The Spirit of Nature

Reid, Jasper

doi:10.1007/978-94-007-3988-8_9

Jasper Reid²

Part of the book series: International Archives of the History of Ideas Archives internationales d'histoire des idées ((ARCH,volume 207))

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Abstract

If there are spiritual forces at work in the natural world, whether to stand in for mechanical explanations where the latter fall short, or to supplement them even where they are forthcoming, then what might the bearers of these powers be like? We already saw a partial answer to this question in Chap. 7, with More’s notion of how bodies might possess a stupefied form of life of their own, and thereby qualify as being in some sense ‘corporeo-spiritual’ rather than purely corporeal. But, as we also saw in that chapter, More did subsequently move away from that early opinion; and, as we will see in the present chapter, it was not quite the end of the story even while he was still embracing it.

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Notes

1.
Plato 1963, p. 1163 (Timaeus, 30b).
2.
See Curry 1968, ch. 2.
3.
Plotinus 1992, p. 95 (enn. 2, tr. 1, ch. 5).
4.
Plotinus 1992, p. 103 (enn. 2, tr. 2, ch. 3).
5.
Plotinus 1992, pp. 297–300 (enn. 4, tr. 3, chs. 1, 2).
6.
Plotinus 1992, p. 275 (enn. 3, tr. 8, ch. 4).
7.
Plotinus 1992, p. 342 (enn. 4, tr. 4, ch. 13).
8.
Plotinus 1992, pp. 273–274 (enn. 3, tr. 8, chs. 1, 2).
9.
Plotinus 1992, pp. 178–179 (enn. 3, tr. 1, chs. 7, 8), here p. 179 (ch. 8).
10.
Plotinus 1992, p. 196 (enn. 3, tr. 2, ch. 16).
11.
Plotinus 1992, p. 292 (enn. 4, tr. 1, ch. 1).
12.
Plotinus 1992, pp. 292–296 (enn. 4, trs. 1, 2).
13.
Plotinus 1992, p. 419 (enn. 4, tr. 9, ch. 2).
14.
Ficino 1980, p. 87 (bk. 3, ch. 1).
15.
Ficino 1980, p. 89 (bk. 3, ch. 1).
16.
Ficino 2001–2006, vol. 5, p. 163 (bk. 15, ch. 14).
17.
Ficino 2001–2006, vol. 1, p. 295 (bk. 4, ch. 1). And see passim, thoughout Book 4 (pp. 249–313).
18.
Ficino 2001–2006, vol. 1, p. 265 (bk. 4, ch. 1). See p. 253, on the role of the soul of the Earth in producing vines (not to mention flies) according to their rational principles, in matter that had first been duly prepared by that same soul. Also see p. 283, on its role in animating the elements.
19.
Ficino 2001–2006, vol. 6, pp. 95, 97 (bk. 18, ch. 3). The brackets are the translator’s; and the Plato reference is to Philebus 30a (Plato 1963, p. 1107).
20.
Ficino 1980, p. 94 (bk. 3, ch. 3).
21.
Ficino 1980, p. 95 (bk. 3, ch. 3).
22.
The Complete Poems, p. 54a (Psychathanasia, bk. 1, cant. 3, st. 23).
23.
See especially The Complete Poems, pp. 106a, 107a, 107b (Antipsychopannychia, cant. 1, sts. 25, 35, 38).
24.
The Complete Poems, p. 48b (Psychathanasia, bk. 1, cant. 2, st. 25). For a fuller discussion, see the remainder of this canto.
25.
The Complete Poems, pp. 47b–48a (Psychathanasia, bk. 1, cant. 2, sts. 17–18).
26.
The Complete Poems, pp. 67a, 67b, 70a–71a, 150a–b (Psychathanasia, bk. 3, cant. 1, sts. 8–9, 14; cant. 2, sts. 3–7; notes upon Psychathanasia, bk. 3, cant. 1, st. 14).
27.
The Complete Poems, p. 160a (The Interpretation Generall: ‘Centre, Centrall, Centrality’).
28.
The Complete Poems, p. 67b (Psychathanasia, bk. 3, cant. 1, st. 14).
29.
The Complete Poems, p. 58a (Psychathanasia, bk. 2, cant. 1, st. 9); and see pp. 67b–68a (bk. 3, cant. 1, sts. 15–17) on the role of this lowest faculty of the soul in shaping the body. That theory of the triplicity of the human soul had itself been drawn from the Platonic tradition. Plato had constructed a theory along broadly similar lines, arguing not only that there were three souls in man, but even that these were seated in three different, descending parts of his body—the head, the chest and the abdomen. See Plato 1963, pp. 677–678, 683–684, 1193, 1199, etc. (Republic, 435b–436b, 440e–441e; Timaeus, 69d–70a, 77b–c). The basic idea would become a commonplace among the subsequent Platonists and Neoplatonists; and More himself elsewhere used deliberately Platonic terms to explain these three natures of the human soul, in his posthumous Discourses on Several Texts of Scripture, pp. 187–190 (discourse 6).
