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Review: Platonism, Theosophy, and Immaterialism: Recent Views of the Cambridge PlatonistsAuthor(s): C. A. StaudenbaurSource: Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 35, No. 1 (Jan. - Mar., 1974), pp. 157-169Published by: University of Pennsylvania PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2708752

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PLATONISM, THEOSOPHY, AND IMMATERIALISM:RECENT VIEWS OF THE CAMBRIDGE PLATONISTSBY C. A. STAUDENBAUR

GeraldR. Cragg,ed., TheCambridgePlatonists (Oxford, 1968).Pp. 451.C.A. Patrides, d.,TheCambridgelatonistsCambridge, 970).Pp.343.James Deotis Roberts, From Puritanism to Platonism in Seventeenth CenturyEngland(TheHague,1968).Pp.298.Serge Hutin, Henry More, Essai sur les doctrines theosophiqueschez les Platoniciens deCambridgeHildesheim, 966).Pp.214.

Cragg and Patrides have providedus with useful selections from the writingsof the Cambridge Platonists; J. D. Roberts has produced a full length study ofBenjamin Whichcote, commonly regarded as the "father" of the school; andSerge Hutin presentsus with a new and novel interpretationof Henry More as atheosophical immaterialist. More than half of the selections which Patridespresents can also be found in Cragg. However, the principles of editing are sovery differentthat the books complement ratherthan compete with each other.'Cragg has chosen to modernize the spelling and punctuation,eliminate some ofthe Latin, Greek, and Hebrew phrases quoted, and generally smooth out theseventeenth-century text-thereby removing the mannerisms which he judgeswould "become too great an irritationto the modern reader."2Patrides attemptsto preservethe curious and antiqueflavorof the original text. Students of the his-tory of philosophy and religion may prefer Cragg's edition, but students ofliteraturewill surelypreferPatrides.Cragg's introduction is competent, brief, and yet surprisinglycomprehensive;it touches on most of the aspects of the school which have interested intellectualhistorians. His discussion of the attitudes of the Cambridgemen toward religionandtheology is particularlygood.2aPatrides' edition displays the style and flavor of the Platonists not only in theselections but also in his introduction. The erudition of More and Cudworthwhich makes their works a treasury of quotations from ancient authors is, ifanything, bettered by Patrides, since his introduction is a mine of both ancientand modern authors. Patrides'comment on the style of Cudworth,which collatesquotations from Martineau, Cragg, Tulloch, and Laird, is representative:"Readers of the System have repeatedly attacked its 'diffuse repetitions andenormous digressions,' its 'vast and unwieldy' size, its lack of 'any graces ofstyle.' It has even been called 'monstrously obese'-and who can demure?"3When Patrides notes that the "tendencyto regard Plato's Forms as thoughts in

'Patrides,ix. 2Cragg, x.2aCragg;ne smallerror:hedateof HenryMore'sDivineDialoguess 1668,not 1665,given on pp. 12 and 437. Hence, Cragg'sdescriptionof the evolutionof More'sdisenchantmentithDescartess somewhatnaccuraten itschronology.3Patrides,3.157


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158 C. A. STAUDENBAURthe Divine Mind" was "ever-present"in Hellenistic times and the Renaissance,he backs up his assertionwith a footnote which refersus to 17differentbooks andarticles.4Occasionally Patrides is overly diligent, as when he supports the com-pletely uncontroversialclaim that Descartes attributed extension only to matterby citing nine places in four authors.5But on the whole Patridesis in command ofhis note cards and his introductionis more than simply a collection of commentsfrom secondary sources. For one thing, the selection of a wide range of modernopinion on the Platonists is judicious and the presentation is readable andinteresting. The extensive bibliographyis well done, and the copious notes Pat-rides provides for the selections he has chosen are most useful. Patrides isinterestedespecially in the literaryand religious aspects of the Platonists and lessso in the philosophical, and perhaps as a result of this bias his evaluation ofHenry More's contribution to the movement is excessively harsh. Patrides in-troducesthe "so-called CambridgePlatonists" with the following comparison:Their inspirationcame from their Plato, BenjaminWhichcote;their best writingissued from their Porphyry,John Smith; their perversitiesbecame most apparentwith their Iamblichus, Henry More; while Ralph Cudworth as an acute andsubtle philosopher was their Plotinus, and as a scholastic systematizer theirProclus.6The basis of this comparison of More to Iamblichus is More's interest in spiri-tualism and witchcraft,7and perhaps Patrides does not mean to push the com-parison beyond that. (Although he also comments on the terriblestyle of Moreand his "astonishing bigotry."8) We shall for a moment leave the perversitiesof More for our discussion of Hutin, and pause to reflect on the place Patridesgives Whichcote. Patrides follows a tradition which goes back at least to thenineteenth-centuryclassic on the school by John Tulloch, and sees Whichcote as"by common consent, the group's acknowledged leader."9 If Whichcote is thePlato of the movement and More its Iamblichus, one might expect that even asthere are hundredsof books on Plato to every one on Iamblichus,there would beseveral on Whichcote to every one on More. But such is not the case. There is agreat deal of literature on More, including several books, and very little onWhichcote;until recently,not a single book or monograph.That situation is now somewhat remedied by the appearance of Roberts'work on BenjaminWhichcote. The title of his book, From Puritanism to Plato-nism in Seventeenth Century England, leads one to expect that Roberts willdevelop and justify this now traditional view of the formative influence ofWhichcote on the other Platonists. Roberts makes the strongest claims whichhave yet been made for Whichcote's priority and importance for the school.Whichcote is the "father of the Cambridge Platonists," "the founder of themovement."10"The relation of Whichcote to his followers is remarkablysimilar

