Department of The Classics, Harvard University

Department of the Classics, Harvard University
The Ancient Atomists and English Literature of the Seventeenth Century

Author(s): Charles Trawick Harrison
Source: Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, Vol. 45 (1934), pp. 1-79
Published by: Department of the Classics, Harvard University
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THE ANCIENT ATOMISTS AND ENGLISH LITERATURE
OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
By
CHARLES TRAWICK HARRISON
AN
EXAMINATION of
Sandys's
tables of editiones
principes
1
and
of Munro's
history
of Lucretian
scholarship
2
will make it clear
that both
primary
and
secondary
sources for the
study
of
Democritus,
Epicurus,
and Lucretius were
generally
available well before the be-
ginning
of the seventeenth
century.3
Lucretius was first
printed
in
1473; Diogenes
Laertius in
1533.
Not
only Aristotle, Plutarch, Cicero,
and
Seneca,
but also
Hippocrates, Suidas, Stobaeus,
and Athenaeus
were well known in the
English Renaissance;
Sextus
Empiricus
was
published early
in the seventeenth
century.
Burton's
Anatomy of
Melancholy (1621) shows
acquaintance
with them all. The treat-
ment of
Epicurean
doctrine in the strictures of Saint
Augustine,
Ter-
tullian,
and Lactantius was familiar from the Middle
Ages,
and un-
doubtedly
tended to
delay
the
study
of Lucretius in the Renaissance -
if not in
Italy,
at least in
England,
where moral considerations were
more
potent.
A
partial
version of
Diogenes
Laertius in
English
translation dates
from the middle of the sixteenth
century.4
But
except
for one
slight
reference to
Democritus,
none of the Atomists is mentioned. A
gen-
eration
later,
Thomas
Palfreyman
revised
Baldewyn's
work. The re-
vision must have become
decidedly popular,
for
Palfreyman
continued
to
enlarge
it
through
nine consecutive editions. The last edition re-
flects
something
of Democritus's increased
literary prominence,
for
Chapter
XXI of Book I
gives
a brief sketch of his life. He is also
rep-
resented
by
a
single apothegm
in Book III.
Epicurus's reputation
was
still under a
stigma;
in
spite
of his
importance
in
Diogenes
Laertius,
J1
. E.
Sandys,
A
History of
Classical
Scholarship (Cambridge, 90o8), II, pp.
102-
io6.
2
H. A.
J. Munro,
Lucretius
(London, 1905-10), I, pp.
1-38.
3
Except,
of
course,
the
recently
discovered
inscriptions
of
Diogenes
of
Oenoanda
and the Herculanean
fragments
of Philodemus.
4
William
Baldewyn,
A Treatise
of
Moral
Philosophy, containing
the
Sayings of
the Wise
(London,
c.
1550).
Also: the
same,
the ninth time revised and
edited, by
Thomas
Palfreyman (London,
c.
I615).
2 Charles Trawick Harrison
he is not referred to in
any
of the twelve divisions of
Palfreyman's
book.
There was no
English
translation of Lucretius in the sixteenth cen-
tury, though Spenser paraphrased
the
opening passage
of Book
I.U
But Lucretius was
by
no means
totally unknown,
however little he
may
have influenced
thought
or
poetical expression.
The
following
stanza
by George
Puttenham
may
be cited as an
expression
of atom-
istic
cosmology
in sixteenth
century
verse:
Some weene it must
Come
by
recourse of
praty
moates
Farr finer then the smallest
groates
Of sand or dust
That swarme in
sonne,
Clinginge
as faste as little clotes
Or burres
uppon younge
children's cotes
That slise and run.2
Puttenham
undoubtedly
means atoms
here,
and not the
06LoloEPpI
of
Anaxagoras;
he is
making
a
display
of his
acquaintance
with various
systems
of ancient
thought,
and he devotes the next stanza to
Anaxag-
oras and the vois. Of course the
passage
does not
prove
that he had
read
Lucretius, though
I think the
comparison
with dust in a sunbeam
makes it
likely.3
I am concerned in this
study
with the more reflective
literary forms,
and for the
present ignore
the drama. But the drama of the Renais-
sance and Restoration is not without echoes of Lucretius.
Though
Lucretius is
not,
I
believe, among
the Latin
poets
an
acquaintance
with
whom is credited to
Shakespeare,
it is difficult not to
suspect
an
1
Faery Queen, IV, x,
stanzas
44-47.
For discussion of Lucretius's influence on
Spenser,
see: Edward
Greenlaw, "Spenser
and
Lucretius,"
Studies in
Philology,
XVII
(1920), pp. 439-464,
and
"Spenser's Mutabilitie," PMLA,
XLV
(1930), pp.
684-703; Evelyn May Albright, "Spenser's
Cosmic
Philosophy
and His
Religion,"
PMLA,
XLIV
(1929), pp. 715-759;
William P.
Cumming,
"The Influence of Ovid's
Metamorphoses
on
Spenser's Mutability Cantos,"
Studies in
Philology,
XXVIII
(I931),
Pp. 241-256.
2
In
"Partheniades,"
Ballads
from Manuscripts (The
Ballad
Society, 1873),
II, p.
82.
3
See Lucretius
2, 114-120. My
references are to the text of
Cyril Bailey,
second edition
(Oxford, 1921).
The Ancient A tomists
3
indebtedness in the
speech
of Duke Vincentio on life and death.' The
Duke reminds the doomed
Claudio
that he exists " on
many
a thousand
grains
that issue out of
dust,"
and discourses on the
folly
of
loving
life.
The
supreme folly,
he
shows,
is the fear of death. The life which is
burdened
by
a desire for
possessions, by
sickness and
age,
should face
with
equanimity
the
prospect
of a return to
nothingness,
to the
sleep
of death that "makes these odds all even."
I. THE PERIOD OF EPICUREAN REVIVAL
Effective interest in the
teachings
of the ancient Atomists arose
much later in
England
and France than in
Italy.
In
France,
the first
half of the seventeenth
century brought
Basso and
Gassendi,
and an
avowed revival of
Epicurean thought.
Not until the middle of the
century
did
Epicureanism
attract
any
considerable amount of atten-
tion in
England,
and then
primarily through
a
general misconception
as to the sources of Thomas Hobbes's doctrines. For Hobbes was the
central
English figure
in what was termed the
"Epicurean revival,"
though
Hobbes
certainly
never considered himself an
Epicurean
in
any
sense. I have elsewhere examined Hobbes's relations to ancient
atomism,
and have shown
that, though
the
superficial
resemblance
of his
system
to the
Epicurean
is so
striking
as
perhaps
to
justify
the
popular confusion,
there is no reason to assume an indebtedness
on his
part
to either
Epicurean metaphysics
or
Epicurean
ethics. In
the same
study
I have considered the influence of the Atomists on
Bacon and
Boyle.2
In so far as there was a technical revival of
Epi-
cureanism in
England,
it was due
largely
to
Boyle.
In his
eagerness
to discredit scholastic natural
philosophy, Boyle accepted
the
physics
of
Epicurus
in all its
essentials,
and made it the basis for his own scien-
tific
experiments
and
reflections.
But even
Boyle
was an
Epicurean
in
a
very
limited
sense,
for he was an orthodox
Christian;
he conceived of
God as a first cause of
things,
and
relegated
atomic motion to the
r61e
of second
cause. This,
with his conviction that God's
purpose
is
every-
where
manifest,
is
enough
to
give
his work a most
un-Epicurean
tone.
1
Measure
for Measure,
Act
III,
Scene I.
Compare
Lucretius
3,
830-Io94.
2
"Bacon, Hobbes, Boyle,
and the Ancient
Atomists,"
Harvard Studies and
Notes in
Philology
and
Literature,
XV
(1933).
4
Charles Trawick Harrison
It was
surely
Bacon
who,
of the
three,
studied the ancient Atomists
with fullest
sympathy.
The chief obstacle to
calling
Bacon their
disciple
lies in the fact that Bacon limited his maturest
writings
to
the
exposition
of
philosophic method;
he believed it vain to
dogma-
tize about
metaphysics.
But it is clear from Bacon's
miscellaneous
writings
that he not
only warmly
admired
Democritus,
but also ac-
cepted
his
teachings
-
primarily
as modified
by Epicurus
and ex-
pounded by
Lucretius
-
to a remarkable extent. Yet Bacon's rela-
tion to the Atomists was
ignored by
his
contemporaries;
he was not
part
of the
"Epicurean
revival."
In
spite
of
Bacon,
Lucretius
had, during
the sixteenth and the first
half of the seventeenth
century,
affected the materials and the forms
of
English
literature less than
any
other
major
Latin
poet.
The
philosophy
of Democritus and
Epicurus,
a
system
which later came to
be considered
peculiarly modern,
was of less familiar
repute
than the
Peripatetic,
the
Academic,
or the Stoic. The Atomists
kept
bad com-
pany
in the
popular
mind: in the
year 1604
a
religious
treatise
"against
atheists, Epicures, paynims, Jews, Mahometists,
and other infidels"
was
published,'
and it went into four editions within a dozen
years.
That the word
"Epicure"
in the subtitle is not used
entirely
without
regard
to its historical
meaning
is
proved by
the author's
quotation
of
passages
from
Lucretius,
whom it damns as an
atheist,
and
by
its
copious
use of
arguments
from Plutarch and Cicero.
Only
the writers who
might
be
loosely designated philosophers were,
as a
group, comparatively
unaffected
by
the
vulgar misinterpretation
of
Epicureanism.
The first of these with whom I am
concerned,
Nicho-
las
Hill,
is an obscure
figure
to whom Ben
Jonson
twice refers.
Jonson
conversed with Drummond about "an
Englishman
who maintained
Democritus's
opinions,"
and who wrote a book on the
subject
for his
son.2 And one of
Jonson's epigrams
uses a
figure
of several
ghosts
who
in more forms outstarted
Than all those atomi ridiculous
Whereof old Democrite and Hill Nicholas
One
said,
the other
swore,
the world consists.3
1
Philip
of
Morney,
A Work
Concerning
the Trueness
of
the Christian
Religion,
translated
by
Sir
Philip Sidney
and Arthur
Golding (London, 1604).
2
Ben
Jonson, Works,
ed. Gifford
(London, 1875), IX, p. 198.
3 Id., VIII, p. 237-
The Ancient A
tomists
5
According
to
Anthony Wood,
Nicholas Hill was an Oxonian who
"adopted
the notions of Democritus about atoms and was a
great
patron
of the
corpuscular philosophy."
Hill's
book,
dedicated to his
son
Lawrence,
is entitled
Philosophia Epicurea, Democritana, Theo-
phrastica, proposita simpliciter,
non
edocta.
It was
printed
first in
16oi;
a second
edition,
somewhat revised and
enlarged,
came in
1619.
A
copy
of each edition is extant in the British Museum. Hill indicates
the character of his work in the first sentence of his dedication: "Trac-
tatum istum esse
'~pio6ov,
sine methodo seu via aut
ordine, respondeo
prima
ut in
natura,
sic in scientia esse
coordinata,
non subordinata."
Hill
apparently anticipated
a
widespread hostility
to his
ideas,
for the
body
of the dedication is made
up
of answers to various kinds of
objections.
