ess of
beauty and harmony to our perception. He widens it, too, to include
deeper and subtler tones than those of our earth-born sense--the
heavenly sports and melodies and harmonies which the rightly attuned
spirit may hear with a finer organ than the ear.

The seventh, and final, "quality" is body or figure, by which he means
the fundamental tendency or energy toward expression in actuality and
concrete form. The final goal of intelligent purpose is the
realization of wisdom, of idea, in actual Nature-forms and
life-forms--the _incarnation of the spirit_. There is nothing real in
the {183} universe but has its form, its "signature," its figure, its
body-aspect: "There is not anything but has its soul and its body, and
each soul is as it were an inner kernel, or seed, to a visible and
comprehensible body,"[29] and, as we shall see, the supreme achievement
of the universe is the visible appearance of the Word of God, the
eternal Son, in flesh like ours--a visible realization in time of the
eternal Heart of God. The glory of God appears in a kingdom of God, a
visible vesture of the Spirit.

All these seven qualities, or "fountain-spirits," or fundamental
tendencies, are in every part and parcel of the universe, and each
particular thing or being finds his true place in the vast drama or
play of the universe, according to which "quality" is prepotent, and
marks the thing or being with its "signature." They constitute in
their eternal nature what Boehme calls _The Three Principles_ that
underlie all reality of every order. The first principle is the
substratum or essence of these first three "qualities," the
nature-tendencies at the level of forces, which he generally calls the
_fire-principle_, _i.e._ the dark fire, before the "flash" has come.
The second principle is the substratum or essence of the last three
"qualities"--the tendencies toward unity, harmony, order, love, which
he calls the _light-principle_. The third principle produces the union
or synthesis of the other two--the principle of realization in body and
form, the triumph over opposition of these two opposing principles in
the exhibition of the real, the actual, the living, the conscious,
where dark and light are both joined, but are dominated by another
irreducible principle. To these three fundamental principles
correspond the three supreme divine aspects: Father, Son, and Holy
Ghost.[30]

We are here, of course, far from a scientific account