CHAPTER III

GOD AND THE SOUL

I. NATURE OF GOD

Platonism affected Christian theology as it appears in English poetry in a twofold way. It provided a body of intellectual principles which were identified with the persons of the Christian Trinity and it also trained the minds of the poets in conceiving God rather as the object of the mind’s speculative quest than as the dread judge of the sinful soul. Platonism in this form is no longer the body of ethical principles appearing in the Platonic dialogues; but is that metaphysical after-growth of Platonism that has its source in the philosophy of Plotinus. According to this form of speculative mysticism there were three ultimate principles, or hypostases,—The Good, Intellect (υοῦς), and Soul. Owing to the affinity of Platonism for Christian forms of thought, these three hypostases were conceived as the philosophic basis underlying the Christian teaching of the three Persons of the Trinity. Such an interpretation is seen plainly in the work of Henry More and William Drummond; and the speculative attitude of conceiving God and Christ in the light of the hypostases of Plotinus is also discernible in Spenser and Milton.

The boldest attempt to identify the three Plotinian principles with the Christian Trinity is made in Henry More’s “Psychozoia,” the first poem of his “Psychodia Platonica.” This poetical treatise reveals the aim of More’s spiritual life as it was formulated on the basis of Platonic philosophy blended with the teaching of the “Theologia Germanica.” The strain of self-abnegation which More learned in “that _Golden little Book_,”[23] as he names the German treatise, may be easily separated from the Platonism, being confined to the last two books of his poem; it may thus be dismissed. In the first book, however, the current of thought is almost purely Platonic. There, under the figure of the marriage rite, the first principle of Plotinus, the Good, is represented as joining his two children—Intellect and Soul—in holy union; and under the poetic device of a veil with several films or tissues, More describes Soul in minute detail.

In keeping with the teachings of Platonism More defines each person of the Trinity in the terms used by Plotinus. According to this philosopher the highest reality is The One or The Good which is infinite and above all comprehension, not because it is impossible to measure or count it (since it has no magnitude and no multitude), but simply because it is impossible to conceive its power. (“Enneads,” VI. ix. 6.) In the beatific vision, in which The Good is known in the Soul, it is invisible, hidden in its own rays of light. (“Enneads,” VI. vii. 35.) More thus speaks of God, naming him Hattove:

“Th’ Ancient of dayes, sire of _Æternitie_, Sprung of himself, or rather nowise sprong. Father of lights, and everlasting glee Who puts to silence every daring tongue And flies mans sight, shrouding himself among His glorious rayes, good _Hattove_, from whom came All good that _Penia_ [_i.e._ want] spies in thickest throng Of most desired things, all’s from that same.”

(I. 5.)

“But first of all Was mighty _Hattove_, deeply covered o’re With unseen light. No might Imaginall May reach that vast profunditie.”

(I. 16.)

The Son is identified with the second hypostasis,—universal intellect. In this all realities are present not as created things in time or space, but embraced as essential forms with no spatial or temporal relation. This character of universal intellect is thus named αἰών, or eternity. (“Enneads,” III. vii. 4.) More thus writes of Christ—

“The youthfull _Æon_, whose fair face doth shine While he his Fathers glory doth espy, Which waters his fine flowring forms with light from high.

“Not that his forms increase, or that they die. For _Æοn Land_, which men _Idea_ call, Is nought but life in full serenitie, Vigour of life is root, stock, branch, and all; Nought here increaseth, nought here hath its fall; For _Æons_ kingdomes alwaies perfect stand, Birds, beasts, fields, springs, plants, men and minerall, To perfectnesse nought added be there can.”

(I. 13. 14.)

Psyche, or Uranore, as she is named at times, is the third person of the Trinity. She is the soul of the universe, present in every “atom ball,” in the creatures of earth, sea, air, the divine stars in heaven. (“Enneads,” V. i. 2.) In her true essence she is invisible; but More pictures her as enveloped in a fourfold garment. The outer garment is called Physis, in which all natural objects appear as spots which grow each according to its idea. This robe is stirred with every impulse of life from the central power of God.

“The first of these fair films, we _Physis_ name. Nothing in nature did you ever spy But there’s pourtraid:

· · · · ·

“And all besprinkeled with centrall spots, Dark little spots, is this hid inward veil.

· · · · ·

“When they dispread themselves, then gins to swell Dame _Psyches_ outward vest, as th’ inward wind Softly gives forth, full softly doth it well Forth from the centrall spot;

· · · · ·

according to the imprest Art (That Arts impression’s from _Idea Land_) So drives it forth before it every part According to true symmetry.”

(I. 41–44.)

The second and third folds of Psyche’s vest are very closely identified. They are called Arachnea and Haphe, by which the life of sensation is meant. Haphe, or touch, sits in the finely spun web of Arachnea, and is aware of every manifestation of life resulting from the soul’s contact with the outward world. In this life of sensation Psyche sees as in a mirror all the stirring life within the universe. (I. 48, 49, 50.)

The fourth fold of Psyche’s garment is called Semele, by which imagination is meant. This is the loosest of the four veils, having the fullest play in its movements. It is universal imagination, and from it arises the inspiration of the poet and the prophet. (I. 57.) The individual powers of imagination are conceived as daughters of the one great Semele.

“She is the mother of each _Semele_: The daughters be divided one from one; But she grasps all. How can she then but see Each _Semels_ shadows by this union? She sees and swayes imagination As she thinks good: and it that she think good She lets it play by ’t self, yet looketh on, While she keeps in that large strong-beating flood That gars the Poet write, and rave as he were wood.”

(I. 59.)

These three persons—Ahad, another name given by More to God (I. 34), Æon, and Psyche—form, says More, “the famous Platonicall Triad; which though they that slight the Christian Trinity do take for a figment; yet I think it is no contemptible argument, that the Platonists, the best and divinest of Philosophers, and the Christians, the best of all that do professe religion, do both concur that there is a Trinity. In what they differ, I leave to be found out, according to the safe direction of that infallible Rule of Faith, the holy Word.”[24] To signify the union of these persons More represents Ahad joining Æon, his son, in marriage to Psyche, and by holding their hands in his, maintaining a perpetual unity.

“My first born Sonne, and thou my daughter dear, Look on your aged Sire, the deep abysse, In which and out of which you first appear; I _Ahad_ hight, and _Ahad_ onenesse is: Therefore be one; (his words do never misse) They one became.

“They straight accord: then he put on the ring, The ring of lasting gold on _Uranure_; Then gan the youthful Lads aloud to sing, Hymen! O Hymen! O the Virgin pure! O holy Bride! long may this joy indure.

· · · · ·

(I. 34, 35.)

And all this time he held their hands in one; Then they with chearfull look one thing desired, That he nould break this happy union. I happy union break? quoth he anon: I _Ahad_? Father of Community? Then they: That you nould let your hand be gone Off from our hands. He grants with smiling glee.”

(I. 38.)

In this way More has expressed his conception of the Christian Trinity. Inasmuch as his purpose in the “Psychozoia” is to relate the experiences of the human soul from the time of its departure from God to its return thither, he has laid especial emphasis upon the third hypostasis of Plotinus,—Soul.

In William Drummond’s “An Hymn of the Fairest Fair” attention is centred upon the first person of the Trinity. Drummond is more of a poet and less of a philosopher than More; but the philosophic conceptions which are woven into his poetical description of the nature, attributes, and works of God are drawn from the same system of metaphysics. In Drummond’s “Hymn” there is a mingling of two conceptions of God. He is described, according to the Hebraic idea, as a mighty king, the creator of the universe, dwelling in heaven, and possessing such attributes of personality as justice, mercy, might. Running in and out of this description is a strain of Platonic speculation, in which the conception of God as an essence is very prominent. Thus by means of a poetic device picturing youth standing before God and pouring immortal nectar into His cup, Drummond expresses the Platonic idea of absolute oneness. And this idea is the attribute of God first set forth.

“If so we may well say (and what we say, Here wrapt in flesh, led by dim reason’s ray, To show by earthly beauties which we see, That spiritual excellence that shines in thee, Good Lord, forgive), not far from thy right side, With curled locks Youth ever doth abide; Rose-cheeked Youth, who, garlanded with flowers Still blooming, ceaselessly unto thee pours Immortal nectar in a cup of gold, That by no darts of ages thou grow old, And, as ends and beginnings thee not claim, Successionless that thou be still the same.”

(ll. 31–42.)

After a description of God’s might, Drummond passes on to consider His truth, conceived as the Platonists conceived intellect, embracing all reality as essential form. This attribute is pictured as a mirror in which God beholds all things.

“With locks in waves of gold that ebb and flow On ivory neck, in robes more white than snow, Truth steadfastly before thee holds a glass, Indent with gems, where shineth all that was, That is, or shall be. Here, ere aught was wrought, Thou knew all that thy pow’r with time forth brought, And more, things numberless which thou couldst make, That actually shall never being take: Here, thou behold’st thyself, and, strange, dost prove At once the beauty, lover, and the love.”

(ll. 56–66.)

