The Seven Powers of the Soul

THE SEVEN POWERS OF THE SOUL
Sec. VI.

We have shown from Holy Scripture in Div. I. Sec. III., that there is an eternal sevenfold doxa or glory of God; and, as was indicated in Div. II. Sec. IV., the relation of the human soul to the human spirit corresponds to the relation of this eternal sevenfold doxa to God the Triune. We here assume both of these positions to be scripturally affirmed; but from the fact that Scripture designates eirra irvevfiaTa as the constituent powers of the divine doxa carried into operation by God's Spirit,¹ there occurs to us the problem in conformity with the parallel once drawn between doxa and psyche—to show the nature of the human soul to be a sevenfold nature. And here first of all arises the question, what those hna irvevfiara are, whose possessor, according to Apoc. iii. 1, is the God-man, and in what order they stand to one another. And our first glance falls on Isa. xi. 2. Here they are named, and named so as to be enumerated from above downward, or from right to left; for the spirit of the fear of Jehovah is the basis of all, as """j3n is the object which, from 'n ntfV₀ is arrived at (Ps. cxi. 10;

¹ J. P. Lange (Deutsch. Zeitsch. 1859, p. 23), with reference to Apoc. i. 4, questions the impersonality of the seven spirits; but however it may be interpreted, they are certainly not seven persons, but seven powers or operations of the personal God, and of His Spirit, whereof J. Bohme (Dreif. Leben, iv. 82) strikingly says, "It is the Holy Spirit who reveals God in nature. He spreads forth the glory of the Majesty, that He may be beheld in the wonders of nature."

Prov. i. 7; Job xxviii. 28); and the Spirit of Jehovah absolutely is the heart of all, corresponding to the midmost flame on the shaft of the seven-flamed lamp (Zech. iv.)—the fourth, therefore, as four is the middle of seven.¹ We range them round in a circle, in which, from left to right, they correspond to the seven flames of the typical lamp; hence they are arranged in the following order: (1) 'n nxy no_; (2) 'n njn no_; (3) no rni3a_; (4) 'n no_; (5) nxj? no_; (6) nra no_; (7) nDsn no. But the seven spirits are here named, not so much according to what they are in themselves, as according to what they effect. In such sevenfold efficiency, the sevenfold doxa, which proceeds from the Father and the Son by means of the Spirit, is to descend upon the second David. It may be expected that the ethical efficiency of the seven spirits will correspond to their metaphysical nature. Our inquiry, therefore, must proceed from another quarter.

And from what other quarter than from those portions of Holy Scripture which narrate to us how the divine doxa has allowed itself to be beheld? To Abraham it appeared as a smoking furnace, out of which a burning torch appears (Gen. xv. 17); thus flaming and enlightening from a dark ground. On Sinai, its manifestation begins just in the same way with smoke and cloud-gloom, from which breaks forth 'n 1133 nx"ID as consuming fire (Ex. xix. 16, xxiv. 15); wherefore it is said indiscriminately, that Jehovah spoke to Israel tJVⁿ ^^ns?> ^or that He spoke Eton ^linD (comp. e.g. Deut. iv. 12 with Ex. xxiv. 16); and here therefore, also, the manifestation was that of flaming and enlightening from a dark ground. In the leading of Israel through the wilderness, the self-manifestation of the divine glory by the cloud or by the light of fire was assigned to day and night (Ex. xiii. 21, xl. 38; Deut. i. 33; Ps. lxxviii. 14), but in such a way that are in one another; and even in

the day-time, if Jehovah will, fire breaks forth from the cloud (Ex. xiv. 24). In Ezekiel, this involution of fire, light, and

¹ The accentuation which gives Athnach to 'n no is thus therefore justified. For the most part, it is held that Spirit of Jehovah is the general idea, which is separated into three pairs. But thus we have not an actual seven according to the apocalyptic requirement. Seven is the divine in the multiplicity of its development (yid. Genesis, p. 640). Even the unfolding of the principle opposed to God, appears in the Apocalypse sevenfold.

gloom, is circumstantially described. He sees a great cloud, and nn^np B'K reciprocally grasping itself, i.e. fire whirling, circling round; and FU5, the brightness which beams from the fire round about the cloud (i. 4). This brightness' into which the appearance is projected, is expressly designated as like a rainbow, and as the exact '0 li33 nK"ip (i. 28). The fire thus goes forth out of the gloom, and the light out of the fire. This relation, moreover, is manifested even in Him who sits upon the throne. From His loins upwards He appeared to the seer as brightness, "inf, and from His loins downwards as fire, B't* (Ezek. viii. 2, comp. i. 27, LXX.).¹ The Johannean description of Him that sits on the throne (Apoc. iv. 3) agrees with this: "And He that sat was to look upon like a jasper and a sardine stone; and there was a rainbow round about the throne, in sight like unto an emerald." The jasper, which in ch. xxi. 11 is called as clear as crystal, and stands in ch. xxi. 19 as the first foundation, corresponds to the bright side of the divine doxa; and the sardine, which has the appearance of fire and of blood (irvpayiros To» eiSei Kal alfiaroeiSrjs, as Epiphanius says), corresponds to the fiery side of the divine doxa.² Fire and light, moreover, are the elements and modes of appearance of the stream or sea before the throne of God, which comes into the visual horizon of the seer. John beholds just the same river proceeding from God, which Daniel represents as a fiery stream (vii. 10), as a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal (Apoc. xxii. 1), and another time as a sea of glass mingled with fire (Apoc. xv. 2). The fire (h3) points to the wrath, and the crystal clearness to the love ; and the mingling of the fire with the glassy clearness, to love that does not come to breaking forth without manifestation of wrath. And as John beholds the seven spirits as seven burning torches before the throne of God (iv. 5), so God as Father of glory is called by James (i. 17) Father of lights—T&v djurwv. Thus everywhere in the divine doxa, appear united the potencies of the fiery gloom and of the

¹ Ziillig, in Hengstenberg, Comm. ilber die Offenb. i. 263, observes, in addition: Below, opposite the earth, appeared to me, He who sits on the throne in the angry glow of His function of judge and avenger, above in the pure brightness of His calm, undisturbed heavenly majesty.

