The Mystic Will

THE MYSTIC WILL
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THE MYSTIC WILL
Based on a Study of the Philosophy
of Jacob Boehme
BY
HOWARD H. BRINTON, ph.d.
Professor 0} Religion, Mills College, California
With an introduction by
RUFUS M. JONES, m.a., d.litt.
Professor of Philosophy, Haverjord College, Pa.
NEW YORK
1930
Copyright, 1930,
By THE MACM1LLAN COMPANY.
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may be reproduced in any form without
permission in writing from the publisher.
Set up and printed. Published May, 1930.
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PREFACE
The purpose of this study is twofold. Its primary aim is
to interpret Jacob Boehme's answer to the central problem of

the philosophy of mysticism. It also presents a survey of
the nature and historical significance of positive ethical types
of mysticism.
The philosophy of Protestant mysticism has not received
the attention it deserves. The world-denying mystics of the
Middle Ages inherited from Neo-Platonism a well-known
type of thought which has come to be considered as pecul-
iarly characteristic of all speculative mystics. But mysticism
has not always fled from the finite. This is evident from the
experience of the Quakers and other ethically active mystical
groups. A widespread, world-affirming type of mystical the-
ory characterized by a well-rounded philosophy of its own,
culminated in Jacob Boehme. I have endeavored to portray
this positive attitude through an exposition of his ideas and
experiences. To
an age such as ours, torn between a desire
to follow up the great success of its mechanistic theories and
a yearning for mystic insight to pierce beyond the symbols
of science, Boehme's philosophy conveys a striking message.
Historians of philosophy usually acknowledge the pene-
trating and prophetic character of Jacob Boehme's insight,
but few have gone far in the analysis of his thought. The
difficulty of his unique vocabulary in which, as William Law
says, "Words were made to mean what they have never
meant before nor have ever meant since," and the chaotic
vi PREFACE
rush of his ideas repel investigation. I have undertaken
to paraphrase his obsolete pictorial language in modern
terms, taking pains at the same time to supply a sufficient
number of direct quotations to justify my interpretations.
In this free rendering I have particularly emphasized those
aspects of Boehme's philosophy which throw light on mod-
ern problems, passing over or touching incidentally upon
the outworn history and the broken bits of mediaeval pseudo-
science which often appear in Boehme's pages and which
to-day retain only an antiquarian interest.
In spite of Boehme's great influence, impartial studies of
his system have been few. Some of his many followers
have interpreted him in the light of strong religious bias,
others attracted by his dark mysterious language have tried
with his help to probe further into the secrets of nature than
is permitted ordinary mortals. The general trend of conven-
tional interpretation which appears in the various histories
of philosophy was set by Franz von Baader (1765-1841)
who was followed closely by Julius Hamburger (flor. 1844)
and the Danish bishop, H. L. Martensen (1808-1884). In
the endeavor to show that Boehme was an orthodox Chris-
tian teacher these writers have followed only the less original
half of his exploration. They discovered his route from

God to nature. But Boehme worked empirically from
nature up to God before he charted the return trip. He is
preeminently a philosopher of evolution.

Later writers have approached Boehme's thought from a
variety of points of view. Three excellent, though brief,
contemporary works are: W. Elert's monograph entitled Die
V oluntaristische Mystik Jacob Bohmes, Eine Psychologische
Studie (Berlin, 1913) ; three chapters byRufus M.Jones in his
Spiritual Reformers of the 16th and 17th Centuries (1914)
PREFACE VII
and the article by G. W. Allen under the heading Jacob

Boehme in Hasting's Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics.
Christopher Walton's Notes and Materials for a Biography
of William Law (London, 1854) is a mine of material for
the patient reader. Dr. Herman Vetterling's volume entitled
The Illuminate of Gorlitz, of which fifty copies were pri-
vately printed in Leipzig in 1923, is a veritable Boehme
encyclopedia and would have saved me some labor had I
found it at the beginning of my study. A number of other

works have contained useful material. These are acknowl-
edged in connection with the discussion of the subjects to
which they have contributed. I am frequently indebted to
John Sparrow's seventeenth century translation of Boehme'
works. A recent book by P. Hankamer (1924) has come to
my attention since the completion of this manuscript. It is
an interesting study which aims primarily at literary interpre-

tation rather than philosophic analysis.
My own study differs from others in its analysis of
Boehme' s elaborate descriptions of the creative act and the
corresponding evolutionary process from nature to spirit.
In so centering my attention I have been compelled to ignore
some characteristic aspects of Boehme' s philosophy which
have been more fully and more frequently treated elsewhere.
Boehme' s theory of evolution portrays a unique mystical
ladder of genuine practical value to modern religious seekers
and of real theoretical significance to students of the psy-
chology and philosophy of mysticism. It has seemed worth
while to devote the major part of the present discussion to
a description and interpretation of this basic but hitherto
neglected aspect of his thought.
Boehme' s thought is in such close accord with certain
aspects oftwo modern theories of mystical religion, one of
viii PREFACE
which was propounded by Baron F. von Hiigel in his Mys-
tical Element in Religion, and the other by W. E. Hocking
in The Meaning of God in Human Experience, that I have

found these two works helpful. The same is true of E.
Troeltsch's Grundprobleme der Ethik and A. Schweitzer's
Civilization and Ethics.
I am indebted to Professor Rufus M. Jones for initiating
me into this study and for encouraging its completion. My
thanks are also due to Professor George P. Adams, who has
given helpful advice and important suggestions during the
progress of the work. Dr. Herman Vetterling has gener-
ously allowed me the use of his collection of books by and
about Jacob Boehme. Miss Flora B. Ludington of the staff
of the Mills College Library has kindly assisted in reading

the proof.
INTRODUCTION
At last, after three hundred years, Jacob Boehme has
found the interpreter who can both understand and trans-
mit his vital message. He has been lying in the lanes of
intellectual traffic like a mighty bowlder which every
traveler had at least to recognize. Most students who have
reviewed the period of history to which he belonged have
walked around the bowlder and have noted its immense
size. Some have describedits weird form and shape as seen
from the outside, and a few patient workers have attempted

to penetrate it with acids or with drills, but it has all the
time baffled them and remained a bowlder.
To the author of this book Jacob Boehme ceases to be a
glacial bowlder lying in the path and obstructing the course
of history; he is discovered to be an essential part of the
main highway of human thought from the ancient world to
the modern one. He has baffled the interpreter in the past
because most of those who have struggled with the task of
interpreting him have dealt with him as though he were
an isolated and solitary mystic who, like Melchisedec of
old, had no historical pedigree, but just mysteriously "came"
and as mysteriously uttered his strange, prophetic revela-
tions. Here in this book he is presented in his true histori-
cal setting. His spiritual ancestry is carefully traced. His
peculiar debts to both the near and the far past are duly
noted. His vocabulary is studied with insight, and, for
Boehme' s historical period, it is found to be neither weird
ix
x INTRODUCTION
nor perverse. He was honestly endeavoring to beat out his
message in the language which his generation and its fore-
runners had produced as the living speech of the time. It
cannot of course be taken over without revaluation and be
used as "current coin" to-day. It sounds to us like barbaric
jargon with little meaning, "though the words are strong."
The interpreter's task, therefore, has first of all involved
the mastery of the vocabulary, the recovery of the key that
opens what otherwise would remain a set of seven-sealed
books.
The author has done that preliminary work with fidelity
and with patient, painstaking skill. His readers will not be
left in an uncharted waste to wonder at the meaning of
words that sound as mysterious as "Jabberwock," "snark,"

or "boojum." "Salniter," "tincture," and "signature" will
become old friends with whom the reader will have the ease
of more than a speaking acquaintance. But much more
important than the unique vocabulary of Boehme is the stock
of ideas which he handles so profusely and withal so pro-
foundly. They, too, seem foreign to our modern ears. He
preceded Descartes and Newton in time, and was a con-
temporary of Galileo, so that he belonged in a prescientific
epoch, and he was forced to do his thinking without the
exact and carefully wrought concepts which were forged in
the next century. He was the inheritor of that tremendous
legacy that came down through the schools of Neo-Platon-
ism, the Jewish Kabbalah, the strivings of the mystics, the
pursuits of the alchemists, the passionate struggles of the
spiritual reformers in the birth-period of the Reformation
and the rich contributions of the humanists of the Renais-
sance. Boehme is the most vital single transmissive organ
of this blend or fusion of thought-currents. The stream did
INTRODUCTION xi
not flow through him unaltered, for the life-stream of his-
torical movements can never flow through a genius and

emerge the same as it was before.
A genius Boehme certainly was, and in a marked degree.
He is not to be dismissed as a mere peasant or a shoemaker
or a cobbler of Gorlitz, nor is he to be classed without more
ado as a "God-taught seer." He was to be sure a man who
had almost no advantages such as come from systematic edu-
cation. No refining culture came his way from schools and
universities. He was forced to support his family by penu-
rious labor. But he shows unmistakably that extraordinary
gift of the genius who, the moment the opportunity comes,
gathers up out of his environment what fits his main pur-
pose, draws it to himself as by a magnet, reshapes it in the
alembic of his own soul and turns it out forever marked
with the "tincture" of his own spirit. Boehme was never
satisfied to wait quiescently for truths to drop into his mind
through some secret doorway. He grappled manfully with
the problems of life and thought. To use his own words,
his spirit "made a violent assault" on the dark issues of life
and death, of heaven and hell. He steadily educated him-
self, for a person who has the quality of genius in his native
fiber can turn a cobbler's shop into a college and can dig his
way through the husks and coverings of truth until he
reaches the inner kernel ofit itself. If Boehme was "God-
taught," was because he seized every conceivable chance

it
that lay open to him to quicken his mind and prepare it to

be an organ of the divine Spirit. It often seemed to him
that powers and forces from beyond him were working
through him and were lifting him to heights that he could
not have attained alone, but that something more than self
operated only after he had done all that could be done with
xii INTRODUCTION
the gifts and powers which he possessed as his own and
with the sources of truth within his reach.
Jacob Boehme may well be called, I think, one of the most
extraordinary cases in modern history of a man of no out-
ward promise, no favoring circumstances, no advantages
from school or college, no external helps of any kind, who,
nevertheless, has made a permanent contribution to the
intellectual life of the race and to the spiritual progress of
the world. He belongs not only in the order of the
"prophets," but he must as well be reckoned with as a
thinker who has sounded the abysmal deeps of thought and
being and has produced an interpretation of the universe
which has profoundly influenced some of the greatest sys-
tems of modern philosophy.

Butno one suppose, too fondly, that now that Boehme
let
has been successfully unlocked and interpreted he will

henceforth be easy to read and digest. Boehme is still
Boehme! If he proves to be a highway of thought rather
than an obstructive bowlder across the path, it is at best a
rugged highway, and much unbroken rock still remains to
jolt the wayfarer. No reader who travels through Chapter
V of this book will have any illusions left of an easy path-
way to the eternal secrets of truth and life, of nature and
grace, of evil and good, of the world and God.
If it takes "the world's eternal wars," if
It takes the might of heaven and hell

And the everlasting love as well,
to make a rose that blooms in the field, we should not expect

to get at the secret of the unfolding world of light and
darkness without some labor and sweat. But I, for one, feel
that Boehme is worth the struggle that he costs. What-
INTRODUCTION xiii
ever one may conclude as to his wisdom about the processes

of creation, there can be little question of his insight in
reference to the ethical and spiritual issues of life. Here
he has his finger on the beating artery. Best of all, his
own life tallied with his message. He was a tender, gentle,
loving spirit, full of grace and goodness. There is a per-
fume about him like that from his own "lily," which sym-
bolized forhim the coming of the Spirit into the lives of
men. Any person is a better person for having lived in the
neighborhood and atmosphere of Jacob Boehme, and we
are grateful to Dr. Brinton that he has brought so much of
the thought and life and spirit of this good man back into
our time and climate.
Rufus M. Jones.
Haverford College,
Haverford, Penna.
CONTENTS
PAGE
Preface v
Introduction ix
By Rufus M. Jones
CHAPTER
I. The Problem of Practical Mysticism ... 3
II. Boehme's Life and Influence 45
III. Alchemy 81
IV. Symbol and Reality 95
V. From Nature to God. The Problem of Evo-

lution 131
VI. From God to Nature. The Problem of Ema-

nation 169
VII. Good and Evil 205
VIII. Recapitulation of Boehme's Evolutionary

Cycles 232
Appendix 255
Bibliography 259
Index 263
THE MYSTIC WILL
—
As German Boehme never cared for plants

Until it happed, a-walking in the fields,
He noticed all at once the plants could speak,
Nay, turned with loosened tongue to talk with him.
That day the daisy had an eye indeed
Colloquized with the cowslip on such themes
We find them extant yet in Boehme's prose,
And by the time youth slips a stage or two
While reading prose in that tough book he wrote,
Collating and emendating the same
And settling on the sense most to our mind,
We shut the clasps and find summer past.
life's
Browning, Transcendentalism.
CHAPTER I
THE PROBLEM OF PRACTICAL MYSTICISM

I. Jacob Boehme and the Two Wills That Enact
the Cosmic Drama
Jacob Boehme (1575-1624), the inspired philosopher-
shoemaker of the ancient city of Gorlitz in Silesia, attacked
the central problem of the philosophy of religion with unpar-
alleled persistence and astonishing originality. This prob-
lem is the oldest of all great questions. The thinker of
to-day finds it quite as difficult as did the agnostic who wrote
the book of Job or the cynic who composed Ecclesiastes.
How, he asks, can a God who meets the demands ofmy
inner life be identified with the God who has created the
outer world? Man desires God a Person, God immediately
concerned for the welfare of each individual, ready to change
the natural course of events to human advantage, but in
nature blind impersonal force appears everywhere to pre-
vail. Man desires God all-powerful and all-good, but His
world seems full of evil, and the baffled mind concludes
either that God is not good, or that He is not all-powerful.
Man prays for a world beneath which are mercifuland ever-
lasting arms, but nature, red in tooth and claw, makes prog-
ress through pitiless destruction of the weak and helpless.
In the philosophy of Jacob Boehme as well as in many
other important systems which aim at completeness, this
religious conflict is tabulated as a special case under the
3
4 THE MYSTIC WILL
wider question of the relation between man's inner experi-
ence and his outer world. Early in life every one makes the
obvious but significant discovery that his surroundings do
not fully satisfy his desires. He finds perpetual tension
between appetites, longings, hopes and aspirations on the
one hand, and a comparatively cold, indifferent environment
on the other. This tension between outer and inner is, as
we shall find, the very substance of life itself. The discord
between inner and outer first becomes vaguely apparent as
a striving toward some dimly defined outer goal. At higher
levels, as human desires become varied and sharply differ-
entiated, man becomes more acutely conscious of the strain
between himself and the world around him. The pleasure
seeker seeks in vain for a completely pleasant experience;
the artist is unable to embody in perfect material form his
vision of ideal beauty; the poet finds words inadequate to
express his deepest feeling; the reformer cannot entirely
overcome the lethargy and indifference of men. These all
testify to the apparent truth of the ancient observation that

the cosmic process is unconcerned with human interests and
incapable of gratifying to the full the demands of the human
spirit.
The chief objective of philosophy is to discover the nature

and to interpret the meaning of this seeming incompatibility
between man's inner life and his outer world. The task
of exploring the outer world as such is delegated to science,
the inner realm tends to become the province of ethics, art,
and religion. Philosophy's own peculiar endeavor is to show

that outer and inner either can, or cannot, be reconciled.
If, as is usually maintained by Western thinkers, outer and
inner are ultimately reconcilable, the possibility of harmony
relieves the pessimism resulting from their palpable hostility.
THE PROBLEM OF PRACTICAL MYSTICISM 5
The world process is found to be at heart not alien to the

deepest human aspirations for these longings can somehow
find fulfillment in the fundamental nature of things. To
realize this fulfillment man must assert himself, he must lord
it over nature in the conviction that all his desires are capable
of ultimate satisfaction. If, however, as is typical of Eastern
thought, the world process is found to be evil and inimical
to man, philosophy recommends self-denial and the destruc-
tion of desire. Every philosophy and every theology takes
its distinctive coloringfrom the manner in which it attempts
to reconcile ethical, artistic, and religious demands of the
inner life with such scientific knowledge as has been attained
regarding the outer world.
Boehme's own character and his entire experience were
dominated by two absorbing interests, he was a fervent lover
of nature and he was a devout worshiper of God. As he
bent over his voluminous manuscript in the early morning
before the workday at his cobbler's bench began, a trans-
figuring idea struggled to birth within him, an idea which
he thought could identify the God of his soul with the God
of nature. Sometimes the solution eluded him and his writ-
ing was dim withperplexity, but again it shone as brilliantly
as the sunrise through his window and his pen could not run
fast enough. In such flickering of alternate doubt and
insight he wrote his first book which he called Morgemote
im Aufgang and which his learned friends later entitled
Aurora. Boehme believed that his discovery marked a new
dawn in philosophy. Though his exposition is often crude,
inconsistent, and obscure, yet he showed himself a true
prophet, for this strange book and the others which were to
follow unmistakably hold germs of a new philosophy.
Boehme's idea, wedded to other influences which were rap-
6 THE MYSTIC WILL
idly maturing in northern Europe, was to generate both a
great intellectual movement and an important religious
revolt.
Jacob Boehme has been appropriately styled "the father

of German philosophy." The ancestry
*
of his thought is
no less significant than its posterity, for in him culminated

the known, and less understood tradition which strug-
little
gled for more than a millennium to demonstrate experi-

mentally a Platonic conception of nature. This so-called
"Hermetic philosophy," or "philosophy of the alchemists,"
is inextricably embedded in gross superstition and imposture.
It contained, however, a valuable kernel, which was the sin-
cere attempt to erect a natural science on a Neo-Platonic
basis. In this effort it failed, but later, married to opposing
Lutheranism, it gave birth to Boehme' s speculations and
through them passed into the romantic idealism which char-
acterized the full flower of German philosophy from Fichte
to Schopenhauer. Through Boehme the alchemistic tradi-
tion also passed into English romanticism and into many
other protests against shallow rationalism or materialistic
science.
A more than this select group
prolific crop of descendants
of poets and study-room philosophers looked to Jacob
Boehme as one of its ancestors, for his interests were not
only theoretical, they were also practical. His burning ambi-
tion was to save souls. As a religious reformer he united
in an articulate system the scattered and often discordant
theories of the mystical left wing of the early Reformation
and in so doing he became the chief exponent of Protestant
mysticism. A host of translations of his writings furthered
the rapid spread of the doctrine of the Inner Light to Hol-
1
Boutroux, Le philosophe allemand, J. Boehme, 1888.
land and England in the middle of the seventeenth century.

No drew from wider sources than did Jacob
great mystic
Boehme nor has any served as leader for a more extensive
and varied following. In him converged the broad, though
shallow and muddy currents of mediaeval nature philosophy
which wound their way far from the well-defined channels
of the philosophy of the schools, through wide, sandy plains
of the life of common folk. From him went forth two
streams of speculation; one emptied directly into the clear
depths of German idealism, the other flowed by devious
mouths into the turbulent, but fructifying floodtide of the
great outpouring of popular mysticism in England of the
Commonwealth. A multitude of mystical sects, of whom
the Quakers are the chief survivors, looked to Boehme as
the philosopher of their movement. It has been said that
a
"mystics arise in every sect, but form none." But Boehme's
mysticism was of a type which could found a sect. His feet
were on the earth, though his head was sometimes above the
empyrean.
There is a universal quality in Boehme's mystical philoso-
phy, through which it touches the whole of man, defining
his relation not only to God, but also to society and to
nature. This is a significant and peculiar trait. The early
seventeenth century was a period of transition when mori-
bund medievalism was confronted by spectacular alterations
in philosophy and science. The Middle Ages had faced
the other world, the Renaissance rediscovered this world.
Boehme attempted to reconcile a this-world life with an
other-world attitude without diminishing the value of either.
The problem of the philosophy of religion is occa-
central
sioned by the antithesis between the longing to live in that
3
Beard, Luther, p. 43.
8 THE MYSTIC WILL
perfect other world in which God's rule is everywhere appar-
ent and the necessity of making the best of the present imper-
fect life. Boehme stood at the crossroads; he looked back
with a mediaeval longing for salvation from the world and
forward with a modern hunger for knowledge about it. So
it came about that he discovered a way to heaven, and
mapped a return trip with equal care. In him were strangely

mingled primitive nature mysticism, Lutheran theology,
alchemistic speculation, mediaeval metaphysics, and a modern
objective attitude toward man and nature. He set himself to
reconcile their conflicting claims. Monistic systems develop
in ages of comparative tranquillity, dualistic and pluralistic
systems in ages of doubt and transition. Boehme was dual-
istic, his attention was fixed both on the sensual and the
supersensual. His century saw the change from mystic to
mechanistic science. Boehme is a peculiarly significant figure
for our own time when a transition in the opposite direction
is beginning to be apparent. Seventeenth-century mechanis-
tic conceptions seem now to be giving way before the impact
of the latest revolutionary discoveries in physical science.
The result is an attitude which suggests the vitalistic
thought of the Renaissance.

Boehme himself would have had small sympathy with an
historical approach to his philosophy. He had no desire
to interpret a bygone system of thought nor did he care
to found a tradition. His interest was pragmatic. He
aimed to develop a philosophy of life. He longed to be,
not to know the answer to his problem and he was zealous
for others to find the same peace and harmony between
inner and outer which he eventually achieved for himself.
Little wonder, therefore, that few have seen him in true
historical perspective. His intense struggle for emancipa-
tion rivets the attention of readers upon him as if he were

an isolated meteoric phenomenon rather than a thinker
whose work entitles him to an important place in the history
of philosophic and religious thought. The "hellish burning
fire" as he calls it, which drove him relentlessly on till it was
at last transformed into divine, benignant light appears to
have belonged so completely to his inner life, and to have
been so little affected by external circumstance that we are
easily blinded, both to the past which kindled it and to the
future on which it shed unearthly radiance.
It is true that Boehme is not merely a creature of the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In his pages is envi-
sioned the Universal Man
of every time and of every place
whose inner he so vividly dramatizes. He under-
conflict
takes to pierce to the core of the human soul, and to describe
with detail worthy a psycho-analyst the inner tension of
which we are all aware, but which we so little understand.
Man is for him a complex epitome of history and nature,
the microcosm of the macrocosm. Boehme believed that the
same conflict which existed in his own soul was present in
the soul of every living thing, that it was also inherent in
physical nature, and that it was an essential attribute of
Deity Himself. To understand this conflict was to under-
stand the mystery of life. To find a solution was to reach
the goal of existence, the Kingdom of Heaven. The ecstatic
shoemaker of Gorlitz struggled to express the great experi-

ence which had harmonized conflicting forces in his own soul
with the single purpose of assisting others to the same new
birth.
The inner tension out of which philosophy arises is pro-
foundly expressed by Troeltsch in his Grundprobleme der
Ethik. This modern Protestant philosopher does not agree
10 THE MYSTIC WILL
with Boehme that a solution is possible in temporal exist-
ence.
This entire Dualism [he says], (pp. 665-666) ...

is, in fact,
deeply rooted in the metaphysical constitution of man. It places him

between the transitory and eternal worlds. The contrast of ethical
motives is only an evidence of the general contrast which results
from man's dual position as facing both the finite-sensible and the
infinite supersensible. . Man will always experience double
. .
motivation, but it will never be overcome on earth, either theoreti-

cally or practically. Since it has a metaphysical root, it can only
find a metaphysical solution. Therefore as a final solution the
thought arises of a life the other side of death.
Boehme recognized the "metaphysical root" of the dual-

ism, was unwilling to postpone the solution.
but He
believed that there was a sense in which the Kingdom of
God "where all working and willing is in quiet love"
8
(Supers. L. 42) could be realized even on this obviously
imperfect earth. Life is more than a pragmatic leap in the
dark, for sometimes, though possibly only for a moment, we
arrive at our goal. Troeltsch's dualism appears in Boehme
in an exaggerated, self-conscious form. Intense religious
feeling pulled him toward the infinite supersensible; poig-
nant sympathy with nature and life attracted him as strongly
toward the finite sensible. He experiences sounds, colors,
tastes and smells with intense vividness. When he describes
Deity in the Aurora as an "all mighty, all wise, all hearing,
all smelling, all feeling, all tasting God," he idealizes his
own craving for exquisite physical sensation. His figures
of speech were drawn from nature. Natural objects fur-
nished him so significant an element of his total vocabulary
that Hegel accuses him of being incapable of purely abstract
8
Boehme's works are referred to by abbreviations. See the list in the
Appendix for titles of books to which the abbreviations refer.
thought and calls him a "Barbarian." *

The Aurora begins
and continues in a picturesque naturalistic vein.
Although and blood cannot conceive the Divine Being, yet

flesh
the spirit can do so if enlightened and kindled of God. If man
would speak of God and say what he is, he must diligently consider
the jorces of nature and the whole creation, heaven and earth, as
well as the stars and elements and the creatures which have come
out of them, and angels, devils and men, heaven and hell.
Boehme's philosophical library was nature itself. "Thou

wilt find," he says, 'no better book, in which the Divine
Wisdom can be searched for and found, than a green and
blooming meadow." (T. P. 8:12.) His first great illumi-
nation was occasioned by seeing the sun's rays reflected from
a pewter plate. This vision which was outwardly directed,
taught him that nature itself was a mirror of Deity.
But an aesthetic nature mysticism was balanced in Jacob
Boehme by an equally strong religious mysticism pulling in
the opposite direction. His passions were as strong as his
sensations, and he longed for peace. A typical expression
of his facing toward the supersensible occurs in the follow-
ing revelation:
In this last trial man becomes the image of God again, for all
things become one and the same. He is one with prosperity and
adversity, poverty and riches, joy and sorrow, light and darkness,
life and death. He is as nothing to himself for in his will he is
dead to all things. He stands as a symbol showing how God is in
and through all and yet is as nothing in all, for the all does not
include him and is yet revealed through him. He is dead to
. . .
all things and is yet himself the life of all things he is one and yet
;
nothing and all. Thus a man becomes in his resigned will when
he yields himself up entirely to God, for his will falls back into
the unsearchable will of God out of which he came in the begin-
ning . .but that which wills of itself tears itself from the
.
entire will of God and brings itself into self -hood wherein there is
4
Hegel, Vorlesungen iiber die Geschichte der Philosophic.
12 THE MYSTIC WILL
no rest. Unquietness is the life of self will. It is better to . . .
know nothing than to will self. The pain of the damned consists
in this, that they will the particular (Eigenheit) and in their willing
they generate structures (Gestaltnisse) which are wills and counter-
wills which are at strife, so that the one is manifested in multi-
plicity wherein it is at war with itself, but if it is one with the
eternal One, then there is no possibility of enmity. (M. M. 66:
63-67.)
Mystics in all ages have solved the problem by such a

retreat to the One Being behind the wearying and baffling
multiplicity of existence. There are many similar passages
in Boehme and it is not surprising that some historians of
mysticism believe that he, like his German predecessor Eck-
hart and die great mystics of the Church who inherited the
Neo-Platonic tradition, sought only the "flight of the alone
6
to the alone." But this is only half the story and represents
but one movement of Boehme's thought. He often declares
that he intends to keep two worlds in his philosophy. He
says, "When God reveals himself to man then is he in two
kingdoms and sees with two-fold eyes." (T. F. L. 10:10.)
"If a spirit is to subsist in the kingdom of joy then it must
have a centre in itself out of which the joy springs, namely,
the dark world which is a sharp might, else it would be a
stillness without moving." (Antist. I, 90.) Boehme wanted
no "stillness without moving" such as is sought in Neo-
Platonic mysticism. He searched nature with such passion
as could exist only in the child of an age which found the
habitable earth intensely alive with spiritual potencies and
mysterious powers. The result of these two opposing lead-
ings, one toward mystic union with God, the other toward
6
The so-called "Law translation" of Boehme's Supersensual Life is a
beautiful piece of English, but it adds a great deal of material that is not
in the original. This translation has misled several writers into thinking
that Boehme is much more "negative" than he really is.
mystic union with nature, was such a struggle as few pens

have attempted to describe. In this strife is summarized the
long effort of the ages to draw out the Kingdom of God as
it exists in the heart of a saint and unite it in thebond of
love with this world of pain and evil. The final consumma-
tion comes in what Boehme calls the "process of Christ."
The mystic is himself crucified on the cross of suffering.
He pierces abysmal hell to rise on its other side a victor
in the heaven of completely harmonized will. Boehme
descantsupon the struggle and victory in many pages of his
writings. The battle was often renewed. Final peace was
never won.
Hear me [he says], thou half dead angel (man). I must ...
every day and hour struggle with the devil. If he strikes me
. . .
I fall back, but the divine power helps me, and then he gets a blow
and often loses the battle. . . And when he is overcome, then

.
the gate of heaven is opened in my spirit and the spirit sees the
divine and heavenly Being. Not outside the body, but in the foun-
tains of the heart, goes the flash of sensibility, and in this the spirit
sees. (Aur. 11.)
After I found in myself a powerful contrary (Gegensatz) . . .
I fought a hard battle with myself. What happened no one can

know but God and my soul, but I would sooner have cast away my
life than give up. While I was wrestling with God's aid, the gates
in the deep of the heart of nature were opened and a wonderful
light arose in my soul. In it I realized for the first time the true
nature of God and man and the relation existing between them.
(Apol. I, 21-26.)
Although "no one but God and my soul" could know,

Boehme, with an inconsistency typical of all mystics,
describes at great length what he saw. After years of effort
to interpret such experiences, he discovered that his victory
over the 'powerful contrary" was the culmination of a com-
plicated evolutionary process. This process in man is part
of a similar process in God and in nature by which the light
14 THE MYSTIC WILL
of spirit is constantly reborn amid dark, struggling material
forces.
Boehme found which initiated the evo-
that the "contrary"
lutionary process, and which furnished the motive power
that carried it to completion, was an opposition between
two "wills" or modes of activity. One is an "own will"
(eigener Wille) which is directed outwardly, into nature
toward the finite sensible and the other is a "resigned will"
(gelassener Wille) directed inwardly, toward the infinite
supersensible. The first goes toward the relative, the phe-
nomenal, the multiplicity of things, the second goes toward
the absolute, the ultimate, the primal unity. Boehme not
only finds the two wills in himself, he envisions them also
in nature even at its lowest level where they appear as
"attraction" and "expansion." There is no problem in phi-
losophy, religion, or science, and no event in divine, angelic,
or human history, which cannot be interpreted as some
phase of the eternal battle between the wills and their
eternal reconciliation. They not only oppose each other,
they create each other, for each is necessary to the existence
of its opposite. Attraction cannot exist as a real force with-
out an opposing expansion. On the conscious level of exist-
ence, the out-going will would not be aware of its own
being, except through the instrumentality of the contrary
will.
Why does God permit the contrary will? . . If it had nothing

.
to resist it, it would continually of itself go outwards and return

not again into itself. But if it returned not again into itself as into
that out of which it originally went, it could know nothing of its
primal being (Urstand). (Beschau. 1:7-8.)
The opposing will is like the soil which presses against the
growing plant and yet nourishes it. It is like a dark object
which checks the light and yet makes it visible. The Son
of God is born when the two contrary wills become ''recon-
ciled." But the word "reconciled" needs elaborate explana-
tion. It requires the whole labor of philosophy to show
how this theogony comes about.

Boehme attacks his problem through a study of nature, a
study of himself, and a study of history. The Mysterium
Magnum, which he considered his greatest work expounds
his philosophy of history. It is a commentary upon the
events recorded in Genesis. The only "history" with which
its author was familiar was contained in the Bible, the Kab-
balah and odd bits of tradition and folklore of which he
made remarkable use.
As Boehme endeavored to relate his system of thought
to the meager historical material of which he was aware, we
shall similarly find it useful to construct an instrument of
research based on historical data. The peculiar character
of the problem presented to Protestant mysticism and
Boehme' s method of solving it can, perhaps, be best under-
stood through a comparison with other types of thought.
Such a comparison must necessarily be brief, and dogmatism
is inevitable in sharp contrasts where there is little room for
qualification. With this hint of caution let us proceed to
find and evaluate Boehme' s place in the history of mysticism.
II. Historical Types of Mysticism

Mysticism has, as a rule, been treated by its interpreters
and historians as a type of reply to either or both of two
problems, of which one is theoretical, the other practical.
The theoretical problem is: "Can absolute truth be known?"
The practical problem, usually presented in a religious or
ethical form, is: "Can desire be completely satisfied?" Mys-
16 THE MYSTIC WILL
ticism replies that a kind of experience is possible through
which both questions are answered in the affirmative.
The theoretical question arises because of the apparent
failure of the mind to break through the screen of idea to
objective existence. The mind and the world, the subject
and object, appear to be quite separate and different from
each other. In the mind we shadow world built of
find a
obscure reports of our imperfect sense organs. These images
are not reality and there appears to be no sure test as to
whether they even resemble reality. The mystic solves the
problem, not as the idealist does by reducing reality itself
to a greater world of ideas, but by brushing shadows aside

and uniting with reality in a single indivisible experience
which overcomes the subject-object distinction. Ideas, he
holds, may be useful signposts which point the way toward
this experience, but the experience itself cannot be expressed
in terms of ideas any more than an object in nature can be
completely expressed in terms of pictures, however many or
suggestive they may be.
The practical or religious question arises when ecclesiasti-
cal formalism has failed to meet the needs of active interior

faith. In church and creed, in sacrament and book, the
mystic finds symbols of Divinity, not Divinity Himself.
Man's highest words about God,
desire cannot be satisfied by
or descriptions of the ways in which God
once appeared on
earth. He wants God Himself in person here and now.
The mystic finds Him. God and the soul are united in an
indivisible experience which no symbol can adequately
represent.
Cognitive mysticism which endeavors to answer the prob-
lem of knowledge, and religious mysticism which in similar
fashion endeavors to answer the problem of salvation, both
face a well-known paradox. The first declares that reality

cannot be expressed in terms of ideas, yet it cannot discuss
reality without using ideas. Reality, it holds, is an ultimate,
a goal to be sought and the theory of cognitive mysticism
indicates its direction. But if the goal alone is real, the
theory about it is unreal and hence of no value. We cannot
journey to a real goal along an unreal road. Mysticism has
usually recognized this difficulty and has taken refuge in the
theory that a contradiction not resolvable in thought may be
resolved in experience. However, as the statement of this
solution is still a theory and not the experience itself, the
difficulty remains.
Religious mysticism faces a predicament of similar char-
acter. Man seeks salvation from the pains and passions of
finitudeby retreating into the inner depths of his being
where he becomes wholly absorbed in the infinite God whom
he finds there. In so far as any part of his sinful self goes
with him, just so far is his union with God incomplete.
But, on the other hand, in so far as his sinful self is left
behind, in just so far he is not saved. Either he retains his

individuality, in which case he is not fully united with God,
or he loses his individuality, in which case he, as an individ-
ual, is not transformed and saved. These paradoxes are not
peculiar to mysticism. They are variations of the oldest of
all philosophic problems, that of the one and the many.
Experience unifies, for a single experience may include within
itself many objects. The mind can findno logical reasons
for this apparent self-contradiction. Hence rational philoso-
phy is, and has always been, at war with irrational experience.
This fundamental difficulty can be examined in another
way if we follow the guidance of Boehme's philosophy.
Abandoning the conventional classification of mysticism as
18 THE MYSTIC WILL
speculative and religious, two types which historically over-
lap to a certain extent, let us introduce the conception of
direction. Here, without attempting at present to deal with
themany psychological and metaphysical problems involved,
we may distinguish between an outwardly directed will,
thought, feeling, or whatever name we may give to pur-
posive psychic activity, and an inwardly directed will. That
which is outwardly directed has for its ultimate object total-
ity. It expands in order That which
to include all things.
is inwardly directed aims at unity. It seeks to contract upon
pure subjectivity, to include nothing except that which it is

in its own deepest self. The out-going will expands upon
a world of many things unrelated by inner connections. Of
itself it finds only multiplicity. It flies forever outward,
seeking a goal in vain, until it becomes lost in the infinite
reaches of space. The in-going will contracts upon a basic
unity at the center of the soul, but as it contracts it leaves
the world behind and becomes lost in the utter blankness
of unity. Therefore neither the out-going nor the in-going
will can find satisfaction in itself. The out-going will can-
not be satisfied with an isolated bit of experience, for this
bit finds its meaning only in the larger whole of which it is
a part. The in-going will in abandoning worldly things

must leave behind the very desire it seeks to satisfy. Mysti-
cism arises when either the out-going or the in-going will
tires of the fruitless search and leaps over self-imposed bar-
riers to arrive at the goal. The out-going will finds as its
goal a Principle, or God, or Law, which combines phenomena

into a related whole. It pierces through the outer veil of
symbol and appearance and unites with a farther realm of

meaning which gives coherence and significance to the multi-
plicity of natural objects. Similarly the in-going will, search-
ing the heart of existence at last leaves all desire behind and,
undefiled by pride and passion, enters the central Holy of
Holies in the depths of the soul. Here it finds restand
peace. The goal of the out-going will is reached by positive
romantic self-assertion, the goal of the in-going will by
negative ascetic self-renunciation.
Both of these mystic attitudes wide variety of
exist in a
types. The first or out-going type may take the form of a
poetic nature mysticism like that of Wordsworth when
we are laid asleep

In body, and become a living soul:
While with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony, and deep power of joy,
We see into the heart of things.
6
Or it may be termed philosophic insight, as when Bergson

says, "Philosophy just consists in placing one's self by an
7
effort of intuition into the interior of concrete reality."
Third, it may be defined as the aesthetic experience illus-
trated by Schopenhauer's genius who "does not allow abstract

thought, the concepts of the reason, to take possession of
his consciousness, but gives the whole power of his mind
to perception, sinks himself entirely in this and lets his whole
consciousness be filled with the quiet contemplation of the
natural object actually present; ... he can no longer sepa-
rate the perceiver from the perception, but both have become
one, . . . then that which is known is no longer the particu-
8
lar thing as such, but it is the idea, the eternal form." Such
aestheticism becomes mysticism only when it implies the objec-
tivity of aesthetic judgment and so, in its contemplation of
* Lines Composed above Tintern Abbey.

7
Introduction to Metaphysics, p. 86. (Eng. trans.)
8
World as Will and as Idea, p. 231. (Eng. trans, by Haldane.)
20 THE MYSTIC WILL
nature, fuses real and ideal elements. These illustrations
suggest for our first type the name "aesthetic mysticism."
Fourth, even the man of science may for a moment become
an "out-going" mystic when in a flash of insight he seizes
the universal aspect of some particular set of relations. He
must later verify his inspiration by careful tests, but he is,
nevertheless, a mystic when a rational process has taken the

form of feeling, and is seen as apparently objectified in
nature itself, rather than as a result of laborious analysis.
The negative or contracting type of mysticism is the sim-
pler of the two forms and exhibits more historic uniformity.
It seeks peace and unity by annihilating all thoughts and
desires save one, the single idea of the absolute God. This
is the famous via negativa which many mystics in all ages
9
have trodden. "We shall," says Molinos, "sink and lose
ourselves in the immeasurable sea of God's goodness and
rest there steadfast and immovable happy in the state . . .
of the soul which has slain and annihilated itself." But even
the single idea of God may not be nihilistic enough. "So
10
long as ye desire," says Eckhart, to fulfil the will of God
and have any desire, even after eternity and God, so long
are ye not truly poor. He alone hath true spiritual pov-
erty who wills nothing, knows nothing, desires nothing."
In the philosophy of India as revealed in the Upanishads
the negative inward way receives its clearest and most uncom-
promising expression. The goal of the search can only be
described by "No, no. He is incomprehensible, for he can-
not be comprehended. If a man understands the self say-
ing 'I am He' what could he wish or desire that he should
pine after the body. . . . They who know the life of life,
9
Quoted by Inge, Christian Mysticism, p. 232.
10
Quoted by Hocking, The Meaning of God in Human Experience, p. 375.
the eye of the eye, the ear of the ear, the mind of the mind,
they have comprehended the ancient primaeval Brahman. . . .
He who perceives therein any diversity goes from death to

death. ... He therefore that knows it, after having become
quiet, subdued, satisfied, patient and collected sees self in
11
Self, sees all as Self."
Little wonder, then, that Boehme's soul was torn in twain.

The in-going and out-going wills both pulled him power-
fully. Obviously he could not at the same time follow both.
Either he must go out into nature and leave the God of his
inner life behind, or, remaining indifferent to nature, he must
rest back upon God in his soul, and seek peace and security.
He finally solved the problem through a type of mysticism
which may be called "voluntaristic" because its goal is neither
an inner static unity nor an outer static totality, but a har-
monized activity of the will which goes from one goal to
the other and back. This, we shall find, is not wholly a
nature mysticism nor wholly a religious mysticism, but a
mysticism of life which seeks both nature and God.
The essential quality of this third type of mysticism can
be partially shown by pointing out a curious and important
relation which exists between the expanding and contracting
types. Each of the two wills, in approaching the mystic
state, takes on the characteristics of the other. The out-
going nature mysticism finds God, or at least some principle
or thing-in-itself behind phenomena. But does not the nature-
mystic, projecting upon the screen of nature a magnified
image of himself, behold there meanings, purposes, spiritual
powers derived from his own inner life? Are not Words-
worth, Bergson, and Schopenhauer objectifying their own
subjective feelings? The out-flying will goes forth into
1 *
Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, IV.
2
22 THE MYSTIC WILL

nature, and, wearied in finding only what is meaningless
and indifferent to human fate, it pierces through nature,
completes a full cycle, and comes back upon the self it left
behind. Here it finds peace at last. Nature now appears
unified, purposeful, and not indifferent to human fate because
behind it is God, the deepest self of the mystic. The in-going
will likewise finds its opposite. It proceeds in the search
for God in the soul by leaving behind all thoughts, all desire,
all that is relative and finite. It will have nothing of its

sinful self. Accordingly the reality it seeks is wholly trans-
cendent. Although it goes inward, it seeks not pure sub-

jectivity, but pure objectivity, something wholly other than
itself. Just as the out-flying will, on becoming mystical,
pierces through objective nature to self, so the in-going will
reaches its mystical stage when it pierces through self to the
wholly Other, the ultimate reality which is everything that is
not self. Thus it likewise completes a full circle and, though

subjectively directed, finds the completely objective as its
12
goal.
1
Thus outwardly
directed mysticism exhibits a kinship to idealism though
it not strictly idealistic.
is Its world is the ideal self, the fulfillment of
inner meanings, the deepest ego of the knower. Inwardly directed mysticism
leans toward realism. It finds reality not by fulfilling, but by denying, desire
and meaning. The reality, it seems, is that which is left over after all that
is subjective is subtracted.
may also be observed here that Mystical experience like other experience
It
is either indefinable or self-definable. Idealistically the Mystical experience is
definable as the fulfillment of my present will. Here it is subjective and
self-definable. Realistically it is indefinable or definable only in negative
terms, as being something which comes by denying the will, that is, it is
purely objective. The duality consists in an idealistic definition and a
realistic experience. Taking experience in the widest sense of the term as
including both definition and thing defined, it is a perpetual alternation
between idealism and realism, between a universe idealistically defined as
my idea and a universe which may or may not correspond to this definition.
The only way which philosophy can obtain any peace is to be resigned
in
to whatever happens in experience, that is, to leave room for negative
mysticism. Mysticism may be defined as a synthesis of idealism and realism,
in which an absolute defined idealistically is experienced realistically.
In this circular process by which each will is harmonized

with the other by passing through a mystic stage we find the
central conception of Boehme's philosophy. He calls it the
"ring" or "hoop" {Band) in which "the end continually
seeks the beginning." (40Q 1:225.) The conception which
has been briefly outlined though far from being stated
in the terms which Boehme uses, probably contains the
key to many obscure passages in his writings such as the
following:
Every Being {Wesen) is in two beings an outer and an inner;

one seeks and finds the other, the outer is nature and the inner is
spirit over nature and there is yet no separation, except only tem-
porally {was in einer Zeit geschlossen isi) where goal is parted from
goal, so that the end finds the beginning. (40Q 1:211.)
If one would do for the human mind {Gemiith) that by which
it might find eternal rest, one must show it the root of the tree out
of which Spirit and Flesh has its origin. One must show it the
"centrum" of the eternal as well as the temporal nature that it may
conceive the earthly and the heavenly "mysterium" then is the eternal
;
beginning and the eternal end all one; therein the spirit of the soul
finds rest for it sees the whole wheel at once, {das Rad ganz)
(Anti-Stiefelius, I, 23.)
We shall have more to say about this mysterious circular

process. Boehme discovers it in multitudinous forms. In
every completed act of the will the soul goes from earth
through hell to highest heaven and back to earth again. This
is the dialectic of all organic Boehme's universe is
life.
dramatic to the core for everywhere the two wills endeavor

to enact their appointed roles. Sometimes they fail and the
darkness of evil overshadows them. When they succeed, the
light of heaven shines. Mysticism, for Boehme, is not alone
a mysticism of the Father, the dark transcendental back-
ground of all things, nor solely a mysticism of the Son, the
luminous goal of nature, but above all a mysticism of the
24 THE MYSTIC WILL
Spirit, the life which eternally pours from one into the other
and again returns whence it came.
III. The Two Wills in Eastern and Western

Philosophy
Prevailing tendencies in Eastern and Western philosophy
will illustrate contrasting attitudes toward the two wills. It
is dangerous to generalize too freely regarding such exceed-
ingly complex matters, but our present purpose will not be
furthered by a citation of the exceptions which might be
enumerated. In general, Western thought follows the phi-
losophy of the expanding will. It tends to reject philo-
sophic systems not primarily interested in understanding or
influencing the objective order. It aims at the perfection
of the world and society. Only through such action can the
individual attain perfection. Nature as a whole is consid-
ered to be friendly to man. It will cooperate with him in
attaining his ends. We set ourselves to discover what nature
J
/ wants in order to find out what we ourselves, as part of it,
(really desire. By immersing ourselves in the immanent law

of progress, we are carried on toward final victory. Thus
Western thought tends to be optimistic and, though it may,
indeed, be melioristic, it seldom dares a thoroughgoing pes-
simism such as to deprive man of all expectation of final
triumph founded on the nature of the world around him.
In general it may be said that the West, following the out-
going will, has left the individual behind. It unwittingly
conquers nature by submitting to it. This is not only true
in social theory which tends to subordinate the individual
to society, but also in science. Western mechanistic science
cannot even find the soul of man for it looks outward, not
jnward. Physics reduces him to a swarm of electric charges,
chemistry to a few simple elements, and the new psychology

to a bundle of reflexes. Geology and astronomy have almost
lost him in boundless reaches of space and time. Biology
classes him with the "lower" animals, and discovers a law
of evolution which sacrifices individual to type. What is
man that science is mindful of him? In the universal nexus

of cause and effect he nowhere appears. The machines
which he has invented to help him require his slavish atten-
tion. Sometimes they utterly destroy him as is the case in
war. In ruling nature the out-going will has submitted itself
to natuTe, as Rome in conquering Greece submitted to Greek
culture.
Eastern philosophy, in general, faces a different way and
follows the in-going will. It does not center itself on the
control of nature or the perfection of society as such, but on
13
inner control and the perfection of each individual.
This philosophy of the contracting will is pessimistic in
respect to external nature. It turns from nature which gives
man low ideals of conduct, back to a super-nature at the
heart of man whence alone can come ideals that satisfy the
deep needs of the self. The in-going will triumphs over the
cosmic process by escaping from it, not, like the out-going
will, by mingling with it and taking on its tones and colors.
In much thought that is typical of the East the knower
withinis the One Absolute, the only reality. All else is the
Known, a fog bank of idea screening the eternal mountain
peaks of the Real. Let Western man exhaust himself in
struggling with the phantom Nature. Eastern man watches
the conflict in quiet contemplation, knowing well that
Nature is bound in the end to win. He himself, however, is
1
Confucius, however, and many of the Chinese moralists aim at per-
fecting society in accordance with the nature of the world order.
26 THE MYSTIC WILL
secure, for he has retired to an inner citadel, which Nature
cannot invade.
In this bald contrast of Eastern and Western thought,
which is far too brief to be fair, much of each which exists
in the other has been omitted. The exceptions which might
be made to the general trend are not only historically true,
they are logically inevitable. Boehme will show us later
/'that each of our two wills is the "matter" or unmanifested
/ substratum of the other and so cannot exist by itself. Each
\ also,by going far enough, passes through a mystical stage
/ which transforms it into the other.
Greek Philosophy and Mysticism

IV.
The Greeks made the first great attempt in the Western
world to work out a philosophy of the expanding will.
They failed because they could not find for it any completely
satisfying goal. The result was that the expanding will was
arrested in full flight and turned back on itself. Greek
Idealism was at first objectively directed. It sought to catch
the whole universe in the net of the idea. The knower seeks
only that which can be perfectly known, only that which
can be thoroughly dissolved in thought, leaving no residuum.
The opaque and meaningless
flux presented to our senses is
and offers no final goal for the mind. Greek philosophy

accordingly goes beyond it and finds an ideal world thor-
oughly transparent to reason. Behind the shadow world of
phenomena it found the Light of Reality where thought in
its own realm might, with naked eyes, behold truth absolute,
unobscured by matter, undarkened by evil. This ideal world

was changeless, orderly, symmetrical like a Greek temple.
In it the diverse elements of our lower physical existence
were purified, idealized and harmonized. But the builders
of this harmonious structure could not fit everything into it.

