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18 THE FOURFOLD BOOT. [CHAP. II.
possible to carry the confusion between reason and cause
farther, nor could it lead to graver consequences than here.
But this shows the importance of the subject of the present
treatise.
In endeavouring to add a third step to the climax in
question, Herr von Schelling has contributed a small after
piece to these errors, into which two mighty intellects of
the past had fallen owing to insufficient clearness in think
ing.
If Descartes met the demands of the inexorable law of
causality, which reduced his God to the last straits, by sub
stituting a reason instead of the cause required, in order thus
and if Spinoza made a real cause
to set the matter at rest ;
out of this reason, i.e., causa sui, his God thereby becoming
the world itself : Schelling now made reason and consequent
separate in God himself. 1 He thus gave the thing still
greater consistency by elevating it to a real, substantial
hypostasis of reason and consequent, and introducing us
to something
"
in God, which is not himself, but his
reason, as a primary reason, or rather reason beyond reason
(abyss)." Hoc quidem vere palmarium est. It is now
known that Schelling had taken the whole fable from
"
Jacob Bonnie s Full account of the terrestrial and celes
tial mystery ;
"
but what appears to me to be less well
known, is the source from which Jacob Bohme himself
had taken it, and the real birth-place of this so-called
abyss, wherefore I now take the liberty to mention it. It
is the fivtioQ,
i.e. abyssus, vorago, bottomless pit, reason
beyond reason of the Valentinians (a heretical sect of the
second century) which, in silence co-essential with itself
engendered intelligence and the world, as Irenaeus 2
re
lates in the following terms : \iyovai yap nva eivat iv
ioparote, teal aKarorofiaaroig i/i^a/jua^i riXtiov Aiutva. Trpoovra*
TOVTOV &= /ecu Trpoap^j/v, KOI TrpOTTaropa, Kal fivdov Ka
1
Schelling, a Abhandlung von der menschHchen Freiheit.
2
"
Irenseus, Contr. hseres." lib. i. c. 1.