chose the latter to found his theological belief upon-in this, perhaps, more philosophical than Cudworth and More, the greater lights of the school, who, without ignoring the "argument from the heart," are inclined rather to look to "science -to "design in nature," and to "epistemology "—for proof of the existence of God. 33 For the Immortality of the Soul, the other cardinal doctrine of Theology and Morals, Cudworth and More are very busy in producing "scientific" evidence, and, on the whole, find it easy to press the science of their day into the service of the doctrine. The starting-point of their scientific argument is, that the Soul is an "incorporeal substance." Systems of Philosophy, both ancient and modern, are distinguished as "theistic" and atheistic," according as they profess or deny the doctrine of "incorporeal substance." The saving merit of Descartes, as we have seen, is that, after all, he recognises "incorporeal substance." On the other hand, Hobbes denies it. In the ninth chapter of the First Book of The Immortality of the Soul, More examines Hobbes' disproof of Spirit or incorporeal substance. Hobbes' argument is, "Every substance has dimensions; but a Spirit has no dimensions; therefore there is no spiritual substance." "Here," writes More,1 "I confidently deny the assumption. For it is not the characteristikall of a Body to have dimensions, but to be impenetrable. All Substance has dimensions-that is, Length, Breadth, and Depth; but all has not impenetrability. See my letters to Monsieur Des Cartes." This refutation of Hobbes falls back on the definitions of Spirit and of Body which More has given in an earlier part of the same treatise 2-Spirit is defined as "a Substance penetrable and indiscerpible"; Body, as " a Substance impenetrable and discerpible." This definition he amends in the chapter against Hobbes, putting it thus:Spirit or Incorporeal is "Extended Substance, with activity and indiscerpibility, leaving out impenetrability.” More thus plainly ranges himself with those who assumed an extended incorporeal substance; but, of course, there were many incorporealists, among whom was Plotinus, who regarded Spirit as 3 Page 21. 3 See Cudworth, Intell. System, vol. iii. p. 386. unextended. Cudworth compares the opposite views of these two classes of incorporealists at great length, and ends1 by leaving the question open, although one might gather that he inclines to the view favoured by More from his speaking of Space as incorporeal substance, with the attribute of extension, and infinite; and therefore as equivalent to God, who is the only infinite substance.2 But the "incorporeal substance" of Descartes, though a good enough" scientific" beginning for a doctrine of the Immortality of the Soul, is only a beginning; just as it is only a beginning for a "scientific" proof of the existence of God. Cartesianism falls short, according to the Cambridge School, as we have seen, in ignoring the "plastic principle," or "soul of nature." It leaves us between the horns of a dilemma: either mere mechanism, once started by God, produces effects blindly; or God interferes personally in the smallest details. The plastic principle releases us from this dilemma. It may be described as an incorporeal substance, or principle, which, like Aristotle's puois, works eveкá Tov without consciousness. To it God, who is Self-conscious Goodness and Wisdom, delegates, as it were, the task of carrying on the operations of nature: these operations are therefore God's operations, and His goodness and wisdom may be inferred from them; but we are not obliged to hold the ridiculous opinion that He produces them by immediate intervention. It is the plastic principle which, in the inorganic world, immediately determines, e.g., the distances of the fixed stars from one another and the paths of their planets, and, in the organic world, appears as that "vegetative part of the Soul" which builds up the body terrestrial, aerial or aethereal, without which, as "vehicle," consciousness would be impossible in the case of finite spirits: 3 without this plastic, vehicle-building, principle there could be no "reproduction," to use T. H. Green's terms, of the "Eternal Consciousness." I have already, in an early part of this work, had occasion to describe the use which More makes of the plastic principle in his account of the future existence of the Soul, and would 3 Cudworth thinks it "probable" that no spirit except God can exist without a body of some kind (Intell. System, vol. iii. p. 368). 