Causa Gratiae Августин о благодати и свободе

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Examination of a Witch, 1853, by Thompkins H. Matteson
The painting depicts officials looking for the “devil’s mark” on the body of a young girl accused of witchcraft.
Source: Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA
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Teaching the Salem Witch Trials
through Place and Time
Jerra Jenrette
Mary Jo Melvin
Deborah Piper
R
ebecca Schaef
When Betty Parris, Abigail Williams, and Anne Putnam Jr. began exhibiting strange behavior in the winter of 1691-1692, their families could not identify the source of their “fits.” Members of the local community suspected witchcraft. The ensuing events, which came to be known as the Salem witch trials, escalated to such a frenzy that practically everyone in the town and village of Salem was touched. The Salem witch trials of 1692 took the lives of 24 people, 20 of whom were executed and four of whom died in prison. Even though the infamous witch trials occurred more than three centuries ago, they continue to capture the hearts and minds of many in academe and the public, and they play an important role in the Salem region’s tourism industry. The many historical sites, museums, and monuments in the region offer students an opportunity to experience a “living history” of the witch trials through exposure to the places where some of the events occurred and direct access to documents and other artifacts from the time period.
This teaching resources article describes significant stops on a tour of sites relevant to the Salem witch trials that helps students experience
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© Institute for Massachusetts Studies, Westfield State
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both the history and the social milieu in which events occurred. The tour description is followed by a unit plan for fifth through twelfth grades and a list of secondary resources for teachers.1 Jerra Jenrette is a history professor at Edinboro University of Pennsylvania, where Mary Jo Melvin is a professor of early childhood education. Debbie Piper and Rebecca Schaef are doctoral candidates in curriculum and instruction at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, and both are teachers in the Crawford School District.
This tour focuses on several locations in Salem and nearby Danvers, including the Rebecca Nurse Homestead, the Witchcraft Victims’ Memorial, the Ingersoll Ordinary, and the Samuel Parris Archaeological Site.2
THE REBECCA NURSE HOMESTEAD
The Rebecca Nurse family was working its way towards owning some 300 acres of land when the witch accusations began, and the Nurse family was particularly targeted by the Thomas Putnam Jr. family.3 Today, the Rebecca Nurse Homestead, located at 149 Pine Street in Danvers, includes the original home, a barn, a gift shop, and a meetinghouse replica. The latter was constructed for the 1985 docudrama Three Sovereigns for Sarah,
Professor Jerra Jenrette with a group of students at the Rebecca Nurse Homestead in October 2010. Photo: Patricia Hillman
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which remains the best and most historically accurate portrayal of events surrounding the witch trials. A short walk from the home is a graveyard, which includes a monument to Rebecca Nurse that was erected in 1885. The Homestead is owned and operated by the Danvers Alarm List Company, a group dedicated to preserving the history of the Homestead and the local community.
Upon arriving at the Rebecca Nurse Homestead, tour guides lead visitors to the Meetinghouse for a brief film and a question/answer session. The short film, narrated by Danvers Archivist Richard Trask, gives a brief history of the Salem witch trials as well as the early history of Danvers. The film focuses on the significance of the meetinghouse in colonial history, providing a place not only for Sunday worship, but also for other important political, economic, and social gatherings. After the film, the docent talks to the students about Rebecca Nurse and the Nurse family.
One can envision what it must have been like to sit in the 1692 Meetinghouse and listen to the Reverend Samuel Parris sermonize about the growing problems in the community. Whether it was fear of attack by local Native American tribes, smallpox, or conflicts with Salem Town, Parris promised the congregation that life would soon be different. When I visit with students in October, it is always cold as we are well into fall. So the temperature inside the meetinghouse gives one a small taste of cold 1692 New England winters.
As students tour the house itself, one can get a sense of historic place and time. The first floor consists of only two rooms: the kitchen and living room. They provide visitors a view into seventeenth-century New England home life, and the docent provides helpful background information about the colonial period. Carolyn Pitcairn, a history graduate student at Edinboro University of Pennsylvania, describes the significance of the homestead for a living history tour:
This settlement allows students to enrich their experience through sight and touch. A student can easily walk through the house and interpret what might have been the normal lifestyle for the Nurse family, and in turn, the families participating in the trials. While there, students can experience what it might have looked like to sit and watch the trials take place: an almost spooky, but worthwhile endeavor. Overall, the homestead represents a big part of Salem history, and without it, I feel that students would rely more on books and have less of a true understanding of the actual time period.4
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WITCHCRAFT VICTIMS’ MEMORIAL, DANVERS
The memorial was installed in 1992 by the town of Danvers as a testament to the strength of character of the victims and the centuries-old dedication the community of Danvers has to ensuring that the truth is told about the trials. The memorial is a crucial part of the history of the Salem witch trials. Memorializing all of the victims, this monument allows students the opportunity to pause and reflect on the horrors which these trials brought.
INGERSOLL ORDINARY TAVERN
Though unused and in disrepair, the tavern is another important piece of the history of the Salem witch trials. Accused members of the community were brought here for their inquests.
Members of the Nurse Family Association gathered for the July 1885 dedication of a memorial to Rebecca Nurse. The memorial includes an epitaph to Nurse written by poet John Greenleaf Whittier: “O Christian Martyr who for truth could die/ When all around thee owned the hideous lie!/ The world redeemed from Superstition’s sway/ Is breathing freer for thy sake today.”
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Witchcraft Victims’ Memorial, Danvers
The three panels at the rear of the memorial are carved with the names of the victims of the witch trials along with passages of statements made by eight accused witches during their trials.
Ingersoll Ordinary Tavern
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SAMUEL PARRIS ARCHAEOLOGICAL SITE
The last stop in Danvers is the Parris Archaeological Site, located a quarter of a mile from the memorial to victims of the witch trials. Although it is not actually an active archaeological site anymore, the site was the original location of the Salem Village parsonage and serves as an excellent teaching tool. As students gather around the split rail fence that surrounds excavated stones from the original buildings, it may not be easy at first to grasp that the witch trial hysteria actually began in this idyllic setting. But, set back from the busy street that runs through the community and surrounded by foliage, the site is somewhat isolated, helping to give one a sense of the isolation residents of Salem might have felt in 1692. In fact, the sense of isolation it imparts makes it a perfect location to contemplate how boredom could breed rumors and hysteria that would envelope an entire community for more than a year. One of the important issues to remember is that this is “living history,” standing in the space where one of the major events in U.S. history occurred. As history graduate student Carolyn Pitcairn notes, the site is close to where the trials began and “this eerie site allows visitors to take in where
Samuel Parris Archaeological Site
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the Parris’s were in relation to the rest of the victims, like Rebecca Nurse. By visiting the remaining stones of the house, students can think about the various requests made by Parris to the village and town, and come to their own conclusions as to why he may have done so.”5 Moreover, she adds, the site is a suitable place for a lecture.
Next, the tour makes it way to the town of Salem. Salem is a much more commercialized locale, offering a number of museums; however, we choose selected museums and one event.
PEABODY ESSEX MUSEUM LIBRARY (DISPLAY OF WITCH PAPERS AND ARTIFACTS)
The Peabody Essex is one of the most significant museums in the country. However, for the purposes of this trip we stop only in the library where a few artifacts and papers from the witch trials are on display.
THE WITCH DUNGEON MUSEUM
The Witch Dungeon Museum provides visitors the opportunity to see a short skit which focuses on Mary Warren’s accusation of Elizabeth Proctor. Warren was a servant in the Proctor home who claimed that her mistress bewitched her and the other girls. The staff of the Witch Dungeon Museum provides the broad historical context of the witch trials in the opening commentary and allows time for questions from the audience. Once the skit is over, the guide leads the visitors down a staircase into a recreated 1692 dungeon. Visitors see different types of cells, some of which allow only enough room to stand up in while others do not even provide that much space. Also included in this exhibit is a portrayal of the pressing of Giles Corey, who refused to enter a plea when he was accused of witchcraft. As Corey breathed his last breath, legend says he whispered, “more weight.”
WITCH HOUSE (JONATHAN CORWIN’S HOME)
A block and a half from the Witch Dungeon Museum is the so-called “Witch House,” which was the home of trials’ magistrate, Jonathan Corwin. Self-guided tours offer the opportunity to compare this home with the Nurse Home. The Corwin Witch House was, according to local author John Goff, “considered a mansion house” during the Seventeenth century.6 It was here that magistrate Jonathan Corwin presided over many of the pretrial examinations of the accused.
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“CRY INNOCENT”
One the best parts of the trip is provided by Gordon College theatre group in their production of “Cry Innocent,” a play that is based on the hearing of accused witch Bridget Bishop. Performances of the play begin in July and continue through October. The student actors begin the play on Essex Street near the plaza and mall. The town crier asks people if they have seen the suspect by describing her attire. Shortly thereafter, Bishop shows up and is arrested. The actors and audience then walk some two blocks to the old town hall where Bishop is examined to determine if enough evidence exists to hold her for trial. At various times, the audience is invited to give evidence or to ask questions of Bishop and the others. Finally, once all evidence has been submitted, the audience is called upon to serve as the jury and to determine if enough evidence has been presented to warrant holding her for trial. In the thirteen years we have taken the trip, more often than not the audience votes against holding her for trial. Bishop then informs the audience they have not kept with historical accuracy as she was indeed tried and executed.
SALEM WITCH TRIALS MEMORIAL
Like nearby Danvers, Salem has raised a memorial to the victims of the witch trials. Situated in a small park adjacent to the old cemetery, the Salem Witch Trials Memorial features a handcrafted stone wall from which protrude 20 granite benches. Each bench is inscribed with the name of one of the executed. The threshold at the entrance of the memorial is inscribed with quotes from some of the victims, protesting their innocence. This simple, yet striking memorial is located behind the Peabody Essex Museum, bringing participants back to the first stop on the Salem portion of the tour.
THE CRITICAL DOCUMENTS
The large majority of the papers available from the Salem witch trials have been digitized by the University of Virginia and can be found online. They are also housed in the Danvers Archives in Danvers, Massachusetts.7
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Teaching Unit: Salem Witch Trials
The Cause and Effect of Human Behavior
(5th-12th grades)
The Salem Witch Trials were the climax of various factors brought to a fevered pitch by the accusations of three young girls. The cause(s) and effect of human behavior during this historical time period can be taught using historical documents and artifacts. Rebecca Schaef, a teacher from Neason Hill Elementary School in Meadville, Pennsylvania, has developed a unit that exemplifies the teaching of “living history.” The unit uses children’s and young adult literature as well as primary source documents and maps to capture and contextualize the stories from this time.
There are two core lessons. The first focuses upon building background knowledge. It allows students to conduct an analysis of primary sources. The second lesson illuminates the causes and effects of the trials in terms of human behaviors. For the duration of the unit plan, conduct the first activity, literature circles, which will promote discussion and application of knowledge throughout. Lesson one includes the reading of trial transcripts and completing an analysis of accounts/letters of innocence from those accused. Lesson two activities include an analysis of area maps to assess land ownership and geographical features of Salem, as well as the creation of a newscast depicting life in Salem during 1692. The unit plan also includes adaptations to meet the individual learning needs of all students, as well as numerous resources for the teacher.
Essential Question: What application can be made to current events today in both personal and political arenas from studying this time period and the factors that led to the frenzy of the Salem witch trials of 1692?
Lesson 1: Students conduct an analysis of actual historical documents to capture the “big picture” of the events and why these events occurred during 1692 in Salem.
Lesson 2: Students identify the causes and the effects of the trials, not only on the accused but on the entire community. They will use their knowledge of the factors leading to this witchcraft hysteria and analyze maps of the region in order to further establish these factors as causes.
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Organizing Idea: When the first accusations of witchcraft were heard in 1692, Salem Village and Town had been experiencing crisis and disunity from numerous factors including economic worries precipitated by a decline in agriculture and the opening of a sea port, as well as religious disagreements over selection of a pastor. Thus vulnerable, the communities were receptive to claims that witchcraft lay at the root of their troubles, a claim that might otherwise have been dismissed.
Key Questions
1. What issues lay at the center of the feuding and discord between Salem Village and Town?
2. What brought the religious conflict to a head?
3. What can we learn from the actual documents, such as warrants for arrest of those accused of witchcraft?
4. What occurred to bolster the belief in the accusations made by the young girls?
5. What can be learned from the actual documents that give accounts of the innocence of those accused of witchcraft?
6. What factors influenced many of the innocent accused to plead guilty to the charges of witchcraft?
Background
1684: Salem Colony loses charter.
1680’s: Decline in agriculture as economic business and an increase in income from the sea port businesses.
1688: Thomas Putnam Jr. hires Samuel Parris as pastor. Parris comes from Barbados and brings Tituba, his slave, along with his family. He expects a large salary.
1692: Dr. Griggs examines the afflicted girls and concludes that their symptoms are evidence of the hand of evil. John Hale and others also investigate and agree with Griggs that the devil is at work in Salem.
February 14, 1692: Samuel Parris gives a sermon stating that “the Devil is around, but this soon will change.”
February 29, 1692: Warrants are served for the arrests of Tituba, Good, and Osborne.
March 1, 1692: The first examinations of the accused witches take place.
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Materials Bank: Literature Circle Reporting Forms
Summarizer: writes a summary of events for each section of the book read.
Discussion Leader: writes questions for the group to discuss based upon the information learned and questions raised from the section that has been read.
Story Connector: identifies parts of the section read that remind them of other texts read; compares and contrasts the two texts.
Real-Life Connector: identifies parts of the text that remind them of things that have happened to them personally or to others in a personal sense, as well as in current events.
Illustrator: draws a detailed picture of a scene from the section of the book being read. Members of the group will use the pictures to describe and discuss that part of the book.
Word Wizard: identifies challenging words from the text and finds the definitions for these words; the words are then related back to the context in which they are used and discussed.
ACTIVITIES
Activity 1: Literature Circles
Place students into groups of six and give each group the choice of a book, which can be fiction or non-fiction, based on the Salem Witch Trials of 1692. Have students choose literature circle roles and assign dates for the readings. Give time allotments of two to three weeks for grades 5-8 and three to four weeks for grades 8-12. At the end of the literature circles, assign a “share out” for each group to present the information gained from their selections. Presentations should focus on the essential questions of the unit and the key questions of the lesson and follow such methods as story vine, story cube, poetic expression, TV commercial, Artifacts Bag Retelling, Round Robin Retelling, Timeline of Events, Newspaper Review, or any other such creative methods approved by the teacher(s).
Some students may prefer the book on audiotape or CD. Some may also benefit from completing a literature circle role with another student. Adapt each role appropriately to fit each student’s individual learning needs, which may include using prepared pictures rather than written text, enlarging pages, or adjusting the number of requirements per page. Enlarged print books should also be made available. Student success can be ensured through these and other adaptations that provide focus and structure to the expectations.
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Activity 2: Reading Trial Transcripts
Supply small groups—which should be different from the literature circle groups—with copies of an actual transcript from the trial of one individual accused of witchcraft, taken from the University of Virginia’s Salem Witch Trials archive.8 (Teacher can modify for students with special educational needs through various methods, such as enlarging the transcript, recording the transcript being read aloud on tape and allowing the student to listen using headphones, highlighting, etc…)
Within these small cooperative groups, assign half of the students to support a “not guilty” verdict and half to favor a “guilty” verdict. While the transcript is read, the prosecution and the defense should both find evidence that supports their points of view. Allow time following the reading for students on both sides to present their ideas convincingly to the opposing side. Afterwards, open up the floor for students to discuss which side was easier to uphold using logic and reasoning similar to today’s justice system. Discussion should include Puritan beliefs and how this affected their decisions. As an enrichment activity, students can present their “trials” to other classes or to a panel of teachers and receive feedback.
Activity 3: Analysis of Accounts/Letters of Innocence
In partners or small groups, have students read accounts and actual letters stating the innocence of those accused of witchcraft. Use the following accounts/letters: Mary Easty, and Rebecca Nurse, which are available online.9
Instruct groups to look for the similarities and differences between the accounts, paying attention to the language of this time period and pulling quotations to further analyze in great detail. Help students interpret the quotes using today’s language, preserving the intent of the meaning of each.
Have students create a visual in their groups to report out what they learned from reading these two different accounts, and encourage them to show their analysis of the language and the various quotes pulled from these accounts. Finally, have students create a poster containing their translations of various quotes into today’s vernacular in order to fully understand their meaning and to reflect upon the eloquence of the way people spoke during this time. After the groups have shared their visuals and their findings, hold a class discussion and note questions raised during this activity.
Some students may benefit from choosing visuals from a set already completed, while others will enjoy creating and finding their own. Enlarge documents as needed. A template for organizing similarities and differences may also be helpful for some students.
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Activity 4: Analysis of Area Maps, Land Ownerships and Geographical Features of Salem
This activity encourages students to analyze the various factors of the witchcraft hysteria of 1692 by plotting the affected areas on a map from the period to show the areas of more intense activity based on the accusations made. They will use the maps to look more closely at the family feud between Thomas Putnam Jr. and Joseph Putnam, the effect that the success of the seaport had upon agriculture, and the conflict between Salem Village and Salem Town. Viewing the maps gives students a better perspective on what life was like during this time.
Allow students the choice of small group or independent work on this activity. Allot some class time to complete the activity, incorporating teacher input and facilitation to ensure understanding. Some students may benefit from being partnered or placed within a small group for this activity. A template for organizing the landholdings of Thomas Putnam Jr., Joseph Putnam and other individuals crucial to the factors being discussed as contributing to the conflict can be made available, as well as the use of various colors of pins, highlighters, or other such markings, complete with a key to visually help students connect to the topic.
Teaching the Salem Witch Trials
Historic maps of Salem Village and Town can be found at http://etext.virginia.edu/salem/witchcraft/maps/
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Activity 5: Newscast
Provide students with an example of a newscast, and use this as a template for them to write their own newscasts about life in Salem during 1692, touching upon the weather, crimes, local news, world news and human-interest stories. Their choices of topic should reflect accuracy when recounting events. Information may be pulled from all of the sources used throughout the unit.
The amount of information within the newscast can also be decreased from five to three news topic areas. It may be beneficial to partner some students to complete the assignment. Some students may also find a template with fill-in-the-blank news stories helpful towards their success with this activity.
Notes
1 Numerous scholars have researched and written about the trials, the conditions that gave rise to the events, and their aftermath, including Paul Boyer and Steven Nissenbaum, Salem Possessed: The Social and Economic Causes of the Salem Witch Trials (Cambridge Mass: Harvard University Press. 1974); Carol Karlsen, The Devil in the Shape of a Woman: Witchcraft in Colonial New England (New York: W.W. Norton, 1987); and Mary Beth Norton, In the Devil’s Snare: The Salem Witchcraft Crisis of 1692 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002). These scholars represent but a small sampling of important works on the trials. The preceding bibliography provides many more.
2 The first land grants were awarded in the 1630s and 1640s for the area that would become known as Salem Village or Salem Farms, home to the large majority of accusers in the witch trials. While legally a part of Salem Town, the Village began petitioning for independence soon after it was established and, in 1673, established a separate parish headed by Samuel Parris. Parris’ daughter and niece were two of the girls whose unexplainable “fits” set off the chain of events that culminated in the witch trials. Salem Village, now known as Danvers, was incorporated in 1752 and today provides most of the real “living history” experiences related to the witch trials.
3 Information on the Rebecca Nurse Homestead can be found at http://www.rebeccanurse.org. Three Sovereigns for Sarah focuses on the lives of Sarah Cloyce and her sisters, Rebecca Nurse and Mary Easty, during the Salem witch trials. All three were accused of witchcraft, and both Nurse and Easty were executed. See Three Sovereigns for Sarah. Directed by Philip Leacock. Produced by Michael E. Uslan. PBS, 1985. DVD/VHS
