Revisioning Cambridge Platonism: Sources and Legacy [1st ed. 2019] 978-3-030-22199-7, 978-3-030-22200-0

Table of contents :
Front Matter ....Pages i-x
Introduction (Douglas Hedley, David Leech)....Pages 1-11
Dii medioxumi and the Place of Theurgy in the Philosophy of Henry More (Anna Corrias)....Pages 13-30
Cambridge Platonism(s): John Sherman and Peter Sterry (Eric Parker)....Pages 31-46
‘A Philosopher at Randome’: Translating Jacob Böhme in Seventeenth-Century Cambridge (Cecilia Muratori)....Pages 47-64
Plotinus in Verses: The Epic of Emanation in Henry More’s Psychozoia (Guido Giglioni)....Pages 65-87
The Neoplatonic Hermeneutics of Ralph Cudworth (Adrian Mihai)....Pages 89-99
Cudworth and the English Debate on the Trinity (Jan Rohls)....Pages 101-115
‘Think on These Things’: Benjamin Whichcote and Henry Hallywell on Philippians 4:8 as a Guide to Deiformity (Marilyn A. Lewis)....Pages 117-131
Giving Locke Some Latitude: Locke’s Theological Influences from Great Tew to the Cambridge Platonists (Nathan Guy)....Pages 133-157
Mixing Politics with the Pulpit: Eternal Immutable Morality and Richard Price’s Political Radicalism (Louise Hickman)....Pages 159-173
‘Have Ye Not Heard That We Cannot Serve Two Masters?’: The Platonism of Mary Wollstonecraft (Sylvana Tomaselli)....Pages 175-189
‘This Is Not Quite Fair, Master More!’: Coleridge and the Cambridge Platonists (James Vigus)....Pages 191-214
‘A Track Pursuing Not Untrod Before’: Wordsworth, Plato and the Cambridge Platonists (Graham Davidson)....Pages 215-240
The Legacy of a ‘Living Library’: On the Reception of John Smith (Derek A. Michaud)....Pages 241-257
Between Theodicy and Apologetics. Plato as ‘A Human Preface of the Gospel’: Joseph de Maistre and Simone Weil in the Wake of Cudworth (Philippe Barthelet)....Pages 259-268

Citation preview

International Archives of the History of Ideas 222 Archives internationales d'histoire des idées

Douglas Hedley David Leech Editors

Revisioning Cambridge Platonism: Sources and Legacy

Revisioning Cambridge Platonism: Sources and Legacy

INTERNATIONAL ARCHIVES OF THE HISTORY OF IDEAS ARCHIVES INTERNATIONALES D’HISTOIRE DES IDÉES 222

REVISIONING CAMBRIDGE PLATONISM: SOURCES AND LEGACY Douglas Hedley David Leech

Board of Directors: Founding Editors: Paul Dibon† and Richard H. Popkin† Director: Sarah Hutton, University of York, United Kingdom Associate Directors: J.C. Laursen, University of California, Riverside, USA Guido Giglioni, University of Macerata, Italy Editorial Board: K. Vermeir, Paris; J.R. Maia Neto, Belo Horizonte; M.J.B. Allen, Los Angeles; J.-R. Armogathe, Paris; S. Clucas, London; P. Harrison, Oxford; J. Henry, Edinburgh; M. Mulsow, Erfurt; G. Paganini, Vercelli; J. Popkin, Lexington; J. Robertson, Cambridge; G.A.J. Rogers, Keele; J.F. Sebastian, Bilbao; A. Thomson, Paris; Th. Verbeek, Utrecht More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/5640

Douglas Hedley  •  David Leech Editors

Revisioning Cambridge Platonism: Sources and Legacy

Editors Douglas Hedley Faculty of Divinity University of Cambridge Cambridge, UK

David Leech Department of Religion and Theology, School of Humanities University of Bristol Bristol, UK

ISSN 0066-6610     ISSN 2215-0307 (electronic) International Archives of the History of Ideas Archives internationales d’histoire des idées ISBN 978-3-030-22199-7    ISBN 978-3-030-22200-0 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22200-0 © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Contents

1 Introduction����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������    1 Douglas Hedley and David Leech 2 Dii medioxumi and the Place of Theurgy in the Philosophy of Henry More������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   13 Anna Corrias 3 Cambridge Platonism(s): John Sherman and Peter Sterry ����������������   31 Eric Parker 4 ‘A Philosopher at Randome’: Translating Jacob Böhme in Seventeenth-Century Cambridge������������������������������������������������������   47 Cecilia Muratori 5 Plotinus in Verses: The Epic of Emanation in Henry More’s Psychozoia������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   65 Guido Giglioni 6 The Neoplatonic Hermeneutics of Ralph Cudworth����������������������������   89 Adrian Mihai 7 Cudworth and the English Debate on the Trinity ��������������������������������  101 Jan Rohls 8 ‘Think on These Things’: Benjamin Whichcote and Henry Hallywell on Philippians 4:8 as a Guide to Deiformity������������������������  117 Marilyn A. Lewis 9 Giving Locke Some Latitude: Locke’s Theological Influences from Great Tew to the Cambridge Platonists����������������������������������������  133 Nathan Guy 10 Mixing Politics with the Pulpit: Eternal Immutable Morality and Richard Price’s Political Radicalism����������������������������������������������  159 Louise Hickman v

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Contents

11 ‘Have Ye Not Heard That We Cannot Serve Two Masters?’: The Platonism of Mary Wollstonecraft��������������������������������������������������  175 Sylvana Tomaselli 12 ‘This Is Not Quite Fair, Master More!’: Coleridge and the Cambridge Platonists����������������������������������������������������������������  191 James Vigus 13 ‘A Track Pursuing Not Untrod Before’: Wordsworth, Plato and the Cambridge Platonists������������������������������������������������������  215 Graham Davidson 14 The Legacy of a ‘Living Library’: On the Reception of John Smith��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  241 Derek A. Michaud 15 Between Theodicy and Apologetics. Plato as ‘A Human Preface of the Gospel’: Joseph de Maistre and Simone Weil in the Wake of Cudworth������������������������������������������������������������������������  259 Philippe Barthelet

About the Contributors

Philippe Barthelet studied at the Sorbonne and holds a Diplôme d’études approfondies in Metaphysics for his translation and commentary of De Sphæra intelligibili of Alanus ab Insulis (Alan of Lille); he is the author of a ‘Roman de la langue’ in seven volumes on the interface between philosophy and literature (L’Étrangleur de perroquets; Baraliptons; L’Olifant; Fou Forêt; Salut aux bêtes sauvages; Tulipes d’orage; Vert dragon) and other essays (including Saint Bernard, Le Ciel de Cambridge (about Rupert Brooke) and Le Voyage d’Allemagne). He is the Director and Editor of dossiers devoted to Ernst Jünger (2000), Joseph de Maistre (2005) and Gustave Thibon (2012) in the collection Les Dossiers H (Lausanne, éditions l’Âge d’homme).  

Anna Corrias was trained in the History of Philosophy and Intellectual History at the Warburg Institute and is currently a Research Fellow at the School of Historical and Philosophical Inquiry, University of Queensland. Her work is primarily focused on the reception of ancient and late ancient philosophy in the Renaissance, with a special focus on the Platonic tradition. She is the author of the monograph The Plotinian Soul: the Renaissance of Plotinus in Marsilio Ficino’s Commentary on the ‘Enneads’ (1492), published by Routledge and forthcoming in 2019, and of several articles. She is also working on a critical edition, English translation, and commentary of Marsilio Ficino’s Expositio in interpretationem Prisciani Lydi super Theophrastum (1497). Before joining the University of Queensland, she was a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow in the History Department at UCL (2015– 2018) and a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies, Princeton University (2014–2015).  

Graham Davidson is the Editor of the Coleridge Bulletin and for many years ran the Coleridge Summer Conference with Nick Roe. He published Coleridge’s Career in 1990 and since then has contributed articles not only to the Coleridge Bulletin but to Romanticism, The Wordsworth Circle, The Lamb Bulletin and the Philological Quarterly. He has met requests for articles in Jeff Barbeau’s Coleridge’s Assertion of Religion, Blackwell’s The Bible in English Literature and Nick Roe’s Coleridge in The West Country. In 2008, a selection of his poems, The Randan Woods, was published by subscription.  

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About the Contributors

Guido  Giglioni teaches Renaissance Philosophy at the Università di Macerata, Dipartimento di Studi Umanistici, Macerata, Italy. His research is focused on the interplay of life and imagination in the early modern period. He has published on such authors as Girolamo Cardano, Tommaso Campanella and Francis Glisson. Among his most recent contributions are ‘Medicine of the Mind in Early Modern Philosophy’, in The Routledge Handbook of the Stoic Tradition, ed. by John Sellars (London: Routledge, 2016), pp.  189–203, and ‘Philosophy’, in The Oxford Handbook of Neo-Latin, ed. by Sarah Knight and Stefan Tilg (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), pp. 249–262.  

Nathan Guy (PhD, Cambridge) is President of Mars Hill, a Christian preparatory academy in Florence, Alabama. Prior to his appointment, he served as an Associate Professor in the College of Bible and Ministry of Harding University (Searcy, AR). His teaching specialties and research interests include the philosophy of religion, political and philosophical theology, New Testament studies and ethics. Under the supervision of Janet Martin Soskice, Nathan wrote his Cambridge thesis on the theological basis of John Locke’s political thought, for which he received the John Coventry prize. He also holds an MSc in Philosophy and Public Policy from the London School of Economics and Political Science and an MPhil in New Testament Studies from the University of Oxford.  

Douglas  Hedley is Professor and Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge, and Professor of the Philosophy of Religion at the University of Cambridge. He has previously held Fellowships at the Universities of Notre Dame (2013–2014) and Muenster (2017) and was visiting Professor at the University of McGill in 2018  

Louise Hickman is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy and Ethics at Newman University, Birmingham. Her research interests are primarily in the history of philosophy, philosophy of religion and science and religion. Her recent publications include Eighteenth Century Dissent and Cambridge Platonism (London: Routledge, 2017) and ‘The Good, the True and the Beautiful: Imagining an Ethico-political Future for the Philosophy of Religion’, Palgrave Communications 4 (2018). She is a former editor of Reviews in Science and Religion.  

David Leech is Senior Lecturer of the Philosophy of Religion at the University of Bristol, UK. He has published widely on Cambridge Platonism, including a monograph The Hammer of the Cartesians: Henry More’s Philosophy of Spirit and the Origins of Modern Atheism with Peeters Publishers, Leuven (2013), for which he was one of the recipients of the 2014 Manfred Lautenschlaeger Prize.  

Marilyn A. Lewis is Honorary Research Fellow in the Department of Religion and Theology at the University of Bristol. After many years teaching church history to candidates for ministry in the Church of England, she completed a PhD in 2010 at Birkbeck, University of London, under the supervision of Professor Michael Hunter. She has published articles on the Cambridge Platonists George Rust and Henry  

About the Contributors

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Hallywell and on Cambridge Platonist prosopography. She is also a Fellow of the Cambridge Centre for the Study of Platonism and an Associate Researcher at the EU-funded History of Human Freedom and Dignity in Western Civilization project. Derek  A.  Michaud teaches Philosophy at the University of Maine, Orono, USA. His research focuses on the relationship between early modern philosophy and theology, especially the Cambridge Platonists. His most recent publications include ‘John Smith on the Immortality of the Soul’, in Plotinus’ Legacy: The Transformation of Platonism from the Renaissance to the Modern Era, ed. by Stephen Gersh (Cambridge University Press, 2019), pp.  160–180; ‘Varieties of Spiritual Sense: Cusanus and John Smith’, Nicholas of Cusa and the Making of the Early Modern World, ed. By Simon J.G.  Burton, Joshua Hollmann and Eric M. Parker (Brill, 2019), pp. 285–306; and Reason Turned into Sense: John Smith on Spiritual Sensation (Peeters, 2017).  

Adrian  Mihai is a British Academy Fellow in the Faculty of Divinity at the University of Cambridge and Research Associate at the Laboratoire d’études sur les monothéismes (CNRS, Paris). He studied philosophy and religious studies at École Pratique des Hautes Études and is the author of L’Hadès céleste. Histoire du purgatoire dans l’Antiquité (Garnier, 2015). He is currently preparing the first critical edition of Ralph Cudworth’s 1678 treatise The True Intellectual System of the Universe (1678), a daring interpretation of ancient philosophy and religion, particularly of atheistic atomism.  

Cecilia Muratori received her PhD in the History of Philosophy (Urbino and Jena) with a thesis on Hegel’s interpretation of Jacob Böhme’s mysticism. From 2009 to 2013 she was Research Fellow at LMU München and junior member of LMU’s Center for Advanced Studies (CAS), working on a project entitled The Debate on the Soul of Animals in Renaissance Philosophy. After a year spent as Ahmanson Fellow at Villa I Tatti, The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies, and fellowships at Forschungsbibliothek Gotha and the Warburg Institute, she joined the University of Warwick as Research Fellow in 2015. She has cocurated a major exhibition on Jacob Böhme for the Dresden State Art Collections (SKD) in 2017 and is currently curating a series of further exhibitions on the international reception of Böhme, including in Coventry Cathedral in 2019.  

Eric  Parker received his PhD from the School of Religious Studies at McGill University. His dissertation focused on the moral theology of the Cambridge Platonist Peter Sterry, highlighting his use of Nicholas of Cusa’s doctrine of the ‘coincidence of opposites’ as a means of shaping human character.  

Jan  Rohls born in 1949, is Professor Emeritus for Systematic Theology at the Faculty of Protestant Theology of the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. He works on the history of ethics and Protestant theology as well as on the relation between theology and philosophy and religion and the arts. At the moment, he is  

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writing a history of ideas of Christianity and of the connection between religion and art from the Renaissance up to the present. Among his numerous publications are Protestantische Theologie, Theologie der Neuzeit, 2nd vol., Studienausgabe Tübingen 2018. Sylvana  Tomaselli is a Fellow of St John’s College, Cambridge, and teaches History of Political Thought as well as Political Philosophy. She has contributed to numerous works on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century political theory and intellectual history, including ‘On Labelling Raynal’s Histoire: Reflections on Its Genre and Subject’, in Raynal’s Histoire des Deux Indes, Colonialism, Networks and Global Exchange, Cecil Courtney and Jenny Mander (eds.), special volume in Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century (2015 with the Oxford Studies on the Enlightenment (Voltaire Foundation, 2015) pp. 73–87. ISBN: 978 0 7294 1169 1), and ‘Reflections on Inequality, Respect and Love in the Political Writings of Mary Wollstonecraft’, The Social and Political Thought of Mary Wollstonecraft, Sandrine Berge and Alan Coffee (Eds.), Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016, pp.  14–33. Her entry ‘Mary Wollstonecraft’ to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is available online, http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2012/entries/ wollstonecraft/, as is her ‘Mary Wollstonecraft’ in Oxford Bibliographies in Philosophy, Ed. Duncan Pritchard, New York: Oxford University Press, URL http:// www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780195396577/obo9780195396577-0306.xml  

James  Vigus is Senior Lecturer in Romanticism at the School of English and Drama at Queen Mary University of London. His research focuses on European intellectual exchange in the Romantic period, especially the British reception of German literature and philosophy, and on the involvement of writers of this period with religious dissent. In addition to his monograph, Platonic Coleridge (2009), and his critical edition of Henry Crabb Robinson’s Essays on Kant, Schelling, and German Aesthetics (2010), he has (co-)edited four essay collections, including Symbol and Intuition: Comparative Studies in Kantian and Romantic-Period Aesthetics (2013). His articles on Coleridge include ‘The Philosophy of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’, in The Oxford Handbook of British Philosophy in the Nineteenth Century, ed. William Mander (2014), pp. 520–540.  

Chapter 1

Introduction Douglas Hedley and David Leech

Abstract  The Cambridge Platonists mark an important juncture in Western intellectual history. Benjamin Whichcote (1609–1683), Ralph Cudworth (1617–1688), Henry More (1614––1687) and John Smith (1618–1652) helped shape the modern idea of selfhood and the contemporary culture of autonomy, toleration, and rights. Not only do they represent one of the great phases of the Platonic tradition, but also this group of Cambridge thinkers arguably represent a ‘Copernican revolution’ in Western moral philosophy. Attention has also been drawn to their impact on women thinkers such as Anne Conway, Damaris Masham, Catharine Macaulay, and Mary Wollstonecraft. The key aesthetic notion of ‘disinterested pleasure’ can be traced back to Cambridge Platonist influence on Shaftesbury, and their concept of Plastic Nature shaped the modern concepts of artistic creativity and genius. There is, however, a striking neglect of Cambridge Platonism in contemporary research, and there is also disagreement about the application and even the legitimacy of the category ‘Cambridge Platonism’ itself. We maintain however that ‘Cambridge Platonism’ is nevertheless a helpful category for exploring the intellectual milieu or constellation of these thinkers. This is not to say that all of the figures included in this volume belong to a tightly defined group of ‘Platonists’, but a distinctive early modern transformation of Platonism is at work among these writers, and a better understanding of the networks, intellectual and personal, of these figures is the aim of the volume. The Cambridge Platonists mark an important juncture in Western intellectual history. Benjamin Whichcote (1609–1683), Ralph Cudworth (1617–1688), Henry More (1614–1687) and John Smith (1618–1652) helped shape the modern idea of D. Hedley (*) Faculty of Divinity, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK e-mail: [email protected] D. Leech Department of Religion and Theology, School of Humanities, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 D. Hedley, D. Leech (eds.), Revisioning Cambridge Platonism: Sources and Legacy, International Archives of the History of Ideas Archives internationales d’histoire des idées 222, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22200-0_1

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selfhood and the contemporary culture of autonomy, toleration, and rights. Not only do they represent one of the great phases of the Platonic tradition, but also, as authors such as Darwall (1995), Beiser (1996) and Gill (2006) have argued, this group of Cambridge thinkers represent a ‘Copernican revolution’ in Western moral philosophy. It has been claimed that they contributed to the development of a secular ethics: perhaps, even, to the general process of secularisation (Beiser 1996; Leech 2013; Taylor 2007). Hutton (2003) and Broad (2002) have drawn attention to their impact on women thinkers such as Anne Conway, Damaris Masham, Catharine Macaulay, and Mary Wollstonecraft; and their role via the British Dissenting tradition on the development of the discourse of women’s rights has just started to be appreciated. The key aesthetic notion of ‘disinterested pleasure’ can be traced back to Cambridge Platonist influence on Shaftesbury, and their concept of Plastic Nature shaped the modern concepts of artistic creativity and genius (Hedley 2000). From them we have derived basic philosophical terms such as ‘materialism’, ‘hylozoism’, ‘monotheism’, ‘philosophy of religion’, and ‘Cartesianism’; indeed they were an early shaping force on the basic intellectual agendas of contemporary philosophy of religion and philosophy of mind (Taliaferro 2005). There is, however, a striking neglect of Cambridge Platonism in contemporary research. Misunderstandings and prejudices about the Cambridge Platonists as fundamentally antiquarian, backward-looking, and philosophically jejune still circulate. A recent flourishing of philosophical interest in these figures (for instance Robert Pasnau 2011; Charles Taliaferro 2005; Michael Gill 2006; Jasper Reid 2012) as well as older work by Stephen Darwall and Frederick Beiser suggests otherwise, but there remain serious deficits in contemporary Cambridge Platonism scholarship. Access to the Cambridge Platonist texts is hampered by the dearth of serious scholarly editions of the major works, and extant anthologies are dated and out of print. Access to their most significant philosophical contributions is made difficult by their style because the philosophical content is often camouflaged by their erudition. Also, most Cambridge Platonism research is specialised on particular aspects of their contribution, and work on them is often pursued from within a single discipline. Moreover, the scholarship in a number of related fields (e.g., Neoplatonic studies) has been and continues to be transformed, but Cambridge Platonism research has not consistently kept up with these developments (although see for example Corrias in this volume as a counter example). Finally, there is disagreement about the application and even the legitimacy of the category ‘Cambridge Platonism’ itself. Most prominently, Dmitri Levitin (2015) has regarded the category itself as representing a problematic reification of more complicated intellectual realities. However, it would be a mistake to assume that the category is a mere projection of nineteenth century historiography. This is partially because earlier practices of referring to a group of primarily Cambridge-based Platonists, invariably including Cudworth, More, usually Whichcote, and (more variably) a number of other key figures, can be traced back at least to the 1730s. There are even earlier attestations to More’s Platonism. Johann Franz Buddeus, for instance, in his Analecta historiae philosophicae, calls Henry More ‘the celebrated restaurer of the Platonic philosophy’ (1706: 141), and in Daniel Georg Morhof’s

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sketch of the history of Platonic philosophy in his Polyhistor, More is classed as a ‘Platonico-Cartesian’ (1708: 40). But Johann Lorenz Mosheim in his Latin translation of Cudworth’s True intellectual system (1731–1736) and Johann Jakob Brucker in his Kurtze Fragen aus der Philosophischen Historie (1731–1735) and his influential Historia critica philosophiae (1742) also refer explicitly to this group of figures as Platonists.1 Brucker interestingly characterises them as revivers of ‘Alexandrian’, or ‘eclectic’ Platonism - what today would be termed Neoplatonism – and notes that this form of Platonism was originally fused with Christianity by Origen. He and Mosheim also take it for granted that Samuel Parker’s Free and impartial censure of the Platonick philosophy (1666) refers to them.2 This does not just as such mean that the reification concern is exploded, but it does mean that the putatively problematic reification would need to be traced back to the first decades of the eighteenth century, and perhaps earlier. Therefore, prior to the circulation of the English-language terms ‘Cambridge Platonism’ and ‘Cambridge Platonist(s)’ we can point to the prior existence of an overlapping set of labels such as ‘Latitudinarians’ (Patrick 1662; Burnet 1724), ‘Cupri-Cosmits’ (Glanvill 1676), ‘English/British Platonist Sect’ (Brucker), ‘Platonists’ (Mosheim), some of which explicitly identify these figures as Platonists, and all of which consistently identify at least More and Cudworth (and, generally, also Whichcote) as core members of this group. But there is a further reason for resisting the idea that the use of the category ‘Cambridge Platonism’ certainly represents a questionable and anachronistic classification. Samuel Taylor Coleridge in his notes on John Smith remarks of the Latitudinarian party at Cambridge that ‘The greater number were Platonists – so called at least, and such they believed themselves to be. But more truly Plotinists’ (1999: 80). Frederick D.  Maurice picks out Cudworth, More, Whichcote, Worthington and John Smith as ‘those men who have sometimes been called Platonists and sometimes Latitudinarians, who are eulogized by Burnet, whose influence was chiefly exercised at Cambridge’ (Maurice 1862: 346). Both Coleridge and Maurice were deeply Platonic thinkers themselves, and it is not implausible to interpret them as part of a continuous if loose tradition of Platonic thought. As such, they may be understood as recognising an affinity, albeit not an uncritical bond, with their intellectual ancestors (cf. Newsome (1974)), rather than retroprojecting a position onto them which was fundamentally alien. Hence when the historian John Hunt in his Religious thought in England speaks of the Cambridge Platonists as the ‘chief Rationalists of the age’ and, as critics of Hobbes, Platonists trying to establish ‘reli-

1  One of their sources is Gilbert Burnet, who refers to a ‘new set of men’, ‘called Latitudinarians’, ‘generally of Cambridge’, who were ‘formed under some divines, the chief of whom were Drs. Whitchcot, Cudworth, Wilkins, More, Worthington’ (1724: 105). Burnet does not explicitly use the term ‘Platonism’, although he does note that Whichcote ‘set young students much on reading the ancient Philosophers, chiefly Plato, Tully, and Plotin’. 2  Curiously, Brucker counts Theophilus Gale, together with More and Cudworth, as among ‘the most celebrated’ of this set, whereas few other accounts of the ‘Cambridge Platonists’, early or late, include him. Smith is also a notable omission (although see also Michaud in the present volume).

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gion and morality not on anything transient or arbitrary, but on principles immutable and eternal’ (Hunt 1870: 410), Hunt need not be seen as indulging in some dubious reification and retroprojection but employing a classification that draws upon the more or less accurate judgements of earlier writers like Coleridge and Maurice about the philosophical orientation of these figures, as well as the reflections of seventeenth-century contemporaries such as Richard Baxter and Gilbert Burnet. This is not to say that all of the figures included in this volume belong to a tightly defined group of ‘Platonists’. We maintain however that ‘Cambridge Platonism’ is nevertheless a helpful category for exploring the intellectual milieu or constellation of these thinkers. A better understanding of the networks, intellectual and personal, of these figures is the aim of the volume. A distinctive early modern transformation of Platonism is at work among these writers, and a number of the authors explain convincingly the nuances of this intellectual context.

1.1  The Present Collection The essays in this volume, which draws upon the work of scholars from Italy, Germany, France, the United States and United Kingdom, reflect a burgeoning of interest in the Cambridge Platonists. To name only a selection of important editions or monographs which have appeared since the 1990s, not to mention hundreds of specialised articles, Hutton’s pioneering work in English-language scholarship (1992, 1996, 2004), as well as the work of Hall (1996), Fouke (1997), Crocker (2003), Reid (2012), Carter (2011), Leech (2013), Michaud (2017); the work of Grossklaus (2000), Lotti (2004), Serafini (2005), Micheletti (2011), Bergemann (2012) in continental (especially French and Italian) scholarship; and the important edited volumes by Hutton (1990), Rogers et al. (1997), Simonutti (2007), Hedley and Hutton eds. (2008) testifies to the resurgence of interest in these figures over the last several decades. The volume builds upon existing scholarship by laying bare some forgotten or lost sources of the thought of these writers (as well as augmenting knowledge of known ones) and explores hitherto neglected influences. The Cambridge Platonists are presented here as a set of Platonizing colleagues, friends and students, located largely, but not exclusively, in Cambridge. As the article by Marilyn Lewis demonstrates, the constellation of intellectual friendships, alliances and critics sheds new light on the intellectual world of these thinkers. The sheer range of sources and influences, ranging from Ficino, Girolamo Zanchi, Jakob Boehme up to Coleridge and Simone Weil, furnishes a distinctive feature of this collection of essays on the Cambridge Platonists. The arrangement of the essays followed here is more or less chronological, stretching from a focus on the Cambridge Platonists’ late antique Neoplatonic and Renaissance sources and contexts, to their legacy reaching from the seventeenth into the twentieth century. They are divided almost exactly equally between ‘Sources’ and ‘Legacy’. Two research questions in Cambridge Platonism scholar-

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ship are particularly pressing: (1) ‘What exactly is the “Platonism” of the Cambridge Platonists?’, and (2) ‘What was their reception?’. A single volume cannot hope to cover these aspects exhaustively, but its aim is more modestly to augment the picture (in ‘Sources’) of the ‘Platonism’ of Cambridge Platonism – also by occasional side glances at other neighbouring variants of Platonism, ancient and more contemporary (for instance, in Parker’s and Muratori’s essays) – and (in ‘Legacy’) of their reception more exactly. The first set of essays by Corrias, Parker, Lewis, Muratori, Giglioni, Mihai and Rohls contribute towards addressing the first question by focusing in one respect or another on the sources and contexts of the Platonism of the Cambridge Platonists. The second set of essays by Guy, Hickman, Tomaselli, Vigus, Davidson, Michaud and Barthelet focus on the reception of Cambridge Platonism. Outside their influence on moral philosophy, the reception history of Cambridge Platonism is a much under-researched area, and this section is intended as an invitation to future research as much as making a contribution to some previously neglected strands of this reception. In this spirit we have chosen to include not just essays which establish definite influence, but also some (Tomaselli, Davidson, Barthelet) which limit themselves principally to identifying convergences (although not entirely: readers may be surprised to see Simone Weil included in an account of their legacy – but Barthelet also notes that Weil had read Cudworth, and knew More through his letters to Descartes).

1.2  Section 1: Sources Anna Corrias’ opening essay examines the (critical) place of ancient Platonic daemonology and theurgy in Henry More’s project of resisting the disenchantment process threatened by mechanism and Cartesianism. She notes how More should be understood in important respects as an heir of the post-Plotinian philosophers retrieved by Ficino, and shows how, far from his being an occultist, daemons play a serious metaphysical role in his philosophy and informs his critique of image worship in the Roman Catholic Church. Moving forward to the early modern period, Eric Parker focuses on the ‘Platonizing Puritan’ Peter Sterry, as well as John Sherman (once, as Parker notes, identified as the original influence behind Cambridge Platonism by the early twentieth-­century historian J. B.Mullinger) and – Sherman’s source – the sixteenth-­ century reformed scholastic Girolamo Zanchi, in order to clarify the variety of opinions regarding the value of Platonism for Christian theology among Protestant theologians of the period. Parker shows that there were a variety of Platonisms available to Cambridge students in the mid-seventeenth century, with some limited to the scope of Aristotelianism and others more radically Platonist. Parker notes that Sterry was undoubtedly familiar with Zanchi, an Aristotelian who recommends Ficino and Steuco’s works in his writings and refers to Plotinus as homo Christianus, although Sterry takes greater liberty in the ideas that he borrows from the Platonists

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and he rejects the Aristotelian method in favour of the method of coincidence developed by Nicholas Cusanus. Cecilia Muratori’s essay turns to another important ‘source’ for Cambridge Platonism (especially More), the philosopher Jacob Böhme. More attributed the ‘obscurity’ of Böhme’s philosophy primarily to the mystic’s lack of education, and the resulting chaotic way in which he used the Neoplatonic and cabalistic sources of his ‘inspiration’. As Muratori notes, both Charles Hotham and More employ a specific frame of reference in their readings of Böhme, placing him in a Neoplatonic, hermetic, cabalistic context, thus inscribing him broadly in the Platonic tradition. This essay investigates how early English readers of Böhme assessed the transposition of Böhme’s works from German into English, examining the role of Abraham von Franckenberg’s famous biography of Böhme, and considers how its English translation acted as a filter for approaching Böhme in England. She also discusses the strategies of readers and translators of Böhme active in seventeenth-century Cambridge, and finishes with a comparison of More and Hotham’s readings of Böhme, demonstrating that they were aware of the gap that had opened between the ‘German Böhme’, and the new, successful creation of seventeenth-century England: the English ‘Jacob Behmen’. Guido Giglioni’s essay focusses on More’s (critical) relation to his major source, Plotinus, and his adoption of the Plotinian model of the accreted self in his 1642 and 1647 collections of poems entitled Psychodia Platonica [‘The Platonic song of the soul’], and in particular in the poem Psychozoia [‘The life of the soul’]. He notes that More here laid the groundwork for his life-long inquiry into the nature of the human self, providing here a poetic commentary of Plotinus’s Enneads in which three ontological dimensions – the life of nature, animal perception and the intellect – created an allegorical background against which one could articulate a systematic analysis of the individual human self in its relationships with God and created reality. He stresses that Psychozoia remains an important document to understand the evolution of More’s thought. Jan Rohls’ essay closely examines Cudworth’s Platonic defence of the doctrine of the Trinity in the True intellectual system and its Neoplatonic sources. He notes how Cudworth defends the Christian Trinity as not only in accordance with reason but also as very close to the Platonic Trinity, although with some important caveats the Christian Trinity is more rational than, and therefore superior to, the Platonic Trinity, and avoids subordinationism. Rohls argues that with Cudworth the character of the Trinitarian debate in England changed, and he was influential in shifting Trinitarian debate to the relation between the doctrine of the Trinity and Platonism. Complementing Rohl’s essay, Adrian Mihai’s essay on the Neoplatonic hermeneutics of Cudworth argues that Cudworth not only followed the Neoplatonic commentators in his opinion about ancient philosophical doctrines, but also and especially adopted their hermeneutical tools. In this careful study of Cudworth’s exact Platonic sources in the True intellectual system, Mihai suggests that for Cudworth, the sacred importance of a text is not based on its historical date, but on the authenticity of its doctrine, i.e. on its identity with the prisca theologia or sapientia, and in this sense he followed a traditional method of interpretation. In a sec-

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ond part, Mihai also looks briefly at the implications of this Neoplatonic hermeneutics for Cudworth’s epistemology. Marilyn Lewis’s essay is on Benjamin Whichcote (1609–1683), often considered the founder of Cambridge Platonism, and Henry Hallywell (1641–1703), a pupil of Henry More and younger member of the group. Whichcote and Hallywell both preached a sermon series on Philippians 4:8 in which deiformity and participation in God is the central theme. The fact that this paradigmatic Platonic theme should shape the exegesis of the reading of Paul in both writers reveals the working of a pivotal Platonic motif as a live spiritual option within this group. The ground-­ breaking work of Lewis is of particular importance in showing the complex but powerful networks of teachers and pupils within the Cambridge Platonists.

1.3  Section 2: Legacy The section on the Cambridge Platonists’ reception history begins with an essay which traces the Cambridge Platonist influence on Locke. Nathan Guy’s essay locates Locke in relation to the moderating influences in seventeenth-century England – the Oxford Tew Circle, the London Latitudinarians, and the Cambridge Platonists – with whom he is intimately associated. Guy suggests that the Cambridge Platonists in their own way contributed to providing a theological framework for Locke’s moral and political thought. After noting Locke’s personal intellectual relations with Whichcote and Damaris Cudworth, and his familiarity with Smith, More and Cudworth, he notes that Locke’s account of reason, and his aversion to predestination, his strong insistence on free will, and his belief in the reasonable acquisition of and compliance with God’s eternal law bears a striking resemblance to Cambridge Platonist positions. Like others of this circle, Locke recoiled at atheism, hyper-Calvinism, and religious enthusiasm, seeing these as detrimental to proper social and political (as well as theological) ends. He concludes that Locke’s theologically-­rich environment, coupled with his deeply-held personal religious commitments, should not be considered peripheral to his aims. His political concerns emanate from Latitudinarian theology, and his writings offer a political vision consistent with this theological perspective. Turning to the eighteenth century reception, both Hickman and Tomaselli’s articles explore a possible conduit of influence through Richard Price, which (Tomaselli suggests) may possibly even reach Mary Wollstonecraft. Hickman’s article argues that Cudworth should be recognised as formative for Richard Price’s political philosophy. Cudworth’s ethics of eternal and immutable morality, dualistic account of human intellect, idea of deiform reason  – and his consequent theology of conscience – together with his participatory account of commonwealth, gives significant shape, she suggests, to Price’s conception of political will, equality and democracy. She also suggests that a consideration of the impact of Cudworth’s philosophy on Price’s political radicalism results in a difficulty for the attempt to dichotomise the enlightenment into sharply distinct radical and moderate move-

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ments. A commitment to eternal and immutable reality is shared with the more moderate Burke while Price’s own anti-materialist, dualistic and theologically motivated radicalism marks a significant departure from some of his most important Dissenting contemporaries, including Joseph Priestley. Tomaselli’s article, which complements Hickman’s, examines the case for discernible strands of Platonism in Mary Wollstonecraft. Tomaselli notes that within the circle that Wollstonecraft came to frequent though her publisher, Joseph Johnson, Platonism was a far more common currency than might at first be assumed. Notably, the circle included Richard Price and William Blake among its members. Building on Sarah Hutton’s suggestions about the philosophical aspect of Wollstonecraft’s relation to Price in her ‘The Ethical Background of Rights of Women’, Tomaselli implies a possible indirect mediation of Cambridge Platonism through Price. Tomaselli notes that Wollstonecraft’s ‘Platonism’ also formed part of the philosophical basis of her attack on Burke. Turning to nineteenth century reception, Vigus’ and Davidson’s essays examine documented and plausible Cambridge Platonist influence on Coleridge and Wordsworth. James Vigus in his chapter traces the evolution of Coleridge’s references to and affinities with the Cambridge Platonists, in order to lay the groundwork for a thorough comparison of ideas. As he notes, both the Cambridge Platonists and Coleridge modified a strongly dualistic philosophical legacy, the former responding to Descartes, the latter to Kant. Indeed, Coleridge’s study of More, Cudworth and Smith took place in parallel with his engagement with German thought, which helps to explain his portrayal of Schelling and other Naturphilosophen as ‘imitators’ of the Cambridge Platonists. The essay analyses Coleridge’s direct, argumentative comments on the Cambridge Platonists; his use of images from Cudworth at different stages of his career; his engagement with Cudworth’s concept of ‘plastic nature’; and his use of Cudworth’s thought on the origin of evil, the ‘seniority’ of mind over world, and the Trinity. It concludes with a brief consideration of the theme of the pre-existence of the soul. Despite the apparently radical nature of Coleridge’s transition from Unitarianism to Trinitarianism, it emerges that his maintenance of interest in the historical scholarship of Cudworth and the poetry and philosophy of More reflect the longstanding consistency of his intellectual concerns. Davidson’s essay argues that although there is no direct evidence that Wordsworth read the Cambridge Platonists, his thought nevertheless can be shown to have much in common with theirs. As he notes, Wordsworth implicitly authorized a search for some philosophical or theological coherence in his work when he declared that an attentive reader of The excursion would have no difficulty in extracting ‘the system’. Careful study has yielded few convincing results, and that Wordsworth has been taken as an Anglican, a Methodist, a pantheist, a Platonist, a Lockean, a Berkeleyan and even a Kantian indicates how difficult it is to establish Wordsworth’s intellectual antecedents precisely. Nonetheless, he argues, Plato’s was the only ‘system’ that Wordsworth acknowledged. Davidson examines The prelude in the light of Cambridge Platonist thought, and argues for a surprising degree of affinity across a range of ideas: the primacy of Reason, the unity of the laws of mind and nature, the idea of a plastic nature, as well as Reason delivering moral absolutes, the senses

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rejected as a form of knowledge, geometry as ‘a leader of the human mind’, the knowability of God, and the notion of an ‘immaterial centre of Immortality within’. Derek Michaud offers a selective overview of the reception and influence of John Smith stretching from the seventeenth up to the twentieth century. He explores well established lines of influence both to and from Whichcote, Cudworth, and More first, before moving on to less well-known connections to Bishop Simon Patrick and mathematician Isaac Barrow. Michaud shows how Smith’s continued significance for eighteenth-century theology can be demonstrated through discussion of his inspiration of the doctrines of spiritual sensation developed by Jonathan Edwards and John Wesley. Special notice is also given to Smith’s authority as an interpreter of Biblical prophecy through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The essay concludes with an examination of Smith’s influence on Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Ralph Waldo Emerson, William Ralph Inge, Rufus Jones, Pierre Hadot, and others. As Michaud notes, none of the core Cambridge Platonists have been as consistently ignored as Smith, who is mostly remembered today as a source of contextual or rhetorical leverage for the study of the more famous Cambridge Platonists (Cudworth and More especially), but in fact, as Michaud shows, Smith also exerted a profound influence in his own right. Finally, Philippe Barthelet looks selectively at a surprising French reception of Cambridge Platonism. Barthelet invokes two major French Platonists of the last two centuries temporally quite far apart, Joseph de Maistre and Simone Weil, in order to argue that Cudworth was the initiator of what he calls a combative Platonism (‘un platonisme de combat’). Joseph de Maistre, he suggests, is undoubtedly Cudworth’s greatest French disciple (Barthelet argues that he looked up to Cudworth as a philosophical model). At twenty, the Systema intellectuale huius universi (Mosheim’s Latin translation of the True intellectual system of the universe) became one of his bedside books which he never ceased referring to, and his own great books, L’Examen de la philosophie de Bacon, du Pape and his late unfinished masterpiece, Les soirées de Saint-Pétersbourg, have something Cudworthian in their encyclopedic intention to serve an apologetic purpose. Turning to Simone Weil, Barthelet suggests that rediscovering Cudworth’s method of searching in the legacy of paganism for means of illustrating and defending Christian dogma, Weil for her part seeks what she calls ‘pre-Christian intuitions’. She asks Descartes – with whose letters to More she was familiar – to make good use of the contradictions, a task which is the philosophical duty par excellence, and the one allowing the philosopher to come out of the cave and reach God. Platonism has always been an important part of the Western intellectual inheritance but it was often mediated by Christian or Muslim theologians, Stoics or poets. It was only with the Renaissance that Plato could emerge as the match of Aristotle, or even worthier than his pupil. Whereas to the scholastics, Aristotle was simply ‘the philosopher’, the Renaissance, particularly through Ficino and Pico della Mirandola, could assert the pre-eminence of Plato. The Cambridge Platonists belong to this striking revaluation of the founding figures of the Western philosophical tradition, even if their interpretation of Plato has been moulded by the genius of Plotinus and Origen. Plato, not Aristotle, is the primary philosophical guide and

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measure of their thought. It is with the aid of Platonism that they read Descartes and challenge Hobbes and Spinoza. Such a volume is an eminently collaborative enterprise. Many of the essays in this volume have their origin in a series of three workshops in 2012–2013 to examine the Cambridge Platonists anew and afresh, sponsored by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. This revisioning would not have been possible without its generous support in the form of a Network Grant. Thanks are also due to Clare College, Cambridge, for hosting the meetings of the Grant, and the Cambridge Faculty of Divinity, for their support.

Bibliography Beiser, Frederick C. 1996. The sovereignty of reason: The defense of rationality in the early English enlightenment. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Bergemann, Lutz. 2012. Ralph Cudworth - system aus transformation. Zur Naturphilosophie der Cambridge Platonists und ihrer Methode. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Broad, Jacqueline. 2002. Women philosophers of the seventeenth century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Brucker, Johann Jacob. 1731–1736. Kurtze Fragen aus der philosophischen Historie. Ulm: Daniel Bartholomäi. ———. 1742–1744. Historia critica philosophiae. Leipzig: Moritz Georg Weidmann. Buddeus, Johann Franz. 1706. Analecta historiae philosophicae. Halle: Orphanotrophius. Burnet, Gilbert (ed.). 1724. Bishop Burnet’s history of his own time. Vol. 1. Dublin: J. Hyde. Carter, Benjamin. 2011. ‘The little commonwealth of man’: The Trinitarian origins of the ethical and political philosophy of Ralph Cudworth. Leuven: Peeters. Cassirer, Ernst. 1932. The platonic renaissance in England. Austin: University of Texas Press. Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. 1999. The collected works, Vol. 12, Marginalia V, Ed. H. J. Jackson & George Whalley. New Jersey: Princeton. Crocker, Robert. 2003. Henry more, 1614–1687: A biography of the Cambridge Platonist. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Darwall, Stephen L. 1995. The British moralists and the internal ‘ought’: 1640–1740. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Fouke, Daniel C. 1997. The enthusiastical concerns of Henry more: Religious meaning and the psychology of delusion. Leiden: E.J. Brill. Gill, Michael B. 2006. The British moralists on human nature and the birth of secular ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Glanvill, Joseph. 1676. Anti-fanatical religion, and free philosophy, in a continuation of the new Atlantis. In Essays on several important subjects in philosophy and religion. London: John Baker and Henry Mortlock. Grossklaus, Dirk. 2000. Natürliche religion und Aufgeklärte Gesellschaft: Shaftesburys Verhältnis zu den Cambridge Platonists. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag C. Winter. Hall, A. Rupert. 1996. Henry more and the scientific revolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hedley, Douglas. 2000. Coleridge, philosophy and religion. Aids to reflection and the mirror of the spirit. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hedley, Douglas, and Sarah Hutton, eds. 2008. Platonism at the origins of modernity. Dordrecht: Springer. Hunt, John. 1870. Religious thought in England. London: Strahan & Co. Hutton, Sarah, ed. 1990. Henry more (1614–1687): Tercentenary studies. Dordrecht: Springer.

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——— (ed.). 1992. The Conway letters. The correspondence of Viscountess Anne Conway, Henry More and their friends, ed. Sarah Hutton and Marjorie Hope Nicolson. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ———, ed. 1996. Ralph Cudworth: A treatise concerning eternal and immutable morality: With a treatise of freewill. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2003. The ethical background of the rights of women. In Philosophical theory and the universal declaration of human rights, ed. William Sweet, 27–40. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press. ———. 2004. Anne Conway, a woman philosopher. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Leech, David. 2013. The hammer of the Cartesians: Henry More’s philosophy of spirit and the origins of modern atheism. Leuven: Peeters. Levitin, Dmitri. 2015. Ancient wisdom in the age of new science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lotti, Brunello. 2004. Ralph Cudworth e l’idea di natura plastica. Udine: Campanotto Editore. Maurice, Frederick Denison. 1862. Modern philosophy; or, a treatise of moral and metaphysical philosophy from the fourteenth century to the French revolution with a glimpse into the nineteenth century. London: Griffin, Bohn and Company. Michaud, Derek. 2017. Reason turned into sense: John Smith on spiritual sensation. Leuven: Peeters. Micheletti, Mario. 2011. I platonici di Cambridge: Il pensiero etico e religioso. Brescia: Morcelliana. Morhof, Daniel Georg. 1708. Polyhistor. Lübeck: Peter Böckmann. von Mosheim, Johann Lorenz. 1733. Systema intellectuale huius universi. Jena: Witwe Meyer. Newsome, David. 1974. Two classes of men: Platonism and English romantic thought. London: John Murray. Parker, Samuel. 1666. Free and impartial censure of the Platonick philosophy. Oxford: W. Hall and Richard Davis. Pasnau, Robert. 2011. Metaphysical themes, 1274–1671. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Patrick, Simon. 1662. A brief account of a new sect of latitude-men. London. Reid, Jasper. 2012. The metaphysics of Henry more. Dordrecht: Springer. Rogers, G.A.J., Jean-Michel Vienne, and Yves Charles Zarka, eds. 1997. The Cambridge Platonists in philosophical context. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Serafini, Marcella. 2005. Dall’uomo a Dio. Il “desiderio naturale di Dio” nel platonismo cristiano di John Smith. Firenze: Franco Cesati Editore Simonutti, Luisa (ed.). 2007. Forme del neoplatonismo: Dall’eredità ficiniana ai platonici di Cambridge. Taliaferro, Charles. 2005. Evidence and faith. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Taylor, Charles. 2007. A secular age. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Chapter 2

Dii medioxumi and the Place of Theurgy in the Philosophy of Henry More Anna Corrias

Abstract  The philosophy of Henry More was deeply indebted to the philosophical tradition of late antiquity. His metaphysics, clearly inspired by the magnificent synthesis of Plato, Plotinus and the later Platonists operated in the fifteenth century by Marsilio Ficino, relied on the continuity of being between Spirit and Matter, which also justified the presence of daemons and disembodied souls within the natural world. However, More fiercely criticised all forms of religious worship in which dii medioxumi were regarded as a mean to rejoin with God (or were worshipped instead of him), including theurgy, or philosophical magic. Theurgy, which was aimed at purifying the soul and reuniting it with the divine, had a central place in the works of the Platonists who followed Plotinus. Intriguingly, More accepted the theoretical premises of theurgy, i.e., the ontological continuity between the natural and the divine worlds, but condemned its practice, which involved the deification of daemons and minor gods. This criticism can be fully understood only if looked at within the context of More’s iconoclastic polemic against the Roman Catholics.

2.1  Saving the Enchanted World The growing process of intellectualization and rationalization does not imply a growing understanding of the conditions under which we live. It means something quite different. It is the knowledge or the conviction that if only we wish to understand them we could do so at any time. It means that in principle, then, we are not ruled by mysterious, unpredictable forces, but that, on the contrary, we can in principle control everything by means of calculation. That in turns means the disenchantment of the world. Unlike the savage for whom such forces existed, we need no longer have recourse to magic in order to control the spirits or pray to them (Weber 2004, 12–13).

With the striking expression ‘disenchantment of the world’, in 1917 the German philosopher and political scientist Max Weber denounced the cynical approach A. Corrias (*) School of Historical and Philosophical Inquiry, The University of Queensland, London, UK e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 D. Hedley, D. Leech (eds.), Revisioning Cambridge Platonism: Sources and Legacy, International Archives of the History of Ideas Archives internationales d’histoire des idées 222, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22200-0_2

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which brought human beings to brutally deprive nature of all aspects of irrationality, mystery, magic and spirituality until it became a mass of lifeless matter. Even though, for Weber, this process of disenchantment had been at work for a thousand years, the seventeenth century no doubt represents its most crucial moment. It was then that spiritual forces were officially banished from nature. The emergence of a new attitude towards both the human mind and the world promoted by momentous intellectual events such as Cartesian dualism and mechanical philosophy and the separation of physics from metaphysics operated by modern science had the ‘de-­ spiritualization’ of matter as one of their most important consequences. Cartesian dualism, in particular, with the belief that cogitation (res cogitans) and matter (res extensa) were two separate dimensions of reality had a great deal of responsibility in giving rise to an image of the world as a highly sophisticated mechanical system. The publication in 1651 of Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan marked another important stage in the advancement of a mechanist and deterministic view of the world. What is more, mechanism, in Hobbes’s philosophy, reverberated heavily in other fields which were more directly concerned with the innermost nature of man, such as theology and eschatology, for he went as far as to endorse mortalism when he denied that the human soul was inherently immortal. As a result of the increasing influence of dualism and mechanism, all those aspects of reality which were not ‘clear and distinct’, as Descartes would have it, became profoundly unfashionable and deemed unworthy of scientific concern. One of the fiercest critiques of what Weber, three centuries later, would have defined the ‘disenchantment of the world’ is Henry More’s The Immortality of the Soul, published in London in 1659, in the heyday of Cartesianism and Hobbes’s mechanism, when the newly philosophically established ontological separation of spirit and matter was about to shape Western thought. More’s treatise can be seen as a cry of protest against the rapid development of this mechanist trend, which was becoming increasingly popular in the most diverse fields, from metaphysics to chemistry, from medicine to ethics.1 More sets up a tenacious defence of the ontological and epistemological connection of the two res and of the presence of spiritual forces in the life of nature. His philosophical claims were supported by continuous recourse to a rich repertoire of anecdotes about preternatural and supernatural phenomena, involving ghosts, daemons and spirits of all sorts, as well as by an erudite use of sources. A quotation from Diogenes Laertius’s Life of Pythagoras on the front-page of The Immortality of the Soul reveals More’s intention to give historical evidence to his belief in a highly populated spiritual world and in its web of exchanges with the world of human beings: The air is full of souls which are called daemons or heroes; these are those who send men dreams and signs of future diseases and health, and not to men alone, but to sheep also and cattle as well; and it is to them that purifications, and lustrations, all divination, omens and the like, have reference (Diogenes Laertius 1925, 2:349).

1  On More’s view of spirit and matter and his relationship with mechanical philosophy see see Gabbey (1990), Hall (1990), Henry (1986), Leech (2013), Popkin (1990), and Reid (2012).

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The idea that the universe is structured according to different levels of life and intelligence – only one of which is represented by human minds – and that there are continuous and fruitful interactions between these levels was a momentous topic in ancient metaphysics and cosmology. The idea that disembodied souls mingled with souls trapped in matter was already well defined in Pythagorean works, but developed into a form of speculative daemonology – as a sort of philosophical subfield – within the Platonic tradition, especially through the works of the Middle Platonists, such as Plutarch, Apuleius, Maximus of Tyre, and Numenius of Apamea, who showed a great fondness for daemons, their place in the universe and their interactions with humans. Daemons were the needed intermediaries between two opposite ends of a universe in which nature developed according to a principle of continuity of being which allowed no gaps between different levels of reality.2 Written in the second century, Apuleius’s De deo Socratis contains ‘the most complete connected version of Middle Platonic demonology extant’, which can be seen also as an exhaustive introduction to the daemon lore in antiquity (Dillon 1977, 320). Apuleius’s daemonology rested on the belief that since no empty spaces were allowed in nature, each region of the universe had to have its proper inhabitants; hence daemons had their natural dwelling place in the region between the earth and the moon. Because of its importance in the development and transmission of ancient daemonology, De deo Socratis deserves a long quotation: There are certain divine middle powers, situated in this interval of the air, between the highest ether and earth, which is in the lowest place, through whom our desires and our deserts pass to the Gods. These are called by a Greek name daemons, who, being placed between the terrestrial and celestial inhabitants, transmit prayers from the one, and gifts from the other. They likewise carry supplications from the one, and auxiliaries from the other, as certain interpreters and saluters of both. Through these same daemons, as Plato says in the Banquet, all denunciations, the various miracles of enchanters, and all the species of presages, are directed. Prefects, from among the number of these, providentially attend to every thing, according to the province assigned to each; either by the formation of dreams, or causing the fissures in entrails, or governing the flights of some birds, and instructing the songs of others, or by inspiring prophets, or hurling thunder, or producing the coruscations of lightning in the clouds; or causing other things to take place, by which we obtain a knowledge of future events (Apuleius 1822, 298–99).

Later philosophers such as Porphyry, Iamblichus and Proclus, up to the eleventh-­ century Byzantine Greek thinker Michael Psellus inherited this strong fascination with the elusive world of daemons and their commerces with both gods and men and refer to a complex system of daemonic beings as to a well-structured part of the universe. In his De abstinentia ab esu animalium, for example, Porphyry articulates an extensive description of daemons, which were said to partake enthusiastically in animal sacrifices, taking great pleasure in blood and in the impurities resulting from them. This kind of daemons, Porphyry believed, have a great deal of responsibility in the mental and physical ill-being of most people, by contributing to the pollution 2  According to Andrei Timotin the idea of the daemon as metaxy, as intermediary between men and the gods originates in a Platonic context and has been ascribed to the Pythagoreans by later sources. See Timotin (2012, 45–46). On the daemon in ancient Pythagoreanism see Détienne (1963).

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of their minds and bodies with their evil influence. With Iamblichus, Porphyry’s student, interactions between gods, daemons and men became an essential part of the soul’s theurgic ascent to the divine, and the ontological province of the ‘daemonic’ expanded until it gave legitimate access to the most various types of disembodied beings, such as intra mundane gods, angels, daemons and heroes. The world of his De mysteriis Aegyptiorum, allegedly written as an answer to Porphyry’s criticism of theurgy contained in the Letter to Anebo, is a magical kingdom, inhabited by many minor deities and spiritual beings which continuously engage in favourable exchanges with human souls. Over a century later, this view was fully elaborated by Proclus, head of the Platonic Academy in Athens, who organized the daemonic in an ordered hierarchical taxonomy, in which each rank of spiritual beings had its specific place in the cosmos, some ruling the region of the celestial fire, others that of the air, and others that of the earth. In the Middle Ages Platonic daemonology found a great advocate in Psellus, whose work De operatione daemonum was widely referred to in the Renaissance and contributed significantly to inform theories of magic and witchcraft. In the Renaissance the view of the natural world still rested on the belief that the metaphysical wholeness of the universe relied on different degrees of life and intelligence, as is evident in the writings of the Italian humanist and philosopher Marsilio Ficino, who translated into Latin and interpreted most of Plato’s dialogues. Additionally, he translated excerpts from Porphyry’s De abstinentia, a number of sections in paraphrase from Proclus’s commentary on Alcibiades I – to which he gave the title De anima et daemone –, an extract from his De arte hieratica, entitled De sacrificio et magia, produced a paraphrase of Iamblichus’s De mysteriis and translated Psellus’s De operatione daemonum. As emerges from his reception of these texts, (which deal mainly with daemonology), but also, for example, from his commentaries on Plato’s Sophist, Timaeus and Phaedrus and on Plotinus’s Enneads, Ficino’s philosophical involvement with daemons goes well beyond exegetical purposes and shows that in the fifteenth century the idea of the ‘daemonic’ was not only philosophically seductive, but still theoretically persuasive. In his commentary on the Phaedrus, echoing his famous Platonic predecessors, Ficino describes an orderly structured and efficiently organized hierarchy of spiritual beings, which he refers to as ‘daemons’: After these [the gods], however, follow the hosts of individual divinities in all the world’s spheres: these are commonly called daemons. Though in Iamblichus, Syrianus and Proclus they are distributed into particular orders – into gods, archangels, angels, daemons, principalities and heroes – yet all these particular divinities are, I repeat, commonly named daemonic, and they follow the universal gods. The ample providence in the gods’ possession these daemons have already allotted among themselves after its distribution. Various daemons minister to various gods; or, if many serve the same gods, yet different daemons perform the different offices of the same god (Ficino 1981, 93).3

3  On Ficino’s daemonology see Allen (1984, 3-22), (1989), (1993), (1994), Corrias (2013b), De Gandillac (1960, 85–109), Giglioni (2011), Guyot (2003), and Toussaint (2009) and (2012).

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This interest and fascination in spiritual beings, as we have said, progressively declined in the seventeenth century with the emergence of a new attitude towards the natural world which was deeply indebted to the spirit of Cartesianism. The laws of physical causality discovered by modern science and grounded in the principles of mechanical philosophy allowed no place for daemons, who were expatriated to the unlawful domains of magic and occultism. Yet, at the beginning of the second half of the seventeenth century, in the intellectual milieu of Cambridge University, and within the most intense philosophical and theological debates on the existence of God and the ultimate fate of the human soul, the philosopher and theologian Henry More was still claiming a legitimate place for spiritual beings within the physical world. His ontology, grounded as it was on the belief in a vital union between the two res vindicated the pervasive presence of spirit within matter. His dialogue with the past, moreover, revealed a great sense of historical and epistemological continuity, in which the sources he quoted found a particularly suggestive voice. In this context, More’s reception of late ancient daemonology acquires an intriguing metaphysical scope, for in his critique of contemporary materialism and mechanism daemons were called on to prove the ultimately spiritual nature of matter.

2.2  The Lure of the ‘Daemonic’ and its Place in the Universe More’s philosophy has been so closely linked to his interest in spirits of all sorts and in their lives and activities that it was long confused with a disguised form of occultism. Not surprisingly, in the ‘Introduction’ to his The Cambridge Platonists, published in 1980, Costantinos A. Patrides describes More as a bizarre and old-fashioned scholar who, notwithstanding many unsuccessful efforts to do serious philosophy, would indulge in a perverse interest for the occult: More’s assertions of the infinitization of space entitle him to be ranked as a philosopher. His concepts influenced many other serious thinkers, most notably Newton. It is however necessary to remember that even as More was raising to the apex of his philosophical endeavours, he was also falling into belief in spiritualism, occultism, witchcraft. His indulgence in these perversities sets him quite apart from the other Cambridge Platonists, in a manner distressingly reminiscent of Iamblichus’s deviation from Neoplatonism through its practice of theurgy (Patrides 1980, 31–32).

Patrides goes on to say that More’s attempts ‘to explain his uncritical fondness for the occult’ with philosophical arguments were unnerving (Patrides 1980, 32), clearly targeting More’s choice to make the ‘preternatural’ part of natural philosophy. More’s choice, indeed, must have appeared disgracefully out of fashion in an epoch in which ‘serious thinkers’  – as Patrides defines More’s contemporaries (Patrides 1980, vii) – were actually grounding their philosophical inquiries on the sharp division between the pole of the ‘natural’ and that of the ‘supernatural’, which obliterated the cosmological scope of the ‘preternatural’. For More, by contrast, daemons, ghosts and the like were active members of the physical world and their

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nature was worthy of the most sophisticated philosophical and scientific investigations. A haunted world was a world intimately connected to God, as he makes clear in the well known closing passage from his Antidote against Atheism: ‘For assuredly that saying was nothing so true in Politicks, no Bishop no King; as this is in Metaphysicks No Spirit, No God’ (More 1655, 164). What is more, in his introductory letter to Joseph Glanvill’s Saducismus Triumphatus, one of the early modern period’s most influential books on daemonology and witchcraft, published posthumously in 1681, More openly declares that ‘stories of witches and apparitions do a real service to true religion and sound philosophy’, as they prove wrong those atheists that are ‘as much afraid of the truth of these stories as an Ape is of a whip’ (More 1700, 9). Hence, he claims: I look upon it as a special piece of Providence that there are ever and anon such fresh examples of Apparitions and Witchcrafts as may rub up and awaken their bennumed and lethargick mindes into a suspicion at least, if not assurance that there are other intelligent beings besides those that are clad in heavy earth or clay (More 1700, 9).

More’s arguments to show the metaphysical relevance of the appearance of daemons and disembodied souls, however, appear to be completely groundless for Patrides, who concludes: ‘Henry More, I fear, could not always tell a hawk from a handsaw’ (Patrides 1980, 32). Notwithstanding this misconceived  – yet surprisingly resilient  – reading of More’s engagement with daemonology, daemons play a serious metaphysical role in his philosophy: their nature as the metaxy, the mediation, is a structural element of his cosmos, so essentially pre-modern and closely resembling to that of Iamblichus and Ficino; daemons’ spiritual bodies divested of matter and yet able to enjoy pleasures and to suffer from pains, their silent voices – to be heard only by those who have access to their intermediary action – were natural consequences of a world in which spirit was mingled with matter. In this sense, More is a fully-fledged Platonist, a passionate reader and an heir of the late ancient Platonists whose works had been disclosed by Ficino. Daemons floating in the lower region of the air provided an answer to the questions about the reality of life after death and the ultimate fate of the soul, because the ‘daemonic’, for the Platonists, was first of all a metaphysical state, a mode of existence which announced the possibility of different levels of being. After all, the innermost meaning of the Greek word δαίμων describes exactly the state of the soul out of the body, regardless of its degree of emancipation from matter and of its moral attributes. It is to this meaning that More refers in his An Explanation of the Grand Mystery of Godliness, published in 1660, while discussing pagan daemonology. The connection between the ‘daemonic’ and the physical state of disembodiment had been highlighted by many Greek and Roman thinkers, including the first century Hellenistic Jewish thinker Philo of Alexandria. Philo had produced a synthesis of Judaism and Greek philosophy by interpreting biblical thought in philosophical terms and his views, which attempted to bridge reason and faith, certainly appealed to More, who quotes him on different occasions. Philo tried to reconcile biblical angels and Platonic daemons, claiming that there was no essential d­ ifference

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between them. They were all spiritual beings, created by God and through whom God continued to exercise his action within the natural world. In his De Gigantibus, a commentary on Genesis VI.1–4, for example, he writes: ‘If you realize that souls and demons and angels are but different names for the same one underlying object, you will cast from you that most grievous burden, the fear of demons and superstition’.4 This underlying object was none other than disembodied being, or the soul out of the body. In defending the identity of substance between angels, daemons and souls, Philo aimed at showing that evil daemons were simply souls who made wrong choices, dismantling, in this way, superstitious daemonology. More, likewise, points out that the ‘daemonic’ refers to every and each kind of ‘disembodied’ nature, which finds evidence on a linguistic level: Haply δαίμων may well derive from the Greek verb δαίω, divido in Latin, it signifying the very same that anima separata (More 1660, 93).

More also identifies daemons and souls  by calling upon sources from a more genuinely Platonic side, such as Plutarch, who believed that ‘souls freed from their bodies become demons or genii and that they goe up and down the earth as being observers and rewarders of the actions of men’ (More 1660, 93).5 Plutarch’s fellow Platonist Maximus of Tyre, More says, makes the same effort to prove that ‘δαίμωνες or genii are nought but the souls of men departed, who are occupied much-what in such emploiments as they were in the flesh’ (More 1660, 93).6 Given the general consent of sources, therefore, it looks like in late antiquity disembodiment was regarded as the main ontological feature of daemons, whereas their main function was the metaxy, the mediation between opposite ends of the universe: By δαίμωνες or daemons I mean their Dii medioxumi, i.e., middle gods, or rather those spirits that were mediators (as I may so call them) betwixt the supreme deities and men. According to this sense is that of Plato in his Symposion, i.e., ‘God intermingles not himself with man, but all the converse and conference betwixt the gods and men is performed by daemons’. The same philosopher says plainly and expressly that these δαίμωνες receive the prayers and oblations that men make, and present them to the gods, and bring back form them rewards and injunctions which they communicate some way or other to men (More 1660, 92–93).7

A fervent partisan of Platonic daemonology, More revived interest in the dii medioxumi, which are familiar presences in his philosophical system. He defended the metaphysical legitimacy of their spiritual extension and made great efforts to assert their right to inhabit the ontological province of disembodied being. Hence, in his writings, separate souls are extended spiritual substances, with specific individual features, including physical appearance, for they can be more or less beauti4  Philo of Alexandria, De Gigantibus, 20. On Philo’s views of angels and daemons see Calabi (2008, 111–25), Dillon (1983) and Nikiprowetsky (1980). 5  See Plutarch, De genio Socratis, 593d-594a 6  See Plutarch, De genio Socratis, 593d-594a and Maximus of Tyre, Oratio IX, 6a-g. 7  See Plato, Symposium, 202e. It must be said that the identification of disembodied souls and daemons is first introduced by the Middle Platonists, for Plato seems to suggest that they are different species. See Dillon (1983, 199).

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ful ‘according to the degrees of virtue and moral affections in them’ (More 1712a, 194).8 Also, they ‘are capable of love, of joy, of grief, of anger’ and are able ‘to imagine, to discourse, to remember’ as well as to converse with one another ‘concerning the nature of things, whether moral, natural, or metaphysical’ (More 1712a, 198). Moreover, they experience ‘both injury and punishment’ and since they are endowed with reason, ‘they cannot fail to mould themselves into some political form or other’ (More 1712a, 204). More’s description of the airy region buzzing with life is an important aspect of the early modern legacy of late ancient Platonism, with its detailed account of a multi-layered and highly organized community of disembodied souls. In dealing with theurgy, nevertheless, More does not show the philosophical detachment of Ficino, who always took care to come across as an objective exegete. More, by contrast, shows the confidence and enthusiasm of one who, on more than one occasion, has happened to socialise with daemons. At the same time, though, he seems very concerned about not letting daemonological discussions trespass into the province of religion, which he believed, could give rise to dangerous forms of idolatry. For this reason, despite his renowned – and widely criticised – interest in daemons, his attitude towards theurgy is cautious and at times even disapproving.

2.3  Daemons, Ensouled Statues and the Spectre of Idolatry Since post-Plotinian authors integrated theurgy into the Platonic tradition, with the aim of enabling the connection – and, ultimately, the unification – with the divinity on earth, the philosophical legitimacy of theurgical rites has been extensively discussed. Most famously, Eric R. Dodds and Pierre Hadot claimed that theurgy had perverted the highly theoretical approach of Greek philosophy by introducing elements of magic, superstition and irrationalism.9 Theurgy, however, as understood by Iamblichus, was aimed both at luring the divine down to earth – often into material forms – and at intensifying the connection between the worshipper and the divinity. In this sense, it was a form of religion, different from and opposite to magic. Theurgy reached one of its most striking forms of expression in the practice of ‘statues animation’, in which a small token placed inside the statue of a god was thought to make the statue come alive, after it had been purified and made fit to host the divinity by the theurgos. This practice, known also as ‘telestic art’ was based on the idea of a cosmic sympathy, according to which the parts of the universe are connected to 8  When they are truly beautiful, separate souls can really mesmerize those who look at them, for their supple bodies can be easily shaped by their moral nature and good will: ‘For if virtue and vice can be ever seen with outward eyes, it must be in these aereal vehicles, which yield so to the will and idea of good and pure affections, that the soul in a manner becomes perfectly transparent through them, discovering her lovely beauty in all the efflorescencies thereof, to the ineffable enravishment of the beholder.’ See More (1712a, 194). 9  See Dodds (1947), and Hadot (2009, 38).

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their corresponding gods, for ‘all things are bound up in the gods and deeply rooted in them.’10 In his A Modest Inquiry into the Mystery of Iniquity, as part of his long discussion of paganism and idolatry, More discusses whether Proclus’s discussion of the animation of statues can be regarded as idolatrous: Upon this ground, that there is such a close concatenation of terrestrial with celestial, and of celestial with supercelestial essences, as also such a particular respect or harmony of several of the one with several of the other, he [Proclus] would insinuate to us that there is a secret method of framing a magical statue out of certain choice materials; which divine symbols rightly mingled, an adapted into an image consecrated by some mysterious priest or magus, will become unum talem qualem divinum existit secundum essentiam, and therefore by power of cognation and similitude will not fail to fetch down Jupiter Olympius himself from his highest or inmost supercelestial throne, and make him vitally actuate this divine statue in such sort that the statue and divinity it self shall become one visible Jupiter (More 1708a, 404).11

A sarcastic tone is easily perceived here. The theurgical animation of statues in which material objects were worshipped as though they were the true God, in More’s view, was an inexcusable form of idolatry. It did not matter if the people involved in these rituals  – the theurgos, the onlookers and the philosopher who reported them  – had a sound notion of the unicity of the divine principle, as the Platonists did. Their attempts to imprison God in matter and worship a statue instead of him, smacked too much of idolatry. And alluding to Proclus, More writes: ‘If ignorance would excuse from idolatry, philosophers will be the only men that will be found capable of that crime’ (More 1708a, 404). More’s condemnation of these rituals suggests that, for him, inquiries into the nature of spiritual forces should be kept entirely within the limits of the philosophical discourse and daemons should by no means be invested with divine power, summoned upon or worshipped in a religious context. This is a fascinating, yet controversial, aspect of the relationship between More and some of his Platonic sources, perhaps those ones which inspired him the most. On the one hand, his belief in the essential union of the divine and earthly worlds and his acceptance of specific late ancient doctrines, such as the soul’s astral body, shows the post-­Platonic dimension of his thought.12 On the other hand, though, he strongly disapproves of all those forms of hieratic practice in which spiritual entities were invested with divine power. Two centuries earlier Ficino had to face a similar challenge when he

 Proclus, prop. CXLIV, trans. E.R. Dodds in Proclus (1963, 127). On Proclus’s attitude towards theurgy see, especially, Sheppard (1982). 11  The Latin quotation is from Ficino’s translation of Proclus’s On the Hieratic Art, as is evident also by the fact that More refers to this work with the title given to it by Ficino, i.e., De sacrificio et magia. See Ficino (1576, II:1929). 12  The astral or spiritual body was an inner body, made out of a semi-material substance, which the soul acquired before becoming embodied and retained after death. See Leech (2011). For a history of this doctrine and its use in different authors see Corrias (2012) and (2013a), Di Pasquale Barbanti (1988), Dodds (1963), Finamore (1985), Hankins (2005), and Kissling (1922). 10

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found himself juggling Platonism and Christian theology.13 Nevertheless, Ficino’s attitude towards theurgy, as we said, was quite different. He was, no doubt, seduced by the theurgical lore of most of his Platonic predecessors to such an extent that he went as far as to father upon Plotinus a complex daemonology, even though in the Enneads we find no philosophical concern with daemons  understood as separate beings. He also entitled the third book of his famous work De vita, published in 1489, De vita coelitus comparanda (On how to Obtain Life from the Heavens), which sounds like a more or less explicit tribute to Iamblichus’s plan of marrying the divine and the human worlds through theurgy. In this work, writing on statue animation at times Ficino shows an enthusiasm which seems to lean perilously toward heterodoxy.14 However, he generally managed to keep a cautious attitude and made great efforts not to blur the boundaries between textual interpretation, Platonism and Christian theology. It is interesting to note that on no occasion did his prudence result in a fully formulated form of condemnation of theurgy, as happens in More. This may well be because his concern with pagan rituals could be easily justified by the need to be as loyal as possible to the spirit of the texts he was translating. ‘Marsilio is not approving magic and images but recounting them in the course of an interpretation of Plotinus’, he writes of himself in the Apology to his De Vita (Ficino 1989, 397). Ficino was, no doubt, a devoted Christian; in 1473 he was ordained a priest and later became a canon of Florence’s cathedral. Admittedly, the priestly aspect is a distinctive mark of his intellectual persona. More’s concerns with religious matters, however, went beyond those of a committed Christian and even beyond those of a minister of the Church, for he was a militant theologian, so to speak. He was actively involved in the doctrinal debates of his time against the Roman Catholic Church, which he would attack on the usual contemporary grounds. Among the charges against the Catholics, idolatry had a prominent place. The debate over the use of images in worship, which had characterized the Protestant Reformation since the very early years of Luther’s polemics against Rome, revived in England in the second half of the seventeenth century, during a period of sharply increasing anti-Catholicism. Events such as the Gunpowder Plot in 1605, the marriage of Charles I with Henrietta Marie of France, a devout Catholic, in 1625, and the reforms in ecclesiastical polity introduced by the Archbishop of Canterbury, William Laud, contributed to fuel fears that Catholicism was shortly to be restored. In this context, the controversy over the veneration of images flared up. Iconoclasm became an important aspect of Protestant identity, giving rise to a great number of theological treatises, some advocating and others opposing the religious use of icons.15 Like many other theologians of his time, More expressed his view against idol worship in a short pamphlet, originally entitled A Brief Discourse of Idolatry, published in 1669, which then became An Antidote Against Idolatry. This short tract was reissued in 1672 as part of More’s A Brief Reply to a Late Answer,  On Ficino and theurgy see Giglioni (2012).  For example: Ficino (1989), bk.3:20 and bk.3:26, 350, 388. 15  On the iconoclastic debate in sixteenth and seventeenth-century England see Aston (1989), Bates (2016), Collinson (1997), and Davis (2016). 13 14

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which was translated into Latin for his Opera Omnia in 1675, and then reappeared in English in his Theological Works in 1708. The criticism contained in An Antidote Against Idolatry and explicitly aimed at ‘putting a stop as much as may be to the Romish Infection’ (More 1708b, 771)  aroused the indignation of John Walton, a Catholic controversialist and member of the Society of Jesus, who replied to More with A Brief Answer to the Many Calumnies of Dr. Henry More, published in 1672.16 Writing about More, Walton says that ‘Fame speaks him a great philosopher’ whose ‘publick works are said to avouch no less’ and who was named ‘The great restorer of the Platonick Cabbala’ (Walton 1672, 2). However, More would have been much wiser, Watson says, if he had refrained from getting involved in theological debates he was not skilled enough to master, ‘for as much as his late unlucky engaging in controversial disputes, cannot but prove a blot to his former undertakings: for the learned world must need acknowledge that Dr More the controvertist, is much degenerated from Dr. More the philosopher’ (Walton 1672, 2). More, in turn, produced a point-by-point rebuttal of Walton’s charges in A Brief Reply to a Late Answer, where he reiterates his condemnation of what he regarded as a vulgar form of idol worship, which he compares with pre-Christian forms of paganism. Writing to his pupil and friend Ann Conway in 1670, More describes the strong contempt in which he held his opponents: ‘The foul image of ungodly and imposturous religion of the Papists I heartily detest, and it is out of love to them that I have so plainly sett out the uglinesse of it before their eyes’ (Hutton 1992, 504). In the seventeenth century, nevertheless, the Catholics were not the only ones to have restored paganism. For More, the so-called ‘Enthusiasts’, dissenting Protestants who based their faith on a direct connection with God rather than on the observance of rituals and churchgoing, were also guilty of pathetic forms of idolatry.17 They disgracefully subscribed to ‘the gross principles of the ancient pagan superstition and idolatry’, following ‘not the guidance of reason, but the strength of fancy’ (More 1712b, 34). In fact, the Enthusiasts’ most blameful crime was their acceptance of the metaphysical premise of theurgy: the existence of a chain of sympathy linking together all parts of the world and all levels of life. Or, to be more precise, their fanciful claim that this universal network of sympathies explained and justified the direct presence of God in every object of nature; a claim that implies a form of pantheism and, ultimately, of atheism. Quoting the Roman poet Lucan on ‘Jupiter est quodcunque vides (it is Jupiter all you see)’, More claims that cosmic sympathy relies on the idea that ‘God is nothing else but the universal matter of the world, dressed up in several shapes and forms, in sundry properties and qualities’ (More 1712b, 34). This, he goes on, is tantamount to a slaughtering and an annihilation of God, for ‘to slice God into so many parts is to wound him and kill him, and to make no God at all’ (More 1712b, 34).18

 On the dispute between More and Walton see Budick (1970, 219ff.).  On More’s crusade against the Enthusiasts see Crocker (1990), Dockrill (1985), Fouke (1997), and Heyd (1995). 18  See Lucan, Pharsalia, 9:580. 16 17

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It is interesting how More, who included vitalistic views into his philosophy, and in fact built his metaphysics on the belief in the coexistence of spirit and matter, was nevertheless concerned that placing the divine principle within the created world would bring about no little danger. His ‘Plotinianism’ informed his belief in an ever-­ active – though mediated – presence of the divine principle in nature. Nevertheless, he was anxious about the consequences which this belief could have in a religious context, especially for those, like the Enthusiasts, who were prone to use their frenzied imagination instead of reason. In other words, More embraced the metaphysical grounds of theurgy and endorsed its ultimate purpose, i.e., the soul’s union with God. However, he remained circumspect about relocating the theory and practice of theurgy in religious context. He showed a similar attitude as regards daemonology, an equally, if not more, suspicious territory. As we said, he made no secret of his fondness for daemons which, however, did not stop him from making outspoken claims against devotional practices in which minor deities were worshipped in lieu of the one God.19 Theurgic rituals of late antiquity, even if espoused by respected Platonists, fell within this category: I thought I spoke sufficiently home in saying they [i.e. the heathens] gave religious worship to these, which is at least equal to the calling of them Gods, especially in Greek and Latine. For as much as θεοὶ and Dii in the Greek and Latine signify as large as Elobim in the Hebrew which signifyes angels or particular spirits as well as the eternal God the maker and Governour of all. And so does θεοὶ and Dii signify all invisible Spirits, δαίμονες separate souls from δαὶω divide or separate, because they are separate from the Terrestrial body. And θεός also is said of a separate soul amongst the Pythagoreans; and Synesius himself also says, θεός ἐν θεοὶς χαρέυσας that he would be an Angel or a blessed Spirit amongst the blessed Spirits. Wherefore Dii, θεοὶ, δαίμονες which we usually translate Gods, the words of themselves imply no more than Angels or souls separate. But if Religious Worship be given to them, then they become Gods (More, 1672, 24–25).

The polemic against the Roman Catholic Church’s worship of idols reveals an interesting, and perhaps unexpected, aspect of More’s ambivalent attitude towards the theurgical enthusiasm of the Platonici who came after Plotinus: the disapproval of daemonic partnership in religious context. In More’s universe daemons were an essential component of the natural world, living beings who, in a way or another, would find themselves hobnobbing with men, for the simple fact that daemons and men inhabit the same space, the former having their permanent residence in the region of the air, the latter in that of the earth. But air and earth were neighbouring and, as a consequence, offered plenty of possibilities for trans-border contacts. Hence, in their comings and goings daemons and men would often come upon one another and engage in mutual dealings. Witchcraft and magic, as well as speculative daemonology, reflected the theoretical need to explain this ontological neighbourhood. Partnership with daemons was so natural, for More, that he did not hesitate to admit the possibility of sexual intercourse with them:  More was the first to introduce the term ‘monotheism’ as an antonym to polytheism and atheism. See More (1660, 62): ‘But thus to make the World God, is to make no God at all; and therefore this kinde of monotheisme of the Heathen is as rank Atheisme as their Polytheisme was proved to be before.’ See also More (1660, 188).

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That the Genii or Spirits which Antiquity called Gods, may impregnate women so, that they may bring forth children without the help of a man seems not to me to be at all incredible (More 1660, 94).

After all, he says, William Harvey clearly explained that the male seed had no responsibility in producing and shaping the foetus, but ‘like the flint and steel only sets the tinder on fire’ (More 1660, 96). Likewise: The pagan gods, when they had to do with women needed no ambages as ordinarily men imagine, viz., first to play the succubi and then the incubi, that is, first to receive the seed of the man, having transformed themselves into the shape of a woman, and then to transfuse the seed into the womb of a woman, after they had changed themselves into the form of a man. For it is not the matter of the seed, but a grateful contact or motion fermenting or spiriting the place of conception that make the female fruitful (More 1660, 67).

Ancient stories of spiritual beings falling in love with humans, so popular in pagan mythology, are not only fascinating: they are highly plausible. However, daemonic partnerships of any kind should be established and kept outside the field of religious devotion, in order to avoid the risk of falling into wicked forms of idolatrous confusion between daemons and God. More says: ‘So reasonable is this opinion of the pagan concerning the intercession of the genii; but their worshipping of them is no less rash, they having no sufficient warrant for so foul a superstition’ (More 1660, 65). More was deeply concerned about the spectre of atheism which creeping in religious practices where intermediate beings – whether amulets, statues or daemons – played an active role in the soul’s reunion with God. Yet, the haunting prospect of atheist idolatry was not relegated within the field of theurgic magic. For a fervent Christian who was at the same time a committed Platonist, the risk of falling into polytheism lurked hidden within the metaphysical architecture of the post-Platonic cosmos. In the True Intellectual System of the Universe, his magnus opus published in 1678, More’s complatonicus Ralph Cudworth acknowledged the same potential pitfall stemming from the metaphysics of later Platonism. He suggested that the emanationist system in itself implies the urge to fill the immense gaps between hypostases with divine life. The Platonists, he says, could have confined the divine to the first and highest hypostasis, but this would have been ‘monstrously absurd to them’ (Cudworth 1837, 1:779). On the contrary, by creating the concept of Soul of the World  – or ‘third hypostasis’  – they brought the divine down to the material world and ‘designedly lay a foundation for their polytheism and creature-worship (now vulgarly called idolatry) that is, for their cosmolatry, astrolatry, and demonolatry’ (Cudworth 1837, 1:777–78). In late antiquity the increased philosophical interest in intermediate beings coincided with the intensification of religiously oriented attempts to establish meaningful connections with them. Ficino, the first to translate the works of the later Platonists, was keenly aware of the weak boundaries they had established between metaphysics and religious worship. Afraid of being himself accused of overstepping these boundaries, in the Apology to the De vita he distances himself from any form of magic which is ‘practiced by those who unite themselves to daemons by a specific

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religious rite, and, relying on their help, often contrive portents’.20 Almost two centuries later, Platonism was still being regarded suspiciously and the integrated view of philosophy, theology and magic which emerged in late antiquity still needed to be handled delicately, at least by those who, like Cudworth and More, were theologians and ministers of the Church as well as Platonists.

2.4  Conclusion In her analysis of the Cambridge Platonists’ engagement with the politics of their time, Sarah Hutton rightly observes that historians have downplayed ‘the vicious hostility of the campaign against Cudworth, More and their Cambridge allies’ by treating it as a chapter in the history of Latitudinarianism (Hutton 2011, 175 n.75). Admittedly, the Cambridge Platonists were less cautious than Ficino in their treatment of daemonology and unorthodox positions such as, for example, the pre-­ existence of the soul. However, as Hutton makes clear, for a long time they had to endure the strong criticism and hostility of the Anglican establishment (Hutton 2011, 175).21 In this context, the much debated topic of theurgy has a peculiar place. Unexpectedly enough, More was not himself accused of reviving interest in the hieratic art; instead, he became the accuser of those who – in the manner of the late ancient Platonists and of contemporary Catholics  – believed in the possibility of getting access to God through the interceding action of intermediate entities, let alone the pantheistic frenzy of the Enthusiasts. He establishes a sharp distinction between the philosophical legitimacy of daemons and their unlawful presence in the field of liturgical theology. As we have seen, in his painstaking criticism of Roman Catholicism, Proclus is defined an inexcusable idolater. Hence, in the seventeenth century theurgy was fiercely attacked by one of the most committed advocates of the philosophical relevance of daemonology. This is because More the philosopher regarded the reality of separate souls of all sorts as a natural consequence of the coexistence in the world of spirit and matter. More the Anglican controversialist, by contrast, did not accept their worship or involvement in devotional practices. Likewise, he did not let cosmic sympathy account for the efficacy of divine agency. From a philosophical point of view, More was surely drawn towards theurgy. Despite his lifelong crusade against pantheism, he accepted the metaphysical and cosmological basis of theurgy, especially the conviction that higher and lower levels of reality are bound together, albeit through the Spirit of Nature. His design of the universe allowed for divine influence to reach down to matter and secured a ­legitimate place for spiritual agents in the natural world. However, he showed no tolerance towards divine rituals which could lead to forms of daemonolatry, even if they were advocated by respectable Platonists such as Iamblichus, Proclus and Ficino. 20 21

 Ficino, ‘Apology’, in De vita, p. 399.  On More’s heterodoxy see Crocker (2003, 93-119).

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More’s attitude towards the theurgical trends of late ancient Platonism, moreover, suggests an ambiguous relationship with his Platonic sources which, if fully explored, could contribute considerably to our knowledge of his complex intellectual identity. He was no doubt attracted by the enchanted world of Iamblichus’s hieratic art and of Proclus’s prophesying statues. By bringing together philosophical rationality and religious inspiration, theurgy seemed to offer the possibility of marrying the material and the spiritual worlds; a possibility that suited quite well More’s attempts to prove the Cartesian dualism and Hobbes’s materialism were metaphysically unsound. Yet, throughout his career, More’s main concern remained atheism. The existence of God, which was being called into question by the emerging philosophical trends and coming under the threat of a Catholic restoration, was to be defended, in a philosophical as well as in a theological context. The later Platonists certainly had profound insights into the true nature of things and their philosophy splendidly described the ontological bonds between the natural and the supernatural. Nevertheless, theurgy seemed to encourage an irrational – and often irreverent – attitude towards the divine, which could result in wicked forms of idolatry. For a Christian Platonist like More this risk was as dreadful as the ones posed by mechanism, for both idolatry and mechanism would eventually led to atheism. More’s discussion of theurgy reveals different fascinating features of his complex intellectual personality built on the legacy of Plotinus, informed by a profound religious afflatus, but armed with a militant resistance against those who denied the true nature of God, whether these were the Cartesians or the Catholics. The dii medioxumi were no doubt important figures in a Platonic universe. In this sense, the universe of More is no exception. In fact, daemons’ ethereal and airy bodies accounted for the existence of spiritual extension, the most important element of More’s metaphysics, understood as an immaterial, yet indivisible and penetrable, substance. Their perceivable presence and dealings with humans were evidence of that spirituality that Cartesian dualism and Hobbesian mechanism were threatening to banish for the world. Daemons, however, just like men, were ‘creatures’ of God and, as such, there was no place for them on the altars. To summon or to deify them during forms of religious rite, for More, was a form of ‘spiritual fornication’ which, he says, is ‘committed where we worship any thing besides Him that is the Creator and Conserver of all things’ (More  1708a, 406). A crime of which the successors of Plotinus were no less guilty than contemporary Roman Catholics.

Bibliography Allen, Michael J.B. 1984. The Platonism of Marsilio Ficino: A study in his Phaedrus commentary, its sources and genesis. Berkeley: University of California Press. ———. 1989. Icastes: Marsilio Ficino’s interpretation of Plato’s Sophist. Five studies and a critical edition with translation. Berkeley: University of California Press. ———. 1993. Ficino and the tutelary spirit. In Il Neoplatonismo nel Rinascimento. Atti del convegno internazionale Roma-Firenze 12–15 dicembre 1990, ed. P.  Prini, 173–184. Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana.

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———. 1994. Summoning Plotinus: Ficino, smoke and the strangled chickens. In id., Plato’s third eye: Studies in Marsilio Ficino’s metaphysics and its sources, 63–88. Aldershot: Variorum. Apuleius. 1822. De deo Socratis. In Metamorphosis, or, golden ass, and philosophical works of Apuleius, trans. T. Taylor. London: Printed by J. Moyes. Aston, Margaret. 1989. Iconoclasm in England official and clandestine. In Iconoclasm vs art and drama, ed. Clifford Davidson and Ann Eljenholm Nichols, 47–91. Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications. Bates, Stephen. 2016. Salvatrix mundi? Rejecting the redemptive role of the virgin Mary. In Sin and salvation in Reformation England, ed. Jonathan Willis, 139–156. London/New York: Routledge. Budick, Sanford. 1970. Dryden and the abyss of light: A study of ‘Religio Laici’ and the ‘hind and the panther’. New Haven/London: Yale University Press. Calabi, Francesca. 2008. God’s acting, man’s acting: Tradition and philosophy in Philo of Alexandria. Leiden/Boston: Brill. Collinson, Patrick. 1997. From iconoclasm to iconophobia: the cultural impact of the second English reformation. In The impact of the English reformation, 1500–1640, ed. Peter Marshall, 278–307. London: Arnold. Corrias, Anna. 2012. Imagination and memory in Marsilio Ficino’s theory of the vehicles of the soul. The International Journal of the Platonic Tradition 6: 81–114. ———. 2013a. The spiritual body: Porphyry’s theory of the ochêma in Ralph Cudworth’s true intellectual system of the universe. In Literary, philosophical, and religious studies in the Platonic tradition, ed. John F. Finamore and John Phillips, 83–106. Sankt Augustin: Academia. ———. 2013b. From daemonic reason to daemonic imagination: Plotinus and Marsilio Ficino on the soul’s tutelary spirit. British Journal for the History of Philosophy 21: 443–462. Crocker, Robert. 1990. Mysticism and enthusiasm in Henry More. In Henry More (1614–1687): Tercentenary studies, ed. Sarah Hutton with a bibliography by Robert Crocker, 137–156. Dordrecht: Kluwer. ———. 2003. Henry More, 1614–1687:Biography of the Cambridge Platonist. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Cudworth, Ralph. 1837. The true intellectual system of the universe. 2 Vols. New York: Gould and Newman. Davis, David J.  2016. From icons to idols: Documents on the image debate in Reformation England. Eugene: Pickwick. De Gandillac, Maurice. 1960. Astres, anges et génies dans Marsile Ficin. In Umanesimo e esoterismo, ed. E. Castelli, 85–109. Padua: Cedam. Détienne, Marcel. 1963. La notion de daïmôn dans le pythagorisme ancien. De la pensée religieuse à la pensée philosophique. Paris: Les Belles Lettres. Di Pasquale Barbanti, Maria. 1988. Ochêma-pneuma e phantasia nel Neoplatonismo. Aspetti psicologici e prospettive religiose. Catania: Cuecm. Dillon, John. 1977. The middle Platonists. 80 B.C. to a.D. 220. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. ———. 1983. Philo’s doctrine of angels. In Two treatises of Philo of Alexandria: A commentary on ‘De gigantibus’ and ‘quod deus sit immutabilis’, ed. David Winston and John Dillon, 197–205. Chico (CA): Scholars. Dockrill, David W. 1985. Spiritual knowledge and the problem of enthusiasm in seventeenth century England. In The concept of spirit, ed. David W. Dockrill and R.G. Tanner, 147–171. Auckland: Prudentia University of Auckland. Dodds, Eric R. 1947. Theurgy and its relationship with Neoplatonism. The Journal of Roman Studies 37: 55–69. ———. 1963. Appendix II: the astral body in Neoplatonism. In Proclus, Elements of theology, 313–21. Ficino, Marsilio. 1576. Opera omnia. 2 vols. Basel. ———. 1981. Commentary on the Phaedrus. In Marsilio Ficino and the Phaedran charioteer, trans. and ed. Michael J.  B. Allen, 65–129. Berkeley/Los Angeles/London: University of California Press.