¹ Hengstenberg, I.e. p. 261. The sardine stands here for an indication of the primitive righteousness of God—of His wrath.

brightness. Let it not be said that these are only types. Types they certainly are, but types of heavenly realities, which thus portray themselves. How otherwise could the Scripture say of God, He is light, 0iu?, and on the other hand, He is fire, 7rvp? (Deut. iv. 24, ix. 3; Isa. xxxiii. 14; Heb. xii. 2!).) Certainly He is neither of the two in the sense of earthly elements; for the bush in which the fire of the doxa appears to Moses is not destroyed (Ex. iii. 2), and the light which shone around Saul and his companions was far "above the brightness of the sun" (Acts xxvi. 13). God is fire and light, in a sense the most actual of all, but in a way that is absolutely supersensual, and above that which is created. He is light, and in Him is no darkness at all (1 John i. 5). According to Jas. i. 17, He is the Father of lights, in whom is found no change from the light to the darkness (prapaXKayrj), or falling of a shadow, such as sun and moon suffer in consequence of a changing (rpoirrj<; airoa-Kiaafia). On the other hand, however, Scripture also says that God is a consuming fire; that there is in Him a power of wrath, which He being angry arouses (Ps. lxxviii. 38); that His purpose of wrath has flaming fire as its result, which is His judicial manifestation (2 Thess. i. 8), by which His anger effectually proves itself (Heb. x. 27), which proceeds from Him (Lev. x. 2, comp. Num. xvii. 11). It considers the wrath absolutely, not merely as an affection of God's will, and an action of God's will; but, at the same time, as something belonging to the nature which is in God, and is through sin (Jer. xvii. 4) judicially aroused against sinners, and is sent forth (e.g. Ex. xv. 7) or poured out from God (e.g. Ezek. xxii. 20-22). And as for the darkness, Scripture does not hesitate to name God not only the former of light, but the creator of darkness (^t?n K"iia, Isa. xlv. 7); and, where it describes the manifestation of the divine glory, to distinguish in it darkness, fire, and light. How otherwise is all to be reconciled, than by assuming that God, in respect of His personal nature, is indeed love, but love which has as its reverse side the might of wrath; and that God, in respect of the doxa of His nature, is indeed absolutely light without disturbance, but light which, in the face of the world opposed to God, can let loose powers of gloomy fire eternally excited in Him? In His doxa, the darkness in the midst of the fire is eternally swallowed up in the light. In the fire, darkness and light

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are distinguished; wherefore Scripture comprehends fire and light sometimes as principal subjects, sometimes as synonymous ideas: for the fire, as the fire of love (Lev. ix. 24), is light; contrary to which, as fire of wrath (Lev. x. 2), it is the synonyme of darkness. Dwelling in this, His doxa, God the triune dwells omnipresent in every created thing. In itself it is the absolute triumph of light. But in the presence of the creature, it externalizes itself as fire or light, even as the creature takes its position in the dark-fiery or in the fiery-light principle of the same. In the godly, God reveals Himself as light,—namely, as P*ril Dirni pan (Ps. cxii. 4); but to the view of sinners, the light of Israel becomes fire, and the Holy One of Israel—i.e. that which in itself is absolute light and purity—becomes flame (Isa. x. 17), to wit, by means of a backward grasp at the potentialities which form the substratum of His glorious light. The fire and darkness of hell proceed from God's doxa, not less than the light of glorification (Isa. xxxiii. 14; Ps. cxxxix. 8). So far as by the power of His wrathful will, fire and darkness prevail in the creature, He rules over both in the might of His light (Ps. cxxxix. 12). In Him Himself is neither darkness nor fire which could not be quenched in absolute light. Without such views as these, Scripture—unless its passages are emptied of all meaning—is in a great measure absolutely unintelligible. We know very well the ingenious representations into which the presumed fantastic symbolism of Scripture allows itself to be interpreted; but they are only the caput mortuum of its infinitely more ingenious figurative expression. We believe that we rightly interpret this, in saying that God's doxa has a dark-fiery and a fiery-light side,—that in the fire both principles are distinct,—and that the former principle is absolutely overpowered and pervaded by the latter.

