Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/41

 30 K. PEAKSON : lb., 320 ; cp. 319, 500, 506, &c.). Into this inconceivable no- thing the soul finds its highest beatitude in sinking. How is this to be accomplished ? What is the phenomenal world, and how can the passage be made to the world of reality ? "What is the price to be paid for this surpassing joy? These are the questions which now rise before us and which Ecke- hart endeavours to solve in his theory of renunciation. All important is it first to note how the philosopher deduces the phenomenal from the real : the externality .'' it dikeit) from the prototypes (diu vorgendiu bilde). The solution of this apparent impossibility is found in a singular interpretation of the Christian mystery ' The Word became flesh ' ; the idea in God passing into phenomenal being is the incarnation of the divine ^0709. God's self-introspec- tion, his "speaking" of the ideas in him produces the phenomenal world. "What is God's speaking? The Father regards himself with a pure cognition, and looks into the pure oneness of his own essence. Therein he perceives the forms of all creation (i.e., diu vorgendiu bilde}, then he speaks himself. The Word is pure (self-) cogni- tion, and that is the Son. God speaking is God giving birth." The real world in the divine mind is " noii-natured nature" (diu ungendtdrte nature] ; the sensuous world which arises from this by God's self-introspection is " natured nature" (diu ycndturte nature)}- In the former we find only the Father, in the latter we first recognise the Son (D. J/., ii., 591, 537, 250.) Of course this process of " speaking the word " or giving birth to the Sou is not temporal but in an eternal now, but we had better let Eckehart speak for him- self: "Of necessity God must work all his works. God is ever working in one eternal now and his working is giving birth to his Son; he bears him at every instant. From this birth all things proceed and God has such joy therein, that he consumes all his power in giving birth er alle sine maht in ir verzert). God bears himself out of himself into himself; the more perfect the birth, the more is born. I say: God is at all times one, he takes cognition of nothing beyond himself. Yet God, in taking cognition of himself, must take cognition of all creatures. God bears himself ever in his Son; in him he speaks all things" (lb., 254). Eckehart in identifying God's self-introspection with the birth of the Son, and the " phenomenalising " of the real has rendered it extremely difficult to reconcile this 1 Thesi- :uv in close agreement with S]>ino/a's ii<-tiir<i ii'iti'i-ini -< and naturti naturata. Cp. Ethica i., Prop. 29, Schot