4 Carolyn Pitcairn. Email to Jerra Jenrette, July 27 2011.
5 Carolyn Pitcairn. Email to Jerra Jenrette, July 27 2011.
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6 John Goff, Salem’s Witch House: A Touchstone to Antiquity (Charleston, SC: The History Press, 2009), 40.
7 See http://salem.lib.virginia.edu/texts/transcripts.html and http://salem.lib.virginia.edu/Collection.html
8 9 Letters are available at Linder, Douglas. “The Witchcraft Trials in Salem: A Commentary,” Bibliography of Sources on Witchcraft and the Salem Witch Trials
Aronson, Marc. Witch-Hunt: Mysteries of the Salem Witch Trials. New York: Atheneum, 2003.
Barstow, Anne Llewellyn. Witchcraze: A New History of the European Witch Hunts.New York: Pandora-Harper, 1994.
Behringer, Wolfgang. Witchcraft Persecutions in Bavaria: Popular Magic, Religious Zealotry and Reason of State in Early Modern Europe. Cambridge, MA: Past & Present Publications, 1997.
Bostridge, Ian. Witchcraft and its Transformations.Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997.
Boyer, Paul and Stephen Nissenbaum. Salem Possessed: The Social Origins of Witchcraft. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. 1974.
Boyer, Paul and Stephen Nissenbaum. Salem-Village Witchcraft: A Documentary Record of Local Conflict in Colonial New England. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1972, 1993.
Breslaw, Elaine, ed. Witches in the Atlantic World: A Historical Reader & Primary Sourcebook. New York: New York University Press, 2000.
Breslaw, Elaine. Tituba, Reluctant Witch of Salem: Devilish Indians and Puritan Fantasies. New York: New York University Press, 1996.
Brown, David. C.A Guide to the Salem Witchcraft Hysteria of 1692.Washington Crossing, PA: David C. Brown, 2002.
Cahill, Robert E. The Horror of Salem’s Witch Dungeon (And Other New England Crimes & Punishments). Danvers, MA: Old Saltbox. 1986.
Cahill, Robert E. New England’s Witches and Wizards. Danvers, MA: Old Saltbox. 1983.
Clapp, Patricia Witches’’ Children. New York: Puffin Books. 1982.
Clark, Stuart. Thinking with Demons: The Idea of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997.
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Godbeer, Richard. The Devil’s Dominion: Magic and Religion in Early New England. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1992.
Goff, John. Salem’s Witch House: A Touchstone to Antiquity. Charleston, SC: The History Press, 2009.
Francis, Richard. Judge Sewall’s Apology: The Salem Witch Trials and the Forming of an American Conscience.New York: Harper Perennial, 2006.
Fraustino, Lisa R. I Walk in Dread: The Diary of Deliverance Trembley, Witness to the Salem Witch Trials. New York: Scholastic. 2004.
Hemphill, Stephanie Wicked Girls: A Novel of the Salem Witch Trials. New York: Harper Collins. 2010.
Hill, Frances. A Delusion of Satan: The Full Story of the Salem Witch Trials.Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 1997.
Hill, Frances. The Salem Witch Trials Reader. New York: Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Books, 2000.
Hoffer, Peter Charles. The Salem Witchcraft Trials: A Legal History Landmark Law Cases and American Society. Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1997.
Jackson, Shirley. The Witchcraft of Salem Village. New York: Random House. 1956.
Karlsen, Carol F. The Devil in the Shape of a Woman: Witchcraft in Colonial New England. New York: W.W. Norton, 1987, 1998.
Lebeau, Bryan F. The Story of the Salem Witch Trials: ‘We Walked in Clouds and Could Not See Our Way’. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1997.
Levack, Brian P., ed. The Witchcraft Sourcebook. London: Routledge, 2004.
Laplante, Eve. The Life and Repentance of Samuel Sewall. New York: Harper Collins, 2007.
Mather, Cotton. Memorable Providences, Relating to Witchcrafts and Possessions. (1684).
Miller, Arthur. The Crucible.New York: Penguin Books, 1952, 1995.
Norton, Mary Beth. In the Devil’s Snare: The Salem Witchcraft Crisis of 1692. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002.
Oldridge, Darren, ed. The Witchcraft Reader. London: Routledge, 2002.
Reis, Elizabeth. Damned Women: Sinners and Witches in Puritan New England. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1997.
Reis, Elizabeth. Spellbound: Women and Witchcraft in America. Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, Inc., 1998.
Rinaldi, Ann. A Break with Charity: A Story about the Salem Witch Trials. Orlando, FL: Harcourt Books, 1992.
Roach, Marilynne K. The Salem Witch Trials: A Day by Day Chronicle of a Community Under Siege. New York: Cooper Square Press, 2002.
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Roper, Lyndal. Oedipus and the Devil: Witchcraft, Sexuality and Religion in Early Modern Europe. London: Routledge, 1994.
Salem-Village Witchcraft: A Documentary Record of Local Conflict in Colonial New England. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1972.
Starkey, Marion Lena. The Devil in Massachusetts: A Modern Inquiry into the Salem Witch Trials. New York: Anchor Books, 1949.
Story, William. The Witchcraft Hysteria of Salem Town and Salem Village in 1692. Peabody, MA: Willart, 2007.
Tapley, Charles S. Rebecca Nurse Saint But Witch Victim. Boston, MA: Marshall Jones, 2008.
University of Virginia. The 1692 Salem Witch Trials: Documentary Archive and Transcription Project, 2002.
Wilson, Lori Lee. The Salem Witch Trials: How History is Invented. Lerner Publishing Company, 1996.
Children’s and Youth Literature
Aronson, Marc. Witch-hunt: Mysteries of the Salem Witch Trials. New York: NY: Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2003.
Bonfanti, Leo. The Witchcraft Hysteria of 1692. Salem, MA: Old Saltbox, 1994.
Cahill, Robert E. New England’s Cruel and Unusual Punishments . Danvers, MA: Old Saltbox, 1994.
Kallen, Stuart A. Figures of the Salem Witch Trials. Farmington Hills, MI: Thomas Gale, 2005.
Martin, Michael. Graphic Library: The Salem Witch Trials. Mankato, MN: Capstone Press, 2005.
Petry, Ann. Tituba of Salem Village. New York, NY: Harper Collins, 1991.
Pipe, Jim. You Wouldn’t Want to be a Salem Witch! Bizarre Accusations You’d Rather Not Face. New York, NY: Scholastic, 2009.
Roach, Marilyn K. In the Days of the Salem Witchcraft Trials. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1996.
Speare, Elizabeth. The Witch of Blackbird Pond. New York, NY: Sandpiper, 1958.
Starkey, Marion L. The Tall Man from Boston. New York, NY: Crown Publishing, 1975.
Richardson, Katherine W. The Salem Witchcraft Trials. Salem, MA: Peabody Essex Museum, 1994.
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Story, William L. True Stories of Courage and Defiance from the Salem Witchcraft Hysteria of 1692. Peabody, MA: Willart, 2001.
Wilson, Lori L. The Salem Witch Trials. Minneapolis: Lerner Publications, 1997
von Zumbusch, Amelie. What Really Happened? The True Story of the Salem Witch Hunts. New York, NY: Rosen, 2009.
Yolen, Jane and Heidi Stemple. The Salem Witch Trials: An Unsolved Mystery from History. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 2004.
Websites
About.Com. “Salem Witch Trials, Lesson Plans.” Buccini, Molly. “Witchcraft Victims’ Memorial.” The Salem Patch. Christensen, Jill and Wendy Williams. “Salem Witch Trials Unit.” Danvers Alarm List Company. “The Rebecca Nurse Homestead.” http://www.rebeccanurse.org/
Discovery Education. “Salem Witch Trials: The World Behind the Hysteria.” Discovery Education. Salem Witch Trials: The World Behind the Hysteria. “The People.” Modugno, Joseph R. “Hawthorne In Salem.” National Geographic. http://nationalgeographic.com/features/97/salem/digest.html
Pfingsten, Bill. “St Andrew’s Episcopal Church, Somerset Parish.” http://www.hmdb.org/marker.asp?marker=3877
Ray, Benjamin. University of Virginia. “Salem Witch Trials-Documentary Archive and Transcription Project.” http://etext.virginia.edu/salem/witchcraft/
“Salem Witch Trials.” http://www.salemwitchtrials.com/
“Salem Witch Trials Timeline.” http://www.salemwitchtrials.com/timeline.html
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Thirteen/WNET New York. “Secrets of the Dead.” University of Virginia. “Salem Witch Trials-Documentary Archive and Transcription Project.” http://www2.iath.virginia.edu/salem/people/nursepics.html
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Andrea Bianchi
The Cambridge Platonists in Continental Europe.
Critique and Erudition in the Biblioth;ques of Jean Le Clerc, p. 149–180.
in: F;rst, Alfond ed.: ORIGEN’S PHILOSOPHY OF FREEDOM
IN EARLY MODERN TIMES. Debates about Free Will and Apokatastasis in 17th-Century England
and Europe
(ADAMANTIANA. Texte und Studien zu Origenes und seinem Erbe /
Texts and Studies on Origen and his Legacy, Band 13
Herausgegeben von / Edited by Alfons F;rst)
Funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program
under the Marie Sk;odowska-Curie grant agreement No. 676258.
THE HISTORY OF HUMAN FREEDOM AND DIGNITY
IN WESTERN CIVILIZATION
The Cambridge Platonists in Continental Europe
Critique and Erudition in the Biblioth;ques of Jean Le Clerc
ANDREA BIANCHI, MILAN*
1. Jean Le Clerc and Ralph Cudworth
In the 17th and early 18th centuries, Jean Le Clerc (1657–1736), the Swiss-Dutch
Arminian pastor, philologist, theologian and erudite journalist, contributed significantly
to the dissemination of knowledge to a large European audience. He
was one of the most popular intellectuals of his time and author of the famous
Biblioth;ques,1 which, for over 40 years, covered topics such as history, law, theology
and philology. He also seldom failed to include an excerpt from some new
book or discovery in the natural sciences, a field which will be of particular importance
within the present article. In so doing, he went some way towards satisfying
the early modern thirst for natural science, which had been sparked by discoveries
in, for example, astronomy and biology. Le Clerc’s presentation of natural
science was complemented by his passion for English scholarship, by means of
which he made French summaries of English publications available to non-English
speaking Continental Europe. These characteristic features of his journalistic
work, an attention to natural sciences and to English scholarship, placed the
Biblioth;ques at a considerable advantage with respect to other contemporaneous
literary journals.2 The present article explores Le Clerc’s relationship with Cam-
* This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and
innovation programme under the Marie Sk;odowska-Curie grant agreement No. 676258.
I am indebted to Prof. Elena Rapetti of the Catholic University of Milan for her revision of
this paper and her very useful comments, and to Dr. Marilyn Lewis from the University of
Bristol, who carefully proofread this paper providing very useful guidance. The final wording
and any errors remain my own.
1 He authored three learned journals, the Biblioth;ques (published in Amsterdam): the Biblioth;que
universelle et historique, in 26 volumes, of which 25 appeared between 1686–1693
and the last volume, containing indexes, in 1718; the Biblioth;que choisie pour servir de suite
; la Biblioth;que universelle, in 28 volumes, of which 27 were published between 1703–1713
and the last volume, with indexes, in 1718, and finally the Biblioth;que ancienne et moderne
pour servir de suite aux Biblioth;ques Universelle et Choisie, in 29 volumes, 28 of which appeared
between 1714–1727 and the last one, with indexes, in 1730.
2 Annie Barns, Jean Le Clerc (1657–1736) et la R;publique des lettres, Paris 1938, 116.
150 Andrea Bianchi
bridge Platonism, in particular with the thought of Ralph Cudworth (1617–1688),
as presented in the Biblioth;ques.
It is often suggested that Le Clerc’s interest in Cudworth was brought about by
Le Clerc’s epistolary acquaintance with Cudworth’s daughter, Damaris Cudworth
Masham. Le Clerc had been introduced to her by his friend John Locke,3 who
resided at her home at Oates in the final years of his life. In a letter of 13th January
1699, Le Clerc sent thanks to Lady Masham through John Locke for her recent
gift of her father’s work, with high probability Cudworth’s True Intellectual System
of the Universe.4 Their direct correspondence continued after Locke’s death.
Cudworth’s name, as well as that of Henry More, appeared in a letter which Le
Clerc received from his close friend the Arminian Philipp van Limborch, dated
6th October 1682, while Le Clerc was living in London for a short time.5 Limborch
recommended that Le Clerc make friends “cum viris doctis et ingenii liberioris
pacisque Christianae amantibus in Academia Cantabrigiensi”, to whom he would
happily introduce him. Although, so far as we know, Le Clerc did not meet any of
the Cambridge Platonists in person, he would read some of their works, especially
Cudworth’s, early on in his scholarly career. Again, this is evidenced in Le Clerc’s
letters; in a letter of 2nd October 1690 to Claude Nicaise, Le Clerc explicitly praised
Cudworth as scholar, especially his knowledge of patristic doctrines of the Trinity.
In a related article of his Biblioth;que universelle et historique, he referred to
Cudworth’s True Intellectual System of the Universe as containing a good exposition
of that subject.6
The mutual intellectual influences shared by Dutch Arminians and Cambridge
Platonists, of course, antedated Le Clerc.7 They shared common ground
from the outset, in their Erasmian heritage, their focus on free will, their tolerant
3 Locke had become a good friend of Le Clerc during his “exile” in the Netherlands between
1683 and 1689. Upon Locke’s return to England, he had been a guest of Lady Masham in
Oates, Essex. Le Clerc and Lady Masham never met in person but corresponded.
4 This is suggested by Mario Sina, who considers it as highly likely. See Jean Le Clerc, Epistolario,
vol. 2, 1690–1705, ed. by Mario Sina/Maria Grazia Zaccone Sina, Florence 1991,
295 note 1.
5 Le Clerc was in London from May 1682 to January 1683, see Barns, Jean Le Clerc (n. 2)
68–74.
6 Jean Le Clerc, Biblioth;que universelle et historique, vol. 19 (1690) Art. 7, 539. Le Clerc
referred to this aspect of Cudworth’s thought in several letters. See letter 2 of 2nd October
1690, from Le Clerc to Claude Nicaise; letter 335 of 8th January 1703, from Le Clerc to Jean
Paul Bignon and letter 361, of 29th April 1704, from Le Clerc to John Sharp, all of which
are published in: Le Clerc, Epistolario, vol. 2 (n. 4). In these letters, Cudworth is esteemed
by Le Clerc as scholar who was knowledgeable about the conception of the Trinity in pre-
Nicene Fathers.
7 See the contribution of Marilyn A. Lewis in this volume.
Critique and Erudition in the Biblioth;ques of Jean Le Clerc 151
approach to religion and their rationalist exegesis.8 English thinkers had contact
with Arminians, such as Baro and Vossius, in the last decade of the 16th century.9
Contrary to the situation in the Netherlands, where Arminianism was officially
condemned by the Synod of Dort (1619), it flourished in the Laudian High Church
movement in England during the early 17th century.10 Later in the century, Henry
More and Ralph Cudworth became acquainted with Samuel Hartlib and Franciscus
Mercurius van Helmont, who lived in England for some time. Through
them, they came into contact with Philipp van Limborch, then professor at the
Remonstrant (Arminian) Seminary of Amsterdam.11 Epistolary contact between
van Limborch and Cudworth lasted until the latter’s death.12 So, Le Clerc’s interest
in Cudworth was not without foundation because of a tradition which he and
Cudworth shared. As we have seen, his personal acquaintances also contributed
to his knowledge of the Cambridge scholar as an Arminian, but his encounter
with some of Cudworth’s ideas antedates these contacts. In the following sections
we will review more particularly some of Cudworth’s philosophy and theology,
with particular attention to its natural scientific and natural philosophical underpinning,
and this will shed further light on why Le Clerc chose to disseminate
Cudworth’s work in his Biblioth;ques. Before we move to the natural philosophical
debate itself, I will present a few contextual remarks on the ongoing debate of
which Cudworth’s work came to form part.
2. Scientific discoveries, philosophy and theology
In the first edition of his Dictionaire historique et critique of 1697, under “Pauliciens”,
the famous Pierre Bayle (1647–1706) had brought up the example of a
mother who, knowing that her daughter would go to a ball, be seduced and lose
her virginity, still allowed her to go. Bayle doubted that the behaviour of such a
mother could be considered as good and caring in any way and regarded it rather
as inappropriate. The mother should not knowingly have allowed her daughter
to go to the ball, thus protecting her from any harm although against her will. By
means of this example, Bayle argued against the possibility of rationally reconcil-
8 Susan Rosa, Ralph Cudworth in the R;publique des Lettres. The Controversy about Plastick
Nature and the Reputation of Pierre Bayle, in: Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture
23 (1994) 147–160, 148.
9 Rosalie L. Colie, Light and Enlightenment. A study of the Cambridge Platonists and the
Dutch Arminians, Cambridge 1957, 14.
10 Ibid. 21. See Nicholas Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists. The Rise of English Arminianism, c. 1590–
1640, Oxford 1987.
11 Colie, ibid. 7.
12 Ibid. 36.
152 Andrea Bianchi
ing the commonly attributed goodness of God with the actual presence of evil in
the world. If God was good, so ran the argument, why did he allow evil? In the
example of the mother, she was held responsible for not protecting her daughter
and could not rationally be considered good. So also God, who had allowed
Adam’s sin and all the evils resulting from it, could and should have prevented
it.13 With these arguments, and especially the (for the time) shocking example of
the uncaring mother, Bayle had brought the problem of evil back to the centre of
learned discussions. Other prominent thinkers of the time, like Isaac Jacquelot
(1647–1708), took up the challenge and qualified the image with the statement
that there was a substantial difference between God and a mother. If one was to
apply the image accurately, one could say that, if the mother had an important
plan (Dessein) for her daughter, then she would be acting in the right way if after
having instructed her she allowed her to go to a ball.14 God’s plan, for Jacquelot,
was to be able to reward the virtuous (and punish the wicked) and this in turn
presupposed human freedom.15
The discussion about the problem of evil was part of a larger attempt at the
time to reconcile God’s and nature’s workings, but even a brief review of the major
positions of such a debate would lead us away from the proposed goal of this
article.16 The debate on the problem of evil was taken up by all of the most promi-
13 Pierre Bayle, Art. Pauliciens, in: id., Dictionaire historique et critique, vol. 2, Rotterdam
1697, 756 note E. A counter-argument that Bayle rejected was the Socinian one on the
eternity of matter, the consequence of which, for Bayle, limited God’s foreknowledge. God
could thus not be blamed for the existence of evil and the latter did not conflict with
his goodness: ibid. 758 note F. See also Barbara Sher Tinsley, Pierre Bayle’s Reformation.
Conscience and Criticism on the Eve of the Enlightenment, Susquehanna PA 2001, 313 f.
14 Isaac Jacquelot, Conformit; de la foi avec la raison: ou d;fense de la religion, contre les
principales difficultez r;pandues dans le Dictionaire historique et critique de Mr. Bayle,
Amsterdam 1705, 201.
15 Ibid. 198. 202 f. See Alan C. Kors, Naturalism and Unbelief in France, 1650–1729, Cambridge
2016, 246 f., for a summary of all the subsequent works where the dispute between
Bayle and Jacquelot continued.
16 Kors, ibid. 215, has summarized this point movingly: “Questions about a demonstrably
transcendent and benevolent Creator – metaphysically prior to the world – were and
remained among the most dizzyingly complex for Christian philosophical theology. Issues
of creation ex nihilo and issues of how evil could co-exist with an infinitely good
and powerful God attracted potent and influential minds. The attention to those issues in
early-modern France, occurring in the fractious climate we have come to know, were both
symptoms and further causes of a crisis of confidence affecting broad parts of intellectual
life. By the dawn of the eighteenth century, orthodox beliefs about creation and the origin
of evil were under various forms of siege.” Another major debate to which these discussions
were related was the one between Calvinists and Remonstrants in Protestantism and
Jansenists and Jesuits in Catholicism. In both cases the main topic was the nature of God’s
providential actions in the world and the space for human freedom. For a review of the debate,
see Andreas J. Beck, God, Creation, and Providence in Post-Reformation Reformed
Critique and Erudition in the Biblioth;ques of Jean Le Clerc 153
nent thinkers, from Gassendi to Descartes, Malebranche and others. They either
offered tentative solutions or simply indicated that they were aware of the question.
17 In Bayle’s view, such a problem represented the ultimate stepping stone for
a reconciliation of reason and religion, and the only acceptable solution, from a
Christian point of view, was to submit reason to revelation and accept with faith
the message of Scripture.18 The realm of the divine and that of the rational were
thus separated. Bayle’s reflection was particularly shocking because he had stated,
although expressly denying his adherence to it,19 that the Manichean position was,
from a purely rational point of view, very sound.20 Manicheans believed that good
and evil should be attributed to two distinct principles, one good and one evil.21 In
this way, evil had its own author as did good, and none of the attributes ascribed
to the two principles would be mistakenly assigned to the other.
In 1699, two years after having seen Bayle’s Dictionaire, Le Clerc reacted to this
in Parrhasiana, setting up an imaginary dialogue on the problem of evil between
a Manichean and an Origenist. Le Clerc stressed the determinism of the Manichean
position, in that the evil principle led human beings necessarily to vice and
God’s punishment. He pleaded instead for human freedom. Unsurprisingly, the
Origenist, who held Le Clerc’s position, won the argument by emphasizing the
responsibility of man and his freedom to act morally or immorally. Moral evil was
understood to be caused by human choices, and physical evil, too, depended on
the responsibility of human beings, because it was regarded by him (or better, by
the Origenist) as a consequence of or punishment for moral evil.22 As in the case
set out by Jacquelot, God had given freedom to man to allow for virtuous moral
behaviour that would later be rewarded: “S’il ne l’emp;che pas, quoi qu’il le voie,
& qu’il puisse nous retenir dans n;tre devoir; c’est qu’il nous a fait libres, pour
donner lieu ; la Vertu & au Vice, au bl;me & ; la lo;ange, ; la recompense & aux
peines.”23 Bayle did not let these remarks go unchallenged; he replied to Le Clerc’s
Theology, in: Ulrich L. Lehner/Richard A. Muller/A. Gregg Roeber (eds.), The Oxford
Handbook of Early Modern Theology, 1600–1800, Oxford 2016, 195–212.
17 Kors, ibid. 233. 238–241.
18 Bayle, Art. Pauliciens (n. 13) 758 f. note F. Thus Bayle’s opponents (among whom we will
find Le Clerc) considered his view as a threat to the rationality of revelation, whereas
others interpreted it as proposing a form of scepticism: Kors, ibid. 243 f.
19 Bayle, Art. Manich;ens, in: id., Dictionaire (n. 13) 527 note B.
20 Ibid. 529–532 note D.
21 Ibid.
22 Jean Le Clerc, Parrhasiana, ou Pens;es diverses sur des Mati;res de Critique, d’Histoire, de
Morale, et de Politique. Avec la D;fense de divers Ouvrages de Mr. L. C., vol. 1, Amsterdam
1699, 307 f.
23 Ibid. 306. Further arguments were also added by Le Clerc in support of his Origenian position,
stating the inconsistency of this-worldly physical evil and of vicious actions when
compared to eternity, or his opinion that this relatively small evil is in reality like a bit154
Andrea Bianchi
arguments in the second edition of his Dictionaire, under “Origene”. Here he restated
his initial points to show what, in his view, rational aporias were contained
in the libertarian explanation of evil proposed by Le Clerc.24
In the remainder of this article, I will review the development of this debate,
although not in its entirety because of my focus on a few specific points of natural
philosophy. The ensuing debate from Bayle’s Dictionaire articles and Le Clerc’s
reply in Parrhasiana, as well as other exchanges that followed – for Le Clerc especially
in the Biblioth;que choisie – attracted a large audience.25 At this point, it is
crucial to stress that Cudworth’s influence on Le Clerc’s arguments must be considered
as instrumental to the ongoing debate with Bayle on the problem of evil.26
Interconnected with this debate was another on the existence of God and, generally,
on the existence of an immaterial reality that transcends the visible matter of
this world. The rational solution to the problem of evil proposed by Bayle – the
Manichean one – was not acceptable to the usual Christian understanding of the
divine principle, nor was the resort to a purely ‘naturalistic’ explanation of evil as
the by-product of natural laws independent of God. Such an option would ultimately
make God superfluous and thus favour atheism and materialism. In this
sense, Cudworth found a specific place in Le Clerc’s argumentation, especially
on the question of the existence of God. This question was considered by the two
