In endeavouring to add a third step to the climax in question, Herr von Schelling has contributed a small afterpiece to these errors, into which two mighty intellects of the past had fallen owing to insufficient clearness in thinking. If Descartes met the demands of the inexorable law of causality, which reduced his God to the last straits, by substituting a reason instead of the cause required, in order thus to set the matter at rest; and if Spinoza made a real cause out of this reason, _i.e._, _causa sui_, his God thereby becoming the world itself: Schelling now made reason and consequent separate in God himself.[37] He thus gave the thing still greater consistency by elevating it to a real, substantial hypostasis of reason and consequent, and introducing us to something "in God, which is not himself, but his reason, as a primary reason, or rather reason beyond reason (abyss)." _Hoc quidem vere palmarium est._--It is now known that Schelling had taken the whole fable from Jacob Böhme's "Full account of the terrestrial and celestial mystery;" but what appears to me to be less well known, is the source from which Jacob Böhme himself had taken it, and the real birth-place of this so-called _abyss_, wherefore I now take the liberty to mention it. It is the βυθός, i.e. _abyssus, vorago_, bottomless pit, reason beyond reason of the Valentinians (a heretical sect of the second century) which, in silence--co-essential with itself--engendered intelligence and the world, as Irenæus[38] relates in the following terms: λέγουσι γάρ τινα εἶναι ἐν ἀοράτοις, καὶ ἀκατονομάστοις ὑψώμασι τέλειον Αἰῶνα προόντα· τοῦτον δὲ καὶ προαρχήν, καὶ προπάτορα, καὶ +βυθὸν+ καλοῦσιν.--Ὑπάρχοντα δὲ αὐτὸν ἀχώρητον καὶ ἀόρατον, ἀΐδιόν τε καὶ ἀγέννητον, ἐν ἡσυχίᾳ καὶ ἠρεμίᾳ πολλῇ γεγονέναι ἐν ἀπείροις αἰῶσι χρόνων. Συνυπάρχειν δὲ αὐτῷ καὶ Ἔννοιαν, ἣν δὲ καὶ Χάριν, καὶ Σιγὴν ὀνομάζουσι· καὶ ἐννοηθῆναί ποτε ἀφ' ἑαυτοῦ προβαλέσθαι τὸν +βυθὸν+ τοῦτον ἀρχὴν τῶν πάντων, καὶ καθάπερ σπέρμα τὴν προβολὴν ταύτην (ἣν προβαλέσθαι ἐνενοήθη) καθέσθαι, ὡς ἐν μήτρᾳ, τῇ συνυπαρχούσῃ, ἑαυτῷ Σιγῇ. Ταύτην δὲ, ὑποδηξαμένην τὸ σπέρμα τοῦτο, καὶ ἐγκύμονα γενομένην, ἀποκυῆσαι Νοῦν, ὅμοιόν τε καὶ ἴσον τῷ προβαλόντι, καὶ μόνον χωροῦντα τὸ μέγεθος τοῦ Πατρός. Τὸν δὲ νοῦν τοῦτον καὶ μονογενῆ καλοῦσι, καὶ ἀρχὴν τῶν πάντων.[39] (_Dicunt enim esse quendam in sublimitatibus illis, quæ nec oculis cerni, nec nominari possunt, perfectum Æonem præexistentem, quem et proarchen, et propatorem, et_ Bythum _vocant. Eum autem, quum incomprehensibilis et invisibilis, sempiternus idem, et ingenitus esset, infinitis temporum seculis in summa quiete ac tranquillitate fuisse. Unâ etiam cum eo Cogitationem exstitisse, quam et Gratiam et Silentium (Sigen) nuncupant. Hunc porro_ Bythum _in animum, aliquando induxisse, rerum omnium initium proferre, atque hanc, quam in animum induxerat, productionem, in Sigen (silentium) quæ unâ cum eo erat, non secus atque in vulvam demisisse.