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———. 1989. Three books on life, trans. and ed. Carol V. Kaske and John R. Clark. Binghamton: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies. Finamore, John F. 1985. Iamblichus and the theory of the vehicle of the soul. Chico (CA): Scholars Press. Fouke, Daniel C. 1997. The enthusiastical concerns of Dr. Henry More: Religious meaning and the psychology of delusion. Leiden: Brill. Gabbey, Alan. 1990. Henry More and the limits of mechanism. In Henry More (1614–1687): Tercentenary studies, 19–36. Giglioni, Guido. 2011. Coping with inner and outer daemons: Marsilio Ficino’s theory of the imagination. In Diseases of the imagination and imaginary disease in the early modern period, ed. Yasmin Haskell, 19–51. Turnhout: Brepols. ———. 2012. Theurgy and philosophy in Marsilio Ficino’s paraphrase of Iamblichus’s De mysteriis aegyptiorum. Rinascimento, 52: 3–36. Guyot, Mathieu. 2003. Marsile Ficin, commentaire du traité de Plotin sur le ‘démon qui nous a reçu en partage’. In Les dieux de Platon, ed. Jérôme Laurant, 263–286. Caen: Presses Universitaires de Caen. Hadot, Pierre. 2009. The present alone is our happiness: Conversations with Jeanne Carlier and Arnold I. Davidson, trans. Marc Djaballah and Michael Chase. Stanford (CA): Stanford University Press. Hall, A.  Rupert. 1990. Henry More and the scientific revolution. In Henry More (1614–1687): Tercentenary studies, 37–54. Hankins, James. 2005. Marsilio Ficino on reminiscentia and the transmigration of souls. Rinascimento 45: 3–17. Harvey, William. 1651. Exercitationes de generatione animalium. Amsterdam: Lodewijk Elzevir. Henry, John. 1986. A Cambridge Platonist’s materialism: Henry More and the concept of soul. Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 49: 172–195. Heyd, Michael. 1995. Be sober and reasonable: The critique of enthusiasm in the seventeenth and early eighteenth century. Leiden: Brill. Hutton, Sarah. 1992. The Conway letters. Rev. ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ———. 2011. A radical view of the Cambridge Platonists. In Varieties of seventeenth and early eighteenth-century English radicalism in context, ed. Ariel Hessayon and David Finnegan, 161–182. Farnham: Ashgate. Kissling, R.C. 1922. The ochêma-pneuma of the neo-Platonists and the Insomniis of Synesius of Cyrene. American Journal of Philology 43: 318–330. Diogenes Laertius. 1925. The Lives of eminent philosophers, trans. R. D. Hicks. 2 vols. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Leech, David. 2011. Ficinian influence on Henry More’s argument for the soul’s immortality. In Laus Platonici philosophi: Marsilio Ficino and his influence, ed. Stephen Clucas, Peter J. Forshaw, and Valery Rees, 301–316. Leiden: Brill. ———. 2013. The hammer of the Cartesians: Henry More’s philosophy of spirit and the origins of modern atheism. Leuven: Peters. Lucan. 1928. The civil war (Pharsalia). Trans. J. D. Duff. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Maximus of Tyre. 1997. The philosophical orations. Trans. M. Trapp. Oxford: Clarendon Press. More, Henry. 1655. An antidote against atheism. London: James Flesher. ———. 1660. An explanation of the grand mystery of godliness. London: James Flesher. ———. 1672. A brief reply to a late answer to Dr. Henry More his antidote against idolatry. London: printed for J. Redmayne. ———. 1700. ‘Letter’. In J. Glanvill Saducismus triumphatus, or Full and plain evidence concerning witches and apparitions, 1–10. London: printed for A.L. and sold Roger Tuckyr. ———. 1708a. A Modest Inquiry into the Mystery of Iniquity. Part I. In The Theological Works, 389–515. London: printed for Joseph Downing.

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———. 1708b. An antidote against idolatry. In The theological works, 771–802. London: printed for Joseph Downing. ———. 1712a. The immortality of the soul. In A collection of several philosophical writings. London: printed by Joseph Downing. ———. 1712b. A brief discourse of enthusiasm. In A collection of several philosophical writings. London: printed by Joseph Downing. Nikiprowetsky, Valentin. 1980. Sur une lecture démonologique de Philon d’Alexandria, De gigantibus 6–11. In id., Études philoniennes, 217–242. Paris: Cerf. Patrides, C.A. 1980. The high and airy hills of Platonisme: An introduction to the Cambridge Platonists. In The Cambridge Platonists, ed. C.A.  Patrides, 1–41. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Philo. 1929. On the giants (De gigantibus). Trans. Colson F. H. and G. H. Whitaker. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Plutarch. 1959. On the sign of Socrates (De genio Socratis). In Moralia VII. Trans. Phillip H. De Lacy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Popkin, Richard H. 1990. The spiritualist cosmology of Henry More and Anne Conway. In Henry More (1614–1687): Tercentenary studies, 97–114. Proclus. 1963. The elements of theology. Trans. E. R. Dodds. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Reid, Jasper. 2012. The metaphysics of Henry More. Dordrecht: Springer. Sheppard, Anne. 1982. Proclus’ attitude to Theurgy. The Classical Quarterly 32: 212–224. Timotin, Andrei. 2012. La démonologie platonicienne. Histoire de la notion de daimōn de Platon aux derniers néoplatoniciens. Leiden/Boston: Brill. Toussaint, Stéphane. 2009. Ficino und das Dämonische. In Platon, Plotin und Marsilio Ficino. Studien zu den Vorläufern und zur Rezeption des Florentiner Neuplatonismus, ed. Maria-­ Christine Leitgeb and Herbert Bannert, 137–145. Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Walton, John. 1672. A brief answer to the many calumnies of Dr. Henry More, in his pretended antidote against idolatry. London: [s. n.]. Weber, Max. 2004. Science as a vocation. In The Vocation lectures, ed. David Owen and Tracy B. Strong, trans. Rodney Livingstone. Indianapolis: Hackett.

Chapter 3

Cambridge Platonism(s): John Sherman and Peter Sterry Eric Parker

Abstract  Scholarly treatments of Peter Sterry and the Cambridge Platonists often view their reception of Platonism as radically different from their Puritan or Calvinist contemporaries. This essay focuses on three individuals, John Sherman, Girolamo Zanchi, and Peter Sterry, in order to clarify the variety of opinions regarding the value of Platonism for Christian theology among Protestant theologians in the Early Modern period. An example of this comes from John Sherman’s use of the Reformed scholastic, Girolamo Zanchi in a treatise that he delivered in the Trinity College chapel in 1641. In this treatise entitled A Greek in the Temple, Sherman argues for a pious reception of pagan wisdom based on the concept of perennial philosophy, ideas which led the early twentieth century historian J.B. Mullinger to conclude that Sherman was the original influence behind Cambridge Platonism. Yet, Sherman claims to receive many of these ideas from Zanchi, an Aristotelian who recommends Ficino and Steuco’s works in his writings and refers to Plotinus as “homo Christianus.” Peter Sterry was likely  familiar with Zanchi, though Sterry takes greater liberty in the ideas that he borrows from the Platonists and he rejects the Aristotelian method in favor of the method of coincidence similar to that used by Nicholas Cusanus. In 1641 a rather obscure Fellow of Trinity College named John Sherman published a lecture (or ‘common places’) that he had delivered in the college chapel entitled A Greek in the Temple (Sherman 1641). The published treatise is an exposition of St. Paul’s notorious ‘Areopagus Address’ recorded in the Acts of the Apostles, chapter 17. Sherman focuses his discourse on Paul’s use of the phrase ‘For we are indeed His offspring,’ a quote from the pagan poet Aratus. The Apostle’s ‘conversion’ of pagan poetry into sacred Scripture provides the model, Sherman believes, for how Christians should relate to pagan literature. For, every person has access to the light of reason, which is a ‘subcelestiall starre in the orb of the microcosme, God’s voice, man’s usher in the school of the world’ (Sherman 1641, 1). Pagans not only share E. Parker (*) Faculty of Religious Studies, McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 D. Hedley, D. Leech (eds.), Revisioning Cambridge Platonism: Sources and Legacy, International Archives of the History of Ideas Archives internationales d’histoire des idées 222, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22200-0_3

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the natural light of reason but figures such as Pythagoras, Hermes Trismegistus, and Plato had access to the books of Moses ‘and peradventure had learned some notions from the Jews’ (Sherman 1641, 30). Sherman also hints that one might give a ‘very favourable and charitable’ conclusion concerning the ‘eternall state and condition of those Heathens’ (Sherman 1641, 30). Sherman’s promotion of ‘pious philosophy’ and the microcosmic nature of the human person bears resemblance to the Platonism of Marsilio Ficino. This similarity led one early twentieth century historian to conclude that Sherman was the original influence behind Cambridge Platonism (Mullinger 1917, 8:317).1 Although there is no evidence that Sherman’s address influenced the Cambridge Platonists, his sources point to a line of influence not often considered by historians. For, Sherman does not directly rely on Ficino for his understanding of pia philosophia but on Girolamo Zanchi, one of the most celebrated Reformed scholastics of the sixteenth century. By examining the Platonism of Sherman (via Zanchi) and comparing it to the Platonism of the Cambridge Platonist, Peter Sterry we will see a prevalence of various Platonisms at Cambridge in the early seventeenth century and that Sterry’s philosophy is distinguished from Sherman’s by the former’s more radical turn away from Aristotelian methodology.

3.1  The Platonism of John Sherman via Girolamo Zanchi The primary source of Sherman’s Platonism in his Cambridge address is Girolamo Zanchi, who was an Italian Reformed theologian and former Augustinian monk, converted to Protestantism by Peter Martyr Vermigli his teacher and former prior of the monastery of San Frediano in Lucca. After fleeing from the Inquisition Zanchi initially landed in Strasbourg along with Vermigli and taught Aristotle’s Physics at the academy there. He later became famous after succeeding Zacharius Ursinus in the chair of theology at the University of Heidelberg, whereupon he became one of the foremost defenders of orthodoxy against Socinianism.2 Zanchi’s works were officially promoted by the Synod of Dort and his name is frequently cited by English theologians in the seventeenth century, including textbooks used by students at Cambridge (Burchill 1984).3 His renown at Cambridge is also revealed by the fact that Sherman refers to him merely as ‘Zanchy’ (or ‘Zanchius’). Vermigli and Zanchi were both trained in the via Thomæ at the University of Padua. Apparently, Zanchi was also attempting to mold his own theological writings into a Protestant Summa Theologiæ before his death in 1590.4 Like Thomas, Zanchi 1  For treatments of Sherman’s treatise see Roberts (1969, 208–09); Dockrill (1988); and Levine (1992). 2  On Zanchi’s influence in the controversy over Socinianism see Merkle (2015). 3  Keckermann, for example, refers to Zanchi as one of the greatest Reformed ‘philosophers’ (1607, 95); On Keckermann’s importance in the curriculum at Cambridge, see Costello (1958). 4  See Donnelly (1976); One should note that Zanchi is often very critical of Aquinas, usually regarding his theology and not for issues arising from his metaphysics.

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is an Aristotelian with some affinity for Augustinian or Porphyrian Platonism (Hankey 2011). Zanchi’s Aristotelianism is eclectic, as is characteristic of Renaissance Aristotelians as well.5 He was familiar with the syncretic goals of the ancient Neoplatonists as well as Renaissance Platonists like Cardinal Bessarion and Ficino.6 Vermigli likely encouraged him to read Simplicius and Ammonius on the harmony of Aristotle and Plato as Vermigli recommended these authors to his students at the Strasbourg Academy.7 Though Vermigli criticizes Plato’s theory of Ideas because of its obscurity, he attempts to read Plato in more Augustinian terms, as he concludes that the Ideas of things are not separable from the essence of God but are rather exemplar causes – this is quite similar to Ammonius’s view as well (Vermigli 2011, 227). Partly due to the influence of his teacher, whom he calls ‘patre meo observandissimo,’ (Zanchi 1554, fol. 4) Zanchi’s Aristotelianism often shows a certain ‘Neoplatonic coloration’ (Schmitt 1983, 163). In this way his writings are similar to Renaissance Aristotelians as well as the English Aristotelian John Case, who cites Vermigli as an authority in his Speculum quæstionum moralium (Case 1585, 402). In 1554 Zanchi published an edition of Aristotle’s Physics to accompany his lectures. The preface to the volume, written by Zanchi, amounts to a seventy page justification for the Christian use of pagan philosophy, specifically natural philosophy. He argues that natural philosophy, as it is elucidated in the writings of Plato and Aristotle – this includes the Neoplatonic commentaries of Themistius, Ammonius, and Simplicius – and corrected by Holy Scripture and the church fathers, is a noble and pious exercise. The study of nature, Zanchi explains, leads one to ascend to the knowledge of God’s existence.8 It also enables one to know oneself. Zanchi recalls that the Platonists distinguish between three worlds: the angelic, celestial, and sublunar worlds, yet the human person inwardly contains all of them. And so, ‘it is fitting for man to know himself and the other worlds, who is certainly a microcosm (μικρόκοσμος) and in whom are contained the relics of three worlds.’9 Natural philosophy also has theological merit, for, ‘Who cannot see how useful (nay, I must say, necessary!) is the knowledge of natural things for rightly understanding the Scriptures?’ One cannot rightly understand the creation narrative of Genesis chapter one, the natural meaning of scriptural metaphors, and the virgin birth of Christ, if one has not studied the natural world that forms the basis of such terms and events. Zanchi argues that the study of nature is also useful (and necessary) for rightly developing piety. As Simplicius explains (per Zanchi), Aristotle teaches that philosophia physica leads one to contemplate the separate form of the soul and then  On the variety of Aristotelianism in the Renaissance see Schmitt (1982).  Zanchi is familiar with the famous debate between Bessarion and Trabizond on the unity of Aristotle and Plato. See Zanchi (1554, fol. 150). 7  Vermigli refers to Ammonius’s Περὶ ἑρμηνείας in Vermigli (2011, 236). 8  ‘[P]rima utilitas est quod per hanc, nempe rerum naturalium scientiam, tanquam per scalam quandam ad Dei cognitionem amoremque ascendimus’ Zanchi (1554, fol. 22). 9  ‘Quæ cum ita sint, decet hominem quippe qui sit μικρόκοσμος & in quo tres reliqui mundi contineantur, reliquos mundos, et seipsum agnoscere’ Zanchi (1554, fol. 14). 5 6

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‘enflames our souls for the worship of divine majesty.’10 Some say that the use of pagan authors is untrustworthy because it places too much trust in the inventions of impious persons. However, Zanchi responds, ‘I deny that [philosophy] was first invented by men, but I contend that it was first revealed by God, then it was increased by human study’ (1554, fol. 9). God first revealed this pia philosophia to Adam who then passed it down after the fall to the Chaldeans and through them to the Hebrews, then to Thales, Anaximander, Xenophanes, Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle, and others (1554, fol. 7). After granting such high (though cautious) praise of pagan philosophy it comes as no surprise that one of Zanchi’s students, Johann Hasler, later used Zanchi’s preface to defend the thesis that ‘Aristotle may have possessed a saving knowledge of the Trinity,’ to which Zanchi objected.11 Sherman culls from Zanchi’s later works in his exposition of St. Paul’s sermon, primarily his De Tribus Elohim (1572), De Natura Dei (1577) and De Operibus Dei intra Spacia Sex Dierum Creatis (1591). In these works Zanchi claims that many of the better philosophers read the books of Moses. The ancient Greeks, including Plato and Iamblichus, understood the meaning of the divine name ‘Jehovah’ which they received from Egyptian religion (Zanchi 1590, 29). All of the most eminent ancient philosophers held to the same opinion concerning the unity of God. Whether Orpheus, Homer, Sophocles, Pythagorus, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle et alia, the best philosophers were monotheists. Zanchi gives direction to those who would like to read more concerning the unified voice of the philosophers, saying, ‘let them read Agostino Steuco’s On Perennial Philosophy’ (Zanchi 1589, 13). Steuco not only confirms to Zanchi that some pagans understood the nature of the true God but that they also knew something about the Trinity. Those wanting ‘a compendium of those testimonies’ concerning the Trinity, Zanchi says, should read Steuco, who ‘has diligently compiled and arranged them in a beautiful order.’12 Plato also understood the divinity of the Holy Spirit, which he referred to as the ‘World Soul,’ and Hermes Trismegistus knew about the Spirit as well from Moses.13 Zanchi likely sees a connection between Plato and the Hermetic literature because of Steuco’s book as well, which he believes is a modern confirmation of the teaching of the church fathers on perennial philosophy.14  ‘Aristoteles quoque ipse (ut etiam refert Simplicius) docuit hanc philosophiam physicam eo spectare, ut ad cognitionem substantiæ animi, & ad cognitionem separatarum formarum nos ducat, ac denique ad divinam maiestatem, eiusque, cultum, animos nostros accendat’ Zanchi (1554, fol. 26). 11  See Archives du chapitre de St. Thomas, 354, 37-48, cited in Burchill (1984, 190, ft. 18). 12  ‘Si quis velit compendium horum testimoniorum, diligenter collectum, & pulchro ordine dispositum, legat Augustin. Steuchi, Eugubini episcopi libros de perenni philosophia’ Zanchi (1589, 313). 13  ‘Ac mirabilia sunt, quae Trismegistus de hoc Spiritu, de quo Moses, scripta reliquit in suo Asclepio, qui est de voluntate Dei. Latinè sic habent: Spiritu augetur, & gubernatur omnis in orbe species. Spiritus implet omnia. Mundus nutrit corpora, Spiritus animas. Spiritu ministrantur omnia, & vegetantur in Mundo’ Zanchi (1589, 264). 14  Compare Steuco: ‘Plato igitur, cuius ferme fluxit omnis ex fontibus Mercurii Theologia, qui priscæ Philosophiæ studiosissimus fuit … Adeoque clare Trismegistus de creatione scripsit, ut 10

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When Sherman comes to explain the manner of the soul’s creation, that is, how we are ‘His offspring’ (via Aratus), he lists a summary of seven opinions concerning the origin of the soul from both pagan and Christian authors (Sherman 1641, 63). The list that he provides is taken from Zanchi’s treatise ‘On the Soul’ from De Operibus Dei. Sherman argues that the soul is created by God out of nothing, and in lieu of a formal defense of this view claims, ‘we need not make a distinct proving … since we have Zanchie for our praecedent’ (Sherman 1641, 65). He also follows Zanchi in finding corroboration for this view among the ancient philosophers. Even though some believed that God created the soul out of the elements or within the soul of Christ, all agree that God is the author of the soul, as ‘Learned Zanchy quoteth Pythagoras, Epictetus, Trismegist, Simplicius, Zoroaster, Aristotle’ (Sherman 1641, 73). Zanchi’s opinion appears to Sherman to include the best summary of ancient wisdom and the principles of reason, and so, the best explanation of Aratus’s phrase as used by St. Paul. ‘Zanchie believeth that this was Aratus his meaning, not onely, That God was the first and universall cause of the soul, as he is of the body and all things else, but, That the substance of the soul is not made of the Elements or of any heavenly substance, but that it is a creature absolutely divine’ (Sherman 1641, 76). Zanchi not only quotes from the Neoplatonic commentators on Aristotle but he also refers to Plotinus in his works. He is aware that Aristotelianism has led certain individuals to propound ideas that contradict Christian doctrine, particularly Pietro Pompanazzi and Simone Porzio. Zanchi turns to the Platonists to combat these modern materialists. In De Natura Dei, he commends Plotinus’s Ennead on providnce, saying, ‘among the writings of the philosophers I think nothing more outstanding and divine can be read concerning providence than the two books by Plotinus on the matter in the third Ennead.’15 In De Operibus Dei, Zanchi explicitly commends Plotinus’s Enneads on the heavens, on eternity and time, on providence, and on the immortality of the soul. Quite contrary to Augustine’s portrayal of Plotinus in The City of God, Zanchi is convinced that he was a Christian and a contemporary of Origen the church father (Augustine 1998, 8:12). He refers to Plotinus as ‘homo Christianus,’ and commends his conclusions on the origin of the heavens.16 Zanchi’s opinion of other Platonists is also higher than one might imagine for an Aristotelian and a Calvinist. In a short treatise on prophecy (Divinatione per Furorem) Zanchi quotes numerous times from Iamblichus’s De Mysteriis, a work that was given its title and first published in the West by Ficino. In this passage quod a nonnullis Græcis est observatum, etiam simplices Mosis dictiones Hebraicas Graece scriptas, cuius linguæ, quippe quæ materna esset, non fuit ignarus, usurpavit’ Steuco (1578, 128); with Zanchi: ‘Atque etiam haec omnia eò pertinent, ut appareat à Gentib. quoque melius intellecta fuisse Prophetarum oracula, quàm à nostris haereticis. Affirmat enim Iustin. Philosophus & Martyr, Platonem, & alios quaecunque scripserunt de Deo, vera; ea. illos accepisse ex libris Mosis’ Zanchi (1589, 313). 15  ‘[I]nter scripta Philosophorum nihil ego praestantius, diviniusque de providentia legi, quàm duos Plotini hac de re libros in Enneade tertia’ Zanchi (1590, 386). 16  ‘Quam sententiam ipse etiam Plotinus homo Christianus, in lib. de Cœlo defendit’ Zanchi (1591, 366).

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Iamblichus argues that those who receive prophecies in their sleep are never truly asleep but are elevated beyond the body to view divine visions. Zanchi responds to this quote to say that ‘these words do not appear to me to be those of a Platonic philosopher but those of a most divine Christian.’17 He acknowledges that Iamblichus was not a Christian but rather a Platonist, yet Zanchi regards the Platonists such as Iamblichus as philosophical authorities. This is to be expected since, ‘God has revealed many excellent things to these men’ (Zanchi 1619, 8:27). Though he prefers Aristotle to Plato for pedagogical reasons, Zanchi often holds Plato in higher regard than Aristotle because, ‘Holy scripture favors Plato’s conclusions more than Aristotle’s.’18 He does not accept the opinions of Plato or Aristotle without criticism, but he favors Plato more than Aristotle in general. After all, Plato appears to corroborate the scriptural doctrines of the Trinity, the immortality of the soul, and, on the creation of the universe ex nihilo. Surprisingly, Zanchi says that Aristotle is misguided in his interpretation of Plato’s Timaeus, when he claims that Plato argues that the universe was created out of preexisting matter; rather, says Zanchi, Plato teaches in the Timaeus that God created the universe out of nothing (ex nihilo), an interpretation likely inspired by both Ficino and Steuco (Zanchi 1591, 31; Ficino 2001, 18.1.1; Steuco 1578, 7.5.f.). While examining Zanchi’s De operibus Dei one notices from the beginning that he organizes the work (which spans over 1000 folio pages) around the concept of the human person as a microcosm. He divides the book into three parts, which he labels: 1. Περί τῶν ἀοράτων (on invisible things) 2. Περί τῶν ὁρατῶν (on visible things) 3. Περί τοῦ ἀνθρώπου ὁρατού τε καὶ ἀοράτου (on man, both visible and invisible) This division corresponds to Zanchi’s use of the ‘three worlds’ of the Platonists and the function of natural philosophy in enabling one to know oneself. Since each person has both a spiritual part and a material part then humanity inwardly combines all other worlds. Zanchi finds this concept in both Gregory of Nyssa and Proclus. He argues: It is clear that of all things created by God (from those things prior to man to the natures of hidden things above) were summed up and held together in man, that is in the body of Adam that was given so great a soul. And all things were depicted or rather engraved in him as in a small tablet, so that man, because he has communion with everything in the universe, should worthily be called a ‘little universe’, that he might attain every creature by name on any occasion. Proclus the philosopher says the same in his commentary on the Timaeus of Plato, saying, ‘all such things subsist in man partially, as the world contains divinely and completely.’ However, the soul is not worthy by itself to be called a ‘little universe,’ since the natures of the elements or of other bodies are not in it. Likewise, the body by itself without the soul is not worthy to be called by such a great name.19  ‘Mihi videntur verba non Platonici Philosophi, sed divinissimi Christiani’ Zanchi, (1619, 8:27).  ‘Scriptura sancta autem magis favet Platonis quam Aristotelis sententiae’ Zanchi (1591, 366). 19  ‘Est autem manifestum, rerum omnium a Deo ante hominem conditarum naturas, ad extremum in homine, hoc ist, in corpore Adae, tali anima praedito, fuisse summatim collectas: & ceu in brevi 17 18

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Here Zanchi shows his indebtedness to both a Christian and Neoplatonic anthropology. The Mosaic philosophy reveals that Adam was created to be a microcosm and the mediator of both heaven and earth and that he must in some sense contain all things within himself in a way that is similar to God. According to Zanchi, God is the exemplar cause of all created things, possessing their ideas within himself. Here Zanchi refers explicitly to Plato’s doctrine of the ideas, affirming that ‘the exemplar of the whole universe existed within God previously and from eternity, then the summation of the universe was copied into man (consisting of body and soul) by God almost in the same way that a seal is copied into the wax’ (Zanchi 1591, 863). Zanchi also uses the concept of man as μίκροκοσμος to explain the relationship between sense perception and knowledge. He affirms: But it is the nature of the human intellect to seek to know that which is below itself and that which is within itself, but also that which is above itself. For if man was created to know God, much more is he able to know himself and corporeal things. And also the most important part of the image of God is stored in this place, for which man was created. For like is not known unless by means of like. Therefore, man was made a ‘little universe’ in order that he may know the whole universe.20

Zanchi uses the Plotinian principle that ‘like is known by means of like’ to argue that the human mind achieves knowledge by turning away from sensible images to recollect the principles of all existing things within itself, though these principles are ‘common notions’ and so not purely innate.21 Since God knows all things by reflecting on himself, and since man is made in his image, then man knows God by reflecting on the universe within himself.22 Though Zanchi sees man as a kind of co-exemplar with God and refers specifically to Plato’s theory of the ideas, his epistemology reflects contemporary concerns and betrays his indebtedness to Marsilio Ficino. In his treatise, ‘On the Soul’ which spans over 200 folio pages within De Operibus Dei, Zanchi reaches the climax of his running argument for the immortality of the soul. In this treatise Zanchi follows Thomas Aquinas’s psychology of the tabella depictas, imo insculptas: ita ut homo, quia cum rebus omnibus mundi communionem habet: merito parvus mundus appellari solitus sit: & nomine omnis creaturae saepenumero veniat. Ideo & Proclus Philosophus in Timaeum Platonis, ἔπι καὶ ἐν τούτω (ἀνθρώπῳ) πάντα μερικῶς· ὅσα ἐν τῷ κόσμῳ θείως τε καὶ ὁλικῶς· Sine corpore autem, sola anima parvi mundi nomine digna non est: cum in ea. non sint Elementorum naturae, aliorumve corporum: sicut & solum corpos sine anima, tali nomine appellari nequit’ Zanchi (1591, 863). 20  ‘Est autem ea. humani intellectus natura, ut cognoscere queat & quae infra se, & quae intra se, & vero etiam, quae supra se sunt. Si enim creatus est, ut cognoscat Deum: multo magis, & se, & res corporatas cognoscere potest. Atque hac etiam in re sita est non minima pars imaginis Dei, ad quam homo creatus est. Simile enim non nisi a simili cognoscitur. Ideo homo factus quoque est μικρόκοσμος: ut posset totum Mundum cognoscere’ Zanchi (1591, 800). 21  For Plotinus, there is a likeness of the Principle in the soul that excites the mind to ascend beyond itself to its Source. See Plotinus (1966–1988, 6.9.11). 22  ‘Et tantam quidem nobis facultatem intelligendi donavit: ut, si omnia possent actu in anima esse, per species suas (ut Philosophi vocant) intelligibiles: omnia etiam intelligeremus: & anima fieret omnia, Quanto magis igitur Deus, in quo sun actu omnia, omnia etiam intelligit?’ Zanchi (1590, 180).

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soul fairly closely but he also draws on Ficino, recommending numerous passages of the Platonic Theology to his readership to corroborate his arguments on the immortality of the soul. Zanchi’s main argument for the immortality of the soul is also the same as Ficino’s, that is, that the soul must be immortal because the intellect is capable of contemplating immortal substances (Ficino 2001, 1). Both Zanchi’s attempted solution to the mind/body problem and epistemology are similar to Ficino’s. Zanchi follows Thomas Aquinas in holding that the human soul is an intellectual substance and (per Aristotle) the ‘form’ of the body. Since the soul is a substance it is per se subsistens and thereby capable of surviving death (Aquinas 1956, 1.75.2). The problem with this definition of the soul, for Aquinas’s purposes, is that it appears more dualistic (Platonic) than hylomorphic (Aristotelian), since it was only the Neoplatonic interpreters of Aristotle - reading Plato back into Aristotle who argued that the soul was capable of subsisting on its own apart from the body. Aristotle only hints that this is possible and only for τὸν ποητικὸν νοῦν, that is, the active intellect (De Anima 3.5). Aristotle’s interpreters attempted to clarify the obscure passages in the Stagerite’s oeuvre regarding the soul. Alexander of Aphrodisias, for example, claims that the agent intellect is not actually part of the soul but is God himself acting within the soul. Simplicius (or rather the Pseudo-­ Simplicius) uses a term coined by Aristotle to describe the general nature of souls (including animals) as actualizing corporeal matter, that is, the term ἐντελέχεια or ‘perfection’ (Blumenthal 1985, 98). Aristotle only used ἐντελέχεια in reference to the parts of the soul whose actions make use of bodily organs. Simplicius, however, argues that both νοῦς and the irrational soul have their own ἐντελέχειαι. Zanchi also refers to the soul as the ἐντελέχεια of the body, noting that Aristotle only used this term in reference to the lower parts of the soul (Zanchi 1591, 815). He argues, however, that the whole soul (including the intellective, sensitive, and vegetative parts) is the ἐντελέχεια of the body and is immortal and thereby separable from the body. Zanchi claims that Aristotle does not necessarily disagree with this use of ἐντελέχεια because in the De Anima he says that the soul is the ‘principle … by which we understand’ (1591, 703). Zanchi is only able to find corroboration for his view of the intellect in a couple of brief passages in Aristotle, which he uses as proof texts for the harmony of Aristotle and Plato, frequently noting that ‘the clearest of the philosophers agree’ (1591, 808). Ultimately, Zanchi’s solution to the mind/body problem is more dualistic than Aristotle’s. In his De religione Christiana fides Zanchi says that human beings have two existences (ὑφιστάμενα), a corporeal ὑφιστάμενα and a spiritual ὑφιστάμενα. This duality is proven, he argues, by the fact that Adam’s body was created before it received its substantial form in the rational soul (Zanchi 2007, 536). In his De operibus Dei, rather than relying solely on the opinion of the philosophers, Zanchi models the division of the human person into soul and body on Chalcedonean Christology. He asserts that the body has its own esse and the soul its own esse and that both are united in each person in a way that is comparable to the union of Christ’s two natures in his individual person (1591, 708). Like Aquinas, Zanchi criticizes Plato and the Platonists for describing the soul as the mere captain of a ship or the inhabitant of a dwelling (1591, 708). For, the dualism proposed by the Platonists denies

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that the soul is truly the essential form of the body. Though he criticizes Plato’s opinion that the soul is ‘merely the motor of the body,’ (Zanchi 1591, 755) he also praises Plato for his view that the soul is unmixed with material existence and is immortal because it moves itself.23 He argues that Holy Scripture agrees with Plato that the soul ‘rules’ the body, as long as one does not consider the division between body and soul to be one of two separate ends but rather two different offices of the one person.24 Furthermore, Zanchi explains how the two ὑφιστάμεναι are held together by an analogy provided by the Neoplatonist Ammonius. Ammonius is quite right when he says that it is the intelligible nature of the mind that it is able to penetrate the body while retaining its purity, involving itself in what is discerned by the illumination of the air. For incorporeal light pouring into corporeal air illuminates it but is in no way polluted by it.25

Zanchi argues here that the soul forms the body as light forms the air without being in any way polluted by it, an analogy that seems to further distance Zanchi from the psychology of Aquinas, since it posits soul and body as separate substances, while nonetheless, having a single telos. One can see Ficino’s influence here, namely, in that Ficino (before Zanchi) also expanded upon the psychology of Thomas Aquinas to recognize a more substantial division between body and soul. Specifically, Zanchi uses Ficino’s concept of the ‘vital’ or ‘animal spirits’ as a quasi-spiritual element within the blood of the heart and brain that mediates between the body and the soul. For Ficino, this element is necessary to corroborate his argument that the soul is immortal and thereby does not depend upon the body in any substantial way (Walker 2000, 3–59). Ficino argues that these ‘spirits’ cause a harmony between the body and the soul, and they account for the soul’s lower vital functions so that using the spirits ‘as a mean [the soul] totally permeates the body’ (2001, 7.6.1) without being mixed within it. The exterior senses receive the images of external objects, these images are then impressed upon the inner senses, which in their turn stir up the spirits which cause the blood to move into the brain and excite the thought process. Zanchi refers to the union that the spirits engender as a συμπάθεια, a term used by Neoplatonists in describing the universe as a stringed instrument in which the strumming of one string causes the

 ‘Atque hoc est argumentum Platonis, cum ideo probavit animam humanam esse immortalem, & omnino immaterialem; nimirum, quia seipsam moveat: in eligendo scilicet ac rejiciendo’ Zanchi (1591, 717). 24  ‘Plato dixit, hominem, esse ipsam animam corpus, instrumentum animae, seu hominis. Uniri itaque animam corpori, ut corpus indumento, & ut nauta navi, quam regit, & qua ad suum iter conficiendum utitur. Videntur scripturae non abludere ab hac sententia: Unde Apostolus aeit, ‘cupio hunc solvere, & esse cum Christo […] Vera haec sunt: si quoddam officium ad quod creata est anima & corpus, consideres: ut illa scilicet regat, hoc regatur. Sed si spectemus praecipuum utriusque finem, res aliter se habet’ Zanchi (1591, 789). 25  ‘Quare recte Ammonius ait, eam esse intelligibilium τῶν νοητῶν naturam ut possint corpora penetrare, & puritate sua retenta, illis sese alligare; quod in aeris illustratione cernitur. Lux enim incorporea aerem corpoream perfundens, illustrat cum ipsa tamen minime inquinetur’ Zanchi (1591, 791). 23

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tuning and vibration or συμπάθεια of the other.26 Thus, the intellect in no way uses the body for understanding the physical world but is enticed to perform its act of intellection by means of the συμπάθεια caused by the intermediary spirits. Despite Zanchi’s positive appraisal of the Platonists, he prefers Aristotle to Plato in the classroom for the same reasons given by Phillip Melanchthon. That is, Aristotle’s method is clear and Plato’s writings are more poetic and filled with ironies which are not conducive to pedagogy.27 Johann Sturm, the teacher of Peter Ramus and rector of the Strasbourg Academy, appends a response to Zanchi’s preface, wherein he defends the use of Plato in the classroom. He argues that Zanchi has not sufficiently proven that Plato’s writings are obscure. Rather, Aristotle is filled with obscurities and leaves students with very little oratory to imitate, whereas Plato was the most excellent Greek orator (Zanchi 1554, fols. 84–96). Thus, ‘Aristotle ought not to be permitted in the schools without Plato, for the one explains the other’ (Zanchi 1554, 95). So we see with both Zanchi and Sturm a high regard for Plato with a difference of opinion regarding the relative places of Plato and Aristotle in the academic curriculum. And, it is this high regard for Plato that one sees in Sherman’s address to the students and fellows of Trinity College.28

3.2  The Platonism of Peter Sterry One finds in the Cambridge Platonists some of the same ideas that we have seen in the writings of Girolamo Zanchi and John Sherman. Henry More and Ralph Cudworth were inspired by Ficino and Steuco to search for remnants of the ancient Mosaic philosophy in the religion and philosophy of the pagan nations (Hutton 1990, 61–76; Crocker 1990, 137–155). They also find a prisca theologia among the ancients, which they believe corroborates the Christian doctrines of the Trinity, the immorality of the soul, and the primacy of the intellect. The Cambridge Platonists as a whole find Platonism, especially in Plotinus, to cohere with Christian religion more easily than Aristotelianism. Henry More recalls his purchase of Plotinus’s Enneads, saying, ‘I was the first that had either the luck or courage to buy him’ (More 1694, 27). In light of Zanchi’s belief that Plotinus was a Christian, More’s claim seems either slightly exaggerated or indicative of the puritanical climate at Cambridge, which is not characteristic of Zanchi himself. For, like the Cambridge Platonists, Zanchi claims to uphold the rational principles of religion, the conclu ‘Est autem observanda mira & stupenda συμπάθεια quam Deus constituit inter cerebrum & cor: qua fit, ut sibi mutua praestent officia, ad totius corporis & animae beneficium. A corde ascendunt ad cerebrum spiritus vitales, e quibus animales gignuntur. Per animales spiritus, excitantur cogitationes, & notitiae gignuntur in mente’ Zanchi (1591, 693). 27  ‘D.  Philippi Melanthonis … doctißimus vir in præfatione Ethicorum in summa hæc dicit de Platone. primo quod is nullam artem integre: secundo neque ordine tradidit: tertio maxime operum eius pars est ironica, quæ figura ad docendum est inepta’ Zanchi (1554, fol. 33). 28  Plato’s writings were a key element in the curriculum at Strasbourg and at other schools inspired by Sturm’s pedagogy. See Spitz and Tinsley (1995). 26

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sions of the church fathers, and Holy Scriptures as the primary grounds of right religion, as Sherman attests. Their liberal spirit and their Origenism, however, certainly sets them apart from Zanchi, who criticizes Origen. Zanchi was a proponent of the Calvinist doctrines of predestination and original sin, notions that Cudworth and others turned to Platonism to mitigate (though Zanchi’s thought in these areas is as equally influenced by Thomas Aquinas as Calvin). These doctrinal differences undoubtedly stem from differences of philosophical method. As mentioned above, Zanchi continued to believe that Aristotle’s analytical method is clearer and better for teaching than Plato’s more obscure and poetic writings, despite his often positive appraisal of Platonism. The Cambridge Platonists, rather, adhered more to Plotinus and other Neoplatonists precisely for the sake of ameliorating certain aspects of scholastic Aristotelianism. One can see an example of their (perhaps radical) change of methods in Lord Brooke’s treatise The Nature of Truth, in which he criticizes the Aristotelian notion of place and time as well as logic, claiming ‘I fully conclude with Aristotle’s Adversaries Anaxagoras, Democritus, &c That Contradictions may be simul & semel in the same Subject, same Instant’ (Greville 1641, 99). Peter Sterry, who was Brooke’s chaplain, provides us with another example of this change of philosophical methods. Sterry crafts a Trinitarian method that utilizes the insights of both Proclus and Nicholas Cusanus. Sterry is often thought to differ from the other Cambridge Platonists because of his support of Cromwell as well as his mysticism and negative statements regarding the power of reason in matters of religion.29 Though he adheres to the same authorities as Zanchi (i.e., reason, tradition/experience, and Scripture), Sterry’s rejection of Aristotelian method distinguishes him from the Reformed scholastics as well as other Puritans and leads him to except certain doctrines, such as universal salvation, that Zanchi would consider to go beyond the bounds of orthodoxy (Sterry 1675, xxvii; Hickman 2011). His use of the method of coincidence, however, also sets him apart from the other Cambridge Platonists. Sterry bases his philosophical method on the Trinity and the apparent coincidence of opposites that we encounter in the unity of the three hypostases that permeate every level of reality. In his treatise on the Trinity he uses Proclus’s terminology of ὁρος, ἀπέρατον, and μικτὸν (terminus, infinity, mixture) drawn from the Platonic Theology as an evidence of the unity and diversity of the three persons of God. In this text Sterry defends his use of a ‘heathen’ philosopher saying, ‘[Proclus’s] words have pleas’d me upon two accounts; that clear agreeableness they seem to have with the Light of Reason and Revelation [..] [His] words seem to enlighten our Minds with the clearest Evidence of this Mystery, in the Truth of it … by the Suitableness  Sterry is excluded from Tulloch’s early treatment of the Cambridge Platonists, Tulloch (1872); According to Patrides (1969), N.I. Matar (1994), and others Peter Sterry does not belong among the rank of the Cambridge Platonists because he is critical of Benjamin Whichcote’s concept of the ‘Candle of the Lord’ and his liberal attitude toward reason; Greene (1991, 636-7) argues that Sterry’s ‘mystical and Platonic inclinations separated him from Whichcote as decisively as his Calvinism. He too showed little sympathy for the tradition of the candle of the Lord.’

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which they have in them to our innate Light, and the Principles of Nature in us’ (Sterry 1710, 439). He affirms that Nicholas Cusanus refers to the Trinity in a similar way in his De Docta Ignorantia (Sterry 1710, 439). Sterry himself appeals to the Trinitarian method of Cusanus in order to demonstrate the conjectural nature of human knowledge (1710, 390). He explains that one must not begin to explain the nature of reality by looking outside of oneself but by first looking to God within the soul, and God specifically as he is a Trinity (1710, 340). This means that anything that appears multiple must be reduced to the triad of unity-in-multiplicity that lies behind it, just as God is the Union (mixture) of Unity (terminus) and Variety (infinity). God is the starting point of knowledge, but the Trinitarian nature of God is set above the ‘Law of Contradictions’ because he is infinite oneness and abstraction from all multiplicity (1710, 390). Therefore, the human mind can only grasp the divine nature by means of learned ignorance, that is, by going beyond knowing and unknowing in the divine cloud that descends upon the mind by means of faith. For Sterry, then, the principles of the ‘natural man’ (reason) and the principles of the ‘spiritual man’ (faith) adhere together as a triad in the same person but as separate principles. The unity of these principles comes about by means of the intellect’s participation in the tri-unity of the divine nature. This means that Sterry’s apparent denunciations of reason are not necessarily due to his puritanical attitude but to his dialectical mysticism. As K.M. Ziebart explains, Cusanus placed faith within intellectus and above ratio so that to limit reason to its own proper sphere (i.e., bound to the law of contradictions) is not to make reason less rational but to elevate it to a higher intellectual form, namely, that of intuition and union with God (Ziebart 2014, 22). Sterry likewise places ‘spirit’ above reason in an effort to fuse the two together within the process of ascent to knowledge. Sterry appeals to Proclus for this Trinitarian method more emphatically than Cusanus, likely because of the antiquity of the former. Proclus also places limits on the ability of human reason (λόγος or διάνοια) for the sake of bringing about the unity of the soul. Since the One is ultimately unknowable, he says, it is only a ‘bastard reason’ (νόθον λόγον) that knows the One as its object of cognition (Proclus 2008, 257.25). Furthermore, Proclus subordinates human λόγος not only to νοῦς (intuitive knowledge) but also to the salvific qualities that transcend the human intellect, that is, πίστις, ἀλήθεια, and ἔρος or faith, truth, and love, which he gleans from the Chaldean Oracles (Proclus 1968, 1:25).30 Because the human intellect is ‘obscured by the body’ and the heavens are far away from us then, Proclus argues, one may only know the gods according to one’s dianoetic mode of understanding, that is, to ‘divide up what is indivisible and make temporal what is eternal,’ such as whenever one speaks of the Demiurge performing temporal acts such as ‘deliberation’ or ‘[doing] this instead of that.’31  For a brief but thorough discussion of the history of this triad in Neoplatonic philosophy see J.M.  Rist (1967, 231-246); On Proclus’s concept of ‘rational faith’ see Proclus (2008, 346.3-347.2). 31  This is how Proclus defends both Plato’s use of εἰκοτολογία or ‘likely accounts’ and myths, Proclus (2008, 351.25-351.1 and 349.1-6); See Chlup (2012, 195). 30

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Πίστις, for Proclus, is tied to the most fundamental principle of theurgy, that is, the concept of συμπάθεια or ‘sympathies’ that cause like to be attracted to like. Πίστις is an attractive force that unites all of the gods with the Good and causes ἕνωσις, or the unity of all of their powers and processions (Proclus 1968, 1:25, 110). Πίστις also unites the human soul with the Good, which contains both the Wise and the Beautiful (Proclus 2011). In this way, πίστις is more crucial than ἀλήθεια and ἔρος, the former revealing the knowledge of the universal Wisdom and the latter reverting all things to the Beautiful (Proclus 2011, 52.10–13). In its highest human form πίστις works through theurgic prayer, as Philippe Hoffmann demonstrates (Hoffmann 2000, 460; see also Layne 2015, 134–163). Through πίστις, prayer enables one to transcend discursive and intuitive knowledge by ‘giving oneself up to the divine light and by closing the eyes, thereby being established in the unknown and hidden henad of beings’ (Proclus 1968, 1.25, 110). Thus, πίστις causes ἕνωσις, or the unification and reversion of the soul’s faculties within the ἄνθος τοῦ νοῦ or the ‘flower of the intellect,’ the ‘one in the soul’ (Proclus 2011, 248.2). The soul’s ἕνωσις is the signature of the gods within the soul which, during the act of prayer, unites the soul to the One by means of its sympathetic power (Proclus 2008, 213.17). Prayer enables the soul to revert to the gods as its center ‘causing there to be a single activity of us and them’ whereby ‘we no longer belong to ourselves but to the gods’ (Proclus 2008, 211.28). Thus, for Proclus ‘faith’ is rational precisely because it aligns the human will with the divine will and participates the vision by which the gods view the universe.32 In developing his Trinitarian method Sterry explicitly borrows from Proclus’s concept of the ἄνθος τοῦ νοῦ (flower of the intellect), wisdom as πληρότης τῶν οντῶν (fullness of beings), and the idea that πίστις, ἀλήθεια, and ἔρος are sympathetic powers.33 He refers to the Chaldean triad of πίστις, ἀλήθεια, and ἔρος, in a sermon on Matthew 18.3. According to Sterry, a certain ‘heathen philosopher’ affirms ‘[that] there are Three ways of being united to God; by Knowledge; by Love; by Faith. But, saith he, this Faith is no Empty Image, or Thin Persuasion; but a Substantial Incorporation of the Things themselves with the Soul’ (Sterry 1683, 133).34 Furthermore, Sterry combines Proclus with the Scriptures to argue that faith is rational because it unites one with the ὑπόστασις (substance) of things hoped for (Hebrews 11:1) and it unites the soul with universal Wisdom, which contains the ‘the fullness of things.’

 Proclus notes that prayer ‘enclose[s] the light in us with the light of the gods’ Proclus (2008, 212). 33  On his use of Proclus’s concept of ‘fullness,’ see Sterry (1675, 196); On Sterry’s use of the ‘flower of the mind,’ see Sterry (1683, 197). 34  Sterry’s description of faith here is also very close to that of Simplicius in his commentary on Aristotle’s Physics. Simplicius argues, ‘this sympathy [of faith] does not create only the solidity of true knowledge, when it comes after the demonstration and is added to it, but it creates also the union with the things known, which is the complete achievement of human felicity,’ quoted in Hoffmann (2000, 472). 32

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For Sterry, Christ is Wisdom and the Variety within the Trinity. He is the image of Unity and so he contains the fullness of both divine and created beings. Like Proclus’s divine Νοῦς, Christ contains the divine Ideas.35 Those who believe, says Sterry, ‘entring into Christ … [are] filled with the same Fulness of the Godhead in him, together with him’ (1710, 326). As for Proclus, faith for Sterry works by means of its sympathetic power. Faith, in the manner of Prometheus, steals the fire of divine knowledge from the face of Christ (1710, 252). Sterry argues, ‘The first Part of Faith is the outgoing Act of the Soul, rooting itself (beyond every thing Created) in Jesus Christ. The Second Part of Faith, is the indrawing Act of the soul, sucking forth and attracting to itself the Virtue and Fulness of Christ’ (1710, 450). Using a modified Proclean logic, Sterry explains the nature of sympathies and their attractive power and concludes that ‘Prayer is a powerful Charm. It hath an Almighty Magick in it. It unites the Spirit of Man to that Supreme Spirit, by which all Things are Form’d, and Govern’d; so it prevails upon all Things’ (1710, 110). Just as Jacob wrestled with God and received a blessing, Sterry argues that ‘Prayer hath a Charm in it, which can bring God down out of Heaven; which can change him out of his own Shape, into the Form of a poor afflicted Thing, like unto ourselves and so present him to us in our Spirits’ (1710, 111). Thus, the Trinitarian method is present in prayer as it begins in faith with the unity of all things, proceeds through the variety of things in the fullness of Christ, and reverts to the unity in the union of Christ and the soul. Sterry’s Trinitarian method, insofar as it agrees with the coincidence logic of Nicholas Cusanus is somewhat antithetical to the goal of the other Cambridge Platonists to bring revealed religion in closer union with reason. Nathanael Culverwel expresses concern over the apparent skepticism in Lord Brooke’s treatise on truth, in which he was aided by Sterry, precisely because of his radical choice of method. Upon reading Brooke’s rejection of Aristotle’s principle of non-­ contradiction Culverwel exclaims, ‘O rare and compendious Synopsis of all Sceptism! O the quintessence of Sextus Empiricus!’ (Culverwel 2001, 142). Sterry’s use of a coincidence logic to form his Trinitarian method would likely receive the same reaction. And so we see in the works of Sherman, Zanchi, and Sterry that there were a variety of Platonisms, or ‘Platonicall Sawce’ as Thomas Jackson might say (Jackson 1625, 439), available to Cambridge students in the mid-seventeenth century, with some limited to the scope of Aristotelian method and others more radically Platonist.

 Sterry says, ‘the Fulness of all Creatures, of all created Excellencies, hath its Dwelling in Jesus Christ: they are there, as in their proper Place … growing immediately out of the Godhead’ (1710, 248); and also, ‘Proclus defines Wisdom to be πληρότης τῶν οντῶν, a fulness of things. Our Jesus is the highest Wisdom, the first, the fullest, the richest Variety’ (1675, 211).

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Bibliography Aristotle. 2014. Complete works of Aristotle: The revised Oxford translation, ed. Jonathan Barnes. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Augustine. 1998. The city of God. Trans. and ed. R.W. Dyson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Aquinas, Thomas. 1956. In Summa theologiae, ed. Petrus Caramelo. Turin: Marietti. Blumenthal, Harry J. 1985. Simplicius (?) on the first book of Aristotle’s De Anima. In Simplicius sa vie, son œuvre, sa survie: actes du colloque international de Paris (28 sept. – 1er oct. 1985), ed. Ilsetraut Hadot, 91–112. Berlin: De Gruyter. Burchill, Christopher J. 1984. Girolamo Zanchi: Portrait of a reformed theologian and his work. The Sixteenth Century Journal 15 (2): 185–207. Case, John. 1585. Speculum quæstionum moralium. Oxford: Joseph Barnes. Chlup, Radek. 2012. Proclus: An introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Costello, William T. 1958. The scholastic curriculum at early seventeenth-century Cambridge. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Crocker, Robert. 1990. Mysticism and enthusiasm in Henry More. In Henry More (1614–1687) tercentenary studies, ed. Sarah Hutton, 137–155. Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Culverwel, Nathanael. 2001. In An elegant and learned discourse of the light of nature, ed. Robert A. Greene and Hugh MacCallum. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund. Donnelly, John Patrick. 1976. Calvinist Thomism. Viator 7: 441–455. Dockrill, D.W. 1988. ‘No other name’: The problem of the salvation of pagans in mid-seventeenth century Cambridge. In The idea of salvation: Papers from the conference on the idea of salvation, sacred and secular, held at St. Paul’s college, university of Sydney, 22-25 august, 1986, ed. D.W. Dockrill and R.G. Tanner, 117–151. Auckland: University of Auckland Press. Ficino, Marsilio. 2001. Platonic theology, ed. James Hankins, trans. Michael J.  B. Allen. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Greene, Robert A. 1991. Whichcote, the candle of the Lord, and Synderesis. Journal of the History of Ideas 52 (4): 617–644. Greville, Robert (Lord Brooke). 1641. The nature of truth, its union and unity with the soule: Which is one in its essence, faculties, acts, one with truth. London: Printed by R. Bishop for Samuel Cartwright. Hankey, Wayne. 2011. Aquinas, platonism, and neo-platonism. In The Oxford handbook to Aquinas, ed. Brian Davies and Eleonore Stump, 55–64. New York: Oxford University Press. Hickman, Louise. 2011. ‘Love is all: And god is love’: Universalism in Peter Sterry (1613–1672) and Jeremiah white (1630–1707). In ‘All shall be well’: Explorations in universalism and Christian theology from Origen to Moltmann, ed. Gregory MacDonald, 95–115. Cambridge: James Clarke & Co. Hoffmann, Philippe. 2000. La Triade Chaldaïque, ἔρος, ἀλήθεια, πίστις: de Proclus a Simplicius. In Proclus et la théologie platonicienne: actes du colloque international de Louvain (13-16 mai 1998) en l'honneur de H.D. Saffrey et de L.G. Westerink, edited by Alain Philippe Segonds, Carlos G. Steel, et al, 459-490. Belgium: University of Leuven Press. Hutton, Sarah. 1990. Ralph Cudworth, god, mind and nature. In Religion, reason and nature in early modern Europe, ed. Robert Crocker, 61–76. Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Jackson, Thomas. 1625. A treatise containing the originall of vnbeliefe, misbeliefe, or misperswasions concerning the veritie, vnitie, and attributes of the Deitie with directions for rectifying our beliefe or knowledge in the fore-mentioned points. London: . Printed by JI[ohn] D[awson] for JIohn Clarke. Keckermann, Bartholomeus. 1607. Praecognita philosophiae. Hanoveriæ: Guilelmus Antonius. Layne, Danielle A. 2015. Cosmic etiology and demiurgic mimesis in Proclus’ account of prayer. In Platonic theories of prayer, ed. John M. Dillon and Andrei Timotin, 134–163. Leiden: Brill. Levine, Joseph. 1992. Latitudinarians, neoplatonists, and ancient wisdom. In Philosophy, science, and religion in England, 1640–1700, ed. Richard W.F. Kroll et al., 85–108. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Matar, Nabil, ed. 1994. Peter Sterry: Select writings. New York: Peter Lang. Merkle, Benjamin R. 2015. Defending the trinity in the reformed Palatinate: The Elohistae. New York: Oxford University Press. More, Henry. 1694. Letters on several subjects. London: W. Onely for John Cheringham. Mullinger, J.B. 1917. Platonists and latitudinarians. In Cambridge history of English literature, vol. 8. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Patrides, C.A. 1969. The high and Aiery Hills of platonisme: An introduction to the Cambridge Platonists. In The Cambridge Platonists, ed. C.A. Patrides. London: Edward Arnold. Plotinus. 1966–1988. Enneads, trans. A.H. Armstrong. Loeb Classical Library. 7 vols. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Proclus. 1963. Elements of theology, ed. and trans. E.R. Dodds. Oxford: Oxford Clarendon Press. ———. 2011. In Alcibiades, ed. L.G.  Westerink, trans. William O’Neill. Dilton Marsh: The Prometheus Trust. ———. 2008. In Timaeus, trans. David T. Runia and Michael Share. 4 Vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1968. Theologie Platonicienne, ed. and trans. H.D.  Saffrey and L.G.  Westerink. Paris: Belles Lettres. Rist, J.M. 1967. Plotinus: The road to reality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Roberts, James Deotis. 1969. From puritanism to Platonism in seventeenth century England. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Schmitt, Charles B. 1982. Aristotle and the renaissance. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. ———. 1983. John Case and Aristotelianism in renaissance England. Kingston Ont: McGill-­ Queen’s University Press. Sherman, John. 1641. A Greek in the temple. Cambridge: R.Daniel. Spitz, Lewis, and Barbara S. Tinsley, eds. 1995. Johann Sturm on education: The reformation and humanist learning. St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House. Sterry, Peter. 1710. The appearance of God to Man in the gospel: And the gospel change. Together with several other discourses from Scripture. To which is added an explication of the Trinity; and a short catechism. London: [s.n.]. ———. 1675. A discourse of the freedom of the will. London: Printed for John Starkey. ———. 1683. The rise, race, and royalty of the kingdom of god in the soul of man: Opened in several sermons upon Matthew 18.3. London: Printed for Thomas Cockerill. Steuco, Agostino. 1578. De perenni philosophia, libri decem. Paris: Michael Sonn. Tulloch, John. 1872. Rational theology and Christian philosophy in England in the seventeenth century. 2 vols. Edinburgh: Blackwood. Vermigli, Peter Martyr. 2011. In Kommentar zur Nikomachischen Ethik des Aristoteles, ed. Luca Baschera and Christian Moser. Leiden: Brill. Walker, D.P. 2000. 1958. Spiritual and demonic magic: From Ficino to Campanella. University Park: Penn State University Press. Zanchi, Girolamo. 1554. Aristoteles de naturale auscultatione. Strasbourg: Windelin Rihel. ———. 1590. De natura Dei, seu de divinis attributis, libri V. Neostadii Palatinorum: Typis Matthaei Harnisii. ———. 1619. Clariss. Viri D.  Hie. Zanchii omnivm opervm theologicorvm tomi octo. Vol. 8. Genevae: Crispinus. ———. 1591. De operibus Dei intra spacivm sex diervm creatis: Opus tres in partes distinctum. Neostadii Palatinorum: Harnisius. ———. 2007. In De religione Christiana fides  – Confession of Christian religion, ed. Luca Baschera and Christian Moser. Leiden: Brill. ———. 1589. De tribus Elohim, æterno Patre, Filio, et Spiritu Sancto, uno eodemque Iehova, libri XIII. Neostadii Palatinorum: Typis Matthaei Harnisii. Ziebart, K.M. 2014. Nicolaus Cusanus on faith and the intellect. A case study in 15th-century fides-ratio controversy. Leiden: Brill.

Chapter 4

‘A Philosopher at Randome’: Translating Jacob Böhme in Seventeenth-Century Cambridge Cecilia Muratori

Sir, Translations are things very difficult, especially where the Notion is uncouth. (D. Hotham, ‘To the Author’, in C. Hotham (1650), A3r)

Abstract  The philosopher Jacob Böhme (1575–1624) was known among his contemporaries for his creative use of the German language that led to inventing new words, or to attributing new meanings to existing ones. Böhme claimed that, properly speaking, his mother-tongue was not German but the ‘language of nature’ (Natursprache), the language spoken by Adam before the Fall, and in which essences and words were still in perfect correspondence. This essay investigates how early English readers of Böhme assessed the transposition of Böhme’s works from German into English: what interpretative challenges were entailed in translating Böhme’s language, and in interpreting Böhme through translations, rather than the originals? The essay is divided into three sections. First, I examine the role of Abraham von Franckenberg’s famous biography of Böhme, and consider how its English translation acted as a filter for approaching Böhme in England. Second, I discuss the strategies of readers and translators of Böhme active in seventeenth-­ century Cambridge. Third, I compare the approaches of two main readers, Henry More and Charles Hotham, demonstrating that they were aware of the gap that had opened between the ‘German Böhme’, and the new, successful creation of seventeenth-­century England: the English ‘Jacob Behmen’.

I am very grateful to Alessio Cotugno and James Vigus for various insightful comments on a draft version of this essay. C. Muratori (*) Italian Department, School of Modern Languages and Cultures, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 D. Hedley, D. Leech (eds.), Revisioning Cambridge Platonism: Sources and Legacy, International Archives of the History of Ideas Archives internationales d’histoire des idées 222, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22200-0_4

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4.1  I ntroduction: Reading, Understanding, Translating Böhme Summarizing his judgment of the German mystic Jacob Böhme, Henry More wrote in a letter to Anne Conway of 1670: ‘Honest Jacob is wholesome at the bottome though a philosopher but at randome’.1 In the same year More wrote (and possibly published)2 a letter to an anonymous recipient,3 titled Philosophiae teutonicae censura.4 In the Censura, too, Böhme is described as sincere, innocuous (More 1679, 539), showing that More’s attitude is not hostile towards the Teutonic Philosopher.5 Yet, More also emphasizes the difficulty of understanding the content of Böhme’s philosophy, a difficulty which appears to stem primarily from the obscurity of Böhme’s language, as well as from the fact that his writings manifest errors of various kinds. At the beginning of the Censura, More declares that he has read all the books that the recipient of the text recommended to him: these include Aurora (Morgenröte im Aufgang), De tribus principiis (Von den drey Principien göttliches Wesens), De triplici vita hominis (Vom dreifachen Leben des Menschen), and Quadraginta quaestiones (Vierzig Fragen von der Seelen), to which he added ‘not a short section of Mysterium Magnum’ (More 1679, 536). But reading and actually understanding are very different things, and More admits: ‘all of these [texts] I did not consider so attentively that I would check whether I had understood what he meant thoroughly in each passage’ (More 1679, 536). He then even declares that he was seriously troubled during the reading by the author’s obscurity. Nevertheless, he concludes that he has gained enough insight into Böhme and his philosophy to be able to respond to the five questions that the anonymous friend had asked him.

1  See Conway (1992), 512. An important starting point for More’s Censura were discussions with Conway back in 1667. On this and in general on More’s approach to Böhme see: Hutton (1990). See also Crocker (2003), 54–5. 2  The letter was probably first written in English, before being translated in Latin and published in the 1679 Opera omnia (see Crocker (2003), 262). 3  The addressee of the letter might be Anne Conway herself. See Ward (2000): ‘Some of his learned Treatises are expressly owing to her own Desire or Instigation; as his Conjectura Cabbalistica, and Philosophiæ Teutonicæ Censura’ (the passage is commented upon in Achermann (2012), 330). On Conway’s reading of Böhme in the context of her interest in religious texts see Hutton (2004), 55–63. Also ibid., 65: ‘John Worthington mentions that there was intense interest in Boehme in Lady Conway’s circle at Ragley in 1668’. On More’s visits to Ragley and Conway’s interest in Böhme see Conway (1992), 381–3 (see also p. 381 a quotation from a letter by Worthington, dated 8 January 1668: ‘I believe  you had your ears full of Behmenism at Ragley; for when I was at London, I met with one, who was to buy all Jacob Behmen’s works to send thither’). See also Crocker (2003), 191–2. 4  Hutton (2004), 65–6: ‘Among the issues which exercised More in his ‘censure’ of Boehme, we can gather something of the attraction of Boehme for the Ragley set. Whether or not Anne Conway agreed with More’s criticisms, she would have found in Jacob Boehme’s writings an attempt to formulate a pious philosophy’. On the connection between Böhme and Quakerism, see Hutton (2004), 66. 5  Cf. Crocker (2003), 54.

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More attributes the ‘obscurity’ of Böhme’s philosophy primarily to the mystic’s lack of education, and the resulting chaotic way in which he used the Neoplatonic and cabalistic sources of his ‘inspiration’. For instance, More repeatedly points out that Böhme’s discussions of the planets in Aurora contain several astronomical misunderstandings: he claims that these derive from  Böhme’s lack of expertise in astronomy (rather than, for instance, to the use of metaphorical language).6 While Aurora is by far the main source used by More in the Censura, he refers to other writings, drawing comparisons between different texts in order to show that Böhme is not consistent throughout his work: More mentions, for instance, the theory that the Deity is corporeal, which Böhme maintains in Aurora, but not so clearly in subsequent works such as De triplici vita (More 1679, 549). To be sure, More was not the first to claim that Böhme was chaotic, obscure and inconsistent, and thus difficult to interpret. Böhme received many requests for explanations of the content of the manuscripts that he used to entrust to his friends: even his acquaintances stumbled on various tricky points, both with regard to specific terminological issues and broader philosophical matters.7 But More’s comments focus on one particular aspect that added to the general obscurity, an aspect which is often overlooked and yet is crucial in the context of Böhme’s international reception: English readers, including More, encountered Böhme’s writings in English translations.8 Mediating the reception, these translations led to the construction of an ‘English Jacob Böhme’, who often had little in common with the original, German one. It is well known that English readers would have had access to English translations of most of Böhme’s writings by the 1660s – an exceptional situation, considering the fact that German readers, on the other hand, still had to wait several years before the publication of a comprehensive edition (1682). Yet, the process of giving Böhme an English voice inevitably led to a certain detachment from the original context in which his writings were located. Most importantly, this transition from Germany to England affected the clarity of Böhme’s terminology. While this might be true of any translation, Böhme represented a particularly radical case, because – as More discusses in the Censura – he considered his native language to be ‘the language of Nature’ (Natursprache), not simply German. In the language of Nature, spoken by Adam before the fall, words and essences were always in perfect harmony, in such a way that the words would indicate and express the true nature of things.9 6  See Crocker (2003), 55, on More’s indirect critique of Böhme in Enthusiasmus Triumphatus, especially with regard to these points: (1) the doctrine of the interdependence of Lucifer and God (‘the battle was not betwixt God and a beast, or God and a man, but bitwixt God and God, Lucifer being so great a share of his own essence’); (2) ‘that Nature is the Body of God’; (3) ‘that there are three souls in man, Animall, Angelicall, and Divine’. 7  See for instance Böhme (1730), Sendbrief nr. 15 (p. 63), where Böhme states that he is willing to reply to any question presented to him in writing. 8  More’s quotations from Aurora, translated into Latin throughout the text, follow the division in paragraphs of the English translation published by John Sparrow in 1656. 9  Hans Blumenberg discusses the implications of the idea of a perfectly clear language, in which the terminology would ‘capture the presence and precrision of the matter at hand in well-defined concepts’ (Blumenberg (2010), 1).

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The fact that Böhme claimed to have access to the deep level of the language of Nature raises the question whether his terminology can be translated at all. As More points out, the post-Babel languages have lost contact with the language of nature (More 1679, 537). There is thus a deep connection between Böhme’s German terminology and his claim that, through German, he could regain the connections of words and meanings in the language of nature. It is worth highlighting that from that point of view every translation, regardless of its approach or quality, necessarily implies severing the connection that Böhme claims to have established between his German vocabulary and the level of the language of nature. Even if More challenges this claim, comparing Böhme’s Natursprache to the language of children, who tend to associate words and meaning arbitrarily, still the problem of translating those arbitrary connections into a different tongue persists (More 1679, 556). This is apparent also in the preface to the English translation of Böhme’s Four Tables of Divine Revelation,10 in which the translator (probably Humphrey Blunden) writes that Böhme ‘had knowledge of that wonderfull Mystery (containing the Secrets of the whole Creation) The Language of Nature, and that in his Native tongue; whereby the very name of every thing gave him clear Inspection into the Nature of it.’11 Translating Böhme therefore involves addressing the issue of the relation between the language of Nature and German, and that of how to render that connection in another language.12 This is acknowledged in the address to the reader of Four Tables: though I know it a general Expect, that the skill of a Translator should illustrate his Author, yet that, in this and some other of his Writings, can not well be done; for whoever (not perfectly baptised into his Spirit) shall render them in the genuine phrase of the language, and not punctually verbatim, will force his Reader to a double loss, both in the significance of expression, and in the mind of the Mystery.13

In this essay I investigate the effects of this complex transposition on the reception of Böhme in seventeenth-century Cambridge.14 The aim is to show that the Cambridge readers and translators of Böhme  – especially Henry More, and the  This text represents an interesting case study for the transmission of Böhme’s works in translation, since it combines different texts by Böhme (Tabulae Principiorum oder Erklärung über die Taffeln der drei Principien: and a table from Sendbrief, nr. 47: see J. Böhme (1730), 194 et seq.) On this edition, in relation to the original texts from which it derives, see Buddecke (1957), 52 and 160. 11  ‘To the Reader’, in Böhme (1654b), H4v. 12  I will not address in this essay another important aspect which informed the English reception of Böhme, namely the fact that Böhme’s writings were not published in English in the same sequence in which they were written in German. Given that Böhme maintained that all his books had roots in the first, Aurora, and could even be considered as attempts to further expound it, presenting a different sequence to the public had a direct effect on the understanding of the unfolding of Böhme’s philosophy. In English, Aurora was translated and published by Sparrow in 1656, after he had already published the translations of other works, such as Forty Questions Concerning the Soule in 1647. 13  ‘To the Reader’, in Böhme (1654b), H4v. 14  For a discussion of Boehme’s obscurity among the first translators, especially Sparrow and Ellistone, see Smith (2013). 10

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brothers Charles and Durand Hotham  – were aware of the gap that had opened between the German Böhme and the English Böhme, and therefore they address the role of language and translation in the reception of the mystic’s writings. Indeed the reception of Böhme in England, I will argue, remains unintelligible without a careful analysis of the ways in which the texts were translated, and simultaneously adapted, to a new readership. The English Böhme, a textual creation that was to have a remarkable career, was to a great extent a product of seventeenth-century Cambridge. In the first section of this essay I will consider an aspect which affected both the German and English reception: the encounter with Böhme’s writings was often preceded and filtered by the circulation of a very influential biography of the mystic written originally by Böhme’s follower Abraham von Franckenberg. The adaptation and often relentless invention of biographical details played an important role in mediating Böhme’s thought – all the more so in the English context, where the language barrier made the access to Böhme’s philosophy more difficult, and the need for supporting material stronger. The success of Durand Hotham’s re-elaboration of Franckenberg’s text – published as The Life of Jacob Behmen – is key to understanding the mediation of Böhme into English.15 The second section examines the discussions on how to translate Böhme, showing that the two most important readers of Böhme at Cambridge, More and Charles Hotham, were well aware of the fact that translations came to play an unusually pivotal role in the case of the German mystic. In particular I will focus on Charles Hotham’s first translation in English of a short writing by Böhme, Trostschrift von vier Complexionen (A Consolatory Treatise of the Four Complexions), framing it in the broader context of his approach to what he calls ‘Teutonic philosophy’ in Ad philosophicam teutonica manuductio (1648; translated into English two years later by Charles’s brother, Durand, as An Introduction to the Teutonick Philosophie). These two aspects – the mediatory role of biographical representations of Böhme and the engagement with the translation of his writings into English – converge in the final section, in which I compare More’s and Charles Hotham’s approaches to Böhme. I will consider the different ways in which they balance the assessment of the philosophical content of Böhme’s writings with the presentation of Böhme’s life. Taken together, these two sides of the reception will contribute to understanding how the first English readers of Böhme received and interpreted his works, assessing the quality of its philosophical content while addressing the question about the language used to express it. More specifically, this will also cast light on Böhme’s reception in Cambridge, pointing to a series of desiderata for further research.16  It is included in the 1654 edition of Böhme’s Mysterium magnum: Böhme (1654c).  Various works on Jacob Böhme’s English reception have recently been published: see for instance Apetrei and Hessayon (2013). What still remains to be fully explored are the connections and contrasts between the German and English reception, including the role of the different languages in the circulation and interpretation of the texts. Burkhard Dohm has made an important contribution to the understanding of the link between English and German readers of Böhme in

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4.2  I maginary Beginnings: The Reinvention of Böhme’s Biography Böhme’s Vita written by his follower Abraham von Franckenberg (probably in 1651, but the opinions of the scholars differ on this point)17 was enormously successful in establishing the reputation of Böhme as a mystic, whose life was supposedly characterized by several supernatural events. As Koyré put it, Franckenberg’s biography is full of ‘presages’, yet Böhme himself actually never talks in that way (Koyré 1929, 17). The mystical experiences Böhme does relate have rather an intuitive character, while Franckenberg reports several extraordinary events by way of suggesting that Böhme was a visionary, and that the magical happenings demonstrated that he had been chosen by God. For instance, he narrates that the young Jacob discovered a treasure in a cave while looking after sheep; or that a foreigner visited him while he was working as apprentice to a cobbler, and, calling him by name, foresaw his great future (Frankenberg 1730, 9–10). Franckenberg’s semi-fictional biography was included in all principal collections of Böhme’s works, thus becoming a kind of introduction to the mystic’s character and to the purpose of his writing. Given the fact that the reception of Böhme’s work was rather tortuous in Germany,18 Franckenberg’s text played an essential role in constructing a certain image of Böhme as visionary mystic. In fact this reputation often preceded the actual encounter with his writings.19 The effects of such a reception are particularly striking if one considers how Böhme himself had envisaged the circulation of his philosophical thought in his letters: for instance he writes to his followers that since the plurality of his books could create confusion, it would be best if the core of his teachings were condensed in just one book.20 What happened instead is that the one text that did circulate widely and contributed most to constructing Böhme’s persona was not his own, and did not focus on philosophical content: it was the biography by Franckenberg. The biography had an extensive reception in England as well. It is well known that Cambridge was a key centre of Böhme’s reception in England thanks to the brothers Durand and Charles Hotham, and indeed it has been suggested that they were the first source of information on Böhme for More himself (Hutton 1990, 158). Durand had been admitted to Christ’s College, while Charles  – probably a year younger – was a fellow at Peterhouse.21 In 1654 Durand Hotham published a Life of Dohm (2012). I have considered the interplay of German and English sources in the creation of Christopher Walton’s library in Muratori (2015). 17  Cf. Gilly (2007). 18  See Buddecke (1937). 19  I have examined the influence of the biography on Arnold and Mosheim in Muratori (2012). The role of the myth created by Franckenberg’s biography is further reconstructed in Muratori (2016), 1–7. 20  Böhme (1730), Sendbrief 10 (p. 40). 21  He was subsequently expelled for publishing C.  Hotham (1651). Cf. on Hotham’s expulsion from Peterhouse Coffey (2006), 226.

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Böhme based on Franckenberg. Yet, this publication is not simply a translation of the original, and indeed Henry More refers to this text in the Censura as the ‘Vita written by the ingenious man, D.H.’, without mentioning Franckenberg at all as the source (More 1679, 535). A first Life of Böhme was published in English in 1644 and differs substantially from the one Durand was to publish ten years later, not just in length (the first comprises 5 pages, the second over 40) but also in style. The first one appears to be based on Franckenberg, but it reports only essential information: it begins with Böhme’s birth, includes a list of his writings, and ends with the story of his death. Ariel Hessayon has conjecturally attributed it to John Sparrow (1615– 1670), noting that this biography was ‘derived from the prefatory material to the German version of Mysterium Magnum published at Amsterdam in 1640’ (Hessayon 2019, 347).  The second one contains many ‘histories parallel’ (Durand’s own expression) to the main one intended expressly for an English readership. As Carlos Gilly has noted, Franckenberg’s text itself can be seen as the result of a mosaic-like construction, and it was not written in the form we read now. Opinions differ as to whether Franckenberg wrote it first in Latin (possibly in 1637) and then translated it or had it translated.22 The story of the English reception of the biography adds further facets to these intricate beginnings, prompting the following questions: how did the textual form and the function of the biography change in the transition from Germany to England? What was maintained and what was modified through the translation and adaption of the text? And ultimately, how did it contribute to the creation of an English Böhme, just as a German Böhme had also been created through Franckenberg’s personal account? In the ten years that divide the two biographies, the reception of Böhme in England had considerably advanced due to the publication of the English translations of many of the works (Hessayon 2007b). Indeed the second biography contains, after the list of Böhme’s writings, the following reference to Sparrow’s achievements: ‘Many of these works have of late been published in English tongue, by the industry of a Gentelman, to whose pains our English Common-wealth rests much oblig’d, the rest remain yet lockt up, and expect the diligence of the same or some other such generous spirit’ (Hotham 1654, E2r). Durand Hotham acknowledges the help of Blunden (Hotham 1654, B2r) – probably the same Blunden who published some English translations of Böhme23 – for providing him with the material for the biography, that is, mainly, Franckenberg. He is conscious that he needs to provide English readers with a fully new presentation on the basis of Franckenberg. It is noteworthy that the biography does not turn to discussing Böhme immediately. Rather, Durand first introduces himself, aiming to clarify the general approach of his work: ‘Yet it being my happiness to be born an Englishman, and my Birth-­ right to be judg’d by my Lay-Peers, I shall try the danger of a Relation of the wonderfull Providences wherein this man was conversant; and though perhaps he may be accounted no Saint, yet it may lessen his esteem of being a pestilent Heretick’ (Hotham 1654, B1v). As this suggests, the biography does not avoid retelling some  Cf. Gilly (2007).  See Hessayon (2007a), 297–8.

22 23

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of Franckenberg’s magical stories, but these are now inserted in a context in which Böhme must be cleared of accusations of heresy. The result is a curious puzzle that mirrors the attempt to mediate both Franckenberg and Böhme, as a way of appropriating Böhme’s writings in English. Moreover, the structure of the biography is different from the ‘original’, and there are noteworthy insertions, including some more extraordinary stories, in particular relating cases of witchcraft, or anecdotes about German customs. To introduce a few verses reported by Franckenberg, Durand writes for instance: ‘It is a custom in Germany, and I have seen some Germans (whom the war had compell’d for relief to come into England) to carry a little paper book in their pockets, into which their friends do write some remarkable sentence, and subscribe their names, and this book is call’d album amicorum’ (Hotham 1654, G1r). Durand also expresses his hope that the Life of Böhme will assist readers in confronting the obscurity of the mystic’s writings: Truly having found many things obscure in this man’s Writings, others highly honest, pious, just, and of much improvement to that equal, humane, sociable principle […] I thought, that an inquiry into, and a short Relation of his Life, would be no little advantage to stir up the more searching Spirits to a thorough weighing of all that he hath published; and being herein furnished with some helps by the ingenuous Publisher of his Works, Mr. Blunden, I laid aside a few daies to fit the Materials that were sent me in order accommodate for a gentle and willing Reader. (Hotham 1654, B2r)

Here Durand addresses directly English readers of the new translations. It is thus important to underline that this readership would have been confronted both with obscurity of Böhme’s texts in German, and with the unclarity deriving from the ‘filter’ of the translations. Durand’s Vita is thus presented to the readers as a constructive filter, tailored to facilitate the approach to the figure of Böhme. The emphasis on the character of the mystic’s writings, defined as honest and pious, resembles the approach of More in the Censura, which indeed in the Praefatio ad Lectorem mentions several supernatural episodes in the life of Böhme, taken from Franckenberg-Hotham (including the episode about the visit of the stranger to the cobbler’s shop) (More 1679, 533). In his foreword to his own translation of Böhme’s A Consolatory Treatise of the Four Complexions, Charles Hotham also addresses the difficulty of creating a portrait of Böhme for the English public. If Durand hoped in the end to convince the readers of his version of the biography ‘that this man was a Saint’, both he and his brother are equally concerned to serve as guides for English-speaking readers, so that they might not get completely lost in the mystic’s difficult language and ultimately misjudge him.

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4.3  Böhme’s Bilinguism and the Translators’ Trilinguism Charles Hotham’s decision to translate Böhme’s very short work derives directly from his experience in dealing with the obscurity of the author.24 In his preface to A Consolatory Treatise of Four Complexions Charles Hotham writes: ‘Of all the works of Jacob Behm, this is one of the least in bulk, but not in worth. Much and important matter lies here inclos’d in a narrow room. Besides, this Paradise of usefull truths stands not guarded by a fiery Cherubim hindring the Readers access, and dazling his eyes with a flaming sword of obscurities’.25 Böhme himself attempted several times to condense and simplify the difficulties of his thought in short texts, sometime using explicatory schemes and tables. In this case, his way of treating the ‘four complexions’ – Cholerick, Sanguine, Phlegmatick, Melancholy – leads him once again into an inquiry about the source and role of negativity, expressed figuratively as man’s constant struggle with the Devil. Compared to the brevity of the text, Charles Hotham’s introduction is quite ample (indeed it breaks off quite abruptly with the explanation that the foreword should not be longer than the text itself). By the time Hotham published his translation in 1654, Sparrow had already published some of Böhme’s major works in English. In fact, finding Hotham’s attempt at translation only partially satisfactory, Sparrow published his own version of the same text only a few years later, in 1661, in the volume that marked the end of the project of translating Böhme into English, entitled The Remainder of Books. Despite explaining the decision to present the Consolatory Treatise to the public in terms of the peculiar clarity and brevity of the text, Hotham then goes on to underline that translating Böhme is nevertheless extremely hard: partly this is due to the task of translation itself; partly to Böhme’s very special language; but the result will also depend on the skills of the translator. Hotham begins by pointing to the second element: Böhme’s language. With a very loose quotation from Böhme, he states: ’Twas his wish espress’d somewhere in his writings, that if it had pleas’d God, his education had given him better skill in the learning and tongues of men, for then sayes he, I might perhaps have better suited those divine manifestations to the common apprehension, many of which for want of that enablement remain lock’d up in the Magick language of the Spirit, and will scarce be understood by any but men skill’d in that Dialect.26

But at this point he addresses a problem that has remained crucial in Böhme studies until today, and is notably emphasized by Koyré (Koyré 1929, xvi): is it possible to translate Böhme at all? Hotham expresses his view on the matter as follows: ‘Hence comes that unusuall difficulty many are so much stumbled at in the works of this  On the manuscript material used by Hotham for his translation see Buddecke (1957), 14: ‘C. Hotham hat diese Schrift nach einem deutschen Text übersetzt (u.a.). Doch scheint ihm nicht die erste Ausgabe vorgelegen zu haben, da der englische Text Abweichungen zeigt, die nicht bloß von einer freien Übersetzung herrühren können. So kommt als Grundlage etwa eine der auch von Beyerland benutzten Hss. in Frage.’ 25  Hotham, ‘The Preface to the Reader’, in Böhme (1654a), A2r. 26  Hotham, ‘The Preface to the Reader’, in Böhme (1654a), A3r-v. 24

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Author, especially in those translated into other tongues […] but in the Magick each man left to his own skill. Yet by this are we set upon even ground with those of his own Nation, and to have done more, had not been simply to translate, but interpret.’27 In a sense, both the German and the English readers of Böhme are faced with similar problems: Böhme’s texts fundamentally require interpretation because of their ‘magical’ character. Henry More’s observation that reading Böhme and understanding him are two different things was true for German as well as for English readers. But translation involves the risk of detaching a text from the cultural milieu to which it belonged. This is the reason why any translator must be a ‘bilinguist’, as Hotham explains, not only with regard to the language but also the whole culture that lies behind the words: as for an Englishman to make Demosthenes speak Latin, it suffices not […] to have his head stuff’d with Vocabularies, but he must know the whole guise of the Countrey, and forms of elegance most in fashion in the several times and places of the Books double nativity by edition and translation; his not being an absolute free Denison of both, may make him defraud the Reader he takes pain for, sometimes of the sense, but very often of the chief grace of his Authour. Secondly, He had need have, besides the tongues, a double portion of His Authors Spirit, else he will oft give us his words without his sense, the Lions skin stuff’d with straw instead of Hercules that wore it.28

The project of bringing Böhme to England consists therefore in nothing less than in giving to his books a second nativity, while taking care not to mislead the reader with an inappropriate mediation of the ‘Spirit’ of the author’s words. In his presentation of Four Tables of Divine Revelation, published in the same year (1654) as Charles Hotham’s translation of A Consolatory Treatise, Blunden had also raised the issue of how to translate the spirit of Böhme, negotiating literal translation with interpretative attempts. Indeed, Charles Hotham points to this problem when he states that a translator of Böhme (unlike any other translator) cannot be a bilinguist only, but must even be a trilinguist: ‘But he that will be this Authors right Trucheman,29 must be a trilinguist at least, skill’d no less in the language of Angells than in the Dutch and English, for want whereof much of the writings, not of this mans only, but even of Scriptures Penmen, are in some parts rather clouded than clear’d by translations’.30 The result of such efforts of translation will depend on a series of extremely delicate factors: the knowledge of two cultures, of two languages, and an insight into Böhme’s inspiration. Very modestly, Hotham admits to a lack of skill in all three areas: For my own Part I pretend to no great expertness in any of the three, yet have not been as to this work without good helps in all; in the English from my birth in Sparta and education at Athens; in the Dutch, I eek’d out of my own skill with advice of a learned man of that Nation, one of our Society of Peter-house in Cambridge; for the Angelique,

 Hotham, ‘The Preface to the Reader’, in Böhme (1654a), A3v–A4r.  Hotham, ‘The Preface to the Reader’, in Böhme (1654a), A4r–A4v. 29  On the word Truch(e)man (from medieval Latin turchemannus, meaning interpres) see Oxford English Dictionary (online edition, accessed 25.6.2015), sub voce. 30  Hotham, ‘The Preface to the Reader’, in Böhme (1654a), A4v. 27 28

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my way was a little smoothed by my former Perusall of this Authors other original writings that speak the same language.31

This passage offers insight into the circulation and exchange of ideas during Böhme’s reception in Cambridge around 165032: most importantly, Hotham acknowledges the help of a colleague at Peterhouse in assisting him with linguistic matters. It also shows the gap that, of necessity, opened up between the demanding requirements that Hotham believes a Böhme-translator should possess (linguistically, culturally, and in interpreting the text), and the actual, messy process of adapting Böhme’s often mysterious expressions, mediating the language from Germany to the scholarly world of Cambridge. Hotham believes it his duty as translator to offer an interpretation of Böhme’s spirit, and this principle helps to explain why Charles Hotham’s Ad philosophiam teutonicam manuductio contains materials from a disputation that took place at Cambridge on Teutonic philosophy. Contrary to what the reader might expect, the text does not contain precise references to Böhme. Rather, it offers a general approach, in the sense of a philosophia perennis, to the roots of Teutonic philosophy, encompassing Neoplatonic and hermetic sources, and Böhme is a starting point for this sketch. This appears to be Charles Hotham’s own answer to the question of how to translate Böhme’s spirit, placing him in a context which Böhme himself does not discuss directly. This attitude emerges clearly in Durand Hotham’s address ‘To the Author’ that prefaces the English translation of Ad philosophicam teutonicam manuductio. Durand compares reading Böhme to the experience of standing on the brink of an abyss, and describes his brother’s writing as a steadying aid with which to look into the depths of Böhme without losing balance: ‘As to the matter and Author of the Teutonick Philosophy, which you here abbreviate […] me thought the reading of him was like the standing upon a precipice […]. I confess, your Introduction hath made me something more steddy, and his Notions more familiar’.33 It is the usefulness of his brother’s manuductio (literally: guidance by the hand), which convinced Durand to embark on the difficult task of ‘transplanting [it] into Native soil’, even if this implied by necessity ‘uncasing your sense from the Latine skin’, an operation which might be seen as tearing ‘flesh and all away’.34 In addition to the various levels of translation discussed by Charles, Durand has to face another form of trilinguism in this case, translating Charles’ Latin into English, while the German remains in the background. ‘I must therein be pardoned’ – he pleads – ‘because some Expressions and Elegancies in it are so peevish, that they walk dull, heavy, and without  Hotham, ‘The Preface to the Reader’, in Böhme (1654a), A4v–A5r.  On other readers of Böhme from Cambridge: see Crocker (2003), 9. See also Hutton, (2004), 10: ‘Although little was known of Boehme in England before the 1640s, it is probable that both Gell and More encountered Boehme’s thought whilst still at Christ’s. On Gell and Böhme see a quotation from a letter by Jeremy Taylor to Evelyn (4. June 1659), in Conway (1992), 155: ‘Castellio is their great patriarch. […] in Dr. Gell’s last booke in folio there is much of it. Indeed, you say right that they take in Jacob Behmen’. 33  D. Hotham, ‘To the Author’ in C. Hotham (1650), A3v. 34  D. Hotham, ‘To the Author’ in C. Hotham (1650), A3r-v. 31 32

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grace, when stript of their native attire’.35 The root of the problem is that ‘in truth it is very hard to write good English’,36 all the more so when the original material is so complex. But the task is made worthwhile by the fact that the Hothams’ synergic engagement with Böhme and Teutonic philosophy is directed to ‘unlocking the door of these Mysteries, by setting it yet wider open for all English-­men that please to enter and satisfie their curiosity’.37 In this context, Böhme and Teutonic philosophy are not perfectly synonymous: the latter is a broader phenomenon, within which Böhme can be loosely located. His ‘notions’ find their place within the Neoplatonic and hermetic traditions: this is what it means to regain the ‘spirit’ of Böhme for both Charles and Durand Hotham. This interpretation resonates with Henry More’s own approach to Böhme’s philosophy in the Censura, even if the conclusions More draws are substantially different in tone from the admiration that the Hotham brothers show for the Teutonic philosopher.