There was an embarrassing refuse pile left over which spoiled
the view. This residuum was matter, evil, ugliness, and pain.
It was so opaque to reason that the builders declared either
that it was devoid of existence or at least that it lacked the
full measure of reality. The result was that the Greeks, who
sought harmony, discovered a series of unharmonized antino-
mies such as finite and infinite, temporal and eternal, phe-
nomenal and intelligible, the many and the one. Reason
was baffled and retreated to feeling. Neo-Platonism solved
J
the problem of a completely satisfying goal by discovering
harmony not only beyond the phenomenal, but even beyond
the intelligible. The limit of reason was found to be the
negation of reason. The completely ineffable One which
reconciles all antinomies could be apprehended only in an
ecstasy which seemed "describable," if such a term can be
used, more in terms of feeling than in terms of knowledge.
The Neo-Platonists thus found a goal for the out-flying will
by completing the circle and discovering inner subjective
feeling. Outer finality, sought from a purely intellectual
starting point, is arrived at through an indescribable inner
experience. The effort first made to free the spirit from the
shadow world of matter by penetrating to the timeless and
spaceless altitudes of reason may purify and redeem, but it I
does not furnish enough vital air to support life. Thejoul

must therefore return to the world of feeling.
But in falling back to feeling, Greek philosophy does not
yet return to earth. Neo-Platonism, particularly its later
and more extreme type, did not develop a this-world ethic,
but remained facing the other world. In order to explain
the character of this negative attitude so prominent in the
history of mysticism, we shall resort to a psychological illus-
28 THE MYSTIC WILL
tration which is intended, however, to be more than a mere
analogy. Let us suppose, without doing too much violence
to contemporary theories, that a complete movement of the
will arises first from the sense world; second, in becoming
thought, it is abstracted from that world in an endeavor to
harmonize sense data with previous judgments ; third, assert-
ing freedom and ultimate value, the will discharges itself
its
into the sense world again in action. Similarly, Greek phi-

losophy first arose from the sense world of the early Greek
sages; second, it became abstracted from that sense world by
an apotheosis of the realm of ideas and endeavored to har-
monize all things into a coherent system in the philosophy of
Plato and Aristotle. Finally, in Neo-Platonism it sought out-
let in a feeling of ultimate value, unobservable and incommu-
nicable. It did not seek outlet in action. It did not develop

an ethic operative in this world. It stopped at that dim, but
profound, apprehension of inner unity and of the ultimate
significance of all things which precedes an art of will. The
world of ideas might have become a middle term between
stimulus and response, but the response was not completed.
It was arrested at the ideal stage in Plato and at the deeper
and more subjective stage of feeling in subsequent Neo-

Platonism. At a later period in this discussion, following
Boehme's analysis of the complete process of will, it will be
set forth more clearly that there is a moment in that process
when the will thrown back on the Absolute wherein it
is
asserts both its freedom to act and the ultimate worth of its
action. This mystical stage is just beyond the rational stage,
for intellect by itself cannot discover either freedom or value.
Greek philosophy stopped at this point. Accordingly its
ethics were based on a release of the soul from the world of
matter. This negativity was carried over into Christianity.
It was precisely this quality of arrested action which chiefly

characterized the great mystics of the Mediaeval Church who
followed the Neo-Platonic tradition. Jacob Boehme is some-
times thought to be a disciple of the pseudo-Dionysius to
whose influence much of this tradition is due. Boehme,
however, followed the will to its completion in action. He
passed through but did not stop at that point in the process
of the will, discovered by the Neo-Platonists, wherein the
soul is baptized in the infinite worth of the ineffable One.
V. Early Christianity and Ethics

The Greeks could not complete the road from the super-
sensual back to the sensual so they abandoned the sensual,
declaring that it lacked a full measure of reality. At this
dramatic juncture Deity descends into the sphere of matter
and redeems the sensual. Dying Greek intellectualism was
confronted by Christianity which appeared at one stroke to
solve all its antinomies. Christianity adored a God-man at
once finite and infinite, natural and supernatural, who had
completely conquered evil and yet could live a normal life
in the sensual world. At one period in her history Israel

had worshiped both the supernatural ethical Jehovah and
the unethical nature-god Baal by identifying the two. Now
Christianity, on a far higher plane, combined nature and
supernature in a single deified man. The actual existence of
a perfect personality in this world solves the problem, for
in the ideal person the outer many of nature and the inner
one of spirit are reconciled, "The Word is become flesh,"
cries the exultant writer of the Fourth Gospel. In Jesus the

gap between sensual and supersensual has been bridged and
on this bridge the whole world may travel to salvation.
Yet early Christianity stopped short of a complete solu-
30 THE MYSTIC WILL
tion. Instead of teaching that every man might become an
ideal person in whom antinomies are wholly reconciled it
tended to inculcate loyalty to one such Person. It is true

that its greatest leaders and all its mystics have seen further
than this. Saint Paul and Saint John taught a mystic union
with Christ, the vine of which all believers are branches.
In this union Christ's personality was shared. Christianity
was, as Paul expressed it, the "putting on of Christ." Faith
meant more than intellectual acceptance or loyal orientation
of will. The law of Moses takes us that far. In the new
religion, according to Saint Paul, followers of Jesus may be
crucified and raised up with Him and so partake of His
perfection. Nevertheless, in spite of the positive mysticism
of Paul and John and many of the early Fathers, Christian
thought crystallized into a type of arrested action. The
average believer looked to Jesus, his ideal, across a great
chasm which only the Apocalypse could bridge.
Early Christianity can be analyzed more adequately in
terms of ethics than in terms of Greek metaphysics. In
terms of ethics the negative in-going will may be said to have
an other-world end. The positive out-going will, being
assertive and seeking an all-inclusive life, may be said to have
a this-world end. The "other- world" end, reached through
self-renunciation, is the religious end in the usual sense of
the term, and the this-world end is a unification of all the
various this-world ends arising from man's physical and
psychical nature. Man's ethical task appears to be to unite
as far as possible the this-world end and the other-world end
into a single end which shall satisfy both the desire for self-
assertionand the desire for self-renunciation. Can the super-
natural and transcendent be combined with the natural and
immanent?
In the person of Jesus it was demonstrated that an other-

world morality of self-renunciation was not incompatible
with a this-world morality of social human relations. The
Neo-Platonist had reached the supersensible by fleeing from
the world, Jesus had attained it by living in the world and yet
overcoming it. Jesus is both worldly and other-worldly. He
constantly expresses indifference to wealth and poverty,
church and state and all mundane preoccupations. "Take
ye no thought for the morrow," "Resist not evil," "Blessed
are the meek," are apparently the statements of a self-
renouncing ascetic. In His dealings with the Pharisees He
emphasizes subjective dispositions, the form and not the
content of the will. Love is the door to the Kingdom. Yet
Jesus obviously did not teach merely a Kantian subjective
formal ethic. The Kingdom of God which was to come
was to be a new human society on this earth, a community
in which men were to treat one another as sons of a common
Father. Only by living as if that Kingdom were here already
could men bring it about. Jesus gives us little specific infor-
mation about His objective this-world end. He is, however,
very definite in saying that the many different this-world
ends in the world around us must be unified and harmonized
by the dominance of the other-world end. Jesus faces the
other world in order to bring about a new world here. The
absolute other- world code of "offering the other cheek"
takes precedence over the relative this-world code of an
"eye for an eye." But Jesus does not abolish the this-world
ethic of Moses. He fulfills it; that is to say, the lower law
of this world attains its own ends not through itself, but
through the higher law of the spirit. Modern Christianity
is confused because it does not know how to accept the
ethics of the Kingdom and at the same time live a normal
32 THE MYSTIC WILL
human life. Such mystics as Boehme undertake to solve
this problem. To the earliest followers of Jesus the riddle
was not so They expected the Kingdom shortly to
serious.
appear in the clouds of heaven. The other- world ethics of
Jesus prepared them for the new order which was about
to come in actuality through some giant catastrophe.
This duality of natural and supernatural which Jesus over-
came in His own life, but had not harmonized in any explicit
system of thought had serious consequences for Christianity.
The same difficulty was faced by the successors of Plato as
by the followers of Jesus. Platonic ideas were both trans-
cendent and immanent. In this they were like the Kingdom
of Heaven which was in the world, but not of it.
The "Realm of Ideas" and the "Kingdom of Heaven" had,
therefore, similar careers for similar reasons. The Kingdom
rose out of thehomely precepts propounded by Jesus regard-
ing everyday life, even as the divine Ideas were first discov-
ered by Socrates in the streets of Athens. The Kingdom
illumined all things with divine radiance in visions of Saint
John and Saint Paul and the early Greek Fathers, just as the
Ideas illumined the sensual world of Plato and Aristotle.
Finally in Catholicism and Protestantism the Kingdom fled
as far away as the One of the Neo-Platonists. In Catholicism
the Kingdom was outside the world except at those points
where the Church could bring it within reach through sac-
raments, and in Protestantism it was removed to the life
hereafter and left its only revelation for mankind within a
Book.
That which and Jesus began as an ethical prin-
in Socrates
ciple operative in this world, in Neo-Platonism and Luther
was incapable of being presented in any experience which
had a this- world significance. In Neo-Platonism the ineffable
One was reached by carrying negation to the farthest limit

in this life. In Protestantism the negation was even more
determined, for Pilgrim must cross the dark river of death
1 *
before he could enter the Celestial City.
Let us trace in more detail the fate of the ethics of the
Kingdom.
VI. Catholicism Offers a Limited Solution

Catholicism early developed an ethic of nature distinct
from an ethic of super-nature through its attempt to preach
the primitive Christian doctrine of world renunciation and
at the same time to adapt itself to this world. Since Greek
thought dominated the ancient world, the natural this-world
ethics had a Greek basis while the supernatural other-world
ethics had what was intended to be a Christian basis. The
first grew out of Platonic, Aristotelian, and Stoic views
which emphasized the immanence rather than the trans-

cendence of the world of forms and so accepted the concept
of a natural ethical law fixed in nature. This law regulated
the political and economic system, as well as science, phi-
losophy, and art. It was a combination of Aristotle, the Old
Testament, and popular and traditional elements. It accepted
"an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth," and its ideal
was the Aristotelian high-minded man, well balanced, prac-
tical, worldly, prosperous.
The supernatural code faced the other way. Its goal was
14
Thus Boehme states the difficulty in Protestantism. "I have sought
through many masters of writing, hoping to find in them the Pearl of the
ground of man, but I could find nothing of that for which my soul longed.
I only found many conflicting opinions. . . With all this my soul became
.
very unquiet within me and was full of anguish as a woman in travail. I

found nothing until I followed the words of Christ when he said 'You
must be born anew if you will see the Kingdom of God.' This at first
stopped my heart for I supposed that such a thing could not be done in this
world, but only at my departure from this life." (T. P. 10:1.)
34 THE MYSTIC WILL
complete renunciation of the world and all its works. It
grew out of the Sermon on the Mount, Pauline theology,

and the Neo-Platonic view of nature as evil. It regulated
certain aspects of private life, the
communication of grace
through sacraments, the subordination of the natural law
to the ends of the Church, and the asceticism of the saints.
It believed the most perfect creature to be only natural.
Christianity lifts such a one above his natural limitations to

God's super-nature through the Church and its sacraments.
The Gospel was a gift from God, a divine bestowment which
endowed man with liberty and freed him from the domi-
nance of the external.
Monasticism arose as a genuine and sincere solution of the
predicament presented by the double ethical standard, for
it seemed that only within an artificially ideal community
could the world renunciation of Jesus' teaching be carried
out. It preserved and emphasized the all-important principle
that the Kingdom of God could (at least in some sense) be
realized on earth as a present temporal reality. Here it
agrees with mysticism. The mystics of the Middle Ages
came most instances from monasteries, oblivious though
in
they seem to have been of the fact that their very mysticism
contained a principle which must eventually dispense with
both church and monastery.
Thus Catholicism recognizes both the this-world and the
other- world elements in Christ's teaching, but it does not
attempt to reconcile them in a single individual experience.
Instead it designates some persons for the religious end, in
contemplative renunciation of the world, and others, accord-
ing to their gifts, to various human ends. The man of the
world is forced to subordinate his Christianity to the neces-
sities of his occupation, but he is not thereby lost. The
Church is an organism of many related parts and this man

can therefore, through the Church, share in the virtue of
those who follow the path of self-renunciation. The
Church's solution was logically elaborated on practical lines,
but it is difficult to believe that Jesus meant the Sermon on

the Mount for a special class of persons. The "sick soul,"
to use William James' phrase, wants a unification of his
divided inner life here and now. He is unwilling that the
monk or priest should monopolize the other-world ends while
he is forced for the sake of a paltry competence to follow a )
lower standard.
VII. Protestantism Postpones the Solution

Protestantism rebelled at the complete monopoly of the
other- world religious
end by the Church. It accordingly took
thisend away from the Church and tried for a time to live
with it. But not for long. The reconciliation of this world
and the other world appeared impracticable in the ordinary
affairs of life. So Protestantism banished the other world,
not to a monastery, but to the life hereafter. It thus
attempted to solve the dualism by abolishing one of the^^
terms. In its rediscovery of the inner life Protestantism
existed at first as a form of mysticism. For many years
before the Reformation there had been growing up, gen-
erally unperceived, though occasionally coming to the sur-
face, a non-ecclesiastical and sometimes anti-ecclesiastical
religion. Such mysticism as that of Eckhart and Tauler, of
Suso and Ruysbroeck, speculative as it was and tinged with
had gradually assumed a practical character
scholasticism,
and had developed into praying circles and pious associa-
tions, such as 'The Eleven Thousand Virgins," the "Gottes-
freunde " and the "Brethren of the Common Life." In these
36 THE MYSTIC WILL
movements the spiritual ancestry of Jacob Boehme can be
traced.
It is, however, wrong to suppose that in them the ancestry
of Protestantism, as finally developed, can be traced. Prot-
estantism has even less place for mysticism than has Catholi-
cism. It might appear that Luther's inspiration came from
breathing the air of German mysticism. As a young man he
was much impressed by the mysticism of St. Augustine. He
bought and elaborately annotated an edition of Tauler, and
edited a mystical manuscript called The Frankfurter, to
which he gave the name of The German Theology. As to
the influence of this mysticism his two hundred or more
biographers vociferously disagree. The most plausible expla-
nation is given by Bohmer {Luther, pp. 103-11), who says
that Luther got from Tauler and the Frankfurter the doc-
trine "that every man whom God saves must pass through
the hell of pangs of conscience" and "that man has no other
alternative than to give himself up to God for life and death
And to wholly relinquish all idea of personal choice." If
qiis be true, Luther adopted the negative elements of mysti-
cism, its humility and self-surrender, rather than the positive
element of direct contact with God himself. In 1520 Luther
branded the pseudo-Dionysius, who was one of the inspirers
of the German theology as "most pernicious, more a fol-
lower of Plato than of Christ."

To ascertain the true spirit of that Protestantism on the
background of which Boehme' s philosophy evolved, we must
turn, not to the mystical sects of the early Reformation which
Protestantism itself repudiated through relentless persecu-
tion, nor to the revived scholasticism of Melanchthon and
Zwingli who tried to make their Protestantism reasonable, but
to the conception of faith. The doctrines regarding faith
and Scripture were the two organizing ideas of the Reforma-

tion. The subjective element of Protestantism was faith, arTl
attitude, an orientation in which the soul throws itself wholly /
on the mercy of God. The objective element was the Scrip- /

ture which contained all that could ever be known in this life/
about God and salvation. "To this Scripture," says the'
Westminster Confession of Faith, "nothing may be added,
whether by new revelation of the Spirit or by the traditions
of men." The natural depraved man could, through faith,
face toward truth, but he could not, of himself, reach it.
The difficulties in such a conception are obvious, for there
is no path from the subjective to the objective. The two are
in water-tight compartments. We have here a kind of reli-
gious naive-realism and the corresponding difficulty of formu-

lating any test of truth. By what standard shall I, who
am but a child of nature and therefore totally depraved,
judge which is correct of two interpretations of Scripture by
Luther and Zwingli, for instance? The Biblical test reduces
all to pure phenomenalism. A comparison of symbols can
tell us nothing of the accuracy of the symbols. But the
difficulty goes deeper. As man is "natural" and totally
depraved with no faculty for truth, can truth have meaning
for him? Orhe can only acquire goodness by a process
if
taking place wholly outside himself, a kind of bargaining

between the persons of the Trinity, must not evil also be out
of relation to him? Even "faith" can be no form of good-
ness. Man is not immoral but unmoral, a conclusion prac-
tically acknowledged in the doctrine of predestination.
A conspicuous achievement of Protestantism was the abo-

lition of the Catholic concept of sacraments. The sacra-
ments permit a mystic union of God and man through the
Church, but Protestantism admits no mystic union of any
38 THE MYSTIC WILL
kind. The Platonic-Aristotelian philosophy of the Church
had room for mystic participation in a transcendental realm.
The theory of this participation was derived from Plato's
conception of a participation of the soul in the realm of
ideas. Protestantism so widened scholastic dualism that the
divine supernatural term pushed clear out of the world,
is
16
leaving this world wholly The result was that Protes-
evil.
tantism, though at first, through its doctrine of faith, it

appeared to favor individualism, was compelled to revert to
authority even more than was the case with Catholicism,
"for," says McGiffert, "there was not the same consciousness
of strength in the divided churches of the Reformation as in
19
Middle Ages."
the one great body of the
As Protestantism had only this world to deal with it was
forced to adopt this- world's ethics. The Sermon on the
Mount, which Catholicism had endeavored to keep at least
in its monasteries and religious orders, was abandoned and a
morality of law, an Old Testament code was substituted.
The mystical sects of the Reformation period, loosely classi-
fied under the general name of Anabaptists, who often took
literally Christ's injunction to "resist not evil" were savagely
persecuted. In the Thirty Years' War the God of Battles
was invoked, and in the hands of Cromwell the "Sword of
the Lord and of Gideon" smote the "Philistines." New
Testament ethics, the ethics of the Kingdom, have on the
whole been ignored by Protestantism down to the present
day. The completeness of this inherent dualism means that
the domination of all other ends by the religious end can
1
William Blake in a note to Cellini's Trattato della Pittura expresses
the same conception in the phrase: "The Pope supposes nature and the
Virgin Mary to be the same allegorical personages, but the Protestant con-
siders nature incapable of bearing a child."
16
Rise of Modern Religious Ideas, p. 12.
be reached only after death in a heaven where even the

possibility of evil is excluded.
VIII. Protestant and Catholic Mysticism

Let us define the supernatural religious object as the goal
of the in-going will of the religious mystic and the whole
group of natural human ends, unified as far as possible, as
the goal of the out-going will. The supernatural religious
object is the Absolute God, and the this-world human ends
are truth, justice, happiness, and whatever may be consid-
ered as belonging to an ideal social order. The problem
then is to reconcile the two wills by giving them a common
goal, that is, to show how the will of God, found by the
renunciation of human desire, can be objectified in a social
order. This is the problem of the Incarnation as set forth
in the Gospel of John. How can spirit in its perfection
tabernacle in mortal flesh? showed how, in a

Christianity
and matter became reconciled. Greek phi-
single case, spirit
losophy had worked out a theory of immanence which early
Christianity attempted to use in explaining, not only the one
complete Incarnation, but also the many incomplete incar-
nations among But the negative
the followers of Jesus.
tendencies in Greek philosophy prevailed. The dualism was
wider in Catholicism than in early Greek Christianity.
Through the grace of God spirit tabernacled in flesh, but
only in special instances. This grace was made possible
through the Church. Protestantism rejected the Church's
control of grace, but found itself even less able to work
out a theory which could reconcile this world and the other
world. It accordingly widened the dualism still further and
attempted to make the best of a this-world legalism.
To both these somewhat divergent points of view mysti-
40 THE MYSTIC WILL
cism replies that the Incarnation is possible in the heart of
every believer and that the resultant ethic is such as Christ
preached in the Sermon on the Mount. Only as the other
world and this world are reconciled inwardly here and now
will the Kingdom of God come outwardly. When in the
days of Cromwell the "Fifth Monarchy Men" were disturb-
ing London coming of
in their excitement over the expected
the Kingdom from the clouds of heaven, George Fox, the
first Quaker, told them that the Kingdom had come already
and had "dashed to pieces the four monarchies."

Mysticism unites the objective grace of Catholicism with
the subjective faith of Protestantism in a single experience,
which is the union of the soul with God. As Catholicism
is primarily objective and Protestantism primarily subjective,
mysticism whether Catholic or Protestant is subjective-objec-
tive. Or, stated in categorical terms,
(1) Catholicism makes the supernatural religious object
exterior and attainable.
(2) Protestantism makes the supernatural religious object

exterior and unattainable.
(3) Mysticism makes the supernatural religious object

interior and attainable.
Since mysticism is both Catholic and Protestant and our
present object is to define the task of Protestant mysticism,
we must distinguish between the two. The difference is
largely in the fact that Catholic mysticism tended to be

orthodox and Protestant mysticism did not. The latter
accordingly became the precursor of modern philosophy

while the former was more closely bound up with medieval-
ism. Catholic mysticism could be orthodox because the
17
philosophy of the church was Greek in origin. Lehmann
17
Mysticism in Heathendom and Christendom, p. 145.
it "Mysticism which the church long ago

picturesquely styles
borrowed from Plato, but which in the course of time had
been re-baptized and re-inaugurated so many times that it
required sharp eyes to detect its heathen derivation." Catholi-
cism had turned to Greek intellectualism rather than to
Augustinian voluntarism because the Church, being universal,
is therefore real (according to this logic) and is the ladder
reaching up to the Platonic heaven. It extends from the
visible and perishable particular to the invisible and eternal
universal. Thus Platonism, by declaring that the most abstract
is the most real, had set the Catholic mystic on the famous
via negativa. On this road, God, the universal of universals,

is reached by subtracting all particulars contributed by the
senses. The most abstract has no other positive quality than

that of unity, the abstraction of all abstractions.As the
mystic mounted upward toward the One, particularity and
multiplicity, and with them the whole world of the senses,
were left behind.
on the other hand was compelled to
Protestant mysticism
evolve a philosophy of own. Because of this contingency
its
it became the ancestor of modern philosophy. Luther had

posited a radical evil over against God; he had also main-
tained that the ultimate individuality of man must not be
merged and lost in any Platonic abstraction. Through him
Protestant mysticism was committed to the preservation of
both terms of the antinomy. Subjective man must not be
merged in objective Church or lost in objective God. Prot-
estant mysticism stands therefore as the true precursor of
the self-assertive modern age, committed not to accepting
the universe, but to transforming it according to the subjec-
tive will. Such mysticism is at once active and passive.
This fact explains the fundamental difference between Cath-
42 THE MYSTIC WILL
olic Eckhart and Protestant Boehme, thinkers who are often
classed together because they are superficially alike. Protes-
tant mysticism, being the more subjective, explores deeper
into the self than does reason and finds will as the furthest
reach of introspection. Hence makes
Protestant mysticism
will rather than idea ultimate. It tends to be irrational and
dualistic, for the activity of will depends on the duality of
reality and value. Creation arises, not from logical, but
moral necessity. God is Person as well as Truth. Meta-
physics is here based on ethics, whereas the ethics of the
Church was based on metaphysics. Creation becomes an
evolution, not a devolution. The early Church mystics in
their theories of creation began at the top and worked
through a series of deteriorating stages, emanations, or radia-
way down to negative matter. Boehme works
tions all the
from formless matter upward and is thus a prophet of mod-
ern science. For the Church, love was submission to the
upward pull of the ideal. "Contemplation," says Thomas
Aquinas, "is Love." For Boehme love is creative force.
The controversy over the primacy of will or intellect did
not arise with the Reformation. It was the source of debate
between Thomism and Scotism. Modern psychology dis-
regards the distinction, holding that will and intellect are

inseparable aspects of mental activity. But pragmatically
there some importance in a distinction which has practical
is
consequences. The Church detected that the primacy of the

intellect was conducive to orthodoxy. It officially adopted
Thomism. If will is dependent on ideas and ideas are fur-

nished by the Church, all is safe and sane. If idea is depend-
ent on will, heresy and anarchy result, as the multitude of
Reformation sects plainly demonstrated. Will, said the
Church, is obviously lower in rank than intellect, for will
can only act by picking out the particular, and therefore

imperfect, realizations of the universal Good.
Protestant mysticism therefore presents a more genuine
dualism to be bridged than the Church's dualism between
philosophy and dogma, which both partook, though in dif-
ferent degrees, of the Ideal realm. The Protestant emphasis
on and the essential interiority and subjectivity of
faith
religion must be kept as a positive gain, yet the religious
object, as in Catholicism, must have present and immediate
reality. Protestant mysticism must recognize both the reality
of evil and the omnipotence of God, the interiority of good-
ness and the objectivity of grace, the dualism of value and
the monism of the Divine Will. The other- world ethics of
renunciation must be possible in an egoistic world. Egoistic
desire must somehow be satisfied with altruistic result. The
Protestant mystic could not, like the monks and mystics of
the Middle Ages, escape the awful consequence of the finite
and "fly hence to our dear country," nor could he like other
Protestants postpone the divine harmony of the Kingdom to
a choir hereafter. To reconcile the two terms of the
antinomy, to create peace founded on strife, harmony which
included discord, a One which was also many, seemed to
Jacob Boehme in his years of despair a superhuman task.
Such indeed it was, but the light finally broke through and
revealed the manner of union between the in-going will
toward the Oneness of God and the out-going will toward
18
the many of nature.
18
For German Idealism and Boehme' s Problem see Appendix, p. 259.
In life's every-day appearances
Iseemed about this time to gain clear sight
—
Of a new world a world too that was fit
To be transmitted, and to other eyes
Made visible; as ruled by those fixed laws
Whence spiritual dignity originates,
Which do both give it being and maintain
A balance, an ennobling interchange
Of action from without and from within;
The excellence, pure function and best power
Both of the object seen, and eye that sees.
Wordsworth, The Prelude, Bk. XIII.
CHAPTER II
BOEHME'S LIFE AND INFLUENCE

The outer circumstances of Boehme's life bear little direct
relation to his inner struggles. He was born in 1575 at Alt

1
Seidenberg, a village near Gorlitz in Silesia. His parents,
Jacob and Ursula, were of poor but solid peasant stock.
They gave him the usual village school education. At an
early age he was sent to the fields with other children to herd
cattle. His peculiar psychic temperament and vivid imagi-
nation soon became evident. As a shepherd boy he climbed
to the top of the neighboring "Landeskrone" and there beheld
a vaulted entrance leading into a cavern. On entering he
found a great vessel filled with money from which he ran
away in fright. Afterwards he often returned to the spot
with other boys, but the cave and its treasure had vanished.
His biographer Frankenberg, to whose account we owe the
incident, finds in an omen of Boehme's "spiritual entrance
it
into the hidden treasury of divine and natural wisdom."

Jacob Boehme was a dreamy, thoughtful stripling, ill-quali-
1
Boehme's first and principal biographer was his friend Abraham von
Frankenberg, whose Bericht, dated 1651, is printed in the first editions of
Boehme's works (1682, 1715 and 1730) along with a number of brief bio-
graphical documents written by other disciples. (English translation by
Okeley, 1780.) These reports, however, contain an obvious mythological
element arising out of the passionate devotion of the writers to their master.
Boehme's epistles are the most trustworthy sources of biographical informa-
tion. They disagree at some points with the accounts of his disciples. The
tercentenary memorial volume published by the city of Gorlitz (R. Jecht.
Gorlitz, 1924) contains a quantity of new, but not very important biographi-
cal material from the city archives.
45
46 THE MYSTIC WILL
fled to become an agriculturist so he was apprenticed to a
shoemaker. Soon the lad experienced another portent of his
future. A stranger with "light-flashing eyes" came into the
shop. "Jacob," he said, with a piercing glance, "thou art
little, but thou shalt become great so that the world will
wonder at thee. Thou must endure much misery and pov-

erty and suffer persecution, but be courageous and strong
for God loves and is gracious unto thee." The result of this
and other apparently subjective experiences was that Jacob
made such a nuisance of himself in exhorting his fellow
apprentices to godliness that his master dismissed him on the
grounds that he wanted a shoemaker and not a
sufficient
"house prophet." Then, probably between the years 1592
and 1595, he wandered over Germany as a traveling journey-
man. Little is known of this period, but it was undoubtedly
crowded with experiences which later found expression in
books. Boehme was deeply distressed by the sufferings of
his countrymen and by the bitter contentions of princes. A
profound hatred of war took possession of his soul. Being a
devout churchgoer he discovered that the Evangelical Church
was split into wrangling factions which consigned each other
to damnation. Henceforth to him the established Church
was "Babel und Vabel' (M. M. 51:49), more representative
of the devil than of Christ. Afflicted with melancholy and
oppressed with doubt, he earnestly sought a guiding light.
Sometimes he found it in a stray bit of alchemistic or Kabal-
listic lore. More often it shone out from within himself.
Once, says Frankenberg, he was lifted into a "sabbath of the
soul" and for seven days was "enrapt in the highest divine
vision and joy."
About 1595 he returned to Gorlitz, became a master shoe-
maker, and married Katherina Kuntzschmann, a tradesman's
BOEHME'S LIFE AND INFLUENCE 47
daughter, with whom he lived in happy union for thirty

years. She bore him four sons. Frankenberg describes a
second, more famous vision to which we have already
alluded. It Boehme's glance
probably occurred about 1600.
was attracted by a polished pewter dish which reflected the
sun. Suddenly a strange feeling overpowered him for it
seemed as if he were looking into the very heart of nature
and beholding its innermost mystery. Startled and desiring
to banish such presumptuous thoughts, he went out on the
green. The vision persisted and became even more clear.
The grass and flowers were stirred with strange living forces.
Over nature the veil of matter grew thin and half revealed
the vast struggling life beneath. He told no one but con-
tinued in faithful application to his trade, wondering what
this mysterious revelation might mean.
During the next twelve years Boehme lived outwardly a

simple God-fearing life. Trade must have prospered, for
in 1610 the town records show that he purchased a new
house at an important street intersection near the Neisse
bridge. Inwardly, however, he suffered painful travail while
the new philosophy was slowly coming to birth.
We have an account in Boehme's own words of his experi-
ences at this period of his life. He says:
I fell into great melancholyand sadness when I beheld the mighty

deep of thisworld with its stars and clouds, rain and snow . . .
for I saw evil and good, love and anger in all things, in the earth
and its elements as well as in man and beast. I considered also
that little spark of light, man, and what he might be worth before
God in comparison to this great fabric of heaven and earth. Finding
that in this world it goes as well with the wicked as with the virtu-
ous, I was exceedingly troubled. The scriptures could not comfort
me though I knew them well. Often the devil would give me
heathenish thoughts about which I will be silent. In this affliction
I raised up my spirit, of which I then understood little or nothing,
48 THE MYSTIC WILL
toward God with a mighty assault and wrapped up my whole heart
and soul together with my thought and will in the resolution to
struggle with the love and mercy of God without ceasing until he
blessed me. . And when in my zeal I stormed so hard on God
. .
and all the gates of hell, as if my life depended on it, and I had
still left some reserves of strength, suddenly at a violent assault my
spirit burst through the gates of hell into the innermost birth of
Deity and there I was embraced with love as a bridegroom embraces
his bride. What this triumph of the spirit was I cannot express.
I can compare it with nothing except with the birth of life in the
midst of death. It was like the resurrection from the dead. In

this Light my spirit saw through all things and into all creatures
and I recognized God in grass and plants. Then I had a great
impulse to describe the Being of God, but as I could not at once
grasp with my reason His profound births in their essence, a year
passed before I received true understanding. It was with me as
with a young tree planted in the ground, at first it is young and
tender and pleasant to the sight, but it does not bear. Though it
blossoms the blossoms fall off. Many a cold wind and frost and
2
snow shall pass over it before it bears its fruit.
This tree of Boehme's philosophy slowly grew through

summers of increase and winters of darkness and depression.
The moments of vision which alternated with the periods of
doubt gradually became more luminous. "The first fire,"
he says, "was but a glimmer, not a lasting light. Many a
3
wind blew upon it, but it never went out."
I was obliged [he says in a letter to Caspar Lindner, customs

collector at Beuthen]to work out this great mystery like a child
going to school. I could clearly see it as in a great depth for I
looked through as into a chaos where all lies undeveloped, but the
unraveling of it was impossible. It opened itself within me from
time to time like a growing thing. I was pregnant with it for
twelve years and experienced a violent impulse to bring it out into

expression. Finally it overwhelmed me like a cloud-burst, what it
strikes it strikes. Whatever I could grasp sufficiently to bring into

4
outwardness that I wrote down.
a 3
Aurora, Chap. 19. Aurora, 19. * Ep. 12:9-10.
This statement applies to the year 1612, the turning point

of Boehme's life. Here he steps out from the narrow circle
of tradesman acquaintances to the society of the great and

learned. The Aurora was composed in this "cloud-burst" of
literary effort, lest the fleeting visions be forgotten. In his
letters Boehme apologizes for his book on the grounds that
itwas merely a memorandum not intended for eyes other
than his own. He writes to Abraham von Sommerfeld in
1620 (Ep. 10:2):
was written by a single hand with no skill or great understand-

It
ing, but only in that knowledge which is God's gift. Its author
never intended that it should come into the hands of great people.
He wrote it only as a memorial for himself and as a means of com-
fort when he was asleep in the flesh.
In a later letter (1621) (Ep. 18:13) he calls the Aurora

"my childish beginning not carried out far enough and in
need of explanation." "I thought," he says, "to keep it by
me was taken away and broadcast without my will."
but it
A nobleman, Karl von Endern, who had come under the

influence of Schwenkf eld's writings, chanced to see the manu-
script in Boehme's shop and became interested in it. Secur-
ing permission to take it home, he read it with enthusiasm
and had several copies made. These and the original were
distributed widely and Boehme did not see his book again
for three years. (Ep. 12:13.) It lacked thirty sheets of
being complete and was never finished. A copy came to the
attention of Gregorius Richter, pastor primarius of Gorlitz.
On a Sunday morning in July, 1613, Boehme sat meekly in
church in his usual pew. The pastor gave forth a text on
false prophets and then, singling out the astonished shoe-
maker, directed toward him such a tirade of violent abuse
as would have been possible only in that era of theological
50 THE MYSTIC WILL
polemic and religious bitterness. The whole city was con-
signed to the abyss of Hell unless it should cast out the
author of this treatise. The humiliated victim waited at the
door at the close of the service and humbly asked his per-
secutor wherein hehad offended. "Away from me, Satan,"
screamed the pastor, "off to Hell with your disturbances.
Have you come to insult me?" The next day the magistrates,
overawed by Richter, brought Boehme before them and
ordered him to leave town. He meekly replied, "Dear sirs,
since it cannot be otherwise I am content." He asked per-
mission to see his family, but this was refused and he was
led outside the walls. After a night of reflection the council
regained its courage and the next day Boehme was brought
back and honorably reinstated in the city. This version of
the incident appears in an account by Boehme' s friend and
6
disciple, Dr. Cornelius Weissner. from the record
It differs
in the diary of the Burgermeister, the famous Bartholomaus

6
Scultetus, who states simply that
on the 26th of July, 1613, Jacob Boehme, a shoemaker living

between the gates behind the hospital smithy, was summoned to
the Rathaus for punishment and asked about his enthusiastic opin-
ions. Thereupon he was put in prison and as soon as his book,
written in quarto, was brought from his house by Oswald Krause,
he was released from confinement and warned to cease from such
matters.
At a second trial before the town council in 1624 Boehme

said that he had after this earlier trial given his promise to
6
Weissner does not date and it may refer to the second per-
this entry
secution in 1624. disagrees with the Gorlitz records.
In either case it
6
Jecht, Die Lebensumstande Jacob Bohmes, p. 36. Scultetus was a stu-
dent of Paracelsus and of the Kabbala and entertained famous Alchemists in
his house. Copies made by him (1564-67) of several Paracelsian writings
are preserved in Gorlitz. He should have had more sympathy with Boehme,
but perhaps he was too old (he was seventy-two) to attempt to unravel the
Aurora.
7
Richter to write no more. "I did not," he explained,
"understand God's way nor what he wished to do with me."
He added that a promise made in return by Richter, that
attacks from the pulpit would cease, had not been kept, but
were so continued that he and his family had become objects
of ridicule throughout the city.
Boehme's letters written during the next five years show

how he struggled to keep his promise.
I was timid [he says] and the light of Grace was for a time with-
drawn and glimmered in me as a hidden fire, which was outwardly

foolishness but inwardly a burning force, (feurzger Trieb) (Ep.
12:13.)
I have implored the spirit of God a hundred times that my
knowledge might not serve for his honor and the betterment of my
brothers; that he would take it from me and hold me only in his
love, but I have found that with all my prayers I have only kindled
the fire the more. (Ep. 12:16. )
In the meantime manuscript copies of the Aurora were

circulated widely and many new friends, among them physi-
cians, chemists, noblemen, and liberal clergymen visited the
shoemaker's shop by the Neisse bridge. Dr. Tobias Kober,
a Paracelsian physician, moved to Gorlitz in 16 13 and became
a devout disciple of Jacob Boehme. The scholarly and far-
traveled Balthasar Walter, hearing of Boehme's fame, spent
three months in his house. These and other learned doctors
furnished Boehme with a number of Latin terms which he
afterward used with meanings of his own to the further con-
founding of an already confused vocabulary. His friends,
however, performed a real service in persuading him to write
again. In his defence before the council in 1624 Boehme
relates how this came about:
7
Libellus Apologeticus 6.
52 THE MYSTIC WILL
In spite of the pastor primarius my book was loaned in strange
places, citiesand villages and copied and spread abroad but without
my knowledge or desire. Many learned men both priests and doc-
tors as well as nobles, counts and princes, corresponded with me
and some of them sought me out in person and demanded more
of my gifts and knowledge. This I dared not give for it was for-
bidden by the pastor primarius. But they showed me that God would
take away my talent and give it to him who could use it, and that
God should be obeyed rather than man. This I considered and I
implored God day and night that he would do with me what he
willed. Finally the divine gift was renewed and kindled into a
great and heavenly light. (Libellus apologetkus, 7-8.)
In 1618 Boehme began to write again and produced book

8
after book with marvelous rapidity until his death in 1624.
Sixty-six of his letters written during this period have been
preserved. They indicate feverish activity. "The burning
fire," he writes, "drives me on so swiftly that the pen cannot
follow." (Ep. 10:45.) There is much talk of conferences
with like-minded philosophers in widely scattered places.
At Boehme' s time appears to have been spent
least a third of
in this way. Sometimes he was much displeased with the
extravagance of his entertainment. "Wines and costly
spices," he writes, "hide the Pearl of the Kingdom." (Ep.
15:6.)
Several years before this Boehme had given up shoemak-
ing. A town record at Gorlitz states that he sold his cobbler's
9
bench on March 12, 161 3. After that he traded in yarns
8
of Boehme's thirty works with dates see Appendix. They cover
For a list
much same ground. Partial exceptions to this are the Forty Questions,
the
the Four Complexions and the controversial pieces written against Tilken
(1621) and against Stiefel and Meth (1621). The Forty Questions Con-
cerning the Soul (1620) were proposed by Dr. Balthasar Walter and
answered by Boehme. The Four Complexions (1621) is a "book for the
melancholy." It contains a keen psychological analysis of the various dangers
in the "four temperaments" and the means of meeting them. In Chapter VI
of the present study I have outlined the development of Boehme's thought
as shown in his books.
9
Jecht, p. 25.
BOEHMFS LIFE AND INFLUENCE 53
and woolen goods, making yearly journeys to Prague. Times

were hard, however, and the family at home suffered pov-
erty as well as persecution. He writes from Dresden to
Dr. Kober asking him to comfort his wife and to say that
he will continue to provide for her and the children.
(Ep. 61.) Philosophy yielded no money and Katherina
Boehme was compelled to eke out the family income by
trading on her own account. There is, however, occasional
mention in the letters of payment for the loan of manu-
scripts (Ep. 9:1) or for permission to copy them (Ep. 51:1).
Karl von Endern, in whose castle at Leopoldshain Boehme
did some writing (Ep. 2:11), sent him gifts of food, as did
a few other wealthy friends. (Ep. 5:2; 6:1; 21:4; 32:2;
33:6.)
In March, 1624, without Boehme's knowledge or consent,
two of were published by his disciple,
his shorter writings
10
the Silesian nobleman von Schweinitz. Four others were
later added to these and the whole collection was printed in
one volume entitled Christosophia or The Way to Christ.
This was the only publication of Boehme's work during his
lifetime. He writes to his friend von Schweinitz that the
wrath of his arch enemy Richter had flared up as never
before.
When I came home from your house [he says], I found Satan's
bed made wherein he would have had me lie, had not God pre-
vented it through noble pious hearts. For the chief Pharisee, the
pastor primarius, ran often to the chief men of our city and raged
mightily with lies about me and cried out against me and demanded
that as soon as I came home I should be cast into prison and driven
out of the city. So he lodged a lying complaint before the council
and thus Hell was hot and ready for me.
But after most of the council had read my little printed book they
10
So says the decree of the Gorlitz town council. The book, however,
gives the credit to von Frankenberg.
54 THE MYSTIC WILL
found nothing unchristian in and some even were much pleased
it
with it. No was found in me, and

true cause for such persecution
the demands of the Primarius were judged unjust.
The council advised Boehme to avoid further trouble by

living elsewhere and to this he readily agreed. Though he
made plans to move from the city (Ep. 53:13, 61:5, 64:17),
he remained in Gorlitz and the struggle with the Primarius
waxed continually hotter. Richter published a series of
verses in bad Latin accusing Jacob Boehme of being the
Antichrist. He pedantically argues that Boehme' s writings
"smack of shoemakers' pitch," and that "Whereas Christ
was anointed with oil by the Holy Spirit the shoemaker is
anointed with offal by the Devil." He proceeds with the
taunt that "Christ drank good wine, whereas the shoemaker
drinks whisky." In his reply (Schutzrede wider Gregor.
Richtern Apr. 10, 1624) Boehme answers the pastor point by
point in gentle and loving reproof. In a letter to Dr. Kober
(June 13, 1624) he says of Richter, "He is but a fiery flash
of God's anger which must be quenched with divine love
and humility; we must in no way add fuel to make it burn."
(Ep. 64:5.) Richter's persecution served to make Boehme
better known. "The enemy means evil, but he nevertheless
spreads abroad my talent." (Ep. 58:12.) But Katherina
Boehme continued to suffer. In a letter to Dr. Kober her
husband asks him to cheer her. He insists that she must
not be compelled to put up window shutters to avoid tor-
ment from the people. Through such petty persecution
"could the fruit of the High Priest be seen." (Ep. 61.)
For some time Boehme had had an invitation to visit certain
learned men in Dresden. (Ep. 50:7.) Early in May, 1624,
he journeyed thither for a sojourn of two months. By this
time he was a well-known figure. His teachings had been

BOEHMES LIFE AND INFLUENCE 55
"sounded through Europe" as he expresses it. (Ep. 50:7.)

He had boasted two years before (Ep. 34:15) that his writ-
ings were read "far and wide with zest by many learned
doctors, by noblemen, and by persons of high and low degree
and were copied down entirely without urging on my part."
In Dresden he was the guest of great men of the city. The
director of the royal laboratory, the famous Benedict Hinckle-
mann, was his host. At dinners and at various conferences
he met high officers of the Elector's court, many of whom
were acquainted with his writings and were highly pleased
with the opportunity of conversing with him. The letters
written to Kober from Dresden (Ep. 61, 62, 63, 64) give a
fairly complete account of this visit. They make no refer-
ence to an examination for heresy which his biographers
agree in attributing to this period. On Whitsunday he dined
with the Haus-Marschall, the three Herrn von Schwalbach,
the master of the horse, the chief chamberlain, and a coun-
cillor, all of whom were delighted with his conversation and
begged for further intercourse. (Ep. 63:2.) They admired
his little book which they had brought to the attention of
the Elector. The Thursday following he went to the castle
(t
of a formidable potentate der Wohl-Edle Gestrenge Herr
Joachim von Loss, Kaiserl. Majest. und Churfurstl. Gehe't-
mer Rath und Rezchs-Offiare," who promised to be his patron
and offered him rest from persecution and an opportunity
to develop his talents. Through this and other visits, some
of them to famous theologians, Boehme came to feel that
he was on the crest of the wave. He wrote to Kober that,
as Richter is attempting to drive from Gorlitz all who read
his little book, perhaps he may desire to come to Dresden
and drive out the Elector, his councillors and preachers. Our
philosopher dreamed of fulfilling his great mission of
56 THE MYSTIC WILL
quickening to new life the dry bones of the Protestant
church.
I hope now [he writes] (Ep. 63:9) that the time of the new
Reformation will soon come when the children of Christ will not be
called "shoemakers' blacking."
In an earlier letter he says:
You shall yet hear wonderful things, for the time of the Reforma-
tion is born of which it was told me three years since by a vision.
(Ep. 58:13.)
What new Luther of a profounder Ref-

great things this
ormation might have accomplished we shall never know for
his end was near. In six years Boehme had increased rap-
idly in ability and influence. It is possible that if he had
lived a decade longer he might have instituted a new and
important movement within the Church. On
hand the other
the Richters of Germany might have overpowered him. Only
in such an atmosphere of political and religious freedom as
that of the English Commonwealth could his ideas finally
come into their own.

In November, 1624, four months after his return from
Dresden, he fell ill at the house of his friend, von Schwein-
itz. He at home to Gorlitz. One night on his
once hurried
sickbed he spoke of hearing beautiful music. As morn-
ing approached, he smilingly bade farewell to his family
and with the words, "Now I go hence into Paradise," he
departed.
His enemy Richter had died shortly before, but the antag-
onistic spirit persistedand the clergy at first refused to offi-
ciate at his burial. Through the intervention of the gov-
ernor, they were finally prevailed upon to perform this duty.
Richter' s immediate successor feigned illness, but a subordi-
nate was found who was willing. He began his address with
the words, "I would rather walk twenty miles than preach
this sermon." An elaborate symbolic cross was erected over
Boehme's grave by his faithful friends. It was promptly
torn down by a mob. Three hundred years later the town
which had driven him from its gates rose up to honor its
most famous son. In 1875 a concourse of scholars and shoe-
makers celebrated the tercentenary of Boehme's birth and an
imposing statue of him was erected in the public square. In
1924, on the anniversary of his death, the magistrates of
Gorlitz struck off medals in his honor and issued a memorial
11
volume.
Immediately after Boehme's death the manuscripts, which
he had produced so fervently and abundantly during the last
six years of his life, were frequently copied and received wide
circulation. A note to the German edition of his collected
works, published in 1715, breaks forth in astonishment with
the words:
One wonders which so many eager

greatly at the mighty zeal with
^
souls copied his writings, for men of noble birth worked with joy
and wrote day and night. By this means his writings were soon
known in Germany, in France (through Balthasar Walter) and in
Italy (as witness Henricus Prunnius) and not a little in Poland and
Lithuania, not to mention the Netherlands.
Itwas a fateful moment when one of these wandering manu-

came to the attention of a traveling Dutch merchant
scripts
named Abraham Willemsoon von Beyerlandt. He imme-
diately set about the arduous task of collecting copies of all
of Boehme's writings, sparing neither effort nor expense. He
succeeded in securing a number of autographs, among which
was the Aurora, which had lain for twenty-seven years in the
11
Jacob Boebme und Gorlitz, ein Bildwerk, 1924. Jacob Boehme
Herausgegeben von R. Jecht, 1924.
58 THE MYSTIC WILL
archives at Gorlitz. By means of these a number of errors
which had crept into later manuscripts were corrected. Von
Beyerlandt translated his collection into Dutch and published
it one volume at a time in Amsterdam between 1634 and
1675. He was by another Dutch
assisted in this enterprise
merchant named Heinrich Beets (or Bekte). One manu-
script entitled The Last Judgement escaped these enthusiastic
editors. It is said to have been burned in the fire which
destroyed Great Glogau in Silesia. In 1630 the work called
The Forty Questions was translated into Latin and published
under the title Psychologia Vera.
The first complete German edition of Boehme's work was
lovingly and painstakingly edited by the devout and much
persecuted Johann Georg Gichtel (1638-1710) and his soci-
ety of"Angel Brothers." It issued from the press in Amster-
dam, 1682. The "Angel Brothers," seeking to be free from
human imperfections, attempted to live in continual contem-
plation and prayer. Though professing to be disciples of
Boehme, they cultivated an asceticism which he would have
condemned. Groups of them continued to exist in a number
of German cities for at least fifty years after Gichtel's death.
To them we owe two other complete editions of Boehme's
works published in 1715 and 1730 respectively. These vol-
umes were edited and printed with even greater skill and
elaboration than the first edition. About the end of the sev-
enteenth century many books made their appearance in
Germany both defending and attacking Boehme's philoso-
12
phy. Philip Jacob Spener (1635-1705), the leader of the
German Pietists, who like Boehme revolted against the dead
orthodoxy of Lutheranism, studied and admired him and
even hoped to construct a Systema der Theologian Bohmi-
12
The British Museum catalogue lists ten titles for the years 1680-1700.
x%
ance, but finally gave up the attempt after a vain endeavor
to understand his writings. Itwas eventually not in his own
land, but in England, that Boehme's philosophy found its
greatest welcome.
Boehme sincerely believed that his philosophy sprang
solely from the depths of his own inner experience. Never-
theless it bears marks of the many currents of thought which
were sweeping Silesia a hundred years after Luther. Many

before Boehme had protested against the course which the
Reformation had taken, and he was undoubtedly influenced
by some of their opinions. In reply to a letter from Caspar
Lindner asking for his opinion of Weybrauch, Schwenkfeld,
and Weigel, Boehme appears in the main sympathetic with
their views though he complained that they thought of Christ
and Mary as too far removed from humanity. (Ep. 12:54,
59.) From Schwenkfeld (1489-1561) he learned that sal-
vation was a new birth within, not dependent on symbols
or transactions external to the soul itself. From Weigel
(1533-1588) he received the elements of a spiritualized
1
nature mysticism which he refined and deepened. * Boehme
shows some acquaintance with the controversial literature
of his time in his refutation of Stiefel's book on The Perfec-
tion of Man which in his opinion leaned too far toward
pantheism, and also in a polemical work against a Silesian
nobleman named Balthaser Tilken in which Boehme opposes
13
Spener, Betreff der Inspiration. In the introduction to a book con-
taining selections from Boehme's works published by the Seventh Day Bap-
tists at Ephrata, Pennsylvania, in 1811 there are a number of stories which
indicate the wide influence of Boehme on German Pietism and the almost
superstitious reverence in which he was held. It is here stated that those
who reviled him met sudden and painful death.
14
"Weigel stands entirely on mystical ground but it was a still farther
step to philosophical speculation." Fechner, /. B. Sein Leben und Schrijten,
p. 146. Opel, Weigel's interpreter, disagrees with this. Weigel's influence
on Boehme was undoubtedly large. See J. O. Opel, Valentin Weigel,
Leipzig, 1864.
60 THE MYSTIC WILL
a false view of predestination. The powerful influence of
the mysticism of the Fourth Gospel and of Saint Paul is
everywhere apparent. Boehme interpreted the Logos-

Christianity of Saint John in his own peculiar way, while
Saint Paul's doctrine of the incorruptible body of heavenly
15
substance was taken over with little change. Most of all
was he influenced by the Lutheranism which he heard

expounded every Sunday morning from the pulpit and by
various alchemistic books which constituted the learned sci-
entific literature of the time. The central problem which
his philosophy attempts to meet arises out of contradictory
points of view between Lutheranism and alchemy.
Schelling maintains that Boehme is not a philosopher, but
ia
an "object of philosophy." Weisse styles him not philoso-
17
pher, but seer. Such judgments arise because Boehme often
expressed his ideas through sensuous images rather than
18
conceptual forms. Like a novelist or painter he portrays
life itself as an interpretation of life. A thoughtful observer
of nature, he deliberately imitates the artless disorder of
fields and woods. As Flora in Lucretius' poem "strews all
the way and covers it with choicest colors and odors," so

15
Saint Paul's conception of nature is also suggestive of Boehme. "The
creation itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into
the glorious liberty of the children of God." Rom. 8, 21.
"The invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly
seen, being understood by the things which are made, even His eternal
power and Godhead." (Rom. 1:20.)
16
Hamburger, /. Boehme, p. xxviii.
1
Weisse, /. B. und seine Bedeutung fur unsere Zeit. Zeitsch. f . Philos.
u. Specul. Theol. XVI.
18
Coleridge comments on this characteristic of Boehme, —
"An American
Indian with little variety of images and still scantier stock of language is
obliged to turn his few words to many purposes by likenesses so clear and
analogies so remote as to give his lauguage the semblance and character of
lyric poetry interspersed with grotesques. Something not unlike this was the
case of such men as Behmen and Fox with regard to the Bible. It was their
sole armory of expressions, their only organ of thought." Biographia Liter-
aria, Vol. I, p. 150 (London, 1847).
Boehme strews his flowers of thought according to no plan

or method, leaving here a patch of vivid color and there a
peak of barren rock. Like Goethe, whom Novalis calls the
"Boehme of Weimar," he develops his philosophy out of

an inner spontaneity as he watches the characters of the cos-
mic drama enact their appointed roles. Again, Novalis com-
pares Boehme to a miner who has discovered the inner secrets
of the earth and who brings out all that he digs, both jewels
and rubbish, and piles them up in lavish confusion.
All Boehme' s commentators bewail the extraordinary diffi-
culty and obscurity of his style. The English translation
(1650) of a Latin lecture on Boehme delivered at Cambridge
University in 1646 expresses the feeling of many readers in
its quaint address to the lecturer.
As and author of the Teutonick Philosophy which

to the matter
you here abbreviate though you know I alwaies affected it and him,
;
yet durst never saile on the ocean of his vast conciets with my little
skull, methought the reading of him was like the standing upon a
precipice or by a cannon shott off, the waft of them lickt up my
19
brains.
Boehme himself would have replied to such a student,

"Reader, had need have an angelical tongue
I and thou . . .
an angelical mind and then we should well understand one

another." (T. P. 12:1.) Boehme's system of expression,
if once mastered, reveals him as an artist comparable to the
anonymous cathedral builders who constructed piles, elabo-
rate, irregular, exquisite, grotesque, but always towering over

men's common habitations and pointing to the sky. Schel-
ling's pupils became enthusiastic when their teacher bor-
rowed figures of speech from The Illuminate of Gorlitz.
The chaos in Boehme's works is often more apparent than
19
Quoted by M. L. Bailey, Milton and J. Boehme, p. 62.
62 THE MYSTIC WILL
20
real. That which was responsible for throwing William
Law and which made Hegel's "head
into a "perfect sweat"
swim" was the absence of technical diction. The German
language had not yet developed a philosophic vocabulary nor
did Boehme desire one. He preferred to construct his own
21
symbols. His learned friends gave him the word idea,
but he impersonated it as the "Heavenly Virgin Sophia."
The power of words in the Runic ritual of ancient Germany

lay heavy upon him. As Roger Fry writes of Blake, "His
forms are the visible counterparts to those words like the
deep, many waters, firmament, the foundations of the earth,
pit,and host whose resonant overtones blur and enrich the
sense of the Old Testament." We find in Boehme a kind
23
of empsychosis, to use Stratton's word. Boehme' s writings
are ideographic rather than graphic. Tieck calls him "the
dreamer in the dark paths of the garden of poesie." We
are indebted to William Law for the suggestive anecdote of
an old shepherd whose wife read aloud to him from
Boehme' s writings.
John, said I, do you understand all this? Ah, he says, God bless
the heart of the dear man. I sometimes understand but very little
2
° of Boehme's faithful students in modern times, Dr. Herman Vet-
One
terling, writes, "The understanding of Boehme comes only by degrees. We
begin to read his writings usually with the same ardor that we would begin
to read a Chinese puzzle book; in the course of a few years we comprehend
a little of what we read; and as we continue our interest grows, our horizon
widens, slowly, very slowly, but surely; and we end by admiring and loving
our humble teacher." (Vetterling, The Illuminate of Gorlitz, p. 17.)
21
Boehme's obscurity was sometimes an object of satire in England; for
example, we find in Butler's Hudibras, Canto I, 11. 541-542:
"He Anthroposophus and Floud
And Jacob Behmen understood."
22
Roger Fry, Vision and Design, p. 215.
28
Psychology of the Religious Life, p. 247. "It is different," says Stratton,
"from imagination in the technical meaning of the word, since the materials
used for its products are drawn, not from the senses, but from our invisible
life of sentiment and purpose."
2 *
Ederheimer, p. 30.
—
of him and mayhap Betty does not always read right, but that little
which I often do understand does me so much good, that I love him
26
where I do not understand him.
Love was indeed the only knowledge which Boehme

claimed for himself or desired of others. "One must know,"
says his disciple, the theologian Oetinger (1738-82), "the
thousand weaknesses of humanity in order to endure them
with gentleness. Love is patient and friendly and so must
2a
he be who would read Jacob Boehme fruitfully."
Novalis writes in similar vein in his poem to Tieck:
Du das Reich des Lebens grunden

hilfst
Wenn du voll Demuth dich bemiihst
Wo du wirst ewge Liebe finden
Und Jacob Boehmen wiedersiehst.
And Angelus Silesius (1624-77), Boehme's mystical succes-
sor in Silesia, expresses the same feeling for his master in
the words:
Im Wasser lebt der Fisch, die Pflanze in der Erden
Der Vogel in der Lujt, die Sonn' am Firmament
Der Salamander muss im Feu'r erhalten werden
Und Gottes Herz ist Jakob Boehme's Element.
2 6
Law, The Way to Divine Knowledge, p. 84. John Byrom, the dis-
cipleand poetical interpreter of Law, who learned German for the express
purpose of reading Boehme, expresses the same opinion as Law's shepherd,
"When Socrates had read, as authors note,
A certain book that Heraclitus wrote
Deep in its matter and obscure beside,
Asked his opinion of it, he replied,
'All that I understand is good and true,
And what I don't is, I believe, so too.'
"All the haranguing therefore on the theme

