Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/35

 24 K. PEARSON : authority. 1 A short sketch of the views contained in this tractate will serve to link more clearly the preceding state- ment of Averroes's -theory with our sketch of Eckeh art's theosophy. The writer quotes Meister Eckehart to the effect that when two things are united one must suffer and the other act. For this reason human understanding must suffer the "moulding of God" (uberformvnye Gotz). Since God's existence is his activity, the blessedness of this union can only arise from the human understanding remaining in a purely passive, receptive state. Only a spirit free from all working of its own can suffer the "reasonable working" of God (daz vernunftige werch Gotz}. The writer, after describing the soul as a spark of the divine spirit, declares that the union of this spark with God is possible, and that the process of union is " God confessing himself, God loving himself, God using himself" a phraseology which is characteristic of Eckehart and suggestive of Spinoza. After these theo- sophical considerations, the tractate passes to the more philosophical side of the subject. There are two kinds of reason, an active reason and a potential reason (ein wu /(/> a rn i' nft and ein moylich vernunfty. The latter is possessed by the spirit at the instant when it reaches the body. If the potential reason would simply subject itself to the active reason, the man would be as blessed in this world as in the eternal life, for " the blessedness of man consists in his recognition of his own existence under the form of the active reason". That is, it consists in contemplation of the in- dividual essence in its connexion with and origin in the universal reason. The complete capacity for understanding all tilings which this implies is not possible to the potential reason. The potential reason has only the capacity for re- ceiving the moulding of the active reason. There are certain brings whose existence is their tivity and whose activity is their understanding. In other words, to be, to act and to think are one and the same process with them (their wesen, //////>// and verstan are < These beings are termed intelligences and are nobler than the angels; they flow reasonably /<,/////(///>///////./ dtm " Jahrhundfrt, This vas jn-inti-d l>y P>. .!. Dnrcn in his Miscellaneen I <'</ ?///.-///( Lit<rntiti; Minn-ln-ii, 1809: i. 8. 138.