Almond The Journey of the Soul in 17th Century English Platonism

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Hisrory of European Ideas, Vol. 13, No. 6, pp. 775-791, 1991

Printed in Great Britain

0191-6599/91 3.00+0.00

Pcrgamon Press plc

THE JOURNEY OF THE SOUL IN

SEVENTEENTH CENTURY ENGLISH PLATONISM

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 crypto-

materialistic. 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 opinionwhich could be maintained without danger to the faith.3 In a letter to Robert

Boyle, accompanying a copy of his Lux Orientalis Glanvill declared,

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 Platonism, they

*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 ofneo-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 pre-

existent natures. As Glanvill declared,

let us conceive the Souls of men to have grown degenerate in a former condit ion of

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 isvitious; 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 aspotent ial ly in 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 pre-

existence 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 Phil ip 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 strictlyproportioned 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 nihi lo

a fresh soul for every human individual at its conception; and traducianism, thedoctrine 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 moreaethereal 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 co-conspirator 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



Seventeent h-cent ury Engl i sh Pl at oni sm 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 not ion 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.. . .’ Inshort, 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 Let ter of Resolut i on 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 topresent 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 Oriental is 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 Praeexi stence stands secure enough upon

those Pil lars of Reason, which have their Foundation in the Attr ibutes of God, and

the Phaenomena of the world. And the Ri ght 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 w ri t t en ReveIat i ons.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 PhiI ip 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.36For 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 t he At t ri but es of God, t he vi sibl e Event s of

Providence, the Phaenomena of Nat ure, t he Reason of Man, and t he Hol y Text t sev,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 byreason, 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. Onthe 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 D i scourse of Li bert y and

Necessity to give us a picture of the passion with which Cudworth defended free




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

Calvi nist i ck Pr edest inat ion, 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 Di vi ne Justi ce and Goodness; that on a certain Day, in

a Ground belonging to Aet on Col l ege, 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 Cursingand 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 inf i nit ely good, and that to his Creatures, and therefore doing always

what is best for them, methinks it roundly follows that our souls l ived and ‘njoy’d

themselves of old before they came into these bodies. For since they were capable of

l iv ing, 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 absol ut e not -bei ng; may we not safely conclude from a

due consideration of the di v i ne 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

OUTmoral 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 Phil ip C. Al mond

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 Platonistresponse was to argue that God’s freedom was not a mere l i bert as i ndl yf erent i ae,

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 w ere 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 asto 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 pre-

existence of the soul was an expression of the essential goodness of God; and the

misuse of free will by pre-existent souls was a vindicat ion of the essential goodness

of God.

However that may be, there were weaknesses in this theodicy. Edward Warren,




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. 56Hallywell’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 theirprimitive 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 Phil ip 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 i nt ernal spring and w heel s, hey 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 et ernal w i sdom he had concluded f i t

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 ‘aw akened 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

t hese Regions [v i z., 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 anymore 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




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 enabledthem to locate those yet to be born, the living, and the dead in the same spatio-

temporal 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 Commonwealthperiod.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 impossibleshe 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 ofspirit 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 Phil ip C. Al mond

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 witchesand, 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 isin Metaphysicks, No Spirit no God.19

Keith Thomas in his Rel i gion and t he Decl i ne of M agic 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



Sevent eent h-cent ury Engl i sh Pl at oni sm 787

and not well discover’d Region; yea, it stands in the Map of humane Science like

unknow n Tracts, fill’d up with M ountains,Seas, andM onst ers. . . 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 andApparit ions, 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 standi ng evi dence against SADDUCISM, to

which the present Age is so unhappily disposed, and a sensibl e A rgument of our

Immortal i ty.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.

Uni versit y of Queensl and

Philip C. Almond

NOTES

The following abbreviations are used throughout:

Lux Orientalis: Joseph Glanvill, Lux Orientalis, in Tw o Choi ce and UsefuI Treat i ses

(London, 1682).

Immorta l i ty : Henry More, The Immortal i ty of the Soul (London, 1659).

A Let t er: Anon., A Lett er of Resol uti on Concerni ng O ri gen and the Chief of hi s Opini ons

(London, 1661).