authors in line with the overall philosophical background of their positions, with
Le Clerc countering and Bayle favouring atheism.
For Le Clerc, the problem with atheism was not primarily religious. He certainly
did not wish society at large to be atheistic, but neither did he condone
the use of any violence in the name of religion.27 God alone would punish or
reward every human being according to their own choices in life.28 But Le Clerc
ter medicine. He also paved the way for the possibility of a final apokatastasis, were God
repairs all damage sustained in the world for eternity and where his choice of allowing a
little time (compared to eternity) before acting in this way, seems more than justified. The
fundamental point remains, however, that human beings and not God are the cause of
their evils: ibid. 309–312.
24 Le Clerc replied directly to the second edition of Bayle’s Dictionaire, but I was able to review
only the first and the fifth edition. Bayle, Art. Origene, in: Pierre des Maizeaux (ed.),
Dictionaire historique et critique, par Pierre Bayle, Cinquieme edition, revue, corrig;e, et
augment;e, vol. 3, various locations 1740, 542 f. note E.
25 Kors, Naturalism (n. 15) 246.
26 See for example the preface of the Eloge Historique de feu Mr. Jean Le Clerc composed by
Jean Barbeyrac (1674–1744), published as Appendice C in: Jean Le Clerc, Epistolario, vol. 4,
1719–1732, ed. by Mario Sina/Maria Grazia Zaccone Sina, Florence 1997, 467–501. See
Kors, ibid. 256.
27 Jean Le Clerc, De l’incredulit;, o; l’on examine les motifs & les raisons g;nerales qui
portent les incredules ; rejetter la religion chr;tienne. Avec deux lettres o; l’on en prouve
directement la verit;, Amsterdam 1696, 154–156.
28 Ibid. 220–222.
Critique and Erudition in the Biblioth;ques of Jean Le Clerc 155
saw atheism (and a purely materialistic world) as indissolubly interconnected to
a deterministic-mechanistic worldview and consequently preventing any possible
human freedom and personal responsibility.29 This would ultimately result in an
immoral or amoral society.30 Whereas Bayle had no problem with the idea that an
atheist could be living a morally sound life, perhaps even more moral than that
of an orthodox Christian, Le Clerc could not accept this, as we have just seen.31
Cudworth’s arguments as adopted by Le Clerc must therefore be viewed as an attempt
to restore a healthy relationship between God and his creation and recover
a spiritual order within matter. Such a framework ultimately had the capacity to
allow for human freedom and thus provide a foundation for the possibility for
moral behaviour. This appropriation of Cudworth’s thought does seem to respect
Cudworth’s intention in his Origenian libertarian framework, which could not be
supported by a purely mechanistic, materialistic and atheistic understanding of
the world, even if the difficulties posed by the problem of evil seemed to point in
that direction.32 In other words, Cudworth’s ideas were to lay the foundation for
an idea of libertarian freedom and human responsibility of an Origenian kind
(explicitly in Cudworth),33 which could be held firmly when scholars’ understand-
29 Jean Le Clerc, Biblioth;que choisie, vol. 2 (1703) Art. 1, 68.
30 Ibid. vol. 9 (1706) Art. 3, 170 f.
31 Pierre Bayle, Pens;es diverses, Ecrites ; un Docteur de Sorbonne, a l’occasion de la Com;te
qui parut au mois de Decembre 1680, 2 vols., Rotterdam 1683, vol. 1, 392–397; vol. 2, 430–
432. See also Jonathan I. Israel, Radical Enlightenment. Philosophy and the Making of
Modernity, 1650–1750, Oxford 2001, 331–341.
32 Douglas Hedley, Cudworth on Freedom. Theology, Ethical Obligation and the Limits of
Mechanism, in: Alfons F;rst/Christian Hengstermann (eds.), Die Cambridge Origenists.
George Rusts Letter of Resolution Concerning Origen and the Chief of His Opinions
(Adamantiana 4), M;nster 2013, 47–58, 54: “Cudworth’s problem is as following: If the
realm of nature is exclusively a domain of mechanical explanations, how can we account
for human behaviour? Where is the axiological dimension of the world? If human beings
are merely the products of efficient causation and cannot effect right or wrong actions,
wherefore punishment?” And ibid. 58: “Here we find the deep impression of Origen amidst
a remarkable attempt to engage the leading mechanical philosophers of the age over the
question of freedom in the context of the scientific revolution.”
33 Regarding Cudworth’s Origenism, see Douglas Hedley, Sacrifice Imagined. Violence,
Atonement, and the Sacred, New York 2011, 114–119; Christian Hengstermann, George
Rusts Letter of Resolution Concerning Origen and the Chief of His Opinions. Manifest eines
neuzeitlichen Origenismus, in: F;rst/Hengstermann, Cambridge Origenists (n. 32)
11–45, 17–19. That Le Clerc’s conception of freedom is Origenian is far less clear. The attachment
of the Arminian to the work of Origen was more general and ambivalent and
seems to suggest that Le Clerc did not have a more particular sympathy for Origen than
for any other author, modern or ancient, among those whom he found to be close to his
own ideas. See Mario Sina, Origenismo e anti-agostinismo in Jean Le Clerc diffusore della
cultura inglese, in: Marialuisa Baldi (ed.), “Mind senior to the world”. Stoicismo e origenismo
nella filosofia platonica del Seicento inglese, Milan 1996, 293–312.
156 Andrea Bianchi
ing of nature was changing drastically.34 The problem of evil and the related problems
of materialism and atheism had thus to be overcome at different levels, not
only philosophically-theologically, but also at the level of natural philosophy. It is
to this specific layer of the debate that I will turn in the following sections.
Scholarship has often failed to pay adequate attention to the natural scientific
debate in which both Le Clerc and Cudworth were immersed, although much more
attention has been paid to the more theological-philosophical debate, that is, to
Cudworth’s presence in the Biblioth;que choisie as instrumental in countering the
spread of materialism and atheism in seventeenth-century Europe.35 This stress on
the theological-philosophical implications of Cudworth’s thought is surely justified
and reflects the nature and primary scope of Le Clerc’s review of Cudworth’s
work. Le Clerc stressed the potentially apologetic nature of Cudworth’s thought
in his autobiographical Joannis Clerici vita et opera (1711), where he affirmed, with
reference to his presentation of Cudworth: “Cum nemo Atheorum argumenta
melius exposuisset ac refutasset, nec firmiora Religionis fundamenta posuisset.”36
However, a large proportion of Le Clerc’s references to Cudworth also included
detailed discussions on how to integrate biological discoveries with philosophy
and theology. While atheism was certainly a matter of great concern to both Le
Clerc and Cudworth, natural science also weighed heavily in their arguments, and
their natural philosophy was not only concerned with a generalized attempt to
34 In this sense, Cudworth’s work must also be understood as an attempt to elaborate on Cartesian
philosophy, recovering the spiritual dimension of a mechanistic universe: Colie,
Light and Enlightenment (n. 9) 56 f.
35 See Colie, ibid. 117–144; Manlio Iofrida, Note sul pensiero teologico e filosofico di Jean
Leclerc, in: ASNSP.L III/9.4 (1979) 1497–1524; Justin E. H. Smith/Pauline Phemister,
Leibniz and the Cambridge Platonists, in: Pauline Phemister/Stuart Brown (eds.), Leibniz
and the English-Speaking World, Dordrecht 2007, 95–110; Kors, Naturalism (n. 15)
272–288; John W. Yolton, Thinking Matter. Materialism in Eighteenth-Century Britain,
Minneapolis MN 1983, 3–12; Rosa, Ralph Cudworth (n. 8) 147–160; Luisa Simonutti,
Bayle and Le Clerc as Readers of Cudworth. Aspects of the Debate on Plastic Nature in
the Dutch Learned Journals, in: Geschiedenis van de Wijsbegeerte in Nederland 4 (1993)
147–165; Jonathan I. Israel, Enlightenment Contested. Philosophy, Modernity, and the
Emancipation of Man 1670–1752, Oxford 2006, 444–457; Insa Kringler, Die gerettete
Welt. Zur Rezeption des Cambridger Platonismus in der europ;ischen Aufkl;rung des
18. Jahrhunderts, Berlin 2013, 88–118.
36 Jean Le Clerc, Joannis Clerici … Vita et opera ad annum MDCCXI. Amici ejus opusculum,
philosophicis Clerici operibus subjiciendum, Amsterdam 1711, 128. See also a letter
that Le Clerc sent to John Sharp on 3rd March 1705, speaking about his work on Cudworth
in Biblioth;que choisie, Epistolario, vol. 2 (n. 4), Letter 389, 540–542, 541: “Igitur inter libros
omnis generis, de quibus illic ego, subinde eos misero, ex quibus utilissimae possint
hauriri doctrinae; quas etiam libentius ab aliis, me interprete, audiunt; quam si ipse eas
meo nomine proferrem. Cudworthum omnes mirantur, praeter paucos quosdam Philosophiae
non sanae addictos; quibus dolet tam gravibus argumentis oppugnari Athe;smum,
et defendi Religionem.”
Critique and Erudition in the Biblioth;ques of Jean Le Clerc 157
confute mechanism.37 Thus, a review of the debate on nature provides a more balanced
and complete picture of the career of Cambridge Platonism in early modern
Europe, at least in literary journals.38 This is not to diminish the theological
and philosophical implications connected with the debate, but to review carefully
many of the related natural-philosophical aspects that have been neglected. Once
again, such an analysis is very relevant to show how, in the specific discussion of
natural philosophy, Le Clerc’s critical engagement with Cudworth provided a way
to clear the path for Origen’s libertarian freedom in Europe. As Douglas Hedley
has affirmed, in Cudworth, interest in natural philosophy “was closely linked to a
concern with the question of freedom and responsibility”.39
A recovery of the natural scientific debate that was initiated by Cudworth, as
presented by Le Clerc, allows us to gain a more holistic insight into the successful
reception of Cudworth’s thought in Continental Europe. This success might
be only partially explained by his arguments against atheism and mechanism;
its natural scientific side suggests a further plausible explanation, which we will
explore in this article. Interest in Cudworth was far reaching. His name was mentioned
as far away as Wallachia,40 and his theory of “plastic nature”, which we shall
examine below, may have influenced the thought of Gian Battista Vico in Naples.41
Also, the spread of Cudworth’s ideas on the Continent through the Biblioth;que
37 Le Clerc’s presentation of Cudworth is often associated with the ensuing heated dispute on
divine providence and goodness, initially between Le Clerc and Pierre Bayle but later also
between Leibniz and the Arminian Samuel Clarke (1675–1729). This aspect of the question,
already the subject of scholarly discussion, is beyond the scope of the present article. For
detailed studies, see Colie, Light and Enlightenment (n. 9); Rosa, Ralph Cudworth (n. 8);
Kors, Naturalism (n. 15).
38 As we shall see, Cudworth’s theory was discussed not only in Le Clerc’s journals, but also,
as an effect of the dispute with Bayle, in other European journals. For an overview of
this discussion, see Kors, ibid. 257–264. 279–281. For an introduction into the debate, see
Hedley, Cudworth on Freedom (n. 32), and Simonutti, Bayle and Le Clerc (n. 35). The
same debate developed beyond the Le Clerc–Bayle controversy, with the later intervention
of such prominent thinkers as Leibniz, the authors of the Jesuit Journal de Tr;voux,
Claude-Fran;ois Alexandre Houtteville and Samuel Clarke.
39 Hedley, ibid. 53.
40 Antoine Epis, secretary of the Vaivode of Wallachia, in a letter of 8th October 1721, alludes
to the fact that the Vaivode had read Cudworth’s excerpts with such close attention as to be
able to point out that Le Clerc’s work had not been completely faithful to Cudworth’s book.
See Le Clerc, Epistolario, vol. 4 (n. 26), Letter 695, 122–125.
41 This thesis is supported by Nicola Badaloni as mentioned by Mario Sina. Badaloni had
contended that Vico’s concept of “forma plastae” had been influenced by Le Clerc’s review
of Cudworth’s “plastic natures” in Biblioth;que choisie. Sina, however, does not agree with
him and sees Vico as influenced more by Renaissance thinking than Le Clerc’s or Dutch
theories. For Sina, Vico would have made it expressly clear if he was in any way “dependent”
on Le Clerc, and such a link would have been confirmed by Le Clerc: Mario Sina,
Vico e Le Clerc. Tra filosofia e filologia, Naples 1978, 82–86.
158 Andrea Bianchi
choisie continued until at least the end of the 18th century. Le Clerc’s excerpts were
even preferred to Cudworth’s original English version.42 The Biblioth;que choisie
was reprinted many times and became recommended reading, referenced (specifically
including Cudworth’s ideas as presented by Le Clerc) by prominent figures
such as Voltaire and the Encyclop;distes.43 Sarah Hutton has affirmed that
Cudworth’s ideas were debated well into the 19th century,44 and a discussion in
1860 referred to Cudworth and Le Clerc (and to Bayle).45
3. „Plastic nature“ and animal generation
From 1673, Le Clerc studied philosophy in Geneva under Jean-Robert Chouet,
learning both the standard traditions of philosophy and the new Cartesian ideas.
As a teacher, Chouet was a Cartesian pioneer.46 On the process of animal generation,
Descartes thought that animals were generated from matter, through a mixing
of the male and female seed in a movement caused by heat.47 Similarly, Chouet
believed that heat was an important factor in the generation of animals, in that
it excited the particles of animal semen and blood.48 In both cases, the process of
the generation of animals was considered to be purely mechanistic and material,
dismissing Aristotelian substantial forms as an ordering faculty. However, dissatisfaction
grew with the Cartesian solution. Particular objections focused on
the specificity of bodily organs, their function and the complexity that could now
by observed through the microscope by famous scientists of the time, such as
Leeuwenhoek, Malpighi, Swammerdam, Hooke and Grew.49 An ordering (and
possibly immaterial) intelligence seemed necessary to account for particular fea-
42 Kors, Naturalism (n. 15) 272.
43 Rosa, Ralph Cudworth (n. 8) 156; Kors, ibid.; Paul Janet, Essai sur le m;diateur plastique
de Cudworth, Paris 1860, 5.
44 Ralph Cudworth, A Treatise Concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality, with A Treatise
of Freewill, ed. by Sarah Hutton, Cambridge 1996, x.
45 See Janet, Essai (n. 43).
46 On Chouet’s Cartesian teaching, see Mario Sina, Con Jean Le Clerc alla Scuola Cartesiana,
in: id., Studi su John Locke e su altri pensatori cristiani agli albori del secolo dei lumi,
Milan 2015, 405–419.
47 Vincent Aucante, Descartes’s Experimental Method and the Generation of Animals, in:
Justin E. H. Smith (ed.), The Problem of Animal Generation in Early Modern Philosophy,
Cambridge 2006, 67–70.
48 Jean-Robert Chouet, Syntagma Physicum, ed. by Elena Rapetti, in: Mario Sina/Marco
Ballardin/Elena Rapetti (eds.), Jean-Robert Chouet. Corsi di Filosofia, vol. 2, Florence
2010, 9–274, 233.
49 Andrew Pyle, Malebranche on Animal Generation. Preexistence and the Microscope, in:
Smith, Animal Generation (n. 47) 194–214, 201.
Critique and Erudition in the Biblioth;ques of Jean Le Clerc 159
tures of organs.50 Philosophically, some attempts were made in another direction,
abandoning Descartes’s epigenetic doctrine. Malebranche, for example, believed
in preformism: animal generation brought forth only that which pre-existed, that
is, animals existed from a first creation and each animal contained in itself future
animals in miniature.51 Similarly, Leibniz maintained that animal birth consisted
only in an addition of matter to an already fully formed and organized body.52
Between 1703 and 1706, Le Clerc published a number of carefully selected excerpts
from Cudworth’s True Intellectual System (originally published in 1678),
mostly following the structure of Cudworth’s book and adding commentaries to
it. Starting with the third article in the first volume of his Biblioth;que choisie,53
he dedicated two articles to Cudworth’s review of ancient philosophers’ conceptions
of matter. In a third article, Le Clerc began to set out Cudworth’s crucial
concept of “plastic nature”: “a Subordinate Instrument of Divine Providence, in
the Orderly Disposal of Matter; but yet so as not without a Higher Providence
presiding over it, for as much as this Plastic Nature, cannot act electively or with
Discretion.”54 Thus plastic nature was a natural instrumental faculty that presided
over the regularity and harmony of the world without being itself the origin of it
and without self-consciousness.55 It could also be understood as a “simple”, incorporeal,
vital energy, similar to a Platonic anima mundi, that unconsciously gives
life to the world.56 Thus, God is not directly involved in creating every single part
of the world, but once he has instructed plastic nature, as one would a servant,
he lets it act on its own, keeps watch on it and supplements that which is eventually
lacking.57 For Le Clerc’s Cudworth, there are two alternatives to this plastic
50 One could argue that mechanism does not necessarily contradict the idea of an intelligently
directed generation, but it seems that Descartes did not give a sufficiently clear
explanation of how such mechanism worked in practice, without returning to some sort of
Aristotelian substantial forms. See also Pyle, ibid. 199 f.
51 Pyle, ibid. 203.
52 Pauline Phemister, The Soul of Seeds, in: Adrian Nita (ed.), Leibniz’s Metaphysics and
Adoption of Substantial Forms. Between Continuity and Transformation, Dordrecht 2015,
125–141, 131.
53 The total number of articles directly dedicated to the True Intellectual System of the Universe
(or to its defence) is 13, all in Biblioth;que choisie: vol. 1 (1703) Art. 3; vol. 2 (1703)
Art. 1 and 2; vol. 3 (1704) Art. 1; vol. 5 (1705) Art. 2 and 4; vol. 6 (1705) Art. 7; vol. 7 (1705)
Art. 1; vol. 8 (1706) Art. 1 and 2; vol. 9 (1706) Art. 1, 2 and 13. Related articles are found also
in vol. 6 (1705) Art. 6; vol. 7 (1705) Art. 7 and 8; vol. 9 (1706) Art. 3; vol. 10 (1706) Art. 8.
54 Ralph Cudworth, The True Intellectual System of the Universe. The First Part: wherein all
the Reason and Philosophy of Atheism is Confuted: and its Impossibility Demonstrated,
London 1678, 178.
55 Ibid. 179.
56 Ibid. 180.
57 Jean Le Clerc, Biblioth;que choisie, vol. 2 (1703) Art. 2, 84. The “vitalist” undertone in this
concept of “plastic nature” is evident and shared by others in Cudworth’s circle and be160
Andrea Bianchi
nature, both of them untenable. On the one hand, there is the supposition that
the world is maintained by a purely mechanical and thus fortuitous process; on
the other, that God interacts with the world in the formation of “chaque mouche,
chaque mite, chaque ciron & chaque insect”.58 He contrasts a purely mechanistic
world view with that of an admiring stance towards nature, in which “tous les
membres renferment tant d’art, que Galien admiroit l’artifice qu’il voyoit dans un
pied de mouche, & qu’il auroit encore bien plus admir;, s’il avoit eu l’usage du
microscope”.59 Also, a purely mechanistic nature did not provide a basic explanation
for all the natural phenomena that we commonly see:
“Non seulement on ne sauroit concevoir que l’infinie r;gularit;, qui est dans tout l’Univers,
r;sulte constamment du simple mouvement de la matiere; mais il y a encore plusieurs
ph;nomenes particuliers, qui passent le pouvoir du mouvement m;chanique; comme la
respiration des animaux, & il y en a m;me, qui sont contraires ; ses loix, comme la distance
du pole de l’Equateur de celui de l’Ecliptique.”60
Thus, through the concept of plastic nature, a rational explanation of natural phenomena
was secured. At the same time, the pitfall of a purely mechanical nature
that renders God merely a spectator, and thus superfluous, was avoided.61 The
alternative, that conceived of God as the direct author and sustaining force of
every single natural part and process, was for Le Clerc’s Cudworth equally untenable,
given that a perfect being would not cause any imperfection in his creation,
despite such imperfections being evident. In this case, nature would also be totally
passive:
“Que si l’on dit que Dieu est l’auteur imm;diat de tout, c’est faire la Providence embarrass;e,
pleine de soins & de distractions; & par consequent en rendre la cr;ance plus difficile qu’elle
n’est & donner de l’avantage aux Ath;es. … Il ne paro;t pas conforme ; la Raison que la
Nature, consider;e comme quelque chose de distinct de la Divinit;, ne fasse rien de tout,
Dieu faisant toutes choses imm;diatement & miraculeusement; d’o; il s’ensuit que tout se
fait par force, ou par artifice seulement & rien par un principe interne.”62
yond. Even Cudworth’s colleague at Cambridge, Henry More, had conceived of something
similar, and so had Anne Conway. See Alister E. McGrath, A Scientific Theology, London
2006, 101 f. In the same way, Le Clerc had also presented Nehemiah Grew’s vitalism as
in his Cosmologia Sacra in vol. 1 (Art. 6) and vol. 2 (Art. 13) of his Biblioth;que choisie and
defended it from the critique of Bayle, alongside Cudworth’s work, for example in vol. 5
(Art. 4). A consideration of Grew’s peculiarities would be beyond the scope of the present
study.
58 Le Clerc, ibid. vol. 2 (1703) Art. 2, 79.
59 Ibid. 79 f.
60 Ibid. 80 f.
61 Ibid. 81.
62 Ibid. 82 f.
Critique and Erudition in the Biblioth;ques of Jean Le Clerc 161
Notable in the previous quotation is the possible implicit critique of Malebranchian
occasionalism. The explanation that refers to God as the sole material author
of the beauty and complexity of the world was, for Le Clerc, not only lacking in
rationality, but more importantly posed a serious threat to the nature of God as
a perfect being. For Le Clerc’s Cudworth, then, neither alternative could be accepted
as both led towards atheism. Plastic nature, as the mediator between God
and the world, was a suitable explanatory tool for Le Clerc to counter mechanism
and atheism by offering an alternative explanation of the generation of animals.
After these first three articles, Le Clerc published another excerpt from Cudworth
in the third tome of his Biblioth;que choisie, in 1704, handling various questions,
among which was the crucial point of the innatism of the idea of God.
Bayle, however, chose to confront Le Clerc’s Cudworth precisely on the concept of
“plastic nature”. He sought to show the counter-productive consequences of such
a theory, using the generation of animals as one of the crucial stepping stones. For
Bayle, blind (because unconscious of its own operation) plastic nature favoured,
rather than countered, atheism. For him, the concept was a revival of scholastic
“substantial forms” and ascribed a certain power to matter, independent from
God:
“Rien n’est plus embarassant pour les ath;es que de se trouver reduits ; donner la formation
des animaux, ; une cause qui n’ait point l’id;e de ce qu’elle fait, & qui execute regulierement
un plan sans savoir les loix qu’elle execute. … si Dieu a pu donner une semblable vertu
plastique, c’est une marque qu’il ne repugne point ; la nature des choses qu’il y ait de tels
agens, ils peuvent donc exister d’eux-m;mes, conclura-t-on.”63
If matter entails some sort of “inner power”, then, God, according to Bayle, is
superfluous in the process and can be discarded. For Bayle, the concept of “plastic
nature” to explain the generation of animals suggested atheism, and Cartesian
physics, in which movement is derived ultimately only from God but which ascribes
no intelligence to matter on its own, was still a sounder way to understand
the problem.64
Le Clerc responded promptly in the fourth article of the fifth volume, in 1705,
clarifying the distinction between scholastic substantial forms and plastic nature,
the latter not being intrinsically united to matter, as are substantial forms, but only
instrumental to its generation and maintenance.65 In this sense, according to Le
Clerc, Cudworth’s theory was still very Cartesian, in that plastic nature is neither
63 Pierre Bayle, Continuation des Pens;es Diverses, Ecrites ; un Docteur de Sorbonne, ;
l’occasion de la Comete qui parut au mois de Decembre 1680. Ou Reponse ; plusieurs
dificultez que Monsieur *** a propos;es ; l’Auteur, vol. 1, Rotterdam 1705, 91.
64 Ibid.
65 Jean Le Clerc, Biblioth;que choisie, vol. 5 (1705) Art. 4, 290 f.
162 Andrea Bianchi
intelligent in itself nor conducts any sort of intelligence to matter. Matter is, as in
Descartes, still deprived of intelligence. In Le Clerc’s reply then, Cudworth’s theory
is still favourable to theism in Baylian terms, as it does not posit intelligence as
contained in matter itself. Yet Cudworth’s plastic nature, as in Le Clerc, includes
a finalism that goes beyond Cartesian philosophy, as it ascribes instrumental but
at the same time somehow intelligent/organized working (without self-consciousness
and without its own intelligence) to an immaterial plastic nature which is
“other” in regard to God and to matter.66 In Bayle’s subsequent response, however,
he considered the nexus of the problem to be untouched: if plastic nature is understood
as a “moral instrument”, that is, not a purely passive faculty, it is impossible
to conceive of it as working intelligently, but without any intelligence.67 A
faculty which is active but lacking intelligence cannot produce the regular world
we see.68 Conversely, if such a faculty does have some self-organising capacity and
intelligence of its own, then nothing stops a “Stratonist”69 from making matter
self-sufficient and God superfluous.70 Nonetheless, Cudworth’s plastic nature as
presented by Le Clerc is a simple, passive “physical instrument”, and that leads to
the further criticism, that Cudworth’s theory is superfluous. Already Cartesian
