[37] Schelling, "Abhandlung von der menschlichen Freiheit."
[38] Irenæus, "Contr. hæres." lib. i. c. 1.
[39] "For they say that in those unseen heights which have no name there is a pre-existing, perfect Æon; this they also call fore-rule, forefather and the depth.--They say, that being incomprehensible and invisible, eternal and unborn, he has existed during endless Æons in the deepest calmness and tranquillity; and that coexisting with him was Thought, which they also call Grace and Silence. This Depth once bethought him to put forth from himself the beginning of all things and to lay that offshoot--which he had resolved to put forth--like a sperm into the coexisting Silence, as it were into a womb. Now this Silence, being thus impregnated and having conceived, gave birth to Intellect, a being which was like and equal to its Creator, and alone able to comprehend the greatness of its father. This Intellect also they call the Only-begotten and the Beginning of all things." [Tr.'s add.]
Somehow or other this must have come to Jacob Böhme's hearing from the History of Heresy, and Herr von Schelling must have received it from him in all faith.
It was Leibnitz who first formally stated the Principle of Sufficient Reason as a main principle of all knowledge and of all science. He proclaims it very pompously in various passages of his works, giving himself great airs, as though he had been the first to invent it; yet all he finds to say about it is, that everything must have a sufficient reason for being as it is, and not otherwise: and this the world had probably found out before him. True, he makes casual allusions to the distinction between its two chief significations, without, however, laying any particular stress upon it, or explaining it clearly anywhere else. The principal reference to it is in his "Principia Philosophiæ," § 32, and a little more satisfactorily in the French version, entitled "Monadologie": _En vertu du principe de la raison suffisante, nous considérons qu'aucun fait ne sauroit se trouver vrai ou existant, aucune énonciation véritable, sans qu'il y ait une raison suffisante, pourquoi il en soit ainsi et non pas autrement_.[40]
[40] Compare with this § 44 of his "Theodicée," and his 5th letter to Clarke, § 125.