Platonic metaphysics are also present in Drummond’s account of the essential unity persisting throughout the triplicity of Persons. Plotinus had held that The One caused the mind or intellect, and that in turn caused universal soul. The order, however, is not one of time sequence, but merely a logical order of causation. In this series of causation there is no idea of a production as an act going out of itself and forming another; each producing cause remains in its own centre; throughout the series runs one cause or manifestation of life. His favorite figures by which he explains this idea are, first, that of an overflowing spring which gives rise to a second and this to a third; and, second, that of a sun with a central source of light with its spreading rays. (“Enneads,” V. ii. 1, 2.) Thus intellect is an irradiation of The One and soul is an irradiation of intellect. (“Enneads,” V. i. 6.) Drummond, holding to the idea of the self-sufficiency of God as expressed in Plotinus, a state in which God is alone by Himself and not in want of the things that proceed from Him (“Enneads,” VI. vii. 40), is thus able to unfold the mystery of the One in Three:

“Ineffable, all-powrfull God, all free, Thou only liv’st, and each thing lives by thee; No joy, no, nor perfection to thee came By the contriving of this world’s great frame;

· · · · ·

world nought to thee supplied, All in thyself thyself thou satisfied. Of good no slender shadow doth appear, No age-worn track, in thee which shin’d not clear; Perfections sum, prime cause of every cause, Midst, end, beginning, where all good doth pause. Hence of thy substance, differing in nought, Thou in eternity, thy Son forth brought, The only birth of thy unchanging mind, Thine image, pattern-like that ever shin’d, Light out of light, begotton not by will, But nature, all and that same essence still Which thou thyself....

· · · · ·

Of this light, Eternal, double, kindled was thy spright Eternally, who is with thee the same, All-holy gift, ambassador, knot, flame. Most sacred Triad! O most holy One! Unprocreate Father, ever procreate Son, Ghost breath’d from both, you were, are, aye shall be, Most blessed, three in one, and one in three, Incomprehensible by reachless height, And unperceived by excessive light.

· · · · ·

So, though unlike, the planet of the days, So soon as he was made, begat his rays, Which are his offspring, and from both was hurl’d The rosy light which comfort doth the world, And none forewent another; so the spring The well-head, and the stream which they forth bring, Are but one selfsame essence, nor in aught Do differ, save in order, and our thought No chime of time discerns in them to fall, But three distinctly bide one essence all.”

(ll. 99–142.)

From this point on to the close, the “Hymn” celebrates the glory of God in his works. Drummond possessed an imagination that delighted as Milton’s did in the contemplation of the universe as a vast mechanical scheme of sun and planets. (ll. 180–232.) His philosophic mind, however, led him to conceive of nature in the manner of the Platonists. God, or true being, according to Plotinus is a unity, everywhere present (“Enneads,” VI. v. 4); and matter, the other extreme of his philosophy, is an empty show, a shadow in a mirror. (“Enneads,” III. vi. 7.) In closing the account of the works of God, Drummond thus writes:

“Whole and entire, all in thyself thou art, All-where diffus’d, yet of this All no part; For infinite, in making this fair frame, Great without quantity, in all thou came, And filling all, how can thy state admit Or place or substance to be said of it?

· · · · ·

Were but one hour this world disjoin’d from thee, It in one hour to nought reduc’d should be, For it thy shadow is; and can they last, If sever’d from the substances them cast?”

(ll. 285–298.)

Drummond’s “Hymn” is the work of a mind in which poetical sensuousness and philosophic abstraction are well-nigh equally balanced. In More the philosopher had outweighed the poet. In Milton the poet asserts his full power. To him the Plotinian scheme of the hypostases is valuable only as they enable his love of beauty to be satisfied in conformity with his intellectual apprehension of the relation between God and the Son in the Trinal Godhead. Plotinus had outlined the relation between The Good and Intellect as that of a principle of beauty by which the intellect is invested and possesses beauty and light. (“Enneads,” VI. vii. 31.) The Good itself is the principle of beauty, hidden in its own rays of light. In Milton the conception of God as hidden in inaccessible light, and of the Son as the express image of the invisible beauty of God, is explained in conformity with the Platonic scheme, and also with those Scriptural texts, one of which mentions God as a King of kings, who only hath immortality, dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto (1 Tim. vi. 16); and the other proclaims that in Christ “dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily” (Col. ii. 9). Thus in heaven the angels hymn their praises:

“Thee, Father, first they sung, Omnipotent, Immutable, Immortal, Infinite, Eternal King; thee, Author of all being, Fountain of light, thyself invisible Amidst the glorious brightness where thou sitt’st Throned inaccessible, but when thou shad’st The full blaze of thy beams, and through a cloud Drawn round about thee like a radiant shrine Dark with excessive bright thy skirts appear, Yet dazzle Heaven, that brightest Seraphim Approach not, but with both wings veil their eyes. Thee next they sang, of all creation first, Begotten Son, Divine Similitude, In whose conspicuous countenance, without cloud Made visible, the Almighty Father shines, Whom else no creature can behold: on thee Impressed the effulgence of his glory abides. Transfused on thee his ample Spirit rests.”

(P. L., III. 372–389.)

And the Almighty addresses the Son:

“‘Effulgence of my glory, Son beloved, Son in whose face invisible is beheld Visibly, what by Deity I am.’”

(VI. 680–682.)

This relation of Christ to God which in the Scripture was indicated only as in an outline sketch has been filled in with the substance of the Plotinian æsthetics, in which The One and The Good is beauty itself (καλλονή) and intellect is the beautiful (τὸ καλόν). (“Enneads,” I. vi. 6.)

The attraction which this philosophical explanation had for those whose work reveals its presence is twofold. To the religious mind in which the metaphysical cast of thought was prominent, the idea of the transcendent immanence of God in all things as their life, yet apart from all things as objects in time and space came home with its wealth of suggestion of the nearness of God to man. In Henry More this feeling is uppermost in his “Psychozoia.” In the midst of his description of Psyche’s robe he breaks out into a passage on the constant care which God shows toward the world. In Psyche’s mirror of Arachnea and Haphe God is aware of all on earth that falls under sense. The roaring of the hungry lion, the burning thirst of the weary traveller and every movement of the little sparrow are all known to him.

“Do not I see? I slumber not nor sleep, Do not I heare? each noise by shady night My miroir represents: when mortals steep Their languid limbs in Morpheus dull delight, I hear such sounds as Adams brood would fright. The dolefull echoes from the hollow hill Mock houling wolves: the woods with black bedight. Answer rough Pan, his pipe and eke his skill, And all the Satyr-routs rude whoops and shoutings shrill.”

(I. 54.)

In his second canto, where he repeats the idea of the universal life of Psyche, he dwells on the fact of God’s immanence in the world. He is the inmost centre of creation, from whom as rays from the sun the individual souls are born.

“Dependence of this All hence doth appear And severall degrees subordinate. But phansie’s so unfit such things to clear, That oft it makes them seem more intricate; And now Gods work it doth disterminate Too far from his own reach: But he withall More inward is, and far more intimate Then things are with themselves. His ideall And centrall presence is in every atom-ball.”

(II. 10.)

In those minds less metaphysical in nature, the high speculations of Platonic philosophy opened a way by which they could conceive God as a principle grasped by the mind rather than as a personal judge and punisher of sin. In Drummond this contrast in the two conceptions of God—one feeding itself on philosophy, and the other on the imagery of the Scripture—is strikingly brought out by a comparison of the opening and the ending of “An Hymn of the Fairest Fair” with those of “A Prayer for Mankind.” The “Hymn” begins with a confession of the elevating power of his subject:

“I feel my bosom glow with wontless fires Rais’d from the vulgar press my mind aspires, Wing’d with high thoughts, unto his praise to climb, From deep eternity who called forth time; That essence which not mov’d makes each thing move, Uncreate beauty, all creating love: But by so great an object, radiant light, My heart appall’d, enfeebled rests my sight, Thick clouds benight my labouring engine, And at my high attempts my wits repine. If thou in me this sacred rapture wrought, My knowledge sharpen, sarcels [_i.e._ pinions] lend my thought; Grant me, time’s Father, world-containing King A pow’r, of thee in pow’rful lays to sing, That as thy beauty in earth lives, heaven shines, So it may dawn or shadow in my lines.”

(ll. 1–16.)

At the close he prays:

“What wit cannot conceive, words say of thee, Here, where, as in a mirror, we but see Shadows of shadows, atoms of thy might, Still owly-eyed when staring on thy light, Grant that, released from this earthly jail, And freed of clouds which here our knowledge veil, In heaven’s high temples, where thy praises ring, I may in sweeter notes hear angels sing.”

(ll. 329–335.)

“A Prayer for Mankind,” however, opens with the note of humble adoration and a sense of sin.

“Great God, whom we with humble thoughts adore, Eternal, infinite, almighty King,

· · · · ·

At whose command clouds dreadful thunders sound! Ah! spare us worms; weigh not how we, alas Evil to ourselves, against thy laws rebel; Wash off those spots which still in mind’s clear glass, Though we be loath to look, we see too well; Deserv’d revenge O do not, do not take!”

(ll. 1–13.)

It closes similarly:

“Grant, when at last our souls these bodies leave, Their loathsome shops of sin, and mansions blind, And doom before thy royal seat receive, They may a Saviour, not a judge thee find.”