Of deep obscurity in Jacob Boehme
Is but itself obscure; for he might see
Farther 'tis possible, than you or me,
Meanwhile the goodness of his plainer page
Demands the answer of the Grecian sage."
Byrom, The Reply of Socrates.
F. C. Oetinger, Kurzer Auszug der Hauptlehren Jakob Bohms.
64 THE MYSTIC WILL
The world's vast laboratory for the psychology of religion
exhibits few more interesting specimens than Jacob Boehme.
Writers who wish to show that mysticism is pathological find
in him much that is to their purpose. Under the influence
of strong emotion ordinary processes of thought assumed
for him a supernatural significance. He was highly suggesti-
ble and often wrote as if he were in a trance. "When I am
writing," he says, "the Spirit sometimes dictates to me in such
wonderful clearness that I do not know whether I am accord-
ing to my spirit in this world." Boehme's
(Ep. 2:10.)
"language of nature" by which he divined the meaning of
words from their sounds seems to belong to the "lunatic
fringe" of philosophy. The theory which holds that mysti-
2S
cism is in many instances an auto-erotic phenomenon
as it often uses the vocabulary of sexual passion, would
seem to find occasional support in Boehme's rhapsodies to
Sophia, the Virgin Wisdom of God. A writer named Kiel-
holz, following Freud, characterizes Boehme's philosophy as
29
a "sexualization of the whole cosmos."
Psychological classifications of this sort, however inade-
quate they may be to express the whole truth, imply to cer-
tain minds an abnormality that invalidates the philosophical

system under discussion. The abnormal need not, however,
27
C. H. Hamilton, A Psychological Study of Mysticism, p. 25, and Inge,
Philosophy of Plotinus, Vol. II, p. 153, cite the possibly apocryphal incident
of the pewter plate as an example of autohypnosis.
28
Leuba, The Psychology of Religious Mysticism. Murisier, Les malades
du sentiment religieux.
29
/. Boehme, ein pathographischer Beitrag zur Psychologie der Mystik,
Leipzig, 1919, p. 25.
It is, fair to make so much of the figures of speech which
however, hardly
Boehme commonly uses to express his oft-recurring thesis, antithesis, and
synthesis. When Hegel says that "Nature is the bride that mind weds"
(Encyc. VII) we do not accuse him of eroticism. If Boehme's monogamous
dualism is to be so indicted, how could one defend the morals of a pluralist
or the parthenogenesis of a monist?
be correlated with the subnormal; may it not sometimes

appear as the supernormal? A great mystic is a religious
genius. His abnormalities resemble those of other forms of
genius. which come to a genius are not always
If the ideas
born of both nature and spirit in the ordinary manner, but
are sometimes conceived only by inspiration of Spirit, may
they not attest their divinity by this virgin birth? To Boehme
in his ecstasy, Truth is the Son, born of the Virgin Wisdom
of God within his soul, but in his less poetic moments he
dwells upon another and sterner ancestor, which is none
other than a cold, impartial observation of himself and
nature. The mysticism of the Gorlitz shoemaker was on the
whole much less pathological than that of mediaeval monasti-
cism. As has been often stressed, Boehme made no ascetic
flight from the world. He struggled hard to bring earth and
heaven together in the ordinary behavior of human society.
In a later chapter it will be shown that he possessed a remark-
able insight into his own psychological processes.
Boehme' s influence spread quickly from Holland to
Britain, where the soil was prepared for his mystic seeds by
the previous incursion of anabaptism. This popular early
Reformation type of mysticism flowed underground till
Cromwell's armies opened the flood gates of outer control,
whereupon it immediately became an important ingredient
in the swelling stream of English political and religious free-
dom. The Commonwealth period was a time of extraordi-
nary emotional stress when the land was daily swept by new
and strange winds of doctrine. Now at last the Reforma-

tion had come in earnest to England. As Episcopacy and
Presbyterianism gave way to Independency a chaos of new
sects developed and flourished in a general climate of mysti-
30
cism. One excited Puritan mournfully lists three hun-
66 THE MYSTIC WILL
81
dred "errors" of the time and another describes sixty-two
different sects. Some called Seekers, finding none of the
innumerable new forms of religion suited to their needs,
waited silently in small groups for a new revelation.
Into this fermenting, germinating milieu of passionate
hope and unlimited aspiration came the influence of two
men of prophetic rank, who gave to English Protestant
mysticism a definite form and a practical goal. These two
were Jacob Boehme and George Fox. Boehme's complete
works were translated and published in England between
1644 and 1662 and were widely circulated in religious, lit-
erary, and scientific circles. They gave to the popular doc-
trine of the inner light a solid basis in an elaborately thought-
out system of philosophy. What Thomas Aquinas was to
Catholicism, suchwas Jacob Boehme to Protestant mysticism.
It is probable that many of Boehme's English followers
understood him imperfectly, but we find the prolific mystical

literature of that period well salted with "Behmenistic"
phrases in an effort to supplement the appeal to Scripture
32
with an appeal to philosophy. In the English translation
of the Latin discourse referred to above, which was
delivered at Cambridge in 1646, we find the following
passage:
If there be any friendly medium which can possibly reconcile

these ancient differences between the nobler wisdom which hath
30
Edwards, Gangrcena, 1646.
31
Pagit, Herisiography, 1654.
32
Boehme's wide influence in England is described in detail in Spiritual
Reformers in the 16th and 17th Centuries (1914) by Rufus M. Jones
(Chap. XII) and in Milton and Jacob Boehme (1914) by M. L. Bailey
(Chap. III). M. L. Bailey establishes a high probability that Boehme
influenced Paradise Lost. In my discussion of Boehme in England I owe
much to these two works. I have also made use of an unpublished study
of my own entitled Minor Sects of the Commonwealth (a thesis presented
for the degree of Master of Arts, Haverford College, 1905).
fixed her Palace inHoly Writ and her stubborn handmaid Natural
Reason: this happy marriage of the Spirit and Soul, this wonderful
consent of discords in one harmony, we owe in great measure to
38
Teutonicus (Boehme) and his skill.
Richard Baxter, the famous Puritan heresy hunter, lists

3
"Behmenists" as a This "sect" appears to have
sect. *
become the ancestor of the "Philadelphian Society" founded

for the purpose of studying and expounding the teachings
of Boehme, which lasted well into the eighteenth century,
both in England and on the Continent. Among the promi-
nent sixteenth century English students of Boehme were
Charles Hotham, Rector of Wigam, author of Ad Philoso-
86
phiam Teutonicam Manductio (1648) Justice Durant
;
Hotham, his brother, a friend of George Fox and author of

a Life of Jacob Behmen (1653); John Sparrow and John
Ellistone, who translated and published all of Boehme'
works and whose introductions furnish valuable information
regarding Boehme's reception in England; Dr. John Pordage,
Jane Leade and Francis Lee, all three members of the Phila-
delphian Society, who wrote long ecstatic Behmenistic books,
which obscure rather than reveal the teachings of their mas-
3 3
AnIntroduction to the Teutonick Philosophie by C. Hotham Englished
by D. F. London, 1650.
34
"The fifth sect are the Behmenists whose opinions go much toward
the way of the former (the Quakers) for the sufficiency of the Light of
Nature, Inward Light, the salvation of the Heathen as well as Christians and
a dependence on revelations. But they are fewer in number and seem to
have attained to a greater meekness and conquest of passions than any of the
rest. Their doctrines are to be seen in Jacob Behmen' s Books by him that
hath nothing else to do than to bestow a great deal of time to understand
him that was not willing to be easily understood." Reliquice Baxter iance
(London, 1715).
36
In his "Epistle Dedicatory," Hotham writes, "Whatsoever the thrice-
great Hermes deliver' d as Oracles from his Propheticall Tripos or Pythagoras
spake by authority, or Socrates debated or Aristotle affirmed, yea, whatever
divine Plato prophesied or Plotinus proved; this and all this, or a far
higher and prof under philosophy, is (I think) contained in the Teutonicks
(Boehme's) writings." From the English translation, 1650.
68 THE MYSTIC WILL
ter; Samuel Hartlib, scholar and friend of Boehme's biogra-
pher, Frankenberg; Elias Ashmole, antiquary and publisher
of alchemistical treatises; Thomas Taylor, a Seeker, and
Francis Ellington, a Quaker; and Dr. Henry More, leader
36
of the Cambridge Platonists, who calls Boehme the
"Apostle of the Quakers." This partial list of Jacob
Boehme's English students should include also the unfortu-
nate Charles I, who wrote in a message to Boehme's trans-
lator, Sparrow, that the Forty Questions was "one of the
best inventions that ever I read." Names of such admirers

of Boehme could be multiplied almost indefinitely. Now at
last the prophecy of "Teutonicus," as the English called
him, had come true: "What my fatherland has thrown away
will be received with joy by strange peoples." (Ep. 50:10.)
In Quakerism the purely ethical and religious aspects of
38
Boehme's system found fruition, although his speculative
teachings were officially repudiated. George Fox, who was
born in the year of Boehme's death, became the reformer and
leader that Boehme himself had hoped to be. "Every
prophet," says Boehme, "is a boundary wherein a time is
enclosed. He is the mouthpiece of that realm; when con-
fusion is awakened in it he becomes the mouthpiece of that
inward ground which proclaims the vanity of confusion."
(M. M. 67:9.) Such a prophet was Fox. He became the
spokesman of the highest religious aspirations of seventeenth-
century England. It is not certain that he was acquainted
36
More condemns Boehme in his Enthusiasmus Triumphatus, but later he
praises as well as "censors" him in his Philosophies Teutonics censura.
37
See Sparrow's introduction to the 40 Q.
3 8
Lodowick Muggleton, founder of the Muggletonians, listed as a sea by
Baxter, writes in his Looking Glass for George Fox the Quaker, p. 10,
"I suppose Jacob Behmont's Books were the chief books the Quakers bought
for there is the Principle or Foundation of their Religion. And you
. . .
George Fox are far below Wm. Smith in the knowledge of Jacob Behmont's
writings."
at first hand with Boehme's writings, but there are a number

of passages in his journal which have a strongly "Behmenis-
30 *°
tic" tone. Rufus Jones Fox and Boehme "were
says that
kindred in spirit, of the same household of faith, members
of one mystic fellowship and the torch that fell at Gorlitz
in 1624 was caught and held aloft by the man who was
born in that year in Fenny Drayton."
After this first great period of religious exploration and
experimentation had closed and the heretical sects had settled
down to a quiet and respectable orthodoxy of their own,
Boehme continued to be an important factor in English
thought. "The influence of Boehme in the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries," says Caroline F. E. Spurgeon, "is very
far reaching. In addition to subjugating the strong intellect
of Law, he profoundly influenced Blake. He also affected
Thomas Erskine of Linlathen and through him Carlyle,
41
J. W. Farquhar, F. D. Maurice and others." William
Law (1687-1762), the famous author of the Serious Call
and the best-known religious writer of his time, was, in the
latter part of his life, won over by Boehme from the ritualis-
tic formalism of a High Church clergyman to sympathy with
42
such radicals as the Quakers. Law's Appeal to all that
Doubt (1740) and his Way to Divine Knowledge (1752)
are excellent expositions of some of Boehme's ideas. They
are written in prose which is unsurpassed for beauty and
lucidity, but they show that their author did not com-
pletely grasp the profundity of his master's philosophy.
The latter book was written as an introduction to a
39
See Rufus M. Jones, Spiritual Reformers, Chap. XII.
40
Life and Message of George Fox, 1924.
41
C. F. E. Spurgeon, Mysticism in English Literature, p. 28.
42
See Stephen Hobhouse, William Law and Eighteenth Century Quaker-
ism, Macmillan, 1928.
70 THE MYSTIC WILL
new edition of Boehme's work which Law contemplated
publishing, but which was not produced until after his
48
death.
According to Law "the illustrious Sir Isaac Newton
44
ploughed with Behmen's heifer." In a letter of Law's we
find the following curious information:
When there was found among his papers large

Sir Isaac died,
abstracts out of Behmen's works, written in his own hand.
J. . . .
Sir Isaac was formerly so deep in J. B. that he, together with one
Dr. Newton, his relation, set up furnaces and for several months
were at work in quest of the tincture. ... Sir Isaac did but
reduce to a mathematical form the central principles of nature
45
revealed in Behmen.
46
While Newton was undoubtedly a student of Boehme at
one time, he probably got little from him. Boehme has
much to say of attraction and expansion (not repulsion) and
derives the whole material world including the stars out of
their interaction. He also seems to have vaguely understood
47
that action and reaction are equal and opposite. Never-
theless he and Newton belong to different epochs of scien-
tific thought.
Law was, apparently, influenced by the writings of Dio-
nysius Andreas Freher (1649-1728), a German philosopher
resident in London who was a devout and prolific com-
43
This edition, printed in four volumes, 1764-81, contains seventeen of
Boehme's thirty works. It is not a translation by Law as is generally sup-
posed but is in the main a reprint of Sparrow's earlier editions. The elab-
orate diagrams in it illustrating Boehme's philosophy are in some cases,
perhaps in all, by Freher.
44
Walton's Notes, etc., p. 72.
iB
Ibid., p. 46.
46
"It is almost certain that the idea of the three laws of motion reached
Newton through his eager study of Boehme." Spurgeon, William Law and
the Mystics. This point would bear further investigation.
47
See page 138.
48
mentator on Boehme. Some of Freher's manuscripts were
published as part of a footnote three hundred pages long in
Christopher Walton's Notes and Materials for an adequate
Biography of William Law (London, 1854), but the remain-
der form the greatest extant mine of unexplored Boehme
49
literature.
Coleridge has been accused of plagiarizing from Schelling,

but he himself asserts that all Schelling has said he has
50
thought out for himself or found in Jacob Boehme. His
debt to Boehme is best expressed by himself:
Why need I be afraid? Say rather how dare I be ashamed of the

Teutonic theosophist, Jacob Behmen? . One assertion I will
. .
venture to make as suggested by my own experience that there exist

folios on the human understanding and the nature of man which
would have a far juster claim to their high rank and celebrity, if in
the whole huge volume there could be found as much fulness of
heart and intellect as burst forth in many a single page of George
Fox, Jacob Behmen, and even of Behmen's commentator, the pious
and fervid William Law. The feeling of gratitude which I cherish
toward these men, has caused me to digress further than I had fore-
seen or proposed; but to have passed them over in an historical
sketch of my literary life and opinions, would have seemed to me
like the denial of a debt, the concealment of a boon. For the writ-
ings of these Mystics acted in no slight degree to prevent my mind
from being imprisoned within any single dogmatic system. They
contributed to keep alive the heart in the head; gave me a presenti-
ment that all the products of the mere reflective faculty partook of
death, and were as rattling twigs and sprays in winter, into which a
48
In 1739 Law met Joseph Clutton, a well-known Quaker chemist and
author who "was a 'great admirer of Jacob Behmen' and possessed a manu-
script of Andreas Freher, an interpreter of Boehme, some of whose
commentaries were carefully copied out by Law in the years following
this date." Hobhouse, William Law and Eighteenth Century Quakerism,
p. 237.
* 9
A list of the Freher MSS. is given by Walton on pp. 679-684 and also
in an Appendix to Barker's edition of Boehme's Three-fold Life (London,
1909). The MSS. are in Dr. William's Library, London.
60
J. D. Campbell, S. T. Coleridge, London, 1894, p. 187.
72 THE MYSTIC WILL
sap was yet to be propelled from some root to which I had not
51
penetrated,if they were to afford my soul either food or shelter.
Of the two major sources of William Blake's obscure

philosophy, Swedenborg and Boehme, Boehme is undoubt-
edly the more important. "Any man of mechanical talents,"
writes Blake in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, "may
from the writings of Paracelsus or Jacob Behmen produce
ten thousand volumes of equal value with Swedenborg' s."
Swedenborg was condemned apparently because he had not
discovered the value of Hell in the universal scheme of
things. In The Marriage of Heaven and Hell Blake revives
Boehme's dualism. "Without Contraries," he writes, "is no
progression. Attraction and Repulsion, Reason and Energy,
Love and Hate are necessary to Human existence. From
these contraries spring what the religious call Good and Evil.
Good is the passive that obeys Reason. Evil is the active
springing from Energy. Good is Heaven. Evil is Hell."
Not only in his dualism and in his view of evil does Blake
follow Boehme closely, but also in his theory of the fall as
a descent from unity to plurality; in his view of our present
existence as due to a contraction of self-hood ; in his concep-
tion of imagination as a means of breaking through this
contraction; in his reliance on double, triple and even four-

fold vision and in much more besides he is clearly a disciple
of the "inspired shoemaker" though he uses a vocabulary of
62
his own.
Boehme made his first appearance in America in a book
61
Biographia Literaria, London, 1847, Vol. I, p. 153. Boehme was one
of the four "men unjustly branded" whose vindication Coleridge planned
to write. Ibid., p. 154.
62
Among other English students of Boehme was Henry Brooke (1703-83),
author of the once famous novel the Fool of Quality. This book as well
as his two long poems Universal Beauty (1735) and Redemption (1750)
are full of Behmenistic phrases.
53
published in 1688 by a Quaker named Daniel Leeds. This
little volume contains an excellent summary of his teachings.
Leeds thinks that in Boehme "the eternal day was but dawn-
ing," but now in the Quakers "the glorious sun has arisen."
A group of German Pietists, mystics and ardent followers
of Boehme settled in Germantown near Philadelphia in 1694,
bringing much Boehme literature with them. Their leader
was John Kelpius. Whittier says of Pastorius, the founder of
Germantown, who had come in an earlier Pietist migration
that, like Boehme, he "read his creed in flowers."
For by the lore of Gorlitz' gentle sage

With the mild mystics of his dreamy age
5 *
He read the herbal signs of nature's page.
In England was the ethical and religious aspects of

it
Boehme' s philosophy which exerted most influence, but in

Germany, as would be expected, the speculative elements
found greatest favor. "In Jacob Boehme," says Hegel, "phi-
losophy first appeared in Germany with a character peculiar
to itself." The natural romanticism of the German people
was not long held in check by the limitations to knowledge
setup by Kant. Post-Kantians, particularly that small group
of literary geniuses among whom were Tieck, Novalis, the
56
two Schlegels and Schleiermacher, all of whom were born
63
"The Temple of Wisdom or the Little World." The first Philosophically
Divine Treating of the Being of all Beings and whence everything has its
original as Heaven, Hell, Angels, Men, Devils, Earth, Stars and particularly
all mysteries concerning the Soul and Elements and Adam before and after
the Fall. Also a treatise of the Four Complexions with the cause of spiritual
sadness. Collected, published and intended for the general Good By D. L."
Philadelphia, 1688.
54
Whittier, The Pennsylvania Pilgrim. In 1811 Boehme's Way to Christ
and five of his epistles were published by the Seventh Day Baptists, a later
Pietist migration, at the press of their quaint "convent" which is still stand-
ing at Ephrata, Pennsylvania.
55
Hegel, Werke, XV, 270.
56
Mention should also be made of Franz von Baader (1765-1841) who
was by far the most devout Boehme enthusiast of this period.
74 THE MYSTIC WILL
about 1770, looked to Boehme as their spiritual ancestor.
It was he who gave the young romanticists their first ravish-
ing glimpse of the living heart of Nature, an insight which
Kant had coldly forbidden. "The philosophy of that time,"
57
says Ederheimer, "is spoken of as a poetic Spinozism. Its
chief representatives were Schelling and Goethe. As a result
of Boehme's influence the rigid unity of Spinoza's teaching
was poetized to a unity of the universal life." The Rational-
ists of the earlier eighteenth century had had small use for
Boehme. Lessing and Herder ridiculed his crudities, but were
not without sympathy with his genius. Lavater came more
strongly under his influence. He says of Boehme's writings,
"though they seem, or rather are, so abhorrent they are yet
an inexhaustible gold mine of Germanity and poetry."
Lavater introduced Boehme's writings to Tieck, who, with
ill-concealed contempt, carried the book home. As he
perused the work of the old German mystic he found that
he had "brought a firebrand into his house." Like the other
Romanticists he welcomed one who could bring him back
from the passionless star-gazing of the Enlightenment to
the mysteries of living nature.
Man [says Tieck] were happy had he not striven higher. Nature
surrounded him and took care of him, and played with him as with
her child. But the proud one freed himself from his mother; he
saw the stars which hang over his head, he climbed a cliff and cried
to them, "I am near to you." Smiling pitifully the stars looked
down upon him and he stands now bewildered by the dizzy abyss,
looking down to the blooming meadow which he has spurned; he
59
has lost the way back.
Boehme helped Novalis also to find the lost way back.

Novalis writes to Tieck:
67
JacobBoehme und die Romantiker, p. 45.
58
Quoted by Feilchenfeld, Der Einfluss Jacob Boehmes auf Novalis, p. 29.
69
Tieck, Abdallah.
I am now reading Jacob Boehme connectedly and begin to under-

stand him as he must be understood. In him can be seen through-
out the mighty spring with its gushing, driving, forming and min-
gling forces by which the world is outwardly born from within, a
eo 61
real Chaos full of dark desire and miraculous life.
Friedrich Schlegel discovers that Boehme is a poet as well

as a philosopher.
He is without doubt [says Schlegel] the most inclusive, richest,

and most many sided of all mystics. He not only explains the
Scriptures allegorically, as does Pico della Mirandola, in order to
give commonplace religious conceptions a higher meaning, but he
penetrates as far into physics as did Fludd or Paracelsus, and brings
forth a system, or, if it cannot be so called, a complete expression
62
of an entire speculative Philosophy.
In another essay he writes:
If it should be found that imagination has far greater share than

has enlightened understanding in the development of his genius, it
must be confessed that it is a very poetic imagination that we dis-
cover in this strange spirit. Considering him merely as a poet and
comparing him with other poets who have attempted to deal with
supersensual things, with Klopstock, or Milton, or Dante, it must be
admitted that he almost surpasses them in the richness of his fancy
and the depth of his feeling, nor is he inferior to them in the beauty
63
of his poetic expressions.
German men of
In spite of the sincere devotion of these
letters Boehme would probably have consigned all the
Romanticists to the devil. Boehme' s devil is that kind of a
poet who knows not the straight gate and narrow way to
reality but "remains ever with his legions in the realms of
phantasie." This devil would have agreed with Novalis in
f(
saying "the more poetic the truer" and Alles ist ein
60
"Chaos" is here used in the alchemistic sense as the lower stage out
of which the higher comes. Thus an egg is the "chaos" of a bird.
61
Briefe an Ludvig Tieck, quoted by Ederheimer.
82
Schlegel, Vorlesungen aus den Jahren 1804-1806.
63
Schlegel, Gescbicbte der alten und neuen Literatur.
76 THE MYSTIC WILL
Marchen." Romantic "irony," which arises because the
soul's longing remains ever unsatisfied, is not to be found
in Boehme. For Tieck this "longing" leaves only a "deadly
unquenchable pain," but for Boehme such pain was the gate
to salvation and peace. Though Romanticism brought man
back to earth from the heaven gazing of Rationalism, it gave
him no new guiding star. Novalis raises the veil of Sai's
—
"But what saw he? He saw miracle of miracles he saw
6
—
himself." Boehme saw God and escaped the Romantic
*
subjectivity. Romanticism only discovered the out-going

nature-will in Boehme. It missed the in-going self-renuncia-
tion which alone recognizes ultimate objectivity.
Boehme is a better "Chaos," to use Novalis' term, of
Schelling, Hegel, and Schopenhauer, in more than one sense
of the word. Schelling' s overwhelming debt to Boehme is
well known, but as Schopenhauer says of Schelling' s Enquiries
into Hu?nan Freedom, "It is almost a revived makeup of
Jacob Boehme's Mysterium Magnum. But what in Schelling
is absurd, in Boehme is read with admiration. Schelling
takes from Boehme only what he could take and does not
66
know how husk from the fruit."
to separate the Schopen-
hauer comes nearest to being Boehme's real heir, but not
having had Boehme's profound religious experiences, he
could not see what Boehme saw beyond the depths of self-
renunciation. His philosophy ends with a negation to be
carried further, he says, by the mystics among whom he
86
mentions Boehme. The mighty effort of German Romantic
Idealism to discover the wholly satisfying ultimate which
Kant had denied to this life, culminated in Hegel. Hegel
84
Fragment e, p. 177. Quoted by Ederheimer.
65
Handschrijten, Nachlass, p. 261.
66
The World as Will and as Idea, III, 432. (Haldane's Translation.)
spurns mysticism, yet he uses the same logic of life that

Boehme uses and his so-called "reasoning" is based on the
reconciliation of the contradictory opposites of the mystical
paradox. But Hegel's "logic" does not take us so far as
Boehme's "experience." Schopenhauer and Boehme were
right. Only the mystics have found that ultimate garden
where blossoms the Blue Flower of Romanticism and Jacob
87
Boehme's Lily.
Accordingly, although for many Boehme's writings appear
68
to be "the outpouring of a God-drunken Heart" yet as
Fechner truly claims, "In him philosophy breaks through the
fl9
darkness of the mystical world," and as Carriere says, "He
70
contains in germ, the whole new philosophy." Perhaps
we cannot agree with Frankenburg in holding that Boehme
was that new and extraordinary star in the heavens which, in
the year 1572, three years before his birth made its awful
and alarming appearance in Cassiopeia," but we can at least
say with another biographer, Lasson, "He is a stern prophetic
71
figure in an age of transition."
Boehme's neighbors said to him, "What ails the fool,
when will he be done with his dreaming?" "You will see,"
he said, "what kind of a dream this will be." (Aur. 11 150.) :
As the sequel showed, it was a dream prophetic of the future

philosophy of Germany. German idealism was implicit in
6 7
No account of Boehme's influence, however brief, should omit mention
of the great French mystic and prophet, Claude St. Martin (1743-1803).
Though called "le philosophe inconnu" he was a powerful opponent of the
Enlightenment and the Revolution. He translated the Aurora into French
and his writings are thoroughly permeated with the teachings of Boehme
whom he calls "mon second educateur," Martinez de Pasqualis having been
his first teacher. {(Euvres posthumes, I, II.)
68
Opel, Weigel, p. 250.
69
Fechner, /. B., seine Leben und seine Schrijten, p. 15.
7 °
Carriere, Die philosophiscbe Weltanschauung der Rejormationszeit,
p. 311.
71
Lasson, Jacob Boehme, p. 34.
78 THE MYSTIC WILL
him, not as Plato was latent in Socrates, a steady light to
increase in brilliance, but as the Old Testament prophesied
the New in occasional brilliant flashes, alternating with
longer periods of darkness.
Two contraries war against each other in Fury and Blood
And Los fixes them on his anvil, incessant his blows,
x
He fixes them with strong blows placing the stones and timbers
To create a world of generation from a world of death.
William Blake, Jerusalem.
1
Imagination.
CHAPTER III
ALCHEMY
The fundamental concept of Boehme's philosophy was
life. He inherited this emphasis from the alchemists whose
categories of science were Hermetic philosophers
biological.
viewed nature as a living whole, composed of organically
related parts. This organism was intensely alive at its heart,
though wholly dead at its periphery. Boehme did more than
borrow a large part of from alchemy, he took
his vocabulary
over the alchemistic world-view which he developed into a
philosophic system. His universe was permeated with living
forces whose outer aspects half concealed and half revealed
the inner vital essence.
There is some significance in the fact that the concept of
life was fundamental in this age of transition from mediaeval
to modern thought. In the Holy Trinity which was regarded

as energy the Father, idea the Son, and life the Holy Spirit,
life appears as intermediate between energy and idea. The
Middle Ages were strongly influenced by Platonic and Aris-
totelian thought in which Idea was the fundamental concept.
The universe was accordingly thought of as moved by its
goal, that is, by causes which operated from in front. In
the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, under
the influence of the quantitative science of Galileo and New-
ton, the concepts of matter and energy became fundamental.
The universe was then thought of as composed wholly of
81
82 THE MYSTIC WILL
inert substances moved by external forces. Life was believed
to be a complicated mechanism and mind a useless, inexpli-
cable mirage. According to this view matter and motion are
the sole realities, and the universe is accordingly moved only
by causes which operate from behind.
But between the Platonic world-view of a universe whose
unifying principle was pure intellect and the Newtonian
world-view of a universe unified through a common sub-
stratum of matter moving according to fixed laws appeared
the so-called pseudo-sciences of the later Middle Ages and
the Renaissance. These made life the unifying principle.
Life is neither mind nor matter, but apparently partakes of
characteristics of both. Life accordingly became a useful
concept in an age when science was passing over from
rationalism to empiricism. In the philosophical-empirical
sciences of the Renaissance the universe is moved neither
from in front nor from behind, but from within. Such
science is neither idealistic nor materialistic, but vitalistic.
It conceives of the universe as organically related into a sin-
gle living whole. This third world-view has been too much
neglected both by historians of philosophy and historians
of science. It has been neglected by philosophers because
it was too scientific and by scientists because it was too philo-
sophical. Nevertheless, it is of peculiar historical signifi-
cance. Boehme is its greatest expositor. In an age of transi-

tion he was a philosopher of life. Now after an interval of
three hundred years the pendulum of scientific thought
appears to be swinging back to its former position. The
philosophy which is growing up in the twentieth century in
connection with the new physics seems to present the ele-
ments of an organic world-view, which bears at least a family
resemblance to the conceptions of science of the sixteenth

ALCHEMY 83
century. It is too early as yet to prophesy with much assur-

ance regarding the direction in which physics of to-day will
lead philosophy, but certain trends are already fairly clear.
The attempt to explain life in terms of mechanics is being
supplanted by an effort to explain mechanics in terms of
life. Can be that Jacob Boehme, the leading philosopher
it
of a previous age of transition, will take his place as a real

prophet of our present transitional epoch?
Boehme' s philosophy was unaffected by mechanistic theo-
ries. At the very time that he was writing his books Galileo,
Kepler, and Bacon were laying the foundations of modern
science. None of these new conceptions, however, pene-
trated to the shoemaker's cottage in Gorlitz. Jacob Boehme
was naturally compelled to work with the materials at hand.
These were supplied by the pseudo-science of alchemy. This
fact might appear to discredit him, for alchemy, in spite of
sincere and prodigious efforts, often degenerated into the
wildest absurdities and the most palpable humbug. Boehme
was not wholly free from alchemistic nonsense, but in gen-
eral he repudiated that part of alchemy which we now know
to have been false. He retained and valued that part which
has in many respects a strangely modern tone.
Alchemy was a vigorous attempt to prove in the laboratory
a Neo-Platonic philosophy of nature. It failed, not because
it was wholly unscientific in its methods, but because its
hypotheses were wrong. methods were "scientific" to a

Its
certain degree. It searched nature in an objective and
empirical manner. Its hypotheses were wrong because it was

previously committed to Aristotelian "forms." These could
not be discovered and isolated by laboratory instruments.
Alchemy attempted to obtain in its retorts and crucibles the
inner essences or souls of things as if they were composed
84 THE MYSTIC WILL
of light and volatile matter. It treated the qualitative as if
it were the quantitative. Aristotelianism was turned upside

down by attempts to deal with the "forms" immanent in the
world as if they were vital forces or semi-material essences.
This effort arose out of a degenerate form of Neo-Platonism.
It is a curious fact that Neo-Platonism was not only the
ancestor of a mysticism of the contracting type, as in the case

of the great mystics of the Church, but also, though much
polluted in the crucibles of the adepts, it helped to pro-
duce this out-going mystical attempt to read the essential
secrets of nature. This was possible because Platonic Ideas
were at once transcendent and immanent. Religious mysti-
cism seized upon their transcendent aspect; science, through
the doctrine of participation of things in ideas, was inspired
to search for inner unifying principles in nature. Immanent
scientific Platonism flowed through a network of subterra-
nean channels and became contaminated with primitive anim-

ism and folklore, and with Jewish Kabbalism and number-
mysticism. Here the Realm of Ideas became so saturated with
matter that the clear transcendent abstractions of the Greeks
can hardly be distilled from it. Now at last in the philoso-
phy of the alchemists the Ideas had soaked up enough earth
to support life. During the seventeenth century the course
of the Platonic stream divided. One branch swelled into the
full current of German Idealism. It discovers a cosmos
with meaning and purpose. The other branch devel-
filled
oped into physical science. It finds a universe controlled

by immanent law.
Alchemy has a much longer and more variegated history
than its offspring, chemistry. Its amazingly prolific litera-
ture, buried under a vocabulary which has ceased to have

meaning, seems too barren to reward investigation. It
ALCHEMY 85
appears to have first become prominent in Alexandria where

it began its spectacular course as a series of receipts for
metalworkers' apprentices. Somewhat later, uniting with
Neo-Platonism, Gnosticism and Stoic traditions regarding a
cosmos permeated by the Divine, it spread eastward to Syria
and Arabia, where it was known as "Platonism according
to the Egyptians." Berthelot in La chimie au moyen age
traces its descent for a thousand years through a multitude
of Syrian and Arabic treatises until it finally reached Europe
by way of Spain. After the fall of the Kaliphate (1031) it
still prospered and was carried north by students from the

Spanish universities to become rapidly fused with European
thought. Even such orthodox churchmen as Albertus Mag-
nus and Thomas Aquinas wrote alchemistic treatises. In
the century preceding Boehme, the two most important
alchemists were Cornelius Agrippa of Nettesheim (1486-
1535) and Theophrastus Paracelsus (1493-1541). During
their many travels and adventures, alternately patronized and
persecuted by the great, these two worked out a highly imag-
inative and romantic view of nature. This they set forth in
language as obscure as it was picturesque.
The alchemists differed widely among themselves, but it
is few elements common to their more

possible to sift out a
important spokesmen. The human intellect, newly freed by
the Renaissance from the bondage of school and cloister,
acknowledged no limits to its powers. Nature was an open
book whose secret language might be deciphered and whose
powers could accordingly be controlled by man. Through
man passed all the streams of circulating spiritual force
which bound together the world, animate and inanimate,
terrestrial, celestial, and diabolic, into an organic complexity
of sympathies and antipathies. Man is a microcosm, a cross

86 THE MYSTIC WILL
section of thewhole universe. He can know all things
merely by knowing himself. Thus alchemy took over the
negative self-directed mysticism of Neo-Platonism and turned
it into a theory of scientific knowledge. It held that man
was a denizen of all three worlds, natural, astral, and celes-
tial. Therefore he could know all three. In the natural
world knowledge is sensual, for the body is in nature; in
the "astral" world knowledge is intellectual, because through
man flow the rational emanations of the stars; in the celes-
tial world knowledge is intuitional, for a spark of infinite
Deity dwells in the human soul.
Alchemy is a philosophy of evolution. It beheld nature
as an animated process developing through successive
embodiments of inner vital energy. This evolution was,
according to some theories, based on the interaction of two
primordial substances, called "prima materia" and the 'phi-
losophers' stone." "Prima materia" was not quantitatively
measurable, but was the "possibility of bodily formation."
It was thought of as wholly passive. The philosophers' stone
was the divine producing power at the heart of things. It

was a "radical moisture" of supernatural kind, simple and
indestructible. Through solution and putrefaction this "uni-
versal," "quinta essentia" or "mercury of the philosophers,"
could be freed from particulars which accrued to it from
base matter. Evolution upward took place by successive action
x
or "tincture" of the philosophers' stone, each stage becom-
ing matter for the stage next above it. Man could assist this
2
evolution. He could find in bodies comparatively gross and
1
"Tincture" is the living spirit-form between the ideal and the real.
2
"Q. Give a concise definition of Nature.
"A. It is not visible though it operates visibly, for it is simply a volatile
spirit fulfilling its office in bodies and animated by the universal spirit, the
divine breath, the central and universal fire which unifies all things which
exist.
ALCHEMY 87
dead, substances light and living which were the souls of

the grosser bodies. Thus a hidden higher stage could be
brought to manifestation. The chemist could externally add
soul to body so that the body became more perfect. The
metals do not differ in nature, but in degree. They develop
in the womb of earth toward gold which is their perfect
state. By combining a " tincture" with a lower metal it could
be brought a stage further toward gold.
The philosopher with his crucible imitates God in creation
according to the process described in the book of Genesis.
Like God he extracts light out of the dark crude mass, then
the waters above and below the firmament are distinguished
and so the process proceeds. In his commentary on Genesis,
Boehme follows the entire alchemistic process in minute
detail, but gives it his own peculiar meaning. (Mysterium
Magnum, chaps. X-XV.) To the alchemists the same prin-
ciples of evolution hold for human souls as for nature. Both
partake of a single universal process typified by the transmu-
tation of lead into gold. Such is the transformation from
the sick body into health, and the exaltation of the soul into
Christ. Christ is the "philosophers' stone," "the stone which
the builders rejected." This is the "Universal Chemistry"
by which the Divine Tincture "transmutes base metal of the
soul into perfection that can survive the fire of eternity."
There is a transforming tincture for all souls, the soul of
metal, the human soul, even the Weltgeist?
"Q. What is the object of research of the philosophers?

"A. Proficiency in the art of perfecting what nature has left imperfect and
the attainment of the treasure of the Philosophers Stone." Short Catechism
of Alchemy (Waite, Paracelsus, p. 287).
3
Anon., Lives of the Alchemistical Philosophers, p. 3.
4
"Question not those imposters who tell you of a 'sulphur tingens' and I
know not what fables, who pin also that narrow name of Chemia on a
science both ancient and infinite. It is the Light only that can truly be mul-
88 THE MYSTIC WILL
The
divine Mercury [says Boehme] changes the wrathful Mercury
into property and Christ is born,
its —
and a new man appears as
hidden gold out of the earthly property. Hereby it is shown the
adept how he shall seek (for the philosopher's stone) not other- ;
wise than as he has sought and found himself in the property of

pure gold; and so likewise is this process; for man, and the earth
with its secrets, lie shut up in the like curse and death and need
one and the same restitution. {Signatura Rerum 8:52, 53.)
The self-renunciation which brings this transformation about
is the inner spiritual form of the transforming fire of the
alchemist.
When Boehme speaks of the "process of Christ," as he
often does in the Signatura Rerum, he may be discussing
either "Chemistry," the rebirth of the human soul, or the
birth of God in the universe. All three are examples of a
universal law of development. Man is not the only micro-
cosm. All things are microcosms struggling each in its own
way, just as the universe is struggling, to manifest hidden
gold of the Divine Kingdom by consuming the grosser ele-
ments in the purifying fire of life. The world is one vast
alchemistic retort distilling base metal of nature and natural

man into the gold of perfection.*
The is hidden from the curious under
"science" of alchemy
a strange and ever-changing vocabulary. "If we have con-
cealed anything," says Geber, "ye sons of learning wonder
not; we have not concealed it from you, but have delivered
it in such strange language so as it may be hid from evil
6
men. Boehme, having no philosophic vocabulary of his
tiplied for this ascends to and descends from the first fountain of multiplica-
tion and generation. If to animals, it exalts animals if to minerals it refines
;
minerals and translates them from the worst to the best conditions." Thomas
Vaughan: Anima Magica Abscondita.
6
"Destruction perfects that which is good; for the good cannot appear on
account of that which conceals it. . By the element of fire all that is
. .
imperfect is destroyed and taken away." Paracelsus, Caelum Philosophorum.

8
James Miller, Alchemistic Symbolism.
ALCHEMY 89
own, adopts a large part of the vocabulary of alchemy and

is quite as successful at concealment as his predecessors.
One example may suffice.
Thus let the philosopher observe that when the three murderers
Saturn, Mars, and Mercury, are drowned blood of the lion
in the
they do not perish, but they are pardoned, that is, their wrath is
changed to a love desire; out of Venus into Sol, for when the fiery
desire enters into the watery desire, then a stirring, a glorious splen-
dour arises from, and in the fire; for Venus is white and the fire
desire is red. (Sig. Rer. 11:41.)
This, it may not be superfluous to explain, is the begin-

ning of an alchemistic account of what Christ meant when
he them for they know not what they
said, " Father, forgive
do." Translated into modern terms it is a reasonably clear
explanation of that process by which the human is "tinctured"
with the divine so that "might is changed into love." (Sig.
Rer. 11:48.)
7
Boehme is often classified as an alchemist. The Lutheran
theologian Harless in an extended treatise, entitled Jacob
Boehme und die Alchemisten, endeavors to discredit him
by making him an alchemist and nothing more. Boehme, he
says, only differed from Paracelsus by going one step further.
He "threw God himself into the Alchemistic Retort." For-
merly, God was inscrutable to the alchemists. Now Boehme
watches him develop out of primordial matter according to
the recipes of the art. Harless concludes that Boehme s God
is sulphuric acid. This, however, is a gross confusion of
form and content shown in what follows.
as will be
It is true that Boehme owed much to the alchemists, par-
ticularly to Paracelsus, but he went far beyond them, not
7
Lippmann says that Boehme with all the elements "gar nichts genug zu
tun weiss, —
sondern auch die bedeutendsten Naturjorscher des zehalters."
(Alckemie, p. 510.)
90 THE MYSTIC WILL
only in his theogony but in many other directions. Hegel
truly says, "Paracelsus is much more confused and lacks
8
Boehme's depth of mind." One important difference
between the two lies in the fact that Paracelsus had no genu-
ine theory of evil. Although a contemporary of Luther, he
did not accept Luther's conception of a radical evil and so
did not promote evil into a metaphysical principle as real
as goodness. His philosophy is permeated with the Platon-
ism of the Church. Christianity is the highest "Potenz" in
nature, its crown and end. The other end is zero. Paracel-
sus accordingly believes that the world was created from
above out of nothing. "Every created thing," he says, "longs
to be again that which it was before the creation. That is
now the ground of all our philosophy. The elements are . . .
created out of nothing and long to return again to nothing."

They are "Verkorperte Nichts." (Philos. ad Ath. 1, 1:21.)
Boehme denies this.
Manyauthors [he says] have written that heaven and earth were
created out of nothing. Now
where nothing is, nothing can come
to be. All things must have a root else nothing can grow. But —
the earth is come from the corrupted Salniter (substances) of the
outermost birth. You cannot deny when you look upon the earth
and stones that death is therein; otherwise neither gold nor silver
nor vegetables nor grass would grow in it. Yes, life presses through
death, the outermost birth is death, the second is life, which consists
of anger and love, and the third is the Holy Life. (A. 19:67-70.)
Boehme is thus shown to be an evolutionist while Paracelsus

is an emanationist. Boehme believes in a genuine progress
from real imperfection to real perfection while, for Paracel-
sus, nature is a Platonic ladder from nothing to reality. A
comparison between the two is, however, hardly just, for the
weird medical recipes of Paracelsus are of slight consequence
8
Hegel, History of Philosophy, Eng. trans., p. 273.
ALCHEMY 91
in comparison with the profound philosophical thoughts of

Boehme.
Boehme repeatedly denies that he is an alchemist. "Do
not take me for an Alchemist," he says, "for I write only in
the knowledge of the Spirit and not from experiments."
(A. 22:105.) have read many noble masters in the hope
"I
of finding therein ground and true depth, but I have found
nothing but a half dead spirit." (A. 10:45.) He adds,

however, "I must needs say that their scheme of formulation
is my master; from it I have the first elements of my knowl-
edge and it is not my purpose to controvert or emend their
formulas." Boehme's principal objection to
(A. 22:14.)
the alchemists seems to be that they were too materialistic.
"This tincture," he says, in referring to the philosophers'
stone, "is hid from the Alchemists because it bears witness
9
of itself out of the eternal, while they seek it in the earthly."
Boehme does not, like the alchemists, lose himself in the
sensual. In temperament, methods, and interests he differed
from them. He owed to them a portion of his vocabulary
because he could find no other words in which to express
his ideas. Yet there is a sense in which the philosophical
chemistry of the Renaissance culminated in Jacob Boehme.
He developed into a philosophical system its central concep-
tion of nature as a vast organism in which the human will
plays a decisive part. Our next consideration will be the
analysis of the question as to what this part played by the
will really is. Boehme was convinced by his scientific studies
9
"Thus when he (Boehme) first appeared in English many persons of
this nation, of the greatestwit and abilities became his readers, who instead
of entering in to his one and only design, which was their own regeneration
from an earthly to a heavenly life, turned chymists and set up furnaces to
regenerate metals in search of the philosophers' stone. And yet of all men
in the world no one has so deeply and from so true a ground laid open the
exceeding vanity of such labor." (Law, Way to Divine Knowledge, p. 107.)
92 THE MYSTIC WILL
that man creates in the same way that God he creates; but
was convinced that man must submit to an
just as surely
objective order. Human life is part of the whole stream of
life which flows between the dark nature-will which is called
the Father and the goal of all things which is termed the
Son. It cannot lose itself wholly, either in the beginning
or the end, either in earth or heaven ; for it has an important
part to play in redeeming itself and nature, each becoming
transformed through the action of the other. How then can
the will be both active and passive, at once furthering the
evolutionary process and resigning itself to the Divine
10
Will?
1
In connection with alchemy a word should be said about a kindred
°
influence, the Kabbalah, particularly that curious combination of Neo-

Platonism, Gnosticism, Philonism, and Rabbinical Theology known as the
Zohar. Boehme occasionally mentions it (177 Th. Fr. 3:33. 6:7-11) and
some of his phraseology can be traced to it. Amid the horrors of per-
secution in the Middle Ages the Kabbalah renewed in the hunted Jews
the old hope for speedy redemption accompanied by supernatural events.
Unsatisfied by Judaized Aristotelian rationalism or the strict relentless logic
of Talmudic schools, they hungered for something imaginative and spiritual.
They were attracted by the Kabbalistic principle, that mystic speculation
based on words, numbers, and phrases, is an effective means of communion
with God. They saw concrete spiritual realities in the most insignificant
object and the simplest phenomenon alluded to something in the Divine
mind. (See Greenstone, The Messianic Idea in Jewish History, p. 162.)
Boehme adopts from the Kabbalah the theory that the Bible cloaks many
significant meanings in simple lauguage. The mysticism of the Zohar is
founded on the Neo-Platonic emanation theory. (Abelson, Jewish Mys-
ticism.)
I rest not from my great task
To open the Eternal Worlds, to open the immortal eyes

Of man inwards into worlds of Thought, into Eternity
Ever expanding in the bosom of God, the human Imagination.
Rivers, mountains, cities, villages,

All are human, and when you enter into their bosoms you walk
In Heavens and Earths, as in your own bosom you bear your Heaven
And earth and all you behold, though it appears without, it is within
In your Imagination, of which this world of Mortality is but a shadow.
CHAPTER IV
SYMBOL AND REALITY
We have defined Boehme's central problem as the recon-
ciliation or harmonization of two wills, the negative
in-going religious will and the positive out-going nature
will. The first is a "resigned will" seeking, through self-
surrender, a supersensible divine object. The second is a

"self will" seeking through self-assertion to know and con-
trol external nature. These two wills may be correlated
respectively with the two main historical influences on
Boehme's thought, Luther anism and alchemy. Luther anism
convinced him that the world belonged to the devil and that
he should flee from it and direct his mind toward heaven.
Alchemy lured him back toward this world in which human
wills assist God and nature in bringing latent divine poten-
tialities to manifestation. Boehme accepted both challenges,
but with reservations. In Lutheranism he rejected the
extreme negativity which made it impossible to bridge the
gap between flesh and spirit in this life. In alchemy he
rejected the semi-materialism by which it crossed the rainbow
span with fatal ease. He accepted the heaven directed will
of Protestantism and the earth directed will of alchemy and
discerned a single goal for both in a universal life. This life
more than included them both, for it appeared as the opera-

tion and manifestation not of a twofold, but of a "three-fold
95
96 THE MYSTIC WILL
will." This trinity is (1) negative in that it wills backward
to the Father, (2) positive in that it wills forward to the
Son and (3) intermediary in that it alternates between the
negative and positive as a Spirit which fashions the warp and
woof of temporal existence. To show what Boehme means
by show what he means by knowl-
this "three-fold will" is to
edge. The and higher knowledge spans the interval

true
between flesh and spirit by means of the bridge of the "three-
fold will." Man's lower knowledge cannot resolve the dual-
ism because, to quote our author's figure, it is "like a cow
before a new barn door" (S. P. 7:21), afraid to hazard the
venture of faith.
An approach to this important distinction which Boehme
draws between higher and lower knowledge can best be
made through his analysis of religious knowledge. As
always, it is the practical and religious, rather than the theo-
reticalwhich preoccupies this zealous philosopher. "Our

whole teaching," he says, "is nothing else than to show how
a man may kindle God's light- world in himself." (S. P.
7:33.)
Boehme' s indictment of Protestantism summed up in the
is
phrase "History is the faith of to-day" (Von Wahrer Busse),

and his own position is stated in the sentence, "You must
be born again through a living movement of the will."
(Inc. Ill, 3:7.) He addresses the Church with the words:
You retain only the shell of God's word which has no power, you
keep the historical part and fight about it; and the power of it you
deny. Of what avail is your knowledge? The devil knows as much
as you know, but he does not do it; therefore the kingdom of God
remains hidden from you both. (T. F. L. 13:37.)
The Reformation, according to Boehme, has produced no

real change.
SYMBOL AND REALITY 97
In Germany it is supposed that Antichrist (The Catholic Church)
has been gone out from, but it has not yet happened for they who
now curse Antichrist are grown out of the tree of Antichrist."
(T F. L. 12:28.) Oh, if some Jesuits should come and demand
the Church from them (the Reformers) again, what good Papists
they would make. (Ep. 64:10.)
"In the great Babel," Boehme's usual word for the estab-
lished church, "they quarrel about the words and permit the
spirit of Understanding to lie in mysterio." (Ep. to A. von
Sommerfeld.) The church "depends on the dead letter"
(Chr. Test) and "is only a letter dealer." (M. M. 36:63.)
Boehme attacks this emphasis on the external in his refuta-
tion of the doctrine of imputed righteousness. "Therefore
it is all an 'Ungrund,' " he says, "what Babel teaches of exter-
nal imputed righteousness and an externally acquired child-

likeness. A stranger can not inherit God's kingdom, but an
inborn righteousness out of God's Being." (Ep. to Dr.
Koschwitz.) He similarly protested against the ordinances.
"The sacraments are mere symbols and not realities, . . .
Christendom has departed from the apostolic virtues and

instead of Christ's kingdom has set up a pompous and
hypocritical one through baptism and the Lord's supper."
(T. F. L. 13:28.) Protestantism had substituted law for
life. "Your laws, councils, decrees are mere deceit. The
Spirit of Christ will not be bound by any law." (T. F. L.
3:67.) "God's law is written in our hearts as is also the
way to life. It lies inno one's knowing nor in mere histori-
cal opinion, but in a good will and well doing." (T. F. L.
6:19, 20.)
Boehme' s biographers seem astonished that a man so meek
and law-abiding should have been persecuted and driven
from home. When, however, we read that pastors "are as
profitable to a church as a fifth wheel to a wagon" (M. M.
98 THE MYSTIC WILL
tr
63:46), that the church is em geistliches Hurenhaus"
(M. M. 63:45), that as "a beast man goes to church and as
a beast he comes out (Gellasenheit), that the church "has
only a mouth-christianity, and the heart is worse than when
they were heathens" (Ep. 58:7), and many similar expres-
sions, we can hardly wonder Boehme's enemies.
at the fury of
Boehme breaks sharply with the bibliolatry and creed wor-
ship of Lutheran pastors. He stoutly declares that he is not
dependent for his knowledge of religious truth either on
authority or tradition.
Though an angel from heaven would say otherwise yet would I

not believe it,much less understand it, for I would always doubt.
But when the sun goes up in my spirit then am I certain. (Aur.
11:136.)
He does not hesitate to declare that Moses is sometimes

wrong. (Aur. 18:1-5, 19:100.)
It is very likely [he says] that before the flood the creation was
not described in writing, but the account was passed along from one
generation to another as a dark word in men's memories. (Aur.
22:26.)
In his defence against Richter he writes "another time has

come, a man no longer believes what any one may say, he
demands a proof." (Apol. contra Richter, 67.)
We must not suppose, however, that in rejecting authority
as the supreme test of truth Boehme advocated a merely sub-
jective religion. In his Apologia contra T'ilk en he strenu-
ously denies the charge of antinomianism. In fact it is this
very charge that he himself repeatedly makes against the

Lutheran pastors, claiming that they reason subjectively and
do not study external nature. "Without the light of
Nature," he says, "there is no understanding of divine mys-
teries." (Ep. 4:13.) The whole labor of Boehme's philoso-
phy is to find room for both outer and inner lights. "We
do not," he says, "depend on the light of outer nature alone,
for us both suns shine." Boehme will not give up the his-
torical faith, for it is "a soil where a spark glimmers; we
must give it fuel wherein it can be kindled." (Inc. II, 8:1.)
The historical faith of Christianity plays in Boehme' s system
the same part as the world of natural objects. Both, as we
shall find, are images of deeper realities which can be actu-
alized through living experience.
The contrast between historical and living facts, outer shell
and inner reality, exists in almost every sentence of Boehme'
works. He always sees double. He would have agreed
with William Blake in saying:
For a double vision my eyes do see

And a double vision is always with me
With my inward eye 'tis an old man gray
With my outward a thistle across the way. 1
It was such a vision of nature and the struggling life within

it aswe find in Whitman 2 and Maeterlinck.
The whole outward visible world with all its being is a signature
or figure of the inward spiritual world ; whatever it is internally and
however operation is, so likewise it has its character externally
its
. the internal holds the external before it as a glass wherein

. .
it beholds itself in the property of the generations of all forms;

*
the external is its signature. (Sig. Rer. 1:3.)
1
Poems from Letters IV, 11. 27-30, Clarendon Press, p. 306. Blake and
Boehme both speak also of a "three-fold vision" corresponding to the
three persons of the Trinity, and even of a "four-fold" when the Divine
Wisdom or Idea is added.
2
—
do not doubt interiors have their interiors and that the eyesight has
"I
another eyesight and the hearing another hearing and the voice another
voice." Whitman, Assurances.
3
Compare Schopenhauer:
"Die objective Betrachtung ihrer mannigjaltigen wundersamen Gestal-
ten und ihres Thuns und Treibeni ist ein lehrreiches Lexicon aus dem
groszen Buche der Natur, ist eine Entzifferung der wahren signatura
rerum." (Welt als W. u. V. Ill 44.)
100 THE MYSTIC WILL
Here Boehme follows the ancient alchemistic tradition as
stated by the thrice great Hermes in the words "Everything
that is, is double." As man is equipped with two eyes that
*
he may have a sense of spatial depth, so Boehme's two

eyes, the temporal and the eternal, one to see the surface and
the other to pierce below it, gave to his world depth of mean-
ing and tense dramatic interest not possible to either eye
alone.
That by which man knows the external and historical both
in religion and nature Boehme calls ''Vernunjt,'' while the
'
internal and significant is known through "Ver stand."
Vernunjt "is a treasure above all the treasures of this world"
(Gellas. 1:19), but it can see "only as it were the shadow
in a glass." (Clavis 2.) "Dear outer Reason," "own rea-
son," "reason of this world," to give this function some of
its titles, is "wavering and imperfect" (M. M. 46:4) it ;
"comprehends nothing of the kingdom of God but the husk"

(T. P. 16:30) ; it "can not see through the tables given to
Moses on Mt. Sinai" (T. P. 17:34) ; it is "only a symbolical
existence" (Gnad. 2:1); it "always goes round in a circle
on the outside of things (M. M. 2:4) it "is a mirror image ;
of eternity" (Gelass. 1:9); and "stands always in doubt"

(Inc. Ill, 8:7) "out of it comes all strife" (Christ. Test II,
;
1:1) it "knows the essence of die world, but not the centre
;
of motion" (M. M. 10:4) it "stands in the Magia of Nature,

;
not in the freedom of God." (Inc. Ill, 3:2.)

