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 Another Random Document on
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 Bacon emphasizes what has reference to the formal aspect of
investigation. For he says, “Natural philosophy is divided into two
parts, the first consists in the investigation of causes; the second in
the production of effects; the causes to be investigated are either
final or formal causes, or else material or efficient causes. The
former constitutes metaphysics; the latter physics. This last Bacon
looks upon as a branch of philosophy very inferior in point of dignity
and importance to the other and accordingly to ascertain the most
probable means of improving our knowledge of metaphysics is the
great object of his Organon.”[107] He himself says: “It is a correct
position that ‘true knowledge is knowledge by causes. And causes,
again, are not improperly distributed into four kinds: the material,
the formal, the efficient, and the final.’”[108] (Vol. I. p. 174, Vol. II.
p. 138.)
But in this connection an important point is that Bacon has
turned against the teleological investigation of nature, against the
investigation into final causes. “The investigation of final causes is
useless; they corrupt rather than advance the sciences except such
as have to do with human action.”[109] To Bacon the important
matter is to investigate by the study of causæ efficientes. To the
consideration of final causes such assertions as these belong: “That
the hairs of the eyelids are for a protection to the eyes; that the
thick skins and hides of living creatures are to defend them from
heat and cold; that the trees have leaves so that the fruit may not
suffer from sun and wind”[110]: the hair is on the head on account of
warmth; thunder and lightning are the punishment of God, or else
they make fruitful the earth; marmots sleep during the winter
because they can find nothing to eat; snails have a shell in order
that they may be secure against attacks; the bee is provided with a
sting. According to Bacon this has been worked out in innumerable
different ways. The negative and external side of utility is turned
round, and the lack of this adaptation to end is likewise drawn within
the same embrace. It may, for example, be said that if sun or moon
were to shine at all times, the police might save much money, and
this would provide men with food and drink for whole months
together. It was right that Bacon should set himself to oppose this
investigation into final causes, because it relates to external
expediency, just as Kant was right in distinguishing the inward
teleology from the outward. As against the external end, there is, in
fact, the inward end, i.e. the inward Notion of the thing itself, as we
found it earlier in Aristotle (Vol. II. pp. 156-163). Because the
organism possesses an inward adaptation to its ends, its members
are indeed likewise externally adapted as regards one another; but
the ends, as external ends, are heterogeneous to the individual, are
unconnected with the object which is investigated. Speaking
generally, the Notion of nature is not in nature itself, which would
mean that the end was in nature itself; but as teleological, the
Notion is something foreign to it. It does not have the end in itself in
such a way that we have to accord respect to it—as the individual
man has his end in himself and hence has to be respected. But even
the individual man as individual has only a right to respect from the
individual as such, and not from the universal. He who acts in the
name of the universal, of the state, as a general does for instance,
does not require to respect the individual at all; for the latter,
although an end in himself, does not cease to be relative. He is this
end in himself, not as excluding himself and setting himself in
opposition, but only in so far as his true reality is the universal
Notion. The end of the animal in itself as an individual is its own self-
preservation; but its true end in itself is the species. Its self-
preservation is not involved in this; for the self-preservation of its
individuality is disadvantageous to the species, while the abrogation
of itself is favourable thereto.
Now Bacon separates the universal principle and the efficient
cause, and for that reason he removes investigation into ends from
physics to metaphysics. Or he recognizes the Notion, not as
universal in nature, but only as necessity, i.e. as a universal which
presents itself in the opposition of its moments, not one which has
bound them into a unity—in other words he only acknowledges a
comprehension of one determinate from another determinate going
on into infinity, and not of both from their Notion. Bacon has thus
made investigation into the efficient cause more general, and he
asserts that this investigation alone belongs to physics, although he
allows that both kinds of investigation may exist side by side.[111]
Through that view he effected a great deal, and in so far as it has
counteracted the senseless superstition which in the Germanic
nations far exceeded in its horrors and absurdity that of the ancient
world, it has the very merit which we met with in the Epicurean
philosophy. That philosophy opposed itself to the superstitious Stoics
and to superstition generally—which last makes any existence that
we set before ourselves into a cause (a Beyond which is made to
exist in a sensuous way and to operate as a cause), or makes two
sensuous things which have no relation operate on one another. This
polemic of Bacon’s against spectres, astrology, magic, &c.,[112] can
certainly not be regarded exactly as Philosophy like his other
reflections, but it is at least of service to culture.
