accounts of Tauler's life. Preger and Denifle both
reject the identification of the mysterious stranger with Nicholas;
Denifle doubts his existence altogether. The subject is very fully
discussed by Preger]

[Footnote 265: Tauler was well read in the earlier mystics. He cites
Proclus, Augustine (frequently), Dionysius, Bernard, and the
Victorines; also Aristotle and Aquinas.]

[Footnote 266: Tauler adheres to the doctrine of an "uncreated
ground," but he holds that it must always act upon us through the
medium of the "created ground." He evidently considered Eckhart's
later doctrine as too pantheistic. See below, p. 183.]

[Footnote 267: See p. 155. In my estimate of Tauler's doctrine, I have
made no use of the treatise on _The Imitation of the Poverty of
Christ_, which Noack calls his masterpiece, and the kernel of his
Mysticism. The work is not by Tauler.]

[Footnote 268: See above, p. 170.]

[Footnote 269: This expression is found first, I think, in Richard of
St. Victor; but St. Augustine speaks of "oculus interior atque
intelligibilis" (_De div. quaest._ 46).]

[Footnote 270: But Christ, he says, could see with both eyes at once;
the left in no way hindered the right.]

[Footnote 271: Tauler often uses similar language; as, for instance,
when he says, "The natural light of the reason must be entirely
brought to nothing, if God is to enter with His light."]

[Footnote 272: Stoeckl criticises the _Theologia Germanica_ in a very
hostile spirit. He finds it in "pantheism," by which he means
acosmism, and also "Gnostic-Manichean dualism," the latter being his
favourite charge against the Lutherans and their forerunners. He
considers that this latter tendency is more strongly marked in the
_German Theology_ than in the other works of the Eckhartian school, in
that the writer identifies "the false light" with the light of nature,
and selfhood with sin; "devil, sin, Adam, old man, disobedience,
selfhood, individuality, mine, me, nature, self-will, are all the
same; they all represent what is against God and without God."
Accordingly, salvation consists in annihilation of the self, and
substitution for God for it. There is no doubt that the writer of this
treatise is deeply impressed with the belief that the root of sin is
self-will, and that the new birth must be a complete transformation;
but it must be remembered that the language of piety is less guarded
than that of dogmatic disputation, and that the theolog