The chief limitation of Vernunjt is its inability to see how
apparent contradictions may be reconciled. "How," Reason
asks, "can a good God make an evil world?" Reason sa
* Hermes Trismegistus, Poemander, I, 30.

6
I shall for the sake of clearness use these terms for the two functions.
Boehme uses many terms. Thus Verstand is also called Erkenntniss, Wissen-
scbajt, ErUuck:ung. etc. Sometimes Vernunjt is
"If this world is so dangerous for man why has God put
him in it, why has he created it, why has God not turned the
devil into nothing again since his fall?" (T. P. 7:15.)
Many parts of Boehme's works are cast in the form of a dia-
logue between Vernunft and Verstand. For instance in the
gottlicher Beschaulichkeit, Vernunft proposes difficulties
which Verstand "answers."

Reason hear much mention made of God, that there is a
says, "I
God who has created all things, but I have not yet seen any nor
heard from the lips of any that hath seen God, or that could tell
where God dwells or is or how he is. For when Reason looks upon
the existence of this world and considers that it fares with the
righteous as with the wicked then it thinks, all things hap-
. . .
pen by chance."
Answer. "Reason is a natural life, whose ground lies in a tem-
poral beginning and end and cannot enter into the supernatural
ground wherein God is understood. For though Reason thus views
itself in this world, and in its viewing finds no other ground, yet
it finds in itselj a. desire after a higher ground wherein it may rest."
On the whole, Reason in Boehme's writings seems to be con-

demned for partial truth rather than untruth. It knows
"outwardly after the Form" but not "inwardly after the
power." Accordingly, to Vernunft, God appears as "merely
a nothing." (M. M. 43:3.) Nevertheless true knowledge
is it for Reason "finds in itself a desire after
potentially in
a higher ground this signifies that the hidden God can-
. . .
not be of the nature of perceptibility since Reason cannot

see him." Reason therefore "seeks rest in that which is not
in itself" in order that "that which has created it may take
it from its suffering into itself." "O blind Reason, rise from
thy cradle, art not thou a child of thy mother and an heir
to the goods." (T. F. L. 6:39.) Vernunft often appears
as the dwelling place of Verstand, its localization in space
and time.
102 THE MYSTIC WILL
For we should observe what the spirit of the outward world is;
it is a house and instrument of the inner spiritual world which is
hidden therein, and works through the outer world and brings itself
into images. Thus Reason is a house of the true understanding of
the divine knowledge. (Clavis 115-116.)
Boehme frequently identifies Vernunjt with the "eigener

Willed It is the out-going, self-assertive will which finds
only external multiplicity, not internal unity. The "own-
will" aims at the particular rather than the universal and is
condemned to the hopeless task of particularizing itself in

objects which can never realize its longing. Only the inner
universal life, the object of the resigned will, can really
satisfy it; nevertheless it flies from one external object to
another in a vain endeavor to find rest. Reason, unless it
is fulfilled by higher knowledge, can never get away from

the world of forms and shadows in which it is imprisoned
rr
by egoism. Eigene-Vemunjt rules the outward world
without the spirit and will of God, according to its own
self-will —
it gives God fair words, but remains outside Him."
(40Q. 1:177.) "The will of reason must be broken: it must

be a living movement of the will which breaks through
reason and which strives against reason for God's will must —
be lord over reason, if reason is to be worthy to stand before
God." (Inc. 3:3.) It is the rationality of selfishness and
the apparent irrationality of resignation which permit Boehme
to identify Reason with the "own" or egoistic will. This
aspect of Vernunjt appears at first sight to be a confusion
of ethical and non-ethical concepts. Boehme' s world is,
however, ethical throughout. Vernunjt wholly isolated from
V erstand becomes evil. We shall discuss this point at greater

length in Chapter VII. The devil, it will be shown, is an
excellent logician and nothing seems more illogical to him
than the Christian paradox that he "that saveth his life shall
lose it."
As Vernunjt is the external human point of view, Verstand
is the internal Divine point of view. What is opaque and
meaningless and full of contradictions to Vernunjt is trans-
parent to Verstand because Vernunjt attempts to go through
the external to the internal while Verstand works through
inner unity outward. Vernunjt struggles in vain from mul-
tiplicity to unity, Verstand beginning at unity sees reality
as a whole filled with interrelated forms. Thus Vernunjt

8
is conceptual thought and Verstand is mystical experience.
Verstand internalizes the external. It sinks into the lowest
depths of the dark abyss within the soul, and rises up with
God's life to a deeper understanding of the same objects
dealt with by Vernunjt. It can see the meaning of things
because it has come out of the source of all meanings. The
transition from the partial point of view to God's point of
view is the crossing of the deepest abyss in nature, where
Vernunjt is crucified and all particularity renounced that
Verstand may rise to profounder understanding.
Boehme accordingly often makes Verstand appear to be
merely a better and fuller Reason than Vernunjt. Thus one
argument is answered by another in his dialogues.
Reason says, "Why has God created a painful and suffering life?"
Answer, "Nothing without contrariety can become manifest to
itself —
A single thing can know nothing more than a one, and even
though it is in itself good, yet it knows neither evil nor good."
(Besch. 1:7.)
Here we are again facing the paradox of mysticism. Mysti-

cal knowledge claims to be above reason, yet it must become
reasonable if it is to be communicated to others. On the
9
Compare: "The better we conceive things the less we understand them."
Paulsen, Introduction to Philosophy, p. 373.
104 THE MYSTIC WILL
whole Boehme sees this clearly. His object is not to abolish
reason but to make it the outward expression of a deeper
truth than it can find within itself. Symbol and reality are
both necessary, but the latter must be the controlling factor.
Reason can be kept if it is in proper ethical relation to that
deeper "reason" which is the will of God.
Reason will speculate and say that we forbid man the knowledge
whereby men govern life. . . . Unto it we declare that nothing
is abolished in man but the beast-like will of self . . . which has
set itself in God's place. . . . We teach that man must wholly
die to the anti-christian image that he may be born again in Christ,
with a new life which new will has power in the formed
and will,
word of nature to see and behold with divine eyes all the manifes-
tations of God in nature. (M. M. 36:74.)
A discussion of what Boehme means by will and imagina-

tion may make the matter clearer. As life is Boehme'
organizing concept so will is his ultimate. All things are

either wills or the imagination that is the objectification of
wills. Matter is will contracted on itself. Imagination is
will going forth to create. Life is the higher unity arising

out of the opposition of will to itself.
Every life is essential and is based on will. Will is the . . .
motive power of the essences. Will is dumb without life,

. . .
wherein is no feeling, understanding or substantiality. Thus . . .
life is the essence's son and will is the essence's father, for no essence
can arise without will. (S. P. 1:1-6.)
"Essence" is accordingly the intermediate stage between will

and life.
This voluntarism made strong appeal to the Romanticists.

If the classic spirit is the influence of thought on will, the
romantic is the influence of will on thought. The fear of
Spinozism which inspired Romanticists of the post-Kantian
period, and the dread of logical, mechanical, and teleological
absolutism which inspires the more modern pragmatist and

humanist movement had its counterpart in the days of
Boehme in the horrors of the Protestant dogma of predes-
tination. Throughout Boehme' s speculations we trace the
drama of the free human will struggling to realize its deep-
est aspirations and striving to create an environment which
and peace.
will bring satisfaction Will is omnipotent, omni-
present, free and eternal. Nothing can oppose it except
another will. "By will God created heaven and earth and
a mighty will such as His is hidden in the soul." (T. F. L.
8:18.)
All things are generated out of will and are re-propagated in will
for will is the master of every work. It has its origin out of God
the Father towards nature, and passes through nature to his heart
which is the end of nature. (T. F. L. 4:48.)
The will shapes its own form in the spirit; it can give to the
body another form out of the centre of nature, for the inner is the
lord of the outer, ...
it can make out of it a devil and out of the
devil an angel. (40Q. 6:10-14.)
Will is omnipresent. All objects in nature are vector

quantities; incarnate wills pointing beyond themselves. "You
know from reason that where there is a root, there is a desir-
ing will which is the noble tincture that driveth upward out
of itself and seeketh a similitude of its form." (40Q.
1:332.) Boehme applies the term "will" so widely that it
7
appears as the mere form of activity. It is simply move-
ment seen from the inside, just as nature is movement seen

from the outside.
We get closer to what Boehme means by "will" in such
expressions as "The Will is thin as nothing and quiet as a
nothing." (S. P. 1:7.) "It exists and exists not, it is not
7
Boehme derives "wollen" to "will" from wallen to "move about," "to
agitate," thus identifying will and activity.
106 THE MYSTIC WILL
a spirit, but a form of spirit." (S. P. 1:9.) No behaviorist
of modern times could be more emphatic that pure will is
beyond all possibility of observation. Yet for Boehme, the

introspectionist, will is ultimate for the reason that it is at
8
the limit of the furthest reach of introspection. If it could
be observed it would still be a "Grund" not an "Ungrund."
The "abysmal will" in Boehme's philosophy is the ulti-
mate inner nature of being. It is known immediately, and

so, as pure subjectivity, all distinction of subject and object
in the act of knowing it disappears. Boehme's explanations
are all historico-genetic. Things develop and grow, inspired
by irrational wills and do not move along fixed logical lines.
Will, as substratum of nature, manifests itself in all things

— stones, vegetables, animals, men. As we shall see in our
next chapter, blind will is force, either attraction, repulsion
or rotation. becomes conscious life in actualizing an idea.
It
Pure, naked, aimless will is Boehme's dark "abyss" at the

basis of all things. It is at the opposite extreme of the
"Ineffable One" of the negative mystics, for it is the lowest
stage of the cosmic process. For the Neo-Platonist the Abso-
lute One is highest heaven, but for Boehme it may be the
lowest depth of hell. This abyss is a point through which
every soul must pass if it is to begin life afresh for it must
start where God starts in order to be reborn into His Light.
The soul finds itself in hell only if the rebirth fails to take
place.
Boehme bases argument for freedom on the theory that
his
the human will is a "nothing" and rises up out of the pri-
mordial abyss which is the source of all things. Reason is

8
core of character even of human character is felt more and more
"The
to lie in judgments, preferences, decisions, purposes, which constantly are
its
experienced but never can be seen or heard or handled and therefore cannot
be imagined." Stratton, Psychology of the Religious Life, p. 227.
bound to its external objects, but will is based on nothing

but itself. Boehme often calls the "abyss" the "liberty." It
is free to manifest itself as it will.
The soul's free will is as thin as a nothing. ... If faith would

work it must conceive (fassen, in sense of objectify) itself into
something wherein it may work. God's free will has conceived
itself through the spiritual world and works through it, and the
spiritual world's free will has conceived itself through the outward
world and works through it. Even so the soul's free will which
also has its origin out of the abyss conceives itself into something
whereby it may become. (M. M. 27:6.)
Thus will is primary and unconditioned, its manifestation

or objectification is secondary and conditioned. In some such
fashion Kant defended freedom by placing it in the super-
sensuous. Boehme, however, does not seem to have any
real understanding of the force of the arguments against
freedom and it is not apparent that in his book on "Election
by Grace" (Von der Gnadenwahl) he is very successful in
attacking the doctrine of predestination. He generally
resorts to analogies.
show blind reason a thistle which the sun touches for a whole
I
day and gives it power and light and yet it remains a thistle. So
is the godless will. The divine sun shines upon it for its life's day,
but its ground is the substance of a thistle. (M. M. 61:67.)
The will has chosen its own form and all God's power
cannot change it.
"God has not willed the fall of man but the will-spirit
of man which is as free as God Himself." (Ep. 11:51.)
"Each man is his own God and also his own devil." (Inc.
I, 5:133.)
On its lowest or abysmal level Boehme's will appears to
be the instinctive striving which is called to-day "conation,"
a blind undifferentiated craving, divorced even from the
108 THE MYSTIC WILL
vaguest awareness of an end to be attained. It is simple
and unanalyzable, a sense of which never occurs
tension,
by itself at the introspective level. Boehme, like Schopen-
hauer, finds such a will to be the inner side of phenomena,
existing as blind force at the lowest level in external nature
and reaching its highest degree of temporal self-conscious-
ness in man. Boehme's philosophy is a history of will striv-
ing to know itself —beginning as a "nothing," a formless
abyss; acquiring vague content or "thickening" in
its first
desire; then by its inner conflict, which is nature, it breaks

through nature into the light of self -consciousness and ;
finally reaches its goal completely harmonized through a

content which satisfies all its longings. The first contrast
produced, that of will and desire, begins the dialectic process
which generates nature and deity.
The Ungrund an eternal Nothing but makes an eternal begin-
is
ning as a desire then is this will a magician for it has found

. . .
in the nothing, something and so now it has a place for its dwell-
ing. .The will is an insensitive, incognitive life, but the desire
. .
is found by the will and is a being in the will The eternal . . .
9
Will-Spirit is God
and the moving life of the desire is nature.
For there is nothing prior and each is a cause of the other. Thus
the Will-Spirit is an eternal knowing of the Ungrund and the life
of desire an eternal body of the will. (Mys. Pan. 1:3.)
The process by which will passes over from "nothing" to

"something" Boehme calls "imagination." This "imagina-
tion" is not the "Embzldung" which implies fancy and pre-
10
tense, nor is it "Phantasze," for Boehme's devil "remains
ever a prince at the head of his legions, but only in the
9
God as unmanifested. More often when Boehme speaks of God he
means God as manifested, the other end of the evolutionary process. The
contrast between will and desire is only the first vague embodiment of will,
to be succeeded by higher manifestations.
1 °
For a similar comparison of Imagination and Fancy see Inge's quotation
from Ruskin, Christian Mysticism, p. 252.
realm of fancy." (Gnad. 4:36.) "Imagination" is inde-

terminate will becoming determinate. It is empty form
becoming filled with content. Boehme speaks of will as

"centering" itself in some object which thereupon becomes
the "Wesen" of the will —for "every imagination makes
substance." (Wesenheit) (T. F. L. 10:48.)
Where no substance is there is no creating, for a creating spirit is

no conceivable substance, but it must draw substance into itself
through its imagination else it would not subsist. (Inc. I, 5:59.)
Human imagination is the temporal repetition of the eter-
nal process by which the "Ungrund" goes over into the
"Grund," the "abyss" into the "byss." Schopenhauer's term
"objectification of the will" seems to be close to what
Boehme means by "imagination," though Boehme, of course,
has no conception of the Kantian categories through which
Schopenhauer's "will" objectifies itself. Boehme has his
own These are the "seven nature forms" as
"categories."
described in the next chapter. Through them will attains
its goal of complete self-knowledge.
In facing the central problem of the manner in which
the will becomes objectified we meet a difficulty. We are
asked to view the process from an eternal, not a temporal,
standpoint. From a temporal standpoint the will precedes
its manifestation and causes it. Eternally, will and mani-
festation determine each other. Neither precedes the other.
To know the process from the eternal point of view we
must leave "external reason" behind and merge our wills in
a timeless life. "In the centrum of the eternal and temporal
nature," says Boehme, "the beginning and end are all one.
Therein the soul finds rest for it sees the whole wheel at once.
{das Rod ganz.) " (Apol. I, 23.)
But Boehme's efforts to see "the whole wheel at once"
110 THE MYSTIC WILL
give little of this rest to his readers. In the doctrine of the
seven nature forms we shall find this difficulty particularly
prominent. Boehme can begin at either end of his seven
or with any one of them and produce the others out of it.
Thus we find in chapter 10 of the Aurora that a nature form
gives birth to and mother as its father and mother bear
its father
it, . . . for one
alone can not generate another nor can two
spirit
of them do it, but the birth of one takes place through the operation
of all seven, six of them always generate the seventh, and if one
of them were not the others would not be.
If I sometimes take only two or three to produce a spirit, I do
that only because of my weakness for I cannot hold all seven in my
corrupted brain at once in their perfection. I see all seven very well,
but when I look into them (in sie speculire) then the spirit rises in
,
the midst of the fountain where Life generates itself, which goes
now upwards now downwards, and so all seven can not be com-
prehended in one thought but only part at a time (stiickweise)
Boehme apparently makes no other distinction between

time and eternity than just this distinction between seeing
things "stiickweise" or in "das Rad ganz." His "eternity"
is not an indefinitely extended time. Adam's fall was a fall
from eternity to time, that is from seeing things as inter-
related wholes or as organisms to seeing them successively
as casually or mechanically related.
We
cannot say of man that he in the beginning was enclosed in
time for he was in eternity. God had created him in his image, but
he fell; so the power of time seized him where all things stand
in number, measure and weight and the same clock work is the
outspoken formed word of God, according to love and anger, wherein
lies the whole creation together with man according to nature.
(Gnad. 7:51.)
The primordial from an eternal or organic to a "clock-

fall
work" or mechanical world is important in Boehme's theory

of knowledge. Our task in seeking truth is to reverse the
process of the fall and attain a divine point of view; that
is, Verstand. Adam fell into matter, that is from univer-

sality to particularity. His descendants see as separate what
is one in God. Boehme as a son of Adam is compelled
sometimes to describe object as the creation of will and
sometimes will as determined by its object. But, however
unable he may be to express it, he knows in his heart that
the two are interrelated in the higher unity of spirit or life.
Life cannot be known by "reason" (Vernunft) but only by

itself, that is, by Verstand.
Here we reach the most obscure point in Boehme' s phi-
losophy. He labors ceaselessly to make himself clear, but
only succeeds in uttering one paradox after another. Thus
we read that the eternal will
is in nothing butis the mirror of the Abgrund and seeks itself and
finds itself,and the found seeks again a model wherein it can seek,
find, and see itself. Then the last again finds the first in itself, and
the last is a mirror of the first and the first of the last and it is an
eternal "Band" (a word used by Boehme for an interrelated process)
and consists in will and desire, seeking and finding. (40Q. 1:202.)
Innumerable passages like this could be cited. They appar-

ently mean that will is itself dualistic and exists by over-
coming an inner dualism. Will seeks two ends, a negative
and a positive, an internal and an external. It passively
accepts an external object and at the same time actively
creates it. Such is Boehme' s voluntaristic mysticism. The
out-going "self -will" seeks to create, the in-going "resigned
will" passively accepts objectivity. In the two together we
have a circular process by which "the end continually seeks
the beginning" (40Q. 1:225) "for the world is in time. It
proceeds to a goal and there the end finds the beginning."
(40Q. 1:218.) In this way the mystical paradox is solved,
not by reason, but by life, for life is the strange paradox
112 THE MYSTIC WILL
which bridges the antinomy between matter and spirit; it
is the Holy Ghost, the mediator between the Father and the
Son, the origin and the goal.

In the passive phase of the will its "imagination" is much
like our modern "effort of attention." According to the
theory involved in this phrase any idea which excludes all
others from the field of attention discharges in action. In

this way the will accepts and becomes immersed
its object
in the life stream of reality. Thus will takes on the form
of that on which it is "centered," to use Boehme's oft-
recurring word.
"To whatever the mind inclines itself, in that is it figured
in the eternal fiat." Imagination is thus the food of the
soul and man is evil or good according to whether he
"imagines" himself into the dark or light world.
Outer Being does not reach the inner soul except through imagi-
nation; otherwise there is nothing in this world which can touch or
kill the soul neither fire nor sword, but only imagination that is its ;
poison. (40Q. 11:7.)
Adam and Lucifer both fell because they put their imagina-
tion on the material rather than the spiritual.
How happened it that Adam though a perfect image of God lost
his perfection and became earthly? Did it not happen through
imagination that he introduced his desire into the outer earthly and
elementary realm? ... So it goes also with the new birth.
Through imagination and earnest desire we are again impregnated
with deity and receive a new body in the old. (Informatiorum II,
7:8.)
But this passive process by which the undetermined will

is "impregnated" by objects is always accompanied by a
creative process through which the will determines itself and

so brings its hidden possibilities to manifestation. Not only
does structure determine function, but function determines
structure. To the active will nature is a "mirror" in which

the soul sees its deepest longing reflected from the inner
depths. The world of external objects is not merely the
world of the senses. It is also the world in which the pos-
sible lies hidden behind the sensual, a mirror world of imagi-
nation which becomes actualized as the will breaks through
nature and so comes to a deeper knowledge of itself. Outer
nature points toward an inner ideal world which the will
posits in order to create it, and so attain a more complete
self -consciousness.
For the beginning of all being is nothing else than an imagina-

tion of the Ungrund, whereby it introduces itself through its own
desire in an imagination and models, forms and sets itself into
images and from the eternal one breathes out to its self-observation.
(Chr. Test 1:5.)
In this way the will comes "in eine Selbstbeschaulichkeit

Empfindlichkeit und Findlichkeit zu seinen Selbstbewegungen
und Formen." Thisi active phase of will through which it
creates its own world is to be described in more detail when

we come to consider how the "abysmal" or indeterminate
will passes over into the "formed" or determinate will in
God's act of creation.
Boehme in this way discovers a volitional element in
knowledge. is an identification of subject and
Volition
object in an actionwhere all sense of otherness is lost because
each penetrates and determines the other. It is therefore the
only true and immediate knowledge, the only path from
symbol to reality, from Vernunft to Verstand, from an his-
torical faith to a living faith, from nature to spirit. It is
the rebirth of the soul from darkness to light, which does

not banish darkness, but makes it the material basis of the
light's manifestation. This double character of the will by
114 THE MYSTIC WILL
which it is at once active and passive, self-assertive yet self-
denying, is the eternally inherent contradiction which must
be overcome in order to make true knowledge possible.
Boehme not only sees it as the basis of the soul which exists
by the unfortunate necessity of particularizing itself in exter-
nal forms which limit its inner freedom, but he sees it on
its lowest level as the conflict between the forces of attrac-
tion and expansion, which is the blind life of external
nature. The often quoted phrase from Boehme, "In yes and
no all things consist" (Th. Fr 3:2) or such statements as
"Nothing without contrariety can become manifest to itself"
(Beschau. 1:8) are based on this dual character of knowl-
edge, as implying two opposite movements, a contraction and
expansion.
In Nature one thing is always set against another, not to the end
that it might be at enmity with itself, but that one might reveal
itself in the other. Thus the Great Mystery comes to differentiation

and the nothing works and plays in and with something. (Gnad.
2:22.)
Boehme defines a soul as that in which this double process

takes place. He says:
it is is without ground, but seeks and makes a

a thing which
ground and has its origin and dwelling in the original con-
in itself
ception in which it first conceives itself in itself; that is its inner-
most limit, and it goes out of itself and seeks before itself where it
makes a mirror like the others, until it finds the first groundless
limit again. (40Q. 11:1.)
The objectification of the will is often compared to speak-

ing in which one thought images itself in many words.
Speaking is thus the forming of the formless.
This breathing is the eternal Word of the ungrounded Godhead

as an outspeaking of the Ungrund in the Grund, the unsubstantial
in the substantial: in which the whole creation takes and will eter-
nally take its beginning in the outspeaking in the differentiation of
speech. All Life stands in the same differentiation of speech, where

the formed imagination divides itself in the outbreathing into dif-
ferentiation, in which dividing is understood the sensuality of the
one life, where the one beholds itself in the many.
Speaking is an excellent illustration of this dual character

of knowledge. Thoughts determine words and the words
in turn determine thoughts and the result is an interaction
of the two.
Knowledge is possible because the will does not penetrate
that which is wholly alien to itself. Will is one parent of
its object.
Our mind is an indissoluble bond which God breathed into Adam

out of the eternal mind by the fiat of the moving spirit and so is our
eternal essence a particular or a spark out of the eternal mind . . .
It continues in the darkness and makes all light in itself and where
it is there it sees. So our thoughts can regard a thing many miles

away, far from the body, where the body has never been. The
glance goes through wood and stone, through bones and marrow,
and nothing can stop it for it breaks the darkness everywhere with-
out breaking the body of anything, and the will is the horse whereon
it rides. (T. P. 16:6-7.)
For every Spirit sees no deeper than the realized forms wherein
it works, which it has made actual through imagination. Therein
it forms itself, and in such essence it beholds itself and so high is
its knowledge. (Chr. Test. 1:16.)
The active phase of the will through which in knowing its
object it also knows itself is coherent with the old mystical

doctrine that "like can only know like." True knowledge
is self-knowledge; therefore the possibility of true knowledge
implies that man is the epitome of the universe. "As Empe-
docles said, like can only be known by like, only nature can
understand itself, only nature can fathom itself; but only
1X
spirit also can understand spirit." There is much in
11
Schopenhauer, The World as Will and as Idea, I, 288.
116 THE MYSTIC WILL
Boehme that parallels this. "Every spirit," he says, "sees no
further than its own mother from which it had its original
and wherein it stands, for it is impossible for any spirit in
its own natural power to look into another principle and
12
behold it, except it be reborn therein." (T. P. 7:1.)
Since man is in all three worlds, the celestial, the sidereal,
and the terrestrial, it follows that he can have a knowledge
of all three.
As the soul comprehends the inner eternal nature and the spirit
or God's noble image apprehends the birth of the angelic light-
world and the sidereal or elementary spirit conceives the birth and
property of the stars and elements, every eye sees into its own
mother wherein it was born. Let none account it impossible seeing
man is an image of God, a likeness of the Being of all Beings.
(Sig. Rer. 3:8.)
Boehme constantly reminds the reader that his writings

cannot be understood by anyone who has not been reborn
out of the dark world of nature into the light world of spirit.
"My writings," he says, "transcend sidereal knowledge, they

lay hold of the divine birth, therefore he must have a like
spirit who would understand them." Accordingly "the devil
lends man his eyes to see evil, even as God lends him his
eyes to see good." (Inc. 7:23.) Boehme attempts to
explain how the mind finds itself in its object.
If the mind did not flow out

of itself it would have no sense
perception and if it had no sense perception then it would have no
knowledge of itself nor of any other thing and could neither work
nor act. But the efflux of the mind which is an object of the mind,
in which the mind finds itself causes it to will and desire. Hence
it introduces the senses into a something which is, as it were, a
centrum of selfhood. Here the mind works through the senses and
thereby reveals and contemplates itself. (Beschau. 1:18.)
12
Compare with the following passage from Plotinus: "One kind
this
of intelligence is the intellectual perception of another thing, but another is
the perception of a thing by itself, the latter of which flies in a greater
degree from duplicity or doubleness of intellection." Plotinus, Enn. V.
Because of this subjective contribution of the mind to the

objects which it knows, Boehme can say:
My writings exist only for the end that a man may learn to know
himself, what he is and what he was in the beginning. (T. P. 3:3.)
If I had no other book than only the book which I am myself so
I have books enough. The whole Bible lies in me if I have Christ's
spirit. If I read myself I read God's book and you my brothers are
the alphabet which I read in myself, for my mind and will finds you
within me. I wish from my heart you would also find me. (Apol.
II, 298.)
From such voluntaristic epistemology it follows that man is
a microcosm. In a similar manner the Romanticists said

that nature is "an encyclopaedic systematic index or plan
of our Spirit." Man, thought Boehme, as he was created
on the under the sign of Venus, and it was love
sixth day, is
or the Venusbegierde which drew all things together into

the new human entity. So Boehme can say to man, "Thou
standest in the supersensible and rulest in the sensible, over
that out of which all creatures are created; and thou mayest
fear nothing on earth for thou art like all things and nothing
is unlike thee." (Supers. 8.) There is no monastic asceti-
cism in this. It is a philosophy which calls for the greatest
activity in the world around us. Boehme is constantly
impressed with the infinite possibilities of man. He often
repeats, "We are children of eternity." (T. F. L. 6:45.)
The evidence of this eternity is in the mighty power of
thought.
There are a limited number of stars whereby we know they must

return again into the aether but man is measureless for in
. . .
the constellations of the mind numberless thoughts arise, for out of

one thought others go forth as many as the stars in the firmament,
wherein we know our eternity. (T. F. L. 6:44.)
Man is "not a separated spark like a piece out of the whole

13
Novalis Frag. 364, quoted by Ederheimer, p. 71.
118 THE MYSTIC WILL
but the whole altogether, just as in every point there is a
whole." (T. F. L. 6:50.) This last statement indicates that
Boehme believed in some sense that the whole is present in
all its parts. He goes on to say:
If you make a little circle as small as a grain of seed, so the
whole birth of the eternal nature is therein and also the Trinity
(6:45). And as you see and find a man to be, so also is eternity.
Observe him in body and soul, in good and evil, in joy and sorrow,
in light and darkness, in power and weakness, in life and death.
All is in man, heaven, earth, stars, elements and also the Trinity
of the Godhead, nor can aiiy thing be named that is not in man.
All creatures are in him both in this world and in the angelical
world. We are all, together with the Being of all Beings, only one
body with many members where every member is again a whole,
and yet is an individual. (T. F. L. 6:49.)
We find somewhat the same expression in Schopenhauer

when he says:
"The will reveals itself as completely and as much in one oak as

in millions ...
the thing-in-itself is present entire and undivided
14,
in every object of nature and in every living being."
Boehme scandalized many pious souls by his extraordinary

claims for man. "God," he says, "is the Being of all Beings
and we are gods in him through which he reveals himself."
(T. F. L. 6:5.)
The holy Trinity without end or being has revealed itself as an
image in a beingand that is Christ and we are his limbs; we are
gods, we remain in him. (T. F. L. 13:22.) When you draw up
if
by faith to God then you break through to heaven and lay hold on
God at his holy heart. Then when this is done you are as the whole
or total God and are such a person as the whole God in the place
of this world. (A. 23:13.)
When Boehme says, "If I take up a stone or a clod of

earth and look upon it, then I see thewhole world therein"
14
Schopenhauer, The World as Will and as Idea, Vol. I, p. 67. Trans,
by Haldane.
(M. M. 2:6), he means that such knowledge is only possible

to a man who is "reborn" into the life of God. Man knows
divine things only by identifying himself with the divine.
"Not I, the I that I am, knows these things, but God knows
them in me." (Apol. 2:72. ) "I am not climbed up into
the Deity, but the Deity has climbed up into me." (A. 18:8.)
Yet Boehme insists that man retains his individuality even
though he becomes a part of the larger life.
God leads no new or strange spirit into us, but with his Spirit he
opens our spirit: that is the hidden things of the Divine wisdom
which lie in every man. (Ep. to. C. Lindner.)
Communication between men is possible because all men

are rooted in one eternal spirit.
All human properties proceed from one, so that they have only
one root and mother, otherwise one man could not understand the
speech of another ... In speech it may be understood into what
the Spirit has created itself, in evil or good, and with the same
manifestation it goes into the form of another man and awakens
in the other such a form in the signature that both forms act together
to form one form (mit einander inqualiren) so that there is one
comprehension, one will, and one understanding The sig- . . .
nature of nature is in its form a dumb essence; it is a prepared

instrument of music on which the will's spirit plays, whatever strings
it touches sound according to their property, man wants . . .
nothing but the wise master, the true spirit of eternity who can
strike his instrument for that is the mind's natural knowledge of
itself. (Sig. Rer. 1:1-5.)
Thus even our knowledge of each other is, in a sense,

self-knowledge, or rather God's knowledge of himself
through us.
It follows from what has been said about Boehme' s epis-

temology, that his psychology and theology are practically
identical.The knowledge of God is self-knowledge.
Boehme would accordingly be ready to admit an accusation
120 THE MYSTIC WILL
made against him that his philosophy is an account of his
own psychological processes. What else, he would probably
say, can one know about the creative process except that
which is revealed in the one example directly known to us,

ourselves. Reason, thinks Boehme, gives us only external
dead nature, no life nor generation, yet it is a mirror of
the spirit and in it man can find himself.
this, not He does
through Reason, but by a living act of will through which
he projects his own psychological processes into external
nature. They do not return to him void, but filled with
living content. The indeterminate will sees in the heart of
nature its idea, that is, a mirror of what it may become.
As such it is Reason, restless and unsatisfied. It then goes
forth and through imagination, it becomes clothed with sub-
stance, through a living union with the eternal Idea. The
Son, born of this marriage of masculine will and feminine
idea, is a new will which is at once natural and spiritual
because it is living. This is Verstand, the knowledge or life
of the internal as well as the external, the union of subjec-

tiveand objective.
Boehme's philosophy is confessedly autobiographic. "The
15
task of philosophy," says Watson, "is to state in the
explicitform of reflection, that which is implicit in the life
and action of good men."
Let us be at one [says Hocking] with our saints as in reality we

are at one with them in the drama of their moral will The . . .
settlement of thy problem, St. Augustine, which looks so much like

a theoretical result, is it not in truth an inevitable moral decision
governed from afar by thy deep religious feeling playing itself out
in terms of speculative issues which only symbolize the inner mean-
16
ing of the process?
15
Watson, Schelling, p. 245.
19
Hocking, The Meaning of God in Human Experience, p. 75.
—
No statement of Boehme's own theoretical result could be

truer than this.
Before we leave Boehme's theory of knowledge something
furthermust be said about the doctrine of the three worlds
the dark world, the light world and this temporal existence
which is sometimes called the "fire world." The first two
are eternal, the third exists in time. Man is in all three;
his soul in the dark world, his spirit in the light world and
his body in the temporal order. He is thus higher than the
angels who know only the light and the devils who know
only darkness. In man the threefold world is revealed.
The blind struggling self-will is in darkness; the will uni-
versalized, harmonized and determined by a complete knowl-
edge of the light and the human body is born
itself is in
of the interaction of the two.

To these three worlds or three modes of activity three
kinds of knowledge correspond. Knowledge in the dark
world sensual, knowledge in the light world is divine
is
intuition, knowledge in the fire world is rational. The sec-

ond, or as Boehme calls it, "Die hochtheure Pforte von
gottlicher Beschaulichkeit," is not knowledge in the usual
sense of the term, but life itself wherein God knows himself
in the soul and the soul knows itself in God. Thus in addi-
tion to the two types of knowledge recognized by psychology,
namely the sensual and the rational, which merge into each
other, Boehme recognizes a third type called Verstand, which
arises out of mystical union with the divine.
It is difficult to reconcile all that Boehme says regarding
the three types of knowledge and the three corresponding
worlds. This preliminary sketch will be rendered more intel-
ligible in a later discussion of Boehme's seven forms of

nature. He took over the three worlds from alchemy, but
122 THE MYSTIC WILL
the seven forms are the result of his own investigations and
comprise a clearer and more consistent theory. His insist-
ence on sharp distinctions between the three worlds simpli-

fies his analysis, but renders its result less complex than life
itself. Throughout his writings he assumes in all experience

some grade of blind nature-will outwardly directed in com-
bination with some grade of mystical knowledge inwardly
directed. These two produce a third type of experience
which partakes of both. The will objectifies itself in pro-
gressively higher and higher forms. Knowledge in the dark
world which is the experience of naked energy and knowl-
edge in the light world which is the experience of the inner
life of the universe furnish the lower and upper asymptotic
limits. The temporal world includes all possible intermedi-
ate grades of objectification of the will. Hell and heaven
are the lower and upper limits immanent in the temporal
world. On its pilgrim's progress through time the soul
alternates between the eternity of the lower and the eternity
of the higher.
Between the two limits of the threefold will hovers reason
which is "half dead," for it is tied on one side to dead
matter, yet hungers always for the fullness of life in the
it
light world,which is immanent within it. It is thus an inter-

mediate stage between sensual and mystical experience. As
such an intermediary it is sometimes spoken of as if it had
a semi-material body. Boehme probably derived this curious
idea from Paracelsus. According to this theory man has
two bodies, one composed of the elements and the other
"from the stars." The inner semi-corporeal body is the
sphere of the mind and senses and so is a mediator between
matter and spirit. Boehme conceives of a "Vernunftleben"
throughout all nature which he also calls, to give it a few
of its names, an astrum, a. Naturgeist, a Weltseele, the

spirit us Man's psychic life is a part of this more
mundi.
universal nature life radiating from the stars. Perhaps the
following is as clear as any of the very obscure and some-
what inconsistent statements about it.
This twofold outward body is now to be considered if we would

understand nature The sidereal body is the highest except-
. . .
ing the divine in man; the elemental body is its dwelling house,
. . The elemental body is inanimate and void of understanding,
.
it has only desire in it, vegetation is its right life. The astrum
gives knowledge of all essences in the elements. The inward . . .
light and power of the light gives in man the right divine under-
standing, but .the sidereal spirit is the true rational life in all
. .
creatures. The whole astrum is the instrument whereby the eternal

speaking Word speaks and forms externally, it is a great harmony
of unsearchable manifold voices, the desire or Fiat receives
. . .
this sound and makes it substantial. This substance is the spirit

of the stars which the elements receive into themselves and coagulate
it in themselves and hatch it as a hen her eggs; therefrom is the
true rational life in the elements. (M. M. 11:22-27.)
Much might be said of Boehme's theory regarding the various

grades of corporeality, but it does not seriously concern the
problems we are at present discussing. It is an important
part of the outworn physics of alchemy.
The two opposite phases of the will becomes
duality of the
threefold when produced a new being.
their interaction has
This new being as directly experienced is life. But life can-
not be directly experienced for long. Soon it becomes indi-
rectly experienced from the outside and the duality breaks
out again. As indirectly experienced it is reason, a mirror
or idea in which the will sees the possibilities of its next act
reflected. The whole process is then repeated in the next
movement of will. Boehme sometimes describes this process
in theological terms. The Father, that is the dark principle
124 THE MYSTIC WILL
or blind will, sees in the passive idea, that is, the Virgin, the
possibility of creation. Their union results in the Son, that
is, the light principle or determinate self-conscious will. The
interaction of Father and Son, or nature-will and spirit-will
produces the Holy Spirit which is life. When the inevitable
duality reappears, life as viewed externally or rationally
becomes idea. The whole series is then repeated. Such a
brief summary of this theological psychology does not con-
vey its full import. It will become clearer as we analyze
in the two following chapters Boehme's conception of evo-
lution from nature and God and the return process from
God to nature.
Boehme's theory of V erstand and Vernunft, the two types
of knowledge, suggests an obvious criticism. He defines
Verstand as pure experience of the higher life. It provides
a profounder truth than Vernunft or reason. But truth and
experience are not the same thing. Truth is an interpreta-
tion orjudgment upon experience. Mere experience, devoid
of such an interpretation, is meaningless and is neither true
nor false. In Vernunft subject and object are separated.
Accordingly Vernunft is doubtful knowledge. In Verstand
the subjective-objective distinction has been transcended,
therefore Boehme holds Verstand is sure knowledge, for
knower and known are one. Vernunft mirrors the image of
the soul's possibility in the world of objects, Verstand real-
izes that possibility in experience or activity. Boehme's the-
ory is open to question because the words true and false

properly apply only to Vernunft. If Vernunft images a
genuine possibility so that Verstand completely satisfies it,
then it is pragmatically true. If Vernunft can find no ful-
fillment it is false. True and false are only relative terms

and signify a relation existing between a judgment and that
about which the judgment made. They necessitate the

is
subject-object distinction and cannot be applied to the abso-

lute. Accordingly when Boehme says, 'Throw away your
outer reason, so is your will God's will and God's Spirit will
seek you in you" (40Q. 1:36), or when Eckhart says,
"The eternal process is a self -revealing of God in pure

knowledge where the knower is that which is known"
(Schr. u. Pre. I, 124), or when such modern writers as
Holt say, "A representation is always partially identical with
that which it represents, and completely identical in all those
17
features and respects in which it is a true representation,"
it is difficult to see how such knowledge is either true or false
except in relation to judgments about it, which destroy its

character as 'pure immediacy." To reiterate the words of
Bergson which we have already quoted "Philosophizing just
consists in placing one's self by a sort of intuition in the
interior of concrete reality." {op. cit., p. 86.) Boehme says
the same thing many times; but philosophizing obviously is
not such an immersion, it is rather a judgment upon the

immersion. Philosophy, therefore, being mediate, not imme-
diate, cannot remove all doubts, and mystic philosophy is
quite as much on the surface of things as any other philos-

ophy. Here again we face our well-worn mystic paradox.
The mystics do not admit as does Kant, a "dialectical illu-
sion" through which the mind must forever attempt the

impossible task of expressing in ideas what is inexpressible,
nor do they admit with the scholastics a double standard of
truth, that is, a truth for the expressible and another truth
for the inexpressible. Rather they openly admit the paradox
and say that ultimate truth or immediate knowledge both is
and is not. Boehme says that the very existence of the
17
Concept of Consciousness, p. 142.
126 THE MYSTIC WILL
dilemma means that we are merely philosophizing, and phi-
losophy (Vernunft) cannot possibly get us out of it.
Beloved Reader [he continues], if you would understand the high

mysteries you need not put a university upon your nose or any such
spectacles. (T. F. L. 3:29.)
The dilemma is evidence of that double aspect of all will
which has been pointed out. The whole object of willing

is to remove this inner contradiction, to transform the double
temporal will into the one eternal will. "The one divine
way by which a man may behold God in his Word, Being,
and Will is this, man must be at one in himself." (M. M.
41:54.)
Boehme solves the difficulty by taking Vernunft with him
up into this higher experience. The "one will" of Verstand
is a harmony, not an identity. His common figure is that
of a candle. There is always a dark spot at the heart of
every flame. "Faith and doubt are close to each other and
are bound with a chain." (Inc. Ill, 2:2.) Knowledge exists
because manifestation is only possible through opposites.
The opposites are the out-going active and the in-going pas-
Knowledge does not cancel the opposites and
sive wills.
make them one. "One will," says Boehme, "no knowl-
edge." (T. P. 10:35.) Nor does it leave them a two,
for this multiplicity is the "false imagination" of the devil.
It makes them a two in one, or rather a trinity of thesis,
antithesis and synthesis, Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Rea-
son, left behind in darkness and duality, is reborn through
experience into a fuller reason, wherein the old is not lost,
but exists as the matter of the new or its hidden basis.
Vernunft and Verstand resemble Plato's two steeds, the

higher and lower natures, but Boehme attempts to drive
them both to heaven.
A modern analogy may clarify Boehme's distinction

between Verstand and Vernunft. A deaf man could master
the mathematical theory of sound. He could also under-
stand the manner in which material objects vibrate in order
to produce sound. way he understands sound from
In this
the outside as a phenomenon in nature. But his knowledge
is rational. He does not understand sound from "the inside"
as an experience. All that he can possibly learn about har-
monic motion gives him no suggestion of the nature of
sound as an element in conscious life. An air wave has a
double aspect, it is mechanical energy and it is sound. Each
is known by a different type of knowledge. To say that
sound, as a psychological fact, has also a double aspect,
rational and empirical, does not alter the situation. The
dualism continually breaks out again. If any object in experi-
ence splits into an inner and an outer, then each of these two,
on being observed, experiences the same diremption.
In spite of his crude methods of expressing it, Boehme's
theory of knowledge contains much with which modern
thought would agree. Since Kant few would deny that there
is in all knowledge both a subjective and objective element.
Boehme is especially profound when he discusses in detail

the method by which the soul frees itself from the shadow
world of idea and achieves genuine objectivity. This step
is the central stage in its evolution from darkness to light,
a process which has so far been discussed only in outline.

We are now prepared to examine the evolutionary process
more closely. Our analysis has so far shown in general
terms how an out-going aesthetic mysticism and an in-going
religious mysticism are reconciled by a conception that
knowledge is a process of interpenetration of each by the
other through which experience is progressively interpreted
128 THE MYSTIC WILL
and reorganized into unity. What Catholicism granted only
piecemeal and what Protestantism denied, namely, the divin-
ity of experience, and the experience of divinity, is found to
be implied in the character of that knowledge by which the

same divine reality reveals itself in nature and man.
What is there hid in the heart of a rose,
Mother mine?
Ah, who knows, who knows, who knows?
A man that died on a lonely hill
May tell you perhaps but no other will,
Little child.
What does it take to make a rose,

Mother mine?
The God that died to make it knows
It takes the world's eternal wars,
It takes the moon and all the stars,
It takes the might of heaven and hell
And the everlasting love as well,
Little child.
Alfred Noyes, Forest of Wild Thyme*

* Reprinted by permission from Collected Poems, Vol. I, by Alfred Noyes.
Copyright, 1907, by Frederick A. Stokes Company.
CHAPTER V
FROM NATURE TO GOD. THE PROBLEM OF
EVOLUTION
We are now to inquire in greater detail how the divided
will overcomes its duality and rises to a complete and har-
monized life. This evolutionary process from the darkness
of divided will to the light of unified life can be described
either in terms of man or in terms of nature. As man is a
microcosm, a cross section of all that is,from the highest
to the lowest, he can make discoveries about himself by exam-
ining nature or he can make discoveries about nature by
examining himself. We shall now proceed to analyze the
evolutionary process in terms of nature as in the previous
chapter it was discussed principally in terms of man. But
we cannot completely separate the two. They are interde-
pendent. The light of knowledge, as has been pointed out,
is compounded of inner light in the soul of man and outer
light shining upon him from nature.
This persistent duality of inner and outer becomes appar-
ent in another form when we discover that we can begin our
analysis at either end of the evolutionary process. Turning
upon nature the light of outward knowledge we discover an
evolution from the lower to the higher. Sub specie tempo-
ralitatis Boehme's philosophy is a naturalism. As a student
of nature he sees the blind nature-will through its inherent
131
132 THE MYSTIC WILL
capabilities overcome its own dualism and rise to the heaven
of completely satisfied desire. Conflicting forces of nature
are harmonized through the birth of self-conscious unified
life within them. But Boehme is also an idealist in the sense
that the goal of the evolutionary process inspires its progress.
Sub specie ceternitatis the struggle of nature is not wholly a
struggle in the dark. The ideal hovers before the half blind
forces creating in them a dissatisfaction and leading them on
to greater heights. Thus the nature- will, like its human
counterpart, is both active and passive. Actively it creates
its goal, passively it is transformed by it. These two points
of view are inconsistent only in so far as the two kinds of
knowledge are inconsistent. Rationally Boehme is a natural-
ist, mystically he is an idealist. Vernunft sees man and
nature evolving from lower to higher forms, but in the light
of Verstand, nature is an organic interrelated process in
which the "end generates the beginning." Thus the mystical
paradox keeps reappearing in Protean forms because our
analysis must needs remain in the realm of philosophy rather
than in the realm of life in which paradoxes are solved by
experience. Philosophy can point toward the promised land
though, like Moses, it cannot enter in.
We cannot solve philosophic problems merely by referring

them to another realm of experience. Boehme takes us
further than this facile procedure. He analyzes the whole
complicated process by which higher experience evolves out
of lower. It is not enough to know that higher experience
exists. It is more important to learn how to seek and find
it. we shall in the main trace the
In the present chapter
naturalistic evolution from nature to God and in the next
the idealistic emanation from God to nature. It will, how-
ever, be found impossible to distinguish sharply between the
THE PROBLEM OF EVOLUTION 133
two progressions for each involves something of the other.

This interpenetration is the heart of Boehme's philosophy.
Life exists because dualism continually breaks out in the
realm of Vernunft only to be overcome in the realm of
Verstand.
Proceeding therefore sub specie temporalitatis or "stuck-
weise" as Boehme phrases it, we find that the higher levels
of existence arise through successive operations of seven
"nature forms" or "qualities," the higher coming out of the
lower through a kind of logic of life. Boehme devotes a
large share of his books to an explanation of the character
and function of these seven forms or "fountain spirits."
Commentators have made little effort to relate them to the
rest of Boehme's philosophy, probably because of the con-
fusion and obscurity resulting from his descriptions of them.
"Few," says the Encyclopaedia Britannica, "will take the
pains to follow Boehme through the interminable accounts
of his seven Quellgeister." Yet the prominence and ubiquity
of the great seven indicate their basic importance. The
Aurora is largely devoted to them. Unlike most of Boehme's
other theories, he remains fairly consistent in regard to his
interpretation of the seven forms throughout his writings.
Only do we notice a decided devel-
in the case of the fourth
opment. Through these forms Boehme can explain any-
—
thing the birth of God, the growth of a plant, the fall of
Lucifer, the jealousy of lovers, the structure of angels, all
that is in "the choir of heaven and the furniture of the
earth." Take as a random example the statement that fat
people are jovial because of a predominance of the second
form. (Aur. 8:18.) All seven forms are in everything, but
((
one is always uppermost or primus^ as Boehme sometimes
phrases it.
L
134 THE MYSTIC WILL
When take up a stone or a clod of earth and look upon it then
I
I see thatwhich is above and that which is below, yea I see the
whole world therein only that in each thing one form happens to
be chief and most manifest. According to this each thing is named.
All the other forms are jointly therein, only in various degrees and
centres, and yet the various degrees and centres are only one centre.
(M. M. 2:6.)
These forms are the simplest elements into which Boehme

can resolve all knowable existence, material and spiritual;
divine, angelic and human.
As an empiricist and a naturalist or "Naturkundiger"
(Aur. 2:15) Boehme's first task was to find unifying prin-
ciples in temporal nature. He had inherited from the
alchemists the idea of evolution or development * and he
set out to discover what governed that development. Turn-
ing to his first book the Aurora we find at the outset that to
know God "we must diligently consider the forces of nature."
(Aur. 1:1.) These "forces" he also calls qualities (Quali-
taten) and a quality is defined as the "Beweglichkeit, Qual-
len oder Treiben eines Dwges," in other words, it is a char-
acteristicform of activity. For example, he says that heat
is a quality and it contains two others, light and ferocity.
Cold is a quality, so is sweetness, sourness, saltness, etc.

