Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 3.djvu/44

, remains likewise in the bosom of God, and the distinction is no real distinction.

It was in forms such as these that the Idea showed its workings. The most important point of view from which to regard the matter is that which will enable us to see that, however rude were the shapes taken by these thoughts, they are to be considered as rational, and from which we shall perceive that they are based on reason, and discover what amount of reason is in them. Still it is necessary at the same time to be able to distinguish the form of rationality which is present, and which is not yet adequate to express content.

This Idea is usually put somewhere beyond Man, beyond thought and reason, and forms an antithesis to these, so that this characteristic, which is all truth, and alone is truth, comes to be regarded as something peculiar to God only, something which remains in a region beyond human life, and does not reflect itself into its Other, which appears in the form of the world, Nature, Man. So far this fundamental idea is not regarded as the Universal Idea.

To Jacob Böhme this mystery of the threefold nature became clear in another fashion. His way of conceiving of the truth, and his style of thought, are certainly of a rather wild and fantastic sort. He did not attain to the use of the pure forms of thought, but the ruling and fundamental principle of all the ideas which fermented in his mind, and of all his struggles to reach the truth, was the recognition of the presence of Trinity everywhere and in everything, as, e.g., when he says, “It must be born in the heart of Man.”

It forms the universal basis of everything which is looked at in a true way, it may indeed be as finite, but still as something which even in its finitude has the truth in it. Thus Jacob Böhme attempted to represent under this category Nature and the heart or spirit of Man.

In more recent times the conception of Trinity has,