(ll. 65–68.)

In Spenser’s “Hymne of Heavenly Beautie” in the first portion of which he sings the ascent of the mind through ever rising stages of perfection to

“that Highest farre beyond all telling,”

the mingling of these two ways of approach to God is very apparent. Spenser is first a Platonist and then a Christian. How, he asks, if God’s glory is such that the sun is dimmed by comparison, can we behold Him?

“The meanes therefore which unto us is lent, Him to behold, is on his workes to looke, Which he hath made in beauty excellent, And in the same, as in a brasen booke, To reade enregistred in every nooke His goodnesse, which his beautie doth declare, For all thats good, is beautifull and faire.

“Thence gathering plumes of perfect speculation, To impe the wings of thy high flying mynd, Mount up aloft through heavenly contemplation, From this darke world, whose damps the soule do blynd, And like the native brood of Eagles kynd, On that bright Sunne of glorie fixe thine eyes, Clear’d from grosse mists of fraile infirmities.”

Then comes in the sense of sin, and he approaches God in a different spirit. He continues:

“Humbled with feare and awful reverence, Before the footestoole of his Maiestie, Throw thy selfe downe with trembling innocence, Ne dare looke up with corruptible eye, On the dred face of that great _Deity_, For feare, lest if he chaunce to looke on thee, Thou turne to nought, and quite confounded be.

“But lowly fall before his mercie seate, Close covered with the Lambes integrity, From the just wrath of his avengefull threate, That sits upon the righteous throne on hy.”

(ll. 130–152.)

II. NATURE OF THE SOUL

The nature of the soul from the standpoint of Plotinian metaphysics was treated by Henry More in his two poetical treatises, “Pyschathanasia” and “Anti-psychopannychia.” In the former he follows the course of the argument set forth in the seventh book of the fourth “Ennead” of Plotinus. In the Plotinian defence two propositions are established; namely, that the soul is not body, and that it is not a function of body. By demonstrating these, it followed that the soul is an immaterial thing, a real being, and consequently eternal. This is the drift of More’s argument in “Psychathanasia.” The first and second books are devoted to the establishment of the definition of the soul as an incorporeal substance, and the proof of its incorporeality is deduced from considerations of its functions.

The soul, More holds, is an incorporeal thing because it is a self-moving substance present in all forms of life. Plotinus had taught that soul was everywhere. “First, then,” he says, “let every soul consider this: how by breathing life into them soul made all animals, the creatures of earth, sea, air, the divine stars in heaven; made the sun, made the great firmament above us, and not only made but ordered it, so that it swings round in due course. Yet is this soul a different nature from what it orders, and moves, and vivifies. It must needs then be more precious than its creations. For they are born, and when the soul which ministers their life abandons them, they die; but the soul ever is because it never abandons itself.” (“Enneads,” V. i. 2.) More finds this soul present in the growth of all forms of vegetation, the sphere spermatic (I. ii. 30), in the life of animals, sensation, and self-directed motion; and in the intellectual life of man. (I. ii. 17–22.)

“Thus have I trac’d the soul in all its works, And severall conditions have displaid, And show’d all places where so e’r she lurks, Even her own lurkings of her self bewray’d, In plants, in beasts, in men, while here she staid.”

(I. ii. 23.)

He next demonstrates that this soul is a self-moving substance. It is self-moving in plants, as the quickening power of the sun on vegetation shows. Through the heat of the sun the hidden centre, or soul, is called into the life of blossoming and growth.

“Thus called out by friendly sympathie Their souls move of themselves on their _Centreitie_.”

(I. ii. 31.)

In animals the self-moving soul is manifested in motion and the life of sensation.

“Then be the souls of beasts self-moving forms, Bearing their bodies as themselves think meet, Invited or provok’d, so they transform At first themselves within, then straight in sight Those motions come, which suddenly do light Upon the bodies visible, which move According to the will of th’ inward spright.”

(I. ii. 36.)

In man the self-motion of the soul is present in the activity of reason, whether as the presiding power in all of the operations of the image-making faculty, or as the contemplative and speculative power. (I. ii. 41–44.)

After this account of the nature of the soul as a self-moving substance, More addresses himself to the task of showing that all life is immortal. In a time of despondency a Nymph once came and declared to him,

“_All life’s immortall_: though the outward trunk May changed be, yet life to nothing never shrunk.”

(I. iii. 17.)

According to the theory unfolded by the Nymph there is an ever present unity in all things which is the true source of their life. This is God. From Him are six descending degrees of existence, called intellectual, psychical, imaginative, sensitive, plantal, or spermatic. (I. iii. 23.) Below all of these is matter, which is nothing but mere potentiality, or the possibility of all created things. (I. iv. 9.) Though these various degrees of life are distinct, they are manifestations of the one pervading unity. (I. iii. 25.) Matter thus cannot be the prop and stay of life. (I. iii. 26.)

The second proof of the incorporeal nature of the soul is found in the character of its functions. After a hasty attack on the doctrine of materialism in the form of a _reductio ad absurdum_ (II. ii. 13–25; cf. Plotinus, IV. vii. 3), More shows, first, that the faculty within us by which we are aware of the outward world of sense is one and individual, yet everywhere present in the body. (II. ii. 32.) This faculty, called “the common sense” (II. ii. 26), sits as judge over all the data of sense knowledge (cf. Plotinus, IV. vii. 6); it decides in case of disagreement between two senses, and distinguishes clearly between the objects present to each sense. (II. ii. 28.) The common sense must be one, else, being divided, it would breed confusion in consciousness (II. ii. 31); and it must be everywhere present in the body because it shows no partiality to any sense, but has intelligence of all equally. (II. ii. 32.)

The rational powers of the soul are a further proof of the soul’s incorporeal nature. The first consideration draws attention to the vast scope of man’s will and soul. In the virtuous the soul can be so universalized and begotten into the life of God that the will embraces all with a tender love and is ever striving to seek God as the good. (II. iii. 6.) If this is so, More asks whether the soul thus universalized can ever die. (II. iii. 7.) Man’s understanding, too, can become so broadened that it can apprehend God’s true being, not knowing it, to be sure, in its true essence, but having such a true insight that it can reject all narrow conceptions of His nature and welcome other more comprehensive ideas as closer approximations to the truth. The understanding is in a state that More calls parturient; God under certain conditions can be born within the soul. (II. iii. 9–12.) For the reason, then, of the vastness of the power of will and understanding More holds that the soul cannot be a body. (II. iii. 4.)

The next argument in regard to the rational powers of the soul centres about her power of pure abstraction. (Cf. “Enneads,” IV. vii. 8.) In herself the soul divests matter of all time and place relations and views the naked, simple essence of things. (II. iii. 18.) She thus frames within herself an idea, which is indivisible and unextended; and by this she judges outward objects. (II. iii. 18–20; cf. “Enneads,” IV. vii. 12.) This property is not a property of body. (II. iii. 26.)

At this point More closes the first division of his argument. By establishing the definition of the soul as a self-moving substance, and by an account of the nature of its functions, he has defended his first proposition, that the soul is an incorporeal thing. He then passes on to the second part of his argument, that the soul is an incorporeal thing because it is independent of the body.

This portion of his defence falls into four main divisions. In the first he explains the nature of the body’s dependence upon the soul. Through the power that the soul has by virtue of its lowest centre of life, called the plantal, the soul frames the body in order to exercise through it the functions of life. (III. i. 17.) The more perfect this body is the more awake the soul is. (III. i. 17.) But after the work of framing the body is finished, the soul dismisses it as an old thought and begins its life of contemplation. (III. i. 16.) The main desire is to see God. (III. ii. 11.) Next More shows how the soul can direct her own thoughts within herself without in any way considering the body. Her intellectual part dives within her nature in its quest for self-knowledge and her will affects herself after this knowledge has been gained. All this is accomplished free from any bodily assistance. (III. ii. 25, 26.) The third division shows how the soul is so independent of the body that she can resist its desires. Often the sensual impulse of our nature would lead us to be content with mere satisfaction of our bodily desires; but the soul desirous of truth and gifted with an insight into God’s true nature enables us to resist all such impulses. (III. ii. 38, 39.) The fourth division contrasts the vitality of the soul with that of sense, fancy, and memory. These three faculties are weakened by age and by disease, and also by excessive stimulation; but the soul never fades, but grows stronger with each contemplative act. (III. ii. 48, 49, 56.)

The attraction which the philosophy of Plotinus had for More’s mind lay in its scheme of speculative mysticism. The metaphysical system of Plotinus had taught that The One, which is the truly existing being, is everywhere present and yet nowhere wholly present. (“Enneads,” VI. iv.) It had explained also that the only way in which the individual soul could apprehend this truly existing being was by a mystical union with it, in which state the soul did not know in the sense of energizing intellectually, but was one with The One. (“Enneads,” VI. ix. 10.) These two ideas lie at the basis of More’s theosophic mysticism. Their presence can be felt throughout his “Psychathanasia” as its controlling idea and also in his two less important treatises, “Anti-psychopannychia” and “Anti-monopsychia.”

