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Eleven books by a shoemaker of Görlitz who wrote, by his own account, because he could not help it. Ten of them stand here in the seventeenth-century English of John Sparrow, who translated Boehme within a generation of his death and whose prose is itself now four hundred years old; where that English has drifted out of reach, the facing pane carries a modern register — the same text with archaic inflection and spelling normalised by rule, never paraphrased. Nothing is reworded, and where no register appears beside a passage it is because the rules found nothing to change.
The eleventh book is not in English at all, and it is the reason this note exists.
Des trois principes de l'essence divine, printed at Paris in 1802, is the same work as Concerning the Three Principles of the Divine Essence, which stands here as the second book — the same twenty-seven chapters in the same order, opening `Du premier principe de l'essence divine` against Sparrow's `Of the first Principle of the Divine Essence`. Its translator was Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin, who gave the last years of his life to putting Boehme into French, and who has a shelf of his own in this Lycaeum.
That makes a closed circuit inside this archive, and it is worth naming plainly. Saint-Martin translates Boehme. La Iniciación, printed in Montevideo a hundred and forty years later, traces its own descent through Saint-Martin. A reader can therefore follow one thread from a German mystic of 1619, through the French philosopher who carried him into another language, to a Spanish-language monthly of the 1940s that claimed them both — and read every step of it in the original.
The two are shelved as one work rather than two because that is what they are. They are not set as facing panes: an English translation of 1619 and a French translation of 1802 are two independent readings of a lost German original, and pairing them line by line would assert a correspondence neither translator ever claimed.
1Therefore there can be no inherent impossibility in the idea here suggested that every known quality must have some unknown, hidden basis. Nor in the further idea that the hidden and the manifested will necessarily be (to us) contraries. Consider such a quality as " love." It appears so weak that it cannot threaten or use force to compel response; it prefers to seem to yield, to give way; yet always, in the end, it wins. It is the one invincible force. Why is this? If Boehme is right, it is because in everything there is a quality on the surface, and a power in the hiddenness; and if the quality appears weak, the power is strong; and if the quality appears strong, the power is weak. The man who scoffs at love, and prefers to compel and dominate in his own power, in the end always fails to accomplish his end. Strange, therefore, as the idea may seem to us at first sight, and the reverse of all that we should naturally be inclined to expect, yet deep reflection will show that there is very much to be said for it, and that it is well worthy of consideration; especially as it affords such a splendid and effective explanation of things as we find them. Had the true, divine Order not been transgressed, the fact of the second will arising had never produced manifested evil. It stands in the very nature of the case that — being, ex hypothesi, a contrary will — if it should be manifested, it must manifest as the contrary to the manifestations of
2the first will. But the divine Order is that it never should be manifested, but remain always in the hiddenness, and so be the basal might and secret power of what does manifest. And there is a double sense in which this principle can be understood. In heaven, where good alone manifests, all that — if manifested — would manifest as evil is always kept in the hiddenness. On earth, where the conditions of heaven are reversed, the law is that what we would be recognised as possessing in heaven we must be content to seem not to possess while on earth, and in the recognition of earthlyminded people. If there we would wear the crown, here we must be content to bear the cross. If there we would possess the true riches, here we must be poor in spirit: that is, if God gives us wealth here, we must not boast of it and glory in it, and use it as if it were our own, but hold it as only a stewardship, and be — in the eyes of the world — none the richer for it; not use it to command luxuries and display, and all that the world esteems money as able to procure. If in heaven we would be wise, here we must be willing to be thought fools. For what is manifested on earth is hidden in heaven, and what is manifested in heaven is hidden on earth. Which is why all God's saints have to go the covered way, and enter into the kingdom through much tribulation.