41bid.,3. Ibid., 31.6Ibid.,2. 7Ibid.,32. 81bid.,6, xxv, 35, 25."Ibid.,xxv, xxvi, 2, 10. Patridesmust mean that Whichcote s the leaderof themovement "by common consent" of the later students of the movement,sinceMore,Cudworth,ndSmithsay nothing t all aboutWhichcote nd heirrelationohim.Tulloch's reatment f Whichcote nd the otherCambridgemen s to befound n hisRational Theologyand ChristianPhilosophyin England (Edinburgh, 1874)."Roberts, iv,15.


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RECENT VIEWS OF THE CAMBRIDGEPLATONISTS 159to that of Socrates to Plato and others,"" accordingto Roberts, and so he speaksof "Whichcote and his disciples."12These claims can be supportedif Roberts canjustify two assumptions, namely, that Whichcote is properly classified as aCambridge Platonist, and that he developed the essential position of theCambridge Platonists before More, Cudworth, and Smith and had a formativeinfluence on these younger men. I believe that the first assumption is very ques-tionable, although Roberts makes as good a case for it as can be made. Thesecond, however, has not a bit of evidence in its favor, and considerableevidenceexists whichmakes it highly improbable.In discussing the first assumption, let me distinguish two questions. WasWhichcote a latitudinarian;that is, a liberal theologian opposed to Puritanismand Calvinism?Most scholarswould agreewith Roberts that he was.13Was he inany real sense a Platonist? I think not. And none of his contemporariessaw himas such. Among modern studentsof the movement opinion is divided.As Robertsnotes, those students whose training and interest in the movement is philo-sophical do not admit that Whichcote is a Platonist. But those who, like Roberts,have been trained primarilyin religion or theology, for whom Platonism is morea religious mood than a philosophical theory-for such, Whichcote is a Pla-tonist.14Roberts devotes considerable energy to the argumentthat Whichcote isa Platonist. First, he describes the "mood" of the "Personal Platonist."Personal Platonism is the mood of one who regards the endless variety of thisvisible and temporal world with an inquisitiveness, and at the same time ishaunted by the presence of an invisible and eternal world, sustaining both thetemporal world and men-a world not perceived as external to himself, but in-wardlylived by him.15

I would agree that this mood is a necessary condition if one is to be a "Per-sonal Platonist," but it is hardlya sufficientcondition. If it were, everytraditionalChristianwho believes in the invisible God and in invisible spirits or souls wouldbe a Platonist. What marks off the Christian Platonist from other Christians isthe extent to which he uses the theories and language of the Platonic tradition indeveloping and expoundingthis two-world theory; when we compare Whichcoteto More or Cudworth or Smith in this respect,we must conclude that Whichcotehardly used the tradition at all. Whichcote makes but one passing reference toPlotinus (Roberts, 201), and hardly mentions Plato himself.16 AlthoughWhichcote does commend the "Platonists," he does so for the typically Cal-vinistic reason that they correctly recognized the depravity of man.17If one ortwo references to Plato or "the Platonists" makes one a Platonist, thenWhichcote is one; but no more so than Calvin himself, who mentions Plato as"the most religious andjudicious" of all philosophers(but even so, given, like allotherphilosophers,to "stupidityand folly" aboutGod18).

"Ibid.,18,note 1. 12Ibid.,33. 13Seenote29 below or adissentingpinion.14Ibid., 01-03. 1'5bid., 201.16Roberts204)quotesone favorableomment n Platoandattributest to Whichcote,but the originof the commentappears o be Whichcote'sPuritanopponent,AnthonyTuckney.S. Salter,ed.,MoralandReligiousAphorisms, o whichareadded,EightLet-ters .. betweenDr. Whichcote... andDr.Tuckney, . [London, 753],38.)17WorksAberdeen, 851), I, 172; f II, 304f.18Institutes f the ChristianReligion, I, v, 11.


