Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/40

 MEISTEE ECKEHAET, THE MYSTIC. 29 different a sense ! Eckehart's knowledge is a kind of transcendental instinct of the soul steeped in religious emotion ; Spinoza's knowledge is the result of an adequate cognition of the essence of things it is a purely intellectual (non-transcendental) process. A striking corollary to this similarity may be found in the two philosophers' doctrines of God's love. The love of the mind towards God, writes Spinoza (Ethica v. 36 and Cor.), is part of the love where- with God loves himself, and conversely God in so far as he loves himself, loves mankind. The love of God towards men, says Meister Eckehart, is a portion of the love with which he loves himself (D. M., ii. 145-6, 180). In both cases God's self-love is intellectual it arises from the contemplation of his own perfection. 1 Eckehart perhaps even more strongly than Spinoza endeavours to free God from anthropomorphical qualities. His God, placed in the sphere of Dinge an sich, is freed from extension, but this by no means satisfies him God must have no human at- tributes ; he is not lovable, because that is a sensuous quality he is to be loved because he is not lovable. Nor does he possess any of the spiritual powers such as men speak of in the phenomenal world nothing like to human will, memory or intellect ; in this sense he is not a spirit. He is nothing that the human understanding can approach. One attribute only can be asserted of him and of him only namely, unity. Otherwise he may be termed the nothing of nothing, and existing in nothing. Alone in him the prototypes or uncreated forms (vorgendiu Hide) can be said to exist, but these are beyond the human understanding and can only be reached by the higher transcendental knowledge. " How shall I love God then ? Thou shalt love him as he is, a non-god, a non-spirit, a non-person, a non-form ; more, as he is an absolute pure clear one." (Wie sol ich in denne minnen ? Dd solt in minnen als er ist, ein nihtgot, ein nihtgcist, ein nihtpersone, ein nihtbild: mer als er ein Idter ptir klar ein ist, &c. ' higher knowledge ' of the soul is concerned with the vorgdndez bild and not with the phenomenal world.) Prop. 30 : Mens nostra, quatenus se et corpus sub seternitatis specie cognoscit, eatenus Dei cognitionem necessario habet, scitque se in Deo esse et per Deum concipi (a proposition agreeing entirely with Eckehart's). After this it is hard to deny a link somewhere between these two philosophers ! 1 "VVyclif, Trialogus, 56 : Cognoscit et amat se ipsum. Wyclifs whole theory of the divine intellect as the sphere of reality, and cognition by God as the test of possible existence, has strong analogy to Eckehart.