30.
The Complete Poems, p. 17a (Psychozoia, cant. 1, sts. 41–42).
31.
See The Complete Poems, pp. 139b, 160b (notes upon Psychozoia, cant. 1, st. 41; The Interpretation Generall: ‘Cuspis of the Cone’), etc.
32.
The Complete Poems, pp. 140b, 21a, 119a respectively (notes upon Psychozoia, cant. 1, st. 59; Psychozoia, cant. 2, st. 22; The Praeexistency of the Soul, st. 3).
33.
The Complete Poems, p. 132a (Antimonopsychia, st. 20). See the whole poem, and also the briefer discussion of the Averroistic theory in The Immortality of the Soul, pp. 226, 233–235 (bk. 3, ch. 14, §5; ch. 16, §§1–7).
34.
The Complete Poems, p. 79b (Psychathanasia, bk. 3, cant. 3, sts. 34–35).
35.
The Complete Poems, p. 48b (Psychathanasia, bk. 1, cant. 2, st. 27).
36.
The Complete Poems, pp. 21a, 143a (Psychozoia, cant. 2, st. 23, and the note thereto).
37.
The Complete Poems, p. 16b (Psychozoia, cant. 1, st. 39).
38.
The Complete Poems, p. 20b (Psychozoia, cant. 2, st. 13).
39.
Conjectura Cabbalistica, pp. 11–12 (The Philosophick Cabbala, ch. 1, §§1, 2, 6).
40.
Conjectura Cabbalistica, pp. 74–75 (The Defence of the Philosophick Cabbala, upon ch. 1, vers. 2).
41.
Conjectura Cabbalistica, p. 190 (Appendix to the Defence of the Philosophick Cabbala, ch. 9, §4).
42.
Conjectura Cabbalistica, p. 193 (Appendix to the Defence of the Philosophick Cabbala, ch. 10, §3). See also pp. 190–191 (ch. 9, §§2–4)
43.
Conjectura Cabbalistica, pp. 13–15 (The Philosophick Cabbala, ch. 1, §§13, 14, 20, 26).
44.
The Complete Poems, pp. 92a, 140a (Democritus Platonissans, sts. 12–13; notes upon Psychozoia, cant. 1, st. 55).
45.
The Complete Poems, p. 160b (The Interpretation Generall: ‘Cuspis of the Cone’).
46.
The Complete Poems, pp. 164b–165a (The Interpretation Generall: ‘Spermaticall’). On this notion of the ‘magnetic’ power of a plastic, spermatic spirit, see also op. cit., pp. 48b, 78b (Psychathanasia, bk. 1, cant. 2, sts. 25–27; bk. 3, cant. 3, st. 28).
47.
The Complete Poems, p. 136a (notes upon Psychozoia, cant. 1, st. 1).
48.
The Complete Poems, p. 20b (Psychozoia, cant. 2, st. 13).
49.
The Complete Poems, p. 139b (notes upon Psychozoia, cant. 1, st. 41).
50.
See also Conjectura Cabbalistica, pp. 16–17 (The Philosophick Cabbala, ch. 2, §4).
51.
Although there is an explicit reference to the ‘Universal Spirit of Nature’ in Conjectura Cabbalistica, the passage in question—together with its telltale marginal references to 1659’s Immortality of the Soul and to the 1662 Appendix to Conjectura Cabbalistica itself—had not been present in 1653, but was added in the 1662 edition. Compare Conjectura Cabbalistica, pp. 76–78, with Conjectura Cabbalistica (1653 edition), pp. 145–146 (The Defence of the Philosophick Cabbala, upon ch. 1, vers. 6).
52.
The Complete Poems, p. 163a (The Interpretation Generall: ‘Mundane’).
53.
The Complete Poems, p. 92a (Democritus Platonissans, st. 11).
54.
Alexander Jacob has read this stanza of Democritus Platonissans as containing traces of the Lurianic Cabbala, thereby insinuating, contrary to the general consensus, that More was already familiar with that system some decades before he actually came into contact with it through van Helmont and Knorr von Rosenroth. This is because Jacob conflates More’s use of the Biblical Hebrew term ‘shamayim’ with the Cabbalistical notion of ‘tsimtsum’, the withdrawal of the divine nature to leave a void space wherein the world might be formed. (See the editor’s introduction to Enchiridion metaphysicum—i.e. Manual of Metaphysics, 1995 edition—vol. 1, p. xxxvi). The two concepts are unrelated.
