhundert, vol. i.
2']2 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
being. It sees no longer any being in
Nature that is like unto the human soul,
and that creates after the manner of man.
It no longer makes the organic forms to
be created by a man-like God; it follows
up their development in the sense-world
according to purely natural laws. Meis-
ter Eckhart, as well as Tauler, and also
Jacob Boehme with Angelus Silesius,
would needs feel the deepest satisfaction
in contemplating this natural science.
The spirit in which they desired to behold
the world has passed over in the fullest
sense to this view of Nature, when it is
rightly understood. What they were
still unable to do, viz,\ to bring the facts
of Nature themselves into the light which
had risen for them, that, undoubtedly,
would have been their longing, if this
same natural science had been laid be-
fore them. They could not do it; for
AFTERWORD 273
no geology, no ** natural history of crea-
tion'* told them about the processes in
Nature. The Bible alone told them in
its own way about such processes. There-
fore they sought, so far as they could, for
the spiritual where alone it is to be
found: in the inner nature of man.
At the present time, they would have
quite other aids at hand than in their own
time, to show that an actually existing
Spirit is to be found only in man. They
would to-day agree unreservedly with
those who seek Spirit as a fact not in
the root of Nature, but in her fruit.
They would admit that Spirit as per-
ceivable is a result of evolution, and
that upon lower levels of evolution such
Spirit must not be sought for. They
would understand that no "creative
thought" ruled in the forthcoming of the
Spirit in the organism, any more than
18
274 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
such a *' creative thought" caused the
ape to evolve from the marsupials.
Our present age cannot speak about
the facts of Nature as Jacob Boehme
spoke of them. But there exists a point
of view, even in this present day, which
brings Jacob Boehme' s way of regarding
things near to a view of the world that
takes account of modern natural science.
There is no need to lose the Spirit, when
one finds in Nature only the natural.
Many do, indeed, believe to-day that
one must needs lose oneself in a shallow
and prosaic materialism, if one simply
accepts the ''facts'' which natural sci-
ence has discovered. I myself stand
fully upon the ground of this same nat-
ural science. I have, through and
through, the feeling that, in a view of
Nature such as Ernst Haeckel's, only he
can lose himself amid shallows who him-
AFTERWORD 275
self approaches it with a shallow thought-
world. I feel something higher, more
glorious, when I let the . revelations of
the ''natural history of creation" work
upon me, than when the supernatural
miracle stories of the confessions of faith
force themselves upon me. In no ''holy
book" do I know aught that unveils for
me anything as lofty as the "sober"
fact, that every human germ in the moth-
er's womb repeats in brief, one after the
other, those animal types which its animal
ancestors have passed through. If only we
fill our hearts with the glory of the facts
that our senses behold, then we shall have
little left over for "wonders" which do
not He in the course of Nature. If we
experience the Spirit in ourselves, then we
have no need of such in external Nature.
In my Philosophy of Freedom, (Ber-
lin, 1894) I have described my view
276 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
of the world, which has no thought of
driving out the Spirit, because it beholds
Nature as Darwin and Haeckel beheld
her. A plant, an animal, gains nothing
for me if I people it with souls of which
my senses give me no information. I
do not seek in the external world for
a ''deeper," ''more soulful" being of
things; nay, I do not even assume it,
because I believe that the insight which
shines forth for me in my inner being
guards me against it. I believe that the
things of the sense- world are, in fact,
just as they present themselves to us,
because I see that a right self-knowledge
leads us to this : that in Nature we should
seek nothing but natural processes. I
seek no Spirit of God in Nature, because
I believe that I perceive the nature of
the human spirit in myself. I calmly
admit my animal ancestry, because I be-
AFTERWORD 277
lieve myself to know that there, where
these animal ancestors have their origin,
no spirit of like nature with soul can work.
I can only agree with Ernst Haeckel when
he prefers the "eternal rest of the grave"
to an immortality such as is taught by
some religions/ For I find a dishonour-
ing of Spirit, an ugly sin against the Spirit,
in the conception of a soul continuing to
exist after the manner of a sensible being.
I hear a shrill discord when the scien-
tific facts in Haeckel's presentation come
up against the "piety" of the confessions
of some of our contemporaries. But
for me there rings out from confessions
of faith, which give a discord with natural
facts, naught of the spirit of the higher
piety which I find in Jacob Boehme
and Angelus Silesius. This higher piety
stands far more in full harmony with
' Cp. Haeckel's Riddle of the Universe.
278 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
the working of the natural. There lies
no contradiction in the fact of saturating
oneself with the knowledge of the most
recent natural science, and at the same
time treading the path which Jacob
Boehme and Angelus Silesius have sought.
He who enters on that path in the sense
of those thinkers has no need to fear
losing himself in a shallow materialism
when he lets the secrets of Nature be
laid before him by a *' natural history of
creation." Whoever has grasped my
thoughts in this sense will understand
with me in like manner the last saying
of the Cheruhinean Wanderer, with which
also this book shall close: ''Friend, it is
even enough. In case thou more wilt
read, go forth, and thyself become the
book, thyself the reading.'*
THE END
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