Theosophy - The Cambridge Platonists - by William C.Ward - as published in "Theosophical Siftings" - Volume 7
THE CAMBRIDGE PLATONISTS
by William C. Ward
as published in “Theosophical Siftings” - Volume
7 - [1894-1895]
[Page 3] THE
attempt to reconcile the doctrines of the Christian religion with the philosophy of Plato and of the Stoics
dates from the earliest centuries of our era. It is a distinctive feature of the Fourth Gospel, the opening
paragraph of which is pure Platonism, and to be rightly understood only by those who have some acquaintance
with the teachings of the Platonic school. It was continued by the most profound thinkers among the Christian
Fathers: by Origen, and Clement, and Augustine. To the mediaeval church the Platonic tradition was handed down
in the writings which passed under the name of Dionysius the Areopagite. It coloured the theology of the Angelic
Doctor, Thomas Aquinas; and blossomed afresh in the teachings of Master Eckhart, and the German Mystics of the
fourteenth century. It received a new and powerful impulse during the Italian Renaissance, from the labours of
Marsilio Ficino and Pico della Mirandola. Even at this day Platonic Christianity is not wholly extinct, nor,
perhaps, is it destined to extinction so long as Christianity itself endures; but its last prominent appearance
in the history of literature was in the seventeenth century, in the writings of a group of English scholars and
theologians, collectively known as the Cambridge Platonists.
Every religion which the world has known may be regarded under two
aspects. There is the esoteric, or inward, religion, which is in essence everywhere one and the same; and there
is the exoteric, or outward, religion, the garb wherewith the inward truth is clothed, and too often disguised,
which varies with the differing manners of men, and the changeful course of the ages. Behind both Platonism
and Christianity abides the one Truth, which each is striving to express, which each expresses in more or less
imperfect fashion. Each springs from the same source, each tends towards the same goal; their difference lies
in the mode, and perhaps also in the degree, of expression. But among the Platonists there has always been
one insuperable point of dissension between Christians and non-Christians: the Christians identified the Logos
or Word of God with the personality of Jesus of Nazareth; the non-Christians refused to restrict the corporeal
manifestation of the Logos to any human personality whatsoever. To both Christians and non-Christians the Logos
originally meant the same thing: it was the second principle of the Platonic Triad, the second person of the
Christian Trinity: the mind or consciousness of the Deity. [Page 4]
It will not,
I think, be irrelevant to our subject if we attempt here to investigate, though very briefly, the nature of
this Triad or Trinity, in accordance with the teachings of Plato and Plotinus. The first hypostasis, or principle,
of the Triad is denominated by them the One, and the Good. It is that Unity from whence all things proceed,
in which all things have their being, and towards which all things ultimately tend. From this One, which is
beyond attributes and beyond essence, emanates the second principle, Nous — that is, Intellect or Consciousness — which
is called also Logos, or the Word. In this principle all being is comprised, all life, and all power; and it
has three aspects, Being, Life, and Intellect. In its third aspect it is the Creator, in its second aspect the
creative energy, in its first aspect the essence of all that is. And again, in its first aspect this principle
is the Intelligible World of Plato, the World of Ideas — of the realities, namely, whereof all things in
this visible universe are but the shadows, or imperfect expressions. To this Intelligible World, the home of
eternal Being, the Creator is said to look, fashioning the sensible world therefrom as from a pattern or paradigm.
And similarly, a Christian Platonist would speak of " the Father thinking Himself," meaning the same
thing with Plato; since Being, Life, and Intellect are not three distinct substances, but three aspects of one
and the same principle — the Nous or Logos.
From Nous emanates the third principle of the Triad — Psyche,
the Soul. And as Nous is the Logos, or expressed thought, of the One, so also may Psyche be called the Logos
of Nous. Soul, then, is the medium through which the Intellect creates. Its essence is eternally established
in the Father, Intellect; and from thence it extends itself downward through the changeful realms of Time and
Space, expressing in mutation the Immutable, receding from the Father and again returning thither. The whole
phenomenal universe is the soul's attempt to realise by the senses, under conditions of time and space, the
eternal facts of the World of Ideas.