55.
The Complete Poems, p. 164a (The Interpretation Generall: ‘Quantitative’).
56.
The Complete Poems, p. 112a (Antipsychopannychia, bk. 3, st. 1).
57.
The Complete Poems, p. 58a (Psychathanasia, bk. 2, cant. 1, st. 9).
58.
The Complete Poems, p. 140a (notes upon Psychozoia, cant. 1, st. 59).
59.
The Complete Poems, p. 68a (Psychathanasia, bk. 3, cant. 1, st. 18). The topic is discussed quite extensively in this and the next canto—see especially p. 74a (cant. 2, st. 44)—and More would subsequently return to it in the first canto of Antipsychopannychia.
60.
Conjectura Cabbalistica, p. 17 (The Philosophick Cabbala, ch. 2, §§6–7). I have here corrected the text of the 1712 edition, which reads ‘Sensual forms’ where the 1653 and 1662 editions both say ‘Seminal forms’, and the 1679 Latin has ‘Seminalium Formarum’. See also The Complete Poems, pp. 70b–71a (Psychathanasia, bk. 3, cant. 2, st. 7; and passim in this canto).
61.
Conjectura Cabbalistica, p. 13 (The Philosophick Cabbala, ch. 1, §8).
62.
Among many other treatments of the Spirit of Nature in the secondary literature, one might mention Greene 1962; Boylan 1980; Henry 1990; and Hall 1990b, especially pp. 114–120.
63.
The Immortality of the Soul, p. 212 (bk. 3, ch. 12, §1). In a 1679 note on this definition, More would retreat to a certain agnosticism over whether it really was as devoid of sense and animadversion as he had suggested, although he did continue to insist on its lack of reason and free will. I will be coming back to this towards the end of the next section below (pp. 342–343).
64.
Opera omnia, vol. 2.1, p. viii (Praefatio generalissima, §11).
65.
A Collection of Several Philosophical Writings, The Preface General, pp. xii, xv–xvi (§§12, 13).
66.
An Antidote Against Atheism, p. 46 (bk.2, ch. 2, §13).
67.
The added passage runs from §7 to §13 (inclusive) of the enlarged text of bk. 2, ch. 2, pp. 43–46. I do not, however, accuse any specific scholars of failing to spot this, or of falling into any misapprehensions here. The contributors to Hutton 1990a, for instance, do seem to be well aware of the fact that this was a 1662 addition to the text.
68.
An Antidote Against Atheism, p. 53 (bk. 2, ch. 5, §3, with the marginal note thereto).
69.
An Antidote Against Atheism (1655 edition), p. 91 (bk. 2, ch. 5, [§3]). Cf. p. 53 in the 1712 edition.
70.
The Immortality of the Soul, pp. 212, 216 (bk. 3, ch. 12, §1; and the note to §4). Examples of further such remarks from 1659 onwards could be multiplied ad nauseam.
71.
An Explanation of the Grand Mystery of Godliness, p. 245 (bk. 7, ch. 19, §4); and see more generally throughout chs. 18–20.
72.
Enchiridion metaphysicum, vol. 2, pp. 158–159, 166 (ch. 19, §§8, 14). See also Two Choice and Useful Treatises, second part, pp. 197–198 (Annotations upon the Discourse of Truth, The Digression).
73.
An Antidote Against Atheism, pp. 37, 39–40 (bk. 2, ch. 1, table of contents and §6).
74.
An Antidote Against Atheism, p. 216 (Appendix, ch. 11, §8).
75.
An Antidote Against Atheism, p. 39 (bk. 2, ch. 1, §4). This point about the shapes of the stars was in fact one of More’s favourite examples of the failures of mechanism, which he brought up over and over again throughout his whole career.
76.
The Immortality of the Soul, p. 29 (bk. 1, ch. 8, §3).
77.
The Immortality of the Soul, p. 30 (bk. 1, ch. 8, §4).
78.
The Immortality of the Soul, p. 187 (bk. 3, ch. 6, §7).
79.
The Immortality of the Soul, pp. 219–220 (bk. 3, ch. 13, §7).
80.
An Explanation of the Grand Mystery of Godliness, p. 322 (bk. 9, ch. 2, §9).
81.
Two Choice and Useful Treatises, second part, p. 198 (Annotations upon the Discourse of Truth, The Digression).
82.
An Antidote Against Atheism, p. 233 (Appendix, ch. 11, §9, scholium). In the original 1655 passage to which this is the scholium, More had been sitting squarely on the fence: ‘To the last puzzle propounded, whether these Archei be so many sprigs of the common Soul of the World, or particular subsistences of themselves; there is no great inconvenience in acknowledging that it may be either way’ (p. 216). By 1679, he had made up his mind. Indeed, he had made it up by 1659.
83.
Besides More’s own repeated denials of individual seminal forms in his later writings, we also have the testimony of his first biographer: ‘… seminal Forms, if there were any such, (as he did not conceive there were) of Plants and Vegetables.’ (Ward 2000, p. 286).
84.
Burthogge 1699, pp. 6–8; and passim both here and in Burthogge 1694.
85.
Burthogge 1694, p. 128 (ch. 4, §1). The brackets are Burthogge’s.
86.
The Immortality of the Soul, p. 233 (bk. 3, ch. 16, §3).
87.
The Immortality of the Soul, p. 234 (bk. 3, ch. 16, §5). See also pp. ix–xi (The Preface, §10).
88.
The Immortality of the Soul, p. 188 (bk.3, ch. 6, §8). And see chs. 6–7 in full, especially §§3 and 7 of the latter (pp. 190, 192).
89.
Ibid.
90.
See Hunter 1950.
91.
Cudworth 1743, pp. 146–174/Cudworth 1845, vol. 1, pp. 217–274. See Sailor 1962; Passmore 1951, ch. 2.
92.
Atherton 1994, p. 94 (Masham to Leibniz, 20 October 1705).
93.
Bayle 1732, vol. 4, p. 185b (‘Réflexions de Mr. Bayle sur l’Article VII. du 6. Tome de la Bibliotheque choisie de Mr. le Clerc’).
94.
The reference is to the pseudo-Aristotle: see Aristotle 1984, vol. 1, p. 636 (On the Universe, ch. 6; 398b4–10)
95.
Cudworth 1743, p. 149/Cudworth 1845, vol. 1, pp. 222–223.
96.
Malebranche 1959–1984, vol. 19, p. 833 (Malebranche to Conti, 14 June 1713).
97.
Malebranche 1959–1984, vol. 6, p. 44 (Réponse, ch. 4, §17).
98.
Cudworth 1743, p. 150/Cudworth 1845, vol. 1, p. 223.
99.
The Complete Poems, p. 17a (Psychozoia, cant. 1, sts. 44–45).
100.
The Complete Poems, p. 139b (notes upon Psychozoia, cant. 1, st. 41).
101.
Also see Observations upon Anthroposophia Theomagica, and Anima Magica Abscondita, pp. 57–58 (upon Anima Magica Abscondita, pag. 15).
102.
The Immortality of the Soul, p. 101 (bk. 2, ch. 10, §2).
103.
See particularly Enchiridion metaphysicum, ch. 12.
104.
An Antidote Against Atheism, p. 44 (bk. 2, ch. 2, §8). This was one of the passages added in the 1662 edition. Also, Enchiridion metaphysicum, vol. 2, pp. 33–34 (ch. 12, §16).
105.
Enchiridion metaphysicum, ch. 13, and Remarks upon Two Late Ingenious Discourses, passim.
106.
See Hale 1674, pp. 93–94, and More’s reply in Remarks upon Two Late Ingenious Discourses, pp. 77–80 (remarks 8 and 9, upon Difficiles Nugae, ch. 5), together with ch. 13 of Enchiridion metaphysicum. In relation to this discussion, we actually have a reply to More from none other than Samuel Clarke: see Clarke’s note in Rohault and Clarke 1729, vol. 1, pp. 44–46 n. 1, at pp. 45b–46a (pt. 1, ch. 10, §11, note 1, corol. 3).
107.
Remarks upon Two Late Ingenious Discourses, pp. 79–80 (remark 9, upon Difficiles Nugae, ch. 5).
108.
Enchiridion metaphysicum, vol. 2, pp. 101–102 (ch. 13, §17, scholium).
109.
An Explanation of the Grand Mystery of Godliness, p. 322 (bk. 9, ch. 2, §9).
110.
Two Choice and Useful Treatises, second part, p. 137 (Annotations upon Lux Orientalis, upon ch. 14, pag. 136).
111.
Two Choice and Useful Treatises, second part, p. 129 (Annotations upon Lux Orientalis, upon ch. 14, pag. 125).
112.
The Immortality of the Soul, p. 215 (bk. 3, ch. 12, §1, note). See also op. cit., p. 31 (bk. 1, ch. 8, §4, note); An Antidote Against Atheism, p. 153 (bk. 2, ch. 1, §4, scholium); Two Choice and Useful Treatises, second part, p. 120 (Annotations upon Lux Orientalis, upon ch. 13, pag. 102); Enchiridion metaphysicum, vol. 2, p. 86 (ch. 13, §10, scholium); and elsewhere.