4.3.1  Teutonic Philosophy Without the Philosopher An Introduction to the Teutonick Philosophie begins with two poems, the first by Charles Hotham to More, and the second by More to Charles Hotham.38 Both of them deal with the obscurity of the Teutonick Philosophy.39 Yet despite a common interest in reading Böhme within a specific philosophical context, More and Hotham take opposite paths in assessing its value. In Durand’s translation, the introduction to Ad philosophiam teutonicam manuductio describes the author’s approach in these terms: Whatsoever the Thrice-great Hermes deliver’d as Oracles from his Propheticall Tripos, or Pythagoras spake by authority, or Socrates debated, or Aristotle affirmed; yea, whatever divine Plato prophesied, or Plotinus proved; this, and all this, or a far higher and profounder Philosophy is (I think) contained in the Teutonicks writings. And if there be any friendly medium which can possibly reconcile those ancient differences between the Nobler Wisdom […] and her stubborn hand-maid, Naturall Reason; this happy marriage of the Spirit and the Soul, this wonderfull concent of discords in one harmony, we owe in great measure to Teutonicus his skill.40

Unlike More’s, Charles Hotham’s account of the relation entertained by Böhme with the Neoplatonic tradition is thoroughly positive: he believes that Böhme’s philosophy stems from this background, and that it fused harmoniously rational and ‘mystical’ approaches. With regard to the problematic issue of understanding Böhme’s works, Charles Hotham underlines the responsibility of the reader, rather than of the translator/mediator: ‘Onely let not the non or misunderstanding even of  D. Hotham, ‘To the Author’ in C. Hotham (1650), A3v.  D. Hotham, ‘To the Author’ in C. Hotham (1650), A3v. 37  D. Hotham, ‘To the Author’ in C. Hotham (1650), A6v. 38  On More and C. Hotham see Struck (1936), 154 and 225. 39  In the orginal Latin version, the poems are placed after the main text. 40  C. Hotham (1650), ‘The Epistle Dedicatory’, A9v–A10r. 35 36

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the most rationall Reader (if not a little sublim’d above the sphere of common reason) be imputed as fault to this elevated Philosopher, no more then ‘twas to the divine Plotine, whose highest notions many even of his owne School, after much study, were not able to reach.’41 Ultimately reader and translator must both be elevated above ‘the sphere of common reason’, if they want to understand Böhme. The project of mediating Böhme seems to take on an almost mystical connotation. More, for his part, does not shift the responsibility of making sense of Böhme to the reader or the translator: rather, in the Censura he argues that often it is simply impossible to find a coherent path through Böhme’s works, for they contain evident errors. This proves the main point at the centre of More’s answers to the questions posed by the anonymous friend: if Böhme made mistakes, than his inspiration was not infallible. Indeed More’s answers deal more with the general attitude and claims attributed to Böhme, than with in-depth analysis of his philosophy. Furthermore, they offer More the chance to consider in what sense the German cobbler was an enthusiast, whether he was truly inspired and what was the source of his mistakes. In line with his attack on enthusiastic inspiration in Enthusiasmus triumphatus, primarily directed at Thomas Vaughan,42 More claims that Böhme’s enthusiastic inspiration was essentially a delusion. Yet, despite the various errors they contain, Böhme’s writings are remarkable for the way in which the unlearned cobbler reached back, often unconsciously, to the teachings of the Neoplatonists and of the Cabala.43 These teachings, according to More, did arise from true inspiration,44 and they are recognized as the real source of Böhme’s philosophy, an interpretation which is consistent with Charles Hotham’s. Such a philosophical foundation often comes only partially to light in Böhme’s confused and unlearned re-elaboration: for instance, More claims that Böhme’s doctrine of the seven spirits is a rough copy of the cabalistic diagram of the six universal forms: the correct number of items is thus six, not seven, showing that Böhme transmitted the original Cabalistic doctrine in a more confused and imprecise form (More 1679, 546–8). In other cases, such as for instance the Copernican theory that the sun is the centre of the universe, Böhme remarkably supports the correct view, despite his poor education.45 More also discusses a practical question which remains unaddressed in Charles Hotham’s Ad philosophiam teutonicam manuductio, namely the identification of  C. Hotham (1650), ‘The Epistle Dedicatory’, A10r.  On the treatment of enthusiasm in this text see Leech (2008). See also Hutton (2004), 64–5; and Crocker (2003), 54–5: ‘it was the examples apparently taken from Boehme’s theosophy that More had used in his Enthusiasmus Triumphatus 15  years earlier to illustrate the extravangances of imagination of apparent in such ‘political’ (or sectarian) Enthusiasm.’ More’s critique of Böhme is considered also in Hutin (1966), 55. 43  On More reading Böhme within a Christian Neoplatonic frame see Crocker (2003), 58. See also Edel (1995), ch. 2. 44  More (1679), 558: ‘Quanquam vero eum infallibiter inspiratum fuisse nullo pacto admittere possumus, non possumus tamen quin fateamur aliquantulum mirabile esse et praeter opinionem omnino contigisse, ut homo adeo illiteratus, in praecipua antiquae Sapientiae Lineamenta, quae revera inspirata erat, tam manifesto incideret.’ On this passage see Gilly (2011), 821. 45  Cf. also More (1679), 537. 41 42

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the sources of Böhme’s works. Böhme only rarely mentions any sources of inspiration apart from the Bible – an approach which is linked to a certain desire to fashion himself as a prophet.46 For More, it is beyond doubt that he took inspiration from Paracelsus, and the fact that it is possible to identify such sources is further proof that his insight did not have an exclusively divine origin, and was therefore fallible (More 1679, 542). As Sarah Hutton has noted, More’s insistence on the innocence and honesty of Böhme nevertheless signals an essentially benign approach, despite the critique of specific instances of the way in which his enthusiasm produced mistakes rather than an infallible insight into divine things. A consideration of More’s treatment of Böhme in context of his judgement of other ‘enthusiasts’, such as the Familists,47 further strengthens this impression: the enthusiasm of the latter group does not derive from the philosophical foundation which on the contrary is still visible, even if in turbid form, in Böhme’s writings.48 In the Censura, More opposes the ‘careful and subtle philosophical reason’ to ‘the most fervid enthusiasm’ (More 1679, 540). Böhme, as it is to be expected, is found to be lacking the former, while being too involved in the latter. More develops a twofold approach to deal with such enthusiastic and confused material. On the one hand he tries to further explicate what in his opinion remained unclear in Böhme’s thought, disclosing its cabalistic and Neoplatonic roots. At various points in the Censura, and especially in the concluding section, More delves into a cabalistic exposition of major doctrines that are to be found in Böhme, but are in his view best understood with reference to the background from which they take their origin. For instance he proposes a cabalistic interpretation (‘si Cabalistice exponatur’) of the question regarding Adam’s status before the fall, while also referring to Böhme’s theory about the condition of Adam’s body, and the functioning of its organs, in the Garden of Eden (More 1679, 545). In this way, More ‘filters’ Böhme’s thought using approaches that he considers philosophically clearer and better presented. But on the other hand, he radically severs Böhme’s (bad) philosophy from the honesty of his persona. From this perspective, it seems that if anything positive can be said about the German enthusiast, then this has to do rather with his sincere attempts at developing a pious, Christian doctrine, rather than in actually succeeding in the purpose. It remains a puzzle, for More, how a man with such a ‘sincere heart’ could have ‘such a week [imbecillum] brain’ (More 1679, 556). Even if at the beginning of the text More declares that those who abhor Böhme are igno A seminal study on this topic is Benz (1959).  Cf. Hutton (1990), 162. 48  See the letter by More to Mrs. Foxcroft, 1669 (cf. Crocker (2003), 250). It is interesting to note that Baxter, too, appeared to be more favourable to Böhmian enthusiasts than to other groups, on account of their ‘meekness’, and despite the obscurity of Böhme’s writings: ‘But they [the Behmenists] are fewer in Number, and seem to have attained to greater Meekness, and conquest of Passion, than any of the rest: Their Doctrine is to be seen in Jacob Behmen’s Books, by him that hath nothing else to do, than to bestow a great deal of time to understand him that was not willing to be easily understood, and to know that his bombasted words signifie nothing more than before was easily known by common familiar terms.’ (Baxter (1696), 77). 46 47

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rant both with regard to ‘his writings and of his life’, it seems that for More the latter  – Böhme’s life  – ultimately overshadows the former, Böhme’s writings.49 From this perspective, it is clear that the influence of the biography of Böhme, in Durand Hotham’s version, emerges in its full strength in More’s critique: the life of Böhme ‘corrects’ the image of Böhme as confused enthusiast, that his writings, taken in isolation, could convey. Both Charles Hotham and More employ a specific frame of reference in their readings of Böhme, placing him in a Neoplatonic, hermetic, cabalistic context. Yet the former, in Ad philosophiam teutonicam manuductio, goes beyond Böhme in the construction of what Teutonic philosophy means, avoiding precise reference to Böhme’s works. The latter, on the other hand, quotes several passages from Böhme, yet ultimately attempts to rehabilitate him as a pious and ignorant enthusiast, rather than as a proper philosopher. Teutonic philosophy, in both cases, is deprived of its founder.50

4.4  Conclusion: A Lion Stuffed with Straw In describing the dangers of misinterpreting the Teutonic philosophy, Charles Hotham used this metaphor: we must take care not to end up with a lion stuffed with straw rather than with Hercules. The essence of Böhme’s writings, in other words, could get completely lost in translation. The frame I have sketched – starting with the biographical construction of two different ‘Böhme’, in Germany and in England, and then considering the approach of the Cambridge readers to translating Böhme for a new readership – shows that indeed the ‘original’ Böhme was frequently lost and recreated in this process of adaptation. The mediation of the philosophical content of Böhme’s writings strongly depended on understanding, translating into English, and adapting his complicated language. The results vary greatly: not only according to the linguistic skills of the translator, but also because of his general attitude. Both Henry More and Charles Hotham inscribe Böhme and his legacy in a precise philosophical tradition.  More (1679), 532: ‘Iam vero quantum ad eos, qui aut abominantur Jacobum Behmen, ceu Diabolicum, vel tanquam vanum vilemque Scriptorem contemnunt, ex ignorantia id proficisci oportet, tum Scriptorum tum Vitae hominis.’ 50  Achermann has pointed out that the role of Böhme in More’s Censura should be placed in a broader frame of reference, for instance acknowledging the debate on enthusiasm, where Böhme was only one example; otherwise there is a danger of claiming a more thorough reception of Böhme’s writings than actually occurred (Achermann (2012), 324: ‘Es ist geradezu dieses geringe Interesse an der religionsphilosophischen Argumentation Mores, das die Legende einer intensiven und anerkennenden Böhme-Rezeption bei More, und darüber hinaus im Kreise der Cambridger Neuplatonisten nährt.’) As I try to show in the present essay, More’s engagement with Böhme – as generic as it might have been – should be considered within specific discussions on how to translate Böhme: such an approach shows that the reception of Böhme’s writings played a key role at Cambridge, a reception which is not simply a legend because it is founded on direct work on the sources. 49

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Sparrow’s explanation of the need to retranslate A Consolatory Treatise, an edition published eight years after Hotham’s, is particularly relevant in this context. In the preface to The Remainder of Books Sparrow claims: that, never any treatise was written before so fully briefely and yet convincingly, as far as hath been Commonly known either among the bookes of Philosophy or Divinity: it was formerly translated into English by a worthy Person, in very Elegant language, which notwithstanding was thought to be the writing of another author, by those that delighted to reade him, not having the same Phrase with his other Bookes, for which cause I was induced to retranslate it, though not in so good a style, into that kinde of Expression which makes it known to be one of his workes.51

If the foundations of Hotham’s translation attempt might seem shaky, Sparrow’s translations, which show a remarkable terminological consistency, succeeded in making available the whole Böhme in English: so much so, that Sparrow attributes to his English Böhme a certain language and phrasing that had become a sort of ‘trademark’. In this sense Hotham had broken the uniformity of the English corpus, by offering to the reader quite a different Böhme – his own Böhme, whom Sparrow diplomatically defines as elegant, but whom he ultimately depicts as a foreigner placed next to the ‘official Böhme’ he had translated. This conflict between two different English Böhmes suggests that the Cambridge reception of Böhme based on these translations deserves a detailed study starting with the question: in which cases were the translations, rather than the German originals, the basis for the philosophical analysis of Böhme? The relations between the English corpus of Böhme and its German counterpart, the strategies and choices of the translators, altogether with the general frame, both with regard to the creation of a Böhme persona, and to the interests of the Cambridge readers, have to be taken into account. Whether or not we would still conclude, with More, that Böhme was a ‘philosopher but at randome’, this is the only way to set about distinguishing the stuffed lion skin from the hero that wore it.

Bibliography Achermann, Eric. 2012. Fromme Irrlehren. Zur Böhme-Rezeption bei More, Newton und Leibniz. In Offenbarung und Episteme. Zur europäischen Wirkung Jakob Böhmes im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert, ed. Wilhelm Kühlmann and Friedrich Vollhardt, 313–362. Berlin: De Gruyter. Apetrei, Sarah, and Ariel Hessayon, eds. 2013. An introduction to Jacob Böhme: Four centuries of thought and reception. London: Routledge. Baxter, Richard. 1696. Reliquiae Baxterianae: Or, Mr Richard Baxter’s narrative of the most memorable passages of his life and times, ed. Matthew Sylvester. London: Printed for Parkhurst, Robinson, Lawrence and Dunton. Benz, Ernst. 1959. Der Prophet Jakob Boehme. Eine Studie über den Typus nachreformatorischen Prophetentums. Wiesbaden: Steiner. Blumenberg, Hans. 2010. Paradigms for a metaphorology. Trans. Robert Savage. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. 51

 J. Sparrow, ‘The Englishers Preface to J.B.’s Apologies’, in Böhme (1662), 6.

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Böhme, Jakob. 1654a. A consolatory treatise of four complexions. Trans. Charles Hotham. London: Printed by T.W. for H. Blunden. ———. 1654b. Four tables of divine revelation. Trans. H. B. London: Printed for H. Blunden. ———. 1654c. Mysterium magnum or an exposition of the first book of Moses called Genesis. Trans. John Sparrow. London: Simmons for Blunden. ———. 1662. The remainder of books written by Jacob Behmen. Trans. John Sparrow. London: Printed by M.S. for Giles Calvert. ———. 1730. Epistolae theosophicae, oder Theosophische Sendbriefe. In Theosophia revelata, Das ist: Alle Göttliche Schriften des Gottseligen und Hocherleuchteten Deutschen Theosophi Jacob Böhmens, vol. 7, book 21 [s.l.]. Buddecke, Werner. 1937. Die Jakob-Böhme-Ausgaben: Ein beschreibendes Verzeichnis. Part 1: Die Ausgaben in deutscher Sprache. Göttingen: Häntzschel. ———. 1957. Die Jakob-Böhme-Ausgaben: Ein beschreibendes Verzeichnis. Part 2: Die Übersetzungen. Göttingen: Häntzschel. Coffey, John. 2006. John Goodwin and the Puritan revolution: Religion and intellectual change in seventeenth-century England. Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer. Conway, Anne. 1992. The Conway letters: The correspondence of Anne, Viscountess Conway, Henry More and their friends, 1642–1684, ed. Marjorie Hope Nicolson, revised ed. Sarah Hutton. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Crocker, Robert. 2003. Henry More 1614–1687: A biography of the Cambridge Platonist. Dordrecht: Springer. Dohm, Burkhard. 2012. Böhme-Rezeption in England und deren Rückwirkung auf den frühen deutschen Pietismus: Jane Lead und das Ehepaar Petersen. In Offenbarung und Episteme. Zur europäischen Wirkung Jakob Böhmes im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert, ed. Wilhelm Kühlmann and Friedrich Vollhardt, 219–240. Berlin: De Gruyter. Edel, Susanne. 1995. Die individuelle Substanz bei Böhme und Leibniz. Die Kabbala als Tertium Comparationis für eine Rezeptionsgeschichtliche Untersuchung. Stuttgart: Steiner. Franckenberg, Abraham v. 1730. Gründlicher und Wahrhafter Bericht vom Leben und Abscheid des in Gott selig-ruhenden Jacob Böhmens. In Jakob Böhme, Theosophia revelata, Das ist: Alle Göttliche Schriften des Gottseligen und Hocherleuchteten Deutschen Theosophi Jacob Böhmens, vol.7, book 22 [s.l.]. Gilly, Carlos. 2007. Zur Geschichte der Böhme-Biographien des Abraham von Franckenberg. In Jacob Böhmes Weg in die Welt: Zur Geschichte der Handschriftensammlung, Übersetzungen und Editionen von Abraham Willemsz van Beyerland, ed. Theodor Harmsen, 329–363. Amsterdam: In de Pelikaan. ———. 2011. ‘Oppositissimorum ingeniorum conspiratio et consensus’: Die Bezichtigung Des Atheismus gegen Böhme und Spinoza. In La centralità del dubbio. Un progetto di Antonio Rotondò, ed. Camilla Hermanin and Luisa Simonutti, vol. 2, 819–835. Florence: Olschki. Hessayon, Ariel. 2007a. ‘Gold tried in the fire’: The prophet TheaurauJohn Tany and the English revolution. Aldershot: Ashgate. ———. 2007b. ‘The Teutonicks writings’: Translating Jacob Böhme into English and welsh. Esoterica 9: 129–165. http://www.esoteric.msu.edu/VolumeIX/EsotericaIX.pdf. [online]. ———. 2019. Jacob Böhme’s foremost seventeenth-century English translator: John sparrow (1615-1670) of Essex. In Jacob Böhme and his world, ed. Bo Andersson, Lucinda Martin, et al., 329–357. Leiden: Brill. Hotham, Charles. 1650. An introduction to the Teutonick philosophie. Being a determination concerning the original of the soul. London: Printed by T.M. and A.C. for N. Brooks. ———. 1651. The petition and argument of Mr. Hotham, fellow of Peter-House in Cambridge, before the committee for reformation of the universities, April 10 1651. London: Printed for Giles Calvert. Hotham, Durand. 1654. The life of Jacob Behmen. London: Printed for H. Blunden. Hutin, Serge. 1966. Henry More: Essai sur les doctrines théosophiques chez les Platoniciens de Cambridge. Hildesheim: Olms.

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Hutton, Sarah. 1990. Henry More and Jacob Boehme. In Henry More (1614–1687): Tercentenary studies, ed. Sarah Hutton, 157–171. Dordrecht: Springer. ———. 2004. Anne Conway: A woman philosopher. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Koyré, Alexandre. 1929. La philosophie de Jacob Boehme. Paris: Vrin. Leech, David. 2008. Raison et enthousiasme dans l’Enthusiasmus triumphatus de Henry More. Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale 3: 309–322. More, Henry. 1679. Philosophiae teutonicae censura, sive epistola privata ad amicum. In Opera omnia, vol. 2. London: J. Macock, for J. Martyn and G. Kettilby. Muratori, Cecilia. 2012. Tanta verborum confusione. Die Rezeption von Franckenbergs Bericht durch Arnold und Mosheim. In Offenbarung und Episteme. Zur europäischen Wirkung Jakob Böhmes im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert, ed. Wilhelm Kühlmann and Friedrich Vollhardt, 435–449. Berlin: De Gruyter. ———. 2015. Jacob Böhme a Londra: la biblioteca teosofica di Christopher Walton. In Biblioteche filosofiche private: strumenti e prospettive di ricerca, ed. Renzo Ragghianti and Alessandro Savorelli, 133–149. Pisa: Edizioni della Normale. ———. 2016. The first German philosopher: The mysticism of Jakob Böhme as interpreted by Hegel. Dordrecht: Springer. Smith, Nigel. 2013. Did anyone understand Boehme? In An introduction to Jacob Böhme: Four centuries of thought and reception, ed. Sarah Apetrei and Ariel Hessayon, 98–119. London: Routledge. Struck, Wilhelm. 1936. Der Einfluss Jakob Böhmes auf die englische Literatur des 17. Jahrhunderts. Berlin: Junker und Dünnhaupt. Ward, Richard. 2000. The life of Henry More, ed. Robert Crocker, Sarah Hutton, et al. Dordrecht: Springer.

Chapter 5

Plotinus in Verses: The Epic of Emanation in Henry More’s Psychozoia Guido Giglioni

Abstract  In the collection of poems entitled Psychodia Platonica (‘The Platonic Song of the Soul’, 1642; 1647), and in particular in the poem entitled Psychozoia (‘The Life of the Soul’), Henry More laid the groundwork for his life-long inquiry into the nature of the human self. He provided a poetic commentary of Plotinus’s Enneads in which three ontological dimensions – the life of nature, animal perception and the intellect – created an allegorical background against which one could articulate a systematic analysis of the individual human self in its relationships with God and created reality. Psychozoia ended with a conversion, in which the soul of a Platonic pilgrim (Mnemon) was released from its condition of ‘autaesthesia’ (the kind of self-consciousness that fails to disengage from selfishness) so that it was finally able to reach a state of ‘anautoaesthesia’ (the awareness that true happiness can only lie in surrendering one’s will to the One, i.e., God). Significantly, More characterized this crucial shift from self-perception to the annihilation of the individual self as a motion towards ‘self-senslessnesse’ and ‘self-deadnesse’. Regardless of its aesthetic merits, More’s poem dramatizes key philosophical notions, while bringing to the fore the prodigious effervescence of his linguistic skills. In this sense, Psychozoia remains an important document to understand the evolution of More’s thought.

5.1  Introduction When Henry More discovered Plotinus’s Enneads at the end of the 1630s, the book offered him a most suitable subject to voice his philosophical ambitions (More 1694, 27).1 The 1640s were for More a period of poetic apprenticeship, or better, of  See Hutton (2007); Leech (2011); Leech (2013), 39–45; Reid (2012), 16.

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G. Giglioni (*) Dipartimento di studi umanistici, Universita di Macerata, Macerata, Italy e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 D. Hedley, D. Leech (eds.), Revisioning Cambridge Platonism: Sources and Legacy, International Archives of the History of Ideas Archives internationales d’histoire des idées 222, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22200-0_5

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philosophical and theological meditations conducted through the medium of poetry. To the collection of poems resulting from this encounter More gave the title ΨΥΧΩΔΙΑ Platonica, or a Platonicall Song of the Soul (1642). The Song in question, though, was a ‘Plotinian’ poem, for innumerable references to the Enneads dotted the text of the Psychodia and the ascetic tone of the whole poetic sylloge was unmistakably Plotinian. Readers were here presented with a description of the universe articulated in various interdependent levels  – a ‘Platonicall description of Universall life’ in which life was ‘omnipresent, though not alike omnipresent’. Psychodia opened with a sample of Plotinus’s cosmology, expounded according to the general division of the three hypostases: One, Intellect and Soul – ‘the famous Platonicall Triad’. It then continued focusing on the relationships between Soul, the Soul of the World and the human soul as they interacted in the story of one individual soul, Mnemon, the Platonic pilgrim in search of his truest self. Plots were intricate and one could easily be disoriented by the foundational paradox: the low Spirit of the Universe, though it go quite through the world, yet it is not totally in every part of the world; Else we should heare our Antipodes, if they did but whisper: Because our lower man is a part of the inferiour Spirit of the Universe (More 1642, A4r; More 1647, B7r).

Is Soul one or many? Are we one or many? The questions that perplexed the readers of More’s Platonicall Song were the same that triggered the movement of Plotinus’s Enneads, in the editorial arrangement of Porphyry. To address this dizzying array of philosophical riddles, in the second edition of Psychodia (1647) More added an apparatus of explanatory notes replete with precise references to the corpus of Plotinus’s Enneads. At this stage of his philosophical career, Plotinus was for More the philosopher whose ‘conceit’ he said he had ‘improved and made use of’ (More 1647, 353–54). This chapter is focused on one of the Plotinian poems written by More at the beginning of the 1640s, the one entitled ΨΥΧΟΖΩΙΑ, or the Life of the Soul. In the first section, I will follow More as he described the cosmic and individual cycles of life prompting motion in nature and knowledge in the human soul. The second section will concentrate more specifically on the various stages of life, from the unknowing and unknown energy of the One to the unconscious and tacit operations of the vegetative soul in nature. In the third section, finally, I will explore how More embraced poetry as the suitable medium to approach the nature of life in all its dimensions – ontological, religious and aesthetic. Here the imagination emerges as the faculty that bridged gaps and mediated the most difficult and perilous ‘conversion’ of all: the transition from self-perception (‘autaesthesia’) to freedom from perception (‘anautoaesthesia’), from virtue as knowledge to virtue as purification. As a final outcome of this spiritual journey, More intimated that there could be no true awareness for the soul without ‘self-senslessnesse’, ‘self-deadnesse’ and ‘self-­ nothingnesse’. Only passing through this cycle of alienation and re-appropriation, of loss and rediscovery could the soul be rightly described ‘a thing complex or concrete’ (More 1647, 422–23).

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5.2  The Cycle of Life More’s early interest in philosophy took poetic shape through his 1642 collection of philosophical poems. Psychozoia, or the Life of the Soul is the poem that opens the series. The life of the soul alluded to in the Greek title of the poem is both the emanation of the third hypostasis in the Plotinian triad and the history of an individual human self, which goes through the whole ordeal of self-alienation in the world of nature before rediscovering itself in the deepest recesses of his own intelligible nature. In this respect, Psychozoia can be seen as More’s complex attempt to provide a Christianized version of the Plotinian soul and its vagaries, drawing on a wide variety of sources and models: the Bible, the Gospel of John, the Kabbalah, the Corpus Hermeticum, the Orphic Hymns, Philo of Alexandria, Renaissance mythography, even Paracelsian natural philosophy.2 More describes his poem as a philosophical exercise along the lines of ‘that strange school’, that is, ‘Plato’s school’: ‘I onely do engage / my self to make a fit discovery, / give some fair glimpses of Plato’s hid Philosophie’ (I, ii, 7–9; lxi, 3).3 In keeping with the tenets of an allegedly most ancient wisdom (the doctrine known since the Renaissance as prisca sapientia), More presents the Platonic tradition as a ‘strange lore’ of ‘learned Pythagore’, ‘Egyptian Trismegist’ and ‘Chaldee wisdom’, which Plato and ‘deep Plotin’ have rescued from the clutches of time (I, iv).4 He declares that he is not afraid of expounding Plato’s philosophy ‘in a full heat’, while touching upon ‘some points of Christianitie’. In doing so, as he writes in the preface ‘To the Reader upon the First Book of Psychozoia’, he is following the precedent of ‘all-approved’ Edmund Spenser (1552–1599), who ‘sings of Christ under the name of Pan’. In a way, what Aristotelian exegesis was for late medieval and Renaissance schoolmen is allegory for More, who offers a version of Platonism ‘in a Christian strain and Poeticall scheme’ (More 1642, A5r; More 1647, B7v).5 The effort of reconciling different traditions reaches its climax when Plotinian Intellect is likened to Christ. Relying on Philo of Alexandria (c. 25  BC-c. 50  AD), who, in More’s interpretation, had assigned ‘the government of the Universe, Heavens, Starres, Earth, Elements, and all the creatures in them’ to  The complete title of the collection reads: ΨΥΧΩΔΙΑ Platonica: or A Platonicall song of the soul, consisting of foure severall poems; viz. ΨΥΧΟΖΩΙΑ, ΨΥΧΑΘΑΝΑΣΙΑ, ΑΝΤΙΨΥΧΟΠΑΝΝΥΧΙΑ, ΑΝΤΙΜΟΝΟΨΥΧΙΑ. Hereto is added a paraphrasticall interpretation of the answer of Apollo, consulted by Amelius, about Plotinus soul departed this life. The title-page of the 1647 edition is friendlier to the reader: A Platonick song of the soul, treating of, the life of the soul, her immortalitie, the sleep of the soul, the unitie of souls, and memorie after death. On Psychozoia, see Bullough (1931), xli–lxxiv; Crocker (2003), 17–27; Fouke (1997), 18–49; Hoyles (1971), 6–10; Jacob (1985); Jacob (1998), 27–37; Nicolson (1922); Staudenbaur (1986). 3  More (1642) 1, 16; More (1647), 1, 16; More (1931), 11, 31. 4  More (1642) 2; More (1647), 2; More (1931), 12. 5  For a study of Ficinian themes in Spenser’s poetry, see Rees (2009). For a study of More’s Psychozoia within the context of Spenser’s poetry, see Bland (2010), 57–70. 2

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‘the uptight word of God, his first-born son’, and drawing heavily on the Johannine Gospel, More feels perfectly at ease in associating ‘pure Platonisme’ with ‘right Christianisme’.6 The poem has a prologue in heaven whose effects reverberate through the rest of the work. Although the attention shifts from ontological outflows to the particular vicissitudes of the human soul, it is the Soul of the World that, in its twofold role as both metaphysical premise and existential instantiation, seems to be the real protagonist of the poem. In Canto 1, Uranore, the Soul, takes centre stage as the very core of the emanative process, linking nature to the mind, on the one hand, and individual souls to universal knowledge, on the other. In Canto 2, the journey of Mnemon across lands of division and deception demonstrates that the individual soul can have access to Intellect and then to the One only by contemplating the external spectacle of the universal soul, that is, Uranore’s dress (I, xxviii, 2–6), ‘[t]he outward shape of the worlds curious frame’ (I, xxxii, 2). This means that ‘through the boundlesse Universe’, the spirit of God, as ‘that great Ghost that fills both earth and sky’, shines through ‘purged hearts and simple minds’ (II, xci, 3–9). Finally, in Canto 3, the individual soul, after having been thoroughly cleansed, in the spirit of Plotinian asceticism, of its destructive passions (especially intellectual arrogance), abandons the last vestiges of its former self to recover inner peace and the unity it once lost. A few words are in order to give a brief account of the characters, the setting and the plot of Psychozoia. The three Plotinian hypostases – One, Intellect and Soul – are the main characters in the first part of the poem. The One (or the Good) is also called Atove, Ahad and Abinoam; Being, or Intellect (his son) is variously named as Aeon, On, Autocalon; Soul, finally, Atove’s daughter and Aeon’s sister and wife, is called Uranore and Psyche. The emanative descent through Atove, Aeon and Uranore is paralleled by the ascent of the individual soul, Mnemon, who at the end of Canto 3 is reunited with the One in Theoprepy (that is, ‘aptness for God’, ‘divine suitability’), the land of divine healing and final reconciliation. As far as the negative characters are concerned, matter is at the lowest level of ontological depravation and it functions as a counterpoint to the order of intelligible life. Matter is depicted as an ‘old hag’, ‘foul, filthy, and deform’ (I, ix, 3; xxxxiv, 7), a ‘horrid cave’, ‘womb of dreaded night’ and ‘mother of witchcraft’ (II, ix, 3–4). When the narrative moves from the archetypal protagonists to the individual souls, the role of main characters in the domain of evil is taken by Daemon and his wife Duessa, the evil tyrants who rule over the irascible and concupiscible regions of the human soul. More’s account of Plotinian emanations occurs in a poetic landscape which reflects a veritable topography of the soul. No wonder More would later reject as ‘nullibism’ the thesis that the soul is nowhere.7 Although Psychozoian geography is certainly the fruit of poetic licence, to a certain extent it also works in epistemological terms, in the way in which it displays the imagination’s effort to locate the journey of the soul. While the ineffable domain of the One is located somewhere in the ‘Atuvaean shore’, Intellect (the ‘ancient Eidos omniform’ [I, ix, 1], ‘life in full  More, ‘Notes upon Psychozoia’, in More (1647), 366–67.  On nullibism, see now Reid (2012).

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serenity’ [I, xiv, 3], ‘unspeakable plenitude of life’ [More 1647, 340]) is said to live in ‘Idea-Lond’ or ‘Aeon-land, which men Idea call’ (I, xiv, 2; xxxxiv, 2). The generation of individual souls from the energy of Psyche, finally, occurs in Psychany, ‘the Land of Souls’,8 which is a vast expanse including countless human souls. So far, so poetically good, for, as clarified by a timely note, the mind is in fact not confined to any material location and is able to expand indefinitely: The abode of the body is this Earth, but the habitation of the soul her own energy, which is exceeding vast, at least in some. Every man hath a proper World, or particular Horizon to himself, enlarged or contracted according to the capacity of his mind (More 1647, 357).

And yet, for reasons of narrative verisimilitude, places must have some element of conceptual physicality, all the more so as the return of the individual soul to the One is recounted in terms of a long and difficult journey through Psychany, a land symbolizing ontological change and division. Psychany is divided into two ‘mighty kingdomes’: Autaesthesia (i.e., self-perception) and ‘god-like Theoprepy’. Autaesthesia contains two provinces: Adamah (also known as Beirah, Beiron and Anthropion) and Dizoia. Adamah stands for animal life, while Dizoia is the land of ‘divided life’, of reflectivity without resolution. This region is in turn split into Aptery and Pteroessa, which are provinces inhabited by souls that are respectively deprived of and endowed with wings. The angel Michael rules over Theoprepy, the giants Daemon and Duessa tyrannize over Autaesthesia. The event that triggers the process of emanation is poetically represented as a ‘mysterious marriage’ in which Ahad weds his daughter Uranore to his son (and her brother) Aeon (I, xxxiii–xxxviii).9 If the situation is allegorically coherent, the poetic imagination hardly manages to smooth the many conceptual asperities. The offspring of Uranore – ‘Psyches progeny’ – is an incessant flow of individual human souls. Among the souls flowing out of Aeon and Uranore’s wedlock is Mnemon, the Platonic pilgrim, who recounts his many encounters while travelling in the regions of Adamah and Dizoia.10 More’s allegorical system is centred on what he calls the ‘wide Sensible’, that is, the universe of animal life, where the behaviour of insects, birds and quadrupeds denote ‘brutish’ desires and feral behaviour (II, cxxxv). So birds of various type  – jackdaws, crows and owls  – represent disparate religious positions within a divided Christendom (Laudian High Church, Puritans, Ranters and Quakers), while lions, asses, foxes and ants epitomize the different forms of governments such as monarchy, democracy, statecraft based on cunning and plutocracy.

 More, ‘The interpretation of the more unusuall names or words’, in More (1642), Q4r; More, ‘The interpretation generall’, in More (1647), 432. 9  This is how More recapitulates the emanative setting: ‘These three are Ahad, Aeon, Uranore: /Ahad these three in one doth counite. / What so is done on earth, the self-same power / (which is exert upon each mortall wight) / is joyntly from all these. But she that hight / fair Uranore, men also Psyche call’ (I, xxxix, 1–6). 10  On Mnemon’s vicissitudes as an example of conversion narrative and identity change, see Bergemann (2016). 8

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Confronted with various religious positions during his journey, Mnemon opts for ‘sense’, understood as the immediate grasping of divine nature (‘th’innate light / of my true Conscience’, II, cxxii, 6–7). Mnemon’s choice fully embraces the Plotinian rediscovery of one’s own truest self. With tones that betray More’s own conversion to a Plotinian understanding of the Christian soul, he emphasizes the extent to which a sincere believer is pervaded by justifying faith and is therefore saved: Gods spirit is no private empty shade But that great Ghost that fills both earth and sky, And through the boundlesse Universe doth ly (II, xci, 3–5).

This is when the journey through the various stages of spiritual regeneration takes on a more distinctive political meaning. Division and self-love, which are the hallmark of the individual unregenerate soul, are here depicted as the cause of ‘tyrannick thoughts’ and ‘private good’ (II, cxxxi, 4–5), responsible for making humans unable to engage in society, love and order: There’s no society in Behirah, But beastlike grazing in one pasture ground. No love but of the animated clay With beauties fading flowers trimly crown’d, Or from strong sympathies heart-striking stound. No order but what riches strength and wit Prescribe (II, cxxxiv, 1–7).

In a note appended to the 1647 edition of Psychozoia, More explains that the reference here is to the Nicomachean Ethics (IX, 8) by Aristotle, for whom ‘the genuine society that should be among men’ must lie in the ‘communication of reason and discourse’ (More 1647, 361). Withdrawal from animal appetite, though, is not the only way towards salvation. As made clear by More in his account of Mnemon in the land of Psychany, true virtue is no external conformity to social norms of behaviour. Animals are capable of this level of action and man would therefore still be ‘a Beast clad in man’s cloths’. Once again, animal life signals a limitation that human nature needs to overcome, while true virtue is founded in ‘true knowledge of God, in obedience and self-deniall’ (More 1647, 361–62). For this reason, the fundamental requisite is to drive out the brutes within and without. At this stage in Mnemon’s inner development, the condition of surrendering to one’s animal obtuseness is represented by More as a ‘very high’ wall with ‘no door’ in view (II, cxxxviii, 6–7). Help comes from a young man called Simon, the symbol of ‘obedientall nature’ (II, cxxxix, 3–4). He explains to Mnemon that the gate of ‘Humility’ out of the wall of ‘Self-conceit’ is not high, but ‘in deep descent doth lie’ (II, cxli). In this descent into humbling self-effacement, he needs the help of Simon’s parents, his father Autaparnes (self-denial) and his mother Hypomone (patience and endurance). Virtue means for More a path to freedom which can be obtained only when one plunges into the deepest recesses of the soul  – a subtle interplay of ascent and descent. In the ‘Interpretation Generall’ to Psychozoia, More clarifies the relationship between Simon, Autaparnes and Hypomone as a complex dialectic between

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obedience, self-denial and patience, in which repression of animal drives and feelings of pain play an active role: Simon, Autaparnes, Hypomone are but the soul thrice told over. Autaparnes is the soul denying itself: From these two, results Simon, the soul obedient to the spirit of Christ. Now there is no self-deniall where there is no corrupt or evill life to be supprest and satisfied; nor any Patience or Hypomone, where there is no agony from the vexation of self-deniall. So that the soul so long as it is Autaparnes or Hypomone, is a thing complex or concrete, necessarily including the corruption of that evill life or spirit, which is the soul’s self for a time (More 1642, Q1v; More 1647, 422–23).

The result of the combined actions of Simon, Autaparnes and Hypomone on Mnemon’s soul – the ‘thing complex or concrete’ – is the achievement of a condition of complete impassiveness. It is at this point that Simon becomes ‘Anautaesthetus’, unable to feel and relish himself (II, cxlvi, 9). As a consequence, he has a premonition of what being reabsorbed into the original unity of the One (old Atuvus) truly means: So both their lives do vanish into mine, And mine into Atuvus life doth melt, Which fading flux of time doth not define, Nor is by any Autaesthesian felt. This life to On the good Atuvus dealt. In it’s all Joy, Truth, Knowledge, Love and Force; Such force no weight created can repel’t. All strength and livelyhood is from this sourse, All Lives to this first spring have circular recourse (II, cxlvii).

This is the turning point in the evolution of the soul’s life. It is also the most Plotinian moment in the whole poem. The individual self dissolves into the universal intellect like ice ‘melt by the warmth of the Sunne’.11 In an accompanying note, More translates a passage from the Enneads (VI, ix, 10) to shed more light on this ‘state of union with God’: ‘Wherefore then the mind neither sees, nor seeing discerns, nor phansies too, but as it were become another, nor her self, nor her own, is there, and becoming His is one with Him, as it were joyning centre with centre’ (363). It should be said, however, that while referring more specifically to Plotinus’s own experience of union with God (Enneads, IV, viii, 1), More makes clear that the idea of Theoprepy, allegorized in the poem as the true place of the mind, is not entirely reducible to Plotinian ecstasy: ‘I do not confine my Theoprepia to it [i.e., Plotinus’s union with the Intellect]’. Man needs to lose his ‘self-will’ and ‘self-love’, ‘being wholly dead to himself and alive to God’ (More 1647, 363). In this respect, More’s journey of the soul ends with a thorough annihilation of the self. Complete self-denial and extinction of the self (and therefore becoming ‘another’) correspond in the poem to the stage when the soul moves from Adamah and Dizoia towards Theoprepy. Just before entering Theoprepy, though, Mnemon encounters ‘three sisters’ on the top of a hill which symbolizes the culmination of pagan wisdom. Her names are Dicaeosyne/Pythagorissa, Philosophy/Platonissa and ­Apathy/ 11

 More, ‘Notes upon Psychozoia’, in More (1647), 362.

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Stoicissa (III, lvii). Here lies the final hurdle before the soul can attain complete purification and freedom. The reason is that the highest achievement of pagan philosophy needs to be overcome by the self-denying faith of Christian religion. Otherwise life would remain at the ‘demonic’ stage of divided life: ‘What so is not of Christ but doth partake / of th’Autaesthesian soil, is life Daemoniake’ (III, lxi, 8–9). More argues that, however elevated, the philosophical systems of antiquity, especially Pythagoreanism, Platonism and Stoicism, are still confined within the constraining boundaries of intellectual perfection, unable to dissolve the innermost fetters of self-love into the freedom of intellectual self-surrender and mortification. In a note to Psychozoia, More explains that pagan philosophy, while being ‘a type of that life which is very near to perfection’, remains nevertheless ‘imperfect, having still a smack of arrogation, and self-seeking’. In More’s ascetic journey, philosophical ‘selfenesse’ needs to be extinguished through ‘perfect self-deadnesse’ (More 1647, 371–72). In this sense, Theoprepy is the final destination in Mnemon’s journey, for aspiration towards higher knowledge should always be accompanied by moral purification  – ‘the purging of the mind from all sorts of vices whatsoever’, as More is recorded saying in Ward’s biography (Ward 2000 [1710], 46). The spiritual journey of the soul, at the end of which it recovers its wings, terminates when amorous self-­ abandonment prevails over intellectual self-control. Those who die ‘unto self-­ feeling life’ (III, lxvi, 6–7) are finally freed from the bonds of ‘autopathian’ and ‘daemoniake’ life, that is, solipsism and conflict; ‘fading vitality’ gives way to ‘lifes reality’ (III, lxvii, 3–5). As clarified in an accompanying note, ‘anautaesthesy’ is total lack of felt life, that is, ‘self-nothingnesse’ or ‘self-senslessnesse, no more feeling or relishing a mans self’ (More 1647, 373). As already said, it’s only the complete obliteration of the self that paves the way to the One. And Psychozoia does ends in fact with the pilgrim arriving in a land – Theoprepy – where God is invisible and there is no more room for words, images or signs of any kind.

5.3  The Stages of Life Introducing the subject of Psychozoia, More explains that he is going to sing Psyche, ‘Mother of all that nimble Atom-throng / of winged lives, and generation’ (II, i, 3–4). Being metaphysically centred on Psyche, one of Plotinus’s three hypostases, Psychozoia deals principally with the Soul of the World, its associate faculties and its relationship to individual souls. More calls this model of emanation based on the allegorical dress of Uranore – the ‘cloth’ of the universe – the ‘universall Orders of life’.12 Using Plotinian loci, More compares ‘the entrance of Psyche into the body of the Universe’ to the sun piercing the clouds’ thick screen, ‘kindling and exciting the dead mist’ into a spectacle of ‘Aetherial vivacity’.13 Uranore also corresponds to 12 13

 More, ‘Notes upon Psychozoia’, in More (1647), 357.  More, ‘Notes upon Psychozoia’, in More (1647), 342.

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the third Person of the Trinity and, as Psyche, it rules over the life of the created world (‘the possession of the whole earth’).14 As already mentioned, More decided to allegorize all these various notions by dwelling on Uranore’s ethereal gown, made up of four ‘golden films’: Physis (nature), Haphe (the sense of touch), Arachnea (the senses) and Semele (the imagination). The visible layer of Uranore’s dress (‘the externall form of this large flowing stole’) is material nature. More difficult to unfold ‘out of the deadly shade / of darkest Chaos’ are the internal ‘films’, corresponding, respectively, to tactile perceptions, sensory representations and increasingly less opaque imaginations. These layers represent the intermediate stages within a stream of intelligible energy in eight levels of ‘differentiall profundity’, which together form one unity called by More the ‘universall Ogdoas’ (Hattove, Aeon, Psyche, Semele, Arachnea, Haphe, Physis, Hyle): One mighty quickned Orb of vast extent, Throughly possest of lifes community, And so those vests be seats of Gods vitality (II, xv, 7–9).

In the poem entitled ΨΥΧΑΘΑΝΑΣΙΑ Platonica (‘A Platonic Poem on the Immortality of the Soul’), which is part of the Psychodia Platonica, More dwells again on the number eight as the most adequate to represent the degrees of life in the universe: This number suits well with the Universe: The number’s eight of the Orb generall, From whence things flow or wherein they converse, The first we name Nature Monadicall, The second Hight Life Intellectuall, Third Psychicall, the fourth Imaginative, Fifth Sensitive, the sixth Spermaticall, The seventh be fading forms Quantitative, The eighth Hyle or Ananke perverse, coactive (I, iii, xxiii).

Compared to the Pythagorean ‘ogdoad’ in Psychzoia, the one in Psychathanasia does not include the sense of touch as a specific degree within the cycle of life and adds instead a transient flux of forms that engenders a sense of quantitative configuration in the space between nature (the ‘spermaticall’ stage of being) and matter, the domain of ‘perverse’ and ‘coactive’ determinism. In Psychozoia, Hyle is characterized as the most external and material hem of Physis’s layer, further subdivided into Proteus (‘changeableness’), Idothea (the ‘fleet passage of fading forms’) and Tasis (‘extension’).15 The reason behind this constant multiplication of layers is that, as More admits, the folds of Uranore’s dress are in fact infinite: ‘For no man can unfold/ the many plicatures so closely prest / at lowest verge’ (I, xviii, 6–8). In Uranore’s dress as is being depicted in Psychozoia, Arachnea represents the senses. They are compared to a spider which is always in the process of creating new worlds out of webs of perceptions that are all interrelated through a system of proportioned correspondences. Of the senses, touch (Haphe) represents the source  More, ‘To the reader upon the first book of Psychozoia’, in More (1642), A4v; More (1647), B7v.  More, ‘The interpretation of the more unusuall names or words’, in More (1642), Q5r, Q5r; More, ‘The interpretation generall’, in More (1647), 429, 431, 434

14 15

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of primal reactivity, ‘the root of felt vitality’ (I, xlix, 8). By and large, More considers sense to be a proportionate measure between beings of like nature: All sense doth in proportion consist, Arachnea doth all proportions bear: All sensible proportions that fine twist Contains: all life of sense is in great Haphes list (I, lv, 6–9).

Finally Semele, placed at the very boundary that separates Physis from Psyche, embodies the power of the imagination, always caught in the act of drawing the sinuous contour that divides and yet connects the senses and the intellect. Through On (the Intellect), Semele the imagination generates Bacchus, that is, desire, poetic frenzy and religious inspiration (I, lviii, 1–2). In this capacity, the imagination is also the power of poetic and prophetic utterances: ‘No wonder then each phansie doth incline / to their great mother Semel, and obey / the vigorous impresse of her enforcing ray’ (I, lviii, 7–9). Below Psyche is the domain of Physis, that is, Nature. In Psychozoia, Physis encompasses the realm of visible reality: ‘Nothing in nature did you ever spy / but there’s pourtraid’. This hidden ‘inward veil’ is ‘all besprinkled with centrall spots, / dark little spots’ (I, xli, 3; xlii 6–7).16 And when the energy of life (‘the hot bright dart’) ‘doth pierce these knots, / each one dispreads it self according to their lots’ (I, xlii, 6–9). Every time these nodules of clotted matter ‘dispread’, the ‘outward vest’ of ‘Dame Psyche’ swells as if blown by ‘th’inward wind’ (I, xliii, 1–4): ‘what’s all this but wafts of winds centrall / that ruffle, touze, and tosse Dame Psyche’s wrimpled veil?’ (I, xlvii, 8–9). Here the image of Uranore’s dress serves to convey the idea of an incessant change of forms prompted by the breath of life: Of gentle warmth, Physis is the great womb From whence all things in th’Universitie Yclad in diverse forms do gaily bloom, And after fade away, as Psyche gives the doom (II, xiii, 6–9).

As nature, Physis is the principle of generation which is constantly threatened by matter, depicted as an ‘envious witch’ intent on spoiling all the good work made by Uranore: [Matter] colours dims; clogs tastes; and damps the sounds Of sweetest musick; touch to scorching pains She turns, or baser tumults; smels confounds. O horrid womb of hell, that with such ill abounds (I, xlv, 6–9).

Matter is the principle that tarnishes life and turns all natural processes into effects of distorted generation and sensation. It unremittingly perverts all that is represented by the senses (be they external or internal), while supplying things with extension, quantity and figure, spreading sympathetic and magnetic forces, and kindling the innermost vital desires (‘pursuit or flight’, I, xlvi, 1–9). In the glossary appended at the end of Psychodia, More defines Hyle as a ‘dark fluid potentiality of the Creature’ and what he calls the ‘straitnesse, repugnancy and incapacity of the Creature’, for, inevitably, any material configuration ‘destroyes or debilitates the 16

 On More’s atomism, see Clucas (1991); Reid (2012).

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capability of being something else, or after some other manner’. This is, More continues, ‘all that any wary Platonist will understand by Άνάγκη’, the ‘perverse’ and ‘coactive’ necessity of matter.17 As already mentioned, an account of the principal stages of life can also be found in the poem Psychathanasia, where the nature of the soul is investigated in order to demonstrate its immortality. In this text, the discussion is set against the wider question of the contrast  – apparent  – between the unremitting changeability of vital forms and the imperishable character of life as a whole, i.e., between ‘the vanity of fading life’ and the principle that ‘all life’s immortall’ (I, iii, xvii, 8). The original nucleus of life  – ‘nature monadicall’  – never perishes; particular lives  – ‘atom-­ lives’ – contract and expand depending on the circumstances put in place by the universe as a whole (I, iii, xxiv, 6; I, iii, xxviii, 3). In scrutinizing the various ‘degrees of the souls’, More discards the Aristotelian notion of the soul as the ‘Enthelechy / of organized bodies’: … For this life, This centrall life, which men take souls to be, Is not among the beings relative; And sure some souls at least are self-active Withouten body having Energy (I, ii, xxiv, 2–6).

Since life can be found in the universe ‘devoid of heterogeneall organity’ (I, ii, xxiv, 9), one needs to find a better definition of the soul, which for More is essentially inward self-motion that becomes aware of its own motion through processes of self-­ reflection (‘animadversive sense’) and self-reduplication. A thing can be said to be an individual and a soul when it is able to reflect itself within itself (‘that thing is individuous / what ever can into it self reflect, / such is the soul as hath been prov’d by us / before’, III, ii, xxv, 1–4). While in Psychozoia ‘self-senslessnesse’ is the defining feature of the purged soul, in Psychathanasia, this feature is self-reflectivity: Upon her self she strangely operates, And from her self and by her self returns Into her self; thus the soul circulates (II, iii, xxvii, 1–3).

One may wonder whether the circle of self-perception and self-denial, epitomized in Psychozoia by the story of Mnemon, signals in fact an inconsistency in More’s thinking about the soul. Can self-reflection in the end be identified with the eradication of the self? A possible answer to this central question lies in the way in which More handled the functions  – both metaphysical and aesthetic  – of the imagination within the cycle of the Platonic poems. Just as, at the level of hypostatic emanation, the Soul of the World is the main character in Psychozoia (and, in a way, in the whole collec17  More, ‘The interpretation of the more unusuall names or words’, in More (1642), Q3r; More, ‘The interpretation generall’, in More (1647), 428. See also Phychathanasia Platonica, I, iii, xxiv, 1–4: ‘That last [Hyle] is nought but potentiality, / which in the lower creature causeth strife, / destruction by incompossibility / in some, as in the Forms Quantitative’.

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tion of Platonic songs), so the imagination is in fact the central faculty in the story of how human knowledge represents itself in the grand scheme of nature. It is especially when combined with memory that the adjusting and reshaping functions of the imagination come to the fore. In Psychathanasia, More call phansy ‘th’impression of those forms that flit / in this low life’ (III, ii, xlvi, 1–2). From their impressions ‘springeth that which men call memory’ (xlvii, 1). Memory, like the imagination, has two origins, from the ‘outward’ objects or from the ‘clear phantasies’ that our mind elicits from ‘our own centrall life’, … by might Of our strong Fiat as oft as we please, With these we seal that under grosser spright, Make that our note-book, there our choisest notions write (III, ii, xlvii, 6–9).

Memory and imagination thus turn the soul into a ‘note-book’. In this book the imagination responds to the call of the archetypes originally imprinted by God in the human soul: ‘of old Gods hand did all forms write / in humane souls, which waken at the knock / of Mundane shapes’ (III, ii, xlv, 5–7). Despite their links with the body, memory and imagination are not corporeal, for otherwise ‘stretchen corporeity’ and ‘effluxion of parts’ would blurry the focus of memory, ‘wash away all intellection’ and what was once ‘graven’ in ‘phantasie’ (II, ii, xv). The opposite is rather the case: the imagination – the ‘nimble phantasie’ – works better when all the influences from the body are muffled up (II, ii, xvi, 2). In introducing another of his poems collected in Psychodia Platonica, the one entitled ΑΝΤΙΨΥΧΟΠΑΝΝΥΧΙΑ (‘Confutation of the Sleep of the Soul after Death’), More explains how ‘the sight of more attenuate phantasms’ overcomes the distractions of the living body and paves the way to ‘subtility of reason’: Sure I am that sensuality is alwayes an enemy to subtility of reason, which hath its rise from subtility of phansie: so that the life of the body, being vigorous and radiant in the soul, hinders us of the sight of more attenuate phantasms. But that being supprest or very much castigate and kept under, our inward apprehension grows clearer and larger. Few men can imagine any thing so clearly awake, as they when they were asleep. And what’s the reason, but that the sense of the body is then bound up or dead in a manner? (More 1647, R5r).18

In this respect, the imagination is defined in Psychathanasia as the power through which the soul sets herself free from the world of the senses (II, iii, xxvii–xxviii). And yet, for all its energy, no force of inner visualization can ever represent the One. ‘No might Imaginall’, More insists in Psychozoia, ‘may reach that vast profunditie’ (I, xvi, 8–9). The imagination is also unable to grasp the limitless interdependence of the whole creation. Above all, it cannot have access to the ‘ideall / and centrall presence’ of divine nature ‘in every atom-ball’ (II, x, 8–9).19

 On early modern psychopannychism, see Hamilton (2001).  See also Psychathanasia, II, iii, ix, 5–9: ‘Imagination / that takes its raise from sense so high ascent / can never reach, yet intellection / or higher gets, or at least hath some sent / of God, vaticinates, or is parturient’.

18 19

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In line with the Platonic tradition (especially Ficino),20 More distinguishes two principal kinds of imagination: a ‘low phansie’, attached to the vital functions of the body, and a ‘high phantasie’, acting as the privileged path leading to the world of intelligible forms.21 In between the two types of imagination, though, More records countless varieties of imaginative functions, all labelled through the forceful means of his visual and expressive language: ‘flowring phantasie’ (set to inspire ‘drowsie sensuall souls’); simple ‘phancie’ (the faculty of the internal senses); ‘might imaginall’ (the endeavour to visualize intelligible realities); ‘working phansie’ (the energy underlying poetic inspiration); ‘phansie fulminant’ (which in some circumstances manages to ‘pierce’ the outward appearance of things); the ‘darker phansied soul that live in ill disease’ (the disordered imagination that often triggers illness and physical pain)22; ‘curious phansie’ (the spontaneous activity of daydreaming that clogs the mind with vain representations); ‘frantick phansie’ (when the imagination is subjected to the lures of earthly love)23; the imaginative work underlying the process of ‘idiopathye’ (self-absorption into one’s own imagination and inability to see reality)24; ‘progging phansie’ (the seeking activity that secures self-preservation); ‘phansies beck’ (the principle of animal motion); the ‘orb Imaginall” (one of the stages in the emanation of life); ‘beasts life Phantasticall’ (the animal degree of life); ‘phansies florid wile’ (the imagination associated to rhetorical tricks that hamper the construction of rational arguments); ‘fatter phansie’ (the rich, imaginative style that is opposed to the ‘lean style’, characteristic, as we will see in the next section, of philosophy); ‘false phansies’ (meaning the illusions about corporeal beings that keep the mind from perceiving reality); ‘clear phantasies’ (i.e., the imaginations conveyed by remembrances of ideas); ‘lightsome phansies’, ‘loose luxuriant phansie’, ‘needlesse phansy’ and ‘daring phansie’ (when the imagination is put to vain use to demonstrate the alleged reality of mental figments, such as astronomical devices and fictitious spheres).25 And this exercise could continue for pages, such is the profusion of words, phrases and expressions related to the power of the imagination in More’s poetry and poetics. What is more, the imagination occupies a central position in the construction of philosophical arguments. In the preface to Antipsychopannychia, More explains that his aim is ‘to raise a certain number of well ordered Phantasms, fitly shaped out and warily contrived’, prepared in such a way that they may be able ‘to skirmish and conflict with all the furious phansies of Epicurisme and Atheisme’ (More 1642, M6r; More 1647, R5r). More’s adoption of the Plotinian model of the accreted self (reflecting the emanative stages of cosmic life while embarking on an ascetic expedition from the  Significantly, Ficino attributes this division into two types of imagination to Plotinus in his Commentary on the Enneads. See Ficino (1962 [1576]), II, 1548–1549. On the two types of imagination in Ficino, see Giglioni 2011. 21  Psychathanasia, III,iii, ii. Cf. Dante’s notion of alta fantasia in Paradiso, 30, 142. 22  Psychozoia, I, vi, 1; I, xv, 7; I, xvi, 8; II, v, 5; II, lxviii, 9; III, xx, 9. 23  Cupids Conflict, in More (1646), C7v, C8v; More (1647), 300–02. 24  More, ‘The Preface to the Reader’ [Psychathanasia] (1642), E4v; More (1647), H2r. 25  Psychathanasia, I, ii, xvi, 4; I, ii, xxxv, 9; I, iv, iv, 3; II, i, i, 7; II, i, v, 8; II, i, vi, 3; II, i, xvi, 3; III, ii, xlvii, 4; III, iii, xvi, 9; III, iii, xlv, 1; III, iii, lxviii, 1. 20

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senses to the intellect) is even more evident in the poem ΑΝΤΙΜΟΝΟΨΥΧΙΑ (‘Against the One Soul’). In Stanza 30, memory is described as the core of the soul. In pervading all the different layers of the soul, memory allows life to move from plants to intellects, to the primal functions of life to the most abstract operations of the mind: ’Tis also worth our observation, That higher life doth ever comprehend The lower energie: sensation The soul some fitten hint doth promptly lend To find our plantall life; sense is retaind In subtiller manner in the phantasie; Als reason phantasies doth well perpend: Then must the highest of all vitality Contain all under life. Thus is there Memory.

For More, the soul ‘hath retention’ of all its faculties and this ensures that it preserves its identity throughout the changes it undergoes in the worlds both within and without. In this way, the self is capable of making ‘a prompt agnition’ of all its previous states and of recognizing its past life (‘their former being’): This memorie the very bond of life You may well deem (XXXIII, 1–2).

And so through the imagination memory rescues the self-reflective motion of the soul from the dispersion of oblivion. Above all, though, memory rescues self-­ reflection from the insignificance of inane self-referentiality and selfishness (the ‘self-feeling life’ of animal autoaesthesia). In this sense, both at a cosmological level (with the Soul of the World), and at the level of the individual soul (with the story of Mnemon), the functions of the imagination and memory reconcile the ‘purgative’ journey of the soul (‘self-deadnesse’) with the need for intellective ‘agnition’. Otherwise said, the souls recognizes itself in what is other from itself only through the cognitive and moral resources of imagination and memory.

5.4  The Poetry of Life The writer Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977) began his Strong opinions by addressing the well-known chasm between thought and words (written and spoken): ‘I think like a genius, I write like a distinguished author, and I speak like a child’ (2012 [1973], ix). The humorous apophthegm encapsulates an exquisitely Platonic conundrum: while writing kills the spontaneous flow of one’s thinking, talking about one’s thinking may preserve the original candour of the thinking activity. Henry More, being a Platonist, was on the same wavelength. In the ‘Letter to the Reader’ opening his Explanation of the Grand Mystery of Godliness (1660), he thus addressed the situation described by Nabokov:

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I must indeed confess, That free Speculation and that easie springing up of coherent Thoughts and Conceptions within is a Pleasure to me far above any thing I ever received from external Sense; and that lazy activity of Mind in compounding and dissevering of Notions and Ideas in the silent observation of their natural connexions and disagreements, as a Holy-day and Sabbath of rest to the Soul. But the labour of deriving of these senses of the Mind with their due advantages and circumstances to the Understanding of another, and to find out Words which will prove faithful witnesses of the peculiarities of my Thoughts; this verily is to me a toil and a burden unsopportable: besides the very writing of them a trouble so tedious, that if any one knew with what impatience and vexatiousness I pen down my Conceptions, they might be very well assured that I am not onely free from, but incapable of the common disease of this Scripturient Age (More 1660, A2r).

In characterizing the time in which he lived as the ‘scripturient age’, More was certainly thinking of the technological advancements caused by the invention of the printing press. It cannot be denied, however, that he too had a significant part in the spreading of the disease, given the volume of his ‘scripturient’ production. The justification he gave for indulging in ‘so ungratefull a piece of drudgery’ (i.e., writing) was a fundamental inability to reconcile the tasks of active life with the need to contemplate nature and its archetypal reality, a need driven by a powerful desire to know the ‘Principle’ behind them. In this sense, writing meant for More the act of giving words to ‘matters of the highest consequence that the Mind of man can entertain her self withall’: The writing whereof was in a manner a necessary result of my natural Constitution, which freeing me from all the servitude of those petty designs of Ambition, Covetousness, and the pleasing entanglements of the Body, I might either lie fixt for ever in an unactive idleness, or else be moved by none but very great Objects. Amongst which the least was the Contemplation of this Outward world, whose several powers and properties touching variously upon my tender senses, made to me such enravishing musick, and snatcht away my Soul into so great admiration, love, and desire of a nearer acquaintance with that Principle from which all these things did flow; that the pleasure and joy that frequently accrued to me from hence is plainly unatterable, though I have attempted to leave some marks and traces thereof in my Philosophical Poems (More 1660, A2r).

Poetry provided therefore the means of articulating a pleasure that More described as ‘unatterable’. The Philosophical Poems are More’s attempt to record ‘marks and traces’ of this ineffable experience. In Psychathanasia, the activities of writing and speaking are presented as the result of a delicate interplay of reason and imagination: ‘The busie soul thus doth her reason strain / to write or speak what envious tongue may never stain’ (I, ii, xli, 8–9). This occurs ‘when reason works with fantasie’. Then the flow of thinking finds its suitable form: … changeable conceits we do contrive, Purging and pruning with all industrie, What’s dead or uselesse, lesse demonstrative, What’s dull or flaccid, nought illustrative, Quenching unfitted phantasmes in our brain, And for our better choice new flames revive (I, ii, xli, 2–7).

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In his suite of Platonic songs, More is thus testing how to give expression to Platonic abstractions by using the language of allegorical and metaphysical poetry. He is experimenting through metaphors, metonymies, oxymoronic juxtapositions and synecdochic relations. What’s more, though, he is ‘purging and pruning’ the poetic material so as to purge and prune the life of the soul. As already said, Psychozoia ends in silence. Or better, it ends with a philosophical glossary, which is as poetic as the texts which it is supposed to elucidate. Most importantly, in keeping with the poetic and philosophical programme of the soul’s self-effacement, the glossary at the end of Psychodia Platonica has no erudite intent, but it is a confirmation that beyond lofty knowledge and harsh virtue, it is ‘simplicity of heart’ that really counts’: it would be well, that neither the Linguist would contemne the illiterate for his ignorance, nor the ignorant condemne the learned for his knowledge, for it is not unlernednesse that God is so pleased withall, or silliness of mind, but singlenesse and simplicity of heart (More 1642, A6r; More 1647, C2v).

It is therefore apparent that in this period of his philosophical production, More confided in the power of poetic imagination. In a note added to Psychozoia, he exalted the ability of the imagination to bridge the gap between sensible appearances and intelligible truth: ‘even Sence can reach the Starre; what then can exalted phansie, or boundlesse Intellect?’ (More 1647, 357). And yet the imagination could not be left to its own devices, even when brightened up by the faculty of the intellect. Resonating with Dantesque echoes, More compared his poetic ‘phancie’ to a ‘wandring Bark’ that needed divine assistance while navigating the vast ocean of knowledge (cf. Paradiso, II, 1; XXIII, 67). Above all, More’s imagination encountered a limit in depicting Theoprepy, the region where the searching soul was finally reunited with the One, for the ultimate stage in the mind’s return to the original unity with God could only be experienced in a personal and direct way: ‘who list to know himself must come and see’ (III, lxix, 9). On this point Plotinian mysticism met the experimental and experiential attitude of Protestant devotion. Despite abandoning metaphysical poetry later in his life, More’s philosophical prose remained indebted to the poetic experiments of his youth. His philosophy is constantly interspersed with linguistic inventions. As he wrote in Psychathanasia while exploring the imagination’s journey into the abyss of matter, the soul dived into ‘the profunditie / of darkest matter’ and found ‘nought / but all this worlds bare Possibilitie’ (I, iv, x, 5–9). In Psychodia Platonica, philosophical concepts are often given contrived descriptions, and yet they maintain a certain level of linguistic ingenuity. In Psychathanasia, for instance, the human soul is portrayed as the very embodiment of the imaginative faculty of nature: ‘Natures fancie ti’d / in closer knot, shut up into the mid / of its own self’, or ‘th’impresse imaginall / of Natures Art’ (I, ii, xxviii, 3–4; xxxx, 5–6). The two definitions are parts of a long similitude in which the soul – the ‘inward centre hid’ – is compared to a snake reviving from winter hibernation: So doth the gentle warmth of solar heat Eas’ly awake the centre seminall, That makes it softly streak on its own seat,

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And fairly forward force its life internall. That inward life’s th’impresse imaginall Of Natures Art, which sweetly flowreth out From that is cleep’d the sphere spermaticall: For there is plac’d the never fading root Of every flower or herb that into th’aire doth shoot (I, ii, xxx).

From a strictly poetic point of view, however, More’s Muse lacks grace, as has often been recognized by critics and historians of literature.26 The symbolic code tends to be simplistic and mechanic. His allegories are often harsh and charged with a sense of rationalistic stridency. It is a style that he himself described as ‘rude rugged uncouth’ (More 1646, D2r; More 1647, 305). He deliberately pursued a contrast between ‘a sound of words signifying the thing is so’ and the ‘true understanding that the thing is so indeed’ (1642, E4v; 1647, H2v). More did not hide that he was not looking for ‘Teian strain’ or ‘light wanton Lesbian vein’. He knew that only readers who have passed through ‘silent Secesse’, ‘wast Solitude’, ‘deep searching thoughts often renew’d’, ‘stiff conflict ‘gainst importunate vice’, ‘collection of the mind from stroke / of this worlds Magick’, were fit to read his ‘lofty layes’. Rather than addressing his poems to those ‘whom lust, wrath, and fear controul’, he preferred to sing to ‘cragg’d clifts and hills, / to sighing winds, to murmuring rills, / to wastefull woods, to empty groves, / such things as my dear mind most loves’ (More 1642, A2r).27 In the Preface to Psychathanasia, he acknowledged that such a poem was so abstruse for common ears that it was the same as to sing to ‘waste Woods and solitary Mountains’. And the reason he gave was that ‘all men are so full of their own phansies and idiopathyes, that they scarce have the civility to interchange any words with a stranger’. In this sense, poetry – strident and dissonant as it sounds – may offer a solution to the predicament of how one should know and communicate that which is remorselessly ‘other’. Poetry teaches us ‘neither to embosome nor reject any thing, though strange, till we were well acquainted with it’, for any excess in self-­ confidence and assertiveness prevents true understanding. On the contrary, ‘[e]xquisite disquisition begets diffidence; diffidence in knowledge, humility; humility good manners and meek conversation’ (More 1642, E4v; More 1647, H2r). Here the virtues of Simon, Autaparnes and Hypomene are given their aesthetic due. The poem Cupids Conflict, published in 1646, can be said to contain the principles of More’s poetics. They are presented in a dialectic and dramatic way, in the form of a banter between Mela, a character who conveys the author’s own concerns, and Cupid (symbol of both ‘lustfull Love’ and ‘consuming ire’ – ‘both born of one rebellious fire’). In this poem, true poetry is described as the soul’s effort to withdraw from the senses (‘senses objects soon do glut the soul’) and

 See, for instance, Robert Southey in Omniana: ‘The allegory in Spenser is the worst part of his poem, but the worst allegory in Spenser is far better than the best in Henry More’ (Southey and Coleridge 1812, II, 157). 27  See also Cupids Conflict, in More (1646), D5r; More (1647) 311: ‘…thou now singst to trees / to rocks to Hills, to Caves that senselesse be / and mindlesse quite of thy hid mysteries, / in the void air thy idle voice is spread, thy Muse is musick to the deaf or dead’. 26

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turn its attention inside. Here the paradox of self-reflection and self-effacement reappears in a context that concerns poetics more than gnoseology: When I my self from mine own self do quit And each thing else; then an all-spreaden love To the vast Universe my soul doth fit, Makes me half-equall to All-seeing Jove (More 1646, C8v; More 1647, 302)

Although Semele in Psychozoia is the imagination that reconciles intellect (Jove) with desire (Bacchus), in Cupids Conflict More adjudicates the crucial contrast between ‘living sense’ and ‘livelesse words’ in favour of the faculty of thinking, Jove, symbolized as the ‘measure’ of poetic expression – the ‘tongue’: My thought’s the fittest measure of my tongue, Wherefore I’ll use what’s most significant, And rather then my inward meaning wrong Or my full-shining notion trimly skant, I’ll conjure up old words out of their grave, Or call fresh forrein force in if need crave (More 1646, D2r; More 1647, 305).

More’s Muse is unashamedly philosophical. It is certainly not by accident that his poems come enwrapped with a complex paratextual apparatus made of prefaces, notes and glossaries. There is no doubt that, as I have argued in the previous section, the imagination is the very engine that through poetic and narrative devices bridges the gap between self-reflection and self-denial. And yet, the philosophical urge behind his rational inquiry jeopardize the cognitive and creative attempts of the imagination. It may easily be that at this particular stage in his intellectual career, More felt that Spenserian poetry was the best poetical model through which he could address the potentially disruptive tension in his mind between the Plotinian νοῦς and the Averroist intellectus, that is, between the accreted individuality of the self and the impersonal unity of the intelligible.28 In Book 3, Canto 2 of Psychathanasia, this Plotinian model of accreted self is designated as ‘the tricentreity / of humane souls’: … A reall tricentreitie. First centre ever wakes, unmoved stayes. High Intellect. The next in sleep doth lie Till the last centre burst into this open skie (III, ii, iii, 6–9).

The first centre is the intellect, the second is the force of desire and will, and the last the drowsy and silent life of the vegetative operations, in which ‘we no more are conscious of life’ (III, i, ix, 8–9). In this view, every individual soul builds its own body in order to know the surrounding world, which is then left behind when the soul finally rejoins God, its origin. More’s is a type of contrived and concise poetry marked by levels of increasing difficulty and obscurity, in which neologisms, barbarisms and obsolete words are ‘conjured up’ every time a living meaning needs to be rescued from the sloth of lifeless words. In the preface to the second edition of the Philosophical Poems (1647), 28

 On this particular tension in More’s philosophy, see Hutton (2013).

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More recounts how the poems published five years earlier had been conceived and written in a haste. In this connection, he refers to the literary trope of the bear who licks her cubs when they are not fully formed, so that their mother may turn them into finely shaped animals: ‘I have taken the pains to peruse these Poems of the soul, and to lick them into some more tolerable form and smoothnesse’. Revisiting his poetic experience five years later, he realizes that at the time of the Platonicall Song of the Soul he was ‘so immerse in the inward sense and representation of things’ that it was even necessary to forget the oeconomie of words, and leave them behind me aloft, to float and run together at randome (like chaff and straws on the surface of the water) that it could not but send them out in so uneven and rude a dress (More 1647, B1rv).

Thinking, verbal articulation and writing (or rewriting): once again we are confronted by the quandary intimated in the Grand Mystery of Godliness and wittily re-proposed in the last century by Nabokov. In the very judgment of its author, Psychozoia was a badly-cut dress (‘uneven and rude’) designed to mimic the dress of the soul, which on the contrary was naturally and smoothly form-fitting. In More’s intention, the image of the dress was an allegorical trope used to characterize the living tapestry of nature as well as to shed light on the relationship between words and thought. It also worked as a justification of the positive role played by external appearances in the human pursuit of inner knowledge and freedom, for the imagination was deemed to be constitutively limited when faced by the representation of the One: ‘No might imaginal / may reach that vast profunditie’ (I, xvi, 8–9). As a result, the only thing More was willing to report about the Soul of the World was her dress and her four principal layers  – ‘that’s the onely thing / that I dare write’ (I, xvii, 3–4). Otherwise, the risk was to end up like Phaeton, the son of Helios, scorched alive while running too closely to the sun. ‘The many plicatures so closely prest’ (I, xviii, 1–8), which made Uranore’s dress rustle and billow in infinitely different ways, escaped More’s poetic abilities: For her large robe all the wide world doth fill: It’s various largeness no man can depaint: My pen’s from thence, my Book, my Ink; but skill From Uranures own self down gently doth distill (I, xxix, 6–9).

In other words, nature was for More the self-revelation of Soul and the conduit of the self-distilling wisdom of life. Likewise, genuine poetry was a natural expression of the life of nature: ‘When life can speak, it cannot well withold / t’expresse its own impressions and hid life’ (More 1646, D4r; More 1647, 309). More saw his task as a poet very close to the one of a very attentive reader, of someone who was ‘spying’ between the infinite ‘plicatures’ of the Soul’s dress.29 He was well aware that ‘sense’ was not able to grasp ‘th’inwardnesse / of things, nor penetrate the crusty fence / of constipated matter close compresse’; and yet the human mind could have no access to the Soul without contemplating Uranore’s dress (I, xxviii, 2–6). Indeed, a close proximity linked the beauty of the dress to the joy of the senses: ‘O gladsome life of sense that doth adore / the outward shape of the worlds curious frame!’ (I, xxxii, 2). 29

 On the verb ‘spie’, see Psychozoia, I, xvi, 2; I, xxxi, 1; xxxxi, 2.

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5.5  Conclusion Philosophy has always had an uncomfortable relation with beauty. To put it simply (perhaps too simply), the question of whether Psychozoia is a great poem is irrelevant from a philosophical point of view. One should rather ask: Why poetry? Is poetry a better medium than prose to express what is perceived as ineffable truth? In his letter to Walter Raleigh (c. 1554–1618) premised to the 1590 edition of the Faerie Queene, Spenser had famously argued that allegory and poetry were better equipped than philosophy to offer the reader convincing examples of virtuous action. In this sense, Xenophon’s Cyrus had been more successful than Plato’s Republic in educating princes.30 In Spenser’s poem, the aim behind the hero’s vicissitudes was to secure virtue and to strengthen it against the constant threat of external temptations and inner weakness; in More’s Psychozoia, the hero was a Platonic soul who struggled to reach a clearer vision of the truth and to transcend the limits of sensible, individual nature, with all its inner divisions and conflicts. In his Spenserian phase, More had partly subscribed to the principle that poetic allegories and narrative examples were more persuasive than philosophical notions. ‘Platonick rage’, he wrote in the opening stanzas of Psychozoia (I, ii, 3), was needed to give words and images to arcane thoughts, otherwise barely conceivable and hardly effable. ‘My mind is mov’d dark Parables to sing’ (II, vi, 1), he later insisted while referring to the parallel processes dealing with the emanation of reality and the ascent of the fallen soul. As argued in this chapter, Psychozoia chronicles the life of the soul, or better the life of the Soul of the World and the latter’s influences on the individual souls of human beings. More’s epic of emanation recounts the story of the soul’s descent against the grain of cosmological emanation and its re-ascent to the One through Soul and Intellect. The process generates a tension – metaphysical more than narrative – whose poles are unity and diversity: the ‘uniform’ nature of the Good and the ‘infinite’ difference of the Evil (III, lxxi, 9). The Plotinian drama re-enacted by More in Psychozoia is thus pivoted on the recovery of a lost unity. The question is whether one can in fact represent the soul’s attempt to return to the One in real dramatic terms. After all, the way More appropriated Plotinus’s emanation betrays a confident belief that in the end ‘all to him return’. Rational optimism blends here with soteriological universalism: ‘Love all did make: / and when false life doth fail, it’s for the sake / of better being ’ (I, vii, 5–6). If there is an element of dramatic tension in Plotinus’s philosophy, this is to be found in the soul’s longing for the light of knowledge and, beyond that, its final surrender to the power of God, the One. In this sense, we can say that the motor behind Plotinian epic is of a genuinely ecstatic nature: the story narrates how the self survives alienation and becomes ‘another’, different from what it thought it was and yet still capable of seeing itself as an individual. To this pattern More added a distinctive streak of Christian mysticism (with strong influences from the Theologia germanica, whose inspirational power had 30

 Spenser (1978 [1590, 1596, 1609]), 15–16.

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been recently rediscovered by Martin Luther). One of the aims of the poem, as explained in one of the notes attached to Psychozoia, was therefore to demonstrate that the type of virtuous existence glorified by pagan philosophers was a life which, while being ‘very near to perfection’, remained nevertheless imperfect, ‘having still a smack of arrogation, and self-seeking’. More insisted that ‘perfect self-deadnesse’ should be the target of Christian life: ‘where selfenesse is extinguished, all manner of arrogation must of necessity be extinct’ (More 1647, 372). One of the reasons why the narrative drive of the poem tends to fizzle out lies in the way in which More voiced the drama of the religious soul. The universal angle, regardless of whether this angle is that of the Intellect or the Soul of the World, blurred the focus of the individual self while expanding its intelligible potential. By relying on the breadth of Plotinian universalism and intellectualism, More challenged the narrowness of Puritan self-righteousness and the dogmatic outcomes of its claims to predestinarianism. This move, however, quenched the most emotional and compelling aspects in the story of personal salvation. For More, God was infinite goodness and imparted salvation to all the souls who wished to follow the path of inner discipline: ‘his good Art / is all to save that will to him return, / that all to him return, nought of him is forlorn’ (I, vi, 7–10). As explained in the first section of this chapter, the wedding of Intellect (Aeon) and Soul (Uranore) in Canto 1, Stanza 36, was characterized by More as an allegorical description of the union between the universal good (‘the eternall will of God’) and the individual will of human beings (‘their [human] own perverse and dark will’), a union that was premised on a plan of universal salvation (‘one everlasting way of light and saving health’). In an explanatory note attached to this stanza, More expanded on this crucial point, describing the marriage of Aeon and Uranore as a ‘Christian mystery wrapt up in a Platonicall covering, that is, the reduction of the world to conformity with the Eternall Intellect, and the soul of the world’. For this Intellect and this Soul, More continued, move still, to this very day, to win men to be governed by them, and not by their own perverse and dark will. Or rather to speak in the Christian Idiom, the Sonne of God, and the Holy Ghost do thus stirre men up, and invite them to true and lively obedience to the eternall will of God, and to forsake their own selves, and their blind way, and to walk all in one everlasting way of light and saving health (More 1647, 345).

In this picture, the ‘perverse and dark will’ of the individual souls inevitably tends to disappear in the background. In expanding the focus of the individual soul to its full intelligible scope, Uranore plays a crucial role in the economy of the poem, for the balance of More’s emanation is tilted towards the Soul of the World. This soul is deemed to participate in the sensations of natural beings. Indeed, all sensations, including touch, can be seen as adjustments to the life of Psyche. They are offshoots of the universal Soul, which envelops the one and the parts in one continuum of vitality and knowledge, a veritable ‘community’, to use More’s own word (‘Haphe’s mother hight all-spread Community’, I, xlix, 9). More specifically, through the collective imagination of the Soul of the World, God perceives all individual imaginations (‘How can she then but see / each Semels Shadow by this union?’, I, lix, 3–4),

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so much so that at times it seems as if the Soul of the World – that is, Psyche and not the Intellect – is the allegorical referent for Christ. The way in which Christ rules over human souls, and in the end delivers them from sin, occurs through the actualization of their potential lives, with their roots in the universal vitality of nature: the eternal and immortall sonne of God is to take possession of the world by that which after a manner is mortall and extinguishable, which is the energie of himself, exerted upon the souls of men, or a kind of life diffused in mans heart and soul, whereby God doth inact us, and is our ἐντελέχεια, as the soul is the ἐντελέχεια of the body and governs and guides it (More 1647, 365–366).

This means that, in the end, even Aristotle’s ἐντελέχεια is eventually subsumed into the universal flow of Intellect and Soul, Christianized as Christ and Holy Spirit. This is possible for More because, beyond the ‘entelechy’ of the body, there is an ‘entelechy’ of the spirit ‘diffused in mans heart and soul’. As we have seen, More had in fact rejected the Aristotelian understanding of the soul as an ‘informing’ act of the body, even though that notion of the soul had been usually regarded as the standard-­ bearer of personal individuation. And yet, by transforming the Aristotelian ‘entelechy’ into a principle of spiritual ‘information’ governed by God, More was moving towards a treacherously ambiguous area where the spirit of Christ seemed to overlap with the Holy Spirit, and the Soul of the World risked engulfing the individual self. The Platonicall Song of the Soul was More’s poetic laboratory, rich in daring and surprising linguistic inventions, but the metaphysical tensions enacted by the allegorical background – how to preserve the ontological consistency of the individual self when this is suspended between God and nature – would continue to fuel his philosophical investigations right to the end of his life.

Bibliography Bergemann, Lutz. 2016. Aufstieg in die Tiefe – Bekehrung, Konversion und Transformation in der Psychozoia Henry Mores. In Zwischen Ereignis und Erzählung: Konversion als Medium der Selbstbeschreibung in Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit, ed. Julia Weitbrecht, Werner Röcke, and Ruth Bernuth, 85–106. Berlin: De Gruyter. Bland, Jay. 2010. The generation of Edward Hyde: The animal within, from Plato to Darwin to Robert Louis Stevenson. Oxford: Lang. Bullough, Geoffrey. 1931. Introduction. In Henry More, Philosophical poems, ed. Geoffrey Bullough, xi–lxxxi. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Clucas, Stephen. 1991. Poetic atomism in seventeenth-century England: Henry More, Thomas Traherne and ‘scientific imagination’. Renaissance Studies 5: 327–340. Crocker, Robert. 2003. Henry More, 1614–1687: A biography of the Cambridge Platonist. Dordrecht: Springer. Ficino, Marsilio. 1962 [1576]. Opera omnia, 2 vols. Turin: Bottega d’Erasmo. Fouke, Daniel. 1997. The enthusiastical concerns of Dr. Henry More: Religious meaning and the psychology of delusion. Leiden: Brill. Giglioni, Guido. 2011. Coping with inner and outer demons: Marsilio Ficino’s theory of the imagination. In Diseases of the imagination and imaginary disease in the early modern period, ed. Yasmin Haskell, 19–51. Turnhout: Brepols.

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Hamilton, Alastair. 2001. A ‘sinister conceit’: The teaching of psychopannychism from the Reformation to the Enlightenment’. In La formazione storica dell’alterità: Studi di storia della tolleranza nell’età moderna offerti a Antonio Rotondò, 3 vols, vol. 3, ed. Henri Mechoulan, Richard H. Popkin, Giuseppe Ricuperati, and Luisa Simonutti, 1107–1127. Florence: Olschki. Henry, John. 1986. A Cambridge Platonist’s materialism: Henry More and the concept of soul. Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 49: 172–195. Hoyles, John. 1971. The waning of the Renaissance 1640–1740: Studies in the thought and poetry of Henry More, John Norris and Isaac Watts. The Hague: Nijhoff. Hutton, Sarah. 2007. Henry More, Ficino and Plotinus: The continuity of Renaissance Platonism. In Forme del neoplatonismo: Dall’eredità ficiniana ai Platonici di Cambridge, ed. Luisa Simonutti, 281–296. Florence: Olschki. ———. 2013. The Cambridge Platonists and Averroes. In Renaissance Averroism and its aftermath: Arabic philosophy in early modern Europe, ed. Anna Akasoy and Guido Giglioni, 197– 211. Dordrecht: Springer. Jacob, Alexander. 1985. Henry More’s Psychodia platonica and its relationship to Marsilio Ficino’s Theologia platonica. Journal of the History of Ideas 46: 503–522. ———. 1998. Introduction. In Henry More, A Platonick song of the soul, ed. Alexander Jacob, 1–136. Lewisburg/London: Bucknell University Press/Associated University Presses. Leech, David. 2011. Ficinian influence on Henry More’s arguments for the soul’s immortality. In Laus Platonici philosophi: Marsilio Ficino and his influence, ed. Stephen Clucas, Peter J. Forshaw, and Valery Rees, 301–316, Leiden: Brill. ———. 2013. The hammer of the Cartesians: Henry More’s philosophy of spirit and the origins of modern atheism. Leuven: Peters. More, Henry. 1642. ΨΥΧΩΔΙΑ Platonica; or, A Platonicall song of the soul, consisting of foure severall poems; viz. ΨΥΧΟΖΩΙΑ, ΨΥΧΑΘΑΝΑΣΙΑ, ΑΝΤΙΨΥΧΟΠΑΝΝΥΧΙΑ, ΑΝΤΙΜΟΝΟΨΥΧΙΑ. Hereto is added a paraphrasticall interpretation of the answer of Apollo, consulted by Amelius, about Plotinus soul departed this Life. Cambridge: Roger Daniel. ———. 1646. Democritus Platonissans, or, an essay upon the infinity of worlds out of Platonick principles. Hereunto is annexed Cupids conflict together with the philosophers devotion. Cambridge: Roger Daniel. ———. 1647. Philosophical poems. Cambridge: Roger Daniel. ———. 1660. An explanation of the grand mystery of godliness; or a true and faithfull representation of the everlasting gospel of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, the onely begotten Son of God and sovereign over men and angels. London: James Flesher. ———. 1694. In Letters on several subjects, ed. Edmund Elys. London: John Everingham. ———. 1931. Poems, Comprising Psychozoia and Minor Poems, ed. Geoffrey Bullough. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Nabokov, Vladimir. 2012 [1973]. Strong opinions. London: Penguin. Nicolson, Marjorie H. 1922. More’s Psychozoia. Modern Language Notes 37: 141–148. Rees, Valery. 2009. Ficinian ideas in the poetry of Edmund Spenser. Spenser Studies 24: 73–134. Reid, Jasper. 2012. The metaphysics of Henry More. Dordrecht: Springer. Southey, Robert, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. 1812. Omniana, or Horae otiosiores, 2 vols. London: Longman. Spenser, Edmund. 1978 [1590, 1596, 1609]. The Faerie Queene, ed. Thomas P. Roche, Jr, with the assistance of C. Patrick O’Donnell, Jr. London: Penguin. Staudenbaur, Craig A. 1986. Galileo, Ficino, and Henry More’s Psychathanasia. Journal of the History of Ideas 29: 565–578. Ward, Richard. 2000 [1710]. The life of Henry More: Parts 1 and 2, ed. Sarah Hutton, Cecil Courtney, Michelle Courtney, Robert Crocker, and A. Rupert Hall. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

Chapter 6

The Neoplatonic Hermeneutics of Ralph Cudworth Adrian Mihai

Abstract  The present study compares Cudworth’s method of interpretation of ancient texts with that of the Late Antique Neoplatonists, like Iamblichus, Proclus and Simplicius. Not only does Cudworth, like his Neoplatonic predecessors, attach himself to a long lasting tradition of early wisdom that, at least for the Christian Platonists, went back to Moses himself, but he also uses the same exegetical methods and Platonic and Aristotelian texts. Furthermore, the treatment of these texts as sacred implies that their importance is not based on their historical date, but on the authenticity of their doctrine. In a second part, we look briefly to the implications of this singular hermeneutics on Cudworth’s epistemology. The general consensus1 about Ralph Cudworth’s interpretation of the ancients is that he tried very hard to force all ancient philosophy into the Procrustean bed of Christian Platonism, and he used his Platonism as the arbiter of various types of atheistic and materialist philosophies. Less known are the exegetical tools he used to achieve this result. We suggest that Cudworth not only followed the Neoplatonic commentators in his opinion about ancient philosophical doctrines but adopted their hermeneutical tools. Already in the eighteenth century, Johann Lorenz von Mosheim, the Latin translator of Cudworth, was complaining of some of the interpretative inaccuracies of the English author regarding ancient texts. Yet, this was all too obvious and even normal if we consider Cudworth’s exegetical goal or skopos. This is explained by the fact that Cudworth adopted from, and fully agreed with, the characteristic hermeneutical principles or tools of Neoplatonic commentators. In regard to the particular tonality of his interpretations, he maintained, like his predecessors, the total harmony 1  On Cudworth’s use of ancient philosophers, see Aspelin (1943, 1–47) and Rowett (2011, 215–35).

A. Mihai (*) Faculty of Divinity, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 D. Hedley, D. Leech (eds.), Revisioning Cambridge Platonism: Sources and Legacy, International Archives of the History of Ideas Archives internationales d’histoire des idées 222, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22200-0_6

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between Plato and Aristotle, understood as the identification of their philosophies. As for the actual tools that he employed, Cudworth uses the historical sedimentation of doctrinal materials, the intertwining and interlocking of sources and citations, and finally, the marquetry of textual units cleverly joined and adapted to the needs of the general argumentation (Hoffmann 2000, 356–57). Thomas Hobbes, the ‘arch-enemy’ of Cudworth’s system, had already attacked any kind of erudition, and especially the kind that is used as proof2: From whence it happens that they which trust to books do as they that cast up many little sums into a greater, without considering whether those little sums were rightly cast up or not : and at last finding the error visible, and not mistrusting their know not which way to clear themselves but spend time in fluttering over their books; as birds that entering by the chimney, and finding themselves enclosed in a chamber, flutter at the false light of a glass window for want of wit to consider which way they came in (Hobbes 1996, 1.4.28).

Without any consideration of the context of the citations, and, in regard to lost works, without distinguishing between citation, paraphrase, allusion, or blatant forgery, Cudworth, like many of the Neoplatonic commentators, erects, on the one hand, an ordered system of thought, as he does for most of the Presocratic philosophers. On the other hand, these almost artificial systems are represented as being minor parts of a higher and more elaborate framework, the Christian Neoplatonic one. What is more, The True Intellectual System of the Universe had a long progeny, and was used as a manual of ancient thought by many modern thinkers, philosophers, theologians or scientists. Moreover, and this has not yet received the attention it deserves, Cudworth, like the late Neoplatonists, uses only a handful of Platonic dialogues and Aristotelian treatises. Here is a preliminary list of the dialogues used by Cudworth, particularly in his The True Intellectual System of the Universe and A Treatise Concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality: Republic, Theaetetus, Laws, Meno, Sophist, Statesman, Phaedo, Timaeus, Philebus, Symposium, Alcibiades, Cratylus and the apocryphal Epinomis.3 Thirteen dialogues out of thirty-six works were recognized by the Neoplatonists as genuine. From all these dialogues, Cudworth uses mostly the tenth book of the Laws. There is a good reason for this: the tenth book is almost a treatise against atheism, and for that reason it had a great influence on Western thought. Most philosophers were attracted by Plato’s distinction of three types of atheists (Laws 10.888C): (i) those who do not believe in the existence of the gods, (ii) those who doubt that the gods care about human affairs, and, finally, (iii) those who think that the gods are easily moved by sacrifices and prayers. As for the Aristotelian texts, Cudworth uses mainly the set formed of Metaphysics, On the Soul, On Generation and Corruption, Sense and Sensibilia, On the Heavens, Parts of Animals, Generation of Animals, Rhetoric, Physics, Nicomachean Ethics.  On the debate between the Cambridge Platonists and Hobbes, see Mintz (1970, 80–133).  Cudworth draws his information about the Sophist Protagoras, not from the homonymous dialogue, but from the Theaetetus. 2 3

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He also uses On Melissus, Xenophanes and Gorgias, On the Universe and On Marvellous Things Heard, all apocryphal texts. In accordance with later Neoplatonism, Cudworth chooses a specific set of Platonic and Aristotelian writings in accordance with pedagogical, spiritual and philosophical reasons. The use of ‘spiritual’ calls for some comment. For the ancient Platonists, around the first century bc, the dialogues of Plato were seen as sacred and canonical texts, transmitting the gnosis or knowledge necessary in the divinization (theosis) of human nature.4 From the first century before our era onwards the basis for education (paideia) became the commentary on authoritative texts, such as Plato’s or Aristotle’s: ‘The radical change that took place around the first century bce’, says Pierre Hadot, ‘consisted in the fact that from this point on, philosophical teaching itself essentially took on the form of textual commentary’ (Hadot 2002, 150). This was connected with the thought that truth is revealed in authoritative writings once and for all, and that the role of professors resided mainly in reading and interpreting these texts. Thus, culture developed into ‘Scholastics’, that is, in the words of Marie-Dominique Chenu, ‘a rational form of thought which is elaborated consciously and voluntarily from a text considered as authoritative’ (Chenu 1984, 55, our translation). Because philosophy was conceived as ‘revelation’, all these professors of post-Hellenistic age denounce all innovation (kainotomia) concerning the truth of the ancients. In such a context, interpreting such ‘authorities’ as Plato and Aristotle amounts to unveiling – with no innovation – a meaning and a truth of which the gods and ‘divine men’ are the source […]. The interpreter explicates what is already there: he is merely the vector of Truth. As the grandiose prologue of Proclus’ Platonic Theology expresses it, there is furthermore no history of Truth, but only a history of its manifestations and of its unveiling (Hoffmann 2006, 599).

At this point, it will be instructive to open up a brief parenthesis in order to show the continuation of this tradition in the Renaissance. For Marsilio Ficino, not only the interpretation of these divine texts, but also their translation, can fill the reader with the same divine illumination that the authors of those texts enjoyed. Hence the same divinity, through the mouth of both [Plato and Plotinus], poured out divine oracles for the human race, oracles worthy in both cases of a most sagacious translator [or interpreter] who in Plato’s case must devote his efforts to unveiling what is hidden, and who in Plotinus’ case must labor more carefully at once to express everywhere his most secret meanings as well as to explain his most gnomic expressions. Remember, moreover, that you will by no means penetrate to the exalted mind of Plotinus using merely sense of human reason; you must employ a certain more sublime intuitive understanding (mens) […]. But I hope that in translating and explaining the divine books of Plotinus, Marsilio Ficino shall not lack what is a far more blessed help – divine aid (Hankins 1990, 317).

 It is to be noted that for Cudworth, in the tradition of Maximus the Confessor, it is through the Incarnation of God that all men and women are divinized, but each must actualize (or assume or individualize) this potential nature.

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Let us not forget that Cudworth uses Pietro Perna’s 1559 Greek edition of Plotinus’ Enneads, reprinted in 1615, which also contained the annotations and commentaries of Marsilio Ficino. Moreover, according to Carol L. Marks, ‘the Cambridge Platonists accepted Ficino’s view of an unbroken tradition of early wisdom, passing from Moses to Hermes and percolating through Zoroaster, Pythagoras, Plato, Orpheus, and yet more obscure philosophers’ (Marks 1966, 523). It will also be a mistake to suppose that Cudworth accepted as sacred any ancient text and was unaware of the debate of his day regarding the date and attribution of some of these texts, particularly those of the Corpus Hermeticum, which Isaac Casaubon had already shown in his De rebus sacris et ecclesiasticis exercitationes XVI (1614), that they were composed after the Christian era, and that they were influenced by Greek, Jewish and Christian doctrines. Of course, Cudworth acknowledged the progress of the new scholarship, and even affirmed that he shall not prove, for example, the existence of one supreme God among the pagans by using spurious writings: And this we shall perform not as some have done, by laying the chief stress upon the Sibylline Oracles, and those reputed Writings of Hermes Trismegist, the Authority whereof hath been of late so much decried by Learned Men; nor yet upon such Oracles of the Pagan Deities, as may be suspected to have been counterfeited by Christians: but upon such Monuments of Pagan Antiquity, as are altogether unsuspected and indubitate (Cudworth 1678, 281).

