CHAPTER VIII.
Μύστας δὲ νόος
Τά τε καὶ τά λέγει,
Βυθὸν ἄρῥητον
Ἀμφιχορεύων.
Σὺ τὸ τίκτον ἔφυς,
Σὺ τὸ τικτόμενον,
Σὺ τὸ φωτίζον,
Σὺ τὸ λαμπόμενον.
Σὺ τὸ φαινόμενον,
Σὺ τὸ κρυπτόμενον
Ἰδιαις α γαῖς.
Ἐν καὶ πάντα
Ἐν καθ᾽ ἑαυτὸ,
Κα διὰ πάντων.[[241]]
Synesius.
Willoughby’s Essay—Sixth Evening.
§ 6. Jacob Behmen.—Sketch and Estimate of his System.
So our Behmen, rejoicing in his supernatural light, is prepared to answer more questions than ever the Northern hero, Ganglar, put to the throned phantoms in the palace roofed with golden shields. Let us listen to some of his replies. We have been long in the penumbra—now for the depth of the shadow.
To begin with, Behmen must have an ‘immanent,’ as distinguished from the revealed Trinity. He attempts to exhibit the principle of that threefold mode of the divine existence, concerning which we could have known nothing, apart from Revelation, and which Revelation discloses only in its practical connexion with the salvation of man. His theory of the Trinity is not one whit more unsubstantial than many suggested by modern philosophical divines of high repute. In the Abyss of the divine nature, the Nothing of unrevealed Godhead, Behmen supposes that there exists Desire—a going forth, on the part of what is called the Father. The object and realization of such tendency is the Son. The bond and result of this reciprocal love is the Holy Spirit.[[242]]
Here a marked difference must be noted between Behmen and recent German speculation. With Hegel, for example, humanity is an indispensable link in the Trinitarian process. God depends on man for his self-consciousness and development. The deity of Behmen, on the contrary, is self-sufficing, and the circle of the divine blessedness does not stand indebted to man for its completion.
But does not every inward suppose an outward? As, therefore, there is an Eternal Spirit, so also is there an Eternal Nature. God is not mere being; He is Will. This Will manifests itself in an external universe.
The Eternal Nature, or Mysterium Magnum, may be described as the external correlative of the divine Wisdom. In other words, what are Ideas in the divine Wisdom, assume external form, as natural properties, in the Eternal Nature. Suso and Spenser sing the praises of the heavenly Wisdom. Behmen, too, personifies this attribute as the eternal Virgin. But Nature is distinguished from the maiden Wisdom as the prolific Mother of the Universe.
In the Eternal Nature, are seven ‘Forms of Life,’ or ‘Active Principles,’ or ‘Fountain-Spirits’ (Quellgeister), or ‘Mothers of Existence,’—typified in the seven golden candlesticks of the Apocalypse, and in the many examples of that significant number. These Forms reciprocally generate and are generated by each other. Each one of them is at once the parent and offspring of all the rest. As King Arthur for his knights, so Behmen has a kind of round table for them, that no one may hold precedence. He compares them to a skeleton globe, or a system of wheels revolving about a common centre. This heart or centre is the Son of God, as the sun is the heart and lord of the seven planets. The antitheses which these various qualities present to each other, in their action and reaction, are harmonized in the Supreme Unity. The opposition and reconciliation of ideal principles manifest the divine fulness,—constitute a play of love and life in the Divine Nature, the blessedness of Godhead. But the simultaneous action of these qualities becomes concrete in the visible universe. On our planet their operation has been corrupted by moral evil, and is therefore accompanied by painful strife; so that, with harsh clangour, the great wheel of life is turned by hostile forces.
The shortest method will be at once to catalogue the mighty Seven—the besiegers of that Thebes, your patience.
I. The Astringent Quality.
This first Fountain-Spirit is the principal of all contractive force. It is desire, and draws, producing hardness, solidity, &c. Rocks are hard because this quality is dominant, or primus in them, as Behmen phrases it. In organic nature it produces the woody fibre. It predominates in the planet Saturn, in salt, in bone, in wolves.
II. The Sweet Quality.
The second is the antagonist of the first,—the principle of expansion and movement. The pliant forms of plants, fluids, quicksilver,—and, among animals, the subtle fox, are examples of its characteristic supremacy.
III. The Bitter Quality.
This is the principle generated from the conflict of those two contraries, the first and second. It is manifest in the anguish and strife of being,—in the alterations of the revolving wheel of life. It may become heavenly rapture or hellish torment. Its influence is dominant in sulphur, in the planet Mars, in war, in dogs. It produces red colours, and reigns in choleric temperaments.
IV. The Quality of Fire.
The first three qualities belong more especially to the kingdom of the Father—of wrath, necessity, death. The last three to the kingdom of the Son—of love, freedom, life. The fourth quality is the intermediate or transition point between the two members of this antithesis of evolution. In the quality of Fire, light and darkness meet; it is the root of the soul of man; the source, on either side, of heaven and hell, between which our nature stands. In this lower material world, it is manifest in the principle of growth. In the sidereal world, its planet is the central sun. It produces yellow colours; reigns, among metals, in gold,—among animals, in the lion.
V. The Quality of Love.
This principle, in its higher operations, is the source of wisdom and glory. It predominates in all sweet things, in birds, in the intercourse of the sexes; and its star is Venus. Behmen, in some places, assigns this quality especially to the gracious Son.
VI. The Quality of Sound.
Hence, in heaven, the songs of the angels, the harmony of the spheres; in man, the five senses, understanding, and the gift of speech. This quality is primus in jovial temperaments, and produces blue colours.
VII. The Quality of Corporeity, or Essential Substance.
This is the quality by which all the rest come to manifestation. It falls, with the preceding, more peculiarly under the province of the Holy Spirit, as the searching and formative principle. It is the source in the heavenly world of the beautiful forms of Paradise, as the preceding is of its sweet sounds. On earth it is the plastic power ruling matter—the operative spirit of nature.[[243]]
It is curious to observe how Behmen’s theory takes hold of Chemistry with one hand, and Theology with the other. Paracelsus pronounced all matter composed of salt, mercury, and sulphur. Behmen adds, ‘It is even so, considering salt as the representative of the astringent or attractive principle—mercury, of the fluent or separative,—and sulphur, of nature’s pain in the resultant process of production.’ Again, the Father is the dark or fiery principle; the Son, the principle of light or grace; and the Holy Ghost, the creative, formative, preserving principle—the outbirth or realization of the two former. There are no materials so incongruous that a dexterous use of imaginative or superficial analogies cannot combine them. In this way, a medley of terms from the nomenclature of every science may be catalogued and bracketed in symmetrical groups of twos and threes. Behmen was too much in earnest, however, to carry such artificial method very far. He was more concerned about thought than orderly form. He could not postulate a fact to fill a gap in a synopsis. Though he mingles in much confusion the sciences of mind and matter, he does not confound their subjects, and regard them as different states of one substance. He would not affirm, with Schelling, that matter was mind dormant; and mind, matter realized and self-conscious.
We have seen that Behmen assigns the first three principles to the dark kingdom of the Father. When he describes that as a realm of wrath and darkness, he speaks chiefly from the human point of view. God is love. The Father regarded as the wrath-principle, cannot strictly be called God. But the very principle which makes love what it is, becomes, in respect to sin, so much wrath.
Yet, independently of man, and of such wrath as he may know, God would still have manifested himself in contraries. The divine One, the unmanifested Subject, seeking an object—desiring, as it were, to find himself, becomes what, for lack of better terms, Behmen has to call a craving darkness, or burning sense of want. Not that Deity suffers pain; but a certain passion must form the base of action. Realizing that object, the darkness becomes light. That light—the Son—had not been, but for the darkness—the Father. Then from the two, which are one, arise, in the Holy Spirit, the archetypal Forms of the universe. Thus, from the depth of the divine nature itself spring these opposites, Power and Grace, Wrath and Love, Darkness and Light; and thence, by a combination of forces, the manifestation of God in the quickened, changeful universe. But for such antithesis God had remained unrevealed. Without so much of antagonism as is essential to action, the Divine Being had not realized the glory of his nature.
At the same time, Behmen carefully excludes the notion of modern pantheism, that the Divine Idea develops itself by a process, and grows as the world grows.[[244]] ‘I have to relate in succession,’ he would say, ‘what takes place simultaneously in God,—to describe separately what is one in Him. He needs no method, no medium. The Eternal Nature is not his instrument for creating the visible universe. Thought and realization, with God, take place together, and are in Him identical.’ So, in describing a landscape, we have to relate severally the sounds and appearances of birds and clouds, hills and waters. But to him who is on the spot, the birds sing, the waters shine, the clouds fly, the trees bow on the hill, and the corn waves along the valley, at one and the same time. His senses are the focus of the whole: he sits in the centre. But description must travel the circumference.
We now arrive once more at Behmen’s ‘Yea and Nay’—that theory of antithesis before noticed: his explanation of the origin of Evil. These Contraries are his trade-winds, whereby he voyages to and fro, and traverses with such facility the whole system of things. He teaches that the Divine Unity, in its manifestation or self-realization, parts into two principles, variously called Light and Darkness, Joy and Sorrow, Fire and Light, Wrath and Love, Good and Evil. Without what is termed the Darkness and the Fire, there would be no Love and Light. Evil is necessary to manifest Good. Not that anything is created by God for evil. In everything is both good and evil: the predominance decides its use and destiny. What is so much pain and evil in hell, is, in heaven, so much joy and goodness. The bitter fountain and the sweet flow originally from one divine Source. The angels and the devils are both in God, of whom, and in whom, all live and move. But from their divine basis, or root, the former draw joy and glory, the latter shame and woe. The point of collision is the gate of anguish and of bliss.
Thus Behmen, from far away, echoes Heraclitus, and declares Strife the father of all things. What were Virtue, he would ask, without temptation? In life’s warfare lies its greatness. Our full wealth of being is only realized by a struggle for very life. Not till the height of the conflict between Siegfried and the dragon—not till the mountain is all flames and earthquake with that fearful fight, do the dwarfs bring out their hoard, and untold riches glitter round the victor.
Behmen was by no means the first to devise a hypothesis so plausible. We meet with it in quarters widely remote—in the pantheism of Jelaleddin Rumi and of John Scotus Erigena. But nowhere does it occupy so central a place, undergo such full development, receive such copious illustration, as in the theosophy of the Görlitz shoemaker.
