not contradict the idea of the Godhead; and secondly, a posteriori,—for the reality of a personal being, is sustained only on empirical grounds,—what sort of form God has, where he exists,—in heaven,—and lastly, of what sex he is.
Let the profound, speculative religious philosophers of Germany courageously shake off the embarrassing remnant of rationalism which yet clings to them, in flagrant contradiction with their true character; and let them complete their system, by converting the mystical “potence” of Nature in God into a really powerful, generating God.
The doctrine of Nature in God is borrowed from Jacob Böhme. But in the original it has a far deeper and more interesting significance, than in its second modernized and emasculated edition. Jacob Böhme has a profoundly religious mind. Religion is the centre of his life and thought. But at the same time, the significance which has been given to Nature in modern times—by the study of natural science, by Spinozism, materialism, empiricism—has taken possession of his religious sentiment. He has opened his senses to Nature, thrown a glance into her mysterious being; but it alarms him; and he cannot harmonize this terror at Nature with his religious conceptions. “When I looked into the great depths of this world, and at the sun and stars, also at the clouds, also at the rain and snow, and considered in my mind the whole creation of this world; then I found in all things evil and good, love and anger,—in unreasoning things, such as wood, stone, earth, and the elements, as well as in men and beasts. . . . But because I found that in all things there was good and evil, in the elements as well as in the creatures, and that it goes as well in the world with the godless as with the pious, also that the barbarous nations possess the best lands, and have more prosperity than the godly; I was therefore altogether melancholy and extremely troubled, and the Scriptures could not console me, though almost all well known to me; and therewith assuredly the devil was not idle, for he often thrust upon me heathenish thoughts, of which I will here be silent.”[1] But while his mind seized with fearful earnestness the dark side of Nature, which did not harmonize with the religious idea of a heavenly
- ↑ Kernhafter Auszug . . . J. Böhme: Amsterdam, 1718, p. 58.
