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Spiritual Extension

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The Metaphysics of Henry More

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Abstract

A closer analysis of the precise nature of this immaterial extension, as the mature More conceived it, together with related notions such as those of ‘essential spissitude’ and ‘hylopathia’. Once More had concluded (i) that space not only possessed an infinite immaterial extension but was also something real (Chaps. 3 and 4), and (ii) that God also possessed an infinite immaterial extension (Chap. 5), the way was finally clear for him to identify those two infinite immaterial extensions with one another, and to declare that the space that underlay bodies was in fact divine. I discuss this theory, and its reception by people like Newton and Clarke.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    I already presented, in Reid 2003a, much of the material of the first four sections of this chapter.

  2. 2.

    Divine Dialogues, p. 49 (dial. 1, §25).

  3. 3.

    See Lichtenstein 1962, p. 169; Henry 1986a, pp. 173, 195, and passim; Hutton 1995, p. 381; Crocker 2003, pp. 134, 174; etc.

  4. 4.

    Epistolae quatuor, p. 78/AT 5:308 (More to Descartes, 5 March 1649).

  5. 5.

    Descartes 1991, pp. 40–41/AT 8A:42/CSM 1:224 (pt. 2, §4); Epistolae quatuor, pp. 66–67/CSMK 360–361/AT 5:268–269 (Descartes to More, 5 February 1649).

  6. 6.

    The Immortality of the Soul, p. 8 (bk. 1, ch. 3, §2).

  7. 7.

    Two Choice and Useful Treatises, second part, pp. 180–181 (Annotations upon the Discourse of Truth, The Digression).

  8. 8.

    Norris 1688, pp. 152–153 (More to Norris, 19 January 1684/5).

  9. 9.

    Divine Dialogues, pp. 61, 64 (dial. 1, §§29, 30). See also The Immortality of the Soul, p. 8 (bk. 1, ch. 3, §§1–2). This approach (ultimately an Aristotelian one) to defining spirits and bodies ‘by the rule of Contraries’ did not receive universal approval. Boyle, for instance, wrote: ‘though superficial considerers take up with the vulgar definition, that a spirit is an immaterial substance, yet that leaves us exceedingly to seek, if we aim at satisfaction in particular enquiries. For it declares rather what the thing is not, than what it is; and is as little instructive a definition, as it would be to say, that a curve line is not a strait one, which sure will never teach us what is an ellipsis, a parabola, an hyperbola, a circle, or a spiral line, &c.’ (Boyle 1999–2000, vol. 12, p. 474: The Christian Virtuoso, The Second Part).

  10. 10.

    Saducismus Triumphatus, p. 196 (An Answer to a Letter of a Learned Psychopyrist, §1).

  11. 11.

    Enchiridion metaphysicum, vol. 1, pp. 117–118 (ch. 28, §§2–3).

  12. 12.

    Divine Dialogues, p. 64 (dial. 1, §30). See also Enchiridion metaphysicum, vol. 1, p. 124 (ch. 28, §10).

  13. 13.

    Enchiridion metaphysicum, vol. 1, p. 134 (ch. 28, §10, scholium). See also Divine Dialogues, p. 531 (dial. 1, §32, scholium).

  14. 14.

    Ibid.

  15. 15.

    Enchiridion metaphysicum, vol. 1, p. 24 (ch. 3, §2, scholium).

  16. 16.

    Enchiridion metaphysicum, vol. 1, pp. 123–26 (ch. 28, §§9–13); Divine Dialogues, p. 531 (dial. 1, §32, scholium); Norris 1688, pp. 152–153 (More to Norris, 19 January 1684/5).

  17. 17.

    Divine Dialogues, p. 65 (dial. 1, §30). (The 1713 edition actually reads: ‘… from rectangle-Triangle,.’ I have inserted the indefinite article from the 1668 edition, and also cleaned up the punctuation). See also Enchiridion metaphysicum, vol. 1, p. 126 (ch. 28, §13), and elsewhere.

  18. 18.