We go further: if the doxa—which is of the Father and the Son, effectuated by the Holy Ghost—be a reflection of the Godhead, then as well the loving will, and the loving thought of the Father, as the loving satisfaction which the Father finds in the Son, and the Son in the Father, as also the loving experience of the Holy Spirit, will be reflected therein. The light that shines forth in the midst of the process of the doxa is the reflection of the birth of the Sou of God; for He is, as we so frequently read in the Gospel of St John, the self-living absolute light that goeth forth from the Father (i. 4, viii. 12)—the airavyaafia of the paternal doxa (Heb. i. 3; comp. Wisd. vii. 26, airavyaafia $<dto? aiiiov of the aotf>la).¹ It follows thence that the three first irvevfiaia describe the offspring of the Father's love. But how otherwise than by prototypically representing the threefold law of every <£wm: (1) the contraction into itself, (2) the outward pressing beyond itself, (3) the unrest of becoming? to which there follows, (4) the breaking through of that which has been aimed at, as it were, a priori. This agony of becoming, which at the same time is a pleasure of becoming, is the characteristic of all self-life. It is a constant circle — a wheel revolving around itself—T/jo^o? yeveaem, according to Jas. iii. 6.^a Of late, the power of attraction, the power of expansion, and the polarity which results from the operation of these two polar forces, has been named the "trinity of power."³ Jacob Bohme calls it the fiery triangle in every living thing. These three forces or forms in themselves are the principle of life whose emblem is scarlet (coccus), as the colour of fire and of blood,⁴ but not yet the principle of the life of light or of love. They do not become this until a further advance of the process. In themselves they are infinite agitation and excitement—dvyud? or opyr) in the first primitive meaning. Therefore they are expressed, when God's love is repelled, as instruments of divine

¹ Athanasius, C. Arian. iv. 2 : u; ./Hp U-C ^vpi; Qu;, ovru; fx. &fov Xo'yo,-. Augustine, de Symb. ch. iii.: Occurrat vobis (he is addressing the catechumens) ignis pater, splendor filius, ecce invenimus coaevos.

¹ According to Bbttcher, Schriftproben, p. 83, there exists even in the root of im—to wit, 'n—the fundamental idea of the circling line returning into itself. According to the Arabic, on the other hand, the root-meaning

is rather comprehendere or contrahere. For the word ijy>- indicates, according to the Kamus, to bring together and to secure: con jug. viii., to lay one's self around something; conjug. vi., to wind into one another, to curl one's self (of the serpent), to wrinkle, to crisp one's self. According to this, life may be called el-hajat, as close-binding (contrast of death, maut, nio, as stretching out, i.e. loosing of that which has been hitherto bound and contracted); as the shame, haja, Beidawi on the Koran, Sur. ii. 24, is defined " as a retraction of the soul to itself (contractu sui), apart from that which is shameful from fear of blame." The serpent, however, is called el-ffajja, as curling itself, or as the living one **r' i&xn».

³ Prof. Owen, in a work so entitled (Niirenberg 1856).

⁴ Bahr, Symbolik tks Mosaischen Cultus, i. 333.

wrathfulness; and so far—not as though there were everlasting wrath in God—they are called also the principle of wrath.

The impulse of the process is indeed the God of love, in whom the urgency of love, the satisfaction of love, and the triumph of love, eternally coincide. Therefore the three first forces—those of contraction, expansion, and rotation—are only the hasisof the fourth, the force of decussation¹ or intersection, in virtue of which, out of the released fire the light of love shines forth, as, in Ezekiel, from the midst of the fire shone a flashing brightness, ta^ni? H?? (i- 4). The emblem of this fourth power is the fourfold figure of the cross, significant to all the orders of heavenly and earthly existence.² The other powers or forms correspond to the Holy Spirit, which, on the one hand, is receptively related to the loving association of the Father and the Son, by adopting into itself its impression; on the other hand, is productively related thereto, by becoming the expression for the promulgation of this impression (comp. John xvi. 13-15). Corresponding to that is the fifth power—that of the passive resignation to the light of love; and the sixth —that of the distinct and manifest production of the nature imprinted by God on the doxa as it comes into being. The fifth is the prototype of the fruitful and moulding water, which receives into itself, and reflects, the forms of things: for in Scripture water and light are things very closely bordering upon one another (Ps. xxxvi. 9); and there is an everlasting spring of living water, of which it may equally be said that God Himself is it (Jer. ii. 13, xvii. 13), just as He is light—as that it is in God (Ps. xxxv. 9; Apoc. xxi. 6, etc.), just as the light is in God (Dan. ii. 22). The sixth is the prototype of sound or of the voice (^ip, Ezek. xliii. 2), which, considered in respect of itself alone, is the doxa or glory of the word. The Holy Ghost reveals Himself in the fifth power rather as the Spirit of the Father, and in the sixth, rather as the Spirit of the Son (Logos). In the sixth grade the doxa is the intelligent and intelligible revelation of the nature of God, and its substance; but there is still wanting one power, which unites all the powers together with their contents into a substantial and compact whole. It is the efficiency of the seventh. As the

¹ See the article " Geist" in Oetinger's Biblischem Worterbuch.
¹ See the article "Cross" (Kreuz) in Oetinger's Worterbuch.