But he seems to have aroused little
attention,
hostile or otherwise.
This
may
have been due to the
disorderly
form of his book and the un-
systematic presentation
of his
thought.
His mind was a
hodge-podge
of
widely
various
notions;
his text consists of
short,
disconnected
para-
graphs. Yet, rising
above the
context,
which sometimes smacks of
occultism,
there is a
prevailing
atomistic materialism:
"Primae
com-
positurae
sunt insensibilia rerum semina indissolubilia." "Primus
Dei
et naturae actus est seminum
conditura, quae
indissolubilia sunt
necessario."
"Spiritus
est
corpus
subtilissimum sensum
subterfugiens
acutissimum." 1
Hill covers a wide
range
of
topics: fire, magnetism,
celestial
phe-
nomena, ethics, predestination. Only rarely
does he seem to
forget
his
basic
conception
of atoms and atomic motions. If this can be called
a one-man revival of
atomism,
it is a matter of some interest that it
antedates the efforts of such men as Sennert and Basso.2
Edward
Herbert,
Lord
Cherbury,
considered himself a naturalist
and
rationalist,
but his concern was not with
matter, form,
or void.
It was his
purpose
in the
De Veritate (1624)
to achieve a full state-
ment of man's relation to God. He fortified his
position
with his
treatise on The
Religion of
the
Gentiles,
which
purports
to trace the
1
Paragraphs 2, 5,
68.
2
See Kurd
Lasswitz,
Geschichte der Atomistik
(Hamburg
and
Leipsig, 189o), I,
PP. 436-454, 467-481.
Lasswitz mentions Hill
(I, p. 465 n.),
but
says
he has never
seen his book.
development
of natural
theology throughout
the
history
of human
thought. Among
the various forms of natural
theology
which he de-
tects under the
guise
of Greek
philosophy
is the atomism of
Epicurus,
a
system,
he
thinks,
which was
compiled
at least
partly
from sound
and solid reason.' But the
rationality
of atomism itself interests Cher-
bury very slightly;
he is far more concerned with moral
thought.
Although Cherbury
is above the
vulgar
criticism of
Epicurean
morals,
and even
though
he is
among
the
first
to
point
out the
high
ethical standards of
Epicurus's teaching,2
he feels that the whole
scheme is vitiated
by
the denial of divine
purpose.
He summarizes the
anti-teleological argument
of Lucretius and admits
its consistency
and skill. But he refutes it
by pointing
out the amount of conscious
purpose necessary
to construct so
simple
a mechanism as a watch.3
There are several other incidental uses of Lucretius in
Cherbury's
treatise,
which seems to indicate a
fairly thorough familiarity
with
Lucretius's
poem.
But however
ready Cherbury
was to
quote
Lucre-
tius,
and however
highly
he
praised
Greek moral
philosophy
in
gen-
eral,
his
knowledge
was most
unscholarly.
Twice in his
Dialogue
he
derives the
teachings
of
Epicurus
from
Eleaticism,
of which school he
gives Xenophanes
credit for
being
founder.4
Even more
extraordinary
in his criticism of
Epicurus
is Robert
Greville,
Lord Brooke. His treatise on The Nature
of
Truth is suffused
with a neo-Platonic
mysticism,
its intention
being
to show the
unity
of all acts and all
being.
The nature of
truth,
Brooke
shows, may
be
grasped only
in a
mystical synthesis; analysis
is false in
direction,
fated to lead
only
into error.
Epicurus, then, appears
to him
danger-
ous not because he is an infidel or a
libertine,
but because he is an
apostle
of erroneous method: he is
grouped
with
Copernicus
and
Galileo.5 Brooke
values, among
atomistic
teachings, only
the doc-
trine of void. This he uses in his
argument
for the
reality
of
not-being,
entirely perverting
and
misrepresenting
the
position
of Democritus
in an
attempt
to show how a
negative
moral force
(evil) may
coexist
1 The Ancient
Religion of
the
Gentiles,
and Causes
of
Their Errors
(London, 1705),
pp.
381-382.
2
A
Dialogue
between a Tutor and His
Pupil (London,
I768),
pp. 44-45.
3
Rel.
Gent., pp.
159-i60.
4 Dialogue, pp. 45, 79.
I
The Nature
of Truth,
Its Union and
Unity
with the Soul
(London, 1640), p. 123.
The Ancient Atomists
7
with a
positive (good).'
The scheme of rational materialism
becomes,
in Brooke's
hands,
a device for
solving
the contradictions of
religion.
Sir
Kenelm
Digby
was a transitional
figure
who still owed first alle-
giance
to Aristotle. But he was
sufficiently impressed by
the new
naturalism to make considerable use of the
teachings
of Galileo and
Descartes. His Two Treatises
(1644),
the one on the nature of bodies
and the other on the nature of man's
soul,
make
up
a
complete
and
oddly
eclectic
philosophic system.
The first treatise
displays
a
thorough knowledge
of
Lucretius;
it
presents,
in
fact,
a sort of
battle-ground
where Lucretius and the
scholastic Aristotle
fight
it out. It is not without a
twinge
of
regret
that
Digby opposes
"
the
easy
and
intelligible" system
of the Atomists
in favor of "the
exceedingly
abstracted" one of
Aristotle.2 But
op-
pose
it he
does;
and
Digby's justification
of his choice
3
is so exceed-
ingly
abstracted that I can not follow it at all. The
early part
of
the treatise is a detailed refutation of the basic doctrines of atoms
and void.
Yet Lucretius was not without his successes even in Sir Kenelm
Digby's
mind.
Digby
admits that Lucretius well indicated the nature
of
tangibility,'
and that his
atom,
after
being metamorphosed
into a
sort of Cartesian mathematical
corpuscle,
serves to
explain
the nature
of
motion.5
For a few natural
phenomena Digby quite simply adopts
Lucretian
explanations
without
acknowledgement.
He indicates his
departure
from Aristotle in the definition of
light,
which he
says
is not
a
quality
but is
corporeal: thin,
diffused fire.6 And he
explains mag-
netism as
being wrought by
streams of bodies to and from the load-
stone.7
More
important
an indebtedness to Lucretius is
Digby's explana-
1
Democritus,
in Hermann
Diels,
Die
Fragmente
der
Vorsokratiker (Berlin, 1912),
II,
Section
55A, fragment i, xliv-xlv; fragments 40,
etc. Cited henceforth as
"
Democritus."
2 Two Treatises
(London, 1658), p. 25. 3 Id., pp. 30
ff.
4
Id., p.
I.
5
Id., Chapters X,
XI.
8
Id., Chapter
V. Cf. treatment in Lucretius
2, 150-164.
7
Two
Treatises, pp. 230, 251.
Cf. Lucretius
6,
90o6-1o89.
principio
fluere e
lapide
hoc
permulta
necessest
semina sive aestum
qui
discutit aera
plagis,
inter
qui lapidem ferrumque
est
cumque
locatus.
tion of sensation.
Perception,
he
says, depends upon
the contact of
particles
thrust off from that which is
perceived
with the sense
organs
themselves. In
determining
the
quality
of
subject reaction, then,
everything depends
on the
differing
constitutions of
subjects
accord-
ing
as the stimuli are "conformable or
disagreeing
to their natures."
A taste
may
be sweet to one
creature,
bitter to
another;
one man takes
that for a
perfume
which to another is an offensive
smell.'
Taste is
effected
by "petty
bodies" which
prick, corrode,
or
pierce
the
tongue.2
Smell, hearing, sight,
are likewise the results of fine bodies thrust off
from an
object.3
In
fine,
we
may
conclude that as well the senses of
living creatures,
as the
sensible
qualities
in bodies are made
by
the mixtion of rare and
density
as
well as
by
the natural
qualities
we
spoke
of in their
place;
for it can not be
denied that heat and cold and the other
couples
or
pairs
which beat
upon
our touch are the
very
same as we see in other
bodies;
the
qualities
which
move our taste and smell are
manifestly
akin and
joined
with
them; light
we have concluded to be
fire;
and of motion
(which
affecteth our
ear)
it is
not
disputable,
for that it is evident how all sensible
qualities
are as
truly
bodies as those other
qualities
which we call
natural.4
hoc ubi inanitur
spatium multusque
vacefit
in
medio locus, extemplo primordia ferri
in vacuum
prolapsa
cadunt
coniuncta,
fit
utqui
anulus
ipse sequatur eatque
ita
corpore
toto.
nec res ulla
magis primoribus
ex
elementis
indupedita
suis arte conexa cohaeret
quam
validi
ferri
natura et
frigidus
horror.
11.
Ioo2-1l
I.
i
Two
Treatises, p. 305.
Cf. Lucretius
4, 615-721.
nunc
aliis
alius
qui
sit cibus
atque
venenum
expediam, quareve,
aliis quod
triste et
amarumst,
hoc tamen esse
aliis
possit perdulce
videri.
11.
633-635.
2 Two
Treatises, p. 308.
Cf.
Lucretius
4, 622-626:
hoc ubi levia sunt manantis
corpora suci,
suaviter
attingunt
et suaviter omnia tractant
umida
linguai
circum sudantia
templa.
at contra
pungunt
sensum
lacerantque coorta,
quanto quaeque magis
sunt
asperitate repleta.
Two
Treatises, pp. 309
ff. See,
in addition to sections
just cited,
Lucretius
4,
217-378, 522-614.
I
Two
Treatises, p. 331.
The
Ancient A tomists
9
It was not until the time of the
Cambridge
Platonists that the
Eng-
lish
clergy
of the Renaissance made serious
entry
into the domain of
speculative thought.
Preachers of the first half of the seventeenth
century may fairly
well be divided into two classes: those whose ef-
forts were devoted to the
practical plea
for
righteousness,
and those
who
spent
most of their
energies
in technical and
partisan polemics
about details of creed. To such
Anglicans
as Laud and
Ussher,
to such
Puritans as
John Owen, Prynne,
and
Calamy,
to a devotional Catho-
lic like
Baker,
there were other matters far more
pressing
than the
atheism of an ancient
poet.
The Puritan Richard Baxter shows in his
Christian
Ethics,
it is
true,
an extensive
acquaintance
with
Diogenes
Laertius;
and this is a
very exceptional scholarship among
writers of
his class. But Baxter avoids all use of Laertius's tenth
book, though
there is much there which would
admirably
suit his
purpose.
Among
those
preachers
whose main desire it was to
preach righteous-
ness, however,
references to Lucretius and
Epicureanism
are common.
But such references
rarely
show
any
real
knowledge
of the
objects
of
attack,
and in no
way
rise above the
vulgar
use of the term
"Epicure."
William Perkins defines
Epicurism
as the
contemning
of God's com-
mands and the desire for
nothing
but meat and
drink;
it is one of the
two elements of
atheism,
and
proceeds directly
from
Satan.'
Lancelot
Andrewes,
like
Perkins,
divides all atheism into two
parts:
"the stom-
ach,"
and
"sensuality."
