ECKHART, JO tiANNEs, generally called 7.111EiSTER (master) •EcHrrinT. lived in the latter part of the 13th and beginning of the ; b. probably about 1250. He was.
of the Dominican order, and for some time professor in a college in Paris. Boniface VIII. called him to Rome to assist in the controversy between the pope and Philip of France. In 1304, he was provincial of his order for Saxony, and in 1307, vicar-general of Bohemia. He was distinguished for practical reforms, and for his power as a preacher. He systematized and expounded the fundamental notions of the Beghards
sion through and in which the Father becomes Self-conscious. The Father eternally begets the Son, and the Son's return into the Father in love and mutual will is the Spirit. The Father is not before the Son; only through the begetting of the Son, only through arriving at self-consciousness, does he become the Father. The genesis of the Son from the Father involves also the production of the world of things; for God is reason, and in reason is contained the ideal world of creatures. In the Son all things are made in ideal form. As all things have arisen from God, so they all tend to return to him. Repose in him is the end of all things; and in man, the noblest of creatures, this end is realized. In him, specially, there is the power of reaching to the absolute, the ground both of God and the universe. This power—which E. called the spark—is in truth God working in man. In cognition of God, God and man are one; there is no distinction of knower and known. Lnion with God—the birth of the Sou in the soul— is the ultimate end of activity and is to be attained by resigning all individuality. When this is reached the soul is one with God; its will is God's; it cannot sin. Yet all this applies only to the " spark" in the soul, the other powers of which may be properly employed about other things. Thus, the way is left open to adjust the balance between feeling and action; between philosophical theory and practical life. In Eckhart's theo ries appear at least the elements of some modern metaphysical speculations.