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"I ventured," wrote Boswell of a conversation with Johnson in 1772, "to lead him to the subject of our situation in a future. state, having much curiosity to know his notions on that point: Boswell: But, Sir, is there any harm in our forming to ourselves conjectures as to the particulars of our happiness, though the scripture has said but very little on the subject?'.. Johnson: Sir, there is no harm. What philosophy suggests to us on that topick is probable: what scripture tells us is certain. Dr. Henry More has carried it as far as philosophy can. You may buy both his theological and philosophical works in two volumes folio, for about eight shillings.'" 1

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During the years which immediately followed the Restoration, those theological and philosophical works-particularly the Grand Mystery of Godliness-according to the statement of the publisher Chiswell, ruled all London booksellers. With the publication in 1642 of the first of his Philosophical Poems, followed in 1647 by another edition, More had made a place for himself as one of the important figures in seventeenth century letters; the effect of that curious work had been, in fact, to found a second school of "metaphysical" writers, chiefly Plotinian enthusiasts. It was his Antidote Against Atheism, however, which established More as a philosopher in the minds of English readers; the first important refutation of Hobbes, it antedated by many years Cudworth's Treatise Concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality,

1 Boswell's Life of Johnson, edited G. Birkbeck Hill, New York, Harper and Brothers, II, 186.

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usually considered the most important philosophical work of the Cambridge Platonists-though that, indeed, adds little to More's Enchiridion Ethicum. There was a story-the truth of which cannot be attested, that Hobbes was accustomed to say that, should he ever give up his own philosophy, he would accept that of Dr. More of Cambridge. Certainly, from about 1650 until his death in 1687 More was considered one of the most influential English thinkers: a man of unusually attractive personality, a latitudinarian, a scholar, a cabbalist, a Platonist, an ardent "spiritist," a member of the Royal Society, the chief interpreter of Cartesianism to England, most of all one of the greatest teachers of his day. The circle of his disciples was a large one. Each of his books was eagerly hailed and read by those who feared the influence of Hobbian materialism. Born and bred a Calvinist, More had revolted during his school years from that discipline. He entered Cambridge the year before Milton left it; tradition says that they were acquainted; a memorandum in one of More's books in the Grantham vestry library-one of the few "chained" libraries left in England-mentions that acquaintance. There was some natural association of the two in the minds of their fellow-students, for, as Milton was the "lady of Christ's," More was the "angel of Christ's." Practically all of More's long and placid life was spent at Cambridge as student, as tutor, as fellow. Latitudinarian that he was, he was one of the few Cambridge men left untouched both by the troubles attendant on the Civil War and those attendant on the Restoration. While Milton was writing Latin letters and discussing questions of church and state government, More at Cambridge was placidly setting down his ideas concerning ghosts, witches, and the immortality of the soul.

In 1659 appeared More's formal treatise The Immortality of the Soul, one of the most technical of his philosophical works. It was undoubtedly this book which Dr. Johnson had in mind when he spoke to Boswell of More's ideas on the "future state," for, though the subject was one of More's favorites, and he discusses it in nearly all his works, in the third book of this treatise he gathered together all he had said or thought on the subject; here he gave

2 Cf. John Tulloch, Rational Theology and Christian Philosophy in England, II, 366.

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free rein both to his learning and to his fancy; the result is one of the most remarkable pictures in English of a sensuous afterworld. No one can read the chapters without being reminded on every page of the Heaven and Hell of Paradise Lost, and of Milton's conception of the beings that inhabit them; but it is not until we come to compare the two works in detail that we realize the remarkable correspondence, even in minute details. So close is the parallel that it seems impossible that Milton did not know the work, published just at the time when he was most interested in the ideas which it contained. That Milton not only knew More's philosophical work in general, but that he was in his ethicaland many of his cabbalistical-ideas, a follower of More, I hope to show at another time. At present I shall limit myself to a discussion of the pronounced similarities between More's and Milton's conceptions of spirits and the world of spirits.

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The third book of the Immortality of the Soul begins with a series of "moral axioms," a favorite device of More's who held, in common with most of the English Platonists, that moral truths are as clear, certain, and unchanging as mathematical. The two most important axioms state that "the Soul is not released from ali vital union with matter "; and that "the Soul . . . is capable of sense, properly so called, and consequently of pleasure and pain." Here at once we are brought face to face with More's fundamental belief: "The Soul is a substance, extended and indiscerpible" (p. 164). Like Milton, he holds definitely the cor- ' poreity of spirits; these are no shadows, images, shades; spirit is finite and "necessarily bounded in some figure" (p. 165).