Like most of those attempts to explain the inexplicable which have proved more than usually attractive, this theory has its truth and its falsehood. It is true that the harmonious development of life is neither more nor less than a successive reconciliation of contraries. The persistent quality, representing our individuality and what is due to the particular self, must not exist alone. The diffusive quality, or fluent, having regard only to others, must not exist alone. The extreme of either defeats itself. Each is necessary to, or, as Behmen would say, lies in the other. The two factors are reconciled, and consummated in a higher unity when the command is obeyed—‘Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.’ Towards this standard all moral development must tend. Pairs of principles, like the Personal and the Relative, the Ideal and the Actual, &c.—at once twin and rival—where each is the complement of the other, are very numerous. They are designed for union, as heat and cold combine to produce a temperate or habitable clime. Had Behmen confined his theory of contraries within such limits, we might have questioned his expressions;—we must, I think, have admitted his principle.
But when he takes good and evil as the members of such an antithesis, he is deceived by an apparent likeness. It would be a strange thing should any one declare courage and meekness, lowliness and aspiration, the work of God and the work of man, incapable of harmony. It is still more strange to hear any man pronounce any harmony possible between good and evil, sin and holiness. The former set of terms belong to one family, the latter are reciprocally destructive, totally incompatible. Here lies Behmen’s fallacy.
To regard goodness as a quality which would remain inert and apathetic were it not endowed with individuality and consistence by evil, and goaded to activity by temptation, is altogether to mistake its nature. An adequate conception of Virtue must require that it be benignly active within its allotted range.
The popular saying that a man should have enough of the devil in him to keep the devil from him, expresses Behmen’s doctrine. But the proverb has truth only as it means that of two evils we should choose the less: supposing imperfection inevitable, better too much self-will than too much pliability. It is true that greatness of soul is never so highly developed or so grandly manifest as amid surrounding evils. But it is not true that the good is intrinsically dependent on the evil for its very being as goodness. No one will maintain that He in whom there was no sin lacked individuality and character, or that he was indebted to the hostility of scribes and Pharisees for his glorious perfectness. Indeed, such a position would subvert all our notions of right and wrong; for Evil—the awakener of dormant virtue—would be the great benefactor of the universe. Sin would be the angel troubling that stagnant Bethesda—mere goodness, and educing hidden powers of blessing.
Moreover, we must not argue from the present to the original condition of man. Nor can any one reasonably rank among the causes by which he professes to account for sin, that which God has seen fit to do in order to obviate its consequences. To say, ‘where sin abounded, grace did much more abound,’ is not to explain the origin of evil.
Once more, if evil be a necessary factor in our development, that world from which all evil will be banished cannot be an object of desire. Heaven seems to grow wan and insipid. To exhort us to root out the evil of our nature is to enjoin a kind of suicide. It is to bid us annihilate the animating, active seed of moral progress. So death is life, and life death. Again, if man’s nature be progressive and immortal, his immortality must be one of unending conflict. Modern Pantheism escapes this conclusion by annihilating personality, and by resolving the individual into the All. A poor solution, surely—dis-solution. To Behmen, no consequence could have been more repugnant. No man could hold more strongly than did he, the doctrine of a future and eternal state, determined by the deeds done in the body. Yet such a cessation of personality might be logically urged from the theory which seemed to him triumphantly to remove so much perplexity.[[245]]
A tale of chivalry relates how fair Astrid wandered in the moonlight, seeking flowers for the wreath she was twining, but always, when the last had just been woven in, the garland would drop asunder in her hands, and she must begin again her sad endeavour, ever renewed and ever vain. Human speculation resembles that ghostly maiden. Each fresh attempt has all but completed the circuit of our logic. But one link remains, and in the insertion of that the whole fabric falls to pieces. It is a habit with fevered Reason to dream that she has solved the great mystery of life. And when Reason does so dream, her wild-eyed sister, Imagination, is sober and self-distrustful in comparison.
Neither the theist nor the pantheist can claim Behmen as exclusively his own. He would perhaps have reckoned their dispute among those which he could reconcile. Certain it is, that he holds, in combination, the doctrine which teaches a God within the world, and the doctrine which proclaims a God above it.
Says the pantheist, ‘Do you believe in a God who is the heart and life of the universe, the soul of that vast body, the world?’ Behmen answers, ‘Yes; but I do not believe in a God who is a mere vital force—a God of necessary process—a God lost in the matter He has evolved.’
Says the theist, ‘Do you believe in a God who has Personality and Character; who creates of self-conscious free-will; who rules, as He pleases, the work of his hands?’ Behmen answers, ‘Yes; but I do not relegate my Deity beyond the skies. I believe that He is the life of all creatures, all substance; that He dwelleth in me; that I am in His heaven, if I love Him, wherever I go; that the universe is born out of Him and lives in Him.’
Like Erigena, Behmen supposed that the ‘Nothing,’ out of which God made all things, was his own unrevealed abstract nature, called, more properly, Non-being.