    The Immortality of the Soul, p. 5 (bk. 1, ch. 2, axiome 9). See also op. cit., p. 7 (ch. 2, §9, note); and Observations upon Anthroposophia Theomagica, and Anima Magica Abscondita, pp. 6, 47 (preamble; and upon Anima Magica Abscondita, pag. 4, lin. 23); The Second Lash of Alazonomastix, pp. 161–163 (upon [page 93], observation 4); Enchiridion ethicum, pp. 210–211 (bk. 3, ch. 4, §3); Enchiridion metaphysicum, vol. 1, p. 127 (ch. 28, §§14–15); Saducisumus Triumphatus, pp. 218–219 (An Answer to a Letter of a Learned Psychopyrist, §13).

  19. 19.

    Divine Dialogues, p. 64 (dial. 1, §30).

  20. 20.

    The Immortality of the Soul, p. 9 (bk. 1, ch. 3, §3).

  21. 21.

    The Immortality of the Soul, p. 12 (bk. 1, ch. 3, §3, note).

  22. 22.

    The Immortality of the Soul, p. 20 (bk. 1, ch. 6, §5).

  23. 23.

    Baxter 1682, p. 16.

  24. 24.

    Baxter 1682, pp. 16–17. Pasnau likewise suggests that More was led ‘inescapably into contradiction with his account of corporeal atoms…. If atoms are indiscerpible in the way souls are, then it seems we should say either that atoms are incorporeal or that souls are corporeal’ (Pasnau 2007, p. 307). The accusation of contradiction is certainly too strong: More simply settled for the first horn of that alleged dilemma. Still, that is not to dismiss the main thrust of the objection.

  25. 25.

    The Immortality of the Soul, p. 17 (bk. 1, ch. 6, §1).

  26. 26.

    See The Complete Poems, p. 159b (The Interpretation Generall: ‘Atom-lives’).

  27. 27.

    Enchiridion metaphysicum, vol. 1, p. 112 (ch. 27, §14).

  28. 28.

    Two Choice and Useful Treatises, second part, p. 211 (Annotations upon the Discourse of Truth, The Digression).

  29. 29.

    Enchiridion metaphysicum, vol. 1, p. 124 (ch. 28, §10).

  30. 30.

    Edward Grant distinguishes these three conceptions of penetration, specifically in the context of the act of penetration that can take place between a body and a region of space: Grant 1981, p. 235. See also pp. 186–188, 193, 217–218, 231, 378 n. 42, 380 n. 62, 396 n. 218, 403 nn. 286 and 287, on the issue of the penetrability (or impenetrability) of space in the works of Bruno, Telesio, Guericke, Raphson and Keill in particular. As Grant points out, there was no consensus across authors of the period about how penetrability should be understood, and these three conceptions were not always kept properly separate, even in the works of individual authors.

  31. 31.

    Bayle 1991, pp. 281–282 (‘Simonides’, note F). Although Bayle did not actually refer to More by name, the larger discussion in which this passage appears does display several points of contact with More’s own theory of spiritual extension, as presented in Enchiridion metaphysicum, and it might have been drawn up as a direct response thereto. Bayle certainly did know this work of More’s well, referring to it several times: see the Nouvelles de la République des Lettres for September 1685 (Bayle 1732, vol. 1, p. 368b); the letter to his elder brother, 24 July 1677, in his Lettres à sa famille (op. cit., p. 79a–b in the second, separately paginated section); and his 1679 Objections contre le traité de Pierre Poiret (Bayle 1982, p. 21)—the treatise of Poiret in question there being the same one that More criticised in the 1679 scholia to his Divine Dialogues.

  32. 32.

    The citation is actually to the English translation of one of More’s 1679 scholia to the Divine Dialogues: ‘a Substance… most perfectly penetrable, which entirely passeth through every thing’ (p. 531: pt. 1, §32, scholium). What that means is that this was not actually More’s own wording: the translation of these Latin scholia was done posthumously (and anonymously) for the 1713 edition. But the sentiment was certainly More’s; and the wording does agree with other statements that he himself made in English elsewhere.

  33. 33.

    Two Choice and Useful Treatises, second part, p. 204 (Annotations upon the Discourse of Truth, The Digression). The brackets are More’s, and the page references are to Baxter’s original presentation of the objection in Baxter 1682.

  34. 34.

    Two Choice and Useful Treatises, second part, pp. 211–212 (Annotations upon the Discourse of Truth, The Digression).

  35. 35.

    The Immortality of the Soul, p. 27 (bk. 1, ch. 7, §5).

  36. 36.

    Enchiridion metaphysicum, vol. 1, p. 133 (ch. 28, §7, scholium).

  37. 37.

    The Immortality of the Soul, p. 6 (bk. 1, ch. 2, §11).

  38. 38.

    Enchiridion metaphysicum, vol. 1, pp. 121–122, 133 (ch. 28, §7, and the scholium thereto); Norris 1688, p. 158 (More to Norris, 19 January 1684/5). John Keill also characterises More as having treated it as a fourth ‘dimension’: Keill 1698, p. 6 (Introduction).

  39. 39.

    The Immortality of the Soul, p. 6 (bk. 1, ch. 2, §11).

  40. 40.

    Alexandre Koyré describes More’s essential spissitude as ‘a kind of spiritual density, fourth mode, or fourth dimension of spiritual substance’ (Koyré 1957, p. 129), but he does not elaborate on the tension—if it can be called that—between these different ways of conceiving essential spissitude, by analogy with density or with dimension. Tulloch calls it ‘essential consistency’ (Tulloch 1874, vol. 2, p. 384). See also Burtt 1932, pp. 129–130; Henry 1986a, p. 177.

  41. 41.

    See Latham 1965, p. 448.

  42. 42.

    Oresme 1968, p. 46. See passim in pp. 46–49 (bk. 1, ch. 1, fols. 4a–4c). Oresme’s English translator does indeed translate the French term as ‘thickness’.

  43. 43.

    See the editors’ ‘Selected List of Technical Neologisms’, appended to Oresme 1968, p. 772 with the comment at p. 763. Some examples of usage of the French term (including Oresme’s own) are listed in Godefroy 1881–1902, vol. 7, p. 572b. But the term does not exist at all in most other French dictionaries.

  44. 44.

    The Immortality of the Soul, p. 139 (bk. 2, ch. 16, §§3–4). This was noted by Henry 1986a, p. 177.

  45. 45.

    Opera omnia, vol. 2.1, pp. 344–345 (Philosophematum de principiis, §15).

  46. 46.

    Limborch to More, 30 December 1674, quoted in Simonutti 1990, pp. 209, 216 n. 61.

  47. 47.

    See The Complete Poems, pp. 92a–b, 160a (Democritus Platonissans, st. 13; The Interpretation Generall: ‘Body’); and The Immortality of the Soul, pp. 169–170, 180 (bk. 3, ch. 3, §2; ch. 5, §2).

  48. 48.

    Two Choice and Useful Treatises, second part, p. 218 (Annotations upon the Discourse of Truth, The Digression).

  49. 49.

    Saducismus Triumphatus, p. 209 (An Answer to a Letter of a Learned Psychopyrist, §9). More had much earlier made the same point, again with a reference to Scaliger, in his correspondence with Descartes: Epistolae quatuor, p. 76/AT 5:304 (More to Descartes, 5 March 1649).

  50. 50.

    An Antidote Against Atheism, p. 189 (Appendix, ch. 3, §8).

  51. 51.

    An Antidote Against Atheism, p. 228 (Appendix, ch. 3, §8, scholium).

  52. 52.

    Two Choice and Useful Treatises, second part, pp. 217–218 (Annotations upon the Discourse of Truth, The Digression).

  53. 53.

    The Immortality of the Soul, p. 26 (bk. 1, ch. 7, §2). The 1712 edition has ‘… the lessening the presence…’: I have reinserted the word ‘of’ from the 1662 edition.

  54. 54.

    Amos Funkenstein observes that More was forced to deny that God had any essential spissitude, but he also suggests in a footnote: ‘Perhaps it would be more precise to say: God’s spissitude is immense.’ (Funkenstein 1986, p. 79 and n. 15). He does not, however, elaborate on this.

  55. 55.

    Baxter 1682, p. 78.

  56. 56.

    The Immortality of the Soul, p. 227 (bk. 3, ch. 14, §6).

  57. 57.

    Two Choice and Useful Treatises, second part, p. 215 (Annotations upon the Discourse of Truth, The Digression). More proceeded to explain that (in contrast to the divine case), ‘there is no Repugnancie at all, but the Spirit of Nature might be contracted to the like Essential Spissitude that some particular Spirits are; but there is no reason to conceit that it ever was or ever will be so contracted, while the World stands.’ (p. 216). See also The Immortality of the Soul, p. 23 (notes to bk. 1, ch. 6, §§5, 8).

  58. 58.

    Gabbey 1982, pp. 222–231.

  59. 59.

    Gabbey 1982, p. 173.

  60. 60.

    Conway Letters, p. 488 (More to Conway, 5 May 1651)

  61. 61.

    An Antidote Against Atheism, p. 199 (Appendix, ch. 7, §1); Divine Dialogues, pp. 54, 59, 61 (dial 1, §§27, 28); Enchiridion metaphysicum, vol. 1, pp. 56–57 (ch. 8, §6).

  62. 62.

    Enchiridion metaphysicum, vol. 1, p. 57 (ch. 8, §8).

  63. 63.

    Conway 1996, p. 45 (ch. 7, §2).

  64. 64.

    Divine Dialogues, p. 289 (dial. 3, §40).

  65. 65.

    Enchiridion metaphysicum, vol. 1, p. 67 (ch. 8, §13, scholium). See also pp. 61, 68 (ch. 8, §15; §13, scholium), and Divine Dialogues, pp. 55, 530 (dial. 1, §27; scholium to §32).

  66. 66.

    Enchiridion metaphysicum, vol. 1, pp. 57–58 (ch. 8, §8); see also pp. 59 and 63–64 (§10 and its scholium).

  67. 67.

    Copenhaver 1980, p. 493.

  68. 68.

    The principal study of this is Copenhaver 1980. But also see Wolf 1950, p. 666; Lichtenstein 1962, p. 170 n. 37; Jammer 1969, ch. 2, especially pp. 28–32; Pyle 1995, pp. 80–82.

  69. 69.

    Wallis 1643, p. 86 (ch. 12, §3).

  70. 70.

    Twisse 1631, pp. 93, 109, 111, 112, 114, 116, 117, 120, 123 (sect. 2, ch. 5). And that was just in one chapter! See also pp. 63, 67, etc.

  71. 71.

    Divine Dialogues, p. 55 (dial. 1, §27); Enchiridion metaphysicum, vol. 1, p. 63 (ch. 8, §10, scholium).

  72. 72.

    Sherman 1641, p. 44. The Hushai reference is to 2 Samuel 17:7.

  73. 73.

    Virgil 1915, p. 106 (bk. 4, lines 221–222); Newton 1999, pp. 941–942 note j (General Scholium).

  74. 74.

    As cited by Voltaire 1819, vol. 1, p. 47 (‘The Chinese Catechism’, dial. 2).

  75. 75.

    Copenhaver 1992, pp. 8–9, 11.

  76. 76.

    Cudworth 1845, vol. 2, pp. 541–554 n. 3, at pp. 545–546.

  77. 77.

    Oresme 1968, p. 177 (bk. 1, ch. 24, fol. 39b). See also p. 725 (bk. 4, ch. 11, fol. 201b).

  78. 78.

    Oresme 1968, pp. 279, 721–723 (bk. 2, ch. 2, fol. 68a–b; bk. 4, ch. 10, fol. 200c). See Duhem 1985, pp. 263–267; Grant 1981, pp. 262, and 349, n. 123.

  79. 79.

    Guericke 1994, p. 94 (bk. 2, ch. 6). See also p. 101 (ch. 8). On Lessius in relation to Guericke, see Grant 1981, p. 219. Leibniz associated the two of them together, as both regarding God as the place of objects: Leibniz 1996, p. 149 (bk. 2, ch. 13, §17).

  80. 80.

    Raphson 1697, pp. 85–88 (ch. 6, §7).

  81. 81.

    Guericke 1994, p. 89 (bk. 2, ch. 4).

  82. 82.

    Guericke 1994, p. 95 (bk. 2, ch. 6).

  83. 83.

    Guericke 1994, p. 94 (bk. 2, ch. 6).

  84. 84.

    Grant 1981, p. 223.

  85. 85.

    Robinson 1709, p. 19 (on Genesis 1:3, ‘Let there be light’): ‘Dr. H.M. would have Light to be the Platonick Anima Mundi, wherein are contained the Seminal Principles and Specifick Forms of all Vegetables and Animals; and this seems agreeable with the Mosaick Hypothesis.’ Compare Conjectura Cabbalistica, p. 11 (The Philosophick Cabbala, ch. 1, §1).

  86. 86.

