symbols, or signs, which as such are only aroused within us, and to
which “outside” of us something totally different corresponds. For
that which is really set going within us, as the effect of some
external happening, is something altogether other than what appears in
the field of our sensations. If we want to call that which is within us
a symbol, then we can say: These symbols make their appearance within
our organism, in order to mediate to us the perceptions which, as such,
in their immediacy, are neither within nor outside of us, but belong,
on the contrary, to that common world, of which my “external” world and
my “internal” world are only parts. In order to be able to grasp this
common world, I must, it is true, raise myself to that higher plane
of knowledge, for which an “inner” and an “outer” no longer exist. (I
know quite well that people who pride themselves on the gospel that
our entire world of experience builds itself up out of sensations and
feelings of unknown origin will look contemptuously upon these remarks;
as, for instance, Dr. Erich Adikes in his book, _Kant contra Haeckel_,
observes condescendingly: “At first people like Haeckel and thousands
of his type philosophise gaily away without troubling themselves about
theory of knowledge or critical self-reflection.” Such gentlemen have
no inkling of how cheap their own theories of knowledge are. They
suspect the lack of critical self-reflection only in others. Let us
leave to them their “wisdom.”)
Nicholas of Cusa expresses some very telling thoughts bearing directly
upon this very point. The clear and distinct way in which he holds
apart the lower and the higher knowledge enables him, on the one side,
to arrive at a full and complete recognition of the fact that man as a
sense-being can only have in himself processes which, as effects, must
necessarily be altogether unlike the corresponding external processes;
while, on the other side, it guards him against confusing the inner
processes with the facts which make their appearance in the field of
our perceptions, and which, in their immediacy, are neither outside nor
inside, but altogether transcend this opposition of “in” and “out.”
But Nicholas was hampered in the thorough carrying through of these
ideas by his “priestly garments.” So we see how he makes a fine
beginning with the progress from “knowing” to “not-knowing.” At the
same time we must also note that in the domain of the higher knowledge,
or “ignorance,” he unfolds practically nothing but the content of the
theological teaching which the Scholastics also give us. Certainly he
knows how to expound this theological content in a most able manner. He
presents us with teachings about Providence, Christ, the creation of
the world, man’s salvation, the moral life, which are kept thoroughly
in harmony with dogmatic Christianity. It would have been in accordance
with his mental starting point, to say: I have confidence in human
nature that after having plunged deeply into the science of things in
all directions, it is capable of transforming from within itself this
“knowing” into a “not-knowing,” in such wise that the highest insight
shall bring satisfaction. In that case, he would not simply have
accepted the traditional ideas of the soul, immortality, salvation,
God, creation, the Trinity, and so forth, as he actually did, but he
would have represented his own.
But Nicholas personally was, however, so saturated with the conceptions
of Christianity that he might well believe himself to have awakened in
himself a “not-knowing” of his own, while yet he was merely bringing to
light the traditional views in which he was brought up. But he stood
upon the verge of a terrible precipice in the spiritual life of man. He
was a _scientific_ man. Now science, primarily, estranges us from the
innocent harmony in which we live with the world so long as we abandon
ourselves to a purely naïve attitude towards life. In such an attitude
to life, we dimly feel our connection with the world-whole.
We are beings like others, forming links in the chain of Nature’s
workings. But with knowledge we separate ourselves off from this
whole; we create within us a mental world, wherewith we stand alone and
isolated over against Nature. We have become enriched; but our riches
are a burden which we bear with difficulty; for it weighs primarily
upon ourselves alone. And we must now, by our own strength, find the
way back again to Nature. We have to recognise that we ourselves
must now fit our wealth into the stream of world activities, just as
previously Nature herself had fitted in our poverty. All evil demons
lie in wait for man at this point. His strength can easily fail
him. Instead of himself accomplishing this fitting in, he will, if
his strength thus fails, seek refuge in some revelation coming from
without, which frees him again from his loneliness, which leads back
once more to the knowledge that he feels a burden, into the very womb
of being, into the Godhead. Like Nicholas of Cusa, he will believe
that he is travelling his own road; and yet in reality he will be only
following the path which his own spiritual evolution has pointed out
for him.