I am well aware how impossible it is to convey to you, in so few words,
any clear conception of what the Platonic philosophers understood by this Triad of hypostases. But I think
you will perceive that their Triad and the Christian Trinity, although in some respects analogous, are by no
means identical; and you may easily imagine how a non-Christian Platonist would have recoiled with horror from
the impiety, as it would seem to him, of identifying the all-comprehending Logos with the personality of one
mortal man. To the Christian Platonist this identification became possible. Man was admittedly the microcosm
of the macrocosm: in the wide universe nothing existed which was without its correspondence in the soul of
man. Might not then the perfect Man be regarded as a [Page 5] manifestation of
the Logos in all the plenitude of its power ? On the other hand, the true successors of Plato held that the
Logos was perpetually manifesting itself in the entire world of phenomena. Man is indeed the microcosm of the
macrocosm, but, in the words of Proclus, "all such things subsist in him partially, as the world contains
divinely and totally". Or, if we may use again the oft-employed and beautiful metaphor, the Logos is as
the Sun, of which every soul is a ray — inseparable from its source, and one in essence with it; yet
distinct. A non-Christian philosopher would find the same incongruity in restricting the power of the Logos
to one human personality, as in restricting the power of the sun to one of its innumerable rays.
Thus you see that the point of divergence was not the recognition
of the Logos in Jesus, but its restriction to the person of Jesus. It is possible, indeed, that some of the
early philosophic Christians accepted this identification in a sense not utterly irreconcilable with Platonic
conceptions of the Logos; holding that the divine essence, everywhere present and the same, was but more fully
manifested in Jesus of Nazareth than in any other person. Moreover, the pseudo-Dionysius, whose writings were
held in such high esteem by the mediaeval Church, boldly affirms "That Christ before his resurrection
was simply a mortal man, even inferior, as it were, to the angels, and that only after the resurrection did
he become at once immortal man and God of all."[Max Müller’s
Theosophy or Psychological Religion, page 468] But such views as these are not, and perhaps
never were, regarded as orthodox, in distinguishing between the divinity in Jesus, and the divinity which is
manifest throughout the universe, the Christian writers forfeited their claim to be reckoned among the genuine
disciples of Plato.
Nevertheless, the light is the same, although it is variously refracted,
and there are different degrees of illumination. And in all ages this has been recognised by Christian thinkers,
who have felt the strong attraction of Plato's philosophy, and have owned him, despite their differences, as
a master of wisdom and a fellow-servant of the Truth. In our own country, the most remarkable instance of Christian
Platonism is to be found in the writings of those seventeenth century scholars who are known as the Cambridge
Platonists. These men were both students of philosophy and divines of the Church of England, and their true
mission was to prove a fact so constantly in practice, and so often, even in theory, denied — the essential
unity of religion and philosophy. "For
my part", says one of them, Dr. Henry More, "I look upon the Christian religion, rightly understood,
to be the deepest and the choicest piece of philosophy that is". And indeed, I think it may be said that
true religion and true philosophy are not only inseparable, but that in their essence they are really' the same.
It is [Page 6] certain, at least, that without philosophy religion is very apt to become superstition, and that
without religion philosophy will inevitably degenerate into materialism.
This outburst of Christian Platonism in England was not confined to
Cambridge: two of its prominent supporters, John Norris and Joseph Glanvill, were educated at Oxford. Cambridge
University, however, was its headquarters; and I purpose this evening to offer you some remarks upon the writings
of two Cambridge scholars, the leaders of the movement: Dr. Ralph Cudworth, who is, I suppose, the best known
of the group, and Dr. Henry More, who deserves to be the best known. On the principle of reserving the best
to the last, I shall begin with Dr. Cudworth.
Ralph Cudworth was born in Somersetshire in the year 1617. In May,
1632, he was admitted to Emmanuel College, Cambridge: he took his degree in 1635, and in 1639 became Master
of Arts and Fellow of his college. Six years later he was chosen Regius Professor of Hebrew to the University
of Cambridge, which position he held during the remainder of his life. In 1654 he was appointed Master of Christ's
College — the college at which Milton
had studied, and of which Cudworth's friend and brother-Platonist, Henry More, was at this time the most distinguished
ornament; and (to finish at once with these dates) in June, 1688, he died, and his body was interred in the chapel
of Christ's College.
Cudworth's first published work, a Discourse Concerning the Lord's
Supper, appeared in the year 1642; but the great work of his life, the work on which his reputation almost
entirely rests, was not published until 1678, when he was above sixty years of age. This work is entitled The
True Intellectual System of the Universe, wherein all the Reason and Philosophy of Atheism is Confuted, and
its Impossibility Demonstrated. It is a book replete with learning, and — a circumstance in the highest
degree creditable to Cudworth — the arguments in
behalf of the various atheistic systems are stated with such fulness and candour, as to have given rise to the
suspicion, in prejudiced or superficial minds, that the author was himself little better than an atheist in disguise.
