AFTERWORD
Nearly two and a half centuries have passed since Angelus Silesius gathered up the profound wisdom of his predecessors in his Cherubinean Wanderer. These centuries have brought rich insights into Nature. Goethe opened a vast perspective to natural science. He sought to follow up the eternal, unchangeable laws of Nature’s working, to that summit where, with like necessity, they cause man to come into being, just as on a lower level they bring forth the stone.[21] Lamarck, Darwin, Haeckel, and others, have laboured further in the direction of this way of conceiving things. The “question of all questions,” that in regard to the natural origin of man, found its answer in the nineteenth century; and other related problems in the realm of natural events have also found their solutions. To-day men comprehend that it is not necessary to step outside of the realm of the actual and the sensible in order to understand the serial succession of beings, right up to man, in its development in a purely natural manner.
And, further, J. G. Fichte’s penetration has thrown light into the being of the human ego, and shown the soul of man where to seek itself and what it is.[22] Hegel has extended the realm of thought over all the provinces of being, and striven to grasp in thought the entire sensible existence of Nature, as also the loftiest creations of the human spirit.[23]
How, then, do those men of genius whose thoughts have been traced in the preceding pages, appear in the light of a world-conception which takes into account the scientific achievements of the centuries that followed their epoch? They still believed in a “supernatural” story of creation. How do their thoughts appear when confronted with a “natural” history of creation, which the science of the nineteenth century has built up?
This natural science has given to Nature naught that did not belong to her; it has only taken from her what did not belong to her. It has banished from Nature all that is not to be sought in her, but is to be found only in man’s inner being. It sees no longer any being in Nature that is like unto the human soul, and that creates after the manner of man. It no longer makes the organic forms to be created by a man-like God; it follows up their development in the sense-world according to purely natural laws. Meister Eckhart, as well as Tauler, and also Jacob Boehme with Angelus Silesius, would needs feel the deepest satisfaction in contemplating this natural science. The spirit in which they desired to behold the world has passed over in the fullest sense to this view of Nature, when it is rightly understood. What they were still unable to do, viz.: to bring the facts of Nature themselves into the light which had risen for them, that, undoubtedly, would have been their longing, if this same natural science had been laid before them. They could not do it; for no geology, no “natural history of creation” told them about the processes in Nature. The Bible alone told them in its own way about such processes. Therefore they sought, so far as they could, for the spiritual where alone it is to be found: in the inner nature of man.
At the present time, they would have quite other aids at hand than in their own time, to show that an actually existing Spirit is to be found only in man. They would to-day agree unreservedly with those who seek Spirit as a fact not in the root of Nature, but in her fruit. They would admit that Spirit as perceivable is a result of evolution, and that upon lower levels of evolution such Spirit must not be sought for. They would understand that no “creative thought” ruled in the forthcoming of the Spirit in the organism, any more than such a “creative thought” caused the ape to evolve from the marsupials.
Our present age cannot speak about the facts of Nature as Jacob Boehme spoke of them. But there exists a point of view, even in this present day, which brings Jacob Boehme’s way of regarding things near to a view of the world that takes account of modern natural science. There is no need to lose the Spirit, when one finds in Nature only the natural. Many do, indeed, believe to-day that one must needs lose oneself in a shallow and prosaic materialism, if one simply accepts the “facts” which natural science has discovered. I myself stand fully upon the ground of this same natural science. I have, through and through, the feeling that, in a view of Nature such as Ernst Haeckel’s, only he can lose himself amid shallows who himself approaches it with a shallow thought-world. I feel something higher, more glorious, when I let the revelations of the “natural history of creation” work upon me, than when the supernatural miracle stories of the confessions of faith force themselves upon me. In no “holy book” do I know aught that unveils for me anything as lofty as the “sober” fact, that every human germ in the mother’s womb repeats in brief, one after the other, those animal types which its animal ancestors have passed through. If only we fill our hearts with the glory of the facts that our senses behold, then we shall have little left over for “wonders” which do not lie in the course of Nature. If we experience the Spirit in ourselves, then we have no need of such in external Nature.
In my Philosophy of Freedom, (Berlin, 1894) I have described my view of the world, which has no thought of driving out the Spirit, because it beholds Nature as Darwin and Haeckel beheld her. A plant, an animal, gains nothing for me if I people it with souls of which my senses give me no information. I do not seek in the external world for a “deeper,” “more soulful” being of things; nay, I do not even assume it, because I believe that the insight which shines forth for me in my inner being guards me against it. I believe that the things of the sense-world are, in fact, just as they present themselves to us, because I see that a right self-knowledge leads us to this: that in Nature we should seek nothing but natural processes. I seek no Spirit of God in Nature, because I believe that I perceive the nature of the human spirit in myself. I calmly admit my animal ancestry, because I believe myself to know that there, where these animal ancestors have their origin, no spirit of like nature with soul can work. I can only agree with Ernst Haeckel when he prefers the “eternal rest of the grave” to an immortality such as is taught by some religions.[24] For I find a dishonouring of Spirit, an ugly sin against the Spirit, in the conception of a soul continuing to exist after the manner of a sensible being.
