Chapter 2

‘No respecter of persons’: Individual Merit in Milton’s Heaven

In the last chapter it was suggested that any satisfactory account of Milton's political modernity would have to avoid dismissing liberal ideals as the merely ideological derivations of market society I and recognize that, as Jay Bernstein puts it, their 'original force ...owes as much to the politically functioning public sphere in which public ~ opinion was formed through unrestricted discussion as it does to the market economy'.(1) The blanket scepticism regarding such ideals often displayed by Foucault is a similar disincentive to attentive analysis. To the extent that appeal to 'the people' implied, (and still implies) operations of definition, and therefore the exclusion of some individuals as the counterpart to the inclusion of others, the analyses, by Foucault and many others, of these practices and their effects in a whole range of ; social institutions 'are salutary. Discourses of liberty and the formation; of people as individuals are bound up with the exercise of power: The “Enlightenment," which discovered the liberties, also invented the disciplines.(2) But, notwithstanding his disclaimers, caveats, and methodological declarations, there is a consistent tendency in Foucault's texts; to interpret those social practices which contribute to individualization: as reflexes of the state:

…although in a formal way, the representative regime makes it possible, directly or indirectly, with or without relays, for the will of all to form the fundamental authority of sovereignty, the disciplines provide, at the base, a guarantee of the submission of forces and bodies. The real, corporal disciplines constituted the foundation of the formal, juridical liberties. The contract may have been regarded as the ideal foundation of law and political power; panopticism, [a series of techniques for instilling self-discipline by fostering a

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permanent sense of visibility] constituted the technique, universally widespread, of coercion. It continued to work in depth on the juridical structures of society, in order to make the effective mechanisms of power function in opposition to the formal framework that it had acquired.(3)

The reality of freedom is not that it is limited, or partial, or depends in certain respects on self-restraint, or that it is wrongly extended to some and not to others, or is in need of enlargement, conceptually or practically, but that 'the effective mechanisms of power function in opposition to the formal framework' and all its fine talk. The reality of freedom is domination.(4) Despite Foucault's announcement that 'we must eschew the model of Leviathan in the study of power' (meaning that we should give up the post-Hobbesian story of the constitution of the ,state by its subjects and instead attend to the construction of subjects by the state), his account of political modernity is, in essence, Hobbesian: 'The Liberty of a Subject, lyeth therefore only in those things, which in regulating their actions, the Soveraign hath praetermitted.'(5) Where Hobbes disallows the concept of tyranny because to allow thinking along such lines! inevitably produces more misery for all in the form of civil war, Foucault, refusing to espouse any particular political principle, lacks any' grounds for distinguishing liberal democracies from

totalitarian states.(6) Where Hobbes, as Otto Gierke put it with reference to the intimate relation between the utter lawlessness of Hobbes's state of nature and the absolute lawfulness of his state 'made the individual omnipotent, with the object of forcing him to destroy himself instantly in virtue of his own omnipotence', Foucault simply inverts the humanist belief' in the individual as free origin of his own actions.(7) Socialization is synonymous with subjugation.(8)It is necessary to get beyond Foucault's principled hostility to socialization if the different assumptions about human nature and society held by Hobbes, Milton and Locke are to be given their due weight. This chapter will begin by suggesting a fully developed account is beyond the scope of the present work -that these different assumptions have their roots in different social milieux. While Milton and Locke are recognizably partisans of those who were known in the seventeenth' century as 'the middle sort of people', Hobbes, regardless of his social origins, is best understood as an absolutist thinker not merely philosophically or politically, but in social and cultural terms as well. The distinction between these milieux and the types of individuality they

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produce and promote is essential to understanding the 'politics of Paradise Lost.

Hobbes is often described as a 'bourgeois' thinker. This characterization has a degree of validity insofar as the society on which Hobbes reflected was increasingly characterized by market relations, but in political terms it is misleading. It appears most plausible when Hobbes is discussing the modes of living and' the rights and privileges of the aristocracy. Of the 'three principal I causes of quarrel' in the 'nature of man' -'First, Competition; Secondly, Diffidence; Thirdly, Glory.' – only the last of these, the desire 'for Reputation' derives not from models suggested by natural philosophy but directly from social observation. In society, this desire is liable to take the form of vainglory, or 'boastfulness, excessive vanity' (OED):

Of the passions that most frequently are the causes of Crime, one, is Vain-glory, or a foolish over-rating of their own worth; as if difference of worth, were an effect of their wit, or riches, or bloud, or some, other naturall quality, not depending on the Will of those that have the Soveraign Authority. From whence proceedeth a Presumption that the punishments ordained by the Lawes, and extended generally to all Subjects, ought not to be inflicted on them, with the same rigour they are inflicted on poore, obscure, and simple men, comprehended under the name of the Vulgar.

(Leviathan, 341/ 154) (9)

It is clear that. vainglory is inegalitarian in inspiration, that a belief in ' the natural or inherent qualities of rank ('bloud') may be a key factor, and that it is not associated with the 'poore, obscure, and simple' or 'Vulgar'. Leo Strauss, took' such analyses as evidence that Hobbes's was a 'bourgeois' worldview which substituted the values of peaceable

hedonism for those of social vanity.1O Jean Hampton 'associates the critique! of vainglory and potential rebelliousness with Hobbes's anti-feudal and Anti- Aristotelian worldview, which had no truck with the belief in natural rulers (see particularly Lev. 211 / 77).11 In opposition to such 'feudal' ideas about human worth there is a strong meritocratic streak: in Hobbes. He recommends that counsellors be chosen on grounds of I merit not birth: 'Good Counsell comes not by Lot, nor by Inheritance; and therefore there is no more reason to expect good Advice from the rich, or noble, in matter of State, than in delineating the dimensions of I a fortresse' (Lev. 391-2 / 184). He argues that nobility is contingent and

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social, not inherent and natural: 'Nobility is Power, not in all places, but onely in those Commonwealths, where it has Priviledges: for in such priviledges consisteth their Power' (L~v. 151 / 41). He accepts the suggestion of Selden's research that titles once denoted 'offices of Honour' but have since 'by occasion of trouble, and for reasons' of good and peaceable government', been 'turned into meer Titles' (Lev. ! 159 / 45). Opinions such as these led Clarendon to descibe his rejection of natural hierarchy as a 'levelling fancy' and to chide him in general for 'his extreme malignancy to the Nobility, by whose bread he hath' alwaies bin sustain'd'.(12)

What is more, Hobbes seems to cut through such empty pretences as 'meer Titles' in ruthlessly materialistic terms: 'The Value, or WORTH of a man, is as of all other things, his Price;. that. is to say, so much as ' would be given for the use of his Power: and therefore is not absolute but a thing dependant on the need and judgement of another' (Lev. 151-2 / 42). This assertion is one of the key pieces of evidence in Macpherson's case that Hobbes's theory of human nature, which posits' as 'a generall inclination of all mankind, a perpetuall and restlesse desire of Power after power' (Lev. 161 / 47), is 'a reflection of his insight into the behaviour of men towards one another in a specific kind of society'. By this Macpherson means a possessive market society, the only kind which allows a continual and universal competition for power without a degree of violence incompatible with the existence of society.(13)

Hobbes's reference to the 'price' of a man's power, or the potential value of his services, reflects his assumption 'that power is so generally transferable, that there is a pervasive market in power, which established the value of every man'. Macpherson argues that since power is something on which one can put a price, then Hobbes's claim that the 'Desire of Power, of Riches, of Knowledge, and of Honour. ...may be reduced to the first, that is Desire of Power' (Lev. 139 / 35) represents a reduction' of all human strivings and human value to the logic of market relations. ! His models 'of man and society. ..were bourgeois models'.(14) A ruthless' and calculating streak of commercialization undercuts feudal claims to : natural superiority.

However, as Macpherson acknowledges, Hobbes appears much less bourgeois when he is discussing the bourgeoisie. (15) There is his advocacy of sumptuary laws to prevent the flaunting of wealth.(16) There is his condemnation of the acquisition of wealth as an end

in itself and his apparent belief that it was usually acquired crookedly rather than by hard work and talent. He criticizes the Presbyterian clergy, who 'did never in their sermons, or but lightly, inveigh against the lucrative vices of men

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of trade or handicraft; such as are feigning, lying, cozening, hypocrisy, or other uncharitableness', an omission he suspects was welcome 'to the generality of citizens and the inhabitants of market-towns'. Perhaps! even more telling is Hobbes's position on property, the holding of which: is, like everything else, dependent on the will of the sovereign., with; predictable consequences in terms of his position on the right of the sovereign to tax without consent:

of the one, issue where property rights in Hobbes's day were seriously disputed, Hobbes abandoned the interests of possessing classes i altogether. It was not surprising that his contemporaries classed' his views on property with those of the Royalist clergy, Sibthorp and Manwaring, who taught that all property was subject to the king. (17)

Furthermore, Hobbes does not advocate the eradication of the emotion of pride but only certain manifestations of it. Indeed he implies that it should be put to use. Hobbes's description of the titles of nobility as 'meer titles' means not that they are empty displays to be shredded by an egalitarian bourgeois rationalism but that they are filled with meaning only insofar as they can be. understood as spoken by the sovereign. In a commonwealth it is not 'the flattery of other men' (Lev. 164 / 49) which determines differences of human worth, but the' sovereign: 'The public worth of a man, which is the value set on him by the commonwealth, is that which men commonly call DIGNITY' andis often signified 'by Names and Titles, introduced for distinction of such Value' (Lev. 152/42). Thus titles are a sign of the sovereign's esteem, an expression of his will, and the desire for them can be understood as i an' expression of that 'Desire of Praise' which' disposeth to laudable actions' (Lev. 162 / 48). Given that the desire for esteem is potentially asocial and destructive, it must be deprived of independent grounds and! instead organized around the will of the sovereign as a competition for his favour, the element which will underlie all signs of status.