788 PhiI i p C. Almond

1. J. Henry, ‘A Cambridge Platonist’s Materialism: Henry More and the Concept of

Soul’, Journal of t he Warburg and Court auld I nsti t ut es, xlix (1986), p. 188.

2. E.W., No praeexi stence. Or a Bri ef D i ssert at i on against t he Hy pot hesis of Humane

Souls, Li vi ng in a St at e Antecedaneous t o This, London 1667, Epistle to the Reader.For the attribution of this to Edward Warren, see W.R. Alger, Crit ical Doctri ne of a

Future Li fe (Philadelphia, 1864), p. 705.

3. See Lux Orientalis, Preface.

4. Thomas Birch (ed.), Robert Boyl e: The Works, vol . vi (London, 1772), pp. 630-l.

5. See D.P. Walker, The Anci ent Theology (New York, Ithaca, 1972); Frances A. Yates,

Giordano Bruno and the Hermet i c Tradit ion (London, 1964).

6. See Immorta l i ty , p. 246.

7. See Lux OrientaIis, p. 26; C.P., A Di ssert at i on concerni ng t he Pre-exi stency of Sot

(London, 1684). On the attribution of this to Christian Knorr von Rosenroth, see

D.P. Walker, The DecIi ne of Hell (London, 1964), p. 127. See also J. Glanvill, ‘ALetter on Preexistence from Dr. Joseph Glanvill to Richard Baxter’, Bibliotheca

Platonica, i (1890), p. 91.

8. See G.W. Butterworth (ed.), Or i gen: O n First Pri ncipl es (Massachusetts, 1973), pp. 47,

65, 67, 8.134.

9. See W.H. Fremantle (trans.), Let t ers and Sel ect Work s of St . Jerome (New York,

1893), pp. 238-44.

10. See Max Schlr, Das Nachleben des Ori genes im Zei t al t er des Humani smus (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.), Studi es i n Ar t and Li t erat ure for BeI I e da Cost aGreene (Princeton, 1954), pp. 412-24.

12. See Walker, (as in n. 7), p. 15.

13. See Marjorie H. Nicholson, Conw ay Let t ers (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 Hunt i ngdon Library Quart erl y, i (1937) pp. 447-56.

14. See A Let t er, p. 22.

15. See Nicholson Conway Let t ers (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 Let t er, pp. 34, 38.

18. Lux Orientalis, preface.19. See Michael MacDonald, M ysti caI Bedlam: M adness, Anxi et y, and Heali ng i n

Seventeenth-Century England (Cambridge, 1981).

20. See P.J. Marshall and Glyndwr Williams, The Great M ap ofM anki nd(London, 1982).

21. Henry More, The Immortal it y of t he Soul, second edition (London, 1662), p. 112.

22. See Jacques Le Goff, The Bir th of Purgatory (Chicago, 1984), p. 229.

23. See Don C. Allen, Doubt ’s Bound I ess Sea: Skepti cism and Fait h i n t he Renai ssance

(Baltimore, 1964), pp. 159-62.

24. A Let t er, pp. 28-9. See also Lux Orientalis, p. 10.

25. See K Thomas, ‘The Puritans and Adultery: The Act of 1650 Reconsidered’, in

D. Pennington and K. Thomas (eds), Purit ans and Revol uti onaries (Oxford, 1978)pp. 257-82.

26. Immorta l i ty , 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 Rhet ori c ofl evi at han:

Hobbes and t he Poli t ics of Cult ural Transformati on (Princeton, 1986).

28. On the relation of More and Descartes, see S.P. Lamprecht, ‘The Role of Descartes in

Seventeenth-Century England’, Studi es i n he H i stor y of deas, iv (1935), pp. 181-240;

C. Webster, ‘Henry More and Descartes: Some New Sources’, The Bri t i sh Journal for




t he H i stor y 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 t reat i se concerni ng t he Propagati on of the Soul (London,

1667), p. 23.31. Ibid., p. 31.

32. See Shirley A. Roe, M at t er, L i fe, and Generat i on:Eighteent h-centur yembroyol ogyand

t he Ha i l er- WoI fe debate (Cambridge, 1981).

