is the language of the Word. Eckhart loves startling phrases, and says
boldly, "Nature is the lower part of the Godhead," and "Before
creation, God was not God." These statements are not so crudely
pantheistic as they sound. He argues that without the Son the Father
would not be God, but only undeveloped potentiality of being. The
three Persons are not merely accidents and modes of the Divine
Substance, but are inherent in the Godhead.[239] And so there can
never have been a time when the Son was not. But the generation of the
Son necessarily involves the creation of an ideal world; for the Son
is Reason, and Reason is constituted by a cosmos of ideas. When
Eckhart speaks of creation and of the world which had no beginning, he
means, not the world of phenomena, but the world of ideas, in the
Platonic sense. The ideal world is the complete expression of the
thought of God, and is above space and time. He calls it "non-natured
nature," as opposed to "diu genâ-tûrte nâtûre," the world of
phenomena.[240] Eckhart's doctrine here differs from that of Plotinus
in a very important particular. The Neoplatonists always thought of
emanation as a diffusion of rays from a sun, which necessarily
decrease in heat and brightness as they recede from the central focus.
It follows that the second Person of the Trinity, the [Greek: Nous] or
Intelligence, is subordinate to the First, and the Third to the
Second. But with Eckhart there is no subordination. The Son is the
pure brightness of the Father's glory, and the express image of His
Person. "The eternal fountain of things is the Father; the image of
things in Him is the Son, and love for this Image is the Holy Ghost."
All created things abide "formless" (as possibilities) in the ground
of the Godhead, and all are realised in the Son. The Alexandrian
Fathers, in identifying the Logos with the Platonic [Greek: Nous], the
bearer of the World-Idea, had found it difficult to avoid
subordinating Him to the Father. Eckhart escapes this heresy, but in
consequence his view of the world is more pantheistic. For his
intelligible world is really God--it is the whole content of the
Divine mind.[241] The question has been much debated, whether Eckhart
really falls into pantheism or not. The answer seems to me to depend
on what is the obscurest part of his whole system--the relation of the
phenomenal world to the world of ideas. He offers the Christian dogma
of the Incarnation of the Logos as a kind of explanation of the
passage of the "prototypes" into "externality." When God "speaks" His
ideas, the phenomenal world arises. This is an incarnation. But the
process by which the soul emancipates itself from the phenomenal and
returns to the intelligible world, is also called a "begetting of the
Son." Thus the whole process is a circular one--from God and back to
God again. Time and space, he says, were created with the world.
Material things are outside each other, spiritual things in each
other. But these statements do not make it clear how Eckhart accounts
for the imperfections of the phenomenal world, which he is precluded
from explaining, as the Neoplatonists did, by a theory of emanation.
Nor can we solve the difficulty by importing modern theories of
evolution into his system. The idea of the world-history as a gradual
realisation of the Divine Personality was foreign to Eckhart's
thought. Stöckl, indeed, tries to father upon him the doctrine that
the human mind is a necessary organ of the self-development of God.
But this theory cannot be found in Eckhart. The "necessity" which
impels God to "beget His Son" is not a physical but a moral necessity.
"The good must needs impart itself," he says.[242] The fact is that
his view of the world is much nearer to acosmism than to pantheism.
"Nothing hinders us so much from the knowledge of God as time and
place," he says. He sees in phenomena only the negation of being, and
it is not clear how he can also regard them as the abode of the
immanent God.[243] It would probably be true to say that, like most
mediæval thinkers, he did not feel himself obliged to give a permanent
value to the transitory, and that the world, except as the temporary
abode of immortal spirits, interested him but little. His neglect of
history, including the earthly life of Christ, is not at all the
result of scepticism about the miraculous. It is simply due to the
feeling that the Divine process in the "everlasting Now" is a fact of
immeasurably greater importance than any occurrence in the external
world can be.
When a religious writer is suspected of pantheism, we naturally turn
to his treatment of the problem of evil. To the true pantheist all is
equally divine, and everything for the best or for the worst, it does
not much matter which.[244] Eckhart certainly does not mean to
countenance this absurd theory, but there are passages in his writings
which logically imply it; and we look in vain for any elucidation, in
his doctrine of sin, of the dark places in his doctrine of God.[245]
In fact, he adds very little to the Neoplatonic doctrine of the nature
of evil. Like Dionysius, he identifies Being with Good, and evil, as
such, with not-being. Moral evil is self-will: it is the attempt, on
the part of the creature, to be a particular This or That outside of
God.