In its assertion of the centrality of the sovereign Hobbes's theory sums up the aspirations of the absolutist project. But Hobbes can be described as an absolutist thinker not just in the sense that he asserts the in compatibility of sovereign power with external restrictions upon it, but in the sense that his theory reflects the social base of absolutism. The' competitive desire for esteem displayed by Hobbesian individuals makes' them antisocial but it also opens the way to an organization of their desire around the sovereign such that society can be conceived as consisting, essentially, of a bunch of atoms or, more precisely, electrons,

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cohering only in as much as they dance around -attend upon, pay obeisance to, a single nucleus. This is clearly a post-feudal ideal. But it is also, arguably, aristocratic. Certainly the belief that 'most men would rather lose their lives ...than suffer slander' is redolent of an aristocratic code of honour.(18) The reason Hobbe's thought has appeared to some as bourgeois and to others as aristocratic is that one finds in it a sense that status (rather than economic gain) is the overriding concern of men, combined with a recognition that in a post- : feudal epoch status can be to some extent attained by wealth, is certainly enhanced by it and, in the form of royal largesse, is often an expression of it.(19) Hobbes's theory derives from an epoch in which, as Perry Anderson says with respect to the absolutist state, 'noble power' took on a 'new form ... determined by the .spread of commodity production and exchange', in which 'The political order remained feudal, , while society became more and more bourgeois.'(20) The court itself was a market. As one writer cited by Lawrence Stone put it: 'All such as aspire and thirst after offices and honours run thither amaine with emulation I and disdaine of others; thither are the revenewes brought that appertain to the state, and there are they disposed out againe.' As Stone notes, 'The most striking feature of the great nation states of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was the enormous expansion of the Court and the central administration.' One significant consequence of this was that in the course of the sixteenth century the importance of the court; had increasingly overridden local loyalties. This concentration of the activity of the noble class on the court did not happen by accident.

Stone cites Burghley's advice to Elizabeth I that she 'gratifye your nobylyte, and the pryncypall persons of your realm, to binde them faste to you. ..whereby you shall have all men of value in the real me to depend only upon yourselfe'. According to Stone, 'The first effect of attracting: the nobility to court by the lure of office and rewards was to turn them' from haughty and independent magnates into a set of shameless mendicants.' Where once there had been 'formidable local potentates' there were soon 'fawning courtiers and tame state pensionaries'. Stone's account may overstate the abruptness of the change and the decline in moral fibre that resulted, but it is revealing that he uses Hobbes's evocation of the 'perpetual and restlesse desire of power after power that ceaseth onely in death' to explain the impulse which drove the nobility to court.(21) Paradoxically, the project of reducing the independence! of the nobility, because it made status dependent on a struggle for favour, was responsible for the atomization (or the appearance of

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which many have seen as the legacy of the bourgeoisie.(22) According to Norbert Elias, just as in our society the most influential human types have come from 'or received the stamp of the city, with the result that' urban types may be described as 'representative' of our society, 'It is precisely this representative and central significance that the court had for! most Western European countries in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.'(23) This was not altogether true of England, but it is suggestive! in respect of Hobbes, who was familiar with both the Versailles of Louis XIV and the Court of Charles II. Certainly this would help explain what Macpherson sees as the chief factor underlying Hobbes's

neglect by the seventeenth-century middle class --his apparent' lack of class consciousness:

What Hobbes overlooked and failed to put into his model was the centripetal force of a cohesive bourgeois class within the society. He was so impressed with the divisive and destructive force of the competition for power which he put in his model (and rightly put in, for this force is indeed present in the capitalist market society, to which, as we have seen, his model closely corresponded), that he failed to see that the model also necessarily generates a class differentiation' which can be expected to produce a class cohesion, at least in the class which is on its way up to the top.(24)

Insofar as people seek and recognize power through market relations Hobbes's theory is applicable to these. But such consciousness of the bourgeoisie as there is in Hobbes is by no means a bourgeois class consciousness.

Milton and Locke, by contrast, appeal to that 'vigorous and independent class of town dwellers' which was 'an indispensable element in the growth of parliamentary democracy.(25) The idea that 'people' were sufficiently capable of moral cognition to be entrusted with 'liberty' and I the power to judge governments was a practical assumption, with a class basis, about the real capacities of people. This basis --the urban middle class --is one which can usefully be termed bourgeois. For some time, a denial that such a class existed as a meaningful entity in seventeenth century England became an orthodoxy among historians of the period.(26) The term was felt to be too vague, its range of referents, extending from the landed gentry in their capacity as agrarian capitalists to small urban artisans, too wide. Furthermore, it was believed that even those classes which might otherwise have been termed middle class

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merchants traders and the like) were notable for their lack of a distinctive class self-consciousness and their desire to emulate the culture and values of their superiors. Jonathan Barry, However, who argues that 'one of the virtues of studying the middling sectors of society' may be that 'such analysis reveals the imprecision and variability of all efforts; to pin down social structure and social relationships', also contends that a compact and useful definition can be arrived at: 'independent trading households'.(27) As Shani d'Cruze puts it in the volume Barry is introducing:

A middling sort cohered out of lived experience and social relations, through occupation, but also through other aspects of life. One attribute in particular was shared by traders, artisans and professionals. All organised their working and family lives around the small-producer household in which living and working space existed in close proximity and household members, including wives, older children, servants and apprentices, participated in both the household and business tasks. (28)

The importance of such arrangements not only as empirically common actual facts but as a model for imagining society in general is suggested, as Barry notes, by the way 'the language associated with the property rights of the freeholder provided a crucial metaphor in the, constitutional criticism that was directed by early Stuart MPs towards unpopular royal policies'.(29) Keith Wrightson traces a corresponding: increase in the use of the term 'middle sort' as a category of social description in the third and fourth decades of the seventeenth century, until the term

…finally seems to have come into its own in the pamphlet literature and memoirs occasioned by the English Civil Wars, above all, in those works which described the social basis of parliamentarian allegiance and in those which attempted to define an interest group in politics, religion, or taxation policy which was distinct from the gentry and 'meaner sort' alike. (30)

The image of the head of household, endued with the right to 'oeconomize', upright and reasonable and on a footing of equality with others, like himself, is clearly important to the individual as figured by Milton' and Locke. It was a figure essential to middle-class identity in the seventeenth century. As Barry observes:

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Economically, the middling sort appears much more fragmented than either the poor or the landed elite. 'What they all had in common--the need to work for their income using skill and engaging in a trade i or profession, rather than relying on rentier income or labouring in another's employment, was also what separated them into a thousand different categories. .."

In consequence, cultural assumptions were vital to the reduction of potential tensions between different professions and to the reinforcement of those factors which united them.(31) This may explain why the! notion of a 'middle class' or 'bourgeoisie' retained more interpretative prestige among political theorists and literary critics than it did among historians: they' were not blithe to the evidence, but tended to be looking at different evidence, at the political and cultural work which served to cohere the potentially disparate interests historians were busy identifying. The self-image produced by this work was far from a 'mere' image. It was an idealized version of the kind of identity which middle-class men in the seventeenth century derived from their participation!in a whole set of social practices whose collective nature undermines what Barry calls 'the myth of bourgeois individualism'. Rather than conceiving of themselves as atomized, it was generally recognized amongst members of the “middling sort” that “the achievement of individual aims in urban society depended on collective action, both official and voluntary, at the level of family, neighbourhood, parish, association, and the whole community’. Apparent obstacles to the formation of collective identity, such

economic diversity, a possible gulf within the bourgeoisie between the elite and the rest, and the flux and mobility of urban life, in fact operated as powerful factors ‘impelling the bourgeoisie towards association and ensuring its centrality in their value-systems’. There was a concern

with the reinforcement of both the family and the wider community in the face of disorder of every kind. In addition to material provision, this included the promotion of a series of values seen as fundamental to the survival of urban society. Amongst the various virtues so promoted are all those qualities, such as thrift, respectability and industry, often labelled the Protestant work-ethic and seen as the foundation of individualism. We may observe not only that their success was assumed to depend on collective rather than individual action, but also that they were matched by a set of overtly collective virtues, of sociability and good fellowship. The expression of these