And, now, to Behmen’s version of the story of our world. He tells us how God created three circles, or kingdoms of spirits, corresponding to the three persons of the Trinity. To each a monarch and seven princes were assigned, corresponding to the seven Qualities or Fountain-Spirits. One of these angelic sovereigns, Lucifer, fell, through pride, and all his kingdom with him. Straightway, as the inevitable consequence of sin, the operation of all the seven Qualities throughout his dominion became perverted and corrupt. The Fiery principle, instead of being the root of heavenly glory, became a principle of wrath and torment. The Astringent quality, instead of ministering due stability, or coherence, became hard and stubborn; the Sweet, foul and putrescent; the Bitter, fierce and raging. So with all the rest. Now, it so happened that the seventh Quality of Lucifer’s realm coincided, in space, with this world of ours. This earth, therefore,—once a province of the heavenly world,—was broken up into a chaos of wrath and darkness, roaring with the hubbub of embattled elements. Before man was created, nature had fallen. The creative word of God brought order into the ruins of this devastated kingdom. Out of the chaos He separated sun and planets, earth and elements.[[246]]
In the Black Forest lies a lake, bordered deep with lilies. As the traveller gazes on that white waving margin of the dark waters, he is told that those lilies, on the last moonlighted midnight, assumed their spirit-forms,—were white-robed maidens, dancing on the mere; till, at a warning voice, they resumed, ere daybreak, the shape of flowers. Similarly, on Behmen’s strange theory, all our natural has been previously spiritual beauty. The material of this world was, erewhile, the fine substance of an angel realm. All our fair scenes are as much below the higher forms of celestial fairness, as are the material flowers of lower rank in loveliness than the phantom dancers of that haunted lake. The ‘Heavenly Materiality,’ or ‘Glassy Sea,’ of the angelic kingdom, was a marvellous mirror of perfect shapes and colours, of sounds and virtues. Therein arose, in endless variety, the ideal Forms of heaven—jubilant manifestations of the divine fulness, gladdening the spirits of the praising angels with a blessedness ever new. All the growth and productive effort of our earth is an endeavour to bring forth as then it brought forth. Every property of nature, quickened from its fall by the divine command—‘Be fruitful and multiply,’ strives to produce in time as it did in eternity.[[247]] But for that fall, this earth had never held perilous sands nor cruel rocks; never put forth the poisonous herb, nor bred the ravenous beast; and never would earthquake, pestilence, or tempest, the deadly outbreaks of water or of fire, have accompanied the warfare of disordered elements. The final fires will redeem nature, purging away the dross, and closing the long strife of time.
Adam was created to be the restoring angel of this world. His nature was twofold. Within, he had an angelic soul and body, derived from the powers of heaven. Without, he had a life and body derived from the powers of earth. The former was given him that he might be separate from, and superior to the world. He was endowed with the latter, that he might be connected with, and operative in the world. His external nature sheltered his inner from all acquaintance with the properties of our corrupted earth. His love and his obedience surrounded him with a perpetual paradise of his own. He could not feel the fierceness of fire, the rigour of cold; he was inaccessible to want or pain. He was designed to be the father of a like angelic-human race, who should occupy and reclaim the earth for God,—keeping down the ever-emerging Curse, and educing and multiplying the Blessing which God had implanted.
But the will of Adam gradually declined from the inward paradisiacal life towards the life of this world. He commenced his downward course by desiring to know the good and evil of the world about him. Then Eve was fashioned out of him, and the distinction of sex introduced. This was a remedial interposition to check his descent. It was deemed better that he should love the feminine part of his own nature rather than the external world.[[248]] Each step of decline was mercifully met by some new aid on the part of God, but all in vain. He ate of the earthly tree, and the angelic life within him became extinct.
Behmen contends stoutly that no arbitrary trial or penalty was imposed on Adam. No divine wrath visited his sin on his descendants. His liability to suffering and death was the natural consequence (according to the divine order) of his breaking away from God, and falling from the angel to the animal life. It is characteristic of Behmen’s theology to resolve acts of judgment, or of sovereign intervention, as much as possible, into the operation of law. Thus, he will not believe that God inflicts suffering on lost souls or devils. Their own dark and furious passions are their chain and flame. He shares this tendency in common with most of the Protestant mystics. And I am by no means prepared to say that our mystics are altogether wrong on this matter.
No sooner had man fallen, than the mercy of God implanted in him the seed of redemption. He lodged in the depths of our nature a hidden gift of the Spirit, the inner light, the internal ‘serpent-bruiser,’ the light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world. All our beginnings of desire towards God and heaven are the working of this indwelling seed of life. Thus, salvation is wholly of grace. At the same time, it rests with us whether we will realize or smother the nascent blessing. Man is the arbiter of his own destiny, and voluntarily develops, from the depths of his nature, his heaven or his hell.
Lessons of self-abandonment, similar to those of the Theologia Germanica, are reiterated by Jacob Behmen. We are never to forget the ‘Nothingness’ of man, the ‘All’ of God. He pronounces means and ordinances good only as they lead us directly to God,—as they prepare us to receive the divine operation. With Behmen, as with the mystics of the fourteenth century, redemption is our deliverance from the restless isolation of Self, or Ownhood, and our return to union with God. It is a new birth, a divine life, derived from Christ, the true vine.[[249]]
But to this idea the theosophists add another. They have a physical as well as a spiritual regeneration, and believe in the revival, within the regenerate, of a certain internal or angelic body. The Lutheran doctrine of consubstantiation gave much encouragement to such fancies. According to Weigel, Christ had a twofold body—one truly human; another, called the heavenly, a procession from the divine nature. Furthermore, theosophy extends the influence of redemption to external nature. In the latter-day, ‘the time of the Lilies,’ all men will be the true servants of Christ, our race will have recovered its lost lordship over nature, and the Philosopher’s Stone will be discovered. That is, man will be able to extract from every substance its hidden perfectness and power.