The argument of the “Anti-psychopannychia” and of the “Anti-monopsychia” centres about the doctrine of the mystic union with God. The argument in the “Psychathanasia” is a critique of materialism rather than a positive plea for the existence of the soul after death. It was the purpose of More in his two pendants to his longer poem to treat of the state of the soul after death. That it is not enveloped in eternal night he proves in his “Anti-psychopannychia.” His argument is briefly this: Since God is a unity everywhere present, he is infinite freedom. (II. 2.) Since the soul’s activities of will and intellect are free from dependence upon the body, death will be but the ushering of the soul into the life of God’s large liberty.

“Wherefore the soul cut off from lowly sense By harmlesse fate, far greater libertie Must gain: for when it hath departed hence (As all things else) should it not backward hie From whence it came? but such divinitie Is in our souls that nothing lesse than God Could send them forth (as Plato’s schools descrie) Wherefore when they retreat a free abode They’ll find, unlesse kept off by _Nemesis_ just rod.”

(II. 14.)

In this life of union the soul will realize the deep fecundity of her own nature; for in her are innate ideas. To establish this theory of innate ideas into which Plato’s theory of reminiscence has been transformed in Plotinus (cf. “Enneads,” IV. iii. 25), More educes four considerations. They must exist because (1) like is known only by like (II. 31); (2) no object or number of objects can give the soul a universal concept (II. 36); (3) the apprehension of incorporeal things cannot be made by sense, therefore the soul must have the measure of such within her own nature (II. 38, 39); and (4) the process of learning shows that it is education, or the drawing out of the mind what was in it potentially (II. 42). Inasmuch, then, as innate ideas exist within the mind, called out by experience in life, how much more will they be evoked in that high union with God!

“But sith our soul with God himself may meet, Inacted by his life, I cannot see What scruple then remains that moven might Least doubt but that she wakes with open eye, When fate her from this body doth untie. Wherefore her choisest forms do then arise, Rowz’d up by union and large sympathy With Gods own spright: she plainly then descries Such plentitude of life, as she could nere devise.”

(III. 2.)

But this union of the soul with The One may be thought to obliterate self-identity after death and teach only a universal absorption of all souls into The One. To combat this idea More contends in his “Anti-monopsychia” that by virtue of the “Deiformity” of the soul, by which he means its ability to be joined with God, the soul in death is so

“quickned with near Union With God, that now wish’d for vitalitie Is so encreas’d, that infinitely sh’ has fun Herself, her deep’st desire unspeakably hath wonne.

“And deep desire is the deepest act, The most profound and centrall energie, The very selfnesse of the soul, which backt With piercing might, she breaks out, forth doth flie From dark contracting death, and doth descrie Herself unto herself; so thus unfold That actual life she straightwayes saith, is I.”

(Stz. 35, 36.)

In the “Psychathanasia” the Plotinian doctrines of the immanent unity of The One and of the mystical union of the soul with it are not so much present as positive arguments incorporated in the sequence of thought, but are felt as controlling ideas in the mind of the writer. The reason for this lies in the fact that in the argument of Plotinus (IV. vii) these two truths of his philosophy are not specifically elaborated. To More, however, as indeed to all students of Plotinian metaphysics, these are the significant ideas of his system. More thus brings them in at opportune times throughout his argument in “Psychathanasia.”

The conception of the ever present unity of The One in all things is the fundamental idea in the first division of his thought. The tenacity with which he clings to this doctrine is remarkable. His argument had brought him to the point where he had shown that all life—of plants and animals, as well as of men—was immortal. What, then, is the state of the plantal and animal soul after death? (I. ii. 49–53.) More does not answer directly, but replies that although men cannot know this, it is not permitted to reason it down.

“But it’s already clear that ’tis not right To reason down the firm subsistencie Of things from ignorance of their propertie.”

(I. ii. 59.)

Consequently when he comes to consider man’s immortality, he says that all the preceding argument—the general reflection on the “self-motion and centrall stabilitie” of the soul—may be dismissed as needless.

“Onely that vitalitie, That doth extend this great Universall, And move th’ inert Materialitie Of great and little worlds, that keep in memorie.”

(II. i. 7.)

It is because of the firm conviction with which he holds to the conception of the pervading unity of The One that he expands the idea at length in the third and fourth cantos of the first book.

The second idea, that of the mystical union of the individual soul with The One, is an incentive to More’s thought and feelings throughout the course of his entire argument. From the fact that the soul can dive as deep as matter, and rise to the height of a blissful union with God, he derives the necessary inspiration for his “mighty task.”

“This is the state of th’ ever-moving soul, Whirling about upon its circling wheel; Certes to sight it variously doth roll, And as men deem full dangerously doth reel, But oft when men fear most, itself doth feel In happiest plight conjoin’d with that great Sun Of lasting blisse, that doth himself reveal More fully then, by that close union, Though men, that misse her here, do think her quite undone.”

(I. ii. 8.)

When in the course of his argument he arrives at a discussion of the rational power of the soul, he launches out into a treatment of the vast scope of man’s will and mind which

“should bring forth that live Divinity Within ourselves, if once God would consent To shew his specious form and nature eminent:

“For here it lies like colours in the night Unseen and unregarded, but the sunne Displayes the beauty and the gladsome plight Of the adorned earth, while he doth runne His upper stage. But this high prize is wonne By curbing sense and the self seeking life (True Christian mortification) Thus God will his own self in us revive, If we to mortifie our straightened selves do strive.”

(II. iii. 12, 13.)

Again, when his argument brings him to the point at which the independence of soul from body is to be proved, he breaks out with an exclamation of the bliss of that union of soul with God, when

“reason shines out bright, And holy love with mild serenity Doth hug her harmlesse self in this her purity;”

(III. ii. 28.)

and passes on to a description of The One as seen in the vision

“Unplac’d, unparted, one close Unity, Yet omnipresent; all things, yet but one; Not streak’d with gaudy multiplicity, Pure light without discolouration, Stable without circumvolution, Eternal rest, joy without passing sound.”

(III. ii. 36.)

Finally in the last canto of his third book he testifies to the vanity of that knowledge of the reasons for the soul’s immortality, even as he had given them (III. ii. 11), and confesses that the only sure stay in the storm of life is a faith in “the first Good.”

“But yet, my Muse, still take an higher flight, Sing of Platonick Faith in the first Good, That Faith that doth our souls to God unite So strongly, tightly, that the rapid floud Of this swift flux of things, nor with foul mud Can stain, nor strike us off from th’ unity, Wherein we steadfast stand, unshak’d, unmov’d, Engrafted by a deep vitality The prop and stay of things is Gods benignity.”

(III. iv. 14.)

As in his “Psychozoia” it was noted how the omnipresence of Psyche appealed to More’s religious sense of the nearness of God to His children, so in his other treatises, especially his “Psychathanasia,” the mystical union of the soul with The One is for More another name for the love of God as known in the soul of the Christian. The Christian religion had taught that God is love, a conception far removed from Platonism, whether of the dialogues or of the “Enneads” of Plotinus. But the tendency to find in Platonism a rational sanction for religious truth was so strong in the theology of the Cambridge school, to which More belonged, that this conception of God as love—which, indeed, is held by the Christian not as an idea but as a fact of his inmost religious experience—was interpreted in the light of the speculative mysticism of Plotinus; and thus the formless One, the ultra-metaphysical principle above all being, became the Christian God of love.

III. ETERNITY OF THE SOUL AND OF MATTER

In the work of Vaughan and Spenser two distinct phases of another form of Platonic idealism are presented: one in which the poet looks back upon eternity as a fact of the soul’s past experience, and the other in which he directs a forward glance to the future when the soul shall find its eternal rest.

In the expression of his sense of eternity, Vaughan recurs to the doctrine of the preëxistence of the soul as it is expounded in Plato. In Vaughan this idea is felt as an influence either affording the substance of his thought or determining the nature of his imagery. The idea which Vaughan carries over into his own poetry is found in Plato’s account in the “Phædrus” of the preëxistence of the soul in a world of pure ideas before its descent into the body. “There was a time,” says Plato, “when with the rest of the happy band they [_i.e._ the human souls] saw beauty shining in brightness: we philosophers following in the train of Zeus, others in company with other gods; and then we beheld the beatific vision and were initiated into a mystery which may be truly called most blessed, celebrated by us in our state of innocence, before we had any experience of evils to come, when we were admitted to the sight of apparitions innocent and simple and calm and happy, which we held shining in pure light, pure ourselves and not yet enshrined in that living tomb which we carry about, now that we are imprisoned in the body, like an oyster in his shell.” (“Phædrus,” 250.)

This idea occurs in two forms in Vaughan. In “The Retreat” the reminiscence of a past is described as a fact of Vaughan’s religious experience. He longs to travel back to the time when, in his purity, he was nearer to God than he is now in his sinful state.