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in communal gatherings, eating and drinking, and often in listening together to sermons and marching through the streets on holidays or anniversaries, was common to all these groups, old and new.(32)

Urban association in 'voluntary organizations' worked to ease or render comparatively unproblematic what appears to us as a conceptual tension between equality and' inequality. On the one hand, 'Fundamental to all such bodies was the notion of a common bond of fellowship --a fraternity --between members.' On the other hand, 'in a way that seems paradoxical to us, the rules and procedures usually also established hierarchies within such groups'. Such bodies tended to 'establish: an inner group of trustees, answerable in some often ill-defined sense to a wider body of members or subscribers'. Nonconformist churches became prime examples, but also 'other groups with property to administer, such as library societies or significant charities'. Thus these organizations 'reproduced the socio-economic inequalities within the bourgeoisie', but it is also important 'that the hierarchy within these organisations was justified organisationally (rather than on principle), that they brought different groups of the middling together, and that they often combined their hierarchical side with another emphasis, less often stressed by historians, on freedom and equality among and between members'. These two dimensions were held together by the notion that authority was held 'in trust', to be exercised in accordance' with agreed aims, and that the relationships within this hierarchy were 'not simple patron-client ones but ties strengthened by a sense of common, essentially voluntary, commitment to a shared cause, most' notably in the case of churches'.(33)

Such an outlook is evident in Milton's early expressions of a vision of a model of church government according to which, as he puts it in Of Reformation, ministers are responsible for the 'instructing and disciplining of Gods people by whose full and free election they are consecrated to that holy and equall Aristocracy'. Despite their relatively elevated position, ministers are accountable to their congregations, whose 'free-borne

members' have the right' as Christians and freeholders' to full involvement in the life of the Church, including a say in appointments to higher offices: 'he that will mould a modern Bishop into a primitive, must yeeld him to be elected by the popular voyce, undiocest, unrevenu'd, unlorded, and leave him nothing but brotherly equality, ;matchles temperance, frequent fasting, incessant prayer, and preaching, continual watchings, and labours in his Ministery'. As Milton affirms in ' Reason, 'every good Christian' should 'be restor'd to his right in the

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Church, and not excluded from such place of spirituall government as his Christian abilities and his approved good life in the eye and testimony of the Church shall preferre him to' (CPW 1.600, 584, 600, 549, 844). These early assertions are part of the Presbyterian assault on the established Church. Accordingly, they' are written in the name of the supremacy of divine ordinance over merely human tradition, and are descriptions of the ideal workings of an organization which would not, strictly speaking, be voluntary.(34) But Milton was soon to break with the Presbyterians. As William Haller recognizes, Milton's attack on the hierarchy as it stood, whose 'pyramid aspires and sharpens to ambition, not to perfection, or unity' (CPW 1.790), embodies a far more democratic' impulse than they would have found comfortable: 'The argument for the equality of bishops and presbyters, as he presented it, based as it was upon the doctrine of the equality of all believers, came near to overriding the distinction between lay and cleric.'(35)

Underpinning the worldview of the seventeenth-century bourgeoisie; was an experience and practice of a collectivist individualism which recognized that both a potential to disorder and organizing oneself with others to avoid it are natural, which effected an ongoing, dynamic integration of freedom and equality with. differences of rank, promoted cooperation in the face of forces that pulled against these ends, and: was experienced not as inevitable but as opted into by people who saw' themselves as 'fundamentally free'.36 The discourse of natural law employed by Milton and Locke appealed above all to this urban audience. The wellspring of its moral egalitarianism was the democratic element in the social practices of the town-dwelling middle classes.(37) This was the context, made up of economically independent individuals" who nonetheless experienced themselves as a social and political collectivity, out of which arose the public sphere, that arena in which 'the private people,' come together to form a public' called on 'public authority to legitimate itself before public opinion:,(38)It is from this perspective that the political significance of events in Paradise Lost can be understood. The relation between the poem and Milton's political writings is by no means direct, since heavenly society is not really 'political'. It is made up not of men who, in the absence of authoritative access to God, must tolerate 'brotherly dissimilitudes' (Areopagitica, CPW 2.555), but of angels in His (virtually) immediate presence. The Son, in whom' all his Father shone / Substantially expressed' (PL 3.139-40), is a truly transcendental signifier. Debate in Heaven is either a pedagogical prelude to full

understanding or the clash of fixed' metaphysical positions: there is no place for the contending

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perspectives of 'civil society'. Brought down to earth, Heaven would be a totalitarian state, but a critical reading based on such a translation would be misleading.There is no denying that on the one hand Heaven is a monarchy in which can be discerned behaviour similar to that prescribed by courtly etiquette on earth, while on the other hand Satan espouses a rhetoric of liberty against tyranny.(39) Thus Robert Fallon is able to compare God with Louis XIV, while Roger Lejosne, not the first to note that Satan's arguments sound like Milton's, describes Abdiel as 'positively Salmasian' in his support for a king appointed by God.(40) Of course, even if these alignments are taken at face value they have multiple possible significances. It has been argued that the poem demonstrates' Milton's profound commitment '(indeed, more profound than, he knew) to'\constitutional monarchy, and that the depiction of Satan and Hell amounts to an analysis of the faults and failures of Cromwell, the army and parliament. Alternatively, the opposite evaluations have peen made on the basis of similar interpretations of the textual 'facts'. There are those, like William Empson, who argue that Paradise Lost contains a recognition on Milton's part, at some level, that God is a tyrant, and there are various attenuated forms of Blake's assertion that Milton 'was' a true poet and of the devil's party', such as Walter Bagehot's judgement that 'though the theme of Paradise Lost obliged Milton to side with the monarchical element in the universe, his old habits are often too much for him; and his real sympathy --the impetus and energy of his nature --sides with the rebellious element'.41 However, others have found reasons in the poem to offer interpretations of the literal meaning of Heaven and Hell which are partly or completely opposed to those on which the aforementioned readings are grounded. Joan Bennett, for instance, sees Satan as evil, and, along with Charles I, as one of 'Milton's royal portraits', while Andrew Milner's God is 'really' an abstract principle of reason underwriting an egalitarian meritocracy, and Christopher Hill, although recognizing that Heaven is a monarchy, is concerned to emphasize that part of the poem which looks forward to the time when there will be no more need of the Son's kingly sceptre since God will be 'all in all' (PL 3.341). These readings assume commonsensical evaluations of the moral standing of Heaven and Hell, and there do not seem to be any examples of drawing the opposite evaluative conclusions from this way of construing the text (that is to say, readings which argue that Satan resembles Charles and that this is evidence both of Milton's sympathy for the devil and of his retrospective sympathy with

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the Royalist cause, or which contend that Milton is revolted by the rationally egalitarian nature of Heaven).(42)

This proliferation of interpretations suggests not incompetent reading, since there is evidence to be found and reasonable arguments' to be made for most of the positions sketched out in the last paragraph, but reading directed by concerns which throw light on aspects of the political thrust of the poem which are incidental or,' if not quite incidental, then certainly epiphenomenal manifestations of what Milton; would have perceived as a deeper underlying logic. For instance, monarchical 'forms' mayor may not be rational, depending on the 'content' they' express. Such an assumption (that attention should be diverted from 'appearances' to the 'reality' or principle which 'underlies' them), while no doubt philosophically questionable, is close enough to Milton's constant intellectual practice to seem plausible as an account of his strategy. More specifically, it also mirrors the lack of concern with the form (or appearance) of government, compared with its content, generally (though not always) displayed by Milton and, indeed, by Locke.(43) Locke, nonetheless, made consent the principle of legitimate i government (in however compromised a way), while Milton, despite his' appeals to this principle in the name of good men, felt no compunction about denying it to the bad. Consent is clearly not a basis on which the governments of Heaven and Hell in Paradise Lost could be distinguished. Everyone is where he has chosen to be. Milton is concerned only with' the quality of such consent, or its content, and this, ultimately, is a question of good and evil, virtue and vice, godliness or rebellion.