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160 C. A. STAUDENBAURJudging Whichcote from the standpoint of the historian of philosophy, I can-not see any evidence for the view that Whichcote was a Platonist in anysignificant sense. In fact, my own view is that he was not even a philosopher.Roberts himself admits that "Whichcote was not in any professional sense aphilosopher," but still wishes to claim that philosophers like Cudworth were"profoundlyinfluencedby him" in their religious outlook.19And if the essence ofCambridge Platonism is a religious outlook, a certain "mood," then Whichcote

may still be claimed to be its father even though, to quote the rest of the passagefrom Passmore that Roberts is paraphrasing, "Cudworth ... had scarcelyanything else to learn from him."20 But Cambridge Platonism is also a philo-sophical movement, and I do not think that anyone would argue that Whichcoteis the father of that aspect of the movement.But were Cudworthand More influencedby Whichcote'sreligious outlook, ordid they merely share it? Is Whichcote even the founder of the religious aspect (oressence) of the movement? Roberts does not make any explicit argument for thepriority of Whichcote's religious outlook to that of Cudworth, Smith, or More.But he does claim that the movement began in 1651, when Whichcote andTuckney exchanged a series of letters. "In these letters we find the 'germ' ofCambridge Platonism," remarks Roberts, "the real beginning of themovement...."21 If so, the period of germination was exceedingly short sinceone of the Platonists, John Smith, died less than a year later, in August 1652.Roberts chooses 1651 because he has no earlier record of Whichcote's thought,but it is impossibly late as the beginning of the movement. Some nine yearsearlier, in 1642, both More and Cudworth published works of Platonic in-spiration, and while Cudworth's short tract, The Union of Christ and the Church;in a Shadow, displays no acquaintancewith Plotinus, it does pursuea Platonizingapproachto theology.As the Platonists used to say, concerning spiritual and material things, that ma-terial things are but Ectypall resemblances and Imitations of spiritual thingswhichwere the first,primitiveand Archetypall things.22More's collection of Platonic poems published under the title Psychodia Pla-tonica in 1642, on the other hand, does not merely contain the "germs" ofCambridge Platonism, but one finds fully explicit most of the themes of themovement; anti-Puritanism in matters of religion, and anti-Calvinism, ra-tionalism, and Neoplatonism in philosophy andtheology.23Thus we must seek the origins of the movement prior to 1642, and ifWhichcote is to be regarded as the founder, the most plausible date is 1636.24

'gRoberts,14.20J. A. Passmore, alph Cudworth Cambridge,1951),7-8.21Roberts, 49, 50;cf: 65.22Ralph Cudworth, The Union of Christ and the Church;in a Shadow (London,1642),3.23Foranti-Puritanismand anti-Calvinism:Psychozoia, II, 52f. andPsychathanasia,III,iv, 14f.; and Marjorie H. Nicolson, "More's Psychozoia," Modern Language Notes, 37

(1922), 141-48. For Neoplatonism, see my "Galileo, Ficino, and Henry More'sPsychathanasia,"JHI, 29(1968), 567-78.24Patrides, xv.


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RECENT VIEWS OF THE CAMBRIDGE PLATONISTS 161When Whichcote was appointedSunday Afternoon Lecturer n Trinity Churchin1636, a position he held for nearly 20 years, John Smith was just enteringCambridge with Whichcote as his tutor, and Ralph Cudworth and Henry Morewere Junior Fellows. We might then regard their publications in 1642 asreflecting in print the point of view that Whichcote had been maintaining in hisSunday sermons. The next significant date would be 1644, the date ofWhichcote's appointmentas Provost of King's.The date of Whichcote's appointmentas Provost of King's, 1644, may be said tomark the rise of the new philosophical and religious movement at Cambridge.Not for some while after this, indeed, did it attain significance and general in-tellectual interest. But from the time he was placed in this position of authority,Whichcote seems to have become a power in the university, and gradually it wasfelt that there was a new life, other than Puritan or Anglo-Catholic, moving theacademic mind.25In 1651 the new movement attracted public attention, if not as a wholly newmovement, then at least as Arminian and contrary to the prevailing Puritantheology. John Goodwin, a notorious Arminian controversialist, dedicated hisRedemption Redeemed to Whichcote and others at Cambridge, and Whichcoteentered into correspondencewith his former tutor, Anthony Tuckney, who com-plained about Whichcote's Arminianism. By 1660 the new movement wasrecognizedas something new, and given a name. Whichcote andhis sympathizerswere known as "Latitudinarians,"accordingto the contemporaryaccount of Gil-bert Burnet, who visited Cambridge in 1663. Although Whichcote himselfpublished nothing (his sermons and correspondence appeared posthumously) heoccupies a prominentplace in Burnet'sdescription of the Latitudinarians;he wasa man of great influencethroughhis preachingand the force of his personality.26This account I have just given of the development of the movement ispossible, but not, I think, probable. First, we have very little evidence as to thenatureof Whichcote's views until they surface in his controversywith Tuckneyin1651. Such evidence as we do have suggests that he was a Puritan until at least1644. In the first place, he was sent to a Puritan college, Emmanuel, and placedunder a Puritan tutor, Anthony Tuckney. Secondly, when Dr. Collins was ex-pelled as Provost of King's in 1644 for not taking the Covenant, the PuritanParliament appointed Whichcote as his replacement.27 t is extremely unlikelythat Whichcote would have been appointedif therehad been any suspicionthat hewas not still a proper Puritan. And since he had been giving Sunday afternoonsermons for eight years, the CambridgePuritanshad ample opportunityto knowhis views. Thirdly, Roberts notes that in the Select Notions Whichcote sometimes"lapses into Puritan dogma."28 Roberts approves as probable the view ofWhichcote's eighteenth-centuryeditor, Samuel Salter, that these parts of the textmay represent "views of Whichcote in early life" when he had not yet made a"radical break with his Puritan background." This view is certainly consistentwith the Puritan faction findinghim acceptable to replace Dr. Collins in 1644.29