sixth power corresponds to the day of the creation of man, so this seventh power answers to the Sabbath of creation. Seven is everywhere the number of peace. Thus the seventh beatitude of the Preacher on the Mount concerns the peacemakers (Matt. v. 9) ; thus the seventh of the attributes which, according to Aboth de-Rabbi Nathan, ch. xxxvi., attend before the throne, is Peace. The seventh power unites all the powers of the divine doxa into peace. Its emblem is (Apoc. iv. 3) the emerald, for green is the most comforting and mildest of all combinations of colours. The seven spirits are an organization of sabbatic harmony, and they are this, without beginning and without end; for the formation of the doxa is an everlasting, but never incomplete, coming into existence. All the seven spirits exist from eternity in majestic light and peaceful activity of love.¹ "I was by Him," says Wisdom (Prov. viii. 30), "as His workmistress;³ and I was daily His delight, rejoicing alway before Him." The chokma which is here personified is not distinct from the doxa. The doxa is called chokma (no3n or rto3n) so far as it involves in itself the divine ideas in pre-existent elementary efficiency. Both are sevenfold. The wisdom that is from above has, in James' epistle (iii. 17), seven characteristics, as the house of wisdom, according to Prov. ix. 1, has seven pillars. For the divine wisdom, as the divine doxa, is ItoxviroUiKos (Eph. iii. 10). In both is reflected the divine nature and its rich substance. This reflection, as a reflection of the divine nature, is called doxa; and as a reflection of the contents of the divine nature, i.e. of the ideas, it is called sophia, or wisdom. But both are one. For if the sophia says (Prov. viii. 23), " I was anointed a king³ from everlasting," in what respect does that differ from the everlasting Sofa of the fiaaiXevs Toiv alwvwv (1 Tim. i. 17)?

These are the seven spirits—or, as we may venture to say, the seven powers or forms—of the divine doxa: spirits, in consideration of their vitality, spiritually effected, excluding

¹ See the beautiful statement of this movement, reciprocal Source and harmonic Unity, in Rocholl, Beitrage zu einer Gesch. der deutschen Theosophie (1856), pp. 57-59.

² (German, Werkmeisterin. Auth. vers.: "one brought up with Him." —Tk.)

³ (Auth. vera.: "J was set up from everlasting."—Tr.)

everything material and accidental, pure and simple; powers, in consideration of their peculiar manifestation, and the cosmic operations of which they are the sources of efficiency; forms, in consideration of the divine doxa, which they all together in indissoluble unity, but everyone in special manner, show forth. We have here attempted to solve the problem which Scripture, without offering its direct solution, proposes to the gnosis that proceeds from faith. The knowledge of the problem is primitive, for long ago Philo and the Cabbala have striven to solve it, by placing at the head of the ten Swa/iet? or niT'SD, a triad; and thence deducing a heptad—the seven brooks into which the ocean of the divine nature is divided.¹ But in these attempts there is missed not only the inward necessity, but also all scriptural foundation that is in any measure satisfactory. Moreover, the seven names are only names of divine attributes (as 1 Chron. xxix. 11), from which attributes the reference of the typical relation of the human soul to the divine doxa is 'wholly incapable of being drawn out; and apart from all, the gloom in which these attempts grope after the mystery, is set aside by the New Testament unveiling of the trinity of the divine nature. Whether our endeavour, which for the most part is due to Jac. Bohme,² approaches to the truth, will now be proved, as we come to confront the archetype with the copy.

¹ v. Grossmann, Qusestionum Philonearum, Pt. i. p. 241, and the late works of Franck and Joel on the Cabbala, but especially that of Molitor (Philosophie der Geschichte oder tiber die Tradition, 4 vols.), besides its replies by Hamberger (Die hohe Bed. der altjiid. Tradition, 1844) and Kocholl (Beitrage, 1856). The three last named Christian scholars assume, after the example of Mirandola and Knorrs von Rosenroth, a too respectful attitude to the Cabbala. This latter is not without lights (see e.g. above, Div. II. Sec. VI.), but moreover it is full of false lights. Above all, there requires historical criticism to distinguish the actually old tradition from the mediaeval and new.

² Naming him, I cannot forbear recalling the words of Lavater in his review of his physiognomical predecessors: "And then I name one more, absit blasphemia dicto, Jacob Bbhme I Whether we laugh now or weep, probably nobody had more natural perception, feeling of nature, or sense of the language of nature, than this unintelligible theosophist. Doubtless our dictatorial journalistic age will finely impale this thought, and cry, Crucify him 1 I know that I have friends, who, from love to my theological and philosophical reputation, would be sufficiently weak-hearted and good-hearted to buy out of this page these four or five lines with as many

As the divine. doxa is related to the tri-personal spiritual nature of the Godhead, so the human soul is related to the personifying human spirit. But the same process, which in respect of God falls into the domain of self-consciousness, and of that freedom which is one with internal necessity, on the side of man falls into the domain of entire unconsciousness and entire nnfreedom, because man is a creature; and the beginning of his existence, by which he is a witness to himself of his own character of a creature, precedes in every relation his own knowledge and will. As the spirit of man is the product of the divine inbreathing, so the soul, by virtue of the continuously operative impulse of this divine inbreathing, is the product of the human spirit: its origination is a WJ (Gen. ii. 7), as full of mystery as all God's creations. The necessity is implanted into the nature of the created spirit, to bring itself to essential manifestation, and, so to speak, spiritually to embody itself. So it is even with the heavenly spirits, as we see in their selfmanifestations in visions, although they make themselves visible in such cases in a manner accommodated to human perception: still the diversity of their forms (e.g. cherub, seraph) points back to an actual supersensuous externality of their nature. Not as though the angels also had souls: we could only speak of the souls of angels as of a t?W of God (e.g. Amos vi. 8; Isa. i. 14), by means of an anthropomorphism.¹ Soul, t?W, is the

louis d'ore, if it were possible; but if they were willing, and, if at the same time a poor man stood by me who might want these louis d'ors, I would not take them." The rest may be referred to in Lavater's Ausgen. Schrifteu, edited by Orelli, iv. 64.