The strongly subjective bent of Behmen’s mind has its good as well as its evil. He never long loses sight of his great aim—the awakening and sustenance of the inward life. That life was imperilled by formalism, by fatalism, by dogmatical disputes, by the greedy superstition of the gold-seeker. So Behmen warns men incessantly, that no assent to orthodox propositions can save them.[[250]] He argues against the Hyper-Calvinist, and against what he regarded as the Antinomian consequence of the doctrine of ‘imputed righteousness.’[[251]] He was a man of peace,—little disposed to add one more to so many controversies; seldom entering the lists unless challenged.[[252]] He justly condemned as profitless the Millenarian speculations in which some about him were entangled.[[253]] He had no sympathy with those who endeavoured to make ancient Jewish prophecy the fortune-teller of the present day. He declared that the true Philosopher’s Stone, to be coveted by all, was ‘the new life in Christ Jesus.’[[254]] Only by victory over Self could any win victory over nature. To the selfish and the godless no secrets would be revealed. Such men were continually within reach of wonders they might not grasp. So the sinful Sir Launcelot slept by the ruined chapel, and had neither grace nor power to awake, though before him stood the holy vessel of the Sangreall on its table of silver. The treatise on the Three Principles abounds in counsels and exhortation designed to promote practical holiness. The Büchlein vom heiligen Gebet is a collection of prayers for the private use of ‘awakened and desirous souls,’ somewhat after the manner of those in Doddridge’s Rise and Progress of Religion.
When Behmen finds that Scripture contradicts his scheme, on some minor point, he will frequently, instead of resorting to a forced allegorical interpretation, break away without disguise from the authority of its text. Thus, he says more than once, concerning passages in the Mosaic account of the creation, ‘It is evident that the dear man Moses did not write this, for it is contrary to,’ &c., &c.[[255]]
Such, then, is the track of Behmen’s journeying across the speculative wilderness, following the fiery pillar of an imaginary illumination—a pillar, be it observed, much like that column of glory which, as we stand upon the sea-shore, descends to us from the setting sun,—a luminous line which moves as we move, and which, whatever point we occupy, glows from the ripples at our feet up to the fiery horizon beneath which day is sinking. Behmen’s work was done chiefly among the educated. Had his mission been to the lower orders, we should probably have heard of him as the founder of a sect. His object was, however, at once to awaken the life and expound the philosophy of religion, within the Lutheran Church. He called attention to aspects of Christian truth which the systematic theology of that day had too much overlooked. The extensive circulation of his books, and the general welcome given to the main positions of his doctrine, show that his teaching supplied a real want in those times. There can be little doubt that one considerable class of minds, repelled by the assumption or the harshness of the current orthodoxy, was attracted once more to religion under the more genial form in which Behmen presented it. Others were shaken from the sleep of formalism by his vehement expostulations. When the Creed had so largely superseded the Word,—when Protestants were more embittered against each other than brave against the common foe, the broader, deeper doctrine of Behmen would offer to many a blessed refuge. For gold and precious stones shine among his wood and stubble. The darker aspect which some theologians had given to the Divine Sovereignty seemed to pass away, as the trembler studied Behmen’s reassuring page. Apart from scientific technicalities, and the nomenclature of his system, Behmen’s style and spirit were mainly moulded upon Luther’s German Bible. Any one who will take the trouble to look, not into the Aurora, but into the Book of the Three Principles, will find, along with much clouded verbosity and a certain crabbed suggestiveness, a racy idiomatic cast of expression, a hearty manliness of tone, indicating very plainly that Behmen had studied man, and the book which manifests man.
Though his voice is, for us, so faint and distant, we feel how near he must have come to the hearts of his time. Through volumes of speculative vapour, glance and glow the warm emotions of the man, in his apostrophes, appeals, and practical digressions. His philosophy is never that of the artificial abstraction-monger, or the pedantic book-worm. He writes of men and for them as though he loved them. Modern idealism expresses itself with a grace to which the half-educated craftsman was a total stranger. But its rhetorical adornment is a painted flame compared with Behmen’s fire. Unlike the earlier mystics, his theosophy embraces the whole of man. Unlike so much recent speculation, it is wrought out more by the aspiration of the soul than the ambition of the intellect. Amidst the fantastic disorder of his notions, and the strange inequalities of his insight—now so clear and piercing, now so puerile or perverse,—a single purpose stands unquestionable,—he desired to justify the ways of God to men. His life was a waking dream; but never did mystical somnambulist more sincerely intend service to man and praise to God.
Note to page 107.
Behmen derives Qualität from quallen, or quellen (our well), and understands by it the characteristic virtue or operation of anything. Thus the seven Qualities are the seven Fountain-Spirits—the prolific sources of their several species of influence. Aurora, i. § 3. The notion of pain (qual) in giving birth enters also into his conception of Quality.
The description of these seven Qualities occupies (amidst many digressions) a considerable portion of the Aurora, and is repeated, with additions and varieties of expression, throughout all his larger works. The summary here given is derived principally from the account in the Aurora, and the Tabula Principiorum, Wercke, vol. iv. p. 268. Similar classifications and definitions are contained in the three first chapters of the Drei Principien, and with more clearness and precision in the Mysterium Magnum, cap. vi. Compare also especially Aurora, cap. iv. §§ 8, 9; xiv. §§ 89, &c.; and xiii. 70-78.