To this circumstance Dryden alludes, in the dedication of his version of the Aeneid, observing that Dr. Cudworth "has" raised
such strong objections against the being of a God, and Providence, that many think he has not answered them". The
suspicion, nevertheless, was wholly unwarranted: if the atheistic arguments are fairly stated, they are as fairly
controverted; and it is impossible for anyone, who has read the book carefully through, honestly to believe the
author guilty of insincerity or lukewarmness in the cause of religion.
Extensively and intimately acquainted with the writings of the ancient
philosophers, admiring and frequently upholding the teachings of [Page 7] Plato,
Cudworth was nevertheless by no means so profound a Platonist as his friend, Henry More. Thus we find in him
a strong advocate of the atomic theory, maintaining, and indeed with perfect reason, that this theory is not
of necessity atheistic: the atomists before Democritus, says he, were asserters of a Deity and substance incorporeal.
If body consists, as Plato and Plotinus held, of matter which is incorporeal, and form which is likewise incorporeal,
then body, too, must be incorporeal! " But," continues
Cudworth, " the ancient Atomic philosophy, settling a distinct notion of body, that it is διάστατον ἀντίτυπον (extended
resistance), a thing impenetrably extended — which hath nothing belonging to it but magnitude, figure,
site, rest, and motion, without any self-moving power — takes away all confusion; shows clearly how far
body can go, where incorporeal substance begins; as also, that there must of necessity be such a thing in the
world".
Yet Cudworth's intended reduction to an absurdity of the Platonic
theory of matter and body, is altogether superficial. He maintains that as souls unquestionably derive their
whole being from the Deity, so matter or body (for he does not sufficiently distinguish between these terms) "was
created likewise out of nothing, or caused by the Deity". He postulates two distinct substances, one incorporeal,
the other corporeal, both generated in time, and from nothing; or rather, for this is what it really amounts
to, from the substance of the Creator. Now according to the Platonists, there is but one real substance, and
that is intelligible essence. Matter has no objective existence, and body represents, in fact, a mode of the
soul's perception. But let us accept for a moment the hypothesis that body is true material substance, actually,
and not merely apparently, existent. How then can this corporeal substance be created out of nothing, or rather,
out of the substance of the Creator ? Since the substance of the Creator is certainly incorporeal and intellectual.
How then, upon this hypothesis, can one substance proceed, wholly and immediately, from another substance totally
distinct from it in essence ? And Cudworth himself employs a similar argument in order to prove the impossibility
of the production of soul from matter.
The Platonic theory, however, which Cudworth rejects, is briefly this: The Creator is an intellectual and eternal
being, who creates therefore essentially, and not deliberatively. That is to say, he creates by his very nature
or essence, as fire by its nature produces heat; and not by a process of deliberation, since deliberation implies
time, and cannot therefore be attributed to that which is eternal. Thus the creation, being an expression of
the very nature of the Creator, partakes of that nature, and is said to be of the same kind secondarily as its
cause is primarily. The universe, then, so far as it participates of intellectual order and perpetuity, [Page
8] is the work of the Demiurgic Intellect, but so far as it is sensible and mutable it is produced through soul
as a medium. And body represents the attempt of the soul to realise to itself the eternal Ideas by means of sense;
but as sense is incapable of apprehending essences, but apprehends only appearances, so the objects of perception
to sense are not real beings, but the shadows or transitory images of beings.
A very large portion of Cudworth's book is occupied with his attempt
to show that the ancient Pagans in reality believed in one Supreme Being; that their seeming polytheism was
but the polyonymy (as he calls it) of the one God; that their real polytheism was the worship of generated,
not of self-existent, Gods. This argument he illustrates with great learning and countless instances, and his
contention is doubtless to some extent justified. Like all Christian Platonists, he makes much of the analogy
between the Platonic Triad and the Christian Trinity, although he allows that the resemblance is not complete,
inasmuch as the Platonic theory "supposes the three hypostases
not to have one and the same singular essence, not yet an absolute co-equality, but a gradual subordination and
essential dependence. He rebukes Plotinus for his assertion that our soul is of the same species with the mundane
or universal soul; which doctrine Cudworth terms, "a monstrous degradation of that third hypostasis of
their Trinity". " a thing liable to be much abused to creature-worship and idolatry, when the distances
are made so wide, and the lowest of the Deity is supposed to differ but gradually from the highest of created
beings". This disagreement as to the nature of the third person of the Trinity is in fact an inevitable
consequence of the disagreement which we have already noted between Christian and non-Christian Platonists with
respect to the second person, the Logos. There is no more essential feature in Platonic theology than the belief
that all things, from Absolute Being down to matter (which in a certain sense is non-being), are conjoined in
an unbroken chain of causes and effects. To cut off the Creator from the Creation, as Cudworth and many others
think proper to do, would be, in the mind of a true Platonist, to render creation itself impossible, to destroy
that unity which is the sustaining power of the universe, to establish chaos in the place of order.
