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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.
114. Reason says: How can a man do this, seeing the Scripture saith (1 Cor. xv. 45; Gen. i. 28) : The first man was made a natural life, to rule over all the creatures and beings of this world. The life must therefore introduce desire into earthly quality. 196 ON THE DIVINE INTUITION Answer. Human life is placed in a counterstroke to the divine will, in and through which counterstroke God wills; and the earthly creatures are placed in a counterstroke to human life, in and through which counterstroke man was to will. Man's will was with God's will to will, and rule over all natural and creaturely life. Not in animal but in divine essence was it to stand. Though man was placed with life in Nature, yet his nature was a temperament, and his life a mansion of divine will. 15. But because hfe must stand during this time in earthly essence, and cannot be rid of it, we must look at the threefold nature of the life according to the three principles; by which principle of the life man may plunge into the supersensible being of God, and how this may be done.
216. Christ said: Without me ye can do nothing (John XV. 5) . No man can of his own power reach the supreme ground, unless he sink his inmost ground of the first principle, according to the life's image-like nature, in the embodied grace of God; and, in accordance with the same ground, stand still from his own being in divine hope, and give himself up wholly with the will to God, in such a way that his will no longer wills to speak according to this gi-ound, save what God speaks and wills through this ground ; then he is at the highest goal. 17. If it be possible for him to stand still an hour or less from his own inner willing and speaking, then will the divine will speak into him. By which inspeaking God's will embraces his will in Himself, and speaks into the image-like, natural, external ON THE DIVINE INTUITION 197 Reason-life; and dissolves and illuminates the earthly imagination of Reason's will, so that immediately the supersensible divine life and will buds and incentres itself in Reason's will. 18. For as little as the hfe's own will can, in selfness and will turned away from God, stand still in Nature a moment from its working, unless it sink down beyond all Nature ; so little also can the divine speaking, in the life resigned to the ground, stand still from its working. 19. For if the life stand still from its own will, it is in the abyss of Nature and creation, in the eternal, divine utterance ; and hence God speaks therein.
320. For from God's speaking the hfe has proceeded and come into body, and is nothing else than an image-hke will of God. Now if its own imagination and will stand still, the divine imagination and will arises. For whatever is will-less is with the Nothing but one thing, and is out of or beyond all Nature, which ungroundedness is God himself. 21. Seeing then the Unground or God is an eternal speaking, viz. a breathing forth of himself, the Unground accordingly is inspoken into the resigned life; for the breathing of the Unground speaks through the stationary ground of the life. For the life has arisen from the divine breathing, and is a likeness of the divine breathing, therefore one hkeness seizes the other. As we understand in the case of the life's senses, which are such an issue from the breathing of the soul, as the soul is an issue and counterstroke from the divine soul of the divine knowledge. 198 ON THE DIVINE INTUITION
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.
114. Reason says: How can a man do this, seeing the Scripture saith (1 Cor. xv. 45; Gen. i. 28) : The first man was made a natural life, to rule over all the creatures and beings of this world. The life must therefore introduce desire into earthly quality. 196 ON THE DIVINE INTUITION Answer. Human life is placed in a counterstroke to the divine will, in and through which counterstroke God wills; and the earthly creatures are placed in a counterstroke to human life, in and through which counterstroke man was to will. Man's will was with God's will to will, and rule over all natural and creaturely life. Not in animal but in divine essence was it to stand. Though man was placed with life in Nature, yet his nature was a temperament, and his life a mansion of divine will. 15. But because hfe must stand during this time in earthly essence, and cannot be rid of it, we must look at the threefold nature of the life according to the three principles; by which principle of the life man may plunge into the supersensible being of God, and how this may be done.
216. Christ said: Without me ye can do nothing (John XV. 5) . No man can of his own power reach the supreme ground, unless he sink his inmost ground of the first principle, according to the life's image-like nature, in the embodied grace of God; and, in accordance with the same ground, stand still from his own being in divine hope, and give himself up wholly with the will to God, in such a way that his will no longer wills to speak according to this gi-ound, save what God speaks and wills through this ground ; then he is at the highest goal. 17. If it be possible for him to stand still an hour or less from his own inner willing and speaking, then will the divine will speak into him. By which inspeaking God's will embraces his will in Himself, and speaks into the image-like, natural, external ON THE DIVINE INTUITION 197 Reason-life; and dissolves and illuminates the earthly imagination of Reason's will, so that immediately the supersensible divine life and will buds and incentres itself in Reason's will. 18. For as little as the hfe's own will can, in selfness and will turned away from God, stand still in Nature a moment from its working, unless it sink down beyond all Nature ; so little also can the divine speaking, in the life resigned to the ground, stand still from its working. 19. For if the life stand still from its own will, it is in the abyss of Nature and creation, in the eternal, divine utterance ; and hence God speaks therein.
320. For from God's speaking the hfe has proceeded and come into body, and is nothing else than an image-hke will of God. Now if its own imagination and will stand still, the divine imagination and will arises. For whatever is will-less is with the Nothing but one thing, and is out of or beyond all Nature, which ungroundedness is God himself. 21. Seeing then the Unground or God is an eternal speaking, viz. a breathing forth of himself, the Unground accordingly is inspoken into the resigned life; for the breathing of the Unground speaks through the stationary ground of the life. For the life has arisen from the divine breathing, and is a likeness of the divine breathing, therefore one hkeness seizes the other. As we understand in the case of the life's senses, which are such an issue from the breathing of the soul, as the soul is an issue and counterstroke from the divine soul of the divine knowledge. 198 ON THE DIVINE INTUITION
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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