Boehme derives "Qualitat" from Quallen or Quellen, i.e.
Quell, 2l spring or source. With this notion is also associated
Qual (pain), in this case a birth pang for a quality only
comes to manifestation through painful struggle. In the
Aurora he at first finds only two qualities, good and evil in
all things (Aur. 1:3), then he appears to discover an indefi-
nite number (Aur. chaps. I and II), but finally he settles
1
"The word evolution (Entwicklung) first came into philosophic speech
through Jacob Boehme," R. Eucken, Des Paracelsus Lehren von der
Entwicklung. Philosophische Monatshefte, Vol. 16.
down to seven. (Aur. 8:21.) In choosing seven he not

2
only has Biblical precedence in the seven candlesticks and
the seven seals of the Apocalypse (T. F. L. 3:46), but he
follows such predecessors as Basilides with his seven imper-
sonators in the mystical Abraxas, Saturninus with his seven
star spirits, the hebdomad of Valentinus, and the ten Sephi-
roth of the Kabbalah (which are the Trinity plus seven
spirits) . Boehme's seven differ from the Gnostic seven. His
"qualities" are not arbitrary personifications such as Might,
Wisdom, Glory, but are rather of the character of scientific
generalizations, arrived at through observation. They are
connected by logical relations. They are kinds of energy
which operate throughout all things. They incarnate the
invisible God and do not, like the Gnostic hierarchies, sepa-
rate Him from nature. With each of the seven forms
Boehme associates one of the seven metals, the seven planets
and the seven days of the week and other symbolic groups.
In the Tajeln von den drei Principien gottlicher Offenbarung
(1624) we find forty-five groups of seven, each associated
with the seven forms.
The forms appear under many names such as "Essences"
(T. P. 25:22), "Spirits of the Eternal Nature" (T. P. 25:22),
"Quellgeister" (A. 12:20), "Properties" (Eigens chaj ten) ,
(S. R. 9:8), "Forms" (Gestalten), (T. P. 25:24), "Species"

(Gnad. 3:3), "Forces" (Th. Q. 12:3), "Mothers" (II Inc.
4:4), "Wheels" (A. 13:90). These seven forms comprise
2
—-\
"On the sixth day I commanded my Wisdom to create man from seven
consistencies,one his flesh from the earth . . . and seven his spirit from my
breath and from the wind." II Enoch 30:8.
"Even these seven which are the eyes of the Lord, they shall run to and
fro through the whole earth." Zech. 4:10.
Perhaps Blake was thinking of both Boehme and Zechariah when he wrote:
"Then they elected Seven called the Seven Eyes of God and the Seven
lamps of the Almighty. The Seven are one within the other; the seventh is
named Jesus." The Four Zoas, I, 242.
136 THE MYSTIC WILL
all manifested existences visible and invisible, temporal and
eternal, because through them the eternal unmanifested will
is objectified. "All Being arises through the seven proper-
ties." (M. M. 11:10.) "Had not the forces of the one
divine property brought themselves into separability nothing
would have been possible. Neither angel nor any other
would have existed." (Gnad. 2:6.) These forms,
creature
described under the name "essences," are part of the process
of becoming, at the goal of that process they are substance.
(Wesen.) Boehme introduces the novel idea, thus radically
differing from the Gnostics, that the forms are not ranked as
a series of emanations, but are interdependent, each one
being the product of the other six, and no one preceding the
other. Their relation to each other is such that "every spirit
in the seven spirits of God is impregnated with all the seven

spirits and they are all one in another as one spirit." (Aur.
10:64.) The seven spirits in harmonious combination form
Eternal Nature, the complete manifestation of the will; in
discord they form temporal nature. Eternal Nature is imma-
nent in temporal as its heart and goal, that toward which
the temporal longs to return since its fall.
It is at first confusing to find the seven "properties"

described in both physical and psychical terms. But we must
constantly remind ourselves that Boehme thinks of nature as
animated from within by the same vital forces which find
more complete expression in man. Man and nature are
both creations of the seven properties. Viewed from with-
out (y ernunjt) the "properties" of nature appear physical,
viewed from within (Verstand) these same vital forces
appear as wills, separate elements of that one life which
animates the universe. This universe is neither exclusively
physical nor exclusively mental, it is vital. In the first three
nature forms the physical predominates for these forms are
the periphery of the spirit. When, however, the one life

rises to self-consciousness in the fourth form then the inner,
in one sense the "mental," aspect of reality becomes manifest.
The first force or form is variously described as contrac-
tion, attraction, harshness, themagnet (M. M. 3:16), a con-

gealing or coagulation, an impression, and the prima materia.
(T. P. 1:9.) It causes weight and density. (M. 3:16;
T. F. L. 4:14.) If allowed to act alone it would reduce all
things to cold, hard, immobile matter, "as when water is
,f
frozen to ice. (Aur. 13:65.) It is the principle of indi-
viduality and concrete being, hence the origin of the soul
(T. P. 15:62), and in fact the origin of every separate thing
(Aur. 8:27) qua separate. The primordial will to be,
whether in God man, first contracts upon itself. "The
or
desire proceeding from the will of the abyss is the first form
3
and it is the creative fiat." (M. M. 3:8.) This desire of
the first will for substance is the first substance of the will
and "it makes a great darkness (M. M. 3:9.) in the abyss."
"For the nothing hungers after something and the hunger
is the desire which conceives only itself and draws itself
. . .
into itself and brings itself from abyss to byss, so that the
nothing is filled." (M. M. 3:5.) The darkness "arises from
the first desire when the desire draws itself in and impreg-
nates itself so that it is a stinging, bitter, harsh, hard, cold,
grim Feuergeist. . . . Thus the abyss is hidden, yet manifest,
as darkness is to our sight, but the source (Quaal) is
unsearchable until the will sinks down into it, then it will
be found and (40Q. 1:49-51.) Thus the first form
felt."
is the in-going will at its most primitive stage, it is blind

desire physically manifested as contraction.
3
Compare:
"Thereafter rose Desire in the beginning,
Desire the primal seed and germ of Spirit."
"The Creation Hymn," Rig Veda, X, 129.
138 THE MYSTIC WILL
This in-going force of attraction or desire could not exist
without another force to oppose it. The second quality or
property of eternal nature is expansion. (Ausdehnung.)
As the first is centrepetal this is centrifugal. It is the sepa-
rator or divider. It is the counter-will (WiderwilW) which
opposes the "Formwille." It makes pliable and movable
what the first would make hard and dead. It is the "Stachel
der Regung," the "sting of stirring." (M. M. 3:10) and
"macht Unruhe." (M. M. 3:11.) It is the water spirit
which softens or dissolves. (Aur. 8:37.)
The twoforms, the sharp and the bitter stinging are the original
of being, and the eternal will is the mother wherein they gen-
all
erate themselves: we understand that the attracting {Herbigkeit,
perhaps acidity) always draws in with the grasping of the will and
the drawing in is the sting of the movement which the attracting
cannot endure. For the attracting desires a strong shutting up in
death and the stinging bitterness is the opener.
Thus the second form is the out-going will at its most primi-
tive stage, physically manifested as expansion. The more
attraction pulls the more expansion pulls against it. (S. P.
1:38.) Each creates the other and so "it is a chain or band

which always makes itself and has no maker." (T. F. L.
1:32.) These two opposing forms are so interdependent
that it is difficult to tell one from the other. Sometimes
(S. R. 1:12) both are called "attraction." This is not sur-
prising when we consider that a force exists only in so far
as there is another force to oppose it. Each force is a meas-
ure of the other. Boehme seems vaguely to realize that
action and reaction are equal and opposite ; either force alone
would be nothing at all.
The great infinite space desires narrowness and limitation, wherein

it may reveal itself . . Therefore there must be a contrary will
.
for a clear still will is as a nothing and generates nothing. If a will

would generate, it must be in something wherein it may form and

produce. (T. F. L. 12:35.)
Scientific monists who reduce all things to a single force 1

or one kind of energy might well notice this. As Schelling
pointed out, a polarity of some sort seems fundamental in
natural phenomena. There is no difference between a world
of one thing and nothing at all.
The first two forces, though equal and opposite, do not

oppose in such a way as to cancel each other. They form
what is called in mechanics a couple and the result is rota-
tion, which is the third property of eternal nature.
Now these entering into one another as swiftly as a thought, the

sting (second form) would go out of the sharpness (first form) but
cannot, for the sharpness generates and holds it, and so, as it cannot
overcome it, it turns like a wheel and breaks the attracted sharpness \
and creates a continual stirring and mixing. (T. F. L. 1:33.)
The resulting motion is the "wheel of nature" most often

called "anguish" (Angst) . As the first form is the "grosser
Tod" this is the "kleiner Tod." It is a motion toward no
particular end, it is blind struggle in the darkness. Some-
times Boehme calls it heat or more often
fire without light,
the "bitter quality." In the third form the first two forms
tear at each other ceaselessly, but can make no progress for
neither gives way to the other. Nature here appears some-
times as a welter of chaotic forces, sometimes as blind
demonic mechanism. It is hell, the wrath of God, the lowest
and blackest level of material existence.
It is important to notice that Boehme often calls the third
form "sensuality" (Sinnlichkeit) By this he appears to .
mean the world of nature as revealed to our senses, unillu-

minated by reason or understanding, the confused meaning-
less swarming mass of mere existence. By opposition to each
140 THE MYSTIC WILL
other the first two forms have produced a series of contrasts
and tensions, "stings" as Boehme calls them, which impinge

on our senses and appear to us as the world of nature. The
third form is the "source of hellish fire * and of the sensual
mind" (Tab. Prin. 39.) It is "the irritability (Empfindlich-
keit) as a cause of the mind wherein the senses are active."
(M. M. 6:16.) "It is the origin * of distinction or differ-
entiation whereby the forces are, each in itself, mutually
manifest, it is also the origin of the senses." (M. M. 13:12.)
Only in the fourth form does understanding arise. The
third form is a frightful anguish, but no true feeling is to
be understood until the fire arises (the fourth form) (M. M.
3:16), for "the fourth form in nature is the kindling of the
fire where first the feeling and understanding life arise."
(M. M. 3:18.) In the Six Points (1:49) we find the third

form defined as a
moving, driving, fleeing and holding, as also feeling, tasting and
hearing. Yet it is not a right life, but only a nature life, without
a principle. For it has no growth, but is like a frenzy or madness
where something goes whirling in itself as a wheel where indeed
there is a bond of life, but without understanding or knowledge, for
it knows not itself.
In the first three forms we have life which is sensuous, but

not self-conscious (T. F. L. 2:15). The dim light of con-
sciousness is just beginning as the third form goes over into
the fourth, but nowhere in Boehme do we find a consistent
sharp dividing line between these two forms. The cause
of the pain of this nature life in the third form is plurality.
(S. P. 1:47.) Plurality makes sensation possible, but
nature hungers for a single unified life in which plu-
rality is overcome. As yet nature is only motion, a rest-
* By "source" or "origin" Boehme means that this form is most prominent.
All the others are, of course, present though not manifested.

less search for satisfaction which cannot be found in

itself.
The first three forms constitute the first stage toward the
manifestation of the Trinity. Freher calls them "God's first
footsteps in nature." Boehme has many names for this

6
lower ternary, "the eternal worm of the darkness," the
"fire-pregnant triangle," the "centrum nature." It forms the
corporeal being of all things (Aur. 8:52), the body in which
the holy life is generated. (Aur. 24:65.) Allen defines the
7
lower three as "homogeneity, heterogeneity and strain."
Spencer's "concentration, differentiation and determination"
are suggestive parallels, though we have not yet reached fully
determinate being. The first two forms are like the "love
and hate" of Empedocles, and the third is the "war" which
Heraclitus said was the "father of all things." It is too
8
much to say that in these three forms Boehme prophesied
the modern theory of electricity although there are some
startling resemblances. In his lower ternary he seems to go as
far as Kant, who endeavored in his Metaphysische Anfangs-
grunde der Naturwissenschaft to show that matter can be
resolved, not into anumber of indivisible material units, but
into two ultimate forces, attraction and repulsion, by which
all phenomena of nature can be explained. Modern physics
is not far from this standpoint in its reduction of matter
to energy. Schopenhauer follows Boehme closely in saying

that "crude matter has its existence only in the strife of con-
flicting forces: . . . the conflict between attractive and repul-
sive forces, the former as gravitation pressing from all sides
5
Law Biography, Walton, p. 290.
e
"Ternary" is a term first used by Baader.
7
Hastings Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics: Jacob Boehme.
8
Athenceum, January 26, 1867. Also Vetterling, The Illuminate of Gor-
litz, p. 253.
142 THE MYSTIC WILL
toward the centre, the latter as impenetrability always oppos-
ing the former, either as rigidity, or elasticity; this constant
pressure and resistance may be regarded as the objectivity of
the will at its very lowest grade, ... a blind striving, an
9
obscure inarticulate impulse."
10
Nature cannot in itself find any relief from the pain of
its conflicting wills. The more it wills to escape the dark-
ness the greater the darkness becomes. (40Q. 1:40.) Its
desire is the very matter out of which nature is made. The
more it struggles for freedom from conflict, the more material
and the less free it becomes. Stated mechanically the increase
of a force is proportional to the increase of the opposing
force. Action and reaction are equal and opposite. Stated
ethically the more I assert myself to get what I want the less
I am able to go out from myself to get it. Self-assertion
creates which hinders the progress it
that very isolation
attempts. In this hopeless struggle the wheel of nature
whirls faster and faster and the forces rage and tear at each
other more and more terribly.
We have now reached the crisis of the cosmic drama.
Nature is saved by an extraordinary and wholly inexplicable
event. At the culmination of is a sudden
the struggle there
mighty pent-up force accompanied by a terrify-
release of a
11
ing sound (Schrack) and a great flash of light {Blitz).
9
Schopenhauer, The World as Will and as Idea, I, 195. (Eng. trans.)
10
Boehme uses the term "nature" in at least three senses, (1) The eternal
nature, (2) the temporal nature, (3) the first three forms which are the
nature will as opposed to the spirit will.
11
In the English translations Boehme's Schrack (modern German Schreck)
is translated "flagrat." It is cognate with the English shriek or screech
which would be a better translation. Ellistone in a note to the S. R. justify-
ing flagrat as a translation says, "You may perceive a resemblance of this
flagrat in thunder and lightning as also in gun powder and the like. It is
the pregnant echo of the sound of eternity everywhere speaking and work-
ing and opening itself in love and anger." Earle translates Schrack as
"terror." (S. P. Eng. ed., p. 26.)
Fire breaks forth in the midst of the whirling wheel and

melts down and consumes the harshness of nature. The
three primary forms sink down in death to be reborn into
the light of the higher ternary. Boehme struggles hard
through many different images to describe this rebirth from
nature to spirit. and most frequent figure is that
His first
12
of fire generated by Such fire is not merely a
friction.
figure. It is an actual example of the eternal process. (Aur.

9:23-33.) The first two qualities struggling against each
other first generate dark heat which is the third form. As
the anguish increases there is a faint glow (40Q. 1:45-46),
then fire and light arise, ''and this is the beginning of life."
(A. 9:29.)
Boehme' s fourth nature form is the transition point from
the lower dark ternary to the higher bright ternary. As a
point it has no dimensions. Three stages, however, can be
detected; a sinking down to the point, the point, and the
rising up beyond the point. The first belongs to the lower
ternary, the third to the higher ternary and the point is the
abyss, the eternal freedom, the absolute will of unmanifested
Deity. This bottomless abysmal will here appears in the
middle of the evolutionary process as the point or unity
through which nature and man must pass in order to be
reborn into light. In the next chapter we shall see that there
is a sense in which this undifferentiated primordial will origi-
12
A figure used by many others. "The assemblage and comparison of
unknowns generates knowns as friction of cold and dark objects may produce
heat and light." Hocking, The Meaning of God in Human Experience,
p. 197. "It is in the interplay and frequent collisions of Gnosis and Praxis
that sparks are struck out which illuminate the dark places of reality."
Inge, Personal Idealism and Mysticism, p. 153. -—
For Boehme, however, fire is more than a symbol. It is an actual mani-
festation on the material level of the Trinity itself. The "fierceness" of the
fire is the Father, the Light of the fire is the Son and the air, apparently
rising from it, is the Holy Ghost. ^_ .
J
144 THE MYSTIC WILL
nates the evolutionary process by differentiating itself at the
fourth form into nature and spirit.
Boehme calls the fourth form "the Cross" when he is
thinking of the sinking down of the will to the point.

Nature must be crucified that it may be reborn.
When the lightning strikes the wheel it becomes a cross and can
whirl no more, but stands trembling in the great power of the will
of the eternal freedom which is God the Father. (T. F. L. 2:27.)
There no way from the dark to the light triangle except

is
through death on the cross of self-abnegation. Lucifer tried

to fly above the cross and dropped back into darkness. In
the fourth form the contradiction in the first triangle exhausts
itself. "The fire consumes all grossness of the first forms
and casts them into death." (S. R. 14:58.) ft Im Feuer ist
Tod/' (Gnad. 2:32.) Here nature retraces its steps and
sinks back to the eternal will which first gave it birth. This
will, being bottomless, is freedom. The process was started
by freedom longing for manifestation. A point has been
reached at which the imperfect manifestation longs in its
anguish for the freedom whence it came.
Thus the will which is called Father and is itself freedom

first
desires nature and nature with great longing desires freedom that
it may be released from the torment of anguish. And it receives
freedom in its sharp fierceness in the imagination at which it is
terrified as a flash for it is released from the torment of anguish.
And in the terror (Sc brack) arise two beings a deathly and a living
to be understood thus; the will which is called Father which has
freedom in itself, so generates itself in nature, that it takes on nature
and is the universal power of nature. The Schrack of its nature is
a kindler of fire, for when the dark anguish, as a stern, strong sub-
stance, takes the freedom into itself, it is transformed in the Schrack,
in the freedom, into a flash {Blitz), and the flash is freedom as

gentleness. the sting of death is broken and there rises in
Then
nature the other will of the Father, which he drew prior to nature
in the mirror of wisdom, namely, his heart of love, the desire of

love, the kingdom of joy. (S. P. 1:54-57.)
This is probably as clear as any of the many dark accounts

of the rebirth into light through complete self-denial, an
event which is of central importance in Boehme's philosophy
and which he never wearies of describing. The birth of

light in man, nature or God, occurs under the operation of
the same law. The higher life is reached only through
death. "The sinking down goes into the still eternity, into
the freedom, and the point of separation from the fire-life
is death, but the sinking life pierces through death and

sprouts forth into another world and has another substance
wherein the light shines." (40Q. 1:94.)
Thus in the "Feuerschrack" or fourth form the original
unmanifested unity and the discordant plurality of nature
both find what they seek, that is, each other. The result is
unity in plurality, in other words a perfectly adjusted organic
life. Life arises out of oppositions which are not destroyed
but harmonized.
The out-flown mild unity and the unity longs

will longs after the
after sensibility. So one goes in the other and when that happens
there is a Schrack or Blitz as when one strikes steel on a stone.
(Clavis 49.)
Thus before the flash we have nature and unity external to

each other and afterward nature and unity internal to each
other. The fourth form is the entrance of Deity into nature,
the incarnation of the Son of God. Spirit acquires body and
body acquires spirit. In the fourth form Boehme is the
mystic in union with the absolute, the primal undifferentiated
energy. Nature sinks back into God, but God comes forward
into nature for each is incomplete without the other.
146 THE MYSTIC WILL
The first will which is called Father finds itself in manifestation
and the second will which is called Son finds itself in power. If
there were no pain there were no joy. This is the kingdom of joy
that life originates in pain and is freed from pain. (S. P. 4:69.)
The lower ternary supplies force, matter, individuality, and

particularity and the passage through the fourth form is the
baptism of all these in the original unity in order that har-
mony may result through rebirth in the spirit. By this sink-
ing back to the first unity, out of which all arose, the parts
become aware of each other and of their interdependence
and the result is an interrelated self-conscious life.
The divided will which has passed through the cross of
self-denial in the fourth form is harmonized by new content.
The forms of nature are necessarily present, but they
first
remain in the background. In the lower level unity was

unmanifested and plurality manifested. In the higher level
ls
the will is centered on unity. Hence unity is manifested
and plurality hidden. The abysmal will or eternal freedom
behind phenomena to which nature retreats in order to find
unity and harmony, is a Durchgangspunkt. To remain in it
would be the "still standing death" with which the whole

process began. But it must be passed through if nature is
to be "tinctured" with divinity in order to attain "tempera-

ture" which Boehme's usual word for harmony. God and
is
nature meet in the "terrifying flash" of knowledge arising

out of the opposition of the forms. God finds in nature, that
is in the first three forms, a content for his formless empty
will, and the blind struggling forces of nature find in Him
that which relates them to each other through a common
origin.
The soul is composed of the first four forms of nature.
In the fourth form, "where light and darkness divide"
18
"Kindled" is sometimes Boehme's suggestive word for manifestation.
(T. F. L. 5:19), thesoul stands in the eternal freedom, the

abyss out of which all arises and is, accordingly, as free as
the will of that abyss. The soul may then imagine itself
either into the dark or light ternary. If the soul imagines

toward the lower or material, the fourth form appears to it I
as fire, the "anger of God" which consumes its materiality

in the furnace of life. If the soul imagines toward the
higher or spiritual ternary the fourth form appears as light,
the love of God which unites the soul's will to God's will \
in Verstand the higher knowledge. At the fourth form the

unethical nature-will becomes polarized and splits up into
J
ethical moments, because self-knowledge arises.
For the origin of imagination is the first form of nature . . .
whence it goes through all forms and is carried as far as fire. There
is the dividing bound or mark of
spirit, there it is born. It is now
free. It may go back

again by its imagination into its mother the
dark world, or going forward, sink down through the anguish of
fire into death and bud forth in the light. That depends on its ;
choice. Where it yields itself up there it must lie for the fire
(defined here as life) must have substance, in order to have some-
thing to feed upon. (S. P. 7 3.)
:
In the flash God and nature both attain self-knowledge,

each through the other. Boehme sometimes speaks of the
unmanif ested abysmal will as a light, but since it has nothing
to shine on it is also darkness. Nature furnishes the neces-
sary background. The first will as pure subjectivity goes
forward and finds itself objectified in nature, and nature
going backward becomes aware of its origin and goal. Light
only becomes light through a background of darkness. Man-
ifestation is only possible through opposition and reconcilia-
tion. This law Boehme finds fundamental. Nature began
through the opposition of the first two forms, contraction
and expansion. Then the opposition of the subjective will
148 THE MYSTIC WILL
"as thin as nothing" and physical nature in its first three
forms produces the flash of knowledge. Here the oppo-
sitions of mechanical nature based on necessity pass over
to similar oppositions based on freedom, and so the light
of self-consciousness arises. Self -consciousness is generated
by blind opposing impulses face to face with primordial
freedom.
The flash of the higher knowledge changes the first three
forms into the last three, for the higher ternary, composed
of the and seventh forms, is in a certain sense
fifth, sixth
the lower ternary seen as it were from the inside. Here the
doctrine of the seven forms is linked with Vernunft and
Verstand. Boehme recognizes Vernunft or the lower knowl-
edge, in the dim light of the fire as the third form passes
over into the fourth. The higher ternary is the lower har-
monized by Verstand which is the flash of light in the fourth
form. This flash is perpetual with God, but in human beings
it appears intermittently. Boehme associates darkness with
knowledge derived from the senses, fire with rational knowl-
edge, and light with the true or mystical knowledge. He
sees that in nature dark heat precedes fire and fire precedes
light. When light appears darkness and fire are not abol-
ished. They are its necessary bases, just as the gleam of a
candle exhibits a dark material centre, a fiery flame and an
out-going light. In Vernunft, symbolized by fire, beings in
the first three forms of nature cannot understand the world
because they are separate and discordant and see each other
only externally as individual self-wills. As the fire grows
more intense it dissolves this isolation which is dependent
on materiality and the three forces sink to the abyss in the
fourth form to rise to a higher life. In this higher life,
Verstand sees unity uppermost because it has united with
that one will out of which all things come. All objective
forms of the will are denied in order that consciousness may
deduce a bond of unity out of itself by retreat into the sub-
jective and thus see nature with the universal eyes of God,
not with the particular eyes of men.
In this change from a human to a divine point of view
physical nature is not abolished. In Vernunft matter is
manifest and spirit is hidden, in Verstand spirit is manifest

and matter hidden. Which shall be manifest and which
hidden depends on the soul's attention or imagination.
Viewed from the outside the world is a swirl of contending
forces; viewed from the inside it is an outer expression of
the inner life of God. In the lower or external knowledge
plurality is in the foreground and unity is hidden. In the
higher knowledge the first three forms in becoming the
material substratum of existence retire into the background
and the principle of unity, the light of the eternal freedom
shines upon them and in so doing manifests itself. As the
evolutionary process proceeds through the fourth form it
leaves the first three forms behind, but it finds them again
on a higher level, internalized by Verstand.
Speaking in ethical terms, Vernunjt is associated with the
lower ternary because it is egoistic. It is the nature of
reason to satisfy itself. It is not associated with the higher
ternary because the gateway to the higher, which is resigna-
tion, is inexplicable. The resigned will seems to lead the
soul to utter extinction in the irrational depths of the abyss.
But soul does not perish there; it is saved by faith. It
triumphs over crucifixion on the cross of resignation, and is
raised up to new and higher knowledge.

It is perhaps misleading to describe the birth of light in
terms of knowledge for we tend to think of knowledge as
150 THE MYSTIC WILL
passive acceptance of an objective world. Apparently, accord-
ing to the above description, the higher ternary is simply
the lower seen with eternal rather than with temporal eyes.
No real change seems to have taken place. It is important
to remember Boehme's philosophy is
in this connection that
voluntaristic. Knowledge is creative and to know the higher
life is to bring it to manifestation and even to become it.
In mystic union with the absolute the will receives a vision

of its goal, which is the higher ternary, but it does not remain
passively beholding it. By the law of the circular process
itmust return to our disordered earth and embody the vision.
Nature and men are bound together. When Adam fell, all
1
nature fell with him. *
As a result, "turba" or confusion
replaced "temperature" or harmony. Adam's descendants
must redeem nature by fixing their imaginations on the Son
who is the goal and Savior of nature. Through such atten-
tion to the eternal we become like it and thus are enabled
to bring salvation to the temporal.
This theory does not apply to man alone. Boehme sees
throughout nature a continual transformation from the dis-
ordered strife of matter to the light of a higher life. When

an object in nature, whether it be a human body or some-
thing else, evolves to a higher stage, in one sense it remains
the same object. The nature forces which compose it are the
same forces as before, but now they are in "temperature."
This temperature is a new non-material being which is the
higher life of the object. So far as "outer reason" is con-
cerned no fundamental change has taken place. As a sci-
entist might say to-day, man may evolve but he is still
nothing but a swarm of atoms and life is only a more com-

14
"Earth felt the wound and nature from her seat
Sighing through all her works gave signs of woe."
Paradise Lost, IX, 782.
plicated mechanism than inert matter. But to the higher

knowledge which views living nature from the inside with
love and sympathetic understanding, life is more than a
15
mere rearrangement of material particles. This sympa-
thetic view from within not only finds, but also creates, a
new object. The three lower forms evolve into the three
higher through creative imagination.
An analogy may assist us to understand this seeming
paradox which is at the root of Boehme's voluntaristic mys-
ticism. Our illustration is not one which was used by
Boehme, but it is not at variance with his parables of tree
and flower which emphasize the interdependence of parts
and the unity of a living whole.
Suppose in a group of men each is following his own
egoistic impulses regardless of his fellows. The result is
confusion, that is, the lower ternary. When such strife has
reached a certain intensity conviction dawns that each may
better attain his ends by submerging his egoism in a common
enterprise. The individual accordingly denies his selfishness
and imagines himself into the common undertaking, turning
his back on particularity and self-interest. He is now, as
it were, in mystical union with a life higher than his own.
This is the Durch gangspunkt to the light world which a

given individual or possibly all the individuals concerned
now enter, not by reason, but by will. Each assumes that
his fellows in the enterprise have the same faith in it which
he has. This he cannot know. The others make the same

assumption. This general expectation creates its object. Out
of the united faith of all that each will play his part, a
1
Boehme, apparently, gives us the same rules for the evolution of higher
forms of out of lower as for the evolution of life out of "dead" matter.
life
He does not sharply distinguish between the two because to him all matter
is, in some degree, living.
152 THE MYSTIC WILL
new life is born in the group. This new life is controlled
by new laws of action. It is the corporate will which har-
monizes the individual wills into a common purpose. Knowl-
edge could not have discovered it in advance because it was
created by the very faith which posited it. This new being
cannot be found by any scientific instrument nor isolated in
a laboratory. It is not material. The individual parts are
still the original physical entities that made up the group.
Yet something new is there which governs the parts for its
own purpose. A new kind of supersensual attraction has

appeared to hold the parts together. It is love, a force which
rules not from the outside as is the case with the first nature
form, but from within as in the fifth nature form. Our group
of individuals has risen to the higher ternary because its con-
flicting interests have been harmonized in a higher unified
life.
Such is the evolution of social life. The evolution of

physical life is possibly similar. We might suppose a group
of molecules going through much the same process as our
group of men. Their harmonized action is evinced by a new
organic life which controls them from within.
This is not a fantastic picture. A molecule of water in an
inanimate body is chemically the same molecule as it is in
an organic body. But is it same? Does it
"spiritually" the
not, as part of an organic whole, in some unexplained way
submerge the egoistic impulse by which it is controlled
according to the laws of its own nature alone and submit
to the larger plan of the organism? What is life but a type
of existence created by the harmonization of many parts that
are not living if they are isolated from each other? Isola-
tion and dead matter, the lower ternary;

strife result in
cooperation and harmony, brought about by resigning the
own will to the whole, is life, the higher ternary. We can-

not conjecture what degree of dim consciousness may accom-
pany the formation of a society of molecules such as we
have suggested, but life and mind, as we know them in
ourselves, have evolved out of matter, and matter therefore
must contain the germ of life and mind. The fear of
describing nature in terms which suggest primitive animism
is disappearing to-day from many philosophies of science.
16
Even the atom is now described in organic terms. It may
be going too far to say that the electric field which holds the
electrons of an atom to their orbits is the outer aspect of an
inward faith in each other which creates their society, but
it is nevertheless true that the evolution of human society
begins with the atom and the atom accordingly must contain
human society in germ.
After the evolutionary process has passed through eternal
freedom which is the absolute point of view, attraction,
the nature form becomes love, the fifth form; expan-
first
sion, the second form, becomes speech or any sort of
intelligible expression, the sixth form. Rotation or motion

which is the third form becomes God's complete manifesta-
tion, the Kingdom of Heaven, the seventh form of eternal
nature. Thus freedom gives love, which cre-
attraction plus
ates unity in difference, not unity through external force
which is no true unity. Love is physical attraction baptized
by divine knowledge. Here we pass from an Old Testament
morality of law in the first ternary to a New Testament
morality of love in the second.
The birth of love, the fifth nature form, which holds the
spiritual universe together as attraction holds together the
16
For such points of view see Whitehead, Science and the Modern World \
Smuts, Holism and Evolution.

154 THE MYSTIC WILL
material universe, is sometimes symbolized by a plant grow-
ing out of the dark ground. This figure suggests the Bud-
dhist parable of the lotus. Nature gives birth to that which
is different from itself.
The makes the dark stern might thin again and a plant
flash
springs up out of the countless essences, and this is the power of
the second centre, for in this upspringing there is a love desire and
the eternal light reaches the freedom without nature. The freedom
without nature kindles (manifests) Here the
in this love. . . .
sharpness which is the form is not perceptible, for although it

first
is there it is now a birth of joy, and a true fulfilling of the first will
which is God's, which he first set in desire and brought forth in
nature, and out of nature grows a plant which is love Thus . . .
light breaks open the gates of darkness and the love-plant grows in
the dark nature and lives in the eternal stillness of the father and
is called his Son. (T F. L. 2:83-86.)
The birth of the fifth form, love or light, is summarized

in a passage in Boehme's last book, the Clavis.
In the flash the unity perceives the sensibility and the fire
. . .
becomes a burning love. The darkness is pierced through with light

so that it is no more discerned, but remains eternally in itself in the
impression. . This fire ground only becomes hunger and sharp
. .
desire when the will breaks itself off from unity The fire is . . .
an object of the great unity of the love of God, and therefore the
eternal desire becomes perceptible and the perception of the unity
is called love. It is a burning or life in the unity of God. And
according to this burning of love God calls himself a loving God,
for unity pierces through the painful will of the fire and changes it
into joy. In the fiery will of the eternal nature stands the soul of
man and if the soul breaks itself off from the light and love of God
and enters into its own natural desire then the source of this dark-
ness becomes manifest in it, and this is the hellish fire and the anger
of God. (CI. 50:55 inter alia.)
Boehme calls the sixth form, that is the unity of expansion

and freedom, sound, speech, tone, the outspoken word of
God, expression, differentiation (Aur. 10:1), and under-

standing. (CI. 69.) As he associates love with the visual
sense, so he associates the sixth form with the auditory sense,
and in describing it he seems at times wholly lost in his
figure. The harmony of the forces attained in the light is
imaged as a musical symphony, generating a sound unheard

by the coarser ear of nature. (M. M. 5:19.)
This harmony of hearing, seeing, smelling, tasting, and feeling is
17
the true intelligent life for when one power enters into another,
then they reach each other in the sound, and when they penetrate
each other they mutually awaken and know each other. In this
knowledge is the true understanding, which has neither number,
measure, nor cause, but is of the nature of the eternal wisdom, the
one which is also all. (M. M. 5:14.)
The sixth form "is the chariot on which the spirit rides
and executes that which is decreed by the council of the

seven spirits." (A. 15:76.) "The sound is the declarer that
the beloved child is born." (T. P. 3:13.) "Sound" thus
symbolizes the out-going will just as love signifies the
in-going will. "Sound" is the expression of love. Boehme
sometimes calls it Verstand because, although the fifth form
is the beginning of true knowledge, expression completes
it. As the second form tears asunder the hardness of the
first, so expression, or differentiation, the sixth form (Unter-
scheiden Th. Q. 3:31), breaks up the cohesive force of love.
Boehme does not mean that the fifth form is an emotion
nor that the sixth is a physical sound (although these two
forms are manifest in love and sound respectively). He
merely emphasizes again the double character of the higher
knowledge which involves both the in-going and out-going
17
Boehme uses the adjective verstdndliche. Its connection with Verstand
is obvious.
156 THE MYSTIC WILL
will. In speech the unity of one thought becomes a plu-
rality of expression. In love plurality of souls is drawn
into unity of life.
The seventh form is the consummation of the whole

process. In it the will becomes fully manifest to itself.
Boehme calls it the pure element, substance, body, the glory

of God, eternal nature, the formed Word, paradise, heaven,
the Kingdom of Heaven. In describing it he becomes
ecstatic and can hardly contain himself.
Beloved mind, behold, this is now God and his kingdom of
heaven, even the eternal element and paradise, as it stands in an
eternal beginning from eternity to eternity. What joy, pleasure
and loveliness is therein I have no pen to describe, for the earthly
tongue is much too weak, speech is dross as compared to its gold.
(T. P. 14:90.)
Here the one abysmal will which began the process as nega-
tive unity, a unity reached by subtraction, has become posi-
tive unity containing an infinite wealth of detail such as
might be compared to "a stringed instrument tuned into a
harmony although with many kinds of strings." (S. R.
15:50.) Nature becomes wholly alive. It is at the same
time one and many. Here the forms ''do mutually in a love-
play wrestle with each other like a pleasant song or pregnant
harmony or kingdom of joy." (M. M. 6:2.)
This is the Body of God as the first six forms are His life.
(Aur. 16:9.) It is a substance without which the six forms

would be as spirits without a body, and no spirit can exist
without a body. (T. F. L. 5:5.) It is the "substance of
which the spirit of God wears as a garment and with
spirit
which he reveals Himself, otherwise His form would not

be known." (T. F. L. 5:50.)
The seventh spirit in the Divine Power is the body which is gen-
erated by the other six, wherein all heavenly figures subsist, wherein
all things image and form themselves and out of which all beauty
and joy arises. This is the true spirit of nature, yes nature itself,
wherein comprehensibility consists, and wherein all creatures are
formed in heaven and earth, yes heaven itself is formed therein and
all that is natural in the whole Deity stands in this spirit. If this
spirit were not, there would be no angels nor men and God would
be unsearchable. (A. 11:1-3.)
The seventh form is the final adjustment and harmoniza-

tion of all seven. Boehme calls it Eternal Nature. It is an
already existing perfection, operating as one of the seven
forces which make up the world as we now see it which is
called temporal nature. This temporal nature is a devolu-
tion from eternal nature and is created when the lower ter-
nary is imperfectly subordinated to the upper. The seven
qualities are all present in temporal nature but in a different
relationship. The first contracts too harshly, the second tears
apart too much, the third whirls too rapidly. Thus in our
bodies sensation is and necessary, but if a finger is
excellent
crushed, sensation is stirred too much. (Aur. 5:71-72.) So
with the forms, if any form asserts itself too much the
harmony is destroyed and temporal nature comes into exist-
18
ence. Temporal nature is spoiled nature; half-dead nature,
whereas eternal nature, latent within it, is the perfection of
life. That Boehme visualizes the perfection of eternal nature
as an organic perfection is evident from his figures.
As members of man's body love one another, so do the spirits

the
in the Divine Power, there is nothing but a longing, desiring and
fulfilling as well as a triumphing and delight in each other, whence
come understanding and distinction in God, angels, men, beasts,
18
"We may therefore say that every organism expresses the idea of which
it the image only after we have subtracted the part of its force which is
is
expended in subduing the lower ideas that strive with it for matter. This
seems to have been running in the mind of Jacob Boehme when he says
somewhere that all the bodies of men and animals and even plants are half
dead." (Schopenhauer, The World as Will and as Idea, I, 191.) (Eng.
trans.)
158 THE MYSTIC WILL
fowls and all that lives, whence these spirits become living and the
power of life penetrates through all. (Aur. 9:64-67.) (Also Aur.
10:40.)
The distinction made in a previous chapter between time and

eternity appears again here as the distinction between a tem-
poral process thatis not entirely interrelated and an eternal
one that is completely harmonized. The properties, says

Boehme, are "in eternity spiritual" (Gnad. 3:40) and "in
the outer created world they are in strife with each other
in evil and good." The doctrine of the seven forms describes
the evolution of God to complete self-conscious personality.
The Father is the dark subjective nature will which began
the process. The Son, the goal of the process, is God the
19
Person. "God," says Boehme, "is no Person except in
Christ." (M. M. 7:5.) God has won his personality
through a long and fearful struggle through the lower forms
of nature up into the light of complete self-knowledge.
Eternal Nature is Deity incarnate. The Cross of Calvary
symbolizes the agony which God eternally suffers in over-
coming his self-assumed physical limitations and rising to
the heaven of a completely satisfied will.
To man, Deity may appear either as an angry nature God
embodied in the lower forces or as God the Person, a God
of love embodied in the higher forces. To a will centered
on the lower ternary God creates both evil and good, but to
a will centered on the higher range God creates only good.
Evil is not illusory. God must pass through a real imper-
fection in order to attain a real perfection. God as a source
of evil is the devil's point of view. God as a source of
19
"God has no beginning and there is nothing sooner than he, but His
word has bottomless beginning and a bottomless end and yet is not called
end rightly but Person, the heart of the Father." (T. F. L. 3:2.)
Blake says, "God out of Christ is a consuming fire" (written on painting
in Tate Gallery).
good is an angelic point of view. To man in temporal

nature, a stage in which light and darkness alternate and
thus create the twilight of temporal knowledge, God some-
times partakes of one aspect and sometimes of the other,
depending on the direction of the creative imagination.
This is Boehme's answer to the problem proposed at the
beginning of chapter I, the reconciliation of God as revealed

in nature with a God who satisfies the demands of the human
spirit.
Boehme describes Eternal Nature as glorified material

nature. It is all that temporal nature will be when it over-
comes its inner conflict. "The man of genius," says Schop-
enhauer, "requires imagination in order to see in things not
that which nature has actually made, but that which she
endeavored to make yet could not because of the conflict of
20
her forms." Such a genius was Jacob Boehme. He relies
on the famous theorem of alchemy, "What is above is like
that which is below and what is below is like that which is
above." When he says, "The corrupted nature of this world
labors in its utmost power to bring forth heavenly forms"
(Aur. 12:89), he does not mean that heavenly forms are
bloodless concepts conceived intellectually, but corporeal
beings to be perceived sensually. However, he often com-
pares the process towards eternal nature to a thought process.
"The birth of Eternal Nature is like the thoughts of man as,
for example, when a thought is generated by something and

afterwards spreads out infinitely." (T. P. 3:9.) "The
angels are the thoughts of God according to love and anger
as a manifestation of his mind or will." (T. Q. 6:5.)
20
World
Similarly,
—
as Will and as Idea, I, 241. (Eng. trans.)
"If the doors of perception were cleansed, even this world
would appear to men as it is, infinite." William Blake, The Marriage of
Heaven and Hell.
160 THE MYSTIC WILL
Boehme is here thinking of a thought process deeply colored
with the sensual as was his own. His heaven is not less
sensual than this earth. It is more so. The colors are
richer, the sounds more musical. Temporal nature is "spoiled
sensuality." Eternal nature is "living matter at harmony
with itself." Temporal nature, like Pygmalion's statue, may
be quickened into life by the breath of love.
The character of Boehme' s Eternal Nature can be better
understood if we compare it briefly with the two most famous
extra-phenomenal realms in philosophy, Plato's realm of ideas
and Kant's Boehme's system of thought stood
thing-in-itself .
at the transition point when ancient Greek objectivism, typi-

fied in the philosophy of the Church and the philosophy of
alchemy, was passing over into the new subjectivism repre-
sented in the Protestant doctrine of justification by faith.
Eternal Nature was born of the two. It resembles Plato's
realm of ideas in that it is an objective eternal goal of per-
fection toward which temporal nature is drawn. It resem-

bles Kant's thing-in-itself because it is posited not by reason
but by subjective will. It is neither subjective nor objective,
but subjective-objective. Plato stresses goals, Kant origins,
Boehme life which includes both goals and origins. In this
he is truly the philosopher of transition. Eternal Nature is
the evil Protestant will perfected in the alchemistic retort

of the seven forms, into the absolute good of the Platonic
heaven. In Protestantism evil is real and the doctrine of
predestination places the responsibility close to the Divine
throne itself. In Platonism evil is an illusion. In Boehme's
Eternal Nature real evil is present as a hidden substratum of
goodness. An Idea of Plato as a realization of will is a dif-
from an Idea of Plato as the negation of matter.
ferent thing
21
Boehme's heaven may look like Plato's, but there is in it
a dark nature center, a lurking devil whom Plato would not

have admitted. Dying objective Platonism and nascent sub-
jective Protestantism were fused in Boehme's conception of
Eternal Nature in such a way that the Platonic realm
of Ideas was supplemented by the depth of pain and
tragedy which was needed to make it a true picture of life
itself.
We are now in a position to summarize the significance

of the Three Principles so often mentioned in Boehme's
works. The first or dark principle is the lower ternary com-
posed of the first three nature forms; the second or light
principle is the higher ternary composed of the last three
nature forms and the third principle is temporal nature in
which and darkness contend, though neither gains the
light
mastery. The light and dark principles are so related that
each makes the manifestation of the other possible. Evo-
lution begins in tension between attraction and expansion
which are the first two nature forces. Each of them creates
the other. The process ends with similar tension between
darkness and light, physical nature and divine life. In Eter-
nal Nature light is manifest and darkness hidden, but the
tension still exists as the basis of manifestation. "Without
poison," says Boehme, "there can be no life."
The power in the light is God's love-fire and the power in the
darkness is God's anger fire yet it is but one and one only fire, but
;
divided into two principles, that the one might be manifest in the
other. For the flame of anger is the manifestation of the great
love; and in the darkness is the light made known else it were not
manifest of itself. (M. M. 8:27.)
The wrathfulness and painful source is a root of the kingdom of
21
Boehme often calls eternal nature the "universal." (S. R. 11:91.) This
term, however, is used in an alchemistic sense. It refers to the philosophers'
stone. The evolution of eternal nature out of the temporal is the "process
of the universal." (S. R. 10:15-21.)
162 THE MYSTIC WILL
joy and the kingdom of joy is and dark wrath-
a root of the enmity
fulness, thus there is whereby the good is made mani-
a contrarium
fest and known that it is good. (M. M. 4:19.)
The desire to good and the desire to evil, both must be or God
would not be manifested. Nothing in nature is to be rejected or
all would be a still nothing. (T. F. L. 3:1.)
Thus without shadow no light however brilliant could be

seen.
In his doctrine of the three principles Boehme does not
dichotomize the cosmos into self-sufficient parts. The
moment he turns his attention on any one of the parts he
discovers all three of them in the one. The three principles
cannot exist separately because they cannot be known sepa-
rately. "Each without the other would be an Ungrund."
They exist in all things and in each other. This is the cause
of much obscurity in Boehme' s works though his ultimate
meaning is plain.
Thus we find many paradoxical expressions like this:
The centre of nature has three principles in the original . . .
and these three are called in the third principle sulphur, mercury
and salt. (S. R. 2:11.)
Thus we find that all three principles are in the third. But
more trouble follows. As we read further we find that
sulphur splits up into sul (soul) and phur (fire) and so on
ad infinitum. But this everlasting splitting up of everything
into two opposing phases whose interaction forms a third is
to be expected from Boehme's epistemology. The three
principles must exist in all that is known for knowledge is
born of the trinity which comprises the two opposing phases
of the will and their interaction. Accordingly we can know
any one of the three principles only by recognizing all three
principles in it.
Boehme's science with its strange theological and psycho-

logical terminology makes at first sight small appeal to the

22
modern mind. "In the dawn of science," says Vaughan,
"hovered a meteor which at once lured on and led astray
the seekers after truth, ... it was the hope of a special
illumination." Boehme followed this meteor, yet as Vaughan
says, "it was characteristic of Boehme' s theology to resolve
acts of judgment or sovereign intervention as much as pos-
2
sible into the operation of law." This is very true. In
spite of his Faustian craving for a knowledge higher than
that reached by the slow labor of science, he struggles hard
for a genuinely objective attitude. Boehme does not in gen-
24
eral come under the criticism of Munsterberg, who confines
mysticism "to the regions where ignorance of nature leaves
blanks in the causal system and so has to tremble at every
advance which science makes." For Boehme all is miracle.
The word Wunder, miracle, is one of his words for mani-

festation. Boehme is of small use in physical science, not
because he is not searching for inviolable law, but because
hiswhole concern is religious and ethical. His is the prob-
lem of the Timaeus, the moral perfecting of nature.
To this end stands the poor soul in the prison house of the ele-
ments that it might be a laborer and re-unite the wonders of the
external nature with the light world. (Ep. 5.)
We may with Schopenhauer

2 e
consider that Boehme means
by "longing" what science means by relationship, but he
probably meant more than that, for no concept of his was
without a strongly emotional element. Boehme thought of
nature as having the same dimensions as man. Here he
differs from physical science as such. Physical science deal-
22
Hours with the Mystics, I, p. 57.
23
Ibid., p. 116.
24
Grundzug der Psychologies I, p. 120.
2 B
Schopenhauer, The World as Will and as Idea, p. 398.
164 THE MYSTIC WILL
ing as it does only with measureable relations fixes its exclu-
sive attention on Boehme's first three forms of nature. It is
not concerned with good and evil. Boehme goes beyond it
and finds seven forms, the last three constituting with the
first three an antithesis which creates good and evil. In
saying that all seven forms are in all things the shoemaker
of Gorlitz is not far from teaching that all consciousness is
consciousness of value. To this many would to-day agree.
Science may struggle hard to separate things and values, but
it is doubtful whether man can view nature so dispassion-
ately. "The law to do right," says Boehme, "is written in

nature and thou hast that very book in thy heart." (Aur.
11:54.)
Boehme's penetrating insight is befogged with so much
nonsense derived from the alchemists that a comparison
between him and serious modern thinkers might seem out
of place. Nevertheless it would not be difficult to find close
parallels between his interpretation of the universe and that

of more than one contemporary philosopher. In his mystic
philosophy of life he is not far from Bergson and Eucken.
If he were living to-day Boehme would find a congenial
spirit in such a scientist as Arthur S. Eddington who has
become acutely aware of the limitations of scientific method
and who has consequently put his approval to a kind of
mystical knowledge which approaches nearer to the heart of
28
things than scientific concepts can penetrate. Nor is it a
serious exaggeration of Boehme's importance to assert that
his doctrine of the seven forms is a precursor of the organic
conception of nature which is to-day replacing mechanistic
theories in such analyses as that of A. N. Whitehead. Again
28
Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World, Chap. XV.
we might, with some show of reason, consider him a prophet

of the doctrine of emergent evolution. In Boehme's works
the higher level is constantly described as emerging out of
the lower in a manner which is very suggestive of recent
27
theories. To Boehme, however, the discontinuity between
the lower and higher stage in the evolutionary process is not
such a miracle as it appears to be to the modern emergent
evolutionist. Boehme can explain it in great detail because
he has himself been through it.
Our philosopher is particularly suggestive of modern

thought in his explanation of the origin of the light of con-
sciousness and self-knowledge.
Consciousness [says Muirhead] arises through a conflict of dif-
them into the completest
ferent interests in an endeavor to bring
harmony with one another and thus the will into completest har-
mony with itself.
This is exactly what Boehme tried so hard to say. Boehme's
theory followed in the main by Schelling and Hartmann.
is
In Hartmann' s philosophy intellect, originally a servant of

will,and obeying it without question, rebels and disturbs the
harmony. Out of the friction thus occasioned consciousness
emerges as a product which recognizes the antagonism of the
generative elements. In Boehme's allegorical language this
intellect is Lucifer, originally the son of God, who plays the
part of rebel. The light, says Boehme, arises out of the very
fire of hell.Tagore puts the same thought in poetic lan-
guage when he says, "It is the function of our own intellect
to realize the truth through untruths, and knowledge is noth-
ing but the continually burning up of error to set free the
27
The following statement, for instance, is Behmenistic: "Dissolution at
a lower level of emergence is contributory to evolution at a higher level."
Morgan, Life, Mind and Spirit, p. XIII.
166 THE MYSTIC WILL
light of truth. Our will, our character has to attain perfec-
tion by continually overcoming evils, either inside or outside
us or both; our physical life consuming bodily materials
is
every moment to maintain the life fire; and our moral life
28
has its fuel to burn."
2 8
Rabindranath Tagore, Sadhand, p. 53.
.
God is within and without, he is even in the depths of hell
And Los said: I beheld the finger of God in terrors
... I saw the finger of God go forth

Giving a body to Falsehood that it may be cast off forever.
Wm. Blake, Jerusalem.

CHAPTER VI
FROM GOD TO NATURE. THE PROBLEM OF
EMANATION
One important problem remains regarding the generation
of Eternal Nature through the seven forms. How did the
process originate? Boehme is determined to leave no ques-
tion unanswered. In the previous chapter the two wills
began their careers as attraction and expansion by creating
physical nature on its lowest level, and then, evolving by a
living logic, they brought nature to its goal in a complete
and harmonized life. But what is the nature of the neutral
entity which preceded the divison into attraction and expan-
sion. Or, stating the question in theological terms, why
does the unmanifested God desire manifestation, He who
is perfect and desires nothing? If Eternal Nature is the
complete objectifkation of God's will what are the purely
subjective elements in God which started the process?
Boehme thinks that he can explore the bottomless will beyond
nature. It is not easy to follow him as he roams the outer
dark. Two wills, we have discovered, make experience possi-
ble, but of one will nothing can be known or said. This one
will of the abyss came into the midst of the evolutionary
process in the fourth form as a unifying principle, combin-
ing with the struggling forces of nature to generate both
knowledge and the higher life. It has so far appeared as a
169
170 THE MYSTIC WILL
condition not as an object of knowledge. In exploring the
absolute and searching for a "why" for the universe Boehme
ceases to be a voluntaristic dualist and becomes a rationalistic
monist. The absolute, no longer an object of purely irra-
tional mystical experience is analyzed and discussed. Here
we find the beginnings of idealism, the first important
attempt in history to derive the universe out of the subject.
The problem now is the problem of Kant and his succes-
sors. What is the inherent logical structure of the subjective
will by which it creates this particular world rather than
some other. This problem, which had hardly existed for
Boehme in his earlier works, became increasingly important
to him mind was less occupied with a philosophy of
as his
nature and more concerned with the problems of evil, of
freedom, and of the extent to which God is identified with
the world. In describing evolution through the seven forms
he had say of what lies beyond nature except to
little to
designate an empty will or "eternal freedom" which

it as
contained a longing for content, a longing which was the
beginning of nature as its first form. God as Father was
darkness, manifested in the blind nature forces; God as
Son was light or God the Person; God as Holy Ghost was
the interaction of the two or harmonious self-conscious life.
The trinity was thus eternal nature itself in its threefold

operation and the one will or eternal freedom served as a
starting point for thought, behind which it was useless to go.
But in addition to this nature trinity with its latent evil
Boehme had another trinity which he kept in the orthodox
compartment of his mind wholly separated from the other.
This was the Lutheran Trinity of Jehovah, Christ and the
Holy Ghost. This Trinity, uncontaminated by any taint or
THE PROBLEM OF EMANATION 171
even the possibility of evil, had no place anywhere in his

system, yet our philosopher, being a meek and pious church-
goer as well as the boldest of heretics, determined to find
room for it somewhere. To do this he must find a trinity
antecedent to the evolutionary process.

