ethod of finding the circumference of a circle (taken from a
paper by Mr. S. Drach[591] in the _Phil. Mag._, Jan. 1863, Suppl.) is as
accurate as the use of 3.14159265. From three diameters deduct
8-thousandths and 7-millionths of a diameter; to the result add five per
cent. We have then not quite enough; but the shortcoming is at the rate of
about an inch and a sixtieth of an inch in 14,000 miles.

JACOB BEHMEN.

Though I have met with nothing but a little tract from the school of Jacob
Behmen[592] (or Boehme; I keep to the old English version of his name), yet
there has been more, and of a more recent date. I am told of an
"Introduction to Theosophy [_Theo_ private, I suppose, as in theological];
or, the Science of the Mystery of Christ," published in 1854, mostly from
the writings of William Law[593]: and also of a volume of 688 pages, of the
same year, printed for private circulation, containing notes for a
biography of William Law. The editor of the first work wishes to grow "a
{318} generation of perfect Christians" by founding a Theosophic College,
for which he requests the public to raise a hundred thousand pounds. There
is a good account of Jacob Behmen in the _Penny Cyclopaedia_. The author
mentions inaccurate accounts, one of which he quotes, as follows: "He
derived all his mystical and rapturous doctrine from Wood's[594] _Athenae
Oxonienses_, Vol. I, p. 610, and _Hist. et Antiq. Acad. Oxon._, Vol. II, p.
308." On which the author remarks that Wood was born after Behmen's death.
There must have been a few words which slipped out: what is meant is that
Behmen "derived his doctrine from _Robert Fludd_,[595] _for whom see_
Wood's etc. etc." Even this is absurd enough: for Behmen began to publish
in 1610, and Fludd in 1616. Fludd was a Rosicrucian, and a mystic of a
different type from Behmen. I have some of his works, and could produce out
of them paradoxes enough, according to our ways of thinking, to fit out a
host. But the Rosicrucian system was a recognized school of its day, and
Fludd, a man of great learning, had abettors enough in all which he
advanced, and predecessors in most of it.

[A Correspondent has recently sent a short summary of the claims of Jacob
Behmen to rank higher than I have placed him. I shall gladly insert this
summary in the book I contemplate, as a statement of what is said of Behmen
far less liable to suspicion of exaggeration than anything I could write. I
shall add a few extra