    Robinson 1709, p. 106, and see pp. 107–111. Compare Enchiridion metaphysicum, vol. 1, pp. 117–118 (ch. 28, §§2–3).

  87. 87.

    Robinson 1709, p. 107.

  88. 88.

    Robinson 1709, pp. 108–110, and see pp. 111, 113. Compare The Immortality of the Soul, pp. 15–16 (bk. 1, ch. 5, §§2–3). The printed text actually features the words ‘undiscernable’ (p. 107) and ‘indiscernable’ (p. 108), but these duly corrected to ‘undiscerpible’ and ‘indiscerpible’ in a pasted-in errata slip at p. 118.

  89. 89.

    Robinson 1709, pp. 109–110. Compare A Collection of Several Philosophical Writings, The Preface General, p. xiii (§12), etc.

  90. 90.

    Robinson 1709, pp. 111–113. Robinson proposed ‘Mineral Spirits’, which were supposed to take responsibility for the growth and cohesion of minerals and stones, a task that More either sought to explain mechanically, or else handed over to the universal Spirit of Nature. He proposed distinct seminal forms in plants, which More did countenance initially, but from which he began to distance himself after developing that theory of a universal Spirit of Nature (see Chap. 9 below). He suggested a substantive difference between human souls and angels, not merely in the vehicles they animated (which was as far as More would go), but also in the latter’s possession of ‘intelligence’ in contrast to the former’s possession of mere ‘rationality’. And he identified the Soul of the Universe not with a Morean Spirit of Nature but with the Triune God himself.

  91. 91.

    Rüdiger 1716, p. 347 (bk. 1, ch. 8, sect. 4, §19).

  92. 92.

    Rüdiger 1716, unpaginated alphabetical index, under ‘Spatium’.

  93. 93.

    Edwards 1980, p. 203 (‘Of Being’). See Reid 2003b, on how Edwards’s views would develop subsequently.

  94. 94.

    Raphson 1697, pp. 74–80 (ch. 5). For discussion, see Koyré 1957, ch. 8; together with Copenhaver 1980, pp. 529–540; Grant 1981, pp. 230–234.

  95. 95.

    Cheyne 1725, Part II (paginated separately from the first part), p. 4. See also op. cit., pp. 117–119.

  96. 96.

    Cheyne 1725, Part II, pp. 53–54.

  97. 97.

    Enchiridion metaphysicum, vol. 1, p. 68 (ch. 8, §13, scholium); Cheyne 1725, Part II, p. 53.

  98. 98.

    Cheyne 1725, Part II, p. 119. See Cheyne’s elucidation of this notion at pp. 119–23.

  99. 99.

    Cudworth 1743, p. 770/Cudworth 1845, vol. 3, p. 232. Gassendi himself did not deify his space, and was careful to defend himself, in a variety of ways, from the anticipated charge of heterodoxy in postulating something uncreated yet independent of God: see Gassendi 1972, pp. 389–390 (Syntagma, pt. 2, sect. 1, bk. 2, ch. 1).

  100. 100.

    Cudworth 1743, p. 833/Cudworth 1845, vol. 3, p. 398.

  101. 101.

    Cudworth 1743, pp. 776–777/Cudworth 1845, vol. 3, p. 248.

  102. 102.

    It was, incidentally, at this point that Cudworth presented a now-familiar image: ‘… so that thousands of these incorporeal substances, or spirits, might dance together at once upon a needle’s point’ (Cudworth 1743, p. 777/Cudworth 1845, vol. 3, p. 249). But then, More himself had used the same image just three years earlier (if we go by the 1671 imprimatur of Cudworth’s book, that is, rather than its official 1678 publication date): ‘Is it not infinitely incredible, Philotheus, if not impossible, that some thousands of Spirits may dance or march on a Needle’s point at once?’ (Divine Dialogues, p. 46 (dial. 1, §22)).

  103. 103.

    Cudworth 1743, pp. 777–783/Cudworth 1845, vol. 3, pp. 248–259.

  104. 104.

    Masham in Atherton 1994, p. 84 (Masham to Leibniz, 3 June 1704).

  105. 105.

    Masham in Atherton 1994, p. 86 (Masham to Leibniz, 8 August 1704). See also pp. 83–84, 87.

  106. 106.

    Rogers 1985, p. 292.

  107. 107.

    Smith 1660, p. 132 (‘Of the Existence and Nature of God’, ch. 2, §5).