But what is most distinctive in Eckhart's ethics is the new importance
which is given to the doctrine of immanence. The human soul is a
microcosm, which in a manner contains all things in itself. At the
"apex of the mind" there is a Divine "spark," which is so closely akin
to God that it is one with Him, and not merely united to Him.[246] In
his teaching about this "ground of the soul" Eckhart wavers. His
earlier view is that it is created, and only the medium by which God
transforms us to Himself. But his later doctrine is that it is
uncreated, the immanence of the Being and Nature of God Himself.
"Diess Fünkelein, das ist Gott," he says once. This view was adopted
by Ruysbroek, Suso, and (with modifications by) Tauler, and became one
of their chief tenets.[247] This spark is the organ by which our
personality holds communion with God and knows Him. It is with
reference to it that Eckhart uses the phrase which has so often been
quoted to convict him of blasphemous self-deification--"the eye with
which I see God is the same as that with which He sees me.[248]" The
"uncreated spark" is really the same as the grace of God, which raises
us into a Godlike state. But this grace, according to Eckhart (at
least in his later period), is God Himself acting like a human faculty
in the soul, and transforming it so that "man himself becomes grace."
The following is perhaps the most instructive passage: "There is in
the soul something which is above the soul, Divine, simple, a pure
nothing; rather nameless than named, rather unknown than known. Of
this I am accustomed to speak in my discourses. Sometimes I have
called it a power, sometimes an uncreated light, and sometimes a
Divine spark. It is absolute and free from all names and all forms,
just as God is free and absolute in Himself. It is higher than
knowledge, higher than love, higher than grace. For in all these there
is still _distinction_. In this power God doth blossom and flourish
with all His Godhead, and the Spirit flourisheth in God. In this
power the Father bringeth forth His only-begotten Son, as essentially
as in Himself; and in this light ariseth the Holy Ghost. This spark
rejecteth all creatures, and will have only God, simply as He is in
Himself. It rests satisfied neither with the Father, nor with the Son,
nor with the Holy Ghost, nor with the three Persons, so far as each
existeth in its particular attribute. It is satisfied only with the
superessential essence. It is determined to enter into the simple
Ground, the still Waste, the Unity where no man dwelleth. Then it is
satisfied in the light; then it is one: it is one in itself, as this
Ground is a simple stillness, and in itself immovable; and yet by this
immobility are all things moved."
It is God that worketh in us both to will and to do of His good
pleasure; but our own nature and personality remain intact. It is
plain that we could not see God unless our personality remained
distinct from the personality of God. Complete fusion is as
destructive of the possibility of love and knowledge as complete
separation[249].
Eckhart gives to "the highest reason[250]" the primacy among our
faculties, and in his earlier period identifies it with "the spark."
He asserts the absolute supremacy of reason more strongly than anyone
since Erigena. His language on this subject resembles that of the
Cambridge Platonists. "Reasonable knowledge is eternal life," he says.
"How can any external revelation help me," he asks, "unless it be
verified by inner experience? The last appeal must always be to the
deepest part of my own being, and that is my reason." "The reason," he
says, "presses ever upwards. It cannot rest content with goodness or
wisdom, nor even with God Himself; it must penetrate to the Ground
from whence all goodness and wisdom spring."
