Tauler’s ‘Nothing,’ or ‘Ground’ of the soul, may be metaphysically a fiction—religiously it indicates the sole seat of inward peace. Only as we put no trust in things earthly,—only as amidst our most strenuous action the heart saith ever, ‘Thy will be done,’—only as we strive to reduce our feverish hopes and fears about temporal enjoyment as nearly as we can to Nothing,—are we calm and brave, whatever may befal. This loving repose of Faith is Eternal Life, as sin is so much present death;—it is a life lived, in harmony with the everlasting, above the restlessness of time;—it is (in Eckart’s phrase, though not in Eckart’s sense) a union with the Allmoving Immobility—the divine serenity of Love Omnipotent, guiding and upholding all without an effort. Note to page 248. The above is from the _Sermon on the Nineteenth Sunday after Trinity_, ii. p. 546. He says in this discourse that the soul has various names, according to the different operations and attributes belonging to it. It is called Anima, or soul; Spirit; and Disposition (_gemüth_), a marvellous and very lovely thing—for the memory, the understanding, and the will of man are all collected therein. The Disposition hath an _objectum_ above the other powers, and as it follows or forsakes that aim so is it well or ill with the rest of man’s nature. Fourthly, the soul is called mens or mensch (_man_), and that is the ground which is nameless, and wherein dwells hidden the true image of the Holy Trinity. (Compare _Third Serm. on Third Sunday after Trin._, ii. p. 305, and _Serm. on Eleventh Sunday after Trin._, ii. p. 435.) By the synteresis, or synderesis, Tauler appears to mean the native tendency of the soul towards God. With Tauler and the mystics generally this tendency is an original capacity for knowing God immediately. The term is not peculiar to the mystics, but it bears in their writings a signification which non-mystical theologians refuse to admit. The distinction usually made between συντήρησις and συνείδησις is simply this: the former expresses that constitution of our nature whereby we assent at once to the axioms of morality, while the latter denotes that judgment which man passes on himself in conformity with such constitution of his moral nature. The second is related to the first somewhat as recollection is to memory.