  108. 108.

    Toland 1704, pp. 212–221 (letter 5, §§24–26), here at p. 219 (§26). See also Copenhaver 1980, pp. 546–547.

  109. 109.

    Watts 1742, pp. 8–23, 169–170 (essay 1, §§4–6; essay 6, §5).

  110. 110.

    Berkeley 1945–1957, vol. 1, p. 37 (Philosophical Commentaries, §298).

  111. 111.

    Berkeley 1948–1957, vol. 2, p. 94 (Principles of Human Knowledge, §117).

  112. 112.

    Berkeley 1948–1957, vol. 2, p. 292 (Berkeley to Johnson, 24 March 1730, §2). For a couple more references to Raphson in particular, see op. cit., vol. 1, p. 99 (Philosophical Commentaries, §827); and vol. 4, pp. 237–238 (‘Of Infinites’).

  113. 113.

    Locke 1975, pp. 172–173, (bk. 2, ch. 13, §13). Cf. Locke 1936, pp. 78–79 (20 June 1676)

  114. 114.

    Locke 1975, p. 306 (bk. 2, ch. 23, §19).

  115. 115.

    Locke 1975, p. 329 (bk. 2, ch. 27, §2).

  116. 116.

    Locke 1975, p. 200 (bk. 2, ch. 15, §8). See also pp. 179 (bk. 2, ch. 13, §26), 197 (bk. 2, ch. 15, §§2–3).

  117. 117.

    Newton also rejected nullibism in the case of a created spirit: see Newton 2004, p. 31/Newton 1962, p. 143 (De gravitatione).

  118. 118.

    Newton 2004, p. 91/Newton 1999, p. 941 (General Scholium), but here reverting to the 1729 translation by Andrew Motte. On this particular occasion, the latter is not only truer to Newton’s Latin but also (apart from the archaic use of ‘virtue’) actually still remains clearer than the Cohen and Whitman translation that Janiak is presenting in that 2004 collection. Note that it was here that Newton inserted the footnote wherein he cited Acts 17:28 alongside several other similar classical texts. Janiak’s edition unfortunately omits this footnote. More worryingly—and, one can only presume, by accident—it also omits the next sentence, which is crucial to the interpretation of the continuation of this one. What Newton wrote here was: ‘In him all things are contained and move, but he does not act on them nor they on him. God experiences nothing from the motions of bodies; the bodies feel no resistance from God’s omnipresence.’ The point is that the mere fact of God’s omnipresence has no effect on bodies, not that God does not act on bodies at all: he can and he does, but it requires a positive act of will on his part.

  119. 119.

    Clarke and Leibniz 1956, pp. 33–34 (Clarke’s third reply, §12).

  120. 120.

    Newton 2004, p. 25/Newton 1962, p. 136 (De gravitatione); Newton in McGuire 1978b, pp. 117; Clarke 1998, pp. 103, 106, 114 (Clarke’s answers to the second, third and sixth letters from Butler and another gentleman).

  121. 121.

    Grant 1981, p. 253.

  122. 122.

    See McGuire 1978a, pp. 506–507. Grant replies in Grant 1981, p. 416 n. 420. See also McGuire and Tamny’s commentary in Newton 1983, pp. 123–125.

  123. 123.

    Newton 2004, pp. 25–26/Newton 1962, pp. 136–137 (De gravitatione).

  124. 124.

    Newton 2004, p. 91, Newton 1999, p. 941 (General Scholium).

  125. 125.

    Ibid.

  126. 126.

    Vailati 1997, pp. 21–22. And see, more generally, pp. 17–37, on Clarke’s views on the relation of space and time to God. For his views on the spatiality of created spirits, see pp. 54–62, 66–68; and Vailati 1993.

  127. 127.

    Vailati 1993, p. 396 n. 20. The reference is to Clarke 1998, p. 35 (Demonstration, §6).

  128. 128.

    Vailati 1993, p. 390.

  129. 129.

    Clarke 1998, p. 116 (‘An Answer to a Sixth Letter’). See Vailati 1993, pp. 397–398.

  130. 130.

    Descartes famously identified the sensorium of a human being as the pineal gland. More considered but rejected that theory, favouring instead the animal spirits in the fourth ventricle of the brain. See The Immortality of the Soul, pp. 75–112 (bk. 2, chs. 4–11). And Newton himself drew on this discussion of More’s, in his own early Questiones: Newton 1983, pp. 382–385.