Each divine identifies
Epicureanism
with one
of the essential
ingredients;
but whereas Perkins selects
greed
as the
synonym,
Andrewes selects lust. Andrewes ascribes his
interpretation
directly
to
Lucretius,
whom he condemns for the denial of
immortality
and for a
generally
irrational and brutish
point
of
view.2
The attitude and utterances of
Joseph
Hall on the
topic
of
Epi-
cureanism are
typical
of this whole
group. Bishop
Hall was a scholar
in
patristic
and scholastic
literature,
and was
considerably
indebted
to a number of classical Latin writers. But his
sympathies
were nar-
row: he refers to Greek civilization as "the dark
ages," and,
in one of
his
satires,
invokes the Greek
philosophers
as
"palish ghosts"
who
spent
their
patrimony
in "witless
waste."
4
Plato, Aristotle, Cicero,
1
Perkins, Works
(Cambridge, 1616), I, p. 482.
2
Andrewes,
Pattern
of Catechistical
Doctrine
(Oxford, 1846), pp. 13, 15, 25.
Hall,
Works
(Oxford, 1863), VIII, p. 49.
4
Id., IX, p. 598.
he refers to alike as
heathen; though
he will admit them some
wisdom,
he declares vain all the achievements of heathenism. For the Stoics
he feels an admiration mixed with
pity.
But for
Epicurus
he feels
nothing
but horror.
Epicureanism
means
brutish and odious
drunkenness, carelessness, profanity.' "Nothing
is more absurd than that
Epicurean
resolution 'Let us eat and
drink,
tomorrow we
die';
as if we were made
only
for the
paunch,
and lived
that we
might
eat.
They
should
say,
'Let us fast and
pray,
tomorrow
we shall die."' 2 Hall's sermons abound in variations on the Cice-
ronian theme: "He is not
worthy
the name of a man that would
spend
a whole
day
in
pleasure."
Pleasure is a vile
sorceress,
and the desire
for it was the chief sin of Sodom.3
Yet,
within a
generation
after the death of
Hall,
there were other
devotional writers who
paid homage
to the ethical
teachings
of
Lucretius.
The obscure
essayists
who first imitated the
prose
form of Mon-
taigne
and Bacon were remote from their masters in
knowledge
and in
understanding.
Whereas such writers as William
Cornwallis,
Robert
Johnson,
and
John Stephens
take
pleasure
in a show of ac-
quaintance
with the Roman
poets,
there is no
sign
that
any
of them
had heard of Lucretius.
Stephens,
indeed,
writes a character of "an
Epicure ";
but he
depicts only
a coarse
glutton.4
And in his
"Atheist,"
where, following
a common
device,
he identifies atheism with
Epicur-
ism,
there is no
suggestion
of
philosophic import
or historical knowl-
edge
in his reference.
Among
miscellaneous writers of
prose,
Robert Burton is as
excep-
tional in his
knowledge
of the Atomists as in
everything
else. He
quotes freely
from all the sources for the
study
of atomism.
The
Anatomy of Melancholy represents
the
high-water
mark of
Democritus's
literary popularity.
Burton called himself
Democritus,
Junior,
because
he,
like
Democritus,
led a monastic
life,
and
especially
because
Hippocrates
on one occasion
surprised
Democritus in the act
of
seeking
the seat of black bile.
Furthermore,
Burton lets the Democ-
1
Hall, W1orks, V, p. 657.
2
Id., VII, p. 529.
3 Id., V, p. 387; VI, p. 30.
4
Stephens, Essays
and Characters
(London, 1615), P. 244.
1i
ritean
laughter
at human follies resound
symbolically throughout
his
pages.'
Burton is at
pains
to
explain
that he has no intention of writ-
ing
a "ridiculous treatise or
paradox
of the earth's
motion,
of infinite
worlds in an infinite
waste,
so caused
by
accidental collision of motes
in the sun." 2
Burton's
cosmology
was
essentially medieval,
as is
amply
evident
in such a
passage
as his
"Digression
of
Spirits,
Bad
Angels, Devils,
and Witches."
3 Only
in the
"Digression
of Air"
4
does he
give
even
a moment's serious consideration to a naturalistic universe. Here he
makes a number of
specific
references to the theories of
Democritus,
Epicurus,
and
Lucretius,
and
groups
them with
Kepler
and
Copernicus.
But Burton refuses to be attracted
by speculations
about the size and
placing
of
stars,
the
composition
of
comets,
and the
infinity
of worlds.
He decides to await the solution of God for mortal men.
In
spite
of Burton's lack of
sympathy
with atomistic
physics,
he was
too well informed to be
unjust
to
Epicurus. Though
he uses the term
"Epicure" exclusively
in the
popular sense,
as a
synonym
for
atheist,
he
repeatedly praises
the
"temperate" Epicurus.5
He recommends
the
Epicurean
"non adiice
opes,
sed minue
cupiditates"
to those who
suffer a
melancholy
discontent induced
by greed.
And in his section
"Against
Sorrow for Death" he
depends directly
on
Epicurean
con-
solations.
Burton was
thoroughly
familiar with
Lucretius,
and made
frequent
use of his
phraseology.
He found
especially satisfactory
Lucretius's
depiction
of the
misery
of man's
state,6
and of the extremities to which
the fear of death will lead a human
being.'
But he condemns Lucretius
for his doubt of
immortality,
and refers him to
Jerome
and
Augustine
for correction.
Among
other
prose
writers of the first half of the
century
who inter-
ested themselves at all in the
Epicurean system,
Sir
John
Eliot
repre-
sents the
type
and Sir Thomas Browne the
exception.
Eliot's attitude
I
Democritus's
"literary popularity,"
of
course,
was due to his character as
laughing philosopher:
Democritus
A, fragments 20, 21; Hippocrates, Epistles, 14,
17, 18; Juvenal o10, 28-35.
2
Anatomy of Melancholy,
ed. Shiletto
(London, I893), I, Io.
3 Id., I, p. 205 ff.
4
Id., II, p. 40
ff.
5
E.g., id., II, p. 178.
6 Id., I, p. 314.
Id., I, p. 496;
Lucretius
3,
978-1023.
was identical with that of the
ecclesiastics:
he was a moral
philosopher
of full serious
intention,
and could not
ignore
the
irregularities
of
Epicurus;
he was content to summarize and to criticize
directly
from
the
pages
of Cicero.'
Sir Thomas Browne
belongs
to the middle rather than to the
early
part
of the
century; yet, many years
before
Epicurus
came to be a
figure
of
general
interest,
Browne was attracted to
him,
and did his
name a service
by clearing
it of
charges
of atheism and
bestiality.
It was around
1635
that Browne wrote: "That doctrine of
Epicurus
that denied the Providence of God was no
atheism,
but a
magnificent
and
high
strained conceit of his
majesty,
which he deemed too sub-
lime to mind the trivial actions of those inferior creatures."
2
Epicurus's appeal
to Sir Thomas was in no wise on
grounds
of natural
philosophy,
as it was to
Boyle
a few
years
later. For all the
independ-
ent and tolerant
spirit
which characterizes Browne and which led to his
being charged
with
impiety,3
he is
entirely
orthodox in his
subjection
of reason to
faith.4
He endorses Tertullian's "Certum est
quia
im-
possibile
est."
5
"I
can not hear of atoms in
divinity," says
Browne.6
On
grounds
of faith he denies the
plurality
of worlds.7 On like
grounds
he denies the
eternity
of matter and the aimlessness of creation.8
But Browne was
genuinely sympathetic
to
Epicurus's
moral
phi-
losophy,
and in his
Vulgar
Errors he writes the first
pointed
defense in
English
of
Epicurus's position.9
He blames
Cicero, Plutarch, Clement,
and Ambrose for the
prevailing injustice
to
Epicurus's memory.
Browne
paraphrases Diogenes
Laertius at some
length
in
praising
the
temperance
and virtue of
Epicurus,
and
approves
the
teachings
of
Epicurus's Epistle
to
Menoeceus. When, many years later,
Browne
wrote his own treatise on Christian
Morals,
he
again
cited "true
Epicurism"
as a
guide
to
practical
conduct.'0
The
Epicurean
doctrine
1
The Monarchie
of Man,
ed. Grosart
(London, 1879), passim.
2
Religio Medici,
Part
I,
section xx.
See Memoir
prefaced
to Browne's
Works,
ed. Wilkins
(London, 1836), I, p.
lxv.
Relig. Med.,
Part
I,
section xix.
5
Id.,
Part
I,
section ix.
6
Id.,
Part
I,
section xxi.
Id.,
Part
I,
section xxv.
8
Id.,
Part
I,
sections
xiv, xv, xxv.
9
Browne, Works,
ed.
Keynes (London, 1928-31), III, pp. 323 f.
10
Christian
Morals,
Part
II,
section i.
13
of
tranquillity
is the basis of the
concluding
reflections in Browne's
maturest work: "Live
happy
in the
Elysium
of a
virtuously composed
mind,
and let intellectual contents exceed the
delights
wherein mere
pleasurists place
their
paradise." "Tranquillity
is better than
jollity,
and to
appease pain
than to invent
pleasure."
Browne's tenderest treatment of
Epicurus
is in the Urn-Burial.2
That
Epicurus
could be honest without a
hope
for
heaven,
that he
could
despise
death without
believing
in
survival,
was a noble
and
amazing audacity.
Meanwhile
Epicurus
lies
deep
in Dante's
Hell,
wherein we meet with
tombs
enclosing
souls which denied their immortalities. But whether the
virtuous
heathen,
who lived better than he
spake, or, erring
in the
principles
of
himself, yet
lived above
philosophers
of more
specious maxims,
lie so
deep
as he is
placed,
at least so low as not to rise
against
Christians
who, believing
or
knowing
that
truth,
have
lastingly
denied it in their
practice
and conver-
sation,
were a
query
too sad to insist on.
At the
very
threshold of seventeenth
century philosophic poetry
comes a work whose chief
purpose
it is to confute the
Epicurean
doc-
trine
of the soul's
mortality:
Sir
John
Davies's Nosce
Teipsum. Nearly
a hundred
years
after the
poem
was
written,
it was recommended to
the wits as an antidote
against
the
poison
of Lucretius and
Hobbes.3
I believe that Davies was himself a student of
Lucretius, and
that he
designed
his work as a "De Animae Natura" in answer to the third
book of Lucretius.
Davies makes it clear in his
opening
stanzas that he means to dis-
prove
all ancient theories of the soul's
nature;
but he
gives
chief em-
phasis
to the
conception
which would define our souls as "swarms of
atomies which do
by
chance into our bodies flee."
4
In Davies's own account of the
soul,
he is at
special pains
to refute
the idea that the soul is a
body composed
of atoms like those of wind
or fire. His
apparent willingness
to
accept
the atomic structure of wind
and
fire,
and his
acquaintance
with the
process whereby heavy
atoms
1
Id.,
Part
III,
section xxiii.
2 End of
Chapter
IV.
3
Sir
John Davies,
Works in Prose and
Verse,
ed. Grosart
(Blackburn, 1869), I,
p.
166.
The
passage
referred to is in the
preface
to
Nahum
Tate's edition of
1697.
'Id., I, p. 57.
14
Charles
Trawick Harrison
beat
against light
ones and drive them
upwards,'
furnish
proof
to
my
mind that Davies knew his
Epicureanism
at least
partly through
Lucretius;
but it has been doubted that Davies knew Lucretius
at all.2
After
answering
the doctrine of
ex nihilo
nihil,
and
giving
his own
proofs
of the
immortality
of the
soul,
Davies
proceeds
to answer the
arguments
of
"Epicures" against
its
immortality. Broadly,
three of
the four
arguments
answered
by
Davies
correspond
to
groups
of Lucre-
tian
arguments.
