HENRY MORE

Democritus Platonissans

(1646)

Introduction by P. G. Stanwood

PUBLICATION NUMBER 130 WILLIAM ANDREWS CLARK MEMORIAL LIBRARY University of California, Los Angeles

1968

GENERAL EDITORS

George Robert Guffey, University of California, Los Angeles

Maximillian E. Novak, University of California, Los Angeles

Robert Vosper, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library

ADVISORY EDITORS

Richard C. Boys, University of Michigan

James L. Clifford, Columbia University

Ralph Cohen, University of Virginia

Vinton A. Dearing, University of California, Los Angeles

Arthur Friedman, University of Chicago

Louis A. Landa, Princeton University

Earl Miner, University of California, Los Angeles

Samuel H. Monk, University of Minnesota

Everett T. Moore, University of California, Los Angeles

Lawrence Clark Powell, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library

James Sutherland, University College, London

H. T. Swedenberg, Jr., University of California, Los Angeles

CORRESPONDING SECRETARY

Edna C. Davis, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library

INTRODUCTION

Henry More (1614-1687), the most interesting member of that group traditionally known as the Cambridge Platonists, lived conscientiously and well. Having early set out on one course, he never thought to change it; he devoted his whole life to the joy of celebrating, again and again, “a firm and unshaken Belief of the Existence of GOD . . . , a God infinitely Good, as well as infinitely Great . . . .”1 Such faith was for More the starting point of his rational understanding: “with the most fervent Prayers” he beseeched God, in his autobiographical “Praefatio Generalissima,” “to set me free from the dark Chains, and this so sordid Captivity of my own Will.” More offered to faith all which his reason could know, and so it happened that he “was got into a most Joyous and Lucid State of Mind,” something quite ineffable; to preserve these “Sensations and Experiences of my own Soul,” he wrote “a pretty full Poem call’d Psychozoia” (or A Christiano-Platonicall display of Life), an exercise begun about 1640 and designed for no audience but himself. There were times, More continued in his autobiographical remarks, when he thought of destroying Psychozoia because its style is rough and its language filled with archaisms. His principal purpose in that poem was to demonstrate in detail the spiritual foundation of all existence; Psyche, his heroine, is the daughter of the Absolute, the general Soul who holds together the metaphysical universe, against whom he sees reflected his own soul’s mystical progress. More must, nevertheless, have been pleased with his labor, for he next wrote Psychathanasia Platonica: or Platonicall Poem of the Immortality of Souls, especially Mans Soul, in which he attempts to demonstrate the immortality of the soul as a corrective to his age. Then, he joined to that Antipsychopannychia, or A Confutation of the sleep of the Soul , and Antimonopsychia, or That all Souls are not one; at the urging of friends, he published the poems in 1642—his first literary work—as Psychodia Platonica.

In his argument for the soul’s immortality toward the end of Psychathanasia (III.4), More had urged that there was no need to plead for any extension of the infinite (“a contradiction,” and also, it would seem, a fruitless inquiry); but he soon changed his mind. The preface to Democritus Platonissans reproduces those stanzas of the earlier poem which deny infinity (34 to the end of the canto) with a new (formerly concluding) stanza 39 and three further stanzas “for a more easie and naturall leading to the present Canto,” i.e., Democritus Platonissans, which More clearly intended to be an addition, a fifth canto to Psychathanasia (Book III); and although Democritus Platonissans first appeared separately, More appended it to Psychathanasia in the second edition of his collected poems, this time with English titles, the whole being called A Platonick Song of the Soul (1647).

There is little relationship between Democritus Platonissans and the rest of More’s poetry; even the main work to which it supposedly forms a final and conclusive canto provides only the slightest excuse for such a continuation. Certainly, in Psychathanasia, More is excited by the new astronomy; he praises the Copernican system throughout Book III, giving an account of it according to the lessons of his study of Galileo’s Dialogo, which he may have been reading even as he wrote.2 Indeed, More tries to harmonize the two poems—his habit was always to look for unity. But even though Democritus Platonissans explores an astronomical subject, just as the third part of Psychathanasia also does, its attitude and theme are quite different; for More had meanwhile been reading Descartes.

