THE MYSTERY OF MYSTICISM, OR OF NATURE IN GOD.
Interesting material for the criticism of cosmogonic and theogonic
fancies is furnished in the doctrine--revived by Schelling and drawn
from Jacob Böhme--of eternal Nature in God.
God is pure spirit, clear self-consciousness, moral personality;
Nature, on the contrary, is, at least partially, confused,
dark, desolate, immoral, or to say no more, unmoral. But it is
self-contradictory that the impure should proceed from the pure,
darkness from light. How then can we remove these obvious difficulties
in the way of assigning a divine origin to Nature? Only by positing
this impurity, this darkness in God, by distinguishing in God himself
a principle of light and a principle of darkness. In other words,
we can only explain the origin of darkness by renouncing the idea of
origin, and presupposing darkness as existing from the beginning. [62]
But that which is dark in Nature is the irrational, the material,
Nature strictly, as distinguished from intelligence. Hence the simple
meaning of this doctrine is, that Nature, Matter, cannot be explained
as a result of intelligence; on the contrary, it is the basis of
intelligence, the basis of personality, without itself having any
basis; spirit without Nature is an unreal abstraction; consciousness
develops itself only out of Nature. But this materialistic doctrine is
veiled in a mystical yet attractive obscurity, inasmuch as it is not
expressed in the clear, simple language of reason, but emphatically
enunciated in that consecrated word of the emotions--God. If the
light in God springs out of the darkness in God, this is only because
it is involved in the idea of light in general, that it illuminates
darkness, thus presupposing darkness, not making it. If then God is
once subjected to a general law,--as he must necessarily be unless
he be made the arena of conflict for the most senseless notions,--if
self-consciousness in God as well as in itself, as in general, is
evolved from a principle in Nature, why is not this natural principle
abstracted from God? That which is a law of consciousness in itself
is a law for the consciousness of every personal being, whether man,
angel, demon, God, or whatever else thou mayest conceive to thyself as
a being. To what then, seen in their true light, do the two principles
in God reduce themselves? The one to Nature, at least to Nature as
it exists in the conception, abstracted from its reality; the other
to mind, consciousness, personality. The one half, the reverse side,
thou dost not name God, but only the obverse side, on which he presents
to thee mind, consciousness: thus his specific essence, that whereby
he is God, is mind, intelligence, consciousness. Why then dost thou
make that which is properly the subject in God as God, i.e., as mind,
into a mere predicate, as if God existed as God apart from mind,
from consciousness? Why, but because thou art enslaved by mystical
religious speculation, because the primary principle in thee is the
imagination, thought being only secondary and serving but to throw
into formulæ the products of the imagination,--because thou feelest
at ease and at home only in the deceptive twilight of mysticism.
Mysticism is deuteroscopy--a fabrication of phrases having a double
meaning. The mystic speculates concerning the essence of Nature or of
man, but under, and by means of, the supposition that he is speculating
concerning another, a personal being, distinct from both. The mystic
has the same objects as the plain, self-conscious thinker; but the
real object is regarded by the mystic, not as itself, but as an
imaginary being, and hence the imaginary object is to him the real
object. Thus here, in the mystical doctrine of the two principles
in God, the real object is pathology, the imaginary one, theology;
i.e., pathology is converted into theology. There would be nothing to
urge against this, if consciously real pathology were recognised and
expressed as theology; indeed, it is precisely our task to show that
theology is nothing else than an unconscious, esoteric pathology,
anthropology, and psychology, and that therefore real anthropology,
real pathology, and real psychology have far more claim to the name of
theology than has theology itself, because this is nothing more than
an imaginary psychology and anthropology. But this doctrine or theory
is supposed--and for this reason it is mystical and fantastic--to
be not pathology, but theology, in the old or ordinary sense of the
word; it is supposed that we have here unfolded to us the life of
a Being distinct from us, while nevertheless it is only our own
nature which is unfolded, though at the same time again shut up
from us by the fact that this nature is represented as inhering in
another being. The mystic philosopher supposes that in God, not in us
human individuals,--that would be far too trivial a truth,--reason
first appears after the Passion of Nature;--that not man, but God,
has wrestled himself out of the obscurity of confused feelings and
impulses into the clearness of knowledge; that not in our subjective,
limited mode of conception, but in God himself, the nervous tremors
of darkness precede the joyful consciousness of light; in short, he
supposes that his theory presents not a history of human throes, but a
history of the development, i.e., the throes of God--for developments
(or transitions) are birth-struggles. But, alas! this supposition
itself belongs only to the pathological element.