philosophy, as he sees it, had seen nature as a passive instrument: adding another
entity (plastic nature) for the same task would be unnecessary.71 Once again, Le
Clerc replied, discussing the salient point of the possibility of an active immaterial
entity producing a regular work but being unconscious of it. His solution to
the problem was simple: for him, such a plastic nature is possible because to God
everything is possible. It is in the power of God to ascribe such limited capability
(intelligent working – but unconscious of itself) to an immaterial entity, interfering
when he sees fit, a concept resembling that of the vegetative soul in Chouet’s
philosophical teaching, as we shall see below.72 For him, this is well-exemplified in
the way we interact with animals:
66 Ibid. 292 f.
67 Henry Basnage, Histoire des Ouvrages des Savans, par Monsr. B*** Docteur en Droit, Rotterdam
August 1704, Art. 7, 386 f.
68 Ibid. 389.
69 The thought of Strato of Lampsacus, philosopher from the 3rd century BCE, known in the
17th century for his views on ascribing divine power to matter, was often instrumental to
attacking Spinoza’s philosophy, whose ideas resembled for many (for Cudworth, for example)
those of the ancient Greek philosopher. See Israel, Enlightenment Contested (n. 35)
446 f.
70 Basnage, Histoire, Art. 7, 390.
71 Ibid. 387 f. 390 f.
72 Jean Le Clerc, Biblioth;que choisie, vol. 6 (1705) Art. 7, 424 f.; Chouet, Syntagma Physicum
232.
Critique and Erudition in the Biblioth;ques of Jean Le Clerc 163
“Je con;ois aussi facilement qu’une Nature Plastique agit r;gulierement par elle m;me,
sous les ordres n;anmoins de Dieu, qui intervient, comme il lui plait & quand il lui plait;
que je con;ois que les B;tes font diverses choses r;gulierement, lors que les hommes les
conduisent, quoi qu’elles ne s;chent pas ce qu’elles font, ni pourquoi.”73
Once again, this intelligence does not necessarily need to be contained in the
instrument itself for it to be used successfully to maintain the regularity of the
world:
“On ne peut pas dire qu’un b;timent a ;t; fait, sans art; parce que non seulement les marteaux,
les regles, les ;quierres, les compas, les haches, les scies, mais encore les bras des
hommes, qui se sont servis des ces outils, sont des choses destitu;es d’intelligence.”74
There were further exchanges between Le Clerc and Bayle on the theory of plastic
nature and some of the points addressed will be discussed below. Interestingly, Le
Clerc applied Cudworth’s theory to the discussion of the generation of animals in
the same year that he discussed scientific accounts of the Acad;mie Royale des
Sciences, confuting alternative explanations of the generation of animals by contemporary
scientists (in the article, Denis Dodart) or philosophers, like Descartes,
Leibniz and Malebranche and reiterating the key function of plastic nature. In his
view, instead of considering animals (and plants) as created once and for all by
God, enveloped in each other, the tenet of preformism, Cudworth’s plastic nature
offered a more viable epigenetic alternative, and the generation of animals was a
useful example of how to overcome the mechanist Cartesian impasse on the matter.
75 Animals are not aware of their generation, neither do they know why they do
it, so that, for Le Clerc, a plastic nature is needed to preside over their generation:
“On ne peut pas non plus douter, qu’il n’y ait des Etres, qui agissent r;gulierement &
to;jours de la m;me maniere; sans s’;lever n;anmoins jusqu’aux id;es d’ordre & de r;gularit;.
C’est ainsi que les B;tes s’appliquent ; la propagation de leurs Especes, & qu’elles ont soin
de leurs petits, pendant quelque tems, avec beaucoup de r;gularit; & d’ordre; sans savoir
n;anmoins qu’elles agissent r;gulierement, & sans avoir aucune id;e du dessein de celui qui
les a faites. La cause immaterielle de l’organisation des Animaux, & des Plantes pourroit ;tre
de cet ordre, & agir n;cessairement d’une certaine fa;on sans savoir pourquoi, ni comment;
& sans pouvoir s’;loigner d’une certaine m;thode, qu’elle suit to;jours, en chaque espece.”76
73 Le Clerc, ibid. 425.
74 Ibid. vol. 5 (1705) Art. 4, 299.
75 Ibid. vol. 7 (1705) Art. 7, 268. 278.
76 Ibid. 274.
164 Andrea Bianchi
In the end, Le Clerc admitted that Cudworth’s theory is an hypoth;se, and that
Scripture, his principal source of truth alongside “nature”, was unclear about it.77
However, given his prolonged effort to defend it, we might well think that Cudworth’s
theory represented for Le Clerc a very “reasonable hypothesis”. In any
case, Bayle did not miss the opportunity of renewing his attack on Cudworth’s
theory, reiterating the same difficulties and favouring, in matters of animal generation,
the Malebranchian hypothesis.78
4. Feeling and thinking in animals
To speak of plastic nature as a single and unified force of nature would do only
partial justice to Cudworth’s theory. In his own terms, besides a single plastic
nature, we find also individual plastic natures in “particular animals”. This individual
plastic nature is part of the “soul” of individual beings, presiding over
the formation of their bodies with “the Contribution of certain other Causes not
excluded”.79 This individual aspect of plastic nature is different from the sentient
life of animals; it is rather more like an instinctive life devoid of self-perception,80
closer to an Aristotelian notion of vegetative soul:
“Granted that what moves Matter Vitally, must needs do it by Some Energy of its own, distinct
from Local Motion; but that there may be a simple Vital Energy, without that Duplicity
which is in Synaesthesis, or clear and express Consciousness. Nevertheless that the Energy
of Nature might be called a certain Drowsie, Unawakened, or Astonish’d Cogitation.”81
Le Clerc made the reader aware that Cudworth’s affirmation that an individual
plastic nature somehow thinks was rather a generous use of the term, that in reality
entails the same meaning as lives.82 He confirmed in a later article that plastic
nature must be considered as parallel to a traditional vegetative soul and that
nothing was asserted here that was explicitly rejected by Descartes. He specified
that, “c’est ; peu pr;s ; quoi en revient l’id;e confuse des Ames V;getatives des
Plantes & des Animaux, que toute l’Ecole a soutenues, & que Descartes n’a jamais
bien p; r;futer”.83 As we have previously argued, the notion of the “vegetative
77 Ibid. 280.
78 Pierre Bayle, Reponse aux questions d’un provincial, vol. 3, Rotterdam 1706, 1294.
79 Cudworth, True Intellectual System 180.
80 Ibid. 179 f.
81 Ibid. 180.
82 Le Clerc, Biblioth;que choisie, vol. 2 (1703) Art. 2, 107.
83 Ibid., vol. 6 (1705) Art. 7, 424 f.
Critique and Erudition in the Biblioth;ques of Jean Le Clerc 165
soul” suggests the influence of Chouet’s blend of Aristotelian and Cartesian philosophical
teaching and thus his “filtered” Cartesianism.
For Le Clerc, the individual plastic natures of animals were not their sole living
faculties. He affirmed that animals have souls that go functionally beyond
plastic nature, tacitly accepting the common Aristotelian tripartition of the soul
into vegetative, sensitive and rational, with plants having only the first, animals
having only the first two, and the rational part reserved for man.84 This is true
also for Cudworth, who, in Le Clerc’s excerpts, used the concept “Vie Animale”
as proof that matter alone cannot explain its existence, and therefore requires a
principle (in this case, God) responsible for its creation.85 This is something that
goes beyond the mere generation and material organisation of matter by plastic
nature, to include a broader notion of life and an immaterial sentient principle in
animals, in explicit opposition to Descartes.86 Le Clerc, once again, clearly distinguished
an individual plastic nature from the sensitive soul of animals, the former
being inferior to the latter due to its unconsciousness.87
Bayle, however, in attempting a confutation of plastic nature in response to Le
Clerc’s clarification on the subject, equated the vegetative plastic nature in animals’
souls with their entire living faculty. He drew the conclusion that, if there
exist individual plastic natures that direct animals, then animals must have no
feelings and self-consciousness, since plastic nature, by definition, lacks these attributes.
Therefore it must be concluded that if the theory of individual plastic nature
is applied to animal life, then animals are necessarily only machines, which,
in the view of both Bayle and Le Clerc, seemed untenable.88 Initially, Le Clerc did
not fall into this trap, again distinguishing plastic nature from the sentient life of
animals.89 However, when engaging with Bayle’s argument by way of practical examples
from the animal kingdom, his argumentation did not counter Bayle’s objection
fully but rather reinforced Bayle’s view of plastic natures in animals. Even
though animals are endowed with sentient souls, for Le Clerc they act out of an
instinctive nature, which he equated functionally with Cudworth’s plastic nature:
“Je suppose, avant toutes choses, que les B;tes ne sont point des Machines, mais qu’elles
ont un principe interieur de mouvement, par lequel elles se remuent. Cela ;tant suppos;,
je demande que l’on s’imagine une paire d’Oiseaux, ou un M;le & une Femelle qui soient
en ;tat d’avoir des petits, & qui en aient, comme on sait qu’ils en ont. Je demande apr;s
84 As mentioned before, this is also clear from his own philosophical training by Chouet, as
in Chouet, Syntagma Physicum 231 f.
85 Le Clerc, Biblioth;que choisie, vol. 7 (1705) Art. 1, 48.
86 Ibid. 47. 52. 56.
87 Ibid. vol. 2 (1703) Art. 2, 105.
88 Bayle, Reponse, vol. 3, 1258 f.
89 Le Clerc, Biblioth;que choisie, vol. 9 (1706) Art. 10, 366.
166 Andrea Bianchi
cela, qu’on me dise s’ils se conduisent par principe de connoissance, en ce qu’ils font; ou
s’ils le font sans raisonnement, & par Instinct, comme on parle dans I’Ecole; c’est ; dire, par
un principe aveugle, mais qui les fasse agir n;cessairement, en un certain ordre, qu’il ne
fait pas lui m;me. Si l’on accorde l’lnstinct, je ne vois pas pourquoi l’on nieroit les Natures
Plastiques.”90
Thus, Le Clerc seemed to rule out the possibility that animals have the capacity
knowingly to perform actions in an orderly and regular manner. In fact, if animals
had self-consciousness of what they were doing, they would be more rational than
human beings themselves!91 The comparison is striking:
“[About the actions performed by birds], qu’ils font sans instruction, & sans exercice &
qu’ils executent parfaitement bien, du premier coup & sans y jamais manquer; aulieu que
les hommes ne font rien que par instruction, qu’ils n’apprennent rien, sans un long tems,
& sans l’exercer beaucoup, apr;s quoi ils font souvent mal ce qu’ils ont apris avec bien de
la peine.”92
The perfection of animals in day-to-day execution and human imperfection in
learned tasks would seem prima facie a good argument in favour of the full and
even higher rationality of animals, something that for Le Clerc was simply absurd
and that required the re-introduction of the concept of plastic nature. This forced
Le Clerc to reconsider whether animals are mainly directed by blind instinct and
plastic nature, and, contrary to human beings, are unable to act freely.93 In Le
Clerc’s Cudworth, then, and as a result of the debate with Bayle, rationality is
taken away from animals and returned to God, who instructs plastic nature how
to do a number of tasks, without self-consciousness and knowledge of its own
functioning.94 Yet this was not to say that animals are pure machines, totally directed
by plastic nature and instinct, as Le Clerc noted that animals do have some
feeling and self-consciousness, but this was not discussed further nor integrated
into the theory of plastic nature.95 This failure to explain the matter fully left room
for Bayle to renew criticism on this point, as he once again considered animals
from the perspective of a purely mechanic plastic nature, reverting simultaneously
to Cartesian animal-machines and occult qualities.96
90 Ibid. 371 f.
91 Ibid. 372.
92 Ibid. 372 f.
93 Ibid. 377 f.
94 Ibid. 380 f.
95 Ibid. 382.
96 Pierre Bayle, Reponse pour Mr. Bayle a Mr. Le Clerc, au sujet du 3. & du 13. Articles du
9. Tome de la Biblioth;que choisie, in: id., Reponse aux questions d’un provincial, vol. 4,
Rotterdam 1707, 33 f.; id., Reponse, vol. 3, 1259.
Critique and Erudition in the Biblioth;ques of Jean Le Clerc 167
The relevance of this discussion between Bayle and Le Clerc becomes fully visible
in its implications. Each side of the dispute on the souls of animals aimed at
reinforcing or weakening a different philosophical tradition. Bayle expressed this
explicitly, when he mentioned his surprise that the debate was lasting so long and
suggested that Cudworth would have not gone as far as Le Clerc in defending his
theory of plastic nature, after receiving his objections:
“Je croi aussi que s’il e;t ;t; au monde lors que le V. tome de la Bibliotheque choisie fut
port; en Angleterre, il e;t ;t; bien surpris qu’on s’interessat ; sa gloire avec si peu de necessit;.
L’observation de Mr. Bayle concernoit autant Thomas d’Aquin, Scot, & tels autres
genies superieurs, que Mr. Cudworth, & que Mr. Grew. Nous n’avons pas ou; dire que ce
dernier s’en soit mis en peine, quoi que Mr. Le Clerc l’y e;t excit; en quelque fa;on. Mr.
Cudworth n’auroit pas eu moins d’indiference pour une objection ; quoi il n’avoit pas plus
de part que presque tout le genre humain, & il e;t soup;onn; sans doute qu’il ne servoit
que de pretexte pour les premieres semences d’une querelle.”97
For Bayle, his confutation of Cudworth’s plastic nature served the ultimate purpose
of showing the weakness of the scholastic tradition, particularly because he
believed that plastic nature and scholastic substantial forms were not really different.
98 As early as 1697, he had discussed this in his Dictionaire historique et
critique, in the entry on “Rorarius”, to which he referred in his discussions with Le
Clerc. There, he admitted the difficulties encountered by Cartesianism in denying
animal souls, while still finding himself unable to accept the Aristotelian dictum
that animals are sentient but not rational, which had pernicious implications for
religion. If, in fact, animals are sentient and not merely machines, they also suffer,
but their suffering is inexplicable if they are not fully rational and capable of
sin, since sin is the cause of suffering. In that sense, pure Cartesianism was still
more useful in preserving some coherence in religion.99 Bayle and Le Clerc, then,
differed in that Bayle considered Cartesianism to be more secure than traditional
scholastic theories on the souls of animals in defending “true faith”. We should
not forget that Bayle, too, had attended Chouet’s philosophy courses in Geneva.100
Yet Bayle also moved away from Cartesianism, in assuming a soul in plants, animals
and human beings, with this soul being uniform in substance and potency,
but its rationality being expressed differently due to their differing organs, which
curtail rational expression in plants and animals.101 Conversely, for Le Clerc, the
traditional tripartite soul is still considered as a sound theory and plastic nature
97 Ibid., vol. 4, 35 f.
98 Ibid. 38; id., Continuation 91.
99 Id., Art. Rorarius, in: id., Dictionaire (n. 24) 956–958 note C.
100 Ibid. 957 main body.
101 Ibid. 961 note D; id., Art. Pereira, in: ibid. 784–787 note E; id., Reponse, vol. 3, 1248 f.
168 Andrea Bianchi
is used as a way to bring traditional philosophy up to date and integrate it with
current scientific knowledge.102
To sum up: neither Le Clerc nor Bayle conceived of animals as pure machines,
but they differed diametrically on how to understand the animal soul, as a result
of the differing philosophical traditions from which they drew their beliefs. Le
Clerc maintained a traditional Aristotelian bipartite soul (sensitive and vegetative
– for animals), while Bayle resorted to a kind of general Cartesian dualism,
although he also saw the soul as one and the same for all living things, with the
expression of their rationality dependant on their differing organic structure. It is
still not clear, however, whether this soul was understood by Le Clerc’s Cudworth
as material or immaterial (material meaning being extended, divisible, impenetrable
– immaterial the converse). This question will be discussed in the next
section. Read as a critique of mechanism, the immateriality of the soul was a
central tenet in Le Clerc’s presentation of Cudworth’s treatise, a point to which
he referred repeatedly in numerous extracts. What is at stake was the necessity
of something beyond pure mechanism and pure matter, that is, of an immaterial
principle, which countered atheism by proving the necessity of a creator God.103
5. The immateriality of the animal soul, or whether or not there is a
paradise for animals
In passages where Le Clerc’s Cudworth deals with the problem of the immateriality
of the souls of animals, the presence of an immaterial living faculty in animals
was not always clearly stated. The biological life of animals was said to be “un pur
accident”,104 although this biological life of animals is not the same as the living
principle of the animal life: the latter is intrinsically an immaterial substance.105
The very notion of an individual plastic nature (by definition immaterial) that is
equated with the vegetative soul in animals, proves that the souls of animals are
immaterial in Cudworth’s sense. Yet, in another place, when speaking about the
indivisibility of the soul – an attribute of immateriality – as one of its essential
principles, Le Clerc’s Cudworth applied this only to God and the human soul.106
Returning to the first extract from Cudworth, Le Clerc had stressed the immateriality
of the soul, radically distinct from matter in its active principle, while
matter is inert.107 He followed Cudworth in affirming that belief in the possibility
102 Le Clerc, Biblioth;que choisie, vol. 6 (1705) Art. 7, 425; vol. 7 (1705) Art. 7, 277.
103 Ibid., vol. 9 (1706) Art. 1, 22 f.
104 Ibid., vol. 8 (1706) Art. 1, 41.
105 Ibid.
106 Ibid., Art. 2, 49.
107 Ibid., vol. 1 (1703) Art. 3, 98.
Critique and Erudition in the Biblioth;ques of Jean Le Clerc 169
of the existence of immaterial substance was shared by ancient philosophers, for
example by Aristotle, and in linking this with the idea that God as a substance is
clearly distinct from matter.108 In a later excerpt, Le Clerc specifically contrasted
the properties of material and immaterial substances:
“Il faut montrer, comme il l’a fait encore, que les proprietez, & les actions des Natures intelligentes
n’ont rien de commun avec ce que nous connoissons dans les Corps; de sorte que
nous ne pouvons pas dire que les Natures intelligentes sont corporelles, sans avancer une
chose tr;s-absurde; si par corporel nous entendons ce que l’on entend ordinairement par
ce mot, ou l’assemblage de certaines proprietez, qui nous sont connues; savoir, l’;tendue,
la solidit;, la divisibilit;, la mobilit;, & ce qui fait que le Corps est susceptible de diverses
figures. Nous ne voyons rien de semblable, dans les Esprits, & nous ne pouvons pas dire
que ces proprietez soient en Dieu, de la m;me maniere, qu’elles sont dans les Corps. Par
l; on peut confondre les Materialistes, qui ne sauroient prouver qu’un Corps soit capable
d’intelligence; sans s’engager dans I’explication du sujet inconnu, dans lequel les proprietez
intelligibles de Dieu existent.”109
Here, however, Le Clerc offered an explicit critique of Cudworth’s argument. Cudworth
had proved immateriality through the penetrability and indivisibility of
extended space, as distinct from bodies, thus making the existence of a living
immaterial and intelligent substance a logical necessity.110 Le Clerc thought that
the inference of an intelligent and living immaterial substance from the existence
of a vaguely extended immaterial substance was unwarranted.111 As the above
quotation shows, for him immateriality was proved through the difference in the
properties of the two substances themselves. In a later passage, it was Le Clerc’s
Cudworth who clearly exposed the difference between material and immaterial
substance in their essential properties, which make them radically different.112
Finally, Cudworth, embracing Plotinus’s doctrine, showed that this substantial
distinction finds a parallel in the immaterial soul and material body of human
beings and animals:
“La conclusion de ce raisonnement est, que dans les Hommes & dans les B;tes, il n’y a
qu’une seule chose indivisible; qui est pr;sente ; tout leurs corps, & qui s’apper;oit de tout
ce qui se passe dans ses parties; par quelque sens que les objets entrent. Cette m;me chose
est unie aux membres les plus ;loignez, sent ce qu’ils souffrent, & agit toute entiere en tous.
108 Ibid. 126 f.
109 Ibid., vol. 8 (1706) Art. 1, 21.
110 Ibid. 11–19.
111 Ibid. 19 f.
112 Ibid., Art. 2, 47.
170 Andrea Bianchi
C’est l; le MOI, qui est en chaque homme, & non la masse ;tendue de son corps, qui est
compos;e de plusieurs Substances distinctes.”113
Thus, the soul was considered by Cudworth an immaterial unifying principle in
human beings as well as in animals and Le Clerc would confirm this argument
as being based “par des raisonnemens tr;s-profonds & tr;s-justes”.114 In a later
excerpt, however, after having examined the connection between the soul and the
body, Le Clerc would maintain the immateriality of the souls of animals as a reasonable
way of avoiding a mechanistic conception of them. But he also expressed
his disappointment at not being able to solve, through the immateriality of the
animal soul, all the related difficulties. He simultaneously expressed slight scepticism
regarding the immaterial origin of animal life, and thus its immateriality:
“II n’y a que ce qu’il dit de l’Ame des B;tes, qui puisse faire quelque peine. Mais ; moins de
so;tenir que ce sont de pures machines, ce que presque personne ne croit; il en faut venir
; dire que les Ames des B;tes sont produites ; part, & peuvent subsister, sans leurs corps.
Quand on considere le nombre prodigieux d’animaux de toutes sortes & d’insectes, qui se
meuvent de toutes parts, dans l’eau & sur la surface de la terre & dont la pl;part ne vivent
que tr;s-peu de tems; il paro;t d’abord dur ; l’imagination d’avou;r qu’il y a dans tout cela
des principes de vie & de mouvement, qui ne sont nullement sortis de la Mati;re & qui n’y
retournent pas. II est f;cheux de se voir dans l’embarras de ne savoir presque que r;pondre,
sur l’origine & sur le sort de ces Ames, sans s’engager en de grandes difficultez.”115
Finally, he appealed to Locke’s argument ad ignorantiam, that is, that we cannot
rationally know the substances of which matter and soul are made,116 and he compared
our ignorance of many aspects of the immateriality of animal souls with
the certainty with which Cartesians maintained animal machines. This certainty
results from a lack of awareness of the limited explicative power of their own ar-
113 Ibid. 91.
114 Ibid. 93.
115 Ibid., vol. 9 (1706) Art. 1, 37 f.
116 Locke conceived of the soul as made of a very thin matter, responsible for the life of the
body, and mortal, and he distinguished it from the spirit, to which he attributed immateriality
and immortality and which is given only by God. See Mario Sina (ed.), Testi e
documenti. Testi teologico-filosofici lockiani dal ms. Locke c. 27 della Lovelace Collection,
Milan 1972, 403 f. Le Clerc’s doubt here might have been influenced by Locke’s conception.
Le Clerc was well aware of Locke’s thought, as is evident from his early review of Locke’s
Essay concerning Human Understanding (Le Clerc, ibid., vol. 8 [1706] Art. 2, 85) and subsequent
excerpts from it, and his continuous correspondence with him. On the other hand,
Le Clerc’s philosophical Cartesian training did derive this lesson from Chouet, so it seems
more likely that Le Clerc was simply hesitant about giving up orthodox Cartesianism. For
the latter point, see Jean-Robert Chouet, Tractatus de rebus viventibus, ed. by Elena Rapetti,
in: Sina/Ballardini/Rapetti, Chouet (n. 48) 281 f.
Critique and Erudition in the Biblioth;ques of Jean Le Clerc 171
guments; in Le Clerc’s view, this is something that should ideally lead to an honest
“NESCIO”.117
Crucially, Le Clerc was disturbed not by the conception of an immaterial substance
in animals, which follows logically from the reasoning presented, but by
its theological-philosophical consequences. If, in fact, the souls of animals are
immaterial, then they cannot be produced from matter and must thus be continuously
created for each animal, nor can they subsequently perish after death. The
question of immateriality is thus closely linked with the question on the origin
and mortality of the soul of animals. Bayle had already seen this point clearly in
his Dictionaire, where he made immateriality and immortality interdependent, so
that if the soul of an animal is immaterial, then it must also be immortal – something
that was widely rejected – without any possibility of distinction between the
human and the animal soul.118
Bayle was critical of what he saw as an only imaginary distinction between the
two in Daniel Sennert’s (1572–1637) solution.119 The latter believed that immortality
was a consequence of the will of God, who, like a king minting coins, had
created some coins to last forever and some to last only until a new order came.120
Sennert’s solution was proposed by Le Clerc’s Cudworth, where immortality is
ascribed to the good will of God, who attaches it to the human soul in order
to give it moral responsibility and freedom, but not out of necessity.121 Le Clerc
held this conventional solution, even though it would have been more Cartesian
to consider immateriality and immortality to be interdependent, as Bayle had
