tellungen
hievon, sind die Ideen." But in what sense is the ideal world
"subordinate"? The Son in Eckhart holds quite a different relation to
the Father from that which the [Greek: Nous] holds to "the One" in
Plotinus, as the following sentence will show: "God is for ever working
in one eternal Now; this working of His is giving birth to His Son; He
bears Him at every moment. From this birth proceed all things. God has
such delight therein that _He uses up all His power in the process_. He
bears Himself out of Himself into Himself. He bears Himself continually
in the Son; in Him He speaks all things." The following passage from
Ruysbroek is an attempt to define more precisely the nature of the
Eckhartian Ideas: Before the temporal creation God saw the creatures,
"et agnovit distincte in seipso in alteritate quadam--non tamen omnimoda
alteritate; quidquid enim in Deo est Deus est." Our eternal life remains
"perpetuo in divina essentia sine discretione," but continually flows
out "per aeternam Verbi generationem." Ruysbroek also says clearly that
creation is the embodiment of the _whole_ mind of God: "Whatever lives
in the Father hidden in the unity, lives in the Son 'in emanatione
manifesta.'"]

[Footnote 242: It is true that Eckhart was censured for teaching "Deum
sine ipso nihil facere posse"; but the notion of a real _becoming_ of
God in the human mind, and the attempt to solve the problem of evil on
the theory of evolutionary optimism, are, I am convinced, alien to his
philosophy. See, however, on the other side, Carriere, _Die
philosophische Weltanschauung der Reformationszeit_, pp. 152-157.]

[Footnote 243: See Lasson, _Meister Eckhart_, p. 351. Eckhart protests
vigorously against the misrepresentation that he made the phenomenal
world the _Wesen_ of God, and uses strongly acosmistic language in
self-defence. But there seems to be a real inconsistency in this side
of his philosophy.]

[Footnote 244: I mean that a pantheist may with equal consistency call
himself an optimist or a pessimist, or both alternately.]

[Footnote 245: As when he says, "In God all things are one, from angel
to spider." The inquisitors were not slow to lay hold of this error.
Among the twenty-six articles of the gravamen against Eckhart we find,
"Item, in omni opere, etiam malo, manifestatur et relucet _aequaliter_
gloria Dei." The word _aequaliter_ the stamp of true pantheism.
Eckhart, however, whether consistently or not, frequently as