As treated
by Davies, they
are: I. The soul
gets old,
for
aged
men
dote;
it is
corrupted,
for there are idiots."
II.
The soul
has no
powers,
the
body being dead.4
III. How can a bodiless soul
exist? 5
Davies is a
typical Spenserian poet
in that his interests were
philo-
sophic
and
religious,
but there was no other who took his
point
of
departure
from Lucretius. Yet
among
the
poets
of this
age,
it is un-
doubtedly
the
Spenserians
who owe most to the Lucretian strain.
This was a
general
and indirect
indebtedness, however,
and the
medium of influence was the French
poet
Du Bartas. Du
Bartas,
in
the form
given
him
by Sylvester, taught
the School of
Spenser
to
"
take
a
poetical
interest in the natural world." 6 As Phineas Fletcher
puts it,
That French muse's
eagle eye
and
wing
Hath soared to heaven and there hath learned
To frame
angelic strains,
and canzons
sing.7
The first two books of Du Bartas's
Holy Days
and Weeks owe their
general plan directly
to Lucretius.
They treat,
in a
fairly orderly
1 Sir
John Davies,
Works in Prose and
Verse, I, p. 78:
If, lastly,
this
quick power
a
body were,
Were it as swift as is the wind or
fire,
(Whose
atomies do th' one down
side-ways
bear
And
make the other in
pyramids aspire)
...
Cf. Lucretius
2, 184-205.
2
E. H.
Sneath, Philosophy
in
Poetry (New York, 1903), PP. 35-36.
3
Cf. Lucretius
3, 451-458,
and
following
sections.
4
Cf.
id., 3, 558-562,
and
following
sections.
6 Cf.
id., 3, 624-633,
and
following
sections.
George Saintsbury, History of
Elizabethan
Literature
(New York, 1887), p. 29.
7
The
Purple
Island
I,
xiii.
5
manner,
of
elementary
natural
phenomena
such as the order of the
seasons,
the movements of
heavenly bodies, rain, hail, magnetism,
etc.
But the intention of Du Bartas's work is hostile
throughout
to
Leucip-
pus, Democritus, Epicurus,
and
Lucretius;
he mentions all of them
frequently,
and
always tauntingly.
Du Bartas is
keenly
conscious of
the
impenetrable mystery
of the
universe,
and denounces the cock-
sureness of such
expositors
as the
Atomists.1
A considerable
portion
of Book I is devoted to
denying
the doctrines of "fond Democritus."
In the words of the
argument,
he means to demonstrate:
World not eternal: nor
by
chance
composed:
But of mere
nothing
God it essence
gave:
It had
beginning:
and an end shall
have.2
From Democritus he turns to the
scoffing
atheist who
inquires
what
the
Almighty
did before he framed the
world,
and
by
what
pattern
God
could have created a universe that never existed before.3 He taunts
Lucretius with
ignorance
in his
attempt
to
explain magnetism,4
and
proceeds
to make use of Lucretius's
very explanation. Leucippus
he
denounces for his belief in the
plurality
of worlds and
Epicurus
is
contemptuously
referred to
throughout
the
poem.5
The
general
atomistic
doctrines which are most
repugnant
to Du
Bartas are creation
by
chance
6
and the
infinity
of the
physical
uni-
verse.'
Du Bartas insists that God created from
nothing
a chaos of
the materia
prima,
and the elements which he conceives as
present
in
the chaos are
Aristotelian;
but his actual
description
of these elements
warring
with each other and
entering
into combinations is more like
Lucretius's cosmic whirl than
anything
in Aristotle.8
1
Joshua Sylvester, Works,
ed. Grosart
(Edinburgh, 188o), I,
p. 34,
U. 791-792,
847.
2
Id., I, p. 19,
11.
2-4.
3 Id.,
I.
p. 19,
11.
62-63; p. 21,
11.
212-220.
Lucretius
5, 11-234.
4 Sylvester, Works, I, p. 48,
11.
972-982.
Lucretius
6,
go6-Io89.
5 Sylvester, Works, I, pp. 34, 84,
etc.
6 Referred to
frequently
in first two
books; e.g., I,
p. 22, 1.
374
and
following
section.
I
Loc. cit.
8
Id., I, p. 21,
11.
296-311; p. 29,
11.
267-289. Compare
the combination of Aris-
totelian and atomistic elements in Milton and
Dryden. (See below.)
Having
differed
violently
with the Atomists to maintain that God
created the materia
prima
out of
nothing,
Du
Bartas,
without ac-
knowledgement, proceeds
to
adopt
the nihil ex
nihilo formula,
and sub-
stantiates it with an
argument paraphrased directly
from Lucretius:
Since the Lord of
nothing
made this frame
Nought's
made of
nought;
and
nothing
turns to
nothing;
Things' birth,
or
death, change
but their formal
clothing;
Their forms do
vanish,
but their bodies
bide;
Now
thick,
now
thin,
now
round,
now
short,
now wide.
For if of
nothing anything
could
spring,
Th' earth without seed should wheat and
barley bring;
Pure maiden-wombs desired babes should
bear;
All
things
at all times should
grow everywhere;
The hart in water should itself
ingender;
The whale on
land;
in air the
lambling
tender.
Following Lucretius,
he shows how the whole
process
of
growth
and
decay
would be instantaneous and erratic. And he describes the woe-
ful
consequences
which would obtain "if
ought
to
nought
did fall" in
equal
detail.1
It seems
probable
that
during
the
composition
of his " Second
Day
"
Du Bartas had the first book of Lucretius
open
before him.
For, only
a few lines
beyond
the
passage
I have
just quoted,
he uses the
figure
of the
alphabet
to
explain
God's use of a few elements in
creating
the
diverse
objects
of the world:
As of twice-twelve
letters,
thus
transposed,
This world of words is
variously composed,
And of these
words,
in divers order
sown,
This sacred volume that
you
read is
grown.2
1
Sylvester, Works, I, p.
28,
11.
171-206.
Cf. Lucretius
I, 146-482.
2
Sylvester, Works, I, p. 29,
11.
279-282.
Cf. Lucretius
I, 823-829:
quin
etiam
passim
nostris in versibus
ipsis
multa elementa vides multis communia
verbis,
cum tamen inter se versus ac verba necessest
confiteare et re et sonitu distare sonanti.
tantum elementa
queunt permutato
ordine solo.
at rerum
quae
sunt
primordia, plura
adhibere
possunt
unde
queant
variae res
quaeque
creari.
17
This
figure
was a favorite one with
English
writers
long
after the time
of
Sylvester.
It is
only
in the first two or three
"Days"
that Du Bartas finds
himself at
grips
with the Atomists.
Although
there are occasional ref-
erences thereafter to
Lucretius,
to
Epicurus,
and to
atoms,
he derives
his materials
primarily
from Genesis and from such other sources as
are
suitably
orthodox.
After
Sylvester's
Du Bartas and
John
Davies's Nosce
Teipsum
were
published,
it became a
regular procedure
for those
poets
who wrote
long-winded
works about the
soul,
the
universe,
or other such am-
bitious
themes,
to take some kind of
fling
at
Epicureanism.
John
Davies of Hereford wrote his Microcosmos and his Mirum ad
Modum to
give
a
"glimpse
of God's
glory."
One of the
purposes
of the
former work is to
catalogue,
as
warning,
the various
apostles
of error.
Leading position among
these
is,
as
usual, given
to those "damned
libertines,"
the Atomists. Davies is
sufficiently
detailed in his account
of their
heterodoxy
to
justify
the belief that he had studied the sub-
ject
with some
care.'
He describes the atomic
structure,
the
diffusion
of the soul
throughout
the whole
body,
and the dissolution of the soul
at the time of the
body's
death. He is
quite
unable to believe that
even an
Epicurean
could hold to these doctrines at a time of
supreme
crisis.2
The
punishment
of Lucian stands in his mind as an
example
to heretics.3
Edward
Benlowes,
author of the
pseudo-philosophic Theophila,
devotes Canto XI of his
poem
to a denunciation of
Epicureanism
as it
was
popularly conceived.4
William Alexander includes
among
the
victims in his
Doomes-Day
those who
think that God soft
pleasure
doth
affect,
And
jocund, lofty,
lulled in
ease,
as
great,
Doth
scorn, contemn,
or at the least
neglect
Man's
fickle, abject,
and laborious
state;
That he disdains to
guerdon
or correct
Man's
good
or
evil,
as free from love or
hate.5
1
Works,
ed. Grosart
(Edinburgh, 1878), I, pp. 83, 84, 87.
2 Id., I, p. 87.
3
Id.,
i,
p. 27.
4 George Saintsbury,
Minor Poets
of
the Caroline Period
(Oxford, 1905-21), I.
5
Alexander, Works,
ed. Kastner and
Charlton
(Edinburgh
and
London, 1921-29),
II, pp.
11-12.
He wonders that brimstone does not fall forthwith on the wicked men
who dare
say,
Let us alive have what contents the mind.'
Lucretius
appears
in somewhat
strange guise
in the works of Richard
James.
One of his translations is headed "A translation of Lucretius
or Ritterhusius in his notes
upon
Isidore
Pelusiota."
2 The selection
being
from
Ritterhusius,
Professor Grosart wonders "whence he
got
the Lucretius in the
heading." 3
The obvious
explanation
would seem
to be that
James
remembered similar reflections in
Lucretius,4
and
supposed
that Ritterhusius was
borrowing
from him. The
subject
is
the
variety
of
things
in
creation, particularly
in the tastes of mankind:
Creation and the whole world of men
Hath not two all alike of
visage.
That which is beautiful and
gives delight
To
one,
is
ugly
in another's
sight.'
Among Jonsonian
and
metaphysical poets,
relations to Lucretius
are far less than
among
the
Spenserians.
Ben
Jonson
criticizes Lucretius on
grounds very
much like those of
his
objections
to
Spenser,
who "writ no
language."
He considers
L
LAdeiLtal,
V
/rK3-,
II
,P.
1I.
2
James, Works,
ed. Grosart
(London, 1880), p. 207.
3 Id., Introduction, p. lxxxvi,
n. 2.
*
Lucretius
2, 333-477-
5
Cf. Lucretius
2, 342-348:
praeterea genus
humanum
mutaeque
natantes
squamigerum pecudes
et
laeta
armenta
feraeque
et variae
volucres,
laetantia
quae
loca
aquarum
concelebrant circum
ripas fontisque lacusque,
et
quae pervulgant
nemora avia
pervolitantes;
quorum
unum
quidvis generatim
sumere
perge,
invenies tamen inter se differre
figuris;
and
4, 633-637, 677-678:
verum
aliis
alius
magis
est animantibus
aptus
dissimilis
propter
formas.
19
Lucretius "scabrous and
rough"
in his use of
early
forms like
"aquai"
and
"pictai,"
and therefore inferior to the
polished Virgil.'
