"Matter of Glorious Trial" 9780300156348

Table of contents :
Contents
Preface
Introduction
Notes and Abbreviations
1. The University Years: Milton and Seventeenth- Century Aristotelianism at Cambridge
2. Milton’s Metaphysic and Linguistic Practice in Paradise Lost
3. Milton’s Early Poems: The Agon Between Plato and Aristotle
4. Milton on the Soul
5. Milton’s Angelology: Intelligential Substance in Paradise Lost
6. From Angels to the Almighty: Accommodation and the Problem of Narrative Intelligibility
7. Prime Matter, Subject of Chaos
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

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n. k. sugimura

“Matter of Glorious Trial” spiritual and material substance in paradise lost

yale university press new haven & london

Copyright © 2009 by Yale University. All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers. Set in Scala type by Westchester Book Group. Printed in the United States of America. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Sugimura, N. K. “Matter of glorious trial” : spiritual and material substance in Paradise lost / N. K. Sugimura p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-300-13559-6 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Milton, John, 1608–1674. Paradise lost. 2. Milton, John, 1608–1674—Philosophy. 3. Substance (Philosophy) I. Title. PR3562.S78 2009 821'.4—dc22 2009019347 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper). 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

In Memory of A. D. Nuttall For his bounty, There was no winter in’t; an [autumn] it was That grew the more by reaping. His delights Were dolphin-like, they show’d his back above The element they liv’d in. —Antony and Cleopatra V.ii.86–90

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CONTENTS

Preface ix Introduction xiii Notes and Abbreviations xxv 1. The University Years: Milton and Seventeenth-Century

Aristotelianism at Cambridge 1 2. Milton’s Metaphysic and Linguistic Practice in

Paradise Lost 40 3. Milton’s Early Poems: The Agon Between

Plato and Aristotle 81 4. Milton on the Soul

113

5. Milton’s Angelology: Intelligential Substance in

Paradise Lost 158 6. From Angels to the Almighty: Accommodation and the

Problem of Narrative Intelligibility 196 vii

viii contents

7. Prime Matter, Subject of Chaos

Conclusion 280 Notes 285 Bibliography 347 Index 393

231

PREFACE

this book is the first full- length study of spiritual and material substance in Paradise Lost. In drawing on John Milton’s early writings as well as his more mature poetry and prose it aims to demonstrate that Milton continued to think about matter and substance over the course of his poetic career, and that this engagement necessarily grows more complex as his linguistic practice develops. In offering a new reading of Paradise Lost alongside Milton’s poetry and prose, I show how, within the imaginative context of his poetry, Milton strove to reconceive seventeenthcentury metaphysics. It specifically challenges the prevailing scholarly consensus that Milton’s poetry supports monist materialism, in which every substance is reducible to the material, and suggests instead that Milton’s poetic representation of spiritual substance creates a superficial narrative monism which never finds full philosophic endorsement by the poetry. In placing intellectual history, history of philosophy, history of science, and theology alongside literary criticism, my book rejects the idea that there exists a seamless intellectual genealogy for Milton’s poetry. Rather, it aims to show that at every stage of Milton’s career, one may track his thoughts about form and matter through his writings, and that, in introducing problems of literary representation, his linguistic practice necessarily enriches and further complicates ideas about materiality and immateriality in his poetry, especially in Paradise Lost. ix

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In charting this exploration over Milton’s poetic career, I examine not only what Milton’s intellectual heritage may have contributed to his thinking about ontology, but also how his poetry responded to this legacy. In examining the interaction between ideas about substance (intellectual history) and also their representation in metaphorical language (poetic practice), this book proposes that Milton’s poetry pleasurably explores competing philosophic claims and thereby resists both the monist and materializing tendencies literary scholars have thus far attributed to his verse and ascribed to his metaphysic. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book is a revised version of my doctoral thesis, which was written at New College, Oxford, under the supervision of A. D. Nuttall. I thank the O. R. S. Bursary and Clarendon Award for helping fund my postgraduate studies in English at New College, Oxford, and to Christ Church and Balliol College for their support in the form of stipendiary teaching lectureships. I would also like to thank The Huntington Library, San Marino, California, for making me an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fellow; it was during my time there that this book neared completion. I am indebted to the Master and Fellows of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, for electing me to a Research Fellowship in 2006 and for providing me with such a warm and stimulating work environment. Research for this book began in Oxford and ended in Cambridge. It was greatly assisted by the librarians and staff at both universities. At the Bodleian Library, Oxford, I would like to thank Vera Ryhajlo, in particular, and, in the Duke Humfrey’s Library: William Hodges, Russell Edwards, Alan Carter, and Jean-Pierre Mialon. I am grateful also to the librarians of the New College library, and to Norma Aubertin-Potter and Gaye Morgan of the Codrington Library, All Souls College, Oxford, who cheerfully assisted me with material at all times. At Cambridge, I extend my warm thanks both to David Abulafia, Fellow Librarian of the Old Library, Gonville and Caius College, and to the librarian, Mark Statham, and his staff, for making its collection so readily available to me; to Candace Guite, Librarian of the Old Library at Christ’s College, Cambridge; to Jonathan Harris, Special Collections Librarian of the Old Library at St. John’s College; to Jonathan Smith of the Wren Library, Trinity College; and to all the librarians of the Cambridge University Library Rare Books Room.

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I thank the Bodleian Library and British Library for granting me permission to cite manuscripts in their collections, and the Warden and Fellows of All Souls, Oxford, for permission to use material from the Codrington Library. I cite Christ’s College MS LC 6 and the Mede [Mead] Notebooks [T. 11. 1–4] by the permission of the Master, Fellows and Scholars, Christ’s College, Cambridge; St. John’s College MS K. 38 (formerly James 347), MS S. 34, and James Duport’s Musae Subsecivae, seu Poetica Stromata by the permission of the Master and Fellows of St. John’s College, Cambridge; Trinity College MS R.16. 7 and Bona Spes’s Commentarii Tres in Universam Aristotelis PHILOSOPHIAM (Bruxellae, 1652) by permission of the Master and Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge; and St Edmund Hall MS 72 by the Master and Fellows of St. Edmund Hall, Oxford. I have benefited from discussing this book with a number of friends and colleagues and have received support and encouragement from Dominic Bailey, Harold Bloom, Mishtooni Bose, Fiona Edmonds, Adam Fergus, Wayne Hsieh, Maggie Kilgour, John Kulka, Yao Liang, Mary Ann Lund, Isaac Meyers, Mary Nuttall, K. J. Patel, Seamus Perry, Carolyn Van Wingerden, and Brian Vickers. The British Milton Seminar (convened by Tom Corns and Neville Mariner) and the International Milton Symposiums in Grenoble (2005) and London (2008) were hospitable forums in which I received comments on my work-in-progress. A special thanks is owed to Tom Corns, John Creaser, Martin Dzelzainis, Karen Edwards, Neil Forsyth, John Leonard, William Poole, and Gordon Teskey for their continued interest in my work. It also gives me great pleasure to be able to record my gratitude both to Colin Burrow and to Gordon Campbell for all the time and energy they put into this project: they scrupulously read an earlier draft of this book, and their invaluable comments and criticisms helped shape the final version. Michael Edwards, Alexander Marr, Sarah Mortimer, Richard Scholar, and Brian Young generously read various sections of the book and offered suggestions for improvement; Paul Binski and Ruth Scurr encouraged me to finish the book and, to that end, read and commented on diverse chapters. I am especially grateful to them for their time and scholarly insights. Mark Edwards, from whom I have learned much in conversation, kindly improved my translations from the Latin. My editor, Jennifer Banks, and the assistant editor, Joseph Calamia, at Yale University Press have

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been supportive and accommodating at all times. In particular, I thank Lawrence Kenney, senior manuscript editor at the Press, for his careful preparation of the book, and Jack Borrebach for scrupulously seeing it through production. I readily acknowledge that all errors—which include my infelicities in style and the much more serious infelicities in my thought—are mine and mine alone. Last but not least, I wish to thank the two people who indefatigably supported this project from its inception: one is my mother, Cindy Sugimura; the other was my supervisor, mentor, and friend, Tony Nuttall, without whom this book would never have been written. To each, I owe a “debt immense of endless gratitude.” It is to the memory of Tony Nuttall—whose generosity of mind showed me what it was to be a teacher and whose intellectual integrity showed me what it was to be a scholar— that I fondly dedicate this book.

INTRODUCTION

“then feed on thoughts, that voluntarie move / Harmonious numbers”—in the writing of this book, I have had two major preoccupations: the first is with the idea that Milton conceives of the act of creating poetry as a mode of thinking; the second, which has emerged as my major theme, is with Milton’s conception of substance. My book therefore seeks to examine not only the way Milton himself “feed[s] on thoughts” but also how he pleasurably explores multiple intellectual positions through the making of his poetry. In particular, this book investigates the ways in which Milton’s thought informs his poetry and also analyzes his imaginative vision in order to reveal how the poetry expresses a variety of philosophic ideas, often conflicting ones. When read as a manifestation of the way its author explores ideas in the act of writing, poetry does not produce a philosophy as such but is rather representative of a mode of thinking, or philosophic speculation. My inquiry here is thus based on the conviction that rather than constraining or diminishing the creative authority of either the poet or the poem, philosophy—now understood as that toward which modes of thinking strive—enriches literature. Such an understanding of Milton’s intellectual world is important because it contributes to readers’ appreciation of his poetry and also sheds new interpretative light on the development of his philosophic imagination. By reading Milton’s poetry in the context xiii

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of the history of philosophy as well as of intellectual history, I demonstrate how the lines of literary analysis and philosophic inquiry fruitfully intersect.1 Central to this thesis is the supposition that while Milton may confidently tell us what he thinks in his prose writings, these thoughts often undergo substantial revision and redaction in his poetry. Milton’s thinking is therefore enhanced and rendered more complex by the creative context of the poetry, in which the implications of different philosophic ideas are more fully explored and developed through the very act of writing verse. The result is that Milton’s thought processes unfold in his poetry in ways that complicate, and also differ from, their exposition in his prose writings. In integrating this idea with my book’s two main preoccupations, this book situates Milton’s conception of substance within his philosophic vision of reality—both as it emerges and evolves in the poetry—and juxtaposes this depiction with what Milton says about substance elsewhere in his prose works. As a poem which is as much about Creation as about the creative act, Paradise Lost takes very seriously its depiction of substance and hence its conception of reality in the epic. When the figure of the archangel Raphael descends to lecture Adam and Eve on metaphysics in book V of the poem, Milton presents a vision of reality that moves beyond the simply material: “O Adam, one Almightie is, from whom / All things proceed, and up to him return, / If not deprav’d from good, created all / Such to perfection, one first matter all, / Indu’d with various forms, various degrees / Of substance, and in things that live, of life” (V.469–74). Raphael has here made a subtle transition: he slips from speaking of the created “all things” (470) to the more mysteriously encompassing “all” (471) that is not yet a “thing,” or a compound of form and matter.2 The “all” refers instead to the strange substance of prime matter—to what Raphael calls that “one first matter all” (472). Since prime matter exists prior to the advent of form, this “stuff ” or underlying substance cannot be conceived of as the concretely material. In fact, Raphael’s speech reveals that this “first matter” is gradually differentiated, in terms of both its generation and its composition, into a range of “things,” or “various degrees of substance” (473–74). In attempting to understand Milton’s imaginative portrayal of the physically real (or enformed) “things” that exist after Creation alongside the more perplexing range of

introduction xv

substances, or “counter-things,” which are envisaged to exist prior to Creation (such as Night, Chaos, and, of course, God), this book argues that Milton’s poetry stands quite apart from the ideological commitments critics have hitherto assigned to it and to Milton in general. In tracing the philosophic idiom that emerges alongside and also within the poetry, literary history is investigated from the perspective of a philosophic consciousness developing through the verse that cannot be treated simply as an epiphenomenon to a historical movement or as merely a product of an evolving political consciousness. Such a reading differs from recent interpretations of Milton’s poetry that tend to emphasize—on the basis of Raphael’s metaphysical speech to Adam and Eve (V.469)—the importance of one word: “matter.” Since “matter” in this reading becomes synonymous with “material substance,” it has fostered a belief that Milton’s conception of substance, whether visible or not, is straightforwardly materialist. Critics of Paradise Lost are therefore inclined to understand the epic from the position that Milton was an uncomplicatedly “materialist monist” poet, meaning that he is said to have thought that all substance is ultimately reducible to a material basis.3 But to speak of the Milton of Paradise Lost in this way—as supporting a given philosophic position—is to misunderstand his poetic purpose. Inconsistencies and contradictions abound in his poetry, and this is to be expected since things happen in epic that do not occur in systematic philosophy. The pressures of literary form on the poem’s subject matter produce a mode of thinking in verse that is richly exploratory. While Milton’s theological prose treatise De Doctrina Christiana is in theory a theological work, just as the Art of Logic is ostensibly a Ramist treatise, it must be conceded that these works break their generic restrictions and become something very different in practice. While Paradise Lost has its origins in scriptural material, it is never restricted by the hexameral account; the epic demands that Milton flesh out the biblical story and fill in the narrative’s preexisting aporiai. The very act of writing the poem encourages the exploration of diverse philosophic and theological ideas.4 As this is the first book to undertake a sustained investigation of the nature of substance in Milton’s poetry, especially in relation to Paradise Lost, it also engages with the history of philosophy in analyzing the way

xvi introduction

in which Milton’s poetry places various philosophic ideas in conflict with one another. The poetry itself becomes like a coiled spring: as the verse opens itself up to literary analysis, the theological and philosophical tensions intertwined with the poetry break free, unleashing dynamic forces that at once complicate and also enrich Milton’s thought and its figurative representation in poetry. I suggest, therefore, that Milton’s poetic practice performs a sort of eclectic philosophizing of the kind found in the genre of commonplace books, letters, and philosophical and theological commentaries in the early modern period. These genres all display a fructifying copiousness in which ideas play off one another and are concerned less with confirming one position of thought than with contemplating it alongside its alternatives.5 Milton’s poetry, in other words, prompts ancient and contemporary ideas to spark off one another with electrifying effect, so that no one philosophic system can be said to dictate the movement of Milton’s mind. If so, then it is an error to say that Milton believes in either monism or dualism. Milton’s poetry does not present us with a question of either/or but of an and. While parts of Milton’s poetry may confirm a monist materialist reading, other parts do not. The main methodological point of difference between my book and those that have preceded it is that I reject the idea that one can create a continuous intellectual genealogy for Milton’s poetry.6 Intellectual history is employed because it is seen as providing conceptual schemes that are cognate with Milton’s own, within which one may better understand Milton’s thought. The result is that, as a work of intellectual history, this book explores what Milton thought about matter and substance; as a work of literary criticism, it examines the way in which his linguistic practice then expresses these ideas through literary representation. Just as Milton’s intellectual heritage and his intellectual development over the trajectory of his career suggest that his conception of matter and spirit is far more confused and complex than the orthodox picture of him as a monist materialist admits, Milton’s poetic representation of the universe—of supernatural and natural phenomena—presents a vision of reality that cannot be underwritten or made manifest by a single metaphysical position. In this regard, my book not only underscores the complexities inherent in Milton’s conceptions of matter and spirit, but also advances more specifically literary claims about the way in which Milton’s metaphorical language necessarily

introduction xvii

occludes and complicates the way substance is represented and the spiritual implications of those representations. Over the years, critics such as William Kerrigan, Stephen Fallon, Harinder Singh Marjara, John Rogers, William Kolbrener, Phillip J. Donnelly, Barbara Lewalski, and Gordon Teskey have underscored the metaphysical importance of Raphael’s speech to our understanding of the epic and to Milton’s ontology more generally.7 My book is indebted to their work and the interest it has generated in the field. Despite the various approaches of these authors, a critical consensus in the field of Milton studies has been established, so that for a student first approaching Milton the scholars appear to be saying three important things: (1) Milton is a monist materialist, by which they mean that he reduces everything to material substance. But then, by way of concession, they admit (2) that Milton was a Platonist in his early works (as in Comus), though he had left all of this behind him by the time he came to write Paradise Lost. This means that (3) in his epic, the monist materialism to which Milton ostensibly subscribes places him alongside aggressively philosophical materialists such as Thomas Hobbes, the difference being that in order to save his philosophy from determinism, Milton chose to enhance all matter by animating it.8 My book challenges this reading. When one hears critics apply the terms “rarefied matter” or “spiritual matter” to descriptions of celestial or infernal substances in Milton’s poetry, they often seem to employ them as substitutes for the term “spiritual substance.” This book addresses the disparity by proposing that Milton’s poetry exhibits a philosophic position very different from that which has heretofore been received. It suggests that fluid intermediaries are present in Milton’s poetry and that these substances move respectively between poles of materiality and immateriality. While one may be tempted to think that the alternative to the monist position immediately makes Milton a dualist, a Cartesian dualism—in which there is a confirmed division between the unextended soul and extended bodies—is not at the center of Milton’s epic. As I argue, the dualism with which Milton engages is Platonic in flavor and is held in a tense relationship with Milton’s understanding of Aristotle. This engagement with both Plato and Aristotle and the problems Milton encounters when he attempts to isolate one from the other gradually come into view as he writes.

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As a result, my book draws on, and also respectfully disagrees with, the seminal work of Stephen Fallon, Milton among the Philosophers (1991). Fallon’s book was the first to treat Milton’s philosophy as coextensive with his literary achievements and was therefore a salutary corrective for the then-prevailing belief that Milton was a poet but not a philosopher. Yet in the process of extricating Milton from a purely historian-of-ideasmethodology in which, according to Fallon, the poet’s originality was reduced to a set of antiquated ideas “guiding passive writers as they formulate these systems,” Fallon charts Milton’s intellectual development with reference to the philosophic grandees of the seventeenth century. The shortcoming of this approach is that it privileges the exceptions— both intellectually and socially—and not the norms.9 Another critic, more rigorously historicist in his approach to Milton, is John Rogers. His book The Matter of Revolution: Science, Poetry and Politics in the Age of Milton (1996) argues that politics, religion, and science all exert ideological pressures on the making of Milton’s epic. Rogers implies that Milton was party to the “new” science and, like Christopher Hill before him, thinks that Milton was conversant with specific and often radical modes of theology and politico-scientific discourse.10 While Rogers, like Fallon, successfully opens up Milton’s poetry to a reading that invites us to think about literature, history, and philosophy in dialogue with one another, the limitation is again one of context: neither Milton’s epic nor his other writings encourages a reading of the poem within the framework of the historical record of the new science.11 Like Fallon, Rogers imposes a historical model that the author and, more important, the poem resist. This book is devoted to analyzing this perceived resistance. It begins where Fallon and Rogers left off, but it attempts to trace the development of Milton’s intellectual imagination without placing any undue emphasis on philosophic coherence and consistency. In rejecting the idea that Milton’s poetry exhibits a preference for one particular philosophic system, this book is the first to challenge the prevailing scholarly consensus and to offer something else in its place. It has, therefore, an underlying sympathy with Gordon Teskey’s endeavor to recuperate Milton the poet. In his Delirious Milton: The Fate of the Poet in Modernity (2006), Teskey argues that Milton uses the past to forge a transition into modernity through his poetic craft. Before

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Teskey’s book, Marshall Grossman’s chapter on Milton in The Story of All Things (1998) attempted to read parts of Milton’s epic in terms that would focus on the “rhetoric of the self ” as defined by sociopolitical and historical events. But in the end, Grossman’s overall approach remains far more psychoanalytic and postmodern than historicist in its approach.12 While Grossman and Teskey both seek to turn readers’ attention to the poetry itself, an emergent problem is that, in choosing to read either the poetry or the historical record through the lens of theory, they often run the risk of distorting one’s sense of the past or the poem’s relation to it. Recognizing this problem and also the difficulties posed by historicist approaches, William Kolbrener’s Milton’s Warring Angels: A Study of Critical Engagements (1999) launched a critique of the way reductive ideologies were foisted upon Milton by his critics. Kolbrener’s basic thesis is that Milton’s thought is never fully assimilable to the paradigms of modernity as defined by Enlightenment or post-Enlightenment historiographical approaches. In attempting to free Milton from an approach to history, in which “intentions [must] uphold some particular position in argument,” Kolbrener avoids classifying Milton’s thought along absolutely monist or dualist lines. His study, with its confessedly intentionalist framework, presents Milton’s writing as a form of mediation in which competing claims are never reconciled. The drawback of this approach, though, is that it privileges subjective experience of “linguistic ideologies” (to use Herman Rapaport’s term) to historicist claims.13 I aim here to assimilate aspects of these various methodologies. In line with Teskey, my book addresses Milton’s poem from the point of view of its inner life, or philosophic consciousness, thereby attempting to return to the poetry itself. But, following Fallon and Rogers, it also aims to relate the ideas expressed in the poetry to philosophic debates, ancient and early modern alike, that play a role in forming Milton’s philosophic imagination. With Kolbrener, it challenges the consensus that Milton adhered to one metaphysical vision but avoids the conclusion, as articulated by Peter C. Herman, that Milton’s poetry exemplifies throughout a “poetics of incertitude” which resists any and all interpretative resolution (save that foisted upon it by Stanley Fish’s “interpretative communities”).14 I suggest instead that, at every stage of Milton’s career, he is thinking about matter and substance, and that the process of writing about it

xx introduction

further deepens his exploration of what he thinks might constitute the material as well as the immaterial. As Milton places rival philosophic models against one another, the tensions developed in and by his poetry signal the strength of his thought and, simultaneously, render both his ontological claims and their literary representation more complex. The result is that the poetry offers a vision of a world whose ontology is in constant flux—rich with possibilities—and this, in turn, sustains a dynamic tension between interpretative choices, rather than simply abandoning the poetry to philosophic incoherence. In order to chart the discussion of substance over the trajectory of Milton’s poetic career, the book is organized into seven chapters that proceed more or less chronologically. The first sets the stage by looking at how Milton read and thought about Aristotle. This chapter establishes the predominance of Aristotelian philosophy within a humanist context in the seventeenth century. It attempts to show that Milton, schooled as he was in this Aristotelian tradition, differentiated between a corrupt, scholastic Aristotelianism and Aristotle himself. In analyzing Milton’s letters, such as Elegia quarta, and his prolusions or academic exercises (especially Prolusions IV and VII), I show that Milton relies heavily on Aristotle as well as on his early Greek commentators and that these, in turn, profoundly influence the direction Milton’s own thinking will take, especially with regard to substance. While one might be tempted to think of Milton as Aristotelian in this context, the truth of the matter is that his Aristotelianism (such as it was) admits major modifications and is far from uncomplicated. In fact, as I discuss in chapter 2, it is by introducing competing philosophic claims that Milton’s poetry may be read as staging a conscious rebellion against the more stultifying form of a sclerotic, scholastic Aristotelianism. Chapter 2 begins with a case study of Raphael’s “one first matter all” speech, which has historically been read as clinching the case for those who call Milton a monist materialist. I suggest instead that this passage reveals Milton to be wrestling with, though not resolving, the ontological division between earthy and ethereal substance. In examining the way Milton uses imagery and metaphor to break free from standard Aristotelian conceptions of things, I discuss instances of naming in Paradise Lost insofar as they help delineate the complex relationship Milton envisaged between name, thing, and concept. Through the act of writing

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his poem, it appears that Milton not only gives new meaning to old words, but also transforms our understanding of what things—and the substances said to underlie these things—truly are. By teasing out Milton’s conception of language and its operations in relation to Aristotelian metaphysics and logic, this chapter explores the interaction between ideas about substance (intellectual history) and also their representation in metaphorical language. In so doing, it lays the groundwork for understanding the ways in which Milton might be said to philosophize through the medium of poetry. Chapter 3 explores Milton’s engagement with Aristotle and Plato, especially in relation to their respective theories of matter and form. In offering a new interpretation of Milton’s early works, such as “De Idea Platonica,” I challenge the prevailing opinion that the young Milton adhered to an unproblematic Platonism that he later abandons, wholeheartedly, for Aristotle. In looking specifically at Milton’s masque Comus, this chapter proposes that Milton’s early experience of reading Plato alongside Aristotle taught him that while he could emphasize certain aspects of their respective philosophies for different ends, he could not afford a wholesale rejection of the one without severely damaging the integrity of the other. It appears that Milton thought that for heavenly action to be achieved on earth, transcendental and material (or enmattered) forms need to coexist and work together. In chapter 4 I extend this analysis by turning from a discussion of forms to an analysis of the form of man, namely, the rational soul. This chapter explores the technically more complex metaphysics of some of Milton’s prolusions, which were written during his years at Christ’s College, Cambridge, and published a year before his death in 1674. In asking us to conceive of the soul in terms of the act or form that makes the “instrumental natural body” (corpus physicum organicum) and also as the operations performed by the soul-body compound, Milton’s psychology (or scientia de anima; “science of the soul”) reveals a division between the soul as (immaterial) intellect and the soul as (material) vehicle. In suggesting here that Milton’s linguistic practice as well as his metaphysic allows the rational soul to escape materialization and hence annihilation, I draw Milton’s early writings into conjunction with his later understanding of the soul as depicted in Paradise Lost, Samson Agonistes, and De Doctrina Christiana. This chapter thus reassesses Milton’s

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doctrine of mortalism, in which the soul is said to die, through his poetic practice and specifically his use of metaphor. It also invites readers to consider how Milton’s dual understanding of the soul has further implications for the way in which he differentiates between purely intellectual beings (the angels) and rational creatures (man). In the light of this distinction, chapters 5 and 6 attend to Milton’s pneumatology, or study of spirit. Chapter 5 makes the case that the Aristotelian–Scholastic distinction between the agent intellect and possible intellect, still prevalent in the seventeenth century, fired Milton’s imagination into thinking about angels in terms of the intellect. By placing this analysis in the context of contemporary discussions that comfortably align angels with intellect, I present a framework meant to facilitate a new understanding of Milton’s angelology—both in terms of angelic ontology (what they are) and their epistemology (what they are capable of knowing)—in relation to the poem’s theodicy. Milton, who then places this theory of angels-as-intellects alongside two very different and ultimately conflicting angelological traditions, thus uses the angels to think through the larger tensions between individuality and oneness—difference and complete unity—that the poem exhibits. Chapter 6 continues the discussion of Milton’s angels and their supposed materiality, this time from the perspective of the purely literary. Whereas chapter 5 analyzed the angels in terms of how Milton might have thought about them, this chapter looks at the way these ideas are given literary expression. The fact that the angel Raphael encounters difficulties when he attempts to accommodate the seemingly easier thing—the intelligible—to the world actually underscores the fact that accommodation in Paradise Lost implicitly reverts to its intended task, namely, placing the divine, and not just the intelligible, into narrative. While the sustained illusion of the War in Heaven is a masterful attempt to conceal the failings inherent in the accommodation of the intelligible, namely, the angels, Milton’s accommodation of God in Paradise Lost, in which the divine is said to condescend to human apprehension, audaciously reworks the technique itself. Keeping the literary and biblical tools of exegesis in mind, I return in chapter 7 to examine prime matter, this time within the context of the allegorical figure of Chaos and the otherwise accommodated picture of God. In the figure of Chaos, we observe that Milton places two conflict-

introduction xxiii

ing interpretations of prime matter, the Aristotelian account and the Lucretian account, against one another. But the energy Milton devotes to this enterprise of describing the void actually strives to conceal a still more subversive figure: Night. The fact that Chaos itself cannot be shown to be purely material in any categorical way means that the very Aristotelian categories against which Milton first rebelled are rapidly disintegrating. As they do, they unleash avatars of a far more heterodox theology and philosophy that strike at the very heart of Milton’s projected theodicy and that also render problematic God’s relationship to the void. I thus argue that, with or without modifications, material substance cannot cover all things existing in Paradise Lost. Contrary to Fallon’s findings, in which Milton is said to subscribe to vitalism or “the belief that life is properly traceable to matter itself rather than to either the motion of complex organizations of matter or an immaterial soul,” my book traces life to just these arrangements and actions.15 In fact, one of the underlying claims of this book is that the tense progression of thought in Paradise Lost is itself beholden to the mysterious and often perplexing metaphysical relationship between form and matter. As a result, one may feel that I place philosophy above poetry. This is because when the philosophy becomes dense and technical, I have often found it necessary to break away from the poetry and clarify the ideas at hand, before returning to discuss how they play out in the poetry itself. That said, there is a more general limitation inherent in this sort of exercise. In attempting to open up a field of inquiry in which a variety of disciplines can communicate about the treatment of a common subject without fear of polarizing the discussion, I realize that not just philosophers but also intellectual historians and literary critics reading this book will locate areas in their respective fields that would have benefited from further analysis and exposition. In relocating the treatment of its topic, though, the book aims to encourage scholars to do just that. My book does not attempt to cover all of Milton’s poetry and prose. Given that its focus is mainly on substance, specifically in relation to Paradise Lost, much of the earlier work by Milton that I discuss has been chosen for the interpretative light it sheds on Milton’s intellectual and poetic development in this area. Since ideas spring to life, undergo modification, and then go underground for long stretches of time in the course of Milton’s career before suddenly resurfacing in different contexts, my book

xxiv introduction

charts this movement in roughly chronological order. Nonetheless, when the dominant strand is pursuing the argument, chronology becomes secondary to conceptual continuity. While some readers may feel that this causes unnecessary friction throughout the narrative or makes for unwanted difficulties in locating criticism of specific passages, I believe that a flexible chronology best enables the reader to track those ideas that prove fundamental to the epic and to Milton’s thinking more generally. What the basic argument of this book proposes, therefore, is that while the narrative outlined above may hold some of the time or even most of the time (as a number of readers may be inclined to argue), another alternative presents itself. Against the bleached backdrop of the story of Milton’s monist materialism, there are brilliant moments of opposition, such as when the intellect shimmers with immateriality like the “radiant forms” of Milton’s angels (PL V.457). These ethereal and liminal substances emit a light that at times blazes but at other times softens to a mere flicker. Still, a thin crack of light under the door is all that is needed to shatter the commonly held assumption that substance is universally material in Milton’s cosmos. This book is my attempt to let in the light and to give it the critical attention it deserves.

N O T E S A N D A B B R E V I AT I O N S

since this book uses limited manuscript material, I have chosen to leave all dates as presented by the author. This means that all dates given are Old Style (in which the year began on 25 March), except when the author takes the year to begin on 1 January (New Style). If a letter has the date “13 March 1666/67,” it refers to the year 1666 (Old Style) and to 1667 (New Style). Hence, Milton’s admission record to Christ’s College gives the date as 12 February 1624, where the year is 1624 according to the Julian Calendar (it would be 1625 according to the Gregorian Calendar). Throughout the book, square brackets in manuscript or printed sources indicate my editorial intervention, including expanded contractions in the Latin. Since I have attempted to be as faithful as possible in transcribing text, be it manuscript or printed material, I have chosen to retain all original orthography, capitalization, and punctuation, with the exception of the long “s,” which has been normalized. For the most part, abbreviations are not expanded (hence: “ye” for “the”; “yn” for “than”; etc). Deletions in manuscript material are placed in square brackets, preceded by “del:”. In like manner, interlineation in manuscripts is marked by the caret sign (∧). Where an interlineation replaces original material, I place the deletion (if legible) in square brackets, followed by the caret signs. Blotting is marked as such: “[blotted: text].”

xxv

xxvi notes and abbreviations

When dealing with printed material, volume numbers precede the colon, with page numbers immediately following. When dealing with scholastic material, I list the book (liber) first, followed by the appropriate subdivisions: “a” or “art” for “article”/“articulus”; “bk” for “book” (when it is a subdivision); “ch”/“c” for “chapter”/“caput”; “d” for “disputatio”; “dist.” for “distinction”; “dub” for “dubium”; “lib” for “liber”; “lsn” for “lesson”; “p” for “pars”; “prop” for “propositio”; “q” for “questio”; “res” for “resolutio”; “text” for “textus”; and “tract” for “tractatus.” “Conclusio” is written out. The “§” sign or “sct” is used for sections or numbered/lettered paragraphs, except when both are present, in which case “no.” is used for the section number as given in the margin (for example: d.30.§7.no.16, 54[col.a]B). The abbreviation “col.” is used for the page column (when page numbers are not used), and this is followed, more often than not, by a lettered or numbered section given in square brackets (for example: col.49[B] or col.52[H5]). Where there are two columns of text and page numbers are given, “a” refers to the inner column, “b” to the outer. When relevant, I have included page numbers followed by “r” and “v” to denote recto and verso. Biblical references are to the Authorized King James Version of the Bible, unless otherwise stated. References to Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae (abbreviated “ST”) conform to the Blackfriar’s edition (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, c. 1964–81) with each part—Prima, Prima Secundae, Secunda Secundae, and Tertia—abbreviated as Ia, Ia-IIae, IIaIIae, and III, respectively. These are then followed by the question (“q”), article (“a”), and reply (given as “ad” with the ordinal number). Other citations to Aquinas’s works include references to the disputation (“d”), chapter (“c”), and section (“sct”), when applicable. All abbreviations to classical references follow The Oxford Classical Dictionary, edited by Simon Hornblower and Antony Spawforth, 3d ed. (Oxford University Press, 1996). All references to Aristotle refer to The Works of Aristotle, translated under the editorship of J. A. Smith and W. D. (Sir David) Ross in 12 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1908–60). The exception to this is Aristotle’s De anima, where I have chosen to cite instead R. D. Hicks’s English translation, with the parallel Greek text (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1907). Throughout the book, Loeb editions of classical texts are used for the Greek; translations are my own, unless otherwise stated. For poetry, the short-title name of the poem is given in square

notes and abbreviations xxvii

brackets in the text, followed by the relevant book, canto,stanza, and/or line numbers. The main text cited without a title is Paradise Lost, except in those places where the omission of the “PL” is apt to cause confusion. All other citations and bibliography adhere to the style outlined in the Chicago Manual of Style, 15th edition (2003). The following abbreviations apply throughout the book: CPW

Columbia Works

DDC DRN

Carey-Fowler PL

FQ Pat. Gr.

Pat. Lat.

PL

Complete Prose Works of John Milton. Edited by D. M. Wolfe, general editor. New Haven: Yale University Press; London: Oxford University Press, 1953–82. The Works of John Milton. Edited by Frank Allen Patterson et al. New York: Columbia University Press, 1931–38. De Doctrina Christiana. In Complete Prose Works of John Milton, vol. 6, 117–807. Lucretius. De Rerum Natura. Translated by W. H. D. Rouse. Revised by Martin Ferguson Smith. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997. Paradise Lost, edited by Alastair Fowler, in Complete Poems, edited by John Carey and Alastair Fowler. London: Longman Group Ltd, 1968. Edmund Spenser. The Faerie Queene. Edited by A. C. Hamilton. London: Longman, 2001. Patrologiae Cursus Completus . . . Series Graeca. Accurante J. P. Migne. Paris, 1857–[1912]. Volume numbers are followed by column numbers. Patrologiae Cursus Completus. . . . Series Latina. Accurante J. P. Migne. Paris, 1844–1906. Volume numbers are followed by column numbers. Paradise Lost. A Poem in Twelve Books. The Second Edition Revised and Augmented by the same Author. London, 1674. Available also on the Chadwyck-Healey English Poetry Full-Text Database, 1992. All citations are to this edition.

xxviii notes and abbreviations

Poems

PR Quodl.

SA SC

SCG

Complete Shorter Poems. Edited by John Carey. 2d edition. Longman Annotated English Poets. London: Longman, 1998. Paradise Regained in Poems. Aquinas. Quodlibetal Questions I and II, translated with an introduction and notes by Sandra Edwards. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1983. Samson Agonistes in Poems. The Shepheardes Calender. In Spenser, Complete Poems, edited by Richard A. McCabe. London: Penguin Books, 1999. Aquinas. Summa Contra Gentiles. Translated by English Dominicans. London: Burns, Oates, and Washbourne, 1934.

JOURNALS

Arch. Hist. Exact. Sci. E in C ELH ELN ELR Hist. Sci. Hist. Stud. Phys. Sci. HLQ HR HSCP HTR JEPG JHB JHI JR JWI MLN MS MQ

Archive for History of Exact Sciences Essays in Criticism English Literary History English Language Notes English Literary Renaissance History of Science Historical Studies in Physical Sciences Huntington Library Quarterly History of Religions Harvard Studies in Classical Philology Harvard Theological Review Journal of English and Germanic Philology Journal of the History of Biology Journal of the History of Ideas Journal of Religion Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes [before 1939, Journal of the Warburg Institute] Modern Language Notes Milton Studies Milton Quarterly

notes and abbreviations xxix

NQ PhQ PhR PMLA Ren. Stud. RQ SEL SPh. SRen. Stud. Hist. Phil. Sci. TLS TSLL UTQ

Notes and Queries Philological Quarterly The Philosophical Review Publications of the Modern Language Association Journal of the Society for Renaissance Studies Renaissance Quarterly Studies in English Literature, 1500–1900 Studies in Philology Studies in Renaissance Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science Times Literary Supplement Texas Studies in Literature and Language University of Toronto Quarterly

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chapter one

The University Years milton and seventeenth- century aristotelianism at cambridge

Non nisi cum magni ruitura est machina Mundi, Scripta Stagiræi sunt peritura Sophi. (Only when the machine of the world will crash down in ruins Will the writings of the wise Stagirite [Aristotle] perish.) — james duport, “Pro Aristotele, contra Novos Philosophos. Seu Pro Veteribus contra Nupiros Novatores,” Musae Subsecivae, seu Poetica Stromata

milton’s thinking about substance— about the complex relationship between form and matter, Plato and Aristotle—started early and continued late. My present purpose is to examine how the intellectual legacy Milton inherited during his university career (c. 1625–32) testifies to his preoccupation with and examination of matter and substance. In seeking to establish that Milton engages seriously with Aristotle as well as with scholastic philosophy, this chapter traces his encounters with and treatments of Aristotelian philosophy at the early stages of his university career. Drawing on Milton’s early academic exercises and letters to his former teachers, we are able to see not only how but, more specifically, what Milton’s education at Christ’s College contributed to his thoughts on matter and substance. Milton’s engagement with the ontology of both Plato and Aristotle in these early writings develops and deepens as his poetic career moves forward and eventually culminates in his more mature works, such as the Art of Logic, Of Education, and Accedence Commenc’t Grammar. Many of Milton’s ontological considerations—evident in Paradise Lost— have their genesis in, or are foregrounded by, his so-called juvenilia. 1

2 the university years

Since Milton’s intellectual preoccupation with substance and matter is continuous, albeit not entirely consistent, much is to be gained by threading Milton’s later works into a narrative on the young Milton. Although it is commonly assumed that Milton was a psychophysical monist and that Aristotle, still a significant figure in the early seventeenth century, would have naturally confirmed Milton in his material monism, one might ask whether Milton’s poetry confirms or undermines this alleged drive for materialization. An analysis of Milton’s engagement with seventeenth-century Aristotelianism reveals that neither Milton nor Aristotle reduces substance to the inertly material and that their thinking is not this way inclined. Milton, like the Aristotle whose philosophy he chose to think “with,” prefers to work with open, not closed, systems of thought. As a result, Milton’s thinking is characterized at every stage of his career by an interest in fluid structures of thought that embrace competing claims and even court philosophic contradictions. Milton’s Aristotle is not the Aristotle of the Schools but rather the philosopher whom T. S. Eliot described as “primarily a man of not only remarkable but universal intelligence.”1 If Milton’s Aristotle was indeed very different from the figure we have come to accept, then Milton’s “Aristotelianism” and the ostensibly materializing philosophy toward which it is said to have led are equally suspect and subject to revision. It may be possible to show that Milton rebels against the scholastic strand of Aristotelianism he encountered at university and that he promotes instead a philosophical mode of inquiry that is framed in overtly humanist terms (as opposed to exclusively Ramist ones). In discussing how Milton’s prolonged engagement with seventeenthcentury Aristotelianism is a necessarily complex one, I make a case for thinking that Milton resists repeatedly any full-scale assimilation to monist materialism. The very fact that in both his early and later writings Milton places conflicting ideas about substance in opposition to one another indicates his willingness to overturn and even subvert some of the most fundamental tenets of Aristotelian metaphysics. Although the depth of this tendency—in which the standard conception of substance as the straightforwardly material is challenged—is most effectively demonstrated in the epic when Milton is writing at the height of his power, glimmers of it are discernible much earlier. In choosing to begin

the university years 3

this chapter with a simile from Paradise Lost that compares the outstretched Satan in Hell to the Leviathan, I hope to throw into sharp relief the degree to which Milton’s literary sensibility, while admittedly more mature in the epic, expresses ontological concerns consonant with those that the young Milton will be seen to voice. POETIC PROLEGOMENA

A vital key to understanding how Milton’s education contributes to developments in his conception of substance and matter lies, therefore, in the collective power of his poetry—which, as this simile from book 1 of Paradise Lost illustrates, is alive to the tensions his depictions of substance creates: his other Parts besides Prone on the Flood, extended long and large Lay floating many a rood, in bulk as huge [as] ... that Sea-beast Leviathan, which God of all his works Created hugest that swim th’ Ocean stream: Him haply slumbring on the Norway foam The Pilot of some small night-founder’d Skiff, Deeming some Island, oft, as Sea-men tell, With fixed Anchor in his skaly rind Moors by his side under the Lee, while Night Invests the Sea, and wished Morn delayes: So stretcht out huge in length the Arch-fiend lay (PL I.194–96, 200–09) The first thing we notice is that the vehicle of the simile breaks from its tenor: we move from seeing Satan as like the bulk of the Leviathan to visualizing a detailed snapshot of the pilot who moors, all unawares, on the side of some huge sea-beast (perhaps a whale?) that is a figure for Satan.2 Milton’s simile progresses with ease from skiff to foam to beast and has us register the texture and weight of each object. In the heterogeneity of things mentioned, the simile calls to mind different sorts of density, so that the strangeness in the picture—here given in terms of the weighty “bulk” of Satan “haply slumbring on the Norway foam”

4 the university years

(I.203)—strikes home. The writing is distinctly oppositional, and the effect is to make the word “foam” darkly ominous. The second thing we notice is that Milton’s simile, unlike Virgil’s, is nonhomologated (Virgil’s homologated similes match vehicle and tenor in an exact set of correspondences). In Milton, as in Homer, though, similes are peripatetic, digressive. Critics often say that Homer’s similes, while tremendously beautiful, deviate from the subject and are not themselves explanatory of the thing described.3 Milton’s similes exhibit this Homeric effect of sustained difference. The simile describing Satan’s shield (I.284–91), for example, moves beyond the immediate scope of its subject (shield-as-moon) to expatiate on the moon as viewed by Galileo peering through his “Optic Glass” (I.288). Yet behind this digression a larger homologation of the whole takes place: “the spotty Globe” (I.291), or distant world Galileo descries, reminds us of the flawed but luminous beauty of Satan’s shield, which is itself from another world (at I.285 it is said to be made of “Ethereal temper”). As the seemingly lighter substance (“foam”) now inexplicably supports the heavier (Satan-as-Leviathan), ideas of what composes Satan’s substance are thrown into confusion. Richard Bentley (1662–1742), the great classical philologist and intractable literalist, had a particular dislike for this Leviathan simile and especially for Milton’s use of the word “foam:” “We allow Foam to be sometimes put for Sea or Water,” Bentley complained. “But here it comes unhappily; for it must be very solid Foam, that can support a sleeping Whale.”4 In his masterful study Milton’s Grand Style, Christopher Ricks responds to Bentley’s criticisms by pointing out that “once we notice the word foam, we see that the effect is very like that other moment of horror twenty lines later [I.226–27].” The lines to which Ricks refers speak of Satan “incumbent on the dusky Air,” which is yet another instance when the poetry makes us register Satan’s “unusual weight” (I.226–27). For Ricks, this formula (“Adjective . . . on the . . . adjective . . . noun”) yokes the two moments together because both air and foam feel Satan’s weight. But the fact that Satan rests on air as well as on foam implies that his weight cannot be reduced to the heavy or the light. In like manner, the substance of the foam that supports this Satan-as-Leviathan complex is a far cry from being straightforwardly solid (as Bentley

the university years 5

says), or simply material. As Ricks rightly observes, the effect is deeply sinister.5 When Bentley scores out Milton’s “foam” and insists instead that Milton meant to write “with plain Simplicity, FLOOD or DEEP,” his emendation loses the exciting antagonism existing between the idea of a huge, heavy Satan and an equally huge, but mysteriously light, Satan (we would not be surprised, after all, to discover that the leviathan is supported by the monstrous deep).6 Bentley’s correction of Milton implicitly attempts to homologate the simile, but the effect is to ruin the alien suspension the simile works to create. Nonetheless, Bentley’s comment brilliantly, though perhaps unintentionally, underscores the fact that Milton’s nonhomologated similes craft a conscious indeterminacy about the substance of their subjects. The tired pilot who, according to the seamen’s stories, “Moors by his side under the Lee” (I.207), is here understood to moor at the side of the Leviathan. The phrase “under the Lee” creates an additional tension: the word “lee” may derive from the Old English word hléo, meaning “shelter” or “protection.” There is an obvious dramatic irony in the idea that the pilot of the skiff thinks he is safe under the protective shadow of an island when he has actually beached himself on the side of Satan.7 The fact that this safety is a mere illusion intensifies the perceptible terror in these lines. What this analysis draws out is the idea that while Milton’s similes are not homologated in their immediate context (as Virgil’s are), they are nonetheless homologated in the background of the epic.8 Although we sense that “water dark and deep” (III.11) is pre-Creation and menacing, the foam on which the Leviathan slumbers is not obviously so. The realization that the density the foam supports actually lies beyond our comprehension makes it (the foam) eerie. Through the deeper homologation afforded by the simile, the familiar concept of foam gradually is made unfamiliar. The image of Satan “floating many a rood” (I.196) atop the fires of hell strikes us as being as uncanny as the idea that his bulk can be held up by something as minuscule and as insubstantial as foam. As the normal meaning of the word “foam” is transformed by its context, the substance of foam itself becomes metonymic for a spiritual world that does not adhere to man’s earthly conceptions and categorizations of things.

6 the university years

In this regard, Milton’s nonhomologating similes and metaphors become literary devices that are at once aesthetic and also deeply philosophic. While Francis Bacon’s idols were said to fossilize myth into a system which petrified thought and language, Milton’s similes and metaphors—as we see here in the case of the Leviathan simile—utilize myth to create a philosophical mode of inquiry that is in theory as well as in practice profoundly heuristic.9 Different conceptions of substance come to light because the mind of the poet, like that of the poem, is exploratory, uncontainable, as Milton willingly acknowledged: “Nil magis humanam commendat origine mentem, / Sancta Prometheae retinens vestigia flammae” (Nothing commends the human mind more by its origin / [than poetry] retaining a sacred trace of the Promethean flame; “Ad Patrem” 19–20). In examining how Milton’s intellectual heritage may have helped shape his intellectual imagination and so provided fuel for the “Promethean flame” of his poetry, it is possible to chart the developments in Milton’s thinking about substance. Samuel Johnson, who complained of Paradise Lost, “None ever wished it longer than it is,” nevertheless wrote with unstinting admiration about the scope of Milton’s epic: “Here is a full display of the united force of study and genius; of a great accumulation of materials, with judgment to digest and fancy to combine them.” Johnson’s remark hints at the futility inherent in any enterprise that attempts to exhaustively account for the “accumulation of knowledge [that] impregnated his [Milton’s] mind, fermented by study and exalted by imagination.”10 With Johnson, I recognize the limitations and holes in knowledge to which a historical narrative of Milton’s intellectual development is susceptible; hence my claims must necessarily be more modest. If we return to Milton’s early writings and to the intellectual world that helped to shape them, we may discover more not only about how Milton depicts substance, but also about how he comes to conceive of it through particular avenues of thought that are not immediately identifiable as ontological. M I LT O N ’ S A R I S T O T L E

The primary thesis of this section—namely, that Milton’s university Aristotelianism may have assisted him in developing a dichotomous distinction between the spiritual and the material—may strike some readers

the university years 7

as nonsensical.11 Those who attribute psychophysical monism to Milton may suppose their case is helped by the cultural authority of Aristotle, but this is largely because in the twentieth century Aristotle was viewed as being no dualist: “Aristotle,” Sir David Ross confidently declared, “is no holder of a two-substance dualism.”12 Although it is true that Aristotle is not a dualist in the Cartesian sense of the term, there are places in his philosophy that admit substances other than the concretely material. Later philosophers and commentators on Aristotle will explore these passages in more detail and claim to uncover his supposed true meaning. Yet it is through the mediation of these (mostly) Greek Neoplatonic commentators, read in the original language and received also through intermediary, often Latin, sources, that Milton appears to have arrived at a very different understanding of Aristotle’s philosophy from that of the Schools. As Milton gradually uncovered a fertile field of Aristotelianism as it existed in antiquity, he discovered both a metaphysics and a psychology (“study of the soul”) that defy simple physicalist reductions. But during the time that Milton toiled under the pressures of reading Aristotle and his commentators in their original Greek (with Latin translations to hand) and immersed himself in the founding fathers of Christian theology and Protestant thought, he encountered a serious problem: if Aristotle was understood as fundamentally materializing, his philosophy was deeply antithetical to Christian beliefs. As the Christian tradition continued to struggle with assimilating Aristotelian philosophy to Christian doctrine, the collision between theology and philosophy made individualist interpretations of Aristotle the norm in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Although the alterations Aristotelianism underwent at the hands of individual writers vitiate in advance any attempt to define absolutely Renaissance Aristotelianism, which broadly refers to Aristotelianism as the predominant philosophy of the seventeenth century, it appears that Aristotelianism encompassed the very philosophic traditions and ideas that challenged it and even threatened to overturn it.13 In addition, sixteenth- and seventeenth-century thinkers increasingly no longer understood Aristotle simply in stark opposition to Plato. Milton was no exception. His thought, which resists classification as either Platonic or Aristotelian, dualist or monist, is largely owing to the

8 the university years

fact that whereas we tend to think there is a sharp distinction between Aristotelianism and, say, Neoplatonism, Renaissance readers like Milton often read them as working together.14 This tendency in Milton’s thinking may, therefore, be traced to his early encounters with Aristotle at university, in which the gradual assimilation of Aristotelian doctrine through various other philosophic systems may have prompted in Milton a rejection of a binary division between a supposed ontologically hylomorphic Aristotle and a dualist Plato.15 In fact, Greek and Christian Neoplatonic commentators on Aristotle, many of whom Milton read kept alive and slowly brought to the fore the incipient strand of dualism discernible in Aristotle. Against those who might be tempted instead to argue that Aristotle’s stock fell so sharply at the end of the sixteenth century that his “cultural authority” became negligible, Charles Schmitt’s groundbreaking work has persuasively shown that “Renaissance Aristotelians moved gradually toward a more critical interpretation of their master, based not only on a fuller comprehension of the context of the Stagirite’s thought but on a deeper understanding of the text itself. The dead wood of spuria [spurious works] was cleared away, as well as the shadow cast over the genuine text by translation.”16 Milton, like his contemporaries, thus recognized at least two Aristotles: one, the Greek philosopher and pupil of Plato, whose writings had provoked extensive commentary both in antiquity and in the Renaissance; the other, the Aristotle of the Schools, whom many serious philosophers, Milton included, opposed as a straw man. To understand Milton’s reaction against this latter, scholastic Aristotle within a humanist context is, therefore, to appreciate better the type of Aristotelianism Milton consistently rejects over the course of his poetic career and to clarify what sort of Aristotelianism he more readily accepts. Not just Milton’s bilingualism but also his trilingualism enabled him to read his Aristotle in a more humanist tradition.17 As Paul Oskar Kristeller has argued, the humanists and their studia humanitatis were heir to a tradition begun by medieval rhetoricians, or dictatores, the difference being that the humanists introduced a “new, classicist style into the traditions of medieval Italian rhetoric.”18 The humanist impulse to emphasize classical and, specifically, Greek learning is in evidence, for example, in the statutes of Trinity College, Cambridge, where it is made clear that Greek texts are embraced as much for their rhetoric and style

the university years 9

as for their treatment of philosophic ideas: “In the first year, they translate Demosthenes into Latin, and the Orations of Cicero into Greek; in the second year, they render Plato in Latin and the philosophical writings of Cicero into Greek. In the third year, the same is repeated as in the first.”19 An anonymous commonplace book of a Trinity student (c. 1613/14) is cluttered with references to Aristotle and is written mostly in Greek. The very use of the Greek language as a tool of analysis bears witness to the ongoing influence of humanist educational practices at Cambridge, which promoted the reading of Aristotle and his ancient commentators in the original Greek. When placed in this context, Milton’s writings harken back to a tradition of Aristotelianism at Cambridge that was part and parcel of the university’s commitment to a humanist program of study.20 Sixteenthcentury Cambridge had boasted of a rich array of eminent Greek scholars: Desiderius Erasmus (c. 1467–1536), John Redman (1499–1551), Sir Thomas Smith (1547–73), Sir John Cheke (1514–57), Roger Ascham (1514/15–68), and John Caius (1510–73), not to mention John Bois (1561– 1644), whom Andrew Downes (c. 1549–1628), the Regius Professor of Greek at Cambridge, proclaimed to be “the ablest Grecian of Christendom.”21 All of these scholars sought to draw students away from scholastic interpretations and return them to the authoritative writings of the Greek philosopher himself. But the “new, or at least refurbished Aristotle” described by Erasmus in a letter to Henry Bulloch as early as 1516 was nonetheless understood in contradistinction to the familiar and older mode of scholasticism associated with the Schools.22 In distinguishing the humanist Aristotle from the scholastic Aristotle an odd (and unintended) rapport between scholasticism and humanism comes into view, so that it appears that Milton’s intellectual heritage from university was actually shaped as much by scholastic learning as it was by humanist study.23 This strange alliance between seemingly distinct modes of study reflects more generally the overall character of the English university curriculum as Milton would have found it. Although the university and college statutes remained firmly Aristotelian, there was, in practice, substantial intellectual freedom. Indeed, as Mordechai Feingold has shown, although the statutes commanded one thing, experience dictated another.24 While Aristotle’s position in moral, natural, and literary studies remained

10 the university years

firmly established, his hold on natural philosophy (physics) and even metaphysics was gradually weakening as the supposed new science— largely grounded in mathematics—rose to prominence. A donation book of Christ’s College begun in 1623 records that in 1626, Henry Burwell left a bequest of four pounds a year to the college library to buy mathematical textbooks.25 Since, as Feingold writes, “only intellectual pluralism and the right to choose could accommodate and guide the search for truth,” this new science obtained a sort of philosophical freedom within the university. But the effect was distinctly double-edged: the same intellectual pluralism that allowed philosophies deeply inimical to Aristotle’s to infiltrate the university also helped cement Aristotle’s permanence in the academic community because his was the philosophy against which these alternatives could be understood.26 Hence, Ralph Bohun (b. 1639–d. 1716), who succeeded Milton’s nephew, Edward Phillips (1630–d. in/after 1696), as tutor to the younger Evelyn (b. 1655), wrote to John Evelyn Sr. in 1668 about his young son’s education: [Y]et why I insist not in ye footsteps of this Champion in arts [i.e., Dymmock], but teach Aristotle first [ . . . ] yet I shall venture to give you an account [ . . . ] In reading then to my pupill, I begin with ye philosophy of ye schools, wch though I make it not my Creed, & have of-ten declard to ye selfe how insufficient I believe ye Peripatetic Hypothesis to solve ye phænomenas of nature, with any tolera-ble consistency to it selfe; yet since Aristot. [Aristotle] has so universally obtaind in all ye Univer-sitys [margin: ∧“schools”∧] of Christendome for so many ages; thus in sensibly crept into all modern writers by ye use of his terms; it’s almost impossible, as things stand, to be either Divine, Physician, or Lawyer without him; & though I believe no-thing more ruinous then ye first principles of his physics, yet we must indulge something to ye age wherein wee live.27 The tone is one of indulgent, if not begrudging, respect. As late as 1669, it appears that Aristotle remained well entrenched in the universities, even though, as Bohun was well aware, Cressy Dymmock’s Oxford lectures on experimental philosophy in 1667—of which Bohun disapproved,

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denigrating them as a “Lullian way of science”—were extremely contemptuous of Aristotle.28 The paradoxical position I discussed earlier—in which Milton was educated according to scholastic and also humanist courses of study— may thus be understood in relation to the emergence of this new science and its need for Aristotelianism to furnish it with a language and method of organization.29 With even the anti-Aristotelians forced to systematize their philosophies in a profoundly Aristotelian way, the old scholastic Aristotelianism experienced a revival.30 As Bohun concedes through clenched teeth, to confute Aristotelian philosophy first entails an understanding of it: “I should advise Mr John to speak against Aristotle because he had read him, & not like ye young gallants of ye Town yt continually condemn his hypothesis only be cause they heard it ∧censurd in∧ ye last Cofeehouse or think it out of vogue in ye Royal Society . . . [which is] no mor than an Learned Conventicle, it self in Ballance with ye 2 most flou-rishing Universitys of Europe.”31 This continued emphasis on Aristotle—even into the 1660s—owed much, as Bohun reluctantly admits, to Aristotle’s Organon, the collection of his logical writings, as well as to his natural philosophy, both of which provided a framework within which a student was best able to understand the old and new philosophies alike. What becomes clear is the very “intellectual pluralism” that had welcomed alternatives to Aristotle’s philosophy into the university now ended up fortifying Aristotle’s position in them. Rather helplessly, Bohun asks, “How yn can it be expected yt we should understand ye new philosophies without him, when ye greatest part of their works consist only in confutations of his?”32 It is against this reactionary entrenchment of the scholastic Aristotle that Milton rebels at the end of the 1620s in Prolusion III. This declamation, or rhetorical set speech, aptly entitled “Against Scholastic Philosophy,” was delivered either in 1628 or 1629. As part of his statutory exercises, Milton was required to argue a set thesis before the university lecture rooms, or Public Schools (now called the Old Schools).33 Since the thesis was assigned in advance to each participant, it is doubtful that the position Milton defends here is his own.34 Still, as an exercise in mental gymnastics, Milton excels at it. While it might be supposed that Milton’s assault on scholasticism would be a direct attack

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on Aristotle, we discover that Milton actually works quite hard to distinguish between the two. As H. R. Fletcher rightly noted, Milton’s argument against the Aristotle of the Schools essentially proceeds through a “long complicated syllogism” in which good Aristotelian logic defeats the sophistic Aristotelianism that characterized the Schools.35 When placed in the context of the distinction between these two Aristotles that I have already discussed, the prolusion’s otherwise perhaps confusing condemnation of scholastic Aristotelianism and its sudden panegyric of Aristotle at the end make sense. Although the audience may have expected a detraction of Aristotle on Milton’s part, they, too, are evidently surprised (or “aroused,” as Milton observes) to hear the final encomium on Aristotle: “Let that famous man, Aristotle, be your teacher in all those subjects, who possess so much charm, who indeed has left to us almost all those things which ought to be learned, written in a learned manner and with much pain [diligence]” (Vobis ad hæc omnia Disciplinæ sit ille, qui tantopere in deliciis est, Aristoteles, qui quidem hæc prope cuncta scienter & conquisite scripta nobis reliquit addiscenda). In reminding his audience that the “true” Aristotle—replete with his syllogistic reasoning and argumentative method—actually helps him to cast out dull scholastic studies from the curriculum, Milton’s exhortation— “on account of this matter, you clearly owe him [Aristotle] praise of whatever kind and thanks” (sane ejus rei laudem, cujusquemodi est, illi debebitis & gratiam)—feels wholly genuine.36 While it is part of the genre of declamationes (orations) to have the speaker convince his audience of whatever side he is told to represent, even if the speaker himself remains unconvinced, the argument presented on this occasion strikes us as Milton’s own, largely because its thesis accords with what Milton himself would later come to believe. I began this chapter by suggesting that there is a certain continuity of thought between the university Milton and the Milton of the later prose and poetry. In this regard, Prolusion III looks forward to Milton’s Of Education (1644), in which he enthusiastically speaks of stripping away all scholastic trappings from Aristotle. Yet here again Milton’s commitment to humanist educational reforms makes his program very different from an outright attack on Aristotle himself: “And for the usuall method of teaching Arts, I deem it to be an old errour of universities not yet well recover’d from the Scholastick grosnesse of barbarous ages, that

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in stead of beginning with Arts more easie, and those be such as are most obvious to the sence, they present their young unmatriculated novices at first comming with the most intellective abstractions of Logick & metaphysics.”37 The movement described labors to siphon off the dross of the Schools from Aristotle so that Aristotle himself is saved. Instead of complaining about the humanist directives at the universities—which placed a high value on (Aristotelian) logic—Milton criticizes the manner in which these directives were carried out.38 Milton’s general frustration at university teaching emerges again in Prolusion VII , aptly entitled “Beatiores reddit Homines Ars quam Ignorantia” (Learning brings more Blessings to Men than Ignorance). This prolusion was delivered in the chapel at Christ’s College and may have been a declamation intended to fulfill the requirements for the M.A. degree (the fact that Milton’s Latin is very eloquent and that he makes a passing reference to the plague have prompted Gordon Campbell to redate this prolusion to the autumn of 1631).39 As an academic exercise, Prolusion VII brilliantly displays Milton’s talent for intellectual performance, and the enthusiasm with which Milton presents his argument strongly suggests that he was sympathetic to its thesis. Milton opens with a bang. He chastises the university for failing to “know how to select branches of learning that are useful, and what is useful within them”—he will return to this idea later in his tract of 1644, Of Education. The “despicable quibbles” in grammar and rhetoric— presumably the products of Ramist attempts to separate dialectic and rhetoric, ratio and oratio—receive particular derision: “One may hear the teachers of them talking sometimes like savages and sometimes like babies. What about logic? That is indeed the queen of the Arts, if taught as it should be [si pro dignitate tractetur], but unfortunately how much foolishness there is in reason! Its teachers are not like men at all, but like finches which live on thorns and thistles” (italics added).40 In the phrase “if taught as it should be,” there is the very strong sense that Aristotle and his logic will be of use only once they are detached from the Schoolmen and the “empty abridgments” of Ramism.41 As a clear indictment of Ramist learning, Milton’s prolusion not only criticizes the way Cambridge teaches logic, but also issues a rallying cry for real educators to return to the original texts—to reinstate the “queen of the Arts” (logic) to her proper place in the university.

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At the end of this chapter (p. 29) I will return to discuss more fully the reasons Milton rejected Ramism as the philosophic alternative to scholastic Aristotelianism. Central to the discussion here, though, is the high status Milton accords to logic—to ratio—in Prolusion VII. Its emphasis on the processes of reasoning moves us into a view of Aristotelian logic and the role of language that introduces, by implication, an immaterialist element to Milton’s ontology. The account of logic in Prolusion VII thus shares an underlying sympathy with that of his Oxford contemporary Thomas Barlow (Oxon, M.A. 1633), a fellow of the Queen’s College, Oxford, who shrewdly observed that “wee must know wordes before wee can compasse the knowledge of thinges, all learning beeing lockd up in some language.”42 In describing language’s power as that which enables us to understand things, Barlow anticipates later philosophic notions in which language is necessarily prior to learning. Words, for Barlow, provide us with interrogative tools that allow us to examine the world—to reason through things. While the modern reader may feel a jump here—from language to logic—Barlow, like Milton, proceeded naturally from language to a reasoned discourse that actually presupposes logic (lovgo~ in Greek is cognate, after all, with levgein, “to speak”). In continuing to think about logic and language in terms congenial to Barlow’s countermaterialist tendencies, even the Milton of the ostensibly Ramist treatise the Art of Logic (which was probably begun in the 1640s but not completed till the early 1670s) demonstrates a continuity of thought with the young Milton of Prolusion VII. In the Art of Logic, Milton writes that “of all the arts the first and most general is logic [by which we “argue well”], next grammar [by which we “speak well”], and finally rhetoric [by which we “express (ourselves) well”], since reason can be used, and even used extensively, without speech, but speech cannot be used at all without logic. We give the second place to grammar because speech can be faultless even when it is unadorned, but it cannot easily be adorned unless it first be faultless.”43 When he argues that an internal dialogue requires no speech, Milton’s claim directly opposes one of the cornerstones of Ramist philosophy, which states that logic is “the art of discoursing well” (ars bene disserendi). Schooled as he was in a humanist tradition, Milton prefers to say instead that logic is the “art of reasoning well” (ars bene ratiocinandi).

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That this idea of a nonmaterial, mental language originates in Plato’s Alcibiades (129C) is not without significance.44 In introducing this Platonic notion to his Art of Logic, Milton redefines the dialectic (dialektikh;) as a type of internal speech: “To reason, used no less broadly than reason itself, properly means the same thing as to use the reason.”45 In other words, the use of reason—now understood in ordinary language—is no longer seen simply in terms of logical analysis; we are seen to depend on the rules of grammar and rhetoric in order to know how propositions are used in the public sphere. Although Milton moves away from the Ramist idea that the art of knowing belongs exclusively to discourse, meaning is still seen to be given contextually through discourse. Citing Cicero (De or. i.42.187–88), Milton differentiates between these two types of logic: while “artificial” logic leads to the “actual laying down of the precepts for doing something useful,” or “discoursing well,” “natural” logic sets out “precepts for something useful.” For Milton, then, natural logic is the necessary precondition for speech.46 In making the material (speech) dependent on the immaterial (reason), Milton is developing an important epistemological as well as ontological claim. Rational cognition is situated not within a communal sphere but within the individual mind: “For, just as in a picture there are two things, the subject or primary model and the art of painting, so in the discovery of an art, the natural use and the example of skilled men corresponds to the primary model, and logic corresponds to the art of the painter—natural logic, at least, for this is the faculty itself of reason in the human mind, according to the common saying that art imitates nature.”47 In likening the percepts logic analyzes to the subject the painter paints, Milton regards logic itself as the “art of the painter,” or the activity that reproduces these percepts (or “primary models”) within one’s mind. I hinted earlier that Milton’s concept of ratio as “internal speech” is Platonic in origin. But it also has distinctly seventeenth-century overtones: the German Lutheran and peripatetic philosopher Phillip Melanchthon (1497–1560) envisages logic as an intramental activity by which we discover forms, or Milton’s “percepts of the arts:” “This form is not a thing outside the intellect, but is itself an act of the understanding, painting this image” (Haec forma non est res extra intellectionem, sed ipse actus intelligendi, pingens hanc imaginem).48 It is from this inner

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sanctum of Protestant theology that Milton is able to conceive of a (more Aristotelian) logic which is fundamentally preverbal and nonmaterial, since “Logic, therefore, treats neither words nor things” (Tractat igitur Logica neque voces, neque res). The ontological implication of all this is that logic, so involved with reason, associates itself with what is intelligible.49 There thus persists an abiding concern in Milton’s writings about the relationship between logic and language, and the separation of the internal/immaterial from the external/material. This preoccupation is again in evidence in Milton’s much later work Accedence Commenc’t Grammar (published in 1669), in which he states that “Latin Grammar is the Art of right understanding, speaking, or writing Latine,” while “Grammar hath two Parts: Right-wording, usually call’d Etymologie; and right-joyning of words, or Syntaxis.” By transforming thinking into an “art of questioning and answering,” both parts of grammar are seen to facilitate discourse.50 Again, discourse in the public sphere becomes analogous to logic, or the process of thought that takes place privately within the self. Milton’s fixation on the internal as the immaterial was duly noticed by Johnson, albeit in a very different context. Upon reading Milton’s dismissal of verse, Johnson opined, “Rhyme, he [Milton] says, and says truly, is no necessary adjunct of true poetry. But perhaps, of poetry as a mental operation, metre or musick is no necessary adjunct.”51 The idea Johnson derives from Milton’s headnote to Paradise Lost is that there is a distinction between the natural procedure of making something in your head and simply writing it down and the alternative activity of writing something down in accordance with a specific style. Poetry as “mental operation” is devoid of any necessary contextualizing—and, hence, materializing— apparatus.52 Milton himself makes a similar claim when, along with Aristotle, he distinguishes the “sermonem interiorem” (internal speech) as that which is “conceived in the mind alone” from the “sermonem exteriorem” (outer speech), which is “uttered with the mouth.”53 In all these discussions of logic, grammar, and poetry the internal operation repeatedly emerges as that which is not yet materially determined. We sense an affinity, therefore, between Milton’s argument for a preverbal logic and the more general Protestant stress on the priority of the Spirit to the Letter. In either case (although “spirit” will become an increasingly ambivalent term), the tendency in Milton’s thought—so

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triggered by his investment in Aristotelian logic—remains distinctly antimaterialist. While the theological antithesis “spirit / flesh” is always in the background, it appears that Milton’s early engagement with Aristotle and university Aristotelianism also helped confirm his (more PlatonistAugustinian belief ) that a logic disengaged from words is a logic austerely discarnate.54 And this idea, as we shall see in the next section, exerts a powerful influence on Milton’s more metaphysical analysis of substance. P R O L U S I O N V I : S U B S TA N C E O F T H O U G H T, M AT T E R O F L A N G U A G E

So far, I have discussed in general terms how Milton’s encounters with Aristotelianism, and especially Aristotelian logic, prompted him to admit the existence of a nonmaterial aspect to his philosophy. To examine more closely how logical analysis helps shape Milton’s metaphysics, I turn to Prolusion VI, Milton’s most sustained and marked discussion on substance from the point of view of ontology. In its subversion of the Aristotelian categories, Prolusion VI is a complex instance of the way in which Milton explores ideas about substance and matter. Delivered at the end of the Easter term of 1631, Prolusion VI consists of a Latin oration (“Sportive Exercises on Occasion are not Inconsistent with Philosophical Studies”), a Latin prolusion (or exercise), and a nowincomplete English peroration in verse, “At a Vacation Exercise in College.” David Masson, who decoded a good deal of the prolusion’s contemporary and collegiate references, describes the speech as having been given “on an occasion of periodical revel, when not only his fellow-collegians, but a crowd of students from other colleges, were present.”55 Milton himself says that the “very flower as it were of the University, [were] gathered together” for the event.56 Yet amid all this gaiety and foolishness, Milton felt out of his element: “I will not shrink from singing the praises of jests and merriment to the best of my powers, even though I must admit that my faculty is slight for them” (in quibus quoque perexiguam agnosco facultatem meam).57 Such a joke-against-joking is hardly a surprise coming from the poet who, within a decade, will write a masque against revel. In fact, the prolusion’s joke serves to reinforce one of the more serious, if not self-advertising, claims of the prolusion and its poem: Milton already regards himself as having been called to the vocation of the poet.58

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As early as 2 July 1628 in a letter to his former tutor, the Scottish Presbyterian Thomas Young (c. 1587–1655), Milton brusquely dismisses the foolish revels in the hall and scorns simple, vulgar humor.59 With a fair bit of rancor in his tongue, Milton remarks in Prolusion VI that, upon returning to Cambridge with much zeal for his studies, he was dismayed to learn that he must turn his mind to “foolery and the invention of new jests.”60 The effect of the remark about joking at the opening of the oration creates a lingering sense of discomfort that is never wholly dispelled. The mocking rhetoric records the begrudging tone with which Milton accepted and carried out the request to write this prolusion as a “salting.”61 Saltings—so named because senior orators were commissioned to write salty or witty exercises that were rewarded with gruel and punished with a salted drink—were meant to mark the induction of first- and second-year undergraduates into the college. As Rosalind Richek first proposed in 1982, Milton’s Prolusion VI belongs to this particular genre of college exercises delivered in the hall. The occasion of a salting was a merry affair, as the name indicates—“salting” derives from the Latin pun on sal, meaning both “salt” and “wit”—and it included an election of a “Father” who would then incorporate other students, or “jolly rascals” (Milton’s phrase), to liven up the festivities.62 But Milton characteristically refuses to follow this tradition: his “sons” are no longer named after “various dishes” or according to “various kinds of meat,” but are named instead according to “the Predicaments of Aristotle.”63 Milton, as the Master of the Revels and father of this farce, transforms himself into Ens, or the principle of Absolute Being. The idea is humorous, but as Milton delves into a deeper exploration of the Aristotelian categories and the ontological status of Ens per se (as substance) and Ens per accidens (as the accidental forms of Quantity, Quality, Relation, Place, Time, Posture, Possession, and Passion), the joke suddenly turns fiercely technical. The poem, which Milton published separately from the exercise in the Minor Poems (1673), acts as a parody of Aristotelianism and therefore implicitly relies on a detailed understanding of Aristotelian philosophy.64 When Milton as Ens the Father tells Substance, “She heard them [the Fairy Ladies] give thee this, that thou should’st still / From eyes of mortals walk invisible” (65–66), he lampoons Aristotle and his argument that substance is individual (Cat. 2a10; 3b10).65 Despite Aristotle’s

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emphasis on particulars, and his claim that primary substance underlies everything else (Cat. 2b15; 3a1), substance itself is here shown to elude definition. Knowledge, Milton emphasizes, entails a conceptualization that moves beyond such concrete entities, as Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) centuries later also understood: “Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind.”66 The blatant absurdity involved in Milton’s use of “invisible” directly implies that since substance in Aristotle is always in the particular, we have no idea of what substance is on its own. Given that Aristotelian individuals or particulars are always sensible, substance itself begins to feel less like a thing—especially a material thing—and more like Form. The term “Form,” though, immediately suggests Plato. This has led some critics to assume that Milton’s mind here reverts to Platonism: John Carey, for instance, writes, “to Milton the Platonist, the visible world is removed from the reality of eternal Form(s), which cannot be seen (cf. Resp. V.474–510),” the implication being that the sensibly given is less than fully real and hence not an object of knowledge.67 Far from being a Platonist, though, Milton actually sets out the consequences of Aristotle’s philosophy. Intelligibility involves Aristotelian categorical relationships so that what is prior to categories is rendered inexplicable, unrelatable—is ultimately unintelligible. By applying an Aristotelian criterion of intelligibility, Milton exposes a problem with Aristotle’s own notion of primary substance. What looks oddly Platonic is, in fact, far from straightforward Platonism: “invisible” (66) is now a term of abuse in the poem, which it would not be in Plato. To say that substance is invisible implies a reductio ad absurdum. The underlying drive of the poem may be toward materialization, but it is a materialization that Milton never completes. Although Milton derides Aristotle for his materializing tendencies, he continues to imply that Platonism is nothing more than a refuge for failed Aristotelians. The prolusion and poem restate a fundamental question concerning substance: namely, is substance a particular, concrete individual (Aristotle) or, alternatively, a Form (Plato)? In delicately balancing the intellectual excitement against the jollity of the festivity, Milton (playing Ens) interjects once more, reminding his audience of the prophecy of the sibyl, who decreed that Being would be the “King,” though “subject be to many an accident” (74). As Addison lamented,

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Milton’s notoriously bad puns fall flat.68 Yet just where the elephantine humor collapses, the sardonic intellectualizing takes off; Milton’s “satyricall wit” exploits the fact that substance is rendered worldly and perceptible only through the accidents that adhere to it.69 The monarchist role of substance undergoes a sudden carnivalesque demotion. Substance (as oujs iva, or “being,” and as uJpokeivmenon, or “that which lies beneath”) is ontologically “under,” or defined by, its conceptual definition: “Yet every one [of his Brethren] shall make him underling, / And those that cannot live from him asunder / Ungratefully shall strive to keep him under; / In worth and excellence he shall out go them, / Yet being above them, he shall be below them; / From others he shall stand in need of nothing, / Yet on his Brothers shall depend for clothing” (“Vacation Exercise” 76–82). The hierarchy is topsy-turvy. Being, who says he needs nothing from his “Brothers” because he is self-sufficient, nonetheless requires the addition of his “Brothers . . . for Clothing,” since it is only by way of secondary qualities that he (Being) is made apprehensible (to us). The joke, relying as it does on metaphysical notions of “priority” and “actuality,” shifts between the two ways we might understand Being: namely, as an immaterial entity or as an already concrete (particular) thing.70 The joke grows even more technical when Milton makes the rapid transition from a discussion of thought to one of language. The move, which is arguably licensed by Aristotle himself, alludes to Aristotle’s claim that we are best able to speak (levgein kavllista) about being (peri; th'~ oujs iva~) when we have imagined the properties attached to it. While in Milton the picture of Being standing in need of “clothing” depicts the fact that substance (oujs iva~) requires properties in order to be known, the image also underscores the idea that the properties themselves are presented kata; th;n fantasivan, “through the imagination.”71 As Milton slips with ease from thinking about logos-as-thought to logos-as-speech, it appears that, even from an Aristotelian point of view, the imagination “clothes” what is essentially immaterial: thought. This account of the operations of language in relation to thought may also allude to the philosophy of language outlined by Alexander Gill (or Gil, the elder; 1565–1635), who was Milton’s schoolmaster at St. Paul’s School, London. Gill’s book the Logonomia Anglica (1619) is a bizarre text, a virtual panegyric of the English language that combines rhetoric

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and grammar under the broader umbrella of “logonomia.” This phonetic-based science of learning supposedly provides the reader with the “rules by which an unknown language can be learned more easily.” In the second section, Gill describes linguistic “accidence”—which in his terminology was “etymologia”—or the second part of “logonomia.”72 While accidence is that part of the “logomania which adorns speech,” logic is still acknowledged to be “that [which] adduces arguments.”73 At this point, clear affinities emerge between Milton’s thought and Gill’s: in Milton’s poem, substance is unknown and unspeakable till it is subject to “accidents”; in Gill’s terminology, accidence, or syntax, makes thought manifest in language. In both cases, language, along with its etymologies, is seen as posterior to those operations of reason that schematize it. By expressing a preexisting thought—or a prelinguistic utterance of the mind—language makes accidence (syntax) more properly an accident. So, although Milton’s hortatory “cull those richest Robes, and gayest attire / Which deepest Spirits, and choicest wits desire” (21–22) may sound deeply ironic in the prolusion’s poem—as does the tone in the phrase, “this fair assembly’s ears” (28)—there is a sudden seriousness in the lines “I have some naked thoughts that rove about / And loudly knock to have their passage out” (23–24). Even though Milton protests his subject is unworthy of grand linguistic attire, “At a Vacation Exercise” still wings its way toward unabashedly epic elevation.74 Reason and thinking, concepts and ideas are consistently promoted over language and its concomitant materiality. The priority the prolusion gives to thought over language is most evident in Milton’s swift transition from Latin to the vernacular when he moves from delivering the exercise to reciting the poem. When Christ’s College—formerly known as God’s House—was refounded by Lady Margaret, Countess of Richmond and Derby, the Statutes of 1505 decreed that Latin was to be used as long as the fellows were within the bounds of the college, excluding their rooms only (“semperque latino sermone vtantur quamdiu intra limites collegij fuerint praeterquam in cameris duntaxat”).75 By Milton’s time, this rule may have been relaxed, but an oration in Hall or Chapel, much like those in the University Schools, would be expected to be delivered in Latin. We detect a gleeful mischievousness in Milton’s tone as he calls attention to the fact that his transition to English in the poem is, at the very least, a breach of custom,

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if not a violation of one of the college statutes: “Nunc Leges Academicas veluti Romuli muros transiliens à Latinis ad Anglicana transcurro” (Now leaping over the Academic Laws just as over the walls of Romulus, I run across to English from Latin).76 When, in “At a Vacation Exercise,” Milton exhorts his “native Language” (1) to display the beauty of the English tongue, which he claims to be superior to Latin, he announces unapologetically, “I have thither packt the worst: / . . . The daintiest dishes shall be served up last” (12, 14). But Milton’s decision to use the vernacular cuts both ways. He first mocks its “lowness”: “Thou knowest it must be now thy only bent / To keep in compass of thy Predicament” (55–56). The bad puns fail to deflect attention away from the fact that Milton’s very choice of language (Latin or English?) produces something of a paradox since the supposedly selfsubsistent (substance) is now said to be dependent on the lower categories and even language to be known initially. Still, Milton emphasizes that words express what is immaterial: namely, ideas. Hence, he orders language to “search thy coffers round, / Before thou clothe my fancy in fit sound” (31–32). The description “fit sound,” written by the author who will later complain of “fit audience . . . though few” (PL VII.31), tempts us to think of the seventeen-year-old Milton as already challenging language to meet the sublimity of his thought.77 This effect is deepened in Milton’s description of his “deep transported mind” that “soar[s] / Above the wheeling poles” (33–34), which is a pre-echo of the later Hermeticism of “De Idea Platonica” (16) and Il Penseroso (85).78 This poet who will one day claim to be “rapt above the Pole” (PL VII.23) is already clambering over “lofts of piled thunder” (42) as his exhortation to us makes plain: “at heaven’s door / Look in, and see each blissful deity / How he before the thunderous throne doth lie, / Listening to what unshorn Apollo sings / To the touch of golden wires” (“Vacation Exercise” 34–38). In this allusion to Joshua Sylvester’s (d. 1618) “Urania,” Milton acknowledges that in this far-flung sphere, the world of sensibles is lost.79 Touch and sight may be relearned spiritually, but materiality, as we know it in an Aristotelian sense—that is, in relation to the sensible world—has vanished. As soon as language makes the expression of thought congenial to us through materialization, words escape their material clothing and exist as concepts that resound with a purely intellectual music. Concepts, much like Milton’s

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Eve, are attended by an array of metaphors, “a pomp of winning graces” (PL VIII.61). Language is revealed to be incurably metaphorical, even prophetic. Shooting through extramundane space, Milton claims to uncover the first causes “of secret things that came to pass / When Beldam Nature in her cradle was” (45–46). Only once he is transported to the farthest reaches of space (90) does he begin to travel (longitudinally) back through time, to the primordial beginnings of the cosmos. The poem propels itself toward the ontologically pure—toward substance as being and as being qua God—until being is finally conceived of as eluding material redaction. While Milton dared to record his thought on the world of intelligibles, his contemporary Abraham Cowley (1618–67) shrank at the prospect of expressing in mortal tongue the “wide-stretch’t Scrowl of Heaven” writ with “all the beauteous Characters that in it / With such deep Sense by Gods own Hand” (“The 34. Chapter of the Prophet Isaiah” iii.7; 9–10).80 Cowley’s reticence may be understood in terms of his belief that language fails to express things: “Angels who Live, and know what ’tis to Be, / Who all the nonsense of our Language see, / Who speak Things, and our Words, their ill-drawn Pictures scorn” (“Life” i.11–13). Since the thought of angels exists prior to language and originates in things, not words, angels alone are beyond the pitfalls of language. As a poet, Cowley strove to become like an angel: “My Eyes are opened, and I see / Through the Transparent Fallacie” (“Life” ii.1–2).81 If words must dress ideas, Milton proposes that rather than pinning words to the material thing (as Cowley does), we should first make words living expressions that move beyond inert reference. It may be this idea that prompts Milton to recount how the blind bard Demodocus (usually understood as a mythic self-portrait of Homer) sang of the Trojan War to the disguised Odysseus (Odyssey viii) until, as Milton says, the poet held “sad Ulysses’ soul and all the rest / . . . / In willing chains and sweet captivity” (49–52). (The reference in Milton to “sad Ulysses” picks up on Odysseus’s tears—and his shame at crying—at Odyssey viii.86.) What is significant in these lines is the fact that the soul actively desires to be bound to the entrancing song. As thought transcends the material vestments of language, the difference between the inner song and its outer sound dissolve. By touching on this transcendent view of language and moving his own “mock” argument that substance qua being exists only when divested

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of predicaments, Milton draws attention to the ease with which substance can be removed from the nexus of (worldly) relationships that define it. The idea, while seemingly Platonic, is actually firmly grounded in Aristotelian metaphysics. Aristotle, who argues that philosophy proper deals with things beyond physics (hence, it is properly called “metaphysics”), wrote that the study of qeologikhv φilosoφiva (theological philosophy) necessarily deals with the divine or the highest genus of being, so that its subject matter immediately must be immaterial. While in Aristotle, the Unmoved Mover is “the actuality that moves without being moved,” this actuality in Milton is the first, simple substance: the object of thought.82 As the particular thing—the subject for ratiocination— comes to be the abstract “matter” of thought, materiality gives way to a process of conceptualization beyond linguistic utterance and definition. Milton thus draws the familiar conclusion that substance qua being exceeds the sensible substratum in which it inheres. This may help explain why in the poem “At a Vacation Exercise” metaphor may provide for the description but not for the definition. It reinforces the notion that the truest language is tied not to things (as in Cowley) but to ideas and concepts. Words, insofar as they are material coverings, are dispensable to “naked thoughts” (24–25), as William Butler Yeats (1865–1939) would later remind us: “I made my song a coat / Covered with embroideries / Out of old mythologies / . . . / Song, let them take it, / For there’s more enterprise / In walking naked” (A Coat 1–3, 9–11).83 “At a Vacation Exercise” thus displays, along with Yeats’s poem, an awareness that meaning often lies on the other side of literal language. Behind the poem’s jocular façade we detect a formidable wit. When in the derisively entitled Prolusion VI, “That Sportive Exercises on Occasion are Not Inconsistent with Philosophical Studies,” Milton turns the tables on the authorities who had asked him to write it, the laborious half-apology—“Moriæ encomium non infimi Scriptoris opus” (The Praise of Folly, a work from a not-inferior writer)—signals Milton’s silent competition with Erasmus. In that prolusion, Milton intends to “play the wise fool” better than Erasmus had played Folly.84 Indeed, Prolusion VI and its poem audaciously attempt to disarm the audience through humor; Milton entreats us to “give me your laughter and applause” (Plaudite, & ridete).85 In reconceiving substance and the categories used

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to define it, the prolusion has the effect of delivering a sophisticated joke at the expense of Milton’s fellow Cantabrigians as well as of the more august company of Plato and Aristotle.86 By ending on the English poem “At a Vacation Exercise,” Milton draws attention to the fact that he has depicted substance in distinctly antimaterialist but nonetheless Aristotelian terms. WEARING ONE’S LEARNING

. . . L I G H T LY ? If Milton’s spirited treatment of Aristotle in his university exercises and letters reveals him to be thinking deeply and critically about substance and its categorization, something similar is also extended to Aristotle’s ancient commentators, to whom Milton’s writings frequently make reference.87 While Aristotle showed one what it was to think and provided students with a “disciplined and structured framework for thought” (to use Charles Schmitt’s phrase), his Greek Neoplatonic commentators, such as Alexander of Aphrodisias (fl. 198–209) and John Philoponus (also known as John the Grammarian, c. 490–570), were credited with elaborating the technical details that improved the process overall.88 As in the case of Aristotle (discussed above), the ludic element in Milton’s treatment of these commentators does little to lessen the philosophic gravity such allusions introduce. As the saying goes, many a true word hath been spoken in jest, and this point was not lost on the Milton of Christ’s. Milton’s Latin verse letter of 1627 to his former tutor Young belongs to this intellectually playful environment. With seeming ease, Milton describes Young in glowingly learned terms: “charior ille mihi quam tu doctissime Graium Cliniadi / . . . / Quamque Stagirites generoso magnus alumno / Quem peperit Libyco Chaonis alma Iovi (He is dearer to me than you, most learned of the Greeks, were to Alcibiades / . . . / Dearer than the great Stagirite was to his noble pupil, / the son whom that bountiful girl from Chaonia bore to Libyan Jove) (Elegia quarta 23– 26).89 The reference to Aristotle (“Stagirites”) leaps off the page. Milton’s own words now tell us much about his studies. First, Milton addresses Socrates directly—“tu doctissime Graium”—thereby granting him a preeminent position above other philosophers. Yet Aristotle immediately follows (24): Young, Milton declares, is dearer to Milton than the “great Stagirite was to his noble pupil” Alexander the Great (356–323 BC).90 As

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Milton the student attempts to impress his former tutor with his learning, he slips in—by way of a slightly odd digression on the parentage of Alexander—a subtle (complimentary) reference to one of Aristotle’s greatest commentators, Alexander of Aphrodisias. In order to do so, Milton alludes to the myth, derived from Plutarch (46–120 AD) and Pausanius (fl. 2d century AD), that Jove made love to Alexander’s mother in the form of a serpent. Alexander’s mother was named the “Chaonis alma” (nourisher of Chaon) after the place of her birth.91 Since the “alma” in Milton lacks a subsequent noun—such as the expected “mater” (mother)—it triggers an oblique memory of the luscious opening to Lucretius’s De Rerum Natura: “Aeneadum genetrix, hominum divomque voluptas, / alma Venus” (Mother of Aeneas and his race, darling of men and gods, nurturing Venus; i.1–2). Lucretius (c. 99– c. 55 BC), who granted Venus one of the most beautiful and complex invocations in poetry, was widely admired in the Renaissance, as evinced by Edmund Spenser’s imitation of Lucretius’s invocation in the fourth book of The Faerie Queene.92 In his description of Alexander’s mother, Milton speaks of her in terms of her birth-giving capacity (“peperit”); similarly, Lucretius’s Venus is depicted as inspiring greedy generation and procreation (“ut cupide generatim saecla propagent”).93 The “alma” in Milton, in other words, stands in for the unnamed nourisher par excellence. In raising the poetic ghost of this Venus figure through the word “alma” and subsequently aligning it with the greatest Greek military leader (Alexander), Milton makes the transition from the Roman name of the goddess (Venus) to its Greek equivalent, Aphrodite. Meanwhile, we realize that “alma” in Italian means “soul.”94 When taken in conjunction with “Alexander,” and the idea of “alma”-for-Aphrodite, the reference to the soul (present in the pun “alma” / “anima”) begins to evoke the name of the Aristotelian “Commentator” most famed for his scholia on Aristotle’s De anima: Alexander of Aphrodisias.95 Lest it be objected that such an inference is too elaborate, we should remember that Milton chose to write his letter to Young in the intimate language of Latin. When he equates his former tutor with Aristotle, Milton—by the logic of the analogy—becomes the conquering Alexander. At the same time, though, this very act of self-aggrandizement purports to be humble: the young Milton is as intellectually indebted to

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Young as Alexander the Great was to his tutor, Aristotle—or as the great commentator Alexander of Aphrodisias (nicknamed The Expositor) was beholden to the writings of Aristotle.96 The use of the Alexander / Aristotle trope in this way is a familiar one: James Duport (1606–76), tutor at Trinity College and Regius Professor of Greek, was a contemporary of Milton (Duport was the praevaricator for the commencement of 1631). Like Milton, Duport was a formidable wit, and he, too, deploys the Alexander / Aristotle trope—albeit in a different register—to exalt the tutor over the pupil (note Duport’s use of conduplicatio on “magnus”): “Naturæ genius, (Mome, audias?) Alpha Sophorum, / Tutor Alexandri, Philosophûmque Pater. / Dic mihi, Discipulus major fuit, annè Magister, / Magnus Alexander, Magnus Aristoteles?” (The genius of nature [do you hear me, O God of Scoffers?], the A of the wise, / Tutor of Alexander, and father of philosophy. / Tell me, who is greater, the disciple or the teacher, /Alexander the Great, or Great Aristotle?).97 For Duport, the answer was clearly Aristotle. For Milton, too, it is Aristotle, primarily because Aristotle is a figure for Young. Although purporting to use the Alexander / Aristotle trope in the traditional way, as Duport does, we detect that Milton has transformed it into a sophistical form of homage. Young as the teacher is acknowledged as the greater of the two, but then—by virtue of the dazzling, intellectual bravura with which Milton wittily conveys this rather pat conclusion—Young suddenly appears to have been surpassed by his student. The intellectual performance complicates Milton’s supposed posture of humility and even threatens to conquer the compliment itself. For all that the introduction to Aristotle and his famous commentator serves to underscore Milton’s immense learning, we should not lose sight of the emotional impact such a parallel creates: if Alexander of Aphrodisias defended Aristotle against the rising Stoic school and their concepts of Fate, a similar role was adopted some thirteen years after Elegia quarta, when Milton became Young’s staunch defender in the Smectymnuan debates of the 1640s.98 More important for my purposes, though, is the fact that Elegia quarta provides a critical glimpse into what Milton’s intellectual world was like; it illustrates how he wittily pressed into service the educational material he acquired at school and at university. It may well be that Milton’s allusion to Alexander of Aphrodisias in his verse letter to Young was a subtle

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addition meant to demonstrate to his former teacher that he, as the former pupil, was continuing his humanist course of study (which he had experienced first under Young’s tutelage and then, later, under Gill’s at St. Paul’s).99 The dense, intellectual play on words and etymologies thus contributes to the overall sense we have that such tremendously sophisticated puns (present in the Latin) are there to impress, to deepen the intellectual tenor of the piece.100 More generally, though, Elegia quarta reveals a familiarity with Aristotle that was presumably deepened during Milton’s time at university, where an understanding of Aristotle through his ancient Greek commentators increasingly played a part. In a similar vein, Prolusion IV, “In the Destruction of Whatever Substance There is a Resolution into First Matter” (In Rei cujuslibet interitu non datur resolutio ad Materiam Primam) draws attention to the Aristotelian commentary tradition. Delivered in college, Milton as proponent opens it with a jokey-rhetorical send-up of the Schoolmen: “I am not sure whether I am boring to you; certainly I am very boring to myself ” (ac profetio nescio an vobis, mihimet certe ipse maximopere sum tædio). Despite his professed aversion to tedious, scholastic topics, Milton proceeds to set forth a grittily technical exploration not only of what constitutes substance but also of whether or not prime matter can ever be found pure—that is, without accidental forms.101 The nub of the argument concerns the ontological status of prime matter and its relation to quantity. Moving incredibly quickly through dense patches of metaphysics, Milton suddenly marshals to his side another Greek Neoplatonic commentator on Aristotle, the Christian Philoponus, who was a pupil of Ammonius and rival of the pagan Aristotelian Simplicius. On the one hand, the reference to Philoponus—whose name literally means “lover of toil” (as Milton’s audience would have known)—is tongue in cheek, a clever pun meant to provide some comic relief in the midst of some heady metaphysics; on the other hand, Milton’s decision to cite Philoponus raises an implicit challenge to the prevailing Aristotelian tenor of the argument, in which matter and form are codependent and quantity is associated solely with the material. In “citing the ancient and learned author Philoponus” (antiquus & eruditus Scriptor), Milton alludes to the possibility that prime matter, so devoid of accidental forms, may actually be—as Philoponus had seriously proposed—a

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three-dimensional extension in its own right.102 The emergent problem is that a quantity so conceived is no longer straightforwardly material in an Aristotelian sense. For Philoponus, prime matter is a dimensionless quantity and refers to what precedes the material—to what already has oujs iva (ousia), or being, and is, therefore, classified as substantia, or substance. In drawing Philoponus into his discussion, the easy equation of prime matter with the material in Milton suddenly vanishes. While this idea may strike us as odd, the metaphysical weirdness of this prolusion is itself indicative of the creaking unease about the ontological status of substance and of its relation to the material arising in Milton’s mind. This uncertainty, so often concealed in puns and jokes in his early writings, should not mask the fact that Milton’s studies in Aristotelianism at university actively contribute and also attest to his preoccupation with the status of substance. Milton’s ostensible juvenilia are thus at the furthest remove from being amateur in thought or simplistic in expression. Although the seemingly lighthearted treatment of their subjects may attempt to conceal the continuous and serious meditation about substance to which Milton’s intellectual heritage contributed, theirs is a levity that possesses a critically dangerous edge. Milton’s early writings cannot, therefore, disguise the fact that Milton was engaged with both Aristotle and the Aristotelian (Greek) commentary tradition, the influence of which is felt in his later poetic conception of substance and matter (as we shall see in chapters 4 and 7 especially). T H E S E D I M E N TAT I O N O F T H E S C H O O L S ,

“DOWNWARD PURG’D” Thus far I have examined the way in which Milton’s letters to his former tutors and his university exercises and poetry testify to his continuing preoccupation with the status of substance and matter as understood from the point of view of either logic or ontology. But as I mentioned in the first section, Milton’s understanding of Aristotle—which deepened at university within a humanist context—also had to confront its rival philosophy of Ramism.103 In returning to reassess the influence of Ramism on Milton, it appears there is a case for thinking that it is best understood in terms of the intellectual friction the engagement with Ramist philosophy produced. While the Aristotelianism Milton accepted in its most humanist form provided him with a way to think through philosophic ideas and their attendant problems, he continued to reject

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wholeheartedly the rigidity of scholastic Aristotelianism and of Ramism, both of which proved to be too prohibitive to intellectual dialogue and debate for Milton’s taste. As we saw earlier (p. 14), Milton’s university writings reveal him to be unreceptive to Ramism in general. In Prolusions III and VII, Milton makes it clear that he took very seriously Erasmus’s call to return ad fontes—to attend to the primary texts in their original language. But as his letter of 1628 to his former grammar school teacher, Alexander Gill (the elder), reveals, Milton presented himself as singularly alone in this undertaking.104 Three years after entering Christ’s College as a pensioner, he still had found reason to lament the fact that he was “finding almost no intellectual companions here.”105 While we may be tempted to brush aside Milton’s complaint on the grounds that it is a rhetorical embellishment, it appears to convey some truth about college life in the late 1620s. Christ’s College had long been famous as the hotbed of Ramism in Cambridge: Laurence Chaderton (or Chatterton; 1536?–1640) had pounded “the logike” into the college between 1568 and 1577 before becoming the first master of Emmanuel College in 1584.106 The intellectually isolating environment of the college for the scholarly Milton may have resulted, in part, from the lingering effects of Chaderton’s earlier enthusiasm for Ramus, which Milton begrudgingly took up as part of his university intellectual inheritance.107 As early as 1625, shortly after his admission to Christ’s College (12 February 1625) and his matriculation into the university (9 April 1625), Milton wrote to Young, alluding to Ramus in deprecatory terms: “In truth, to express sufficiently how much I owe you were a work far greater than my strength, even if I should plunder all the Arguments collected by Aristotle and by that Logician of Paris, or even if I should exhaust all the fountains of oratory.”108 The rhetoric emphasizes the idea that even if Milton were to collect all the arguments he could out of Ramus and Aristotle, the vast quantity of material—not to mention, the effort they would require—would still fall disastrously short of the “strength” needed to articulate sufficiently Milton’s gratitude to Young. While Ramus and Aristotle appear in the context of this letter side by side, as if they are equals, the autonomasia of “Dialectician of Paris” (for Ramus) is scornful (note that Milton does hesitate to use Aristotle’s proper name).109 Despite the hyperbolical nature of the claim, the letter indicates an awareness of,

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if not outright knowledge of, the material to which it refers. Understood within a specifically humanist context, Ramus provides Milton’s compliment with the very deficiency it needs in order to make the language of thanks, or praise, work. The genuine sense of immense gratitude is conveyed not in words, but in the effort described. The overall effect is to leave us in no doubt as to Milton’s vast learning and to pass an implicit judgment on the ineffective nature of Ramus’s project. Milton’s treatment of this “Dialectician of Paris” is sympathetic to that of Francis Bacon (1561–1626), who dismissed Ramus, writing, “Aquinas, Scotus, and their followers out of their unrealities created a varied world; Ramus out of the real world made a desert . . . I rate him below the sophists.”110 It is significant that when Bacon speaks critically of Aquinas and Scotus, his remark actually throws into sharp relief his complete contempt for Ramus (he calls him an “ignorantiae latibulum” [lair of ignorance]).111 Milton’s comment that “our sage and serious Poet Spencer, whom I dare be known to think a better teacher then Scotus or Aquinas,” is likewise a grand rhetorical flourish of humanist learning.112 But in Prolusion III (c. Lent Term, 1628/29), which he read in the Public Schools, Milton deprecates both the Dominican Aquinas and the Franciscan Scotus in order to exalt Ramus’s opponent: Aristotle.113 As with Bacon, one detects that even the Scholastics are, by comparison, still superior to Aristotle’s modern-day adversary (Ramus). Unlike its impact on Europe, Ramism appears to have gained only a foothold in the humanist-governed universities of Oxford and Cambridge.114 But even this foothold proved to be too much for the undergraduate Milton. In his Elegia Prima ad Carolum Diodatum (c. 1626?)—which immortalized Milton’s whipping tutor, William Chappell (1582–1649)—we detect an (admittedly) glancing reference to Ramus: “Nec duri libet usque minas perferre magistri / Caeteraque ingenio non subeunda meo” (I do not like having always to stomach the threats of a stern tutor, and other things which my spirit will not tolerate).115 Could the “caeteraque” Milton says he was force-fed allude to Ramist logic? If so, it seems that Milton’s spirit—itself depicted as the best reflection of the university’s commitment to education—preferred to embrace Aristotle rather than the philosopher who so triumphantly claimed to have overthrown him (as Ramus had memorably done).

