Though I have met with nothing but a little tract from the school of Jacob
Behmen[592] (or Boehme; I keep to the old English version of his name), yet
there has been more, and of a more recent date. I am told of an
"Introduction to Theosophy [_Theo_ private, I suppose, as in theological];
or, the Science of the Mystery of Christ," published in 1854, mostly from
the writings of William Law[593]: and also of a volume of 688 pages, of the
same year, printed for private circulation, containing notes for a
biography of William Law. The editor of the first work wishes to grow "a
{318} generation of perfect Christians" by founding a Theosophic College,
for which he requests the public to raise a hundred thousand pounds. There
is a good account of Jacob Behmen in the _Penny Cyclopaedia_. The author
mentions inaccurate accounts, one of which he quotes, as follows: "He
derived all his mystical and rapturous doctrine from Wood's[594] _Athenae
Oxonienses_, Vol. I, p. 610, and _Hist. et Antiq. Acad. Oxon._, Vol. II, p.
308." On which the author remarks that Wood was born after Behmen's death.
There must have been a few words which slipped out: what is meant is that
Behmen "derived his doctrine from _Robert Fludd_,[595] _for whom see_
Wood's etc. etc." Even this is absurd enough: for Behmen began to publish
in 1610, and Fludd in 1616. Fludd was a Rosicrucian, and a mystic of a
different type from Behmen. I have some of his works, and could produce out
of them paradoxes enough, according to our ways of thinking, to fit out a
host. But the Rosicrucian system was a recognized school of its day, and
Fludd, a man of great learning, had abettors enough in all which he
advanced, and predecessors in most of it.
[A Correspondent has recently sent a short summary of the claims of Jacob
Behmen to rank higher than I have placed him. I shall gladly insert this
summary in the book I contemplate, as a statement of what is said of Behmen
far less liable to suspicion of exaggeration than anything I could write. I
shall add a few extracts from Behmen himself, in support of his right to be
in my list.]
"_Jacob Behmen._--That Prof. De Morgan classes Jacob Behmen among
paradoxers can only be attributed to the fact of his being avowedly
unacquainted with the writings {319} of that author. Perhaps you may think
a few words from one who knows them well of sufficient interest to the
learned Professor, and your readers in general, to be worthy of space in
your columns. The metaphysical system of Behmen--the most perfect and only
true one--still awaits a qualified commentator. Behmen's countryman,
Dionysius Andreas Freher,[596] who spent the greater part of his life in
this country, and whose exposition of Behmen exists only in MS., filling
many volumes, written in English, with the exception of two, written in
German, with numerous beautiful, highly ingenious, and elaborate
illustrations,--copies of some of which are in the British Museum, but all
the originals of which are in the possession of the gentleman who is the
editor of the two works alluded to by Professor De Morgan,--this Freher was
the first to philosophically expound Behmen's system, which was afterwards,
with the help of these MSS., as it were, popularized by William Law; but
both Freher and Law confined themselves chiefly to its theological aspect.
In Behmen, however, is to be found, not only the true ground of all
theology, but also that of all physical science. He demonstrated with a
fullness, accuracy, completeness and certainty that leave nothing to be
desired, the innermost ground of Deity and Nature; and, confining myself to
the latter, I can from my own knowledge assert, that in Behmen's writings
is to be found the true and clear demonstration of every physical fact that
has been discovered since his day. Thus, the science of electricity, which
was not yet in existence when he wrote, is there anticipated; and not only
does Behmen describe all the now known phenomena of that force, but he even
gives us the origin, generation and birth of electricity itself. Again,
positive evidence can be adduced that Newton derived all his knowledge of
gravitation and its {320} laws from Behmen, with whom gravitation or
attraction is, and very properly so, as he shows us, the first of the seven
properties of Nature. The theory defended by Mr. Grove,[597] at the
Nottingham meeting of last year, that all the apparently distinct causes of
moral and physical phenomena are but so many manifestations of one central
force, and that Continuity is the law of nature, is clearly laid down, and
its truth demonstrated, by Behmen, as well as the distinction between
spirit and matter, and that the moral and material world is pervaded by a
sublime unity. And though all this was not admitted in Behmen's days,
because science was not then sufficiently advanced to understand the deep
sense of our author, many of his passages, then unintelligible, or
apparently absurd, read by the light of the present age, are found to
contain the positive enunciation of principles at whose discovery and
establishment science has only just arrived by wearisome and painful
investigations. Every new scientific discovery goes to prove his profound
and intuitive insight into the most secret workings of nature; and if
scientific men, instead of sharing the prejudice arising from ignorance of
Behmen's system, would place themselves on the vantage ground it affords,
they would at once find themselves on an eminence whence they could behold
all the arcana of nature. Behmen's system, in fact, shows us the _inside_
of things, while modern physical science is content with looking at the
_outside_. Behmen traces back every outward manifestation or development to
its one central root,--to that one central energy which, as yet, is only
suspected; every link in the chain of his demonstration is perfect, and
there is not one link wanting. He carries us from the out-births of the
circumference, along the radius to the center, {321} or point, and beyond
that even to the zero, demonstrating the constitution of the zero, or
nothing, with mathematical precision. C. W. H."
