The relation of the reason to matter, Bruno determines wholly in the Aristotelian manner; both stand related to each other as form and matter, as actuality and potentiality, neither is without the other; the form is the inner impelling might of matter, and matter, as the unlimited possibility, as the capability for an infinite diversity of form, is the mother of all forms. The other side of Bruno’s philosophizing, his elaboration of the topics of Lullus, which occupies the greater part of his writings, has little philosophic interest, and we therefore pass it by.
8. JACOB BOEHME.—As Bacon among the English and Bruno among the Italians, so _Jacob Boehme_ is the index among the Germans of this transition period. Each one of these three indicates it in a way peculiar to his own nationality; Bacon as the herald of empiricism, Bruno as the representative of a poetic pantheism, and Boehme as the father of the theosophic mysticism. If we regarded alone the profoundness of his principle, Boehme should hold a much later place in the history of philosophy, but if we looked chiefly at the imperfect form of his philosophizing, his rank would be assigned to the mystics of the Middle Ages, while chronologically we must associate him with the German Reformation and the protestant elements that were nourished at that time. His true position is among the forerunners and prophets of the new age.
Jacob Boehme was born in 1575, in old Seidenburg, a village of upper Lusace, not far from Goerlitz. His parents were poor peasants. In his boyhood be took care of the cattle, and in his youth, after he had acquired the rudiments of reading and writing in a village school, he was sent to Goerlitz to learn the shoe-maker’s art. He finished his apprenticeship and settled down at Goerlitz in 1594 as master of his trade. Even in his youth he had received illuminations or mysterious revealings, which were subsequently repeated when his soul, striving for the truth, had become profoundly agitated by the religious conflicts of the age. Besides the Bible, the only books which Boehme read were some mystical writings of a theosophic and alchymistic content, _e. g._ those of Paracelsus. His entire want of culture is seen as soon as he undertakes to write down his thoughts, or, as he calls them, his illuminations. Hence the imperious struggle of the thought with the expression, which, however, not unfrequently rises to a dialectical acuteness and a poetic beauty. His first treatise, Aurora, composed in the year 1612, brought Boehme into trouble with the chief pastor in Goerlitz, Gregorious Richter, who publicly condemned the book from the pulpit, and even ridiculed the person of its author. The writing of books was prohibited him by a magistrate, a prohibition which Boehme observed for many years, till at length the command of the spirit was too mighty within him, and he took up again his literary labors. Boehme was a plain, quiet, modest and gentle man. He died in 1624.