¹ The question whether, without contradicting Scripture, we may speak of the souls of angels, is discussed by Origen, de princ. ii. 8. He considers that, if by soul is understood a substantia rationabiliter sensibilis et mobilis, it is allowable to speak of the Bouis of angels. This is certainly true. In this sense, Philo calls the mid-natures between God and man (the angels or demons, i.e. Logni and spirits of the air) everywhere in his works bodiless souls; e.g. i. 431: t<rri xxl Xxtx Ton xkpx ypv^un daufixtut hpurxto; xopof_y ovxh'd; ruv QvpXVtut' oiyyi'kttv; yxp tXq "tyvjcoi; Txvtx; titiQt xXhilv i iianulof Xo'yof- The mode in which Plutarch speaks of demons (spirita of the air) is entirely the same. But the New Testament Scripture, even where the same might be expected, as in Eph. ii. 2, vi. 12, expresses itself otherwise. Hahn, Theologie des N. T. i. 404, very justly observes: "The angels are named wtifiXtx, but never \j/vxxi'; living men are called ypvxxl, but never irvsvfix-xx."

peculiar doxa in which the spirit of corporeal natures is reflected. Therefore Scripture only speaks of souls of men and of brutes. Even of brutes, for they have souls which are the individual particularizations of the spirit of life inwrought into universal nature by the creative spirit of God, which the ancients call— by a name certainly not to be justified from 1 Cor. ii. 12¹— spiritus mundi. The Scripture acknowledges in plants life indeed, but no soul. Even although 'n (Ps. lviii. 9) ought not to be referred to the thorn-bush, yet the notion of the life of plants is evident from Job xiv. 8, Ps. lxxviii. 47, Jer. xiv. 30, Jude 12; for only what is living can die. But they do not belong to the Kriafiara e-^ovra yfrirxa<; (Apoc. viii. 9). The prevalent idea of an anima vegetativa, which scholasticism adopted from Aristotle, is foreign to Scripture. They are endowed with life, but not self-living. The general spirit of life lives in them, contracting its essence in the grain of seed, and unfolding it in the shoot, according to the idea of the plant already pre-formed in the seed. Its wheel of life does not oscillate itself; but it is oscillated, as also is that of the lowest of the brutes, which were first conceived in the transition to psychical life, and partaking thereof.

We turn back to the soul of man, to the effluence of his spirit, which essentially is distinguished from the spirit of the brute, by the fact that it is no individualization of the general spirit of life, but the immediate constitution of the spirit itself by God. Before we set out the seven powers of the soul, let the position be very clearly established, that the soul, made personal by the spirit, is yet in and for itself impersonal, as its archetype, the divine doxa or chokma, of which therefore we just now said that it is personified in Prov. viii. That the divine doxa or chokma is impersonal, although brought forth from God's will, and pervaded by God's self-consciousness, and enclosed by God's personality, needs no proof; thence it follows of necessity that God, as He has revealed Himself and declared

¹ For in this place wevftx Tow^-xurfiov does not mean the Spirit of God, as it dwells as a created spirit of life, as a physical-psychical power of life in the world, and even in Christians as men (thus Theod. Schott in the Luth. Zeitschr. 1861, p. 282); but, as the contrast shows, the spirit which is not from God—thus the principle opposed to God, and operative in the worldly life, which is breathed into the world by the prince of the world.

Himself to us, is a tri- and not a quadri-personal nature. That the soul is impersonal, strange as it may sound, is at least no new view. It is, moreover, the view of all those who attribute the soul to the corporeity of man, and essentially distinguish it from his spirit,—the dualism of the Giintherish school, defended of late by Zukrigl, Gangauf, Esser, and others. But still, only reading Gen. ii. 7, we see that man is not already endowed with soul before the spirit is breathed into him; but it is even by that inspiration that he is endowed with soul. And how could Scripture say that the body without the spirit is dead (Jas. ii. 26), if the soul belonged to the body? The whole Scripture, from beginning to end, contradicts this view of a dualistic distinction of the soul and the spirit. Spirit and soul are not essentially distinct. Even in Homer, dvfio< ; and y/ri/y?) do not stand in this relation. The view of Niigelsbach, that Bvyi< ; in Homer is the spiritual, and -^vxn the animal principle of human life, essentially distinct from the former, has been already shown to be untenable. That which continues to flourish of man after death is called ^rv»7, but sometimes also dvfi,6< ; (II. tj. 131); because both are of one nature, and for the rest are only separated just as spirit (mind) and soul are. Yet that trichotomic view which places the soul on the side of corporeity is not absolutely destitute of truth. That which is true therein is, (1) that spirit and soul are substantially distinct; and (2) that the spirit, and not the soul, is the personifying power in man. We have already often seen for what reason Scripture is accustomed to call the self or Ego of man by the name of Ekj: it is because the soul is the medium and link, and the true and essential form, of the human personality.¹ But itself is only personal so far as the spirit is immanent in it; it is impersonal when we consider it in itself, abstracting it from the concrete matter of fact. The self-consciousness—i.e. that consciousness in virtue of which man apprehends himself as Ego—and all the functions conditioned by it, belong originally to the spirit, and come to the soul only in a derived manner, by means of the immanence of the spirit.² The spirit is the power

¹ The spirit is the essential foundation of man; the soul his peculiar essential form; the body his essential manifestation. Thus J. P. Lange, Dogm. p. 298. The expressions are excellently chosen.