“Happy those early days, when I Shin’d in my angel-infancy! Before I understood this place Appointed for my second race, Or taught my soul to fancy ought But a white, celestial thought; When yet I had not walk’d above A mile or two from my first love, And looking back—at that short space— Could see a glimpse of His bright face; When on some gilded cloud, or flow’r, My gazing soul would dwell an hour, And in those weaker glories spy Some shadows of eternity; Before I taught my tongue to wound My conscience with a sinful sound, Or had the black art to dispence A sev’ral sin to ev’ry sense, But felt through all this fleshly dress Bright shoots of everlastingness. O how I long to travel back, And tread again that ancient track! That I might once more reach that plain, Where first I left my glorious train: From whence th’ enlighten’d spirit sees That shady City of palm-trees. But ah! my soul with too much stay Is drunk, and staggers in the way! Some men a forward motion love, But I by backward steps would move; And when this dust falls to the urn, In that state I came, return.”

The second form of this idea appears in Vaughan’s poem called “Corruption.” Man is represented as enjoying the happiness of innocence in the garden of Eden, where he was in close touch with the beauties of heaven. Here he had a glimpse of his heavenly birth; but when, by reason of sin, he was forced to leave that place, he found earth and heaven no longer friendly.

“Sure, it was so. Man in those early days Was not all stone and earth; He shin’d a little, and by those weak rays Had some glimpse of his birth. He saw heaven o’er his head, and knew from whence He came, condemnèd, hither; And, as first love draws strongest, so from hence His mind sure progress’d thither. Things here were strange unto him; sweat and till; All was a thorn or weed.

· · · · ·

This made him long for home, as loth to stay With murmurers and foes; He sigh’d for Eden, and would often say ‘Ah! what bright days were those!’ Nor was heav’n cold unto him: for each day The valley or the mountain Afforded visits, and still Paradise lay In some green shade or fountain. Angels lay leiger here: each bush, and cell, Each oak, and highway knew them; Walk but the fields, or sit down at some well, And he was sure to view them.”

In this poem, although there is no such parallelism with the account of a preëxistent state as it is given in Plato, the fundamental idea is the same as that of “The Retreat.” Vaughan describes man’s life in Eden as one of closer intimacy with his celestial home than his lot on earth affords him, just as he had described the experience of his own “angel-infancy” and its contrast to his earthly life. In both poems is present the conviction that the human soul once lived in a state of pure innocence; and in both is heard the note of regret at the loss of this through sin.

In Vaughan’s poem, “The World,” the influence of Plato’s account of the preëxistent life of the soul is felt only in affording the character of the imagery which Vaughan has used to express his idea. In the “Phædrus” Plato describes the progress of the soul in its sight of the eternal ideas in the heaven of heavens. Each soul, represented as a charioteer guiding a pair of winged horses, is carried about by the revolution of the spheres, and during the progress it beholds the ideas. The souls of the gods have no difficulty in seeing these realities; “but of the other souls,” says Plato, “that which follows God best and is likest to him lifts the head of the charioteer into the outer world, and is carried round in the revolution, troubled indeed by the steeds, and with difficulty beholding true being; while another only rises and falls, and sees, and again fails to see by reason of the unruliness of the steeds. The rest of the souls are also longing after the upper world, and they all follow, but not being strong enough they are carried round below the surface, plunging, treading on one another, each striving to be first; and there is confusion and perspiration and the extremity of effort; and many of them are lamed, or have their wings broken, through the ill-driving of the charioteers.” (“Phædrus,” 248.)

In this account of the revolution of the soul about the eternal realities of true being, Vaughan found the suggestion for his poem, “The World.” Instead of the revolution of the soul about true being, he describes the revolution of time about eternity. The figure of the charioteer is absent, too, but it is by the use of the “wing” that those who make the revolution about eternity mount up into the circle, just as in Plato. Time in the poem also is represented as being “driven about by the spheres.” Such coincidences of imagery show that Vaughan found in Plato’s fanciful account of the soul’s preëxistent life in heaven the medium through which he expressed his view of the relation of the life of the present day world to that of eternity. At first he pictures the revolution of the world about the great ring of light which he calls eternity:

“I saw Eternity the other night, Like a great ring of pure and endless light, All calm, as it was bright; And round beneath it, Time in hours, days, years, Driv’n by the spheres Like a vast shadow mov’d: in which the world And all her train were hurl’d.”

He then describes the lover busied in his trifles,—his lute, his fancies, and his delights. Next moves the statesman, pursued by the shouts of multitudes. The next to follow are the miser and the epicure.

“The doting lover in his quaintest strain Did there complain; Near him, his lute, his fancy, and his flights, Wit’s sour delights; With gloves, and knots, the silly snares of pleasure Yet his dear treasure, All scatter’d lay, while he his eyes did pour Upon a flow’r.

“The darksome statesman, hung with weights and woe, Like a thick midnight fog, mov’d there so slow, He did nor stay, nor go; Condemning thoughts—like sad eclipses—scowl Upon his soul, And clouds of crying witnesses without Pursued him with one shout.

· · · · ·

“The fearful miser on a heap of rust Sate pining all his life there, did scarce trust His own hands with the dust, Yet would not place one piece above, but lives In fear of thieves. Thousands there were as frantic as himself, And hugg’d each one his pelf; The downright epicure plac’d heav’n in sense, And scorn’d pretence; While others, slipp’d into a wide excess, Said little less; The weaker sort slight, trivial wares enslave, Who think them brave; And poor, despisèd Truth sate counting by Their victory.”

At this point Vaughan ends his catalogue of human types and comments upon the unwillingness of the many to soar up into the ring by the aid of the wing.

“Yet some, who all this while did weep and sing, And sing, and weep, soar’d up into the ring; But most would use no wing. O fools—said I—thus to prefer dark night Before true light! To live in grots and caves, and hate the day Because it shows the way; The way, which from this dead and dark abode Leads up to God.”

Spenser finds his suggestion of the eternal in life, not in a consciousness of a past existence, but in a conception of the world of matter built up in accordance with the Platonic doctrine of stability of the substance amid the flux of changing forms. This conception of the world is explained by him in his description of the “Garden of Adonis” in the “Faerie Queene” and in his “Two Cantos of Mutabilitie.”

The conception of matter which Spenser teaches is the doctrine of Plotinus expressed in accordance with the account of flux and stability of natural phenomena explained by Plato in the “Timæus.” According to Plotinus matter is an indestructible “subject” of forms which endures through all the various changes which it is constantly undergoing, and this unchanging something is never destroyed. (“Enneads,” II. iv. 6.) In the “Timæus” Plato had outlined a theory of flux with which this doctrine of the indestructibility of matter could be easily harmonized. In his discussion of the world of natural phenomena he distinguishes three natures, as he calls them, and likens them to a father, a child, and a mother. “For the present,” he says in the “Timæus” (50), “we have only to conceive of three natures: first, that which is in process of generation; secondly, that in which the generation takes place; and thirdly, that of which the thing generated is a resemblance. And we may liken the receiving principle to a mother, and the source or spring to a father, and the intermediate nature to a child.” According to this piece of poetic imagery he describes the various manifestations of matter in the outward world. The elements are constantly changing in and out of one another and have in them nothing permanent. They cannot be called “this” or “that,” but only “such.” Only the receiving principle, the universal nature, “that must be always called the same; for while receiving all things, she never departs at all from her own nature, and never in any way or at any time assumes a form like that of any of the things which enter into her; she is the natural recipient of all impressions, and is stirred and informed by them, and appears different from time to time by reason of them.” (“Timæus,” 50.)

The explanation of the myriad changes of matter of the outward world of sense after the manner of this account by Plato is found in Spenser’s description of the “Garden of Adonis.” The term “garden of Adonis” is found in Plato’s “Phædrus” (276), where is meant an earthen vessel in which plants are nourished to quick growth only to decay as rapidly. On this term Spenser’s imagination built its superstructure of fancy by which the garden of Adonis became symbolic of the world of natural phenomena described after the manner of Plato in the “Timæus” and Plotinus in the “Enneads.” The garden is described at first as a seminary of all living things, conceived first as flowers:

“In that same Gardin all the goodly flowres, Wherewith dame Nature doth her beautifie, And decks the girlonds of her paramoures, Are fetcht: there is the first seminarie Of all things, that are borne to live and die, According to their kindes. Long worke it were, Here to account the endlesse progenie Of all the weedes, that bud and blossome there; But so much as doth need, must needs be counted here.”

(III. vi. 30.)

Spenser’s imagination now changes, and he conceives of the objects in this garden as naked babes, in accordance with the suggestion of the intermediate nature which Plato conceived as a child. Genius as the porter of the place is thus described:

“He letteth in, he letteth out to wend, All that to come into the world desire; A thousand thousand naked babes attend About him day and night, which doe require, That he with fleshly weedes would them attire: Such as him list, such as eternal fate Ordained hath, he clothes with sinfull mire, And sendeth forth to live in mortall state, Till they againe returne backe by the hinder gate.”

(III. vi. 32.)

Again there is a change, and the objects issuing from this garden are forms which borrow their substance from the matter of chaos.

“Infinite shapes of creatures there are bred, And uncouth formes, which none yet ever knew, And every sort is in a sundry bed Set by it selfe, and ranckt in comely rew Some fit for reasonable soules t’ indew, Some made for beasts, some made for birds to weare, And all the fruitfull spawne of fishes hew In endlesse rancks along enraunged were, That seem’d the _Ocean_ could not containe them there.”

(III. vi. 35.)

When these forms are sent forth from the garden they take for their substance the matter found in chaos which is ever eternal.