He also advises that attention should be directed to formal
causes, the forms of things, and that they should be recognized.[113]
“But to give an exact definition of the meaning which Bacon attaches
to the phrase formal causes is rather difficult; because his language
upon this subject is uncertain in a very remarkable degree.”[114] It
may be thought that he understood by this the immanent
determinations of things, the laws of nature; as a matter of fact the
forms are none else than universal determinations, species, &c.[115]
He says: “The discovery of the formal is despaired of. The efficient
and the material (as they are investigated and received, that is as
remote causes, without reference to the latent process leading to
the forms) are but slight and superficial, and contribute little, if
anything, to true and active science. For though in nature nothing
really exists beside individual bodies, performing pure individual acts
according to a fixed law, yet in philosophy this very law, and the
investigation, discovery and explanation of it, is the foundation as
well of knowledge as of operation. And it is this law, with its clauses,
that I mean when I speak of Forms.... Let the investigation of Forms
which are eternal and immutable constitute metaphysics. Whosoever
is acquainted with Forms embraces the unity of nature in substances
the most unlike.”[116] He goes through this in detail, and quotes
many examples to illustrate it, such as that of Heat. “Mind must raise
itself from differences to species. The warmth of the sun and that of
the fire are diverse. We see that grapes ripen by the warmth of the
sun. But to see whether the warmth of the sun is specific, we also
observe other warmth, and we find that grapes likewise ripen in a
warm room; this proves that the warmth of the sun is not
specific.”[117]
“Physic,” he says, “directs us through narrow rugged paths in
imitation of the crooked ways of nature. But he that understands a
form knows the ultimate possibility of superinducing that nature
upon all kinds of matter; that is to say, as he himself interprets this
last expression, is able to superinduce the nature of gold upon
silver,” that is to say to make gold from silver, “and to perform all
those other marvels to which the alchymists pretended. The error of
these last consisted alone in hoping to arrive at these ends by
fabulous and fantastical methods;” the true method is to recognize
these forms. “One leading object of the Instauratio Magna and of
the Novum Organon is to point out the necessity of ascertaining the
formal causes and logical rules.”[118] They are good rules, but not
adapted to attain that end.
This is all that we have to say of Bacon. In dealing with Locke we
shall have more to say of these empirical methods which were
adopted by the English.
 B. Jacob Boehme.
We now pass on from this English Lord Chancellor, the leader of
the external, sensuous method in Philosophy, to the philosophus
teutonicus, as he is called—to the German cobbler of Lusatia, of
whom we have no reason to be ashamed. It was, in fact, through
him that Philosophy first appeared in Germany with a character
peculiar to itself: Boehme stands in exact antithesis to Bacon. He
was also called theosophus teutonicus, just as even before this
philosophia teutonica was the name given to mysticism.[119] This
Jacob Boehme was for long forgotten and decried as being simply a
pious visionary; the so-called period of enlightenment, more
particularly, helped to render his public extremely limited. Leibnitz
thought very highly of him, but it is in modern times that his
profundity has for the first time been recognized, and that he has
been once more restored to honour. It is certain, on the one hand,
that he did not merit the disdain accorded him; on the other,
however, he did not deserve the high honour into which he was
elevated. To call him an enthusiast signifies nothing at all. For if we
will, all philosophers may be so termed, even the Epicureans and
Bacon; for they all have held that man finds his truth in something
else than eating and drinking, or in the common-sense every-day life
of wood-cutting, tailoring, trading, or other business, private or
official. But Boehme has to attribute the high honour to which he
was raised mainly to the garb of sensuous feeling and perception
which he adopted; for ordinary sensuous perception and inward
feeling, praying and yearning, and the pictorial element in thought,
allegories and such like, are in some measure held to be essential in
Philosophy. But it is only in the Notion, in thought, that Philosophy
can find its truth, and that the Absolute can be expressed and
likewise is as it is in itself. Looked at from this point of view, Boehme
is a complete barbarian, and yet he is a man who, along with his
rude method of presentation, possesses a deep, concrete heart. But
because no method or order is to be found in him, it is difficult to
give an account of his philosophy.
Jacob Boehme was born in 1575 of poor parents, at
Altseidenburg, near Görlitz, in Upper Lusatia. In his youth he was a
peasant boy who tended the cattle. He was brought up as a
Lutheran, and always remained such. The account of his life which is
given with his works was drawn up by a clergyman who knew him
personally, from information given by Boehme himself. Much is there
related as to how he attained to more profound knowledge and
wisdom by means of certain experiences through which he passed.
Even when a herd tending the cattle, as he tells of himself, he had
these wonderful manifestations. The first marvellous awakening that
occurred to him took place in a thicket in which he saw a cavern and
a vessel of gold. Startled by the splendour of this sight he was
inwardly awakened from a dull stupor, but afterwards he found it
was impossible for him to discover the objects of his vision.
Subsequently he was bound apprentice to a shoemaker. More
especially “was he spiritually awakened by the words: ‘Your heavenly
Father will give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him’ (Luke xi. 13),
so that, desiring to come to a knowledge of the truth, and yet
retaining the simplicity of his mind, he prayed and sought, and
knocked, fervently and earnestly, until, while travelling about with
his master, he was, through the influence of the Father in the Son,
spiritually transported into the glorious peace and the Sabbath of the
soul, and thus his request was granted. According to his own
account, he was then surrounded with divine light, and for seven
days he remained in the supremest divine contemplation and joy.”
His master for this dismissed him, saying he could not keep in his
service “house-prophets such as he was.” After that he lived at
Görlitz. In 1594 he rose in his trade to be master, and married. Later
on, “in the year 1600, and in the twenty-fifth year of his age, once
more” the light broke upon him in a second vision of the same kind.
