Both Hegel and Eckart regard _Thought_ as the point of union between the human nature and the divine. But the former would pronounce both God and man unrevealed, _i.e._, unconscious of themselves, till Thought has been developed by some Method into a philosophic System. Mysticism brings Eckart nearer to Schelling on this matter than to the dry schoolman Hegel. The charge which Hegel brings against the philosophy of Schelling he might have applied, with a little alteration, to that of Eckart. Hegel says, ‘When this knowledge which claims to be essential and ignores apprehension (is _begrifflose_), professes to have sunk the peculiarity of Self in the _Essence_, and so to give forth the utterance of a hallowed and unerring philosophy,[95] men quite overlook the fact that this so-called wisdom, instead of being yielded up to the influence of Divinity by its contempt of all proportion and definiteness, does really nothing but give full play to accident and to caprice. Such men imagine that by surrendering themselves to the unregulated ferment of the Substance (_Substanz_), by throwing a veil over consciousness, and abandoning the understanding, they become those favourites of Deity to whom he gives wisdom in sleep; verily, nothing was ever produced by such a process better than mere dreams.’—_Vorrede zur Phænomenologie_, p. 6. These are true and weighty words: unfortunately Hegel’s remedy proves worse than the disease. We seem to hear Eckart speak when Fichte exclaims, ‘Raise thyself to the height of religion, and all veils are removed; the world and its dead principle passes away from thee, and the very Godhead enters thee anew in its first and original form, as Life, as thine own life which thou shalt and oughtest to live.—_Anweisung zum sel. Leben_, p. 470. And again, ‘Religion consists in the inward consciousness that God actually lives and acts in us, and fulfils his work.’—_Ibid._ p. 473. But Eckart would not have affirmed with Fichte (a few pages farther on) that, were Christ to return to the world, he would be indifferent to the recognition or the denial of his work as a Saviour, provided a man were only united to God _somehow_! Footnote 94: See Note, p. 212. Footnote 95: Eckart does not make use of his lapse into the Essence to philosophise withal; it is simply his religious _ultimatum_. CHAPTER III. With that about I tourned my hedde, And sawe anone the fifth rout That to this lady gan lout, And doune on knees, anone, to fall, And to her tho besoughten all, To hiden hir good workes eke, And said, they yeve not a leke For no fame, ne soch renoun, For they for contemplacioun, And Goddes love had it wrought, Ne of fame would they nought.