The three periods of Boehme’s authorship constitute three distinct stages in the development of his philosophy. He himself marks a threefold division of his subject-matter:—1. Philosophia, i.e. the pursuit of the divine Sophia, a study of God in himself; this was attempted in the Aurora. 2. Astrologia, i.e., in the largest sense, cosmology, the manifestation of the divine in the structure of the world and of man; hereto belong, with others, Die drei Principien göttlichen Wesens; Vom dreifachen Leben der Menschen; Von der Menschwerdung Christi; Von der Geburt und Bezeichnung aller Wesen (known as Signatura Rerum). 3. Theologia, i.e., in Scougall’s phrase, “the life of God in the soul of man.” Of the speculative writings under this head the most important are Von der Gnadenwahl; Mysterium Magnum (a spiritual commentary on Genesis); Von Christi Testamenten (the Sacraments).
Although Boehme’s philosophy is essentially theological, and his theology essentially philosophical, one would hardly describe him as a philosophical theologian; and, indeed, his position is not one in which either the philosopher or the theologian finds it easy to make himself completely at home. The philosopher finds no trace in Boehme of a conception of God which rests its own validity on an accord with the highest canons of reason or of morals; it is in the actual not in the ideal that Boehme seeks God, whom he discovers as the spring of natural powers and forces, rather than as the goal of advancing thought. The theologian is staggered by a language which breaks the fixed association of theological phrases, and strangely reversing the usual point of view, characteristically pictures God as underneath rather than above. Nature rises out of Him; we sink into Him. The Ungrund of the unmanifested Godhead is boldly represented in the English translations of Boehme by the word Abyss, in a sense altogether unexplained by its Biblical use. In the Theologia Germanica this tendency to regard God as the substantia, the underlying ground of all things, is accepted as a foundation for piety; the same view, when offered in the colder logic of Spinoza, is sometimes set aside as atheistical. The procession of spiritual forces and natural phenomena out of the Ungrund is described by Boehme in terms of a threefold manifestation, commended no doubt by the constitution of the Christian Trinity, but exhibited in a form derived from the school of Paracelsus. From Weigel he learned a purely idealistic explanation of the universe, according to which it is not the resultant of material forces, but the expression of spiritual principles. These two explanations were fused in his mind till they issued forth as equivalent forms of one and the same thought. Further, Schwenkfeld supplied him with the germs of a transcendental exegesis, whereby the Christian Scriptures and the dogmata of Lutheran orthodoxy were opened up in harmony with his new-found views. Thus equipped, Boehme’s own genius did the rest. A primary effort of Boehme’s philosophy is to show how material powers are substantially one with moral forces. This is the object with which he draws out the dogmatic scheme which dictates the arrangement of his seven Quellgeister. Translating Boehme’s thought out of the uncouth dialect of material symbols (as to which one doubts sometimes whether he means them as concrete instances, or as pictorial illustrations, or as a mere memoria technica), we find that Boehme conceives of the correlation of two triads of forces. Each triad consists of a thesis, an antithesis and a synthesis; and the two are connected by an important link. In the hidden life of the Godhead, which is at once Nichts and Alles, exists the original triad, viz. Attraction, Diffusion, and their resultant, the Agony of the unmanifested Godhead. The transition is made; by an act of will the divine Spirit comes to Light; and immediately the manifested life appears in the triad of Love, Expression, and their resultant, Visible Variety. As the action of contraries and their resultant are explained the relations of soul, body and spirit; of good, evil and free will; of the spheres of the angels, of Lucifer, and of this world. It is a more difficult problem to account on this philosophy for the introduction of evil. Boehme does not resort to dualism, nor has he the smallest sympathy with a pantheistic repudiation of the fact of sin. That the difficulty presses him is clear from the progressive changes in his attempted solution of the problem. In the Aurora nothing save good proceeds from the Ungrund, though there is good that abides and good that fall;—Christ and Lucifer. In the second stage of his writing the antithesis is directly generated as such; good and its contrary are coincidently given from the one creative source, as factors of life and movement; while in the third period evil is a direct outcome of the primary principle of divine manifestation—it is the wrath side of God. Corresponding to this change we trace a significant variation in the moral end contemplated by Boehme as the object of this world’s life and history. In the first stage the world is created in remedy of a decline; in the second, for the adjustment of a balance of forces; in the third, to exhibit the eternal victory of good over evil, of love over wrath.