“Daily they grow, and daily forth are sent Into the world, it to replenish more; Yet is the stocke not lessened, nor spent, But still remaines in everlasting store, As it at first created was of yore. For in the wide wombe of the world there lyes, In hateful darkenesse and in deepe horrore, An huge eternall _Chaos_, which supplyes The substances of natures fruitfull progenyes.

“All things from thence doe their first being fetch, And borrow matters whereof they are made, Which when as forme and feature it doth ketch, Becomes a bodie, and doth then invade The state of life, out of the griesly shade. That substance is eterne, and bideth so, Ne when the life decayes, and forme does fade, Doth it consume, and into nothing go, But chaunged is, and often altred to and fro.”

(III. vi. 36–37.)

Spenser now stops the play of fancy and becomes the philosopher, explaining the doctrine of matter as taught by Plotinus. The substance of things is eternal and abides in potency of further change.

“The substance is not changed, nor altered, But th’ only forme and outward fashion; For every substance is conditioned To change her hew, and sundry formes to don, Meet for her temper and complexion: For formes are variable and decay, By course of kind, and by occasion; And that faire flower of beautie fades away, As doth the lilly fresh before the sunny ray.”

(II. vi. 38.)

Finally, Spenser closes his account of the garden with a mingling of fancy and philosophy. He adopts the suggestion of Plato that the source of the many changes in natural phenomena is a father, and blends the conception with the myth of Venus and Adonis. In the garden Venus is represented as enjoying the pleasure of the presence of Adonis perpetually, for he is described as the father of the various forms who abides eternal in all change.

“There wont faire _Venus_ often to enjoy Her deare _Adonis_ joyous company, And reape sweet pleasure of the wanton boy; There yet, some say, in secret he does ly, Lapped in flowers and pretious spycery, By her hid from the world, and from the skill Of _Stygian_ Gods, which doe her love envy; But she her selfe, when ever that she will, Possesseth him, and of his sweetnesse takes her fill.

“And sooth it seemes they say: for he may not For ever die, and ever buried bee In balefull night, where all things are forgot; All be he subject to mortalitie, Yet is eterne in mutabilitie, And by succession made perpetuall, Transformed oft, and chaunged diverslie: For him the Father of all formes they call; Therefore needs mote he live, that living gives to all.”

(III. vi. 46, 47.)

The attraction which this doctrine of the indestructibility of matter had for Spenser lay in the comforting assurance which it brought him of an eternity when things should be at rest. Throughout Spenser is heard a note of world weariness.

“Nothing is sure, that growes on earthly ground.”

These words placed in the mouth of Arthur (I. ix. 11) are essentially characteristic of Spenser’s outlook on the things of this world: they are his _lacrimæ rerum_. The “Cantos of Mutabilitie” is the best instance in point. These two cantos celebrate the overthrow of Mutability by Nature. To the claim of preëminence among the gods which Mutability lays before Nature, and which she bases upon the fact that everything in the wide universe is subject to constant change, Dame Nature replies that though they be subject to change, they change only their outward state, each change working their perfection; and she further remarks that the time will come when there shall be no more change. At the end of Mutability’s plea Dame Nature thus answers the charge:

“I well consider all that ye have sayd, And find that all things stedfastnes doe hate And changed be: yet being rightly wayd They are not changed from their first estate; But by their change their being doe dilate: And turning to themselves at length againe, Doe worke their owne perfection so by fate: Then over them Change doth not rule and raigne; But they raigne over change, and doe their states maintaine.

“Cease therefore daughter further to aspire, And thee content thus to be rul’d by me: For thy decay thou seekst by thy desire; But time shall come that all shall changed bee, And from thenceforth, none no more change shall see.”

(VII. vii. 58, 59.)

On this decision of Nature Spenser bases his assurance of a time when the soul shall have its final rest. With a prayer to the great God of Sabaoth that he may see the time when all things shall rest in Him, Spenser closes his work on his great unfinished poem—the “Faerie Queene.”

“Then gin I thinke on that which Nature sayd, Of that same time when no more _Change_ shall be, But stedfast rest of all things firmely stayd Upon the pillours of Eternity, That is contrayr to _Mutabilitie_: For, all that moveth, doth in _Change_ delight: But thenceforth all shall rest eternally. With Him that is the God of Sabbaoth hight: O Thou great Sabbaoth God, graunt me that Sabaoths sight.”

(VII. viii. 2.)

In the theory of the preëxistence of the soul and in the conception of the indestructibility of matter Vaughan and Spenser were able to find teachings which were akin to the most intimate experiences of their lives. Although the phase of Platonic idealism which taught in these two distinct ways the eternity of human life and of the world about us did not have so vital an influence upon English poetry as did the opening of a world of moral beauty, its presence is nevertheless indicative of the strong hold which Platonism had upon some of the finest poetic minds of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in England. Even when these poets were writing from the fulness of their own personal experience, it was in the moulds of Platonic philosophy that their thought was cast.

The elements of Platonism, then, that enter into the English poetry of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, have their source in the dialogues of Plato and the “Enneads” of Plotinus. The body of this teaching—its æsthetics, its metaphysics, and its ethics—was seen by the poets in its relation to Christian doctrine and to the passion of romantic love. The more permanent results for good are found in the fusion of Platonism with the ideals of Christian living and with its longing for perfection. If one passage in Plato may adequately sum up the teaching of Platonism most influential in English poetry, it is the passage in “Phædrus” in which the beauty of wisdom is taught (“Phædrus,” 250).

But beauty in its stricter import is a thing known to the sense, and is carried over into the moral world only to indicate the value of moral ideas. Plato recognized this; and in this connection it is significant that in the part of “Phædrus,” where he speaks of the loveliness of wisdom, he is aware of the power of pure beauty. “But of beauty,” he says, “I repeat again that we saw her there [in the ideal world] shining in company with the celestial forms; and coming to earth we find her here too, shining in clearness through the clearest aperture of sense. For sight is the most piercing of our bodily senses; though not by that is wisdom seen; her loveliness would have been transporting if there had been a visible image of her, and the other ideas, if they had visible counterparts, would be equally lovely. But this is the privilege of beauty, that being the loveliest she is also the most palpable to sight” (250).

Spenser was the poet who caught the spirit of this teaching. Pastorella’s beauty is presented not as Una’s, the beauty of wisdom, nor as Britomart’s, the beauty of the inward purity of womanhood; but it is a beauty of pure form.

“And soothly sure she was full fayre of face, And perfectly well shapt in every lim, Which she did more augment with modest grace, And comely carriage of her count’nance trim, That all the rest like lesser lamps did dim.”

(VI. ix. 9.)

And yet as she stands on the little hillock she is encompassed with a cloud of glory.

“Upon a litle hillocke she was placed Higher then all the rest, and round about Environ’d with a girland, goodly graced, Of lovely lasses, and them all without The lustie shepheard swaynes sate in a rout; The which did pype and sing her prayses dew, And oft rejoyce, and oft for wonder shout, As if some miracle of heavenly hew Were downe to them descended in that earthly vew.”

(VI. ix. 8.)

They saw in the object before their eyes the idea of beauty in earthly form. The miracle is no more and no less than this; it is “the privilege of beauty, that being the loveliest she is also the most palpable to sight.”

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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INDEX

Absence, effect of, in love, 143, 144, 145, 146, 148.

Acrasia, a type of sensual beauty, 20; captured by Guyon, 21.

Adam, 43, 44, 83.

Amavia, 24.

“Anatomy of the World, An,” 162, 165.

“Answer to the Platonicks,” 162.

“Anti-monopsychia,” 194, 196.

“Anti-Platonick” (Cleveland’s), 162.

“Anti-Platonick” (Daniel’s), 159.

“Anti-psychopannychia,” 194, 195.

“Apology for Smectymnuus, An,” 47.

“Arcadia,” 66.

Archimago, 14.

ἀρετή, identification of Una with, 2.

Ariosto, 26, 39.

Arthegal, his reverence for Britomart, 35, 37, 38, 40; his training in justice, 28.

Arthur, as heavenly grace, 3, 62; his relation to the Red Cross Knight, 62; his function in scheme of “Faerie Queene,” 62.

Astræa, 27.

“Barriers, The,” 125.

Baxter, 92.

Beauty, in Ficino, 109, 112, 113, 114; in Plato, 34, 35, 220; in Milton, 41; in Spenser, 35,38, 41, 109, 111, 112, 113, 220, 221. of beloved, its relation to absolute beauty, in George Daniel, 131; in Ficino, 115; in Shakespeare, 128, 134, 135; in Spenser, 32–34, 115, 130, 136. earthly, 79, 80. heavenly, a fundamental doctrine of Platonism, 1, 103; identified as wisdom, 73; as beauty of intelligible world, 76.

“Beauty,” 86.

Beelzebub, 58.

Being, true, 98.

Belphœbe, 5.

Bower of Bliss, 21.

Boyle, Robert, 158.

Bradamante, 39.

Britomart, 35, 36–38.

“Cælica,” 138.

Calidore, 46.

“Cantos of Mutabilitie,” 217.

Carew, Thomas, 158.

Cartwright, William, 162.

Charles I, 156.

Charleton, Walter, 157.