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When, in his letter of 1628 to Gill, Milton relates that most of his contemporaries, although “almost completely unskilled and unlearned in Philology and Philosophy alike,” nonetheless “flutter off to Theology unfledged,” his charge reflects, in all likelihood, Milton’s perception of the deleterious effects of Ramist logic on learning. Sending Gill the “first and only piece” he had written in Greek since leaving St. Paul’s, Milton notes with withering contempt that “there is a danger that whoever in this age expends study and pains on Greek compositions sings mostly to the deaf.”116 The implication is that Ramism, like the “monkish disease” of scholasticism that reduced metaphysics to a “sinister rock, a Lernian bog of Fallacies,” endangered humanist learning. Milton’s complaint that the Ramist-inflected Protestant “practice” of theology was already “carried far enough to make one fear that the priestly Ignorance of a former age may gradually attack our clergy” expresses, therefore, an Erasmian-like disdain for the scholasticism he associated with a corrupt clergy. But it also reflects the flabby intellectualism Milton associated with an educational program that promoted learning mainly through compendia and epitomes, as opposed to the study of the original texts themselves.117 We might ask, therefore, what prompted Milton to write an ostensibly Ramist tract on logic? Written in all probability for his young nephews who studied under him (c. 1640–47), Milton’s Art of Logic is best understood in the context of the humanist belief that Ramist texts were useful primarily at the propaedeutic stage.118 It is therefore significant that in its slightly revised form, printed in 1672 by the Royal Society printer, Spenser Hickman, the Art of Logic appears to have been intended as a schoolbook.119 In claiming to pare down complexities for his younger audience, Milton’s “Preface” announces its intention to discard “a great number of the rules out of Aristotle by others, not to mention rules which these others have themselves thrown onto the heap.” Again, it is not Aristotle Milton seems to deplore, but the products of the Ramist-Aristotelian controversy that led to (unnecessary) confusion in logic (what the “others have thrown on to the heap”). Johnson thus reflected: “I know not whether, even in this book, he [Milton] did not intend an act of hostility against the Universities; for Ramus was one of the first oppugners of the old philosophy, who disturbed with innovations

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the quiet of the schools.”120 If Milton is indeed criticizing the universities, it may well be because he perceived that Ramism, much like the older form of scholasticism, proved in practice to “impede the learner.”121 Still, in accordance with the general aim of Ramist texts, Milton’s Art of Logic claims to provide the minimal number of precepts necessary for furnishing its readers with an experience of what logic is like (“an art is what it is by reason of what it teaches rather than by the order of its teaching”).122 Yet when Milton remarks that Ramus employed a “diffuse procedure of teaching,” even the generous concession on his part and that of the humanists that Ramus was a helpful propaedeutic is rescinded. Although Milton makes a show of writing within a Ramist tradition—of cleaning up logic and decidedly not “stuff[ing] in random rules which come from theologians”—he, too, falters in his task.123 Ockham’s razor may have appealed to Milton the educational reformer, but his final product displays that same proliferating complexity which had entrapped the Scholastics.124 Despite the initial claim in the Art of Logic to adhere to the genre of a Ramist treatise, thereby following the principles outlined in the writings of Ramus and George Downham (professor of logic at Cambridge and Fellow of Christ’s till 1593), Milton continues to introduce theology, philosophy, and poetry wherever possible.125 Since adherents to Ramism, especially in an English context, tended to locate their examples for logical analysis in the Bible and not in classical literature, Milton’s treatise—in spite of its professed allegiance to a Ramist model—evolves into something very different. Milton, it seems, was aware of the deviation. He preemptively excuses his allusions to the classics as well as the introduction of metaphysical material by pointing an accusatory finger at dogmatic Ramists or Aristotelians: “As for adding the authority of Aristotle and of other older writers to practically every rule of logic, this would be superfluous in teaching the art were it not that the suspicion of novelty, which has up to now been especially attached to Peter Ramus, must be quieted by the testimony of these older writers” (Nisi novitatis suspicio, quæ Petro Ramo hactenus potissimum obfuit, adductis ipsis veterum authorum testimoniis, esset amolienda) (italics added).126 Although Milton’s Art of Logic reveals a desire to create a substitute for Aristotelian logic through its enthusiasm for innovation (and here he praises Ramus), he remains critical

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of the Ramist method, which sacrificed clarity for the sake of brevity.127 While allegedly adopting the notion of simplification, the emphasis of the treatise remains on Milton’s right of libertas philosophandi, of altering or augmenting the argument “where I disagree with what these commentaries say.”128 Important for our purposes, then, is the fact that as humanist educators increasingly focused their efforts on confining Ramism to the merely propaedeutic, Aristotle—and, in particular, Aristotelian logic—managed to escape unscathed. Aristotle, and especially his Organon, became an immovable fixture in university learning, as the German Protestant Bartholomew Keckermann (1571–1609), writing in 1606, remarked: “Never from the beginning of the world was there a century so keen in logic, or in which more books on logic were produced and studies of logic flourished more abundantly than this seventeenth century of ours in which we live” (Nvllum ab initio víque mundi seculum fuit vel ita cupidum Logicæ, vel in quo plures libri Logici editi sunt & studia Logica magis floruerint, quam hoc est seculum à nato Christo, in quo viuimus).129 Keckermann’s works reflected the Calvinist tradition that produced them: encyclopedic in scope, they were called systema because they aimed at organizing their subject matter in accordance with the most practical or analytic method able to synthesize large quantities of material. In drawing on philosophy to buttress theology, Keckermann attempted to create a sort of universal Protestant curriculum and fast became a leader of the “new wave” of Protestant scholasticism flourishing at the beginning of the seventeenth century.130 A mere twenty years after Ramus had claimed to overthrow Aristotle’s systems in the fields of both logic and invention, Keckermann’s adherence to Aristotle—which reveals him to be duly contemptuous of Ramus—was thus turning the tide back in the direction of Aristotle’s philosophy.131 This efflorescence of Aristotelianism appears to have formed part of Milton’s education at Christ’s College, as suggested by the presence of Keckermann’s textbooks in the account books of Joseph Mead (Mede; 1586–1638), a fellow of Christ’s College and friend of Milton’s tutor.132 When coupled with Milton’s ambivalent attitude toward Ramism, the renewed interest in Aristotle may seem to imply that Milton harkened

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back to Aristotelianism. But this is not so. Ramism as Milton understood it had created a decidedly negative precedent for any new logical philosophical alternative to Aristotle, but, worse than that, it had caused a serious reentrenchment of Aristotelianism in the university that demanded adherence: “ALMA in Verse; in Prose the MIND / By ARISTOTLE’S pen defin’d,” as Matthew Prior (1664–1721) later jingled (Alma i.1415).133 In 1676, when Duport, now master of Magdalene College, Cambridge, published a collection of poems, he struck down Ramus while predicting the downfall of the new Cartesian philosophy, all in the context of applauding Aristotle’s supremacy: “Rame, exaresces, Cartesî & chartas peribis,/ Quando Stagiritæ fama perennis erit” (O Ramus, you are drying up; O Descartes, you will perish with your writings, / While the fame of the Stagirite will be everlasting).134 Yet the fact that Ramism was the foil to the everlasting fame of Aristotle was itself a problematic development. An anonymous Oxford author, interested in student directions and libraries, copied out in a notebook dating to the latter half of the seventeenth century the end of William Watts’s Directions: “Aristotle hath made all Learning beholden to him. No man hath bin able to confute him, but by him, & unlesse he had first ploughed wth his Heifer. He had ye most incomparable Witt, & was ye most Logical, & demon-strative Deliverer of himself of all ye Sonns of Nature: but, who best of all deseru’d to be calld her principall Secretary: One, who not only adorns a Library, but makes it: Qui habet Ar[istote]lem, habet Bibliothecam; is truer of him, yn of ye great Comparer.”135 In his letter to Sir John Evelyn in 1668 (see above) Bohun comments, rather less generously, that Aristotle had “acquir’d so Large an Emp-ire ore’ ye intellectual powers, That shou’d we rebell, all ye artillery of witt we could rally against him, all ye various sorts [of ] argumentation & Syllogism by wch wee might confute his [del: Topics] principles must be taken from his own Topics, Thus we must either allow him ye dictatorship of reason, or be be-holden for his weapons to conquer him with.”136 The focus of the complaint seems to be directed squarely at Aristotle, but a few sheets later Bohun clarifies the object of his attack: “Peter Lombard especially, & after him Aquinas & his followers spun him [Aristotle] out into ye nicetys wch Schoole divinity stands ∧to∧ at present;

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Then he vanishd into aire & words & scarce ye skeleton of old Aristotle remaining; They commented on him in Latin wch Cicero would scarce understand, so they ruind at once ye philosophy of this great man & divinity it-selfe, perplext ye native whiteness & beauty of religion; and made that seem in-tricate by their Cobweb distinctions wch was well written in ye plainest [blotted: &] demonstration [del: of ye Spirit].”137 The perceived tension is once again between the original (Greek) Aristotelian philosophy and its subsequent scholasticized version. Milton’s younger contemporary Joseph Glanvill (1636–80) wrote against the “School-Divinity” of Aristotelianism and dismissed scholastic “Theology . . . made out of Aristotelian principles,” just as Milton had done in 1634 in his letter to Gill.138 But the difficulty Bohun, Glanvill, and Milton all encountered was that in order to rid themselves of the pernicious effects of scholastic Aristotelianism (without falling into the trap of Ramism), they first had to find a way of curtailing Aristotle’s dominance in the field of philosophy in general. Much to their chagrin, they discovered that any attempt to counteract the domineering influence of this sort of Aristotelianism required the very analytical tools Aristotelianism had first provided. Any serious philosophic alternative to Aristotelianism, in other words, would have to fight Aristotle on his own ground. It followed that the university Aristotelianism Milton encountered had already acquired an authoritarian streak—what Bohun dubbed the “dictatorship of reason.” When Milton roundly condemns the Aristotelian peripatetic tradition (as promulgated by Keckermann) for burdening him with a philosophical inheritance that “irresponsibly confus[ed] physics, ethics, and theology with logical matters,” his remark reveals him to be well acquainted with the Aristotelian metaphysics he sarcastically denigrates for dazzling the eyes of freshmen. Milton’s writings thus exhibit a learned contempt for both scholastic Aristotelianism and Ramism.139 As university Aristotelianism gradually hardened into an incontrovertible philosophic tradition that demanded the very conformity of opinion which Milton always found inimical to intellectual and religious freedom, he met it with increasing hostility. The Aristotle Milton exhorts his fellow undergraduates to admire and to follow in Prolusion III is emphatically not the sclerotic figure he continues to deplore and mock. While we might be tempted to think that Milton’s reaction against

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Aristotle in this latter guise is driven by a prior engagement to another philosophical system, it is actually motivated by his quest for truth. Truth—as Milton tells us in his role of the proponent in Prolusion I, “Whether Day or Night is the More Excellent” (c. 1625–27)—is the goal of any inquiry: “So—whoever you may be—do not be rash enough to accuse me of arrogance on the ground that I have done violence to the utterance of the old poets, and that I have altered them without authority. That is not what I am presuming to do. I am simply trying to bring them to the test of reason, to find out in this way whether they can stand the probe of strict truth.”140 Masson, who read Prolusion I as a “castigation for somebody, if not for the whole College of Christ’s,” thought the Latin too sophisticated to be the work of a freshman. He therefore speculated that this academic exercise might belong to Milton during (or approaching) his third year at Christ’s College. While phrases such as “test of reason” and “probe of strict truth” strike our ears as characteristic of the more mature Milton, much of the prolusion’s sophistication actually rests on its disarming simplicity. While Milton politely says that he does not “presum[e]” to alter or contradict the old poets “without authority,” his posture actually masks the fact that he has already arrogated this authority to himself. Throughout his career, Milton will actively test philosophic and theological positions alike in order to see whether or not they can withstand his “probe of strict truth.” It was not without reason that Milton’s more cautious friend and fellow poet Andrew Marvell (1621–78) confessed that upon reading Paradise Lost, he was struck with fear: “the argument / Held me a while misdoubting his intent, / That he would ruin (for I saw him strong) / The sacred truths to fable and old song / (So Sampson groped the Temple’s Posts in spite) / The World o’rewhelming to revenge his sight” (“On Mr Milton’s Paradise Lost” 5–10). Despite Marvell’s subsequent retraction—“That majesty which through thy work doth reign / Draws the devout, deterring the profane. / And things divine thou treats of in such state / As them preserves, and thee, inviolate” (31–34)—we feel that Marvell’s initial reaction was correct.141 Marvell had every right to be deeply anxious about the way Milton would handle theological matters, or “things divine” (33), especially given that Milton does apply his forensic intelligence to even the “sacred Truths” (8), just as Marvell had feared

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he would. Nothing is exempt from Milton’s scrutiny, least of all the totalizing worldview of Aristotelianism that he regarded as forming the foundations upon which the glittering edifice of orthodox Christian theology was erected.142 The most lasting effect of the intellectual legacy Milton inherited from Cambridge, which proves fundamental to his later assessment of matter and substance, may therefore have been this emphasis on enlarging the scope of one’s inquiry. Throughout his career, Milton will adopt the language of his opponents only to turn it against them. His education— whatever the shortcomings he later perceives in it—encouraged him to engage seriously with Aristotle and to acknowledge that the philosophic alternatives available were themselves problematic (as in the case of Ramism). In arriving at a studied dislike for scholastic Aristotelianism, while absorbing the more humanist Aristotle through the original Greek texts and ancient commentaries, Milton richly partook of the “intellectual pluralism” at Cambridge. It is worth considering, then, that it was this pluralism that helped craft in Milton an appreciation for the free and fluid exchange of ideas and that his early encounters with both Ramism and the “despotic” Aristotelianism of the Schools paved the way for Milton’s own departure from Aristotle.143 As such, we should be wary of assigning to his writings (be they early or late) an unambiguous Aristotelian hylomorphism that is then said to lead to a full-scale materialization of substance. By cultivating in Milton a tendency toward a consciously crafted philosophic eclecticism capable of rebelling against this more “despotic” strand of seventeenth-century Aristotelianism as well as its more reductive counterpart, Ramism, the effects of this intellectual legacy also influence Milton’s linguistic practice (as discussed in chapter 2). Milton’s figurative language and metaphors alter and subvert the predominantly Aristotelian conceptions of things which more familiar terms are said to evoke—we think here of Milton’s use of “foam” in the Leviathan simile.144 As it comes into view in his poetry, this process is rhetorically powerful, highly imaginative, and profoundly dialectic. While the intellectual play associated with the young Milton’s analysis of substance and the Aristotelian categories may fall away in his later years, the engagement continues to produce dynamically fraught tensions perceptible in the

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poetry. When Milton rewrote the biblical story of the Creation and the Fall in Paradise Lost, his description of the universe and all that it contains elicits a beautiful—albeit highly idiosyncratic—vision of reality which is replete with substances, such as “foam,” that resist explication in purely Aristotelian, let alone materializing, terms.

chapter two

Milton’s Metaphysic and Linguistic Practice in Paradise Lost Every distortion of construction, the foreign idiom, the use of a word in a foreign way or with the meaning of the foreign word from which it is derived rather than the accepted meaning in English, every idiosyncrasy is a particular act of violence which Milton has been the first to commit. —t. s. eliot, “Milton II”

from the “salty” wit of milton’s Prolusions and letters to the imagery of Paradise Lost itself, Milton appears to cultivate a style that constantly subverts the jargon of a sclerotic Aristotelianism while continuing to respect Aristotle himself. In this way, he may be seen to participate in the larger seventeenth-century project of dismantling the totalizing system of an Aristotelian worldview. Yet the interpretative categories with which Milton analyzes the world and which structure his poetry’s existential relationship to external reality remain fundamentally Aristotelian. The tension this produces emerges most clearly in Raphael’s famous “one first matter all” speech, where Milton’s practice of his poetic method substantially modifies the Aristotelian metaphysic said to determine substance. As Milton’s representation of substance gradually reveals a metaphysic that fundamentally diverges from—and even successfully subverts—the Aristotelian one, we might consider the possibility that Milton’s linguistic practice actually sustains the subterranean movement already present in his metaphysic, in which ontology cannot be adequately underpinned by the single vision of monist materialism.1

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metaphysic and linguistic practice 4 1 M E TA P H O R I C A L L A N G U A G E A N D M AT E R I A L I T Y I N M I LT O N : A C A S E S T U D Y O F R A P H A E L’ S “ O N E F I R S T M AT T E R A L L” S P E E C H In order to prise open Aristotelian terms and thereby present an alternative vision of substance and matter, Milton had to make his similes and metaphors work philosophically. Though he may be credited with carrying the enterprise beyond its usual bounds, the poet Abraham Cowley (1618–67) had attempted something similar when he tried to reform philosophy through the act of writing poetry. The first stanza of Cowley’s poem “The Tree of Knowledge, That there is no Knowledge, Against the Dogmatists,” begins as follows: “The sacred Tree midst the fair Orchard grew, /The Phœnix Truth did on it rest, / And built his perfum’d Nest” (“The Tree of Knowledge,” i.1–3). More than just the rhyme feels dull. But in the following lines, we note an abrupt shift in register. “The sacred Tree” is now “That right Porphyrian Tree which did true Logick shew; / Each Leaf did learned Notions give, / And th’ Apples were Demonstrative: / So clear their Colour, and divine, / The very shade they cast did other Lights outshine” (“The Tree of Knowledge,” i.4–8).2 Something sparkles here: Cowley is attempting to move categorical logic away from the Aristotelian system by writing that the “right” tree and “true” logic belong to the same “Porphyrian” tree. With the mention of Porphyry (c. 231/32–c. 305 AD), a strong follower of the Neoplatonist Plotinus (c. 204/05–270 AD), one might expect Cowley’s tree to be fully Neoplatonic, where Neoplatonic means anti-Aristotelian. But Porphyry, author of the Isagoge, actually demonstrates how one must revert to Aristotle when it comes to logic.3 Hence, even Cowley’s biblical tree—which is meant to reject the (flawed) Aristotelian system—ends up depicting an overtly Aristotelian tree of logic. In fact, to seventeenth-century readers Cowley’s “Porphyrian tree” probably evoked a diagrammatic picture or pictorial representation of Aristotle’s categories, with the circles and lines indicating a steady movement from genus to species, proprium to definition.4 Knowledge was said to be gained by traversing the connecting lines, or differentia. In Cowley’s poem, the fact that “each Leaf did learned Notions give” (i.2) prompts us to think that we are within reach of those longed-for “Demonstrative” apples (i.3).5 While the theological warning not to eat of the tree is lighthearted—“Taste not, said God; ’tis mine and angels meat” (ii.9)—the warning against a Fall into Aristotelian logic with its “rhetoric

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and fallacies” (iii.22) is very serious indeed. Yet it is already too late: Cowley’s poem enacts the very Fall he describes. His “sacred tree” no longer stands for an alternative to the classification involved in an Aristotelian structure. By employing the process of the Aristotelian via divisa, Cowley’s poem actually epitomizes the very system it aims to oppose. Nonetheless, we must remember that Cowley is doing his best to combat Aristotle; however tongue-in-cheek his poem may be, it still strains to record his dissatisfaction with a predominantly Aristotelian philosophy. While the “Demonstrative” apples in Cowley might amuse, the tenor is more serious in “He broke that Monstrous God which stood / In midst of th’ Orchard, and the whole did claim / . . . / [he] made / Children and superstitious Men afraid. / The Orchard’s open now, and free; / Bacon has broke that Scar-crow Deity: / Come, enter, all that will, / Behold the ripen’d Fruit, come gather now your Fill” (“To the Royal Society” iv.50–51, 56–61). The language is terrifying. If Milton did read Cowley’s ode, we surmise his ears would have pricked up at hearing Cowley encourage— and then exalt—a second Fall as a reversal of the first:6 Yet still, methinks, we fain would be Catching at the Forbidden Tree; We would be like the Deity; When Truth and Falsehood, Good and Evil, we Without the Senses’ aid within ourselves would see; For ’tis God only who can find All Nature in his Mind. (“To the Royal Society” iv.62–68)7 For Cowley, the “monstrous god” of Aristotle, the father of all such false idols outlined by Bacon, needed to be smashed (Cowley seems unaware that he is erecting a new scarecrow in Aristotle’s place). Nonetheless, the language and imagery of these poems attempt to undermine their Aristotelian framework. We detect a similarity with Cowley’s enterprise when we encounter a much more professedly analogical tree in Milton: O Adam, one Almightie is, from whom All things proceed, and up to him return,

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If not deprav’d from good, created all Such to perfection, one first matter all, Indu’d with various forms, various degrees Of substance, and in things that live, of life; But more refin’d, more spiritous, and pure, As neerer to him plac’t or neerer tending Each in thir several active Sphears assignd, Till body up to spirit work, in bounds Proportiond to each kind. So from the root Springs lighter the green stalk, from thence the leaves More aerie, last the bright consummate floure Spirits odorous breathes (PL V.469–82) This speech does not seem to depict a tree at all; still less does it appear to discuss logic, let alone language. Yet Raphael has structured a vision of ascent—of working up to spirit—that is at once theological and philosophical, built from ideas of the scala naturae, Jacob’s ladder (Gen. 28.12), and Porphyry’s tree.8 The fact that Raphael speaks of “root,” “stalk,” and “leaves” and describes a “one first matter all” (V.472)—or prima materia (prime matter)—from which all created things spring makes the discussion profoundly metaphysical. In his marginalia to Paradise Lost, Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772– 1834) wrote with great excitement that here in Raphael’s speech was a true philosophic system: “There is nothing wanting to render this a perfect enunciation of the only true System of Physics, but to declare the ‘one first matter all’ to be a one Act or Power consisting in two Forces or opposite Tendencies, φusi~ diploeidh~, potentialiter sensitiva [nature with two forms, potentially sensitive]; and all that follows, the same in different Potencies.”9 Coleridge rightly discerned that Milton’s prima materia was not straightforwardly material. Especially congenial to Coleridge’s mind was the notion that Milton was speaking about prime matter as if it were a quasi-material, quasi-spiritual stuff, capable of connecting two worlds—this and the transcendent— which are poles apart. If we were to say that this first matter is wholly material, the entirety of Milton’s universe would be relegated to the material side. But in depicting this “first matter” as a strange potentiality

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cusping on power, Raphael disrupts the overriding monist tenor of the metaphor.10 Raphael fumbles for terms with which to describe this elusive “all” (V.470–72). The progression of his speech is contorted by its frequent attempts to return and clarify what “first matter” is, so that the essence of it is that “God, who created all such things (which proceed) to perfection, at first made them from one matter, which was then endowed with various forms.” Here, prime matter—once “Indu’d with various forms, various degrees / Of substance” (V.473–74)—yields to remote, or secondary, matter. But since prime matter is itself without form and properties, it cannot therefore be said to be material, as secondary matter is. A good Aristotelian would say that matter obviously has no essence or form; the statement, “In its essence [Milton’s] matter is incorruptible” would make little sense philosophically because matter on its own cannot have an essence, a form.11 Still, the inadvertent oxymoron, “matter’s essence,” reflects a sense we have of color in the notion: prime matter is no longer a mere logical fiction. It begins to feel like a something—albeit a something existing predefinition. Raphael’s use of the word “one,” which itemizes and hence distinguishes this “first matter” from all other substance, reinforces this general feeling. Yet the word “one” also draws attention to the way this “first matter” not only constitutes everything created in the universe, but also underlies it; prima materia exists as the fluid hupokeimenon (uJpokeivmenon; Latin: subiectum), or formless and characterless stuff, of created substance.12 As prime matter is divorced from the classification of the simply material, we discover that terms familiar to Aristotelian psychology and metaphysics—such as “matter” (472), “forms” (473), “degrees” (473), “substance” (474), and “spirit” (478)—are increasingly put under pressure. Undifferentiated prima materia graduates into two things: matter and spirit, as Coleridge observed. The effect is to draw attention to the way we tend to think of matter as that which is consistently concrete. Raphael’s speech reminds us that we can get things only from the combination of matter and form (as Aristotle says). The Milton of De Doctrina Christiana who speaks of “material forms,” including the human soul, as being produced “ex potentia materiæ”—that is, from a potencycum-power (or what the Yale edition has translated as “the power of matter”)—appears to have agreed with this view.13 While it may seem

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strange to speak of a power already existing in matter (and especially one that produces a form), Aristotle thought that matter desires form as the female yearns for the male (Ph. I.9.192a20). It may be that when Milton states that forms are produced “from the power of matter,” he refers to the way in which matter actively “calls out” to be enformed. All instantiated forms are therefore necessarily material because they are in material or sensible objects.14 When, in the Art of Logic, Milton makes the claim that the action of form on matter produces a “thing,” he boldly states that “but of whatever sort the things themselves may be, such, too, should be their matter” (Quales autem res ipsæ sunt, talis materia earum esse debet). This means that were I to dream of a hippogriff, the matter in which the hippogriff exists is a “dream-matter.” Similarly, if I think of a pure mathematical object, such as a circle, Milton would admit that it has a mathematical and intelligible “matter.” The conclusion Milton draws is that “all the logician considers in matter is that a thing be composed out of [it]” (Id enim solum Logicus in materia spectat, ut res ex ea sit).15 This idea is distinctly un-Aristotelian. Reality pictured this way depicts different types of matter, all of which are conceived as far more elastic and various than in Aristotle because matter is no longer simply equated with the material: “since we know that matter is common to all entities and nonentities, not peculiar to sensible and corporeal things” (ut intelligamus materiam etiam esse omnium entium & non entium communem; non rerum sensibilium & corporearum propriam).16 So, while an Aristotelian would frown with disgust if we were to speak of the “matter of enquiry,” Milton, or so it seems, would have let the phrase stand, the implication being that things need not be sensible in order to exist. Language, which is now seen to provide a relational context that defines what it is we are talking about, appears to be structured by a conceptual framework largely comprised of metaphors (such as “matter of enquiry”). Since we have no other way to speak of the asyet-unintelligible, we revert to metaphorical language.17 Hence, the poetry in Raphael’s vision of man working “up to spirit” plays heavily on the commonplace metaphor “man is a plant.”18 We have to think only of Robert Herrick’s (1591–1674) “Divination by a Daffadill” to be reminded of its currency: “When a Daffadill I see, / Hanging down his head t’wards me; / Guesse I may, what I must be: / First, I shall decline my

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head; / Secondly, I shall be dead; / Lastly, safely buryed.”19 Yet Milton’s metaphor rises in the opposite direction—away from the gross materiality of an earthly body: “So from the root / Springs lighter the green stalk, from thence the leaves / More aerie, last the bright consummate floure / Spirits odorous breathes” (PL V.479–82). While it may be felt that the tree Raphael describes is not an imaginative analogy but instead an actual instance of the thoroughly materialist process in question, the minute we come to the “so” at V.479, the tree begins to work as an analogy. And an “analogical tree” in its broadest classification is a type of metaphor. This means that despite its assertion of a fundamental similarity in the process (both man and tree strive for a perfection that is associated less with the material and more with the spiritual world), the analogy still works hard to close the preexisting gap between the different substances mentioned (bodily matter and soul stuff ). To reduce the entire process to the material is to miss the rich tension evident in the poetry.20 As prima materia branches out into different types of substances— as spiritual and bodily matter—Raphael describes the transmogrification of an already established thing: man, he says, may “at last turn all to Spirit / Improv’d by tract of time, and wingd ascend / Ethereal, as we” (V.497–99). By way of a gradual spiritualization of each part, man as the soul-body is said to be divinized: “Till body up to spirit work, in bounds / Proportiond to each kind” (V.478–79). (In De Doctrina Christiana, Milton will describe this as being “not for the separation of the soul from the body, but for the perfecting of both” [non profecto ad separationem a corpore, sed ad utriusque perfectionem adipiscendam]).21 The metaphor “man is a plant” suddenly becomes richly complex: man’s body as well as his soul is seen to blossom into spirituality, albeit independently. Francis Cherry, citing the Polish Jesuit Martinus Smiglecius (Smiglecki; 1562/ 4–1618) in his student notebooks, made the same distinction between bodily and spiritual grades: “Which formal grade is neither spiritual nor corporeal, but in spiritual things, is spiritual, and in corporeal things, is bodily (Qui gradus formali nec est spiritualis, nec corporeus, sed in spiritualibus est spiritualis, et in corporeis est corporeus. Smig.).22 Despite his protestations in De Doctrina Christiana that one can dispense with such dualities of soul and body, Milton still continues to speak of them as separate entities.23 Raphael’s metaphor in Paradise Lost similarly speaks

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of prelapsarian “perfection” as being achieved by the body and soul in “due proportionality”—that is, in a manner appropriate to each substance in question. The process Milton describes is reminiscent of the corresponding ascent of body and soul described by the Cappadocian father Bishop Gregory of Nyssa (c. 335–d. after 385/86 AD), in section eight of his treatise “On the Making of Man.” 24 The operations of the soul in Gregory are first spoken of as a “power of growth” likened to “some root buried in the ground” (we think of Milton’s “root” at V.479). The soul next attains the “gift of sensibility,” which Gregory says emerges as when “the plant comes forth to the light and shoots its shoot to the sun” (here we think of Milton’s “green stalk” and “leaves / More aerie” at V.480–81). Finally, Gregory writes that the soul achieves “the power of reason” and “shines forth like a fruit.”25 The stress on similitude over simple identification is crucial. Similarly, Raphael images the metaphor “fruits of reason” with a piece of real fruit. In both Gregory and Milton, then, the highest form of perfection is depicted by a tactile, fleshy fruit. But Milton immediately complicates this picture by oddly setting the fruit against the more rarefied picture of a flower that with “spirits odorous breathes” (V.482); fruit smacks of the material, not spiritual, world and is in sharp contrast to the thing imaged in the sequence of the ascent—namely, the “bright consummate floure” (V.481), whose fragrance wafts toward immateriality. It might be objected that I am placing too much emphasis on the ontological implications of the flower’s “spirits” and not enough on the fruit. As the final word after the description of this process of transformation (V.484), “fruit” clearly marks out a material end (through a physiological process of digestion no less), and this would seem to support the monist-materialist line. But as Milton knew, the word “fruit” is etymologically rich. Most people think fruition means “bearing fruit,” but it actually means “enjoyment” (derived from the Latin verb fruor and its participle, fructus).26 In the Christian tradition, the frui-uti dichotomy was closely associated with the pagan idea of utile-dulce—as expressed by the Roman poet Horace (65–8 BC)—in which the love of enjoyment of a certain thing is distinguished from the love of its use.27 Broadly speaking, what is usus consists in helping us attain secondary advantages, but Christian theology says that God should never be reduced to the “means.” God is the final cause that we adore and enjoy for its own

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sake, so that—as Augustine said—we glorify the “fruitio Dei” (enjoyment of God).28 It is to the latter sense that the God of Paradise Lost refers when, turning to the creature-that-is-the-Son, he explains that the Son’s voluntary offer to die on behalf of man has made him “Equal to God, and equally enjoying / God-like fruition” (III.306–07; italics added). When Satan first sees earth, the experience affords him less pleasure than he expected because he beholds Adam and Eve “in the happie Garden plac’t, / Reaping immortal fruits of joy and love, / Uninterrupted joy, unrivald love / In blissful solitude” (III.66–69; italics added). In both instances, the “fruition” and “fruits” connote (active) spiritual enjoyment—godly love—rather than physical or material rewards. It follows that Adam’s and Eve’s sexual relations are governed by the rights of “wedded Love” (IV.750), which are immediately contrasted to the very different “Casual fruition” (IV.767) of lust. As the poem progresses and moves closer to the moment of the Fall, fruition as spiritual enjoyment experiences a fall through language into gross carnality, into the sensual fruit of sin (I.2–3). Raphael does not intend to invoke the fallen sense of the word “fruit.” While his speech inclines to emphasize the material and the ostensible biological process that absorbs these “fruits” as “Mans nourishment,” the materializing element in the verse immediately meets a countercurrent in the word “sublim’d”: “flours and thir fruit / Mans nourishment, by gradual scale sublim’d / To vital Spirits aspire, to animal, / To intellectual, give both life and sense, / Fansie and understanding, whence the Soule / Reason receives, and reason is her being, / Discursive, or Intuitive; discourse / Is oftest yours, the latter most is ours, / Differing but in degree, of kind the same” (V.482–90; italics added). The word “sublim’d” refers to an alchemical process of moving a solid to a gaseous state, the implication being that both “flowers and thir fruit” become “spirits odorous.” This movement to the increasingly immaterial is then reinforced by the theological meaning of “sublimation,” which evokes spiritual elevation or purification. The focus of Raphael’s speech is not yet on “fruit” (for fallenness) but is, instead, on the idea of a process of spiritual refinement, in which “fruit” conveys a godly end (“fruitio Dei”).29 The alchemical conversion thus describes a process in which material substance is returned to its

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beginnings—to the state of the “one first matter all” that occupies a moment prior to differentiation. 30 In Raphael’s speech, this process of differentiation begins only when we begin to place things on a spectrum, with spiritual perfection as telos: “But more refin’d, more spiritous, and pure, / As neerer to him plac’t or neerer tending” (V.475–76). In order to push us back to this state of undifferentiation, the emphasis in the speech must be given not to the material image (of fruit) but to its meaning (godly fruition); in like manner, the flower-as-spirit (V.481–82) must be privileged over and above the more earthly flower at V.483. The result is that we are no longer speaking about a substance ascending through possible ontological states defined by a latitude of forms. In this picture, “body” and “spirit” are juxtaposed—placed in opposition— as indicated by the word “kind.” In English, the word “kind” may refer either to the genus or to the species, and the context here—“Differing but in degree, of kind the same” (V.490)—implies that it refers to the genus, or the broader category under which species exist (animal is a genus which covers different species, or types, of animals). Under the genus (or “kind”) of “finite created beings,” Milton places the angels and man. The angels are distinguished as a separate species (“differing in degree”) by virtue of their capacity for intellection, which requires no body; meanwhile, man is an embodied creature, endowed with the faculty for discursive thought. The Richardsons (the elder; 1667–1745; the younger, 1694–1771) observed that Milton’s choice of “corporeal” at V.413 was “justly Oppos’d to Incorporeal, which Corporal would not have been,” precisely because “corporal” refers to the human body and not to body as such. Raphael’s comment underlines the idea that while angels and men share a genus (“of kind the same;” V.490), they are distinguished by species: spirit is one species of substance; body is another.31 Confusion arises because we are not always as alive as we should be to the two ways in which Raphael’s speech uses “spirit.” While the term clearly expresses intellectual, or spiritual, substance (V.478), it also signifies a quasi-material, rarefied substance connecting soul to body (V.484– 85). Readings of this passage often attempt to elide this distinction. In Fallon’s reading, Milton is said to modify a Galenic tradition that moves both spirit and soul in Milton toward an “unambiguous materialism.” In his analysis of V.483–90, Fallon writes, “Milton skips the first spirit, the natural spirits, to begin with the vital spirits, and adds his own invention,

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the ‘intellectual spirits.’ . . . While the construction is remarkably fluid— the soul receives something from the intellectual spirits, and thus seems separate from them, but what the soul receives, reason, is ‘her being’— to save the coherence of this passage one must take the ‘intellectual spirits’ as interchangeable with the soul.”32 The model here described is indeed confirmed by Raphael’s process of “thinned out” materiality (V.482–85)—until, that is, we come to the line that declares “reason” to be “her [the soul’s] being” (V.487). With this definition, the monist rarefaction model is shattered. If the essence of the soul is understood to be the intellect, or mind, then “intellectual spirits” cannot be identical with the soul.33 This idea is developed in an admittedly controversial passage of De anima, where Aristotle reckons that the intellect is a transcendent substance: “[the intellect,] only when separated . . . is its true self, and this, its essential nature, alone is immortal and eternal” (cwrisqei;~ d∆ ejsti; movnon tou`q` ∆ o{per ejstiv, kai; tou`to movnon ajqavnaton kai; ajid? ion).34 In De Generatione Animalium, Aristotle goes on to say that the mind is of a divine element (ti qei`on), and this is congenial to his claim in De anima, where the intellect is “separable and impassive and unmixed, being in its essential nature an activity” (oJ nou`~ cwristo;~ kai; ajpaqh;~ kai; ajmighv~, thÛ` oujs ivaÛ w]n ejnevrgeia).35 In the writings of the later Greek Aristotelian Neoplatonic commentators, such as the pagan Simplicius and the Christian Philoponus, Aristotle was thought to distinguish between two types of intellection: one, in which things are known directly (possible intellect); the other, in which reason operates discursively (agent intellect).36 When Milton has Raphael speak of “the Soule” as a substance which receives reason as its essence (V.487), the remark immediately yields a definition of the rational soul in terms of an independent (nonphysicalist) substance. The materialist model—in which we have a graduation from dense to rarefied material substance—is simply not adequate to cover the transfiguration Raphael describes. Thus, when Milton speaks of “intellectual spirits,” he refers to “spirit” as a vehicle for the (human) rational soul and differentiates it from the spiritual substance of intellect itself. Bacon draws attention to this distinction when he asserts that “the fabric of the [bodily] parts is the organ of the spirit, as the spirit is the organ of the reasonable soul, which is incorporeal and divine.”37 Like Bacon, Milton never equates “intellectual

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spirits” with the spiritual substance of the soul. This means that while the rest of the soul decays (and this includes the vital, animal, and intellectual spirits), the rational soul does not. The human intellect, as Bacon writes, “is not propagated, nor subject either to repair or death.”38 The challenge of Raphael’s speech is to explain how the greater ontological division between the substance of spirit (here taken as intellect) and that of body is overcome. The suggestion is that there is an instantaneous dispensing of one substantial form for the taking up of another. Writing in more protoscientific terms, Bacon claims that “if the assimilating body be finer and rarer than that assimilated,” dilatation must occur.39 In arguing that alimentation involves distillation and rarefaction, Bacon provisionally says that assimilation “dilates and condenses.” The unwanted material is purged as an exhalation of sort: “what redounds, transpires / Through Spirits with ease” (V.438–39).40 The use of alchemical terms—“sublimed,” “transpire,” etc.—attempts to create a bridge between the substances of body and spirit. But alchemy alone is incapable of bringing about this ontological union. While Milton proposes that food is converted to spiritual substance in the same way that the “Empiric Alchimist” (V.440) is said “to turn, or holds it possible to turn / Metals of drossiest Ore to perfet Gold / As from the Mine” (V.441–43), his interjected “or” in the phrase “or holds it possible to turn” (V.441) sheds an Avicenna-cum-Erastian skepticism over Raphael’s speech and the alchemist’s (supposed) ability to transmute one species (like metal) into another by dissolving its constituent parts. The Latin dictum “Quare sciant artifices alkimie species metallorum transmutari non posse” (Therefore let the artificers of alchemy know that the species of metals cannot be transmuted), holds—unless, as Latin commentators hastened to add, the object was first “resolved to prime matter.”41 In Jean de Meun’s (c. 1240–1305) amplified ending to Guillaume de Lorris’s Roman de la Rose (which Milton read) alchemical conversion requires just this impossible resolution to prima materia: “Though Art so much of alchemy should learn / That he all metals could with colors tint, / Though he should work himself to death, he ne’er / One species could transmute to other kind, / If he should fail to reduce / Each to its primary matter” (Romance of the Rose; italics added).42 Although Milton argues in Prolusion IV that there is not—nor can there ever be—a complete resolution to prime matter, Raphael’s account of man’s ascent in terms of an

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analogical tree (V.469–82) suggests otherwise.43 As the tenor and vehicle of Raphael’s metaphor fall apart, prima materia remains the only unifying substance because it belongs not to the category of “the material” but to the broader category of “the created.” The Aristotelian understanding of prime matter has undergone a radical revision at Raphael’s hands, and the grammar in his speech— which is all in terms of the material plant energetically growing and changing so that the prime agent of the change is the material thing— registers this shift. The syntax draws attention to the fact that Milton could have chosen to have written a very different sentence: God as subject could assist matter and irradiate it with colored forms, raising it up. Instead, prime matter as mysterious substrate has a power all its own to translate and transform. What this implies is that the material side of the equation—the thrusting plant—has within it certain characteristics that sit very uncomfortably with the natural inertia of full monist materialism. Raphael’s description of prime matter has already loaded within it a preexistent, nonmaterial power. Although this process is presented as gradual and so, in a way, continuous, the sequence the angel sets out is touched with wonder precisely because of the breakthrough at the end into a radically different mode of being. Yet this continuity masks a necessary discontinuity—namely, the transition from the material to the immaterial. While Fallon seeks to exorcise the demon in the lines by extending “matter” to cover “spirit,” and “spirit” to cover “soul,” Milton’s way of dealing with the difficulty is really almost the opposite of Fallon’s: he plants seeds of immateriality within the supposedly material primitive organism, so that the final summation, though still mysterious, is rendered believable.44 As man’s body is said to turn “all to Spirit” (497), the type of “reason” his soul receives is presumably moved to the higher (angelic) level; “wingd ascend / Ethereal, as we” (V.498–99). Fallon’s “gradually rarefying” model seems more applicable here than at V.483–90, but when Milton introduces a “perhaps” at line 496 (“And from these corporal nutriments perhaps / Your bodies may at last turn all to Spirit”; 496–97; italics added), he casts doubt over the efficacy such a biological process of graduated change (498) might achieve. Despite the seemingly smooth progression up a ladder of increasingly rarefied substance (on a monist scale), Raphael actually pictures a leap from material bodies to

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“Intelligential substances” (V.408), the latter of which express their essence in purely intellectual activity (even in the act of love; VIII.622– 29). This dynamic picture of change suddenly overturns the sense of hierarchy between man and angel. This idea is reinforced by Milton’s use of the term “bounds,” which creates an ontological pun of sorts, thereby underscoring the metaphysical gymnastics required for one substance to become another. The phrase “in bounds / Proportiond to each kind” (V.478–79) may at first strike us as imposing limits (“bounds”) on substance, thereby restricting movement. Since we are talking about corporeal substance (“Till body up to spirit work”; 478), this could imply that spirit is placed on a continuum, at the highest end of a physical spectrum.45 This same use of “bound” as a verb is employed when Satan enters Eden: “At one slight bound high over leap’d all bound” (IV.181). As Richardson was quick to hear, there is a pun here on the French word “Bondir,” meaning “to Leap, and Slight.” When the alchemical subtext of Raphael’s passage is taken into account, the word “bounds” feels less like a noun and more like a verb: substance leaps into the genus of the angels. The pun proves the Latin maxim “Natura in operationibus suis non facit saltum” (Nature in its operations does not make leaps) to be wrong.46 While one might be tempted to say that the jump images a leap into a rarefied materiality, this is not the case. The Newtonian physician George Cheyne (1671/2–1743), writing much later in his Essay on Regimen (1740), carefully avoids equating spiritual substance directly with rarefied matter: “Spiritual Substance was analogous to Matter infinitely rarefied, refin’d or sublim’d” (italics added).47 Note that spirit as substance or species of created being is merely likened to or made analogous to the tenuous materiality of man’s (internal) spirits.48 Yet Raphael’s description of a spiritualizing metamorphosis—in which Adam supposedly leaps into the substance of those mysterious “bodies” promised at the Last Judgment—is problematic for other reasons as well. The transformation described in the angel’s speech describes a process of refinement, or move toward perfection through alchemical terms, and alchemy—as Charles Webster has discussed— was generally understood in the seventeenth century as a way of reversing the effects of the Fall (we think of Cowley’s “To the Royal Society”).49 Raphael’s figurative language richly depicts the benefits Adam will reap

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from spiritual obedience, but its allusions to alchemy smuggle in postlapsarian conceptions and connotations to the prelapsarian landscape of Eden. The speech thus produces a sort of afterimage of the Fall that gradually darkens as the epic moves toward the actual event. Still, it could be said that this rich subtext of postlapsarian contraries within a still prelapsarian world renders the process Raphael describes fruitfully dynamic. The alchemical images of translation and transmutation evoke notions of trial in both an empirical and spiritual sense; as Milton wrote in 1644, “That which purifies us is trial, and trial is by what is contrary.” Yet as soon as we accept the notion that contraries clash and that “mans nourishment” (the physical) can turn into intellectual spirits, just as body can aspire to mind (V.478), we implicitly endorse the alchemist’s claim that a spiritus vitae, or preserving spirit, must exist for such an ontological change to occur. What Raphael’s speech serves to underscore is the idea that the ever-present substratum of prime matter establishes a mysterious continuity between our world and the next— between material and spiritual substance.50 With perspicacious hesitation, Raphael’s imagery approaches the mystical Paracelsian doctrine of the natural turning into the supernatural—to what Henry Vaughan (c. 1613–76) described as “Water’s refin’d to motion, air to light.”51 As soon as prime matter is taken as a power—or strange force field—that causes things to arise, the metaphoric breakdown of certain substances leads us necessarily to conceive of the process by which a substance is said to be purified: what was the “mattery matter” of “flours and thir fruit” (482) is first thinned out, strained, and finally distilled, until it is fit for incorporation to “vital,” “animal,” and, ultimately, “intellectual” spirits; similarly, man may elevate himself—or “work up to” spiritual substance—through (passive) obedience. What Fallon placed on a sliding scale of density–rarefaction may actually be reconceived as a spiritual advancement or deterioration, rising and falling in accordance with its subject. After the Fall, when man is a “distemper” and his spirit “tainted” by sin (XI.52–53), the “pure immortal Elements” (XI.50) expel him from Paradise. The union of spiritual substance with earthly material is irreparably sundered (XII.74–78), but this process of cleansing through ejection is the obverse of Raphael’s vision of purification through incorporation. The idea of trial as that which yields a choice reveals prime matter to be the principle that allows for

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assorted processes of differentiation. As Raphael’s imagery moves prima materia slowly away from its standard Aristotelian definition as potentia qua potential and toward an alignment with potentia qua power—toward what Coleridge described as “one Act or Power consisting in two Forces or opposite Tendencies, φusi~ diploeidh~ [a double nature]”—his discussion of spirits nobly attempts to erect a conceptual framework capable of negotiating the huge leap from earthly substance to spiritual substance. Raphael’s analogical thinking thus has prime matter slowly exceed its traditional role as a medium of change—or as a substratum of potentiality deemed necessary for Aristotle’s “latitude of forms.”52 As prime matter in Milton oscillates between potentiality and power, it repeatedly eludes definition. Like a cause known to exist only by its effects, prime matter retreats into the dark domains of the occult, with its alleged materiality belonging to that of the image alone.53 As Cowley asserted, poetry is seen to possess its own “Phœnix Truth.” The metaphor of ascent (the growing plant) in Milton thus has an imagery and concomitant logic all its own. Implicitly drawing on Aristotle’s claim that poetry is a mimesis of reality, capable of possessing the power to “partly complete what nature cannot bring to finish,” Milton’s poetry brings about the transformation natural philosophy cannot complete or adequately define.54 In this sense, Milton’s use of Aristotle against Aristotle is audacious; it flies in the face of more standard interpretations of Aristotle, such as that by the Dutch peripatetic philosopher and educator Franco Petri Burgersdijck (1590–1636), who outlined two forms of metaphorical discourse, the “proper” and “less proper.” According to Burgersdijck, “Proper discourse is transparent in the mind and suitable for teaching: for the thing itself refuses to be decorated, is content to be taught. Metaphorical discourse is obscure in the mind and not suitable for teaching; because by sticking images in the way it distracts the mind from the subject before it” (Oratio propria, menti perspicua est, & apta ad docendum: Namque Ornari res ipsa negat, contenta doceri. Oratio Metaphorica est menti obscura, & ad docendum non apta; quia objectis imaginibus distrahit mentem à re proposita).55 But in opposition to Burgersdijck, Milton’s poetry demonstrates that metaphors and images are themselves great instructors, capable of giving liberty of thought to language as well as to philosophy. Like Cowley

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before him, Milton attempts to free his poetry from the Aristotelian conception of things that structure logical discourse—to free language from the rigidity of old terms which are now incapable of bodying forth reality in figurative terms. This attitude shares an underlying sympathy with the broader historical movement of the period that envisioned a “new instauration” in natural philosophy. As in Cowley’s rejection of the former “sacred Tree” of “true” Porphyrian logic, Baconian reformers sought to shift the focus on to the contemplation of things (res), whose notions could then be expressed (perfectly) in speech. Bacon, who thought language was so thoroughly corrupted by the “idols of the marketplace” that it had corrupted even our powers of conception, strenuously advanced the idea that language must be drawn not from our words and their subsequent concepts but from things themselves. His directive finds expression in Cowley’s verse—“From Words, which are but Pictures of the Thought, / (Though we our Thoughts from them perversly drew) / To things, the Minds right Object, he it brought” (“To the Royal Society” iv.69–71)—which emphasizes the idea that the “right object” must be in front of us for contemplation and method of induction to work. That is, the object must first give us a notion before the word can become the material representation of this notion: “The real object must command / Each Judgment of his eye, and Motion of his Hand” (iv.87–88).56 While this attribution of primacy to “things” may appear to imply a simple language of names in which metaphor need play no part, it rapidly emerges that the renewed movement—from things to word to concept—has a complex dynamic within which metaphor plays a vital role. Bacon’s writings are full of metaphor, such as “idols of the marketplace,” and these create new concepts and hence new definitions for old words. In a climate heavily indoctrinated with Aristotelian philosophy, Cowley and Milton—for vastly different reasons and in vastly different ways—both hanker after an alternative to the Scholastico-Aristotelian metaphysic they inherited. Raphael’s image of the tree (“one first matter all”) produces a rich field of concepts mediating between word and thing, a field in which both imagery and metaphor play a significant role in redefining the underlying (Aristotelian) metaphysic. Milton’s linguistic practice, which militates against a nominalist account of language and its attendant materialization of ideas, makes us register the fact that

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the work performed by concepts is as important as the object under discussion.

“ W H AT ’ S

I N A N A M E ?”: N A M I N G A N D S I G N I F I C AT I O N

IN PARADISE LOST

So much the rather thou Celestial light Shine inward, and the mind through all her powers Irradiate, there plant eyes, all mist from thence Purge and disperse, that I may see and tell Of things invisible to mortal sight. (PL III.51–55) I have attempted to show that Raphael’s speech to Adam brings into focus how Milton uses poetic devices to stage a conscious rebellion against the sedimentation of linguistic structures, and that this poetic insurgence entails a resistance to the supposed materializing tendencies of Milton’s poetry. When Cowley composed his ode “To the Royal Society,” Bacon was the great prophet-cum-redeemer, ushering in a language about things. But in his invocation to book III, Milton desires to see into things, to be “endu’d” with the “nature,” or essence, of things. The role of the mind in relation to language mounts high. In his biblical commentary, the Church of England clergyman Nicholas Gibbens (fl. 1601–02) remarked that “when we comprehend all creatures in our mind, and so readily conceive in thought, so many matters, so different, so far distant, this is the shadow of Gods ubiquity.” For a poet like Milton who does not merely comprehend but also actively creates new substances—such as the stuff of prime matter or of allegory— Gibbens’s safe “shadow” silently disappears.57 Just as God illuminated Adam’s mind for naming, so it appears that the process of reconceptualization belongs to the illuminated mind of the poet. In challenging the language and conceptual framework of the dominant philosophy of Aristotelianism through his poetry, Milton may be seen to revisit the much older debate about what words express (words or things?) and to address whether words are themselves capable of depicting reality as it truly is. John Leonard, who has astutely discussed Milton’s “use of prelapsarian and postlapsarian names” in Paradise Lost, pays particular attention to

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the importance the concept of a name has in the light of its “naturalist” or “conventionalist” role. But whereas Leonard explores this specifically in relation to the significance attached to pre- and postlapsarian modes of naming, I address what names signify for Milton: things or ideas or both. It may be possible to understand Milton’s view as modulating between the “picture-presentation” view of reality (encouraged by Aristotelianism)—in which words attempt to represent things (we think of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s [1889–1951] builders with their slabs)—and its alternative, which rejects the former for a theory of language as agency, of “putting language up against reality”(italics added).58 When Leonard draws attention to Sin’s ominous pledge to Death— “His thoughts, his looks, words, actions all infect” (X.608)—the first thing on the list is not “words” but “thoughts.”59 Thoughts qua conceptions and mental states are now corruptible. The implications are huge, especially if we think of words representing concepts that then construct a vision of reality. Yet for the majority of those living in the seventeenth century this was the common view as outlined in Aristotle’s De Interpretatione, the locus classicus for language theory. As Aristotle argued, mental experiences furnish us with universal notions that are said to be the same for all men: “Spoken words are the symbols of mental experience.” Since these spoken words are imposed ad placitum—that is, by convention—Aristotle thought “nothing is by nature a noun or name— it is only so when it becomes a symbol.” The upshot of the argument is that we are said to learn a set of words that refers to a group of conventionally identifiable, commonly shared notions. The Coimbra Commentaries—which were the contributions of the Jesuit professors at the Colégio das Artes at Coimbra, Portugal, to their order’s ratio studiorum (1599)—were widely read on the Continent as well as in England. Clearly summarizing Aristotle’s position, they write in De Signis, “Truly, concepts and the things signified by those concepts are everywhere the same” (conceptus verò, & res per eosdem significatas, vbíque easdem esse).60 This understanding of linguistic epistemology is grounded in Aristotelian metaphysics. In opposition to Plato, Aristotle argues that we gain knowledge of individuals through sense perception and subsequently arrive at knowledge of universals. But the Aristotle who asserted, “Experience is the knowledge of particulars, but not of universals,” also claimed, “When

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one of a number of logically indiscriminable particulars has made a stand, the earliest universal is present in the soul: for though the act of sense-perception is of the particular, its content is universal—is man, for example, not the man Callias” (italics added).61 This statement, which privileges the universal, recalls Plato, not Aristotle—primarily because it runs counter to Aristotle’s overarching argument for immanent forms. In his Physics, though, Aristotle chose to privilege knowledge of the universal again: “We must advance from generalities [kaqovlou] to particulars [kaq∆ e[kasta]; for it is a whole that is best known to senseperception, and a generality is a kind of whole, comprehending many things within it like parts [w{sper mevrh].” Even if we take kaqovlou and kaq∆ e[kasta to mean the less frequent “concrete whole” and “constituent factors” (instead of “generals” and “particulars”), the Greek remains ambiguous. It still reads as though the universal is given priority, meaning that our senses first receive the whole and then proceed to identify constituent parts. Aristotle may have opted for this position because, as he acknowledged in his Metaphysics, it is impossible to know the infinite number of particulars through sense perception and cognition.62 In his account of acts of naming, Aristotle returns to discuss this movement from universal concepts to particulars—from “man” to “that man” (such as “Socrates”). The Aristotle who writes that “much the same thing happens in relation of the name [ojnovmata] to the formula [to;n lovgon]” makes it clear that a name begins by referring to the unanalyzed whole; the definition, meanwhile, takes into account properties of the individual. Such a view, as outlined in the Physics, is fundamentally heuristic: a “child [who] begins by calling all men ‘father,’ and all women ‘mother,’” Aristotle opines, will “later on distinguish each of them.” Aristotle appears to be thinking in terms of what this experience of differentiation is like. As the child moves to discover how this object exists, he formulates a definition. Experience is not conveyed by given particulars but by working terms that operate in (our) practical world. The question this raises is whether when we say a name—such as “mother” and “father”—it exists first for an “unanalyzed whole” or for the “undifferentiated experience.” If the latter, it appears that primary infantile experience supplies us with a kind of preuniversality to assist (later) the universality of concepts.63

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Frans A. J. De Haas has argued that this second reading is a valid interpretation of Aristotle. In the ancient commentary tradition, the Neoplatonist Themistius (317–87 AD) challenged Alexander of Aphrodisias’s claim that Aristotle said contradictory things over the priority of the universal. Themistius’s argument was, “what is common” is equivalent to the universal. By proposing that Aristotle had set up a mode of inquiry which progressed from the general to the particular, Themistius enabled one to read Aristotle’s Physics as a text which dealt with universal concepts.64 Renaissance thinkers who inherited this interpretation of Aristotle were thus open to the suggestion that it is by means of relational categories and a process of specific differentiation (we think of the branches of Cowley’s “Porphyrian tree”) that a child is able to learn from convention to distinguish Aunt June from his mother, Uncle Henry from his father. What is significant in Milton’s poetry—and, especially, Raphael’s “one first matter all” speech—is that it asks what happens if the name becomes redundant in order to cause us to rethink the definitio rei (“definition of a thing”).65 In Paradise Lost, we return to Eden, or, as the Romantics might say, to a second childhood—to a time prior to all definition and all conventionality. Eden is the place, as Raphael says, where “no place / Is yet distinct by name” (VII.535–36). 66 After the Fall, Michael describes the future to Adam, adding a bracketed statement that “things by thir names I call, though yet unnam’d” (XII.140). Note that Milton’s application of the heuristic process moves toward a very different end than it does in Aristotle: if we name things and proceed to show how these things are different from their long-standing conventional names, things end up being refitted and reclothed in order to evoke new conceptions. This type of neologism does not create a “picture view” of reality but runs after a process of thought emergent in language— in acts of free, unconstrained, and hence unconventional linguistic utterance. For those of Milton’s contemporaries who sought an alternative to Aristotle’s account of conventional and arbitrary naming, the natural touchstone was Plato. Plato proposed that a probable linguistic account would be one in which words might perfectly correspond to the essence of the (signified) thing. Cratylus, in his eponymous Platonic dialogue, promotes just such a naturalist view of language against his

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friend Hermogenes, who views names as being ex instituto (from convention).67 As part of the scholastic and, later, humanist tradition, Renaissance theological tracts and biblical commentaries chose to couch the debate over Cratylian (Cra. 389C–390A) or Hermogenean (Cra. 385D) accounts of language in terms of an exegesis of Adam’s naming of the animals at Genesis 2.19. Among those inclining to the essentialist, or natural, view of language are those who thought God, not Adam, did the naming. The Dutch Remonstrant Simon Episcopius (1583–1643), pupil of Arminius (1560– 1609) and successor to Franz Gomarus (1563–1641) as professor of theology at Leiden, pointed out that scripture never mentions Adam as creating the names. He concluded that just as the animals were gathered together by God, so too were they named by God.68 In like manner, Konrad Aslacus (Kort Aslakssøn; 1564–1624), father of Scandinavian Hebraists, agreed that the Genesis phrase, “ut videret quomodo vocaret illa” (and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof; Genesis 2.19), surely referred to God (“scilicet vel ipse Deus”), albeit through anthropopatheia (the attribution of human affections and abilities to God). God, in other words, gave names to the animals through an agent: namely, Adam (“per Adamum”). By studiously observing the creatures as they passed, Adam, Aslacus argued, learned the names of the animals from their Paracelsian signatures.69 To the question whether language was essential or conventional—“Whether the name of the thing is given from its first nature or whether while one examines it is for the true judgement of men?” (An nomina rerum ex ipsa natura primo sunt imposita; an vero pro arbitrio hominum duntaxat)— Aslacus affirmed the former: names have “proceeded from an intelligent tracking of the nature of things” (ex solerti naturæ cuiusque indagine promanauit).70 The Huguenot theologian David Chamier (1587–1624?)—famed for his attack on the Jesuits, especially Cardinal Bellarmine, and admired by Scaliger for his skill in Greek—arrived at a similar conclusion: by virtue of the strength of his contemplation, Adam was able to name each thing (mostly in Hebrew) in accordance with its natural signification.71 It was a contentious point: the great Calvinist theologian of the Reformed Church and rector of Heidelberg, David Pareus (1548–1622), whom Milton cites in The Doctrine of Discipline and Divorce, Tetrachordon, The

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Tenure of Kings and Magistrates, and his introduction to Samson Agonistes, subscribed to the idea that Adam received an immediate and revelatory apprehension of the animals: “The notitia of divine things flashed in Adam’s mind, joined with the perfect knowledge of nature in its entirety” (Fulgebat in eius mente illustris diuinarum rerum notitia, coniuncta cum perfecta totius naturæ scientia).72 Since Pareus readily conceded that Adam’s knowledge was limited, he put forward the theory that revelation was needed to make known to Adam the natures of the animals. Referring to Plato, he emphasized that it was no small accomplishment that the right names were imposed by Adam as “this thing was more than of human wisdom” (fuitque ea res plus quam humanæ sapientiæ).73 The idea that essential knowledge came to Adam through a new act of revelation did not go unquestioned. Martin Luther (1483–1546) had lauded Adam for discerning “in a moment the characteristic nature of each creature” and naming them. Nevertheless, Luther made it clear that he thought Adam did all this “without any new illumination for the purpose.”74 In the seventeenth century, the French Reformed theologian Andreas Rivetus (André Rivet; 1572–1651) wrote in a similar vein that “from the beginning Adam possessed the perfect knowledge of all animals, for he was not able to impose names appropriate to individual animals, unless by the knowledge of particular natures [which] he had been given [by God]” (Adamum ab initio perfectam omnium animalium habuisse scientiam, non enim potuisset imponere nomina singulis animalibus convenientia, nisi cognitione naturæ singularum donatus fuisset). Despite their varying interpretations of when exactly Adam acquired this knowledge of “natures,” all these writers testified to the Cratylian understanding of Genesis 2.19.75 Such an interpretation did not belong to the domain of Reformed theology alone. One of the most influential biblical commentators of the seventeenth century, the Jesuit Benedictus Pererius of the Collegium Romanum (1535–1610), agreed with the basic Cratylian position.76 While Pererius acknowledged rival interpretations—such as that of the Franciscan Alonso Tostatus (c. 1400–55), who had argued that God himself had named the creatures—he nonetheless urged the reading that Adam “not only received the knowledge of things from God but also the perfect language by which he is able to speak” (Adamum non modò scientiam

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rerum à Deo accepisse; sed linguam etiam perfectam, qua & loqueretur ipse).77 In true Thomist fashion, Pererius affirmed that man named the animals but that these names, so adapted to the nature of things, were formed in advance by Adam. The context here is fully Aristotelian; the names Adam is seen to impose and establish agree with the natures of their referents because they are formed from the conceptions (“per notitiam”) already present in Adam’s mind.78 Yet Pererius’s conclusion, in which Adam’s act of naming “by observation” is suddenly colored by divine illumination, marks a shift in this way of thinking. Approvingly citing Hugo de St. Victor (1096–1141) as affirming Adam’s ability to see all the animals in one glance and Benedict’s (c. 480–530) ecstatic proclamation that “Adam saw the entire world in the light of the sun,” Pererius attributed divine conceptions to Adam.79 Still, he emphasized that Adam contemplates not conceptual animals—as the Dominican Cajetan (Tommaso de Vio; 1568–34) had argued—but real, physical beasts of the field: “As much by his intellectual vision as by the corporeal . . . he discerned individual animals” (tam de visione intellectuale quàm corporali: . . . cernebat indiuidua).80 What these accounts—Protestant and Catholic alike—share is the suggestion that Adam produces a language in perfect accord with the nature of things: language, thought, and reality are isomorphic. This general Platonic tilt toward a naturalist language remains in the ascendant, even in vernacular biblical commentaries. The erudite John Salkeld (1579/80–1660), a Jesuit priest who converted to the Church of England and remained a staunch Royalist during the Civil War, recorded in his Treatise of Paradise the belief that Adam had a perfect understanding of essences, even though the animals were probably physically present. John Downham (1571–1652), brother to the Ramist professor of logic at Cambridge, included a telling marginal citation to Plato’s Cratylus in his book The Summe of Sacred Divinitie: “It is most certain, that the name of a thing (if it be rightly given) serveth to set out the true nature & propertie of the thing, wherein consisted a great part of that wisedome which was in Adam, who gave apt and fit names to all the Beasts of the Field, and to all the Fowles of the Ayre, according to their quality and condition.”81 Gibbens similarly thought Adam “perfectly discerned, at the first view and sight of them [the animals], the nature and condition of every creature . . . as God himselfe both permitted and allowed of his wisedome

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in giving names unto them.” Gibbens’s philological argument cheerfully justified his essentialist claim: “The word KTUA iicrah, he named: Genes. 2.19. signifieth to give a significant name, answerable to the nature of the thing. Latinè, nomen quasi novimen. Festus [in Latin, named just as it was known. Rejoice!]” Gibbens here plays with the close etymological associations between the word nomen (for “name”) and novimen (for “knowing”), the idea being that, as Carolus Lundius would later write, “the name is a certain image by which something is known” (nomen enim est imago quædam, qua quid noscitur).82 Even the distinctly less sanguine Bishop Godfrey Goodman (1583–1656) lamented the world’s gradual decay after the Fall in Cratylian terms: “It were to be wished, that wee might speak the language of Adam, where names were imposed according to the nature of things; but now it should seem, there is a great difference, for the most pleasing speech adorned with Metaphors, and Figures, is not the fittest for the discoverie of a truth” (italics added).83 But if the original Adamic language was indeed essentialist with right knowledge of natures as a prerequisite for right naming, then the question, How is this right knowledge acquired? still invites different answers. I have charted the movement from God doing the naming (Episcopius; Tostatus) to God naming through Adam (Aslacus) to Adam as naming in accordance with his own special knowledge of the nature of things. It is the last view that Milton propounds in De Doctrina Christiana, where Adam is said to impose names according to a preexistent knowledge: “Since man was formed in the image of God, he must have been endowed with natural wisdom, holiness, and righteousness. . . . Moreover, he could not have given the names to the animals in that ex tempore way, without very great intelligence.”84 Yet this claim in De Doctrina Christiana differs from the accounts of naming given in Paradise Lost. When Raphael draws his catalogue of animals to a close in his narration of Creation, he says to Adam, “the rest are numberless, / And thou thir Natures know’st, & gav’st them Names, / Needlest to thee repeated” (PL VII.492–94). Raphael’s comment suggests that Adam moves from apprehending the essences of things (“thir Natures know’st”) to bestowing names on the animals, though he does not describe how this movement progresses (is Adam assisted by revelation? by God?).85

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Adam’s Naming of the Animals In book VIII of Paradise Lost, where Adam gives his own “naming narrative,” Milton hints that there are two possible ways of understanding Adam’s act of naming. In the lines “I nam’d them, as they pass’d, and understood / Thir Nature, with such knowledg God endu’d / My sudden apprehension” (VIII.352–54; italics added), the experience, as in Pareus, is revelatory and resists Pererius’s claim that Adam had perfect knowledge ab ovo. Milton’s choice of the word “endu’d”—which is applied to the application of forms to matter in Raphael’s “one first matter all” speech (V.473)—reinforces the notion that Adam’s apprehension of the animals and “Thir Nature” (VIII.353) occurs simultaneously with his act of naming them. The emphasis is on the process itself: “I nam’d them, as they pass’d” (352; italics added). The fact that this movement of the animals before Adam in humble subjection (VIII.349–51) takes place concurrently with his act of naming implies that Adam possesses a fully natural, or Cratylian, language in Eden as a result of divine illumination.86 Still the line “I nam’d them, as they pass’d, and understood” (VIII.352) must give us pause. If the “as” does not carry over for the entire line, then a split-second temporal divide—between the naming and understanding—occurs. The name will first exist as an indication that something exists; then, as we move toward an understanding of its quidditas (or “thisness”), it is followed by knowledge of what this thing is. The process of work and the shift from “as” to “and” thus invokes the idea of sequence. Names mark out the process of the mind’s movement toward differentiation and knowledge. The “whatness” (as opposed to the “thisness”) of the thing ends up yielding a general concept.87 This account coincides with Hermogenes’ view of language, in which naming is arbitrary, fixed by a kind of cultural fiat. An undated manuscript in Samuel Hartlib’s hand records “Mr Richersons Notes. on the Logick Tables,” which proposes a more conventional account of naming with regard to Gen. 2.19: “Adam did not have the forms of the animals impressed upon his soul, and he certainly did not know first through intuition, but from their appearances and by making a profound analysis, finally, from the effects and applications, he provided names: which signs will illuminate his intellect” (Adam non habuit formas bestiarum animo impressas, nec quidem primo intuitu cognouit, sed penitus iis aspectis et Analysin faciendo tandem ex effectis et adjunctis

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nomina dedit: quæ argumenta irradiabunt in intellectu ejus).88 This argument echoes the claim of Smiglecius, whose works are frequently cited in seventeenth-century university notebooks and student directions: “because words are signs of concepts, and that which we express with words is what we conceive of in the mind” (quia verba sunt signa conceptuum, & id verbis exprimimus, quod in mente concepimus).89 If we choose to hear the disjunction between the “as” and “and” in Milton at line 352, it appears he endorses Smiglecius’s view of language in which concepts mediate between word and thing. It might be objected that this notion of split temporality in Milton— and, hence, this view of language—is a product of an overattention to detail. Nevertheless, this feeling of succession is helped along more generally by the exciting narrative movement of Adam awaking to find that he is able to speak. At VIII.270, we encounter the first act of naming that is done outside Eden. Recounting his birth to Raphael, Adam tells us that while he wondered “who I was, or where, or from what cause, / Knew not” (270–71), he found himself able to name the sun and much more: “to speak I tri’d, and forthwith spake, / My Tongue obey’d and readily could name / What e’re I saw” (VIII.271–73). This account is a significant improvement on the Lucretian account that Milton echoes: in Lucretius, various sounds are associated and then acquire meaning (“leap into form”) by fortuitous circumstance; in Paradise Lost, the process is divinely guided.90 Even though we hear of no “sudden apprehension” involved with the act of naming—what Milton had elsewhere described as a revelatory experience, taking place in an “ex tempore way”—we find Adam possessed by a “quick instinctive motion” (VIII.259) that causes him to stand on his feet and gaze upward before attempting speech.91 The description underscores the freedom of (linguistic) movement—to “name / What e’er I saw” (VIII.272–73)—and the (potential) randomness implicit in the line is kept in check by the phrase “to speak I tri’d” (271). The pun is on “tried.” Adam not only attempts speech but also goes through a process of trial, of experimentation, to find the (right) names. The movement is rapid: “to speak I tri’d, and forthwith spake” (271). As in the instance of his naming of the animals, Adam attempts to name what he sees (274). Yet the verb “saw” (VIII.273) remains ambivalent, encompassing notions of physical and mental sight as well as illumination.

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The creation of Adam and his consciousness does not blaze forth in Paradise Lost in a moment of divine revelation; rather, it unfolds as an exciting story or narrative sequence (though it takes place at great speed). The names which are later said to match nature and are ascribed to the assistance of divine revelation are here imposed by Adam alone. The phrase “speak I tri’d” (VIII.271) thus hints that Adam’s experiment with naming outside Paradise has furnished him with conceptual knowledge (God transplants Adam to the “Garden of Bliss” at VIII.299–304). In drawing attention to the sequence—to the idea of a trial—Milton places concepts as prior to knowledge of things themselves. The interpolation of Adam’s dream between these two acts of naming encourages this reading. It reveals how, even in a dream, concepts are at work, mediating between names and things. The grasping of concepts, in other words, seems to occur long before illumination takes place in Eden. When Adam awakes “In Balmie Sweat” (VIII.255), he falls asleep again almost immediately: “soft oppression seis’d / My droused sense” (VIII.288–89). Sinking down on a “green shadie Bank profuse of Flours” (VIII.286), he is reminded of how he first awoke, “Soft on the flourie herb” (VIII.254). This memory makes him fear that in sleeping, he is again “passing to [his] former state” (VIII.290). The poetry, which moves Adam back as close as possible to that moment prior to birth, has him experience in a dream the answers to his existential questions, “how came I thus, how here?” (VIII.277), and who is “[my] great maker?” (VIII.278–82). As Adam remembers, his consciousness is strangely awake during the dream-vision: “suddenly stood at my Head a dream, / Whose inward apparition gently mov’d / My fancy to believe I yet had being, / And livd” (VIII.292–95). Even in his somnolent state, Adam recognizes that his dream of Paradise excels what he has experienced so far: “what I saw / Of Earth before scarce pleasant seemd” (VIII.305–06). This memory indicates a comparative method of differentiating and distinguishing things in Paradise from those without. That this vague preconception becomes a reality is strengthened by Adam’s claim that once placed within the “Circuit wide” (VIII.304), he “wak’d, and found / Before mine Eyes all real, as the dream / Had lively shadowd” (VIII.309–11). The word “lively,” so set against the “shadowd” landscape of the dream, vivifies the dream-experience until both it and its conceptual realities merge with the

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factual world. This is further emphasized by the fact that after this second awakening, Adam does not hesitate to exercise his power to name. Language appears to be built from preconceptions that, so running ahead, are not only true, but also necessary to the art of naming. Adamic language reflects not things but conceptions of things. Through Milton’s repeated emphasis on process in the poetry, the delicate tension—between names expressing things and, alternatively, concepts—is carefully sustained. When Raphael describes how the Son drove his legions in “perfet ranks” (VI.71), he likens the movement to the way “Birds in orderly array on wing / Came summond over Eden to receive / Thir names of thee” (VI.74–76). The image is, once more, one of motion. Absent from this picture of animals processing before Adam, however, are the fish, as Milton acknowledges at VIII.346–47. This was not mere pedantry on Milton’s part, as biblical commentaries of the period reveal. Aslacus, for instance, thought it impossible to say that fish could survive out of water and so concluded that Adam’s progeny must have named the fish. Salkeld, who advocated the idea that only the beasts came as a “token . . . of their subjection,” notably adds, “peraduenture . . . fishes could not naturally liue out of the water, as man cannot in any wise persist without God.”92 It is significant that Milton rejects these more conventional readings.93 Milton’s God tells Adam, “each Bird and Beast behold / After thir kindes; I bring them to receave / From thee thir Names, and pay thee fealtie / With low subjection; understand the same / Of Fish within thir watry residence, / Not hither summond, since they cannot change / Thir Element to draw the thinner Aire” (VIII.342–48; italics added). In the phrase, “understand the same / Of Fish” (345–46), God apparently asks Adam to think of them as though they were present and to then name them accordingly. But this returns us to our initial problem of whether the process of naming exists in relation to Adam’s understanding of natures or of concepts. On the one hand, God’s injunction to Adam is to “behold” the fish and “name” them according to their physical appearance; on the other hand, the phrase, “understand the same / Of Fish within thir watry residence” (345–46; italics added) smacks of a conceptual understanding of the creatures that exists prior to their physical appearance and names. Concepts in this reading might not be signified by

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words themselves but might instead play the first part in a process which bestows signification upon a thing, as Smiglecius emphasized: “Words signify things by mediating concepts” (voces significant res mediante co[n]ceptu).94 And this, as I have discussed, is the idea endorsed by Adam’s narration of his dream and the narrative more generally. The God of Paradise Lost, who applauds Adam for naming the animals correctly, gives little away. Names appear to accord with Adam’s already existing preconceptions of things, but it does not follow that they are isomorphic with things therewith. While Adam’s language may be extremely well suited to reality, it is not rendered straightforwardly transparent (as Milton claimed it was in Tetrachordon).95 There is more than a memory here of the argument advanced by the Cordovan Jesuit Franciscus Toletus (1534–96), who thought that Adam’s words—although most properly fitted to things—were nonetheless artificial: “For we are accustomed to call artificial things natural when they most closely imitate nature through an exaggeration, and perhaps this is the meaning of Gen. 2 ‘everything that Adam gave a name to, that was its name’” (Solemus enim artificialia, quæ maximè naturam imitatur, naturalia per exaggerationem vocare: & forsan illud est Gen. 2. omne, quod vocauit Adam, ipsum est nomen eius).96 It appears that Milton’s God is endorsing a double vision of naming. One interpretation strangely accords with Cajetan’s belief that the animals had to pass conceptually before Adam’s inner intellectual eye, so that he could name them properly. In this interpretation, the quid nominis has meaning only in relation to the concept it signifies. Adam, in other words, had to have the concepts in order to create meaningful names. By contrast, in Toletus’s account this preconception is not necessary for understanding the thing’s definition, or quid rei. By implying that both a physical as well as a conceptual parade of the animals occurs, Milton’s poetry places (1) the quid nominis, or the analytic mode of knowing accidental and external properties (applicable to entities and nonentities alike) in perfect equipoise with (2) the opposing, essentialist claim, in which the quid rei is said to discover natures. The poetry thus suggests that Adam is able to name according to general concepts that then go on to assist him in attaining the exalted metaphysical knowledge of things in themselves.

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Yet if a name, given as a mere indicator, cannot be altered to express an essence subsequently acquired, an uncomfortable (proto-Lockeian) implication arises: natural knowledge may elude signification to the point where “universality belongs not to things themselves” but to the mind alone. Milton crucially avoids this mentalist prison: the unstable preconception that shimmers in the process of Adam’s imposition of names means that names might reveal a knowledge derived either from concepts (quid nominis) or from an immediate apprehension of the name and essence of the thing (quid rei).97 Either way, the process in Milton remains heuristic, thereby preserving the ability to receive revelation as well as to investigate. The apparent contradiction between VIII.272–73 and 352–54 keeps up the movement toward a conventionalist language, while simultaneously retaining the flavor of Pareus’s miraculous revelatory experience. This balancing act on the part of the poetry has the effect of drawing attention to two things: it appears that in Eden everything exists in a strange state of potentiality, including language; from this, it follows that language has a built-in ability, or skill, to rise or fall, depending on how well it matches either things or thoughts—or both.98 Even God speaks of the act of naming as a trial, or successful experiment, although now it is the namer, Adam, who is tried and tested. Again, this second trial presupposes an idea of process: “Thus farr to try thee, Adam, I was pleas’d, / And finde thee knowing not of Beasts alone, / Which thou hast rightly nam’d, but of thy self, / Expressing well the spirit within thee free” (VIII.437– 40; italics added). This “trial,” which enacts a process of differentiation, also leans on knowledge of things as well as of concepts. It conducts Adam to know more “of himself ” (now that the idea of “self-trial” has entered at line 439). While the revelation of who he is may take place within a dream, Adam experiences it as true in this world. Milton’s crystallized interlocking of concept, word, and thing—of the dual signification of language—is unfortunately often brutally simplified.99 For instance, Patrick Hume (fl. 1695), the editor of the 1695 edition of Paradise Lost, believed that Milton subscribed to the popular account of words as signifiers of accepted concepts: “Names, according to the best Enquiries, have no other relation to the Things they signify, than the common Consent of those agreeing, so to difference and distin-

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guish them.”100 Hume’s comment makes sense because he was writing with the awareness that Milton had no choice but to write of a prelapsarian world in a postlapsarian language (one which had degenerated further since the Fall of Babel). For the Dutch logician Burgersdijck, Babel was proof enough that names must obtain meaning through use or convention: “blistri demonstrates nothing to anyone, and canis makes manifest an animal barking among the Latins, [but] among the French, nothing” (Igitur, quòd blistri nihil omnino significet, quódque canis significet animal latrans apud Latinos, apud Gallos nihil).101 Not things themselves but concepts are made manifest in names. “Articulate utterances,” Burgersdijck writes, “signify concepts, primarily, that is, and immediately; for they also make known the affections of the soul from design, or kata; sunqhvkhn [by convention]” (Voces articulatæ significant animi conceptus, primò scilicet, atque immediaté: nam res etiam significant animi affectus ex instituto, sive kata; sunqhvkhn, hoc est, ex usu arbitrario hominum eâdem societate utentium).102 Yet where the conventionalist would say that a word signifies a concept, Milton appears to be edging toward the view that words express things by means of concepts. This movement between two very different philosophies of language may explain why Hume’s comment only tells one half of the story, the Hermogenian side, and why we continue to detect more than glimmers of the Cratylian position in Paradise Lost as well. Sin and Death: Allegory, Signification, and Substance The emergent tension between thing, name, and concept is dramatized most memorably in Milton’s allegory of Sin. When Sin rebukes Satan at the gates of Hell, she gives a narrative of her birth that careens into reconstructing an identity prior to all acts of naming. Knowing something, she implies, does not necessitate the use of its name, of saying “what” it is. The memory of “Out of thy head I sprung” (II.758) is a performative linguistic utterance that recaptures and reproduces Sin’s movement from the ideal to the concrete.103 Her parthenogenesis from Satan’s head in Heaven reveals an active and potently beautiful figure representative of a new, dynamic power: evil itself. Yet her image creates the illusion of goodness; she is not obviously ugly: “L’ hypocrisie est un hommage que

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le vice rend à la vertu,” as François, duc de La Rochefoucauld (1613–80) remarked.104 The question Sin’s birth raises is this: if Sin is so beautiful (II.756–57), why does the angelic host draw back in fear? Naming in Paradise Lost now appears to begin a process of contextualization in which the angels gradually understand not only what thing Sin is but also what concepts help define her. The word “sin” attaches itself to the object—the glamorous lady they behold—but the angels’ withdrawal acknowledges that this word cannot as yet express a concept they do not themselves know: “amazement seis’d / All th’ Host of Heav’n; back they recoild affraid / At first, and call’d me Sin, and for a Sign / Portentous held me” (II.758–61). The immediate and intuitive action of shrinking back in horror in the presence of evil is to be expected from purely good creatures. Yet Sin herself mimes the actions of these good, created beings. Instead of naming herself, she waits to receive a name from the heavenly host. The primary difference is that whereas Adam’s account of naming balanced the conventionalist view of naming against the essentialist one, here the good angels cannot name Sin according to her nature. To do so would imply, simpliciter, that they are already fallen. Nonetheless, the heavenly action of naming Sin raises questions about how names and concepts relate to things in heaven. Whereas Augustine would argue that the dicibilia (things understood mentally, before utterance) are normally prior to the dictiones (things said), here the concept of sin is not even something dicibile, or expressible, to the (angelic) intellect. While the angels are said to have knowledge of universals—intelligible species—they have no knowledge of the universal that is Sin. They think that the word “sin” must therefore be a dictio or expression for something else. Augustine explains this phenomenon by pointing out that the word arma in Virgil’s Aeneid is a dictio that may “signify either the wars Aeneas carried out, or the shield, or the other arms made by Vulcan for him” (ut eo significarentur vel bella quae gessit Aeneas, vel scutum, vel caetera arma, quae Vulcanus Aeneae fabricatus est). Signification, in other words, may be figurative (as in the first instance, which takes arma metonymically) or it may be literal.105 The trouble is that with an allegorical figure, like Milton’s Sin, the dictio signifies both equally, and this generates confusion— even in heaven.

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Since the angels do not know what sin stands for (namely, Sinfulness), she remains a “Sign / Portentous” (II.760–61). She is equivalent to what the Jesuit neo-Scholastic Juan de Fonseca (1528–99), the “Aristotle of Coimbra,” would have categorized as an “instrumental” sign by which “we signify our concepts by another thing” (conceptus nostros aliis significamus).106 Insofar as the good angels think of Sin in this way, they conceive of her as a sign that points to something else instrumentally (as smoke indicates fire). While they sense she is “Portentous” (II.761)— in the sense of “boding some Mischief ”—she is also a portentum, or “a Sign of a bad Consequence” (to use Patrick Hume’s phrases).107 In both cases, Sin’s identity in the present is determined by the thing or event to which she points, be it in the future or in the past. The trouble with this account, though, is that it conceives of Sin only in terms of her being an accidental form—as that which helps constitute the (already concrete) sinful agent or sinful act. Milton’s choosing to use the genre of allegory is thus important here: when we abstract sin from particular sins and sin’s concrete (physicalist) expression in allegory—when, that is, we see Sin as depicted with real self-agency (“thir power was great”; X.284)—we arrive at a concept, or universal notion, of Sinfulness itself.108 In this understanding of allegory, Sin becomes a self-referential signum, thereby eluding the understanding of the good angels who lack the concept (of Sinfulness). The phrase “Sign / Portentous” (II.760–61) thus creates a dark pun on “portentous” that is audible to the fallen alone. Once more, though, we note Milton’s emphasis on the importance of process in signification and knowledge acquisition. Sin’s narrative reveals how the angels’ revulsion (II.758) progresses through the act of naming to enjoyment and eventually to approval: “but familiar grown, / I pleas’d, and with attractive graces won / Thee most averse” (II.761–63). We are given a picture of concept formation in which the angels slowly learn about Sin as an extramental object. The fact that this progression implies a discursive process which is less commonly associated with the angels, who are said to be “mostly” intuitive, communicating through a commerce of concepts, mind-to-mind (V.488–89), is problematic.109 Once a named object, Sin is made comfortable—at least, superficially. This, as Herrick hints, is how Sin takes root in heaven: “Sin once reacht up to Gods eternall Sphere / And was committed, not remitted

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there.”110 In actuality, Sin remains a causal mystery, as the narration of her birth confirms. The unaccounted time when Satan impregnates Sin and conceives Death is presumably simultaneous with that moment described by “Meanwhile Warr arose, / And fields were fought in Heav’n” (II.767–68). Historic action now runs parallel to myth—that is, to its own cause. The temporal aspect shrinks before analysis. The problem veiled by the allegory is unde malum?, or “whence evil?” For an act of sin to occur, one must first have an evil thought, or possess the concept of sin. Yet the fact that this very possession can itself be read as the moment when one falls into sinning renders sin causally inexplicable, as Augustine observed.111 Through the naming of Sin, Milton thus depicts how words no longer simply name known, preexistent objects but may refer to causally confusing denotata. In Satan’s exclamation to Sin, “What thing thou art,” Milton draws attention to the way Satan accepts without hesitation that Sin exists as a something.112 This is then further complicated by line 744, where Satan denies his earlier relationship with Sin (“I know thee not”). Yet in claiming that Sin is unknowable, Satan actually makes a truth-claim regarding how we know her. The effect has parallels in Augustine. When Augustine declares evil to be “nothing” insofar as it is beyond predication— “For that which is nothing cannot be known” (Sciri enim non potest quod nihil est)—his exasperation yields an undesired assertion. This is because the moment Augustine says evil is beyond predication and is therefore a “nothing,” he paradoxically stakes a claim about what evil is (“nothing”). Elsewhere, Augustine is aware of the problem: when he speaks of God’s ineffability, he writes, “God is not even ‘unspeakable,’ because to say this is to speak of Him” (quoniam si illud est ineffabile, quod dici non potest, non est ineffabile quod vel ineffabile dici potest).113 In consciously exploring and exploiting the Augustinian conundrum, Milton’s poetry moves us into a world in which representation has less to do with the externalist’s concern for correspondence than with the idealist’s concern for vivacity—for the felt impressions of things as reconceptualized through language. It follows that when Milton’s allegory describes Sin as being like the sound of baying hounds (II.653– 59), we are reminded of how John Locke claimed that it was impossible (if not rather ludicrous) to say that “scarlet sounds like the sound of a trumpet.” Locke placed himself squarely in the camp of analytic philosophers

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who, like Bishop George Berkeley (1685–1753), wondered how the colored can be like the uncolored or love can be like a rose.114 Yet where philosophy stumbles on synaesthesia, poetry builds itself from this unanalyzable tension. In constructing Sin from recognizable things (snakes, dogs, a female torso), Milton imagines what Sin is like, while making it clear that we can never know what Sin is essentially. While we can discuss Sin, first ontologically and then phenomenologically, Milton’s allegorical figure of Death is beyond all such visualization. It is Sin who names Death—“I fled, and cry’d out Death” (II.787)—but Death, unlike Sin, continues to remain a cipher, even after receiving a name. Synaesthetic transgression is all that remains to furnish us with a picture of what Death might be like. Yet this, too, fails. In the phrase “black it stood as Night” (II.670), the masculine subject becomes neuter, a blank unknown. Incapable of any action, the verb “stood” gradually dissolves Death in an inertly colorless abyss.115 In describing Death as a “meager Shadow” (X.264), Milton underlines the idea that a shadow truly depicts what is less than real. The descriptions serve to remind us that we should not mistake a being that is objectively less than fully real for a mere abstract entity.116 The phrase “The other shape, / If shape it might be call’d that shape had none” (II.666–67) is as oblique and as defensively nondefining as “what seem’d his head / The likeness of a Kingly Crown had on” (II.672–73). In his attempts to rename and hence reconceptualize Death, Satan calls Death “the dear pledge / Of dalliance had with thee in Heav’n, and joys / Then sweet, now sad to mention” (II.818–20). Although the shapeless allegory of Death eludes definition by metaphor, the idea of Death as a “dear pledge” is a reminder that our most heuristic tool—for signification and the formation of concepts—is metaphor. While the name “Death” cannot signify the greatness of this unimaginable thing existing outside our visual field, it can be used as a marker to intimate what Death might be like. But such intimations are dependent on negations. Unable to track death in the usual way, general descriptions fail and figurative expressions multiply. At the moment of the Fall, Death’s entry into Paradise is described in terms of its effects, one of which is captured in the hauntingly beautiful image “all the faded Roses shed” (IX.893). The observation by the poet William Cowper (1731–1800) that Death maintains “a kind of intermediate form between matter and

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spirit, partaking of both, and consisting in neither,” is equally applicable to Milton’s allegorical figuration of Sin. Both Sin and Death draw attention to the idea that we cannot simply use reason to get at things. What looks to the nominalist like an excursion into illustrative fiction may be, to the realist, an engagement with real entities on this ideal plane. Sin’s unapologetically, even relishingly, physical vehicle finally points to the inadequacy of the material form and so returns us to the underlying immateriality of its tenor. The allegorical intentional object, having no particular thing to represent it, harkens back to a signification that highlights an interior that is psychological (an internal state) and also beyond representation: Scylla, as a mere physical obstacle, is “Farr less abhorrd” (II.659) than Milton’s Sin, whose reality outstrips her (fictional) physicality. With the Cratylian power to name withdrawn, the poetry throws into sharp relief how the conventionalist account of naming can depict only one half of the story figured in the allegory.117 What all of these accounts of naming emphasize, though, is that Milton’s poetry tacks to and fro between a linguistic model based on things and another based on concepts. Milton’s poetry thus inclines to the view of language propounded by the popular scholastic Antonius Rubius (1548–1615). Rubius wrote, “If things are signified by words as we conceive them, then concepts are the means by which things are designated . . . [and] by which things are expressed or said” (si res significantur per voces, vt à nobis concipiuntur, ergo conceptus quasi medii sunt, quibus res conceptas designamus . . . sed quo exprimuntur, aut dicuntur res). The rich alternative arising in Milton is that “right names” may best express the liberty of language when they enact a process of dual signification—of concepts and things—rather than just that of double function.118 While Boethius’s influential commentary (c. 5th/6th century A.D.) on Aristotle’s De Interpretatione may have reinforced in the Renaissance the notion that spoken words make evident principally concepts, while reality—mediated by concepts—is expressed secondarily, Milton’s poetry endorses a view more congenial to that held by the influential Conimbricenses, who argued—against Boethius—that a thing and a concept are (equally) signified by a word. By this logic, imaginary entities such as Milton’s Sin and Death are more than simple concepts. Fashioned “in the manner of a true thing,” they are treated as things requiring signification. As the Conimbricenses argued, a variety of terms

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are employed for imaginary creatures, like “phoenix,” just as we use words like “hawks” and “kites” to signify real birds: “It must be denied that words which stand for imaginary things indicate concepts only, for even though they do not signify a true thing, they do, however, designate an object which is fashioned in the manner of a true thing” (negandum est, vocabula reru[m], quæ confinguntur, solos indicare conceptus. Quanuis [sic] enim veram rem non significent, vtpote quæ nulla est, designant tamen obiectum confictum per modum veri).119 The idea taking hold in Milton is that as conceptual things take on a greater (realist) reality, the word that reveals begins to perform crucial work. It not only reforms our understanding of what something means, but also affects what it is (in a factual or mental world). Linguistic context plays a positive part, as Rubius pointed out in his popular Logica Mexicana: “Not only is it necessary to understand just what is designated by means of the name of the object but also by means of what(ever) word in what has gone before: for if the meaning of the other term is in any degree hidden, it will be impossible to grasp the meaning of the description” (nec solum quid per nomen subiecti designetur, intelligere necesse est, sed etiam, per quamcunque vocem in præmissis positam: nam si alterius dumtaxat significatio lateat, impossibile erit demonstrationis vim capere).120 The stress in Rubius falls on the importance of context for conferring meaning: the term “præmissis” indicates that the prior uses of naming reveal concepts that create meaning within the system. Once granted this strange force, conceptual realities begin to designate in advance what something will (later) be understood to be. In thinking about how these universal notions were first imposed, the Conimbricenses eventually rejected the conventionalist view that the speech of our first parents could have been by institution. They argued, in a common-sense sort of a way, that it would have taken Adam too long to teach Eve the names of all things in Eden. More to the point, if Adam had named ad placitum, one must presuppose not only the institution (governing the use of the name), but also the very language that would pronounce mutual consent. In line with Cajetan, the Conimbricenses attributed to God both the production of the original Adamic (natural) language and the (artificial) languages scattered after Babel, so that God in this view becomes the great language giver—the omnipotent arbitrator of words and of universal notions.121

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When transposed into a theory of poetics, this philosophy of language has powerful implications for the poet who brings new things into existence through his verse. It would be a mistake, though, to think that the greatest poets simply bask in the now-unconstrained freedom of concept formation. Poetry, which commonly deals with abstractions or immaterial entities by reexpressing them metaphorically in material terms, grows stronger when it makes a point of the inadequacy of its own metaphorical materialization, as in the case of Milton’s allegory of Sin. The image is revealed to be a poor substitute for the idea or imagined entity that, like Milton’s Death, exceeds representation in materialist terms in figurative language. While the philosophy of twentieth-century linguistic positivists implied that if you can’t say something, it isn’t really being thought, such a constipated account of reality is absent from Milton’s poetry. The case study of Raphael’s tree and these accounts of naming in Paradise Lost thus reveal that Milton’s figurative language attempts to move beyond sensible descriptions in order to intimate something outside the material world. In so doing, it attempts to take us back to that Adamic moment of naming in order to recreate things and our concepts of them. The account of Genesis 2.19 transposed into the epic explores, therefore, not only who is more responsible for names and our understanding of them (God or Adam?), but also who most properly owns this poetic creation: the poet or his muse? In the end, the processes associated with the roles of Adam as namer and Satan as corrupter of language, or misnamer, signal that a final arbitrator of language must be present. But it is Milton, not God, who acts as this arbitrator; he radically rethinks the application of the definitio notionis (name), while decreeing a thing’s quid rei (essence) and quid nominis (meaning of the term). Within the realm of visionary poetics, Milton purports to be like a prophet, the recipient of an unapprehended inspiration, as he himself tells us: “If answerable style I can obtaine / Of my Celestial Patroness, who deignes / Her nightly visitation unimplor’d, / And dictates to me slumb’ring, or inspires / Easie my unpremeditated Verse” (IX.20–24).122 As in the case of Adam’s conception of names, the poem is said to exist first in a dream and only secondarily in reality. While we naturally think of a dream as being less real than waking experience, an inspired dream—planted by

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God—could be (Platonically) more real. Much like Adam, Milton claims to see into things-in-themselves in his sleep; he then awakens to dictate the verses from these “nightly visitation[s]” (22) to his amanuensis. As William Poole has remarked, the entire epic becomes a transcription of “unpremeditated Verse” (24).123 The very process by which Milton writes his epic thus reinforces the general idea that Milton’s poetry puts into play the idea that preconceptions exist prior to the use of language. This idea finds resonance in twentieth-century theories of metaphor: Owen Barfield thought that buried within language itself and our own consciousness are processes of heuristic metaphor. Something had to have glimmered in our mind before the vocabulary for it existed. In antiquity, Cicero (106–43 BC) described metaphor as arising from necessity—from a deficiency (inopia) or an inability to depict something with the words available. From a slightly different angle, Quintilian (c. 35–c. 95) later wrote that catachresis provides names for things where there are not yet proper terms (here we think of the naming of Sin in Paradise Lost).124 When done in great poetry, catachresis, much like neologism, is neither a mistreatment of language nor a violently random and meaningless outburst. In returning to the potentiality associated with the beginnings of language and expressing what (till then) is inexpressible, catachresis becomes a way to draw out the first conceptions that are things—albeit as-yet-unutterable things. This view of language, in which both concepts and things are signified, effectively overturns the Aristotelian maxim, “Nihil est in intellectu quod non prius fuerit in sensu.”125 It suggests further that these preconceptions already possess the power to organize the intractably chaotic serial input of the senses. Plato’s superobjective Idea, which can turn sensory chaos into rational knowledge, is now being psychologized as mentally exerted prior to the concept. While Bacon famously averred that he who could be a namer would have the power to reclaim Eden, Milton hints that the poet achieves his status as namer only when he successfully alters conceptions behind words—when he “un-infects” the “thoughts” (X.608) that Sin first pollutes. In appropriating for himself as poet Adam’s original power of naming, Milton reconceptualizes what words express. The result is that words, now given an agency through metaphorical language, bestow new meanings on once “dead” words and “brute” indicators. The development of

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this process dislodges the static “pictured-words” conceived within, and defined by, their Aristotelian framework.126 Milton’s carefully balanced claims about naming in Paradise Lost thus suggest that while language is used to provide words that, historically and philosophically speaking, are seen as names for things, language actually goes beyond names to contribute more actively to our ideas of things. In acknowledging metaphor as our mother tongue, Milton exploits the way in which language—especially in poetry—may ground, on a linguistic and also conceptual level, the claim in Areopagitica (1644) that “liberty . . . is the nurse of all great wits.”127 It is to this poetic liberty and intellectual boldness that Marvell may allude when, in his poem appended to Paradise Lost, he admires Milton’s “bolder wing” (III.193) that “with so much gravity and ease; / And above human flight dost soar aloft / With plume so strong, so equal, and so soft. / The Bird named from that Paradise you sing / So never flags, but always keeps on wing” (“On Mr Milton’s Paradise Lost” 36–40).128

chapter three

Milton’s Early Poems the agon between plato and aristotle ille Naturæ Matris optimus interpres Plato Plato, that best interpreter of Mother Nature Aristotles, Pythagoræ, & Platonis æmulus & perpetuus Calumniator Aristotle, the rival and perpetual detractor of Pythagoras and Plato —milton, Prolusion II, “On the Music of the Spheres” Plato’s best interpreter. . . . —simplicius, On Aristotle On the Soul (speaking of Aristotle)

milton’s poetry may be read as placing alternative philosophic structures, such as Platonism, in opposition to Aristotelian thought, thereby exposing important fault lines in their respective ontologies. It may be helpful, therefore, to entertain the idea that Milton does not uncomplicatedly prefer Plato over Aristotle, as critics often assume. If we understand Milton’s thought as moving deftly between a Platonic and an Aristotelian ontology, substance in Milton appears capable of being construed as both Form (Plato) and also as enmattered form, or the material compound (Aristotle).1 The supposition that Milton, after dallying with Platonism in his youth, later repented of his interest in Plato and espoused a monist materialism may, therefore, be too simple, not least in its initial confident characterization of Milton as straightforwardly accepting a hylomorphic Aristotelianism which then developed into materialism. While it is true that late medieval discussions of Aristotle often understood Plato in opposition to Aristotle, and that many early Renaissance writers continued to propagate the idea that Plato and Aristotle 81

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offered conflicting ontologies (with Plato’s Forms as universalia ante rem), the discovery of Greek commentaries on Aristotle radically changed this way of thinking. The Neoplatonist Simplicius recorded in antiquity that Aristotle was Plato’s “best interpreter,” and sixteenth- and seventeenthcentury thinkers took up his enterprise of harmonizing Plato and Aristotle with varying degrees of success.2 Against a backdrop in which these ancient commentators play a significant role, Aristotelianism as understood by Milton needed to negotiate more with Platonism in order to work. In order to trace the way in which Milton places Plato and Aristotle in opposition to one another, thereby creating a countermaterialist movement latent in the poetry, I would like to examine, first, one of Milton’s university poems that grapples with the idea of substance and matter, before moving on to discuss the form/matter distinction as it emerges in the masque he wrote shortly after taking his master of arts degree at Cambridge. Milton’s early poem “De Idea Platonica” may be read as presenting a subtle critique of substance as understood both by Plato and Aristotle. It reveals that, beneath the top layer of academic sparring, Milton develops a secondary level, where the materialist guying of Platonic ideas is itself absurdly gross. (This technique has much in common with Milton’s postgraduate piece “At a Vacation Exercise,” in which what is under investigation is beyond definition and language traditionally conceived.) Although this reading may appear to confirm the critics’ account of Milton as inclining to Platonism in his early years, Milton’s masque, Comus, immediately seems to complicate this claim. While it is generally held that Comus is Milton’s most overtly Platonic piece of writing, it is not altogether uncritical of Plato’s philosophy of Forms. The masque, I suggest, may be read as dramatizing the competing ontologies of Plato and Aristotle, with the effect that the Form Milton initially places at the center of the masque—namely, Chastity—eventually gives way to the more unifying power of Grace.3 According to Aristotle, we know a thing’s form through our experience of particular things; form in this picture makes something what it is and is, therefore, necessarily enmattered. Meanwhile, Plato thought of Forms as transcendent—that is, as occupying a world utterly separate from our own. Forms in Plato thus become explanatory paradigms for worldly phenomena. Milton foresaw the difficulties inherent in an ontology

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which adheres to solely Platonism or Aristotelianism. Milton’s poetry arguably reveals that an Aristotelianism devoid of transcendental (Platonic) Forms is just as problematic for Milton’s ontology as a Platonism wholly detached from the sensible world. While Milton is unhappy with the materializing tendencies of Aristotelian enmattered forms in “De Idea Platonica,” his masque, conversely, expresses concerns about the complications arising from a purely Platonic philosophy, in which (true) Form is dangerously devoid of material association. In the light of this, monist materialism may not adequately represent the metaphysic underlying Milton’s theory of language or, indeed, his linguistic practice. C H O O S I N G F O R M S : P L AT O N I C O R A R I S T O T E L I A N ?

Plato’s Forms were apparently good fodder for poetry. In a letter to Alexander Gill (2 July 1628), the university Milton mentions he has enclosed some verses, or delicious “leviculas . . . nugas” (trivial jokes). With the use of the word “nugas,” we sense that Milton’s gamesome spirit may be trying to conceal a real intellectual engagement (there may be an allusion here to Catullus’s dedicatory letter to Cornelius Nepos, which refers, tongue-in-cheek, to the Carmina as “nugas”).4 Milton then goes on to say that these verses were written “for a certain Fellow of our College who had to act as Respondent in the philosophical disputation in this Commencement.”5 Since this would not have been Milton’s commencement (he graduated M.A. in 1632), it appears he was acting as a ghostwriter for this particular exercise. The reference to philosophical lighthearted joking fits the tenor of “De Idea Platonica Quemadmodum Aristoteles Intellexit” (On the Platonic Form as Aristotle Understood It).6 The title alone displaces the piece to the realm of hypothesis, engaging with a goodnatured exploration of Aristotelian philosophy.7 In the opening lines of the poem, the collegiate Milton—apparently bleary-eyed from reading too much dry (scholastic) philosophy—turns stroppy. Assuming the role of a scholastic Aristotelian interrogating Plato, Milton’s speaker cheerfully mocks his way through the poem. But Milton consciously exploits and exaggerates the philosophical difficulties in Aristotle that entangled thinkers “in perpetual fallacies, a rebus ad voces.”8 The agon between Plato and the Aristotle of the Schools is reenacted here as a massive figure, initially conceived as a Platonic immaterial Form, wildly careens through space, a now fully materialized being.