I hear a shrill discord when the scientific facts in Haeckel’s presentation come up against the “piety” of the confessions of some of our contemporaries. But for me there rings out from confessions of faith, which give a discord with natural facts, naught of the spirit of the higher piety which I find in Jacob Boehme and Angelus Silesius. This higher piety stands far more in full harmony with the working of the natural. There lies no contradiction in the fact of saturating oneself with the knowledge of the most recent natural science, and at the same time treading the path which Jacob Boehme and Angelus Silesius have sought. He who enters on that path in the sense of those thinkers has no need to fear losing himself in a shallow materialism when he lets the secrets of Nature be laid before him by a “natural history of creation.” Whoever has grasped my thoughts in this sense will understand with me in like manner the last saying of the Cherubinean Wanderer, with which also this book shall close: “Friend, it is even enough. In case thou more wilt read, go forth, and thyself become the book, thyself the reading.”
THE END
FOOTNOTES
| [1] | Cp. W. Preger: Geschichte der Deutschen Mystik, vol. iii, p. 161. |
| [2] | Cp. Preger: History of German Mysticism, vol. iii., p. 219 et seq. |
| [3] | Denifle: Die Dichtungen des Gottesfreundes im Oberlande. |
| [4] | The writings in question are, among others: Von eime eigenwilligen weltwisen manne, der von eime heiligen weltpriestere gewiset wart uffe demuetige gehorsamme, 1338; Das Buch von den zwei Mannen; Der gefangene Ritter, 1349; Die geistliche stege , 1350; Von der geistlichen Leiter, 1357; Das Meisterbuch, 1369; Geschichte von zwei fünfzehnjährigen Knaben. |
| [5] | Vide ante, page 34. |
| [6] | Chap. i., Book of the Man from Frankfurt. |
| [7] | Chap. xv., Book of the Man from Frankfurt. |
| [8] | Chap. xxiv, Book of the Man from Frankfurt. |
| [9] | Ibid., Chap. liv. |
| [10] | K. Werner, in his book upon Frank Suarez and the Scholasticism of the Last Centuries, p. 122. |
| [11] | Otto Willman, in his History of Idealism, vol. ii., p. 395. |
| [12] | Otto Willman, History of Idealism, vol. ii., p. 383. |
| [13] | Joseph Kleutgen, Die Theologie der Vorzeit, vol. i., p. 39. |
| [14] | Cp. Helmholtz, Die Thatsachen der Wahrnehmung , p. 12 et seq. I have characterised this kind of conception in detail in my Philosophie der Freiheit, Berlin, 1894, and in my Welt- und Lebensanschauungen im Neunzehnten Jahrhundert, vol. ii., p. i., etc. |
| [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. |
| [16] | Der güldene Griff, p. 26 et seq. |
| [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. |
| [18] | We may here name the most important of Boehme’s writings: Die Morgenröthe im Aufgang; Die drei Prinzipien göttlichen Lebens oder über das dreifache Leben des Menschen; Das umgewandte Auge; “Signatura rerum” oder von der Geburt und Bezeichnung aller Wesen ; Das “Mysterium Magnum.” |
| [19] | Paul Topinard: Anthropologie, Leipzig, 1888, p. 528. |
| [20] | Haeckel, Riddle of the Universe. |
| [21] | Cp. my book: Goethe’s Weltanschauung, Weimar, 1897. |
| [22] | Cp. ante, and the section upon Fichte in my book: Welt- und Lebensanschauungen im neunzehnten Jahrhundert, vol. i., Berlin, S. Cronbach. |
| [23] | Cp. my presentation of Hegel in Welt- und Lebensanschauungen im neunzehnten Jahrhundert, vol. i. |
| [24] | Cp. Haeckel’s Riddle of the Universe. |
TRANSCRIBERS’ NOTES
All obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected, while original spellings and inconsistent hyphenation have been preserved to maintain the authenticity of the original text.
The following changes have been implemented to improve the clarity and flow of the text:
- Page 105: “uncreate” changed to “uncreated”: but he must look forward upon the uncreated: his knowledge must be a beginning
- Page 155: “less” changed to “lesser”: To a greater or lesser extent this illumination
- Page 173: “of” added: I should in reality and in truth be trying to think of something not unlike
- Page 181: “to” added: which leads back once more to the knowledge
- Page 254: “of” added: Instead of thinking of the Root-Being of the world as Spirit
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