More’s theory of the infinity of worlds and God’s plenitude evidently owed a great deal to Descartes’ recent example; More responds exuberantly to him, especially to his Principes de la Philosophie (1644); for in him he fancied having found a true ally. Steeped in Platonic and neo-Platonic thought, and determined 3 But the Platonic element implicit in Descartes, his theory of innate ideas, and his proof of the existence of God from the idea of God, all helped to make More so receptive to him. Nevertheless, More did not really need Descartes, nor, as he himself was later to discover, had he even understood him properly, for More had looked at him only to find his own reflection.

But there was nothing really new about the idea of infinite worlds which More described in Democritus Platonissans; it surely was not a conception unique to Descartes. The theory was a common one in Greek and Renaissance thought. Democritus and the Epicureans, of course, advocated the theme of infinite worlds in an infinite universe which More accepted; but at the same time, he rejected their view of a mechanistic and fortuitous creation. Although Plato specifically rejects the idea of infinite worlds (in Timaeus), More imagines, as the title of his poem implies, a Platonic universe, by which he really means neo-Platonic, combined with a Democritean plurality of worlds. More filled space, not with the infinite void of the Atomists, but with the Divine, ever active immanence. More, in fact, in an early philosophic work, An Antidote against Atheisme (1652), and again in Divine Dialogues (1668), refutes Lucretius by asserting the usefulness of all created things in God’s Providence and the essential design in Nature. His reference in Democritus Platonissans (st. 20) is typical: “though I detest the sect/ of Epicurus for their manners vile,/ Yet what is true I may not well reject.” In bringing together Democritus’ theories and neo-Platonic thought, More obviously has attempted reconciliation of two exclusive world views, but with dubious success.

While More stands firmly before a familiar tradition, his belief in an infinity of worlds evidently has little immediate

In introducing Cartesian thought into England, More emphasized particular physical doctrines mainly described in The Principles of Philosophy; he shows little interest in the Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting the Reason (1637), or in the Meditations (1641), both of which were also available to him when he wrote Democritus Platonissans. In the preface to his poem, he refers to Descartes whom he seems to have read hopefully: surely “infinitude” is the same as the Cartesian “indefinite.” “For what is his mundus indefinitè extensus, but extensus infinitè? Else it sounds onely infinitus quoad nos, but simpliciter finitus,” for there can be no space “unstuffd with Atoms.” More thinks that Descartes seems “to mince it,” that difficulty lies in the interpretation of a word, not in an essential idea. He is referring to Part II, xxi, of The Principles, but he quotes, with tacit approval, from Part III, i and ii, in the motto to the poem. More undoubtedly knows the specific discussion of ‘infinity’ in Part I, xxvi-xxviii, where he must first 4 More asked Descartes to clarify his language in their correspondence of 1648-49, the last year of Descartes’ life.

Democritus Platonissans is More’s earliest statement about absolute space and time; by introducing these themes into English philosophy, he contributed significantly to the intellectual history of the seventeenth century. Newton, indeed, was able to make use of More’s forging efforts; but of relative time or space and their measurement, which so much concerned Newton, More had little to say. He was preoccupied with the development of a theory which would show that immaterial substance, with space and time as attributes, is as real and as absolute as the Cartesian geometrical and spatial account of matter which he felt was true but much in need of amplification.

In his first letter to Descartes, of 11 December 1648, More wrote: “. . . this indefinite extension is either simpliciter infinite, or only in respect to us. If you understand extension to be infinite simpliciter, why do you obscure your thought by too low and too modest words? If it is infinite only in respect to us, extension, in reality, will be finite; for our mind is the measure neither of the things nor of truth. . . .” Unsatisfied by his first answer from Descartes (5 February 1649), he urges his point again (5 March): if extension can describe matter, the same quality must apply to the immaterial and yet be only one of many attributes of Spirit. In his second letter to More (15 April), Descartes answers firmly: “It is repugnant to my concept to attribute any limit to the world, and I have no other measure than my perception for what I have to assert or to deny. I say, therefore, that the world is indeterminate or indefinite, because I do not recognize in it any limits. But I dare not call it infinite as I perceive that God is greater than the world, not in respect to His extension, because, as I have already said, I do not acknowledge in God any proper [extension], but in