His
only
other critical reference to Lucretius is a
citing
of the form at the be-
ginning
of Book
VI.2
Jonson's
editor sees a
possible poetical
debt in
the invocation to Venus which occurs in The
Masque of Hymen.3
Jonson's disciples, naturally,
turned to models more
highly ap-
proved
than
Lucretius, though
one
may suspect
an occasional borrow-
ing
of an idea or
phrase.
Professor
Grosart,
for
example, points
out
the
similarity
between Herrick's "There's loathsomeness e'en in the
sweets of love"
4
and Lucretius's
medio
de fonte
leporum
surgit
amari
aliquid.5
The same theme is at least
suggested
in one of
John
Owen's
epigrams:
"Principium
dulce
est,
at finis amoris amarus." 6
Throughout
Owen's
epigrams
Democritus is a favorite
figure;
he devotes two to the inevi-
table contrast of the
laughing
with the
weeping philosopher.7
Results
among
the
metaphysical poets
are even more
meager.
Ex-
cept
for the
all-pervading originality
of
Donne,
one would be astonished
that a writer who in his
youth
"could not
keep
to his bed after four
in the
morning,
so
eager
he was in his
study,"
makes so few allusions
to other authors. He uses the
figure
of a wealth of words from so few
letters.8 And his reference to the
disorganization
of the old cosmos
by
the
Copernican
revolution
suggests
that he
may
have
recognized
the Lucretian affinities of the new science. He
speaks
of the firma-
ment's
being
"crumbled out
again
to his atomies."
9
The
only
considerable use of atomistic
figures
that I have found in
1
Jonson, Works, IX, p. 198 (Discoveries, cxxix).
2
Works, IX, p. 213 (Discoveries, cxlviii).
3
Works, VII, p.
68.
*
Robert
Herrick, Works,
ed. Grosart
(London, 1876), III, p. 25.
5 Lucretius
4, 1133-1134.
6
Owen, Epigrammatum,
Book
I, ep.
xiii.
7 Id.,
Book
II, ep. xlvi; III,
cxlvi.
8
John Donne,
Poetical
Works,
ed. Grierson
(Oxford, 1912), I, p.
81.
9
Id., I, p.
237.
metaphysical poetry
of the first
half-century
is in
John
Hall's
"Epi-
curean
Ode,"
1 which
begins:
Since that this
thing
we call the
world,
By
chance on atoms is
begot
. . .
Except, then,
for the
quaint
work of
Hill,
the
apparently
unremarked
sympathies
of
Bacon,
and the sensitive criticism of Sir Thomas
Browne,
the ancient Atomists
produced
little effect on
English thought
of the
first half of the seventeenth
century.
The
generation
of Hobbes and
Boyle,
and of the establishment of the
Royal Society,
is another mat-
ter. But here I am concerned with
only
the minor
figures
in the
"Epi-
curean revival." These are Richard
Overton,
Thomas
White,
Walter
Charleton,
and Thomas
Stanley.
Richard Overton stands at the
beginning
of a
polemic which,
in its
various
stages,
lasted for more than half a
century.
Overton's
purpose
was to
prove
that the soul is
naturally
mortal.2
Although
there is no
evidence that he was indebted to
Epicurean teachings,
some of his
arguments
are the same as those used
by
Lucretius. The association
was inevitable in the minds of his
critics, however,
and the first counter-
blast to his treatise makes
heavy
use of Cicero's
anti-Epicurean argu-
ments.3
The doctrine of Overton was taken
up by Henry Layton,
and
in the
closing years
of the
century
the
controversy emerged
into some-
thing
like
prominence
when
Bentley preached
a sermon entitled " Mat-
ter and Mind Cannot Think."
One of Thomas White's works is related to this same
polemic by
its
denial of natural
immortality.4
But he was a more versatile and con-
spicuous figure
than
Overton,
and was associated with Hobbes. He
was a friend of
Hobbes,
and his Grounds
of
Obedience and Government
5
presents
a
position
akin to that of the Leviathan. Further
grounds
for his connection with
Epicurus
are evident in his
Dialogues,'
where
1
Saintsbury,
Minor Caroline
Poets, II, p.
201.
2
Man's Mortality; or,
a Treatise wherein 'tis Proved that Man is a
Compound
wholly
Mortal
(Amsterdam, 1645).
3 Anonymous,
The
Immortality of
Man's
Soul, proved
both
by Scripture
and
by
Reason
(London, 1645).
4
Of
the Middle State
of
Souls
(London, 1659). 5 London, 1655.
6
De Mundo
Dialogi Tres, quibus materia, forma, causae,
et tandem
definito,
rationibus
pure
e
natura depromptis aperiuntur,
concluduntur
(Paris, 1642).
The Ancient Atomists 21
his discussions of
pleasure
and
immortality
have an
Epicurean
flavor.
The contribution of Walter
Charleton,
in his work on
Epicurus
which
was
published
in
1656,
is more
tangible.'
Charleton's work is the
closest
approach
made
by
an
English
scholar in the
early days
of the
new
philosophy
to the voluminous
Syntagma
of Gassendi. Its
scope,
however,
is
severely
limited in
comparison
with
Gassendi's,
for it is
without mention of atomistic
physics.
But it has a double
importance
of its own: it is
self-evidently
the fulfilment of a new
popular demand,
and it makes
readily
available the materials for
furthering
the new
interest in
Epicurus.
Charleton addresses his
preface
to "a
person
of
honor," by whom,
in common with the
author, Epicurus
is
"beloved,"
and who has
expressed frequent
wishes to
acquaint
himself with
Epi-
curus's doctrines.
The
body
of Charleton's work is a
presentation
of
Epicurean ethics,
the materials
being given
the form of direct utterance
by Epicurus.
The
chapters
are divided into sections which are
grouped by topics.
The whole forms a
complete
text of the moral
system,
with full treat-
ment of
felicity, reason, will,
and the various virtues. As the subtitle
of the work
indicates,
all the main sources are
utilized,
Lucretius
only
less than the
Epistles
in
Diogenes.
This is an
example
of Charleton's
free
paraphrase:
If you
account it a
pleasure
to stand
upon
a safe rock and behold mariners
at sea
distractedly striving
with a
tempest; or,
from a secure
castle,
to look
upon
two armies
maintaining
a
long
and most fierce
battle; assuredly
it
must be more
delightful,
from the serene tower of
wisdom,
to
contemplate
the
tumults, hurries,
and contentions of the foolish multitude below. Not
that it is
delightful
to see others afflicted with
evils,
but to see ourselves not
to be involved in those evils.2
Charleton's
preface is,
in certain
respects,
more
interesting
than his
translation. In the form of an
apologia,
it
attempts
to
bring
historical
and rational criticism to the defense of
Epicurus.
Three faults with
which
Epicurus
is
generally charged
are treated in detail: his denial of
the soul's
immortality,
his denial of divine
beneficence,
and his teach-
1
Epicurus's Morals,
collected
partly
out
of
his own Greek text in
Diogenes Laertius,
and
partly
out
of
the
Rhapsodies of
Marcus
Antoninus, Plutarch, Seneca,
and Cicero
(London, 1656).
2
Lucretius
2, I-6.
ing
that suicide is sometimes
pardonable.
Charleton contends that
the
Epicurean position
on
any
one of these
points
was
thoroughly
reasonable for the time in which
Epicurus lived,
and that he
always
supported
his
arguments intelligently.
No Greek thinkers believed
in
immortality
in even
approximately
the Christian
sense;
further-
more,
"to believe the soul to be immortal on
principles supernatural
is
much more
easy
than to demonstrate the same
by
reasons
purely
natural." Nor should
Epicurus
be condemned for
refusing
to believe
in
Providence;
he
should, rather,
be admired for
avoiding superstitious
theology,
and for
achieving
some
conception
of the divine nature. Here
again
he was not more
benighted
than other ancient thinkers:
Epi-
curus's
worship
was
filial,
while Cicero's was servile. As for
suicide,
Charleton shows that
only
the direct and divine law which Christians
enjoy
could lead
any
reasonable man to
disagree
with
Epicurus
on the
subject.
A
conspicuous
feature of this
preface
is Charleton's
unequivocal
siding
with
Epicurus
as
against
Cicero. Of the
two,
Charleton
argues,
Epicurus
was the more
genuinely
unselfish and the nobler. The
loyal-
ties of the Renaissance were
being
criticized and
outmoded;
new
loyal-
ties were
being suggested. Epicurus
is "a sublime
wit,
a
profound
judgment,
and a
great
master of
temperance, sobriety, continence,
and
all other virtues."
Thomas
Stanley's History of Philosophy
1
plays
a
r61le
like that of
Charleton's work. Here is a man of the
highest repute
whose most
ambitious task takes its
precedent
from
Gassendi,
and whose
history
of
philosophy
-
the first to be written in
English
-
gives
more than
twice as much
space
to
Epicurus
as to
any
other
philosopher.
It is
true that
Stanley's
work is in the main a
paraphrase
of
Diogenes
Laertius and
keeps
his
proportions.
But no other sections have been so
elaborately
added to as those which deal with Democritus and
Epi-
curus. In each case
Stanley
works
nearly
all of the available informa-
tion into the text of
Diogenes's
account, including
the
correspondence
with
Hippocrates
in the section on
Democritus, and,
in his
exposition
of
Epicurean
doctrine, making
a curious
patchwork
of
Epicurus's
letters and Lucretius's
poem.
1
The
History of Philosophy, Containing
Those on Whom the Attribute
of
Wise
was
Conferred
(London,
I655-6o).
23
The works of Charleton and
Stanley embody
a considerable
part
of
Lucretius done into
English prose.
II. THE CRUSADE AGAINST THE ATOMISTS
However
striking
the influence of
Epicureanism
on
Boyle
or its
similarities
to the
philosophy
of
Hobbes,
a far more remarkable mani-
festation is the active fear and
hostility
which
came,
after the middle
of the
century,
to be directed toward
Epicurus
and those associated
with him.
"Of all the sects and factions which divide the
world,
that of
Epi-
curean scorners is become the most
formidable,"
1 writes Isaac Bar-
row about the
year 1665;
and he
gives
voice to a concern which had
become
general among
defenders of the faith. Most such defenders
are
betrayed by
their works as uncritical. But even
Bishop Pearson,
of whom the
scholarly Bentley
said that the
very
dust of his
writings
was
gold,
felt
Epicureanism
to be a
living system:
"Sed cum
Epicuri
doctrina tanta cum cura et
applausu nuper
sit in
publicum prolata,
restituta, exornata; operae pretium
videatur eam
propius inspicere,
et
accuratius
paulo
refellere."'2
Among
the churchmen earlier than
Bentley
who
joined
the
attack,
Pearson was
unique
in his
preparation
for the task. In
1664
he edited and
published Diogenes Laertius,
and
dedicated the edition to the
king.
In defense of Pearson's
accuracy
it
may
be said that he does not
localize the revival of which he
speaks.
He is
possibly referring
to
the work of
Gassendi,
the
quality
of which he elsewhere
praises
in the
highest terms,
and
only
wishes such
great diligence
and skill could
have been devoted to a better
pursuit.3
But there is no doubt that
others believed the
danger
nearer home: "The
very plebeians
and
mechanics have
philosophised
themselves into
impropriety,"
writes
Samuel Parker in a Preface.4
Parker's Preface is
typical
in its clear relation of this
general
"licentiousness" to the
teachings
of
Hobbes,
and
equally
so in its
identification of the
Epicurean
with the Hobbesean
system.
