Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/34

MEISTER ECKEHART, THE MYSTIC. 23 introduced to quiet the scruples of the theologians, which would be excited by anything appearing to destroy individual immortality. The like inconsistency recurs with Eckehart. Three premisses of Alexander are stated by Averroes to prove how in the course of time it is possible for the material to attain perfection through the separate intellect. In accordance with these premisses (which are based on the analogy mentioned above of the intellective and sensitive faculties) we ought to conclude that some portion of mankind can really contemplate the separate intellect, and these men are they who by the speculative sciences have perfected themselves. Perfection of the spirit is thus to be obtained by Knowledge, nor can it ever again be lost. Often however it comes only in the moment of death, since it is opposed to bodily (material) perfection. The separate intellect (active reason) exercises two ac- tivities. The one, because it is separate, consists in self-con- templation or self-perception. This self-perception is the manner of all separate intellects, because it is characteristic of them that the intellectual and the intelligible are ab- solutely one. The second activity is the perception of the intelliyibilia which are in the material intellect, that is, the transition of the material intellect from possibility to actuality. Thus the active intellect attaches itself to man and is at the same time his form, and the man becomes by means of it active, that is, he thinks. These statements can hardly be said to be free from obscurity, but they receive considerable light from Eckehart, who identifies the active reason with the Deity, and explains the life of the universe by his two activities : self-contemplation, wherein to think is to create or act, and human contemplation which is the " bearing of the Son ". The question now arises as to what follows upon the complete union of the separate and individual intellects. What happens to the man for whom there no longer re- mains any intelligibile in potentia to convert into an in- tellifjibile in adu ? Such an individual intellect then becomes in character like to the separate intellect ; its nature becomes pure activity ; its self-consciousness is like that of the sepa- rate intellect, in which existence is identified with its purpose uninterrupted activity. This statement Averroes holds to be the most important that can be made concerning the intellect. While Eckehart himself makes no direct reference to Averroes, a remarkable tractate written by one of his school does not hesitate to cite the Arabian commentator as an