The order of Boehme's thought is always the order of
his own experience. There is first an antagonism, a conflict
of wills or forces. This conflict is nature itself on its lower
level either in man or outside him. Then comes negation,
the sinking down into the depths and the rising up into a
new nature harmonized as a revelation of Deity. The prac-
tical and ethical character of Boehme's interests, which are
the regeneration of man and nature out of pain and discord
to peace and harmony, compel him to start with the world
as he finds it and to struggle through from multiplicity to
unity. Once he has solved that problem he may inquire,

from the vantage point of this higher knowledge, how this
present disharmony came about. Like Lucifer and Adam,
who fell into matter and became mere materialists because
of too much curiosity about the origin of things, Boehme
himself inconsistently attempts to give, as a sequel, a rational
explanation of evil and multiplicity. But the course of his
thought first takes the other direction. The question, "How
is God born in nature?" is equivalent in Boehme's mind to
the question, "How may I go through nature to an experience
of God?" His epistemology identifies philosophy and life.
God is born in nature in the same way that God is born in

man. The process proceeds from the incomplete to the
complete.
If this is true it is surprising to discover that most inter-
preters of Boehme describe him as beginning with a nameless
.
172 THE MYSTIC WILL

One which and then
for ulterior reasons divides into a trinity
for further reasons creates the world. For example Marten-
1
sen, who was himself influenced by Hamberger a and
8
Baader, says:
The fundamental which Boehme has set himself is to appre-

task
hend God and apprehend the world (p. 36)
in this light to Out .
of the self-perfect God he desires to grasp and explain the created

world (p. 47). The first link in Boehme's theosophic train of
thought is the unit which he designates the abyss where all as yet
is in indifference (p. 56)
Such statements through too exclusive attention to cer-

arise
tain expressions inBoehme's later works and a tendency to
read into him Neo-Platonic theories of emanation and such
conceptions of God as that of Eckhart. Thus we find in
Boutroux's essay *
a description of four steps which descend
like a Gnostic ladderfrom heaven to earth; at the top is the
One, then the Trinity, then eternal nature and finally this
temporal world. Each time God "moves himself" to accom-
plish the next stage. That Boehme's thought, like his
evolutionary process, first moves, not from a knowledge
of Godknowledge of nature, as the orthodox bishop
to a
Martensen would wish, but from a knowledge of nature
to a knowledge of God will appear more clearly if we
inquire, through a comparison of his different works, how
his thought developed.
While the theory of manifestation through the seven forms
remains fairly constant, the theory of that which is to be
manifested undergoes considerable change. There are in
1
H. L. Martensen, Jacob Boehme. Tr. by T. Rhys Evans. London, 1885.
2
Julius Hamberger, Die Lehre des deutschen Philosophen Jakob Boehme,
Munich, 1844.
3
Baader, Vorlesungen und Erlauterungen zu Boehme's Lehre. Samt.
Werke, XIII.
* Boutroux, Le pbilosopbe
allemand Jacob Boehme, 1888.
Boehme's writings at least four theories of the subjective

5
abysmal will.
(1) In Boehme's earliest theory the trinity and the seven

forms are loosely connected. The trinity is wholly good as
all seven forms are in each person. To account for imper-
fection a fourth will, Lucifer, is introduced.
(2) In the second theory the eternal will is a trinity con-
tinually passing over from a state of longing and discord in
the first person or the first three forms to a state of harmony
and perfection through the second person in the last three

forms. There is a mysterious will beyond which is a
"nothing."
(3) According to the third theory the eternal will is a
threefold will having an ideal existence outside the seven
forms and coming to reality or manifestation through the
forms. Prior to the forms the trinity is unmanifested
goodness.
(4) Finally the eternal will is interpreted as a neutral
one, neither evil nor good, which on the one hand differen-
tiates itself into a trinity which is wholly good, but merely
ideal, and on the other hand into seven forms which mani-
fest it in nature.
The first theory appears only in the Aurora, the second in
the Three Principles, the Three-fold Life, and the Forty
Questions, the third in the Incarnation and the Signatura
Rerum and the fourth in the Gnadenwahl and the Mys-
terium Magnum* Needless to say there are many excep-
tions as Boehme's thought fluctuates considerably. In his
later books he constantly returns to the earlier theories.
5
This discussion has been much helped by Bastian's brief work, Der
Gottesbegriff bet J. Boehme, 1905. Bastian outlines three theories of God.
e
This list omits numerous smaller works which follow the same changes
chronologically.
174 THE MYSTIC WILL
Such a confusion is to be expected for Boehme holds that
the only distinct ideas we can have of Godare those we have
of eternal nature in its seven forms. (T. F. L. 4:87-89).
"The Trinity is first rightly understood in his eternal mani-
festation where he manifests himself through eternal nature
progressively from fire into light." (M. M. 7:12.) The
attempt to know God without eternal nature is, he says, like
trying toknow the mind without thoughts. Eternal nature
may be defined as the knowable aspect of God. Accordingly,
Boehme is clearest and most consistent in the second theory
to which he always adheres closely while dealing only with
the forms. This theory was elaborated in the preceding
chapter. The other theories arise through an effort to deal
with the problem of evil and with pantheism. In the first
theory Lucifer and in the third and fourth nature and the
abyss seem like dei ex machina brought in to relieve God of
the responsibility for evil.
We find in Boehme's he was well aware that
epistles that
his philosophy evolved gradually. At first, he says, he saw
the truth "as in a great deep and as in chaos where all lies
and the development (Auswzcklung) of this was impossible
for me. From time to time it opened in me like a plant."
(Ep. 12:10.) The Aurora was written by "a young child
still in his A. B. C.'s." (Ep. 12:13.) The first seven chap-
ters of the Aurora, he acknowledges tf handeln ganz
as
schlecht" (Int. to Aurora), but in the eighth chapter he dis-
covers the seven forms and their history is the basis of the
remainder of the book. There is no mention in the Aurora
of eternal freedom, the temperature, the still liberty, the
chaos, the Mysterium Magnum, the abysmal eye, the mirror
of wonders, or "the eternal generation of the trinity" which
appear so often in the later books. Boehme's eyes are on

nature (Aur. 1:1) and manner of generation and he does
its
not attempt to rise above it or sink below it. It is true that

he has much to say of the glories of heaven and he often
rails at the devil for the confusion he has wrought, but this
heaven and hell are in nature itself. The Father is nature
as awhole (Aur. 3:13) and all the forces of nature proceed
from the Father. (A. 3:16.) "He is the beginning and end
of all things and outside of him is nothing." (A. 3:32.)
The Son is the "heart in all the forces of the Father" (A.
3:37) and is a light in their midst "generated by all the
forces of the Father from eternity" without which the Father
would be "a dark valley." The Holy Ghost "is the living
motion in all the forces of the Father." (A. 3:70.) In the

Trinity itself there no imperfection. The whole responsi-
is
bility for evil lies Thus we find in the Aurora

with Lucifer.
that although the doctrine of the seven qualities is worked
out in great detail there is no effort to link this doctrine with
the eternal will or with evil. Here Boehme's philosophy
is a pantheistic naturalism to which is inconsistently added
an ethical theory of evil. "From the whole nature," he says,

"with its inward birth have I learned my philosophy, astrol-
ogy and theology." (A. 22:12.) Nature is the "divine
salitter (probably salnitre) in the deep of the Father"
(Aur. 4:20; 11:87; 15:52), a physical substance which, in
its infinite spontaneous power of generation precipitates the
beings and forms of life through its chemical action. The
seven years (1612-1619) following the production of the
Aurora, during which time Boehme obeyed the order of the
town authorities to cease writing, gave him time to work out
the relation between the eternal will, the seven forms, and
176 THE MYSTIC WILL
evil. In the Three Principles (1619) the Three-fold Life
(1620) and the Forty Questions (1620) written soon after
thisperiod of reflection, we find a fairly consistent and
coherent system. Here the generation of the Trinity and
the generation of Eternal Nature in its seven forms coincide
as described in the previous chapter, whereas in the Aurora
each person of the Trinity was wholly good and possessed
all seven qualities. The first three are assigned to the
Father who is the dark principle (T. P. 4:22), and the last
three to the Son, the light principle (T. P. 2). The Holy
Ghost is the third principle, the creative power of all seven.
Sharpness, bitterness and fire are in the origin in the first prin-
ciple,but God is not called God in the first principle, but anger, the
source out of which evil arises. (T. P. 1:8.)
Thus in the book of the Three Principles evil is described
as having a metaphysical root in God Himself. In the Three

Principles Boehme frequently harks back to his first theory
in an effort to avoid pantheistic naturalism.
The Three-fold Life is more difficult to classify because
Boehme is occupied with various sorts of wills which he has
not yet differentiated. In the first chapter the will of the
Father is described as being "thin as a nothing." Desire
makes it thick by contraction in the first nature form. This
darkens it. (T. F. L. 1:28.) The second principle or light
breaks the darkness. (T. F. L. 1:29.)
The first will which is outside of nature is free from nature, but
nature is born in its desire. The second will which goes out of the
first, out of nature as out of its own centre is also free from nature
for it dwells in the first will Since it would be manifested

. . .
the seven forms of eternal nature must be generated. (T. F. L.

3:19-20.) The will is the master of every work, for it has its
origin out of God the Father towards nature and passes through
nature to his heart which is the end of nature, which dwells in the
eternal still freedom without nature and is in nature as a peculiar

principle in itself. (T. F. L. 4:48.)
This seems to mean that nature in its seven forms is between

the first will and the second as the process by which the
first generates the second. After Boehme had fixed on the
seven forms as the process by which God is manifested he
labored to find some conception of God as unmanifested,
other than the first three nature forms, that is, he tried to
avoid pure pantheism. He knows of a will prior to the first
form, but cannot yet conceive of it as a Trinity.
In the trinity are three centres which are understood in eternal

nature, but without nature they are not understood. For without
nature the name of God is majesty, but in nature it is Father, Son
and Holy Ghost, — miracle, counsel, force. without That which is
nature profits me nothing. I could to all eternity neither feel nor
see nor understand it. But since the majesty has brought
. . .
forth nature and revealed himself therein in three persons, so I

rejoice at the revelation. (T. F. L. 4:87-88-89.)
Nevertheless he makes further efforts to evolve a theory

about this unknown Deity in his next book the Forty Ques-
tions. "That which is before the desire (the first form), is
free and a nothing and yet it is. If it were something know-
able it (40Q. 1:14.) Boehme describes
would be a being."
it in detail (40Q. 1:14-22) as an eye which sees itself. The
eye is a "will to seek itself" and so, being a circular process
is eternal. (1:15.) The first two forms appear here as the
first steps towards self -seeing. (1:22.) In the Forty Ques-
tions the abysmal will is plainly pure subjectivity and the
end of nature is self-consciousness. This subjectivity or eye
is the mirror of consciousness (1:15, 1:108, 11:1), a form-
less blank which reflects the images of nature. In spite of a
clearer conception of the meaning of self-consciousness,
178 THE MYSTIC WILL
Boehme has not in the Forty Questions progressed beyond
the standpoint reached in the Three-fold Life.
In Boehme's next three books, the Incarnation, The Six
Points and The Signatura Rerum, a. change has taken place
in his theories, and a process is described through which the
whole trinity is generated outside Eternal Nature. (Inc.
II, 1:8-12.) Boehme realizes that he is in serious difficulties
for, after describing this disembodied trinity he says t( denn
es turbiret uns." (Inc. II, 1:8.) While he insists through-
out that Eternal Nature is just the intelligible aspect of God
to be known by a deep insight into this temporal nature
around us, he does not give up his attempt to know God as
He is in Himself, apart from nature. In The Incarnation
the abysmal will again serves as a starting point for thought,
but there is a twofold seeking and a twofold finding.
The its imagination spirit only and becomes
will thus creates in
pregnant with with the eternal knowing of the Ungrund,
spirit as
in the all-power of life without being. As it is then pregnant, the
engenderment goes within itself and dwells in itself as a son in the
eternal spirit . . . But in this word is a will which desires to go
out into being into nature and reveal the non-understanding
. . .
life. (9 Texts 4:3-6) (written 1620).
There is thus an in-going and an out-going process in the

7
abyss itself. Baader who makes much of this distinction
describes the generation of the trinity as an esoteric process
in God and the generation of Eternal Nature as an exoteric
process, or God as he appears from the outside. Thus, he
concludes, Boehme is saved from pantheism and his philoso-
phy can serve as a basis for Christianity. Of this trinity out-
side Eternal Nature Boehme is compelled to say that the

Father wants nothing and yet has a desire to generate a Son.
The desire to generate nature is a painful hungry desire, but
7
Baader, Vorlesungen und Erlauterungen zu Boehme's Lehre.
the desire to generate the Son is a pleasure desire. Boehme

8
calls this pleasure "Lust," as distinguished from the painful
desire which he "Begehren" "Begzerde," or "Sucht"
calls
(later German Sehnsucht). Thus in the Signatura Rerum
(1621) which takes the same standpoint as The Incarnation
we find:
All life, growth, and motion consists in two things, in Lust and
Begierde. The Lust is a free will, a nothing as compared to nature,
but the Begierde is a hunger. In the Begierde arises the spirit
which causes motion, that is the natural, and in the Lust the super-
natural, which is yet natural, though its natural quality only comes
from the Begierde. The Begierde impels the essences as it is a
hunger, and the Lust is the hunger's substance (food) which it
takes into itself, for the Begierde is only a hungry will and the spirit
of nature in its forms, but the Lust is out of the freedom; for God
is without Begierde as concerning His own being. As far as He is

called God He needs nothing, being all. But He has a Lustwillen
and He is Himself this will to reveal Himself in the Lust, although
in the free Lust no manifestation is possible, for it is without the
Begierde. The Lust is as nothing compared to nature, but it is the
satisfaction (Erfullung) of nature. It freely gives itself over to the
hunger of nature for it is a spirit without substance like a nothing,
but the Begierde makes it substantial. (S. R. 6:1-2.)
The unsubstantial pleasure will thus manifests itself first by

becoming a painful desire and then by fulfilling itself as a
substantial pleasure will. It can win no reality except
through pain.
In the Six Points we find similarly that God has two
desires, "one for the word, one for the light or the mani-
festation of the word." (S. P. 1:31.) Then "the heart is
pregnant with light and the first will pregnant with nature."
(S. P. 1:32.) God, to manifest Himself, deliberately
renounces his pleasure will, becomes a painful will or natural
8
As there is no exact English equivalent for the German "Lust" it is
rendered by the early English translators as "lubet"
180 THE MYSTIC WILL
process and thus wins, through the seven forms, a new pleas-
ure will which is real and substantial, because it holds within
itself an unmanifested opposing will. "God desires only
light that he may shine forth in wisdom and manifest Him-
self. Now this can be accomplished in no other way than
through fire where the will is brought into the deepest sharp-
ness." (S. P. 1:35-36.) "The fire is hidden in the light and
gives to the light its power, strength and might so that
together there is an eternal union and one without the other
would not be." (S. P. 1:33.)
This brings us finally to the fourth stage of Boehme's
thought. The one will has now a new part to play. It is not
only the subject as distinguished from the object; it is also
that which differentiates itself into subject and object, and
as such it is neutral and without character of any kind. In
the Gnadenwahl (election by grace) Boehme is considering
the problem of predestination. In order to remove from
God any trace of responsibility for evil he makes Him a pure
empty identity. "He is not this and not that, neither evil
9
nor good, love nor anger. It cannot be said of God that
he has distinction in Himself, for He is in Himself nature-
less, emotionless, creatureless." (Gnad. 1:3.) As such
Boehme calls him the "Ungrund," the "ewige Nzchts," the
r
ohne Wesen," the "unfassliche Nichts" the Mysterium
'Stille
Magnum/' One is reminded of the "stillen Wiiste der Gott-

heit" of Eckhart, the Brahman of the Upanishads, the
10
Identit'dt of Schelling and the absolute God of negative
9
Boehme uses the term God in at least three senses, ( 1 ) as the
Ungrund, (2) as the Trinity, (3) as the Light Principle. He often says,
however, "God is only called God according to the light of his love."
(S. R. 16:21.)
10 from
Schelling, as is well known, derived his "Identity philosophy"
Boehme.
mystics in general. Milton may have had in mind Boehme's

Ungrund when he wrote of
The wide womb of uncreated night
Devoid of sense and motion. 11
(Paradise Lost II, 150.)
Yet Boehme does not describe this absolute or Ungrund

entirely by negatives. He cannot contemplate anything for
more than a moment without seeing it split into two oppos-
ing phases. The Neo-Platonists and the great mystics of the
Church found, in their ecstasies of union, no flood nor ebb
tide in the boundless ocean of the absolute. Boehme differs
from them in that he finds both. His absolute is a will. It
is never without activity for it is of the essence of will to

split into opposites which contend with each other.
The beginningless, inconceivable will bears in itself the one
first
eternal good as a conceived will which is a son of the groundless

will and yet equally eternal with it. This other will is the first
will's perceptibility and finding. The groundless will is father and
the conceived will is son. The out-go
of the groundless will
through the conceived son is the spirit. Thus
the one will of the
Ungrund differentiates itself by means of the first eternal beginning-
less conception of itself by a three-fold operation, yet it remains only
one will. (Gnad. 1:5-6-12.)
Thus the one Absolute Will previous to nature is not a

mere unity and never was, but is, like everything else, a trin-
ity of thesis, antithesis and synthesis. It is not only out-
going in order to create. It is also in-going in order to

discover what to create. As reflected back on itself it "com-
11
The following passage is also suggestive of Boehme:
"This wild Abyss,
The womb of nature and perhaps her grave
Of neither sea nor shore nor air nor fire
But all these in their pregnant causes mixt
Confusedly and which thus must ever fight."
(Paradise Lost, II, 910.)
182 THE MYSTIC WILL
prehends itself in an eye or general longing to a self-
observation and perception." (Gnad. 1:8.) In the threefold
Absolute Will; the Father is the original out-going will
of the abyss; the Son is the derived in-going or "reconceived
will" as Boehme calls it, and the Holy Spirit is the activity
resulting from this reflection of the will on itself. The
Father apart from the Son is "ewige Nichts" or the Ungrund.
Though a Son is born, the Father is still the will of the
Ungrund. As Boehme illustrates the point, a candle when
lighted is still the same candle, but it appears in a new
capacity. So the Ungrund is still the Ungrund, even
when it becomes the Father. However, as the light of
the Son is always shining, the Ungrund without it is
an abstraction. The Father from all eternity generates the

Son.
We now have in our universe two Trinities, one an ideal
Trinity generated prior to nature by the reflection of the Will
on itself, and the other a substantial incarnated Trinity gen-
erated through the seven forms. In the previous chapter
it was shown how this latter Trinity came about through a
naturalistic evolutionary process in which the empty Abso-
lute Will attains complete objectification. Now we find
that the Absolute Will itself is threefold antecedent to the
natural process. Boehme says that the Father of the ideal
primordial Trinity manifests Himself as the dark world of
nature and the Son manifests Himself as the light world
of nature. Thus there is an unmanifested Trinity prior to
nature and a manifested Trinity in nature. In each Trin-
ity the Father comes to self-knowledge through the Son, but
there is a great difference in the type of self-knowledge
attained. In the ideal Trinity God learns only of His possi-
bilities; in the incarnated Trinity those possibilities are

attained. In the first case the Absolute Will is reflexed on
itself and thereby becomes acquainted with its inherent sub-
jective capabilities; in the second case the Will comes to
complete self-knowledge by finding itself reflected in the
mirror of objective nature.
Here arises a new problem. We have studied in detail
in the doctrine of the seven forms, the character of the

mirror of Eternal Nature in which the will sees itself as
finally perfected in harmonized But what is the char-

life.
acter of this first mirror prior to nature in which the will

sees its possibilities reflected? It appears from Boehme's
accounts that there is in the Absolute Will itself a certain

inherent structure by virtue of which it wills this particular
world rather than some other. It discovers in itself a plan
of creation. Here we face again, even in the subjective
Absolute Will, the old, and ever present, duality of subjec-
tive and objective elements. God's will, like all will, is
both active and passive. There is pure self-assertion in it
and there is also an objective given element discovered when
the will is turned back on itself. Apparently creation is not
purely an arbitrary matter. Boehme's philosophy is not
wholly a voluntarism. God must, by His very nature, do
some things rather than others. What then is the nature of
this objective or given element in God Himself prior to
creation?
We are about to discover a new and important character
in Boehme's Cosmic Drama. The form or structure of the
Absolute Will by virtue of which this world is planned
rather than some other world is called the "mirror of divine
wisdom" or the "divine imagination." It is personified as
184 THE MYSTIC WILL
the "Heavenly Virgin Sophia," the "Jungfrau der Weisheit."
This first dim stage of objectivity is the passive material
with which the active will first works. Boehme, therefore,
considers wisdom to be feminine just as he considers the
12
active will to This Celestial Maiden is not
be masculine.
merely a creature of Boehme's pictorial imagination, how-
ever vividly he may personify her. She is a profound and
Without her the active
significant philosophical conception.
will could not create. would be wholly capricious and
It
would have no material in which to work. Her place in

Boehme's philosophical system is difficult to find because she
appears in so many roles. She exercises to the full the femi-
nine privilege of changing her mind and name. Thus, we
find her appearing as (1) the mirror of Deity, (2) the
Mother of God, (3) the Divine Imagination, (4) the idea
as the model of the world, (5) as that which is manifested
in Eternal Nature, (6) man's heavenly genius, (7) the bride
of the soul, (8) the mother of the reborn. In all these
various appearances wisdom plays the same role. She
always remains the passive idea which, when wedded to
active will, gives birth to new life. She is the given objec-
tive element in which the will sees its possibilities reflected.
The will is The union of the

the subjective creative element.
two produces life which then becomes a new given element
for a new act of will. Accordingly wisdom appears to play
a varied role, because, each time she comes forth in the cos-
mic drama she manifests a higher and different type of exist-
ence. Beginning as the vaguest possible structural charac-
teristics of the subjective abysmal will, she finally in the
12
"Reason," says Schopenhauer, using Boehme's figure, "is feminine in
nature; it can only give after it has received. Of itself it has nothing but
the empty forms of its operation." Schopenhauer, World as Will and as
Idea, p. 165.
last act stands before God, mirroring his completed

18
life.
Let us first examine her at the beginning of her career.

All of Boehme's later works begin with a terrific verbal
struggle to get the universe started and the panting reader
endeavors as best he can to
Follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bounds of human thought.
The following passage is typical of many efforts to describe

the first vague beginnings of the cosmic process in the dark
abyss.
As the first will is an Ungrund to be regarded as eternal nothing,

we recognize it to be like a mirror wherein one sees his own image.
13
Boehme follows an ancient precedent in this personification of Divine
Wisdom. She often appears in Hebrew literature. In Prov. 8 Wisdom speaks:
"The Lord formed me in the beginning of His way
Before his works of old.
I set up from everlasting, from the beginning
was
Or ever the earth was.
When there were no depths I was brought forth
When there were no fountains abounding with water.
"When He marked out the foundations of the earth
Then was I by Him as a master workman
And I was daily His delight, sporting always before Him."
In the apochryphal Wisdom of Solomon, 7:25-26, we find:
"For she is a breath of the power of God
And a clear effulgence of the glory of the Almighty.
For she is an effulgence from everlasting light.
And an unspotted mirror of the working of God."
In the Wisdom of Solomon, 10:5: "She preserved

the first formed father of
the world that was created alone and brought him out of his fall." In the
book of Enoch she descends from heaven to earth, but is rejected of men
and returns to await the Messianic age. The Gnostic systems placed her as
one of the mediators between man and God. Sometimes she appears as the
lost aeon to be redeemed. She is also the second Sephiroth in the Kabbalah.
Boehme may have been influenced by Weigel, who says of her:
"This heavenly Eve has from eternity been mother of the son of God in
the Trinity. This wisdom which is there the word of God, is a virgin who,
when born in bodily form, has borne Christ in the flesh for us in the world."
Postille, II, 286.
186 THE MYSTIC WILL
It is like a life and yet no
but an image and a figure of life.
life,
It is like an eye which without substance.

sees, yet the seeing is
Also we recognize that the eternal Ungrund without nature, is a
will, like an eye wherein nature is hidden, like a hidden fire which
burns not, which is and is not. It is not a spirit, but a form of
spirit like the reflection in a mirror. For all the form of spirit is
seen in the reflection or in the mirror and yet there is nothing which
the eye or mirror sees but its seeing is in itself for there is nothing
;
before it that were deeper there And so it is to be under-

. . .
stood concerning the eternal hidden wisdom of God which resem-

bles an eternal eye without substance. It is the Ungrund and yet
sees all, yet without essence But no seeing is without
. . .
14
spirit, so is also no spirit without seeing. Understand then that
the seeing shines out of the spirit, which is its eye and mirror,
wherein the will is revealed. For the seeing makes a will in which
the Ungrund can find no ground nor limit therefore its mirror goes ;
into itself and makes a ground in itself, that is a will. Thus the
mirror of the eternal eye shines forth in the will and generates to
itself another eternal ground, in itself. This is its centre or heart
from which the seeing continually takes its rise from eternityand
through which the will becomes moving and directive of that which
the centre generates. For all consists in will and is a being which
in the eternal Ungrund takes its rise in itself, enters into itself,
grasps itself in itself and makes the centre in itself, but with that
which is grasped passes out of itself. It is its own self, and yet as
compared to nature it is a nothing; that is, as compared to conceiv-
able being. Yet it is all and all arises from it.
Here we understand the eternal triad of the Deity and the
ungrounded wisdom. For the eternal will which contains the eye
or the mirror wherein the eternal seeing exists as its own wisdom
is Father. And that which is eternally comprehended in the wis-
dom, where that which comprehends, passing out of the Ungrund
into the ground, conceives a ground or centre in itself, is Son or
heart. . And the going-into-itself to the centre of the ground
. .
is Spirit, for it is the finder who from eternity continually finds
where there is nothing. Then the mirror of the eye, the Father's
and Son's wisdom, becomes manifested and wisdom thus stands
before the spirit of God who in it manifests the Ungrund . . .
Thus the essence of the Deity is everywhere in the deep of the

14
We would say, no subject without object and no object without subject.
Therefore the will must have itself for an object as there is nothing else.
Ungrund wheel or eye, where the beginning possesses the

like as a
end . Thus we are to understand the being of the deepest
. .
Godhead without and beyond nature. (S. P. 1:7-30.)

Some of the difficulties in this passage are due to Boehme's
figure. It is not easy to imagine an eye which sees itself.
The important thing to observe is that wisdom stands both

at the beginning and the end of the first evolution of Trin-
ity. This first circular process is purely ideal and is followed
later by a similar substantial circular process involving
nature. Wisdom both begins and ends the process.
She is the first eternal beginning and the first eternal end like an
eye by which the spirit sees what is in eternity and what it might
reveal therein. (II Inc. 1:11.)
Wisdom is at once that which is determined by the will and

that which makes the will determinate.
All being is an eye inclosed like a mirror where the will sees
what it is. In the seeing the will becomes desiring and models itself
in its desire and this model is the mirror wherein the will sees what
it is and this mirror is the wisdom. (II Inc. 1:9.)
Boehme's many long and confused descriptions of what

takes place previous to nature may be disentangled some-
what as follows:
Wisdom in her first capacity is the form or structure of
the One Will of the Ungrund. She is here the empty mirror
of consciousness, but this mirror, though lacking in images,
has a definite peculiarity of construction. Although the
Abyss is a purely subjective bottomless Will, an "ewige
Nichts" yet there is inherent in it a law, reason or wisdom
through which it acts in one way rather than another. By
virtue of this first "virgin" or "wisdom" it becomes turned
back on itself, that is, it becomes its own object. This
"reconceived will" turned back on itself is the Son, born of
the Virgin. Interaction of the out-going will of the Father
188 THE MYSTIC WILL
and the in-going will of the Son produces the Holy Ghost,
the first dim life of the Trinity. As a result of this creative
process Wisdom reappears not as at first an empty structure,
but now as a world of forms or the Divine Imagination.
The blank mirror of consciousness has filled up with images.
The empty threefold will has acquired a body of Idea.
Will, by turning back on itself, has become aware of its
possibilities. The "reconceived" or determinate will has

chosen out of the infinite possibilities of the Ungrund, or
indeterminate will, certain images which now serve as a
divine plan of creation, a model of the world to be. Deter-
minate and indeterminate are here to be considered in a rela-
tive sense. The will of the Ungrund was not wholly inde-
terminate for there was a wisdom or rational structure inher-
ent in it, but as a result of the first trinitarian process it
becomes more determinate and creates or "imagines" a defi-
nite plan of creation. Wisdom is, in both cases, the objec-

tive constitutive element, first as the rational structure, then
as the images. The difference between the
and second first
wisdom is almost the difference between a theoretical and

a value consciousness, a will to know in general and a will
with a purpose set on a definite good.
After the second Wisdom which is the Divine plan and
image of the Trinity is created through the threefold will,
a new movement of the threefold will takes place and the
result is a new image of the Trinity in the mirror of Wis-
dom. This second creative process takes place through the
seven forms of nature, the first three manifesting the Father
and the last three the Son and it ends in Eternal Nature the
final, and complete objectification of the threefold will.
Eternal Nature is again called Wisdom (T. P. 22:77) for

B
in it God sees Himself mirrored, not as He might become,

but as He really is. This might be called Wisdom in her
third capacity. The second mirror of Wisdom showed God
his possibilities, the third showed Him his actualities. The
second was a plan, the third the realization of the plan. In
the first movement of the threefold will the images in the
mirror result from the selective power of the Divine atten-
tion, working in the chaos of the Ungrund, just as man, out
of the infinite possibilities of nature around him, puts his
attention on certain objects. In the second movement of
the threefold will these images were incarnated in Eternal
Nature just as man, having selected certain objects for atten-
tion transforms them through action to the stuff of his own
existence.
The form of Boehme s logic is therefore: — first the vir-
gin, then a creative act of the threefold will, then the virgin,
then a creative act of the threefold will, then the virgin and
so on. The will acts and views its action internally as Life,
the Holy Spirit. This is Verstand. The will then views its
creation externally as Idea or Reason. This is Vernunft.

In the latter case the will sees before it a new Wisdom
reflecting its possibilities in the next creative act. Evolution
thus progresses in an ascending chain of cycles, each incar-
nation of Wisdom being higher than the last. She is in
every case the passive objective Idea in which the active
subjective will works to produce a new being, who is the
15
Son born of the Virgin.
1
Boehme
uses this conception in his long and elaborate discussions of
Adam's creation and fall. Adam, created in the image of God was both
sexes at once and so could create "magically" like God. When he slept the
heavenly Sophia, idea or wisdom, left him and he woke to find this aspect
of his will incarnated in Eve. Thus according to Boehme active will pre-
dominates in man, and passive will in women and accordingly it takes both
190 THE MYSTIC WILL
We shall see before we go much further that in this brief
summary the plot of our cosmic drama appears too simple
and undramatic. There is a villain in the story and a result-
ant tragedy, which calls forth heroic sacrifice.
Wisdom in her first capacity as the a priori form of the
empty subjective will might be compared to Kant's cate-
16
gories. She is thus the possibility of experience in general.
Kant's pure forms of space, time, causality, etc., are in them-
selves "Nichts" in Boehme's sense of the word, but they
condition all experience. They are the inherent forms of
the subjective will, by virtue of which this world is experi-
enced as spatial, temporal, causal, and the like. Kant would
agree with Boehme that the world without these forms or
the forms without the world would be an Ungrund. "With-
out the spirit the wisdom is no being and the spirit without
the wisdom would not be revealed, and the one without the
other would be an Ungrund." (II Inc. 1:10.) Boehme, of
course, knew nothing of such categories as are involved in
Kant's theory of the structure of the mirror of consciousness,
but he seems to have been aware that the mirror had some
sort of structure, that it was not wholly indeterminate and
to create. This same dichotomy into masculine and feminine elements appears
everywhere. As Coventry Patmore says:
"Nature with endless being rife
Parts each thing into 'him' and 'her,'
And in the arithmetic of life
The smallest unit is a pair."
The Angel in the House, Bk. XII.
18
This comparison is made by Weisse, Jakob Boehme und seine Bedeutung
fur unsere Zeit. Zeitsch f. Philos. u. Spekul. Theol. XVI. This article is
the only serious effort with which I am familiar to analyze Boehme's impor-
tant idea of the mirror of the Ungrund.
In my brief discussion of this point I have not distinguished, as Kant does,
between the forms of perception and of understanding. The term experi-
ence is used in its broad sense.
irrational and that it evolved by becoming aware of its own

inherent forms.
Wisdom model of creation
in her second capacity as the
is comparable to Plato's realm of ideas. Out of the clear
mirror which is the mother of God comes the ideal trinity
as absolute will, relative will, and spirit. These create the
images in the mirror, the plan of the world to be.
The nothing causes the will and makes it desire and the desiring
is an imagination in which the will sees itself in the mirror of
wisdom, so it imagines out of the Ungrund into itself and makes
in the imagination a ground in itself and impregnates itself with
the imagination out of the wisdom. The will is Father and
. . .
the conceived is Son, and the imagination of the will, the vision of
form in the mirror, becomes pregnant with force and color. (II
Inc. 2:1-2.)
The vision of form in the mirror is sometimes called "The

idea, the express image of God, a form of Divine names."
(177Q. 5:3.) She is not a particular but a universal.
The eternal wisdom is a figure or spirit in colors, wonders, and
virtues and is yet not a particular, but entirely a whole in infinite
form. (Gnad. 5:5.)
As such she is a model for creation.
The
desire of the Trinity is an eternal Magus and makes being.
Itbrings things to a ground according to the model which the spirit
has opened in the wisdom. Out of it the creation came forth accord-
ing to the model in the mirror of the virgin-like wisdom. (40Q.
1:118.)
Though this ideal world of Boehme's resembles the realm

of ideas it does not have the absolute character which Plato
assigned to it. It is a creation of subjective will. Here
again we see how Boehme stands at the transition between
Platonic objectivism and Kantian subjectivism. Boehme as
192 THE MYSTIC WILL
the philosopher of life cannot derive existence either wholly
out of the objective as did Plato or wholly out of the sub-
jective as did Kant's successors. Life, for Boehme, is a cir-
cular process which arises out of an organic union of subjec-

tive and objective. Platonic idea and Kantian will are both
too thin to support life. Only in their union do we find
food strong enough to nourish the soul.
The creation of the ideal world or Divine plan is only a
step toward the creation of substance. The ideal is as
Boehme describes it "a life, yet not a life." In it thought
and reality are identical. God is like a dreamer who is con-
scious, but not genuinely self-conscious.He encounters no
real obstacle which might awaken him to self-knowledge.
Wisdom in the ideal world creates "magically" without the
"fire soul" or masculine principle. She is a virgin indeed.
She has a Son in the Spirit but as yet no son in the flesh.
The accounts of this first formal trinitarian process are
always followed by a warning from the author that we are
now getting down to a very serious and terrible business and
must fortify ourselves so that we can pass through the very
depth of hell in order to get back as a real unity the merely
ideal unity which we shall have abandoned. Let us trace
briefly this second or naturalistic trinitarian process as
described in Incarnation II and the Mysterium Magnum.
In the former, after reading of the birth of the formal Trinity,
we pass through a "grim portal" (gar ernstliche Pforte) and
are confronted with the statement that "without pain and
poison no life is possible." (4:1.) Then the wheel of
nature begins to turn in the lower ternary. (4:6.) This is
"the material world which is a hunger after life." (4:7.)

"Before the fire it is dumb without feeling." (4:7.) "But
it is a seed of life where life grows out of destruction." "It
makes itself and has no maker, but only the strong will
toward the fire life." (4:8.) But the Ungrund also "has
no life, nor movement nor feeling." (4:9.) These two,
nature and spirit, find each other in fire, the fourth form, "for
fire has two causes, one cause is the will-spirit in the heart,
the Father's other will or the Son, the other cause is the
matter of the will, the wheel of the essences of life," the
chamber of anguish.
"If there were no matter there would be no spirit or find-
ing. The Ungrund finds itself in the harsh darkness as a

spirit, which has found itself through pain. . . . Thus is
freedom kindled as light wherein it sees what it is." (5:4.)

"The fire takes in itself the light's property as gentleness and
the light takes in itself the fire's property as life and so finds
itself." (5:3.) "Ohne Quaal kann keine Offenbarung
xl
sein" (5:3.) "Thus life arises out of death" (5:10)
because life is the fire which exists by consuming matter.
"But it gives back a nobler than it has destroyed, it gives
spirit for matter." (5:6.) "Thus God the Father who is
the Ungrund is revealed through fire" and "the other will

goes out through fire (as light) and fulfills the first will."
(5:7.) The total result is "that the forms of the divine

wisdom through the movement of the Father's will are incor-
porated spirits or angels." (5:5.) Boehme says "angels"
because he is describing the whole evolutionary process. In
man "the half -dead angel" it has obviously not reached its
conclusion, but any man may become an angel by centering

his willon the light. The first five chapters of Incarnation
II form an interesting description of the union of form
and substance, ethically conceived, and portrayed in highly
figurative language.
17
"Without pain there is no manifestation."
194 THE MYSTIC WILL
In the Mystertum Magnum Boehme calls the first three-
fold will "the eternal understanding." Here its three parts
are, the eternal willwhich is Father, an eternal mind of the
which is Son, and an out-going from both the will and
will,
mind which is spirit. (M. M. 1:3-4.) It is ft kem Wesen,"
like the man which is without time or
understanding in
place (1:5.) That which goes out from the will is the Lust
of the Deity, or the eternal wisdom. This wisdom is a cause
of all the forces, but in it they all lie "like properties
without weight limit or measure and unseparated from each
other:' (1:7.)
This is the eye of the Ungrund, the eternal chaos wherein all lies
whether it is in time or eternity it is not far from anything
. . .
nor near anything, it is through all and in all, its birth is every-
where and without it is nothing. (1:8.)
In it is neither darkness nor light, thickness nor thinness, joy nor
sorrow, sensibility nor perception. It brings itself to a "lust" in
order to behold itself. Seeing itself in the wisdom it brings itself
into a desire to perceive itself in smells, tastes, colors, forces and
virtues. There would be no feeling in the free spiritual lust if it did
not bring itself into a desire like a hunger. (3:4.)
This second or hungry desire Boehme then describes at

length as nature generating in its first three forms. We now
have two things in our universe. First a divine mind or
understanding which is without real existence. In reference
to wrathful nature "it is a nothing" (3:25) because it is a
one "which would do continually one and the same thing."
(4:22.) It is happy, but it does not know it (4:22), hence
it has not real happiness. Secondly we have a nature- will

which is real because it contains an opposition. But it is
unhappy as it cannot overcome the opposition. Each then
has what the other wants. The result is "that the two now
18
go towards and permeate each other." (3:25.) When
18
"Diese beide gehen nun gegen einander und in einander."
the nature-will (Begierde) and spirit will {Lust) thus enter

each other the flash {Blitz) is kindled. In the flash the
kingdoms of darkness and come into existence and the
light
divine birth is in full operation (M. M. 4) in all seven
forms. In this process the three principles are conceived as
generated from the three wills of the ideal triune Godhead.
The first will, the Father, "pregnant with nature" through
a painful desire generates the lower ternary. The second
will, the Son or word, "pregnant with light" through the
pleasure desire generates the higher ternary, and the third
will through a speaking of the word generates the holy life,
the final manifestation of hidden divine wisdom, Thus even

God must lose his life in order to save it. God the dreamer
must pay the supreme penalty of death on the cross of matter
in order to awake from dreams to real self-knowledge.
Self -consciousness and self-sacrifice are interdependent. Self-
consciousness arises out of a real contrast between subject
and object, a contrast which does not exist in the world ante-
cedent to nature. God cannot have a real object without a
will wholly independent of his own. This independence is
death. Creation begins with a painful separation from God
and the creation of an independent will to the end that this
separation may be overcome in a type of unity higher than
that with which the process began. The ascending path of
evolution first goes down then up. Christ descended into
hell on His way to heaven. God, and man also, must leave
the oneness of subjectivity and pass downward through the
hell of the many separated wills to rise to the heaven of the
many in one which is life. This new unity is higher because
it is an achieved unity, the basis of knowledge.
The perpetual outflow of the will causes the good to long to stand
still again and it desires to repenetrate the One, and in such pene-
196 THE MYSTIC WILL
tration the One becomes mobile and desireful. In such action arises
sensation, knowledge, and will. (Beschau. 1:16.)
Boehme inconsistently explains that God is, in his first

state, good, and wants nothing, but desires to realize His
goodness by developing an opposing will. "The Divine
Understanding leads itself into fire that its Lust may become
a light . . . but the all does not need the something. The
something is only its play." (M. M. 3:21.) But what have
been previously described as the terrible birth pains of nature
to bring forth the light hardly seem like "play." Such
writers on Boehme as Baader, Hamberger, Penny, Freher,
and others, make much of this perfection of God prior to
nature, whereby Boehme avoids pantheism; but the "three-
fold will" in its first condition is obviously unstable and must
fulfill itself through creation. It is an abstraction, a uni-
versal in the Hegelian sense, which goes out of itself, par-

ticularizes itself and opposes itself that it may reach a deeper
19
unity in concrete being. Like Hegel, Boehme finds the
1
° Hegel in the chapter on Boehme in his History of Philosophy, finds
much of his own system in Boehme. Boehme's manifested Trinity is, he says,
"Absolute Substance" (p. 212). The "anguish" in God is "negativity"
(p. 287), Fursichsein, absolute affirmation, the being for self, the inward
imagining of self, the evil or matter, the 1=1, necessary for manifestation.
"So," says Hegel, "this is the greatest depth of thought reached by Jacob
Boehme" (p. 216). It is, to quote further, "the generating of light by the
most living dialectic" (p. 216). Nevertheless, in spite of Boehme's pro-
found insight, Hegel criticizes him because he uses "Wirklichkeit als
Begriff," that is he substitutes that which has actuality as immediate fact,
be this fact merely determinate being or explicitly the expression of a princi-
ple which it contains within itself, for a thought. Because Boehme has not
the Begriff there is a most "frightful and painful struggle" between his
mind and his powers of expression. In his efforts to introduce unity into
all things, Hegel believes, he forces his opposites together by a great mental
effort. Since reason does not hold them together; their union shatters the
actuality possessed by both. Yet Hegel acknowledges that such is not
always the case and that there does stand in the background "the purest
speculative thought," which approximates "the form of self-consciousness."
In this criticism Hegel is probably making too much of Boehme's figurative
vocabulary, although such is the effect of language on thought that Boehme
often, no doubt, conceived his "qualities" as physical objects or emotions.
element of negativity essential to any conception of the Abso-

lute. Mere light is mere darkness.
As we have discovered elements of Hegel and Schopen-
hauer in Boehme it is not surprising to find Boehme and
Hartmann in close accord because Hartmann's philosophy
was a deliberate combination of that of Hegel and Schopen-
hauer. The logical idea of Hegel cannot, thought Hart-
mann, attain reality without will nor can the blind irrational
will of Schopenhauer determine its prototypal ideas. The
former cannot "explain" the irrational, the latter the rational.
Hence the Absolute Spirit has two attributes, blind will and
powerless idea. (Boehme's Father and Virgin.) The will,
mirroring itself in the idea, comes to consciousness, and the
world of existence unfolds through a union of the two. The

will posits the that, the idea the what. All natural processes,
as active, show conforming to an end they show idea.
will ; as
Idea leads the world to the greatest possible development of
self -consciousness. So far Boehme would agree. But Hart-
mann goes further and finds that the most highly developed
These qualities or forms are much like Hegel's "Bestimmung," the original
latent nature which being possesses in consequence of its "ansich," its power,
capacity or fitness for external relationship.
If we take into account the different ways in which Hegel himself uses
the term Begriff we might question the justice of his criticism. Hegel's
Begriff can have an objective or a subjective meaning, in fact its use as
defining a thought process whose evolution according to its principles and
law is conceived of as an objective world of rational fact depends upon this
double use. The Begriff is not only the principle which governs the whole
universe, but is applied likewise to the concrete embodiments of that prin-
ciple. In the process of its evolution it wins the immediacy possessed by
Wirklichkeit. Hegel permits us to confuse Begriff and Wirklichkeit in the
final stage of evolution, that of the Absolute, which is at once the world
process and its consummation. If Begriff did not determine both thought
and things it could not be a process whose outcome is the unity of self-
consciousness. On the whole, although Boehme vaguely foreshadows the
Hegelian dialectic process in his theory by which the abstract God wins
concrete being as Eternal Nature, he does not conceive of creation as a logical
necessity so much as a moral necessity. At this point he is closer to Fichte.
s
198 THE MYSTIC WILL

consciousness overcomes all subjective will, and with this
denial of the will, the world process ceases. Boehme would
say that the highest development of one isaccompanied by
the highest development of the other as the two opposites
are always necessary to each other. Hence Boehme' s world
process like Hegel's is eternal, while Hartmann's is temporal.
In general Boehme' s unmanifested Trinity resembles the
Trinities of thinkers who preceded him, particularly the
schoolmen. They divided God according to the Platonic
parts of the soul. Boehme' s manifested Trinity suggests the
thought systems which came after him which occupied them-
selves with epistemological problems. Cusa's Trinity of
Father as moving cause; Son as formal cause and Spirit as
final cause is suggestive of Boehme' s first Trinity. So are
Schelling's three wills of the Ungrund, a thought borrowed
directly from Boehme. The psychological division of the
mind into thought, feeling and will is not far from Boehme'
conception of the ideal Trinity. (T. P. 7:25.) The end of
action then becomes the unification of the three through an
operation involving nature.
The Virgin Sophia, the mirror in which the threefold will
sees itself, has been analyzed as a cold philosophical abstrac-
tion, but to Boehme she is an ideal which awakens the most
powerful emotion. Again and again he apostrophizes her
in glowing poetic language.
When, in the light of nature we consider our mind; what it is

that makes us eager, which burns there like a light, and is greedy
like fire, which desires to receive where it has not sown, and to reap
in that land where the body is not at home, then the precious maiden
of the wisdom of God meets us in the midst of the light of life and
says mine is the light, the power and the glory, mine is the gate of
;
knowledge. I live in the light of nature and without me thou can'st

not see nor know my power. I am thy bride in the light and thy
longing after my power is my drawing to myself. I sit on my throne,
but thou knowest me not. I am in thee, but thy body is not in me.
I make distinctions, but thou seest it not. I am the light of the
mind. The root of the mind is not in me, but near me. I am the
root's bride, but he has put on a rough coat. I will not lay myself
in his arms until he puts that off and then I will rest eternally in
his arms and adorn the root with my power and give him my
beautiful form and espouse myself to him with my Pearl. (T. P.
16:3.)
She appears to our author when he is in the depths of

despair.
The Virgin has given me her promise not to leave me in my need.

I willgo through thorns and thistles, through scorn and disgrace,
till I come again to my own native country out of which my soul
has wandered, where my dear virgin dwells. I rely upon the promise
she made when she appeared to me that she would turn my sorrow
into joy. As I lay upon the mountain at midnight and all the trees
fell over me, and the storm beat upon me, and Antichrist opened
wide his jaws to devour me, she came and comforted me and wedded
herself to me. (T. P. 14:52.)
This was a real and important experience. In a second

account of it Boehme speaks of his philosophic knowledge
as firstcoming with "the rose which stands in the centre of
Paradise in the hand of the virgin which she reached down
to me in the same place where she came to me in the gate
of the deep and offered me her love, as I lay on the mountain
at midnight in the storm." (T. P. 18:62.) In some places,
particularly in his short treatise Of True Repentance,
Boehme' s dialogue with the Virgin is so fervent as to lead
to the suspicion that other emotions are entering in than
those usually considered permissible in philosophy. On the
whole, however, Boehme's Virgin appears free from sex.
She is the vision of a higher, holier life. At her appearance
200 THE MYSTIC WILL
"the soul is so astonished and amazed at its uncleanness that
all its sins immediately awake in it and it trembles before
her." (True Repentance 45.) "Putting herself in the para-

disiacal centre of the soul she continually warns it of its
evil ways." (T. P. 15:46.) The heavenly ]ungjrau was

the image of God in which Adam was created. When Adam
fell this image left him.But not entirely.
(T. P. 13:8.)
She still knocks inwardly at the door of man's soul. (T. P.
17:114), or hovers outwardly before him in a constellation,
or some awful aspect of nature. In the beauty of fruits and
the fragrance of flowers she inspires in him a yearning for
the paradise whence he fell. (T. P. 14:32-46.)
We get a clear hint as to her metaphysical status in rela-
tion to man in Boehme's frequent statement that she is "the
bride of the soul." (T. P. 15:46.) The soul is made up
of the first four forms of nature. The light is the Son of
God and the soul in fire and darkness longs for the light.
Here Boehme's figures of speech come into full play. As

the Virgin Mary bore Jesus, so the dark nature-will of the
Father (the lower ternary) in the soul unites with the Vir-
gin, the Heavenly Wisdom or Idea, and a Son is born. He
is a new will centered on the good. Thus the union of
subjective will and objective idea realizes the light of
true and immediate knowledge which is the Son of
God.
We must our desiring will again on the Heavenly Virgin and
set
receive the virginal essenceand property wherein God dwells where
the soul's image may again reach the sight of God. (Inc. I, 12:1.)
So we recognize His virginity led into us for our virginity. Then
His love and virginity has wedded with our cold love and virginity
and therein it results that God and man are only one person.
(Inc. I, 9:5.)
The Virgin is thus not only the bride of the soul, she is
the mother of the reborn. We have described the rebirth

of God and the rebirth of Nature. The rebirth of man
proceeds on the same principle. As God bears his Son the
Light, as Mary bore Jesus, the Virgin must bear the new
man. "Out of the same virginity from which Christ was
born must we all be born." (Inc. 1:11.) This comes about
through Imagination, the process by which the will acquires
substance by uniting with objective Idea.
It is now recognized wherein our rebirth stands merely in

. . .
the Imagination that we with our will go into God's will and give
ourselves entirely and singly to Him which For the
is called faith.
word faith does not mean an intak-
accepting the historical, but it is
ing of the Being of God, an eating of God, a bringing of God's

Being into the Soul-fire by means of the Imagination, there-
with to satisfy its hunger; it is clothing ourself with the Being
of God not as with a cloak, but as with a body of the Soul.
(I Inc. 11:8.)
The Divine Wisdom gives to man the direction of his

goal but the element of risk and uncertainty is not elimi-
nated. William James describes an "aching void" in which
the searcher for a forgotten name dimly senses what he seeks
without being able to bring it clearly to consciousness. The
searcher knows the name well enough to recognize it when
he hears it and yet he does not know it well enough to
reproduce mind there is a dim structural
it. In his outline
which does not become substantially filled with matter.
Such is the vision of Wisdom which the mystic receives by
contact with the All. He sees her and he sees her not. She
is the vague vision the artist has of his picture before he
paints it, or the author's idea of his book before he writes
it. She is the objective, the ideational, the constitutive; the
will is the subjective, the affective, the evaluative. As the
will brings her to reality, she determines the will and is
202 THE MYSTIC WILL
determined by it, and creation proceeds as the dual product
20
of the subjective impulse and the objective vision.
This philosophy combines voluntarism and mysticism in
a way that suggeststwo such widely different types of thought
as those of William James and Saint Paul. James suffered
21
the same inner conflict as Boehme experienced. He desired
a universe in which there was peace and security. He
desired also a dramatic world with real conflict between good
and evil. Out of the first came his mysticism and out of
the second his pragmatism. But James never succeeded in
completely reconciling the two. His second interest finally
prevailed. He rejected Absolutism in all its forms. Boehme
was more naive and dogged. The faith-mysticism of the
philosopher of Gdrlitz was more like that of St. Paul. Faith
was to St. Paul more than a pragmatic leap in the dark.
Christ had overcome the world already and man could share
in that victory. There must first be a "dying with Christ"
to the bondage of the external in order that man may be
raised up with Him into the freedom of the Spirit.
20
"While the harmony of logic lies upon the universe as an iron neces-
sity, the aesthetic harmony stands before it as a living ideal moulding the
general flux in its broken progress toward finer subtler issues." Whitehead,
Science and the Modem World, p. 28.
81
Bixler, Religion in the Philosophy of William James, Chapter I.
Cruel works
Of many wheels I view, wheel without wheel with cogs tyrannic
Moving by compulsion each other, not as those in Eden which
Wheel within wheel in freedom revolve, in harmony and peace.
CHAPTER VII
GOOD AND EVIL
Boehme considered his philosophy valuable only in so far

as it contained the basis for ethics. Its sole object was to
show men how to lead a good life. Not only does he con-
tinually repeat the warning that his books are not intended
to satisfy intellectual curiosity, but he declares that theory
alone cannot grasp his meaning. Only those who have
actually experienced rebirth into the light can understand
it. He abjures his readers in these words, "You must follow
the flights of my soul, not of my pen."
He who will not seek to be a new man born in God let him not
meddle with my writings. He will not be able to understand my
meaning unless he enters into the resignation in Christ where he
may apprehend the spirit of the universal. Otherwise all is to no
purpose. (S. R. 37:38.)
Every one says "show me the way to the revelation of the good."
Hear, dear Reason (V'ernunft) you must yourself become the way.
,
The understanding (Verstand) must be born in you, otherwise I

cannot show it to you. You must enter into it so that the under-
standing as a practical art {Verstand in Handgrifen), in which I
do not deal, may be opened in you. I write only in a spirit of
observation, how the generation of good and evil is, and I open the
well. He shall draw water whom God has appointed. (S. R. 14:1.)
Yet we cannot accept these assertions of exclusive practical

intention too literally. Boehme placed some value on theory
or he would not have filled his books with it. In fact it is
the perpetual tension between theory and practice and the

perpetual overcoming of this strain which is the motive
205
206 THE MYSTIC WILL
power behind his philosophy of life. We have confronted
the problem of theory versus practice in many forms. Let
us face again in an effort to determine Boehme's con-
it
ception of the nature of goodness. In terms of ethics our

fundamental problem may assume some such form as this,
does Boehme base his ethics on his metaphysics or his meta-

physics on his ethics? Does he give a rational explanation
of good and evil as based on the structure and quality of
the universe or does he determine the nature of the universe
through an observation of the nature of good and evil as he
finds them in his own experience of life? Does he base the
practice of goodness on a theory about it or a theory about
it on the practice of goodness?
This question is fundamental. In general the rationalist
tends to base his ethics on his metaphysics; that is, he
endeavors to give a reason for goodness and evil by showing
how they result necessarily from the character of the uni-
verse as a whole. In so doing he makes evil less evil and
good less good. If there is a reason for evil it serves a good
purpose, therefore it is a good. In that case goodness also
vanishes, for it can exist only in contrast to a real evil.
The rationalistic monist cannot deduce both good and evil
from a single theory about the nature of things without

rubbing out essential distinctions between them. He tends
to treat them as illusory by making them both relative to a
single all-inclusive absolute. No rationalistic system of
thought has been wholly successful in preserving genuine
ethics, for ethics depend on a real distinction between good
and evil. Reason seeks to unite all things into a single
whole. It cannot tolerate ultimate and absolute distinctions.
The voluntarist, on the other hand, tends to base meta-
physics on ethics. He is the practical man who acts on the
GOOD AND EVIL 207
assumption that values are real and that some one thing or
condition is absolutely and fundamentally better than
another. Without a dualism of value the will could not
exist at all, for there would be no motive for any activity.
When Boehme says that "Poison is the cause of life," he
means that life exists because there is a real evil to be over-
come. The wholly satisfied organism could not long sur-
vive. Practically man is a dualist because every human
action is based on a bifurcation of the cosmos into good and
evil; a good to be attained and an evil to be overcome.
A metaphysics based on ethics assumes that the universe con-
tains a real dualism of value. Man cannot discover that
duality as final to his reason, but he can discover it in his
will, for it is the basis of the will's activity.
The same disagreement between theory and practice arises
in connection with the problem of freedom of the will.
The feeling which accompanies every act of will is a feeling
of freedom. At the moment of action the will assumes that
it is determined only by itself. But the rationalist cannot
conceive of a free act. Every effect has its cause and every
act is a link in a long chain of cause and effect. A free and
undetermined will cannot exist in a universe where there is
a reason for everything. Accordingly the rationalist denies
freedom. If he is thoroughgoing he will proceed further
and deny that the will exists at all, a conclusion which
scientific psychology has reached through consistent reason-
ing. The modern psychologist finds no place for the will
either in his laboratory or his logic.
Is Boehme a rational monist making good and evil relative
and deriving both from a single Absolute or is he an irra-

tional voluntarist declaring that we must accept as ultimate
the distinction between good and evil assumed by the will?
208 THE MYSTIC WILL
He is well aware of the difficulty involved in each position,
but believes he has found a solution. Many times, however,
he presents an appearance of helpless vibration back and
forth between the two positions. In his earlier works he is
predominantly irrational and voluntaristic and content to
leave the origin of evil in the unknowable depths of the
bottomless will. If hard pressed he takes refuge in the
legend of the fall of Lucifer and says that the battle with
Lucifer was "God against God" (A. 14:19), hence Lucifer
could not be annihilated. But such a statement does not
remove the dualism for it is a dualism of Light and Dark-
ness within God himself, wholly inexplicable and irremedia-
ble. When the idea occurs to Boehme that since evil is a
necessity, being the principle of movement and particularity,
and the fuel of life and love, it must therefore have been
devised by God, he begins violently to accuse the devil of
giving him a devilish point of view.
If you understand this aright you will not make a God a devil,
as some do, who say God hath created the evil and that his will is
that some men be lost. Men who say so help to increase the devil's
lies, and bring upon themselves severe judgment. (A. 13:64.)
It is the essence of deviltry to think that evil serves a good

purpose because this theory derives the lower ternary out of
the higher and thus reverses the true evolutionary process.
God appears as darkness and a source of evil if the imagina-
tion is centered on the lower ternary, but if it is centered on
the higher He appears as He is, in His completeness, a source
of pure Light. His darkness should remain hidden. It
should not be an object of attention, for such attention brings

it to manifestation. Boehme seems to mean that evil is not
an illusion, but rather something to be ignored. It is ration-
alizing the irrational, making as an object of knowledge that

GOOD AND EVIL 209
which should not be known because it should continue in

darkness. The source of evil is inexplicable because hidden
in the depths of the will. To it we must face the
observe
wrong way, become and turn our backs on the
rationalists,
light of that truer and higher knowledge which creates
goodness by attention to it.
All this is as consistent as such ethical dualism permits.

