Write to Walton, the British Boehmist, whose letters interest by the
information they contain of himself and of his literary ventures. Any
disciple of the distinguished Mystic and student of his works, living
in foggy London in these times, is as significant and noteworthy as
are students of Hegel in St. Louis.[21] Mysticism is the sacred spark
that has lighted the piety and illuminated the philosophy of all places
and times. It has kindled especially and kept alive the profoundest
thinking of Germany and of the continent since Boehme's first work,
"The Aurora," appeared. Some of the deepest thinkers since then have
openly acknowledged their debt to Boehme, or secretly borrowed without
acknowledgment their best illustrations from his writings. It is
conceded that his was one of the most original and subtlest of minds,
and that he has exercised a deeper influence on the progress of thought
than any one since Plotinus. Before Bacon, before Newton, Swedenborg,
Goethe, he gave theories of nature, of the signatures of colors and
forms, of the temperaments, the genesis of sex, the lapse of souls, and
of the elementary worlds. He stripped life of its husk, and delivered
its innermost essence. Instead of mythology, he gave, if not science,
the germs, if nothing more. And when the depths of his thinking have
been fathomed by modern observers it will be soon enough to speak of
new revelations and arcana. His teeming genius is the genuine mother
of numberless theories since delivered, from whose trunk the natural
sciences have branched forth and cropped out in scientific systems.
And like Swedenborg, it has borne a theology, cosmology, illustrious
theosophists and naturalists,--Law, Leibnitz, Oken, Schelling, Goethe,
Baader, and other philosophers of Germany.
[Footnote 21: A mystic book entitled "Quinquenergia, or Proposals for a
new Practical Theology," by Henry S. Sutton, was published in London in
1854. Mr. Sutton is plainly tinctured with Boehme's theosophy, if not
a disciple of his as appears from his book. It is a volume of singular
originality, and the latest modern attempt at a Genesis from First
Principles that I have met with. It seems to have attracted few readers
in England or in this country.]
His learned English disciple and translator, Rev. William Law, an
author once highly esteemed and much read by a former generation of
pietists, says of him in his Introduction to Boehme's Works:--
"Whatsoever the great Hermes delivered in oracles, or Pythagoras spoke
by authority, or Socrates or Aristotle affirmed, whatever divine Plato
prophesied, or Plotinus proved,--this and all this, or a far higher
and profounder philosophy, is contained in Boehme's writings. And if
there be any friendly medium that can possibly reconcile these ancient
differences between the divine Wisdom that has fixed her place in Holy
Writ and her stubborn handmaid, natural Reason,--this happy marriage of
the Spirit of God and the soul, this wonderful consent of discords in
harmony,--we shall find it in great measure in Boehme's books; only
let not the non or misunderstanding of the most rational reader (if not
a little sublimed above the sphere of common reason) be imputed as a
fault to this elevated philosopher, no more than it was to the divine
Plotinus, whose scholars, even after much study, failed to comprehend
many of his doctrines."
Dr. Henry More, with a qualifying discrimination of Law's estimate,
writes:--
"Jacob Boehme, I conceive, is to be reckoned in the number of those
whose imaginative faculty has the preeminence above the rational,
and though he was a holy and good man, his natural complexion,
notwithstanding, was not destroyed but retained its property still, and
therefore his imagination being very busy about divine things, he could
not without a miracle fail of becoming an enthusiast, and of receiving
divine truths upon the account of the strength and vigor of his fancy,
which being so well qualified with holiness and sanctity, proved not
unsuccessful in sundry apprehensions, but in others it fared with him
after the manner of men, the sagacity of his imagination failing him,
as well as the anxiety of reason, does others of like integrity with
himself."[22]
[Footnote 22: Students of Boehme have been few and far between. Edward
Taylor appears to have been Boehme's most distinguished disciple in
England before William Law. He published "A Compendious View of the
Teutonic Philosophy." London, 1670. Also Jacob Boehme's "Philosophy
Unfolded in divers Considerations and Demonstrations, and a Short
Account of his Life." London, 1690. John Sparrow published Boehme's
Tracts and Epistles. London, 1662. John Pordage's "Theologia Mystica,
or the Mystic Divinity of the Eternal Invisibles," London, 1683, is a
rare volume.]