Rudolf Steiner - Mystics of the Renaissance

AND

THEIR RELATION TO MOD ERN T H OUGHTI NCLUDIN G

MEISTER ECKHART, T AULER, PARACELSUS,JACOB BOEHME, GIORDANO BRUNO, ,v-~'-f-l'-R-'\I

AND OTHERS 0~'\' ~,--~ ...'~~C[rt:r,

BY\

Ph.D. (Vienna)

AU T HO R ISE D TR ANSLATIO N FRO~ T HE GE RM AN BY

BERTRAM KEIGHTLEY, M .A . (Caneab.)

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONSNEW YORK AND LO NDON~b e 'lkn(cJterbocJt er t:lr es s

19 1 1

C O PYRIGH T , I g H

BY

MAX GYSI

M AX GYSI, Editor,

H Ad ya r-;" Park Drive,

Lond on , N. W.

CONTENTS

PAGE

F ORE WORD . v

I NTRODUCTION I

MEISTE R ECKHART S2

FRIENDSHIP WITH GOD [TAULER, SUSO

AND RUYSBROECK] . 8 1

C ARDINAL NICHOLAS OF CUSA 133

AGRIPPA VON NETTESHEIM AND THEO-

PHRASTU S PARACELSUS 182

V ALE NTI NE WEIGEL AND j ACOB BOEHME 223

G IORDANO BRUNO AND A NGELUS SILE SIUS 246

AFTE RWORD . 269

iii

FOREWORD

THE matter which I am laying beforethe public in this book formed thecontent of lectures which I deliveredduring last winter at the TheosophicalLibrary in Berlin. I had been request edby Grafin and Graf Brockdorff .t o speakupon Mysticism before an audience forwhom the matters thus dealt with constitute a vital question of the utmostimportance. Ten years earlier I couldnot have ventured to fulfil such a request . Not that the realm of ideas, towhich I now give expression, d id noteven then live actively within me . Forthese ideas are al ready fully containedin my Philosophy of Freedom (Berlin,1894. Emil Felber) . Bu t to give ex-

v

vi FOREWORD

pression to this world of ideas III suchwise as I do to-day, and to make it thebasis of an exposition as is done on thefollowing pages-to do this requiressomething quite other than merely tobe immovably convinced of the intellectual truth of these ideas. It demandsan intimate acquaintance with this realmof ideas, such as only many years of lifecan give. Only now, after having enjoyed that intimacy, do I venture tospeak in such wise as will be found inthis book.

Anyone who does not approach myworld of ideas without preconceptionsis sure to discover therein contradictionafter contradiction. I have quite recently (Berlin, 1900. S . Cronbach) dedicated a book upon the world conceptionsof the nineteenth century to that greatna turalist , E rnst Haeck el, and closed it

FOREWORD vii

with a defence of his thought -world.In the following expositions, I speakabout the Mystics, from Master Eckhartto Angelus Silesius, with a full measure ofdevotion and acquiescence. Other " contradictions," which one critic or anothermay further count up against me, I shallnot mention at all. It does not surpriseme to be condemned from one side as a., Mystic" and from the other as a

"Materialist." When I find that theJ esuit Father Muller has solved a difficult chemical problem, and I therefore int his particular matter agree with himunreservedly, one can hardly condemnme as an adherent of J esuitism withoutbeing reckoned a fool by those who haveinsight.

Whoever goes his own road , as I do,must needs allow many a misunderstanding about himself to pass. That,

Vl11 FOREWORD

however, he can put up with easilyenough. For such misunderstandingsare, in the main , inevitable in his eyes ,when he recalls the mental type of thosewho misjudge him. I look back, notwithout humorous feelings, upon manya "critical" judgment that I have suffered 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 beof such a nature that they could file itin their mental pigeon-holes. This theydid by saying: "A work such as RudolfSteiner's Introduction to Goethe's Writingsupon Natural Science may, without hesitation, be described as the best that hasbeen written upon this question. "

When, later, I published an independent work, I had already grown agood bit more stup id. For now a well

FOREWORD I X

meaning critic offered the advice: " Beforehe goes on reforming further and giveshis Philosophy of Freedom to the world ,he should be pressingly advised first towork himself through to an understandingof these two philosophers [Hume andKant]." The critic unfortunately knowsonly so much as he is himself able to readin Kant and Hume; practically, therefore , he simply advises me to learn to seeno more in these thinkers than he himself sees. When I have attained that, hewill be satisfied with me. Then whenmy Philosophy and Freedom appeared, Iwas found to be as much in need of correct ion as the most ignorant beginner.This I received from a gentleman whoprobably nothing else imp elled to thewriting of books except that he had notunderstood innumerable foreign ones.H e gravely informs me th at I should have

x FOREWORD

noticed my mistakes if I had IC mademore thorough studies in psychology,logic, and the theory of knowledge";and he enumerates forthwith the booksI ought to read to become as wise ashimself: IC Mill, Sigwart, Wundt, Riehl,Paulsen, B. Erdmann." What amusedme especially was this advice from aman who was so IC impressed" with theway he IC understood" Kant that hecould not even imagine how any mancould have read Kant and yet judgeotherwise than himself. He thereforeindicates to me the exact chapters inquestion in Kant's writings from whichI may be able to obtain an understandingof Kant as deep and as thorough ashis own.

I have cited here a couple of typicalcriticisms of my world of ideas. Thoughin themselves un important , yet they

FOREWORD XI

seem to me to point, as symptoms, tofacts which present themselves to-dayas serious obstacles in the path of anyone aiming at literary activity in regardto the higher problems of knowledge.Thus I must go on my way, indifferent,whether one man gives me the good advice to read Kant, or another hunts meas a heretic because I agree with Haeckel.And so I have also written upon Mysticism, wholly indifferent as to how a faith-•fur and believing materialist may judgeof me. I would only like-so that printers' ink may not be wasted wholly without need-to inform anyone who may,perchance advise me to read Haeckel'sRiddle of the Universe, that during thelast few months I have delivered aboutthirty lectures upon the said work.

I hope to have shown in this bookthat one may be a faithful adherent of

XlI FOREWORD

the scientific concepti on of the worldand yet be able to seek out those pathsto the Soul along which Mysticism,rightly understood, leads. I even gofurther and say: Only he who knows theSpirit, in the sense of true Mysticism, canattain a full understanding of the factsof Nature. But one must not confusetrue Mysticism with the "pseudo-myst icism " of ill-ordered minds. How Myst icism can err, I have shown in myPhilosophy of Freedom (page 131 et

seq.).

RUDOLF STEINER.

BERLIN , S eptember, 1901.

MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE

Mystics of the Renaissance

INTRODUCTION

THERE are certain magical formulsewhich operate throughout the cent uriesof Man 's mental history in ever newways. In Greece one such formulawas regarded as an oracle of Apollo. Itruns: "Know Thyself." Such sentencesseem to conceal within them an unending life. One comes upon them when following the most diverse roads in mentallife. The further one advances, the moreone penetrates into the knowledge ofthings , the deeper appears the significanceof these formulas. In many a momentof our brooding and thinking, they flash

I

2 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE

out like lightning, illuminating our wholeinner being. In such moments therequickens within us a feeling as if weheard the heart-beat of the evolution ofmankind. How close do we not feelourselves to personalities of the past,when the feeling comes over us, throughone of their winged words, that they arerevealing to us that they, too, had hadsuch moments!

We feel ourselves then brought intointimate touch with these personalities.For instance, we learn to know Hegelintimately when, in the third volumeof his Lectures on the Philosophy ofHistory we come across the words:" Such stuff, one may say, the abst ractions that we contemplate when weallow the philosophers to quarrel andbatt le in our study, and make it out tobe thus or so-mere verbal abst ract ions !

, r

INTRODUCTION 3

No! No! These are deeds of the worldspirit and therefore of destiny. Thereinthe Philosophers are nearer to the Masterthan are those who feed themselves withthe crumbs of the spirit; they read orwrite the Cabinet Orders in the originalat once; they are constrained to writethem out along with Him. The Philosophers are the Mystse who, at the crisisin the inmost shrine, were there and tookpart." When Hegel said this, he hadexperienced one of those moments justspoken of. He uttered the phrases when,in the course of his remarks, he hadreached the close of Greek philosophy;and through them he showed that once,like a gleam of lightning, the meaningof the Neoplatonic philosophy, of whichhe was just treating, had flashed uponhim. In the instant of this flash, he hadbecome intimate with minds like Plotinus


and Proklus; and we become intimatewith him when we read his words.

We become intimate, too, with thatsolitary thinker, the Pastor of Zschopau,M. Valentin Weigel, when we read theopening words of his little book KnowThyself, written in 1578: "We read in thewise men of old the useful saying, 'KnowThyself,' which, though it be right wellused about worldly manners, as thus:'regard well thyself, what thou art, seekin thine own bosom, judge thyself andlay no blame on others,' a saying, Irepeat, which, though thus used of humanlife and manners, may well and appropriately be applied by us to the naturaland supernatural knowing of the wholeman; so indeed, that man shall not onlyconsider himself and thereby rememberhow he should bear himself before people,but that he shall also know his own

, t- '/ /, r '0'(

I NTROD UCTION 5

nature , inner and outer , in spirit and inNature; whence he cometh and whereofhe is made, to what end he is ordained."So, from points of view peculiar to himself, Valentin Weigel attained to insightwhich in his mind summed itself up inthis oracle of Apollo.

A similar path to insight and a like relation_to the saying" Know Thyself" maybe ascribed to a series of deep-naturedthinkers, beginning with Master Eckhart(1250-1327) , and ending with AngelusSilesius (1624-1677), among whom maybe found also Valentin Weigel himself.

All these thinkers have in common ast rong sense of the fact that in man'sknowing of himself there rises a sunwhich illuminates something very different from the mere accidental, separatedpersonality of the beholder. 'What Spinoza became conscious of in the ethereal


heights of pure thought,-viz. , that "the

human soul possesses an adequate knowledge of the Eternal and Infinite Being

of God ,"-that same consciousness livedin them as immediate feeling; and self

k nowledge was to them the path leading

to this E ternal and Infinite Being. Itwas clear to them that self-knowledge in

it s true form enriched man with a new

sense, which unlocked for him a world

standing in relation t o the world acces

sible to him without this new sense as

does the world of one possessing physicalsight t o that of a blind man.

I t would be difficult t o find a bett erdescription of the import of this new sense

than the one given by ] . G. F ichte in his

Berlin Lectures (1813) :" Imagine a world of men born blind,

t o whom all objects and their relationsare known only through the sense of

INTRODUCTION 7

touch. Go amongst them and speak tothem of colours and other relations,which are rendered visible only throughlight. Either you are talking to themof nothing,-and if they say this, it isthe luckier, for thus you will soon seeyour mistake, and, if you cannot opentheir eyes, cease your useless talking,or, for some reason or other, they willinsist upon giving some meaning or otherto what you say; then they can onlyinterpret it in relation to what theyknow by touch. They will seek tofeel, they will imagine they do feellight and colour, and the other incidents of visibility, they will inventsomething for themselves, deceive themselves with something within th e worldof touch, which they will call colour.Then they will misunderstand, distort,and misinterpret it ."


The same thing applies to what thethinkers we are speaking of sought after.They beheld a new sense opening in selfknowledge, and this sense yielded, according to their experiences, views ofthings which are simply non-existentfor one who does not see in self-knowledgewhat distinguishes it from all other kindsof knowing. One in whom this new sensehas not been opened, believes that selfknowing, or self-perception, is the samething as perception through the outersenses, or through any other meansacting from without. He thinks : "Knowing is knowing, perceiving is perceiving."Only in the one case the obj ect is something lying in the world outside, in theother this obj ect is his own soul. Hefinds words merely, or at best, abstrac tthoughts, in that which for those who seemore deeply is the very foundation of

INTRODUCTION 9

their inner life; namely, in the proposition: that in every other kind ofknowing or perception we have the object perceived outside of ourselves, whilein self-knowledge or self-perception westand within that object ; that we seeevery other object coming to us alreadycomplete and finished off, while in ourselves we, as actors and creators, are weaving that which we observe within us.This may appear to be nothing but amerely verbal explanation, perhaps evena triviality; it may appear, on the otherhand , as a higher light which illuminatesevery other cognition. One to whom itappears in the first way, is in the position of a blind man, to whom one says :there is a glittering object. H e hears thewords, but for him the glitter is not there.He might unit e in himself the whole sumof knowledge of his time; but if he

10 MYSTres OF THE RE NAISSANCE

does not feel and realise the significanceof self-knowledge, then it is all, in thehigher sense, a blind knowledge.

The world, outside of and independentof us, exists for us by communicatingitself to our consciousness. What is thusmade known must needs be expressed inthe language peculiar to ourselves. Abook, the contents of which were offeredin a language unknown to us, would forus be without meaning. Similarly, theworld would be meaningless for us didit not speak to us in our own tongue; andthe same language which reaches usfrom things, we also hear from withinourselves. But in that case, it is we ourselves who speak. The really importantpoint is that we should correctly apprehend the transposition which occurs whenwe close our perception against externalthings and listen only to that which then

r

I NTRODUCTION 11

speaks from within. But to do thisneeds this new sense . If it has not beenawakened, we believe that in what isthus told us about ourselves we are hearing only about something external to us ;we fancy that somewhere there is hiddensomething which is speaking to us in thesame way as external things speak. Butif we possess this new sense, then wekn ow that these perceptions differ essent ially from those relating to externalthings. Then we realise that this newsense does not leave what it perceivesoutside of itself, as the eye leaves theobject it sees; but that it can take upits obj ect wholly into itself, leaving noremainder. If I see a thing, that thingremains outside of me ; if I perceive myself, then I myself enter into my percept ion . Whoever seeks for somethingmore of himself than what is perceived,

m MYSTICS OF THE RE NAISSANCE

shows thereby that for him the real content in the perception has not come tolight. Johannes Tauler (1300-1361), hasexpressed this truth in the apt words:"If I were a king and knew it not, thenshould I be no king. If I do not shineforth for myself in my own self-perception, then for myself I do not exist. Butif for myself I do shine out, then I possess myself also in my perception, in myown most deeply original being. Thereremains no residue of myself left outsideof my perception."

J. G. Fichte, in the following words,vigorously points to the difference between self-perception and every otherkind of perception: " The majority ofmen could be more easily brought to believe themselves a lump of lava in themoon than an ' ego .' Wh oever is notat one with him self as to this, under-

INTRODUCTION 13

stands no thorough-going philosophy andhas need of none. Nature, whose machine he is, will guide him in all thethings he has to do without any sort ofadded help from him. For philosophising,self-reliance is needed, and this one canonly give to oneself. We ought not towant to see without the eye; but also weought not to maintain that it is the eyewhich sees."

Thus the perception of oneself is alsothe awakening of oneself. In our cognition we combine the being of thingswith our own being. The communications, which things make to us in ourown language, become members of ourown selves. An object in front of meis not separated from me, once I haveknown it. What I am able to receivefrom it becomes part and parcel of myown being. If, now, I awaken my own

14 MYSTICS OF THE RE NAISSANCE

self, if I become aware of the content ofmy own inner being, then I also awakento a higher mode of being, that whichfrom without I have made part of myown being. The light that falls uponme at my awakening fa lls also uponwhatever I have made my own from thethings of the outside world . A lightsprings up within me and iilumines me,and with me all that I have cognised oft he world. Wh atever I might know wouldremain blind knowledge, did not thislight fall upon it. I might search theworld through and through with myperception ; st ill the world would not bethat which in me it must become, unlessthat perception were awakened in me toa higher mode of being .

That whi ch I add to things throughthis awakening is not a new idea, is notan enrichment of the content of my

IN TRODUCTION IS

knowing; it is an uplifting of the kn owledge, of the cognit ion, t o a higher level,where everything is suffused with a newglory. So long as I do not raise my consciousness to this level, all knowledge continues to be for me, in the higher sense,valueless. The things are there withoutmy presence. They have their beingin themselves. What possible meaningcould there be in my linking with theirbeing, which they have outside and apartfrom me, another spiritual existence inaddit ion , which repeats the things overagain within me? If only a mere repetiti on of things were involved, it would besenseless to carry it out. But, really, amere repetition is only involved so long asI have not awakened, along with my ownself, the mental content of these thingsup on a higher level. When this occurs,then I have not merely repeated within


myself the being of things, but I havebrought it to a new birth on a higherlevel. With the awakening of my self,there is accomplished a spiritua l re-birthof the things of the world.

What the things reveal in this re-birthdid not previously belong to them. There,without, stands the tree. I take it up into my consciousness. I throw my innerlight upon that which I have thus conceived. The tree becomes in me morethan it is outside. That in it which findsentrance through the gate of the senses istaken up into a conscious content. Anideal replica of the tree is within me, andthat has infinitely more to say about thetree than what the tree itself, outside , cantell me. Then, for the first t ime thereshines out from within me, towards thetree, what the t ree is. The tree is nowno longer the isolated being that it is out

INTRODUCTION 17

there in space. I t becomes a link III

the entire conscious world that lives inme. I t links its content with other ideasthat are in me. It becomes a member ofthe whole world of ideas that embracesthe vegetable kingdom; it takes itsplace, further, in the series of all thatlives.

Another example: I throw a stonein a horizontal direction away from me.I t moves in a curved line and after sometime falls to the ground. I see it insuccessive moments of time in differentplaces. Through observation and reflection I acquire the following: Duringits motion the stone is subject to differentinfluences. If it were subject only tothe influence of the impulse which I imparted to it, it would go on flying forever in a straight line, without alteringits velocity. But now the earth exerts an

2

I S MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE

influence upon it . It attracts the stonetowards itself. If, instead of throwing the stone, I had simply let it go, itwould have fallen vertically to earth;and its velocity in doing so would haveconstantly increased. From the mutualinteraction of these two influences arisesthat which I actually see.

Let us assume that I could not inthought separate the two influences, andfrom this orderly combination put together again in thought what I see: inthat case, the matter would end with theactual happening. It would be mentallya blind staring at what happened; a perception of the successive positions whichthe stone occupies. But in actual fact ,matters do not stop there. The wholeoccurrence takes place twice. Once outside , and then my eye sees it; then mymind causes the whole happening to

INTRODUCTION 19

repeat itself again, in a mental or conscious manner. My inner sense must bedirected upon the mental occurrence,which my eye does not see, and then itbecomes clear to that sense that I, bymy own inner power, awaken that occurrence as a mental one.

Again, another sentence of J. G.Fichte's may be quoted which bringsthis fact clearly before the mind."Thus the new sense is the sense forthe spirit; that for which there existsonly spirit and absolutely nothing else,and for which also the 'other,' the givenbeing, assumes the form of spirit andtransforms itself into spirit, for whichtherefore being in its own proper formhas actually disappeared. . .. Therehas been the faculty of seeing withthis sense ever since men have existed,and all that is great and excellent in the


world, which alone upholds humanity,originates in what has been seen by meansof this sense. It is, however, not thecase that this sense has been perceivedor known in its difference and its contrast with that other, ordinary sense.The impressions of the two senses meltedinto one another, life fell apart into thesetwo halves without a bond of union."

The bond of union is created by thefact that the inner sense grasps in itsspirituality the spiritual element whichit awakens in its intercourse with theouter world. That which we take upinto our consciousness from outsidethings thereby ceases to appear as amere meaningless repetition. It appearsas something new over against that whichonly external perception can give . Thesimple occurrence of throwing the stone,and my perception thereof, appear in a

INTRODUCTION

higher light when I make clear to myselfthe kind of task which my inner sensehas to perform in regard to the wholething. In order to fit together in thoughtthe two influences and their modes ofaction, an amount of mental content isneeded which I must already have acquired when I cognise the flying stone.I therefore apply a spiritual contentalready stored up within me to somethingthat confronts me in the external world.And this occurrence in the externalworld fits itself into the spiritual contentalready present. It reveals itself in itsown special individuality as an expression of this content.

Through the understanding of myinner sense, there is thus disclosed tome the nature of the relation thatobtains between the content of thissense and the things of the exte rn al


world. Fichte would say that withoutthe understanding of this sense, theworld falls apart for me into two halves :into things outs ide of me, and into pictures of these things within me. Thetwo halves become united when th einner self understands it self and consequently recognises clearly what sort ofillumination it throws upon things inthe cognitive process. And Fichte couldalso venture to say that this inner sensesees only Spirit. For it perceives howthe Spirit enlightens the sense-world bymaking it part and parcel of the spiritua lworld. The inner sense causes the outersense-world to arise within itself as aspiritua l being on a higher level. An exte rnal object is complet ely known whenthere is no part of it which has not thusundergone a spiritual re-birth. Thusevery external object fits it self into a

•'v /, )

INTRODUCTION 23

spiritual content, which, when it hasbeen grasped by the inner sense, sharesthe destiny of self-knowledge. The spiritual content, which belongs to an obj ectthrough its illumination from within,merges itself wholly, like the very self,into the world of ideas, leaving no remainder behind.

These developments contain nothingwhich is susceptible or even in need oflogical proof. They are nothing butthe results of inner experience. Whoever calls into question this content,shows only that he is lacking in thisinner experience. I t is impossible todispute with him; as little could onediscuss colour with a blind man.

It must not, however, be contendedthat this inner experience is made possible only through the special endowmentof a few chosen people. I t is a common


property . Every one can enter up onthe path to this experience who doesnot of his own will shut himself againstit. This closing up of oneself againstit, is, however, common enough. And indealing with objections raised in this direction, one always has the feeling thatit is not so much a matter of peoplebeing unable to attain this inner experience, as of their having hopelesslyblocked the entrance to it with all kindsof logical spiders' webs. It is almost asif some one looking through a telescopeand discovering a new planet shouldyet deny its existence because his calculations have shown that there can be noplanet in that position.

But with all this there is st ill in mostpeople the clearly marked feeling thatall that really lies in the being of thingscannot be completely given in what the

IN TROD UCTION

outer senses and the analysing understanding can cognise. They then believe that the remainder so left over mustbe just as much in the external world asare the things of our perceptions themselves. They think that there must besomething which remains unknown tocognition. What they ought to attainby again perceiving with the inner sense,on a higher plane, the very object whichthey have already cognised and graspedwith the understanding,-this they transfer as something inaccessible and unknowninto the external world. Then they talkof the limits of knowledge which preventour reaching the "thing-in-itself." Theytalk of the unknown " being " of things.That this very " being " of things shinesout when the inner sense lets it s lightfall upon the things, is what they willnot recognise. The famous " Tgnora-


bimus " speech of the scientist, Du Boi sReymond, in the year 1876, furnisheda particularly blatant example of thiserror. vVe are supposed to be able toget in every direction only so far as tobe able to see in all natural processesthe manifestations of "matter." Wh at"matter" itself is, we are supposed tobe unable to know. Du Bois-Reymondcontends that we shall never succeed inpenetrating to wherever it is that" matter" leads its ghostly life in space. Thereason why we cannot get there lies,however, in the fact that th ere is nothingwhatsoever to be looked for there. Wh oever speaks like Du Bois-Reymond musthave a feeling that the kn owledge ofNature yields results which point to asomething further and other which Nature-knowledge itself cannot give. Buthe refuses to follow the road ,- th e road

1. I -, .<

INTRODUCT ION

of inner experience, which leads to thisother. Therefore he stands at a complete loss before the question of Il matter" as before a dark riddle. In him whotreads the path of inner experience, objects attain to a new birth; and that inthem which remains unknown to outerexperience then shines forth.

In such wise the inner being of manobtains light not only as regards itselfbut also as regards external things. Fromthis point of view an endless perspective opens out before man's knowledge. Within him shines a light whoseillumination is not restricted to thatwhich is within him. It is a sun whichlights up all reality at once. Somethingmakes its appearance in us which linksus with the whole world . No longer arewe simply isolated , chance human beings,no longer this or that individual. The


entire world reveals it self in us. It unveils to us its own coherence ; and itunveils to us how we ourselves as individuals are bound up with it. Fromout of self-knowledge is born knowledgeof the world. And our own limitedindividuality merges itself spiritually intothe great interconnected world-whole,because in us something has come tolife that reaches out beyond this individuality, that embraces along withit everything of which this individualityforms a part.

