Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/38

 MEISTER ECKEHART, THE MYSTIC. 27 finds therein the ultimate truth, the reality, which cannot be reached in the phenomenal world (Ib., 12). The world as reality is thus the world as it exists in God's perception ; but, since God's will and its production are absolutely iden- tical (there being no distinction between the moulding and the moulded entgiezunge und entgozzenlicit], we arrive at the result that the world as reality is the world as will. Thus both Eckehart and Kant find it necessary to transcend the ' limit of the human understanding ' ; both find reality in the world as will. 1 The critical philosopher is desirous of finding an absolute basis for morality in the supersensuous, and accord- ingly links phenomena and the Dinge an sick by a transcen- dental causality, which somehow bridges the gulf. The fourteenth century mystic, desirous of raising the idea of God from the contradictions of a sensuous existence, places the Deity entirely beyond the field of ordinary human reason. In order to restore God again to man, he postulates a trans- cendental knowledge ; in order to show God as ultimate cause even of the phenomenal, he is reduced to interpreting in a remarkable manner the chief Christian dogma. We shall see the meaning of this more clearly if we examine more closely the conception Eckehart had formed of God and his relation to the Dinge an sich (vorgendiu bilde, or ' prototypes ' as we may perhaps translate the expression). Things-in-themselves are things as they exist free from space and time in God's perception. (D. M., ii. 325, &c.) Thus the prototype (voryendez bild) of Eckehart corresponds to the esse intelligibile of Wyclif, who in like manner identifies God's conception and his causation (Omne quod habet esse intelligibile, est in Deo, and Deus est ceque intellectivus, ut est cMusativus, &c. Trialogus, ed. Lechler, pp. 46-48.). 2 This form in God is evidently quite independent of creature-exist- ence and not bound by time or space, cannot be said to have been created, cannot be said to come into or go out of existence. The form is in an ' eternal now ' (daz ewige nti).' To describe a temporal creation of the world is folly to the intelligent man ; Moses only made use of such a description to aid the ignorant. God creates all things in an ' ever- present now' (in eime gegenwiirtigen nd. D. M., ii. 266, and 1 This principle, usually identified with the Grober Philosoph, is clearly expressed in the Kritik der praldischen Vernunft, i. Theil., 1 B., 3 Hauptst. The will however with Kant and Eckehart is different in character. 2 This is absolutely identical with Spinoza, Ethica, i. 16, Omnia quce sub intellectum infinitum cadere possunt, necessario sequi debent. Cp. Prop. 17, Scholium.