* Comp. Oehler in Herzog's R.E. vi. 16: "The soul is the supporter

of self-consciousness, and the soul, its place; and the spiritual soul, its subject, and the whole man, its object. It has its root in the spirit. Therefore, when the Scripture speaks of spiritual functions as such, it never says t?W, yfrv^tf, but always nn, irvevfia. Thus, for instance, in 1 Cor. ii. 11, where the writer is speaking of the self-consciousness of man, probably yfrv^r j could as little be substituted for irvevfia, as in Ps. lxxvii. 7 "IPW for Wl, or in the Old Testament generally 3$ be usual instead of vow. Even in 1 Chron. xxviii. 12, where it is said of David, that he had before him in the spirit the design of the future temple, t?Ma would not be allowable in place of nna. And although, moreover, JHJ is rarely and exceptionally said of the soul in the sense of higher perception, as Ps. cxxxix. 14, Prov.

of the Ego-life, the peculiar self of man, certainly by the power of the immanence of the spirit; but so that this latter is only the personifying principle, not the human person himself." Fault is found by Oehler, that I characterize the soul as impersonal in itself; but if, according to his own words, it is indebted for its personality to the immanence of the spirit, it follows that in itself it is not personal, but is related to the spirit, as, perhaps, the moon to the suu. Moreover, v. Rudloff, p. 34, says: "Without the spirit, the soul would be no reasonable soul, no human soul, would have no self-consciousness—would be no Ego." In other words, man is a personal anima viva, by virtue of the spirit immediately inbreathed into him by God (comp. Gen. ii. 7, Prov. xx. 27, 1 Cor. ii. 11): the spiritual soul is its proper essential form (forma informans, according to the Aristotelian expression), but the personifying spirit is the principle and ground of that essential form which distinguishes him from the brute. V. Rudloff's formula —the soul is the principale, the spirit the accessorium—according to this, is inconsistent with itself. It must be said the spirit is the principale, the soul the secondarium. When finally, moreover, Zbckler (Naturtheologie, i. 734) puts it down as a complete reversal of the true state of the case, that I should regard the spirit as the peculiar personifier in man, I hold, in opposition to him, that he himself looks on the spirit as the energetic principle which completes the personality of man. But if it be that which completes the person, it is also self-consciousness; and if it be self-consciousness, it is also the personifying power, or with the distinction of a self-conscious spirit and a soul self-conscious, not through the spirit, but in itself, the unity of man's natural condition is altogether lost; since that cannot otherwise be maintained than, as says Schoberlein (Studien u. Krit. 1860, pp. 153-155), by regarding the spirit from which the soul has existence and personality, as the absolute divine spirit entered into man, or by looking on spirit and soul as only two aspects of one substance, or the selfconsciousness of the soul as the self-consciousness of the spirit immanent in the soul.

xix. 2, still in passages such as Ezek. xi. 5, xx. 32, D3E'M could hardly be said, as Scripture speaks indeed of an erring spirit (Isa. xxix. 24) or heart (Ps. xcv. 10), but never of an erring soul (against which is not to be alleged Num. xv. 28, from two contiguous passages); because perception of the truth in the deeper sense is a function of the spirit, and not of the soul. Just so, in texts such as Judg. viii. 3, Job xv. 13, Isa. xxxiii. 11, xxv. 4, Ps. lxxvi. 13,—where nri, as often elsewhere, denotes the spirit of wrath vehemently declaring itself in pantings,—E'S3 could not be used: passionate excitements overcome man, from his spirit (Eccles. vii. 4), and take possession of him from thence outwards. And why does Scripture speak of the truly humbled one—3^~I3B0 (broken heart) and rnvtG^ (contrite spirit)— everywhere naming heart and spirit (Ps. xxxiv. 19, li. 19; Isa. 1 vii. 15, lxvi. 2, etc.), and not soul? For the reason that the selfish Ego-life which penitence breaks down has its root in the heart, and the self-consciousness, from whose fallacious elevation penitence brings down, has its seat in the spirit,—similarly, according to the New Testament mode of expression, which in this respect is still more stringent, the renovation of man's 'person-life has its seat in the irvevfia or vow (Rom. xii. 2; Eph. iv. 23): it is there that man receives the testimony of his adoption (Rom. viii. 16). For that man is "^"in^t/eo?, i.e. that the yfrv^^ has become that which designates his person-life, is the result of sin. But, moreover, this psychical self-consciousness is the self-consciousness of the spirit only psychically determined. For the soul is, indeed, the very counterpart of the spirit; but not as the Son is of the Father, but rather as the doxa is of the Trinity. It is of similar nature with the spirit, but not similar to it. The psychical functions which are the types of the spiritual, correspond to the spiritual functions, but are not like to them: they are rather the broken rays of their colours. The soul is no Ego, distinguishing itself from the spirit. The self-consciousness which forms the background of its spirit-copied functions, is that of the spirit from which it has its origin, and of which it is the organ made essential by the spirit-corporeity of man, and the first sphere of its operation.

