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]