Be that as it may, for Cudworth, the sacred importance of a text is not based on its historical date, but on the authenticity of its doctrine, that is, on its identity with the prisca theologia or sapientia, ‘the pristine fount of illumination flowing from the divine Mens’ (Yates 2001, 17). George Berkeley expressed well Cudworth’s thinking, when he wrote in one of his most immediately influential books, though now ignored by most scholars, that ‘though the books attributed to Mercurius Trismegistus were none of them wrote by him, and are allowed to contain some manifest forgeries, yet it is also allowed that they contain tenets of the ancient Egyptian philosophy, though dressed perhaps in a more modern garb’ (Wright 1843, 398).5 This is the traditional method of interpretation that Cudworth follows in his exegesis of ancient texts, though he was too much of a systematic and rational philosopher to see himself as a Renaissance Magus. Getting back to the curriculum of the later Neoplatonists, we must remark that it was systematized mainly by Iamblichus in the third century ce, and was organized so as to achieve the deification of the person, seen as a progression in the scale of virtues and as an initiation into sacred mysteries.6 Apprehending this divine knowledge would help the soul of the neophyte to ascend, after the death of the body, towards his/her deserved place, to wit under the earth, the stars, or beyond the visi See also Assmann (1997).  We must not forget also the essential role that theurgic rites, which were based on the Chaldean Oracles (c. 170 ce), played in this path towards deification. See Tanaseanu-Döbler (2013). 5 6

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ble universe (Mihai 2015, 79–148). Philosophy thus appears as a ‘therapeutic of the passions’ (τὸ περὶ παθῶν θεραπευτικός), which entails a ‘conversion to the self’ (ἐπιστρέφειν εἰς ἑαυτόν). Pierre Hadot explains: Attention to self translates into self-mastery and self-control, which can be obtained only by habit and perseverance in ascetic practices. These, in turn, are intended to bring about the triumph of reason aver the passions, pushed as far as their complete extirpation […]. The road which led to such complete liberation from the passions (ἀπάθεια) passed by detachment (ἀπροσπάθεια) from objects – that is to say, the gradual elimination of desires which have indifferent things as their object (Hadot 2002, 244–45).

To appreciate the matter further, we should add here that for Cudworth, philosophy is not a Matter of Faith, but Reason, Men ought not to affect (as I conceive) to derive its Pedigree from Revelation, and by that very pretence seek to impose it Tyrannically upon the minds of Men, which God hath here purposely left Free to the use of their own Faculties, that so finding out Truth by them, they might enjoy that Pleasure and Satisfaction, which arises from thence (Cudworth 1678, 12–13).

But even this quite rational definition of philosophy reflects a Neoplatonic tendency. According to Cudworth, and as we will see below in our discussion on innate ideas, there are some ‘seeds of light’, to borrow the expression of Nathaniel Culverwell (Greene and MacCallum 1971, 89), divinely implanted in the soul through which we know the true intellectual form and content of the universe. After this brief parenthesis on Cudworth’s notion of philosophy, we return now to the Neoplatonic cursus. The Iamblichan curriculum of study, adopted by all the Neoplatonists in Late Antiquity, was a spiritual program in which the works of Aristotle, called the ‘Minor Mysteries’, were the propaedeutic studies that enabled the neophyte to understand the canonic texts that were the dialogues of Plato, called for that reason the ‘Major Mysteries’. The Aristotelian treatises had already been divided and organized in the peripatetic school into three groups, long before the Neoplatonists: the logical or instrumental writings, the practical writings (ethics and politics) and the theoretical writings (physics, mathematics and metaphysics). The set of dialogues of Plato followed the same spiritual progression, and consisted of two cycles, a first cycle of ten dialogues (First Alcibiades, Gorgias, Phaedo, Cratylus, Theaetetus, Sophist, Statesman, Phaedrus, Symposium and Philebus) and a second cycle made of the Timaeus and the Parmenides. The first cycle took the student through the hierarchy of virtues and sciences, while the second cycle initiated the student into the mysteries of the universe. The ‘Major Mysteries’ of the Neoplatonic cursus of studies can be represented as follows7:

7  A lot has been written about this topic over the past few years, but what has been written has been based on the writings of Westerink (1962, xxxvii–xxxviii), Festugière (1965, 34–46) and Hadot (1979, 218–21). See also O’Meara (2005, 61–65).

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First cycle Introduction Political virtues Cathartic or purificatory virtues Theoretical virtues (knowledge of beings…)

Crowning moment Second cycle

1. First Alcibiades 2. Gorgias 3. Phaedo 4. Cratylus (… in words) 5. Theaetetus (… in concepts) 6. Sophist (… in physical things) 7. Statesman (… in physical things) 8. Phaedrus (… in spiritual things) 9. Symposium (… in spiritual things) 10. Philebus 11. Timaeus 12. Parmenides

Cudworth’s reasons for using a small set of writings are not pedagogical, at least not in the Neoplatonic sense, but doctrinal, since he uses mostly the middle and the late dialogues of Plato, which were seen to expound a more dogmatic doctrinal philosophy. To grasp the hermeneutical methods of our British Platonist more deeply, we must look briefly to the theory of the origins and development of atheism. Harkening back to the Neoplatonist tradition, it can be affirmed that Cudworth uses his auctoritates (authorities) not for the weight of their names, but for the content of particular passages. The sources he quotes figure as representatives of a philosophia perennis which has remained unchanged since the beginning of time – or a least since the creation of Adam (Hutton 1997, 93).

We could add that this philosophia perennis,8 notion borrowed from Agostino Steuco’s De perenni philosophia libri X (1542), which offers a synthesis of all the religious doctrines in the world, since there is only one principle of all things and the same knowledge among all people, was assimilated to a philosophia mosaica, that we encounter already in Antiquity (Goulet 1987). This project was revived by Marsilio Ficino, and was taken over by the Cambridge Platonists, especially by Thomas More and Ralph Cudworth. Moreover, Cudworth tried to prove in his treatise against atheism that, properly understood, atomism was an invention of Moschus, widely identified with the biblical Moses (Cudworth 1678, 9r): Ancient Atomick physiology […] was no invention of Democritus nor Leucippus, but of much greater Antiquity: not only from that Tradition transmitted by Posidonius the Stoick, that it derived its Original from one Moschus, a Phoenician, who lived before the Trojan Wars (which plainly makes it to have been Mosaicall).

8  Regarding the similarities and differences between the notions of philosophia perennis and prisca theologia, see Schmitt (1970, 211–36) and Idel (2002, 137–58).

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Mochos or Moschus or Mochus (Μώχος) was first mentioned by Strabo, but it is due to the influence of Iamblichus’ Life of Pythagoras (3.14), that such speculations started gaining ground. This argument is complex and needs much more lengthy exposition than space can allow me here. Suffice to say that these speculations on Moschus/Moses were revived by Johannes Arcerius’ 1598 edition of Iamblichus’ Life of Pythagoras (Sailor 1964, 3–16). From this identification of Mochus with Moses follow questionable consequences insofar as the Judeo-Christian tradition is seen as the source of Pagan philosophy and culture. Indeed, Cudworth distinguishes between two forms or kinds of ‘atomisms’, the ‘Moshical’/Mosaical’ or Pythagorical atomism – the ‘most ancient and genuine’ –, and the ‘atheistic atomology, called Leucippean or Democritical’ (Cudworth 1678, 174). And whereas we conceive this Atomick Physiology, as to the Essentials thereof, to be Unquestionably True, viz. That the onely Principles of Bodies, are Magnitude, Figure, Site, Motion, and Rest; and that the Qualities and Forms of Inanimate Bodies, are Really nothing, but several Combinations of these, Causing several Phancies in us: (Which excellent Discovery therefore, so long agoe made, is a Notable Instance of the Wit and Sagacity of the Ancients). So do we in the Next place, make it manifest, that this Atomick Physiology rightly understood, is so far from being either the Mother or Nurse of Atheism, or any ways Favourable thereunto, (as is Vulgarly supposed;) that it is indeed, the most directly Opposite to it of any, and the greatest Defence against the same (Cudworth 1678, 9r–10v).

According to the genealogy of atomism sketched in The True Intellectual System of the Universe, a modern follower of Mosaical atomism was René Descartes.9 However, unlike Cudworth, who sees himself as the main restorer and reviver of the true atomism, the Cartesian system had deviated from the original by rejecting the doctrine of plastic nature. Thus, the Cartesian atomism ‘derives the whole system of the corporeal universe from the necessary motion of matter […] without the guidance or direction of any understanding nature’ (Cudworth 1678, 175). A complete exposition of the doctrine of plastic nature, or even an advanced account of some of its fundamental concepts, would be out of place here. Suffice to say that the introduction of ‘plastic nature’ allows Cudworth to present an intermediary ‘physical’ and ontological doctrine that will oust both fortuitous mechanism  – held by the materialists –, and the direct and eternal action of God on the physical world – as Malebranche, Cordemoy and Geulincx had done.10 For Cudworth, plastic nature, which is at work not only in the universe, but also in each individual living being, is unconscious, that is, is has ‘no express con-sense or consciousness (συναίσθησις) of what it doth’ (Cudworth 1678, 159). Thus, the plastic nature of the universe (which is to be assimilated to the third Plotinian hypostasis, ψὐχή or Soul) or of the individual, is a vital energy that does not possess any clear and express consciousness or self-perception. And Cudworth adds confidently (Cudworth 1678, 160):

9  Though not a pure atomist (as Cudworth asserts here), Descartes contributed to its development through his own corpuscular theory. See also Roux (2000, 211–74). 10  We should remember that Malebranche’s occasionalism is a response to Descartes’ doctrine of continuous creation.

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A. Mihai It is certain, that our human souls themselves are not always conscious of whatever they have in them; for even the sleeping geometrician hath, at that time, all his geometrical ­theorems and knowledges some way in him; as also the sleeping musician, all his musical skill and songs; and, therefore, why may it not be possible for the soul to have likewise some actual energy in it, which it is not expressly conscious of?

This passage makes it very clear that Cudworth precedes by some two hundred years the intuitions of Schopenhauer and Freud. Returning now to our discussion of Cudworth’s interpretation of atomism, let us finish by saying that scholars have observed and rightly criticized the distortions and the misinterpretations, without noticing the finality of these analyses: Cudworth adapts atomistic philosophy in order to build a Christian apologetics based wholly on reason. Like so many twentieth-century theologians and philosophers (Jacques Maritain, Edith Stein, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Bernard Lonergan, Thomas Merton, to mention just a few), Cudworth’s is one of the first attempts to reconcile Christian intellectual tradition to early Modern science. The Neoplatonists cannot be read properly without keeping in mind the pedagogical and anagogical purpose of their commentaries. This is essential for a good understanding of the history of the reception of these treatises and their various uses. For a proper estimate of our discussion, it must be observed that thinkers in general preferred the Neoplatonic commentaries, not only for their exegeses on Plato and Aristotle, but mostly for their summary of ancient philosophical traditions. Their commentaries are indeed the predecessors of the medieval summae. We could conclude our preliminary remarks on the hermeneutics of Cudworth by reviewing the theoretical assessment of his work and of the Cambridge Platonists in general. However, we propose to move to another terrain and give closer attention to a problem that is only touched here: that of the epistemological implications of these particular exegetical devices. Following in the footsteps of Plato and Plotinus, Cudworth maintained that there are a priori concepts in the mind independent of experience. According to Cudworth, universal moral and religious values can be supported only by the innate idea doctrine, because only in this way can they be justified independently of the senses and the material universe (Armstrong 1969, 187–202). Thus, intellection doth not merely prospicere, look out upon a thing at a distance, but makes an inward reflection upon the thing it knows […]; the intellect (intellectus) doth read inward characters written within itself, and intellectually comprehends its object within itself, and is the same with it (Hutton 1996, 59–60).

For Cudworth, Euclid’s geometrical theorem concerning a triangle is the best example of an innate idea. And because each innate idea must, of necessity, be a ‘universal axiomatical truth’ or ‘scientifical theorem or proposition’ (Hutton 1996, 118 and 122 respectively), then they must have originated not in external sensation but in ‘the active strength and vigour of the mind, comprehending the intelligible ideas and universal notions (rationes) of things within itself’ (Hutton 1996, 121). Accordingly, knowledge is ‘a descending comprehension of a thing from the univer-

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sal ideas of the mind and not an ascending perception of them from individual by sense’ (Hutton 1996, 120). Cudworth sums up his reasons in supporting this doctrine as follows: But I have not taken all these pains only to confute scepticism or fanaticism, or merely to defend and corroborate our argument for the immutable natures of just and unjust; but also for some other weighty purposes that are very much conducing to the business that we have in hand. And first of all, that the soul is not a mere tabula rasa, a naked and passive thing, which has no innate furniture or activity of its own, not anything at all in it, but what was impressed upon it from without; for if it were so, then there could not possibly be any such thing as moral good and evil, just and unjust; forasmuch as these differences do not arise merely from outward objects, or from the impresses which they make upon us by sense, there being no such thing in them (Hutton 1996, 144–45).

Now, since all these innate ideas are the same for all the human beings, and because these same innate ideas are eternal, that is, they exist even after our passing, then they must be thought by a mind that is eternal and immutable and that is forever thinking of all the objects of reason, that is, they must be thought by God. Moreover, from hence also it comes to pass that truths, though they be never so many several and distant minds apprehending them, yet they are not broken, multiplied, or diversified thereby, but that they are one and the same individual truths in them all. So that it is but one truth and knowledge that is in all the understandings in the world. Just as when a thousand eyes look upon the sun at once, they all see the same individual object […]. So in like manner, when innumerable created understandings direct themselves to the contemplation of the same universal and immutable truths, they do all of them but as it were listen to one and the same original voice of the eternal wisdom that is never silent, and the several conceptions of those truths in their minds are but like several echoes of the same verba mentis of the divine intellect resounding in them (Hutton 1996, 132).

It has not been stressed enough that Cudworth has two predecessors in his doctrine of innate ideas. Firstly, he assimilates them to the Platonic Forms, or Ideas (ἰδέαι), and interprets them as thoughts in the mind of God. This has been the orthodox interpretation in the Platonic circles from about the second century bce to about the second century ce (Dillon 2011, 31–42). Secondly, by describing them as eternal truths, or even axioms, maxims or common notions, Cudworth follows Descartes’ doctrine of ‘vérités éternelles’, eternal truths created by God’s free will and ‘divinely implanted’ in the mind of human beings (Rodis-Lewis 1985; Gasparri 2007). This is the skopos or aim of Cudworth’s treatises and all his exegetical work was directed towards it, and was based on an epistemological position that held that we have knowledge or a science of something only if we understand why it is necessarily so (Gill 2006, 38–57; see also Darwall 1995). As for the Neoplatonists, we must understand the σκοπός as the interpretative goal of an author’s work. Moreover, there can be only one skopos in each work, and all the doctrines and assertions of a philosopher should be coherent with this unique goal. This is so because a treatise, like all of Reality, is oriented toward a principle of unity (Hoffmann 2006, 611).

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Mintz, Samuel I. 1970. The hunting of Leviathan. Seventeenth century reactions to the materialism and moral philosophy of Thomas Hobbes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. O’Meara, Dominic J. 2005. Platonopolis. Platonic political philosophy in late antiquity. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Rodis-Lewis, Geneviève. 1985. Idées et vérités éternelles chez Descartes et ses successeurs. Paris: Vrin. Roux, Sophie. 2000. Descartes atomiste? In Atomismo e continuo nel XVII secolo, ed. Egidio Festa and Romano Gatto, 211–274. Naples: Vivarium. Rowett, Catherine. 2011. Ralph Cudworth’s The true intellectual system of the universe and the Presocratic philosophers. In The Presocratics from the Latin middle ages to Hermann Diels, ed. Oliver Primavesi and Katharina Luchner, 215–235. Stuttgart: Steiner Verlag. Sailor, Danton B. 1964. Moses and Atomism. Journal of the History of Ideas 25: 3–16. Schmitt, Charles B. 1970. Prisca theologia e philosophia perennis: Due temi del Rinascimento italiano e loro fortuna. In Il pensiero italiano del Rinascimento e il tempo nostro, ed. Giovannangiola Tarugi, 211–236. Florence: Olschki. Tanaseanu-Döbler, Ilinca. 2013. Theurgy in late antiquity. The invention of a ritual tradition. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Westerink, L.G., ed. 1962. Anonymus, Prolegomena to Platonic philosophy. Amsterdam: North Holland Publishing. Yates, Frances A. 2001. Giordano Bruno and the hermetic tradition. London/New York: Routledge.

Chapter 7

Cudworth and the English Debate on the Trinity Jan Rohls

Abstract  In his “True Intellectual System of the Universe”, published in 1678, Cudworth defends the doctrine of the Trinity against the Socinian critique. In contrast to its defenders in the Presbyterian or Congregationalist camp he is less interested in showing that the doctrine is contained in Scripture than in showing that it is in accordance with philosophical reason. He was convinced that it was already present in pagan philosophy, especially in Platonism, there being no fundamental difference between the Platonic and the Nicean Trinity. For this reason Cudworth strictly distinguishes between a genuine Platonic Trinity and what he calls the Pseudo-­ Platonic Trinity of pagan Neoplatonism. At least since the critique of Michael Servet, the doctrine of the Trinity as it had been formulated by the Nicene fathers became a cornerstone of Catholic and Protestant orthodoxy.1 That explains the heavy attacks of Lutheran and Reformed theologians against the supporters of Lelio and Fausto Sozzini, uncle and nephew, for whom the ancient dogma had no biblical foundation and was not in accordance with reason. Anti-trinitarianism spread from Poland to the Netherlands and finally found its way to England too. Already early in the seventeenth century political measures were taken against it. But during the Civil War and the Commonwealth afterwards it became stronger. In 1647 John Biddle published his ‘Twelve arguments Drawn Out of the Scripture: Wherein the commonly-received Opinion touching the Deity of the Holy Spirit is clearly and fully refuted’. One year later he attacked the Nicene doctrine of the Trinity on the whole in his ‘Confession of Faith Touching the Holy Trinity’, and the English Parliament found it necessary to pass a law against Antitrinitarianism and Socinianism (cf. Fock 1970, 263–67). Yet despite the fact that the Westminster Standards, as well as the Savoy Declaration, both  For the whole debate cf. Glawe (1912, 1–149) and Mulsow (2002, 85–113, 261–307).

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J. Rohls (*) Evangelisch-Theologische Fakultät, Abteilung für Systematische Theologie, Ludwig-­Maximilians-­Universität München, München, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 D. Hedley, D. Leech (eds.), Revisioning Cambridge Platonism: Sources and Legacy, International Archives of the History of Ideas Archives internationales d’histoire des idées 222, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22200-0_7

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defended the orthodox dogma of the Trinity as biblical, Anti-trinitarianism and Socianism lived on. In 1654 Biddle published his ‘Two-fold Catechism’, and during Cromwell’s Protectorate numerous Socinian treatises were translated into English and printed with official permission. In 1665 Johannes Crell’s ‘Two Books, touching on God the Father wherein many Things also concerning the Nature of the Son of God and the Holy Spirit are discoursed of’ offered all the classical Socinian arguments to prove that the Nicene doctrine of the Trinity was neither biblical nor any way rational. But what is even more important, the French Jesuit Denis Pétau distinguished in his ‘Dogmata theologica’, published between 1644 and 1650, the Nicene from the Pre-Nicene doctrine of the Trinity very sharply. Subordinationism which was the ruling doctrine of the early Church Fathers was replaced by the doctrine of the consubstantiality of Father and Son not before the Nicene Council, subordinationism being a product of the influence of Platonism on the early Church fathers. Pétau was very much influenced by the Calvinist philologist Isaac Casaubon who had proved in his ‘De rebus sacris et ecclesiasticis exercitationes’, published in London 1614, that the Corpus Hermeticum was a collection of treatises written not earlier than the first century. Thus he destroyed the belief of most Renaissance scholars that it entailed the old revealed philosophy of the times of Mose by which the Greek philosophers were inspired. The Platonic philosophers and theologians of the Renaissance were convinced that one could find the Christian doctrine of the Trinity not only in the Old and New Testament but also in the Corpus Hermeticum and in Greek philosophy, especially in Plato and Platonism (cf. Wind 1984, 276–94). For Pétau, however, it was evident that the source of Platonism was not the Mosaic philosophy of the Corpus Hermeticum and that the Trinitarian elements of Platonism did not lead to the Nicene doctrine of the Trinity. Their influence mislead the early Church Fathers instead to subordinationism. It was thanks to Pétau that the Trinitarian debate became closely linked with the question of the influence of Platonism on the shaping of the doctrine of the Trinity in the Early Church. This is the background of Ralph Cudworth’s defence of Trinitarian and Platonic thinking in his ‘The True Intellectual System of the Universe’ published in 1678. In contrast to its contemporary advocates in the Presbyterian or Congregationalist camp, Cudworth is not much interested in showing that the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity is contained in the Scripture, which he of course presupposes. His aim was rather to show that this doctrine is in accordance with reason, for he was convinced that you could find the doctrine of the trinity already in pagan philosophy and that there is no decisive difference between the Nicene and the Platonic Trinity. According to Cudworth, there were two different kinds of philosophical or natural theology, the one elevating the supreme God above the world and regarding him as an abstract being, the other identifying him with the soul of the world. That means that in one case the deity was conceived as transcendent, in the other as immanent. The first position was hold by the Pythagoreans and Platonists, who made a further distinction. For they distinguished between supramundane, eternal and intelligible gods on the one hand and mundane, generated and sensible ones on the other. And the highest within the hierarchy of the first class were the three divine hypostases which are the principles of the universe, namely Tagathon or Hen, Nous and Psyche, that is Monad, Mind and Soul. This philosophical Trinity was by no means an invention

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of Plato, but could be found in Parmenides before (Cudworth 1687/1977, 546). And Parmenides himself belonged to the Pythagorean school, so that it is highly probable that the doctrine of a divine Trinity or Triad was one of the arcanums of that philosophical sect. Cudworth finds support for this thesis in the teaching of the Neopythagoreans Moderatus of Gades and Numenius of Apameia living in first and second century. Thus Moderatus declares, „that according to Pythagoreans, the First One or Unity, is above all Essence; that the Second One, which is that which truly is, and Intelligible, according to them, is the Ideas; and that the Third, which is Psychical or Soul, partaketh both of the First Unity, and of the Ideas’ (Cudworth 1687/1977, 547). Quoting Proclus, Cudworth detects the roots of the Pythagorean philosophy in the Orphic Cabbala, where one already finds a Trinity of Phanes, Uranos and Kronos. Since he shares the old conviction that Orpheus, Pythagoras and Plato travelled to Egypt where they were initiated in the arcane Hermetic theology he dates their trinitarian teaching back to the Egyptian tradition. Traces of this tradition might also be found in Persian Zoroastrism as well as in the Chaldean Oracles and even in the Capitoline Trinity of ancient Rome. Cudworth is convinced that such a divine Trinity cannot be the mere product of human reason though it does not contradict reason at all. And since there are certain signs of a plurality in God within the books of the Old Testament he concludes that the Trinity was revealed to the Hebrews and afterwards communicated to the Egyptians and the other nations. Thus it is part of the Divine Cabbala, that is the very old tradition. As a mystery, the Trinity was difficult to grasp of course, and so it is not surprising that there did not exist a precise and full understanding of it right in the beginning, the doctrine of the Nicene and Athanasian creed being a late product of doctrinal conflicts within the early church. For this reason one finds many depravations and misunderstandings of the Trinity especially among the pagans. The main difference between the Pythagorean or Platonic Trinity and the Christian Trinity is the fact, that the pagan philosophers are talking of a Trinity of Gods, that is of a first, a second and a third God. Numenius, for example, taught „that as the Second of these Gods, was the Off-spring of the First God, so the Third called the Nephew of the First, was derived both from him and from the Second, from the First as the Grandfather, and from the Second, as the Father of him’ (Cudworth 1687/1977, 548). Cudworth claims that in this case the second and third God must be inferior Gods than the first. For „otherwise, they would be Three Independent Gods, whereas the Pagan Theology Expressly disclaims a Plurality, of Independent and Self-­ originated Deities’ (Cudworth 1687/1977, 549). Thus the Platonic Trinity implies subordinationism regarding the three Gods. For Christians, however, it is impossible to speak of three Gods, because the Scripture, as the only true Rule of the Divine Cabbala of the Trinity, speaks of only one God, and although the Logos of the Gospel of St. John is said to be God, he is not called a second God. Therefore Cudworth criticises Philo because his calling the divine Logos a second God contradicts Jewish monotheism. But despite the fact that the pagan philosophers spoke of three gods they also could call their whole Trinity ‘to theion’, that is ‘the Divine Numen’, or ‘protos theos’, ‘First God’ to distinguish the eternal, uncreated and intelligible three from the generated gods.

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It is not only the language, of course, which makes a difference between the pagan and the Christian Trinity. Moreover, the old Cabbala of the Trinity was depraved by several Platonists and Pythagoreans. Cudworth mentions three such depravations. First of all, the third of the three Hypostases, the Soul, is very often identified with the ‘Immediate Soul of the Corporal World, informing, acting, and enlivening it, after the same manner as the souls of other Animals do their respective Bodies’ (Cudworth 1687/1977, 551). The corporal world was thus regarded as an animal with a soul in it and was itself called the third god. But in this case the created gets mixed up with the uncreated. For on the one hand the world is taken as god, while on the other hand it is thought of as created. Anyway, the Trinity in this case becomes a mixture of created and uncreated beings. The first is the Father as the uncreated Fountain of all, the second the demiurgic maker of the whole world, and the third his work and creature. This depraved notion of the Trinity Cudworth attributes to Numenios. And it makes no difference if one takes not the world as a whole but only its soul as the third god. For according to Plato’s ‘Timaios’ the world soul itself is created. That is for Cudworth the reason why, for example, Philo hesitated to take the soul as a third principle besides the Father and his Logos. To this first deprivation of the Cabbala of the Trinity one can add a second one. Some Platonist taking the second Hypostasis as the archetypical world let it consist of substantially independent ideas which they regard as gods. Thus the second Hypostasis is no longer one god but a heap of gods. Cudworth refers mainly to Proclus and his distinction between intelligible and intellectual gods or henads. But identifying the ideas of the archetypical world is a mistake he finds already in Plotinus and also in Apuleius of Madaura and the Emperor Julian. A mistake not found in Philo who interprets the beginning of the Mosaic Genesis as the creation of the intelligible world without declaring the ideas to be separate substances and gods. The third depravation, also attributed to Proclus, consists in making each of the three Hypostases a source of many particular entities. As from the Soul innumerable other particular souls in the world were derived, so from the Mind many particular minds and from the One and Good many henads. The derived minds are as immovable as the underived Mind and are thus above the rank of the underived Soul and all derived souls which are self-movable beings. Also the many henads are superior to the Mind as the second Hypostasis. Cudworth resumes that this all ‘was doubtless a gross Mistake of the ancient Cabbala of the Trinity’ (Cudworth 1687/1977, 557). And further: ‘This is therefore that Platonick Trinity, which we oppose to the Christian, not as if Plato’s own Trinity in the very Essential Constitution thereof, were quite a Different Thing from the Christian; it self in all probability having been at first derived from a Divine or Mosaick Cabbala; but because this Cabbala, (as might well come to pass in a thing so Mysterious and Difficult to be conceived) hath been by divers of these Platonists and Pythagoreans, Misunderstood, Depraved and Adulterated, into such a Trinity, as Confounds the differences between God and the Creature’ (Cudworth 1687/1977, 557)

By depriving the Cabbala of the Trinity the pagan Platonists laid a foundation for Polytheism, Cosmolatry and Creature-Worship.

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Coming to the Christian Trinity, Cudworth confines himself to three aspects. First, it is not a Trinity of mere names or words, that means it is not merely a ‘nomical Trinity’. Such a nomical or Sabellian Trinity may be found in the first Hypostasis of the Platonic Trinity, insofar it is named the First, the One and the Good, as well as in the first Hypostasis of the Christian Trinity when it is characterised by Goodness, Wisdom and Power. Concerning the first Hypostasis as such Cudworth insists on its intellectual character. He argues against Plotinus who put the Hen above knowledge and understanding because it is totally simple whereas knowledge implies multiplicity. For ‘this can hardly be conceived by ordinary Mortals, that the Highest and most Perfect of all Beings, should not fully comprehend it self, the Extent of its own Fecundity and Power, and be conscious of all that proceedeth from it, though after the most Simple manner. And therefore this high-flown conceit of Plotinus (and perhaps of Plato himself too) has been rejected by latter Platonists, as Phantastical’ (Cudworth 1687/1977, 558). As regards the Christian Trinity it is anyway true that its first Hypostasis, the Father, owns knowledge as well as power and goodness. As a second point has to be mentioned that though the second Hypostasis was begotten from the first and the third proceeds from the first and the second neither the second nor the third are creatures. For against Arius Cudworth argues that this would only be the case if they were made out of nothing and once were not. But they are coeternal with the Father and are also necessary emanations. So they are not only uncreated but also indestructible. Furthermore ‘they are Universal, each of them comprehending the Whole World, and all created things under it; which Universality of theirs, is the same thing with Infinity: Whereas all other Beings besides this Holy Trinity, are Particular and Finite’ (Cudworth 1687/1977, 559). But no intellectual being which is eternal, necessarily existent, indestructible and infinite can be a creature. Concerning the third aspect, Cudworth makes it clear that in the Christian Trinity the three Hypostases are really one God. They not only have one and the same will but they are also a unity by having a mutual co-existence which cannot be found in any created being. Nevertheless, this sort of oneness of the three Hypostases of the Trinity might be compared with the unity of body and soul as two different substances in one human person. Thus, according to Cudworth, there is no contradiction in the Christian concept of the Trinity as the Atheists assume, despite the fact that it is a mystery. Furthermore, ‘the Christian Trinity (though a Mystery, yet) is much more agreeable to Reason, than that Platonick or Pseudo-Platonick Trinity before described’ (Cudworth 1687/1977, 560). For the main mistake of the Platonic Trinity is the mixture of God and the creature insofar as the third Hypostasis is identified with the world or the soul of the world and thus leads to a cosmolatry. According to Cudworth, however, not all Platonists made this mistake but the more refined of them like Plotinus and Porphyry distinguished between a soul immanent in the world and a supramundane soul which they took as the ‘opificer’ or maker of the world. And this difference may also be found in Plato himself. For „that Soul, which is the only Deity, that in his Book of Laws he undertakes to prove, was … a Supramundane Soul, and not the same with … that Mundane Soul, whose Genesis or Generation is described in his Timaeus; the Former of them being a

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Principle and Eternal; the Latter made in Time, together with the World; though said to be Older than it, because in order of Nature before it’ (Cudworth 1687/1977, 562). Cudworth aims to show that it was a misunderstanding of Plato’s Trinity by later pagan Platonists that led to that Pseudo-Platonic Trinity which he criticises as a depravation of the old Cabbala of the Trinity. And it was also such a depravation that later Platonists made the second Hypostasis not to be one God or Hypostasis but a multitude of gods or Hypostases: ‘Nevertheless it cannot be at all doubted, but that Plato himself and most of his Followers very well understood, that these Ideas, were all of them, really nothing else but the Noemata or Conceptions, of that one Perfect Intellect, which was their Second Hypostasis; and therefore they could not look upon them in good earnest, as so many Distinct Substances Existing severally and apart by themselves out of any Mind; however they were guilty of some Extravagant Expressions concerning them’ (Cudworth 1687/1977, 563).

But they called them substances, essences or even animals only to signify that they were not such dead accidents as the conceptions of our mind. Despite of their poetic personification und deification by the pagan Platonists, the ideas were concepts of the divine Mind as the second Hypostasis. So neither the identification of the third Hypostasis with the world soul nor the understanding of the ideas as real substances independent of the second Hypostasis belongs to the original Platonism. And the same is true of the assumption of particular created Henads or unities superior to the second and particular created Noes or minds superior to the third Hypostasis. According to Cudworth ‘this was not the Catholick Doctrine of the Platonick School, that there were such Henades and Noes, but only a private Opinion of some Doctors amongst them’ (Cudworth 1687/1977, 568). Where Plato himself describes his Trinity, namely in his Second Epistle, Henads and Noes are never mentioned. And one does not find them in Plotinus either, ‘this Language being scarcely to be found any where in the Writings of any Platonist, Seniour to Proclus’ (Cudworth 1687/1977, 569). This leads Cudworth to the conclusion, „that this Platonick or rather Pseudo-Platonick Trinity, which confounds the differences betwixt God and the Creature, and that probably in favour of the Pagan Polytheism and Idolatry; is nothing so agreable to Reason it self, as that Christian Trinity before described, which distinctly declares how far the Deity goes, and where the Creature begins: namely, that the Deity extends so far as to this Whole Trinity of Hypostases; and that all other things whatsoever, this Trinity of Persons only excepted, are truly and properly their Creatures, produced by the joynt concurrence and Influence of them all, they being really but One God’ (Cudworth 1687/1977, 570). It is, however, Cudworth’s aim to show that the genuine Platonic Trinity distinguished from the Pseudo-Platonic one is very close to the true Christian Trinity. For Plato himself made a sharp distinction between God and the creature. Creature is that whose temporal or successive duration once had a beginning and, therefore, never truly is, but was produced by some cause which is without beginning, has permanent duration and is uncreated and divine. Because it always is, the Septuagint translation of the Mosaic writings calls God ‘He that truly is’. When Plato in his ‘Timaeus’ speaks of the eternal Gods as this cause he has in mind not the plurality

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of pagan gods but his own Trinity of the Second Epistle. And though its second Hypostasis, the Mind or Intellect, is said to have been generated or to have proceeded by way of emanation from the first, this emanation is thought of as eternal and without beginning. That is ‘though this Second Divine Hypostasis, did indeed proceed from the First God, yet was it not produced thence after a Creaturely, or in a Creating Way, by the arbitrary will and Command thereof, or by any particular Fiat of that Supreme Deity, but by the way of Natural and Necessary Emanation’ (Cudworth 1687/1977, 574). For this reason, Cudworth does not share the opinion of Pétau who declared that Arius was a genuine disciple of Plato because he regarded the Father to be the only God and the Son to be a creature made by him in time and out of nothing. Indeed, ‘it is certain, that Petavius (though otherwise Learned and Industrious) was herein grosly mistaken, and that Arius was no Platonist at all’ (Cudworth 1687/1977, 575). For Plato as well as Plotinus both nowhere denied the eternity of the second Hypostasis, because for them it was nothing but original wisdom, that is the wisdom, by which God himself is wise. When Pétau quotes Macrobius saying that the first cause created Mind from itself, one has to keep in mind „that these Ancient Pagans, did not then so strictly confine that Word Creare, (as we Christians now do) to that narrow Sense and Notion, of the Production of Things in Time; but used it generally, for all manner of Production or Efficiency’ (Cudworth 1687/1977, 576). Of course, Pétau wanted to show that all the Platonists interpreted emanation as creation and were thus forerunners of Arius. According to Cudworth, however, this is totally wrong because Pétau’s prejudice against Platonism made him blind against any difference between original Platonism and Pseudo-Platonism, for ‘none of these Three Hypostases of Plato’s Trinity, were Creatures, but all of them Divine and Uncreated’ (Cudworth 1687/1977, 577). They are, however, all not only uncreated but also necessarily existent and absolutely undestroyable. ‘For the First of them, can no more Exist without the Second, nor the First, and Second, without the Third, than Original Light can Exist without its Splendor’ (Cudworth 1687/1977, 577). And to be sure, ‘as all these three Platonick Hypostases are Eternal and Necessarily Existent, so are they plainly supposed by them, not to be Particular, but Universal Beings; that is, such as do … contain and comprehend the whole World under them, and preside over all things, which is all one as to say, that they are each of them Infinite and Omnipotent’ (Cudworth 1687/1977, 578). That is why they are called principles and causes of the whole world. If we consider more closely the Platonic Trinity, it is quite clear that according to Plato ‘Unity was in order of Nature before Number and Multiplicity; and that there must be noeton before nous, an Intelligible before Intellect; so that Knowledge could not be the First; and Lastly, that there is a Good transcending that of Knowledge; made One most simple Good, the Fountain and Original of all things, and the First Divine Hypostasis; and Mind or Intellect only the Second next to it, but Inseparable from it, and most nearly Cognate with it’ (Cudworth 1687/1977, 578). In his ‘Philebus’ Plato calls the Mind or Intellect as the second Hypostasis despite the fact that it is subordinated to the One or Good as the first Hypostasis ‘cognate’ – ‘genoses’ – to it which means almost the same as ‘coessential’ or ‘cosubstantial’ – ‘homousios’ – in the Nicene Creed and the teaching of Athanasius. ‘So that Plato

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here plainly and expressly agrees … not with the Doctrine of Arius; but with that of the Nicene Council and Athanasius’ (Cudworth 1687/1977, 578). And since in his ‘Cratylus’ Plato identifies the Soul as the third Hypostasis with Zeus, the highest Olympian god, who in turn is characterized as offspring of a great Mind, namely Chronos, the third Hypostasis is coessential with the second. Because the Platonists did not restrict the term ‘opificer’  – ‘demiurgos’  – to the second Hypostasis, Cudworth declares that ‘according to the Genuine and most ancient Platonick Doctrine, all these Three Hypostases, were the Joynt-Creators of the whole World, and of all things besides themselves’ (Cudworth 1687/1977, 579). So there is a very close relationship between the Platonic and the Christian Trinity notwithstanding that the Nicene Fathers and Athanasius made not Plato but the Scripture their foundation. The Platonic Trinity being a middle thing between the Sabellian and the Arian Trinity is nevertheless not totally identical with the Christian one. There are two aspects in which they differ. First, the Platonists ‘assert an Essential Dependence of the Second Hypostasis upon the First, as also of the Third both upon the first and Second; together with a Gradual Subordination in them’ (Cudworth 1687/1977, 580). This subordination is illustrated in different ways, Philo for example speaking of the Word as the shadow or the son of God. Most frequently, however, the Platonists use the picture of the outshining of light and splendour of the sun. The gradual subordination fully appears when we look at the particular description of the Hypostases. The first is referred to as ‘the One before all things’ – hen pro panton –, the second as ‘the One actually all things’  – hen panta  – and the third as ‘the One and all things’ – hen kai panta. The third produces into being what was virtually or potentially contained in the first and ideally or exemplarily in the second. The first of these, the Good, is no doubt put above the Mind or Intellect and characterized as something ineffable and incomprehensible. But this does not mean that it is devoid of mind, reason and wisdom. It is true that whereas the pagan theologians usually regarded Mind as the highest principle of the world, the Platonists, inspired by the Egyptians and Hebrews, placed something above it and took the Mind not as the first but the second. For this they offered three reasons. First, at least human understanding, reason, knowledge and wisdom implies a duality of the knowing subject and the known object whereas the first principle should be a perfect monad or unity. Secondly, there must be some intelligible before the intellect, and thirdly, there is something higher and better than knowledge and intellection. As Plato and the Platonists, however, Scripture likewise makes the eternal wisdom to be the second Hypostasis, the first begotten Son of God the Father. But this does not imply that the first Hypostasis is irrational and totally devoid of mind, understanding and wisdom. The main reason for the Platonic doctrine of essential dependence and gradual subordination of the Hypostases is its fundamental principle that ‘there is but One Original of all things, and … only One Fountain of the Godhead’ (Cudworth 1687/1977, 586). The second Hypostasis must therefore derive its whole being from the first. And despite the fact that it is said to have been begotten from the first its generation is quite different from that of human beings. For in their case ‘the Father, Son and Nephew, when Adulti at least, have no Essential Dependence one upon

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another, nor Gradual Subordination in their Nature, but are all perfectly Co-equal, and alike Absolute’ (Cudworth 1687/1977, 587). But this is but an imperfect generation because that which is begotten does not receive its whole being from that alone which did beget but from God and nature as well. The begetter is but an instrument having been himself begotten by some other. The first divine Hypostasis, however, is altogether unbegotten and the sole principle of the second Hypostasis which therefore derives its essence from it. That is why the second Hypostasis is coeternal with the first one, this sort of generation being called emanation. The reason why the Platonists favoured this gradual subordination of principles instead of conceiving God as one simple monad is that otherwise it cannot be understood how God should contain the distinct ideas of all things as an archetypal world within itself. Therefore God is not only a monad but also an immovable Mind. Yet an immovable Mind does not explain how God should have any commerce with the lower world, wherefore God is not just an immovable Mind but a movable Deity too. It is not only the gradual subordination which characterises the Platonic Trinity. A second peculiarity is that the three divine Hypostases are sometimes called three Gods but are also regarded as one Divinity or Numen. Cudworth points out ‘that though Porphyrius calls the Three Divine Hypostases, three Gods; yet does he at the very same time declare, that … the Essence of the Godhead and the Divinity, extends it self to all these Three Hypostases … And therefore that even according to the Porphyrian Theology it self, (which could not be suspected to affect any compliance with Christianity) the Three Hypostases in the Platonick Trinity, are … Co-Essential, both as being each of them God, and as being all One God‘ (Cudworth 1687/1977, 589). It is just because they are essentially dependent and subordinated that the Platonists regard the three Hypostases as one Divinity or God. Were they supposed to be perfectly coequal without essential dependence, they would be three coordinate Gods having only a generic or specific identity and being no more one God than three men are one man. ‘The Platonists therefore, First of all suppose such a close and near Conjunction betwixt the Three Hypostases of their Trinity, as is no where else to be found in the whole World’ (Cudworth 1687/1977, 590). As the first Hypostasis which is above Mind and Wisdom is wise and understanding in the second so move and act the first and the second in the third. Thus the three Platonic Hypostases seem to be nothing else but infinite Goodness, Wisdom and Power which as substantial things constitute one God. Despite the close relationship between the Platonic and the Christian Trinity, there are nevertheless some remarkable differences. ‘First, because the Platonists dream’d of no such such thing at all, as One and the Same Numerical Essence or Substance, of the Three Divine Hypostases. And Secondly, because though they acknowledged none of those Hypostases to be Creatures, but all God; yet did they assert an Essential Dependence of the Second and third upon the First, together with a certain Gradual Subordinatian; and therefore no Absolute Co-equality’ (Cudworth 1687/1977, 592). For these two reasons only, many Church Fathers assumed a strong similarity between the Platonic Trinity and Arianism which of course is not the case. Cudworth takes the part of a Christian Platonist or Platonic Christian in defending the Platonist as being so close as possible for a pagan to the Christian

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Trinity: ‘They not only extending the True and Real Deity to Three Hypostases, but also calling the Second of them, logos, Reason or Word too, (as well as noun, Mind or Intellect) and likewise the Son of the First Hypostasis, the Father; and affirming him to be the demiourgos and aition, the Artificer and Cause of the whole World; and Lastly describing him as the Scripture doth, to be the Image, the Figure or Character, and the Splendour or Brightness of the First. This, I say, our Christian Platonist, supposes to be much more wonderful, that this so Great and Abstruse a Mystery, of Three Eternal Hypostases in the Deity, should thus by Pagan Philosophers, so long before Christianity, have been asserted, as the Principle and Original of the whole World; it being more indeed than was acknowledged by the Nicene Fathers themselves; they then not so much as determining, that the Holy Ghost was an Hypostasis, much less that he was God’ (Cudworth 1687/1977, 595). The gradual subordination of the second Hypostasis to the first and of the third to the first and second might also be excused by the Christian Platonist. For Cudworth argues that the Christian theologians during the first three hundred years taught the same sort of subordination. An absolute coequality of the Hypostases was totally foreign to them. And ‘they are by Petavius therefore taxed for Platonism and having by that means corrupted the Purity of the Christian Faith, in this Article of the Trinity’ (Cudworth 1687/1977, 595). According to Cudworth, however, the intention of the Platonists in subordinating the Hypostases was to exclude a plurality of coequal independent gods, that is tritheism. For ‘whereas the only ground of the Co-Equality of the Persons in the Holy Trinity, is because it cannot well be conceived, how they should otherwise all be God; since the Essence of the Godhead, being Absolute Perfection, can admit of no degrees; these Platonists do on the contrary contend, that notwithstanding that Dependence and Subordination which they commonly suppose in these Hypostases, there is none of them for all that, to be accounted Creatures, but that the General Essence of the Godhead, or the Uncreated Nature, truly and properly belongeth to them all’ (Cudworth 1687/1977, 596). This general essence consists in being eternal, in having a necessary existence, and in being universal, that is in comprehending the whole world or in being infinite and omnipotent. If, however, we also make selfexistence an element of the general essence, then the second and third Hypostasis would no longer belong to the essence of the Godhead. The Platonists may even defend the Coequality of the three, insofar all of them are alike God and uncreated. Thus they distinguish between the common essence and the distinct Hypostases like the orthodox Christians. And „according to this Distinction, betwixt the Essence or substance of the Godhead, and the Particular Hypostases, (approved by the Orthodox Fathers) neither Plato, nor any Intelligent Platonist, would scruple to subscribe, that Form of the Nicene Council, that the Son or Word, is homousios, Co-Essential or Con-Substantial, and Co-Equal with the Father’ (Cudworth 1687/1977, 597). Cudworth is quite sure that it was the only intention of the Council to make clear that the Son was coessential with the Father because he was no creature but God. The Platonists would even go further and agree with the Christians that the three Hypostases are not three separate Gods but one God and Divinity because they are indivisibly conjoined together, are mutually inexistent in each other und have all

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one and the same energy or action. ‘Wherefore though there be some Subordination of Hypostases or Persons in Plato’s Trinity, … yet is this only ad intra, within the Deity it self, in their Relation to one another, and as compared amongst themselves; but ad extra, Outwardly, and to Us, are they all One and the same God, concurring in all the same Actions; and in that respect without any Inequality, because in Identity there can be no Inequality’ (Cudworth 1687/1977, 598). And obviously the Christians must also assume some dependence and subordination within the Trinity because the first Hypostasis which is underived from any other must be superior to the second and third who derive their being and Divinity from it. And though the three Hypostases are alike omnipotent ad extra, yet ad intra they are not so. The Son, for example, is not able to beget the Father, and neither can the Holy Ghost produce the Father or the Son, thus the Father alone being the cause of all things. Even the Christians, therefore, assume an inequality within the Deity revealed by Christ’s saying „My Father is greater than I′. The ancient orthodox Christians also agree with the Platonists insofar as they distinguish in an Aristotelian manner between the Hypostasis as something singular and individual and the ousia as the universal essence or substance common to the three Hypostases. Originally the meaning of ‘hypostasis’ and ‘ousia’ was quite the same, for the Christian theologians Hypostasis being nothing else but an existent Essence in the Deity. Yet ‘for distinctions sake, they here thought fit thus to limit and appropriate the signification of these Two words; that a Singular and Existent Essence, should not be called Essence, but Hypostasis; and by ousia Essence or Substance, should be meant, that General or Universal Nature of the Godhead only, which is Common to all those Three Singular Hypostases or Persons, or in which they all agree’ (Cudworth 1687/1977, 602). Some of the theologians as, for example, Gregory of Nyssa, however, went further declaring that there is only a numerical difference between the three like between three individual men. And they insisted upon the absolute coequality and independence of the three Hypostases without any subordination which coequality they called ‘homousiotes’, that is ‘consubstantiality’. But it was just this conception of the Trinity which was afterwards criticised as tritheistic and replaced by the doctrine that the three Hypostases have all one and the same singular existent essence. According to Cudworth who quotes Petavius ‘this Same Singularity of Numerical Essence was not asserted by the Nicene Council nor the most Ancient Fathers, but only an Equality or Sameness of Generical Essence’ (Cudworth 1687/1977, 605). Moreover, it implies Sabellianism and leads to no more than a Trinity of modes or names. The Nicene Council and Athanasius afterwards, however, took the word ‘homoousios’ as meaning ‘having a common nature’. It is a word directed against Arius making clear that the Son is not creature but God. ‘And with this Equality of Essence, did some of these Orthodox Fathers themselves imply, that a certain Inequality of the Hypostases or Persons also, in their mutual Relation to one another, might be consistent’ (Cudworth 1687/1977, 607). The Homoousian Trinity is thus in the middle between Sabellius und Arius and agrees with the genuinely Platonic Trinity. Cudworth is eager to prove that even Athanasius who so much stresses the unity of God nowhere wants to say that the three Hypostases have one and the same sin-

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gular essence. He does not understand the indivisibility of the Trinity as if there were not three, but that neither of them can be without the other as the original light of the sun cannot be without a diffused light derived from it. ‘Wherefore God the Father being an Eternal Sun, must needs have also an Eternal Splendour, and an Eternal Light. And Secondly, that these are so Nearly and Intimately Conjoyned together, that there is a kind of … continuity betwixt them’ (Cudworth 1687/1977, 617). And they are not only invisibly conjoined with another, but they also have a mutual inexistence in each other which was later called circumincession. But ‘the same Athanasius in sundry places still further supposes those Three Divine Hypostases, to make up one Entire Divinity after the same manner, as the Fountain and the Stream make up one Entire River … And accordingly the word Homousios seems here to be taken by Athanasius, in a further sence, besides that before mentioned; not only for things Agreeing in one Common and General Essence, as Three Individual men are Coessential with one another; but also for such as concurrently together, make up One Entire Thing; and are therefore Joyntly Essential therunto’ (Cudworth 1687/1977, 619). Father, Son and Holy Ghost are not only coessential as having the same divine essence in them, but also concurrently making up one entire Divinity. But this understanding of the Trinity does not really differ from the Platonic Trinity. Of course, Cudworth does not accept the Christian Trinity because it agrees with the Platonic Trinity. What he wants to show, however, is the agreement of the Platonic Trinity with the Scripture as well as with the Nicene and Constantinopolitane Council whereas the so-called Athanasian Creed was written not by Athanasius himself. ‘Wherefore we cannot but take notice here of a Wonderful Providence of Almighty God, that this Doctrine of a Trinity of Divine Hypostases, should find such Admittance and Entertainment in the Pagan World, and be received by the wisest of all their Philosophers, before the times of Christianity; thereby to prepare a more easie way for the Reception of christianity amongst the Learned Pagans’ (Cudworth 1687/1977, 625). And it was the acceptance of the Platonic Trinity by the early Christians which led the pagan Neoplatonist like Jamblichus and Proclus to its perversion insofar they put a Monad or Unity above the Trinity. Only two years after Cudworth’s work had been published, George Bull finished his ‘Defensio fidei Nicaenae’. Despite the approval by John Fell, the Bishop of Oxford, it was not printed before 1685. But Bull’s interest is quite different from that of Cudworth. For he is not at all concerned with the question whether the Christian doctrine of the Trinity may already be found in Plato. It is his aim to prove that the Nicene doctrine of the Trinity was not only taught by the Church Fathers from Justin onwards but is also implied in the Scripture. He wants to show „the agreement of the ancient doctors, who preceded the Nicene council, with the Nicene fathers, as well concerning the consubstantiality of the Son of God as His co-­ eternity, the tradition having been derived from the very time of the Apostles’ (Bull 1851, vii). Bull is arguing against Christoph Sand who in his ‘Nucleus Historiae Ecclesiasticae, exhibitus in Historia Arianorum’, published in 1676, ‘unblushingly maintains the blasphemy of Arius as the truly catholic doctrine’ (Bull 1851, viii). He starts with an index of the propositions he tries to demonstrate in his ‘Defensio’, starting with the first book about the pre-existence of the Son of God. In it he wants

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to show that all Catholic Theologians of the first three centuries taught that Christ before his incarnation existed in another nature surpassing the human and was before the foundations of the world were laid present with God his father. In the second book Bull deals with the consubstantiality of the Son of God. Here too he argues that it was the unanimous opinion of the theologians of the first three centuries that the Son of God was neither created nor mutable but of one substance or consubstantial with God the Father and, therefore, very God of very God (Bull 1851, xiii). In the third book Bull tries to show that the coeternal existence of the Son with the Father was taught by the more authoritative and larger part of the pre-­ Nicene theologians. Even though some theologians have attributed to the Son a certain nativity which began at a certain time and preceded the creation of the world they were far removed from the opinion of Arius. They only meant that the Son of God as the internal Word and co-eternal offspring of the eternal Mind, which proceeded from the Father as the external Word to create the world and manifest himself and the Father to the creatures. That the Son was born of the Father as the first-begotten was not even denied by those theologians who strongly opposed the Arian heresy. Thus there is no contradiction between the coeternity and consubstantiality of the Son and his subordination to the Father. The Son has indeed the same divine nature in common with the Father but communicated by the Father so that the Father alone has the divine nature from himself whereas the Son has it from the Father. The Father is thus the fountain, origin and principle of the Son’s Divinity, and that implies that even in respect of his Divinity he is greater than the Son. This is why, despite the fact that Son shares the same divine nature with the Father, the divine monarchy is nevertheless preserved. ‘For although the name and the nature be common to the two, namely the Father and the son of God, still, inasmuch as the one is the principle of the other, from which he is propagated, and that by an internal, not an external, production, it follows that God is rightly said to be only one. This reason those ancients believed to be equally applicable to the divinity of the Holy Ghost’ (Bull 1851, xvi). There is no substantial difference, according to Bull, in the doctrine of the Trinity between the orthodox theologians before and after the Nicene council. For they all insisted on the subordination of the Son despite his having the same nature as the Father. So neither Pétau nor Sand are right in claiming such a difference, the latter taking the subordinationism of the Pre-Nicene theologians as a proof for their tendency towards Arianism, the former taking it as a proof for the harmful influence of pagan Platonism before the Nicene council. For Bull, there was no such influence within the Trinitarian teaching at all. But it was not so easy to deny this influence, and neither was it very convincing to maintain such a continuity between the Trinitarian teaching of the early Church Fathers and the Nicene Council. Bull’s ‘Defensio’ could not stop the Socinian attacks on the doctrine of the Trinity. 1687 Stephen Nye published his ‘Brief History of the Unitarians, called also Socinians’, and 1690 Arthur Bury’s work ‘The Naked Gospel’ was printed. Also several collections of Unitarian pamphlets, among them those by Biddle, were edited: in 1691 ‘The Faith of One God’ and in 1693 ‘A Second Collection of Tracts, Providing the God and Father of Our Lord Jesus Christ the Only True God’. There was of course

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a number of books in which the orthodox position was defended against the Unitarians, such as ‘Socinianism Unmasked’ 1696 and ‘The Socinian Creed’ 1697 by John Edwards. Among the foreigners who were also engaged in the English Trinitarian debate was Samuel Crell, the son of the Socinian Johann Crell who lived in Amsterdam and travelled several times to England. Here he had contacts not only with Locke – who was himself critical of the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity – but also with Socinians, and 1695 he published in answer to Bull his ‘Tractatus Tres’ the first of which was titled ‘Anti-Nicenismus’ including ‘Testimonia Patrum Ante-­ Nicenorum’. This publication was followed 1697 by a second book ‘Fides primorum christianorum ex Barnaba, Herme, et Clemente Romano demonstrata’, in which he shows that the consubstantiality of the Father and the Son was never taught before the Nicene council. It was also Crell who supported the publication of the treatise ‘Le Platonisme devoilé’ in 1700, in which Jacques Souverain declared that the Trinitarian doctrine of the Churchfathers is an adulteration of the biblical faith caused by the influence of Platonism, the Nicene creed being the last step of this process of Platonizing the gospel. Souverain was a French Calvinist minister who had studied in Geneva and went to London after having been accused 1682 by the Reformed synod of Arminianism. He became a member of the Church of England, and his anti-trinitarian thinking was revealed only posthumously when his treatise was published one year after his death. In contrast to Bull, Souverain is convinced that the Nicene doctrine of the Trinity can only be explained by the harmful influence of the Platonic philosophy on Christian theology starting with the early Apologists. The end of Jewish Christianity under the emperor Hadrian meant not only the end of original Christianity but at the same time the beginning influence of pagan philosophy and especially Platonism on Christian theology. According to Souverain the Hellenization of Christianity was its Platonization too. Whereas in the gospel of St. John the incarnation of the Logos means God’s revelation through the man Jesus and his internal communication through the spirit, the Platonic theologians transformed the Logos and the Spirit into two Hypostaseis. Souverain does not deny that Plato himself spoke of a sort of Trinity, but it was a Trinity not of Hypostases but of virtues  – ‘Bonté, Sagesse, Puissance’  – belonging to the one God as the creator of the world (Souverain 1700/2004, 50). And Plato did not receive this Trinity from the ancient tradition going back to Moses but from reflecting on the origin of the world. Where the Platonists like Plato himself accept only this Trinity of virtues which allegorically may be called gods Souverain speaks of a ‘Platonisme délié’. He distinguishes it from the ‘Platonisme grossier’ which transforms the three virtues in three ‘Hypostases’: the Father who generates the ideas, the Son as the internal Word or thought of the Father and the Spirit or the Soul of the world (Souverain 1700/2004, 96). The early Christian theologians took over the latter Platonism and identified its Trinity with the Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. But they could nevertheless also speak in a more Sabellian way of Father, Son and Spirit as three different modes of God’s manifestations, ‘les diverses Oeconomies d’un Dieu qui se manifeste dans la Création du Monde’ (Souverain 1700/2004, 97). Against Bull, Souverain also insists that the early Churchfathers did not distinguish three consubstantial

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divine Hypostases. But the distinction between Father and Son does not date back before the creation since the Logos was in God before as internal Logos and was generated as external Logos or Son for the purpose of creating the world. When the Christian theologians later on transformed the Son as well as the Spirit into eternal Hypostases they taught a ‘Platonisme grossier’ which is an almost pagan degeneration of Christianity (Souverain 1700/2004, 110). What the Church Fathers call ‘theology’ is nothing but a platonized gospel. ‘Ce que les Peres appellant la Theologie est une autre sorte de Machine, qu’ils ont fait jouer pour nous donner un Evangile contemplative et formé sur les Idées de Platon’ (Souverain 1700/2004, 194). According to Souverain it was this sort of Platonizing theology that made of the man Jesus the eternal Son of God. Platonizing theology, however, is nothing but metaphysics. Like Adolf von Harnack later Souverain draws a radical distinction between the revelation of the gospel and the Platonizing metaphysical theology. ‘Il paroit de là que les Anciens n’ont pas appellé Theologie la science qui traitoit simplement de Dieu, mais ces Contemplations relevées, qui en parloient d’une maniere abstraite; et qu’ainsi leur Theologie´´etoit à-peu-prés ce que nous appellons la Metaphysique, c’est-à-dire la Philosophie des Esprits guindez. Quel abus! Comme si la veritable Theologie n’étoit pas celle qui a pour objet la Revelation sensible et l’Evangile des simples’ (Souverain 1700/2004, 198). According to Souverain, the gospel does not consist in metaphysics but in history and morality. Thus there is a great distinction between the revealed gospel and simple faith in Jesus Christ and the metaphysical Trinitarian theology defended by Cudworth which was influenced by Platonism.

Bibliography Bull, George. 1851. Defensio fidei Nicaenae. A defence of the Nicene creed, out of the extant writings of the catholick doctors, who flourished during the three first centuries of the Christian church, a new translation. Vol. 1. Oxford: John Henry Parker. Cudworth, Ralph. 1678/1977. The true intellectual system of the universe (1678), collected works of Ralph Cudworth. Facsimile edition prepared by Bernhard Fabian, vol. 1. Hildesheim/New York: G.Olms. Fock, Otto. 1847/1970. Der Sozinianismus nach seiner Stellung in der Gesamtentwicklung des christlichen Geistes, nach seinem historischen Verlauf und nach seinem Lehrbegriff dargestellt. Aalen: Scientia Verlag. Glawe, Walther. 1912. Die Hellenisierung des Christentums in der Geschichte der Theologie von Luther bis auf die Gegenwart. Berlin: Trowitzsch & Sohn. Mulsow, Martin. 2002. Moderne aus dem Untergrund. Radikale Frühaufklärung in Deutschland 1680–1720. Hamburg: F.Meiner. Souverain, Jacques. 1700/2004. Le platonisme dévoilé, texte revu par Sylvian Matton. Paris: Arthème Fayard. Wind, Edgar. 1984. Heidnische Mysterien in der Renaissance, 2nd ed. Trans. Christa Münstermann with Bernhard Buschendorf and Gisela Heinrichs. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.

Chapter 8

‘Think on These Things’: Benjamin Whichcote and Henry Hallywell on Philippians 4:8 as a Guide to Deiformity Marilyn A. Lewis

Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report: if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things. (Philippians 4:8, Authorised Version)

Abstract  Benjamin Whichcote (1609–1683), the reputed father of Cambridge Platonism, and Henry Hallywell (1641–1703), a younger member of the group, each preached a sermon series on Philippians 4:8 in which they stressed the necessity of moral virtue as a means to deiformity and participation in God. It is argued here that both drew on the Platonic and Origenian epistemological doctrine that there must be conformity between the knower and the thing known, and the Christian soteriological and ethical implications of this doctrine are explored. The dependence of Hallywell on Whichcote and the impossibility of his having read Whichcote in a printed source also suggest his close association with a group of rational divines gathered around Whichcote at St Lawrence Jewry in London. The present study introduces that group and calls for further prosopographical research on London Latitudinarianism, especially in relation to Cambridge Platonism.

An earlier version of this paper was read at the ‘Facets of “Participation” in the Renaissance and the Early Modern Period’ conference at the Institute for Research in the Humanities, University of Bucharest, 19 April 2018. I am grateful for the invitation to speak there and for the discussion which followed my paper. M. A. Lewis (*) Department of Religion and Theology, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 D. Hedley, D. Leech (eds.), Revisioning Cambridge Platonism: Sources and Legacy, International Archives of the History of Ideas Archives internationales d’histoire des idées 222, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22200-0_8

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Writers on Benjamin Whichcote (1609–1683), the reputed father of Cambridge Platonism, have noted his influence on his students – including John Smith, John Worthington, and probably Ralph Cudworth – at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, where he was a fellow for a decade from 1633, and on a wider congregation from the University who attended his lectures at Holy Trinity Church, continued ‘for almost twenty years together’ (Tillotson 1683, 24).1 Some writers have remarked on the influence of his writings on later philosophers such as the third earl of Shaftesbury, John Locke, Samuel Clarke and the nineteenth- and twentieth-century Christian Socialists (Roberts 1968, 225–56; Schneewind 1998, 196–99; Beiser 1996, 159–65; Gill 1999, 2006, 1–74). But the personal impact of Whichcote’s preaching at St Lawrence Jewry in London, where he was rector from December 1668 until his death in May 1683 has gone largely unnoticed.2 This paper will present both circumstantial and textual evidence for Whichcote’s personal influence at St Lawrence Jewry on the younger Cambridge Platonist Henry Hallywell (1641–1703). Hallywell was a pupil of George Rust at Christ’s College, Cambridge, from 1657 to 1659 and a fellow of the college from 1662 to 1667. He was the author of eight books which popularised Cambridge Platonist ideas and the editor and translator of Rust’s works from his Cambridge years. At Christ’s, six letters from Hallywell to Henry More evidence their friendship and close intellectual convergence (Lewis 2013a, b). Hallywell’s penultimate book, The Excellency of Moral Vertue of 1692, was an exposition of Philippians 4:8, a text on which Whichcote had preached a series of sermons, and it shows a close association between the two men’s ideas.

8.1  St Lawrence Jewry, a Centre of Rational Preaching Whichcote himself prepared nothing for publication, nor did he write out his sermons in full, preferring to preach extempore from headings. All the printed editions of his sermons were therefore based on his manuscript notes or the transcriptions of his auditors (Whichcote 1698, [sigs] A8v–(a)v; Whichcote 1753, x–xi, xii–xv; Roberts 1968, 269–72; T. Jones 2005, 77). Whichcote’s preaching on Philippians 4:8 first appeared in print in the edition of his Select Sermons published by the third earl of Shaftesbury in 1698. Although twice the length of the other sermons in the 1  All subsequent writers base Whichcote’s biography on (Tillotson 1683). On Whichcote’s thought and intellectual influence, see (Hunt 1870–1873, 1: 431–39); (Tulloch 1872, 2: 45–116); (Westcott 1877); (Campagnac 1901, x, xv–xxvii); (Inge 1926, 47–53); (Powicke 1926, 50–86); (Pawson 1930, 18–32); (De Pauley 1937, 2–66); (Jordan 1932–1940, 4: 99–116); (Argyle 1946); (Williams 1964); (Roberts 1968); (Davenport 1972); (Greene 1991); (Beiser 1996, 159–65); (Schneewind 1998, 196–99); (Gill 1999, 2006); (Hutton 2000, 2002, 2004); (Taliaferro and Teply 2004, 12–15); (T. Jones 2005). 2  (Roberts 1968, 11–12) barely mentions this period of Whichcote’s ministry. (Hutton 2004) says that John Locke attended Whichcote’s sermons at St Lawrence Jewry, but Locke’s letter to Richard King, 25 August 1703, seems to refer to reading his sermons, see (Whichcote 1753, xxxiv) and (Locke: 2015, 8: letter no. 3328).

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collection, the Philippians 4:8 material was presented there as a single sermon (Whichcote 1698, 225–300).3 At the National Archives at Kew in London, there are two volumes of manuscript transcriptions of Whichcote’s sermons in two thus-far unidentified hands, with marginal annotations by Shaftesbury, which were used in the preparation of his 1698 edition, but the Philippians 4:8 material is not included in them (TNA, PRO 30/24/24/16-17).4 Another set of manuscripts, comprising notes in Whichcote’s own hand and some sermons transcribed by one Smith ‘who lived upon Dr. Whichcote’, both of which had been unavailable to Shaftesbury, was entrusted by Whichcote’s nephew, the London merchant Mr. Benjamin Whichcote, to Archdeacon John Jeffry. Although Jeffry published the material from Whichcote’s notes as Several Discourses, in three volumes in 1701–1703, he was too cautious to include Smith’s transcriptions and was displeased when the philosopher Samuel Clarke did so, selectively, in 1707, in a fourth volume of Several Discourses. There were apparently twenty-four discourses on Philippians 4:8, but Clarke published only thirteen of them or perhaps reorganised them as thirteen discourses (Whichcote 1701–1703, 1707, 1–272, 1753, xvi–xix).5 The 1707 version differs substantially from that of 1698, with some rewording, a few significant omissions and a good deal of interpolated material. Further, the lean, elegant pace of the 1698 language – what the seventeenth century called ‘nervous writing’ – has been replaced with a rather plodding tone. In 1742, William Wishart, principal of Edinburgh University and a philosophical follower of Shaftesbury, republished the 1698 version (Whichcote 1742; Stewart 2004). Finally, an anonymous editor combined both strands of the Whichcotian sermon tradition in a four-volume edition of Whichcote’s Works, published in Aberdeen in 1751. Here, the Philippians 4:8 material again appears as thirteen discourses (Whichcote 1751, 3: 368–436; 4: 1–155). Hallywell’s The Excellency of Moral Vertue was published in 1692, so he clearly could not have become familiar with Whichcote’s preaching on Philippians 4:8 from any printed source. It is possible that he saw someone else’s notes; he might even have been one of those who transcribed the sermons and thereby contributed 3  This material does not appear in the anonymously edited (Whichcote 1685), for which unreliable source see (Roberts 1968, 273–74). 4  Information from Mark Burden, who very kindly supplied me with digital photographs of the complete volumes. 5  Concerning Smith, see (Whichcote 1753, xvi–xix; Roberts 1968, 270). (Davenport 1972, 179–80) identified ‘Smith’ as the Cambridge Platonist John Smith, without saying why. (Michaud 2017, 60, 195) also identifies Smith with John Smith, whose duties, he suggests, as a sizar at Emmanuel College probably included recording Whichcote’s sermons; this seems to me unlikely, because: (1) it would mean that all of the Whichcote sermons published by Clarke were preached before 1644 when John Smith left Emmanuel to take up a fellowship at Queens’ College, with this strand of the tradition containing nothing from the remainder of the Interregnum or the Restoration period; (2) Salter’s reference to ‘one Smith’ seems uncharacteristically careless, given his precise identification of other associates of Whichcote in his preface to ‘Eight Letters of Dr. Antony Tuckney and Dr. Benjamin Whichcote’ (Whichcote 1753, separately paginated i–xl); (3) since Smith is such a common name. I agree with Mark Burden that Smith was likely to have been a member of the St Lawrence Jewry congregation; I am also grateful to John Henderson for email conversations on this point.

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to the printed editions, although no specific evidence for this appears to be extant.6 So, did Hallywell hear the Philippians 4:8 sermons at Holy Trinity, Cambridge, or at St Lawrence Jewry? While the precise dating of most of Whichcote’s sermons is apparently impossible (Roberts 1968, 271), the literary historian of preaching William Fraser Mitchell confidently assigned the extant sermons to ‘the days of Whichcote’s London ministry, after the Restoration, when learned citations would no longer be acceptable’ (Mitchell 1932, 286). In reply, James Deotis Roberts noted that ‘we have no way of knowing what amount of such quotations would have been restored or inserted had Whichcote published [… the sermons] himself’ (Roberts 1968, 271). Still, Hallywell’s hearing of Whichcote’s sermons probably dates from the period of his London ministry, as the younger man did not enter Christ’s College until May 1657. Roberts dates the beginning of Whichcote’s lectures at Holy Trinity to 1636, which would mean that they had ended before Hallywell arrived in Cambridge (Tillotson 1683, 24–25; Peile 1910–1913, 2: 577; Roberts 1968, 2). Sarah Hutton favours 1643, which makes it possible that the undergraduate Hallywell heard Whichcote preach in Cambridge (Hutton 2004). Wherever he heard the Philippians 4:8 sermons – and I think London is the more likely – he might have heard any of the material eventually printed in any of the editions, so I have consulted all of them for this paper, although my quotations are from the 1751 edition. Hallywell was also an associate of other members of the St Lawrence Jewry circle, where Whichcote’s Sunday preaching was supplemented by endowed weekday lectures, many of which were given by John Tillotson on Tuesdays and John Sharp on Fridays (LMA, MS P69/LAW1/B/008/MS02593/002; Birch 1752, viii; Hart 1949, 63–64). ‘[C]rowds of auditors […] especially the Clergy’ who had heard Tillotson preach at Lincoln’s Inn on Sundays went to St Lawrence Jewry on Tuesdays hoping to hear the same sermon repeated (Birch 1752, cxix). Tillotson’s friend, the Socinian Thomas Firmin, noted that his Tuesday lectures were ‘frequented by all the Divines of the Town’. When Tillotson’s duties as dean of Canterbury caused his absence from London, Firmin ‘provide[d] Preachers for his Lecture’ (Anon 1698, 14).7 In 1689, when John Mapletoft had become rector of St Lawrence Jewry, the Scottish diarist Robert Kirk wrote that, ‘Every tuisday some eminent Doctor preaches at St Lawrence nigh to Guild hall where will be above a hundred Divines, hearing Sermon, who usually meet at the Divines Coffee-house hard by, immediately after, & do Business with one another’ (EUL, MS La. III, 545: fol. 137).8 While we cannot be certain that Hallywell frequented the Divines Coffee-­ house, it was possible that he found stimulus and company in this clerical gathering. An investigation of the other weekday lecturers at St Lawrence Jewry would considerably illuminate this scene: there is important research yet to be done here. Steven Pincus has noted a group of London ‘Low Church divines’ who met frequently in the 1670s and ‘80s to discuss topics on which they intended to preach and  For Hallywell’s hand, see (CCC, MS 21, fols 21, 32, 33–35, 37).  Unfortunately, we do not know the names of any of these supply preachers. 8  I am grateful to Mark Goldie for supplying this quotation. Other portions of Kirk’s diary are published in (Kirk 1929–30, 1937). The Divines Coffee-house does not appear in (Lillywhite 1963), and I have not succeeded in identifying it further. 6 7

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to plan a series of inexpensive books on pastoral subjects. This group included Sharp (although I would not call him a Low Churchman) and Tillotson, as well as Symon Patrick and Edward Stillingfleet. Pincus suggested that Robert Grove, Nicholas Stratford, Thomas Tenison, Richard Cumberland, Edward Fowler and Richard Kidder were probably ‘frequent participants as well’ (Pincus 2009, 409, 604 n.25). Autobiographies of Patrick and Kidder mentioned these meetings, as does Sharp’s biography by his son Thomas, who made it clear that they took place in the private homes of the participants, not in ‘taverns, or places of public resort and entertainment’, so they should be distinguished from the gatherings at the Divines Coffee-house (Sharp 1825, 1: 48; Patrick 1858, 9: 454; Kidder 1924, 37). Thomas Sharp mentioned the names of other participants: Whichcote, Tillotson, Stillingfleet, and Patrick, as well as William Beveridge, Samuel Cradock, Benjamin Calamy, William Sherlock, William Wake, William Cave and William Clagett. The younger Sharp noted the similarity of this list to Bishop Burnet’s well-known list of ‘Latitudinarians’ (Sharp 1825, 1: 50; Burnet 1833, 1: 339–49).9 While limitations of space will not permit further investigation here, this would surely be a good place to begin a fresh examination of London Latitudinarianism.10 Hallywell can be associated with this group by his preferment between 1690 and 1692 and by the dedications of his last two books. Symon Patrick became bishop of Chichester, and therefore Hallywell’s diocesan, in September 1689 and presented him to the Sutton prebendaryship in Chichester cathedral in July 1690. Tillotson, as archbishop of Canterbury, presented Hallywell to the vicarage of Cowfold, Sussex, in March 1692. The living was in the gift of Robert Grove, who had succeeded Patrick, but he had ceded the right of presentation to Tillotson on this occasion.11 Tillotson may well have thought that Hallywell would be a safe pair of hands in dealing with Baptists and Quakers, who had flourished in the parish under the previous incumbent (BL, Add. MS 39332 (7), fol. 228; Lewis 2013a, 123–24). Hallywell demonstrated his gratitude to Tillotson by dedicating The Excellency of Moral Vertue to him (Hallywell 1692, [sigs] A2-4v). Hallywell’s last book, A Defence of Revealed Religion, was dedicated to Sharp, by then archbishop of York, to whom he was ‘obliged in Justice and Gratitude’ (Hallywell 1694, [sig.] A2v). Sharp had very likely assisted Hallywell to hold three benefices in plurality in 1681 by securing his appointment as royal chaplain in extraordinary, a royal chaplaincy being a means to qualify for such a dispensation; Sharp’s patron, Sir Heneage Finch (half-brother to Lady Anne Conway), delegated matters of ecclesiastical patronage to him (Lewis 2013a, 122). Sharp, of course, was not only a member of Whichcote’s London circle and a particular friend of Tillotson but also a graduate of Christ’s College and Henry More’s protégé (Birch 1752, xi; T. Sharp 1825, 1: 9–16, 28–9; Hart 1949, 46–53, 63–4; Till 2004a, b). 9  (Burnet 1833, 1. 339–49) lists Whichcote, Cudworth, Wilkins, More, Worthington, Tillotson, Stillingfleet, Patrick, Lloyd and Tenison. 10  See (Lewis 2010, 14–17, 156) and (Tyacke 2012). 11  (Kidder 1924, 192) notes the ‘custom’ by which the archbishop who had consecrated a bishop ‘appropriated the next appointment to some piece of the new Bishop’s patronage’.

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Philippians 4:8 had already emerged as a Cambridge Platonist and Latitudinarian signature text after appearing in the printed dedication to Ralph Cudworth’s famous House of Commons sermon of 1647 (Cudworth 1647, [sig.] A1). The Platonic Dissenter Thomas Wadsworth, as a student at Christ’s College, had used the text as the basis for what he called ‘Christian prudence in our conversation with men’ in his diary, written during 1650–51 (Wadsworth 1680, separately paginated preface, 56). Symon Patrick had stressed the great regard that John Smith had had for the good things mentioned in the Philippians passage when he preached Smith’s funeral sermon in 1652, and John Worthington had quoted the verse in his preface to Smith’s Select Discourses in 1660 (Smith 1660, xvii, 521). Hallywell himself had included the verse in an informal creed, which he called the ‘Sum of our Duty’, in his Discourse of the Excellency of Christianity of 1671 (Hallywell 1671, 12–13). Sharp had preached on this text in his farewell sermon at St Giles-in-the-Fields, London, before becoming archbishop of York (Sharp 1691), and the verse would appear five times in Tillotson’s collected sermons (Tillotson 1752, 1: cxxx, 50; 3: 307, 336, 382). Hallywell said that the substance of his sermons on Philippians 4:8 had been ‘lately delivered to a small Country Auditory’ (Hallywell 1692, [sig.] A2v). This will have been the village parish of Slaugham in Sussex, where he was rector until the end of March 1692; as we have seen, he then moved to Cowfold, but the imprimatur was dated 23 April, so he will hardly have had time to preach the sermons in his new parish. He had probably preached the sections of the book as individual sermons. The congregation will have included his patroness Lady Isabella Covert and members of her large household at Slaugham Place (Hallywell 1692, imprimatur; Lewis 2013a, 121–22).

8.2  ‘Deiformity’ in Whichcote’s and Hallywell’s Writings While there has been some debate on the question of Whichcote’s Platonism,12 the current focus of Cambridge Platonist studies suggests that Whichcote’s Origenism poses a more pertinent question.13 While there is no evidence in Whichcote’s sermons that he was an Origenist in the sense of believing in the pre-existence of souls, universal salvation or the cyclic conflagration of the earth, his emphasis on the soteriological necessity of deiformity made his treatment of Philippians 4:8 markedly Origenian.14 Whichcote’s first biographer, Gilbert Burnet, noted that Whichcote

 See, e.g., (Staudenbaur 1974, 159–61), who says that Whichcote was neither a Platonist nor even a philosopher; (Levitin 2015), makes no mention of Whichcote’s sermons, nor his correspondence with Tuckney – all of his index entries for Whichcote refer to his commonplace book at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., MS V.a.326. 13  Cambridge Platonism is one of the areas currently being researched by ‘The History of Human Freedom and Dignity in Western Civilization from Antiquity to Modernity’ project on the Nachleben of Origen, for which see http://itn-humanfreedom.eu/ 14  (Roberts 1968, 164) notes that Whichcote was not a universalist, and I have not found the other themes in Whichcote’s writings. 12

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considered religion to be ‘a seed of a DEIFORM nature’, that is, he held that the pursuit of deiformity – becoming like God – fitted a human soul to prepare for the fellowship with God for which it had been created (Whichcote 1751, 1: viii; Burnet 1833, 1: 340). Deiformity was, of course, a constant theme in the writings of all of the Cambridge Platonists; Smith, More and Cudworth all stressed that purity of soul was requisite to knowledge of the divine.15 This was based on the Platonic epistemological doctrine that there must be congruity between the knower and the thing known (Plotinus 1992, 5.1.4 on 426–7; Plato 2005, 40–98), which also underlies the major theme of deiformity in book three of Origen’s On First Principles (Origen 1973, 157–328; Tripolitis 1978, 122–33). Roberts emphatically affirmed Whichcote’s Origenism: Origen’s treatment of such subjects as God, the world and rational creatures in his chief work, On First Principles, points towards Whichcote’s treatment of the same subjects. Further, his views concerning Christian tolerance; the role of reason in the comprehension of Christian knowledge; ‘divine likeness’ as a prerequisite for revelation; punishment for sins as remedial and the present as a ‘probation-state’; and the authority of Scripture, are remarkably similar to Whichcote’s views on the same subjects (Roberts 1968, 22–23).

Hallywell used the term ‘deiform’ only once (Hallywell 1668, 47), but the concept was a constant theme throughout his writings. His presentation of deiformity in The Excellency of Moral Vertue was even more pronounced and explicit than Whichcote’s, and we know from some of his other writings that he also believed in the pre-­ existence of souls and had an Origenian understanding of the soul’s journey back to the bliss of its first creation (Lewis forthcoming). For both Whichcote and Hallywell, deiformity, of course, did not mean imitation of God’s dominical virtues  – his omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence, etc. – but of his moral virtues – his goodness, justice, purity, etc. This meant that deiformity was essentially Christian morality, which was privileged by both writers over doctrinal orthodoxy (Hallywell 1692, 12–13; Roberts 1968, 113–14, 149–53, 180–83; Davenport 1972: 102–25; Gill 1999, 274–280). In my comparison of Whichcote’s and Hallywell’s sermons on Philippians 4:8, the emphasis will be on their presentation of the concept of deiformity understood as moral virtue. Most importantly, it is deiformity which allows human participation in God, which is an absolute necessity in the restoration of souls to their original state of bliss. While Origen wrote no commentary on Philippians, I would suggest that both Whichcote and Hallywell were familiar with St John Chrysostom’s Homilies on Paul’s Letter to the Philippians. I was alerted to this source by Hallywell’s quotation from it in his first book, A Private Letter of Satisfaction to a Friend of 1667 (Hallywell 1667, 80–81).16 Chrysostom’s exposition of Philippians 4:8 was a ­miniature treatise on moral virtue which may have inspired imitation by Whichcote and Hallywell (Chrysostom 1613, 4:78–81, 2013, 287–95). Chrysostom was  See e.g., (Cudworth 1647, [sig.] 3v; Smith 1660, 20–21; More 1692, 55; Gill 1999, 274–80; Newey 2002). 16  Hallywell found the quotation from Chrysostom in (Cassander, 239–40); for Cassander, see (Schoor and Meyje 2016). 15

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accused of being an Origenist during his lifetime, but J. N. D. Kelly noted that this was simply a catch-all term of abuse rather than an indication that he held specific Origenist doctrines (Kelly 1995, 191–227). While their Origenism informed their soteriology, their anthropology and their ethics, neither Whichcote nor Hallywell wrote a philosophical, nor even a theological, treatise. The texts examined in this paper are distinctly different in kind from Ralph Cudworth’s A Treatise concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality and Henry More’s Enchiridion Ethicum (More 1667; Cudworth 1996).17 This is not to say that Whichcote and Hallywell did not have a philosophical commitment to the pre-eminence of God’s goodness and to human rationality and free will, but only that their purpose was pastoral and that they delivered their message in sermons – Whichcote perhaps to his diminishing auditory at St Lawrence Jewry as his voice grew weaker ‘in his declining age’ (Tillotson 1683, 25). Hallywell had a particular gift for clearly summarizing the often prolix and obscure writings of the Cambridge Origenian Platonists and making them accessible to a less highly educated auditory or readership (Lewis 2013b, 451). The Excellency of Moral Vertue is a neat compendium of their writings on ethics, but with explicit practical applications, set out for the intelligent reader or parishioner. Both Whichcote and Hallywell dealt in detail with ‘small morals’ (Hobbes 1996, 69; Parker 1666, 17, 1681, 9: 17), for example, how a Christian should behave in conversation or how to give alms without causing the recipient to feel humiliated (Whichcote 1751, 3: 413–19; Hallywell 1692, 125).

8.3  Whichcote and Hallywell on Philippians 4:8 As we have seen, Hallywell’s Excellency of Moral Vertue was dedicated to Tillotson, but, unlike Tillotson, who tended to preach simply that morality is absolutely requisite to salvation,18 Hallywell constantly echoed  – in fact, elaborated upon  – Whichcote’s emphasis on deiformity. In his Epistle Dedicatory, Hallywell said that ‘if Men neglect the Sincere Practice of Virtue, the Renovation of their Minds in the faultless Image of Jesus will never effectually be carried on’ (Hallywell 1692, [sig.] A2v).19 In his brief introduction, Whichcote had said that Philippians 4:8 ‘shews how complete and well furnished, the man of God should be’ (Whichcote 1751, 3: 368). He was preaching to an auditory who were familiar with his theological opinions, but Hallywell preached an entire introductory sermon which essentially summarised the main themes of Whichcote’s preaching. Like Whichcote, he noted that  (Cudworth 1996) was first published in 1731, but Whichcote and Cudworth were close friends (Hutton 2004) and Hallywell was a fellow of Christ’s College, 1662–1667 (Peile 1910–1913, 1: 577), thus providing many opportunities for conversation. For Cambridge Platonist ethics, see also (Austin 1935). 18  (Birch 1752, viii) notes that Lady Barnardiston complained that while Tillotson had been curate of Cheshunt, Herts, ‘Jesus Christ had not been preach’d amongst them’. 19  Whichcote’s treatment of this theme is so continuous as to defy citation but see especially the places referenced by (Roberts 1968, 147–70). 17

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‘[t]he true life and spirit of Religion consists not in dry and barren Speculation’, but that ‘the main and substantial part of Religion consists in the Practice of Moral Virtue’ (Hallywell 1692, 1–2; Whichcote 1751, 2: 204–43, 1753, 835; Roberts 1968, 148–49; Gill 1999, 283–90).20 He affirmed that morality was consonant with true and right reason, before quoting one of Whichcote’s favourite biblical texts, Micah 6:8 – that the Lord requires us ‘to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God’ (Hallywell 1692, 5; Whichcote 1751, 62–72; Roberts 1968, 99–104). He cited another favourite verse of Whichcote’s, Titus 2:12, the injunction to live ‘soberly, righteously and godly’ (Hallywell 1692, 11; Whichcote 1751, 2: 204–43; 3: 132–34, 374; Roberts 1968, 147–48; Davenport 1972, 110–13, 158). Hallywell stressed deiformity by insisting that, in the sincere practice of morality, the Christian ‘partake[s] of the Nature of God’, not his ‘Eternity, Omniscience and Omnipotency’, but his ‘Holiness and Purity, … his Love and Goodness’, following the perfect example of Jesus (Hallywell 1692, 12–13, 1694, 169–74; Whichcote 1751, 2: 146–48). And there was a reminder that God does not expect us to accomplish this spiritual renovation by our own power but will assist us continually with his grace: ‘God will never forsake his own Life and Nature; and Holiness being the very Nature of God, he cannot but love and regard it wherever he finds it in any person’ (Hallywell 1692, 21; Whichcote 1751, 1:332, 367–70; 2: 75–76). Beginning with ‘whatsoever things are true’, Whichcote had first discussed philosophically ‘the truth of things’ and then truth ‘in our apprehensions’, before turning to a detailed discussion of God’s veracity and our obligation to behave truthfully towards God, ourselves and other people. He came closest to discussing deiformity when he remarked ‘That God is original to me, [so] I ought to make him final to me’ (Whichcote 1751, 3: 370, 374).21 Hallywell’s sermon was less philosophical but more explicitly focused on deiformity than Whichcote’s. He described how we can discern truth by ‘the Conformity and Likeness it hath to the Nature of God’. ‘[T]he more a Man swerves and declines from Truth, the further he is removed from a Participation of the Nature of God.’ The truths of Christianity are designed ‘to communicate such a knowledge of God and of his Works to us, as may affect our Hearts, and render us more God-like’ (Hallywell 1692, 33, 35, 37). Whichcote had interpreted ‘whatsoever things are honest’ as referring to those things which are ‘venerable, grave, comely, seemly, honourable’. Honest behaviour includes constancy, patience, composure of mind, evenness of temper and ‘[s]uch a gesture and carriage as may no ways argue a spirit either over-eager or forward’ (Whichcote 1751, 3: 399, 428). Concerning honesty, Hallywell commended those things that are ‘venerable, grave, decent and becoming’. Once again, he stressed deiformity more openly than Whichcote: since ‘the highest and best end of Man as a Rational Creature must undoubtedly be the Participation of the Nature of God’, we should eschew ‘whatever it be that hinders our communication with God, and our partaking of his Nature, so far forth it is Dishonest, Vile and Unsuitable to our Intellectual Creature’ (Hallywell 1692, 43, 51–52). 20 21

 Cf. (Cudworth 1647, 13–21).  Cf. (Rust 1686, 21–46).

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‘Whatsoever things are just’ had called forth from Whichcote a detailed discussion of justice and equity. He said that ‘[j]ustice, righteousness, fair-dealing, and equal consideration, are things wherein we imitate and resemble God’, especially in his ‘mercifulness and compassion’. He urged his hearers to resolve to behave so ‘That it shall be the better for every one, with whom we shall have to do in the World’ (Whichcote 1751, 4: 1, 30, 45). Hallywell took the Golden Rule – ‘Whatever you would that Men should do to you, do ye so to them’ – as the basic principle of justice or righteousness. He said that ‘Every Good Man desires above all things his own Happiness both in this Life and in the next’. He should, therefore, ‘stand so affected to all others’, dispensing healing, charity, advice and strengthening them in their faith, and never delighting ‘in the Miseries of others’ (Hallywell 1692, 63, 68–71). For Whichcote, ‘whatsoever things are pure’ had referred essentially to holiness. ‘Holiness in […] Men’, he had said, ‘doth import their Deiformity, that is, their Conformity to God, according to their capacity’. ‘Real holiness’ consists in ‘our conformity to the nature of God’ and ‘makes us really deiform’; ‘real holiness is our participation of God and our resemblance of him’ (Whichcote 1751, 4: 58–59). For Hallywell, too, purity equated to holiness, because holiness implies that something is set aside for the ‘Service of God’. To become pure, we need to follow the example of Jesus, who had to cope with the same physical and emotional nature as us. Hallywell said that ‘[w]ithout this Purity of Flesh and Spirit, there is no Union of our Souls with God’ (Hallywell 1692, 87, 101). Whichcote had interpreted ‘whatsoever things are lovely’ as generous and noble work ‘done in a good mind, a noble temper, a high intention, and [a] good disposition.’ Loveliness ‘is God-like, in a high degree: [there is] [n]o fuller Participation of the divine nature; no exacter imitation of God’. Those things which are ‘truly noble, generous, [and] honourable’ are ‘in resemblance and imitation of God’. ‘[T]he definition of religion in us’ is ‘divine imitation’. ‘Godliness is god likeness’ (Whichcote 1751, 4: 84, 86, 99–100). Hallywell admitted that we encounter a real difficulty in distinguishing things which appear to be attractive from things that are really beautiful − things which conform to the love of God. We can get a good idea of the truly lovely, however, by looking at the example of Jesus, whose behaviour was always courteous and patient as well as deeply kind. He says that Christ is ‘the express Image and Character of his Fathers Person, [who] came on purpose to restore in Men that Beautiful resemblance of the Great Author of their Being’ (Hallywell 1692, 112). Considering ‘whatsoever things are of good report’, Whichcote had urged humble submission to the opinions of others concerning ourselves as a good antidote to false pride. He had equated ‘Vertue’ with all that is ‘useful, grateful, [and] beneficial’ in human conduct, and ‘Praise’ with the commendation that follows virtue (Whichcote 1751, 131). Hallywell said that trying to build a good reputation on anything but virtue is counter-productive. Since ‘all Virtue derives’ from God ‘and is a participation of his Image and Nature’, ‘such Actions as are Conformable and Agreeable to those Intellectual Laws and Principles which God has fixed in our Minds, […] are Virtuous and Praise-worthy’ (Hallywell 1692, 128). Hallywell stopped here, but Whichcote went on to interpret ‘think on these things’ as ‘think these things to be reasonable’. He said that the use of our reason in religion

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‘is that faculty, whereby we are made capable of God, and apprehensive of him, receptive from him, and whereby we can make returns upon him, and acknowledgements to him’. He concluded that Philippians 4:8 ‘doth contract and epitomize our religion, comprehends the moral part of religion, that which in part will make us like God; and if these things be received with a temper, complexion and constitution of soul, we shall become God-like, and partakers of the very nature of God’ (Whichcote 1752, 138, 140, 155).

 pilogue: The Legacy of Preaching on Deiformity E in Philippians 4:8 In an age of ‘moral preaching’, we might expect there to have been a number of sermons on Philippians 4:8 with a message similar to that of Whichcote and Hallywell. Sampsom Letsome’s Preacher’s Assistant, a list of published sermons on biblical texts from the Restoration in 1660 to the date of publication, 1753, listed nine other sermons on this text, which make a useful comparison (Letsome 1753, 226). Examination of these sermons shows that, while the other preachers agreed with Whichcote and Hallywell that the verse could be expounded morally, the stress of our authors on deiformity was not replicated. The High Churchman Thomas Manningham’s sermon of 1686 focused on loyalty to James II (Manningham 1686, 7–9; Wood 1813–20, 4: 555; Gray 2004), while even John Sharp devoted a good portion of his 1691 sermon to urging acceptance of the new monarchs, William and Mary (J. Sharp 1691, 25–31). In the seven sermons on the text published during the first half of the eighteenth century, five by Anglicans (Strype 1724; W. Jones 1726; Burnet 1747; Trapp 1752; Gough 1752)22 and two by dissenters (Foster 1737; Lardner 1751),23 there were occasional echoes of Whichcote and Hallywell’s language on the image of God and the imitation of Christ, but all fell short of any real discussion of deiformity. So, were Whichcote’s and Hallywell’s stress on deiformity and participation in God isolated examples of preaching by Cambridge Platonists who were closely associated with London Latitudinarianism? I would urge that research is urgently needed on the group of divines associated with the St Lawrence Jewry community, in both their biographies and their published sermons. There, I suspect that we shall find their legacy within a community of richly social participation in the divinity of late seventeenth-century London. If we do not, that will serve to highlight how significant and distinctive Whichcote and Hallywell were in presenting this Origenian doctrine in their sermons on Philippians 4:8.