The real question, therefore, is not 'which side is right, which side wrong, and what kind of earthly government/political figure does it/he most resemble?' but (and the question is meant literally not rhetorically) 'Given that Milton describes God and Heaven in this way, and Satan and Hell in that way, what on earth is the significance of the poem's presentation of what may be termed political events?' If Abdiel sounds rather Royalist, and Satan a bit parliamentarian, it is reasonable to assume that Milton is aware of this, and then to ask how it might further his ends. With regard to Heaven it would seem useful to note that it is different from earth in at least two crucial respects: it is Heaven, and therefore not Earth, and it is ruled by a God who created everything we encounter in the poem. The same principles are not at stake in a realm ruled directly by God, and a monarchy, headed by a human, on postlapsarian earth. Milton condemned earthly monarchs who believed that the pattern of divine government could and should be replicated

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on earth, disgusted at the thought of 'deifying and adoring' a king 'for nothing don that can deserve it. For what can hee more then another man?' (Readie, CPW 7.426).44 Once this is recognized, it becomes apparent that the more Milton emphasizes the monarchical aspect of Heaven, the more his critique of earthly kingship gains in legitimacy. Salmasius opined that, given his liability to construe kingship as tyranny, it followed that Milton must think 'God himself should be called king of tyrants and even the greatest tyrant himself.'(45) But Paradise Lost clears Milton of the implication of being, as it were, no more than the inverse of the idolater, or doter on images and outward forms, revealing that he can concede kingship where kingship is due, and thus implying that where he refuses it this 'is not the result of a rabid reflex, but because it is illegitimate. The

presentation of Hell, for its part, reinforces the irrelevance of mere form (or order). What is most significant about it is that it is not chaos, and by virtue of this fact it removes defacto legitimacy from earthly order, just as Milton's refusal to make the devils ugly, and his stress on their ability to create magnificently, severs any link between virtue and earthly splendour and beauty.(46) A simply chaotic Hell might have had a rhetorical effect similar to that of Hobbes's state of nature, suggesting that order is a virtue in itself. Instead the appearance of order masks a secret chaos of passion and fear in which orators jockey for position rather than serve the truth, and sentries leave their posts when their dread commander's back is turned(PL 2.1-505, 10.420-1). What is significant in the case of Hell is not its distance from but its proximity to earthly governments of many different kinds.(47)

This is not all that can usefully be said about the earthly significance of heavenly society. Satan's revolt is due to what he claims to perceive as a change in the nature of this society. Opinions differ on the nature of heavenly order. Andrew Milner has little specific to say about it, simply describing it as meritocratic, and arguing that it was precisely the remnants of feudalism inscribed in the theology of Calvinism which led to Milton's repudiation of the doctrine of predestination, citing to this effect Milton's assertion that 'God is no respecter of persons. (48) However, while not denying this it must also be noted that the form, at least, of heavenly society is such that Stevie Davies is able to argue quite convincingly that, although Milton would not have wanted such a form of social organization on earth, his Heaven is feudal, albeit in a way which demonstrates a commitment to 'the deepest meanings of human liberty and equality'. Davies's reading is one of a number which suggest that the world of Paradise Lost embodies impulses characteristic

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different social orders. Christopher Kendrick describes the universe of Paradise Lost in terms of a dynamization of the feudal ontology of the hexameral tradition. Carrol Cox believes that Milton's combination of hierarchy with meritocracy 'empties hierarchy of real content'. Charles Durham argues that in the course of the poem 'merit' comes to surpass 'birthright'.(49) Broadly speaking, there seems to be a consensus that both hierarchy and a meritocratlc, dynamic principle are operative.

But there is less agreement about what kind of hierarchy, what kind of merit, and the ways .in which they are related, because Paradise Lost does not present the issues terribly clearly. Rank exists in Heaven. In Reason Milton describes the angels as 'distinguisht and quatemiond into '~ their celestiall Princedomes, and Satrapies, according as God himselfe. ' hath writ his imperiall decrees through the great provinces of heav'n' (CPW 1.752). In Paradise Lost, Satan, who was once himself 'great in power, / In favour and pre-eminence' bows to Uriel 'low, I As to superior spirits is wont in heaven, / Where honour due and reverence none neglects' (PL 5.660-1, 3.736-8). But despite the description of the angels bearing 'Standards, and gonfalons' which 'for distinction serve / Of hierarchies, of orders, and degrees' (PL 5.589-91), part of a passage which Davies

describes as 'self-consciously chivalric, feudal, and oldfashioned', the nature and implications of such ranks are uncertain.(50)

In principle, they could testify to a difference in nature, in the very being of the various entities which appear before us. As Joan Bennett points out, Milton's opposition to feudalism on earth stemmed from his belief that different ranks of men were not different kinds of being, not from an opposition to the notion that there could be such variety.(51) Milton was quite happy with man's dominion over animals and women. However, the ranks, of angels do not seem to be made up of different kinds of entity, something on which some clarity might be expected were it the basis of heavenly order. In fact, such evidence as there is of the heavenly hierarchy is rather vague. As Robert West puts it, 'notoriously Milton uses the terms of rank so fluidly that no one has been able to organize his use into a consistent pattern. ...Obviously Milton sometimes uses the hierarchical terms virtually without hierarchical meaning.(52) Among the characters, only Satan is really attached to the idea of pedigree so central to what we would understand by feudalism on earth.(53) Furthermore, in his prose Milton tends to find the idea of fixed and hereditary titles 'empty and vain', and asserts instead that when, in the past, such titles had meaning, it was as 'names of trust and office, and with ,the office ceasing' (Tenure, CPW 3.220). In Paradise Lost, the major angelic characters do seem to have characteristic tasks

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fitted to their particular talents and dispositions: Uriel is a surveillance officer, Raphael a sociable ambassador (as well as teacher and adviser), Michael military commander-in-chief. As West, writes of Milton's use of the term 'archangel', he 'probably uses it to distinguish "offices", not "degrees".(54) The issue seems insusceptible of definite resolution (which is itself a significant- fact about the poem), but an association of role and position would imply that Charles Durham's belief, referred to above, that merit supplants birthright in' the course of the poem is not only erroneous but Satanic. To have been created with certain aptitudes is not to possess a birthright but to be fitted to one's function in an order which is rational but not, given the dynamic view of creation expressed by Raphael when he holds out the prospect that Adam and Eve may be 'improved by tract of time,' and winged ascend' (PL 5.498), necessarily fixed. Given the possibility that the differences between the angels are chiefly differences, of role (which is not to say that some roles do not bring more honour than others), the fact that all the angels are peers, and the emphasis given to the voluntary nature of heavenly social order, Milton's view of heaven can be seen as a celestial projection of the social ideals and practices of the 'middle sort'.(55) What even Satan recognizes as 'heaven's free love dealt equally to all' (PL 4.68) is part of a radical middle-class vision.(56)

Certainly the clearest thing about hierarchy in Paradise Lost, apart from the fact that it exists, is that its primary dramatic function is to be undercut (though not necessarily contradicted) by moral egalitarianism in order to show that the moral individual, rather than his status, is, in all senses of the phrase, the essential thing. Where you are in terms of social rank may well be an accident, or beyond your control. That you are good is your

reponsibility. The poem turns not on subtle gradations of rank and etiquette, but on ultimately stark (in terms of destiny if not of definition) oppositions between reason and unreason, self-esteem and pride against God, which are further used to assert a distinction between goodness and greatness. We are- told the Son is 'good / Far more than great or high' (PL 3.310-11). As the adverbial phrase suggests, the poem goes further than affirming that the great must be good: the two qualities are revealed as separable (although, in a world with no need of poetic justice thanks to the presence of the divine variety, once the goodness has gone the greatness follows).

Such issues allow more comparision between heavenly society and earth than would be possible if the former displayed a uniformity of status. Negotiations of the relation between rank and equality, and of the disjunction between goodness and greatness, would have been

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impossible had all the angels simply been the same. Instead, Milton employs a 'feudal' language which not only fuses social order and sanctity in a way Peculiarly appropriate to Heaven, but allows a narrative to be told which shadows in some respects the historical changes Milton felt had taken place on earth.(57) The elevation of the Son suggests that,despite Davies's assertion `that one of the advantages of feudal language is that its 'conservative structure' makes it 'perhaps inherently appropriate for the representation of a state of perfect changelessness', change is in fact intrinsic to- the nature of things. Heaven's perfection is not static but, like the progress of Hegel's Spirit, consists in a process and a plan. Davies refers to Milton's use, in his controversy with Salmasius, of texts written by Huguenot co-religionists of his French opponent:

(Francois Hotman's Francogallia and the Vindiciae Contra Tyrannos, probably by Philippe Du Plessis Mornay) that 'represented feudalism as an institution that...vested sovereignty in the nation rather than in the king', regarded the monarchy as elective, and pledged to guarantee the liberty and welfare of the people'.(58) The importance of these tracts to the development of a concept of a right to resist, and thus ultimately to Locke, has been analysed by Quentin Skinner. They represented a bid by the Huguenots, many of whose congregations were protected by local feudal magnates who had converted to Protestantism, to gain a base of support wider than they could gain an purely religious grounds, by exploiting the resentment of the hereditary nobility in general against the centralization of royal power which increasingly excluded them from government. Their response found theoretical expression in a form of constitutionalism which asserted the legal rights and freedoms of this class. Against this stood such texts as the Commentaries on the Customs of Pn's (1639), written by Peter Du Moulin, later an adversary of Milton's in the propaganda war over the regicide. As part of an anti-feudal absolutist project, this claimed to expose 'the futile conjectures of those who sought to locate the invention and origin of fiefs in Roman law and thus founded a new orthodoxy whose principal thrust is summarized by Skinner:

All these writers decisively question the image of society as a stratified hierarchy.... The new structure which begins in consequence to emerge is recognisably that of an early modern absolutism: the feudal pyramid of legal rights and obligations is dismantled, the king is singled out as the holder of complete Imperium, and all other members of society are assigned an undifferentiated legal status as his subjects. (59)

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However, in Paradise Lost, it is Satan who articulates resistance inthe political language of feudalism, laying claim to a status which isunshakeably his, regardless of what he does and how things change.The key to this is the fact that although at times Milton may have hadrecourse to a 'feudal' conceptual armoury, and although he (and- Locke)owed a historical debt to this tradition, he, like Locke (and Hobbes,too) is above all concerned with ~a single law for all, as opposed to the'parcellized sovereignty, vassal hierarchy and fief system' of feudalismproper."" As Milton put it in Eikonoklasres, 'It were a mad law that would.subject reason to superiority of place' (CPW 3.462). The oppositionbetween rational law and claims to privilege Is central to the conflictin Heaven. God declares the elevation of the Son and decrees thatthe angels shall 'Under his great vicegerent reign abide / United as oneindividual soul / For ever happy' (PL 5.609-11). In response Satan, in apiece of smart rhetoric, makes the form of his address to his potentialadherents express the substance of his grievance:

Thrones, Dominations, Princedoms, Virtues, Powers, If these magnific titles yet remain Not merely titular, since by decree Another now hath to himself engrossed All power, and us eclipsed under the name Of King anointed...

