Note 1 — HENRY MORE
Reading edition
The quotations from More’s Latin autobiography occur in the Opera Omnia (London, 1675-79), portions of which Richard Ward translated in The Life of . . . Henry More (London, 1710). Cf. the modern edition of this work, ed. M. F. Howard (London, 1911), pp. 61, 67-68, the text followed here. There is a recent reprint of the Opera Omnia in 3 volumes (Hildesheim, 1966) with an introduction by Serge Hutin. The “Praefatio Generalissima” begins vol. II. 1. One passage in it which Ward did not translate describes the genesis of Democritus Platonissans. More writes that after finishing Psychathanasia, he felt a change of heart: “Postea vero mutata sententia furore nescio quo Poetico incitatus supra dictum Poema scripsi, ea potissimum innixus ratione quod liquido constaret extensionem spacii dari infinitam, nec majores absurditates pluresve contingere posse in Materia infinita, infinitaque; Mundi duratione, quam in infinita Extensione spacii” (p. ix).
2. Cf. Lee Haring’s unpub. diss., “Henry More’s Psychathanasia and Democritus Platonissans: A Critical Edition,” (Columbia Univ., 1961), pp. 33-57.
3. Marjorie Hope Nicolson’s various articles and books which in part deal with More are important to the discussion that follows, and especially “The Early Stage of Cartesianism in England,” SP, XXVI (1929), 356-379; Mountain Gloom and Mountain Glory (Ithaca, 1959), pp. 113-143, and The Breaking of the Circle (New York, 1960), pp. 158-165.
4. Cf. The Meditations and Selections from the Principles of René Descartes, trans. John Veitch (Chicago, 1908), p. 143. The quotations from the letters which follow occur in Alexandre Koyré’s very helpful book, From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe (Baltimore, 1957), pp. 114, 122-123, but the complete and original texts can be consulted in Descartes, Correspondance avec Arnaud et Morus, ed. G. Lewis (Paris, 1953).
5. This passage occurs at the beginning of “The Easie, True, and Genuine Notion, And consistent Explication Of the Nature of a Spirit,” a free translation of Enchiridion Metaphysicum, I. 27-28, by John Collins which he included in Joseph Glanvil’s Saducismus Triumphatus (London, 1681). I quote from the text as given in Philosophical Writings of Henry More, ed. F. I. MacKinnon (New York, 1925), p. 183.
6. Cf. Enchiridion Metaphysicum, VIII. 8, trans. Mary Whiton Calkins and included in John Tull Baker, An Historical and Critical Examination of English Space and Time Theories . . . (Bronxville, N.Y., 1930), p. 12. For the original, cf. Opera Omnia, II. 1, p. 167.
7. “Infinitum igitur hoc Extensum à Materia distinctum,” Enchiridion Metaphysicum, VIII. 9, in Opera Omnia, loc. cit. Quoted by MacKinnon, p. 262.
8. This and the following reference appear in An Explanation of the grand Mystery of Godliness (London, 1660), “To the Reader,” pp. vi and v.
9. Ibid., II. xi. 5 (p. 52).