It is
1
Barrow, Theological
Works
(Oxford, 1830), IV, p. 232.
2
John
Pearson,
Minor
Theological
Works
(Oxford, 1844), I,
p.
233.
3
Id., II, p. 605.
4
A Demonstration
of
the Divine
Authority of
the Law
of
Nature
(London, 1681).
24
quite enough
that both "teach the senseless materials to be their own
architect." Parker convicts himself of
astonishingly
weak critical
capacity by attempting
to show that there are
really only
two
philo-
sophic systems
in the world:
Epicureanism
and
Christianity.
These
are
mutually antipodal
because one teaches the soul's
mortality
and
the other its
immortality.
The
only
other fundamental
ground
of
distinction is the choice of the
highest good.'
However uncritical Parker's
grounds
for his confusion of two dis-
tinct
philosophies,
his
grounds
were
quite satisfactory
to most of his
contemporaries.
Hobbes and
Epicurus
are almost
universally
treated
together,
whether it be to
oppose
them with "the reasonableness and
the
credibility
of the
principles
of natural
religion,"
i.e.
Christianity,2
or with some rival
metaphysical system
like that of Descartes.3 It is
not uncommon for a
teaching
of Hobbes to be ascribed to
Epicurus,
and vice
versa,
however it
may
clash with the actual doctrines of the
other. Thomas Tenison
displays
uncommon sensitiveness in
recogniz-
ing
that Hobbes denies the existence of a
vacuum;
but he insists that
Hobbes believes in a
vacuum, notwithstanding,
and is an
Epicurean
in
spite
of
himself.4
It is no
part
of
my purpose
to outline the vast
body
of criticism
which was leveled at
Hobbes;
that has
already
been done.
Briefly,
though,
his enemies
may
be divided into three
groups.
The first con-
sists of such scientists as
John
Wallis and Seth
Ward,
who answered
Hobbes's attacks on academic
thought
and who
proved
the falseness
of some of his mathematical demonstrations. The second includes
po-
litical
philosophers
like
James Harrington
and Robert Filmer.
Though
admiring
Hobbes's treatment of human
nature, Harrington opposed
his
theory
of
government.
It is the third
group
with which I am con-
cerned. The
grounds
of
hostility
here are
generally philosophical,
and
more
especially theological.
It was this
group
who crusaded
against
the Atomists.
In most cases it was
Epicurus
who was
singled out,
but in the
I
A Demonstration
of
the
Divine
Authority of
the Law
of Nature, pp. 87-88.
2
As
by Bishop John
Wilkins:
Of
the Principles
and Duties
of
Natural
Religion
(London, 1675).
3
As
by Bishop
Edward
Stillingfleet:
Works
(London, 1710), I, pp. 694 ff.
4
The Creed
of
Mr. Hobbes Examined
(London, 1670), p.
34-
25
most ambitious instance of
all,
that of
Cudworth,
it was Democ-
ritus. In either case the end was to discredit
Hobbes, though
sometimes the critic became so involved with his medial
figure
that
he
virtually forgot
Hobbes.
My present
intention is to sketch
the
fate of the Atomists in this
extraordinary,
and almost
wholly
one-
sided, controversy.
It
may
be said in
general
that attacks on
Epicurus, Lucretius,
or
Democritus were on a
higher plane
than the
vulgar
abuse of a
gener-
ation earlier. It was now the
exception
rather than the rule to
join
"Epicurism"
with such terms as
"sadducism," "sorcery,"
and "ex-
tortion,"
as Eachard did.' In his zeal Eachard refers with
contempt
to
the achievements of natural
philosophers generally, especially
Gas-
sendi.2 Also
exceptional
was the
position
of
Henry Stubbe,
whose
main
ground
of
complaint
was that the new scientists were discredit-
ing
Aristotle. The whole
Royal Society
seemed an heretical
body
to
Stubbe, and,
in his Animadversions on Thomas
Sprat's history
of the
society,
he accuses it of
having
revived not
only
the
philoso-
phy
but also the
ignorance
of the
Epicurean sect.3
Stubbe wonders
what can become of the
younger generation
that has lost reverence
for
Aristotle.4
The usual
grounds
for the assault on the Atomists
are,
of
course,
that
their
teachings
are
dangerously
at odds with those of
Christianity.
No
longer
does a critic
rely merely
on the rhetoric of
contempt;
he is
forced
by
the seriousness of the situation to make some show of ac-
quaintance
with the
philosophies
of which he treats. It
may
in
justice
be said that there
usually
is a fair
acquaintance.
In
many
instances the
Christian
philosopher
tries to meet the
pagan
on his own
ground,
and
to
bring
forth a
systematic,
reasoned
opposition.
It
may
be claimed
that one of the
salutary
influences of Lucretius
lay
in his demonstrat-
ing
the method of
exposition
and of
argument. Bishop
Wilkins's work
illustrates
this,5
and he is
uncommonly
successful in
maintaining
a
rational tone. The
early chapters,
which are
directly
in answer to
1
John
Eachard: Works
(London, i774), III, p. 196.
2
Id., II, p. Io; III, p. 174.
3 Preface to Animadversions
(London, 1670).
*
The Plus Ultra Reduced to a Non Plus
(London, 1670).
6
Wilkins, op.
cit.
Lucretius, proceed
in
orderly
manner from a
group
of
postulates
and
definitions.
Bishop
Cumberland 1 calls his first
chapter
"De Natura
Rerum,"
and
begins
his attack on
Epicureanism
in the first sentence.
His whole treatise is an
attempt
to
prove
a
proposition, opposed
to
Hobbes and
Epicurus,
about the natural basis of ethics and
society.
Both the device of
offering systems
which
opposed
those of the ma-
terialists and the device of
directly attacking
materialistic tenets were
conscientiously employed during
the latter half of the seventeenth
century.
The attacks were
especially thorough;
there is no
prominent
section of ancient atomistic
philosophy
which was not
systematically
examined and refuted.
The basic
objection
to both Democritus and
Epicurus
was their
theology.2
Both
were accounted atheists. Of course it was
generally
recognized
that
they
had admitted the existence of
gods;
but the
word
"
atheism
"
was
subject
to considerable
subtlety
of
interpreta-
tion. Some
years
earlier
(1640),
Thomas Fuller had
distinguished
three
kinds of atheists: in life and
conversation;
in will and
desire;
in
judgment
and
opinion.3
This last is the
group
of
"speculative"
atheists, among
whom the Atomists came to be accounted
preeminent.4
"The word
atheist," says Fuller,
"is of
very large
extent:
every poly-
theist
is,
in
effect,
an
atheist;
for he that
multiplies
a
Deity
annihilates
it;
and he that divides it
destroys
it."
5
Lactantius,
in one of the
earliest Christian criticisms of
Epicurus,
wrote:
Si est
Deus, utique providens est,
ut
Deus; neque
aliter ei
potest
divinitas
attribui,
nisi et
praeterita teneat,
et
praesentia sciat,
et futura
prospiciat.
Cum
igitur providentiam
sustulit
Epicurus,
etiam Deum
negavit esse;
. . alterum enim sine altero nec esse
prorsus,
nec
intelligi potest.6
The same
argument
was used in the seventeenth
century: Epicurus
had denied
Providence,
and had
thereby
denied God.
1
Richard
Cumberland,
De
Legibus
Naturae
Disquisitio (London, 1672).
2 Democritus
A, fragments 74-79; Epicurus III,
cxxiii-cxxiv
(ed. Cyril Bailey,
Epicurus:
The Extant
Remains, Oxford, 1926,
cited henceforth as
"Epicurus");
Lucretius
6, 58-95-
3
The
Profane State, Chapter VI.
4 See,
for
example, John Tillotson,
Works
(London, 1757), I, pp. i-74.
5 Fuller, loc.
cit.
6
De
Ira
Dei, 9, 5-6.
27
Even
Tillotson, who,
like Sir Thomas
Browne,
could find
something
to
praise
in the
theology
which
gave
the
gods
an existence of untroubled
blessedness,
sees the
conception
as insufficient to
modify
the atheism
which "so
boldly attempted
to
strip
the divine nature of most of its
perfections."
1
Howe finds the Lucretian
description
of the
gods merely
offensive;
he
suspects
it attractive to those whose
designs
are
wicked.2
Bishop
Pearson writes De Providentia Dei with the
primary purpose
of
demonstrating
the unnaturalness of
Epicurus's
view: "Praeter
enim
Epicuri scholam, paucosque atheos, qui
Deum
ipsum,
nemo inter
Ethnicos
providentiam negavit.
Immo vero late ante
Epicurum, post
ipsum,
animose defenderunt
philosophi."
3
In
proving this,
Pearson
relies
heavily
on the De Deorum
Natura.
To the critics of the Atomists the
Epicurean
reliance on "chance"
presented
an essential
problem
in
theology.4
Both Democritus and
Epicurus
had denied divine
purpose
in the
ordering
of
things,
and the
mechanical scheme of Hobbes
brought
the issue into the forefront.
With first and final causes ruled
out,
it made no difference whether
the alternative was "chance" or
"necessity"; they
were
identically
dangerous.
The whole belief in Providence
depends upon
the relation
of God to created
things.
"Est enim
Deus,
ut ante
probavimus, prima
causa,
et ultimus finis rerum
omnium;
et
per ipsum
et
propter ipsum
facta sunt
omnia,"
writes Pearson in
stating
the orthodox
view.5
It was not the ministers
only
who assailed the doctrine of chance.
Boyle
had been
spokesman
for the
scientists;
and Newton was
equally
emphatic
in
insisting
that God's
plan
was discernible behind natural
law, though
Newton did not attack the Atomists in so
insisting. John
Ray
was a
fairly typical scientist,
and both of his
philosophic
treatises
were written to demonstrate the immanence of God in
every stage
of
the cosmic
process."
It is not
enough
to
postulate
God as the
prime
and efficient cause of
things,
but he must be
thought
of as
constantly
present, controlling
natural forces. "I am difficult to believe that the
1
Tillotson, Works, VIII, pp. 35, 241.
2
John Howe,
Whole Works
(London, 1822), I, p.
221.
3
Works, I, p.
233.
4
Democritus
A, fragments 65-69;
Lucretius
I,
1021--I028.
6
Works, I, p. 235-
6
The Wisdom
of
God
Manifested
in
the
Works
of
Creation
(first ed.,
169o),
and
Three
Physico-Theological
Discourses.
bodies of animals can be formed
by
matter divided and moved
by
what
laws
you
will or can
imagine,
without the immediate
presidency,
direc-
tion,
and
regulation
of some
intelligent being."
1
Ray's
two works
may
be described as answers to what he calls the "mechanical-theistic
"
and
the "mechanical-atheistic " views of the
world;
that is to
say,
the
Cartesian and the
Epicurean.
Both are refuted in
great
detail.
An
example
of the
layman's
attitude toward the doctrine of chance
may
be
pointed
out in
Culpeper's essay
on
"Providence." 2
Culpeper
considers the
position
of
Epicurus
too frivolous to be
worthy
of serious
discussion.