done.122 The reference to God as the guarantor of immortality had been entailed in
Chouet’s teaching, and in confirming this Le Clerc found an ally in Cudworth.123
117 Le Clerc, ibid., vol. 9 (1706) Art. 1, 38 f.
118 Bayle, Art. Sennert, in: Dictionaire (n. 24) 1041 note D; id., Art. Rorarius, in: ibid. 961 note
E. See also id., Reponse aux questions d’un provincial, vol. 1, Rotterdam 1704, 197.
119 Daniel Sennert was a professor of medicine at Wittemberg, well known at that time, among
other things, for being one of the forerunners of early modern atomism and, most importantly,
for holding the traducianist doctrine of the soul, that animal and human generation
proceeds from seeds and the soul is thereby transmitted from parent to offspring. The
latter theory caused particular controversy, as it seemed to provide reasons for considering
animal souls immortal like human souls. See Richard T. W. Arthur, Animal Generation
and Substance in Sennert and Leibniz, in: Smith, Animal Generation (n. 47) 150–155;
Emily Michael, Daniel Sennert on Matter and Form. At the Juncture of the Old and the
New, in: Early Science and Medicine 2 (1997) 272–299.
120 Bayle, Art. Sennert, in: Dictionaire (n. 24) 1043 note E.
121 Le Clerc, Biblioth;que choisie, vol. 1 (1703) Art. 3, 115.
122 Ibid., vol. 9 (1706) Art. 1, 27.
123 Chouet, Syntagma Physicum 239. The other argument used by Chouet to prove this was
that, since death comes from divisibility of matter, the simplicity of soul (not being composed
of pieces) makes it indivisible and thus immortal. For the latter arguments, see ibid.
172 Andrea Bianchi
In Cudworth, Le Clerc found a number of other alternatives that overcame the
problem of human beings and animals sharing the same kind of immaterial substance
and therefore the necessity of consigning animals to heaven or hell. Drawing
upon ancient philosophers, Le Clerc’s Cudworth pondered both the mortality
and immortality of the souls of animals and found ancient arguments showing
that animal immortality could be of a different nature from human immortality.
A first option would be to assume that the animal soul is only “temporarily” dead,
in the sense that, being detached from the body after the death of the animal, it
remains without sensation – the preeminent activity of the (immaterial) sensitive
soul of animals – for a time, until it regains its connection to the old or a new body
(of another animal) and starts gaining new sensations and thus living again:
“Qu’encore que l’intellection soit une action de l’Ame raisonnable, sans que le Corps y
concoure; n;anmoins la sensation ne se fait pas, sans son intervention. C’est pourquoi les
Ames des B;tes peuvent demeurer, apr;s la mort de leurs Corps, sans sentir & sans agir. …
il y a peu de lieu de douter que l’Ame Sensitive de certains Animaux, qui sont comme morts
& assoupis pendant tout l’hiver, & qui ne se r;veillent que quand la chaleur revient, ne
demeurent alors sans sentiment & sans action. Ainsi quoi que l’on puisse dire, en un sens,
que les Ames des B;tes font immortelles, par ce que leur substance, & les principes de la vie
subsistent en elles; n;anmoins on peut les appeller mortelles ; un autre ;gard, parce qu’elles
demeurent quelque tems, sans jouir de cette vie. Il paro;t par l; qu’on n’a pas sujet d’inf;rer
de la subsistence des Ames des B;tes, apr;s la mort de leurs Corps, qu’il faut n;cessairement
qu’elles aillent en Paradis, ou en Enfer.”124
This option considers animal immortality only insofar as it is connected to or
separated from a body, thus making the animal soul both, in a sense, mortal and
immortal at the same time. Another option considers the animal soul as truly
mortal, but this is inconsistent with the fact that, being immaterial, the soul of
an animal cannot by nature be mortal and therefore cannot die. The animal soul
can, nonetheless, be destroyed or reabsorbed by God, with the implication that
an afterlife in heaven or hell is unnecessary. This also applies to human beings, as
we saw above: if the justice of God did not guarantee them immortality in heaven
or hell, as a consequence of their moral freedom to choose virtue or vice, neither
heaven nor hell would be prepared for them.125 A final option is the existence
of a sort of “aerial body”, which serves as a temporary envelope for the souls of
animals (and human beings) before they are united to a “corps plus grossier” and
after their separation from it.126 This is not too difficult to imagine, if we consider
our daily experience of the worm that is turned into a “new” body, that of the but-
124 Le Clerc, Biblioth;que choisie, vol. 9 (1706) Art. 1, 30–32.
125 Ibid. 32 f.
126 Ibid. 29.
Critique and Erudition in the Biblioth;ques of Jean Le Clerc 173
terfly, an image found in contemporaneous Christian theology with reference to
the resurrection.127 Thus, Cudworth offered Le Clerc an array of ways with which
to overcome pitfalls related to the immateriality of the animal soul, thus countering
materialism and atheism, as well as the related problem of animal immortality,
which had led Descartes to embrace a mechanist view of animals.128 Cudworth
assisted Le Clerc, then, in bringing relevant philosophical-theological problems
to the fore and thus engaging as “quelque habile homme” in Continental Europe
“; traiter ce sujet, plus ; fonds”.129
6. Body and soul connection
To counter all of the atheistic-materialistic objections to the immateriality of the
soul, a problem crucial to both Cudworth and Le Clerc’s thinking, it was essential
to consider the link between the body and the soul. This difficulty had already
preoccupied Descartes in his formulation of the dichotomy of the body and mind.
More particularly, the objection that Cudworth faced was how an extended substance,
the body, is connected to a non-extended substance, the soul. If a substance
is not extended, it cannot be considered as being in a particular place or
body, neither can it be understood how it can act on a particular body, thus weakening
the reasons for the very existence of such an immaterial substance.130 Bayle’s
own formulation of the problem, applied to animals, is particularly pointed:
“Quand on ne feroit que vous demander si l’ame d’une b;te existe dans le corps de cette
b;te, on vous tailleroit bien de la besogne … Si vous repondiez qu’elle n’existe ni dans le
corps de cette b;te, ni dans aucun autre lieu, vous trouveriez peu de gens qui daignassent
vous ;couter, & vous parleriez sans rien comprendre dans v;tre dogme. Si vous repondiez
qu’elle existe dans le corps de cette b;te, l’on en concluroit qu’elle est ;tendu;, & par consequent
materielle; ce qui vous feroit tomber en contradiction.”131
Cudworth challenged this objection by drawing on the arguments of Platonists
and Pythagoreans. The soul in reality is not attached directly to the material body,
but there is an “aerial body”, in which the soul is enveloped and which lasts after
the separation from the material body, from the “corps grossier”.132 Others had
even postulated a further layer, that is an “ethereal” or spiritual body, even “finer”
127 Ibid. 32.
128 Ibid. 27.
129 Ibid. Avertissement.
130 Ibid., vol. 8 (1706) Art. 2, 45.
131 Bayle, Reponse, vol. 4, 212.
132 Le Clerc, Biblioth;que choisie, vol. 8 (1706) Art. 2, 51.
174 Andrea Bianchi
than the aerial body and more rational.133 Cudworth went beyond philosophy,
resorting to Scripture and the Church Fathers, noting that St. Paul had distinguished
between an animal, or mortal, body and a spiritual or celestial body,134
and that Origen had affirmed that only God is totally without a body and that all
souls, even angels, are attached to a body of some kind.135 This would solve the
problem raised by materialists because the soul, being contained in the subtler
body which is attached to the material body, would move with the body, thus allowing
the body and soul to influence each other.136
Le Clerc initially welcomed this solution, as it potentially led to a better understanding
of the Pauline epistles and the Church Fathers when speaking of the
distinction between the animal and the spiritual body.137 When discussing its effectiveness
in confronting the objections of atheists, however, he was highly critical
of this solution and ultimately considered it untenable. Crucially, whatever
the container of the soul is, be it spiritual or “aerial”, it is always a “body”, that is,
composed of a material substance. Even if this materiality is “subtle”, and despite
the “thinness” of such a body, it is still distinctively material and thus not reconcilable
with the immaterial soul:
“Ces m;mes gens-l; [the ‘Materialistes’] demanderont, comment une chose absolument
immaterielle, comme l’Ame, peut ;tre unie ; un corps materiel; car enfin quelque subtil que
puisse ;tre le v;hicule ;therien, que les Platoniciens lui donnent, c’est n;anmoins un corps,
qui n’a pas plus de rapport avec une Nature Immaterielle, que les corps les plus grossiers.”138
Thus, for Le Clerc, the problem of the connection between the mind and the body
was not solved by simply postulating a finer body as a medium of connection. He
would reaffirm even more strongly that it is the radical and irreconcilable difference
between mind and body that is problematic:
“Les preuves, dont on se sert pour prouver qu’il y a des Etres immateriels, & dont les
proprietez n’ont rien de commun avec celles des Corps, sont incontestables, & l’on en est
convaincu, d;s qu’on les comprend. Mais en d;montrant la grande difference des Etres, qui
pensent, & de ceux qui sont ;tendus; on augmente la difficult; qu’il y a ; concevoir comment
ces deux sortes d’Etres sont unis ensemble, comme nous le voyons. Comment est-il
possible que des Etres, qui n’ont rien de commun, soient, selon les id;es de ceux qui admettent
le V;hicule de l’Ame, naturellement unis ensemble? Comment une simple pens;e
peut-elle produire du mouvement, dans la Matiere de nos Corps; soit que l’on entende celle
133 Ibid. 52 f.
134 Ibid. 69 f. Cf. 1 Cor. 15:44 (Le Clerc erroneously refers to verse 48).
135 Le Clerc, ibid. 75–79. Cf. Origen, princ. I 6,4 (GCS Orig. 5, 85).
136 Le Clerc, ibid. 58.
137 Ibid. 59.
138 Ibid. 60.
Critique and Erudition in the Biblioth;ques of Jean Le Clerc 175
du V;hicule, ou celle du corps grossier; & comment une Matiere ;mu;, de quelque maniere
que l’on con;oive ce mouvement, peut-elle faire na;tre des pens;es dans n;tre Esprit?”139
For Le Clerc, such questioning resulted in a humble attitude towards reality and
the confession that we don’t know how body and mind are connected. He added
that we will never be able to solve this mystery: “Il y a des liaisons secretes entre
les Sujets cachez, des proprietez des Esprits & des Corps, que nous ne p;netrerons
jamais, en cette Vie; & peut-;tre que des Substances, qui nous sont tout ; fait inconnues,
interviennent dans cette union, sans que nous le s;chions.”140 Nonetheless,
we would misunderstand Le Clerc’s thought if we concluded that he doubted
the mutual influence of body and soul. As in strict Cartesianism, the fact that our
experience teaches us that body and soul are connected, was, for Le Clerc, sufficient
assurance that they are.141
Here, Le Clerc’s use of Cudworth was somewhat critical. Cudworth was still
considered a good source of possible solutions to atheistic and materialistic
arguments,142 and, perhaps even more importantly, Cudworth’s suggestions provided
the occasion for discussing various hypotheses and for rejecting the greatest
contemporary Cartesian alternative for the union of the soul and the body – occasionalism.
For Le Clerc, occasionalism lacked explanatory power on the interaction
between mind and body. As a theory, occasionalism diminished God’s
worth by positing his continuous meddling, even in the smallest things. Also, it
seemed irrational that God had created such a complex body pointlessly, for he
139 Ibid. 103 f.
140 Ibid. 105.
141 Ibid., vol. 9 (1706) Art. 10, 367; vol. 10 (1706) Art. 8, 390 f. The theory of the “aerial body”
would hardly have found a place in Le Clerc’s consideration of the so called body-mind
problem. Not only had his teacher, Chouet, taught that we don’t know how mind and body
are united, even if we are assured that they are by our personal experience, but Le Clerc’s
own philosophical teaching is also permeated by a negative attitude towards the solution
of such a problem. In reality, and this follows his friend Locke – to whom the first and
second editions of his Opera Philosophica are dedicated and to whom he refers in multiple
passages in a later discussion on the subject – very closely, the greatest difficulty lies in
the fact that we know only the properties of the two substances, matter and spirit, not the
substances as such. For Le Clerc, the question remains obscure, as we do not even know if
we are discussing two separated substances or if these substances are unified by God. Even
Cudworth’s theory of plastic nature, expressly cited in the 1704 edition of Le Clerc’s Opera
Philosophica as a possible mediating element between body and soul, lacks explanatory
power in this case, since it fails to explain how an immaterial plastic nature could interact
with a material world.
142 The theory of the “aerial body” is not rejected in toto by Le Clerc but considered cautiously.
In his view, the Church Fathers have misunderstood Scripture and taken the concept of the
spiritual body from pagan philosophy: ibid., vol. 8 (1706) Art. 2, 79.
176 Andrea Bianchi
would still need to be responsible for every action.143 In his Opera Philosophica,
Le Clerc had branded occasionalism as pure conjecture, to which he preferred
the humble attitude of the Aristotelians, who said that the force of movement
comes ultimately from God, even if we don’t know how this actually happens.144
His renewed confutation of occasionalism in the Biblioth;que choisie was also a
response to Bayle’s objections to plastic nature and the latter’s affirmation of occasionalism
as the best way to counter atheism.145 Bayle had shown the problems
inherent in the theory of plastic nature, as we have seen above, and thus saw occasionalism
as the best alternative.146
With his fourth volume of the Reponse, Bayle had moved the conversation
from the problem of the interrelation between body and soul, between materiality
and immateriality, to a discussion of the concept of extension. Bayle held
Descartes’s position on the correspondence of extension and matter: immateriality
had to be completely without extension, or else we could say that an immaterial
God, who is omnipresent, is extended and thus material, a conclusion
dangerously close to Spinozism.147 Descartes had also implicitly suggested that
immaterial spirits, including God, cannot be in any particular place or connected
to a particular body.148 For this reason, Bayle had criticised Locke’s Essay concerning
Human Understanding, especially his concept of solidity, which allowed
extension to be understood as solid-material-impenetrable space and at the same
time as a neither material, nor immaterial, space, akin to a vacuum.149 Bayle had
turned Locke’s acknowledgment of the inner unknowability of the substances
against him by saying that such an argument would not prevent making materiality
think and immateriality to be extended, thus leading to all sorts of problems.150
Bayle concluded:
“Combien seroit-il Plus avantageux ; la Religion de s’en tenir au principe des Cartesiens
que l’;tendu;, & la matiere ne sont qu’une seule & m;me substance! Si l’on nous menoit ;
143 Ibid. 104. Cf. ibid., vol. 7 (1705) Art. 7, where Le Clerc does not provide any particular reason
to reject occasionalism.
144 Joannis Clerici Pneumatologia, Cui subiecta est Thomae Stanleii philosophia orientalis.
Operum philosophicorum Tomus II. Editio Tertia auctior & emendatior, Amsterdam
1704, sect. I, ch. 6, par. 12–14.
145 Basnage, Histoire, Art. 12, 543 f. See also ibid., Art. 7, 395.
146 See above section 3.
147 Bayle, Reponse, vol. 4, 216 f. See also ibid., vol. 1, 210–213; Colie, Light and Enlightenment
(n. 9) 122 f.
148 Bayle, ibid., vol. 4, 217 f.
149 A clear definition of this can be found in Locke’s second letter to Stillingfleet: John Locke,
Mr. Locke’s Reply to the Bishop of Worcester’s Answer to his second Letter, in: The Works
of John Locke, vol. 3, London 121824, 418.
150 Bayle, Reponse, vol. 4, 219–223.
Critique and Erudition in the Biblioth;ques of Jean Le Clerc 177
quelques chose de clair en abandonnant ce principe bien des gens prendroient patience,
mais on nous jette dans des tenebres d’autant plus obscures.”151
In Bayle’s view, then, Cartesian physics still had more advantages than an “obscure”
consideration of extension. In the eighth volume of the Biblioth;que choisie,
Le Clerc’s Cudworth had discussed the concept of extension in order to confute
the objection of atheist-materialists – who asserted that nothing exists but matter
– by affirming the logical necessity of an extended, penetrable and indivisible,
but also living and intelligent, space. For Cudworth, the concept of space without
matter, that is of void, was something that went beyond the material, “real” world
and that led into the immaterial, a kind of “immaterial void”. Not so for Le Clerc,
who criticized the lack of solid reasoning in this passage. Cudworth had moved
from the concept of void to one of an immaterial substance, drawing from it the
concept of “life” and “intelligence”, without warrant.152 Like Locke, Le Clerc considered
extension to be composed of a material part and a “pure extension” – that
is, a void – part.153 This “pure extension” was for Le Clerc neither material, nor
immaterial:
“Itaque omnibus expensis, c;m sentiamus obversari nobis ideam Spatii sine soliditate,
quamvis soliditas, sine spatio non sit, agnoscamus necesse est esse Ens quod sit extensum,
sine soliditate; quod neque corpus sit, neque spiritus, prout еae voces intelliguntur ab omnibus;
& quod omnia corpora ambitu suo contineat. Est hujus Entis idea simplicissima,
cum nihil praeter puram Extensionem in eo intelligamus, nec proinde ullam requirit definitionem.
Eam ideam sensibus & animi mediatione haurimus, c;m omiss; omni soliditatis
consideratione de Spatio cogitamus, aut distantiam quampiam consideramus, quam
corpore occupari aut ignoramus, aut non cogitamus.”154
Thus, in what seems a Gassendian revision of Cartesian extension, Le Clerc was
again critical of Cudworth. To Bayle’s attack on Locke’s concept of extension, Le
Clerc, after having said that the whole of Bayle’s philosophical knowledge “consistoient
en quelque peu de P;ripatetisme, qu’il avoit appris des Jesuites de Toulouse,
& un peu de Cartesianisme, qu’il n’avoit jamais approfondi”,155 would reply with a
reference to the scholastic distinction of “predicamental accidents”. The accidents
of matter, in particular “extension” (a predicamental accident), are known, even
though the substance itself, in Locke’s view, is not. In this way, Le Clerc avoided
151 Ibid. 224.
152 Le Clerc, Biblioth;que choisie, vol. 8 (1706) Art. 1, 20.
153 Joannis Clerici Physicа, Sive de Rebus Corporeis Libri II Posteriores. Operum Philosophicorum
Tomus IV. Editio Tertia auctior & accuratior, Amsterdam 1704, lib. V, ch. 2, par. 2–9.
154 Ibid., par. 11.
155 Biblioth;que choisie, vol. 12 (1707) Art. 2, 106.
178 Andrea Bianchi
scepticism.156 His reply to Bayle was also a reaffirmation of his own conviction
of the limit of the a priori approach of Cartesianism to physics: “C’est que les
Cartesiens ;toient bien ;loignez de leur compte, lors qu’ils s’;toient imaginez de
pouvoir rendre raison de tout, & m;me ; priori, par leurs principes.”157 And in a
later passage: “Ceux qui ne connoissoient que le dehors des choses t;choient de
persuader le monde, que par les principes de la Physique de Descartes, on pouvoit
rendre raison de tout; quoi qu’elle n’ait aucuns principes g;neraux & ass;rez, qui
nous d;couvrent clairement quelle est la nature du Corps.”158 Le Clerc would also
ultimately contradict Bayle on the usefulness of Cartesian physics for countering
atheism. He referred to Bayle’s Continuation, chapter CXIV, where Bayle had
shown that, through Cartesianism, God could be made a voluntarist, able to create
even paradox at will, and that this would help missionaries in their quarrels
with Chinese philosophers.159 Such a conclusion, was not only contradictory in Le
Clerc’s terms, but also in Bayle’s and Locke’s, as all of these thinkers conceived of
God as somehow limited by paradox.160 But such a critique of the usefulness of
Cartesianism for the defence of the Christian religion did not target the concept
of Cartesian extension, even though Le Clerc had cited it here for this purpose.
Once again, Le Clerc’s excerpt from Cudworth presented an opportunity for Le
Clerc both to draw support for his own assumptions and to discuss various philosophical
problems, in this case related to the contemporaneous understanding of
physics.
7. Conclusion
The present review of those passages in Le Clerc’s excerpts from Cudworth’s True
Intellectual System of the Universe which have a particular connection with natural
philosophy has highlighted some of the ways in which Cambridge Platonism,
through Cudworth, was presented to Continental Europeans in the early modern
period. One of the most obvious ways in which Le Clerc presented Cudworth’s
thought was as an excellent argumentative “toolbox” against atheism and materialism.
Cudworth’s “plastic nature” is the main concept used by Le Clerc in
a number of discussions related to the generation of animals and their internal
living faculty. It is also the idea most contested by Le Clerc’s opponent, Bayle.
Granted, such a concept was also part of the heated debate on divine providence,
on the problem of evil, and on the rationality of religion between Le Clerc and
156 Ibid. 112.
157 Ibid. 113.
158 Ibid. 117.
159 Ibid. 115.
160 See e. g. ibid. 120 f.; Bayle, Reponse, vol. 1, 214; Locke, Locke’s Reply 465.
Critique and Erudition in the Biblioth;ques of Jean Le Clerc 179
Bayle, although that has been neglected in the present article because it has already
been the object of detailed study.161 However, it is also evident that the concept
of plastic nature, if applied to the natural sciences, in particular to biology,
has a relevance of its own that goes beyond its theological implications. Natural
scientific observations became an obstacle with which plastic nature had to be
confronted, in order to grasp the functioning of the world better. We could say
with Douglas Hedley, that in Cudworth, “God is brought into physics, and physics
is used to provide a quasi-inductive and experimental demonstration of the existence
and attributes of God”.162 But the philosophical debate on the natural sciences
remained important in itself, even though theological-philosophical implications
were very present to the minds of the disputants.
Le Clerc did not use Cudworth’s thought simply as a support for his own ideas
or to serve as an argumentative repertoire. This was surely the case in many instances,
but elsewhere Cudworth’s ideas were criticized as a non sequitur, as in the
case of the demonstration of the existence of immateriality from the concept of
extension. In other cases, the limits of Cudworth’s hypotheses were made evident,
as with the theory of the aerial body of the soul, which for Le Clerc did not solve
the problem of how body and soul are connected. In other circumstances, as in
the case of the immortality of the souls of animals, Cudworth’s hypothesis was
considered a good point of departure for further discussion among specialists.
Generally, Le Clerc’s use of Cudworth can also be considered as a critique of some
aspects of Platonism and Cartesianism. This sometimes took the form of an open
rejection of Cartesianism, as in the case of the nature of extended matter, which
Le Clerc used as a critique of Cartesian physics and methodological apriorism.
As can be clearly seen in his excerpts from Cudworth, Le Clerc argued for a more
Lockean a posteriori attitude and an awareness of the unknowability of the substance
of the material and the immaterial. Similarly, he rejected Malebranchian
occasionalism and departed from Cartesianism in decoupling immateriality from
immortality.
At the beginning of this paper, I remarked on the strict interrelation of natural
philosophy with the debate on freedom in Cudworth’s thought, which is part of
his Origenian framework.163 I would affirm that through Cudworth’s multi-faceted
anti-determinism the groundwork for his Origenian understanding of freedom is
laid. In this sense, Le Clerc’s excerpts were an interesting and relevant contribution
to the spread of such an outlook in Continental Europe. That a discussion
of natural philosophy in Continental Europe was also relevant in establishing,
in Cudworth’s sense, a libertarian freedom, is apparent from the debate between
161 Kors, Naturalism (n. 15) 229–259.
162 Hedley, Cudworth on Freedom (n. 32) 52.
163 Cf. ibid. 53.
180 Andrea Bianchi
Le Clerc and Bayle on divine providence and the problem of evil, which we have
barely sketched here. In conclusion, Le Clerc’s excerpts from Cudworth’s True Intellectual
System must be considered as a crucial aspect of Cambridge Platonism’s
presence in Continental Europe.Hisrory of European Ideas, Vol. 13, No. 6, pp. 775-791, 1991
Printed in Great Britain
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THE JOURNEY OF THE SOUL IN
SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY ENGLISH PLATONISM zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA
PHILIP C. ALMOND*
INTRODUCTION
In a recent article on Henry More’s concept of the soul, John Henry has argued
that, in spite of More’s dualist rhetoric, his Platonism was essentially cryptomaterialistic.
According to Henry, More’s ‘respect for the new philosophies of
nature and certain Neoplatonic traditions led him so close towards a materialistic
world view that conflict with dualism was inevitable’.’ In this article, I want