25Tulloch, I, 51f.26Ibid.,46, 52. 27Roberts, , 5. 28Ibid.,273.29JayG. Williams, The Life and Thought of Benjamin Whichcote(Ph.D. dissertation:ColumbiaUniversity, 964),argueswithsomeplausibilityhatWhichcote idnotradically


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162 C. A. STAUDENBAUR

Finally, Whichcote himself points to 1644 as the year in which his views began tochange.30If Whichcote started his college and preachingcareeras a Puritan,what hap-pened around 1644 to moderatehis theological position?Perhapsit was the soul-searching surroundinghis appointment to the Provostship of King's-it was ru-mored later that Whichcote refused to sign the Covenant which the Puritanparliamentlegislated in 1644.31Or was it the influenceof the personand writingsof Henry More? More rejected Calvinism in 1630 while he was a studentof Eton;32he came to Cambridge in 1631 and was placed under Robert Gell, atutor who was "not at all a Calvinist."33 More's conversion to Platonism tookplace before 1639, and evidentlynot throughthe mediation of any fellow Canta-brigianssince he writes later that he was the first Cambridgeman to own a copyof Plotinus.34In 1640 he commenced work on the Psychodia Platonica, andpublishedit two years beforeWhichcote'sappointmentas Provost in 1644.Let me sum up my argument. I have argued that Whichcote cannot havecontributed to More's Platonism, because he was not a philosopher and Moreand Cudworth could have learned nothing from him on that score.35Secondly,Whichcote could not have influencedMore's conversionto anti-Calvinismin re-ligious attitude since this happened before More came to Cambridge. We cantrace More's anti-Calvinism back to Hales at Eton and Gell and Mede atCambridge,and his Platonism back to his interest in Spenser, with whom he be-came acquainted in childhood.36It is the presence at Cambridge of people likeMore, Gell, and Mede in colleges other than Emmanuelwhich providesthe mostplausible explanation of how it happened that Whichcote, a Puritan in a Puritancollege, should have experienceda change of views. And while More cannot benamed as the sole or primary anti-Calvinist influence in the University in the1640's, he apparentlywas the only recognized Platonist during that period.37Ifwe compare the intellectual personalities of More and Whichcote, we see thatchangehis views 82); hathenever eallydiscardedomeof hisearlyCalvinist ndPuritanideas.Williams peculateshat Whichcote'sppointmento thelectureshipt Trinityandlater o theProvostshipt Kingswasdueto hisavailabilitys a compromiseandidate, c-ceptableo both hePuritan ndanti-Puritanactions48).30Roberts,74.31Ibid.,,4.32Marjorie. Nicolson,"Christ'sCollegeandtheLatitude-Men,"ModernPhilology,27(1929),36.33D.Masson,TheLife of John Milton(London,1875),I, 183;More,OperaOmnia(London,1679),I, vi., trans. n R. Ward,TheLifeof the Learned nd PiousDr.HenryMore,ed. M.HowardLondon,1911),62.34More,Letterson SeveralSubjects (London, 1694),27;also note 37, below.35Robertsegsthe questionneatlywhenhe argues"But f the schoolwas foundedbyWhichcote,hen t wouldappearmpossibleor himto becompletelygnorant f Platonicthought"203f.).36More,hilosophicalloems Cambridge,647),A2v.37In1651,More tells theOxfordNeoplatonist ndtheosophistThomasVaughanhatVaughan's"affectation f Platonisme"wasembarrassingo More,sincetherewas "nobodyelse besidesus twodealingwiththesekindof notions, men)mightyokemewithsodisordered companion s yourself."TheSecond Lashof AlazonomastixCambridge,1951),35.