The churchmen discussed it
seriously, however,
if not
always
en-
tirely logically.
To Parker the
purpose
of God is unmistakable:
"There is
nothing
more evident than that the sun is
designed
to
give
light
and comfort to this lower world."
*
Barrow and Tillotson call
universal consent to refute Lucretius
here.4
Howe
argues
from the
perfection
of the human
soul,
and is scornful because God has "no
other rival for the
glory
of this
production
than the fortuitous
jumble
of the
blindly moving particles
of matter."
5
Leighton
thinks the
"prettily
dreamed"
system
of
Epicurus
a
poor
alternative for Gene-
sis;
the vision of "atoms
dancing
at random in an
empty space, and,
after innumerable
trials, throwing
themselves at last into the beautiful
fabric which we
behold,"
is a monstrous
hypothesis.6
Wilkins treats the whole
point
in an
exceptionally orderly manner,
arguing
from "the
Original
of the
World,"
from "the Admirable Con-
trivance of Natural
Things,"
and from "Providence and the Govern-
ment of the World."
~ He
keeps
the
corresponding
treatments of
Lucretius
constantly
in mind. I
quote
the
beginning
of the first-
mentioned section:
"Nothing
can be more evident than that this
visible frame which we call the world was either from all
eternity,
or
else had a
beginning.
And if it had a
beginning,
this must be either
1
Wisdom
of
God
(London, 1704), p. 52.
2 Thomas
Culpeper (?), Essays
or Moral Discourses on Several
Subjects (published
anonymously, London, I671).
Op. cit., Preface, p.
viii.
*
Barrow, Works, V, p. 214; Tillotson, Works, I, p. 14.
6
Works, I, p. 144.
6
Robert
Leighton,
Whole Works
(London, 1825), IV, p. 249.
7
Wilkins, op. cit., Chapters
V-VII.
29
from chance or from some wise
agent.
Now if from clear
principles
or
reason it can be rendered more credible that the world had a
beginning,
and that from some wise
agent,
this
may
be another
argument
to the
purpose."
Bishop Beveridge
sums
up
the
problem
toward the end of the cen-
tury,
and makes it clear that the
anti-teleological argument
had made
little
headway
with the
theological
mind of the
period.
There is no natural cause can
give being
to
anything [he says],
unless it
has that
being
it
gives
in
itself;
for it is a received maxim in
philosophy
that
"nothing
can
give
what it has not."
Were
things
made
by
chance? This could not
be;
for as chance seldom
or never
produces any
one effect that is
regular
and
uniform,
so it can not
be
supposed
that a
being
of such admirable
beauty, symmetry,
and
propor-
tion,
and such a nice contexture of
parts,
as the
body
of man
is,
should
ever be
jumbled together by
a fortuitous concourse of
atoms,
which noth-
ing
but the chimeras of
Epicurus
could ever reduce to a
regular
form and
composition.1
So much was
preached
and written about chance and the cosmic
process
that one would
expect
the even more fundamental
dogma
of
ancient atomism to have been
fully
discussed. But the
general problem
of
Epicurus's
materialism was not
approached
as such. It
may
be that
an assertion of Providence was felt to cover all the ultimate demands
of
philosophy;
but it seems more
likely
that the
conception
of a
simple
and
all-embracing
materialism was not
fully grasped by
Hobbes's con-
temporaries,
and
possibly
not even
by
Hobbes himself. The word
"mechanical"
was
widely used,
and it was the source of a serious con-
fusion of Hobbes and
Epicurus;
that
Epicurus
was a materialist but
not
exactly
a mechanist was an
unappreciated point.
At
any
rate materialism was treated
largely by implication,
or in
connection with the
immortality
of the soul.
Stillingfleet,
for
example,
suggests
the
problem
in his
making
the distinction between
pleasure
and true
happiness,2
and
specifically
attacks Hobbes's
explanation
of
memory
as a material
phenomenon.3
He almost comes to
grips
with
materialism and the definition of matter in the
Origines
Sacrae
when he
SWilliam Beveridge, Theological
Works
(Oxford, 1842-48), VIII, p. 141.
2
Stillingfleet, Works,
Sermons
XLI,
XLV.
*
Id., I, p. 647.
30
examines Lucretius's account of creation: "To
say
that atoms move
because it is their nature to
move,
and
give
no other account of
it,
is
so
precarious
that it will never
give
the least satisfaction to an
inquisi-
tive mind." 1
More
pointed
is
Stillingfleet's approach
to the
conception
of the soul
as material: "If our souls be
nothing
else but some small
spherical
cor-
puscles
which move
up
and down the
body,
as the
Epicurean philoso-
phy supposeth,
then all our
knowledge
and
perception
must
depend
on motion."
2
Such an
explanation
of
knowledge
is
untenable, argues
Stillingfleet,
as is
proved by
our
knowledge
of God.
Isaac Barrow also comes close to
facing
the
Epicurean
issue of ma-
terialism. Bodies and
motion,
he
shows,
are insufficient to account
for the
phenomena
of
experience
which
religion explains by
a reference
to the immaterial. Barrow is
willing
to rest his case in
proof
of God's
being
on the
incorporeality
of the soul. In his Frame
of
Human Nature
he
writes,
"The
operations
of man's soul are
wholly
different in
kind,
highly
elevated
above,
the
properties, powers,
and
operations
of
things
corporeal." 3
Other
physical
doctrines of the Atomists aroused less interest.
Ray,
like
Hobbes,
finds fault with the
vacuum,4
and he
utterly rejects
the
atomic declination.
"They
did
absurdly feign
a declination of some
of these
principles,"
he
says,
"without
any
shadow or
pretense
of
reason."
5
Most of the divines
ignore Epicurus's swerve,
and credit
him with the
pure
mechanism of Hobbes. But Wilkins
6
and
Stilling-
fleet
I
examine Lucretius's
explanation
of free
will, only
to convict
it,
as
Ray does,
of
absurdity.
For the
rest, Stillingfleet
shows that in
infinity
the
Epicurean
has as serious a mental
difficulty
as
any
con-
ception
of God could
be,8
and
Beveridge
dismisses the
plurality
of
worlds
by saying,
"The
only
other worlds beside this I live
in,
for
which I find warrant in the word of
God,
are heaven and hell."
9
1 Stillingfleet, Works, II, p. 284.
2
Id., II, p. 243.
Cf.
Tenison, op.
cit., p. 46.
1
Works, V, p. 214.
*
Wisdom
of God, p.
61.
Democritus
A, fragment i,
sections
xliv-xlv; Epicurus
I, xxix-xl;
Lucretius
I, 329-417.
Wisdom
of God, p. 32.
Lucretius
2, 216-293.
Op. cit., p. io8.
?Works, II, pp. 289-290.
s Id.,
II.
p 238.
9 Works, VIII, p.
2
I0.
The
Ancient A tomists
31
We turn from
problems
cosmic and divine to
problems human.
Thomas Tenison summarizes the
Epicurean
account of man's
origin
1
in
one scornful
paragraph: "Epicurus
therefore in
sequel
of that
doctrine
of his that all
things
were
produced by atoms, explained
the birth
of
man
by supposing
certain
swelling bags
or wombs
upon
the
earth,
which brake at
last,
and let forth
infants,
nourished
by
her
juice,
clothed
by
her
vapors, provided
of a bed in the soft
grass."
2
Wherever
this section of Lucretius is referred
to,
it is with the intention of demol-
ishing
him without debate. Not even Tenison
deigns
to discuss it.
But Tenison continues with the
history
of
civilization,
and finds
the doctrine of social contract
3
more
dangerous.
Primitive man was
under the direct
tutelage
of
God,
and
always partook
somewhat of
the divine nature. It was
sacrilege, then,
for
Epicurus
to teach that
"men
wandered about like
beasts,
and
everyone
was for
himself,
and
that
merely
to secure themselves
they
combined into
societies,
and
that those societies were formed
by pacts
and
covenants,
and that
from those covenants
sprang good
and
evil, just
and
unjust."
4
If this
is not
exactly
what
Epicurus
did
teach,
it
is,
of
course,
because Teni-
son was
remembering
the account of
Hobbes.5
Parker too criticizes
the
primitive
"state of
war";
but
though
he does so in the midst of
his examen of
Epicurus,
he
actually
refers to Hobbes as his
authority
for the
phrase.6
No
churchman, however, gives
the social contract
nearly
so full a
treatment as the Earl of Clarendon does. No less
bitterly
than Teni-
son,
he shows that Hobbes has
degraded
man beneath the beasts in
thinking
him so
naturally
warlike as to be forced into a
binding
con-
tract for
very preservation.7
The
following passage
from Clarendon's
essay
on
"Liberty"
shows how
thoroughly
he identifies Hobbes's con-
tract with the
Epicurean:
Those
men,
of how
great
name and
authority soever,
who first introduced
that
opinion
that nature
produced
us in a state of
war,
and that order and
1
Democritus
A, fragments 139-147; Epicurus I, lxxiv-lxxv;
Lucretius
5,
772-1010. 2
Op. cit., p. 132.
SLucretius
5,
1019-IO23;
Epicurus IV, 31-38.
* Op. cit., p.
133. -
Hobbes, Leviathan, Chapter
XIV.
6 Op. cit., p.
9.
Edward
Hyde,
Lord
Clarendon,
View and
Survey of
the
Dangerous
and Per-
nicious Errors to Church and State in Mr. Hobbes's Book entitled Leviathan
(Oxford,
1676), pp. 26-41.
32
government
was the effect of
experience
and
contract, by
which man surren.
dered the
right
he had
by
nature to avoid that violence which
every
man
might
exercise
upon another,
have been the authors of much mischief in the
world,
by infusing
into the hearts of mankind a
wrong opinion
of the institution of
government.
-
Nor is it
strange
that
philosophers
who could
imagine
no
other
way
for the world to be made but
by
a
lucky
convention and
conjunc-
tion of
atoms,
nor could
satisfy
their own
curiosity
in
any
rational
conjec-
ture of the structure of
man,
or from what
omnipotency
he could be formed or
created;
I
say
it is no wonder that men so much in the dark as to matter
of fact should conceive
by
the
light
of their reason that
government
did
arise in that
method,
and
by
those
argumentations
which
they
could best
comprehend capable
to
produce
such a
conformity.1
A crux
comparable
to the
r6le
of
chance,
in the orthodox criticism
of
Epicurus,
was the matter of the soul's
immortality.2
It was rare
that so central a doctrine could be
approached calmly,
and it was
usually given
a climactic
position
in the
logic
of refutation. Samuel
Parker reasons thus: "If there be a
Deity
there must be a law of
nature;
and if there be a law of
nature,
a future state."
3
Parker made
a belief in
immortality
the
prime
criterion in his
grand
division of
phi-
losophies.4
As I have
already pointed out,
the whole
argument against
material-
ism was based on the manifest
immateriality
of the soul.
Proving
the
soul immaterial was tantamount to
proving
it
immortal;
either
quality
was
postulated
as a means of
reaching
the other. Tillotson
preached
a series of sermons on the
theme,5
one of which is devoted to
showing
Epicurus's
failure in
accounting
for the
phenomena
of sensation and
volition.