further to develop Henry’s insight that the Platonism of More (and a number of
other Restoration Platonists) was intended to establish a viable natural theology
against the encroachments of atheism, enthusiasm, and occultism. But further, I
want to argue that the attempts of Henry More, Joseph Glanvill, and George
Rust to tread a middle way between dualism and materialism was an inevitable
outcome of their theories of the journey of the soul from creation to eternity; and
I want to suggest that this neo-Platonic anthropology was a crucial factor in their
construction of a cosmography intended to establish an appropriate balance
between spirit and matter.
THE PRE-EXISTENCE OF THE SOUL
. . . I loved not to see, what I reputed a fable and Imposture travel so confidently
through the World, and everywhere vaunt itself for a genuine truth.. .z
The fable and imposture to which Edward Warren was referring in 1667 was
the concept of the pre-existence of the soul. Warren was exaggerating the
universality of the adoption of this concept. Certainly in England it appears to
have remained the preserve of a few of the intellectual elite, and in so far as it was
expounded, it was done with caution and reticence. Nevertheless, asserted and
defended it was, and by several of the Restoration period’s leading
Platonists-Henry More, Joseph Glanvill, and the Anglican Bishop George
Rust. Its unorthodoxy was recognised, but it was presented as a rational opinion
which could be maintained without danger to the faith.3 In a letter to Robert
Boyle, accompanying a copy of his zLyuxxw vOurtiesnrqtapliosn, mGllaknvjiilhl gfeddecclabraedZ, YXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA
I am secure that you will appoint no other judge of these theories, but an uninterested
and impartial reason. If such as you cherish those beams of restored zyPxlawtovnuistms, rtqhepy onmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA
*Department of Studies in Religion, University of Queensland, Queensland 4072,
Australia.
775
776 Philip C. Almond
will shine more and more to a perfect day; otherwise this light will sneak back to its
forgotten darkness, and be buried again in its old obscurity.”
The Restoration Platonists were heirs of the late fifteenth century revival of
neo-Platonism inaugurated by Marsilio Ficino’s translations of Plato, the Corpus
Hermeticum, Plotinus, Porphyry, Iamblichus, and Proclus.s And they saw
themselves as heirs of what Daniel Walker has called ‘Ancient Theology’. They
looked back, not only to Plato, but to a series of earlier ancient theologians who
had themselves derived their philosophy from Moses, sometimes from Noah,
Enoch, or even Adam. In short, Platonism was God’s original revelation to
humankind, and Plato was ‘Moses Atticus’. Among the ancients who accepted
the pre-existence of the soul, More listed Trismegistus, the Indian Brahmans, the
Magi, the Chaldean Oracles, the Jewish Cabbala, Moses, Zoroaster,
Pythagoras, Plato, Euclid, Philo, Plotinus, Iamblichus, and Proclus.6 A similar
list was given by Glanvill, and by Christian Knorr von Rosenroth, together with
Francis van Helmont, the editor of the Kubbalu Denudutu.7
With one notable exception, it was a much more difficult task to discern the
pre-existence of the soul in the writings of the early Christian Fathers, even
among those with Platonic inclinations. The exception was Origen. In his De,
Principiis, Origen had maintained the pre-existence of the soul, its fall as a result
of its misuse of free will, and its subsequent descent into a terrestrial form.* This
was little comfort to seventeenth century defenders of the soul’s pre-existence.
Among the numerous heresies which Jerome alleged Origen to be guilty of, he
included the pre-existence of the soul, and its fall into bodily existence as a result
of sloth and neglect.g And Origen had been condemned as a heretic by the
Council of Alexandria in A.D.400 and the Council of Constantinople in
A.D.553.”
To be sure, there was a significant revival of interest in Origen during the
Renaissance provoked, in part at least, by Pica della Mirandola’s proposal in his
Nongentue Conclusiones in 1486 that it was more reasonable to believe Origen to
be saved than to believe him to be damned. I1 Still, as Walker has pointed out,
neither Pica, nor Erasmus, nor other Origenist sympathisers, attempted to
defend Origen’s opinion. Rather, they defended him in spite of his opinions.‘*
In fact, the anonymous 1661 work, A Letter of Resolution Concerning Origen,
was the first to defend rather than to attempt to excuse the theology of Origen,
and in particular the pre-existence of the soul and the final universal restoration
of all to God. It has been attributed, probably correctly, to George Rust.” Rust
had certainly read Henry More’s Immortality of the Soul and had adopted many
of its ideas.14 But, if Rust was the author of it, More who had been his tutor at
Cambridge did not know it. I5 His reaction to it was cautious. It is ‘a pretty odd
Book’, he wrote to Lady Ann Conway, ‘but has some thynges very consyderable
in it’.r6 One of the ‘thynges very consyderable’ with which More was in complete
agreement was its account of the pre-existence of the ~0~1.
PRE-EXISTENCE AND HUMAN SUFFERING
What then were the reasons for More, Glanvill, and Rust maintaining and
Seventeenth-century English Platonism 777
defending, however cautiously, a doctrine which at best was outside the
mainstream of the Christian tradition, at worst could be construed as heretical?
Essentially, it was the central feature of a natural theology which, by offering an
explanation of human suffering, justified the essential goodness of God.
The theory of the soul’s pre-existence explained, for example, why some
persons appeared to be naturally depraved from the earliest stages of life. The
natures of persons in their terrestrial state were seen as contiguous with their preexistent
natures. As Glanvill declared,
let us conceive the Souls of men to have grown degenerate in a former zcyoxndwitvioun tosf rqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA
life, to have contracted strong and inveterate habits to vice and lewdness.. . ; we
may then easily apprehend, when some men’s natures had so incredibly a depraved
tincture, and such impetuous, ungovernable, irreclaimable inclinations to what is
vitious; while others have nothing near such wretched propensions, but by good
education, and good discipline are mouldable to vertue . . .I7
The theory of the soul’s pre-existence was in conflict therefore with the
doctrine of original sin. However variously interpreted, this doctrine allowed for
the diminution of human responsibility, by interpreting the evil inherent in
human nature as the result of the sin of Adam, and thus making of humanity a
massa damnata without free will and redeemable only by God’s grace. By
contrast, the theory of the soul’s pre-existence, by attributing the propensity to
evil within every human soul to the individual’s psychological development in the
pre-existent state, made each individual responsible for the condition of his soul
in the terrestrial life and vindicated the divine goodness and justice. The
hypothesis of the soul’s pre-existence, declared Joseph Glanvill,
clears the divine Attributes from any shadow of harshness, or breach of equity, since
it supposeth us to have sinned and deserved all the misery we suffer in this condition
before we came hither: whereas the other which teacheth, that we became both
guilty and miserable by the single and sole offence of Adam, whenas we were not
then in being, or as to our own souls, as much aspotentiallyin our great Progenitour;
bears somewhat hardly upon the repute of the Divine perfections.‘*
The pre-existence of the soul also served to provide an explanation of human
mental disorders and physical deformities. So-called ‘monstrous births’ were
interpreted as the consequence, not of divine providence, but as the unfortunate,
albeit deserved, result of pre-existent sins. In the seventeenth century, the
correlation between mental disorders, physical deformities, and sin was common
as was its contrary, the correlation of mental and physical health with godliness
and piety. I9 In the absence of secular medical theories to account for such
prodigies of nature it was perhaps not inappropriate to see them as the result of
sin and to interpret ‘monstrous births’ as the consequence of pre-existent lapses
from godliness.
Burgeoning knowledge of the ‘savage races’ during the seventeenth century
also raised questions about the divine Providence.20 The theory of the soul’s preexistence
provided one explanation for human lives apparently doomed to live
outside of the salvific grace of the Christian gospel. For More, for example, the
members of such races had forfeited the favour of their Creator through their
778 Philip C. Almond
actions in a prior life. Sins then committed explained ‘the squalid forlornness and
brutish Barbarity that whole Nations for many Ages have layen under.. .12’ The
late medieval Catholic doctrine of Purgatory was, as Jacques Le Goff has
pointed out, an accountancy of the hereafter, the purges of the afterlife strictly
proportioned to the sins of this one. 22 The doctrine of pre-existence provided an
accountancy of the heretofore. The evil, the suffering, and the brutishness of this
life was a direct result of the sins of a pre-existent state.
All human souls had come into existence at, or very near, the time of the
original creation of the world. More specifically, since God had ceased his
creative activity on the seventh day, souls were created during the first six days of
creation. Such an account was at odds with two other more common theories of
the origin of souls: immediate creationism, the doctrine that God creates ex nihilo
a fresh soul for every human individual at its conception; and traducianism, the
doctrine that the soul is transmitted by one (or both) of the parents to the unborn
child.23
The arguments of the Platonists against immediate creationism were primarily
theological and decidedly Manichaean. Since the enmeshing of souls in matter
was an undesirable state, a God who is essentially good would never create souls
in order to place them in such brutish bodies in so uncongenial a realm.
Somewhat colourfully, Rust reminded his readers,
For God therefore to send out of his pure and holy hands an immaculate Soul,
capable of living elsewhere, and fit for all vi’rtue and heavenly wisedome, lest the lust
of two brutish persons should come to nothing, and condemn it to an habitation in
such parts of the earth where reigns nothing but gross ignorance and vice. . . what is
this, saies the Father [Origen], but to betray his own offspring. unto unavoidable
misery; and to put off the chief excellencies of his most blessed Nature, goodness and
righteousness. . .24
That God was, through immediate creation, intimately linked to ‘the lust of
two brutish persons’ was a matter of distaste to all the Platonists. Sexuality was
an undesirable facet of terrestrial life, the consequence of a fall from more
aethereal pursuits, both literally and metaphorically. And if sexuality per se was
undesirable, illicit sexual activity was to be abominated. Their horror of incest,
adultery, and fornication was in keeping with the Catholic medieval tradition
and that of the Protestant Reformation (parts of its radically libertine wing
excepted). But it was undoubtedly reinforced by an English Puritanism that had
led in 1650 to the Commonwealth’s Act ‘for suppressing the detestable sins of
incest, adultery and fornication’. What had been spiritual misdemeanours were
redefined as secular crimes. 25 In such a context, the doctrine of immediate
creation was seen as involving God, not only in sin, but also in crime, a coconspirator
if not the author of it. For More, the doctrine made God ‘the chief
assistant and actour. . . in those abominable crimes of Whoredom, Adultery,
Incest, nay Buggery itself, by supplying those foul coitions with new created souls
for the purpose. . .r.26
The Platonists’ main arguments against immediate creationism were directed
against its incipiently materialistic nature. Glanvill’s criticisms of the implicit
traducianism in Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan were effectively arguments against
Seventeenth-century English Platonism 779
Hobbes’s materialism in general. 27 More’s criticism of traducianism assumed the
Cartesian definition of soul as a non-corporeal substance incapable of division or
separation.28 Consequently, according to More, because traduction implied the
divisibility of the soul, it was ‘a plain contradiction to the notion of a Soul, and
therefore of an Indivisible, that is of an Indiscerpible, Essence’.29
For those who accepted the Cartesian definition, this was an effective rebuttal.
But for those traducianists, like Henry Hills, who believed there to be a
quintessential seed in every person which produced a psycho-physical unity in
the foetus, it had little effect.30 Moreover, implicit in Hills’ proto-genetic theory
was a theological motif which would conceptually tip the scales against both
creationism and pre-existence. God, declared Hills, ‘is most absolute and all
sufficient of himself, yet where he hath set up nature, and ordinary wayes and
means, to work by, he allwaies honoureth and useth his own ordinance.. . .’ In
short, therefore, explanations in terms of secondary causes were to be preferred.
The increasing dominance of explanations in these terms in the eighteenth
century was to relegate discussions about the origin of the soul to a little-used
siding, even among those who held to the belief in the immortality of the soul.
The question of the origin of persons was to become centred on rival
physiological accounts in a developing science of embryology.32
SCRIPTURE AND PRE-EXISTENCE
But how were arguments for the soul’s pre-existence to be made compatible
with that repository of necessary truth, the Scriptures? On the face of it, the
Biblical account of the creation and fall of man was at complete odds with the
theory of the soul’s pre-existence. While Rust’s Letter of Resolution recognised
that Origen had supported the soul’s pre-existence by a ‘spiritual’ reading of the
Genesis accounts, Rust contented himself merely with declaring that there was
no direct Scriptural evidence against pre-existence and cited several texts that
were allegedly suggestive of it. 33 In his Lux Orientalis, Glanvill was reluctant to
present Scriptural evidence, primarily because of what he saw as the misuse of
Scripture by enthusiasts to justify their deluded imaginings.34 Glanvill accepted
Scripture as authoritative, but we find in Lux Orientalis a developing
understanding of Reason as an independent and equivalent source of religious
truth:
But whether what I have brought from Scripture prove anything or nothing, ‘tis not
very material, since the Hypothesis of Praeexistence stands secure enough upon
those Pillars of Reason, which have their Foundation in the Attributes of God, and
the Phaenomena of the world. And the Right Reason of a Man, is one of the Divine
Volumes, in which are written the indeleble Ideas of eternal Truth: so that what it
dictates, is as much the voice of God, as if in so many words it were clearly exprest in
the written ReveIations.35
To be sure, both Rust and Glanvill offer readings of the creation and fall in
terms of pre-existence; but these are merely echoes of the complex Cabbalistic
reading of the Genesis account elaborated in More’s Conjectura Cabbalistica in
780 PhiIip C. Almond
1653. Like Glanvill, More was committed to Reason in the search for divine
truth, for to discourage Reason was, for him, to encourage enthusiasm. Yet,
unlike Glanvill, because for More both Scripture and Reason were equally
sources of religious truth, their compatibility had to be demonstrated.36
For More, the prime sources of incompatibility between Scripture and Reason
were science, more specifically Copernicanism, and philosophy, more specifically
pre-existence. 37 The key to their compatibility lay, for More, in Scripture’s
hidden meaning. Only thus can science and philosophy be freed from the
suspicion of impiety and irreligion:
Now, I say, it is a pretty priviledge of F&hood, (if this Hypothesis be false) and very
remarkable, that it should better suite with the Attributes of God, the visible Events of
Providence, the Phaenomena of Nature, the Reason of Man, and the Holy Text itsev,
where men acknowledge a mysterious Cabbala, then that which by all means must
be accounted true, viz. That there is no such Motion of the Earth about the Sun, nor
any Praeexistency of Humane Souls3*
In what then did the philosophical Cabbala consist? According to More,
Adam was originally a wholly aethereal being, living in Paradise-the aethereal
realm-and charged not to eat of the Tree of Knowledge of good and evil, that is,
not to misuse his free will. Adam’s instinct-his feminine element-overcomes
his reason-his masculine element. Man thus alienated himself from God who is
Supreme Reason. The literal story of the expulsion from the garden is read
philosophically as a descent from the aethereal to the terrestrial realm. The
triumph of will over reason
so changed the nature of his Vehicle that (whereas he might have continued in an
Angelical and Aethereal condition, and his Feminine part been brought into perfect
obedience to the divine Light.. .) he now sunk more and more towards a mortal and
terrestrial estate.. .39
In short, the theory of the pre-existence of the soul was certified not only by
reason, but guaranteed by an appropriate ‘rational’ interpretation of Scripture.
FREE WILL, HUMAN AND DIVINE
It was Origen who provided the defenders of the soul’s pre-existence with an
ancient authority for the assertion of free will as the cause of the fall of all persons
into terrestrial life.4o But there were also pressing seventeenth-century reasons for
a vigorous defense of free will by the supporters of the soul’s preexistence. On
the one hand, the argument for free will was an argument against Hobbes’
determinism, itself a consequence of his materialism.4’ On the other hand, it was
directed against Calvinistic theological determinism, for by the early 1660’s
Arminianism had triumphed in England.42 Like their teachers Joseph Mede and
Benjamin Whichcote, both Ralph Cudworth and Henry More rejected
predestination. Sufficient has survived of Cudworth’s A Discourse of Liberty and
Necessity to give us a picture of the passion with which Cudworth defended free
Seventeenth-century English Platonism 781
will against both Hobbes’ and Calvinistic determinism. And from Ward’s life of
More, we know that, as a youth, More rejected ‘that hard Doctrine concerning
Fate’:
. . I did.. . very stoutly, and earnestly for my Years dispute against this Fate or zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA
Calvinistick Predestination, as it is usually call’d: and that my Uncle, when he came
to know it, chid me severely; adding menaces withal1 of Correction, and a Rod for
my immature Forwardness in Philosophizing concerning such Matters: Moreover,
that I had such a deep Aversion in my Temper to this Opinion, and so firm and
unshaken a Perswasion of the Divine Justice and Goodness; that on a certain Day, in
a Ground belonging to Aeton College, where the Boys us’d to play, and exercise
themselves, musing concerning these Things with myself, viz. If I am one of those
that are predestinated unto Hell, where all Things are full of nothing but Cursing
and Blasphemy, yet will I behave my self there patiently and submissively towards
God; and if there be any one thing more than another, that is acceptable to him, that
will I set my self to do with a sincere Heart, and to the utmost of my Power: Being
certainly persuaded, that if I thus demeaned my self, he would hardly keep me long
in that Place. 43
The argument for free will not only entailed a rejection of determinism but also
a defense of God’s goodness. For the evil inherent in human existence was a
consequence of the misuse of free will by human beings, and not attributable to
any defects in the divine nature.
Moreover, the argument for the essential nature of the divine goodness was a
key element in the argument for the soul’s preexistence. That God was
essentially good entailed that God always acted necessarily for the best.
Consequently, since it is better for souls to exist than not to exist, God must have
created all souls at the time of the original creation:
God being infinitely good, and that to his Creatures, and therefore doing always
what is best for them, methinks it roundly follows that our souls lived and ‘njoy’d
themselves of old before they came into these bodies. For since they were capable of
living, and that in a much better and happier state long before they descended into
this region of death and misery; and since that condition of life and self-enjoyment
would have been better, than absolute not-being; may we not safely conclude from a
due consideration of the divine goodness, that it was ~0.~~
The meaning of the ‘divine goodness’ was thus crucial to the Platonist cause.
From the perspective of Calvinism, the sovereign will of God was central.
Thus, in effect, in spite of the fact that predestination to damnation may offend
OUT moral sense, it cannot count against the goodness of God-what God wills is
necessarily good. 45 In sharp contrast to this, it was essential to the Platonist
position that ‘goodness’ was determinable through reason and independently of
the will of God. According to Henry Hallywell, for example, the notions of good
and evil, of justice and injustice, are unalterable even by God himself. Our souls
are in the image of God ‘stored and filled with the indelible Characters and Ideas
of Truth’.46 For Hallywell, ‘This harmony and agreeableness of Moral Objects to
our Intellectual parts, is antecedent to the things themselves, so that they are not
782 Philip C. Almond
good because God for example commands them, but therefore they are
enjoyned, because there is an innate Goodness in them’.47
However, among those who agreed with the Platonists that ‘goodness’ was
determinable independently of the will of God were some who denied that God
did always and necessarily act according to the good. Samuel Parker, for
instance, pointed to Biblical examples of God’s acting out of anger and severity.48
God’s goodness, he maintained, is more of the nature of a habit than an essential
faculty. Edward Warren argued that God’s will dominated his goodness.49 As
Walker remarks, Warren and Parker ‘end, in fact, by demonstrating that God is a
“plenipotentiary Devil” of an unintelligibly capricious kind’.50
A stronger argument advanced by Warren and Parker was to the effect that, if
God could not but do the good, there was no divine freedom of the will, and that
consequently God was lacking in power and in perfection.*l The Platonist
response was to argue that God’s freedom was not a mere libertas indlyferentiae,
Rust, for example, argued that the power to do evil was not a perfection;
Hallywell suggested that God was free to act conformably to his nature; More
declared that God’s anger and severity were expressions of his goodness.52
Hallywell and More also wanted to define the divine freedom as entailing the
absence of any external restraint. Thus God was essentially good by virtue of his
always and necessarily having to do what was best, but also free in that nothing
external could restrain him from so acting.
In spite of the Platonists’ attempts to construe divine freedom in such a way as
to make it compatible with divine goodness, they were unable to avoid the
admission that divine freedom was curtailed by God’s inability to do evil. This
was seized upon by Parker. He argued that ‘goodness’ could only be attributed to
free agents, that is, to those who could do other than the good; and that
consequently, the denial of the divine freedom to do evil entailed the denial of the
predication of ‘goodness’ to God. 53 In essence, Parker’s argument was an attack
on the logical coherence of the concept of ‘essential goodness’, namely, that the
concept of goodness has meaning only when predicated of an agent who could do
otherwise.
More responded in two ways. First, he quite simply admitted that, granted
God could not do other than the good, his actions cannot be described as ‘moral’,
but that they could not be so described did not entail they could not be described
as ‘good’. Second, he suggested that even Parker would admit that God cannot
act from a purely evil will, 2nd therefore must admit there is no incoherence in the
notion of God’s acting from a purely good wi11.54
We can now perceive the way in which the theory of the soul’s pre-existence
was part of an attempt to formulate a Christian Platonist theodicy. For
Calvinism, the problem of evil and suffering was resolved, or rather dissolved,
into the inscrutable divine sovereign will. For Parker and Warren for example,
the problem was solved by a God who can and does do evil. For the Platonists,
the problem was to reconcile the exigencies of the human situation with the
existence of a God who was both essentially good and omnipotent. The preexistence
of the soul was an expression of the essential goodness of God; and the
misuse of free will by pre-existent souls was a vindication of the essential goodness
of God.
However that may be, there were weaknesses in this theodicy. Edward Warren,
Seventeenth-century English Platonism 783
for example, inquired why, if God were good, he had not made men immutably
blessed. He suggested that God would have acted for the best if men had been
created without the possibility of misusing their free wi11.55 Against this
argument, More resorted to ridicule. 56 Hallywell’s response, on the other hand, is