He tells that he saw a brightly scoured pewter dish in the room, and
“by the sudden sight of this shining metal with its brilliant radiance”
he was brought (into a meditation and a breaking free of his astral
mind) “into the central point of secret nature,” and into the light of
divine essence. “He went out into the open air in order that he might
rid his brain of this hallucination, and none the less did he continue
all the more clearly as time went on to experience the vision in this
way received. Thus by means of the signatures or figures,
lineaments, and colours which were depicted, he could, so to speak,
look into the heart and inmost nature of all creatures (in his book De
signatura rerum this reason which was impressed upon him is found
and fully explained); and for this he was overwhelmed with joy,
thanked God, and went peacefully about his affairs.” Later on he
wrote several works. He continued to pursue his handicraft at
Görlitz, and died at the same place in 1624, being then a master
shoemaker.[120]
His works are especially popular with the Dutch, and for that
reason most of the editions are issued from Amsterdam, though they
were also surreptitiously printed in Hamburg. His first writing is the
“Aurora” or “Morgenröthe im Aufgange,” and this was followed by
others; the work “Von den drei Principien,” and another “Vom
dreifachen Leben des Menschen,” are, along with several others, the
most noteworthy. Boehme constantly read the Bible, but what other
works he read is not known. A number of passages in his works,
however, prove that he read much—evidently mystical, theosophic,
and alchemistic writings for the most part, and he must certainly
have included in his reading the works of Theophrastus Bombastus
von Hohenheim, known as Paracelsus, a philosopher of a somewhat
similar calibre, but much more confused, and without Boehme’s
profundity of mind. He met with much persecution at the hands of
the clergy, but he aroused less attention in Germany than in Holland
and England, where his writings have been often printed.[121] In
reading his works we are struck with wonder, and one must be
familiar with his ideas in order to discover the truth in this most
confused method of expression.
The matter of Jacob Boehme’s philosophy is genuinely German;
for what marks him out and makes him noteworthy is the Protestant
principle already mentioned of placing the intellectual world within
one’s own mind and heart, and of experiencing and knowing and
feeling in one’s own self-consciousness all that formerly was
conceived as a Beyond. Boehme’s general conceptions thus on the
one hand reveal themselves as both deep and sound, but on the
other, with all his need for and struggle after determination and
distinction in the development of his divine intuitions of the universe,
he does not attain either to clearness or order. There is no
systematic connection but the greatest confusion in his divisions—
and this exists even in his tables,[122] in which three numbers are
made use of.

I.
What God is beside nature and creation.
II.

Separability: Mysterium The first Principium.

God in Love. magnum. God in Wrath.
III.
God in wrath and love.

Here nothing definite to hold the moments asunder is shown,

and we have the sense of merely doing it by effort; now these and
now other distinctions are set forth, and as they are laid down
disconnectedly, they again come into confusion.
The manner and system which Boehme adopts must accordingly
be termed barbarous; the expressions used in his works prove this,
as when, for example, he speaks of the divine Salitter, Marcurius, &c.
As Boehme places the life, the movement of absolute existence in
the heart, so does he regard all conceptions as being in a condition
of actuality; or he makes use of actuality as Notion, that is to say he
forcibly takes natural things and sensuous qualities to express his
ideas rather than the determinations of the Notion. For instance,
sulphur and such like are not to him the things that we so name, but
their essence; or the Notion has this form of actuality. Boehme’s
profoundest interest is in the Idea, and he struggles hard to express
it. The speculative truth which he desires to expound really requires,
in order to be comprehended, thought and the form of thought. Only
in thought can this unity be comprehended, in the central point of
which his mind has its place; but it is just the form of thought that is
lacking to him. The forms that he employs are really no longer
determinations of the Notion at all. They are on the one hand
sensuous, chemical determinations, such qualities as acid, sweet,
sour, fierce, and, on the other, emotions such as wrath and love;
and, further, tincture, essence, anguish, &c. For him these sensuous
forms do not, however, possess the sensuous significance which
belongs to them, but he uses them in order to find expression for his
thought. It is, however, at once clear to us how the form of
manifestation must necessarily appear forced, since thought alone is
capable of unity. It thus appears strange to read of the bitterness of
God, of the Flagrat, and of lightning; we first require to have the
Idea, and then we certainly discern its presence here. But the other
side is that Boehme utilizes the Christian form which lies nearest to
him, and more especially that of the Trinity, as the form of the Idea:
he intermingles the sensuous mode and the mode of popularly
conceived religion, sensuous images and conceptions. However rude
and barbarous this may on the one hand be, and however
impossible it is to read Boehme continuously, or to take a firm grasp
of his thoughts (for all these qualities, spirits and angels make one’s
head swim), we must on the other hand recognize that he speaks of
everything as it is in its actuality, and that he does this from his
heart. This solid, deep, German mind which has intercourse with
what is most inward, thus really exercises an immense power and
force in order to make use of actuality as Notion, and to have what
takes place in heaven around and within it. Just as Hans Sachs
represented God, Christ and the Holy Ghost, as well as patriarchs
and angels, in his own particular manner and as ordinary people like
himself, not looking upon them as past and historic, so was it with
Boehme.