But Boehme apparently yields to temptation and takes the
view himself. What could be more devilish
devil's point of
than this:
Therefore God has introduced Himself with His holy word into
nature and creature and also into pain and torment, into light and
darkness, that the eternal power of his word and wisdom may be
distinguishable and perceptible in order that knowledge may
exist. . . .
If the evil in thecontrary will were not profitable, God, the one
only eternal God, would not endure it, but annihilate it. But it
serves for the manifestation of the glory of God and the kingdom
of joy and is a tool of God whereby he makes the good imagible
that the good may be known. For if there were no evil the good
would not be known.
If there were no anger-fire there could be no light-fire and the
eternal love would be hidden for there would be nothing that could
be loved. (M. M. 71:15-18.)
Here Boehme is a rationalist, who endeavors to explain all
things. Evil, he concludes, is useful and serves the purpose

of manifesting God's hidden goodness.
In regard to the related problem of freedom and indi-
viduality, we find the same alternation between ethical and
metaphysical points of view. The ethical Boehme views
man as an individual free to choose light or darkness; the
metaphysical Boehme views him as the battleground of light
and dark forces, whichever wins shall possess him. There
exists for Boehme a world of separate wills, either for no
210 THE MYSTIC WILL
reason, or for a reason. If for no reason, and this position
is by far the most frequent, we find that every will splits
up into separate wills like the branches on a tree. The very
essence of will, as has been shown, is duality. One will, like
one force, could not exist without another will or force to
oppose it. Each will, as it comes into existence, again splits
into two opposing phases. Hence arises the turba. Such a
view is irrational. The will has no reason for splitting up.
The demonic will wills only itself and discovers to its sorrow
that it thus creates the very opposition that it would over-
come. But Boehme, on the other hand, is sometimes rational
in declaring that God deliberates and decides to create inde-
pendent individual self-wills in order to bring himself to
manifestation; that his love may exist by having something
to love. Here becomes a logical necessity and
individuality
the devil justifies his independence of God.
The problem of the origin of individuality presents no
more difficulties than the problem of keeping it once it has
originated. The reborn man merges his will with the Divine
will, but Boehme insists that he retains his individuality,
although he has become a perfect instrument of the Divine.

As the sun gives its tincture to the metallic essence and the metal-
lic essence gives its desire to the sun's tincture, so that out of them
both the fair and precious gold is generated so likewise is it to be
1
understood concerning the soul. The Deity dwells in the soul, but
the soul is not to be identified with it as far as its creative power
is concerned but the eye or light of God gives its holy love-tincture
;
from the light's lustre to the desire of the soul. The soul's desire
is the creative which takes the power of the holy love- tincture
fiat
into itself and makes it essential; so that the divine tincture, pro-
ceeding from the true love spring, the source of living and seeing,
and the soul's believing desire become one being. This is a spiritual
1
The alchemists believed that metals like plants grew from seeds. The
desire in the seed unites with the light of the sun, that the new life may
be born.
GOOD AND EVIL 211
being, the inward new man, a new habitation of the soul. . . The
.
soul not changed into the Deity, the source of the living and see-
is
ing, for it is of the temporal and eternal nature. The Deity is not
nature, but the will to nature, and manifests itself through the soul's
nature. As fire manifests itself through iron, when the iron seems,
as it were, pure fire and yet keeps its own nature and the fire its
own, and the one dwells in the other and the one is a manifestation
of the other. The iron has no power over the fire, but the fire
gives itself to the iron and the iron gives its substance to the fire
and thus both are changed into one and yet remain two. Thus it is
to be understood with the soul and Deity. (M. M. 51: 4-7.)
Through such highlyfigurative language Boehme attempts

to steer a course between individualism and monism, and
so preserve both ethics and metaphysics.
Thus we find two apparently inconsistent points of view
in Boehme' s philosophy. From one angle his philosophy
presents a dualism and views evil as a dark power over
against God, while God is conceived of as wholly good.
On the other hand, Boehme often expresses a rationalistic
monism which explains evil as in God and an unfortunate
though necessary condition to his manifestation as a person.
There is good reason why Boehme alternates between these
two positions. Sometimes he confuses the two theories
because he does not see his way out of the difficulty but
more often he realizes that his philosophy is based on the
interplay of two opposing kinds of knowledge, Vernunjt
and Verstand. Vernunjt results in a shallow rationalism
which does not penetrate through the outer symbols of life.
It faces the dark world and sees God as the deliberate
creator of evil. Here evil appears as good. Verstand, the

mystical experience of life, facing the light world sees God
as wholly good, triumphant over evil. Life exists by over-
coming this real contradiction between metaphysics and ethics,
between monistic rationalism and dualistic voluntarism.
212 THE MYSTIC WILL
This fundamental fact will become clearer if we recapitu-
late the theory which may well be called the central con-
ception in Boehme's philosophy, of the rebirth of the soul
from darkness to light. The rebirth is essentially an event
of ethical significance regardless of chemical or theological
terms which may be used in describing it. It marks that
stage in the evolutionary process when an unethical physical
nature describable only in terms of reason splits up into
ethical moments presented in an experience of value. After
discovering this ethical dualism the reborn life overcomes
it by subordinating evil to good.
The soul stands at the fourth nature form where light and
darkness divide. It is the neutral point, the Abyss, the Eter-
nal Freedom. It can project itself through imagination
either into the dark world or the light world. Whichever
it chooses as its goal, it must first pass through the dark
world. This is true of God in his creation of Eternal Nature.
It is also true of man. In order to act the will must first
separate itself from the universal will and become an egoist.

It cannot aim at the good universal or wisdom, it must aim
at the evil particular or matter. This self-assertion is the

first nature form, the fiat of creation. Boehme considers it
"rational" because it arises out of the subjective necessity for

self-assertion. It chooses the particular because nothing else
can be chosen. But the particular does not satisfy the soul
and as a result it is in pain. God has forced it to choose

the particular, hence as a rationalist it blames God for evil.
To be relieved of its pain it must give up egoism and rejoin
the Absolute whence it came. This act of resignation is
born of irrational faith. The soulis now no longer a monis-
tic rationalist, but a dualist. It has discovered real evil

from which it flees to the Divine plan of the one condition
GOOD AND EVIL 213
that is completely valuable. Having left the world behind,

it now sees God as completely good. It then passes through
the Absolute and returns to the world endowed with the
point of view of the Absolute. After its blind venture of
faith into the unseen center of absolute values it proceeds
to incarnate these values in the relative world. The par-
ticular is now no harmonized
longer a source of pain. It is
with the universal. A good act has been born which has
reconciled the evil of particularity with the empty goodness
of universality. The evil particular is not abolished, it is
merely hidden because it has taken its proper place in a

larger organic whole. A good act thus begins with the evil
particular, passes through the empty universal and ends in a
life which endows the limited particular with a universal
value.
This recapitulation of the evolutionary process departs
far from Boehme's vocabulary but probably remains close to
his usual meaning. The dark world known to reason is not
evil in itself. The reborn soul must pass through it. Evil
is arrested development and arises only when the rebirth
does not take place. It is a negative teleological direction.

The lower forms of nature, in going over into the higher,
become the "matter" or unseen basis of the manifestation of
goodness. They become evil when chosen as an end rather
than a means. Evil is actualized only when the evolutionary
process halts in the lower ternary.
Boehme thus finds that we need two philosophies, one to
2
know our world and the other to take it seriously. The first
is a rational philosophy and the second is a faith to venture

into the unknown that the empty forms of reason may be
2
"Since we are generated out of both worlds therefore we speak in two
languages." (T. F. L. 5:26.)
214 THE MYSTIC WILL
filled with value and life. The first is reality defined. The
second is reality experienced. Definition is of course a kind
of experience, but it is a lower type. It points toward
reality, but it is not reality itself. It is subjective and must
be fulfilled by the objective. Christ did not come to abolish
the law, which is subjective, but to fulfill it. In the lower
ternary I assert only myself, that is I define the world as
the fulfillment of my idea, as an expression of my reason.
When I realize this brings no ultimate satisfaction I seek
true objectivity by self-renunciation. I go beyond reason and
make a venture of faith that there is a creative as well as a

logical and mechanical process. Ethics now come into play
for a genuine dualism of value has appeared. Life is a
process by which a rationalistic monism continually passes
over into a voluntaristic dualism; where Vernunjt dies con-
tinually to be reborn as V erstand. This is Boehme's
(t
Himmeljahrt nach dem Willen" (Super. Life 11)
tagliche
freely interpreted, a "daily journey to Heaven" undertaken
not only in a complete form in the mystical experience as a
religious act but in some form in every conscious movement
of the will. Whether Boehme, if he were living to-day,
would own this as a true interpretation of his philosophy
must be left, not to reason, but to faith.
Evil is arrested development. It can also be defined as
selfishness. Selfishness, though an unescapable stage in evo-
lution, is evil when not fulfilled by unselfishness. "All sins
arise out of selfishness" (S. R. 15:12), for in "selfishness"
the soul's attention is centered in itself. Self-satisfaction
makes progress impossible.
Every will which enters into self-blood and seeks the ground of
its life'sform breaks itself off from the mystery and enters into a
capriciousness. It cannot do otherwise for its fellow members stir
GOOD AND EVIL 215
up dying and death. It lies,and denies union with the Will of God
and sets self-hood in its place, so thatit goes out from unity into
a desire for self. If it knew that all things have brought it forth
and are its mothers, and if it did not hold its mothers' substance for
its own, but in common, then greed, envy, strife and a contrary will
would not arise. (S. R. 15:7-11.)
Selfishness is thus a refusal to recognize a relationship with

others which is due to a common origin. Boehme's ethics,
like all mystical ethics, often seem and
to ignore this fact
become the apparently purely individual unsocial ethics of
resignation. But the fact is easily forgotten that resignation
is only the prerequisite to proper social relationships. Good-
ness arises when all particular desires are phases of will in
an harmonious system, whether in one individual or in sev-
eral. "There is," says Fichte, "but one virtue and that is to
forget oneself as a person. There is but one vice and that
3
is to think of oneself." Boehme's will is a will which sees
itself reflected in the mirror of the world, and this world
includes other souls. Its evil is therefore the elevation of
an individual subjective judgment to the rank of a universal.
Such an evil is "false imagination" or "phantasie" which
turns back from the Virgin, the Divine Idea, to its own
desire. (Gnad. 1:17.)
No account of Boehme's ethical discussions should omit
some mention of the vivid and picturesque figures with which
he illumines his deep doctrines. He is never weary of ana-
lyzing the fall of Lucifer. Lucifer's sin was a will for com-
plete independence of God. This caused his fall and the
fall of his legions, and as a result "the world was without
form and void and darkness was upon the face of the deep."
God creates a new world out of the fallen one through the
seven forms, each form being in turn operative on each of
3
Fichte, Characteristics of the Present Age, p. 70.
216 THE MYSTIC WILL
the seven days of creation. The Sun is created in the fourth
day through the fourth form. It stands therefore as a god
in the material world, through whose beams of fire and light
the dead earth is transformed into vegetable and animal life.
Adam is created to take the place of the fallen angel. He

is wedded to the Heavenly Virgin through whom he creates
magically in a perfect union of will and idea. But he puts
his imagination on matter and from
sleeps, that is, he falls
a full life to a half-dead life. The Virgin leaves him and
he wakes to find her substitute, Eve. They sin through eat-
ing of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and
evil; that is through a divided attention instead of a single
mind on the good. But they have not fallen so far as Luci-
fer whose attention was wholly on evil. The world is now
the battlefield between darkness and light, the Devil and
God, and man is in great danger. Yet the prophecy is ful-
filled that the "Seed of the woman shall bruise the Serpent's
head." The Virgin bears a Son, Christ, the second Adam,
and God becomes incarnate in man, that man may be saved,
and the law be fulfilled through life.
Boehme accepts the story of the fall, creation, and redemp-
tion not only as a literal fact, but also as a symbol, spread-
ing out through a vast period of time, of the same evolution-
ary process which we have been describing. In the Divine
birth, in the creation of the world, in the long course of
history, in the events of every human life, the same princi-
ples are operative with the same results. It is a circular
process from eternity through time and then back once more
to eternity. Lucifer fell from unity to plurality, from har-
mony to discord, from spirit to matter. Matter is the prin-
ciple of divisibility, of the separation of one spirit from
another. The primal sin was existence, individuality, a will
GOOD AND EVIL 217
separating itself from the whole and thus acquiring an inde-

pendent being. "Lucifer," says Boehme, "made two out of
what was one." (A. 12:78.) After thefall this world of
time in the Third Principle arose, not as a wholly evil thing,

but as a temporal evolution toward the good. Independence,
individuality, are finally transcended, not obliterated through
the world process, and Christ typifies the regenerated man
through whom new unity arises. The devil has spoiled the
world, but man must redeem it, not avoid it. According to
Boehme, "It is not meant that one should run from house
and home, from wife and children and kindred and flee out
of the world, or forsake his goods so as not to regard them
but he must kill and make as nothing the own self-will,
which possesses all this for a property." (M. M. 41:55.)
In giving the will primacy over the intellect Boehme'
system makes it supremely difficult to define the nature of
the summum bonum, which is the end of all action. The
essence of will is purposeful activity yet such activity is
generated by want. How then can we have activity as a

final goal? Boehme answers by calling the perfect state
"play." In 'play" life expresses itself in its fullness; there-
fore play as an end means that life itself has intrinsic value.
Play uses nature as a means, but does not take it seriously
as an end in itself. It aims, though indirectly, at the pure
joy of activity. In positing "play" as an end we must never
forget the circular character of the eternal process. The
pure joy of activity is only a point to pass through. Pleasure
turns into desire and a new tragedy develops. Boehme'
"play" means that life does not consist in tension alone. It
has its moments of equilibrium and victory.
Whatever runs on in nature torments itself, but that which attains

nature's end is at rest without pain; it is active, but only in one
218 THE MYSTIC WILL
desire. All that makes anguish and strife in nature makes joy in
God, whole host of heaven is tuned in one harmony, every
for the
angelic kingdom into a particular instrument, but all in one another
as a single symphony, the one voice of God's love. Every string of
every instrument exalts and gives joy to every other. It is a ravish-
ing tasting, feeling, smelling and hearing. Whatever God is in
Himself that the creature is in its desire of Him, a God-angel and
a God-man. God all in all and without Him nothing else. . . .
And this is the beginning and end of all things. (S. R. 15:52.)
When Boehme is speaking of God's life as it is in itself
he refers to it as "play." (S. R. 16:2) (M. M. 7:19.) In
heaven the seven qualities are pictured as playing with each
other. (A. 11:98-101.) Adam ought to have been content
to play with nature in Paradise.
As God plays with the time of this outward world, so also should
the inward divine man play with the outward in the revealed won-
ders of God in this world, and open the Divine Wisdom in all
creatures, each according to its property. (M. M. 16:10.)
Adam fell when this play became serious business, that is
when nature was made an end instead of a means. The one

sin is to subordinate yourself to natural objects and serve
them. The one virtue is to subordinate natural objects to
spirit and make them serve it and you.
Therefore, O Man, consider where thou art at home; in the stars
and four elements, in the dark world with the Devils, or in the
Divine power in Heaven? Whatever property is lord in thee, its
servant thou art. (M. M. 10:46.)
The man who is not a servant of nature is not dependent on

it for his pleasure.
He one with prosperity and adversity, poverty and riches,

is all
joy and sorrow, lightand darkness, life and death. He is a . . .
symbol of God who is in and through all and yet is as a nothing to

all things. (M. M. 66:63.)
Such passages as this, which often occur, would lead us to

GOOD AND EVIL 219
believe that Boehme advocated stoic indifference, whereas

his use of the word "play" as an end, includes and approves
aesthetic enjoyment. Resignation, however, is only a station
on the way. Here "man breaks self -hood as a vessel wherein
he is imprisoned." (S. R. 15:35.) Formerly he was a slave
to external form, now he is free.
Now he is born from within out of the speaking voice of

that
God God's will-spirit, he goes free in the "Grund" and the
in
"Ungrund." He is bound to no form. (S. R. 15:24.)
Expected conditions are reversed. The self-assertive man

who would lord it over nature really makes himself a servant
of nature; the resigned man discovers freedom in the inner
ideal life and God's will,
rules nature in conjunction with
from within. This higher life, attained through pain, strug-
gle, and resignation, is the seventh nature form, the perfect
union of will and idea. It is not a static perfection, it is
perfection of function.
Boehme stands somewhere between Schopenhauer whose
ethical goal is complete denial of will and Nietzsche whose
objective is complete affirmation of will. Boehme and
Schopenhauer concur in asserting the pain of the will to live.
Schopenhauer escapes either aesthetically by will-less con-
templation of the idea as a spotless mirror of the will or
by wholly effacing both will and idea. Nietzsche desires no
escape because he does not know that the will-to-power is a
will of pain. Boehme accepts self-effacement as a step
toward a higher affirmation in which the individual will is
harmonized with a higher will without losing its individu-
ality. Though man's soul is still ego-centric his imagination
becomes cosmo-centric.
Christ's heavenly blood has tinctured us. Thereby the rent torn
and divided harmony of our human properties has entered into the
220 THE MYSTIC WILL
harmony and unity of properties, that is, into the Light of Paradise,
Love and Life, that real temperature where variety is concentric and
in accord with unity. (Ep. 1:12.)
Schopenhauer is faced with the difficulty of explaining how

a will-to-live can deny Boehme's dualism avoids this
itself.
predicament. For him there are always two wills, the own-
will and the resigned- will each needs the other, but one may
;
become manifest and the other hidden. Boehme and Schop-

enhauer can both say, "the world is the crucified Savior or
the crucified thief according as it resolves," *
but Schopen-
hauer could not see beyond the crucifixion.
In our first made between a
chapter a distinction was
"this-world" immanent and an "other- world" trans-
ethic
cendent ethic. We are now prepared to understand and
evaluate these two types in the light of Boehme's philosophy.
The "this-world ethic" is obviously the ethic of the soul
"imagining into" the lower or dark ternary. It is an ethic
derived from physical nature as seen from the outside. Here
the soul takes on the forms and colors of nature. It is a
nature-will, that is an egoistic will or a will to life. It has
a this-world end. It is combative and attains its ends by
struggle. Force meets force, and the more one force asserts
itself the more it creates an opposite force. The self-
assertive will cannot exist without an opposing will. Accord-

ingly it never attains satisfaction. Every experience calls
forth an opposite and sends the will on to something else.
It is always in pain, for its yearning can never be satisfied

by the particular to which its egoism inclines it. Thus it
comes about that a this-world ethic derived from nature is
combative, pessimistic, egoistic.

4
Schopenhauer, World as Will and as Idea, III, 474. Boehme uses the
same incident in S. R. 11:47-48.
GOOD AND EVIL 221
Boehme does not deny the inescapable logic of a this-

world ethic, but he asks the soul to face the other way and
seewhat happens. Like the negative mystics he asks us to
world and retreat to the Absolute, but unlike
flee the evil
them he asks us to return to the same world with the Abso-

lute in tow. The other-world ethic is discovered in an act
which transcends nature, but which is applied to nature.
In the lower ethics perfection was sought by an infinite
process in time; in the higher ethics perfection exists already
as a leavening power in this world. It is not one force
among other forces. Rather, it is the whole acting upon
the parts. The whole comes down into nature as a harmoniz-
ing influence and the three struggling forces of nature, con-
traction, expansion, and rotation, are transformed into the
last three nature forms, love, expression, and eternal nature,
which incarnate the living God. Nature is now in tempera-
ture, for the parts act under the influence of the whole.
The plurality of this-world ends is wholly dominated by the
unity of the other- world religious end. Love is the creative
imagination by which the lower categories pass over into the
higher.
The new which transcends the law of nature is the
ethic
ethic of the Sermon on the Mount. When Christ said
"resist not evil" he meant "do not imagine into the lower
ternary," that is, do not put your attention on evil. Do not
meet one evil force with another evil force thereby making
it stronger through opposition. Imagine into the higher
ternary, put your attention on the good, and the evil will dis-
appear. In this way you will bring the good to manifesta-
tion and the evil to hiddenness. Everything is double, but
of two opposites, one may be hidden and the other manifest.
Love is the creative imagination, which by ignoring the evil
222 THE MYSTIC WILL
manifests the good. "Imagination makes substance." Thus
by living in the kingdom inwardly, I tend to create it out-
wardly. I become a channel by which the divine light streams
into the dark places of the world.
That this doctrine of creative imagination applies to con-
scious beings, many would agree. Boehme, however, often
applies it, apparently, to natural objects as well. It is not
so evident that imagination has the power to produce its
object in the realm of physical nature. Boehme would have

agreed with his contemporary Bacon in asserting that "knowl-
edge is power," but he would have meant it in a different
sense. Subsequent events have shown that Bacon was right
and Boehme wrong. Man has acquired a vast power over
nature by the process Boehme repudiated and which Bacon
upheld, that is, by laborious observation of external nature
as it appears to us. In the Supersensual Life, the master,
in answer to his disciple's question as to how power may be
obtained over nature replies:
If thou wouldst rule outwardly over all creatures, so art thou
with thy will and ruling in a bestial form, and standest only in an
external and transitory dominion. But, if thou wouldst forsake this
external way so thou standest in the super-sensuality and rulest over
the ground out of which they are created and noth-
all creatures, in
ing on earth may harm thee for thou art like all things and nothing
is unlike thee. (Supersensual Life, 8.)
Few to-day would agree with this, especially if it is
intended to apply to physical nature. Nevertheless, there

is a sense in which Boehme' s doctrine can be justified.
According to his voluntaristic philosophy "imagination makes

substance" even in nature. The world, as we know it, is
all knowledge there is both
created as well as received, for in
an active and a passive element. As we have already shown,
man by uniting with God's will creates as God creates,
through the power of will and imagination.
GOOD AND EVIL 223
The ethical significance of this doctrine as applied to

nature may become clearer if we return for a moment to the
application which was made in an earlier chapter of the
theory of the seven forms to the evolution of organic life
from inorganic nature. Here we depart from Boehme's
it is hoped, from his
usual illustrations, but not very far,
meaning. Suppose, in a swarm of molecules, each molecule
is following an independent course and acting upon its fel-
lows through external forces only. The result is confusion,

the dark world, the first three forms of nature. Each
molecule assumes, as it were, an external relationship to its
neighbors. Then let each part "imagine into" the whole

and the influence of the whole descend into the warring
parts. The result is life, the light world, a new form of
relatedness. External mechanical compulsion of each mole-
cule by the other is replaced by the influence of the whole
organism from within. In the light world of harmonious
organic life no part attempts by force to assert its egoism
and control another part externally for its own interest.
There is, instead, a reciprocal dependence of whole and part,
each part working on the others through the inner influence
of the whole. It is, more than a figure of speech
perhaps,
to say that the organism results from a creative imagination
of the parts which at once forms and submits to the whole.
Life arises when each part trusts the loyalty of every other
part and creates that loyalty by its trust.
The scientist who views the organism from without

through his microscope sees it in the dark world. He sees
each part operate on every other part through rigid mechani-
cal laws. No instrument which he can construct can detect
or measure the influence of the parts on the whole or the
whole on the parts. Each part seems to go on its egoistic
way controlled by the law of its own being. The scientist
224 THE MYSTIC WILL
cannot find that a molecule of a certain chemical element in
an organic body is in any way different from the same
molecule outside of the body. But the scientist through a
knowledge of his own life can enter into mystic union with
the life he studies and view it as operating, not through
mechanical force, but through love. This higher knowledge
is the creative imagination which produces the light world.
Through it the scientist can understand how each part sub-

mits to the invisible non-mechanical spirit of the whole how, ;
actuated by love from within, it surrenders its egoism and

thus creates the larger life in which it shares. Similarly the
scientist may view a molecule of my brain from without and
thus see it helplessly moved about by external forces. Or

he may, by mystic union with my soul, view it from within
as the partial incarnation of an idea functioning in a larger
whole. Just so the mystic may come into union with the
inner life of the universe and find each part functioning in
the whole divine plan.
Such an interpretation may take us further than Boehme's
thought goes, but his language and figures of speech indicate
his belief that life is created as well as observed by this inner
knowledge. In the flash of light in the fourth nature form,
the warring parts are harmonized by the One Will and a
higher life emerges. It is the faith of each part in the others
operating through the whole which produces life, just as, in
a group of men, it is the faith of each in the other which
creates the social organism. Life emerges to higher levels
through the creative love of the individual wills for the
invisible One Will.
In thus emphasizing the creative aspect of the will, it must
not be forgotten that will is passive also. It requires both
the "own will" and the "resigned will" to create. The
GOOD AND EVIL 225
resigned will retreats to an empty whole which longs for

content. The "own will" seeks the jarring particulars which
long for peace and harmony. Life evolves to a higher stage
when two come together. In the flash of light in the
these
fourth nature form the painful particulars of nature meet the
empty joy of universal spirit and Primal Unity is once more
incarnate.
Boehme's theory regarding the manifestation or objectifi-
cation of the light world through the power of creative
imagination receives its most striking confirmation as applied
to human relations. In man the light and dark worlds
struggle for supremacy. One is always manifest, the other
hidden. Man brings the light world into manifestation in
himself by placing his imagination or attention on it. Added
to this is the extraordinary fact that he can do this also for
other men. Experience shows that if we treat a man as a
natural object he will tend to behave as such, if we treat
him one in whom the Divine love-will is manifesting
as
itself,he will tend to live up to expectations of him. Here
Boehme's doctrine of the twofold character of the will as
both active and passive and the corresponding twofold char-
acter of existence as externally physical and internally
spiritual reveals its fundamentally ethical character. The
will to know finds itself in its object. Let us take a purely
scientific view of man as a swarm of molecules or a bundle
of reflexes, or a cog in an industrial machine. As such, he
is so much matter, externally controlled. he becomes a
If
nuisance to society he should be abolished like any other
physical evil, such as flood or famine. This is the relative
ethic of the dark world which teaches force for force, an
eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. It puts the attention
on the beginning, not the end of the evolutionary process.
226 THE MYSTIC WILL
Lucifer sinned in that he placed his imagination on physical
origins, not on spiritual goals. In this respect he is like any
man who treats another as a natural object.
But let us place our attention on the light world in our
fellow man, that is on the goal, not the origin of the vital
sevenfold evolutionary process in him. Here we move him
not externally by force or reason but internally by love. We
see him as in the depths of his soul he conceives himself
to be, not a physical object of relative value, but a spiritual
object of absolute and infinite value. He rises to our ideal.
Faith creates its object. What is impossible to reason is
possible to experience. A new being is evolved out of the

warring nature forces by the power of creative imagination.
This result cannot be guaranteed. To guarantee it would be
to rationalize it. To accomplish it we must pass through
the fourth nature form and, in an act of utter resignation,
crucify self-will. Then, coming to our fellow man through
the Absolute Will where all selfhood and particularity is
eliminated, we are prepared to endure with joy whatever the

consequences of our irrational act of faith may be. In the
dark world God is angry and treats man justly according to
reason. In the light world he goes beyond justice through
love.
Boehme's devil is not like Milton's, a mighty prince.
His strength is appearance, for all knowledge is appearance
in the dark world. The solution is not to fight him but to
ignore him. Opposition gives him the only strength he has.
But as evil appears strong, though it is really weak, love
appears weak though it is really strong. "Love," says Boehme,
"surrenders to anger that may become love. But if anger
it
separates from love and goes into its own service, love does
not hinder it, otherwise God would be at odds with himself."
(Th. F. 9:5.) But the cross is the symbol of victory and
GOOD AND EVIL 227
a lamb the symbol of power. If love is manifest and force

hidden, then force is the matter of love and so, while out-
wardly weak, love is inwardly strong. Thus love is "inwardly
powerful, outwardly formal." (Supers. L. 27.) Accord-
ingly Boehme can "As heaven rules the world and as
say,
eternity rules time so ought Love to rule the natural life."
(Supers. L. 24:25.)
The virtue of Love is the Nothing, but its power is through all
things. Its height is as high as God and its greatness is greater
than God. He who finds it finds nothing and all things. (Supers.
L. 26.) . . . It is greater than God
dwells not, for where God
love goes in. If there is anguish God
is not the anguish, but his
love is in it and leads thee out of anguish into God. God may
seem hidden in thee, yet his love is there to bring Him to mani-
festation in thee. (Supers. L. 26, 27.)
Boehme's writings are permeated with a deep sense of the

organic solidarity of humanity. This he expresses in the
frequently occurring figure of a tree with many branches.
We are all twigs of one tree. (Ep. 56:3.) No twig must
say, "I am the tree." (Apol. I, 74.) In the concluding
paragraph of his introduction to the "Six Points" he uses
the following comparison:
. . As a fair flower grows out of the rough earth, which is

.
not like the earth, but declares by its beauty the power of the earth,
and how it is mixed of good and evil; so also is every man, who,
out of the animal, wild, earthly nature and quality, is born again
so as to become the right image of God.
We have written this book for those who are a growth of such
a kind, and are shooting forth into the fair lily in the kingdom of
God, and are in the process of birth, that they should strengthen
their essence therein, bud in the life of God, and grow and bear
fruit in the tree of paradise. And seeing all the children of God
grow in this tree, and each is a twig of this same tree, we have
wished to impart to our twigs and fellow-branches in our tree, in
which we all are, and from which we all grow, our sap, savour and
essence, that our tree of paradise may become great, and that we
may rejoice one with another. And we would urge all children,
228 THE MYSTIC WILL
who are thus growing in this tree, friendly to ponder that each
branch and twig helps to shelter the other from the storm, and we
commend ourselves unto their love and growth.
Such a mystical ethic, however much it may talk about self-
renunciation, is not a flight from the world. It is dedication
to a God who in this present world seeks to become incar-
nate in men that they may become creative centers for trans-
forming darkness into light.
For this reason Boehme opposes war, for war is justified
only on the lower level of existence. "All war," he says,
"arises out of the nature of the dark world. Pride, envy,
covetousness and anger are the four elements of darkness
out of which war comes." (M. M. 38:7.) "No Christian
warreth." ( M. M. 38:15.) "No soldier shall inherit the
kingdom of God while he is a soldier." (M. M. 33:24.)
In Boehme' s commentary on Genesis he is confronted with
the fact that God frequently ordered the Israelites to fight.
His philosophy, however, is well designed to explain this.
It was Jehovah, the dark savage nature Deity, the God of

anger who commanded war, not God the Son as He is to an
imagination centered in the light of His love.
For although God bade the people of Israel to drive out the
heathen and wage war yet the command was wholly from the angry
God that is the property of fire. The heathen stirred up the anger
which destroyed them. God so far as he is called God, desires no
war, yea he cannot desire anything evil or destructive for, according
to the second or light principle, he is only good and giving, and
giveth himself to all things. (M. M. 38:8.)
Boehme has little confidence in Moses as an interpreter of
Deity.
What need hath the Lord of a hunter such as Moses says that
Nimrod was, a mighty hunter before the Lord. Moses has a veil
before his shining eyes. He who hunts before the Lord of all
creatures, does not hunt hares and other beasts. (M. M. 35:32.)
GOOD AND EVIL 229
Boehme's sensitive soul suffered much from the religious

wars of his time and he has no words too strong for the
militaristic clergyman. "How can he serve Christ/' he says,
"who holds in one hand the cup of Christ and in the other
the sword of revenge." (M. M. 62:30.)
Hearken all ye who call yourselves apostles of Christ. Hath
Christ sent you to fight and make war. When he gave you the
sword of the spirit did he command you that. Are you not rather
apostles of God's anger. (M. M. 62:25.)
In his pacifism he does not go so far as Tolstoi. The follow-

ing passage summarizes his attitude and his reasons for it:
Thou shouldst be a leader into the kingdom of God, and enkindle

thy brother with thy love and meekness, that he may see in thee
God's essence as in a mirror, and thus in thee take hold also with
his imagination. Doest thou this, then bringest thou thy soul, thy
work, likewise thy neighbour or brother into God's kingdom, and
enlargest the kingdom of heaven with its manifestations. This has
Christ taught us, saying: "If any smite thee on one cheek, offer him
the other also; if any take away thy cloak, withhold not from him
thy coat also" (Matt. 5:39, 40) that he may have in thee a mirror
;
and retreat into himself, see thy meekness, acknowledge thou art
God's child, and that God's Spirit leads thee; that he may learn of
thee, descend into himself and seek himself. Else, if thou oppose
him with defiance and spite, his spite becomes kindled still more,
and at last he thinks he is acting right to thee. But thus he must
certainly recognize he doth thee wrong.
And as God's love resists all wicked men, and the conscience
often dissuades from evil, so also thy meekness and patience go
to his bad conscience and arraign the conscience in itself before
God's light in the wrath. In this way many a wicked man goes
out from his wickedness, descends into himself and seeks himself.
Then God's Spirit puts him in mind of thy patience, and sets it
before his eyes, and so he is drawn thereby into repentance and
abstinence.
Not one should not defend oneself against a murderer or
that
thief, who would murder and steal. But where one sees that any
is eager upon unrighteousness, one should set his fault openly with
a good light before his eyes, and freely and of good-will offer him
230 THE MYSTIC WILL
the richly-loving Christian heart; that he mayand infind actually
fact, that it is done out of love-zeal to God, and
and God'sthat love
will are more to that man than the earthly nature, and that he pur-
posely will not consent to anything passionate or evil being done;
that he may see that the children of God do love more the love of
God and do cleave to it more than to any temporal good; and that
God's children are not at home in this world, but only pilgrims,
who gladly relinquish everything of this world so that they may but
inherit the kingdom of heaven. (S. P. 4:25-27.) (Earle's trans-
lation.)
To our modern scientific materialism and to our over-

whelming faith in the supreme value of our rapidly develop-
ing conquest of nature, the ethic of Jacob Boehme speaks
in Mighty and all important as science
no uncertain terms.
is, Boehme to the world of darkness if unful-
consigns it
filled by that mystic knowledge which pierces through the
mechanistic shell to the life beneath. There are two

systems of categories through which we can approach our
world, one set is rational and scientific, the other is ethi-
cal and mystical. These are Boehme's dark and light
worlds and each is a nothing, he says, to the other. If
we rationalize our world, ethics disappears, for good and

evil become relative. If we construct our world accord-
ing to ethics, science disappears for it cannot recognize

freedom. Yet ethics and science need each other, for with-
out ethics science would have no goal, and without sci-
ence ethics would evaporate as a mere form without content.

"Each without the other would be an Ungrund." The
only way out is up our ambition to reduce all things
to give
to a single system and recognize Boehme's fundamental dual-
ism as irreducible. But it is a dualism to be perpetually
overcome, though never abolished. Darkness must be in
continual process of being subordinated to light. To derive
GOOD AND EVIL 231
our ideals out of an objective study of nature is to face the

wrong way and make an end out of what should be a means.
Looking into nature we find man the passive instrument of
vast cosmic forces that are wholly indifferent to his fate.
He is a mechanism and his will is a delusion. Boehme
exhorts us as mystics to face toward the light. If we follow
his injunction, will becomes the supreme reality and nature
the passive instrument. Man finds to his surprise that,
while theoretically he is helpless, practically he can lord it
over nature. On the wings of will and imagination he can

pierce through the sense world to the Life beneath. We
must therefore be both scientists and mystics if we would
know both truth and life.
It has often been said that the mechanization of human
beings due to our industrial system and such calamities as
the great war and other evils of our modern time are due to
the fact that we have developed more rapidly
scientifically
than we have progressed ethically. Boehme would explain
that we have "imagined into" the lower ternary. Our ideals
have been derived from nature, not spirit, from the means
and not from the end. In our intoxication with our remark-
able material progress, we have become slaves of nature.
We have worshiped the tool and made it an end in itself.
The infinite worth of human life has been forgotten and
subordinated to material achievement.
To discover and maintain the true relation between nature
and spirit is no easy task as Boehme discovered in the unceas-
ing travail of his soul. It cannot be said that his philosophy
fully succeeds and yet, paradoxically, it is the very heart of
that philosophy, that philosophy alone cannot solve our
problem. Not only as a thinker, but also as a prophet he
asks us to make a venture of faith.
CHAPTER VIII
RECAPITULATION OF BOEHME'S EVOLUTIONARY

CYCLES
Our cosmic drama is now complete. It is at once the

biography of God; a philosophy of nature and the history
1
of man.
Let us briefly outline the whole scheme of existence accord-
ing to the interpretation which has been given of the final
phase of Boehme's philosophy.
(1) The basis of all phenomenal existence is a threefold
will which is on itself. It is
a circular process turned back
an indeterminate will or blind energy (the Father), a will
rendered more determinate by being reflexed on itself (the
Son), and a Spirit which creates through the interaction of
the two.
(2) The result of this first creative movement is a Divine
plan of creation, or the Divine imagination. It is personified
as Wisdom or the Virgin Sophia. Here at the beginning
as always, life and knowledge result from a union of sub-
jective and objective elements. In its first reflexive move-
ment the will is its own object. The in-going will discovers
as its object a certain inherent structure or "Wisdom" in the
out-going will which determines action. In the dim self-
knowledge which results from this discovery there arises a
1
"The ancient world takes its stand on the drama of the universe, the
modern on the inward drama of the soul." Whitehead, Science and the
Modern World. Boehme being a philosopher of the transition identified
the two.
232
BOEHME'S EVOLUTIONARY CYCLES 233
more model of creation

definite plan of action or abstract
which is an ideal harmony of empty forms. This again
receives the name of "Wisdom."
(3) The will can attain no true self -consciousness by

having itself as an object. It must be reflected in a mirror
independent of itself. Accordingly there arises within it a
painful desire for genuine objective self-knowledge. This
desire is the first form of nature and manifests itself as
"attraction." It exists only through an opposing force which
is "expansion." The two produces rota-
interaction of the
tion, the multitude of circular processes which make up
physical nature. These three constitute the Trinity on its

lowest physical level. Hence the creation of physical nature
materializes or externalizes the original threefold will.
Attraction is the in-going will. Expansion is the out-going

will, and physical nature is the interaction of the two. This
descent into matter or particularity is symbolized as the
"Fall of Lucifer."
(4) As these forces are independent of the original ideal
harmony and of each other, conflict and confusion arise.
The intensity of the conflict finally subdues the harshness of

nature and there is a new reflexion of the will on itself. In
the fourth nature form there is a retreat to the Absolute
Will which reconciles the jarring discordant particulars
through the harmonizing influence of the abstract ideal Wis-
dom of God. In theological terms God is crucified on the
cross of nature in order to experience resurrecton in the
Heaven of a higher life. In physical terms the friction of
opposing forces generates a spark of light which is nature's
knowledge of itself. In human terms the discordant forces
in man's soul are harmonized through an act of self-renuncia-
tion by which his will is identified with the original absolute
234 THE MYSTIC WILL
will. In every case self-knowledge and rebirth to a better
life come about through opposition and reconciliation in a
higher unity.
(5) When the first three nature forms unite with the
Absolute Will in the fourth nature form, they are internally
harmonized and vitalized and then become the last three
forms. The first three remain however as the unmanifested
material substratum of the last three. When whole and part
are thus adjusted to each other in an organic union the seven
forms comprise Eternal Nature, the final objectification of
the original threefold will in a completely self-conscious

life. This Divine Life is known internally through mystic
union with it (y erstand), not through outward rational
knowledge. In such union the human will creates as God
creates, in perfect freedom through the power of creative
imagination.
(6) This internal view of nature as the life of the three-
fold will is succeeded by an external view (Vernunft).
Now the will sees only the empty abstract image of what
2
it may become. As so observed Eternal Nature is the
mirror of divine Wisdom, a new plan of creation. The
whole cycle of changes is now repeated in the next creative
act. The life of God, says Boehme, is a "continuous hunger
and satiating/' (T. F. L. 4:7.)
This, in brief, is the plot of our cosmic drama. Each
step is connected with every other by a living logic. And
here again Boehme' s warning must be repeated. We have
described as in time and as a sequence connected by the law
of cause and effect what is in reality an interrelated eternal
process, wherein each part is both cause and effect to every
other part.
3
Temporal Nature is, however, only a distorted and imperfect mirror of
the Spirit.
Whatever degree of truth this account may have in its

God and nature, it clearly exhibits keen insight
application to
into human experience. "As God's eternal beginningless
manner of birth is," says Boehme, "so is also the springing
up of human life." (A. 26:54.) The single subject of our
discourse has been this upspringing of all life to higher
levels. The Ideal Trinity, the Divine Wisdom, and the seven
fountain-spirits form a series of mystical cycles, a chain
which like the ladder of another Jacob, reaches up from
earth to heaven. The famous three rungs in the ladders
of earlier mystics, purification, enlightenment, and union,
seem simple in comparison with Boehme' s minute scientific
analysis of his cycles within cycles. We have characterized
his evolutionary process as a theogony and a cosmogony.
Let us now review it briefly as the rebirth of the human soul,
not only through religious experience of God, but through
contact with the life of all things in every movement of
the will.
The following is one of innumerable passages which,
though intended to apply to nature is obviously autobio-
graphical:
The will finds nothing, but only a hunger which which
it is itself,
draws it into itself; that is, it draws itself and finds itself
into itself
in itself, and its attraction (the first form) into itself makes in it
an over-shading or darkness. . . . That the will with its desire
is in darkness is its contrariety and it conceives in itself another will
to go out from the darkness again into the freedom and yet it cannot
reach the freedom outside of itself for the desire to go out of itself
causes pain and darkness Thus the sting (the second form)
. . .
would go out of itself and cannot for the desire holds it and so it
stands like a triangle and cross wheel, which, because it cannot move
becomes quivering, whence arises the mixture, that is, the essences,
or plurality of desires, for the turning makes a continual confusion
and tearing whence the third form, anguish, as pain arises. (S. R.
2:7-9.)
236 THE MYSTIC WILL
This is the description of a soul in torment, torn between
two contending desires. There is the in-going will which
creates darkness and the out-going will which attempts to
break through that darkness. Boehme saw the in-going will
in nature as and the out-going as expansion.
attraction
These are the first two forms of nature. They are also the
first two forms of the soul in its knowledge of nature.
They symbolize the dilemma of the mystic seeking inwardly

for God in the dark depths of his soul and outwardly for
knowledge of Him as He is revealed in nature. In nature
as in man, the result of this double search is tension or
anguish, in fact the third of the seven mystic forms.
In the fire-soul there is a wheel like a madness and the soul's

form stands in a mad furious wheel which confounds the body and
breaks in pieces the understanding. (M. M. 26:62.)
The struggle of nature is matched by the struggle of the

mystic who endeavors to reconcile the God demanded by his
inner life with the God of the outer world. A negative
mystic will flee from the world to find God in the super-
sensible. A positive mystic struggles to find Him also within
the world of sense.
How can the mystic go in opposite directions and reach
the same God? In hunger for life, physical nature whirls
in hopeless circles torn by the contention of attraction and
diffusion. Similarly man's hunger for God and knowledge
drives him outward and inward, torn as he is
as restlessly
by the tension of centrifugal and centripetal wills. Nature's
dilemma is due to particularity. Each force goes on its
independent way regardless of the others. Man's problem,
likewise, arises from egoism. The in-going and out-going
wills both seek to satisfy themselves, that is, they seek a sub-
BOEHMES EVOLUTIONARY CYCLES 237
jective rationalgood relative to painful desire not an objec-

tive good which is independent of desire.
in itself
The solution is resignation in which all desire and egoism
is wholly surrendered and the will retreats to the Absolute
whence it came. Here it finds the original unity in which

its divided self is harmonized.
All that pains thee is only thy self-hood, for thou art at enmity
with thyself. Would'st thou now wholly forsake thy own desire,
which has introduced itself into a strange substance, and become in
self-hood and in own-desire as a nothing, so that thou dost no more
will or desire for thyself, but wholly and fully introduce thy desire
again with resignation into the eternal, to wit, into God's will, that
the same will may be thy will and desire. (S. R. 15:8-9.)
In nature the conflict of forces generates the "fire of life"

which consumes particularity, and the whole, the Eternal
Freedom, is present in the light of the fire as harmonizing
love. Thus life and knowledge are born in nature through
an intensifying of contrasts which results in an organic syn-
thesis. In man the conflict of the two wills generates the
light of knowledge, for knowledge can only exist if it is
born of both subjective and objective elements. The light

of knowledge which is kindled in the fourth form
com- is
pounded of the many and the one. The many arise from
dark nature, the object of the out-going will and the one
is the absolute whole, the object of the in-going will.
Baptized in the Eternal Freedom of the Absolute Will the
two contending wills arise harmonized and a new knowledge
is born. Now each contributes its share to the higher life.
The active nature- will contributes force, energy, ambition.