And so Behmen is no subject for the Budget! I waited until I should chance
to light on one of his volumes, knowing that any volume would do, and
almost any page. My first hap was on the second volume of the edition of
1664 (4to, published by M. Richardson) and opening near the beginning, a
turn or two brought me to page 13, where I saw about _sulphur_ and
_mercurius_ as follows:
"Thus SUL is the soul, in an herb it is the oil, and in man also, according
to the spirit of _this_ world in the third principle, which is continually
generated out of the anguish of the will in the mind, and the
Brimstone-worm is the Spirit, which hath the fire and _burneth_: PHUR is
the sour wheel in itself which causeth that.
"_Mercurius_ comprehendeth all the four forms, even as the life springeth
up, and yet hath not its dark beginning in the Center as the PHUR hath, but
after the flash of fire, when the sour dark form is terrified, where the
hardness is turned into pliant sharpness, and where the second will (_viz._
the will of nature, which is called the Anguish) ariseth, there Mercurius
hath its original. For MER is the shivering wheel, very horrible, sharp,
venomous, and hostile; which assimulateth it thus in the sourness in the
flash of fire, where the sour wrathful life _ariseth_. The syllable CU is
the pressing out, of the _Anxious_ will of the mind, from Nature: which is
climbing up, and _willeth_ to be out aloft. RI is the comprehension of the
flash of fire, which in MER giveth a clear sound and tune. For the flash
maketh the tune, and it is the Salt-Spirit which _soundeth_, and its form
(or quality) is gritty like sand, and herein arise noises, sounds and
voices, and thus CU comprehendeth the flash, and so the pressure is as a
_wind_ which thrusteth, and giveth a spirit to the flash, so that it liveth
and burneth. Thus the {322} syllable US is called the burning fire, which
with the spirit continually driveth itself forth: and the syllable CU
presseth continually upon the flash."
Shades of Tauler[598] and Paracelsus,[599] how strangely you do mix! Well
may Hallam call Germany the native soil of Mysticism. Had Behmen been the
least of a scholar, he would not have divided _sulph-ur_ and _merc-ur-i-us_
as he has done: and the inflexion _us_, that boy of all work, would have
been rejected. I think it will be held that a writer from whom hundreds of
pages like the above could be brought together, is fit for the Budget. If
Sampson Arnold Mackay[600] had tied his etymologies to a mystical
Christology, instead of a mystical infidelity, he might have had a school
of followers. The nonsense about Newton borrowing gravitation from Behmen
passes only with those who know neither what Newton did, nor what was done
before him.
The above reminds me of a class of paradoxers whom I wonder that I forgot;
they are without exception the greatest bores of all, because they can put
the small end of their paradox into any literary conversation whatever. I
mean the people who have heard the local pronunciation of celebrated names,
and attempt not only to imitate it, but to impose on others their broken
German or Arabic, or what not. They also learn the vernacular names of
those who are generally spoken of in their Latin forms; at least, they
learn a few cases, and hawk them as evidences of erudition. They are
miserably mistaken: scholarship, as a rule, {323} always accepts the
vernacular form of a name which has vernacular celebrity. Hallam writes
Behmen: his index-maker, rather superfluously, gives "_Behmen_ or Boehm."
And he retains Melanchthon,[601] the name given by Reuchlin[602] to his
little kinsman Schwartzerd, because the world has adopted it: but he will
none of Capnio, the name which Reuchlin fitted on to himself, because the
world has not adopted it. He calls the old forms pedantry: but he sees that
the rejection of well-established results of pedantry would be greater
pedantry still. The paradoxers assume the question that it is more
_correct_ to sound a man by lame imitation of his own countrymen than as
usual in the country in which the sound is to be made. Against them are,
first, the world at large; next, an overpowering majority of those who know
something about surnames and their history. Some thirty years ago--a
fact--there appeared at the police-office a complainant who found his own
law. In the course of his argument, he asked, "What does Kitty
say?"--"Who's Kitty?" said the magistrate, "your wife, or your
nurse?"--"Sir! I mean Kitty, the celebrated lawyer."--"Oh!" said the
magistrate, "I suspect you mean Mr. Chitty,[603] the author of the great
work on pleading."--"I do sir! But Chitty is an Italian name, and ought to
be pronounced _Kitty_." This man was a full-blown flower: but there is many
a modest bud; and all ought either to blush when seen or to waste their
pronunciation on the desert air.
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