113.
Two Choice and Useful Treatises, second part, pp. 243–244, here at p. 244 (Annotations upon the Discourse of Truth, The Digression).
114.
The Immortality of the Soul, p. 212 (bk. 3, ch. 12, §1).
115.
The Immortality of the Soul, p. 223 (bk. 3, ch. 13, §10).
116.
An Antidote Against Atheism, p. 46 (bk. 2, ch. 2, §13). See also op. cit., p. 44 (bk. 2, ch. 2, §7), and The Immortality of the Soul, p. 223 (bk. 3, ch. 13, §9). These three references to the ‘vicarious power of God’ were all 1662 additions to these works: but a 1659 reference to the same may be found in The Immortality of the Soul, p. xiii (The Preface, §14).
117.
A Collection of Several Philosophical Writings, The Preface General, pp. xv–xvi (§13).
118.
Gabbey 1990, p. 29.
119.
Cudworth 1743, p. 148/Cudworth 1845, vol. 1, p. 220. There is also an apparent echo of More in §13 (p. 159/pp. 241–242), where Cudworth presents an analogy of a sleeping musician who, on being exposed to the first few words of a song, will continue it through habit before he becomes properly conscious. On the other hand, Cudworth transposed this analogy to a new context, using it to illustrate the unconscious, plastic activity of nature, where More had used it to illustrate the unconsciousness of our latent innate knowledge, prior to its being eked out by sensible stimuli (An Antidote Against Atheism, p. 17 (bk. 1, ch. 5, §3)).
120.
See Simonutti 1993.
121.
See Raven 1942, pp. 456–461 and passim; Hall 1990b, pp. 120 and 245–246.
122.
See Garrett 2003.
123.
For Hallywell’s position, see Hallywell 1667, p. 59; Hallywell 1681, unpaginated Epistle to the Reader, and pp. 9, 62–63; and passim. For Robinson, see immediately below. Hallywell was admitted to Christ’s in 1657, graduating BA in 1660/1 and MA in 1664; and he was a fellow there from 1662 to 1667. Robinson was admitted in 1664, and graduated BA in 1668. (Venn and Venn 1922–1927, vol. 2, p. 290b; and vol. 3, p. 474a).
124.
Robinson 1709, p. 113.
125.
Robinson 1709, p. 111.
126.
A more nuanced position was adopted by John Toland, who tellingly connected the notion of a plastic soul of the world with More’s other most cherished notion of an infinitely extended but incorporeal space, and suggested that both arose out of the same erroneous belief in the inactivity of matter. See Toland 1704, pp. 210–212 et seq. (letter 5, §§23–24).
127.
Leibniz 1989, pp. 125–126 (‘A Specimen of Dynamics’).
128.
Leibniz 1989, p. 156 (‘On Nature Itself’). Also see, for instance, op. cit., pp. 314–15 (‘Against Barbaric Physics’); Leibniz 1969, pp. 555 (‘Relections on the Doctrine of a Single Universal Spirit’), 587 (‘Considerations on Vital Principles and Plastic Natures’), 655 (Leibniz to Remond, 10 January 1714); Leibniz 1996, pp. 343–344 (bk. 3, ch. 10, §14).
129.
Berkeley 1948–1957, vol. 2, p. 258 (Three Dialogues, dial. 3).
130.
Berkeley 1948–1957, vol. 5, p. 82 (Siris, §152).
131.
See Berkeley 1948–1957, vol. 5, pp. 74–77, 100–102, 106–110 (Siris, §§126–134, 200–206, 220–228). Of course, for Berkeley, this invisible fire was not a material substance either. But that was for Berkeley’s own idiosyncratic reasons: it was still corporeal for all that.
132.
Hall likewise distinguishes between the two on these grounds: see Hall 1990b, pp. 239–240, 265–267, and passim in chs. 11–12. Also Hall 1990a, p. 49.
133.
Newton 2004, p. 30/Newton 1999, p. 142 (De gravitatione).
134.
Westfall 1971, p. 341.

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Reid, J. (2012). The Spirit of Nature. 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_9

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