 To faith spirit has truth, but in this truth the moment of certainty
of self is lacking. We have seen that the object of Christianity is the
truth, the Spirit; it is given to faith as immediate truth. Faith
possesses the truth, but unconsciously, without knowledge, without
knowing it as its self-consciousness; and seeing that thought, the
Notion, is necessarily in self-consciousness—the unity of opposites
with Bruno—this unity is what is pre-eminently lacking to faith. Its
moments as particular forms fall apart, more especially the highest
moments—good and evil, or God and the Devil. God is, and the Devil
likewise; both exist for themselves. But if God is absolute existence,
the question may be asked, What absolute existence is this which
has not all actuality, and more particularly evil within it? Boehme is
hence on one side intent on leading the soul of man to the divine
life, on inducing the soul to pay attention to the strife within itself,
and make this the object of all its work and efforts; and then in
respect of this content he strives to make out how evil is present in
good—a question of the present day. But because Boehme does not
possess the Notion and is so far back in intellectual culture, there
ensues a most frightful and painful struggle between his mind and
consciousness and his powers of expression, and the import of this
struggle is the profoundest Idea of God which seeks to bring the
most absolute opposites into unity, and to bind them together—but
not for thinking reason. Thus if we would comprehend the matter,
Boehme’s great struggle has been—since to him God is everything—
to grasp the negative, evil, the devil, in and from God, to grasp God
as absolute; and this struggle characterizes all his writings and
brings about the torture of his mind. It requires a great and severe
mental effort to bring together in one what in shape and form lie so
far asunder; with all the strength that he possesses Boehme brings
the two together, and therein shatters all the immediate significance
of actuality possessed by both. But when thus he grasps this
movement, this essence of spirit in himself, in his inward nature, the
determination of the moments simply approaches more nearly to the
form of self-consciousness, to the formless, or to the Notion. In the
background, indeed, there stands the purest speculative thought,
but it does not attain to an adequate representation. Homely,
popular modes of conception likewise appear, a free out-spokenness
which to us seems too familiar. With the devil, particularly, he has
great dealings, and him he frequently addresses. “Come here,” he
says, “thou black wretch, what dost thou want? I will give thee a
potion.”[123] As Prospero in Shakespeare’s “Tempest”[124] threatens
Ariel that he will “rend an oak and peg him in his knotty entrails ...
twelve winters,” Boehme’s great mind is confined in the hard knotty
oak of the senses—in the gnarled concretion of the ordinary
conception—and is not able to arrive at a free presentation of the
Idea.
I shall shortly give Boehme’s main conceptions, and then several
particular forms which he in turn adopts; for he does not remain at
one form, because neither the sensuous nor the religious can
suffice. Now even though this brings about the result that he
frequently repeats himself, the forms of his main conceptions are still
in every respect very different, and he who would try to give a
consistent explanation of Boehme’s ideas, particularly when they
pass into further developments, would only delude himself in making
the attempt. Hence we must neither expect to find in Boehme a
systematic presentation nor a true method of passing over into the
individual. Of his thoughts we cannot say much without adopting his
manner of expression, and quoting the particular passages
themselves, for they cannot otherwise be expressed. The
fundamental idea in Jacob Boehme is the effort to comprise
everything in an absolute unity, for he desires to demonstrate the
absolute divine unity and the union of all opposites in God. Boehme’s
chief, and one may even say, his only thought—the thought that
permeates all his works—is that of perceiving the holy Trinity in
everything, and recognizing everything as its revelation and
manifestation, so that it is the universal principle in which and
through which everything exists; in such a way, moreover, that all
things have this divine Trinity in themselves, not as a Trinity
pertaining to the ordinary conception, but as the real Trinity of the
absolute Idea. Everything that exists is, according to Boehme, this
three-fold alone, and this three-fold is everything.[125] To him the
universe is thus one divine life and revelation of God in all things, so
that when examined more closely, from the one reality of God, the
sum and substance of all powers and qualities, the Son who shines
forth from these powers is eternally born; the inward unity of this
light with the substance of the powers is Spirit. Sometimes the
presentation is vague, and then again it is clearer. What comes next
is the explanation of this Trinity, and here the different forms which
he uses to indicate the difference becoming evident in the same,
more especially appear.
In the Aurora, the “Root or Mother of Philosophy, Astrology and
Theology,” he gives a method of division in which he places these
sciences in proximity, and yet appears merely to pass from one to
the other without any clear definition or determination. “(1) In
Philosophy divine power is treated of, what God is, and how in the
Being of God nature, stars and Elementa are constituted; whence all
things have their origin, what is the nature of heaven and earth, as
also of angels, men and devils, heaven and hell and all that is
creaturely, likewise what the two qualities in nature are, and this is
dealt with out of a right ground in the knowledge of spirit, by the
impulse and motion of God. (2) In astrology the powers of nature, of
the stars and elements, are treated of, and how all creatures
proceed from them, how evil and good are through them effected in
men and animals. (3) In theology the kingdom of Christ is dealt
with, as also its nature, and how it is set in opposition to hell, and
how in nature it wars with the kingdom of darkness.”[126]
1. What comes first is God the Father; this first is at once divided
in itself and the unity of both its parts. “God is all,” he says, “He is
the Darkness and the Light, Love and Anger, Fire and Light, but He
calls Himself God only as to the light of His love. There is an eternal
Contrarium between darkness and light; neither comprehends the
other and neither is the other, and yet there is but one essence or
substance, though separated by pain; it is likewise so with the will,
and yet there is no separable essence. One single principle is divided
in this way, that one is in the other as a nothing which yet exists;
but it is not manifest in the property of that thing in which it is.”[127]
By anguish is expressed that which we know as the absolute
negativity—that is the self-conscious, self-experienced, the self-
relating negativity which is therefore absolute affirmation. All
Boehme’s efforts were directed towards this point; the principle of
the Notion is living in him, only he cannot express it in the form of
thought. That is to say, all depends on thinking of the negative as
simple, since it is at the same time an opposite; thus anguish [Qual]
is the inward tearing asunder and yet likewise the simple. From this
Boehme derives sources or springs [Quellen], a good play on the
words. For pain [die Qual], this negativity, passes into life, activity,
and thus he likewise connects it with quality [Qualität], which he
makes into Quallity.[128] The absolute identity of difference is all
through present to him.