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John Hale has pointed out that since most Miltonists read Milton as a Platonist at this point in his career, they are slightly baffled that he would side with Aristotle against Plato.9 Yet once we realize that the satire rapidly shifts so that Plato is no longer the object of the attack, the difficulty resolves itself. The poem begins with its speaker, an Aristotelian literalist, scoffing at Platonic thought: “Quis ille primus cuius ex imagine / Natura solers finxit humanum genus” (Who was that first being in whose image skillful Nature has modeled the human race?; 7–8). The question derides the idea that there is a Form of Man: “Aeternus, incorruptus, aequaevus polo, / Unusque et universus, exemplar Dei” (eternal, incorrupt, single yet universal being, as old as the heavens, the pattern used by God?; 9–10). Universals fail to account for the headache-inducing Platonic problem of the “One and the Many”—that is, of describing how generality relates to particulars.10 Evidently tired of this question, the poem’s speaker suddenly halts the flow of the verse in mycterismus, or narrative sneer: “Sed quamlibet natura sit communior, / Tamen seorsus extat ad morem unius, / Et, mira, certo stringitur spatio loci” (Although he [the Form of Man] is by nature common to all, he has a separate existence just like a normal individual and, extraordinarily enough [mira], is confined within definite spatial limits; 13–15).11 The words “communior” (meaning “more universal”) and “unus” (meaning “single”) in “unusque et universus” (10) are consciously oxymoronic. They evoke Aristotle’s criticisms of Platonic Forms as doing the work of individuals and even of universals. Plato claimed that Forms were indispensable to knowledge because Forms give us the universals that are said of (kathgorouvmenon), or predicated of, many subjects.12 It was generally agreed that an Idea is necessarily general and that the Form of Man does not give the individual (such as Socrates). This means that if we discard the Forms, we are left with mere dross. Form in this picture gives to many different things particular properties. These properties, in turn, are understood with reference to that shared Form.13 In this sense, Forms not only give the underlying structure to reality but also provide the conceptual apparatus necessary for describing our world. Hence, as Parmenides points out in his eponymous dialogue, the loss of Forms would destroy the “possibility of discourse” (th;n tou` dialevgesqai duvnamin).14

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John Carey, detecting the tension between Form and matter in Milton’s poem, comments in his edition of Milton’s poems that “Id. Plat. is a burlesque of Aristotle’s criticisms of Plato’s doctrine of ideal forms [and that] Milton speaks as a literal-minded Aristotelian.” Hale similarly remarks, “De Idea in particular is a delightful, mysterious attack on Plato (by Milton the fervent Platonist).”15 But Milton actually exposes the speaker of the poem to be an unthinking reductionist; Aristotle’s philosophy is shown to be as problematic as that of Plato. As the account of form as a general essence fails to yield a description of the individual, the derision initially directed at Plato is gradually redirected to Aristotle.16 While on the surface the speaker jeers at this wandering “archetypal man,” the object of derision is not straightforwardly Platonic: “Sive in remota forte terrarum plaga / Incedit ingens hominis archetypus gigas, / Et diis tremendus erigit celsum caput / Atlante maior portitore syderum” (Or perhaps in some faraway land this archetypal man strides along like an enormous giant, taller than star-bearing Atlas, and rears up his towering head to frighten the gods; 21–24). The “hominis archetypus” who is stalking through the heavens and threatening the gods finally curls up to sleep as the man in the moon (“Citimum . . . Lunae globum”; 16–18). These images create a sense that the Platonic Idea presents our minds with a stumbling block: we cannot fill out—or flesh out—the form because it is immaterial. The Form of Man is conceived in this picture only by way of a simile—by thinking of this figure as an “ingens . . . gigas” (22). Such a figure is imaginable because we abstract from particular subjects (men) a general form of manhood. Then, by increasing its magnitude, we make it a “gigas,” or giant monster. Yet such a process does very little to tell us about the elusive Form of Man itself. The satire on the expanding figure of this imagined universal is reminiscent of Thomas More’s Utopia, in which the Utopians—unreflective nominalists—scorn reified universals and caricature the Idea of Man as a super-gigas.17 The use of the comparative indicates the likelihood of More being Milton’s source. Both writers suggest, in a common-sense sort of way, that Aristotelian immanent forms, or enmattered forms (e[nulon ei\do~), are more congenial to us than Platonic Forms. Our minds move naturally from particulars to generalizations.18 According to Milton’s speaker, neither the ancient seer Tiresius nor the (fictional)

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contemporary of Moses, the Alexandrian Neoplatonist Hermes Trismegistus, bears witness to the form’s existence. To Hermes’ question in the actual text of the Poimandres, “Hast thou seen in thy minde that Archetypal Form, which was before the interminated and infinite Beginning?,” Milton’s speaker answers with a resounding, “No.”19 The possibility that Plato’s theory of recollection will save the Platonic philosophy of this poem is effectively scuppered. The monuments and “ratas leges” (unalterable laws; 5) of Memory and Eternity can find no record of man’s first form; the “caelique fastos” (calendars of heaven) and the “ephemeridas Deum” (diaries of the gods; 6) are also silent. The Aristotelian speaker, who derides the (hopeless) quest of this First Form hunting for its matter, thus ends by ridiculing the Platonic Idea of the “exemplar Dei” (idea of God; 10). But at this point, Milton the young university student begins to distance himself from the witty persona he has adopted.20 Milton’s materialized metaphor swells like a facetious version of the famous figure on the title page of Thomas Hobbes’s (1588–1679) Leviathan.21 The Idea of Man now pictured as a ridiculously big man is indicative of the problem of excessive materialization. While Hermes Trismegistus and other Neoplatonists depict Forms as paradigms in order to explain the phenomenon that Lloyd Gerson calls the “eternal possibility of intelligible real predication of sensibles,” the Aristotelian speaker of Milton’s poem has already shrunk this paradigm to fit his sensible world.22 Whereas Plato gives a substantial (underlying reality) existence to the Idea of Man, the seventeenth-century Aristotelian speaker of Milton’s poem deems “substantial” to mean “material.” The speaker’s interpretation of Aristotelian universals as things immanent in matter produces an (erroneous) material redaction of the Platonic idea. Hence, the unwieldy giant—“Haud ille Palladis gemellus innubae / Interna proles insidet menti Iovis” (He is not twin brother to the virgin Athene: he does not live like an unborn child inside Jove’s mind; 11–12)—is twice denied the status of a Platonic Idea.23 Since the poetry vehemently denies from the beginning any ascription of immaterial identity to this “gigas,” it cannot, in point of fact, represent the “idea Platonica” as such. The subversion of the imagery only grows stronger near the end of the poem. Although the Aristotelian speaker tacitly endorses a ruthless materialism, this materialization is shown to be more ludicrous than the

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supposedly vacuous Platonic idea it purportedly mocks. Through the crass physicalization of the hulking figure/form, Milton’s poem subtly undermines its speaker’s position so that Platonic philosophy is suddenly felt to be more palatable than this colossal mass of matter. Yet the speaker, believing his victory is complete, concludes that Plato should be exiled from his own Republic as the “fabulator maximus” (supreme feigner; 38). While he condemns Plato for being the creator of the outrageous fiction of the Forms, Milton’s poem meanwhile hints that Aristotle is as guilty as Plato for introducing these monsters to the Schools (“Haec monstra . . . induxti scholis”; 36).24 It is here—just when the movement reaches a crisis point—that we encounter the urgent and melancholic “iam iam” of the last three lines: “Iam iam poetas urbis exules tuae / Revocabis, ipse fabulator maximus, / Aut institutor ipse migrabis foras” (hurry up and call home the poets whom you exiled from your Republic or else banish yourself from it, although you were its founder, as the greatest fictional writer of them all; 37–39).25 Through its allusion to the image of homecoming in Lucretius (DRN iii.894–99)—“iam iam non domus accipiet te laeta” (now no longer will your happy home give you welcome)—Milton complicates the ending of the poem. The plangent tone evoked in Milton’s poem implicitly laments the loss of poetry and also of Plato; it calls for a return of the “proles . . . menti Iovis” (the children of Jove’s mind; 12). The intertextual allusions, in other words, consciously call up Athena, the goddess born from “Jove’s mind.” As the goddess of craft and wisdom, Athena was also the goddess of poivh ma (Greek for “making”), and so implicitly aligned with the poet.26 In this context, Athena’s craft emerges as an epitome of substance: although spun from a material thread, it follows a pattern (or Idea) preexisting in the mind. Like Athena’s act of weaving, the image-making process of the poet is a secondary act, subordinate to the ideas which precede it—the implication being that the immaterial once more gains ontological priority over the material. The speaker’s threat of exile may now be read as an opportunity to flee a world of gross materialization. As Milton’s poem locates a sanctuary for Platonism outside the body of the poem’s Aristotelianism, the emergent idea is that Plato may have exiled the poets partly out of admiration and partly out of fear of their craft— namely, their inexplicable power of invention. Yet Plato the philosopher,

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as Milton would have known, was also rumored to have been a poet, the author of witty, beautiful verses like this one: “Of old among the living thou didst shine the star of morn; / now shinest thou among the wasted dead, the star of eve” (’A sth;r pri;n me;n e[lampe~ ejni; zwoi`s in ’EwÛ`o~ / nu`n de; qanw;n lavmpei~ {Espero~ ejn φqimenoi~).27 We are told that the lover has died: in life, he was the “star of morn”; in death, he is the “star of eve.” But the morning star and the evening star are in fact the same physical body. The magnificence of these compact lines is that the essence of the “thou” is identical. Shimmering at a distance, the same star—now perceived as something different—falls from the morning sky into twilight. It is we, not the lover, who shift perspective. Milton’s poem encourages us to do likewise. Taking his leave from the Aristotelian detractor and the poem he voices, Milton imagines exile as a form of self-banishment. The mention of Plato becomes an implicit invitation for immateriality to return to the substance of the poem. “De Idea Platonica” now sides with Sir Philip Sidney’s (1554–86) understanding of the Platonic philosophy and poetry: “So, as Plato, banishing the abuse, not the thing—not banishing it, but giving due honour unto it—shall be our patron and not our adversary.”28 In Milton, the volte-face may also be owing to the fact that Milton was aware that Aristotle could be read as being more critical of the poets and the fiction-making element of poetry than Plato. In his Metaphysics (A.2.983a3), Aristotle approvingly quotes Solon as saying the “bards tell many a lie,” but a few lines later he issues a well-known statement to the contrary: “The lover of myth is in a sense a lover of Wisdom.” In the end, Aristotle chooses to dismiss the poets and their myths as incapable of conveying metaphysical truths.29 Plato, who banished the poets in the Republic, meanwhile has Socrates in the Ion extol the poet as a prophet, thereby elevating poetry to the status of a divinely inspired creation: “These fine [beautiful] poems are not human, or the work of men, but divine (qie`a), and the work of gods . . . the poets are merely the interpreters of the gods by whom they are severally possessed” (Ion 534E).30 The idea reemerges when, in “Ad Patrem,” Milton poignantly beseeches his father not to turn his back on poetry: “Nec tu vatis opus divinum despice carmen, / Quo nihil aethereos ortus, et semina caeli” (Do not despise divine song, the poet’s work. Nothing provides clearer evidence of our divine song, our heavenly seed; 17–18).31

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It is not mere polemic, therefore, that will later incite the Milton of Areopagitica (1644) to construe Plato’s banishment of the poets as a merely utopian vision: “But that Plato meant this Law peculiarly to that Commonwealth which he imagin’d, and to no other, is evident. Why was he not else a Law-giver to himself, but a transgressor, and to be expell’d by his own Magistrats; both for the wanton epigrams and dialogues which he made, and his perpetual reading of Sophron Mimus, and Aristophanes, books of grossest infamy.”32 By decrying the Republic as a “fancied republic, which in this world could have no place,” Milton once more separates the antipoet Plato from Plato the lover of poets. When the poets, along with Plato, are called home (“poetas urbis exules tuae / Revocabis”; 37–38) in “De Idea Platonica,” the verse differentiates between the poetloving Plato with his philosophy of Forms and the Plato who creates the austerely utopian, antipoetical vision of the Republic. In thus separating Milton from the speaker of “De Idea Platonica,” irony comes not at Milton’s expense—which, as Hale rightly notes, would be rare—but at ours and that of the speaker.33 The poem’s ingenuity is to have expanded the attack of the iambic satire so that it reverses (our) expectations. It does not simply attack, as Hale argues, its purported subject, Plato, on behalf of the poet; rather, it defends Plato and his philosophy against absurdly reductionist characterizations. The clever Aristotelian who sniggers at Plato line by line in the poem now has his philosophy mocked by the poem as a whole. The Idea of Man appears less ridiculous than the grossly physicalized man the speaker’s rhetoric has created. While Plato does not escape wholly unscathed, Milton’s seemingly naïve burlesque exercise of wit is a heartier condemnation of Aristotelianism—when taken as a purely materializing philosophy—than it is an easy dismissal of Plato’s doctrine of the Forms.34 M I LT O N ’ S

“ P L AT O N I C ”

M A S Q U E : D R A M AT I Z I N G F O R M S ,

VISIBLE AND INVISIBLE

While Milton’s subtle critique of Aristotle and Plato may feel as though it comes down on the side of Plato, we should not conclude that Milton in his younger years embraced an uncomplicated Platonism. Milton’s first (and only) masque, entitled A Masque Presented at Ludlow-Castle, 1634, announces on the title page of the 1637 edition that it was performed on

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the “Michaelmasse night” of 29 September 1634. The differences between the revised Trinity MS (in Milton’s hand) and the Bridgewater MS (1634) make it clear that the entertainment of 1634, given before the Earl of Bridgewater, son-in-law of the Countess Dowager of Derby, was a good 115 lines shorter than the text we possess in printed form.35 While “De Idea Platonica” played with the idea of the Form of Man, Milton has his Lady in the masque speak of another Form, the hypostasized virtue of Chastity: “O welcome pure-eyed Faith, white-handed Hope, / Thou hovering angel girt with golden wings, / And thou unblemished form of Chastity, / I see ye visibly, and now believe / That he, the Supreme Good, t’ whom all things ill / Are but as slavish officers of vengeance, / Would send a glistering guardian if need were / To keep my life and honour unassailed” (Comus 212–19). The Lady speaks with great conviction. As John Leonard notes, it is as though she is ravished by the sight of the Platonic Form itself (Phdr 216; 250).36 According to the closing Myth of Ur in Plato’s Republic (book 7), only the philosopher-king has the ability to see the Forms (Resp. 516– 17). The rest of us remain in the Cave, staring at the shadows of things. The opening lines of Milton’s masque—which describe the “smoke and stir of this dim spot, / Which men call earth, and, with low-thoughted care / Confined, and pestered in this pin-fold here” (Comus 5–7)— effectively reduce our entire world to that of Plato’s Cave. We see things in a muted light that is at a far remove from the purity of the True Earth as described by Plato (Phd. 109).37 The introduction of this ontological dualism immediately puts pressure on the role Forms play in the masque—most notably, Chastity. As in the instance of “De Idea Platonica,” it is possible to read Milton’s poem as subverting the philosophic position the poetry claims to endorse. In what follows, I propose that Milton interrogates the masque’s underlying dualist ontology, thereby pushing to the fore the pressing question of what substance is: form or matter? The Form of Chastity If the masque, Comus, is the most Platonic (not to mention, the most Shakespearian) of Milton’s works, it is subtly so.38 Within a framework that otherwise seems to endorse a Platonic philosophy, we discover that the masque—both in the performance text and also its later, expanded

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printed edition—launches a serious critique of Plato’s Forms.39 While it must be conceded that chastity is not generally thought of as a Platonic Form, it seems likely that the Socrates of the Parmenides would admit Chastity to his list of Forms. As Milton dramatizes, Chastity is already an abstraction separable from sensible things (as opposed to, say, dirt, for which Socrates does not want to admit a Form).40 Chastity for Milton may in fact refer to the very Platonic virtue of swφrosuvnh (sophrosyne), which in Plato’s dialogue the Charmides is both an ethical activity—of acting modestly—and the intellectual virtue of temperance, which is regarded as self-knowledge.41 The fact that Milton chose to place the virtue of chastity at the center of his masque is significant, not least because in redefining chastity as a spiritual and intellective virtue he hints that it is the means by which we might ascend to the Good—or to God. For the Greek Neoplatonist Porphyry (234?–305 AD), Plato’s Phaedo outlined a process of purification in which the four virtues (temperance, courage, wisdom, and justice) are elevated with the ascending soul. In this picture, temperance is divorced from bodily feeling (oJmopaqei`n), and intellectual activity is understood as the telos toward which moral activity aims.42 In like manner, the Elder Brother in Milton’s masque attributes a process of purgation (kavqarsi~) and refinement, similar to that described by Porphyry, to the power of “Saintly chastity” (454): “Till oft converse with heavenly habitants / Begin to cast a beam on the outward shape, / The unpolluted temple of the mind, / And turns it by degrees to the soul’s essence, / Till all be made immortal” (Comus 458–62).43 In Plato, this conversion to immortality occurs when, with the aid of philosophy, the soul abjures the senses and experiences the “pure apprehension of pure existence” (Phd. 83A). Diotima’s famous speech in the Symposium makes clear that this power to see the Forms depends on one’s communion with the simple and the divine: one “will be enabled to bring forth, not images of beauty, but realities (for he has hold not of an image but of a reality), and bringing forth and nourishing true virtue to become the friend of God and be immortal, if mortal man may” (Symp. 212A). The Elder Brother’s speech thus seems to draw on the Platonic idea that both body and soul can be made immortal once the “unpolluted temple of the mind” is united with the intelligible world (460–62).

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It is telling, therefore, that Milton, who accords high status to mind and its purity, chooses to describe Comus’s magic in terms of a reversal of this process—as a descent into bestiality: “And the inglorious likeness of a beast / Fixes instead, unmoulding reason’s mintage / Charactered in the face” (Comus 527–29). The word “charactered” underscores the way man’s appearance physically marks out his godlike power of reason (68– 69). Reason, as we saw in Plato, is important because it allows one to ascend beyond the sensible world and come to know things in themselves. The fact that Comus (unlike his mother, Circe) “unmould[s]” the human face emphasizes that this metamorphosis strips man of the very faculty that makes him human: namely, reason. When we are told that these metamorphosed men their “native home forget / To roll with pleasure in a sensual sty” (76–77), the stress is on the internal pollution as destroying identity. The transformation depicted is the antithesis of that described by Porphyry, where the power of chastity cleanses the soul, thereby enabling it to leave the material world. Yet here, when man gives in to lust, to the desires of the body, not only his reason but also his knowledge of the self—what Socrates calls “temperance” (I Alc. 131A)—is instantaneously lost. As Pierre J. Payer has observed in his discussion on the De Bono of the “Doctor Expertus,” Albert the Great (c. 1200–80?), “chastity is the ultimate virtue of temperance because its matter is ultimate in the order of difficulty and its lack (lechery) is ultimate in the degree of harm, since lechery assimilates us to brute animals.”44 The fact that this notion of temperance-as-chastity occupies the central position in Milton’s masque may owe something to Milton’s awareness that the Greek word swφrosuvnh—which will first become “castitas” and then “temperentia” in Latin—is loaded from the start with ideas about the ethical as well as the intellectual power of chastity (cf. Symp. 219).45 Xenophon (c. 431–c. 355 BC) enshrined the alignment between temperance (swφrosuvnh) and self-knowledge (soφiva) in his Memorabilia of Socrates, in which he records that what Socrates meant by “temperance” and “wisdom” were in fact two aspects of the same thing (ouj diwvrizen). While wisdom (soφiva) dictates what ought to be done according to reason, prudence (swφrosuvnh) refers to the self-control in the act itself. Since all virtues are in harmony with, or are part of, wisdom, it follows that they are a part of prudence.46 Years later, in 1642, Milton will

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favorably recall his introduction to “the shady spaces of philosophy, but chiefly to the divine volumes of Plato and his equall Xenophon,” in which he claims to have “learned of chastity and love” (Apology).47 The comment sheds light on Milton’s decision to have the Lady invoke the two Pauline virtues (I Cor. 13.13) of Faith and Hope (213–15) and to substitute Chastity in the place of the expected third virtue, Charity. For Georgia B. Christopher, this replacement should be understood in terms of the Reformed tradition of the “virginitas fidei,” in which faith is given priority over love and where equal importance is given to the “chastity of body” and the “chastity of soul.”48 To appreciate the weight the term “chastity” had acquired by this time we have only to look at Augustine’s lament in his Confessions, where he describes the lack of chastity as a “fornication of the mind” (ita fornicatur anima).49 Chastity in the Augustinian sense is no longer a straightforward ethical virtue or habit but is a spiritual virtue that is rooted in the mind as well as the will. As Augustine makes clear, the concept of chastity harmonizes the Christian tradition of an arduous ascent to God with the Platonic idea of spiritual elevation: “sapientia scilicet qua in Dei cognitione formamur, continentia vero qua huic sæculo non conformamur” (with wisdom we become like God in knowledge, and with chastity we become unlike the world).50 By positing a vertical scale of substances capable of transforming themselves into ontologically purer substances, Milton’s masque inclines to view chastity as a cleansing and purifying power that is naturally associated with intellectual and spiritual wisdom.51 Yet there are generic reasons for his choice of chastity (over charity) as well. The poet Torquato Tasso (1544–95) thought chastity was a distinctly feminine virtue; charity, meanwhile, resembles (“è simile”) the heroic virtue characteristic of a true Christian hero—the implication being that charity (unlike chastity) is a masculine virtue.52 In Tasso’s Discorso della Virtù Feminile e Donnesca (1582), the difference between the sexes means that of the two dominant virtues, courage and chastity, the former was assigned to men, the latter to women (Tasso does admit the division is artificial and subject to alteration by social convention).53 In choosing to have his heroine call upon Chastity, not Charity, Milton appears to accept this gendered classification of the virtues. As a result, his Lady is implicitly likened to the “unmarried woman” the apostle Paul exhorts to be “holy

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both in body and in spirit” (I Cor. 7.34), though the context makes it clear that “castitas” does not refer to marital chastity. The conscious move on Milton’s part to invoke the spiritual, intellectual, and ethical dimensions associated with the virtue best suited for his heroine means that the (female) virtue of chastity is understood not only to have the power to grant its possessor access to the intelligible world but also to transplant her there. 54 Yet, there is the lingering sense that the latent distinction emerging between masculine agency and female passivity will be problematic. It is this disjunction between the threat of physical violation—represented by Comus and his rabble—and the passive resistance on the part of the virtuous Lady that forms the plot of the masque. In arguing that spiritual chastity provides its recipient with a defense against even physical injury, the Lady and her brothers attempt to claim that passivity is power. But the question the masque repeatedly raises is whether or not a physically active force can be overcome by a passive, yet highly spiritualized, virtue. When at line 785, the Lady refers to “the sage / And serious doctrine of virginity,” the suggestion is that what is at stake is not only physical integrity—or the abstention of sexual pleasure—but also something far more spiritually and intellectually defined. This, at least, was the point John Chrysostom (c. 347–407) made in his influential tract De Virginitate (c. 380–90) when, speaking about women virgins only, he asserted, “Even if [a virgin’s] body should remain inviolate the better part of her soul has been ruined: her thoughts. What advantage is there in the wall having stood firm when the temple is destroyed?” (Nam etsi ei corpus salvum est, animi tamen, quæ pars est potior, sunt corrupta consilia. Quid autem refert disjecto templo septa restare?).55 Denigrating monasticism, John Calvin (1509–64) made the withering remark that “celibacy is one thing, virginity another,” thereby underlining the notion that to be chaste entails more than simply remaining unmarried (as in the case of clerical celibacy). Unlike virginity, chastity was thought to require the conjunction of the purity of mind and that of the body, as the German Calvinist Clemens Timpler (1563/4– 1642) pithily summarized: “Virginity is not a moral virtue.”56 Milton would have been aware from the Latin tradition that virginity referred to one’s ability to remain physically pure or untouched (the first

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reference to male virgins is at Revelation 14.4, but Jerome helped along the feeling that this was a male term by deriving virgo from vir).57 There is a growing sense, though, that to remain a virgo intacta is more difficult for women for the simple reason that men are not seen to possess a physical integrity that can be violated.58 While a man may retain his virginity through his exercise of self-control—by abstaining from sexual acts—a woman must actively protect the chastity of her body. This difference may partly explain why virginity devolved into a component of the virtue of chastity.59 In what may feel like a bizarre twist, the Lady in Comus concludes that she can best protect herself as a virgo intacta through the spiritual armor of Chastity—the feminized equivalent to the “armor of God” described at Ephesians (6.10–18). Hence, Augustine’s verdict: “Chastity of the soul must be preserved much more assiduously in the soul since there the protection of bodily chastity is provided” (Unde colligitur, multo magis animi castitatem servandam esse in animo, in quo tutela est pudicitiæ corporalis).60 The “sublime notion” (784) expressed by the “serious doctrine of virginity” (786) in the masque—about which the Lady says no more— appears to point to a spiritual power belonging to the “sun-clad power of chastity” (781) which, unlike virginity, is separable from the physical. The chastity that the Lady and her brothers exalt thus transcends the purely physical (in his later divorce tracts, Milton will downplay the physical element to such an extent that he will countenance the idea that “where the minde and person please aptly, there some unaccomplishment of the bodies delight may be better born with”).61 The difficulty in the masque, though, is that this distinction—between the physical and the spiritual—is given in excessively polarizing terms. The drama of the masque depends, therefore, on the conflict between Comus’s sensual materialism (representing enmattered forms) and the Lady’s hypostatization of universals (or her adherence to Platonic Forms). The tension reaches a crisis point when the Lady scornfully refuses to touch Comus’s banquet. Here we detect echoes of the Christian belief that it is “the things which come out of him, those are they that defile the man” (Mk. 7.15, 20–23; Mt. 15.17–19). While Comus’s sensuous language (669– 80) is the most tempting and dangerous part of the Banquet of Sense, she nonetheless proves herself to be immune to his linguistic charm:

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Impostor do not charge most innocent Nature, As if she would her children should be riotous With her abundance she good cateress Means her provision only to the good That live according to her sober laws, And holy dictate of spare temperance: If every just man that now pines with want Had but a moderate and beseeming share Of that which lewdly-pampered Luxury Now heaps upon some few with vast excess, Nature’s full blessings would be well-dispensed In unsuperfluous even proportion, And she no whit encumbered with her store, And then the giver would be better thanked, His praise due paid, for swinish gluttony Ne’er looks to heaven amidst his gorgeous feast, But with besotted base ingratitude Crams, and blasphemes his feeder. (Comus 761–78) In her verbal assault against Comus (who has called her an “ill borrower” at line 683), the Lady proceeds to argue that his luxury has tipped the scales of nature. The implication is that while the exchange between Nature and man should be a fair exchange (“better thank’t,” “due paid”), the opulent desires of a few have shattered the efficacy of the transaction. Since her soul complies with Nature’s “sober laws” (765) and accepts only those things that come from good men, the Lady is the proponent for—and exemplar of—this exchange. In this sense, the Lady embodies what Aquinas distinguished as “spiritualis castitas” (that is, a turning away from enjoying things against God’s design), in opposition to the “spiritualis fornicatio” (whereby one sins, like Comus, by delighting in things against God’s design).62 In more practical terms, the Lady is advocating the Aristotelian Mean as the basis for virtuous activity.63 All this is pretty heady stuff for the twelve-year-old Lady Alice Egerton to recite, especially given the fact that while she speaks the “grim aspects” of Comus’s swarthy band throng around her (693–94). Only a few lines later, Comus darkly speaks of how “Beauty is Nature’s coin, must not be

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hoarded, / But must be current, and the good thereof / Consists in mutual and partaken bliss” (738–40). The “mutual and partaken bliss” Comus describes alludes to the sexual desires of his licentious cohorts. Along with Leonard, one admires the fact that, given her condition, the Lady dares to “say so much.”64 It is therefore surprising that in the subsequent additions to Comus (1637), Milton has the Lady say even more: Shall I go on? Or have I said enough? To him that dares Arm his profane tongue with contemptuous words Against the sun-clad power of chastity, Fain would I something say, yet to what end? Thou hast nor ear, nor soul to apprehend The sublime notion, and high mystery That must be uttered to unfold the sage And serious doctrine of virginity, And thou art worthy that thou shouldst not know More happiness than this thy present lot. (Comus 778–88) The rhetorical question allows the Lady to delay, but it fails to conceal the fact that her paean to virginity is distinctly at odds with her earlier espousal of the Aristotelian Doctrine of the Mean (768–76).65 One possible explanation for Milton’s having the Lady move from espousing an Aristotelian conception of virtue as the mean towards an “absolutist” conception is that he is attempting to convey a spiritual perfection that, by nature, cannot yield to compromise (lest it destroy itself ). The Lady, who notably refuses to “unfold” (785) the “doctrine of virginity” (786) to Comus, implies that to indulge in such an act of accommodation would itself constitute a violation of the virtue. It is as though the Lady suddenly realizes that to engage in argument with Comus might itself constitute the “foul talk” described by her Elder Brother, which lets “in defilement to the inward parts” (464, 466).66 One may feel at this point that the Lady has pushed her argument for chastity’s (passive) spiritualized protection too far. Ironically, it is Comus who tells us otherwise: “She fables not, I feel that I do fear / Her words set off by some superior power” (799–800).67 While we must concede

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that the power of chastity evidently exists, the masque still urges us to consider whether this power is truly enough to save the Lady. It appears it is not. When the brothers rush on stage, the Attendant Spirit laments that the Lady remains “in stony fetters fixed, and motionless” (818). Despite the Lady’s earlier grand declaration to Comus—“Fool do not boast, / Thou canst not touch the freedom of my mind / With all thy charms, although this corporal rind / Thou hast immanacled, while heaven sees good” (661–64)—the fact remains that Comus is not interested in touching her mind. Yet the Lady does not seem to understand that Comus poses a very real physical threat. In true Platonic fashion, she fears Comus is out to destroy her chastity of mind by infecting her with a spiritual-cum-intellectual contamination (this recalls Crito 47E, where Plato speaks of how it is not worth living with a corrupted soul). Hence, when the Lady voices concern over the “thousand fantasies” (204) that “Begin to throng into my memory” (205), she hastily adds, “These thoughts may startle well, but not astound / The virtuous mind” (209–10). Chastity, so construed in terms of intellectual and spiritual purity, prompts the Lady to boast to Comus that he cannot touch the “freedom of [her] mind” (662). But the masque works hard to show that Comus could not care less about the Lady’s mind; he is fixated on her body (“dainty limbs,” 679; “vermeil-tinctured lip,” 751; “Love-darting eyes” and “tresses like the Morn,” 752, are all wonderfully erotic). It is at the point when Comus moves in on the Lady, who is still glued to her chair, that one begins to detect an interesting fault-line in the ontology of Comus between the universal form of Chastity and the plot, which gives the practice here on smoky, dim earth. The masque, in other words, dramatizes a Platonic chorismos (cwrismó~): chastity is so transcendent that it cannot help out (unlike, for instance, Jesus, who, as the New Testament tells us, was made flesh and dwelt among us. This, as Augustine said, was the crucial bit he could never find in the Greeks). The Elder Brother is manifestly wrong when he says that chastity is effective armor and that their sister is “clad in complete steel” (420). But she most obviously is not; the metaphor fails to materialize. Added to this difficulty is the troublesome claim that the Form of Chastity will descend if—and only if—the recipient is fit to receive it, as the Lady herself implies when she says, “none / But such as are good men can give good

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things, / And that which is not good, is not delicious / To a wellgoverned and wise appetite” (Comus 701–04). The Lady’s transition from speaking about the giver (702) to speaking about the receiver is crucial. The recipient’s inner worth, or spiritual chastity, is what makes her fit to receive good things. This idea of receptivity is at once Platonic and Christian. Plato’s Second Letter declares, for instance, that knowledge of the Forms is accessible to those suitably endowed to receive it (Ep. ii.314A–B). Similarly, the Christian tradition as under Augustine’s influence understood continence as a “gift of God,” received through an act of willing, since “no one would receive unless willing” (quia et nemo acciperet nisi volens).68 This echoes Luke’s injunction that in order to receive gifts from God, one need only be able to ask (Lk. 11.9). This idea is dramatized in the masque when the Lady first meets Comus, who is in the guise of a shepherd. While she acquiesces to his help, she also murmurs a prayer: “Eye me blest Providence, and square my trial / To my proportioned strength” (328–29). The word to watch is “proportioned” (329). The Lady is saying that if she is put to the test (and she will be), “blest Providence” (328) will grant her heavenly assistance by making the “trial” in proportion to her ability to withstand it. The philosophic problem lurking in these lines is that the Lady’s ability to withstand evil is seen to come not from herself but from “Providence” (328). While Form may possess the power to save the Lady, it cannot, in a Platonic sense, descend to operate in our world; even if it did, it would need to be squared with an account of individual agency. The masque opts to endorse the compromise position: namely, that the grace the Lady expects to protect her will do so, but only if she merits it (429–30). The “hidden strength” (414) supposedly belonging to her is described as her own insofar as it is divinely earned (“if heaven gave it”; 418; 430). This may explain why the “sage / And serious doctrine of virginity” (785–86) as presented by her brothers is so laden with caveats as to seem impossible to attain. According to the Elder Brother, chastity will keep their sister safe as long as she is not proud or presumptuous in her possession of it (430). Yet this remark is disconcerting precisely because it implies that if the Lady gets herself in serious trouble, it may well be because she deserves it.69 The focus on reception becomes a sort of smoke screen; it diverts our attention from the more pressing question

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of whether or not the Form of Chastity can actually affect real, physical action on earth. At line 664, the Lady answers in the affirmative: she says she knows she is safe “while Heav’n sees good.” The phrase “Heav’n sees good” feels slightly odd. We expect to hear a noun (like “things” or “persons”) after “good.” Milton’s refusal to supply one means that we are forced to take “good” as a substantive. The Lady thus appears to be saying that while Heaven acts as a witness to the good instantiated in our world, it will protect its practitioners from evil. But the phrase may also be read as meaning that the Lady will be safe only for as long as heaven itself attends to, or is “invested in,” Goodness paradigmatically. The latter reading is the more problematic. Since for Plato, the Form of the Good is the greatest Form, ensuring the (possible) existence of all other Forms, Milton’s masque implies that were heaven to reject the Idea of the Good, then the “unblemished form of Chastity” (214) itself would be rendered facetious.70 This interpretation finds support when the Elder Brother changes tack and presents a new argument for Chastity’s redemptive power: this I hold firm, Virtue may be assailed, but never hurt, Surprised by unjust force, but not enthralled, Yea even that which mischief meant most harm, Shall in the happy trial prove most glory. But evil on it self shall back recoil, And mix no more with goodness, when at last Gathered like scum, and settled to itself It shall be in eternal restless change Self-fed, and self-consum’d, if this fail, The pillared firmament is rottenness, And earth’s base built on stubble. But come let’s on . . . (Comus 587–98; italics added) Note that we have moved away from the idea that the virtuous / chaste are unassailable to the notion that while they are assailable, they are yet immune to enslavement. The modification is significant. Attempting to make the idea more congenial to our minds, the Elder Brother then adds that while virtue may be hurt, it gains glory in causing evil to selfdestruct.71

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Yet as soon as we come to the brother’s sudden “if ” at line 596, the germs of a rising theodicy spring to life. The Elder Brother simply assumes that the virtues are protected because justice exists in “this pillared firmament” (597) of our universe. But earthly justice in a Platonic framework exists only insofar as it participates (mevqexi~) in the Form of the Just. When the Elder Brother switches to say that if virtue is not protected—that is, if justice is not in evidence in our sensible world— then the Form of Justice is itself compromised, he implicitly reverses Plato’s line of argument. Plato’s Forms are independent of sensible objects. Regardless of what goes on in our sensible world, Forms are the “really real” existing substances (o[ntw~ o}n; Soph. 240B; Resp. 597A). As in Socrates’ example of the Form of Beauty, Forms are unparticipated; particulars are said to come into being through the “presence or communion (call it which you please)” of the Forms (Phd. 100D). Of interest here is the fact that the Elder Brother surprisingly argues for the inverse: if virtue is hurt—if evil is not conquered—then the “pillared firmament” (597) with its Forms is rotten; the entire moral fabric of the universe is reduced to “stubble” (598), mere chaff. To avoid this conclusion, the Elder Brother assumes that the Platonic cwrismov~ (separation) between the supernumerary world of the Forms and our world can be bridged by real (practical) action on the part of the Forms themselves. Virtue in this picture condescends to save the virtuous, which is distinctly odd; Plato’s Forms do not act in this way. The whole point of Plato’s Forms is that they remain separate from their instantiations, as Milton dramatizes at the Lady’s peril. At the core of the masque’s ontology, therefore, is a gaping hole that a monist materialist philosophy would have otherwise closed. Within a Christian context, this ontological breach is bridged by the figure of Christ, the incarnation of Love that supersedes the Law: “O more exceeding love or law more just? / Just law indeed, but more exceeding love!” (15–16), Milton exclaims in his poem “Upon the Circumcision” (c. 1633). Insofar as the miracle of the Incarnation combines the transcendent and immanent, the divine and human natures, it essentially expresses the Form of the Good—or what the Lady refers to as the “Supreme Good” (216)—in our world. But the dramatic action of Comus notably lacks this miraculous union of Form with form, of the divine with the human. Although the Elder Brother remains optimistic (“A

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thousand liveried angels lackey her [the Lady], / Driving far off each thing of sin and guilt”; 454–55), the real action of the masque remains arrested. The Lady’s chastity cannot provide her with truly effectual armor because Chastity (as Form) remains utterly divorced from our material world. Forms, in other words, are disastrously devoid of practical agency.72 Embodied Agency: Sabrina and the Role of Grace It is only when a nonhuman agent is allowed to enter and act—to transmit the power of the transcendent—that this cycle of failed action is resolved. Sabrina, the figure that frees the Lady and ostensibly solves the masque’s problematic dichotomy between substance and matter— human and nonhuman agency—is herself an ontologically murky character. It is significant, therefore, that Sabrina, the metamorphosed guardian of chastity, exists not in isolation from our world but in engagement with it. In fact, Sabrina’s liminal status hints that a focus on an overdetermined spiritual telos may actually hollow out an otherwise healthy emphasis on the material world, thereby restricting our understanding of what constitutes reality. In reintroducing to the drama an attenuated and good materiality, Sabrina also serves as a mediating figure through which a higher power operates. But to return to that moment prior to Sabrina’s entry when the Lady is stuck to her chair: this is the truly interesting phase in the masque because the Lady’s timeless virtue is without agency. When the brothers rush in with their swords drawn (stage direction, 812–13) but fail to break Comus’s wand and thus reverse the spell, they, like the Lady and her “hidden strength,” are rendered powerless at the crucial moment. The masque looks to be breaking down at the point where human agency is supposed to enter. This is all the more surprising given the fact that the brothers, like Odysseus before them, have been given an herb “of divine effect,” haemony, (629) to help them. In that it allows the youths to enter the enchanter’s lair untouched, the gift of haemony may be read as another attempt on Milton’s part to place divine agency squarely within the sensible world.73 Whereas Homer’s moly is said to grow on earth and is difficult—not to mention, lethal—to extract, Milton’s haemony is simply trod underfoot (633–34).74 We are told that although dark and prickly on earth (630), haemony will

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“in another country” (631) bear “a bright golden flower” (632). Like moly, haemony is otherworldly—part of the class of Homeric plants that the Roman emperor Julian the Apostate (332–63 AD) exclaimed were “more lovely to hear about than those one can see with one’s eyes” (e[sti ga;r φuta; par∆ aujtw`/` polla; terpnovtera ajkou`sai tw`n oJrwmevnwn).75 So transplanted to our world, haemony reflects the way things on earth are mere likenesses—and hence imperfections—of their truer reality in the intelligible sphere. In ostensibly operating in our world, haemony continues to holds out the tantalizing possibility that there may yet be a way to close the ontological gap existing between (sensible) reality and Reality (with a capital R). The fact that Milton here chooses to depict this connection between the two worlds with a plant should come as no surprise.76 A few years before Comus (probably around 1629), Milton, in Sonnet III, describes how his love for a lady has prompted him to try to write a poem in the Tuscan dialect. The canzone likens Milton’s speaking of love in a foreign language to a plant that tries to bloom on foreign soil: Qual in colle aspro, al imbrunir di sera L’avezza giovinetta pastorella Va bagnando l’herbetta strana e bella Che mal si spande a disusata spera Fuor di sua natía alma primavera, Cosi amor meco insù la lingua snella Desta il fior novo di strania favella, Mentre io di te . . . (Just as on a craggy hill at the dusk of even-tide, a youthful shepherdess, inured to it [the ruggedness], Goes to water a little plant, strange and beautiful, Which can scarcely spread its leaves in the unfamiliar sphere, Outside its native, nourishing springtime So, love, upon my swift [nimble] tongue, Awakens the new flower of a foreign language While I sing of you . . .) Love cares for the exotic plant—here, a symbol for poetry—which has been displaced from its “native” soil (the English language). In the “disusata spera,” or foreign sphere, of the Italian language, the plant

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finds it hard to grow. Still, Love causes it to blossom with the “fior nova” (new flower) of Italian love poetry. In this, the poem expresses a muted memory of Petrarch’s Poem 302 (Sonnet IX.480): “Levommi il mio penser in parte ov’era in questa spera / sarai ancor meco, se ’l desir non erra” (In this sphere you will be with me, if my desire is not deceived).77 But Milton elevates Petrarch’s “desir” to the heavenly power of “Amor”: E’l bel Tamigi cangio col bel Arno. Amor lo volse, ed io a l’altrui peso Seppi ch’ Amor cosa mai volse indarno. Deh! foss’ il mio cuor lento e’l duro seno A chi pianta dal ciel si buon terreno. (And I exchange the fair Thames for the bel Arno. Love willed it, and I knew from the burden of others, that Love never willed anything in vain. Ah! Would that my tardy heart and hard breast were as good a soil for him who plants from heaven.) The end of the canzone takes a sudden theological turn. The commonplace idea that the soul belongs in heaven, “To heaven (his Native Soyl) his soul is flown,” is distinctly Platonic-Augustinian in flavor.78 The assumption is that we, in our fallenness, have been ejected from Paradise but still labor to get home to heaven. While Love can cause Italian (love) poetry to rise on the young Milton’s tongue, it cannot guarantee that his soul (“mio cuor”) is the good soil (“buon terreno”) capable of receiving God’s love. In referring to his “duro seno” (hard breast), Milton alludes to the “stony ground” in Mark’s parable of the sower (4.3–20). Just as those who receive the word with gladness but find “no root in themselves” soon fall away from truth (Mk. 4.16–17), so here the successful transposition of the heavenly to the earthly is seen to depend ultimately on the beneficiary’s power of reception.79 This general idea lends support to John Steadman’s claim that Milton’s haemony “carries the sense of daemon and epistemon” and so refers to “divine philosophy.” (The fact that the spirit bestowing the herb on the brothers was originally described as a “daemon” in the Cambridge MS strengthens his case.)80 The notion that haemony may represent divine philosophy may also be traced back to the apocryphal book of the Wisdom

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of Solomon (7.20–21), in which “the diversities of plants and the virtues of roots [virtutes radicam] . . . them I know.” Hugo Grotius (1583–1645) glossed the “virtutes radicam” as the “medical power of herbs” (Herbarum vim medicam).81 Milton’s haemony thus fuses the pagan idea of heavenly, mystical plants with the Christian belief that wisdom teaches the devout the materia medica.82 Yet if haemony represents divine philosophy, the masque also seems to make the point that such divine power is capable of being received— or used—only by a select few (Mk 4.12). In placing the potency or activity of the Form into a physical object as an enmattered form, Milton transfers its power to the agent—if, that is, the agent is fit to receive it. What the masque underscores, therefore, is that the two brothers are not yet fit (or “skilled”; haimon) enough to receive the herb’s full effects in the way that Odysseus did (Iliad v.49). We sense that as innocent children, they are still too young to be characterized as epistemon (“wise”). In failing to follow the Attendant Spirit’s directions, the brothers effectively relinquish their opportunity to be the agents who might instantiate divine wisdom. Even though haemony’s φuvs i~, or nature, is itself naturally endowed with divine powers, the brothers fall short of achieving its nature in the secondary sense of realizing its possibilities for action within our world.83 A quasi-divinized spirit is thus needed to complete the process the brothers and haemony have begun but not yet completed. As the masque makes clear, experience falls on the side of those who have already undergone translation or transplantation; these are the agents who have been made fit to receive, or instantiate, heavenly gifts. The masque thus has the very immanent nature spirit, Sabrina, save the Lady. What complicates this solution is the fact that, as a river deity, Sabrina looks more like a member of Comus’s party than of the Lady’s. Milton, who transforms Sabrina’s history so that she is now described as a victim who fled her “enraged stepdame Guendolen” (829) and “Commended her fair innocence to the flood” (830), attempts to place Sabrina in the camp of the virtuous. Sabrina’s reward for preserving her chastity is the immortality the “water-nymphs” (833) bestow upon her: “In nectared lavers strewed with asphodel, / And through the porch and inlet of each sense / Dropped in ambrosial oils till she revived, / And underwent a quick immortal change/ Made goddess of the river” (837–41).

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Sabrina is made immortal through a process of embalming akin to that described in the Iliad when, by “applying soveraigne force / Of rosie balmes that to the dogs were horrible in tast, / And with which she the body fild,” Aphrodite guards “noble Hector’s Corse.” The difference is that while Hector remains dead, Sabrina is transformed into the “goddess of the river” (841).84 Like the Echo invoked by the Lady’s song, Sabrina occupies a state of liminality, strangely associated with the murky brine of the sensible world. The main difference between Echo and Sabrina, though, is that while Echo remains silent to the Lady’s plea, Sabrina answers her in both word and deed: “’tis my office best / To help ensnared chastity,” she cheerfully tells the Shepherd (907–08). But the very fact that Sabrina’s “office” is to protect those who have been “beguiled” and also physically entrapped actually complicates the Lady’s earlier claim that the “form of Chastity” will successfully keep her “life and honour unassailed” (219). Contrary to what the Lady says, the masque demonstrates that the Elder Brother was right to emend his previous argument and to admit that “Virtue may be assailed, but never hurt, / Surprised by unjust force, but not enthralled” (588–89; italics added).85 As the masque proceeds, the threat of bodily harm increases, thereby drawing attention to the fact that the Lady’s chastity (like that of Diana and Minerva, to which hers is likened; 445–48) is not enough to protect her from rape. Even though the Elder Brother asserts with confidence that “through the sacred rays of chastity, / No savage fierce, bandit, or mountaineer / Will dare to soil her virgin purity, / . . . / But rigid looks of chaste austerity, / And noble grace that dashed brute violence / With sudden adoration, and blank awe” (424–26; 449–51), the dramatic action of the masque continues to imply otherwise. Chastity is itself never shown to possess the material agency required of it to dispel the danger of physical assault. It is left to the “glistering guardian” (218), Sabrina, to save the Lady. In terms of literary representation, Sabrina cannot be a figure for the Form of Chastity itself. In The Reason for Church Government (c. 1641/42), written seventeen years after the masque, Milton will return to visualize Form, this time as Discipline: “And certainly discipline is not only the removall of disorder, but if any visible shape can be given to divine things, the very visible shape and image of vertue, whereby she is not only seene in the regular gestures and motions of her heavenly paces as she walkes, but

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also makes the harmony of her voice audible to mortall eares.”86 The act of conceptualizing discipline here employs imagery and hence materiality. It follows that the image of discipline cannot therefore be identical with the Idea of Discipline itself. Discipline, so visualized as a faintingly beautiful female figure endowed with a heavenly voice, has already been accommodated to our world. The “visible shape” of discipline, much like Sabrina, is therefore an instantiation of its Form. The implication is that while the chaste may participate in the Form of Chastity, they are incapable of becoming identical with Chastity essentially. The Lady’s song (229–42)—in which she promises to translate Echo from being less than voice to something able to give “resounding grace to all heaven’s harmonies” (242)—describes an ontological metamorphosis that is impossible for her to accomplish. This entire section of the masque—from the brothers’ foiled attack to Sabrina’s entry—in effect shines a light on the masque’s inability to complete fully any ontological transformation (between spiritual and material substance; Form and matter). Every deferred metamorphosis thus becomes another instance of a failure to carry out the longed-for “translation” of form to Form—or, conversely, of Form to form. The division between these two worlds is reinforced by the fact that Sabrina rises from the waters in which she drowned instead of descending from the skies. Even as a quasi-divinized spirit, she leaves behind no trace of her presence in the material world: “Whilst from off the waters fleet / Thus I set my printless feet / O’er the cowslip’s velvet head / That bends not as I tread” (895–98).87 The strangeness of this entry into our world is thrown into relief by the description of her “printless feet.” The phrase “printless feet” alludes, in all likelihood, to Shakespeare’s The Tempest—to the place where Prospero calls up nature spirits (like Sabrina) before abjuring his magic: “Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes, and groves, / And ye that on the sands with printless foot / Do chase the ebbing Neptune” (Temp. V.i.33–35).88 But Sabrina’s “printless foot” may also echo Sonetto xxvi (published in Rime, 1558) of the Italian poet Giovanni Della Casa: “Ov’ orma di virtú raro s’ imprime” (thou, where print of virtue is rarely impressed).89 We know that Milton read his Della Casa (1503–56) with care; in December of 1629, he purchased a copy of his Rime e Prose (1567).90 While Della Casa’s sonnet addresses a “thou” who will participate in a noble fight for honor (“seco d’ onor contenda”),

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the contest in Comus is already over by the time Sabrina arrives (the brothers have scared Comus and his crew away prior to her arrival). The idea flickering in these lines is that Sabrina’s feet are “printless” because, unlike the “tu” (thou) addressed in Della Casa’s poem, she does not have to engage in active conflict (Della Casa speaks of “giostri,” or “jousts,” in line 7).91 The effect of those allusions in the Sabrina passage is to emphasize that chastity as conceived by Milton may—against all the evidence to the contrary—possess a strange sort of passive agency, especially since chastity is said to represent self-restraint as well as rational judgment. While Milton gives ample room for the intellectual or spiritual aspect of chastity to develop, he provides a limited space in which the ethical can act. In order to free the Lady from “this marble venomed seat / Smeared with gums of glutinous heat” (Comus 915–16), Milton has Sabrina enter the picture: “For maidenhood she loves, and will be swift / To aid a virgin, such as was her self / In hard-besetting need” (854–56). That said, critics have long debated who is responsible for the Lady’s immobility: Comus or the Lady herself. Regardless of whether the Lady’s frozen state depicts a moment of capture (Comus) or of rapture (the Lady), the Lady seems utterly incapable of completing the movement toward either a this-worldly or, conversely, an otherworldly, freedom on her own. While the focus on the internal qualities of chastity remains in the ascendant, the plot of the masque now demands that this virtue of chastity express itself through practical (not merely formal) agency. The magical efficacy in Sabrina’s actions and words—“I touch with chaste palms moist and cold” (917)—may also owe something to the Lady, who suddenly awakens to the realization that Sabrina expresses more fully her own spiritual chastity (we recall that Comus describes the Lady as possessing a “cold shuddering dew” at 801). As Angus Fletcher first noted, there appears to be a “sacrificial doubling of the paired virgins,” so that Sabrina emerges as the alreadytranslated doppelgänger, the answering Echo for which the Lady yearns (229–42).92 Sabrina, who has undergone the process of spiritual cleansing associated with death as outlined in the Phaedo, is now able to transmit to the living its purifying effects through the power of touch. Milton’s decision to have the sensation of touch free the Lady is a significant one: it awakens in the Lady an acknowledgment that she, like the

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agent of her freedom, is embodied (unlike Echo). The difficulty of finding a way to unite the transcendent with the earthly appears to find momentary resolution in Sabrina’s quasi-divinized physical connection with the Lady. Yet this, too, is shown to be intensely fragile. The delightful ending of Comus, with its florilegium and the happy thought that Lady Egerton will marry and produce heirs worthy of her (“from her fair unspotted side / Two blissful twins are to be born, / Youth and Joy;” 1008–10), cannot dispel the urgency with which the Attendant Spirit hastens to take everyone out of the wood: “Come Lady while heaven lends us grace, / Let us fly this cursed place, / Lest the sorcerer us entice / With some other new device” (937–40). While the gift of grace saves the Lady from Comus and his charms, the Attendant Spirit reminds us that this power, so freely “lent” the Lady, will not destroy the Sorcerer nor his temptations (“Lest . . . us entice” is a telling phrase). As with the Lutheran pun (“abesse / obesse”) to which it may allude, the masque emphasizes that “the desires and conflicts of the flesh will not vanish (abesse); yet they will not vanquish (obesse).”93 I stated earlier that I find a disjunction between the plot of Comus and the philosophy it claims to espouse. The masque displays a gentle, even playful irony at work: gentle because this is a masque and we know the good will win; playful because the Shakespearian cadence of the verse never sinks in the mouth of its youthful speakers. But its philosophic tenor exposes real dangers in adopting an exclusively Platonic philosophy; Forms cannot be relied upon for help in our world because they are, by definition, transcendent and devoid of practical agency. The statement “Virtue could see to do what Virtue would / By her own radiant light, though sun and moon / Were in the flat sea sunk” (372–74) remains true for a good Platonist, but it is also a salutary reminder for the Aristotelian that the Form of Virtue requires instantiation—in Aristotelian enmattered forms or material agents—to operate directly in our world. As a sort of local genius or “daimon,” Sabrina is the vehicle through which a greater supernatural power becomes immanent (stage direction, 920–21).94 While Milton’s term “power of Chastity” (781) attempts to conceal this act of translatio from Form to form, the masque demonstrates that Sabrina is herself an image for transformation and an instance of grace. She professes neither to be Grace herself nor identical

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with Chastity therewith, and the mirror imagery and interest in doubles throughout the masque reflect this preoccupation with the division between Form and its instantiation in the sensible world.95 What the masque gradually discloses is that although Platonism provides a ravishingly enchanting architectonic of thought for poetry, it cannot provide— as an Aristotelian metaphysic does—the action necessary to the plot. Although Comus is the most overtly Platonic of Milton’s works, it is also the most critical of Plato’s interest in superintendence, or the idea that Forms are ontologically distinct from their instantiations: “likenesses [eijkwvn] fall short of being such as the things are of which they are likenesses” (Crat. 432D1–3).96 If Platonism is understood as crafting an ontology in relation to the intelligible world, and if Aristotelianism is a philosophy that focuses more on our own sensible world, then Milton’s masque subtly suggests that Plato and Aristotle need to be taken together in order to encompass reality in its entirety. Forms, as Milton illustrates, exist paradigmatically (Plato) as well as sensibly (Aristotle).97 In the Attendant Spirit’s concluding lines, we detect the tension between bipolarity and inclusiveness one last time: “Mortals that would follow me, / Love Virtue, she alone is free, / She can teach ye how to climb / Higher then the sphery chime; / Or if Virtue feeble were, / Heaven itself would stoop to her” (Comus 1017–22). The (Platonic) love for the Form of Virtue is here seen to help conduct us, spiritually and intellectually, to the higher heavens (1019–20). Still, it is admitted that the (Aristotelian) practice of virtue in our world is still too “feeble” to “climb,” or transport, its possessor up to the intelligible world (1020). In such instances, heaven, not Sabrina, descends to do the work (1021–22).98 At this point, the masque suddenly shifts from a pagan context to a more overtly Christian one, with the mediating power of Grace at the center of the discussion (the word “feeble” awakens us to echoes of Romans 7.19 and Galatians 5.17). In the context of the masque, it appears that while our love of virtue may draw us toward the celestial world, we are incapable of making the journey without divine assistance.99 Christian Grace denotes a “gift” that cannot be earned and is itself both the inclination (“good will”) and the acts produced by this good will. Hence, the injunction “Love Virtue” (1018) stresses the internal action—the affection or inclinatio of the will that makes us fit to receive the things given. It is Augustinian in tone: “For were we not to will, we

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certainly neither should receive the gifts which are given, nor should we have [received them]. For who possesses continence [chastity]—as among the other gifts of God this one is more discussed, [as] concerning it, I am now speaking to you—who, I ask, would have continence, unless willing?” (Nam si nos non vellemus, nec nos utique acciperemus ea quæ datur, nec nos haberemus. Quis enim haberet continentiam, ut inter cætera Dei dona ipsam potius loquar, de qua ad te loquor: quis, inquam, haberet continentiam nisi volens?). The question Augustine raised, as Calvin later understood it, is whether this will—or spirit to aspire— comes from ourselves or from God: citing Genesis 8.21, Calvin gloomily answered that it must belong to God alone, since our will is bound by sin.100 For Milton, though, even an earnest love for what is unfettered— namely, Virtue (1019)—may help set us free. Since the Lady in the masque is devoted to the practice of true continence, heaven is seen to “lend” her Grace. According to Augustine, this sort of continentia is itself spiritual, coming from on high (“vera est desuper veniens continentia”); as such, it is able to overcome the lust for those delights (“delectationibus concupiscentiæ”) that oppose the delight of wisdom (“adversantur delectationi sapientiæ”).101 It is telling, therefore, that Comus’s final words to the Lady—which were added by Milton to the printed editions—is the temptation to reject the spirit for the flesh: “Be wise, and taste . . .” (812). The command “Be wise” now justifies giving way to physical enjoyment. But the Lady never answers. Comus’s sudden aposiopesis signals the entry of the two brothers, so that her trial is left unfinished. The effect of this unexpected breaking off is to leave open the possibility that had Comus finished his speech, the Lady might well have faltered, but that even so “Heaven” would have acted graciously and intervened, or “stooped,” to save her (1021–22). The hope that this could be the case evidently resonated deeply with Milton: he transcribed the masque’s last two lines in the guest book of the Cerdogni family during his visit to Geneva (10 June 1639). His attachment to it may be owing to the fact that Grace miraculously dissolves the distinction between agent and recipient, form and matter—internal, personal salvation and external, ceremonial catalysts. The unification of two worlds, the sensible and the intelligible, crystallizes in this one word. If the ontology of Milton’s masque mirrors what Martin Evans describes as “the fundamental ideological contradiction” between the role of grace and

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the efficacy of individual agency in the masque, then the reconciliation of Aristotle with Plato—of the human with the divine—reveals Grace to be the one gift capable of remaining essentially the same, on earth as it is in heaven.102 By virtue of possessing the causal agency necessary for bridging the ontological gulf that separates our world from the transcendent, and by effecting this union through the actions of individuals, Grace replaces Chastity—or reconceptualizes it—as the Form, or unique gift, “Which if heaven gave it, may be termed our own” (418; substitution italicized).

chapter four

Milton on the Soul

Much of the soul they talk, but all awry. —Paradise Regained (IV.313)

milton’s early years cannot be categorized as Neoplatonic, if by “Neoplatonism” one means simply Platonic in opposition to Aristotle. Even though the Milton of the 1620s and after reveals an impatience with vacuous scholastic distinctions (and here he will sound materialistic), he still appears to display a keen interest in strands of immaterialism woven into Aristotle’s conception of the soul. These strands were subsequently elaborated upon by Aristotelian commentators like Simplicius and Philoponus. Given that these commentators were read in the Renaissance as authorizing interpretations of Aristotle that were considered faithful to the original Greek texts, this intellectual climate—in which Milton is seen to participate—appears to pose difficulties for those who would argue that Milton read Aristotle as inclining to materialism, and that he then followed suit.1 In what follows, I chart the nonmonistic tendency in Milton’s thought in his depiction of souls and bodies in Comus as well as in his great elegy written on the death of Edward King, Lycidas. The same inclination appears also in the more rigorous argument of Milton’s early university exercise Prolusion IV, which may be read as foregrounding many of the ideas on the soul Milton later develops in Paradise Lost and De Doctrina Christiana. The first part of this chapter thus seeks to demonstrate how Milton understood Aristotle’s conception of the soul with the 113

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aid of both ancient and Renaissance commentators, and how he then proceeded to modify this picture as he developed his own psychology (literally “soul study”). An analysis of the tensions over the status of soul-substance discernible in Milton’s poetry gradually reveals that Milton’s linguistic practice continuously dismantles the monist framework he attempts to impose. It is therefore worth considering that, although Milton is widely thought to have held the theologically heretical doctrine of mortalism (in which the soul dies) and that this naturally reinforced his heavy prose emphasis on monism, it is also possible to read Samson Agonistes and, in particular, De Doctrina Christiana as actually describing the soul in far less material terms than the attempted petrification would like to allow. The second part of this chapter thus suggests that Milton’s endeavors to harden (heuristic) description into definition may yet fail to tame the interrogative aspect inherent in metaphoric language (as in the phrase, “sleep is like death”). If this is so, then it appears that Milton’s linguistic practice as well as his underlying metaphysic elicits in the reader a conception of the rational soul that is distinctly antimonist and antimaterialist. The result is that claims about Milton’s mortalism may be as problematic as assertions about his alleged monist materialism. P L AY I N G W I T H T H E D E A D : E A R LY E X P L O R AT I O N S O F T H E B O D Y – S O U L R E L AT I O N S H I P I N C O M U S A N D LY C I D A S

As discussed earlier (p. 50), seventeenth-century thinkers generally conceived of the human soul as being immortal.2 This tenet, central to Christianity, was mainly adduced from Plato’s proof of the soul’s immortality at Phaedo 76D–81B. Philoponus’s introduction of Plato to his commentary on Aristotle’s De anima 3.1–8 made it clear that Aristotle was read as supporting the view that the rational soul is unembodied: “Plato says that intellect, when it is in coming to be, can be a citizen of Heaven, and act in connection with non-material things and be contemptuous of the body. For if souls outside [the body] that are body-loving are always with body, even in tombs, what wonder if also souls in coming to be should act in connection with non-material things? So Plato.”3 The passage in Plato to which Philoponus here refers (Phd. 30D–E) visualizes souls too long accustomed to their bodies as hanging about charnel houses. His very use of Plato asks us to consider whether a soul yet

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inexperienced in the world of “body” might happily consort solely with immaterial things. In his discussion of the “more divine” substance of the soul, Philoponus drew heavily on the text of the De anima (II.2.413b25–27), at the place where Aristotle speaks of nou`~ (or the intellect / mind) as “another type of soul” (yuch'~ gevno~ e{teron ei\nai), capable of separation from the body “as that which is eternal from that which is perishable.”4 The suggestion is that while Aristotle believes the entire soul is composed of three interconnected parts (the nutritive, sensitive, and rational)—all of which associate with the body—the intellect itself is independent. Reason, or the human intellect, is seen to enter the soul from the outside.5 What Philoponus’s commentary on the De anima emphasizes is how both Plato and Aristotle describe the intellect’s essence in distinctly nonphysical terms: as “immortal and eternal” (ajqavnaton kai; aji?dion).6 Milton, who thought that the rational soul is the substantial form of man, would have easily understood that Aristotle himself never thought rationality could be reduced to the body or the material. In Comus—and in Lycidas in particular—Milton assesses the overall merits or demerits of an Aristotelian or Platonic philosophy in relation to the substantial form of man: the rational soul. What these early poetic works address, however tangentially, is the question of how mind is conjoined to body. When Milton echoes the Phaedo’s strange picture of souls yearning for their “natural” bodies in Comus, the Platonist with his contempt for the body is seen to enjoy the ontological scandal of showing souls morbidly hungering for dead bodies: “Such are those thick and gloomy shadows damp / Oft seen in charnel-vaults, and sepulchres / Lingering, and sitting by a new-made grave, / As loth to leave the body that it loved” (Comus 469–72). The incongruous persistence of bodily material feels strangely welcomed by the poet. The desire for physical entrapment creates images of the soul as a half-materialized, half-transcendent substance (466–68). This same hesitancy over the soul’s relationship to the body is powerfully put to work in Lycidas (1637), to which I now turn in order to trace the nonmonistic depiction of soul and body. The first thing to note is the nightmarish imagery of biological decay which persists in keeping the corpse of Edward King vividly present in the poem. The very intensity which characterizes this persistence has the effect of slowly taking

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apart the transcendent frame of reference. It is increasingly difficult to accept the poem’s claim that although King’s body is “Sunk . . . beneath the watery floor” (167), the real Lycidas is elsewhere, among the “sweet societies” (179) of saints. The fact that the poetry creates a mutual attraction between body and soul so that neither appears without images of the other weakens our sense of a (Christian) consolation. As the poem proceeds, Lycidas’s body—which we are warned at the outset “must not float upon his watery bier / Unwept, and welter to the parching wind” (12–13)— progressively sinks. The speaker flips through a variety of imaginative pictures that portray his body as either submerged in a ghoulish world of subaqueous terror or, alternatively, shattered by the recurrent beating of surf on sand. In the lines “thee the shores, and sounding seas / Wash far away, where’er thy bones are hurled” (154–55), the speaker envisions the body as remorselessly flung “under the whelming tide” till it “Visit’st the bottom of the monstrous world” (157–58). The poem finally says that Lycidas “Sleep’st by the fable of Bellerus old” (160), presumably resting at the edge of Land’s End.7 But even here the consolation fails. As the poem removes us to the pre-Christian world of Old Britain (evoked by the word “Bellerus”), it awkwardly places Lycidas’s body in a state of liminality, thrust against St. Michael, the “great vision of the guarded mount” (161). The political-religious mission of the saint is interrupted by Milton’s cry, “Look homeward angel, now, and melt with ruth” (163), which beseeches Michael to pity the dead Lycidas. But the plea also addresses Lycidas himself, imploring him to melt, or resolve himself, into the sea by way of lamentation. The thought is that if Lycidas’s tears return him to the ocean, the dolphins might yet “waft the hapless youth” and his body homeward (164). Hope momentarily flickers: Lycidas may not be left to a “watery bier” (12) after all. In this reading, “Weep no more, woeful shepherds weep no more, / For Lycidas your sorrow is not dead” (165–66; italics added) feels assertive—even confident. But the logic of the idea soon overtakes the hope and proves it weak. If Lycidas did weep himself into the ocean, he would be, as Shakespeare put it, “indistinct / As water is in water” (A&C IV.xiii.10–11). Watery obliteration in Milton, as in Shakespeare, registers great loss, as Antipholus of Syracuse observes in the

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Comedy of Errors: “I to the world am like a drop of water, / That in the ocean seeks another drop, / Who, falling there to find his fellow forth / (Unseen, inquisitive), confounds himself ” (C of E I.ii.34). Milton’s abandonment of Lycidas to the “watery floor” in the next line may in fact give an oblique nod in Shakespeare’s direction (Lyc. 167). Yet Milton counters the Shakespearean element as soon as he makes the gesture. Something, after all, is holding up this watery world.8 If there is a “floor” of sorts, then we have the strange sense that Lycidas is cushioned by it. When Lycidas lands on this soft ooze of an underwater world and is subsequently aligned with the day star’s “ocean bed” (168), he must be as concretely corporeal as the star with which he is associated. The dissolution in the former lines is now rejected. But as the bodily form of Lycidas returns, our sense of solace does not. As the elegy drowns the poem’s pastoral framework, generic conventions are overturned. The elegiac repetitions make it clear that the peace of the pastoral does not border on, but rather becomes, death itself: the message of recurrent mourning is “Et in Arcadia Ego.” Yet even death fails to provide finality. Milton’s syntax, “Sunk though he be” (167), reveals that Lycidas is not conclusively sunk but is instead poised at a liminal state. When, from the weighty depths of the “ocean bed” (168), Lycidas is depicted as rising like the sun, a symbol of transcendence (as it is in Prolusion V), the two visions in the poem collide. While the sun may have lost its liquid heaviness and “drooping head” (168), the word “drooping” reminds us of the weight of Lycidas’s body “sunk low” (172). As the sun “Flames in the forehead of the morning sky” (171), the shameless display in the phrase “tricks his beams” (170) slips into sounding like a kind of poetic cheat. In like manner, the description “with new spangled ore” (170; italics added) makes us feel the hardened physicality and permanence of a Lycidas transported to heaven. But the phrase also betrays hesitation over where Lycidas is. While the golden texture implicit in the word “spangled” associates him with the starry world of heaven, the word “ore” is reminiscent of the sea (“sea-ore” is seaweed).9 The word “spangled” floats uncomfortably between what produces light—as in the descending cherubim with “all thir shape / Spangl’d with eyes more numerous then those / Of Argus” (PL XI.129–31)—and what reflects light (like water).10 The confidence fulminating in the line

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“Flames in the forehead of the morning sky” (171) suddenly feels slightly desperate, as if it is aware that the preceding imagery has already undermined it. The fiction of transcendence, in other words, feels too heavy to have “mounted high” (172). There is a strange incongruity present in the picture of a Lycidas who walks in “other groves” by “other streams” (174) and “With nectar pure his oozy locks he laves” (175). The word “oozy”— so associated etymologically with mud and the bottom of the “remorseless deep” (50)—sits more comfortably with a description of King’s “gory visage [that] down the stream was sent” (62) than with those saints who in “glory move” (180). The word “laves” also recalls Giovanni Della Casa’s sonetto xxvi, in which the speaker says that his lingering sorrow is only able to be washed away—or “laved” (from lavar)—by a wave of Lethe (“ma dolor dimora, / Cui solo pò lavar l’onda di Lete”; xxvi.13–14; Rime, 26). The effect of this in Milton is to have the Underworld with its dead reclaim the image in line 175; the otherworldly, transcendent vision is suddenly snatched from us. With full transcendence aborted, all that remains is partial transcendence. The Lycidas who supposedly “mounted high” (172) returns to be a “genius of the shore” (183), a this-worldly genius loci like Sabrina in Comus. Yet even here, Lycidas is on the move once more since “shore,” unlike “oozy,” retains a shimmer of transcendence. In alternating between visions of a transcendent Lycidas and a semitranscendent Lycidas, the poem exploits the haunting, quasi-materialist, anti-cwrismov~ (separation) which Milton toyed with in Comus (469–74). While souls were adrift without bodies in Milton’s masque, it is the difficulty of separating Edward King’s soul from the “heavy change” (37) his body is said to have undergone that troubles Lycidas. Souls are implicated in matter but not identical therewith. When, in his masque, Milton speaks of how spiritual knowledge confers immortality as the conversation with “heavenly habitants” (458) turns the “outward shape” (459) or body to “the soul’s essence,” soul and body are “all . . . made immortal” (462), individuals are magically taken up—or “assumed”—into heaven with the spiritual body (sw`ma yucikovn) described at I Corinthians 15.44. Although this early assumptionalism, which retains a degree of semimateriality in relation to the soul, provides one way to cope with the problem of dead bodies and disembodied souls, the physicality of the

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body is never completely lost; rather, it is converted and transported to heaven directly, as in the famous cases of Enoch, Elijah, and, according to some apocryphal accounts, Moses.11 In Milton, bodies are visualized as being translated to heaven “Through the dear might of him that walked the waves” (Lyc. 173). Mortalism ostensibly put to rest this lingering problem of floating souls and sinking bodies by making both the soul and the body subject to death. In arguing that the soul–body unit is raised together, albeit at the end of time, assumptionalism is revealed to be the exception that proves the rule. There is a sense, therefore, that Milton eventually rejects the doctrine, refusing to “dally” further “with false surmise” (Lyc. 153). When drawn into conjunction with his more mature writings, these early writings signal Milton’s continued interest in the substance of the soul and also help chart the progression of Milton’s thought toward a metaphysic and linguistic practice that—while often mortalist and even monist in tenor—never fully yields to monist materialism as such. T H E S O U L’ S

“ B O D Y ”: A N O V E R V I E W O F R E C E P T I V I T Y, I N S T R U M E N TA L I T Y, A N D I M M AT E R I A L I T Y I N M I LT O N In his fantastically compressed Prolusion V, entitled, “Non dantur formæ partiales in animali præter totalem” (Partial forms do not occur in an animal in addition to the whole), Milton disputes the precise metaphysical status of the soul. Prolusion V, which was most likely delivered during the Lent Term of 1629 (13 January–27 March), is a formal and formidable work, chiefly because of its scholastic subject matter.12 While it is possible that Milton may here again be defending a thesis not necessarily his own (as discussed in chapter 1), this prolusion nonetheless exemplifies how Milton worked for himself and others, pari passu.13 Far from being a “tedious waste of time to sit and hear” (PR IV.123), this prolusion sets out the philosophical and theological ideas about the soul that continue to fuel Milton’s intellectual imagination. Important for our purpose is the fact that the prolusion places Milton firmly within a predominately Aristotelian intellectual milieu and demonstrates that, within this Aristotelian philosophy, Milton encountered dualist strands of thought. This contravenes the idea that Milton went through an early Platonist stage ( just as Aristotle himself was said to have done) that he later rejected.14 It also helps to explain why much

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of the prolusion actually combats the Platonist notion of an immortal and immaterial soul shackled to a fallen human body (the latter was at odds with Milton’s account of generation). While in the ChristianPlatonic account, the presence of an everlasting matter, or potentiality, demanded God to act out of necessity, Milton’s God is absolutely free: he already possesses all inferior substance.15 The theological idea is reflected in the psychology of Prolusion V, in which the supervening total soul is said to possess all parts of the soul (virtually). Just as Milton refused to conceive of a God who limits his creatures by possessing their nature formally, or according to their definition, so, too, does he repudiate the idea that the soul of man is merely implanted. For Milton, the soul unfolds and develops with the creature (as in Raphael’s simile at PL V.480), and this in turn implies that, as a materially generated thing, the soul may in fact be mortal. Milton’s opening of the prolusion calls attention to this realization with a typically hyperbolical and ironically deferential excuse for citing certain authorities: “quod ut expeditius fiat gravissimorum vestigiis Authorum insistendum esse mihi existimo, neque enim expectandum est” (for it must not be expected that I can add anything of myself to what perchance has escaped the notice of, and been neglected by, so many men preeminent in ability). We detect a familiar perfunctory, if not sardonic, tone. The following claim—“tum si quid reclamat, atque obstat nostræ sententiæ diluam, ut potero” (then, if anything is contradictory and presents an obstacle to our view, I will present such refutation as I am able)—is full of characteristic robust self-confidence. Milton is here aligning himself with ancient crusaders of Truth and signaling that his discussion of the soul should be taken as having real philosophic merit.16 That said, Prolusion V is written in a rather crabbed scholastic style. Summarizing the cumbersome interpretation of Aristotle by the Italian Thomist theologian Chrysostomus Javellus (Crisostomo Javello; 1470– 1538)—whose method Milton accurately described as “horridulo & incompoto” (shaggy and unkempt)—the prolusion proceeds to give its thesis: “Distinctio illa & Organizatio partium dissimilarium præcedere debet introductionem animæ, utpote quæ sit actus corporis non cujuslibet, sed Physici organici” (That division and organization of dissimilar parts must precede the introduction of the vital principle of life, inasmuch

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as it [the vital principle] is not the act of any body randomly but of a natural organic [body]).17 For Milton, as for Javellus, the soul enters a body of a “certain sort”—that is, it ensouls a body that has already undergone organization—and, as Javellus argued against the Scotists, the body referred to must be an arrangement of matter receptive to its substantial form.18 In the prolusion, Milton seems to adopt Javellus’s conception of “Socrates” as a composite of matter (not body) and form.19 Analyzing this moment in the prolusion, John Hale has argued that Milton moves “past Aristotle into Javellus” in order to show that Aristotle’s philosophy left gaps that were “not even yet exhausted” by his successors.20 This is definitely true. While Milton works from the Aristotelian claim that the soul qua life principle is the actus (ejntelevceia), or actualization, of a natural body holding the potentiality for life, he, like Aristotle’s commentators, perceived difficulties in this definition.21 Two complications, in particular, enter the argument by way of the Greek and Latin terminology: there is the question of what constitutes the “natural instrumental body,” or the thing “actualized,” and also the problem of what is meant by “actus.” As the “actualization” of some “natural” body, or “corpus physicum organicum,” grows more mysterious, the “potentia” as potentiality in prime matter moves across to become a sort of power. That Milton was aware of this occurrence is evident from his guarded comment that quantity in prime matter is “in no way” a “receptive potency proximate to form” (verum nullo modo tanquam potentiâ proxime receptivâ formæ).22 Important also is the fact that Milton limits quantitative extension to matter alone, so that it can never pertain to the rational soul. But the effect of this claim is to yield an antimaterialist understanding of the rational soul: “the rational soul [animam rationalem] . . . is spiritual and not in the least capable of the effect of formal quantity; that is, of quantitative extension.”23 In addition, the formal “actualization” (actus) to which Milton refers in Prolusion V complicates a definition of the soul: while the soul is a principle, or unmoved agent, enforming the natural instrumental body, it is also seen to be an active instrument carrying out operations. Javellus, who chose to underscore this double aspect of life, thus wrote that there is the fact of being alive and also the ability to perform the operations of life. But in reiterating the maxim “corpus physicum

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organicum habet vitam actu,” (the instrumental natural body holds life in act), Javellus’s definition of the soul still fails to define what sort of “body” the soul enforms. The neo-Scholastic Jesuit Francisco Suárez (1548–1617) attempted to provide an answer. Since, as Thomas Hartmann has pointed out, there are clear parallel passages between Milton’s writing and that of Suárez, it appears that Milton had more than a passing familiarity with Suárez, and especially his Commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics.24 Suárez, like Javellus, believed that the “more perfect body” (corpus perfectius) receiving the soul was formally organized for the reception of its incoming form: the soul.25 The presence of the mediating factor (of organization or receptivity for the soul) and the idea that there are differences in degrees of souls is reminiscent of the Neoplatonic interpretations of Aristotle. For instance, Philoponus, whom Milton calls the “ancient and learned author” (antiquus & eruditus Scriptor) in Prolusion IV, interprets Aristotle as saying that “each form requires matter mixed in a specific way so that it can supervene on [the matter] when [matter] is in a state suitable [ejpithvdeio~] to receive it.”26 Philoponus’s pagan opponent Simplicius took this a step further when he commented that yuch; (soul) was the equivalent “matter” prepared for the reception of nou`~ (intellect): “Consequently, he [Aristotle] does not conclude that the soul is a separate form or rational principle, but that which it is to be a body of a certain sort, for this is the actuality of an organic body; this is common even to the rational form of life in us as well as to other souls” (italics added).27 It appears that Aristotle’s ancient commentators who sought to make sense of the difference between actus-as-principle and actus-as-operation conceived of the natural instrumental body more as a soul-vehicle, or shuttling substance housing a vital life principle, than as an actual visible body itself. In the seventeenth century, this reading of Aristotle underwent a revival. In his first book of his commentary on De anima, Suárez attempted to settle the problem of what constitutes the soul’s “natural body” with reference to Aquinas, as well as to the Greek Neoplatonic commentators Themistius, Simplicius, and Philoponus: The first part follows self evidently from what has been said in the three preceding “questions,” for the soul in essence is form and the first act in which it combines with others, and therefore

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deservedly holds the place of genus; however [this is] not the act of an artificial body but of a natural one . . . [the term] “organici” [instrumental] is, however, brought in to differentiate it from the inanimate body. But the bit [“particula”] that says “having life in potency” likewise signifies the same thing as the other phrase—namely, the “instrumental body” [“corporis organici”]—as therefore it is only written down for the amplitude of exposition, which is collected from Aristotle, text 7, and Thomas, the same; Themistius, comm. 7 and Philoponus, comm. 1. Which [interpretation] is true if “instrumental body” can be taken to mean the material disposed therein, and “potentiality for life” this substantial life. If, however, “organic body” is used for the composite, and “potentiality for life” for the vital operation, these two are distinct, as Simplicius notes, because it is one thing to make a compound and to give it being [“esse”] and another to give it the power for operation; only indeed in the last sense does this last bit, “potentiality for life” not belong to the intrinsic principle of the definition but is proposed for the purpose of explaining the organic body in what follows [is a posteriori]. Therefore, the definition arranges the soul in its proper genus and assigns to it its proper differentia [that is, defining characteristics]. Whereby nothing is wanting for it to be a good [definition]. (Prima pars patet ex dictis in tribus quaestionibus praecedentibus, nam anima essentialiter est forma et actus primus in quo cum aliis convenit, et ideo locum generis merito habet; est autem actus non corporis artificialis, sed naturalis. . . . Additur autem “organici” ad differentiam corporum inanimatorum. Illa autem particula “potentia vitam habentis” idem importat cum alia, scilicet “corporis organici,” et ideo ad maiorem expositionem tantum posita est—Quod colligitur ex Aristotele, tx. 7, et D. Thoma, hic; Themistio, com. 7, et Philopono, com. 1. Quod verum est si “corpus organicum” sumatur pro materia disposita, et “potentia ad vitam” pro vita substantiali. Si autem sumatur “corpus organicum” pro composito, et “potentia ad vitam” pro operatione vitali, illa duo diversa sunt, ut Simplicius annotavit, quia aliud est componere compositum et dare illi

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esse, aliud dare illi / virtutem ad operandum; tamen etiam in isto sensu illa ultima particula “potentia etc.,” non est de intrinseca ratione huius definitionis, sed posita tantum est ad explicandum a posteriori quondam sit corpus organicum. Illa igitur definitio animam in proprio genere collocat, et illi propriam differentiam tribuit. Quare nihil deest ut bona sit.)28 The upshot of Suárez’s argument is that as long as Aristotle, Themistius, Simplicius, and Philoponus take the organic body to be organized soul-stuff, and as long as they understand the phrase “having the potentiality for life” as referring to the soul’s receptivity for the substantial form, this account of the soul is, for Suárez, the correct one. But if one takes the organic body as a composite having the potentiality for life (by which we understand “capable of performing operations”), problems arise: in order to make the organic body the compound (or visible body), the substantial form must give the compound esse or being, while another substantial form is required to confer the power of operation. Since it is impossible for a thing to have more than one substantial form, Suárez concludes that when we make a statement about the soul having the potentiality for life in terms of operations (as a compound), it is because we have employed an inappropriate figure of speech: we speak of what follows—or is a posteriori—as though it actually belongs to the initial enforming substantial form which grants the organic body its esse, or existence. By this logic, the rational soul is a substantial form entering a corpus (body), where “body” refers to the arrangement of matter best fitted for carrying out the soul’s operations.29 This understanding of the soul is congenial to a traducianist account of generation, in which the seed (semen) transmits the quasi-material accidental forms (including original sin).30 The difficulty such an interpretation presents for Simplicius, Philoponus—and, later, for Suárez, Javellus, and Milton—is that if there is to be more negotiation between the soul and body, then more soul character needs to be put in on the body side. Privation, which in Aristotle explains the attraction of form to matter, is no longer enough; it cannot act and organize matter. The “corpus physicum organicum,” or “natural instrumental body,” of the soul, so cooperative to the arriving rational soul, must therefore be more than inert matter; it cannot be so

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well fitted to receive the rational soul, unless it is already possessed of immaterial powers. According to the Paduan peripatetic philosopher Giacomo [Jacopo] Zabarella (1533–89), this idea of receptivity owed much to Alexander of Aphrodisias’s interpretation of Aristotle. In vindicating Alexander from the charge that he had materialized even the intellective soul, Zabarella argued that although Alexander maintained the intellect “is a form constituting matter and derived from the power of matter; yet it is not ‘organic,’ for it is not localized in any organ of the human body” (forma dantem esse materie˛, & eductam de potentia materiæ, tamen dixit non esse organicam, quia nulla est pars in corpore humano).31 What Zabarella’s summary of Alexander draws attention to is the fact that the intellect is received into a “soul-matter.” But it also underscores the fact that Alexander thought “organic” referred to a body “with organs.” Against this reading, though, were those thinkers who, as we have seen, thought—as Milton did—that “organic” could be construed differently: namely, to mean “that which is organized” and is thus “instrumental.” Milton’s repeated usage of the English word “organic” with its Greek etymology (ojrganikovn) suggests, at the level of language, his awareness of the larger philosophical problems latent in the Aristotelian description of the soul as a “corpus physicum organicum.”32 For Milton, the term “organic” evokes the idea of an instrument and hence of an agent: Satan delivers his temptation scene in Paradise Lost “with Serpent Tongue / Organic, or impulse of vocal Air” (IX.529–30). The instrument, or mechanism, so imagined here in a biological context, becomes a living affair (this makes possible the later opposition of “organic” to “mechanistic” in English). The result is that the word “organic” implicates the mind as well as the body. When, in 1644, Milton speaks of “those organic arts [that] inable men to discourse and write” (Of Education), he takes “organic” to mean “instrumental” in the same way that the Spanish humanist Juan Luis Vives (1492–1540) did: “Certain arts, such as grammar and dialectic, are only instruments of others, and for that reason are called by the Greeks o[rgana.”33 In Tetrachordon (1645), Milton similarly refers to “that organic force that logic proffers us.” In the light of this, it appears that the “corpus physicum organicum” was, for Milton, a quasispiritual, semimaterial matrix, mediating between the actualizing (enforming) life-giving soul-principle and the thing-that-will-be.34

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The suggestion that Milton conceived of the soul in such terms is further supported by the poetry of Paradise Lost. Although the narrator describes Satan’s influence on Eve’s dream in overtly physicalist terms (“organs”; “venom”), the tenor of the speech draws attention to the “Phantasms and Dreams” (IV.803) which are made present to the mind through the attenuated material images produced by the cogitatio, or vis imaginativa (“imaginative power”): “Assaying by his Devilish art to reach / The Organs of her Fancie, and with them forge / Illusions as he list, Phantasms and Dreams, / Or if, inspiring venom, he might taint / Th’ animal spirits that from pure blood arise / Like gentle breaths from Rivers pure, thence raise / At least distemperd, discontented thoughts” (IV.801– 07). The fact that Satan can “assay,” or try and test, Eve’s “fancy” with his “art” immediately testifies to the inherent instability of the imagination as a power (vis). With the intellectual increasingly described only with reference to the sensible or the physical, spirits and blood appear to be finely tenuous: “pure blood” is likened to “Rivers pure”; spirits become “subtle breaths.” Once more, spirit is placed on the side of agency and activity. The “at least” in line 807 implies that Satan’s tainting of the animal spirits tries to raise “distemper’d . . . thoughts.” Note, though, that the cause has been subtly folded into the description of the effect: Satan, not Eve herself, gives rise to the distempering; spirits enter from the outside.35 Still, it could be argued that Eve may already be “distemperd” before Satan finds her in the garden. She appears guilty of the darker “curiositas,” or curiosity, in which the desire for knowledge is not straightforwardly good. While Adam looks up to the heavens at his creation, Eve is transfixed by her reflection in the pool. Entranced by her image, she exhibits the “desiderium oculorum” (lust of the eyes) that Augustine roundly condemned.36 It is telling, therefore, that Satan finds Eve’s fancy receptive to his influence: it permits him to “forge / Illusions as he list” (IV. 802–03). Even though Milton’s use of the word “inspiring” attaches itself to “venom” as a verbal description of the psychological process of animation—as a “breathing into” that taints “animal spirits”—the Latin word for soul, animus, so latent in “animal spirits,” hints that Milton is thinking of spirit as a less physical and more spiritual substance. Since the term “inspiring” in this speech just as easily describes the venom’s power to awaken what is dormant—or in potentiality—in Eve

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(IV.806–07), the seemingly physicalist description of contamination may also conceal a far more spiritual conception of pollution. In this reading, Eve’s dream gestures at a notion of defilement occurring less from an agent entering in from the outside than from a process of actualizing, or realizing, what is already present on the inside.37 Milton makes a similar move when he tells us that Satan attempts to raise “Phantasms” (IV.803) in Eve. The word “phantasms” is the English equivalent of the Latin word phantasmata, which comes from the Greek psychological term for “image.” According to Aristotle, all thinking requires an image.38 These images are, in turn, created from things received through our sensory faculties. Milton plays on the medieval-scholastic commonplace that experiences are said to be felt; a prerational judgment always accompanies the perception of the image. This is not behavioralism, in which mind stuff is explained by its relation to physical states, or behavior, but is, instead, a descriptive correlationism equally invested in mind and matter. The substance Satan pollutes is only likened to “gentle breaths” (IV.806); the physicalist language (“Organs”; “blood) yields to the emotional and psychological (“breaths”; “thoughts”). The sequence is like that we saw earlier in Raphael’s speech on “the green stalk” aspiring to animal (and, finally, intellectual) spirits (PL V.479–500). As in Raphael’s speech, we catch “glimpses” of immaterial agency long before we reach the wholly disengaged rational soul. By corrupting the “matter” that enables and engages thought, Satan’s dream leaves a “spot or blame behind” (V.119) in Eve’s mind, despite what Adam says to the contrary. It could be argued, therefore, that Eve’s response—when she “silently a gentle tear let fall / From either eye” (V.130–31)—registers an awareness of a deep danger lurking within the Aristotelian maxim “nihil in intellectu quod non prius fuerit in sensu” (nothing is in the intellect that was not before in the senses).39 If power is to make a strange appearance on the matter side—as in Simplicius, Suárez, Javellus, and Milton—this still does not materialize the power itself. The outfitting of matter to the entering soul is a precise, complicated affair: matter, once organized, becomes a medium through which certain forms are received. Even Adam has an intuitive understanding of how this works. When he consoles himself that God will not punish him infinitely, he muses on natural law and exclaims, “all Causes else, according still / To the reception of their matter act, / Not to th’ extent of their own Spheare”

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(X.806–08; italics added). Causes naturally accommodate themselves to the matter that receives them, as Milton’s editor, Thomas Newton (1704– 82), observed: “All other agents act in proportion to the reception or capacity of the subject matter, and not to the utmost extent of their own power. An allusion to another axiom of the schools: ‘Omne efficiens agit secundum, vires recipientis, non suas.’”40 The literal-minded Richard Bentley put his finger on the same axiom, rewriting Milton’s lines to read: “To the CAPACITY of their SUBJECT act.” Bentley’s emendation moves the stimulus for action to what is already enformed; the term “subject” implies that “causes” act and are indicative of accidental, not substantial, change. Nevertheless, it is telling that Milton’s decision to employ the word “matter” sat so uneasily with Bentley. Bentley may well have perceived that the implication of Milton’s thought was to conceive of matter not as passively receptive (as in Aristotle) but as an actively receptive factor, so that it (matter) educes form.41 Since this entails more soul character to be loaded into the matter side of the equation, Bentley’s response was to score out the crucial words, “reception” and “matter,” thereby making Milton’s meaning more comfortably Aristotelian. The difficulty is that as early as the meticulous psychology of Prolusion V, Milton justifies this emphasis on reception with no less a figure than Aristotle himself: “In the forefront let me set Aristotle, who is entirely on our side, and who, towards the end of the first book of the De anima, unequivocally lends his support to our assertions.”42 Milton’s description of the “unicity of form” presumably refers us to the place in De anima where Aristotle argues that various operations of the soul (movement, sensation, thought) are due not to different parts of the soul but to the overriding unity that is the soul. If, as Aristotle writes, this unity is actuality, then it is an actuality qua actualization and also qua operation.43 As with Aristotle’s commentators, much of Milton’s thinking about the soul appears to be driven by Aristotle’s assertion that “the actuality of each thing comes naturally to be developed in the potentiality of each thing—that is, in the appropriate matter (thÊ` oijkeivaÊ u{lhÊ).” According to Simplicius, this meant that “that which potentially has a life is the instrument of the soul and the instrument of the soul potentially has life.”44 This account, which bequeaths a picture of the soul-body as

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understood by Neoplatonizing Aristotelian commentators, posits a parallel between the action of form on matter and of soul on body. The result is that as matter is increasingly distanced from the straightforwardly material—this time, in relation to the soul—Milton’s prolusions and early poems illustrate an interest on Milton’s part in the slippage between potentia-qua-potential and potentia-qua-power. This elision, when paired with the notion of actus recurring in differing forms (actualization versus operation), implies an incipient dualist foundation beneath the monist surface. Although it may seem that Milton has the soul (as form) develop in tandem with matter, the minute we say that some part of the soul is infused into body, correlationism ensues. And correlationism itself presupposes that this part of the soul is other than matter.45 De Doctrina Christiana on the Rational Soul It may be objected at this point that claims about some immaterial part of the soul are wholeheartedly dismissed by De Doctrina Christiana, or that Milton’s thought may well have changed by the time he came to write his theological prose treatise. At first glance, this appears to be true. Milton states unequivocally that man is “a living soul,” an uncompounded and nonseparable substance. But he also writes that “the breath of life was neither a part of the divine essence, nor the soul itself, but as it were an inspiration of some divine virtue fitted for the exercise of life and reason, and infused into the organic body [corpore organico]; for man himself, the whole man, when finally created, is called in express terms ‘a living soul.’”46 The description of God’s breath as “fitted” to carry out life and reason immediately catches our attention, as does his subsequent claim that “we are certainly not to suppose [that] something like a part of God’s nature was turned into the man’s soul, and so be obliged to say that God’s nature is subject to change.” Here, we detect echoes of Augustine’s comment that “God’s breathing into him [man] added sensation to the soul itself when the man was made into a living soul—not that God’s breathing was turned into the living soul, but that it got to work on the living soul” (ipsi animae sensus est additus ista insufflatione, cum factus est homo in animam viventem: non quia illa insufflatio conversa est in animam viventem, sed operata est in animem viventem).47

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In a Platonic tradition, the “soul” of man refers to the soul’s highest part: namely, the intellect or mind. Mind was acknowledged to exist apart from the entire soul-vehicle as well as from the creaturely thing it defines (namely, man).48 Yet Milton rejected the Platonic doctrine of metempsychosis (or the idea of precreated souls), arguing, “[The notion that the spiritum hominis is] separate from the body, so as to have a perfect and intelligent existence independently of it, is nowhere said in Scripture, and the doctrine is evidently at variance both with nature and reason, as will be shown more fully hereafter” (italics added).49 Although God’s infusion of spirit into man at Creation distinguishes him from all other created beings by making him a rational creature, Milton thought that this rationality was itself propagated through sexual generation. Hence, Milton embraced the doctrine of traducianism which, as he himself eagerly points out, was not only agreed upon by “the whole western church in the time of Jerome” (including the eminent patristic theologians Tertullian, Apollinarius, Augustine, and Gregory of Nyssa), but also authorized, more importantly, by scripture itself: “Nor did God merely breathe that spirit [illum spiritum] into man, but moulded it [ formavit] in each individual, and infused it throughout [ penitus indidit], enduing and embellishing it with its proper faculties [ facultatibus ornavit atque distinxit]. Zech. xii.1 : he formeth the spirit of man within him” [ formans spiritum hominis in medio eius].”50 His description of this spirit sounds increasingly like pneuma, which was said to yoke together the faculties of the soul with those of the body, thereby effecting change internally.51 The emphasis on “infusing”—on an internal formation—is significant because it supports the idea that the soul, as a vehicle capable of operations, develops over time. This idea is supported by Milton’s statement in the Art of Logic that “matter and form are, as it were, internal causes,” meaning that they are responsible for producing the concrete thing (external causes are relegated to the ranks of efficient and final causes). De Doctrina Christiana thus appears to elide the distinction between potentiality (matter) and actualization (form): “Matter was not, by nature, imperfect. The addition of forms (which, incidentally, are themselves material) did not make it more perfect but only more beautiful” (italics added).52 “Material forms” sounds heartily Aristotelian (Aristotle’s forms are never found apart from matter). But Milton is actually thinking about

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how matter, so coming from God, already possesses the potentialitycum-power for receiving the myriad forms, which are said to grant the (soon-to-be-existent) thing a more beautiful existence. Since for Milton an action consists in being either “in motion” (motus) or brought about by motion (res motu facta), forms as operations and organizations cannot perfect matter; they merely “embellish” it, just as God’s spirit embellishes man with faculties proper to him.53 Milton’s next sentence, “Nearly everyone agrees that all form, and the human soul is a kind of form is produced ex potentia materiae,” speaks of the soul as actualization (the rational soul as the soul principle of the soul, or yuchv), and also as operation (or as that part of the soul, yuchv, that is the vegetative and sensitive souls capable of performing actions). Note that in both instances the rational soul is protected against a reduction to a “material form.” While recent interpretations of Aristotle claim the philosopher inclines to a hylomorphism that naturally lends itself to materialism, Aristotle, like Milton, holds this movement in check.54 According to Aristotle, semen contains a vital heat that transports an “active substance . . . an analogue of the astral element.” This substance—“the spiritus, conveying the principle of the soul [th`~ yucikh`~ ajrch`~]”—directs the sperm to the menstrual material-to-be-enformed and has also a nonphysical part to it: “Of the principle there are two kinds, the one is not connected with matter, and belongs to those animals in which is included something divine [ti qei`on] (to wit, what is called reason [nou`~]), while the other is inseparable from matter.”55 The words “reason” and “divine” jump off the page as unequivocally immaterial.56 The wobble evident at Gen. an. II.3.736b30–34 has been blown wide open: “Now so far as we can see, the faculty of Soul of every kind has to do with [kekoinwnhkevnai] some physical substance which is different from the so-called ‘elements’ and more divine [qeiotevrou] than they are; and as the varieties of Soul differ from one another in the scale of value so do the various substances concerned with them differ in their natures.”57 The Greek word for what is here translated as “has to do with” refers to the perfect active infinitive (kekoinwnhkevnai), and is an oddly guarded word that implies incomplete identity. As such, it is distinct from an “is.” If the idea in this sharing between a higher soul (the intellect) and a soul-substance or vehicle is one of overlap, then it follows that there must be a nonoverlapping part which is itself other than this astral stuff

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of the soul-body. An immaterial residuum continues to shine. This fits with Aristotle’s description at De an. II.2.413b26 where nou`~ (or the intellect or mind) is described as another type of soul (yuch`~ gevno~ e{teron ei\nai), capable of separation from the body “as that which is eternal from that which is perishable.”58 Aristotle’s (entire) soul, so made up of three interconnected parts, actually associates only the nutritive and sensitive “types of souls” with the body; the intellect (nou`~) remains distinct.59 Aristotle’s Neoplatonic commentators were quick to latch on to this distinction; Simplicius wrote that the higher functions of the soul develop over time through nourishment, so that “food is transformed, assimilated and given a form like to that of what is fed.”60 The emergent thought is that if the power (duvnami~) of every soul is described as having something to do with a body that is composed not of earthly elements but of something analogous to the “astral” material of the heavens, then the sw`ma (body) may actually be a soul-vehicle containing the immaterial soul principle which determines the development of the visible body.61 From Simplicius and Philoponus down to Javellus and Suárez, we thus receive a picture of the soul’s gradual “unfolding”—of its unity and development—that is especially congenial to Milton’s conception of the soul as developing in “due proportionality” with its matter: “When God breathed that breath of life [vitæ halitu] into man, he did not make him a sharer in anything divine, any part of the divine essence, as it were. He imparted to him [man] only something human which was proportionate to divine virtue [pro rata virtutis divinæ portione impertitum esse homini a Deo]. For he breathed the breath of life into other living things besides man” (italics added).62 As Milton picks up the Aristotelian argument for the transmission of sperm and pneuma to one’s progeny, the problematic “sharing” in Aristotle is brushed aside: “if sin is transmitted from the parents to the child in the act of generation, then the prw`ton dektiko;n or original subject of sin, namely the rational soul [Animam rationalem], must also be propagated by the parents. For no one will deny that all sin proceeds in the first instance from the soul [anima].”63 When imported into a Christian (Augustinian) scheme in which only a rational soul can sin, the soul becomes a subject or dektikovn for divine influence. This makes the soul— now that God has entered the picture at the higher level—an instrumental

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body (qua pneuma). The replication of receptive, mediating substances gradually promotes a scala naturae running between varying levels of actualization and potentiality: the vegetative soul is to the entering life principle as the rational soul is to the divine influence (God). The argument remains Aristotelian insofar as the “breath of life” gives life to something that already possesses a blueprint for rationality, so that this actualizing force remains distinct from a “material form.”64 In this way, even Milton’s traducianism retains the immaterial and immortal aspect of the rational soul against the soul’s apparent drive toward materialization.65 As Milton moves the distinguishing factor back a step into an indescribable potentiality, this immaterial soul-substance actually begins to glow with what looks like a self-actualizing (animist) power.66 Milton now seems to be thinking with Aristotle that intellect is a potentiality awaiting its own actualization through the power of intellection: “Thus, then, the part of the soul which we call intellect (and by intellect I mean that whereby the soul thinks and conceives) is nothing at all actually before it thinks” (oJ a[ra kalouvmeno~ th`~ yuch`~ nou`~ (levgw de; nou`n wÊ| dianoei`tai kai; uJpolambavnei hJ yuchv) oujqevn ejstin ejnergeivaÊ tw`n o[ntwn pri;n noei`n).67 We are here reminded of Raphael’s words to Adam: “the Soule / Reason receives, and reason is her being” (V.486–87). In this picture, reason is divine, entering as an immaterial, incorporeal substance from the outside. Since reason defines the soul—is “her being,” or essence (V.487)—it is regarded as naturally superior to the “intellectual spirits.”68 What this suggests is that the conception of the soul emergent in Paradise Lost and De Doctrina Christiana draws heavily not only on Aristotle (who authorized the move to separate intellect from soul), but also on those Aristotelian commentators who further confirmed this distinction by distinguishing between intellectual spirits (or soul-vehicles) and the principle (or essence) of the soul.69 As the Milton of Prolusion V made clear, Aristotle—as understood with the aid of the Greek commentators— had voiced the “most true opinion” (et puto verissimum): namely, that the soul, so infused throughout the entire body, unifies it through the natural conjunction of matter and form. Throughout his prose writings, it appears that Milton remained committed to the idea that the soul exists “in all the body and wholly in any given part of that body” (anima est tota in toto, et tota in qualibet parte).70 But the more specific texture of the

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thought fixes the soul principle enforming the entire soul as the source of movement.71 The incorporeal soul is now described in terms eerily akin to those used to describe the Unmoved Mover in Aristotle. In order to unite the soul-principle with the visible body, a tertium quid is needed. For Milton, as for Aristotle, this connecting tissue was the instrumental body of the soul itself, a substance analogous to pneuma, or spirit. While the linkage to a material vehicle may seem to imply that the soul is itself in some way material, Milton’s discussion emphasizes the fact that the soul, entering from the outside, is immaterial (as life principle) because it has reason for its essence.72 That said, Milton, like his contemporaries, was very much alive to the problems this division between an immaterial and material aspect of the soul implied. While the poet Robert Anton chose to satirize various Aristotelian tags on the soul—“That the chiefe seate of honour is the hart, / Diffusing motion to each princely part. / And like the soule, whome Schooles hold all in all, / In every member is essentiall, / Compleate and undivided: not begot / Of Thales element to die and rot”—the Platonizing theologian Joseph Glanvill was less amused by such reductions.73 He felt that even the “vulgar saying . . . That if the Eye were in the Foot, the Soul would see in the Foot” served as a serious warning against the dangers implicit in a materializing philosophy that sought to diffuse the higher powers of the rational soul throughout the body.74 S A M S O N A G O N I S T E S : L I T E R A L I Z I N G T H E M E TA P H O R , M AT E R I A L I Z I N G T H E S O U L

It is significant that the hero of Milton’s Hebraic drama, Samson Agonistes, yearns for the very materialization of the soul which Glanvill consciously rejected. By magnifying the space that exists between what something is and what something is likened to, Samson Agonistes assails Aristotelian notions of soul and body through the very metaphors and analogies originally used to describe them. In so doing, it demonstrates the degree to which Aristotelian psychology resists materialization. As we move from examining the immateriality of the rational soul in metaphysical terms to the way metaphor accomplishes something very similar, it appears that Milton’s linguistic practice actually exacerbates an element of insurgence already present in the underlying metaphysic.

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In its almost pathological obsession with light, the poetry of Samson Agonistes underscores the agonizing effects that result from a withdrawal, or repudiation, of the imaginative (or feigned) on the part of the real, as Samson’s tortured cry reveals: “Since light so necessary is to life, / And almost life itself, if it be true / That light is in the soul, / She all in every part; why was the sight / To such a tender ball as the eye confined? / So obvious and so easy to be quenched, / And not as feeling through all parts diffused, / That she might look at will through every pore?” (SA 90–97). The question is grim. But what makes the context even bleaker is the poetry’s serious, sophisticated reworking of an analogy important to Aristotle’s description of the soul.75 When Aristotle speaks about the soul in relation to various powers, he describes the sensitive soul (sw`ma aijsqhtikovn) through a metaphor of sight, arguing that it is that part of the soul which has the power for sensation belonging to its instrument (hJ duvnami~ tou` ojrgavnou).76 In other words, the soul’s “sensing” power is analogous to the power of sight in the eye. Simplicius interpreted Aristotle’s assertion, “If the eye were an animal, eyesight would be its soul” (eij ga;r h\n oJ ojfqalmo;~ zwÊ`on, yuch; a]n h\n aujtou` hJ o[yi~), as meaning that sight is “doubly the form of the eye,” and that both sight and soul use a “living instrument” to “see.”77 When we turn from plants to the human soul, Aristotle’s analogy urges the thought that an immaterial power must exist in order to complete the sensitive soul, just as the concept of sight completes the eye. Yet where the soul with its streaming pneuma gains something in the analogy of power, the eye and the notion of sight do not. It seems that Samson’s frustration largely derives from an inability to switch the metaphor’s vehicle and tenor. The diffusion of sight requires a mediating substance (pneuma) but, as Samson painfully discovers, tertium non datur. The analogy fails to materialize; sight is denied the power to “look at will through every pore” (97).78 Still, Samson refuses defeat. As he works to fold the power of sight into the power of sensation, his tortured complaint subjects Aristotelian psychology to figurative redaction. The cry for the figurative to attain the status of the actual within the phenomenal world is that of a poet. But the difficulty Samson encounters is that sight cannot be as ubiquitous as touch—unless, of course, the metaphor finds a way to materialize itself. As the urgency for this desired-for redaction rises, so also does Samson’s

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scorn for platitudes. To Manoa’s reassurance, “But God . . . / . . . / . . . can as easy / Cause light again within thy eyes to spring” (581, 583–84), Samson responds with deep skepticism: “All otherwise to me my thoughts portend” (590). The poet who has an appetite for materiality and the drive to express things in physicalist terms is now outdone by the (intelligent) poet, who always knows that metaphor is metaphor and that there exists an intractable space between the physical image and the thing described. Precisely because the development of particular senses is distinguished from the overarching faculty of sensation, Samson laments that his sight is to the “tender ball . . . the eye confined” (94). The hoped-for final materialization of the light that is “almost life itself ” (91) cannot be achieved. In his plea to collapse the spiritual and the physical world, Samson draws attention to the division between the two: “O that torment should not be confined / To the body’s wounds and sores / . . . / But must secret passage find / To the inmost mind, / There exercise all his fierce accidents, / And on her purest spirits prey, / As on entrails, joints, and limbs, / With answerable pains, but more intense, / Though void of corporal sense” (SA 606–07, 610–16; italics added). The “torment” of blindness that extends beyond the merely corporeal now occludes even the light of the “inmost mind,” and the intensity of this thought is emphasized by the stressed rhyme, “intense” / “sense” (615–16). Here is a mental landscape vastly unlike that of Paradise Lost, in which Milton’s invocation to the “brooding Spirit” for inspiration and enlightenment—“what in me is dark / Illumine” (PL I.22–23)—directs us to a command for an interiorization of light, “There plant eyes” (PL III.53; italics added), which is successfully answered. When Spenser asks to what he “might compare / those powrefull eies, which lighten my dark spright” (Sonnet IX.1–2), he responds with a joyous celebration of his “eies,” which reflect and also embody God’s light.79 The image provides a terrifying point of contrast with the text of Samson Agonistes, in which physical blindness is equated with spiritual benightedness. The lines “The sun to me is dark / And silent as the moon, / When she deserts the night / Hid in her vacant interlunar cave” (SA 86–89) depict a ghostly and doubly-darkened landscape. The heightened theological tension in Milton’s sonnet “When I consider how my light is spent” (Sonnet XVI) similarly recasts Milton as

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Spenser’s “dark spright” (Sonnet IX.2) who has yet “found no dawn.” While Spenser concludes his sonnet with a couplet exalting the spiritual energies of poetry—“to the Maker selfe they likest be, / Whose light doth lighten all that here we see” (Sonnet IX.13–14)—Milton meanwhile speaks of a darkness that demands poetic inspiration prior to the act of writing. The blind Milton acutely felt that he deserved this sort of dazzling spiritual irradiation and enlightenment; the concept of light—as much as the actual thing—was salvific.80 The invocation to Paradise Lost book III thus speaks of light as God himself. Renaissance writers traditionally thought of light as a mysterious substance: in his exclamation “How should a thought be united to a marble-statue, or a sun-beam to a lump of clay!” Glanvill expresses the glaringly obvious difference seventeenth-century thinkers perceived between light and physical things.81 The question of what constitutes the substance of light implicitly had them distinguish a power from the material in which it inheres. This issue of differentiation is at the core of Samson Agonistes. Milton knew all too well that a reduction of sight to a general notion of touch is impossible. The Chorus voices the unease: “Down Reason, then, at least vain reasonings down” (SA 322). In the oddly abrupt afterthought, “vain reasonings,” Samson’s arguments are dismissed not because they are irrational but because they invoke bad reasoning. His attempt to brutalize an Aristotelian metaphor is repudiated as ineffectual. Some eighty years later, Alexander Pope (1688–1744) nonetheless thought it worthy of a serious rebuttal: “Or touch, if tremblingly alive all o’er, / To smart and agonize at ev’ry pore? / Or quick effluvia darting thro’ the brain, / Die of a rose in aromatic pain?” (Essay on Man i.197–200).82 Pope’s imagery provides the argument in response to Samson: if the immaterial is rendered material, nightmarish realities spring to life; we would “die of a rose in aromatic pain” (200). But Milton’s drama is relentless in asking us to consider what will happen if Samson’s cry for restored vision is left unanswered. The question strikes us as intensely personal. Milton, we remember, believed he had lost his sight “overplied / In liberty’s defence, my noble task” (“To Mr Cyriack Skinner Upon his Blindness” 10–11). While Milton weakly asserted that he would “argue not / Against heaven’s hand or will, nor bate a jot / Of heart or hope” (6–8), he still did his best to force God’s

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hand. His aggressively defiant posture in this sonnet uneasily shifts to the defensive, as the Victorian poet Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–89) could well appreciate: “Thou art indeed just, Lord, if I contend / With thee; but, sir, so what I plead is just.”83 In an earlier dialogue with God, Milton excused his delay in writing poetry by arguing that he deserves a chance to act, lest “that one talent which is death to hide / [be] Lodged with me useless” (Sonnet XVI.3–4). The conclusion strains, theologically, to muffle or repress—rather than reply to—the rigor of the poem’s argument. We detect a similar and uncomfortable undercurrent of thought in Samson Agonistes when, “eyeless in Gaza at the mill with slaves” (41), Samson discovers that God does in point of fact “exact day-labour, light denied” (Sonnet XVI.7). Unlike Paradise Lost, in which Milton prays for spiritual vision to be restored (and it is), Samson Agonistes depicts inner illumination to be as irretrievably lost as physical sight. As the imprisonment within the self returns us to a commonplace (Platonic) dualism, the imagery drives us deeper into synoeciosis: “As in the land of darkness yet in light, / To live a life half dead, a living death, / And buried; but O yet more miserable! / Myself, my sepulchre, a moving grave” (SA 99–102). This grief over the double loss of vision—the “double darkness nigh at hand” (593)—shatters the poem’s superficial monism. A confused Samson cries aloud, “Which shall I first bewail, / Thy bondage or lost sight, / Prison within prison / Inseparably dark?” (SA 151–54). The “darkness of blindness” which Milton described in a letter to Leonard Philaras (dated 28 September 1654) is now equated with the darkness of death: “Thou art become (O worst imprisonment!) / The dungeon of thyself; thy soul / (Which men enjoying sight oft without cause complain) / Imprisoned now indeed, / In real darkness of the body dwells, / Shut up from outward light” (SA 155–60).84 As in Comus, the nightmare resides in the increasing physicality assigned to the spiritual which, as Samson says, forces one “to incorporate with gloomy night” (161). The murky imagery thickens and mixes with bodily matter, so that all that remains is an indistinct gloom, a viscous darkness. The absence of light in this mucilaginous fog threatens to swallow Samson entirely, since “inward light alas / Puts forth no visual beam” (162–63; italics added). The prayer for the materialization of the spiritual—for an obstinate physicality—has been effectually ignored.

