Herbert of Cherbury (Lord) and the Cambridge Platonists

Lord Herbert of Cherbury and the Cambridge Platonists Sarah Hutton The philosophy of Lord Herbert of Cherbury (1582/3–1648) and of the Cambridge Platonists exemplifies the continuities of seventeenth-century thought with Renaissance philosophy. At the same time, they were very much engaged with new developments in philosophy of the seventeenth century. Together they represent the development of philosophy outside the Aristotelian tradition. And each illustrates one aspect of what were to become interconnected features of seventeenth-century philosophy: its lay character and the use of the vernacular as the language of philosophical discourse. Although he wrote in Latin, still the lingua franca of intellectual exchange, Lord Herbert was a lay practitioner of philosophy. The Cambridge Platonists were all university men, although they wrote in English. LORD HERBERT OF CHERBURY Lord Herbert of Cherbury is normally placed in a category of his own as a philosopher, separate from the philosophical groupings of the seventeenth century. He was neither the successor to, nor the founder of a school. His reputation as a philosopher derives from his epistemological treatise De veritate (1624, begun 1617) and his work of religious philosophy, De religione laici (published with the third edition of De veritate in 1645). His motivation in writing these works was as much religious irenicism as a wish to confront the problem of scepticism. Having travelled in Europe and served as English ambassador to France 1619–24, he undoubtedly benefited from his contact with European intellectuals—Grotius, Tilenus, Casaubon, and especially the Mersenne circle. Indeed Mersenne is credited with the French translation of De veritate.1 Herbert was acquainted with Gassendi and appears to have known Descartes personally (Descartes presented a copy of his Méditations to him (1.60) and Herbert commenced an English translation of the Discours). Both Descartes and Gassendi wrote comments on the second edition of De veritate (1633) at his request or that of Mersenne.2 De veritate is a blend of Stoic, Neoplatonic and Aristotelian elements, founded on the Renaissance microcosmic/macrocosmic analogy between man and nature: everything knowable in the world has its corresponding faculty in the mind. Nothing can be known except through those faculties. True knowledge consists in conformity between the faculties of the mind and the objects of knowledge: “Truth is a harmony between objects and their faculties’ ([1.34], 148). While he insists that certainty of knowledge is possible, Herbert recognises the limitations of human knowledge and accepts that not everything can be known. He distinguishes four classes of truth: truth of the thing itself (veritas rei), truth of appearance (veritas apparentiae) truth of concepts (veritas conceptus or subjective truth), and truth of the intellect (veritas intellectus), each of which is able to grasp truth according to its own nature. The main faculties of the mind are: natural instinct, internal perception (equivalent to will or conscience), external perception (equivalent to sensation) and discursive thought (reason). Over and above these he posits the presence in the mind of common notions, imprinted in the soul by dictate of nature’ ([1.34], 106). These koinai ennoiai (to use the Stoic term Herbert adopts) ‘are the principles without which we should have no experience at all ([1.34], 132). These common notions are implanted in the mind by Divine Providence. Indeed they constitute an important part of the image of God in man. And their truth is attested by universal consent. Among the faculties of the mind, Natural Instinct is the highest, able to grasp truth intuitively, with absolute conviction. Reason or discursive thought (discursus) is the lowest faculty of all, most liable to error through misapplication, but of enormous value when properly applied in accordance with the common notions. Reason is to be guided by the application of a set of rules or ‘zetetica’, not dissimilar to Aristotle’s categories, which help it to discern the common notions and perform its functions of generalization, analysis, reflection. Along with internal and external perception, reason is part of a cumbersome apparatus for processing subjective classes of truth in order to ascertain the certainty of the thing in itself in accordance with the common notions. Herbert’s epistemology is integrally connected to his religious concerns. He does not supply a comprehensive list of the common notions apart from the five pertaining to religious belief. In De veritate, De religione gentilium and his argument for religious tolerance in De religione laid he proposes a minimum number of fundamental beliefs, arrived at by examining the common elements in all religions. These religious common notions are that there is a god, that god is to be worshipped, that virtue and piety are the chief parts of worship, that we should repent of our sins, and that the afterlife brings reward or punishment. Thus the essentials of religion may be arrived at by reason without the need for revelation. Herbert’s most eminent contemporary critics (Descartes and Gassendi)3 were quick to point out that the certainty of his method for arriving at truth is fatally dependent on universal consent and therefore inadequate as an answer to scepticism. He is the one philosopher actually named by Locke in his critique of innatist epistemology. But, as R.H.Popkin points out ([1.42], 155), Herbert anticipates many of the objections levelled at him by Locke and he appears to suppose that knowledge is derived from empirical observation of the world outside the mind. Herbert’s standing as a philosopher in the later seventeenth century was occluded by posthumous association with deism and irreligion. His reputation as father of deism derived in large part from his posthumously published De religione gentilium (Amsterdam, 1663) which discusses religion in distinctly non-Christian terms and has affinities with the religious views of Bruno and Campanella. Herbert’s deism seemed more obvious in the wake of hostile reaction to developments in philosophy in the later seventeenth century, especially to the work of Hobbes and Spinoza’s Tractates theologico-politicus. On the one hand, Christian Kortholt in De tribus impostoribus (Cologne, 1680)4 and Michael Berns in Altar der Atheisten (Hamburg, 1692) read Herbert, along with Hobbes, as a forerunner of Spinozistic atheism. On the other hand, the deist Charles Blount professed himself to be a disciple of Herbert and plagiarized Herbert’s De religione laid in his own work of that name (1683). The imputation of deism lead to De veritate being regarded as the theoretical underpinning of natural religion, and Herbert as a forerunner of the Enlightenment. This posthumous standing as a kind of proto-philosophe should not obscure the fact that, with its eclectic blend of elements of ancient philosophy (Stoic, Neoplatonic and Aristotelian) along with its emphasis on free will and consensus gentium arguments, Herbert’s philosophy is a product of the humanist tradition of Renaissance philosophy. His concern with the problem of scepticism places it within the new philosophical climate of the seventeenth century. This blend of Renaissance elements with seventeenth-century philosophical concerns, as well as arguments for free will and arguments based on universal consent, are all characteristics of the diffuse group of English thinkers known as the Cambridge Platonists, although none of them were actually followers of Herbert. THE CAMBRIDGE