33. The crucial passage was John ix.2. See A Let t er, p. 44; Lux O ri ent al i s,~. 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 Paradoxi caI D i scourses of PM . Van

Helmont (London, 1685) p. 107; and cf. Samuel Parker, An Account of t he Nat ure and

Extent of t he Di vi ne Domi nion and Goodnesse, especial l y as hey efer t o he O ri geni an

Hypot hesis Concerni ng t he Preexi stence of Soul s (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 he H i st ory of deas, 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, M ajor Trends in Jew ish M ysti cism (New York, 1961).

37. On Copernicanism in England, see Paul H. Kocher, Science and Rel i gion i n

Ehzabethan England (San Marino, California, 1953) pp. 189-200; and Francis R.

Johnson, Astr onomi cal Thought i n Renai ssance England: A St udy of t he Engl i shScientw c W ri t i ngs rom 1500-1645 (New York, 1968).

38. Henry More, Conjectura Cabbalistica, in A Coll ecti on of Phil osophical W ri t ings,

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 Hunt i ng of Levi athan (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 free-

will controversy’, Journal of the Hi story of I deas, xl (1979), pp. 339-52.42. On Arminianism in England, see Rosalie L. Colie, Li ght andEnli ghtenment : A St udy

of t he Cambri dge Piat oni sts and the Dut ch Armi ni ans (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 Pr esent ,

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 Li fe of t he Learnedand t he Pious D r. Henry M ore (London, 1710),

pp. 6-7.44. Lux Orientalis, p. 52. See also Immorta l i ty , 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 Hi story , xxx (1961)

pp. 433-57.

46. Anon., Deus Justi fi catus: Or, The D i vi ne Goodness Vind i cated and Cleared. agai nst he

Assert ors of Absolut e and I ncondi t i onate Reprobat i on (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 PhiI ip C. Almond

47. Ibid., p. 255. See afso George Rust, A D i scourse of Trut h, in Tw o Choice and U seful

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, Annot ati ons upon t he Tw oforegoing

Treatises, in Two Choice and Useful Treati ses (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 andOmnipotence’, in B. Mitchell (ed.), The Philosophy of Religion (Oxford, 1971),

pp, 92-104.

58. See E.R. Dodds (ed.), Proclus: The Element s of Theol ogy (Oxford, 1933), appendix 2;

John F. Finamore, Iamblichus and the Theory o he Vehicl e of the Soul (Chico,

California, 1985).

59. Ralph Cudworth, The True nt el l ectua l System of he Uni verse 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 Let t er, p. 54.62. See Moody E. Prior, ‘Joseph Glanvill, Witchcraft, and Seventeenth-Century Science’,

modern Phi l ogy, xxx (1932-3), p. 176.

63. Lux Orientalis, p. 98.

64, See Immorta l i ty , p. 52.

65. Lux Orientalis, pp. 121-2.

66. See ~mmortaI i ty, p. 270.

67. Ibid., p. 343.

68. Ibid., pp. 411-12.

69. Lux Orientalis, p. 93. See also Henry More, An Ant i dote against At hei sme (London,

1652), pp. 146-7.70. Immorta l i ty , pp. 439,441; cf. A Let t er, 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, Christ i an ~orta~ism from Tyndale to M il ton (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, Immorta l i ty , pp. 342-3.79. More (as in n. 69), p. 164. See also Joseph Glanvill, A Whipfor t heDr oll , Fiddler to he

Atheist (London, 1668), pp. 176-7.

80. See Keith Thomas, Rel i gion and t he Decli ne of magic (Harmondswo~h, 1980),

pp. 517-58.

81. Joseph Glanvill, Sadducismus Triumphatus, third edition (London, 1689), pp. 73-4;

see also Immorta l i ty , pp 278-9.

82. See ibid., pp. 75-6. See also Jackson 1. Cope, Joseph Glanvi k Angli can Apol ogi st

(St Louis, 1956), p. 96.




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’,

Isis, lxxii (1981), pp. 343-56; P.M. Rattansi, ‘Paracelsus and the Puritan Revolution’,

Ambix xi (1964), pp. 24-32.

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Almond The Journey of the Soul in 17th Century English Platonism