Thus Eckhart is not content with the knowledge of God which is
mediated by Christ, but aspires to penetrate into the "Divine
darkness" which underlies the manifestation of the Trinity. In fact,
when he speaks of the imitation of Christ, he distinguishes between
"the way of the manhood," which has to be followed by all, and "the
way of the Godhead," which is for the mystic only. In this overbold
aspiration to rise "from the Three to the One," he falls into the
error which we have already noticed, and several passages in his
writings advocate the quietistic self-simplification which belongs to
this scheme of perfection. There are sentences in which he exhorts us
to strip off all that comes to us from the senses, and to throw
ourselves upon the heart of God, there to rest for ever, "hidden from
all creatures[251]." But there are many other passages of an opposite
tendency. He tells us that "the way of the manhood," which, of course,
includes imitation of the active life of Christ, must be trodden first
by all; he insists that in the state of union the faculties of the
soul will act in a new and higher way, so that the personality is
restored, not destroyed; and, lastly, he teaches that contemplation is
only the means to a higher activity, and that this is, in fact, its
object; "what a man has taken in by contemplation, that he pours out
in love." There is no contradiction in the desire for rest combined
with the desire for active service; for rest can only be defined as
unimpeded activity; but in Eckhart there is, I think, a real
inconsistency. The traditions of his philosophy pointed towards
withdrawal from the world and from outward occupations--towards the
monkish ideal, in a word; but the modern spirit was already astir
within him. He preached in German to the general public, and his
favourite themes are the present living operation of the Spirit, and
the consecration of life in the world. There is, he shows, no
contradiction between the active and the contemplative life; the
former belongs to the faculties of the soul, the latter to its
essence. In commenting on the story of Martha and Mary, those
favourite types of activity and contemplation[252], he surprises us by
putting Martha first. "Mary hath _chosen_ the good part; that is," he
says, "she is striving to be as holy as her sister. Mary is still at
school: Martha has learnt her lesson. It is better to feed the hungry
than to see even such visions as St. Paul saw." "Besser ein
Lebemeister als tausend Lesemeister." He discourages monkish
religiosity and external badges of saintliness--"avoid everything
peculiar," he says, "in dress, food, and language." "You need not go
into a desert and fast; a crowd is often more lonely than a
wilderness, and small things harder to do than great." "What is the
good of the dead bones of saints?" he asks, in the spirit of a
sixteenth century reformer; "the dead can neither give nor take[253]."
This double aspect of Eckhart's teaching makes him particularly
interesting; he seems to stand on the dividing-line between mediæval
and modern Christianity.
Like other mystics, he insists that love, when perfect, is independent
of the hope of reward, and he shows great freedom in handling
Purgatory, Hell, and Heaven. They are states, not places; separation
from God is the misery of hell, and each man is his own judge. "We
would spiritualise everything," he says, with especial reference to
Holy Scripture.[254]
In comparing the Mysticism of Eckhart with that of his predecessors,
from Dionysius downwards, and of the scholastics down to Gerson, we
find an obvious change in the disappearance of the long ladders of
ascent, the graduated scales of virtues, faculties, and states of
mind, which fill so large a place in those systems. These lists are
the natural product of the imagination, when it plays upon the theory
of _emanation_. But with Eckhart, as we have seen, the fundamental
truth is the _immanence_ of God Himself, not in the faculties, but in
the ground of the soul. The "spark of the soul" is for him really
"divinæ particula auræ." "God begets His Son in me," he is fond of
saying: and there is no doubt that, relying on a verse in the
seventeenth chapter of St. John, he regards this "begetting" as
analogous to the eternal generation of the Son.[255] This birth of the
Son in the soul has a double aspect--the "eternal birth," which is
unconscious and inalienable,[256] but which does not confer
blessedness, being common to good and bad alike; and the assimilation
of the faculties of the soul by the pervading presence of Christ, or
in other words by grace, "quæ lux quædam deiformis est," as Ruysbroek
says. The deification of our nature is therefore a thing to be striven
for, and not given complete to start with; but it is important to
observe that Eckhart places no intermediaries between man and God.
"The Word is very nigh thee," nearer than any object of sense, and any
human institutions; sink into thyself, and thou wilt find Him. The
heavenly and earthly hierarchies of Dionysius, with the reverence for
the priesthood which was built upon them, have no significance for
Eckhart. In this as in other ways, he is a precursor of the
Reformation.
With Eckhart I end this Lecture on the speculative Mysticism of the
Middle Ages. His successors, Ruysbroek, Suso, and Tauler, much as they
resemble him in their general teaching, differ from him in this, that
with none of them is the intellectual, philosophical side of primary
importance. They added nothing of value to the speculative system of
Eckhart; their Mysticism was primarily a _religion of the heart_ or a
rule of life. It is this side of Mysticism to which I shall next
invite your attention. It should bring us near to the centre of our
subject: for a speculative religious system is best known by its
fruits.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 188: _Conf._ viii. 2-5. The best account of the theology of
Victorinus is Gore's article in the _Dictionary of Christian
Biography_.]
[Footnote 189: So Synesius calls the Son [Greek: patros morphê].]
[Footnote 190: "Non enim vivimus præteritum aut vivimus futurum, sed
semper præsenti utimur." "Æternitas semper per præsentiam habet omnia
et hæc semper."]
[Footnote 191: "Effectus est omnia," Victorinus says plainly.]