PLATONISTS The term ‘Cambridge Platonist’ is a label of convenience for a cluster of philosophical divines, liberal in their theology and educated at the University of Cambridge in the first half of the seventeenth century. The most prominent members of this group were Henry More (1614–87) and Ralph Cudworth (1617–88). Other contemporaries associated with the group were also Cambridge dons: Nathaniel Culverwell (1619–51), John Smith (1618–52), Peter Sterry (1613–72) and the man traditionally regarded as their forerunner, Benjamin Whichcote (1609–83). Their younger followers include George Rust (d. 1670), John Norris (1657–1711), Anne Conway (c. 1630–79) and the group of liberal churchmen now known as the latitudinarians, especially Simon Patrick (1626–1707) and Edward Fowler (1632–1714). Two kindred spirits, that might also be mentioned in this connection are Joseph Glanvill (1636–80) and Jeremy Taylor (1613–67). The Cambridge Platonists are too heterogenous a group to be considered a philosophical school: the common element in their thinking is a liberal theological outlook rather than a consistent set of philosophical doctrines. Indeed their philosophical concerns must be understood in relation to their primary concerns with religious apologetics. In theology, their emphasis on the role of reason in religion and on the freedom of the will, contrasted with the prevailing Calvinist predestinarian orthodoxy of the first half of the century, suggesting that their theological roots lie with Erasmian humanism. Reason was conceived as a safeguard against the excesses of the fanaticism of self-proclaimed prophets, or ‘enthusiasts’ as such ‘private spirits’ were then known. This is a reminder that Cambridge Platonism developed in the context of a period of religious strife and uncertainty of belief. The Platonism of their sobriquet was an eclectic Neoplatonism, reminiscent of Florentine Neoplatonism and strikingly receptive to those aspects of seventeenth-century philosophy and science which appeared compatible with their rational theology, though hostile to the materialistic philosophies inconsistent with it. More, Cudworth and Smith were all attracted by Cartesianism (albeit with differing degrees of reservation). More and Cudworth were implacable in their opposition to Hobbes and Spinoza. Thus their theological stand against voluntarism and predestinarian Calvinism corresponds to their philosophical opposition to the materialism of Hobbes and Spinoza. Behind both their religious and philosophical concerns, the challenge of scepticism is apparent. The same blend of Ficinian Neoplatonism and anti-determinism is to be found in their Oxford predecessor, Thomas Jackson (1579–1640).5 In Jackson’s work, as later in that of the Cambridge Platonists, eclectic Neoplatonism serves as a philosophical alternative to prevailing but increasingly outmoded Aristotelianism. Peter Sterry, on the other hand, combines his visionary Neoplatonism with denial of free will in his Discourse of the Freedom of the Will (1675). And Nathaniel Culverwell’s An Elegant and Learned Discourse of the Light of Nature (Cambridge, 1652) is critical of aspects of Platonism, especially the doctrine of the pre-existence of souls, preferring instead to draw on scholastic sources, especially Thomas Aquinas and Suarez. His use of Aquinas is consistent with his rationalizing theology. (Ficino before him had used Aquinas in his Theologica platonica). In their emphasis on reason, the Cambridge Platonists were careful to acknowledge its limitations in fallen human nature. While affirming the compatibility of faith and reason, they never elevated reason above faith. Reason is the pre-condition of faith (faith without reason is blind), but it is also illuminated by faith. Right reason is affective reason, directed by love towards God. Furthermore, by reason, the Cambridge Platonists do not mean mere abstract speculation (logic too, is blind, according to Smith), but a more elevated capacity of the mind than discursive reason. Reason corresponds to mens or nous, deriving its power from either reflection of or participation in the divine. Moreover, their concept of reason emphasises practical reason: the mind contains within it the principles of moral conduct. Thus, moral purification is the best way to obtain true knowledge. In advancing the claims of reason in religion, Whichcote, Culverwell and Smith appear to be addressing fellow-believers who deny reason a role in religious matters. Cudworth and More, by contrast, set out to defend religious belief against unbelievers, conscious of the need to defend religion in a ‘seculum philosophicum’. But they were careful to define its role so that it did not conflict with faith. The Apology of Henry More (1664) gives a set of rules for the use of reason in matters of religion, insisting that the apologist should choose ‘Philosophick theorems’ which are ‘solid and rational in themselves, nor really repugnant to the word of God’.6 It is a mark of their repudiation of Aristotelianism as the philosophical groundbase of theology that the Cambridge Platonists each adopt some version of innatism. This also, perhaps, explains part of the attraction of Cartesianism for them. For Culverwell, the mind is furnished with ‘clear and indelible Principles’ through which the mind can recognize the law of nature or nomos graphos written in the heart of man. These principles include moral principles. But while he accepts that they are innate, he denies that they are ‘connate’ (that is, present from the moment of the creation of the soul)—a view which he associates with the Platonic doctrine of pre-existence of souls. These innate ideas or principles are often referred to as common notions, as for example by John Smith who calls the common notions ‘praecognita’ or ‘the Radical Principles of Knowledge’ imprinted in the soul ([1.27],13). These logoi spermatikoi include the idea of God and of virtue as well as the principles of mathematical demonstration. The doctrine of common notions is not in itself attributable to Herbert’s influence, since it derives from Cicero through whom it became a commonplace of Renaissance humanism.7 When, in The Immortality of the Soul (London, 1657), Walter Charleton proposes, in opposition to Aristotle’s conception of the soul as a tabula rasa, a set of ‘Proleptical and Common Notions’ innate to the mind he is echoing the Cambridge Platonists. Charleton’s common notions include ideas of “Motions and Figures’ and the means whereby the mind can form ideas of things when stimulated by external objects.8 Later in the same work he links this concept of proleptical and innate ideas with Descartes’ demonstration of the existence of God from the idea of God in the mind. It is none the less true that the Cambridge Platonists were aware of Herbert’s theory of truth: Whichcote and Rust both draw on his theory of truth. Cudworth and Culverwell are critical of Herbert ([1.25], 31– 6; [1.26], 193; [1.10], 160). In ‘The True Way or Method of Attaining to Divine Knowledge’ John Smith argues that knowledge of God is possible by inward meditation rather than external ([1.27]). The innate knowledge of the mind is obscured by the body, and is therefore to be attained by closing the eyes of sense and opening the eyes of understanding. While Smith subordinates sense-perception to intellection in this way, he none the less insists that knowledge of the external world is conducive to religious belief. Far from being antithetical to developments in contemporary science, the Cambridge Platonists accommodated them. Culverwell is open in his admiration of Francis Bacon in The Light