(PL 5.772-7)Satan appears to believe that power has been centralized withoutconsent, and is clearly sensitive to the possibility that once there is onelaw for all, titles are, in a sense, 'merely titular', a phrase which echoesriot only Milton's but also Hobbes's judgement on the place of themodern aristocracy."' It is a possibility he vehemently rejects. How, heasks, can one be ordained to rule over such as they? They are

· · if not equal all, yet free, Equally free; for orders and degrees Jar not with liberty, but well consist. Who can in.reason then or right assume Monarchy over such as live by right

His equals, if in power and splendor less, In freedom equal? Or can introduce Law and edict on us, who without law Err not; much less for this to be our Lord,

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And look for adoration, to th'abuse Of those imperial titles which assert Our being ordained to govern, not to serve

(PL 5.791-802) As Carrol Cox points out, Satan appeals to 'the most common under-standing of freedom from at least the time of Plate, who was insistenton the point that the artisan and the guardian in his republic were:"equally free" precisely because they acknowledged the rightness oftheir places in a hierarchy'. This is a conception of freedom derived fromacceptance of the sheer givenness of hierarchical order Satan appears asthe representative of a feudal order, which claims to be 'the analogicalsxpression of its own inner reality'. What you see is what you get,because in a sense it is all that there is. He 'objects not to superior"power and splendour" (which do not challenge the hierarchicalfreedom and equality he defends) but rather to the claim to rule by meritand through law, the leveling power of which dissolves all distinctionsbased on hierarchical position.(62)

This levelling power is embodied in Abdiel, the seraph 'than whomnone with more zeal adored / The Deity) (PL 5.805-6), who, accordingto Cox, 'incessantly returns to the theme of abstractly just law'.63Certainly, while accepting the existence of a hierarchical order, Abdielseems sensitive to what, presumably, has only just become apparent -that rank and identity are not seamlessly interwoven. He describes.Satanas 'ingrate / In place thy self so high above thy peers' (PL 5.812), a for-Ilsulation which implies a potential disjunction between one's place andthe self which occupies it. He is also emphatic in his conviction thatsucfi external considerations as position and appearance should reflectthe conformity or otherwise of the self to a transcendent principle. Ashe exclaims when confronting Satan before the first battle of·the Warin Heaven,'O heaven! That such resemblance of the highest / Shouldyet remain, where faith and realty / Remain not' (PL 6.114-16). Where -Satan addresses 'thrones' and 'dominations', Abdiel refers to 'everysoul in heav'n', which Cox reads as a vigorous evocation of'the abstract

egalitarianism of bourgeois civil society'.(64) One bases his appeal on thehollow ring of big names, the other argues on behalf of a rationalessence abstracted from - indeed, transcending - place and rank. The Son exemplifies the proper order of things in ruling 'by right ofr~erit' (PL 6,43). From Abdiel's perspective, to be ruled by a superior is,in effect, to be served rather than lorded over. All are now 'under onehead more near united', and 'more illustrious made, since he the head

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/ One of our number thus reduced becomes, / His laws our laws' (PL:51830-1, 842-4). 'His laws our laws' is ambiguous. The dominant:meaning would seem to be that the laws he gives are theirs to keep, butit also implies that heavenly society will be constructed as a unified fiel9for the uniform operation of laws which are·universal in their applica;bility, and given that the context is one of'reduction', the sense that'the Son will be governed by the same laws as everyone else is als~present. He will be, as Davies puts it,'rex under lex' in a way which'renders the angels 'more illustrious',"" This is quite consistent with theprinciples which informed Milton's political writings. As he writes in"EikonokIastes:

Indeed if the race of Kings were eminently the best of men, as the breed at Tutburie is of Horses, it would in some reason then be their: part onery to command, ours always to obey. But Kings by genera- tion no way excelling others, and most commonly not being the wisest or the worthiest by far of whom they claim to have the gov erning, that we should yeild them subjection to our own ruin, or hold of them the right of our common safety, and our natural freedom by meer gift, as when the Conduit pisses Wine at Corona- tions, from the superfluity of their royal grace and beneficence, we- may be sure was never the intent of God, whose ways are just and equal; never the intent of Nature, whose works are also regular; never: of any People not wholly barbarous, whom prudence, or no more but human sense would have better guided when they first created' Kings, then so to nullifie and tread to durt the rest of mankind, by exalting one person and his Linage without other merit lookt after, but the meer contingencie of a begetting, into an absolute and unac- countable dominion over them and thir posterity. (CPW 3.486-7):

This meritocratic position is typically rationalist both in its assumptionof a 'just and equal' God, and in its opposition to the haphazard and

chance-ridden processes of mere physical nature (as opposed to reasonbased on 'Nature, whose works...are regular', or a recognition of theorder of the world). But it does not discount kingship on principle. As.Abdiel says,'God and nature bid the same, / When he who rules is wor-thiest, and excels / Them whom he governs' (PL 6.176-8). The most striking difference between Satan and Abdiel resides in the:types of individuality they display. This is also where, despite sharing a;'rationalist' commitment to a single body of law, the poem’s distance

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from a Hobbesian vision becomes most manifest. Hobbes's God is to beobeyed 'not from his Creating them [those who might disobey], as if herequired obedience, as of Gratitude for his benefits; but from his Irre-sistible Power' (Lev. 397 / 187), a position implicitly refuted by Abdiel'sexclamation against Satan the 'ingrate' (PL 5.811). This overridingemphasis on power means that the only real virtue is peaceableness,and even this is more properly described as prudent than virtuous." Ashas been established, this perspective underlies an absolutist politicalvision starkly opposed to those of Milton and Locke. But it also meansthat when it comes to considering heroism in literary terms Hobbesis forced to concede that, as it were, the devil has the best tunes, or atleast is able to perform passable cover versions of them. Despite assert-ing that ambition is 'a fault', Hobbes concedes that it 'has somewhatHeroick in it, and therefore must have place in an Heroick Poem'.67Satan, whose descriptions of God are rather Hobbesian, characteriz-ing Him only as powerful (for example, as he whom 'force hath madesupreme ! Above his equals'), and declaring that 'To reign is worthambition though in hell' (PL 1.248-8,262), is the closest thing tosuch a hero in Paradise Lost.68 The only way in which Abdiel's heroismcould really become visible in Hobbes's scheme of things would be if itwere recoded as stemming from ambition rather than timorous pru-dence. And indeed, Hobbes tended to consider those who stand on prin-ciple as secretly seeking power and honour.(69) But such a reading ofAbdiel is discredited by association with Satan: ‘well thou com'st / Beforethy fellows, ambitious to win / From me some plume' ( PL 6.159-61).While Hobbes would have considered Satan imprudent and irrational,he would not necessarily have seen his motives as exceptional orparticularly deviant. Milton, on the other hand, casts him to a placebeneath political consideration (which is to say that he bases his politi-cal considerations on such an exclusion). For Milton, Satan's ambi-tion finds a place in the poem only so that it may be exposed as asham before 'the better fortitude / Of patience and heroic martyrdom'(PL 4,31-2).