a. Boehme thus represents God not as the empty unity, but as
this self-separating unity of absolute opposites; one must not,
however, here expect a clearly defined distinction. The first, the one,
the Father, has likewise the mode of natural existence; thus, like
Proclus, he speaks of this God being simple essence. This simple
essence he calls the hidden; and he therefore names it the
Temperamentum, this unity of what is different, in which all is
tempered. We find him also calling it the great Salitter—now the
divine and now the natural Salitter—as well as Salniter. When he
talks of this great salitter as of something known to us, we cannot
first of all conceive what it means. But it is a vulgar corruption of the
word sal nitri, saltpetre (which is still called salniter in Austria), i.e.
just the neutral and in truth universal existence. The divine pomp
and state is this, that in God a more glorious nature dwells, trees,
plants, &c. “In the divine pomp or state two things have principally
to be considered; salitter or the divine power, which brings forth all
fruits, and marcurius or the sound.”[129] This great salitter is the
unrevealed existence, just as the Neo-Platonic unity is without
knowledge of itself and likewise unrecognized.
b. This first substance contains all powers or qualities as not yet
separated; thus this salitter likewise appears as the body of God,
who embraces all qualities in Himself. Quality thus becomes an
important conception, the first determination with Boehme; and he
begins with qualities in his work “Morgenröthe im Aufgang.” He
afterwards associates with this the conferring of quality, and in the
same place says: “Quality is the mobility, boiling, springing, and
driving of a thing.” These qualities he then tries to define, but the
account he gives of them is vague. “As for example heat which
burns, consumes and drives forth all whatsoever comes into it which
is not of the same property; and again it enlightens and warms all
cold, wet, and dark things; it compacts and hardens soft things. It
contains likewise two other kinds in it, namely Light and Fierceness”
(Negativity); “of which the light or the heart of the heat is in itself a
pleasant, joyful glance or lustre, a power of life ... and a source of
the heavenly kingdom of joy. For it makes all things in this world
living and moving; all flesh, trees, leaves, and grass grow in this
world, as in the power of the light, and have their light therein, viz.
in the good. Again, it contains also a fierceness or wrath which
burns, consumes and spoils. This wrath or fierceness springs, drives,
and elevates itself in the light, and makes the light movable. It
wrestles and fights together in its two-fold source. The light subsists
in God without heat, but it does not subsist so in nature. For all
qualities in nature are one in another, in the same manner as God is
all. For God” (the Father) “is the Heart.” On another occasion (Vom
dreifachen Leben des Menschen, chap. iv. § 68, p. 881) the Son is
the heart of God; and yet again the Spirit is called the heart
(Morgenröthe, chap. ii. § 13, p. 29) “or fountain of nature, and from
Him comes all. Now heat reigns and predominates in all powers in
nature and warms all, and is one source or spring in all. But the light
in the heat gives power to all qualities, for that all grow pleasant and
joyful.” Boehme goes over quite a list of qualities: cold, hot, bitter,
sweet, fierce, acid, hard, dense, soft qualities, sound, etc. “The
bitter quality is in God also, but not in that manner as the gall is in
man, but it is an everlasting power, in an elevating, triumphing
spring or source of joy. All the creatures are made from these
qualities, and live therein as in their mother.”[130]
 “The virtues of the stars are nature itself. Everything in this world
proceeds from the stars. That I shall prove to you if you are not a
blockhead and have a little reason. If the whole Curriculum or the
whole circumference of the stars is considered, we soon find that
this is the mother of all things, or the nature from which all things
have arisen and in which all things stand and live, and through
which all things move. And all things are formed from these same
powers and remain eternally therein.” Thus it is said that God is the
reality of all realities. Boehme continues: “You must, however,
elevate your mind in the Spirit, and consider how the whole of
nature, with all the powers which are in nature, also extension,
depth and height, also heaven and earth and all whatsoever is
therein, and all that is above the heavens, is together the Body and
Corporeity of God; and the powers of the stars are the fountain
veins in the natural Body of God, in this world. You must not
conceive that in the Body of the stars is the whole triumphing Holy
Trinity, God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. But we must not so
conceive as if God was not at all in the Corpus or Body of the stars,
and in this world.... Here now the question is, From whence has
heaven, or whence borrows it this power, that it causes such mobility
in nature? Here you must lift up your eyes beyond nature into the
light, holy, triumphing, divine power, into the unchangeable holy
Trinity, which is a triumphing, springing, movable Being, and all
powers are therein, as in nature: of this heaven, earth, stars,
elements, devils, angels, men, beasts, and all have their Being; and
therein all stands. When we nominate heaven and earth, stars and
elements, and all that is therein, and all whatsoever is above the
heaven, then thereby is nominated the total God, who has made
Himself creaturely in these above-mentioned” many “Beings, in His
power which proceedeth forth from Him.”[131]
c. Boehme further defines God the Father as follows: “When we
consider the whole nature and its property, then we see the Father:
when we behold heaven and the stars, then we behold His eternal
power and wisdom. So many stars as stand in the whole heaven,
which are innumerable, so manifold and various is the power and
wisdom of God the Father. Every star differs in its quality.” But “you
must not conceive here that every power which is in the Father
stands in a peculiar severed or divided part and place in the Father,
as the stars do in heaven. No, but the Spirit shows that all the
powers in the Father,” as the fountainhead, “are one in another as
one power.” This whole is the universal power which exists as God