There is one thing more in Cudworth's book upon which I should like
to say a few words; his very ingenious attempt to reconcile the Christian dogma of the resurrection of the
body with the teaching of Platonists on this matter. According, then, to the Platonists, the soul possesses
three vehicles, or bodies. Of these, the first is called the ethereal vehicle, or body of light; it is the
first vehicle assumed by the soul proceeding from its parent, Intellect, and becoming established in the world
of time and space. This vehicle, however, being pure light (as most nearly allied to [Page
9] the light of
Intellect); is hardly to be termed a material body; but the Second vehicle properly marks the descent of the
soul into material conditions, and is denominated the aerial or spiritual body (τὸ πνευματικὸν σϖμα );
and it is formed of the elements, and very pure, but yet in the course of long time corruptible. The third
vehicle, which betokens the lowest descent of the soul into matter, is this gross, terrestrial body which we
now inhabit. Possessing, then, these three vehicles, the soul, upon the death of this body, retires into its
aerial body, and so abides until the period of its re-incarnation has arrived. But when, by purification, it
has passed beyond the necessity of re-birth, it discards its aerial body likewise, and employs the ethereal
vehicle alone, returning, as Plato says, to its kindred star: that is, to the ethereal vehicle of the star to
which it is related — in our case, the earth. And there is a higher-state even yet, as Plato and Plotinus
and Proclus all assert; for the soul which has attained the summit of philosophy, shall be freed utterly from
body, and shall pass into eternity and that Intelligible World from whence it first descended.
Cudworth, then, maintains that the resurrection body is no other than
.this ethereal, or luciform, vehicle of the soul; but he holds also that the gross body which is laid in
the earth, does itself at the resurrection become converted, by some wondrous alchemy, into this ethereal
body. This view is, of course, entirely opposed to that of the Platonists, who held that the earthly body,
the controlling life being removed, was resolved again into its kindred elements. Moreover, Cudworth denies
the possibility of the soul's perfection apart from body — a
theory which he regards with some scorn, as a conceit of such high-flown and unsafe philosophers as Plotinus.
Life in conjunction with an ethereal body he deems the summit of its attainment. The Platonic doctrines of pre-existence
and re-incarnation are dismissed by him as "offensive absurdities".
But enough of Cudworth: let us turn now to a far more interesting
man; a truer Platonist, and a profounder philosopher. For Dr. Henry More was a poet and a visionary; not
in the vulgar acceptation of the term "visionary", as
of one who lives in the fantastic and the unreal; but as one who had true glimpses of the inward light, visions
of that selfless ecstasy of which Plotinus speaks — the summit of right philosophy. I shall presently endeavour
to give you some account of More's great poem, his "Platonic Song of the Soul"; but before we enter
upon the poem, I think it will be well to consider a little the life and character of its author, that we may
understand what manner of man this was, who in England, in the seventeenth century, amid the tumult of warring
sects, when all men around him were fighting, as it were, about shadows, lived a life of peace and retirement,
thinking deep thoughts, and conversing with God as a friend. He was born at Grantham, in October, 1614; and seems
to have [Page 10] been happy in his parents, although they were earnest Calvinists.
The letter in which he dedicates his " Song of the Soul", "to his dear Father, Alexander More,
Esq.", is filled with expressions
of love and respect: "I could wish myself", he writes, "a stranger to your blood, that I might
with the better decorum set out the nobleness of your spirit. But to speak modestly; you deserve the patronage
of better poems than these, though you may lay a more proper claim to these than to any: you having from my
childhood tuned mine ears to Spenser's rhymes, entertaining us on winter nights with that incomparable piece
of his, 'The Fairy Queen', a poem as richly fraught with divine morality as fancy".
In 1631 More entered as a student at Christ's College, Cambridge.