The Son is the epitome of Christian heroism.(70) But his supremesacrifice is only foreshadowed in the form of his offer to lay downhis life.(71) In Paradise Lost and elsewhere Milton appears comparativelyuninterested in the crucifixion itself, preferring to concentrate on theprinciples which underlie it.(72) Thus the markedly discursive ParadiseRegained centres not on the crucifixion and resurrection, but on theSon's temptation as a man. A large part of the effectiveness of the poemdepends on its capacity to evoke an identification on the part of the

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reader with the humanity of the Son, rather than provoke a reaction ofgratitude for His divine suffering.(73) Abdiel, too, though a lesser figure,is a potential focus for such identification.(74) Not only are we given acharacter to identify with (despite the fact'that we are also told thathe is a 'seraph', Cox's remark that Milton 'provides only the principlewhich explains Abdiel's action, his zeal and obedience' is correct insofaras this is the most important thing about him, his defining characteris-tic), but this character is also obscure,'totally invented by Milton', andpossessing a name which occurs only once in the Bible.(75) He is not amythic or larger-than-life figure. Like the characters which come topopulate the novels bf the eighteenth century, he is a representative ofhis kind, typical.(76) It may be due to his desire to present Paradise Lostas working a complete inversion of the epic form that there Is only onereference to Abdiel in his index, but while Steadman says the lesson ofParadise Lost is obedience, a version of the poem which Milner believesis dead to us, the important question the Abdiel episodes raise is: obe-dience to Whom?(77) If i, worthwhile recognizing that the Christian ratio-nalism which gave both Milton and Locke the strength to resist earthlypower was not separate from or in opposition to their belief in God, butintimately bound up with it. Absolute personal responsibility for thefate of one's soul is the ultimate reason why freedom is so essential.78 Itis of central importance that Abdiel's obedience to God is of the kindwhich allows one to disobey, or to reject the grounds for obeying, anyother pretended power. Abdiel shows, as does the Son in human formin Paradise Regained, and through his own choice of virtue in ParadiseLost, that heroism is not beyond the creature.(79) Cox overstates the casewhen she asserts that 'Until he stands up the other angels are not indi-viduals but places in a hierarchy.'(80) But it is true that his rejection ofSatan's leadership makes clear, and dramatically presents, the fact thatthe basis of obedience and the foundation of identity is not hierarchi-cal allegiance but individual moral choice. Stella Revard finds that 'In other Renaissance poems it is not the humble Abdiei, surrounded byadversaries who is the one to denounce Satan, but most often themighty Michael in the midst of God's camp.' Since 'all is done in the safety of God's presence...none of these Michaels becomes the strik-

ing figure that Abdiel does.'(81) But it might be added that this enhancedliterary effectiveness also seems to spring from a different world, onewhich is more int·erested in individual conscience than in rival com-manders of equivalent rank exchanging words of scorn at the head ofarmies whose loyalty is a given. Abdiel is God-fearing in a way whichdoes not detract from his heroism but displays what Milton would have

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called a 'filial' rather than a 'servile' fear (PL 12.305-6; see also Christr'anBoctrine, CPW 6,537), an attitude of mind allowing a cheerful boldnessstemming from a conviction of righteousness. He is presented as moreoffended by Satan than fearful of God, animated less by concern forhimself than by a sense of right, and despite the fact that he is, as itwere, a social inferior of Satan's, he leaves the scene 'superior' (PL 5.905). Where Satan reveals his pride and ambition, Abdiel's concern for God,reason and law and for himself as a rational being, overrides any regardfor rank. Satan, who even after defeat recognizes only power as the dif-ference between himself and God, feels himself'impaired' by the ele-vation of the Son. Seeking to compensatefor the damage done to hispride, Satan performs for an audience, conjuring with the names denot-ing angelic orders. He clings to these titles in response to what he feelsis a threat to his being, and, indeed, claims that they are intrinsicallyrelated to this essence or being, when in fact he has rejected the prin-ciple which they only represent, and on which they depend for sub-stance and meaning. He is so dependent on social opinion that he is,paradoxically, anti-social.(82) Abdiel is unconcerned about the surround-ing crowd and, because he stands on principle, feels big enough to takeon the vice of a great one. But, as is shown on his return to God, hecan also cooperate and congregate joyfully with others of like mind('gladly then he mixed' ), a possibility ~parodied, since Satan is debarredfrom the reality by his egotism, by the hollow shell of the name of theplace on which Satan's palace stands ('the Mountain of the Congrega-tion'). Abdiel is in a condition of liberty by virtue of his freely chosenobedience and gratitude to the One who gave him being, while Satan,the 'ingrate' is, as Abdiel puts it 'not free, but to [him] self enthralled'(PL 6.21, 5.766, 811, 6.181).(83) Two epochs of the nobility's concern for status are condensed in thefigure of Satan. On the one hand he is the vainglorious feudal baronwho claims independence from the rule of law in the face of centrali-zation and rationalization. That is to say, one aspect of his activity canbe associated with the defunctionalization of the knightly class thatwent hand in hand with the strengthening of centralized power out ofwhich the nation-states of Europe eventually developed. The nobilityceased to be a semi-independent, feudal warrior caste, becoming instead

a social stratum increasingly dependent on the state. The nobility was'aristocratized' and 'courtized'. Under Louis XIV, whose reign is itselfalmost an 'ideal type' of this process, the nobility came to be more orless captives at court, with nothing to do and no purpose except vyingfor prestige. Elias refers to the tragic aspects of this process for those

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who failed to adapt, 'people whose existence and self-confidenceare bound to a certain traditional attitude...which now, in a worldwhich has changed for uncomprehended reasons, condemns them tofailure and downfall', and who saw no way out but doomed and futilerebeIlion.(84) On the other hand Satan appears in a guise which Milton associatedwith the court. In Eikonoklastes Milton takes up Charles I's referenceto his 'honour' and defines the dead king's meaning as 'complement,Ceremony, Court fauning, and dissembling' in 'the language of theCourtier' (CPW 3.539). To repeat Lawrence Stone's description of theconsequences of the centralization of the state and the enhancement ofroyal power which made the court so centrally important for many, 'Notmerely did the system turn all courtiers into sycophants, but it accen-tuated the psychological gulf between Court and Country, giving thegentry a sense of clear moral superiority over the cringing courtiers.'(85)A similar vocabulary is employed in the angry exchange betweenGabriel and Satan after the rebel has been discovered in the garden.Satan dismisses the 'easier business' of the loyal angels, having only 'toserve their Lord / High up in heaven, with songs to hymn his throne,/ And practised distances to cringe, not fight'. In response Gabriel termshim a 'sly hypocrite, who now wouldst seem / Patron of liberty' andasks

· · who more than thou Once fawned, and cringed, and servilely adored Heaven's awful monarch? Wherefore but in hope To disposess him, and thy self to reign.

(PL 4.943-5, 957-61)

William Empson believes that this retort is 'quite enough to prove thatGod had already produced a very unattractive Heaven before Satanfe11'.(86) But it seems likely that Gabriel8 retort is not an appropriatedescription (or even an unwitting revelation) of the nature of heavenlysociety as a whole, but is a critique of Satan's behaviour, the implica-tion being that his obedience, unlike Abdiel's, and unlike the displaysof mutual, though hierarchically organized, respect prescribed by heav-

enly etiquette, was 'servile' rather than 'filial' in a sense which is clari-fied in Locke's Thoughts Concerning Education. There, the 'slavish Temper'is born of fear and 'slavish discipline' rather than the 'Love and Friend-ship' which will hold the respect born initially of 'Fear and Awe'. Sucha temper is disposed to obedience only when watched, an obedience

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born not of inner conviction and moral strength, but out of immediate expediency on the part of one who will be 'ill and wicked in private'. It is important that a son have 'Habits woven into the very Principles of his Nature, and not a counterfeit Carriage, and dissembled Outside, put on by Fear, only to avoid the present Anger of a Father who perhaps may disinherit him'.(87) Self-discipline, as opposed to servile conformity, must be instilled through a loving respect for the father. Gabriel's accu- sation also captures a sense that servility is a kind of power-worship on the part of the weak and envious who do not feel 'grace', or an empow- ering love for the father within, and consequently nurture a secret'pride towards God' in the form of a wish to occupy his place (PL 12.305; Chris- tian Doctrine, CPW 6.662). Implicit in Gabriel's rebuke is the suggestion that Satan's identity is structured around a struggle for power rather than a desire to be in accord with a morally exemplary authority which has become part of the self. Certainly Satan's concern for status is com- petitive. His proud and scornful reply to the angels who arrest him in Eden is typical:

'Know ye not then', said Satan, filled with scorn, 'Know ye not me? Ye knew me once no mate For you, there sitting where ye durst not soar; Not to know me argues yourselves unknown, The lowest of your throng;..:'

(PL 4.827-31)

The sterile self-gratification of looking down on others is intrinsically linked to a rejection of the happy congregation enjoyed by Abdiel on his return to the ranks of the just. The work of Norbert Elias usefully suggests a social explanation for the types of individuality displayed respectively by Satan and Abdiel. Elias distinguishes between 'courtly' and 'bourgeois' milieux. He argues that the court rather than the market was the first crucible in which a

type of person was forged whose sense of himself as an individual was a function of his self-restraint and the reflection on himself and his behaviour that this necessitated.88 Only later did 'the less visible and more impersonal compulsions of social interdependence, the division of labor, the market and competition... impose restraint and control on the impulses and emotions.' This impersonality produced an im- perative which seemed to derive from the very nature of things, and the restrictions it imposed were stronger, deeper, less conscious, or even Unconscious.(89) What is more: [70]

...in a social field where money and profession have become the main foundation of social existence, the individual's actual social environment is relatively interchangeable. The esteem he enjoys among the people with whom he has professional contact naturally plays a parr, but he can to an extent always withdraw from it.