 For these preachers, see (Martin and McConnell 2004; Foster 1891, 831; R. Sharp 2004; Gordon rev. Brooks 2004a). Burnet (Venn 1922–1924, s.v.) was a younger namesake of the Latitudinarian Bishop of Salisbury, for whom see (Greig 2004). 23  For these preachers, see (Stephen rev. Benedict 2004; Gordon rev. Sell 2004b). 22

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Bibliography Manuscripts British Library, London, Add. MS 39332 (7), Dunkin Collection, Sussex Incumbencies. Christ’s College, Cambridge, MS 21, fols 21, 32, 33–35, 37, six letters from Henry Hallywell to Henry More. Edinburgh University Library, MS La. III, 545, Robert Kirk, ‘Sermons, conferences, opinions of the late transactions, with a description of London anno 1689’. London Metropolitan Archives, MS P69/LAW1/B/008/MS02593/002, St Lawrence, Jewry, Churchwardens accounts (from 1671–2 for united parishes of St Lawrence Jewry and St Mary Magdalen, Milk Street), 1640–1 to 1697–8. The National Archives, London, PRO 30/24/24/16-17, two volumes of sermons by Benjamin Whichcote.

Printed Sources24 Anon. 1698. The life of Mr. Thomas Firmin, late citizen of London, written by one of his most intimate acquaintance. London: A Baldwin. Argyle, Aubrey William. 1946. The aphorisms of Benjamin Whichcote. Baptist Quarterly 12: 23–25. Austin, Eugene M. 1935. The ethics of the Cambridge Platonists. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania. Beiser, Frederick C. 1996. The sovereignty of reason. The defense of rationality in the early English enlightenment. Princeton University Press: Princeton. Birch, Thomas. 1752. The life of Dr. John Tillotson. In Tillotson, Works, vol. 1, ed. Thomas Birch, i–cxxvi. 3 vols. London: J. and R. Tonson et al. Burnet, Gilbert. 1747. Practical sermons on various subjects, 2 vols. London: C. Ackers. ———. 1833. Bishop Burnet’s history of his own time, 6 vols, 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Campagnac, E.T. 1901. The Cambridge Platonists. Being selections from the writings of Benjamin Whichcote, John Smith, and Nathanael Culverwel. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Cassander, Georg. 1608. De articulus religionis inter catholicos et protestantes consultatio. Leiden: Lazarus Zetznerus. Chrysostom, John. 1613. S. Joannis Chrysostomi opera Græcé, 8 vols, ed. Henry Savile. Eton: Eton College. ———. 2013. Homilies on Paul’s letter to the Philippians. Trans. Pauline Allen. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature. Cudworth, Ralph. 1647. A Sermon preached before the honourable house of commons at Westminster, March 31, 1647. London: Roger Daniel. ———. 1996. In A Treatise concerning eternal and immutable morality: With a treatise of freewill, ed. Sarah Hutton. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Davenport, Paul Miles. 1972. Moral divinity with a tincture of Christ? An interpretation of the theology of Benjamin Whichcote, the founder of Cambridge Platonism. Nijmegan: H. Th. Peeters and R. Th. Tissen.

24  Abbreviation: ODNB = Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. 2004. Edited by H.  C. G. Matthew and B. Harrison. 60 Vols. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

8  ‘Think on These Things’: Benjamin Whichcote and Henry Hallywell on Philippians… 129 De Pauley, W.C. 1937. The candle of the lord. Studies in the Cambridge Platonists. London: SPCK. Foster, James. 1737. Sermons on the following subjects, 2 vols. London: John Gray. Foster, Joseph. 1891. Alumni Oxonienses, 1500–1714, 2 vols. Oxford: Parker & Co.; CD-ROM, Archive CD Books, 2001. Gill, Michael B. 1999. The religious rationalism of Benjamin Whichcote. Journal of the History of Philosophy 37: 271–300. ———. 2006. The British moralists on human nature and the birth of secular ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gordon, Alexander. 2004a. Gough, Strickland (d. 1752), rev. M. L. Brooks. In ODNB. ———. 2004b. Lardner, Nathaniel (1684–1768), rev. A. P. F. Sell. In ODNB. Gough, Strickland. 1752. Sermons on the following subjects. London: C. and J. Ackers. Gray, Donald. 2004. Manningham, Thomas (d. 1722). In ODNB. Greene, Robert A. 1991. Whichcote, the candle of the lord, and synderesis. Journal of the History of Ideas 52: 617–644. Greig, Martin. 2004. Burnet, Gilbert (1643–1715). ODNB. Hallywell, Henry. 1667. A private letter of satisfaction to a friend. [s.n: s.n]. ———. 1671. A discourse of the excellency of Christianity. London: Walter Kettilby. ———. 1692. The excellency of moral virtue. London: James Adamson. ———. 1694. A defence of revealed religion in six sermons on Rom. 1, 16. London: Walter Kettilby. Hart, A. Tindal. 1949. Life and times of John Sharp, Archbishop of York. London: SPCK. Hobbes, Thomas. 1996. In Leviathan, ed. Richard Tuck. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hunt, John. 1870–1873. Religious thought in England from the reformation to the end of the last century. A contribution to the history of theology, 3 vols. London: Strahan and Co. Hutton, Sarah. 2000. Whichcote, Benjamin (1609–83). In The dictionary of seventeenth-century British philosophers, vol. 2, ed. Andrew Pyle, 872–873. 2 vols. Bristol: Thoemmes Press. ———. 2002. The Cambridge Platonists. In A companion to early modern philosophy, ed. Steven Nadler, 308–319. Oxford: Blackwell. ———. 2004. Whichcote, Benjamin (1609–1683). In ODNB. Inge, William Ralph. 1926. The Platonic tradition in English religious thought. London: Longman, Green and Co., Ltd. Jones, Todd E. 2005. The Cambridge Platonists. A brief introduction. Oxford: University Press of America. Jones, Walter. 1726. Seventeen sermons upon several subjects. London: J. Watts. Jordan, W. K. 1932–1940. The development of religious toleration in England, 4 vols. London: Allen and Unwin. Kelly, J.N.D. 1995. Golden mouth: The story of John Chrysostom, ascetic, preacher, bishop. London: Duckworth. Kidder, Richard. 1924. The life of Richard Kidder, D.D., Bishop of Bath and Wells: Written by himself, ed. A.E. Robinson. Somerset Record Society 37. Kirk, Robert. London in 1689–90, transcribed by D. Maclean. Transactions of the London and Middlesex Archaeological Society, new ser. 6 (1929–1930): 322–342; new ser. 7 (1937): 304–318. Lardner, Nathaniel. 1751. Sermons upon various subjects. London: J. Nonn et al. Letsome, Sampson. 1753. The preacher’s assistant, in two parts. London: for the author. Levitin, Dimitri. 2015. Ancient wisdom in the age of the new science. Histories of philosophy in England, c.1640–1700. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lewis, Marilyn A. 2010. The educational influence of Cambridge Platonism. Tutorial relationships and student networks at Christ’s College, Cambridge, 1641–1688. Unpublished University of London PhD thesis, available at ethos.bl.uk ———. 2011. Thomas Wadsworth (1630–76): The making of a platonic dissenter. Congregational History Society Magazine 6: 171–191. ———. 2013a. Henry Hallywell (1641–1703). A Sussex Platonist. Sussex Archaeological Collections 151: 115–127.

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———. 2013b. Pastoral Platonism in the writings of Henry Hallywell (1641–1703). The Seventeenth Century 28 (2013b): 441–463. ———. forthcoming. Expanding the Origenist moment: Nathaniel Ingelo, George Rust, and Henry Hallywell. Adamantiana. Lillywhite, Bryant. 1963. London coffee houses: A reference book of coffee houses of the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. London: G. Allen and Unwin. Locke, John. 2015. The correspondence of John Locke, 8 vols, ed. E. S. de Beer. Oxford, electronic resource. Manningham, Thomas. 1686. A sermon preached at the Hampshire-Feast on Shrove-Tuesday, Feb. 16. 1685/6. London: W. Crooke. Martin, G.H., and Anita McConnell. 2004. Strype, John (1643–1737). In ODNB. Michaud, Derek. 2017. Reason turned into sense. John Smith on spiritual sensation. Leuven: Peeters. Mitchell, W. Fraser. 1932. English pulpit oratory from Andrewes to Tillotson. A study of its literary aspects. London: SPCK. More, Henry. 1667. Enchiridion ethicum. London/Cambridge: J. Flesher and W. Morden. English trans. by ‘K. W.’ (Edward Southwell). 1690. An account of virtue. London: B. Tooke. ———. 1692. In Discourses on several texts of scripture, ed. John Worthington II.  London: B. Aylmer. Newey, Edmund. 2002. The form of reason: Participation in the work of Richard Hooker, Benjamin Whichcote, Ralph Cudworth and Jeremy Taylor. Modern Theology 18: 1–26. Origen. 1973. On first principles. Trans. G.W. Butterworth. Gloucester: Peter Smith. Parker, Samuel. 1666. A free and impartial censure of the Platonic philosophy. Oxford: Richard Davis. ———. 1681. A demonstration of the divine authority of the law of nature and of the Christian religion. London: R. Royston. Patrick, Symon. 1858. The works of Symon Patrick, D.D, sometime bishop of Ely, 9 vols, ed. Alexander Taylor. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pawson, G.P.H. 1930. The Cambridge Platonists and their place in religious thought. London: SPCK. Peile, John. 1910–1913. Biographical register of Christ’s college, Cambridge, 1505–1905, and of the earlier foundation, God’s house, 1448–1505, 2 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pincus, Steve. 2009. 1688: The first modern revolution. New Haven/London: Yale University Press. Plotinus. 1992. The Enneads. Trans. Stephen MacKenna. Burdett: Larson Publications. Plato. 2005. Phaedo, translated by H. Tredennick. In Plato. The collected dialogues, including the letters, ed. E. Hamilton and H. Cairns. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Powicke, Frederick J. 1926. The Cambridge Platonists. A study. London: J. M. Dent & Co. Roberts, James Deotis, Sr. 1968. From Puritanism to Platonism in seventeenth century England. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Rust, George. 1686. A discourse of truth. In The remains of that reverend and learned prelate, Dr George Rust, ed. Henry Hallywell. London: Walter Kettilby. Schneewind, J.B. 1998. The invention of autonomy. A history of modern moral philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. van de Schoor, Rob, and Guillaume H.M. Meyje, eds. 2016. Georgius Cassander’s De officio pii viri (1561). Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter. Sharp, John. 1691. A Sermon preached on the 28th of June, at St Giles in the fields. London: Walter Kettilby. Sharp, Richard. 2004. Trapp, Joseph (1679–1747). In ODNB. Sharp, Thomas. 1825. The life of John Sharp, D.D., Lord Archbishop of York, 2 vols. London: C. and J. Rivington. Smith, John. 1660. In Select discourses, ed. John Worthington. London: W. Morden.

8  ‘Think on These Things’: Benjamin Whichcote and Henry Hallywell on Philippians… 131 Staudenbaur, Craig A. 1974. Platonism, theosophy, and immaterialism. Recent views of the Cambridge Platonists. Journal of the History of Ideas 35: 157–169. Stephen, Leslie. 2004. Foster, James (1697–1753), rev. Jim Benedict. In ODNB. Stewart, M. 2004. A. Wishart, William (1691/2-1753). In ODNB. Strype, John. 1724. Short rules for Christian practice. London: T. Edlin. Taliaferro, Charles, and Alison J. Teply. 2004. Cambridge Platonist spirituality. New York: Paulist Press. Till, Barry. 2004a. Sharp, John (1645–1714). In ODNB. ———. 2004b. Stillingfleet, Edward (1635–1699). In ODNB. Tillotson, John. 1683. A Sermon preached at the funeral of the reverend Benjamin Whichcote, D.D. and minister of S. Lawrence Jewry, London, May 24th, 1683. London: Brabazon Aylmer and William Rogers. ———. 1752. Works, 3 vols, ed. Thomas Birch. London: J. and R. Tonson et al. Trapp, Joseph. 1752. Sermons on moral and practical subjects, 2 vols. Reading: S.  Birt, E. Wicksteed, and W. Russel. Tripolitis, Antonia. 1978. The doctrine of the soul in the thought of Plotinus and Origen. San Diego: Libra Publishers. Tulloch, John. 1872. Rational theology and Christian philosophy in England in the seventeenth century, 2 vols. Edinburgh/London: William Blackwood and Sons. Tyacke, Nicholas. 2012. From Laudians to Latitudinarians. A shifting balance of theological forces. In The later Stuart church, 1660–1714, ed. Grant Tapsell. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Venn, John and J. A. Venn. 1922–1924. Alumni Cantabrigienses. From the earliest times to 1751, 4 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; CD-ROM, Ancestry.com, 2000. Wadsworth, Thomas. 1680. Remains. London: Tho. Parkhurst. Westcott, B.F. 1877. Benjamin Whichcote. In Masters in English theology, ed. Alfred Barry, 147– 173. New York: John Murray. Whichcote, Benjamin. 1685. Some select notions … of Benj. Whichcot. London: Israel Harrison. ———. 1698. In Select sermons of Dr Whichcot, ed. the third earl of Shaftesbury. London: Awnsham and John Churchill. ———. 1701–1703. Several discourses, 3 vols, ed. John Jeffry. London: James Knapton; Vol. 4, edited by S. Clarke. London: James Knapton, 1707. ———. 1742. In Select sermons of Dr. Whichcot, ed. William Wishart. Edinburgh: G. Hamilton and J. Balfour. ———. 1751. The works of the learned Benjamin Whichcote, D.D, 4 vols. Aberdeen: J. Chalmers. ———. 1753. In Moral and religious aphorisms of the reverend and learned Dr Whichcote, ed. Samuel Salter. London: J. Payne. Williams, Jay Gomer. 1964. The life and thought of Benjamin Whichcote. Church History 33: 356–358. Wood, Anthony. 1813–1820. Athenæ Oxonienses, 5 vols. 3rd edition with additions by Philip Bliss. London: F. C. and J. Rivington.

Chapter 9

Giving Locke Some Latitude: Locke’s Theological Influences from Great Tew to the Cambridge Platonists Nathan Guy

Abstract  Locke’s political philosophy brings forth theologically-rich aims, while seeking to counter or disarm threats such as atheism, hyper-Calvinism, and religious enthusiasm. Locke’s theological views are born out of a context, and his theological perspective is heavily shaped by strands of influence from these perspectives. There is a generous orthodoxy that lay beneath Locke’s political project which parallels closely the explicit teachings of a moderating influence in seventeenth-­century England with whom Locke is intimately associated—the Oxford Tew Circle, the London Latitudinarians, and the Cambridge Platonists. Locating Locke within his seventeenth-century religious context provides a fitting framework for placing Locke’s political project within the sphere of a moderating political theology. Locke scholars and biographers have already established these links broadly; but how did this background provide not only a general influence, but an impetus to provide something akin to a political theology after the teaching of Whichcote, Cudworth, and the like? The answer is that many of Locke’s political aims (and theological argumentation to support those aims) are already present in his theological context. This backdrop shows how Locke was able to establish the crucial link between his political ends (freedom, equality, property, toleration, and a just civil government) and his Christian theological commitment.

This chapter is taken from my PhD dissertation submitted to the Divinity Faculty of the University of Cambridge in January 2016. I wish to express my deep appreciation to Professor Janet Soskice for her excellent supervision, and to Dr. Douglas Hedley and Professor Paul Kelly for serving as readers and for offering many helpful suggestions. N. Guy (*) Florence, AL, USA e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 D. Hedley, D. Leech (eds.), Revisioning Cambridge Platonism: Sources and Legacy, International Archives of the History of Ideas Archives internationales d’histoire des idées 222, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22200-0_9

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With some measure of charity, John Locke can properly be described as a devout Christian: he believed Jesus to be the messiah, held a deep and abiding allegiance to the Christian scriptures as divine revelation, and lived and died a member of the Church of England.1 Further still, Locke’s project of moral and political philosophy can easily be described as a theological one.2 Locke may have sought to remove a great deal of political control from the hands of unscrupulous religious leaders, and he may have been the champion of the separation of church and state (for the benefit of both). But he had no intention of separating a distinctly Christian view of God, humanity, law, morality, and nature (for him, implied by his theology of creation) from the theoretical or pragmatic ends of his political program. He is offering a Christian political theology—albeit pragmatic and couched in “secular” terms. There is a generous orthodoxy that lay beneath Locke’s political project which parallels closely the explicit teachings of a moderating influence in seventeenth-­century England with whom Locke is intimately associated. The Oxford Tew Circle, the London Latitudinarians, and the Cambridge Platonists are each credited with developing approaches to theology that stand between high Anglicanism and Calvinistic puritanism through an appreciation for common monotheisms (associated with the “Ancient theology”), the role of reason in verifying a minimalistic set of key religious truths, and an emphasis on the personal and individual character of faith in contradistinction to state coercion.3 In fact, the Cambridge Platonists connected a deeply Christian theology with metaphysical assurance—both distinguishing itself from Unitarians (thus protecting the Christian character of their theology) and affirming the unity of their philosophical and theological analysis.4 Locke was intimately familiar with proponents for each of these theological approaches. He placed membership at their churches, lived with them, and collected their writings. Locke only began sustained theological inquiry late in life (around age fifty), when he met the Cambridge Platonist Damaris Cudworth, and spent the next 15 years living among and associating with Latitudinarians. At the time of his death, Locke’s library held over hundred books written by these moderating voices, including a fair selection of works from the Oxford Tew Circle, Cambridge 1  See, for example, Spellman (1997, esp. 77); Pearson (1978, 248): ‘On the one hand Locke was deeply committed to the Christian faith which he understood in moral and experiential more than in dogmatic terms but which he believed rested on historic revelation. Yet on the other hand he was troubled both by the claims of enthusiasts to direct revelation and by what he regarded as indefensible arguments of contemporary churchmen seeking to defend the faith.’ According to Tate (2013, 133–34), ‘Few scholars have ever doubted the sincerity’ of Locke’s ‘deep religious faith and the importance that he placed upon it in his own life and in the lives of others.’ Tate (2013, 157n.1) points out that even Strauss (1959, 202, 207, 208) made such an acknowledgement. Cranston (1957, 124): ‘Even so Locke was always and essentially a deeply religious man, a fact that is sometimes not appreciated…His religion was that of the Latitudinarian wing of the Church of England. His creed was short, but he held to it with the utmost assurance.’ 2  For Locke’s theological grounding of his moral philosophy, see A, 41; E, 2.28.4: 351; 2.28.8: 352. For his theological grounding of his political philosophy, see 2nd T, 4, 6. 3  See Tulloch 1872. 4  For an excellent and sympathetic analysis of these groups, see Tulloch 1872; Griffen 1992: esp. 15.

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Platonists, and other Latitudinarian preachers in restoration London.5 It is no ­coincidence, then, as Locke biographer William Spellman notes, that Locke’s writings (both published and unpublished) reveal a thorough familiarity with these authors.6 Locke’s political philosophy brings forth theologically-rich aims, while seeking to counter or disarm threats such as atheism, hyper-Calvinism, and religious enthusiasm. Though fiercely independent and notoriously heterodox, Locke’s theological views are born out of a context, and his theological perspective is heavily shaped by strands of influence from these perspectives. Locating Locke within his seventeenth-­ century religious context provides a fitting framework for placing Locke’s political project within the sphere of a moderating political theology. His circle of influence which included Latitudinarian and dissenting voices provided Locke with a broader practical theology while his encounters with the Cambridge Platonists offered him a deeper philosophical theology. In addition, each in their own way provided a theological framework for Locke’s moral and political thought.7 Locke scholars and biographers have already established these links broadly8; but how did this background provide not only a general influence, but an impetus to provide something akin to a political theology after the teaching of Whichcote, Cudworth, and the like? The answer is that many of Locke’s political aims (and theological argumentation to support those aims) are already present in his theological context. This backdrop shows how Locke was able to establish the crucial link between his political ends (freedom, equality, property, toleration, and a just civil government) and his Christian theological commitment. Thus, reflection on Locke’s religious environment is pivotal to understanding how his deeply held religious beliefs echo forth in every facet of his writing, and may also serve as the impetus for how he conceives his work to be a form of political theology.

5  For Tew Circle authors represented in Locke’s library, see John Hales (LL, 150), William Chillingworth (LL, 106), Jeremy Taylor (LL, 244), and Henry Hammond (LL, 150; cf. 111, 134). For Cambridge Platonists, see Benjamin Whichcote (LL, 263), Ralph Cudworth (LL, 119), Henry More (LL, 192), and John Smith (LL, 235). For Latitudinarian Preachers in London, see Edward Stillingfleet (LL, 240), John Tillotson (LL, 248–49), Edward Fowler (LL, 137–38), and Simon Patrick (LL, 205). Other Latitudinarians represented in Locke’s library include Isaac Barrow (LL, 80) and Gilbert Burnet (LL, 96). 6  Spellman (1997, 19). 7  In preparing this chapter, I am especially indebted to Tetlow (2006, 18–40), who stresses this very point in her excellent thesis exploring the theological context of Locke’s political thought. 8  As representatives, see Cranston 1957; Reventlow 1985; Rogers 1992; Marshall 1994; Spellman 1997; Tetlow 2006; Pailin 2008; Rogers 2008; Nuovo 2011.

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9.1  A  Broader Ecclesiology: The Tew Circle and the ‘Men of Latitude’ 9.1.1  Following the Widening Stream of Liberal Anglicanism Latitudinarianism began in the seventeenth century as part of a larger movement within the Church of England. Theirs was a rational theology, holding reason in high regard, but favoring toleration for the many things which could not be determined on the basis of reason. It is for this cause, as Cranston notes, Latitudinarianism was essentially within Christendom “the religion of the minimal creed” (Cranston 1957, 125), Minimization has its consequences, and those of this persuasion were labeled Socinians (though, perhaps justifiably in later years), since the logical conclusion of a minimal creed is to allow variation on matters of formulation concerning the mysteries of faith. But the label is unwarranted if applied simply due to the logic of the argument; Cranston rightly notes that “a particular of Latitudinarians was that they did not push things to their logical conclusion. They would not have thought of doing anything so immoderate” (Cranston 1957, 126). They eschewed dogmatism and sectarian strife by rejecting such labels and holding fast to the value of true toleration with high regard for basic creedal truths, evidenced by reason; this not only defined them in contrast to churchmen on their right, but also with regard to the Unitarians on their left. Latitudinarianism did not develop in a vacuum. From its inception, the Church of England housed advocates for a tolerating and synthesizing theological outlook. Thomas Cranmer (1489–1556), Sebastian Castellio (1515–1563), and Heinrich Bullinger (1504–1575) each provided profoundly important elements that helped shape a wider Anglican ecclesiology.9 Due largely to their efforts, the Anglican communion positioned itself to accommodate Protestants with some lingering traditional Catholicizing sensibilities as well as Lutheran, Calvinist, and even humanist priorities as set forth in the Thirty-Nine Articles of 1571.10 As Tetlow remarks, “This was the strength of Anglicanism, it could accommodate Reformed and humanist Protestants; its hybrid nature facilitated both flexibility and stability.”11 While the Anglican Communion could accommodate such opposing views, the question remained whether it would do so. What the church needed was not simply to frame the discussions in accommodating ways, but theological reasoning that grounded and required a tolerant attitude. The later Latitudinarian movement would echo themes which earlier resonated with a group of open-minded theologians gathered in Oxford at the house of Lord Falkland.  For an excellent summary of how these three men influenced a wider tolerating ecclesiology, see Tetlow (2006 19–23); cf. Lettinga (1987, 13–85). Locke’s library includes six works by Castellio (LL, 102) and one compiled by Cranmer (LL, 128). Cf. Tulloch (1872, 1: 43). 10  Lettinga (1987, 46). 11  Tetlow (2006, 20). 9

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9.1.2  The Great Tew Circle Though the term “Latitudinarian” is anachronistic before 1660, the term is widely associated with an Oxford movement originating in the 1630’s among the “Great Tew Circle” which often met in the home of Lucius Cary, second Lord Viscount Falkland (1610?–1643).12 This group included Oxford theologians John Hales (1584–1656), William Chillingworth (1602–1644), and Jeremy Taylor (1613–1667), as well as the Anglican cleric Henry Hammond (1605–1660). Locke’s library collection, as well as his own words, testify to his acquaintance with all four gentlemen.13 Locke’s first acquaintance with this circle may have come innocuously in 1650, when he purchased a copy of Jeremy Taylor’s Works.14 However, nearly two decades later, Locke read Taylor’s Discourse of the Liberty of Prophesying, a book which, according to Cranston, “probably did as much as any other book to convert Locke to the idea of toleration” (Cranston 1957, 125).15 In this work, Taylor warns against violent treatment of heretics in favour of non-violent persuasion, and, at the most extreme, excommunication. His description of the limited role of government, the superiority of persuasion over coercion, and his advocacy for toleration of religious diversity re-appear in Locke’s Letter (Loconte 2014, 106). Locke’s later work, the Reasonableness, also echoes Taylor in a number of important ways—so much so that John Edwards couldn’t help but notice the association between the two works (Edwards 1695, 104–05).16  For the link between Latitudinarianism and the Tew Circle, see Griffin (1992, 15); Cranston (1957, 127n.1). Cary’s house was located at Great Tew in Oxfordshire: thus the nickname ‘Tew Circle’. Clarendon (1888, 3: 180), describes the Great Tew Circle as a ‘university bound in a lesser volume.’ Loconte (2014, 107n.3): ‘Before the Civil War, it became an intellectual gathering place for England’s new generation of humanists.’ Cf. Trevor-Roper (1988, 166–230). 13  Cf. ft. 6. Spellman (1997, 55) notes that Locke would have already been familiar with Hales’ work before 1667. In 1703, nearing the end of his own life, Locke recommended the writings of Chillingworth alongside classical authors as models for proper reasoning: ‘I should propose the constant reading of Chillingworth, who by his example will teach both perspicuity, and the way of right reasoning better than any book that I know; and therefore will deserve to be read upon that account over and over again, not to say anything of his argument’ (Reading, 351). 14  LL, 244; Cranston (1957, 24n.2). 15  See Taylor 1647. 16  Taylor (1647, 368) diagnoses the root cause of ‘mischiefs’ in church polity involving how one handles ‘disagreements’ that ‘arise on matters of speculation.’ He bemoans ‘the current state of affairs’ in which ‘every opinion is made an article of faith, every article is a ground of quarrel, every quarrel makes a faction, every faction is zealous, and all zeal pretends for God, and whatsoever is for God cannot be too much.’ As a corrective, Taylor affirms making ‘[t]he important distinction between fundamental and non-fundamental doctrines’ and allows the New Testament to settle such matters: ‘[i]f we have found out what foundation Christ and His apostles did lay, that is, what body and systems of articles simply necessary they taught and required of us to believe, we need not, we cannot go any further for foundation, we cannot enlarge that system or collection’ (377). Taylor favors a minimal creed, concluding ‘that nothing is required to be believed by any Christian man but this, that Jesus is the Messiah’ (105). 12

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Chillingworth’s primary publication was The Religion of Protestants, A Safe Way to Salvation, which appeared in 1638 (Chillingworth 1638). Citing him often, the later Latitudinarians would draw heavily from this and other works of his in the development of their rational theology, Chillingworth’s writings serving as the “fountainhead.”17 Locke was acutely aware of Chillingworth’s major work, having read it early and often. Higgins-Biddle cites evidence from Locke’s journal that Locke purchased, read, and took notes on several editions at multiple times, ­beginning possibly as early as 1661, but continuing through 1696 (Higgins-Biddle 1999, lvii).18 In fact, Tetlow notes the strong similarity between Chillingworth’s major work and Locke’s Second Vindication, stating that “the substance of their arguments based on a rational, minimal, moral theology were essentially the same” (Tetlow 2006, 30).19 Both Locke and Chillingworth advocate a high view of scripture as divine revelation,20 yet distinguish between fundamentals of the faith— expressed clearly in scripture—and other plain teachings of scripture which do not require collective agreement for salvation.21 Both advocate humility and toleration toward differing religious views without resorting to charges of atheism and irreligion (VRC, 7–10, 20),22 and both make their final appeal to the language of scripture itself, rather than church edicts and later refined theological pronouncements.23 According to both Lettinga and Tetlow, the sixteenth-century liberal Anglican hope for a via media was best harnessed and delivered to the seventeenth century by  See Griffin (1992, 89). See also Marshall (1994, 94).  Cf. Marshall (1994, 11, 128, 372). 19  More specifically, Tetlow claims ‘there is a similarity of tone, argument, and intention’ (24n.73). 20  Chillingworth 1638: ‘I cannot know any doctrine to be a Divine and supernatural truth, or a true part of Christianity, but only because the Scripture says so, which is all true’ (194); ‘[T]hat many points which are not necessary to be believed absolutely, are yet necessary to be believed upon a supposition that they are known to be revealed by God; that is, become then necessary to be believed, when they are known to be Divine revelations’ (247). Locke echoes these sentiments: E, 4.18.8: 694; 4.19.14: 704; RC, 15, 25, 156; 2nd VRC, 36. 21  Chillingworth 1638 distinguishes between ‘fundamentals’—which are ‘necessary’ and ‘plain in Scripture’—and issues over which Christians can have ‘differences’ and yet ‘the same heaven may receive them all’ (49, 50). Chillingworth does not provide a ‘catalogue of fundamentals,’ but instead offers this line: ‘it is sufficient for any man’s salvation that he believe the Scripture; that he endeavour to believe it in the true sense of it, as far as concerns his duty; and that he conform his life unto it either by obedience or repentance. He that does so (and all protestants, according to the dictamen of their religion, should do so) may be secure that he cannot err fundamentally. And they that do so cannot differ in fundamentals’ (50). For Locke echoing Chillingworth, see VRC, esp. 14–16. 22  Chillingworth (1638, 5) claims it is wrong ‘to fasten the imputation of atheism and irreligion upon all wise and gallant men that are not of your own religion; in which uncharitable and unchristian judgment, void of all colour or shadow of probability.’ Marshall notes that Latitudinarians quoted him often due to his irenic spirit. 23  Chillingworth (1638, 188): ‘For if the church fall into error, it may be reformed by comparing it with the rule of the apostles’ doctrine and Scripture; but if the apostles have erred in delivering the doctrine of Christianity, to whom shall we have recourse for the discovering and correcting their error? Again, there is not so much strength required in the edifice as in the foundation [.]’ See 2nd VRC, 36. 17 18

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Henry Hammond (Lettinga 1987, 160, 212–13; Tetlow 2006, 23–25). Hammond penned his Practical Catechism in 1644 as a response to the Calvinistic puritanism that was beginning to threaten a spirit of liberality within the Anglican Communion (Hammond 1644). Although Hammond highly valued the sacraments, he offered a “Covenant Anglicanism” which differed from a “Sacramental Anglicanism” by emphasizing contractual duties and corresponding obligations (offered to all) rather than a gift offered only to the elect.24 The timing of his work (which flourished ­during the Interregnum) and the biblically-centered minimalism of his message—of repentance, belief in the gospel, and refraining from sin—“created a new religious and theological perspective” for Anglicans interested in a middle way between Calvinistic puritanism and Roman Catholicism (Lettinga 1987, 212).25 His Pacific Discourse was published in 1660, a work upon which Locke took notes (Hammond 1660).26 In this work, Hammond further decried the excesses of Calvinism (with its teachings of irresistible grace and limited atonement), but also cautioned Arminians for an over-emphasis on free will and an under-appreciation for the effects of the Fall and thus the role of grace in awakening one’s heart to God. As is true with each of these authors, Locke read Hammond and relied upon his teachings in the development of his own theology—including political theology. At its heart, the Great Tew Circle provided a “peace-loving, Erasmian approach” to toleration that required both humility but also a recognition that personal faith required personal freedom (Loconte 2014, 8).27 Visitors at Great Tew read first-hand accounts of the horrors of violence against heretics, and vowed to work against such vice.28 However, tolerance was defined as a broad middle, believing in a necessary connection between faith and a moral life. In short, writes Remer, the Tew Circle “believed in a tolerant and comprehensive Church” and worked to foster what Loconte describes as “a culture of toleration amid differences over religion” (Remer 1996, 144).29

 Lettinga (1987, 6, 158, 214; cf. 222). It is interesting to note that this ‘covenant theology’ (with its movement away from Calvinism) was systematized and stressed in Richard Allestree’s popular devotional work The Whole Duty of Man (1657). Within just a few short years of its publication, Locke would advise his Oxford students (in his role as their tutor) to read this work, and just before his own death, Locke recommended Allestree’s book ‘as a methodical System’ of morality (L3328, COR, 8: 57). 25  See also Tetlow (2006, 23–25). 26  Cf. Marshall. 27  See also Mansfield (1979, 151): ‘Great Tew might be seen as a last attempt to recover the irenic vision of Erasmus. In one sense it was a dying echo of the vigorous Christian humanism of a century and a half before.’ 28  Loconte (2014, 21), mentions Jacob Acontius’ Darkness discovered (1565; repr., 1651), a work decrying violence against heretics as the work of the devil, ‘was a favorite book among the visitors at Great Tew.’ Cf. Trevor-Roper (1988, 190). 29  Loconte (2014, 123), with reference both to the Great Tew and the Republic of Letters (‘a European equivalent of the Great Tew Circle in England’) with which Locke formed close alliance in 1683. 24

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9.1.3  The Latitudinarians Latitudinarianism was bourgeoning as an officially-recognized theological position just as Locke was graduating from his studies at Oxford and formulating his own independent theological outlook. Locke read and enjoyed a friendship with many Latitudinarian divines, such as Isaac Barrow (1630–1677), Gilbert Burnet (1643– 1715), and Edward Fowler (1632–1714).30 Barrow once preached a sermon advocating peaceful co-existence among all people, citing reasons that would reappear in Locke’s writings. Since “[w]e are all fashioned according to the same original idea (resembling God our common father) all endowed with the same faculties… [w]e are obliged…upon account of common equity…[to] pay the same love, respect, aid and comfort to others, which we expect from others.”31 Unlike Locke, Burnet is remembered for championing the doctrine of innate ideas, but he used this teaching to fight what Locke would have considered a common foe: the “faith alone” doctrine of the fideists.32 For Burnet, man’s central sin-problem refers to our moral (rather than intellectual) failure, and he held a high view both of natural reason (as a universal principle) and the liberty of an individual conscience.33 These concerns, along with a high view of revelation, not only characterized Burnet, but also Fowler and the majority of the Cambridge school as well.34 Another major Latitudinarian figure of influence on Locke is John Tillotson (1630–1694), who became Archbishop of Canterbury.35 Tillotson’s rational theology, with its strong emphasis on evidence and testimony, was clearly an influence on Locke, especially as both advocated miracles as the last word of defence for the authenticity of Biblical teachings.36 Laslett records twenty entries in Locke’s library catalogue for works by Tillotson (LL, 248–49). But Locke’s own words prove the closeness of the association. Upon hearing the news of Tillotson’s death, Locke wrote to Philippus van Limborch to express his “very great hurt and grief” over losing not just a “great” man, but “a friend of many years, steadfast, candid, and sincere” (L1826 COR, 5: 237–39). Linking Tillotson with the “Cambridge men” (discussed below), Powicke writes that Locke was “the chief channel through whom their spirit passed onward, and imprinted itself, with formative force, on the ‘Seculum Rationalisticum’” (Powicke 1926, 201–02).

 Cf. ft. 6; Spellman (1997, 19). Locke referred to Barrow as ‘a very considerable friend.’  Barrow (1859, 1: 289–90). Compare 2nd T, 4–6. 32  See Burnet 1675; Spellman (1997, 56). 33  See Greig (1993, 637–38). 34  Spellman (1997, 56); Tetlow (2006, 32–33). On the liberty of conscience, see Fowler (1680, 228–29). 35  He was labeled a latitudinarian in the 1660’s (Spellman 1997, 18). 36  Compare Tillotson (1666, 67–70) with RC, 32–33, 82, 135, 138, 143, 146, 147; Discourse, 48. 30 31

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9.2  A  Deeper Philosophical Theology: Locke among the Cambridge Platonists In the seventeenth century, a school of philosophical theology which carried a heavy influence upon Latitudinarianism grew up in Cambridge. The Latitudinarian Gilbert Burnet became familiar with the Cambridge Platonists in the early 1660’s and offered a charitable description of them as intensely studious moderates, standing between superstition and enthusiasm, and as the catalyst for those who would be called “men of latitude” (Burnet 1823, 323–24). The Cambridge Platonists offered a rational philosophical grounding for theological moderation, eschewing scepticism in favor of reasonable metaphysical claims. Speaking of their writings, David Pailin claims “They are generally marked by a collected reasonableness arising from their authors’ confidence that authentic theistic belief is rationally justified, and that it can be seen to be such by all people of good sense” (Pailin 2008, 94). Such an approach, according to Pailin, is born out of two convictions: (1) such belief is a basic characteristic of what it means to be human, and (2) a fundamental assurance that all people in their right mind can perceive the fundamental contents and truth of such a belief. Thus the Cambridge Platonists were fond of referring to reason as “the candle of the Lord”—a quote from Proverbs, but expressing a sentiment borrowed from Nathaniel Culverwell.37 Those of the Cambridge school also followed Culverwell’s lead in that all agree that while some important truths are “always above reason,” none are “against Reason.”38 According to Taliaferro, the Cambridge Platonists advocated four key points concerning natural theology: through the use of reason one is able to glean from the natural world (1) the existence of God, (2) His providential care for creation, (3) proper but general moral guidance, and (4) a genuine hope of immortality (Taliaferro 2005, 106). Though revelation fills each of these out in detail—and a Christian commitment is God’s ultimate desire for mankind—no particular religious commitment (beyond what is implicit in accepting these four markers) is required to adequately acknowledge and live in accordance with these foundation stones, upon which a moral life and a civilized society may be built. What then is the proper response toward pagans or toward those of other religions? As Pailin correctly notes, there exists a wide variety of responses among the Cambridge Platonists (Pailin 2008, 110). However, three general consequences flow out of their cardinal tenets. First, one must regard all people as intellectually capable of discerning the truths of what they often call “natural religion.” Second, the power of human reason is limited, which supports the need for revelation to correct one’s errors. Thus other faiths are adjudicated by whether they have never been given—or  Proverbs 20:27; Culverwell (1652, 13). Greene & Maccallum (1971, li) notes this text ‘serves as the touchstone for the whole argument…Culverwell interprets the verse as a celebration of the light of nature, that is, reason.’ Greene (1991, 640) notes that while the sentiment is pervasive among the Cambridge Platonists, specific references to this verse are few and far between. For Locke’s use, see RC2, 140n.1. 38  Noted in Pailin (2008, 111). 37

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fail to acknowledge—revelation. Third, it is appropriate to use reason to seek to correct wrong ideas about religion and morality.39 Following in the train of Erasmus, Nicholas of Cusa and Marsilio Ficino, Cambridge Platonists such as Benjamin Whichcote (1609–1683), Ralph Cudworth (1617–1688), and Henry More (1614–1687) found Christian truth inherently residing within and resulting from reflection on pagan metaphysics, precisely ­ because of the continuity between Christian and pagan versions.40 Thus one finds among the writings of the Cambridge Platonists a moderating inclusivism.41 Locke’s writings share an affinity with many approaches, arguments, and conclusions offered by the Cambridge Platonists.

9.2.1  Whichcote The restoration preacher Benjamin Whichcote (1609–1683) probably served as the clearest entrance point for Locke to the metaphysical approaches of the Cambridge Platonists.42 Whichcote is considered the founder of Cambridge Platonism, as he taught at Emmanuel College while most early members of the formidable group studied there (Roberts 1968, 210). Whichcote was a leading latitudinarian divine of the Cambridge School, the first provost of King’s College, and was subsequently inducted Vicar of St. Lawrence Jewry in London. Locke and Whichcote shared a similar reputation for having a humane temperament.43 From 1668–1675, Locke was either a member or a regular attender at Trinity Church (where Whichcote was a Sunday lecturer), and spoke of Whichcote as his favourite preacher.44 Whichcote valued the role of reason and biblical revelation; his high view of both led him to view “enthusiasm” with as much disdain as Locke.45 Locke’s account of  Pailin 2008.  See articles in Hedley & Hutton 2008. For more on Locke in the Erasmian Christian humanist tradition, see Loconte 2014. Colie (1957, 22): ‘The tradition of Erasmus, of Richard Hooker, of rational theologians like Falkland, Chillingworth, and Hales worked on in England within the English Church, temporarily in retirement during the Interregnum, to emerge with particular force among the Cambridge Platonists.’ 41  Cf. Hedley (2000, 277): ‘The Cambridge Platonists would agree that our knowledge of the real world is illuminated by the Divine Logos, and, hence, that even those who employ this Logos unconsciously can attain genuine insight and live admirably.’ 42  Locke’s library contained two volumes of Whichcote’s sermons (LL, 263). 43  Compare Powicke (1926, 53) and Woolhouse (2007, 2). 44  Cranston (1957, 124) calls Locke a ‘member.’ See also Powicke (1926, 200). However, rightly notes that no contemporary evidence exists for such a claim, though even he believes it likely that Locke frequented the congregation (79). For Locke’s high regard for Whichcote’s sermons, see Masham (1706, 349); Roberts (1968, 233). 45  In his Moral and Religious Aphorisms, Whichcote (1753, 330), listed No. 349 as follows: ‘Enthusiasm is the Confounder, both of Reason and Religion: therefore nothing is more necessary to the Interest of Religion, than the prevention of Enthusiasm.’ 39 40

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reason in Book IV of the Essay bears some striking resemblance to Whichcote’s position, that reason is “the prime intellectual virtue.”46 As such, Whichcote conceived of following the dictates of right reason as a religious enterprise.47 Spellman points out that Whichcote’s “emphasis upon man’s power to act in accordance with reason” is due to the fact that “he adopted the Aristotelian-Thomist definition of man as a rational creature, one whose unique defining characteristic was the ability, and hence the obligation, to exercise his reason and to discover God’s eternal law in the nature of things” (Spellman 1988, 75). However, the necessary correlation between exercising reason and discovering God’s eternal law suggests that, for Whichcote, religion was simply “the most natural thing” to humanity; thus “a man” is defined not as “Animal rationale” but “Animal religiosum, a religious Creature” (Whichcote 1685, 85–86). Man’s religious sensibilities, in fact, could lead to a type of moral perfectionism; Whichcote was also averse to the doctrine of original sin, teaching that sin is “the Act or Defect of a Fallible Creature, and so Reversible.”48 Though Locke may not have echoed these words, he shared Whichcote’s high view of morality and human capability to fulfill one’s duties and thus please God. Locke’s aversion to predestination, his strong insistence on free will, and his belief in the reasonable acquisition of and compliance with God’s eternal law suggest that Whichcote’s theology would have resonated with Locke in a number of crucial ways. For these reasons, among others, Roberts contends that Locke “may be said in some sense to be the successor of Whichcote;” or as Sykes once described it with rhetorical flare: “[w]hat they [the Cambridge Platonists] had taught in the academy, Locke and his disciples proclaimed in the market-place[.]”49

9.2.2  Masham, Smith and More If Whichcote opened the Platonist door for Locke, it was Lady Masham who took Locke by the hand and led him into the Platonist world of ideas. Before she acquired her married name, Lady Masham was known to Locke as Damaris Cudworth, daughter of the Cambridge Philosopher Ralph Cudworth. Brought up among the Cambridge Platonists, Damaris was an avid philosopher in her own right, with wide-ranging interests, including Platonism, Stoicism, and contemporary dissenting movements on the Continent.50  See Rogers (2008, 202) for this phrase. See E, 4.17.2: 668; 4.18.5: 692; 4.18.8: 694; 4.18.10: 696. Rogers (2008, 203): ‘None of the Cambridge Platonists, except possibly Smith, would have wanted to reject any of Locke’s argument.’ 47  Whichcote (1753, 326, 327, 331) (aphorism #33, #76, #99, and #460). See also Patrides (1970, 58–59). Cf. Rogers (2008, 202). 48  Patrides (1970, 38n.38), citing Whichcote’s Several Discourses (1: 364). 49  Roberts (1968, 232–33), citing Sykes (1953, 55). Cf. Marshall (1994, 373). 50  L690 (COR, 2: 493): ‘I have no Ill Opinion of the Platonists I confess, nor ought you to wonder at That seeing I have spent the Most of my Life amongst Philosophers of that Sect in whom I have 46

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Locke and Damaris shared more than intellectual compatibility; from 1681 until 1690, the two exchanged letters full of philosophical sparring, friendly chatter, and poetry Laslett describes as “uncommonly like love poetry.”51 Locke had a habit of writing with romantic flare when exchanging letters with women he found ­interesting; however, the kind of deep, lasting, and influential relationship he shared with Damaris, as revealed in their letters, was like no other.52 Damaris would sign her letters with the pseudonym “Philoclea” – a reference not only to a literary character, but also serving as a pun to indicate “friend of Locke” (Woolhouse 2007, 175).53 Locke would write to Philoclea with tremendous regularity for the next decade, even as he travelled abroad, and made visits on her behalf in search of information regarding religious movements on the continent. An examination of the letters exchanged between 1681 and 1688 between Damaris and Locke suggest that the former may indeed have served to influence Locke toward a greater appreciation for revealed truths which are “above reason.”54 In one of their exchanges, Damaris suggested they move beyond romances and read Selected Discourses by John Smith (1618–1652), a Cambridge Platonist whose book had been published 20  years previous.55 Locke bought the book on 11 Feb 1682 and read it with careful reflection.56 Locke was most interested in the first discourse, in which Smith advocates a way of attaining divine knowledge “above reason.” For Smith, this was a fourth and highest kind of knowledge, but Locke sceptically viewed this as a reference to some personal vision (which he considered false “enthusiasm”). In reply, Damaris sides with Locke on the dangers of enthusiasm, but suggests that that there is a middle way between reason and vision in which God is able to immediately make himself known to individuals who exhibit “Puritie of Life.”57 In his letters, Locke continues to show great reluctance to such a proposal; however, the acceptance and avocation of “truths above reason” finds its way into the Essay in 1689.58 Smith’s insistence that “Truths of Divine Revelation” are given as a superior alternative to the “less clear and legible” divine truths gleaned

always found the most Vertue and Friendship.’ Damaris Cudworth to Locke, 9 March 1682. Cf. Hutton 1993; Broad (2002, 114–40); Goldie 2004. 51  Laslett (1971, 6). 52  Goldie 2004; Nuovo (2011, 13–15). Damaris became Lady Masham in 1685 when she married Sir John Masham. Goldie suggests that Locke and Lady Masham remained close, but were not ‘lovers’ in the modern sense of the word. 53  Locke’s pen name of Philander, like Philoclea, is borrowed from Philip Sidney’s novel Arcadia. For the interesting connection between this work, the Ancient Theology, and seventeenth-century Platonism, see Walker 1972 (132–63). 54  See L684, L687, L688, L696, L699 (COR, 2: 484–85, 488–90, 500–01, 503–05). Woolhouse (2007, 175–77). 55  Smith 1660. The second edition (1673) is found in Locke’s library (LL, 235). 56  De Beer in COR, 2: 484. Nuovo (2011, 66): ‘Smith’s Discourses is one of the few books in Locke’s personal library whose text is marked up…Presumably, these are Locke’s markings.’ 57  L699 (COR, 2: 503–05). Letter dated 20 April 1682. 58  E, 4.18.7: 694; 4.18.9: 695.

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from reason alone is also in line with Locke’s own views.59 In fact, as Marshall notes, Locke would declare Select Discourses to be “one among the best treatises on superstition that he had ever read.” Another influence upon Locke from the Cambridge school is Henry More (1614–1687). Lady Masham mentioned More in her letters to Locke; she admired More as a friend and teacher, even favoring his argument for God’s existence over Locke’s.60 Locke’s library records include six entries for More’s works, including Philosophical Poems—a gift from Lady Masham (LL, 192).61 Locke’s Essay shares More’s epistemological scepticism which aided in Locke’s formulation of his doctrine of substance.62 More shared much in common with the Royal Society, including a rejection of “dogmatic Calvinism and scholasticism”; for this reason, writes Crocker, “most” of the leaders in this circle “were sympathetic to More’s moderate, rational and tolerant ecclesiology and rational theology” (Crocker 2003, 122). When Locke added a chapter entitled “Of Enthusiasm” in 1700 to the fourth edition of the Essay, he expressed himself in language reminiscent of More, who famously claimed enthusiasts and atheists grew out of the same branch.63 Although Locke expressed his disagreement with More in a number of areas (such as concerning the pre-existence, immortality, and revolution of souls), the evidence suggests that Locke engaged with More’s thinking in the formulation of his own ideas.64  See Smith (1660, 383): Due to the Fall, ‘the inward virtue and vigour of Reason is much abated.’ Thus, ‘those Principles of Divine Truth which were first engraven upon mans Heart with the finger of God are now…less clear and legible than at first.’ For this reason, God provides ‘the Truth of Divine Revelation’ to point ‘the Minds of men’ back to God. For Locke’s high view of scripture, especially in relation to reason, see E, 3.9.23: 489; 4.18.8: 694; RC, 25, 135, 146–47; 2nd VRC, 36; 2nd T, 52, 65. 60  L1040 (COR, 3: 431–35, esp. 434). When Locke wrote to Masham, asking her critique of his Abregé of the Essay, Lady Masham appeals to and relies on More’s An Antidote against Atheism to question Locke’s denial of innate ideas (433). 61  Cf. LL, 98. 62  For similar doubt concerning one’s ability to discover the essence of a substance, see E, 4.1.2: 525; 4.4.1: 562–63; 4.4.3: 563. Cf. More (1662, 26–27): ‘The Subject, or naked Essence or Substance of a thing, is utterly unconceivable to any of our Faculties’ (26). I am indebted to Rogers (1992, 238). 63  More (1712, 1): ‘Atheism and Enthusiasm…in many things …do very nearly agree…they are commonly entertain’d…in the same Complexion. For that Temper that disposes a Man to listen to the Magisterial Dictates of an overbearing Phancy more than to the calm and cautious insinuations of free Reason…does very easily lodge and give harbor to these mischievous Guests.’ Cf. E, 4.19: 697–706, esp. 4:19.12: 703. 64  Nuovo (2011, 26n.15) suggests that Locke’s reply to ‘A Christian Platonist’ and the theory of the revolution souls in E, 2.27.14: 339 might refer to More. Crocker 2003 notes that works of the period that formed the link between ‘empiricism and voluntarism’—which came to its ‘final expression’ in Locke—‘sat uneasily’ with More’s intellectualism and his theology (118). However, while there were ‘mainly latitudinarian attempts’ to placate More’s approach to illumination, Crocker warns that there was no ‘clear-cut fissure’ between those influenced by More and the ‘moderate, voluntarist latitudinarianism’ of the day. After all, writes Crocker, ‘it was in this period that More’s reputation as a ‘Cambridge Platonist,’ and one of the founding fathers of Anglican Latitudinarianism…becomes established’ (202, 203). 59

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9.2.3  Cudworth Locke was also influenced by Damaris’ father, Ralph Cudworth (1617–1688). According to Nuovo, Cudworth was “foremost of the Cambridge Platonists,” (Nuovo 2011, 14) and Hutton describes him as “the chief philosopher of the most tolerant section of the Church of England, nicknamed Latitudinarian” (Hutton 2008, 145).65 Locke purchased an auctioned copy of Cudworth’s True Intellectual System in December of 1681.66 Just 2 years later, Locke began working on drafts of Some Thoughts Concerning Education, and by the time of its publication in 1693, Locke had these words to say in commendation of Cudworth’s philosophical framework with regard to Natural Philosophy: He that would look farther back, and acquaint himself with the several Opinions of the Ancients, may consult Dr. Cudworth’s Intellectual System; wherein that very learned Author hath with such Accurateness and Judgement collected and explained the Opinions of the Greek Philosophers, that what Principles they built on, and what were their chief Hypotheses, that divided them, is better to be seen in him, than any where else that I know (STCE, 93).67

In this quotation, as Sarah Hutton notes, Locke is not simply acknowledging acquaintance with Cudworth, but recommending his approach to philosophical analysis regarding ancient philosophy (Hutton 2008, 154). Just as Locke was not, as is often assumed, an enemy of the rationalists, Cudworth was no enemy of empiricism. Instead, as Passmore has noted, Cudworth gladly exchanged the pursuit of novelty for the balancing effects of continuity and respect for tradition (Passmore 1951, 13). Gysi’s excellent research on Cudworth reveals a coherent Christian theology full of social and political overtones which anticipate Locke.68 Consider, for example, the nature of God and the demonstration of His existence. Concerned with “The True and Proper Idea of God,” Cudworth begins with “A Being Absolutely Perfect” (TIS, 200).69 Whatever belongs to and flows from perfection belongs to God.70 From  Hutton claims there is more affinity between Cudworth and Locke than scholarship has often recognized (Hutton & Schuurman 2008, xiv; Hutton (2008, 143–57)). Ayers (1991, 2: 168–83) links Locke’s argument for the existence of God with Cudworth’s arguments against materialism. This is all the more interesting when one notes that Locke purchased Cudworth’s book shortly before writing his own argument for God in E, 4.10. Cf. Nuovo (2011, 214n.30). Passmore (1951, 93–94) also notes that Cudworth’s views on free will are echoed by Locke in E, 2.21.17–19: 242–43. 66  TIS. Laslett (1971, 22). Cf. L1336, (COR, 4: 161). For other works by Cudworth in Locke’s library, see LL, 199; cf. 87. 67  However, Rogers (2008, 205) notes no reference to Cudworth, nor to ancient philosophy, appears in Locke’s letter to Clarke which served as the origin of STCE. See L844, COR, 2: 770–88, esp. 785. 68  For the remainder of this section, I am indebted to Gysi 1962. 69  See E, 4.10.7: 621. For Locke’s equal concern for the ‘true idea’ of God, see STCE, 136; Draft, 116–18. 70  See also 210. Cp. E, 4.10.6: 621. 65

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this starting point, writes Gysi, Cudworth is able to infer God’s “self-existence, necessary existence, eternity, infinite goodness, wisdom, and power” (TIS: 636, 646, 652).71 God is both “more Incomprehensible” than any other thing, due to his perfection, and yet “more Knowable and Conceivable” than all else, because his existence is thus most obvious (TIS, 639).72 While the attributes of God are inadequate conceptions—significant for us, but whose full meaning lay beyond human comprehension73—they are both necessary and demonstrable like the elements which make up a geometrical theorem.74 Like Locke, Cudworth does believe that the existence of God may be demonstrated through inference from discursive reason, and offers a cosmological argument for God’s existence.75 However, the highest way to knowledge of God is through an inward holiness, in which a person through voluntary acceptance of a virtuous lifestyle participates in the divine life (TIS, 203). This two-fold conception of God—divine perfection participating in pure holiness—forms the backdrop for Cudworth’s theological tirade against what he perceived as Calvinism’s power-centered doctrine of divine omnipotence, in which some humans are predestined to evil, and thus, to perdition.76 Like Locke, Cudworth saw within Calvinism an emphasis on God’s power, which, writes Gysi, Calvinists “interpreted as an unrestricted, arbitrary will which creates both, good and evil, alike, and is guided by no goodness and wisdom.”77 In this regard, thought Cudworth, the goodness and wisdom of God is not perfected but arbitrary, and a God who is not, in some sense “Bound or Obliged to the Best” is not holy, but simply “Arbitrary Will Omnipotent” (TIS, 873). In truth, there can be no power without goodness, because “power for evil” will turn against itself, and lead to impotency (TIS, 873).78 Cudworth believed that Calvinism results in the destruction of any objective morality, in which nothing could be good in itself or serve as a standard of holiness. On this account, Calvinism would make God “the sole cause of all the sin and moral evil” in the world, and humans would be “totally free from the guilt of them.”79 Instead, argued Cudworth, God’s essential nature is neither power nor knowledge, but goodness and love.80 This emphasis on goodness as a central and essential  See Gysi (1962, 102–03). For example, TIS, 645.  On Locke’s view of God as incomprehensible yet knowable, see E, 2.15.8: 200; STCE, 136. 73  TIS, 652, 653. 74  TIS, 652: ‘But all the Genuine Attributes of the Deity, of which its Entire Idea is made up, are Things as Demonstrable of a Perfect Being, as the Properties of a Triangle or a Square are of those Ideas respectively.’ Cp. E, 1.1.4.16: 95. 75  TIS, 474, 683–84, 834. Cf. Gysi (1962, 92–98). For Locke’s cosmological argument, see E, 4.10: 619–30. 76  See Gysi (1962, 126–27). 77  See Gysi (1962, 111). For Locke’s distaste of this form of Calvinism, see RC, 1–4. 78  Cf. Gysi (1962, 128). 79  Cudworth (1838, 78), claims such a view ‘will destroy the reality of moral good and evil, virtue and vice, and make them nothing but mere names or mockeries.’ 80  TIS, 202, 203, 205; 406; Cudworth (1838, 50). Locke highlights God’s goodness as a central characteristic of God (RC, 129). 71 72

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understanding of God is crucial for Cudworth, as it will be for Locke. “God is a nature of infinite love, goodness, or benignity,” writes Cudworth, “displaying itself according to infinite and perfect wisdom, and governing all creatures in righteousness, and this is liberty of the Deity.”81 One must not conceive of a God apart from his Providence (TIS, 661). We are to hope in God, which flows from recognizing his essential goodness (TIS, 889). To restrict God’s goodness in favor of irrational power is worse than denying His existence since it turns God into the opposite of His nature (TIS, 203). Instead of restricting God’s goodness, one must recognize the restrictions that logically flow from God’s goodness. Goodness is tied to wisdom in that God’s power is guided by a rational rather than an arbitrary will.82 As Gysi summaries, “God is bound to restrict His omnipotence to meaning and purpose,” otherwise he would deny His own divinity (Gysi 1962, 116). But his goodness also offers freedom. Outside of what justice and goodness demand, God exercises contingent choice—such as determining the size of the universe and the number of stars.83 It appears that Cudworth believed that human beings (and, by extension, governments) are able to participate in the divine life by acting in accordance with justice and goodness, but exercising free will in contingent matters.84 Cudworth’s emphasis on God’s goodness and human participation leads him to reflect on God’s method of governance. God chooses not to govern the world through violence and force, writes Cudworth; instead, God has given a certain liberty to his creation, in which all things “act according to their own natures,” and “all rational creatures have essentially this property of liberum arbitrium….self power” (Cudworth 1838, 77; cf. 78). For Cudworth, writes Gysi, “[t]his is a further proof of the goodness of the world, as well as the perfection of its creator” (Gysi 1962, 114). But Cudworth shares more political affinities with Locke, especially concerning foundational issues.85 “God and Nature create the state,” writes Cudworth, in the sense that “were there not a natural conciliation of all rational creatures, and subjection of them to the Deity, as their head,” there would be no foundation for “superiority and subjection, with their respective duty and obligation,” and thus no just government (TIS, 896). Gysi notes that, for Cudworth, one has to presuppose obligation before any positive law can require it, sovereign authority cannot simply be presumed or assumed, and “just” laws must refer to a standard of justice that is logically prior to any positive laws humans make (TIS, 697).86 Thus any notion of  Cudworth (1838, 49–50).  TIS, 647, 717; Cudworth (1838, 34); Cudworth (1647, 27). Locke often combines in the Essay ‘wisdom and goodness’ (2.7.4: 129; 2.9.12: 148) or ‘wisdom, power, and goodness’ (2.23.12: 302), suggesting the kind of inter-relationship expressed by Cudworth and others. 83  Cudworth (1838, 16–17, 53). 84  Cf. Cudworth (1731, 77), where Cudworth responds to the Calvinist claim that ‘God would not be God, if he did not arbitrarily determine all things’ with this reply: ‘But…this is to swallow up all things into God, by making him the sole actor in the universe, all things else being merely passive to him.’ Instead, ‘the supreme perfection of the Deity’ includes ‘suffering’ his creation ‘to act according to their own natures’ and thus participate in God’s creation. 85  Cudworth’s theology of the state runs in opposition to Hobbes. Cf. TIS, 895; Gysi 1962, 128. 86  Cf. Gysi (1962, 129). 81 82

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authority, obligation, or sovereignty can only survive if rooted in (and founded upon) the goodness of God and natural justice (which, itself, originates in deity)—not human will and words (TIS, 895–96). Humans share universal obligations of love, and this obligation to natural justice comes through conscience, not force.87 God himself can only rule according to justice, which sets the pattern for human governments (TIS, 897). One way to determine what is “rational” is by referring to what, by nature, is good and just; it is irrational to think a will or command could make an action morally obligatory that is neither good nor just (Cudworth 1731, 26–27). The goodness of God not only defines the nature of justice, but also provides the basis for a teleology that defines human happiness—a perspective that will be repeated in Locke’s writings.88 For Cudworth, the soul of man has meaning and purpose in its ultimate end, in that it leads toward the “one summum bonum, one supreme highest good transcending all others” which ends in one’s “complete happiness” (Cudworth 1838, 30). Deep within us is a “constant, restless, uninterrupted desire, or love of good as such, and happiness” (Cudworth 1838, 28). Since holiness forms the true centre of any full conception of God, and is the soul’s true end, all human endeavors ought to be filtered through this eternal lens (Cudworth 1647, 19). All of this suggests that the essential goodness of God (leading to the standard of holiness which is natural justice) not only defines God and law, but the nature and purpose of human beings as well—a conclusion with political implications. Humans, as rational beings, are by nature social beings since they participate in the order and purpose of God. If they tended toward disunity, claims Cudworth, the “force of lions” couldn’t keep citizens from separation or being engulfed in violence (TIS, 895). But, notes Gysi, history shows that humans have “a natural tendency to form communities” (Gysi 1962, 130). Instead of isolation or ceaseless conflict, they form states which serve as “one whole” and thus enjoy “natural community life;” this is because human “social character springs from their being rooted in the one divine mind” (Gysi 1962, 130). In summary, Cudworth envisions an integrated philosophical outlook that is deeply theological in character. “[F]or Cudworth as for Plato,” writes Gysi, “Ethics, Aesthetics, Logic, and Religion are inseparable from each other and are ultimately one” (Gysi 1962, 155). Perhaps even more pertinent to the present topic, they all emanate from “the One” and cannot be adequately conceived or modeled unless they find their origin and motivation in the theological realm. The nature of this theological outlook cannot be divorced from a particular conception of God as essentially holy and good, attributes which determine the purpose and scope of God’s deeds of power and discretion in judgment. In addition, one must conceive of creation as one in which humans are called to active participation in holiness, and through freedom, pursuit of the Good.  Cudworth (1838, 31); TIS, 897, 898. Gysi (1962, 131), describes the ‘absolute values that carry universal obligation’ as ‘all modifications of the love, which in the life of the Trinity is perfectly realized.’ 88  For the role of happiness in Locke’s teleological account of the law of nature, see RC, 149; LCT, 47; E, 1.3.3:67; 2.7.5: 130. 87

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9.3  Reflections on Locke’s Connections The diversity of Locke’s theological influences reflect the wide-ranging nature of his intellectual curiosity. Yet Locke’s penchant for eclectic pursuits need not diminish from his methodical approach to working out complex issues. No concern was more central, or carried greater weight to Locke, than the theological.89 As a result, Locke pursued theological sparring partners throughout his life, finding respite among advocates for a Latitudinarian strand of Christianity. The Latitudinarians were not monolithic, and Locke differed with any number of them over a wide range of matters—from innate ideas to royalism. But the ability to disagree and yet still find a common sense of fellowship is precisely what attracted Locke to their theological approach in the first place. Among the liberal Anglicans, the “broad men” of the Tew Circle, the Cambridge Platonists, and those who described themselves as Men of Latitude, Locke found kindred spirits who were able to ground a high view of reason, a high view of scripture, and a strong sense of morality in a theological outlook that was inclusive and promising for application to social and political concerns. If the scarcity of direct references to scholastic, earlier Anglican, or contemporary authors seems disappointing, one must remember that such is to be expected, given Locke’s independent streak.90 A familiarity with Locke’s method suggests that Locke’s greatest influences are to be found in his arguments, not his acknowledgements.91 However, in his final years, Locke himself expressed a deep appreciation for his context. “[If] you desire a larger View of the Parts of Morality,” wrote Locke in 1703, “I know not where you will find them so well and distinctly explain’d, and so strongly inforc’d, as in the Practical Divines of the Church of England. The Sermons of Dr. Barrow, Archbishop Tillotson, and Dr. Whichcot, are Masterpieces in this kind[.]”92 In fact, near the end of October, just 1 year prior, Locke spent weeks confined to what he described as “a chimny corner” removed from the ordinary b­ usiness of life.93 Here, with his friend Samuel Bold, he engaged in conversation on how a young man could make the best use of his time and study. Wishing to emphasize proper reasoning, coherence, and eloquence, Locke recommended not only classical writers (Cicero, Terence, Virgil, and Livy) but also the writings of Tillotson, Chillingworth, and Hooker (Reading, 351–52).  LCT, 47: ‘Every man has an Immortal Soul, capable of Eternal Happiness or Misery; whose Happiness depending upon his believing those things in this Life, which are necessary to the obtaining of Gods Favour, and are prescribed by God to that end; it follows from thence, 1st, That the observance of these things is the highest Obligation that lies upon Mankind, and that our utmost Care, Application, and Dilligence, ought to be exercised in the Search and Performance of them; Because there is nothing in this World that is of any consideration in comparison with Eternity.’ 90  Cf. Aaron (1971, 7). 91  Nor are they to be found only in personal contact. Rogers (2008, 198) notes how few Platonists Locke actually met. 92  L3328 (COR, 8: 57). Locke to Richard King, 25 Aug 1703. 93  L3198 (COR, 7: 687). Locke to Benjamin Furly, 12 Oct 1702. 89

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But Locke’s appreciation and indebtedness to his Latitudinarian context goes beyond rhetoric, or even shared descriptions of morality. It was within this context that Locke’s theological as well as political aims took shape. The moderating influences of the Tew Circle, the Cambridge Platonists, and Locke’s larger Latitudinarian environment provided theological grounds for Locke’s cherished political ends. Locke held some fundamental perspectives in common with his religious context, and, along with other Latitudinarians, was deeply concerned with some practical dangers that could arise from denial of these claims. For example, Locke’s writings establish the existence of God as the basis for any standard of virtue, sense of obligation, and right for political structure, including laws and punishments. Further, Locke’s moral and political philosophy requires “a true idea” of God—one consistent with the description of God given in scripture, associated with Christian tradition, and proclaimed from Anglican pulpits.94 The great danger to this was avowed atheism. The explicit denial of God’s existence was not only a testament to irrationality; such a conviction would remove any legitimate reason to consent to or obey laws that were not in one’s favor, and destroy any ultimate sense of obligation. This concern was not his alone. Locke can be linked to several of his contemporaries who were writing in response to atheism and arguments against God’s existence.95 Locke was able to make room for the political toleration of Muslims and Jews since they, echoing More, may be considered “ignorant” of the details concerning God’s way in the world. But atheism was considered the supreme sin in which one makes the free and rational decision to ignore the things of God. Thus the bounds of toleration, for Locke, may include volition in terms of virtue toward one’s neighbour, and consent to abide within the law; but the bounds are set epistemically by one’s rational acknowledgement of God’s existence. Without acknowledgement of God’s existence, a just political society and the development of one’s moral nature has neither roots nor trajectory, and is disconnected from the intended happiness that comes from a proper teleology. Yet a proper teleology can only come about through a proper understanding of the God in whose image humans are created. Only a “true” idea of God—consistent with biblical attributes such as goodness, and biblical claims concerning present freedom and future reward—can do justice to Locke’s understanding of a truly just society. As such, atheism and deistic rationalism are views too intellectually anemic for a society built on this foundation. Locke’s religious context—chiefly the Cambridge Platonists and the Latitudinarians—not only shared this view, but produced major proponents. Another example is found in Locke’s fundamental law of nature: that humans are born in freedom or liberty to pursue goodness, justice, and happiness. Though Locke did not believe in “absolute” liberty—believing instead in a teleologically-­ oriented guided liberty toward one’s directed end, which is to be “about His [God’s] business”— he did renounce the use of force or state coercion and promoted indi Draft, 116; STCE, 135, 136. This true notion involves not only God’s infinity, independence, Supremacy, and authorship of all Creation, but also his goodness, love, and generosity. Locke speaks of the ‘one true God’ repeatedly in the RC (e.g., RC, 26, 135, 137, passim). 95  TIS; Smith (1660, 41–55); More 1712. See also Boyle (1725, 150–59). 94

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vidual liberty to follow the dictates of one’s conscience. Consent is essential to Locke’s political theory, and this is informed by his understanding of the nature of man as created to voluntarily pursue just ends. However, human beings were not simply created to live free, but to live well. For Locke, moral living (or practical virtue) is the incontestable terrestrial goal of human affairs. Yet this was always in anticipation of an afterlife with rewards and punishments. Locke offers a teleological emphasis on happiness which suggests that human freedom is not simply freedom from coercion, but freedom to pursue the good—which is defined in terms of God’s nature as both free and good. The threat to Locke’s fundamental belief came from a hyper strain of Calvinism with its doctrine of Supralapsarianism (and thus double pre-destination). For Locke, such a teaching defeats human freedom and makes it impossible to develop a just theory of moral accountability modeled after God’s own character. In this hyper-­ Calvinistic perspective, God’s arbitrary judgments destroy any objective standard of goodness, and the entire approach to God runs counter to the nature of a just society borne out of a particularly Latitudinarian account of creation and the human telos. This was a special area of concern for Cudworth, and push back against the encroachment of this hyper-Calvinism is a strain found throughout the history of Latitudinarianism. Jeremy Taylor taught that the Westminster confession was unbiblical. Cudworth, More, and Tillotson spoke with such anti-Calvinist fervor their teaching bordered on Pelagianism.96 Thus, Locke’s religious context did more than provide a cover (or foil) for Locke to pursue some hedonistic moral theory; it demanded a political theology that took freedom and consent seriously as a Christian principle—a principle that resonated deeply with Locke’s personal beliefs. What Locke found in his religious context was a doctrine of creation birthed in freedom and geared toward participation; a teaching that flows from Hooker to Cudworth is that free people in free societies may participate in governance as a way of modeling the free exercise of God. A third example may be gleaned from Locke’s view of scripture as God’s final divine revelation that clarifies truths in accordance with reason and the law of nature. Many scholars have noted that Locke thought of reason as a “primary intellectual virtue” in matters religious (Rogers 2008, 202). Whichcote was a major champion of such a view, as well as a decisive enemy to what he considered a grave threat: the “false zeal” of religious enthusiasm. The concern here is not with “feelings,” as if these writers subscribe to a cold and abstract notion of God and religion. Instead, the concern is practical: Puritan claims of direct revelation from God (seen, for instance, among the Quakers) would undermine any shared agreement for principle truths that are found in nature and confirmed in scripture. In addition, enthusiastic reception of special revelation lacked any assurance of its veracity. Appeal to a special knowledge not readily available to the masses was at odds with the kind of society Locke envisioned, with its appeals to reasoned reflection and shared knowledge. For Locke, scripture provides the complete description of God’s will for moral living, but also testifies to God’s special providential giving of grace in the person of Jesus Christ. Locke saw no conflict between the truths of scripture and the truths 96

 See Gill 2006.

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of reason or the law of nature. Some truths in scripture were “above reason,” but none are “against” reason. Locke scholarship has sometimes incorrectly assumed Locke’s high regard for reason implies a lesser regard for revelation. Locke’s problem with enthusiasm is not a distain for revelation from God; it is his insistence that God has already revealed himself—in creation as well as in scripture—and that this body of true and shared knowledge is in need of no updates or corrections. Claims of special revelation imply the need for such, and undermine the finality of God’s revelation in scripture.

9.4  Conclusion With others in his circle of influence, Locke shared an emphasis on the ‘true’ idea of God, belief in the demonstration of His existence, acceptance of key divine attributes (such as goodness) which arise from scripture, awareness of a law of nature to which all are bound, a high view of scripture, and the necessary political ends that result from such theological reflection. Like others of this circle, Locke recoiled at atheism, hyper-Calvinism, and religious enthusiasm, seeing these as detrimental to proper social and political (as well as theological) ends. It was in this context that Locke found appreciation for the theological claims which would eventually lead to his political arguments in favor of individual liberty, just government, religious toleration, human equality, and the separation of church and state. The conclusions of this study suggest that Locke’s theologically-rich environment, coupled with his deeply-held personal religious commitments, should not be considered peripheral to Locke’s aims. His political concerns emanate from Latitudinarian theology, and his writings offer political fruits consistent with this theological perspective.

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Pailin, David. 2008. Reconciling theory and fact: The problem of ‘other faiths’ in Lord Herbert and the Cambridge Platonists. In Platonism at the origins of modernity: Studies on Platonism and early modern philosophy, International archives of the history of ideas 196, ed. Douglas Hedley and Sarah Hutton, 93–112. Dordrecht: Springer. Passmore, John Arthur. 1951. Ralph Cudworth: An interpretation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Patrides, C.A., ed. 1970. The Cambridge Platonists. Cambridge, MA: HUP. Pearson, Samuel. 1978. The religion of John Locke and the character of his thought. Journal of Religion 58: 244–262. Powicke, Frederick J.  1926. The Cambridge Platonists: A study. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Remer, Gary. 1996. Humanism and the rhetoric of toleration. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press. Reventlow, Henning Graf. 1985. The authority of the bible and the rise of the modern world [1984]. Philadelphia: Fortress Press. Roberts, James Deontis, Sr. 1968. From Puritanism to Platonism in seventeenth century England. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Rogers, G. A. J. 1990. Introduction. In John Locke, Drafts for The essay concerning human understanding, and other philosophical writings, ed. Peter H. Nidditch and G.A.J. Rogers, in three volumes: Volume I: Drafts A and B, xiii–xxvi. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ———. 1992. Locke and the latitude-men: Ignorance as a ground for toleration. In Philosophy, science and religion in England (1640–1700), ed. Richard Ashcraft, Richard Kroll, and Perez Zagorin, 230–252. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2008. Locke, Plato and Platonism. In Platonism at the origins of modernity: Studies on Platonism and early modern philosophy, International archives of the history of ideas 196, ed. Douglas Hedley and Sarah Hutton, 193–207. Dordrecht: Springer. Spellman, William M. 1997. John Locke. London: Macmillan. ———. John Locke and the Problem of Human Depravity. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988. Strauss, Leo. 1959. What is political philosophy? And other studies. Glencoe: The Free Press. Sykes, Norman. 1953. The English religious tradition: Sketches of its influence on church, state, and society. London: SCM Press. Taliaferro, Charles. 2005. Evidence and faith: Philosophy and religion since the seventeenth century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tate, John William. 2013. Dividing Locke from God: The limits of theology in Locke’s political philosophy. Philosophy and Social Criticism 39 (2): 133–164. Tetlow, Joanne E. 2006. The theological context of John Locke’s political thought. PhD thesis. Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America. Trevor-Roper, Hugh. 1988. Catholics, Anglicans, and Puritans: seventeenth century essays [1987]. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Tulloch, John. 1872. Rational theology and Christian philosophy in England in the seventeenth century. 2 Vols. Vol I: Liberal Churchmen, Vol II: The Cambridge Platonists. London: William Blackwood and Sons. Walker, D.P. 1972. The ancient theology: Studies in Christian Platonism from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century. London: Duckworth. Woolhouse, Roger. 2007. Locke: A biography. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Chapter 10

Mixing Politics with the Pulpit: Eternal Immutable Morality and Richard Price’s Political Radicalism Louise Hickman

Abstract  This chapter argues that Ralph Cudworth should be recognised as formative for Richard Price’s political philosophy. Cudworth’s ethics of eternal and immutable morality, dualistic account of human intellect, idea of deiform reason— and his consequent theology of conscience—together with his participatory account of commonwealth, gives significant shape to Price’s conception of political will, equality and democracy. A consideration of the impact of Cudworth’s philosophy on Price’s political thought results in a difficulty for the attempt to dichotomise the enlightenment into sharply distinct radical and moderate movements. A commitment to eternal and immutable reality is shared with the more moderate Burke while Price’s own anti-materialist, dualistic and theologically motivated radicalism marks a significant departure from some of his most important Dissenting contemporaries, including Joseph Priestley. ‘I was always a warm admirer of Plato among the antients, and of Cudworth and Clark among the moderns’ wrote an enthusiastic Richard Price in 1780. He went on to venture that ‘I differ from Cudworth only in his notion of Plastic Natures’ (1991a, 65, 67). Even a cursory study of Price’s ethical writings shows that Price’s admiration for this particular seventeenth century divine ran to considerably more than just sympathetic affection or chance similarity. The epistemology of Ralph Cudworth’s A Treatise Concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality (1731, 1996) provided the moral epistemology and metaphysics for Price’s ethical philosophy as expounded in his A Review of the Principal Questions in Morals (1758, 1948).1 Despite their different contexts a century apart, Price saw Cudworth as a valuable ally against both relativism and voluntarism. Believing in their common cause against these foes  Price is clearly indebted to Samuel Clarke too but see Smith (2011, 1–18) for an argument that Clarke’s account of the immutability of truth is in outline from the Cambridge Platonists, particularly Cudworth. 1

L. Hickman (*) Newman University, Birmingham, UK e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 D. Hedley, D. Leech (eds.), Revisioning Cambridge Platonism: Sources and Legacy, International Archives of the History of Ideas Archives internationales d’histoire des idées 222, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22200-0_10

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(personified primarily by Hobbes and Hutcheson), he utilised Cudworth’s arguments for the immutable nature of morality and the participation of reason in God (Price 1948: 112–13).2 The focus of the present discussion is Price’s political philosophy. It will be argued that in certain key respects, Price embraced a political radicalism that should be recognised as a maturation and development of some of the theological and political principles that are present in Cudworth’s thought: in particular a politics of equality and participation in government grounded in a dualistic metaphysic of human participation in the divine. To argue this is to argue something about the ‘Enlightenment’. Jonathan Israel’s account is far more nuanced than many of its predecessors, not least because he counts more than just the one project of enlightenment. He insists on an unbridgeable gap between what he calls the moderate (conservative) enlightenment and the radical enlightenment. The radicals, in which category he includes Price, are characterised primarily by their democratic and materialist-determinist, or Christian-­ Unitarian, metaphysics (Israel 2010, 12). A closer analysis of Price’s political principles, however, indicates a much more complex story. Price simply does not fit Israel’s conception of a radical.3 Israel, I propose, is right that Price’s thought should in many ways be considered radical but his dualistic ethical realism puts him very much at odds with aspects of the ‘radical’ enlightenment that Israel describes. There is, therefore, at least one further strain of eighteenth century radicalism that can trace much of its momentum back to seventeenth century Cambridge resulting in a rather more heterogeneous Enlightenment than a clear split between moderate and radical might suggest. Price’s Discourse on the Love of our Country gives apparent good reason for Israel’s claim that he is a leading representative of the radical enlightenment (Israel 2010, 3). This address, given at the annual meeting of the London Revolutionary Society in celebration of the events of 1688, was delivered towards the end of Price’s life in 1789, but it expresses ideals that remained consistent in Price’s political thought throughout his life (Thomas 1991, xxi). The Discourse gives thanks for the revolution of 1688, draws analogies with the current situation in France, and hopes that events on the other side of the Channel will inspire radical political change at home. In it, Price calls for the liberalising and enlightening of his country, celebrates the overthrowing of ‘priestcraft and tyranny’, insists civil government is a human institution, and praises the Glorious Revolution as a ‘bloodless victory [by which] the fetters which despotism had long been preparing for us were broken, the rights of the people were asserted, a tyrant expelled, and a sovereign of our own choice appointed in his room’ (Price 1991b, 182, 184, 189). It is clear from this that Price’s political doctrine is one of freedom, rights and popular will. For Israel, Price’s senti2  The influence of Platonism, particularly Cudworth, on Price’s epistemology is affirmed in Thomas (1977) and Zebrowski (2000, 1994). See also Hickman (2008 and 2017). 3  Fitzpatrick (2012, 42–72) makes a similar argument with regard to candour and toleration. The scope of his paper does not include Price’s influences, however. Hickman (2017) discusses the distinctions Israel draws in further detail but the subject of this book is primarily the philosophy of religion.

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ments represent what he calls Christian-Unitarianism, a variant of the Radical Enlightenment which by 1789 had ‘come to form a powerful rival “package logic”— equality, democracy, freedom of the individual, freedom of thought and expression, and a comprehensive religious toleration’ (Israel 2011, 12). Israel associates Christian-Unitarianism with Socinianism and argues for what he calls an alliance between Socinianism and Spinozism (Israel 2010, 23). Both are linked to materialism and are part of the one-substance Enlightenment that is characterised by its ‘conflating body and mind into one, reducing god and nature to the same thing, excluding all miracles and spirits separate from bodies, and invoking reason as the sole guide in human life’ (Israel 2010, 19). The ‘package’ rivalling this radical movement is a moderate enlightenment, characterised by an opposition to sweeping programs of reform, an endorsement of two-substance dualism and a providential theology, which insisted on the restriction of reason together with faithfulness to tradition and ecclesiastical authority (Israel 2011, 11; 2010, 15, 18). All these ideas are encapsulated neatly in Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France, a text motivated by conservative outrage at Price’s praise for the upheavals in France. Israel goes as far as to call Burke the culmination of the Moderate Enlightenment (Israel, 2010, 236). For Israel, Price and Burke as the two figureheads of the two enlightenments stand either side of a yawning chasm ‘impossible to bridge’ embracing a politics and moral philosophy diametrically opposed between which ‘no compromise or half-way position was ever possible, either theoretically or practically’ (Israel 2010, 221, 12, 17–18). While it is easy to appreciate the radical nature of the French philosophes and English revolutionaries such as Tom Paine with their advocating of sweeping political change, Price’s radicalism is not so clear-cut. For a start, in practical terms, Price’s proposals for the constitution were not particularly revolutionary. His views were shaped by the Old Whig ‘Country’ tradition and the radicals with which he was regularly in contact, including Benjamin Franklin, John Jebb, John Cartright and James Burgh. Price did not found any political societies but he was a member of Jebb and Cartright’s Society for Constitutional Information and this actively campaigned for an overhaul in parliamentary representation (Fruchtman 1983, 49). Price, however, wanted reform of the House of Commons instead of any radical change. He embraced a Whig politics of a balanced constitution with a mixed government, rejected accusations of revolutionary tendencies, and firmly rejected the suggestion of republicanism, while pledging allegiance to the monarchy and the House of Lords. As D. O. Thomas points out, compared to other members of the Society for Promoting Constitutional Information, Price should be regarded as a moderate (Thomas 1977, 286, cf. 200). What was radical, however, was Price’s insistence that all those capable of independent judgement should be granted political responsibility. The power of government, Price insists, originates in the people. Twelve years before the Discourse Price argued in support of the American colonies declaring: ‘the people are the spring of all civil power and they have a right to modify it as they please (Price

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1991c, 88).’4 According to Price, the will of the state is the will of the whole of the state (as opposed to any particular part), and this can only be expressed in one of two ways: either ‘by the suffrages of all the members given in person’ or ‘by the suffrages of a body of representatives, in appointing whom all the members have voices’ (Price 1991c, 76–7). Although only the first scenario grants the most ‘complete and perfect liberty’ he suggested the second is to be promoted as practical in a large community. Price made this distinction to show that the size of a state is no barrier to its ability to express the will of its members, and it is an imperative that all states should do this in order to be free and self-governing. The power of governance embodied in the people was seen as a direct consequence of the God-given right of equality and independence (Price 1991c, 86). For Price, politics cannot be separated from theology. Burke could not bear that the ‘spiritual doctor of politics’ mixed his politics with the pulpit (Burke 2014, 15; Thomas 1977, 194). The logical conclusion of Price’s argument that no one person or group of people have a divine mandate to rule others was a direct threat to Burke’s more tradition-centred belief that rights rest on their inheritance from historical precedent. Burke interpreted Price as proposing popular sovereignty and argued instead for the succession of the crown as ‘an hereditary succession by law’ (Burke 2014, 22). A hereditary crown preserves hereditary rights. This was the crux of their disagreement: a dispute about the origin of political power and whether 1688 affirmed or challenged the principle of inheritance. As Burke saw it, no sovereignty can be challenged by popular opinion because power gains its force from eternal law.5 The English constitution is grounded in natural law, which in turn is founded in God. The will of individuals can never override it. Immutable morality, not arbitrary will, is thus the foundation of power: ‘no man can govern himself by his own will, much less can he be governed by the will of others. We are all born – high as well as low – governors as well as governed – in subjection to one great, immutable, pre-existing law…by which we are connected in the eternal frame of the universe’ (Burke 1991, 350). Burke’s response to the Wilkes affair, opposing king and commons, demonstrates his conviction that the will of government should follow the moral law and not determine it (Stanlis 1991, 24). Immutable law, the law that gives our conventions and compacts ‘all the force and sanction they can have’ (Burke 1997, 18) is at the heart of Burke’s rejection of voluntarism. Given his commitment to eternal morality it is not surprising that Burke was outraged at Price’s political pamphlets. He was entirely correct (as is Israel) to see a potentially radical challenge to the political status quo in Price’s commitment to popular will. Burke was mistaken, however, in interpreting Price as 4  The arguments of Price’s Discourse are continuous with his Observations and Additional Observations. See e.g. Dreyer (1978, 33); Price (1991c, 88). 5  In the mid-twentieth century it was popular to interpret Burke as either a Thomist or a utilitarian, see e.g. Insole (2012); Stanlis (1991). Pocock (1971) argued against the attempt to identify a systematic political philosophy in Burke’s writings and his approach has since dominated. Insole disputes that natural law theology had no influence on Burke and his reading adds weight to Peter J. Stanlis’ interpretation. This article follows their argument that a commitment to the eternal law of the nature of things is a fundamental component of Burke’s philosophy.

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a voluntarist.6 Price’s challenge to the ancien régime was one that sprang from a commitment to the immutable nature of morality—a metaphysic that he shares with Burke—and it was anti-materialist, metaphysically dualistic and theologically motivated. In his Review, Price self-consciously utilised the epistemology of Cudworth’s Treatise to argue for the objective reality of right and wrong against Protagorean relativism and against Protagoras’ modern accomplices, Hutcheson and Hume (Price 1948, 55; Zebrowski 1994; Hickman 2008). Price accepted entirely the distinction formulated in Plato’s Theaetetus and then developed by Cudworth’s Treatise between the shadowy untrustworthy perceptions of sense and the true knowledge gained through intellect (Price 1948, 20–21). For all three thinkers this meant that ethical knowledge could only arise through the use of the intellect. Cudworth’s argument acknowledges an affinity with Plato’s Laws. Morality, ethics and politics belong to mind and intellect, which makes them ‘real and substantial’ and ‘truly natural.’ Sense experience can only tell us about corporeal things not about their essences or about ‘noematical’ ideas like justice, equity, duty, obligation, cause and contingency. It is the intellect which engages in ‘abstracted intellections and contemplations’ and which can penetrate the essence of things and discern truth. Intellection is the active comprehension of something necessary and incorruptible (Cudworth 1996, 147, 80, 81, 128). The objects of intellect—the ‘essences or ideas of all things’—therefore have an immutable, absolute and eternal nature (Cudworth 1996, 94, 126, 137). The argument is reiterated in Price’s Review. ‘Every thing having a nature or essence’ on which truth or falsity about it necessarily depends means that it can only be perceived and judged by reason (Price often uses the term understanding too), not sense (Price 1948, 48). It is the understanding that discovers ‘intelligible objects’ and this makes it the source of knowledge and from this follows the conclusion, unmistakably Cudworthian, that morality is both ‘eternal and immutable’ in its nature (Price 1948, 36, 38, 50). For both Cudworth and Price the foundation of this immutable morality is the divine: ‘when morality is represented as eternal and immutable…it is only saying that God himself is eternal and immutable, and making his nature the high and sacred original of virtue’ (Price 1948, 89; cf. Cudworth 1996, 128). This means that for Price, no less than for Cudworth, morality cannot depend on will, even the will of God. ‘No will, therefore, can render any thing good and obligatory, which was not so antecendently, and from eternity; or any action right, that is not so in itself’ (Price 1948, 50; cf. Cudworth 1996, 144). The nature of goodness is part of the nature of God and this cannot be changed even at the behest of divine decree. Human intellect is then brought together with the immutable nature of God through a theology of participation. For Cudworth knowledge is possible only through the participation of created minds in the divine mind and the kinship between (immaterial) reason and eternal morality; ‘For as the mind of God, which is the archetypal intellect, is…the possibility of all things – so all created intellects [are]  Burke scholars have tended to continue making this mistake see e.g. Stanlis (1991, 222).