Thinking which does not block up itsown road to inner experience with logicalpreconceptions always comes, in thelong run, to a recognition of the ent it ythat rules in us and connects us with th eentire world, because through this entitywe overcome the opposition of "inner "and "outer" in regard to man . Paul

INTROD UCT ION

Asmus, the keen-sighted philosopher, whodied young, expressed himself as followsabout this position (cp. his book Das Ichund 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 areone and all qualities which we understand; one thing, however, hovers before us as something totally different,that we do not understand, that is sodifferent from ourselves that we cannotpenetrate into it without losing ourselves;from the mere surface of which thoughtstarts back afraid. This one thing isthe unknown bearer of all these qualities;the thing-in-itself, which constitutes theinmost self of the object . Thus Hegelrightly says that the entire content ofour percept ion is related as mere accident to this obscure subject, while we,


without penetrating into it s depths,merely at tach determinations to whatit is in itself,- which ultimately, sincewe do not know the thing itself, remainmerely subjective and have no obj ectivevalue. Conceptual thought, on the otherhand, has no such unknowable subject,whose determinations might be mereaccidents , but the obj ective subject fallswithin the concept. If I cognise any thing, then it is present in its ent irefulness in my conception; I am at homein the inmost shrine of its being, notbecause it has no proper being-in-itselfof its own , but because it compels me t ore-think it s concept, in virtue of thatnecessity of the concept which hoversover us both and appears sub ject ivelyin me and object ively in the conceptitself. Through this re-thinking therereveals itse lf to us at the same time, as

INTROD UCTION 31

H egel says,- just as this is our own subject ive act iv ity-the true nature of theobject ." So can speak only a man who isable to illuminate the life of thoughtwith the light of inner experience.

In my Philosophy of Freedom (Berlin ,1894, Verlag Emil Felber) , starting fromother points of view, I have also pointedout the root-fact of the inner life (p . 46):"It is therefore unquestionable: in ourthinking we hold the world-process byone corner, where we must be present,if it is to come about at all. And thatis just the very thing we are here concerned with. That is just the reasonwhy things seem to confront me somysteriously: that I am so without anyshare in their coming into existence. Isimply find them there; in thinking,however , I know how it is done. Henceone can find no more original start ing


point for a consideration of the worldprocess than that of thought."

For one who looks thus up on the innerlife of man, it is also obvious what is themeaning of human cognition within thewhole world-process. It is not a mereempty accompaniment to the rest of theworld happenings. I t would be such ifit represented merely an ideal repetiti onof what is outwardly present. Butin cognition something is accomplishedwhich accomplishes itself nowhere inthe outer world: the world-process set sbefore itself its own spiritual being. T heworld-process would be to all eternitya mere half-thing, if it did not at tain tothis confrontation. Therewithal man'sinner experience finds its place in theobjective world-process ; and without itthat process would be incomplet e.

It is 'apparent that only the life which

[ . r.. f/I er sot

INTROD UCTION 33

is ruled by the inner sense, man's highestspiritual life in its most proper sense,-itis this life only which can thus raiseman above himself. For only in this lifedoes the being of things unveil itselfbefore itself. The matter lies quitedifferently in regard to the lower perceptive power. For instance, the eyewhich meditates the seeing of an objectis the theatre of a process which, in contrast to the inner life, is exactly like anyother external process. My organs aremembers of the spacial world like otherthings, and their perceptions are processes in time like any others. Further,their being only appears when they aresunk into the inner life. I thus live adouble life; the life of an object amongother objects, which lives within its,own embodiment and perceives throughits organs what lies outside this embodi

3


ment; and above this life a higher life,th at knows no such inside and outside,that extends, st retch ing and bridgingover both th e outside world and itself.I shall therefore be forced to say: at onetime I am an individual, a limited "self";at another time I am a general, universal"Self." This, too, Paul Asmus has expressed in excellent words (cp. his book:Die indogermanischen Religionen in denH aicptpunkten. ihrer Entwickelung, p. 29

of Vol. 1.):"The activity of merging ourselves

in something else, is what we call' thinking'; in thinking, the ego has fulfilledits concept, it has given itself up asa single thing; therefore, in thinkingdo we find ourselves in a sph ere which isalike for all, for the principle of separateness which is involved in th e relation ofour 'self' to that which is other than

INTRODUCTION 3S

it self has van ished in the activity ofthe self-cancelling of the single 'self, 'and there remains then only the='Selfhood' common to alL"

Spinoza has exactly the same thing inview when he describes, as the highestactivity of knowing, that which" advancesfrom an adequate conception of the realnature of some of the attributes of Godto an adequate knowledge of the natureof things." This advancing is no otherthan the illumination of things with thelight of inner experience. Spinoza describes in glowing colours the life in thisinner experience: (( The highest virtue ofthe soul is to know God, or to obtain insight into things in the third-the highest- mode of knowing. This virtue is thegreater, the more the soul knows thingsby this method of knowing ; thus he whocan gras p things in this mode of knowing


attains the highest human perfectionand consequently becomes filled with thehighest joy, accompanied, moreover, bythe conceptions of himself and of virtue.Thus there arises from this mode ofknowing the highest peace of soul thatis possible."

He who knows things in this way,transforms himself within himself; forhis single separated "self" becomesat such moments absorbed by the universal "Self"; all beings appear not toa single limited individual in subordinated importance, they appear to "themselves." On this level there remains nodifference between Plato and me; whatsepara ted us belongs to a lower level ofcogni tion. vVe are separated only asindividuals ; the individual which workswithin us is one and the same. Butabout this fact it is impossible to argue

INTROD UCTION 37

with one who has no experience of it.He will everlastingly emphasise: Platoand you are two. That this duality ,that all multiplicity, is reborn as unityin the outbursting life of the highestlevel of knowledge: that cannot beproved, that must be experienced. Paradoxical as it may sound, it is the truth :the idea which Plato conceived and thelike idea which I conceive are not twoideas. It is one and the same idea. Andthere are not two ideas: one in . Plato'shead and one in mine ; but in the highersense Plato's head and mine interpenetrate each other; all heads interpenetrat ewhich grasp one and the same idea; andthis idea is only once there as a singleidea . It is there; and the heads all goto one and the same place in order tohave this idea in them.

T he t ransformation that is brought


about in the whole being of man when helearns to see things thus , is ind icat ed inbeautiful words by the Hindu poem, theBhagavad-Gita, about which Wilhelmvon Humboldt said that he was thankful to the fate which had allowed him tolive long enough to become acquaint edwith this work. In this poem, the innerligh t declares: "An eternal ray from myself, having attained a distinct existencein the world of personal life, drawsaround itself the five senses and the individual soul, which belong to nature.When the spirit, shining from above, embodies itself in space and time, or whenit quits embodiment, it seizes up onthings and carries them away with it,as the zephyr seizes the perfumes of theflowers and bears them away with it .The inner light rules the ear , touch ,t aste and smell, as also the emot ions :

t. r· /'.., J

INTRODUCTION 39

it knits together the link between it selfand the obj ects of the senses. Theignorant know not when the inner lightshines forth or is extinguished, nor whenit is married to objects; only he whopartakes of the inner light can knowthereof. "

So strongly does the Bhagavad-Git ainsist upon the transformation of theman, that it says of the wise man thathe can no longer err, no longer sin . If,apparently, he errs or sins, then hemust illuminate his thoughts or his act ions with a light wherein that no longerappears as error or as sin which to theordinary consciousness appears as such."He who has raised himself and whoseknowledge is of the purest kind, he k illsnot, nor does he stain himself, eventhough he should have slain another."This points only to the same basic mood


of the soul flowing from the highestknowledge, of which Spinoza, afte r havingdescribed it in his Ethics , breaks out intothe passionate words: "Here is concluded that which I aimed to bring forward in regard to the power of the soulover its affect ions or in regard to the freedom of the soul. Hence it is clear howvery greatly the wise man is superior tothe ignorant, and how much more powerfill than he who is ruled only by his lusts.For the ignorant is not merely drivenhither and thither by external causes inmany ways and never attains to thetrue peace of soul, but he also lives inignorance of himself, of God and oft hings, and when his suffering ceases,his exist ence ceases also; whil e on theother hand , the wise man, as such , feelshardly any dis turbance in his spirit andever enjoys the t rue peace of the soul.

INTRODUCTION 4 1

Even if the road which I have outlinedas leading thereto appears very difficult,still it can be found. And well may itbe difficult, because it is so seldom found.For how could it be possible, if salvationlay close at hand and could be foundwithout great trouble, that it should beneglected by almost all? Yet all thatis noble is as difficult as it is rare."

Goethe has indicated in monumentalform the point of view of the highestknowledge in the words: "If I know myrelation to myself and to the outerworld, I call it truth. And thus everyone can have his own truth, and yet itis always one and the same." Eachhas his own truth: because each is anindividual, separate being, beside andalong with others. These other beingsact upon him through his organs. Fromthe individual standpoint at which he

42 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSA CE

is placed , and according to the constitution of his power of percept ion, hebuilds up his own tru th for h imself inintercourse with the things arou nd him.He acqu ires his relati on to things . If,then, he enters into self-knowledge, ifhe learns to know his relati on to himself,then his special separate truth is mergedin the universal Truth; and this universal Truth is in a ll the same .

The underst anding of the raising ofthe individual , of the single self, into theUniversal Self in the personality , is regarded by deeper natures as the secretwhich reveals itself in the inmost heartof man as the root -mystery of life. AndGoethe has found an apt expression forthis : "And so long as thou ha st not that,this : Die and Become ! Then thou artbut a melancholy guest upon this darkearth ."

INTRODUCTION 43

Not a mere repetition in thought , buta real part of the world-process, is thatwhich goes on in man's inner life. Theworld would not be what it is if the factorbelonging thereto in the human soul didnot play its part. And if one calls thehighest which is attainable by man theDivine, then one must say that thisDivine is not present as something ext ernal, to be repeated pictorially in thehuman mind, but that this Divine isawakened in man. Angelus Silesius hasfound the right words for this: "Iknow that without me God can live noinstant ; if I become nothing, He mustof necessity give up the ghost." " Without me God may make no single smallestworm: if I do not sustain it with Him,then it must st raightway perish. " Onlyhe can make such an assertion whopresupposes that in man something

44 MYSTICS OF T HE RE NAISSANCE

comes t o ligh t , without which ex ternal

being cannot exist. If everything pertaining to the " worm" were there present

without man, then one could not possibly

say that it must peri sh if man did not

sustain it.T he innermost kernel of the world

comes to life as spiritual content in self

knowledge . The expe rience of self-know

ledge means for man working and weavingwithin the kernel of the world. H e who

is permeated with self-knowledge nat ur

a lly carries out his own action in the

light of self-knowledge. Human actionis-in general-determined by motives.

R obert H amerling , the poet-philosopher,has r ightl y said (Atomistik des Willens,p . 2 13) :

"A man can indeed do what he wills- but he cannot will whatever hepleases, because his will is determined

I NTROD UCTION 4S

by motives. He cannot will whatever he pleases? Look again at thesewords more closely. Is there anysensible meaning in them? Freedom ofthe will ought then to consist in beingable to will something without reason,without motive. But what does willingmean other than the 'having a reason'for preferring to do or endeavour toattain this, rather than that? To willsomething without reason, without motive, would mean to will something 'without willing it.' The concept of motiveis inseparably bound up with that of willing. Without a definite motive the willis an empty potentiality: only througha motive does it become active and real.It is therefore quite correct that man'swill is in so far not free as its directionis always determined by the strongestmotive."


For all action that is not accomplishedin the light of self-knowledge, themotive, the reason for act ion, mustneeds be felt as a constraint. But thematter is otherwise when the reason ormotive is taken up into self-knowledge.Then this reason becomes a part of theself. The willing is no longer determined ; it determines itself. The lawabidingness, the motives of willing, nowno longer rule over the one who wills,but are one and the same with thiswilling. To illuminate the laws of one'saction with the light of self-observationmeans to overcome all constraint ofmotive. By so doing, will transfers itselfinto the realm of freedom.

I t is not a ll human action which bearsthe marks of freedom. Only such actionis free action which in its every part islighted up with the glow of self-observa-

INTRODUCTION 47

tion. And because self-observat ion raisesthe individual self up to the Universal Self,therefore free action is that which flowsfrom the Universal Self. The old controversy whether man's will is free or subject to a universal law , to an unalterablenecessity, is a problem wrongly stated.All action is bound which is done bya man as an individual; all action freewhich is accomplished after his spiritualre-birth. Man,therefore, is not, in general,either free or bound. He is both the one'and the other. He is bound before hisre-birth; and he can become free throughthis re-birth, The individual upwarddevelopment of man consists in thetransformation of unfree willing intowill possessing the character of freedom.The man who has realised the law-abidingness of his action as his own, hasovercome the constraint of this law-


abidingness and therewith of un-freedorn.Freedom is not from the outset a factof human existence, but a goal thereof.

With the attainment of free action,man resolves a contradiction betweenthe world and himself. His own deedsbecome deeds of universal being. Hefeels himself in the fullest harmony withthis universal being. He feels everydiscord between himself and another asthe outcome of a not yet fully awakenedself. But such is the fate of the self,that only in its separation from thewhole can it find its contact with thiswhole. Man would not be man if hewere not shut off as an individual selffrom everything else; but also he is notman in the highest sense if he does not,as such a shut-off and isolated self, widenhimself out again into the UniversalSelf. It belongs through and through to

INTRODUCT ION

the nature of man that it should overcome an inherent contradiction which haslain therein from the beginning.

Anyone who regards spirit as, in themain, logical understanding, may wellfeel his blood run cold at the idea thatobjects should be supposed to undergotheir re-birth in spirit. He will comparethe fresh , living flower, outside there inits fulness of colour, with the cold, faded,schemat ic thought of the flower. He willfeel himself particularly ill at ease withthe conception that the man who drawshis motives from the solitude of his ownself-consciousness is more free than theoriginal, naive personality which actsfrom its immediate impulses, from thefuln ess of its own nature. To one whosees only one-sided logic, another manwho sinks himself into his own innerbeing will appear like a mere walking

4


scheme of concepts, like a mere ghostin contrast with the man who remains inhis own natural individuality.

Such objections to the re-birth of thingsin spirit are especially to be heard fromthose whose power of perception fails inthe presence of things with a purelyspiritual content; although they are wellprovided with healthy organs of senseperception and with impulses and passionsfull of life. As soon as they are calledupon to perceive the purely spiritual, thepower to do so fails them ; they can dealonly with mere conceptual husks, wheneven they are not limited to emptywords. They remain, therefore , in whatconcerns spiritual content, men of "dry,abstract understanding." But th e manwho in things purely spiritual possessesa gift of perception like that in thi ngsof the senses, finds life assuredly not th e

fl,t le

INTRODUCTION SI

poorer when he has enriched it with itsspiritual content. If I look out upon aflower, why should its rich colours loseaught whatever of their freshness, becausenot only does my eye see the colours, butmy inner sense also perceives the spiritualbeing of the flower? 'Why should thelife of my personality become poorer,because I do not follow my passions andimpulses in spiritual blindness, but illuminate them throughout with the lightof higher knowledge? Not poorer, butfuller, richer, is that life which is givenback again in the spirit.

MEISTER ECKHART

T HE world of Meister Eckhart 's concept ions is aglow through and throughwith the feeling that things become reborn as higher entities in the spirit ofman. Like the greatest Christian theologian of the Middle Ages, St. ThomasAquinas, who lived from 1225 till 1274,

Meister Eckhart belonged to the Dominican Order. Eckhart was an unqualifiedadmirer of St. Thomas; and this willseem the more intelligible when we fixour gaze upon Eckhart's whole mannerof conceiving th ings. He believed himself to be as completely in harmony withthe teachings of the Christ ian Church ashe assumed a like agreement on the part

52

MEISTER ECKHART 53

of St . Thomas. Eckhart had neitherthe desire to take aught away from thecontent of Christianity, nor the wish toadd anything to it; but he desired tobring forward this content anew in hisown way. It forms no part of thespiritual needs of a personality such ashe was to set up new truths of this orthe other kind in the place of old ones.Such a personality has grown completelyintertwined with the content which ithas received from tradition; but it cravesto give to this content a new form , a newlife.

Eckhart desired, without doubt, toremain an orthodox Christian. TheChristian truths were his own; only hedesired to regard these truths in anotherway from that, for instance, in whichSt. Thomas Aquinas had done. St.Thomas accepted two sources of know-


ledge : Revelation, in matters of faith ,and Reason, in those of research. Reasonrecognises the laws of things, that is, thespiritual in nature. Reason can rai se itself above nature and grasp in the spir itfrom one side the Divine Being underlying nature. But it does not attain inthis way to merging itself in the full being of God . A still higher truth-contentmust come to meet it . That is givenin the Holy Scripture, which revealswhat man cannot at tain to through himself. The truth-content of the Scripturemust be accepted by man ; Reason candefend it , Reason can seek to understandit as well as possible through its powersof knowing ; but never can Reason engender tha t truth from with in the spiritof man. Not what the spirit perceivesis the highest truth, but what has cometo this spirit from without.

t'

MEISTER ECKHART SS

St. Augustine declares himself unableto find within himself the source for thatwhich he should believe. He says: "Iwould not believe in the Gospel, did notthe authority of the Catholic Churchmove me thereto." That is in the samespirit as the Evangelist, who points tothe external te stimony: "That...which we have heard, which we haveseen with our eyes, which we have lookedupon, and our hands have handled, ofthe Word of Life; . . . that which wehave seen and heard declare we unto you,that ye also may have fellowship withus." But Meister Eckhart would ratherimpress upon man the words of Christ:"It is expedient for you that I go away:for if I go not away, the Comforter willnot come un to you"; and he explainsthese words by saying: " Just as if hehad said: Ye have set too much joy

S6 MYSTICS OF TH E RENAISSANCE

upon my present appearance, thereforethe full joy of the Holy Ghost cannotcome to you."

Eckhart thinks that he is speakingof no God other than that God of whomAugustine, and the Evangelist , andThomas, speak, and yet this testimonyas to God is not his testimony, theirwitness is not his. "Some people wantto see God with the same eyes they seea cow withal, and want to love God asthey would love a cow. So they loveGod for the sake of outer riches andinner comfort; but such folk do notrightly love God.... Simple folkfancy they should behold God as thoughH e stood there and they here. But itis not so. God and I are one in the actof knowing (-im Erkennen), " What underlies such expressions in Eckhart'smouth is nothing else th an the experience

. t

MEISTER ECKHART 57

of the inner sense; and this experienceshows him things in a higher light. Hetherefore believes himself to have noneed of an external light in order to attain to the highest insight: "A Mastersays: God became man, whereby thewhole human race is uplifted and madeworthy. Thereof may we be glad thatChrist our brother of His own strengthrose above all the choirs of angels andsitteth at the right hand of the Father.That Master spake well; but, in truth,I would give little for it. What would ithelp me, had I a brother who was a richman, and I therewithal a poor man?What would it help me , had I a brotherwho was a wise man, and I were afool? . .. The Heavenly Father begetteth His Only-Begotten Son in Himself and in me. Wherefore in H imselfand in me? I am one with Him ; and


H e has no power to shut me out. In theself-same work, the Holy Ghost receivesits being and proceeds from me, as fromGod. Wherefore? I am in God, and ifthe Holy Ghost takes not it s being fromme, neither does it take it from God . Inno wise am I shut out."

When Eckhart recalls the saying ofSt. Paul: "Put ye on J esus Christ ," hemean s to imply in this saying the meaning: Sink yourselves into yourselves , divedown into self-contemplation: and fromout the depths of your being, God willshine forth to meet you; He illuminesall things for you; you have found Himwithin you; you have become unitedwith God's Being. "God became man,that I might become God."

In his booklet upon Loneliness, Eckhartexpresses himself as follows up on the relation of the outer percept ion to the

.J -I L Y ICrr "( f

MEISTER ECKHART 59

inner: "Here thou must know that theMasters say that in every man thereare two kinds of man: the one is calledthe outer man, and yet he acts throughthe power of the soul. The other man iscalled the inner man, that is, that whichis within the man. Now thou mustknow that every man who loveth Godmaketh no more use of the powers ofthe soul in the outer man than so far asthe five senses absolutely require; andthat which is within turns not itself tothe five senses, save in so far as it is theguide and conductor of the five senses, andshepherds them, so that they follow notafter their craving to bestiality." Onewho speaks in such wise of the inner mancan no longer d irect his gaze up on a Beingof things lying outside himself; for he seesclearly that from no kind or species of theouter world can this Being come to him .

60 MYSTICS OF THE R ENAISSANCE

An objector might urge : 'What can itmatter to the things of the outer world,what you add to them out of your ownmind? Do but rely upon your ownsenses. They alone give you information of the outer world. Do not adult erate, by a mental addition, what yoursenses give you in purity, without ad mixture, as the image of the outer world.Your eye tells you what colour is; whatyour mind knows about colour, of thatthere is nothing whatever in colouritself. To this, from Meister Eckhart'sstandpoint, the answer would have tobe: The senses are a physical apparatus;therefore what they have to tell us aboutobjects can concern only that which isphysical in the objects. And t his physical factor in the objects communicatesitself to me in such wise that in myselfa physical process is set going .

MEISTER ECKHART 61

Colour, as a physical process of theouter world, sets up a physical processin my eye and brain. Thereby I perceive colour. But in this manner I canperceive of colour only so much as isphysical, sensuous. Sense -perception cutsout everything non-sensuous from objects. Objects are thus by sense-perception stripped of everything about themwhich is non-sensuous. If I then advance to the spiritual, the ideal content,I in fact only reinstate in the objectswhat sense-perception has shut out therefrom. Thus sense-perception does notexhibit to me the deepest Being of objects, it rather separates me from thatbeing. But the spiritual, the ideal conception, seizing upon them again, unitesme with that being. I t shows me thatobjects are inwardly of exactly the samespiritual (geis tigen) nature as I myself .

62 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSA CE

The barrier between myself and theouter world falls through this spi ritualconception of things. I am sepa ra tedfrom the external world in so far as I ama thing of the senses among other thingsof the senses. Colour and my eye aretwo different entities. My brain and aplant are two different things. But theideal content of the plant and of colourbelong together with the ideal contentof my brain and eye alike to a singleideal ent ity .

This way of looking at things must notbe confused with the very widespreadanthropomorphising concept ion of theworld , which imagines that it grasps theobj ects of the outer world by ascribingt o them quali ties of a physical nature ,which are supposed to resemble thequalit ies of the human soul. This viewasserts : When we meet another human

MEISTER ECKHART 63

being, we perceive in him only sensuouscharacteristics. I cannot see into myfellow-man's inner life. I infer fromwhat I see and hear of him, his innerlife, his soul. Thus the soul is neveranything which I can directly perceive;I perceive a soul only within myself.My thoughts, my imaginations, my feelings, no man sees. Now just as I havesuch an inner life, alongside of the lifewhich can be outwardly perceived, so,too, all other beings must have such aninner life.

Thus concludes one who occupies thestandpoint. of the anthropomorphisingconception of the world. What I perceive externally in the plant, must equallybe the outer side of something inward, of asoul, which I must add in my imaginationto what I actually perceive. And sincefor me there exists but one single inner


world, namely, my own, therefore I canconceive of the inner world of otherbeings only as resembling my own innerworld. Along this line of argument onecomes to a sort of universal ensouling ofall nature (Pan-psychism).

This view depends, however, on afa ilure to recognise what the awakenedinner sense really gives us. The spiritual(geistig) content of an external object,which reveals itself to me in my innerself, is not anything added in or bythought to the outer perception. It isjust as little this as is the spirit of anotherman. I perceive this spiritual contentthrough the inner sense just in the sameway as I perceive its physical contentthrough the external senses. And whatI call my inn er life in the above sense(i .e., thoughts, feelings, etc.), is not atall in the higher sense, my spirit (Geist) .