These seven Fountain-Spirits, or Mothers of Nature, are a contrivance really novel. Paracelsus bequeathed to Behmen the term Mysterium Magnum, applying it to the Chaos whence he supposed light and darkness, heaven and hell, to derive their origin. But Behmen’s furniture or fitting-up of the idea is wholly original. Of the early Gnostics he could know nothing, and his Heptarchy of Nature is totally distinct from theirs. Basilides has seven intellectual and moral impersonations,—the first rank of successive emanations of seven, comprised in his mystical Abraxas. Saturninus has seven star-spirits—the lowest emanations in his scheme, and bordering on matter. Ancient Gnosticism devised these agencies to bridge the space between the supreme Spirit and Hyle. But Behmen recognises no such gulph, and requires no such media. With him, the thought becomes at once the act of God. Matter is not a foreign inert substance, on which God works, like a sculptor. The material universe exhibits, incorporate, those very attributes which constitute the divine glory. Nature is not merely of, but out of, God. Did there lie no divineness in it, the Divine Being would (on Behmen’s theory) be cut off from contact with it. With the Sephiroth of the Cabbala Behmen may possibly have had acquaintance. But, in the Cabbala, each Sephira is dependent on that immediately above it, as in the hierarchies of Proclus and Dionysius Areopagita. Behmen’s seven equal Qualities, reciprocally producing and produced, are not links in a descending chain,—they are expressions for the collective possibilities of being. Compare with them the seven lower Sephiroth of the Cabbala, called Might, Beauty, Triumph, Glory, Foundation, and Kingdom. Here we have mere arbitrary personifications of the magnificence displayed in creation. Behmen’s qualities are arbitrary, it is true. They might have been different in name, in nature, in number, and the fundamental principles of the system still retained. But who could have resisted the obvious advantages of the sacred planetary number, seven? Behmen, however, goes much deeper than the Cabbalists. He does not idly hypostatise visible attributes. His attractive and diffusive Qualities are the results of generalisation. His Fountain-Spirits are the seminal principles of all being. They are, he believes, the vital laws of universal nature. They are Energies operative, through innumerable transformations, in every range of existence,—in heaven, on earth, and under the earth.
Note to page 108.
In the following passage, Behmen endeavours to explain himself, and repels the charge of material pantheism.
‘I know the sophist will accuse me for saying that the power of God is in the fruits of the earth, and identifies itself with the generative processes of nature. But, harkye, friend, open thine eyes a moment. I ask thee—How hath Paradise existence in this world?.... Is it in this world or without it? In the power of God, or in the elements? Is the power of God revealed or hidden?.... Tell me, doth not God live in time also? Is He not all in all? Is it not written, “Am not I He that filleth all things,” and “Thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory, for ever?”
‘Here I bethink myself. I would stand clear of all blame from your misconception. I say not that Nature is God, far less that the fruits of the earth are He. I say God gives to all life its power—be that power used for good or evil,—gives power to every creature according to its desire. He Himself is all, yet is not in all natures to be called God, but only where there is light, in respect of that (nach dem Liechte) wherein He Himself dwells, and shines with power throughall his nature. He communicates his power to all his nature and works (allen seinen Wesen und Wercken), and everything appropriates that power of his according to its property. One appropriates darkness, another light: the appetite of each demands what is proper to it, and the whole substance is still all of God, whether good or evil. For from Him, and through Him, are all things; and what is not of his love is of his wrath.
‘Paradise is still in the world, but man is not in Paradise, unless he be born again of God; in that case he stands therein in his new birth, and not with the Adam of the four elements,’ &c., &c.—De Signatura Rerum, cap. viii. §§ 45-47.
Note to page 117.
In his practical writings, and especially in his letters, Behmen handles well the great theme of the life of Christ in us. The prayer of salutation in most of his letters is—‘The open fountain in the heart of Christ Jesus refresh and illumine us ever.’
Hear him, on this matter, in a letter to N. N., dated 1623:—
‘That man is no Christian who doth merely comfort himself with the suffering, death, and satisfaction of Christ, and doth impute it to himself as a gift of favour, remaining still himself a wild beast, and unregenerate.... I say, therefore, that no show of grace imputed from without can make a true Christian. Sin is not forgiven him by the speaking of a word once for all from without, as a lord of this world may give a murderer his life by an outward act of favour. No, this availeth nothing with God.
‘There is no grace whereby we can come to adoption, save simply in the blood and death of Christ. For Him alone hath God appointed to be a throne of grace in His own love, which He hath set in Him, in the sweet name Jesus (from Jehovah). He is the only sacrifice God accepteth to reconcile His anger.
‘But if this said sacrifice is to avail for me, it must be wrought in me. The Father must communicate or beget His Son in my desire-of-faith (Glaubensbegierde), so that my faith’s hunger may apprehend Him in His word of promise. Then I put Him on, in His entire process of justification, in my inward ground; and straightway there begins in me the killing of the wrath of the devil, death, and hell, from the inward power of Christ’s death.
‘For I can do nothing; I am dead to myself; but Christ worketh in me when He ariseth within. So am I inwardly dead, as to my true man; and He is my life; the life I live, I live in Him, and not in mine-hood (Meinheit), for grace slays my will and establisheth itself lord in place of my self-hood (Ichheit), so that I am an instrument of God wherewith He doth what He will.
‘Henceforth I live in two kingdoms;—with my outward mortal man, in the vanity of time, wherein the yoke of sin yet liveth, which Christ taketh on Himself in the inward kingdom of the divine world, and helpeth my soul to bear it.... The Holy Scripture everywhere testifieth that we are justified from sin, not by meritorious works of ours, but through the blood and death of Christ. Many teach this, but few of them rightly understand it.’
