On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, and On the Will in Nature: Two Essays (revised edition) — Schopenhauer — John Shaqi
On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, and On the Will in Nature: Two Essays (revised edition)
Schopenhauer · en
P. Pomponatius also says: _Sic contigit, tales esse homines, qui
habeant ejusmodi vires in potentia, et per vim imaginativam et
desiderativam cum actu operantur, tales virtus exit ad actum, et
afficit sanguinem et spiritum, quæ per evaporationem petunt ad extra et
producunt tales effectus_.[316]
[316] De incantationibus. Opera Basil. 1567, p. 44.
Jane Leade, an English mystic visionary of Cromwell's time and pupil
of Pordage, has given us some very curious disclosures of this kind.
She is led to Magic in a very singular way. For, as the doctrine of
their becoming one with the God of their religion is a fundamental
characteristic of all Mystics, so is it with Jane Leade also. Now,
with her however, the human will has its share in the omnipotence
of the Divine will as a consequence of the two having become one,
and accordingly acquires magic power. What other magicians therefore
believe to be due to a compact with the Devil, she attributes to her
becoming one with her God. Her Magic is therefore in the highest sense
'white Magic.' Besides, this alters nothing as to the practice and
results. She is reserved and mysterious, as people had to be in those
times; still it is easy to see that the thing is not a mere theoretical
corollary, but that it has sprung from knowledge and experience
obtained in another way.
It is in her "Revelation of Revelations"[317] that we find the chief
passage; but the following one, which is rather an abridgment than a
literal quotation and is contained in Horst's "Zauberbibliothek,"[318]
comes from the same book: "Magic power enables its possessor to
rule over and to renew the creation--_i.e._ the animal, vegetable
and mineral kingdoms--so that, were _many_ to co-operate in _one_
magical power, Nature might be created anew as a paradise.... How is
this magic power to be acquired? By renascence through faith: that
is, by our _will_ harmonizing with the divine _will_. For faith
subjects the world to us, inasmuch as our own _will_, when it is in
harmony with the divine _will_, results, as St. Paul tells us, in
making everything submit to and obey us." Thus far Horst.--p. 131 of
the "Revelation, &c.," Jane Leade shows that it was by the force of
his will that Christ worked miracles, as, for instance, when he said
to the leper: "I _will_; be thou clean." Sometimes however he left it
to the will of those who, he saw, believed in him, saying to them:
"'What _will_ ye that I shall do unto you?' in which cases no less
was done for them than they had desired in their will that the Lord
should do. These words of our Saviour's are well deserving of notice,
since the _highest Magia lies in the will_, so far as it is in union
with the will of the Almighty: when these two wheels fit into each
other, becoming in a sense _one_, they are, &c."--Again, p. 132, she
says: "For what could resist that which is united with the will of
God? The power of such a will is so great, that it always achieves its
end.