If, therefore, the cosmogonic process presents to us the Light
of the power of distinction as belonging to the divine essence;
so, on the other hand, the Night or Nature in God represents to us
the Pensées confuses of Leibnitz as divine powers. But the Pensées
confuses--confused, obscure conceptions and thoughts, or more correctly
images--represent the flesh, matter;--a pure intelligence, separate
from matter, has only clear, free thoughts, no obscure, i.e., fleshly
ideas, no material images, exciting the imagination and setting the
blood in commotion. The Night in God, therefore, implies nothing else
than this: God is not only a spiritual, but also a material, corporeal,
fleshly being; but as man is man, and receives his designation, in
virtue not of his fleshly nature, but of his mind, so is it with God.
But the mystic philosopher expresses this only in obscure, mystical,
indefinite, dissembling images. Instead of the rude, but hence all
the more precise and striking expression, flesh, it substitutes
the equivocal, abstract words nature and ground. "As nothing is
before or out of God, he must have the ground of his existence in
himself. This all philosophies say, but they speak of this ground
as a mere idea, without making it something real. This ground
of his existence which God has in himself, is not God considered
absolutely, i.e., in so far as he exists; it is only the ground of his
existence. It is Nature--in God; an existence inseparable from him,
it is true, but still distinct. Analogically (?), this relation may
be illustrated by gravitation and light in Nature." But this ground
is the non-intelligent in God. "That which is the commencement of an
intelligence (in itself) cannot also be intelligent." "In the strict
sense, intelligence is born of this unintelligent principle. Without
this antecedent darkness there is no reality of the Creator." "With
abstract ideas of God as actus purissimus, such as were laid down
by the older philosophy, or such as the modern, out of anxiety to
remove God far from Nature, is always reproducing, we can effect
nothing. God is something more real than a mere moral order of
the world, and has quite another and a more living motive power in
himself than is ascribed to him by the jejune subtilty of abstract
idealists. Idealism, if it has not a living realism as its basis, is as
empty and abstract a system as that of Leibnitz or Spinoza, or as any
other dogmatic system." "So long as the God of modern theism remains
the simple, supposed purely essential, but in fact non-essential
Being that all modern systems make him, so long as a real duality is
not recognised in God, and a limiting, negativing force, opposed to
the expansive affirming force, so long will the denial of a personal
God be scientific honesty." "All consciousness is concentration, is a
gathering together, a collecting of oneself. This negativing force, by
which a being turns back upon itself, is the true force of personality,
the force of egoism." "How should there be a fear of God if there
were no strength in him? But that there should be something in God
which is mere force and strength cannot be held astonishing if only
it be not maintained that he is this alone and nothing besides." [63]
But what then is force and strength which is merely such, if
not corporeal force and strength? Dost thou know any power which
stands at thy command, in distinction from the power of kindness and
reason, besides muscular power? If thou canst effect nothing through
kindness and the arguments of reason, force is what thou must take
refuge in. But canst thou "effect" anything without strong arms and
fists? Is there known to thee, in distinction from the power of the
moral order of the world, "another and more living motive power" than
the lever of the criminal court? Is not Nature without body also an
"empty, abstract" idea, a "jejune subtilty"? Is not the mystery of
Nature the mystery of corporeality? Is not the system of a "living
realism" the system of the organised body? Is there, in general,
any other force, the opposite of intelligence, than the force of
flesh and blood,--any other strength of Nature than the strength of
the fleshly impulses? And the strongest of the impulses of Nature,
is it not the sexual feeling? Who does not remember the old proverb:
"Amare et sapere vix Deo competit?" So that if we would posit in God
a nature, an existence opposed to the light of intelligence,--can we
think of a more living, a more real antithesis, than that of amare
and sapere, of spirit and flesh, of freedom and the sexual impulse?
