Though I have met with nothing but a little tract from the school of Jacob Behmen[592] (or Boehme; I keep to the old English version of his name), yet there has been more, and of a more recent date. I am told of an "Introduction to Theosophy [_Theo_ private, I suppose, as in theological]; or, the Science of the Mystery of Christ," published in 1854, mostly from the writings of William Law[593]: and also of a volume of 688 pages, of the same year, printed for private circulation, containing notes for a biography of William Law. The editor of the first work wishes to grow "a {318} generation of perfect Christians" by founding a Theosophic College, for which he requests the public to raise a hundred thousand pounds. There is a good account of Jacob Behmen in the _Penny Cyclopaedia_. The author mentions inaccurate accounts, one of which he quotes, as follows: "He derived all his mystical and rapturous doctrine from Wood's[594] _Athenae Oxonienses_, Vol. I, p. 610, and _Hist. et Antiq. Acad. Oxon._, Vol. II, p. 308." On which the author remarks that Wood was born after Behmen's death. There must have been a few words which slipped out: what is meant is that Behmen "derived his doctrine from _Robert Fludd_,[595] _for whom see_ Wood's etc. etc." Even this is absurd enough: for Behmen began to publish in 1610, and Fludd in 1616. Fludd was a Rosicrucian, and a mystic of a different type from Behmen. I have some of his works, and could produce out of them paradoxes enough, according to our ways of thinking, to fit out a host. But the Rosicrucian system was a recognized school of its day, and Fludd, a man of great learning, had abettors enough in all which he advanced, and predecessors in most of it. [A Correspondent has recently sent a short summary of the claims of Jacob Behmen to rank higher than I have placed him. I shall gladly insert this summary in the book I contemplate, as a statement of what is said of Behmen far less liable to suspicion of exaggeration than anything I could write. I shall add a few extracts from Behmen himself, in support of his right to be in my list.]