MEISTER ECKHART 6S

This so-called inner life is only th e outcome of purely sensuous processes, andbelongs to me only as a purely individualpersonality, which is nothing more thanthe result of its physical organisation.If I transfer this inner life to outer things,I am, as a matter of fact, thinking in theair.

My personal soul-life, my thoughts,memories, and feelings, are in me, because I am a nature-being organised insuch and such a way, with a perfectlydefinite sense-apparatus, with a perfectlydefinite nervous system. I have no rightto transfer this my human soul to otherthings. I should only be ent it led to doso if I happened to find anywhere asimilarly organised nervous system. Butmy individual soul is not the highestspiritual element in me. This highestspiritual element must first be awakened

5


through the inn er sense; and this awakened spiritual element in me is also oneand the same with the spiritual elementin all things. The plant appears immediately in its own proper spiritualityto this spiritual element,-I have no needto endow it with a spirituality like untomy own.

All talk about the unknown" thing-init self " loses any kind of meaning withthis conception of the world; for it isjust that very "thing-in-itself" whichreveals itself to the inner sense. Allsuch talk originates simply in the factthat those who talk thus are unable torecognise in the spiritual contents ofthe ir own inner being the "things-inthemselves ." They think that they knowin their own inner selves mere sha dowsand schemes without being,-"n1ereconcepts and ideas" of things. But as

MEISTER ECKHART 6]

they still have a sort of premonition ofthe " thing-in-itself," they therefore believe that this "thing-in-itself" is concealing it self, and that there are limits sett o man's power of knowing. One cannotprove to such as are entangled in thisbelief, that they must grasp the "thingin-i tself" in their own inner being, foreven if one were to put it before them,they would st ill never recognise or admitthis "thing-in-itself." But it is just thisrecognition with which we are concerned.

All that Meist er Eckhart says issaturated with this recognition. "Ofthis take a comparison: A door opensand shuts upon a hinge. If, now, Icompare the outer plank of this door tothe oute r man, I must then comp are thehinge to the inner man . .. Now, when thedoor opens and shuts, the outer plankmoves to and fro , while yet the hinge


remains constantly immovable and is inno way changed th ereby. In like mannerit is here also." As an individual sensebeing, I can investigate things in all directions-the door opens and shuts,-if I donot spiritually give birth within me to theperceptions of the senses, then do I knownothing of their nature-the hinge doesnot move!

The illumination brought about throughthe inner sense is, according to Eckhart 's view, the entrance of God intothe soul. The light of knowledge whichflames up through this entrance, he callsthe " lit t le spark of the soul." Thepoint in man's inner being at which this"spark" flames up is "so pure, so loft y,and so noble in itself, that no creaturecan be therein, but only God alone dwellstherein with His purely Divine Nature."'Whosoever has kindled this " spa rk" in

MEISTER ECKHART 69

himself, no longer sees only as sees theordinary man with his outer senses, andwith his logical understanding whichorders and classifies the impressions ofthe senses, but he sees how things are inthemselves. The outer senses and theclassifying understanding separate theindividual man from other things; theymake of him an individual in space andtime, who also perceives the other thingsin space and time. The man illuminatedby the "spark" ceases to be a singleseparat ed being. He annihilates his separateness. All that brings about thedifference between himself and thingsceases to be. That he, as a single being,is that which perceives, no longer comesinto consideration. Things and he himself are no longer separated. T hings,and with them, God , see themselves inhim. "This spark is in very deed God,


In that it is a single oneness and bearswithin it the imagery of all creatures,image without image, and image upon. "Image.

Eckhart proclaims in the most magnificent words the extinction of the isolated being: "It is therefore to beknown, that according to things it is oneand the same to know God and to beknown by God. Therein do we knowGod and see, that He makes us to seeand to know. And as the air, whichenlighteneth, is nothing other than whatit enlightens ; for the air giveth light,because it is enlightened; even so do weknow that we are known, and that H emaketh us to know Himself."

On this foundation Meister Eckhartbuilds up his relation to God. It is apurely spiritual one, and cannot bemodelled according to any image bor-

MEISTER ECKHART 71

rowed from human individual experience.Not as one separated individual lovesanother can God love his creation : notas an architect builds a house can Godhave created it. All such thoughts vanish before the inner vision. I t belongsto God's very being that He should lovethe world. A God who could love ornot love at pleasure, is imagined according to the likeness of the individualman. "I speak in good truth and ineternal truth and in everlasting truth,that God must needs ever pour Himselfforth in every man who has reached downto his true root to the utmost of possibility, so wholly and completely that inHis life and in His being, in His natureand in His Godhead, He keeps nothingback ; He must ever pour a ll forth infruitful wise. " And the inner illumination is something that the soul must

72 :VIYSTI CS OF THE RENAISSANCE

necessarily find when it sinks itself deepinto the basis of its being.

From this it is already obvious thatGod's communication to humanity cannot be conceived after the fashion ofthe revelation of one human being toanother. This communication may alsobe cut off, for one man can shut himselfoff from another; but God must, by virtueof His very nature, reveal Himself. "Itis a sure and certain truth, that it is anecessity for God to seek us, exactly asif His very Godhead depended upon it.God can as little dispense with us as wewith Him. Even though we turn awayfrom God, yet God can never turn awayfrom us." Consequently, man 's relationto God cannot be conceived of as thoughsomething image-like, something takenfrom the individual human being , werecontained therein.

MEISTER ECKHART 73

Eckhart is thus conscious that it belongs to the perfectness of the Root-Beingof the world to find Itself in the humansoul. This Root-Being indeed would beimperfect, incomplete, if it lacked thatpart of its unfoldment which comes tolight in the soul. What happens in manbelongs to the Root-Being; and if it didnot happen, then the Root-Being wouldbe but a part of Itself. In this sense,man can feel himself as a necess ary partof the Being of the universe. This Eckhart expresses by describing his feelingstowards God as follows; " I thank notGod that H e loveth me, for He may notdo otherwise; whether He will it or no,His nature yet compelleth Him. . . .T herefore will I not pray to God t o giveme any thing , nor will I praise Him forthat which He hath given me. . . ."

But this rela tionship of the soul t o the

i4 J\l YSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE

Root-Being must not be conceived of asif the soul in its individual nature weredeclared to be identical with this RootBeing. The soul which is entangled inthe sense-world, and so in the finite, hasas such not yet got within itself the content of the Root-Being. The soul mu stfirst develop that content within itself.It must annihilate itself as an isolatedbeing; and Meister Eckhart most ap tlycharacterises this annihilation as Entwerdung (un-becoming or involution) ."When I come to the root of the God head, none ask me whence I come andwhere I have been, and none doth missme, for here there is an E ntioerdung:"

Again, the following phrase speaks veryclearly about this relat ion: " I take a cupof water and lay therein a mirror and setit under the disc of the sun . The suncasts out its shining light on the mirror

lVIE ISTER ECKHART 7S

and yet doth not pass away. The reflecting of the mirror in the sun is sun in thesun, and yet the mirror remains what itIS. SO is it about God. God is in thesoul with His very nature and being andGodhead, and yet He is not the soul.The reflecting of the soul in God, is Godin God, and yet the soul is still thatwhich it is."

The soul which gives itself up t o theinner illumination knows in itself notonly what this same soul was beforeits illumination; but it also knowsthat which this soul only becamethrough this illumination. "We mustbe united with God in being; wcmust be united with God uniquely;we must be united with God wholly .How shall we be united with Godin being? That must happen in thebeholding and not in the vVesung.


His being may not become our being,but it shall be our life." Not an alreadyexistent life-a Wesung-is to be knownin the logical sense; but the higher knowing-the beholding-shall itself becomelife; the spiritual, the ideal must be sofelt by the beholder, as ordinary dailylife is felt by individual human nature.

From such starting points, MeisterEckhart also builds up a pure conceptionof Freedom. In its ordinary life thesoul is not free ; for it is interwoven withthe realm of lower causes, and accomplishes that to which it is impelled bythese lower causes. But by "beholding"or "vision" it is raised out of the domainof these caus es, and acts no longer as aseparated individual soul. The root ofbeing is laid bare in this soul, and thatcan be moved to act ion by naugh t saveby it self. "God does not compel the

MEISTER ECKHART 77

will; rather He sets the will free, so thatit wills not otherwise than what GodHimself wills; and the spirit desires notto will other than what God wills: andthat is not its un-freedom: it is its trueand real freedom. For freedom is thatwe are not bound, but free and pure andunmixed, as we were in our first outpouring, as we were set free in the HolyGhost."

It may be said of the illuminatedman that he is himself the being whichfrom within itself determines what isgood and what is evil. He can do naughtabsolutely, but accomplish the good . Forhe does not serve the good, but the goodrealises and lives itself out in him. "Therighteous man serveth neither God, northe creature; for he is free, and the nearerhe is to righteousness, the more he isFreedom's very self." 'What then, for


Meister Eckhart, can evil be? I t canbe only action under the influence of thelower mode of regarding things ;-theacting of a soul which has not passedthrough the state of E nttuerdung (unbecoming). Such a soul is selfish in thesense that it wills only itself. It couldnot bring its willing outwardly intoaccord with moral ideals. The soulhaving vision cannot in this sense beselfish. Even if it willed itself, it ye tcould will only the lordship of theideal; for it has made itself into thisvery ideal. I t can no longer will theends of the lower nature, for it has nolonger aught in common with this lower'nature, To act in conformity with";;oral

,.ideals implies for the soul which hasvision, no compulsion, no depriva t ion.

"The man who standeth in God's willand 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 thatare contrary to God. And it is impossible for him to leave undone anythingthat God will have done. Even aswalking is impossible to one whose legsare bound , just so it would be impossiblefor a man who standeth in God 's will todo aught unvirtuous."

Eckhart moreover expressly guardshimself against the idea that, with thisview of his, free license is given for anything and everything that the individualmay will. The man possessing visionis indeed to be recognised by the veryfact that as a separated individual heno longer wills anything. •• Certain mensay: If I have God and God 's freedom,then I may just do whatever I please.Such und erstand wrongly this saying. Solong as thou canst do aught that is con-


trary to God and His commandment, solong thou hast not God's love; eventhough thou mayest well deceive theworld, as if thou hadst." Eckhart isconvinced that to the soul which divesdown into its own root, the most perfect morality will shine forth from thatroot to meet it; that there all logical conception, and all acting in the ordinarysense, ceases, and an entirely new ordering of human life makes its appearance.

"For all that the understanding cangrasp, and all that desiring can desire,is verily not God. Where understandingand desiring end, there it is dark, thereshineth God. There that power unfoldsin the soul which is wider than th e wideheavens. . .. The bliss of the righte ousand the bli ss of God is one bli ss ; for thereis the righteous full of bliss, where Godis full of bliss."

(

THE FRIENDSHIP OF GOD

I NJohannes Tauler (130o-1361 ) ,HeinrichSuso (1295-1365) , and Johannes Ruysbroeck (1293- 1381) , one makes acquaintance with men whose life and workexhibit in a very str iking manner those"motions of the soul" to which such aspirit ua l path as that of Meister Eckhart is calculated to give rise in naturesof depth and power. While Eckhartseems like a man who, in the blissfulexperiencing of spiritual re-birth, speaksof the nature of Knowledge as of apicture which he has succeeded in painting; these others , followers of h is, appearrather like pilgrims, to whom their innerre-birth has shown a new road which they

6 8 1


fain would tread, but whose goal seemsto va nish before them into the illimitabledistance. Eckhart dwells more upon theglories of his picture; they upon thedifficult ies of the new path.

To understand the difference betweenpersonalities like Eckhart and Tauler,one must see quite clearly how a manstands towards his higher cognitions.Man is interwoven with the sense-worldand the laws of nature by which thatsense-world is ruled. He is himself aproduct of that world. He lives becau seits forces and its materials are at workin him; nay, he perceives this senseworld and judges of it by laws, accordingto which both he himself and that worldare alike built up. If he turns his eyesup on an object, not only does the object,present itself to him as a complex ofinte racting forces, rul ed by nature's laws,

TH E FRIENDSHIP OF GOD 83

but the eye, with which he sees the objectis itself a body built up according to justsuch laws and of just such forces; and theseeing, too, takes place by similar lawsand forces. If we had reached the goalof natural science, we should be able tofollow out this play of the forces of natureaccording to natural laws right up intothe highest regions of thought-formation,- but in the very act of doing this, weraise ourselves above this play of forces.For do we not stand above and beyondall the "uniformities which make up thelaws of nature," when we over-see thewhole and recognise how we ourselvesfit into nature? We see with our eyesaccording to laws of nature. But weknow also the laws, according to whichwe see.

We can take our stand upon a highersummit and overlook at once both

84 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANC E

ourselves and the outer world in theirmutual interplay. Is there not herea something working in us, which ishigher than the sensuous-organic personality working with Nature's forcesand according to Nature's laws? Insuch activity does there still remain anywall of division between our inner selvesand the outer world? That which herejudges and gains for itself insight is nolonger our separated personality ; it israther the general world-being, whichhas torn down the barrier between theinner and outer worlds and now embracesboth alike. As true as it is that , judgedby the outer appearance, I still remainthe same separated individual when Ihave thus torn down this barrier, so trueis it also that, judged according to essential being, I am no longer this separated unit. Henceforth there lives in

THE FRIENDSHIP OF GOD 85

me the feeling that there speaks in mysoul the All-Being, which embraces bothmyself and the entire world.

This is what Tauler felt, when hesaid: H Man is just as if he were threemen-his animal man as he is accordingto the senses ; then his rational man andlastly, his highest, godlike man....The one is the outer, animal, sensuousman; the other is the inner, understandingman, with his understanding and reasoning powers ; the third man is spirit,(Gemiith-lit. emotional, feeling nature),the very highest part of the sou1." I Howfar this third man is above the first andsecond , Eckhart has expressed in thewords: "The eye through which I seeGod, that is the same eye with which Godsees me. My eye and God's eye, that

I cp. W. Preger: Geschichte der Deutschen Mystik, vol. iii,p. r6r.


is one eye and one knowing and onefeeling."

But in T auler another feeling is activeas well as this. He has fought his waythrough to a real vision of the spiritual,and does not constan tly confuse, asdo the false materialists and the falseidealists, the sensibly-natural with thespi ritual. If, with his disposition , Taulerhad become a scient ist, he would haveinsisted upon explaining all that isnatural , including the whole of man, boththe first and the second, purely up onnatural lines. H e would never havetransferred purely spiritual forces intonature itself. H e would never havetalked of a " purposefulness" in natureconceived of according to men 's notions.He knew that there, where we perceivewith our senses, no " creative ideas"are to be found. Far rather he was most


keenly conscious of the fact that man isa purely natural being. And as he felthimself to be, not a scientist, but a devotee of moral life, he therefore felt mostkeenly the contrast which reveals itselfbetween this natural being of man andthat vision of God which arises naturallyand within nature, but as spirituality .And just in that very contrast the meaning of life presented itself to his eyes.Man finds himself as a single being, acreature of nature. And no science canreveal to him anything else about thislife than that he is such a creature ofnature. As a creature of nature hecannot get outside of the sphere ofnatural creation. In it he must remain.And yet his inner life leads him outsideand beyond it. He must have confidence in that which no science of outernature can give him or show to him.


If he calls only this nature Being or"that which is," then he must be ableto reach out to the vision which recognises as the higher, Non-being , or"that which is not." Tauler seeks forno God who is present in the same senseas a natural force; he seeks no God whohas created the world in the sense ofhuman creation. In him lives the clearinsight that the conception of creat ioneven of the Fathers of the Church is onlyidealised human creating. It is clear tohim that God is not to be found asnature's working and her laws are found,by science. Tauler is well aware thatwe must not add in thought anything tonature as God . He knows that whoeverthinks God, in his sense, no longer thinksthought-content, as does one who hasgrasped nature in thought. Therefore,T auler 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 adifferent thing from the knower of nature,but he knows in a different way. Notone single letter can the knower of Godadd to the knowledge of nature; butthrough his whole knowing of naturethere shines a new light.

What root-feelings will take possessionof a man's soul who contemplates theworld from this point of view, will dependupon how he regards that experienceof the soul which brings about spiritualre-birth. Within this experience, manis wholly a natural being, when he considers himself in his interaction withthe rest of nature; and he is wholly aspiritual being when he considers theconditions into which this re-birth has


brought him. Thus we can say withequal truth, the inmost depth of thesou l is still natural; as also it is alreadydivine. T auler emphasised the form erin accordance with his own t endency ofthought. However far we may penetrateinto our souls, we still remain separatedindividual human beings, said he to himself. But yet in the very depths of thesoul of the individual being there gleamsforth the All-B eing.

T auler was dominated by the feeling:Thou canst not free thyself from separateness, nor purify thyself from it. Therefore the All-Being in its purity can nevermake its appearance within thee, it canonly shed its light into the depths of thysoul. Thus in its depths only a merereflection, a picture of the All-Beingcomes into existence. Thou canst sotransform thy separated personality that

THE FRIENDSH IP OF GOD 91

it reproduces the All-Being as a picture ;but this All-Being itself does not shineforth in thee. Starting from such conceptions, Tauler came to the idea of aGodhead that never merges wholly intothe human world, never flows quite completely into it. More, he attaches importance to his not being confused withthose who maintain that man's inmostbeing is itself divine. He says: " TheUnion with God is taken by foolish menin a fleshly sense, and they say that theyshall be transformed into divine nature;but such is false and an evil heresy. F oreven in the very highest, most inwardUnion with God, God's nature and God'sbeing still remain lofty, yea, higher thanthe loftiest ; that passeth in to a divineabyss, where never yet was creature. "

Tauler wishes , and rightly, t o be calleda good Catholic in the sense of his age

92 l"lYSTICS OF T HE RE NAISSANCE

and of his priestly calling. He has nodesire to oppose any other conception toChristianity. He desires only to deepenand spiritualise that Christianity throughhis way of looking at it. He speaks asa pious priest of the content of H oly Writ.But this same scripture still becomes inthe world of his conceptions a mean s forthe expression of the inmost experiencesof his soul. "God worketh all his worksin the soul and giveth them to the soul ;

.,'

and theFatherbegetteth His only begot tenSon in the soul, as truly as He begettethHim in etern ity , neither more, nor less.What is born when one says: Godbegetteth in the soul? Is it a likenessof God, or a picture of God, or is it somewhat of God ? Nay: it is neither picturenor likeness of God, bu t the same Godand the same Son whom t he Father begetteth in ete rnity and naught else th an

I !-. 'f [ll' f IU')~ )fl


th e blissful divine word , that is the secondperson in the Trinity, Him the F atherbeget te th in the soul, . . . and thereofthe soul hath thus great and specialdignity. " I The sto ries of scripture become for Tauler the garment in which heclothes the happiness of the inner life."Herod, who drove out the child andsought to slay him, is a likeness of theworld, which yet seeketh to kill thischild in a believing man, therefore oneshould and must flee therefrom , if we dodesire to keep that child alive in us, butthat child is the enlightened believing soulof each and every man."

As T auler directs his gaze mainly uponthe natural man, he is comparatively lessconcerned to tell us what happens whenthe higher man enters into the natural

' Cp. Pr eger: History of German Mysticism , vol. iii.,p . 2 19 et seq.

9..J. MYSTICS OF THE RE NAISSANCE

man, than to discover the paths whichthe lower forces of the personality mustfollow if they are to be transmuted intothe higher life. As a devotee of themoral life, he desires to show to men theroads to the All-Being. He has unconditional faith and trust that the All-Beingshines forth in man, if man will so orderhis life that there shall be in him a shrinefor the Divine. But this All-Being cannever shine forth while man shuts himself up in his mere natural separatedpersonality. Such a man, separated offin himself, is merely one member of theworld: a single creature, in Tauler'slanguage. The more man shuts himselfoff within this his being as a member ofthe world, so much the less can the AllBeing find place in him. "If man is inreality to become one with God, then allenergies and powers even of the inner

THE FRIE NDSHIP OF GOD 95

man must die and become silent . Thewill must turn away even from the Goodand from all willing, and become voidof willing." "Man must escape fromall his senses and turn inwards all hispowers, and come into a forgetting of allthings and of himself." "For the trueand eternal Word of God is uttered onlyin the desert, when the man hath goneout from himself and from all things

and is quite untrammelled, desolate andalone."

When Tauler stood at his zenith, theproblem which occupied the central pointof his mental life was: How can manovercome and kill out in himself hisseparated existence, so as to live in perfect unison with the All-life? For onein this position, all feeling s towards theAll-Being concentrate themselves intothis one thing: Awe before the All-

96 MYST ICS OF THE RENA ISSANCE

Being as that which is inexhaustible,endless. He says to himself: whateverlevel thou hast reached , there remainst ill higher perspectives, still more exaltedpossibilities. Thus clear and defined asis to him the direction in which he hasto turn his steps, it is equally clear tohim that he can never speak of a goal :for a new goal is only the beginning of anew path. Through such a new goalman reaches a certain level of evolution :but evolut ion itself continues illimitably. And what that evolut ion mayat tain upon some more distant level, itcan never know upon its present stage.There is no knowing the final goal: onlya trusting in the path, in evo lut ion itself. There is knowing for eve ry thingwhich man has a lready at tained . Itconsist s in the penetration of an alreadypresent ob ject by the powers of our


spirit. For the higher life of man'sinner being, there is no such knowing.Here the powers of our spirit must firsttransfer the object it self into the realmof the existent; they must first createfor it an existence, constituted as isnatural existence.

Natural Science follows the evolutionof beings from the simplest up to themost perfected , to man himself. Thisevolut ion lies before us as already completed. "Ve know it , by penetratingit with the powers of our spirit . Whenevolut ion has reached humanity, manthen finds nothing further there beforehim as its continuation. He himselfaccomplishes the further unfoldment.Henceforward he lives what for earlierstages he only knows. He creates, accord ing to the obj ect, that which, forwhat has gone before, he only copies

98 MYSTI CS OF THE RENAISSANCE

in accordance with its spiritual nature.That truth is not one with the existe ntin nature, but naturally embraces boththe existent and the non-existent: of thistruth Tauler is filled to overflowing inall his feelings. I t has been handeddown to us that Tauler was led to thisfulfilling by an illuminated layman, a"Friend of God from the Mountains."

We have here a mysterious story.As to where this "Friend of God " livedthere exist only conjectures; as to whohe was, not even these . He seems tohave heard much of Tauler's way ofpreaching, and to have resolved accordingly to journey to Tauler, who wasthen working as a preacher in Strassburg, in order to fulfil a certain dutyby him. Tauler's relation to the Friendof God , and the influence which thelatter exercised upon the former, are to

TH E FRIENSDHIP OF GOD 99

be found described in a text which isprinted along with the oldest edit ionsof Tauler's sermons under the ti tle," T he Book of the Master." Thereina Friend of God, in whom some seek torecognise the same who came into relations with Tauler, gives an account ofa" Master," whom some assert to be Tauler himself. He relates how a transformation, a spiritual re-birth, was broughtabout in a certain " Master" and how thelat ter, when he felt his death drawingnear, called his friend to him and beggedhim to write the story of his "enlightenment, " but yet to take care that noone should ever learn of whom the bookspeaks. He asks this on the groundthat all the knowledge that proceedsfrom him is yet not really from him."For know ye that God hath broughtall t o pass through me, poor worm, and


that what it is, is not mine, it is ofGod ."

A learned controversy which has connected itself with the occurrence isnot of the very smallest importance forthe essence of the matter. An effortwas made to prove on one side ' that theFriend of God never existed, but thathis existence was fiction and that thebooks ascribed to him come from another hand (Rulman Merswin) . On theother hand Wilhelm Preger has soughtwith many arguments (in hi s H istory ojGerman Mysticism) t o support t he existence, the genuineness of the writi ngs, andthe correctness of the fact s that relateto Tauler.