Now there are--in the main--three roads which one can follow, when
once one has reached the point at which Nicholas had arrived: the one
is positive faith, forcing itself upon us from without; the second
is despair; one stands alone with one’s burden, and feels the whole
universe tottering with oneself; the third road is the development of
the deepest, most inward powers of man. Confidence, trust in the world
must be one of our guides upon this third path; courage, to follow that
confidence whithersoever it may lead us, must be the other.
AGRIPPA VON NETTESHEIM AND
THEOPHRASTUS PARACELSUS
Both Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim (1487-1535) and
Theophrastus Paracelsus (1493-1541) followed the same road along which
points Nicholas of Cusa’s way of conceiving things. They devoted
themselves to the study of Nature, and sought to discover her laws by
all the means in their power and as thoroughly as possible. In this
knowledge of Nature, they saw the true basis of all higher knowledge.
They strove to develop this higher knowledge from within the science or
knowledge of Nature by bringing that knowledge to a new birth in the
spirit.
Agrippa von Nettesheim led a much varied life. He sprang from a noble
family and was born in Cologne. He early studied medicine and law, and
sought to obtain clear insight into the processes of Nature in the
way which was then customary within certain circles and societies, or
even among isolated investigators, who studiously kept secret whatever
of the knowledge of Nature they discovered. For these purposes he
went repeatedly to Paris, to Italy, and to England, and also visited
the famous Abbot Trithemius of Sponheim in Würzburg. He taught at
various times in learned institutions, and here and there entered the
service of rich and distinguished people, at whose disposal he placed
his abilities as a statesman and a man of science. If the services
that he rendered are not always described by his biographers as
unobjectionable, if it is said that he made money under the pretence of
understanding secret arts and conferring benefits on people thereby,
there stands against this his unmistakable, unresting impulse to
acquire honestly the entire knowledge of his age, and to deepen this
knowledge in the direction of a higher cognition of the world.
We may see in him very plainly the endeavour to attain to a clear and
definite attitude towards natural science on the one hand, and to
the higher knowledge on the other. But he only can attain to such an
attitude who is possessed of a clear insight as to the respective roads
which lead to one and to the other kind of knowledge. As true as it is
on the one hand that natural science must eventually be raised into the
region of the spirit, if it is to pass over into higher knowledge; so,
also, it is true on the other, that this natural science must, to begin
with, remain upon its own special ground, if it is to yield the right
basis for the attainment of a higher level. The “spirit in Nature”
exists only for spirit. So surely as Nature in this sense is spiritual,
so surely too is there _nothing_ in Nature, of all that is perceived by
my bodily organs, which is immediately spiritual. There exists nothing
spiritual which can appear to my eye as spiritual.
Therefore, I must not seek for the spirit as such in Nature; but that
is what I am doing when I interpret any occurrence in the external
world immediately as spiritual; when, for instance, I ascribe to a
plant a soul which is supposed to be only remotely analogous to that of
man. Further, I again do the same when I ascribe to spirit itself an
existence in space and time; as, for instance, when I assert of the
human soul that it continues to exist in time without the body, but
yet after the manner of a body; or again, when I even go so far as to
believe that, under any sort of conditions or arrangements perceivable
by the senses, the spirit of a dead person can show itself.
Spiritualism, which makes this mistake, only shows thereby that it has
not attained to a true conception of the spirit at all, but is still
bent upon directly and immediately “seeing” the spirit in something
grossly sensible. It mistakes equally both the real nature of the
sensible and also that of the spirit. It de-spiritualises the ordinary
world of sense, which hourly passes before our eyes, in order to give
the name of spirit immediately to something rare, surprising, uncommon.
