self or God, is a Christian a member of the Holy Church even though he never believed on Christ. - Franck was by the Lutherans persecuted for his philosophical opinions.' § 21. Valentin Weigel (1533-1588).- Weigel, after many years of study at the universities of Leipsic and Wittenberg, spent his life as pastor of a church at Zschopau. By discreetness he escaped Franck's fate. He was a follower of Works of Weigel are, Franck and the German Mystics. "Studium Universale, Tvô σeavтóv" (Know thyself), "Kurzer Bericht vom Wege und Weise, alle Dingen zu erkennen" (Brief Description of the Way and Method of Learning all Things), "Christliches Gesprach vom wahren Christenthum." True wisdom has its foundation in selfknowledge, knowledge of our origin and destiny. Man is the microcosm: in him are united soul, spirit, and body, originating respectively in the divine, the celestial (æthereal), and the earthly worlds. By his soul (only) he is an image of God, and is immortal. He apprehends God directly: he cognizes the world, the macrocosm, through the elements of it united in himself. The object of knowledge is the occasion but not the cause of our knowledge : we know and understand only what we ourselves are. is one and self-sufficient: man is dependent, and contains in himself alterity, has self existence not of necessity, but by grace or favor. True Christianity, true resurrection and consciousness of God, are contained in "death to self." § 22. God 2 Jacob Boehme (1575-1624), the "Görlitz Shoemaker," a native of Upper Lusatia, attended a village school, and was then apprenticed to a shoemaker. For many years he was an industrious maker of shoes and gloves in the town 1 See Erdmann, § 233. VOL. I. 3 2 Erdmann. § 234, 4-6. of Görlitz. He was a constant reader of the Bible, the works of the Mystics, and astrological works. He experienced in youth supernatural visions and ecstatic conditions of mind, and in later years passed through inner mystical struggles. His peculiar views brought upon him charges of heresy, and made him an object of inveterate hatred to the clergy in his neighborhood. Works. Of Boehme's works (1612-1624), — about twenty in all, the following-named are among the most important: "Aurora," "Vom dreifachen Leben des Menschen" (Threefold Life of Man), "Signatura Rerum," "Von der Gnadenwahl" (Election by Grace), "Mysterium Magnum." Boehme's works, both by their content (which is strongly mystical) and their form (which is very highly figurative), have been universally found difficult to comprehend, and even more difficult to expound. Philosophy.-Boehme is a naturalistic theosophist. In its physics, his doctrine is Paracelsian (see below, p. 37); in its metaphysics, Neo-Platonic. He divides speculation into three branches: philosophy, treating of God and the origin of the heavens and the elements; astrology, treating of the origin of all mundane things, from the stars and the elements; and theology, which treats of the "Kingdom of Christ." Boehme attempts to refer all things to their source in such a manner that the greatest contrarieties even shall be comprehended in a single principle. All things have their source in God, and, conversely, all things are, without giving up their being, contained in God; the distinction between God and Nature (including man) is one that is in some manner eternally in God himself, for only so is God all in all. The distinction exists that God may manifest himself, and so be a true, perfect God. Apart from this distinction, God is pure groundless unity, eternal stillness, eternal nothing. If God were only this unity, this stillness, this nothingness, any distinction would be a separation from God without a return to him, and he would not be the All. There is both a "Yes" and a "No" in all things, by which they subsist. The primary physical elements are "light" and "wrath," which are antagonistic forms of the same thing, "heat." Light is lovely, and the universal cause of life; wrath burns, consumes, destroys. The constant war of light and wrath is at once the source and offspring of "quality," — spirit. In God are seven primal qualities or spirits. Of these, six were begotten by and are embraced in the seventh, which is the divine nature," mysterium magnum." In itself, the mysterium magnum is a world of pure light, harmony, and joy; unfolded, it becomes the world of both good and evil. Hence, evil as well as good is from God, and is of his essence, appertains to the property of generation necessarily contained in God. The evil in every creature is that inherent individual self-will which opposes itself to