[Footnote 192: Victorinus must have got this phrase from some Greek
Neoplatonist. It was explained that [Greek: to mê on] may be used in
four senses, and that it is not intended to identify the two extremes.
But the very remarkable passage in Hierotheus (referred to in Lecture
III.) shows that the two categories of [Greek: aoristia] cannot be
kept apart.]
[Footnote 193: "Ipse se ipsum circumterminavit."]
[Footnote 194: _De Trin_. vii. 4. 7; _de Doctr. Christ_. i. 5. 5;
_Serm_. 52. 16; _De Civ. Dei_, ix. 16.]
[Footnote 195: _Contr. Adim. Man._ 11.]
[Footnote 196: _De Ord._ ii. 16. 44, 18. 47.]
[Footnote 197: _Enarrat. in Ps._ 85. 12.]
[Footnote 198: _Conf._ vii. 13 _ad fin._]
[Footnote 199: Compare with this sentence of the _Confessions_ the
statement of Erigena quoted below, that "the things which are not are
far better than those which are."]
[Footnote 200: _Ep._ 120. 20. St. Augustine wrote in early life an
essay "On the Beautiful and Fit," which he unhappily took no pains to
preserve.]
[Footnote 201: _De Ord._ ii. 16. 42, 59; Plot. _Enn._ i. 6. 4.]
[Footnote 202: _De Lib. Arb._ ii. 16. 41; Plot. _Enn._ i. 6. 8, iii.
8. 11.]
[Footnote 203: _Enarr. in Ps._ xliv. 3; _Ep._ 120. 20. Plot. _Enn._ i.
6. 4, says with more picturesqueness than usual [Greek: kalon to tês
dikaiosynês kai sôphrosynês prosôpon, kai oute hesperos oute eôos
outô kala]. (From Aristotle, _Eth._ v. 1. 15.)]
[Footnote 204: _Ench._ iii. "etiam illud quod malum dicitur bene
ordinatum est loco suo positum; eminentius commendat bona." St.
Augustine also says (_Ench._ xi.), "cum omnino mali nomen non sit nisi
privationis boni"; cf. Plot. _Enn._ iii. 2. 5, [Greek: holôs de to
kakon elleipsin tou agathou theteon.] St. Augustine praises Plotinus
for his teaching on the universality of Providence.]
[Footnote 205: _De Civ. Dei_, iv. 12, vii. 5.]
[Footnote 206: _De Quantitate Animæ_, xxx.]
[Footnote 207: _Conf._ vii. 10. I have quoted Bigg's translation.]
[Footnote 208: _Conf._ xi. 9.]
[Footnote 209: St. Augustine does not reject the belief that visions
are granted by the mediation of angels, but he expresses himself with
great caution on the subject. Cf. _De Gen. ad litt._ xii. 30, "Sunt
quædam excellentia et merito divina, quæ demonstrant angeli miris
modis: utrum visa sua facili quadam et præpotenti iunctione vel
commixtione etiam nostra esse facientes, an scientes nescio quo modo
nostram in spiritu nostro informar visionem, difficilis perceptu et
difficilior dictu res est."]
[Footnote 210: See Lotze, _Microcosmus_, bk. viii. chap. 4, and other
places. We may perhaps compare the Johannine [Greek: kosmos] with the
Synoptic [Greek: aiôn] as examples of the two modes of envisaging
reality.]
[Footnote 211: Eriugena is, no doubt, the more correct spelling, but I
have preferred to keep the name by which he is best known.]
[Footnote 212: Erigena quotes also Origen, the two Gregorys, Basil,
Maximus, Ambrose, and Augustine. Of pagan philosophers he puts Plato
first, but holds Aristotle in high honour.]
[Footnote 213: Stöckl calls him "ein fälscher Mystiker," because the
Neoplatonic ("gnostic-rationalistic") element takes, for him, the
place of supernaturalism. This, as will be shown later, is in
accordance with the Roman Catholic view of Mysticism, which is not
that adopted in these Lectures. For us, Erigena's defect as a mystic
is rather to be sought in his extreme intellectualism.]
[Footnote 214: "Dum vero (divina bonitas) incomprehensibilis
intelligitur, per excellentiam non immerito _nihilum_ vocitatur."]
[Footnote 215: This is really a revival of "modalism." The unorthodoxy
of the doctrine becomes very apparent in some of Erigena's
successors.]