It fails to understand that that which lives as the “spirit in nature”
reveals itself to him who is able to perceive spirit in the collision
of two elastic balls, for instance; and not only in occurrences which
are striking from their rarity, and which cannot all at once be grasped
in their natural sequence and connection.
But the spiritist further drags the spirit down into a lower sphere.
Instead of explaining something that happens in space, and that he
perceives through his senses only, in terms of forces and beings which
in their turn are spacial and perceptible to the senses, he resorts to
“spirits,” which he thereby places exactly on a level with the things
of the senses. At the very root of such a way of viewing things, there
lies a lack of the power of spiritual apprehension. We are unable
to perceive spiritual things spiritually; we therefore satisfy our
craving for the spiritual with mere beings perceptible to the senses.
Their own inner spirit reveals to such men nothing spiritual; and
therefore they seek for the spiritual through the senses. As they see
clouds flying through the air, so they would fain see spirits hastening
along. Agrippa von Nettesheim fought for a genuine science of Nature,
which shall explain the phenomena of Nature, not by means of spirits
phenomenalising in the world of the senses, but by seeing in Nature
only the natural, and in the spirit only the spiritual.
Of course, Agrippa will be entirely misunderstood if one compares _his_
natural science with that of later centuries which dispose of wholly
different experiences. In such a comparison, it might easily seem that
he was still actually and entirely referring to the direct action of
spirits, things which only depend upon natural connections or upon
mistaken experience. Such a wrong is done to him by Moriz Carrière when
he says, not in any malicious sense, it is true:
“Agrippa gives a huge list of things which belong to the Sun, the Moon,
the Planets and the fixed stars, and receive influences from them; for
instance: to the Sun are related Fire, Blood, Laurel, Gold, Chrysolite;
they confer the gifts of the Sun: Courage, Cheerfulness, and Light....
Animals have a natural sense, which, higher than human understanding,
approaches the spirit of prophecy.... Men can be bewitched to love and
hate, to sickness and health. Thieves can be bewitched so that they
cannot steal at some particular place, merchants, that they cannot do
business, mills, that they cannot work, lightning flashes, that they
cannot strike. This is brought about through drinks, salves, images,
rings, incantations; the blood of hyenas or basilisks is adapted to
such a purpose--it reminds one of Shakespeare’s witches’ cauldron.”
No; it does not remind one of that, if one understands Agrippa aright.
He believed--it goes without saying--in many facts which in his time
everybody regarded as unquestionable. But we still do the same to-day.
Or do we imagine that future centuries will not relegate much of
what we now regard as “undoubted fact” to the lumber-room of “blind”
superstition?
I am convinced that in our knowledge of facts there has been a real
progress. When once the “fact” that the earth is round had been
discovered, all previous conjectures were banished into the domain of
“superstition”; and the same holds good of certain truths of astronomy,
biology, etc. The doctrine of natural evolution constitutes an advance,
as compared with all previous “theories of creation,” similar to that
marked by the recognition of the roundness of the earth as contrasted
with all previous speculations as to its form. Nevertheless, I am
vividly conscious that in our learned scientific works and treatises
there is to be found many a “fact” which will seem to future centuries
to be just as little of a fact as much that Paracelsus and Agrippa
maintain; but the really important point is not _what_ they regarded as
“fact,” but _how_, in what spirit, they interpreted their “facts.”
In Agrippa’s time, there was little understanding or sympathy
for the “natural magic” he represented, which sought in Nature
the natural--the spiritual only in the spirit; men clung to the
“supernatural magic,” which sought the spiritual in the realm of the
sensible, and which Agrippa combated. Therefore the Abbot Trithemius
of Sponheim was right in giving him the advice to communicate his
views only as a secret teaching to a few chosen pupils who could rise
to a similar idea of Nature and spirit, because one “gives only hay
to oxen and not sugar as to singing birds.” It may be that Agrippa
himself owed to this same Abbot his own correct point of view. In his
_Steganography_, Trithemius has produced a book in which he handled
with the most subtle irony that mode of conceiving things which
confuses nature with spirit.