the Father, wherein all differences are united; “creaturely” it,
however, exists as the totality of stars, and thus as separation into
the different qualities. “You must not think that God who is in
heaven and above the heaven does there stand and hover like a
power and quality which has in it neither reason nor knowledge, as
the sun which turns round in its circle and shoots forth from itself
heat and light, whether it be for benefit or hurt to the earth and
creatures. No, the Father is not so, but He is an All-mighty, All-wise,
All-knowing, All-seeing, All-hearing, All-smelling, All-tasting God, who
in Himself is meek, friendly, gracious, merciful, and full of joy, yea
Joy itself.”[132]
Since Boehme calls the Father all powers, he again distinguishes
these as the seven first originating spirits.[133] But there is a certain
confusion in this and no thought-determination, no definite reason
for there being exactly seven—such precision and certainty is not to
be found in Boehme. These seven qualities are likewise the seven
planets which move and work in the great Salitter of God; “the
seven planets signify the seven spirits of God or the princes of the
angels.” But they are in the Father as one unity, and this unity is an
inward spring and fermentation. “In God all spirits triumph as one
spirit, and a spirit ever calms and loves the others, and nothing
exists excepting mere joy and rapture. One spirit does not stand
alongside the others like stars in heaven, for all seven are contained
within one another as one spirit. Each spirit in the seven spirits of
God is pregnant with all seven spirits of God;” thus each is in God
itself a totality. “One brings forth the other in and through itself;”
this is the flashing forth of the life of all qualities.[134]
2. As what came first was the source and germ of all powers and
qualities, what comes second is process. This second principle is a
very important conception, which with Boehme appears under very
many aspects and forms, viz. as the Word, the Separator, Revelation
—speaking generally the “I,” the source of all difference, and of the
will and implicit Being which are in the powers of natural things; but
in such a way that the light therein likewise breaks forth which leads
them back to rest.
a. God as the simple absolute existence is not God absolutely; in
Him nothing can be known. What we know is something different—
but this “different” is itself contained in God as the perception and
knowledge of God. Hence of the second step Boehme says that a
separation must have taken place in this temperament. “No thing
can become manifest to itself without opposition; for if it has nothing
to withstand it, it always goes forward on its own account and does
not go back within itself. But if it does not go back into itself as into
that from which it originally arose, it knows nothing of its original
state.” Original state [Urstand] he makes use of for substance; and it
is a pity that we cannot use this and many other striking
expressions. “Without adversity life would have no sensibility nor will
nor efficacy, neither understanding nor science. Had the hidden God
who is one solitary existence and will not of His own will brought
Himself out of Himself, out of the eternal knowledge in the
Temperamento, into divisibility of will, and introduced this same
element of divisibility into an inclusiveness” (Identity) “so as to
constitute it a natural and creaturely life, and had this element of
separation in life not come into warfare, how was the will of God
which is only one to be revealed to Himself? How could a knowledge
of itself be present in a solitary will?”[135] We see that Boehme is
elevated infinitely above the empty abstraction of the highest reality,
etc.
Boehme continues: “The commencement of all Beings is the
Word as the breath of God, and God has become the eternal One of
eternity and likewise remains so in eternity. The Word is the eternal
beginning and remains so eternally, for it is the revelation of the
eternal One through and by which the divine power is brought into
one knowledge of somewhat. By the Word we understand the
revealed will of God: by the Word we mean God the hidden God,
from whom the Word eternally springs forth. The Word is the efflux
of the divine One, and yet God Himself as His revelation.” Λόγος is
more definite than Word, and there is a delightful double significance
in the Greek expression indicating as it does both reason and
speech. For speech is the pure existence of spirit; it is a thing which
when once heard goes back within itself. “What has flowed out is
wisdom, beginning and cause of all powers, colours, virtue and
qualities.”[136]
Of the Son Boehme says: “The Son is” of the Father and “in the
Father, the heart of the Father or light, and the Father beareth him
ever, from eternity to eternity.” Thus “the Son is” indeed “another
Person from the Father, though no other,” but the same “God as the
Father,” whose image he is.[137] “The Son is the Heart” or the
pulsating element “in the Father; all the powers which are in the
Father are the propriety of the Father; and the Son is the heart or
the kernel in all the powers in the whole Father, and he is the cause
of the springing joy in all powers in the whole Father. From the Son
the eternal joy rises and springs in all the powers of the Father, as
the sun does in the heart of the stars. It signifies the Son, as the
circle of the stars signifies the manifold powers of the Father; it
lightens the heavens, the stars and the deep above the earth,
working in all things that are in this world; it enlightens and gives
power to all the stars and tempers their power. The Son of God is
continually generated from all the powers of his Father from eternity,
just as the sun is born of the stars; He is ever born and is not made,
and is the heart and lustre shining forth from all powers. He shines
in all powers of the Father, and his power is the moving, springing
joy in all the powers of the Father, and shines in the whole Father as
the sun does in the whole world. For if the Son did not shine in the
Father, the Father would be a dark valley; for the Father’s power
would not rise from eternity to eternity, and so the divine Being
would not subsist.”[138] This life of the Son is an important matter;
and in regard to this issuing forth and manifestation Boehme has
likewise brought forward the most important assertions.
