Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/31

II. MEISTEE ECKEHABT, THE MYSTIC. By Prof. KARL PEARSON. Diz 1st Meister Eckehart Dem Got nie niht verbarc. Old Scribe. STUDENTS of mediaeval philosophy must often have been struck by the unexpected occurrence of phases of thought, even in Christian writers, which are utterly out of keeping with the framework of Scholastic theology within which they are usually mounted. M. Kenan has done excellent sendee in showing how many of these eccentricities may be attributed to the influence the fascination of the arch- heretic Averroes. There is however one field of Averroistic influence to which M. Renan has only referred without entering on any lengthened discussion : this is the extremely interesting, but undoubtedly obscure subject of fourteenth century mysticism. I purpose in the following paper to present the English reader with a slight sketch of the philosophical (or rather theosophical) system of Meister Eckehart, the Mystic, 1 who may be accepted as the chief exponent of the school. There are two points which ought peculiarly to attract the student of modern philosophy to Eckehart : the first lies in a possible (and by no means im- probable) influence which his ideas may have exercised ovrr Kant ; the second consists in a peculiar spiritual relation to Spinoza. This latter can be in no way due to direct contact, but has to be sought in a common spiritual ancestry. Xr is this link in the past by any means difficult to find. The parallelism of ideas in the writings of Averroes and Mai- monides has led some authors hastily to conclude an adoption by the latter of the ideas of the former. The real ivlation is a like education under the influences of the same Arabian school. On the one hand Maimonides was the spiritual 1 The Germans pos.-< .-Unit book on Eckchart from tin- pen of Prof. Lasson, lint, for tin- purposes of this r.-say, I have made use only of Eckehart'e own writings in tlic stvoinl volume of IM'<-i!!.-i '> Detti Mi+tiker. That my ivMilts differ so often from those of Prof. Larson is dm- principally to his stroni: Hegelian standpoint ; at tin- same time [ have to acknowledge the del >t which I o r, iii 't so much to his hook, as to the charm of his personal teaching. Kn-li.-h readers will tind a -hort account of Eckehart due to Prof. Lasson in ' 'a Sietory of Phtiotophy.