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RECENT VIEWS OF THE CAMBRIDGE PLATONISTS 163More was an originator, an enthusiastic champion of new ideas. Whichcote wasless speculative, more moderate and deliberate. "He was slow to declare hisjudgment and modest in deliveringit. Never passionate, neverperemptory:so farfrom imposing upon others that he was rather apt to yield."38It is much moreprobable that More would father a new movement of thought than Whichcote.When Whichcote came to attach himself to this more liberal tendencyin religiousthought (or at least came to be associated with it in the eyes of Arminians likeGoodwin and Puritans like Tuckney) he no doubt gave it a respectabilitywhichitotherwise would not have had, and no one would wish to underestimate hisinfluencein the spreadof these new ideas.I conclude then that Whichcote is neither the Socrates nor the Plato of theCambridgemovement, but if anything the Xenophon of that movement. A manof impressive character and persuasive speech, given to moralizing rather thanphilosophizing, he adopted the liberal theological attitudes of his fellowCambridge men without concerninghimself too much about their philosophicalfoundations. If anyone deserves the comparisonto Plato and Socrates it is HenryMore, who, I believe, is both the founder of the school and its most eminentmember. But the school of CambridgePlatonists did not really have a Plato or aSocrates; it had something approaching a Plotinus (and Iamblichus) in HenryMore, and, as Patrides suggests, a Porphyry in John Smith and a Proclus inRalph Cudworth.I hope I have sufficientlyexplained why so much attention has been paid toHenry More as compared with the other Cambridge men. And now anothermonograph has appeared on More, the first to interprethim as a theosophist,thereby filling a much needed gap in the literature.That this gap has been permit-ted to exist so long is something of a surprisein view of the exotic nature of someof Henry More's writings. Dr. Hutin, the author of severalbooks on the historyof theosophy, alchemy, freemasonry, and related subjects appears well qualifiedto fill it. Hutin's book on More is a paradigmof note-cardvirtuosity.To give oneexample-in section 3 of Chapter IV (pp. 62-64) we find 16 lines of text and117 lines of quotations in the footnotes. Originally his principlethesis presentedin 1958 to the University of Paris for the Doctor of Lettersdegree, Hutin's workmakes at least a prima facie claim to be the definitive work on this aspect ofHenry More's thought. I hesitate to regard it as definitive, but I am willing tohope that it is the last word on the subject.The extravagantflirtation with far-outdoctrines and occult phenomenawhichPatrides labels "perversity"in Henry More is the especial interestof Hutin, whonotes that when More wishes to reason logically he reveals himself as a thinkerwithout great originality, who often falls into "la plus contestable vulgarisationmetaphysique."When More abandons himself completely to his inspirations,hisintuitions and visions, however,he discovers "des theories bien interessantes,desspeculations tres hardies, . ...39 As a rationalist and philosopherMore is quiteunimpressive, but certain of the "speculations 'irrationalistes' de Morus nemanquent pas d'originalite, de hardiesse meme, ni de reelle fecondite metaphy-sique."40In other words, it is not Henry More the philosopher who interestsHutin, but Henry More the theosophist.

38Tillotson,uotednWhichcote'sWorks, , v.39Hutin,11. 40Ibid.,12.


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164 C. A. STAUDENBAURHutin's case for More as a theosophist is somewhatloosely made. First, thereis the problem of defining theosophy. According to Hutin, theosophy is "anysystem which the originatorclaims to have obtainedby some sort of illuminationor direct and instantaneous knowledge of the absolute, of the ineffable realitywhich lies hidden behind the world of appearance."41This definition seems un-satisfactory; it appearsto be self-contradictory.On the one hand, it asserts thattheosophy is a system, something formulated in words, and on the other hand,obtainedby a directexperienceof the ineffable,that which cannot be described nwords. It is best to drop the word "ineffable"from the definitionand distinguishtheosophy from mysticism. Hutin's argument that Henry More was a mystic-that he experiencedthe ineffable(or at least pretendedto)-is acceptableto many

students of More, but Hutin's insistence on this point does not advance his claimthat More is a theosophist. The term which is more important for Hutin's ar-gument is "illumination." Hutin believes that More got the fundamental prin-ciples of his philosophy(or pretendedto get them) from visions ratherthan fromthe study of books or from arguments.The "mysticism of More is of the most vi-sionary and the most exalted type; in the course of his ecstasies, he falls into a'ravishment'so delicious that he bursts into tears....". More's mysticism, ac-cording to Hutin, "results in metaphysical contemplation, in theosophic illumi-nations."43The vision which had the most profound influence on the young More is thatwhich he recites in the Divine Dialogues: it is the "dream of Bathynous," ofwhich we will give a detailed exegesis, for Henry More reveals there themetaphysicalintuitions of which he makes use in constructinghis philosophy;it isin the course of this dream that the Platonist had a direct revelation of his twomystic devices: "Claude fenestras ut luceat domus; Amor Dei, lux animae."(Close the windows in orderto light the house. The love of God is the light of thesoul.) Is this not, condensed in the most suggestive manner, the essence ofmysticism?44

These two mottos suggest too much to Hutin. The first is congenial to any ra-tionalist, especially a rationalistic Platonist, mystic or not. Descartes utters thesame sentiment at the beginning of Meditation III. The second motto is con-genial to any Christian rationalist or ChristianPlatonist. What is novel is Hutin'sinterest in these mottos and his desire to take seriously what other students ofMore have regarded as merely a literary embellishment-namely the so-called"dream" of Bathynous, one of the fictitious characters in the Divine Dialogues.Hutin believes that this dream is a report of an "experiencevisionnaire" whichHenry More himself had, and remarksthat it is regretablethat More did not giveus the date of his dream.45More's biographerreportsthat someone asked Moreabout the dream of Bathynousand More repliedthat it "was indeed but a fictionbut that it deserv'd to be a true dream."46Even if one could ignore More's bi-ographer, and believe with Hutin that it was a real dream, it seems to me extrava-gant, even visionary,to believe that it could have played a role in the formation ofMore's thought. It appears in a publication, in 1668, near the end of his creativecareer. The doctrines contained in the dream are quite ordinary except for

4lIbid., 13. 42Ibid.,50. 43Ibid.,55.44Ibid.,50f. 4Ibid., 71, 73 4"Ward, 49.