 b. “From such a revelation of powers in which the will of the
eternal One contemplates itself, flows the understanding and the
knowledge of the something [Ichts], since the eternal will
contemplates itself in the something [Ichts].” “Ichts” is a play upon
the word “Nichts” (nothing), for it is simply the negative; yet it is at
the same time the opposite of nothing, since the Ich (Ego) of self-
consciousness is contained in it. The Son, the something, is thus “I,”
consciousness, self-consciousness: God is not only the abstract
neutral but likewise the gathering together of Himself into the point
of Being-for-self. The “other” of God is thus the image of God. “This
similitude is the Mysterium magnum, viz. the creator of all beings
and creatures; for it is the separator” (of the whole) “in the efflux of
the will which makes the will of the eternal One separable—the
separability in the will from which powers and qualities take their
rise.” This separator is “constituted the steward of nature, by whom
the eternal will rules, makes, forms and constitutes all things.” The
separator is effectuating and self-differentiating, and Boehme calls
this “Ichts,” likewise Lucifer, the first-born Son of God, the creaturely
first-born angel who was one of the seven spirits. “But this Lucifer
has fallen and Christ has come in his place.”[139] This is the
connection of the devil with God, namely other-Being and then
Being-for-self or Being-for-one, in such a way that the other is for
one; and this is the origin of evil in God and out of God. This is the
furthest point of thought reached by Jacob Boehme. He represents
this Fall of Lucifer as that the “Ichts,” i.e. self-knowledge, the “I”
[Ichheit] (a word which we find used by him), the inward imagining
of self, the inward fashioning of self (the being-for-self), is the fire
which absorbs all things. This is the negative side in the separator,
the anguish; or it is the wrath of God. This divine wrath is hell and
the devil, who through himself imagines himself into himself. This is
very bold and speculative; Boehme here seeks to show in God
Himself the sources of the divine anger. He also calls the will of the
something [“Ichts”] self-hood; it is the passing over of the
something [“Ichts”] into the nothing [Nichts], the “I” imagining itself
within itself. He says: “Heaven and hell are as far removed from one
another as day and night, as something and nothing.” Boehme has
really here penetrated into the utmost depths of divine essence; evil,
matter, or whatever it has been called, is the I = I, the Being-for-
self, the true negativity. Before this it was the nonens which is itself
positive, the darkness; but the true negativity is the “I.” It is not
anything bad because it is called the evil; it is in mind alone that evil
exists, because it is conceived therein as it is in itself. “Where the
will of God willeth in anything, there God is manifested, and in that
manifestation the angels also dwell; but where God in any thing
willeth not with the will of the thing, there God is not manifested to
it, but dwelleth” (there) “in Himself without the co-operating of the
thing;” in that case “in that thing is its own will, and there the devil
dwelleth and all whatever is without God.”[140]
Boehme in his own way sets forth the form further assumed in
this process in a pictorial manner. This “Separator deduces qualities
from itself, from which the infinite manifold arises, and through
which the eternal One makes itself perceptible” (so that it is for
others) “not according to the unity, but in accordance with the efflux
of the unity.” Implicit Being and the manifold are absolutely opposed
through the Notion, which Boehme did not have: Being-for-self
implies Being-for-another and retrogression into the opposite.
Boehme sways backwards and forwards in apparent contradictions,
and does not well know how to find a way out of the difficulty. “But
the efflux is carried on to the greatest extreme possible, to the
generation of fire”—dark fire without light, darkness, the hidden, the
self;[141]—“in which fiery nature,” however, since this fire rises and
shoots up, “the eternal One becomes majestic and a light,” and this
light which there breaks forth is the form which the other principle
assumes. This is the return to the One. “Thereby” (through fire) “the
eternal power becomes desirous and effectual and” (fire) “is the
original condition” (essence) “of the sensitive” (feeling) “life, where
in the Word of power an eternal sensitive life first takes its origin.
For if life had no sensitiveness, it would have no will nor efficacy; but
pain”—anguish, suffering—first “makes it” (all life) “effectual and
endows it with will. And the light of such kindling through fire makes
it joyous, for it is an anointment,” joy and loveliness “of
painfulness.”[142]
Boehme turns this round in many ways in order to grasp the
something [Ichts], the Separator, as it “rises”[143] from the Father.
The qualities rise in the great Salitter, stir, raise, and move [rügen]
themselves. Boehme has there the quality of astringency in the
Father, and he then represents the process of the something [Ichts]
as a sharpness, a drawing together, as a flash of lightning that
breaks forth. This light is Lucifer. The Being-for-self, the self-
perception, is by Boehme called the drawing together into a point.