of Nature, while Cudworth and More used contemporary natural philosophy in their construction of a philosophica perennis that combined both the Renaissance idea of a prisca theologia and a concomitant prisca scientia. From a philosophical point of view, the most important of the Cambridge Platonists were Ralph Cudworth and Henry More. RALPH CUDWORTH The only major philosophical work which Cudworth published in his lifetime was his True Intellectual System of the Universe (1678). The published part constitutes the first book of a treatise originally conceived as a more extensive work which was never completed. None the less, book I stands on its own as a self-contained unit. Of the papers Cudworth left behind on his death, two treatises were published posthumously: his Treatise Concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality (1731) and his Treatise of Free Will (1838). For all the humanistic antiquarianism of his writings, Cudworth was a modern in natural philosophy, in that he accepted the mechanical philosophy, albeit with important modifications to safeguard dualism and ensure its compatibility with Christian teaching. He maintains that matter is inert, ‘Extended bulk’ of which the principle attributes are ‘Divisibility into Parts, Figures, and Position, together with Motion or Rest, but so as that no part of Body can ever Move it Self; but is alwaies moved by something else’ ([1.9], 7). These properties are deducible from the very idea of matter, and hence intelligible without the otiose and untintelligible apparatus of intentional species, and substantial forms of scholasticism. Since the properties of matter by definition exclude mental operations, to posit the existence of matter endowed with these properties and no others is to imply the existence of incorporeal substance: ‘neither can Life and Cogitation, Sense, and Consciousness, Reason and Understanding, Appetite and Will, ever result from Magnitudes, Figures, Sites and Motions, and therefore they are not Corporeally generated and Corrupted’. ([1.9], 36). Hence it is that ‘the same Principle of Reason which made the Ancient Physiologers to become Atomists, must needs induce them also to be Incorporealists’ ([1.9], 40). Furthermore, since true atomism leads to the recognition of an intellectual faculty able to judge the appearances of things, it is an antidote to scepticism ([1.9] (1845), 3:554–5). True Intellectual System of the Universe is a work of immense classical erudition. Most of it is taken up with consensus gentium arguments showing the prevalence among ancient philosophers of belief in a supreme deity. Insofar as Cudworth sets out the philosophical schemes of ancient atomists, The True Intellectual System can be considered as a history of philosophy. The purpose of this antiquarian exercise is in large measure to vindicate corpuscularean natural philosophy from the charge of atheism. The underlying conception of philosophy is of a philosophia perennis deriving ultimately from Moses and transmitted to all nations of the world where it resurfaces in more or less partial or imperfect forms. The True Intellectual System thus presupposes the homogeneity of philosophy, its systematic unity and the singleness of truth. True philosophy combined atomistic, mechanistic natural philosophy and a metaphysics positing the existence of spirit and of God. In its pure totality it was taught by Pythagoras, and less perfectly by Empedocles, Anaxagoras, Plato and Aristotle. Degeneracy set in with the separation of the metaphysical and ethical aspects (the ‘Theology or Pneumatology’) from natural philosophy (the ‘Atomical or Mechanical Physiology’), with philosophers like Plato (excusably) opting for the former. Leucippus, Democritus and Epicurus rejected the metaphysical component, thereby promoting dangerous atheistic versions of the original atomic mechanism. Cudworth distin-guishes four distortions of mosaic atomism in four varieties of atheism: as atomical atheism (in which all things came about by chance), hylozoic atheism (initiated by Strato of Lampsacus, which imputes life to matter), hylopathian atheism (deriving from Anaximander, in which all things are derived from matter as the highest numen), and cosmo-plastic atheism (which entails a concept of the world soul, but without positing a guilding mind). These have their contemporary proponents: Spinoza by imputing the properties of spirit to matter is a hylozoist; Hobbes, by denying the existence of spirit altogether, but not denying the existence of God is a material atheist of the hylopathian variety. Cartesianism appears to occupy a somewhat ambiguous position in Cudworth’s estimation. In many respects Cudworth appears to have adopted Cartesianism implicitly, but regarded its compatibility with the true, spiritualized mechanism propounded by Cudworth as inconsistent, necessitating the modifications Cudworth advances to secure its orthodoxy. In large measure, Cudworth’s critique of Cartesianism is grounded in theological objections to Cartesian voluntarism and denial of final causes, with the philosophical consequences attendant upon that. Descartes is in some respects worse than the ancient pagans since he did not recognize the argument from design, and obstinately refused to see the hand of the deity in the orderly universe he described. The vindication of ancient atomism in The True Intellectual System is part of the demonstration of the belief in the existence of God by an appeal to universal consent. To this end the evidence of pagan polytheism as well as pagan philosophy is mustered and interpreted to prove that belief in a divinity is natural to all human kind, even if it is expressed in corrupt form as polytheism. Cudworth is concerned not simply to prove the existence of God, but to demonstrate the true idea of God. In this respect his project is aimed not just at atheists and philosophers but also at Christian theologians. The idea of God, in Cudworth’s conception, is integrally linked to the rational order of the universe, and therefore to the intelligibility of the universe. Just as atheism is characterized by deterministic notions of causality, so misconceptions of the deity, pagan and Christian alike, are characterized by misplaced emphasis on divine will, and elevation of divine omnipotence above other attributes. According to Cudworth, voluntaristic conceptions of God mean that the deity acts in an arbitrary manner. In consequence there is no criterion of truth, no secure grounds of morality, no providential government of the universe, since goodness, right and wrong, truth and falsehood would all depend on the arbitrary whim of the almighty. Voluntarism thus.opens the way to scepticism. Instead, Cudworth stresses God’s goodness and knowledge, above His omnipotence, arguing that this follows from the idea of God as ‘a being absolutely perfect’. It follows from such an idea of God that divine justice and moral principles are not arbitrary, but founded in the goodness and rationality of God. The laws of morality and God’s providential design, being thus evidently rational, it also follows that human beings must bear responsibility for their actions. Cudworth is also at pains to emphasize divine providence, the visible hand of God in His creation being clear demonstration of the wisdom and goodness of God. It is in this connection that he puts forward his distinctive doctrine of ‘Plastic Nature’. Derived ultimately from the Platonic anima mundi, the ‘Plastic Nature’ is a spiritual agent of God, the chief instrument of His government of the physical universe. Plastic nature is ‘an Inferior and Subordinate