Chastity, Milton’s idea of, 47, 48, 54, 55, 56.

Christ, mystical love of, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 99; as true being, 98; Milton’s idea of, 180, 181.

“Christ’s Triumph after Death,” 100–103.

Cleveland, John, 161, 162.

“Colin Clouts Come Home Againe,” 122.

“Commentarium in Convivium,” on love, 107, 108, 115, 116, 121; on beauty, 109, 110, 112, 113, 114; its interpretation of Plato, 140.

“Comus,” effect of sensuality on soul taught in, 49; chastity in, 48, 49, 56; doctrine of grace in, 63, 64; parallelism with “Phædo,” 49, _n._ 1.

Comus, his attempts on The Lady, 51–54; his character, 53.

“Corruption,” 205, 206.

“Court-Platonicke,” 159.

Cowley, Abraham, 161, 162.

Craig, Alexander, 138.

Crashaw, Richard, 97, 99, 138.

Daniel, George, 131, 158.

Daniel, Samuel, 138.

D’Avenant, William, 156.

Diodati, Charles, 41.

Donne, John, mysticism in, 94; love in, 141, 144, 145, 149, 51, 152, 153, 154; his idea of woman, 163, 164, 165.

Drayton, Michael, 125, 138.

“Dream, The,” 153.

Drummond, William, his idea of God, 174, 175, 176, 183; his idea of love, 82, 88, 132; his idea of heavenly love, 76, 81; appeal of Platonism to, 76; his idea of happiness, 86; his idea of rest, 87.

Dryden, John, 165.

Duessa, 66.

“Ecstacy, The,” 141.

Elissa, 22.

“Enneads,” see under Plotinus.

“Epithalamion,” 31, 32, 33.

“Epithalamy,” 162.

“Epode,” 151.

Eve, 44, 45.

“Faerie Queene,” Christianity and Platonic idealism in, 1; its teaching on holiness, 1; its teaching on temperance, see under Guyon; Platonic ethics in, 26, 39; its allegorical scheme, 26; its unity, 29, 30; beauty of mind in, 33; function of grace in, 62, 63.

“Fever, A,” 164.

Ficino, see under “Commentarium in Convivium.”

Fidelia, 3.

Fletcher, Giles, 100, 101, 102, 103.

Fletcher, Phineas, 83, 97.

Florimell, 66.

“Forerunners, The,” 90.

“Friendship in Absence,” 161.

Furor, 16.

“Garden of Adonis,” 213–216.

God, as lover of His own beauty, 68, 69; as The Good, 70, 86; union of soul with, 100–103; as “Idea Beatificall,” 102; as source of beauty, 109, 180; as Creator, 110; and the three Platonian hypostases, 172; as king, 174, 175, 176; as philosophical principle, 176–178.

Good, The, 169.

“Gorgias,” on temperance, 24.

Grace, doctrine of, its connection with ideal of holiness, 61–63; its connection with ideal of chastity, 63, 64; its connection with ideal of temperance, 62, 63; represented by Arthur, 62.

Greville, Fulke, 138.

Guyon, his adventures, 13; his struggles with wrath, 14–18; his struggles with sensual desire, 18–21; character of his life, 24; his praise of beauty of mind, 34; his relation to Arthur, 62.

Habington, William, 147.

Heaven, 92.

Henrietta, Maria, 156, 157.

Herbert, Edward, Lord Herbert, 146, 159.

Herbert, George, 71, 89, 90, 93.

Heywood, Thomas, 156.

Holiness, Platonism and, 10; its connection with the doctrine of grace, 62.

Holy Spirit, identified with Psyche, 170.

Howell, James, 155, 156, 157.

Hudibras, 22.

“Hymn of Fairest Fair, An,” 174–179, 183, 184.

“Hymne in Honour of Beautie, An,” 106, 109–117, 118.

“Hymne in Honour of Love, An,” 105, 107, 108, 118, 121.

“Hymne of Heavenly Love,” 68, 69, 73, 74, 75, 76, 95, 96.

“Hymne of Heavenly Beautie,” 185, 186.

“Hymne of True Happiness, An,” 86.

Hypostases, the Plotinian, 167, 176, 177.

Idea, Platonic notion of, 95; connection with mysticism, 95, 101; term used as title, 138.

“Idea Beatificall,” 102.

Intellect, The, identified with God, 175; defined, 170, 180; identified with Christ, 170.

Intelligible world, 77, 78, 81.

“In the Glorious Epiphanie of Our Lord God,” 97–99.

Ithuriel, 59.

Jonson, 122, 123, 151.

“Jordan,” 91.

Joy, in religious experience, 85; and the beatific vision, 88.

Justice, Spenser’s conception of, 27, 28; Plato’s conception, 28; identical with temperance, 28.

Lady, The, in “Comus,” effect of spells of Comus on, 53; her response to Comus, 54; her conception of chastity, 54, 56.

Linche, Richard, 138.

Love, nativity of the god of, 120, 121, 122, 123, 124; treatment of, in Donne, 149–151, 152–155; in Drayton, 125, 126; in Ficino, 107, 108, 115, 116; in Habington, 147; in Jonson, 123, 124, 125, 151; in Milton, 41, 47, 82, 83; in Plato, 34, 35, 120; in Spenser, 34, 107–109, 115–118, 120, 122; in Vaughan, 132, 133. earthly, 83, 88. heavenly, defined, 67, 72, 73, 84; in Spenser, 75; in Drummond, 81. Platonic, its rise at court, 155, 156; defined, 155, 156, 160; ridiculed, 156, 157; described Lord Herbert, 159, 160; in Stanley, 158; in Vaughan, 158; its immorality, 158.

“Love,” 71.

“Love Freed from Ignorance and Folly,” 124, 125.

Lovelace, Richard, 161.

“Love’s Growth,” 152.

“Love’s Innocence,” 158.

“Love’s Mistress or the Queen’s Masque,” 156.

“Love’s Triumph through Callipolis,” 123, 124.

Mammon, 19.

Margaret of Valois, 156, 157.

“Masque of Beauty, The,” 122, 123.

Matter, in Plato, 211, 215; in Plotinus, 210, 211, 215; in Spenser, 212.

Mean, the Aristotelean doctrine of the, described, 21, 22; in Spenser, 22, 23.

Milton, John, his notion of woman, 40, 41, 44; his treatment of Eve, 44, 45; his love of beauty, 41, 44, 64, 65; his debt to Platonic philosophy, 47; his idealism, 47, 48, 55, 57, 61; his conception of sin, 49, 57, 58; hold of Platonism on, 40, 47, 55, 56, 57, 61, 64, 65; his idea of chastity, 47, 48, 54, 55; doctrine of grace in, 63, 64; his idea of beauty, 64; his idea of love, 82, 83; his idea of God, 180; his idea of Christ, 180.

More, Henry, mysticism in, 99, 196, 199; his idea of the Trinity, 168, 173; his idea of soul, 187–193; his idea of Christ, 170; his idea of the Holy Spirit, 170–174; religious feeling in, 182, 201; his argument for immortality, 187–193; hold of Platonism on, 193, 202; on innate ideas, 195.

Mysticism, erotic, defined, 92, 93; in George Herbert, 93; in Donne, 94; its connection with Platonism, 95; relation of love of Christ to, 95–103.

“Negative Love,” 153–155.

“Nicomachean Ethics,” 22.

“No Platonique Love,” 162.

Norris, John, 86, 87, 89, 157.

One, The, 153, 169, 179.

“Orlando Furioso,” 38, 39.

Palmer, The, 17, 20, 21, 25.

“Paradise Lost,” 49, 58.

“Paradise Regained,” 42.

Pastorella, 46.

Petrarchism, defined, 105, 126; influence of Platonism on, 105, 127.

Perissa, 22.

“Phædo,” on the function of philosophy, 8; on effect of sense knowledge on soul, 48, 49 _n._ 1, 50, 55; on the super-sensible world, 77, 78, 81 _n._ 1.

Phædria, 18.

“Phædrus,” on the beauty of wisdom, 4, 127; on love, 8, 34, 35; on beauty of virtue, 4, 127, 220; on reminiscence, 11, 57, 203, 206, 207; on sight of true beauty, 57; on beauty, 220.

“Philebus,” on goodness, 61.

“Piscatorie Eclogues,” 83.

“Platonick, The,” 161.

“Platonic Elegy, A,” 143.

“Platonic Love” (Ayres’s), 161; (Aytoun’s) 161.

“Platonick Love (Cowley’s), 162; (Cleveland’s), 162; (Lord Herbert’s), 159, 160.

“Platonic Lovers,” 156.

Platonism, fundamental principle of, 1, 3, 30; its relation to ideal of holiness, 10; its part in religious experience, 12, 71, 72, 85, 91, 92, 181, 183; its relation to ethics of “Faerie Queene,” 26, 30; its connection with doctrine of grace, 61; its relation to doctrine of heavenly love, 67, 68; its appeal to sense of beauty, 85; its influence on erotic mysticism, 95–104; its influence on love poetry, 104; its relation to morality of love, 136, 137, 138; its influence on discussion of love, 140, 141; its three hypostases, 167; its effect on theology, 167; its attraction for the religious mind, 183, 193, 194, 201, 202, 216, 218, 219. Italian, appeal of, to Spenser, 117, 118; its æsthetic theory, 139; its debt to Plotinus, 140; its relation to Plato, 140; its debt to Ficino, 140.

