Himself. Next to it in dignity comes humility. The beauty of the
soul, he says in the true Platonic vein, is to be well ordered, with
the higher faculties above the lower, each in its proper place. The
will should be supreme over the understanding, the understanding
over the senses. Whatever we will earnestly, that we have, and no
one can hinder us from attaining that detachment from the creatures
in which our blessedness consists.

Evil, from the highest standpoint, is only a means for realising the
eternal aim of God in creation; all will ultimately be overruled for
good. Nevertheless, we can frustrate the good will of God towards
us, and it is this, and not the thought of any insult against
Himself, that makes God grieve for our sins. It would not be worth
while to give any more quotations on this subject, for Eckhart is
not more successful than other philosophers in propounding a
consistent and intelligible theory of the place of evil in the
universe.

Eckhart is well aware of the two chief pitfalls into which the
mystic is liable to fall--dreamy inactivity and Antinomianism. The
sects of the Free Spirit seem to have afforded a good object-lesson
in both these errors, as some of the Gnostic sects did in the second
century. Eckhart's teaching here is sound and good. Freedom from
law, he says, belongs only to the "spark," not to the faculties of
the soul, and no man can live always on the highest plane.
Contemplation is, in a sense, a means to activity; works of charity
are its proper fruit. "If a man were in an ecstasy like that of St
Paul, when he was caught up into the third heaven, and knew of a
poor man who needed his help, he ought to leave his ecstasy and help
the needy." Suso[17] tells us how God punished him for disregarding