I am here under no obligation to throwlight by presumptuous invest igation up ona relationship as to which anyone, who

I Denifle: Die Dictun gen des Gottesjreund es ini Oberlande.

THE FRIE ND SHIP OF GOD 101

understands how to read the wr itings in question, will know that it shouldremain a secret.

If one says of Tauler, that at a certainstage of his life a transformation tookplace in him, that will be amply sufficient.Tauler's personality need no longer bein any way considered in this connection, but only a personality" in genera1."As regards Tauler, we are only concernedwith the fact that we must understandhis transformation from the point ofview set forth in what follows. If wecompare his later activity with his earlier ,the fact of this transformation is obviouswithout further search. I will leave

'The writings in question are, among others: Von eimeeigenwilligen u eltunsen manne, der uon eim e heil igen weltpriestere gewiset wart uffe demuetige gehorsamme, 1338; DasBit ch V01l den zwei Mannen; Der gejangene R itter, 13-1-9;Die gei stliche siege, 1350 ; Von der geistlichen Leiter, 1357;Dos Mei sterbuch, 1369 ; Geschichie von zwei [unjzelinjalizigen Knaben,


aside all outer circumstances and relatethe inner occurrences in the soul of the" Master" under "the influence of thelayman." What my reader willunderstand by the "layman" and the"Master" depends entirely upon his ownmentality; what I myself think aboutit is a matter as to which I cannot knowfor whom it is of any weight.

A Master is instructing his disciplesas to the relationship of the soul tothe All-Being of things. He speaks of thefact that when man plunges intothe abysmal depths of his soul, he nolonger feels the natural, limited forces ofthe separated personality working withinhim. Therein the separated man 110

longer speaks, therein speaks God. Thereman does not see God, or th e world ; thereGod sees Himself. Man has become onewith God. But the Master knows that

'.I- ia f /11. Jft


this teaching has not yet awakened tofull life in him. He thinks it with hisunderstanding: but he does not yet livein it with every fibre of his personality.He is thus teaching about a state ofthings which he has not yet completelylived through in himself. The description of the condition corresponds to thetruth; yet this truth has no value ifit does not gain life, if it does notbring itself forth in reality as actuallyexistent.

The "layman" or "Friend of God"hears of the Master and his teachings.He is no less saturated with the truthwhich the Master utters than the Masterhimself. But he possesses this truthnot as a mat ter of the underst anding;he has it as the whole force of his life.He knows that when this truth has cometo a man from outs ide , he can himself

104 MYSTICS OF THE R EN AISSANCE

give utterance to it , without even in theleast living in accordance with it. Butin that case he has nothing other in himthan the natural knowledge of the understanding. He then speaks of thisnatural knowledge as if it were thehighest , equivalent t o the working ofthe All-Being. It is not so, because ithas not been acquired in a life that hasapproached to this knowledge as a transformed, a reborn life. What one acquires only as a natural man, thatremains only natural,-even whenone afterwards expresses in words thefundamental characteristic of the higherknowledge. Outwards, from within thevery nature itself, must the transformation be accomplished.

Nature, which by living has evolveditself to a certain level, must evolvefurther through life; something new must

r I I,. ,t'

THE FRIE NDSHIP OF GOD 105

come into existence through this furtherevolution. Man must not only lookbackwards upon the evolution whichalready lies behind him-claim as thehighest that which shapes itself according thereto in his spirit-but hemust look forward upon the uncreate :his knowledge must be a beginning of anew content, not an end to the contentof evolution which already lies beforeit. Nature advances from the worm tothe mammal, from the mammal to man,not in a conceptual but in an actual,real process. Man has to repeat thisprocess not in ' h is mind alone. Themental repetition is only the beginningof a fresh, real evolution, which, however,despite it s being spiritual, is real. Man,then, does not merely know wha t naturehas produced; he continues nature; het ranslates his knowledge into living ac-


tion. He gives birth within himself tothe spirit , and this spirit advances thenceonwards from level to level of evolut ion ,as nature itself advances. Spirit beginsa natural process upon a highe r level.

The talk about the God who contemplates Himself in man's inner being, takeson a different character in one who hasrecognised this. H e attaches little importance to the fact that an insightalready attained has led him into thedepths of the All-Being; instead, hisspiritual nature acquires a new character. It unfolds itself further in thedirection determined by the All-Being.Such a man not only looks at the worlddifferently from one who merely understands: he lives his li fe otherwise. H edoes not talk of the meaning wh ich lifealready has through the forces and lawsof the world: but he gives anew a fresh


meaning to his life. As little as the fishalready has in itself what makes itsappearance on a later level of evolutionas the mammal, as little has the understanding man already in himself whatshall be born from him as the higherman. If the fish could know itself andthe things around it, it would regardthe being-a-fish as the meaning of life.It would say: the All-Being is like thefish: in the fish the All-Being beholdsitself. Thus would the fish speak aslong as it remained constant to its understanding kind of knowledge. In realityit does not remain constant thereto.It reaches out beyond its knowledgewith its activity. It becomes a reptileand later a mammal. The meaningwhich it gives to itself in reality reachesout beyond the meaning which merecontemplation gives to it.


In man also this must be so. H egives himself a meaning in reality; hedoes not halt and stand st ill at themeaning he already has, which hiscontemplation shows him. K nowledgeleaps out beyond itself, if only it understands itself aright. Knowledge cannotdeduce the world from a ready-madeGod; it can only unfold itself from agerm in the direction towards a God.The man who has understood this willnot regard God as something that is outside of him; he will deal with God as a being who wanders with him towards a goal ,which at the outset is just as unknownas the nature of the mammal is unknownto the fish. He does not a im to be theknower of the hidden, or of the self-revealing existe nt God, but to be the friendof the divine doing and working, whichis exalted over both being and non- being.


The layman, who came to the Master,was a "Friend of God" in this sense,and through him the Master becamefrom a contemplator of the being ofGod, one who is "alive in the spirit,"one who not only contemplated, butlived in the higher sense. The Masternow no longer brought forth conceptsand ideas of the understanding fromhis inner nature, but these concepts andideas burst forth from him as living,actualised spirit. He no longer merelyedified his hearers ; he shook the veryfoundations of their being. He nolonger plunged their souls into theirinner being; he led them into a new life.This is recounted to us symbolically:about forty people fell down throughhis preaching and lay as if dead .

* * *


As a guide to such a new life, wepossess a book about whose authornothing is known. Luther first made itknown in print. The philologist, FranzPfeiffer, has recently printed it according to a manuscript of the year1497, with a modern German translation facing the original text. Whatprecedes the book indicates its purpose and its goal: "Here begins theman from Frankfurt and saith manyvery lofty and very beautiful thingsabout a perfect life." Upon this followsthe" Preface about the man from Frankfurt": "Al-mighty, Eternal God hath

uttered this little book through a wise,understanding, truthful, righteous man,his friend, who in former days was aGerman nobleman, a priest and a custodian in the German H ouse of Nobles atF rankfurt ; it teacheth many a lovely

/ ,.

THE FRIENDSHIP OF GOD I I I

insight into Divine Wisdom, and especially how and whereby one mayknow the t rue , righteous friends of God,and also the unrighteous, false, freethinkers, who are very hurtful to HolyChurch."

By "free-thinkers" one may perhapsunderstand those who live in a merelyconceptual world , like the " Maste r ' ,described above before his transformationby means of the " Friend of God," andby the " t rue, righteous friends of God, "such as possess the disposition of the" layman ." One may further ascribe tothe book the intention of so workingup on its readers as the "Friend of Godfrom the Mountains" did upon theMaster . It is not known who theauthor was. But what does that mean?It is not known when he was born anddied, or what he did in h is outer life.


That the author aimed t o preserveeternal secrecy about these facts of hi souter life, belongs naturally to the wayin which he desired to work. It is notthe "I" of this or the other man, bornat a definite point of time, who is tospeak to us, but the "I-ness " in thedepths whereof " the separateness of individualit ies " (in the sense of Paul Asmus'saying') must first unfold itself. "1£ Godtook to Himself all men who are or whohave ever been, and became man in them,and they became God in Him, and it didnot happen to me also, then my fall andmy turning away would never be madegood, unless it also happened in me too.And in this restoration and making good,I neither can nor may nor should do anything thereto save a mere pure suffering,so that God alone doeth and worketh

, Vide ante, page 34.


all things in me, and I suffer Him andall His works and His divine will. Butif I will not submit to this, but possessmyself with egotism, i:e., with mine, andI, to me, for me, and the like, that hindersGod so that He cannot work His work inme purely alone and without hindrance.Therefore my fall and my turning awayremain thus not made good." The"man from Frankfurt" aims to speaknot as a separated individual; he desiresto let God speak. That he yet can dothis only as a single , distinct personalityhe naturally knows full well; but he isa "Friend of God," that means a manwho aims not at presenting the natureof life through contemplation, but atpointing out the beginning of a newevolutionary pathway through the livingspirit.

The explanat ions in the book are8


various instructions as to how one comesto this pathway. The root-thoughtreturns again and again: man muststrip off everything that is connectedwith that which makes him appear as a

single , separate personality. This thoughtseems to be worked out only in resp ectof the moral life; it should be extended,without further ado, to the higher lifeof knowledge as well. One must annihilate in oneself whatever appears asseparateness: then separated existenceceases; the All-Life enters into us. Wecannot master this All-Life by drawingit towards us . It comes into us, whenwe reduce the separa teness in us tosilence. We have the All-L ife least ofall just then, when we so regard ourseparated existence as if the Wholealready dwelt within it . This first comesto light in the sepa rated exist ence when

THE FRIENDSHIP OF GOD I IS

this separa ted existence no longer claimsfor itself to be anything. This pretension on the part of the separated existenceour text terms" assumption."

Through "assumption" the self makesit impossible for itself that the Universal Self should enter into it. Theself then puts itself as a part, as something imperfect, in the place of the whole,of the perfect. "The perfect is a being ,that in itself and in its being has conceivedand resolved all beings, and withoutwhich and apart from which there is notrue being, and in which all things havetheir being; for it is the being of allthings and is in itself unchangeable andimmovable, and changes and moves allother things. But the divided and theimperfect is that which has sprung fromout of th is perfect , or becomes, just as aray or a light that flows forth from the


sun or a light and shines upon something,this or that. And that is called thecreature, and of all these divided thingsnone is the perfect. Therefore also isthe perfect none of the divided. . . .When the perfect cometh, the divided isdespised. But when does it come? Isay: When so far as is possible it isknown , felt , tasted in the soul; for thedefect lies wholly in us and not in it.For just as the sun illuminates thewhole world and is just as near to theone as to the other, yet a blind man seesit not. But that is no defect of the sunbut of the blind man. . .. If my eyeis to see anything, it must becomecleansed, or be already cleansed from allother things. . .. Now one might beinclined to say : In so far then as it isunknowable and inconceivable for allcreatures, and since the soul is also a

THE FRIEN DSHIP OF GOD 1 17

creature, how can it then be known inthe soul? Answer : Therefore is it said,the creature shall be known as a creature."

This is as much as to say that allcreatures shall be regarded as creat edand creation and not regard themselvesas 1-ness and self-ness, whereby thisknowing is made impossible. " For inwhatever creature this perfect one shallbe known, there all creature-being, created-being, 1-ness, self-ness, and everything of the kind must be lost, be andbecome naught." I The soul must therefore look within itself; there it findsits 1-ness, its self-ness. If it remainsstanding there, it thereby cuts itself offfrom the perfect. If it regards its 1-nessonly as a thing lent to it as it were, andannihilates it in spirit , it will be seizedupon by th e stream of th e All-Life, of

I Chap. i., B ook of the Man from Frankf urt.


Perfection. "When the creature assumes to itself somewhat of good , asBeing, Life, Knowledge, Power, in short,aught of that which one calls good andthinks that it is that, or that it belongsto it or comes from it, so often and somuch as that happens, does the creatureturn away." "The created soul of manhas two eyes. The one is the possibilityof seeing in eternity; the other of seeingin time and in creation." "Man shouldtherefore stand and be quite free withouthimself, that is without self-ness, I-ness,me, mine, for me and the like, so thathe as little seeks and thinks of himselfand what is his in all things as if it didnot exist; and he should therefore alsothink little of himself, as if he were not ,and as if another had done all hisdeeds.'"

1 Ch ap. xv., Book of the Man fr om Frankf urt.

TH E FRIENDSHIP OF GOD 1 19

One must also take account of thefact in regard to the writer of thesesentences, that the thought-content,to which he gives a direction by hishigher ideas and feelings, is that of abelieving priest in the spirit of his owntime. We are here concerned not withthe thought-content, but with the direction, not with the thoughts but withthe way of thinking. Anyone who doesnot live as he does in Christ ian dogmas,but in the conceptions of natural science,finds in his sentences other thoughts;but with these other thoughts he pointsin the same direction. And this direction is that which leads to the overcoming of the self-hood, by the Self-hooditself. The highest light shines for manin his Ego. But this light only thenimparts to his concept -world the rightreflection, when he becomes aware that


it is not his own self-light, but theuniversal world-light.

Hence there is no more importantknowledge than self-knowledge; and thereis equally no knowledge which leads socompletely out beyond itself . When the" self" knows itself aright, it is alread yno longer a "self." In his own language,the writer of the book in question expresses this as follows: "For God's,own-ness ' is void of this and that, voidof self-ness and I-ness; but the natureand own-ness of the creature is that itseeketh and willeth itself and its ownand' this' and ' that'; and in all thatit does or leaves undone, it seeket h toreceive its own benefit and profit.

"When, now , th e creature or the manloseth hi s own-ness and his self-ness andhimself, and goeth out from himself, thenGod entereth in with H is Own-ness, that

THE FRIEND SHIP OF GOD 121

is with his Self-hood ." l Man soars up wards, from a view of his " Ego " whichmakes the latter appear to him as hisvery being, to a view such that itshows him his Ego as a mere organ, inwhich the All-B eing works upon itself .In the concept-sphere of our text, thismeans: "If man can attain thereto thathe belongeth unto God just as a man'shand belongeth to him, then let himcontent himself and seek no further ." 2

That is not intended to mean thatwhen man has reached a certain st ageof his evolution he shall stand st illthere, but that, when he has got as faras is indicated in the above words, heshould not set on foot further invest igations into the meaning of the hand, butrather make use of the hand , in order

r Chap. xxiv, Book o f the Mall from Fran kfurt .a I bid .• Ch ap. liv ,


that it may render service to the bodyto which it belongs.

HEINRICH Suso and JOHANNES RtrvsBROEK possessed a type of mind whichmay be characterised as genius for feeling.Their feelings are drawn by somethinglike instinct in the same direction inwhich Eckhart's and Tauler 's feelingswere guided by their higher thoughtlife. Suso's heart turns devoutly towardsthat Root-Being which embraces the individual man just as much as the wholeremaining world, and in whom forgettinghimself, he yearns to lose himself as adrop of water in the mighty ocean . Hespeaks of this hi s yearning towards theAll-Being, not as of something that hedesires to embrace in thought ; he speaksof it as a natural impulse, that makes

I '-If '(1 r: . I /IC .ot


his soul drunken with desire for theannihilation of its separated existence

and its re-awakening to life in the allefficiency of the endless life. " Turnthine eyes to this being in its pure nakedsimplicity, so that thou mayest let fallthis and that manifold being. Takebeing in itself alone, that is unmovedwith not-being; for all not-being deniesall being. A thing that is yet to become,or that has been, is not now in actualpresence.' ,

" Now, one cannot know mixed beingor not-being except by some mark ofbeing as a whole. For if one will understand a thing, the reason first encountersbeing, and that is a being that workethall things. It is a divided being of thisor that creature,-for divided being isall mingled with something of other-ness,with a possibility of receiving something.

124 MYST ICS OF T HE RE NAISSANCE

Therefore the namel ess div ine beingmust so be a whole being in itse lf, thatit sustaineth all divided beings by itspresence."

Thus speaks Suso in the autobiographywhich he wrote in conjunction with hispupil Elsbet Staglin. He, too, is a piou spriest and lives entirely in the Christiancircle of thought. He lives therein asif it were quite unthinkable that anybodywith his mental tendency could live inany other world. But of him also it istrue that one can combine another concept-content with his mental tendency.This is clearly borne out by the wayin which the content of the Christianteaching has become for him actualinner experience, and his relation toChrist has become a relation between hisown spirit and the ete rnal t ruth in apurely ideal, spiritual way.

L


He composed a "Little Book of Eternal·Wisdom ." In this he makes the "Eternal Wisdom." speak to its servant, inother words to himself: "Knowest thoume not? How art thou so cast down, orhast thou lost consciousness from agon yof heart, my tender child? Behold itis I, merciful Wisdom, who have openedwide the abyss of fathomless compassion which yet is hidden from all thesaints, tenderly to receive thee and allrepentant hearts; it is I, sweet EternalWisdom, who was there poor and miserable, so as to bring thee to thy worthiness;it is I, who suffered bitter death, that Imight make thee to live again! I standhere pale and bleeding and lovely , as Istood on the lofty gallows of the crossbetween the stern judgment of my Fatherand thee. It is I, thy brother ; look, itis I , thy spouse! I have therefore wholly

12 6 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE

forgotten all thou hast done against me,as if it had never been, if only thouturnest wholly to me and separatest thyself no more from me."

All that is bodily and temporal in theChristian conception has become forSuso, as one sees, a spirit ual-ideal processin the recesses of his soul. From somechapters of Suso 's biography mentionedabove, it might appear as if he had lethimself be guided not by the mere actionof his own spiritual power, but throughexternal revelations, through ghost lyVISIons. But he expresses his meaningquite clearly about this. One at tainsto the truth through reasonabl eness ,not through any kind of revelation." T he difference between pure t ru th and

I two- souled visions in the matte r ofknowledge I will also t ell you. An immediate beholding of the bare Godhead,


that is right pure truth, without alldoubt; and every. vision, so that it bereasonable and without pictures and themore like it be unto that bare beholding,the purer and nobler it is."

Meiste r Eckhart, t oo, leaves no doubtthat he puts aside the view which seeksto be spiritual in bodily-spacial form s,in appearances which one can perceiveby any senses. M inds of the t ype ofSuso and Eckhart are thus opponents ofsuch a view, as that which finds expression in the spiritualism which has developed during the nineteenth century.

JOHANNES RUYSBROEK, the Belgianmystic, trod the same path as Suso. H isspiritual way found an active opponentin J ohannes Gerson (born 1363), whowas for some time Chancellor of the

128 MYST ICS OF THE RENAISSANCE

University of Paris and played a momentous role at the Council of Constance.Some light is thrown upon the natureof the mysticism which was practised byTauler, Suso and Ruysbroek, if onecompares it with the mystic endeavoursof Gerson, who had his predecessors inRichard de St. Victor, Bonaventura, andothers.

Ruysbroek himself fought against thosewhom he reckoned among the hereticalmystics. As such he considered all thosewho, through an easy-going judgment ofthe understanding, hold that all thingsproceed from one Root-Being , who therefore see in the world only a manifoldnessand in God the unity of this manifoldness.Ruysbroek does not count himself amongthese, for he knew that one cannot attainto the Root-Being by the contemplat ionof things, but only by raising oneself from

t: . .. tr ;r


this lower mode of contemplation to ahigher one .

Similarly, he turned against those whoseek to see without further ado, in theindividual man, in his separated existence (in his creature-being), his highernature also. He deplored not a littlethe error which confuses all differencesin the sense-world, and asserts lightmindedly that things are different onlyin appearance, but that in their beingthey are all alike. This would amount,for a way of thinking like Ruysbroek's, tothe same thing as saying: That thefact that the trees in an avenue seem toour seeing to come together does notconcern us. In reali ty they are everywhere equally far apart, therefore oureyes ought to accustom themselves tosee correct ly. But our eyes see aright .That the trees run together depends

9


upon a necessary law of nature; and wehave nothing to reproach our seeingwith, but on the contrary to recognise inspirit why we see them thus.

Moreover, the mystic does not turnaway from the things of the senses. Asthings of the senses, he accepts them asthey are, and it is clear to him thatthrough no judgment of the understanding can they become otherwise.But in spirit he passes beyond bothsenses and understanding, and then onlydoes he find the unity. His faith isunshakable that he can develop himselfto the beholding of this unity. Therefore does he ascribe to the nature ofman the divine spark which can bebrought to shine in him, to shine byits own light.

People of the type of Gerson thinkothe rwise. They do not believe in this

> t lit r

THE FRIENDSHIP OF GOD 13 1

self-shining. For th em, what man canbehold remains always a something external, that from some side or other mustcome to them exte rnally . Ruysbroekbelieved that the highest wisdom mustneeds shine forth for mystic contemplation. Gerson believed only that thesoul can illuminate the content of anexternal teaching (that of the Church).For Gerson, Mys ticism was nothing y

else but possessing a warm feeling forevery thing that is revealed in thist eaching. For Ruysbroek , it was afaith , that the content of all teachingis also born in the soul. ThereforeGerson blames Ruysbroek in that thelat t er imagines that not only has he thepower to behold the All-Being withclearness, but that in this beholdingthere expresses itself an activi ty of theAll-Being. Ruysbroek simply could not


be understood by Gerson . Both spokeof two wholly different things. Ruysbroek has in his mind 's eye the life ofthe soul that lives itself into onenesswith its God; Gerson, only a soul-lifethat seeks to love the God whom it cannever actually live in itself. Like manyothers, Gerson fought against somethingthat was strange to him only because hecould not grasp it in experience.

CARDINAL NICHOLAS OF CUSA

A GLORIOUSLY shining star in the skyof the thought-life of the Middle Agesis Nicholas Chrysippus of Cusa (atTrevis,1401-1464). He stands upon thesummit of the knowledge of his time.In mathematics he accomplished remarkable work. In natural science hemay be described as the forerunner ofCopernicus, for he took up the standpoint that the earth is a moving celestialbody like others. He had already brokenaway from a view upon which even ahundred years later the great astronomer,Tycho Brahe, based himself, when hehurled aga inst the teaching of Copernicus the sentence : "The earth is a

133

134 MYSTICS OF TH E RENAISSANCE

gross, heavy mass inapt for movement ;how, then, can Copernicus make astar of it and run it about in the air?"The same man who thus not only embraced all the knowledge of his time, butalso extended it further, possessed inaddit ion, in a high degree, the power ofawakening this knowledge in the innerlife, so that it not only illuminates theexternal world, but also mediates forman that spiritual life, which from theprofounder depths of his soul he needsmust long after.

If we compare Nicholas with suchspirits as Eckhart or Tauler, we obtaina remarkable result . Nicholas is thescient ific thinker, striving to lift himselffrom research about the things of theworld on to the level of a higher percepti on; Eckhart and Tauler are the faithful believe rs, who seek the higher life

DIC/lt12l"d by tvucrosott

CARDINAL NICHOLAS OF CUSA 135

from within the content of this faith.Eventually Nicholas arrives at the sameinner life as Meister Eckhart; but theinner life of the former has a rich storeof knowledge as its content.

The full significance of this differencebecomes clear when we reflect that forthe student of science the danger liesvery near at hand of misunderstandingthe scope of that species of knowingwhich enlightens us regarding the variousspecial departments of knowledge. Hecan very readily be misled into believingthat there really is only one single kindor mode of knowledge; and then he willeither over- or under-rate this knowledgewhich leads us to the goal in the variousspecial sciences. In the one case hewill approach the subject-mat ter of thehighest spiritual life as he would a problem in physics, and proceed to deal with


it by means of concepts such as he wouldapply to gravitation or electricity. Thus,according as he believes himself to bemore or less enlightened, the world willappear to him as a blindly workingmachine, or an organism, or as theteleological structure of a personal God:perhaps even as a form which is ruled andpervaded by a more or less clearly conceived "World-Soul." In the other casehe notes that the knowledge, of whichalone he has any experience, is adaptedonly to the things of the sense-world;and then he will become a sceptic, sayingto himself: We can know nothing aboutthings which lie beyond the world of thesenses. Our knowledge has a limit.For the needs of the higher life we haveno choice but to throw ourselves blindlyinto the arms of faith untouched byknowledge. And for a learned theo-

V/flit i.a by Mluosoft


logian like Nicholas of Cusa, who wasalso a scientist, this second danger laypeculiarly near at hand. For he emerged,along the lines of his learned training,from Scholasticism,-the way of conceiving things which was dominant in scientific life within the Mediaeval Church; amode of thought that St. Thomas Aquinas(1227-1274), the "Prince of Scholastics,"had brought to its highest perfection.We must take this mode of conceivingthings as the background, when wedesire t o portray the personality ofNicholas of Cusa .