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Or so we think. Before Samson topples the temple, the humiliated hero stands “with a head a while inclined, / And eyes fast fixed . . . as one who prayed” (1636–37). (We can only surmise that Samson is praying since we do not overhear him.) While in Paradise Lost the call for inspiration leads to poetry that proves Milton to be “equal’d . . . in renown” to “Blind Thamyris and blind Mæonides, / And Tiresias and Phineus Prophets old” (PL III.34–36), here Samson’s “rousing motions” forecasts “something extraordinary” (SA 1382–83). It leads to a terrifying and dazzling eruption of the power: the power to act, to perform. In his final hour, Samson acts the role of the revenger (Chorus at 1660ff ). The reclamation of spiritual sight is understood in terms of (regained) physical power: “But he though blind of sight, / Despised and thought extinguished quite, / With inward eyes illuminated / His fiery virtue roused / From under ashes into sudden flame” (SA 1687–91). The phrase “inward eyes illuminated” fuses the invocations of Paradise Lost books I and III. The phoenix-like fall and rise of Samson (1690–91; 1698–1707) marks out—in figurative language—the way the spiritual is finally understood in physical terms, but without materializing itself in the process. By consciously exploiting the metaphor of sight that Aristotle employed to depict an immaterial aspect of the soul, Milton exposes a brutal truth: namely, that a metaphoric prick of this “sleek and seeing ball will make no eye at all” (Hopkins).85 In its threat to “raze out” sight, light, and, by way of metaphor, God, the simplicity of the act of blinding, as well as blindness, appalls Milton. As the tensions in Samson Agonistes promote a tense engagement with the transcendent, the play’s theology is set dangerously adrift, silencing itself and its hero with “uncontrollable intent” (1754). With that phrase, there is the suggestion of a loss of self-power. Agency feels on the outside, belonging to the omnipotent Yahweh of the Old Testament, and not to its tragic protagonist (agonistes, or ajgwnisthv~, means “contestant” or “rival”). This sense is then further complicated by the fact that from the beginning of the play, Samson believes himself to be Israel’s chosen “deliverer” or “defender”—(ajgwnisthv~, or “champion”)—“I was no private but a person raised / With strength sufficient and command from heaven / To free my country” (SA 1211–13)—which is a claim notably absent from the account of Samson given at Judges 13.16 and a significant modification to what Samson himself declares at line 1208 in the play.

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Milton’s Samson thus purports to speak for and act on behalf of God. The drama, meanwhile, asks us whether we should take Samson as our mediator (that this typological equation is expected is evident, for instance, in the phoenix imagery at 1690–91). Whereas in the Christian tradition, Christ is the mediator who freely offers to undergo the Crucifixion, the role of the redeemer / mediator is rendered more complex in Samson Agonistes because the concept of love—so central to the ethos of the Christian theory of atonement—is wholly absent. The Hebrew bible speaks of a Samson motivated by revenge (Jdg. 16.28), so that selfslaughter encompasses mass murder.86 But as Milton’s Samson bows his head “as one who prayed” (1637), we are uncertain whether his toppling of the pillars is motivated by revenge or by a delusion regarding his role as “redeemer”—or, as the case may be, both. At the heart of this drama, then, is the notion that Light is God is Physical Power. To be eyeless is to be blind and godless and hence emasculated—shorn “like a tame wether” (538). Yet the last line of the poem, “And calm of mind all passion spent” (1758), hints that divine inspiration has returned to its provenance through violent collapse. The instrument is shattered by its user (God). A. D. Nuttall and Michael Lieb both gesture at a Deus Absconditus in Samson Agonistes that obliterates “being-ness” with “Ruin, destruction at the utmost point” (1514).87 In opposition to Paradise Lost, then, destruction—not creation—attains the transcendent (1695–1707). Samson’s opening cry, “Let there be light, and light was over all” (84), subverts its echo of Genesis: light blazes into life and is immediately extinguished. Where Paradise Lost says boldly “to justify” (PL I.26), Samson Agonistes hesitates: “Just are the ways of God, / And justifiable to men” (SA 293–94). The idea is that God’s ways could be justified (perhaps). At the ethical level, as distinct from the power level, Samson Agonistes issues upon vacancy. I stated earlier that Milton, like Pope, responds to Samson’s velleity, albeit in a very different way. Although Samson is denied the miracle of materialized light, the drama implies that his prayer is answered by the inaudible—by an invisible infusion of divine power. This power finds expression in a reassertion of male strength. Sight, light, and power are not materialized but masculinized: Samson, now called Israel’s “great dread” (1474), appropriates for himself the pachad (Hebrew for “dread”)

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attached to God.88 This, it seems, is compensation enough for the Hebraic hero. But it is this denial of the longed-for monist solution, coupled with the remorselessly retained division between the material and immaterial through metaphor, that brings this play to life and its hero to death. Milton’s lifelong quest “to justify” God ends here—with an annihilating force of an uncreating mysterium.89 DE DOCTRINA CHRISTIANA:

“SLEEPING”

SOULS AND

“DEAD”

M E TA P H O R S

The rich, terrifying commerce between the phenomenal and the transcendent world of Samson Agonistes is erased in De Doctrina Christiana. The sterile, partitioned universe of the theological treatise attempts to reduce metaphors, like those that trouble Samson, to blank statements of identity which, as in Samson Agonistes, fail to materialize. The treatise’s effort to annihilate the very imaginative explorations launched by metaphor in Samson Agonistes is tremendous and also deeply problematic. While the obsession with the annihilation of light / sight in Samson Agonistes hazarded to describe the soul in terms of powers, De Doctrina Christiana turns to examine what the soul is and what it means to say that it dies. De Doctrina Christiana advances the mortalist argument that before the Fall “all man’s component parts were equally immortal”; after the Fall, “all become equally subject to death,” including the soul.90 Referring to Psalm 146.4 (“in that day his thoughts perish”) and Ezekiel 8.20 (“the soul which sins shall itself die”), Milton firmly roots the mortalist position in scripture. More significant, he appears to suggest that mortalism entails the wholesale destruction of the intellect.91 Yet the more Milton thunders this mortalist “truth,” the more we become aware of a deeper anxiety asserting itself. This is largely owing to the fact that Milton’s discussion of the soul in relation to earthly time and atemporal entities such as death and eternity causes difficulties for his conception of a wholly material soul-substance. These tensions are then further exacerbated by the figurative language he employs. It appears, therefore, that the account of the soul in De Doctrina Christiana exceeds the scope of literal language—just as it did in Samson Agonistes—and that this difficulty in linguistic practice complicates, in turn, an understanding of the treatise in straightforwardly monist-materialist terms.

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While the poetry’s engagement with the figurative is obviously dynamic and alive to the resultant tension, an element of poetic insurgency is also discernible in Milton’s prose.92 Nowhere is this more evident than when Milton ventures into the inner mystery of death. Here, he is driven to use heuristic metaphors, including the metaphor of sleep, to describe death. If we are to take Milton literally in these places—as in the rest of De Doctrina Christiana—we note that he crosses over from thnetopsychism, in which the soul dies (yuchv: “soul” and qnhtov~: “death”), to psychopannychism, or a “soul-sleeping” system (from yuchv: “soul” and pannuvcio~: “lasting all night”).93 Although the metaphor “death is like sleep” tames the idea by bringing it under a more comfortable image (sleep), Milton implies that this is still less than the thought. When in Lycidas Milton muses, “whether thou to our moist vows denied, / Sleep’st by the fable of Bellerus old” (159–60), the use of “sleep’st” bespeaks a greater fear of uncertainty and dissolution than is capable of being imagined. Death is acknowledged as being much greater and grander than the metaphor allows. Yet the fact that death is not sleep does very little to tell us what death actually is. Despite Milton’s best attempts to say conclusively that the soul dies, the word “death” remains fraught with mystery. If there is an inability on Milton’s part to suppress the figurative in De Doctrina Christiana, then this arguably discloses a tension in his theology that shatters the superficially applied monist materialism. To examine this idea further, I turn to Milton’s analysis of I Corinthians 15.22 (“For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made to live”), in which he suggests the phrase “in Adam all die” means that “all sinned in Adam.”94 Bodily death, as Milton writes in his opening of chapter 13 of De Doctrina Christiana, is not natural but results from man’s sin.95 The impulse to theodicy in the prose treatise—which rejects the notion that God’s punishment could allow the sinning soul to escape— thus elevates God’s glory through the (promised) hope and miracle of Redemption. Contrary to Calvin’s claim that if one accepts the soul’s death, grace is rendered ineffectual, Milton’s point is that grace is actually more efficacious if it does not presuppose, as Calvin does, the immortality of the soul.96 Milton’s favorite church historian, the “Father of Church History,” Eusebius of Caesarea (c. 263–339), believed in the complete death of the soul (thnetopsychism). Even Milton’s old tutor, Alexander Gill, gathered

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together mortalist positions (albeit to attack them).97 The doctrine of thnetopsychism may have appealed to Milton in large part because it complemented his understanding of metaphor. Norman Burns tells us that while the psychopannychists “believed that the immortal substance called soul literally slept until the resurrection of the body . . . the thnetopsychists, denying that the soul was an immortal substance, believed that the soul slept after death only in a figurative sense.”98 In other words, the doctrine of the psychopannychists relied on the way the literal sense of the metaphor can be the fiction. C. S. Lewis, borrowing phraseology from Dante, described this effect when he called The Thebaid of Statius, “literaliter bellum Thebanum, allegorice homo” (literally, the Theban war, allegorically the war in man).99 In Richard Lovelace’s (1618–57) poem “To Lucasta, the Rose,” the rose is employed as a metaphor for Lucasta, so that the poem is literally about a rose but metaphorically about Lucasta.100 The literal sense, in other words, is the immediately given sense and is not to be confused with the word “actual” (“literal” and “actual” are often and erroneously used synonymously). The emergent distinction is that while the psychopannychists believe the metaphor of soul-sleep is literally true, the thnetopsychists claim on the contrary that a metaphor, or figure of speech, is devoid of further meaning. For the thnetopsychists, tenor and vehicle are indistinguishable, so that the metaphorical can operate in a thoroughly reductive manner.101 For those to whom metaphors are richly heuristic agents, it will seem absurd to reject a figurative expression on the ground that it specifies the wrong object (after all, metaphor must specify another object in order to be metaphor). But for the thnetophyschists, to whom metaphor is a simple (inert) substitution of terms, the objection But this is not true! will seem cogent. In denying that metaphor may convey a truth, Milton is able to argue that the phrase “sleep of death” must be understood by taking “sleep” as a term merely substituted for “death.” The phrase “the soul sleeps” is straightforwardly understood to mean “the soul dies.” By eradicating the fluid, interrogative aspect of metaphor, Milton hardens metaphor into something more simply ostensive but renders it vulnerable in the process. The metaphor “sleep of death” so conceived fails to describe—let alone, define—death, and this “fossilization of metaphor” creates further difficulties. When metaphor and its meaning

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disappear, once instructive terms become corrupted, facile: useless.102 Perhaps for this reason Milton dispenses with the literal meaning in “death is sleep” and slowly reverts to another protracted metaphor, “death is a journey.” He writes that “Paul desires to be with Christ at Christ’s second coming, an event which all believers confidently hoped would take place in the very near future. In the same way, someone who is going on a voyage wants to set sail and to reach port safely, and hardly mentions the intervening journey.”103 This unknown “intervening journey,” reminiscent of epic homecomings as in the Odyssey, is even more closely related to Dante’s Ulisse, who revises the notion: Ulisse ventures forth on to the unknown seas of Death itself.104 The idea of novsto~ (“journey homeward”) exemplifies the most profound, metaphysical homecoming narrative: the fate of the soul. But even this journey is finally deemed unnarratable because the soul—which returns to dust and then to God—is conceived of as first being out of time, before it finally moves beyond time. Milton’s choosing to replace the metaphor “sleep of death” with this new, deeply inquisitive metaphor is important. Even as he claims to pass into apprehending death literally—to possess knowledge of it without the help of metaphor—he cannot stop describing death metaphorically. We rapidly realize that the “buried metaphor” seeking definition through affinity (“death is something like sleep”) cannot properly be replaced by blank identification (in which “death is sleep”). As Lewis observed, “When we begin to think of causes, relations, mental states or acts we become incurably metaphorical.”105 Although Milton’s treatise works hard to suppress this tendency, whenever he meditates on death, he repeatedly fails to rein in the power of the figurative. This trend becomes clearer when we turn to the place where, citing the two main mortalist citations from scripture—the sleep of St. Stephen in Acts 7.60 and Luke’s sleep of death (20.35; 24.21; 26.6–8)—along with the notion of promised resurrection from I Corinthians 15.17–19, Milton argues that there is no “heavenly existence” for the dead prior to the Resurrection.106 The dead, like Lazarus, are therefore called directly from the grave since, as Milton writes, they “really have been dead.”107 Yet while the thnetopsychists give the Resurrection the most important place in the “Christian eschatological drama,” Milton privileges the Regeneration: “forthwith the cited dead / Of all past Ages to the general

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Doom / Shall hast’n, such a peal shall rouse thir sleep” (PL III:327–29; italics added). Although a fiction, we detect that the metaphor of sleep in the poetry expresses a greater reality. Even though Milton’s reading of I Thessalonians 4.13–17 contends that the sleep described must be taken literally in the first instance, it appears that Milton wants to reconstrue the metaphor by flattening the difference between “sleep” and “death”: “They have gone to sleep: the lifeless body, however, does not sleep, unless, that is, you could say that a piece of stone, for example, sleeps.”108 Common sense forces us to admit that neither an inanimate object nor a dead body sleeps. The metaphor, as Milton argues, is just that—a metaphor. In this reading, “sleep” becomes shorthand for “annihilation.” But Milton’s mortalism, which leans heavily on the idea that “spirit is not exempt from death: Eccles. iii. 18–20: that as the beast dies, so the man dies, they all have the same spirit. Each of them goes to the same place,” gradually promotes the traditional Hebraic account in which God takes back the spirit—when, that is, “the body returns to dust, Job xxxiv. 14, 15: if . . . he takes its spirit and its soul to himself: all flesh will die together, and man will turn back to dust.”109 But this notion—in which death is seen as a return to a thing’s native element—is admittedly a vastly different affair from total annihilation. While Milton works hard to prove the soul is completely destroyed— “each component returns to the place it came from, to its own element”— his quotation from Theseus’s speech to Adrastus in Euripides’ Supplices (532–34) unwittingly reinforces the difference between soul-stuff and bodily material: “Each various part / That constitutes the frame of man, returns / When it was taken; to th’ ethereal sky [aijqevra] / The soul [pneu`ma], the body [sw`ma] to its earth.”110 The citation reveals an interest in ancient atomism and the way “parts” imply an infinite number. It is reminiscent of Augustine’s proof for the immortality of the soul, in which Augustine says that just as an infinite series of division never reaches nothingness, so, too, the soul can never be reduced to nothingness: “For by taking away a half part, so to speak, from these, and then from that which is less, [taking away another] half, the interval is diminished and proceeds towards an end to which however it is in no way about to come. Wherefore all the less is this to be feared concerning the soul” (Nam et de his etiam terminatis, dimidiam, verbi gratia, partem

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detrahendo, et ex eo quod restat, semper dimidiam, minuitur intervallum, atque ad finem progreditur, ad quem tamen nullo pervenitur modo. Quo minus hoc de animo formidandum est).111 When taken within a Christian context, Milton’s use of Euripides implicitly militates against the idea that the soul is annihilated. A variation of the Euripides’ passage, extant in Philo’s De aeternitate mundi vi.30, further confirms the sense we have that soul-stuff in Milton is not destroyed but dispersed—returned to its ethereal home: “What springs from earth goes back to earth, / The ether [aijqerivou]-born to heaven’s vault returns; / Naught that is born can die / Hither and thither its parts disperse / And take their proper form [morfh;n ijdivan].” Again, the idea of a pre-Christian regeneration flickers behind the phrase “Naught that is born can die.” While Philo believed that things in this world were opposed to their natural order, “like strangers in a foreign land” (wJ~ trovpon tina; xeniteuvein dokei`n), Milton’s comment that “God is referred to as having given spirits to all animals, and as taking them to himself again when the body returns to dust” shows death to be less like sleep and more like a journey.112 In Milton’s statement “Obviously the spirit of man must have first gone to the four winds if it is now to return from them” (italics added), we catch echoes of the poetic conceit present in the Euripides passage.113 In the invocations of both Euripides and Ezekiel 37.9 (“Thus saith the Lord GOD; Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live”), a rich linguistic play on wind and spirit (pnei`n and pneu`ma) emerges.114 John 3.8 was commonly translated as “the wind bloweth where it listeth,” but John Wycliffe (c. 1330–84) had memorably written, “the spirit brethith where he wole” (italics added). The varying interpretations attest to the openness of the image that metaphor keeps alive. A return to the winds (the soul to the original a[nemo~) marks not a destruction of substance but a reassimilation. When Milton speaks of winds and souls, the allusion to John 3.8 insufflates his language so that a dying soul entering the winds becomes an extended metaphor for a journey back home—to God. By interpreting the metaphor of a journey “home” in this way, Milton privileges the literal (not the figurative) meaning, thereby reinvigorating the so-called dead metaphor “sleep is death.” At this point, it might be objected that when Milton writes in De Doctrina Christiana that “thoughts are in his soul and spirit, not in his

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body,” he folds the capacity of ratiocination into the soul, so that the death of the entire soul implies the end of the thinking part too. The elision would lead to the conclusion, so elegantly phrased by John Donne (1572–1631), that “one might almost say, her body thought.”115 Yet like Aristotle and Plato before him, Milton—or rather, Milton’s language— refuses to consign the (immaterial) intellect to death. Through his allusion to the winds of Ezekiel and Euripides’ vault of heaven, the Aristotelian notion that the intellect is immortal (ajqavnaton) and eternal (aji?dion)—even something divine (qei`on)—returns.116 Implicit in Milton’s argument for mortalism is the (perhaps inherited) admission that a notion of greater or lesser embodiment can be applied only to that which itself is initially immaterial.117 Hence, Milton reads both Matthew 26.38 (“Then saith he unto them, My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even unto death: tarry ye here, and watch with me”) and John 5.28 (“Marvel not at this: for the hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice”) as confirming his belief that souls “are always said to be called out of the grave, or at least to have been in the state of the dead.” But the “or” here is a red flag. To be in a given state is not the equivalent of having a changed or altered being (or nature). Death, as the great skeptic Sextus Empiricus (c. 160–210 AD) observed, is akin to sleep, since, in both cases, the percipient is incapable of perceiving. In “Woman’s Constancy,” Donne bitterly observes that “lovers’ contracts” may be binding “till sleep, death’s image, them unloose” (9–10). Nonetheless, death itself remains a strange and special kind of “unconsciousness,” different from sleep. It is fundamentally unimaginable except by analogy, beyond which, as Adam acknowledges, “humane reach no further knows” (PL X.793).118 Time, Reality, and the Rational Soul With the introduction of time to his discussions of the soul, Milton strengthens this alliance between his metaphysic and linguistic practice. While time may be thought to assist an understanding of what it means to say that the soul dies, Milton’s analysis of time actually falls short of providing a definition of that event as complete annihilation. In fact, his exploration of two different conceptions of time—one, which is internal to the soul and another, which is external to it—appears to encourage the belief that the rational soul escapes death. The result is that, in seeking

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to prove his mortalism by defining the soul in terms of time, Milton unwittingly reveals time itself to be a mysterious entity—an elusive and potentially unintelligible thing, as Augustine famously remarked, “Quid est ergo tempus? Si nemo ex me quærat, scio; si quærenti explicare velim, nescio” (What, therefore, is time? Provided that no one asks me, I know. If I want to explain it to an inquirer, I do not know).119 Nevertheless, Milton—who thinks we can get an idea of death through temporal analysis—attempts to explain what time is and how the soul relates to it. His account in De Doctrina Christiana owes much to Aristotle’s passage on the Sardinian sleepers in the Physics, to which Milton refers. Aristotle argued that if, like the Sardinian sleepers, we have no awareness of the interim (when we are asleep or dead), then that intervening time cannot be said to exist.120 The notion of time in this analysis depends on its relation to our perceiving souls. Richard Sorabji has made the subtle point that Aristotle’s “epistemological premise”—in which we notice time only when we notice change—becomes an “ontological conclusion” the minute we say that time does not exist without change.121 As Sextus Empiricus understood, the underlying Aristotelian premise was that an undetected change is meaningless: “[Aristotle] says, when the soul gets by itself in sleep, it regains its true nature . . . it is also in such a condition when it is severed from the body at death.”122 In like manner, Alexander of Aphrodisias and Simplicius wrote that time required change and hence a percipient to detect that change. The clear candidate for perceiving time was thus the rational soul.123 According to Alexander of Aphrodisias, we divide time into instances in our minds, the result being that the existence of time is itself dependent on the mind’s perception of time measuring motion.124 Alexander concluded that, without the rational soul, the substratum for time would exist, but that the notion of time itself would not. Time is therefore naturally individuated according to (each) soul.125 In Milton’s metaphor “death is sleep,” the continuation of “personhood” is ensured because the metaphor does nothing to corrupt the underlying substance of the rational soul, nor does the idea of “sleep” prohibit the potential reactivation of our rational soul’s activity of perception.126 Hence, Milton can write without fear of contradiction that those “who have died . . . will seem” to die and yet be “with Christ at the same moment”—the implication being that the number of time(s) are equal to the number of individual

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motions.127 In this picture, universal time is understood through a succession of particulars. Milton’s Hobson poem—much like its predecessor, “On the University Carrier” (1631)—warms to the task of commemorating the death of Thomas Hobson (1545–1631), the Cambridge–London carrier who never appears to have driven a horse himself: “Here lieth one who did most truly prove, / That he could never die while he could move” (“On the University Carrier: Another on the Same” 1–2). But the central conceit of the poem comically reverses the standard Aristotelian notion of time in a mere two lines: “Time numbers motion, yet (without a crime / ‘Gainst old truth) motion number’d out his time” (7–8). The joke makes sense because Milton takes advantage of the manner in which real time in a Christian–Augustinian framework refers to our human perception of time-in-succession (motion).128 Since time-in-succession, here imaged as the “motion” between Cambridge and London, eventually wears down the percipient (Hobson) until he dies, or “number[s] out his time,” the poetry hints that the individual, rational soul is what perceives these discrete moments: “But had his doings lasted as they were, / He had been an immortal carrier” (27–28). The idea the poem drives home is that when Hobson’s “goings,” or movements, cease, so does his time on earth. As soon as earthly motion comes to an end, the percipient—here, the soul (Hobson)—is said to die. The Aristotelian thought Milton is exploiting is that if time is motion, then its relationship to our soul must be conveyed through sense perception and activity, both of which are subject to corruption. But Milton knew better than to accept this latter conception of time as proof of the soul’s mortality, especially since Aristotle himself had raised the difficult question of whether time could exist without the numbering part of the rational soul.129 Even a time visualized in terms of earthly movement implicitly depends on a power capable of numbering motion—of distinguishing time T from time T-1. As soon as number is involved, so also is the intellect (as the numbering power) and hence the idea of immortality. While the cessation of motion in the Hobson poem images the soul’s death, Milton’s poem “On Time” (c. 1633) visualizes a soul that moves beyond this world and into the next, thereby hinting that the soul’s relationship to time must be imagined in terms other than physical movement. Although the humorous elegy on Hobson turns on

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the idea that time is given in terms of sense perception, Milton’s poem “On Time”—which describes an individual soul’s intelligible relationship to an external (imagined) continuum—is more in line with the opinions expressed in contemporary discussions of time.130 The Italian natural philosopher Bernardino Telesio (1509–88) wrote, for instance, in his De Rerum Natura (1565; 1570) that while Aristotle’s sleeping Sardinians illustrate how our consciousness of movement makes us conscious of time, time itself may exist independent of our sense-perceiving faculties. Giordano Bruno (1548–1600) similarly understood Aristotle as linking our awareness of time to motion, but, like the natural philosopher and critic of Aristotle Francesco Patrizi (1529–97), he also conceived of time as duration capable of existing extrinsic to the soul.131 The idea in the ascendant in all these writers is that time is no longer simply a movement but is a continuum, as Plotinus had proposed (Enn. 3.7.8–6.8).132 With the second wave of neo-Scholastics— of which Suárez was one—the notion that it was possible to retain both views of time (intrinsic / individual versus external / celestial), as Duns Scotus and William of Ockham had done, gradually gained adherents. As Charles Lohr has remarked, Suárez’s Disputationes portray a “confessionally neutral, possible world.”133 His ideas on time thus find their way not only into the Calvinist Clemens Timpler’s popular Metaphysicae Systema Methodicum (first published, 1604), but also into the writings of Timpler’s student at Heidelberg, the influential Aristotelian textbook writer Bartholomew Keckermann. Like Suárez, Keckermann conceived of an undifferentiated (celestial) time as that which was external to, but ran alongside, the independent “vis mensurandi” (power of measuring) belonging to the rational soul.134 Important to Milton would therefore have been the idea that the rational soul’s awareness of internal time is itself a way for writers to talk about the duration of the soul—of the continuation of the individual being. Milton begins “On Time” by invoking a mortal conception of successive time that characterizes all created things: “Fly envious Time, till thou run out thy race, / Call on the lazy leaden-stepping hours, / Whose speed is but the heavy plummet’s pace” (1–3). The “fly” of the first line is encumbered with the assonance of the “lazy leaden-stepping hours” and “heavy plummet’s pace.” Time, like death, lumbers toward to its destined

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end as decreed by Christian eschatology. When the Son announces in Paradise Lost, “rais’d I ruin all my Foes, / Death last, and with his Carcass glut the Grave” (III.258–59), death—like time—is treated as a selfconsuming, self-defeating artifact. In like manner, the poem “On Time” proclaims, “So little is our loss, / So little is thy [Time’s] gain” (7–8). Note, though, that “On Time” probes specifically how (extrinsic) celestial time might relate to man’s immortal, rational soul: “For when as each thing bad thou hast entombed, / And last of all thy greedy self consumed, / Then long eternity shall greet our bliss / With an individual kiss” (“On Time” 9–12). While some critics, such as O. B. Hardison, have argued that the word “individual” reveals the poem’s larger concern for the soul’s individual immortality, in opposition to the Averroist doctrine of a shared immortal soul, the word actually means “indivisible.”135 As the ectophagous time greedily consumes itself (10), this individual, or undivided, kiss reinforces the unity of the soul with eternity, thereby bringing it (eternity) into an imaginable relationship with us: “When once our heavenly-guided soul shall climb, / Then all this earthy grossness quit, / Attired with stars, we shall for ever sit, / Triumphing over Death, and Chance, and thee / O Time” (19–23). In skipping over death and moving straight to the end of time—to our entry into things “perfectly divine” (15)—the speaker in Milton’s poem successfully glosses over the intervening “frozen” time, or journey itself (19). The literal sense has now become the fiction; the imagined journey ends with the static “sit” (21). Meanwhile, the word “triumphing” works to reinforce the Christian idea that this fixity is loaded with an ever-continuing action that ends only after the Last Judgment. Milton’s imagery suggests, therefore, that the succession or motion which we perceive on earth is but an image of time running parallel to eternity.136 The poem relies, in other words, on the fiction of a temporal correlation between our world and that of heaven: the “for ever” (21) which makes us part of an infinite duration that is eternity also underscores that our “heavenly-guided soul” (19)—so imagined as atemporal—must actually remain different, as an individual entity. Once more, it appears that intellect alone survives the severance from finite duration to enter “long eternity” (11) and behold God’s “happy-making sight” (18). The poem’s final image in which the soul attains eternal beatitude (19) thus marks the transition in Milton’s thought from an understanding of time

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in terms of linear perception (1–2) toward something more akin to Luther’s belief that “God does not see time longitudinally; He sees it transversely, as if you were looking transversely at a tall tree lying before you. Then you can see both ends at the same time. This you cannot do if you look at it longitudinally.”137 The basic idea expressed by Luther’s transverse gaze reappears in the angel Raphael’s parenthetical clarification of what heavenly time is in Paradise Lost: “For time, though in Eternitie, appli’d / To motion, measures all things durable / By present, past, and future” (PL V.580–82). Raphael’s point is that the angels and heaven occupy the aevum, whose name, as Milton points out in the Art of Logic, derives from the “Greek aion—as it were, aei on, or ever existing.”138 Two types of time—the spiritual (celestial) and the physical (individual)—are now conceived as running alongside one another, with the result that a removal from earth’s diurnal motion is no longer seen straightforwardly as death. Even as he draws the transcendent into measurements congenial to our finite comprehension, Milton is careful not to define the transcendent by these terms.139 In Paradise Lost, he readily acknowledges that eternity eludes depiction in imagery—“all [is] abyss, / Eternitie, whose end no eye can reach” (XII.555–56; italics added). Yet even here, eternity is imagined as a transcendent object of understanding already placed within our finite field of apprehension (this is why eternity is limitless, viewless, etc.). It is significant that Milton chooses to redeploy this same technique when he conceptualizes the other great unknown: death. With death, though, the problem of interdependence is greater: “to die” does not simply mean “to enter eternity.” The “dead” souls (the presence of metaphor authorizes the use of inverted commas) are not yet beyond time and with God. Eternal existence as such is granted only after the Last Judgment. It follows, a fortiori, that the unperceiving souls must be out of time. But, as in Lycidas, atemporal displacement is not straightforwardly the same as transcendence; the “genius of the shore” (Lyc. 183) is still separated from the aevum occupied by angels and other intelligences. As Milton struggles to say what it means for the soul to die, his poetry discloses that such an understanding of death and eternity requires a relational context to provide us with heuristic metaphors. Time, which initially was supposed to help define the soul, actually moves Milton into a more complex debate about perception (of motion)

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and intellection (of number). As ideas about external time and internal time reexpress the tense dynamic we saw earlier between what is intelligible and what is corruptible, the poetry suggests that the rational soul not only escapes death but is itself also the best guarantee of individual immortality. R E A S S E S S I N G M I LT O N ’ S M O R TA L I S M A N D H I S

“ D E A D ” M E TA P H O R S The exploration of time in Milton’s poetry does not, therefore, simplify his description of souls or his depiction of death. If death is nothing more than a cessation of motion—and hence an end of time—it would appear that an unperceiving soul is dead. But when Adam attempts to apprehend death by likening it to a protracted sleep—to an unconscious state—much depends on the idea conveyed in his use of the word “insensible:” “[H]ow gladly would I meet / Mortalitie my sentence, and be Earth / Insensible, how glad would lay me down / As in my Mothers lap? there I should rest / And sleep secure” (PL X.775–79). The term “insensible” (771) now redeploys the psychopannychist metaphor, so that death becomes nothing more than “sleep secure” (778). This is because Adam’s fear is of immortalism—of what would happen if the “pure breath of Life, the Spirit of Man” (X.784) fails to “together perish / With this corporeal clod” (X.785–86). Death could slip into a nightmare of recurrent torment, as Adam gasps, “[W]ho knows / But I shall die a living death?” (X.787–88; italics added). The chill of these lines is akin to the terror Shakespeare’s Claudius felt at the thought that he might “reside / In thrilling region of thick-ribbed ice; / To be imprison’d in the viewless winds” (M for M III.i.121–23), the implication being that there yet exists something that perceives the imprisonment. Unlike Claudius, Adam finds comfort in the logic of his punishment: “All of me then shall die” (X.792), Adam reasons, because a “deathless Death” (X.798) would compromise God’s justice. (He also rightly concludes that man-as-subject is incapable of sustaining God’s “Wrath without end”; X.797). According to Adam, death must be taken spiritually to mean an “endless miserie” (X.810) that continues “To perpetuitie” (X.813). Again, his is not the fear of death per se, but of the immortal nature of death: “both Death and I / Am found Eternal, and incorporate both” (X.815–16). The framing use of “both” and “incorporate” emphasizes the (postlapsarian) eternal union death now finds with man.

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According to the darker interpretation of the Fall, Adam is correct. But the darkness cast over man’s depravity and sinful nature gives way to a more dazzling eschatological picture: one must first surrender to death in order for the miracle of the final resurrection to take place. A partial regeneration is no miracle; immortality is no gift if certain conditions are not satisfied, as Alfred Lord Tennyson’s Tithonus lamented. This, at least, is the position Milton’s God adopts when he declares, “I at first with two fair gifts / Created him endowd, with Happiness / And Immortalitie: that fondly lost, / This other serv’d but to eternize woe; / Till I provided Death; so Death becomes / His final remedie” (PL XI.57–62). God, who takes back immortality, or the ability not to die, is suddenly rendered “just” in this context. When we are told man dies but is then “Wak’t in the renovation of the just” (XI.65), the verb “wak’t” evokes an intervening state. The metaphor “death is sleep” blazes into life once more.140 Given the analysis of Milton’s figurative language in his prose writings and poetry, we may be tempted to say that were we to read only these passages in Paradise Lost we would find little evidence for Milton’s mortalism.141 Yet Francis Blackburne, lord chancellor of Ireland (1782– 1867), read Paradise Lost without De Doctrina Christiana to hand and still detected its mortalism. He even used a line from Paradise Regained— “much of the soul they talk but all awry” (PR IV.313)—for the epigraph of his book The Short Historical View.142 In his appendix to that book, he hints that just as Luther labored “to conceal his real sentiments” regarding mortalism, so, too, did Milton practice a sort of self-wrought concealment.143 At the other end of the spectrum, though, is Thomas Newton. Newton, who thought Adam’s mortalism altogether too “natural,” airily dismissed it as the outburst of one who has fallen into sin: “The sinner may invent never so many arguments in favor of the annihilation and utter extinction of the soul.”144 While he discerned the thnetopsychist position in Paradise Lost, Newton also recognized the “metaphorical meaning” (of “sleep is death”) and, subsequently, felt authorized to reject it. In his note to X.513, he mused, “We may observe here a singular beauty and elegance in Milton’s language, and that in his using words in their strict and litteral sense, which are commonly apply’d to a metaphorical mean-

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ing, whereby he gives peculiar force to his expressions, and the litteral meaning appears more new and striking than the metaphor itself.”145 For Newton, metaphor in Milton is drained of further meaning, thereby producing a powerful literal language. But what I have suggested is the opposite—namely, that in having us take the metaphor literally, Milton actually reactivates the “buried” metaphor. That is, as soon as we adjoin more force to the given sense, or literal meaning, we immediately acknowledge the truth-telling sense to be on the side of the fiction-making element (we talk about sleep for death). The attention to the literal sense (here, sleep) thus acknowledges that Milton describes death metaphorically; the metaphor (“sleep is death”) is suddenly operational once more. Still, Newton is correct to say that Milton’s figuration of death-as-sleep underscores—but does not define—the mystery of death. Milton himself emphasizes this understanding of metaphor when, in De Doctrina Christiana, he states that a literal interpretation of scripture depends on an understanding of the bible’s own complex metaphorical language: “A thing which in any way illustrates or signifies another thing is mentioned not so much for what it really is as for what it illustrates or signifies.”146 It follows that, when Milton writes, “If, as I have shown above, the soul as well as the body goes to sleep until the day of resurrection, then obviously there can be no stronger argument against it [namely, the idea of purgatory]” (italics added), his statement is immediately explicable in its reversion to metaphor.147 In first asking us to imagine death as something we can gain a limited understanding of (such as sleep), Milton is able to then say that death is not this thing. The effect is to move us, by way of the figurative, into an unknown area that is supposedly defined in opposition to the figurative. Although his prose pretends that, once comfortable with a metaphor, it can settle meaning and deny metaphor’s heuristic function (for instance: “Metaphor is a fiction; reality is other than that”), such a barbaric literalism cannot survive the interrogative power awakened by the concepts it evokes. Milton’s odd technique of flattening a metaphor while simultaneously speaking in metaphorical terms exposes that we are experiencing a failure on the part of literal language to ossify.148 As soon as he asserts that the soul literally dies, Milton grants a huge concession to the metaphor he claims to have abandoned.

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It is only by disagreement with the metaphor that Milton is able to argue his new conception of the soul’s fate into reality. The difficulty this raises, however, is that the metaphor behind the argument, although buried, lives on. The result is that while, in De Doctrina Christiana, Milton claims that body and soul are said to die and be regenerated as a complete, concrete individual, the surface monism of this treatise—which ostensibly confirms this understanding—never fully coheres or materializes.149 Milton’s poetry, with its overtly psychopannychist language, actively sustains the division between tenor and vehicle: “so he dies, / But soon revives, Death over him no power / Shall long usurp; ere the third dawning light / Returne, the Starres of Morn shall see him rise / Out of his grave, fresh as the dawning light” (XII.419–23). Here, Christ is seen to rise—body and soul—from the grave and, like those “whom he redeems,” to overcome “temporal death.” But observe how death is explicitly stated by the very metaphor Milton supposedly rejected: death is described “like sleep” (XII.434), or, as the Son adds, a “gentle wafting to immortal Life” (XII.435). The metaphors “death as sleep” and “death as journey” coalesce. In like manner, there is a reversion to the metaphoric language of the psychopannychists in De Doctrina Christiana when Milton writes, “If, as I have shown, the soul as well as the body goes to sleep until the day of resurrection, then . . . no middle state, except death, is assigned between the earthly house of this life and that eternal home in the heavens, II Cor. v. 1” (italics added). The idea of death as a “middle state” is now disrupted by a profound uncertainty evoked by the metaphor of sleep, until it eventually slips into a metaphor in which death is imagined in terms of a progressive journey.150 The transition moves from a picture of time as frozen or static to one in which time is given in terms of motion, both real and imagined. As the battle between the literal and the figurative rages on in De Doctrina Christiana, Milton places a finger on the inadequacy of the material terms metaphor employs. Lewis, who wrote that “the meaning of any composition is in inverse ratio to the author’s belief in his own literalness,” gives prominence to the sustaining flexibility of metaphor in Milton as that which refuses to assert—but nonetheless intimates— what is fundamentally unknowable. When, at the end of the Art of Logic, Milton proclaims, “To orators and poets should be left their own account

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of method,” his statement is in direct opposition to Hobbes’s view that metaphors are merely for “ornament or deceit.” Unlike Hobbes, Milton never claims that terms lacking a definition according to the physical are devoid of meaning.151 Yet even Hobbes’s drive for a purely literal language capitulates to the figurative language it attacks, as G. F. Stout observed in passing: “When Hobbes mockingly says that inspiration, ‘taken properly,’ is ‘the blowing into a man of a thin and subtle wind,’ he merely shows that metaphor becomes pointless and absurd when the animism which it pre-supposes is ignored.”152 Whereas Hobbes would have language end where epistemological claims begin to suppose and fail to assert, Milton—no matter how much he claimed to do otherwise—continuously sifts metaphors for more meaning. The animism in Milton’s prose writing as well as in his poetry is expressive of, but never reducible to, a literal (material) truth. Although it ostensibly rejects the metaphor “death is sleep,” the language of De Doctrina Christiana is rich with echoes of, “To die, to sleep; / To sleep, perchance to dream—ay, there’s the rub: / For in that sleep of death what dreams may come” (Ham. III.i.65–67; italics added). The metaphors and attendant elements of paradox, discontinuity, and disjunction that Milton repeatedly presses into service in his poetry continue to complicate his descriptions of the soul and are never successfully purged from his prose exposition of a theological system. As the literal in Milton’s treatise repeatedly veers into strangely metaphorical realms that, by nature, are exploratory, Milton’s linguistic practice—in which language is shown to be inherently metaphorical—encounters the immaterialist tendencies implicit in even an Aristotelian account of the soul. The result is that the remorseless drive for the soul’s complete materialization in Milton’s prose and poetry is thwarted once more—this time, as much by his use of metaphor as by the practice of his metaphysic.

chapter five

Milton’s Angelology intelligential substance in paradise lost Thou hast made him a little less than the angels. —Psalm 8.6 Millions of spiritual Creatures walk the Earth Unseen, both when we wake, and when we sleep —Paradise Lost (IV.677–78)

it is generally held that milton, who declared the soul to be material, similarly conceived of his angels as material.1 But, as we saw in the last chapter, the status of the soul in Milton resists physical redaction in terms of his metaphysics as well as his poetic practice. A study of Milton’s account of the angels in Paradise Lost may likewise prove to be more complex than one might have thought. Recent scholarship provides ample testimony that this is indeed the case: writing on Milton’s angels, Joad Raymond claims that they “are substantial, physical beings; they are spirits, but nonetheless material. They are, however, not corporeal.”2 Meanwhile, Stephen Fallon contends that Milton’s angels are both material and corporeal.3 The fact that Raymond and Fallon have reached such radically different conclusions about the nature of angelic substance in Paradise Lost invites us to reconsider not only what Milton’s angels are made of, but also why an understanding of angelic substance is so important to one’s reading of Paradise Lost. I suggest that Milton used his angels to think through the fraught metaphysical relationship between sameness and difference—uniformity and individuality—which haunts the epic and that these tensions reemerge in the poem’s depiction of angelic epistemology and ontology.4 When Raphael tells Adam that “the Soule / Reason receives, and reason is her being / Discursive, or Intuitive; discourse / Is oftest yours, the lat158

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ter most is ours, / Differing but in degree, of kind the same” (V.486– 90), the different types of intellection characterize different species: the angels possess a more perfect, simple intuitive knowledge, while man is granted an imperfect, discursive mode of thought.5 A case can be made that, in thus conceiving of angels as “pure / Intelligential Substances” (V.407–08), Milton’s angelology is playing with the Aristotelian (and, later, scholastic) distinction between the possible intellect and the agent intellect, both of which comprise two modes, or aspects, of intellect itself. When Milton treats the good angels as unanimous intellectual substances, uniformity (not individuality) is asserted. Yet this angelic uniformity is itself far from unproblematic: the epistemological difficulties the good angels encounter appear to complicate, not assist, the poem’s claim to write a successful theodicy. This is then made more complicated by the fact that Milton’s angelology is framed by a dialectic that sets two diverse angelological traditions against one another. While the Thomist tradition sees angels as forms and regards each one as a separate species united by a higher power (viz. intellect), the alternative tradition of universal hylomorphism—in which all things are composed of matter and form—provides angels with the “spiritual matter” needed for individuation and affectability.6 By incorporating both angelological traditions, Milton gives emphasis to the exalted character of angelic epistemology and ontological unity, while simultaneously retaining the individual character and “emotionology” of his angels. The final effect of threading together both parts of the argument—with the one strand focusing on the philosophic alignment of intellect with angel, and the other examining Milton’s juxtaposition of two angelological traditions—is to bring into view the poem’s larger attempt to assert a totality of oneness within which differences nonetheless abound. Much can be gained from exploring the ontological and epistemological concerns to which Milton’s angels give rise, especially since these difficulties appear to be too great for the poem’s alleged monism, let alone its supposed monist materialism. M I LT O N ’ S A N G E L S A N D T H E G R A N D P O S S I B L E I N T E L L E C T

In the case of Milton’s angels, it must be admitted that unification is itself not an easy affair. It is fraught with an anxiety about—and also marked by an interest in—the highest form of creaturely thinking: intellection. In

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describing the angels as “pure / Intelligential Substances” (V.407–08), Milton distinguishes the intellective act that is “mostly intuitive” performed by the angels from the “Rational” and discursive thought done by man (V. 488–89): Therefore what he [God] gives (Whose praise be ever sung) to man in part Spiritual, may of purest Spirits be found No ingrateful food: and food alike those pure Intelligential substances require As doth your Rational; and both contain Within them every lower facultie Of sense, whereby they hear, see, smell, touch, taste, Tasting concoct, digest, assimilate, And corporeal to incorporeal turn. (V.404–13) For most scholars, the immediate sense is the literal (by which they mean the material). Angels, like us, are seen to possess sense perception. But the mere fact that Milton calls his angels “intelligential substances” (V.408) becomes a hitch for those adhering to a monist materialist reading of the poem. A clever critic like Fallon gets around the difficulty by arguing that “Raphael shows that to be an ‘Intelligence’ is not to be purely incorporeal; in contrasting angels and men, he sets ‘intelligential’ not against corporeal, but against ‘rational.’”7 This is true—but not absolutely. While Raphael does indeed place the angel’s intelligential substance against man’s rational substance—thereby making a (scholastic) distinction between the method by which angels and humans know—his distinction between the two modes of cognition has ontological implications as well. We recall Raphael’s claim to Adam, “Your bodies may at last turn all to Spirit, / Improv’d by tract of time, and wingd ascend / Ethereal, as wee” (V.497–99; italics added). The import of Raphael’s speech reinforces the sense that while Adam cannot become an angel, he can become like one—by which Raphael presumably means that Adam will attain something akin to both the substance and the intellectual power of the angels.8 Man in his entirety is thus said to turn to spirit.

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As the so-called Protestant Suárez, Christoph Scheibler (1589–1635), made clear in his Metaphysica (1637), “spirit” is a messy term.9 Scheibler thought there were at least three ways we might construe spiritus: (1) as a tenuous and subtle body (in the sense we call the wind a spirit); (2) as something vital and animal (like the extremely subtle bodies analyzed in physics); or (3) as a substance without matter (such as God).10 Raphael’s spirit, which becomes “more spiritous, and pure, / As neerer to him [God] plac’t or neerer tending” (V.475–76), appears to move from category 2 to 3. Spirits cannot be equal to God’s substance because they are created and hence finite beings. Yet, when taken in relation to man, their substance is of “purest light” (VI.660). The emergent idea is that while humans need bodies to interact with and understand the material world, angels need no such instruments: the entire body is turned “all to Spirit” (V.497).11 To the question of whether an angel could exist without a body, Pietro Pomponazzi (1462–1525) famously replied in the negative.12 Given that he says so firmly that intellect cannot exist without a body, it looks as if Pomponazzi wants to say intellect will not continue forever.13 John Herman Randall Jr. comments that Pomponazzi believed that virtue is its own reward and scorned rewards and punishments in the next life.14 This suggests that Pomponazzi would see the element of participation in the timeless (which he allowed to be present in the individual thinking human soul) in metaphysical, synchronic terms, rather than in terms of a continued existence in another sphere. Milton, who believed in the punishment of the damned and the resurrection of the individual, would emphatically not have accepted such an argument.15 Still, the comparison with Pomponazzi is instructive, especially since Milton may have come into contact with his thought through the writings of the Italian Dominican Chrysostomus Javellus, whose work we know Milton read at Christ’s sometime between 1625 and 1631. In general, Milton seems to have shared with Pomponazzi the idea that even if the soul—as determined by the vegetative and sensitive faculties—is consigned to death, the intellect will escape annihilation (Pomponazzi was certainly not a full materialist; he is very contemptuous of Lucretius). Even though Pomponazzi affirms, perhaps with vivid sincerity, that at the level of faith the soul must be seen as immortal, the final tendency of his thought is to deny that the individual soul is immortal, at least as far

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as rational demonstration goes.16 Since the possible intellect is one, intelligence is angelically the same for all parties. Another implication in Pomponazzi’s thought is that angelic intelligence is nonratiocinative—that is, it does not have to do with any form of active reasoning. Human (agent) intellect, in contrast, is more easily compatible with individuation: “For the human intellect is both intellect and human. For as intellect it knows the universal, but as human it cannot perceive the universal except in the singular.”17 Angels, conversely, know universals (and hence know singulars, through the universal forms); angelic intellection is thus characterized collectively.18 What this suggests is that Milton’s angels may be aligned with the intellect and, specifically, the possible intellect. According to the Aristotelian distinction, there is knowing-which-is-immediate (possible intellect) and knowing-through-process (agent intellect), both of which are aspects of intellect itself. Ancient Greek and Byzantine commentaries attempted to unify the sensible with the intelligible by arguing that what intellects or senses and what is intellected or sensed are one and the same. But, as F. E. Cranz has noticed, Latin commentaries and translations of Aristotle introduced a significant modification to this picture; they reinforced the disjunction between what senses and what is sensed, or what performs the intellection and what actually is intellected.19 The Latin tradition with which Milton would have been familiar emphasized Aristotle’s De anima III.5—at the place where Aristotle speaks of mind (nou`~) as an imperishable substance, separable (cwristò~) from soul itself. The idea that nou`~ (“intellect”) actually enters the soul from the outside prompted later Greek Neoplatonic commentators such as Simplicius to understand Aristotle’s De anima as a treatise about the rational soul (logikh; yuchv) in particular. Aristotle’s claim that “only the intellect when separated . . . is its true self, and this, its essential nature, alone, is immortal and eternal” (cwrisqei;~ d∆ ejsti; movnon tou`q∆ o{per ejstiv, kai; tou`to movnon ajqavnaton kai; aji?dion) received much attention at the hands of the Latin fathers and the Scholastics.20 They articulated sophisticated theories about how the active intellect (oJ poihtiko;~ nou`~; intellectus agens) derived sensible species (as the phantasmata of things from sense experience) and subsequently transported them—now as intelligible species, or universals—to the possible intellect (oJ paqhtiko;~ nou`~; also

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called the intellectus passivus or intellectus patibilis), itself the home to the resultant knowledge.21 A good critic like John Rist will therefore say that the distinction between agent and possible intellect demonstrates that Aristotle conceived of only the active intellect as immortal, primarily because the passive intellect is—as its name (paqhtiko;~; pathetikos) implies—“affectable” (or receptive to forms). Since what is passible is, simpliciter, perishable, the possible intellect is conceived as belonging to a lower ontological category than the active intellect. While Rist’s analysis may be true for some readings of Aristotle, it does not appear to be consistently true.22 In Simplicius’s interpretation, the possible intellect appears to be neither material nor bodily; rather, it is transcendent and intuitive. According to his reading, the active intellect, which grappled discursively with the sensible world, was a lesser power.23 From the Greek Neoplatonic Aristotelian commentators straight through to the Latin commentators, there was a steady elevation of the status of the possible intellect until, in the seventeenth century, this shift was, as philosophical and theological treatises and handbooks of the period testify, fully in the ascendant.24 Given that metaphysics was seen to provide only the general categories into which an entity could be placed according to qualities (such as finite–infinite, corporeal–incorporeal, created–not created, timeless–temporal, etc), theological writings, especially those of the Second Scholastic, were used because they gave more thorough treatment to the different roles assigned to the active and possible intellect. The popular Coimbra commentary on Aristotle’s De anima, which was used as a textbook at universities, including Cambridge, confirms the rising status of the possible intellect in the late sixteenth century.25 The Coimbra commentary on De anima, written by the Jesuit Emmanuel de Goes (1542–97), promulgated the belief that while the agent intellect dealt with specific natures, the possible intellect actually attended to universal knowledge.26 The Jesuit neo-Scholastic Francisco Suárez pursued this line of thought with more rigor: his Tractatus de Anima, which was compiled from his lectures at the University of Segovia (1571–79) and published posthumously by his fellow Jesuit P. Alvarez (the editio princeps of Suárez’s De anima appeared at Lyon in 1621), advances the claim that the agent intellect paves the way for the superior work of the possible intellect.

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In his De anima as well as his theological writings (of which his Disputationes Metaphysicae were only an abridgment) Suárez demoted the agent intellect to something akin to an “assisting” cause:27 It is replied that the possible [intellect] is simpliciter more perfect. And it is proved because its act is the most noble, which is to know; and it is the knowing power, which the agent intellect is not. Also, it is through the possible intellect that our soul is capable of divine vision, whence in the act of this faculty consists our happiness. Also, the agent intellect is only a minister to the possible intellect, [and is] ordered [viz. arranged] for the preparation of species for it. Therefore, this is a sign that the possible intellect is the more noble [of the two]. Also, in the possible intellect we are more like to God and to the angels, and it is that which through itself reaches the nature of spiritual substance; truly, the agent intellect is almost through accident for the [purpose of ] taking the place of material objects. (Respondetur ⁄quod⁄ possibilis simpliciter est perfectior. ⁄Et probatur⁄ quia eius actus est nobilissimus, qui est intelligere; et est potentia cognoscitiva, qualis non est intellectus agens. Item, per intellectum possibilem est anima nostra capax divinae visionis; unde in actu huius potentiae beatitudo nostra consistit. Item, intellectus agens tantum est minister intellectus possibilis, ordinatus ad praeparandum illi species; ergo signum ⁄est⁄ possibilem esse nobiliorem. Item, intellectu possibili maxime assimilamur Deo et angelis, et est qui per se consequitur naturam substantiae spiritualis; intellectus vero agens est quasi per accidens ad supplendum vicem obiectorum materialium.28 Since the possible intellect was understood to be that part of the intellect that worked strictly with the unchanging universal, it was accorded a higher ontological status. As a result, theologians were quick to assign to the angels this possible mode of intellection, thereby demonstrating, as Suárez had done, that “the nature of the angel is more perfect than the human” (naturam Angeli esse humana perfectiorem).29 What becomes clear is that in the seventeenth century the high status of the possible intellect as well as its alignment with the knowing

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power of the angels successfully crossed the confessional divide: from the works of the Catholic French Aristotelian Joseph Caesar Scaliger (1484–1558) to the chair of natural philosophy at Padua, Giacomo Zabarella (1533–89), who espoused a far more materializing Aristotelian natural philosophy, we continue to find a gradual inversion of the original Aristotelian distinction between the agent and possible intellect. While the Cistercian Eustachius a Sancto Paulo (1573–1640) demoted the agent intellect to a mediating power and aligned knowing with the possible intellect, Franco Petri Burgersdijck, who was deeply influenced by the Spanish scholastic, nearly did away with the agent intellect altogether.30 Despite national and religious differences, England remained richly indebted to and influenced by the thought of the (Catholic) Second Scholastic and their Protestant counterparts—first, through the genre of the commentary tradition and, then, through the more eclectic melange of writings that characterized the cursus, or textbook, tradition.31 Hence, the learned biblical exegete Edward Leigh (1603–71) recorded in 1656 that “Mr. Baxter in his Reply to Mr. Kendall, saith he hath about thirty Tracts of Metaphysciks by him, and seemed to value Suárez, Schibler and Burgersdicius before all the rest.”32 Significantly, all three of these authors—a Jesuit, a Lutheran, and a Calvinist—situate discussions of the intellect alongside analyses of angels. Suárez, in fact, devotes an entire treatise to the study of angels (De angelis), in which he concludes that their intellect is necessarily one—by which he refers to a greater intellectual power than that in man—thereby dissolving the distinction between the agent and possible intellects in angels.33 The thought arising is that for Milton, like Pomponazzi—who roughly equates intelligence and angels—intelligence when practiced by angels is more immediate and intuitive than the cognition of benighted humans. The Neoplatonic fondness for exciting intermediacy we detect in Pomponazzi’s treatise On the Immortality of the Soul is evident in Milton’s epic as well: human intellects are between those of the sensing animals and the Angels / Intelligences.34 When this is put together with the exalted character of the possible intellect—which is made incorruptible in angels because it is not joined to the material—one can begin to think that an (angelic) mind in immediate contact with truth looks very like a Grand Possible Intellect. In his comments on the definition of

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Wisdom in the apocryphal book of Solomon at 7.27—“And being but one, she [Wisdom] can do all things”—Hugo Grotius declared, “The Mind is one thing in actuality, but everything in potentiality” (Vnum ejnergevia [actu] est Mens, omnia dunavmei [potentiâ]).35 Yet in humans this intellect has to be fed with the intelligibles that are its proper diet by the agent intellect (and so, in a curious way, the possible intellect does remain dependent on the agent intellect).36 Still, insofar as the angels and possible intellect deal exclusively with forms, they are ontologically superior to men and their discursive agent intellect. In their deathless state of intellection, Milton’s angels appear to act with an immediacy akin to thought. One of the participants in this exalted mode of cognition in Paradise Lost is the angel Abdiel, who is able to outthink and hence outact Satan. Raphael relates that Abdiel’s sword “so swift with tempest fell / On the proud Crest of Satan, that no sight, / Nor motion of swift thought, less could his Shield / Such ruin intercept” (VI.190–93). Earlier in the poem, the relationship between angelic thought, action, and time is explored by Raphael when he narrates how the seraph Abdiel—“Among the faithless, faithful only hee” (V.897)— deserts Satan’s legions and flies back to the camp of the good angels to report the rebellion rising in the North: “all the Plain / Coverd with thick embatteld Squadrons bright, / Chariots and flaming Armes, and fierie Steeds / Reflecting blaze on blaze, first met his view: / Warr he perceav’d, warr in procinct, and found / Already known what he for news had thought / To have reported” (VI.15–21; italics added). A slight temporal gap appears to exist in the angels’ act of relaying knowledge to one another: the very awkwardness of Raphael’s phrasing—“found / Already known what he for news had thought / To have reported” (V.19–21)—points to the way linear narration and causality have become twisted and turned. Since the only truly immediate acts are those of God, as we are told at VII.176–79, angelic action is comparatively slower. In an intelligible world, the only actions that truly matter are movements of the mind. In the case of Satan, though, we behold a fallen angelic intellect. So separated from the uniform intellect of the good angels, Satan is not “swift” enough to oppose the “intelligential” action of the heavenly host. When, on the battlefield, the “Satanic Host” (VI.392) survey the wreckage of “all the ground / With shiverd armour strow’n” (VI.388–89), they realize that “till that hour” they were “Not liable to fear or flight or paine”

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(VI.396–97). Their deficiency is further accentuated by the narrator’s depiction of the good angels pressing forward in battle: “Far otherwise th’ inviolable Saints / In Cubic Phalanx firm advanc’t entire, / Invulnerable, impenitrably arm’d” (VI.398–400). The good angels here move in unison with almost robotlike efficiency against their foe; their very goodness makes them immune to pain. Although in book VI God “limited thir might” (VI.229), their strength nonetheless grows with their unity of purpose. In like manner, their unanimity of thought, which entails immediate action, transcends even the decorum of Milton’s angelic hierarchies: “yet Leader seemd / Each Warriour single as in Chief ” (VI.232– 33). In Milton, as in Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153), an angel is thus “unanimitate individuos” (individual with unanimity).37 Amid union, though, there is still difference. When, for instance, Zophiel, “of Cherubim the swiftest wing” (VI.535), attempts to “conjecture aught” (VI.545) to his superiors about the strength of Satan’s troops— who now advance with gunpowder in hand—he discovers that they already know his news. The contorted syntax in the phrase, “So warnd he them aware themselves” (VI.547), makes the other angels the objects of his warning and also the possessors of this preexistent awareness. Milton underscores the idea that there are subtle demarcations of what certain classes of angels are able to know: Zophiel’s news is old hat precisely because the higher intellect of his superiors excels his own.38 Nevertheless, Zophiel is clearly part of the harmonious concord that characterizes the intellection (and acts) of the good angels. He is one among a multitude of good angels who are themselves representatives of an even greater godly unity: namely, that “constant mind / Though single” (V.902–03) which is exemplified in the epic in the figure of Abdiel. By pressing into service the late sixteenth- and early seventeenthcentury scholastic framework of aligning the possible intellect with angelic cognition, Milton meditates on the relationship of individuals to oneness, now as reflected through the difference between object and mind, thinking and (pure) intellection. Yet this, in turn, leads him to reflect on the problem that what the angels gain here as “pure knowers,” they lose at the level of individuation.39 The rebel angels, once divested of goodness and godliness, depart from the unity of intellect as epitomized by the heavenly host and become isolated individuals—separated and singular objects. Meanwhile, the exalted status of the good angelic

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intellect draws them closer together, so that their shared knowledge (epistemology) expresses a unity of intellectual substance (ontology). So aligned with the uniformly shared powers of the possible intellect, the good angels in Paradise Lost merge into an immortal, undifferentiated mass of intellectual substance; little stock is placed in (humans’) perishable yet individuating agent intellects.40 While it must be admitted that particular angels stand out in the epic—for example, Raphael, Gabriel, Uriel, Michael, and, most notably, Abdiel—they are depicted and indeed defined either by their offices or as embodiments of an abstract principle (Abdiel, for instance, is, as his name says, holy and godly zeal). This produces the feeling that there is a sensed contrast in Paradise Lost between the angels who are either timeless possessors of possible undifferentiated intellect or else artificially placed by narrative into a kind of bloodless imitation of active intellection. What I am hinting at here is that causal agency, when given to the angels, makes them appear (like form) to undergo materialization because a cause is usually seen as acting upon matter. But since the poetry is interested in real agency, in epic verisimilitude, a problem arises: verbs of action are applied to the timelessness of the celestial world in order to produce a sense that they have real effects. Similarly, static verbs, such as the “held” employed in the description of Abdiel’s flight— “Through Heav’ns wide Champain held his way” (VI.2)—are actually meant to express movement. There is, I suggest, a sort of pre-Cartesian shock running through Milton’s discussion of angels. When, in De Doctrina Christiana, Milton speaks of how forms are material, he may refer, as the Paduan Aristotelians do, to formae materiales since his statement would otherwise make little sense—form, after all, is the profound and ultimate antithesis to matter. But if soul and body are seen simply as metaphysical principles, they remain utterly distinct. The result is that the idea of material forms in the celestial realm continues to strike one as nonsensical, especially since Milton never says that the substance of heaven is material. Yet when causal agency is attributed to form so that it acts upon matter, the fact of the action—the impact—can be made intelligible only by in some degree materializing the formal agent.41 We detect that we are here on the early modern cusp of Aristotelianism, and the essence of it

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is that we are moving from verbal forms expressing timeless metaphysical relations to a new world in which these same verbs begin to express practical agency—in time—on particular things or persons. Some people might say, “Precisely! and the consequence is that the whole field— matter and its onetime opposite, form—is materialized.” But to flatten the crisis in this is to lose the energy of the whole thing, which is still a struggle, as Milton’s poetry demonstrates. The complications this struggle produces have profound implications for the ontology of angelic substance and also for our understanding of the poem’s theodicy. The communal possible intellect of the good angels may actually explain why angels, such as Ithuriel, Zephon, Uriel, and even Gabriel, are rather inept cops—as the narrator himself points out: “Up into Heav’n from Paradise in haste / Th’ Angelic Guards ascended, mute and sad / For Man, for of his state by this they knew, / Much wondring how the suttle Fiend had stoln / Entrance unseen” (X.17–21). Here, the angels are genuinely perplexed that Satan has slipped so easily through their fingers. They appear to have forgotten that there was a precedent for Satan finding “Entrance unseen” (X.21) into Eden. In book IV, Uriel (Heb. MAUK: “God is My Light”) failed to detect that the lithe young cherub enquiring after earth is the fiend: in his role as “guide,” Uriel—“now for once beguil’d” (III.689)—actually points Satan in the direction of our universe.42 It is only when Satan stops to rest at the top of Mount Niphates that Uriel witnesses the horrid disfiguration of the supposed “stripling Cherube” (III.636) and realizes his mistake (IV.124–29; 570–75). Still, as the narrator of Paradise Lost points out, we can hardly hold Uriel responsible for failing to recognize Satan: “For neither Man nor Angel can discern / Hypocrisie, the onely evil that walks / Invisible, except to God alone” (III.682–84). As Suárez emphasized in his De angelis, the angels may know a great many things, but they do not know everything.43 In like manner, the Milton of De Doctrina Christiana took care to outline the limits of angelic cognition: “The good angels do not see into all God’s thought, as the Papists pretend. They know by revelation only those things which God sees fit to show them, and they know other things by virtue of their very high intelligence, but there are many things of which they are ignorant.”44 One such thing, as we have seen through Uriel’s experience, is evil. Satan’s fall confronts the glowing world of the angels with a causally inexplicable event. As soon as Satan

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fails to participate in the communally shared “concord” (III.371) of the good angels, he exhibits an individualized intellect in which heaven has little interest and still less of an understanding. That said, “Uriel once warnd” (IV.125) is on the lookout for an intruder in his midst. When he discerns a “disfigur’d” (IV.127) Satan at the top of Mount Niphates, he hastens to warn Gabriel of the impending danger: “Gabriel, to thee thy course by Lot hath giv’n / Charge and strict watch that to this happie Place / No evil thing approach or enter in / . . . / . . . one of the banisht crew / I fear, hath ventur’d from the deep, to raise / New troubles; him thy care must be to find” (IV.561–63; 573–75). The language is formal, even stilted; Uriel addresses Gabriel in terms of the office assigned to him. This is in general accord with what Milton discusses in De Doctrina Christiana when he assigns—and even defines— angels by place and occupation in relation to our world: “It is probable, too, that angels are put in charge of nations, kingdoms and particular districts.”45 Given his role as a protector or guardian of Eden, we are startled to find that Gabriel remains unruffled by Uriel’s news that Satan is heading straight for Paradise: “in at this Gate none pass / The vigilance here plac’t, but such as come / Well known from Heav’n; and since Meridian hour / No Creature thence” (IV.579–82). The confidence in Gabriel’s pronouncement is staggering. We, who see the “evil thing” (IV.563) fast approaching Eden, know that Gabriel’s assurance to Uriel, “No Creature thence,” is demonstrably false. Almost as an afterthought Gabriel makes a significant concession. He acknowledges the very weakness in his defenses which will allow the “suttle Fiend” (X.20) to slip through his fingers: “if Spirit of other sort, / So minded, have oreleapt these earthie bounds / On purpose, hard thou knowst it to exclude / Spiritual substance with corporeal barr. / But if within the circuit of these walks, / In whatsoever shape he lurk, of whom / Thou tellst, by morrow dawning I shall know” (IV.582–88; italics added). While the ringing declaration “I shall know” attempts to drown out the uncertainty the “winged Warriour” (IV.576) expresses at IV.582–83 (italics added), the reader registers the strangeness of the exchange. Given that the apodosis actually reads as though it is providing an explanation for the antecedent, the protasis (or “if ” clause) now feels more like a statement of fact (namely, that Satan has already “oreleapt these earthie bounds”). We note, moreover, that the lines “hard thou knowst it to

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exclude / Spiritual substance with corporeal barr” (IV.584–85; italics added) have set the words “spiritual” and “corporeal” in opposition once more, and the tension this duality produces is central to the unfolding narrative. Why, then, do Gabriel and his angelic troops not place a better sort of “barr” to keep Satan out of Eden (Gabriel’s name derives from the Hebrew MAKULC, meaning “Power of God”)?46 Perhaps there is no need: God himself erects a “corporeal barr” made up, on the one side, of the “eastern Gate of Paradise” (IV.542) and, on the other side, of a “craggie cliff . . . / . . . impossible to climbe” (IV.547–48). But angels, as Gabriel reminds us, do not need to worry about walls and cliffs as potential obstacles. Fallen angels especially are immune to such barriers: “One Gate there only was, and that look’d East / On th’ other side: which when th’ arch-fellon saw / Due entrance he disdaind, and in contempt, / At one slight bound high over leap’d all bound / Of Hill or highest Wall, and sheer within / Lights on his feet” (IV.178–83). The “barrs” not only fail to deter Satan but actually incite “contempt” (IV.180) in him. As he easily leaps into Eden, it dawns on us that the defenses surrounding Eden are minimal, useless: “One Gate there only was” (IV.178; italics added). It is not merely physical defenses that fail to do their intended job, though. When Satan springs into Paradise and lands “on his feet” (IV.183), Gabriel remains blissfully unaware of his entry: “Betwixt these rockie Pillars Gabriel sat / Chief of th’ Angelic Guards, awaiting night; / About him exercis’d Heroic Games / Th’ unarmed Youth of Heav’n, but nigh at hand / Celestial Armourie, Shields, Helmes, and Speares, / Hung high with Diamond flaming, and with Gold” (IV.549–54). The description in this passage registers in us the potential strength of the angelic squadron. Nonetheless, the word “unarmed” catches our eye: these “Youth of Heav’n” (IV.552) are rather green sentries, the equivalent to what Shakespeare’s Lafew called “the unbak’d and doughy youth of a nation” (All’s Well IV.v.3). Even when Gabriel charges Ithuriel and Zephon to search for the “infernal Spirit” (IV.794), he still has the remainder of his troops go on their rounds according to schedule: “from thir Ivorie Port the Cherubim / Forth issuing at th’ accustomd hour stood armd / To thir night watches in warlike Parade” (IV.778–80). The regular rhythm of the angelic squadron moving through Eden (IV.684–88) in the evening creates the sense that Eden is secure—at

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least at night, which is when the good angels most expect trouble. Yet it is broad daylight when Satan enters. Gabriel’s troops are not on their rounds but are presumably practicing their military formations at the Eastern Gate. Since their arms are “nigh at hand,” it seems they are not yet in full kit. Still, the narrator makes the point that their weaponry is impressive: “Hung high with Diamond flaming, and with Gold” (IV.554). Yet the phrases “nigh at hand” and “hung high” trigger a feeling of unease. Despite the fact that these angels are actively performing military exercises, we are reminded of Spenser’s Verdant, whose “warlike Armes, the ydle instruments / Of sleeping praise, were hong upon a tree” (FQ II.xii.80.1–2). In the phrase “nigh at hand” we catch the apocalyptic overtones that look forward to Milton’s opening of Paradise Regained, where John the Baptist is said to have “cried / Repentance, and Heaven’s Kingdom nigh at hand” (PR I.19–20). The poetry creates the awkward sense that these good angels are doomed to failure; evil will in. This general feeling is helped along by Milton’s possible allusion to Herodotus’s History (book 7), in which Xerxes’ scout observes some of those stationed outside the wall, arms piled up and practicing athletic exercises, while others comb their long hair. Satan, we remember, is likened to a “Scout” at III.543 (though I admit there is no evidence Satan spies on Gabriel’s assembled troops. Still, we know from II.412–13 that Satan is aware that there are “strict Senteries and Stations thick / Of Angels watching round”). The salient feature in the Herodotus passage is the Spartans’ preoccupation with combing their hair (tav~ kovma~ ktenizomevnou~)—an action that the Persian Xerxes memorably mocks but that the Greek Demaratos explains to him is an important Spartan ritual consecrating, in advance, a perilous campaign. Demaratos’s speech reaches a crescendo when he makes the point to Xerxes that “now thou art about to fight against the noblest kingdom and city of those which are among the Hellenes, and the best of men.” Such grandeur—“noblest kingdom” [kallivsthn povlin]; “best of men” [a[ndra~ ajrivstou~]—easily draws the Spartans into alignment with Milton’s angelic squadron.47 Satan and his troops are meanwhile associated with the tyrant Xerxes (in the description of the bridge Sin and Death construct between hell and our universe, Milton memorably alludes to Xerxes’ scourging of the Hellespont at X.307–11). If we entertain the idea that Milton omitted the detail about the hair lest he overplay his hand, then it seems that flicker-

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ing behind the narrator’s description of Gabriel’s encampment of good angels between the Gate of Paradise and the craggy cliff of Eden is an allusion to Herotodus that likens Milton’s good angels to the Spartans at Thermopylae. But this realization is deeply disconcerting: the Spartans were defeated at Thermopylae, so that only the moral victory was theirs.48 Perhaps the failure of the good angels to keep evil out of Eden is owing to their participation in a grander, more integrated form of intellection. But such a unified intellect, rather problematically, is devoid of knowledge of evil. God may give Paradise a host of angelic guards, but his failure to enlighten them as to what they are protecting, namely, the garden and its inhabitants, again betokens a problem for the success of the theodicy as a whole. As in De Doctrina Christiana, the angels of Paradise Lost are conceived of as lacking divine knowledge, and this deficiency, when coupled with the collective unity of their intellection, proves deadly to the garden’s inhabitants.49 Gabriel’s earlier hesitation at IV.584–85 thus betrays a deep anxiety, the full force of which we now feel: “This Eevning from the Sun’s decline arriv’d / Who tells of som infernal Spirit seen / Hitherward bent (who could have thought?) escap’d / The barrs of Hell, on errand bad no doubt” (IV.792–95). Whether Gabriel conceives of Hell’s “barrs” as “spiritual” or “corporeal,” the bracketed question to Ithuriel and Zephon displays a genuine bewilderment: how can an “infernal Spirit” break these bars which God has erected? When Gabriel later marvels, “who could have thought?” (IV.794), our minds immediately supply the answer: “Well, according to IV.583–84, you, Gabriel, thought it possible.” As slight as these complications may seem, they build up a sense that even Gabriel does not fully understand the workings of fallen angelic substance. His uncertainty reflects—and also replicates—a difficulty he and the other good angels face: they need to adjust to the fact that their foe, while appearing to be like them in substance (ontology), is in fact profoundly unlike them (epistemologically). While the alteration in Satan’s natural shape (whatever that is) is discernible to the good angels, the contours of his now-fallen mind remain inaccessible to them (X.17–21). When Gabriel captures Satan in the garden, his attempts to interrogate the fiend reveal, therefore, his inability to comprehend the nature of the evil thing in front of him: “Why hast thou, Satan, broke the

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bounds prescrib’d / To thy transgressions, and disturbd the charge / Of others, who approve not to transgress / By thy example, but have power and right / To question thy bold entrance on this place . . . ?” (IV.878–82). In his annotations on Paradise Lost (1749), Newton confessed that Gabriel’s words perplexed him: “Yet it is good sense, if Milton meant (as I suppose he did) that the bounds of hell were by God prescrib’d to Satan’s transgressions, so that it was intended he should transgress no where else, but within those bounds; whereas he was now attempting to transgress without them.”50 Newton’s comment touches on a crucial point. In suggesting that Satan transgresses “within” certain bounds, Newton attempts to overlook the awkward thought conveyed; to “transgress” etymologically means “to step across bounds,” so that to do so within certain limits makes very little sense—unless, of course, these bounds are merely erected to keep up the appearances of security. Either way, Gabriel’s contorted question to Satan illustrates the degree to which the angelic mind struggles to understand what has divorced itself from the unity, or concord, of the angelic Grand Possible Intellect. C O M P E T I N G A N G E L O L O G I E S I N M I LT O N : A Q U I N A S V E R S U S B O N AV E N T U R E

So far, we have examined the way the angels, once placed within philosophical discussions of intellect, were aligned with the possible intellect as the higher knowing power. Despite the fact that the consensus on the superiority of the possible intellect retained its currency well into the seventeenth century, the story of the agent intellect and possible intellect seems to splinter and almost founder as it proceeds (you can see why people got impatient with hair-splitting Scholastics). Nevertheless, the scholastic legacy Milton inherited and even despised as a young man serves as the tinder for the mature poet’s intellectual imagination. The fact that the angels themselves look like possessors and participants in a Grand Possible Intellect further complements the Thomist tradition of angelology, in which angels as forms are denied emotions (because this would assign a material component to the celestial world) as well as individuality (which similarly requires matter). The upshot of Aquinas’s position is to essentialize angels into separate species and assign to the higher orders a more universal and hence unified mode of intellection that, in its simplicity, is like God’s.51 As we have discussed, though, this

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exalted status of the angelic intellect is not itself unproblematic for the poem’s theodicy. To compensate, Milton begins to revert to another philosophic and theological alternative: he places in Raphael’s speech clear indicators that the angels possess faculties of sense perception. With the addition of sense perception to the angels, we might be tempted to think Milton immediately materializes them. But, as Aristotle shrewdly observed in De anima, we think and perceive not with our bodies but with our soul. Gisbertus Voetius (Gisjbert Voet; 1589–1676), the Dutch Calvinist theologian and later opponent of René Descartes (1596–1650), restated the idea when he claimed that man’s cogitation is an effect of the soul through the mind (“cogitatio autem est effectus animæ per mentem”).52 For the poet Sir Robert Ayton (1570–1638) the idea was more obviously Platonic than Aristotelian: “Nor in divinity do you go less: / You hold and you profess / That souls may have a plenitude of joy, / Though their bodies never meet to enjoy.”53 The trend here is that whatever is said to be located in the body is, in point of fact, actually rooted a stage within, as Milton outlined: “Moreover spirit, being the more excellent substance [substantia excellentior], virtually [virtualiter], as they say, and eminently [eminenter], contains within itself what is clearly the inferior substance; in the same way as the spiritual and rational faculty contains the corporeal, that is, the sentient and vegetative faculty!”54 The lower faculties of the soul, like the visible body, are ascribed to—and contained by—the highest faculty: mind. In this reading, sense experience is understood in the angels as the forms of sensory content. We may wonder, therefore, how the angels arrive at these forms if they do not first possess a matter in which to receive sensory affections. One answer is to say that angels-as-unified-intellect (or form) absorb the contents of sensory representations as the conceptual equivalents to what we perceive as “sense data” (in this way, angels do not contain all things eminently, as God does).55 Angelic sex, which images the perfect union of minds, encompasses all the (lower) experiences corresponding to (our base) sense perceptions: “Whatever pure thou in the body enjoy’st / (And pure thou wert created) we enjoy / In eminence, and obstacle find none / Of membrane, joynt, or limb, exclusive barrs” (VIII.622–25).

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Dennis Des Chene has argued that this doctrine of “eminent” or “virtual” causation, in which the substantial form is capable of virtually emanating all lesser forms (and their effects), was seriously adopted by scholastic Aristotelians.56 Since Milton’s angels contain “Within them every lower facultie / Of sense” (V.410–11), it appears that Milton also adhered to the doctrine. To Adam’s question—“do they mix / Irradiance, virtual or immediate touch?” (VIII.616–17)—Raphael responds that angels meet “Easier then Air with Air, if Spirits embrace, / Total they mix, Union of Pure with Pure, / Desiring; nor restrain’d conveyance need / As Flesh to mix with Flesh, or Soul with Soul” (PL VIII.626–29). Sex is better in heaven, though frictionless. The angels who merge with “no conveyance” appear to meet as pure form—without bodies and without matter—and this is in keeping with a Thomist tradition of angelology. In the Neoplatonic sense, bodies and the sense of touch are subordinate to the higher unity occurring between intellects. Following the Thomist line of thought, Suárez, like many sixteenth- and seventeenthcentury theologians, thought that the main difference between our souls and the angels is that a soul is an incomplete substance but an angel is not.57 That Milton subscribed to a similar notion is suggested by the fact that Raphael describes angelic sex in terms reminiscent of Christian ecstasy: “Total they mix, Union of Pure with Pure / Desiring” (VIII.627–28). The act of uniting like with like—“Pure with Pure” (VIII.627)— emphasizes that a substantial union takes place. Yet the enjambment that makes “Pure” modify the verbal act (“Desiring”) creates a union expressive of an act of will. Angelic love is exemplary of creaturely love— both for one another and for God—chiefly because it is done after the manner in which we adore God: namely, purely. In his notes to Paradise Lost, Zachary Pearce (1690–1774) interpreted angelic substance in the following way: “Raphael has said that spirits mix total; that is one Circumstance, in which they differ from Men: here he adds another circumstance of their difference, viz. they are so unrestrain’d that they need no Conveyance, i. e. need not move to meet one another, as our Flesh does to meet with other Flesh, and one Soul with another Soul, mediante corpore.”58 Pearce agrees with the general Renaissance belief that while angels do not need the medium of bodies to meet, our souls do require it, as John Donne memorably lamented: “But O alas, so long, so far / Our bodies why do we forbear? / They are

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ours, though they are not we, we are / The intelligences, they the sphere.”59 Milton’s angels appear to grasp the concepts of things (though not the percepts), so that each angelic sense may be said to exist throughout the entire substance. Pearce’s comment draws attention to the way angels are said to unite their substance as soul meeting soul (VIII.629). As soon as we hear that angels are “Spirits that live throughout / Vital in every part, not as frail man / In Entrailes, Heart or Head, Liver or Reines” (VI.344–46), soul-stuff and spirit are brought into near identification. The fact that the angels are “vital in every part” (VI.345) superficially hints at the idea that angels have parts, or organs. But the import of Raphael’s speech is that angels actually lack these parts; what is usually assigned to particular organs (VI.346) is now said to be throughout the angels’ entire substance (VI.350–53). As Raphael’s speech proceeds, the angels are described in increasingly psychological terms that appears to place them not in the domain of intellect but in that of the soul: “All Heart they live, all Head, all Eye, all Eare, / All Intellect, all Sense, and as they please, / They Limb themselves, and colour, shape or size / Assume, as likes them best, condense or rare” (VI.350–53). The passage, as Newton rightly noted, resonates with “Pliny’s account of God, Nat. Hist. 1. c. 7. Quisquis est Deus, si modo est alius, quacunque in parte, totus est sensus, totus visus, totus auditus, totus animae, totus animi, totus sui [Whoever God is—provided there is a God—and in whatever region he is, he consists wholly of sense, sight, and hearing, wholly of sense, wholly of mind, wholly of himself ].”60 Milton’s “all” thus expresses, in relation to his angels, the totality of the Latin “totus” (whole) present in Pliny and simultaneously invokes the description of the lover in Lucretius who desires to “penetrare et abire in corpus corpore toto” (penetrate and merge with the body with one’s entire body; DRN iv.111). Yet in drawing on an account of mind in which thinking inwardly dissolves the bodily senses into a greater unity, Raphael radically alters the Lucretian account; he turns its focus on to the interior. As Augustine had written, “In the mind it is not one thing to see and another thing to hear” (in animo autem non est aliud atque aliud videre et audire). Applying Augustine’s thought to his analysis of the angels, Bonaventure asserted that “in an Angel, to hear and to see is to understand” (tam audire quam videre est in Angelo intelligere; italics added).61 In Milton, angelic

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sense and intellect are similarly made indistinguishable; the repetition of that favorite Miltonic word, “all,” in “All Heart . . . all Head, all Eye, all Eare, / All Intellect, all Sense” (VI.350) is exhaustive precisely because it attempts to convey the ontological unity of all concepts of intellectual and sensory experience as transcending the particular, the discrete. The emphasis on totality (as far as the angels are concerned) once again moves the thought in Milton’s poetry in the direction of Pomponazzi’s claim that the human intellect is but a shadow of the Intelligences: “Aristotle teaches this also, both in scattered passages in the De anima and in the Metaphysica ii. For it [the human intellect] is not truly called intellectual but rational. For intellect perceives all things by a simple intuition, but reasoning by composition, discourse, time. All this bears witness to its imperfection and materiality.”62 For Pomponazzi, man and his intellect exist in time, thereby experiencing durable motion through the material substrate; angels meanwhile are conceived as incorruptible because they do not partake of the material and reside instead in the (nonmaterial) aevum. As Donne wrote in “Air and Angels,” there is a “disparity / ‘twixt air and angels’ purity” (26–27).63 Milton similarly tells us that air is clearly elemental, but that his angels are not; they are composed of aether (V.499; V.863). Aristotle had argued that aether proved the imperishability of the heavens, but his Greek Christian Neoplatonic commentator Philoponus repudiated the claim. Philoponus argued that it was impossible that heavenly bodies and hence their matter were eternal because they were form-matter compounds. But he did concede that the initial substrate, prime matter, was eternal.64 Like Philoponus, Milton chooses to play up the distinction between what is eternal—or always in existence—and what is immortal, or always living.65 According to this distinction, the angels and their substance are immortal and, as Beelzebub says, capable of being defeated only “As far as Gods and Heav’nly Essences / Can perish: for the mind and spirit remains / Invincible, and vigour soon returns, / Though all our Glory extinct, and happy state / Here swallow’d up in endless misery” (I.138–42). Although Beelzebub is one of the fallen angels, his comment that “Heav’nly Essences” (I.138) are immortal with respect to “mind and spirit” (I.139) appears to be true. Raphael’s ringing declaration to Adam which states that angels “cannot but by annihilating die” (VI.347) is in

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line with what Voetius thought—namely, that intellectual substance is corruptible only inasmuch as it can be destroyed by God.66 Apart from this general caveat, though, in Milton the angelic “mind and spirit” both are conceived of as being “Invincible” (I.139–40)—a triumphant echo of the Aristotelian nou`~ ajqavnato~, or “mind immortal,” which was said to exist entirely apart from material corruption.67 Yet if the angels are incorruptible, ethereal beings, why have critics since Johnson persisted in commenting on the materiality of Milton’s angels? Raymond, for instance, has proposed that while Milton’s angels have no bodies, they are nonetheless material (by which I take him to mean that the angels are amorphous). To the question, Are they in fact material? we may feel, as Raymond does, the urge to reply in the affirmative.68 Indeed, there appear to be moments in the epic that support an argument in favor of the materialization of angels, the most important being the narrator’s description of Raphael’s lunch with Adam and Eve: “So down they sat, / And to thir viands fell, nor seemingly / The Angel, nor in mist, the common gloss / Of Theologians, but with keen dispatch / Of real hunger” (V.433–37). Raphael really (not “seemingly”) eats with “keen dispatch / Of real hunger” (V.436–37) what is put in front of him (no rude guest, this). Milton’s account is pointed in its rejection of the view that the angels assume bodies as in a mist (V.435); he scathingly says that such an explanation is but the “common gloss / Of Theologians” (V.435–36). Yet this “gloss” of “assumed bodies” had gained wide currency among Catholic and Protestant theologians alike and was attributed to the “Angelic Doctor” himself, Thomas Aquinas (1224–74). It is Aquinas’s angelology that Milton now attacks. According to Aquinas, matter is corporeal because it is already in existence in the natural world (and not merely “in potentia,” or in potency, as it is in Aristotle). In moving away from Aristotle’s hylomorphism—in which things are compounds of matter and form—Aquinas made the distinguishing factor not form / matter but essence / existence. As discussions in the thirteenth century increasingly shifted to analyze angelic substance in terms of matter, the position on angelic incorporeality—as derived from the writings of the Pseudo-Dionysius—entailed almost automatically a wholesale rejection of the idea that there existed “angelic matter.” Aquinas, who wrote that angels were spirits, simply meant that

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they must be forms and that, as forms, they needed to adopt or assume bodies to appear to men. It follows that an outright rejection of this picture—as is the case in Paradise Lost—inclines to place the emphasis on precisely what Aquinas had discarded: matter. While we may think that this clinches the monist-materialist understanding of Milton’s angelology, the problem is that we, like Aquinas, tend to see matter through the lens of natural philosophy so that matter is simply equated with the material.69 Yet in both his logical and theological writings, Milton consistently rejects this equation of matter with the straightforwardly material that natural philosophy permits: “Let no one object,” Milton writes in his discussion of the Holy Spirit, “that a dove is not a person: any intelligent substance, whatever shape it takes, is a person.” Since Milton’s definition of a “person” as “any individual thing gifted with intelligence” immediately invokes the Aristotelian form–matter distinction, personhood, like individuality, is clearly not dependent on corporeality. When Milton adds that even the “four creatures which Ezekiel saw in Ezek. i, for example, were persons,” it is clear that he saw no logical problem with extending the doctrine of Aristotelian hylomorphism to the angels themselves.70 So, while the onto-theological tradition of Suárez and his Protestant counterpart Scheibler promoted a theory of intelligible being in which theological claims are described through a shared language of being (in line with the Thomist tradition), another metaphysical framework— which keeps in place the older form / matter dichotomy— informs Milton’s angelology.71 This inclination is in keeping with his apparent preference for approaching the angels from the standpoint of metaphysics and logic, rather than from the (Thomist) perspective of natural philosophy.72 Milton’s method of inquiry, in other words, shares distinct affinities with Aquinas’s great thirteenth-century rival, the Franciscan “Seraphic Doctor,” Bonaventure (1217–74).73 In his commentary on Peter Lombard’s Four Book of Sentences, Bonaventure argued that angels were hylomorphic creatures because they possess the active and passive principles associated with form and matter. Although the claim in Milton’s Art of Logic—namely, that “when the essence of almost anything is partly common, partly proper,

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the matter constitutes what is common, the form what is proper” (enim cujusque ferè rei essentia partim sit communis, partim propria; communem materia constituit, forma propriam)—does not yet assert a full-fledged universal hylomorphism (as in Bonaventure), the thought nonetheless moves in that general direction, toward the idea that everything requires a conjunction of both form and matter to exist.74 When, in De Doctrina Christiana, Milton speaks of how “matter, like the form and nature of the angels, came from God in an incorruptible state,” he makes a claim about the way angels possess both a “form and nature.”75 Since Milton has earlier defined “nature” as “nothing except the specific character of a thing,” the nature of an angel begins to look as though it does in fact possess some type of “matter” that complements its angelic form (“thinghood” depends on a form-matter composite). Bonaventure similarly writes that “matter is not the principle of individuation, unless as it is thus the sine qua non cause, but not as it is the whole cause” (materia sit principium individuationis, nisi sicut causa sine qua non, non autem sicut tota causa).76 Even more telling is Milton’s observation in the Art of Logic that “matter is common to all entities and nonentities, not peculiar to sensible and corporeal things” (materiam etiam esse omnium entium & sua entium communem; non rerum sensibilium & corporearum propriam). As I discussed in chapter 2, Milton here abandons the physicist’s (or natural philosopher’s) definition of matter-as-material for that of the metaphysician and logician, in which “whatever sort these things are, such the matter of them ought to be: the sensible should be composed of sensible things, the eternal of eternal things, and so in the rest” (Quales autem res ipsæ sunt, talis materia earum esse debet; sensibilium sensibilis, æternarum æterna; & ita in reliquis).77 The “one first matter all” Milton describes in De Doctrina Christiana and Paradise Lost is, as Bonaventure wrote, “one in all created things” (materia est una in omnibus), primarily because the so-called essence of matter exists in its potentiality for receiving an infinite possibility of forms, which include both the spiritual and the corporeal.78 For Milton, then, the natural counterweight to a Thomist understanding of angelology, in which angels are simply forms, would have been a universal hylomorphism, as in Bonaventure. In working to recuperate an Aristotelian metaphysics—which he saw as otherwise severely

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contaminated and compromised by Catholic and, specifically, Thomist theology—Milton speaks of angels as “transubstantiating” corporeal food through a resolution to prime matter. When Raphael tells Adam that the angels “Tasting concoct, digest, assimilate, / And corporeal to incorporeal turn” (V.412–13), the verbs depict a process of gradual heating and breaking down of the material until it is reduced to prime matter—to what Aristotle called nohthv u{lh (intelligible matter).79 By virtue of its receptivity to a new substantial form, it is reincorporated into spiritual substance that may be said to have “matter” as Bonaventure understood it. All three verbs in Milton—“concoct” for “heat,” “digest” for “break apart,” and “assimilate” for “being made like”—are here used in a figurative sense to imply deliberation; physical “food” becomes “food for thought.” Just as in Reason for Church Government (first published, 1641) Milton spoke of the affairs of state as having “things at first . . . crude and hard to digest, which only time and deliberation can supple, and concoct,” so here Raphael’s metaphor of digestion depicts the transformation of the material into rational matter.80 Iatrochemistry, Alchemy, and Angelic “Matter” While Milton’s angels do indeed digest—a thought that neo-Scholastics such as Scheibler would have denied because angels are not said to generate or grow—this process is itself described in terms of a spiritual assimilation that Milton calls “transubstantiation.”81 Although the Catholics thought of Transubstantiation as something we see but do not participate in, Milton conceives of transubstantiation as immediately implying participation. But participation, as Raphael’s account makes clear, involves selftranscendence. He thus images in miniature the unity the entire cosmos is said to achieve: For know, whatever was created, needs To be sustaind and fed; of Elements The grosser feeds the purer, Earth the Sea, Earth and the Sea feed Air, the Air those Fires Ethereal, and as lowest first the Moon; Whence in her visage round those spots, unpurg’d Vapours not yet into her substance turnd. Nor doth the Moon no nourishment exhale

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From her moist Continent to higher Orbes. The Sun that light imparts to all, receives From all his alimental recompence In humid exhalations, and at Even Sups with the Ocean. (V.414–26) Early readers of Milton attempted to dismiss the philosophic import of this passage. Newton, for instance, complained that the idea expressed at V.425 was “certainly very unphilosophical,” although he did concede “it is not unpoetical.”82 In rejecting Milton’s depiction of upwards-recycling and, most notably, Milton’s suggestion that the moon’s spots are owing “to vapours not yet turn’d into her substance,” Newton failed to appreciate the extent to which such processes in Milton are profoundly philosophical. Raphael’s account yields a picture in which everything in the universe turns back (“versus”) to the One (“uni-”) that is its source: God. In line 423, the English word “all,” so standing in for the Greek to; pa`n (meaning “whole”; Latin omnis), describes the way all created things are illuminated by the sun, itself an image for God. Satan, who breaks free from the regenerative cycle, not only loses his ability to eat (the only time he attempts to do so, he chokes on ash at X.563–72), but also displays a blemished substance akin to that of the moon’s “spotty Globe” (to which Satan’s shield and, by extension, Satan are likened at I.286–291). To fall away from the concord of the good angels and the totality of experience enjoyed through God’s goodness is to depart from the cosmic harmony uniting all substance and to venture instead into a dangerous individuality that is ontologically unstable and discordant. The fact that the intellective faculty of the angels is given sustenance even in heaven (V.426–28) also draws attention to the analogous relationship Milton sought to establish between our world and heaven (V.430–32)—between man and angel—with prime matter acting as the connective glue. In a similar vein, Bonaventure encouraged one to understand the spiritual world and its “matter” through analogy: “For of the corporal, there is a spiritual similitude, and of the composed, there is a simple similitude, even in creatures” (Nam corporalis est similitudo spiritualis, et compositi est similitudo simplex, etiam in creaturis).83 While Aquinas is generally credited with refining the doctrine of “analogia entis”

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(analogy of being) by grounding existence-as-such in this world and by placing the priority of application with God, his emphasis on causal similitude led him to focus more on the agent of causality (God). Bonaventure, more elegantly and more simply, meanwhile employed analogy through the form / matter definition of reality, thereby elucidating the metaphysical structures already in place.84 Given that Milton dismissed the Catholics and their doctrine of Transubstantiation as a failure to understand figurative language in the context of the Lord’s Supper, his interest in similitude is important: “A thing which in any way illustrates or signifies another thing is mentioned not so much for what it really is as for what it illustrates or signifies.”85 While Ben Jonson (1573–1637) had ridiculed the naïveté of those who adhered to alchemical explanations in his play The Alchemist (1610), Milton actually seems to enjoy using alchemy as a fiction expressive of truth. This is because the older tradition of alchemy (of which Milton was otherwise rather skeptical; III.600–02; V.439–43) helps him subvert and redefine the Catholic doctrine of Transubstantiation in a manner that is in keeping with his inversion of the Dionysian angelic hierarchies in Paradise Lost.86 Donne, who employed the term “transubstantiate” in the much darker context of “Twicknam Garden,” spoke of a “spider love” that “transubstantiate[s] all.”87 While “transmutation” conveys the sense that a thing merely shifts its shape, “transubstantiation” is the immediately stronger word, implying—somewhat more sinisterly—that the thing under discussion is radically and substantially altered (we think of the metamorphosis described by Donne’s phrase “manna to gall”).88 Shorn of Catholic theology, “transubstantiation” becomes shorthand for the process by which something material becomes spirit the moment—here, prime matter— receives a new substantial form. Alchemical metaphors in Milton are interested less in the things transformed than in the stuff that allows such a transformation to occur. Hence, the intellectual power of spiritual substances, which is capable of “transubstantiating” corporeal “food,” is equally able to discharge “as vapours” all that is excess (“what redounds”). Yet this process of transpiration remains a far cry from (humans’) gross bodily excretions. The Catholic poet Richard Crashaw (1613–49) conceived of “transpiration” in a spiritual rather than literal (material) sense: “With wider

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pores / . . . / More freely to transpire / That impatient fire.” Milton’s friend, the poet Andrew Marvell, likewise exhorted his mistress to acknowledge that “thy willing soul transpires / At every pore with instant fires.”89 In Milton, as in Crashaw and Marvell, there is an immediate movement which links “transpires” to “fire” at the level of the barely perceptible (Crashaw and Marvell both speak of “pores”). The idea slowly evolving is that these alchemical processes are purified by a spiritual, not physical, “concoctive heate” (V.437) which is itself strangely eschatological. What initially sounded like physical, bodily processes in need of a material substrate now looks more like alchemical procedures requiring nothing more than prime matter—or matter-understood-as-metaphysicalprinciple—to operate.90 As he uses alchemy to reconceptualize the Thomist vocabulary on which he draws, Milton places the angelologies of the Angelic Doctor and the Seraphic Doctor in tense opposition. The emphasis on similitude in angelic eating reinforces the idea, articulated by Bonaventure, that angels can be said to have a “matter” analogous to ours. This trend is in keeping with seventeenth-century theologians and metaphysicians who implicitly situated the Thomist account of the angels against its hylomorphic alternative: Scheibler, for example, observed that it would make little sense to say that the angels were material because this would mean that they would need another form (itself an impossibility since angels are already intelligential forms). Within the context of Milton’s poetry, Scheibler’s conclusion strikes home: “If it is any matter so subtle that it might not prohibit penetration, then it cannot be called the same matter, unless equivocally. For this ‘matter,’ according to Aristotle, was neither accustomed to be called matter nor was popularly accepted to be called thus [viz. ‘material’]” (si aliqua materia tam subtilis sit, ut non prohibeat penetrationem, tum ne quidem materiam esse, nisi æquivocè. Id enim juxta Aristotelem materia vocari non solet, nec vulgò ita dici receptum est).91 What I am gesturing toward is the idea that to contend—as Fallon does—that Satan and the devils are “turning from spirit to matter . . . migrat[ing] toward the pole at which Hobbes found all reality” is to align matter with the material.92 Fallon, who says that Milton believed, simpliciter, that angels were material, therefore draws a (misleading) contrast between spiritual-unfallen angels and material-fallen angels.

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“Spirit” in his sentence no longer connotes rarefied substance (gas)—a mode of matter—but is placed in antithesis to the full materialism of Hobbes. Fallon seeks to repress the obvious contrast by presenting it as a conflict between two sorts of materialism: “straight” and “vitalist.” But the notion of a vitalist materialism is itself implicitly dualist (because an immaterial power or nonphysical cause has been loaded in to matter in advance).93 So, while Fallon is right to observe that the rebel angels are punished by their reliance on material protection—“Thir armor help’d thir harm, crush’t in and bruis’d / Into thir substance pent, which wrought them pain / Implacable, and many a dolorous groan, / Long strugling underneath, ere they could wind / Out of such prison, though Spirits of purest light, / Purest at first, now gross by sinning grown” (PL VI.656–61)—Milton’s description does not testify to a mechanized descent into brute matter, as Fallon claims.94 When we are told that the angels learn about their celestial substances in stages during the War in Heaven—“Since now we find this our Empyreal form / Incapable of mortal injurie / Imperishable, and though peirc’d with wound, / Soon closing and by native vigour heal’d” (VI.433– 36)—the poem beats Fallon down to one huge concession: as “Empyreal forms” (V.433) or “Heav’nly Essences” (I.138), these unfallen angels are composed of a “spiritual matter” that makes them immortal yet passible (meaning that they are capable of injury and pain).95 The difference between the substance of the good angels and the rebel angels is sharply pronounced, though Milton still renders it mysterious: Satan is epistemologically and ontologically unrecognizable to the good angels, as is evident when Ithuriel (Hebrew for “discovery of God”) and Zephon (Hebrew for “searcher of secrets”) find Satan “Squat like a Toad, close at the eare of Eve” (IV.800). The verbal participle “squat,” so derived from the French se catir or se coitir, meaning “to hide oneself,” and Satan’s general association with the toad—itself a seventeenth-century object of opprobrium (Milton writes in Colasterion of “hat[ing] one another like a toad or poison”)—emphasizes his base nature.96 But Satan is neither a toad nor even in a toad but simply “like” one. What we gradually discover is that Satan’s transfiguration in the garden scene fails to disclose what shape Satan possesses at Eve’s ear in the same way that the picture of Satan springing up at Ithuriel’s touch consciously withholds a picture of what Satan’s “own likeness” really is:

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Him thus intent Ithuriel with his Spear Touch’d lightly; for no falshood can endure Touch of Celestial temper, but returns Of force to its own likeness: up he starts Discoverd and surpriz’d. As when a spark Lights on a heap of nitrous Powder, laid Fit for the Tun som Magazin to store Against a rumord Warr, the Smuttie graine With sudden blaze diffus’d, inflames the Aire: So started up in his own shape the Fiend. Back stept those two faire Angels half amaz’d So sudden to behold the grieslie King; Yet thus, unmovd with fear, accost him soon. (IV.810–22) The good angels, who are “half amaz’d” (IV.820) by Satan’s transformation, have no knowledge that falsehood may imitate—and yet remain hostile to—truth and goodness. The fact that Ithuriel’s spear magically causes Satan to arise in no describable shape is itself suggestive of the mystery Milton attaches to the essence of evil. Ithuriel’s “spark” (IV.814) ignites Satan as if he were gunpowder—“With sudden blaze diffus’d, inflames the Aire” (IV.818). Satan invented and used gunpowder in the War in Heaven (VI.519–20). Now, however, the power of ignition is transferred in the metaphor to Ithuriel; Satan is consequently demoted to the “nitrous Foame” he previously unearthed in heaven (VI.512), which is equally quick to respond to fire (“pernicious with one touch to fire”; VI.520).97 (These instances are the only times “nitrous” is used in the entire epic.) It appears that Satan’s substance belongs to an iatrochemical order—a new “pyrotechnie.” The “volatile, penetrative, communicative, and diffusive Nature” of Paracelsian ferment which “steals abroad insensibly” sounds eerily like Satan’s substance (and movement) in Eden.98 He is variously described as “involv’d in rising Mist” (IX.75); as gliding “wrapt in mist / Of midnight vapor . . . obscure” (IX.158–59); and is likened to “a black mist low creeping” (IX.180). As iatrochemistry seeps into the edges of the poem, the idea that Satan has “fallen” into materiality and hardens as a result is held in check by a movement in the

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poetry, which runs in the opposite direction—toward the more spiritual nature that is expressed by the “mist” that mysteriously occludes both physical and mental sight. The fact that Satan and his rebel crew depend on physical (and, as critics assume, material) weapons to protect themselves does not indicate that their substance is solidifying into the purely material. As Bernard of Clairvaux astutely pointed out, an angel is not created impassible but is made so through grace (“impassibiles non creatos, sed factos, id est gratia, non natura”). In the case of Satan and the fallen angels, though, this grace is completely withdrawn.99 Hence, even the fiery cherub Zephon, who remarks on the alteration of Satan’s substance, notably avoids any overtly physical, material description of the fiend: “Think not, revolted Spirit, thy shape the same, / Or undiminisht brightness, to be known / As when thou stoodst in Heav’n upright and pure; / That Glorie then, when thou no more wast good, / Departed from thee, and thou resembl’st now / Thy sin and place of doom obscure and foule” (IV.835–40). Zephon’s comment depicts Satan in terms of what he is divested of—namely, light—since light is a symbol of the spiritual and psychological closeness to God that the good angels enjoy. In losing his lustre—his “brightness” (IV.836) and “Glorie” (IV.838)—Satan’s “shape” is no longer identical with what it was before the Fall (IV.835). His former shape, so described by color and light, is now a far more alien substance that “resembl’st” the darkness (IV.840) from which it came, a symbol of Satan’s preoccupation with himself (and not God). Meanwhile, Raphael (Hebrew MARU for “God Healed”) radiates light.100 He describes in warmly Neoplatonic and alchemical terms the process whereby man ascends to God: “What higher in her societie thou findst / Attractive, human, rational, love still; / In loving thou dost well, in passion not, / Wherein true Love consists not; love refines / The thoughts, and heart enlarges, hath his seat / In Reason, and is judicious, is the scale / By which to heav’nly Love thou maist ascend” (VIII.586– 92). Here, we encounter the seeming commonplace “love refines” (VIII.589). The suggestion is that a love of contemplation leads to spiritual purification. Milton’s scala naturae (the ontological) and the ladder of contemplation (the epistemological) now move into closer identification with one another.101 Proper love, we are told, “hath his seat / In Reason” (VIII.590–91), not in (carnal) passion. In Milton, the “scale”

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(VIII.591) on which man must rise thus invokes the idea that contemplation affords the most pleasure and is also the most exalted. Significantly, it is God who does the purifying; he alone is the touchstone that renders knowledge holy. According to Bonaventure, the “nearness to God” (approximatio ad Deum) is reflected in the angels when they become “more simple” (simplicius), which is another way of saying that they become “more virtuous” (virtuosius).102 In Milton, righteous action is said to move the human agent intellect toward the greater (albeit more impersonal) possible intellect of the angels and the ultimate “sapientia” that is God: “for love thou saist / Leads up to Heav’n, is both the way and guide” (VIII.612– 13). Angels who possess godly knowledge thus stand, like the Wisdom of Proverbs 6.30, beside and in the presence of God. But they are also embodiments of godly love sent to instruct and “guide” man.103 This means that while the good angelic intellect is uniform in its goodness, godliness, and wisdom, Satan and his rebel crew lack the stability this homogeneity of intellect guarantees. Unsurprisingly, it is the “Satanic,” not the heavenly, host who argue and debate (we think here of the council in Hell and also of the narrator’s comment at PL II.557–61). In his Treatise of the Three-Fold State of MAN, or An Anatomie of the Soule, Bishop Thomas Morton (bap. 1649–d. 1659) differentiated between the knowledge possessed by the good angels and that belonging to the devils: “The wicked Angels are in this their corrupt estate endued with a great measure of knowledge, but this their knowledge is void of all holinesse, because it hath no relation to God and his glory: for this onely is to bee accounted the holinesse of the mind: not barely to know the natures, properties and differences of thinges, but to see and acknowledge the Wisdome, Power, Goodnesse, and Glory of God in them.”104 Satan may be a grand knower in one sense, but once devoid of the “holinesse of the mind” that Raphael labors to instill in Adam, he is removed from true wisdom and its associative power. This may also help to explain why Satan’s shape-shifting power is diminished to the point where he must condescend to appear to Eve in the body of an already corporeal creature: a snake. In the sequence leading up to the Temptation Scene, it becomes apparent that Satan discovers that he is unable to be the agent who does the incorporation and that he is instead the object for incorporation. The

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contrast to the good angels and their assumed bodies throws into sharp relief why Milton writes that Raphael really ate in bodily form (and not just “seemingly” as in a “mist”) at V.433ff. In like manner, Raphael speaks of the angels in battle as being able to “Limb themselves, and colour, shape or size / Assume, as likes them best, condense or rare” (VI.352– 53). The body in which the good angels make themselves manifest is described by both Milton and Bonaventure as assumed—as “rarefiable and condensable” (rarefactibile et condensabile).105 But in describing angels as “assuming” bodies (both spiritual and corporeal), Milton implies that they do so in the manner of shape-shifters. So far, this may sound like the “common gloss / Of Theologians” (V.435–36) Milton scornfully rejected, but there are important differences. Bonaventure proposed that the simplicity of a truly good angel bestows on the angel a “virtue” (virtus) for making a body which is itself a mystical combination of air and “some occult virtue” (aliqua virtute occulta). In order to allow the angelic dignity to condescend to man, it seems “more probable” (probabilior) that the angel uses an “elementary body” (corpus elementare) befitting a rational creature (we think here of the body of man).106 Given that the angels in Milton may possess a “spiritual matter,” they—and hence their assumed bodies—are already more substantial than the “misty” (fictional) bodies Aquinas had assigned to his angels-as-simple-forms. The key distinction, though, is that Bonaventure argues that a good angel assumes a body not to “move or work something about a body” (quod moveatur vel operetur aliquid circa corpus) but to “take it to himself ” (accipit ad se). The crucial point to emphasize in this account is that the assumed body is said to “follow rather the mode of spirit than the converse” (potius sequitur modum spiritus quam e converso).107 An angel, in other words, is not a passive object simply enveloped in a “mist” but an agent performing acts of incorporation. In Milton, as in Bonaventure, there is thus a marked difference between an angel as it appears to Adam and Eve (or to other angels) and Satan’s wholesale adoption of an already physical body. While Satan is able to transform his spiritual substance into a youthful angel to trick Uriel, it now seems he is unable to muster enough virtue or power to create a corporeal shape which he might then inhabit. Neither scripture nor demonological works, such as Augustine’s De Divinatione Daemonum, ever

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denied demons the power to infiltrate bodies, human or animal.108 But the decision to enter an already-corporeal, irrational subject is a humiliation of the spiritual nature, as Satan himself says: “I who erst contended / With Gods to sit the highest, am now constraind / Into a Beast, and mixt with bestial slime, / This essence to incarnate and imbrute” (IX.163– 66). When the word “incarnate,” used here for the first and only time in the epic, is coupled with the narrator’s swift transition from “incarnate” (used ironically) to the more apt word “imbrute,” the resultant union is shown to be forced and unnatural—a parody, or perversion, of the Incarnation, in which Christ achieves a hypostatic union. In his scorn for the Thomist doctrine in which assumed bodies perform actions only “seemingly,” Milton appears to have conceived of an angel as being made manifest in, conversing through, and working with an assumed body, which is itself incorporated into the spiritual substance of the angel. Milton gradually draws out the difference between the unfallen and fallen angels by exploring the extent to which Satan can inhabit the serpent in the same way that a good angel inhabits—and incorporates into himself—an assumed body. Hence, when Satan approaches Eve, we are told that he “with Serpent Tongue / Organic, or impulse of vocal Air, / His fraudulent temptation thus began” (IX.529–31). Responding to Fallon’s limited concession that there might be present—by dint of Milton’s key use of the word “or”—a hint of metaphysical dualism, Raymond writes, “Satan has no need of the serpent’s tongue to issue audible speech.” For Raymond, this is so because Satan, like the angels, is said to be all tongue and hence fully material. If, as Raymond argues, Satan uses the serpent’s tongue, it is because it “might add a virtuoso shine to his fraudulence,” while simultaneously drawing attention to Satan’s nature, which is to “feign.” Raymond’s may be an admirable explanation, but the demands seventeenth-century metaphysics make on such a reading prove to be too great: it is impossible for a material Satan to enter a snake that is obviously already-material. The thought the poetry plants in our minds is that while a material Satan cannot enter the serpent, an immaterial Satan—an “Essence,” as he calls himself—could.109 This interpretation works for both the hylomorphic and nonhylomorphic understandings of the angels because, in both cases, the essence of an angel as “intelligential substance” is—as we

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have seen—the immaterial intellect. What the alternative to the Thomist angelological tradition provides in this instance is the idea that an angel— by virtue of possessing a “spiritual matter” as in Bonaventure—is capable of individual agency and also of affectability (the good angels traipsing up to heaven after the Fall are characterized by sorrow, “mute and sad” at X.18). Yet the “matter” Milton here attributes to his angels—fallen and unfallen alike—does not reduce either to the concretely material. A N G E L I C U N I T Y, S ATA N I C I N D I V I D U A L I T Y

The philosophical and theological traditions that richly inform and complicate Milton’s angelology produce, in the end, a sense that angelic action—especially in the War in Heaven—feels like some sort of charade (unlike Eve’s reasoning, which doesn’t feel like this at all). The agency of the angels in the war is not—cannot be—active like that of humans (we note their inability to guard Eden successfully at IV.794–95 and X.17– 21). This is true because the angels, like the superior faculty of the possible intellect, are without individuation. In a sudden turn, this actually makes the possible–agent intellect distinction implicit in the naturalist felix culpa: Adam and Eve move into a this-worldly, intensely individuated sphere in which they will have to think actively. With the naturalist felix culpa, Milton virtually makes the shift in relative status (of the agent intellect over the possible) an epistemological equivalent to the ethical superiority of humans over angels. This may partly explain Milton’s summary of John Chrysostom’s “Twelfth Homily” in his Commonplace Book: “A good man by the same reckoning [namely, an exercise of virtue] seems to surpass even the angels [angelos excellere videtur], to the extent that, enclosed in a weak and earthly body [mortali corpore] and always struggling with his passions, he nevertheless aspires to lead a life like that of the inhabitants of heaven [vitam tamen cœlestium similem agere aspirat]. Homil in Gen. 12. near the end.”110 Although angels have built-in knowledge, this mode of “mostly intuitive” intellection is somehow less exciting than our mental—and moral—activity of discursive reasoning: “We ought,” Milton writes, “struggle and strive towards perfection.” In striving to transform the passions into “the very ingredients of vertu,” the effort must be characterized by “real vigor,” by “labor[ing] earnestly and tirelessly.”111 Yet it is precisely this effort of action that we discover is alien to the good angels themselves.