The passive spirit-will contributes value, relationship and a
sense of the inner life and unity of all things. The first
strikes out toward the particular, the second harks back to

238 THE MYSTIC WILL
the universal. The first aims at the external and seeks to
bring it into subjection, the second makes the internal its
objective,and seeks to understand it. The first knows a this-
world ethic founded on struggle and a variety of ends; the
second knows an other-world ethic founded on self-denial
and a single end. Separated, the two produce confusion and
the darkness of external knowledge. Harmonized they form
Divine Life, which is a coordinated and integrated person-
ality. The mystic reborn into the light world no longer
knows nature simply as an external procession of empty
forms, but he knows a nature that is pregnant with life
and purpose holding latent within it the Kingdom of
Heaven.
Such rebirth from nature to spirit resembles the procedure
of a mathematician plotting the tangent curve. Finding that
the curve mounts upward more and more sharply as it
approaches its asymptote and wearying of ever reaching an

end he makes a mystical leap through the point infinity (or
zero) and discovers his curve comingup from below on the
other side of the asymptote. Just so Boehme struggles for
knowledge of nature and, finding that he is engaged in an
infinite task,he sinks down into the Absolute and comes up
to nature from the other side. He envisions the curve of
existence, not as an indefinite and fragmentary figure, but
as a completed cycle returning upon itself.
At this point the peculiar characteristic of Boehme's mys-
ticism, which permits us to call it Voluntaristic, becomes
evident. In every vision of God the soul must go through
the whole theogonistic process from zero to infinity and
back. The mystic vision is a process, rather than an ecstatic
contemplation. At the bottom is the empty subjective will.
At the top is the fully realized objectified will, the Kingdom
BOEHMFS EVOLUTIONARY CYCLES 239
of Heaven. Between the two is our temporal world in which

the Kingdom is latent, but not yet realized. The mystic in
imitating God and going from bottom to top and back must
constantly pass through this temporal world. By so doing,
he brings the Kingdom nearer in each successive passage.
Without a vision of the All, he would be blind and unaware
of his goal; without a knowledge of the discordant particu-
lars of nature the All would be empty and meaningless.
His procedure is both inductive and deductive. He becomes
cognizant of the part through the whole and the whole
through the part.
Thus Boehme's mystic ladder does not reach straight up
into heaven. The pilgrims' progress of the soul, like the
creative process, proceeds in ascending and descending
curves. In the creative process God abandons his ideal
abstract goodness, and permits an independent will which
manifests itself as matter. He seeks self-knowledge, but
He cannot know Himself without knowing something other
than Himself. There can be no real knowledge without
an independent object. Also, there can be no real value
without a real dualism of good and evil. "How can God
love," says Boehme, "without something to love?" In his
first ideal state, God is a solipsist and his goodness is unreal.
Accordingly, through the first three forms, He creates an
independent world which may and does turn against Him.
Even God does not see beyond the darkness of complete
self-renunciation. After much suffering, He harmonizes the
independent particulars through His sacrificial love and so
wins His world back. He then finds the original empty
forms of His imagination have become the realities of Eter-
nal Nature for they hold hidden within them an opposition
which has been overcome.
240 THE MYSTIC WILL
The mystic must, like God, be earth-bound as well as
heaven-bound. He unites with the will of God and beholds
God's Wisdom, the great plan of the Kingdom of Heaven
that is to be. But he cannot remain there where his own
individuality is lost and his goodness is abstract and unreal.
Real goodness contains an opposition which has been over-
come. As God incarnates His dream in the flesh of His
Son, so the mystic must create his vision in material form
on the earth.
The mystic is like an artist who has caught a vision of
perfect beauty. The artist is not satisfied with a transitory
dream, he wishes to embody it in matter which is independent
of himself in order that it may be an object of genuine
sacrificial love. Accordingly he must submit to limitations
due to the nature of substance and fix his attention on the
particular. Through a he comes
self-assertive act of the will
from his vision down into nature and splits up the one pri
mordial beauty into many imperfect embodiments. Even
by this he cannot win complete satisfaction. His will flies
back and forth; out into nature and back into himself, but
the forms he creates are all inferior to his vision. They
express too much of his own egoism. The vision came out
of the Absolute and to the Absolute the artist must again
retreat in order to renew it.
The own will forms itself according to its innate nature, but the
resigned will forms itself according to the model in eternity, as it
was conceived in the mirror of the eternal wisdom of God before
world began. For whatever takes place in self -hood forms itself,
but that which resigns itself freely is fashioned of free will. (S. R.
15:49.)
The the 'model in eternity" receives new

artist returns to
inspiration and comes back to earth better able to incarnate

his vision. Thus he goes back on the "resigned will" and
forward on the "own will"; each time bringing earth closer

to heaven and heaven closer to earth.
God must become Man, man must become God, Heaven must
be one with the earth and the earth must become Heaven. Wouldst
thou make heaven out of the earth, then give the earth the food of
heaven. (S. R. 10:48.)
Thus the "process of Christ," to use Boehme's phrase,

consists in setting apart an independent other and then win-
ning it back again revitalized with a new value. Boehme
knew man. It was the only
this as the creative process in
creative process that he or anyone else could know directly.
Little wonder then that he thought it also the creative
process in the universe.
Thus the mystic cycle is a constant intersection of heaven
and hell in order that this world may be gradually redeemed.
The spiritual life is a continual struggle "wherein is such a
contest as no wicked man feels, but only those who have put
on Christ." (Ep. 13:15.) That Boehme always thinks of
the new-birth not as a single event, but as a gradual growth,
is illustrated by his frequent comparison of it to the growth
of the lily-twig sprouting up out of dark matter into the
sunlight of the kingdom.
When we find that our desire is set entirely upon God ... so
that the imagination draws on God's Power then the noble lily-twig
is born. (Inc. II, 10:3.) The lily-twig is at first small as a grain
of mustard seed and then becomes great as a laurel-tree, that is the
true new birth in Christ. (Apol. I, 297.) If we have struggled
many times for the garland and have remained steadfast until the
twig becomes a little tree then it will not easily be broken in the
storm. (Inc. I, 13:11.) A
lily blossoms upon the mountains and
valleys in all the ends of the earth: He that seeketh findeth. Amen.
(S. R. 16:48.)
The laws of the evolutionary process which have been

briefly summarized, govern the birth of the cosmos out of
242 THE MYSTIC WILL
chaos, the long course of human history and the regeneration
of the soul. One more important field in which they operate
remains to be discussed. In every free movement of the
human will the whole series of changes which we have just
outlined takes place.
I shall attempt to show, by means of a diagram, how this
latter statement applies. This diagram is intended as an
aid to imagination, not as a picture of structural character-
istics of the human nervous system, nor of any possible
arrangement of psychic entities in space. It serves the same
purpose as a diagram drawn by a physicist to represent a
magnetic field or to suggest the structure of an atom. It
does not pretend to be a picture of reality, but it may serve

as an aid to thought.* Only certain very limited aspects of
a complicated situation can be represented by such a figure.
The heavy circle represents man. The arcs labeled I, II,
and III are Boehme's "Three Principles" or "Threefold Life
of Man." The numbers 1 to 7 indicate the seven forms of
nature.
Boehme's word Principium which is usually rendered
"principle" in English translations of his works retains for
him its original meaning of "source," "origin," or "begin-
ning." *
He identifies it with Anfang. Man can imagine
into (center his attention on) any one of three "principles"
or springs of action. These are three "births" of three dif-
ferent types of life. We shall call them three levels of
experience. In them man experiences the threefold will of
the Deity antecedent to nature which has been called the
* The use of such diagrams is a weakness of other writers on Boehme.
Blake compared those in the "Law edition" to the works of Michael
Angelo, probably referring to their subject matter rather than their artistic
quality.
* "In this consideration you may understand what I mean by Principium,
for a principium is nothing else than a new birth, a new life." (T. P. 5:6.)
"Ideal Trinity." The will may discharge in action through

any one of the three levels, though no act is possible which
does not contain something of all three. One is always
dominant and the others "hidden." The discharge of the
will through I manifests the dark world or first three nature
forms through II, the light world or last three nature forms,
;
and through III the temporal or mixed world. Sometimes
The Three Principles and the Seven

Forms of Nature considered as com-
ponents of a complete movement of the
threefold will.
Boehme applies the word principium to the manifestation

in nature, as well as to the will which is manifested.
I, the dark "source" or Father, is the level of inner experi-
ence which we would call to-day "instinctive." Boehme
calls it "animal or vegetative." Here man behaves as a
natural object and responds mechanically to the stimuli of
sense. His knowledge is wholly external. In religious
244 THE MYSTIC WILL
experience, at this level, man uncritically accepts the his-
torical, the institutional and the authoritative. The ethic
of the dark world is a mechanical ethic of external force.
Self-interest alone prevails as man cannot see beyond the
desire of the moment. This level is hell, the first three
nature forms, the abode of devils who do not know evil
from good.
II is the bright source, the will of the Son. Here the first
three nature forms enter, pass through the Absolute point

of view and emerge as the last three forms. Man creates
Eternal Nature in exactly the same way that God creates
itas previously outlined. Through level II man's will and
God's will become identical and create in unison. Man
follows the in-going will of the primordial Trinity ante-
cedent to nature and beholds, as it does, the Wisdom of
God, the plan of the world, which is the inherent subjective
structure of the Absolute Will. Having seen these abstract
possibilities dimly outlined in the background of existence,
man goes out into the dark world of nature to overcome it
and incarnate his vision in the flesh. Thus the Son is born
of the Virgin Wisdom, crucified on the cross of nature, and
raised up into the higher life. The new creative will is free,
for it goes forth from the background of the primordial free-
dom of the Absolute. It has renounced all self-interest and
so has found an absolute objective good which is not relative
to its painful desire. Its interest is now the interest of the
whole. The ethic it has discovered is the ethic of the
Sermon on the Mount which is beyond rational and relative
justice and external law. Action is now motivated only by
love of life as a whole. In discharging through II the will
brings the interests of the whole to bear upon the frag-
mentary and particular. The first three forms of nature

which are the basis of particularity and individuality are not
abolished. They pass through the Absolute and form the
hidden material basis of the new act. Thus the new act is
the manifestation of a higher form of organic life in which
the whole and parts reach a more harmonious degree of
interdependence. This level is the innermost core of man.
Here the incommunicable element is at a maximum. To this
point science cannot explore for it does not recognize an

irrationalfreedom nor an inner absolute will. We are aware
of it only as the profound unplumbed background of feel-
ing which to some degree comes into every free act of the
will. Though always present, it is not, however, always
dominant in action. Only when the will is "centered" on
it does it give birth to the light world. The religion of II
is mysticism.
by Boehme the "rational" source. Here the
Ill is called
term "rational" must be understood in Boehme' s peculiar

sense. I and II may be considered as the lower and upper
asymptotic limits of experience and III as any intermediate
stage. I and
"eternal" but III is in time and is peculiar
II are
to this presentworld which will some day pass away. In

Eternal Nature I and II are perfectly harmonized in a time-
less circular process, but with man, this state is only occa-
"Reason" contains something of the infi-
sionally possible.
nite All and something of the unharmonized parts. She
cannot harmonize I and II completely, but she contains
enough of II to make her dissatisfied with herself and
eventually to bring about her salvation. Ill is the twilight
zone of our present-day life where Eternal Nature is seen as

out of joint. Here light and darkness, life and mechanism
246 THE MYSTIC WILL
struggle for supremacy. Only by self-surrender can Reason
obtain a vision of the higher life which will save her. Evo-
lution in III proceeds by the gradual and progressive har-
monization of I and II.
The religion peculiar to III is theology which is a partial

harmonization of God and nature. Religious rationalism
endeavors without complete success to reconcile elements of
the mysticism of II and the institutionalism of I.
Ill can be compared to the visible part of the spectrum

of which II is the ultraviolet and I the infrared. I and II
are at the limits of introspection. They affect us profoundly

though they can never be examined directly.
The seven forms of nature fit easily into this scheme.
Beginning with nature as revealed to our senses, we find it
composed of a series of contrasts generated by the opposition
of the first two nature forms, attraction and diffusion. These
contrasts are each a "Stachel der Empfindlichkeit" (T. F. L.
2:13) or "sting of sensibility" which gives rise to sensation.
Boehme frequently refers to the third nature form, which

combines the first and second, as "Sinnlichkeit" or sensibility
It is the world as revealed to our senses. Here we are close
to modern psychology which maintains that sensation arises
only through contrasts which are great enough to be above
a certain threshold.
Boehme holds that the contrast of attraction and diffusion
is the first primitive operation of the out-going and in-going
wills. An might be made as
interpretation of this doctrine
follows: We
become aware of a contrast because our atten-
tion goes both forward and backward across it. Thus, in
going from black to white, the will is out-going to find the
white and in-going to compare it with the memory of the
black. Unless the will goes in both directions it knows
neither white nor black for each is known only as compared

to the other. The world, as known, is the joint result of
the out-going will to discover the new and the in-going will
to interpret the new in terms of the old.
The world thus presents itself to us in the third nature
form as a confusion of contrasts of sufficient intensity to
arouse our consciousness and our will to bring harmony and
order. The soul stands at 4, the fourth nature form, where
light and darkness divide. The will discharges on all three
paths, but one is dominant. Let us consider only I and II,
the two extremes. If the first principle is dominant, the
action is based on the sensual and mechanical and the will
returns to the same three nature forms from whence it came.
The will which discharges through II is in union with the
one will which unites all nature from within. It brings the
whole down into the parts just as it first brought the parts
up into the whole. Thus, through II the will returns to
nature, as it were from the inside with an absolute point
of view. It is then in living union with nature. It recon-
ciles warring material forces and so generates the higher
life. Such action is based not only on freedom, but on a

sympathetic feeling of harmony with all creation. The first
three forms are transfigured into the last three and thewhole
cycle is eternally repeated in an ever ascending chain toward
heaven which gradually draws the kingdom of this world
up into the Kingdom of Light.
In my historical introduction to Boehme's philosophy six
types of thought which preceded him were briefly outlined
in order to show, by way of contrast, the peculiar problem
of Protestant mysticism. The early Protestant mystic, being
both mediaeval and modern, sought to retain the absolute
values discovered by an other world attitude and apply them
248 THE MYSTIC WILL
to the transformation of this present relative world. Boehme
solved the problem through a careful analysis of the course
of the will as it first rose from out the dark relative world,
passed through the absolute and returned with absolute
whole and relative particular harmonized in a higher organic
life. The diagram depicting the path of the will represents
probably the greatest possible simplification of the living
elements in Boehme's philosophy. It neglects much that is
dead. It will be useful to see how the other systems of

thought outlined in the introduction fit into this scheme. As
the diagram oversimplifies Boehme's conceptions so also will
it oversimplify the others.
(1) Greek Idealism is centered in III. There is a conse-
quent apotheosis of the intellectual realm as ultimate reality.
The out-going will, finding no satisfying object, is turned
back on itself as is the case in Boehme's Ideal Trinity. It
gets no further than the Divine Wisdom which is a plan of

action, not action itself.There is accordingly an arrest of
discharge into nature. Greek philosophy made no signifi-
cant attempt to reform the world in the light of the Ideas.
Rationalism can discover no real independent evil and ethics
therefore vanish.
(2) Neo-Platonism and Catholic mysticism penetrate
deeper than Greek Idealism and reach level II. There is a
consequent apotheosis of the mystical realm as ultimate real-
ity. Little ethical discharge takes place into nature as the

emphasis is on the in-going path. The out-going is ignored.
There is a further flight from the world than in Greek
Idealism.
(3) Early Christianity was not a consistent system of

thought and is accordingly difficult to classify. It penetrated
to II at times, but believed that the Divine had come down
into this world only in one instance, that of the Incarnation.

"The Word was made flesh and dwelt amongst us." (John
1:14.) At some time in the future, through a supernatural
event, the Absolute realm would descend into nature. Such
mystics, however, as Paul and the early church Fathers
believed in a discharge through II in every human life
which was in mystic union with Christ.
(4) Catholicism provided for discharge through II in chan-

nels furnished by the church, and through III and I in the
ordinary affairs of life. There was no attempt to harmonize
I, II and III.
(5) Orthodox Protestantism faced toward II, but did not

enter it. It possessed a theology in III. Man's soul, it held,
was wholly "natural" and accordingly was centered entirely
in I. There was no bridge to II. By faith the soul was
oriented toward the eternal and so entered II after death.
(6) Protestant mysticism holds that the soul can be cen-
tered in II in this life and that discharge through it is a
normal process. It accordingly undertakes to apply an abso-
lute ethic to this present imperfect world. The Quakers,
for example, who are to-day the chief exponents of Prot-
estant mysticism, interpret the Sermon on the Mount literally.
They believe that an uncompromising attempt to live in
the Kingdom of Heaven inwardly in the heart is the best
means of bringing it into existence outwardly on the
earth.
It would not be difficult to find serious fault with each of
and with the scheme of classifi-
these brief characterizations
cation as a whole. Sharp distinctions are made between I,
II and III, whereas they actually merge gradually into one
another. Also the diagram does not show how each level
plays a part in every movement of the will. It would be
250 THE MYSTIC WILL
just as true to fact to draw our figure so that I, III and II
are three successive stages in any action. As so considered,

I comes first as the given element. It is the world presented
to us in our sense organs and in the structure of our physi-
cal organism. Ill is the middle term, the central intellectual
process of mental abstraction and reflection which attempts
to harmonize as far as possible the given elements with
what has come before. II, the final stage before the action
is completed, is the emotional and volitional background out
5
of whose mysterious depths arises a free act of will. It is
not III, the "reason" (in Boehmes' sense of the word), but
II, the ultimate source of our sense of value which chiefly
governs the free conscious action of man. Our own figure,

as drawn above, not only follows Boehme's philosophy more
closely than this arrangement, but it has the merit of show-
ing how some religious systems are centered in deeper levels
than others. It is the distinguishing characteristic of that
type of mysticism which we have described as voluntaristic,
not only to pierce to the deepest level of human experience,
but also to incarnate in the outer world what it finds there.
While discussing in quite different phraseology the process
outlined above, Boehme warns us again and again that he
is forced to distort it in order to describe it. The process,
he says, is "eternal"; that is, every part is cause and effect
to every other part, whereas it must be described as a
sequence in time as if one element came first, another second
and so on. We would say to-day that we are compelled to
mechanize an organic system in order to give it a rational
explanation. Diagrams may represent machines perfectly,
but no diagram can ever show how whole and part are inter-
6
See William James' essay Reflex Action and Theism for a discussion of
this arrangement of the three factors. Also Von Hugel, The Mystical Ele-
ment in Religion, I, p. 57.
related in a living organism. This can be apprehended only

through experience of life itself.
In like manner no system of theology or philosophy and

no external symbol can take the place of vital religious
experience. This is Boehme's indictment of the Protestant-
ism of his day. It did not pierce below the level of historic
fact and written creed, and it depended on an external celes-
tial mechanism for human salvation. Boehme offered it a
philosophy based on the conception of life, and taught that
man may come into living organic union with a redemptive
process at the core of existence.
For three centuries Protestantism and mechanistic science
have been among the principal influences in the world of
western thought. Both are legalistic and emphasize external
relations. The Protestant creed regulates the attitude of the
worshiper to an external Deity. The Protestant form of
worship operates through words, sounds and symbols. The
Protestant ethic still clings largely to Old Testament legal-
ism which prescribes an eye for an eye and a tooth for a
tooth. Though the doctrine of total depravity is seldom
mentioned to-day, men are still treated as natural objects
in Protestant industrialism.
Similarly mechanistic science tells us only how material
bodies behave in their external relations with each other.
Like Protestantism it believes thoroughly in predestination
and the total depravity of matter, for matter, it holds, is dead
and helplessly moved about by outside forces. Mechanism
ignores life and cannot find any absolute will of the whole
which operates through the parts. Behaviorism or mechanis-
tic psychology does not go deeper than level I in our figure.
Protestantism and mechanistic science follow the out-going
subjectively originated will which discovers only the external.
252 THE MYSTIC WILL
It is sometimes believed that our modern age of mechanism
followed immediately upon the Platonic Idealism of the
Middle Ages, but between the rule of Luther and Galileo
on the one hand and Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas on the
other there was a mighty effort in the Renaissance to evolve
a philosophy of life. This effort culminated in Jacob Boehme
who inherited the traditions of Renaissance science. The
Platonic objectivism of Catholicism and the Lutheran sub-
jectivism of Protestantism find in Boehme a subjective-
objectivism in a mystical union of Protestant will and Cath-
olic Idea. Interior faith meets exterior grace in life. Jesus
said, "I am the way, the truth and the life." Protestantism
speaks of the way, or the Father, Catholicism of the Truth
or the Son, and Mysticism of the Holy Ghost or the life.
Boehme hears the divine melody, not from a choir of Protes-

tant angels, nor in the Gregorian chant of the Church. It
is, for
—
him, "das Freudenspiel der ewigen Gebarung" "the
joy-melody of the eternal generation." (S. R. 16, 3.)
Signs are multiplying to-day that the rule of mechanistic
theory is beginning to weaken. The newest philposophies
of science are evolving a theory of nature which declares
that mechanism is a superficial aspect of existence. Protes-
tantism, losing faith in its Book and creeds and attempting
to substitute social service and business efficiency, is just
beginning to discover that it must pierce to deeper levels of
experience if it isto be saved. Of this new transitional
epoch in religion and science the Gorlitz shoemaker is a real
prophet.
There is a story told by Hans Christian Andersen and
translated into music by Stravinsky which is suggestive of
the recent history of western man. Long ago a nightingale
sang so sweetly before the Emperor of China that she was
kept at court and held in great honor. One day a packet

arrived from the Emperor of Japan containing a marvelous
mechanical bird whose songs were an almost perfect imita-
tion of the songs of a living nightingale. At the first per-
formance of this marvelous rival the real nightingale flew
away. But no one cared because, as the music master said,
"With a real nightingale we can never tell what is going to
be sung, but with this bird everything is settled. We can
open it and explain it so that people can understand exactly
how the songs are made, why one particular note follows
another." Finally when every oneknew every little turn in
the artificial song a spring cracked and the music
bird's
stopped. Thewas worn out and no one could mend it.
bird
Years passed and the emperor fell ill. He saw the horrible
image of Death bending over him and he pleaded with the
mechanical bird to charm the specter away, but the bird
remained silent. Suddenly there came through the open
window the sound of a sweet song. Outside on the bough
of a tree sat the living nightingale.She sang of the quiet
churchyard so beautifully that Death longed to go and see
his garden. He floated away like a mist. The emperor
recovered, but the living nightingale would come to court
no more. She said, "I will sit on a bough outside your
window and sing to you, for I love your heart better than
your crown."
The living bird which left us three centuries ago with the
advent of mechanistic science and religion has not yet come
back, but her song can be faintly heard already in the dis-
tance. She will not return in the pomp and glory of the
Middle Ages but she is willing to return to human hearts.
The music master was right in holding that the mechanical
bird is much more efficient and dependable, but the Western
254 THE MYSTIC WILL
world is from a disease which no machine can
suffering
cure. Only the wild untamed song which wells out of the
mysterious depths of life can charm away the specter hover-
ing above us.
APPENDIX
German Idealism and Boehme's Problem. The character of
Boehme's problem can be better understood if we sketch a brief
comparison between the situation at the beginning of the seven-
teenth century and the more familiar situation at the beginning of
the nineteenth, though in the nature of the case such a summary
cannot do full justice to the conflict of ideas at either period.
The sinner-salvation problem of Luther is, in religious terms, the
subject-object problem of Kant. The Puritan asks, "How can I
make my calling and election sure?" The epistemologist asks, "How
can I make my knowledge sure?"
Descartes had discovered a deep chasm between mind and matter
and the Leibnizian-Wolfian philosophy, finding no way to bridge it,
conceived of a preestablished harmony, grounded in God, between
knower and known. In the same way the scholastics had found a
kind of preestablished harmony, grounded in God, between reason
and faith, and Leibnitz, as a faithful churchman, agreed, but neither
Leibnitz nor Saint Thomas could demonstrate how such a pre-
established harmony could actually exist. Neither the unclouded
"intuition" of Leibnitz nor the "authority" of Saint Thomas saved
subject from from sin. Either he was left
subjectivity nor sinner
imprisoned in a monad or separated from the suprasensible by a
gulf which only the miraculous, as for example, in the sacrament,
could bridge.
Curiously enough, Kant and Luther "solved" the problem by
making the gulf wider than ever. Luther abolished the sacraments
as the bridge to heaven, and Kant demolished the ontological argu-
ment. Heaven and the noumenal world became objects, not of
knowledge, but of faith, that is, they are posited by an act of will.
Luther's "faith" is Kant's "practical reason."
"Faith," says Melanchthon, the philosopher of Lutheranism, "is
nothing else than trust in the Divine mercy promised in Christ."
Neither the "faith" of Luther nor the "regulative principles" of
Kant can do more than point to a God beyond the sensible. They
are promissory notes received in this world, to be cashed in the next.
255
256 APPENDIX
"The highest good," says Kant, "is therefore practically possible
only if we presuppose the immortality of the soul." ' For both
Luther and Kant the soul is condemned to eternal struggle, but it
has that within it by which it wills that the struggle is justified.
It is not surprising that when the other world is pushed too far
away it should disappear altogether. Successors of Kant, such as
Fichte, and the Romanticists found that the world was their ego, and
the extreme radicals of Luther's day declared that they were "godded
with God." There were of course enormous differences between the
poetic dreamers of the Romantic movement and those uncounted
Reformation radicals who suffered death for the faith that was in
them. In both cases, however, the loosening of the authority of
the external freed some spirits from all restraint. Kant and the
French Revolution were to Romanticism what Luther and the Ref-
ormation were to Anabaptism.
It is difficult to generalize about Anabaptism. "There are not
two to be found who agree with each other at all points," says their
3
contemporary Franck. But this very disagreement is the signifi-
cant point. It follows upon the retreat of the objective. Hans
Denck, an apostle of the Anabaptists, speaks of faith that must rest
on "an inner witness which God by his grace plants in the soul."
The Bible is "an echo of what is being uttered deep in my own
8
bosom." Much of Anabaptism was well balanced, but it some-
times ran into extravagant forms. Crushed out of Germany by
frightful persecution it fled to Holland and England. The extreme
limit in the subjectivism of the Reformation is found in the English
Ranters of the seventeenth century who, because God was in them,
claimed God's prerogatives.*
In similar fashion the Romanticists of the nineteenth century
claimed divine privileges. They objected to Kant's theory that a
prerequisite of knowledge is something outside knowledge itself.
Why not take Kant's principle of the originality and activity of
spirit and make it all-sufficient? Reason has no object but itself,
and the philosopher, like the poet or artist, need only examine his
own spirit as it unfolds before him. Schilling's attempt to "break
through to Nature" ended in aestheticism and a mysticism taken
directly from Boehme. But as Boehme went further than mystical
subjectivism, so did Hegel. Neither Boehme nor Hegel found that
1
Critique of Practical Reason, 128.
2
Quoted by Bax, Rise and Fall of the Anabaptists, p. 51.
3
Rufus Jones, Studies in Mystical Religion, p. 384.
*
See Rufus Jones, Studies in Mystical Religion, Chap. XIX.
APPENDIX 257
pure intuition gave true objectivity. Boehme passed through the

gate of death with much pain to gain his insights. For Hegel
"these (mystic) rockets are not the empyrean. True thoughts and
scientific insights are only to be gained by the labor which compre-
hends and grasps its objects." 6 Hegel adopted a logic of experi-
ence which permitted the subject to be at once identical with the
object and different from it. Each without the other is an unreal
abstraction. Likewise Boehme in much cruder fashion, through a
logic appearing like a chain of images and more deeply embedded in
experience than Hegel's, attempted to show that the sinner must be
himself and other than himself at the same time, at once human and
divine, egoistic and altruistic. Boehme thus attempted to do in the
ethical and religious field what Hegel attempted to do in the more
inclusive epistemological field. However, though Boehme's conclu-
sions resemble Hegel's, his method and vocabulary have more in
common with Schopenhauer.
s
Prolegomena, p. 53. Trans, by Wallace.
. .
BIBLIOGRAPHY
All references to Boehme's works are to the Schiebler edition,
Leipzig, 1843, in seven volumes.The chapters and verses are the
same as in the first Amsterdam edition and later German editions.
The various English translations have the same chapters, but unfor-
tunately not the same verses as the German editions. As the Aurora
in the Schiebler edition not divided into verses I have used the
is
verses in the English edition. The list here given of Boehme litera-
ture is not complete. It includes only those books examined by the
author. These comprise, however, nearly all of importance which
have been published.
The following is a list of Boehme's works in the order in which
they were written with the abbreviations by which each work is
referred to in this essay.
1612
1. Aurora (Morgenrothe im Aufgang) (A) or (Aur.).
1619
2. The Three Principles (Von den drei Principien) (T. P.).
1620
3. The Threefold Life (Vom
dreifachen Leben des Menschen)
(T. F. L.).
4. The Forty Questions (Vierzig Fragen von der Seele) (40 Q.).
5. The Incarnation (Von der Menschwerdung Christi) (Inc.).
6. The Six Points (Von sechs theosophischen Punckten) (S. P.).
7. The Six Mystical Points (Von sechs mystischen Punckten)
(S. M. P.).
8. Mysterium Pansophicum (Vom himmlischen und irdischen Mys-
terio) (M. P.).
9. The Last Times (Von den letzten Zeiten)
10. Theoscopia (Von gottlicher Beschaulichkeit) (Beschau)
1621
11. The Four Complexions (Von den vier Complexionen) (F. C).
12. Apologia I (Erste Schutzschrift wider Balthaser Tilken)
(Apol. I).
259
. . ..
260 BIBLIOGRAPHY
13. Apologia II (Zweite Schutzschrift wider B. T.) (Apol. II).
14. Anti-Stiefelius I (Bedenken uber Stiefels Buchlein) (Antist I)
1622
15. Anti-Stiefelius II (Vom
Irrtum Stiefels und Meths) (Antist II)
16. Signatura Rerum (Von der Geburt und Bezeichnung aller
Wesen) (S. R.).
17. Repentance (Von wahrer Busse) (Buss)
18. Regeneration (Von der Wiedergeburt) (Wiederg).
19. Resignation (Von der wahren Gellassenheit) (Gellas).
20. The Supersensual Life (Vom iibersinnlichen Leben) (Supers.
L.).
1623
21. Predestination(Von der Gnadenwahl) (Gnad.).
22. The Testaments (Von Christi Testamenten) (Test.).
23. Mysterium Magnum (Erklarung iiber das erste Buch Mosis)
(M. M.).
1624
24. The Tables (Tafeln der Principiorum) (Taf.).
25. Gesprach einer erleuchteten und unerleuchteten Seele.
26. The Holy Week or Prayer Book. (Vom heiligen Gebet)
27. Apologia contra Richter (Schutzrede wider Gregorius Richter).
28. Von 177 theosophischen Fragen (Th. Q.).
29. Clavis (oder Schlussel der vornehmsten Punkte). (CI.).
1618-1624
30. Theosophische Brief e (Ep.).
Boehme's works were nearly all translated into English by John

Sparrow and published 1647-1663. John Ellistone finished the
translation and publication. A number of these translations were
republished by William Law's friends in four volumes 1764-1781.
This is known as the "Law edition." Several of the Sparrow trans-
lations have recently been reprinted by C. J. Barker (press of John
M. Watkins, London) These include The Three-fold Life (1909),
.
The Three Principles (1910), The Forty Questions and the Clavis
(1911), The Way to Christ (1911), The Aurora (1914), and the
Mysterium Magnum (2 vols., 1924). A new translation of the
Six Points and other short treatises has been made by Earle (New
York, 1920).
WORKS ABOUT BOEHME
Allen, G. W., The Master Mystic, Theosophical Rev: Vol. 35
and 36.
Baader, Vorlesungen und Erlauterungen zu Boehme's Lehre. Samt.
Werke XIII.
Bailey, Milton and Jacob Boehme 1914.
Bastian, Der Gottesbegriff bei J. Boehme 1905.
Boutroux, Le Philosophe allemand J. Boehme 1888.
Carriere, Die philosophische Weltanschauung der Reformationszeit
1847.
Claassen, J.
Boehme. Sein Leben und seine theosophischen Werke
1883.
Deussen, J. Boehme. tlber sein Leben und seine Philosophic 1897.
Ederheimer, J. Boehme und die Romantiker 1904.
Elert, Die Voluntaristische Mystik J. Boehme's 1913.
Fechner, J. Boehme Sein Leben und Schriften 1857.
Freher, Manuscripts printed in the Notes for a Law Biography by
Walton 1856.
Hamberger, Die Lehre des deutschen Philosophen J. Boehme 1844.
Hankamer, J. Boehme. Gestalt und Gestaltung 1924.
Harless, J. Boehme und die Alchymisten 1870.
Hartmann, The Life and doctrines of J. Boehme (an unacknowl-
edged translation of Hamberger) 1891.
Hegel, Vorlesungen iiber die Geschichte der Philosophic, Werke
XV.
Hoffding, Modern Philosophy. Trans, by Meyer 1900.
Jecht, Gedenkgabe der Stadt Gorlitz 1914.
Jones, R. M., Spiritual Reformers in the 16th and 17th Centuries
1914.
Kielholz, J.
Boehme, ein pathographischer Beitrag zur Psychologie
der Mystik 1919.
Kayser, H. (editor), Schriften J. Boehmes 1923.
Fouque, J. Boehme, Ein Biographischer Denkstein 1831.
Law, Wm., The Way to Divine Knowledge. To the Christianity
of the Age. Works. 9 vols. London 1753-76.
261
262 WORKS ABOUT BOEHME
Martensen, J.
Boehme, his life and teaching 1881. Tr. by T. R.
Evans, 1885.
Okeley, Memoirs of Life, Death and Burial of J. Behmen. 1780.
Peip, J. Boehme der deutsche Philosoph I860.
Penny, Mrs., Studies in Boehme 1912.
Petersen, Grundzuge der Ethik J. Boehme's 1901.
Umbreit, J. Boehme 1835.
Vetterling, The Illuminate of Gorlitz. 1923.
Walton, Memorial of Wm. Law 1856.
Werniche, Meister Jacob Boehme 1898.
Whyte, J. Boehme. An Appreciation 1894.
Wullen, J. Boehme's Leben und Lehre. 1836.
.
INDEX
Absolute will, 106, 170, 181, 182, Bergson, Henri, 19, 21, 125, 164.
210; as transition point, 106, 143, Beyerlandt, A. W. von, 57.
146, 212, 233, 237-239; 244; in- Blake, William, 38n., 62, 69, 94, 99,
herent structure, 183-195; place in 135n., 159n., 168, 204, 242n.
Boehme's philosophy, 180-182. Body of God. Seventh nature form.
See also Will, Trinity, Transition See Eternal nature.
point. Boehme, Jacob, and alchemy, 89-92;
Abyss. See Absolute will. and Protestantism, 96-99; death,
Adam's 110, 150, 171, 189, 200,
fall, 56; form of his logic, 189; growth
216, 218. of his philosophy, 47, 48, 49, 170-
Agrippa, Cornelius, 85. 180; his central conception, 212;
Albertus Magnus, 85. his doctrine compared with mod-
Alchemy, chap. Ill; and Boehme, 6, ern thought, 163-166; his mysti-
60, 89-92; and evolution, 86, 87; cal ladder, 235; his naturalism,
and knowledge, 86; its history, 83- 131, 132, 134, 175; his psychol-
85; its theories, 85-88; its vocabu- ogy, 120; influence, 6, 7 —
in Amer-
lary, 88. See also Renaissance ica, 73, in England, 65-72, in
science. Germany, 58, 73-77; influences
Allen, G. W., 141. on him, 6, 7, 59; inner con-
Anabaptists, 38, 260. flict, 5, 8, 9, 10, 13, 21,
Andersen, H. C, 252, 253. 48, 171; 45-56; persecution,
life,
"Angel Brothers," 58. 49-56; philosopher of the transi-
Anger of God, 147, 158, 226. See tion, 7, 8, 81, 82, 83, 160, 191;
Dark world, Father, Third nature practical aims, 8, 9, 12, 23, 163,
form. 164, 205; psychological character-
Aquinas, Thomas, 42, 66, 85, 252, istics, 64, 65; style, 60, 61; trial,
259. 50, 53; visions, 11, 46, 47, 199;
Aristotle, 28, 32, 252. works, 52, 57, 58, 255, 256.
Artist, creative vision of, 240. Boehme, Katherina, 46, 53, 54.
Ashmole, Elias, 68. Bohmer, Eduard, 36.
Attraction. See First nature form. Boutroux, E., 6, 172.
Augustine, 36. Brooke, Henry, 72n.
Aurora, The, 5, 49, 51, 57, 174. Browning, Robert, 44.
Byrom, John, 63n.
Baader, Franz von, 73n., l4ln., 172,
178, 196. Carlyle, Thomas, 69.
Bacon, F., 83, 222. Carriere, M., 77.
Bailey, M. L., 6ln., 66n. Catholicism, 32, 33-35, 39, 40, 249,
Barker, C. J., 256. 252; its type of mysticism, 40, 41.
Basilides, 135. Charles I, 68.
Bastian, A. O. G., 173n. Christianity, early, 29-33, 39, 248.
Baxter, Richard, 67. Circular process, 22, 23, 28, 111,
Beard C, 7. 150, 187, 192, 217, 238.
263
264 INDEX
Clutton, Joseph, 7 In. tian, 30-32; in Neo-Platonism, 28,
Coleridge, S. T., 60n., 71. 248; of Catholicism, 33, 34; of
Conflict, in nature, 142, 159; re- Jesus, 31, 221; of Mysticism, 40,
ligious, 3, 4, 9, 13; in William 215, 221-231; of Protestantism,
James, 202; in Boehme, 5, 8, 9, 38; "this world" and "other
10, 13, 21, 48, 171. See also world," 30, 31, 34, 220, 221, 225,
Third nature form. 238, 244.
Confucius, 25n. Eucken, R., 134n., 164.
Contraries, doctrine of, 14, 126, 147- Evil, and rationalism, 209; and par-
150, 161, 162, 180, 195, 209, 213, ticularity, 212; definition of, 213,
221, 246, 247. See also Knowl- 214, 215; development of
edge, Conflict, Evolution, Dual- Boehme's theory of, 173-182;
ism. function of, 206-214; in Greek
Cosmic drama, its plot, 232-234. thought, 27; strength of, 226. See
Cusa, Nicolas de, 198. also Ethics, Adam's fall.
Evolutionary process, chap. V, and
Dark world, 142, 146, 161, 212, 223, alchemy, 86, 87, 88; as succes-
243. See also Father, First nature sive incarnations of Idea, 189;
form, Second nature form, Third emergent, 165; from dualism to
nature form. monism, 212; from the ideal to
Denck, Hans, 260. the real, 192-196; how originated,
Descartes, Rene, 259. 14, 169-202; in every movement
Desire, its double aspect, 137, 178, of will, 242-247; must descend to
179, 194, 195. See also First ascend, 195; recapitulation of
form. Boehme's theory, 232-234.
Dionysius, the Areopagite, 29, 36. Expansion. See Second nature form.
Dualism, 8, 10, 38, 39, 43, 208, 211,
220, 230; of the will, 111-115; of Faith, 202, 213, 214; as creating
value, 207, 214, 239. life, 151, 221-231; Protestant doc-
trine of, 36, 37, 96-99, 259.
Eastern thought, 5, 25. Farquhar, J. W., 69.
Eckhart (Meister), 12, 20, 35, 42, Father, 23, 123, 158, 175, 176, 182,
172, 180. 195, 232, 243. See aho Trinity,
Eddington, A. S., 164. First nature form, Second nature
Ederheimer, E., 74, 117n. form, Third nature form.
Edwards, T., 66n. Fechner, J. A., 59n., 77.
Ellington, Francis, 68. Feilchenfeld, W., 74n.
Ellistone, John, 67, 256. Fichte, J. G., 6, 197n., 215, 260.
Empedocles, 115, 141. Fifth nature form. See Love.
Endern, Karl von, 49, 53. First nature form, or attraction, 14,
Erskine, Thomas, 69. 70, 72, 114, 137, 161, 233; as in-
Essences. See Forms. going will, 236, 246. See also
Eternal nature, 153, 156-160, 161, Forms.
178, 234, 239; compared with tem- Forces. See Forms.
poral nature, 157-160, 178; rela- Forms, nature, 133-158; both physi-
tion to Plato and Kant, 160. cal and psychical, 136; defined,
Eternity and time, 109, 110, 132, 134, 135; in an act of will, 246,
158, 216, 234, 250. 247; importance, 133; interrelated,
Ethics, chap. VII, and Metaphysics, 136; relation to the Trinity, 173-
42, 205-211; and Science, 230; 180. See also First form, Second
Boehme's, 205-231; early Chris- form, etc.
INDEX 265
Forty Questions, The, 52n., 58, 68, criticism of Boehme, 10, 196n.,
176, 177. 197n.
Fourth nature form. See Transition Hell, 13, 192, 195, 244. See also
point. Conflict.
Fox, George, 40, 66, 68, 71. Heraclitus, 141.
Franck, Sebastian, 260. Herder, G., 74.
Frankenberg, A. von, 45, 46, 47, 68, Hermes Trismegistus, 100.
77. Hincklemann, Benedict, 55.
Free will, 106, 107, 144, 148, 207, Hobhouse, Stephen, 69n., 7 In.
244. Hocking, W. E., 120, l43n.
Freher, D. A., 70, 71, 141, 196. Holt, E. B., 125.
Fry, Roger, 62. Hotham, Charles, 67, 67n.
Hotham, Durant, 67.
Galileo, 81, 83, 252. Hiigel, F. von, 350n.
German idealism, 7, 73-77, 84; and Hudibras, 62.
Boehme's problem, 259-261. See
also Hegel, Schelling, etc. Idea. See Wisdom.
Gichtel, J. G., 58. Idealism, beginnings of, 170; of
Gnadenwahl, The, 180. Boehme, 132; relation to mysti-
Gnosticism, 135, 172, 185n. cism, 22n. See also German ideal-
God, and evil, 211-214; as person, ism.
158, 195, 239; Boehme's four Imagination, as creating life, 151;
theories of, 173-182; His biog- as objectification of the will, 108,
raphy, 232-234; His desire for 109, 112, 232-234; Blake on the,
manifestation, 178-180; His double 94; creative, as applied to man,
aspect, 159; His rebirth, 192-196; 225; false, 215; the Divine, 188,
His self-knowledge, 239; His self- 182.
sacrifice, 195, 196, 239; knowl- Incarnation, The, 178, 192, 193.
edge of, 174, 178. See also Individuality, 17, 209-211, 217.
Trinity, Father, Son, Eternal na- Inge, W. R., 64n., 108n., I43n.
ture.
Goethe, J. W.
von, 61, 74. James, William, 35, 201, 202, 250n.
Good, evolution of, chap. V; defined, Jecht, R., 45n., 57n.
215, 221-227. See also Ethics, Jesus, 29, 30, 31, 249.
Evil. John, 30, 32, 39, 60.
Good act,evolution of a, 213. Jones, Rufus M., 66n., 69.
Greek philosophy, 26-29, 39, 41,
248. Kabbalah, 15, 84, 92, 135, 185n.
Kant I., 73, 74, 76, 107, 125, 127,
Hamberger, J., 60n., 172, 196. 141, 160, 170, 260.

Hamilton, C. H., 64n. Kelpius, John, 73.
Harless, G. C. A. von, 89. Kepler, J, 83.
Harmony or "Temperature," the goal Kielholz, 64.
of evolution, 145-152, 221, 233. Kingdom of heaven, 9, 10, 13, 31,
See also Conflict, Eternal nature 32, 34, 40, 153, 156-160, 238,
Hartlib, Samuel, 68. 249. See also Eternal nature.
Hartmann, E. von, 165, 197, 198. Knowledge, chap. IV; as self-knowl-
Heaven. See Eternal nature, King- edge, 115-117, 182, 183; as the
dom of heaven. birth of the Son, 200; Boehme's
Hegel, G. W. F., lln., 62, 64n., 73, theory of, 95-127; criticism of
76, 77, 90, 198, 260, 261; his Boehme's theory, 124, 125; for
266 INDEX
Mystical knowledge, see Vetstand; Martensen, H. L., 172.
for Rational knowledge, see Ver- Maurice, F. D., 69.
nunft; for Sensual knowledge, see McGiffert, A. C, 38.
Third nature form; in the dark Mechanism, 244, 251-259. See also
world, 223; in the Fourth nature Science, modern.
form, 147-153; in the three worlds, Melanchthon, P., 36, 259.
86, 121, 122; mystical, 16, 224; of Metaphysics, and ethics, 205-211.
each other, 119; of God, 174, 178; Microcosm, 9, 85, 88, 116-119, 131.
through opposites, 126, 147-150, Miller, James, 88n.
161, 162, 209, 237, 247. See also Milton, J., 150n., 181.
Manifestation. Mirror of consciousness, 190, 191.
Kober, Dr. Tobias, 51, 54, 55. See also Wisdom, Vernunft.
Molinos, Miquel de, 20.
Lasson, A., 77. Monasticism, 34, 65.
Lavater, J. C, 74. Monism, 8, 206, 211, 214. See also
Law, William, 62, 69, 71, 91n., 256. Dualism.
Leade, Jane, 67. Morgan, C. L., I65n.
Lee, Francis, 67. More, Henry, 68.
Leeds, Daniel, 73. Muggleton, Lodowick, 68n.
Lehmann, J. E., 40. Muirhead, J. H., 165.
Leibnitz, G. W., 259. Hugo, 163.
Miinsterberg,
Lessing, G. E., 74. Mysterium Magnum, The, 15, 192,
Leuba, J. H., 64n. 194, 195.
Life, 111, 145, 192, 223; and the Mysticism, Catholic, 40, 41, 248;
higher knowledge, 150-152; as a cognitive, 16; definition,
16; 15,
fundamental concept, 81-83; as ethics of, 215, 221-231, 244,
40,
union of two opposite phases of 245; for Mystical knowledge see
will, 123, 192-196, 214, 225. See Verstand; its ladder, 235; its
also Verstand, Harmony, Transi- paradox, 17, 125, 132; its psycho-
tion point, Holy Spirit. logical level, 244; its relation to
Lily, 77, 241. idealism, 22n. negative or ingo-
;
Light world, 161, 243. See also ing, 12, 18-21, 25, 27, 41, 221,
Eternal nature, Son, Fifth nature 236; positive or outgoing, 11, 18-
form, Sixth nature form, Seventh 21, 236; Protestant, 7, 35, 36, 38,
nature form. 40-43, 65-69, 249, 252; reli-
Love, the Fifth form, 153, 154; as gious, 16; types of, 15-23; volun-
creative, 152, 221-231; strength taristic, 21-23, 42, 202, 222, 224,
of, 227. 238.
Lucifer, 174, 208, 215, 233.
Luther, M., 32, 36, 37, 41, 89, 252, Nature no goal for will, 218-231.
259, 260. See also Protestant- See also Forms.
ism. Neo-Platonism, 12, 27, 28, 32, 83,
86, 106, 172, 181, 248; as an-
Maeterlinck, M., 99. cestor of alchemy, 84, 85. See
Man, the microcosm, 9, 116-119, also Mysticism.
235-241. See also Soul. Newton, Isaac, 70, 81.
Manifestation, through attention, Nietzsche, F. W., 219.
208; through opposition, 126, Novalis, 61, 63, 73, 74, 75, 117.
147-150, 161, 162, 180, 195, 209, Noyes, Alfred, 130.
213, 221, 246, 247. See also
Knowledge. Objectification of the will, 108, 109,
INDEX 267
112; summary of process, 232-234. Rebirth, 142-153, 212; as gradual,

See also Imagination. 241; in terms of knowledge, 148-
Oetinger, F. C, 63. 152; of God through pain, 192-
Opel, J. O., 58n., 77n. 196; of man, parallel to evolu-
Organism, 251; its evolution, 151- tionary process, 234-241 through
;
153; origin of, 223, 224. Wisdom, 201. See also Transi-
tion point.
jit, E.,66n. Reformation. See Protestantism.
Pain, function of, 179, 180, 192-196, Renaissance science, 8, 81-89, 163,
202, 213. See also Evil. 252.
Pantheism, 196, 211. Resignation, 219, 220, 237; func-
Paracelsus, Theophrastus, 72, 85, tion of, 226. See also Will, re-
88n., 122; and Boehme, 89, 90. signed.
Paradox, the mystical, 17, 125, 132. Richter, Gregorius, his persecution
Pastorius F. D., 73. of Boehme, 49-56.
Patmore, C, 190n. Rig Veda, 137n.
Paul, 30, 32, 60, 202, 249. Romanticists, 73-76, 104, 260.
Paulsen, F., 113. Rotation. See Third nature form.
Philadelphian Society, 67. Ruskin, J., 108n.
Philosophers' stone, 86, 87, 91, l6ln. Ruysbroeck, Johannes, 35.
Philosophy, function of, 4, 9, 125,
132, 171, 213, 231. Sacraments, 37, 97, 259.
Pietists, 58, 59n., 73. Saturninus, 135.
Plato, 28, 32, 38, 41, 78, 84, 160; Schelling, F. W. J., 60, 61, 71, 74,
and Paracelsus, 90. 76, 165, 180, 198, 260.
Play, 217, 218. Schlegel, F., 73, 75.
Plotinus, H6n. Schleiermacher, F. D. E., 73.
Pordage, John, 67. Schopenhauer, A., 6, 19, 21, 76, 77,
Principles, three, 121, 122, 161, 162, 99n., 108, 109, 115, 118, 141,
217; definition, 242; in various 157n., 159, 163, 197, 219, 220,
types of thought, 248; psychologi- 261.
cal meaning, 242-247. See also Schwenkfeld, C, 49, 59.
Trinity, Dark world, Light world, modern, 8, 24, 82, 84, 141,
Science,
Temporal world. 153, 251, 252; and ethics, 230;
Protestantism, 32, 35-39, 40, 249, compared with Boehme's thought,
251, 252; Boehme's indictment of, 163-166.
96-99; its doctrine of faith, 36, Science, of the Renaissance, 8, 81-89,
37, 96-99, 259; its dualism, 38, 163, 252.
39, 43; its ethics, 38; its type of Scotism, 42.
mysticism, see Mysticism. Scultetus, Bartholomaus, 50.
Second nature form, or expansion,
Quaker, 40, 68, 69, 73, 249. 14, 70, 114, 138, 161, 233; as
Qualities. See Forms. outgoing will, 236, 246. See also
Forms.
Ranters, 260. Seekers, 66.
Rationalism, 213, 246, 248; and Sensuality, 140, 246. See also Third
ethics, 206-211. form.
Reality, as opposition overcome, 182, Self-consciousness, 147, 148, 233;
192-195, 237, 239, 240; knowledge origin of, 165, 195.
of, 17. See Verstand. Selfishness, 219-220, 223; as basis
Reason. See Vernunjt, Wisdom. of will, 214, 215; as evil, 237.
268 INDEX
See also Evil, Third nature form, Tieck, L., 63, 73, 74, 76.
Will. Time and eternity, 109, 110, 131,
Self-knowledge, 115-117, 182, 183; 158, 216, 234, 250.
conditions of, 233; growth of, Tincture, 86, 87, 91.
232-234; of God, 239. See also Transition era, 7, 8, 81, 82, 83, 160,
Knowledge. 191.
Self-sacrifice, of God, 195, 196, 239. Transition point, and Absolute Will,
See also Transition point, Will. 237, 244; Fourth nature form, 142-
Sermon on the Mount, 34, 35, 221, 153, 195, 233; from duality to
249; its ethics, 244. actuality, 192-196. See also Re-
Seventh nature form. See Eternal birth, Absolute will.
nature. Trinity, 81, 141, 233; as absolute
Signatura Rerum, 178, 179. will, 181, 182; ideal, 182, 243;
Silesius, Angelus, 63. incarnated, 182; in man, 118; its
Six points, The, 178, 179. relation to the seven forms, 173-
Sixth nature form, 153, 154, 155. 182; Lutheran, 170; other the-
Smuts, J. C, 153n. ories, 198. See also Father, Son,
Social life, its evolution, 151, 152. Holy Spirit, Principles.
Socrates, 32, 78. Troeltsch, E., 9, 10.
Son, 23, 124, 145, 150, 158, 175, Truth, criticism of Boehme's theory,
176, 182, 195, 232, 244; born of 124, 125. See V
erst and for Mys-
the Virgin Wisdom, 188, 189, 200, tical truth. See Vernunft for Ra-
201. See also Trinity, Fifth na- tional truth.
ture form, Sixth nature form, Sev- Turba, 210.
enth nature form.
Sophia, 62, 64. See also Wisdom. Understanding. See Verstand.
Soul, 147, 200, 212. Ungrund. See Absolute will.
Sparrow, John, 67, 68, 256. Upanishads, 20, 21, 180.
Spencer, Herbert, 141.
Spener, Philip Jacob, 58. Valentinus, 135.
Spinoza, B. de, 74. Vaughan, Thomas, 87-88n.
Spirit, Holy, 24, 124, 175, 176, 182, Vaughan, R. A., 163.
232. See also Trinity, Life. Vernunft, or Reason, 132, 211, 214,
Spurgeon, Caroline F. E., 69, 70n. 234; and the seven forms, 148-150;
St. Martin, Claude, 77n. as intermediary, 122, 123; as wis-
Stratton, G. M., 62, 106. dom, 189; criticism, 124, 125;
Summum bonum, 217. definition, function, and limita-
Suso, H., 35. tions, 100-104; its psychological
Swedenborg, E., 72. level, 245; modern analogy, 127.
See also Wisdom.
Tagore, Rabindranath, 165. Verstand, or Understanding, 121,
Tauler, John, 35, 36. 132, 189, 211, 214, 234; and the
Taylor, Thomas, 68. seven forms, 148-150; criticism,
Temperature. See Harmony. 124, 125; its relation to Vernunft,
Temporal nature, 243; compared 100-104; modern analogy of, 127.
with Eternal nature, 157-160, 178. See also Life.
Third nature form or rotation, 139, Vetterling, H., 62n., I4ln.
140, 161, 246. See also Conflict, Violence, 220, 222, 226, 228, 229.
Sensuality. Virgin Sophia, 124, 232. See also
Three-fold Life, The, 176. Wisdom.
Three Principles, The, 176. Voluntarism and ethics, 206-211;
INDEX 269
and Mysticism, 21-23, 42, 202, evolution, 108; its inherent dual-
222, 224, 238; of Boehme, 104, ism, 14, 111-115, 126, 194, 195;
113. its relation to the seven forms,
173-182; nature will vs. spirit will,
Waite, A. E., 87n. 194; outgoing, 18, 20, 22, 24, 26,
Walter, Balthasar, 51, 52n., 57. 30, 39, 95, 111, 178, 181, 232, 236,
Walton, C, 70, 71, I4ln. 237, 238, 246, 251; own, 14, 102,
War, 228, 229. 220, 224; resigned, 11, 14, 149,
Watson, J., 120. 219, 220, 224; vs. intellect, 42.
Weigel, V., 59, 185n. See also Absolute will.
Weisse, C. H., 60, 190n. Wisdom or Idea, 182-202, 232, 233,
Western thought, 4, 24. 244; and Will, 201; an ideal for
"Westminster Confession of Faith," man, 198-201; as a model, 191,
37. 240; as beginning and end, 187;
Whitehead, A. N., 153n., 164, 232. as Divine imagination or idea,
Whitman, Walt, 99n. 188; as James' "aching void,"
Whittier, J. G., 73. 201 ; as mother of the reborn,
Will, analysis of each movement of, 200, 201; as revealed in Eternal
242-247; and wisdom, 201; as nature, 188; as structure of abso-
active and passive, 112; as lute will, 187; as the eye of eter-
Boehme's ultimate, 104-107; as nity, 187; compared to Plato's
form of activity, 105; as free, ideas, 191; compared with Kant's
106, 107; as three-fold, 96; cir- categories, 190; her various r61es,
cular, 22, 23, 28, 111, 150, 187, 184; in earlier literature, 185n.
192, 217, 238; ingoing, 18, 20, See also Vernunjt.
22, 25, 30, 39, 95, 111, 137, 178, Wordsworth, William, 19, 21.
181, 232, 236, 237, 238, 246, 251;
in modern psychology, 207; its Zwingli, H., 36, 37.
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THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

ATLANTA SAN FRANCISCO

MACMILLAN <fc CO., Limited

LONDON • BOMBAY CALCUTTA

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

Professor of Philosophy, Haverjord College, Pa.

Set up and printed. Published May, 1930.

SET UP BY BROWN BROTHERS LINOTYPERS

to interpret Jacob Boehme's answer to the central problem of

half of his exploration. They discovered his route from

preeminently a philosopher of evolution.

and the article by G. W. Allen under the heading Jacob

found it at the beginning of my study. A number of other

an interesting study which aims primarily at literary interpre-

in The Meaning of God in Human Experience, that I have

of the Mills College Library has kindly assisted in reading

from the outside, and a few patient workers have attempted

words that sound as mysterious as "Jabberwock," "snark,"

not flow through him unaltered, for the life-stream of his-

torical movements can never flow through a genius and

taught," was because he seized every conceivable chance

that lay open to him to quicken his mind and prepare it to

tems of modern philosophy.

has been successfully unlocked and interpreted he will

It takes the might of heaven and hell

to make a rose that blooms in the field, we should not expect

ever one may conclude as to his wisdom about the processes

II. Boehme's Life and Influence 45

IV. Symbol and Reality 95

V. From Nature to God. The Problem of Evo-

VI. From God to Nature. The Problem of Ema-

VII. Good and Evil 205

VIII. Recapitulation of Boehme's Evolutionary

As German Boehme never cared for plants

THE PROBLEM OF PRACTICAL MYSTICISM

testify to the apparent truth of the ancient observation that

The chief objective of philosophy is to discover the nature

and religion. Philosophy's own peculiar endeavor is to show

The world process is found to be at heart not alien to the

Jacob Boehme has been appropriately styled "the father

no less significant than its posterity, for in him culminated

gled for more than a millennium to demonstrate experi-

land and England in the middle of the seventeenth century.

mapped a return trip with equal care. In him were strangely

thought of the Renaissance.

tion rivets the attention of readers upon him as if he were

shoemaker of Gorlitz struggled to express the great experi-

This entire Dualism [he says], (pp. 665-666) ...

deeply rooted in the metaphysical constitution of man. It places him

motivation, but it will never be overcome on earth, either theoreti-

Boehme recognized the "metaphysical root" of the dual-

thought and calls him a "Barbarian." *

Although and blood cannot conceive the Divine Being, yet

Boehme's philosophical library was nature itself. "Thou