Scholasticism is, in the highest degree,a product of human sagacity ; and in itthe logical capacity celebrated it s highesttriumphs. Anyone who is striving towork out concepts in their sharpest,most clear-cut outlines, ought to go tothe Scholastics for instruction. They

138 l\lYS TICS OF THE RENAISSANCE

afford us the High School for the technique of thinking. They possess anincomparable skill in moving in the fieldof pure thinking. It is easy to undervalue what they were able to achievein this field; for it is only with difficultyaccessible to man as regards most departments of knowledge. The maj ori tyrise to its level only in the domains ofnumbers and calculation, and in reflecting upon the connection of geometricalfigures.

'Ve can count by adding in thought aunity to a number , without needing tocall to our help sense-conceptions. VI ecalculate also, without such conceptions, in the pure element of thought.In regard to geometrical figures, we knowthat they never perfectly coincide withany sensible percept ion. There is nosuch thing within sensibl e reality as an


"ideal" circle. Yet our thinking concerns itself with the purely ideal circle.For things and processes which are morecomplicated than forms of number andspace, it is more difficult to find the idealcounterparts. This has even led so farthat it has been contended, from varioussides, that in the separated departmentsof knowledge there is only so much ofreal science as there is of measuring andcounting.

The t ru th about this is that most menare not capable of grasping the purethought-element where it is no longerconcerned with what can be counted ormeasured. But the man who cannot dothat for the higher realms of life andknowledge, resembles in that respect achild, which has not yet learned to countotherwise than by adding one pea toanother. The thinker who said the re


was just so much real science in anydomain as there was mathematics in it,was not very much at home in the matter.One ought rather to demand that everything which cannot be measured orcounted should be handled just as ideallyas the forms of number and space. Andthe Scholastics in the full est way didjustice to this demand. They sough teverywhere the thought-content of things ,just as the mathematician seeks it in thefield of what is measurable and countabl e.

In spite of this perfected logical art ,the Scholastics attained only t o a onesided and subord inate concept ion ofKnowledge. Their concept ion is this :that in the act of knowing, man createsin himself an image of what he is toknow. It is obvious, without furtherdiscussion, that with such a concept ionof the knowing process all reality must


be locat ed outside of the knowing . Forone can grasp, in knowing, not the thingitself, but only an image of that thing.

Also, in knowing himself man cannotgrasp himself, but again, what he doesknow of himself is only an image ofhimself. It is entirely from out of thespirit of Scholasticism that an accuratestudent thereof' says: "Man has intime no perception of his ego, of thehidden ground of his spiritual beingand life, . . . he will never attain tobeholding himself; for either, estrangedfor ever from God, he will find in himselfonly a fathomless , dark abyss, an endlessempt iness, or else, made blessed in God ,he will find on turning his gaze inwardsjust that very God, the sun of whosemercy is shining within him, whose image

I K. Werncr, in his book up on Frank Su arcz and theScholasticism of the Last Centuries, p . 122.


and likeness shapes itself in the spiritualtraits of his nature."

Whoever thinks like this about allknowing, has only such a conception ofknowing as is applicable to externalthings. The sensible factor in anythingalways remains external for us; thereforewe can only take up into our knowledgepictures of whatever is sensible in theworld. When we perceive a colour or astone, we are unable, in order to knowthe being of the colour or the stone, tobecome ourselves the colour or the stone.Just as little can the colour or thestone transform itself into a part of ourown being. It may, however, be questioned whether the conception of such aknowing-process, wholly directed to whatis external in things, is an exhaustive one.

For Scholasticism, all human knowingdoes certainly in the main coincide with

t: I.

CARDINAL NIC HOLAS OF CUSA 143

this kind of knowing. Another admirable authority on Scholasticism I characterises the concept ion of knowledgewith which we are concerned in thisdirect ion of thought in the followingmanner: " Our spirit, a llied in earthlife with the body, is primarily focussedupon the surrounding bodily world ,but ordered in the direction of thespiritual therein : the beings , natures,forms of things, the elements of existence, which are related to our spiritand offer to it the rungs for its ascentto the super-sensuous ; the field of ourkn owledge is therefore the realm of experience, but we must learn to underst andwhat it offers, to penetrate to its meaningand thought, and thereby unlock forourselves the world of thought ."

'Otto Willrnan , in his Hi story ;)f Idealism, vol. ii.,P· 395·


The Scholastic could not attain toany other conception of knowledge, forthe dogmatic content of his theologyprevented his doing so. If he had directed the gaze of his spiritual eye uponthat which he regards as an image only,he would then have seen that the spirit ualcontent of things reveals itself in thissupposed image; he would then havefound that in his own inner being theGod not alone images Himself, but thatHe lives therein, is present there in H isown nature. He would have beheld ingazing into his own inner being, not adark abyss, an endless empt iness, butalso not merely an image of God ; hewould have felt that a life pulses withinhim, which is the very life of God itself;and that his own life is verily just God'slife.

This the Scholast ic dared not admit.


The God must not, in his opinion, ente rinto him and speak forth from him;God must only be in him as an image.In reality, the Godhead must be externalto the self. Accordingly, also, it couldnot reveal itself from within throughthe spiritual life, but must reveal itselffrom outside, through supernatural communication. What is aimed at in this,is just exactly what is least of all attainedthereby. It is sought to attain to thehighest possible conception of the Godhead. In reality, the Godhead is draggeddown and made a thing among otherthings; only that these other thingsreveal themselves to us naturally, throughexperience; while the Godhead is supposed to reveal Itself to us supernaturally. A difference, however, betweenthe knowledge of the divine and of thecreated is attained in this way : that as

10


regards the created , the exte rnal thingis given in experience, so that we haveknowledge of it; while as regards thedivine, the object is not given to us inexperience ; we can reach it only in faith.

The highest things, therefore, are forthe Scholastic not objects of knowledge,but mainly of faith. It is true thatthe relation of knowledge to faith mustnot be so conceived, according to theScholastic view, as if in a certain domainonly knowledge, and in another onlyfaith reigned. For" the knowledge ofthat which is, is possible to us, becauseit, itself, springs from a creative element ;things are for the spirit , because theyare from the spirit; they have somethingto tell us, because they have a meaningwhich a higher intelligence has placedin them. " 1 Becaus e God has created

' Otto WiIlman, History of Id ealism, vol. i i ., p. 383.

.{ t1 {)l t r-

CARDI NAL NICHOLAS OF CUSA Lt?

the world according to thoughts, we tooare able, when we grasp the thoughtsof the world, to seize also upon thetraces of the Divine in the world, throughscientific reflection. But what God is,according to His own being, we can learnonly from that revelation which He hasgiven to us in supernatural ways, andin which we must believe. 'What weought to think about the highest things,must be decided not by any humanknowledge, but by faith; and "to faithbelongs all that is contained in thewrit ings of the New and of the OldTestament, and in the divine traditions. " I

It is not our task here to present andestablish in detail the relation of thecontent of faith to the content of knowledge. In truth, all and every faith-

t Joseph Kl eu tgen, Die Theologie der Vorzeit, vo\. L,

P·39·


con tent originates from some actualinner human experience that has oncebeen undergone. Such an experience isthen preserved, as far as it s outer formgoes, without the consciousness of howit was acquired. And people maintainin regard to it that it came into theworld by supernatural revelation. Thecontent of the Christian faith was simplyaccepted by the Scholastics. Science,inner experience, had no business toclaim any rights over it. As little asscience can create a tree, just so littledared Scholasticism to create a conception of God; it was bound to accept therevealed one ready-made and complete,just as natural science has to acceptthe tree ready-made. That the spiritualitself can shine forth and live in man'sinner nature, could never, never be admitted by the Scholastic. He therefore

\, 1


drew the frontier of the rightful powerof knowledge at the point where thedomain of outer experience ceases. Human knowledge must not dare to begetout of itself a conception of the higherbeings; it is bound to accept a revealedone. The Scholastics naturally couldnot admit that in doing so they wereaccepting and proclaiming as "revealed'a conception which in truth had reallybeen begotten at an earlier stage ofman's spiritual life.

Thus, in the course of its development,all those ideas had vanished from Scholasticism which indicated the ways andmeans by which man had begotten, in anatural manner, his conceptions of thedivine. In the first centuries of thedevelopment of Christian ity , at the timeof th e Church Fathers , we see thedoctrinal content of theol ogy growing


bit by bit by the assimilation of innerexperiences. In ] ohannes Scotus Erigena, who stood at the summit of Christian theological culture in the ninthcentury, we find this doctrinal contentbeing handled entirely as an inner living experience. With the Scholasticsof the following centuries, this characteristic of an inner, living experiencedisappears altogether: the old doctrinalcontent becomes transposed into thecontent of an external, supernaturalrevelation.

One might, therefore, understand theactivity of the mystical theologians,Eckhart, Tauler, Suso and their associates, in the following sense: they werestimulated by the doctrines of the Church,which were contained in its theology,but had been misinterpreted, to bringto birth afresh from within themselves,


as inner living experience, a similarcontent.

* * *Nicholas of Cusa sets out to mount

from the knowledge one acquires in theisolated sciences up to the inner livingexperiences. There can be no doubt thatthe excellent logical technique which theScholastics have developed, and for whichNicholas himself was educated, forms amost effective means of at t ain ing t othese inner experiences, even though theScholastics themselves were held backfrom this road by their positi ve faith .But one can only understand Nicholasfully when one reflects that his calling asa priest , which raised him to the dignityof Cardinal , prevent ed him from comingto a complet e breach with the faith ofthe Church , which found an expression


appropriate to the age in Scholasticism.We find him so far along the road, thata single step further would necessarilyhave carried him out of the Church.We shall therefore understand the Cardinal best if we complete the one stepmore which he did not take; andthen, looking backwards, throw lightupon what he aimed at.

The most significant thought in Nicholas's mental life is that of "learnedignorance." By this he means a formof knowing which occupies a higher levelas compared with ordinary knowledge.In the lower sense, knowledge is thegrasping of an object by the mind, orspirit. The most important characteristic of knowing is that it gives us lightabout something outside of the spirit,that therefore it directs its gaze uponsomething different from itself. The


spirit, therefore, is concerned in theknowing-process with things thought ofas outside itself. Now what the spiritdevelops in itself about things is thebeing of those things. The things arespirit. Man sees the spirit so far onlythrough the sensible encasement. Whatlies outside the spirit is only this sensibleencasement ; the being of the thingsenters into the spirit. If, then, thespirit turns its attention to this being ofthe things, which is of like nature withitself, then it can no longer talk ofknowing ; for it is not looking at anythingoutside of itself, but is looking at something which is part of itself; is, indeed,looking at itself. It no longer knows;it only looks up on itself. It is no longerconcerned with a "knowing," but witha " not-knowing." No longer does man" grasp" something through the mind;


he "beholds without conceiving" hisown life. This highest stage of knowingis, in comparison with the lower stages,a "not-knowing."

But it is obvious that the essentialbeing of things can only be reachedthrough this stage of knowing . ThusN icholas of Cusa in speaking of his"learned not-knowing" is really speakingof nothing else but "knowing" come to anew birth, as an inner experience. Hetells us himself how he came to thisinner experience. "I made many effortsto unite the ideas of God and the world,of Christ and the Church, into a singleroot-idea; but nothing satisfied me untilat last, on my way back from Greece bysea, my mind's vision, as if by an illumination from above, soared up tothat perception in which God appearedto me as the supreme Unity of all con-

t: '11 1)

CARDINAL NICHOLAS OF CUSA I55

tradict ions." To a greater or less extentthis illumination was due to influencesderived from the st udy of his predecessors. One recognises in his way oflooking at things a peculiar revival ofthe views which we meet with in thewritings of a certain Dionysius. Theabove-mentioned Scotus Erigena translated these writings into Latin, andspeaks of their author as the "great anddivine revealer."

The works in question are first mentioned in the first half of the sixthcentury. They were ascribed t o thatDionysius, the Areopagite, named in theActs of the Apostles, who was convertedto Christianity by St. Paul. When thesewrit ings were really composed may herebe left an open question. Their contents worked powerfully upon Nicholasas they had already worked upon Scotus


Erigena, and as they must also havebeen in many ways stimulating for theway of thinking of Eckhart and hiscolleagues. This" learned not-knowing"is in a certain way preformed in thesewritings. Here we can only indicatethe essential trait in the way of conceiving things found in these works.Man primarily knows the things of thesense-world. He forms thoughts about itsbeing and action. The Primal Cause ofall things must lie higher than these thingsthemselves. Man therefore must not seekto grasp this Primal Cause by means of thesame concepts and ideas as things. Ifhe therefore ascribes to the R oot-Being(God) attributes which he has learned toknow in lower things, such attributes canbe at best auxiliary conceptions of hisweak spirit, which drags down the RootBeing to itself, in order t o conceive it.

t, -r, t ' ler

CARDI NAL NICHOLAS OF CUSA 157

In t ru th , therefore, no attribute whatsoever which lower things possess canbe predicated of God. I t must not evenbe said that God " is." For" being" toois a concept which man has formed fromlower things. But God is exalted above"being" and "not-being." The Godto whom we ascribe attributes, is therefore not the true God. We come to thetrue God, when we think of an "OverGod" above and beyond any God withsuch attributes. Of this "Over-God"we can know nothing in the ordinarysense. In order to attain to Him, "knowing" must merge into "not-knowing."

One sees that at the root of such a viewthere lies the consciousness that man himself is able to develop a higher knowing,which is no longer mere knowing-in apurely na tural manner-on the basis ofwhat his various sciences have yielded


him. The Scholastic view declaredknowledge to be impotent to such adevelopment; and, at the point whereknowledge is supposed to cease, it calledin to the help of knowledge a faithbasing itself upon external revelation.Nicholas of Cusa was thus upon the roadto develop out of knowledge itself thatwhich the Scholastics had declared tobe unattainable for knowledge.

We thus see that, from Nicholas ofCusa's point of view, there can be noquestion of there being only one kind ormode of knowing. On the contrary, forhim, knowing clearly divides itself intotwo, first into such knowing as mediatesour acquaintance with external objects,and second into such as is itself theobject of which one gains knowledge.The first mode of knowing is dominantin the sciences, which teach us about


the things and occurrences of the outerworld ; the second is in us when we ourselves live in the knowledge we haveacquired. This second kind of knowinggrows out of the first. Now, however,it is still one and the same world withwhich both these modes of knowing areconcerned; and it is one and the selfsame man who is active in both. Hencethe question must arise, whence comes itthat one and the self-same man developstwo different kinds of knowledge of oneand the same world.

Already, in connection with Tauler,the direction could be indicated in whichthe answer to this question must besought. Here in Nicholas of Cusa thisanswer can be still more definitely formulated. In the first place, man lives asa separated (individual) being amids tother separated beings. In addit ion to


the effect s which th e other beings produceon each other, there arises in his casethe (lower) knowledge. Through hissenses he receives impressions from otherbeings, and works up these impressionswith his inner spiritual powers. Hethen turns his spiritual gaze away fromexternal things, and beholds himself aswell as his own activity. In so doingself-knowledge arises in him. But solong as he remains on this level of selfknowledge, he does not , in the true senseof the word, behold himself. He canstill believe that some hidden being isactive within him, whose manifestationsand effects are only that which appearsto him to be his own <activities. Butnow the moment may come in which,through an incontrovertible inner experience, it becomes clear to the man thathe experiences, in what he perceives or

CARDI NAL NICHOLAS OF CUSA 161

feels within himself, not the manifestationor effect of any hidden power or being,but this very being itself in its mostessential and intimate form. Then hecan say to himself: In a certain way Ifind all other things ready given, and Imyself, standing apart from and outsideof them, add to them whatever thespirit has to tell about them. But whatI thus creatively add to the things inmyself, therein do I myself live; that ismyself, my very own being. But whatis that which speaks there in the depthsof my spirit? It is the knowledge whichI have acquired of the things of theworld. But in this knowledge therespeaks no longer an effect, a manifestat ion ; that wh ich speaks expresses itselfwholly, holding back nothing of whatit contains. In this knowledge, therespeaks the world in all its immediacy.

II

162 MYSTICS OF TH E RENAISSA CE

But I have acquired thi s knowledge ofthings and of myself, as one thing amongother things. From out my own beingI myself speak, and the things, too,speak.

Thus, in truth, I am giving utteranceno longer only to my own being ; I am alsogiving utt erance to the being of thingsthemselves. My" ego " is the form, theorgan in which the things express themselves about themselves. I have gainedthe experience that in myself I experiencemy own essent ial being; and this experience expands itself in me to the

. \

further one that III myself and throughmyself the All-Being Itself expressesItself, or in other words, knows Itself.I can now no longer feel myself as athing among other things ; I can now onlyfeel myself as a form in which the AllBeing lives out Its own life.

• ·C' I >'·d t'\' M/I lit


It is thus only natural that one andthe same man should have two mod esof knowing. Judging by the facts of thesenses, he is a thing among other things,and , in so far as he is that, he gains forhimself a knowledge of these things; butat any moment he can acquire the higherexperience that he is really the form inwhich the All-Being beholds Itself. Thenman transforms himself from a thingamong other things into a form of theAll-Being-and , along with himself, theknowledge of things transforms itselfinto the expression of the very being ofthings. But as a matter of fact thistransformation can only be accomplishedthrough man. That which is mediatedin the higher knowledge does not existas long as this higher knowledge itselfis not present. Man becomes only areal being in the creation of this high er


knowledge ; and only through man'shigher knowledge can things also bringtheir being forth into real exist ence.

If, therefore, we demand that manshall add noth ing to things through hisinner knowledge, but merely give expression to whatever already exists inthe things outside of himself, that wouldreally amount to a complete abnegationof all higher knowledge. From the factthat man, in respect of his sensible life,is merely one thing among others, andthat he only attains to the higher knowledge when he himself accomplishes withhimself, as a being of the senses, thetransformation into a higher being, itfollows that he can never replace theone kind of knowledge by the other .His spiritual life consists, on the contrary,in a ceaseless oscillation between thesetwo poles of knowledge-between know-

• I tr I


ing and seeing. If he shuts himself offfrom the seeing, he abandons the realnature of things: if he seeks to shuthimself off from sense-perception, hewould shut out from himself the thingswhose nature he seeks to know. It isthese very same things which revealthemselves alike in the lower knowingand the higher seeing; only in the onecase they reveal themselves accordingto their outer appearance; in the otheraccording to their inner being. Thus itis not due to the things themselves that,at a certain stage, they appear only asexternal things; but their doing so isdue to the fact that man must first ofall raise and transform himself t o thelevel upon which the things cease to beexternal and outside.

In the light of these considerations,some of the views which natural science


has developed during the nineteenthcentury appear for the first time in theright light. The supporters of theseviews tell us that we hear, see, and touchthe objects of the physical world throughour senses. The eye, for instance, transmits to us a phenomenon of light, acolour. Thus we say that a body emitsred light, when with the help of theeye we experience the sensation "red."But the eye can give us this same sensation in other cases also. If the eyeballis struck or pressed upon, or if an electricspark is allowed to pass through thehead, the eye has a sensation of light.

It is thus evident that even in thecases in which we have the sensation ofa body emitting red light, somethingmay really be happening in that bodywhich has no sort of resemblance to thecolour we sensate. Whatever may be

CARDI AL NICHO LAS OF CUSA 167

actually happening "outside of us " inspace, so long as what happens is capableof 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 constitutedin a part icular manner. 'What happensoutside in space, remains outside of us;we know only the effect s which theexternal happenings call up in us. H ermann Helmholtz (1821- 1893) has givena clearly outlined expression to t histhought:

"Our sensa tions are simply effect swhich are produced in our organs byexternal causes, and the manner in whichsuch an effect will show itself depends,natura lly enough, altogether upon thekind of apparatus upon which the act iont akes place. In so far as the qualityof our sensation gives us information as


to the peculiar nature of the externalaction which produces the sensation, sofar can the sensation be regarded as asign or symbol of this external action,but not as an image or reproduction ofit. For we expect in a picture somekind of resemblance to the object itrepresents ; thus in a statue, resemblanceof form; in a drawing, resemblance inthe perspective projection of the fieldof view; in a painting, resemblance ofcolour in addition. A symbol, however, is not required to have any sortof resemblance to that which it symbolises. The necessary connection between the object and the symbol islimited to this : that the same objectcoming into action under the same cond itions shall call up the same symbol,and that therefore different symbolsshall always correspond to different ob-

I ' lif


jects. When berries of a certain kindin ripening produce together red colouration and sugar, then red colour and asweet taste will always find themselvestogether in our sensation of berries ofthis form." r

Let us follow out step by step the lineof thought which this VIew makes itsown. I t is assumed that somethinghappens outside of me in space; thisproduces an effect upon my sense-organs;and my nervous system conducts theimpression thus made to my brain.There another occurrence is broughtabout. I experience the sensation "red."Now follows the assertion: therefore thesensation "red" is not outside, not ex-

' Cp. Helmholt z, Die T hatsachcn der W ahrnehmu ng,p. 12 et seq. I have characterised this kind of conceptionin detail in my Ph ilosophic der Freiheit , Berlin, 1894, an din my lVelt- und Lebensanschcuungen i m N eunz chutenJa hrhundert , vol. ii., p. i., et c.


ternal t o me; it is in me. All our sensations are merely symbols or signs ofexternal occurrences of whose real qualitywe know nothing. We live and move inour sensations and know nothing of theirorigin. In the spirit of this line ofthought, it would thus be possible toassert that if we had no eyes , colourwould not exist; for then there would benothing to translate this, to us, whollyunknown external happening into thesensation "red."

For many people this line of t houghtpossesses a curious attra ction; butnevertheless it originates in a completemisconception of the fact s under consideration. (Were it not that many ofthe present day scientists and philosophers are blinded even to absurdityby this line of thought , one would needto say less about it. But, as a matter


of fact, this blindness has ru ined in manyrespects the thinking of the present day.)In truth, since man is but one object orthing among other things, it naturallyfollows that if he is to have any experienceof them at all, they must make an impression upon him somehow or other.Something that happens outside theman must cause something to happenwithin him, if in his visual field the sensat ion "red " is to make its appearance.

The whole question turns upon this:'Wha t is without ? what within ? Outsideof him something happens in space andt ime. But within there is undoubtedlya similar occurrence. For in the eyeth ere occurs such a process, which manifests itself to the brain when I perceivethe colour " red ." This process whichgoes on " inside " me, I cannot perceivedirectly , any more than I can directly

17 2 MYSTICS OF THE RENAI SSANCE

perceive the wave motions "outside "which the physicist conceives of asanswering to the colour "red." Butreally it is only in this sense that I canspeak of an "inside" and an "outside "at all. Only on the plane of sense-perception can the opposit ion between"outside" and "inside" hold good .

The recognition of this leads me toassume the exist ence "outside" of aprocess in space and time, alth.ough Ido not directly perceive it at all . Andthe same recognition further leads meto postulate a similar process withinmyself , although I cannot directly perceive that either . But, as a matter offact, I habitually postulat e analogousoccurrences in space and time in ordinarylife which I do not directly perceive ; as,for instance, when I hear p iano-playingnext door, and assume that a human being

C f·

CARDINAL N ICHOLAS OF CUSA 173

III space is seated at the piano and isplaying up on it. And my conception,when I speak of processes happeningoutside of, and within me, is just thesame. I assume that these processes havequa lities analogous to those of the processes which do fall within the provinceof my senses, only that, because ofcertain reasons, they escape my directperception.