The existence of the soul has its origin in the spirit, and, indeed, in its struggles to reveal itself. It reveals itself first of all to itself, and this its revelation of itself to itself is the soul. In order to have any deep understanding of the sevenfold character of this, we must enter in thought into the process, by means of which, when God breathed into man the spirit in God's likeness, immediately therefrom proceeded the soul. In doing this, we are conceiving as separate and consequent, what in reality was associated without place, and contemporaneous without time. Still we are at liberty to do this, because that which we are conceiving as distinct is absolutely separable; and that which we conceive as consequent actually forms a chain of cause and effect; and that in such a manner, as that every effect is always again the cause of a subsequent effect.

, The beginning and basis of the soul's existence are the three constituent fundamental powers of all life—D"n—that of contraction, of expansion, and of rotation. At the first stage, it is substance contracted into itself; at the second, striving away from itself,"and out beyond itself; at the third, fallen into the restlessness of becoming; the effect of the first power, and the counter effect of the second, begets, for instance, an excitement or commotion, which becomes a revolution (t^o^o? 7eveaea>?), as the soul, coming into existence, has in itself no satisfaction, and still will not lose itself: for in every moment of self-comprehension, it urges itself away from itself, and in every moment of this avoidance of itself, it comprehends itself. The impelling power of the process is the spirit, which is engaged in producing a living likeness of itself—a likeness of its own light, threefold, nature. The establishment of the soul, as of a living thing, is the founding of this likeness. The purpose of the process is light, in the divine spiritual sense. The soul embracing itself is dark; fleeing itself, it presses outwards to the light; oscillating on itself, it is, as it were, in birth-pains (comp. W, to revolve, circumagi, to bring forth). The form in which it proceeds out of this agony of becoming, is, however, not at first light, but fiery. In the fourth power, that of breaking forth, fire and light are distinguished.

Fire and light 1 If to any person this sounds too purely physical, let him consider that the life of fire is a scriptural designation of the selfish life of self; and the life of light a scriptural designation of the self-life, after the likeness of God or the spirit. These two several kinds of the self-life are distinguished in the fourth power. The form of the spirit, which is the central agent of the process, here comes to light: the self-life of the soul in itself, transforms itself here to self-life in the spirit. It becomes the life of love, which is turned in love towards the spirit. Therefore the next power is that of .perception (ata^jyat?), of reflection, or of spirit-like receptivity: the soul surrenders itself patiently and receptively to the spirit, and becomes, as it were, impregnated with its thoughts: the substance of the spirit becomes, as in a copy, its own. And by means of the sixth power—that of manifestation, of revelation, or of spirit-like productivity—it reveals this conceived substance, serving to the spirit as a means to imprint the spiritually formed material of its consciousness into words which, before they pass over by means of the organs of speech into sensible externality, already bear on themselves the pre-formed complete determination of the word which is to be outwardly dispersed in sound: for as the soul, on the one hand, is the mirror in which the outer world is reflected to the spirit; so, on the other hand, it is the workshop or laboratory in which the spirit forms its thoughts into words, and, as it were, embodies them. For the Xoyo? ivStdOeros of the spirit becomes Xo7oe irpofyopiKos in the soul; and it is there that the word, with its sound and its form of speech, is made ready, before it comes forth as <f>wvrj prjfidrwv (Ileb. xii. 19) into sensible perceptibility. The seventh power embraces all the former in one harmonious organic unity: it is the power of substantiality; for the powers of the soul that have been referred to, are not its inherent attributes distinct from the soul. All these powers together are the substance of the soul itself; and therefore the seventh is that in which the spirit-resembling essence of the soul is sabbatically completed.

But in all this we have only considered the nature of the soul in its intercourse with the spirit; but not yet, as we shall do later, in its aspect towards corporeity and the outer world; for primarily, as has been said, it is the externalization of the spirit itself. And in representing its origination, we went back to the primeval process; because, after the loss of the spirit's likeness to God, the soul's presence still only makes itself perceived by its primeval going forth from the divinelyimaged spirit. For the soul has lost by the fall nothing of its sevenfold substance—only its spirit-resembling determination. The fifth and sixth powers, which brought the spirit-resembling nature of the soul to its completion, are still only the remaining outlines of a failing type—the forms that are left of a lost substance, but still only intelligible from this their original constitution and destination.

The soul thus consists, in conformity with its archetype— the divine dcxa—of seven powers.¹ As are the seven spirits to the Spirit of God, unfolded in a sevenfold aspect towards the world, so is the soul to the human spirit unfolded in sevenfoldwise towards the body. It resembles—as we say with Luther in his exposition of the Magnificat — the candlestick in the sanctuary, with its branches and lights; for this, as it were, is an embodied doxology of the church,² giving back sevenfold to God in the echo of praises, the sevenfold glory in which He lias revealed Himself (comp. the psalm of the seven thunders, Ps. xxix. 1). The holy candlestick, rightly understood, is thus, in reality, a fitting type of the human soul, which indeed is for that reason called 1i33.³ Its constitution, as we have shown, is sevenfold. There are seven circles: the first (contraction) is the narrowest; the centre, which here still is concealed in its

¹ How—even apart from Jac. Bdhme (v. Hamberger, Leftre Jac. Bohme's, p. 129) and Pordage—psychology strives after such a sevenfold expression of powers, is shown by the Religions-lehre of C. A. H. Clodius (1808), pp. 122-125, the author of Eros and Psyche, an ingenious poem of a psychologic and religious character, that appeared after the poet's death, in twelve cantos (1838). And Flacius' representation of the genesis of the faith in Thomasius, Dogm. iii. 2, 185, offers an analogue of our psychical sevenfold nature. But the knowledge of the gospel beginning to soften the sting of conscience is the fourth degree, not the third.