[Footnote 216: _De Div. Nat._ i. 36: "Iamdudum inter nos est confectum
omnia quæ vel sensu corporeo vel intellectu vel ratione cognoscuntur
de Deo merito creatore omnium, posse prædicari, dum nihil eorum quæ de
se prædicantur pura veritatis contemplatio eum approbat esse." All
affirmations about God are made "non proprie sed translative"; all
negations "non translative sed proprie." Cf. also _ibid._ i. 1. 66,
"verius fideliusque negatur in omnibus quam affirmatur"; and
especially _ibid._ i. 5. 26, "theophanias autem dico visibilium et
invisibilium species, quarum ordine et pulcritudine cognoscitur Deus
esse et invenitur _non quid est, sed quia solummodo est._" Erigena
tries to say (in his atrocious Latin) that the external world can
teach us nothing about God, except the bare fact of His existence. No
passage could be found to illustrate more clearly the real tendencies
of the negative road, and the purely subjective Mysticism connected
with it. Erigena will not allow us to infer, from the order and beauty
of the world, that order and beauty are Divine attributes.]
[Footnote 217: But it must be remembered that Erigena calls God
"nihilum." His words about creation are, "Ac sic de nihilo facit
omnia, de sua videlicet superessentialitate producit essentias, de
supervitalitate vitas, de superintellectualitate intellectus, de
negatione omnium quæ sunt et quæ non sunt, affirmationes omnium quæ
sunt et quæ non sunt."]
[Footnote 218: So Kaulich shows in his monograph on the speculative
system of Erigena.]
[Footnote 219: Erigena was roused by a work on predestination, written
by Gotteschalk, and advocating Calvinistic views, to protest against
the doctrine that God, who is life, can possibly predestine anyone to
eternal death.]
[Footnote 220: Berengar objected to the crudely materialistic theories
of the real presence which were then prevalent. He protested against
the statement that the transmutation of the elements takes place "vere
et sensualiter," and that "portiunculæ" of the body of Christ lie upon
the altar. "The mouth," he said, "receives the _sacrament_, the inner
man the true body of Christ."]
[Footnote 221: Similar teaching from the sacred books of the East is
quoted by E. Caird, _Evolution of Religion_, vol. i. p. 355.]
[Footnote 222: This is the accepted phrase for the work of the twelfth
and thirteenth century theologians. We might also say that they
modified uncompromising Platonic Realism by Aristotelian science. Cf.
Harnack, _History of Dogma_, vol. vi. p. 43 (English translation):
"Under what other auspices could this great structure be erected than
under those of that Aristotelian Realism, which was at bottom a
dialectic between the Platonic Realism and Nominalism; and which was
represented as capable of uniting immanence and transcendence, history
and miracle, the immutability of God and mutability, Idealism and
Realism, reason and authority."]
[Footnote 223: The great importance of Bernard in the history of
Mysticism does not lie in the speculative side of his teaching, in
which he depends almost entirely upon Augustine. His great achievement
was to recall devout and loving contemplation to the image of the
crucified Christ, and to found that worship of our Saviour as the
"Bridegroom of the Soul," which in the next centuries inspired so much
fervid devotion and lyrical sacred poetry. The romantic side of
Mysticism, for good and for evil, received its greatest stimulus in
Bernard's Poems and in his Sermons on the Canticles. This subject is
dealt with in Appendix E.]
[Footnote 224: Stöckl says of Hugo that the course of development of
mediæval Mysticism cannot be understood without a knowledge of his
writings. Stöckl's own account is very full and clear.]
[Footnote 225: The "eye of contemplation" was given us "to see God
within ourselves"; this eye has been blinded by sin. The "eye of
reason" was given us "to see ourselves"; this has been injured by sin.
Only the "eye flesh" remains in its pristine clearness. In things
"above reason" we must trust to faith, "quæ non adiuvatur ratione
ulla, quoniam non capit ea ratio."]
[Footnote 226: Richard, who is more ecstatic than Hugo, gives the
following account of this state: "Per mentis excessum extra semetipsum
ductus homo ... lumen non per speculum in ænigmate sed in simplici
veritate contemplatur." In this state "we forget all that is without
and all that is within us." Reason and all other faculties are
obscured. What then is our security against delusions? "The
transfigured Christ," he says, "must be accompanied by Moses and
Elias"; that is to say, visions must not be believed which conflict
with the authority of Scripture.]
[Footnote 227: See, especially, Stöckl, _Geschichte der Philosophie
des Mittelalters_, vol. i. pp. 382-384.]