Instrument doeth Drudgingly Execute that Part of his providence, which consists in the Regular…and Orderly Motion of Matter’ ([1.9], 150). Its existence implies that nature is not the supreme numen but is subordinate to a Perfect Mind. It is the means whereby God imprints His presence on His creation, displaying His wisdom and goodness and rendering it intelligible. It is comparable to human art, though superior to it. In positing ‘plastic nature’ as the intermediary between God and the world, Cudworth was attempting to defend divine providence by steering a course between mechanistic determinism, which explained all physical phenomena as the result of chance, and occasionalism, which required the intervention of God in even the minutest details of day-to-day natural occurrences. Determinism is as irrational as it is impious: its theistic version, which admits the existence of the deity, reduces the role of God to that of an ‘idle Spectator’, rendering divine wisdom useless and irrelevant. In fact, what the mechanist identifies as the laws of motion, are actually the operations of plastic nature putting divine purposes into effect. Occasionalism dispenses with divine providence, making it ‘operose, Sollicitous and Distractious’, thereby opening the door to atheism. The occasionalist’s god is an undignified god obliged to intervene directly in the most menial minutiae of the day-to-day running of the universe. As a buttress against atheism, Cudworth’s doctrine of Plastic Nature failed to satisfy Pierre Bayle (1647–1706) who saw it as a reworking of the peripatetic doctrine of substantial forms and inconsistent with the idea of a providentially ordered universe because it meant that God is ignorant of what He does. Bayle’s criticisms were based on the extracts translated into French by Jean Leclerc and published in the Bibliothèque choisie (1703–6).9 If Cudworth’s Christian Platonism is evident in his making the good the chief attribute of the deity, his debt to Neoplatonism is evident in the fundamentals of his epistemology. His theory of knowledge is scattered through The True Intellectual System but is most systematically set out in A Treatise Concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality. The ultimate objective is a confutation of the materialistic concept of mind and the ethical relativism of Hobbes. It is also integrally related to his idea of God. The underlying Neoplatonism is apparent in his conception of the relationship of the soul (and hence mind) to God, and of God to the world. The human mind not only mirrors the divine, but its capacity for knowledge comes about through its participation in the divine: ‘The first Original Knowledge is that of a Perfect Being. Infinitely Good and Powerful, Comprehending itself. The Divine Word is the Archetypal Pattern of all Truth’, and it is ‘by a Participation of the Divine Mind’ that ‘Created Minds’ are ‘able to know Certainly’. Knowledge is therefore innate to the mind which is like a microcosm of the world: ‘The Minde and Understanding is as it were a Diaphanous and Crystalline Globe, or a kind of Notional World, which hath some Reflex Image, and correspondent Ray or Representation in it, to whatsoever is in the True and Real World of Being’ ([1.9], 638; cf. [1.9] (1845), 3:581). To comprehend is thus, in a sense, to contain all knowable things as ideas. The common notions are the noemata or ‘intelligible’ of things within the mind, the ‘seeds’ of certain knowledge derived from God by virtue of the fact that created intellects are ‘ectypal models or derivative compendiums of the mind of God’ ([1.9] (1845), 3:581). The truth to which we have access in this way is one and eternal. As the archetype of all things the mind of God precedes both the human mind and the world. Mind is thus antecedent to things, the intellect precedes intellection ([1.9], 733). Hence the common notions are prolepses or ‘anticipations’ of knowledge. Furthermore, the mind is not the passive recipient of knowledge, whether this is derived from God or from the external world. Cudworth conceives of the mind as active in obtaining knowledge: the ‘cognoscitive’ power of the soul is ‘a power of raising intelligible ideas and conceptions of things from within itself ([1.9] (1845), 3:572). Thus knowledge is an inward and active energy of the mind itself. Cudworth rejects the image of the soul as a container to be filled (mere mental capacity) preferring an image of mental activity which also implies that knowledge is present in the mind potentially: knowledge is ‘not be poured into the soul like liquor, but rather to be invited and gently drawn forth from it; nor the mind so much to be filled therewith from without like a vessel, as to be kindled and awakened’ ([1.9] (1845), 3:582). Furthermore, the ectypal character of the natural world means that it bears the stamp of the divine ideas from which it derives, in the same way that a building, in its structure and the arrangement of its parts, corresponds to the plan of the architect. The design of the building, which differentiates it from a heap of bricks, displays the mind of the architect. …no man that is in his wits will say that a stately and royal palace hath therefore less reality, entity, and substantiality in it, than a heap of rubbish confusedly cast together; because forsooth, the idea of it partly consists of logical notions, which are thought to be mere imaginary things; whereas the totum, ‘whole’ is all solid matter without this notional form. For this logical form which is the passive stamp or print of intellectuality in it, the first archetypes contained in the idea or skill of the architect, and thence introduced into the thing that… distinguishes it from mere dirt and rubbish, and gives it the essence of a house or palace. And it hath therefore the more of entity in it because it partakes of art or intellectuality. ([1.9] (1845), 2:594) In like manner, the cosmos bears the stamp of the creator: the order and harmony of the natural world constitute the scheses which render the natural world intelligible to the observing mind. The mechanical philosophy ‘makes sensible things intelligible’ because the properties of matter, ‘magnitude, figure, site and motion’ are ‘intelligible principles’ ([1.9] (1845), 3:545). This ‘stamp of intellectuality’ in the world is not apparent to the senses. Cudworth denies sense-perception can lead to knowledge, for the senses are passive and unreliable. With mathematics as his model he argues that the more abstract knowledge is, the closer it is to truth and that ‘scientifical knowledge is best acquired by the soul’s abstracting itself from outward objects of sense and retiring into itself, that so it may better attend to its own inward notions and ideas’ ([1.9] (1845), 3:581). Far from being an empirical philosophy atomism is the triumph of reason over sense ([1.9] (1845), 3:555). None the less, he does not deny sense-perception a role. Sense-perception is in fact vital for making us aware of the existence of the external world, without which we could not be sure of the existence of any thing except God ([1.9] (1845), 3:564). Empiricism has its place in his epistemology, but mind is necessary for making sense of sensory input, ‘the active power of the mind exerting its own intelligible ideas upon that which is passively perceived’. The noemata act upon the phantasmata and aisthemata (sensations) produced by senseperception. HENRY MORE Henry More was the most prolific of the Cambridge Platonists and the most famous in his own time: his international reputation stemmed in large measure from his correspondence with Descartes (as