Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 23.djvu/297

Rh other, into a naturalistic pantheism that denies the reality of the distinction between good and evil. He faces the difficulty boldly, and the eternal conflict between the two may be said to furnish him with the principle of his philosophy. It is in this connexion that he insists on the necessity of the Nay to the Yea, of the negative to the positive. Eckhart's Godhead appears in Boehme as the abyss, the eternal nothing, the essenceless quiet ("Ungrund" and "Stille ohne Wesen" are two of Boehme's phrases). But, if this were all; the Divine Being would remain an abyss dark even to itself. In God, however, as the condition of His manifestation, lies, according to Boehme, the " eternal nature " or the mysterium magnum, which is as anger to love, as darkness to light, and, in general, as the negative to the positive. This principle (which Boehme often calls the evil in God) illuminates both sides of the antithesis, and thus contains the possibility of their real existence. By the " Qual " or torture, as it were, of this diremption, the universe has qualitative existence, and is knowable. Even the three persons of the Trinity, though existing idealiter beforehand, attain reality only through this principle of nature in God, which is hence spoken of as their matrix. It forms also the matter, as it were, out of which the world is created; without the dark and fiery principle, we are told, there would be no creature. Hence God is sometimes spoken of as the father, and the eternal nature as the mother, of things. Creation (which is conceived as an eternal pro cess) begins with the creation of the angels. The subsequent fall of Lucifer is explained as his surrender of himself to the principle of nature, instead of dwelling in the heart of God. He sought to make anger predominate over love; and he had his will, becoming prince of hell, the kingdom of God's anger, which still remains, however, an integral part of the Divine universe. It is useless to follow Boehme further, for his cosmogony is disfigured by a wild Paracelsian symbolism, and his constructive efforts in general are full of the uncouth straining of an untrained writer. In spite of these defects, his speculations have exercised a remarkable influence within the present century, notably upon the later phases of Schelling's philosophy, upon Franz von Baader, Molitor, and others.

Schelling's Philosophical Inquiries into the Nature of Human Freedom (1809) is almost entirely a reproduction of Boehme's ideas, and forms, along with Baader's writ ings, the best modern example of theosophical speculation. In his philosophy of identity (q.v.) had already defined the Absolute as pure indifference, or the identity of subject and object (of the ideal and the real), but without advancing further into theogony. He now proceeded to distinguish three moments in God, the first of which is the pure indifference which, in a sense, precedes all existence the primal basis or abyss, as he calls it, in agreement with Boehme. But, as there is nothing before or besides God, God must have the ground or cause of His existence in Himself. This is the second moment, called nature in God, distinguishable from God, but inseparable from Him. It is that in God which is not God Himself; it is the yearning of the eternal One to give birth to itself. This yearning is a dumb unintelligent longing, which moves like a heaving sea in obedience to some dark and indefinite law, and is powerless to fashion anything in permanence. But in correspondence to the first stirring of the Divine existence there awakes in God Himself an inner reflexive perception, by means of which—since no object is possible for it but God—God beholds Himself in His own image. In this, God is for the first time as it were realized, although as yet only within Himself. This perception combines as understanding with the primal yearning, which becomes thereby free creative will, and works formatively in the originally lawless nature or ground. In this wise is created the world as we know it. In every natural existence there are, therefore, two principles to be distinguished—first, the dark principle, through which this is separated from God, and exists, as it were, in the mere ground; and, secondly, the Divine principle of understanding. The first is the particular will of the creature, the second is the universal will. In irrational creatures the particular will or greed of the individual is controlled by external forces, and thus used as an instrument of the universal. But in man the two principles are consciously present together, not, however, in inseparable union, as they are in God, but with the possibility of separation. This possibility of separation is the possibility of good and evil. In Boehme's spirit, Schelling defended his idea of God as the only way of vindicating for God the conscious ness which naturalism denies, and which ordinary theism emptily asserts. This theosophical transformation of Schelling's doctrine was largely due to the influence of his contemporary (q.v.). Baader distinguishes, in a manner which may be paralleled from Boehme, between an immanent or esoteric process of self-production in God, through which He issues from His unrevealed state, and the emanent, exoteric, or real process, in which God overcomes and takes up into Himself the eternal " nature " or the principle of selfhood, and appears as a Trinity of persons. The creation of the world is still further to be distinguished from these two processes as an act of freedom or will; it cannot, therefore, be speculatively constructed, but must be historically accepted. Baader, who combined his theosophy with the doctrines of Roman Catholicism, has had many followers. Among thinkers on the same lines, but more or less independent, Molitor is perhaps the most important. (q.v.) is usually reckoned among the theosophists, and some parts of his theory justify this inclusion; but his system as a whole has little in common with those speculative constructions of the Divine nature which form the essence of theosophy, as strictly under stood.  THERA, or, as it is now called,, is a volcanic island in the Ægean Sea, the southernmost of the group of islands, called, which intervene between the and. From the last-named island it is separated by a space of 60 miles of sea, but the lofty Cretan ranges of Dicte and Ida are clearly visible from it in fine weather.

Thera and neighbouring Islands.

In shape Santorin forms a crescent, and encloses a bay on the north, east, and south, while on the western side lies the smaller island of Therasia. The encircling wall thus formed, which is elliptical in shape and 18 miles round in its inner rim is broken in two places,—towards the north-west by a strait a mile in breadth, where the water is not less than 1100 feet deep, and towards the south-west by an aperture about