  131. 131.

    Newton 2004, p. 130/Newton 1931, p. 370 (Opticks, query 28). See also Newton 2004, pp. 138–139/Newton 1931, p. 403 (query 31); and also Newton in McGuire 1978b, p. 123. That last passage does not actually include the word ‘sensorium’: but the basic idea (in paragraph 7) is clearly the same as in these queries. As is well known, Newton’s claim was discussed ad nauseam in the Leibniz-Clarke correspondence: see Vailati 1997, pp. 42–52; and Koyré and Cohen 1961.

  132. 132.

    Newton 2004, p. 25/Newton 1962, pp. 135–136 (De gravitatione).

  133. 133.

    Newton in McGuire 1978b, p. 119; see also p. 121.

  134. 134.

    Newton 2004, p. 91/Newton 1999, p. 941 (General Scholium).

  135. 135.

    Newton 2004, p. 25/Newton 1962, p. 136 (De gravitatione).

  136. 136.

    The Immortality of the Soul, p. 18 (bk. 1, ch. 6, §2).

  137. 137.

    Clarke and Leibniz 1956, p. 31 (Clarke’s third reply, §3). Punctuation notwithstanding, it seems—on the basis of similar remarks cited in the next note below—that the term ‘property’ was here being attached not simply to a being infinite and eternal, but, together with the term ‘consequence’, specifically to the existence of such a being.

  138. 138.

    For these and similar expressions, among still other passages that could be mentioned, see Clarke 1998, pp. 103, 105, 108, 115 (Clarke’s answers to the second, third, fourth and sixth letters from Butler and another gentleman); Clarke and Leibniz 1956, pp. 47, 104, 121 (Clarke’s fourth reply, §10; fifth reply, on §45, and footnote).

  139. 139.

    Koyré and Cohen 1962, p. 97; also pp. 96, 101, 102. And compare Clarke and Leibniz 1956, pp. xxviii–xxix.

  140. 140.

    Clarke 1998, p. 35 (Demonstration, §6).

  141. 141.

    Newton 2004, p. 31/Newton 1962, p. 143 (De gravitatione). See also p. 33/p. 145; and Newton in McGuire 1978b, p. 121.

  142. 142.

    Newton 2004, p. 91/Newton 1999, p. 941 (General Scholium).

  143. 143.

    Clarke 1998, p. 120 (‘An Answer to a Seventh Letter Concerning the Argument a priori’).

  144. 144.

    La Forge 1997, p. 117 (ch. 12); Le Grand 1694, p. 85b (bk. 1, pt. 3, ch. 7, §8).

  145. 145.

    For Newton on the essence of matter, see Newton 2004, pp. 13, 27–29 (De gravitatione: Newton 1962, pp. 122, 138–140); 87–89 (Principia, bk. 3, under Rule 3: Newton 1999, pp. 795–796); 120–121 (Newton to Cotes, c. March 1713: Newton 1959–1977, vol. 5, pp. 398–399); etc. In addition to their being impenetrable, Newton also tended to add that bodies should be mobile. For Clarke on the essence of matter, see Clarke 1998, p. 58 (Demonstration, §10). Whereas Newton himself was comfortable with the term ‘impenetrability’, Clarke generally tended (as here) to follow Locke in favouring the term ‘solidity’. Compare Locke 1975, p. 123 (bk. 2, ch. 4, §1). But nothing much hung on that merely terminological preference. Elsewhere, Clarke would happily write: ‘Wherefore not Extension, but solid Extension, impenetrable, which is endued with a Power of resisting, may (as was before said) be more truly called the Essence of Matter.’ Rohault and Clarke 1729, vol. 1, p. 24 n. 1 (on pt. 1, ch. 7, §8).

  146. 146.

    Barrow 1734, p. 178.

  147. 147.

    Newton 2004, p. 23/Newton 1962, p. 133 (De gravitatione).

  148. 148.

    Newton 2004, p. 29/Newton 1962, pp. 140–141 (De gravitatione).

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    Jasper Reid

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Reid, J. (2012). Spiritual Extension. In: The Metaphysics of Henry More. International Archives of the History of Ideas Archives internationales d'histoire des idées, vol 207. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-3988-8_6

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