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.