In this book he apparently speaks of nothing but supernatural
occurrences. Any one reading it as it stands must believe that the
author is talking of conjurations of spirits, of spirits flying through
the air, and so on. If, however, one drops certain words and letters
under the table, there remain--as Wolfgang Ernst Heidel proved in the
year 1676--letters which, combined into words, describe purely natural
occurrences. (In one case, for instance, in a formula of conjuration,
one must drop the first and last words entirely, and then cancel from
the remainder the second, fourth, sixth, and so on. In the words left
over, one must again cancel the first, third, fifth letters and so on.
One next combines what is then left into words; and the conjuration
formula resolves itself into a purely natural communication.)
How difficult it was for Agrippa to work himself free from the
prejudices of his time and to rise to a pure perception is proved by
the fact that he did not allow his “Occult Philosophy” (_Philosophia
Occulta_), already written in 1510, to appear before the year 1531,
because he considered it unripe. Further evidence of this fact is given
by his work “On the Vanity of the Sciences” (_De Vanitate Scientiarum_)
in which he speaks with bitterness of the scientific and other
activities of his time. He there states quite clearly that he has only
with difficulty wrenched himself free from the phantasy which beholds
in external actions immediate spiritual processes, in external facts
prophetic indications of the future, and so forth.
Agrippa advances to the higher knowledge in three stages. He treats
as the first stage the world as it is given for the senses, with its
substances, its physical, chemical and other forces. He calls Nature,
in so far as it is looked at on this level, “elementary Nature.” On
the second stage, one contemplates the world as a whole in its natural
interconnection, as it orders things according to measure, number,
weight, harmony, and so forth. The first stage proceeds from one thing
to the next nearest. It seeks for the causes of an occurrence in its
immediate surroundings. The second stage regards a single occurrence
in connection with the entire universe. It carries through the idea
that everything is subject to the influence of all other things in the
entire world-whole. In its eyes this world-whole appears as a vast
harmony, in which each individual item is a member. Agrippa terms the
world, regarded from this point of view, the “astral” or “heavenly”
world. The third stage of knowing is that wherein the spirit, by
plunging deep into itself, perceives immediately the spiritual, the
Root-Being of the world. Agrippa here speaks of the world, of soul and
spirit.
The views which Agrippa develops about the world, and the relation of
man to the world, present themselves to us in the case of Theophrastus
Paracelsus, in a similar manner, only in more perfected form. It is
better, therefore, to consider them in connection with the latter.
Paracelsus characterises himself aptly, when he writes under his
portrait: “None shall be another’s slave, who for himself can remain
alone.” His whole attitude towards knowledge is given in these words.
He strives everywhere to go back himself to the deepest foundations
of natural knowledge, in order to rise by his own strength to the
loftiest regions of cognition. As Physician, he will not, like his
contemporaries, simply accept what the ancient investigators, who then
counted as authorities,--Galen or Avicenna, for instance, asserted
long ago; he is resolved to read for himself directly in the book of
Nature. “The Physician must pass Nature’s examination, which is the
world, and all its origins. And the very same that Nature teaches him,
he must command to his wisdom, but seek for nothing in his wisdom, only
and alone in the light of Nature.” He shrinks from nothing, in order
to learn to know Nature and her workings in all directions. For this
purpose he made journeys to Sweden, Hungary, Spain, Portugal, and the
East. He can truly say of himself: “I have followed the Art at the
risk of my life, and have not been ashamed to learn from wanderers,
executioners and sheep-shearers. My doctrine was tested more severely
than silver in poverty, fears, wars and hardships.”