it does even today) and from the publication in Latin of his Opera omnia (1679). Divine Dialogues (1668) which present an accessible recension of his philosophical views in dialogue form, ensured him a non-academic contemporary readership at home. The Platonism of Henry More like that of Ralph Cudworth was a version of the eclectic and syncretic Neoplatonism of the Renaissance. He too subscribed to the notion of a philosophia perennis deriving from Moses/Moschus which he called a cabala, in which he became interested in his later years (1.69 and Katz in 1.72). This concept of philosophy and the transmission of philosophical ideas is given fullest expression in Conjectura cabbalistica (1653), which constitutes a three-fold commentary on the first book of Genesis: literal, moral and philosophical. In its main philosophical tenets, the perennial philosophy here described was receptive to certain aspects of seventeenth-century philosophy, notably Cartesianism and hostile to others, in particular Hobbism and Spinozism. More’s earliest writings, his poems (1642 and 1647) are Neoplatonic allegories of the soul which argue for the immortality, divine origin and pre-existence of the soul and for the infinity of the universe. The poems show not only his repudiation of scholasticism and his preference for Neoplatonism as the philosophical framework for his thought, but his awareness of the new astronomy and of Cartesianism: his notes to Psychathanasia and Democritus platonissans and The Philosopher’s Devotion give up-to-date technical glosses on the references to astronomy in the poems. More’s first philosophical prose treatise, his Antidote against Atheism (1653) sets out the main themes which were to dominate his thought: the existence of spirit and the immortality of the soul. His metaphysical crusade against philosophical materialism, was the equivalent in his philosophy to his crusade against religious enthusiasm in which he advanced the role of reason in religion as a safeguard against sectarian fanaticism. In An Antidote he sets out to combat atheism by using arguments ‘compiled of no Notions but such as are possible according to the Light of Nature’. The Immortality of the Soul develops many of these points adopting an axiomatic mode of argument in imitation of Descartes, proposing some thirty-two axioms which are designed to follow one from another or which are supposedly self-evidently rational. This is a method he adopts again in his Enchiridion ethicum (1667). Conceived as the introduction to a larger work of metaphysics which he never completed, Enchiridion metaphysicum (1671) is a reiteration rather than a development of arguments, which had been put forward in the Antidote and the Immortality and in More’s letters to Descartes and to ‘V.C.’. From his poems through to his mature metaphysical writings, More develops and elaborates the pneumatology which formed the mainstay of his critique of the mechanical philosophy. He consistentlyproposed the existence of incorporeal substance and a spiritual explanation of causality. In his letters to Descartes (1648–9) and in his apologetic Epistola…ad V.C. (1664) he argues that there is immaterial extension as well as material. He tries to persuade Descartes to adopt his own distinction between material and immaterial extension: that the former is divisible and impenetrable, and the latter indivisible and penetrable. In the Immortality More defends his contention that the idea of spiritual substance is easy to define, entailing the properties of ‘Self-penetration, Selfmotion, Self-contraction and Dilatation, and Indivisibility’. More refines his concept of Spirit as extension with properties obverse to those of matter: where matter is divisible (‘discerpible’) and impenetrable, spirit is indivisible (‘indiscerpible’) but penetrable. In the Immortality he also gives his most developed account of his concept of the Spirit of Nature (‘principium hylarchicum’) which he had first described in his philosophical poems. The hylarchic spirit is More’s answer to purely mechanistic explanations of ‘all these Sensible Modifications in Matter’. It is ‘a substance incorporeal, but without Sense and Animadversion, pervading the whole Matter of the Universe, and exercising a Plastical power therein according to the sundry predispositions and occasions in the parts it works upon, raising such Phaenomena in the World, by directing the parts of the Matter and their Motion, as cannot be resolved into mere mechanical powers’ ([1.18], bk. 3, ch. 2, sect. 1). As the immaterial agent of God in the physical world, the spirit of nature is the equivalent in More’s philosophy of Plastic Nature in Cudworth’s: deriving from the Platonic world soul, it offered a means of explaining natural phenomena without recourse to the mechanism of the moderns or the substantial forms and occult qualities of the scholastics. In the Immortality More reserves its operations to cover the explanatory weaknesses of mechanistic theory, to account for phenomena such as the sympathetic vibration of lute strings ‘which cannot be resolved into any Mechanical Principle’. In his Enchiridion metaphysicum (1671) More extends the operations of the spirit of nature to all phenomena which had hitherto been ascribed to mechanical causes. In the antimechanical cause, More marshals a wide array of physical and metaphysical phenomena from tidal motion and magnetic attraction to the operations of the soul and records of apparitions as well as experiments described in Boyle’s An Hydrostatical Discourse. More criticizes Descartes for over-reliance on the argument for the existence of God from the idea of God, and for failing to take account of God’s providence: innatism shorn of final causes is a recipe for misbelief, even disbelief in God, the deity being reduced to a mere philosophical abstraction, or at best the initial impetus that set creation in motion. More dubs Cartesians ‘nullibists’, as it were ‘nowhere-ists’, because they argued that God existed but failed to recognize thatspiritual substance (God included) was extended and operative throughout creation. The finality of More’s opposition to mechanism of Enchiridion metaphysicum should not obscure the fact that, with important metaphysical qualifications, he accepted tenets of Cartesian mechanism as the best available natural philosophy, concerned as he was to oppose any manifestation of the materialism promoted by atheistical atomists like Epicurus. The worst contemporary manifestations of what he saw as atheistic materialism were the philosophies of Hobbes (which he attacked consistently and especially in Immortality) and Spinoza (attacked in two short treatises styled ‘Epistolae’: Ad V.C. Epistola altera, quae brevem Tractatus Theologico Politici confutationem complectitur and Demonstrationum duarum propositionum…confutatio) (in 1.32). More was one of the first promoters of Cartesianism in England (1.41; 1.70). He has been credited with the first English translation of the Discours10 though this attribution has not been established with certainty. In the preface to his Antidote against Atheism he urges that Cartesianism should be taught in the universities. Initially Cartesianism seemed an ally in the battle against atheism. It appeared to offer a system of natural philosophy to replace discredited Aristotelianism, as well as an invincible innatist argument for the existence of God. In the preface An Antidote against Atheism More acknowledges his debt to Descartes, but rejects all his arguments for demonstrating the existence of God except the ontological argument claiming that the others are not such as would