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RECENT VIEWS OF THE CAMBRIDGE PLATONISTS 165sentences 4 and 5, which proclaim the Origenist doctrine of the preexistenceandfall of the soul.47But since More had expounded this theory in the second editionof his Philosophicall Poems in 1647, some twenty years earlier,the repetitionof itin the dream seems not at all unusual.Why does Hutin take the dream so seriously? Because he is convinced thatMore was an illuminationist, a visionary, a theosophist. But More never admit-ted to being a theosophist or visionary, and he devoted four volumes to attackingtheosophy,48which he classified as a species of "enthusiasm."49Enthusiasm, asMore defines it, is "a full but false persuasion in a man that he is inspired."50 tmanifests itself in strange and fanciful doctrines which are either contrary toreason, or for which no reasons can be given;nor does the enthusiast care to givereasons. More divides enthusiasts into three species: religious, political, andphilosophical. Religious enthusiasts are given to mystical interpretation ofScripture, quaking, and visions; political enthusiasts to prophecy and anarchy;and philosophical enthusiasts to "alchemy and theosophy."51Opposed to en-thusiasm are temperance, humility, and especially, reason.52How ironical thatMore, who spent his life attacking "Atheism and Enthusiasm," which "thoughthey seem so extremely opposite one to another, yet in many things they do verynearly agree,"53should now be labeled a theosophist,54and interpretedas an en-thusiast who (in More's language, which is echoed in Hutin) believed himselfinspired, given to illumination and visions,55which belief manifested itself instrangeand fanciful doctrines.56I shall not attempt to refute Hutin's view that in epistemology More was anenthusiast, mystic, illuminationist, and irrationalist;this has alreadybeen done ina very competent book by Aharon Lichtenstein which appeared in 1962, fouryears before Hutin's. Lichtenstein sees More as a rationalist, "hardly amystic,"57who emphasized "the validity of human reason and the importanceofrational guidance in all spheres of life, particularly the religious."58Hutin'smisinterpretationof More's epistemological position was adequately refuted, inmy view, before it appeared; unfortunately, Hutin took no notice of Lichten-stein's work.59

47More,Divine Dialogues (London, 1668),491.48Namely, Anthroposophia Theomagica (1650, 1656); The Second Lash ... (1651,1656); Enthusiasmus Triumphatus(1656, 1662, 1712); Philosophia Teutonicae Censura

(1670, 1679).49EnthusiasmusTriumphatus,XLIII. 50Ibid., I.51Ibid.,XXIV, XLIII. 52Ibid.,LIV. 53Ibid., .54The erm "theosophy"has been appliedto the thoughtof Henry More beforeby JohnTulloch,but n the more nnocent ndetymologicalenseof "divinewisdom."HenryMorewouldnotobject o beingcalledanadvocate f thepursuit f divinewisdom.Buthewould,andI do,object o hisbeingcalleda theosophistnthesensewhichHutingives o theterm.Since he himself objected to theosophy in this sense, and since this is the more common

meaningassociated with the term both in the seventeenthcenturyandnow, I think it best toavoid usingthe term entirelywhendescribingMore's thought.55Hutin, 2. 56Ibid.,11, 12.57HenryMore. The Rational Theology of a CambridgePlatonist (Cambridge, 1962),14. 58Ibid.,5559Hutin'sresearch was evidently done in the early 1950's (7); nothing publishedafter1954appearsin his bibliography.


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166 C. A. STAUDENBAURBut I shall try to deliver More from the charge that he maintained strangeand fanciful doctrines, at least of the varietythat Hutin finds most interestingand

typical of the theosophical tradition. Some of More's theories which are familiarto every student of the CambridgePlatonists are strangeenough: the infinite ex-tension of God, essential spissitude, the triple vital congruity of the soul, etc. Ac-cording to Hutin, however, these were not More's most novel theories; his mostinteresting speculations were so bold that he dared not draw attention to them."These importantdoctrines were thus condensed by More into two or three lines,and carefully hiddenin an opuscle-apparently secondary-of cabalistic exegesis... ,"60 entitled Fundamenta Philosophiae sive Cabbalae Aeto-paedo-me-lissaeae.6'The Fundamentacontains sixteen propositions, and occupies only one page inMore's OperaOmnia. The first five are as follows:1. Nothing can be createdfrom nothing.2. And thereforematter cannot be created.3. Nor does it exist by itself, by reason of the baseness of its nature. This followsfrom the fundamentalprinciple,Nothing of a base naturecan exist by itself.4. Thereforethere is no matter in the nature of things.5. Whatevertrulyexists is spirit.62According to Hutin, these propositions constitute an "immaterialism"based onthe denial of the dogma of creation ex nihilo, which denial is "a constant of allsystems more or less theosophical."63And while the first five propositions aremost important in view of their immaterialist conclusion, the others are notwithout interest. The argument continues from the conclusion that only spiritexists. If this spirit is the divine essence (since that which exists a se is eternal,infinite, etc.), then no other essence besides the divine can exist. But other thingsdo exist, and if they cannot be created out of nothing they must proceed from thedivine essence by some act of division. The parts which issue from this divisionare capable of contraction and expansion. Spiritual particles which expand be-come conscious spirits;those which contract become unconsciousphysical points,or monads. Bodies are constructed of these unconscious spiritual monads; thusGod constructed the so-called material world out of himself, not out of nothing.And matter does not exist in reality since to speak properly, bodies are com-poundedout of unconsciousspirits.64If these are the "fundamental intuitions of More about matter,"65 hen it isvery surprising that everywhere else in his writings he assumes or affirms theexistence of matter.66Hutin admits that More does not develop this "bold anddaring monadology,"67and that he does not try to integrate these principlesintothe system which he develops in other writings-"through prudence primarily,but also througha nearly total lack of the systematic spirit."68But Hutin does try