At this time, he tells us, "A mighty
and almost immoderate thirst after knowledge possessed me throughout; especially for that which was natural;
and above all others, that which was said to dive into the deepest cause of things, and Aristotle calls the
first and highest Philosophy, or Wisdom. . . Thus then persuaded, and esteeming it what was highly fit, I immerse
myself over head and ears in the study of philosophy, promising a most wonderful happiness to myself in it. Aristotle,
therefore, Cardan, Julius Scaliger, and other philosophers of the greatest note, I very diligently peruse. In
which, the truth is, though I met here and there with some things wittily and acutely, and sometimes also solidly
spoken, yet the most seemed to me either so false or uncertain, or else so obvious and trivial, that I looked
upon myself as having plainly lost my time in the reading of such authors".
Four years spent in such studies ended in something approaching to
scepticism. More had begun at the wrong end: he had yet to learn that the science of universals can alone
unfold the true nature of particulars. After taking his degree, he entered upon a more hopeful course of study,
reading now "the Platonic writers, Marsilius
Ficinus, Plotinus himself, Mercurius Trismegistus, and the mystical divines; among whom there was frequent mention
made of the purification of the soul, and of the purgative course that is previous to the illuminative; as if
the person that expected to have his mind illuminated of God was to endeavour after the highest purity".
One book he mentions which then beyond all others pierced and affected him; "that golden little book" (he
calls it), entitled Theologia Germanica, a treatise which has been ascribed, though doubtfully, to the
famous German Theosophist, Master Eckhart. Herein he found it mightily inculcated "That we should thoroughly
put off and extinguish our own proper will: that being thus dead to ourselves, we may live alone unto God, and
do all things whatsoever by His instinct or plenary permission; "which doctrine”, says he, "was
so connatural', as it were, and agreeable to my most intimate reason and conscience, that I could not of anything [Page
11] whatsoever
be more clearly or certainly convinced". " But after that the sense and consciousness of this great
and plainly divine duty was thus awakened in me; good God ! what strugglings and conflicts followed presently
between this divine principle and the animal nature ! For since I was most firmly persuaded, not only concerning
the existence of God, but also of His absolute both goodness and power, and of His most real will that we should
be perfect, even as our Father which is in Heaven is perfect; there was no room left for any tergiversation;
but a necessity of immediately entering the lists, and of using all possible endeavours that our own will, by
which we relish ourselves and what belongs to us, in things of the soul as of the body, might be opposed, destroyed,
annihilated; that so the Divine Will alone, with the New Birth, may revive and grow up in us. And", he adds, "if
I may here freely speak my mind, before this conflict between the Divine Will and our proper will or self-love,
there can no certain signs appear to us of this New Birth at all".
He had set his, feet upon the path; and mark what followed. "All
my other studies, in comparison of this, became vile and of no account: and that insatiable desire and
thirst of mine after the knowledge of things was wholly almost extinguished in me; as being solicitous now
about nothing so much as a more full union with this divine and celestial principle, the inward flowing well-spring
of life eternal: with the most fervent prayers breathing often unto God, that he would be pleased thoroughly
to set me free from the dark chains, and this so sordid captivity of my own will. But here openly to declare
the thing as it was. When this inordinate desire after the knowledge of things was thus allayed in me, and
I aspired after nothing but this sole purity and simplicity of mind, there shone in upon me daily a greater
assurance than ever I could have expected, even of those things which before I had the greatest desire toknow:
insomuch that within a few years I was got into a most joyous and lucid state of mind; and such plainly as
is ineffable".
Men live to themselves, apostatizing from the divine harmony in which
the universe is established; and on this account, says Proclus, "there is much among them of mine and
not mine: but they abandon the union and communion of life". Henry More had explored the knowledge
of things, and his learning had been futile: he had now discovered that truer life which is not in separateness,
but in union, a life as of the Gods, having all-things in common; not losing the individuality, but blending
it, as the musician in an orchestra blends his own part, in the harmony of the whole. And lo ! now that he
could see them in their right relations, all those things that he had longed for, not yet understanding, were
added unto him. The soul which knows itself, says Proclus again, sees in all things, yea, in the smallest,
symbols of the Gods. [Page 12]
Here is one more quotation from our Cambridge Platonist: “I
say that a free, divine, universalized spirit is worth all. How lovely, how magnificent a state is the
soul of man in, when the life of God, inactuating her, shoots her along with Himself through Heaven and Earth;
makes her unite with, and after a sort feel herself animate the whole world. This is to become deiform, to
be thus suspended (not by imagination, but by union of life; Κέντρον κέντρῳ συνάψαντα,
joining centres with God), and by a sensible touch to be held up from the clotty dark personality of this compacted
body. Here is Love, here is Freedom, here is Justice and Equity, in the super-essential Cause of them. He that
is here looks upon all things as One; and on himself, if he can then mind himself, as a part of the Whole".
