Philosophie

XL QUESTIONS CONCERNING The SOULE. Propounded by Dr. Balthasar Walter Walther. And Answered by Jacob Behmen. Aliàs Teutonicus Philosophus. And in his Answer to the First Question is the Turned EYE or Philsophick GLOBE. Which in it selfe containeth all Mysteries with an Exposition of it. Written in the Germane Language. Anno. 1620. bound with The CLAVIS Or KEY. Or An Exposition of Some Principall Matters and Words in the Writings of Jacob Behmen. Very Usefull for the Better Apprehending and Understanding of this Booke. Written in the Germane Language in March and Aprill Anno. 1624

1647 · 24501 — London: Printed by M. S. for H. Blunden at the Castle in Corne-hill 1647. 1st Edition variant issue Wing B-3408A. Another issue of the same year has the printer's name "Matth. Simmons. in the yeare 1647". Period full leather with modern rebacking to style. Red morocco title label in second spine compartment. Modern eps. An overall VG copy text paper beginning to brown at edges with some associated chipping/repaired hole to lower right quarter of E2 affects last few words of two lines on p 25 and first few words of four lines on page 26/occasional po marginal pencil annotation a/o check mark. 18 155 7 28 4 pp. Separate t.p. for "Clavis". Last 4 pp: 2 pp 'Catalogue of Bookes' viz. bibliographical list by Behmen 1 pp of "Faults Escaped in Printing" & a blank. Inserted table & plate imperfect lacking 'folded' left side approx. 1 - 1.5". 4to: ¢4 -¢1 a half-title a2 a3 B1 A4 -A1 C - 2B4 2C2. <br/><br/>Bohme a German philosophical mystic who had a profound influence on such later intellectual movements as idealism and Romanticism. Born of poor parents in Goerlitz Germany as a boy he tended cattle later becoming a shoemaker marrying & fathering 4 children. Boehme at the robust age of 37 in 1612 wrote his first treatise Aurora oder Die Morgenroete in Aufgang. In 1613 an unauthorized copy of the manuscript was copied and circulated by Karl von Ender. Its reception "raised him out of his homely sphere and made him the centre of a local circle of liberal thinkers considerably above him in station and culture." However the local pastor primarius of Gorlitz Gregorius Richter leveled a charge of heresy. The local muncipal council administered an admonishment to no further "meddle in such matters." This charge Boehme publicly followed for 5 years. In 1618 Boehme again started writing expository & polemical treatises. The majority of his works were written though not formally published from 1619 - 1624. A second major work Der Weg zu Christo was published in 1624 and signaled a renewal of clerical hostility. Boehem however was destined to suffer but a short period of this second persecution; he died of an illness on 17 November 1624. Boehme has been said to have a "fertility of ideas" and a "trasncendent greatness of religious insight." Boehme was studied by Sir Isaac Newton and influenced the work Henry More as well as and especially William Law 1686 - 1761. Xl Questions concerning the Soule was translated by the English mystic John Sparrow in collaboration with John Ellstone & financed by Humphrey Blunden. This the first of several works by Boehme that Sparrow & Ellstone were to translate into English between 1644 - 1662. Boehme proved to be highly popular in England where there were regular societies of Behmenists at the time. This work XL Questions went into a second edition in 1648 and a third edition in 1665. 11th EB. A scarce title in the Boehme canon. We find no copies currently offered via the major on-line databases OCLC records but 4 institional cc and the work has only appeared at auction 3 times in the last 25 years the last in 1989. Printed by M. S. for H. Blunden, at the Castle in Corne-hill hardcover books