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Each good angel—from the affable Raphael to the steadfast Abdiel—is, therefore, dangerously locked into the unicity of the possible intellect that is shared by all. Like Gabriel and the other angelic guards, Raphael is too good, too unassuming—too unawares—to provide Adam and Eve with a warning that will help (not harm) them.112 Satan, who tells his rebel troops that “we can preserve / Unhurt our mindes, and understanding sound” (VI.443–44), is one up on Raphael and the angelic host. By falling away from the shared perfection of the possible intellect, Satan gains knowledge of another mode of cognition, one which is highly individualized and fully active. While the “flaming seraph” (V.875) Abdiel may be praised for his “constant mind” (V.902), his “solitary fidelity” and “singularity of virtue”—so admired by Johnson—are unique only when placed amid the rebel angels, “against the scorn of multitudes.”113 Within the context of the good angels, Abdiel’s steadfast nature is far less exciting: it is merely metonymic of the Grand Possible Intellect that is possessed by each of the heavenly host. As the tables are gradually turned—as our epistemological world is in the ascendant—an ontological peripeteia of sorts occurs. The initial thought was that the substance of the angels and their intellectual powers were understood as being immediately superior to ours. But now the suggestion is that we might be better off than the good angels are. While Adam enjoyed, but subsequently lost the chance to change his corporeal substance into something quasi-ethereal, like that of the angels, this loss—in a felix culpa tradition—provides an opportunity to take on the heroic struggle of becoming one of the partially regenerated men who, so justified through faith, attain, as Milton writes, a “new generation, “new nature,” and a “new glory,” according to the promise of Luke 22.36: “they are equal to the angels, and sons of God, since they are the sons of the resurrection.”114 Although orthodox theologians lament the Fall, Milton’s poetry inclines to the felix culpa interpretation of the Fall, in which man becomes a “warfaring Christian,” capable of returning to God in the name of Christ through the exercise of his individual virtue.115 In this sense, Milton’s angelology drives home the point that, at the center of the epic, is the tension of a difference-within-unity, of an agent-intellect-asparticipating-in-the-timeless (possible intellect). The War in Heaven, which describes each fighting angel as being “led in fight, yet Leader

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seemd / Each Warriour single, as in Chief ” (VI.232–33), yields an image of the individual as conjoined to the collective. While individuality among the good angels is dependent upon the offices and station into which they are born or which they gradually achieve, it still precludes the idea of moral choice and hence of an ethically dynamic development of character (to choose evil is not a rational choice for the good angels because rationality and godliness are implicitly one). As ideas of individuality are shown to be held in a tense relationship with the larger totality of good angels, Milton’s angelology becomes a vehicle for thinking through the implications of the epic’s epistemology as well as its ontology. In his assessment of Paradise Lost, Dr. Johnson dryly commented that “some philosophical notions, especially when the philosophy is false, might have been better omitted.” But in the instance of the angels, Milton’s juxtaposition of different conceptions of the angels—both as form (pure intellect) and as spiritual compounds (of “matter” and form)—actively tests the cogency of philosophical as well as theological propositions about intellect and intelligential substance. Milton not only elevates the intellectual status of his angels to a higher mode of being (Aquinas), but also manages to sustain their emotional “life” and sense of “personhood” as they are attached to each angel (Bonaventure). In setting an understanding of the angelic substance as seen through the lens of natural philosophy (Aquinas) against an interpretation of their substance as defined by metaphysics and logic (Bonaventure), Milton may have, as Johnson memorably complained, “unhappily perplexed his poetry with his philosophy.”116 But this sort of perplexity is part and parcel of the knotty and robust character of Milton’s thought. It animates Milton’s imaginative vision of the angels, who might otherwise have remained trapped and static in a motionless, timeless world of endless duration—without variety, without difference. Milton’s awareness of the dangers inherent in depicting his good angels as omniform intellect may also explain why, on the one hand, angelic unity is shown to be the deathless possible intellect in which all good angels are said to participate, and why, on the other hand, the epic presents the angels as individual—and individuating—agents against which this unity is asserted. Discussing the oneness of Wisdom, Bonaventure observed that “the similitudes of one thing are many in souls” (similitudines unius rei in animabus pluribus), so that we dis-

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cover “the One can be in Many” (quod unus potest esse in multis) in God alone.117 Milton’s vision of the angels, so consciously situated between two accounts of the intellect as well as between two competing angelological traditions, strives to attain the transcendent unity or oneness Bonaventure described. Yet it consistently falls short. Although the angels are “United as one individual Soule” (V.610) under the Son, they remain numerically distinct. What is brought to light through Milton’s angelology in Paradise Lost, therefore, is the idea that this is a poem less concerned with achieving a monist resolution, let alone a materializing one, and far more invested in exploring the ways in which a reconciliation between the Many and the One—difference with unity—might be effected, without compromising the idea of the individual, the union, or the theodicy in the process.

chapter six

From Angels to the Almighty accommodation and the problem of narrative intelligibility

Then the revelation occurred: Marino saw the rose as Adam might have seen Paradise, and he thought that the rose was to be found in its own eternity and not in his words; and that we may mention or allude to a thing, but not express it; and that the tall proud volumes casting a golden shadow in a corner were not—as his vanity once dreamed—a mirror of the world, but rather one thing more added to the world. —borges, “The Yellow Rose”

i suggested above that in availing himself of the (neoScholastic) Latin commentary tradition of Aristotle’s De anima, Milton effectively employed his angels to meditate on the exalted mode of knowing characterized by the possible intellect and that, in so doing, he explored the difficulties the idea of a Grand Possible Intellect posed for his theodicy. But it may also be the case that Milton’s thinking about angels is further complicated by problems inherent in literary expression. Since Milton’s method of representation directly influences what he can and cannot say about the relationship between matter and spirit, this chapter is a necessary excursus on Milton’s poetic practice. It examines, in particular, Milton’s theory of accommodation, in which the divine—or in the case of Milton’s angels, the easier thing, the intelligible—is said to condescend to our (limited) human faculties, thereby undergoing a superficial materialization through narrative. According to a minimalist interpretation of the theory, in which “scripture speaks the language of man” (scriptura humane loquitur), the 196

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gross anthropomorphisms of God in scripture—which embarrassed Jews and Christians alike—were explained away by the argument that God was understood in terms of the immediately intelligible.1 The maximalist interpretation meanwhile claimed that God was understood in terms of human reason (which includes analogy, speculative inference, etc.), so that the literal sense supposedly encompasses everything.2 Either way, the transcendental object—when transposed into the temporal framework of narrative through accommodation—appears to undergo immediate materialization. That said, the moment we become aware of the various degrees to which poetry claims to produce an embodied concept or, conversely, the thing itself (such as God), the consciously incomplete nature of the imagery makes us increasingly skeptical about the ability of language to do the work theology demands of it. When Milton uses the principle of accommodation as something done by man—and not, as many seventeenth-century readers thought, by God—he transforms the tool of accommodation into an imperfect heuristic device that attempts to apprehend the transcendent.3 In moving beyond the literalism the technique intends, the technique of accommodation in the epic sharply diverges from the account Milton gives in De Doctrina Christiana (in which he claims to describe what has already been disclosed to us in adapted form). If we examine the dialectical tension between the materiality of the image and what the image is meant to convey, it appears that the alleged materiality of Milton’s angels and his celestial substances may in fact tell us only half the story. T R A N S C R I B I N G H E AV E N : A C C O M M O D AT I N G THE INTELLIGIBLE IN PARADISE LOST

Milton’s literary practice in the epic has both the angels and the War in Heaven conform to a logic of narration in which concepts are said to represent objects through an acknowledged similarity: as Raphael declares, “What surmounts the reach / Of human sense, I shall delineate so, / By lik’ning spiritual to corporal forms, / As may express them best” (PL V.571–74). This focus on similitude reveals an analogical, or accommodated, way of thinking. Early Rabbinic and Christian writers argued that the anthropomorphisms ascribed to God in the Bible supplied the people with an inadequate but nonetheless useful picture of God because it

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gave them an idea of what he was like.4 John Woolton (c. 1537–94), bishop of Exeter, for instance, spoke with admirable honesty when he observed, “We speake of God and diuine things, not so exactly as we would, but as we are able.”5 Yet while Milton superficially claims to speak knowingly about “divine things” and the angels, his poetic project may be read as shifting the problem of intelligibility from the poet to the reader—or, as the case may be, to his “Divine interpreter” (VII.72), Raphael. While the archangel is supposed to know heaven as well as earth, the language he uses to condescend to our intelligence is necessarily rooted in the material world alone. The result is that the different types of accommodation Raphael employs in order to overcome this ontological division may, in fact, confirm the initial separation. In what follows, the problems the technique of accommodation encounters—and also creates—are analyzed in relation to the celestial world, the suggestion being that Milton’s poetic practice actually removes heaven itself from our view. Hence, when Raphael comments on the abundance of earthly food, adding that this bounty “may compare with Heaven” (V.432), his remark immediately draws attention to the variegated delights on earth as being like—and, simultaneously, unlike—what is in heaven. The use of the comparative points to Raphael’s ability to taste and transmute earthly corporeal substances in a manner analogous to the way he assimilates to his substance the “ambrosial frutage” (V.427) and “Nectar” (V.428) of heaven. While the emphasis on analogy reinforces successfully the idea we have that the ontological status of the angels is material only in relation to God and that the application of the term “matter” is itself applied equivocally or analogously, it nonetheless creates problems for the angel’s narrative as a whole.6 As we cross over from a purely metaphysical account of Milton’s angels to an analysis of the representation of spiritual beings in Milton, the tracking to and fro between the philosophic and the literary reveals ontological as well as epistemological tears in the fabric of the narrative. When Raphael speaks of “The Palace of great Lucifer, (so call / That Structure in the Dialect of men / Interpreted)” (V.760–62), the bracketed thought is amplified, not diminished, by the use of those parentheses. In reverting to similes in an attempt to conceal serious textual aporiai, Raphael’s accommodated account of the War in Heaven ends up exacerbating the very anxieties it hopes to dispel. This is largely because

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the difficulty for Raphael is not about getting at what is ineffable (God) but at describing the seemingly easier thing—the intelligential—without fully materializing it in the process. The problem Milton’s (and Raphael’s) method of representation thus encounters is that the moment the angels—who operate mostly intuitively and immediately—are put into narrative, they become time-bound and hence materialized. This would be acceptable if the accommodation accurately described what the angels are, but the trouble is that it does not. When Uriel descends to Gabriel by “gliding through the Eeven / On a Sun beam” (IV.555-56), the journey is given in distinctly temporal terms—until, that is, we come to the additional description of his speed: “swift as a shooting Starr” (IV.556). The action—first placed within our world—now moves beyond our frame of reference once more. The arising thought is that this oscillation—and the sense we have that Raphael’s narrative presents us with an accurate vision of heaven even while it underscores that this is not possible—mirrors the poetry’s movement between two poles of reality: the material and the immaterial. Ontological concerns, in other words, are now reexpressed in literary representation, as Raphael emphasizes when he speaks of how earthly terms are unique in their application to God and to heaven (V.579–82). In speaking to Adam, he draws attention to the fact that even the physical movement of the angels is not subject to the same measurements of time or motion as man is: “mee thou thinkst not slow, / Who since the Morning hour set out from Heav’n / Where God resides, and ere midday arriv’d / In Eden, distance inexpressible / By Numbers that have name” (VIII.110–14). In like manner, the Son’s descent to Eden after the Fall is done with “the speed of Gods” (X.90) and is beyond temporal measurement: “Time counts not, though with swiftest minutes wing’d” (X.91). Even heaven itself is timeless, despite the fact that it produces a simulacra of day and night “which makes through Heav’n / Grateful vicissitude” (VI.7–8). Although angelic actions are acknowledged to occur almost immediately and outside of earthly time, narrative demands that they be placed in some sort of order.7 Since Raphael’s mind does not work sequentially, or discursively, this drive for linear sequencing causes confusion. Cowley expressed a similar perplexity over how to accommodate heavenly motion when he wrote, “Slow Time admires, and knows not

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what to call / The Motion, having no Account so small” (Davideis i.39– 40).8 In Milton, Raphael finally appeals to Adam for help in completing the sought-for accommodation: “The swiftness of those Circles attribute, / Though numberless, to his Omnipotence, / That to corporeal substances could adde / Speed almost Spiritual” (VIII.107–10). Here, Raphael asks Adam to “attribute” to the planets a speed the likes of which he cannot conceive. Adam has no concept of God’s omnipotence, but neither do the angels: omnipotence, much like omniscience, resists narrative exposition: “Great are thy works, Jehovah, infinite / Thy power; what thought can measure thee or tongue / Relate thee; greater now in thy return / Then from the Giant Angels; thee that day / Thy Thunders magnifi’d; but to create / Is greater then created to destroy” (VII.602–07).9 Lines 603–04 allude to the act of the accommodation described at I Corinthians 13.1—“Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels”— which Grotius glossed as meaning that “there is among the angels something analogous to language through which they relate to us concepts in turns” (Est & in Angelis aliquid ajnavlogon [simile] linguis per quod conceptus sibi mutuò tradunt).10 But this analogous language in heaven is not the same as the language used in the act of accommodation. As Raphael desperately tries to find a way to bring his world down to us, or to take us up to his level of understanding, he increasingly describes heaven through negation. Of the war itself, he reflects, “though strange to us it seemd / At first, that Angel should with Angel warr, / And in fierce hosting meet, who wont to meet / So oft in Festivals of joy and love / Unanimous, as sons of one great Sire / Hymning th’ Eternal Father: but the shout / Of Battel now began, and rushing sound / Of onset ended soon each milder thought” (VI.91–98). The harmony of heavenly battle is understood only in opposition to the noise of angelic singing—an idea that is reinforced when we learn that Adam and Eve have heard “Celestial voices to the midnight air, / Sole, or responsive each to others note / Singing thir great Creator” (IV.682–84). The heavenly hymns provide the antithesis by which the awful calamity of celestial battle is partly understood. The War in Heaven thus opens itself up to be read as one huge, expanded (negative) litotes, or affirmation by a denial of the opposite. “Warr seem’d a civil Game / To this uproar” (VI.667–68) is a complex instance of this. At first glance, there appear to be no opposites. But the

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narrative introduces a concept that we (not Adam and Eve) can understand: namely, war. War exists not in a perfect world but in a fallen one. Yet Raphael characterizes war in our world as “civil” (meaning “wellordered”) in comparison to the “uproar” of war in heaven. Again, the important thing to hold on to is that (so far) war in this world and war in heaven are capable of being likened to one another only insofar as they appear to be types of “civil war,” or internal strife. But Raphael cuts down the similarity with one word: “game.” By reducing civil war on earth to merely a “civil Game” or “well-ordered amusement,” he makes the most devastating type of war on earth now the very opposite of what has occurred in heaven—when “all Heav’n / Had gon to wrack, with ruin overspred” (VI.669–70). As the other side of the comparison—war on earth—is diminished, the “uproar” in heaven is doubly amplified: the use of “seem’d” in “Warr seem’d a civil Game” means war on earth may no longer be identifiable with even the game. The cancelled identification— which is less than an opposite occurring within an implied denial— makes this a weirdly strong litotes. I have called it a negative litotes because it implicitly overdenies, or cancels, the point of comparison: that is, the magnitude of the War in Heaven cannot be expressed, even though it has the power to diminish earthly civil war to something less than a game. In other instances, this effect is akin to occupatio, or the technique whereby what we claim will not be said is in point of fact stated. When Raphael describes the War in Heaven, he aims to show Adam and Eve the importance of obedience to God and teach them to eschew evil (which as yet they do not know of ). But again, this affirmation comes at the cost of accentuating Satan’s fall. The reader’s attention is immediately drawn to what is purportedly diminished and rejected. For the yet unfallen Adam and Eve, the contamination is deadly. William Empson, it seems, was right to comment that “Adam and Eve would not have fallen unless God had sent Raphael to talk to them, supposedly to strengthen their resistance to temptation.”11 In slightly less jarring terms, we might understand this problem in terms of the narrator’s growing awareness that he, like Raphael, cannot do narrative the way he intends.12 There is the growing sense, then, that things are accommodated more easily by the individuated mind of a fallen angel—perhaps because

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a personalized sense of self, or consciousness, struggles much less with temporal, narrative movement than a mind like Raphael’s, which is accustomed to an undifferentiated, timeless unity. The idea slowly taking root is that a good portion of the epic is transmitted to us by Satan: the “now he views” (IV.205) becomes what we view. The epic never attempts to hide the fact that we travel with Satan—from Hell through Chaos—and that Satan, not the angels, offers us our first vision of Eden (IV.205–86). If Satan’s way of perceiving is more congenial to our mode of (mostly discursive) intellection than that of the good angels, we should not be surprised to find Raphael remarking on the futility of accommodating heaven to our minds: “Immediate are the Acts of God, more swift / Then time or motion, but to human ears / Cannot without process of speech be told, / So told as earthly notion can receave” (VII.176–79).13 The fact that the figure doing the accommodation is himself already accommodated in the epic’s narrative may attempt to allay the anxiety that accommodation is wholly impossible. Raphael possesses the “process of speech” necessary for relating his story to Adam and Eve but only through the use of analogous thinking. The accommodation occurring here magnifies the idea that for Milton, unlike for Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463–94), we cannot have direct access to the intelligible world, to the structure of reality. Knowledge of heaven is interdicted, as Milton’s use of myth and his reversion to the older tradition of epic makes apparent. Commenting on book VI, Newton thus observed, And indeed within the compass of this one book [VI] we have all the variety of battels that can well be conceiv’d. We have a single combat, and a general engagement: The first day’s fight is with darts and swords, in imitation of the ancients; the second day’s fight with artillery, in the imitation of the Moderns; but the images in both are raised proportionably to the superior nature of the beings here describ’d. And when the poet has briefly compris’d all that has any foundation in fact and reality, he has recourse to the fiction of the poets in their description of the giants’ war with the Gods. And when war hath thus perform’d what war can do, he rises still higher, and the Son of God is sent forth in the majesty of the almighty Father, agreeably to

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Scripture; so much doth the sublimity of holy Writ transcend all that is true, and all that is feign’d, in description.14 When Newton speaks of “Holy Writ” transcending the truth, he refers to (human) history as well as to feigned history—that is, to myth. He suggests that since the scriptural truths present in Milton’s War in Heaven actually supersede both, the truths must necessarily be shadowed through myth—accommodated by “measuring things in Heav’n by things on Earth” (VI.893). This use of myth indicates yet another type of accommodation working in the background of Milton’s epic: historical accommodation. Within the Judeo-Christian scheme, historical accommodation reads history backward. Past figures become shadowy types for stronger future fulfilments; pagan practices are foreshortened approximations of Christianity, pointing either to salvation or to damnation. In the narrative of Mulciber’s mythical fall, the telltale admonition— “thus they relate, / Erring; for he with this rebellious rout / Fell long before” (I.746–48)—performs a rearguard defensive action typical of historical accommodation. Mulciber’s mythological fall is said to be a misreading or small-scale reenactment of this original Fall from heaven. Milton’s theodicy thus adopts the posture of the grand Christian jurist and Church Father Tertullian (ca. 155–230): So all the subject matter, all the material, all the origins, chronologies, sources, of every ancient pen you know—yes, and most of your races, your cities, famous in history, hoary of memory—nay, the very shapes of your letters, those witnesses and guardians of the past—and (for I seem to be understanding things), I say, add your very gods, temples, oracles, rituals and all—the book of a single prophet notwithstanding beats them all, with centuries to spare,—that book in which is seen summed up the treasure of the whole Jewish religion, and in consequence of ours as well. (Omnes itaque substantias omnesque materias, origines, ordines, venas veterani cuiusque stili vestri, gentes etiam plerasque et urbes insignes historiarum et canas memoriarum, ipsas denique effigies litterarum, indices custodesque rerum et (puto adhuc minus dicimus) ipsos inquam deos vestros, ipsa templa et oracula et sacra unius interim prophetae scrinium

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saeculis vincit, in quo videtur thesaurus collocates totius Iudaici sacramenti et inde iam nostri).15 Myth is roundly dismissed: Moses and the Pentateuch, we are told, got there first. It is only natural, then, that Milton—who was so concerned with asserting the universal truth of his epic’s story—is deeply invested in historical accommodation. In the cancellation of the devils’ names (VI.379–80), he describes the fallen angels as having “thir Names in heav’nly Records . . . / . . . blotted out and ras’d” (I.361–62). A short while later, the narrator tells us that the rebel angels will get “new Names” (I.365) once they fall into human history, “wandring ore the Earth, / Through Gods high sufferance for the tryal of man” (I.365–66). When the rebel angels are marshaled into epic catalogues in book I, we note that they are called not by their “canceled” names, but by these newer names—names with which the narrative presumes we are familiar because we occupy a postlapsarian world.16 This sort of historical accommodation is not without its problems, as Raphael learns. In having to provide an account of “who that enemy is, and how he came to be so, beginning from his first revolt in Heaven, and the occasion thereof ” (argument, book V), Raphael is forced to create an aetiology that will interact with the human world without employing a postlapsarian language. The difficulty Raphael faces is that if he names the fallen angels according to their new names, this presupposes the Fall; conversely, if he calls the fallen angels by their “cancelled” names (V.659), he would be guilty—as John Leonard has shrewdly pointed out—of telling “secrets of another world, perhaps / Not lawful to reveal” (V.569– 70).17 The result is that Raphael attempts to gloss over what is potentially corrupting, lest the narrative itself be defiled. It appears that much of the weirdness associated with the War in Heaven may therefore be chalked up to the difficulties Raphael’s narrative analepsis creates—both with regard to historical accommodation (which automatically encompasses the future) and to prelapsarian literary condescension: “High matter thou injoinst me, O prime of men, / Sad task and hard, for how shall I relate / To human sense th’ invisible exploits / Of warring Spirits; how without remorse / The ruin of so many glorious once / And perfet while they stood” (PL V.563–68). The

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word “relate” is thus stretched between two meanings—that of telling the story and that of bringing “th’ invisible exploits / Of warring Spirits” (V.565–66) into a relationship with man’s yet-unfallen “human sense.” Despite the fact that Raphael’s story is more interesting and persuasive when it speaks of the celestial in terms of the earthly, he avoids allegorizing the war in the vein of a Prudentian Psychomachia. The decision is as significant as his choice to narrate the War in Heaven in a style entirely governed by metaphor (V.572–74). Harold Skulsky, who has discussed how a “metaphor is an act—an act of speech, a social act,” explains that when we use metaphor, we invoke a common understanding of how language works and confers meaning. Figurative language, which tends to bend, break, or violate these terms, is understood because we have an idea of where, or rather how, the metaphor originates. To tell a story through metaphor is therefore to engage in a conversation in which both parties are aware of the translatio occurring.18 Convention cannot help but play an important part in this process; it pins down points of similarities and gives us something with which to run. Perhaps for this reason, Raphael begins with the explicit announcement (discussed above) that he will begin his narration with a simile (V.572–74). William Poole has suggested that Raphael employs simile because metaphor may draw too much attention to what is dissimilar.19 Still, the uncertainty in the “may” of “may express them best” (V.574) voices the angel’s unease about why certain things can be said to be alike at all. Raphael cannot clarify why the analogy works because such an explanation requires the very analogical understanding that eludes him.20 As a result, the “ethics of metaphor,” which authorizes us to liken two unlike things, gradually begins to break down.21 That Raphael detects as much is evident when, in his description of Satan’s and Abdiel’s encounter on the battlefield of heaven, he says, “They ended parle, and both addrest for fight / Unspeakable; for who, though with the tongue / Of Angels, can relate, or to what things / Liken on Earth conspicuous, that may lift / Human imagination to such highth / Of Godlike Power: for likest Gods they seemd, / Stood they or mov’d, in stature, motion, arms / Fit to decide the Empire of great Heav’n” (VI.296–303). Raphael’s account raises the question, If an archangel cannot do the accommodation needed to “relate” (298) the War in Heaven to us, who

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can?22 The ambiguous phrasing “that may lift / Human imagination to such highth / Of Godlike Power” (VI.299–301) refers to the imagination’s ability to capture the godlike majesty of the angels (“for likest Gods they seemd”; VI.301), but it hints also at the idea that this sort of elevation—of the human imagination to “Godlike Power”—requires God’s assistance. David Quint correctly discerns that “what is at issue in the war is the very possibility of narrative meaning.”23 While Raphael argues that his accommodation is licit—“for thy good / . . . dispenc’t” (V.570–71)—the fact that God himself has not already accommodated the story for his messenger creates literary as well as ontological problems for the epic. For Raphael, it is not so much the Ineffable that is at the center of the narrative (as it is in book III) but the intelligible. Yet the intelligible, as we soon discover, is equally shrouded in mystery. In Milton’s much earlier poem Il Penseroso, we encounter something similar: when Milton exclaims, “Hail divinest Melancholy, / Whose saintly visage is too bright / To hit the sense of human sight” (12–14). Melancholy is approachable “to our weaker view” (15) because it is accommodated to our senses, “O’erlaid with black staid wisdom’s hue” (16). Qualities—like blackness—make the object under discussion intelligible to us.24 In his description of Abdiel’s return to the camp of the good angels, Raphael expresses heavenly movement in temporal terms congenial to our senses. Although he begins with what seems to be an assertion of fact—“There is a Cave / Within the Mount of God, fast by his Throne, / Where light and darkness in perpetual round / Lodge and dislodge by turns, which makes through Heav’n / Grateful vicissitude, like Day and Night” (PL VI.4–8)—he chooses to end on a simile. The vicissitude, much like the variety of God’s “bounty” in heaven, is merely “like” (VI.8) that found on earth. This, as Raphael tells us, is because “Light issues forth, and at the other dore / Obsequious darkness enters, till her houre / To veile the Heav’n, though darkness there might well / Seem twilight here” (VI.9–12). Just as “black” veils melancholy in Il Penseroso and renders it intelligible, so here darkness descends to veil heaven, like night covering Eden. But Raphael then doubles back on this idea (VI.12): he says that heaven is actually all light and that it cannot have any darkness (other than what a fallen angel introduces to it). The result is that this cycle of alternating light and dark he describes has even its darkness shot

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through with light, so that the darkness of heaven seems to be twilight on earth (VI.11–12). As Raphael’s narration continues, the emphasis falls increasingly on the differences—not the similarities—between heaven and earth. His comment “Thus measuring things in Heav’n by things on earth” (VI.893) feels desperately weak; the very act of placing things in relation to one another now points to a preexistent and unfathomable partition. The angel’s question—“to recount Almightie works / What words or tongue of Seraph can suffice, / Or heart of man suffice to comprehend?” (VII.112– 14)—not only pinpoints the angel’s inability to perform the necessary accommodation, but also underscores man’s inability to raise his mind to a godlike level of understanding. Raphael’s condescension, which appears to make things more comfortable for our understanding, merely feigns a downward movement. The narrator, who describes Satan’s vision of heaven in book III, thus attempts to succeed at representation where Raphael fails: “farr distant he descries / Ascending by degrees magnificent / Up to the wall of Heaven a Structure high, / At top whereof, but farr more rich appeerd / The work as of a Kingly Palace Gate / With Frontispice of Diamond and Gold / Imbellisht, thick with sparkling orient Gemmes / The Portal shon, inimitable on Earth / By Model, or by shading Pencil drawn” (III.501–09; italics added). Both the idea of mimesis, here evoked in the term “inimitable,” and the act of making metaphor, which is evoked in the Platonic reference to models, are wholeheartedly rejected. Heaven is incapable of being imitated in our world “By Model” or by shadowy likenesses because such correspondences with our world are denied ab initio. This denial sits rather uncomfortably with the narrator’s subsequent description of heaven, which is given entirely through metaphor: “The Stairs were such as whereon Jacob saw / Angels ascending and descending, bands / Of Guardians bright, when he from Esau fled / To PadanAram in the field of Luz, / Dreaming by night under the open Skie, / And waking cri’d, This is the Gate of Heav’n / Each Stair mysteriously was meant, nor stood / There alwayes, but drawn up to Heav’n somtimes / Viewless” (III.510–18). The stairs are likened to the Ladder of the Angels, which, crucially, Jacob envisions in his dream (Gen. 28.12). As the dream in the biblical narrative combines with the epic convention of

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dream messages, Milton’s God becomes the dream-giver, the author of metaphor. By thinking through—or with—this biblical story, Milton uses metaphor to depict reality, despite his previous rejection of it as a truth-telling fiction.25 But Raphael cannot use biblical stories to approve his narration and metaphors; biblical—or human—history has yet to be written. The angel, who is aware that language is now falling short, reiterates his claim that God has sanctioned his use of accommodation. Rather desperately, he gropes to find similarities, resorting even to counterfactual comparisons: in describing the War in Heaven, he announces that “had Earth bin then, all Earth / Had to her Center shook” (VI.218–19; italics added). As the disjunction between what is told and what the teller wishes to tell becomes greater, Raphael—like Milton before him—reverts to a more Augustinian understanding of metaphor. The shift is significant because, in Augustine’s view of metaphor, the literal is the common-sense referent (that is, the word as understood by us). Augustine knew that if biblical language was pressurized into delivering strict literal interpretations, absurdities would proliferate. With much gravity, he warns us against delimiting the transcendent with terms restricted to our world: “For when what is said figuratively is taken just as if it were said properly [that is, literally], it is understood carnally. And nothing is more agreeably called the death of the soul than when that in it which raises it above the beasts—that is, the intelligence—is subjected to the flesh by adhering to the letter” (Cum enim figurate dictum sic accipitur, tanquam proprie dictum sit, carnaliter sapitur. Neque ulla mors animæ congruentius appellatur, quam cum id etiam quod in ea bestiis antecellit, hoc est, intelligentia carni subjicitur sequendo litteram).26 Raphael’s repeated emphasis on the failures implicit in accommodation therefore alerts us to the fact that his narrative is turning away from the “letter” and into a “language of gesture.”27 By punctuating his narrative with these moments of Augustinian uncertainty (“and if I have said anything, it is not what I desired to say” [si autem dixi, non hoc est quod dicere volui]), Raphael prevents us from taking the narrative solely at face value, as a Thomist would.28 Aquinas, who adhered to Aristotle’s notion that words express (shared) mental conceptions, thought that the

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meaning or tenor was the literal truth. Words were merely the incarnation of concepts “because nothing that is necessary to faith is contained under the spiritual sense which is not openly conveyed by the literal sense elsewhere” (quia nihil sub spirituali sensu continetur fidei necessarium, quod Scriptura per litteralem sensum alicubi manifeste non tradat).29 Since the vehicle in metaphor is denied the power to point beyond its strict (vernacular) language to something greater, the Thomist interpretation of metaphor encourages a kind of literary monism in which spirit and letter are coextensive.30 The result is that a Thomist, not Augustinian, reading of Milton is far more congenial to those critics who wish to categorize the universe of Milton’s epic as monist materialist. Indeed, the fact that Milton places the narrative of the War in Heaven in an archangel’s mouth does much to encourage the feeling that the story depicts reality in a straightforwardly material way (after all, we tend to believe that heaven is the way an angel tells us it is). But Raphael’s relentless drive to express the similarity between heaven and earth actually has the unwitting effect of reinforcing their fundamental dissimilarity. The accommodated picture remains confessedly other than what it represents, thereby pushing us toward a more figurative and Augustinian understanding of poetic language. It may be thought that while accommodation falls short of full truth, it can yet achieve verisimilitude. But even verisimilitude proves, finally, to be elusive. In Satan’s march, the “Regions they pass’d, the mightie Regencies / Of Seraphim and Potentates and Thrones / In thir triple Degrees” (V.748–50) can be described only analogously as “Regions to which / All thy Dominion, Adam, is no more / Then what this Garden is to all the Earth, / And all the Sea, from one entire globose / Stretcht into Longitude” (V.750–54). Yet the immense reduction at work in the comparison cannot mean much to Adam; he has no concept of how vast “all the Earth” is, let alone how large “the Earth / and all the Sea” are (V.752– 53). Adam, whose adult experience is limited to the circuit of Eden, does not know the other earthly term involved in the analogy and is therefore incapable of understanding the comparison. Conversely, (fallen) readers grasp immediately the idea that a sphere “Stretcht into Longitude” (V.754) intimates an immense tract of space which can never be fully traversed.

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What gradually emerges is that an accommodated picture of heaven cannot, in the end, be—or even resemble—heaven itself. As we read on, we find that heaven is not only different from that which it is deemed to represent; it is not even traceably like it. One might do well to heed D. H. Lawrence’s maxim “Never trust the artist, trust the tale.”31 Yet even the tale in Milton proves untrustworthy. Take, for instance, Milton’s angels, who look fully material. They are seen reclining “On flours” (V.636), and “they eate, they drink, and in communion sweet / Quaff immortalitie and joy” (V.637–38). In addition, they have weight: “the passive Air upbore / Thir nimble tread” (VI.72– 73). Meanwhile, the rebel angels are depicted as passible (VI.326–27); Satan’s mangled “Ethereal substance” (VI.330) bleeds not blood but “Nectarous humor” (VI.332), before it miraculously heals itself (VI.330– 31; 433–36).32 All of these descriptions admittedly fall on the side of the excessively physical. Yet, as we saw in chapter 5, such accounts prompt one to conceive of Milton’s angelology in terms of a universal hylomorphism rather than materialism as such. This immediately distinguishes Milton’s angels from traditional (Thomist) descriptions, in which incorporeal angels assume bodies. In his Christiados Libri Sex, the Cremonese poet Marcus Hieronymus Vida (1485–1566) depicts the War in Heaven on the portals of heaven.33 The gross physicalism of his angels is immediately comfortable because it is so obviously ekphrastic. Even though Milton’s war is much more three-dimensional than Vida’s, as Estelle Haan has discussed, Raphael’s narrative nonetheless feels quasiekphrastic. His process of image making is a form of artistic representation and, as Coleridge shrewdly remarked, one must be careful not to “mistake surface for substance.”34 One Miltonist, Michael Murrin, has implicitly heeded Coleridge’s warning. Murrin argues that heaven’s substance is unknowable because heaven is itself a “self-enclosed” system. “Heavenly terms,” he writes, “refer to each other and build up a complete world, but one we cannot enter. . . . We have no means of gauging Milton’s language, no point of comparison with our experience.”35 What Murrin holds on to, perhaps too firmly—and what a critic like Fallon too easily lets go of—is the idea that transcendental terms remain irreducibly unique, even when placed within the context of our world. When Milton writes in De Doctrina Christiana, “Angels are spirits. . . . They are ethereal by nature,” we note

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that—in claiming not to earn the apostle’s rebuke—he refuses to define his terms.36 The emergent paradox in Milton is that while we glimpse the transcendent by degrees, these degrees are such that they actually mask a more substantial difference in kind.37 Within the alleged material world of heaven, then, Milton has planted seeds of doubt. The fundamental unknowability of celestial substance is brought to the fore by the very metaphors and similes which attempt to transmute, translate, and accommodate it to the material world. While the role of the prophet and poet as Milton understood it was to do just this— namely, to create and control metaphor, to make fiction truth—it does not follow that the poet must speak in irreducibly material (or monist) terms, as Fallon claims.38 When Milton has his angels continue their battle under the heavenly hills “Hurl’d to and fro with jaculation dire” (VI.665), the language, like the landscape, weirdly fluctuates between the material and immaterial. In his depiction of the war and the fighting angels, Milton may well allude to the expressed opinion of Johannes Wollebius, the Continental Reformed theologian (1586–1629), who thought that even in the bad angels “there remains . . . great power, which they use for moving the larges bodies from place to place; for causing storms; for shaking buildings and mountains.”39 In moving Wollebius’s account of angelic action in a postlapsarian world back a stage—to heaven—Milton imagines the war as continuing “under ground . . . in dismal shade” (VI.666). Heaven is gradually turned inside out; ideas of materiality and substance are thrown into confusion as the devils . . . turnd Wide the Celestial soile, and saw beneath Th’ originals of Nature in thir crude Conception; Sulphurous and Nitrous Foame They found, they mingl’d, and with suttle Art, Concocted and adusted they reduc’d To blackest grain, and into store convey’d: Part hidd’n veins diggd up (nor hath this Earth Entrails unlike) of Mineral and Stone, Whereof to found thir Engins and thir Balls Of missive ruin . . . (VI.509–19)

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The Aristotelian prima materia of the earlier books is now governed by the three Paracelsian principles of sulphur, nitre, and salt.40 “Deep under ground” (VI.478), beneath the “bright surface / Of this Ethereous mould . . . / This continent of spacious Heav’n” (VI.473–74), Satan rightly discerns “materials dark and crude, / Of spiritous and fierie spume” (VI.478–79).41 Prime matter, prior to being given form, is not yet “temperd” and made “beauteous” by the “ambient light” (VI.480– 81). In sleeping in “dark Nativitie . . . / . . . pregnant with infernal flame” (VI.482–83), it suddenly appears to be already alive—as a power of sorts. Paracelsus himself described these “Coruscations” as indications that the “Metalls in those Mines have not yet attained to perfection, but are yet in their first as the sperm of a man in the matrix of a woman.”42 The idea toward which this gestures is that a protoscientific chemical order, the alternative to—and potential antithesis of—Aristotelianism, is slowly asserting itself. Here, a subterranean world most closely associated with God’s Unconscious emerges, as only “Eternal Night” (III.18) understands. Unsurprisingly, the demonic invention of gunpowder—which Paracelsus also likened to the “sparkling fire” of his coruscations—takes place in Milton under the covering darkness of “conscious Night” (VI.521).43 This is a clear echo of Virgil’s “conscius Aether” that is privy to Dido’s and Aeneas’s disastrous marriage ceremony at Aeneid iv.167– 68: “the fires flashed and the air was witness to their marriage, and on the tops of mountains, the nymphs wailed” (fulsere ignes et conscius Aether / conubiis, summoque ulularunt vertice nymphae). The association of darkness with the unnatural is further reinforced by the shrieking nymphs, who trigger, in turn, memories of Hecate’s dark descent in the Argonautica when she comes to Jason’s aid: “and the nymphs that haunt all the meadows and the river shrieked” (pivsea d∆ e[treme pavnta kata; stivbon. aiJ d∆ ojlovluxan / nuvmfai eJleionovmoi potamhivde~… Argon. iii.1218–19).44 The epic allusions all work hard to depict Night’s involvement with the dangerous and the unnatural. By displacing the historical invention of gunpowder to the underworld of heaven, Milton universalizes it. It becomes a dangerous expression for a darkness that is comprehending— and, indeed, overcoming—the light of heaven. With the War in Heaven having unearthed a Chaos and concomitant darkness that is as much a

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part of heaven as it is of earth (VI.516–17), the battle’s end marks out the Maker’s rage for a return to order: “Power Divine his way prepar’d; / At his command the uprooted Hills retir’d / Each to his place, they heard his voice and went / Obsequious, Heav’n his wonted face renewd” (VI.780–83). Nonetheless, Raphael’s narrative has already revealed that beneath the face of Creation there exists a rich disorder—an “infernal flame” and “spume”—that is more potent and active than the merely material. As terms pertaining to the nature of celestial substance enter a state of indeterminacy, the poem’s narrative responds by attempting to resolve the difficulty: He [Raphael] lights, and to his proper shape returns A Seraph wingd; six wings he wore, to shade His lineaments Divine; the pair that clad Each shoulder broad, came mantling o’re his brest With regal Ornament; the middle pair Girt like a Starrie Zone his waste, and round Skirted his loines and thighes with downie Gold And colours dipt in Heav’n; the third his feet Shaddowd from either heele with featherd maile Skie-tinctur’d grain. Like Maia’s son he stood (V.276–85) Our ability to see Raphael as he truly is—when he “to his proper shape returns” (V.276)—is immediately withdrawn the moment we come to “Like” in line 285. We, along with the other angels (V.287–88) and, subsequently, Adam and Eve, behold not Raphael’s “proper shape” but his accommodated form: “six wings he wore, to shade / His lineaments Divine” (V.277–78). Everything is “shaddowd” (V.284), or already accommodated. As the image of Raphael veers first into dazzling images of light and then into ethereal colors (“colours dipt in Heav’n” at V.283 is purposefully vague), the richly evocative descriptions of “downie Gold” (V.282) and “Skie-tinctur’d grain” (V.285) at once materialize Raphael’s appearance and, in the same instant, also remove him from our field of perception. In like manner, when Raphael is said to have “shook his Plumes, that Heav’nly fragrance filld / The circuit wide” (V.286–87), the physical description suddenly melts into the intangible (namely, smell). The result is that the concrete reality of Raphael’s appearance is finally

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fixed only by what launches the simile: “Like Maia’s son he stood” (V.285). Milton needs the older fiction—the myth of Hermes, messenger of the gods—to describe that which eludes description. Even so, Raphael, complete with his six wings, girt loins, and “featherd maile,” (V.284) exhibits a profoundly ambivalent physicality. Upon seeing the approaching Raphael, Adam exclaims, “What glorious shape / Comes this way moving; seems another Morn / Ris’n on mid-noon” (V.309–11). The angel is described not in terms of what his substance is but by what it emits: namely, light. Even against the bright heat of a noonday sun, Raphael still “seems” like the “Morn” (V.310). Both Raphael’s descent to Eden (V.266-90) and Adam’s greeting—“for other place / None can then Heavn’s such glorious shape contain” (V.361–62)—signal that Adam readily perceives a huge difference between himself and his celestial visitor. The decision to use the word “shape” here over the more loaded and metaphysical word “form” indicates that this is no essence, or abstraction, arriving in Eden (V.309; 361–62). Raphael, who appears to Adam as an accommodated (and hence physical) figure, thus glows with a brilliant otherworldliness: “thir being / Who dwell in Heav’n, whose excellence he saw / Transcend his own so farr, whose radiant forms / Divine effulgence, whose high Power so far / Exceeded human” (V.455–59). The thrice-repeated possessive (“whose”) compounds the notion that angels “transcend” man in excellence, glory (qua “divine effulgence” at V.458), and power. What the narrator underscores is that Adam is amazed by an already-accommodated angel—the implication being that, in heaven, the angels, as “radiant forms” (V.457), are too dazzling to be received by mortal sight. Just as forms need to be informed in matter to be perceptible (to us), so it seems that Milton’s angels need the image-making process associated with narrative to become apprehensible (to us).45 The result is that the War in Heaven is far from a straightforward example of things becoming (truly) intelligible (to the mind of the reader). It is usually supposed that it was the pressure of narrative that imposed a kind of shadow of progressive cognition on this part of the narrative as opposed to the baseline idea that angels were nearer to the immediate divine intuitive cognition as possible intellects. Of course, the chariots and armor and even the celestial horses (VI.17) are clear to our minds, but only because of an older fictional literary tradition (epic). The war itself

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is like an imitation of such a process of making things intelligible to us, in large part because we cannot get at the intelligible without the sensory. What I am hinting at is that the war is almost an epistemological parody of sorts: it does not really render things more intelligible as the technique intends but instead reminds us of the fissure existing between the reality we receive in narrative—itself a sort of “sensory image”—and the celestial Reality it claims to depict.46 When Aquinas made the very good point that angels move not to acquire knowledge but to carry out various operations, he spoke of the way the phrase “heavenly army” is already an accommodated form—or synecdochical representation—that refers to the order and power of the divine will.47 Read in this way, Milton’s War in Heaven begins to look like a charade. Satan’s audacious attempt to combat the divine mind leads him to think that he is secretly spreading sedition among the angelic squadron. But we, as readers, are alert to the fact that God already knows of Satan’s treachery: “th’ Eternal eye, whose sight discernes / Abstrusest thoughts, from forth his holy Mount / And from within the golden Lamps that burne / Nightly before him, saw without thir light / Rebellion rising” (V.711–15). The entire passage is tremendously eerie: God sees everything and sees through everything.48 In accentuating the differences between the angelic and the divine mind, Milton draws attention to the difficulty of accommodating the intelligible, primarily because it is bound up with an act of accommodating the much more difficult thing: God. Raphael’s unwillingness to continue with the accommodation—“if else thou seekst / Aught, not surpassing human measure, say” (VII.639– 40)—produces the sense that the “affable Arch-Angel” (VII.41) is aware that something has gone awry in his narrative, even though he cannot pinpoint what precisely. The argument to book VIII confirms this anxiety: “Adam inquires concerning celestial Motions, is doubtfully answer’d, and exhorted to search rather things more worthy of knowledg.” Despite the discomfort Raphael’s narrative produces, it nonetheless struggles to assert its status as a true transcription of celestial reality and to bridge the epistemological gulf created by the ontological separation of heaven and earth: “God to remove his wayes from human sense, / Plac’d Heav’n from Earth so farr, that earthly sight, / If it presume, might erre in things too high” (VIII.119–21). While Raphael’s narrative produces a magnificent monist

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illusion, the poetry crafting this picture is far too clever to believe its own creation. The collision between what we are told to accept as representation and what we actually see happening to that image in the poetry cannot help but complicate the claim that the intelligible creations in Paradise Lost are material, and that God is too.49 D E P I C T I N G T H E D I V I N E : A C C O M M O D AT I O N I N D E D O C T R I N A CHRISTIANA AND PARADISE LOST

De Deo loquimur, quid mirum si non comprehendis? Si enim comprehendis, non est Deus. (We are talking about God, so why will you be surprised if you cannot grasp it? For if you can grasp it, it is not God.) —Augustine

Milton’s accommodated picture of God in book III of Paradise Lost is actually at odds with his practice of the technique in De Doctrina Christiana. In general, when it comes to accommodation, Milton is a minimalist, meaning that he prefers a literal to an allegorical interpretation of scripture. It follows that he thinks we should follow God’s scriptural representation and conceive of (but not imagine) God in a certain way: “He [God] has adjusted his word to our understanding, and has shown what kind of an idea of him he wishes us to have.”50 Yet this idea of accommodation—which takes place between image and concept, or concept and reality—does not settle definitively on one picture; rather, it invites alternatives. This produces in Milton, as in Augustine, the problem of receiving a “double picture” of God: one in which God is said to exist as he really is in scriptural representation; another in which the belief that God is incapable of delimitation is reinforced.51 This problem is not unique to Milton. Theodore Beza’s French pupil Daniel Chamier (1587–1624?) speaks of accommodation in equally troubled terms. Through an instance of modus tollens, he reduces scripture’s meaning to one, literal sense: “If there were many literal senses of the same passages, then God would not have used Scripture in a manner accommodated for human sense. But the latter is false!” (Si vnius eiusdemque loci plures sensus essent literales, non esset Deus vsus Scripturis accommodatè ad sensum humanum. At posterius falsum).52 Chamier’s point is that there cannot be many literal senses, and this is

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mainly owing to the fact that “the sign of the Divine conception is the human concept for us because God signified through it [namely, the accommodation]” (conceptus diuini signum est nobis conceptus humanus: quia Deus per istum significauit).53 In line with Chamier, the Milton of De Doctrina Christiana similarly asserts that God gives us a concept of himself in terms congenial to human understanding. If God is to have a touch of anthropopathism—that is, if we can ascribe human feelings to God—it is his doing, not ours, as Milton makes clear: “God . . . has disclosed just such an idea of himself to our understanding as he wishes us to possess.”54 But with rising anxiety Milton then adds, “We do not imply by this argument that God, in all his parts and members, is of human form, but that, so far as it concerns us to know, he has that form which he attributes to himself in Holy Writ” (italics added).55 Implicit in this exegetical principle, though, is a fundamental contradiction: Milton tells us that “we ought not to imagine that God would have said anything or caused anything to be written about Himself unless he introduced that it should be part of our conception of him.” This means that if God accommodates himself, we should not doubt him: “Let us ask for no more dependable authority than God himself.” So far, so reasonable. Yet there is a larger problem inherent in any accommodated picture, as Milton points out: if God “is not really like this, on what authority can we contradict God?” Apparently the answer is: “None.” And there’s the rub. While we are told we should believe that this scriptural presentation of God is God, the Miltonic refrain of “let us believe” (credamus) in “let us believe that he did feel grief ” and “let us believe that it is not beneath God to feel what grief he does feel” is marked by a headstrong determination that flags a problem: The accommodated picture remains distinct from what God truly is.56 A few pages earlier in De Doctrina Christiana, Milton warns us of as much, writing that “God, as He really is, is far beyond man’s imagination, let alone his understanding.”57 Presumably, then, the accommodated picture we are exhorted to believe is false (it is not the real God), since “God is always described or outlined not as he really is but in such a way as will make him conceivable to us” (italics added).58 As A. D. Nuttall has pointed out, the crux of the problem is that you cannot “invoke a sophisticated theory to commend simplicity and then forget that you

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were once sophisticated.”59 No accommodation is needed if the literal reading of God in scripture reveals the true God.60 But, for Milton, it evidently did not. The fact that Milton employs the accommodation theory in the first place suggests that his God is really other than what he presents himself to be. Perhaps we, along with Milton, have inherited from the Bible an analogical view of God (that is, if God is anthropomorphic, he is also accommodated). For this reason, Milton thinks we should not “be afraid of assigning to him something he assigns to himself, provided we believe that what is imperfect and weak in us, when ascribed to God, [is] utterly perfect and utterly beautiful” (italics added).61 Since (our) language is trapped within the confines of a phenomenal and finite world, analogy—and hence accommodation—appears to provide one way out.62 The difficulty is that while to render God “knowable” by analogy with, say, the term “father” is to avail oneself of the intelligibility of ordinary fatherhood, it certainly does not mean that God is simply turned into an ordinary father and so seen to be familiar or understandable.63 The fact of analogy, the distance it necessarily implies, must be kept in view (“it’s not this but analogous to this”), as Milton’s exasperated rhetorical question implies: “Who would claim that things which are analogous must correspond to each other in every respect?”64 Aristotle, writing on different kinds of metaphor and the transference between genus and species, or species and species, analyzes analogy and defines it so that where A is to B as C is to D, A is analogous to C (Poet. 21.1457b8–20). A ship, for example, is to sea as a horse is to land, so a ship is analogous to a horse (thereby giving the analogical metaphor “horse of the sea”). In his Metaphysics (Q.6.1048a37–1048b9), Aristotle discusses analogy in terms of the distinction between actuality and potentiality, concluding that “all things are not said in the same sense to exist actually, but only by analogy” (Metaph. Q.6.1048b6–9). Potentiality aside, superreality—or the transcendent—also appears to create problems because when one term is unknown, or even partly known, we cannot get the analogy going.65 No conclusion can follow from a four-term syllogism, as George Berkeley famously pointed out.66 Milton may have arrived at a similar conclusion through the assistance of Aquinas, who argued that terms must be used in the same mode: as we understand, so we speak.67 But Aquinas also makes the point that the addition of

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“unique” to terms predicated of God causes a (four-term) analogy to fall apart. This is largely owing to the fact that whenever we ascribe a quality to God, that quality is immediately conceived of differently because the term achieves perfection only in relation to God. As Augustine noted, “It is not easy, after all, to find any name that will really fit such transcendent majesty” (Non enim facile nomen quod tantæ excellentiæ conveniat potest inveniri).68 Aquinas’s thought is moving in the direction of Augustine’s and toward Berkeley’s powerful observation that we need to hold on to—and yet cannot do so—a nonanalogical (linguistic) referent. Even heuristic (analogical) metaphors now fail to compass an entirely new entity. Even so, Miltonists such as C. A. Patrides and Roland Frye have strenuously argued for Milton’s employment of the theory of accommodation in the poem as a means by which we come to “know God.” Their argument rests on the assumption that Milton’s language is “earthbound”—that terms like “wise” and “good” are not, as Berkeley pointed out, logically unique to God.69 According to these critics, Milton’s use of the terms applies equally to God and to us. The implicit supposition is that were we to reject such univocity, we would consign the exegetical tool of accommodation—and analogy in general—to the flames (as Berkeley eventually did). Oddly enough, Milton’s poetry moves in just this direction—toward the increasingly abstract—in which language accentuates the difference, not the sameness, of terms applied to God.70 De Doctrina Christiana thus gradually reveals a process of conceptualization through negation. Milton records that “when God is called immense or infinite or immortal, these are negative attributes.”71 In Latin, we would say that the Deus is immensus, infinitus, immortalis. Here, the Latin prefix im- (and also in-) reflects the Greek alpha privative, which removes a certain characteristic, such as definite measurement or color (note that privation does not necessarily lead to ultimate negation).72 In fact, as Aristotle observed at Metaphysics (G.II.1004a14–17), the privation performed by the im- or a< gestures at an underlying substrate (Cpokeimevnh ti~ fuvs i~). Our language, when applied to God, may discover its limitations, but it nonetheless gains some of its imaginative and heuristic force by resorting to fundamentally negative descriptions. Apophatic language, in other words, points to a God beneath the (visual) image—to a mysterious underlying substance, or CpokeAmenon.

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It is telling, therefore, that the “negative attributes” ascribed to God in De Doctrina Christiana return in Milton’s most apophatic description of God, in book III of Paradise Lost: Thee Father first they sung Omnipotent, Immutable, Immortal, Infinite, Eternal King; thee Author of all being, Fountain of Light, thy self invisible Amidst the glorious brightness where thou sit’st Thron’d inaccessible, but when thou shad’st The full blaze of thy beams, and through a cloud Drawn round about thee like a radiant Shrine, Dark with excessive bright thy skirts appeer, Yet dazle Heav’n, that brightest Seraphim Approach not, but with both wings veil thir eyes (III.372–82) Materiality and concreteness are gradually erased as the negative words (“immutable,” “immortal,” “infinite,” “invisible,” “inaccessible”) are piled up, one on top of another.73 This picture of God is fundamentally different from the earlier depictions of him in book III, mainly because God is here accommodating himself to the angels: “thou shad’st / The full blaze of thy beams” (III.377–78). Although God cloaks his brilliance in a cloud of darkness that is “excessive bright” (III.380), even the “brightest Seraphim” (III.381) have to shield their eyes. The God that accommodates himself to the angels is thus very different from the God that accommodates himself to our fallen minds by way of scripture.74 While in De Doctrina Christiana, Milton speaks of a God who “reveals himself to the sight of the angels and saints (insofar as they are capable of seeing him),” the fact that the angels are responsible for accommodating God in Paradise Lost suggests that full disclosure is impossible, as the angels’ reaction makes clear (III.381-82).75 The idea is that even when the poetry employs the via negativa to invert the principle of accommodation, the supposedly imageless, negative depiction of God remains too apprehensible for the divine essence. In response, the poetry offers a paradox meant to signal the inadequacy of language—even apophatic language—to describe God: “Dark with excessive bright” (III.380). No longer do we have accommodation meant to

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provide a receivable picture of God; rather, we are prompted to look beyond the given picture. Out there—Milton points through the narrative of Paradise Lost and that of scripture—is where the truly transcendent deity resides.76 By passing through these negatives and into paradox, the activities of conceiving and imagining are arrested and confounded; the slow explosion in the mind continues. The paradox of light and dark becomes representative of the paradox inherent in the act of describing Absolute Being (qua God) in terms of being (qua creature). The poetry also demonstrates that a (material) image which points to the immaterial is necessarily self-destructive. We momentarily sense that the (transcendent) unaccommodated God of Paradise Lost is reminiscent of Augustine’s God, who is “better known through not knowing” (scitur melius nesciendo).77 The technique itself now endorses the Neoplatonist Porphyry’s maxim that “on the subject of that which is beyond Intellect, many statements are made on the basis of intellection, but it may be immediately cognized only by means of a nonintellection [literally: the unknowing] superior to intellection” (peri; tou` ejpevkeina tou` nou` kata; me;n novhsin polla; levgetai, qewrei`tai de; ajnohsivaÊ kreivttoni nohvsew~).78 As soon, then, as Milton claims to accept and depict an accommodated God, his poetry appears to reject the refiguration. The move mirrors the unintentional regression to an admitted transcendence which we observed earlier in De Doctrina Christiana. The challenge to visualize God in terms of some sort of pictorial representation is doomed to fall short. When we listen to Milton’s description of his accommodated God in narrative—“From the pure Empyrean where he sits / High Thron’d above all highth, bent down his eye, / His own works and their works at once to view” (III.57–59)—we hear echoes of Torquato Tasso’s description of God in the Gerusalemme Liberata (ix.55): “Cosí si combatteva, e ’l sangue in rivi / Correa egualme[n]te in questo lato e in quello. / Gli occhi fra tanto a la battaglia rea / Dal suo gran seggio il Re del Ciel volgea” (So they were fighting, and the blood ran in streams on this side and that equally. From his mighty throne, the King of Heaven turned his eyes amongst the sad carnage).79 The similarities are very traditional. As in scriptural representation, Tasso’s God watches the human fray below with the same partiality ascribed to Homer’s gods and to Virgil’s Jupiter. But Tasso desperately tries

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to set his Christian God apart from the gods of classical antiquity. Like Milton after him, Tasso grapples with the difficulty of writing a poem that exceeds its restrictive theology. In inheriting Tasso’s challenge of describing an indescribable God, Milton strove to succeed where his Italian precursor had failed. But Milton would have seen that while Tasso’s poetry accepted a God captured within narrative, Dante, in admitting the inadequacy of the image, became the stronger poet: Così parlar conviensi al vostro ingegno, però che solo de sensato apprende ciò che a poscio d’ intelletto degno. Per questo la Scrittura condescende a vostra facultate, a piedi e mano attribuisce a Dio, ed altro intende (It is necessary to speak thus to your faculty, since only from sense perception it grasps that which it then makes fit for the intellect. For this reason Scripture condescends to your capacity and attributes hand and feet to God, having another meaning.) (Dante, Paradiso iv.41–45; italics added)80 We can well imagine Dante’s “altro intende” (having another meaning) lingering in Milton’s mind. In altering the aim of the exegetical principle of accommodation so that it no longer leads to description or explanation, Dante is able to assist the activity of exploring (however inadequately) notions of what the deity is like. Milton, who appears to have learned much from Dante’s depiction of God, creates an even more complex technique. Within the narrative of Paradise Lost, the image of Milton’s God asserts the full reality of both tenor and vehicle as figura. In allegoria, the represented image is feigned, but in figura, as Erich Auerbach understood it, the representing image has its own (secondary) reality.81 By Milton’s schizoid logic of accommodation (in which “God is this” and, simultaneously, “God is not this”), the reality of the accommodated God—so concretely presented—may be fully asserted before being subverted once more. Through the dialectic created by these apophatic and cataphatic descriptions of God, Milton creates the effect of moving us through the image itself, toward a greater meaning and a more mysterious thing.

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As Milton strains to remove the picture-making power of the imagination from his theory of accommodation, he implicitly moves toward the Thomist point that while we can conceive, or operate with mentally and mathematically, a figure having an infinite number of sides, our imagination is incapable of doing so. Glanvill, who employed the Aquinas-Cudworth distinction between conceptualization and imagination, followed this idea up by making the point that right reason argues, ex hypothesi, for a greater thing than that which it conceives: “[For we] never had them [inferences] from any material power but from something more sublime and excellent.”82 Glanvill exposes, as it were, the philosophical sophistication Milton attempts to forget in the accommodation theory of De Doctrina Christiana: namely, that our immaterial ideas, so divorced from the material or sensory, require an activity equal to, if not greater than, their product, the ideas themselves. In the same vein, Seth Ward (1617–89), Fellow of the Royal Society, argued that “a corporeall thing can neither be the Idea of an incorporeall being, neither can an incorporeall, immateriall be subjected in a materiall or corporeall.” Within a theory about the metaphysics of representation, this idea—in which a cause is said to contain within it its effect—leads to the notion that the (material) image of God necessarily draws attention to its greater (immaterial) conception. If we are given an accommodated, literalist picture of God—what Calvin scathingly dubbed an “insipid fiction”—the image’s very inadequacy must imply, simpliciter, that God is something else: a mysterious force pulsing in the distance. God, as Milton reminds us, “has revealed only so much of himself as our minds can conceive and the weakness of our nature can bear.”83 In its attempts at accommodation, Milton’s poetic practice thus ends up preserving a latent dualism in the epic.84 What is brought to light by way of implication in the theological treatise is consciously invoked in the poem, and the unaccommodated, intimated God exceeds the restrictions imposed on the accommodated (more materialist) representation of the “Almightie Father” who “sits / Shrin’d in his Sanctuarie of Heav’n secure” (VI.671–72). As the figura of God and the true God clash, the invisible God behind the accommodated version “blaze[s] forth” (X.65), so that the God behind the picture proves himself to be the true God, as Tertullian demanded.85 In the phrases “thron’d inaccessible” (III.377) and shading “the full blaze of thy beams” (III.378), Milton’s God reveals

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that he is accommodating himself only visually; conceptually, he remains beyond comprehension: “Dark with excessive bright thy skirts appeer / Yet dazle Heav’n” (III.380–81). Milton probably derived this last, apophatic line (III.380) from Bishop Gregory of Nyssa, who appears to have invented the oxymoronic term “bright darkness” (lampro;~ gnovfo~) or “divine darkness” (qei`o~ gnovfo~).86 The appearance of Gregory’s paradox marks out the moment at which even apophatic logic implodes. The poetry now seems to dramatize Aquinas’s observation that Augustine was correct to say that spiritual things are not “light” in the “proper meaning” but only “according to the meaning of manifestation.” That is, the divine may be understood in terms of transference by metaphor (itself a word that means “to carry to another place,” as derived from the Greek preposition, meta [across], and fevrein [to carry]).87 The paradox of a “dazzling darkness” in Milton galvanizes the imagination into this act of transference but simultaneously moves beyond it. The image produced—of light and darkness—is rejected in favor of the thing it is trying to depict, but which nevertheless remains too great to be depicted. The result is the paradox’s mindboggling imagery. Although Milton’ poetry creates the illusion that we can apprehend God by the simple application of negative prefixes, even apophasis proves to be too comfortable for Milton.88 The placid accommodation of the deity, either through apophatic or cataphatic methods, is finally rejected by Milton’s linguistic practice. This rejection may owe something to theological discussions over the proper use of negation in the context of God. According to the neoArians, the alpha privative in ajgevnnhto~ proved, linguistically, that God was “not begotten” (while the Son was). As a protonominalist or, at least, a linguistic positivist, the Arian Eunomius (d. c. 393 AD) thus subscribed to the idea that names are integral with reality (kata; fuvs in). Following the Aristotelian idea that names are artificial and lack connections to the essence of the thing named, orthodox theologians—such as the so-called Christian Demosthenes, Gregory Nazianzen (330–90 AD); Basil, bishop of Caesarea (b. c. 329–79 AD); and Gregory of Nyssa—all rejected Eunomius’s linguistic proof.89 Milton, who subscribed to the main Arian tenet that God and the Son are of different essences, nonetheless rejected Eunomius’s linguistic proof of Arianism. After invoking Urania as an unknowable presence—“Descend from Heav’n Urania, by that

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name / If rightly thou art call’d” (VII.1–2)—Milton proceeds to acknowledge, in a powerful, revisory moment, that Urania’s name and essence, along with her “Voice divine” (VII.2), are nonisomorphic: “The meaning, not the Name I call” (VII.5). The separation between creature and Creator, which Gregory of Nyssa claimed was expressed in an unbridgeable gap or interval (diavsthma), is now transposed on to language by Milton.90 This metaphysically driven separation between word and essence is further confirmed by the imagery used to depict the Son’s relationship to the Father. Quoting Gregory of Nazianzen, “Sermo; audibilis ergo: at Deus, ut invisibilis est, ita est inaudibilis” (The Word: thus [is] audible; but God, as he is invisible, is thus inaudible), Milton makes a clear distinction between the Son and God the Father.91 The Son, who is made material through cataphatic terms and is thus separate from the arid, accommodated picture of God the Father, stands in even starker contrast to the invisible God’s immaterial existence. The petulant tone Milton adopts in his comments on Isaiah testifies to his belief that God is incapable of description and hence of visualization: “I repeat, it was not God himself that he saw, but perhaps one of the angels clothed in some modification of the divine glory, or the Son of God himself, the image of the glory of his Father.”92 Like the Arian Eunomius, then, Milton subscribes to the idea that God exceeds our powers of imagination as well as our positive methods of conception. Yet just when we think Milton is ready to accept completely the via negativa (as Eunomius did), we encounter his telling addition in his invocation to Urania: “if rightly thou art call’d” (VII.2). The hesitation betrays the conviction that there must exist an ontological gulf between the uJpovstasi~ (“standing under,” or substance) and the name of the thing created by the fiction-making faculty (ejpivnoia, or “inventiveness”).93 As the breach between names and things widens, the poetry demonstrates that even apophatic theology ends up essaying a superreality by an image of the imageless. But this, too, falls prey to a certain degree of mediation by concepts and implicit analogy. As the shortcomings of the via negativa and the via analogiae are exposed in Milton’s two versions of accommodation, the literary representation that is shown to be necessarily different from the thing seeking representation pushes us toward accepting a God that is now beyond all language.94

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Silence, we remember, was the final retreat of Maimonides, PseudoDionysius, and even Augustine.95 Nonetheless the urge or wish to talk about God persists. The anxiety lives on in Milton’s invocation to Light at the beginning of book III in his question, “May I express thee unblam’d?” (III.3). In drawing out the Greek etymology of “blame”— blasfhmiva (meaning “profane language,” “evil-speaking”)—Milton reveals his fear that his conception of God as Light is already blasphemous.96 Light is the “bright effluence” (III.6), or material emanation, from God, but it is also the immaterial thing: God himself (III.3). As Milton gropes, all too blindly, toward the poetic illumination he saw as the compensation for his blindness, his apparent confusion between material light and the immaterial-light-as-God explodes. Running alongside Milton’s accommodated picture of God is, therefore, a semiapophatic description of God that rejects any definitive (materialist) representation.97 Milton thus appears to be in agreement with Plato’s belief that people, having deficient intelligences, cannot conceive of transcendentals but only of the things that partake of them (Resp. 476C; 378D). The implication is that while we cannot have a conception of the true God, we are nonetheless able to see him in fits and starts through accommodated pictures (cataphatic and apophatic) as well as by the effects of his actions (as Maimonides had claimed).98 Milton, who is careful not to precipitate us into a discourse of mere negations, thus gestures toward a darkness of an epinyctal, or nighttime, sun. His picture of God in Paradise Lost is drawn partly through the technique of accommodation and partly by the darkness such a principle, complete with its omissions and occlusions, creates. When Satan beholds heaven’s overpowering beams of light that push the margin of darkness back so that the “bounds . . . set / To darkness” (III.538–39) become otiose, he observes a light and trespassing darkness that are both part of the accommodated vision of God. The paradox this produces propels us through the (material) accommodation and deeper into the mystery. R E A S S E S S I N G M I LT O N ’ S P O E T I C P R A C T I C E : A C C O M M O D AT I O N AND ANALOGY IN PARADISE LOST

In his attempt to yoke the phenomenal and the transcendental worlds through metaphysical imagery, Milton arrives at a notion of analogy that resembles Owen Barfield’s idea that, before language demarcated, there

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existed a rich array of analogical terms. This predemarcational linguistic openness is perhaps better fitted to deal with the unknowable essence of God than with the crystallized semiology of language in its later phase. C. S. Lewis held that a man who has never seen the sea may think of a ship in terms of metaphors—“sea-stallions, winged logs, wave riders, ocean trains”—and thereby gain an imperfect knowledge of ships.99 Lewis might argue that the Greek word nau`~ is quite different from the word “ship” because nau`~ conjures a dark shape climbing the waves. But Barfield would not agree: he might say that were he to show Aristotle a current ocean liner, Aristotle would call it a nau`~ because the Greek word has the ability to stretch, to encompass this new input.100 In a similar vein, Skulsky argues that we see things in terms of the image: “image becomes term.”101 By this argument, the word nau`~ could cover both Greek ships and steamships; the meaning and the analogical potential (image) are present prior to the later, more constricted usage. So, when we speak of Jason’s Argo, we will call it his ship because we now intend that the dark shape riding the waves is not just a Greek vessel but also automatically analogous to a modern vessel. The fact that we can do this with so little discomfort suggests that, pace Lewis, “ship” is still a fairly elastic term. The Barfieldian emphasis on unacknowledged metaphors lurking in our current usage—so derived from an earlier, primary receptiveness to analogy—helps explain why the poetry of Paradise Lost, with its dynamically open theology, is distinct from and more alive than the prose theology of De Doctrina Christiana. To understand metaphor through live use thereof is to know that the image—even when already negative— is other than (and often less than) what it images. In gesturing toward a God approached by indirections, the poem gives high status and power to analogy. But it is this point that Berkeley hits so hard: perhaps even the richly exploratory, hinting method of Paradise Lost is dependent on a succession of analogies—all of which must ultimately fail. In answer to this (otherwise) leveling claim, I return to the effect of paradox in Milton’s poetry. Paradise Lost, which is marked by its energy of mind and intense criticisms of easy philosophic structures and formulas, is naturally image producing. While analogy may seem to fall short philosophically, the poetry continues to argue for it. In so doing, it moves us from the material to the immaterial through metaphor—through acts of transference (metaforav). The rigorous use of this analogical, or

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metaphorical, mode of thinking thus serves to remind us of the elasticity inherent in language and suggests that both materialism and the idea of a wholly literal language are summarily refuted. In that this applies to anything written with poetic strength or to anything that falls into it, inert, material, crystallized terms are continuously rejected. By dissolving one picture in the negative vein of Maimonides and Pseudo-Dionysius and by attempting to find a language fit to describe the thing (God), the process is itself (forever?) chasing metaphorical thinking; it attempts to get us outside human language even while speaking within it. The exegetical principle of accommodation as used by Milton is an example of precisely this practice—of stretching language and its use—and thus reminds us how language, from its inception, is open to analogies that have the potential to succeed. Heuristic analogy, in other words, staves off the failure implicit in simple analogy. As Dorothy Emmet remarked, in the jump from the empirical to a total impression, there is no proof—only the expression of it in metaphor or analogy.102 Still, to all this there yet remains the physicalist’s objection that language has an operational dimension, so that actions and operations run ahead of literal language. One could argue, therefore, that the doing of religion (such as kneeling, liturgy, etc.) is prior to speaking—to language. While this argument leads to some (wholly bizarre) presumptions that would be untenable to Milton—especially since the emphasis on outward show is reminiscent of the Laudian conformity that the mature Milton rejected—it nonetheless must be conceded that the agency of religion might work if it is prior to language: that is, if it gestures toward a Being—prendre un peu—which language limps after. When placed in a literary context, this idea has interesting implications. The very twists and turns of the principle of accommodation in Paradise Lost may be conceived of as heuristic analogy—as the acts within poetry that build up a running conception of God that language itself is unable to hold, contain, or delimit. If we are to say that God is not a being in the same way that we are, then there must be some relational context—some “carry-over meaning” of thought. The difficulty is that this context must itself be “transcategorical.”103 As G. E. L. Owen said of Aristotle’s understanding of the concept of a word, language’s “scope and power are to be understood by use and not by definition.”104 What begins in belief finally engenders transcendental terms that,

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although logically shrunk to fit our world, are still regarded by metaphor and analogy as being outside it. In staking a claim that language may adumbrate concepts yet unknown to us, Milton’s poetry holds on to the mystery of God and simultaneously protects it against the Berkeleian critique, in which resolution is achieved only in univocity.105 Along with Sir Isaac Newton (1642–1727), who also was no intractable literalist, Milton therefore agrees that the technique of accommodation is neither “philosophical nor feigned.”106 In highlighting language’s abject failure, logically speaking, to define ontic realities through analogy, Milton demonstrates that analogical language evolves and gains force when our understanding of such terms is deepened by way of an engagement with their intended (and hence metaphorical) concepts. Meaning itself may defy definition (as does God), but the tenor still needs its vehicle. A Platonic register is discernible in this dialectical tension: we need something outside our own perspective to reveal to us that which we are seeking; otherwise, the inquiry would be circular and self-defeating.107 Language as a picture-making process or poetry as a purely image-making enterprise fails when we try to force it into handing over logically given ontologies. Our world, so disastrously dualistic, defies complete logical coherence, as does our language. The result is that poetry must learn to speak “double.”108 By pointing beyond its linguistic worldly signifiers, metaphor in Milton leads us toward the revelation expressed by Borges’s “yellow rose,” in which the addition made to the world is no longer a representation of reality but is itself an intimation of it. It follows that the seeming confusion in Milton’s poetry between God and light, or God and sun, transforms a two-dimensional, almost medieval, accommodated picture of God into a Caravaggesque or Zurbaránesque masterpiece of chiaroscuro. The God we glimpse in Paradise Lost in those eleven lines of book III (III.372–82) blows apart the accommodated picture, but even that apophatic picture is eventually rejected through paradox. In shattering both cataphatic and apophatic visions of God, the transcendent intrudes and retreats in Paradise Lost, but Milton’s imagery registers the blow that language fails to record. The entire method is profoundly metaphorical—not to mention metaphysical. The result is that the materialization of substance that critics have so far detected in Milton’s poetry may, in fact, owe less to his metaphysics

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than to his poetic practice. Writing in his own blindness, “In darkness, and with dangers compast round, / And solitude” (VII.27–28), Milton’s technique of accommodation appears to have helped him arrive at the difficult truth described by Dionysius the Areopagite: namely, that “material lights are images of the outpouring of an immaterial gift of light.”109 Such an inner act of illumination, like Milton’s poetry, needed a darkness to be set against, the tenebrae his gutta serena imposed. In order to leave behind our world of materiality and to write God back into his poem more successfully than Tasso had done in the Gerusalemme Liberata, Milton closed his eyes to see. His description of heaven and God in Paradise Lost challenges us to do the same.

chapter seven

Prime Matter, Subject of Chaos

And disinherit Chaos, that reigns here In double night of darkness, and of shades —Comus 334–35

if the god of P A R A D I S E L O S T exceeds material representation, it appears that Chaos does not. Milton’s depiction of prime matter is fraught with tension. While this may be owing to the philosophic problems Milton creates through his philosophic accounts of prime matter, it also owes something to the problems in representation that Milton necessarily encountered when he attempted to place the unapprehensible into poetry. Much may be gained, therefore, in analyzing the way Milton’s allegorical figuration of Chaos attains to something approaching a philosophical and theological understanding of prime matter (first discussed in chapter 2). Milton’s poetry appears to present two conflicting metaphysical accounts of prime matter in Paradise Lost: the Aristotelian and the Lucretian. As these two vie for control, the depiction of the abyss as straightforwardly material increasingly encounters difficulties. With the Lucretian account in the ascendant, we would expect the materializing tendencies of the allegory to increase. While this may be true in terms of the superficial materialization performed by the allegorical representation of Chaos, Milton’s metaphysic actually moves in the opposite direction. The Lucretian particulate is revealed to be flooded with the unknown immateriality of Night. Yet the introduction of this second allegorical figure adds yet another layer of complexity: as Night clothes itself with a moral texture, it 231

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emerges, rather counterintuitively, as strangely materialized. At this point, Milton’s poetic method acts as a form of positive interference that brings about an aesthetic recuperation of a metaphysic troubled by different descriptions of what prima materia might be. While the ideas about occult powers and imaginary space with which Milton’s allegorical figurations of Chaos and Night engage would be considered philosophic embarrassments to a monist materialist reading of the epic, they are, in my reading, intellectually dynamic and aesthetically enriching. CHAOS IS COME AGAIN

When Sin throws wide the portals of Hell, we behold Satan peering into a vast abyss, “a dark / Illimitable Ocean without bound, / Without dimension, where length, breadth, & highth, / And time and place are lost” (PL II.891–94). Leonard suggests that this passage is actually a description of Night: “Night is a ‘thing’ in accordance with the atomists’ theory that the void, though unreal, exists.”1 In the apparent and simple contradiction in the conjunction of the terms “unreal” and “exists” perhaps Leonard is saying that, though substanceless, the void exists. If so, his language reflects those Greek paradoxes like to; mh; ojn, oujk ejstin (the not-being that is not) that refuse simplification, just as Milton’s Chaos does.2 In general accord with the line taken by Leonard, Milton’s Chaos may be read as an elaborate attempt to domesticate, in poetic terms, the far more dangerous notion of an “unessential Night” (II.439). We would do well to heed Richardson’s warning that “unessential Night” is something that “ought to be Carefully Attended to.”3 Through a process of contradistinction from our ordinary notion of thingness, it appears that Milton depicts Chaos and Night as counterthings. The topothesia of the void, so given in material terms or images, is now seen to conceal a darker power within it: Night. This, at least, is what the argument to book I implies when it states, “Which action past over, the Poem hastens into the midst of things, presenting Satan with his Angels now fallen into Hell, describ’d here, not in the Center (for Heaven and Earth may be suppos’d as yet not made, certainly not yet accurst) but in a place of utter darkness, fitliest call’d Chaos.” Standing at the edge of this “dark / Illimitable Ocean” (II.891–92), Satan is confronted by an unconfined darkness that is at once a materially conceived place qua Chaos and also an immaterial uncreated space qua Night. (The

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nonce term “unoriginal Night” at 477 appears to be a reworking of that part of the Greek paradox that speaks for the “nothing that is.”)4 Of course, an Aristotelian, thinking about this description, could argue that, strictly speaking, such an “ocean” does exist: it is formed (that is, it has surface tension, etc). He might then add that this is why we are able to conceive of it, name it, and talk about it. Yet the word “illimitable” (II.892) works against this idea. Definite three-dimensional measurements are lost (II.893–94). When Aristotle removed all properties from a particular thing, he sought to arrive at a definition of prima materia but rapidly discovered that it was an unknown eluding all materialization, including that of language. Plato’s idea that we know prime matter only through a sort of “bastard reasoning” (logismov~ novqo~) was applied by Simplicius to Aristotle’s text, so that Aristotle’s phrase kat’ ajnalogian (by analogy) was equated with the Platonic description of sense-based intellection.5 But where Aristotle resorted to analogy to describe prime matter, Milton turned to allegory. In purporting to materialize the surface figure of Chaos, Milton’s allegory also claims to domesticate Night. Given that prime matter is not yet material—that is, in possession of properties—this materialization is only superficial. The physical place “where eldest Night, / And Chaos, Ancestors of Nature, hold / Eternal Anarchie” (II.894–96) gradually dematerializes before our eyes. Chaos is an active realm of conflict and contrariety (“hold . . . Anarchie” is an obvious oxymoron). It is not, as it would be in a simple Aristotelian framework, pure potentiality. When, in De Doctrina Christiana, Milton discards the idea of God as an “Actus Purus” and claims instead that God can act or not act whenever he likes, he rejects the Aristotelian claim that actuality is more fundamental than potentiality. Aristotle argued that the eternal participates in what is fundamental, so that no potentiality could be associated with eternity itself. The effect was to make evil inhere in particulars alone. But Milton rejects this “soft” version of theodicy, as he makes clear in the opening lines of Paradise Lost.6 It is a far more audacious and difficult task to justify (“to men”) an object that is completely transcendent (“wayes of God”) than it is to “justify” something that has already been placed within our world (“actions” or “wayes of God to men”).7 So located beyond the phenomenal world, Chaos and Night are difficult objects because they might be part of the “wayes of God” (I.26), instances of a primary je ne sais quois.8

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In his prose, Milton smoothes over the problem by simply writing that prime matter is a “passive principle dependent upon God and subservient to him.”9 But as the poetry elides this distinction between a God not defined by act and matter-as-potentiality, prima materia becomes an ontological something that, although less than a concrete thing, is nevertheless much more than a straightforward privation. In depicting Chaos this way, Milton may have hoped to domesticate the more troublesome figure of Night. Yet he rapidly discovered that he then needed to replicate this process and personify Chaos until it, too, became a comfortably imaginable entity. The very process of iteration suggests that Chaos and Night resist this process and remain unmanageable, unknown entities. The difficulty this presents, though, is that if allegory falls short of bringing Chaos and Night under control, the coveted epithet “Eternal”— on which so much of the theodicy is based—may attach itself to disturbingly darker entities (II.896; III.18), which may or may not be associated with God.10 The suggestion is that Milton’s metaphysic as well as his poetic method counteracts, in complicated ways, the materializing tendencies otherwise attributed to the allegorical figure of Chaos. CONFLICT IN CHAOS: ARISTOTELIAN VERSUS LUCRETIAN A C C O U N T S O F P R I M A M AT E R I A

Although prime matter in Milton adheres for the most part to an Aristotelian metaphysic, he makes significant modifications to this picture (as we saw in chapter 2). Nowhere is this effect more in evidence than when Satan, perched on the brink of Hell, becomes spellbound by the metaphysical war he views: “for hot, cold, moist, and dry, four Champions fierce / Strive here for Maistrie, and to Battel bring / Thir embryon Atoms” (II.898–900).11 The locution is strange: the Aristotelian simples of fire, air, water, and earth are not themselves present, but their smaller particulate, or “four Champions,” with their troops of “embryon Atoms,” are. The word “embryon,” so derived from the Greek word Gmbruon (from a root meaning “to swell or grow”), is loosely equated with the “fruit of the womb.” True to its etymology, the word in Milton looks forward to generation and creation, the implication being that this particulate no longer deals with matter but with something prior to matter. Commenting on this passage, John Rumrich finds two notions of substance—

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“that which underlies being as we know it and . . . the finite phenomena that we in fact know”—which strongly suggests that the former is a substance distinct from the material.12 The idea is reinforced by the crucial appearance “embryon” makes in Milton’s Limbo of Vanity (III.442–98), his parody of Ludovico Ariosto’s “Moon of Lost Wits.”13 Milton scatters “Embryo’s and Idiots, Eremits and Friers / White, Black and Grey, with all thir trumperie” (III.474–75) in different directions: “All th’ unaccomplisht works of Natures hand, / Abortive, monstrous, or unkindly mixt, / Dissolvd on Earth, fleet hither, and in vain, / Till final dissolution, wander here” (III.455–58). The idea of eternal, unformed confusion is different from that of matter as “pre-thinghood.” As the turbulence of Chaos is developed in a kind of jolly, satirical, and surrealist adynaton, the falling sequence (“dissolvd . . . dissolution”) describes a progressive return to first matter that belongs not so much to the womb as to the grave. Just as Spenser has Orgoglio’s substance shoot out into a dizzying nothingness much like a popped balloon (FQ I.viii.24.7–8), so, too, are Milton’s friars and monks propelled by taunting winds into the farthest reaches of space.14 Time feels as though it is running backward, as Pope darkly remembered in the Dunciad: “CHAOS! is restor’d; / Light dies before thy uncreating word” (iv.653–54).15 Milton’s ebullient description of these Carmelite, Dominican, Franciscan, and Augustinian friars who are made “the sport of the Winds” (III.493) pushes them back to a confused, embryonic state, where they are reduced to mere iconographic elements.16 The “Cowles, Hoods and Habits with thir wearers tost” are shrunk to synecdochic representations as “Raggs, then Reliques, Beads, / Indulgences, Dispenses, Pardons, Bulls” (III.490–92). Here we enter the “anti-clerical satire” of Geoffrey Chaucer, the “anti-fraternal attack” of the Wycliffite tradition, and the world of “antiprelatical complaints” characteristic of Spenser’s Shepheardes Calender.17 As Milton’s “Paradise of Fools” (III.496) thickens with shapes, the murky universe of unstable imagery is expressed linguistically in Milton’s deployment of amplificatio: “upwhirld aloft” (III.493), after all, is a moment of lexical overbuilding. The antic sentences with their plunging movements grossly parody assumptionalism, the difference being that now these figures are taken by winds to the “backside of the World farr off ” (III.494) and not to heaven. With the rare (and informal) second person

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apostrophe, “then might ye see” (III.489), the urbane levity of the satire attempts to make the reader complicit in the gleeful destruction Milton envisions. The verse grows more grotesque, but, as it does, the triviality— exuberant on the surface—is wholly absent from the center. This is a consciously dark rewriting of Ariosto. Nuttall has shown that adynaton has been used from ancient times in two ways: to diagnose comic confusion and to describe in apocalyptic terms the beginning or end of the world.18 The Gothic apparatus, even when satirically employed, may be trivial, pasteboard stuff, but the move into Gothicness is, meanwhile, frightening. In the whirling Protestant pasquinade of lost friars cast away as embryos or undeveloped, aborted natures, Milton’s poetry attains to a strange simultaneous status: true epic, true satire.19 As the merry-sounding satire in the Limbo of Vanity extends a poetic confusion from word to trope, embryons breed confusion. While this satiric adynaton may lead to the conjunction of Chaos with the embryonic and lead to a meltdown of the elemental, the hexameral material of book II—which describes primordial confusion and final dissolution—triggers an adynaton with irrefutably darker and more apocalyptic overtones. This overall effect is then made more forceful by the grainy texture of the thought in book II. The first thing we notice is that we are dealing not with things returning to nothingness or confusion but with things rising out of it—of “Bringing hid Noughts into existencie, / Or sleeping Somethings into wide day-light,” as Henry More sings in his Song of the Soul.20 Milton’s Chaos is a world of prethings and is thus profoundly metaphysical. The yet-unborn atoms of the four contraries are whirled around “in thir several Clanns / Light-arm’d or heavy, sharp, smooth, swift or slow” (II.901–02). The action recalls Ovid’s description of how, before particular bodies are differentiated, an internal war of contraries rages (Met. i.19). The French Huguenot poet Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas (1544–90) drew on Ovid for his account of Creation: “where hot and colde were iarring each with either; / The blunt with sharp, the dank against the drie.”21 But Milton parses these Ovidian “bodies” even further, thereby reducing Du Bartas’s “elements” to bits of particulate matter. In asking us to conceive of “embryon” matter in which atoms have yet to be born, Milton depicts “neither Sea, nor Shore, nor Air, nor Fire, / But all these in thir pregnant causes mixt / Confusdly” (II.912–14).