Well might he call himself Incola Coeli in Terrâ, an Inhabitant of Heaven upon Earth!
The serene beauty of Henry More's mind is reflected in his literary productions, both in prose and verse. He
was perhaps riot less intimate with the works of the ancient philosophers than his friend Dr. Cudworth but with
a truer sense of their inward meaning. Cudworth, indeed, although a man of deep thought and learning, seems almost
superficial by the side of this visionary poet. He was more mixed up with the outer world, preaching on one occasion
before the House of Commons. But Henry More was always the secluded scholar, content with his fellowship of Christ's
College, with his books and his studies. It was no selfish seclusion which he sought; his chamber-door, it is
said, was as a hospital to the needy. But such honours as the world could bestow, the preferments which from
time to time were offered him, he constantly rejected. A little story is told of him which I will repeat to you,
as it is very characteristic of the man. He was a royalist by conviction, and, after the Restoration, his friends
prevailed upon him to undertake the journey to London, in order to pay his respects to the King. On the way he
was informed that his visit would be the prelude to a bishopric, which the King would certainly bestow upon him;
whereupon he instantly returned to Cambridge.
There is one thing which seems to me to illustrate very clearly the
difference between More and Cudworth. Of all the great philosophers of the Platonic school, Plotinus is at
once the most mystical and the most profound; of him it has been said that he worked out the mystical element
in the teachings of his master, Plato, to the utmost limit of vision and ecstasy. [ Walter Pater: The
Renaissance, 2nd ed., p.40] Now Cudworth quotes Plotinus, but, I venture to think, without rightly
appreciating him; on some occasions, as we have seen, he dissents rather strongly from the position of Plotinus,
and this on very important [Page 13] points. With Henry More, on the other hand,
Plotinus was a first favourite: he is never tired of quoting and praising him. "O more than
man!" he exclaims in one of his poems: —
"But Thou, O more than man!
Aread, thou sacred Soul of Plotin dear,
Tell what we mortals are, tell what of old we were."
I am afraid Henry More's poems are somewhat deficient in the qualities
which make for popularity. They are offered to those who "are at leisure a while to lay aside the pleasure
or trouble of the world, and entertain their minds with thoughts of a greater compass than the fetching in
of a little wealth or honour". Such, indeed,
will find them well worthy of perusal; perhaps others will hardly be induced to read them. His great poem, the''
Platonic Song of the Soul", first published in 1642, is divided into four parts, to which were afterwards
added two considerable poems, on different aspects of the same subject, by way of appendices. It is written in
the Spenserian stanza — you have not forgotten those winter evenings with the "Faërie Queene" — and
with a plentiful use of Spenserian archaisms, rather agreeable than otherwise, but still such as would assuredly
have subjected any other poet of More's time to a charge of affectation; though More himself lived so wholly
apart from the world, with his books and his thoughts, that I suspect he was hardly conscious of the archaisms
as he penned them.
The first part of the poem is entitled " Psychozoia", or
the "Life of the Soul": it is
an allegory in three cantos, whereof the first is concerned with the Triad or Trinity, under the names of "Ahad", "Aeon," and "Psyche". "Ahad" is
that which Platonists call the "One"; "Aeon" (Eternity) is the Nous or Logos; Psyche,
whom our poet names also Uranore (celestial), is, of course, the soul. The canto opens thus bravely:—
"Nor Ladies' loves, nor Knights' brave martial deeds,
Ywrapt in rolls of hid antiquity;
But th' inward fountain, and the unseen seeds,
From whence are these and whatso under eye
Doth fall, or is record in memory,
Psyche, I'll sing. Psyche ! from thee they sprung,
"O life of Time and all alterity!
The life of lives instill his nectar strong,
My soul t'inebriate, while I sing Psyche's song."
