Part 9
Naturally I have not the least intention of blurring the difference that exists between a scientist of the sixteenth and one of the nineteenth century. It was, indeed, this latter century which for the first time was able to see, in the full scientific sense, the phenomena of living beings in such a connection that their natural relationship and actual descent, right up to man, stood out clearly before one’s eyes. Science sees only a natural process where Linnæus in the eighteenth century saw a spiritual process and characterised it in the words: “There are counted as many species of living beings, as there were created different forms in the beginning.” While thus in Linnæus’s time, the Spirit had still to be transferred into the spacial world and have assigned to it the task of spiritually generating the forms of life, or “creating” them: the natural science of the nineteenth century could give to Nature what belonged to Nature, and to Spirit what belonged to Spirit. To Nature is even assigned the task of explaining her own creations; and the Spirit can plunge into itself there, where alone it is to be found, in the inner being of man.
But although in a certain sense Paracelsus thinks according to the spirit of his age, yet he has grasped the relationship of man to Nature in a profound manner, especially in relation to the idea of Evolution, of Becoming. He did not see in the Root-Being of the universe something which in any sense is there as a finished thing, but he grasped the Divine in the process of Becoming. Thereby he was enabled truly to ascribe to man a self-creative activity. For if the divine root of being is, as it were, given once for all, then there can be no question of any truly creative activity in man. It is not man, living in time, who then creates, but it is God, who is from Eternity, that creates. But for Paracelsus there is no such God from Eternity. For him there is only an eternal happening, and man is one link in this eternal happening. What man forms, was previously in no sense existent. What man creates, is, as he creates it, a new, original creation. If it is to be called divine, it can only be so-called in the sense in which it is a human creation. Therefore Paracelsus can assign to man a rôle in the building of the universe, which makes him a co-architect in its creation. The divine root of being is _without_ man, not that which it is _with_ man.
“For nature brings nothing to light, which as such is perfect, but man must make it perfect.” This self-creative activity of man in the building of the universe is what Paracelsus calls Alchemy. “This perfecting is Alchemy. Thus the Alchemist is the baker, when he bakes bread, the vintager, when he makes wine, the weaver, when he makes cloth.” Paracelsus aims at being an Alchemist in his own domain as a Physician. “Therefore I may well write so much here about Alchemy, that ye may well understand it, and experience that which it is and how it is to be understood; and not find a stumbling-block therein that neither Gold nor Silver shall come to thee therefrom. But have regard thereunto, that the Arcana [curative means] be revealed unto thee.... The third pillar of medicine is Alchemy, for the preparation of the medicines cannot come to pass without it, because Nature cannot be made use of without Art.”
In the strictest sense, therefore, the eyes of Paracelsus are directed to Nature, in order to overhear from herself what she has to say about that which she brings forth. He seeks to explore the laws of chemistry, so that, in his sense, he may work as an Alchemist. He pictures to himself all bodies as compounded out of three root-substances: Salt, Sulphur, and Mercury. What he thus names, naturally does not coincide with that which later chemistry solely and strictly calls by these names; just as little as that which Paracelsus conceives of as the root-substance is such in the sense of our later chemistry. Different things are called by the same names at different times. What the ancients called the four elements: Earth, Water, Air, and Fire, we still have to-day. But we call these four “elements” no longer “elements,” but states of aggregation and have for them the designations: solid, liquid, gaseous and etheric. The Earth, for instance, was for the ancients not earth, but the “solid.”
Again, we can clearly recognise the three root-substances of Paracelsus in contemporary conceptions, though not in present names of like sound. For Paracelsus, dissolution in a liquid and burning are the two most important chemical processes which he utilises. If a body be dissolved or burnt, it breaks up into its parts. Something remains behind as insoluble; something dissolves, or is burnt. What is left behind is to him of the nature of Salt; the soluble (liquid) of the nature of Mercury; while he terms Sulphur-like the part that can be burnt.
