§ 29. MEISTER ECKART. 249
topics of speculation, from the constitution of the angelic world to the motives and actions which rule and prevail in the regions of hell. God and the soul's relation to Him are the engrossing subjects.^
The authorities upon whom Eckart relied most, if we are to judge by his quotations, were Dionysius the Areopagite, and St. Bernard, though he also quotes from Augustine, Jerome and Gregory the Great, from Plato, Avicenna and Averrhoes. His discussions are often introduced by such expressions as " the masters say," or " some masters say." As a mystical thinker he has much in common with the mystics who preceded him, Neo-Platonic and Christian, but he was no servile reproducer of the past. Freshness characterizes his fundamental principles and his statement of them. In the place of love for Jesus, the precise definitions of the stages of contemplation emphasized by the school of St. Victor and the hierarchies and ladders and graduated stairways of Dionysius, he magnifies the new birth in the soul, and sonship. 2
As for God, He is absolute beingj Deus est esse. The Godhood is distinct from the persons of the Godhead, — a conception which recalls Gilbert of Poictiers, or even the quaternity which Peter the Lombard was accused of setting up.
^ Denifle lays down the proposition that Eckart is above all a Schoolman, and that whatever there is of good in hina is drawn from Thomas Aquinas. These conclusions are based upon Eckart's Latin writings. Deutsch, V. 15, says that the form of Eckart's thought in the Latin writings is scholastic, but the heart is mystical. Delacroix, p. 277 sqq., denies that Eckart was a scholastic and followed Thomas. Wetzer-Welte, IV. 11, deplores as Eckart's defect that he departed from " the solid theology of Scholasticism " and took i;p Neo-Platonic vagaries. If Eckart had been a servile follower of Thomas, it is hard to understand how he should have laid himself open in 28 propositions to condemnation for heresy.
2 Harnack and, in a modified way, Delacroix and Loofs, regard Eckart's theology as a reproduction of Erigena, Dionysius and Plotinus. Delacroix, p. 240, says, sMr tons les points essentiels, il est (V accord avec Plotin et Proclus. But, in another place, p. 260, he says Eckart took from Neo-Platonism certain leading conceptions and "elaborated, transformed and transmuted them." Loofs, p. 630, somewhat ambiguously says. Die ganze Eckehartsche Mystik ist verstdndlich als eine Erfassung der thomistischen und augustinischen Tradition unter dem Qesichtswinkel des Areopagiten.
250 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1294-1517.
The Trinity is the method by which this Godhood reveals itself by a process which is eternal. Godhood is simple essence having in itself the potentiality of all things. ^ God has form, and yet is without form; is being, and yet is without being. Great teachers say that God is above being. This is not correct, for God may as little be called a being, ein Weseti^ as the sun may be called black or pale.^
All created thing^s were created out of nothing, and yet they were eternally in God. The master who produces pieces of art, first had all his art in himself. The arts are master within the master. Likewise the first Principle, which Eckart calls Erstigkeit, embodied in itself all images, that is, God in God. Creation is an eternal act. As soon as God was, He created the world. Without creatures, God would not be God. God is in all things and all tilings are God — Nu sint all Ding gleich in Grott und sint Grot selher.^ Thomas Aquinas made a clear distinction between the being of God and the being of created things. Eckart emphasized their unity. What he meant was that the images or universals exist in God eternally, as he distinctly affirmed when he said, " In the Father are the images of all creatures."*
As for the soul, it can be as little comprehended in a definition as God Himself.^ The soul's kernel, or its ultimate essence, is the little spark, Fiinkelein, a light which never goes out, which is uncreated and uncreatable,^ Notwithstanding these statements, the German theologian affirms that God created the soul and poured into it, in the first instance, all His own purity. Through the spark the soul is brought into union with God, and becomes more truly one with Him than
1 Pfeiffer, pp. 254, 540.
2 Pfeiffer, p. 268. The following pas.sage is an instance of Eckart's abstruseness in definition. He says God's eiuveltigin Natitr ist von Fvrmen furinelos, von Wardenen werdelos, von Wese7ien toeselos, und ist von Sachen sachelos. Pfeiffer, p. 497. s Pfeiffer, pp. 282, 311, 570.
* In dem Voter sind Bilde aller Creatiiren, Pfeiffer, pp, 209, 285, etc.
5 Die Seele in ihrem Orunde ist so unsprechlich als Gott unsprechlich ist. Pfeiffer, p. 89.
fi pp. .39, 113, 193, 286, etc. Pfleiderer, p. 6, calls this the soul's spirit, — der Geist der Seele, — and Deutsch, p. 152, dcr innerst Scelenyrund.