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certain ectypal models’ (Cudworth 1996, 77, cf. 55; 1820, iii, 382). Price puts it thus: the intellect —an ‘emanation from the supreme intelligence’—can perceive truth because it participates in God, the source of all knowledge (Price 1816, 148; 1766, 11).7 A direct result of this participatory epistemology is an argument for both equality and political participation. Equality of all those in possession of reason becomes a moral imperative given the divine nature of the intellect. Every ‘being’ who has reason—and the resultant consciousness of what is right and wrong—becomes a ‘law to himself’ and should be permitted to follow individual conscience free from coercion or direct force (Price 1948, 180n). Human beings are debased when subject to despotic power and cannot, or are too afraid, to speak or even think for themselves (Price 1948, 118–9). Tradition cannot ground claims to ethical knowledge if this knowledge is perceived by reason through participation in the divine. Claims to ‘dominion over conscience’ are ‘absurd’ because nothing can usurp the nature of ethical obligation grounded solely in conscience (Price 1948, 180). Price is making explicit what is foreshadowed in Cudworth’s theology of participation. For Cudworth, the obligations to which we are subject are derived not from utility or contract but from conscience because only this can apprehend eternal law: ‘conscience, and religious obligation to duty, is the only basis, and essential foundation, of a polity or commonwealth’ (Cudworth 1820, iii, 339). This means that all who possess conscience enjoy something of the divine which implies, as Benjamin Carter puts it, an ‘equality between all men as equal participants in the intellectual form of divine creation’ (Carter 2011, 21–2). Responding to the conflict of the Civil War, Cudworth sought harmony through an affirmation of common nature as ‘partakers of the divine nature’ by which we glimpse the ‘true heavenly light’, through which all those of deiform nature become equal participants of the human community (Carter 2011, 22). Carter concludes from this that Cudworth’s political principles are ‘a powerful, almost democratic defence of a society based on equality and justice for all’ (Carter 2011, 128).8 Cudworth’s theology of participation leads not just to the principle of equality but also to an affirmation of active participation in the political community. The political community is a reflection of the divine nature and participates in it. Although society is composed of autonomous individuals it is not individualistic in the strict sense because each member perceives and participates in the immutable nature of God. Individual morality is linked to political society and community (Carter 2011, 104). What is crucial is that participation leads to a collective understanding of the commonwealth. Cudworth’s ideal society ‘is united by the collective realisation of the higher, ethical truths that emanate from the mind of God’ (Carter 7  For an in depth analysis of Price’s Platonic theology of participation see Hickman (2008) esp. 3–5. 8  This article utilises Carter’s account of Cudworth. He gives a valuable and convincing argument for seeing Cudworth as politically engaged and his monograph is the fullest treatment of Cudworth’s political theology. He challenges the older perception of Cudworth and his fellow Cambridge-based Latitudinarian divines as primarily mystical rather than political; see particularly Tulloch (1872) and Powicke (1926). The political elements of Cudworth’s thought have been noted by Cragg (1968), Rogers (1997) and Hutton, (2011, 161–82).

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2011, 128). Although arguments for political rights are not always generalisations of philosophical ideas, including those of individual conscience, Price’s political philosophy self-consciously links the two, especially in his grounding of civil liberty on moral self-determination (Hickman 2011). Suffrage for him is essential if each rational being is to be continually engaged in the search for truth. No community can embody this if one member is subject to the whim of another so the participation of all members is at some level necessary (Price 1991c, 76). People must be their own legislators, which includes making their own ethical decisions and having representation in government (Price 1991d, 30). Price’s appeal to the political will of the people should therefore be read in the light of this commitment to the unalterable nature of moral truth and his participatory account of reason. Unlike Burke’s protestations to the contrary it is not incoherent for him to appeal to immutable truth while simultaneously declaring that political authority lies in the will. The principle of a collective political will based on the immutability of goodness can be identified first in Cudworth for whom ‘the identity and cohesion of the ethical and political community is not grounded on the dictates of a sovereign but in the collective will of the members of that community’ (Carter 2011, 123). Individual conscience is not merely private and partial but also has a ‘public and common nature’, representing the good of the whole as opposed to our own selfish interests and abiding by the law of justice (Cudworth 1820, iv, 212). For Cudworth, political actions mirror the participatory nature of ethical actions (Carter 2011, 118). Price’s depiction of will is infused by the same theology of participation. He describes the popular will at large as analogous to human reason in the individual, and it is this that gives it its moral weight: ‘Reason in man, like the will of the community in the political world, was intended to give law to his whole conduct, and to be the supreme controlling power within him’ (Price 1991c, 90). The will of the community is conscience writ large and both are integrally connected to the divine nature of goodness. The ideal state for Price, no less than for Cudworth, is one in which all individuals subject themselves only to the moral law. The public nature of conscience means that not only does it protect a right to private judgement but it can also legitimate rebellion. It alone can limit the power of sovereigns and prevent absolute power (Cudworth 1820, iii, 337). If obligation rests in conscience, then obligation to obey civil powers is weakened if conscience is troubled (Cudworth 1820, iv, 212). In the Treatise, Cudworth proposes that the obligation to authority can be ‘refused if the dictates of natural justice were circumvented by the commander’ (Cudworth 1996, 21; cf. Carter 2011, 127) and he is clear that ‘the liberty of commanding is circumscribed within certain bounds and limits, so that if any commander go beyond the sphere and bounds that nature sets him, which are indifferent things, his commands will not at all oblige’ (Cudworth 1996, 21; Carter 2011, 127). That civil laws are accountable to God means that they are merely pragmatic and therefore, in principle, malleable, with the result that the covenant made to the political community is not inherently binding. All this leads Carter to declare that the Treatise contains ‘a sophisticated defence for a limited right to resistance’ (Carter 2011, 127).

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With Price, at the end of the following century, this becomes a much more explicit argument for democratic change. Our primary obligation is to our consciences (Price 1948, 118). We cannot have religious or moral liberty without the rule of conscience, and the same principle is applied to political liberty too. The rule of conscience, or reason, should ideally form the foundation of any self-governed society (Price 1991d, 22). Like Cudworth, he viewed political institutions with a degree of pragmatism. There are many different ways, he thought, in which the will of the community can govern (Price 1991c, 80). This explains how he could defend the British constitution at home while recommending the overturning of this system in America and France, and how he came to be criticised by Thomas Northcote for being in favour of the aristocracy as a result of his advice to the Irish reformers (Thomas 1977, 292). Despite his being in many ways politically moderate, D.O. Thomas is correct to see Price as preparing the ground for a more democratic and dominant House of Commons. He wanted to destroy the influence that the Crown exerted in the Commons and over elections to the Commons, and his philosophy effectively helped to promote the emergence of the Commons as dominant. The result was the promotion of changes that eventually resulted in a radical overhaul of the British political system (Thomas 1977, 207–8). What is important is that Price’s emerging democratic theory was founded on dualistic metaphysics of reason and its participation in the divine. His principles of equality and democracy arose from a belief in the superiority of intellect and its kinship with the divine, just as they did for Cudworth. In some respects, Price was not so far removed from Burke. Their ethical realism led both to insist that consent is not the foundation of truth. Democracy is not actually, therefore, normative for either writer.9 They differed considerably, however, in the political application of their belief in eternal morality. For these reasons it is impossible to accept Israel’s strict dichotomy between a radical one-substance monism which conflates both body and mind, and God and nature, and a moderate two-substance dualism (Israel 2010, 18). Israel insists that ‘for the moderate mainstream, reason is immaterial and inherent in God, a divinely given gift to man, and one that raises him above the rest.’ In radical thought, by contrast, ‘man is merely an animal among others with no specially privileged status in the universe’ (Israel 2010, 33). For Price, this is plainly not the case. His political radicalism was based upon a dualistic participatory theology of reason. Like Burke he held to the immutability of morality in opposition to voluntarism but he took this in a radically egalitarian direction. The eternal law does not fix hierarchy or control the rights and duties of governors and governed by commanding our respect for tradition and prescription (Freeman 1980, 18). Instead it grounds the equality of individuals by acting as that in which deiform reason can participate. The grounding of obligation in eternal moral truth made Price in some important respects more radical than Locke, who is often assumed to be the source of Price’s political principles of liberty and also to be more radical than his fellow Dissenters

 For Burke see Insole (2008, esp. 463–4).

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Joseph Priestley and James Burgh.10 The shared context of the Rational Dissenters was one of opposition to government corruption—particularly patronage and placemen—and to a weak House of Commons that was seen as largely ineffectual, together with concern about the rising national debt, standing armies, and parliaments that were far too infrequent. The Rational Dissenters had much in common with the ‘Country’ or Old Whig tradition that sought more stability and less corruption in a mixed government (Fruchtman 1983, 47–8). This was a tradition that linked liberty and property intrinsically together with the assumption that property was necessary for freedom and therefore for political participation. Price, however, rejected the possession of property as the condition of suffrage and, at least in principle, refused to admit any necessary restrictions on political responsibility (Thomas 1977, 194). Whereas John Cartright and James Burgh sought to expand the franchise by expanding the definition of property ownership (to include householders and those who pay rates) Price did not see any necessary connection between political participation and property ownership. The possession of strength, knowledge or property he insisted does not give any one person authority over another (Price 1991c, 86), and it is this basic equality that is the foundation for political participation. Price defined equality carefully. He did not mean that all are equal in terms of natural ability or that parents have no authority over their children. Instead it is defined with distinct ethical overtones: equality exists between those who are ‘grown up to maturity’. While this is described as referring to those who are ‘capable of acquiring property’, this is not the same as actually owning it and should be seen in terms of those who are able to become ‘independent agents’ ‘directing their own conduct’ (Price 1991c, 86). If authority does not come from property, and if no one individual has the right to make others subject to them, then it must in principle be all rational agents, not just those with property, who have right to self-government. Price thus moved away from a Lockean emphasis on property and unlike the political scheme that Locke presented, individuals do not delegate to their appointed government but instead hold continuous political responsibility (Thomas 1977, 193). D. O. Thomas sees this radicalism as a transformation of Locke’s emphasis on government by consent but the influence of Cudworth’s political theology deserves more attention here than it is typically given. The theological belief in the immutability of morality and the authority of deiform intellect would have galvanised and given shape to Price’s concern for equality and the extension of the franchise.  Josiah Tucker (1781) is the first person to argue that Price derives his politics from Locke. It was popular until the mid-twentieth century to assume that modern liberalism originated from Locke and studies on Price’s work have tended to see his principle of liberty as Lockean, see esp. Thomas (1977, esp. 188) and Cone (1952, 33). Kramnick (1968) and Pocock (1975) were early and important challengers of the assumption that there is a direct line between Locke and eighteenth century radicalism. Following the work of John Dunn (1969) and HT Dickinson (1977), Locke’s importance has been reaffirmed. Hickman, (2011) argues instead for a Platonic strand in Price’s account of liberty. This discussion points out that few monographs dedicated to Price have considered his politics in detail. The most notable, Labouchiex, (1982) is more concerned with reception and does not consider Price’s influences.

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Price’s theology creates an essential difference between him and his contemporary radicals. Jack Fruchtman points out the importance of ideology for political action and he makes a notable case for the role of millennial theology in marking a distinction between Price and Priestley on the one hand and other late eighteenth century radicals on the other, most notably John Jebb, Burgh and Cartright. Liberty and virtue was, for Price and Priestley, a ‘sacred blessing’ equated with the divine life, and both saw the establishment of the conditions of liberty on earth as vital for hastening the glorious end times (Fruchtman 1983, 46, 49). Due consideration must be given, however, to the disparities between these two Dissenting figures, which they themselves were well aware of. Although he openly applauds Priestley’s good character and obvious scientific and intellectual talents, Price reports in a letter of 1780: ‘I differ…from Dr. Priestley in almost everything, and consider his system as most dangerous in its tendency’ (1991a, 87). The topic of conversation in this missive is his recent dispute with Priestley over materialism and determinism (Priestley 1778) but the ramifications of these different ideas about the nature of reality have wide ranging—including political—consequences. Priestley’s empiricism treated society and state like nature: as a chain of cause and effect, and one that can be directed by human powers (Hoecker 1984, 58). Nature is a system of which we are a part and the more knowledge we have of nature, and the more power we will have over it, the more we will be able to control our situation for the better (Priestley, 1786, vi). This materialism led him to what might be called a more monistic form of providence. It is human beings who can materialise the will of God through changing their social and political institutions. Priestley thus saw less inherent value than Price in current political constitutions and more incentive to overturn them (Hoecker 1984, 59; Priestley 1771, 292–3). Price’s view of providence was not that of Priestley’s, however. As noted above, he explicitly rejected Cudworth’s account of plastic nature and expressed disappointment that Cudworth’s ‘truly great and learned’ Treatise has gone astray in embracing this idea’ (Price 1990, 49n). Price, however, did not doubt providence as a reality and his disagreement with Cudworth was really one about the method by which God acts. Cudworth’s doctrine challenged the materialism of Hobbes and Descartes by postulating a power that is derived from God, and which passes through the universe and acts as the immediate cause of God’s providence on earth (Cudworth 1820, i, 321; Hunter 1950, 200).11 For Cudworth it is demeaning to the divine nature to envisage God as doing the ‘triflingest things’: the plastic life of nature safeguards the divine majesty and allows nature a certain amount of independence and integrity (Cudworth 1820, i, 321). It is this that Price took issue with. He rejected plastic nature because he could not imagine that any part of God’s providence would act without intelligence and design. God’s action is immediate, not mediated through any other active principle of matter (Price 1990, 45–6).12 It was Price’s anti-materialism that led him to the logical conclusion that God’s providence must directly infuse the natural world, and here he was starkly at odds with Priestley. 11 12

 Price also associates Henry More with the doctrine (1990, 49n).  For more on Price and Cudworth on plastic nature see Hickman (2017, ch. 4, esp. 106–7).

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The primary cause of all things must be non-mechanical and matter cannot possess the property of self-motion (Price 1990, 28, 39). God’s providence for Price cannot therefore be boiled down to human action. Providence is manifested in every event and God often intervenes to make sure everything happens according to plan (Price 1990, 20; Thomas 1977, 30). Price even went as far as to wonder whether challenging social inequality was to challenge God’s providence given that God has ‘fixed our situation, and assigned our lot’ (Price 1816, 89; Hole 1989, 88). Despite these reservations, Price clearly saw reason as essential for directing human action, and a tension emerges here. The social action that he engaged in during his life took steps to lesson the inequality that he observed around him. Among other things, he tried, with Francis Maseres, to introduce social insurance into England in the 1770s, he advised John Acland in his preparation of A Plan for Rendering the Poor Independent of Public Contribution and he supported the Quaker anti-slavery petition of 1783 (Page 2011, 54; Thomas 1985, 77). Price seemed to be trying to hold together a strong view of direct providence with an acknowledgment that change for the better can be human in origin. This tension is best seen as a direct result of his trying to tread carefully between Priestley’s materialism (and its concomitant dangers of atheism) and Burke’s providential justification of hierarchy. Burke talks of ‘the establishment of some sure, solid, and ruling principle in government’ which some philosophers, he states, ‘have called a plastic nature’ (Burke 2014, 173).13 In Burke’s hands the institutions of society become the divine instruments of God with the imperative that human interference must be minimised. Power, he insists, has never been, and could never be, given to ‘the multitude’ because in this there is ‘no control, no regulation, no steady direction whatsoever’ (Burke 1792, 472–3). For Burke, the hereditary nature of government is fixed; it is part of God’s providential guidance, the embodiment of plastic nature. For Price, the future of the state is not determined by its past. The past, and the historical institutions of the state, are not a source of the revelation of God’s providence. Price and Burke therefore shared a commitment to eternal and immutable morality but Price insisted, as Cudworth did before him, that conscience has primacy. The belief in the malleability of historical institutions that arises from this theology means that these institutions cannot be revered as ordaining the present social order. It is not purely through the ordinary processes of nature and society that Price envisaged God’s action as being at work in the world but it is rather in the breaking of the link between divine action and historical institutions that the radical potential of Price’s providential theology lies. If historical institutions are no source of providential revelation then they do not have to be revered and can be dispensed with when conscience sees fit.  It is difficult to know for sure if Burke learned the doctrine of plastic nature directly from the Cambridge Platonists especially given that the idea had popular currency in the late eighteenth century. We know from Price’s writing that it was associated with them and it is reasonable to suppose that Burke was familiar with Cudworth’s work. The True Intellectual System of 1743 was in Burke’s library (item no. 138) and Burke also criticised Bolingbroke who was considerably unfavourable towards Cudworth’s Treatise. McLoughlin and Boulton suggest Cudworth may have introduced Burke to Plotinus (Burke 1997, 241).

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The claim, therefore, that there is a clear materialistic ‘Christian-Unitarian’ model of providence, interpreted as the ordinary processes of nature and society, as distinct from ‘supernaturally ordered and divinely guided progress’ characteristic of the moderate enlightenment (Israel 2010, 33) is difficult to argue in any ­straightforward manner. Price’s political principles are not developed solely from a materialistic Christian-Unitarianism but reveal a line of inheritance that can be traced back to Cudworth’s theology of ethical realism and deiform conscience. It must be acknowledged, however, that the difference in practice between a purely mechanistic account of providence and a non-materialist all-pervasive providence is hard to maintain. Cudworth posited a plastic nature in order to avoid materialism because he could see just this difficulty. It would have cohered better with Price’s overall argument if he had endorsed some sort of intermediate divinised providential force. The gist of Price’s argument against Burke is one that is there in Cudworth’s idea of plastic nature: providence is not fixed but unfolding. Against Priestley, Price’s concern—as for Cudworth against Hobbes—was to defend an anti-materialist non-reductionism. Price ultimately moves towards an affirmation of the view that human beings might themselves enact God’s providence through social and political change but he never rescinds his anti-materialism. His political philosophy, shaped by a belief in the intellect’s participation in immutable morality, is thus markedly different from Priestley’s. Rights, for Priestley, are ‘founded on a regard to the general good’ and this tends to be worked out in terms of general happiness of the whole community (Priestley 1771, 41). The empiricism that forms the basis of Priestley’s epistemology and politics thus tends to subvert the idea of immutable ethical law. Priestley had a tendency to support rather uncritically the idea of government which serves the ‘general good’ and Hoecker points out that his empiricism actually contradicts the idea of immutable morality: a problem it seems that was not recognised by Priestley himself (Hoecker 1984, 61). In conclusion therefore, it should be recognised that Price’s dualism and anti-­ materialism, drawn to a significant extent from Cudworth’s ethical and political philosophy, was a driving force behind his political radicalism. This gives considerable weight to Sarah Hutton’s claim that Cudworth was a presence in—rather than merely an ancestor of—eighteenth century politics (Hutton 2003, 38). There is one point of difference between these two thinkers that merits brief consideration: The most profound theological disparity between them was not the doctrine of plastic nature but their conception of God. Cudworth was a Trinitarian while Price remained an Arian. Price, however, plainly never saw this as a sticking point. He perhaps followed the Unitarian Stephen Nye’s assessment that Cudworth’s Trinitarianism might be better called Moderate Arianism (Hickman 2008, 19). More important is that fact that Price was not Socinian (Fitzpatrick 2012, 50–1; Hickman 2008, 19–20). He rejected Socinianism’s extreme rationalism and its deistic tendencies, and used Scripture to argue against it, and against Priestley, in favour of the pre-­ existence of Christ (Price 1787, 3). Israel’s depiction of an alliance between Socinianism and Spinozism is therefore illuminating in considering these two traditions of thought in relation to one another but they are not movements into which

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Price can easily be slotted, and they do not form one homogenous movement of radical enlightenment. Although Cudworth’s seventeenth century context is far removed from debates about American Independence and the French Revolution, it should be recognised that Price’s radical political principles take the shape they do through being informed by Cudworth’s theologically infused and politically orientated ethics of eternal and immutable morality.

Bibliography Burke, Edmund. 1792. An appeal from the new to the old Whigs. In The works of the right honourable Edmund Burke, vol. 3, 375–520. London: J Dodsley. ———. 1991. In The writings and speeches of Edmund Burke, ed. P.J.  Marshall. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ———. 1997. The early writings. In The writings and speeches of Edmund Burke, ed. T.O. McLouglin and James T. Boulton, vol. 1. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ———. 2014. Reflections on the revolution in France. In Revolutionary writings, ed. I. Hampsher-­ Monk, 1–250. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Carter, Benjamin. 2011. “The little commonwealth of man”: The Trinitarian origins of the ethical and political philosophy of Ralph Cudworth. Leuven: Peeters. Cone, Carl B. 1952. Torchbearer of freedom: The influence of Richard Price on eighteenth century thought. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press. Cragg, G.R. 1968. The Cambridge Platonists. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Cudworth, Ralph. 1820. The true intellectual system of the universe. Vol. 4. London: Richard Priestley. ———. 1996. In A treatise concerning eternal and immutable morality with a treatise of freewill, ed. Sarah Hutton. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dickenson, H.T. 1977. Liberty and property: Political ideology in eighteenth century Britain. New York: Holmes and Meier. Dreyer, Frederick. 1978. The genesis of Burke’s “Reflections”. The Journal of Modern History 50: 462–479. Dunn, John. 1969. The political thought of John Locke. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Fitzpatrick, Martin. 2012. Enlightenment, dissent and toleration. Enlightenment and Dissent 28: 42–72. Freeman, Michael. 1980. Edmund Burke and the critique of political radicalism. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Fruchtman, Jack. 1983. The apocalyptic politics of Richard Price and Joseph Priestley: A study in late eighteenth century English republican millennialism. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society. Hickman, Louise. 2008. Godliness and godlikeness: Cambridge Platonism in Richard Price’s religious rationalism. Enlightenment and Dissent 24: 1–23. ———. 2011. Casting out Hagar and her children: Richard Price, Platonism and the origins of American independence. International Journal of the Classical Tradition 18: 393–414. ———. 2017. Eighteenth century dissent and Cambridge Platonism: Reconceiving the philosophy of religion. New York: Routledge. Hoecker, James J. 1984. Joseph Priestley and Utilitarianism in the age of reason. Enlightenment and Dissent 3: 56–64. Hole, Robert. 1989. Pulpits, politics and public order in England, 1760–1832. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Hunter, William B., Jr. 1950. The seventeenth century doctrine of plastic nature. Harvard Theological Review 43: 197–213. Hutton, Sarah. 2003. The ethical background of the rights of women. In Philosophical theory and the universal declaration of human rights, ed. William Sweet, 27–40. Ottowa: University of Ottowa Press. ———. 2011. A radical review of the Cambridge Platonists. In Varieties of seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century English radicalism in context, ed. Ariel Hessayon and David Finnegan, 161–182. Farnham: Ashgate. Insole, Christopher J. 2008. Two conceptions of liberalism: Theology, creation and politics in the thought of Immanuel Kant and Edmund Burke. Journal of Religious Ethics 36: 447–489. ———. 2012. Burke and the natural law. In The Cambridge companion to Edmund Burke, ed. David Dwan and Christopher J. Insole, 117–130. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Israel, Jonathan. 2010. A revolution of the mind: Radical enlightenment and the intellectual origins of modern democracy. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ———. 2011. Democratic enlightenment: Philosophy, revolution, and human rights 1750–1790. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kramnick, Isaac. 1968. Bolingbroke and his circle: The politics of nostalgia in the age of Walpole. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press. Laboucheix, Henri. 1982. Richard Price as moral philosopher and political theorist: Studies on Voltaire and the eighteenth century. Oxford: Voltaire Foundation at the Taylor Institution. Page, Anthony. 2011. “A species of slavery”: Richard Price’s rational dissent and antislavery. Slavery and Abolition 32: 53–73. Pocock, J.G.A. 1971. Politics, language and time: Essays on political thought and history. London: Methuen. ———. 1975. The Machiavellian moment: Florentine political thought and the Atlantic republican tradition. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Powicke, Frederick J. 1926. The Cambridge Platonists: A study. London: J.M. Dent. Price, Richard. 1766. The nature and dignity of the human soul: A sermon preached at St. Thomas’, January the fifth, 1766. London: A. Millar. ———. 1787. Thoughts on the progress of Socinianism; with an enquiry into the cause and the cure. In a letter humbly addressed to learned, orthodox, and candid ministers of all denominations: With a particular view to the writing of Dr. Priestley. To which is added, a letter to Dr. Price, on his late Sermons on the Christian doctrine. London: J. Buckland and J. Johnson. ———. 1816. Sermons on various subjects. London: Longman. ———. 1948. A review of the principal questions in morals. 3rd ed. Oxford: Clarendon. ———. 1990. Four dissertations. Bristol: Thoemmes. ———. 1991a. In The correspondence of Richard Price, ed. D.O. Thomas. Cardiff: University of Wales Press. ———. 1991b. A discourse on the love of our country. In Political writings, ed. D.O. Thomas, 176–196. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1991c. Additional observations on the nature and value of civil liberty, and the war with America. In Political writings, ed. D.O. Thomas, 76–100. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1991d. Observations on the nature of civil liberty, the principles of government, and the justice and policy of the war with America. In Richard Price:Political writings, ed. D.O. Thomas, 20–75. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Priestley, Joseph. 1771. An essay on the first principles of government, and on the nature of political, civil, and religious liberty, including remarks on Dr. Brown’s code of education and on Dr. Balguy’s sermon on church authority. 2nd ed. London: T. Cadell and J. Johnson. ———. 1778. A free discussion of the doctrines of materialism and philosophical necessity. In a correspondence between Dr. Price and Dr. Priestley. To which are added, by Dr. Priestley, an introduction, explaining the nature of the controversy, and letters to several writers who have

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animadverted on his disquisitions relating to matter and spirit or his treatise on necessity. London: T. Cadell. ———. 1786. Experiments and observations, relating to various branches of natural philosophy; with a continuation of the observations on air. London: Pearson and Rollason. Rogers, G.A.J. 1997. The other-wordly philosophers and the real world: The Cambridge Platonists, theology and politics. In The Cambridge Platonists in philosophical context: Politics, metaphysics and religion, ed. G.A.J. Rogers et al., 3–16. London: Kluwer. Smith, S.H. 2011. Clarke on virtue and reasonableness. Enlightenment and Dissent 27: 1–18. Stanlis, Peter J.  1991. Edmund Burke: The enlightenment and revolution. London: Transaction Publishers. Thomas, D.O. 1977. The honest mind: The thought and work of Richard Price. Oxford: Clarendon. ———. 1985. Francis Maseres, Richard Price, and the industrious poor. Enlightenment and Dissent 4: 65–82. ———. 1991. Introduction. In Richard Price: Political writings, vii–xxii. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tucker, Josiah. 1781. A treatise concerning civil government. London: T. Cadell. Tulloch, John. 1872. Rational theology and Christian philosophy in England in the seventeenth century. Edinburgh. Zebrowski, Martha K. 1994. Richard Price: British Platonist of the eighteenth century. Journal of the History of Ideas 55: 17–35. ———. 2000. We may venture to say, that the number of Platonic readers is considerable: Richard Price, Joseph Priestley and the Platonic strand in eighteenth century thought. Enlightenment and Dissent 19: 193–213.

Chapter 11

‘Have Ye Not Heard That We Cannot Serve Two Masters?’: The Platonism of Mary Wollstonecraft Sylvana Tomaselli

Abstract  Together with David Hume, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Adam Smith, Mary Wollstonecraft thought modern commercial society exacerbated the psychological need of most of their members to seek the approbation of others. Like them, she thought the better part of her contemporaries were caught in a hall of mirrors and sought to be esteemed for their appearance. In her view the contrivances this entailed distorted individual characters, relationships, and society as a whole. Though she partook of a European wide philosophical debate, she came to it from the very unique perspective of a largely self-taught English woman and in a large part from what might be meaningfully conceived as a Platonist perspective. In examining how this might be so, this chapter does not seek to make Wollstonecraft a Platonist as opposed to, say, an Aristotelian, much less a Christian. Her moral and political critique made her eclectic in her use of ideas and argument. She seems however to have been inspired by conceptions of the soul, love, truth and virtue that have their origins in Platonism. Considering her in this light provides greater insights into her philosophy of mind as well as her social and political views and provides a greater understanding of the continued importance of Platonism in the latter part of the eighteenth century. ‘Have ye not heard that we cannot serve two masters?’, Mary Wollstonecraft exclaimed in A Vindication of the Rights of Men; ‘an immoderate desire to please’, she continued, ‘contracts the faculties and immerges [sic], to borrow the idea of a great philosopher, the soul in matter, till it becomes unable to mount on the wing of contemplation’ (Wollstonecraft 1995, 23).1 If one had to choose a passage that  All references to the Vindications are from this edition. The edition of the Vindication of the Rights of Woman, in The Works of Mary Wollstonecraft, 7 vols., Vol 5, 23, n. b gives a reference to Phaedrus, 274. The relevant passage in Phaedrus is 246. As will be discussed further in what follows, this way of speaking about the soul and its wings can be found in Phaedrus more generally 1

S. Tomaselli (*) St. John’s College, Cambridge, UK e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 D. Hedley, D. Leech (eds.), Revisioning Cambridge Platonism: Sources and Legacy, International Archives of the History of Ideas Archives internationales d’histoire des idées 222, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22200-0_11

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encapsulated Wollstonecraft’s philosophy, these two sentences, which make up a simple paragraph a third of the way into what was to be the first of her two Vindications, would stand out as revelatory of her most pressing concern in that period of her intellectual life and, one might add, throughout it. Like a number of other important eighteenth-century political thinkers and commentators, Wollstonecraft found herself in a world that seemed to be driven by the need for approbation of a kind that she perceived to be destructive of both society and the individuals that made it up. While she was not alone in writing about this phenomenon and was entering an ongoing conversation on the subject, she came to it in part from what might be meaningfully thought of as a Platonist perspective. That Thomas Taylor’s translations of Plato influenced the development of Wollstonecraft’s thought is almost certain. Also, as Hutton has noted, the role of the Cambridge Platonists via the British Dissenting tradition on the development of the discourse of women’s rights has just started to be appreciated.2 As the preceding essay by Louise Hickman shows, one plausible conduit of influence is via Richard Price. Within the circle that Wollstonecraft came to frequent though her publisher, Joseph Johnson, and which included Price as well as William Blake, Platonism was a far more common currency than might at first be assumed. As I shall show, Wollstonecraft, like Price, drew on Plato’s theory of knowledge in her equal rejection of voluntarism and her belief in the independent existence of immutable ideas of morality, and Platonic aspects of her thinking also formed part of the philosophical basis of her attack on Burke. However, in examining how this might be so, this chapter does not seek to make Wollstonecraft a Platonist. If anything, she was a pragmatist who encouraged eclecticism. Nor does it attempt to document the precise nature of Cambridge Platonist influence via Price. But this is not to say that particular strands of Platonism strongly inflected by Price and secondarily by others are not discernible or more especially prevalent in some of her writings. What follows is an exploration of such a strand. We might then take Plato, mediated to her perhaps especially by Price and Taylor, to be the great philosopher from which Wollstonecraft borrowed to make her point about the effect of ‘an immoderate desire to please’. Whether the claim was his or one of his followers or whether he or they could be understood as having made it, is a separate matter. What of the two masters? Was Wollstonecraft thinking of the soul and the body or the world of truth and that of appearances, or a complex mix of both? The context in which Wollstonecraft evokes ‘a great philosopher’ is the point in her diatribe against Edmund Burke when she attacks him for his support for the ‘perpetuation of property in our families’ and goes on to detail the consequences of as well as Phaedo and other of Plato’s dialogues that might well have been read and discussed by Thomas Taylor, the Platonist, who shared his knowledge of Plato and Platonism with her, when the Wollstonecraft family had taken lodgings with him in 1777 or in subsequent meetings. Given that he worked as a bank clerk during the day, his translations must have been undertaken over a prolonged period of time before they appeared in print. See Raine and Mills (1969, 15, 113, 125–126); Todd (2000, 27). 2  Hutton (2003) has explored the philosophical aspect of Wollstonecraft’s relation to Price.

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what she sees as an obsession with inheritance (Wollstonecraft 1995, 22). These are a distortion of natural parental affection, ‘the insuperable bar which it puts in the way of early marriages’, which in turn ‘weaken both mind and body’, leading to ‘the lax morals and depraved affections of the libertine’ in men, and, in the case of girls, to their sacrifice for family convenience in arranged marriages, vanity, the desire to shine, so as to secure a propertied husband ‘that they may have it in their power to coquet, the grand business of genteel life, with a number of admirers, and thus flutter the spring of life away, without laying up any store for the winter of age, or being of any use to society’ (Wollstonecraft 1995, 22). The accumulation of property, or more precisely the desire that produces it, has dire results for marriage, as that section of the Vindication of the Rights of Men makes clear, since it divides ‘Love and Hymen’ and makes women into ‘weak beings’ unlikely to command respect, which according to Wollstonecraft is the very foundation of marriage; it further leads to adultery and inevitably to the neglect of one’s own children: A woman never forgets to adorn herself to make an impression on the senses of the other sex, and to extort the homage which is gallant to pay, and yet we wonder that they have such confined understandings! (Wollstonecraft 1995, 22-23)

‘Have ye not heard’, she continues, ‘that we cannot serve two masters?’ Whilst the distinction between knowledge and belief, the objects of truth and mere shadows, reality and appearance could not be more central to Plato’s philosophy, and although he was not averse to discussing delusions as well as illusions of human beings, Wollstonecraft’s concerns are not quite his. This is not because she speaks of women or the relations between the sexes. Much less is it because her point of entry into her subject is private property. One need only think of the life of the Guardian class as outlined in the Book V of Republic to recall that Plato was insistent on the absence of private property amongst them as well as the need for Guardian men and women to be educated together (a view that Wollstonecraft was to share and maintain well into her later writings) and for children to be raised communally. He saw no reason for women to be excluded from an equal participation in the Guardianship of the Callipolis, the ideal city, and was not entirely uninterested in the question of the male gaze: They must strip, then, the women amongst the guardians. Virtue will be their cloak. They must play their part both in war and in being the guardians of the city in general. That, and nothing else. And of those tasks, women should be given lighter ones than men, because their sex is weaker. Any man who laughs at the idea of naked women, if they are exercising naked in pursuit of excellence, is “plucking the unripe fruit of laughter.” He has no idea, apparently, what he is laughing at, or what he is doing. It is a good saying – and always will be- that what is good for us is beautiful, and what is bad for us is ugly. (Plato 2000, 154)3

However, while Plato did discuss the need of individuals and cities to maintain a good reputation and by no means dismissed the desire for fame and honour out of hand, he did not consider the social and political problems of his time the result of 3  One might note that Wollstonecraft never argued for the rights of women on the basis of their physical equality to men. Indeed, equality of ability of any kind was not the foundation of her argument. See Tomaselli (forthcoming).

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a pathological craving within the bulk of humanity for recognition by the other. Critical though he was of aspects of Athens and of various parts of its citizenry, he did not think that either the city as a whole or its inhabitants were driven by the need to ingratiate themselves to one another. Wollstonecraft did. One must tread carefully here of course. Any attempt at drawing a line between her and Plato draws out the remarkable extent to which she resembles him, even if it is fortuitously so or indirectly through his and his disciples’ phenomenal impact on Western culture and ethics in particular. Where his influence on civilization is less palpable and his views had little or no impact on even his disciples in the last two and a half centuries, to wit the capabilities of women, the manner in which Socrates in Republic is shown to argue for the irrelevance of difference to women’s education and training for political leadership, the similarity is even more striking.4 Leaving that issue aside, one could say at this juncture that both Plato and Wollstonecraft thought their contemporaries to be victims of moral ignorance, one which the ancient philosopher and the eighteenth-century one sought to combat and rectify through a true understanding of the nature of the good and the beautiful. The point about the relative importance of the need to please in their respective understanding of the wrongs of their societies stands nonetheless. What is more, Wollstonecraft had in mind an ‘immoderate desire’. She had in mind a kind of lunacy spreading through society from the aristocracy to the middle ranks (Wollstonecraft 1995, 23). As she made clear in the passage under discussion, this need shrank the human mind. It immersed the soul in matter, overloading it, and thus making it impossible to rise towards the objects of contemplation. Although the image of withered mental capabilities is not quite Plato’s (it belongs, as we shall see, to the language of one of his most ardent followers), Wollstonecraft is drawing on his view of the soul, and mind and body relation as described in a number of dialogues, including Phaedrus. In the dialogue, Phaedrus and Socrates’ conversation first enquires whether love is beneficial or injurious, which leads them to seek to establish the true nature of love and its effects, and that, in turn, requires, so Socrates asserts, ‘to discern the true nature of the soul, divine and human, its experiences, and its activities’. (Plato 1961, 492) The essence and definition of soul is self-motion, Socrates explains; that being so, the soul is immortal, self-moving being ‘the first principle of motion, and it is as impossible that it should be destroyed as that it should come into being: were it otherwise, the whole universe, the whole of that which comes to be, would collapse into immobility, and never find another source of motion to bring it back into being’ (Plato 1961, 493). The next question is ‘how it is that living beings are called mortal and immortal’ (Plato 1961, 493). Spirit ‘traverses the whole universe, though in

4  Plato’s Republic was not translated into English until 1794. Whether Wollstonecraft had unmediated access to its content prior to that date is difficult to establish, but as is discussed below she did know of it. Rousseau repeatedly urged the readers of his Emile, of which Wollstonecraft was one, to read Republic claiming that those who thought it a political treatise were much mistaken; it was a pedagogical work.

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ever-changing forms’, according to Socrates. It is in developing this point that the image of wings appears: Thus when it is perfect and winged it journeys on high and controls the whole world, but one that has shed its wings sinks down until it can fasten on something solid, and settling there it takes to itself an earthly body which seems by reason of the soul’s power to move itself. This composite structure of soul and body is called a living being, and is further termed ‘mortal’; ‘immortal’ is a term applied on no basis of reasoned argument at all, but our fancy pictures the god whom we have never seen, nor fully conceived, as an immortal living being, possessed of a soul and a body united for all time. […] what we must understand is the reason why the soul’s wings fall from it, and are lost. It is on this wise. The natural property of a wing is to raise that which is heavy and carry it aloft to the region where the gods dwell. And more than any other bodily part it shares in the divine nature, which is fair, wise, and good, and possessed for all other such excellences. Now by these excellences especially is the soul’s plumage nourished and fostered, while by their opposites, even by ugliness and evil, it is wasted and destroyed (Plato 1961, 493-4).

This is but a small part of Socrates’ account of the nature of the soul, and of the loss and recovery of its wings. Plato’s is a complex metaphysics, to which we cannot render justice here. However a further passage might suffice to give a fuller sense of the imagery of ascending flight that Wollstonecraft was ‘borrowing’ from - remembering as we must that Phaedrus is in the first instance a discussion about the nature of love: Therefore is it meet and right that the soul of the philosopher alone should recover her wings, for she, so far as may be, is ever near in memory to things a god’s nearness whereunto makes him truly god. Wherefore if a man makes right use of such means of remembrance, and ever approaches to the full vision of the perfect mysteries, he and he alone becomes truly perfect. Standing aside from the busy doings of mankind, and drawing night to the divine, he is rebuked by the multitude as being out of his wits, for they know not that he is possessed of a deity. Mark therefore the sum and substance of all our discourse touching the fourth sort of madness – to wit, that this is the best of all forms of divine possession, both in itself and in its sources, both for him that has it and for him that share therein – and when he that loves beauty is touched by such madness he is called a love. Such a one, as soon as he beholds the beauty of this world, is reminded of true beauty, and his wings begin to grow; then is he fain to lift his wings and fly upward; yet he has not power, but inasmuch as he gazes upward like a bird, and cares nothing for the world beneath, men charge it upon him that he is demented. (Plato 1961, 496)

If Wollstonecraft had not read Phaedrus when she composed her Vindication of the Rights of Men in November 1790, she is likely to have known of it or its content through the then well-known Platonist, Thomas Taylor, who published its first translation into English in 1792 as The Phaedrus of Plato. A Dialogue Concerning Beauty and Love Translated from the Greek.5 Taylor had lectured on Platonic phi5  There are a number of ways in which Wollstonecraft may have drawn upon Taylor’s work on antiquity. The first is relatively simple, that Wollstonecraft read Plato in translation in her late teens. In the late 1770s, Taylor and his wife, Mary Morton, were landlords to the young Mary Wollstonecraft. At the time, Taylor had embarked on the translation of the complete works of Plato and of Plotinus, in particular the Phaedrus, and Plotinus’ ‘On the Essence of the Soul’. Of another channel through which Taylor’s translations and Platonism may have reached Wollstonecraft we

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losophy in 1788 and also published Concerning the Beautiful; or, a Paraphrase Translation from the Greek of Plotinus. Ennead I. Book VI in 1787 (Raine and Mills 1969, 36). In the latter work, another feature of Wollstonecraft’s language can be found, that of the soul’s engulfment in matter and of its contraction: Let us suppose a soul deformed, to be one intemperate and unjust, filled with a multitude of desires, a prey to foolish hopes, and vexed with idle fears; through its diminutive and avaricious nature the subject of envy; employed solely in thought of what is mortal and low; bound in the fetters of impure delights; living the life, whatever it may be, peculiar to the passion of body; and so totally merged in sensuality as to esteem the base pleasant, and the deformed beautiful and fair. […] Hence, becoming impure, and being on all sides snatched in the unceasing whirl of sensible forms, it is covered with corporeal stains, and wholly given to matter, contracts deeply its nature, loses all its original splendour, and almost changes its own species into that of another: just as pristine beauty of the most lovely form would be destroyed by its total immersion in mire and clay. (Raine & Mills 1969, 151-2).

While it not possible to establish as a matter of fact that Wollstonecraft was echoing Plato and Plotinus in her Vindication of the Rights of Men, the similarity between their conceptions of the ascending soul and its being weighed down by false beliefs is no less striking as the likelihood of the sources for these notions is great. She was not alone in being inspired by Plato. Within the circle that she came to frequent mostly through her publisher, Joseph Johnson, Platonism was a far more common currency than might at first be assumed. One need only think of two of its members, Richard Price and William Blake, to recall its importance in that intellectual milieu. The title page of Price’s A Review of the Principal Questions and Difficulties in Morals (first published in 1758) bore a motto from Plato’s Phaedo: ‘Nothing is so evident to me personally as that the beautiful and the good certainly exist’.6 The text as a whole owes much to Plato’s Theaetetus, a debt which Price makes explicit in the text. Blake, who illustrated the second edition of Wollstonecraft’s Original Stories (1788), also knew Taylor well, and discussed Plato and Platonism with him.7 That he was a Platonist has been argued extensively by Katheen Raine as well as others, and challenged by some, but even those agree that he made extensive use of can be more certain. In 1788, Taylor gave a series of lectures at the artist John Flaxman’s house. Attending those lectures was an informal ‘academy’ of artists and poets, including William Meredith, William Fordyce, Mrs. Damer, Mrs. Coswar and, according to Kathleen Raine, William Blake. Blake was an intimate friend of Flaxman’s and frequently references Taylor’s translations in his later work. But Blake was also a client of Joseph Johnson’s, Wollstonecraft’s publisher, and the two moved in the same circle of Dissenters. 6  It comes at Plato’s Phaedo 77A. Price’s quote is in Greek. I am grateful to Professor Malcolm Schofield for this translation, who remarks that Price more literally wrote something like this: ‘Surely nothing is so evident to me personally as this? That the beautiful and the good certainly exist’. 7  See also notes 12 and 17. From the late 1780s, William Blake began working with Joseph Johnson, who helped Blake open a print shop in 1794. According to Kathleen Raine, Johnson held regular discussions at his house, attended by Joseph Priestly, Richard Price, William Blake, Thomas Paine and Mary Wollstonecraft. It is possible, therefore, perhaps even probable, that Blake and Wollstonecraft met at one of Johnson’s evening discussions. At the very least, the two were undoubtedly aware of the others’ ideas and writings.

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Platonic concepts (Raine 1977; Raine 1979, xiii, 3–4; Larrissy 1994, 186–98). Price and Blake turned to Plato to counter what they saw as the philosophical materialism that predominated in the age of Enlightenment and looked set to maintain its power over the next. While Price’s concern was more particularly epistemological and his efforts primarily directed at establishing the foundation of our moral ideas, Blake combatted materialism not only because he thought it philosophically mistaken, but also because it was ‘the source of great unhappiness, of spiritual sickness in Western civilization, in England especially’ (Raine 1977, 23). As someone who might be seen as a critic of Platonism from within, one who thought it did not grant the imagination its rightful place as the spring of knowledge and creative genius, Blake will appear the closest to Wollstonecraft if we follow Barbara Taylor in highlighting the part played by that faculty in her writings and feminism (Taylor 2003, 58–94). Recognising that she most consistently and least ambiguously placed her trust in reason as the epistemological and moral anchor in humankind brings her closer to Price (Hutton 2003, 26–40). Be this as it may, Wollstonecraft certainly did see, as did Blake, a great malaise prevailing in society, but she tended to view its causes in human psychology and, as we have seen already, in the distorting effect of living in the realm of appearances. This is partly due to the fact that she entered philosophy as a pedagogue, intent on understanding the formation of character. Her Thoughts on the Education of Daughters had appeared in 1786 and she had some experience as a governess. 1788 saw the publication of her translation of Jacques Necker’s Of the Importance of Religious Opinions as well as that of her Original Stories from real Life: with Conversations Calculated to Regulate the Affections and Form the Mind to Truth and Goodness, with, as mentioned above, illustrations by Blake. In the years leading up to the Vindication of the Rights of Men, her articles for the Analytical Review covered a variety of books from poetry and novels to sermons, travel literature and education. 1790 also saw the publication of Elements of Morality for the Use of Children with an Introductory Address to Parents, her translation from the German of Christian Gotthilf Salzmann, and Young Grandison, a re-writing of a translation from the Dutch of Maria Geertruida van de Werken de Cambon. Without seeking to create a false sense of a thematic unity within these various works, it is true to say that they contain a number of motifs that were to play themselves out to varying extents throughout her intellectual life. Amongst them is a clear call for the need to build a strong rational core in the self, a citadel that can withstand the vicissitudes of circumstances be they affective or social. Related to this is a continuous probing into the nature of love. The construction of such a reason in individuals required a particular education, one that tightly controlled influences on the mind in accordance with a clear schedule of the appropriateness of specific stimuli at given stages of development. Catharine Macaulay Graham’s Letters on Education: with Observations on Religious and Metaphysical Subjects, which was published in 1790, and Wollstonecraft reviewed most favorably in the November issue of the Analytical Review of that year, in other words in the very same period as she penned the Vindication of the Rights of Men, offered a trustworthy pedagogical guide to the

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making of a strong mind. ‘This masculine and fervid writer’, Wollstonecraft wrote, ‘has turned the very superior power of her mind to the consideration of a subject, which, perhaps, embraces a wider circle of unsettled opinions, than most of those disputed points that have exercised the argumentative talents of ancient philosophers and modern theologians’ (Wollstonecraft 1989, 309). Wollstonecraft proceeded by quoting Macaulay: ‘“Of all the arts of life […] that of giving useful instruction to the human mind, and of rendering it the master of its affections, is the most important” ’ (Wollstonecraft 1989, 309). Declaring that she coincided perfectly ‘in opinion with this sagacious writer, not only respecting the importance of the subject, considered in an uncircumscribed view, but also with the tendency of the instruction, which she has intimated in the preface, by asserting that morals must be taught on immutable principles’, Wollstonecraft went on to give the work a glowing and unusually long review.8 Uneven in its coverage in that it gave prominence to some topics (e.g. Benevolence, No characteristic difference in sex) and only noted the section titles of others ‘On the vice of lying  – religion.  – The Bible and New Testament totally excluded by Mrs M. from the religious study of children’, the review showed Macaulay and Wollstonecraft to yearn for a world in which men and women would receive the same education, free of false notions of beauty and delicacy, and of ridicule and improper conversations, and in which hardy habits would be acquired by both the sexes, together with the recognition of the need for independence (Wollstonecraft 1989, 309–22). Benevolence would prevail, ‘the fine arts, instead of pampering vice, and destroying simplicity of manners, [would] be rendered subservient to religion and virtue’. ‘That true taste is subservient to religion’, Wollstonecraft added, ‘cannot be doubted – for a love of order and beauty, leads directly to admiration of their author’ (Wollstonecraft 1989, 317). It would be a world that would bring back ‘classic simplicity, that we are every day departing more and more from’ (Wollstonecraft 1989, 315). While Wollstonecraft did not think that Macaulay was always as clear as she ought to be, she thought of her as committed, as she herself appeared to be, to the view that ‘that system of philosophy must be obnoxious to morality that “sets out with introducing an uncertainty respecting the nature of virtue; and by taking away the essential and eternal discriminations of moral good and evil, of just and unjust, and reducing these to arbitrary production of the divine will, or rules and modifications of human prudence and sagacity, it takes away one regular, simple, and universal rule of action for all intelligent nature”’ (Wollstonecraft 1989, 318). Both women implicitly but nonetheless firmly endorsed the line Price had chosen from Phaedo that ‘Nothing is so evident to me personally as that the beautiful and the good certainly exist’. Like him, they drew on Plato’s theory of knowledge in their rejection of voluntarism and their belief in the independent existence of immutable ideas of morality, for Wollstonecraft quoted part of Macaulay’s discussion of the origins of evil as follows: 8  For an account of the philosophical similarity between Macaulay and Wollstonecraft, see Hutton (2003, 29-38); Gunther-Canada (1998, 126-47).

11  ‘Have Ye Not Heard That We Cannot Serve Two Masters?’: The Platonism of Mary… 183 ‘Dr King.’ Mrs M. observes, ‘sets out with a denial of that catholic opinion in the creed of the moralist, a moral beauty and a moral deformity, necessarily independent of the will of every being created or uncreated. It is explained by Plato, under the form of everlasting ideas or moral entities, coeval with eternity, and residing in the divine mind, from when by irradiating rays, like the emitting of the sun beams, they enlighten the understanding of all those intellectual beings, who, disregarding the objects of sense, give themselves up to the contemplation of the deity. The modern philosopher in a lower strain of reasoning asserts, that there is an abstract fitness of things perceived by the mind of God, and so interwoven in the nature of contemplative objects, as to be traced, like abstract truths, by those faculties of the mind, which enable us to compare and perceive the agreement and disagreement of our sensitive and reflex ideas.’ (Wollstonecraft 1989, 317-8)9

Whilst those are Macaulay’s words, Wollstonecraft leaves no room for doubt that she also is convinced of the reality of ideas independent of human perception. What is more, the nature of the references to the Ancients in the review, Wollstonecraft’s approval of Macaulay’s true exposition of the doctrines of the Stoics so as to remove ‘unjust aspersions’ and give them the ‘respect’ they ‘deserve’, and the argument which she highlighted in Macaulay’s pedagogy –that Biblical instructions should be left to mature understandings – combined to make clear that she held reason to be the source of true knowledge of the good and beautiful. However much Revelation might concur with our moral ideas, ethical life did not depend on it. Commenting on Macaulay’s claim ‘That the injudicious Defenders of Religion, have given means of triumph to the Infidel’, Wollstonecraft explained: She means the injudicious defenders of the Christian religion. – For a glimpse of immortality was caught before the promulgation of the Gospel, and all the hopes of futurity, founded on the attributes of God, are not clouded, at least do not vanish, when a firm belief in revelation is shaken; and God may be reverenced, as perfectly good and benevolent, by those who do not call themselves believers. (Wollstonecraft 1989, 319)

In recent years, much has been made of the importance of religion in the thought of Macaulay and Wollstonecraft, and rightly so. However, this should not obscure the influence of Ancient philosophy, and particularly Plato’s, on both thinkers. To say this is not to suggest that either were unqualified or uniformly consistent disciples, but if we are to understand Wollstonecraft’s multiple and often unexplained (or sometimes puzzling) assertions in A Vindication of the Rights of Men and thus the basis of her better known works, it is important to endeavour to reconstruct what philosophical views she entertained when she came to make her reply to Burke’s Reflections. That she continued to think within a Platonic conception of truth, beauty and virtue and did not stop using Platonic imagery can be seen in even her later texts, such as An Historical and Moral View of the Origin and Progress of the French Revolution; and the effect it has produced in Europe (1794). There we find her writing of what she thinks of the passing of times of ignorance and misery as follows: But these evils are passing away; a new spirit has gone forth, to organise the body-politic; […] Reason has, at last, shown her captivating face, beaming with benevolence; and it will 9  Hutton comments on the extensiveness of Macaulay’s engagement with King and the importance of her religious views to her feminism more generally in Hutton (2005, 538-50).

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be impossible for the dark hand of despotism again to obscure it’s [sic] radiance, or the lurking dagger of subordinate tyrants to reach her bosom. The image of God implanted in our nature is now more rapidly expanding; and, as it opens, liberty with maternal wing seems to be soaring to regions far above vulgar annoyance, promising to shelter all mankind. (Wollstonecraft 1989, 22).

Thus the image of the soul ascending through contemplation and unhindered by deluded sensory perceptions and earthy matters was one that Wollstonecraft retained and used to describe revolutionary Europe or what she hoped for its future. As mentioned earlier, Wollstonecraft laid considerable emphasis in her first Vindication on the importance of the intellect in the development of understanding and the attainment of virtue. Amongst other things, she criticized Burke for his ‘sentimental jargon’, since it ‘never received the regal stamp of reason’ and, all the more so, his want of understanding about the acquisition of true knowledge, that is, his failing to comprehend the relationship between the passions and reason. In these criticisms, we find an outline of a more comprehensive and Platonic conception of the human mind and soul. Reading Burke’s Reflection, Wollstonecraft detected a belief that [a] mysterious instinct is supposed to reside in the soul, that instantaneously discerns truth, without the tedious labour of ratiocination. This instinct, for I know not what other name to give it, has been termed common sense, and more frequently sensibility; and, by a kind of indefeasible right, it has been supposed, for rights of this kind are not easily proved, to reign paramount over the other faculties of the mind, and to be an authority from which there is no appeal. (Todd 2000, 30)10

Wollstonecraft’s rejection of what she dubbed instinct, and the part it played in Burke’s work, can be understood only in light of the views we saw her endorse earlier about the attainment of true ideas as opposed to mere opinion. It was not that she dismissed the role and importance that various parts of the soul played in human motivation. Rather it was their proper function and place that needed to be fully grasped. Asking ‘in what respect are we superior to the brute creation, if intellect is not allowed to be the guide of passion?’, she continued: Brutes hope and fear, love and hate; but, without a capacity to improve, a power of turning these passions to good or evil, they neither acquire virtue nor wisdom. - Why? Because the Creator has not given them reason. (Todd 2000, 31)11

To this, Wollstonecraft added a note that might be taken to attest to her Platonism once again: I do not now mean to discuss the intricate subject of their mortality; reason may, perhaps, be given to them in the next stage of existence, if they are to mount in the scale of life, like men, by the medium of death (Todd 2000, 31 n.23).

This is an odd addition coming from an author writing within an overtly Christian standpoint, and it is notable that Plato had Socrates discuss the transmigration of souls and their hierarchy in a number of dialogues, notably Phaedo and Phaedrus 10 11

 The italics are Wollstonecraft’s.  The emphasis is mine.

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as well as Republic.12 What is more, Wollstonecraft also followed Plato in believing that the passions needed to be ruled. It was wrong to suggest, as she took Burke to be doing, that some instinct guided mankind towards virtue. The passions required direction: parental in the case of children as they were born ignorant, and a cultivated reason in the case of adults (Todd 2000, p.30). What makes her view interesting is Wollstonecraft’s insistence that ‘the cultivation of reason is an arduous task, and men of lively fancy, finding it easier to follow the impulse of passion, endeavour to persuade themselves and that it is most natural’ (Todd 2000, 31). Imitation, which Burke argued to be one of three main principles of action, along with ambition and sympathy in A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757) and to which Wollstonecraft refers in the Vindication of the Rights of Men, as well as consideration of prudence was ‘reason at secondhand’ (Todd 2000, 31). For her, if virtue is to be acquired by experience, or taught by example, reason, perfected by reflection, must be the director of the whole host of passions, which produce a fructifying heat, but no light, that you would exalt into her place. – She must hold the rudder, or, let the wind blow which way it list, the vessel will never advance smoothly to its destined port; for the time lost in tacking about would dreadfully impede its progress. (Todd 2000, 32)13

Wollstonecraft’s critique of Burke, and indeed of the mores of her contemporaries, centred on the nature and rule of reason in guiding human action and the relationships between human beings. What Burke missed entirely in her view was that an imitative reason, one that learnt to ape socially appropriate control of the passions and appetites, did not pave the way to virtue. What was needed was a cultivated reason, one ‘perfected by reflection’. Such a reason possessed true knowledge of the nature of the good and the beautiful. Such reflective activity, we saw above, required the soul to rise above mundane concerns above, one might say, the world of particulars, appearances and opinion so as to grasp the universal truth of beauteous virtue. ‘The common affections and passions’, she wrote, ‘equally bind brutes together; and it is only the continuity of those relations that entitles us to the denomination of rational creatures – from the operations of that reason which you contemn with flippant disrespect.’ (Todd 2000, 40–41). Private property and the concerns it generated, we saw earlier, were a major hindrance to the soul’s ascendance towards the light of the sun that was truth. ‘[b] enevolence, friendship, generosity, and all those endearing charities which bind human hearts together, and the pursuits which raise the mind to higher contemplations, all that were not cankered in the bud by the false notions that “grew with its growth and strengthened with its strength”, are crushed by the iron hand of property’ (Todd 2000, 23). Together with vanity, its maiden hand, Wollstonecraft argued that property dragged man and woman away from the development of intellect and contemplation, without which it was impossible to nurture moral character. Its  See for instance, Phaedo 70c sq., 81, 113a, Phaedrus 248c sq., and Republic 10.617d sq.  I am grateful to Joshua Simons for pointing out that in describing the authority of reason, Wollstonecraft uses an analogy found in Plato’s Republic (488e-489d), of the captain of a naval vessel.

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effect spread throughout society as ‘numberless vices, forced in the hot-bed of wealth, assume a slightly form to dazzle the senses and cloud the understanding’, undermining the cultivation of reason, and the respect paid to rank and fortune ‘damps every generous purpose of the soul, and stifles the natural affections’ (Todd 2000, 24). The Platonic character of Wollstonecraft’s conception of the soul and virtue sheds light on the philosophical basis of her attack on Burke. Her combined reading of his Reflections and his A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful led her to think of him and the moral theory he was endorsing as ‘reducing virtue to an empty name, and make wisdom consist in saving appearances’(Todd 2000, 24). Her condemnation of a commitment to ‘mere appearances’ was above all driven by her belief that they eroded a genuine sense of respect grounded in knowledge and understanding. Evoking Plato’s cave and the imagery of light once again, she wrote that ‘virtue is out of the question when you only worship a shadow, and worship it to secure your property’ (Todd 2000, 21). Appearances lured one away from the search for understanding and made opinion a delusionary substitute for knowledge. As property fixated attention on ‘mere shadows’ or appearances, it necessarily diverted men and women away from the cultivation of reason and thus the true conception of the nature of virtue. Although the overt purpose of Wollstonecraft’s first Vindication was to defend Price against Burke’s critique of him and his enthusiasm for what was the beginnings of the French Revolution, she launched into a far wider philosophical dispute that addressed not only a number Burke’s works and Parliamentary Speeches, but also engaged Price’s moral philosophy and theology. Wollstonecraft shared Price’s belief in the existence of moral certainty, expounded in his famous Review of the Principal Questions in Morals of 1758, a third edition appearing in 1787, and its accessibility by the mind given ‘strenuous’ reflection as Wollstonecraft was to insist. She also shared with him as with all Platonists, not least Taylor, a deep interest in the relationship between truth and beauty, and beauty was a topic which, together with the sublime, had made Burke famous since the middle of the century not only in England but also across the Channel, particularly in the German speaking world. Thus, in the very first paragraph of her Vindication, Wollstonecraft introduced herself as someone who had not yet learnt to ‘disguise [her] sentiments’, explaining that ‘truth, in morals, has ever appeared to me the essence of the sublime; and, in taste, simplicity the only criterion of the beautiful.’ (Todd 2000, 5) Quite apart from anything Burke might have said of Price or of the events in France or indeed of any political event past or present, his views of virtue, truth and beauty alone would have incensed Wollstonecraft and led her to write not only her first, but also her second Vindication. This brings us to another of Plato’s great interest, love. In his Philosophical Enquiry Burke had not only sought to ascertain the origin and nature of our ideas of the sublime and the beautiful, but linked these to admiration and love respectively. Though we saw earlier that Wollstonecraft came to the subject of love through that of private property, which, in turn, had opened the door to the topic of marriage and the manner in which it was treated in contemporary society, namely as a pro-

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curement of goods not a temple to love. As women sought to attract the most ­eligible men, they sought to make themselves desirable, trading, effectively, one property for another. Were ladies to ‘have read your Enquiry concerning the origin of our ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful ’, Wollstonecraft apostrophized Burke, they ‘may have laboured to be pretty, by counterfeiting weakness’ (Todd 2000, 46–7). As well as evoking Hamlet’s ‘You jig and amble, and you lisp, you nickname God’s creatures and make your wantonness your ignorance’ (3, 1, 146–8), it was a reference to Burke’s ‘they learn to lisp, to totter in their walk, to counterfeit weakness and even sickness’ (Todd 2000, 47; Boulton 1958, ix). Wollstonecraft’s full response to this portrayal of the seductive machinations of women is to be found in her second Vindication. In her first, it foreshadowed arguments deployed 2 years later, and it was the implication of Burke’s account of beauty for the relationship of humankind to God that Wollstonecraft most emphatically drew out. As she saw it, Burke had ‘made our idea of beauty independent of reason’ (Todd 2000, 47). He had done so by considering ‘beauty as distinguished from the sublime’ (Boulton 1958, 91). In his analysis of our idea of it, he had undermined the notion that it consisted in proportionality or utility and in the course of this made his sole allusion to Platonism, by referring to the baneful influence of the ‘Platonic theory of fitness and aptitude’ on our conception of beauty (Boulton 1958, 101). Before turning to ‘The real cause of BEAUTY’, Burke had composed a single paragraph section on ‘How far the idea of BEAUTY may be applied to VIRTUE’: From what has been said in the foregoing section, we may easily see, how far the application of this quality to virtue, has a strong tendency to confound our ideas of things; and it has given rise to an infinite deal of whimsical theory; as the affixing the name of beauty proportion, congruity and perfection, as well as to qualities of things yet more remote from our natural ideas of it, and from one another, has tended to confound our ideas of beauty, and left us, no standard or rule to judge by, that was not even more uncertain and fallacious than our fancies. ˂ This loose and inaccurate manner of speaking, has therefore misled us both in the theory of taste and of morals; and induced us to remove the science of our duties from their proper basis, (our reason, our relations, and our necessities,) to rest it upon foundations altogether visionary and unsubstantial. ˃ (Boulton 1958, 112)

Burke went on to link beauty to littleness, smoothness, softness, delicacy, as well as other related qualities, whilst the sublime was equated with to the grand, the striking, the powerful, and like qualities. Most importantly for our present purpose, he had argued that ‘[t]here is a wide difference between admiration and love’ (Boulton 1958, 113). Thus Burke had drawn a mighty wedge between the beautiful and love, on one hand, and virtue, perfection and admiration, on the other. On his view, ‘Nature’, a term which Wollstonecraft used interchangeably with ‘God’, ‘by making women little, smooth, delicate fair creatures, never designed that they should exercise their reason to acquire the virtues that produce opposite, if not contradictory, feelings’ (Todd 2000, 47). Admiration could not come into it. What is worse, Burke had made women not only incapable of achieving virtue, but untruthful and deceitful by essence. They were condemned by their very nature to the world of appearances and shadows. It placed them in a sphere outside of morality, because

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they could at best only behave morally by imitation or chance, not through genuine cognition of the truth of virtue. This was not all. As Wollstonecraft saw it, there was yet an even more profound consequence to Burke’s severance of the beautiful and love from the sublime and admiration: If beautiful weakness be interwoven in a woman’s frame, if the chief business of her life be (as you insinuate) to inspire love, and nature has made an eternal distinction between the qualities that dignify a rational being and this animal perfection, her duty and happiness in this life must clash with any preparation for a more exalted state. So that Plato and Milton were grossly mistaken in asserting that human love led to heavenly, and was only an exaltation of the same affections; for the love of the Deity, which is mixed with the most profound reverence, must be love of perfection, and not compassion for weakness.’ (Todd 2000, 48)

The implications of Burke’s position on love and beauty extended beyond womanhood, as she continued, To say the truth, I not only tremble for the souls of women, but for the good natured man, whom everyone loves. The amiable weakness of his mind is a strong argument against its immateriality, and seems to prove that beauty relaxes the solids of the soul as well as the body. (Todd 2000, 48)

‘Have ye not heard that we cannot serve two masters? an immoderate desire to please contracts the faculties and immerges [sic], to borrow the idea of a great philosopher, the soul in matter, till it becomes unable to mount on the wing of contemplation’ (Todd 2000, 23). In many ways, Burke’s idea of love, what was lovable, and what human beings underwent to make themselves so, fits rather well with Wollstonecraft’s claim. She was to accept in her Vindication of the Rights of Woman the substance of what we just saw her rejecting in the Vindication of the Rights of Men. Seeing her sex in his eyes, she endeavoured to make them cease to be lovable, and sought instead to make them worthy of admiration.14

Bibliography Boulton, J.T., ed. 1958. A philosophical enquiry into the origin of our ideas of the sublime and beautiful. London: Routledge. Gunther-Canada, W. 1998. The politics of sense and sensibility: Mary Wollstonecraft and Catharine Macaulay Graham on Edmund Burke’s reflections on the revolution in France. In Women writers and the early-modern British political tradition, ed. Hilda L. Smith. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hutton, Sarah. 2003. The ethical background of the rights of women. In Philosophical theory and the universal declaration of human rights, ed. William Sweet. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press. ———. 2005. Liberty, equality and god: The religious roots of Catherine Macaulay’s feminism. In Women, gender and enlightenment, ed. Sarah Knott and Barbara Taylor. London: Palgrave.

 For a further discussion of her views on love and respect, see my ‘Reflections on Inequality, respect and love in the political writings of Mary Wollstonecraft (note 5 above).

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11  ‘Have Ye Not Heard That We Cannot Serve Two Masters?’: The Platonism of Mary… 189 Larrissy, Edward. 1994. Blake and platonism. In Platonism and the English imagination, ed. Anna Baldwin and Sarah Hutton. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Plato. 1961. In The collected dialogues, including the letters, ed. Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ———. 2000. The republic, ed. G.R.F.  Ferrari, Trans. Tom Griffith. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Raine, Kathleene. 1977. Berkeley, Blake and the new age. Ipswich: Golgonooza Press. Raine, Kathleen. 1979. Blake and antiquity. London: Routledge. Raine, Kathleen, and George Mills, eds. 1969. Thomas Taylor the platonist: Selected writings. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Taylor, Barbara. 2003. Mary Wollstonecraft and the feminist imagination. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Todd, Janet. 2000. Mary Wollstonecraft: A revolutionary life. London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson. Tomaselli, Sylvana. Forthcoming. Reflections on inequality, respect and love in the political writings of Mary Wollstonecraft. In The social and political philosophy of Mary Wollstonecraft, ed. Sandrine Berges and Alan M.S.J. Coffee. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wollstonecraft, Mary. 1989. Analytical review, Article 1, Vol. 8 (November 1790). In The works of Mary Wollstonecraft. Vol. 7. ed. Janet Todd and Marilyn Butler, assistant ed. Emma Rees-­ Mogg. London: William Pickering. ———. 1995. In A vindication of the rights of men, with a vindication of the rights of woman and hints, ed. Sylvana Tomaselli. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Chapter 12

‘This Is Not Quite Fair, Master More!’: Coleridge and the Cambridge Platonists James Vigus

Abstract  This chapter traces the evolution of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s references to and affinities with the Cambridge Platonists, in order to lay the groundwork for a thorough comparison of ideas. Both the Cambridge Platonists and Coleridge modified a strongly dualistic philosophical legacy, the former responding to Descartes, the latter to Kant. Indeed, Coleridge’s study of More, Cudworth and Smith took place in parallel with his engagement with German thought, which helps to explain his portrayal of Schelling and other Naturphilosophen as ‘imitators’ of the Cambridge Platonists. The chapter analyses Coleridge’s direct, argumentative comments on the Cambridge Platonists; his use of images from Cudworth at different stages of his career; his engagement with Cudworth’s concept of ‘plastic nature’; and his use of Cudworth’s thought on the origin of evil, the ‘seniority’ of mind over world, and the Trinity. It concludes with a brief consideration of the theme of the pre-existence of the soul. Despite the apparently radical nature of Coleridge’s transition from Unitarianism to Trinitarianism, it emerges that his maintenance of interest in the historical scholarship of Cudworth and the poetry and philosophy of More reflects the longstanding consistency of his intellectual concerns. In 1817, one of the most philosophically erudite readers in England was studying Cudworth’s Treatise of Eternal and Immutable Morality (1731) in his favourite, peripatetic fashion. Henry Crabb Robinson recorded: I walked back to tea. On my walk I read what I began on my journey to Witham Cudworth on the Immutability of Truth – An Essay too verbose & too minutely argumentative, but of great ability & high interest – written to prove that there is a class of ideas or Cogitations of the Mind quite independent of all which have their origin in sense. He has with too great a waste of learning & powers of understanding disproved the theory of Locke – and yet with so little effect that Locke has remained the victorious master, the hero of our country & the

J. Vigus (*) School of English and Drama, Queen Mary University of London, London, UK e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 D. Hedley, D. Leech (eds.), Revisioning Cambridge Platonism: Sources and Legacy, International Archives of the History of Ideas Archives internationales d’histoire des idées 222, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22200-0_12

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imagined founder of our philosophy – and this admirable book has remained a dead letter – making few converts I fear[.]1

Robinson is not making the anachronistic suggestion that Cudworth wrote against Locke, but is rather contrasting two broad tendencies in seventeenth-century philosophy. He probably confided his thoughts on this book only to his own diary, since he would have found few fellow enthusiasts for the relatively obscure works of Cudworth. Further evidence from Robinson’s diary suggests that they may have been difficult to acquire in the early nineteenth century: on 6 November 1823 he mentions at last buying ‘a Cudworth I have been long in search of’. He had first read Cudworth’s True Intellectual System of the Universe in February 1806 (Notebook, entry 14 February 1806). As Robinson emphasizes in the above-quoted passage, Cudworth’s anti-empiricism, however intellectually persuasive it may have been, had long remained underground. Similarly, Robinson understood that the philosophical writings of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, many of which remained unpublished, were deliberately esoteric in manner. (While reading Coleridge’s Aids to Reflection, Robinson noted, on 18 May 1826: ‘a book of great talent but of strange singularities. His religion that of the vulgar, his philosophy his own’ (Robinson 1938 I 335).) What Robinson could not have known, though it might not have surprised him, is that the influence of Cambridge Platonism on Coleridge emerged with greatest force in a fragmentary work largely composed in the 1820s, the Opus Maximum. This text, an esoteric one in the sense that its readership was intended to be restricted, finally emerged to complete the Bollingen Collected Coleridge as late as 2002. The principal editor of the Opus Maximum, Thomas McFarland, wrote in his ‘Prolegomena’ to the volume that a ‘most important study could be written—it has not been accomplished so far—on the varied effects of Cudworth on Coleridge’s mentation’ (clxii). The present chapter has more modest aims. Having explained the absence of a study such as McFarland called for, it attempts to lay a historical and textual foundation for a thorough comparison of ideas. In doing so, it also shows that the Cambridge Platonists remained a crucial point of reference for Coleridge throughout his career as a poet, lecturer and philosopher. I suggest that there is (as yet) no full study on Coleridge and the Cambridge Platonists precisely due to the esoteric atmosphere of the topic, which Robinson’s above-quoted comments underline. The fact that the Opus Maximum remained so long unknown to all but a few specialist readers of the manuscripts is a case in point. Although he was immersed in seventeenth-century prose and poetry, Coleridge cited Ralph Cudworth, Henry More, John Smith and Benjamin Whichcote only infrequently in his published works (he wrote marginalia to the latter three). Further, 1  Henry Crabb Robinson, ‘Diary’, 13 April 1817. Quotations from Robinson’s manuscripts are by permission of the Director and Trustees of Dr. Williams’s Library, London, and the Crabb Robinson Project (editors Timothy Whelan and James Vigus), School of English and Drama, Queen Mary University of London. On Robinson’s philosophical background, see Robinson 2010. Cf. Passmore 1951 (22): ‘Cudworth’s arguments are not without a certain force: he sees, as Locke was not to see, that a passive mind could never perceive […] as distinct from merely being susceptible to pressure.’ My thanks go to Peter Cheyne for his invaluable comments on a draft of this chapter.

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although contemporaries did recognise Coleridge’s fascination with Cudworth and More in particular, the parallels drawn have sometimes been barbed. William Hazlitt, whose youthful admiration of Coleridge subsequently gave way to disillusion, noted that Coleridge ‘was deep-read in … Cudworth’s Intellectual System (a huge pile of learning, unwieldy, enormous)’.2 This comment implies that studying Cudworth was a singularly impractical activity – of the kind, perhaps, that contributed to the mythical ruin of Coleridge’s genius. Over a century later, René Wellek’s Kant in England (1931) set out to undermine Coleridge’s credentials as a philosopher in opposition to J.H. Muirhead’s portrayal of him as a faithful inheritor of a Platonic tradition. Wellek reinvigorated a hostile line of Coleridge criticism, claiming that he had failed to understand Kant’s Copernican revolution in philosophy. According to Wellek, Coleridge slipped back into a pre-critical, seventeenth-­century, ‘mere philosophy of faith’ (Wellek 135; see also Vigus, Platonic Coleridge 49). Wellek’s approach accorded with Ernst Cassirer’s dismissal of the Cambridge Platonists as mystical in an obscurantist sense. Cassirer barely mentions Cudworth in The Philosophy of the Enlightenment and states at the outset of The Platonic Renaissance in England that he played ‘no decisive part’ in early modern philosophy (Cassirer 1). Wellek’s argument gained traction by rebutting Claud Howard’s claim that the Cambridge Platonists had anticipated all the essential doctrines of Kant regarding the a priori, time and space, and the moral law, and that Coleridge had correctly recognised this anticipation. Howard’s thesis, inspired by the work of A.O.  Lovejoy, was perhaps unfortunately expressed rather than entirely wrong. Coleridge did claim that Platonism prepared his mind to receive German thought (Vigus, Platonic Coleridge 24); he also posited cycles of anticipation and renewal in the history of philosophy, most systematically so in his Lectures on the History of Philosophy (ibid. 96–8). Further, the relationship between Cudworth’s True Intellectual System (as mediated via Mosheim’s Latin translation with commentary) and German philosophers of Coleridge’s era is a significant one. Using manuscripts that many earlier scholars (including Coleridge himself) would not have seen, Stephen Darwall demonstrates that Cudworth and other Cambridge Platonists ‘advanced versions of a thesis we are much more familiar with in Kant: that moral obligation is self-imposed in the practical reasoning of a self-determining agent’ (110–111). As recent scholarship has established, the German afterlives of the Cambridge Platonists are very important: F. W. J. Schelling drew on Cudworth for an early manuscript work on the history of Gnosticism (Hedley, ‘Cudworth, Coleridge and Schelling’); F. H. Jacobi’s precipitation of the pantheism controversy involved a cabbalistic interpretation of Spinoza indebted to the Christian Cabbalism of Henry More (Hedley, ‘Philosophia Trinitatis’); and Herder, responding to Jacobi, echoed Cudworth’s notion of plastic nature to amend Spinozism (Hampton). In the early nineteenth century, Coleridge 2  Hazlitt 59. The unwieldiness of Cudworth’s True Intellectual System has long been noted by apologists and critics alike. Berkeley, another early favourite of Coleridge, refers in Siris to the ‘learned Dr. Cudworth’ (qtd. Passmore 1), and Cudworth’s foremost twentieth-century interpreter states that ‘Cudworth must somehow be rescued from his own wordiness’ (Passmore vii).

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eagerly read these authors, especially Kant, Schelling and Jacobi. (For further lines of transmission, see Kringler.) Even such a brief summary makes apparent that the common distinction between Coleridge’s ‘German’ and ‘native’ philosophical sources is oversimplified, and needs to be dissolved if an accurate intellectual ­biography of the poet-philosopher is ever to be written. However, it is understandable that in the wake of Wellek’s work and for the rest of the twentieth century, defenders of Coleridge’s philosophical acumen tended either to ignore or downplay his association with the Cambridge Platonists. Even McFarland, while acknowledging (again) that Cudworth was ‘important’, immediately qualified this by asserting that Coleridge found no ‘coherence, rigor, control’ in Cudworth, and that More’s ‘logical and systematic fuzziness’ was ‘uncongenial’ to Coleridge (McFarland 24).3 Seeing beyond these apparently problematic links between Coleridge and the Cambridge Platonists is a necessary but far from straightforward task. This is because all these writers have usually been consigned to second-class status in the history of philosophy. Just as the Cambridge Platonists dealt with the legacy of a great philosopher, Descartes (Leech; Gyisi), so Coleridge engaged in the great intellectual challenge of his own age: determining the implications for religious faith of Kant’s Copernican Revolution in philosophy. Both the Cambridge Platonists and Coleridge set about modifying a starkly dualistic system, seeking ways to bridge the divisions between matter and spirit, phenomenon and noumenon, or natural necessity and inner freedom (cf. Passmore 23). This process was by its very nature an untidy one. For his supposed failure to create a system Coleridge, like the Cambridge Platonists, has sometimes been over-harshly judged. Recent scholarship, however, has laid the foundations for a revaluation. For instance, Benjamin Carter – echoing the above-quoted judgment of Henry Crabb Robinson – points out that Cudworth’s prestige as a philosopher has unjustly suffered from the ‘historical triumph of Locke’s empiricism’, which marginalized Neoplatonism (104). The Revisioning Cambridge Platonism project is now in the process of establishing a more accurate view. In a parallel development, it is now recognised that Coleridge’s Platonic response to Kant and post-Kantian philosophy began early in his career (Class) and was not an aberration, but addressed the key aspects of the German debates (Hamilton; Vigus, ‘The Philosophy of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’). I therefore commence from the position that Cudworth, More and Coleridge are sufficiently substantial thinkers to warrant close comparison. In what follows, I will analyse Coleridge’s direct comments on the Cambridge Platonists; his use of images from Cudworth at different stages of his career; his engagement with Cudworth’s concept of ‘plastic nature’; the development of his affinities with Cudworth on the origin of evil, the ‘seniority’ of mind over world, and the Trinity; and conclude with a brief consideration of the theme of the pre-existence of the soul.

3  McFarland’s opponent in scholarly polemic, Norman Fruman, abruptly dismisses Coleridge’s interaction with Cudworth (Fruman 1971, 475 n.57).

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12.1  Coleridge on the Cambridge Platonists Coleridge did not in fact subscribe to a belated or anachronistic Cambridge Platonism, as Wellek implied when arraigning Coleridge’s supposed ‘mere philosophy of faith’. Rather he took a critical attitude to this group of philosophers, and especially to Henry More. The quotation I have used for the title of this chapter – ‘This is not quite fair, Master More!’ – appears in Coleridge’s marginalia to More (Marginalia III 907). Though not especially significant in itself, it represents the humorous, cajoling tone that Coleridge took with authors whom he considered worth arguing with. In his marginalia to the Cambridge Platonists, Coleridge repeatedly expresses a basic reservation about their philosophical method. Of Smith, he notes that despite anticipating Kant on the priority of mind, the Cambridge Platonists failed to attain a transcendental level of investigation: ‘What they all wanted was, a pre-inquisition into the mind, as part Organ, part Constituent of all Knowledge: an examination of the Scales, Weights and Measures themselves, abstracted from the Objects to be weighed or measured by them – in short, a transcendental Aesthetic, Logic, and Noetic.’ (Marginalia III 81). He repeats this charge in marginalia to More (probably written at the end of 1823), lamenting 1st and foremost, the want of that logical προπαιδεια δоκιμαστικη [examinatory propaedeutic preparatory to learning], that Critique of the human intellect, which previous to the weighing and measuring of this or that begins by assaying the weights, measures, and scales themselves – that fulfilment of the heaven-descended, Nosce teipsum, in respect to the intellective part of Man, which was commenced in a sort of tentative broad-cast way by Lord Bacon in his Novum Organum, and brought to a systematic Completion by Immanuel Kant’ (Marginalia III 919).

(Claud Howard overlooked such warnings on Coleridge’s part.) In this same lengthy annotation Coleridge regrets the Platonists’ ‘ignorance of Natural Science’ (Marginalia III 919) and their ‘corrupt mystical theurgical Pseudo-platonism’ (Marginalia III 920), which induced Henry More and Joseph Glanvill’s unfortunate belief in phenomena such as witchcraft. Further, Coleridge makes sharp comments about the influence of the masculine milieu of seventeenth-century Cambridge on these writers’ styles of prose and argument. He did so despite expressing a certain envy of scholars who, unlike himself, enjoyed the structure of a university within which to pursue their speculations. Responding to More’s overly-explicit reference to an opponent having ‘polluted so many sheets of paper with thy Nocturnall Conundrums’, Coleridge writes: ‘This is an exquisite specimen of university Wit and Manners in 1650—or rather of that style which is sure to prevail among Cœlibates & in works destined for the exclusive Reading of young or old Bachelors—! i.e. [? given/gross] even to emetica!’ (Marginalia III 907). These remarks may seem unimportant. As I have suggested, however, Coleridge sparred in this way only with authors whom he considered worthy of the trouble. He shared with Robinson the belief that the Cambridge Platonists were unjustly neglected. In his Table Talk he defended the ‘wise and thoughtful Cudworth’ (II

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458–9), and he stated that More’s works ‘contain more original, enlarged and elevating views of the Christian Dispensation, than I have met with in any other single Volume’ (Marginalia III 918). More, in his view, required a rigorous editor to separate the wheat from the chaff: ‘there are few [Writer]s, whose works could be so easily defecated as More’s. Mere Omission [would] suffice – & perhaps one Half (an unusually large proportion) would [come fo]rth from the furnace, pure Gold’ (Marginalia III 920–1). Studying the Cambridge Platonists was, for Coleridge, an important step in a project of his own, that of reviving the intellectual springs of the University of Cambridge (Hedley, Coleridge, Philosophy, and Religion 1). Writing in 1812, he exclaimed: ‘What scholar but must at times have a feeling of splenetic regret, when he looks at the list of novels, in 2, 3, or 4 volumes each, published monthly by Messrs. Lane, &c. and then reflects, that there are valuable works of Cudworth, prepared by himself for the press, yet still unpublished by the University which possesses them, and which ought to glorify in the name of their great author!’ (Shorter Works and Fragments I 315; also in Southey, Omniana, I 236–7). Coleridge had evidently noted Thomas Birch’s account of Cudworth’s manuscripts in the preface to the 1743 True Intellectual System (Flores, Plastic Intellectual Breeze 280). Long before John Tulloch coined the term ‘Cambridge Platonists’, Coleridge had a firm sense of their group identity, as Tulloch acknowledged (McFarland 365). His nomenclature is notably precise, and perhaps responds to these writers’ own terminological ingenuity. In marginalia to Smith, Coleridge calls them ‘Plotinists’ (Marginalia V 80, cf. 81), and as though to refine this term further, he refers to them in marginalia to More as ‘Proclo-plotinian Platonists’ (Marginalia III 909). As Sarah Hutton explains, ‘Platonism’ is ‘a misleading term to describe the affiliations of More, Cudworth and their colleagues from Emmanuel College, if by Platonism we mean an exclusive adherence to the teachings of Plato …. They interpreted Plato alongside the later Platonists, notably Plotinus, and drew on other ancient philosophies besides Platonism, including Stoicism and Greek atomism but also Aristotelianism.’ (Hutton 309). In acknowledging the wide range of their sources, Coleridge recognised exactly this (Kabitoglou).

12.2  C  oleridge’s Reading of Cudworth: Early Fascination and Later Return There is no evidence that Coleridge encountered the Cambridge Platonists as an undergraduate at Cambridge. It is possible that he did so, especially since Charles Lamb famously recollected hearing the schoolboy Coleridge read Iamblichus and Plotinus aloud in the cloisters of Christ’s Hospital (Vigus, Platonic Coleridge 24). But if Coleridge did not read the Cambridge Platonists at Cambridge, then the omission may have informed his belief that the academics were neglecting their own heritage in failing to publish Cudworth’s manuscripts. What is certain is that Coleridge read More and especially Cudworth in Bristol in 1795, where, having

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adopted the form of rational dissent known as Unitarianism (or Socinianism), he gave a short series of politically radical lectures. The evidence for his reading of More at this time is circumstantial yet convincing: in his notebook he writes, ‘The prayers of enthusiast a pious drunkenness, a spiritual concupiscence, presumptuous self-idolatry—’ (Notebooks I, entry 190). As Kathleen Coburn points out, the key words in this entry appear in More’s Enthusiasmus Triumphatus.4 Coleridge’s engagement with Cudworth is more directly apparent. On 15 May 1795, he borrowed the two-volume True Intellectual System (the second edition of 1743, edited by Thomas Birch), returning it on 1 June.5 On 9 November 1796 he borrowed the same work, this time for a month, until 13 December (Whalley). Some phrases from Cudworth accordingly appear his notebook in this period. They indicate that Coleridge’s purpose in reading Cudworth was to assimilate arguments against atheism. Thus he comments that the scientist-poet Erasmus Darwin too rashly ‘makes up his mind on such important subjects, as whether we be the outcasts of a blind idiot called Nature, or the children of an all-wise and infinitely good God’ (Letters I 177 to Josiah Wade 27 January 1796; see Schrickx 73). In another letter, just a couple of days later, Coleridge added of Darwin that ‘He is an Atheist—but has no new arguments and does not seem acquainted with many ingenious old ones.’ What must have been in the back of Coleridge’s mind, as Schrickx notes, is that Cudworth’s True Intellectual System provided an array of arguments for atheism, in the process of refuting them. (Letters I 178–9, 29 Jan 1796 to Rev. John Edwards. As Coleridge may already have known, Pierre Bayle considered Cudworth’s work to be covertly atheistic.) Schrickx (74) draws attention to a third letter, again to Edwards (20 March 1796, Letters I 193), in which Coleridge critically questions the theology of Joseph Priestley: ‘Has not Dr Priestly forgotten that Incomprehensibility is as necessary an attribute of the First Cause, as Love, or Power, or Intelligence?’ The ‘incomprehensibility’ of God is a favourite emphasis of Cudworth. Coleridge’s rhetorical question about Priestley may appear to support a traditional notion about the role of Cudworth in his intellectual development. While a Unitarian, Coleridge was a prominent supporter of Priestley, whose History of the Corruptions of Christianity (1782) he used for his 1795 lectures. He hailed Priestley in Religious Musings, a long poem published in 1796, as ‘Patriot, and Saint, and Sage’ (line 387). Commentators have sometimes supposed that an interest in a Trinitarian polemicist such as Cudworth would have been highly exceptional for a Unitarian in the 1790s. This is a misleading assumption. To be sure, Coleridge’s own account in Biographia Literaria (especially volume one, chap. 9) can be readily enlisted to the view, succinctly expressed by the editors of the 1795 Lectures, that ‘his reading in Cudworth’s Platonism helped him to extricate himself after 1795 from the narrow mechanistic rationalism and materialism exemplified in his Bristol lectures and in the works of the men he most admired at this time, especially David

 Paragraphs xix-xxiii. Schrickx 76, offers further speculation on Coleridge’s reading of More.  Perkins (63n.) notes that ‘Coleridge may also have known the Latin edition of Cudworth’s True Intellectual System (1743), which includes Mosheim’s notes to the text.’ 4 5

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Hartley and Joseph Priestley’ (Lectures on Politics and Religion 86).6 But this familiar narrative underestimates the intellectual capaciousness of the Unitarian movement and its commitment, vigorously asserted by Priestley, to openness of speculative inquiry. For comparison, it is significant that Henry Crabb Robinson, too, was a Unitarian, who maintained an interest in Cudworth from 1805 to at least 1823. Louise Hickman has recently traced further crucial Cambridge Platonist influences on the milieu of rational dissent, and especially on the work of Richard Price and Mary Wollstonecraft. Priestley himself mined Cudworth’s work, and many of the passages of Cudworth to which Coleridge refers in notes made for his 1795 Lectures would have been brought to his attention by Priestley’s Disquisitions Relating to Matter and Spirit (1777). It was Priestley who promoted the doctrine of ‘philosophical necessity’ by editing an abridgement of David Hartley’s Observations on Man; the second part of Hartley’s work (omitted in Priestley’s edition) being ‘a kind of unitarian Christian “Platonism”, with a pseudo-Calvinistic flavor’ (Marsh 272; see also Haven). Cudworth’s encyclopaedic thoroughness lent his work to being deployed on different sides of theological arguments: the True Intellectual System ‘became a handbook of philosophical ideas’ (Hedley,  Coleridge, Philosophy, and Religion 35). Thus on the one hand, Joseph Berington, in Immaterialism Delineated (1779), deploys Cudworth to argue that the Church Fathers, contra Priestley, did maintain the notion of incorporeal substance (Mills 178). But on the other, as Robert Schofield suggests, Priestley’s theological scholarship formed a point of convergence for the ‘streams in which Cambridge Neoplatonism flows into the eighteenth century’ (Schofield 242). Cudworth was, for instance, read in the Dissenting Academies, albeit not central to their curricula.7 In sum, an interest in Cambridge Platonism may have been unusual but was not necessarily eccentric for a rational dissenter in the 1790s. Priestley’s ‘sublime theological works’, as the young Coleridge called them, in some respects echoed the speculative historicism of Cudworth (although of course reaching Unitarian rather than Trinitarian conclusions). Further, Priestley directly challenges Cudworth, notably arguing that Cudworth’s attribution of Trinitarianism to Plato on the basis of the latter’s ‘Second Letter’ is not ‘properly supported’ (An History of Early Opinions Concerning Jesus Christ I 349). All this has considerable bearing on Coleridge’s intellectual development. As Hedley emphasises: ‘It is in the light of [Priestley’s] criticism of the “obscurities” of the “Platonic Trinity” that we should try to understand the single most important development in Coleridge’s mind: the move from Unitarianism to Trinitarian theology and metaphysics’ (Hedley, Coleridge, Philosophy, and Religion 58).