Plotinus, “Enneads” of, on the intelligible world, 77; on The Good, 153, 154, 169, 181; on the hypostases, 167; on soul, 170, 171; on intellect, 170; on The One, 176, 177, 181, 194; on inter-relation of the hypostases, 177, 180; on matter, 179, 211; on immortality, 187.

“Prayer for Mankind,” 184.

“Prospect,” 87.

“Psychathanasia,” idea of creation in, 70; mysticism in, 99, 194; immortality in, 187–193; The One in, 197, 198, 199.

Psyche, 170, 171, 172.

“Psychozoia,” idea of the Trinity in, 168; religious feeling in, 183.

“Pure Platonicke,” 159.

“Purple Island,” 97.

Pyrochles, 17, 18.

Randolph, Thomas, 143.

Red Cross Knight, his sight of Una’s beauty, 7, 9, 10, 11; on Mount of Contemplation, 8, 9, 10, 11, 62; training in House of Holiness, 10; slandered, 14; character of, 15; Arthur’s relation to, 62.

“Republic,” on the good, 8; on temperance, 13, 14, 28; on principles within soul, 13; on justice, 28; on imitative art, 91 _n._ 1; on truth and opinion, 125.

Reminiscence, theory of, in Vaughan, 203, 204–206, 207, 208; in Plato, 203, 206.

“Retreat, The,” 203, 204, 206.

Ruggiero, 39.

Sans Loy, 23.

Satan, his love of beauty, 42, 43–46; his sight of Eden, 43; contemplating Adam and Eve, 43, 44, 46; his regret for lost beauty, 58, 59, 60.

Satyrane, 3.

Sedley, Charles, 161.

“Seraphick Love,” 89.

Shakespeare, 128, 129, 134, 135.

Sidney, Algernon, 157.

Sidney, Philip, on beauty of virtue, 66; on heavenly love, 84, 85; on Stella and virtue, 127; on Plato, 137.

Song—“If you refuse me once,” 161.

Song II—“It Autumn was, and on our hemisphere,” 76, 77, 79–81, 81 _n._ 1.

Song, “To a Lady,” 158.

Song, “To Amoret,” 133.

σοφια, Una identified with, 2.

σωφροσύνη, Plato’s idea of, 12.

Soul, three principles in the, 13; effect of sensuous experience on the, 48, 50, 51; its self-sufficiency, 61; its union with God, 89, 100–103; its formative energy, 113, 114; union of, in love, 141, 143; defined, 187, 192, 193; where found, 188; a self-moving substance, 188; immortality of, 189, 190, 191, 192; its identity after death, 195,196; universal, identified with woman, 164; defined, 170, 171.

“Soul’s Joy,” 144.

Spenser, Edmund, Platonism in, 3, 5, 7, 21, 22, 31, 35, 39, 117, 218, 220; his idea of beauty, 4, 32, 33, 65, 66; his idea of justice, 27; his idea of temperance, 23, 24, 25; his idea of virtue, 27, 29; his idea of a gentleman, 29; his idea of love, 31, 108; his idea of heavenly love, 75; his æsthetics, 109–117; identifies beloved with idea of beauty, 130, 136; on his hymns, 139; his idea of matter, 212; his world weariness, 216.

Stanley, Thomas, 158.

Suckling, John, 161.

Sylvanus, 6.

“Symposium,” on wisdom, 8; its dialectic 8, 75; on beauty of mind, 31; on nativity of love, 68, 120; interpreted by Ficino, 107, 140; on generation and immortality, 119, 120.

“Teares on the Death of Mœliades,” 87, 88.

Temperance, Plato’s idea of, 12, 13, 14, 23; Spenser’s idea of, 23, 24, 25; and justice, 28; connection with heavenly grace, 62.

“Temple of Love,” 156.

“Theologia Germanica,” 168.

θνμός, 13.

“Timæus,” on creation, 70; on Creator, 110; on flux, 211, 212.

“To Amoret. Walking in a Starry Evening,” 132.

“To Cinthia, Converted,” 159.

“To Cinthia, coying it,” 159.

“To Cloris, a Rapture,” 161.

“To Lucasta, Going beyond the Seas,” 161.

“To my Mistress in Absence,” 161.

“To the Countess of Huntingdon,” 149, 151, 163.

“To the Platonicke Pretender,” 159.

“To the World. The Perfection of Love,” 147.

Trinity, The, identified with Plotinian hypostases, 168–174; its unity, 176.

Una, identified with σοφία, and ἀρετή, 2; identified with truth, 2, 3; guides Red Cross Knight to Fidelia’s school, 3; presented as true beauty, 3–10.

“Urania,” 88.

“Valediction Forbidding Mourning,” 145.

Vaughan, Henry, his idea of love, 132, 133, 148; his idea of Platonic love, 158; his idea of preëxistence, 203.

Virtue, Plato’s idea of, 27; a manifold of graces, 27; its beauty, 127; identified with woman, 163.

Vision, beatific, described as rest, 87; as joy, 88.

Wisdom, the highest beauty, 4; beauty of, 4, 10; seen only by soul, 8; sight of, quickening imagination, 10, 11; identified with heavenly beauty, 73; subject of “Hymne of Heavenly Beautie,” 73, 74.

“Wishes, The,” 138.

“World, The,” 206, 207, 208, 210.

Woman, her inward beauty, 31; attraction of, 162; identified as virtue, 163; as universal soul, 164.

Zephon, 59, 60.

-----

Footnote 1:

Cf. Pub. of Mod. Lang. Ass. of Amer., 1897, p. 177, “Spenser’s Imitations from Ariosto.”

Footnote 2:

Masson, Life of Milton, I. 600.

Footnote 3:

Milton, Prose Works, I. 225.

Footnote 4:

ll. 470–475 are taken from “Phædo,” 81: “And this corporeal element, my friend, is heavy and weighty and earthy, and is that element of sight by which a soul is depressed and dragged down again into the visible world, because she is afraid of the invisible and of the world below—prowling about tombs and sepulchres, near which, as they tell us, are seen certain ghostly apparitions of souls which have not departed pure, but are cloyed with sight, and therefore visible.”

Footnote 5:

Lib. 3. fol. 313 recto.

Footnote 6:

Besides paraphrasing “Phædo,” 110–111 in ll. 111–136, Drummond repeats the argument given in that dialogue to prove the probable existence of such a world. Cf. ll. 141–170 with “Phædo,” 109.—“But we who live in these hollows [of earth] are deceived into the notion that we are dwelling on the surface of the earth; which is just as if a creature who was at the bottom of the sea were to fancy that he was on the surface of the water and that the sea was the heaven through which he saw the sun and the other stars, he having never come to the surface by reason of his feebleness and sluggishness, and having never lifted up his head and seen, nor ever heard from one who had seen, how much purer and fairer the world above is than his own.... [But] if any man could arrive at the exterior limit [of the atmosphere], or take the wings of a bird and come to the top, then like a fish who puts his head out of water and sees this world, he would see a world beyond.”

Footnote 7:

This idea of catching the truth of a thing at two removes and the reference to a true and painted chair are reminiscences of Plato’s discussion of imitative art, and his figure of the three beds. (“Republic” X, 597–599.)

Footnote 8:

“Puritan and Anglican Studies,” Edward Dowden, pp. 29–30.

Footnote 9:

Walton, “Life of Herbert,” pp. 386, 396.

Footnote 10:

Poems of Shakespeare. Ed. George Wyndham, p. cxxii.

Footnote 11:

“Poems of Lord Herbert of Cherbury,” ed. John Churton Collins, p. 24.

Footnote 12:

Howell’s “Letters,” Bk. I, sect. 6, let. XV.

Footnote 13:

“Lustra Ludovicii,” p. 26. London, 1646.

Footnote 14:

“An Account of Plato’s Ideas, and of Platonic Love.” “Miscellanies,” pp. 355–364.

Footnote 15:

“An Essay on Love,” p. 275.

Footnote 16:

“The Ephesian and Cimmerian Matrons,” 1668.

Footnote 17:

“A Treatise of Seraphic Love.” Advertisements to the Reader, p. 12.

Footnote 18:

“Poems, with the Tenth Satire of Juvenal Englished, 1646.” Preface.

Footnote 19:

Works, ed. Grosart, I. 112–123.

Footnote 20:

Works, ed. A. H. Bullen, p. 124.

Footnote 21:

“Ben Jonson’s Conversations with William Drummond,” p. 3. Shakespeare’s Soc. Pub. v. 8.

Footnote 22:

Works, ed. Saintsbury, xi. 124, note.

Footnote 23:

“Life of Henry More,” Richard Ward, p. 12.

Footnote 24:

“Psychozoia.” To the Reader.

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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

1. Silently corrected palpable typographical errors; retained non-standard spellings and dialect. 2. Reindexed footnotes using numbers and collected together at the end of the last chapter. 3. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_. 4. Denoted superscripts by a caret before a single superscript character, e.g. M^r.