an inchoate version of what is now known as the free will defense, according to
which moral evils in the world cannot be ascribed to God but are rather the result
of the misuse of human free will. For Hallywell, the goodness of God is
vindicated on the grounds that the good inherent in persons having free will,
rather than being merely good-doing automata, is greater than the amount of evil
and suffering that results from the misuse of human freedom. God foresaw,
declared Hallywell,
that the calamity which many of them were like to undergo by deserting their
primitive Happiness, was not sufficient to out-ballance the good which might
accrue to themselves and the rest of the Creation in their production; for albeit they
were made lapsable, yet it was no wayes necessary that they should actually recede
from their blessed life.. ?’
It was perhaps fortunate for Hallywell that no-one asked why God did not create
beings such that they always freely chose the good.
THE VEHICLES OF THE SOUL
For the seventeenth century Platonists, the journey of the soul was not merely
a temporal one but also a spatial one. Whether in the aethereal, aereal, or
terrestrial realms, the soul was necessarily, at least in so far as it was conscious,
connected with a body appropriate to those regions.
The belief in the vehicles of the soul was an inheritance from neo-Platonism.
Although difficult to discern in Plato, the theory played an important part in neo-
Platonic thought, particularly among those neo-Platonists most interested in
theurgy. For Origen too, all rational creatures appropriated bodies suitable to
the regions into which they descended. ‘* As Cudworth summed it up, the ancient
philosophers generally conceived the soul in its pre-existent state ‘to have had a
lucid and aethereal body.. . as its chariot or vehicle; which being incorruptible,
did always inseparably adhere to the soul, in its after-lapses and descents, into an
aerial first, and then a terrestrial body.. .r.59
According to Glanvill, souls are initially created with the highest intellectual
and spiritual faculties and united with the most subtle matter in a pure and
aethereal body. He remained uncertain about the location of these pure souls,
although he considered ‘those immense tracts of pure and quiet aether that are
above Saturn’ more likely than the sun. 6o There was also uncertainty about the
temporal duration of souls in the aethereal realm, although Rust guessed that the
aereal life far exceeded the terrestrial, and ‘the aerealperiod falls as far short of
the celestial as the blended Atmosphere of the pure lucid Aether’.6’
Having fallen from its aethereal state, the soul assumes an aereal vehicle. For
More, the placing of souls in particular bodies is the responsibility of the Spirit of
Nature, that entity which superintends God’s work in the aereal and terrestrial
784 Philip C. Almond
regions6* Glanvill imagined souls as allocated under a more impersonal spiritual
law (albeit with angelic assistance on occasion), and God effectively played no
role from the time of creation on:
it seems to me to be very becoming the wise Author of all things so to have made
them in the beginning, as that by their own internal spring and wheels, they should
orderly bring about whatever he intended them for, without his often immediate
interposal. For this looks like a more magnificent apprehension of the DivinePower
and Prescience, since it supposeth him from everlasting ages to have seen and
constituted the great machina of the world, that the infinite variety of motions
therein, should effect nothing but what in his eternal wisdom he had concluded fit
and decorous. .”
There were no essential differences between humans, angels and demons,
excepting that the latter two could not inhabit a terrestrial body.64
For most souls, a further descent was necessitated, from the aereal to the
terrestrial. At times, there being more souls ready for terrestr.ial vehicles than
there are vehicles available, the soul may lie in a state of inactivity and silence
until ‘awakened into life and operation in such bodies and places of the earth, as by
their dispositions they are fitted for . . .‘65
At death, the soul leaves its terrestrial vehicle, according to More, either
through the mouth or one of the other openings in the head.66 A few souls resume
their aethereal vehicles in the heavenly realm; but most are allotted vehicles of
air, where they appear in ‘the ordinary form of Angels, such a countenance, and
so cloathed, as they’.67 The soul has enhanced hearing, sight, and touch. The
more virtuous the soul, the more beautiful is its aereal form.‘j* There is no
difference of sex between aereal beings, though there is a discrimination of
beauty into male and female form.
Virtuous souls are envisaged by both More and Glanvill in the upper regions of
the air, closer to the aethreal realm: ‘ ‘tis very likely’, explained Glanvill, ‘that
these Regions [viz., near the earth] are very unsuitable, and disproportion’d to the
frame and temper of their Senses and Bodies;. . . Nor can the pure and better any
more endure the noisom steams and poysonous reeks of this Dunghil Earth, than
the delicate can bear a confinement in nasty Dungeons, and the foul squalid
Caverns of uncomfortable Darkness’.69
The wicked, on the other hand, are confined by More to regions closer to the
earth, in company with aereal demons. The pangs of conscience bring the aereal
body into ‘intolerable distempers, worse than death it self;’ those without
conscience are exposed to the torments of the demonic ministers of justice who
‘satiate their lascivient cruelty with all manner of abuses and torments they can
imagine’.70 Glanvill was disturbed by the presence in the air of wicked souls,
believing them to be less miserable than in their terrestrial bodies when they
ought to be more so. ‘l Consequently, in Lux Orientalis, he placed the wicked after
death within the earth. In the cavities beneath the earth’s surface, they do severe
penances for their wickedness. Contained in gross and foetid bodies of air,
variously tormented and persecuted by demons, they await the Day of
Judgement ‘no more able to abide the clear and lightsome Air; than the Bat or the
Owl are able to bear the Suns noon-day beams.. .r72
Seventeenth-century English Platonism 785
A PLATONIC COSMOGRAPHY
For the seventeenth century Platonists, no great gulf was fixed between the
world of the living and the dead. The theory of the vehicles of the soul enabled
them to locate those yet to be born, the living, and the dead in the same spatiotemporal
realm. The spiritual and the material, the natural and the supernatural,
were necessarily part of the one universe-a universe which operated according
to fixed laws both spiritual and material. What then were the factors which
motivated the Platonists to construct this elaborate cosmography?
In part, it was a reaction against Christian mortalism--the view that the soul
died or slept between death and the Day of Judgement. Mortalism had been a
recurring element in English religion from the time of the Reformation and was
particularly common among the radical sects during the Commonwealth
period.73 Cudworth, More, and Glanvill all assumed that any spirit without a
body could not be involved in the affairs of the world for it would be ‘asleep’ or at
least insensate. The theory of the vehicles of the soul enabled persons to retain a
continuity of consciousness by guaranteeing a conscious post-mortem existence.
But if the notion of disembodied souls is accepted, More maintained,
It is easy for the Psychopannychites to support their Opinion of the Sleep of the
Soul, for the Soul being utterly rescinded from all that is corporeal, and having no
vital union therewith at all, they will be very prone to infer, that it is impossible
she should know anything ad extru, if she can so much as dream. For even that
power may also seem incompetible to her in such a state, she having such an
essential aptitude for vital union with Matter.74
The theory of the vehicles of the soul ensured its temporal continuity and ruled
out even the possibility of the sleep of the soul after death.
The same theory also ensured the spatial location of the soul. This was a
reaction to the Cartesian notion of the soul as an unextended, non-corporeal
substance. For More, the non-extension of the soul entailed that it was nowhere,
‘it being the very essence of whatever is, to have parts of extension in some
manner or other. For, to take away all extension, is to reduce a thing only to a
Mathematical point, which is nothing else but pure negation or non-entity; and
there being no medium betwixt entity and non-entity, it is plain that if a thing be
at all, it must be extended’.75 More’s concept of the soul as extended was meant to
avoid what he saw as the incipient materialism of Cartesianism which, in denying
any extension to the soul, effectively denied its existence.“j It was a high cost for
More to pay. As Henry remarks, ‘The result is so materialistic in its major details
as virtually to belie its author’s professed belief in immaterial souls’.” Be that as
it may, the notion of the soul as extended did allow More to retain the realm of
spirit within a mechanically interpreted world. The world remained one, under
the superintendency of a transcendent Deity, served by a hierarchy of spirits, and
under the immediate supervision of the Spirit of Nature who exerted a guiding
influence on both the realm of spirit and the mathematico-physical world of the
new science.
While the notion of the soul’s extension ensured that it was somewhere in the
universe, it failed to allow for the possibility of its being at any specific location.
786 Philip C. Almond
For one implication of its being an extended non-corporeal substance was that it
was (like God) everywhere at the one time, that is, co-extensive with the universe.
It was the theory of the soul’s vehicles which guaranteed a specific location for
the soul. For it allowed in principle the locating of souls at particular points in the
universe rather than being diffused in some way throughout it. That is to say, the
soul’s potentially infinite extension was limited by the material form-of aether,
air, or earth-within which it was contained. Since, by virtue of its ‘essential
spissitude’, the soul penetrated and possessed the whole body, the amplitude of
the soul was determined by the shape and form of its vehicle.78
Moreover, the theory of the vehicles of the soul provided a framework for the
activities within the world of angels and demons, of the appearance and
disappearance of ghosts, and, crucially, of Satan and his earthly minions,
witches. The vehement support of More and Glanvill for the existence of witches
and, more particularly, for the constant action of Satan in the world cannot be
read as a superstitious remnant in their works. On the contrary, it was a central
theme in their defence of spirit against incipient Cartesian materialism and overt
Hobbesian atheism. In 1653, More was convinced
that a contemptuous misbelief of such like Narratives concerning Spirits, and an
endeavour of making them all ridiculous and incredible is a dangerous Prelude to
Atheisme it self, or else a more close and crafty Profession or Insinuation of it. For
assuredly that Saying was nothing so true in Politicks, No Bishop, no King; as this is
in Metaphysicks, No Spirit, no God.19
Keith Thomas in his Religion and the Decline of Magic has shown that only in the
late Middle Ages was there added to the European notion of witchcraft that of a
compact between Satan and witches, together with that of the Sabbath at which
witches gathered to worship Satan and to copulate with him. From the end ofthe
sixteenth century this European concept was disseminated in England.*O More
and Glanvill embraced this concept of witchcraft and constructed it within their
cosmography. Glanvill, for example, saw the witch’s journey to the Sabbath in
terms of the vehicles of the soul:
That the confederate Spirit should transport the Witch through the Air to the place
of general Rendezvous, there is no difficulty in conceiving it.. . ‘tis easie to
apprehend, that the Soul having left its gross and sluggish body behind it, and being
cloath’d only with its immediate vehicle of Air, or more subtitle matter, may be
quickly conducted to any place it would be at by those officious Spirits that attend
ita’
Glanvill was often uncertain as to whether to prefer supernatural or natural
explanations of the activity of witches. ” But he was convinced that the methods
of natural science could be utilised to verify the reality of soul and spirit. Science
was for Glanvill the preferred weapon against the onslaught of atheistic
materialism and the key to the defense of the co-existence of spirit and matter, of
aereal and terrestrial souls, of the angelic and the demonic. To the Royal Society,
he wrote.
Indeed, as things are for the present, the LAND of SPIRITS is a kind of America,
Seventeenth-century English Platonism 787
and not well discover’d Region; yea, it stands in the Map of humane Science like
unknown Tracts, fill’d up with Mountains, Seas, andMonsters. . . For we know not
anything of the world we live in, but by experiment and the Phaenomena; and there is
the same way of speculating immaterial nature, by extraordinary Events and
Apparitions, which possibly might be improved to notices not contemptible, were
there a Cautious, and Faithful History made of those certain and uncommon
appearances. At least it would be a standing evidence against SADDUCISM, to
which the present Age is so unhappily disposed, and a sensible Argument of our
Immortality.83
The desire of Glanvill and More to place the realm of spirit on an experimental
scientific basis was also an attack on occultists-Paracelsians, Helmontians,
believers in natural magic-and on the radical sectarians who, during the
Commonwealth period, embraced the immanentalism and illuminationism
implicit in these systems. 84 More and Glanvill criticised Cartesianism for
separating spirit and matter too completely to the effective denial of the reality of
the former. They criticised the occultists for merging them too completely to the
effective denial of any essential difference between them. The assertion of the
reality of both spirit and matter, supported by natural science, served to discredit
occultism.
CONCLUSION
The cosmography constructed by More, Glanvill, and Rust was intended to
guarantee an appropriate balance between the spiritual and material realms. It
provided a context in which both spirit and matter could be located in the same
spatio-temporal continuum, and thus equally amenable to the methods of the
new science.
But it was also a cosmography which outlined the progress of human souls
from creation to eternity, explained the vicissitudes of human existence,
endorsed free will and moral choice, and defended the essential goodness of God.
In sum, the problem of the nature of human existence and its relationship to the
nature of God played a crucial role in the development of a Christian Platonism,
attempting to be responsive to the demands of the spiritual and the material.
University of Queensland
Philip C. Almond
NOTES
The following abbreviations are used throughout:
Lux Orientalis: Joseph Glanvill, Lux Orientalis, in Two Choice and UsefuI Treatises
(London, 1682).
Immortality: Henry More, The Immortality of the Soul (London, 1659).
A Letter: Anon., A Letter of Resolution Concerning Origen and the Chief of his Opinions
(London, 1661).
788 PhiIip C. Almond
1. J. Henry, ‘A Cambridge Platonist’s Materialism: Henry More and the Concept of
Soul’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, xlix (1986), p. 188.
2. E.W., No praeexistence. Or a Brief Dissertation against the Hypothesis of Humane
Souls, Living in a State Antecedaneous to This, London 1667, Epistle to the Reader.
For the attribution of this to Edward Warren, see W.R. Alger, Critical Doctrine of a
Future Life (Philadelphia, 1864), p. 705.
3. See Lux Orientalis, Preface.
4. Thomas Birch (ed.), Robert Boyle: The Works, vol. vi (London, 1772), pp. 630-l.
5. See D.P. Walker, The Ancient Theology (New York, Ithaca, 1972); Frances A. Yates,
Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition (London, 1964).
6. See Immortality, p. 246.
7. See Lux OrientaIis, p. 26; C.P., A Dissertation concerning the Pre-existency of Sot&
(London, 1684). On the attribution of this to Christian Knorr von Rosenroth, see
D.P. Walker, The DecIine of Hell (London, 1964), p. 127. See also J. Glanvill, ‘A
Letter on Preexistence from Dr. Joseph Glanvill to Richard Baxter’, Bibliotheca
Platonica, i (1890), p. 91.
8. See G.W. Butterworth (ed.), Origen: On First Principles (Massachusetts, 1973), pp. 47,
65, 67, 8.134.
9. See W.H. Fremantle (trans.), Letters and Select Works of St. Jerome (New York,
1893), pp. 238-44.
10. See Max Schlr, Das Nachleben des Origenes im Zeitalter des Humanismus (Base1 and
Stuttgart, 1979), pp. 2347.
11. On the revival of Origen during the Renaissance, see e.g., ibid., E. Wind, ‘The Revival
of Origen’, in Dorothy Miner (ed.), Studies in Art and Literature for BeIIe da Costa
Greene (Princeton, 1954), pp. 412-24.
12. See Walker, (as in n. 7), p. 15.
13. See Marjorie H. Nicholson, Conway Letters (New Haven, 1930), p. 192, n. 1; Walker
(as in n. 7), pp. 125-6; C.F. Mullett, ‘A Letter by Joseph Glanvill on the Future
State’, The Huntingdon Library Quarterly, i (1937) pp. 447-56.
14. See A Letter, p. 22.
15. See Nicholson Conway Letters (as in n. 13), pp. 196-7.
16. Ibid., p. 194.
17. Lux Orientalis, p. 75. See also C.P. (as in n. 7), pp. 21-2,26-9; A Letter, pp. 34, 38.
18. Lux Orientalis, preface.
19. See Michael MacDonald, MysticaI Bedlam: Madness, Anxiety, and Healing in
Seventeenth-Century England (Cambridge, 1981).
20. See P.J. Marshall and Glyndwr Williams, The Great Map ofMankind(London, 1982).
21. Henry More, The Immortality of the Soul, second edition (London, 1662), p. 112.
22. See Jacques Le Goff, The Birth of Purgatory (Chicago, 1984), p. 229.
23. See Don C. Allen, Doubt’s BoundIess Sea: Skepticism and Faith in the Renaissance
(Baltimore, 1964), pp. 159-62.
24. A Letter, pp. 28-9. See also Lux Orientalis, p. 10.
25. See zKy.x wThvoumtassr, qp‘oTnhme lPkujriihtagnsf edacnbda ZAYduXlteWry:V UTTheS RAQct PoOf N1M650L KReJcIoHnsiGdeFreEd’D, CBinA
D. Pennington and K. Thomas (eds), Puritans and Revolutionaries (Oxford, 1978)
pp. 257-82.
26. Immortality, p. 241. See also Lux Orientalis, p. 11; C.P. (as in n. 7), p. 12.
27. See Lux Orientalis, p. 17. See also Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (Cambridge, 1904),
ch. 34, p, 285. On Hobbes on the soul, see David Johnston, The Rhetoric ofleviathan:
Hobbes and the Politics of Cultural Transformation (Princeton, 1986).
28. On the relation of More and Descartes, see S.P. Lamprecht, ‘The Role of Descartes in
Seventeenth-Century England’, Studies in the History of Ideas, iv (1935), pp. 181-240;
C. Webster, ‘Henry More and Descartes: Some New Sources’, The British Journalfor
Seventeenth-century English Platonism 789 zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA
the History of Science, iv (1968-9) pp. 359-77.
29. Immortality, p. 241. See also C.P. (as in n. 7), pp. 11-12; Lux Orientalis, p. 22.
30. See Henry Hills, A Short treatise concerning the Propagation of the Soul (London,
1667), p. 23.
31. Ibid., p. 31.
32. See Shirley A. Roe, Matter, Life, and Generation:Eighteenth-centuryembroyologyand
the Hailer- WoIfe debate (Cambridge, 1981).
33. The crucial passage was John ix.2. See A Letter, p. 44; Lux Orientalis,~. 40; C.P. (as in
n. 7) ch. iii. The same text was used as an argument for the transmigration of souls.
See Franciscus Mercurius van Helmont, The ParadoxicaI Discourses of PM. Van
Helmont (London, 1685) p. 107; and cf. Samuel Parker, An Account of the Nature and
Extent of the Divine Dominion and Goodnesse, especially as they refer to the Origenian
Hypothesis Concerning the Preexistence of Souls (Oxford, 1666), p. 233.
34. Lux Orientalis, pp. 83-4.
35. Ibid., pp. 88-9. See also Glanvill (as in n. 7), pp. 191-2.
36. See Marjorie H. Nicholson, ‘Milton and the Conjectura Cabbahstica’, Philological
Quarterly, vi (1927), p. 6. On More and the Jewish Cabbala, see A. Coudert,
‘A Cambridge Platonist’s Kabbalist Nightmare’, Journal of the History of Ideas, xxxvi
(1975), pp. 633-52. On the Lurianic Cabbalism with which More only became
familiar after 1670 when he had met van Helmont and corresponded with Rosenroth,
see Gershom G. Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (New York, 1961).
37. On Copernicanism in England, see Paul H. Kocher, Science and Religion in
Ehzabethan England (San Marino, California, 1953) pp. 189-200; and Francis R.
Johnson, Astronomical Thought in Renaissance England: A Study of the English
Scientwc Writings from 1500-1645 (New York, 1968).
38. Henry More, Conjectura Cabbalistica, in A Collection of Philosophical Writings,
second edition (London, 1662), pp. 45-6.
39. Ibid., p. 27.
40. See Butterworth (ed.) (as in n. 8) p. 134.
41. See Hobbes (as in n. 27), p. 148; More (as in n. 21) p. 36. On the controversy over
Hobbes’s determinism, see Samuel I. Mintz, The Hunting of Leviathan (Cambridge,
1962), pp. 110-33. On the debate between Hobbes and Archbishop John Bramhall,
see L. Damrosch Jr, ‘Hobbes as Reformation Theologian: implications of the freewill
controversy’, Journal of the History of Ideas, xl (1979), pp. 339-52.
42. On Arminianism in England, see Rosalie L. Colie, Light andEnlightenment: A Study
of the Cambridge Piatonists and the Dutch Arminians (Cambridge, 1957). There is a
considerable contemporary debate on the rise of Arminianism in England. See, for
example, P. White, ‘The Rise of Arminianism Reconsidered’, Past and Present,
ci (1983) pp. 34-54; N. Tyacke and P. White, ‘Debate: The Rise of Arminianism
Reconsidered’, Past and Present, cxv (1987), pp. 201-29; see also, J.M. Atkins,
‘Calvinist Bishops, Church Unity, and the Rise of Arminianism’, Albion, xviii (1986),
pp. 41 l-27.
43. Richard Ward, The Life of the Learnedand the Pious Dr. Henry More (London, 1710),
pp. 6-7.
44. Lux Orientalis, p. 52. See also Immortality, pp. 242-3.
45. On theological voluntarism, see F. Oakley, ‘Christian Theology and the Newtonian
Science: The Rise of the Concept of the Laws of Nature’, Church History, xxx (1961)
pp. 433-57.
46. Anon., Deus Justificatus: Or, The Divine Goodness Vindicated and Cleared. against the
Assertors of Absolute and Inconditionate Reprobation (London, 1668), p. 19. On the
attribution of this to Henry Hallywell, friend of George Rust, see Nicholson (as in
n. 13), p. 293, n. 4.
790 zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONPMhiILipK CJ.I HAlGmoFnEd DCBA
47. Ibid., p. 255. See afso George Rust, A Discourse of Truth, in Two Choice and Useful
Treatises (London, 1682), p. 181, and Glanvill’s Introduction to this work.
48. Quoted by Walker (as in n. 7), p. 151.
49. See E.W. (as in n. Z), pp. 7-8.
50. Walker (as in n. 7), p. 150. See also Henry More, Annotations upon the Twoforegoing
Treatises, in Two Choice and Useful Treatises (London, 1682), p. 43.
51. See, for example, Parker (as in n. 33), p. 162.
52. See Rust (as in n. 47), pp. 189-90; anon. (as in n. 46), pp. 275-6; More (as in n. 50),
p* 43.
53. See Parker (as in n. 33), p. 162.
54. More (as in n. 50), p. 45.
55. See E.W. (as in n. 2), p. 20.
56. See More (as in n. 50), p. 77.
57. Anon. (as in n. 46), pp. 37-8. On the free will defense, see J.L. Mackie, ‘Evil and
Omnipotence’, in B. Mitchell (ed.), The Philosophy of Religion (Oxford, 1971),
pp, 92-104.
58. See E.R. Dodds (ed.), Proclus: The Elements of Theology (Oxford, 1933), appendix 2;
John F. Finamore, Iamblichus and the Theory zoyfx twhev uVethsirclqe poof nthme lSkoujil h(Cghfiecod, cbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA
California, 1985).
59. Ralph Cudworth, The True Intellectual System of the Universe (London, 1845), p. 275.
Cudworth recognised too that for some neo-Platonists the aethereal body was lost and
needed to be regained: see also Dodds, op. cit., pp. 319-20.
60. Lux Orientalis, pp. 114-5. See also More (as in n. SO), p. 122.
61. A Letter, p. 54.
62. See Moody E. Prior, ‘Joseph Glanvill, Witchcraft, and Seventeenth-Century Science’,
modern Philogy, xxx (1932-3), p. 176.
63. Lux Orientalis, p. 98.
64, See Immortality, p. 52.
65. Lux Orientalis, pp. 121-2.
66. See ~mmortaIity, p. 270.
67. Ibid., p. 343.
68. Ibid., pp. 411-12.
69. Lux Orientalis, p. 93. See also Henry More, An Antidote against Atheisme (London,
1652), pp. 146-7.
70. Immortality, pp. 439,441; cf. A Letter, pp. 73-4; see also More(as in n. 50), pp. 114-5.
71. See Mullett (as in n. 13), p. 454.
72. Lux Orientalis, p. 133; see also p. 132.
73. See Norman T. Burns, Christian ~orta~ism from Tyndale to Milton (Cambridge,
Massachusetts, 1972).
74. More (as in n. 21), pp. 6-7. See also Cudworth, (as in n. 59), p. 319.
75. More (as in n. 21), p. 3.
76. See More (as in n. 50), pp. 133-51.
77. Henry (as in no. I), p. 194.
78. See, for example, Immortality, pp. 342-3.
79. More (as in n. 69), p. 164. See also Joseph Glanvill, A Whipfor theDroll, Fiddler to the
Atheist (London, 1668), pp. 176-7.
80. See Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of magic (Harmondswo~h, 1980),
pp. 517-58.
81. Joseph Glanvill, Sadducismus Triumphatus, third edition (London, 1689), pp. 73-4;
see also Immortality, pp 278-9.
82. See ibid., pp. 75-6. See also Jackson 1. Cope, Joseph Glanvik Anglican Apologist
(St Louis, 1956), p. 96.
Seventeenth-century English Platonism 791
83. Joseph Glanvill, A Blow at Modern Sadducism (London, 1668), pp. 115-7.
84. See T.H. Jobe, ‘The Devil in Restoration Science: The Glanvill-Webster Debate’, zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA
Isis, lxxii (1981), pp. 343-56; P.M. Rattansi, ‘Paracelsus and the Puritan Revolution’,
Ambix, xi (1964), pp. 24-32.