6  Cf. also Class 2012, 71. Hazlitt made the comparable suggestion that Coleridge used ‘Bishop Berkeley’s fairy-world’ to ‘escape from Dr. Priestley’s Materialism, where he felt himself imprisoned by the logician’s spell, like Ariel in the cloven pine-tree’ (Hazlitt 1969, 59). 7  The Virtual Library System of the Dissenting Academies Project, Queen Mary Centre for Religion and Literature in English, lists many holdings of Cambridge Platonist works in Dissenting Academy libraries (http://vls.english.qmul.ac.uk/)

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As a radical, Priestleyan-Unitarian lecturer in 1795, Coleridge took a highly ambitious approach. His Prospectus advertised the topic as follows: ‘The Subjects of the first Lecture are the Being and Attributes of a God—The Origin of Evil. The Necessity of Revelation deduced from the Nature of Man. A Defence and Examination of the Mosaic Dispensation—’ (Lectures on Politics and Religion 83). These – as I will discuss below – are the very same concerns that Coleridge still retains when he pieces together his mature speculative theology in the Opus Maximum some three decades later. In his first lecture of 1795 Coleridge takes up Cudworth’s project of combating atheism. The notes on atheism he drafted in preparation (‘Remarks &c on Atheism’, Shorter Works and Fragments I 28–32) show that he absorbed the various categories expounded by Cudworth, including the crucial distinction between crude, atomistic atheism which posits a universe of inert fragments, and ‘hylozoick’ atheism which attributes to matter a ‘plastic’ life (though without consciousness). Coleridge draws this distinction himself in Lecture One (Lectures on Politics and Religion 98–99; 99 n.1). His poetic intelligence fastened especially on the following image in the True Intellectual System: ‘The Numen, which the hylozoick Corporealist pays all his devotions to, is a certain blind she-god … called Nature, or the life of matter; which is a very great mystery, a thing that is perfectly wise, and infallibly omniscient, without any knowledge or consciousness at all’ (Cudworth, True Intellectual System I 107; cited in editorial notes in Lectures on Politics and Religion 93 n.1, and 100 n.1). Coleridge begins his lecture with ‘An Allegoric Vision’, which evinces a close parallel to Cudworth’s description of hylozoic living material. Here, Coleridge elaborately recounts a dream of the ‘Temple of Superstition’, a place of darkness with illegible inscriptions on the walls, which the priests term mysteries. Many who escape this gloomy place rush headlong into a cave in which an old man is poring over the torso of a statue with a microscope. The statue is called Nature. Coleridge thus implies that natural philosophy, perhaps not least among the rational dissenters, has replaced the superstition of traditional religion with a new kind of superstition. It is in the language that Coleridge attributes to the old man of the cave that Cudworth’s imagery emerges: [He] spoke in diverse Tongues and unfolded many Mysteries, and among other strange Things he talked much about an infinite Series of Causes—which he explained to be—a string of blind men of which the last caught hold of the skirt of the one before him, he of the next, and so on till they were all out of sight; and that they all walked straight without making one false step. We enquired, Who there is at the head to guide them. He answered No one, but that the string of blind men went on for ever without a beginning for though one blind man could not move without stumbling, yet that infinite Blindness supplies the want of sight. I burst into Laughter at this strange exposition and awoke – (Lectures on Politics and Religion 1795, 92-3)

The metaphor Cudworth had used for the supposedly absurd belief in the principle of cause and effect without a governing intelligence took hold in Coleridge’s mind. He proceeds to denounce the ‘Unthinking Essences’ posited by some materialist writers: ‘These are the blind Almighties, that forever act most wisely most benevolently yet never know what they are doing—this is the Unintelligent Intelligence, these are the Ignorant Omniscients to make place for whom we are exhorted by

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modern sages to exclude our God and Untentant the Universe.’ (Lectures on Politics and Religion 99–100; ibid. 100 n.1 traces more elements of this imagery in the True Intellectual System.) Subsequently, not only did Coleridge re-use elements of this allegoric vision,8 he remained fascinated by images of long chains detached from a secure anchor-point. For instance, he was to describe Spinoza as presenting an ‘iron Chain of Logic […] which falls of itself by dissolving the rock of Ice, to which it is stapled’ (Letters I 548). In other words, Spinoza’s first principle must be considered false, though all his reasoning thereafter is consequent. Relatedly, if a little more cryptically, Coleridge in 1818 finally closed his phase of interest in F.W.J. Schelling’s Identitätsphilosophie by dismissing Schelling as a propounder of atheistic ‘Hylozoism’ (Letters IV 883) – echoing Cudworth’s distinctive term of disapprobation. This was not the first time he had adopted such an epithet from Cudworth to criticise a philosopher: in 1795 Coleridge had referred to ‘Descartes, a concealed Atheist’ (Lectures on Politics and Religion 110), evidently recalling Cudworth’s suggestion that an argument might be made for Descartes’ being ‘but an hypocritical Theist, or personated and disguised Atheist’ (Cudworth, True Intellectual System II 646; the allusion is noted in Lectures on Politics and Religion 111 n. 1). The pattern by which Coleridge reused an image from Cudworth in different phases of his career is noteworthy. In the 1797 version of Religious Musings, Coleridge glossed the lines ‘melting into day/What floating mists of Idolatry/Broke and mis-shap’d the Omnipresent Sire’ with a Greek quotation taken from Cudworth: ‘They divided the intelligible into many and several individualities’ (see Wylie 12–13, 24 and n.). The English translation I quote is Coleridge’s own – published over a quarter of a century later in Aids to Reflection, where he redeploys the phrase (Aids to Reflection 33). We will consider another such phrase (‘counterfeit infinity’) below. Again and again, Coleridge returned to the Cambridge Platonists, above all to Cudworth, for both imagery and thought.

12.3  Plastic Nature Cudworth faced a dilemma in grounding his thought. If neither a dualistic system in which God is conceived as absolutely transcendent, nor a materialistic, atomic atheism were tenable, how was the more refined ‘hylozoick’ atheism, or pantheism – identifying God with the world – also to be avoided? A key aspect of Cudworth’s solution consisted in the notion of ‘plastic nature’, expounded in the third chapter of the True Intellectual System. Plastic nature acts an intermediary between the divine mind and creation. Cudworth posits such an intermediary explicitly in order to 8  He revised it in ‘Superstition, Religion, Atheism: An Allegoric Vision’ (Essays on His Times II 262–270), and abridged it as ‘Allegoric Vision’ (Lay Sermons 130–137); see Lectures on Politics and Religion 89n. The target was initially the Church of England, but later becames the Catholic Church. The story of infinite blindness supplying the place of sight reappears in Biographia Literaria, chap. 12 (I 266).

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avoid two unsatisfactory alternatives, namely that God acts immediately in all times and places, or that ‘every thing comes to pass fortuitously’ (Cudworth, True Intellectual System I 147). Plastic nature has no will of its own, but carries out God’s will to shape the world according to benevolent purposes. As Cudworth summarises, plastic nature is a certain lower life than the animal, which acts … according to the direction of mind and understanding, reason and wisdom, for ends, or in order to good, though itself do not know the reason of what it does, nor is master of that wisdom according to which it acts, but only a servant … and drudging executioner of the same; it operating fatally and sympathetically, according to laws and commands prescribed to it by a perfect intellect, and imprest upon it; and which is either a lower faculty of some conscious soul, or else an inferior kind of life or soul by itself; but essentially depending upon an higher intellect …’ (Cudworth, True Intellectual System I 172; see also Flores, Plastic Intellectual Breeze 365).

Cudworth’s ‘plastic nature’ thus resembles the ‘spirit of nature’ hypothesized by Henry More. In the 1790s, Coleridge confronted a dilemma similar to Cudworth’s. The optimistic idea of the One Life, which pervades Coleridge and Wordsworth’s Lyrical Ballads of 1798, initially seemed a harmonious poetic adaptation of Priestleyan Unitarianism. ‘Speculative gloom’, however, lay just below this smooth surface. To return letter of 1796 in which Coleridge took Priestley to task for failing to appreciate the divine ‘incomprehensibility’: ‘How is it that Dr Priestley is not an atheist?’, asks Coleridge. ‘He asserts in three different Places, that God not only does, but is, every thing.—But if God be every Thing, every Thing is God—: which is all, the Atheists assert—. An eating, drinking, lustful God—with no unity of Consciousness— these appear to me the unavoidable Inference from his philosophy’ (Letters I 192; to the Rev. John Edwards, 19 March 1796). As Nicholas Halmi observes, ‘The pressure of that question grew more insistent in the following years’ (paragraph 14). Coleridge was to announce firmly in a letter of 1802 – after his discovery of Kant – that Christianity was not ‘tenable on the Priestleyan hypothesis’.9 Coleridge’s gradual arrival at this conclusion involved a considerable disappointment, since to equate Priestley’s system with pantheism, or hylozoick atheism, was to admit that this dominant strand of rational dissenting Christianity was nothing less than a trojan horse for the ‘infidelity’ he had attempted to oppose on Priestleyan grounds. In 1810, Coleridge declared, ‘No Trinity, no God’ (Letters III 283, quoted in Opus cxlii). Given this rapid development in Coleridge’s thought, it is not surprising that his poetry registered conflict quite early, especially at moments of apparent intellectual relaxation, between the alternatives of a transcendent versus an all-pervading God who is nothing more than the Universe he saturates and is. Coleridge used Cudworth-­ like language to explore this conflict of views. In the first version of ‘Effusion XXXV, Composed August 20th 1795’, better known as ‘The Eolian Harp’, Coleridge writes: 9  Coleridge to Estlin, 26 July 1802; Letters II 821. Cf. Coleridge, Letters I 482 (8 April 1799): ‘I confess that the more I think, the more I am discontented with the doctrines of Priestly [sic].’

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And what if all of animated nature Be but organic harps diversely framed That tremble into thought, As o’er them sweeps plastic and vast One intellectual breeze At once the soul of each and God of all? (1796, 36–40)

Commentators have long been tempted to associate the word ‘plastic’ in line 38 with Cudworth’s theory (for detailed accounts, see Flores, Plastic Intellectual Breeze 364–370, and Flores, “Contemplant Spirits”). The adjective ‘intellectual’, too, reminds us of the True Intellectual System. H. W. Piper’s caution is admittedly salutary: ‘Though the word ‘plastic’ strongly suggests Cudworth’s influence, it by no means proves it, and the central idea of the passage quoted does not derive from him.’ As Piper points out, this term was ‘common property’ in Neoplatonic thought (Piper 43; Kringler describes the transmission of this idea through Bayle and Leclerc). Further, as Piper implies, this is not in fact a versification of Cudworth’s idea, since the speaker of the poem is dreamily identifying the divine ‘breeze’ with the soul of each ‘organic’ being. He does so in the form of a tentative rhetorical question, which a ‘serious’ glance from his soon-to-be wife provokes him to withdraw, mindful of the pantheistic heresy. ‘Plastic’ nature here is not, as it is in Cudworth, a mediator between a transcendent God and his creation. Nevertheless, in view of other echoes of Cudworth’s imagery in Coleridge’s verse (of which more below), the possibility that the True Intellectual System played some part in the One Life ideal remains plausible (see further Coleridge 2004, 19; Piper 1962, 43–44). Indeed, such terminology continued to fascinate Coleridge, who coined the term ‘esemplastic’ to define a certain form of imagination (Biographia Literaria I 168– 70, 295, 303).10 In Coleridge’s later theoretical writing, the concept of creative nature as natura naturans, whose spirit may be assimilated by the human artist, bears at least some affinity with ‘plastic nature’: ‘If the Artist painfully copies nature, what an idle rivalry! … The essence must be mastered – the natura naturans, & this presupposes a bond between Nature in this higher sense and the soul of Man –’. (Notebooks III 4397, f. 50; notes for the lecture ‘On Poesy or Art’). Cudworth had evocatively explored this relationship between the artist and his natural materials. He draws an analogy between the fertile mind of an architect or a musician and the divine creativity that operates through plastic nature: If the oecodomical art, which is in the mind of the architect, were supposed to be transfused into the stones, bricks and mortar, there acting upon them in such a manner as to make them come together of themselves, and range themselves into the form of a complete edifice, as Amphion was said, by his harp, to have made the stones move, and place themselves orderly of their own accord, and so to have built the walls of Thebes; or if the musical art were conceived to be immediately in the instruments and strings, animating them as a living soul, and making them to move exactly, according to the laws of harmony, without any external

 By 1822, Coleridge was using ‘esemplastic’ with a different meaning: it now described not the power of imagination (as opposed to fancy), but ‘Sense’: ‘the esemplastic and image—making Faculty (= the Sense)’. Notebooks III 4929.

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impulse: these, and such like instances, in Aristotle’s judgment, would be fit iconisms or representations of the plastick nature, that being art itself acting immediately upon the matter as an inward principle in it. (Cudworth, True Intellectual System I 155)

Although it is not possible to prove that Coleridge paid any particular attention to this passage, it resonates with his poem ‘Kubla Khan’. Kubla Khan creates a ‘stately pleasure-dome’ merely by ‘decree’, just as God – or perhaps the Platonic Demiurge – created the world. The poet aspires to an analogous kind of effortless creativity, yet this hope remains provisional and unfulfilled. This is apparent in the conditional tenses in the final stanza: of the ‘damsel with a dulcimer’, the poet exclaims, ‘Could I revive within me/Her symphony and song’ (emphasis mine). If he could recollect the maiden’s song, what the poet would achieve is this: ‘I would build that dome in air’. This line is usually read as an allusion to Amphion, the inspired singer and orphan who built the walls of Thebes through his music alone. The allusion returns us to the above-quoted passage from Cudworth. Cudworth, too, employs conditional verbs. If an artist could create directly, without having to struggle to shape his material, his work would be analogous with plastic nature, which acts (to use Cudworth’s word) ‘immediately’. In the concluding lines of ‘Kubla Khan’, however, the poet is discovering that his craft is not like this: instead he has to make an effort of will to recollect the song that may enable him to continue composing (Vigus, Platonic Coleridge 86). For this crucial expression of nostalgic longing, then, Coleridge probably delves into his memory of Cudworth’s writing.

12.4  Evil Coleridge’s increasing dissatisfaction with a Priestleyan-Unitarian conception of nature as the One Life turned on the difficulty of explaining the existence of evil. Probably Cudworth played a part in the development of Coleridge’s speculations on this topic, too. Cudworth’s moral thought is relevant to ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’, the opening poem in the 1798 Lyrical Ballads. The first clue appears in an enigmatic Notebook entry that foreshadows the theme of the ‘Rime’ (Notebooks I 273): in that eternal & delirious misery. wrathfires— inward desolations— an horror of great darkness. great things that on the ocean counterfeit infinity—

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The phrase ‘counterfeit infinity’ comes from Cudworth. The context is Cudworth’s argument that ‘Infinity of duration, or eternity, is really nothing else but perfection’: and because infinity is perfection, therefore can nothing, which includeth any thing of imperfection, in the very idea and essence of it, be ever truly and properly infinite, as number, corporeal magnitude, and successive duration. All which can only, mentiri infinitatem, counterfeit and imitate infinity, in their having more and more added to them infinitely, whereby notwithstanding they never reach it, or overtake it. There is nothing truly infinite, neither in knowledge, nor in power, nor in duration, but only one absolutely perfect Being, or the holy Trinity (Cudworth, True Intellectual System II 648-8).

As John Beer points out, ‘Coleridge is taking the point a little further, by introducing an element of fear and desolation into the forms that ‘counterfeit infinity” (Beer 155–6). In an inchoate form, the Notebook entry hints that evil may consist metaphysically in fragmentation from the One. As early as 1795, Coleridge meditated on the origin of evil, about which he was still planning in 1797 to write a poem. Yet his Priestleyan Unitarianism denied the existence of evil. According to the Unitarian world-view, nothing can happen contrary to the will of the One, benevolent God; a universalist tenet which implies that the whole creation will eventually be saved. When Coleridge described himself in 1794 as ‘a compleat Necessitarian’ (Letters I 137), he meant that he endorsed Priestley’s principle of ‘philosophical necessity’, which held that all events unfold in the universe according to an absolute law of cause and effect – or, in other words, according to God’s will. As everything came from God, so everything will return to God. The optimistic perspective thus enabled on things that appear to us ugly or hostile emerges when the Mariner blesses the water-snakes, delighting in them merely because they are ‘living things’ (1834 version, line 274). But further, as Coleridge explained, the moral consequence of this world-view was a radical one: ‘Reasoning strictly and with logical Accuracy I should deny the existence of any Evil, inasmuch as the end determines the nature of the means and I have been able to discover nothing of which the end is not good. Instead of evil, a disputable word, let us use Pain—[…] Pain is intended as a stimulus to Man in order that he may remove moral Evil.’ (Lectures on Politics and Religion 105–6). This conclusion follows logically from the twin convictions that God brings everything to a good end, and that human beings have no free will. Likewise, Coleridge as a Unitarian lecturer taught that ‘vice originates not in the man, but in the surrounding circumstances’, which can always be gradually improved (Lectures on Politics and Religion 40). On this model, we are not responsible for evil, which is not an active power. Coleridge never composed the projected poem on the origin of evil; but he wrote ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ instead. His Unitarian allegiance partly explains the peculiarity in the poem’s treatment of the theme of atonement. For instance, having shot an Albatross without any apparent motivation, the Mariner relates that ‘Instead of the cross, the Albatross/About my neck was hung’ (lines 141–142). At this point, the dead albatross – obtrusively rhymed with ‘cross’ – almost parodies Christ, intensifying rather than relieving the sinner’s suffering. Semi-parody of this kind might seem a fitting strategy for a Unitarian poet who officially considered the

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orthodox doctrine of the atonement to be a mystification of established religion; and yet the pathos of the poem depends on the fact that the Mariner’s need for forgiveness is palpable to the reader (see Hillier). Indeed, Coleridge’s Unitarianism was not stable, but in flux. Cudworth’s notion of a ‘plastic nature’ directed by God may have lent some support to Coleridge’s ideal of the One Life (Coleridge’s Poetry and Prose 19; Piper 43–44)  – but the Cambridge Platonist also argues, crucially, in favour of the objective reality of evil and moral guilt. He memorably describes the consequences of neglecting one’s spiritual state and indulging sensual impulses. This is a condition of ‘disease or distemper in the soul itself’, in Cudworth’s view, in which reason itself is ‘degraded and dethroned’ and the imagination produces ‘boisterous phantasms’. He continues: ‘it is easy to conceive that the divine vengeance (nemesis) may make the soul its own tormentor, though there were no other hell without it, not only by representing most loathsome and affrightful, dismal, and tragical scenes of things to itself, but also by cruciating itself with exquisite and sensible pains’ (Cudworth, A Treatise 71–2). Cudworth’s image of the soul ‘cruciating itself’ foreshadows the condition of Coleridge’s Mariner, self-burdened with the albatross around his neck. In the ‘Rime of the Ancient Mariner’, then, we see Coleridge trying out an idea that he knew to be logically incompatible with Unitarian doctrine: the Mariner’s suffering, although he believes it to be inflicted by external agents, represents the self-torturing corruption of the human will. The Mariner exercises his free will by shooting the albatross, and so he enslaves himself. To this extent, he resembles Cudworth’s man of distempered soul: self-condemned to a nightmarish world, he imagines himself persecuted and then partially redeemed by supernatural forces (Vigus, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”).

12.5  The Seniority of Mind and Trinitarian Theology In adopting Trinitarianism and rejecting his former Unitarianism as tantamount to pantheism, Coleridge moved closer to Cudworth’s ‘intellectual system’. He also continued, in some respects, to adopt Cudworth’s methods. Cudworth constantly claims that the philosophy of his own day repeated ideas from the ancient world. Despite his procedure of cataloguing the opinions of individual philosophers, he is interested in them only insofar as they represent possible intellectual positions. The True Intellectual System treats Descartes as the heir of Pythagoras, Hobbes as the heir of Protagoras, and so on. Coleridge, writing a century-and-a-half later, was of course more critical than Cudworth of assertions of a prisca theologia in the tradition of Marsilio Ficino.11 But he had encountered Cudworth’s cyclical model for the history of philosophy early,12 and he retained it in his Lectures on the History of  Hedley (2017, 934) notes that Cudworth’s assertion of a prisca theologia constituted a critique (rather than wilful ignorance) of Isaac Casaubon’s 1614 demystification of the Corpus Hermeticum. 12  As J. R. de J. Jackson notes, ‘The sequence of Enfield, Cudworth, and Brucker, is probably the most important part of Coleridge’s first independent assault upon the history of philosophy’ (Lectures 1818–1819 on the History of Philosophy xlvii). 11

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Philosophy of 1818–1819. By this time, Coleridge’s principal source for information was W.G. Tennemann’s Geschichte der Philosophie, but he continued to draw on his earlier reading of Cudworth: J. R. de J. Jackson documents various uses of Cudworth, including a case in which he returns to one of his first notebook entries from Cudworth for an opinion on Anaxagoras (I 171n., referring to Notebooks I 208). More importantly than these specific borrowings, Coleridge depicts throughout the lectures a cyclical struggle between true, morally virtuous idealism and corrupt, sensuous materialism or ‘Epicureanism’ (Vigus 2009, 96). The contrast is not taken from Tennemann, but rather is thoroughly in Cudworth’s spirit. The Lectures on the History of Philosophy formed a part of Coleridge’s much larger project to establish a ‘system’ (Barbeau; McFarland in Opus Maximum cxcvii). In general terms, Coleridge’s central, hierarchical distinction between Reason (the uniquely human power of making universal and necessary judgments) and Understanding (which processes sense-impression and is shared with animals) reflected Cudworth’s view that the mind is ‘senior to the world’ (qtd. Hedley, Coleridge, Philosophy, and Religion 60). This affinity should not be over-­ emphasised, of course: Kant, not Cudworth, was the philosopher with whom Coleridge most strenuously engaged in working out this distinction, as his Logic (c.1821) makes clearly evident. But Cudworth remained relevant. In Aids to Reflection (1825), as Hedley has explained, one of Coleridge’s principal tasks was ‘a philosophical defence of the Trinitarian metaphysical conception. Here he was following the steps of Cudworth, to whom Coleridge is deeply indebted’ (Coleridge, Philosophy, and Religion 39). In this work, Coleridge also continued to delight in Cudworth’s Grecian neologisms, using the latter’s platonic term Θεοπαράδοτος σοϕια, ‘the wisdom delivered from God’, to intimate an ancient tradition of theology (Aids to Reflection 41). Aids to Reflection (1825) expounds Trinitarian theology from a practical stance. Coleridge begins by appealing to the reader’s experience of his or her own conscience, which provides evidence of our need for a redeemer. His theological arguments commence from that principle, and the text offers quotations, authorities, biblical quotations and extracts from sermons and other texts (chiefly by Archbishop Leighton) in order to encourage readers to reflect on their own minds. The speculative counterpart to Aids to Reflection, the Opus Maximum, takes a very different approach.13 Like Cudworth, Coleridge in the Opus Maximum undertakes to refute atheism by establishing Trinitarianism. Since it was an esoteric work, unpublished and read only by Coleridge’s innermost circle, Coleridge could openly admit what he knew would provoke ‘chill’ and ‘shock’ in many readers (Opus Maximum 108): that the existence of God cannot be positively demonstrated. Cudworth made a similar declaration in the ‘Preface’ to the True Intellectual System. Further, the Opus Maximum, though a substantial work that addresses central questions of p­ hilosophical  In Letters V 444, Coleridge notes that Aids to Reflection established the concept of the Trinity only negatively; whereas in his ‘larger work’ (Opus Maximum) Coleridge did so positively (Barbeau 2006, 13).

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theology, is incomplete; it is symptomatic that Fragment One opens with the heading ‘Chap. III’. In this respect, too, it invites comparison with Cudworth’s True Intellectual System. Cudworth’s ‘Preface’ explains that his work has three aims: first, to refute atheism and ‘democritick fate’; second, to prove that the nature of God, not his putative arbitrary will, is the basis of morality; and third, to establish human free will. In fact, however, his extensive tome addresses only the first of these aims. More substantially, Cudworth and Coleridge are similar in insisting on the Trinity as an essential principle without which the moral law would be incoherent (see Armour). Specifically, Coleridge maintained the Pythagorean and Platonic ‘tetractys’, according to which (at least in Coleridge’s version) a Ground or ‘prothesis’ logically precedes the Tri-unity (Perkins 64; Plato writes of the ‘tetractys’ only in the Timaeus). Perkins explains: ‘The origins and history of the significance of the tetractys to the Greeks are now (and were by Coleridge’s own time) difficult to reconstruct or identify with confidence. Much of his own development of the theme was based on the comprehensive treatment given to it in Ralph Cudworth’s True Intellectual System of the Universe’ (62, referring to Cudworth, True Intellectual System I 375  f.). Coleridge also knew Henry More’s discussion in Conjectura Cabbalistica of the Pythagorean tetractys in relation to the Cabbala (Perkins 62). The intertextual complexity further increases as Coleridge’s Fragment 3 (‘On the Divine Ideas’), in contrast to Cudworth and More, sternly criticises accounts of the Trinity in the ‘Cabbalists and degenerated Platonists’ (Opus Maximum 215) for their subordinationism. In Coleridge’s view it is impossible for an emanationist system to maintain the equality of three Persons of the Trinity. At the same time, Coleridge avers that Plato’s unwritten doctrines did maintain a Trinity of equal relations. What may be said in summary, however, is that in the Opus Maximum Coleridge revisits the scene of his Cudworth-assisted speculations in the 1790s, but now to support, rather than deconstruct, the Trinity. He returns to the Cudworthian emphasis on incomprehensibility with which he had once queried Priestley’s approach: ‘I have but one end in view, that of presenting an intelligible though not comprehensible Idea of the possibility of that which in some sense or other is, yet is not God nor One with God’ (Opus Maximum 216).14 Moreover, in the 1820s, as in the 1790s, evaluating the logical and speculative triads of Plotinus and other Platonists is, for Coleridge, no antiquarian pursuit, but important to establishing an intellectual system of Trinitarian religion. In his desire to present ‘an intelligible though not comprehensible Idea’ together with his dismissal of ‘degenerated’ (as opposed to true) Platonists’, Coleridge in the Opus Maximum aims to establish his own argument using strict reasoning. In other words, he minimises both appeal to authority and poetic quotation. The argument is designed to make deductive and inferential connection at the level of a priori cognition. The demanding quality of Coleridge’s austere prose in this work, however, throws emphasis on those few passages in which he does quote poetry – specifically that of Wordsworth, Milton, and Henry More. He quotes a few lines from More’s 14

 Hall 1979 traces similarities between Coleridge’s and More’s notions of ‘mystery’.

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‘The Preexistency of the Soul’ and a stanza from Psychozoia (Opus 244). The latter appears at the sublime moment at which he confronts a basic, perennial question of metaphysics: how did multiplicity emerge from the One? He answers by quoting More: We’ll try to borrow from the glorious sun. A little light to illustrate this act, Such as he is in his solstitial noon, When in the welkin there’s no cloudy tract, For to make gross his beams and light refract. Then sweep by all those globes that by reflexion. His long small shafts do rudely beaten back, And let his rays have undenied projection, And so we will pursue this mysteries retection. (Psychozoia II verse 7, qtd. (var.), in Opus Maximum 244)

The insertion of More’s homely verse at a climactic moment of Coleridge’s sublime prose discourse appears surprising. Indeed, in a detailed marginal criticism of the poetry of More and other ‘elder poets not of the first class’, Coleridge diagnoses among other faults ‘[t]hat from a predilection for the lively and exact in similitudes and descriptions, they recur to the mean, the ludicrous, and the odd.’ (He also finds that More indulges in loathesome imagery, is heedless of ‘the influence of associations’, will ‘sacrifice the grand keeping and total impression to particular effects’, and constructs meter for a ‘peculiar and mannered mode of reading or reciting’ (Marginalia III, 913–914).) Nevertheless, Coleridge’s view of More’s achievement as a poet was notably more favourable than that of Robert Southey, who in Omniana (a miscellany to which Coleridge contributed 47 entries) had firmly dismissed Psychozoia: ‘There is perhaps no other poem in existence, which has so little that is good in it, if it has any thing good’ (II 157). Despite his reservations about More as both a philosopher and a poet, Coleridge considered that with ‘the sun … in his solstitial noon’, in the absence of mist or clouds, maintaining ‘undenied projection’, the Cambridge Platonist had supplied an apt image for an ineffable process of thought.

12.6  Pre-Existence Defending his conception of the Trinity, Coleridge appeals to ‘these, from Origen to Thomas à Kempis and to Archbishop Leighton’ (Opus Maximum 152), who have been accused of ‘mysticism’ yet maintain a true conception of the divine tri-unity. The choice of Origen as the authoritative Church Father here is significant: Coleridge elsewhere calls Origen ‘too great a man for his Age’ (Marginalia II 721; also qtd. Opus Maximum 252n.). He would have known about Origen’s speculations partly via the work of Henry More (see Crocker, chap. 8); he knew that Origen was a friend of Plotinus, and that both were taught by Ammonias Saccas. In Origen, the doctrine that the soul exists before it enters a body, so that immortality after death is also consistently maintained before birth, accompanies an emphasis on the fall of

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spirits that occurred notionally prior to the fall of man. This idea underpins Coleridge’s argument in the Opus Maximum: indeed, ‘all the various strands of Coleridge’s thought were driven by a Christian Platonic system that bears comparison with the thought of Origen’ (Holmes 90). Tracing an underground river in the history of philosophy, it is noteworthy that Henry Crabb Robinson perused his friend Wilhelm Benecke’s Origenic theology of pre-existence in the 1830s (Whelan), and sought out material on this topic in the works of Cudworth and More. In an undated manuscript sheet of notes entitled ‘Henry More, D.D.’, Robinson records: ‘In his general preface he asserts his attachm[en]t to the philosophy of Plato & also of Des Cartes at the same time that he imputes all Wisdom to the Cabbala or philosophy of the Hebrews from whom he maintains Pythagoras took his philosophy  – he vindicates the prae-existence of man, as a doctrine admitted by Clem: Alexandrinus, Origen &c […]’. Further, in a set of ‘Notes from Cudworth – Intellectual System’, Robinson reminds himself that ‘None of the Ancients assert[ed] the post without the ante-existence of the Soul’. Thus Robinson, who shared with Coleridge a level of knowledge of German philosophy unusual for writers of their generation, pursued a non-mainstream current of thought in a country in which, as Robinson said, Cudworth’s ‘admirable book has remained a dead letter’ (Diary, 13 April 1817).

12.7  Conclusion Coleridge’s engagement with Cudworth, More, Smith, Glanvill, and other figures from seventeenth-century Cambridge, was sustained and fruitful. It spanned from his early reading of Cudworth in 1795, while a radical lecturer, influenced by Joseph Priestley, who harshly criticised Cudworth’s metaphysics; to his quoting Henry More in the Opus Maximum in the 1820s. Coleridge was conscious that this group fell short of Kantian rigour in delineating the possibilities of transcendental knowledge. As a poet, however, Coleridge adapted images from More and Cudworth; as a theorist of artistic psychology he used concepts such as ‘plastic’ nature and ‘esemplastic imagination’ that echo Cambridge Platonist formulations; and as a philosopher and theologian he turned to Cudworth to assist in developing his thought on the topics of evil and the Trinity. Coleridge was by no means the only Romantic-period writer to rediscover the underground channel of Cambridge Platonism. Robinson, as we have seen, studied Cudworth and More; Hazlitt, too, knew Cudworth; Southey read More, but without enthusiasm; Wordsworth owned and read Cudworth’s True Intellectual System (see Bruhn, who, however, overstates the independence of Wordsworth’s reading from Coleridge’s influence); Shelley’s atomism is thought to have been influenced by Cudworth (Vicario; Grabo 124–9). Yet, Coleridge’s use of and commentary on Cudworth, More and Smith runs far deeper than anything attempted by these writers. In this chapter I have revised a view which I presented in Platonic Coleridge (2009). In that book, I emphasised Coleridge’s attempt to disentangle Plato’s

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d­ ialogues and his dialectical method from the ‘degenerated’ Neoplatonists - such as Iamblichus and Proclus in his theurgic mode (as opposed to Plotinus), with their multiplication of henadic hierarchies and their Orphic magic, of whom he always remained critical. Coleridge’s effort to return ad fontes within the Platonic tradition  – for instance by maintaining that Plato’s Trinity contained equal relations, whereas in the hands of the later Platonists it degenerated into subordinationism – seemed to me to imply that the ‘Proclo-plotinian Platonists’ were peripheral to his main interests. The points of comparison and affinity are nevertheless, I now suggest, considerable. The present chapter has only laid the foundations for the ‘important’ assessment of Cudworth’s influence on Coleridge for which McFarland called in 2002. I have surveyed Coleridge’s critique of, allusions to and affinities with the Cambridge Platonists. More remains to be done to show sufficiently the interrelatedness of Coleridge’s concern with the Trinity and with the origin of evil (for an opening of the discussion, see Vigus, Platonic Coleridge 143–148); and to compare thoroughly the Cambridge Platonists’ notion of Reason as ‘the candle of the Lord’ and Coleridge’s (post-)Kantian distinction between Reason and Understanding. The next stage of this investigation would involve distinguishing Coleridge’s reception of the Cambridge Platonists from his reception of Plotinus. Above all, the underground movement of Origenism from the Cambridge Platonists to Coleridge and Henry Crabb Robinson remains to be thoroughly researched. The main suggestions I have made concern potential methods for such studies. The historiographical dichotomy by which some critics assert that Coleridge espoused a belated, seventeenth-­century ‘mere philosophy of faith’, or a variation on F. H. Jacobi’s fideism, while others respond with the counter-claim that he repudiated the Cambridge Platonists as incoherent, has proved unhelpful. Somewhat similarly, a balanced assessment of these writers’ significance for Coleridge requires setting aside grand narratives of Coleridge’s intellectual biography, the dichotomy this time consisting in the claims on the one hand that abstruse metaphysics killed off Coleridge’s poetic spirit, or on the other that he ‘progressed’ from an inadequate Unitarianism to a more convincing, semi-Anglican Trinitarianism. Coleridge’s thought did develop and transform, but the theological concerns he inherited from Priestley in the 1790s remained ever-present, albeit with changed convictions, in the 1820s. As Hedley puts it: ‘Coleridge denies Priestley’s claim that the Idealistic metaphysics presents a corruption of the Christian faith. Yet he is in basic agreement with much of Priestley’s diagnosis. For Coleridge, Christianity and an idealist metaphysics stand or fall together’ (Hedley, Coleridge, Philosophy, and Religion 55; for a further example of such continuity, see Vigus ‘“Inspirations of which we are not capable”’). Coleridge’s continued interest in Cudworth’s historical scholarship and More’s poetry and philosophy testifies to an intellectual consistency. Coleridge read the Cambridge Platonists as sources for the history of philosophy, but he also tested his own moral thought with and against them, over a period of at least thirty years. ‘Ah!’, he exclaimed in a marginalium to More, ‘What strength might I gather, what comfort might we derive, from the Proclo-plotinian Platonists’ doctrine of the soul, if only they or their Spinosistic imitators, the nature-philosophers of present Germany, had told or could tell us what they meant by I and we, by pain and remorse!

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Poor we are nothing in act, but everything in suffering’ (Marginalia III 909). As we have seen, new scholarship on German responses to the Cambridge Platonists would indicate that the portrayal of Schelling and other Naturphilosophen as their ‘imitators’ is less wild than might first appear. And Coleridge, while frequently delighting in abstruse research, looked constantly for practical – in the sense of moral – arguments in his predecessors. He was right to deplore the absence of editions of Cudworth’s manuscript works. Cudworth’s A Treatise of Free-will was published after Coleridge’s death, but it may be that the closest parallels of all are to be found between the elder Platonist’s unpublished reflections on the basis of the moral law and those of Coleridge in the Opus Maximum and his later Notebooks.

Bibliography Armour, Leslie. 2008. Trinity, Community and Love: Cudworth’s Platonism and the Idea of God. In Platonism at the Origins of Modernity: Studies on Platonism and Early Modern Philosophy, ed. Douglas Hedley and Sarah Hutton, 113–129. Dordrecht: Springer. Barbeau, Jeffrey W. 2006. The Quest for System: An Introduction to Coleridge’s Lifelong Project. In Coleridge’s Assertion of Religion: Essays on the ‘Opus Maximum’, 1–32. Leuven: Peeters. Beer, John. 1977. Coleridge’s Poetic Intelligence. London: Macmillan. Bruhn, Mark. 2018. Wordsworth before Coleridge: The Growth of the Poet’s Philosophical Mind. New York: Routledge. Carter, Benjamin. 2010. The Standing of Ralph Cudworth as a Philosopher. In Insiders and Outsiders in Seventeenth-Century Philosophy, ed. G.A.J. Rogers, Tom Sorrell, and Jill Kraye, 99–121. London: Routledge. Cassirer, Ernst. 1953. The Platonic Renaissance in England. Trans. James P. Pettegrove. Edinburgh: Nelson. Class, Monika. 2012. Coleridge and Kantian Ideas in England, 1796–1817. London: Bloomsbury. Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. 1956–1971. The Collected Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. 6 vols. ed. Earl Leslie Griggs. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———. 1957–2002. The Notebooks of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Ed. Kathleen Coburn, Merton Christensen and Anthony Harding. 5 vols in 10. New York/London/Princeton: Routledge and Kegan Paul. ———. 1971. Lectures 1795: On Politics and Religion, ed. Lewis Patton and Peter Mann. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ———. 1978. Essays on his Times in the Morning Post and the Courier. 3 vols. ed. David V. Erdman. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ———. 1980–2001. Marginalia. 6 vols. ed. George Whalley and H.  J. Jackson. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ———. 1983. Biographia Literaria. 2 vols. ed. James Engell and Walter Jackson Bate. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ———. 1990. Table Talk. 2 vols. ed. Carl Woodring. ———. 1993. Aids to Reflection. Ed. John Beer. ———. 1995. Shorter Works and Fragments. 2 vols. ed. H. J. Jackson and J. R. de J. Jackson. ———. 2000a. Lectures 1818–1819 on the History of Philosophy. 2 vols. ed. J. R. de Jackson. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ———. 2000b. Opus Maximum. Ed. Thomas McFarland with the assistance of Nicholas Halmi. ———. 2001. Poetical Works. Part 1. Poems (Reading Text). 2 vols. ed. J. C. C. Mays. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

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———. 2004. Coleridge’s Poetry and Prose, ed. Nicholas Halmi, Paul Magnuson, and Raimonda Modiano. New York: Norton. Crocker, Robert. 2003. Henry More, 1614–1687: A Biography of the Cambridge Platonist. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Cudworth, Ralph. 1743. The True Intellectual System of the Universe. 2 vols. Ed. Thomas Birch. London: Walthoe. ———. 1996. A Treatise Concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality, ed. Sarah Hutton. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Darwall, Stephen. 1995. The British Moralists and the Internal ‘Ought’, 1640–1740. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dissenting Academies Online: Virtual Library System. Queen Mary Centre for Religion and Literature in English. http://vls.english.qmul.ac.uk/. Flores, Cristina. 2008. Plastic Intellectual Breeze: The Contribution of Ralph Cudworth to S. T. Coleridge’s Early Poetics of the Symbol. Bern: Peter Lang. ———. 2017. ‘Contemplant Spirits’: Ralph Cudworth and Contemplation in S. T. Coleridge. In Coleridge and Contemplation, ed. Peter Cheyne, 211–220. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Fruman, Norman. 1971. Coleridge: The Damaged Archangel. London: George Braziller. Grabo, Carl Henry. 1935. The Meaning of ‘The Witch of Atlas’. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Gyisi, Lydia. 1962. Platonism and Cartesianism in the Philosophy of Ralph Cudworth. Bern: Herbert Lang. Hall, Dennis R. 1979. A Note on Coleridge and Henry More. The Wordsworth Circle 10: 30–32. Halmi, Nicholas. 2012. Coleridge’s Ecumenical Spinoza. Romanticism and Victorianism on the Net 61, April, http://www.erudit.org/revue/ravon/2012/v/n61/1018604ar.html. Hamilton, Paul. 2007. Coleridge and German Philosophy: The Poet in the Land of Logic. London: Routledge. Hampton, Alexander J.B. 2017. An English Source of German Romanticism: Herder’s Cudworth-­ inspired Revision of Spinoza from ‘Plastik’ to ‘Kraft’. Heythrop Journal 58 (3): 417–431. Haven, Richard. 1959. Coleridge, Hartley, and the Mystics. Journal of the History of Ideas 20: 477–494. Hazlitt, William. 1969. Mr. Coleridge. In The Spirit of the Age, ed. E.D.  Mackerness. London/ Glasgow: Collins. Hedley, Douglas. 2000a. Coleridge, Philosophy and Religion. ‘Aids to Reflection’ and the Mirror of the Spirit. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2000b. Cudworth, Coleridge and Schelling. Coleridge Bulletin, n.s. 16, Winter, 63–70. ———. 2006. Philosophia trinitatis: Coleridge, Pantheism, and a Christian Cabbala. In Coleridge’s Assertion of Religion: Essays on the ‘Opus Maximum’, ed. Jeffrey W.  Barbeau, 213–231. Leuven: Peeters. ———. 2017. Gods and Giants: Cudworth’s Platonic Metaphysics and his Ancient Theology. British Journal for the History of Philosophy 25 (5): 932–953. Hickman, Louise. 2016. Eighteenth-Century Dissent and Cambridge Platonism: Reconceiving the Philosophy of Religion. New York: Routledge. Hillier, Russell M. 2009. Coleridge’s Dilemma and the Method of ‘sacred sympathy’: Atonement as Problem and Solution in ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’. Papers of Language and Literature 45 (1): 8–36. Holmes, Stephen R. 2010. ‘Coleridge’. The Blackwell Companion to Nineteenth-Century Theology, ed. David Fergusson, 76–96. Oxford: Blackwell. Howard, Claud. 1924. Coleridge’s Idealism: A Study of his Relationship to Kant and to the Cambridge Platonists. Boston: Badger. Hutton, Sarah. 2002. The Cambridge Platonists. In A Companion to Early Modern Philosophy, ed. Steven Nadler, 308–319. Oxford: Blackwell. Kabitoglou, E.  Douka. 1991. The Cambridge Platonists: A Reading from Coleridge. The Seventeenth Century, 6 (1), Spring: 11–31.

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Kringler, Insa. 2013. Die gerettete Welt: Zur Rezeption des Cambridger Platonismus. Berlin: De Gruyter. Leech, David. 2013. The Hammer of the Cartesians: Henry More’s Philosophy of Spirit and the Origins of Modern Atheism. Leuven: Peeters. Lovejoy, Arthur O. 1908. Kant and the English Platonists. Essays Philosophical and Psychological in Honor of William James, 265–302. New York: Longmans, Green and Co. Marsh, Robert. 1959. The second part of Hartley’s system. Journal of the History of Ideas 20 (2), April: 264–273. McFarland, Thomas. 1969. Coleridge and the Pantheist Tradition. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Mills, Simon. 2009. Joseph Priestley and the Culture of Rational Dissent, 1752–1796, PhD thesis, Department of English, Queen Mary University of London, https://qmro.qmul.ac.uk/xmlui/ bitstream/handle/123456789/476/MILLSJosephPriestley2009.pdf?sequence=1 Muirhead, John H. 1930. Coleridge as Philosopher. London: Allen and Unwin. Passmore, J.A. 1990. Ralph Cudworth: An Interpretation [1951]. Bristol: Thoemmes. Perkins, Mary Ann. 1999. Coleridge’s Philosophy: The Logos as Unifying Principle. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Piper, H.W. 1962. The Active Universe: Pantheism and the Concept of Imagination in the English Romantic Poets. London: University of London, Athlone Press. Priestley, Joseph. 1786. An History of Early Opinions Concerning Jesus Christ, compiled from original writers; proving that the early church was at first unitarian. 4 vols. Birmingham: J. Johnson. Robinson, Henry Crabb. 1811–1867. Diary. London: MS, Dr Williams’s Library. ———. 2010. Essays on Kant, Schelling, and German Aesthetics, ed. by James Vigus. London: MHRA, 2010. ———. 1938. On books and their writers, 3 vols. ed. Edith J. Morley. London: J.M. Dent. ———. 1805–1806. Notebook for November 1805-December 1806. MS, Dr Williams’s Library. Bundle 6.VIII. ———. n.d. Henry More, D. D. MS, Dr Williams’s Library. Bundle I.V.6 (87). ———. n.d. Notes from Cudworth – Intellectual System. MS, Dr Williams’s Library. Bundle I.V.6 (137). Schofield, Robert. 1983. Joseph Priestley, Eighteenth-century British Neoplatonism, and S.  T. Coleridge. In Transformation and Tradition in the Sciences: Essays in Honor of I.  Bernard Cohen, ed. Everett Mendelsohn, 237–254. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schrickx, Willem. 1966. Coleridge and the Cambridge Platonists. A Review of English Literature 7 (1): 71–90. Southey, Robert [with contributions by S. T. Coleridge]. 1812. Omniana, or Horae Otiosiores. 2 vols. London: Printed for Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown. Vicario, Michael. 2007. Shelley’s Intellectual System and its Epicurean Background. London: Routledge. Vigus, James. 2006. With his Garland and his Singing-robes about him: The Persistence of the Literary in the Opus Maximum. In Coleridge’s Assertion of Religion: Essays on the ‘Opus Maximum’, ed. Jeffrey W. Barbeau, 97–119. Leuven: Peeters. ———. 2009. Platonic Coleridge. Oxford: Legenda. Vigus, James. 2014a. ‘Inspirations of which we are not capable of judging’: Coleridge’s View of the Daimonion of Socrates and its Unitarian Context. The Coleridge Bulletin, n.s. 43 (Summer), 15–28. ———. 2014b. The Philosophy of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. In The Oxford Handbook of British Philosophy in the Nineteenth Century, ed. William Mander, 520–540. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———. 2017. Samuel Taylor Coleridge: ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’. In De Gruyter Handbook of Romanticism, ed. Ralf Haekel, 360–375. Berlin: De Gruyter. Wellek, René. 1931. Immanuel Kant in England 1793–1838. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

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Whalley, George. 1949. The Bristol Library Borrowings of Southey and Coleridge, 1793–1798. The Library 4: 114–131. Whelan, Timothy. 2015. Wilhelm Benecke, Crabb Robinson, and ‘rational faith’, 1819–1837. Transactions of the Unitarian Historical Society 26 (1): 51–78. Wylie, Ian. 1989. Young Coleridge and the Philosophers of Nature. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Chapter 13

‘A Track Pursuing Not Untrod Before’: Wordsworth, Plato and the Cambridge Platonists Graham Davidson

Abstract  Wordsworth’s thought was first defined by its relation to Anglicanism, typified in Coleridge’s remark that Wordsworth was a ‘semi-atheist’. A subsequent commonplace associates his poetic decline with his gradual return to Christian orthodoxy. Even if true, his orthodoxy has many missing elements, and Wordsworth implicitly authorized a search for some philosophical or theological coherence in his work when he declared that an attentive reader of The Excursion would have no difficulty in extracting ‘the system’. Careful study has yielded few convincing results. That he has been taken as an Anglican, a Methodist, a pantheist, a Platonist, a Lockean, a Berkelean and even a Kantian indicates how difficult it is to establish Wordsworth’s intellectual antecedents precisely. Nonetheless, Plato’s was the only ‘system’ that he acknowledged, and a brief review of Wordsworth’s Platonism begins this paper. An examination of The Prelude in the light of Cambridge Platonist thought follows, and reveals a surprising degree of affinity across a range of ideas: the primacy of Reason, the unity of the laws of mind and nature, the idea of a plastic nature, as well as Reason delivering moral absolutes, the senses rejected as a form of knowledge, geometry as ‘a leader of the human mind’, the knowability of God, and the notion of an ‘immaterial centre of Immortality within’.

13.1  Introduction Even if evading precise definition, thus making it difficult to decide who is and who is not a member of that ‘loose federation’,1 the nature of Cambridge Platonist thought is well-established. And although the works of key writers  – More, 1  Culverwell (1971, xi). W. J. Mander notes that ‘the distribution of membership badges is no business of the history of philosophy’ (Mander 2011, 20).

G. Davidson (*) The People’s Republic of Stokes Croft, Bristol, UK e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 D. Hedley, D. Leech (eds.), Revisioning Cambridge Platonism: Sources and Legacy, International Archives of the History of Ideas Archives internationales d’histoire des idées 222, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22200-0_13

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Cudworth and Smith – were admired by later and more influential thinkers – C. A. Patrides cites Boyle, Locke, Shaftesbury, Leibniz, Newton, Berkeley and ‘even Kant’ (Patrides 1969, 39) – their principal ideas have been forgotten, refuted, denied or dispersed to such a degree that they are sometimes assumed to have explored an intellectual dead end, their achievements locked into their own time. However, by identifying convergences rather than establishing direct influence, this paper argues the contrary: that their lines of thought are reflected in the work of a major Romantic poet writing a hundred years and more after the Platonists flourished in Cambridge.2 But first, two examples of their traditional isolation: if theirs was, in the words of J.  H. Muirhead, ‘the highest expression of theology in England’ (Muirhead 1931, 28), that theology failed to irradiate the Anglican church; had it done so, Coleridge would not have echoed Lessing’s assertion, that a ‘hunger-bitten and idea-less p­ hilosophy naturally produces a starveling and comfortless religion’ (Lay Sermons 30) – nor would we still feel the validity of Coleridge’s complaint; and W.  J. Mander’s British Idealism: A History, some 600 pages, begins in the mid-nineteenth century, with the recognition of Kant and Hegel in England. True, he acknowledges the role of Coleridge, and Carlyle, in introducing Kant in particular, but fails to recognize that Coleridge’s mind had been prepared for Kant by his study of the neo- and Cambridge Platonists – he read Cudworth’s True Intellectual History of the Universe in 1795, when he was only 22 or 23. And Mander is dismissive of Muirhead’s singular attempt to offer these thinkers a place in the history of British idealism: ‘There is no evidence that any one apart from Muirhead ever thought the Cambridge Platonists a significant influence’ (Mander 2011, 74). But if British idealism, opposing British materialism, begins anywhere, a good case can be made for it beginning with the Cambridge Platonists’ disquiet with enlightenment thinking, and arriving at a very different idea of the relationship of Reason and Nature, an idea which Coleridge adopted consciously and Wordsworth intuitively. My argument is a simple one: that whatever the fate of their reception in other fields, the Cambridge Platonists did succeed in helping English poetry keep alive a Platonic tradition from Donne and Herbert through to Hopkins and Eliot. No doubt there were other positive influences within that tradition, and Donne and Herbert were of course born too early to be directly engaged, but the debate was nonetheless under way, partly as a result of Bacon’s influence. Donne’s description of Nature as God’s lieutenant is comparable to Cudworth’s idea; and when Hamlet says, ‘I could be bound in a nutshell and count myself king of infinite space,’ John Smith would have applauded. The difficulty is uncovering this tradition. Some poets, who might be exemplars, are now not much read; for instance, Abraham Cowley, who was at Cambridge with More, wrote a poem entitled ‘Reason, the Use of it in Divine Matters’ in which he asserts that ‘mysteries divine/May with our Reason join’ (Cowley 1809, 67) – an 2  Establishing direct Cambridge Platonist influence on Wordsworth would in any case be extremely difficult to document, because unlike Coleridge, he was insouciant concerning his own intellectual sources. In this sense Wordsworth was a ‘personal Platonist’ in the philosopher J.A.  Stewart’s sense (1912).

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opinion the Cambridge Platonists shared, but expressed in somewhat better verse than More’s. And Wordsworth declared that he had ‘read all Cowley’, and is believed to have been particularly influenced by the Pindaric Odes, of which the above is one (Wu 2007, 65). Other potential exemplars are obscured by lack of publication, some probably forever lost, at least one only lately discovered – the poems of Thomas Traherne were not published until 1903. The strong Platonist tradition in his poetry and prose is self-evident, but equally evident is that he sees himself writing within a living tradition, in no sense an outsider, or suffering some kind of cultural isolation (Hutton 1994, 177). The curiously close thematic relationship between his poetry and that of Wordsworth, to whom Traherne was of course entirely unknown, first suggested an exploration of Wordsworth’s poetry to look for marks of the Cambridge Platonists. It was surprising how many were discernible, even in a relatively brief survey, of which this paper is the outcome. So when W. J. Mander says that ‘the ingredient lacking from nineteenth century British philosophy was a sense of ‘spirit’, any penetration above, beyond, or beneath the appearances of things to a world of greater significance or value’ (Mander 2011, 24), and we find John Stuart Mill reading Wordsworth to satisfy that lack, I suggest that what we may be witnessing is Mill’s turning or re-turning to the living spirit of Cambridge Platonism.

13.2  College Labours On October 30th, 1787, Wordsworth arrived in Cambridge, at St. John’s, all set, apparently, to distinguish himself at the university as part of the process by which he might become a clergyman. From his account in Book 3 of The Prelude we tend to remember the incidents of his arrival: the dreary morning, alighting at The Hoop, his lordly dressing gown, Trinity’s ‘loquacious clock’, ‘Newton with his prism and silent face’, his rooms ‘a nook obscure’ underneath the college kitchens, and so on – all of which and more he records with surprising care. So when we come to the line ‘A track pursuing not untrod before’ it could be easily passed over as Wordsworth’s recognition that he was only doing what many generations of students had done before him.3 But that would be to miss or dismiss the context of this line. He has already put the incidentals of his arrival behind him; and has also set aside the relevance of required studies, what he calls ‘college labours’, of which he says ‘Things they were which then/I did not love, nor do I love them now’. And he asserts with a confidence one may think either remarkable or pompous, ‘I was not for that hour/Nor for that place.’ John Worthen notes that he more and more withdrew from the set courses and examinations of his day, so much so, that a later Master of St. John’s, conscious of Wordsworth’s fame, could still only recall him as ‘a wayward and disappointing

3  Subsequent citations from the Prelude are from Wordsworth et al. (1979). Citations are by year, book and line.

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undergraduate’ (Worthen 2014, 37). His intellectual ability wasn’t in doubt, so this sounds as though Wordsworth wanted to know something that he wasn’t being taught. His confidence comes from an internal assurance that a life much more real was stirring within him, what he calls ‘a strangeness in my mind’, a belief that ‘hither had I come with holy powers/And faculties to work or feel’. The task he set himself, supplanting ‘college labours’, was ‘To apprehend all passions and all moods/Which time, and place, and season do impress/Upon the visible universe, and work/Like changes there by force of my own mind.’ This sentence proved obscure or audacious enough for Wordsworth to remove it from the 1850 version of The Prelude.4 But it is a declaration of intent, and aligned to a mode of Platonism previously a force in Cambridge. He is not going to use his mind just to observe, weigh, measure – or as he later put it, murdering to dissect, using the mind as an analytic instrument distinct from the workings of the world – but to find or synthesize a harmony between the power of nature and the power of his intellect. It is a rebuttal of the mind and object distinction, and possibly a recognition of the immanence of mind in the world’s continuing function – a position he would adopt, if only latent here.

13.3  Universal Things Those lines are preliminary to several similar passages in Book 3. Absented from the ‘shapes sublime’ of his native Cumberland, (that absence a suppression of the senses so important to his understanding of how the imagination works), his mind ‘Seemed busier in itself than heretofore’, and then follows Let me dare to speak A higher language, say that now I felt The strength and consolation which were mine, As if awakened, summoned, rouzed, constrained, I looked for universal things, perused The common countenance of earth and heaven And, turning the mind in upon itself, Pored, watched, expected, listened, spread my thoughts, And spread them with a wider creeping, felt Incumbences more awful, visitings Of the upholder, of the tranquil soul, Which underneath all passion lives secure A steadfast life. But peace, it is enough To notice that I was ascending now To such community with highest truth. (Prelude 1805, 3.106–20)

And then, the very next line, opening a new passage, is, ‘A track pursuing not untrod before.’ By listing his purpose and powers, and declaring that these were not 4  The syntax is a little obscure, but suppose a comma after ‘there’, and his intention is clear: the changes that circumstance impress upon the world he will understand by using the power of his intellect. He is connecting the power of nature with the power of mind.

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original to him, Wordsworth is acknowledging that he is working in a tradition outside anything that the contemporary Cambridge syllabus has to offer, and that through this progress he is in ‘community’ with highest truth. Whatever the precise quality of this truth it is portrayed as a life beneath life – ‘Which underneath all passion lives secure/A steadfast life.’ That kind of distinction Wordsworth makes time and again in his work. But he gives us no clue as to what he considers the origins or sources of the particular track he is following to the ‘highest truth’, and thus we gain no hint of how he perceived that tradition or how it was handed down to him. The difficulty of discerning a distinct philosophical or religious tradition in Wordsworth’s poetry has long been acknowledged, and his early reception assumed a uniqueness inherent in Keats’s remark distinguishing the nature of his own genius from that of ‘the wordsworthian or egotistical sublime; which is a thing per se and stands alone…’ (Keats 1958, 387). Coleridge understood Wordsworth slightly differently, but still emphasized his uniqueness: ‘But in imaginative power he stands nearest of all modern writers to Shakespeare and Milton: and yet in a kind perfectly unborrowed and his own’ (BL 2:151). Even those whom one might expect to be aware of any tradition from which it emerged, still stress the originality of Wordsworth’s insight, of that particular quality which seems almost to belong to him alone. Gerard Manley Hopkins asserted that his ‘peculiar grace, his charisma as theologians say, has been granted in equal measure to so very few men since time was – to Plato and who else? I mean his spiritual insight into nature…’ (Hopkins 2013, 799– 800). That ‘who else?’ certainly suggests Hopkins’ sense of Wordsworth’s uniqueness, and as a companion in arms  – for what but ‘a spiritual insight into nature’, though expressed with greater particularity, is at the heart of Hopkins’s work? And, finally, a twentieth century critic described his sense of Wordsworth’s uniqueness in this way: ‘To think of him as mainly harking back to the Lockean or any other tradition seems to me to obscure the freshness of his vision’. (Rader 1967, 3).5 That he might be considered an Anglican, a Methodist, a pantheist, a Platonist, a Lockean, a Berkelean or even a Kantian – despite declaring that he had never read a word of German metaphysics – indicates how difficult it is to establish Wordsworth’s intellectual antecedents precisely. Nonetheless a strong Platonic vein is evident in  Initially, Wordsworth’s thought was defined by its relation to Anglicanism, exemplified in Coleridge’s remark that Wordsworth was a ‘semi-atheist’ (Collected Letters 1:216). Since then it has become a commonplace to associate his poetic decline with his gradual return to orthodoxy, though this has been challenged both by Edith Batho in 1933 and William Ulmer in 2001, the first standing up for the quality of the later poetry, the second seeing the earlier poetry as more orthodox than usually assumed. Not including Rader’s, the following is a list of the principle works, all monographs, which have examined Wordsworth’s links with various philosophical and religious traditions: Edith Batho, The Later Wordsworth. 1933. Oxford: Oxford University Press; Raymond Dexter Havens, The Mind of a Poet: A Study of Wordsworth’s Thought with Particular Reference to The Prelude: 1941. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press; Newton P. Stallknecht, Strange Seas of Thought: Studies in William Wordsworth’s Philosophy of Man and Nature. 1958. Bloomington: Indiana University Press; Richard E Brantley, Wordsworth’s “Natural Methodism”. 1975. New Haven: Yale University Press; William A. Ulmer, The Christian Wordsworth, 1798–1805. New York: State University of New  York Press; Simon Jarvis, Wordsworth’s Philosophic Song. 2006. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. My thanks to Richard Gravil for most of this list.

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much of his poetry, and one could not read, for instance, ‘I looked for universal things’ and not think of Plato.6 But his language is his own, and by choosing the material ‘things’ over the intellectual ‘ideas’ he ensures that the freshness of his vision is retained. Like his relationship to Anglicanism, his relationship with Platonism is both strong and obtuse. Emerson tells this amusing story: We talked of English national character. I told him, it was not creditable that no one in all the country knew anything of Thomas Taylor, the Platonist, whilst in every American library his translations are found. I said, if Plato’s Republic were published in England as a new book to-day, do you think it would find any readers? – he confessed, it would not: “And yet,” he added after a pause, with that complacency which never deserts a true-born Englishman, “and yet we have embodied it all.” (Emerson 1856, 294).

13.4  The Plotino-Platonic Philosophy Is that final ‘we’ royally used? It wouldn’t be unique if it were, and it makes more sense applied to the poet alone than as a general remark on English culture, given that he has just agreed that Platonism is not much considered in Britain.7 On the other hand, he could hardly have embodied all The Republic, or Plato, or Taylor’s translations. But singular or plural, that remark does tell us how much Wordsworth believed his work was rooted in Plato. Yet it is not rooted in any dogmatic or doctrinaire way  – more a spirit and an impulse  – or what I would call experiential Platonism, not what Plato thought, necessarily, but something akin to the quality of his thinking; a free yet disciplined spirit, his language owing little to established philosophical or theological formulations, nonetheless rooted in the idea of a knowable God. Coleridge describes a key quality of such thought in a note-book entry, also notably free of doctrine or dogma: One excellence of the Doctrine of Plato, or of the Plotino-platonic Philosophy, is that it never suffers, much less causes or even occasions, its Disciples to forget themselves, lost

6  Rader (72) reveals that Plato is mentioned six times in Wordsworth’s poetry, more than any other thinker. See also Price (1994, 217–28). As one might expect, the article is largely concerned with the myth of pre-existence. Price also acknowledges that it is impossible to determine when Wordsworth got to know Plato. 7  In an email (17 Dec 2016) Richard Gravil suggested that Coleridge might be in Wordsworth’s mind, and also Shaftesbury, whose dialogues were in his library, and refers to Sally Bushell’s Re-Reading The Excursion: Narrative, Response and the Wordsworthian Dramatic Voice. 2002. London: Ashgate Press. As well as the dialogues, Shaftesbury published Benjamin Whichcote’s sermons, with a preface of his own – which, had he come across, would have put Wordsworth in touch with the first of the Cambridge Platonists. In Sermon 1, (Whichcote 1698, 298), Whichcote writes, ‘Our Reason is not confounded by our Religion; but awaken’d, excited, employ’d, directed, and improved’, a compilation of verbs comparable to those of Wordsworth uses in the extract above, and serving a similar purpose. Richard Gravil read this paper with some care and produced a list of queries and suggestions which have significantly improved the text. All following references to Gravil derive from the email above.

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and scattered in sensible Objects disjoined or as disjoined from themselves. It is impossible to understand the Elements of this Philosophy without an appeal, at every step & round of the Ladder, to the fact within, to the mind’s Consciousness – and in addition to this, instead of lulling the Soul into an indolence of mere attention… [‘the Plotino-platonic Philosophy’] rouses it to acts and energies of creative Thought, & Recognition—of conscious re-­ production of states of Being. … The boast therefore of the modern Philosophy is to me a decisive proof of its being an Anti-philosophy, or at best a psilosophy, that it calls the mere understanding into exertion without exciting or wakening any interest, any tremulous feeling of the heart, as it heard or began to glimpse something which had once belonged to it, its Lord or its Beloved (Notebooks 3:3935).

I suggest that what Wordsworth is recording of himself in the passage from The Prelude above is close to the kind of activity that Coleridge believes marks out the Plotino-platonic philosophy. Two distinct but related actions are realized in two separate lines almost all verbs  – the first, ‘awakened, summoned, rouzed, constrained’, betokens a power partly external, and suggests a moving from some kind of unconsciousness to an as yet undefined awareness – an awareness which will, in Coleridge’s words, enable ‘acts and energies of creative Thought’ – those acts by which Wordsworth looks for ‘universal things’. And then, changing the focus by ‘turning the mind in upon itself’, ‘Pored, watched, expected, listened, spread my thoughts,/And spread them with a wider creeping.’ Though the mind turns in upon itself, these powers, if distinguished, are not presented as different, but one power variously conceived. The first is felt as external, shaking him awake, the other the mind looking at the workings of the mind itself, independently of the external world. The accumulated list of verbs for both actions suggest the depth and breadth of the power he is experiencing. But this is not introspection as we use the term. The mind turning in on itself becomes aware of the presence of something not itself – ‘incumbences more awful’, ‘visitings/Of the upholder’. These are strange and paradoxical phrases. ‘Incumbent’, living in the mind, already there – that knowledge only requiring recollection to be realized? And who is the upholder and what is being upheld in those ‘visitings’? Whose is ‘the tranquil soul’? It lacks the possessive or qualifier we might expect – ‘my’ tranquil soul, or the world’s tranquil soul. And though its visitings or incumbences are ‘awful’, this soul is ‘tranquil’, a paradox Wordsworth allows untroubled, unexplained in the space of half-a-dozen words. But whatever the difference of language, Wordsworth’s thought, in coming to consciousness of the ‘upholder’, is moving in the same direction as Coleridge’s: an interest is being excited or awakened, a ‘tremulous feeling of the heart, as it heard or began to glimpse something which had once belonged to it, its Lord or its Beloved’, a knowable God. Also note that phrase we just roll past in our reading – ‘The common countenance of earth and heaven’ – which, considered, appears a little odd: how often do we think of those two alike, having a common countenance? Isn’t it their conceptual difference we are most habitually conscious of? Yet Wordsworth just throws it in, as if it were the easiest business in the world to ‘peruse’ their shared features. What he means becomes evident in the 1850 version: ‘Earth, nowhere unembellished by some trace/Of that first Paradise whence man was driven’. The elucidation continues a little clumsily, and the later Wordsworth suppresses what is a quiet drone note

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of his earlier poetry – that Paradise may be realized again, now, and on this earth. To sum up, the power that acts, that awakens, summons, rouzes and constrains is of a kind with the mind that is conscious of itself – mind is both in here and out there – in nature and in the human consciousness. That would appear to be Wordsworth’s thesis as he arrives in Cambridge, a thesis which set him at odds with the spirit pervading European culture in the previous hundred years. Curiously Wordsworth’s complaint about English culture in his time is very much the complaint of the Cambridge Platonists in theirs: ‘… the English, with their devotion to Aristotle, have but half the truth: a sound Philosophy must contain both Plato and Aristotle’ (Letters 1988, 6 Oct 1844).

13.5  Coercing All Things An earlier passage from The Prelude illustrates the difficulties of getting to grips with Wordsworth’s thinking, in part the consequence of his tendency to rehearse comparable ideas in different narrative contexts, as if he is struggling repeatedly to realize what he thinks or feels. In Book II, noting that ‘My seventeenth year was come’, the year before he went up to Cambridge, he speaks of how he had always loved the ‘exercise and produce of a toil’ more creative and more poetic than that of analysis, the ‘observation of affinities/In objects where no brotherhood exists/To common minds’—what we might call the power of synthesis, ‘acts and energies of creative Thought’, which … whether from this habit rooted now So deeply in my mind, or from excess In the great social principle of life Coercing all things into sympathy, To unorganic natures were transferred My own enjoyments; or the power of truth Coming in revelation, did converse With things that really are; (Prelude 1850, 2.387 ff.)

This could be passed over as mere rhetoric: what power, what truth, what revelation, what things that really are? No answers given, no reference to other contexts in which those phrases might be read.8 But this passage is comparable to the description of the mind turning in upon itself. It seems likely that the power that is ‘coercing’ is of a kind with ‘the force of my own mind’; that ‘the things that really are,’ the ‘universal things’ experienced at Cambridge; and that ‘the power of truth’ is of a kind with the ‘highest truth’ to which he was ascending. But why does he specify ‘unorganic natures’? That deliberate but peculiar phrase finds an echo immediately after Wordsworth’s ascent:

 Richard Gravil points out (see fn. 7) that this passage ‘can of course be read in the light of numerous antithetical traditions, including Virgil, Priestley and the Encyclopaedists.’ 8

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A track pursuing not untrod before, From deep analogies by thought supplied, Or consciousness not to be subdued, To every natural form, rock, fruit or flower, Even the loose stones that cover the highway, I gave a moral life – I saw them feel, Or linked them to some feeling. The great mass Lay bedded in a quickening soul, and all That I beheld respired with inward meaning. (Prelude 1805, 3: 121 ff.)9

Wordsworth is refusing to allow his consciousness to be, in Coleridge’s words, ‘lost and scattered in sensible Objects’, but rather drawing them in by force of mind to one life ‘in a quickening soul’ – which is perhaps also a pun on ‘soil’. If his earlier use of ‘inorganic natures’ is clarified by this passage, it also complicated by his insisting that even the loose stones of the highway are perceived as having a moral life, a sensibility.10 That is a determined assault on common sense: stones do not respire, are not sensible, nor ethical. But Wordsworth’s task is the ‘observation of affinities/In objects where no brotherhood exists’, though ‘common minds’ may ask what constitutes the nature of this affinity; what are ‘the deep analogies by thought supplied’? And, the common mind continues to ask, is the ‘revelation’ something secular, like our use or misuse of ‘epiphany’? Or is it part and parcel of his gift of ‘holy powers’? Is this a religious impulse being re-examined in the language of the platonic coalface? All these and more are questions raised by a comparison of the two passages, in which similar processes of mind are discernible, underpinned by a belief in the singularity of consciousness, but hard to define or distinguish precisely.

13.6  The Cambridge Platonists And that should remind us that Wordsworth was a poet, not a theologian nor a philosopher. If we look for professional philosophical or theological coherence in his poetry aren’t we asking the wrong question? The simplest answer is to quote from his Preface to The Excursion: It is not the Author’s intention to formally announce a system: it was more animating to him to proceed in a different course; and if he shall succeed in conveying to the mind clear thoughts, lively images, and strong feelings, the Reader will have no difficulty in extracting the system for himself.  Cf. Coleridge, Logic p. 21: ‘We cannot conceive even the merest thing, a stone for instance, as simply and exclusively being, as absolutely passive and actionless.’ 10  Those lines were originally ascribed to the Pedlar, and his determination to see mind in nature is further evident in other passages from that poem: And in the hollow depths of naked crags He sate; and even in their fix’d lineaments, He trac’d an ebbing and a flowing mind, Expression ever varying. (The Ruined Cottage and The Pedlar, (Wordsworth 1979), MS E, l.153 ff.) 9

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That ‘no difficulty’ is a little ingenuous, but otherwise unambiguous. There is a system to be ‘extracted’ – though, again, Wordsworth does not suggest links to any known or previous systems. But he was able to imbibe an intellectual heritage without being fully aware of its origins. For instance, he could not have known Traherne’s poetry, but the pattern of his work, especially that of the Immortality Ode  – the divine visions of childhood, the loss of that insight in the growing the child, and then some recovery through the development of intellectual power – follows that of Traherne very closely. Both poets saw the man-made world as a form of distraction, and retirement as necessary to enable the recovery of vision, and both saw nature as a potential form of Paradise. The parallels, which I have traced in detail elsewhere, are remarkable, and one must suppose they held some tradition in common.11 As one critic remarked, Traherne was an Oxford-educated Cambridge Platonist, and it was that comment that encouraged me to look for their footprints in Wordsworth’s poetry (Marks 1966, 521). But first to establish the ‘leading principles’ (Biographia Literaria 2:115) of that group of thinkers Coleridge thought ‘more truly Plotinists’ than Platonists as they wrote in the Christianized tradition of Plotinus (Marginalia 5:81). His note-­book entry on ‘the Plotino-platonic Philosophy’ is thus an insight into a key principle of their thinking, a principle which could be entitled primacy of mind, closely linked to reason, considered below.12 But that phrase needs to be carefully treated as there were few who did not think that the mind led the way in replacing either religious superstition, reviewing the status of Aristotle at the universities, or developing a natural philosophy; what the Platonists refused was to consider the mind just as an instrument for analysis, separated from the world it investigated, which attitude Coleridge epitomized when he wrote that the ‘Mind in [Newton’s] system is always passive – a lazy Looker on an external World’ (Letters 2:709)13; other characteristics or principles of the Cambridge Platonists include the possibility of a direct relationship with God, which depends on an idea of God as a rational intellect – the words ‘intellectual’ and ‘intelligible’ are key to their vocabulary – not for them Tertullian’s  Philological Quarterly. Spring 2017. No. 96.2, 239–68. Iowa: University of Iowa Press.  The intellectual traits outlined here are not exclusive to the Cambridge Platonists, which is why it is difficult to define who is and who is not a member of that ‘federation’. Thus at least one aspect of Milton’s thought – and central to Coleridge’s development of the imagination in the Biographia Literaria – the nature and function of reason – is at the heart of Whichcote’s theology; and although Whichcote and Milton were exact contemporaries, probably at Cambridge together, and there are many platonic elements to Milton’s thought, he is never considered a Cambridge Platonist. Coleridge was aware of this: ‘How little the Commentators of Milton have availed themselves of the writings of Plato/Milton’s Darling!’ (Collected Letters 2:866). So exact and precise co-incidencies with Wordsworth’s work are not what we should be looking for, but modes and tones of thought within a limited number of fairly loose parameters. 13  Richard Gravil writes (see fn. 7): ‘I had an inner voice at this point objecting that the reason the Platonists and Coleridge didn’t separate the mind from the world was that they dissolved the world into mind, like the child Wordsworth….’ Had Coleridge and Wordsworth done so in their maturity, I think both would have identified themselves as Berkelians  – but neither finally did. One key distinction between the Cambridge Platonists and Berkeley lies in the idea of a plastic nature, a power mediating between mind and the created world. 11 12

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‘Prorsus credibile est, quia ineptum est’ (De Carne Christi (5.4))’; as a consequence, and absolutely central to their principles, the qualities and function of Reason as a life and power – that is they tied Reason and Religion together, asserting the reasonableness and rationality of religion; out of this, I think, came a belief in moral absolutes – a particularly difficult concept for us14; they also set a very high value on religious practice, much less on doctrines, sacraments and liturgy; or as the acknowledged founder of the group, Benjamin Whichcote, put it: ‘The State of Religion lies in a good Mind, and a good Life; all else is about Religion…’ (Whichcote 1753, aphorism 835); and rather far down the list as far as Wordsworth is concerned, the idea of Nature as a power connected to the mind as power; and then some more general ideas which they shared with other contemporary thinkers – the immortality of the soul; the apprehension of infinity as a form of eternity; the idea of Paradise; the idea of grace and the idea of singularity and of retirement; and last in this list, but a fitting close, love as the final end of all being.

13.7  God and Mind To what extent are these ideas and apprehensions present in Wordsworth’s work? To begin, very briefly, with one example from many possible, of the idea of direct relationship with God. Speaking of those activities of mind that possessed him at Cambridge, he says, ‘I had a world about me – ‘twas my own,/I made it; for it only lived to me’ – well-known lines, but what follows is less often quoted: ‘And to the God who looked into my mind’ (Prelude 1805, 3:144). There is something homely about the picture that this simple phrase conveys – two minds, of a kind, the greater looking into the lesser, yet each knowing the other.15 Again, such confidence: if the world about him lived for him and that God, what else matters? And yet not ‘God’ but ‘the God’, still with an upper-case ‘G’ – why that small, subtle, but significant distinction? Is there a deliberate distancing from the Christian God, and a punning reference to Plato’s ‘The Good’? We tend to see religion as liturgy not as power – or as Whichcote put it, ‘Men have an itch; rather to make Religion, than to use it…’ (Whichcote 1753, aphorism 36). Wordsworth has no interest in doctrines or liturgy, but he does believe that an immediate connection with God is possible – that is, he uses religion, but is determinedly non-sectarian: we are given almost no hint as to the qualities of his God.

 Cf. ‘Had he lived to complete the work, he would have argued that “all the Moral Law is founded in natural and common light, in the light of Reason” and that “there’s nothing in the mysteries of the Gospel contrary to the light of Reason; nothing repugnant to this light that shines from the Candle of the Lord”, (Culverwell 1971, 16). 15  In the 1850 version this idea is much more conventionally, and less interestingly, expressed: ‘And to the God who sees into the heart’. See also Whichcote’s comment, ‘Thus, is God most knowable of any thing in the World.’ (Whichcote 1698, 112). 14

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13.8  Mind and Sense If the possibility of that unmediated connection was something Wordsworth shared with the Cambridge Platonists, it is linked to a rejection of the senses as a form of knowledge, an assertion of the primacy of mind – in respect of which remember his magnificent credo, the Prospectus to The Excursion, where he declared that nothing ‘can breed such fear and awe/As fall upon us often when we look/Into our Minds, in the Mind of Man – /My haunt, and the main region of my song.’ This emphasis on the mind as the main region of his song is another surprise for those who see Wordsworth as a poet of nature. But Coleridge speaks for both of them when he writes, ‘… the material universe which splendent, as it is, is yet but the faint resplendence of that intellectual world, that already is in us essentially, and which we behold only as it is in us -’ (Notebooks 3:3941).16 And it may seem paradoxical to some readers of Wordsworth, familiar with his delight in visible nature, that he so insistent on a rejection of the senses, but it is a regular feature of his verse. Here is one instance, from Book 13 of The Prelude, where he speaks of The tendency, too potent in itself, Of habit to enslave the mind – I mean Oppress it by the laws of vulgar sense, And substitute a universe of death, The falsest of all worlds, in place of that Which is divine and true. (Prelude 1805, 13.135 ff.)

There is a minor caveat in this, of course – ‘vulgar sense’, a very Eliotic sentiment, implicitly not all forms of sense  – and we will see later how Wordsworth conceives ‘higher minds’ as dealing with the objects of sense.17 But how do the Platonists relate mind and sense? Sarah Hutton says of her selection of Cambridge Platonists that ‘In metaphysics they were dualists for whom mind was ontologically prior to matter, and soul or spirit… the fundamental causal principle in the operations of nature’ (Hutton 2015, 139). There is a latent conflation in this statement between the kind of dualism we find in John Smith, and that we find

 Cf. Notebooks 3:2151, in which Coleridge reflects on his youthful ‘Dream of the Birth of the Planets, as ‘a law of Spirit – & all was Spirit – and in matter all beheld the past activity of others or their own – this Reflection, this Echo, is matter…’. 17  Richard Gravil asked me (see fn. 7) to square ‘rejection of the senses’ with the passage from Tintern Abbey in which Wordsworth declares that he is ‘… well pleased to recognise/In nature and the language of the sense/The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,/The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul/Of all my moral being.’ I do so with some difficulty: what precedes this is the description of ‘something far more deeply interfused,/… that impels/All thinking things, all objects of all thought’, and I suggest it is this immaterial presence which validates Wordsworth’s love of nature or the language of the sense. The ‘therefore’ which follows this declaration and leads into the passage quoted is a significant conjunction: without the one, the implication is that there would be no validity in the other – or what the senses present would be ‘unintelligible’. The power that he will later associate with reason here precedes and informs ‘Nature and the language of the sense’. 16

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in More and Cudworth. Smith, I think, would not accept that there is a ‘causal principle’ or incarnational relationship between ‘soul or spirit’ and nature – something I will consider more carefully in a moment. Mind precedes matter – the fundamental Platonist stance, and clearly opposed to the popular if unrefined ‘All is body’ characterization of Aristotelianism, Whichcote declaring that ‘It is the Foundation of Atheism that all Being is Body’ (Whichcote 1707, 4:337). The dualism of the Cambridge Platonists is strongly Puritan in its spiritual if not its moral tone  – exhortation rather than condemnation. Thus Whichcote, ‘The Mind being Superior, is not to be subjected to the Body, nor to the things of the Body; neither ought there to be an unequal distribution of Attendance… We ought to improve our Minds so far, as much over and above, as our Minds do transcend the Body’ (Whichcote 1698, 91–2). Attitudes of this kind are not easy for us – so radical the distinction, such confidence in the primacy of mind – it hardly lies within our experience and we tend to wonder what improving our minds actually means. But we will see that Wordsworth is nearly as radical. John Smith spells it out with greater engagement, first of all remembering that the ‘Platonists… thought the Mindes of men could never be purg’d enough from those earthly dregs of Sense and Passion… before they could be capable of their divine Metaphysicks: and therefore they so much solicite a… separation from the Body, in all those that would sincerely understand Divine Truth’. Then this remarkable passage: This was also intimated by them in their defining Philosophy to be… ‘a Meditation of Death;’ aiming herein at onely a Moral way of dying, by loosening the Soul from the Body and this Sensitive life; which they thought was necessary to a right Contemplation of Intelligible things: [cf. Wordsworth’s ‘universal things’] and therefore besides those purifying virtues by which the Souls of men were to be separated from sensuality and purged from fleshly filth, they devised a further way of Separation more accommodated to the conditions of Philosophers, which was their Mathemata, or Mathematical Contemplations, whereby the Souls of men might farther shake off their dependency upon Sense, and learn to go as it were alone, without the crutch of any Sensible or Material thing to support them; and so be a little inur’d, being once got up above the Body, to converse freely with Immaterial natures, without looking down again and falling back into Sense’ (Smith 1660, 10-11).

Like Descartes, John Smith was a mathematician, and the notion of Maths as a subject of pure mind or intellect, independent of information from the senses, enabled both to feel comfortable with the separation of mind from the material world. This was particularly true of one then developing branch of maths – geometry – in which it is easy to suppose a connection between Plato’s ideal forms, and the necessary truths inherent in geometric models. “Let no one unversed in geometry enter here” was reputedly the motto engraved at the entrance to Plato’s Academy. Smith was thus sure that the mind could go it alone, shaking off ‘dependency upon Sense’. In that he is different from Cudworth and More and of course Wordsworth. Nonetheless, Wordsworth understood the attractions of geometry as having an intelligibility independent of sense: with ‘Indian awe and wonder’ he says did I meditate Upon the alliance of those simple, pure Proportions and relations, with the frame And laws of Nature – how they could become

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It looks as if there are two movements of mind here comparable to that examined above – a looking outward, the truths of geometry in relation to the laws of nature, − and a ‘pleasure calmer and deeper’, an inward reflection in which the truths of geometry are an analogy or image of how we might know God – another instance of Wordworth’s belief in the possibility of a direct relationship with God, not ‘touched by the weltering of passion’, just as to achieve this end, John Smith thought that we must be purged of ‘those earthly dregs of Sense and Passion.’ That the science of ‘pure/Proportions’ might bear some relationship to the laws of Nature is unsurprising in the light of what he may have known about Newton, and possibly, Descartes; but that, for Wordsworth, geometry could become ‘a leader to the human mind’ and present, as a ‘paramount endowment of the mind’, an image of that which surpasses or transcends life, is unexpected, even as the verse unrolls to the end which is finally named, cautiously but firmly, as God. And though he says he never got very far with ‘geometric science’ his studies are surely of a kind with the ‘Mathematical Contemplations’ that John Smith advocates, and to the same end, conversing with ‘Immaterial natures’. And just in passing here, note that Wordsworth describes this as ‘meditating’, a process that leads to the image and idea of God, just as it is a ‘meditation’ on the slopes of Snowdon that leads him to conceive the scene he witnessed as the image of a mighty mind that feeds upon infinity. Meditation, whether focused on geometry or the appearances of nature, leads to the idea of a pure life, a life of mind or intellect, beyond the notices of sense. A little later in the same passage, Wordsworth writes, ‘Mighty is the charm/Of those abstractions to a mind beset/With images … /an independent world/Created out of pure intelligence’ (Prelude 1850, 6.158 ff.). Wordsworth finds relief in the workings ‘of pure intelligence’ free of the notices of sense. This is a further example of his fear of the oppression of the mind by the senses, as important to him as it is to Whichcote, Smith and their colleagues.18 And yet it works both ways for Wordsworth, the mind can dominate the senses, for the experience underlying the Immortality Ode is a reverse of the oppression of the senses. As a boy, he said, he

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        I speak in recollection of a time When the bodily eye, in every stage of life The most despotic of our senses, gained Such strength in me as often held my mind In absolute dominion. (Prelude 1850, 12.127–31)

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was ‘often unable to think of external things as having external existence, and I communed with all that I saw as something not apart from, but inherent in, my own immaterial nature… At that time I was afraid of such processes. In later periods of life I have deplored… a subjugation of an opposite character & have rejoiced over the remembrances, as is expressed in the lines “obstinate questionings & c.”(Fenwick Notes 1993, 61). This is what I mean by experiential Platonism. For the boy Wordsworth, the world of sense is swallowed up by what John Smith calls ‘the immaterial centre of Immortality within’, which in the same note Wordsworth calls an ‘abyss of idealism’ – an apparently pejorative phrase, although elsewhere he connects the word ‘abyss’ with the notion of mysterious origins; and in the Ode, it is the shadowy recollection of that power which will, as he put it in an earlier version, ‘mitigate the spell/Of the strong frame of sense in which we dwell’. Or, in Tintern Abbey, he explains how ‘the heavy and the weary weight/Of all this unintelligible world,/Is lightened’ by the serene and blessed mood in which we are laid asleep in body, and become a living soul  – to which he adds, what Cudworth and More might have added, but Smith could not, we are thus enabled ‘to see into the life of things.’ It is worth bearing in mind that word ‘unintelligible’, particularly in the light of Smith’s ‘a right Contemplation of Intelligible things’. Wordsworth doesn’t say what his ‘things’ are – but we assume, in this poem, that they are the appearances of nature, or the objects of sense seen by a higher mind  – and thus, possibly, ‘universal things’.19 Smith’s ‘things’ are his mathemata, the truths of mind and soul. What Wordsworth is saying in Tintern Abbey, I suggest, is that the material or created world is ‘unintelligible’, an inexplicable burden upon the soul, ‘a universe of death’, until the senses are closed down and the power that Smith evokes to ‘shake off … dependency upon Sense’ is allowed to live – just as, in the Immortality Ode it is the visionary child, ‘deaf and silent’, ‘without sense or sight/Of the warm light’ that ‘read’st the eternal deep’. Smith may not extend that power into making sense of the visible world, but Wordsworth both evokes the power in its primary sense, and then asserts that it enables us to interpret the world in which we live, remove the ‘burthen of the mystery’. Thus, as a result of a sudden and sharp realization that his senses had ­completely misled him in the Alps, he declared that only ‘in such strength/Of usurpation, when the light of sense/Goes out’  – that is, extinguished  – do we get a glimpse of that infinitude which is our home. The notices of sense can only be rightly read by, and when they cease to oppress, the truths of mind.

 This process is perhaps exemplified when he left Anne Tyson’s cottage before dawn, and went to sit upon a ‘jutting eminence’ among the hills, and is very close to the process of becoming a ‘living soul’ in ‘Tintern Abbey’: Oft in those moments such a holy calm Did overspread my soul that I forgot That I had bodily eyes, and what I saw Appeared like something in myself, a dream, A prospect in my mind. (Prelude 1805, 2.367–71)

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But just as we can find in Wordsworth’s poetry what we might call spiritual or experiential platonism, so we can find the moral or ethical platonism of the Cambridge confederation. In Book 6 of The Prelude, amidst all the turmoil of the French Revolution, with which he sides using martial and incendiary rhetoric  – ‘Discerning sword that Justice wields, do thou/Go forth and prosper; and, ye purging fires,/Up to the loftiest towers of Pride ascend,/Fanned by the angry breath of Providence’ – he nonetheless opposes the closing of the Convent of Chartreuse with an equal if mystical vigour: But oh! if Past and Future be the wings On whose support harmoniously conjoined Moves the great spirit of human knowledge, spare These courts of mystery… be the house redeemed With its unworldly votaries, for the sake Of conquest over sense, hourly achieved Through faith and meditative reason, resting Upon the word of heaven-imparted truth, Calmly triumphant; (Prelude 1850, 6.444 ff.)

The primary task that Wordsworth assigns to the Carthusians is ‘conquest over sense’, and the power to perform this task is that of ‘faith and meditative reason’ anchored in ‘heaven-imparted truth’, or revelation. This may seem unexpectional, just as the dualism of Whichcote and Smith might seem common-place, and so it is easy to pass over Wordsworth’s apparently casual linking of faith, meditation and reason. I’ll consider this more closely in discussing his use of ‘Reason’, but suffice to repeat here that ‘meditation’ is a synonym for ‘imagination’ in Wordsworth’s poetry, and is a mode of faith active, for the ultimate end of the imagination is the beholding of infinitude or eternity, as experienced variously in the Alps and on Snowdon. The task that Wordsworth assigns to the Carthusians is very much the task he has assigned to himself, which, in John Smith’s words, is ‘to converse freely with Immaterial natures’.

13.9  Reason and Moral Absolutes At the very beginning of ‘The Use of Reason in Matters of Religion’, Benjamin Whichcote sets out his case for a system of ethics based on, among other things, ‘the great Notices of Reason’: We should be very careful to observe the difference of Moral Good and Evil. Herein we should be severe and impartial; not giving ourselves leave to comply with our own humours; for as to the great Notices of Reason and Nature; the Measures of Vertue and Vice; the Grand Instances of Morality; there can be no allowance, no Variation; because they are ­matters unalterable, unchangeable, indispensible; Laws of themselves; without Sanction by Will; but by Reason of the thing (Whichcote 1698, 80-81).

As we have seen, arriving at Cambridge, Wordsworth declared ‘I was not for that hour,/Nor for that place’. He then asks, ‘But wherefore be cast down?’, going on to answer his own question, but prefacing it with this aside: ‘For (not to speak of

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Reason and her pure/Reflective acts to fix the moral law/Deep in the conscience/…) … hither I had come/endowed with holy powers’. The concatenation is remarkable; had he not been endowed with holy powers to buoy him up, Reason and her pure reflective acts would have been sufficient; thus he is pretty much making Reason a holy power, its reflective acts determining moral absolutes. If no surprise in a Cambridge Platonist, this is not the Wordsworth we think we know: yet consider such a poem as Ode to Duty, another semi-external voice or form of Reason providing absolute commands and ‘constraining’ us.20 The connection between moral law and the motion of the soul to God is re-­ asserted much later in The Prelude. Even behind the ‘rueful prospect’ of the degradation he witnessed in London, Wordsworth, with ‘the eyes of Adam, yet in Paradise/ Though fallen from bliss’, connects singular moral judgement with the realization of a ‘sensation’ in 1805 or ‘idea’, italicized, in 1850, which enables the soul to find her rest in God: Add also, that among the multitudes Of that huge city, oftentimes was seen Affectingly set forth, more than elsewhere Is possible, the unity of man, One spirit over ignorance and vice Predominant, in good and evil hearts; One sense for moral judgments, as one eye For the sun’s light. The soul when smitten thus By a sublime idea, whencesoe’er Vouchsafed for union or communion, feeds On the pure bliss, and takes her rest with God. (Prelude 1850, 8.665 ff.)

‘One sense for moral judgements, as one eye/For the sun’s light’. That is surely an echo of Plotinus’s ‘And as the eye cannot behold the Sun, unless it be Sunlike… so neither can the Soul of man behold God, unless it be Godlike’, quoted by John Smith at the beginning of his first Discourse. The sublime idea of a single moral order is necessary for a communion with God—or in Coleridge’s words, conscience precedes consciousness (Notebooks, 5:5556 f.41). And that single moral order incorporates even the loose stones covering the highway.

13.10  Nature, and Two Kinds of Reason The Cambridge Platonists were alive to a problem that the work of Galileo, Bacon, Boyle, Newton and other natural philosophers had gradually made evident, demonstrating that the constitution and function of the material world could be better understood without the prior imposition of Aristotelian schemata, by observation, deduction and induction, a process in which the use of reason is pre-eminent. However, the problem that this novum organum created, the divorce of mind and  My thanks to James Vigus for this point, and for a careful and instructive reading of the first draft of this paper.

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nature, was not immediately apparent. In 1662, Simon Patrick, acknowledging the charge that the ‘Latitude Men’ had committed the crime of introducing a new philosophy, ‘that Aristotle and the schoolmen are out of request with them…’, makes this defence of a philosophy of reason: For reason is that faculty, whereby a man must judge of every thing; nor can a man believe anything except he have some reason for it, whether that reason be a deduction from the light of nature, and those principles, which are the candle of the Lord, set up in the soul of every man, that hath not wilfully extinguished it; or a branch of divine revelation in the oracles of holy Scripture (Patrick 1662, 5–6).21

The very loose connection between reason as a process of deduction, reason as the source of spiritual principles, and reason as divine revelation, is perhaps what Coleridge meant when he said that the Cambridge Platonists, and Lord Herbert of Cherbury in particular, backed away from developing a propaedia of the mind, the honor of establishing which was reserved for Immanuel Kant (Marginalia 5:81–2). For that loose connection hides two modes by which nature and mind might be divorced. The two modes are either a sole dependency on reason; or taking reason as a quality or instrument only.

13.11  Reason Alone Taking sole dependency first: the reason of observation and induction is not different from the reason which elucidates the truths of geometry, a method of meditation or reflection that both Wordsworth and John Smith saw as a means to knowing God. Coleridge, in his Opus Maximum (6), uses those kinds of truth as an analogy for the absolute nature of reason – once understood, such truths could not be other than they are – ineluctable truths: ‘Reason is from God, and God is reason, mens ipsissima’ – mind most itself (Shorter Works and Fragments 2:181).22 Thus, the process of the rational is the process of the spiritual. It may seem strange to us that understanding geometry is taken as an analogy of understanding spiritual processes, but both Smith and Wordsworth can imagine a transcendent peace achieved by the mind reflecting on her own powers, by separation from sense. But separation from sense is of course the very process that must lead, ultimately, to a separation of world and mind, body and soul, to the mind ignoring how the  Patrick adds, ‘Let her [Religon] alone be mistress, and choose her servants where she best likes; let her old loving nurse, the Platonic philosophy, be admitted again into her family; nor is there any cause to doubt but the mechanic also will be faithful to her, no less against the open violence of atheism, than the secret treachery of enthusiasm and superstition’. 22  John Smith: ‘God is not better defin’d to us by our Understandings then [sic] by our Wills and Affections: He is not onely the Eternal Reason, that Almighty Mind and Wisdome which our Understandings converse with; but he is also that unstained Beauty and Supreme Good which our Wills are perpetually catching after: and wheresoever we find true Beauty, Love and Goodness, we may say, Here or there is God.’ (‘Of the Existence and Nature of God’, quoted from Campagnac, E.T., ed., The Cambridge Platonists. 1901. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 173–74. 21

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world works, and going it alone. Henry More rejects this extreme dualism, and I suspect he has both Descartes and John Smith in mind when he denies ‘that man by a program of purification and abstraction can rid himself of his lower nature’: And those that endeavour after so still, so silent & demure a condition of Mind, that they would have the sense of nothing there but peace and rest, striving to make their whole nature desolate of all Animal Figurations whatsoever, what do they effect but a clear Day shining upon a barren Heath, that feeds neither Cow nor Horse?23

That is a fine down-to-earth way of putting what Wordsworth said in other words, that it is in this world we have our happiness or not at all. We cannot live on a barren heath.

