[6] There is a fine saying about Dante in the Ottimo Commento: "I, the writer, heard Dante say that never a rhyme had led him to say other than he would, but that many a time and oft he had made words say for him what they were not wont to say for other poets."
[7] _Sig. re._ ix. 1-3. Paracelsus said, "Everything is the product of one creative effort," and, "There is nothing corporeal that does not possess a soul."
[9] Paracelsus and others used the term _Mysterium magnum_ to denote the original, but unoriginated, matter out of which all things were made. "Mysterium" is anything out of which something germinally contained in it can be developed.
[13] _The Threefold Life of Man_, iii. 2.
[17] _Aurora_, xiii. 48-57; _Myst. mag._ viii. 31; _The Three Principles_, iv. 66.
[21] _The Three Principles_, iv. 68-74; _The Threefold Life_, iv. 33.
[24] Christopher Walton, _Notes and Materials for a Biography of Wm. Law_ (London, 1854), 55.
[25] The great passages in which Boehme expounds the seven qualities are found in the _Aurora_, chaps. viii.-xi.; _Sig. re._ chap. xiv.; _The Clavis_, 54-132; though they are more or less definitely stated or implied in nearly everything he wrote. Seven "qualities" or "principles" or "sources" appear and reappear in ever shifting forms throughout the entire literature of Gnosticism, alchemy, and nature-mysticism.
[27] Some of Boehme's enthusiastic friends insist that Sir Isaac Newton, who was an admirer of Boehme, "ploughed with Boehme's heifer," _i.e._ got his suggestion of the law of universal gravitation from the philosopher of Görlitz. See Walton, _Notes_, p. 46 and _passim_.
[30] For fuller treatment of this point see Boutroux, _Historical Studies in Philosophy_, chapter on "Jacob Boehme, the German Philosopher," pp. 199-201.
[32] _Twenty-fourth Epistle_, 7; _Sig. re._ i.
[34] _The Three Princ._ xiv. 89; _First Epistle_, 42.
[39] _Ibid._ xviii. 31-43, given in substance.
[40] _Ibid._ xxvi. 19. The place of Christ in Boehme's system will be given in the next chapter.
[46] _The Three Princ._ ix. 25-27 and xix. 33.
[48] _The Supersensual Life_, 38. Every reader will naturally be reminded of Milton's great lines:
"The mind is its own place, and in itself Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven."