Mysticism at the Dawn of the Modern Age
GA 7
Giordano Bruno and Angelus Silesius
[ 1 ] In the first decade of the sixteenth century, at Castle Heilsberg in Prussia, the scientific genius of Nicolas Copernicus (1473–1543) is erecting an edifice of ideas which will compel men of succeeding epochs to look up to the starry heavens with conceptions different from those which their ancestors had in antiquity and in the Middle Ages. To the latter, the earth was a dwelling-place resting at the center of the universe. The stars, on the other hand, were for them entities of a perfect nature, the movement of which proceeded in circles because the circle is the image of perfection.—In what the stars showed to the human senses one saw something belonging directly to the soul or the spirit. The objects and events of the earth spoke one language to man; another language was spoken by the shining stars which, in the pure ether beyond the moon, seemed to be a spiritual being that filled space. Nicolas of Cusa had already formed different ideas. Through Copernicus the earth became for man a fellow creation among the other heavenly bodies, a star that moved like others. Everything in the earth which appeared to man as being different, he could now attribute only to the fact that it is his dwelling-place. He was compelled to stop thinking in different ways about the phenomena of this earth and about those of the remainder of the universe. His sensory world had expanded into furthest space. What reached his eye from the ether he now had to accept as belonging to the sensory world, like the things of the earth. He could no longer seek the spirit in the ether in a sensory fashion.
[ 2 ] All who henceforth strove for higher cognition had to come to terms with this expanded sensory world. In earlier centuries, the meditating spirit of man had stood before another world of facts. Now it was given a new task. It was no longer the things of this earth alone which could express their nature out of the interior of man. This interior had to enfold the spirit of a sensory world, which fills the spatial universe everywhere in an identical fashion.—It was such a task that confronted the thinker from Nola, Philotheo Giordano Bruno (1548–1600). The senses have conquered the spatial universe for themselves; now the spirit is no longer to be found in space. Thus man was directed from outside to seek the spirit henceforth only where, on the basis of deep inner experiences, it had been sought by the glorious thinkers who have been discussed in the preceding expositions. These thinkers draw out of themselves a conception of the world to which men later are to be compelled by a more advanced natural science. The sun of ideas which later is to fall upon a new conception of nature, with them is still beneath the horizon, but its light already appears as a dawn in a time when men's thoughts about nature are still enveloped in the darkness of night.—For the purposes of science the sixteenth century gave the heavens to that world of the senses to which they rightfully belong; up to the end of the nineteenth century this science had progressed so far that from among the phenomena of plant, animal, and human life also it could give to the world of sensory facts what belongs to it. Neither up in the ether nor in the development of living organisms can this science henceforth look for anything but factual-sensory processes. As the thinker of the sixteenth century had to say: The earth is a star among stars, subject to the same laws as other stars, so the thinker of the nineteenth century must say, “Whatever his origin and his future may be, for anthropology man is only a mammal; specifically he is that mammal whose organization, needs, and diseases are the most complicated, and whose brain with its wonderful capacity, has reached the highest degree of development.” (Paul Topinard, Anthropologie, Anthropology, Leipzig, 1888, p. 528.)—On the basis of this point of view attained by science, a confusion of the spiritual with the sensory can no longer take place, if man understands himself aright. An advanced science makes it impossible to seek in nature a spirit conceived along the lines of the material, just as sound thinking forces us to seek the cause of the advance of the hands of a clock in the laws of mechanics (the spirit of inorganic nature), not in a special demon who causes the movement of the hands. As a scientist, Ernst Haeckel justifiably had to reject the clumsy conception of a God thought of in the same way as something material. “In the higher and more abstract forms of religion this corporeal manifestation is abandoned, and God is worshiped only as ‘pure spirit,’ without body. ‘God is a spirit and he who worships Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth.’ Nevertheless, the spiritual activity of this pure spirit is exactly the same as that of the anthropomorphous, divine personality. In reality this immaterial spirit too is not thought of as incorporeal, but as invisible, gaseous. We thus come to the paradoxical conception of God as a gaseous vertebrate.” (Haeckel, Welträtsel, The Riddle of the Universe, p. 333.) In reality, a sensory-factual existence of something spiritual can only be assumed where an immediate sensory experience shows the spiritual; and only that degree of the spiritual can be assumed which is perceived in this manner. The excellent thinker, B. Carneri, could say (in the work, Empfindung und Bewusstsein, Sensation and Consciousness, p. 15): “The sentence, No spirit without matter, but also no matter without spirit—would justify us in extending the problem also to plants, or even to the first rock we come across, where hardly anything could be said in favor of this correlation.” Spiritual processes, as facts, are the results of different functions of an organism; the spirit of the world does not exist in the world in a material manner, but only in a spiritual manner. The soul of man is a sum of processes in which the spirit appears most immediately as a fact. But it is only in man that the spirit exists in the form of such a soul. And to seek the spirit in the form of a soul elsewhere than in man, to think of other beings as endowed with a soul like man, is to misunderstand the spirit; it is to commit the most grievous sin against the spirit. One who does this, only shows that he has not experienced the spirit itself within him; he has only experienced the external manifestation of the spirit that holds sway in him: that is, the soul. But this is just as if somebody were to mistake a circle drawn in pencil for the true mathematical-ideal circle. One who does not experience within himself anything but the soul-form of the spirit, feels impelled to assume such a soul-form also in non-human things, in order not to have to stop at gross sensory materiality. Instead of thinking of the primordial foundation of the world as spirit, he thinks of it as a world soul, and assumes a general animation of nature.
[ 3 ] Giordano Bruno, under the impact of the new Copernican conception of nature, could grasp the spirit in the world, from which it had been expelled in its old form, only as a world soul. When one immerses oneself in Bruno's writings (especially in his profound book, Of the Cause, the Principle, and the One) one has the impression that he thought of things as being animated, although in different degrees. He has not in reality experienced the spirit within himself; therefore he imagines it in terms of the human soul, in which form alone it has confronted him. When he speaks of the spirit he understands it in this way. “The universal reason is the innermost, most real, and most characteristic faculty, and is a potential part of the world soul; it is something everywhere identical, which fills the All, illuminates the universe, and instructs nature in bringing forth its species as they should be.” It is true that in these sentences the spirit is not described as a “gaseous vertebrate,” but as a being like the human soul. “A thing however small and minute, has within itself a portion of spiritual substance which, if it finds the substratum to be suitable, strives to become a plant or an animal, and organizes itself into a body of some kind, which is generally called animated. For spirit is to be found in all things, and there is not the most minute body which does not contain such a portion of it that it animates itself.”—Because Giordano Bruno had not really experienced the spirit as spirit within himself, he could confuse the life of the spirit with the external mechanical functions by means of which Raimon Lull (1235–1315), in his so-called Great Art had attempted to unveil the mysteries of the spirit. A modern philosopher, Franz Brentano, describes this Great Art as follows: “On concentric, individually turnable circular disks various concepts were inscribed, and then the most diverse combinations were produced by this means.” What coincidence superimposed upon a particular turn, was formed into a judgment about the highest truths. And in his many wanderings about Europe, Giordano Bruno appeared at various universities as a teacher of this Great Art. He had the boldness to think of the stars as worlds that are completely analogous to our earth; he enlarged the vision of scientific thinking beyond the earth; he no longer thought of the heavenly bodies as corporeal spirits, but he still thought of them as spirits of the soul. One must not do an injustice to this man whom the Catholic church made to atone for his advanced ideas with death. It was an enormous achievement to enfold the whole heavens in the same conception of the world that up to that time had been applied only to the things of the earth, even though Bruno still thought of the sensory as of something belonging to the soul.—
[ 4 ] As a personality that made what Tauler, Weigel, Jacob Boehme and others had prepared shine once more in a great spiritual harmony, Johann Scheffler, called Angelus Silesius (1624–1677) appeared in the seventeenth century. The ideas of the above-mentioned thinkers appear in his book, Cherubinischer Wandersmann, Geistreiche Sinn-und Schlussreime, Cherubinic Wanderer, Ingenious Aphorisms in Rhymes, as though gathered in a spiritual focus and shining with a heightened luminosity. And everything Angelus Silesius utters appears as such an immediate, spontaneous revelation of his personality that it is as though this man had been destined by a special providence to embody wisdom in a personal form. The spontaneous way in which he lives his wisdom is shown by the fact that he expresses it in sayings which are also admirable for their artistic form. He floats above all earthly existence like a spiritual being, and what he utters is like the breath of another world, cleansed from the very beginning of all those coarse and impure elements from which human wisdom can free itself at other times only with difficulty.—In the sense of Angelus Silesius only he partakes of true cognition who makes the eye of the All to see within himself; only he sees his acts in their true light who feels them to be performed within himself by the hand of the All: “God is the fire in me, and I the light in Him: do we not intimately belong to each other?”—“I am as rich as God; there is no grain of dust that I (Believe me, O Man) do not have in common with Him.”—“God loves me above Himself; if I love Him above myself I give Him as much as He gives me out of Himself.”—“The bird is in the air, the stone lies on the land; the fish lives in the water, my spirit in God's Hand.”—“If you are born of God, then God blossoms in you; and His divinity is your sap and your ornament.”—“Stop, whither are you running; Heaven is in you; if you seek God elsewhere you will forever miss Him.”—For one who feels himself to exist in the All in this way, every separation between himself and another being ceases; he no longer feels himself to be a separate individual; on the contrary, he feels everything about himself to be a part of the world, while his true essence is identical with this universe itself. “The world does not hold you; you yourself are the world that, in you and with you, keeps you so strongly prisoner.”—“Man does not have perfect bliss till the oneness has swallowed the otherness.”—“Man is all things: if he lacks one, he himself truly does not know his wealth.”—As a sensory being man is a thing among other things, and his sensory organs bring to him, as to a sensory individuality, sensory information about the things in space and time outside of him; but when the spirit speaks in man, then there is no outside and no inside; nothing that is spiritual is here and nothing is there; nothing is earlier, and nothing is later; space and time have disappeared in the contemplation of the universal spirit. It is only as long as man sees as an individual that he is here and the thing is there, and only as long as he sees as an individual, is this earlier and this later. “Man, if you let your spirit rise above place and time you can at every instant be in Eternity.”—“I myself am Eternity when I leave time, and gather myself together in God, and God in myself.”—“The rose which your external eye sees here, has bloomed like this in God through Eternity.”—“Sit down in the center, and you shall see everything at once: what happens now and then, here and in Heaven.”—“As long, my friend, as you have place and time in mind, you shall not grasp what God and Eternity are.”—“When man withdraws from multiplicity and communes with God, he reaches unity.”—With this the height has been climbed where man goes beyond his individual self and abolishes every contrast between the world and himself. A higher life begins for him. The inner experience which takes place in him appears to him like the death of the old life and a resurrection in the new. “When you raise yourself above yourself and let God act, then shall the Ascension take place in your spirit.”—“The body must elevate itself in the spirit, the spirit in God, if you, O Man, wish to live in Him forever in bliss.”—“As much as my I pines away and diminishes in me, so much is the Lord's I strengthened thereby.”—It is from this point of view that man can understand his significance and the significance of all things in the realm of eternal necessity The natural universe appears to him in a direct way as the divine spirit. The thought of a divine, universal spirit which could have its being and continuance above and beside the things of the world, fades away as a concept that has been surmounted. This universal spirit appears to be so poured out into things, to have become so much one nature with them, that it could not be imagined any longer if even a single part of its being were imagined as absent. “There is nothing but I and You; and if we two do not exist, then God is God no more, and the heavens shall fall.”—Man feels himself to be a necessary link in the chain of the world. His acts no longer have any element of arbitrariness or individuality. What he does is necessary in the whole, in the chain of the world, which would fall apart if what he does were taken out of it. “Without me God cannot make a single worm; if I do not preserve it with Him, it must straightway fall to pieces.”—“I know that without me God cannot live for an instant; if I come to nothing then He must needs give up the ghost.”—It is only on this height that man sees things in their true nature. He no longer needs to attribute, from the outside, a spiritual essence to what is smallest, what is grossly sensory. For such as this smallest is, in all its smallness and gross, sensory nature, it is a part of the All. “No dust mote is so poor, no dot is so small, but the wise man sees God in it in His glory.”—“In a mustard-seed, if you can understand it, is the image of all higher and lower things.”—On this height man feels himself free. For coercion exists only where one can still be compelled by something from the outside. But when everything external has flowed into the interior, when the contrast between “I and world,” “outside and inside,” “nature and spirit,” has disappeared, then man feels everything which impels him only as his own impulse. “Fetter me as strictly as you want, in a thousand irons; nevertheless I shall be wholly free and unfettered.”—“When my will is dead, then must God do what I will; I myself prescribe to Him the pattern and the goal.”—Now all externally imposed moral norms cease to exist; man becomes his own measure and goal. He is not subject to any law, for the law too has become his nature. “The law is for the wicked; if no commandment were written, the godly would yet love God and their neighbor.”—On the higher level of cognition the innocence of nature is thus given back to man. He accomplishes the tasks which are set for him with the awareness of an eternal necessity. He says to himself, Through this iron necessity is given into your hand to withdraw that part which is assigned to you from this same eternal necessity. “O Men, learn from the flower of the field how you can please God and be beautiful at the same time.”—“The rose is without why; it blooms because it blooms; it pays no attention to itself, nor asks whether one sees it.”—When man arises to the higher level he feels in himself the eternal and necessary impulse of the universe, just as the flower of the field; he acts as the flower blooms. In all his actions the awareness of his moral responsibility grows into the immeasurable. For what he does not do is withdrawn from the All, is a killing of this All, insofar as the possibility of such a killing lies with him. “What is it not to sin? Do not ask much; go, the silent flowers will tell you.”—“Everything must be slain. If you do not slay yourself for God, eternal death shall at last slay you for the Enemy.”
VI. Giordano Bruno und Angelus Silesius
[ 1 ] Im ersten Jahrzehnt des sechzehnten Jahrhunderts ersinnt auf dem Schloß zu Heilsberg in Preußen das naturwissenschaftliche Genie des Nikolaus Kopernikus (1473-1543) ein Gedankengebäude, das die Menschen der folgenden Zeitalter zwingt, mit anderen Vorstellungen zum gestirnten Himmel aufzusehen, als ihre Ahnen im Altertum und Mittelalter gehabt haben. Diesen war die Erde ihr im Mitte]-punkt des Weltalls ruhender Wohnplatz. Die Gestirne aber waren ihnen Wesenheiten von einer vollkommenen deren Bewegung in Kreisen verlief, weil der Kreis das Bild der Vollkommenheit ist. — In dem, was die Sterne den menschlichen Sinnen zeigten, wurde unmittelbar etwas Seelisches, Geistiges erblickt. Eine andere Sprache redeten zu dem Menschen die Dinge und Vorgänge auf der Erde; eine andere die leuchtenden Gestirne, die jenseits des Mondes im reinen Äther wie ein den Raum erfüllendes Geistwesen erschienen. Nicolaus von Kues hat sich bereits andere Gedanken gebildet. Durch Kopernikus wurde für den Menschen die Erde ein Bruderwesen gegenüber den anderen Himmelskörpern, ein Gestirn, das sich wie andere bewegt. Alle Unterschiedenheit, die sie für den Menschen aufweist, konnte dieser nunmehr nur darauf zurückführen, daß sie sein Wohnplatz ist. Er wurde gezwungen, nicht mehr verschieden über die Vorgänge dieser Erde und über diejenigen des andern Weltraumes zu denken. Seine Sinnenwelt hatte sich bis in die fernsten Räume erweitert. Er mußte, was vom Äther in sein Auge drang, nunmehr ebenso als Sinnenwelt gelten lassen, wie die Dinge der Erde. Er konnte in dem Äther nicht mehr auf sinnliche Weise den Geist suchen.
[ 2 ] Mit dieser erweiterten Sinneswelt mußte sich auseinandersetzen, wer fortan nach höherer Erkenntnis strebte. In früheren Jahrhunderten stand der sinnende Menschengeist vor einer anderen Tatsachenwelt. Nun war ihm eine neue Aufgabe gestellt. Nicht mehr die Dinge dieser Erde allein konnten von des Menschen Innern heraus ihr Wesen aussprechen. Dieses Innere mußte den Geist einer Sinnenwelt umfassen, die in überall gleicher Art das räumliche All erfüllt. — Vor einer solchen Aufgabe stand der Denker aus Nola, Philotheo Giordano Bruno (1548-1600). Die Sinne haben sich das räumliche Weltall erobert; der Geist ist nun nicht mehr im Raume zu finden. So wurde der Mensch von außen darauf hingewiesen, den Geist fortan nur mehr dort zu suchen, wo ihn, aus tiefen inneren Erlebnissen heraus, die herrlichen Denker gesucht haben, deren Reihe die vorhergehenden Ausführungen an uns vorübergeführt haben. Diese Denker schöpfen aus sich eine Weltanschauung, zu der später eine fortgeschrittene Naturwissenschaft die Menschen zwingt. Die Sonne der Ideen, die später auf eine neue Naturanschauung fallen soll, steht bei ihnen noch unter dem Horizont; aber ihr Licht erscheint bereits als Morgendämmerung in einer Zeit, als die Gedanken der Menschen über die Natur selbst noch im nächtlichen Dunkel liegen. — Das sechzehnte Jahrhundert hat für die Naturwissenschaft den Himmelsraum der Sinnenwelt gegeben, der er rechtmäßig angehört; bis zum Ende des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts war diese Wissenschaft so weit, daß sie auch innerhalb der Erscheinungen des pflanzlichen, tierischen und menschlichen Lebens dasjenige der sinnlichen Tatsachenwelt geben konnte, was dieser zukommt. Weder droben im Äther, noch in der Entwicklung der Lebewesen darf nunmehr diese Naturwissenschaft etwas anderes suchen als tatsächlich-sinnliche Prozesse. Wie der Denker im sechzehnten Jahrhundert sagen mußte: Die Erde ist ein Stern unter Sternen, den gleichen Gesetzen unterworfen wie andere Sterne — so muß derjenige des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts sagen: «Der Mensch, mag seine Entstehung, seine Zukunft sein, wie sie wolle, ist für die Anthropologie nur ein Säugetier, und zwar dasjenige, dessen Organisation, Bedürfnisse und Krankheiten die verwickeltesten sind, und dessen Gehirn mit seiner bewunderungswürdigen Leistungsfähigkeit den höchsten Grad der Entwicklung erreichte.» (Paul Topinard: «Anthropologie», Leipzig 1888, S. 528.) — Von einem solchen durch die Naturwissenschaft erreichten Gesichtspunkt kann eine Verwechslung von Geistigem und Sinnlichem nicht mehr eintreten, wenn der Mensch sich selbst recht versteht. Die entwickelte Naturwissenschaft macht es unmöglich, in der Natur einen, nach Art des Materiellen gedachten Geist zu suchen, wie ein gesundes Denken es unmöglich macht, den Grund des Vorrückens der Uhrzeiger nicht in den mechanischen Gesetzen (dem Geist der unorganischen Natur), sondern in einem besonderen Dämon zu suchen, der die Zeigerbewegung bewirkte. Mit Recht mußte Ernst Haeckel die grobe Vorstellung von dem nach materieller Art gedachten Gott als Naturforscher zurückweisen. «In den höheren und abstrakteren Religionsformen wird diese körperliche Erscheinung aufgegeben und Gott nur als ‹reiner Geist›, ohne Körper verehrt. ‹Gott ist ein Geist, und wer ihn anbetet, soll ihn im Geist und in der Wahrheit anbeten.› Trotzdem bleibt aber die Seelentätigkeit dieses reinen Geistes ganz dieselbe wie diejenige der anthropomorphen Gottesperson. In Wirklichkeit wird auch dieser immaterielle Geist nicht unkörperlich, sondern unsichtbar gedacht, gasförmig. Wir gelangen so zu der paradoxen Vorstellung Gottes als eines gasförmigen Wirbeltieres.» (Haeckel, «Die Welträtsel», S.333.) In Wirklichkeit darf ein sinnlich-tatsächliches Dasein eines Geistigen nur da angenommen werden, wo unmittelbare sinnliche Erfahrung Geistiges zeigt; und es darf nur ein solcher Grad des Geistigen vorausgesetzt werden, als auf diese Art wahrgenommen wird. Der ausgezeichnete Denker B. Carneri durfte (in der Schrift «Empfindung und Bewußtsein», S. 15) sagen: «Der Satz: Kein Geist ohne Materie, aber auch keine Materie ohne Geist, — würde uns berechtigen, die Frage auch auf die Pflanze, ja, auf den nächsten besten Felsblock auszudehnen, bei welchem kaum etwas zugunsten dieser Korrelatbegriffe sprechen dürfte.» Geistige Vorgänge als Tatsachen sind die Ergebnisse verschiedener Verrichtungen eines Organismus; der Geist der Welt ist nicht auf materielle Art, sondern eben nur auf geistige Art in der Welt vorhanden. Die Seele des Menschen ist eine Summe von Vorgängen, in denen der Geist am unmittelbarsten als Tatsache erscheint. In der Form einer solchen Seele ist aber der Geist nur im Menschen vorhanden. Und es heißt den Geist mißverstehen, es heißt, die schlimmste Sünde wider den Geist begehen, wenn man den Geist in Seelenform anderswo als im Menschen sucht, wenn man sich andere Wesen so beseelt denkt, wie den Menschen. Wer dies tut, zeigt nur, daß er den Geist selbst in sich nicht erlebt hat; er hat nur die in ihm waltende äußere Erscheinungsform des Geistes, die Seele, erlebt. Das aber ist gerade so, wie wenn jemand einen mit Bleistift hingezeichneten Kreis für den wirklich mathematisch-idealen Kreis hielte. Wer nichts anderes in sich erlebt, als die Seelenform des Geistes, der fühlt sich dann gedrängt, auch in den nichtmenschlichen Dingen solche Seelenform vorauszusetzen, damit er nicht bei der grob-sinnlichen Materialist stehen zu bleiben brauche. Statt den Urgrund der Welt als Geist zu denken, denkt er ihn als Weltseele, und nimmt eine allgemeine Beseelung der Natur an.
[ 3 ] Giordano Bruno, auf den die neue kopernikanische Naturbetrachtung eindrang, konnte auf keine andere Art den Geist in der Welt fassen, aus der er in der alten Form vertrieben war, denn als Weltseele. Man hat, wenn man sich in Brunos Schriften vertieft (insbesondere in sein tiefsinniges Buch «Von der Ursache, dem Prinzip und dem Einen»), den Eindruck, daß er sich die Dinge beseelt dachte, wenn auch in verschiedenem Grade. Er hat den Geist in Wirklichkeit nicht in sich erlebt, deshalb denkt er sich ihn nach Art der Menschenseele, in der er ihm allein entgegengetreten ist. Wenn er von Geist spricht, so faßt er ihn in dieser Art auf «Die universelle Vernunft ist das innerste, wirklichste und eigenste Vermögen und ein potentieller Teil der Weltseele; sie ist ein Identisches, welches das All erfüllt, das Universum erleuchtet und die Natur unterweist, ihre Gattungen, so wie sie sein sollen, hervorzubringen.» Der Geist wird zwar in diesen Sätzen nicht als «gasförmiges Wirbeltier», wohl aber als ein Wesen geschildert, das so ist wie die Menschenseele. «Das Ding sei nun so klein und winzig als es wolle, es hat in sich einen Teil von geistiger Substanz, welche, wenn sie das Substrat dazu angetan findet, sich darnach streckt, eine Pflanze, ein Tier zu werden, und sich zu einem beliebigen Körper organisiert, welcher gemeinhin beseelt genannt wird. Denn Geist findet sich in allen Dingen, und es ist auch nicht das kleinste Körperchen, welches nicht einen solchen Anteil in sich faßte, daß er sich nicht belebte.» — Weil Giordano Bruno den Geist nicht wirklich als Geist in sich erlebt hat, deshalb konnte er auch das Leben des Geistes mit den äußeren mechanischen Verrichtungen verwechseln, mit denen Raymundus Lullus (1235-1315) in seiner sog. «Großen Kunst» die Geheimnisse des Geistes entschleiern wollte. Ein neuerer Philosoph, Franz Brentano, beschreibt diese «Große Kunst» so: «Auf konzentrischen, vereinzelt drehbaren Kreisscheiben wurden Begriffe aufgezeichnet, und dann dadurch die verschiedenartigsten Kombinationen hergestellt.» Was der Zufall bei der Drehung übereinanderschob, das wurde zu einem Urteile über die höchsten Wahrheiten geformt. Und Giordano Bruno trat auf seinen mannigfaltigen Irrfahrten durch Europa an verschiedenen hohen Schulen als Lehrer dieser «Großen Kunst» auf Er hat den kühnen Mut gehabt, die Gestirne als Welten zu denken, vollkommen analog unserer Erde; er hat den Blick naturwissenschaftlichen Denkens über die Erde hinaus erweitert; er dachte die Weltkörper nicht mehr als körperliche Geister; aber er dachte sie doch noch als seelische Geister. Man darf nicht ungerecht sein gegen den Mann, den seine fortgeschrittene Vorstellungsart die katholische Kirche mit dem Tode büßen ließ. Es gehörte ein Ungeheures dazu, den ganzen Himmelsraum in dieselbe Weltbetrachtung einzuspannen, die man bis dahin bloß für irdische Dinge hatte, wenn Bruno auch das Sinnliche noch seelisch dachte.
[ 4 ] Als eine Persönlichkeit, die in einer großen seelischen Harmonie noch einmal aufleuchten ließ, was Tauler, Weigel, Jacob Böhme und andere vorbereitet hatten, erschien im siebzehnten Jahrhundert Johann Scheffler, genannt Angelus Silesius (1624-1677). Wie in einem geistigen Brennpunkte gesammelt und in erhöhter Leuchtkraft strahlend, erscheinen die Ideen der genannten Denker in seinem Buche: «Cherubinischer Wandersmann. Geistreiche Sinn- und Schlußreime.» Und alles, was Angelus Silesius ausspricht, erscheint als solch eine unmittelbare, selbstverständliche Offenbarung seiner Persönlichkeit, daß es ist, als wenn dieser Mann durch eine besondere Vorsehung berufen worden wäre, die Weisheit in persönlicher Gestalt zu verkörpern. Die selbstverständliche Art, in der er die Weisheit darlebt, kommt dadurch zum Ausdruck, daß er sie in Sprüchen darstellt, die auch bezüglich ihrer Kunstform bewundernswert sind. Er schwebt wie ein Geistwesen über allem irdischen Dasein; und, was er spricht, ist wie der Hauch aus einer anderen Welt, von vornherein befreit von allem Groben und Unreinen aus dem sich sonst menschliche Weisheit nur mühsam herausarbeitet. — Wahrhaft erkennend verhält sich im Sinne des Angelus Silesius nur, wer das Auge des Alls in sich zum Schauen bringt; in wahrem Lichte sieht sein Tun nur, wer dies Tun in sich verrichtet fühlt durch die Hand des Alls: «Gott ist in mir das Feuer, und ich in ihm der Schein: sind wir einander nicht ganz inniglich gemein?» — «Ich bin so reich als Gott; es kann kein Stäublein sein, das ich — Mensch glaube mir — mit ihm nicht hab' gemein.» «Gott liebt mich über sich: lieb ich ihn über mich: so geb ich ihm so viel, als er mir gibt aus sich.» — «Der Vogel in der Luft, der Stein ruht auf dem Land; im Wasser lebt der Fisch, mein Geist in Gottes Hand.» — «Bist du aus Gott geborn, so blühet Gott in dir: und seine Gottheit ist dein Saft und dein Zier.» — «Halt an, wo laufst du hin; der Himmel ist in dir: Suchst du Gott anderswo, du fehlst ihn für und für.» - Für den, der sich so im All fühlt, hört jede Trennung zwischen sich und einem anderen Wesen auf; er empfindet sich nicht mehr als einzelnes Individuum; er empfindet vielmehr alles, was an ihm ist, als Glied der Welt, seine eigentliche Wesenheit aber als dieses Weltall selbst. «Die Welt, die hält dich nicht; du selber bist die Welt, die dich in dir mit dir so stark gefangen hält.» — «Der Mensch hat eher nicht vollkommne Seligkeit: bis daß die Einheit hat verschluckt die Anderheit.» «Der Mensch ist alle Ding': ist's daß ihm eins gebricht, so kennet er fürwahr sein Reichtum selber nicht.» — Als sinnliches Wesen ist der Mensch ein Ding unter anderen Dingen, und seine sinnlichen Organe bringen ihm als sinnlicher Individualität sinnliche Kunde von den Dingen in Raum und Zeit außer ihm; spricht aber der Geist in dem Menschen, dann gibt es kein Außen und kein Innen; nichts ist hier und nichts ist dort, was geistig ist; nichts ist früher, und nichts ist später: Raum und Zeit sind in der Anschauung des Allgeistes verschwunden. Nur so lange der Mensch als Individuum schaut, ist er hier, und das Ding dort; und nur so lange er als Individuum schaut, ist dies früher, und dies später. «Mensch, wo du deinen Geist schwingst über Ort und Zeit, so kannst du jeden Blick sein in der Ewigkeit.» — «Ich selbst bin Ewigkeit, wann ich die Zeit verlasse, und mich in Gott, und Gott in mich zusammenfasse.» - «Die Rose, welche hier dein äußres Auge sieht, die hat von Ewigkeit in Gott also geblüht.» — «Setz dich in'n Mittelpunkt, so siehst du all's zugleich: was jetzt und dann geschieht, Her und im Himmelreich.» — «So lange dir, mein Freund, im Sinn liegt Ort und Zeit: so faßt du nicht, was Gott ist und die Ewigkeit.» — «Wenn sich der Mensch entzieht der Mannigfaltigkeit, und kehrt sich ein zu Gott, kommt er zur Einigkeit.» — Die Höhe ist damit erstiegen, auf welcher der Mensch hinausschreitet über sein individuelles Ich und jeden Gegensatz zwischen der Welt und sich aufhebt. Ein höheres Leben beginnt für ihn. Wie der Tod des alten und eine Auferstehung im neuen Leben erscheint ihm das innere Erlebnis, das ihn überkommt. «Wann du dich über dich erhebst und läßt Gott walten: so wird in deinem Geist die Himmelfahrt gehalten.» — «Der Leib muß sich im Geist, der Geist in Gott erheben: wo du in ihm, mein Mensch, willst ewig selig leben.» — «So viel mein Ich in mir verschmachtet und abnimmt: so viel des Herren Ich darvon zu Kräften kömmt.» - Von solchem Gesichtspunkt aus erkennt der Mensch seine Bedeutung und die Bedeutung aller Dinge im Reich der ewigen Notwendigkeit. Das natürliche All erscheint ihm unmittelbar als der göttliche Geist. Der Gedanke an einen göttlichen Allgeist, der noch über und neben den Dingen der Welt Sein und Bestand haben könnte, schwindet als eine überwundene Vorstellung dahin. Dieser Allgeist erscheint so in die Dinge ausgeflossen, so mit den Dingen wesenseins geworden, daß er nicht mehr gedacht werden könnte, wenn aus seinem Wesen nur ein einziges Glied weggedacht würde. «Nichts ist, als Ich und Du; und wenn wir zwei nicht sein: so ist Gott nicht mehr Gott, und fällt der Himmel ein.» — Der Mensch fühlt sich als notwendiges Glied in der Weltenkette. Sein Tun hat nichts mehr von Willkür, oder Individualität an sich. Was er tut, ist notwendig im Ganzen, in der Weltenkette, die auseinanderfiele, wenn dieses sein Tun aus ihr herausfiele. «Gott mag nicht ohne mich ein einziges Würmlein machen: erhalt ich's nicht mit ihm, so muß es stracks zerkrachen.» - «Ich weiß, daß ohne mich Gott nicht ein Nu kann leben: werd ich zu nicht, er muß von Not den Geist aufgeben.» — Auf dieser Höhe erst sieht der Mensch die Dinge in ihrem rechten Wesen. Er hat nicht mehr nötig, dem Kleinsten, dem Grobsinnlichen eine geistige Wesenheit von außen beizulegen. Denn so wie dieses Kleinste ist, in aller seiner Kleinheit und Grobsinnlichkeit, ist es Glied im All. «Kein Stäublein ist so schlecht, kein Tüpfchen ist so klein: der Weise siehet Gott ganz herrlich drinne sein.» — «In einem Senfkörnlein, so du's verstehen willst: ist aller oberen und untren Dinge Bild.» — Der Mensch fühlt sich auf dieser Höhe frei. Denn Zwang ist nur, wo ein Ding noch von außen zwingen kann. Wenn aber alles Äußere eingeflossen ist in das Innere, wenn der Gegensatz zwischen «Ich und Welt», «Draußen und Drinnen», «Natur und Geist» geschwunden ist: dann fühlt der Mensch alles, was ihn treibt, nur als seinen eigenen Trieb. «Schleuß mich, so streng du willst, in tausend Eisen ein: ich werde doch ganz frei und ungefesselt sein.» — «Dafern mein Will' ist tot, so muß Gott, was ich will: ich schreib ihm selber vor das Muster und das Ziel.» — Nun hören alle von außen kommenden sittlichen Normen auf; der Mensch wird sich Maß und Ziel. Er steht unter keinem Gesetz; denn auch das Gesetz ist sein Wesen geworden. «Für Böse ist das Gesetz; wär kein Gebot geschrieben: die Frommen würden doch Gott und den Nächsten lieben.» — Dem Menschen ist so, auf der höheren Stufe der Erkenntnis, die Unschuld der Natur wiedergegeben. Er vollzieht die Aufgaben, die ihm gesetzt sind, im Gefühl einer ewigen Notwendigkeit. Er sagt sich: es ist durch diese eherne Notwendigkeit in deine Hand gegeben, dieser selben ewigen Notwendigkeit das Glied zu entziehen, das dir zugeteilt ist. «Ihr Menschen, lernet doch vom Wiesenblümelein: wie ihr könnt Gott gefall'n und gleichwohl schöne sein.» — «Die Ros' ist ohn' warum, sie blühet, weil sie blühet: sie acht nicht ihrer selbst, fragt nicht, ob man sie siehet.» — Der auf höherer Stufe erstandene Mensch empfindet in sich den ewigen, notwendigen Drang des Alls, wie die Wiesenblume; er handelt, wie die Wiesenblume blüht. Das Gefühl seiner sittlichen Verantwortlichkeit wächst bei all seinem Tun ins Unermeßliche. Denn, was er nicht tut, ist dem All entzogen, ist Tötung dieses Alls, soweit die Möglichkeit solcher Tötung an ihm liegt. «Was ist nicht sündigen? Du darfst nicht lange fragen: geh hin, es werden's dir die stummen Blumen sagen.» — «Alls muß geschlachtet sein. Schlacht'st du dich nicht für Gott, so schlachtet dich zuletzt für'n Feind der ew'ge Tod.»
VI Giordano Bruno and Angelus Silesius
[ 1 ] In the first decade of the sixteenth century, at the castle of Heilsberg in Prussia, the scientific genius of Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543) devised a system of thought that forced the people of the following ages to look up at the starry heavens with different ideas than their ancestors had in antiquity and the Middle Ages. For them, the earth was their dwelling place resting at the center of the universe. The celestial bodies, however, were to them entities of a perfect nature whose movement ran in circles, because the circle is the image of perfection. - In what the stars showed the human senses, something spiritual was immediately seen. The things and processes on earth spoke a different language to man; the shining stars, which appeared beyond the moon in the pure ether like a spiritual being filling space, spoke a different language. Nicolaus of Cusa had already formed other ideas. Through Copernicus, the earth became for man a brother being to the other celestial bodies, a celestial body that moves like others. All the differences that it exhibited for man could now only be attributed to the fact that it was his dwelling place. He was forced no longer to think differently about the processes of this earth and those of the other universe. His sensory world had expanded into the most distant spaces. He had to accept that what entered his eye from the ether was now just as much a sense world as the things of the earth. He could no longer seek the spirit in the ether in a sensual way.
[ 2 ] From then on, anyone striving for higher knowledge had to come to terms with this expanded world of the senses. In earlier centuries, the sensing human spirit stood before a different world of facts. Now it was given a new task. No longer could the things of this earth alone express their essence from within man. This inner being had to encompass the spirit of a world of the senses that fills the spatial universe in the same way everywhere. - The thinker from Nola, Philotheo Giordano Bruno (1548-1600), was faced with such a task. The senses have conquered the spatial universe; the spirit can no longer be found in space. Thus man was instructed from outside to seek the spirit henceforth only where, out of deep inner experiences, the glorious thinkers, whose series the preceding remarks have led us past, have sought it. These thinkers drew from themselves a view of the world to which advanced natural science later forced people. The sun of ideas, which was later to fall on a new view of nature, is still below the horizon with them; but its light already appears as dawn at a time when men's thoughts about nature itself are still in the darkness of night. - The sixteenth century gave to natural science the celestial space of the sense world, to which it rightfully belongs; by the end of the nineteenth century this science had reached the point where it could also give to the sense world of facts that which belongs to it within the phenomena of vegetable, animal and human life. Neither above in the ether nor in the development of living beings may this natural science now seek anything other than actual sensuous processes. Just as the thinker of the sixteenth century had to say: The earth is a star among stars, subject to the same laws as other stars - so the thinker of the nineteenth century must say: "Man, whatever his origin, whatever his future, is for anthropology only a mammal, and the one whose organization, needs and diseases are the most complex, and whose brain, with its admirable efficiency, has reached the highest degree of development." (Paul Topinard: "Anthropology"). (Paul Topinard: "Anthropologie", Leipzig 1888, p. 528.) - From such a point of view, achieved by natural science, a confusion between the spiritual and the sensual can no longer occur if man understands himself correctly. Developed natural science makes it impossible to seek in nature a spirit conceived in the manner of the material, just as sound thinking makes it impossible to seek the reason for the advance of the hands of a clock not in mechanical laws (the spirit of inorganic nature) but in a special demon that caused the movement of the hands. Ernst Haeckel was right to reject the crude notion of a God conceived in material terms as a natural scientist. "In the higher and more abstract forms of religion, this physical appearance is abandoned and God is worshipped only as 'pure spirit', without a body. 'God is a spirit, and whoever worships him should worship him in spirit and in truth. Nevertheless, the soul activity of this pure spirit remains completely the same as that of the anthropomorphic God person. In reality, even this immaterial spirit is not conceived as incorporeal, but invisible, gaseous. We thus arrive at the paradoxical idea of God as a gaseous vertebrate." (Haeckel, "Die Welträtsel", p.333.) In reality, a sensual, factual existence of a spiritual being may only be assumed where direct sensual experience shows spirituality; and only such a degree of spirituality may be assumed as is perceived in this way. The excellent thinker B. Carneri was allowed to say (in the essay "Sensation and Consciousness", p. 15): "The sentence: No spirit without matter, but also no matter without spirit, - would entitle us to extend the question also to the plant, yes, to the next best boulder, in which hardly anything should speak in favor of these correlative concepts." Spiritual processes as facts are the results of various activities of an organism; the spirit of the world is not present in the world in a material way, but only in a spiritual way. The soul of man is a sum of processes in which the spirit appears most directly as a fact. In the form of such a soul, however, the spirit is only present in man. And it means misunderstanding the spirit, it means committing the worst sin against the spirit, if one looks for the spirit in soul form elsewhere than in man, if one thinks of other beings as animated as man. Whoever does this only shows that he has not experienced the spirit itself within himself; he has only experienced the external manifestation of the spirit, the soul, which reigns within him. But this is just as if someone were to take a pencil-drawn circle for the real mathematical-ideal circle. He who experiences nothing else in himself but the soul-form of the spirit then feels compelled to presuppose such a soul-form in non-human things as well, so that he need not remain with the gross-sensual materialist. Instead of thinking of the primordial ground of the world as spirit, he thinks of it as world-soul, and assumes a general ensouling of nature.
[ 3 ] Giordano Bruno, who was influenced by the new Copernican view of nature, could not grasp the spirit in the world, from which it had been expelled in the old form, in any other way than as world soul. If you delve into Bruno's writings (especially his profound book "On the Cause, the Principle and the One"), you get the impression that he thought of things as animated, albeit to varying degrees. He did not actually experience the spirit in himself, so he thought of it in the manner of the human soul in which he alone encountered it. When he speaks of spirit, he conceives of it in this way: "Universal reason is the innermost, most real and most proper faculty and a potential part of the world soul; it is an identical thing that fills the universe, illuminates the universe and instructs nature to bring forth its species as they should be." Although the spirit is not described in these sentences as a "gaseous vertebrate", it is described as a being that is like the human soul. "Be the thing as small and tiny as it will, it has within it a part of spiritual substance, which, when it finds the substrate suitable for it, strives to become a plant, an animal, and organizes itself into any body, which is commonly called animated. For spirit is found in all things, and there is not even the smallest little body that does not contain such a part of itself that it does not animate itself." - Because Giordano Bruno did not really experience the spirit as a spirit within himself, he was also able to confuse the life of the spirit with the external mechanical processes with which Raymundus Lullus (1235-1315) sought to unveil the secrets of the spirit in his so-called "Great Art". A more recent philosopher, Franz Brentano, describes this "great art" as follows: "Concepts were recorded on concentric, individually rotatable circular disks, and then the most diverse combinations were produced." What chance superimposed during the rotation was formed into a judgment on the highest truths. And Giordano Bruno, on his manifold wanderings through Europe, appeared at various high schools as a teacher of this "great art" He had the bold courage to think of the heavenly bodies as worlds, completely analogous to our earth; he extended the view of scientific thinking beyond the earth; he no longer thought of the worldly bodies as physical spirits; but he still thought of them as soulful spirits. One must not be unfair to the man whose advanced way of thinking made the Catholic Church pay the penalty of death. It took a tremendous effort to include the entire celestial realm in the same view of the world that until then had only been held for earthly things, even if Bruno still thought of the sensual in spiritual terms.
[ 4 ] In the seventeenth century, Johann Scheffler, called Angelus Silesius (1624-1677), appeared as a personality who once again illuminated in a great spiritual harmony what Tauler, Weigel, Jacob Böhme and others had prepared. The ideas of the aforementioned thinkers appear in his book "Cherubinischer Wandersmann. Spiritual rhymes of meaning and conclusion." And everything that Angelus Silesius utters appears as such a direct, self-evident revelation of his personality that it is as if this man had been called by a special providence to embody wisdom in personal form. The natural way in which he lives wisdom is expressed by the fact that he presents it in sayings which are also admirable in their artistic form. He hovers like a spiritual being above all earthly existence; and what he speaks is like a breath from another world, freed from the outset from all coarseness and impurity from which human wisdom otherwise works itself out only with difficulty. - In the sense of Angelus Silesius, only those who bring the eye of the universe to see within themselves are truly cognizant; only those who feel this action carried out within themselves by the hand of the universe see their actions in true light: "God is in me the fire, and I in him the light: are we not intimately common to one another?" - "I am as rich as God; there can't be a little stick that I - believe me - don't have in common with him." "God loves me above himself: if I love him above myself, I give him as much as he gives me of himself." - "The bird in the air, the stone rests on the land; in the water lives the fish, my spirit in God's hand." - "If you are born of God, God blossoms in you: and his divinity is your sap and your ornament." - "Stop, where art thou going; heaven is within thee: if thou seekest God elsewhere, thou lackest him for ever." - For the one who feels this way in the universe, all separation between himself and another being ceases; he no longer feels himself as a single individual; rather, he feels everything about him as a member of the world, but his actual being as this universe itself. "The world does not hold you; you yourself are the world that holds you so strongly captive within yourself." - "Man has not complete bliss until unity has swallowed up otherness." "Man is all things: if he lacks one thing, he truly does not know his own riches." - As a sensual being, man is a thing among other things, and his sensual organs bring him, as a sensual individuality, sensual knowledge of the things in space and time outside him; but if the spirit speaks in man, then there is no outside and no inside; nothing is here and nothing is there that is spiritual; nothing is earlier and nothing is later: space and time have disappeared in the vision of the All-Spirit. Only as long as man looks as an individual is he here, and the thing there; and only as long as he looks as an individual is this earlier, and this later. "Man, where you swing your spirit above place and time, you can be every glance in eternity." - "I myself am eternity when I leave time and merge myself into God and God into me." - "The rose that your outer eye sees here has bloomed from eternity in God." - "Sit in the center, and you will see everything at once: what happens now and then, here and in the kingdom of heaven." - "As long as place and time are in your mind, my friend, you cannot grasp what God is and what eternity is." - "When man withdraws from diversity and turns to God, he comes to unity." - The height has thus been reached on which man steps beyond his individual ego and abolishes all opposition between the world and himself. A higher life begins for him. The inner experience that overcomes him seems like the death of the old and a resurrection in the new life. "When you rise above yourself and let God rule, then the ascension is held in your spirit." - "The body must rise in the spirit, the spirit in God: if you want to live eternally blessed in him, my human being." - "As much as my ego languishes and diminishes in me, as much as the Lord's ego gains strength from it." - From such a point of view, man recognizes his significance and the significance of all things in the realm of eternal necessity. The natural universe appears to him directly as the divine spirit. The thought of a divine All-Spirit, which could still exist and endure above and beside the things of the world, disappears as an idea that has been overcome. This All-Spirit appears to have flowed into the things, to have become one with the things, so that it could no longer be conceived if only a single element of its essence were to be removed. "Nothing is but I and Thou; and if we are not two, God is no longer God, and heaven falls in." - Man feels himself to be a necessary link in the chain of worlds. His actions no longer have any arbitrariness or individuality about them. What he does is necessary in the whole, in the world chain, which would fall apart if this action of his were to fall out of it. "God may not make a single worm without me: if I do not keep it with him, it must break apart." - "I know that without me God cannot live a moment: if I do not, he must give up the ghost from need." - Only at this height does man see things in their true essence. He no longer needs to attach a spiritual essence from outside to the smallest, the grossest things. For just as this smallest thing is, in all its smallness and coarseness, it is a member of the universe. "No stalk is so small, no speck is so small: the wise man sees God gloriously within." - "In a mustard seed, if you want to understand it, is the image of all things above and below." - Man feels free at this height. For compulsion is only where a thing can still compel from the outside. But when everything external has flowed into the internal, when the contrast between "I and world", "outside and inside", "nature and spirit" has disappeared: then man feels everything that drives him only as his own impulse. "Lock me up in a thousand irons, as strictly as you like: I will be completely free and unfettered." - "If my will is dead, then God must do what I want: I myself write the pattern and the goal before him." - Now all external moral norms cease; man becomes his own measure and goal. He is under no law; for even the law has become his essence. "The law is for the wicked; if no commandment were written, the pious would still love God and their neighbor." - Thus, on the higher level of knowledge, the innocence of nature is restored to man. He carries out the tasks that are set for him with a sense of eternal necessity. He says to himself: it is given into your hand by this eternal necessity to withdraw from this same eternal necessity the link that is allotted to you. "You humans, learn from the little meadow flower: how you can please God and still be beautiful." - "The rose is without reason, it blooms because it blooms: it does not care for itself, does not ask whether it is seen." - Man, who has risen to a higher level, feels within himself the eternal, necessary urge of the universe, like the meadow flower; he acts as the meadow flower blooms. The feeling of his moral responsibility grows immeasurably in all his actions. For what he does not do is withdrawn from the universe, is the killing of this universe, insofar as the possibility of such killing lies with him. "What is not sinning? You must not ask for long: go, the silent flowers will tell you." - "All must be slain. If you do not slaughter yourself for God, eternal death will ultimately slaughter you for your enemy."