The other kingdom which, in his haste, Behmen forgot to specify, is the inward world of spiritual and eternal life, which he calls Paradise.—Theosophische Sendbriefe, xlvi. §§ 7, &c. He inveighs frequently against an antinomian Calvinism. But if any one will compare this letter with Calvin’s Institutes III. i. and III. ii. 24, he will find that, on the doctrine of union with Christ, Calvin and Behmen, in spite of all their differences, hold language precisely similar.
Note to page 117.
Behmen was well entitled to teach that lesson of tolerance which his age had so forgotten. In one of his letters he says, ‘I judge no man; that anathematizing one of another is an empty prating. The Spirit of God Himself judgeth all things. If He be in us, why need we trouble ourselves about such idle chatter? On the contrary, I rejoice much rather in the gifts of my brethren, and if any of them have received another gift to utter than have I, why should I therefore condemn them? Doth one herb, or flower, or tree, say to another, Thou art sour and dark; I cannot stand in thy neighbourhood? Have they not all one common Mother, whence they grow? Even so do all souls, all men, proceed from One. Why boast we of ourselves as the children of God, if we are no wiser than the flowers and herbs of the field,’ &c.—Theos. Sendbr. 12, §§ 35, 36. Again, in the same letter (§ 61), ‘Doth not a bee gather honey out of many flowers; and though some flowers be far better than others, what cares the bee for that? She takes what serves her purpose. Should she leave her sting in the flower, if its juices are not to her taste, as man doth in his disdainfulness? Men strive about the husk, but the noble life-juice they forsake.’
Exhortations to try the spirits, and warnings like those adverted to, not lightly to take whatever fancies may enter the brain, for special revelation, are given in Theos. Send. xi. § 64. The test he gives for decision between a true and a false claim to revelation, is the sincerity of desire for the divine—not self-glory; a genuine charity towards man; a true hunger, ‘not after bread, but God.’-Compare Aurora, cap. xix. § 77.
Note to page 118.
Carriere, in an excellent summary of Behmen’s doctrine, is inclined to idealize his expressions on this point. He would regard Behmen’s language concerning the fall and restitution of nature as symbolical, and understand him only in a subjective sense. But such, I feel persuaded, was not Behmen’s meaning. The idea that man, himself disordered, sees nature and the world as out of joint,—that the restoration of light within him will glorify the universe without, is comparatively modern. The original design of man, in Behmen’s system, requires a restitution in which man shall be once more the angelic lord of life,—the summoner and monarch of all its potencies. Carriere has pointed out, with just discrimination, the distinction between Behmen’s position and that of German pantheism in our times. But on some points he seems to me to view him too much with the eyes of the nineteenth century, and his judgment is, on the whole, too favourable. See his Phil. Weltanschauung der Reformationzeit, chap. xi.
The De Signatura Rerum abounds in examples of that curious admixture of chemical or astrological processes and phenomena with the facts of the gospel narrative, to which allusion has been made. The following specimen may suffice:—
‘Adam had brought his will into the poison of the external Mercury. So, then, must Christ, as Love, yield up his will also in the venomous Mercury. Adam ate of the evil tree; Christ must eat of the wrath of God; and as it came to pass inwardly in the spirit, so must it also outwardly in the flesh. And even thus is it in the philosophic work. Mercury, in the philosophic work, signifieth the Pharisees, who cannot endure the dear child. When he sees it, it gives him trembling and anguish. Thus trembles Venus also, before the poison of the wrathful Mercury: they are, one with the other, as though a sweat went from them, as the Artista will see. Mars saith, ‘I am the fire-heart in the body: Saturn is my might, and Mercury is my life: I will not endure Love. I will swallow it up in my wrath.’ He signifies the Devil, in the wrath of God; and because he cannot accomplish his purpose, he awakens Saturn, as the Impression, who signifies the secular government, and therewith seeks to seize Venus, but cannot succeed; for she is to him a deadly poison. Mercury can still less bear the prospect of losing his dominion,—as the high priests thought Christ would take away their dominion, because He said He was the Son of God. So Mercury is greatly troubled about the child of Venus,’ &c., &c.—De Signatura Rerum, cap. xi. §§ 18-22.
Note to page 118.
A word or two should find place here concerning the fate of Behmen’s doctrine. His friends, Balthasar Walther and Abraham von Franckenberg, were indefatigably faithful to his memory. The son of the very Richter who had so persecuted him, became their fellow-labourer in the dissemination of his writings. Throughout the latter half of the seventeenth century, Germans, Swiss, Hollanders, Englishmen, were busy with translations, commentaries, or original works, in exposition and development of his philosophy. Gichtel published the first complete edition of his writings in 1682, and afterwards went off on his own account into one of the craziest phases of mysticism. Orthodox Lutheranism long continued to assail the doctrine, as it had assailed the man. But the genial piety of Spener, and the large charity of Arnold—that generous advocate of ecclesiastical outcasts—did justice to the devout earnestness of the theosophist. In France, St. Martin became at once a translator and a disciple. His best representative in England is William Law. That nonjuring clergyman was elevated and liberalised by his intercourse with the mind of the German mystic, and well did he repay the debt. Law may be said to have introduced Behmen to the English public, both by his services as a translator, and by original writings in advocacy of his leading principles. As might be expected, the educated and more practical Englishman frequently expresses the thoughts of the Teuton with much more force and clearness than their originator could command. Several other Englishmen, then and subsequently, speculated in the same track. But they met with small encouragement, and their names are all but forgotten. Here and there some of their books are to be found among literary curiosities, whose rarity is their only value. If any would make acquaintance with Behmen’s theology, unvexed by the difficulties of his language or the complexity in which he involves his system, let them read Law. The practical aspect of Behmen’s doctrines concerning the fall and redemption are well exhibited in his lucid and searching treatise entitled The Spirit of Prayer; or, The Soul rising out of the Vanity of Time into the Riches of Eternity.
