a. Boehme thus represents God not as the empty unity, but as this self-separating unity of absolute opposites; one must not, however, here expect a clearly defined distinction. The first, the one, the Father, has likewise the mode of natural existence; thus, like Proclus, he speaks of this God being simple essence. This simple essence he calls the hidden; and he therefore names it the _Temperamentum_, this unity of what is different, in which all is tempered. We find him also calling it the great Salitter—now the divine and now the natural Salitter—as well as Salniter. When he talks of this great salitter as of something known to us, we cannot first of all conceive what it means. But it is a vulgar corruption of the word _sal nitri_, saltpetre (which is still called salniter in Austria), _i.e._ just the neutral and in truth universal existence. The divine pomp and state is this, that in God a more glorious nature dwells, trees, plants, &c. “In the divine pomp or state two things have principally to be considered; salitter or the divine power, which brings forth all fruits, and marcurius or the sound.”[129] This great salitter is the unrevealed existence, just as the Neo-Platonic unity is without knowledge of itself and likewise unrecognized. b. This first substance contains all powers or qualities as not yet separated; thus this salitter likewise appears as the body of God, who embraces all qualities in Himself. Quality thus becomes an important conception, the first determination with Boehme; and he begins with qualities in his work “Morgenröthe im Aufgang.” He afterwards associates with this the conferring of quality, and in the same place says: “Quality is the mobility, boiling, springing, and driving of a thing.” These qualities he then tries to define, but the account he gives of them is vague. “As for example heat which burns, consumes and drives forth all whatsoever comes into it which is not of the same property; and again it enlightens and warms all cold, wet, and dark things; it compacts and hardens soft things. It contains likewise two other kinds in it, namely Light and Fierceness” (Negativity); “of which the light or the heart of the heat is in itself a pleasant, joyful glance or lustre, a power of life ... and a source of the heavenly kingdom of joy. For it makes all things in this world living and moving; all flesh, trees, leaves, and grass grow in this world, as in the power of the light, and have their light therein, viz. in the good. Again, it contains also a fierceness or wrath which burns, consumes and spoils. This wrath or fierceness springs, drives, and elevates itself in the light, and makes the light movable. It wrestles and fights together in its two-fold source. The light subsists in God without heat, but it does not subsist so in nature. For all qualities in nature are one in another, in the same manner as God is all. For God” (the Father) “is the Heart.” On another occasion (Vom dreifachen Leben des Menschen, chap.