The courtier, on the other hand, was much more dependent on hismilieu. Social opinion was the`foundation of his existence.(90) Conse-quently, in courtly as opposed to bourgeois society,'the awareness thatthis control is exercised for social reasons is more alive. Opposing incli-nations do not yet wholly vanish from waking consciousness; self-constraint has not yet become so completely an apparatus of habitsoperating almost automatically and including all human relation-ships.'(91) According to Elias, a less interchangeable social context createsa stronger imperative to conform to norms rather than adhere to prin-ciples. The account of the 'middling sort' given earlier in this chaptershows that it would be inaccurate to picture the bourgeoisie as oblivi-ous to the social pressures which shape or even make them. But itshould be remembered that for both Milton and Locke the self wishesto keep company only with those it considers to be good, is ultimatelyresponsible for choosing its milieu (unlike the courtier, who is facedwith a choice between life at court and what appears to have been ex-perienced as isolation), and, in the end, should be possessed of a moralrectitude which is appears to be prior to and transcendent of society (anappearance which is actually a function of an environment which offersconstant occasions for the exercise of choice).(92) Abdiel epitomizes thispattern:'hostile scorn' (PL 5.904) is unpleasant, and to mix gladly ispreferable, but when it comes down to it he can up and leave. It is true that Satan, too, quits his milieu and decamps to the North,his physical departure shadowing his spiritual rupture from God. Buthe is still wholly concerned with his social standing, at first leaving withthe intention of returning still greater than before, and later seeking torecreate a context - 'High on a throne of royal state' (I-'L 2.1) - whichcan reflect back to him the glory he needs. His identity is structuredalong courtly lines. An expert in the kind of intrigue consistently anato-

mized in descriptions of court societies, his inwardness consists not intranscendence of context but in the gap between appearance and reality.His behaviour exemplifies the oscillation between theatrical dissimula-tion and secret outburst typical of accounts of this environment. In thecase of the courtier's self-observation, 'We are not concerned...with areligious self-observation that contemplates the inner self as an isolatedbeing to discipline its hidden impulses, but with observation of oneself

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with a view to self-discipline in social life...he [the courtier] must know his own passions if he is to conceal them effectively.' Calculation, rather than sincerity, is all-important. There is little room for sponta- neous self-expression: 'affective outbursts are difficult to control and cal- culate. They reveal the true feelings of the person concerned to a degree that, because not calculated, can be damaging.''" Self-control is a matter of expediency. It is above all this courtly context, encouraging an ever-present aware- ness of self-control, which fosters the sense of 'that: complex, self- conscious, theatrical accommbdation to the world' which Stephen Greenblatt sees as 'a characteristic mode of modern individuality'. In Thomas More he discerns both the acutely self-conscious creation of a public role and an intense desire to escape it. More suffered both from the fear that behind the fictional roles he played lay nothing, and from an intense desire for such 'a cancellation of identity itself, an end to all improvisation, an escape from narrative'. Wyatt was perhaps more typical in laying claim to an 'unaffected self-expression', and lament- ing the demand 'Rather than to be, outwardly to seem' to which, as a diplomat, he had to submit."" The demands of courtly existence seem to afflict Hamlet in a similar way when he disclaims the word 'seems' and proclaims he has 'that within which passes show' (Hamlet, 1.2.76, 85). Although the roles Hamlet will later play are part of a strategy dictated by a troubled but upright conscience - and it is significant that Hamlet identifies with a context altogether other than the Court, the Protestant University of Wittenburg, to which he longs to return - the alternation between a calculated role which he controls, and so- liloquies in which an inner self is expressed, would have been recog- nized by an observer of the court such as Jean De La Bruyère: 'A man who knows the court is master of his gestures, of his eyes and his expres- sion; he is deep, impenetrable; he dissimulates the disservices for which he is responsible, smiles at his enemies, suppresses his moods, disguises his passions, denies what is really in his heart, speaks, acts against his. Feelings. '(95)

In the world of Paradise Lost, where virtue has nothing to fear and therefore nothing to hide, such a pattern of behaviour (dissimulation followed by soliloquy, an effective act succeeded by an affective out- burst in - as he thinks - private) characterizes the devils, and Satan above all. Linda Gregerson remarks, 'Satan soliloquizes throughout his sojourn in Paradise, where his function is stage villainy'" Indeed, his soliloquy at the beginning of Book 4, possibly the first part of the poem to have been written, was composed when Milton's intention was to write a tragedy.(97) But in his theatricality Satan is the antagonist not only[72]

of Puritanism and its doubts about dramatization, but of the 'middlesort' and its hostility to courtly self-fashioning.(98) When Satan, 'Soon asmidnight brought on the dusky hour / Friendliest to sleep and silence',wakes Beelzebub to speak to him 'in secret', reminds him of how 'Thouto me thy thoughts / Wast wont, I mine to thee was wont to impart',but, after a brief indication of his displeasure at the latest events, seemsto realize that 'More in this place / To utter is not safe' (PL 5.667-8, 672676-7, 682-3), the atmosphere is that of a court in which order is amatter of force (embodied in splendour), and covers a reality of intrigue,deception, and whispering in dark corners. It is evocative of Wyatt'spoetry, or of Versailles as described by Elias: 'Great caution was neededbefore people who did not know each other very exactly could opentheir minds to each other at this court.’(99) In his concern for status Satan does two kinds of work in the poem,one theological, the other political, although both are intertwined.As Defoe noticed, no real explanation of Satan's fall is given.(100) Aphilosophical-cum-theological approach, such as Kant's in his readingof Genesis, might make reference to the radical irreducibility of theproblem of primal evil. Scripture 'finds a place for evil at the creationof the world, yet not in man, but in a spirit of an originally loftierdestiny. This is the first beginning of all evil represented as inconceiv-able by us (for whence came evil to that spirit?).'(101) But when this fallis 'brought within the ambit of Milton's political-cum- ideological projectthere is, as it were, an explanation to be found for this lack of expla-nation in the sheer folly of the high aristocrat's absolute concern withstatus from the point of view of one for whom social life is either a'private' matter of friendship, or, as in the case of a church or other vol-untary organizations, is a matter of collective organization in the nameof some larger purpose. There is a political stopping-point on the ques-tion, which is thus provided with finite and recognizable points ofreference. Conversely, Satan tars with the brush of primal evil muchthat the middle classes had been, were, and would continue to definethemselves against. Satan's revolt is one of the forms of unreason whichassure the solidity of reason and the coherence of the community ofthe just in Milton's writings. Satan's attachment to the already-given

and visible renders him blind to the invisible principle at work behindthe scenes and changing them. Although it is invisible, this principle certainly has force. In ParaniseLost proclamations of expulsion and damnation are juxtaposed withvisions of community and purity in a proximity which testifies to theunthinkability of the latter without the former. As in Locke's Treatises

[73]and Milton's Tenure, purity is produced against the other and throughits expulsion - a correspondence which suggests that the splitting per-formed in Paradise Lost is not reducible to Milton's psychic need toseparate his sense of himself from ~Satanic pride (although it is notnecessarily free of such an urge either).'" In Book 3, a vision of thecommunity of the just, so spontaneously orderly that sceptred rule isunnecessary, is founded on the description, ~just a few lines earlier, ofthe irrevocable exclusion of the damned from this community:

...thou shalt judge Bad men and angels, they arraigned shall sink Beneath thy sentence; hell her numbers full,:- Thenceforth shall be for ever shut. Mean while The world shah burn, and from her ashes spring New heaven and earth, wherein the just shall dwell, And after all their tribulations long See golden days, fruitful of golden deeds, With joy and love triumphing, and fair truth. Then thou thy regal sceptre shalt lay by, For regal sceptre then no more shall need, God shall be all in all.

(PL 3.330-3; see also I)L 5.609-27)

Michele Le Doeuff sees a telling image for this process in the roof of thechurch at Pont-Aven, upheld by grimacing gargoyles:

Our countryside offers a thousand examples of such an inclusion, within a 'sublime' space, of a figure opposed to the sublime. This is, however, a paradoxical inclusion, in the case of Pont-Aven at least: these grotesque characters are at one and the same time crushed by the roof and supporting it because they are trying to lift it up to free themselves. A subtle use of negative values, which end up serving in their very effort to escape servitude.(l03)

The parallels between this schema and that elaborated in Paradise Lostare obvious. Indeed, the poem virtually theorizes it. The angels hymn

to God:

...`Who seeks To lessen thee, against his purpose serves To manifest the more thy might: his evil

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Thou usest, and from thence createst more good. Witness this new-made world...