In this canto the poet records the mystic marriage of Aeon and Psyche,
and describes the fourfold vesture of the soul. Her outermost garment is this visible universe; the next in
order is that which we call Nature; the third is the garb of Sense; while the fourth, or inmost covering of
the soul, is Semele, the Imagination — "Prophets
and Poets have their life from [Page 14] hence".Like Plato and Plotinus, Henry
More is by no means heedless of the beauty of this outer world, of the sweetness of this "gladsome life
of sense"; yet like them
also, he earnestly recognises its transitory and unreal nature. For beauty subsists in the idea alone, and that
which we term the beautiful in material objects is in truth a certain reminiscence of the idea which these shadows
awaken in us. Yet it is sweet to live, and sweet to see the sun: —
" But O ! what joy it is to see the Sun
Of Aeon's kingdoms, and th' eternal Day
That never night o'ertakes ! "
In another stanza he develops the thoroughly Platonic notion that
love of the beautiful in externals may assist the soul to rise to the perception of the inward and true beauty —
"And this I wot is the Soul's excellence,
That from the hint of every painted glance
Of shadows sensible, she doth from hence
Her radiant life and lovely hue advance
To higher pitch, and by good governance
May weaned be from love of fading light
In outward forms, having true cognisance
That those vain shows are not the beauty bright
That takes men so, but what they cause in human spright."
There are many noble passages in this first canto of "Psychozoia",
which I must deny myself the pleasure of quoting, that I may tell you somewhat of the pilgrimage of Mnemon
(the mindful), which is the principal subject of the second and third cantos. Psychany, or the region of the
soul, is divided into two mighty kingdoms; whereof one is called Autaesthesia, the land of self-sense (or self-sensedness,
to use More's own word); the other Theoprepia, the land of the likeness of God. And Authaesthesia is again
divided into two provinces: Beirah, which signifies the brutish, or animal life; and Dizoia, the double life,
a condition "betwixt
man and beast, light and darkness, God and the devil". From Beirah, therefore, the pilgrim's path lies
through Dizoia, until, the love of self being wholly lost or transmuted into the love of God, his journey ends
in " blest Theoprepy." But
first of Beirah Mnemon has much to tell, and of its inhabitants, those in whom the spiritual sense is as yet
unawakened. For even in Beirah there is much talk of religion, and loud contention and intolerance; though of
true inward religion nothing is found there. All this the poet recounts with much picturesque circumstance and
keen-edged satire. To Henry More, Faith has but one foundation — the Spirit of God in the soul, the divine
light which is known of itself alone. Of authority other than this he is impatient; yet his satire is without
uncharitableness: [Page 15] all false seeming, all imperious pretensions arising
from love of self, excite his scorn, but not the errors, whatsoever they be, of any honest seeker after truth. " I
would be very loath", he
writes, in the preface to the second edition of his poem, "to be so far mistaken as to be thought a censurer
or contemner of other men's religions or opinions, if they serve God in them in the simplicity and sincerity
of their hearts, and have some more precious substratum within, than inveterate custom or natural complexion.
All that I mean is this: that neither eager promoting of opinion or ceremony, nor the earnest opposing of the
same; no, not the acuteness of reason, nor yet a strong, if naked, conceit that we have the Spirit of God, can
excuse a man from being in any better condition than in the Land of Brutes, or in the mere animal nature".
On the border of Beirah, where the country verges upon Dizoia, the pilgrim's way is obstructed by the wall of
Self-conceit. This he passes by the door of Humility, and enters into the land of double life, the state of conflict
between the higher and lower nature in man. Mnemon's first impression of the unrestful land is finely depicted.
"When we that stately wall had undercrept,
We straightway found ourselves in Dizoie:
The melting clouds chill drizzling tears then wept;
The misty air sweat for deep agony,
Sweat a cold sweat, and loose frigidity
Fill'd all with a white smoke; pale Cynthia
Did foul her silver limbs with filthy dye,
Whiles wading on she measured out her way,
And cut the muddy heavens defil'd with whitish clay.
"No light to guide but the Moon's pallid ray,
And that even lost in misty troubled air:
No tract to take, there was no beaten way;
No cheering strength, but that which might appear
From Dian's face; her face then shin'd not clear,
And when it shineth clearest, little might
She yieldeth, yet the goddess is severe.
Hence wrathful dogs do bark at her dead light:
Christ help the man thus clos'd and prison'd in dread Night."
By the dim light of the Moon, the poet here signifies the first troubled
awakening to a sense of the divine law. This is the country of the Apterites, the Wingless Folk, who are yet
“fain to flag among the dirty desires of the world, though sometimes full of sorrow and vexation for
their gross vices". You will doubtless remember
what Plato says in the Phaedrus concerning the wings of the soul. Here Mnemon passes through the Valley
of Weeping, and is deceived awhile by the false dawn which lightens upon Ida Hill. For thereon stands the castle
of Pantheothen (All [Page 16] of God), as it is named of those that built it; though
indeed it were better named Pandaemoniothen, All of the Devil. For they that dwell therein are Ireful Ignorance,
and Unseemly Zeal, and Self-conceit, and Rash Censure, and Spiritual Pride, and all such evils as beset the soul
that is awakening to the spiritual life. And the Keeper of the Castle is Unfelt Hypocrisy, that most dangerous
kind, namely, which does not know itself to be hypocrisy.