[Footnote 228: It is hardly necessary to point out that St. Paul's
distinction between natural and spiritual (see esp. 1 Cor. ii.) is
wholly different.]
[Footnote 229: Contrast the Plotinian doctrine of ecstasy with the
following: "Dieu élève à son grè aux plus hauts sommets, sans aucun
mérite préalable. Osanne de Mantoue reçoit le don de la contemplation
à peine agée de six ans. Christine est fiancée à dix ans, pendant une
extase de trois jours; Marie d'Agrèda reçut des illuminations dès sa
première enfance" (Ribet). Since Divine favours are believed to be
bestowed in a purely arbitrary manner, the fancies of a child left
alone in the dark are as good as the deepest intuitions of saint,
poet, or philosopher. Moreover, God sometimes "asserts His liberty" by
"elevating souls suddenly and without transition from the abyss of sin
to the highest summits of perfection, just as in nature He asserts it
by miracles" (Ribet). Such teaching is interesting as showing how the
admission of caprice in the world of phenomena reacts upon the moral
sense and depraves our conception of God and salvation. The faculty of
contemplation, according to Roman Catholic teaching, is acquired
"_either_ by virtue _or_ by gratuitous favour." The dualism of natural
and supernatural thus allows men to claim independent merit, while the
interventions of God are arbitrary and unaccountable.]
[Footnote 230: Those who are interested to see how utterly defenceless
this theory leaves us against the silliest delusions, may consult with
advantage the _Dictionary of Mysticism_, by the Abbé Migne (_passim_),
or, if they wish to ascend nearer to the fountain-head of these
legends, there are the sixty folio volumes of _Acta Sanctorum_,
compiled by the Bollandists. Görres and Ribet are also very full of
these stories.]
[Footnote 231: See Appendix C.]
[Footnote 232: The difference between contemplation and meditation is
explained by all the mediæval mystics. Meditation is "discursive,"
contemplation is "mentis in Deum suspensæ elevatio." Richard of St.
Victor states the distinction epigrammatically--"per meditationem
rimamur, per contemplationem miramur." ("Admiratio est actus
consequens contemplationem sublimis veritatis."--Thomas Aquinas.)]
[Footnote 233: This arbitrary schematism is very characteristic of
this type of Mysticism, and shows its affinity to Indian philosophy.
Compare "the eightfold path of Buddha," and a hundred other similar
classifications in the sacred books of the East.]
[Footnote 234: The date usually given, 1260, is probably too late; but
the exact year cannot be determined.]
[Footnote 235: Prof. Karl Pearson (_Mina_, 1886) says, "The Mysticism
of Eckhart owes its leading ideas to Averroes." He traces the doctrine
of the [Greek: Nous poiêtikos] from Aristotle, _de Anima_, through
the Arabs to Eckhart, and finds a close resemblance between the
"prototypes" or "ideas" of Eckhart and the "Dinge an sich" of Kant.
But Eckhart's affinities with Plotinus and Hegel seem to me to be
closer than those which he shows with Aristotle and Kant. On the
connexion with Averroes, Lasson says that while there is a close
resemblance between the Eckhartian doctrine of the "Seelengrund" and
Averroes' _Intellectus Agens_ as the universal principle of reason in
all men (monopsychism), they differ in this--that with Averroes
personality is a phase or accident, but with Eckhart the eternal is
immanent in the personality in such a way that the personality itself
has a part in eternity (_Meister Eckhart der Mystiker_, pp. 348, 349).
Personality is for Eckhart the eternal ground-form of all true being,
and the notion of Person is the centre-point of his system. He says,
"The word _I am_ none can truly speak but God alone." The individual
must try to become a person, as the Son of God is a Person.]
[Footnote 236: Denifle has devoted great pains to proving that Eckhart
in his Latin works is very largely dependent upon Aquinas. His
conclusions are welcomed and gladly adopted by Harnack, who, like
Ritschl, has little sympathy with the German mystics, and considers
that Christian Mysticism is really "Catholic piety." "It will never be
possible," he says, "to make Mysticism Protestant without flying in
the face of history and Catholicism." No one certainly would be guilty
of the absurdity of "making Mysticism Protestant"; but it is, I think,
even more absurd to "make it (Roman) Catholic," though such a view may
unite the suffrages of Romanists and Neo-Kantians. See Appendix A, p.
346.]