§ 29. MEISTER ECKAKT. 251
food does with the body. The soul cannot rest till it returns to God, and to do so it must first die to itself, that is, completely submit itself to God.i Eckart's aim in all his sermons, as he asserts, was to reach this spark.
It is one of Eckart's merits that he lays so much stress upon the dignity of the soul. Several of his tracts bear this title. ^ This dignity follows from God's love and regenerative operation.
Passing to thejncarnation^ it is everywhere the practical purpose which controls Eckart's treatment, and not the metaphysical. The second person of the Trinity took on human nature, that man might become partaker of the divine nature. In language such as Gregory of Nyssa used, he said, God became man that we might become God. Giott ist Mensch warden das8 wir Gott wurden. As God was hidden within the human nature so that we saw there only man, so the soul is to be hidden within the divine nature, that we should see nothing but God. 3 As_certaiiil^_as_God begets the Son from His own nature, so certainly does He beget Him in the soul. God is in all things, but He is in the soul alone by birth, and nowhere else is He so truly as in the soul. No one can know God but the only begotten Son. Therefore, to know God, man must through the eternal generation become Son. It is as true that man becomes God as that God was made man.*
The generation of the eternal Son in the soul brings joy which no man can take away. A prince who should lose his kingdom and all worldly goods would still have fulness of joy, for his birth outweighs everything else.^ God is in the soul, and yet He is not the soul. The eye is not the piece of wood upon which it looks, for when the eye is closed, it is the same eye it was before. But if, in the act of looking, the eye and the wood should become one, then we might say the eye is the wood and the wood is the eye. If the wood were a spiritual substance like the eyesight, then, in reality, one
1 pp. 113, 152, 286, 497, 530.
2 Die Edelkeit der Seele, Von der Wurdigkeit der Seele, Von dem Adel der Seele. Pfeiffer, pp. 382-448.
3 p. 540. ^ pp. 158, 207, 285, 345. ^ pp. 44, 478-483.
252 THE MIDDLE AdES. A.D. 1294-1517.
might say eye and wood are one substance. ^ The fundament of God's being is the fundament of my being, and tiie fundament of my being is the fundament of God's being. Thus T live of myself even as God lives of Himself. ^ Tliis begetment of the Son of God in the soul is the source of all true life and good works.
One of the terms which Eckart uses most frequently, to denote God's influence upon the soul, is durchhrechen^ to break through, and his favorite word for the activity of the soul, as it rises into union with God, is Abi/eschiedenheit, the soul's complete detachment of itself from all that is temporal and seen. Keep aloof, abgeschieden, he says, from men, from yourself, from all that cumbers. Bear God alone in your hearts, and then practise fasting, vigils and prayer, and you will come unto perfection. This Abgeschiedenheit, total self-detachment from created things,^ he s;i\ s in a sermon on the suhject, is "the one thing needful." After reading many writings by pagan masters and Cliristian teachers, Eckart came to consider it the highest of all virtues, — higher than humility, higher even than love, which Paul praises as the highest; for, while love endures all things, this quality is receptiveness towards God. In the person possessing this quality, the worldly has nothing to correspond to itself. This is what Paul liad reference to when he said, "I live and yet not I, for Christ liveth in me." God is Himself perfect Abgeschiedenheit.
In another place, Eckart says that he who has God in his soul finds God in all things, and God appears to him out of all things. As the thirsty love water, so that nothing else tastes good to them, even so it is with the devoted soul. In God and God alone is it at rest. God seeks rest, and He finds it nowhere but in such a heart. To reach this
1 rfeiffer, p. 139.
2 Hier ist Gottes Grund mein Grundundmein Grund Gottes Grund. Uier lebe ich aus meinem Eiyenen, tcie Gott aus seinem Eigenen lebt. Biittner, p. 100.
3 Lnutere, nlles Erschaffenen ledi<je Afxiesrhiedenheit. For the sermon, see Biittner, p. 9 sqq.