That is astringency, sharpness, penetration, fierceness; to this
pertains the wrath of God, and here Boehme in this manner grasps
the “other” of God in God Himself. “This source can be kindled
through great motion or elevation. Through the contraction the
creaturely Being is formed so that a heavenly Corpus may be”
intelligibly “formed. But if it”—the sharpness—“be kindled through
elevation, which those creatures only can do which are created out
of the divine Salitter, then it is a burning source-vein of the wrath of
God. The flash is the mother of light; for the flash generates the
light, and is the Father of the fierceness; for the fierceness abides in
the flash as a seed in the father, and that flash generates also the
tone or sound”—the flash is, speaking generally, the absolute
generator. The flash is still connected with pain; light is what brings
intelligence. The divine birth is the going forth of the flash, of the life
of all qualities.[144] This is all from the Aurora.
In the Quæstionibus theosophicis Boehme makes particular use
of the form of Yes and No for the separator, for this opposition. He
says: “The reader must know that in Yes and No all things consist,
whether divine, devilish, earthly, or what they may be called. The
One as the Yes is pure power and life, and it is the truth of God or
God Himself. He would be unknowable in Himself, and in Him there
would be no joy nor elevation, nor feeling”—life—“without the No.
The No is a counterstroke of the Yes, or of the truth” (this negativity
is the principle of all knowledge, comprehension), “that the truth
may be manifest and be a something wherein there is a contrarium
in which there is the eternal love, moving, feeling, and willing, and
demanding to be loved. And yet we cannot say that the Yes is
separated from the No, and that they are two things in proximity; for
they are only one thing, but they separate themselves into two
beginnings and make two centra, where each works and wills in
itself. Without those two, which are continually in strife, all things
would be a nothing, and would stand still without movement. If the
eternal will did not itself flow from itself and introduce itself into
receptibility, there would be no form nor distinction, for all powers
would” then “be one power. Neither could there be understanding in
that case, for the understanding arises” (has its substance) “in the
differentiation of the manifold, where one property sees, proves and
wills the others. The will which has flowed out wills dissimilarity, so
that it may be distinguished from similarity and be its own
something—and that something may exist, that the eternal seeing
may see and feel. And from the individual will arises the No, for it
brings itself into ownness, i.e. receptivity of self. It desires to be
something and does not make itself in accordance with unity; for
unity is a Yes which flows forth, which ever stands thus in the
breathing forth of itself, being imperceptible; for it has nothing in
which it can find itself excepting in the receptivity of the dissentient
will, as in the No which is counterstroke to the Yes, in which the Yes
is indeed revealed, and in which it possesses something which it can
will. And the No is therefore called a No, because it is a desire
turned inwards on itself, as if it were a shutting up into negativity.
The emanated seeking will is absorbent and comprehends itself
within itself, from it come forms and qualities: (1) Sharpness, (2)
Motion, (3) Feeling. (4) The fourth property is Fire as the flash of
light; this rises in the bringing together of the great and terrible
sharpness and the unity. Thus in the contact a Flagrat [Schrack]
results, and in this Flagrat [Schrack] unity is apprehended as being a
Flash or Gleam, an exulting joy.” That is the bursting forth of the
unity. “For thus the light arises in the midst of the darkness, for the
unity becomes a light, and the receptivity of the carnal will in the
qualities becomes a Spirit-fire which has its source and origin out of
the sharp, cold astringency. And according to that, God is an angry”
and “jealous God,” and in this we have evil. “(a) The first quality of
the absorption is the No; (b) Sharpness; (c) Hardness; (d) Feeling;
(e) the source of fire, hell or hollowness, Hiddenness. (5) The fifth
quality, Love, makes in the fire, as in pain, another Principium as a
great fire of love.”[145] These are the main points under the second
head. In such depths Boehme keeps struggling on, for to him
conceptions are lacking, and there are only religious and chemical
forms to be found; and because he uses these in a forced sense in
order to express his ideas, not only does barbarism of expression
result, but incomprehensibility as well.
c. “From this eternal operation of the sensation the visible world
sprang; the world is the Word which has flowed forth and has
disposed itself into qualities, since in qualities the particular will has
arisen. The Separator has made it a will of its own after such a
fashion.”[146] The world is none other than the essence of God made
creaturely.[147] Hence “If thou beholdest the Deep” of the heavens,
“the Stars, the Elements and the Earth,” and what they have brought
forth, “then thou” certainly “comprehendest not with thy eyes the
bright and clear Deity, though indeed it is” likewise “there and in
them.” Thou seest only their creaturely manifestation. “But if thou
raisest thy thoughts and considerest ... God who rules in holiness in
this government or dominion, then thou breakest through the
heaven of heavens and apprehendest God at His holy heart. The
powers of heaven ever operate in images, growths and colours, in
order to reveal the holy God, so that He may be in all things
known.”[148]
3. Finally what comes third in these three-fold forms is the unity
of the light, of the separator and power: this is the spirit, which is
already partially implied in what has preceded. “All the stars signify
the power of the Father, and from them issues the sun” (they make
themselves a counterstroke to unity). “And from all the stars there
goes forth the power which is in every star, into the Deep, and the
power, heat and shining of the sun goes likewise into the Deep”—
back to the stars, into the power of the Father. “And in the Deep the
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