Personality, individuality, consciousness, without Nature, is
nothing; or, which is the same thing, an empty, unsubstantial
abstraction. But Nature, as has been shown and is obvious, is nothing
without corporeality. The body alone is that negativing, limiting,
concentrating, circumscribing force, without which no personality is
conceivable. Take away from thy personality its body, and thou takest
away that which holds it together. The body is the basis, the subject
of personality. Only by the body is a real personality distinguished
from the imaginary one of a spectre. What sort of abstract, vague,
empty personalities should we be, if we had not the property of
impenetrability,--if in the same place, in the same form in which we
are, others might stand at the same time? Only by the exclusion of
others from the space it occupies does personality prove itself to
be real. But a body does not exist without flesh and blood. Flesh and
blood is life, and life alone is corporeal reality. But flesh and blood
is nothing without the oxygen of sexual distinction. The distinction
of sex is not superficial, or limited to certain parts of the body;
it is an essential one: it penetrates bones and marrow. The substance
of man is manhood; that of woman, womanhood. However spiritual and
supersensual the man may be, he remains always a man; and it is the
same with the woman. Hence personality is nothing without distinction
of sex; personality is essentially distinguished into masculine and
feminine. Where there is no thou, there is no I; but the distinction
between I and thou, the fundamental condition of all personality,
of all consciousness, is only real, living, ardent, when felt as the
distinction between man and woman. The thou between man and woman
has quite another sound than the monotonous thou between friends.
Nature in distinction from personality can signify nothing else than
difference of sex. A personal being apart from Nature is nothing
else than a being without sex, and conversely. Nature is said to
be predicated of God, "in the sense in which it is said of a man
that he is of a strong, healthy nature." But what is more feeble,
what more insupportable, what more contrary to Nature, than a person
without sex, or a person who in character, manners, or feelings denies
sex? What is virtue, the excellence of man as man? Manhood. Of man as
woman? Womanhood. But man exists only as man and woman. The strength,
the healthiness of man consists therefore in this: that as a woman,
he be truly woman; as man, truly man. Thou repudiatest "the horror
of all that is real, which supposes the spiritual to be polluted by
contact with the real." Repudiate then, before all, thy own horror for
the distinction of sex. If God is not polluted by Nature, neither is he
polluted by being associated with the idea of sex. In renouncing sex,
thou renouncest thy whole principle. A moral God apart from Nature
is without basis; but the basis of morality is the distinction of
sex. Even the brute is capable of self-sacrificing love in virtue of
the sexual distinction. All the glory of Nature, all its power, all
its wisdom and profundity, concentrates and individualises itself in
distinction of sex. Why then dost thou shrink from naming the nature
of God by its true name? Evidently, only because thou hast a general
horror of things in their truth and reality; because thou lookest at
all things through the deceptive vapours of mysticism. For this very
reason then, because Nature in God is only a delusive, unsubstantial
appearance, a fantastic ghost of Nature,--for it is based, as we have
said, not on flesh and blood, not on a real ground,--this attempt to
establish a personal God is once more a failure, and I, too, conclude
with the words, "The denial of a personal God will be scientific
honesty:"--and, I add, scientific truth, so long as it is not declared
and shown in unequivocal terms, first à priori, on speculative grounds,
that form, place, corporeality, and sex do not contradict the idea of
the Godhead; and secondly, à 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 modernised 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
harmonise 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." [64]
But while his mind seized with fearful earnestness the dark side
of Nature, which did not harmonise with the religious idea of a
heavenly Creator, he was on the other hand rapturously affected by
her resplendent aspects. Jacob Böhme has a sense for Nature. He
preconceives, nay, he feels the joys of the mineralogist, of the
botanist, of the chemist--the joys of "godless natural science." He is
enraptured by the splendour of jewels, the tones of metals, the hues
and odours of plants, the beauty and gentleness of many animals. In
another place, speaking of the revelation of God in the phenomena of
light, the process by which "there arises in the Godhead the wondrous
and beautiful structure of the heavens in various colours and kinds,