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It should be made clear at the beginning that More, in using the word "soul" in this treatise, is dealing primarily-unlike Milton-with the human soul after the death of the body. As a Platonist, More held that "there is a triple vital congruity in the soul, namely ætherial, aërial, and terrestrial" (p. 160). He is concerned here chiefly with the "aërial" stage-that intermediate position of the human soul-and rather with the spirits of the

"The Immortality of the Soul" in A Collection of Several Philosophic Writings of Dr. Henry More. Fourth Edition. London, 1712. Book III, pp. 158 ff.

• Axiom xxvii, p. 159. Axiom xxx, p. 161.

dead than with the "rest of the aërial demons," whose presence he nevertheless recognizes (p. 198). But souls are, in essentials, the same throughout the three kingdoms; the difference is merely that the ætherial souls are more purified than the others and dwell in a rarer region. What he has to say of the appearance, occupations, and nature of the soul holds equally for aërial and ætherial; and among the ætherial, as well for those angels created in the beginning by God as angels, as for those pure souls which by their merit have won ætherial regions. Milton's spirits, on the other hand, are merely the original angels; yet the general idea of the three stages of spiritual life is suggested in such passages as:* Those argent fields more likely habitants, Translated Saints, or middle Spirits hold, Betwixt th' angelical and human kind.

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not to Earth confined,

But sometimes in the Air, as we; sometimes
Ascend to Heaven by merit thine, and see
What life the gods live there.

Most important is the long passage in Book V, in which Raphael instructs Adam: 8

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Your bodies may at last turn all to spirit,
Improved by tract of time, and winged ascend

Ethereal as we, or may at choice

Here or in heavenly paradises dwell.

More shows repeatedly that the aërial world is a reflection, a

• Paradise Lost, II, 460 ff.

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Ibid., v, 78 ff. For the words aëry and aërial with something of the neo-Platonic significance, cf. IV, 568, 1, 430, III, 445.

P. L., V, 470-500. The entire passage is important.

copy, of the ætherial, and that the spirits there are like the spirits in the ætherial world; the difference is not in kind but in degree. Therefore we are not distorting his meaning when we compare his world of aërial beings with Milton's ætherial world. We may

best see the similarities between the two by comparing these spirits under three heads: A. Physical Qualities; B. Abstract Qualities; C. Place of Abode.

A. It has already been said that both writers hold the idea of the corporeity of spirits. Milton's angels are no abstractions, no wailing shades, no Banquo or Hamlet ghosts, no visionary angels. Neither More nor Milton felt that body hindered spirit-an important element in the ethical system of the two men. Both were men to whom " temperance" in the true sense was a cardinal principle, yet neither was in any degree an ascetic. More declares him- { self always a "lover of the body," provided the body be kept/ worthy of love. He would, he says,

free the imagination of men from that ordinary and idiotick misapprehension which they entertain of spirits that appear, as if they were evanid and devoid of substance, as the very shadows of our bodies cast against a wall, or our images reflected from a river or looking-glass; and therefore from this error have given them names accordingly, calling the ghosts of men that present themselves to them eldwλa and Umbrae, Images and Shades. Which certainly must be a very lamentable consideration to such as love this thick and plump body they bear about with them. . . (Spirits) have no less body than we our selves have, only this body is far more active than ours, being more spiritualized, that is to say, having greater degrees of motions communicated into it. (p. 167).

The actual appearance of Milton's spirits is too well known to require comment. They are characterized by great beauty; they are bright with a glory not seen on earth; they are greater than man in stature; they are mightier than man in strength. They are idealized, to be sure, but they are none the less patterned after man. Upon this point More has something to say. He discusses, in his fifth chapter, the "natural" shape of a spirit, and concludes that, since God made man in His image, that must be the perfect image, and therefore spirits also will be found in what we call "human" form. In our world, he says, 66 the most unexceptionable beauty, questionless, is that of man in the best patterns, (chuse what sex you will) and far above the rest of creatures; which is not our judgment only, but His that made us" (p. 182).

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