All this, taken as relating to material things, may leave the man cold who cannot look out beyond such natural processes; whoever seeks at all costs to grasp the spirit with his senses, will people these processes with all sorts of ensouling beings. He, however, who like Paracelsus knows how to regard them in connection with the whole, which permits its secret to become revealed in man’s inner being,--he accepts them, as the senses offer them; he does not first re-interpret them; for just as the occurrences of Nature lie before us in their sensible reality, so too do they, in their own way, reveal to us the riddle of existence. That which through their sensible reality they have to unveil from within the soul of man, stands, for him who strives after the light of higher knowledge, far higher than all supernatural wonders that man can invent or get revealed to him about their suppositious “spirit.” There is no “Spirit of Nature,” capable of uttering loftier truths than the mighty works of Nature herself, when our soul links itself in friendship with that Nature and listens to the revelations of her secrets in intimate and tender intercourse. Such friendship with Nature was what Paracelsus sought.
VALENTINE WEIGEL AND JACOB BOEHME
In the view of Paracelsus, what mattered most was to acquire ideas about Nature which should breathe the spirit of the higher insight that he represented. A thinker related to him, who applied the same mode of conceiving things to his own nature especially, is VALENTINE WEIGEL (1533-1588). He grew up out of Protestant theology in a like sense to that in which Eckhart, Tauler, and Suso grew up out of Roman Catholic theology. He has predecessors in Sebastian Frank and Caspar Schwenckfeldt. These two, as contrasted with the orthodox Churchmen clinging to external profession, pointed downwards to the deepening of the inner life. For them it is not that Jesus whom the Gospels preach who is of value, but the Christ who can be born in every man as his deeper nature, and become for him the Saviour from the lower life and the guide to ideal uplifting.
Weigel performed silently and humbly the duties of his office as clergyman in Zschopau. It was only from the writings he left behind, printed first in the seventeenth century, that the world learned anything of the significant ideas which had come to him about the nature of man.[15]
[15] The following, from among his writings, may be named: _Der güldene Griff, das ist alle Ding ohne Irrthumb zu erkennen, vielen Hochgelehrten unbekandt, und doch allen Menschen nothwendig zu wissen; Erkenne dich selbst; Vom Ort der Welt._
Weigel feels himself driven to gain a clear understanding of his relation to the teaching of the Church; and that leads him on further to investigate the basic foundations of all knowledge. Whether man can know anything through a confession of faith, is a question as to which he can only give himself an account when he knows _how_ man knows. Weigel starts from the lowest kind of knowing. He asks himself: How do I know a sensible object, when it presents itself before me? Thence he hopes to be able to mount upwards to a point of view whence he can give himself an account of the highest knowledge.
In cognition through the senses, the instrument (the sense-organ) and the object, the “counterpart” (_Gegenwurf_) stand opposed. “Since in natural perception there must be two things, as the object or ‘counterpart,’ which is to be known and seen by the eye; and the eye, or the perceiver, which sees or knows the object, so do thou hold over against each other: whether the knowledge comes forth from the object to the eye; or whether the judgment, or the cognition, flows out from the eye into the object.”[16] Weigel now says to himself: If the cognition (or knowledge) flowed from the “counterpart” (or thing) into the eye, then of necessity from one and the same thing a similar and perfect cognition must come to all eyes. But that is not the case, for each man sees according to the measure of his own eyes. Only the eyes, not the “counterpart” (or object) can be in fault, in that various and different conceptions are possible of one and the same thing. To clear up the matter, Weigel compares seeing with reading. If the book were not there, I naturally could not read it; but it might still be there, and yet I could read nothing in it, if I did not understand the art of reading. The book therefore must be there; but, from itself it can give me not the smallest thing; I must draw forth everything I read from within myself. That is also the nature of sensible perception. Colour is there as the “counterpart,” but it can give the eye nothing from out of itself. The eye must recognise, from out of itself, what colour is. As little as the content of the book is in the reader, just so little is colour in the eye. If the content of the book were in the reader, he would not need to read it. Yet in reading, this content does not flow out from the book, but from the reader. So is it also with the sensible object. What the sensible thing before him is; that does not flow from outside into the man, but from within outwards.
[16] _Der güldene Griff_, p. 26 et seq.
Starting from these thoughts, one might say: If all knowledge flows out from man into the object, then one does not know what is in the object, but only what is in man. The detailed working out of this line of thought, brought about the view of Immanuel Kant (1724-1804).[17]
[17] The error in this line of thought will be found explained in my book, _The Philosophy of Freedom_, Berlin, 1894. Here I must limit myself to mentioning that Valentine Weigel, with his simple, robust way of conceiving things, stands far higher than Kant.
