I experienced a great influence from an important work that fell into my hands:  it was Arnold’s “History of the Church and of Heretics.”  This man is not merely a reflective historian, but at the same time pious and feeling.  His sentiments chimed in very well with mine; and what particularly delighted me in his work was, that I received a more favorable notion of many heretics, who had been hitherto represented to me as mad or impious.  The spirit of contradiction and the love of paradoxes are inherent in us all.  I diligently studied the different opinions:  and as I had often enough heard it said that every man has his own religion at last, so nothing seemed more natural to me than that I should form mine too; and this I did with much satisfaction.  The Neo-Platonism lay at the foundation; the hermetical, the mystical, the cabalistic, also contributed their share; and thus I built for myself a world that looked strange enough.

I could well represent to myself a Godhead which has gone on producing itself from all eternity; but, as production cannot be conceived without multiplicity, so it must of necessity have immediately appeared to itself as a Second, which we recognize under the name of the Son:  now, these two must continue the act of producing, and again appear to themselves in a Third, which was just as substantial, living, and eternal as the Whole.  With these, however, the circle of the Godhead was complete; and it would not have been possible for them to produce another perfectly equal to them.  But, since the work of production always proceeded, they created a fourth, which already fostered in himself a contradiction, inasmuch as it was, like them, unlimited, and yet at the same time was to be contained in them and bounded by them.  Now, this was Lucifer, to whom the whole power of creation was committed from this time, and from whom all other beings were to proceed.  He immediately displayed his infinite activity by creating the whole body of angels,—­all, again, after his own likeness, unlimited, but contained in him and bounded by him.  Surrounded by such a glory, he forgot his higher origin, and believed that he could find himself in himself; and from this first ingratitude sprang all that does not seem to us in accordance with the will and purposes of the Godhead.  Now, the more he concentrated himself within himself, the more painful must it have become to him, as well as to all the spirits whose sweet uprising to their origin he had embittered.  And so that happened which is intimated to us under the form of the Fall of the Angels.  One part of them concentrated itself with Lucifer, the other turned itself again to its origin.  From this concentration of the whole creation—­for it had proceeded out of Lucifer, and was forced to follow him—­sprang all that we perceive under the form of matter, which we figure to ourselves as heavy, solid, and dark, but which, since it is descended, if not even immediately, yet by filiation, from the Divine Being, is just as