persuade atheists. In Immortality of the Soul More restates his admiration of Descartes and makes explicit that Hobbesian materialism is his chief target. However, More’s Cartesianism was never pure Cartesianism. Much as he admired Descartes’ natural philosophy, he consistently sought to enlarge the metaphysical dimension of Cartesianism. (cf. Immortality of the Soul). He points to the problem of transmission of motion from one object to another, if motion like shape is merely a mode of body. He argues that motion can only be imparted to matter by divine contagion, that is, if God is literally contiguous to it (‘Quo modo enim motum imprimeret materiae…nisi proxime quasi attingeret marteriam universi aut saltem aliquando attigisset?’).11 He contests Descartes‘ denial of the existence of a vacuum, by advancing his own conception of divinized space: the sides of a vacuum-sealed jar are prevented from collapsing, not because the jar is filled with subtle matter, as in the Cartesian account, but because it is filled with divine extension (‘divinam contendo interiacere extensionem’). He rejects Descartes‘ mechanical conception of animals, arguing that animals have souls. By no means all of the points that More raises are founded on a dogmatic a priori commitment to existence of a spirit of nature. He points up a number of areas where Descartes is not fully self-consistent, or does not appear to have the courage of his convictions to state his position clearly: for example, he criticizes him for side-stepping Copernicanism and for not admitting the infinity of the universe. On Descartes’ own argument, the vortices should be cylindrical in shape and celestial bodies oblong, not round. More’s criticisms of Descartes are revealing because they throw into relief key points of his own system. His ‘Cartesianism’ was less a conversion to the French philosophy, than an attempt to assimilate Descartes to Moreism, an attempt most vividly represented by his incorporation of Descartes in his philosophia perennis as a Neo-Pythagorian atomist in Conjectura cabbalistica. Underlying the fluctuations in More’s assessment of Cartesianism was a consistent philosophy which entailed a natural philosophy dedicated to his religious apologetic. The doctrine by which More is best remembered today, his conception of infinite space, is first discussed in his correspondence with Descartes. Against Descartes’ view of extension, denial of the void and characterization of the extent of the universe as ‘indefinite’, More argues that space is a res extensa distinct from matter. Matter is mobile within space. If all matter were annihilated, space would remain. Furthermore, space, unlike matter, is infinite. As an immaterial res extensa space is thus analogous to spirit and to God Himself, whom More conceives as an infinitely extended spirit. The divinization of space is completed in Enchiridion metaphysicum where More describes space as ‘an obscure shadow’ of Divine extension, since the properties of space (immobility, immensity, immateriality etc.) correspond to most of the attributes of God. The conception of space as immaterial extension is important for More’s argument for demonstrating the existence of incorporeal substances. His concept of space is thus formulated for primarily theological reasons. None the less, More’s infinitization of space constitutes a significant contribution to the conceptual framework of the new philosophy of the seventeenth century, especially the new science. In certain important respects More anticipates Newton’s concept of absolute space, though the question of More’s direct influence on Newton continues to be disputed (Hall in [1.72]). It has also been argued that the pneumatology which accompanies More’s concept of space may have a scientific afterlife, that More’s concept of spirit may have contributed to the Newtonian concept of force.12 More’s own excursions into empirical science were not entirely happy. While his poems bespeak a knowledge of contemporary scientific development, his letters to Samuel Hartlib (Hall in [1.72], and Webster [1.75]) document his antipathy to empirical investigation and a preference for the metaphysico-mathematical method of Descartes. In the 1662 edition of his Antidote against Atheism and again in Enchiridium Metaphysicum, More cited some of the experiments described in Boyle’s New Experiments Physico-Mechanical (London, 1660) as proof of the workings of the Spirit of Nature. His insistence on proffering a spiritual explanation for the results of the experiments incurred the public censure of Robert Boyle in his An Hydrostatical Discourse (London, 1672) (Henry in [1.72], and Greene [1.71]). A similar well-meaning attempt to harness empirical investigation to metaphysical enquiry was involved in the project for which he is most easily derided today: his compilation of instances of spiritual phenomena. Both An Antidote against Atheism and The Immortality of the Soul record the appearance of ghosts and poltergeists and examples of witchcraft. In this enterprise he found a willing ally in Joseph Glanvill whose Sadducismus triumphatus (1681) is just such a compendium of spiritual phenomena. While More’s experiments in empiricism are wide open to criticism, the project was part of a philosophically-based religious apologetic which may be summed up in the motto which More himself supplied: ‘No spirit no God’.13 To twentieth-century minds to seriously propose the existence of witches, hobgoblins and ghosts savours of an irredeemably irrational occultism. In the seventeenth century such beliefs formed part of a logically coherent system of thought. Belief in evil spirits was not only consistent with belief in good spirits, but integral to the arguments for the existence of God based on the existence of spirit. Furthermore, it was widely accepted that the threat of Hell was necessary to ensure moral and law-abiding conduct. More was not an exception in his beliefs. Even Sir Francis Bacon suggested that cases of witchcraft should be recorded as a contribution to the natural history of marvels, and Lord Brereton proposed that the Royal Society should investigate supernatural effects (Coudert in [1.72]). ANNE CONWAY AND JOHN NORRIS The legacy of the Cambridge Platonists is most obvious in theology, especially among the more tolerant Anglicans known as the latitudinarians. Although these discarded the Neoplatonic underpinnings of Cambridge Platonism, their rational apologetic found a major exponent in John Ray whose Wisdom of God manifested in the Works of Creation (1691) acknowledges his debt to Cudworth and to More and became a model of its kind for Anglican religious apologetics based on the argument from design. In philosophy, there are echoes of the Cambridge Platonism in George Berkeley and Richard Price. Among their immediate followers in philosophy, particular mention should be made here of John Norris and Anne Conway, in both of whom distinctly Neoplatonic elements found new formulation. Anne Conway (1630?