CAUSA GRATIAE: АВГУСТИН О БЛАГОДАТИ И СВОБОДЕ
Томас Гулан

Лютеранский автор

 1. Введение

Аврелий Августин (354-431) не только жил в то время, когда формулировались основные учения христианства, но и внес значительный вклад в это развитие. Оценка
этой выдающейся фигуры западного христианства конца IV и начала V века должна происходить в свете ситуации, в которой он работал, и ответственности, которую он нес, предпосылок, которые влияли на его образ мышления, и богословских споров, которые сформировали содержание его мысли. [1]. Из трех основных таких споров мы сосредоточим наше внимание на вызове Пелагия и его поздних последователей, который поднял самый важный вопрос западного христианства - о человеческой греховности
и приоритете действующей благодати Бога. В самый разгар этого спора Августина посетили два монаха из монастыря, где поднялся переполох относительно связи
между свободной волей и необходимостью благодати для спасения человека. В
результате, сопровождаемый двумя письмами с объяснениями, Августин не
только наставил этих двух братьев, но и написал трактат под названием «О благодати и свободной воле».

2. Августин против пелагианства

Прежде чем перейти к анализу трактата, необходимо познакомиться с пелагианским движением как таковым. Сначала мы рассмотрим причины возникновения движения, а затем оценим его основную богословскую направленность. Импульсом движения стал «протест против упадка христианской морали». [3] Христианство,
будучи прочно устоявшимся благодаря тому, что последние сто лет было официальной религией Римской империи, больше не было сообществом строгой морали и мужественных исповеданий, столь характерных для предыдущих столетий. Скорее, оно включало «большое количество новообращенных, чье христианство вряд ли могло пойти глубже принятия крещения и исповедания имени». [3] Пелагий тоже увидел упадок и решил действовать. Питер Браун резюмирует основной тезис манифеста Пелагия: «Это послание было простым и ужасающим: поскольку совершенство возможно для человека, оно обязательно». «Бог», продолжает Браун резюме, «повелел беспрекословно
подчиняться,… человеческая природа была создана для достижения такого совершенства». [1]
Пелагианство, прежде всего, сделало фундаментальное теологическое утверждение
о справедливости Бога. Затем оно поместило силу в человеческую природу, возложило ответственность на человеческие плечи и приравняло благодать к дару Бога в творении. Логика была следующей: поскольку Бог справедлив, Он будет судить справедливо. В Своей справедливости «Бог наделил свое творение способностью (possibilitas) или способностью (posse) к действию, и ему надлежало ее использовать». [4] Таким образом, человек был наделен - благодатью Божией, данной в творении - posse, и теперь его
задачей было реализовать это in velle и, наконец, in esse. Подводя итог, можно сказать, что
изначальное наделение человека свободной волей, откровение закона, учение Евангелия, прощение прошлых грехов в крещении и пример Христа были даны для того, чтобы человек мог и, следовательно, должен был реализовать (esse) все предписания, предписанные ему Богом. [2]
Августин чувствовал и разоблачал неотъемлемые опасности этой позиции: грех воспринимался только как подражание Адаму, первому грешнику; человек был призван преодолеть эту плохую привычку подражания. В грехопадении человеческая природа не претерпела существенных изменений, поэтому не нуждалась в искуплении. Человек был emancipatus a Deo и все больше и больше становился таковым, обладая достаточной свободой и самообладанием, чтобы достичь для себя блаженства. Божья благодать вне
процесса творения не существовала и не играла активной роли в спасении. Провозглашенное совершенство личности, когда оно было достигнуто, объявлялось заслугой; таким образом, отрицалась необходимость и искупительное дело Христа.
 Августин хорошо знал, что концепция совершенного послушания, посредством которого можно избежать наказания и заслужить благодать, не только невозможна, но и вредна для христианского послания в целом. Потому он единодушно считается величайшим отцом Церкви западного христианства. Его главная теологическая полемика была против пелагианства, христианской ереси, отождествляющей Божью благодать с Его наделением человека свободным выбором в творении. Когда Августину предложили рассмотреть вопрос о сопоставлении Божьей благодати и свободного выбора человека, он ответил, написав «О благодати и свободной воле», где начал свое обсуждение с доказательства свободного выбора. Однако далее в аргументации он определенно отказывается от этого понятия и движется к возвышению и восхвалению первенства и единственного действия Божьей благодати.

3. Краткое изложение аргумента «О благодати и свободной воле»

Августин замечает, что есть «некоторые люди, которые так защищают
благодать Божию, что отрицают свободную волю человека вообще, или которые полагают, что свободная воля отрицается, когда защищается благодать». [4] Здесь мы можем видеть два изложенных вопроса. Во-первых, вопрос благодати, когда он  подчеркивается таким образом, что разрушает свободный человеческий выбор, с выводом о детерминизме и либертинизме. Августин предупреждает оставаться на прямом пути и не
отклоняться «влево», оставляя хороший образ жизни. Во-вторых, существует опасность поворота «вправо», приписывая себе те добрые дела, которые были совершены силой благодати Божией, ранее дарованной свободно. Против этого искажения, увенчанного пелагианским понятием заслуги, Августин предостерегает в трактате в целом.
Однако эта статья намерена сделать шаг глубже в аргументацию Августина. В риторике Августина, безусловно, есть нечто большее, чем простое смешение благодати и человеческой воли. Если рассматривать работу в целом, как один солидный случай, то
вступительное обсуждение Августином свободы воли служит лишь риторическим
инструментом, направленным на разрушение этой  отправной точки аргументации в пользу человеческой свободы. Он достигает этого, делая ее устаревшей в
рамках трактата в целом, который в конечном итоге направлен не на аргумент в пользу поддержки свободной воли, а на поддержку и восхваление исключительно благодати Божьей. Наконец, вступительное доказательство, когда оно встречается с действенной благодатью и действующим Богом, вытесняется, и единственное, что остается делать, - это стоять в благоговении перед великими тайнами Бога.

4. Наблюдение за доказательством свободы к Августина

Для целей нашего исследования нет необходимости охватывать каждый
аспект трактата. В этой части мы сосредоточимся только на вступительной части, аргументе в пользу свободной воли, что приведет нас к пониманию ключевых аспектов общего сдвига, который будет раскрыт ниже. Вступительное заявление Августина звучит следующим образом: "Теперь Он открыл нам через Свои Священные Писания,
что в человеке есть свободный выбор воли… Начнем с того, что сами по себе предписания Бога были бы бесполезны для человека, если бы у него не было свободного выбора, так что, исполняя их, он мог бы получить обещанные награды. Ибо они даны
для того, чтобы никто не мог оправдаться незнанием [4]
Здесь стоит отметить две вещи. Во-первых, как уже упоминалось выше, Августин начинает с попытки доказать существование свободной воли, поэтому обсуждение выносится на академический уровень, без личного участия стороны, делающей утверждение. Доказательство, которое он предоставляет, - это логика существования предписаний и заповедей Бога, явно адаптированных к человеческой воле. Это приводит
его к выводу не только о несомненном существовании человеческой свободы, но и к обвинению всех людей. Человек не имеет права требовать оправдания своего невежества, но должен приписывать всю вину за злые поступки себе. Это второй пункт, а именно вытекающая из этого ответственность человека за свое поведение и за результаты
своих поступков. Ответственность за зло полностью лежит на плечах людей, и именно мы должны быть обвинены во зле и осуждены как не имеющие оправдания. Августин заключает: «Поэтому ни один человек, когда он грешит, не может в своем сердце винить Бога за это, но каждый человек должен приписывать вину себе». [4]
Это все о классическом философском аргументе в пользу свободной воли,
как вытекающем из ответственности человека, так и ведущем к ней. Самым важным и поразительным моментом вступительной части трактата является то, что не только весь аргумент основан на призыве к человеческой ответственности, то есть на законе, но и то, что этот аргумент лишен Христа. На самом деле Христос появляется только один раз в этих четырех главах, но даже тогда Он служит угрозой суда для того, кто не имеет веры в Него. Таким образом, если бы трактат закончился главой 5, он предоставил бы читателю логичный аргумент в пользу существования свободной воли у человека, но последовательно оставил бы его только с обвинением и осуждением самого сурового закона, без милосердия к осужденному грешнику.

5. Рассмотрение аргумента Августина в целом

Однако Августин не останавливается на точке установления человеческой свободы и непременного осуждения грешника. Он переходит к построению аргумента в пользу необходимости сотрудничества благодати с человеческой волей (А НЕ НАОБОРОТ! - Пер.). В своем обсуждении Августин вводит, среди многих других, еще три важных момента, которые будут рассмотрены ниже.

5.1. Против пелагианского понятия заслуги к приоритету благодати

Для своего аргумента против понятия заслуги Августин выбирает апостола Павла. Именно в этом обсуждении два основных библейских текста (Иоан. 15:5 и 1 Кор. 4:7) используются в качестве ведущего аргумента. Показывая абсурдность пелагианского довода, он пишет: «Без сомнения, у апостола Павла была определенная заслуга, но она была злой». [4] В конце концов, сам Павел признает, что по благодати Божией он есть то, что он есть, и в добром деянии это был не он, но благодать Божия с ним.
Таким образом, Августин показывает, что именно благодать всегда предшествует нашим делам. Применяемый риторический метод включает:
- Всегда помещать два предмета (благодать и человеческую волю) в сопоставление
друг с другом, где эти две вещи всегда следуют одна за другой.
- Последний момент не только противостоит первому, он заменяет первенство первого и, таким образом, делает основной акцент на последнем.
- Когда результирующее действие является добрым, последнее из двух всегда является благодатью Божией; когда таковое действие является злым,  в конечном счете
агентом является человек и его выбор.
Несколько примеров для иллюстрации:
- Благодати предшествуют не наши добрые заслуги, а злые.
- Любовь, исполняющая заповеди, не от нас самих, но от Бога.
– Мы не любили бы Бога, если бы Он прежде не любил нас.
– Не может быть заслуги в выборе человеком Христа, скорее благодать
всегда предшествует этому выбору.
Следовательно, всякий раз, когда говорят о добром действии, это всегда Божья благодать, которая победила злого человеческого агента. Впоследствии, всякий раз, когда человеческий агент больше не совершает зла, это происходит благодаря благодати, которая обязательно предшествовала тому.

5.2. Пересмотр вопроса о человеческой ответственности

Как уже отмечалось, Августин сохраняет акцент на человеческой ответственности. Когда он возвращается к этой теме почти в самом конце трактата, он больше не отвечает на вызов моральной небрежности, но и проводит лобовую атаку на пелагианство. Августин не только отстаивает полную безвозмездность благодати, но и особо иллюстрирует ее на примере крещения младенцев, столь презираемого его оппонентами. Далее он ссылается на Римлянам 9, заявляя о всеобщей греховности, и, подобно апостолу Павлу, он тоже больше не рассуждает, а только пребывает в благоговении перед глубиной
мудрости и богатствами Бога. Августин впоследствии заканчивает свою речь следующим образом: «Но благодать, действительно, осуществляет эту цель - чтобы добрые дела теперь совершались теми, кто прежде творил зло... Их речь, следовательно, не должна быть: «Давайте делать зло, чтобы вышло добро»; но: «Мы сделали зло, но вышло добро.» [4].
В результате человеческая ответственность сохраняется, но на этот раз
не на основе угрозы закона, а по предшествованию благодати Божией. И есть еще одно отличие сверх этого. На этот раз читатель не остается один в отчаянии из-за своей
неспособности и неудачи, как это было в конце первых четырех глав, но ему дается все доброе, что пришло, несмотря на все наши злые заслуги. Таким образом, Августин предлагает, как единственный правильный человеческий ответ на безвозмездно данную благодать, восхвалять и исповедоваться лицом к лицу с Самим добрым Дарителем.

5.3. К абсолютной активности благодати Божией

Чем больше человек продвигается в чтении трактата «О благодати и свободной воле», тем больше он влечется к активности Божией. Благодать Божия является causa sine qua non «исполнения закона, освобождения природы и устранения господства греха». [4]
Начальная герменевтика закона как того, что должно быть исполнено, перевернута на 180 градусов, что иллюстрируется следующим: «Но Бог повелевает некоторые вещи, которые мы не можем сделать, чтобы мы могли знать, чего мы должны просить у Него». [4]
Сумма аргументов Августина относительно нашего желания звучит озадачивающе, но его цель в первенстве Бога во всех наших добрых желаниях недвусмысленна. Он пишет: «Несомненно, что это мы хотим, когда хотим, но именно Он заставляет нас хотеть того, что хорошо», [4] И, следовательно, Он действует без нас, чтобы мы могли хотеть;
но когда мы хотим, и так хотим, чтобы мы могли действовать, Он сотрудничает с нами. Однако мы сами не можем ничего сделать для совершения добрых дел благочестия без того, чтобы Он либо делал то, что мы можем хотеть, либо содействовал, когда мы хотим. Теперь о Его действии в том, что мы можем хотеть, сказано : «Бог производит в вас и хотение». (Фил.2. 13) [4]
Чтобы завершить аргумент в целом, Августин борется с пелагианскими писаниями и тьмой в них, которая говорит, что «Любовь приходит к нам от нас самих». [4] Работа Августина заканчивается недвусмысленными утверждениями о том, что воля людей находится во власти Бога, и Бог действует на сердца людей, чтобы склонить их волю
так, как Ему угодно. В том же духе его заключительное обсуждение ожесточения
сердца фараона и церковной практики крещения младенцев, можно сказать, дает невербализованное опровержение его собственного начального аргумента, который, как показано, равен аргументу его пелагианских оппонентов.
В итоге трактат «О благодати и свободной воле» не предлагает логического объяснения ни зла в мире, ни беспричинности благодать Божия. Это ограничивает возможности человека, требуя не искать тайных судов Божьих, а скорее призывает «воздать Богу хвалу» и «молиться о понимании», увенчанное заключительным славословием и Аминь нашему «Господу и Спасителю Иисусу Христу, Которому принадлежит честь, слава и царство со Отцом и Святым Духом во веки веков». [4]

6. Заключение

Августин, больше, чем любой другой христианский мыслитель за несколько столетий, приводит доводы в пользу неспособности закона - будь он дан или открыт - и/или человеческой воли даровать спасение. Если бы кто-то следовал теологии его оппонентов - четкому пелагианству - человеческий вклад был бы важнейшим импульсом
нашего спасения. Если бы кто-то следовал более позднему полупелагианскому
образу мышления, как человеческое поведение, так и благодать Божия остаются необходимыми и активными в процессе нашего спасения. Если следовать Августину, как мы проследили в этом исследовании, то человеческий вклад остается необходимой предпосылкой, но он не только неэффективен без необходимого пришествия благодати, но и с пришествием благодати человеческий импульс - примером которого является понятие свободной воли - становится устаревшим. Наконец, хотя это выходит за
рамки Августина, а также этой статьи, если исповедовать единоличную деятельность Бога с самого начала, если «мы проповедуем Христа распятого, для иудеев соблазн, а для язычников безумие», человеческие предпосылки вообще не имеют места, и вся сумма наших рассуждений и аргументации направляется исключительно исповедью и славословием.
Августин, живший на пороге этого спора, не был подготовлен к тому, чтобы сделать полный теологический шаг к всемогущей деятельности Бога в спасении человека; поэтому он был склонен к искажению полупелагианской концепции достойных дел. Однако он заложил основу и подготовил почву для дебатов, достигших апогея в реформаторской доктрине sola gratia. Только тогда, как, например, в работе Лютера «Рабство воли», некоторые вопросы - такие как вопрос о свободе человеческой воли в достижении нашего спасения - были определенно объявлены вводящими в заблуждение и вынесены за пределы сферы человека, стоящего перед всемогущим и милосердным Богом.
Там, наконец, в соответствии с христианским вероучением, человек исповедует единственную благодать Божию только во Христе.

[1] BROWN, P.: Augustine of Hippo, A Biography, University of California Press, 2000.
[2] KELLY, J. N. D.: Early Christian Doctrines, Continuum, 1958.
[3] Library of Christian Classics, vol. VIII, Westminster, 1953.
[4] AUGUSTINE: On Grace and Free Will, The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, vol. V., Eerdmans, 1997.

Перевод (С) Inquisitor Eisenhorn