What has been handed down by ancient authorities has for him no value,
for he believes that he can attain to the right view only if he
himself experiences the upward climb from the knowledge of Nature to
the highest insight. This living, personal experience puts into his
mouth the proud utterance: “He who will follow truth, must come into
my monarchy.... After me; not I after you, Avicenna, Rhases, Galen,
Mesur! After me; not I after you, O ye of Paris, ye of Montpellier, ye
of Swabia, ye of Meissen, ye of Cologne, ye of Vienna and of what lies
on the Danube and the Rhine; ye islands in the sea, thou Italy, thou
Dalmatia, thou Athens, thou Greek, thou Arab, thou Israelite; after me,
not I after you! Mine is the Monarchy.”
It is easy to misunderstand Paracelsus because of his rough exterior,
which sometimes conceals a deep earnestness behind a jest. Does he
not himself say: “By nature I am not subtly woven, nor brought up on
figs and wheat-bread, but on cheese, milk and rye-bread, wherefore I
may well be rude with the over-clean and superfine; for those who were
brought up in soft clothing and we who were bred in pine needles do not
easily understand one another. When in myself I mean to be kindly, I
must therefore often be taken as rude. How can I not be strange to one
who has never wandered in the sun?”
In his book about Winkelmann, Goethe has described the relation of
man to Nature in the following beautiful sentence: “When the healthy
nature of man acts as a whole; when he feels himself as one with a
great, beautiful, noble and worthy whole; when the sense of harmonious
well-being gives him a pure and free delight; then would the Universe,
if it could be conscious of its own feeling, burst forth in joy at
having attained its goal, and contemplate with wondering admiration the
summit of its own becoming and being.” With a feeling such as finds
expression in these sentences, Paracelsus is simply saturated. From out
of its depths the riddle of humanity takes shape for him. Let us watch
how this happens in Paracelsus’s sense.
At the outset, the road by which Nature has travelled to attain her
loftiest altitude is hidden from man’s power of comprehension. She
has climbed, indeed, to the summit; but the summit does not proclaim:
I feel myself as the whole of Nature; it proclaims, on the contrary:
I feel myself as this single, separated human being. That which in
reality is an achievement of the whole universe, feels itself as a
separated, isolated being, standing alone by itself. This indeed is
the true being of man, _viz._, that he must needs feel himself to
be something quite different from what, in ultimate analysis, he
really is. And if that be a contradiction, then must man be called a
contradiction come to life.
Man is the universe in his own particular way; he regards his oneness
with the universe as a duality: he is the very same that the universe
is; but he is the universe as a repetition, as a single being. This
is the contrast which Paracelsus feels as the Microcosm (Man) and the
Macrocosm (Universe). Man, for him, is the universe in miniature. That
which makes man regard his relationship to the world in this way, that
is his spirit. This spirit appears as if bound to a single being, to a
single organism: and this organism belongs, by the very nature of its
whole being, to the mighty stream of the universe. It is one member,
one link in that whole, having its very existence only in relation
with all the other links or members thereof. But spirit appears as
an outcome of this single, separated organism, and sees itself at
the outset as bound up only with that organism. It tears loose this
organism from the mother earth out of which it has grown. So, for
Paracelsus, a deep-seated connection between man and the universe lies
hidden in the basic foundations of being, a connection which is hidden
through the presence of “spirit.” That spirit which leads us to higher
insight by making knowledge possible, and leads on this knowledge to a
new birth on a higher level--this has, as its first result for us men,
to veil from us our own oneness with the whole.
Thus the nature of man resolves itself for Paracelsus in the first
place into three factors: our sensuous-physical nature, our organism
which appears to us as a natural being among other natural beings and
is of like nature with all other natural beings; our concealed or
hidden nature, which is a link in the chain of the whole universe, and
therefore is not shut up within the organism or limited to it, but
radiates and receives the workings of energy upon and from the entire
universe; and our highest nature, our spirit, which lives its life in
a purely spiritual manner. The first factor in man’s nature Paracelsus
calls the “elementary body”; the second, the ethereal-heavenly, or
“astral body”; and the third he names “the Soul.”