If I were to attempt to deny tothese processes all the qualities whichmy senses show me in the domains ofspace and time, I should in reality andin truth be trying to think somethingnot unlike the famous knife without

/'

a handle, . whose blade was wanting.Therefore, I can only say that space andt ime processes take place " outside"me; these bring about space and timeprocesses "within" me; and bot h are


necessary if the sensat ion "red" is toappear in my field of vision. And, III

so far as this "red" is not in space andtime, I shall seek for it equally in vain,whether I seek "without" or "within"myself. Those scientists and philosophers who cannot find it "outside,"ought not to want to find it "inside "either. For it is not" inside," in exactlythe same sense in which it is not "outside." To declare that the total contentof that which the sense-world presentsto us is but an inner world of sensationor feeling , and then to endeavour to t ackon something " external" or "outside"to it, is a wholly impossible conception.

H ence, we must not speak of "red ,""sweet," "hot," etc ., as being symbols, orsigns, which as such are only aroused within us, and to which" outside" of us something totally different corresponds. For

l \' 'It


that which is really set going within us,as the effect of some external happening,is something altogether other than whatappears in the field of our sensations.If we want to call that which is withinus a symbol, then we can say: Thesesymbols make their appearance withinour organism, in order to mediate to usthe perceptions which, as such, in theirimmediacy , are neither within nor outside of us , but belong, on the contrary,to that common world , of which my" exte rnal" world and my " internal"world are only parts. In order to beab le to grasp this common world, I must,it is true, raise myself to that higherplane of knowledge, for which an "inner"and an " oute r " no longer exist. (Iknow quite well that people who pridethemse lves on the gospel that our ent ireworld of experience builds itself up out

J76 MYSTICS OF THE RE NAISSANCE

of sensations and feelings of unknownorigin will look contemptously uponthese remarks ; as, for instance, Dr.Erich Adikes in his book, Kant contraHaeckel, observes condescendingly: "Atfirst people like Haeckel and thousandsof his type philosophise gaily awaywithout troubling themselves abouttheory of knowledge or critical selfreflection." Such gentlemen have noinkling of how cheap their own theoriesof knowledge are. They suspect thelack of critical self-reflection only inothers. Let us leave to them their"wisdom.")

Nicholas of Cusa expresses some verytelling thoughts bearing directly upon thisvery point. The clear and distinct wayin which he holds apart the lower andthe higher knowledge enables him, onthe one side, to arr ive at a full and corn-

CAR DINAL NICHOLAS OF CUSA 177

plete recogn iti on of the fact that manas a sense-being can only have in himselfprocesses which, as effects, must necessarily be altogether unlike the corresponding external processes; while, onthe other side, it guards him againstconfusing the inner processes with thefacts which make their appearance inthe field of our perceptions, and which,in their immediacy, are neither outsidenor inside, but altogether transcend thisopposition of "in" and "out."

But Nicholas was hampered in thethorough carrying through of these ideasby his "priestly garments." So we seehow he makes a fine beginning withthe progress from "knowing" to " not knowing." At the same time we mustalso note that in the domain of the higherknowledge, or "ignorance," he unfoldspract ically nothing but the content of

1 2


the theological teaching which the Scholastics also give us. Certainly he knowshow to expound this theological contentin a most able manner. H e presents uswith t eachings about Providence, Christ ,the creation of the world, man 's salvation,the moral life, which are kept thoroughlyin harmony with dogmatic Christianity.It would have been in accordance withhis mental start ing point, to say : I haveconfidence in human nature that afterhaving plunged deeply into the scienceof things in all directions, it is capableof transforming from within it self this"knowing" into a " not -knowing," insuch wise that the highest insight shallbring satisfaction. I n that case, hewould not simply have accepted thetraditional ideas of the soul, immortality , salva t ion , God, creation, theTrinity , and so forth, as he actually


did, but he would have represented hisown.

But Nicholas personally was, however,so saturated with the conceptions ofChrist ianity that he might well believehimself to have awakened in himself a"not -knowing " of his own, while yethe was merely bringing to light thetraditional views in which he was broughtup. But he stood upon the verge of aterrible precipice in the spiritual lifeof man. He was a scientific man. Nowscience, primarily, estranges us from theinnocent harmony in which we live withthe world so long as we abandon ourselves to a purely naive attitude towardslife. In such an attitude to life, wedimly feel our connection with the world whole.

vVe are beings like others, form inglinks in the chain of Nature 's workings.


But with knowledge we separate ourselvesoff from this whole; we create within usa mental world, wherewith we standalone and isolated over against Nature.We have become enriched; but our richesare a burden which we bear with difficulty; for it weighs primarily upon ourselves alone. And we must now, byour own strength, find the way backagain to Nature. We have to recognisethat we ourselves must now fit ourwealth into the stream of world activities,just as previously Nature herself hadfitted in our poverty. All evil demonslie in wait for man at this point. Hisstrength can easily fail him. Insteadof himself accomplishing this fitting in ,he will, if his strength thus fails, seekrefuge in some revelation coming fromwithout, which frees him again from hisloneliness, which leads back once more

L 'tu« t M '( sott

CAR DINAL NICHOLAS OF CUSA f R I

the knowledge that he feels a burden ,into the very womb of being, into theGodhead. Like N icholas of Cusa , hewill believe that he is travelling his ownroad; and yet in reality he will be onlyfollowing the path which his own spiritualevolut ion has pointed out for him.

Now there are--in the main-threeroads which one can follow, when onceone has reached the point at whichNicholas had arrived: the one is positivefaith, forcing itself upon us from without ; the second is despair; one standsalone with one's burden, and feels thewhole universe tottering with oneself;the third road is the development of thedeepest, most inward powers of man.Confidence, trust in the world must beone of our guides upon this third path ;courage, to follow that confidence whithersoever it may lead us, must be the other.

AGRIPPA VON NETTESHEIM ANDTHEOPHRASTUS PARACELSUS

BOTH H einrich Cornelius Agrippa von

Nettesheim (1487 - 1535) and Theophrastus Paracelsus (1493-1541) followedthe same road along which points Nicholas of Cusa's way of conceiving things.They devoted themselves to the studyof Nature, and sought to discover herlaws by all the means in their power andas thoroughly as possible. In this knowledge of Nature , they saw the true basisof all higher knowledge. T hey stroveto develop this higher knowledge fromwithin the science or knowledge of Natureby bringing that knowledge to a newbirth in the spirit.

18%

.,

NETTESHEIM AND PARACELSUS 183

Agrippa von Nettesheim led a muchvaried life. He sprang from a noblefamily and was born in Cologne. Heearly studied medicine and law, andsought to obtain clear insight into theprocesses of Nature in the way whichwas then customary within certain circlesand societies, or even among isolatedinvestigators, who studiously kept secretwhatever of the knowledge of Naturethey discovered. For these purposeshe went repeatedly to Paris, to Italy, andto England, and also visited the famousAbbot Trithemius of Sponheim in Wurzburg. He taught at various times inlearned institutions, and here and thereentered the service of rich and distinguished people, at whose disposal heplaced his abilities as a statesman and aman of science. If the services that herendered are not always described by his

184 MYSTICS OF THE RENAI SSANCE

biographers as unobjectionable, if it IS

said that he made money under the pretence of understanding secret arts andconferring benefits on people thereby,there stands against this his unmistakable,unresting impulse to acquire honestlythe entire knowledge of his age, and todeepen this knowledge in the directionof a higher cognition of the world.

vVe may see in him very plainlythe endeavour to attain to a clear anddefinite attitude towards natural scienceon the one hand, and to the higher knowledge on the other. But he only canattain to such an at t itude who is possessed of a clear insight as to the respective roads which lead to one and to theother kind of knowledge. As t rue as itis on the one hand that natural sciencemust eventually be raised into the regionof the spirit, if it is t o pass over into

I 'IZ I DV /lll I »sott

NETTESHE IM AND PARACELSUS 185

higher knowledge; so, also, it is true onthe other, that this natural science must,to begin with, remain upon its own specialground, if it is to yield the right basisfor the attainment of a higher level.The "spirit in Nature" exists only forspirit. So surely as Nature in this senseis spiritual, so surely too is there nothing

in Nature, of all that is perceived by mybodily organs, which is immediatelyspiritual. .There exists nothing spiritualwhich can appear to my eye as spiritual.

Therefore, I must not seek for the spiritas such in Nature; but that is what I amdoing when I interpret any occurrencein the external world immediately asspiritual ; when, for instance, I ascribeto a plant a soul which is supposed to beonly remotely analogous to that of man .Further, I again do the same when Iascribe to spirit itself an existence in


space and time : as , for instance, when Iassert of the human soul that it continuesto exist in time without the body , butyet after the manner of a body ; or again ,when I even go so far as to believe that,under any sort of conditions or arrangements perceivable by the senses, thespirit of a dead person can show itself.

Spiritualism, which makes this mistake,only shows thereby that it has not attained to a true conception of the spiritat all, but is still bent upon directly andimmediately" seeing" the spirit in something grossly sensible. I t mistakesequally both the real nature of the sensible and also that of the spirit. Itde-spiritualises the ordinary world ofsense, which hourly passes before oureyes, in order to give the name of spiritimmediately to something rare, surprising, uncommon. It fails to under-


stand that that which lives as the " spiritin nature" reveals itself to him who isable to perceive spirit in the collisionof two elastic balls, for instance; and notonly in occurrences which are strikingfrom their rarity, and which cannot allat once be grasped in their naturalsequence and connection.

But the spiritist further drags thespirit down into a lower sphere. Insteadof explaining something that happens inspace, and that he perceives through hissenses only, in terms of forces and beingswhich in their turn are spacial and perceptible to the senses, he resorts to"spirits," which he thereby places exactlyon a level with the things of the senses.At the very root of such a way of viewingthings, there lies a lack of the power ofspiritua l apprehension. We are unableto perceive spiritual things spiritua lly ;


we therefore satisfy our craving for thespiritual with mere beings perceptibleto the senses. Their own inner spiritreveals to such men nothing spiritual;and therefore they seek for the sp iritualthrough the senses. As they see cloudsflying through the air, so they wouldfain see spirits hastening along. Agrippavon Nettesheim fought for a genuinescience of Nature, which shall explainthe phenomena of Nature, not by meansof spirits phenomenalising in the worldof the senses, but by seeing in Nature onlythe natural, and in the spirit only thespiritual.

Of course, Agrippa will be entire.ymisunderstood if one compares his naturalscience with that of later centuries whichdispose of wholly different experiences.In such a comparison , it might easilyseem that he was still actually and

NE TTESHEIM AND PARACELSUS 189

entirely referring to the direct action ofspirits , things which only depend uponnatural connections or upon mistakenexperience. Such a wrong is done tohim by Moriz Carriere when he says,not in any malicious sense, it is true:

"Agrippa gives a huge list of thingswhich belong to the Sun, the Moon, thePlanets and the fixed stars , and receiveinfluences from them; for instance: tothe Sun are related Fire, Blood, Laurel,Gold, Chrysolite; they confer the giftsof the Sun: Courage, Cheerfulness, andLight.. " Animals have a naturalsense, which, higher than human understanding, approaches the spirit of prophecy. . " Men can be bewitched tolove and hate, to sickness and health.T hieves can be bewitched so that theycannot steal at some particular place,merchants , that they cannot do business,

r


mills, that they cannot work, lightningflashes, that they cannot strike. This isbrought about through drinks, salves, images, rings, incantations; the blood ofhyenas or basilisks is adapted to such apurpose-it reminds one of Shakespeare'switches' cauldron." No; it does notremind one of that, if one understandsAgrippa aright. He believed - it goeswithout saying-in many facts which inhis time everybody regarded as unquestionable. But we still do the same to-day.Or do we imagine that future centurieswill not relegate much of what we now regard as 11 undoubted fact" to the lumberroom of "blind" superstition?

I am convinced that in our knowledgeof facts there has been a real progress.When once the " fact " that the earth isround had been discov ered , all previousconjectures were banished into the do-

NE TTESHE IM AN D PARACELSUS 191

main of "superstition "; and the sameholdsgood of certain truths of astronomy ,b iology , etc. The doctrine of naturalevolution constitutes an advance, as compared with all previous "theories ofcreation," similar to that marked bythe recognition of the roundness of theearth as contrasted with all previousspeculations as to it s form. Nevertheless, I am vividly conscious that in ourlearned scient ific works and treatisesthere is to be found many a ,(fact"which will seem to future centuries to bejust as little of a fact as much that Paracelsus and Agrippa maintain; but thereally imp ortan t point is not what theyregarded as " fact ," but how, in whatspirit , they interpreted their ,(facts."

In Agrippa's time, there was littleunderstanding or sympathy for the"natural magic" he represented, which

J92 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE

sought in Nature the natural- thespiritual only in the spirit; men clungto the "supernatural magic," whichsought the spiritual in the realm of thesensible, and which Agrippa combated.Therefore the Abbot Trithemius ofSponheim was right in giving him theadvice to communicate his views onlyas a secret teaching to a few chosenpupils who could rise to a similar ideaof Nature and spirit, because one "givesonly hay to oxen and not sugar as tosinging birds." It may be that Agrippahims elf owed to this same Abbot hisown correct point of view. In hisSteganography, Trithemius has produceda book in which he handled with themost subtle irony that mode of conceiving things which confuses nature withspirit.

In this book he apparently speaks of

I I , ~ ., Dy I~ le -{ if i

NETTESHEIM AND PARACE LSUS 193

nothing but supernatural occurrences.Anyone reading it as it stands mustbelieve that the author is t alking of conjurations of spirits, of spirits flying throughthe air, and so on . If, however, onedrops certain words and letters underthe table, there remain-as WolfgangErnst Heidel proved in the year 1676letters which, combined into words, describe purely natural occurrences. (Inone case, for instance, in a formula ofcon juration , one must drop the firstand last words entirely, and then cancelfrom the remainder the second , fourth,sixth , and so on . In the words leftover, one must again cancel the first,third, fifth letters and so on. One nextcombines what is then left into words ;and the conjuration formula resolvesit self into a purely natural communicat ion .)

'3


How difficult it was for Agrippa towork himself free from the prejudices ofhis time and to rise to a pure perceptionis proved by the fact that he did notallow his "Occult Philosophy" (Philosophia Occulta) , already written in 1SIO,

to appear before the year 1531, becausehe considered it unripe. Further evidence of this fact is given by his work" On the Vanity of the Sciences" (De Vanitate Scientiarumj in which he speakswith bitterness of the scientific andother activities of his time. He therestates quite clearly that he has only withdifficulty wrenched himself free from thephantasy which beholds in external actions immediate spiritual processes, III

exte rnal facts prophetic indications ofthe future, and so forth.

Agrippa advances to the higher knowledge in three stages. He treats as the

.r

NETTESHEIM AND PARACEL SUS 195

first stage the world as it is given forthe senses, with its substances, its physical, chemical and other forces. Hecalls Nature, in so far as it is looked aton this level, "elementary Nature. " Onthe second stage, one contemplates theworld as a whole in its natural interconnection, as it orders things accordingto measure, number, weight , harmony,and so forth. The first stage proceedsfrom one thing to the next nearest. Itseeks for the causes of an occurrence inits immediate surroundings. The secondstage regards a single occurrence inconnection with the entire universe.It carries through the idea that everything is subject to the influence of allother things in the entire world-whole.In its eyes this world-whole appears asa vast harmony, in which each individualitem is a member. Agrippa terms the


world, regarded from this point of view,the" ast ra l" or " heavenly" world . Thethird stage of knowing is that whereinthe spirit, by plunging deep into itself,perceives immediately the spiritual, theRoot-Being of the world. Agrippa herespeaks of the world, of soul and spirit.

The views which Agrippa developsabout the world, and the relation of manto the world, present themselves to usin the case of Theophrastus Paracelsus ,in a similar manner, only in more perfected form. It is better, therefore, toconsider them in connection with thelatter.

Paracelsus characterises himself aptly,when he writes under his portrait:"None shall be another 's slave, who forhimself can remain alone ." Hi s wholeatt itude towards knowledge is given inthese words. He st rives everywhere to


go back himself to the deepest foundations of natural knowledge, in order torise by his own strength to the loftiestregions of cognition. As Physician, hewill not, like his contemporaries, simplyaccept what the ancient investigators,who then counted as authorities,-Galenor Avicenna, for instance, asserted longago; he is resolved to read for himselfdirectly in the book of Nature. "ThePhysician must pass Nature's examination, which is the world, and all itsongms. And the very same thatNature teaches him, he must commandto his wisdom, but seek for nothing inhis wisdom , only and alone in the lightof Nature." He shrinks from nothing,in order to learn to know Nature andher workings in all directions. For thispurpose he made journeys to Sweden,Hungary , Spain, Portugal , and the East.

L


He can truly say of himself: "I havefollowed the Art at the risk of my life,and have not been ashamed to learnfrom wanderers, executioners and sheepshearers. My doctrine was tested moreseverely ~han silver in poverty, fears,wars and hardships."

What has been handed down by ancientauthorities has for him no value, for hebelieves that he can attain to the rightview only if he himself experiences theupward climb from the knowledge ofNature to the highest insight. Thisliving, personal experience puts into hismouth the proud utterance: "He whowill follow truth, must come into mymonarchy. . . . After me; not I afteryou, Avicenna, Rhases, Galen, Mesur!After me; not I after you, 0 ye of Paris,ye of Montpellier, ye of Swabia, ye ofMeissen, ye of Cologne, ye of Vienna and

'( . ,-' f 11" rosott

NETTESHEIM AN D PARACELSUS 199

of what lies on the Danube and theRhine; ye islands in the sea, thou Italy,thou Dalmatia , thou Athens, thou Greek,thou Arab , thou Israelite ; after me, notI after you! Mine is the Monarchy. "

I t is easy to misunderstand Paracelsusbecause of his rough exterior, whichsomet imes conceals a deep earnestnessbehind a jest . Does he not himself say :11 By nature I am not sub tly woven, norbrought up on figs and wheat-bread, buton cheese, milk and ry e-bread , whereforeI may well be ru de with the over-cleanand superfine ; for those who were broughtup in soft clothing and we who werebred in pine needles do not easily understand one another. When in myself Imean to be kindly, I must therefore oftenbe taken as rude. How can I not bestrange to one who has never wanderedin the sun?"


In his book about Winkelmann, Goethehas described the relation of man toNature in the following beautiful sentence: "When the healthy nature ofman acts as a whole; when he feels himself as one with a great, beautiful, nobleand worthy whole; when the sense ofharmonious well-being gives him a pureand free delight; then would the Universe,if it could be conscious of its own feeling,burst forth in joy at having attained itsgoal, and contemplate with wonderingadmiration the summit of its own becoming and being." With a feelingsuch as finds expression in these sentences, Paracelsus is simply saturated.From out of its depths the riddle ofhumanity takes shape for him. Let uswatch how this happens in Paracelsus'ssense.

At the outset, the road by which

, I .I


Nature has travelled to attain her loftiestaltitude is hidden from man's powerof comprehension. She has climbed, indeed, to the summit; but the summitdoes not proclaim: I feel myself as thewhole of Nature; it proclaims, on th econtrary: I feel myself as this single,separated human being. That which inreality is an achievement of the wholeuniverse, feels itself as a separated,isolated being, standing alone by itself.This indeed is th e true being of man,viz., that he must needs feel himself tobe something quite different from what,in ultimate analysis, he really is. Andif that be a contradiction, then mustman be called a contradiction come tolife.

Man is the universe in his ownparticular way; he regards his onenesswith the universe as a duality: he is

2 02 l\IYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE

the very same that the universe is; buthe is the universe as a repetition, asa single being. This is the contrastwhich Paracelsus feels as the Microcosm(Man) and the Macrocosm (Universe).Man, for him, is the universe in miniature. That which makes man regardhis relationship to the world in this way,that is his spirit. This spirit appearsas if bound to a single being, to a singleorganism: and this organism belongs, bythe very nature of its whole being, to themighty stream of the universe. It isone member, one link in that whole,having its very existence only in relationwith all the other links or membersthereof. But spirit appears as an outcome of this single, separated organism,and sees itself at the outset as bound uponly with that organism. It tears loosethis organism from the mother earth

NETTE SHEIl\1 AN D PARACELSUS 2 0 3

out of which it has grown. So, forParacelsus, a deep-seated connection between man and the universe lies hiddenin the basic foundations of being, aconnection which is hidden through thepresence of "spirit." That spirit whichleads us to higher insight by makingknowledge possible, and leads on thisknowledge to a new birth on a higherlevel-this has, as its first result for usmen, to veil from us our own onenesswith the whole.

Thus the nature of man resolves itselffor Paracelsus in the first place into threefactors: our sensuous-physical nature,our organism which appears to us as anatural being among other natura l beingsand is of like nature with all other naturalbeings; our concealed or hidden nature,which is a link in the chain of the wholeuniverse, and therefore is not shut up


within the organism or limited to it,but radiates and receives the workingsof energy upon and from the entireuniverse; and our highest nat ure, ourspirit, which lives its life in a purelyspiritual manner. The firs t factor inman's nature Paracelsus calls the "elementary body " ; the second, the etherea lheavenly, or "astral body "; and thethird he names "the SouL"

Thus in the " ast ral " phenomena,P aracelsus recognises an interm ediatestage between the purely ph ysical andthe properly spiritual or soul-phenomena.Therefore these astral activit ies will comeinto view when the spirit or soul, whichveils or conceals the natural basis ofour being, suspends its activity. In thedream-world we see the simplest phenomena of this realm. The pictureswhich hover before us in dreams, with


their remarkably significant connect ionwith occurrences in our environmentand with stat es of our inner nature, areproducts of our natural basis or rootbeing, which are obscured by the brighterlight of the soul. For example, when achair falls over beside my bed and Idream a whole drama ending with a shotfired in a duel; or when I have palpit ation of the heart and dream of aboiling cauldron, we can see that inthese dreams natural operations cometo light which are full of sense andmeaning , and disclose a life lying between the purely organic functions andt he concept-forming activity which iscarried on in the full, clear consciousnessof the spirit. Connected with this regionare all the phenomena belonging to thedomain of hypnotism and suggest ion ;and in the lat ter are we not comp elled

206 MYSTI CS OF THE RENAISSANCE

to recognise an interaction between human beings, which points to some connection or relation between beings inNature, which is normally hidden by thehigher activity of the mind ? From thisstarting point we can reach an understanding of what Paracelsus meant bythe " astral" body. It is the sum totalof those natural operations under whoseinfluence we stand, or may in specialcircumstances come to stand, or whichproceed from us, without our souls orminds coming into consideration in connection with them, but which yet cannotbe included under the concept of purelyphysical phenomena. The fact thatParacelsus reckons as truths in this domain things which we doubt to-day,does not come into the question, fromthe point of view which I have alreadydescribed.

NE TTESHEI11 AN D PARACELSUS 2 0 7

Starting from the basis of these viewsas to the nature of man , Paracelsusdivides him into seven factors or principles, which are the same as those wealso find in the wisdom of the ancientEgyptians, among the Neoplatonists andin the Kabbalah. In the first place,man is a ph ysical -bodily being, andtherefore subject to the same laws aseve ry other body . He is, in this respect,therefore, a purely "elementary " body.The purely physical-bodily laws combineinto an organic life-process, and Paracelsus denotes this organic sequence oflaw by the terms" arclueus " or " spiritus

vitce ." Next , the organic rises into aregion of phenomena resembling thespiritua l, but which are not yet properlyspiritua l, and these he classifies as " ast ral " phenomena. From amidst theseastral phenomena, the funct ions of the


It 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 thet t human soul" or t, reasoning soul" be

comes alive in him. He sinks himselfdeep into his own mental productions,and learns to recognise" spirit" as such,and thus he has risen at length to thelevel of the "spiritual sou1." Finally,he must come to recognise that inthis spiritual soul he is experiencing theultimate basis of universal being; thespiritual soul ceases to be individual, tobe separated. Then arises the knowledgeof which Eckhart spoke when he felt nolonger that he was speaking withinhimself, but that in him the Root-Beingwas uttering Itself. The conditi on hascome about in which the All-Spir it in

I Cll' hll m


man beholds Itself. Paracelsus hasstamped the feeling of this condition withthe simple words: "And that is a greatthing whereon to dwell: there is naughtin heaven or upon earth that is not inMan. And God who dwelleth in Heaven,He also is in Man."