Weigel says to himself: Even if the knowledge flows out from man, it is still only the being of the “counterpart” (or object) which comes to light in this indirect way through man. As I learn the content of the book by reading it, and not by my own content, so also I learn the colour of the “counterpart” through the eye, not any colour to be found in the eye, or in myself. (Thus Weigel arrives by a road of his own at a result that we have already encountered in Nicholas of Cusa. Cp. pages 151-160). In this way Weigel attained to clearness as to the nature of sense-perception. He arrived at the conviction that everything which external things have to tell us can only flow forth from our own inner nature itself. Man cannot remain passive when he tries to know sensible objects and seeks merely to allow them to act upon him; but he must assume an active attitude, and bring forth the knowledge from within himself. The counterpart (or object) merely awakens the knowledge in the spirit. Man rises to higher knowledge when his spirit becomes its own “counterpart.” One can see from sensible cognition that no cognition can flow into man from outside. Therefore there can be no such thing as an external revelation, but only an inner awakening.
As now the external counterpart waits till there comes into its presence man, in whom it can express its being, so too must man wait, when he seeks to be his own “counterpart” (or object) until the knowledge of his own being shall be awakened in him. If, in cognition through the senses, man must assume an active attitude in order that he may bring to meet the “counterpart” its own being, so in the higher knowing, man must hold himself passive, because he is himself now the “counterpart.” He must admit its being into himself. Therefore the cognition of the spirit appears to him as enlightenment from above. In contrast to cognition through the senses, Weigel therefore terms the higher cognition the “Light of Mercy” This “Light of Mercy” is, in reality, nothing other than the self-knowledge of the spirit in man, or the re-birth of knowledge on the higher level of beholding.
Now just as Nicholas of Cusa, in following up his road from knowing to beholding, does not really bring about the re-birth of the knowledge he has gained, on the higher level, but only the faith of the Church in which he was brought up appears deceptively before him as such a re-birth, so is it also the case with Weigel. He guides himself to the right road, but loses it again in the very moment in which he steps upon it. He who will travel the road that Weigel points out, can regard the latter as his guide only as far as the starting-point.
* * * * *
What rings out to meet us from the works of the Master-Shoemaker of Görlitz, JACOB BOEHME (1575-1624), sounds like the joyous outburst of Nature admiring her own being upon the summit of her evolution. A man appears before us whose words have wings, woven out of the inspiring feeling of having seen knowledge shining within him as Higher Wisdom. Jacob Boehme describes his own state as Piety which strives only to be Wisdom, and as a Wisdom that seeks to live only in Piety: “As I was wrestling and fighting in God’s behalf, behold a wondrous light shone into my soul, such as was quite foreign to savage nature; therein I first knew what God and man were, and what God had to do with men.”
Jacob Boehme no longer feels himself as a separated being expressing its insights; he feels himself as an organ of the great All-Spirit, speaking in him. The limits of his personality do not appear to him as the limits of the Spirit that speaks from within him. This Spirit is for him present everywhere. He knows that “the Sophist will blame him” when he speaks of the beginning of the world and its creation: “the while I was not thereby and did not myself see it. To him be it said that in the essence of my soul and body, when I was not yet the ‘I,’ but when I was still Adam’s essence, I was there present and myself squandered away my glory in Adam.”
Only in external similes is Boehme able to indicate how the light broke forth in his inner being. When once as a boy he finds himself on the top of a mountain, he sees above him a place where large red stones seem to shut up the mountain; the entrance is open and in its depth he sees a vessel full of gold. A shudder runs through him; and he goes on his way without touching the treasure. Later on he is apprenticed to a shoemaker in Görlitz. A stranger steps into the shop and demands a pair of shoes. Boehme is not allowed to sell them in the absence of his master. The stranger departs, but after a while calls the apprentice out of the shop and says to him: “Jacob, thou art little, but thou wilt some day become quite another man, over whom the world will break out into wonder.” In riper years, Jacob Boehme sees the reflection of the bright sun in a tin vessel: the view that thus presents itself to him seems to him to unveil a profound secret. Even after the impression of this appearance, he believes himself to be in possession of the key to the riddles of Nature.