and every spirit shows itself in its form specially," he says, "I can
compare it with nothing but with the noblest precious stones, such as
the ruby, emerald, epidote, onyx, sapphire, diamond, jasper, hyacinth,
amethyst, beryl, sardine, carbuncle, and the like." Elsewhere: "But
regarding the precious stones, such as the carbuncle, ruby, emerald,
epidote, onyx, and the like, which are the very best, these have the
very same origin--the flash of light in love. For that flash is born
in tenderness, and is the heart in the centre of the Fountain-spirit,
wherefore those stones also are mild, powerful, and lovely." It is
evident that Jacob Böhme had no bad taste in mineralogy; that he had
delight in flowers also, and consequently a faculty for botany, is
proved by the following passages among others:--"The heavenly powers
gave birth to heavenly joy-giving fruits and colours, to all sorts
of trees and shrubs, whereupon grows the beauteous and lovely fruit
of life: also there spring up in these powers all sorts of flowers
with beauteous heavenly colours and scents. Their taste is various,
in each according to its quality and kind, altogether holy, divine,
and joy-giving." "If thou desirest to contemplate the heavenly,
divine pomp and glory, as they are, and to know what sort of products,
pleasure, or joys there are above: look diligently at this world, at
the varieties of fruits and plants that grow upon the earth,--trees,
shrubs, vegetables, roots, flowers, oils, wines, corn, and everything
that is there, and that thy heart can search out. All this is an
image of the heavenly pomp." [65]
A despotic fiat could not suffice as an explanation of the origin
of Nature to Jacob Böhme; Nature appealed too strongly to his
senses, and lay too near his heart; hence he sought for a natural
explanation of Nature; but he necessarily found no other ground of
explanation than those qualities of Nature which made the strongest
impression on him. Jacob Böhme--this is his essential character--is a
mystical natural philosopher, a theosophic Vulcanist and Neptunist,
[66] for according to him "all things had their origin in fire and
water." Nature had fascinated Jacob's religious sentiments,--not
in vain did he receive his mystical light from the shining of tin
utensils; but the religious sentiment works only within itself;
it has not the force, not the courage, to press forward to the
examination of things in their reality; it looks at all things
through the medium of religion, it sees all in God, i.e., in
the entrancing, soul-possessing splendour of the imagination, it
sees all in images and as an image. But Nature affected his mind
in an opposite manner; hence he must place this opposition in God
himself,--for the supposition of two independently existing, opposite,
original principles would have afflicted his religious sentiment;--he
must distinguish in God himself a gentle, beneficent element, and a
fierce consuming one. Everything fiery, bitter, harsh, contracting,
dark, cold, comes from a divine harshness and bitterness; everything
mild, lustrous, warming, tender, soft, yielding, from a mild, soft,
luminous quality in God. "Thus are the creatures on the earth, in the
water, and in the air, each creature out of its own science, out of
good and evil.... As one sees before one's eyes that there are good
and evil creatures; as venomous beasts and serpents from the centre
of the nature of darkness, from the power of the fierce quality,
which only want to dwell in darkness, abiding in caves and hiding
themselves from the sun. By each animal's food and dwelling we see
whence they have sprang, for every creature needs to dwell with its
mother, and yearns after her, as is plain to the sight." "Gold, silver,
precious stones, and all bright metal, has its origin in the light,
which appeared before the times of anger," &c. "Everything which in
the substance of this world is yielding, soft, and thin, is flowing,
and gives itself forth, and the ground and origin of it is in the
eternal Unity, for unity ever flows forth from itself; for in the
nature of things not dense, as water and air, we can understand no
susceptibility or pain, they being one in themselves. [67] In short,
heaven is as rich as the earth. Everything that is on this earth is
in heaven, [68] all that is in Nature is in God. But in the latter
it is divine, heavenly; in the former, earthly, visible, external,
material, but yet the same." "When I write of trees, shrubs and fruits,
thou must not understand me of earthly things, such as are in this
world; for it is not my meaning that in heaven there grows a dead,
hard, wooden tree, or a stone of earthly qualities. No: my meaning is
heavenly and spiritual, but yet truthful and literal; thus, I mean no
other things than what I write in the letters of the alphabet;" i.e.,
in heaven there are the same trees and flowers, but the trees in heaven
are the trees which bloom and exhale in my imagination, without making
