[Footnote 239: I here agree with Preger against Lasson. It seems to me to be one of the most important and characteristic parts of Eckhart's system, that the Trinity is _not_ for him (as it was for Hierotheus) an emanation or appearance of the Absolute. But it is not to be denied that there are passages in Eckhart which support the other view.] [Footnote 240: Compare Spinoza's "natura naturata."] [Footnote 241: The ideas are "uncreated creatures"; they are "creatures in God but not in themselves." Preger states Eckhart's doctrine thus: "Gott denkt sein Wesen in untergeordnete Weise nachahmbar, und der Reflex dieses Denkens in dem göttlichen Bewusstsein, die Vorstellungen hievon, sind die Ideen." But in what sense is the ideal world "subordinate"? The Son in Eckhart holds quite a different relation to the Father from that which the [Greek: Noûs] holds to "the One" in Plotinus, as the following sentence will show: "God is for ever working in one eternal Now; this working of His is giving birth to His Son; He bears Him at every moment. From this birth proceed all things. God has such delight therein that _He uses up all His power in the process_. He bears Himself out of Himself into Himself. He bears Himself continually in the Son; in Him He speaks all things." The following passage from Ruysbroek is an attempt to define more precisely the nature of the Eckhartian Ideas: Before the temporal creation God saw the creatures, "et agnovit distincte in seipso in alteritate quadam--non tamen omnimoda alteritate; quidquid enim in Deo est Deus est." Our eternal life remains "perpetuo in divina essentia sine discretione," but continually flows out "per æternam Verbi generationem." Ruysbroek also says clearly that creation is the embodiment of the _whole_ mind of God: "Whatever lives in the Father hidden in the unity, lives in the Son 'in emanatione manifesta.'"] [Footnote 242: It is true that Eckhart was censured for teaching "Deum sine ipso nihil facere posse"; but the notion of a real _becoming_ of God in the human mind, and the attempt to solve the problem of evil on the theory of evolutionary optimism, are, I am convinced, alien to his philosophy. See, however, on the other side, Carrière, _Die philosophische Weltanschauung der Reformationszeit_, pp. 152-157.] [Footnote 243: See Lasson, _Meister Eckhart_, p. 351. Eckhart protests vigorously against the misrepresentation that he made the phenomenal world the _Wesen_ of God, and uses strongly acosmistic language in self-defence. But there seems to be a real inconsistency in this side of his philosophy.] [Footnote 244: I mean that a pantheist may with equal consistency call himself an optimist or a pessimist, or both alternately.]