He lives as a spiritual anchorite, humbly earning his living by his trade, and between whiles, as though for his own recollection, he notes down the harmonies which resound in his inner being when he feels the Spirit in himself. The zealotry of priestly fervour makes life hard for the man; he, who desires naught but to read the Scripture which the light of his inner nature illuminates for him, is persecuted and tortured by those to whom only the external writ, the rigid, dogmatic confession of faith, is accessible.
One world-riddle remains as a disquieting presence in Jacob Boehme’s soul, driving him on to knowledge. He believes himself to be in his spirit enfolded in a divine harmony; but when he looks around him, he sees discord everywhere in the divine workings. To man belongs the light of Wisdom; and yet he is exposed to error; in him lives the impulse to the good, and yet the discord of evil sounds throughout the whole of human development. Nature is governed by its own great laws; yet its harmony is disturbed by happenings of no purport, and the warfare of the elements. How is this discord in the harmonious world-whole to be understood? This question tortures Jacob Boehme. It strides into the centre of the world of his thought. He strives to gain a view of the world as a whole, which shall include the discordant. For how can a conception which leaves the actual present discord unexplained explain the world? The discord must be explained out of the harmony, the evil out of the good itself. Let us restrict ourselves, in speaking of these things, to the good and the evil, wherein the lack of harmony in the narrower sense finds its expression. For, fundamentally, Jacob Boehme also restricts himself to this. He can do so, for Nature and man appear to him as a single entity. He sees in both similar laws and processes. The purposeless seems to him an evil something in Nature, just as evil seems to him something purposeless in man. Similar fundamental forces rule both here and there. To one who has known the origin of evil in man, the source of evil in Nature also lies open and clear.
Now, how can the evil as well as the good flow forth from the very same Root-Being? Speaking in Jacob Boehme’s sense, one would give the following answer. The Root-Being does not live out its existence in itself. The multiplicity of the world shares in this existence. As the human body lives its life, not as a single member, but as a multiplicity of members, so also the Root-Being. And as human life is poured out into this multiplicity of members, so too the Root-Being is poured out into the manifoldness of the things of this world. As true as it is that the entire man has only one life, so true is it that every member has its own life. And as little as it contradicts the whole harmonious life of a man, that his hand should turn itself against his own body and wound it, so little is it impossible that the things of the world, which live the life of the Root-Being in their own way, should turn themselves against each other. Thus the Root-Being, in dividing itself among different lives, confers upon each such life the capacity to turn itself against the whole.
It is not from the good that evil streams forth, but from the way in which the good lives. As the light is only able to shine when it pierces the darkness, so the good can bring itself to life only when it permeates its opposite. From out of the “fathomless abyss” of darkness there streams forth the light; from the “groundlessness” of the indifferent there is brought to birth the Good. And as in the shadow only the brightening demands a pointing to the light; but the darkness, as a matter of course, is felt as that which weakens the light; so too in the world, it is only the law-abiding character that is sought for in all things; and the evil, the purposeless, is accepted as a matter of course, intelligible in itself. Thus, in spite of the fact that for Jacob Boehme the Root-Being is the All, still nothing in the world can be understood, unless one has an eye both to the Root-Being and its opposite at once. “The good has swallowed up into itself the evil or the hideous.... Every being has in itself good and evil, and in its unfoldment, as it passes over into division, it becomes a contradiction of qualities, as one seeks to overcome the other.”
Hence it is altogether in accordance with Jacob Boehme’s view to see in everything, and in every process of the world, both good and evil; but it is not in accord with his meaning, without more ado to seek the Root-Being in the mingling of good and evil. The Root-Being must swallow up the evil; but the evil is not a part of the Root-Being. Jacob Boehme seeks the Root-Being of the world; but the world itself has sprung forth from the “fathomless abyss” through the Root-Being. “The external world is not God, and eternally will not be called God, but only a being wherein God manifests Himself.... When one says: God is all, God is heaven and earth, and also the outer world, so is that true: for from him and in him all stands originally rooted. But what am I to do with such a saying, which is no religion?”