coarse material impressions upon me; the trees on earth are the trees
which I perceive through my senses. The distinction is the distinction
between imagination and perception. "It is not my undertaking," says
Jacob Böhme himself, "to describe the course of all stars, their place
and name, or how they have yearly their conjunction or opposition,
or quadrate, or the like,--what they do yearly and hourly,--which
through long years has been discovered by wise, skilful, ingenious
men, by diligent contemplation and observation, and deep thought and
calculation. I have not learned and studied these things, and leave
scholars to treat of them, but my undertaking is to write according
to the spirit and thought, not according to sight." [69]
The doctrine of Nature in God aims, by naturalism, to establish
theism, especially the theism which regards the Supreme Being as
a personal being. But personal theism conceives God as a personal
being, separate from all material things; it excludes from him all
development, because that is nothing else than the self-separation of
a being from circumstances and conditions which do not correspond to
its true idea. And this does not take place in God, because in him
beginning, end, middle, are not to be distinguished,--because he is
at once what he is, is from the beginning what he is to be, what he
can be; he is the pure unity of existence and essence, reality and
idea, act and will. Deus suum Esse est. Herein theism accords with
the essence of religion. All religions, however positive they may be,
rest on abstraction; they are distinguished only in that from which
the abstraction is made. Even the Homeric gods, with all their living
strength and likeness to man, are abstract forms; they have bodies,
like men, but bodies from which the limitations and difficulties of the
human body are eliminated. The idea of a divine being is essentially
an abstracted, distilled idea. It is obvious that this abstraction
is no arbitrary one, but is determined by the essential stand-point
of man. As he is, as he thinks, so does he make his abstraction.
The abstraction expresses a judgment,--an affirmative and a
negative one at the same time, praise and blame. What man praises
and approves, that is God to him; [70] what he blames, condemns, is
the non-divine. Religion is a judgment. The most essential condition
in religion--in the idea of the divine being--is accordingly the
discrimination of the praiseworthy from the blameworthy, of the perfect
from the imperfect; in a word, of the positive from the negative. The
cultus itself consists in nothing else than in the continual renewal
of the origin of religion--a solemnising of the critical discrimination
between the divine and the non-divine.
The Divine Being is the human being glorified by the death of
abstraction; it is the departed spirit of man. In religion man frees
himself from the limits of life; he here lets fall what oppresses him,
obstructs him, affects him repulsively; God is the self-consciousness
of man freed from all discordant elements; man feels himself free,
happy, blessed in his religion, because he only here lives the life
of genius, and keeps holiday. The basis of the divine idea lies for
him outside of that idea itself; its truth lies in the prior judgment,
in the fact that all which he excludes from God is previously judged
by him to be non-divine, and what is non-divine to be worthless,
nothing. If he were to include the attaining of this idea in the idea
itself, it would lose its most essential significance, its true value,
its beatifying charm. The divine being is the pure subjectivity of
man, freed from all else, from everything objective, having relation
only to itself, enjoying only itself, reverencing only itself--his
most subjective, his inmost self. The process of discrimination, the
separating of the intelligent from the non-intelligent, of personality
from Nature, of the perfect from the imperfect, necessarily therefore
takes place in the subject, not in the object, and the idea of God
lies not at the beginning but at the end of sensible existence, of
the world, of Nature. "Where Nature ceases, God begins," because God
is the ne plus ultra, the last limit of abstraction. That from which
I can no longer abstract is God, the last thought which I am capable
of grasping--the last, i.e., the highest. Id quo nihil majus cogitari
potest, Deus est. That this Omega of sensible existence becomes an
Alpha also, is easily comprehensible; but the essential point is, that
he is the Omega. The Alpha is primarily a consequence; because God is
the last or highest, he is also the first. And this predicate--the
first Being, has by no means immediately a cosmogonic significance,
but only implies the highest rank. The creation in the Mosaic religion
has for its end to secure to Jehovah the predicate of the highest
and first, the true and exclusive God in opposition to idols.