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Most likely remembering this picture of Chaos, Pope writes, “Here she beholds the Chaos dark and deep, / Where nameless Somethings in their causes sleep” (Dunciad i.55–56). Pope’s allusion to Milton underscores the sense we have that Milton’s Chaos is depicting a metaphysical war in which conceptual realities grow stronger. Although spoken of in material terms, this conflict is actually a quasi-abstraction. When Thomas Carew writes, “For in your beauties orient deepe / These flowers as in their causes, sleepe,” he makes the point that such a prior cause is not as fully an abstraction as, say, redness is.22 In the phrase “pregnant causes” (II.913), Milton puns on the embryonic growth described and also asks us to reconsider the semimaterial, semispiritual status of prima materia. From one perspective, Milton’s prime matter seems less Aristotelian and more Lucretian (DRN i.518–19, 790–01). Like the “all” in Milton’s cosmos, Lucretian atoms are not created ex nihilo but are themselves made up of a “solid singleness that is a close-packed mass of minimal parts” (solida primordia simplicitate, / quae minimis stipata cohaerent partibus arte; DRN i.609–10). Milton’s clans, with their different shapes and texture, sound like Lucretian atoms that have hooks and curved points to fasten to one another (DRN ii.426–30, 442–46).23 But whereas Lucretius chose to describe the movement of his atoms as wandering (“vagantur”; DRN ii.83, 109) like motes in a sunbeam (DRN ii.112–24), Milton’s warring factions are embroiled “by [a] decision” (II.908) that the allegorical figure of Chaos—himself the “Umpire” (II.907)—makes and just as quickly unmakes. Any attempt by Chaos at a kind of soft determinism is antithetical to his nature. The question slowly arising is how Milton accounts for movement in Chaos at all. The atomic “swerve” in Lucretius is often read as an expression of free will at the macro level, even though it is left unexplained. There is a refluent movement in Lucretius’s philosophy since, instead of phenomena explained in terms of the material substrate, we now encounter a movement in the substrate dictated from above. Chaos’s momentary acts of arbitration are distinctly un-Lucretian: “Chance governs all” (II.910). Leonard, who has written on Chance as the “high Arbiter” (II.909), says it “evokes freedom [arbitrium] in order to exclude it.”24 Necessity, now denied an active and defining agency, leads to the complete demechanization of the universe, thereby producing a bizarre wraparound effect in which complete freedom (which is wholly prerational) returns in the

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form of complete determinism or tyranny of action. On either side—be it chance or necessity—choice is annihilated.25 Freedom collapses into randomness.26 Although each “champion” of the Aristotelian four simples rallies his offspring “embryon Atoms” around “the flag / Of each his Faction” (II.900–901), the “champion” is obviously more rudimentary than the element it will compose. This “stuff ” in Milton is less than the Lucretian atoms, as Zachary Pearce (1690–1774) emphasized when he defended Milton’s use of the term “embryon” against Richard Bentley’s (1662– 1742) criticisms: “Next the Dr. objects to the sense of the words Embryon Atoms, which (he says) must be Infant Atoms, yet unborn of their Mother Atoms. But these Atoms may be called Embryon, because they are in their unborn state (as it were), being yet not form’d or shap’d into substance.”27 What Bentley thought were “infant” atoms, Pearce moves farther back in the gestating process. The parenthetical “as it were” qualifies an “unborn state,” thereby underscoring that the atomic particulate, although present, is imperceptible. Milton, it seems, has presented us with a picture of preatomic “matter.” Pearce’s note on Milton and even Bentley’s subsequent criticism of it (at II.900) thus resonate with the Lucretian notion of “minimae partes” (minimal parts are below the level of the atom).28 Like Aristotle’s prime matter, this minimatter “cannot exist apart by itself nor will have force to do so, since it is essentially a part of something else” (DRN i.602–04): namely, the “naturam corporis” (nature of the atom). These “parvissima corpora,” or “smallest bodies” (DRN i.615–16), are so packed together that they make up the immutable “semina rerum” (seeds of things) that compose atoms and, by extension, sensible matter (DRN i.59–61). This enlivening idea of “minima naturalia” did not die with the ancients.29 While Lucretius attempted to prepare his reader’s mind for understanding the infinitely small particulate through an analogy in which he is asked to imagine the infinitesimally small organs of insects (DRN iv.116–22), seventeenth-century natural philosophers rushed to their microscopes and mathematical charts for actual scientific evidence to this effect.30 The German physician Daniel Sennert (1572–1637), for instance, opined about “minima naturae” in a manner reminiscent of Lucretius’s description of “parvissima corpora”: “Thus prime matter in itself has no definite or specific form by birth; nevertheless it is capable

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of receiving all forms” (Ita Materia prima in se nullam definitam & specificam naturalem formam habet; apta tamen est omnes recipere). To become a form-receiving material, prime matter, Sennert thought, must come together in conglomerates, or “prima mixta.”31 A rather crotchety John Beale, F.R.S. (bap. 1608–d. 1683), who as an early reader of Milton found “great faults” in Paradise Lost, decried atomist philosophy in a letter to Samuel Hartlib (c. 1600–62).32 Beale complained that “discourses of separate substances, first matter, or atoms, or purest air or spirit, and mo[s]t of all when they fall upon God’s incomprehensible attributes of immensity” were “so far from demonstrations & philosophical or theological aphorisms that I cannot acquit them from shallowness, presumption, and indeed prophanation.” The feeling was then further confirmed by anecdotal evidence: “I remember Mr. Hales [John Hale] told me that much study in the mathematicks would tempt a man, that stood engaged to give [a] full account of the foundation of the Christian Religion. For, saith he, the authentical portions of the Holy Text, and many mysteries will not come under the clearness of mathematical demonstrations.”33 The influence of the irenicist John Hale (1584–1656), who had been Beale’s personal master at Eton College (beginning in 1622), contributed in all likelihood to Beale’s final rejection of his earlier Calvinism. It may be also for this reason that Beale later turned against mathematics. Grotius, whose portrait hung in Hale’s study, wrote against Rivetus for seeking Euclidean certainty in theological doctrines. Against Rivetus, the Grotius of the 1640s argued that it was impossible to have such certainty when one could dispute the meaning of words in different renditions of the Bible. As a result, Grotius became the champion for the argument of biblical interpretation in line with custom and continuity.34 Beale followed suit. Beale, like Grotius, wanted historical proofs and thus renounced mathematical certainty, and this extended to his natural philosophy, which was empiricist. The result was that Beale appears to have deplored the application of mathematics—with its ideas of infinite parts—to natural philosophy, perhaps because he feared it would incite man to explain everything, including articles of faith, mathematically. (His fear was not entirely unfounded.)35 Despite Beale’s protestations to the contrary, the atomist claim was intellectually seductive. It harbored the idea that the smallest bit of physical

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matter might conceal something still smaller and more obscure (DRN i.599–602).36 Philosophers were intrigued by the idea that this something existing beyond human powers of perception might yet be discovered mathematically (that is, conceptually).37 Essential to Milton’s depiction of Chaos is this element of mystery, so guaranteed by the Lucretian account, and the fact that Chaos, as a figure of confusion and disorder, represents the conflict between the Aristotelian account of prime matter and its Lucretian antithesis. In raising the question What is this thing made of?, we can start to answer in terms of parts (for example: a human body is made of a torso, a head, four limbs, etc.). We perceive that the English phrase “break it down” immediately implies or expects a particulate answer. Greek philosophy before Aristotle was inclined this way. But when we say, “What is this made of?,” we invite an answer in terms of mere stuff. Matter, in other words, can immediately imply a larger generality. Aristotle thought the second was the fundamental notion; Lucretius, remembering the Greek philosopher Epicurus centuries later, wondered if this could be true. Lucretius’s response revives the particulate approach by breaking matter apart into (still) smaller parts, until finally declaring—at an arbitrary point—that we have reached an absolute terminus. To an Aristotelian, who thought that even minimal parts retain matter and form, this answer was highly unsatisfactory. For Milton, however, the ancient alternative of atomism provided an intriguing alternative to Aristotelianism. By introducing a Lucretian element to his figuration of Chaos, Milton explores not only what the undifferentiated (first) substance of prime matter might be, but also the complications this sort of mathematization introduces to (orthodox) theology. Following the Lucretian model, Milton speaks of Chaos in “Clanns” of atoms that “Swarm populous, unnumber’d as the Sands / Of Barca or Cyrene’s torrid soil” (II.903–04). The simile presses us to imagine an infinite number of atoms and then, on top of that, to conceive of an immense capacity for divisibility. The metaphor meant to confer greater materiality on its subject ends by breaking apart its subject matter (from sands to clans to atoms). In this respect, the “hoarie deep” (II.891) that is home both to Chaos and Night materializes and simultaneously dematerializes itself before our eyes. In terms of poetic method, these clashing factions—so visualized in terms of material atoms (or

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clans)—supply us with a metaphor that assists conceptualization of the subatomic level. It is a technique Milton may have derived from Lucretius’s comparison of great things (the first beginnings of the world) with the most minute particles of light (DRN ii.123–24).38 Traveling across the abyss, Satan is deafened with “noises loud and ruinous (to compare / Great things with small)” (PL II.921–22; italics added). The obvious use of the Virgilian tag at 922 takes on a Lucretian resonance when the noise engendered by the atoms is said to exceed the clamour produced by Bellona’s engines “bent to rase” a city (II.923).39 Shifting to the imperfect, continuous tense, Milton then adds that the noise is no “less than if this frame / Of Heav’n were falling, and these Elements / In mutinie had from her Axle torn / The stedfast earth” (II.924–27). The movement, triggered by Milton’s subtle deployment of adynaton, not only brings the future apocalypse into the present, but also, in an even more radical gesture, displaces it to a time past. The thunderous sound of atoms and their minimatter colliding produces a din akin to that of a world in the process of being destroyed. The adynaton expands to magnify even Hesiod’s cosmic doPpo~ (roaring) that characterizes the clashing earth and sky in the Theogony.40 While the destructive elements that dismantle the “stedfast earth” (II.927) in Milton are seen to possess the compactness and solidity of Epicurean atoms, the darker implication is that these atoms, like the earth, can be dismembered. The allusion to the apocalypse now yields a horrifying picture of metaphysical dissolution. The shriek of dismemberment involved in a whirling return to prima materia is like the sound of unimaginable matter pre-Creation. The emergent thought is that this sound of destruction is actually less loud—less impressive—than the “noises loud and ruinous” (II.921) of precreated matter. As we encounter ecpyrosis, or a conflagration, on the subatomic level, the normally imperceptible dazzles us with a sensory (that is, material) overload. Chaos and the Interstices of Darkness In delving deeper into the void, though, we discover that the paradox of a less-than-sensible Chaos is growing more complex. As the poetry moves to materialize Chaos, there is a simultaneous breakdown of the particulate so that the void is increasingly aligned with the darker spirituality

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attached to Night. As the two figurations overlap—that is, as Chaos moves across to being a sort of power and Night becomes rich with “dark materials” (II.916)—Milton plays increasingly with the technique of paradox. It appears that while the allegory (superficially) attempts to bring these figures under control, the language used to describe the abyss—which consciously employs oxymoron and paradox—ends up radically destabilizing our conceptions of Chaos and Night. Lucretius depicted a bottomless universe in which everything is falling (DRN ii.89–92). While we, as a product of the motion, do not feel this, Satan and his crew do. They fall for nine days through the void en route to Hell, and the memory of that fall is enough to make no one accept Satan’s mission (PL II.417–26) to “tempt with wandring feet / The dark unbottom’d infinite Abyss” (II.404–05). Satan’s use of the word “unbottom’d” actually reveals a Lucretian understanding of the void as an “abortive gulf ” (II.441) that frightens even Heaven. When we are told that Hell “Saw / Heav’n ruining from Heaven” (VI.867–68) in the rebel angels’ fall, Milton subjoins the English idea of wreaking destruction to the Latin verb ruere, meaning “to come down, to fall.” Unlike the Stoic analogue in Horace who is absurdly calm, Milton’s Heaven panics.41 Although Lucretius’s atoms retain self-movement (“moventur enim per se”; DRN ii.133) in their fall through the void, individual things experience a complete loss of control, as Satan discovers: “all unawares / Fluttring his pennons vain plumb down he drops / Ten thousand fadom deep, and to this hour / Down had been falling” (II.932–35). While the simile of the world’s destruction makes the action continuous with our readerly present (“were falling” at II.924), Milton pushes the thought further: in these lines, Satan would not only have fallen into—but still would be falling through—our continually changing readerly present. When Cowper observed that these lines were “put into our hands by the poet for the purpose of sounding an abyss without a bottom,” his comment pointed to the oxymoron inherent in the idea that Satan “meets / A vast vacuitie” (II.931–32).42 The effect of this sort of oppositional writing, however, is to draw us deeper into the mystery of the void. It also returns us to Lucretius, who intimated that although his world was walled there nonetheless existed a tract of uncreated space beyond it. The visionary impact Milton derived from this picture—from

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the void described at DRN i.969–83—cannot be overstated.43 When, in De Rerum Natura, a man advances to what he believes is the “oras / ultimus extremas” (DRN i.969–70), or the farthest endpoint of the universe, he hurls his lance into the void. Regardless of whether the lance is obstructed (by matter) or whether it continues to speed out into space in a vacuum, Lucretius’s thesis is proved: namely, that the universe continues outside the created world.44 Milton’s void, which reaches out to infinity with an indefinite extension previously associated with matter, is imaged also in terms of the Lucretian antithesis—as a physical vacuum.45 Although Milton, with Descartes and other nullibists, could have said that Chaos is bodily and hence capable of material extension, he chose instead to think of the unimaginable prime matter as possessing an equally unknowable extension.46 The fact that the very nature of the abyss refuses to be either a plenum (that is, the material) or pure vacuous space (that is, a vacuum) makes us feel something of the loss Satan experiences when he stares, rather blankly, “Into this wilde Abyss, / The Womb of nature and perhaps her Grave” (PL II.910–11). Satan’s hesitation is understandable: the “wild Abyss” (II.917) overwhelms him as the void’s embryonic materiality appears to grow and, simultaneously, almost disintegrate into mere nothingness. I say “almost” because when Satan informs his legions in Hell of how he “toild out . . . uncouth passage, forct to ride / Th untractable Abysse” (X.475–76), the ghost of materiality surfaces once more. Milton’s richly nuanced verbs create a shadowy incipient but defeated landscape: “forct to ride” means that the abyss is difficult to ride, hard to mount.47 These expressions are usually applied to physical objects and therefore imply that this void is not the kind of vacuum through which one would slip without resistance. Milton’s use of the word “untractable” (X.476) actually suggests awkward resistance to handling rather than tractionlessness (which is what we would expect in a world without friction). Like Philoponus, though, Milton grants his void friction, but he has it—along with its matter—remain seemingly intangible. In Satan’s description of being “plung’d in the womb / Of unoriginal Night and Chaos wilde” (X.476–77), we see the abyss as being submerged in an uncreated, incorporeal substance (Night), while still remaining the subject of Chaos. The materiality of Chaos may weigh

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Satan down, but the void (Night) threatens to swallow him entirely. Milton’s poetry suddenly yields yet another paradox: that of a material vacuum. The oxymoron is not captious. As Satan ploughs his way deeper and deeper into the void, he swims through a space thickening with materiality: “So eagerly the fiend / Ore bog or steep, through strait, rough, dense, or rare, / With head, hands, wings or feet pursues his way, / And swims or sinks, or wades, or creeps, or flyes” (II.947–50). The sea in Homer’s description of Odysseus swimming—the ontologically innocent brine of the first epic poet—becomes in Milton a metaphysically unstable medium, ontologically vertiginous (II.1019–21). A new species of drowning threatens Satan in this eschatological poem. Struggling not to sink in “the crude consistence” (II.941), Satan bobs up and down, alternating between foot and wing, “Oare and Saile” (II.942). The lop-sided movement makes the passage almost parodic, if not bathetic, as David Quint has discussed.48 While Marvell wrote, “Nature that hateth emptiness / Allows of penetration less,” Milton’s bizarre imagery dissolves the distinction between place and the material body that defines it, thereby drawing attention to the difficulties in conceptualizing the weird substance that constitutes the abyss.49 When, in book I, Satan describes “the void profound” as belonging to “unessential Night” (II.439), the term “unessential” stands out; the word generally means “unimportant”—a dilution of its original metaphysical sense of “accidental.” Writing against the Scholastics, Walter Charleton (1620–1707) argued that the accidental or “unessential” qualities do not affect the reality of something.50 Yet Milton suggests that the term “unessential” refers not to a property’s reality (like the color red) but to a defining characteristic (like Night). That is, “unessential” in Milton means something prior to the time when form and matter are joined and rendered tangibly concrete—which is in keeping with the fact that an Aristotelian would say that matter itself is less than material things. Night becomes the immaterial aspect of the “Wide gaping” void or “abortive gulf ” that threatens heaven and the fallen angels alike with “utter loss of being” (II.440–41). As Leonard rightly points out, the abyss appears to antedate Chaos qua matter and also qua created light.51 The journey Satan describes to his cohorts in Hell accurately describes how one must “through the palpable obscure find out / His uncouth way, or spread his aerie flight / Upborn with indefatigable wings /

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Over the vast abrupt” (II.406–09; italics added). The phrase “palpable obscure” immediately conjures up Night. It is, as Cowper noted, a wonderful instance of a physical and conceptual collision: here is a “darkness that might be felt.”52 While Milton’s use of the word “obscure” plays on its Latinate origin, obscurus (meaning “dark” and “incomprehensible), the term “palpable” evokes a tactile obscurity that resonates with the horrific darkness Moses brings down upon Egypt: “even darkness which may be felt” (tenebræ tam densæ ut palpari queant; Exod. 10.21:).53 Insofar as the moral texture renders darkness physically perceptible, we are reminded of the moment when Abraham makes his covenant with God: “Lo, an horror of great darkness fell upon him” (Gen. 15.12). The slippage between materiality and immateriality is fluid and full. In like manner, Milton applies “Ethereal” to Satan’s “massy” shield at I.285, so that in the phrase its “broad circumference / Hung” (I.286–87) a pure mathematical abstraction suddenly acquires weight. In the case of the abyss, though, Milton presents a place where light breaks off—where everything merges into an original, primal darkness that is nonetheless eerily felt. These passages are therefore very different from the narrator’s description of the physical movement and material obstruction Satan meets when he leaps up “into the wilde expanse, and through the shock / Of fighting Elements . . . / wins” (and winds) “his way” (II.1014–16). The “vast and boundless Deep” (I.177) is much more than a physically bottomless ocean (of chaos). Without the stars to guide him, Satan navigates his passage almost entirely by sound, moving toward the “universal hubbub wilde” (II.951). Materiality is now defined synaesthetically through a collection of “stunning sounds and voices all confus’d” (II.952). It is as if Milton knew in advance that the fremitus of Chaos must be “borne” or transmitted “through the hollow dark” (II.953) by something else. Sound cannot travel in a vacuum. Hence, in his description of what is obviously a radio station in the House of Fame (ii.765–95), Chaucer writes that “soun is noght but air y-broken” (765).54 The crazy medieval Lucretianism has been transmitted to Milton so that a sound of “loudest vehemence” (II.954) reverberates off the strange particulate populating this otherwise desolate cosmic moor. Such auditory materiality implies also that, apart from these random collisions of matter, there must exist something else to produce these (barely discernible) “voices.” The fact that noise emanates from

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“Tumult and Confusion all imbroild, / And Discord with a thousand various mouths” (II.966–67) plays on the Aristotelian notion that the music of the spheres is intellectual (not physical).55 The etymology of the Latin word harmonia has its origins in the Greek original, crmonAa, which refers to a fitting together of discordant elements. The poet who would later ask Milton permission to “tag” his verses, John Dryden (1631–1700), exalts this picture of God tuning the universe: From harmony, from heavenly harmony, This universal frame began: When nature underneath a heap Of jarring atoms lay, And could not heave her head, The tuneful voice was heard from high, “Arise, ye more than dead.” (“A Song for St. Cecilia’s Day” 1–7) Dryden’s creation conceit may well have been influenced by Raphael’s description of the musical activity on the seventh day of Creation: the harp, pipe, and dulcimer continue to sound, “All sounds on Fret by String or Golden Wire / Temper’d soft Tunings, intermixt with Voice” (VII.597–98). But Milton emphasizes that pre-Creation, these “soft Tunings” (VII.598) are notably absent; “Discord with a thousand various mouths” (II.967) clamors to be heard above the material din. This sort of intellectual chaos represents a dangerous, powerful spiritual dissonance. Milton’s adynaton now depicts the future uncreation of the universe as but an echo of this world, pre-creation. The conceit, which captured Dryden’s imagination, is reinvented in his lines: “So when the last and dreadful hour / This crumbling pageant shall devour, / The trumpet shall be heard on high, / The dead shall live, the living die, / And musick shall untune the sky” (“Song for St. Cecilia’s Day” 59–63).56 Dryden’s idea that the dead come to life is completely flattened by the end of the penultimate line: the living end up dying again. The reversal is mirrored in the notion that music, not the Creator, “untunes” the sky by having it unwrite itself. The spiritual and physical are caught up in a reflexive act of destruction that simultaneously is self-destruction. In Milton, this hubbub of materiality needs not just a medium but also an agent—or, as we might say, a force—for its articulation-as-creation. It fol-

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lows that when Satan delves deeper into the “hollow”—the sheer vacuity beneath a material surface—he discovers that Chaos is not alone: “thither he plyes, / Undaunted to meet there what ever power / Or Spirit of the nethermost Abyss / Might in that noise reside” (PL II.954–57). Milton’s near-contemporary the Cambridge Neoplatonist Henry More (1614–87) feared that Descartes had endangered God’s omnipotence by claiming matter occupied all space. But in Milton’s spiritualization of space—of which More would have approved—is the far more heterodox suggestion that the abyss may take on divine attributes, such as immensity and eternity (of which More would not have approved). While a Latitudinarian like More would say that God must be present as the presiding spirit, Milton’s hesitancy is marked: the phrase “what ever power” (II.955) is dangerously elusive, withdrawing the comfortable idea that the cosmological force lurking in the shadows is simply God himself.57 Only after he has battled his way through this clangor does Satan arrive at the “Throne / Of Chaos” (II.959–60) with its “dark Pavilion spread / Wide on the wasteful Deep” (II.960–61). The material aspect of chaos is again erected on what is fundamentally uninhabitable or immaterial— namely, the void (or “Deep”). We are told that Satan approaches Chaos and the similarly “Enthron’d / . . . Sable-vested Night, eldest of things” (II.961–62) with the intent of asking where “neerest coast of darkness lyes / Bordering on light” (II.958–59). Light, creation, and goodness in this image are viewed as bounded and defined by the darkness. Inquiring after the best means of egress, Satan explains that his “way, / Lies through your spacious Empire up to light, / Alone, and without guide, half lost, I seek / What readiest path leads where your gloomie bounds / Confine with Heav’n” (II.973–77; italics added). Here, the reader is slightly disarmed by Satan’s use of “with.” Milton could have written, “confine Heaven,” but that would imply that Chaos had God jailed. Still, Chaos does share a boundary with, or borders on, Heaven, and from the perspective within the darkness the void’s “gloomie bounds” (II.976) appear to set some sort of limit on heaven. Observing the explosion of light from the void, Satan promises Chaos that he too is committed to reducing “that Region lost / . . . / To her original darkness and your sway” (II.982–84). In his blustering boast, Satan speaks of “original darkness” and the “Standard . . . of ancient Night”

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(II.984–86; cf. II.970). Once more, the word “original” brings to mind the “uncreated”—or “unessential” and “independent”—Night that, as Satan’s speech implies, is “ancient” in the sense of existing before Creation. Milton, it seems, had read his Du Bartas with care. In La Sepmaine; ou, Creation du monde (1578), Du Bartas had depicted an original darkness that persisted past Creation, but then, in a bracketed comment, asked the reader to move one step beyond the image: “Or if ought darker in the world be thought.”58 The burden of abstracting darkness is suddenly shifted onto the reader. Even Ovid’s terse description of the primordial “rudis indigestaque moles” (rough, unordered mass of things; Met. i.7) bespeaks a darkness eloquent of its own privation: “lucis egens aer” (the light-lacking air; Met. i.17). It is at this point that Milton’s allegory splinters in two: Night, the fundamentally unimaginable entity, is spoken for by its counterpart, the more easily imaginable and narratable figure of Chaos. It is Chaos, after all, who tells Satan of the “intestine broiles” within his borders that are “Weakning the Scepter of old Night” (II.1001–02). But, as the reclusive Calvinist John Edwards (1637–1716) noted, the pairing of Chaos and Night bestows more power on Night: “The Persons skilled in ancient Theology, believed all things were made of Night. Which questionless is of Mosaic Extraction . . . The Deep [Gen. 1.2] is their Chaos, and the Darkness is their Night or Erebus.”59 For the Cambridge Neoplatonist Ralph Cudworth (1617–88), Chaos and Night may explain Creation, but Night itself strangely antedates her more material counterpart.60 In destabilizing standard conceptions about the void, Milton has Chaos clutter up Night with his material atoms and has Night just as quickly dissolve this unsustainable plenum through ideas of deprivation and absence. Yet the moment Night takes on a palpably dark texture, it becomes weirdly materialized, so that Chaos compensates by slipping in the opposite direction—toward the uncreated (as in the trope of adynaton). The void returns.61 Milton’s depiction of the abyss, in other words, brilliantly fuses material about to be created with material about to be completely annihilated. In cleverly reworking the Greek idea of cavo~ (Chaos)—where the rhyme of “womb” with “tomb” becomes a kind of echo in English of the Greek assonance on spma (soma: “body”) and spma (sema: “fence” and

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hence “tomb”)—Milton confounds our conceptual understanding of being and not-being.62 The fact that “the emptier waste, resembling Air, / Weighs his [Satan’s] spread wings” (II.1045–46; italics added) is paradoxical. Since the word “waste” is usually associated with darkness (III.424) and also with the “wilde” in Hell (I.60), we find ourselves wondering how the “wasteful Deep” (II.961), as an emptied-out, uncultivated desert (Latin vastum), can weigh down Satan’s wings. Even though “weight” brings to mind its secondary meaning of “waste” as refuse (from the womb or the grave?), the initial paradox—“emptier waste” (II.1045)—continues to resist resolution in material terms.63 In like manner, the idea that the abyss is comparatively “emptier” than any other imagined wasteland implies that even the barely perceptible particles of air are conceived of as containing miniature voids. While we would normally think of a void as being empty space, Milton turns this void inside out. To empty out the “waste” of the void so that it is ever more empty means that our mind must simultaneously move in opposite directions: on the one hand, we must dispose of the particulates of air used to create an image of the void; on the other, we must hold on to the concept of nothingness implied by the now-removed image. The conceptual difficulty gives rise to strangely beautiful linguistic contortions: in foretelling Satan’s escape to the Son, God speaks of the fallen angel as a creature “nor yet the main Abyss / Wide interrupt can hold” (III.83–84). Satan similarly describes the abyss as a “vast abrupt” (II.409). In both cases, the bizarre substantives—the verbal “interrupt” and the adjectival “abrupt”—bespeak the mental difficulty of imagining what exceeds the scope of language, as Cowper observed: “Interrupt is a substantive of Milton’s creation, who when the current language failed him, coined for his own use, and always well and wisely.”64 Cowper’s comment elicits the sense that Milton introduces fresh meanings to words by way of new concepts. His poetry becomes a moving field with heuristically dynamic metaphors. In this way, Chaos and Night become rich “counter-things” that reside outside our sensible world and also resist traditional modes of conceptualization. The fact that Satan does not move through an absolute plenum thus militates against the idea that Milton’s cosmos is fully material. Even the Stoics, who are normally thought to have endorsed a material universe in which everything is bodily, do not deny the existence of incorporeal

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things, such as the void, time, “things said” (lekta), and place.65 Francis Holland, writing in 1920, noted, “Seneca was a dualist. For him there is the world of matter of which our bodies are a part, and there is the world of spirit which is divine.”66 The weirdly overmaterialized consistency of Milton’s Chaos in these uncreated, outer regions of the cosmos gradually gestures toward the idea that perhaps what we (or Satan) perceive to be material is really some other, yet unknown, indescribable substance. This feeling is helped along by the fact that, in this inspissated reality, Milton has put to work a strange counterforce, or spiritualizing activity, in the allegorical figure of Night. The Neo-Stoic Substratum: From the Particulate to the Deep It is at this point in the figuration of Night and the abyss that Milton’s dynamic exploration of the role of the material and the immaterial in the void reveals elements of neo-Stoic thought. Stoic philosophy, which is often regarded as the antithesis of an atomist metaphysic, becomes in Milton, as in many of his contemporaries, a way to think through the problem of those interstitial spaces. As a result, Milton’s depiction of Chaos may appear to hold implicit dialogue with some of the greatest natural philosophers of the seventeenth century. One such thinker was Sir Isaac Newton, who, like the Milton of Paradise Lost, thought that within the material substance of air there lurks a powerful, other spirit. Newton characterized this power as “strongly elastick, & in a word much like air in all respects, but far more subtile.”67 By the “Principia period,” Newton had shifted from thinking about this “plenistic aether” to, as B. J. T. Dobbs writes, an aether of “empty spaces . . . scattered between the aetherial particles.”68 The change was momentous: Newton’s Principia smacks of the idea that there is a zero sum quantity of matter.69 Milton’s nearcontemporary (with whom he appears to have had limited contact) the plenist Robert Boyle (1627–91) ran into problems with air, not aether. Boyle, the great spokesman for the plenum (meaning that he was against the idea of the void), implicitly acknowledged a deep, internal immaterial power inherent in air, much like Milton’s Night in Chaos. Although an adherent to the corpuscular philosophy, Boyle thought that inactive matter qua pure potentiality required a force in order to bring about a movement. So, when Boyle writes that corpuscles of air might contain a power since no laws of motion have firmly contravened such a

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hypothesis, the concession is enormous.70 He therefore shares with Newton a belief in a vital power. What is important to Boyle—as to Newton and Milton—is that this power is internal. Writing against Hobbes’s dialogue Dialogus physicus: sive de natura aeris, which claimed air needed an external agent to move, Boyle theorized that “there is a Spring, or Elastical power in the Air” which “consists of, or at least abounds with, parts of such a nature, that in case they be bent or compress’d by the weight of the incumbent part of the Atmosphere, or by any other Body, they do endeavor, as much as in them lies, to free themselves from that pressure.” He likened air to “a Fleece of Wooll,” which, in virtue of its “slender and flexible Hairs,” acts like a spring and can “be easily bent or rouled up; but will . . . be still endeavouring to stretch it self out again.” Each thread, Boyle went on to argue, has a “power or principle of dilation” that allows the wool to regain its shape when the hand relaxes. To this quality of tension, which is evident also in Newton’s aether, Boyle added an idea of sponginess. The effect is to block any reduction of the medium to the purely material.71 Such ideas about an invisible power working within or through what is ostensibly material (like the element of air) are found also in Milton’s poetry. In 1634, Milton, perhaps toying with the idea that air is elastic or porous, curiously described the air as “spongy” (Comus 154). Paradise Lost’s “porous Earth” that draws up Eden’s river (IV.228) and Raphael’s description of “the Suns Orb, made porous to receive / And drink the liquid Light” (VII.361–62) both imagine a matter with miniature interstices into which immateriality gushes. The turbulence of the Lucretian motes in a sunbeam suddenly swims into view in Milton’s poetry once more (DRN ii.114–17) and yields a dazzling live substrate. In the distinctly unLaplacian imagery, not mathematically predictable motions but a seemingly random dance leads to Creation.72 Unlike the atomists, though, Milton’s poetry suggests in its figuration of Chaos that even materiality is inwardly structured by miniature pores or infinitely small spaces.73 While the mathematical mind of the Italian Francesco Patrizi (1527–97) likened the bits of empty space in air (the interparticulate void) to particles of sand, Milton attempted to account for what these empty pockets of space actually were.74 He was not alone. In his “theory of indivisibles,” Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) postulated that “if we consider the line resolved into an infinite number of

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infinitely small and indivisible parts, we shall be able to conceive the line extended indefinitely by the interposition, not of a finite, but of an infinite number of infinitely small indivisible spaces” (mà imaginandola risoluta in parti non quante, cioè ne’ suoi infiniti indiuisibili la possiamo concepire distratta in immenso senza l’interposizione di spazii quanti vacui, mà si bene d’infiniti indiuisibili vacui).75 For Galileo, these “empty spaces” were no longer mere mathematical and conceptual entities. Even the plenist corpuscularian Sebastian Basso ( fl. mid-seventeenth century) conceded that the spaces within this micromatter could be filled with an immaterial substance. The Leeuwenhoekian idea of “living Atoms” not visible to the naked eye marked an exciting departure from Aristotelian philosophy and opened the door to philosophic speculations at the subatomic or preelementary level.76 Seventeenth-century natural philosophers like Henry Power (c. 1626–68) were more confident than their contemporaries about their ability to discover the “very Atoms and their reputed Indivisibles and least realities of matter” as well as the “Solary Atoms of light . . . the springy particles of Air.”77 Power’s corpuscularianism had him conceive of postlapsarian humans as occupying a state far better than Adam’s; he confidently wrote, “[Adam] could never discern those distant, or minute objects by Natural Vision, as we do by the Artificial advantages of the Telescope and Microscope.”78 But the fiercely anti-Aristotelian Glanvill vehemently disagreed and retained the hope that if we could see the operations of nature again, we might repair our benighted vision and (perhaps) even reverse the curse of the Fall. While Power described how modern instruments had revealed just how inadequate human sight really was, Glanvill conversely thought Adam “saw the motion of the blood and spirits through the transparent skin, as we do the workings of those little industrious Animals through a hive of glasse.”79 This debate between the vision afforded to human sight with the aid of instruments (such as the telescope) and unaided vision resurfaces in Milton’s description of the planet Venus: “the Morning Planet guilds her horns; / By tincture or reflection they augment / Thir small peculiar, though from human sight / So farr remote, with diminution seen” (VII.366–69). The attribution of the mysterious quality of light is granted, a posteriori: “with diminuition seen” (VII.369). Yet the process by which Venus increases the light in her particulate—or “small peculiar”

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(VII.368)—through the activity of “tincture” (VII.367) is left unknown. The method and the quality of this illumination remain unintelligible, so that Milton appears to be hinting that beneath the materiality which we are able to apprehend there exist immaterial, occult powers.80 The thought is that while atomism and Stoicism are usually seen as being antithetical, there is evidence that Milton’s experimentation with Lucretian atomic philosophy at the micro level gradually brought him into contact with Stoic thought at the macro level. As Galileo struggled to understand cohesion as a product of matter’s resistance to separation and the void, Stoicizing philosophers happily mixed an immaterial substance straight into matter.81 This is owing in part to the fact that the Stoicism revived in the Renaissance underwent significant revision at the hands of the Flemish philologist and humanist Justus Lipsius (1547– 1606). Long before More, Lipsius perceived a latent dualism in Stoic thought that he proceeded to exploit as both Platonic and Christian.82 In the first edition of his Physiologiae Stoicorum (1604), Lipsius claimed that God “is the greatest, as far as for all that he is put into the world, he animates this shapeless mass [Chaos], and keeps it together” (Sed illum maxime, quatenus tamen insertus est Mundo, & molem ha[n]c animat, continetque).83 As the ultimate tensile force, God, according to Lipsius’s interpretation of the Stoics, was “defined . . . not as Fire but as a spirit of fire,” as the “ignis immaterialis” (At vero cautius etiam & veritati propius Stoici locuti, cum Deum definierunt non Ignem, sed Spiritum igneum).84 (Lipsius’s terms themselves indicate the degree to which “spirit” continues to be an ontologically mixed substance.) Many seventeenth-century thinkers who sought to retain Stoicism’s biological (as opposed to mechanistic) character remained wary of either materializing the entire cosmos, including God, or of submerging everything into a sea of immateriality. The darkness that is seen and felt in Paradise Lost and the strange prime matter through which Satan paddles gesture at this very problem.85 In like manner, even Newton’s “moles of sensible matter” are said to “swim” through an aether that, while united with matter, is “yet remaining of a much more rare tender & subtile disposition.”86 The Newton of the 1670s, much like the Milton of Paradise Lost, subscribed to the idea that “matter depends upon a Deity for its laws of motion as well as for its existence,” but in neither case does this materialize God himself.87

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This rejection of God as a material being may in fact owe something to Lipsian neo-Stoicism, which denied concreteness to God. Lipsius wrote that when the Stoics spoke of seeing God in everything, they were using terms metaphorically: “You see clearly that Nature is the mind of God and Reason, the one word of God” (Vides claréhanc Naturam, Mentem esse Dei & Rationem, vno verba Deum). Availing himself of no less an authority than Augustine, he went so far as to say that the Stoics believed the world to exist because it participates in the mind of God.88 This meant that God was said to be visible only insofar as his spirit was diffused throughout the cosmos. Pointing to St. Paul’s interpolation of Aratus in Acts 17.28—“In him we live and move and have our being as certain also of your own poets have said”—Lipsius argued that Stoic thought was essentially Christian. Even Philo Judaeus (20 BC–50 AD) by virtue of the Stoic element in his thought was construed by Lipsius as endorsing the Christian view. Beginning with a quotation from Philo, Lipsius rhetorically asks, “God as the soul of the universe is a certain measure of intellect. Why?” and answers, “Because we and all things live and move and have our being in God” (Vniuersi Animam Deum esse, quodam intellectu. Quo? quia nos & omnia viuimus, & mouemur, & sumus in Deo).89 As early as 1596, the Lutheran astronomer, chronologist, and astrologist Johannes Kepler (1571–1630) turned the tables on the Apostle by describing air that we cannot “separate or pull apart” as “the heaven in which we and all the bodies of this world live, and move, and have our being” (hoc enim coelum est in quo vivimus, movemur, et sumus nos et omnia mundana corpora). Kepler’s witty allusion to Acts underscores the importance attached to an enlivening vis motrix as the thing accounting for motion. Neo-Stoic philosophy makes the Keplerian medium more palatable because it argues that such a motrix is ever-present and, more important, consonant with Christian doctrine. 90 Seventeenth-century neo-Stoicism emerges, therefore, as a sort of Trojan horse, capable of smuggling in its own philosophical ideas by really accommodating itself to other philosophical (and theological) frameworks.91 Unlike the humanist readings of Aristotle that corrected the monkish Aristotelians of Schools and encouraged a return to original texts, neo-Stoicism fostered a growing eclecticism in Renaissance thought. Even the nonjuror William Law (1686–1761) observed that New-

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ton had “ploughed with Behmen’s Heifer.”92 As Dobbs makes clear, the afterlife of Stoicism was admittedly very different from the materializing of ancient Stoicism: “The tenor of Philonic Stoics,” Dobbs asserts, is “to shift from a materialistic monism toward a Platonic dualism, within which there existed a distinction between spirit and matter that was quite foreign to most of the ancient Stoics.”93 Newton’s idea of space qua sensorium Dei thus adopts a Platonized version of the all-pervasive Stoic God as popularized by Lipsius (and later ridiculed by G. W. Leibniz). Nevertheless, the point is that the exploration of how powers relate to micromatter reverts in many cases to strands of Stoic or neo-Stoic thought. The result is that as elements of neo-Stoicism in Milton’s thought authorize the appearance of Night within the abyss, Chaos appears to be a medium that transmits, transforms, and translates conceptual forces into ontologically active principles.94 As in Newton’s final conception of aether, there is a spirit deep at work in Milton’s Chaos which, in turn, prompts the question of what this power is—and, more important, how it is related to God. C R E AT I N G T H E D A R K N E S S : A G E N T S O F L I G H T, A U T H O R S O F E V I L ?

If Milton’s cosmos seethes with animism, then, it may be because the poem’s roots reach through an alchemical soil down to a neo-Stoic substratum. As Renaissance neo-Stoicism clashed with a fundamentally Aristotelian metaphysics, it appears to have promoted the division between the physical and the spiritual and created intermediate ontological substances for the transmission of spiritual activity.95 The assignment of a vital power to matter thus implies that a spiritual being must stand behind—or, as it were, stand between—physical substances.96 It may be helpful, therefore, to read the Creation accounts, which attempt to provide an aetiology for both Night and light in Paradise Lost, in terms of this implicit dualism and to examine the ways in which Milton’s imagery of light and darkness further complicates the expression of his theology. As the poetry engages with more heterodox questions regarding the primacy of darkness to light and the role of prime matter to “the void and formless infinite” (III.12), the seemingly comfortable picture of God as Light and the Son as the creator of light becomes fraught with difficulties, the result being that the power accorded to Night gathers strength. For the alchemist and antiquarian Elias Ashmole (1617–92), the chaos of creation was “born up by his [God’s] own weight.”97 Refining this

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idea, Newton described “an exceeding subtle and unimaginably small portion of matter diffused through the mass, which, if it were separated, there would remain but a dead and inactive earth.”98 It became axiomatic for Newton that this spirit should be equated with light since “both have a prodigious active principle, both are perpetual workers. . . . No substance [but light] so indifferently, subtly, and swiftly pervades all things as light, and no spirit searches bodies so subtly, piercingly, and quickly as the vegetable spirit.”99 The properties of light notably absorbed Milton too. When Satan “Wafts on the calmer wave by dubious light” (II.1042), the word “dubious” draws out the ambivalence of light’s substance, as does the image of Uriel riding on a “bright beam” (IV.590) of sunlight to and from the earth. The modulations between immaterial and physical depictions of light indicate a generative movement existing somewhere behind it. It is at this point, that theology enters to account for notions of agency and operation. According to Milton, prime matter must be “a substance [that] could only have been derived from the source of all substance”—namely, God. This doctrine of creatio ex Deo led Milton to assert that “it is a demonstration of supreme power and supreme goodness that such heterogeneous, multiform and inexhaustible virtue should exist in God, and exist substantially (for that virtue cannot be accident which admits various degrees and is, as it were, susceptible to augmentation and remission, according to this will).”100 Like Newton, Milton conceived of the material cause as being contained virtually and substantially in the “all” God encompasses. So far, the thought is scholastic, since whatever does the possessing has the more perfect manner. But when Milton says that substance contains “some bodily force,” difficulties arise.101 God veers into being a kind of infinite extension (space), within which there exists the strange viscous prime matter of Chaos. While this does not fully materialize God in that a cause is never materialized by way of it effect, it does complicate the relationship between God and Chaos, not to mention that between God and Night. Newton tackled the problem by supposing that action is carried instantaneously from an immaterial suspension to physical bodies. Yet this spooky character of “action at a distance” makes us feel that something is needed to carry the action across; the famous, sudden philosophic aposiopesis in the General Scholium to Principia III—“non fingo

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hypotheses” (I feign [alt. “frame”] no hypothesis)—is not the end of the story.102 Hypotheses continue to rise in the mind of Newton, as they do in Milton. If there were intermediaries between spirit and body, it was thought that tertium quid variants might similarly act as go-betweens for God and the created world. In Paradise Lost, as in Newton, this being is the Son. In book VII of Paradise Lost we are told that the Son, “Uplifted, in Paternal Glorie,” rides out “farr into Chaos, and the World unborn” (VII.220). On to this metaphysical wilderness he places his “golden Compasses,” which were “prepar’d / In Gods Eternal store, to circumscribe / This Universe, and all created things: / One foot he center’d, and the other turn’d / Round through the vast profunditie obscure, / And said, thus farr extend, thus farr thy bounds, / This be thy just Circumference, O World” (VII.225–31). In this geometric picture, Milton allows us to see one view of the Creation through the lens of mathematical abstraction. With the circling outer leg of the compass, the Son circumscribes the world. According to Aristotle, the tools of mathematics occupied an “intermediate position” for Plato because unlike perceptible objects they were eternal and unchangeable.103 Plutarch (46–c. 122 AD) has Diogenianus report that Plato’s God was “ever playing the geometer”—a sentiment echoed by the Jesuit astronomer Joseph Blancanus (1566–1624; “Plato dixerit Deum geometrizare”)—because geometry alone moved away from the corruptible world and conducted the mind higher, toward immaterial things.104 The long-standing belief that mathematics helps us to understand the intelligible world is, at its core, Platonic.105 When Cowley wrote of the “mystick pow’ers that in blest Numbers dwell” (Davideis i.10–11), he visualizes a construction of the world according to a Platonic use of numbers, in line with what Cowley called an “eternal and unchanging design.”106 Milton’s God similarly surveys this “new created World” (PL VII.554), determining it to be “good” and “faire, / Answering his great Idea” (VII.556–57; italics added). This testifies to the general trend in the seventeenth century in which poets and natural philosophers alike warmed to the idea that one could explore the heavens through a mathematically powered type of conceptualization capable of incorporating both the heavens and the earths. As Blancanus’s Aristotelian and mathematical text Aristotelis loca mathematica (1615) pointed out, the

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divinization and mathematization of space by geometry dealt with both formal and material causes (“Concedat is igitur oportet, Geometricas definitiones non solum nominales, sed etiam formales, & causales esse”).107 Geometry therefore specified geometrical objects and their elusive matter, namely, quantity.108 Cowley’s description of “God’s poem” (Davideis i.19), or cosmos, as initially being “wild and rude in its first draught” (i.20) depicts its “ungovern’d parts [that] no Correspondence knew” (i.21)—that is, until they were brought “to Number and fix’t Rules . . . / By the eternal Mind’s Poetique thought” (i.23–24).109 The focus on quantity—on the “Number and fix’d Rules” (i.24) Cowley claims God imposes upon matter at Creation—suggests that within an incommensurable God there still exists the idea of measure. This is why the “circumference” Milton’s Son draws with the outer leg of his golden compasses is so powerful. The image sets down a seemingly impossible limit to creation without bounding God in its circle.110 In the lines, “Thus farr extend, thus farr thy bounds” (VII.230), an abstract notion of measure, number, and weight—such as that described in Wisdom 11.20—is miraculously imposed on an equally abstract “vast profunditie obscure” (VII.229) through geometrical construction. When set against Du Bartas and George Puttenham (1529–90/1), both of whom rejected the belief that God created “by any paterne or mould, as the Platonicks with their Idees do phantastically suppose,” Milton’s creation account strikes us as distinctly Platonic and Augustinian. God creates out of himself but without diminishing his power or greatness.111 In the symbol of divine unity—the circumference of a circle—Milton’s Son imposes order at the Creation instantaneously; he uses prime matter’s indefinite extension to create sensible, that is, geometrical, objects.112 This differs from Milton’s second, much more material and visually imagined description of Creation, where the “stuff ” that will (later) be geometrically arranged is first presented: Thus God the Heav’n created, thus the Earth, Matter unform’d and void: Darkness profound Cover’d th’ Abyss: but on the watrie calme His brooding wings the Spirit of God outspred, And vital vertue infus’d, and vital warmth

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Throughout the fluid Mass, but downward purg’d The black tartareous cold Infernal dregs Adverse to life: then founded, then conglob’d Like things to like, the rest to several place Disparted, and between spun out the Air, And Earth self ballanc’t on her Center hung. (PL VII.232–42) This is a two-stage account of Creation: first, “th’ Almighty Maker” extracts from the abyss his “dark materials to create more Worlds” (II.915–16); then, he “founds” or forms them into various things.113 The process replicates the difference we saw in chapter 2 above between prime matter, without form and properties, and remote matter, which already has properties. Although earlier in the poem Uriel’s narration attempts to make the Son’s twofold creative act instantaneous, the narrative now breaks up the action: hence, “Confusion heard his [God’s] voice” (III.710), and “at his second bidding darkness fled, / Light shon, and order from disorder sprung” (III.712–13). The diachronic picture raises difficult questions: what happens to that “original” fleeing darkness Uriel describes? And what, as John Rogers asks, happens to those “black tartareous cold Infernal dregs” (VII.238) that the Son purges from Creation?114 If we assume that they are shunted off to a yet more distant space—to an infinite extramundane world—does this mean that these particles continue to exist in the farthest reaches of the universe as bad matter? The material picture appears to dilate at precisely those moments when the conceptual, or mathematical, account constricts. The Milton of De Doctrina Christiana who urges us to believe that “original matter” is neither evil nor worthless because it is “derived from the source of all substance,” namely, God, made it difficult to explain the existence of “counter-things” like Chaos and Night in Paradise Lost.115 Although Milton confidently claims that “matter . . . came from God in an incorruptible state, and even since the fall it is still incorruptible, so far as its essence is concerned,” the poetry of Paradise Lost destabilizes this idea.116 Even if we argue that this process of purging the dregs is simply another way of describing Creation (the same creation that we witnessed a few lines before in its mathematical conception), two questions

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remain: How can these dregs be “infernal”? and Where do these particles of antilife matter go? The answer apparently resides in the dark folds of Night, “eldest of things” (II.962), which covers “th’ Abyss” with a “Darkness profound” (VII.233–34). The Substance of Light, the Power of Night When Milton applies the use of the word “eldest” to Night (II.894; II.962), the theological implications are troubling, primarily because darkness is usually understood in contradistinction to “the first of things, quintessence pure” (VII.244): light. The good Trinitarian Augustine understood corporeal light as made by the Son, who, in turn, is coeval with God the Father. The implication here is that the spiritual light of the Son antedates both physical and spiritual darkness. According to Augustine, Genesis 1.3 depicts light “converted and enlightened, by its creator calling it back to himself ” (eam revocante ad se creature conversio). The hortatory command, “‘Let Light be made,’” is “something eternal because the Word of God is God with God, the only Son of God, co-eternal with the Father” (aeternum est quod dixit Deus, Fiat lux; quia Verbum Dei Deus apud Deum, Filius unicus Dei, Patri coaeternus est).117 But Milton, like Newton, was an anti-Trinitarian, meaning that he viewed the Son as a distinct and subordinate, though still godlike, creature working on behalf of God the Father, the invisible, transcendent deity.118 This separation made sense to Milton because he conceived of the Son and Father to be numerically different. Since, as he writes, “numerically different [things] are also different in their proper essences,” Milton concludes that “God was made manifest in flesh, that is, in the Son, his image: in any other way he [God] is invisible.”119 “Image”—as material representation—is an important word. In his discussion of Philippians 2.6, Milton argues that “the scriptural writers never use the word form to mean actual being.”120 For him, “in the form of ” means “in the image of,” so that the “form of God” must necessarily refer to the more immediately apprehensible thing. This image “in whose face invisible is beheld / Visibly, what by Deitie I am” (VI.681–82) is the Son, whom Newton described as “ye Image of ye invisible God, the first born of every creature.”121 Much like Newton’s cosmic mediator, Milton’s Son expresses the incorporeal, ineffable God. In making the transition from imaging God in

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the “form” of the Son to imagining the Creature-that-is-the-Son as light, Milton’s poetry suspends the Son’s substance between two ontological poles: the immaterial and the material. While the Son is made material through the image-making element of poetry (this yields the accommodated picture), there is also the (metaphysical) possibility that he is essentially light and so fully material. As Milton knew, light was a notoriously elusive substance to define. Even Newton hesitated when he came to discussing light’s substance: he was unsure whether to rely on the corpuscular or the wave theory of light. In 1627, when the Calvinist George Hakewill (1587–1649) was busily writing against Bishop Godfrey Goodman (1583–1656), he put his finger on the problem surrounding light’s signification: “What the light is, whether a substance or an Accident, whether of a Corporall or incorporall nature, it is not easy to determine. Philosophers dispute it, but cannot well resolue it. Such is our ignorance, that euen that by which wee see all things, we cannot discerne what it selfe is.” When it came to what this earthly, possibly material light symbolized, Hakewill grew more confident: “it lifts vp our mindes in meditation to him who is the true light, that lightneth every man that commeth into the world, himselfe dwelling in light unaccessible, and cloathing himselfe with light as with a garment. . . . And S. Ambrose, unde vox Dei in Scriptura debuit inchoare nisi à lumine? Vnde mundi or natus nisi à luce exordium sumere! frustra enim esset si non videretur. From whence should the voice of God in holy Scripture begin, but from the light? From whence should the ornament of the world begin, but likewise from the same light?”122 The idea that light is corporeal is dismantled as soon as we encounter its source, or “true light,” namely, God. Hakewill’s God-as-“light inacessible” is reminiscent of Milton’s God, who is “Thron’d inaccessible” (III.377), even though the latter accommodates himself to the angels (III.377–81). Perhaps remembering Dante’s account of Christ on the cross at Paradiso xiv.97–108, Milton introduces “shade” to light, thereby conjuring up Dante’s image of light as a streaming particulate that “checker[s] the shadow interposed by art / Against the noontide heat” (Paradiso xiv.109-117).123 In Dante, the literary accommodation shadows the dazzling brilliance of God, but light, which may otherwise be material, becomes distinctly otherworldly. In acknowledging the image itself to be transgressive, light reverts to an immaterial substance.

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Light in Milton is thus in constant flux, restlessly moving between the material, corporeal world and the eternal abode of God. As light moves across from being associated with God (or even being representative of God) to our sublunar world, it becomes an image of God’s glory and majesty in the form (or image) of the Son—although even the Son remains essentially transcendent. Nevertheless, the “Begotten Son, Divine Similitude” (III.384) provides a relatively more material image of the ineffable God.124 Before incarnation, it appears that the creature-thatwill-be-the-Son is visible—presumably with a spiritual body that is created from light’s excandescence. This is in contradistinction to God, who, as Milton trumpets, is never visible, as we have already noted: “God was made manifest in flesh, that is, in the Son, his image: in any other way he is invisible. Christ did not come to make himself, but his Father, manifest.”125 As the Son’s light, or the alchemical “vital warmth,” plunges down into a comparatively dead prime matter, the Son is increasingly aligned with the light Pseudo-Dionysius hailed as the “power which embraces the universe.”126 Milton makes abundantly clear that this power is conferred. The Son, who rides out to battle in the “Chariot of Paternal Deitie” (VI.750), appears to ascend to it a second time at the scene of Creation: “on the Wings of Cherubim / Uplifted, in Paternal Glorie rode / Farr into Chaos, and the World unborn” (VII.218–20). Unlike the Father, who resides in an unknown world, the Son occupies—and creates—the space he enters. In returning to the lines “Hail holy light, offspring of Heav’n firstborn” (III.1), Milton appears to have radicalized two different types of light: the physical and the spiritual. “Holy light” may refer to the firstcreated being, the Son, but the moment Milton speaks of light as just light in his echo of the original biblical command, “Fiat lux” (“Let there be light;” Genesis 1.3), even this identification is cancelled. Light, as a substance, is as old as “Eternal wisdom” (VII.9) who plays “in presence of th’ Almightie Father” (VII.11). As we read on, light is on the move again in the invocation—this time away from the Son, toward “th’ Eternal Coeternal beam” (III.2) which emanates from and also shades God the Father.127 As the poetry gradually exploits various gradations of light, the neoStoic subtext of this metaphysical picture begins to surface. Lipsius wrote, “It may be permitted to examine, among these philosophers,

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Hermes Trismegistus, whose philosophy strongly agrees (at least in many respects) with the Mosaic one. He commonly calls God phos or lumen, or the Son of God photeinos logos, lucidum verbum [lit. bright word, word of light]. But the ‘fire’ of the Stoics, is more accurately light and brilliance that nevertheless has heat, than a sort of dense fire. For indeed Moses himself gives that image of God: he writes ‘and He appeared to him in the burning bush’” (Liceat Ter-maximum inter eos recensere, cuius philosophia valde cum Mosaica (in multis quidem) consentit. Ille passim Deum fw`ta, siue Lumen, & Dei filium, fwteino;n, lo;gon, Lucidum verbum appellat. Ille autem Stoicorum ignis, Lux & Splendor verius est cum calore tamen, quam densus aliquis Ignis. Enimuero ipse Moyses imaginem istam Deo donat: & apparuisse sibi scribit, in rubo ardente).128 In Lipsius, God is a very special type of fire or “brilliance.” The light of God in Milton is expressed by the light of the Son—or “bright essence increate” (III.6)—which images the mysterious light in which God has “Dwelt from Eternitie” (III.5). The allusion here is to I Timothy 6.16, where God dwells “in the light which no man can approach unto” and that “no man hath seen.” In Milton’s only use of the word “increate” in Paradise Lost, light is now spoken of in direct relation to the Son as a subordinate effluence.129 Given this distinction, the only spiritual light we can visualize is in the form of the Son, who acts in Milton, as he did in Newton, as the cosmological “first agent.”130 Milton’s argument that “the Greek accent and the verbal passive prwtovtoko~, show that the son of God was the first born of all created things” suggests, therefore, that the Son is the protoplast—“the brightness of his [God’s] glory and the image of his substance.”131 As God’s power is transferred to the Son as “a secondary and delegated power,” the Son is “not by whom but only through whom all things are.” The alteration in the preposition is crucial, as is evident in Milton’s assertion that “Creation: which, however, is always qualified as being through Christ; not by him, but by the Father.” Hence, the God of book III speaks of his power as moving through the Son: “O Son, in whom my Soul hath chief delight, / Son of my bosom, Son who art alone / My word, my wisdom, and effectual might” (III.168–70).132 The credo of Milton and Newton is that while God, so acting through his Son, is to be involved with the governance of (human) affairs, he nonetheless remains utterly transcendent. As Newton observed, “The supreme God doth nothing by himself which he can do by others.”133

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That Newton and Milton meet on this point is not altogether surprising. The idea draws on a much earlier and more orthodox feeling that God’s power is visible in and operates through the astronomical body of the sun. Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543), who had first placed the sun at the center of the planetary system, proceeded to stick God in it. Three years before De Revolutionibus, Rheticus (1514–74) had attempted to prove in his Narratio prima (1540) that the sun was an active power sustaining the laws of nature.134 So invested with God’s power, the sun was regarded as a mediating substance through which God’s continuous presence was introduced to the visible world. The general idea reemerges in Milton in Adam’s and Eve’s prayer, but with an important modification: “Thou Sun, of this great World both Eye and Soule, / Acknowledge him [God] thy Greater” (V.171–72). 135 The role of the sun, which here becomes an image for God’s presence in “this great World”—meaning, the created world—raises the more fundamental question of what existed prior to the advent of light and the creative act. Orthodox Trinitarians, who had the advantage of being able to posit an ever-present, continuously begotten son, were able to dispel the problem of a preexistent darkness through the notion of Son-as-Light. That said, even Augustine was aware that such an account of light could not explain what existed prior “not only [to] . . . the lamps of heaven but even . . . [to] heaven itself.” Augustine drew the conclusion that “we should say that light created originally is the forming and shaping of the spiritual creation, while the night is the material of things still to be formed and shaped in the remaining works, material that had been laid down when in the beginning God made heaven and earth, before he made the day by a word” (ut diceremus illam lucem quæ primitus facta est, conformationem esse creaturæ spiritualis; noctem vero, adhuc formandam in reliquis operibus rerum materiem, quæ fuerat instituta, cum in principio fecit Deus cœlum et terram, antequam verbo faceret diem).136 Milton’s abyss, replete with its “dark materials to create more Worlds” (II.916), echoes Augustine’s “night is the material of things.” But while Augustine reached the confident conclusion that if we are to talk about physical darkness and corporeal light, then night must be just another word for a wholly material chaos, Milton was not so sure.137 Since both light and the Son are created ex Deo in Milton, the presence of an origi-

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nal “Darkness profound” (VII.233) looms large. Book VII describes how created light is “Sprung from the Deep, and from her Native East / To journie through the airie gloom began, / Sphear’d in a radiant Cloud, for yet the Sun / Was not” (VII.245–48). In the proud invocation to book III when Milton claims to have “sung of Chaos and Eternal Night” (III.18), he may be remembering—and attempting to outdo—Vida’s “Æternum noctemque, indigestumque profundum” (Eternal night and confused deep).138 While Milton’s use of “Chaos” admits the Augustinian proposal that God formed the prima materia and then shaped it (in a two-stage yet simultaneous act of creation), the difficult phrase “Eternal Night’ (III.18) works against this notion. Night claims for itself an existence which precedes the Creation tout court.139 Marvell, Milton’s more cautious friend, detected the hesitation and subsequently chose to write, “Of the cold Chaos, and half-eternal Night” (“The Third Advice to a Painter, London. October 1st 1666” 144; italics added).140 The notorious difficulty of getting to the heart of the invocation to book III thus requires us to distinguish between the uncreated light and the light that evokes the Son. Echoing 1 John 1.5, Milton adds to the confusion by asserting, “God is light” (III.3). The equation appears to say that God dwells in himself, so that if God were everywhere, his eternal quality of light would be too. Yet the “holy light” that “as with a Mantle didst invest / The rising world of waters dark and deep, / Won from the void and formless infinite” (III.10–12) is a power, not a material thing. The Son may perform the creative act of sending light down into prime matter, but God is behind that act, choosing to “put . . . forth his Goodness” (VII.171) and to create where and when he will. Milton’s God thus creates, full stop. The fact that God’s “Goodness” is “free / To act or not” (VII.171–72) sounds remarkably Augustinian and appears to describe a protovoluntarist God.141 If, as in Augustine, God withdraws light “as he chooses,” then darkness comes into being. While the “overshadowing Spirit” and “might” (VII.165) of God ride out with the Son to “bid the Deep” (VII.166) to take on “appointed bounds” (VII.167), God in the Deep is exempt from such borders.142 As the Son creates the cosmos, God the Father retreats further into the darkness of the abyss, as it is he alone “who fill[s] / Infinitude” (VII.168–69). Whirling through these deep recesses of the abyss in Paradise Lost is an immateriality associated with primal Night that the Milton of De

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Doctrina Christiana more easily recognizes as the “the back-parts of God.” Yet, as Milton writes, these are not “strictly speaking, God, yet we do not deny that they are eternal.”143 The haunting suggestion is that what remains in the space devoid of God is Night. In putting light into this vacuity, the Night or darkness that is already there is exiled, as Adam makes clear: “Minist’ring light prepar’d . . . / Least total darkness should by Night regain / Her old possession, and extinguish life / In Nature and all things” (IV.664–67). But if light is life, then Night appears to threaten Creation not only with a preexistent darkness, but also with death. Hence, Adam’s and Eve’s prayer describes how Creation “out of Darkness call’d up Light. / Aire, and ye Elements the eldest birth / Of Natures Womb, that in quaternion run / Perpetual Circle, multiform; and mix / And nourish all things” (V.179–83). In wrestling with darkness in this way, Milton appears to have discovered that it was not so easily defeated. His generically distinct prose work De Doctrina Christiana makes the case against creationfrom-nothing (creatio ex nihilo) but forces Milton to admit that contrary to being a “nothing,” darkness is actually a very potent something: “It is clear from Isa. xlv. 7 that this darkness was far from a mere nothing.” The words at Isaiah 45.7 to which Milton refers actually make God unequivocally the author of evil.144 The fact that Milton urges this reading may indicate his eagerness to prove that “darkness” is an equivocal term: “If the darkness is nothing, then when God created the darkness he created nothing, that is he both created and did not create, which is a contradiction in terms.” Milton persuasively argues that things “cannot be put together from nothing” because plural “nothings” make no logical sense. In determining that “these things [pre-Creation] are not as they now appear,” Milton finally suggests that this original darkness may have been involved with a deeper potentiality—utilized by God at Creation— and that this darkness is necessarily very different from the darkness with which we are now familiar.145 On this point, Augustine strongly disagrees. Darkness, he argued, could not be an “actual something” because it is simply a privation, just as emptiness is “a place in which there is no material body.” The Coimbra commentators reinforced the idea by arguing that privation was neither a real nor a rational thing (“nec est ens reale, nec rationis”). In opposition to the Manichean cosmological dualism to which he had

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once subscribed, the Church Father scathingly asserted, “They fail to understand that darkness is only perceived when we cannot see anything, just as silence is only perceived when we cannot hear anything. Now just as silence is nothing, so too darkness is nothing. But just as these people say that the race of darkness has been fighting against the light of God, so too any other simpleton can likewise say that the race of silence has been fighting against the voice of God” (et non intelligunt non sentiri tenebras, nisi quando non videmus, sicut non sentitur silentium, nisi quando non audimus. Sicut autem silentium nihil est, sic et tenebræ nihil sunt. Sicut autem isti: dicunt gentem tenebrarum contra lucem Dei pugnasse; sic potest et alius similiter vanus dicere, gentem silentiorum contra vocem Dei pugnasse).146 Milton’s poetry daringly resists the Augustinian position. Recalling the act of Creation (in the poem’s first description), Uriel speaks of the “wisdom infinite” (III.706) that “brought . . . forth” (III.707) the innumerable works of Creation and, simultaneously, “hid thir causes deep” (III.707; italics added). Lurking in the darkness are obscure forces— unknown causes. Such a darkness, which can never be fully apprehended, cannot be, pace Augustine, simply equated with the absence of sight (silence, after all, is not merely the failure to hear something). Despite the warning message in Michael’s stern lecture to Adam (XII.575– 76), the poetry of Paradise Lost persists in opening up the question of what the cause behind this “action at a distance” might be. While the comfortable answer is God, the uncomfortable one—the one toward which Milton’s poetry inclines—is Night. In reaching out to understand what lies beyond our comprehension (infinity, imaginary space, God), Milton has “unessential Night” (II.439) define itself in opposition to the equally mysterious “Bright effluence” (III.6). What Milton’s rather crazy use of Lucretius, neo-Stoic thought, and theology all attempt to confront is the problem of finding a way to understand not only Night but also its occult qualities, which fall into the realm of experience but not into the realm of sensory perception. Far from stopping on the brink of the unknown, Milton’s poetry actively ventures into the mystery.147 Prima materia in Paradise Lost thus appears to be raised out of a light that, in turn, issues from darkness (Milton here has capitalized on Augustine’s slip). While the Milton of De Doctrina Christiana thought it

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a logical contradiction to say that God created nothing (qua darkness) as well as things (qua light and world), the implication in the poetry is that God is somehow aligned with both Night and also the “Boundless . . . deep” (VII.168) that is Chaos. If God is not present in the void in activity (qua Goodness), then he must be there in potentiality (qua the power to act), as Skulsky notes: “Not being there as Creator does not imply not being there at all.”148 IMAGINARY ENTITIES: GOD, THE VOID, AND SPACE

When God declares, “nor vacuous the space” (VII.169), we naturally inquire what or who is there to fill it. The Son, so deemed by Milton to be subordinate to God the Father, is denied ubiquitous place: “But although Christ’s human nature is in supreme glory, it nevertheless exists in one definite place and not, as some people would like to think, everywhere.”149 But this throws into sharp relief God’s problematic claim, “Though I uncircumscrib’d my self retire” (VII.170). It is the second half of the idea that makes Milton’s God more difficult to get a handle on than the God in Dante, who is “uncircumscribed, and circumscribing all” (non circunscritto, e tutto circunscrive; Paradiso xiv.30).150 Milton’s God is (normally) everywhere, but his power is such that he can, when he so chooses, temporarily withdraw from some area. The discomfort this produces arises over the fact that the Law of God’s Ubiquity may not in fact hold true: if God withdraws, or even if he leaves his power behind somehow, the ubiquity of God, a fortiori, is no longer an absolute. That is to say, if God is “uncircumscrib’d,” or without a circumference, then there appears to be no circle and, by the same logic, no center: God disappears, at will, into rabbit holes. Yet this act does not necessarily mean that the infinity or omnipresence of God is compromised. The weird effect can be likened to an indefinite field of intelligent pinkness that suddenly decides to make holes here and there in the hitherto unbroken pinkness. We could describe this action as a matter of local withdrawals— into the continuing pinkness—which continue to extend indefinitely beyond the horizon. The idea is more common in the seventeenth century than one might expect. In the Greek tradition, the Neoplatonist Porphyry popularized the idea that “God is everywhere because he is no where.”151 In the first commentary on Lucretius’s De Rerum Natura, Joannes Baptista

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Pius (or Giovanni Battista Pio; fl. 1511) noted that this atomist universe is centerless.152 Giordano Bruno (1548–1600) echoed the sentiment when he stated that “the centre of infinite space is everywhere.”153 This line of thought directly contradicts Aristotelian philosophy, in which the farthest limit is placed on the outermost (and hence most perfect) heaven that is itself still considered part of the created universe.154 Yet Milton’s God retreats precisely from these created areas—or pockets of real space—that are said to exist when occupied by (created) bodies. God himself does not require a real, corporeally filled space, but rather defines a periphery around it, as Uriel relates: “I saw when at his Word the formless Mass, / This worlds material mould, came to a heap: / Confusion heard his voice, and wilde uproar / Stood rul’d, stood vast infinitude confin’d” (III.708–11; italics added). The “vast infinitude” (III.711) of the abyss is now bounded by a greater infinity: God. (We might speculate at this point that when Milton alludes to this eternal part as not God but the hinder parts of God, it is precisely because the latter comprise a lesser infinity than God himself.)155 While this act of circumscription may feel counterintuitive—especially since infinity serves as an abstract limit for the created world—its philosophic currency is strong. The Doctor Universalis, Alanus of Lille (c. 1128– 1203), who distinguished between the intelligible and corporeal sphere in his seventh proposition, Regulae Alani de Sacra Theologia—“Deus est spæra intelligibilis, cujus centrum ubique, circumferentia nusquam” (God is an intelligible sphere, whose centre is everywhere, whose circumference is nowhere)—is quoted with approval in the Coimbra commentary on Aristotle’s Physics. There, the idea that “God is an intelligible sphere whose centre is everywhere, the circumference nowhere” (Deus est intelligibilis sphæra, cuius centru[m] est vbique, circumferentiam nusqua[m]) is reiterated.156 While an intelligible sphere that has a center in all places and a circumference nowhere may contain greater infinities, the space itself, as Milton’s poetry hints, is best conceived of as imaginary. Suárez was a great proponent of imaginary space, though he, like the Coimbra commentators, agreed that it was a necessary metaphysical fiction, a heuristic device for thinking about God’s immensity.157 According to Suárez, God was not extended in himself but was present in the extension of imaginary space:

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We cannot conceive this disposition in spiritual substance unless through spacial order from the fact that God—from the force of the aforesaid disposition—has of himself the capacity to exist in certain corporeal spaces, even if he be extended to infinity. So we cannot conceive the disposition and immensity of the divine substance except by means of a certain extension, which, of necessity, we explain through the corporeal order. And when we separate real bodies either in reality or in the mind, we necessarily perceive a certain space capable of being filled by certain bodies, [a space] to which the whole divine substance is present—the whole [divine substance] in the whole [space] and the whole [divine substance] in each of the particular parts of it [meaning “of the space”]. And by this presence, we signify nothing other than the aforesaid disposition of the divine substance. (Quia vero nos non possumus hanc dispositionem in substantia spirituali concipere, nisi per ordinem ad spatium, eo quod Deus ex vi prædictæ dispositionis de se aptus est ad existendum in quibuscunque corporalibus spatiis, etiamsi in infinitum protendantur. ideo non possumus illam diuinæ substantiæ dispositionem & immensitatem concipere, nisi per modum cuiusdam extensionis, quam necessario explicamus per ordinem ad corpora; & quando vel re ipsa, vel mente realia corpora separamus, necessario apprehendimus veluti quoddam spatium aptum repleri corporibus, cui tota diuina substantia sit præsens, & tota in toto, & tota in singulis partibus eius, per quam præsentiam nihil aliud significamus, quam prædictam diuinæ substantiæ dispositionem.)158 God accommodates himself in the physical universe so that the imaginary, infinite space (“spatium imaginarium”) may be conceived of as a disposition of his immensity.159 Despite his best attempts, Suárez’s account careens toward identifying the infinity of God with the immense diffusion of the abyss. The Theogony of Hesiod (fl. 8th century BC?), a culturally central precursor to Milton, was read in such a way that Chaos became the “realization of the quality or caPno~—an insubstantial formlessness.”160

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This, at first, seems deeply problematic. Gregory of Nyssa, assuming a Stoic standpoint, said that if we were to strip away all qualities from matter, there would be no way to grasp the subject (CpokeAmenon), since these qualities make the thing sensible to us in the first place.161 A red ball, once devoid of its sphericity, its redness, and things like extension and weight, would be bodiless. Matter appears to arise from the intelligible, the immaterial. At II.893–94, when Milton similarly removes from Chaos its length, width, depth, and height, its physical body seems to dissolve, leaving behind only the figure of Night.162 In Prolusion IV, Milton declared prime matter to be a passive power (“potentia passiva”) and spoke, rather paradoxically, of matter as demanding an increase (the Latin reads “postulantis talem affectionem”). What the young Milton emphasizes is that an “inner active diffusion” (intrinsecam dimanationem activam) grants to prime matter a three-dimensionality through which form is received.163 In this, Milton appears to be following the line of thought expressed by Philoponus and Simplicius, who both agreed that an innate quantity of indefinite diffusion (cuvs i~ ajovristo~) exists in prime matter. In like manner, Milton argues that prime matter possesses a diffusion that is a “sort of efficiency” (dimanatio est aliqua efficentia); prime matter, in other words, is said to have an activity or motion for increase (ad accretionem) and to possess an “inner active diffusion,” or an “unbounded” (interminata) quantity.164 While extension is usually thought to refer to sensible things, this indefinite three-dimensionality of prime matter is more like an incommensurable volume, prior to particulars and materiality alike. But if the suspended, omnipresent micromatter hovering in Milton’s void in Paradise Lost exhibits such a power for indefinite extension, how does the sinister force of Night—which, as Satan says, desires to “reduce / To her original darkness” (II.983–84) the newly created world—relate to this dimensionless extension? On the surface, the two appear indistinguishable: in his argument to book I, Milton simply refers to the abyss as a “place of utter darkness, fitliest call’d Chaos.” But if Night and Chaos are unified in this picture of limitless extension, a more serious difficulty arises: namely, that of separating this entity from God. Descartes, who aimed to distinguish God’s infinity from the rest of Creation, thus assigned indefinite extension to bodies in his (mechanistic) philosophy,

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but his contemporaries, such as More, still struck back, charging him with using the words “indefinite” and “infinite” interchangeably. In order to avoid this reduction, with its attendant materialization of God, Milton’s poetry entertains the possibility that the void, like God, may actually exist in imaginary space.165 Against Aristotle, Milton argues that the void does exist, even though he denies that it exists in real space.166 The Carmelite Franciscus Bona Spes (François von Crespin; 1617–77) meanwhile hypostasized imaginary space into real space when he innocently wrote, “I say that if God were to produce a new world, he would be present to it and in the middle between the two; not certainly as though in imaginary space, but as it were of an immense space, real in itself and in its immensity really indistinct from the divine” (dico, quòd Deus, si produceretur novus mundus, foret illi præsens, & in medio inter utrumque; non quidem tamquam in spatio imaginario; sed tamquam spatium immensum reale à se & sua immensitate Divina realiter indistinctum).167 Fonseca was more cautious; he conceived of space as a “pure negation,” without a subject—“quia non est verum ens” (because it is not truly being)—but demurred from declaring whether imaginary space could be classified as an “ens reale” or an “ens fictivum.”168 Milton’s poetry, it seems, inclines to Fonseca’s carefully crafted ambivalence but tilts into the dangerous waters Bona Spes had unwittingly entered. As the verse pushes us to conceive of God’s immensity through the seemingly infinite expanse of imaginary space, it does more than flirt with the hard, self-subsisting ideas of space found in Philoponus and Simplicius. Milton, who accepted the conceptual as well as the ontological arguments for prime matter, arguably upgrades his Chaos to the status of a “counter-thing.” By imparting an objective reality to concepts, Milton’s poetry transforms the imaginary, almost Euclidean space and all its virtual properties into a reality distinct from that described by Aristotle.169 The conceptual plane of imaginary space—now hypostasized into another ontologically real space, one which is not bodily—yearns for engagement with our world. Like his French contemporary Emmanuel Maignan (1601–76), Milton is here thinking about God’s immensity in terms of “virtual extension” (extensio virtualis), while carefully avoiding any identification of God with the corporeal or the material.170

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Insofar as it deals with laws and forces, Milton’s imaginary space is, one might say in modern terms, more like absolute space.171 And both God and prime matter are spoken of not in terms of matter but in terms of energy—or, as Descartes would say, in terms of power.172 Yet this notion of space as being charged with dynamic forces and so intimately connected with immateriality was as old as Simplicius’s commentary on Aristotle’s Physics: “So let us not seek to separate the form from the participation in the spatial which is essentially united with it and to see it as well arranged in its own right. That would be like our separating its perfection from it in thought and none the less insisting on regarding it as perfect even without.”173 The commentary describes, per accidens, a recurrent phenomenon in Milton’s poetry in which absolute space slowly takes over the attributes of God. While Milton edges toward More’s belief that space is a “rudior quædam Cpografh;,” or “rather rude adumbratio,” his poetry still registers the energizing discomfort of the philosophic cheat allowed by More.174 As the natural philosopher Otto von Guericke (1602–86) wrote, “The objection is not valid that whatever is imaginary is neither real nor true (although, indeed, this is not always the case), all that which we have never seen and which exceeds our compass, we must at any rate imagine” (Nec objici potest: Quicquid Imaginarium est, illud non esse positivum ac verum quid; si quidem id non semper valet; Omne enim, quod nunquam vidimus & quod captum nostrum excedit, necesse est ut saltem imaginemur).175 Although Milton’s poetry imagines God through light and the Son, he does not allow, pace More, that God is represented only by the comfortable images the technique of accommodation provides.176 Newton’s famous reply to Leibniz—“In all void space, God is certainly present, and possibly many other substances which are not matter; being neither tangible, nor objects of our senses”—teases out an uncomfortable realization: there is room for God as well as for Night in Milton’s abyss.177 In dissolving its own materiality, Milton’s figuration of Chaos suggests that skulking in the interspaces of Chaos’s particulate is God. Yet if God is the activity in this micromatter—the power sustaining the movement, or extension, of prima materia—then Milton runs the risk of collapsing prime matter with God. It seems unlikely that Milton would have easily identified substance from God with God himself, especially

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since he strenuously argues that “a source of light is not the same thing as light, or equal in excellence.”178 But given that neither prime matter nor God falls comfortably into the Aristotelian categories, a creaking sense of unease will naturally arise in anyone thinking seriously about metaphysics and theology. The pressure to protect God from being identified with prime matter was fully registered, for example, in the late (anonymous) fifteenthcentury book Copulata veteris artis Aristotelis. The author of the incunabula seeks alternative “differentiating factors” to distinguish God from prima materia. He does so because he rightly understood that prime matter, which is prior to form and properties, is as incapable of classification according to the Aristotelian differentiae as is God: Prime matter which is pure potentiality, on the one hand, and the first cause which is pure act, on the other, are deeply different. They do not, however, differ by differentiating factors, because it is impossible for the aforesaid [matter] to have within it differentiae. So the differing things [matter and the first cause] do not differ from each other by individual characters—i.e. all [i.e., they are everything]. Of course properly speaking all things which differ are different, but prime matter and God are not different in a particularised way. In themselves, they are diverse because specific differentiae merge, in a univocal mode, but this ought not to be in the case of diversities! (Materia p[ri]ma q[uae] est pura pote[n]tia et p[ri]ma causa purissim[us] [recte purissimi] act[us] maxime differu[n]t. et t[ame]n no[n] differu[n]t differe[n]tiis. q[ua]r[e] impossibile e[st] predicta habere d[iffe]r[e]n[ti]as. [er]go d[iffe]r[e]n[ti]a non differu[n]t a se singula i[dest] o[mn]ia. D[icen]d[u]m q[uod] om[nia] q[uae] differu[n]t differe[n]tia. sed materia p[ri]ma et deus p[ro]prie non differu[n]t. sed seipsis s[un]t diversa. quia d[iffe]r[e]n[ti]a p[ro]prie in aliquo c[ommun]i vnivoco conueniu[n]t. sed hoc non oportet de diuersis.)179 The last phrase is a sort of a helpless shrug, as if to say, “But this isn’t the way it should be!” The logic of the idea has led the author to the uncom-

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fortable conclusion that prime matter and God might be one and the same thing, even though this is inadmissible according to orthodox theology. This difficulty of pinpointing the difference between prima materia and God is further exacerbated in Milton by his denial that God is the Actus Purus (Pure Act). Where Milton’s prose treatise implies God had to create in order to be made manifest, Paradise Lost, through the figures of Chaos and Night, suggests otherwise.180 In his rejection of the more orthodox view, Milton falls to the side of those chastised by the Coimbra commentators: “As they [the Manicheans] said, matter was not only not pure potency; but they said it was itself pure act, that is, God” (vt dixerint, materiam non solùm non esse puram potentiam; sed esse ipsum purum actum, hoc est, Deum).181 Milton’s allegorical figure of Chaos may now be seen as a sort of cover: it represents prime matter as potentia qua potentiality and also qua power. In occupying a state of liminality, Chaos is poised at the margins of existence and also of “super-existence.”182 While we might say that the allegory makes Chaos stand for a universal, it must be admitted that Chaos is nonetheless a particular, defined by Aristotelian qualities (such as hot, cold, moist, and dry) and its Lucretian particulate. To universalize Chaos propels us into a quasi-neo-Stoic ontology in which there is no longer an ontological distinction between qualities and the subject in which those qualities inhere.183 This may partly explain Richardson’s decree that Milton’s “Chaotick Matter” was “a Sort of Substance Different from any thing We can have an Adequate Conception of.”184 As the dark micromatter of Chaos and the skirts of “Sable-vested Night” (II.962) are slowly blurred together, the “black tartareous cold Infernal dregs / Adverse to life” (VII.238–39) that the Son was said to have purged at Creation find an uncomfortable home in Night. The prime matter issuing from God (ex Deo) and the “uncreated,” preexistent darkness retreat deeper into that vast “immeasurable Abyss” (VII.211). Richardson, who read Milton as saying that Creation consisted in “Separating the Portion of Matter” and then having it “Vivify’d, indu’d with an Animal Virtue,” fingers an emergent problem: if some of the particulate rejects this animal virtue—is “adverse to life”—then it must already be possessed of a power that actively opposes life. There is the hint that these dregs, like Chaos and Night, are

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“counter-things” that exist prior to Creation and life, so that once purged from it they return to the darkness from whence they came. As the poetry continues to break down prime matter—to think of it in terms of its smallest constituent parts—we move away from imagining a materially filled space to visualizing a dimensionless and eternal substance that is capable of spanning an infinite (imaginary) space. According to Philoponus, the measureless quantity that upgrades itself to the Aristotelian category of substance itself is prime matter.185 In his De aeternitate mundi contra Proclum, Philoponus writes that matter arises only from something unlike itself (otherwise it would already exist).186 Although complicated by various philosophical and theological arguments over the status of the void, space, and prime matter, Philoponus’s overarching point is that contrariety implies power. But when Milton plays with the idea that prime matter is a dimensionless abyss, his thought veers into the more heretical suggestion that the void which sounds remarkably like God may, in fact, be God. Whereas Plotinus, whose writings were reintroduced to the West in 1492 through Marsilio Ficino’s Latin translation (1433–99), carefully distinguished between the indefinite, which characterizes matter insofar as it is beyond apprehension, and the One, which transcends all apprehension, the distinction in Milton’s poetry between the indefinite eternal (matter) and the infinite eternal (God) is collapsing with increasing speed.187 Amid the fast-moving conglomeration of material and immaterial substances of Chaos and Night, Milton constructs—and simultaneously tears apart—notions of materiality. Through the poetry’s images, an unsettling ambivalence surrounding the relation of God to Chaos and Night is kept eerily alive. Such a conception of prime matter as extension—as a colorless, lightless, and fundamentally uncreated, infinite dimensionality—sends us back to Lucretius’s ontologically real void (DRN i.1002) and to Satan’s walk on the “first convex,” or wall of the universe (III.418–22). The landscape, as Satan beholds it, is hideously bleak: “now seems a boundless Continent / Dark, waste, and wild, under the frown of Night / Starless expos’d, and ever-threatning storms / Of Chaos blustring round, inclement skie” (III.423–26). The surging threat of this deep is meant to fill us with horror: the “boundless Continent” (III.423) that threatens to swallow the shell of the created universe is reminiscent of Raphael’s narration, which

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opens with the uncomfortable memory, “Chaos wilde / Reignd where these Heav’ns now rowl” (V.577–78). Here, Satan beholds a darkness that blusters, shakes, and surges with a strange semimateriality, semiimmateriality. Were it not for the fact that the Son had “farr remov’d” (VII.272) the “loud misrule / Of Chaos” (VII.271–72) from the the crystal sphere of the cosmos, we are told the “fierce extreames / Contiguous might distemper the whole frame” (VII.272–73). It seems that the threats of Chaos are not hollow after all.188 Chaos and Night as “counter-things” may be kept out from real space, but they are very much alive in Milton’s vast, imaginary—or, now, absolute— space that seethes with movement. Since an endorsement of such a reduction would be to divest the abyss of its awful power, we note that the assault of images appearing to privilege materiality is actually opposing a reduction of God and space to the simply material.189 In exploring the problematic relationship between prime matter, Chaos, God, and space, Milton launches ideas that few of his contemporaries would have dared to articulate, let alone think. There is one notable exception. At the end of the century, Newton wrote of a stripped-down, quality-less void. Behind the most fundamental matter, he argued, there was a floating mass of particulates and force: “Something is there because spaces are there, although nothing more than that.”190 There in the darkness of those spaces, Newton points, is God. In Milton’s spiritualized Chaos and materializing Night, both of which block any full-scale identification with the corporeal or incorporeal, Milton waves a crooked finger in the same direction as Newton— toward the God of Isaiah 45.7, who posed the greatest threat to Milton’s theodicy in his thunderous assertion, “I form the light, and create the darkness; I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things.”191 What Milton’s poetry hauntingly suggests is that deep within the frightening Pascalian “silence eternal de ces espaces infinis,” there is a potent counter-something or darkness.192 In the millenarian-influenced climate of the 1660s, Daniel 2.22, in which God “revealeth the deep and secret things: he knoweth what is in the darkness,” glittered with the exciting possibility that scripture itself describes these Pascalian interspaces. The unknown, uncontrollable, and virtually unimaginable intersidereal force of darkness is now conceived of as potentially powerful enough to overcome Creation itself. This is the darkness vividly described by Joel at

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the Son’s Second Coming: “The earth shall quake before them: the heavens shall tremble: the sun and the moon shall dark, and the stars shall withdraw their shining” (Joel 2.10).193 Nonetheless, it appears that Night and Chaos survive this chiliastic conflagration: “at one sling / Of thy victorious Arm, well-pleasing Son, / Both Sin, and Death, and yawning Grave at last / Through Chaos hurld, obstruct the mouth of Hell / For ever, and seal up his ravenous Jawes. / Then Heav’n and Earth renewd shall be made pure / To sanctitie that shall receive no staine” (X.633–39). Heaven and Earth are remade, Hell will be shut (though unchanged as a place of eternal torment for the damned), but the fate of Chaos is passed over in silence. The omission is thunderous. When Belial expresses his fear that created things could be “swallowd up and lost / In the wide womb of uncreated night, / Devoid of sense and motion” (II.149–51), his imagery recalls the primal power Job described as a “darkness itself; and of the shadow of death, without any order, and where the light is as darkness” (Job 10.22).194 Biblically, darkness may be described in terms of material chaos (“without any order”), but this image itself implies that something greater exists beyond—or behind—it. The “abortive gulf ” (II.441), as its name implies, is neither alive nor dead; it just is, in the same way that we say God is. For those critics who think of Milton’s prime matter as good, this figuration of Chaos is problematic, precisely because it points in the opposition direction. But no absolute conception of morality, of goodness or of evil, is coextensive with the concept of Beingness attached to the “unfounded deep” (II.829).195 Although the metaphysic underlying Chaos is confused—a crazy mix of Aristotelian and Lucretian ideas set against one another—and the theological implications of Night occlude any straightforward reading of the poem as theodicy, a sort of aesthetic recuperation of these substances occurs through Milton’s poetic practice. As allegorical figures, these ontologically indeterminable and conceptually challenging “counterthings” are seemingly brought under control and made comfortable through narrative. But the use of allegory and metaphor simultaneously acknowledges that, on the other side of this superficial domestication, is a metaphysical turbulence that still exists, unchecked: “Outrageous as a Sea, dark, wasteful, wilde” (VII.212). Milton’s technique of describing the abyss is, therefore, inherently paradoxical, in the sense that the devi-

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ation is put up against the existing doctrine and then used as a way to explore further that point of departure.196 The result is that all the descriptions of the abyss—of Night and Chaos—in Paradise Lost add up to a weird and rather dangerous kind of philosophizing which is actively encouraged by the poetry. Although Milton reminds us that after the material destruction and renewal of the “all” at the Last Judgment, one thing alone will survive—namely, God— Psalm 139.12 states that “the darkness and the light are both alike to thee.”197 The memory of this may have prompted Milton to conceive of the unmovable darkness of Night and the highly spiritualized micromatter of Chaos as “counter-things,” shot through by God’s sustaining presence. As these infinitesimally small units of conceptual matter attain a reality beyond our notions of materiality and immateriality, they elude definition and classification, both ontologically and ethically. The indeterminacy of Milton’s Chaos, now pictured at the end of time, thus reverses the seemingly determinate role it played at the beginning. The acceptable metaphysical dualism latent in the act of Creation slowly drifts into the more dangerous waters of a cosmological dualism that looks to a violent end—to the apocalypse—which Milton had first gestured toward when he described the monstrous noise within the abyss. Milton’s apocryphal account of the abyss sends us back to that initial, interminable darkness characterizing the precreated universe: “beyond is all abyss, / Eternitie, whose end no eye can reach” (XII.555– 56).198 The Miltonic “all” refers not simply to the created world educed from prime matter, but also to that “one first matter all” that is Chaos and the dark “Eternitie,” or inimical power of “unessential” Night residing within it. As the images provided by allegory proliferate, we are invited to judge for ourselves whether Milton’s God spoke truly when he announced that it was he “who am alone / From all Eternitie” (VIII.405– 06). If the superficial answer is the orthodox Yes, then it must still be conceded that the poem’s imagery has already introduced other possibilities that are far less comfortable to the epic’s theodicy and the poem’s alleged monist materialism.

Conclusion

my purpose in this book has been to consider Milton’s evolving conception of substance in the context of his poetic method. It was largely prompted by the belief that Milton conceives of poetry as a mode of thinking—so richly suggested by the quotation from Paradise Lost with which I opened this study: “Then feed on thoughts, that voluntarie move / Harmonious numbers” (III.37–38). Upon first reading, thoughts “move” themselves in a “voluntarie,” or spontaneous, fashion. But as we continue to read past the line-break, the verb “move” suddenly—and perhaps rather unexpectedly—becomes transitive: we are now invited to think of thoughts as moving, or inciting, the “Harmonious numbers” that constitute poetry itself.1 Still, this modulation between the intransitive and transitive sense of “move” becomes immediately more congenial to our minds when we understand “move” in its older, more archaic sense, in which the verb is self-reflexive. The idea here is that the act of thinking and the art of creating poetry are self-reflexive activities for Milton. In an attempt to explore this idea in more depth, I have chosen to trace the specific way in which Milton’s thinking about substance is evident at every stage of his poetic career. The terms “substance” and “matter” elicit in his poetry a metaphysic that breaks free from the older, predominantly Aristotelian conceptions to which it was tied hitherto, but which it nevertheless required in order for thought to proceed. As Milton’s 280

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poetry places various philosophic ideas in opposition to one another, he ventures out on to new avenues of thought, so that his poetry shares a borderland with philosophy. While it never becomes philosophy as such, it remains clearly philosophical. This belief in Milton’s poetic project as attaining to philosophic speculation has formed the tenor of this book. It has also informed the book’s more immediate argument: Milton’s thinking about matter and substance is far more complex and confused than anything that can be adequately described as monist materialism, and his frequent recourse to metaphor and simile necessarily adds a further layer of complication to his metaphysic. In providing us with imaginary glimpses of a world whose ontology is continually moving between the material and the spiritual world, Milton’s poetry reaches its culmination in the sublime depiction of the universe that he creates in Paradise Lost, his most “adventrous Song” (PL I.13). The poetry of Paradise Lost successfully opens up a space for the exploration of deeply philosophical and theological questions, though these are not necessarily answered. Both the intellectual engagement and the aesthetic experience it provides challenge commonly held assumptions about the epic and Milton’s development as a poet more generally. The result is that when we stand back and view the poetry of Paradise Lost as a complex whole, we find ourselves asking, Is this a poetry of uniform intelligible physical things, disposed in narrative sequence? or is it a poetry of darkness, shot through with variable light, of substance and fluidity in exciting, progressive engagement? We hear the affirmation of the latter in Adam’s exclamation over the Promise of the Crucifixion: “O goodness infinite, goodness immense! / That all this good of evil shall produce, / And evil turn to good; more wonderful / Then that which by creation first brought forth / Light out of darkness!” (PL XII.469–73). Orthodox theology would urge us to understand Adam’s pronouncement in terms of the good brought forth from Christ’s Sacrifice. But this, in turn, demands that we recognize the darkness which precedes the light. Dualities, as Adam’s last line makes clear, are implicit in and even necessary for Creation. Here, Aristotle’s observation that “it is the same natural attribute which is at one time darkness and at another time light” facilitates a far less orthodox reading of the epic.2 The unknown transparent may be God or it may be Night or, more unnerving yet, it may be both. That Miltonic “or” stands full of

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doubt, unwilling to assert a complete separation or, conversely, a full identification. As the phrase “light out of darkness” (XII.473) fuses echoes of Genesis with those of Isaiah, a sense of dynamic opposition asserts itself. If, as I have argued, this is indeed the case, then the poetry of Paradise Lost cannot be, simpliciter, a monist materialist poem, nor can Milton be said to support a vitalist monist materialist perspective. Still, elements of monist and materialist thought arise in Milton’s poetry. They are, however, fragmentary and at times even illusory. The confirmation of a monist materialism in Milton would require an endorsement of this philosophic position from both Milton’s metaphysic and his poetic practice. But it is precisely this double endorsement that his poetry never fully achieves. Even when it is partially effected, it is never done with ease. This perceived resistance arises not only from the philosophic problems Milton’s poetry so gratifyingly explores, but also through the metaphorical language he employs. In experimenting with a metaphysic already fraught with tension and potential contradictions, Milton’s linguistic practice, which necessarily encounters unforeseen difficulties in terms of poetic representation, adds an additional layer of complexity to his poetry that calls into question his supposed adherence to a monist materialist philosophy. The result is that while those in the seventeenth century who thought words picture things created a project that attempted to demystify what language had rendered equivocal, Milton’s poetry challenged this view. It moves in the opposite direction—toward an ontological-cumepistemological chaos—which allows Milton to use the concepts educed from images to reinvest words with new meanings. In this way, Milton is able to illustrate that something exists, while leaving precisely what it is shrouded in mystery. The occlusion may be understood partly as the product of Milton’s intellectual heritage and his continuous engagement with ideas about the supernatural and the natural and partly as a response to the genre in which he chose to write. Either way, it appears that the assertion that Milton’s monism led him uncomplicatedly toward a materialist vision of a self-animating world is too restrictive in its scope: it shrinks Milton’s intellectual and aesthetic achievement to a mere corner of the universe he actually works so hard to create. As Plato decreed in the Sophist (247D), the minute we find anything, however small, that cannot be fully expressed and explicated in physical

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terms, materialism founders as a system. By placing the philosophic conundrum which Plato had likened to a Gigantomachy “in dubious Battel on the Plains of Heav’n” (PL I.104), Milton mines the riches to be discovered on both sides of the argument. He uses the War in Heaven and his angels to draw attention to the fact that just as those who would like to think of the world only in terms of the material run into problems when they assume all matter is vitalist—and thus ascribe to it forces and powers that are immediately nonmaterial—so, too, do immaterialists encounter difficulties when they attempt to rid themselves completely of the material. If reality is the mind doing mathematics, its reasoning is nonetheless about this world; the yearning of the mathematician is for an engagement with the material. Between the two poles—the material and the immaterial, the natural and supernatural—there thus emerges a tense progression of substance. Jacob’s ladder becomes a symbol of how angels accommodate themselves and pass down to our world in an exciting sequence of courtesy and condescension that prefigures God’s final descent in the image of the Son. Such a descent must occur because the transcendent, in order to be known, hankers after a materializing image—even though it, qua pure Being, already occupies the highest rung of reality. Like that in “At a Vacation Exercise,” the poetry of Paradise Lost prefers to convey this movement between matter and spirit in leaps and bounds, rather than in terms of interconnected gradations ascending a continuous spectrum of substance. When Raphael wonders aloud if “Earth / Be but the shaddow of Heav’n” (V.574–75), his comment implies that a multiplicity of substance is necessary for this “shaddow” to be itself something.3 The visual spectacle of heaven’s ladder with the ascending and descending angels (III.511) offers a dark way down—into our sky, our universe (III.528–34). The progression calls attention to the division existing between our world and that of the angels, while simultaneously depicting a process of gracious accommodation that attempts to bridge the gap. Just as proximate matter is different from prime matter through the addition of form, so an angel in Milton’s epic is distinct from its actual substance through the act of accommodation. Certain aspects of reality appear forever unknowable in Milton’s poem, but the poetry enjoys and, indeed, perpetuates the idea that it is this struggle to gain some sort of knowledge about these substances, even if only through intimation, that is inherently a heroic one.

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Metaphor, along with its literary cousins simile, allegory, and analogy, thus keeps alive the mystery surrounding Milton’s vision of reality, which is itself replete with myriad substances, both material and immaterial. In places where we least expect it, we continue to discover figurative language sustaining, yet never settling, the differences in Milton’s metaphysic which are latent in the poetry. On the Protestant view, spirit remains the immaterial aspect, as opposed to the letter; meaning is separable from but transmitted by (verbal) expression. Milton’s investment in the spiritual reflects, therefore, the poem’s interest, more generally, in preverbal logic, in which the pivotal term is “spirit.” A monist would deny that this division exists, and a monist materialist would argue that mind and body—spirit and matter—are not antitheses but expressions of a higher unity of substance. But if this were the case, then there would be no need for Raphael to voice concern over his narration’s ability to condescend to our understanding, or for Raphael himself to be an accommodated figure. Similarly, there would be no emergent tension in identifying God with the prime matter of Chaos or with the darkness of the void. But the poetry continues to suggest otherwise: there is in Milton a consciously sustained tension which allows ideas to come into view through a sort of dialectical play against one another. At the heart of Milton’s linguistic practice and his sense of the poetic we find an aesthetic sensibility that recuperates and maintains the very tensions and elements of discord which would otherwise fracture and dissolve argument when understood in purely philosophic—that is, rigidly logical—terms. This ability to retain regions of rich dissimilarity begets metaphor and hence meaning in Milton’s poetry. As a mode of inquiry struggling to achieve truth through the testing of divergent ideas, Milton’s poetry attains to a mode of thinking that is itself representative of philosophic speculation but never of one philosophic position. Far from relinquishing the dynamic engagement between the spiritual and material worlds in favor of a single metaphysical vision like monist materialism, Milton, especially in the poetry of Paradise Lost, holds on to the ontological tensions he explores. In the final analysis, Milton’s poetry registers a restless eagerness “to finde / Matter of glorious trial” (IX.1176–77), where the “matter” in question pertains as much to inquiry as it is does to substance.

NOTES

introduction 1. I have chosen to use the term “intellectual history” as opposed to “history of ideas” because this book attempts to place the poem in a historical context as well as to discuss the ideas presented by the poetry. Both of these terms differ from history of philosophy insofar as the history of philosophy, as Bernard Williams once remarked, keeps it philosophy before it becomes history. As long as one adopts an interrogative, not just an explanatory, approach to philosophy and literature, a transhistorical exploration of concepts is possible. See Williams, “Preface,” Descartes: The Project of Pure Enquiry, 9–11. 2. A point first made by A. D. Nuttall in Overheard by God, 91. 3. The monist readings of Milton are too numerous to cite, but see William Walker, “Milton’s Dualistic Theory of Religious Toleration,” 201–30, 202n1; for his list of influential monist studies, see 203n3. Christopher Kendrick acknowledges the inherent failure implicit in a doctrine of animist materialism in Milton: A Study in Ideology and Form, 12. Another partial exception is James Grantham Turner, who in One Flesh: Paradisal Marriage and Sexual Relations in the Age of Milton writes that “one flesh and help meet becomes less dualistic as it becomes more ‘mysterious’” (200–01). The quotation marks are telling: Turner is too clever and honest a critic to say this is monistic, so he covers it with a word that expresses quite well his critical hesitation. D. Bentley Hart ultimately opts to say that Milton is “not simply a ‘metaphysical,’ or even ‘material,’ but a narrative monist”; see his “Matter, Monism, and Narrative,” esp. 16, 25. Other notable exceptions include Poole, Idea of the Fall, and Walker, “Milton’s Dualistic Theory of Religious Toleration,” 201–30. 285

286 notes to pages xv – 3

4. Schwartz, for instance, calls Milton “an avowed and consistent monist”; see Remembering and Repeating, 338; see Teskey, Delirious Milton, 17 (on “the phenomenon of emergence”). 5. J. M. M. Hans Thijssen, speaking of the early Renaissance, writes that the “commentator’s interest and commitments were partly personal and subjective, and partly socially and conventionally determined” (515). In discussing Aristotelian natural philosophy, he also points out that this field “allowed the existence, side by side, of competing interpretations” (519), which, as I contend in chapter 1, spread to other faculties and disciplines as well. See Thijssen, “Some Reflections on Continuity and Transformation of Aristotelianism in Medieval (and Renaissance) Natural Philosophy,” 503–28. 6. cf. Hill, Milton and the English Revolution. On his approach, which does not view Milton as “an original thinker, in politics or theology,” see esp. 5–9. 7. Kerrigan, Sacred Complex, 193–262; Fallon, Milton among the Philosophers, 102–07, and “Paradise Lost in Intellectual History,” 334–39; H. S. Marjara, Contemplation of Created Things: Science in Paradise Lost, esp. 221–39; Rogers, Matter of Revolution, esp.109–11; Kolbrener, Milton’s Warring Angels, esp.89–104; Donnelly, “‘Matter’ versus Body,” 79–85; Lewalski, Life of John Milton, 155–56, 349, 427–29, 480–81 (on monism); and Teskey, Delirious Milton, esp. 90–91 (on monism) and 103–04 (on Raphael’s speech). William Kerrigan’s psychogenetic study The Sacred Complex, which notably preceded Fallon’s book, argued strenuously for Milton’s commitment to monism. 8. See Fallon, Milton among the Philosophers, 246. On Hobbes’s impact on Milton, see the discussion by Barbara Lewalski in the introduction to her edition of Milton’s poetry; see Paradise Lost, xxiii–xxiv. 9. See Fallon, Milton among the Philosophers, 12. On Milton as “not a particularly philosophical man,” see Kerrigan, “Milton’s Place in Intellectual History,” Cambridge Companion to Milton, 266–67. 10. See Hill, Milton and the English Revolution, esp. 93–116 (on Milton and the radicals), 323–33 (on Milton’s materialism, in which even God is a material being). 11. Rogers, Matter of Revolution, 103–76; for a corrective, see Poole, “Milton and Science: A Caveat,” 18–34. 12. See Grossman, Story of All Things, xi–xxii; see also 218–52 (on Milton’s writings within a “determined historical experience”). 13. Kolbrener, Milton’s Warring Angels, 66–67 (quoting Skinner), and 6–7, 135–37, 163; Rapaport, Milton and the Postmodern, 17. 14. See Herman, Destabilizing Milton, 3–5, 7 (on Fish), 13–21 (on certainty versus uncertainty in Milton). 15. Fallon, Milton among the Philosophers, 111. chapter 1. the university years 1. Eliot, “The Perfect Critic,” The Sacred Wood, 11. 2. “Skaly rind” to my mind implies the skin of a fish or the barnacles on a whale. But Dobranski links the Leviathan to a tortoise by way of the Satan’s shield–as–moon simile; see “Pondering Satan’s Shield,” 501–02.

notes to pages 4 – 8 2 87

3. A view opposed by Martindale, “Milton and the Homeric Simile,” 224–38. Johnson, commenting on Milton’s similes, observed that they were nonhomologating: “He does not confine himself within the limits of rigorous comparison”; see “Milton,” in Lives, 1:287. 4. See Bentley’s Paradise Lost, 10–11 (note to I.203). 5. See Ricks’s discussion in Milton’s Grand Style, 16. 6. Bentley, Paradise Lost, 10–11. Hume’s annotation states, “Foam, for the Foaming Sea, as Adnixi torquent spumas & cærula verrunt, Æn.III”; see Notes on Milton’s Paradise Lost, 13 (note to I.203). 7. See OED, I.1.a; cf. Hume, Notes on Milton’s Paradise Lost, 14 (note to I.207). 8. Milton’s complex homologation was first studied by Whaler, “Miltonic Simile,” 1034–75; see also Lerner, “Miltonic Simile,” 297–308. 9. I want to make a stronger case for Milton’s exploratory poetics than Lewalski, who writes only that “Milton’s imitative and allusive strategies are essentially heuristic”; see Paradise Lost and the Rhetoric of Literary Forms, 7. 10. Johnson, “Milton,” in Lives, 1:289–90. 11. For instance, Fallon writes, “When redefining Aristotle’s conception of the pneuma in the Christian Doctrine, Milton moves away from hylomorphism towards materialism.” See Fallon, Milton among the Philosophers, 102 (where hylomorphism refers to the functional unity of body and soul). 12. See Ross, Aristotle, 138 (Ross was too good a scholar to be unaware of the fact that Aristotle’s account of the rational soul compromises this interpretation). 13. On the peripatetic tradition as the intellectual framework of the seventeenth century, see Ariew and Gabbey, “Scholastic Background,” 425–53; on the problem of the soul, see Garber, “Soul and Mind,” 759–95; Schmitt, “Reassessment,” 166–68, 178. 14. See Schmitt, “Reassessment,” esp. 162, 174. 15. See J. J. Keaney and R. Lamberton, Life and Poetry of Homer, 12 (also quoted in Bos, Soul and Its Instrumental Body, 288); Hankins, Humanism and Platonism, passim; Kristeller, “Aristotelian Tradition,” esp. 32–49; J. Moreau, “De la Concordance d’Aristote avec Platon,” 45–58. 16. Schmitt, “Reassessment,” 170; cf. Feingold, “Science, Universities and Society”, 17–19. On the increasing complexity of the role of anti–Aristotelianism in England in the seventeenth century, see Schmitt, Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola, 56. 17. Given the recent scholarship on humanism, I feel it necessary to point out that I adopt Paul F. Grendler’s “working definition of humanism,” which refers to (1) classical learning; (2) a “culture of criticism”; and (3) “the institutionalization of the new scholarship and critical attitude of humanism through schools and universities”; see Grendler, “Humanism,” 73–95. On Milton’s languages, see Haan, “Milton’s Bilingual Muse,” 679–700 (esp. 682–86); Hale, Milton’s Languages. 18. Kristeller, “Humanism and Scholasticism,” 102–03; Hankins, “Humanism, Scholasticism, and Renaissance Philosophy,” 31–32; cf. Grafton and Jardine, From Humanism to the Humanities, esp. xi–xvi, 210–20.

288 notes to pages 9 –11

19. On the statute, see Mullinger, University of Cambridge from the Royal Injunctions of 1535, 614: “Repetitiones praeterea quotidianae Graecae sint, aut Latinae, idque alternis. In his se diligenter ac assidue exerceant; horas praeses ad id [et] Senatus commodissimas assignent. Ordo autem librorum in quibus repetendis elaborabunt hic est: Primo anno Demothenem in Latinum convertant, et orationes Ciceronis in Graecum, secundo anno Platonem Latinum faciant et philosophica Ciceronis Graeca. Tertio anno eadem repetantur quae primo.” 20. This refers to the studia humanitatis. As Kristeller notes in “Humanism,” the term does not include logic or the quadrivium (113). 21. On Erasmus, see the “Introduction” to Erasmus and Cambridge, 47–61; for Erasmus’s opinion of the “renewed Aristotle,” see Mullinger, Cambridge Characteristics, 14–15; Costello, Scholastic Curriculum, 62–63; D’Ewes, Autobiography, 1:132; ODNB, s.v. “Bois” (formerly, Boyes). 22. The commonplace book may be Edward Palmer’s, see Trinity College (Cambridge) MS. R. 16. 7; discussed in Costello, Scholastic Curriculum, 63. For the Erasmus–Bulloch letter, see Erasmus and Cambridge, 195. 23. First noted by Kristeller, “Humanism and Scholasticism,” passim (see esp. 99–102). See also D’Amico, “Humanism and Pre–Reformation Theology,” 367. In this book, I employ Schmitt’s working definition of these terms: “Scholasticism . . . is predominantly a method of study and of teaching developed and used within the framework of institutional instruction and pedagogy; Aristotelianism, besides having a specific and quite clearly definable method of its own, is much broader and encompasses a more or less comprehensive system of philosophy and science.” See Schmitt, “Renaissance Aristotelianism,” 161. 24. Feingold, “Aristotle and the English Universities,” 135–40. See also Curtis, Oxford and Cambridge in Transition, 83–125, esp. 93: “Practice, however, did not always conform to preaching.” 25. Christ’s Donor’s Book (c. 1626), fols. 40–45; on the rise of mathematics and the “new” philosophy in the universities, see Feingold, “Aristotle and the English Universities,” esp. 135–42; Mathematicians’ Apprenticeship, esp. 45–121. 26. Feingold, “Aristotle and the English Universities,” 140. 27. BL Evelyn Papers Add. MS 78314, fols. 16r–16v; ODNB, s.v. “Bohun” and “Phillips.” 28. BL Evelyn Papers Add. MS 78314, fol. 18v. 29. See Schmitt, “Science in Sixteenth–Century Universities,” esp. 489–94, 497, 512–14, and 531. Feingold describes logic as the only way “to manage thought and regulate discourse,” in “Humanities,” 281. Even Baconian reform could not easily uproot centuries of Aristotelian scholarship. On the predominance of scholastic Aristotelianism in the curriculum, see, for instance, the notebook attributed to John Day of Oriel College (c. 1589), Bodleian MS Rawlinson D. 274, passim; see also Dyer, Privileges, 2:182–83,

notes to pages 11– 14 289

30.

31.

32.

33.

34.

35. 36.

37. 38. 39. 40.

41. 42. 43.

87; Schmitt, “Reassessment,” 179n131 and 178; id., “Science in Sixteenth– Century Universities,” 513; Mullinger, Cambridge Characteristics, 46–47. On the highly individuated Aristotelianism, see Mercer, “Importance of Early Modern Aristotelianism,” 54–56; Lohr, “Latin Aristotelianism,” 369–80, esp. 371; and Grendler, “Universities,” 8–14; on the confusion surrounding the term “Aristotelianism,” see Kristeller, “Humanism and Scholasticism,” 99–105; Lohr, “Jesuit Aristotelianism,” 204, 211, 215, 217–20; Schmitt, “Reassessment,” 174–75; on eclecticism in general, see Kelley, “Eclecticism and the History of Ideas,” 577–92; Donini, “History of the Concept of Eclecticism,” 15–29; on eclecticism and Aristotelianism, see Schmitt, Aristotle and the Renaissance, 102, 111; Blackwell, “Sturm, Morhof and Brucker vs. Aristotle,” esp. 381–407; Blackwell, “Honoré Fabri,” 49–77. BL Evelyn Papers Add. MS 78314, fol. 17v; discussed in Feingold, “The Humanities,” 401. The Bohun–Evelyn connection was kept alive in the eighteenth century: Sir John Evelyn (son of the diarist) corresponded with the headmaster of Winchester, John Burton, nephew of Ralph Bohun; BL Evelyn Papers Add. MS 78480. The “problem of Aristotelianism” lay also in this flexibility of absorbing ideas and concepts often inimical to its own; see Schmitt, Aristotle and the Renaissance, 103–09; Grant, “Aristotelianism,” 104; Thijssen, “Continuity and Transformation of Aristotelianism,” esp. 518–19; Freedman, “Aristotle and Universities,” 234–46. For Bohun, see BL Add. MS 78314, fol. 17r. On the prolusions in general, see Campbell and Corns, Milton, 35-37; on the definition of a “declamation,” see Costello, Scholastic Curriculum, 32; Hartmann, Prolusions, 11–13, 132. For Campbell’s reservations on the Woodhouse dating, see Parker, Milton, 2:774–75; on public university debates, see Skinner, “Generation of John Milton,” 63–66. A “set topic” refers to the position one was given and made to argue; see Fletcher, Intellectual Development, 2:469–71 and Dyer, Privileges, 1:534. Milton, Columbia Works, 12:170, 172 (Latin); 171, 173 (English). I have chosen to use the Columbia translation here since it captures the spirit of the Latin phrasing more vividly. CPW, VI:374. See Feingold, “The Humanities,” 281–89, 292–306. See Campbell and Corns, Milton, 36, 62; Masson, Life of Milton, 1:297. CPW, I:300–01; Columbia Works, 12:276 (Latin), where the phrase is translated as “if she is handled in accordance with her worth” (12:277). See also Meerhoff, “Beauty and the Beast,” 201–02. The phrase is Bacon’s; see De Augmentis; see Works, 4:122. Quoted in Feingold, “Humanities,” 242; see Barlow, Library for Younger Schollers, 12. CPW, VIII:216; bracketed quotes refer to the definitions Milton gives on page 215. On the dating, see CPW, VIII:144–47. I generally follow the

2 9 0 notes to pages 15– 18

44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52.

53.

54. 55.

56. 57.

58.

59. 60. 61. 62.

Ong–Parker–Lusignan dating, since it appears Milton completed the majority of the work before 1648, so that the primary years of composition would have been c. 1645–47; see CPW, VIII:144. See CPW, VII:216–19, 240, 311; CPW, VIII:217n1; on dialectic, see Ong, Ramus, 176–80. CPW, VIII:218; on Milton’s divergence from Ramus, see Connor, “Milton’s Art of Logic,” 189–91. CPW, VIII:214; cf. VIII:221. CPW, VIII:213. Milton, CPW, VIII:214; Melanchthon, Erotemata dialectices (1547), in Opera Omnia 13:col.520 (quoted in Ocker, Biblical Poetics, 189n18). Columbia Works, 11:24 (Latin); 11:25 (English) [=CPW, VIII:221]. CPW, VIII:87, 218. Johnson, “Milton,” in Lives, 1:294. Marvell agreed on the power of Milton’s blank verse: “Thy verse created like thy theme sublime, / In number, weight, and measure, needs not rhyme,” “On Mr Milton’s Paradise Lost” 53–54, in Poems, 184. See Columbia Works, 11:300: “Si distinguimus cum Aristotele semonem in exteriorem, qui ore profertur; & interiorem, qui mente solùm concipitur.” Connor discusses this “aversion to verbalism” in “Milton’s Art of Logic,” 189, 200–01. On the idea of thinking as silent speech, see Plato, Theat. 189E–190A. Masson, Poetical Works, 1:11. On dating, see Parker, who accepts the traditional dating of c. 1628 with much hesitation, as do Campbell and Corns. They have proposed a later date for this prolusion (Easter 1631), since Milton refers to the canceled exercises (owing to the visitation of the plague in 1630); see Parker, Milton, 2:739–40; Campbell and Corns, Milton, 58-60. Woodhouse and Bush support Masson’s dating in Variorum 2 (pt.1): 18, 136–37. CPW, I:268. CPW, I:271 (emended translation); Columbia Works, 12:216 (Latin); see also Masson, Life of Milton, 1:215–97, esp. 287; on dating, see Campbell and Corns, Milton, 58–59. Variorum 2 (pt.1):138–9; Masson, Life of Milton, 1:10–14. Notably, this exercise was absent from the publication of Milton’s 1645 edition of Poems and was misplaced in the 1673 edition. Letter to Gill, CPW, I:314. CPW, I:266. Elegia prima ad Carolum Diodatum ll. 9–16, 89–90, in Poems, 22. Richek observes that at Cambridge these “saltings” usually took place “about two weeks before October 10,” though the dating on Milton’s poem indicates otherwise; see “Salting,” 103–12 (107, 109). See also Hale, Milton’s Cambridge Latin, 7; Coiro, “Anonymous Milton,” esp. 614–16; Mullinger, University of Cambridge from the Royal Injunctions of 1535, 400–01. On the pun on “salty” / “sexual” in the Defence as anticipated here, see Turner, One Flesh, 299n76; for Milton’s use of “salty,” see Columbia Works, 12:244.

notes to pages 18– 2 2 2 9 1

63. CPW, I:284–85, 27; cf. Masson, Poetical Works, 1:11–13; Parker, Milton, 1:44–49. 64. The poem is omitted from the 1645 edition of the Poems; see Variorum 2 (pt.1):136–37. 65. On this as a departure from the normal “saltings,” see Columbia Works, 12:242–44 (Latin); 243–45 (English). 66. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason A51 / B75, 193–94. 67. In Poems, 81n59. 68. See Addison, The Spectator (no. 297), 3:63: “[Milton] often affects a kind of Jingle in his words.” Johnson agreed, denigrating Milton’s “play on words, in which he delights too often”; see “Milton,” Lives, 1:292. An example in the prolusions of Milton’s punning is in his allusion to “Sparks,” a college servant, who, although not named, is described in Prolusion VI through images of fire and smoke; see Columbia Works, 12:230 (Latin); 12:231 (English) and CPW, I:278n46. On other puns / allusions, see Campbell and Corns, Milton, 58-59. 69. This is Dryden’s description of Milton’s wit, as related by Aubrey; see Brief Lives, 71. 70. Aristotle, Metaph. H.6.1045b20-q.1.1046a4; Z.15.1039b20–31. Philoponus writes that “Aristotle . . . says that objects of intellect are of three sorts”–– i.e., the nonmaterial, the intermediate, and those in matter; see On Aristotle On the Soul 3.1–8, (563, 10–15), 144. 71. Aristotle, De an. I.1.402b22–25. 72. The first edition of Alexander Gill’s Logonomia Anglica (1619) appears to exist in only two copies. The Huntington Library possesses what looks to be James I’s presentation copy (acquired from J. Bindley’s Library), while the Bodleian has the presentation copy ex dono authoris. Milton’s interest in Gill’s work is evident also in the distinction between etymology and syntax in Milton’s Accidence Commenc’t Grammar. On Gill, see Clark, Milton and St. Paul’s, 69–75, and ODNB. 73. See Clark, Milton and St. Paul’s, 72, 74. 74. Noted by earlier twentieth–century critics, such as Gilbert; see “Cambridge Manuscript,” 174 (where he also mentions that the epic theme occurs in the Fifth and Sixth Elegies). Useful also is Tillyard, Milton, 30–32. 75. See Statute 30 in Rackham, Early Statutes of Christ’s College, 90 (Latin); 91 (English). On the rule for speaking Latin being strictly enforced (until 1590), see Mullinger, University of Cambridge from . . . 1626, 138, 138n1. On knowledge of the statutes, see Rackham, who describes how Statute no. 40 states that the Statutes of the College were chained to a stall in Chapel so that everyone might have access to them (“stallo intra capellam eiusdem alligari vt cuique illorum copia fieri posset”); 106 (Latin); 107 (English). When this practice ended, I do not know. 76. Columbia Works, 12:246 (Latin); my translation. On the jesting spirit of the prolusions, with no perceived hostility between Milton and his audience, see Sheppard’s “Milton’s Cambridge Exercises,” 151–62; see also Parker, Milton, 2: 740. On the audience’s awareness of the topic to be debated (it appears it

2 9 2 notes to pages 2 2 – 2 7

77.

78.

79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89.

90. 91. 92. 93. 94. 95.

96.

