The German Theology says that “the soul has two eyes,[269]” one of which, the right eye, sees into eternity, the other sees time and the creatures.  The “right eye” is practically the same as Eckhart’s “spark” and Tauler’s “image.”  It is significant that the author tells us that we cannot see with both eyes together; the left eye must be shut before we can use the right.[270] The passage where this precept is given shows very plainly that the author, like the other fourteenth century mystics,[271] was still under the influence of mediaeval dualism—­the belief that the Divine begins where the earthly leaves off.  It is almost the only point in this “golden little treatise,” as Henry More calls it, to which exception must be taken.[272]

The essence of sin is self-assertion or self-will, and consequent separation from God.  Tauler has, perhaps, a deeper sense of sin than any of his predecessors, and he revives the Augustinian (anti-Pelagian) teaching on the miserable state of fallen humanity.  Sensuality and pride, the two chief manifestations of self-will, have invaded the whole of our nature.  Pride is a sin of the spirit, and the poison has invaded “even the ground”—­the “created ground,” that is, as the unity of all the faculties.  It will be remembered that the Neoplatonic doctrine was that the spiritual part of our nature can take no defilement.  Tauler seems to believe that under one aspect the “created ground” is the transparent medium of the Divine light, but in this sense it is only potentially the light of our whole body.  He will not allow the sinless apex mentis to be identified with the personality.  Separation from God is the source of all misery.  Therein lies the pain of hell.  The human soul can never cease to yearn and thirst after God; “and the greatest pain” of the lost “is that this longing can never be satisfied.”  In the German Theology, the necessity of rising above the “I” and “mine” is treated as the great saving truth.  “When the creature claimeth for its own anything good, it goeth astray.”  “The more of self and me, the more of sin and wickedness.  Be simply and wholly bereft of self.”  “So long as a man seeketh his own highest good because it is his, he will never find it.  For so long as he doeth this, he seeketh himself, and deemeth that he himself is the highest good.” (These last sentences are almost verbally repeated in a sermon by John Smith, the Cambridge Platonist.)

The three stages of the mystic’s ascent appear in Tauler’s sermons.  We have first to practise self-control, till all our lower powers are governed by our highest reason.  “Jesus cannot speak in the temple of thy soul till those that sold and bought therein are cast out of it.”  In this stage we must be under strict rule and discipline.  “The old man must be subject to the old law, till Christ be born in him of a truth.”  Of the second stage he says, “Wilt thou with St. John rest on the loving breast of our Lord Jesus