ve to obscure a difficult
study, like the _Flagrat_ and _Lubet_, with which his English translator
veiled Boehme's own honest _Schreck_ and _Lust_. There is danger lest
his crude science and his crude philosophical vocabulary conceal the
fertility of Boehme's ideas and the transcendent greatness of his
religious insight. Few will take the pains to follow him through the
interminable account of his seven _Quellgeister_, which remind us of
Gnosticism; or even of his three first properties of eternal nature, in
which his disciples find Newton's formulae anticipated, and which
certainly bear a marvellous resemblance to the three [Greek: archai] of
Schelling's _Theogonische Natur_. Boehme is always greatest when he
breaks away from his fancies and his trammels, and allows speech to the
voice of his heart. Then he is artless, clear and strong; and no man can
help listening to him, whether he dive deep down with the conviction
"ohne Gift und Grimm kein Leben," or rise with the belief that "the
being of all beings is a wrestling power," or soar with the persuasion
that Love "in its height is as high as God." The mystical poet of
Silesia, Angelus Silesius, discerned where Boehme's truest power lay
when he sang--

"Im Wasser lebt der Fisch, die Pflanze in der Erden,
Der Vogel in der Luft, die Sonn' am Firmament,
Der Salamander muss im Feu'r erhalten werden,
Und Gottes Herz ist Jakob Bohme's Element."

The three periods of Boehme's authorship constitute three distinct
stages in the development of his philosophy. He himself marks a
threefold division of his subject-matter:--1. PHILOSOPHIA, i.e. the
pursuit of the divine _Sophia_, a study of God in himself; this was
attempted in the _Aurora_. 2. ASTROLOGIA, i.e., in the largest sense,
cosmology, the manifestation of the divine in the structure of the world
and of man; hereto belong, with others, _Die drei Principien gottlichen
Wesens; Vom dreifachen Leben der Menschen; Von der Menschwerdung
Christi;, Von der Geburt und Bezeichnung alter Wesen_ (known as
_Signatura Rerum_). 3. THEOLOGIA, i.e., in Scougall's phrase, "the
life of God in the soul of man." Of the speculative writings under this
head the most important are _Von der Gnadenwahl; Mysterium Magnum_ (a
spiritual commentary on Genesis); _Von Christi Testamenten_ (the
Sacraments).

Although Boehme's philosophy is essentially theological, and his
theology essentially philosophical, one would hardly describe him as