the universal will. The fall of man was a division, which took place in the slumber of selfishness, of his originally sexless nature into the two sexes. The redemption of man is through the divine light manifest in Christ. Boehme is commonly known as the philosophus Teutonicus (the German philosopher par excellence). He has had a very marked influence in later German thought, particularly in the systems of Schelling, Baader, and Hegel. § 23. III. THE (RELATIVELY) INDEPENDENT CULTIVATION OF PHILOSOPHY AS SUCH. Here occur (1) Natural Philosophers; (2) Ethical (chiefly Political) Philosophers. § 24. - (1) Natural Philosophers. As the most important of the natural philosophers may be named: Nicolaus Cusanus, Theophrastus Bombastus Paracelsus, Hieronymus Cardanus, Bernardinus Telesius, Franciscus Patritius, Thomas Campanella, Ucilio Vanini, Giordano Bruno. Nicolaus Cusanus § 25. Nicolas of Cusa In took a doctor's degree in law in the University of Padua, but instead of practising law, entered the Church. 1448 he was appointed to a cardinalship, and two years. later was made bishop (of Brixen), having performed important services as church-official. In the midst of ecclesiastical duties he carried on mathematical and astronomical studies, in which he was at least a century beyond his age, having even anticipated Copernicus in important regards. Works. The chief work of Nicolas is entitled "De docta Ignorantia" (1440). Other works are "De Conjecturis" (supplementary to the foregoing), "De Visione Dei," "De Ludo Globi," "De Beryllo." 66 - Philosophy. All human knowledge is, as such, mere 'conjecture;" human learning is "learned ignorance;" and our highest knowledge is the knowing that we do not know. True knowledge-knowledge of God-we have only by an intellectual intuition, a vision of God. God is the content or substance of all things, the unity of all oppositions in him absolute motion and absolute rest, the infinitely great and the infinitely little, reality and possibility, matter and form, subject and object, are one and the same. The universe is (not God himself, but) the explication, unfolding, externalization of God's nature. All things follow mathematically from the divine unity, and form together a cosmos governed by mathematical relations. The physical universe is infinite in time and space; the earth rotates on its axis. The destiny of man is to be united with God, by faith in the God-man, Christ. The ideas of Nicolas, through their direct influence upon Bruno, and their indirect influence on Spinoza, Leibnitz, and others, have been a very considerable factor in modern philosophy. Particularly original and modern in Nicolas is the idea of the infinitude of the universe, on account of which chiefly is he to be classed with modern rather than with (early) mediæval philosophers. (1493-1541). Paracelsus, who was educated by his father and at several universities, spent a considerable portion of his life roving about the countries of Europe, seeking a knowledge of the world in general and medicine in particular. He had already studied medicine under his father and other instructors. In 1526 he was appointed professor of medicine in the University of Basel. He is reported to have opened his first course of lectures by burning the works of Galen and Avicenna, to symbolize his conception of the duty of investigators as regards independence of the past and the direct study of nature and life. He attempted to introduce a reform in the art of medicine upon the basis of a philosophical knowledge of human nature as a whole. Works. Works of Paracelsus are "Paramirum seu de Medica Industria," "Paragranum (or the "Four Pillars of Medicine"), "Labyrinthus Medicorum et de Tartaro," "Pestilitate ex Influxu Siderum," etc. Philosophy. Philosophy has for its only subject nature, and is itself merely "invisible nature." Its instrument is the natural light of the mind, reason. Nature is to be comprehended only through the knowledge of its end, man, who is (therefore) the "book from which we may read the secrets of nature," the microcosm. Man is composed of an earthly body, which is tangible, a heavenly or astral body, which is æther-like in nature, and a "spirit," and a soul, which is purely of divine origin and destiny. The first of the three parts of man is nourished from the material elements (fire, air, earth, water), the second from the influences of the stars, the third from Christ through faith. The material elements are formed from salt, sulphur, and quicksilver, which in turn come from a primal matter 1 Zeller, Geschichte der deutschen Philosophie. |