46. On the book by Eugen Heinrich Schmitt, “Gnosis”

Even in those areas of contemporary intellectual life that do not strive for direct mystical and theosophical insights, there are currents that speak a prophetic language for the mystic and the true theosophist. Many are on the threshold of mysticism, but cannot take the last steps. All their yearning of the heart, all their most ideal thoughts point them to a higher view of soul and spirit, but they stop in the entrance hall because the intellectual culture of the last centuries weighs too heavily on their spiritual powers. Then the mystic stands before them and admires the strength with which they strive for the truth, often admires the uninhibited boldness with which they fight their way through all the prejudices of their surroundings. He must admit to himself, however, that they stop half way. But if he looks more closely, he will find consolation in the fact that they are preparing for a future that also lies in his direction, that they are preparing ideas and views that will bring genuine spiritual insights, if perhaps not in themselves, then in others. They truly do not work in vain. Here, one of the best of these ranks shall be pointed out first. Eugen Heinrich Schmitt, the lonely thinker in Budapest, recently published the first volume of his important work on the Gnostics. In an inspiring language, with lofty thoughts, he rises to the level of the researchers of spiritual life. With insight, he turns against the materialistic ideas of the time, which want to explore the secret of the world in purely material processes, and scientifically degrade the spiritual man to the animal man, because they can only see what is physical and chemical about the organism. Schmitt vividly describes how the human thought life has its own, its own eternal significance, which elevates it above the transitory, ever-forming and ever-dissolving material processes of the sense world. He has strong colors to show how the person who, grasping this eternal meaning, knows how to live in thought, feels within himself the stream of the original spirit, the universal law, of which the person who sees his thoughts only as images of what takes place outside before his eyes and ears has no idea. “Just as the sensual world of appearances, in all its images and sensations and the impulses and stirrings that connect to them, bears the character of liveliness and finiteness,” shows a rough and coarse ”basic tone of sensation, even where the appearance itself crosses the threshold of consciousness in a weaker way and barely noticeably — the consciousness of a purely mathematical law or of a purely logical category (thought-form) always shows, in its contrast to the sense objects to which they relate, a peculiar, here still difficult-to-describe, character of the ethereal, subtle, and fine. This character is so pronounced that ordinary consciousness these manifestations as non-being, as ' mere thoughts', in contrast to the forms of sensual consciousness, which the latter are always inclined to perceive as something existing and real, even if only in the sense of a weaker affection of the sense organ to which they present themselves.” (E.H.Schmitt: “Die Gnosis”. Published by Eugen Diederichs. Leipzig 1903. Page 37.) — From this point of view, Schmitt traces the thought life of the great Gnostics, from the ancient Egyptians and Persians to the post-Christian centuries. The mystic must see with satisfaction how it is recognized here that man rests in the eternal when he immerses himself in his thoughts, as Schmitt recognizes in thought a part of the All-Spirit. But at the same time he must see how there is no progress toward the true, genuine life of the spirit. Our thoughts are a language to the mystic that is able to express the eternal as well as the transitory of the sense world. But we cannot stop at merely emphasizing this peculiarity of our thinking, as Schmitt does. He is therefore an appraiser of the Gnostics, who presents their thoughts; but these thoughts have something pale and shadowy in his presentation. He cannot relive what took place in the minds of these great mystics and what they saw. The mystic opens his thinking to a higher world, just as the man limited to the sense world opens this thinking to sensual impressions. And just as the thought of a flower seems pale and shadowy to us when it is described to us by someone who has not seen the flower itself alive, so are Schmitt's thoughts. He is a thinker, but not a mystic. He does not perceive the spiritual world as the sensual man perceives his world. He can appreciate the thought, but not enliven it. The intellectual culture of our time has a paralyzing effect even on this bold and free thinker. — And such experiences are familiar to us on many sides. Starting from there, in the next issue we want to look at two other free thinkers of the present day: Bruno Wille and Wolfgang Kirchbach – and then show how our intellectual culture is powerless even in the face of such phenomena, which, by the force with which they occur, also deeply disturb our “enlightened” people: hypnotism and somnambulism.