6?Hutin,1. 61Ibid.,4.62Trans.romMore'sOperaOmnia, , 523. 63Hutin,4.4OperaOmnia, , 523. S6Hutin,3.66For multitude f referenceso matter n HenryMore'swritings, f. the index o ACollection.. under"Matter," r the index n FloraMackinnon, hilosophicalWritingsof HenryMore NewYork,1925),332.67Hutin,8,75. 68Ibid.,9.


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RECENT VIEWS OF THE CAMBRIDGE PLATONISTS 167somewhat to remove the contradictionbetween the immaterialism of the Funda-menta and the dualism we find in the other metaphysicalworks of More; even inthese writings Hutin detects hints of immaterialism. He quotes the followingpassage from More's Conjectura Cabbalistica as evidence that already in 1653More did not wish to admit the "ontological autonomy" of matter.The active and passive principles here are not two distinct substances, the onematerial, the other spiritual. But the passive principle is matter merelyMetaphysical and indeedno real or actual entity ... .9A brief look at the context of the quotation shows that it is not immaterialismwhich is argued here. In the Conjectura Cabbalistica More is giving an alle-gorical interpretationof Genesis in the style of Philo. In the passage just quoted,he is describingthe work of the "First Day," when God created the "ImmaterialCreature."In the next section, which Hutin ignores, More goes on to describethe"Second Day's" work.And God thought again, and invigorating his thought with his Will and Power,createdan immense deal of real and corporeal Matter, ... .70

Hutin also tries to remove the contradiction by mistranslation. When HenryMore, in opposition to Cartesian mechanism, claims that ". .. there is no purelymechanicalphenomenonin the whole universe,"'7Hutin translates this as ". . . iln'existe aucunphenomene purementmaterieldans tout l'univers,"72 nd cites thepassage as evidence of More's opposition to Cartesian materialism.Finally, Hutin resorts to editing the text. Before we consider this drastic lastresort it is appropriateto show that such remedies are unnecessary.The Funda-menta is not an exposition of More's fundamental intuitions. It is an attempt tosystematize the cabalistic position of his friend, Francis MercuryVan Helmont,in order to show him the pernicious consequences of rejecting the doctrine ofcreation ex nihilo. More's tract consists of three parts: an exposition of the ca-balistic position of Van Helmont in 16 fundamentalpropositions, a refutation ofthis position, and some scholia explaining the strange title he gives to the tract.The full title is FundamentaPhilosophiae sive CabbalaeAeto-paedo-melissaeae,Quae omnem Creationem Propriedictam negat, essentiamque supponitdivinamquasi Corporeo-Spiritualem, Mundumq; Materialem aliquo modo Spiritum.Cum brevi ac luculenta praedictorum Fundamentorum Confutatione. (Funda-mentals of philosophy or of the cabala eagle-boy-bees, which deny all creationstrictly speaking and suppose the divine essence to be in some mannercorporeal-spiritual, and the world and matter to be spirit in some manner. Witha brief andexcellent refutation of thesefundamentals.) The tract was first published in theKabbala Denudata, edited by Christian Knorr von Rosenroth,73and reprintedinMore's OperaOmnia.Hutin does not quote the full title of the Fundamenta;he makes no note of the"Confutatio" and "Scholia" which follow the Fundamenta and refute andexplain it. Van Helmont recognized the purpose of the tract as an attack on

69ConjecturaabbalisticaCambridge,653),25(Ch.I, #5of "ThePhilosophical ab-bala"). Hutin quotesandtranslates this passage on page 87.70Ibid.,26 (I, #6). 71DivineDialogues, A6v. 72Hutin,92.73Kabbala Denudata(Sulzbach, 1677),I, ii, 293-307.