97.

was circulated beforehand), see Walsh, Historical Account of the University of Cambridge, 74–75. On the poem, see Daiches, Milton, 32–34; on bilingualism, see Hale, Milton’s Languages, 5; on this as an allusion to Lucretius’s “infantia linguae” (DRN v.1028–32), see Haan, “Milton’s Bilingual Muse,” 681. The intellectual enjoyment of such pieces owes something to the technique of the prolusions––but not as much as Tillyard first claimed; see Parker, Milton, 1:101, 2:770. Il Penseroso is tentatively dated c. 1631 by Campbell and Corns in Milton, 60. Sylvester, “Urania, or the Heavenly Muse,” stanzas 14–15, in Complete Works, 2:3–4; also noted in Milton Variorum 2 (pt.1):144. In Cowley, Pindarique Odes, 48–49. Compare the bishop’s words in Milton’s “In Obitum Praesulis Eliensis” 56–68, in Poems, 26. In Cowley, Pindarique Odes, 45–46. Aristotle, Metaph. E.1.1026a10–22; on immateriality, actuality, and movement in the intelligible world, see N.2.1088b26–28; L.7.1072a21–33. Yeats, Poems, 178. Columbia Works, 12:220 (Latin); 12:221 (English) [=CPW, I:274]. This is the comedic formulation; see Columbia Works, 12:226 [=CPW, I:277]; see also Masson, Life of Milton, 1:289. CPW, I:266–67. Milton received his M.A. cum laude on 3 July 1632; see Parker, Milton, 1:113. Milton refers to Philoponus in Prolusion IV; see Columbia Works, 12:186 (Latin) [=CPW, I:254]. Schmitt, John Case, 28; Aristotle, Metaph. G.2.1004a3–1004b1; on Aristotelian commentators, see Stanley, “Aristotle,” History of Philosophy, 13. Translated in Poems, 59; for the English letter accompanying Elegia quarta, see CPW, I:310–32. The letter is dated 26 March 1627. Almost a year later, Young returned to England, this time to Suffolk (27 March 1628); see Parker, Milton, 1:37–38, 43; Campbell and Corns, Milton, 37–38. See Poems, 59. Plutarch, Alexander, 2:225–27. Spenser, FQ IV.x.44–47. Lucretius, DRN i.20: “You cause them greedily to beget their generations after their kind.” See Nuovo Etimologica, 87: s.v. “anima.” On the importance of Alexander, Philoponus, Simplicius, and Themistius, see Grant, “Aristotelianism,” 102; Schmitt, “Renaissance Aristotelianism,” 173–74; Jardine, “Humanistic Logic,” 194–98. On Alexander of Aphrodisias’s status as “The Commentator” (c. 198–209 AD) on Aristotle, see Simplicius in Phys. 707, 33; 1176, 32; Philoponus in An. Pr. 136, 20, in R. W. Sharples’s “Introduction,” Alexander of Aphrodisias: Quaestiones 1.1–2.15, 1–10, esp. 10nn1,2. Duport, “Pro Aristotele contra Novos Philosophos,” Musae Subsecivae, 47; ODNB, s.v. “Duport.”

notes to pages 2 7– 31 293

98. Milton wrote Animadversions upon the Remonstrant’s Defence against Smectymnuus (1641) and An Apology for Smectymnuus (1642) in support of “An Answer to a Book Entitled ‘An Humble Remonstrance’” (1641). The Humble Remonstrance was written by Young, in collaboration with Edmund Calamy, Matthew Newcomen, Steven Marshall, and William Spurstowe; their anagrammatic acronym, Smectymnuus, became their pen name. 99. St. Paul’s School was deeply humanist. It was founded by John Colet, friend to Erasmus, and the curriculum continued to use portions of Erasmus’s Copia Verborum, Institutum Hominis Christiani, and De Duplici Copia as lesson material. On Colet, see Gleason, John Colet, 217–24; Fletcher, Milton’s Intellectual Development, 1:132–33. 100. For example, Milton’s intrusion and explication of the name of Hamburg (lines 14–16), in Poems, 57. 101. On the thesis, see Columbia Works, 12:178 (Latin); 179 (English); for Milton’s exclamation, see ibid., 12:184 (Latin) and 12:185 (English). On the prolusion in general, see Campbell and Corns, Milton, 37. 102. On Milton’s reference to Philoponus, see Columbia Works, 12:186 [=CPW, I:254]; on Philoponus, see On Aristotle On the Soul 3.1–8 (529, 1), 107; Sorabji, Matter, Space, and Motion, 36. 103. CPW, I:301. Note that high–minded humanists like Ascham did not conceal their contempt for Ramus. In a letter to Johann Sturm (4 April 1550), Ascham speaks of Ramus as the “big mouth of Cephas Chlononius.” The Greek expression “Cephas Chlononius,” meaning “rock” and “twig,” respectively, creates a derisive pun on the supposed “slashing attack” Ramus claimed he made against Aristotle. See Ascham, Letters, 161; Feingold, “English Ramism,” 159. 104. Gill was Milton’s tutor from 1620 to 1625. 105. On Milton’s admission to Cambridge on 12 February 1624/25, see Campbell and Corns, Milton, 29; Masson, Life of Milton, 1:147–78; ODNB, s.v. “Gill.” In this letter (2 July 1628), Milton also mentions that he wrote the responses for his friend (who was to act as the Respondent); see CPW, I:314. 106. ODNB, s.v. “Chaderton.” 107. See Howell, Logic and Rhetoric, 211; on Ramism, see Ong, “Introduction,” CPW, VIII:167, and his Ramus, 303–04. 108. Letter to Thomas Young (26 March 1625?), in CPW, I:310–12 (in which Milton thanks Young for the Hebrew Bible he sent him). On Young, see Masson, Life of Milton, 1:147–78; Parker, “Milton and Thomas Young,” 399–407; on Ramus, see Howell, Logic, 214. 109. “Autonomasia” comes from Latin “anti–,” meaning “instead of,” and the Greek “omazein,” meaning “to name” (“onoma” means “name”). Hence, “autonomasia” means to substitute another name, usually a title or epithet, for the proper name itself. 110. Bacon, as quoted in Feingold; see “English Ramism,” 171–73; see also Farrington, Philosophy of Francis Bacon, 63–64.

2 9 4 notes to pages 31– 33

111. Mullinger, Cambridge Characteristics, 47 (citing Bacon’s De Interpretatione Naturæ). On humanists and their contempt for Ramism, see Hotson, Commonplace Learning, esp. 283–84, 289–92; Feingold, “English Ramism,” 175– 76. 112. Quoted from Areopagitica, in CPW, II:516. 113. On Prolusion III, see Hale, Milton’s Cambridge Latin, 86; Campbell and Corns, Milton, 36, 42. 114. See Hotson, Commonplace Learning, passim. 115. For the account of the incident, see Aubrey, Brief Lives, 68 (also reprinted in Darbishire, Early Lives, 10); Masson, Life of John Milton, 1:135–45; Parker, Milton, 28–29; Campbell and Corns, Milton, 38-39. Given the context, it seems unlikely that Milton is here referring to Chappell’s Arminianism. 116. On the alternative dating of the letter to Gill (2 July 1631), see Shawcross, “Dating of Certain Poems, Letters, and Prolusions,” 261-62; for the letter itself, see CPW, I:314. 117. Quotations from Prolusion VI, CPW, I:301 and Milton’s letter to Gill, CPW I:244. On Milton’s opinion that the decline of the universities is owing to “monkish scholasticism,” see Prolusion VII, CPW I:293 and CPW II:374; on his attack on “those hordes of old men in monkish garb,” see Prolusion III, CPW, I:244-45. See also Hanford, John Milton, 50–51. Milton’s barb against the scholastics does not touch patristic studies, which humanists generally saw as profitable for church reform and prized for their elegance and docta pietas (learned piety); on humanism and the sancti antiqui patres, see Rice, “Humanist and Patristic Scholarship,” 17–28; on the rise of patristic studies post–Reformation in the face of dogmatic theology, see D’Amico, “Humanism and Pre–Reformation Theology,” 373. Significantly, Milton engages with those Greek fathers whom Renaissance humanists regarded as preeminent: Origen (c. 185–c. 254), Eusebius of Caesarea (c. 260–c. 340), Basil the Great (c. 330–c. 379), Gregory Nazianzen (329–89), Gregory of Nyssa (c. 330–c. 395), and John Chrysostom (c. 347–407). 118. See Hotson, Commonplace Learning, 280–81. 119. Ong’s dating in the “introduction” to CPW, VIII:146–47, 179, is problematic. His assumption that Milton stopped teaching in 1647 is mistaken, since, in the mid–1650s, Richard Jones was his pupil. After the Restoration, Skinner tells us that Milton still had pupils––“the Youths that hee instructed from time to time” (Darbishire, Early Lives, 33)––and that one such pupil was William Davenant (d. 1681), son of the dramatist; see Parker, Milton, 1:651; 2:1161n31. Other pupils included the Earl of Barrymore (d. 1684), Cyriack Skinner (d. 1700), the Earl of Ranelagh (d. 1712), and Thomas Ellwood (d. 1713); cf. Parker, Milton, 2:1158n20. It seems Milton began the Art of Logic in the 1640s and then most probably returned to revise it in the early 1670s; on dating, see Connor, “Milton’s’ Art of Logic,” 206n2. 120. Johnson, “Milton,” in Lives, 1:272. 121. CPW, VIII:211; see also CPW, II:401.

notes to pages 33–35 295

122. CPW, VIII:213. 123. CPW, VIII:218. 124. Ockham’s razor is actually a Scholastic tag: “Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem.” Kneale notes that it is not to be found in Ockham’s writings. The nearest is Ockham’s pronouncement “numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate,” in his commentary on Lombard’s Sentences; see Kneale, Development of Logic, 243. 125. On textual sources, see CPW, VIII:184–88. 126. Columbia Works, 11:6–8 (Latin); 11:7–9 (English) [=CPW, VIII:212]. On Ramism at Cambridge, see also Kearney, Scholars and Gentlemen, 62. 127. Milton admits that, along “with our countryman Sidney,” he believes Ramus to be “the best writer on the art” (“optime est de ea meritus, ut ego quidem cum Sidneio nostro sentio, Petrus Ramus”) but criticizes his lack of clarity; see Columbia Works, 11:2 (Latin); 11:3 (English). 128. CPW, VIII:210. 129. CPW, I: 301; Keckermann, Praecognitorum logicorum tractatus III tract.2.c.2, 98. On logic in this period, see Howell, Logic and Rhetoric, 155; Schmitt, John Case, 73; Skinner, “Generation of John Milton,” 41–72, esp. 57–63; Jardine, “Humanistic Logic,” 186. 130. For a more detailed account of Keckermann’s writings and contribution to Protestant scholasticism, see Hotson, Commonplace Learning, 136–65, 244– 46, 281–83; Muller, “Vera Philosophia,” 341–65; Grendler, “Universities,” 1–42, esp. 10; on Calvinist metaphysics, see Hunter, Rival Enlightenments, 33–52, 45–46, and Sparn, Wiederkehr der Metaphysik, esp. 13–18. 131. Keckermann makes his position clear in Praecognitorum Logicorum Tractatus III, 7–46 (“Dissertatio ad Logicæ Stvdiosos de Logicorum Præcognitorum instituto, deque controuersiis inter Philosophos Peripateticos & Rameos”). 132. Although there were different educational practices between tutors, the prevalence of certain authors (like Keckermann) strongly suggests that there was some continuity across the board. The price of student books recorded in Mead’s Account Books suggest that there may have been a secondhand market of book buying and book selling at Cambridge; see Christ’s MS T. 11. 1, T. 11. 2, T. 11. 3. 133. Glanvill, Lux Orientalis, 43; Prior’s Alma (c. 1715–17) satirized Aristotle; see Prior, Works, 1:471. Glanvill censored Aristotle but did not intend to purge him from the universities altogether; see Plus Ultra, 127, and Feingold, “The Humanities,” 280. 134. Duport, “Pro Aristotele, contra Novos Philosophos,” in Musae Subsecivae, 47. 135. For the anonymous author, see Bodleian MS Tanner 88, fols. 36r–37r (“At the End of Capt. James’s Relation of his Travells in this Discourse Concerning Aristotle’s Philosophy. ^dedicated to ye Universities”). This is taken from William Watts’s Captain THOMAS JAMES’s Strange and Dangerovs VOYAGE In his intended Discovery of the North–West Passage into the SOUTH SEA In the year 1631 and 1632, reprinted in A Collection of Voyages and Travels, 2:486–88 (486). On Watts, see

2 9 6 notes to pages 35– 4 2

136. 137. 138. 139.

140. 141. 142. 143. 144.

1. 2. 3.

4.

5.

6.

Feingold, “Mathematical Sciences,” 394; id., “Aristotle and the English Universities,” 137. Bohun–Evelyn Sr. (13 March 1666/67); see BL Evelyn Papers Add. MS 78314, fols. 17r–17v. Bohun–Evelyn Sr. (13 March 1666/67); see BL Evelyn Papers Add. MS 78314, fols. 19v–20r. Perhaps referring to the interpretation of Alexander of Aphrodisias, the scholiast best remembered for actively denying the immortality of the soul. CPW, VIII:209. Milton disliked the “glosses of metaphysics” and the “prolix controversies” they created; see CPW, IV:421; cf. CPW, VI:224; Fletcher, Intellectual Development, 1:225. On Keckermann’s “methodical Peripateticism” and separation from the “high humanists,” see Hotson, Commonplace Learning, 281. I have here used the Hughes translation for its tone (the Yale translation is too flat); see Hughes, Selected Works, 598 [=CPW, 1:224]. Andrew Marvell, “On Mr Milton’s Paradise Lost,” in Poems of Andrew Marvell, 182-83. cf. Edwards, Milton and the Natural World, 202. See Hotson on Keckermann, Commonplace Learning, 245; cf. Kessler, “Renaissance Humanism,” 196–97. On this “syncretic approach,” see Schmitt, “Sixteenth–Century Universities,” 489; on “sceptical criticism,” see id., “Historiography of Scepticism,” 185–87. chapter 2. milton’s metaphysic and linguistic practice in paradise lost In opposition to Silver, Imperfect Sense, xi. In Cowley, Miscellanies, 26–27. Nonetheless, Porphyry will say this gets us no closer to understanding reality as such because logic studies only the way reality is conceptualized, not the way it is; see Ebbensen, “Porphyry’s Legacy to Logic,” 143, 145–56. On Porphyry’s tree, see Maclean, Logic, 121–23, where he helpfully reproduces the famous picture of the tree from Boethius (see the 1570 edition of his Opera, 25). There is a good “Arbor porphriana” in “Questiones Predicabiliu Porphirii” foliu xvii, Copulata veteris artis, C6r [col. b]. Endoxical division is heuristic by nature; see Aristotle, Part. an. I.3.643b9. On Aristotle’s Top. I.4.102a1, and the influence of Boethius’s De Divisione and his De Topicis Differentiis, see Maclean, Logic, 140–45; on Ramus, see Maclean, “Logical Division,” 229–49. Cowley’s Poetical Blossoms (1st ed., 1633) was entered in the Stationers’ Registers on 19 October 1632, but Nethercot speculates that the manuscript was in circulation as early as 1631; see Nethercot, “Young Cowley,” 158–62; id., Abraham Cowley, 23, 51–52, 155. Printed editions include the 1636 and 1637 editions (with the Sylva), before Cowley’s literary executor and Royal Society biographer, Thomas Sprat, published the Works posthumously in 1656.

notes to pages 4 2– 4 7 2 9 7

7. In Cowley, Verses written on several occasions, 39. 8. The distinction primarily arises from the fact that theology deals with things of faith; philosophy, especially natural philosophy, was the science of first principles, of causes. On the scala naturae, see Curry, “Milton’s Scale of Nature,” 176; on Espagnet’s influence on Milton, see Linden, “d’Espagnet,” 603–15. 9. In Marginalia 1:70 of the Collected Works, vol. 12. 10. The beginnings of the materialist reading have their genesis in Masson; see Milton’s Poetical Works, 3:361. Against the oversimple monist materialist drive to equate matter with body, see Donnelly, “Matter versus Body,” esp. 79–80. 11. On matter’s essence as “incorruptible,” see CPW, VI:309; on matter in Milton, see Hart, “Matter, Monism, and Narrative,” 20. 12. On prime matter, see Aristotle, Ph. I.8.192a3–10; II.1.193a29; II.6.207a25– 9; De an. II.1.412a7–8; Metaph. Z.3.1029a20. Here, Milton’s account of prime matter is very similar to that ascribed to Aristotle by Bostock; see Bostock, “Aristotle’s Theory of Matter,” 2:3–22. Although philosophers have recently debated whether or not Aristotle genuinely subscribed to the idea of prime matter, the fact remains that most seventeenth-century thinkers understood Aristotle to support the doctrine. 13. CPW, VI:321–22, 325; Columbia Works, 15:48 (Latin). 14. See Donnelly, “Matter versus Body,” 79. Milton’s account seems to do away with the Aristotelian notion of privation in matter’s capacity to receive form. 15. CPW, VIII:230; Columbia Works, 11:52 (Latin). 16. See Columbia Works, 11:53; 11:52 (Latin). 17. On the close connection between Milton the logician and Milton the poet, see Connor, “Milton’s Art of Logic,” 187–209. 18. Lakhoff ’s and Johnson’s controversial groundbreaking study argued that human thought is defined metaphorically; see Metaphors We Live By, passim. On the idea of man as a plant, see Aristotle, Plant. I.iv.819a24–25 in Minor Works, 166–67. 19. In Hesperides, 40. 20. cf. Teskey, Delirious Milton, 90–91, where he sees spirit and matter, fragrance and flower, as “physically continuous.” Lieb similarly sees this progression as devoid of dichotomy; see “Metaphysics of Form,” 223. 21. See Columbia Works, 15:247 [=CPW, VI:413] (English); 15:246 (Latin). 22. See Bodleian MS Cherry 46, fol. 177r (where the intellective and bodily grade of substance is separated). 23. See again CPW, VI:413 [=Columbia Works, 15:246 (Latin)]. 24. Milton appears to have used Gregory’s Opera (Paris, 1638); CPW, 1:397n18. Important to Milton also may have been Gregory’s idea of a “seminal power” (sphrmatikhÊ; duvnami~), which was said to connect soul with body; see Benin, Footprints of God, 44–45. Like Milton, Gregory of Nyssa rejected the Origenist claim about preexistent souls and metempsychosis; on Gregory’s influence on Milton, see Hunter, “Milton’s Materialistic Life Principle,” 68–76.

2 9 8 notes to pages 4 7– 51

25. In Gregory, Select Writings, 5:421–22. 26. See OED, s.v. “fruit” (1 and 2). 27. On usefulness and sweetness, see Horace, Ars Poetica 333–34, 478 (Latin); on profit and delight, see Ars Poetica 343–44, 478 (Latin). 28. The idea is mainly attributed to Augustine; see Rist, Augustine, 162, 165–55; O’Donovan, “Usus and fruitio,” 361–97. 29. See OED, s.v. “sublimate” (3, 4, 5). This ascent through love appears to conflict with the presentation of substance where Milton allows independent agency to the material plant (VI.478–80). This may reflect the difference between Raphael’s interpretation of his metaphor and the imagery produced by the metaphor itself. 30. Pace Fallon, Milton among the Philosophers, 80: “Spirit and matter become for Milton two modes of the same substance: Spirit is rarefied matter, and matter is dense spirit.” Fallon would be partly correct if by “matter” he meant not concrete (bodily) matter but prima materia. Donnelly demonstrates this is not Fallon’s aim in “Matter versus Body,” 79. 31. Richardson, Paradise Lost, 225. A corrective to Fallon’s (erroneous) equation of “body” and “matter” is Donnelly’s “Matter versus Body,” 80–82. 32. Fallon, Milton among the Philosophers, 104; in general agreement are Lieb, “Metaphysics of Form,” 222–23, and Rogers, Matter of Revolution, 111. 33. See Aquinas, ST Ia.q.76.a.1, where he says the power of the soul (the intellect) has no share in bodily matter. Philosophically speaking, spirits are fluid, connective substances that form a bridge between the corporeal and the spiritual worlds, but this does not mean spirit is easily aligned with materiality or corporeality, as monist materialist readings of Milton like to assume (Donnelly is a notable exception). On spirits in the Renaissance, see Wallace, “Medical Spirits,” 233–44. 34. De an. III.5.430a22–23; on Simplicius’s interpretation, see Blumenthal, Aristotle and Neoplatonism, 161–62. 35. Aristotle, Gen. an. II.3.737a10; De an. III.5.430a17–18. 36. On the two intellects, see De an. III.5.430a22–25; Blumenthal, Aristotle and Neoplatonism, 163–68; on the reception of Greek commentaries, see Lohr, “Jesuit Aristotelianism,” 216–17. 37. See Wallace, Francis Bacon, 33–35, 39. Bacon, like Milton, did not see spirits as divine breath; see Bacon, Works, 5:355; Milton, CPW, VI:317. 38. Bacon, Works, 5:314, 268; 4:361; on the spirit’s tenuous body, see id., Works, 6:318–19. On spirit and soul, see Michael, “Renaissance Theories of Mind,” 165; Park, “Organic Soul,” 484; Gaukroger, Francis Bacon, 212, 215; and Wallace, Francis Bacon, 23, 30–33. 39. Bacon, Works, 5:376. Assimilation, Bacon adds, is “performed freely and vigorously by thin and pneumatic bodies . . . but very languidly by thick and tangible bodies,” in Works, 5:304. 40. See Bacon, Works, 5:399; 4:367. 41. Avicenna’s Liber de Congelatione et Conglutinatione Lapidum as quoted in Newman, “Summa Perfectionis,”49–50. In his Disputationes de nova P.

notes to pages 51–58 299

42.

43.

44.

45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56.

57. 58.

59. 60.

Paracelsi medicina pars altera (tertia) . . . (Basil, 1572-73), the Galenist Thomas Lieber (or Erastus; 1523–83) wrote against Paracelsus and the idea of “aurum potabile”; see Newman, Promethean Ambitions, 109–12, 36–33, and Vickers’s corrective to it, “Limits of Alchemy,” 127–56. Translated in Newman, Promethean Ambitions, 80–81; discussed at 97–114. Milton refers to the “Romant of ye Rose” in his Commonplace Book; see CPW, I:472. Note that De Lorris still comes down on the side of alchemy as being “a true art.” See Leonard, note to PL V.478. Bacon, along with Milton, believed that matter is never annihilated; see Works, 3:21–22; Gaukroger, Francis Bacon, 181–84, 193, 212. In a similar way, Milton dealt with the discontinuity between Sinlessness and Sin in the central narrative of PL by planting seeds of aberrancy—like Eve’s willful decision to go gardening alone—ahead of the Fall itself. On matter and spirit as being continuous, see Cummins, “Milton’s Gods,” 99. See Richardson, Paradise Lost, 144 (notes to IV.181); on the contested origin of the phrase, see Fumagalli, Chi l’ha Detto?, 80. See Cheyne, An essay on Regimen, 35. Against Marjara, who privileges the “material nature,” in Contemplation of Created Things, 229–39, 296–99. Webster, “Alchemical and Paracelsian Medicine,” 315. Areopagitica, CPW, II:590; on the spiritus vitae, see Ellrodt, Seven Metaphysical Poets, 225–46. Vaughan, “Tempest” 29–36, in Poems, 318. Ph. III.1.200b29–201a1; discussed in Maclean, Logic, 139. Maclean, Logic, 242–43. Ph. II.8.199a15. Burgersdijck, Institutionum Logicarum 1.c.24, 105. In Works, 39–40; for a discussion of the seventeenth-century interest in a philosophical language based around things, see, more generally, de Grazia, “Secularization of Language,” 319–27; on the universal language movement, see Lewis, Language, Mind, and Nature, esp. 1–22. Gibbens, Questions, 35. For a view in which Adamic naming is such that “both nature and convention play a part,” see Leonard, Naming, 6. On language as a city, see Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations 3–3e, 2; cf. 8–8e, 17–18; on linguistic agency, see Wittgenstein, Philosophical Remarks 54, 84–85. Leonard, Naming, 16. Conimbricenses, “De Signis” explanatio, cols. 5–6 [a2r]; Aristotle, Int. 1.16a2–8; Int. 2.16a19, 16a26–8; also Int. 4.17a1–3. The Conimbricenses produced eight treatises that by 1633 had reached 112 editions across Portugal, Germany, France, and Italy; see Lohr, “Renaissance Latin Aristotelian Commentaries,” 98; Backer-Sommervogel, Bibliothèque de la Compagnie de Jésus 2:1273–78, 11:62–63.

300 notes to pages 59 –6 3

61. On knowledge of particulars, Metaph. A.1.981a14–24; An. post. II.19.100a1– 10; of universals, see An. post. II.19.100a13–100b1. 62. On the movement from generalities to particulars, see Ph. I.2.184a24–25; Metaph. B.4.999a25 and 4.999a1–15, 20; Maclean, Logic, 128–39, 170. 63. On the definition as individual, see Ph. I.1.184b10 (as opposed to it as process at Ph. I.1.184b10–15). In the Greek in the passage, see WicksteedCornford, Physics 10n(a); compare Charlton’s use of “universal” and “particular” at Ph. I.184a24–25, in Physics, 52. 64. De Haas, “Method of Inquiries in Aristotle’s Physics I.1,” 31–56. 65. Helpful here is Maclean’s account of Giambattista da Monte (Montanus; 1498–1552), in Logic, 104–08. 66. Hobbes famously has God arbitrarily impose names; see Elements of Philosophy pt.1.ch.2.§.4, 12 and pt.1.ch.3.§.8, 27. On the place of Adam’s creation and Eden’s place-name, see Leonard, Naming, 275–92. 67. Plato, Cra. 435C. 68. Episcopius, Institutiones Theologicae lib.4.sct.3.c.7, 359 [col. b]: “Non enim id fecisse dicitur in textu Adamus, sed Deus ipse” (For it does not say in the text that Adam made it [the name], but God Himself ); on Episcopius, see Platt, Reformed Thought, 211–38. 69. Aslacus, Physica, 385, 439. 70. Aslacus, Physica, 393 (see problemata vi). 71. Chamier, Corpvs Theologicvm lib.4.c.6, 130 [col. a]; on Chamier, see Courthope, Daniel Chamier, 43–44; Patterson, “Huguenot Synod of Tonneins of 1614,” 241–70. On Hebrew and naming, see Janowitz, “Divine Names,” 359–72, and Poole, “Divine and the Grammarian,” 283–87. 72. In Samson Agonistes, Milton cites Pareus’s A Commentary Upon the Divine Revelation (1644); see Williams, Common Expositor, 34. 73. Pareus, Opervm Theologicorvm, col. a.§.C–D, 82. 74. Luther, Creation, 162–63. Luther’s emphasis on the perfect knowledge given to Adam by God led to an account of Adam’s naming for God’s pleasure. 75. Rivetus, Opera Theologica tom.1.exercitatio xxii, vol.I, fol. 94 [A]. 76. Williams, Common Expositor, 8. On the printing history of Pererius’s Commentariorvm, see Backer-Sommervogel, Bibliothèque, 6:501–06. H. Vaughan lists “Ruvio” [Rubius], Tolletus [Toletus] and Pererius” as the first three authors to be consulted under the subject of “Physicks, or Naturall Philosophy (often Aristotle)”; see St John’s MS K.38, fol. 165r. 77. Pererius, Commentariorvm, 167 [col. b14]. He adds that, following Tostatus, “not Adam but God Himself gave the names to things” (non Adamus, sed Deus ipse imposuisse eis nomina diceretur); see Commentariorvm, 167 [col. b15]. 78. See Aquinas, ST Ia.q.94.a.3; Pererius, Commentariorvm, 167 [col. b15]. 79. Cited in Pererius, Commentariorvm, 167 [col. b17]. 80. Pererius, Commentarivm, 166 [cols. a8–b]. 81. Salkeld, Treatise, 186–87; Downham, Sacred Divinitie, 8; ODNB, s.v. “Salkeld”; “Downham.”

notes to pages 6 4 – 70 301

82. Gibbens, Questions and Disputations, 34; on names, see Lundius, ZAMOLXIS c.5.§.21, 143–44. 83. Goodman, Fall of Man, 302. 84. CPW, VI:324. In Tetrachordon, Milton not only gives Adam this wisdom but also endows him with the gift of perfect discernment so that even if he didn’t know essences in advance, he would acquire them in the instant they were needed; CPW, II:602. 85. On how the “abundant” number of creatures can fit in Paradise (a problem raised in Genesis 1.20), see Leonard, Naming, 264. On naming as process (different from my account), see Eagle, “Adamic Language,” 186. 86. cf. Poole, Idea of the Fall, 186; Eagle, “Adamic Language,” 187. 87. Leonard’s definition of “apprehension” as “the forming of an idea” emphasizes Milton’s God as endowing Adam with knowledge. Still, Leonard says that “Adam’s intellect moves with a life of its own”; see Naming, 12. 88. Hartlib Papers, fol. 24 / 7 / 1A. 89. This view gained popularity among the empiricists; see Smiglecius, Logica disp.12.q.3, 441. Smiglecius was extremely popular at Oxford and Cambridge: he is the second author to be read at Cambridge under H. Vaughan’s list of logic texts; see St John’s MS 38, fol. 163r; at Oxford, he recurs frequently in student directions, see “Method of Studying in the University” (c. 1701/2), in Bodleian MS Rawlinson D. 40, A1r, fol. 1 (his pagination). The author of “Directions for a young Student in ye Unive^e[r]^sity for ye first 4 Years” (c. 1690) includes Smiglecius as one of those authors whose “Disputa[ti]ons ‘tis necessary he shld Consult upon Occasion, but not read quite over”; see Bodleian MS St. Edmund Hall 72, fol. 523v. 90. DRN v.1028–32. 91. See CPW, VI:324. In relation to the process of concept formation, one could alternatively say that Adam’s account occurs with great rapidity, so that it may be that the concepts said to arise in Adam’s mind in the quick movement of thought at line 352 are actually formed “with” the assistance of God (if we take “with” as an ablative of means). In this case, Adam appears to be saying something like, “My mind laid ahold of the animals [‘apprehension’] and was assisted, or led forward, in this act by God [‘endu’d / My sudden apprehension’]”; PL VIII.353–54. 92. See Aslacus, Physica, 395; Salkeld, Treatise of Paradise, 188. 93. See, for instance, Peter Martyr, In primvm librvm Mosis, 12r and Pareus, Opervm Theologicorvm col.a.§.B, 82; see also Leonard’s discussion in Naming, 264. 94. Smiglecius, Logica d.12.q.1, 438; discussed in Ashworth, “Words Signify,” 316–17. On Milton’s language, see Corns, Regaining “Paradise Lost,” 57; Leonard, Naming, 14, 23. 95. CPW, II:602. 96. Toletus, Commentaria, 209. 97. On this distinction, see Rubius, “Commentaria in duos libros . . . de posteriori analysi” I.q.3.§.19–20, in Logica Mexicana, cols. 288–89. The quid rei is a

302 notes to pages 70 – 74

98. 99.

100. 101. 102. 103. 104. 105. 106. 107.

108.

109.

110. 111.

112.

113.

thing’s essence or quiddity, whereas the quid nominis is the relation of the name to what it signifies. On Locke, see Essay Concerning Human Understanding III.3.11, 414. On Adam as poet but in a state “prior to knowledge,” see Eagle, “Adamic Language,” 187. See Vickers, “‘Words and Things’—or ‘Words, Concepts and Things?,’” esp. 331 (on the Renaissance linguistic model as that which involves words, concepts, and things). Hume, Annotations on Milton’s Paradise Lost, 235 (notes to PL VIII.344–53). Burgersdijck, Institutionum Logicarum 1.c.24, 105. Burgersdijck has probably misremembered “blictri” as “blistri,” or it is a printer’s error. Burgersdijck, Institutionum Logicarum 1.c.24, 104. See also Aristotle’s Int. 1.16a20–29; Plato’s Crat. 384C–D; Modrak, Aristotle’s Theory of Language, 19–27. On the “inner story,” see Glover, I, 152–53. In Maximes Morales no. 218, 80. Augustine, Principia Dialecticae 5, Pat. Lat 32:1411. Fonseca, Institutionum Dialecticarum I.viii, 11[§C]. See OED, s.v. “portentous”; Hume, Notes on Milton’s Paradise Lost, 84 (II.761). For an alternative reading, see Forsyth, Satanic Epic, 207, and Shoaf, Milton, 23–59 (on Sin as a floating signifier); more congenial to my account is Leonard, Naming, 168; Chambers, “Sin and Sign,” 381–82. This account holds even if we read the bracketed statement at X.284 with irony. For a rejection of Sin as a universal, see Fallon, Milton among the Philosophers, 7, 168–93. Since Augustine proclaimed signs were of sensible things, Aquinas countenanced the ideas of “intellectual signs” in the process of angelic speech in II Sent. d.11.q.2.a.3. On concepts as signified by intellectual signs, see Goris, “Angelic Doctor and Angelic Speech,” 87–105; on Augustine’s sensible signs, see De Doctrina Christiana ii.1, Pat. Lat. 34:35; on signs in the Renaissance in general, see Demonet, “ ‘Si les signes vous fâchent,’” 76–99. “His Noble Numbers,” 33–34, in Hesperides, 35. The problem of unde malum greatly exercised Augustine. Even his later attempts to discuss evil cannot dispel the problem he raises at Confessions II.iv(9), 29 (English); Pat. Lat. 32:679 (Latin). The account in De nat. boni. c. Man. 1.36 says that “evil is to use good evilly” (malum est enim male uti bono), so that if evil is not in the use, or in the consent to the desire, then it is in the desire itself; see Pat. Lat. 42:562–63. The difficulty is that this still does not explain why or whence malice arises. On Milton’s denial of Sin as a privative, see CPW, VIII:259. cf. Fallon, Milton among the Philosophers, 187; on Sin as privation in a monistic universe, see his “Milton’s Sin,” 329–50. Conversely, Sin is a privation in Phineas Fletcher’s Locvsts, or Apollyonists x.1–3, 34. Augustine, De. Lib. Arb. 3.20.54, Pat. Lat. 32:1269; De Doctrina Christiana 1.6.6, Pat. Lat. 34:21. On Augustine making a claim about what evil is, see his Confessions 3.7(12), 43 (English); Pat Lat. 32:688 (Latin).

notes to pages 75– 79 303

114. Locke discusses the blind man who bragged he figured out what scarlet was like in Essay Concerning Human Understanding 2.ch.4.§.5, np.126, dp.155 and 3.ch.4.§.11, np.424, dp.37; Berkeley, “First Dialogue,” Works, 2:206 115. Night and Death become more closely aligned here, without any indication that they are feminine—or material; pace Adams, “Fallen Wombs,” 170. 116. On the reality of Sin and Death, see Gallagher, “Real or Allegoric,” 317. Germane to this discussion is Fletcher on the reality of agents in Milton’s epic; see Allegory, 198. 117. Cowper, Latin and Italian Poems, 218–19; Newyln, Romantic Reader, 197. Fallon implies that nominalism is the ascendant in allegory and cites Dante’s Vita Nova as an example (Milton among the Philosophers, 175–76). But the shift in the direction of realism is already evident within the Vita Nuova—when we read “ecce deus fortior me, qui veniens dominabitur mihi” (as applied to love in canto 2.5), 47. Guido Cavalcante, who influenced Dante in the Convivio, would say love was an accident occurring in a substance, since he is as much an Aristotelian as a nominalist. The Convivio, which is Cavalcantesque, depicts the Lady as (empty, fictive) allegory, perhaps in order to defuse the problematic love experience, i.e., philosophy. Later, however, in the Commedia, Dante repents of the line taken in the Convivio, and there is a sense that he is already repenting within the Vita Nuova. On the decline of nominalism, see Ashworth, “Late Scholastic Philosophy,” 3; on Dante, see Hardie, “Dante,” 28, 34–35. 118. Rubius, “Commentaria in Dvos Libros Perihermenias” I.c.1.q.1.§.27, in Logicae Mexicanae, col. 23 (quoted in Ashworth, “Words Signify,” 313); on dual signification versus double function, see Ashworth, “Words Signify,” 323–34; on the earlier scholastic position in which “not only words but also things are representational” (non solum voces, sed et res significativæ sunt); see Hugh of St. Victor, Excerptiones lib.2.c.3, Pat. Lat. 177:205 [B]; on natural signification in biblical hermeneutics, see Ocker, Biblical Poetics, 31–37, 75–76. 119. Conimbricenses, “De Signis” I.q.3.a.3, col.44 [c3v]; on concepts signified through the voice, see ibid., I.q.3.a.1, cols.34–36 [c1r-c1v]. 120. Rubius, “Commentaria in dvos libros Perihermenias” I.c.1.q.2.§.20, in Logicae Mexicanae, col. 289; on Rubius’s popularity (his Logicae went through nine editions from 1605 to 1626), see Lohr, “Renaissance Latin Aristotelian Commentaries,” 702–03; Ashworth, “Words Signify,” 322–26. Vaughan’s commonplace book lists Rubius as the third most important author under the heading of logic; see St John’s (Cambridge) MS K. 38, fol. 163r. 121. Conimbricenses, “De Signis” I.q.4.a.2, col. 55 [d2v]; I.q.4.a.2, cols. 58–59 [d3r–v]. Notably, they argue that Aristotle was speaking about significative words pre-Babel. 122. On studies of Milton as prophet, see Lieb, Poetics of the Holy; Wittreich, Visionary Poetics; Kerrigan, Prophetic Milton. 123. Poole, Idea of the Fall, 147. 124. Barfield, “Poetic Diction,” 51–71; Cicero, De Oratore iii.39.159–60, 2:124– 25; Quintilian, Inst. Orat. 8.6.34–36, 3:444–45; Parker, “Metaphor and

304 notes to pages 79 – 84

125.

126. 127.

128.

Catachresis,” 60–73. A famous example of catachresis (Greek: “misuse”) is Milton’s “Blind mouths” at Lyc. 119. On Aristotle’s maxim “There is nothing in the intellect that is not first in the senses,” see De an. III.8.432a7–8; on the phrase’s history, see Cranefield, “Origin of the Phrase,” 77–80. See Bacon’s parenthetical remark in Works, 3:222; on the Edenic language as not naturalist, see Works, 1:654. CPW, II:559; on the dualist implications of Milton’s language, see Kates, Tasso and Milton, esp. 133, 148–50; on the vis verborum, see Skinner, “Moral Ambiguity,” 269, 271, 275, 283–86. Marvell, Poems, 183.

chapter 3. milton’s early poems 1. Fallon describes this philosophic movement as follows: “The young Milton’s poetry is dualist, that is to say, it presupposes a relation of body and soul traceable to Plato and Renaissance Neoplatonists.” But then “by the time he came to write the Latin prose Christian Doctrine and Paradise Lost in the late 1650s and after, Milton had unequivocally repudiated the dualism of the early poems”; see Fallon, Milton among the Philosophers, 79–80; see also 79–85, 98–99. 2. See Simplicius, On Aristotle On the Soul 3.1-5 (240, 5), 107; cf. Spruit, Species Intelligibilis, 161. Gemisthos Platon and Ficino are examples of those thinkers who attempted to harmonize Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy on a grand scale. 3. Since the time of John Dalton’s reworking of the masque in 1738, Milton’s masque has gone by the name Comus, rather than by its original title, A Masque presented at Ludlow Castle, 1634. I refer to Milton’s masque as Comus throughout this book. 4. Catullus, Poems, 2–3. 5. Parker conjectures that the Respondent was perhaps Robert Gell (B.A., 1628), which is supported by Campbell and Corns; see Parker, Milton, 1:4344, 2:739; Campbell and Corns, Milton, 41. Masson listed Alsop, Fenwick, and Sandelands as possibilities; see Masson, Life of Milton, 1:200. The enclosed verses are often thought to be “Naturam non pati senium,” but “De Idea Platonica” is equally plausible; see Parker, Milton, 2:773. Hale disagrees that the poem was “Naturam”; see Milton’s Cambridge Latin, 35–46. 6. An idea supported by Carey, Poems, 69 (headnote). Milton’s inclusion of “De Idea” in the 1645 edition of his poetic works (and again in 1673) underscores its prominence among his Latin verses. No printed copies from the commencement ceremony survive. Marsden observes that “Bachelor commencers” sat in the schools for the entire Lent term, taking part in the disputations; see College Life, 66–67. 7. See Hale, Milton’s Cambridge Latin, 34. 8. Jackson’s phrase; see Primeval Estate, Works, 9:37–38. 9. Hale, Milton’s Cambridge Latin, 57.

notes to pages 84 –88 305

10. For instance, Scotus believed that there was something positive and intrinsic to this stone and that thisness accounted for individuality; see Nuttall, Common Sky, 153; Plato, Prm. 132A–B; Resp. 507B. 11. Poems, 68. 12. Gerson, Aristotle, 221. 13. Aristotle, Metaph. M.4.1078b26–1079a2. 14. See Prm. 135C; Gerson, Aristotle, 211n11. 15. See Carey’s headnote on “De Idea” in Poems, 69; Hale, Latin Writings: A Selection, 12. 16. For those who see Milton mocking Aristotle, see Campbell, “Satire on Aristotelian Logic,” 107; Hardison, “On Time,” 118. For the opposing view—in which “De Idea sarcastically seeks to discredit Plato’s theory of Ideas”—see Hale, Latin Writings: A Selection, 12. 17. More, Utopia, 158. Milton also had More in mind at the end of Prolusion VI. 18. On Aristotle, see Alexander of Aphrodisias, In Metaph. (133, 33), as quoted in Gerson, Aristotle, 213n18. 19. Trismegistus, Divine Pymander, 17. It is probable that, as a student, Milton was familiar with Ficino’s Latin edition or perhaps the Greek–Latin editions of 1554 or 1574 (those of the noted Turnebus and Flussas, respectively). In 1614, Isaac Casaubon crucially redated the Hermetica to the second or third century AD; see Casaubon, Exercitationes, 66, 70–87. On Casaubon, see Grafton, “Protestant versus Prophet,” 83, 85–92; Gill, “Hermes in England,” 223. Ralph Cudworth’s brilliant rearguard action defending the ultimate antiquity of the Hermetica in the seventeenth century was no match for Casaubon’s scholarship. Nonetheless, the general belief in the extreme primeval ambiguity of the Hermetica persisted; see Sailor, “Moses and Atomism,” 3–16. 20. For the opposite reading, see Hale, Milton’s Cambridge Latin, 61–63. 21. The Corpus Hermeticum may have been a source for Hobbes’s title page; see Prior, “Trismegistus,” 366–70. 22. See Gerson, Aristotle, 206. 23. Poems, 68. 24. It could be objected that the Aristotelian speaker deliberately produces a grotesque figure because he is saying that if the Platonic idea existed (and he thinks it does not), then this is what it would have to look like. But this does not commit the speaker himself to such monstrosities. 25. Poems, 69. 26. The Greek refers to any object made or done and came, by extension, to mean both a poetical work (a poem) and an act or deed; see Greek–English Lexicon, s.v. “poivhma,” 1429. 27. Milton may have known this from Diogenes Laertes’ life of Plato (iii.29) in Lives of Eminent Philosophers, 1:304–05; see also epigram 670 (attributed to Plato) in the Greek Anthology, 2:357. That Plato was often aligned with the poets is a recurrent thought in the works of Renaissance writers. See also Senault, Man Become Guilty, 71: “Is not Plato a pleasant Dreamer, who tasts more of the

306 notes to pages 88– 9 1

28. 29. 30.

31. 32. 33. 34.

35.

36. 37.

38. 39.

40.

41.

42.

Poet, then of the Phylosopher?” Cf. PL IX.49–50 and “On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity,” vi.69–74, in which Satan-as-Lucifer is both twilight and light. On the name Lucifer / Satan, see Leonard, Naming, 87–146, esp. 104–19. Sidney, Defense, 107. Aristotle, Metaph.A.1.982b18–19. See Ion, 424 (Greek); 425 (English), my emended translation. Milton voices this Platonic idea in Elegia sexta (1629) ll.77–78; Ad Patrem (c. 1631–32), 21–24; 35–39; 56–60, 149–51. Translated in Leonard, Complete Poems, 576. Milton, CPW, II:523; on this passage, see Samuel, Plato and Milton, 50–67. Hale, Milton’s Cambridge Latin, 60, 64–65. The idea that these prolusions become “an elaborate parlour game” in which the audience would have recognized “Aristotle travesti” is suggested by Burton in “Cambridge Exercises,” 252–58, which looks at Alexander Bolde’s vellum manuscript, St John’s MS S. 34. Variorum, 2 (pt.3):735–40. After John Toland referred to A Masque as Comus in 1698, this title gained currency in literary criticism. On the Castelhaven scandal, which was finally put to rest by Creaser, see his “Milton’s Comus,” 24–34. Leonard, Complete Poems, note to line 214. I refer to the text of Comus in Carey, Poems. On Comus and the Phaedo, see Wright (against C. S. Lewis and R. Eisler), “Above the Smoke and Stir.” For the influence of Erycius Puteanus’s (1575– 1646) neo-Latin masque Comus, sive Phagesiposia Cimmeria: Somnium, on Milton, see Singleton, “Milton’s Comus,” 949–57. It is difficult, however, to distinguish between what Milton reworked from neo-Latin material itself and what he derived from the (shared) classical precedents. On Milton’s “Shakespearian” manner, see Leishman, Milton’s Minor Poems, 229–46. On the tension between the dualistic Platonic framework and the monistic Aristotelian philosophy (of the mean), see Evans, Miltonic Moment, 39–70, esp. 53–57. The Form of Dirt is not admitted because this would mean that Dirt is dirty and, by this self-predication, dirt must therefore be as we perceive it: namely, a sensible, not transcendent, object. See Parm.130d3–5. On selfpredication of the Forms, see Euthy. 301b5; Crat. 439d4–6; Hip. Maj.202a6– 7; on the principle of separation, see Phd. 75c11–d2, 100b6–7; Resp. 476b10, 480a11. The Phaedo describes “true lovers of knowledge” as “temperate and brave,” capable of recognizing that the soul imprisons herself by her own lust; see Phd. 83E; 82D–83A. Arthos argues that the alignment of “sophrosyne” and “temperentia” in Ficino may attest to their applicability to Milton’s doctrine of chastity in Comus; see Arthos, “Milton, Ficino, and the Charmides,” 261–74. Porphyry, Sent. 32, in Sentences, 23–29; see also Gerson’s discussion, Aristotle, 250–51.

notes to pages 9 1– 95 307

43. Phd. 69B8–C3; on Plato’s process of purification, see Gerson, Knowing Persons, 50-63 and 97. On this passage in Comus as alluding to Phaedo, see Wright, “Above the Smoke and Stir” and Hartwell, Lactantius and Milton, 86–88. 44. See Payer, Bridling of Desire, 145; Albert the Great, De Bono 3.1.1 ad 4, in Opera Omnia, 28:118. 45. On the Latin treatment of swfrosuvnh, see Payer, Bridling of Desire, 158. 46. Xenophon, Memorabilia III.9.§.4–5, 224 (Greek); 225 (English). On Xenophon’s high reputation in the Renaissance, see Low, “Plato, and His Equall Xenophon,” 20–21. 47. Milton, CPW, I:891. 48. Christopher, “Virginity of Faith,” 479–99. 49. Augustine, Confessions II.vi(14), 32 (referring to Ps. 72.27); for the Latin, see id., Pat. Lat. 32:681. On continence as “that by which the mind keeps its chastity unsullied,” see Calvin, Institutes II, bk.4, ch.13.§.17, 2:1272; cf. Christopher, “Virginity of Faith,” 493. 50. See Augustine, De Bono Viduitatis 17.21, Pat. Lat. 40:444. 51. There is, I think, a deeper continuity present between the “mask of temperance” and the “mask of virginity” (in the 1637 printed text) than Evans allows; see Evans, “From Temperance to Abstinence,” 224–31. 52. For Tasso, a hero must contain all the moral virtues as well as the theological virtues (faith, hope, and charity). Charity, he contends, contains the faith and hope so that it alone is “la gloria del Paradiso, si come la gloria del mondo è premio della virtù Heroica”; see Discorso Della Virtv Heroica, et Della Charità, 6v, 9r. 53. See Discorso Della Virtv Feminile, 7r–7v; 3v: “percioche la virtù dell’huomo sarà la fortezza, e la liberalità, e la virtù della dõna la pudicitia.” Discussed by Maclean in Renaissance Notion of Women, 62–63. 54. On castitas in the Bible, see Payer, Bridling of Desire, 138n27 (Jud.15.11, 16– 26; 2 Cor. 6.6; Gal.5.23; 1 Tim. 2.2, 3.4, 4.12, 5.2). My argument thus has affinities with Angus Fletcher’s claim that while virginity “implies absolute stasis,” chastity “can permit the freedom of movement and experiential trial, by which one learns to be inwardly pure”; see Fletcher, Transcendental Masque, 165. Note, however, that the masque dramatizes figures like Echo and Sabrina who are only half-translated or metamorphosed and thus are still associated with materiality. 55. Chrysostom, De Virginitate 6, Pat. Graec. 48:537 [same column numbers for Latin and Greek]; Shore’s translation, On Virginity, 8. 56. See Calvin, Institutes II.bk.4.ch.13.§.3, 2:1257; Timpler, Ethica ii.4, in Philosophiæ Practicæ Systema, 169 (quoted in Maclean, Renaissance Notion of Woman, 57). For Calvin, the end of virginity, not virginity itself, was to be praised; see Tracts and Treatises, 3:262. On Milton’s dislike of priestly celibacy, see, for example, CPW, III:448, 595. 57. See questio on Gen. 2.23 in Jerome’s Liber Hebraicarum Quaestionum in Genesim (c. 389–92 AD), Pat. Lat. 23:942 [308A–309B]. Here, he derives virago

308 notes to pages 9 5– 104

58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66.

67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73.

74.

75.

76. 77.

from vir: “Vir quippe vocatur IS (VKA), et mulier ISSA (IVKA). Recte igitur ab IS, appellata est mulier ISSA . . . quod nos Latine possumus dicere: «Hæc vocabitur virago, quia ex viro sumpta est.»” Commenting on Eve’s genesis from Adam, Augustine referred to the etymological connection between “virago” and “viro” in an attempt to capture the Hebrew etymological pun present in is (man) / issah (woman); see Augustine, Gen. Man. 2.13.18, Pat. Lat. 34:206. Payer, Bridling of Desire, 162; on virginity, see also Brown, Body and Society; Salisbury, Church Fathers, Independent Virgins. On this development, see Aquinas, ST IIa-IIae, q.151..a.2 – q.151.a.2.ad.3; IIa-IIae, q.152.a.3.ad.5. See Augustine, De Mendacio 20.41, Pat. Lat. 40:515 (Latin); English translation in On Lying, 107. CPW, III:246. Aquinas, ST IIa-IIae q.151.a.2,. See Aristotle, Eth. Nic. II.6.1106a26–b28; 1106a36–b7. Leonard, “Saying ‘No,’” 135. Barker first drew attention to this difficulty; see Puritan Dilemma, 10–11; on the difficulty, see also J. M. Evans, Miltonic Moment, 45–53. cf. CPW, II:225, “Truth is as impossible to be soil’d by any outward touch, as the Sun beam.” The Elder Brother’s remark that “convers with heav’nly habitants” can “cast a beam” on the body—“the unpolluted temple of the mind”—and gradually turn it to the “souls essence” (459–62) implies that the inverse may “soil” the soul. Chastity has a lower metaphysical status than Truth in this regard. cf. Fletcher, Transcendental Masque, 214–18, 220. Plato, Epistles, 527–29; Augustine, De Bono Viduitatis 17.21, Pat.Lat. 40:444. Leonard concurs in “Saying ‘No,’” 131–32. See Resp. 509A–B; 509B9; Tim. 28C; 46E4; 47E4; on Plato’s Forms, see Rist, “Plato’s ‘Early Theory of Forms,’” 336–57; Gerson, Aristotle, 186. cf. Milton’s poem, “On Time”; PL IV.15–18, IX.171–72. Aristotle, Metaph. Z.2.1028b19–21. Compare the reference to Spondanus’s comment on the effects of moly in Chapman’s Odyssey X.407, 179. Chapman’s Whole Works of Homer was published c. 1616 and again in c. 1634. The French humanist Jean de Sponde, or Spondanus (1557–95) reports that this was communicated to him by Franciscus Stuardes; see Homeri . . . Omnia Ilias, Odyssea . . . Commentariis, 142. See Julian the Apostate, Mispogon 351D, in Works, 2:460–61. He refers to Ody. vi.162; discussed in Keaney and Lamberton, Homer’s Ancient Commentators, 136. For a plant moving in the opposite direction—up to heaven—because of the Fall, see Milton’s aetiology of amarant, PL III.352. Reminiscent of Comus 621, where the shepherd knew every herb “that spreds her verdant leaf to th’ morning ray.”

notes to pages 104 –107 309

78. M. H., “Epicedia . . . upon the . . . death of . . . Hmphrey [sic] Colls,” 18 (line 20). 79. There is a reference here to the trope of man as the futo;n oujravnion, or “heavenly plant,” which in biblical commentaries is also known as the “arbora inversa” (inverted tree). 80. John Steadman, traces the etymology of “haemony” and points out that, like Robert Estienne (Stephanus) in his Thesaurus Graecæ Linguæ (1572), the great French Hellenist Guillaume Budé (Budaeus; 1467–1540) in his Lexicon Graeco–Latinum understood haemon as a corruption of the word daimon (daemon means “knowing”) and also as cognate with epistemon (meaning “wise”); see Steadman, “Haemony: Etymology and Allegory,” 150–51. Bercovitch argues for haemony’s Greek–Hebrew etymology (haimon / ha’emounah: “the faith”) and makes it a symbol of the marriage of faith with knowledge; see “Milton’s ‘Haemony,’” 351–59. Ulreich, however, argues that haemony is a shadow of the Eucharist; see “Bright Golden Flow’r: Haemony,” 119–28. The Greek context is, I think, especially germane to Milton: Budé argues in his De Transitu Hellensimi ad Christianismum that Homer’s moly represents wisdom allegorically, and Budé’s Commentarii Linguae Graecae (1529) was the first Greek prose guide that was based on most of, if not all of, the Greek texts available; see Grafton, “Renaissance Readers of Homer’s Ancient Readers,” 51–72; Steadman, “Haemony,” 243n9. 81. Grotius, Opera Omnia, 1:587 [A8] (commenting on Wisdom 7.20). Edward Phillips claimed that Milton met Grotius; see Darbishire, Early Lives, 56; discussed in Campbell and Corns, Milton, 106. I am not arguing for direct influence here, however. 82. See Julian the Apostate, Mispogon 351D, in Works, 2:460–61. Julian refers to Ody. vi.162; discussed by Keaney and Lamberton, Homer’s Ancient Commentators, 136. Milton refers to “Julian an Apostate,” nephew of Constantine, as early as Of Reformation (1641), in CPW, I:557. 83. On fuvs i~ as endowment and achievement, see Gerson, Aristotle, 285. 84. Chapman’s Iliad xxiii.167–70, 457. 85. Leonard draws attention to this shift in argument in his notes to Comus 580–90; see Complete Poems, 675. 86. CPW, I:751–52. 87. On Sabrina’s magic, see Oram, “Invocation of Sabrina,” 121–39; Sokol, “‘Tilted Lees,’” 321–22; Fletcher, The Transcendental Masque, 240–44; on Sabrina as divine grace, see Kale, “Milton’s ‘Gums of Glutinous Heat,’” 86–91; on Sabrina as the Platonic Divine Mind, see Jayne, “Milton’s Ludlow Mask,” 533–43. 88. See Carey, Poems, 226n896. 89. In Della Casa, Rime, 26. 90. Maurice Kelley argues for Milton’s hand in the marginalia of Della Casa’s Rime e Prose (1563) and Dante’s Convivio and Varchi’s Sonnetti in “Milton’s Dante-Della Casa-Varchi Volume,” 499–504. On the sublime style in

310 notes to pages 108– 114

91. 92. 93. 94. 95. 96. 97. 98.

99.

100. 101. 102.

Milton and the Italian poets, see Prince, “Influence of Tasso and Della Casa,” 222–36. On the ambivalent agency / reagency implied by “viewless” and “printless,” see Fletcher, Transcendental Masque, 205–06. Fletcher, Transcendental Masque, 233. This was first noted by Christopher, “Virginity of Faith,” 495; see Luther, Lectures on Romans, in Works, 27:80. On Sabrina as nature, see Norbrook, Poetry and Politics, 261. For a rejection of the association of Sabrina with grace, see Evans, Miltonic Moment, 67–68; Adams, Milton, 17–18. Crat. 432D (as translated by Nehamas, in “Imperfection of the Sensible World,” 85); see also Gosling, “Similarity,” 157–58. On Aristotle’s need for Plato’s forms as allowing for “significant predication in the sensible world,” see Gerson, Aristotle, esp. 273–82. Cleanth Brooks and John E. Hardy opt for a reading in which virtue is not self-sufficient; see their edition of the Poems, 233. Compare my reading to Campbell and Corns, who suggest that since “external agencies function as vital catalysts”—as in the case of Sabrina—the masque endorses a “Laudian Arminianism;” see Milton, 83-84. See Milton’s description of how he indefatigably chases after the Form of Beauty in Letter 7 (to Charles Diodati, 1637): “to`u kalou` ijdevan, veluti pulcherrimam quandam imaginem, per omnes rerum formas & facies: (pollai; ga;r morfai; tw`n Daimonivwn) dies noctesque indagere soleo, & quasi certis quibusdam vestigiis ducentem sector” (as it is my habit day and night to seek this Idea of the Beautiful, just as for a certain image of the most beautiful, through all the forms and faces of things [for many are the shapes of things Divine]). See Columbia Works, 12:26 (Latin); 12:27 (English; my emended translation). See Augustine, De Bono Viduitatis 17.21, Pat. Lat. 40:444; Calvin, Institutes II.2.27, 1:288. Augustine, De Continentia 1.13.28, Pat. Lat. 40:369. Evans, Miltonic Moment, 64.

chapter 4. milton on the soul 1. One reason is that it was held that the ancient commentators supported the idea that being qua being referred to a supersensible substance and thus a theology of sorts. See Verbeke, “Aristotle’s Metaphysics,” 123–27; on Aristotle’s ambiguity about immortality of the intellect as leading to immortality of the soul, see Kristeller, “Immortality of the Soul,” 181–96; on Aristotle’s materializing tendencies, see Fallon, Milton among the Philosophers, 96, 99–100. 2. On the overall importance of the de Anima tradition and psychology to the seventeenth century, see Park and Kessler, “Concept of Psychology,” 455–63; Kessler, “Intellective Soul,” 485–534. 3. Philoponus, On Aristotle On the Soul 3.1–8 (563, 6–15), 143.

notes to pages 115–121 311

4. Philoponus, On Aristotle On the Soul 3.1–8 (563, 6–15), 143. See Conimbricenses, In de anima 2.c.1.q.2.a.2, 73 for the popular belief that the soul is a spiritual and hence incorruptible substance. 5. See Aristotle, Gen. an. II.3.736b27–29. 6. De an. III.5.430a23; on the “impassive and unmoved” active intellect, see De an. III.5.430a17–18. 7. “Bellerium” in Latin means “Land’s End,” but “Bellerus” is Milton’s invention. See Carey, Poems, 254n160. 8. Analogous to the problem in PL of what supports Hell, see I.44–47, 70–74. 9. OED 5, s.v. “ore.” Hooker’s 1586 translation of Giraldus Cambrensis’s History of Ireland refers to the “woars of the seas.” 10. Milton uses “spangled” for the angels as early as “On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity” iii.21, in Poems, 104. 11. Biblical proof texts for assumptionalism include Gen.5.24; Heb.11.5; 2 Kings 2.11; Macc. 2.58. On assumptionalism, see Bernard, “Assumption and Ascension,” 151–57; Kerrigan, “Heretical Milton,” 125–66. 12. On this prolusion, see Parker, Milton, 1:105; 2:774; Campbell and Corns, Milton, 36, 41. 13. See the title, CPW, I:257; cf. Masson, Life, 1:241. 14. On Aristotle’s supposed Platonist phase, see Jaeger, Aristotle, 84–100; Nuyens, Psychologie d’Aristotle; on opposition to this line of thought, see Bos, Instrumental Body; id., “Aristotle’s Pyschology,” 309–33. On Milton’s early Platonism, see Fallon, Milton among the Philosophers, 79–85; Carey, Poems, 81n59. 15. On God’s freedom, see CPW, VI:159; on God containing inferior substance eminently, CPW, VI:307–09. On eminent causation, see also Fonseca, In meta. 7.c.12.q.1.§.10, 3:379C–F (col. a); Des Chene, Life’s Form, 90–91. 16. See Columbia Works, 12:194, 196 (Latin); 12:196, 197 (English). 17. On Javellus, see Columbia Works, 12:196 (Latin); my English translation [=CPW, I:260]; on Javellus’s thesis, summarized by Milton, see Columbia Works, 12:190 (Latin) [=CPW, I:259]; my translation. The Columbia translates “Physici organici” as “physical organism,” but this assumes that a “corpus organicum” refers to a “body having organs.” On Javellus at Christ’s, see the entries for “Javell” in Mead’s Account Books, Christ’s MS T. 11. 1, fol. 31v; Christ’s MS T. 11. 3, fols 54r, 56v, 59br; on Milton and Javellus, see Hartmann, “Milton’s Prolusions,” 92–94, 99–100. During the Pomponazzi affair, Javellus defended the immortality of the soul by arguing that the immortalist position could be rationally demonstrated in metaphysics, not physics; on Javellus, see Lohr, “Aristotelian Natural Philosophy,” 91; Michael, “Renaissance Theories of Body, Soul, and Mind,” 147–72, 156n36. 18. Javellus, Epitome, 2:100r–100v. Aquinas also rejected the doctrine of multiple substantial forms at ST I.q.76.a.4. 19. Javellus, Epitome, 2:97v, 100r. 20. Hale, Milton’s Cambridge Latin, 29. 21. Aristotle, De an. II.1.412a27–28; on the body as not a “body with organs,” see Bos, Soul and Its Instrumental Body, passim.

312 notes to pages 121– 125

22. See Columbia Works, 12:189 (English); 12:188 (Latin). 23. See Columbia Works, 12:183 (English); 12:182 (Latin). 24. Suárez’s influence should not be underestimated. He was widely read at Cambridge; see, for instance, the commonplace book at St John’s College, Cambridge (MS. K. 38). In a seventeenth-century notebook at Oxford entitled “Directions for good, & profitable . . . study,” by one Mr. N. Sterry, the following injunction appears: “For Metaphysics read (with any painetaking) onely Suarez”; see Bodleian MS Tanner 88, fol. 5r [original pagination 565]. As late as 1690, John Grandorge of St. Edmund Hall suggested Suárez for the study of disputations under “Metaphysicks”; see Bodleian MS St. Edmund Hall 72, fol. 523v. According to a late seventeenth-century author, Scheibler and Suárez were said to give the best account of metaphysics in their respective “Systems”; see Bodleian MS Rawlinson D. 188, fol. 3r. Milton himself invokes Suárez in Prolusion IV, which was delivered in collegio. On Milton’s use of Suárez, see Hale, Milton’s Cambridge Latin, 21–27; Hartmann, “Milton’s Prolusions,” 59–68, 70–72, 135–45. My argument disagrees with Hartmann’s claim that Milton “did not really care about the material he was copying” (72). 25. See Javellus, Epitome, 2:99r; cf. Suárez, De an. 1.d.1.q.3a, in Castellote, 1:100. 26. On Milton on Philoponus, see Columbia Works, 12:186 (Latin); 12:187 (English) [=CPW, I:254]. On Philoponus and matter, see Todd, “Epitedeiotes,” 25– 35; Philoponus, in Phys. (97, 24–98, 2) and (191, 9–25) (translated by Todd, “Physical Theory in Philoponus,” 162–63); Philoponus, In on Coming-to-Be 1.6–2.4 (169.6–8), 73; On the Soul 1.1–2 (14, 5–6), 29; On the Soul 1.1–2 (52, 15–21), 69; On the Soul 2.1–6 (268, 31–6), 72. 27. See Simplicius, On Aristotle’s On the Soul 1.1–2.4 (92, 20–25), 125; on the soul as instrument versus using an already living instrument, see ibid. (90, 29–91, 6), 122–23; (52, 27), 76; Blumenthal, “Psychology (?) Simplicius,” 78–79; id., Aristotle and Neoplatonism, 94–98. 28. See Suárez, De anima d.1.q.4a, in Castellote, 1:108. 29. On seed as “potentia vitam habens,” see Des Chene, Life’s Form, 82–83. On matter and form in Suárez, see De anima d.1.q.3a, 92 in Castellote, 1:92. 30. On Milton’s belief that the soul is transmitted through the semen, see CPW, III:271. 31. See Zabarella, Commentarii in tres Aristotelis Libros de anima lib.3.text.6, col.743 [A]; translated by Randall, “Introduction,” 267. On the materializing implications of soul in Zabarella, see Poppi, La dottrina della scienza in Giacomo Zabarella, esp. chap. 2. 32. Greek Lexicon, s.v. “organon,” 1245. 33. Cf. Edwards, Milton and the Natural World, 25; see also Vives, De Tradendis Disciplinis 81v (as quoted in CPW, II:401n161); CPW, II:401–24, 608. 34. Again, the receiving capacity on the matter side is privileged over the agent or enforming principle. Much depends, therefore, on the concept of unity: Suárez’s “quandam vnitatem habeat” finds its equivalent in Milton’s phrase

notes to pages 126 –130 313

35. 36. 37.

38. 39. 40. 41.

42.

43. 44.

45.

46. 47. 48. 49. 50.

“per modum unius;” see Milton, Columbia Works, 12:182 (Latin) and Suárez, Metaphysicarum Disputationum d.15.§.1.no.7.col.a, 243[H–I]. For an alternative reading, see Defoe’s account in Political History of the Devil, 105. See Augustine, In Epistolam Joannis 2.2.13, Pat. Lat. 35:1996; on curiositas, see Evans, Getting It Wrong, 109–18. On form and matter in Milton, see CPW, VI:309. On Eve’s fall, see Benet, “Milton’s Toad,” 38–52; on the lineup of critics for the fallen versus unfallen Eve debate, see ibid., 39n2, 38n3. De an. III.7.413b2; 431a14–17; 432a7–10, 12–14. See Cranefield, “On the Origin of the Phrase,” 77–80. Newton, Paradise Lost, 2:289 (note to X.806). Bentley, “Paradise Lost,” 337. Milton emphasizes the active power of matter in Prolusion V, where he speaks of it as a power for increase, ad accretionem, see CPW, I:255 [=Columbia Works 12:190 (Latin)]. Milton cites the “end of the first book of De anima,” but this may well have included more than that proposed in CPW, I:259n5 (it is likely Milton began with Aristotle’s discussion of one soul versus partial souls at De an. I.5.411b9–11). De an. I.5.411b9–10; I.5.411a24–411b7; I.5.411b9–10; II.1.412b8–9; and II.1.412a9–11. Aristotle, De an. II.2.414a25–27; Simplicius, On the Soul 1.1–2.4 (90, 39–91, 1), 123; (86, 10–15), 117–18 (on receptivity); on the matter of the soul, see also Simplicius, On Aristotle’s On the Soul 1.1–2.4 (104, 30–35), 140. On that which initiates change versus what is changed, see Simplicius, On Aristotle’s On the Soul 1.1–2.4 (90, 39–91, 1), 123. For an alternative reading that privileges the effort over the end result, see Fallon, “Metaphysics of Milton’s Divorce Tracts,” 74. It is telling that even Bacon fails to complete the corporealization of the soul; see De Augmentis Scientiarum, Works 4:401; cf. Works 1:494, 604–07; II:225; and discussed by Rees, “Bacon and Spiritus Vitalis,”274–75, 277–79; Walker, “Bacon and Spiritus,” 121–30. Columbia Works, 15:41 (English) [=CPW, VI:318]; Columbia Works 15:40 (Latin). See also Maimonides, Guide 1.41, 91; Aquinas, SCG 2.c.57, 141. See Augustine, De Gen. contra Manich. 2.8.10, Pat Lat. 34:201; translated by Hill, On Genesis: Refutation, 77. The rational soul defines man in the following syllogism: man is an animal; man is rational; therefore man is a rational animal. Columbia Works, 15:43 (English); 15:42 (Latin) [=CPW, VI:319]. Columbia Works, 15:43 (on Tertullian and Jerome); for quotation, see Columbia Works, 15:38 (Latin), 15:39 (English) [=CPW, VI:317]. On Tertullian, see Minucius Felix: Octavius 34.7–10, 418–21. It was Augustine who changed the end of the line: “and so death spread to all men in that [because] all men sinned” becomes “in whom [Adam] all men sinned (in quo omnes peccaverunt).” See Augustine De Nuptiis et Concupiscentia 1.1, Pat. Lat. 44:412-13 and id. 2.5.15, 444-45; Contra Julianum 1.3.10, Pat. Lat. 44:646 and the discussion at De Pecc. Merit. et Remis. 1.9.9–1.12.15, Pat. Lat. 44:114–17. Helpful

314 notes to pages 130 – 132

51. 52.

53. 54.

55.

56.

57.

58.

59. 60.

also is Forsyth, Old Enemy, 401n14. Milton generally approved of the Church Fathers, as they “referre all decisions of controversie to the Scriptures”; see Of Reformation, CPW, I:563. On pneuma, see Aristotle’s discussion of spirit at De mot. An. X.10.703a13– 24 and Gen. an. II.3.736b36–II.3.737a1 (on the “quintessence of the stars”). CPW, VI:308; Columbia Works, 15:22 (Latin): “sed materia non erat in suo genere imperfecta, accessione duntaxat formarum (quæ et ipsæ materiales quoque sunt) facta ornatior.” On matter and form as internal causes, see CPW, VIII:17. Milton, like Scotus and against Aquinas, believes that matter underlies every substantial change; see Scotus, Quaestiones in Metaphysicam 7.q.5 and Lectura 2.d.12,q.un (cited from King, “Scotus on Metaphysics,” 15–68). CPW, VI:311; Columbia Works, 15:28 (Latin); on forms as “embellishment,” see Columbia Works, 15:22-24 (Latin); 15:23-25 (English) [=CPW, VI:308-09]. On recent interpretations of Aristotle’s hylomorphism, see Burnyeat, “Philosophy of Mind,” 15–26; Cohen, “Hylomorphism and Functionalism,” 57–73; Frede, “Aristotle’s Conception of the Soul,” 93–107; Wilkes, “Psuche versus the Mind,” 109–27; and Kahn, “Aristotle on Thinking,” 359–79. Aristotle, Gen. an. II.3.737a8–12. See also his Metaph. N.2.1088b26–8; De an. II.1.412b5–27; II.2.414a13–22; II.2.413a3–8; Gen. an. II.3.736a33; Simplicius, On the Soul 3.1–5 (241, 35–242, 1–5), 109. On the Stoics’ belief that the seed containing the pneuma is potentially the soul, see Long, “Soul and Body,” 236–37, 240–41. Pace, Ross, Aristotle, 132. Ross almost concedes the point that the rational soul is a problem, but he does not register its full importance. Aristotle acknowledges there is a difficulty in saying when precisely the soul acquires reason at Gen. an. II.3.736b5–9. See Aristotle, Gen. an. II.3.736b31, in Generation of Animals, 170 (Greek); 171 (English). On pneuma, see Rist, “Theological Pneuma,” 32–33; Blumenthal, Soul and Intellect, 173–88. On the background to the rational soul, see Kessler, “Intellective Soul,” 485–534. Although people argue about genos in this line, one can agree that whatever it is—a type, species, or form of the soul—it is outside the body. The external existence is the crucial point; see Aristotle, Eth. Nic. X.7.1177b30. Even Tertullian, who is generally thought to adhere to the idea of a corporeal soul, speaks of the soul as a “body of a quality and kind peculiar to itself ” (propriae qualitatis et sui generis). It follows that soul is not corporeal in the same way that the body is; see Tertullian, De anima 9, 10; Wolfson, Religious Philosophy, 85. De an. II.2.414a13–22; II.2.413a3–8. Simplicius, On Aristotle’s On the Soul 1.1–2.4, (115, 20), 155. Simplicius also discusses how the soul is the cause of nourishment, digesting food by warmth (116, 10), 156. A similar idea is behind the transformation of food by Milton’s angels. For Aristotle’s vital heat and digestion, see De an. II.5. 416b25; Bos, Instrumental Body, 110.

notes to pages 132 – 134 315

61. Gen. an. II.3.737a8–13. On the idea’s descent through antiquity (and the Greek Neoplatonists), see Bos, “Aristotle’s De anima II.1,” 189; id., Soul and Its Instrumental Body, 113–14, 117–215, 259–303. 62. CPW, VI:317; Columbia Works, 15:38 (Latin). 63. CPW, VI:321; Columbia Works, 15:46 (Latin). The (incorrect) accent on “dektikon” is Milton’s. In the Art of Logic, the receiving subject is once more the dektiko;n (when it should be dektikovn); see Columbia Works, 11:80. 64. This further emphasizes the distinction of spirit—as in Milton’s intellectual spirits—from the soul qua intellect; cf. Aristotle, Gen. an. II.3.736b13–16. See CPW, VI:325 (for God breathing life into man and mixing it “in a very fundamental way”); see Wightman, “Myth and Method,” 321–36 (on spirit more generally). 65. This, despite Ezekiel 18.20, which, as Milton writes, is “the most convincing explanation I can adduce for the death of the soul”; see CPW, VI:405. 66. Animism as such necessarily implies dualism. 67. Aristotle, De an. III.4.429a22–24; discussed in Bos, “Pneuma and Ether,” 257. 68. For an alternative reading, see Fallon, Milton among the Philosophers, 104; Babb, Moral Cosmos, 41. 69. See, for instance, Iamblicus, De an. (9, 11–15), 33; Simplicius, On Aristotle’s On the Soul 1.1–2.4 (96, 1–10), 129; Philoponus, On the Soul 2.1–6 (224, 28– 224, 5), 24–25. On the Stoic belief in a surviving rational hegemonikon, see Long, Soul and Body, 16, 36; on the soul as vehicle for the blueprint of rationality, see Bos, Instrumental Soul, 116. Note that even Aquinas’s argument concedes that the intellect, like universals, is eternal, and therefore unbodily (although united with body). The power required to make the body and even the soul act goes beyond simple hylomorphism. If we call this vitalist materialism, we are speaking of dualism in softer and more materially accommodating terms; pace Rogers, Matter of Revolution, 37. On Aquinas, see Aquinas, SCG 2.c.61, 2.c.90, 272–75. 70. This scholastic tag prompted Prior to complain that the soul “runs here and there, like HAMLET’s Ghost,” in Alma; see Works, 1:471. On Milton, see CPW, VI:321–22 (English); Columbia Works, 15:46–48 (Latin). Here Milton uses the scholastic tag to argue that the seed, as the “most intimate and noblest part” (pars illa intima et nobilissima) of the body, must have the soul of the parents. See also CPW, VI:321n70. On the soul as totally and simultaneously present in the body and to every portion of it, see also Augustine, De imm. An. 1.16.25, Pat. Lat. 32:1034. 71. Aristotle, De motu An. II.10.703a36. 72. On linkage, see also De an. III.10.433b21–6, where the springs that account for the elasticity of the picture attempt to connect the substance of the soul to bodily parts. The attraction of the wheel is that, while its circumference moves, its center remains still, just as Aristotle’s soul is firmly seated in the heart. But this “circle solution” is an evasive bit of poetic ingenuity: if one is urged to make comfortable the idea of the unmoved mover, the analogy to the wheel fails to do the job. The problem of explaining how an unextended

316 notes to pages 134 – 141

73.

74.

75. 76.

77.

78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89.

90.

thing can impart motion remains. A point (as a fundamental unit) is acceptable as a material unit on (or of ) a line or circle. But the minute we begin to talk about a point as something that starts something else to move, we have loaded into that which lacks extension (and never moves itself ) a selfpossessed power for movement. On pneuma, see Bos, “Pneuma and Ether,” 262; id., Soul and Its Instrumental Body, 299; on the Platonic elements in pneuma as exploited by Renaissance writers, see, for instance, Marchamont Nedham quoting Fernelius, in MEDELA MEDICINÆ, 299. Robert Anton, The Philosophers Satyrs, 31 [G4r]. Printed in the margin is the scholastic comment, “Anima est tota in tota & in qualibet parte.” From the title page, it appears that this Anton was a student “of Magdalen Colledge in Cambridge” and is thus the same author as the Robert Anton (fl. 1606–18) of the Moriomachia (1613). See ODNB, s.v. “Anton.” See Glanvill, Saducismus triumphatus sct.12, 126–30. On the absurdity of “Holenmerianism,” see More in Nature of Spirit, as taken from his Enchiridion Metaphysicum and reprinted in Glanvill, Saducismus triumphatus, 134. See Aristotle, De an. II.1.412b18–26 and 413a1. Aristotle, De an. II.1.412b25; II.1.413a1. On the “vehicle of the faculty of sensation” as Aristotle’s sw`ma ojrganikovn of an animal soul, see Bos, “Traditional Interpretation Rejected,” 195–97; id., Soul and Its Instrumental Body, 106–09. See Aristotle, De an. II.1.412b18–19; on sight, see Aristotle, Sens. 438b8. On the eye as the matter of sight and the sensitive body as the instrument, see Simplicius, On Aristotle’s On the Soul, 1.1–2.4 (93, 30–94, 10), 126. The word “pore” conveys rawness and a materiality that inclines to the atomistic materialism which Aristotle rejects in his De anima. In Spenser’s Amoretti; see Poems, 392. The sun, soul, and eye were generally associated—see, for example, Shakespeare’s Ven. & Ad. ll. 485–86, 1804. See the invocation to PL III and also Sonnet XVI. Glanvill, Vanity of Dogmatizing, 20. Pope, Essay on Man, in Poems, 511. Hopkins, “Thou Art Indeed Just, Lord’,” in Later Poetic Manuscripts, 343. See Milton, “Letter 15,” Columbia Works, 12:64–70 (Latin), esp. 68, 70; on Samson and sight / light, see Guilfoyle, “Aspects of Death,” 42. See Hopkins, “Binsey Poplars,” in Later Poetic Manuscripts, 161. On this “heap of the dead,” see Teskey, Delirious Milton, 189–92. Nuttall, “Milton’s Samson Agonistes,” 129–42; Lieb, “Our Living Dread,” 16. On pachad, see Lieb, “Our Living Dread,” 12–14. I follow the traditional 1665–67 dating of the poem. On the dating controversy, see Poems, 349–50. Fallon, who admits that “parts of Samson Agonistes do not fit the picture of the mature Milton’s philosophy of substance,” opts for the early dating (c. 1640s); see Milton among the Philosophers, 248–51. CPW, VI:404. See Gregory of Nyssa’s discussion on the death of the soul and his On the Making of Man ch.30.§.30, 426–27; id., On the Soul and Resurrection, 437–40, 444–45.

notes to pages 141– 146 317

91. CPW, VI:404–05. 92. Against MacCullum, in “Figurative Interpretation,” 397–415, esp. 409, 412; cf. Stein, “Imagining Death,” 112–13. 93. On mortalism, see Burns, Christian Mortalism, 148–91; Young, “SoulSleeping System,” 64–68. 94. CPW, VI:384. 95. CPW, VI:399, 404. 96. See Calvin, Immortalytie of the Soule. 97. Eusebius, Church History, 1:279; Gill, Sacred Philosophie, 90–91. 98. Burns, Christian Mortalism, 18. On Milton and mortalism, see Williamson, “Milton and the Mortalist Heresy,” 553–79; Henry, “Milton and Hobbes,” 234–49; Chambers, “Milton on Mortalism.” 99. Lewis, Allegory of Love, 56. Lewis refers here to Dante’s letter to the Cangrande: “The subject, then, of the whole work, taken in the literal sense only, is the state of the soul after death, pure and simple. For on and about that the argument of the whole work turns. If, however, the subject is man according as by his merits or demerits in the exercise of his free will he is deserving of reward or punishment by justice.” See Dante, Epistola X (8), 174 (Latin); 200 (English). 100. Lovelace, Poems of Richard Lovelace, 23–24. 101. On the metaphysical impact of monism on Milton’s metaphor, see Fallon, “Metaphysics of Milton’s Divorce Tracts,” 75. The thnetopsychists commonly referred to I Tim. 6.16 to validate their position. 102. The phrase is Lewis’s; see “Bluspels and Flanasferes,” 42–43. 103. CPW, VI:409. 104. Inferno xxvi.94–135, 208–10. 105. Lewis, “Bluspels,” 47. On Milton’s metaphor (albeit in a different context), see Ulreich, “Incarnation as Accommodation,” 131. 106. CPW, VI:402–03. 107. CPW, VI:411, 400 (on Milton’s citation of the Syriac for spirits as being “in the grave”); on the “really” dead, see CPW, VI:402–09, esp. 403, 406. 108. CPW, VI:406. The quotation is more pronounced in the extremely compact Latin: “obdormierunt: at corpus exanimum non dormit, nisi et lapides quoque dormiunt”; see Columbia Works, 15:232. 109. On Ecclesiastes, see CPW, VI:404, also see 407 (on Job). The biblical quotation from Ecclesiastes served as R. O.’s epigraph for Man’s Mortalitie. Unsurprisingly, Milton hears the irony in the speaker’s voice: “[He] condemns the ignorance of those who are so bold as to affirm that the spirit of a man and the spirit of a beast go different ways after death.” On the death of “whole” man, see Milton, CPW, VI:400–03, 410; Burns, Christian Mortalism, 29. 110. CPW, VI:408 [=Columbia Works, 15:238]. Clement attributes the quotation to Euripides’ Chrysippus; see Philo, Eternity of the World, 206n‘a’. Milton owned the 1602 Stephanus edition of Euripides (Bodleian MS Don. D. 27– 28); see Norbrook, “Euripides and Milton,” 37–41. 111. Augustine, De Imm. An. 1.7.12, Pat. Lat. 32:1027.

318 notes to pages 146 – 150

112. See Philo, Eternity of the World vi.30, 206 (Greek); 207 (English). See also Milton on Jude 6 in CPW, VI:383; on Milton’s belief that no created thing can be “utterly annihilated,” see CPW, VI:310. 113. CPW, VI:407–08. Milton employs Euripides (namely, Iphigenia in Aulis 304, 312; Rhesus 262; Bacchae 1028) in his arguments for the oneness of God; see CPW, VI:235–36, 236n85. CPW, VI:408. Calvin knew of this standard mortalist line and argued that the interpretation of Ezekiel was beyond our understanding and hence an accommodated picture; see Immortalytie of the Soule, E7r. 114. Mark Edwards cites Edwin Hatch’s excellent version in the hymn, “Breathe on me, Breath of God,” from Between Doubt and Prayer (1878); see Edwards, John, 47. 115. See Milton, CPW, VI:404; Donne, “Of the Progress of the Soul: The Second Anniversary” 246, in Poems, 294. 116. See Aristotle, De an. III.5.430a22–23; Gen. an. II.3.736b28–30. 117. cf. Lucretius, DRN ii.292 (Lucretius is actually more a minimal correlationist). 118. CPW, VI:405; on “unconsciousness” as it pertains to I Kings 17:21, see CPW, VI:408; Donne, Poems, 92. Epicurus, Epistula ad Menoeceum 12.5.8– 10, in Opera, 108 (Italian); 109 (Greek). It reappears brilliantly in Tristram Shandy v.iii, 425: “When we are—death is not;—and when death is—we are not.” On the more diluted form of Epicurus’s argument, see Laertius, “Epicurus” x.65, in Lives 2:595–97. 119. Augustine, Confessions 11.14(17), 230 (English); Pat. Lat. 32:816 (Latin). 120. Aristotle, Ph. IV.11.218b21–IV.11.219a. 121. See Sorabji, Time and the Continuum, 74; Annas, “Aristotle, Number and Time,” 97–113; Aristotle’s Ph. IV.11.220a26. 122. Sorabji, Time and the Continuum, 75; Sextus Empiricus, Math. ix, 20–23 (quoted in Bos, Soul and Its Instrumental Body, 300). 123. See Alexander, de Temp. 95, 12–15, cited from Sorabji, Philosophy of Commentators 11d(2), 2:201–02; see also Simplicius, On Aristotle’s Physics 4.1–5 (760, 11–26), 173; (760, 27–34), 174. 124. See Sorabji, Time, Creation, and the Continuum, 28–29, 93; Sharples, “On Time,” 58–108. 125. Alexander’s response is distinctly anti–Averroist. 126. See Sorabji, Time, Creation, and the Continuum, 91; Aristotle, Metaph. G.5.1010b30; De an. III.2.426a15–26. 127. CPW, VI:410; cf. Kerrigan, “Heretical Milton,” 125–66. 128. Milton, Poems, 129; on Augustine, see City of God 11.6, 435 [=Pat. Lat. 41:321–22]; Hausheer, “Augustine’s Conception of Time,” 503–12. 129. Aristotle, Ph. IV.14.223a21–a29. 130. See ODNB, s.v. “Hobson.” On the perception of time, motion, and the intellect, see Edwards, “Time and Perception in Late Renaissance Aristotelianism,” 225–41.

notes to pages 150– 157 319

131. See Bruno, Camoeracensis, 148–50; Patrizi, Nova de Universis Philosophia 21, 43–46, esp. 45 (mispaginated 46) col. a–b. On Telesio, Bruno, and Patrizi on time, see Hutton, “Aristotle’s Theory of Time,” 354–59 (esp. 354–55 for Telesio). 132. See Plotinus, Enn. 3.7.1.1–13, 222–38; Mark Edwards, Age of Plotinus, 44–48. 133. Lohr, “Metaphysics,” 629. 134. See Edwards, “Time and the Soul,” 37–39; on Timpler, see Freedman, European Academic Philosophy; on Keckermann, see also Freedman, “Career and Writings of Bartholomew Keckermann (d. 1609),” 305–64. Keckermann’s works on logic, physics, metaphysics, and theology appear frequently in Mead’s Account Books, Christ’s MS T. 11. 3. 135. Hardison, Jr., “Milton’s ‘On Time,’” 107–22; OED, s.v. “individual.” 136. On Suárez’s imaginary succession, see esp. M. J. Edwards, “Time and the Soul,” 36. 137. Luther, “Catholic Epistles” 3.8.10, in Works, 30:196. 138. CPW, VIII:248; cf. De Doctrina Christiana, CPW, VI:143. 139. Compare PL VII.11–12; on time, see Edwards, “Time and the Soul,” 59. 140. Pace Derrida’s belief that “metaphor . . . always carries its death within itself ”; see White Mythology, 271. 141. See Burns, Christian Mortalism, 168–69. 142. See Blackburne, title page of Short Historical View; Young, “Soul-Sleeping System,” 64–81. 143. See Blackburne, View, 121; Memoirs, 1:63, 135; Young, “Soul-Sleeping System,” 71. The idea in Blackburne is stated also in Sidney’s Defence, where he speaks of poetry “written darkly, lest by profane wits it should be abused” (126). 144. Newton, Paradise Lost, 2:290 (note to X.813). 145. Newton, Paradise Lost, 2:260 (note to X.513). 146. CPW, VI:555. On Milton’s horror at the literal interpretation of the Sacrament—as in the case of transubstantiation—and how the host ends up in the latrine, see CPW, VI:560. 147. On Lewis, “Bluspels,” 47; CPW, VI:452. Milton uses mortalism, as did Luther, to dispense with the idea of purgatory. 148. This is reflected in Milton’s theory of accommodation; see CPW, VI:133–36; Nuttall, Alternative Trinity, 151. 149. CPW, VI:461. 150. CPW, VI:452. This type of mortalism immediately has more in common with Sir Isaac Newton’s belief that the soul is an incorporeal substance that God maintains, in an unconscious state, after the body’s death; see Force, “God of Abraham and Isaac (Newton),” 179–200. 151. See Lewis, “Bluspels,” 47; CPW, VIII:395; on Hobbes, see Leviathan pt.1.ch.3, in Works, 3:17; Elements of Philosophy pt.1.ch.2.§.8, 7–8. 152. See Stout, Mind and Matter, 57. It seems more likely than Milton’s vitalism (such as it is) owes more to the animistic impulse of metaphor than to a post-Restoration “liberal political philosophy”; see Rogers, Matter of

320 notes to pages 158– 161

Revolution, 111, 225–26. On Milton’s tendency to “indict past movements,” see Worden, Literature and Politics in Cromwellian England, 384–98. chapter 5. milton’s angelology 1. West asserted the materiality of angels in Milton and the Angels; on angels and monist materialism, see Marjara, Contemplation of Created Things, 226– 27; on their materiality, see also Corns, Regaining Paradise Lost, 30–44, 98. 2. Raymond, “‘With the Tongues of Angels,’” 273. 3. Fallon, Milton among the Philosophers, 137–67 (for an example of such an assertion, see 167). 4. On retaining individuality within the “all,” see Diane McColley, “‘All in All,’” 21–38. 5. Similar to this view is Suárez’s discussion of our intellect as compared to that of the angels; see his De anima d.9.q.8a, in Castellote, 3:234–36. On Italian academies and their influence on Milton’s depiction of angelic activity in the epic, see also Nardo, “Academic Interludes,” 222. 6. The great proponent of “universal hylomorphism” was Bonaventure. Grant McColley briefly drew Bonaventure into a discussion of Milton’s angels in his “Paradise Lost,” 220–21. 7. Fallon, Milton among the Philosophers, 143. 8. The idea that man can become like an angel is traceable back to the early Church Fathers; see, for instance, Origen, Comm. in Matt. 16.29, Pat. Graec. 13:1470–71 (Latin). 9. The Lutheran Scheibler’s works were reprinted at Oxford by Thomas Barlow of Queen’s College. Barlow removed Scheibler’s attack on Calvinism from the preface and transformed it instead into an attack on Socinianism. The Continental rift between Lutherans and Calvinists appears to have been negligible within the English context. 10. Scheibler, Metaphysica articulus ii, 222. 11. On intellection without organ or body, see, for example, Javellus, Opera lib.1.c.4, 314a–b and 316a. Javellus agreed with Pomponazzi on the intellect’s unbodily aspect; see Opera (1580) 1.c.1, 313a; Pomponazzi, On Immortality ch. xiv, 370 and ch. ix, 316 (on Intelligences). See also Randall, “Introduction,” 266–67. 12. It is more than likely that Milton came into contact with Pomponazzi’s writings, either during his sojourn through Italy or earlier—perhaps during his years at Christ’s (c. 1625– c. 1631), which is when he read Javellus. After Agostino Nifo’s 1518 assault on Pomponazzi in De immortalitate anime libellus, Javellus defended the (orthodox) idea of the soul’s immortality in a treatise appended to the index of Pomponazzi’s Defensorium of 1519 (republished 1525). On Nifo, see Spruit, Species Intelligibilis, 71–92. 13. See Pomponazzi, On Immortality ch. viii, 306. 14. See Randall, “Introduction,” 274; Pomponazzi, On Immortality ch. xiv, 359, 362, 373.

notes to pages 161– 163 321

15. Milton was not Averroist. One of Aquinas’s main objections to Averroism— in which there is only one possible intellect for all men—focused on its annihilation of individual immortality as destructive to moral philosophy tout court; see Aquinas against the Averroists c.1.§.2, 19. Milton describes Regeneration as the restoration of “man’s natural faculties of faultless understanding and of free will . . . more completely than before”; see CPW, VI:461; on the punishment of the damned, see CPW, VI:628–30. 16. In De incantationibus, Pomponazzi recanted, privileging faith over reason; see Pine, Pietro Pomponazzi, 126–31. 17. Pomponazzi, On Immortality ch.x, 333. 18. On the angelic intellect as having direct and intuitive knowledge of spiritual things, see Suárez, De anima, d.2.q.3a.[13], in Castellote, 1:180. 19. See Cranz, “Renaissance Reading of the De anima,” 368. A (dualist) division between things and minds emerges once again. 20. Aristotle, De an. III.5.430a17–18; 22–25. On the intellect as imperishable and self-existing, see De an. I.4.408b18–20; as eternal and separable, ibid., II.2.413b24–27; as separable, ibid., III.4.429b5; on reason as divine, entering from the outside, see Gen. an. III.3.736b27–30; on the possibility that reason survives, see Metaph. L.3.1070a26–28. On Aristotle’s De anima as treating the rational soul, see Simplicius’s On the Soul 3.1-5 (240, 5) 107; (220, 25), 82; ibid., (223, 15), 85. 21. On the distinction between active and possible intellect, see De an. III.5.430a10–25. In the Aristotelian tradition, humans need phantasmata, or mental images (species), to think. The mind knows objects by receiving sensible species through organs of perception; intelligible species refers to the way sensible species are understood or apprehended and how this then “grounds the mental act”; see Spruit, Intelligible Species, 258 (who also discusses the serious changes this doctrine underwent in the Renaissance). 22. See Rist, “Notes on Aristotle De Anima 3.5,” 8–20. Rist writes, “Aristotle is quite specific that the Active Intellect alone is immortal” (15). Later theologians, however, will argue that nou`~, or intellect, is not an “essential aspect of the form of man” but a power of the (enforming) soul. 23. Simplicius, On Aristotle On the Soul 3.1–5 (227, 5–13) 90; on possible / practical intellect as a mode of intellect, see Philoponus, On Aristotle On the Soul 3.1–8 (554, 7–29), 134; On Aristotle’s On the Soul 3.9–13 (584, 25), 35 and (584, 32–585, 1), 36; On Aristotle On the Intellect (9, 10–10, 20), 34–35; (11, 55–64), 36. 24. Simplicius’s Commentaria in III libro de anima, which was edited by Evangelista Lungo Asulanus and published by Hieronymus Scotus in Venice in 1553 and 1564, exerted a great deal of influence over the discussions of the role of the agent and possible intellects in the latter half of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. See Latner’s “Introduction” to On Aristotle’s On the Soul 1.1–2.4, 4–5; on the popularity of Simplicius’s De anima commentary, see Nardi, Saggi sull’Aristotelismo padovano, 365–442 (in the context of the Italian controversy on the soul); Mahoney, “Greek Commentators,” 170– 77, 262–82; Symonds, Italian Literature, 406–07.

322 notes to pages 163– 167 25. For instance, during the “Michaelmas qtr 1625” the entry for “Clark” records that Clark paid 2 shilling and 6 pence for “Aristotel de Anima College”; see Christ’s MS T. 11. 3, fol. 53r. On the “Collegium de Anima,” see Christ’s MS T. 11. 3, fol. 56r (s.v. “Hastler,” which is as late as “Christmas qtr 1655/6”). 26. See Conimbricenses, Commentaria in tres libros de anima, 307b. The fact that the Coimbra commentary on Aristotle’s De anima was widely used in the universities (for pedagogical reasons) meant that it also helped to popularize the thought of Melanchthon and Zabarella. De Goes harmonized many of the positions held by the Scholastics; on De Goes’s De anima commentary, see Spruit, Species Intelligibilis, 289–93 27. On the history of editions of Suárez, see Castellote’s “Introducción” to De anima vol. 1, esp. xxxix–xli. In the seventeenth century, the views expressed in the De anima were understood as Suárez’s; see also Spruit, Intelligible Species, 294–306. 28. See Suárez, De anima d.9.q.8a., in Castellote, 3:232. 29. Quotation from Suárez, De Angelis 1.c.6.n.8, 22[col.a]. 30. This Scaliger—Julius Caesar de Lescalle Bordoms—was the father of Joseph Justus Scaliger (1560–1609). Scaliger (the father) insisted on the difference between species educed from matter (“educit speciem è materia”) and those impressed on the possible intellect; see Exercitationes, 959 (quoted in Spruit, Intelligible Species, 252). On Burgersdijck and the intellect, see Spruit, Intelligible Species, 423–25; on the agent intellect as primary only insofar as it produces intelligible species, see Eustachius, Summa Philosophiae pars. 3.[physica]. tract.4.q.7, 275–78. On the “investigative possibilities” of these writers, see Maclean, “Language in the Mind,” esp. 302–03, 315–19. 31. See Schmitt, “Rise of the Philosophical Textbook,” 792–804; P. Reif, “Textbook Tradition,” 17–32; Hotson, Commonplace Learning, 118–19, 121. On the textbook methods, see L. H. M. Reif, “Natural Philosophy in Some Early Seventeenth–Century Scholastic Textbooks,” 305–14. 32. Leigh, Religion and Learning, 46. 33. See Suárez, De angelis 2.c.1.n.16–17, 63[cols.a–b]. 34. See Randall, “Introduction,” 273; Pomponazzi, On Immortality ch. ix, 315– 19. On intermediaries, see Simplicius, On Aristotle On the Soul 3.1–5, (238, 5–40), 104–05; on the progressing intellect, see ibid. (240, 35–241, 20), 108–09; on Simplicius and the “progressing” intellect, see Spruit, Intelligible Species, 161–64. 35. See Grotius, Opera Omnia, 1:597 [A62] (commentary on Wisdom 7.27). 36. On the active intellect as that which is superior only with reference to activity; see Pomponazzi, On Immortality ch.viii, 301. 37. See Bernard, De Consideratione 5.4.7, Pat. Lat. 182:791 [B] (where the angel is pure in mind—“mente puros”). 38. On angelic hierarchies, see Mohamed, “Inversion of Catholic Angelology,” 240–52. 39. See Mead’s records, Christ’s MS T. 11. 3, fol. 38r, s.v. “Highman” (listed as entering in the Midsummer quarter 1625) and fol. 53v, s.v. “Clark” (entered Lady

notes to pages 168– 175 323

40.

41. 42.

43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48.

49.

50. 51. 52.

Quarter, 1628). Highman is a contemporary of Milton’s since Milton was admitted to Christ’s in 1624. Of interest is that the Master’s Book (Christ’s MS LC5) records Suárez’s “Metaphysica Fol / Mogun. 1614,” with the shelf mark K.3.14. I have been unable to ascertain when this entered the library. Here Milton may sound Averroist, but he avoids a full-fledged endorsement of the Averroist position; see Martin, “Rethinking Renaissance Averroism,” 19. Milton may have remembered Dante, who, responding to the pressures of Averroism in his Purgatorio (xxv.62–66), has Statius warn Dante the pilgrim that, although we cannot find an organ for the intellect, we should nonetheless avoid the erroneous conclusion that the intellect is “disgiunto / dall’anima” (disjoined from the soul; Purg. xxv.64–65); see The Divine Comedy, 2:326 (Italian). On the potency of matter, see Philoponus, Coming to Being 1.15, 155. In I Enoch, Uriel is the guide who points Enoch in the direction of the rebel angels; see 1 En. 18.14–19.2. On Uriel’s name, see Gieschen, Angelomorphic Christology, 136–67; Newton, Paradise Lost, 1:244 (note to III.654). At 2 Esdras 4.1, 5.20, and 10.28, Uriel is again aligned with the angelus interpres. See Hamilton, Apocryphal Apocalypse, 249–84 (on the reception of 2 Esdras) and 251–52 (on how this contributed to Anglican millenarianism). Suárez, De angelis 2.c.1.n.7, 60[col.b]. CPW, VI:347–48. CPW, VI:346. See Gieschen, Angelomorphic Christology, 131–34. Herodotus, History vii.§.206–§.209, 522–26 (Greek on even pages); 523–27 (English on odd pages ). The alignment of the good angels with the Spartans may be reinforced also at PL VI.666, where, as Newton first noted, there is an echo of “a memorable saying of one of the Spartans at Thermopylæ, who being told that the multitude of Persian arrows would obscure the sun, why then says he we shall fight in the shade.” Newton thinks Milton may also allude to Statius’s Thebaid viii.412; see Newton, Paradise Lost, 1:486. On Herodotus, see History vii.§.226, 543. Some readers may object and argue that Satan’s ability to enter Eden is adequately explained by the doctrine of permissive evil, in which God allows Satan to break free so that he (God) can then prove his own power by bringing goodness out of such overt evil. But when applied to a prelapsarian world, this still makes God appear as though he is pushing the Fall forward. On God’s ability to transform evil into good, see CPW VI:333: “The sinner, then, is nearly always evil or unjust in his aims, but God always produces something good and just out of these and creates, as it were, light out of darkness.” This idea reemerges at PL XII.469–73. Newton, Paradise Lost, 1:330 (note to IV.878). ST 1.45–58; SCG 2.96–101. Aristotle, De an. 1.4.408b12–13; Voetius, Selectarum disputationum theologicarum, 815. We recall that Milton too located thought in the mind, not the body; CPW, VI:404.

324 notes to pages 175– 178

53. “Upon Platonic Love: To Mistress Cicely Crofts, Maid of Honour,” 16–20, in Burrow, Metaphysical Poetry, 58–59. Burrow dates the poem to c. 1630–33. No argument for influence is being made here. Ayton’s poem is in BL MS Add. 10308, fols. 6v–7r. 54. Milton, CPW, VI:309; Columbia Works, 15:24 (Latin). 55. See Suárez, De angelis 2.c.1.n.7, 60[col.b]–61[col.a]. On Suárez and the generation of species as equivalents to sensory representations, see Spruit, Intelligible Species, 301–03. “Sense data” refers to those objects received by the senses. 56. On virtual extension, see, for instance, Fonseca, In meta. 7c.12.q.1.§.10, 3:379 [col.a.§.C–F]; cf. Des Chene, Life’s Form, 90–91. On the renewal of scholastic Aristotelianism in the 1600s—and Fonseca in particular—see Ashworth, “Logic Textbooks,” 77–85. Fonseca’s Metaphysics was widely read: he is the third author Vaughan listed under “Metaphysicks.” Interestingly, Vaughan begs our pardon (evident in the “sic venia [verbo]”) for his derogatory comment on Aristotle’s metaphysics: “That Aristotles Metaphysicks is ye most impertinent Booke (sic venia) in all his works; indeed, a rapsodie of Logicall scraps.” See St. John’s (Cambridge) MS K. 38, fols. 163r–163v and also fol. 166r (points 5 and 6). 57. See Suárez, De angelis 1.c.5.n.1, 20[col.b]; 1.c.5.n.7–n.8, 22 [cols.a–b]; De anima d.2.q.4, in Castellote, 1:292. For those adhering to the view that angels were pure form, this idea presented the argument for why an angel can never be a form for a material object or for us. Hence, Suárez will argue that the “angelic nature is not a composite from spiritual matter” (naturam angelicam non esse compositam ex materia spirituali); De angelis 1.c.7.n.2, 30[col.a]. Andreas Rivetus similarly argued that angels are complete and integral substance, with no other substantial parts, and this led him to conclude that angels cannot be informing forms (still less, then, can they be forms for a body); see Rivetus, Opervm Theologicorum, 167b. For those who thought angels were already compounds of form and “spiritual matter,” such arguments were irrelevant. 58. Pearce, Review of the Text . . . of Milton’s Paradise Lost, 284–85 (note to VIII.627). 59. See Donne, “The Ecstasy,” 49–56, in Poems, 55. 60. Newton, Paradise Lost, 1:459 (note to VI.350). For Pliny, see Natural History I 2.14, 178–79. 61. Augustine, De Trinitate 15.10.18, Pat. Lat. 42:1071; Bonaventure, Sent. 2.dist.10.a.3.q.1, conclusio [5], OO 2:270 [col.a]. 62. See On Immortality ch.xi, 340. 63. In Poems, 1. 64. See Wildberg, John Philoponus’ Criticisms of Aristotle’s Theory of Aether, 195. 65. On the angels’ immortality, see CPW VI:314. Milton also sides with Philoponus and Aristotle on the eternity of matter; see CPW, VI:313–14. Philoponus argued that the nonrational soul is immortal but can be destroyed by virtue of being in a body, whereas matter is eternal (but not immortal). This is because the word “immortal” refers to something alive; see Philoponus,

notes to pages 179 – 182 325

66.

67. 68. 69. 70.

71. 72.

73.

74.

75. 76. 77. 78. 79.