4 Pages 95 ff. only add here that Cudworth treats of the principle in his Intellectual System, vol. i. pp. 235-252 (ed. Mosheim and Harrison) in a passage well worth the attention of any one interested in the point at issue between the "teleological" and the "mechanical" explanation of the world. The English Platonist of the seventeenth century, with his "plastic soul," makes out, I venture to think, as plausible a case for "teleology as his successor, the English Idealist of the nineteenth or twentieth century, manages to do with his "spiritual principle." The chief difference between the two advocates is that the former tells us frankly that his plastic soul is "unconscious," while the latter leaves us in doubt whether his "spiritual principle" is "conscious " or "unconscious." Having attempted to describe in mere outline-the learning and the science of the Cambridge Platonists, I now go on to compare their central doctrine with that of the English Idealists of the present day-the school of which T. H. Green may be taken as representative. The comparison will show, I think, that the central doctrine of these English Idealists, equally with that of the Cambridge Platonists, is to be traced to Plato—and to Plato the mythologist, rather than to Plato the dialectician. The central doctrine of the Cambridge Platonists is the Doctrine of Ideas as presented in the Phaedrus Myth-that is, presented to religious feeling as theory of the union of man with God in knowledge and conduct. In the Doctrine of Ideas, as it is presented to the scientific understanding in such contributions to Logic as Republic, 509 D ff., the Cambridge Platonists, like their Alexandrine predecessors, seem to take little interest. The Doctrine of Ideas as adopted by the Cambridge Platonists may be stated as follows:-Sensible things, which come into existence and perish, are but reflections, images, ectypes, of Eternal Essences, Archetypal Forms, or Ideas. These Ideas are the vonμara, the "Thoughts," of God-the elements which constitute his Eternal Wisdom, copía, or λóyos. The Wisdom of God is that World of Ideas, that mundus archetypus, according to the conception of which he created this visible world. Man attains to knowledge, motýμŋ, only in so far as he apprehends these Eternal Thoughts of the Divine Wisdom-only in so far as, spurred to reflection by the stimuli of sense, he enters into communion with the Mind of God, sees things in God." This communion is possible only because man's spirit is of one kind with the spirit of God-Toû γὰρ γένος ἐσμέν. "All minds partake of one original mind,"1 are "reproductions of the Eternal Consciousness "2-find that its eternal Ideas are theirs too. Thus epistemology involves theology. The theory of knowledge involves the supposition of a "universal consciousness," or "Wisdom of God," as Eternal Subject of those elon or "forms," without the constructive activity of which in the mind of man his sensations would be "blind." From this sketch it may be seen that the doctrine of archetypal Ideas amounts, in the English Intellectualists, to a Theory of Knowledge, in which the a priori element is recognised, as in the Kantian philosophy. Let me fill in my sketch by quoting some passages from More, Cudworth, Smith, Norris, and Berkeley. In his antidote against Atheism,3 More speaks of "relative notions or ideas"-Cause and Effect, Whole and Part, Like and Unlike in much the same way as Kant speaks of his 66 Categories of the Understanding." These "relative ideas,” he says, "are no external Impresses upon the senses, but the Soul's own active manner of conceiving those things which are discovered by the outward senses." Again, in the Cabbala,1 in a passage which carries us out of the " Critique of Pure Reason into the "Metaphysic of Morals," he says: "The Soul of man is not merely passive as a piece of wood or stone, but is forthwith made active by being acted upon; and therefore if God in us rules, we rule with him; if he contend against sin in us, we also contend together with him against the same; if he see in us what is good or evil, we, ipso facto, see by him -In his light we see light; and so in the rest." Again, in his Philosophickall Poems," the following curious passage occurs -a passage, I venture to think, of considerable philosophic import, on account of the wide view taken of innate ideas, or a priori forms: bodies, it is suggested, are shaped, as well as 2 Green, Prolegomena to Ethics. 4 Page 154. 1 Cudworth, Int. System, iii. 62. 5 Page 238. conscious experience organised, according to a priori, constitutional forms : If plantall souls in their own selves contain That they a tree with different colours stain, A varnish'd green with such like gallantry; Again, an universal notion, What object ever did that form impresse What body ever yet could figure show Exactly round, or blamelesse angularity? Yet doth the soul of such like forms discourse, And finden fault at this deficiency, And rightly term this better and that worse; Which th' humane Soul in her own self doth see. From thence attempts each essence rightly to descrive. The lines with which the last stanza ends find their commentary in a passage in Smith's Discourse of the Immortality of the Soul, in which the κίνησις προβατική and the κίνησις KUKλIKη of the Soul are distinguished. By the former she goes forth and deals with material things; by the latter she reflects upon herself. What she finds by "reflection" he sets forth in his Discourse concerning the Existence and Nature of God.2 Plotinus hath well taught us, εἰς ἑαυτὸν ἐπιστρέφων, εἰς ἀρχὴν Eurрépe, He which reflects upon himself, reflects npon his own Origi nall, and finds the clearest Impression of some Eternall Nature and 1 Pages 65, 66. 2 Pages 123, 124. |