More’s original enthusiasm for Descartes declined as he understood better that the Cartesian world in practice excluded spirits and souls. Because Descartes could find no necessary place even for God Himself, More styled him, in Enchiridion Metaphysicum (1671), the “Prince of the Nullibists”; these men “readily acknowledge there are such things as Incorporeal Beings or Spirits, yet do very peremptorily contend, that they are no where in the whole World [;] . . . because they so boldly affirm that a Spirit is Nullibi, that is to say, no where,” they deserve to be called Nullibists.5 In contrast to these false teachers, More describes absolute space by listing twenty epithets which can be applied either to God or to pure extension, such as “Unum, Simplex, Immobile . . . Incomprehensible ”6 There is, however, a great difficulty here; for while Space and Spirit are eternal and uncreated, they yet contain material substance which has been created by God. If the material world possesses infinite extension, as More generally believes, that would preclude any need of its having a creator. In order to avoid this dilemma, which Democritus Platonissans ignores, More must at last separate matter and space, seeing the 7 More reveals the direction of his conclusion; the dichotomy it embodies is Cartesianism in reverse.

While More always labored to describe the ineffable, his earliest work, the poetry, may have succeeded in this wish most of all. Although he felt that his poetry was aiming toward truths which his “later and better concocted Prose”8 reached, the effort cost him the suggestiveness of figurative speech. In urging himself on toward an ever more consistent statement of belief, he lost much of his beginning exuberance (best expressed in the brief “Philosopher’s Devotion”) and the joy of intellectual discovery. In the search “to find out Words which will prove faithful witnesses of the peculiarities of my Thoughts,” he staggers under the unsupportable burden of too many words. In trying so desperately to clarify his thought, he rejected poetic discourse as “slight”; only a language free of metaphor and symbol could, he supposed, lead toward correctness. Indeed, More soon renounced poetry; he apparently wrote no more after collecting it in Philosophical Poems (1647), when he gave up poetry for “more seeming Substantial performances in solid Prose.”9 “Cupids Conflict,” which is “annexed” to Democritus Platonissans, is an interesting revelation of the failure of poetry, as More felt it: he justifies his “rude rugged uncouth style” by suggesting that sweet verses avoid telling important truths; harshness and obscurity may at least remind one that there is a significance beyond mere words. His lament is characteristic: “How ill alas! with wisdome it accords/ To sell my living sense for liveless words.”

In spite of these downcast complaints, More was quite capable of lively and meaningful poetic ideas. One is the striking image of the cone which occurs in Democritus Platonissans (especially in stanzas 7-8, 66-67, and 88) and becomes the most essential symbol to More’s expression of infinitude and extension. The figure first appears in Antipsychopannychia Democritus Platonissans, the cone enables More to adapt the familiar Hermetic paradox:

Every point on the circumference, or base of the cone, relates to the single point at the top. The world, More wants to say, has no limits, no center, yet there are bounds in its not having any. More recognizes the contradiction when he fancies “some strong arm’d Archer” at the wide world’s edge (st. 37). Where shall he send his shafts? Into “mere vacuity”? But More hardly seems aware of the inappropriateness of the cone: he uses a geometrical figure to locate space, time, and numberless worlds within the universal sight of God, but matter is infinite, “distinct/ And yet proceeding from the Deitie” (st. 68). Obviously, the archer must forever be sending his arrows through an infinitely expanding surface. Nevertheless, the cone has great value as a metaphor, as a richly suggestive and fascinating conception. More, however, does not want to speak metaphorically; he is attempting to disclose truths, literal and plain, where pretty words and metaphors have no place. Even as he is writing his most effective poetry, we are aware that More is denying his poetic office; for he is pleading a reasoned case where the words crack and strain, where poetic meaning gathers, only to be denied.

But these objections momentarily disappear when More forgets himself enough to let us feel his imagination and does not worry that we might miss the proofs of his philosophy. Democritus Platonissans concludes with an apocalyptic vision wherein the poet imagines the reconciliation of infinite worlds and time within God’s immensity. He is also attempting to harmonize Psychathanasia, where he rejected infinitude, with its sequel Democritus Platonissans, where he has everywhere been declaring it; thus we should think of endless worlds as we should think of Nature and the Phoenix, dying yet ever regenerative, sustained by a “centrall power/ Of hid spermatick life” which sucks “sweet heavenly juice” from above (st. 101). More closes his poem on a vision of harmony and ceaseless energy, a most fit ending for one who dared to believe that the new philosophy sustained the old, that all coherence had not gone out of the world, but was always there, only waiting to be discovered afresh in this latter age.

The University of British Columbia

NOTES TO THE INTRODUCTION

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

The text of this edition is reproduced from a copy in the Henry E. Huntington Library.

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