With these seven principles of humannature, Paracelsus aims at expressingnothing else than the facts of inner andouter experience. The fact remainsunquestioned that, what for human experience subdivides itself into a multiplicity of seven factors , is in higherreality a unity. But the higher insightexists just for the very purpose of exhibiting the unity in all that appears as multiplicity to man, owing to his bodily andspiritual organisation. On the level ofthe highest insight, Paracelsus st rives tothe utmost to fuse the unitary Root-


Being of the world with his own spirit.But he knows that man can only cogniseNature in it s spirituality, when he entersinto immediate intercourse with thatNature. Man does not grasp Natureby peopling it from within himself witharb it rarily assumed entities; but by accepting and valuing it as it is, as Nature.Paracelsus therefore does not seek forGod or for spirit in Nature; but Nature,just as it comes before his eyes, is forhim wholly, immediately divine. Mustone then first ascr ibe to the plant a soulafter the k ind of a human soul, in orderto find the spiritual?

Hence Paracelsus explains to himselft he development of things, so far as thatis possible with the scientific means ofhis age, altogether in such wise that heconceives this development as a sensiblenatural process. He makes all things

t l.r


to proceed from the root-matter, theroot-water (Yliaster). And he regardsas a further natural process the separation of the root-matter (which he alsocalls the great Limbus) into the fourelements: Water, Earth, Fire and Air.When he says that the "Divine Word"called forth the multiplicity of beingsfrom the root-matter, one must understand this also only in such wise as perhaps in more recent natural science onemust understand the relationship ofForce to Matter. A "Spirit," in amatter-of-fact sense, is not yet present atthis stage. This jj Spirit" is no matter

of-fact basis of the natural process, buta matter-of-fact result of that process.

This Spirit does not create Nature,but develops itself out of Nature. Nota few statements of Paracelsus might beinterpreted in the opposite sense. Thus


when he says: "There is nothing whichdoes not possess and carry with it alsoa spirit hidden in it and that lives notwithal. Also, not only has that life,which stirs itself and moves, as men, animals, the worms in the earth, the birdsin the sky and the fishes in water, butall bodily and actual things as well ."

But in such sayings Paracelsus onlyaims at warning us against that superficial contemplation of Nature whichfancies it can exhaust the being of athing with a couple of "stuck-up" concepts , according to Goethe's apt expression. He a ims not at putting intothings some imaginary being, but atset t ing in motion all the powers of manto bring out that which in actual factlies in the thing.

What matters is not to let oneself bemisled by the fact that Paracelsus ex-


presses himself in the spirit of his time .It is far more importan t to recognisewhat things really hovered before h ismind when, looking upon Nature, heexpresses his ideas in the forms of expression proper to his age. He ascribesto man, for instance, a dual flesh, thatis, a dual bodily constitution. "Theflesh must also be understood, that it isof two kinds, namely the flesh that comesfrom Adam and the flesh which is notfrom Adam . The flesh from Adam is agross flesh, for it is earthly and nothingbesides flesh , that can be bound andgrasped like wood and stone. The otherflesh is not from Adam, it is a subtl eflesh and cannot be bound or grasped ,for it is not made of earth ." What isthe flesh that is from Adam? It isevery thing that man has received throughnatural development , everything, there-


fore, that has passed on to him byheredity. To that is added, whateverman has acquired for himself in hisintercourse with the world around himin the course of time.

The modern scientific conceptions ofinherited characteristics and those acquired by adaptation easily emerge fromthe above-cited thought of Paracelsus.The" more subtle flesh" that makes mancapable of his intellectual activities, hasnot existed from the beginning in man.Man was « gross flesh" like the animal,a flesh that" can be bound and graspedlike wood and stone." In a scientificsense, therefore, the soul is also an acquired characteristic of the " gross flesh."What the scientist of the nineteenthcentury has in his mind's eye when hespeaks of the factors inherited from theanimal world, is just what Paracelsus

I El

NETTESHEIM AND PARACELSUS 2 15

has in view when he uses the expression,"the flesh that comes from Adam ."

Naturally I have not the least intentionof blurring the difference that existsbetween a scientist of the sixteenth andone of the nineteenth century. It was,indeed, this latter century which for thefirst time was able to see, in the fullscientific sense, the phenomena of livingbeings in such a connection that theirnatural relationship and actual descent,right up to man, stood out clearly beforeone's eyes . Science sees only a naturalprocess where Linnreus in the eighteenthcentury saw a spiritual process andcharacterised it in the words: "Thereare counted as many species of living

./

beings, as there were created differentforms in the beginning. " While thusin Linnreus's time, the Spirit had stillto be transferred into the spac ial world

t

21 6 :-'1YSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE

and have assigned to it the task of spiritually generating the forms of life, or"creating" them: the natural science ofthe nineteenth century could give toNature what belonged to Nature, andto Spirit what belonged to Spirit. ToNature is even assigned the task of explaining her own creations; and theSpirit can plunge into itself there, wherealone it is to be found, in the inner beingof man.

But although in a certain sense Paracelsus thinks according to the spirit ofhis age, yet he has grasped the relation,ship of man to Nature in a profoundmanner, especially in relation to theidea of Evolution, of Becoming. He didnot see in the Root-Being of the universesomething which in any sense is thereas a finished thing , but he grasped theDivine in the process of Becoming.


Thereby he was enabled truly to ascribeto man a self-creative activity. Forif the divine root of being is, as it were,given once for all, then there can be noquestion of any truly creative activityIII man. I t is not man, living in time,who then creates, but it is God, who isfrom Eternity, that creates. But forParacelsus there is no such God fromEternity. For him there is only aneternal happening, and man is one linkin this eternal happening. What manforms , was previously in no sense existent.What man creates, is, as he creates it, anew, original creation . If it is to becalled divine, it can only be so-called int he sense in which it is a human creation.T herefore Paracelsus can assign to mana role in the building of the un iverse,which makes him a eo-architect in itscreat ion. The div ine root of being ~ is


without man, not that which it is withman.

"For nature brings nothing to light,which as such is perfect, but man mustmake it perfect." This self-creative activity of man in the building of the universeis what Paracelsus calls Alchemy. " Thisperfecting is Alchemy. Thus the Alchemist is the baker, when he bakesbread, the vintager, when he makes wine,the weaver, when he makes cloth."Paracelsus aims at being an Alchemistin his own domain as a Physician."Therefore I may well write so muchhere about Alchemy, that ye may wellunderstand it, and experience that whichit is and how it is to be understood; andnot find a stumbling-block therein thatneither Gold nor Silver shall come tothee therefrom. But have regard thereunto, that the Arcana [curative means]

L 11i'ILpu DV NlICfUSOft

NETTESHEI M AND PARACELSUS 2 ] 9

be revealed unto thee. . .. The thirdpillar of medicine is Alchemy, for thepreparation of the medicines cannotcome to pass without it, because Naturecannot be made use of without Art."

In the strictest sense, therefore, theeyes of Parace1sus are directed to Nature,in order to overhear from herself whatshe has to say ab out that wh ich shebrings forth. He seeks t o explore thelaws of chemistry, so that, in his sense,he may work as an Alchemist. He pictures to himself all bodies as compoundedout of three root-substances: Salt, Sulphur, and Mercury . What he thusnames, naturally does not coincide withthat which later chemistry solely andstrictly calls by these names ; just aslittle as that which Paracelsus conceivesof as the root-sub stance is such in thesense of our later chemist ry. Different


things are called by the same names atdifferent times. 'What the ancientscalled the four elements: Earth, Water,Air, and Fire, we still have to-day.But we call these four " elements" nolonger "elements," but states of aggregation and have for them the designations: solid, liquid, gaseous and etheric.The Earth, for instance, was for theancients not earth, but the" solid."

Again, we can clearly recognise thethree root-substances of Paracelsus incontemporary conceptions, though notin present names of like sound. ForParacelsus, dissolution in a liquid andburning are the two most importantchemical processes which he utilises.If a body be dissolved or burnt, it breaksup into its parts. Something remainsbehind as insoluble ; something dissolves,or is burnt. Wh at is left behind is to

NETTESHEIM AND PARACELSUS 2 21

him of the nature of Salt; the soluble(liquid) of the nature of Mercury ; whilehe terms Sulphur-like the part that canbe burnt.

All this, taken as relating to materialthings, may leave the man cold whocannot look out beyond such naturalprocesses; whoever seeks at all costs tograsp the spirit with his senses, willpeople these processes with all sorts ofensouling beings. He, however, who likeParacelsus knows how to regard themin connection with the whole, whichpermits its secret to become revealed inman's inner being,- he accepts them, asthe senses offer them; he does not firstre-interpret them; for just as the occurrences of Nature lie before us in theirsensible reality , so too do they , in theirown way, reveal to us the riddle ofexistence. That which through their


sensible reality they have to unveilfrom within the soul of man, stands, forhim who strives after the light of higherknowledge, far high er than all supernatural wonders that man can inventor get revealed to him about theirsuppositious "spirit." There is .no" Spirit of Nature," capable of utteringloftier truths than the mighty works ofNature herself, when our soul links itselfin friendship with that Nature and listensto the revelations of her secrets in intimate and tender intercourse. Suchfriendship with Nature was what Paracelsus sought.

VALENTINE WEIGEL AND JACOBBOEHME

IN the VIew of Paracelsus, what matt ered most was to acquire ideas aboutNature which should breathe the spiritof the higher insight that he represented.A thinker related to him, who appliedthe same mode of conceiving things tohis own nature especially , is VALENTINEWEIGEL (1533- 1588). He grew up outof Protestant theology in a like sense tot hat in which Eckhart, Tauler, and Susogrew up out of Roman Catholic theology.He has predecessors in Sebasti an Frankand Caspar Schwenckfeldt. These two,as contrasted wit h the orthodox Churchmen clinging to exter nal profession,

223


pointed downwards to the deepening ofthe inner life. For them it is not thatJesus whom the Gospels preach who isof value, but the Christ who can be bornin every man as his deeper nature, andbecome for him the Saviour from thelower life and the guide to ideal uplifting.

Weigel performed silently and humblythe duties of his office as clergyman inZschopau. It was only from the writingshe left behind, printed first in the sevent eenth century, that the world learnedanything of the significant ideas whichhad come to him about the nature ofman.'

Weigel feels himself driven to gain aclear understanding of his relation to the

'The following, from among his writ ings , may benamed: Der gtildene Griff, das i st alle Di ng oluie I rrthumbzu erkennen, oielen Hochgelehrten unbekandt, und doch alienMenschen nothsuendig zu unssen; Erkenne dich selbst; VomOrt der Welt .

WEIGEL AND BOEHME 22S

t eaching of the Church; and that leadshim on further to investigate the basicfoundations of all knowledge. Whetherman can know anything through a confession of faith, is a question as to whichhe can only give himself an account whenhe knows how man knows. Weigel startsfrom the lowest kind of knowing. Heasks himself: How do I know a sensibleobj ect , when it presents itself before me?Thence he hopes to be able to mount upwards to a point of view whence he cangive himself an account of the highestknowledge.

In cognition through the senses, theinstrument (the sense-organ) and theob ject, the "counterpart" (Gegenwurf)stand opposed. "Since in natural percepti on there must be two things, as theob ject or 'counterpart,' which is to beknown and seen by the eye ; and the eye,


or t he perceiver, which sees or kn ows theobj ect, so do thou hold over against eachother: whether t he knowledge comesforth from the object to the eye ; orwhether the judgment, or the cognition,flows out from the eye into the object." I

Weigel now says to himself: If thecognition (or knowledge) flowed fromthe "counterpart" (or thing) into theeye, then of necessity from one and thesame thing a similar and perfect cogni tion must come to all eyes. But thatis not the case, for each man sees according to the measure of his own eyes. Onlythe eyes , not the " counterpart" (orobject) can be in fault, in that variousand different conceptions are possible ofone and the same thing. To clear upthe matter, Weigel compares seeing withreading. If the book were not there, I

1 Der giddene Griff, p. 26 et seq,

t f

WEIGEL AND BOEHME 227

na turally could not read it; but it mightstill be there, and yet I could read nothingin it, if I did not understand the art ofreading. The book therefore must bethere; but, from itself it can give me notthe smallest thing; I must draw fortheverything I read from within myself.That is also the nature of sensible perception. Colour is there as the" counterpart," but it can give the eye nothingfrom out of itself. The eye must recognise, from out of itself, what colour is.As little as the content of the book is inthe reader, just so little is colour in theeye. If the content of the book were inthe reader, he would not need to read it.Yet in reading, this content does notflow out from the book, but from thereader. So is it also with the sensibleobject . What the sensible thing beforehim is; that does not flow from outside

Q2 8 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE

into the man, but from within outwards.

Starting from these thoughts, onemight say: If all knowledge flows outfrom man into the object, then one doesnot know what is in the object, but onlywhat is in man. The detailed workingout of this line of thought, brought aboutthe view of Immanuel Kant (1724-1804).1

Weigel says to himself: Even if theknowledge flows out from man, it is stillonly the being of the "counterpart" (orobject) which comes to light in this indirect way through man. As I learn thecontent of the book by reading it, andnot by my own content, so also Ilearn the colour of the "counterpart"

1 T he error in thi s line of thought will be found explained in my book, The Philosophy of Freedom, Berlin,189-1-. Here 1 mu st limit myself to mentioning tha t Valent ine Wcigel, with his simp le, rob ust way of conceivingthings, stands far high er th an Kant,

WEIGEL AND BOEHME 2 2 9

through the eye, not any colour to befound in the eye, or in myself. (ThusWeigel arrives by a road of his own at aresult that we have already encountered

in Nicholas of Cusa. Cp. pages 151-160).In this way Weigel attained to clearnessas to the 'nature of sense-perception. He

arrived at the conviction that everythingwhich external things have to tell us canonly flow forth from our own inner nature

itself. Man cannot remain passive whenhe tries to know sensible object s and

seeks merely to allow them to act uponhim; but he must assume an active at t itude, and bring forth the knowledge from

within himself. The counterpart (orobject) merely awakens the knowledgein the spirit. Man rises to higher knowledge when his spirit becomes its own" counterpart . " One can see from

sensible cognition that no cognition can


flow into man from outside. Thereforethere can be no such thing as an externalrevelation, but only an inner awakening.

As now the external counterpart waitstill there comes into its presence man, inwhom it can express its being, so too mustman wait, when he seeks to be his own"counterpart" (or object) until the knowledge of his own being shall be awakenedin him. If, in cognition through thesenses, man must assume an active attitude in order that he may bring to meetthe 11 counterpart" its own being, so inthe higher knowing, man must hold himself passive, because he is himself nowthe 11 counterpart." He must admit itsbeing into himself. Therefore the cognition of the spirit appears to him asenlightenment from above. In contrastto cognition through the senses, \iVeigeltherefore terms the higher cognition the

l t,~ I I, Jj

WEIGEL AND BOEHME 2 3 1

44 Light of Mercy ." This "Light of

Mercy" is, in reality, nothing other thanthe self-knowledge of the spirit in man,or the re-birth of knowledge on the higherlevel of beholding.

Now just as Nicholas of Cusa, in following up his road from knowing tobeholding, does not really bring aboutthe re-birth of the knowledge he hasgained, on the higher level , but only thefaith of the Church in which he wasbrought up appears deceptively beforehim as such a re-birth, so is it also the casewith Weigel. He guides himself to theright road, but loses it again in the verymoment in which he steps upon it. Hewho will travel the road that Weigelpoint s out , can regard the latter ashis guide only as far as the startingpoint.

* * *


What rings out to meet us from theworks of the Master-Shoemaker of G6rlitz, ]ACOB BOEHME (1575-1624), soundslike the joyous outburst of Nature admiring her own being upon the summitof her evolut ion. A man appears beforeus whose words have wings, woven outof the inspiring feeling of having seenknowledge shining within him as HigherWisdom. ] acob Boehme describes hisown state as Piety which strives onlyto be Wisdom, and as a Wisdom thatseeks to live only in Piety: "As I waswrestling and fighting in God's behalf, behold a wondrous light shone into my soul,such as was quite foreign to savage nature ;therein I first knew what God and manwere, and what God had to do with men."

] acob Boehme no longer feels himselfas a separated being expressing it s insights ; he feels himself as an organ of

J 'r,t· r"'/f "()f

WE IGEL AND BOEHME

the great All-Spirit, speaking m him .The limits of his personality do not appearto him as the limits of the Spirit thatspeaks from within him. This Spirit isfor him present everywhere. He knowsthat "the Sophist will blame him" whenhe speaks of the beginning of the worldand its creation: "the while I was notthereby and did not myself see it. Tohim be it said that in the essence of mysoul and body, when I was not yet theI I ,' but when I was st ill Adam's essence,I was there present and myself squanderedaway my glory in Adam."

Only in exte rnal similes is Boehmeable to indicate how the light broke forthin his inner being. When once as a boyhe finds himself on the top of a mountain, he sees above him a place wherelarge red stones seem to shut up themountain; the entrance is open and in

234 J\IYSTIC S OF THE RENAISSANCE

its depth he sees a vessel full of gold . Ashudder runs through him; and he goeson his way without touching the treasure.Later on he is apprenticed to a shoemakerin Gorlitz. A stranger steps into theshop and demands a pair of shoes.Boehme is not allowed to sell them in theabsence of his master. The strangerdeparts, but afte r a while calls the apprentice out of the shop and says to him:/l Jacob , thou art little, but thou wiltsome day become quite another man,over whom the world will break out intowonder. " In riper years , J acob Boehmesees the reflecti on of the bright sun in at in vessel: the view that thus present sitself t o him seems to him to unveil aprofound secret. Even after the impression of this appearance, he believes himself to be in possession of the key to theriddles of Nature.


He lives as a spiritual anchorite, humbly earning his living by his trade, andbetween whiles, as though for his ownrecollection, he notes down the harmonieswhich resound in his inner being when hefeels the Spirit in himself. The zealotryof priestly fervour makes life hard forthe man; he, who desires naught but toread the Scripture which the light ofhis inner nature illuminates for him, ispersecuted and tortured by those towhom only the external writ, the rigid,dogmatic confession of faith, is accessible.

One world-riddle remains as a disquieting presence in ]acob Boehme's soul,driving him on to knowledge. He believes himself to be in his spirit enfoldedin a divine harmony; but when he looksaround him, he sees discord everywherein the divine workings. To man belongst he light of Wisdom ;and yet he is exposed

236 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANC E

to error; in him lives the impulse to thegood, and yet the discord of evil soundsthroughout the whole of human development. Nature is governed by its owngreat laws; yet its harmony is disturbedby happenings of no purport, and thewarfare of the elements. How is thisdiscord in the harmonious world-whole tobe understood? This question torturesJacob Boehme. It strides into the centreof the world of his thought. He strivesto gain a view of the world as a whole,which shall include the discordan t. Forhow can a conception which leaves theactual present discord unexplained explain the world? The discord must beexplained out of the harmony, the evilout of the good itself. Let us restrictourselves, in speaking of these things, t othe good and the evil, wherein the lackof harmony in the narrower sense finds

WEIGEL AND BOEH l'l'1 E 23i

its expression. For, fundamentally, j acob Boehme also restricts himself tothis. He can do so, for Nature and manappear to him as a single entity. He seesin both similar laws and processes. Thepurposeless seems to him an evil something in Nature, just as evil seems tohim something purposeless in man. Similar fundamental forces rule both hereand there. To one who has known theorigin of evil in man, the source of evil inNat ure also lies open and clear.

Now , how can the evil as well as thegood flow forth from the very same RootBeing ? Speaking in Jacob Boehme'ssense, one would give the following answer. The Root-Being does not live outits existence in itself. The multiplicityof the world shares in this existence. Asthe human body lives its life, not as asingle member , but as a multiplicity of


members, so also the Ro ot- Being. Andas human life is poured out into thismultiplicity of members, so too the RootBeing is poured out into the manifo1dnessof the things of this world. As true asit is that the entire man has only onelife, so true is it that every member hasits own life. And as little as it contradicts the whole harmonious life of a man,that his hand should turn itself againsthis own body and wound it , so little isit impossible that the things of the world,which live the life of the Root-Being intheir own way, should turn themselvesagainst each other. Thus t he RootBeing, in dividing itself among differentlives, confers upon each such life thecapacity to turn itself against the whole.

I t is not from the good that evil streamsforth, but from the way in which the goodlives. As the light is only able to shine

r 1


when it pierces the darkness, so the goodcan bring itself to life only when it permeates its opposite. From out of the"fathomless abyss" of darkness therestreams forth the light; from the" groundlessness" of the indifferent there isbrought to birth the Good. And as inthe shadow only the brightening demandsa pointing to the light; but the darkness,as a matter of course, is felt as that whichweakens the light ; so too in the world,it is only t he law-abiding character thatis sought for in all things; and the evil,the purposeless, is accepted as a matterof course, int elligible in itself. Thus, inspite of the fact that for Jacob Boehmethe Root-Being is the All, still nothingin the world can be understood, unlessone has an eye both to the Root-Beingand it s opposite at once . " The goodhas swallowed up into it self the evil or


the hideous. . .. Every being has initself good and evil, and in its unfoldment, as it passes over into division, itbecomes a contradiction of qualities, asone seeks to overcome the other."

Hence it is altogether in accordancewith J acob Boehme's view to see in everything, and in every process of the world,both good and evil; but it is not in accordwith his meaning, without more ado toseek the Root-Being in the mingling ofgood and evil. The Root-Being mustswallow up the evil; but the evil is not apart of the Root-Being. Jacob Boehmeseeks the Root-Being of the world; butthe world itself has sprung forth from the11 fathomless abyss" through the RootBeing. 11 The extern al world is not God,and eternally will not be called God, butonly a being wherein God manifestsHimself. . .. 'When one says: God is

c t. ~ ',./Cf f

WEIGEL AND BOEHfl/IE 2 4 1

all, God is heaven and eart h, and alsothe outer world, so is that true: for fromhim and in him all stands originallyrooted. But what am I to do with sucha saying, which is no religion?"

'With such a view in the background,J acob Boehme's conceptions as to thebeing of the whole world built themselvesup in his mind, so that he makes theorderly world emerge in a series of stepsfrom the "fathomless abyss." Thisworld builds itself up in seven naturalforms. In dark astringency the RootBeing receives form, dumbly shut upwithin itself and motionless. This astringency Boehme grasps under thesymbol of Salt. In employing suchdesignations he leans upon Paracelsus,who had borrowed from chemical processes his names for the processes ofNature. By swallowing up it s opposite,

16


the first nature-form passes over into theform of the second; the ast ringent , themotionless, t akes on movement; Powerand Life enter into it. Quicksilver (Mercury) is the symbol for this second form.In the st ruggle of Rest and Motion,of Death with Life, the third form ofNature unveils itself (Sulphur). ThisLife battling within itself, becomes manifest to itself; it lives thenceforward nolonger an outer battle of its members;there quivers through it as it were aunifying glowing flash, itself lightingup its own being (Fire). This fourthform of Nature rises to the fifth , theliving battle of the parts resting int hemselves (Wate r). On this level, asupon the first, there is present an innerastringency and dumbness; only it isnot an absolute rest, a silence of the inneropposites, but an interior movement of


the opposites. I t is not the motionlessresting in itself, but the moved, thatwhich has been kindled by the fire-flashof the fourth stage. Upon the sixthlevel, the Root -Being itself becomes awareof itself as such inner life. Living beingsendowed with senses represent this formof Nature. Jacob Boehme calls it the" Clang" or Call , and in so doing adoptsthe sense-perception of sound as thesymbol for sense-perception in general.The seventh form of Nature is the Spirit,raising itself on the basis of its senseperceptions (Wisdom) , He finds himself again as himself, as the Root-Being,within the world that has grown up outof the "fathomless abyss," shaping itselfout of the harmonious and the discordant." The Holy Ghost brings the Glory ofthis Majesty into the being, wherein theGodhead stands revealed."

