llowing the path of analysis
to the end, and says plainly that in the Abyss there is no distinction
of Divine and human persons, but only the eternal essence. Tauler also
bids us "put out into the deep, and let down our nets"; but his "deep"
is in the heart, not in the intellect. "My children, you should not
ask about these great high problems," he says; and he prefers not to
talk much about them, "for no teacher can teach what he has not lived
through himself." Still he speaks, like Dionysius and Eckhart, of the
"Divine darkness," "the nameless, formless nothing," "the wild waste,"
and so forth; and says of God that He is "the Unity in which all
multiplicity is transcended," and that in Him are gathered up both
becoming and being, eternal rest and eternal motion. In this deepest
ground, he says, the Three Persons are implicit, not explicit. The Son
is the Form of all forms, to which the "eternal, reasonable form
created after God's image" (the Idea of mankind) longs to be
conformed.

The creation of the world, according to Tauler, is rather consonant
with than necessary to the nature of God. The world, before it became
actual, existed in its Idea in God, and this ideal world was set forth
by means of the Trinity. It is in the Son that the Ideas exist "from
all eternity." The Ideas are said to be "living," that is, they work
as forms, and after the creation of matter act as universals above and
in things. Tauler is careful to show that he is not a pantheist. "God
is the Being of all beings," he says; "but He is none of all things."
God is all, but all is not God; He far transcends the universe in
which He is immanent.

We look in vain to Tauler for an explanation of the obscurest point in
Eckhart's philosophy, as to the relations of the phenomenal to the
real. We want clearer evidence that temporal existence is not regarded
as something illusory or accidental, an error which may be
inconsistent with the theory of immanence as taught by the school of
Eckhart, but which is too closely allied with other parts of their
scheme.

The indwelling of God in the soul is the real centre of Tauler's
doctrine, but his psychology is rather intricate and difficult. He
speaks of three phases of personal life, the sensuous nature, the
reason, and the "third man"--the spiritual life or pure substance of
the soul. He speaks also of an "uncreated ground," which is the abyss
of the Godhead, but yet "in us," and of a "created ground," wh