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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.
13. For it understands that it has proceeded from a supernatural ground, and that there must be a God who has brought it into a hf e and will. And it is terrified in itself at its willing of wickedness, it is ashamed of its own will, and pronounces itself wrong in the willing of evil. Even though it does wrong, yet it accuses itself, and is afraid of a judgment which it sees not. This signifies that the hidden God, who has brought himself into Nature, dwells in it and reproves it for its evil way ; and that the same hidden God cannot be of the nature of perceptibility, since Reason sees not nor comprehends him. 4. On the other hand, forsaken Reason, which here wrongfully (to its thinking) is tormented in misery, finds a desire within it, itself still more to forsake, and willingly gives itself up to suffering. But in its suffering wrong it enters into a hope that that which has created it will take it from suffering into itself ; and it desires to rest in that which is not passive, and seeks rest in that which it is not in itself. It desires the death of its egoism, and yet desires not to be a nothing; but desires only to die to suffering (Qual) , in order that it may rest in itself. 5. It gives itself up therefore to suffering, that the power of pain should kill its suffering, and that it might in its fife, through the death of the dying of its Self, in that it is a painful life, enter into the unpainful and unsuffering.
26. Herein we understand rightly the hidden God, how he reveals himself in the heart of man, and reproves wrong in the conscience, and draws that ON THE DIVINE INTUITION 179 which suffers wrong by suffering to himself. And how the life of Reason, viz. the natural life, must in suffering get a desire to return again into that out of which it proceeded; and how it must desire to hate itself, and to die to the natural will, in order that it may attain the supernatural. 7. Reason says : Why has God created a painful, suffering life? Might it not be in a better state without suffering or pain, seeing he is the ground and beginning of all things? Why does he permit the contrary will? Why does he not destroy evil, that only a good may be in all things ? 8. Answer. Nothing without contrariety can become manifest to itself; for if it has nothing to resist it, it goes continually of itself outwards, and returns not again into itself. But if it return not again into itself, as into that out of which it originally went, it knows nothing of its primal being. ^
39. If the natural life had no contrariety, and were without a limit, it would never inquire after its ground from which it arose; and hence the hidden God would remain unknown to the natural life. Moreover, were there no contrariety in life, there would be no sensibility, nor will, nor efficacy therein, also neither understanding nor science. For a thing that has only one will has no divisibility. If it find not a contrary will, which gives occasion to it exercising motion, it stands still. A single thing can know nothing more than a one ; and even though it is in itself good, yet it knows neither evil nor good, for it has nothing in itself to make this perceptible. 10. And so then we can philosophize concerning 1 Dr. Stirling's rendering of Urstand. 180 ON THE DIVINE INTUITION the will of God, and say: If the hidden God, who is a single existence and will, had not by his will brought himself out of himself, out of the eternal wisdom in the temperament, into divisibility of will, and had not introduced this same divisibility into an inclusiveness for a natural and creaturely life, and had this possibility of separation in life not found expression in strife; how could then the hidden will of God, which in itself is one only, be revealed to himself? How can there be in a single will a knowledge of itself?
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.
13. For it understands that it has proceeded from a supernatural ground, and that there must be a God who has brought it into a hf e and will. And it is terrified in itself at its willing of wickedness, it is ashamed of its own will, and pronounces itself wrong in the willing of evil. Even though it does wrong, yet it accuses itself, and is afraid of a judgment which it sees not. This signifies that the hidden God, who has brought himself into Nature, dwells in it and reproves it for its evil way ; and that the same hidden God cannot be of the nature of perceptibility, since Reason sees not nor comprehends him. 4. On the other hand, forsaken Reason, which here wrongfully (to its thinking) is tormented in misery, finds a desire within it, itself still more to forsake, and willingly gives itself up to suffering. But in its suffering wrong it enters into a hope that that which has created it will take it from suffering into itself ; and it desires to rest in that which is not passive, and seeks rest in that which it is not in itself. It desires the death of its egoism, and yet desires not to be a nothing; but desires only to die to suffering (Qual) , in order that it may rest in itself. 5. It gives itself up therefore to suffering, that the power of pain should kill its suffering, and that it might in its fife, through the death of the dying of its Self, in that it is a painful life, enter into the unpainful and unsuffering.
26. Herein we understand rightly the hidden God, how he reveals himself in the heart of man, and reproves wrong in the conscience, and draws that ON THE DIVINE INTUITION 179 which suffers wrong by suffering to himself. And how the life of Reason, viz. the natural life, must in suffering get a desire to return again into that out of which it proceeded; and how it must desire to hate itself, and to die to the natural will, in order that it may attain the supernatural. 7. Reason says : Why has God created a painful, suffering life? Might it not be in a better state without suffering or pain, seeing he is the ground and beginning of all things? Why does he permit the contrary will? Why does he not destroy evil, that only a good may be in all things ? 8. Answer. Nothing without contrariety can become manifest to itself; for if it has nothing to resist it, it goes continually of itself outwards, and returns not again into itself. But if it return not again into itself, as into that out of which it originally went, it knows nothing of its primal being. ^
39. If the natural life had no contrariety, and were without a limit, it would never inquire after its ground from which it arose; and hence the hidden God would remain unknown to the natural life. Moreover, were there no contrariety in life, there would be no sensibility, nor will, nor efficacy therein, also neither understanding nor science. For a thing that has only one will has no divisibility. If it find not a contrary will, which gives occasion to it exercising motion, it stands still. A single thing can know nothing more than a one ; and even though it is in itself good, yet it knows neither evil nor good, for it has nothing in itself to make this perceptible. 10. And so then we can philosophize concerning 1 Dr. Stirling's rendering of Urstand. 180 ON THE DIVINE INTUITION the will of God, and say: If the hidden God, who is a single existence and will, had not by his will brought himself out of himself, out of the eternal wisdom in the temperament, into divisibility of will, and had not introduced this same divisibility into an inclusiveness for a natural and creaturely life, and had this possibility of separation in life not found expression in strife; how could then the hidden will of God, which in itself is one only, be revealed to himself? How can there be in a single will a knowledge of itself?
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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