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168 C. A. STAUDENBAURhimself and wrote an answer to it. Immediately following More's tract in theKabbala Denudata is the reply by Van Helmont, taking the form of a dialoguebetween Compilator (the compiler or editor of the Kabbala Denudata) and Cab-balista Catechumenus (Van Helmont).74Hutin does not refer to this reply butdoes quote from an English translation of it which appeared in 1682 entitled, ACabbalistical Dialogue in Answer to the Opinion of a Learned Doctor inPhilosophy and Theology, that the World was made of Nothing. Even thoughHutin recognizes that the "Learned Doctor" referred to in the title is HenryMore, he takes the title as a mistake (since it implies that More held the doctrineof creation ex nihilo whereas "in reality he violently opposed it!"75)and quotesVan Helmont's defense of immaterialism in reply to More as if this were More'sown position.76It is time to extract ourselves from Hutin's super-confusionand straightfor-wardly explain what More was doing in the Fundamenta. More himself did notreject the doctrine of creation ex nihilo, as Van Helmont correctly recognized.The first cabalistic proposition in the Fundamenta denies it: "Ex nihilo nihilposse creari." But in the "Confutatio" More attacks this proposition. He arguesthat creation ex nihilo is not as absurd as what follows from denying it. If onedenies it, then matter does not exist, and bodies must be explained as composedof spiritual monads. But even more absurd, in order to create these spiritualmonads out of itself, the divine essence must be divided up.77And if it is dividedinto parts, each part remainsdivine, and then the most absurdconsequenceof allfollows, namely that there are many gods, each with the power of creation.78Thelogical result of denying creation ex nihilo, More argues, is polytheism, that"execrandam doctrinam depluribus Diis."79In the "Scholia" to the Fundamenta, More recounts a dream he claims tohave had after reflectingon these issues. He dreamed that an eagle flew into hiswindow from the east; it representedthe Jewish Cabala, which appears to befrom God since it contains many sublime doctrines concerning "divine provi-dence and the pre-existenceof souls."80But on closer inspectionthe eagle turnedinto a buzzingbee andfinally into a small boy who uttered the childish doctrine ofmany gods.8'Neither More's arguments nor his dream convinced Van Helmont that hisprinciplesneed have childish consequences. In his replyto More's "Confutatio,"Van Helmont accepts the first five principles of the Fundamenta but denies thathe thereby commits himself to any absurdity. Polytheism is not the necessaryconsequence of rejectingcreation ex nihilo, accordingto Van Helmont, since thevarious spirits which issue from God when He creates out of Himself are notdivine. They are the same with God in species, but not numerically;hence Godcan be distinguished from the spirits which emanate from Him.82Van Helmont

74(F.M. Van Helmont), Ad Fundamenta CabbalaeAeto-Paedo-Melissaeae Dialogus,ibid., I, ii, 308-12. Hutin(37) mistakenlyhinksthat the dialogues betweenMoreandVanHelmont.75Hutin,82, note 39. 76Ibid.,82, 85.77OperaOmnia, I, 523 (Fundamentum9; Confutatio I, 1).78Ibid.,523, 525 (Fundamentum16;Confutatioad Axioma Ultimum).79Ibid.,526;cf. 528. 80Ibid.,526. 81Ibid.,527, 525.82(Van Helmont), Ad Fundamenta. , in Kabbala Denudata, I, ii, 312; A Cabbalis-tical Dialogue, 14.


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RECENT VIEWS OF THE CAMBRIDGE PLATONISTS 169continued to develop these ideas in his laterwritings; perhapsthe most systematicexpression of his monadic immaterialismis to be found in the short work by VanHelmont and his disciple, Anne Conway, entitled Principia Philosophiae An-tiquissimaeet Recentissimae, publishedanonymouslyin Amsterdamin 1690.83How could Hutin ignore the refutation and scholia which More publishedwith the Fundamenta, and take the immaterialism of the Fundamenta as anexpression of More's own views?Is it possible that he failed to read further thanthe Fundamenta? Even if he did, the Fundamenta ends with an unmistakablereference to the "Scholia," and the dream recountedin it. The last paragraphofthe Fundamenta sets forth the conclusion that the particularspirits which issuefrom the divine essence are each of them capable of being Gods. More then com-ments on this conclusion as follows:This is the same as what the boy in the dream which will soon be narratedinthe Scholia answered, when asked by me if he believed in one God. The boyanswered,smiling, that he believed in the existence of a greatnumberof Gods, di-stinct from one another.84When Hutin quotes the Latin text which I have translated above, he "edits"More's phrase "per insomnium mox in Scholiis narrandum," into "per in-somnium nox in Scholiis .. ." and then translates the passage and comments onit as follows:Ce qui est cela meme qu'unenfant, parune nuitblanchedans les ecoles, interrogepar moi sur le point de savoir s'il croyait a un Dieu unique, me reponditen sou-riant qu'il croyait a l'existence d'un grandnombre de Dieux, distincts les uns desautres. (I1semble bien qu'en fait, l"'enfant" dont parle Morus ne soit autre quece dernier, quand il etait jeune etudiant a Cambridge:il est habile de ne pas sedonner comme l'auteurde theories"quisentent le fagot!")85

Further comment on Hutin's sins of editing, translation, and interpretationseems superfluous.No doubt a more sophisticatedcase for More as a theosophistcould be made, and one which would be harderto refute. But until one appears,let Hutin be the last word on More as theosophist.Michigan State University.83TranslatedntoEnglish s ThePrinciplesf themostAncientandModernPhilosophy(London,1692).84Opera mnia, , 523. 85Hutin,5.

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