3Knowing this they can well "glory in infirmities"; for they know that the high court of heaven will reverse the verdict of earth, given according to the earthly spirit, and from the earthly point of view; and that the decision of heaven will stand for ever, and the decision of earth but for a " little while." I have dealt at this length with Boehme's doctrine of the Hidden and the Manifested because I regard it as the main and preponderating element in his teaching, and in an especial way his " secret." Grasp this, and all the rest will follow easily. For all the rest, the seven forms of Nature, the three Principles, etc., which go to complete his philosophy of origins, are but the details of this main principle; as will be seen from what follows. The Seven Forms of Nature. These, present from the first in real but uncognised fact, appear and become recognisable and definable with the arising of the second, or contrary, will. The first will, being a one will, was to remain unchanged, to go on still as ever. Hence from it arises the first form, which Boehme calls " Harshness," by which I think he means that hard and strong resistance to change, which is the great primal conservative force, tending to give permanence to things, to resist new combinations, and maintain the status quo.
The source text as printed, transcribed diplomatically. Where the source language uses a non-Latin script that reaches us only through a Victorian romanisation, this layer is labelled transliteration, because that is what we hold.
1Therefore there can be no inherent impossibility in the idea here suggested that every known quality must have some unknown, hidden basis. Nor in the further idea that the hidden and the manifested will necessarily be (to us) contraries. Consider such a quality as " love." It appears so weak that it cannot threaten or use force to compel response; it prefers to seem to yield, to give way; yet always, in the end, it wins. It is the one invincible force. Why is this? If Boehme is right, it is because in everything there is a quality on the surface, and a power in the hiddenness; and if the quality appears weak, the power is strong; and if the quality appears strong, the power is weak. The man who scoffs at love, and prefers to compel and dominate in his own power, in the end always fails to accomplish his end. Strange, therefore, as the idea may seem to us at first sight, and the reverse of all that we should naturally be inclined to expect, yet deep reflection will show that there is very much to be said for it, and that it is well worthy of consideration; especially as it affords such a splendid and effective explanation of things as we find them. Had the true, divine Order not been transgressed, the fact of the second will arising had never produced manifested evil. It stands in the very nature of the case that — being, ex hypothesi, a contrary will — if it should be manifested, it must manifest as the contrary to the manifestations of
2the first will. But the divine Order is that it never should be manifested, but remain always in the hiddenness, and so be the basal might and secret power of what does manifest. And there is a double sense in which this principle can be understood. In heaven, where good alone manifests, all that — if manifested — would manifest as evil is always kept in the hiddenness. On earth, where the conditions of heaven are reversed, the law is that what we would be recognised as possessing in heaven we must be content to seem not to possess while on earth, and in the recognition of earthlyminded people. If there we would wear the crown, here we must be content to bear the cross. If there we would possess the true riches, here we must be poor in spirit: that is, if God gives us wealth here, we must not boast of it and glory in it, and use it as if it were our own, but hold it as only a stewardship, and be — in the eyes of the world — none the richer for it; not use it to command luxuries and display, and all that the world esteems money as able to procure. If in heaven we would be wise, here we must be willing to be thought fools. For what is manifested on earth is hidden in heaven, and what is manifested in heaven is hidden on earth. Which is why all God's saints have to go the covered way, and enter into the kingdom through much tribulation.
3Knowing this they can well "glory in infirmities"; for they know that the high court of heaven will reverse the verdict of earth, given according to the earthly spirit, and from the earthly point of view; and that the decision of heaven will stand for ever, and the decision of earth but for a " little while." I have dealt at this length with Boehme's doctrine of the Hidden and the Manifested because I regard it as the main and preponderating element in his teaching, and in an especial way his " secret." Grasp this, and all the rest will follow easily. For all the rest, the seven forms of Nature, the three Principles, etc., which go to complete his philosophy of origins, are but the details of this main principle; as will be seen from what follows. The Seven Forms of Nature. These, present from the first in real but uncognised fact, appear and become recognisable and definable with the arising of the second, or contrary, will. The first will, being a one will, was to remain unchanged, to go on still as ever. Hence from it arises the first form, which Boehme calls " Harshness," by which I think he means that hard and strong resistance to change, which is the great primal conservative force, tending to give permanence to things, to resist new combinations, and maintain the status quo.
The source text as printed, transcribed diplomatically. Where the source language uses a non-Latin script that reaches us only through a Victorian romanisation, this layer is labelled transliteration, because that is what we hold.
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