–79) was a pupil of Henry More. Her induction into philosophy was through his brand of Cartesianism. Later in her life she was influenced by the philosopher-physician, Francis Mercurius van Helmont14. In her posthumously published Principia philosophiae antiquissimae et recentissimae (1690) she posits a monistic ontology in which matter and spirit are conceived as one substance emanating from the Deity. The particles of this substance she calls monads. She denies the dualistic opposition of matter and spirit, asserting that what we take to be physical objects are composed of congealed particles of this one substance. The further this substance is from the perfection of God, the grosser or more corporeal it is. None the less, every particle is capable of regaining its original spiritual purity: ‘even the vilest and most contemptible Creature, yea Dust and Sand, may be capable of all those perfections, sc. through various and succedaneous Transmutations from the one into the other’ ([1.5], 225). She distinguishes two types of extension, ‘Material and Virtual’, the latter being the ‘Internal Motion’ or vital force of a body which may be transmitted from one body to another not mechanically but vitally, by a process she likens to propagation. In the course of her argument she attacks both the dualism of Descartes and More and the materialism of Hobbes and Spinoza, proposing a vitalistic explanation of causality more far-reaching than More’s Spirit of Nature. John Norris represents a different kind of development from Cambridge Platonism. He was an admirer of Henry More. Their brief correspondence, Letters Philosophical and Moral is appended to his The Theory and Regulation of Love (1688). His Cambridge- Platonist leanings predisposed him towards the philosophy of Malebranche,15 of which he became the foremost English exponent ([1.76], [1.77], [1.78]). Norris himself denied that his encounter with Malebranche’s philosophy lead to any great change in his philosophical views. Indeed in his early writings he argues for the existence of an ideal world and that God alone is the proper object of knowledge. The impact of Malebranche is evident in The Theory and Regulation of Love in which he defines love as ‘a motion of the Soul towards good’ and understands God to be the good in general. Norris distinguishes two kinds of love, love of God and love of things. The former is irresistible governing the direction of our will. Love of created things is derivative from the love for God but can be directed in its object by the will. Reason and Religion (1689) articulates Malebranche’s theory of seeing all things in God. Reflections on the Conduct of Human Life (1689) adopts Malebranche’s rules for guiding the mind which seeks truth. It is this Platonico-Malebranchean idealism which underlies Norris’s critique of Locke’s Essay, his Cursory Reflections upon a Book Call’d an Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Appended to his Christian Blessedness (1690) this takes Locke to task for trying ‘to make the Idea of God to come in by our Senses, and to be derived from Sensible Objects’ (op. cit. p. 30). The influence of Malebranche on Norris is most fully developed in An Essay towards the Theory of the Ideal or Intelligible World (1701) which he originally planned as a work of Platonic metaphysics. Here Norris sets out to demonstrate the existence of an ideal world of necessarily existent entities which serves as the intelligible archetype of the natural world. It is ‘the World of Truth, the great Type and Mould of external Nature’. ([1.22], p. 9). Material nature is modelled according to the archetypal plan of the ideal, but is contingent and mutable. The ideal world is ‘necessary, permanent and immutable, not only Antecedent and Praeexistent to this [world], but also Exemplary and Representative of it, as containing in it Eminently and after an intelligible Manner, all that is in this Natural World, according to which it was made, and in conformity to which all the Truth, Reality, Order, Beauty and Perfection of its Nature does consist and is to be Measured’ ([1.22], 8). The material world is an imperfect reflection of god, and cannot be known directly or with certainty. Only the ideal world as the ‘omniform Essence’ of God can be truly known. Our conceptions of physical nature derive from our seeing all things in God, not from sensory perception of physical bodies. Thus transmuted by Norris, Cambridge Platonism could be said to have enjoyed a kind of eighteenth-century afterlife in English Malebranchism. NOTES BIBLIOGRAPHY Original Language Editions (i) Complete and Selected Works 1.1 The Cambridge Platonists, ed. C.A.Patrides, London, Arnold, 1969. 1.2 Cudworth, Ralph, Collected Works of Ralph Cudworth, ed. B.Fabian, Hildesheim and New York, Olms, 1977. 1.3 More, Henry, A Collection of Several Philosophical Writings, London, 1662. 1.4 Philosophical Writings of Henry More, ed. F.L.MacKinnon, New York, Oxford University Press, 1925 (repr. 1969). (ii) Separate Works 1.5 Conway, Anne, Principia philosophiae antiqtiissimae et recentissimae, Amsterdam, 1690. 1.6 The Conway Letters Correspondence of Anne Viscountess Conway,, Henry More, and their friends, 1642–1684, ed. M.H.Nicolson, rev. S.Hutton, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1992. 1.7 Cudworth, Ralph, A Treatise of Freewill, ed. J.Allen, London, 1838. 1.8——A Treatise Concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality, London, 1731. 1 See [1.11]. On the attribution of the translation to Mersenne, [1.65], 529–35. 2 Descartes to Mersenne, 16 October 1639, in Correspondence du P.Marin Mersenne, ed. C.de Waard, Paris, 1963, vol. 8, p. 549–52. P.Gassendi, Ad librum D.Edoardi Herberti angli de veritate epistola, in Gassendi Opera, Lyon, 1658, vol. 3, pp. 411–19. 3 See previous note. 4 This was the first of several attacks on Herbert emanating from Germany. See Bedford, [1.59], 249. 5 S.Hutton, ‘Thomas Jackson, Oxford Platonist and William Twisse, Aristotelianism’, Journal of the History of Ideas 34 (1978): 635–52. 6 More, Apology appended to A Modest Enquiry into the Mystery of Iniquity, London, 1664. 7 Melancthon is credited with importing the idea of ‘communa principia’ or ‘prolepses’ into the arguments for the existence of God in reformation theology. See J.Platt, Reformed Thought and Scholasticism. Arguments for the Existence of God, 1575–1650, Leiden, 1982. 8 Walter Charleton, The Immortality of the Soul, London, 1657, pp. 92–6. 9 Bayle, Oeuvres diverses, 1, pp. 216–7, 368 2, pp. 168–9. See R.Colie, 1.45, chapter 7 and E.Labrousse, Pierre Bayle, 1964, vol. 2, pp. 214–6, 243–5 and footnotes. 10 Discourse of a Method for the Well-guiding of Reason, London, 1649. Crocker, [1.72], 235. 11 Oeuvres de Descartes publiées par Charles Adam et P.Tannery, nouvelle presentation par B.Rochot, Paris, 1964–76) vol. 5, p. 236. 12 J.E.McGuire, ‘Neoplatonism and Active Principles’, in R.S.Westman andJ. E.McGuire, Hermeticism and the Scientific Revolution, Los Angeles, 1977. 13 An Antidote against Atheism, [1.3], 142. 14 See vol. IV, ch. 1. 15 See vol. IV, ch. 10. 1.9——The True Intellectual System of the Universe, London, 1678 (facsimile reprint, Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt, 1964; edition with notes from J.L.Mosheim’s 1733 Latin edition, London 1845; trans. (abbreviated version) Thomas Wise, London, 1706). 1.10 Culverwell, Nathaniel, An Elegant and Learned Discourse of the Light of Nature, London, 1652 (modern edition ed. R.A.Greene and H.McCallum, Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 1971). 1.11 Herbert of Cherbury, Edward, De veritate prout distinguitur a revelatione, a verismili, a possibili, et a falso, Paris, 1624 (2nd edn, London, 1633). 1.12——De veritate…cui operi additi sunt duo alii tractatus: primus de causis errorum: alter, de religione laid, London, 1645. 1.13 More, Henry, An Antidote against Atheism, London, 1652. 1.14——Divine Dialogues, London, 1668. 1.15——Enchiridion ethicum, London, 1667. 1.16——Enchiridion Metaphysicum, London, 1671. 1.17——Epistola H.Mori ad V.C. quo complectitur apologia pro Cartesio, quaeque introductions loco esse potent ad universam philosophiam cartesianam, Cambridge, 1664. 1.18——The Immortality of the Soul, London, 1659. 