The effort to establish the personality of God through Nature has
therefore at its foundation an illegitimate, profane mingling of
philosophy and religion, a complete absence of criticism and knowledge
concerning the genesis of the personal God. Where personality is held
the essential attribute of God, where it is said--an impersonal God is
no God; there personality is held to be in and by itself the highest
and most real thing, there it is presupposed that everything which
is not a person is dead, is nothing, that only personal existence is
real, absolute existence, is life and truth--but Nature is impersonal,
and is therefore a trivial thing. The truth of personality rests
only on the untruth of Nature. To predicate personality of God is
nothing else than to declare personality as the absolute essence;
but personality is only conceived in distinction, in abstraction
from Nature. Certainly a merely personal God is an abstract God;
but so he ought to be--that is involved in the idea of him; for he is
nothing else than the personal nature of man positing itself out of all
connection with the world, making itself free from all dependence on
nature. In the personality of God man consecrates the supernaturalness,
immortality, independence, unlimitedness of his own personality.
In general, the need of a personal God has its foundation in this, that
only in the attribute of personality does the personal man meet with
himself, find himself. Substance, pure spirit, mere reason, does not
satisfy him, is too abstract for him, i.e., does not express himself,
does not lead him back to himself. And man is content, happy, only when
he is with himself, with his own nature. Hence, the more personal a
man is, the stronger is his need of a personal God. The free, abstract
thinker knows nothing higher than freedom; he does not need to attach
it to a personal being; for him freedom in itself, as such, is a
real positive thing. A mathematical, astronomical mind, a man of pure
understanding, an objective man, who is not shut up in himself, who
feels free and happy only in the contemplation of objective rational
relations, in the reason which lies in things in themselves--such
a man will regard the substance of Spinoza, or some similar idea,
as his highest being, and be full of antipathy towards a personal,
i.e., subjective God. Jacobi therefore was a classic philosopher,
because (in this respect, at least) he was consistent, he was at
unity with himself; as was his God, so was his philosophy--personal,
subjective. The personal God cannot be established otherwise than as
he is established by Jacobi and his disciples. Personality is proved
only in a personal manner.
Personality may be, nay, must be, founded on a natural basis; but
this natural basis is attained only when I cease to grope in the
darkness of mysticism, when I step forth into the clear daylight of
real Nature, and exchange the idea of the personal God for the idea
of personality in general. But into the idea of the personal God,
the positive idea of whom is liberated, disembodied personality,
released from the limiting force of Nature, to smuggle again this very
Nature, is as perverse as if I were to mix Brunswick mum with the
nectar of the gods, in order to give the ethereal beverage a solid
foundation. Certainly the ingredients of animal blood are not to be
derived from the celestial juice which nourishes the gods. But the
flower of sublimation arises only through the evaporation of matter;
why, then, wilt thou mix with the sublimate that very matter from
which thou hast disengaged it? Certainly, the impersonal existence of
Nature is not to be explained by the idea of personality; but where
personality is a truth, or, rather, the absolute truth, Nature has
no positive significance, and consequently no positive basis. The
literal creation out of nothing is here the only sufficient ground of
explanation; for it simply says this: Nature is nothing;--and this
precisely expresses the significance which Nature has for absolute
personality.