(PL 7.613-17)

Marcia Landy has argued that in Milton's poem the threat of such exclu-sion is intended to encourage a disposition to socially acceptable behav-iour:'Given his fierce emphasis on liberty and individualism, he had tofind a psychological mode for internalizing necessary restraints onfreedom. The threat of deviance, the fear of death and isolation, providea proper internal restraint.' As Landy notes, Satan is not only cast out as a deviant. He is alsosubjett to surveillance.'(104) Given the potential gap between appearanceand inner reality to which he testifies, the poem works to exposehypocrisy, for which this disjunction is a precondition, to the reader.This exposure goes beyond presenting him as a master of the kindof misleading constructions and false claims which characterize hisrhetoric in the early books, to include the staging of scenes in which heis revealed for his true self. Sometimes this is enacted in quite literalterms, as when, in what is perhaps an ironic take on the fairy-tale sce-nario, Ithuriel's spear unmasks him as if it were a wand, turning himfrom toad into archfiend (PL 4.810-13). More telling is the episode inwhich Uriel spies him on the top of Mount Niphates. At the end ofBook 3, Satan fools Uriel with his 'Hypocrisy, the only evil that walks /Invisible, except to God alone' (PL 3.683-4). Then, early in Book 4, Urielsees him soliloquizing in what might almost be private. Passion dimshis face, marring the 'borrowed visage' with which he had concealedthem. Soon he has once again 'smoothed' his face 'with outward calm',but it is too late. While only God can see through the appearanceadopted by hypocrisy, Uriel's 'eye' has 'pursued him down / The wayhe went' and seen him 'disfigured' while he is 'alone, / As he supposed,all unobserved, unseen' (PL 4.114, 116, 120, 125-7, 129-30). Thisexposure befalls other fallen beings, too. After the Fall, Eve 'reasons' toherself:

And I perhaps am secret; heaven is high, High and remote to see from thence distinct

Each thing on earth; and other care perhaps May have diverted from continual watch. Our great forbidder, safe with all his spies About him.

(PL 9.1888-90, 811-16)

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Eve seems To think of God in a manner more appropriate to an earthlymonarch, who would be dependent on spies, and who, unlike theCreator, would be, largely, a forbidder. In similar spirit, Adam imploresof his surroundings:'cover me ye pines, / Ye cedars, with innumerableboughs / Hide me' (PL 9.1088-90). Adam ascribes this desire to hide tohis belief that should he 'behold the face I Henceforth of God or angel',their 'heavenly shapes' would 'dazzle now this earthly' (PL 9.1080-3).In its physicalization of his sense that he would be unable to lookthem in the eye, this serves also to capture the sudden breach whichhas opened between celestial and terrestrial realms. But the fact'thatthese thoughts are an elaboration of his dawning knowledge of'shame,the last of evils' PL 9.1079) suggest that what is struggling to the surfaceof his consciousness is a recognition that he is now sufficiently distinctfrom the uncorrupted parts of God's Creation to be at the receivingenci of that agon, anatomized by Sartre, whereby to be subject to thegaze of the other is to be disempowered and humiliated.(105) In the cases ·of both Adam and Eve, the notion of being secret and invisible isrevealed as absurd, for nothing 'can scape the eye I Of God all-seeing'(PL 10.5-6). This inevitability of visibility was expressed as an aspiration of socialpolicy by Jeremy Bentharn, whose Panopticon Papers take their epigramfrom the 139th Psalm, of which their may be echoes in Adam's pleato the cedars and pines: 'Thou art about my path, and about my bed:and spiest out all my ways. / If: I say, peradventure the darkness shallcover me, then shall my night be turned into day.’(106) For Foucault,Bentham’s Panopticon is the emblem of modern power, which operates.by means of surveillance rather than spectacular punishment. Ratherthan a public display of the law's 'triumph' over the body of the con-demned, the 'gentle way in punishment' seeks to effect 'the power ofthe norm...within a system of formal equality'. In the Panopticon,which disposes its inmates around a central surveillance tower, thecellls

...are like so many cages, so many small theatres, in which each actor is alone, perfectly individualized and constantly visible. The panoptic mechanism arranges spatial unities that make it possible to see constantly and to recognize immediately. In short, it reverses the principle of the dungeon; or rather of its three functions - to enclose, to deprive of light and to hide - it preserves only the first and elimi- nates the other two. Full lighting and the eye of the supervisor capture better than darkness, which ultimately protected. Visiblity is a trap.

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For Foucault, the Panopticon, which seeks 'to induce in the inmate astate of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automaticfunctioning of power', is a microcosm of modern society itself, whichensures its own functioning by means of 'An inspecting gaze, a gazewhich each individual under its weight will end by interiorising to thepoint that he is his ownoverseer, each individual thus exercising thissurveillance over, and against, himself.'(l07) Surveillance of the self is an integral part of the subject produced inMilton's texts. The kind of spying which Eve imagines should be besidethe point. In Paradise Lost, man is fit to govern the other animalsbecause, 'Self-knowing' (PL 7.510; according to the OED, the first for-mulation of this phrase), he is in command of himself. This self-controlis conceived by Milton elsewhere as a function of an inner visibility ofthe self to itself. In Reason Milton asserts that, beyond the desire toappear virtuous in the eyes of others

... there is yet a more ingenuous and noble degree of honest shame, or call it, if you will, an esteem, whereby men bear an inward rever- ence toward their own persons. And if the love of God, as a fire sent from heaven to be ever kept alive upon the altar of our hearts, be the first principle of all godly and virtuous actions in men, this pious and just honouring of ourselves is the second, and may be thought as the radical moisture and fountainhead whence every laudable and worthy enterprise issues forth....Nor can he fear so much the offence and reproach of others, as he dreads and would blush at the reflection of his own severe and modest eye upon himself, if it should see him doing or imagining that which is sinful, though in the deepest secrecy. (CPW 1.843-4)

In the Panopticon, the individual is isolated and passive: 'the side wallsprevent him coming into contact with his companions. He is seen, buthe does not see; he is the object of information, never a subject in com-munication.''(108) Here, however, the self, while subject to an inner agency

of discipline, is not divorced from others. It is simply that shame beforethem is of a less 'noble degree' because it is less independent. Earlier inthe same tract, Milton proclaims that, should he fail to help further thecause of reformation with 'those few talents' God has lent him, 'I foreseewhat stories I should heare within my selfe, all my life after, of dis-courage and reproach' (CPW 1.804). It is as though Milton has inter-nalized the social milieu in which values are established and reinforced

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by the circulation of opinion and the fear of shame before others, aprocess Foucault represents as the 'reign of "opinion"...a mode ofoperation through which power will be exercised through the mere factof things being known and people seen in a sort of immediate, collec-tive and anonymous gaze'.(109) For Foucault, such processes are respon-sible for the production of the 'soul', understood as 'the seat of habits',which

...is produced permanently around, on, within the body by the functioning of a power that is exercised on those punished - and, in a more general way, on those one supervises, trains and corrects, over madmen, children at home and at school, the colonized, over those who are stuck at a machine and supervised for the rest of their lives. This is the historical reality of this soul, which, unlike the soul represented by Christian theology, is not born in sin and subject to punishment, but is born rather out of methods of punishment, super- vision and constraint....On this reality-reference, various concepts have been constructed and domains of analysis carved out: psyche, subjectivity, personality, consciousness etc.; on it have been built sci- entific techniques and discourses, and the moral claims of human- ism....The man described for us, whom we are invited to free, is already in himself the effect of a subjection much more profound than himself. A 'soul' inhabits him and brings him to existence, which is itself a factor in the mastery that power exercises over the body. The soul is the effect and instrument of a political anatomy; the soul is the prison of the body.(ll0)

Taken at face value, Foucault's critique of panopticism is an attackoft selfhood per se: 'subjectivity itself would seem just a form of self-incarceration; and the question of where political resistance springsfrom must thus remain obscure',"' Not only do questions of agencybecome problematic, so too does the object of action. To equate thepositions of'children' and 'the colonized' is to announce an oppositionto socialization in general. In his later books, however, Foucault's posi-tion is clarified somewhat. His object is not subjectivity tout court but 'amode of subjection in the form of obedience to a general law' which is

one form of the Christian legacy in Western modernity.(112) For many,the demand to develop oneself in relation to such universal norms hasbeen sufficiently oppressive to appear as scarcely more than a form ofdomination. Arguably this has been due to the content and interpreta-tion of these norms, rather than to normativity itself. Although norms

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will always proscribe some identities, it is an easy task to think of normswe cannot imagine society lacking, and whose presence we cannotreadily think of in terms of arbitrary restraint; and it is impossible toconceive the absence of norms. Nonetheless, something of this oppres-siveness is apparent in Paradise Lost. The force behind the ideals itexpresses is evident from the different fates suffered by the fallen angelsand fallen humanity. Adam and Eve show a propensity to repent, unlikeSatan, who, although the voice of conscience is never quite muted, nev-ertheless grows more rather than less wilful and feels the wrath of Godin consequence. By contrast, Adam and Eve undergo a kind of correc-tive treatment in the wake of their transgression. The human is disci-plined while the demonized is punished.