In Germany Behmen became the great mystagogue of the Romantic school. Novalis and Tieck are ardent in their admiration; but they are cold to Frederick Schlegel. This unconscious caricature of Romanticism (always in some frantic extreme or other) places Behmen above Luther and beside Dante. A plain translation of the Bible, like that of Luther, he could scarcely account a benefit. But a symbolical interpretation, like that of Behmen, was a Promethean gift. Christian art was defective, he thought, because it wanted a mythology. In Behmen’s theosophy he saw that want supplied. Alas, that Thorwaldsen did not execute a statue of the Astringent Quality—that Cornelius did not paint the Fiery—that Tieck has never sung the legend of the Mysterium Magnum—and that a Gallery of the Seven Mothers should be still the desideratum of Europe! Hegel condescends to throw to Behmen some words of patronising praise, as a distant harbinger of his own philosophical Messiahship. Carriere declares that Schelling borrowed many choice morsels from his terminology without acknowledgment. Franz Baader published a course of lectures on Behmen—revived and adapted him to modern thought, and developed a theosophy, among the most conspicuous of recent times, altogether upon Behmen’s model. Baader assures us that had Schelling thought less of Spinosa and more deeply studied Behmen, his philosophy would have been far more rich in valuable result than we now find it. Carriere, pp. 721-725.—Hegel’s Encyclopædie, Vorr. z. zweiten Aufl. p. 22. Hoffman’s Franz Baader im Verhältnisse zu Spinosa, &c. p. 23.
The judgment of Henry More concerning Behmen is discriminating and impartial. ‘But as for Jacob Behmen I do not see but that he holds firm the fundamentals of the Christian religion, and that his mind was devoutly united to the Head of the Church, the crucified Jesus, to whom he breathed out this short ejaculation with much fervency of spirit upon his death-bed,—Thou crucified Lord Jesus, have mercy on me, and take me into thy kingdom....
‘But the case seems to me to stand thus:—There being two main ways whereby our mind is won off to assent to things: viz., the guidance of reason, or the strength and vigour of fancy; and according to the complexion or constitution of the body, we being led by this faculty rather than by that, suppose, by the strength or fulness of fancy rather than the closeness of reason (neither of which faculties are so sure guides that we never miscarry under their conduct; insomuch that all men, even the very best of them that light upon truth, are to be deemed rather fortunate than wise), Jacob Behmen, I conceive, is to be reckoned in the number of those whose imaginative faculty has the pre-eminence above the rational; and though he was an holy and good man, his natural complexion, notwithstanding, was not destroyed, but retained its property still; and therefore his imagination being very busy about divine things, he could not without a miracle fail of becoming an enthusiast, and of receiving divine truths upon the account of the strength and vigour of his fancy: which being so well qualified with holiness and sanctity, proved not unsuccessful in sundry apprehensions, but in others it fared with him after the manner of men, the sagacity of his imagination failing him, as well as the anxiety of reason does others of like integrity with himself.
‘Which things I think very worthy of noting, that no man’s writings may be a snare to any one’s mind; that none may be puzzled in making that true which of itself is certainly false; nor yet contemn the hearty and powerful exhortations of a zealous soul to the indispensable duties of a Christian, by any supposed deviations from the truth in speculations that are not so material nor indispensable. Nay, though something should fall from him in an enthusiastic hurricane that seems neither suitable to what he writes elsewhere, nor to some grand theory that all men in their wits hitherto have allowed for truth, yet it were to be imputed rather to that pardonable disease that his natural complexion is obnoxious to, than to any diabolical design in the writer; which rash and unchristian reproach is as far from the truth, if not further, as I conceive, than the credulity of those that think him in everything infallibly inspired.—Mastix, his Letter to a private Friend, appended to the Enthusiasmus Triumphatus, &c., p. 294 (1656).
It will be sufficient to enumerate the mere names of several minor mystics, whose fancies are of little moment in the history of mystical doctrine. In the sixteenth century appeared David Joris, a Dutchman, who had almost fatal ecstasies and visions, and wrote and exhorted men, in mystical language, to purity and self-abandonment. Also Postel, a Frenchman, more mad than the former, who believed in a female devotee, named Johanna, as the second Eve, through whom humanity was to be regenerated. Guthmann, Lautensack, and Conrad Sperber, were theosophists who mingled, in hopeless confusion, religious doctrine and alchemic process, physics and scripture, tradition, vision, fancy, fact. During the first half of the seventeenth century, Brunswick was agitated by one Engelbrecht, a sickly hypochondriacal weaver, who imagined himself translated to heaven and hell, and commissioned to expound and preach incessantly. During the latter part of the same century, the madman Kuhlmann roved and raved about Europe, summoning sovereigns to his bar: Conrad Dippel improvised a medley of Paracelsus, Schwenkfeld, and Behmen; and John George Gichtel, a fanatical Quietist, bathed his soul in imaginary flames, believed himself destined to illumine all mankind, founded the sect of the Angel-Brethren, and seems to have ended in sheer madness. An account of these and other mystics, even less notable, will be found in Arnold’s Kirchen-undKetzergeschichte, Th. iii.