On Aristotle on the Soul 3.1–8 (541, 5–10), 120. Aristotle had said the intellect was “immortal and eternal” (De an. III.4.430a22–23), which Philoponus said was applicable only to the intellect. For Milton and his love of hierarchies, the wholly immortal and eternal intellectual substance would be reserved for the Pure Intellect Itself: namely, God. See Aristotle, De an. III.5.430a22–23; Gen. an. II.3.736b27; Voetius, “De Natura et Operationibus Dæmonum. Resp. Henrico Bonio” (originally: “Vltrajectino. Ad diem 17 Februar.”), in Selectarum Disputationum Theologicarum, 928. Aristotle, De an. III.5.430a23. Raymond, “‘With the Tongues of Angels,’” 256–81. On Aquinas, see also Keck, Angels and Angelology, 31–32, 98. CPW, VI:285; 142 (note that the same logical rigor causes Milton to reject the Trinity at CPW, VI:220). Bonaventure similarly thought “person” signified a “supposit of a rational creature” (supposito rationalis creaturae); see Sent. 1.dist.23.a.1. q.3 conclusio, OO 1:410[b]. Hunter, Rival Enlightenments, 37, 43–45. Gilson, Saint Bonaventure, 222–26; Keck, Angels and Angelology, 99. Bonaventure himself argues the metaphysician’s approach is superior to the physicist’s; Sent. 2.dist.3.p.1.a.1.q.2 conclusio, OO 2:97[a–b]. Dante, as Milton would have known, discarded the rivalry by having Aquinas praise the Franciscan order, and Bonaventure, in turn, speaks with admiration of the Dominicans. Although the Cistercian Eustachius does not mention Bonaventure by name, this is most likely to whom he refers when he denounces the opinion that “angels are not composed of form and matter” (Angelos non componi ex materia & forma). Following Aquinas, Eustachius rejects Bonaventure’s angelology because he thinks matter is bodily, and that incorporeal angels can “admit nothing whatsoever of matter” (nihil quicquam materiæ admittunt); see Eustachius a Sancto Paulo, Summa Philosophiae pars iv [Metaphysica] disp.2.q.2, 66. Eustachius’s Summa went through ten editions between 1609 and 1649 and was a great influence on seventeenth-century philosophers like Descartes. Columbia Works, 11:60 (Latin); 11:61 (English). For the similarities to Bonaventure’s matter as a “unity of homogeneity” (unitatem homogeneitatis), see Sent. 2.d.3.p.1,a.1,q.3 conclusio, OO 2:100[b]. On unity, see Keck, Angels and Angelology, 92, 94. Milton may have read Bonaventure in the seven-volume Moguntiae (Munich) edition of the Opera Omnia (1603). CPW, VI:309. CPW, VI:308; 131; Bonaventure, Sent. 2.dist.3. p.1. a.2.q.3 conclusio [§4,5,6], OO 2:110[b]. See Columbia Works, 11:52 (Latin); 11:53 (English). Bonaventure, Sent. 2.dist.3.p1.a1.q.3 conclusio [7], OO 2:101[b]; cf scholion [4] by the Quraacchi Editors to 2.p.1.a.1.q.1. OO, 2:93[a]. On intelligible versus sensible matter, see Aristotle, Metaph. Z.10.1036a9– 12; on assigning this abstract study to mathematics and the “first philosopher,” see De An. I.1.403b212–16.

326 notes to pages 182 –190

80. CPW, I:797. 81. Scheibler, Metaphysica articulus iv [ii], 266. The biblical text usually cited in support of the doctrine of assumed bodies was Gen. 18.8. 82. Newton, Paradise Lost, 1:384 (note to V.415). 83. Bonaventure, Sent. 1.d.35.a.1.q.4 conclusio [3.4], in OO 1:610[b]. 84. On Aquinas, see Montagnes, La doctrine de l’analogie, passim. 85. CPW, VI:555; also VI:554, 560. 86. On angelic hierarchies, see Mohamed, “Inversion of Catholic Angelology,” 240–52. 87. In Poems, 82. 88. “Gall” can refer to the physical secretions of the liver but here means “rancour,” or a bitter spirit; see OED I.1.a. and 3.a, 3.b—as in Emilia’s comment at Oth. IV.iii.92–93. 89. Crashaw, “Hymn, ‘Name of Jesus’” ll. 211–12, 129; Marvell, “To His Coy Mistress” 35–36, 83. 90. Angels do not excrete (as we do); they transpire—as though through skin, pace, Lehnhof, “Scatology,” 440, 447–48. Milton may well be interested in the body and bodily imagery, but this does not make either material, and it does not make Milton a monist materialist. 91. Scheibler, Metaphysica articulus iv, 229. 92. Fallon, Milton among the Philosophers, 209. 93. Fallon, Milton among the Philosophers, 221, 243. 94. Fallon, Milton among the Philosophers, 207–09. 95. This idea has roots also in Porphyry’s “ethereal” vehicles, which have a substance akin to Milton’s angels; see Porphyry, Auxiliaries to the Perception of Intelligible Natures §.1.32, 215. 96. OED, s.v. “squat; toad” (1b). Milton refers to the seven angels assigned to patrol the earth, citing Zech. 4.10 and Rev. 5.6; see CPW, VI:346. 97. Newton rightly observes that “pernicious” plays with its Latin root, “pernix,” meaning “quick,” “speedy”; see Newton, Paradise Lost, 1:472 (note to VI.520). 98. Quotation from Marchamont Nedham’s MEDELA MEDICINÆ, 156–57. 99. On Satan’s materialization, see Dobranski, “Pondering Satan’s Shield,” 491–92; Fallon, Milton among the Philosophers, 208; Bernard, De Consideratione 5.4.7, Pat. Lat. 182:791 [B]. 100. On Raphael’s name, see Gieschen, Angelomorphic Christology, 135–36. 101. cf. Daniel, “Milton’s Neo-Platonic Angel,” 177. 102. Bonaventure, Sent. 2.dist.3.p.1.dub.Ii, OO 2:111[a]. 103. See also Gieschen, Angelomorphic Christology, 90–91. 104. Morton, State of Man, 328. 105. Bonaventure, Sent. 2.dist.8, p.1, a.2, q.2 conclusio, OO 2:217[a]. 106. Bonaventure, Sent. 2.dist.8, p.1, a.2, q.2 conclusio, OO 2:217[a]. Notably, Bonaventure describes the “matter of an instrumental body” (sit corporis organici materia), which is what Satan takes on when he “sits in the shape of a Cormorant on the Tree of life.” See argument to book IV and PL IV.194–96; compare Bonaventure, Sent. 2.dist.8.p.1.a2.q.2. conclusio, OO 2:218[a].

notes to pages 190– 197 327

107. 108. 109. 110.

111. 112. 113.

114. 115. 116. 117.

Bonaventure, Sent. 2.dist.8.p.1.a.2.q.2 conclusio [5], OO 2:213[b]. For example: Augustine, De Divinatione Daemonum 1.3.7, Pat. Lat. 40:584–85. See Raymond, “‘With the Tongues of Angels,’” 278. CPW, I:364; Columbia Works, 18:129 (Latin). Compare Milton’s memory of Chrysostom with Chrysostom’s Homil. 23.12.9, Pat. Graec. 53:304–05 (identical column numbers are used for the Greek and Latin translation). On the struggle, see CPW, VI:482–83. The quotation on “vertu” is from Areopagitica, in CPW, II:527. On Raphael pushing the Fall forward, see Empson, Milton’s God, 150; Lehnhof, “Uncertainty and ‘The Sociable Spirit,’” 33–49. Johnson, “Milton,” in Lives, 1:284, 286. Milton, like Johnson, was impressed with displays of virtue. Angelo di Costanzo’s account of Guglielmo Porcelletto, whom he lionized as a symbol of virtue in his Historia del Regno di Napoli (Aquila, 1581 and 1582)—“Perche si vegga che la ve[ra] virtù è sicura in ogni estremo pericolo anchora tra’l furore de nimici” (In order to show that true virtue is safe in all extreme dangers and even amid the fury of enemies)—is recorded in Milton’s Commonplace Book (c. 1650); CPW, I:364; Columbia Works, 18:129–30 (Italian). Did this story perhaps serve as an inspiration for Abdiel? As quoted by Milton in DDC; see CPW, VI:497. CPW, II:515; on the controversy of choosing “warfaring” over the alternative “wayfaring,” see II:515n102. Johnson, “Milton,” in Lives, 1:290–91. See Bonaventure, Sent. 1.dist.37.p.2.dub.iv, OO 1:666[b].

chapter 6. from angels to the almighty Epigraph: In Dreamtigers, 38. 1. On accommodation as a theory of representation, see Ando, “Signs, Idols and the Incarnation,” 24–53; on scripture speaking “carnally,” see Augustine, Confessions 12.xvii(24), 258 (English); Pat. Lat. 32:834–35 (Latin); on speaking temporally, see De Genesi ad litteram 1.9.15, Pat. Lat. 34:251–52; on scriptural exegesis, see De Genesi ad litteram 1.20.40, Pat. Lat. 34:261–62; on perceiving God’s infinite nature by way of exemplis familiaribus, see Gregory of Nyssa’s Contra Eunomium lib.12, Pat. Graec. 45:931 [D] (Latin); 932 (Greek). 2. The history of accommodation outlined here is heavily indebted to Funkenstein, Theology and the Scientific Imagination, 10–22, 203–71; Benin, “The ‘Cunning of God,’” 179–91; id., Footprints, 93–109; Harrison, Rise of Natural Science, 132–38. In the seventeenth century there is a marked shift away from the maximalist interpretation in the (largely Copernican) Protestant natural philosophers (for examples, see Benin, Footprints, 195–96). Galileo famously rejected the maximalist interpretation: “The intention of the Holy Ghost is to teach us how one goes to heaven, not how heaven goes.” See his Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina, 186. 3. On the distinction between epistemological and social accommodation in Milton, see Swaim, “Mimesis of Accommodation,” 461–75; McCullum,

328 notes to pages 198– 2 0 8

4.

5. 6. 7.

8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13.

14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25.

26. 27.

“Figurative Interpretation,” 402–03; Himy, Pensée, mythe et structure dans le paradis perdu, 50–54. See Funkenstein, Scientific Imagination, 51; on accommodation in Milton, see Patrides, “Accommodation,” 58–63; Nuttall, Overheard by God, 98–100; Lieb, Theological Milton, 145–52 (on prose), 153–62 (on poetry); Treip, Allegorical Poetics, 187–90, 191–200, 234–35, and Appendix E, 278–81; Ulreich, “Incarnation as Accommodation,” 139; Fish, Surprised by Sin, esp. 57–91; Guillory, Poetic Authority, 151-61. Woolton, Treatise of the Immortalitie of the Soul, 18r. Suárez, De angelis 1.c.6.n.16, 26[col.a]. See Raphael’s description of Abdiel’s night flight: “All night the dreadless Angel unpursu’d / Through Heav’ns wide Champain held his way, till Morn” (PL VI.1–2). This flight is already accommodated because Raphael makes it clear that heaven merely has a “mock” cycle for day and night. In Davideis, 12 (my line numbers). On omnipotence and problems of literary representation, see Nardo, “Academic Interludes,” 223. See I Cor. xiii.1 in Grotius’s Opera Theologicorvm tom.ii, 2:812[B62]–813[A1]. Empson, Milton’s God, 147; Tanner, “Psychology of Temptation,” 136. cf. Reeves on Raphael’s narration in “‘Lest Wilfully Transgressing,’” 83–95; Lehnhof, “Uncertainty and ‘The Sociable Spirit,’” 33, 36–40, 42–43. This has precedent in writers contemporary to Milton: Wollebius, for instance, thought that the bad angels had “natural knowledge” and “empirical knowledge, based on long experience”; see Compendium Theologiae Christianae ch.7.§.2.prop.8, in Reformed Dogmatics, 63. Newton, Paradise Lost, 1:489–90 (note to VI.695). Tertullian, Apologeticus xix.2–3, 96–98 (Latin); 97–99 (English). See Leonard, “ ‘ Though of Thir Names,’” 157–78. See Leonard, note to PL I.361. Skulsky, Language Recreated, 47. Poole, Idea of the Fall, 177. See Silk, “Aristotle, Jakobson, Ricoeur,” 127; on angelic speech in Milton, see Carnes, “Time and Language,” 525–27. Skulsky’s phrase, Language Recreated, 47. My argument here differs from Poole’s expected answer—“No-one.” See Idea of the Fall, 177. See Quint, Epic and Empire, 43 This reenacts Milton’s “At a Vacation Exercise,” in which being is apprehensible only through its accidents. Helpful here is Skulsky, Language Recreated, 43. I disagree with Fallon’s negative reading of Milton’s phrase, “or dreams he sees” at I.781; see Milton among the Philosophers, 164. Augustine, De Doctrina Christiana 3.5.9, Pat. Lat. 34:69. The phrase is Kenneth Burke’s (quoted in Daiches, Critical Approaches, 314). cf. Stein, “Milton’s War,” 264–65.

notes to pages 2 0 8– 214 329

28. 29. 30. 31. 32.

33. 34. 35. 36. 37.

38.

39. 40.

41.

42. 43. 44.

45.

Augustine, De Doctrina Christiana, 1.6.6, Pat. Lat, 34:21. Aquinas, ST Ia.q.1.a.10.ad 1. Quodlibet VII.6.2.ad 5. Quoted in Beal, D. H. Lawrence: Selected Literary Criticism, 297. They are also described as being “Empyreal substance” (I.117) and “Empyreal form” (VI.433). “Ethereal” is also used to describe heaven— “Ethereal mould” (II.139). See West, Milton and the Angels, 100–74. On Vida and the epic tradition, see Di Cesare, Vida’s Christiad. See Haan, “Celestial Warfare,” 408–19; Coleridge, Marginalia 3:318, in vol. 12 of Works. Murrin, Allegorical Epic, 161. CPW, VI:314–15; see Col. 2.18. cf. Fallon, Milton among the Philosophers, 195–97: “Heaven, like everything in Milton’s monist universe, is material.” Better is Leonard’s brief discussion of angelic essence; see Naming, 61. See Fallon’s confident assertion in Milton among the Philosophers, 165: “Because his epic subject required angels, Milton constructed the only kind of angels that his monist materialism would allow. He places corporeal angels in his true poem because he believes in them.” Wollebius, Compendium Theologiae Christianae ch.7.§.2.prop.10, in Reformed Dogmatics, 63. Pace Rogers, Matter of Revolution, 135. This is closer to the Sendivogian notion that all matter emerged from prime matter than to van Helmont’s claim that the primary unit of matter was water and that substances are produced from it through the actions of various Archei; see Sendivogius, New Light of Alchemie; Heinecke, “Mysticism and van Helmont,” 65–78; Porto, “Michael Sendivogius,” 1–16; Gaukroger, Francis Bacon, 178–79. Much like the “strong rebuff of som tumultuous cloud / Instinct with Fire and Nitre hurried him [Satan] / As many miles aloft” (II.936–38). Quint argues for this passage’s Lucretian context, but I find it more Paracelsian than Lucretian; see Quint, “Fear of Falling,” 859, 864. There is the tradition of the Cyclopes hammering under Etna (Hesiod’s Theog. 500) to which Milton refers at PL I.232–37. Here again he begins to utilize iatrochemical descriptions: “Sublim’d with Mineral fury” (I.235). The tradition that makes the Cyclopes servants of the blacksmith god, Hephaestus, is later: see Virgil, Georg. iv.170, 1:230 (Latin) and Aen. viii.433, 2:90 (Latin). Milton alludes to the fate of the Titans at PL, I.195–98. Paracelsus, Of the Nature of Things ix, 130. Ibid., 130. See Aen. iv.167-68, in Virgil 1:432 (Latin); Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica, 312 (Greek). Newton heard echoes to Ovid, Met. xiii.15; see his Paradise Lost, 1:474 (note to VI.521). As space is limited, this chapter cannot discuss Milton’s angelology in full. For more detailed studies, see West, Milton and the Angels; Murrin, Allegorical Epic; Fallon, Milton among the Philosophers, 223–42. On the War in

330 notes to pages 215– 218

46.

47. 48. 49. 50.

51. 52. 53. 54.

55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63.

64. 65.

66.

Heaven, see Madsen, From Shadowy Types to Truth, 87–88, 110–13; Quint, Epic and Empire, 41–48; Revard, War in Heaven; id., “Heroic Warfare,” 119– 39; Stein, “Milton’s War,” 264–83. On the reception of the War in Heaven in the late seventeenth century, see von Maltzahn, “War in Heaven,” 154–79. The capital “R” on “reality” is here meant to signify a nonaccommodated reality. An example of this phenomenon is present at PL V.257-63, where we are given a description not only of Raphael’s descent but of what he is said to see. But as soon as he attempts to describe the latter, Milton reverts to simile. On angels and operations, see Aquinas, ST Ia.q.55.a.2.ad.3; on the “heavenly army,” see Sep. Sub. ch.17.sct.94, 138. Cf. CPW, VI:347–48. cf. Reesing, “Materiality of God,” 159–73. CPW, VI:136. Calvin’s “lisping God,” is described in Institutes ch. xiii, 1:121; Bouwsma, John Calvin, 105, 125n123. On Augustine’s view of accommodation, see De Civitate Dei 15.25, Pat. Lat. 41:472; De Trinitate 8.2.3, Pat. Lat. 42:948–49. I refer here to the epigraph of this section; see Augustine, Sermon 117.3.5, Pat. Lat. 38:663. The exclamation mark attempts to convey the emphasis conveyed by the Latin “at.” Chamier’s Corpvs Theologicvm lib.2.c.6, 59 [col. b]. CPW, VI:134, 136. For a contemporary definition of anthropopathy and syncatabasis, see Smith, Mysterie of Rhetorique, 193–94; Cloppenburg, Disputationes XV, in Opera Omnia, 15. CPW, VI:136. CPW, 134, 136, 135, respectively. CPW, VI:133. CPW, VI:133. Nuttall, Overheard by God, 99; Alternative Trinity, 148–52. cf. Lieb, “Reading God,” 224, 229. CPW, VI:136. On analogy in Milton, see Ryken, Apocalyptic Vision, 118–28. In order to argue that the Son is of a separate essence, Milton takes the term “Father” as applied to God literally. But God is a very special or unique “father”; see CPW, VI:209, 263–64; Aquinas, ST Ia.q.13.a.7.ad.1 and id., ad.4; cf. Graves, “‘Here Let the Theologians Take Notice,’” 332–34. See CPW, VI:547. On Aristotle and analogy, see Gen. an. I.1.715b20; Eth. Nic.V.11.1138b5, VII.4.1148b10. Aquinas discussed analogy in relation to Aristotle’s conception of prime matter in his Commentary on the Metaphysics bk.7.lsn.2.sct.1296, 2:501; see also Burrell, Analogy, 79–84. See Berkeley, “Fourth Dialogue,” in Works, 3:170–71; Nuttall, Alternative Trinity, 150; cf. Aristotle, An. Post. II.13.62b5–25.

notes to pages 218– 221 331

67. See ST I.q.13.a.2.ad.1, ad.2, and especially ad.3: “And thus the names imposed by us signify him [God] in that matter only” (Et sic nomina a nobis imposita eam significant). Aquinas also pointed out that negation is founded on an affirmation; see his criticism of Maimonides at De potentia q.7.a.5. Milton hints at the underlying similarity between all analogical terms when discussing the analogical proportion in the sacraments at CPW, VI:547. The doctrine of analogy, usually ascribed to Aquinas, was created by Cardinal Cajetan’s refinements on Thomist thought; see Cajetan’s Analogy of Names and the Concept of Being, ch.10.§.105, 68. The modus significandi in Aquinas keeps us from even saying that these perfections represent God perfectly; see SCG I.c.30; ST Ia.q.13.a5.ad.2; see also Wippel, Metaphysical Thought, 501–43; Benin, Footprints, 160–61. 68. Augustine, De Doctrina Christiana 1.5.5, Pat. Lat. 34:21. 69. Patrides, “Language of Theology,” 223. 70. cf. CPW, VI:136. On uncomplicated accommodation in Milton, see Patrides, “Language of Theology,” 219–21, 223; id., “Paradise Lost and the Theory of Accommodation,” 58–63; id., Milton and the Christian Tradition, 9n2; Frye, God, Man, and Satan, 7–14; Stein, “Milton’s War in Heaven,” 201–20; Davis, “Languages of Accommodation,” 105, 111, 117, 124; Boyette, “Accommodation,” Milton Encyclopedia, 1:13-14; Killeen, “‘Philosophical Account of the Origin of All Things,’” 106–22. 71. CPW, VI:149. 72. See Mortley, From Word to Silence, 2:57. 73. Milton lists “immense or infinite or immortal” as “negative attributes” given to God, see CPW, VI:149. cf. Lieb, “Reading God,” 233; Ryken, Apocalyptic Vision, 95–102. 74. An idea found in Gregory of Nyssa, Contra Eunomium lib.12, Pat. Graec, 45:931 [C]-38 [A] (Latin); 932-33 (Greek). 75. CPW, VI:312. Milton notably adds that “after the end of the world he [God] will reveal himself more fully, I Cor. xiii. 12.” 76. On negatives and privations as applied to God, see Mortley, From Word to Silence, 2:142–45; Benin, Footprints of God, 54–56. 77. On Augustine, see De Ordine 2.16.44, Pat. Lat. 32:1015; see also Augustine, Sermon 117.iii.5, Pat. Lat. 38:663–64. 78. See no. 25 of Porphyry’s Sentences tome I, 324, and tome II, 804, respectively. Milton probably consulted the Rome 1630 edition of the Sententiae by Lucas Holstensius in his Latin edition of the Porphyrii philosophi Liber de vita Pythagorae. Eijusdem Sententiae ad intelligibilia ducentes. De antro nympharum quod in Odyssea describitur, which was then appended to Epictetus’s (Greek and Latin) Manual and published at Cambridge in 1655. Holstensius was the librarian of the Vatican whom Milton met during his Italian journey (1638), and to whom Milton addressed a Latin letter of thanks five months later (30 March 1639); see Masson, Life of Milton, 1:802–03.

332 notes to pages 2 2 1– 2 2 5

79. See Tasso, Il Goffredo, over Gierusalemme liberata (1655), 215; see also, Gregory, “Tasso’s God,” 576–77. 80. Dante, Paradiso, in The Divine Comedy, 3:62 (Italian); 3:63 (English). Milton knew his Dante well; see, for instance, his use of Dante in Of Reformation; CPW, I:558–59. 81. Auerbach, Drama of European Literature, 71. 82. See Aquinas, Sunday Sermons S1 Basil sct.1.pt.1, 3:8; Glanvill, Lux orientalis, 23. The seventeenth-century thinker Ralph Cudworth (M.A. 1639) echoes Aquinas in the True Intellectual System, 2:518. 83. See Ward, Philosophicall Essay, 52; Calvin, Institutes ch.11.§.4, 2:103; CPW, VI:133. On the numerous proof texts on God’s imageless glory, see especially his discussion of the Revelation on Sinai; see Milton, CPW VI:691. 84. To make God physical would make him completely knowable, which is something Milton never admits. On Cudworth’s synecdochical approach to God, see True Intellectual System, 2:559; Sermon (31 March 1647), 25–28. The synecdochical understanding of accommodation in Milton is espoused by Graves, “Accommodation,” 251–72; on Milton’s “literal” accommodation, see Ryken, Apocalyptic Vision, 140–41. 85. See Tertullian’s maxim “Digna enim Deo probabunt Deum,” in Adversus Marcionem 1.18, 2:col.266 [A–B]. The language of God the Father as the “true God” is Milton’s; see CPW, VI:248. 86. Noted by Allen, “Milton and the Descent to Light,” 626; see also Laird, “Mysticism of Darkness,” 595 (citing In Canticum XI). 87. Aquinas, for instance, concludes that spiritual things are not light in the “proper meaning” but are to be understand to be so metaphorically; see Aquinas, ST Ia.q.67.a.1; II Sent. d.13.q.1 a.2. 88. Milton may have used the 1638 edition of Gregory of Nyssa’s Opera since citations in his Commonplace Book appear to fit this edition’s pagination. See Aquinas in De Malo q.16.a.8.ad 3 (on knowing God through negation). 89. See Mortley, From Word to Silence, 2:147–59; Benin, Footprints, 53–54; Norris, “Theology as Grammar,” 237–48; Otis, “Gregory of Nyssa,” 339–42. 90. The Arian Eunomius argued that the product (the Son) is like the activity (of generation) but unlike the original essence (which is God). On Eunomius, see Barnes, “Eunomius’ Causal Language,” 218. On diavsthma in Gregory, see Otis, “Gregory of Nyssa,” 327–57. 91. Columbia Works, 14:252 (Latin); CPW, VI:239 (English). It may be objected that in book VII God “audibly spake” (VII.518), but he speaks “to his Son” and thus no accommodation is needed. cf. CPW, VI:297, where Milton argues that the Son is distinct from God since “he [the Son] cannot be one in essence with an invisible and inaudible God.” Milton’s phrase “audible Word” appears to be derived from Lactantius; see Hartwell, Lactantius and Milton, 107–11. 92. CPW, VI:237. The idea is also present in Paradise Lost: “on his right / The radiant image of his Glory sat, / His onely Son” (III.62–64).

notes to pages 2 2 5– 233 333

93. The term ejpivnoia usually means “thought” but widens to encompass the larger mental ability at work. On the importance of the term in theological discourse, see Mortley, From Word to Silence, 2:151–53. 94. cf. Silver, Imperfect Sense, 53 (on divine justice as being beyond prediction), and Bryson, “Unknown God,” 22–38 (on Milton’s refusal to present an image of God in Samson Agonistes). 95. On silence, see Maimonides, Guide, 139–40; Augustine, De Doctrina Christiana 1. 6.6, Pat. Lat. 41:19; Mortley, From Word to Silence, 2:217–20; Smith, Speech and Theology, 114–29. Milton was probably familiar with Maimonides through the younger Johannes Buxtorf ’s Latin translation (Basel, 1629). On Maimonides’ popularity among seventeenth-century Protestants, see Funkenstein, Theology and the Scientific Imagination, 213–19; Katchen, Christian Hebraists, passim; Popkin, “Newton and Maimonides,” 189–202. 96. On “blasphemy” and its etymology, see CPW, VI:699–700. 97. For a contemporary rejection of a material God, see Bullinger’s Sermonum, 106. For an alternative reading of Milton, see Graves, “Materiality of Milton’s God,” 497–521. 98. For Maimonides, see Guide, 137–43; Seeskin, Distant God, 50, 102. 99. Lewis, “Bluspels and Flalansferes,” 36–50. 100. Barfield’s example is actually of Bacon’s “laws of nature” (which redefined lex); see Barfield, “Poetic Diction,” 51–71. 101. Skulsky, “Metaphorese,” 582–97. 102. Emmet, “Analogy as a Rule of Meaning,” 24–46. 103. See Gamwell, “Speaking of God,” 204. 104. Owen, “Logic and Metaphysics,” 189; see also Burrell, Analogy, 85. Derrida, “How to Avoid Speaking”; cf. Marion’s response to Derrida, “In the Name,” 20–53. 105. Univocal predication means that the proper sense is in each term; analogical predication refers to how the proper sense is in one term and denominated to the others accordingly; see McInerny, Aquinas and Analogy, 15–17, 124. 106. Isaac Newton, Correspondence, 2:331. 107. See Plato’s Grg. 523–27; Symp. 210–12; Phdr. 246; Resp. 506E; Philb. 65A. 108. Cf. Burrell, Analogy, 258. 109. Pseudo-Dionysius, Celestial Hierarchy ch.1.§.121, 146.

1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

chapter 7. prime matter, subject of chaos Leonard, “Void Profound,” 207. See, for example, Parm. 161A. Richardson, Paradise Lost, 58 (note to II.439). Cf. Poole, Idea of the Fall, 154. Plato, Tim. 52B2; Aristotle, Metaph. Z.3.1029a17–18 and Ph. I.7.191a8; on Simplicius, see in Aristotelis Physicorum libros quattuor I.19.1.a5, 221–25, esp. 222–23 (also quoted in Charleton, “Appendix,” 144).

334 notes to pages 233– 238

6. On God, see CPW, VI:145–46, 209. On potentiality in eternity, see Aristotle, Metaph. q.3.1050b6–1051a2; Ross, Aristotle, 183. An Aristotelian refuses to admit potentiality to the divine nature because this would introduce the possibility of nonbeing to the deity. On evils in particulars, see EN. X.7.1177b33; cf. CPW, VI:146, 308. 7. Poole first distinguished between the two objects of what will be “justified” (namely, God or the “ways of God”) in Idea of the Fall, 147. 8. See Scholar, The Je–Ne–Sais–Quoi in Early Modern Europe, esp. 73–124. 9. CPW, IV:307. 10. On “eternal” as having no beginning and no end, see CPW, VI:143. 11. Du Bartas, Deuine Weekes, 3, on “embryon”; Taylor, Du Bartas, 18n7. 12. Rumrich, Matter of Glory, 58. 13. Ariosto, Orl. Fur. 34.70–85, 395–97. 14. Compare the scatological vision in Orl. Fur. 34.75, 396: “A wondrous hill of bladders he espyde.” On the “violent cross wind” as “scatological conceit,” see King, “Paradise of Fools,” 206–07. 15. Pope, Poems, 553. 16. cf. Wooten, “Milton’s Epic Burlesque,” 256–64; Lieb, “Milton among the Monks,” 108–13. 17. King, “Paradise of Fools,” 201; for examples in Spenser, see “Maye,” “Julye,” and “September” in SC. 18. Nuttall, “Fishes in the Trees,” 68–81; for an example of apocalyptic adynata, see Ovid, Met. i.297ff. 19. In his Apology, Milton likens satire not to epic but to tragedy, to “strike high and adventure dangerously”; see CPW, I:916. Paradise Lost was initially conceived as a tragedy. 20. See More, Song of the Soul I.iv.2, 31. 21. Du Bartas, Deuine Weekes, 8. Du Bartas was immensely popular in the Renaissance: the Sylvester English translation went through three editions in 1605; the Lownes 1605–07 edition was followed by others in 1608 and 1613 and, finally, was enlarged in 1621. 22. Carew, “A Song,” Poems, 180. 23. See also Lucretius’s discussion of the shapes of these “first beginnings” at DRN ii.478–514, ii.522–31. 24. Leonard, “Void Profound,” 205. 25. See Fallon, Milton among the Philosophers, 4, and Leonard, “Void Profound,” 204–05. 26. A sort of seventeenth-century version of existentialism is evident here. But this does seem, in some degree, to be a recurrent effect of linguistic structures. Certain Greeks said, “Fate does not rule the world; all things happen by chance.” This became “So Chance rules” and within a few years, they were building temples to Chance (Tychê). 27. Pearce, Review of the Text . . . of Milton’s Paradise Lost, 73 (note to II.900).

notes to pages 238– 243 335

28. Lucretius, DRN i.599, 605 and ii.485 is highly problematic. On evolving minima theories, see Melsen, From Atomos to Atom, 60; on Aristotelian minima naturalia, see Dijksterhuis, World Picture, 24, 205–06, 277–79. 29. See Smith, “Galileo’s Theory of Indivisibles,” 571–88. 30. Meinel refers us to the use of Lucretius in Bruno, Basso, Sennert, Gassendi, and Magnenus; see his “Seventeenth-Century Atomism,” 184n24. 31. See Sennert, De Chymicorum, 151 (for quotation); Physica Hypomnemata, 17–18. On atoms and matter, see Meinel, “Early Seventeenth-Century Atomism,” 176–211; Chalmers, “Matter in Seventeenth-Century England,” 89–90. 32. Poole, “Two Early Readers,” 76. 33. Beale’s letter to Hartlib as quoted in Hartlib-John Worthington (22 Feb. 1659/60); see Diary and Correspondence of Dr. John Worthington, 1:181–88 (quotation on 185–87). While Beale knew Aristotelian philosophy extremely well, he was no straightforward Aristotelian; on his knowledge of Aristotle, see, for example, Hartlib Papers P 62/22/1B B (Beale to Hartlib, 23 Feb. 1657). 34. Grotius, Rivetiani Apologetici Discvssio, in Opervm Theologicorvm tom. 3 [A54–61], 724. 35. Beale’s primary concern is that God not be excised from the natural world and that belief not be reduced to empirical and mathematical demonstrations. That this type of thinking is widespread is evident when William Chillingworth (1602–44) approvingly quotes Grotius’s True Religion in his Religion of Protestants ch.iv.pt.1, 371–72. The huge, implicit reduction of God in materialist philosophy makes its way into Pope’s Dunciad iv.476, 790: “Or bind in matter, or diffuse in space.” On Milton and atomism, see also Schwartz, Remembering and Repeating, 355. 36. Lucretius, DRN, 50 note (a) refers us to Epicurus’s doctrine of “minimal parts.” See Epicurus, Ep. Ad. Hdt. 56–59, in Epicurus, 33–35. 37. On the plurality of words, see Munitz, “One Universe of Many?,” esp. 234– 36; cf. Koyré, Closed World, 9, 58. 38. See also Leonard, “Void Profound,” 203 (Leonard does not refer to this passage of Lucretius in his discussion, though he refers to the storm at DRN v.367–68). 39. The tag is: “Sic parvis conponere magna solebam”; see Ecl. i.23, in Virgil, Eclogues, 1:26. 40. Hesiod, Theog. 700–705, 24. On Chaos being displaced “to the outer fringe of the world, in mythic space beyond the reach of normal human experience,” see Mondi, “Hesiod’s Theogony,” 15. 41. Horace, Ode III.iii, in Poems, 178–79. 42. Cowper, Milton, 223. 43. See Leonard, “Void Profound,” 203; Quint, “Fear of Falling,” 858–60. 44. The story is also in Greek—Archytas apud Simplicius—in On Aristotle Physics 3 (467, 26–32), 87 (except that now the lance is a staff ) and is translated by Grant in Much Ado abut Nothing, 106; 106n10. Simplicius attributed

336 notes to pages 2 4 3– 250

45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53.

54.

55. 56. 57.

58. 59. 60. 61. 62.

63. 64. 65.

66.

this idea to the Stoics and argued that they believed in an infinite void. The idea was transmitted to the West in the medieval period through William of Moerbeke’s Latin translation of Simplicius’s Commentary on Aristotle’s De Caelo; see Grant, “Infinite Void Space,” 41. Aristotle did not think the void actually possible; see Cael. I.9.279a12-19 and Ph. IV.7.214a118–19. Helpful is Grant, Much Ado abut Nothing, 105. Descartes, Philosophical Works pt.II.§.17, 1:262–63. A point akin to Ricks’s notion of Milton’s “successful metaphor” in Milton’s Grand Style, esp. 58–66. See Quint, “Fear of Falling,” esp. 847–59. Marvell, “An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell’s Return from Ireland,” 41–42, in Poems, 275. Charleton, Physiologia, 188. Leonard, “Void Profound,” 206–07, 213. Cowper, Milton, 213. The Latin Junius–Tremellius Bible, which Milton most likely consulted, uses palpari too, as does the Vulgate. Michael in book XII refers to this as the “Darkness [that] must overshadow all his bounds, / Palpable darkness” (XII.187–88). In Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, 3:23; see also Vincent de Beauvais, Spec. Nat. lib. xxv. c.58, 1:1812 (responding to Boethius); Aristotle, De an. II.8.419b33– 35. Simplicius, On Aristotle on the Heavens 2.1–9 (469, 18–20), 126; Chadwick, Boethius, 82. In Poems, 3:185–86 and 191. “Song for St. Cecilia’s Day” was composed in 1687. On Chaos and God, see Leonard, “Void Profound,” 213; cf. Rumrich, Milton Unbound, 141; “Milton’s God,” 1035–46 (where Rumrich claims we see a “materialist, monist deity”; 1044). Du Bartas, Deuine Weekes, 10. Edwards, Discourse, 92. Cudworth, True Intellectual System, 248. See also Leonard, “Void Profound,” 206. See Hesiod, Theog. 740–43, 25 and, 811–14, 27; Apollonius, Arg. 4.1696–98. Mondi notes that only with Prudentius does Chaos’s darkness become synonymous with Hell, 29n43. The alignment is authorized by 1 Enoch 21. On the Greek pun, see de Vogel, “Soma–Sema Formula,” 79–95; esp. Plato, Gorg. 493A; Crat. 400C. Pace Kendrick, Milton and Ideology, 179. On puns, see Ricks, Milton’s Grand Style, 66–75, and Leonard, “Self–Contradicting Puns,” 393–410. Cowper, Latin and Italian Poems, 229. For the list and an analysis of incorporeals, see Brunschwig, “Stoic Metaphysics,” 206–32; on qualities in relation to body, see Reesor, “Stoic Qualities,” 50–52, 57; on Stoic physics, see White, “Stoic Natural Philosophy,” 124–52. Holland, Seneca, 167.

notes to pages 250–252 337

67. On aether, see Newton–Boyle (28 Feb. 1678/9), in Correspondence, 2:289; for Newton’s letter to Boyle on aether (28 Feb. 1679), see Boyle’s Correspondence, 5:141–49 (142). 68. Dobbs’s description, Janus Face, 149; see also “De Gravitatione” (quoted in Dobbs, Janus Face, 147). 69. See Dobbs, Janus Face, 149; Newton, Principia, 2:414; Home, “Newton’s Subtle Matter,” 197–99. 70. See Boyle, “Of the High Veneration Man’s Intellect Owes to God,” in Works, 10:174. For Boyle, the world is described in terms of matter and motion; see, for instance, “Origin of Form and Qualities,” in Works, 5:305–07. On Milton’s possible connection with Boyle, see Edwards, Milton and the Natural World, 213n28. 71. See Boyle, Spring of Air, 1:165. On air and agents, see Hobbes, Dialogus physicus, in Thomae Hobbes, 4:233–96; translated by Schaffer as Physical Dialogue in “Appendix,” Leviathan and the Air-Pump, 345–91. Hobbes’s dialogue was written in response to Boyle’s Spring of Air (1660), and Boyle then answered Hobbes with his An Examen of Mr. T. Hobbes (1662); see Boyle, Works, 3:109–88. On Newton, see Newton–Bentley (25 Feb. 1692/3), Papers and Letters on Natural Philosophy, 303: “Whether this Agent [of Gravity] be material or immaterial, I have left to the Consideration of my Readers.” See also Webster, “Boyle’s Law,” 441–502; Malcolm, Aspects of Hobbes, 187–91; Kubrin, “Newton and the Cyclical Cosmos,” 338. 72. See OED, s.v. “spongy” (1a). For Laplace’s billiard ball determinism, see his Philosophical Essay, 4. 73. There is a subtle collapse of the Aristotelian extracosmic void with the interstitial void. The third was the intramundane void; on the void, see esp. Ph. IV.6.213a12–IV.10.217b25; Cael. III.3.302a1–5 and III.6.305a17. On the impossibility of void outside heaven, see Cael. III.279a12–18. Aristotle quotes Hesiod on chaos and the void at Ph. IV.1.208b30. The jump from one type of void to another—to positing their fundamental similarity—is a move mirrored in Pascal’s inference of what the vide veritable must be like from his observations of the vide apparent. 74. Patrizi, Universis philosophia, 63a; Henry, “Void Space, Mathematical Realism,” 1:140. Patrizi translated Philoponus in Expositiones and Proclus’s Elementa theologica et physica. Given Patrizi’s historical and literary reputation, it is very probable that Milton was familiar with his works; see also Kristeller, Eight Philosophers, 110–26. 75. Galileo, Discorsi (dialogo primo), 26; translated by Crew and de Salvio in Two New Sciences, 25. On Galileo, see Segre, In the Wake of Galileo, 72, esp. 69–72; Le Grand, “Galileo’s Matter Theory,” 197–208; Webster, “Boyle’s Law,” 444. 76. On Basson, see Philosophia Naturalis, 340–45; Meinel, “Seventeenth-Century Atomism,” 182n19, 197n68. Biographical information for Basso is scant. On Antonie van Leeuwenhoek (1632–1723), see Leeuwenhoek, “Observations concerning Little Animals,” 117–18; Wilson, Invisible World, 89.

338 notes to pages 252 – 255

77. Power was a corpuscularianist and believed particles were suspended in aether. See Webster, “Boyle’s Law,” 460; id., Webster, Great Instauration, 163, 170–72; and Meinel, “Seventeenth-Century Atomism,” 190–92. 78. Quotations are from Power, “Microscopial Observations,” in Experimental Philosophy pt.1, C2v; id., “Preface,” Experimental Philosophy, a4r. On Power’s science, see Webster, “Boyle’s Law,” 460; id., Great Instauration, 163, 170– 72; Meinel, “Seventeenth-Century Atomism,” 190–92; Wilson, Invisible World, 63–65. 79. Glanvill, Vanity of Dogmatizing, 4–6. 80. On Milton, Galileo, and telescopes, see Butler, “Milton’s Meeting with Galileo,” 132–37. 81. See Needham’s discussion of Chrysippus in “Duhem’s Theory of Mixture,” 691–97; on Galileo, see Smith, “Galileo’s Theory of Indivisibles,” 572–73. 82. Such a syncretic system is more appropriately termed neo-Stoicism than Stoicism proper. For its divergence with Stoic doctrine, see Long, “Stoicism,” 379–82. 83. Lipsius, Physiologiae 1.5, 10v (for quotation); see also 1.5, 11r-12v. 84. Lipsius, Physiologiae 1.7, 14v. The idea that God is in fire is reiterated at 18v–19r and 50r. 85. See White, “Stoic Natural Philosophy,” 133. Atomistic philosophy could never fully account for ideas of elasticity. Even peripatetic natural philosophers borrowed the use of “unctuous moisture” from Stoic physics in order to make substances cohere; see Freudenthal, “Clandestine Stoic Concepts,” 161–72. 86. See Dobbs’s transcription of Dibner MS 1031B, fol. 3v in “Appendix A,” Janus Face, 265. 87. See Newton, draft Query 23, Cambridge UL (Portsmouth Collection) MS Add. 3970, fol. 619r (quoted in McGuire–Rattansi, “Newton,” 118, and discussed in Dobbs, Janus Face, 96–117, 253); and against Rumrich, “Milton’s God and the Matter of Chaos,” 1043 (where God is the “dark matter of chaos”). 88. Lipsius, Physiologiae 1.5, 11r (for quotation). As Saunders points out, the Neoplatonic innovation in Lipsian Stoicism is that the world is made by God but with seeds of Fate that possess the Platonic Forms; see Physiologiae 1:6, 12v and 1.8, 17v–18v; Saunders, Lipsius, 127; Bouwsma, “Two Faces of Humanism,” 59; on neo-Stoic thought, see Dobbs, Janus Face, 203–05. 89. Lipsius, Physiologiae 1.9, 19r. Milton alludes to the Aratus–Paul quotation at Adam’s birth, PL VIII: 280–01. See Aratus, Phaenomena 2–5, 73 and the notes in Carey-Fowler, Paradise Lost, 707. On Rumrich’s denial of Stoic influence in Milton, see Matter of Glory, 56. 90. Quoted in Barker, “Stoic Contributions,” 136–54, 148; on Kepler’s motrix, see id., 150. 91. Barker, “Stoic Contributions,” 154. 92. Law, Way to Divine Knowledge, in Works, 7:92; on Böhme in Newton, see the unpublished addition to the Principia, as quoted in Dobbs, Janus Face, 199.

notes to pages 255– 258 339

93.

94. 95.

96.

97.

98. 99. 100.

101.

102. 103. 104.

105. 106.

107.

The writings of the German Lutheran Jakob Böhme (Jacob Boehme; orBehmen; 1575–1624) revived mysticism on the Continent—especially in Holland and Germany—and were widely read in seventeenth-century England also. This may account for why more radical persons like Gerrard Winstanley took to it in its “alchemical” form. See Dobbs, Janus Face, 205. Lipsius argues that all ancients adhere to Plato in actuality; see Physiologiae 1.4, 10r–10v. See Dobbs, Janus Face, 209–12. Dobbs speaks of how Newton embarked on an “interminable search for the spiritual agent that acted on matter to give it life as organized forms arose from chaos”; see her “Emerald Tablet,” 185; cf. Hutchinson, “Supernaturalism,” 297–333; Henry, “Occult Qualities,” 361–63; and Dobbs, “Newton as Alchemist and Theologian,” 134. See Dobbs, “Newton’s Alchemy,” 251–52; McGuire and Heimann, “Rejection of Newton’s Concept of Matter,” 104–18; id., “Newtonian Forces and Lockean Powers,” 233–306. See Ashmole, Way to Bliss, 29; cf. Webster, Great Instauration, 282, 246– 323; Abraham, “Sounding Alchymie,” 261–76, 271n34; cf. Fallon, Milton among the Philosophers, 107–08. Newton, Burndy MS 16, fols. 5r–5v (cited from Dobbs, “Newton’s Alchemy,” 244). Newton, Burndy MS 16, fol. 4r (cited from Dobbs in “Newton’s Alchemy,” 247, 252–53). CPW, VI:308. On the distinction between creatio ex Deo and creatio de Deo, see Campbell, “Treatments of Creation,” 129–30. The fact that matter is in God does not make God material. On virtual containment, see CPW, VI:309; on the materiality of God, see Cummins, “Milton’s Gods,” 83–85; Reesing, “Materiality of God,” 166–67; Rumrich, “Milton’s Concept of Substance,” 218–33. See Newton, Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, 547, 671n55 and also McGuire’s “Existence, Actuality and Necessity,” esp. 469n23. Aristotle, Metaph. A.6.987b14–18; see also History of Greek Mathematics, 1:395. Plutarch, Convivial Questions viii.2.1, in Greek Mathematical Works, 1:387; see also Blancanus, Mathematica, 7. Blancanus also likens the geometer to the poet. See Plato, Resp. 510C–D, 527A–B; Finkelberg, “Plato’s Method in Timaeus,” 391–408. Cowley’s Davideis, 13; see also Cowley’s note 34 of the Davideis on music and creation, 36. Aristotle discusses the deep magic inherent in numbers; see Metaph. D.2.1013a24–29. Milton disputed the claim that numbers moved to the formal side in DDC; see CPW, IV:307. See also Augustine, City of God 12.18, 496; Pat. Lat. 41:367–68 (Latin). Blancanus, Mathematica, 9. His Sphaeri Mundi went through at least four editions in the space of thirty-three years (1620, 1630, 1634, 1653); see George McColley, “Josephus Blancanus,” 364–65.

340 notes to pages 258– 2 6 2

108. Blancanus, Mathematica, 7–10; Dear, Discipline and Experience, 40. 109. Cowley, Davideis, 13. 110. On God as being beyond containment, see Augustine, De Gen. contra Manich. 1.5.8, Pat. Lat. 34:177. 111. Puttenham, as quoted in Patrides, Milton and the Christian Tradition, 34n2. On Du Bartas, who is against the “idea” or premeditated pattern, see Deuine Weekes, 7; Taylor, Du Bartas, 19n3. 112. In DDC, Milton demonstrates that the through clauses he cites denote not the Son as principal cause but the Father, who “comprehends within himself all lesser causes”; see CPW, VI:301–02. 113. Sorabji outlines the three major interpretations of creation: (1) time began with an ordered cosmos (Philoponus, Aristotle); (2) disorderly matter yielded an ordered cosmos with ordered time (as in De Natura Deorum 1.21 and Augustine); (3) the beginning is merely a metaphor (as in Speusippus, Xenocrates, Plotinus, and the Neoplatonists). See Sorabji, Time, Creation and the Continuum, 268. 114. For Rogers’s answer—“Helmontian consideration” of Paracelsian tartar— see Matter of Revolution, 130–38. Du Bartas’s Deuine Weekes has no equivalent to Milton’s “dregs.” 115. CPW, VI:308. On Lipsius’s cosmological dualism, where the principle of evil is not in God but in matter, see Physiologiae 1.14, 32r–32v. 116. CPW, VI:309. Generic differences also contribute to why Milton, in Paradise Lost, is unable to sustain what he argued so strenuously for in his theological treatise, De Doctrina Christiana. 117. See De Gen. ad Litt. 1.2.6; 1.3.7; 1.4.9, Pat. Lat. 34:248–49; translated by Hill in On Genesis, 171. 118. See CPW, VI:212–33. Milton rejects the Trinity at VI:261–64; on the broader application of the term “Arian” to Milton, see Bauman, Milton’s Arianism, 6–10, 82–98, 203–18; Rumrich, “Milton’s Arianism,” 75–92, esp. 81. 119. CPW, VI:262; 244. For the idea of “glory” of the Father “with which Christ” appears, see CPW, VI:245; see also Rumrich, Matter of Glory, 53–69, 167. 120. CPW, VI:248–49. 121. Newton, Keynes MS 2, “Theological Notebook,” Kings College, Cambridge, fol. 12r; available on The Newton Project, http://www.newtonproject.ic.ac.uk. 122. Hakewill, An Apologie lib.2.c.3.sct.1, 86–87. 123. Translated by Cary, The Vision . . . of Dante Alighieri, 397. Compare Sinclair’s translation of the same passage in The Divine Comedy, 3:206 (Italian); 3:207 (English). 124. For the Son as image of the Father in various senses, see Bauman, Milton’s Arianism, 275; Revard, “Dramatic Function,” 50. 125. CPW, VI:244. Du Bartas’s idea of the image, in Taylor, Du Bartas, 21n1; see also Bauman, Milton’s Arianism, 275. 126. Pseudo-Dionysius, Divine Names iv.4, in Works, 74. 127. Cummins acknowledges the ambiguity but then irons it out: all light is physical light; see “Milton’s Gods,” 88.

notes to pages 2 6 3– 267 341

128. Lipsius, Physiologiae 1.6, 14r. 129. The Arian distinction between the Father and the Son is that the Father was “ingenerate” or “increate,” whereas the Son was generated. Milton does not think of the Son as generated ejx oujko]ntwn (out of nothing; ex nihilo), as Arius did. Yet, as Milton adds, “It does not follow, however, that the Son is of the same essence as the Father”; see CPW, VI:209. Milton likewise rejected the idea that the Holy Spirit is God since such a conclusion could “only be ascertained by . . . dubious logic-chopping”; see CPW, VI:289. 130. Dobbs, Janus Face, 106–10, is a useful corrective to Guerlac’s “Theological Voluntarism,” 226–27. 131. CPW, VI:302–03. 132. CPW, VI:217; CPW, VI:267; cf. PL VI.683. See also Lehnhof, “Deity and Creation,” 232–44. 133. Yahuda MS 15, Jewish National and University Library, Jerusalem (cited from Dobbs, “Newton’s Alchemy,” 253). 134. See Granada, “Aristotle, Copernicus, and Bruno,” 100–103. 135. See Copernicus, On the Revolutions, 22; see Granada, “Aristotle, Copernicus, Bruno,” 91–114. In his Harmonices mundi 2.c.3–8, Kepler becomes a virtual sun-worshipper. See also Milton, CPW, VI:258–59. 136. See Augustine, De Gen. ad Litt. 4.31.38, Pat. Lat. 34:311; translated by Hill, On Genesis, 263. This differs from Augustine’s view of the created night, which he argues is not a formless substance but a “space full of air which lacks the light of day” (translated by Hill, On Genesis, 185); for Latin, see De Gen. ad Litt. 1.27.35, Pat. Lat. 34:255: “quia lux non est ibi, totumque spatium illud locus est carens luce.” 137. Ibid. 138. Vida, Christiados, 40 (no line numbers). 139. cf. Cummins on the eternal nature of both night and light in “Milton’s Gods,” 89. Raphael points out that our idea of eternity is accommodated through temporal language (V.580–82). 140. See Poems, 347. 141. See Augustine, De Gen. contra Manich. 1.2.4, Pat. Lat. 34:175: “Qui ergo dicit, Quare fecit Deus cœlum et terram? respondendum est ei, Quia voluit.” I use “voluntarist” here to mean that God privileges his will over his intellect (in this case he does not have a reason for why he creates). See Harrison’s “Voluntarism,” 163–89; Teske, “Motive for Creation,” 245–53; Kretzmann, “Why Would God Create?,” 208, 210–12. 142. A locus classicus for the Arian argument was that the “eternal power” of Rom. 1.20 referred to the Son. 143. CPW, VI:312. cf. Rumrich, “Milton’s Concept of Substance,” 226; Wooten, “Milton’s Epic Burlesque,” 268–69. 144. CPW, VI:300; cf. Ps. 104.20. 145. CPW, VI:306. 146. Augustine, De Gen. contra Manich. 1.4.7, Pat. Lat. 34:177; translated by Hill, On Genesis I.4.7, 43–44. On Aristotle’s discussion of privation as darkness,

342 notes to pages 2 6 7– 271

147.

148.

149. 150. 151. 152.

153. 154. 155.

156. 157.

158.

159.

160. 161.

see Conimbricenses, in octo libros Physicorum Prima Pars 1.c.9.q.7 [mislabeled q.11] a1, cols. 225 [E]–226 [A] (quotation from col. 226 [A]). And thence not explicable in the terminology of the mechanistic motion. On the occult in the Renaissance, see Hutchinson, “Occult Qualities,” 86– 106; Home, “Newton’s Subtle Matter,” 193–202; and Millen, “Manifestation of Occult Qualities,” 185–216. This is Skulsky’s astute response to Rumrich’s question, “How can God both fill the space and not be there?” in Death of Man, 141n54. See also Milton, CPW, VI:275. CPW, VI:442. In Divine Comedy, 3:202. Porphyry, “Auxiliaries to the Perception of Intelligible Nature” §.1.31, in Select Works, 213–14. See Lucretius, In Carum Lucretium, 49v. Hine shows that Pius was the popular Lucretian commentator before the Lambinus edition (Paris, 1563/64); see “Inertia and Scientific Law,” 730, 733n27, 734n31. The Cambridge editions of Lucretius discussed by Hine may have been available to Milton, or he could have consulted the Nardi edition of 1647, which, as Meinel points out, attacks Sennert’s corpuscular explanation for substantial change; see Meinel, “Early Seventeenth-Century Atomism,” 199–200. Bruno, De Immenso I.5 (quoted in Granada, “Aristotle and Bruno,” 107). Granada, “Aristotle and Bruno,” 93. Against Galileo’s theory that infinity, as the measure of indivisibles, is contained (since this would render its container—here, God—finite). See Smith, “Galileo’s Theory of Indivisibles,” 57. See Alanus, Pat. Lat. (regula 7), 210:627 (my translation); Conimbricenses, in octo libros Physicorum Secunda Pars 8.c.10.q.2.a.2, col. 581 [E]. On the Coimbra commentators, see in octo libros Physicorum Secunda Pars 4.c.5.q.1.a.2, cols.36 [D]–37 [A], 37 [E]–38 [B]; Secunda Pars 8.c.10.q.2.a.4, cols. 585 [B]–586[B] (on imaginary space); Suárez, Metaphysicarvm Dispvtationvm Tomus Posterior d.30.§7.no.28, 55[col.b]B-F. On imaginary space, see Small, “Nietzsche and a Platonist Tradition,” 91; Grant, Much Ado abut Nothing, 138–40. Suárez, Metaphysicarvm Dispvtationvm Tomus Posterior d.30.§7.no.16, 54[col.a]B-C; Grant, Much Ado abut Nothing, 154; see also his discussion, 152–57. Hobbes made much use of Suárez’s doctrine, although he alters it substantially by denying the Aristotelian conception of the imagination; see Leijenhorst, Mechanisation of Aristotelianism, 119–28. These two are not made the same, though; see Suárez, Metaphysicarvm Dispvtationvm Tomus Posterior d.30.§7.no.17, 54[col. a]E and d.30§7.no.37, 57[col.a]H–[col. b]B. See also Leijenhorst, Mechanisation of Aristotelianism, 116. Mondi, “Hesiodic Cosmogony,” 25 Gregory of Nyssa, “Answer to Eunomius’ Second Book,” 262; for the Greek, see Contra Eunomium lib.12, Pat. Graec. 45:949[A].

notes to pages 271– 273 343

162. On the omission of weight, see Rumrich, Matter of Glory, 59. 163. CPW, I:255-56; Columbia Works, 12:188 (Latin). On the idea of soul-matter and its receptive capacity, see Simplicius, in Phys. 228, 10 and 230, 21–33 (cited from Sorabji, Philosophy of the Commentators 17f[5], 3:258). On the “power of matter” passage, see CPW, VI:322. 164. See CPW, I:254–55; Columbia Works, 12:188 (Latin). Hartmann was puzzled that Milton would have thought Aristotle said this, but the difficulty is resolved if we understand Milton as reading his Aristotle with the aid of Philoponus; see Hartmann, “Milton’s Prolusions,” 55. On Philoponus, see Sorabji, Matter, Space, and Motion, 36n41; id., “Prime Matter as Extension,” 150–51; see also Simplicius, On Aristotle’s Physics 4.1–5, 10–14 (537, 22–30), 31. 165. Against Curry, Milton’s Ontology, 77. 166. On the problems imaginary space posed, see Grant, Much Ado abut Nothing, 174–81. 167. That is, imaginary space exists, though it is not real; but neither is it simply imagined. See Fonseca, In meta. 5.c.13.q.7.§.1, 2:604 [mispaginated as 904]; on Philoponus and imaginary space, see Fonseca, In meta. 5.c.13.q.7.§.1–§.2, 2:605–06; Leijenhorst, Mechanisation of Aristotelianism, 115; Schmitt, “Experimental Evidence,” 362. 168. Bona Spes, Commentarii Tres in Universam Aristotelis PHILOSOPHIAM, d.5.dub.1.res.8, 177 [col. b]. 169. Smith discusses how Euclidean geometry posits a continuum (conceptually), while Aristotelian metaphysics thinks of a material continuum in terms of actualization. Galileo attempted to combine the two; see Smith, “Galileo’s Theory,” 580–87. While Galileo more or less excludes space (and opts for a plenum), Milton’s poetry embraces the void. In this, he is opposed to the standard view as expressed by Du Bartas: “all things are so fast together fixt / With so firm bonds, that there’s no void betwixt”; see Deuine Weekes, 11. 170. On Maignan, see Grant, Much Ado abut Nothing, 174–78; cf. Rumrich, “Milton’s Theanthropos,” 59. 171. This was a Newtonian innovation: absolute space was indivisible and also infinite. It differed from God because mathematically extended space is not “wise nor powerful nor alive”; see Newton, “De Gravitatione,” 132. 172. Referring to Descartes’ argument to More that God himself was not extended but was extended in power; see Descartes, Oeuvres, X:195. 173. Simplicius, in Phys. 630, 24–30, as quoted in Sorabji, Matter, Space and Motion, 210–11. 174. More, Enchiridion Metaphysicum pt.1.c.8§.15 (the accents in the Greek are his); see Opera, 1:169. 175. Guericke, Experimenta nova 2.c.6, 62 [cols.1–2]; translated by Ames in New (So-Called) Experiments, 97. 176. Stoic space has infinite magnitude; see Plutarch, Résumé des Opinions des Philosophes no. 18, in Plutarque tome XII, 2:18.

344 notes to pages 273– 277

177. See “Reply to Mr. Leibnitz’s Fourth Paper” (2 June 1716), in Leibniz–Clarke Correspondence, 47 (Newton speaking through Clarke). 178. CPW, VI:312. This is against Athanasius’s Trinitarian claim that the sun and its rays are identical; see Against the Arians, 183. cf. Rumrich, “Milton’s Concept of Substance,” 225. 179. See “Questiones Predicabiliu Porphirii” foliu xxvii, Copulata, E4v [col.a]. This edition is the only copy of the book I have located so far in the British Isles. It was donated by Jenkin Vaughan to his alma mater, All Souls College, in 1616 [Codrington shelf mark: i.infra.1.2]. For details on German editions, see the Gesamtkatlog der Wiegendrucke, which lists two 1488 editions as well as one from 1494 and another perhaps from 1500(?). 180. Milton strenuously denies that God is the Actus Purus and also that he had to create out of a necessity to be revealed; see CPW, VI:154. The final cause for creation is God’s glory; see CPW, VI:300. 181. Conimbricenses, In octo libros Physicorum Prima Pars 1.c.9.q.3.a.2, col. 207 [C]. On Milton’s monist materialism in relation to Creation, see Lehnhof, “Deity and Creation,” 243. 182. CPW, VI:145–46. 183. White, “Stoic Natural Philosophy,” 230n30. 184. Richardson, Paradise Lost, 307 (note to VII.234). 185. Quantity is directly beneath substance in the categories; see Aristotle, Cat. 4b20–6a35; Porphyry, Commentary on Aristotle’s Categories (10, 29), 95. See Philoponus, Contra Proclum (424, 4–11; 428, 7–10), as translated by Sorabji in Philosophy of the Commentators 17h(2) & (5), 2:265–66; and Philoponus, Corollary on Place and Void (578, 5–15), 40. 186. Philoponus, de aeternitate (448–51) (cited from Sorabji, Creation, Time, and the Continuum, 249). Philoponus is here defending the idea of creation ex nihilo to Proclus. 187. See Plotinus, Enneads 6.9.6–10, 619–25 (though God is taken not as immeasurable quantity but as “fathomless depths of power” [610]; Edwards, Age of Plotinus, 48–52, 67. 188. On Chaos as ontologically evil, see Poole, Idea of the Fall, 156–57; Schwartz, “Milton’s Hostile Chaos,” 360–66; Corns, Regaining “Paradise Lost,” 99; Curry, Milton’s Ontology, 65–73. On Chaos’s goodness, see Rogers, Matter of Revolution, 123, 129, 133; Rumrich, Milton Unbound, 140–46; id., “Milton’s God,” 1043. 189. Pace Cummins, “Milton’s God,” 88, who claims that Hobbes is “Milton’s fellow materialist.” When Aubrey records that Milton’s wife told him that Milton thought his own philosophy and that of Hobbes were “diametrically [expanded from symbol] opposed,” we might conjecture that this included, besides Hobbes’s politics, his materialist ontology; see Aubrey, Bodleian MS Aubrey 8, fol. 63v. 190. Newton, “De Gravitatione,” 104 (Latin); 138 (English). See also Grant, Much Ado abut Nothing, 243n350; Home, “Newton’s Subtle Matter,” 201–02; Dobbs, “Alchemical Death,” 58–59. By definition, vitalism is opposed to

notes to pages 277– 283 345

191.

192.

193.

194. 195.

196. 197.

198.

materialism; hence, the English mechanical philosophy recognized that active principles had first to be loaded into matter; on this, see Henry, “Occult Qualities,” 339–68. As discussed, Milton himself cites Is. 45.7 in DDC to prove that God did not create a “mere nothing” (darkness) because that would imply God created and also did not create—which, as Milton notes, is a contradiction; see CPW, VI:306. Blaise Pascal, Pensée 130 in Les Pensées, 152 (French); English translation in Pensées, 66: “eternal silence of these infinite spaces.” Pascal argues that beyond—in the darkness of these imagined spaces—is God; see Grant, Planets, Stars, and Orbs, 180. On Pascal’s links to Galileo, see Segre, Wake of Galileo, 162n37. On God in the darkness of imagined spaces, see ComptonCarleton, Philosophia universa, 335–37; Grant, Planets, Stars, and Orbs, 180. We think also of Amos 5.18. From an anti-Trinitarian standpoint, destruction or uncreation would not emphasize the creative presence of the Son qua Light but would focus instead on the ultimate power of God (as potentia absoluta) to undo what he has made. See also the light and darkness at Ps. 143.3. That being and goodness are coextensive in God is a Thomist idea. On the deep’s fundamental unknowability, see Corns, Regaining Paradise Lost, 99– 100; on its “ironic indeterminancy,” see Rumrich, “Milton’s God,” 1036. On paradox, see Maclean, “Introduction,” Heterodoxy in Early Modern Science and Religion, xv–xvi; Steczowicz, “Defence of Contraries,” passim. cf. I John 1.5, where God has no darkness. Presumably, for a Christian, this refers to an inner spiritual darkness—such as that in Matt. 6.2—which is in opposition to the light mentioned at John 12.35–36. On the apocalypse, see CPW, VI:627; PL III.334–35 and 341. There, the elusive term “All” reappears to help Milton hedge his bets. Does the “All” now refer to the generation of a new, spiritual substance to replace the old (through a resolution to prime matter and rebirth?), or is God said to spiritualize “all” by spiritualizing the very qualities that make this substance tangible?

conclusion 1. The double syntax was noted by Donald Davie, “Syntax and Music in Paradise Lost,” 73; see also Guillory, Poetic Authority, 126. 2. Aristotle, De an. II.7.418b31–419a1. 3. The use of the word “shadow” invites one to think of Plato; see Himy, Pensée, mythe et structure dans le paradis perdu, 53.

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INDEX

paradise lost: passages cited I.2–3, 48; 13, 281; 22–23, 136; 26, 140, 233; 60, 249; 104, 283; 138, 186; 138–42, 178; 139–40, 179; 177, 245; 194–96, 3–4; 196, 5; 200–209, 3–4, 5; 226–27, 4; 232–37, 329n41; 284–91, 4; 285, 4, 245; 286–87, 245; 286–91, 183; 288, 4; 291, 4; 361–62, 204; 365–66, 204; 746–48, 203 II.404–05, 242; 406–09, 245; 409, 249; 412–13, 172; 417–26, 242; 439, 232, 267; 439–41, 244; 441, 278; 477, 233; 557–61, 189; 653–59, 74; 659, 76; 666–67, 75; 670, 75; 672–73, 75; 744, 74; 756–61, 72; 758, 71; 760–63, 73; 767–68, 74; 787, 75; 812–20, 75; 829, 278; 891, 240; 891–96, 232–33; 892, 233; 893–94, 271; 894, 260; 894–96, 233; 896, 234; 898–900, 234; 900–901, 238; 901–02, 236; 903–04, 240; 907–10, 237; 910–11, 243; 912–14, 236; 913, 237; 915–16, 259; 917, 243; 921–27, 241; 924, 242; 931–32, 242; 932–35, 242; 941–42, 244; 947–50, 244; 951–53, 245; 954, 245; 954–62, 247; 961, 249; 962, 260, 275; 966–67, 246; 970, 248; 973–77, 247; 982–84, 247; 983–84, 271; 984–86, 248; 1001–02, 248; 1014–16, 245; 1019–21, 244; 1042, 256; 1045–46, 249 III.1–2, 262; 3, 226, 265; 5–6, 263; 6, 226, 267; 10–12, 265; 11, 5; 12, 255; 18, 212, 234, 265; 34–36, 139; 37–38, 280; 51–55, 57; 57–59, 221; 66–69, 48; 83–84, 249;

168–70, 263; 193, 80; 258–59, 151; 306–07, 48; 327–29, 145; 358, 226; 371, 170; 372–82, 220, 229; 377, 223; 377–81, 261; 378, 223; 380–81, 224; 384, 262; 418–22, 276; 423–26, 276; 424, 249; 442–98, 235; 455–58, 235; 474–75, 235; 489, 236; 490–93, 235; 496, 235; 501–18, 207; 511, 283; 528–34, 283; 538–39, 226; 543, 172; 600–602, 184; 636, 169; 682–84, 169; 689, 169; 706–07, 267; 708–11, 269; 710, 259; 712–13, 259 IV.124–29, 169; 178–83, 171; 179, 170; 181, 53; 183, 171; 205–86, 202; 228, 251; 542, 171; 547–54, 171; 552, 171; 554, 172; 555–56, 199; 561–63, 170; 570–75, 169; 573–75, 170; 576, 170; 579–88, 170; 583–85, 173; 584–85, 171; 590, 256; 664–67, 266; 677–78, 158; 682–84, 200; 684–88, 171; 750, 48; 767, 48; 778–80, 171; 792–95, 173; 794, 171; 794–95, 192; 800, 186; 801–07, 126–27; 810–22, 187; 835–40, 188; 878–82, 174 V.19–21, 166; 119, 127; 130–31, 127; 171–72, 264; 179–83, 266; 257–63, 330n46; 266–90, 214; 309–11, 214; 361–62, 214; 404–13, 160; 407–08, 159; 408, 53; 410–11, 176; 412–13, 182; 413, 49; 414–28, 182–83; 427–28, 198; 430–32, 183; 432, 198; 433–37, 179, 190; 437, 185; 438–43, 51; 439–43, 184; 455–59, 214; 457, xxiv, 214; 469–74, xiv–xv; 469–82, 52; 475–76, 49,

393

394 index

V (continued) 161; 478, 49, 54; 478–79, 53; 479–500, 127; 480, 120; 481–82, 49; 482, 47, 54; 482–90, 48–50, 52; 484, 47; 486–87, 133; 486–90, 159; 488–89, 73, 160; 496–97, 52; 497, 161; 497–99, 46, 160; 498–99, 52; 499, 178; 563–70, 204; 565–66, 205; 570–71, 206; 571–74, 197, 205; 574–75, 283; 577–78, 277; 579–82, 199; 610, 195; 636–38, 210; 659, 204; 711–15, 215; 748–54, 209; 760–62, 198; 863, 178; 875, 193; 897, 166; 902, 193; 902–03, 167 VI.1–2, 328n7; 2, 168; 4–12, 206–07; 7–8, 199; 15–21, 166; 17, 214; 71, 68; 72–73, 210; 91–98, 200; 190–93, 166; 229, 167; 232–33, 167, 194; 276–88, 213–14; 296–303, 205–06; 326–27, 210; 330–32, 210; 344–46, 177; 347, 178; 350, 178; 350–53, 177; 352–53, 190; 379–80, 204; 388–89, 166; 392, 166; 396–97, 166; 398–400, 167; 433–36, 186, 210; 443–44, 193; 473–74, 212; 478–81, 212; 482–83, 212; 509–19, 211; 512, 187; 516–17, 213; 519–20, 187; 521, 212; 535, 167; 545, 167; 547, 167; 656–61, 186; 660, 161; 665–66, 211; 666, 323n48; 667–68, 200; 669–70, 201; 671–72, 223; 681–82, 260; 750, 262; 780–83, 213; 867–68, 242; 893, 203, 207 VII.1–2, 225; 5, 225; 9, 262; 11, 262; 23, 22; 27–28, 230; 31, 22; 41, 215; 72, 198; 74–76, 68; 112–14, 207; 165–69, 265; 168–70, 268; 171–72, 265; 176–79, 166, 202; 211, 275; 212, 278; 218–20, 262; 220, 257; 225–31, 257; 229–30, 258; 232–42, 259; 233, 265; 233–34, 260; 238, 259; 238–39, 275; 244, 260; 245–48, 265; 271–73, 277; 361–62, 251; 366–69, 252–53; 536–37, 60; 554, 257; 556–57, 257; 597–98, 246; 602–07, 200; 639–40, 215 VIII.91, 189; 107–10, 200; 110–14, 199; 119–21, 215; 254–55, 67; 259, 66; 270–74, 66–67; 272–73, 70; 278–82, 67; 288–89, 67; 292–95, 67; 299–306, 67; 309–11, 67–68; 342–48, 67–68; 345–46, 68–69; 349–54, 65; 352–54, 70; 405–06, 279; 437–40, 70; 586–92, 188; 612–13, 189; 616–17, 176; 622–25, 175; 622–29, 53; 626–29, 176; 629, 177 IX.20–24, 78; 75, 187; 158–59, 187; 163–66, 191; 180, 187; 529–30, 125; 529–31, 191; 893, 75; 1176–77, 284 X.17–21, 169, 173, 192; 65, 223; 90–91, 199; 264, 75; 284, 73; 307–11, 172; 475–77, 243;

513, 154; 563–72, 183; 608, 58, 79; 633–39, 278; 771, 153; 775–79, 153; 784–88, 153; 792, 153; 793, 147; 797, 153; 798, 153; 806–08, 127–28; 810, 153; 813, 153; 815–16, 153 XI.50, 54; 52–53, 54; 57–62, 154; 65, 154; 129–31, 117 XII.74–78, 54; 140, 60; 419–23, 156; 434–35, 156; 469–73, 281; 555–56, 152, 279; 575–76, 267 GENERAL INDEX

Abdiel (angel), 166–68, 193, 205–06, 327n13, 328n7 Abraham, 245 abyss, 75, 152, 231–32, 241–50, 259, 264–65, 269–71, 273, 276–79. See also imaginary space; prime matter; void accommodation, 97, 196–209, 215–26, 228–30, 261, 273, 283, 332n91 Adam. See also Raphael (angel): apprehension of mortality, 147, 153, 154; dream of, 67–70; on evil, 127; naming and knowledge of things, 57, 60–70, 72, 77–79, 301n84, 301n91; on natural law, 127; sexual relations with Eve, 48 Addison, Joseph, 19, 291n68 adynaton, 235–36, 241, 246, 248 agent intellect. See intellect, possible vs. agent Alanus of Lille, Regulae Alani de Sacra Theologia, 269 Albert the Great, 92 alchemy, 48, 51, 53–54, 184–85, 188, 255, 262 Alexander of Aphrodisias, 25–27, 60, 125, 148, 296n138 Alexander the Great, 25–26 Alvarez, P., 163 Ammonius, 28 angelology, Thomist, 159, 174, 176, 181–82, 185, 190–92, 210 angels. See also accommodation; Grand Possible Intellect; hylomorphism; Satan; specific names: God accommodating to, 220; and intellection, 159–60, 162, 164–66, 167–70, 173–78, 183, 189, 191–96; knowledge of universals, 72–73, 162; nearness to God, 188–89; and prime matter, 182–85; rebel, 167, 186, 189, 193, 204, 210, 242; sense perception of, 175; sex, 175–76; similarity to the soul, 314n60; substance of, 158, 165, 168–69, 171, 174–82, 185–86, 190, 210–11, 283;

index 395

and time, 166, 199, 206; unity/uniformity of, 159, 166–67, 189, 192–95 Anton, Robert, 316n73; The Philosophers Satyrs, 134 Apollinarius, 130 Argonautica, 212 Ariosto, Ludovico, 235 Aristotelianism, xx, xxii–xxiii, 24, 38–39, 86–87, 168, 334n6. See also logic: at Cambridge University, 9–13, 34–36; humanistic, 1–2, 6–9, 10–13, 17, 29, 38, 40–41, 82, 119, 254; Neoplatonic, xx, 7–8, 25, 28, 50, 60, 82, 113, 122–24, 132, 162–63, 178; parodied by Milton, 18–20; and Ramist controversy, 30–35; scholastic, 1–2, 7–8, 11–14, 30, 36, 38, 81, 125, 176, 182, 254 Aristotelian philosophy, xx, 17–20, 24, 32–38, 180, 224, 257, 272, 286n5, 324n65, 337n73; actualization (actus), 121–22, 129; on analogy, 218; categories, xxiii, 17–19, 22, 24–25, 38, 40–41, 49, 52, 60, 163, 274, 276; on darkness and light, 281, 341n146; Doctrine of the Mean, 96–97; dualism in, 7–8, 119; on images, 127; on immanent (enmattered) forms, 59, 81–83, 85–86, 105, 109, 130; on intellect, xxii, 50, 115, 127, 132–33, 147, 159, 162–66, 168, 174, 189, 192–93, 196, 208, 325n65; on language, 57–59; on man as plant, 297n18; on poetry, 55; on the soul, 113–15, 121, 125, 128, 131–33, 135, 139, 157, 162, 179, 315n72; on time, 148–50; universals, 58–60, 70, 72, 84–86, 162–64, 275; Unmoved Mover, 24, 134; on words and names, 58–60, 63, 76, 208, 224, 228 Aristotle, in teacher-student trope, 25–28 Aristotle, works of: De anima, 26, 50, 114–15, 122, 128, 162–63, 175, 178, 196; De generatione animalium, 50, 131; De interpretatione, 58, 76; Metaphysica, 59, 88, 178, 218–19; Organon, 11, 34; Physica, 45, 59–60, 148, 269, 273 Arminius, 61 Ascham, Roger, 9, 293n103 Ashmole, Elias, 255 Aslacus, Konrad, 61, 64 assumptionalism, 118–19 Asulanus, Evangelista Lungo, 321n24 atomism, 145, 232, 234, 236–42, 248, 250–53, 269 Auerbach, Erich, 222 Augustine, 48, 126, 313n50; on chastity (continentia), 93, 95, 98–99, 110–11; Confes-

sions, 93, 302n111; on darkness and light, 260, 264–67; De divinatione daemonum, 190; De natura boni contra Manichaeos, 302n111; on the ineffable or divine, 74, 216, 219, 221, 224, 226, 254; on metaphorical language, 208; on sense reality, 177; on signification (dictio), 72; on sin/evil, 74; on the soul, 129–30, 145–46; on time, 148 autonomasia, 30, 293n109 Averroism, 151, 318n125, 321n15, 323n40 Ayton, Robert, “Upon Platonic Love,” 175 Bacon, Francis, 6, 31, 42, 50–51, 57, 79 Barfield, Owen, 79, 226–27 Barlow, Thomas, 14, 320n9 Basil, bishop of Caesarea, 224–25, 294n117 Basso, Sebastian, 252 Beale, John, 239 Beelzebub (fallen angel), 178 Bellarmine, Robert, 61 Bentley, Richard, 4–5, 128, 238 Berkeley, George, 75, 218–19, 227 Bernard of Clairvaux, 167, 188 Beza, Theodore, 216 Bible: Acts, 144, 254; Amos, 345n193; I Corinthians, 118, 142, 144, 200; II Corinthians, 156; Daniel, 277; Ecclesiastes, 145; I Enoch, 323n42; Ephesians, 95; 2 Esdras, 232n42; Exodus, 245; Ezekiel, 141, 146, 180, 315n65, 318n113; Galatians, 110; Genesis, 61–62, 78, 111, 140, 192, 207, 245, 260, 262, 282, 326n81; Isaiah, 266, 277, 282; Job, 145, 278; Joel, 277–78; John, 146; I John, 265, 345n197; Judges, 139, 140; Luke, 99, 144, 193; Matthew, 147, 345n197; Philippians, 260; Proverbs, 189; Psalms, 141, 279, 345n194; Revelation, 95, 326n96; Romans, 110; I Thessalonians, 145; I Timothy, 263, 317n101; Wisdom of Solomon, 104–05, 258; Zechariah, 130, 326n96 Blackburne, Francis, The Short Historical View, 154 Blancanus, Joseph, Aristotelis loca mathematica, 257–58, 339n104 Boethius, 76, 296n4 Böhme, Jakob, 339n92 Bohun, Ralph, 10–11, 35–36, 289n31 Bois, John, 9 Bona Spes, Franciscus, 272 Bonaventure, 177, 180–85, 189–90, 192, 194–95, 325n70, 325nn72–73

396 index

Borges, Jorge Luis, 229 Boyle, Robert, 250–51 Bruno, Giordano, 150, 269 Budé, Guillaume, 309n80 Bulloch, Henry, 9 Burgersdijck, Franco Petri, 55, 71, 165 Burns, Norman, 143 Burton, John, 289n31 Burwell, Henry, 10 Buxtorf, Johannes, 333n95 Caius, John, 9 Cajetan, Tommaso de Vio, 63, 69, 77 Calvin, John, 94, 111, 142, 223 Calvinism, 34, 165, 175, 239 Cambridge University, xxi, 1, 8, 9–10, 13, 18, 21, 27, 30–31, 33–35, 37–38 Campbell, Gordon, 13 Carew, Thomas, 237 Carey, John, 19 Casaubon, Isaac, 305n19 categories. See under Aristotelian philosophy Catullus, 83 Cavalcante, Guido, 303n117 Cerdogni family, 111 Chaderton, Laurence, 30 Chamier, David, 61, 216–17 Chaos, xxii–xxiii, 202, 212, 231–37, 240–45, 247–51, 253, 255–57, 259, 265, 268, 270–73, 275–79, 284 Chappell, William, 31 Charleton, Walter, 244 Chastity (Comus), 82, 90–95, 97–100, 102, 105–10, 112 Chaucer, Geoffrey, 235, 245; House of Fame, 245 Cheke, John, 9 Cherry, Francis, 46 Cheyne, George, Essay on Regimen, 53 Chillingworth, William, 335n35 Christ, 140, 142, 144, 148, 156, 191, 193, 261–63. See also Son of God Christopher, Georgia B., 93 Christ’s College, Cambridge, xxi, 1, 10, 13, 21, 30, 33–34, 37 Cicero, 9, 15, 36, 79 Coimbra Commentaries, 58, 76–77, 163, 266, 269, 275 Colégio das Artes, Coimbra, 58 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 43–44, 55, 210 Colet, John, 293n99 commonplace books, xiv, 9, 312n24. See also under Milton, John

concept formation, 75, 78 Conimbricenses. See Coimbra Commentaries Copernicus, Nicolaus, De Revolutionibus, 264 Copulata veteris artis Aristotelis, 274 Cornelius Nepos, 83 corpuscularianism, 250–52, 261, 342n152. See also atomism corpus physicum organicum, xxi, 121–22, 121–25, 125, 129 Cowley, Abraham, 23, 41–42, 55–57, 199, 257–58; “The Tree of Knowledge,” 41–42; “To the Royal Society,” 42, 53, 56, 57 Cowper, William, 75, 242, 245, 249 Cranz, F. E., 162 Crashaw, Richard, 184–85 Creation, xiv–xv, 39, 64, 130, 213, 236, 241, 246, 248, 251, 255, 257–59, 262–67, 275–77, 279, 281 Crespin, François von, 272 Cudworth, Ralph, 223, 248, 305n19, 332n82 Dalton, John, 304n3 Dante Alighieri, 144; Commedia, 303n117; Convivio, 303n117; Epistola X, 317n99; La Vita Nuova, 303n117; Paradiso, 222, 261, 268; Purgatorio, 323n40 darkness, 137–38, 154, 188, 206–07, 212, 224, 226, 230, 232, 245, 247–49, 253, 255, 259–60, 264–68, 271, 275–79, 281–82, 284 Davenant, William, 294n119 Day, John, 288n29 Death (PL), 58, 75–76, 78, 151, 153–54, 156, 172, 278 death, compared to sleep, 114, 142–48, 150, 153–57 declamationes, 12 De Haas, Frans A. J., 60 Della Casa, Giovanni, Sonetto xxvi, 107–08, 118 Demartos, 172 Demosthenes, 9, 224 Descartes, René, 175, 243, 247, 271, 273, 325n73 Des Chene, Dennis, 176 dialectic (ratio), 13, 15 Di Costanzo, Angelo, Historia del Regno di Napoli, 327n113 Dido and Aeneas, 212 Diogenes Laertes, 305n27, 318n118 Dionysius the Areopagite, 230. See also Pseudo-Dionysius

index 397

Dobbs, B. J. T., 250, 255 Dobranski, Stephen, 286n2 Donne, John, 176–77; “Air and Angels,” 178; “Woman’s Constancy,” 147 Donnelly, Phillip J., xvii Downes, Andrew, 9 Downham, George, 33 Downham, John, The Summe of Sacred Divinitie, 63 dreams, 45, 67–70, 78–79, 126–27, 207–08 Dryden, John, “A Song for Saint Cecilia’s Day,” 246 Du Bartas, Guillaume de Salluste, 236, 258; La Sepmaine, 248 Duns Scotus, John, 31, 150 Duport, John, 27, 35 Dymmock, Cressy, 10 Echo (Comus), 106–09, 307n54 Edwards, John, 248 Egerton, Alice, 96, 109 Elder Brother (Comus), 91, 97–101, 106 Eliot, T. S., 2, 40 Ellwood, Thomas, 294n119 Emmanuel College, Cambridge, 30 Emmet, Dorothy, 228 Empson, William, 201 enmattered forms. See immanent forms Epicurus, 240 Episcopius, Simon, 61, 64, 300n68 Erasmus, Desiderius, 9, 24, 30, 293n99 Erastus. See Lieber, Thomas Estienne, Robert, Thesaurus Graecæ Linguæ, 309n80 eternity, 141, 151–52, 233, 247, 341n139 Eton College, 239 Eunomius, 224, 332n90 Euripides, 318n113; Supplices, 145–46 Eusebius of Caesarea, 142, 294n117 Eustachius a Sancto Paulo, 165, 325n73 Evans, Martin, 111 Eve, 48, 126–27, 179, 186, 189–93, 192, 200–202, 213, 299n44 Evelyn, John, Jr., 10, 35 Evelyn, John, Sr., 10 Fall, 48, 53–54, 60, 64, 141, 154, 188, 192–93, 199, 203–04, 252, 299n44 Fallon, Stephen, xvii, xix, xxiii, 49, 54, 158, 160, 185–86, 191, 210–11, 287n11, 304n1; Milton among the Philosophers, xviii Feingold, Mordechai, 9–10

Ficino, Marsilio, 276 figura, 222–23 Fish, Stanley, xix Fletcher, Angus, 108, 307n54 Fletcher, H. R., 12 Fletcher, Phineas, The Locusts, 302n112 foam, 3–5, 38–39, 187 Fonseca, Juan de, 73, 272, 324n56 Form, Platonic, 19, 81–85, 89–91, 95, 98–102, 105–07, 109–10, 112 Frye, Roland, 219 Gabriel (angel), 168–74, 193, 199 Galilei, Galileo, 4, 251–53, 327n2 Gell, Robert, 304n5 Genesis. See under Bible geometry, 257–58 Gerson, Lloyd, 86 Gibbens, Nicholas, 57, 63–64 Gill, Alexander, 28, 30, 32, 36, 83, 142–43; Logonomia Anglica, 20–21, 291n72 Giraldus Cambrensis, History of Ireland, 311n9 Glanvill, Joseph, 36, 134, 137, 223, 252 God. See also accommodation; Creation; Son of God: as Actus Purus, 233, 275, 344n180; Chaos and Night, 233–34, 247, 255–56, 265–66; depictions and imaging of, 216–26, 246, 254, 260–61, 263, 273; immateriality of, 253–54, 265–66, 272; infinity of, 268–72; and the sun, 183, 229, 264 Goes, Emmanuel de, 163 Gomarus, Franz, 61 Goodman, Godfrey, 64, 261 Grace (Comus), 82, 109–12 grammar, 13, 14–16, 21, 125 Grandorge, John, 312n24 Grand Possible Intellect, 165, 174, 193, 196 Gregory Nazianzen, 224–25, 294n117 Gregory of Nyssa, 130, 224–25, 271, 294n117, 297n24, 332n88; On the Making of Man, 47 Grendler, Paul F., 287n17 Grossman, Marshall, xvii; The Story of All Things, xix Grotius, Hugo, 105, 166, 200, 239, 335n35 Guericke, Otto von, 273 Guillaume de Lorris, 51 Haan, Estelle, 210 haemony, 102–03 Hakewill, George, 261

398 index

Hale, John, 84, 89, 121, 239, 304n5 Hardison, O. B., 151 Hartlib, Samuel, 65, 239 Hartmann, Thomas, 122 Hatch, Edwin, 318n113 Helmont, Johann Baptist van, 329n40 Herman, Peter C., xix Hermes Trismegistus, 86, 263 Herodotus, History, 172–73 Herrick, Robert, 73; “Divination by a Daffadill,” 45 Hesiod, 337n73; Theogony, 241, 270 Hill, Christopher, xviii Hine, William L., 342n152 Hobbes, Thomas, xvii, 157, 185–86; Dialogus physicus, 251; Leviathan, 86 Hobson, Thomas, 149 Holland, Francis, 250 Holstensius, Lucas, 331n78 Homer, 4, 221. See also Iliad; Odyssey Hopkins, Gerard Manley, 138, 139 Horace, 47, 242 Hugo de St. Victor, 63 Hume, Patrick, 70–71, 73 hylomorphism, 8, 38, 81, 131, 159, 179–81, 185, 191, 210 Iliad, 105–06 imaginary space, 232, 267, 269–70, 272–73, 276–77. See also prime matter immanence, 59, 85–86, 101 immanent forms, xxi, 59, 81–83, 85–86, 95, 105, 109 Incarnation, 101, 191 intellect, possible vs. agent, xxii, 50, 159, 162–66, 168, 174, 189, 192–93, 196 intelligibles, 23, 166 Ithuriel, 169, 171, 173, 186–87 Jacob’s ladder, 43, 207, 283 James I, king of England, 291n72 Javellus, Chrysostomus, 120–22, 124, 127, 132, 161 Jean de Meun, 51 Jerome, 95, 130, 307n57 John Chrysostom, 94, 192, 294n117 Johnson, Samuel, 6, 16, 32, 179, 193–94, 287n3, 291n68 John the Grammarian. See Philoponus, John Jones, Richard, 294n119 Jonson, Ben, The Alchemist, 184 Julian the Apostate, 103

Kant, Immanuel, 19 Keckermann, Bartholomew, 34, 36, 150, 319n134 Kepler, Johannes, 254 Kerrigan, William, xvii King, Edward, 113, 115–16, 118 Kolbrener, William, xvii; Milton’s Warring Angels, xix Kristeller, Paul Oskar, 8 Lady (Comus), 90, 93–102, 105–09, 111 language, philosophy of, 14–17, 20–24, 57–66, 71, 76 La Rochefoucauld, François, duc de, 72 Last Judgment, 53, 151, 279 Law, William, 254–55 Lawrence, D. H., 210 Leibniz, G. W., 255, 273 Leigh, Edward, 165 Leonard, John, 57–58, 90, 97, 204, 232, 237, 244, 301n87 Leviathan, 3–6, 38 Lewalski, Barbara, xvii Lewis, C. S., 143–44, 156, 227 Lieb, Michael, 140 Lieber, Thomas, 299n41 light. See also darkness; sight, physical, and inner illumination: of/as God, 188, 255, 260–63, 273; heavenly, 188, 206–07, 212–14, 220, 226; properties and substance of, 252, 256, 260–62, 281; and the Son, 255, 260–65 Limbo of Vanity, 235–36 Lipsius, Justus, 253–55, 262–63, 339n93; Physiologiae Stoicorum, 253 litotes, 200 Locke, John, 74 logic, 13–17, 34–35, 41–42, 56 logonomia, 21 Lovelace, Richard, “To Lucasta, the Rose,” 143 Lucretius, 66, 161, 177, 237–38, 240–43, 251, 267, 276; De rerum natura, 26, 268; infantia linguae, 292n77 Lundius, Carolus, 64 Luther, Martin, 62, 152, 154, 300n74 Magdalene College, Cambridge University, 35 Maignan, Emmanuel, 272 Maimonides, 228, 331n67, 333n95 man, as plant, 45–46 Margaret, Lady, Countess of Richmond and Derby, 21

index 399

Marjara, Harinder Singh, xvii Mark, Saint, 104 Marvell, Andrew, 37, 80, 185, 244, 265 Masson, David, 17, 37, 304n5 Mead (Mede), Joseph, 34 Mede Notebooks, xi Meinel, Christoph, 342n152 Melanchthon, Phillip, 15, 322n26 metaphor, heuristic, 79, 226–27 metaphorical discourse, 45–47, 55–56, 75, 79–80, 143, 157, 205, 208–09, 227–28. See also under Milton, John Michael (angel), 168, 267 Milton, John: choice of language, 21–22; education, xxi, 1–3, 6, 8–9, 34, 38; intellectual imagination, xviii, 6, 119, 174; linguistic practice, ix, xvi, xxi, 38, 40, 56, 83, 114, 119, 134, 141, 147, 157, 224, 282, 284; on material forms, 44–45, 76, 130–31, 133, 168; as monist materialist, ix, xv–xvii, xx, 2, 40, 47, 52, 81, 83, 101, 114, 119, 141–42, 159–60, 180, 209, 232, 255, 279, 281–84; philosophic imagination, xiii, xix; poetic calling, 17; poetic process, 79; punning, 18, 20, 22, 26, 28–29, 53, 66, 73, 109, 237, 290n62; use of allegory, 71, 73–76, 222, 231–34, 237, 242, 248, 275, 278–79, 284; use of metaphor, 6, 23–24, 45–47, 55–56, 79–80, 114, 141–45, 154–57, 207–08, 227–29, 229, 284; use of myth, 6, 26, 202–04, 214; use of simile, 3–6, 38, 41, 198, 205–06, 211, 214, 240, 242 Milton, John, works of: Accedence Commenc’t Grammar, 1, 16; “Against Scholastic Philosophy,” 11–12; Areopagitica, 80, 89, 230; Art of Logic, xv, 1, 14–15, 32–33, 45, 130, 152, 156, 180–81, 294n119; Commonplace Book, 192, 299n42, 327n113, 332n88; Comus, xvii, xxi, 82, 90–92, 94–102, 108–11, 113, 115, 118, 138, 251; De Doctrina Christiana, xv, xxi, 44–45, 64, 76, 113–14, 129–31, 133, 141–42, 146–48, 154–57, 168–70, 173, 181, 197, 210, 216–17, 219–21, 223, 227, 233, 259, 266–67; “De Idea Platonica,” xxi, 22, 82–90, 304n5; The Doctrine of Discipline and Divorce, 61; Of Education, 1, 12–13, 125; Elegia prima ad Carolum Diodatum, 31; Elegia quarta, xx, 27–28; 23–26, 25; juvenilia, 1; Lycidas, 113, 115–19, 152; Minor Poems, 18–19; “On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity,” 311n10; “On the University Carrier,” 149; “On Time,” 149–52; Paradise Regained, 119, 154, 172;

Il Penseroso, 22, 206; Prolusions, xx, xxi, 12; I, 37; III, 11–12, 30–31, 36, 294n117; IV, xx, 28–30, 51, 113, 119, 122, 312n24; V, 117, 119–21, 128, 133, 313n41; VI, 17–25, 23, 82, 283, 291n68, 328n24; VII, xx, 13–14, 30, 294n117; The Reason for Church Government, 106–07, 182; Samson Agonistes, xxi, 62, 114, 134–41; Sonnet III, 103–04; Sonnet XVI, 136, 138; The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates, 61–62; Tetrachordon, 61, 69, 125; “Upon the Circumcision,” 101; “At a Vacation Exercise,” 17–25, 82, 283, 328n24 Monte, Giambattista da, 300n65 More, Henry, 247, 253, 273; Song of the Soul, 236 More, Thomas, Utopia, 85 mortalism, xxii, 114, 119, 141–49, 152–54, 161 Morton, Thomas, Treatise of the Three-Fold State of Man, 189 Moses, 119, 204, 245, 263 Mulciber (fallen angel), 203 Murrin, Michael, 210 music of the spheres, 246 naming and signification, xx–xxi; Adam’s naming of things, 57, 60–70, 72, 77–78; Aristotle on, 59–60, 63, 76, 224; catachresis, 79; causal phenomena, 74; Cratylian vs. Hermogenean, 60–66, 71, 76; mediating role of concepts, 56–58, 66–72, 76, 79; prelinguistic metaphor, 79 natural philosophy, 10–11, 55–56, 165, 180, 194, 239, 286n5 Neoplatonism, 8, 41, 60, 82, 86, 91, 113, 122, 165, 176, 188, 221, 247–48, 268. See also under Aristotelianism neo-Scholasticism, 73, 122, 150, 182, 196 neo-Stoicism, 250, 254–55, 262, 267, 338n82 Newton, Isaac, 250–51, 253–57, 260–61, 263–64, 273, 277, 319n150; Principia, 250, 256 Newton, Thomas, 128, 154–55, 174, 177, 183, 202–03 Nifo, Agostino, De immortalitate anime libellus, 320n12 Night (PL), xxiii, 75, 212, 231–34, 240, 242–45, 247–50, 255–56, 259–60, 265–68, 271, 273, 275–79, 281 nullibism, 243 Nuttall, A. D., 140, 217, 236

4 0 0 index

occupatio, 201 Ockham’s razor, 33 Odyssey, 23, 144, 244 Origen, 294n117, 297n24 Ovid, 236, 248 Owen, G. E. L., 228 Oxford University, 10, 14, 31 Palmer, Edward, 288n22 Paracelsus, 54, 61, 187, 212, 299n41 “Paradise of Fools,” 235 Pareus, David, 61–62, 65, 70 Pascal, Blaise, 337n73 Patrides, C. A., 219 Patrizi, Francesco, 150, 251 Paul, Saint, apostle, 93, 144, 254 Payer, Pierre J., 92 Pearce, Zachary, 176–77, 238 Pererius, Benedictus, 62–63, 65, 300nn76–77 Peter Lombard, 35; Four Books of Sentences, 180 Peter Martyr, 301n93 Petrarch, Francesco, 104 Philaras, Leonard, 138 Phillips, Edward, 10 Philo of Alexandria (Philo Judaeus), 254; De aeternitate mundi, 146 Philoponus, John, 25, 28–29, 50, 113–15, 122–24, 132, 178, 243, 271–72, 291n70, 324n65, 343n164; De aeternitate mundi contra Proclum, 276 Pico della Mirandola, Gianfrancesco, 202 Pius, Joannes Baptista, 268–69 Plato, 7–8, 19, 58–60, 62, 79, 86–89, 114, 257, 283; on human intelligence, 226, 233; Idea of Man, 85–86, 89; on matter and form, 82–85, 89–91, 95, 101; Myth of Ur, 90; as poet, 88; on the soul, 114, 120, 130, 147; theory of recollection, 86 Plato, works of: Alcibiades, 15; Charmides, 91; Cratylus, 63, 110; Crito, 98; Ion, 88; Parmenides, 84, 91; Phaedo, 90–91, 101, 108, 114, 306n41; Republic, 88–90; Second Letter, 99; Sophist, 282; Symposium, 91 Platonism, xvii, 17, 19, 81–83, 87, 89, 98, 110 plenism, 250–52 Pliny, 177 Plotinus, 41, 150, 276 Plutarch, 26, 257 pneuma, 130, 132–35 Poimandres, 86 Pomponazzi, Pietro, 161–62, 178, 311n17; On the Immortality of the Soul, 165

Poole, William, 79, 205 Pope, Alexander, 235, 237; Essay on Man, 137 Porcelletto, Guglielmo, 327n113 Porphyry, 41, 43, 56, 91–92, 221, 268, 326n95; Isagoge, 41 possible intellect. See intellect, possible vs. agent potentia absoluta, 334n6 potentia ad vitam, 121, 123–24, 128 Power, Henry, 252 prime matter: and alchemy, 51; and angels, 182–85; in Aristotle, xxiii–xxiv, 19, 52, 55, 128, 212, 218, 231, 233–34, 240, 345n193; in Bonaventure, 181; boundlessness of, 178, 271, 276; and Chaos, 243–45, 253, 256, 258–59, 275, 277–79, 284; and God, 234, 253, 255–56, 258, 273–77, 285; and light, 267; Lucretian, xxiii–xxiv, 231, 237–40, 276; in Milton’s prose works, 121, 234, 256, 271; Neoplatonists on, 271; Plato on, 233; as potentia qua potentiality, 55, 120–21, 128–30, 133, 234, 250, 273–75; as potentia qua power, 43–44, 55, 121, 125, 129–31, 266, 268, 271, 274–75; pure state of, 28–29, 274; Raphael on, xiv, 43–44, 46, 52, 54–56; and the Son, 262, 265; in Thomas Aquinas, 179 Prior, Matthew, 35, 295n133, 315n70 Protestant scholasticism, 34, 161, 165, 179–80 Protestant theology, 7, 16, 32, 284. See also specific theologians Pseudo-Dionysius, 179, 228, 230, 262 psychopannychism, 142–44, 153, 156. See also mortalism Puteanus, Erycius, 306n37 Puttenham, George, 258 The Queen’s College, Oxford, 14 quid nominis, 69, 78, 301n97 quid rei, 69–70, 78, 301n97 Quint, David, 206, 244 Quintilian, 79 Ramism, 2, 13–14, 29–36, 38 Ramus, Peter, 30–35, 293n103, 295n127 Randall, John Herman, Jr., 161 Rapaport, Herman, xix Raphael (angel): accommodating to human intellect, xxii, 197–202, 204–08, 214–15, 283–84, 328n7; and analogical tree, 43, 46, 52, 56; on angelic substance and intellection, 175–77, 182; on Creation, 64, 246, 276–77; on first matter, xiv–xv, xvii, 43–44,

index 4 0 1

52, 54–56; on heavenly time, 152; on man’s ascent, 43–49, 51–54, 160–61, 188; on names of things, 60, 64; on porous matter, 251; proper shape of, 213–14; on the rational soul, 50, 133, 158–60; on regenerative cycle of cosmos, 182–83; on War in Heaven, 197–98, 200–201, 204–06, 208–09 rational soul, xxi, 50–51, 114–15, 121, 124–25, 127, 129–34, 147–51, 153, 162 Raymond, Joad, 158, 179, 191 Redman, John, 9 rhetoric (oratio), 13, 20 Richardson, Jonathan, 49, 53, 65, 232, 275 Richek, Rosalind, 18 Ricks, Christopher, Milton’s Grand Style, 4–5 Rist, John, 163 Rivetus, Andreas, 62, 239, 324n57 Rogers, John, xvii–xix, 259; The Matter of Revolution, xviii Roman de la Rose, 51 Ross, David, 287n12, 314n56 Rubius, Antonius, 76, 300n76; Logica Mexicana, 77 Rumrich, John, 234–35, 342n148 Sabrina (Comus), 102, 105–10, 118, 307n54 Salkeld, John, 63, 68 saltings, 18 Satan: assault on Paradise, 169–72; battling the heavenly host, 166–67; and Chaos, 241, 243–44, 247–48, 253; corrupter of language, 78; and Death, 74–75; and Eden, 48, 53, 125–27, 173–74, 202; encounter with Abdiel, 166, 205; escape to the Son, 249; fall of, 241–45; on the “first convex,” 276–77; God’s knowledge of, 215; individuation of, 170, 193, 201; Leviathan simile, 3–5; march to the North, 209; on Night, 243–44, 271; shield of, 4, 183, 245; and Sin, 71, 74; substance and materiality of, 3–5, 183, 185–88, 210, 249–50; transformations of, 173, 186–91; uncomprehended by good angels, 169, 173–74, 186–87; view of Hell, 232, 234; vision of Heaven, 207, 226 Scala, Cangrande della, 317n99 scala naturae, 43, 133 Scaliger, Joseph Caesar, 165, 322n30 Scaliger, Joseph Justus, 61, 322n30 Scheibler, Christoph, 165, 180, 182, 185, 312n24, 320n9; Metaphysica, 161 Schmitt, Charles, 8, 25, 288n23

Scholasticism, xxii, 11–12, 31, 33, 56, 83, 162, 174, 244. See also neo-Scholasticism Second Scholastic, 163, 165 Sendivogius, Michael, 329n40 Sennert, Daniel, 238–39, 342n152 Sextus Empiricus, 147–48 Shakespeare, William: All’s Well That Ends Well, 171; Antony and Cleopatra, 116; The Comedy of Errors, 116–17; Hamlet, 157; Measure for Measure, 153; The Tempest, 107 Sidney, Philip, 88, 295n127 sight, physical, and inner illumination, 135–41 Simplicius, 28, 50, 113, 122, 124, 127–28, 132, 135, 148, 162–63, 163, 233, 271–73 Sin (PL), 58, 71–76, 78–79, 232, 278 Skinner, Cyriack, 294n118 Skulsky, Harold, 205, 227 Smectymnuan debates, 27 Smiglecius, Martinus, 46, 66, 69, 301n89 Smith, Thomas, 9 Socrates, 25 Son of God, 48, 68, 151, 156, 195, 199, 202, 224–25, 249, 255, 257–65, 268, 273, 275, 277–78, 283. See also Christ Sorabji, Richard, 148 soul-body duality, 46, 49, 51, 114–16, 118–25, 128–29, 131–34, 145, 156 Spenser, Edmund, 31; The Faerie Queene, 26, 235; Shepheardes Calender, 235; Sonnet IX, 136–37 spiritus, 161 Sponde, Jean de, 308nn73–74 Sprat, Thomas, 296n6 St. Paul’s School, London, 20, 28 Statius, The Thebaid, 143, 323n48 Steadman, John, 104, 309n80 Stephen, Saint, 144 Stoicism, 249–50, 253–55 Stout, G. F., 157 Stuardes, Franciscus, 308n74 Sturm, Johann, 293n103 Suárez, Francisco, 122–24, 127, 132, 150, 176, 180, 269–70, 312n24, 312n34, 322n39; Commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics, 122; De angelis, 165, 169; Disputationes metaphysicae, 150, 164; Tractatus de Anima, 163–64 sun, 63, 117, 183, 226, 229, 264 Sylvester, Joshua, “Urania,” 22 synaesthesia, 75, 245 systema, 34

4 0 2 index

Tasso, Torquato: Discorso della Virtù Feminile, 93; Gerusalemme Liberata, 221–22, 230 Telesio, Bernardino, De Rerum Natura, 150 Temptation, 125, 189 Tennyson, Alfred, 154 Tertullian, 130, 203, 314n58 Teskey, Gordon, xvii–xix; Delirious Milton, xviii Themistius, 122, 124 Thijssen, J. M. M. Hans, 286n5 thnetopsychism, 142–44, 154, 317n101. See also mortalism Thomas Aquinas, 31, 35, 96, 122–23, 179–80, 183–85, 190, 194, 208–09, 215, 218–19, 223, 311n18, 315n69, 321n15; Commentary on the Metaphysics, 330n65; Summa Theologiae, 311n18, 330n65, 331n67 time, conceptions of, 148–53 Timpler, Clemens, 94; Metaphysicae Systema Methodicum, 150 Toland, John, 306n35 Toletus, Franciscus, 69, 300n76 Tostatus, Alonso, 62, 64 traducianism, 124, 130, 133 Transubstantiation, 182, 184 Trinity College, Cambridge, 8, 27 Ulreich, John C., 309n80 Urania, 224–25 Uriel (angel), 168–70, 190, 199, 256, 259, 267, 269 Vaughan, Henry, 54 Vaughan, Jenkin, 344n179

Vermigli, Pietro Martire. See Peter Martyr Vida, Marcus Hieronymus: Christiados Libri Sex, 210, 265 Vincent de Beauvais, 336n54 Virgil, 4, 72, 221, 241; Aeneid, 212 virginity, 94–95 Vives, Juan Luis, 125 Voetius, Gisbertus, 175, 179 void, the, 232, 241–43, 247–55, 268, 271–73, 276–77, 284, 335n44, 336n45, 337n73, 343n169. See also abyss; imaginary space; prime matter Ward, Seth, 223 War in Heaven, xxii, 186–87, 192–93, 197–98, 200–201, 203–06, 208–15, 283 Watts, William, Directions, 35 Webster, Charles, 53 William of Moerbeke, 336n44 William of Ockham, 150 Winstanley, Gerrard, 339n93 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 58 Wollebius, Johannes, 211, 328n13 Woolton, John, 198 Wycliffe, John, 146 Xenophon, Memorabilia of Socrates, 92 Xerxes, 172 Yeats, William Butler, 24 Young, Thomas, 18, 25–28 Zabarella, Giacomo, 125, 165, 322n26 Zephon (angel), 169, 171, 173, 186, 188 Zophiel (angel), 167