7. Jacob Boehme

If such a philosophy passes over into certainty of redemption, then it is something which is, in this manner, connected with the personality, to be sure, but which has with this character of personality at the same time general human significance. If a person allows this to work upon his soul, he will gladly go on from this struggling soul which rises into the cold abstractions of the “Yes” and “No” in order to acquire therefrom the warmest soul content and the warmest soul experiences—then he will gladly go on from this soul, which gains through struggle confidence in its world conception, to the lonely man in Goerlitz who had no opportunity to found a school, for the time which men, under other circumstances, spend in spiritual things he had to spend in making shoes ... he had to gain the time by strenuous effort for his numerous works. Such a person will gladly go to the man whose books reveal how he struggled with language because his external education was so limited, but whose teachings, nevertheless, were disseminated and spread abroad after his death; who sat on his shoemaker's bench and had only few friends to whom he could open his heart. He had friends, it is true, to whom he wrote letters, but their number was small.