_Ternar_, as Baader calls
it, through _nature_, the principle of self-hood, of individual being,
which is eternally and necessarily produced by God. Only in nature is the
trinity of _persons_ attained. These processes, it must be noticed, are not
to be conceived as successive, or as taking place in time; they are to be
looked at _sub specie aeternitatis_, as the necessary elements or moments
in the self-evolution of the divine Being. Nor is _nature_ to be confounded
with created substance, or with matter as it exists in space and time; it
is pure non-being, the mere otherness (_alteritas_) of God-his shadow,
desire, want, or _desiderium sui_, as it is called by mystical writers.
Creation, itself a free and non-temporal act of God's love and will, cannot
be speculatively deduced, but must be accepted as an historic [v.03 p.0088]
fact. Created beings were originally of three orders--the intelligent or
angels; the non-intelligent natural existences; and man, who mediated
between these two orders. Intelligent beings are endowed with freedom; it
is possible, but not necessary, that they should fall. Hence the fact of
the fall is not a speculative but an historic truth. The angels fell
through pride--through desire to raise themselves to equality with God; man
fell by lowering himself to the level of nature. Only after the fall of man
begins the creation of space, time and matter, or of the world as we now
know it; and the motive of this creation was the desire to afford man an
opportunity for taking advantage of the scheme of redemption, for bringing
forth in purity the image of God according to which he has been fashioned.
The physical philosophy and anthropology which Baader, in connexion with
this, unfolds in various works, is but little instructive, and coincides in
the main with the utterances of Boehme. In nature and in man he finds
traces of the dire effects of sin, which has corrupted both and has
destroyed their natural harmony. As regards ethics, Baader rejects the
Kantian or any autonomic system of morals. Not obedience to a moral law,
but realization in ourselves of the divine life is the true ethical end.
But man has lost the power to effect this by himself; he has alienated
himself from God, and therefore no ethical theory which neglects the facts
of sin and redemption is satisfactory or even possible. The history of man
and of humanity is the history of the redeeming love of God. The means
whereby we put ourselve