Editions of Boehme’s works were published by H. Betke (Amsterdam, 1675); by J. G. Gichtel (Amsterdam, 1682–1683, 10 vols.); by K. W. Schiebler (Leipzig, 1831–1847, 7 vols.). Translations of sundry treatises have been made into Latin (by J. A. Werdenhagen, 1632), Dutch (complete, by W. v. Bayerland, 1634–1641), and French (by Jean Macle, c. 1640, and L. C. de Saint-Martin, 1800–1809). Between 1644 and 1662 all Boehme’s works were translated by John Ellistone (d. 1652) and John Sparrow, assisted by Durand Hotham and Humphrey Blunden, who paid for the undertaking. At that time regular societies of Behmenists, embracing not only the cultivated but the vulgar, existed in England and in Holland. They merged into the Quaker movement, holding already in common with Friends that salvation is nothing short of the very presence and life of Christ in the believer, and only kept apart by an objective doctrine of the sacraments which exposed them to the polemic of Quakers (e.g. J. Anderdon). Muggleton led an anthropomorphic reaction against them, and between the two currents they were swept away. The Philadelphian Society at the beginning of the 18th century consisted of cultured mystics, Jane Lead, Pordage, Francis Lee, Bromley, &c., who fed upon Boehme. William Law (1686–1761) somewhat later recurred to the same spring, with the result, however, in those dry times of bringing his own good sense into question rather than of reviving the credit of his author. After Law’s death the old English translation was in great part re-edited (4 vols., 1762–1784) as a tribute to his memory, by George Ward and Thomas Langcake, with plates from the designs of D. A. Freher (Brit. Mus. Add. MSS. 5767–5794). This forms what is commonly called Law’s translation; to complete it a 5th vol. (12mo, Dublin, 1820) is needed.
See also J. Hamberger, Die Lehre des deutschen Philosophen J. Boehmes (1844); Alb. Peip, J. Boehme der deutsche Philosoph (1860); von Harless, J. Boehme und die Alchimisten (1870, 2nd ed. 1882). For Boehme’s life see the Memoirs by Abraham von Frankenberg (d. 1652) and others, trans. by F. Okely (1870); La Motte Fouqué, J. Boehm, ein biographischer Denkstein (1831); H. A. Fechner, J. Boehme, sein Leben und seine Schriften (1857); H. L. Martensen, J. Boehme, Theosophiske Studier (Copenhagen, 1881; English trans. 1885); J. Claassen, J. Boehme, sein Leben und seine theosophische Werke (Güterslöh, 1885); P. Deussen, J. Boehme, über sein Leben und seine Philosophie (Kiel, 1897).
BOEOTIA, a district of central Greece, stretching from Phocis and Locris in the W. and N. to Attica and Megaris in the S. between the strait of Euboea and the Corinthian Gulf. This area, amounting in all to 1100 sq. m., naturally falls into two main divisions. In the north the basin of the Cephissus and Lake Copaïs lies between parallel mountain-walls continuing eastward the line of Parnassus in the extensive ridge of Helicon, the “Mountain of the Muses” (5470 ft.) and the east Locrian range in Mts. Ptoüm, Messapium and other smaller peaks. These ranges, which mostly lie close to the seaboard, form by their projecting spurs a narrow defile on the Phocian frontier, near the famous battlefield of Chaeroneia, and shut in Copaïs closely on the south between Coronea and Haliartus. The north-east barrier was pierced by underground passages (katavothra) which carried off the overflow from Copaïs. The southern portion of the land forms a plateau which slopes to Mt. Cithaeron, the frontier range between Boeotia and Attica. Within this territory the low ridge of Teumessus separates the plain of Ismenus and Dirce, commanded by the citadel of Thebes, from the upland plain of the Asopus, the only Boeotian river that finds the eastern sea. Though the Boeotian climate suffered from the exhalations of Copaïs, which produced a heavy atmosphere with foggy winters and sultry summers, its rich soil was suited alike for crops, plantations and pasture; the Copaïs plain, though able to turn into marsh when the choking of the katavothra