² Hofmann, Weiss, und ErfiiUung, i. 143, has shown that the sacred candlestick does not signify so much the light proceeding from God, as rather the light by which Israel makes visible the dwelling of its God, just as he also has rightly interpreted the visionary candlestick in Zechariah (ibid. p. 343). The remark of Zockler, Naturtheol. i. 787, against me, goes on the mistaken supposition that the candlestick is a symbol of the Spirit of God in its operation on the spirit of man. The lights burn, indeed, by being fed with the divine oil of the Spirit. It thus signifies, in any case, the human endowed with divinely produced light—which even Kbhler misses in his interpretation.

³ The most learned Jewish epigraphist of late times says of the symbol frequent in Rome on the Jewish cemeteries, e.g. of the Via Portuensis—the Menorah (Epigraphische Beitruge zur Geschichte der Juden, in the JoJirb.

impulse, but typically disclosing itself, is the spirit. In the fourth power shines forth, for the first time, the spirit-resemblance of the soul, while the spirit's will immanent in the process maintains the supremacy. In the ternary beyond, is repeated the first ternary in inverted order; so that the fifth power is the correlative of the third, the sixth of the second, and the first of the seventh. To the expansion according to its nature (2), corresponds the expansion of the spirit-resembling nature (6); to the excited restless circling round itself (3), correspouds the gentle, submissive surrender to the spirit (5); and to the unity of the germinating origin (1), corresponds the perfected unity in multiplicity (7). The three first powers correspond to the procreative urgency of the Father's love reflecting itself in the doxa; the fourth to the birth of the Son exhibited in the doxa; the fifth and sixth to the inhalation of love and the exhalation of love of the Holy Spirit, manifesting itself in the doxa; and the seventh completes the nature of the spiritual soul as the image of the threefold spirit, as in the archetype the nature of the divine doxa was completed as the image of the threefold Godhead.

The biblical use of tf'W, 'ty'v^rj, is conformed to the powers that we have inferred, on the supposition that the human soul is the type of the divine doxa. For in respect of the first power, t?W imports the self of man, e.g. Deut. xiii. 7, 1 Sam. xviii. 1; in regard of the second power, $W imports in the most manifold reference, desire, longing, e.g. Prov. xxiii. 2, Ps. xxvii. 12, xxxv. 25, and the internal impulse (Eph. vi. 6; Col. iii. 23); in respect of the third power, t?W implies life, e.g. Job ii. 6, John x. 11; in respect of the fourth power, t?jM signifies, in virtue of the immanence of the personifying spirit, the Ego, e.g. Isa. xxvi. 9; in respect of the fifth power, C'W implies the disposition of mind, thus or thus inclined and determined by natural (Ex. xxiii. 9) or by spiritual (1 Pet. ii. 11) events; in respect of the sixth power, t?W implies the expressed will, Ps. cv. 22 (synon. with na_, Gen. xli. 40, as also in the second meaning (Isa. v. 14) it is synonymous with nB); in respect of the seventh power, imports the soul in the totality

far d. Gesch. d. Jud. ii. 282): "The candlestick with the seven branches is a type of that which is placed in the sanctuary, and, according to Prov. xx. 27, it passes for the symbol of the human soul."

of all its powers, e,g. Jer. xxxviii. 16, and as the spiritual medium of the spirit and body, the entire person of man, e.g. Gen. xlvi. 26. Thus, moreover, the biblical mode of expression teaches us to recognise the soul, (1) as comprehending itself; (2) as stretching itself beyond itself after another; (3) as self-living; (4) as penetrated by the spirit, which knows itself; (5) as thus or thus affected; (6) as speaking, i.e. forming the thoughts of the spirit into audible words; (7) as united in one in 'a multiplicity of powers. And even in the seven spirits which are named by Isa. xi. 2, our result is confirmed so far as they without constraint correspond to the seven powers or forms of life of the soul. For if we consider man in the position of the restored likeness of God, even as God by His Spirit dwells in the spirit of man, so God's Spirit proves itself to the spirit of man, by means of the first power of the soul, as 71 nvi (comp. Ps. lxxxvi. 11), in opposition to sinful selfishness; by means of the second power of the soul, as 71 njn rm, in opposition to sinful craving; by means of the third power of the soul, as rviua nvi, in opposition to sinful passionateness; by means of the fourth power of the soul, as 'n rm_, ;_n opposition to secularity; by means of the fifth power of the soul, as nyy nvi, in opposition to worldly bondage; by means of the sixth, as nji3 nvi, in opposition to worldly thoughts and customs; and by means of the seventh, as TMM^{n m} opposition to the

Turba of all the powers, as the spirit of the wisdom which holds them all together, and regulates them harmoniously, or still more biblically expressed (comp. Rom. xi. 33 with Eph. iii. 9), ceconomically.¹

We do not suppose that we have proved our view of the sevenfold unity of the soul from the Scripture by these means. But it is sufficient that it is the not unscriptural result of an inquiry, towards which we found ourselves led by Scripture hints worthy of consideration. The capacities of the soul which psychology is accustomed to enumerate, and copiously to treat of, are different. We desire to show how our analysis maintains its claims in the face of that psychological analysis which diverges from it.

¹ See the admirable recapitulation of this paragraph in Goschel, Der Mensch. diesseits und jenseits, p. 37.