Q44 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE

It is with such views that JacobBoehme seeks to fathom that worldwhich for him, according to the knowledgeof his time, was reckoned as the actualworld of fact. For him all is fact whichis so regarded by the natural science ofhis time and by the Bible. His way ofconceiving things is one thing, his worldof facts quite another. One can imaginethe former applied to a totally differentknowledge of facts. And thus thereappears before our eyes a Jacob Boehmeas he might stand at the parting of thenineteenth and the twentieth centuries.Such a one would not saturate with hisway of conceiving things the six days'creation work of the Bible and the fightof the angels and the devils, but Lyell'sgeological knowledge and the facts ofHaeckel's The History of Creation. Hewho can penetrate into the spirit of Jacob

WEIGEL AND BOEH I\IE 245

Boehme's writings must arrive at thisconviction. 1

'We may here name the most important of Boehme'swritings: Die Morgenriithe im Aujgang, Die drei Prineipie« gottlichen Lebens oder iiber das dreifache Leben desMenschen ; Das umgewandte Auge; "<Signatura rerum "oder von der Geburt und Bezeichnung alter TVesen; Das'< M ysterium J.[agnum: "

GIORDANO BRUNO AND ANGELUSSILESIUS

IN the first decennium of the sixteenthcentury, the scientific genius of NicholasCopernicus (1473-1543) thinks out inthe castle of Heilsberg, in Prussia , anintellectual structure which compels themen of subsequent epochs to look up tothe starry heavens with other concept ions than those which their forefathersin antiquity and the Middle Ages had.To them the earth was their dwellingplace, at rest in the centre of the Universe.The stars, however, were for them beingsof a perfect nature, whose motion tookplace in circles because the circle is therepresentative of perfection.

246

l 4' I »sot

BRUNO AND SILESIUS 247

In that which the stars showed tohuman senses they beheld something ofthe nature of soul, something spiritual.I t was one kind of speech that the thingsand processes upon earth spoke to man;quite another, that of the shining stars,beyond the moon in the pure <ether,which seemed like some spiritual naturefilling space. Nicholas of Cusa had already formed other ideas.

T hrough Copernicus, earth became forman a brother-being in face of the otherheavenly bodies, a star moving likeothers. All the difference that earth hasto show for man he could now reduceto this: that earth is his dwelling-place.He was no longer forced to think different ly about the events of this earth andthose of the rest of universal space. Theworld of his senses had expanded itselfinto the most remote spaces. He was


compelled henceforth to allow that whichpenetrated his eye from the ::ether tocount as sense-world just as much as thethings of earth. He could no longerseek in the eether in sensuous fashion forthe Spirit.

'Whoever, henceforth, strove afterhigher knowledge, must needs come toan understanding with this expandedworld of the senses. In earlier centuries,the brooding mind of man stood beforea world of facts. Now he was confrontedwith a new task. No longer could thethings of earth only express this naturefrom within man's inner being. Thisinner nature of his was called on to embrace the spirit of a sense-world, whichfills the All of Space everywhere alike.

The thinker of Nola, PHILOTHEO GWR

DANO BRUNO (1548-1600) found himselffaced by such a problem. The senses

cY {, J 'J<'

BRUNO AND SILESI US 249

have conquered the universe of space;henceforth the Spirit is no more to befound in space . Thus man was guidedfrom without to seek henceforward forthe Spirit there alone where from out ofprofound inner experiences those glorious thinkers sought it, whose ranks ourprevious expositions have led before us.These thinkers drew upon a view of theworld to which, later on, the advance ofnatural knowledge forces humanity. Thesun of those ideas, which later should shineupon a new view of Nature, with themstill stands below the horizon; but theirlight already appears as the early dawnat a time when men 's thoughts of Natureitself still lay in the darkness of night.

The sixteenth century gave the heavenly spaces to natural science for thesense-world to which it rightfully belongs;by the end of the nineteenth century, this


science had advanced so far that, evenwithin the phenomena of plant, animal,and human life, it could assign to theworld of sensible facts that which belongsto it. Neither, then, in the <ether above,nor in the development of living creatures,can this natural science henceforth seekfor anything but sensible, matter-of -factprocesses. As the thinker in the sixteenth century had to say: "The earthis a star among other stars, subject to thesame laws as other stars"; so must thethinker of the nineteenth century say :" Man, whatever may be his origin andhis future, is for anthropology only amammal, and further, that mammalwhose organisat ion, needs and diseasesare the most complex, whose brain , withits marvellous capacities, has reached thehighest level of development. " I

I Paul Topinar d : Anthropologie, Leipzig , , 888, p. 528.


From such a standpoint, attainedthrough natural science, there can nolonger occur any confusion between thespiritual and the sensible, provided manunderstands himself rightly. Developednatural science makes it impossible toseek in Nature for a Spirit conceived ofafter the fashion of something material,just as healthy thinking makes it impossible to seek for the reason of theforward movement of the clock-hand,not in mechanical laws (the Spirit ofinorganic Nature) , but in a specialDaimon, supposed to bring about themovements of the hands. Ernst Haeckelwas quite right in rejecting, as a scientist,the gross conception of a God conceivedof in material fashion. " In the higherand more abstract forms of religion, thebodily appearance is abandoned and Godis worshipped as pure Spirit, devoid of


body. 'God is a Spirit, and they thatworship him must worship him in spiritand in truth.' But, nevertheless, thesoul-activity of this pure Spirit remainsquite the same as that of the anthropomorphic personal God. In reality, eventhis immaterial Spirit is not thought ofas bodiless, but as invisible, like a gas.We thus arrive at the paradoxical conception of God as a gaseous vertebrate." I

In reality, the matter-of-fact, sensibleexistence of something spiritual may beassumed only when immediate sensibleexperience shows something spiritual, andonly such a degree of the spiritual maybe assumed as can be perceived in thismanner. That first rate thinker, B.Carneri, ventured to say (in his book:Empfindung und Bewusstsein, p. 15) :" The dictum: No spirit without matter,

I Haeck el, Riddle of the Universe.

re

BR UNO AN D SILESIUS 253

but also no matter without spirit,-wouldent itle us to extend the question to theplant also, nay, even to any block ofstone taken at random, wherein thereseems very little to speak in favour ofthese correlative conceptions." Spiritualoccurrences as matters of fact are theresults of various doings of an organism;the Spirit of the world is not present inthe world in a material sense, but preciselyafter a spiritual fashion. Man's soul isa sum of processes in which Spirit appears most immediately as fact. In theform of such a soul, however, Spirit ispresent in man only. And it impliesthat one misunderstands Spirit, that onecommit s the worst sin against Spirit, toseek for Spirit in the form of Soul elsewhere than in man, to imagine otherbeings thus ensouled as man is. Who ever does this, only shows that he has


not experienced Spirit within himself;he has only experienced that outer formof appearance of Spirit, the Soul , whichreigns in him. But that is just the sameas though one regarded a circle drawnwith a pencil as the real, mathematicallyideal circle. Whoever experiences in himself nothing other than the soul-form ofthe Spirit, feels himself thereupon drivento assume also such a soul-form in nonhuman things, in order that thereby hemay not need to remain rooted in t hemateriality of the gross senses. Insteadof thinking the Root-Being of the worldas Spirit, he thinks of it as World-Soul,and postulates a general ensoulment ofNature.

Giordano Bruno, upon whom the newCopernican view of Nature forced itself,could grasp Spirit in the world, fromwhich it had been expelled in its old form,


in no other manner than as World-Soul.On plunging into Bruno's writings (especially his deeply thoughtful book:De Rerum Principiis et Elementis etCausis) one gets the impression that hethought of things as ensouled, althoughin varying degree. He has not, in reality,experienced in himself the Spirit, therefore he conceives Spirit after the fashionof the human soul, wherein alone he hasencountered it. 'When he speaks ofSpirit, he conceives of it in the followingway: "The universal reason is the inmost, most effect ive and most specialcapacity, and a potential part of the'World-Soul ; it is something one and identical, which fills the All, illuminates theuniverse and instructs Nature how tobring forth her species as they ought tobe." In these sentences Spirit, it is true,is not described as a "gaseous verte-


brate," but it is described as a being thatis like to the human soul. "Let now athing be as small and tiny as you please,it yet has within it a portion of spiritualsubstance, which, when it finds a substratum adapted thereto, reaches outto become a plant, an animal, and organises itself to any body you choosethat is ordinarily called ensouled. ForSpirit is to be found in all things, andthere does not exist even the tiniest littlebody which does not embrace in itselfsuch a share thereof as causes it to cometo life."

Because Giordano Bruno had notreally experienced the Spirit, as Spirit,in himself, he could therefore confusethe life of the Spirit with the externalmechanical processes, wherewith Raymond Lully (1235-1315) wanted to unveilthe secrets of the Spirit in his so-called


"Great Art" (Ars Magna). A recentphilosopher, Franz Brentano, describesthis "Great Art" thus : "Concepts wereto be inscribed upon concentric, separately revolving discs, and then the mostvaried combinations produced by turningthem about ." Whatever chance bringsup in the turning of these discs, wasshaped into a judgment about the highesttruths. And Giordano Bruno, in his manifold wanderings through Europe, madehis appearance at various seats of learningas a teacher of this "Great Art." Hepossessed the daring courage to think ofthe stars as worlds, perfectly analogousto our earth; he widened the outlook ofscientific thinking beyond the confinesof earth; he thought of the heavenlybodies no longer as bodily spirits; buthe st ill thought of them as soul-likespirits . One must not be unjust towards

17


the man whom the Catholic Churchcaused to pay with death the penalty forhis advanced way of thinking. It required something gigantic to harness thewhole space of heaven in the same viewof the universe which hitherto had beenapplied only to things upon earth, eventhough Bruno did still think of the sensible as soul-like.

* * *In the seventeenth century there ap

peared Johann Scheffler, called ANGELUSSILESIUS (1624-1677), a personality inwhom there once more shone forth, inmighty harmony of soul, what Tauler,Weigel, Jacob Boehme, and others, hadprepared. Gathered, as it were, into aspiritual focus and shining with enhancedlight-giving power, the ideas of thethinkers named make their appearancein his book: "Cherubinischer Wanders-


mann. Geistreiche Sinn- und Schlussreime." And everything that AngelusSilesius utters appears as such an immediate, inevitable, natural revelation ofhis personality, that it is as though thisman had been called by a special providence to embody wisdom in a personalform. The simple, matter-of-course wayin which he lives wisdom, attains itsexpression by being set forth in sayings which, even in respect of their artand their form, are worthy of admiration.He hovers like some spiritual being overall earthly existence; and what he saysis like the breath of another world, freedbeforehand from all that is gross andimpure, wherefrom human wisdom generally only toilsomely works itself free.

He only is truly a knower, in the senseof Angelus Silesius, who brings the eyeof the All to vision in himself; he alone

l260 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE

sees his action in the true light who feelsthat this action is wrought in him bythe hand of the All: "God is in me thefire, and I in him the light; are we notin most intimate communion one withanother? "-" I am as rich as God; therecan be no grain of dust that I-believeme, man,-have not in common withHim."-"God loves me above Himself;if I love Him above myself: I so give Himas much as He gives me from Himself.""The bird flies in the air, the stone restson the earth; in water lives the fish, myspirit in God's own hand."-" Art thouborn of God, then bloometh God in thee;and His Godhead is thy sap and thyadornment."-" Halt! whither runnestthou? Heaven is in thee: seekest thouGod otherwhere, thou missest Him everand ever ."

F or one who thus feels himself in the


All, every separation ceases between selfand another being; he no longer feelshimself as. a single individual; ratherdoes he feel all that there is of himas a part of the world, his own properbeing, indeed, as that World-Whole itself."The world, it holds thee not; thou artthyself the world that holds thee, inthee, with thee, so strongly captivebound."-" Man has never perfect blissbefore that unity has swallowed up otherness. "-" Man is all things; if aught islacking to him, then in truth he knowethnot his own riches."

As a sense-being, man is a thing amongother things, and his sense-organs bringto him, as a sensible individuality, sensenews of the things in space and time outside of him; but when Spirit speaks inman, then there remains no without andno within; nothing is here and nothing


is there that is spiritual; nothing isearlier and nothing is later; space andtime have vanished in the contemplationof the All-Spirit. Only so long as manlooks forth as an individual, is he hereand the thing there; and only so long ashe looks forth as an individual, is thisearlier, and this later. " Man, if thouswingest thy spirit over time and place,so each moment canst thou be in eternity."-" I am myself eternity when Ileave time behind, and self in God andGod in self together grasp."-"The rosethat here thine outer eye doth see, it sohath bloomed in God from all etern ity."-" In centre set thyself, so see'st thouall at once: what then and now occurred,here and in heaven's realm."-" So longfor thee, my friend, in mind lies placeand time: so long graspest thou notwhat 's God, nor what etern ity. " -


"When man from manifoldness withdraws, and inward turns to God, so corneth he to unity." The summit has thusbeen climbed, whereon man steps forthbeyond his individual "I" and abolishesevery opposition between the world andhimself. A higher life begins for him.The inner experience that comes overhim appears to him as the death of theold and a resurrection in a new life."When thou dost raise thyself above thyself and lettest God o'errule; then in thyspirit happens ascension into heaven."- " The body in the spirit must arise, thespirit, too, in God: if thou in him, myman, will live for ever blessed."-" Somuch mine 'I' in me doth 'minish anddecrease; so much therefore to powercometh the Lord's own'!.'"

From such a point of view, man recognises his meaning and the meaning of all


things in the realm of eternal necessity.The natural All appears to him immediately as the Divine Spirit. The thoughtof a divine All-Spirit, who could stillhave being and sub-existence over andbeside the things of the world, vanishesaway as a superseded conception. ThisAll-Spirit appears so outpoured intothings, so becomes one in being with thethings, that it could no longer be thoughtat all, if even one single member werethought away from its being. "Naughtis but I and thou; and if we twain werenot; then is God no more God, and heavenfalleth in."-Man feels himself as anecessary link in the world-chain. Hisdoing has no longer aught of arbitrarinessor of individuality in it. 'What he doesis necessary in the whole, in the worldchain, which would fall t o pieces if thishis doing were to fall out from it. "God


may not make without me a single littleworm: if I with him uphold it not,straightway must it burst asunder."It I know that without me God can nomoment live: if I come to naught, heneeds must give up the ghost."-Uponthis height, man for the first time seesthings in their real being. He no longerneeds to ascribe from outside to thesmallest thing, to the grossly sensible, aspiritual entity. For just as this minutest thing is, in all its smallness andgross sensibility, it is a link in the Whole." No grain of dust is so vile, no mote canbe so small: the wise man seeth Godmost gloriously therein.t->-" In a mustard seed, if thou wilt understand it,is the image of all things above andbeneath."

Man feels himself free upon this height.For constraint is there only where a thing

266 :\1YSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE

can constrain from without. But whenall that is without has flowed into thewithin, when the opposition between"I and world," "Without and Within,""Nature and Spirit," has disappeared,man then feels all that impels him as hisown impulse. "Shut me, as strongly asthou wilt, in a thousand irons: I stillwill be quite free and unfettered.""So far as my will is dead, so far mustGod do what I will; I myself prescribe tohim the pattern and the goal. "-At thispoint cease all moral obligations, comingfrom without: man becomes to himselfmeasure and goal. He is subject to nolaw; for the law, too, has become hisbeing. "For the wicked is the law; werethere no command written, still wouldthe pious love God and their neighbour."

Thus, on the higher level of knowledge,the innocence of Nature is given back to

BRUNO AND SILES IUS 267

man. He fulfils the tasks that are sethim in the feeling of an external necessity .He says to himself: Through this ironnecessity it is given into thy hand towithdraw from this very iron necessitythe link which has been allotted to thee."Ye men, learn but from the meadowflower: how ye shall please God and bebeautiful as well."-" The rose existswithout why and because, she bloomsbecause she blooms; she takes no heedof herself, asks not if men see her." Theman who has arisen upon the higher levelfeels in himself the etern al, necessarypressure of the All, as does the meadowflower ; he acts, as the meadow flowerblooms. The feeling of his moral responsibility grows in all his doing into theimmeasurable. For that which he doesnot do is withdrawn from the All, is aslaying of that All, so far as the possi-


bility of such a slaying lies with him."What is it, not to sin? Thou need'stnot question long: go, the dumb flowerswill tell it thee."-" All must be slain.If thou slayest not thyself for God, thenat last eternal death shall slay thee forthe enemy."

AFTERWORD

NEARLY two and a half centuries havepassed since Angelus Silesius gathered upthe profound wisdom of his predecessorsin his Cherubineasi lVanderer. These centuries have brought rich insights intoNature. Goethe opened a vast perspective to natural science. He soughtto follow up the eternal , unchangeablelaws of Nature's working, t o that summitwhere, with like necessity, they causeman to come into being, just as on alower level they bring forth the stone. I

Lamarck, Darwin, Haeckel, and others,have laboured further in the directionof this way of conceiving things. The

' Cp. my book: Goethe's W eltanschauung, Weimar, 1897.269


11 question of all questions," that 111

regard to the natural origin of man,found its answer in the nineteenthcentury; and other related problemsin the realm of natural events havealso found their solutions. To-day mencomprehend that it is not necessary tostep outside of the realm of the actualand the sensible in order to understandthe serial succession of beings, right upto man, in its development in a purelynatural manner.

And, further, ] . G. Fichte's penetration has thrown light into the being ofthe human ego, and shown the soul ofman where to seek itself and what it is. I

Hegel has extended the realm of thoughtover all the provinces of being, and strivento grasp in thought the entire sensible

1 Cp. ante, and the section upon Fiehte in my book:Welt- und Lebens-anschcuungen im neunzehnten Jahrhundert,vol. i. , Berlin, S. Cronbach .

AFTERWORD

existence of Nature, as also the loftiestcreations of the human spirit.'

How, then, do those men of geniuswhose thoughts have been traced in thepreceding pages, appear in the light of aworld-conception which takes into account the scientific achievements of thecenturies that followed their epoch?They still believed in a "supernatural"story of creation. How do their thoughtsappear when confronted with a It natural"history of creation, which the science ofthe nineteenth century has built up?

~his natural science has given toNature naught that did not belong toher; it has only taken from her what didnot belong to her. It has banished fromNature all that is not to be sought in her,but is to be found only in man's inner

, Cp. my present ation of Hegel in Welt- und Lebensan schauungen i m neunzehnten Jahrhundert, vol. i.


being. It sees no longer any being mNature that is like unto the human soul,and that creates after the manner of man.I t no longer makes the organic forms tobe created by a man-like God; it followsup their development in the sense-worldaccording to purely natural laws. Meister Eckhart, as well as Tauler, and alsoJacob Boehme with Angelus Silesius,would needs feel the deepest satisfactionin contemplating this natural science.The spirit in which they desired to beholdthe world has passed over in the fullestsense to this view of Nature, when it isrightly understood. What they werestill unable to do, viz.: to bring the factsof Nature themselves into the light whichhad risen for them, that, undoubtedly,would have been their longing, if thissame natural science had been laid before them. They could not do it; for

AFTERWORD 273

no geology, no "natural history of creation" told them about the processes inNature. The Bible alone told them inits own way about such processes. Therefore they sought, so far as they could, forthe spiritual where alone it is to befound: in the inner nature of man.

At the present time, they would havequite other aids at hand than in their owntime, to show that an actually existingSpirit is to be found only in man. Theywould to-day agree unreservedly withthose who seek Spirit as a fact not inthe root of Nature, but in her fruit.They would admit that Spirit as perceivable is a result of evolution, andthat upon lower levels of evolution suchSpirit must not be sought for. Theywould understand that no "creativethought" ruled in the forthcoming of theSpirit in the organism, any more than

.,.;~...,.. 18


such a "creative thought" caused theape to evolve from the marsupials.

Our present age cannot speak aboutthe facts of Nature as Jacob Boehmespoke of them. But there exists a pointof view, even in this present day, whichbrings Jacob Boehme's way of regardingthings near to a view of the world thattakes account of modern natural science.There is no need to lose the Spirit, whenone finds in Nature only the natural.Many do, indeed, believe to-day thatone must needs lose oneself in a shallowand prosaic materialism, if one simplyaccepts the "facts" which natural science has discovered. I myself standfully upon the ground of this same natural science. I have, through andthrough, the feeling that, in a view ofNature such as Ernst Haeckel's, only hecan lose himself amid shallows who him-

AFTERWORD 275

self approaches it with a shallow thoughtworld. I feel something higher, moreglorious, when I let the .revelations ofthe "natural history of creation" workupon me, than when the supernaturalmiracle stories of the confessions of faithforce themselves upon me. In no "holybook" do I know aught that unveils forme anything as lofty as the "sober"fact, that every human germ in the mother's womb repeats in brief, one after theother, those animal types which its animalancestors have passed through. If only wefill our hearts with the glory of the factsthat our senses behold, then we shall havelittle left over for "wonders" which donot lie in the course of Nature. If weexperience the Spirit in ourselves, then wehave no need of such in external Nature.

In my Philosophy of Freedom, (Berlin, 1894) I have described my view

2]6 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE

of the world , which has no thought ofdriving out the Spirit, because it beholdsNature as Darwin and Haeckel beheldher. A plant, an animal, gains nothingfor me if I people it with souls of whichmy senses give me no information. Ido not seek in the external world fora " deeper, " " more soulful" being ofthings ; nay , I do not even assume it ,because I believe that the insight whichshines forth for me in my inner beingguards me against it. I believe that thethings of the sense-world are, in fact,just as they present themselves to us,because I see that a right self-knowledgeleads us to this : that in Nature we shouldseek nothing but natural processes. Iseek no Spirit of God in Nature, becauseI believe that I perceive the nature ofthe human spirit in myself. I calmlyadmit my animal ancest ry, because I be-

AFTERWOR D 2i7

lieve myself to know t hat there , wherethese animal ancestors have their origin,no spirit of like nature with soul can work.I can only agree with Ernst Haeckel whenhe prefers the" eternal rest of the grave"to an immortality such as is taught bysome religions. 1 For I find a dishonouring of Spirit, an ugly sin against the Spirit ,in the conception of a soul continuing toexist after the manner of a sensible being.

I hear a shrill discord when the scienti fic facts in Haeckel' s presentation comeup against the " piety" of the confessionsof some of our contemporaries. But

•for me there rings out from confessionsof faith, which give a discord with naturalfacts, naught of the spirit of the higherpiety which I find in J acob Boehmeand Angelus Silesius. This higher pietystands far more in full harmony with

1 Cp. Haeckel' s Riddle of the Univ erse,


the working of the natural. There liesno contradiction in the fact of saturat ingoneself with the knowledge of the mostrecent natural science, and at the sametime treading the path which JacobBoehme and Angelus Silesius have sought.He who enters on that path in the senseof those thinkers has no need to fearlosing himself in a shallow materialismwhen he lets the secrets of Nature belaid before him by a "natural history ofcreation." Whoever has grasped mythoughts in this sense will understandwith me in like manner the last sayingof the Cherubinean Wanderer, with whichalso this book shall close: "Friend, it iseven enough . In case thou more wiltread, go forth, and thyself become thebook, thyself the reading."

THE E N D

Documents

Rudolf Steiner - Mystics of the Renaissance