13.12  Reason as a Quality Coleridge summarized this mode when he spoke of two classes of men: Every man is born an Aristotelian, or a Platonist. They are the two classes of men, beside which it is next to impossible to conceive a third. The one considers reason a quality, or attribute; the other considers it a power. I believe that Aristotle never could get to understand what Plato meant by an idea… With Plato ideas are constitutive in themselves (Table Talk 1, 2 July 1830).24

Reason as a quality, or attribute, or instrument, is reason more or less as we habitually understand the term nowadays – ratiocination, logical thinking, induction, deduction, and so forth. It is the ability that Coleridge re-designated as the Understanding, and the quality that Bacon and others wanted to release from ­scholastic fetters in order to develop a natural philosophy.25 And Simon Patrick, illustrating the method of the new philosophy through the repair of a clock, seems unaware of the trap he is falling into: Then certainly it must be the office of philosophy to find out the process of this divine art in the great automaton of the world, by observing how one part moves another, and how those motions are varied by the several magnitudes, figures, positions of each part, from the first springs or plummets, as I may say, to the hand, that points out the visible and last effects…

 Conjectura Cabbalistica, 158; quoted from Saveson, J.  E. ‘Differing Reactions to Descartes Among the Cambridge Platonists’. Journal of the History of Ideas. 1960. Vol. 21: No. 4, Oct.— Dec., 560–567; 562. 24  Cf., ‘With regard to Philosophy, there are half a dozen things, good & bad that in this country are so nick-named, but in the only accurate sense of the term, there neither are, have been, or ever will be but two essentially different Schools of Philosophy: the Platonic, and the Aristotelean. To the latter, but with a somewhat nearer approach to the Platonic, Emanuel Kant belonged; to the former Bacon and Leibnitz & in his riper and better years Berkley -- And to this I profess myself an adherent -- nihil novum, vel inauditum audemus: tho’ as every man has a face of his own, without being more or less than a man, so is every true Philosopher an original, without ceasing to be an Inmate of Academus or of the Lyceum’ (Collected Letters 5:14). 25  Cf.,‘Both Whichcote and Culverwell viewed man’s reason as more than a dry Baconian light, more than a discursive faculty to “reckon with” in Hobbes’s words’ (Culverwell 1971, xviii). 23

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and Descartes hath proceeded farthest in the like attempt, in that vast machine, the universe… (Patrick 1662, 12)

13.13  Plastic Nature But the constitutive ideas of reason are not present in this method outlined by Patrick – the universe, though ars Dei, the art of God, is nonetheless conceived as a machine, a ‘great automaton’ – and it is not the power by which More, Cudworth, Coleridge and Wordsworth, amongst many others, sought to understand the natural and visible world, to make that world ‘intelligible’. If More had seen the problem from a human point of view, Cudworth puts his finger on the problem from the divine point of view: how does God continue to relate to the world he created? Those who use reason as an instrument only make God to be nothing else in the World, but an Idle Spectator… and render his Wisdom altogether Useless and Insignificant, as being a thing wholly Inclosed and shut up within his own breast, and not at all acting abroad upon anything without him (Cudworth 1678, 149).

And what is true of God is also true of us. If we live in the world using reason as an instrument only, then the ideas that are constitutive of our humanity are shut up within our own breasts, and not at all acting abroad, not ‘Coercing all things into sympathy’, not rousing ‘it to acts and energies of creative Thought, & Recognition’. So the question Cudworth, More, and Nathaniel Culverwell asked, is by what means does God act in the world? Cudworth’s solution is the memorable idea of ‘a Plastick Nature’, as the intermediary between God and the visible forms of Nature, which he defends with a delightful account of God as an unencumbered aristocrat: without such a Nature, either God must be supposed to Doe all things in the world Immediately, and to Form every Gnat and Fly; as it were with his own hands; which seemeth not so Becoming of him, and would render his Providence to Humane Apprehensions, Laborious and Distractious; or else the whole System of this Corporeal Universe, must result onely from Fortuitous Mechanism, without the Direction of any Mind; which Hypothesis once admitted, would Unquestionably, by degrees, Supplant and Undermine all Theism (Cudworth 1678, 147).

He could hardly have been more prescient. Nearly four hundred years later the natural world as driven by ‘fortuitous mechanism’, if not the language, is certainly the notion which has supplanted all forms of theism in minds using reason as an instrument only.26

 However much Cudworth’s idea was repudiated, and it was from its inception, nonetheless it creates a space for the question, What enables the creation and continuation of complex states in a universe which has an equally observable tendency to simple equilibriums?

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13.14  Reason as Power The underlying premise of reason as an instrument, whether acknowledged or not, is that ‘All is body’, the mind a tabula rasa, not a candle of the Lord, and without constitutive ideas. Coleridge came to use the image of the carpenter’s ruler as symbolic of this kind of mechanistic knowledge, what he called ‘Sight without Insight’ (Notebooks 4: 5405). As he explained to James Gillman, junior: … all knowlege, not merely mechanical and like a Carpenter’s Ruler… – all knowlege, I say, that enlightens and liberalizes, is a form and a means of Self-knowledge… For such knowlege must be founded on Principles: and those Principles can be found only in the Laws of the Mind itself (Letters 6:630).27

Nature is not intelligible unless it can be understood in the light of the laws of the mind, the laws of reason, and a knowledge of Nature not founded on the laws of the mind is not knowledge as Coleridge understood the term. If, as he said, ‘Nature is God’s transcript of himself’, God’s self-expression, then Nature should be able to provide the substance by which we can express our self-knowledge. But given the success of empirical thinking in understanding the natural world, attempting to realize that same world in the light of the mind’s constitutive ideas, being able to demonstrate that a law of nature is an idea of mind, or that the appearances of nature are forms of the mind, looks like a lost cause: how would the achievement manifest itself?28 Aren’t we looking at the battle that Patrides, despite his admiration for the Cambridge confederation, declared lost? History has concluded that ‘Plastick Nature’ is a great idea, but that it has no workable manifestations, describes no actual processes. Wordsworth would not have agreed. It is uncertain whether he was familiar with Cudworth’s expression. He uses the term ‘plastic’ only twice as far as I know, once in terms of his own creativity – ‘… by the regular action of the world/My soul was unsubdued. A plastic power/Abode with me; a forming hand,’ (Prelude 1805, 2.380 ff.) in which he assumes of himself the energy that Cudworth ascribes to Nature; and once in terms of the material at hand to re-make the state of France after the revolution. More certain is that the idea of nature as a power, as an intermediary between God and the world – God’s ‘owne Lieutenant’, as Donne put it – joining the common countenances of earth and heaven, is at the heart of his thinking. In the following extract, he begins by talking about his idea of Nature, but what is notable is his direct and close association of this idea with the power of reason:  For other references, see, Lectures on the History of Philosophy 1:256 and Collected Letters 5:98. 28  A tentative answer would be in the work of those who are conscious of the sacramental nature of the world: ‘Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright,/The bridal of the earth and sky’, (‘Virtue’) as Herbert put it; those who, like Hopkins, find ‘the dearest freshness deep down things’ (‘God’s Grandeur’); who can share Eliot’s ‘a grace of sense’, enabling ‘both a new world/And the old [to be] made explicit…’(‘Burnt Norton II’); or who understand Wordsworth’s experience that when ‘the weary weight/Of all this unintelligible world,/Is lightened’, then he could ‘see into the life of things’(‘Tintern Abbey’). 27

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If we are used to associating Wordsworth’s idea of nature with its visible forms, with daffodils and daisies, we need to re-educate ourselves. As Cudworth and More also believed, Nature is a power prior to its expression in form  – the power that makes form intelligible. The central section of this passage is a paean to both to Nature and to Reason, and which the one and which the other hardly distinguishable. Were it not verse, I think it could have been written by almost any of the Platonists. It is their central doctrine beautifully articulated. It asserts the relation of ‘humble faith’ to reason, of reason as supplying ‘objects that endure’, or ‘universal things’, and of steadily maturing processes, such as Cudworth imagined for his ‘Plastick Nature’. And though the first two thirds of the passage might be taken as reason acting alone, independently of the world, at the risk of ‘throwing off’ the ‘incumbrances’ of temporal life, from line 32 onwards Wordsworth connects this power with the social life of mankind, the ‘kindred permanence’ of human qualities – that is, he does not make of reason a light shining on a barren heath. Yet it is curious that Wordsworth does not make a connection between Nature as power and nature as appearance in this passage. It might be explained by the fact that he begins by proclaiming that, in nature, genius finds ‘His best and purest friend  – from her receives/That energy by which he seeks the truth,/Is rouzed, aspires, grasps, struggles, wishes, craves/From her that happy stillness of the mind/ Which fits him to receive it when unsought.’ (Prelude 1805, 12.8 ff.). That progress from intense energy of mind to a ‘happy stillness’ resonates with what he wrote nine books earlier, each list of verbs echoing the other – ‘awakened, summoned, rouzed, constrained,/I looked for universal things,…/And, turning the mind in upon itself,/ Pored, watched, expected, listened, spread my thoughts,’ until this struggle dis-

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closed ‘the tranquil soul,/Which underneath all passion lives secure/A steadfast life.’ Only when we have reached ‘that happy stillness of the mind’, that ‘steadfast life’, are we in a position to read the notices of sense – which are otherwise ‘a universe of death’. Nevertheless, that the power of nature will issue in appearances which define and express the qualities of that power is consistent with the idea of a plastic nature, and Wordsworth opens the final book of The Prelude with an assertion of this belief. What he saw from the top of Snowdon one misty, moonlit night becomes, in a subsequent meditation, ‘The perfect image of a mighty mind/Of one that feeds upon infinity’. That might be taken as a perfectly legitimate, if slightly extravagant, metaphor or analogy. But it is not, for Wordsworth, an accidental image that he has transformed to his own ends. What he saw, he says, is a deliberate act of nature as a power expressing herself in carefully selected appearances. The ‘image of a mighty mind’ is refined to ‘One function of such a mind had Nature there/Exhibited…/That domination which she oftentimes/Exerts upon the outward face of things’ – the effect of which is so powerful, that confronted by such domination ‘even the grossest minds must see and hear/Cannot chuse but feel.’ Nature, as a power, has ‘Thrust forth upon the senses’ the truths of Reason, of our soul rising from a mysterious abyss, and our home as with infinitude and only there. This is probably more than any of the Cambridge Platonists would have said – Cudworth was very wary of giving consciousness to plastic nature. But Wordsworth, to Coleridge’s consternation, tends to see one mind everywhere, and here Nature presents the working of a mind which is ‘a genuine counterpart/And brother of the glorious faculty/Which higher minds bear with them as their own.’ If the power of nature and the power of ‘higher’ minds are distinguished, it is only to highlight their essential similarity. And Wordsworth doesn’t stop there—he goes on to describe the qualities of this shared mind in verse that familiarity only makes more remarkable: This is the very spirit in which they deal With all the objects of the universe: They from their native selves can send abroad Like transformation, for themselves create A like existence… They build up greatest things From least suggestions, ever on the watch Willing to work and to be wrought upon. They need not extraordinary calls To rouze them – in a world of life they live, By sensible impressions not enthralled, But quickened, rouzed, and made thereby more fit To hold communion with the invisible world. Such minds are truly from the Deity, For they are powers; and hence the highest bliss That can be known is theirs – the consciousness Of whom they are, habitually infused Through every image, and through every thought, And all impression; hence religion, faith, And endless occupation for the soul… (Prelude 1805 13.91 ff.)

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‘… in a world of life they live,/By sensible impressions not enthralled…’. How often is that taken as a key Wordsworthian statement? Yet such minds experience the highest bliss that can be known  – consciousness of whom they are, ‘habitually infused/through every image.’ There is a clearly defined relation of the mind to sense in this passage: if objects act on the mind as on a tabula rasa, the mind is, in Wordsworth’s words, enthralled by sensible impressions, or as Coleridge put it, ‘lost and scattered in sensible Objects’; but if it acts on those objects, then they become a form of self-knowledge, an expression of the otherwise ‘invisible world’, and that is ‘the highest bliss’/That can be known’. The world, far from being ‘unintelligible’, or a ‘burthen’ is thus given back to us as our place of being, at one with whom we are. And it is analogous with God’s creative power and his immanent relationship with the physical world. And finally, love. It is the pervading theme of the last book of The Prelude and, beginning with the embracing statement, ‘By love subsists/All lasting grandeur, by pervading love;/That gone, we are as dust’, Wordsworth asserts that the most ordinary, even questionable, forms of love  – such as that of frolicking lambs ‘In the springtime/When birds do sing, hey ding a ding, ding’ – are modes of genuine love, but pitiable ‘Unless this love by a still higher love/Be hallowed, love that breathes not without awe;/Love that adores’, which he then ties in with his principal concerns: This spiritual Love acts not nor can exist Without Imagination, which, in truth, Is but another name for absolute power And clearest insight, amplitude of mind, And Reason in her most exalted mood. (Prelude 1850, 14.188 ff.)

Absolute power: that power analogous to the creative power of God, a power which enables the human being to re-vision or envision the unity of life, the paradise of primary creation.

13.15  Conclusion When Wordsworth arrived in Cambridge at the age of 18, he outlined a method of thinking that, he implied, was once well-established there, but no longer part of university culture. He looked, he says, and ‘Mine eyes were crossed by butterflies, ears vexed/By chattering popinjays; the inner heart/Seemed trivial…’ (Prelude 1850, 3.446–8). To find the seriousness he wanted he went farther back  – to the ‘venerable doctors’, which might describe the Cambridge Platonists – but by which he meant the humanists Bucer, Erasmus and Melanchthon (Prelude 1850, 3.479), whom he admires for their arduous study, but does not suggest that theirs is the track he is pursuing. Tod Jones believes that this humanist tradition was obscured by the Puritan revolution and re-established by the Cambridge Platonists, via the Florentine Academy (Jones and Phang 2005, 3–6). That route was familiar to Coleridge, yet

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there is no evidence that it was part of Wordsworth’s consciousness. Had it been, surely he would have mentioned men like Whichcote, More, Cudworth or Smith as the heirs to that tradition, serious in themselves, and flourishing in Cambridge within a hundred years of his time. Reluctant, in Whichcote’s words, to talk ‘about Religion’, to discuss doctrine or dogma, nonetheless, and in common with Wordsworth, they asserted religion as power, and sought a knowable God; refusing Hobbesian materialism, not limiting Reason to sensory analysis, debating, and some of them rejecting, Cartesian dualism they stood where no other philosophers found it possible to stand. Thus theological and philosophical history has largely set them aside. But that peculiar combination of qualities  – of a profound religious instinct, of powerful, sometimes idiosyncratic thought expressed in a vigorous and lively language, allowed them to stand where a poet might stand, where Wordsworth stood, where Hopkins and Eliot would both stand, believing instinctively in an incarnational or sacramental relationship between mind and the created world. Wordsworth was happy to declare our home is with God, and only there, but he had no certain theology; he asserted that his poetry could disclose ‘a system’, but, bar Plato, he had no discernible philosophical allegiances. In such and in many other respects his work echoes that of the Cambridge Platonists. As yet, Wordsworth’s poetic and intellectual antecedents remain shrouded in mystery. His greatest poem seems to speak of an acquaintance with the work and genius of Thomas Traherne, whom he could never have read; and not in so many words, not as a system, but as an intellectual and spiritual sympathy, his thought reflects the insights of a group of thinkers he never mentioned, and seems to have had no direct knowledge of. So his intuition that he was pursuing a track ‘not untrod before’ was right, even if he could not trace that track back into the country it came from.

Bibliography Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. 1956–1971. The Collected Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ed. Earl Leslie Griggs. 6 vols. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———. 1957–2002. The notebooks of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ed. Kathleen Coburn, Merton Christensen, and Anthony Harding. 5 vols in 10. New York, London, and Princeton: Routledge and Kegan Paul. ———. 1972. Lay sermons, ed. R.J. White. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd. ———. 1980–2001. Marginalia, ed. George Whalley and H.  J. Jackson. 6 vols. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ———. 1981. Logic, ed. J.R. de Jackson. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ———. 1983. Biographia Literaria, 2 vols. ed. James Engell and Walter Jackson Bate. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ———. 1995. Shorter works and fragments, ed. H. J. Jackson and J. R. de J. Jackson. 2 vols. ———. 2000a. Lectures 1818–1819 on the history of philosophy, ed. J. R. de J. Jackson. 2 vols. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ———. 2000b. Opus Maximum, ed. Thomas McFarland with the assistance of Nicholas Halmi.

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Cowley, Abraham. 1809. The works of Mr. A. Cowley in prose and verse. Vol. 1. London: John Sharpe. Cudworth, Ralph. 1678. The true intellectual system of the universe, (London, 1678). Curtis, Jared. 1993. The Fenwick notes of William Wordsworth. Bristol: Bristol Classical Press. Emerson, Ralph Waldo. 1856. English Traits. Boston: Phillips, Sampson, and Company. Greene, Robert A. and MacCullum, Hugh (eds.). 1971. Nathaniel Culverwell an elegant and learned discourse of the light of nature. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Hutton, Sarah. 1994. Platonism in some metaphysical poets. In Platonism in the English imagination, ed. Anna Baldwin and Sarah Hutton. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2015. British philosophy in the seventeenth century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Jeffery, John. 1701–1707. Benjamin Whichcote, several discourses. London: Printed for James Knapton. ———. 1753. Moral and religious aphorisms. London: S. Salter. Cited by aphorism. Jones, Tod E., ed. and Sara Elise Phang, trans. 2005. The Cambridge Platonists: A brief introduction—with eight letters of Dr. Antony Tuckney and Dr. Benjamin Whichcote. University Press of America. Mander, W.J. 2011. British idealism: A history. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Marks, Carol. 1966. Thomas Traherne and Cambridge Platonism. PMLA 81: 521–534. Muirhead, John H. 1931. The Platonic tradition in Anglo-Saxon philosophy. London: Macmillan. [Patrick, Simon.] 1662. A brief account of the new sect of latitude-men together with some reflections upon the new philosophy, by S.P. London: [s.n]. Patrides, C.A., ed. 1969. The Cambridge Platonists. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Price, A.W. 1994. Wordsworth’s Ode on the intimations of immortality. In Platonism and the English imagination, ed. Anna Baldwin and Sarah Hutton. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rader, Melvin. 1967. Wordsworth: A philosophical approach. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hyder Edward Rollins, ed. 1958. The letters of John Keats, 1814–1821. Harvard: Harvard University Press. Cited as Keats. Stewart, J.A. 1912. Platonism in English poetry. In English literature and the classics, ed. George Gordon et al. London: Richard West. Thornton, R.K.R., and Catherine Philips, eds. 2013. The collected works of Gerard Manley Hopkins. Volumes I and II: Correspondence. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Whichcote, Benjamin. 1698. Select sermons of Dr. Whichcot [sic] in two parts, 1609–1683. London: Printed for Awnsham and John Churchill. Cited by sermon, part and page. Whichcote, Benjamin. 1707. Several discourses, ed. John Jeffery (London, 1701–1707), 4 vols. Wordsworth, Christopher. 1851. Memoirs II. London: E. Moxon. Wordsworth, William. 1979. The Ruined Cottage and The Pedlar, ed. James Butler. Ithaca/New York: Cornell University Press. Wordsworth, William. 1988. The letters of William and Dorothy Wordsworth, The later years, part 4, 1840–1853, ed. Alan G. Hill, vol. 7. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Wordsworth, Jonathan, M.H.  Abrams, and Stephen Gill, eds. 1979. William Wordsworth, The Prelude, 1799, 1805, 1850. London and New York. Cited as Prelude by year, book and line. Worthen, John. 2014. The life of William Wordsworth. Oxford: Wiley Blackwell. Worthington, John, ed. 1660. John Smith, select discourses. London: Printed by J.  Flesher, for W. Morden. Wu, Duncan, ed. 2007. Wordsworth’s reading 1800–15. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Chapter 14

The Legacy of a ‘Living Library’: On the Reception of John Smith Derek A. Michaud

Abstract  John Smith (1618–1652) was among the first of the Cambridge Platonists. He was therefore in a position to influence not only his contemporaries but all those who followed after him well into the twentieth century and beyond. Well established lines of influence both to and from Whichcote, Cudworth, and More are explored first before moving on to less well-known connections to Bishop Simon Patrick and mathematician Isaac Barrow. Smith’s continued significance for eighteenth century theology is demonstrated through discussion of his inspiration of the doctrines of spiritual sensation developed by Jonathan Edwards and John Wesley. Special notice is also given to Smith’s authority as an interpreter of Biblical prophecy through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The chapter concludes with looks at Smith’s influence on Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Ralph Waldo Emerson, William Ralph Inge, Rufus Jones, Pierre Hadot, and others. This chapter, offers a broad, but highly selective, overview of the reception and influence of Smith’s life and work. It is intended, however, as a call for future research more than as an authoritative presentation of Smith’s legacy. For, if the Cambridge Platonists have been underappreciated until recently, none of them have been unjustly ignored as consistently as Smith. John Smith (1618–1652) has never escaped the attention of scholars in fields as diverse as the history of philosophy, religious studies, theology, literature, history of science and mathematics. Smith’s name appears, as often as not in a footnote crediting him with inspiring some other better-known figure, in a broad scholarly literature and it has for several centuries. Early Continental accounts of the Platonists of Cambridge often do not include Smith. This is most likely because, unlike others in this group, only his discourse on prophecy was translated into Latin and it is among his less philosophical work. Nevertheless, Smith was one of the first members of the group we know as the Cambridge Platonists. He was therefore able to influence not only his contemporaries like Cudworth and More but all those who followed him D. A. Michaud (*) Department of Philosophy, University of Maine, Orono, ME, USA e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 D. Hedley, D. Leech (eds.), Revisioning Cambridge Platonism: Sources and Legacy, International Archives of the History of Ideas Archives internationales d’histoire des idées 222, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22200-0_14

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well into the twentieth century and beyond. This chapter offers a broad, but highly selective, overview of the reception and influence of Smith’s life and work. It is intended, however, as a call for future research more than as an authoritative presentation of Smith’s legacy. For, if the Cambridge Platonists have been underappreciated, none have been unjustly ignored as consistently as Smith.

14.1  Smith the Cambridge Platonist While often underappreciated for his philosophical acumen, Smith is rightly understood as a Christian Platonist. His ‘Platonism’ lies above all in his self-conscious identification with, and advocacy for, the Platonic tradition as developed in late antiquity and revived in the Renaissance in service of Christian piety. Smith does not embrace every doctrine associated with Plato. For example, he nowhere subscribes to Platonic reminiscence (anamnesis) nor the pre-existence of the soul. Moreover, Smith’s sources and arguments are not always drawn from the Platonic tradition strictly considered. Like Plotinus, he makes regular use of many Stoic texts and concepts. Nonetheless, Smith consistently agrees with ancient Platonic authorities, especially Plotinus, Plutarch, Porphyry, Proclus, and Simplicius against Stoic, Aristotelean, and Epicurean authors. For example, Smith’s arguments for the immortality of the soul are drawn above all from Plotinus’ Ennead IV.7 (Smith 1660, 59–120). In addition to his textual connections to the Platonic tradition Smith argues for a holistic and systematically presented philosophical theology that is consistent with what Gerson calls ‘Ur-Platonism’ consisting of the conjunction of anti-materialism, anti-mechanism, anti-nominalism, anti-relativism, and anti-skepticism (Gerson 2013, 9–19). For example, Smith makes anti-materialist (Smith 1660, 68–84) and anti-mechanist (Smith 1660, 85–92) arguments for the immortality of the soul. His opposition to nominalism is nearly everywhere on display (e.g., Smith 1660, 8, 20, 62, 147–151, 381, 446, 464, etc.). And Smith’s anti-relativism and anti-skepticism are central to the opening ‘Discourse of the True Way or Method of Attaining to Divine Knowledge’ (Smith 1660, 1–21). Conceptually then, as well as textually, Smith’s thought is a form of Platonism. Smith the Platonist is also a ‘Cambridge Platonist’ despite the anachronism involved in applying this nineteenth-century label. Already by 1659, John Worthington thought of the work of Henry More as continuing and expanding on that begun by Smith on the question of the immortality of the soul (Worthington 1660b, xxii). Worthington also acknowledges the assistance of Cudworth in bringing the prophecy discourse to publication (Worthington 1660b, xxii). The evidence is not definitive, but it is suggestive of a consciousness of Smith and his colleagues in Cambridge as a movement. That Cudworth, More, and Smith disagree on many particulars does nothing to lessen this status nor their Platonism for, as Gerson has emphasized, Platonists may ‘agree on first principles but disagree on what follows from these’ (Gerson 2013, 10).

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14.2  Immediate Reception Smith is rightly associated with his tutor Benjamin Whichcote. In fact, it has been said that Smith ‘lived upon Dr. Whichcote’ (Salter 1753, xviii). In addition to being his academic mentor, Smith seems to have received financial support from Whichcote as well. Less well appreciated is the likely role that Smith played in recording the work of his mentor. If Samuel Salter’s reports can be trusted, Smith took down many of Whichcote’s sermons, thus preserving his work for eventual publication (Salter 1753, xvii–xviii). John Worthington and Simon Patrick too suggest that among Smith’s duties as a sizar to record his tutor’s sermons. The degree of collegial cooperation, if any, between them must remain a matter of (irresistible) speculation for lack of clear records. But it may be that their relationship was collaborative in the way that professors and advanced graduate students often are in our time. Smith was almost certainly influenced by, and an influence upon, the more prominent Cambridge Platonists, Cudworth and More (Mijuskovic 1974, 23–6, 35, 63–70). Alan Gabbey has suggested that it may have been Smith, rather than Cudworth or More, who first took up the attack upon ‘mechanical religion’ (2008, 121, 127n50). Smith’s importance for these others is less a matter of shared doctrines than a general approach to philosophy and theology. Moreover, unlike Whichcote, it is with Smith, More, and Cudworth that explicit references to Plotinus become ubiquitous in mid-seventeenth century Cambridge. This suggests at least a mutual affinity for the great Neoplatonist if not also a causal influence between them (Patrides 1969, 17–8; Teply 2004, 18–21, 36–52). Upon his death in 1652 Smith’s impressive collection of books, primarily from continental authors and presses, were left to the Library of Queens’ College. The only record of the collection as it existed in Smith’s lifetime is a manuscript list of the volumes accepted by the College which also lays out the nature of the bequest (Queens’ MS 47). This list is of central importance for understanding Smith’s intellectual world but it does not, unfortunately, record the complete contents of his library. Only those volumes that the librarian at Queens’ thought worth adding to the College collection are now known (Saveson 1955). Smith’s known collection is remarkably broad in the range of interests it reveals in its collector; history, geography, languages, mathematics, philosophy, religion, and science all mingle together in the sort of eclectic mélange one would expect from a late Renaissance scholar. Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, and Descartes are well represented in his collection as are standard accounts of world history and geography. Rabbinic literature in Latin translation and the original Hebrew and Aramaic, as well as other Near Eastern languages, are also noteworthy both in quality and quantity. These Smith put to good use in his Discourses generally but particularly his work on prophecy. Suspicious in their absence are editions of the works of many of the great Platonists Smith clearly knew well. Of the antique Platonists Smith’s collection is only known to have included Plato’s Timaeus, Proclus’s Platonic Theology, Porphyry’s works against killing and eating animals (De abstinentia ab esu anima-

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lium and De non necandis ad epulandum animantibus), and Iamblichus’s Vita Pythagorae and Exhortation to the Study of Philosophy (Protrepticae Orationes ad Philosophiam). Smith’s bequest is still remembered among the very most important of the early contributions to the academic life of the College and it marked a vast improvement in the Library’s holdings at the time. No doubt this gift was a poor substitute for the loss of one Simon Patrick called a ‘living library’ (1660, 506–7). But, Smith’s donations have been an abiding consolation in the years since and a significant contribution to the scholarly life of the College (Eggington 2012, 2013). The Cambridge Platonists have long been closely associated with the so-called ‘Latitudinarians.’ Indeed, figures such as Whichcote and John Wilkins often overlap the standard lists of both groups. The latitudinarians were members of the Church of England who nonetheless viewed specific doctrines (especially Calvinist predestination), liturgical practices, and polities as of minor importance compared to what C. S. Lewis called ‘mere Christianity’ (Lewis 1952). Smith’s relation to the wider ‘sect of latitude men’ who are not also Cambridge Platonists is nowhere more clearly seen than in the case of his eloquent eulogizer, and first observer of the movement, Simon Patrick (1660, 481–526; P[atrick] 1662). Patrick, who eventually went on to become bishop of Ely among other high offices in the Church of England, began his studies at Queens’ within weeks of Smith’s appointment as a Fellow there in 1644. While Smith was not Patrick’s tutor, the two studied together during the latter’s student days and they remained close when Patrick joined Smith as a Fellow. In his Autobiography, Patrick speaks with obvious affection for Smith. In particular, Patrick credits Smith with helping him to remove doubts about predestination and the use of reason in theology that never again troubled him (Patrick 1858, 419). It may safely be assumed that this theological mentorship played a significant role in establishing Patrick on the trajectory toward his long career as a cleric in the Church of England. In Smith, Patrick found a role model for the central place of morality in religious piety over ritual or doctrine that came to guide the latitudinarians. Comparing his departed mentor to Socrates, Patrick remarks ‘that he could say nothing about the Gods and such like … but … he was continually busied and imployed; instructing of their Youth, amending of their Manners and making them truly virtuous … Such an one was the party deceased’ (Patrick 1660, 491–2). And ‘he was always very urgent upon us that by the Grace of God … we would endeavor to purge out the corruption of our Natures and … to labor after Purity of heart, that so we might see God’ (510). Likewise, from Smith, Patrick learned to trust in human reason as a guide in all things religious. ‘If he was not a Prophet like Elijah, yet I am sure he was … an Interpreter of the Spirit’ (484). Thus, it can scarcely be imagined that Smith’s rational religion, containing as it did a latitudinarian’s appreciation for essentials and tolerance of things ‘indifferent,’ did not have a major impact on Patrick. While he is but a single well-known latitudinarian, Smith’s impact on this significant member of a major movement in late seventeenth and eighteenth-century Anglicanism is certain and worthy of additional specialized research. Mention should also be made of Smith’s early theological influence in Scotland. For example, among his early admirers there was the pietist Henry Scougal, whose

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Life of God in the Soul of Man shows the influence of Smith (Rivers 1991, 244). Moreover, Smith’s discourse on ‘The Excellency and Nobleness of True Religion’ was published in Glasgow in 1745. David Dalrymple, Lord Hailes, put forward an abridged edition of Smith’s Select Discourses in 1756. One of the less well-known aspects of Smith’s legacy is his impact on the development of mathematics at Cambridge. He began teaching mathematics in a university lectureship founded by John Wollaston in 1648. In this capacity, Smith may have taught Isaac Barrow, the discoverer of the fundamental theorem of calculus who became the first Lucasian Professor of Mathematics in 1663. Barrow famously taught Isaac Newton, who would finish his work toward calculus as well as taking up the study of optics like Barrow, and prophecy like both Barrow and Smith (albeit in less orthodox ways than his teachers). The connection is not absolutely sure for lack of good records about the teaching of mathematics at Cambridge in the seventeenth century, but it is very likely that Smith (as well as Cudworth and More) stands among those ‘giants’ upon whose shoulders’ Newton stood (Feingold 1990, 2003). The still relatively new phenomenon of publishing philosophical and theological works in English helped Smith’s influence spread immediately across the North Atlantic to the British colonies of New England and Virginia. The libraries of the extant colonial colleges of America all have seventeenth-century copies of Smith’s Discourses (Harvard, William & Mary, Yale, Princeton, UPenn, Columbia, Brown, Rutgers, and Dartmouth). Smith and the other Cambridge Platonists were well known, if not always approved, in colonial Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Charleston. In fact, by the early eighteenth century, Smith formed a key part of the inspiration for a divine working on the frontier of European settlement in western Massachusetts named Jonathan Edwards.

14.3  Eighteenth-Century Reception While Smith is mostly remembered today as an ancillary curiosity or source of contextual or rhetorical leverage for the study of the more famous Cambridge Platonists (Cudworth and More especially) in the more immediate aftermath of his brief career, Smith exerted a profound influence on many divines. This was especially the case in the eighteenth century on both sides of the Atlantic. Of particular interest is the deep affinity between Jonathan Edwards and John Wesley on the ‘spiritual senses’ of the soul and way they both drew upon Smith for their theories thereof. Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) is ‘widely acknowledged to be America’s most important and original philosophical theologian’ (Wainwright 2002). He was born into a family of Congregational ministers in East Windsor, Connecticut in 1703. In 1716 Edwards enrolled at Yale where he read Newton, Locke, Malebranche and the Cambridge Platonists. After briefly ministering to congregations in New York and Bolton, Connecticut, he returned to Yale where he completed his Master of Arts and became a senior tutor in 1724. Edwards was chosen to succeed his grandfather as minister of the church in Northampton Massachusetts in 1725 where he oversaw and commented definitively on the religious revivals of 1734 and 1740–41. This

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period of renewed enthusiasm in evangelical religion has come to be known as the first ‘Great Awakening.’ The experiential Calvinism of this Awakening has been a primary distinguishing factor in American Evangelicalism ever since. Edwards’ defense of the revivals and criticisms of their excesses culminated in his first major treatise, the Religious Affections in 1746 (Edwards 1959). Disputes over qualifications for church membership led to Edwards’s dismissal from ministry in 1750. Instead of accepting offers to preach elsewhere in North America and Scotland, Edwards took up work at the Indian mission at Stockbridge where he had charge of two congregations, supervised a boarding school for native boys, and completed his last major works, Freedom of the Will (1754), Original Sin (1758), End of Creation and True Virtue (1765). Edwards was appointed President of the College of New Jersey (now Princeton) in 1757 but died from complications arising from a smallpox inoculation on 22 March 1758, less than 5 weeks after taking up the post. As Wainwright has demonstrated, Edwards’s writings stress two themes above all, ‘the absolute sovereignty of God’ and the ‘beauty of God’s holiness.’ Divine sovereignty is most clearly defended in Edwards’ occasionalism. He argued that the only real cause of physical and mental events is God. Divine beauty is discussed ‘in accounts of God’s end in creation, and of the nature of true virtue and true beauty.’ Divine creation ‘manifest[s] a holiness which consists in a benevolence which alone is truly beautiful. Genuine human virtue is an imitation of divine benevolence and all finite beauty is an image of divine loveliness. True virtue is needed to discern this beauty, however, and to reason rightly about ‘divine things” (Wainwright 2002). References to the influence of Smith abound in the massive literature on Edwards. Four areas of this influence have been identified; the doctrines of spiritual sensation, deification, morality, and Edwards’ rhetoric all draw heavily on Smith and the other Cambridge Platonists. Smith was an important, and widely cited, source for Edwards’ doctrine of the ‘sense of the heart’ (Walton 2002, 121–2; Wainwright 2012, 224–40; Withrow 2011, 58, 62–3, 194). However, scholars have been overly tentative in asserting a clear line of influence. As Brad Walton puts it, ‘all commentators since John E. Smith have recognized that John Smith’s own discussion of the ‘spiritual sensation,’ presented in the first chapter of the Select Discourses, constitutes a clear anticipation of Edwards, and probably exercised a direct influence on his own thinking’ (Walton 2002, 121). This merely ‘probable’ case for Smith’s influence is rooted in the mistaken notion that it is only in the first Discourse on the ‘True Way of Method of Attaining to Divine Knowledge’ that Smith discusses ‘spiritual sensation.’ This tendency ignores the role of spiritual or intellectual sense in Smith’s arguments for theism, his account of prophecy, and the role of sensibility in practical religion as well (Michaud 2017). Far from merely a likely influence, Edwards drew directly and definitively from Smith’s Discourses and quotes him at length on the ‘inward sense of the Divine goodness’ (Edwards 1959, 217–9; Smith 1660, 361). Edwards also quotes at length the closing passage of Smith’s Discourse upon ‘The Shortness of a Pharisaick Righteousness’ on the ‘boiling up of the imaginative powers,’ commenting that it is a ‘remarkable passage’ (Walton 2002, 121). Moreover, since Smith

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employs the spiritual senses throughout his theology we would be wise to look more broadly than ‘religious experience’ in Edwards for his influence on the American Evangelical. Edwards has received significant attention in recent years for his theory of sanctification or deification. Brandon Withrow, for example, has noted the strong resemblances between Edwards’ view and those of patristic and later Orthodox theologians, such as Origen, the Cappadocians, and Gregory Palamas (Withrow 2008). While the similarities are striking, there is, however, no reason to believe that Edwards had access to these Greek sources directly. McClymond and McDermott have more recently argued that Edwards’ theory of divinization should be read ‘against the backdrop of Renaissance and early modern Neoplatonism, and specifically the writings of the seventeenth-century Cambridge Platonists’ including Whichcote, Cudworth, More, and especially John Smith (McClymond and McDermott 2012, 413–4). Indeed, many passages in Edwards’ End of Creation are anticipated by Smith in both arguments and even phrasing (Smith 1660, 142, 147, 155; Edwards 1989, 436–44). The influence of Henry Scougal’s The Life of God in the Soul of Man (1677) on Edwards and the connections between Scougal and Smith are also likely sources of the New Englander’s concerns for the inner life of Christian piety too (Cragg 1968, 30). Additionally, ‘Edwards’s moral reflections were … shaped by his reading of the Cambridge Platonists, especially John Smith and Henry More’ (McClymond and McDermott 2012, 534). Like the Platonists, Edwards also rejected the harsh and arbitrary portrayal of God in mainstream Calvinism and like Smith, in particular, he argued that God is ‘fundamentally goodness and love’ (Micheletti 1976, 327). Moreover, just as Smith had argued that ‘God judges creatures not by an arbitrary will but by his own internal goodness’ so too did Edwards. One finds a remarkable similarity in Smith and Edwards’s views that ‘everything good in the created world is an emanation from God’ (McClymond and McDermott 2012, 534). This is, of course, a classic Platonic notion, but Edwards’ source for this ancient wisdom seems to have been Smith and the rest of the Cambridge Platonists, rather than the original authors themselves. Edwards’s own record of his library and reading does not include Plotinus at all and only an abridged edition of selected dialogues of Plato (Edwards 2008). Finally, Smith seems also to be an inspiration for Edwards’ rhetorical style. Compare for example the following passage from Smith and the proceeding from Edwards. God does most glorifie and exalt himself in the most triumphant way that may be ad extra or out of himself … when he most of all communicates himself … And we then most of all glorifie him when we partake most of him (Smith 1660, 142). As there is an infinite fullness of all possible good in God … and as this fullness is capable of communication, or emanation ad extra; so it seems a thing amiable and valuable in itself that this infinite fountain of good should send forth abundant streams…. They are all but the emanation of God’s glory; or the excellent brightness and fullness of the divinity diffused, overflowing, and as it were enlarged; or in one word, existing ad extra (Edwards 1989, 433, 445).

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Since Edwards is the first great New World philosopher in English and ‘America’s Evangelical’ there is great interest in understanding his sources and influences (Gura 2005). Moreover, it may well be that a lasting echo from Smith persists today in and through the continued appeal of Edwards. For all these reasons, future research on the influence of John Smith on Jonathan Edwards is needed, especially with regard to the spiritual senses and the rational piety associated therewith. Smith’s influence can also be traced to John Wesley. The founder of Methodism was born near London in 1703 and he enrolled at Christ College, Oxford in 1723. There Wesley earned both a bachelor’s before and a master’s after being ordained a deacon in the Church of England in 1726. Wesley then served as a Fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford while beginning to minister to the parish of Wroote. In the 1730s he began to meet with a small group, including his brother Charles, to pray and study scripture that was dubbed the ‘Holy Club’ by opponents who saw this as unjustified ‘enthusiasm.’ It was around this time that others began to refer to the Wesley’s as ‘Methodists’ a name originally meant to signify their over-eagerness in spiritual matters but which was eventually co-opted (Tomkins 2003, 12–42, 95–100). John Wesley’s major teachings include the possibility of Christian perfection and the denial of Calvinist predestination, both sentiments that resonate well with the Cambridge Platonists and Latitudinarians of the Church of England (Oden 2012– 2014; Thorsen 2013, 29–57, 72–87). While Wesley himself never left the Anglican Church, his movement, ‘Methodism,’ is today a major branch of Protestant Christianity which has itself given rise to the Holiness Movement as well as Pentecostalism. Most relevantly for our purposes, Wesley’s doctrine of the spiritual senses owes much to his reading of John Norris, who was influenced by Smith’s circle, especially Henry More, in addition to Malebranche (English 1991, 55–69; Mealey 2006, 20). Moreover, in addition to publishing an abbreviated edition of Smith’s Select Discourses in his Christian Library, Wesley may also have drawn on Smith’s version of the spiritual senses in formulating his own approach (Mealey 2006, 26–7; Mealey 2012, 241–56). As Isabel Rivers has ably shown, John Wesley was among a significant group of clerics in the eighteenth century to use various means at their disposal to promote work of several we now call Cambridge Platonists (Rivers 2013). Relative to Smith this took the form of publishing selections from Smith’s Discourses in his Christian Library. Wesley included parts of the Preface by Worthington and portions of the Discourses, thus making for essentially the publication of an abridgment of the Select Discourses (Smith 1752). In addition to keeping Smith in print, Wesley’s abridgment lent some of his own spiritual authority to the Cambridge Platonist too, helping to keep him on the minds of evangelicals both in Britain and North America. Unfortunately, we have no better guide to Wesley’s reasons for republishing the works of Smith than a brief note included just after Worthington’s preface that while they are often ‘scarce intelligible to unlearned readers’ he could not resist offering ‘so great a Treasure’ (Wesley 1752, quoted by Christie 1888, 30). Among the possible influences of Smith on Wesley, the most likely involves the spiritual senses of the soul. Whereas the ‘philosophical avant-garde’ in the eigh-

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teenth century (e.g., Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, and Reid) developed notions of moral and aesthetic sensation, Wesley’s spiritual senses stand far more closely in the tradition of the ‘various heart-religion movements in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries’ (Mealey 2006, 26–7). In this, Smith stands chronologically before and conceptually between Shaftesbury and Wesley with a dynamic combination of intellectual, imaginative, and affective versions of spiritual sense (Michaud 2017, 97–189). Like Smith too, Wesley draws from the Greek Patristic Fathers, especially Origen, Clement of Alexandria, and others (Mealey 2006, 28). Mealey suggests that Wesley’s ‘doctrine … resembles the Macarian homilies much more than it does, say, John Smith the Cambridge Platonist’ (Mealey 2012, 256). This judgment, however, ignores the deep similarities between Smith’s doctrine and the Greek spirituality found in Pseudo-Macarius. For example, both the Cambridge Platonist and the monk emphasize the role of the spiritual senses in discerning one’s path through life (Pseudo-Macarius 1992, 50–62; Smith 1660, 3, 8–9, 12–3). Moreover, both authors speak of progress by degrees in the perception of divine things (Pseudo-Macarius 1992, 244–6; Smith 1660, 17–21). Wesley may have been particularly drawn to the Macarian corpus but important themes therein are not wanting in Smith either. Nevertheless, Mealey is correct that care should be taken to distinguish between the influences of others, including Smith, and Wesley’s unique development of this theme in his own particular way (Mealey 2006, 29–30). Clearly then, the additional careful study of the similarities and important differences, between Smith’s and Wesley’s spiritual senses is necessary. Along with Wesley’s influential abridgment, an additional edition was printed in Edinburgh 1756 by Lord Hailes (David Dalrymple); further evidence of the continued interest in Smith’s Select Discourses in the English-speaking world. Earlier in the century, however, and after two complete editions in English, Smith’s lengthy discourse in 13 chapters on prophecy was translated into Latin for an international readership. This translation was appended to Jean Le Clerc’s (1657–1736) Commentary on the Prophets, part of his massive commentary project on the entire Bible (Smith 1731, i–xxix). It seems especially fitting that Le Clerc, a pioneer in the critical exegesis of scripture with special attention to the historical context and purpose of biblical books, included Smith’s discourse. In ‘Of Prophecy’ Smith includes long passages from Jewish authors, especially Maimonides among others, bringing their native insights to bear on Old Testament prophecy rather than simply reading it through a Christian lens. In this way, Smith contributed, albeit in a roundabout way, to the development of modern critical biblical scholarship in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Indeed, ‘Of Prophecy’ remained an important resource for biblical scholars well into the mid-nineteenth century (Kitto 1845, 2: 568). William B. Collyer too cites Smith as an authority on prophecy in his Lectures on Scripture Prophecy (Collyer 1809, 20, 79). Even in our own time, Smith has been referenced as an important commentator on prophets and prophecy (e.g., Johnson 1992, 57–8; Mack 1995, 62–4, 282–3; Raymond 2010, 189–204; and Juster 2011, 35, 42).

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14.4  Nineteenth-Century Reception Smith’s influence in the English speaking world continued apace well into the nineteenth century as his Discourses appeared in print several times (1820, 1821, 1859, 1864, 1882, 1885) and his thought stimulated some of the great minds of the era on both sides of the Atlantic. In fact, there was hardly a generation without a new edition or significant abridgment of the Discourses from the middle of the 18th through the end of the 19th centuries. This alone speaks to the continued appeal of Smith’s thought among philosophers, moralists, divines, and increasingly, the general public too. The appreciation that the great English Romantic Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) had for John Smith is well documented but worthy of mention. Coleridge commented favorably on a number of Smith’s Discourses in several places including his Aids to Reflection (1825, 246) and in his Literary Remains (1836–1839, 1: 213–4, 3: 415–9). On a trip to Sicily, Coleridge ‘gratefully noted’ Smith’s thoroughly platonic observation that as ‘the eye cannot behold the Sun … unless it be Sunlike … neither can the Soul of man, behold God … unless it be Godlike’ (Beer 2010, 128; Smith 1660, 2–4). This language of participation in God on analogy with light and the sun remained a consistent theme throughout Coleridge’s literary career (Beer 2010, 128; Coleridge 1961, 21–64). While Plato is the source of the image it was via Smith that the truth thereof found its way to Coleridge. Smith was also an important source for Coleridge’s conception of Christian philosophy as a spiritual discipline (Hedley 2000, 98–9). Like Smith, Coleridge is highly critical of mere speculation in philosophy and theology (Hedley 2000, 225, 281). Notions such as the platonic commonplace of the soul as a mirror and more specific images such as the Christological heart of morality too may well find their roots in Coleridge’s reading of Smith (Hedley 2000, 109, 175). Finally, in his distinction between the ‘external’ nature of the Jewish Law and the ‘inward’ transformation of Gospel righteousness Coleridge follows not just the Apostle Paul but also John Smith, the ‘most eloquent of the Cambridge Platonists’ (Hedley 2000, 190, 284). Both Coleridge and Smith exerted a deep influence on Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882), one of the founders of American Transcendentalism. Thus, the Cambridge Platonist’s legacy extends to the second noteworthy moment in the history of American philosophy after Jonathan Edwards. Notably, the third, C.  S. Peirce and William James’s Pragmatism, too is a New England development, born of learned Puritan ancestry, first at Smith’s Emmanuel College and later at Harvard in Cambridge, Massachusetts. While Emerson drew on a far wider range of sources than the Cambridge Platonist was in a position to (i.e., Indian texts and traditions), he found in Smith inspiration and confirmation of the lasting significance of critical thought in religion and of Platonism in particular. A quotation from ‘Plato; or, the Philosopher’ in Representative Men (1850) gives something of the flavor of this influence upon Emerson and his school. How many great men Nature is incessantly sending up out of night, to be his men,  – Platonists! the Alexandrians, a constellation of genius; the Elizabethans, not less; Sir Thomas More, Henry More, John Hales, John Smith, Lord Bacon, Jeremy Taylor, Ralph Cudworth, Sydenham, Thomas Taylor … (Emerson 1850, 23).

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Here John Smith takes his place in the Transcendentalist pantheon beside Plato, Plotinus, Jeremy Taylor, and Thomas Taylor. Jay Bregman reports that Thomas Moore Johnson, the great American Platonist of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries who helped bring about the contemporary study of the Platonic tradition on both sides of the Atlantic, ‘always spoke positively of the Christian Cambridge Platonists’ (Bregman 2015, iv). Clearly then, Smith was an important representative of the Platonic tradition in modern America (Bregman 1990, 99–119).

14.5  Twentieth Century Reception & Beyond The twentieth century saw a proliferation of publications that selected, extracted, and anthologized texts from the Cambridge Platonists. In these collections, several of Smith’s Discourses almost always appeared, including especially the first on the ‘True Way or Method of Attaining to Divine Knowledge.’ The editors of these collections have played an absolutely invaluable role therefore in keeping the attention of new scholars fixed on the group as a whole and Smith specifically. In particular, Campagnac (1901), Cragg (1968), Patrides (1969), and Taliaferro and Teply (2004) have helped keep these texts in the hands of successive generations. However, contemporary assessments of Smith are frequently subject to misinterpretation by the selection process. Too often, for example, the Discourses are treated as standalone texts. However, the first five were intended to form a single work of rational theology (Worthington 1660a, 280-1; and 1660b, v). In 1979 the entire first edition of Smith’s Select Discourses was reprinted in facsimile with a brief introduction by C. A. Patrides (1979). This edition has since been the go-to version of the text despite the helpful (though limited) annotations added by various editors in later editions. With the advent of the internet, and especially the scanning of entire books by Google (http://books.google.com/) and scholarly projects like Early English Books Online (http://eebo.chadwyck.com/home), access to the various editions of Discourses has become as widespread as it is currently possible to imagine. That said, a critical edition of the Select Discourses is a project worthy of the considerable labor required as there is no single edition that has both a consistently reliable text and accurate annotations. There was a distinct turn in the disciplinary attention paid to Smith in the twentieth century toward literature and criticism, owing at least in part to the references to him and his circle in the works of figures such as Coleridge and Emerson. Indeed, it is often not among the theologians or philosophers that one finds the most enthusiastic (and knowledgeable) readers of Smith, but instead among the poets, critics, and historians of English literature. Cudworth and More have enjoyed a far better reception among philosophers and theologians in recent decades but ironically when one wants to make one of their points clearly and briefly, it is often a good idea to quote Smith instead. Nevertheless, Smith did not go unnoticed among twentieth-century philosophers and theologians. Indeed, there have been several notable promoters of Smith in the century just passed. In particular, William Inge in Britain and Rufus Jones in the

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United States kept alive a historical and philosophical appreciation for the Cambridge Platonists in general and Smith in specifically. William Ralph Inge (1860–1954) wrote widely and frequently on Neoplatonism and Christian mysticism (Fox 1960). Dean Inge is perhaps best-known today for his Gifford Lectures on Plotinus (published in two volumes in 1918) but he also kept alive an interest in specifically Christian Platonism in the early twentieth century. While Whichcote appears to be his favorite Cambridge Platonist, Inge’s early Christian Mysticism makes frequent approving references to Smith (1899, 9, 285– 96). Personal Idealism and Mysticism opens with an adaptation from Smith, ‘Such as men themselves are, such will God appear to them’ (Inge 1907, 1; cf. Smith 1660, 5). Such references continued throughout Dean Inge’s career. Perhaps most importantly, Inge had a natural understanding of the practical rational piety of Smith. ‘A study of … Smith’s Select Discourses, may not make the reader a better Catholic or a better Protestant, but they cannot fail to make him a better Christian and a better man’ (Inge 1906, 172). The impact of Inge’s ‘Smithian’ outlook had a profound impact on Anglican theology that can still be felt today (Thomas 2009, 1–17). Rufus Jones (1863–1948) was among the organizers of the Quaekerspeisung after World War I. In 1938 he traveled to Berlin seeking a personal meeting with Hitler after Kristallnacht. His efforts as a peacemaker were rewarded with the Nobel Peace Prize for the American Friends Service Committee in 1947 (Bernet 2009, 3–17). Jones was also a noted historian, theologian and philosopher who singled out Smith as one of two examples of the ‘spirit of Cambridge Platonism’ (the other was Whichcote) and dedicated an excellent chapter to him in his Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries (Jones 1914, 305–19). He also made passing use of Smith throughout his 22 books and many articles (for bibliography see, Bernet 2009, 49–136). Given the importance of the relationship between Henry More and Anne Conway, and since the controverted nature of Quaker religion lies at the heart of that relationship in its later stages, it seems Cambridge Platonism and the Society of Friends had a significant influence upon each other (Nicolson and Hutton 1992; White 2008, 11–38). Nevertheless, the influence of Smith on modern Quakerism, beyond the example of Jones, is in need of additional specialist research. From the mid-twentieth century, onward Smith has remained an important influence upon some strands of contemporary work in philosophy and theology. Pierre Hadot, for example, placed Smith in the historical context of the reception of Simplicius’ important Commentary on the Manuel of Epictetus (Hadot 1987). Mario Micheletti’s monograph on Smith’s religious thought (1976) has been far less well appreciated than it deserves, perhaps because it was written in Italian. In it, the general contours of Smith’s thought are clearly presented in reference to his intellectual milieu. More recently, Charles Taliaferro, Sarah Hutton, and Douglas Hedley have contributed to the historical appreciation of Smith and made constructive use of his thought as well. Taliaferro’s Evidence and Faith; Philosophy and Religion Since the Seventeenth Century makes this debt clear by referencing Smith often and to great effect (Taliaferro 2005, 3–4, 11–5, 17–24, 26, 29, 31–8, 40, 42–55, 62, 79, 117, 136–8, 168, 178, 384). In addition to her other work on the Cambridge Platonists

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more generally, Sarah Hutton has helped to keep alive an appreciation for Smith with her entry in the Dictionary of National Biography (2005) as well as an important paper on Smith’s theory of prophecy (Hutton 1984, 73–81). Hedley’s Coleridge, Philosophy, and Religion highlights the influence that Smith had on the Romantic poet-philosopher (Hedley 2000, 98–9, 109, 175, 190, 225, 281, 284). His trilogy on the religious imagination too makes frequent, constructive, reference to Smith (Hedley 2008, 5, 15, 22, 31, 48, 81–2, 89–90, 93, 108, 117, 133–4, 145, 184, 186–7, 224, 265, 270, 273; 2011, 11–6, 51–6, 58, 109–11, 113–9, 121–3, 125, 136, 183, 201–24, 226; 2016, 26, 46–7, 53, 141, 151, 153–4, 166–7, 254, 256).

14.6  Conclusion and Directions for Future Research When one begins to look John Smith appears as a consistent, and significant if sometimes subtle, influence across the modern North Atlantic world. He played an important, even if peripheral, role in the development of theology (Latitudinarianism, American Evangelicalism, and Methodism), philosophy (Platonism, Cartesianism, and Transcendentalism), literature (Romanticism), and mathematics (calculus). His understanding of prophecy too was long held in high esteem across Europe. Indeed, Smith was a ubiquitous authority among eighteenth and nineteenth-century scholars in Britain and the United States. With the close of the Victorian era, Smith began to fade from favor as various forms of positivism, existentialism, and scientism came to displace the idealist and romantic modes of thought that had been so congenial to his brand of Christian Platonism. However, through the consistent publication of selections from his Discourses and the regular historical study and constructive use of his thought Smith’s influence has never vanished. Along with issues of historical and textual interpretation, the theological and philosophical viability of Smith’s system requires careful constructive attention. Our period is poised to benefit from the lessons Smith has to teach about faith and reason generally, and religion and science in particular. Smith speaks exactly to our situation with the apparent conflict between piety and rationality brought on by superstitious anthropomorphic conceptions of God (Smith 1660, 25–37). Perhaps by purging religion of these false idols born of all-too-human fear and turning instead to the transcendent Divinity of Smith’s Christian Platonism the tired conflicts between ‘religion’ and ‘science’ can be overcome. Such a development would require movement on the part of many religious people and perhaps most scientific naturalists, but the prize to be won is a more humane worldview that lacks neither rigor nor living existential power. In personal spirituality and communal worship too Smith’s appeal to essentials in religion provides a calming voice for our time. Against the secular relativistic approach to religions that make them all equal in their irrelevance, Smith offers genuine friendship based on actual unity in essentials and an eagerness to tolerate adiaphora in the name of that essential unity. ‘In necessariis unitas, in dubiis libertas, in omnibus caritas’ (de Dominis 1617, 676).

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Finally, as I have argued at length elsewhere, Smith’s theology and spirituality critically depend upon the spiritual senses (Michaud 2017). It is by means of an encounter with Divine goodness, truth, and beauty that one comes to know and, more importantly, to live into and out of true communion with God. Perhaps, then, renewed attention to, and development of, this traditional way of thinking and being is called for as Christians continue to navigate and (co-)create their world; seeking to be at home, whole, and aware of otherness and transcendence too (cf. Cunningham 2012, 156–88). A renewed Christian Platonism, at once theological and humanistic. A theology that lets one think what one feels and binds the believer to the Good that they may be God’s hands and feet in the world. These are the constructive tasks that Smith’s memory calls for in our time.

Bibliography Beer, John. 2010. Coleridge’s play of mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bernet, Claus. 2009. Rufus Jones (1863–1948). Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Bregman, Jay. 1990. The Neoplatonic revival in North America. Hermathena 149: 99–119. ———. 2015. Preface. In The collected works of Thomas Moore Johnson: The great American Platonist, i–xiv. Westbury: Prometheus Trust. Campagnac, Ernest Trafford, ed. 1901. The Cambridge Platonists. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Christie, Richard Copley, ed. 1888. A Bibliography of the works written and edited by Dr. John Worthington. Manchester: Chetham Society. Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. 1825. Aids to reflection in the formation of a manly character on the several grounds of prudence, morality, and religion: Illustrated by select passages from our elder divines, especially from Archbishop Leighton. London: Taylor and Hessey. ———. 1836–1839. In Literary remains, ed. Henry Nelson Coleridge. London: William Picering. ———. 1961. In Notebooks, ed. Kathleen Coburn and A.J. Harding, vol. 2. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Collyer, William B. 1809. Lectures on scripture prophecy. London: Williams and Smith. Cragg, Gerald Robertson, ed. 1968. The Cambridge Platonists. New  York: Oxford University Press. Cunningham, Conor. 2012. Naturalism lost: Nature regained. In Turning images in philosophy, science, and religion: A new book of nature, ed. Charles Taliaferro and Jil Evans, 156–188. Oxford: Oxford University Press. de Dominis, Marco A. 1617. De repubblica ecclesiastica libri X. London: Ex officina Nortoniana, apud Io. Billium. Edwards, Jonathan. 1959. In Religious affections, ed. John E. Smith. New Haven: Yale University Press. ———. 1989. Concerning the end for which God created the world. In Ethical writings, ed. Paul Ramsey, 403–536. New Haven: Yale University Press. ———. 2008. In Catalogues of books, ed. Peter J. Thuesen. New Haven: Yale University Press. Eggington, Tim. 2012. ‘The advancement of learning’ at Queens’ College in the 17th century. Exhibition, Queens’ College Old Library, Michaelmas term 2012, http://www.queens.cam. ac.uk/bookcollecting. Accessed 27 May 2014. ———. 2013. ‘The living library’ of John Smith (1618–52). Exhibition, Queens’ College Old Library, Michaelmas term 2013, https://www.facebook.com/media/ set/?set=a.638144929550814. Accessed 27 May 2014.

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Emerson, Ralph Waldo. 1850. Plato; Or, the philosopher. In Representative men: Seven lectures, 22–46. Boston: Phillips, Samson and Company. English, John C. 1991. John Wesley’s indebtedness to John Norris. Church History 60 (1): 55–69. Feingold, Mordechai. 1990. Isaac Barrow: Divine, scholar, mathematician. In Before Newton: The life and times of Isaac Barrow, 1–104. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. ———. 2003. Isaac Barrow and the foundation of the Lucasian Professorship. In From Newton to Hawking: A history of Cambridge University’s Lucasian professors of mathematics, ed. Kevin C. Knox and Richard Noakes, 45–67. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Fox, Adam. 1960. Dean Inge. London: John Murray. Gabbey, Alan. 2008. Cudworth, More and the mechanical analogy. In Philosophy, science, and religion in England 1640–1700, ed. Richard W.F. Kroll, Richard Ashcraft, and Perez Zagorin, 109–127. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gerson, Lloyd P. 2013. From plato to platonism. Cornell University Press. Gura, Philip F. 2005. Jonathan Edwards: America’s evangelical. New York: Hill and Wang. Hadot, Pierre. 1987. La survie du commentaire de Simplicius sur le Manuel d’Epictete du XVe au XVIIe siecles: Perotti, Politien, Steuchus, John Smith, Cudworth. In Simplicius, sa vie, son oeuvre, sa survie, ed. Ilsetraut Hadot, 326–368. Berlin: W. de Gruyter. Hedley, Douglas. 2000. Coleridge, philosophy and religion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2008. Living forms of the imagination. London: T&T Clark. ———. 2011. Sacrifice imagined: Violence, atonement, and the sacred. New York and London: Continuum. ———. 2016. The iconic imagination. New York and London: Bloomsbury. Hutton, Sarah. 1984. The prophetic imagination: A comparative study of Spinoza and the Cambridge Platonist, John Smith. In Spinoza’s political and theological thought: International symposium under the auspices of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, commemorating the 350th anniversary of the birth of Spinoza, Amsterdam, 24–27 November 1982, ed. Cornelis de Deugd, 73–81. Amsterdam: North-Holland. ———. 2005. Smith, John (1618–1652). In Oxford dictionary of national biography. Oxford University Press, http://www.oxforddnd.com/view/article/25838. Accessed 10 June 2014. Inge, William Ralph. 1899. Christian mysticism: Considered in eight lectures delivered before the University of Oxford. London: Methuen & Co. ———. 1906. Studies of English mystics. London: John Murray. ———. 1907. Personal idealism and mysticism. London: Longmans, Green, and Co. Johnson, Barbara. 1992. Reading Piers Plowmen and the Pilgrim’s progress: Reception and the Protestant reader. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. Jones, Rufus. 1914. Spiritual reformers in the 16th and 17th centuries. New York: Macmillan and Co. Juster, Susan. 2011. Doomsayers: Anglo-American Prophecy in the age of revolution. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Kitto, John. 1845. Cyclopaedia of biblical literature. Edinburgh: Adam and Charles Black. Lewis, C.S. 1952. Mere Christianity. New York: Macmillan. Mack, Phyllis. 1995. Visionary women: Ecstatic prophecy in seventeenth-century England. Berkeley: University of California Press. McClymond, Michael James, and Gerald R. McDermott. 2012. The theology of Jonathan Edwards. New York: Oxford University Press. Mealey, Mark T. 2006. Taste and see that the Lord is good: John Wesley in the Christian tradition of spiritual sensation. PhD diss. University of St. Michael’s College, Toronto. ———. 2012. John Wesley. In The spiritual senses: perceiving God in western Christianity, ed. Paul L. Gavrilyuk and Sarah Coakley, 241–256. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Michaud, Derek. 2017. Reason turned into the sense: John Smith on spiritual sensation. Leuven: Peeters.

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———. 1859. In Select discourses, ed. H.G. Williams, 4th ed. Cambridge: University Press. ———. 1864. The excellency and nobleness of true religion. London: Emily Faithfull. ———. 1882. In The natural truth of Christianity. Selections from the ‘select discourses’ of John Smith, M.A, ed. W.M. Metcalfe. Paisley and London: Alexander Gardner. ———. 1885. The natural truth of Christianity: Selections from the writings of Jno. Smith, M.A. and others. In The Cambridge Platonists, ed. W. M. Metcalfe. Enlarged Edition. Paisley and London: Alexander Gardner. ———. 1979. In Select discourses, ed. C.A. Patrides. Delmar: Scholars’ Facsimiles & Reprints. Taliaferro, Charles. 2005. Evidence and faith: Philosophy and religion since the seventeenth century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Taliaferro, Charles, and Alison Teply, eds. 2004. Cambridge Platonist spirituality. New  York: Paulist Press. Teply, Alison. 2004. The mystical theology of Peter Sterry: A study in Neoplatonist Puritanism. Ph.D. Thesis, Emmanuel College, Cambridge. Thomas, Owen C. 2009. An Anglican interpretation of the Christian life. In Christian life and practice: Anglican essays, 1–17. Eugen: Wipf and Stock. Thorsen, Don. 2013. Calvin vs. Wesley: Bringing belief in line with practice. Nashville: Abingdon Press. Tomkins, Stephen. 2003. John Wesley: A biography. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans. Wainwright, William. 2002. Jonathan Edwards. In The Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy, edited by E.  N. Zalta, last modified 3 October 2012, http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2012/ entries/edwards/. Accessed 27 May 2014. ———. 2012. Jonathan Edwards and his Puritan predecessors. In The spiritual senses: Perceiving God in western Christianity, ed. Paul L. Gavrilyuk and Sarah Coakley, 224–240. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Walton, Brad. 2002. Jonathan Edwards, religious affections, and the Puritan analysis of true piety, spiritual sensation, and heart religion. Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press. Wesley, John. 1752. A Christian library. Vol. 16. Bristol: Felix Farley. Whichcote, Benjamin. 1969. Moral and religious aphorisms. In The Cambridge Platonists, ed. C.A. Patrides, 326–336. London: Edwin Arnold. White, Carol Wayne. 2008. The legacy of Anne Conway (1631–1679). Albany: State University of New York Press. Williams, Henry Griffin. 1859. Memoir of the author. In Select discourses, ed. John Smith, 4th ed., v–xii. Cambridge: University Press. Withrow, Brandon. 2008. A Connecticut Valley Yankee in a Cappadocian court: Jonathan Edwards, Eastern Christianity, and the ‘spiritual sense’ American Academy of Religion, 3 November 2008. Withrow, Brandon G. 2011. Becoming Divine: Jonathan Edwards’s incarnational spirituality within the Christian tradition. Eugene: Cascade Books. Worthington, John. 1660a. An advertisement. In Select discourses, ed. John Smith, 280–281. London: F. Flesher for W. Morden. ———. 1660b. To the reader. In Select discourses, ed. John Smith, iii–xxxi. London: F. Flesher for W. Morden.

Chapter 15

Between Theodicy and Apologetics. Plato as ‘A Human Preface of the Gospel’: Joseph de Maistre and Simone Weil in the Wake of Cudworth Philippe Barthelet

Abstract  This chapter evokes two major French Platonists of the last two centuries, Joseph de Maistre and Simone Weil, in order to show that Cudworth was the initiator of a combative Platonism, un platonisme de combat. Of course it is only a simple sketch to identify convergences, rather than to detect influences – an exercise which is always post hoc and can as such result in questionable reconstructions.

15.1  Cudworth’s Greatest French Disciple Joseph de Maistre is undoubtedly Cudworth’s greatest French disciple (although strictly speaking he was not French, but Savoyard, and therefore a subject of the King of Piedmont-Sardinia). The word ‘disciple’ is not too strong: he had probably owned Mosheim’s Latin translation of the True Intellectual System of the Universe (Systema Intellectuale, Leiden) since its republication in 1773. He wrote about it in his diary: ‘Excellent Book. Rare and Precious’ (Darcel and Lebrun 1985, 60, translation and subsequent translations from French into English mine). So rare and so precious that it is one of the few books he chose to take from his library in September 1792. We have to remember that at that time Joseph de Maistre was a senator of Savoy, and that Savoy was a part of the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia. When the Revolution flowed over the Alps and the French army invaded Savoy (he noted in his log book (1923, 18): ‘Saturday 22. French invasion, horrible rain’), he left his home in Chambéry to join his king on the other side of the mountains. He could only save a few books and papers from the havoc, and Cudworth’s works were among these items.1 This fact shows the value they had for him. 1  See Darcel and Lebrun (1985), 34: ‘Which were the books saved during his precipitate departure? First of all the old editions dear to the bibliophile: five volumes of the Biblia sacra in the Cologne

P. Barthelet (*) Independent Scholar, Paris, France © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 D. Hedley, D. Leech (eds.), Revisioning Cambridge Platonism: Sources and Legacy, International Archives of the History of Ideas Archives internationales d’histoire des idées 222, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22200-0_15

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Joseph de Maistre read Plato while reading Cudworth and approached the two thinkers similarly: he had a polemic point of view, a warrior’s perspective if we remember the original Greek meaning of the word πόλεμος (‘war’). We can say that Socratic dialectics as Plato depicts it is polemic in its essence: it consists in fighting the false knowledge that the sophists profess. When the sophists took power – and for Maistre this happened at the time that the Encyclopédie was published – it was necessary to raise polemics to another power in the mathematical sense: polemics then became dialectics on a major mode. Viewing Platonism as a link  – the second one after Pythagoreanism  – in the golden chain of ‘true philosophy’, Maistre looked up to Cudworth as a philosophical model. In fact Cudworth himself was a sub-link in the chain along with Cicero, Origen, Augustine, Descartes, Pascal, Bossuet, Fénelon, Leibniz and Malebranche (Maistre 2007b, 508). For Maistre, none of these men had ‘wandered from the truth’. They were all champions and defenders of the ‘true intellectual system of the universe’, or more precisely – since Joseph de Maistre read Cudworth in the annotated translation of Mosheim, of the ‘systema intellectuale hujus universi seu rerum naturae veris originibus commentarii…’ (interestingly, the word ‘true’, which is the first word of the English title, appears more explicitly in the Latin translation in the subtitle). If Maistre identifies the links in the golden chain, though, he refuses to draw up a list of any other philosophers: ‘I will not name’, he writes, ‘the champions of the other party: even their names tear up my mouth’. The tone is set. We have left behind the courteous controversies of that respublica literaria where Cudworth or More could have discussions with Descartes. To Maistre, the blow of the French Revolution has allowed the critics  of authority (a word he borrows from St. Augustine (Maistre 2007b, 508)), those who call themselves ‘philosophers’ or their immediate descendants, the ‘idéologues’ (and for Napoleon this word will be the most dire insult (Picavet 1891)) to usurp social and political power. The spiritual battle that is engaged is a reflection of the one that opposes  – to keep using Augustinian language  – the civitas Dei against the civitas diaboli. These are not explicitly Maistre’s terms, but he would not have disavowed the perspective they denoted. The civitas diaboli, which is the mirror image, the counterfeit and the caricature of the civitas Dei, is divided against itself: division is its principle and its cause, in the same way that divine unity is the keystone of the civitas Dei. That is why, opposite the True Intellectual System of the Universe, which is by definition universal (universalis, versus ad unum, turned towards the One), there is an antagonist multitude of False Intellectual Systems. Following Cudworth, Joseph de Maistre explores and explains them in order to combat and refute them. edition, the New Testament and the superb thirteenth-century illuminated psalter Liber Hymorum. He took the collection of Greek and Latin classics in the precious editions of the Elzevirs; the five volumes of the Iliad in the “magnificent and expensive edition” of Samuel Clark and August Ernesti; some of his last acquisitions like those editions of Tasso and of Theophrastus by Bodoni and, of course, Burke, the critic of an “atheist revolution”. Above all, the érudit and scholar took the works that had played a formative role in his intellectual development. To begin with, the treatise De la sagesse of his ‘good friend Charron’ covered with marginal notes by a youthful hand; the Systema intellectuale of Cudworth/Mosheim with two cumbersome [sic] volumes’.

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We must clarify that for him Cudworth was not only one of the masters of his youth. His Reading Notebooks show he never ceased referring to him, and even the succession of his great works – l’Examen de la philosophie de Bacon, Du Pape and his late masterpiece, his summa (which remained unfinished just like the True Intellectual System), Les Soirées de Saint-Pétersbourg – has something Cudworthian about it in the huge range of places, times, areas and works it covers. Cudworth possesses an encyclopedic will to embrace all human knowledge ad majorem Dei gloriam, for God’s greater glory. One thinks of the great medieval syntheses, especially of St. Isidore of Seville and of the De Universo, subtitled De Rerum Naturis, of his disciple Rabanus Maurus. It is probable that Mosheim, who was German, had it in mind when he composed the Latin subtitle of the True Intellectual System: De Rerum Naturae Veris… Interestingly, the question of ‘truth’ is not broached in the title of Rabanus Maurus: epistemologically, this passage from the implicit to the explicit shows only that between the ninth and the seventeenth centuries, the intellectual and spiritual horizon had shifted and that the obvious certainty called Christendom no longer existed. Cudworth’s prodigious inquiry into the philosophies, theologies, mythologies and esoteric traditions of antiquity must have delighted Joseph de Maistre – who had also the intellectual appetite of an ogre – and it must have shown him his own way. The long and accurate comparative analyses would suggest to him insightful comparisons. I shall mention only two subjects, investigated in a similar spirit: the extensive research Cudworth undertook on the Trinity in the pagan world  – ‘the Egyptian Trinity’ (Cudworth 1678, 412–13), Plato’s Trinity (‘His Divine Trinity of hypostases’ (386–87)), or the ‘Roman and Samothracian Trinity, or Cabiri’ (450)) – a subject which echoes amply in Maistre (2007b, passim); the similar investigation on ‘the names of God’. Moreover, Cudworth educated Maistre on a crucial point. His doctrine of sacrifice, renowned for being of cardinal importance in his own ‘intellectual system’, is based on the premise that ‘bloodshed is the essence of sacrifice’. He found this idea, which, he said, is in agreement with ‘Hebrew theories’, in a text of Strabo about the Persians that Cudworth quotes in his De Vera Notione Cœna Domini, A Discourse Concerning the True Notion of the Lord’s Supper. Joseph de Maistre refers to it.2 The method of searching in the legacy of paganism for means, i.e. weapons, of illustrating and defending Christian dogma may perhaps shock our epistemological habits, but we should not forget it is entirely consistent with the patristic rule given by St. Augustine in his De Doctrina Christiana (2, 42), a rule that all medieval Christian writers observed. When they left Egypt, the Hebrews did not only have the right, but the duty, to take with them Egyptian vessels of gold and silver and precious garments, because they were the legitimate owners of these treasures. Likewise Christians had to take the spiritual treasures of Pagans or Gentiles wherever they found them, since it was the Christians who truly knew what these treasures were. Simone Weil spoke of ‘pre-Christian intuitions’ (Weil 1951). Certainly, she did not 2  Hedley, Sacrifice Imagined: Violence, Atonement and the Sacred, 2011, London: Bloomsbury, 205.

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underestimate the risk of anachronism that is attached to such comparisons. Above all, she distrusted greatly the apologetic claim to serve all dogma, firstly because she detested all spiritual totalitarianism (her harsh words about the Church are well known) and secondly and relatedly, because she detested St. Augustine in particular.3 Despite this, however, we should remember the phrase which summarizes her hermeneutic requirement: ‘One must not say: all that is Christian is true, but: all that is true is Christian’. Hence the great importance she lends to what she calls the implicit forms of God’s love. Simone Weil was deeply shocked by the passage of Dostoyevsky in Demons (1955, 264) where Chatov said to Stavrogin: ‘Did you not tell me that, if we proved mathematically that the truth is outside of Christ, you would rather remain with Christ than with the Truth?’ This phrase, for a Christian, evidently makes no sense, since Christ described himself by saying: ‘I am the Truth’. And on this point which was for her a fundamentum inconcussum, one can say that Simone Weil was a Christian. (I asked a great Slavicist, Pr Jacques Catteau, the French translator of Dostoyevsky, about this, and he answered that one must see here not a heretical paradox but a simple tautology, and that for Dostoyevsky the phrase meant: ‘If I had to choose between Truth and Truth…’.

15.2  The Defence of Innate Ideas But we are getting ahead of ourselves: let us return to Joseph de Maistre and Cudworth. The touchstone of Maistrian Platonism is the defense of innate ideas. It is moreover not the defence of a doctrine or of a particular philosophical position, but only of the possibility of metaphysical reflection itself. His main enemy is John Locke.4 His Locke, though, is not the friend of religion defended by Warburton whose philosophy was to some degree compatible with Christianity – the Locke that the Jesuits first presented – but the hero of Voltaire’s Lettres philosophiques, whom Maistre does not distinguish from his French followers: Condillac certainly, but also Diderot or Raynal, and more generally all the thinkers who have been associated with the ‘Enlightenment’, in which Maistre sees only an anti-metaphysical endeavour. He presents An Essay concerning Human Understanding as ‘the preface to all the philosophy of the eighteenth century, which is all negative and therefore empty’. For him, Locke’s empiricism and the Condillacian sensationalism that derived from it are, to use a Platonic term, only misologies and as such unworthy of formal discussion; it suffices to refute them by showing the invalidity of their content, which is the logical consequence of their evil intent. It is no longer the search for truth, to borrow Malebranche’s title, which determines the activity of the mind; this metaphysical laziness leads firstly to religious indifferentism and secondly to a practical 3  Compare for instance Weil (1950a, 64) about Augustine: ‘Cela est directement contraire au Christ (...) C’est de l’idolâtrie sociale, une idolâtrie de l’Église semblable à l’idolâtrie d’Israël chez les Hébreux’. 4  Pranchère, Jean-Yves. ‘Locke’, in Dictionnaire Joseph de Maistre (Maistre 1884, 1214).

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materialism, and it is the reason why Joseph de Maistre does not distinguish Locke’s empiricism (which he associates with Hobbes) from what appear to him as the logical consequences of it, Condillac’s sensationalism or Helvetius’ materialism. To suppose that intellectual knowledge can come to us from sensations looks to Maistre like an attack against the order of things. If, according to the famous scholastic adage,5 Nihil est in intellectu quod non sit prius in sensu, there is nothing in the understanding which has not first passed through the senses, this logical and physiological priority does not mean that the senses take the place of the understanding. In the sixth dialogue of the Soirées de Saint-Pétersbourg, Joseph de Maistre appeals to Cudworth against Locke on this crucial question: ‘The senses have nothing to do with the truth, which only the understanding can reach; and since what does not belong to the senses does not belong to matter, it follows that there is in man an immaterial principle in which science resides. (…) We must therefore assume with the greatest thinkers that we possess naturally intellectual ideas that have not passed through the senses, and the contrary opinion afflicts common sense as much as religion. I read that the famous Cudworth, discussing one day with a friend the origin of ideas, said: Take, please, a book from my library, the first one at hand and open it at random. The friend fell on the beginning of the first book of the Offices of Cicero: ALTHOUGH6 for a year, etc.… – That’s enough, Cudworth interrupted: Tell me how you could acquire by the senses the idea of ALTHOUGH? The argument was excellent in a very simple form: man cannot speak, he cannot articulate any element of his thought, he cannot say AND without refuting Locke’ (Maistre 2007b, 629). All of Lockean empiricism, in the eyes of Joseph de Maistre, is based on this paralogism. When Warburton defends Locke against the charge of irreligion, Maistre reacts strongly in the Examen de la philosophie de Bacon (1884a, 6:269– 70): ‘Warburton reasoned as badly as Locke. (…) As soon as you separate reason from faith, revelation, which can no longer be proven, can no longer prove anything’. If reason is limited and determined by experiment, it becomes unsuitable for all apologetics, since for Maistre the best ‘ontological proof’ is the existence of innate ideas that not only pre-exist all human experience, but that all experience presupposes. Coming back to Plato (‘I always come back to Plato’, wrote Maistre to Potocki in June 1810 (Maistre 1884b, 8:110)), innate ideas are associated in his mind with the Meno and with the theory of reminiscence: ‘Man can learn nothing except through what he knows’. Plato ‘who is always the first on the road of all great truths’, as he wrote in his Essai sur le principe générateur des constitutions politiques, is for him ‘the human preface of the Gospel’ (Maistre 2007b, 588). It is a way of rephrasing, with greater force and precision, Pascal’s view  of Plato as prefiguring Christianity. It is more than a prefiguring: it is a preface, an initiation, in the Latin sense of beginning. ‘Yes, Plato, you’re right! All truths are inside us. They are US, and when man thinks he discovers them, he is only looking within  ‘Nihil est in intellectu quod non sit prius in sensu’, St Thomas Aquinas, De veritate, Quæstio 2, art. 3, argumentum 19. (Aquinas 1972–1976). 6  De Officiis., bk 1, 1: ‘Quanquam…’ (Cicero 1913). 5

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himself and saying YES’ (Maistre 2007b, 675). This Platonic enthusiasm echoes Cudworth’s first chapter: ‘His Genius was such, that he was Naturally more addicted to Ideas than to Atoms, to Formal and Final than to Material Causes’ (Cudworth 1678, 53). Strictly speaking, Maistre says that real causes can only be final. Material causes are only occasional, to use the vocabulary of Malebranche, according to whom ‘only God is a real cause’. The resulting universal mechanism is acceptable for Maistre, with the exception of a single point of reticence, at first sight surprisingly formulated: ‘Malebranche gives God too much. Intelligence probably runs his will as matter does, but in a very different way. It is very true that in a sense, there is only one cause, since everything comes from it. But intelligence is active and from this perspective, it is actually power or cause’ (Maistre 1884b, 1223). This second cause or this delegated power, if we may so call it, corresponds to the eminent dignity that Maistre ascribes to man, who is nothing less than co-creator: through what he calls onomaturgy or the naming of all creatures,7 a power which God left to Adam. With the slight reserve that Malebranche ‘may have erred sometimes on the way of truth’ but ‘that he never left it’ (Maistre 2007b, 508), Maistre greatly admires the man he calls ‘the Christian Plato’. He blames the French for having ‘abandoned, forgotten, outraged’ him in their preference for Locke, who, he said, ‘was not worthy of sharpening his quills’ (632).

15.3  Of the Proper Use of Contradiction We come to Simone Weil when investigating the question of the universal mechanism that Malebranche obviously inherited from Descartes. It should be noted first of all that she did not know Joseph de Maistre; the name of Cudworth appears in her writings in London, when at the end of her life (1942–1943) she joined the Free French. She knew Henry More through his letters to Descartes. As for Plato, she continued to read, translate and comment on him throughout her life. She was, as is well known, a student of Alain, and it was under the supervision of this great Cartesian that she defended a thesis in 1930 on ‘Science et Perception chez Descartes’ (Weil 1988, 178). This text contains a definition of her own Cartesianism: ‘It is the world as it is that Descartes wants to know’. To illustrate this thesis she quotes a passage from Descartes’ response to More (February 5, 1649 More): ‘Res te monet si dicatur substantia sensibilis, tunc definiri ab habitudine ad sensus nostros, Qua ratione quaedam eius proprietas dumtaxat explicatur non integra natura, quae cum possit existere, quamvis nulli homines existant certe a sensibus nostris non pendet’. ‘But take care that in naming a sensible substance you do not define it through the relationship it has to our senses, which only explains a 7  Gen, II, 19 ‘… Adduxit ea ad Adam, ut videret quid vocaret ea; omne enim quod vocavit Adam animæ viventis, ipsum est nomen ejus’. King James Bible: ‘… and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof’.

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property, instead of understanding the whole essence of bodies which, capable of existing even if there were no men, do not therefore depend on our senses’ (Descartes 1963–73, 3:875). Weil adds: ‘That after that he chose to define the world through extension, i.e. through an idea, that is what has always been amazing. (…) This idealism and realism, both of them extremes, (are) for him not only reconcilable, but correlative (…)’ (Weil 1988, 178). These remarks contain the essence of Weil’s own Cartesianism, from which she never departed, because she found in it the expression of her own idiosyncrasy. A few years later, in Oppression et Liberté, she wrote: ‘If we want, not to build a theory, but to realize the condition where man is actually placed, we will not wonder how it can be that the world is known, but how, in fact, man knows the world; and we must recognize the existence of a world beyond thought, and of a thought that, far from reflecting the world passively, acts on it at once to know it and to transform it. Thus Descartes thought (…)’ (Weil 1955, 48). On this point, she drew close to Joseph de Maistre, who admired above all Descartes’ intellectual probity, to the point of calling him ‘the great restorer of philosophy’ (Maistre 1983, 116): intellectual probity is for Simone Weil the touchstone of all human thought.8 ‘Extreme’ and ‘correlative’ Cartesian realism and idealism illustrate Weil’s method, which consists in the proper use of contradiction. In La Pesanteur et la Grâce, her first published work, which is an anthology edited by her friend Gustave Thibon, to whom she gave her notebooks when she left France in 1942, an entire chapter is entitled ‘La contradiction’. Contradiction is for her ‘the criterion of reality’, ‘the test of necessity’. ‘The representable correlation of contraries is an image of the transcendent correlation of contradictories’. This correlation of contradictories is detachment; Simone Weil infers from it the precept that her whole life will illustrate: ‘the simultaneous existence of contrary virtues in the soul as pliers with which to reach God’ (Weil 1948, 115–20).

15.4  Reaching God Reaching God: the vocation of the philosopher, according to Simone Weil, is indeed to attain inwardly ‘the union of contradictories’, which she says is a form of ‘quartering’, ‘impossible without extreme suffering’. Is this not precisely the allegory of the Cave, as Cudworth commented extensively in the first chapter of his book (‘subterraneous Plato’s Cave’)? And does this allegory not say that if the philosopher is forced to look at the light instead of the moving shadows, if he is dragged out of his cave, to be brought to the light of day, he ‘suffer[s] greatly’ and ‘complain[s] of the violence’? (Republic, VII, 515e). For Simone Weil, philosophy, philosophia, is nothing if it is not philaletheia, love of truth. 8  Weil (1950b, 74): ‘I have an extremely rigorous notion of intellectual probity, to the point that I have never met anyone who did not seem to me to lack it in more than one regard; and I am always afraid of lacking it myself’.

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In a letter of 1942, she writes: ‘Although I have crossed thresholds several times, I do not remember a time when I changed direction’. Philosophy is not just a matter of reason, but of all the powers of the soul, δυνάμεις ψυχῆς, potentiae animæ according to the scholastics, i.e. the senses, the imagination, reason – which is a median faculty – and the intellect (νοῦς). On these powers depends the distinction that Plato makes between ‘to know’ and ‘to know with one’s whole soul’.9 The philosopher who is a prisoner of the Cave cannot free himself; he needs to be released from his chains, forced to return, dragged ‘up a rough and steep climb’ to the sunlight. This is why Simone Weil wrote: ‘I can say that throughout my life I have never, at any time, sought God’. She recounted how, in the spring of 1937 in Assisi, reading an English poem – Love, by George Herbert – ‘Christ himself came down and took (her)’. She adds: ‘In my arguments about the insolubility of the problem of God, I had not foreseen the possibility of this, a real contact, from person to person, here below, between a human being and God’. This contact initiated by God she called ‘mysticism’. And it is this experience that would lead her to write, in La Source grecque: ‘My interpretation: Plato is a genuine mystic, and even the father of Western mysticism’ (Weil 1953, 80). To the merely philosophical question: What is truth? which is the question of Pilate to Christ: Quid est veritas (John 8, 37) (Charles Maurras, as a good rationalist, said of it that it was the only reasonable verse in the whole Gospel…), Christ answered, addressing not Pilate but his disciples, Ego sum Veritas, I am the truth (Jn 14, 6). The answer is obviously not logically equivalent to the question; it responds to Whom, not to What. On a strictly philosophical level, the search for truth, in Malebranche’s sense, can be nothing else, for Simone Weil, than an orientation of the soul. But this very orientation presupposes that the truth manifests itself, if only by its attraction. As Pascal said: ‘You would not seek me if you had not already found me’ (Pascal 2010, 92). Since we are quoting Pascal, we will borrow from him too the famous objection, with which Henry More would perhaps not have concurred given its abrupt formulation: ‘Descartes, inutile et incertain’ (‘Descartes, useless and uncertain’). This is the objection of nullibism (More 1671), which is probably the strongest that can raised against the Cartesian system, since it accuses it of leading the way to materialism and atheism. When Joseph de Maistre called God ‘the general machinist who runs everything’, he saw no danger in this universal mechanism (which for him was more Malebranchian than Cartesian (Lebrun 2005, 290–97)). The idea of Providence that governed his thought protected him. This is a crucial point, made by Plato in the Timaeus (56 c) and noted by Simone Weil, who summed it up in terms of ‘the wise persuasion that love exercises on need’ (Weil 1950a, 302). Cudworth also cites this text: ‘ …the Generation of this World is mixt and made up of a certain composition of Mind and Necessity both together, yet so as that Mind doth also (in some sence) rule over Necessity’ (Cudworth 1678, 220). Need ultimately obeys love. We can only think of the last verse of Dante’s Paradiso, l’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle, ‘the love that moves the sun and the other stars’). Simone Weil wrote at the end of  Thibon, Gustave. Preface, in Weil (1948, iii).

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La Connaissance surnaturelle: ‘It is really, literally true, as Plato makes Socrates say in the Phaedo, that Providence, not necessity, is the sole explanation of this universe. Necessity is one of the eternal dispositions of Providence’ (Weil 1950a, 307).

15.5  Conclusion Joseph de Maistre and Simone Weil both lived and thought during particularly troubled historical periods – the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars in the case of the first, social and revolutionary unrest and the Second World War in that of the second. We could make a similar observation regarding the Cambridge Platonists themselves: it should not be forgotten that they were contemporaries of the English Revolution. Is it a coincidence, or is it that the ‘return to Plato’ is favoured by those extraordinary circumstances that Gabriel Marcel called ‘borderline situations’ (situations limites)? Both Joseph de Maistre and Simone Weil rejoiced that they lived in difficult times. Joseph de Maistre makes the Count of the Soirées de Saint-Pétersbourg say: ‘If the shots had not hurt anyone else but me, I would look upon everything that has happened in the world as a great and magnificent spectacle that would deliver me wholly to admiration. Yet how expensive the admission ticket has been! I do not murmur against the adorable power that has narrowed my apartment so greatly. (…) I never think without admiration about this political torrent which came tearing out of their places thousands of men destined never to know each other, to make them swirl together in the dust of the fields’ (De Maistre 2007a, 515). Weil goes further: ‘You could not have been born in a better time than this, when we have lost everything’ (Weil 1948, 202). This statement is consistent with her Platonism: ‘The Real is transcendent: this is Plato’s essential idea’ (Weil 1956, 104). She does nothing but summarize in philosophical terms the allegory of the Cave: the Real is transcendent to the Cave that imprisons us, that is to say it is outside, above, and the troubled historical circumstances in this perspective are auxiliaries that prevent us from confusing the Real with the play whose shadows are projected into the Cave, and allow us to free ourselves faster from this play and cure us of the confusion it generates. We know that this transformation does not happen without ‘extreme pain’: extraordinary circumstances whereby men and women are forced out of their habits and their customary way of life, where at any time they risk the worst – captivity, exile or death – are serious preparations to knowing not only through speculative thought, but ‘through [their] whole soul[s]’, as Plato required, the transcendence of the Real.

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