With the morning Mnemon comes to the land of Pteroessa, whose inhabitants
have wings "whereby they raise
themselves above the mire and dirt of the corrupt body". And these wings are called Faith and the Love of
God. There, upon a hill of steep ascent, he beholds three sisters, clad in robes of snowy whiteness. And here
it seems to him that the end of his pilgrimage is attained, for by these sisters are represented the ancient
philosophies of Pythagoras, and Plato, and the Stoics. But the end is not yet. I will quote a sentence or two
from the poet's own comments on this remarkable episode, wherein, however, I am inclined to believe that his
Christianity has for once led him to be a little less than just to those great teachers of whom he was so worthy
a disciple. "A noble spirit", he writes, "moves in those philosophers' veins, and so near Christianism,
if a man will look on them favourably, that one would think they are baptized already, not only with water, but
the Holy Ghost. But I, not seeing humility and self-denial and acknowledgment of their own unworthiness of such
things as they aimed at, nor mortification, not of the body (for that's sufficiently insisted upon), but of the
more spiritual arrogative life of the soul, that subtle ascribing that to ourselves that is God's, for all is
God's: I say, I not seeing those things so frequently and of purpose inculcated in their writings, thought I
might fitly make their philosophy, or rather the life that it doth point at (for that's the subject of this poem)
a type of that life which is very near to perfection, but as yet imperfect, having still a smack of arrogation
and self-seeking".
Upon this I will only observe that the merging of the self in God
is the great end of Platonic philosophy, and that our author's phrase "acknowledgment of their own unworthiness
of such things as they aimed at” points to a state by no means so near to perfection as he imagined
it. For the acknowledgment must be either sincere or insincere. If it be sincere, that is, an acknowledgment
of real unworthiness, then we answer that no amount of imputed virtue will enable the soul to attain those
things at which it aims, before it is indeed worthy to receive them. But if the unworthiness be feigned, and
the acknowledgment insincere, the false humility which dictates it is in itself a kind of unworthiness.
Beyond the hill of the three sisters lies the Valley of Ain, or Self
nothingness. Into this dark valley the pilgrim descends, and, having passed
[Page 17] through it, he arrives at the sun-bright kingdom of Theoprepia. And
with this Mnemon ends his discourse. Of Theoprepia he will not trust himself to speak:
"Too hard it is, said he, that kingdom's glee
To show; who list to know himself must come and see."
We have no time this evening to examine the remaining parts of this
great "Song of the Soul". I should
like, however, to say yet a word or two upon one of the poems which it includes — a singularly profound
and beautiful piece upon the Pre-existency of the Soul; a doctrine, be it said, which to Henry More was by no
means the "offensive absurdity" that it seemed to Cudworth, In this poem he tells of the soul's descent
into matter, and of its vehicles — the ethereal, aerial, and terrestrial bodies of which I spoke a while
ago. There is much here, also, of apparitions, "of ghosts, of goblins, and dread sorcery", of souls
which leave the body in trance, and other such matters, with which the poet deals as with well ascertained facts.
It is easy to charge him with ignorance and credulity; not easy to establish the justice of such a charge, or
to evince that More's attitude on these questions is indeed inconsistent with either reason or experience. That
part of the poem which treats of the descent of souls is largely derived from Plotinus, to whom the poet here
addresses that brief, but glowing, apostrophe which I have already quoted. He calls upon Plotinus to "tell
what we mortals are, tell what of old we were"; and the answer comes almost in a paraphrase of the very
words of the master: —
"A spark or ray of the Divinity,
Clouded in earthy fogs, yclad in clay,
A precious drop sunk from Eternity,
Spilt on the ground, or rather slunk away:
For then we fell when we 'gan first t' assay,
By stealth, of our own selves something to been,
Uncentering ourselves from our great stay,
Which fondly we new liberty did ween,
And from that prank right jolly wights ourselves did deem."
One more quotation by way of farewell. With these lines the " Song of the Soul " concludes
:—
" What now remains, but since we are so sure
Of endless life, that to true piety
We bend our minds, and make our conscience pure,
Lest living Night in bitter darkness us immure."