1.19——[Letters]: A.Gabbey, ‘Anne Conway et Henry More. Lettres sur Descartes (1650–1651)’, Archives de Philosophie 40 (1977): 379–404. 1.20——[Letters]: C.Clerselier, Lettres de Mr. Descartes, Paris 1657–9. (Vol. 1 contains the More Descartes correspondence reprinted in Oeuvres de Descartes, ed. C.Adam and P.Tannery, nouvelle présentation by B.Rochot, Paris, Vrin, 1957–8, vol. 5. 1.21——Philosophical Poems, Cambridge, 1647. Collected edition of poems previously published as follows: Psychodia platonica (Cambridge, 1642); Democritus Platonissans (Cambridge, 1645). 1.22 Norris, John, An Essay towards the Theory of the Ideal or Intelligible World, London, 1701–4 (repr., Hildesheim, 1974; New York, Olms, 1978). 1.23——The Theory and Regulation of Love, a Moral Essay, Oxford, 1688. 1.24——A Philosophical Discourse concerning the Natural Immortality of the Soul, London, 1708. 1.25 Rust, George, A Discourse of Truth, London, 1677. 1.26——A Discourse of the Use of Reason in Matters of Religion, London, 1683. 1.27 Smith, John, Select Discourses, ed. R.Worthington, London, 1660. 1.28 Sterry, Peter, A Discourse of the Freedom of the Will, London, 1675. 1.29 Whichcote, Benjamin, Moral and Religious Aphorisms, London, 1703. 1.30——Select Notions, London, 1685. 1.31——Select Sermons, London, 1694. Translations (i) Complete and Selected Works 1.32 More, Henry, H.Mori Cantabrigiensis opera omnia, London, 1675–9. (ii) Separate Works 1.33 Conway, Anne, The Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy, London 1692 (modern edition by P.Loptson, The Hague, Nijhoff, 1982). 1.34 Herbert of Cherbury, Edward De veritate, trans. M.H.Carré, Bristol, J.W. Arrowsmith, 1937. 1.35——De religione laid, ed. and trans. H.R.Hutcheson, New Haven, Conn., Yale University Press 1944. Bibliographies 1.36 Crocker, R. ‘A Bibliography of Henry More’, in 1.72. 1.37 Pailin, D.S. ‘Herbert von Cherbury’, Ueberwegs Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie: die Philosophie des 17. Jahrhunderts, Basle, Schwabe & Co., 1988, vol. 3, pp. 223–4, 284–5. 1.38 Rogers, G.A.J. ‘Die Cambridge Platoniker’, Ueberwegs Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie: die Philosophie des 17. Jahrhunderts, Basle, Schwabe & Co., 1988, vol. 3, pp. 240–8, 285–90 Background and Influences on the Cambridge Platonists and Lord Herbert 1.39 Mintz, S. The Hunting of Leviathan: Seventeenth-century Reactions to the Materialism and Moral Philosophy of Thomas Hobbes, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1962. 1.40 Nicolson, M.H. ‘The Early Stages of Cartesianism in England’ Studies in Philology 26 (1929): 35–53. 1.41 Pacchi, A.Cartesio in Inghilterra, da More a Boyle, Bari, Laterza, 1973. 1.42 Popkin, R.H. The History of Scepticism from Erasmus to Spinoza, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1979. 1.43 Rossi, M.M. Alle fonti del deismo e del materialismo moderno, Florence, 1942. General Surveys and Aspects of the Cambridge Platonists 1.44 Cassirer, E. The Platonic Renaissance in England, trans. J.P.Pettigrove, Edinburgh, Nelson, 1953. 1.45 Colie, R., Light and Enlightenment, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, I957– 1.46 Lamprecht, S.P. ‘Innate Ideas in the Cambridge Platonists’, The Philosophical Review 35 (1926): 553–73. 1.47 Rogers, G.A.J. ‘Die Cambridge Platoniker’, Ueberwegs Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie: die Philosophie des 17. Jakrhunderts, Basle, Schwabe & Co., 1988, vol. 3, pp. 240–82. 1.48 Saveson, J.E. ‘Differing Reactions to Descartes among the Cambridge Platonists’, Journal of the History of Ideas 21 (1960): 560–7. 1.49 Stewart, J.A. ‘The Cambridge Platonists’, The Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics 3 (1911): 167–73. Studies of Herbert and the Cambridge Platonists Conway 1.50 Brown, S. ‘Leibniz and More’s Cabbalistic Circle’, in 1.72. 1.51 Merchant, C. The Death of Nature, San Francisco, Harper Row, 1980. 1.52 Popkin, R.H. ‘The Spiritualistic World of Anne Conway and Henry More’, in Hutton, [1.72]. 1.53 Walker, D.P. The Decline of Hell, London, Routledge, 1964. Cudworth 1.54 Aspelin, G. ‘Ralph Cudworth’s Interpretation of Greek Philosophy. A Study in the History of English Philosophical Ideas’, Gôtborgs Hôgskolas Arsskrift, 49 (1943). 1.55 Carré, M.H. ‘Ralph Cudworth’, Philosophical Quarterly 3 (1953): 342–51. 1.56 Gregory, T. ‘Studi sull’atomismo del seicento, III Cudworth e l’atomismo’, Giornale critico della filosofia italiana 46 (1967): 528–41. 1.57 Hunter, W.B. ‘The Seventeenth-century Doctrine of Plastic Nature’ Harvard Theological Review, 43 (1950): 197–213. 1.58 Sailor, D.B. ‘Cudworth and Descartes’, Journal of the History of Ideas 23 (1962): 133–40. Herbert 1.59 Bedford, R.D. Herbert of Cherbury and the Seventeenth Century, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1979. 1.60 Fordyce, C.J. and T.M.Knox ‘The Books Bequeathed to Jesus College Library, Oxford, by Lord Herbert of Cherbury’ , Proceedings and Papers of the Oxford Bibliographical Society 5 (1936–9). 1 .61 Hutcheson, H.R. ‘Lord Herbert and the Deists’, Journal of Philosophy 43 (1946): 219–221. 1.62 Lagrée, J. Introduction to Le salut du ., sur Herbert de Cherbury. Étude et traduction du ‘De religione laîd, Paris, Vrin, 1989. 1.63 Pailin, D.A. ‘Herbert of Cherbury and the Deists’, The Expository Times 94(1983): 196–200. 1 .64——‘Herbert von Cherbury’, Ueberwegs Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie: die Philosophie des 17. Jahrhunderts, Basle, Schwabe & Co., 1988, vol. 3, pp. 223–9. 1.65 Rossi, M.M. La vita, le opere, i tempi di Edoardo Herbert di Cherbury, Florence, Sansoni, 1947. 1.66 Sorley, W.R. ‘The Philosophy of Lord Herbert of Cherbury’ Mind n.s. 3 (1894): 491–508. 1.67 Walker, D.P. ‘Edward Lord Herbert of Cherbury and Christian Apologetics’, in The Ancient Theology, London, Duckworth, 1972. More 1.68 Copenhaver, B.P. ‘Jewish Theologies of Space in the Scientific Revolution: Henry More, Joseph Raphson, Isaac Newton and their Predecessors’, Annals of Science 37 (1980): 489–548. 1.69 Coudert, A. ‘A Cambridge Platonist’s Kabbalist Nightmare’, Journal of the History of Ideas 36 (1975): 633–52. 1.70 Gabbey, A. ‘Philosophia cartesiana triumphata: Henry More, 1646–71’, inT. M.Lennon et al. (eds) Problems in Cartesianism, Kingston and Montreal, Queens McGill, 1982. 1.71 Greene, R.A. ‘Henry More and Robert Boyle on the Spirit of Nature’, Journal of the History of Ideas 23 (1962): 451–74. 1.72 Hutton, S. (ed.) Henry More, 1614–1687. Tercentenary Studies, Dordrecht, Kluwer, 1990. 1.73 Koyré, A. From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe, Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1957. 1.74 Power, J.E. ‘Henry More and Isaac Newton on Absolute Space’, Journal of the History of Ideas 31 (1970): 289–96. 1.75 Webster, C. ‘Henry More and Descartes, some New Sources’, British Journal for the History of Science 4 (1969): 359–77. Norris 1.76 Acworth, R. ‘Malebranche and his Heirs’ Journal of the History of Ideas 38 (1977): 673–76. 1.77——The Philosophy of John Norris of Bemerton (1657–1712), Hildesheim, Olms, 1979. 1.78 McCracken, C.J.Malebranche and British Philosophy, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1983. Smith 1.79 Micheletti, M. Il pensiero religioso di John Smith, platonico di Cambridge, Padua, La Garangola, 1976. 1.80 Saveson, J.E. ‘Descartes’ Influence on John Smith’, Journal of the History of Ideas 20 (1959): 258–63. Sterry 1.81 de Sola Pinto, V. Peter Sterry, Platonist and Puritan 1613–1672, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1934. Whichcote 1.82 Greene, R.A. ‘Whichcote, the Candle of the Lord and Synderesis’, Journal of the History of Ideas 52 (1991): 617–44.