John
Howe rests his case on the obvious
relationships
of the
soul:
Whose
image
does the
thing produced
bear? Or which does it more re-
semble?
Stupid, senseless,
inactive matter
(or
at the best
only supposed
moving, though
no man can
imagine
how it came to be
so),
or the active
intelligent Being
whom we affirm the cause of all
things,
and who hath
peculiarly
entitled himself the father of
spirits?
6
1 Clarendon, Essays (London, 1815), pp. 145-146.
2
Epicurus III, cxxiv-cxxvii;
Lucretius
3, 417-1094.
Op. cit., p.
xxii.
4 Id., p.
88.
5
Works, VIII, pp. 125 ff. 6 Works, I, p. r44-
33
It was not
only
natural materialism in connection with which
im-
mortality
was
treated,
but also the
Epicurean
ethics.
Stillingfleet
preaches
"On True
Happiness
and
Immortality,"'
and shows
how
the nature of the soul and a true definition of
well-being
are
mutually
dependent.
His
sixty-sixth
sermon is an examination of
Epicurus's
moral
system;
its
purpose
is to defend in
comparison
the Christian
conception
of
pleasure,
based on a sounder
knowledge
of the
soul's
structure and its
destiny.
Since the criticism of
Epicurean
ethics was a traditional
indulgence,
and since that criticism had
wontedly
been
pitched
on a level of bad
scholarship
and bad
manners,
it is not without
significance
that Stil-
lingfleet's
statement of
Epicurus's position
was a
very just
one. With
the recent
study
of
Epicurus
had come a new
knowledge
of the mean-
ing
of the
pleasure
he
taught,2
and the result was that the doctrine of
pleasure
no
longer occupied
the center of hostilities. It
was,
on the
contrary,
considered with more tolerance and even
sympathy
than
any
other
major Epicurean
doctrine.
Tillotson,
for
instance,
is at
pains
to
point
out that the
"speculative
atheism" of Lucretius's
poem
must not be confused with the
"practical
atheism" of
sensuality.
He recommends
Epicurus's
association of
pleasure
with
temperance
as a sound ethical
guide.3
Howe and Bar-
row,
who have no
patience
at all with
Epicureanism
in
general, ap-
parently
find the moral maxims too useful to
ignore;
both make not
infrequent citations.4
Culpeper
believes
Epicurus
sound in his
recog-
nition of fundamental human desires:
"Why
otherwise should our
natures
permit
such desires in
us,
or Providence concur in the
preser-
vation and exercise of them?"
5
And
Hammond,
who contrasts the
Christian
system
of ethics with the various natural
systems,
unhesi-
tatingly gives
the
philosophy
of
Epicurus
preeminent
place among
the
latter
group.
He sees its insistence on the
"practice
of
every
virtue"
as
discipline leading
to
"
the most
ravishing beauty
and
delight
and
joy."
He
qualifies
his
praise only by showing
the
impossibility
of
any
naturalistic
understanding
of the full Christian moral
stature."
I
Works, I, pp. 625
if-
2
Epicurus, Epistle
to Menoeceus
(Epicurus III). 3 Works, II, p. 283
E.g.: Howe, Works, III, p. 18o; Barrow, Works, I, p.
61.
5 Op. cit., p. 168.
6
Henry Hammond,
Minor
Theological
Works
(Oxford,
I847-50),
II, p. 84.
34
Charles
Trawick
Harrison
Such
gentle qualification
is
by
no means sufficient for the
peppery
Parker. He dismisses the new
attempt
to understand the
implications
of
"pleasure"
as an idle and
pedantic
concern.'
The true intention
of the
Epicureans,
he
says,
is to free
people's
minds from "all
appre-
hensions of a divine
providence,"
which is to
say
"from all
obligations
to
religion, justice
and
honesty."
For once Parker makes a distinc-
tion between Hobbes and the
Epicureans;
but it is
only by
virtue of
his
misunderstanding
the
position
of the latter.
Hobbes,
he
says,
is
less consistent than
they,
because he
supposes
it
possible
to construct
a
morality
which is not of divine
origin.2
Parker was
exceptional among
his
generation
in his
having
failed
completely
to
recognize
the
quality
of the
Epicurean pleasure.
But
that is not to
say
that he alone
judged
it
adversely. Stillingfleet
quotes
Cicero in
support
of his contention
that,
however
good
a
thing
pleasure may
be in
theory,
when it is made the end of
conduct,
its
actual
tendency
is to debauch
mankind.3 Leighton
condemns
Epicurus
for not
understanding
that
religion
is the
very
foundation of that
morality
which he so
warmly maintains.4 Though Leighton praises
Lucretius for his
sed nil
dulcius
est bene
quam
munita tenere
edita doctrina sapientum templa serena,5
he somewhat
inconsistently
treats Lucretius as one deluded
by
sense
into doctrines
pleasing
to him." He commends
Horace, by way
of con-
trast,
for his renunciation of
Epicurus;
but he
neglects
to
give
Horace's reasons.
Among
all the critics of the
group
I am
discussing,
it is
Bishop
Pearson who furnishes the most
intelligent
and
compendious critique
of the
Epicurean system;
it is
typical
in that its
procedure
is a con-
trast of the
Epicurean
and Christian
points
of view. In "Concio
V," 8
Pearson
develops
the text of Acts
17,
i8:
"T
T Ls
b
Kal
rWv
'E7rtKovpWV
Ka2
TrWLKWV LXOcWV
~UAvvE/aXXov
a'tr,"
insisting
on
the Greek form
because of the
vigor
of
avv?3aXXov.
1
Samuel
Parker,
Demonstration
of
the Divine
Authority of
the
Law of
Nature
(London,
168i),
p. 89. 2 Id., pp. 2, 3-
Works, I, p. 697; Cicero, De Finibus, 2, 7.
4
Works, IV, p. 238.
5
Lucretius 2, 7-8.
6
Works, IV, p.
221.
7
Horace, Odes, 1, 34.
8
Works, II, pp. 56 ff.
35
Pearson's model is St.
Augustine's
Dicebat
Epicureus,
Mihi frui
came bonum est;
dicebat
Stoicus,
Mihi frui
mea mente
bonum
est;
dicebat
Apostolus,
Mihi
autem
adhaerere Deo bonum
est. Dicebat
Epicureus, Beatus,
cuius est in fructu
voluptas
carnis eius.
Dicebat
Stoicus, Tmo, beatus,
cuius est in fructu virtus animi eius. Dicebat
Apostolus, Beatus,
cuius est in
nomine
Domini
spes eius.1
Pearson's contrast is at least better informed than Saint
Augustine's.
It contains admirable summaries of
Epicurean
and Stoic
dogmas.
In
the
part
devoted to
Epicureanism,
Pearson
asks,
"Unde
igitur
illis
erga
S. Paulum tam hostilis animus?
Unde,
nisi
quod religio
Christiana
sit ratio
Epicuri
sententiis ex diametro
opposita; idque
tum ut
religio
est,
tum ut Christiana est."
In three
pages, then,
Pearson
proves
his
meaning by
a brief state-
ment of the content of
Epicurean teachings, keeping
before him the
expositions
of
Diogenes
Laertius and
Lucretius,
and the adverse
criticisms of Cicero and the Church Fathers. In his three short sec-
tions he
covers, essentially,
all the
ground
which was
being
covered
by
his
contemporaries
at such
length:
i.
According
to
Epicurus,
God is neither first nor final
cause;
the
world was made
by
chance.
2. The soul is
mortal, being composed
of material
particles
into
which it will
again
be
dispersed.
3.
The
happiness
of man consists in health of
body
and
tranquillity
of mind.
I have reserved the
Cambridge
Platonists for
separate treatment,
for, among
the
theologians
of the Restoration
period
who were con-
cerned to discredit the ancient
Atomists, they occupy
a
peculiar place.
They
are in two
respects
distinct from the
typical
critics whom I have
just
treated. In the
first, they
devoted a
larger proportion
of their
attention to the crusade. In the
second, they approached
the
problem
with a
correspondingly greater care;
their criticisms are more exhaus-
tive,
and show
greater
skill in
seeking
for weakness of detail in the
Atomists'
teachings.
The Platonists were bound
together
in their
loyalty
to
reason,
or
I
Saint
Augustine,
Sermon
156, 7.
36
"the candle of the Lord."
I
Benjamin Whichcote,
master of the
group,
claimed reason as the true
pillar upon
which Christian faith is
built,
and contended that the fault of the atheist and the infidel lies in their
being
the "most
irrational, unaccountable,
and inexcusable
things
in
the
world."
2
Though
this devotion to reason saved the Platonists
from some of the
pitfalls
into which
many
of their
contemporaries
fell,
it can not be claimed that their reason was an
entirely
rational
faculty.
Like the Plato and the Plotinus from whom
they derived,
they
were
given
to
rhapsody;
and their
strong
ethical and emotional
sympathies
led them into an intellectual obscurantism. Nathaniel
Culverwel's discussion of reason itself makes clear what
quality
of
homage
his associates were
capable
of
paying.
"As the soul is the
shadow of
Deity,
so reason is a faint resemblance to God himself.
Reason first danced and
triumphed
in those eternal sunbeams in the
thoughts
of
God,
who is the fountain and
original
of
reason." 3
One is
not astonished to have what
promises
to be a
systematic
treatise on free-
dom of will fade into an affirmation of the
mystical knowledge
of God.4
It is not
entirely just
to
imply
that the Platonists' attack on the
Atomists was of the
quality
which would have been
given
it
by
Cul-
verwel or
Sterry. Smith, More,
and Cudworth were better scholars
and sounder thinkers than their
brethren;
but their
polemics
were not
untouched
by
the same
spiritual leanings.
John
Smith was the first of the
Cambridge Platonists, and, indeed,
the first
English theologian,
to
compose
a studied refutation of Lucre-
tius. His
position
is
unique among
the
anti-Epicurean debaters,
for
his whole attention was focused
upon
the ancient Atomists. It is
pointed
out
by
Smith's
editor, John Worthington,
who issued the
volume of Select Discourses nine
years
after Smith's
death,
that a new
situation had
developed
in the decade since the discourses were writ-
ten. It is the
dogmas
of
Epicurus
and
Lucretius, says Worthington,
which Smith examined in his
writings;
these were the
only
men whose
opinions
our author had to combat.
1 See discussion in F.
J. Powicke,
The
Cambridge
Platonists
(Cambridge,
Massa-
chusetts, 1926), p. 50.
2
Select Sermons
(Edinburgh, 1742), Pp.
I
ff.
3 Elegant
and Learned Discourse
of
the
Light of
Reason
(London, 1652), p. 114.
4
Peter
Sterry,
Discourse
of
the Freedom
of
the Will
(London,
1675).
37
He lived not to see atheism so
closely
and
craftily insinuated,
nor lived he
to see
Sadduceeism
and
Epicurism
so
boldly
owned and
industriously propa-
gated
as
they
have been of
late, by
some
who, being heartily
desirous that
there were no
God,
no
Providence,
no reward nor
punishment
after this
life,
take
upon
them to deride the notion of
spirit
or
uncorporeal substance,
the
existence of
separate souls,
and the life to come.'
One
gathers
at once that
Worthington belongs
to the less
competent
class of the Atomists'
opponents.
He accuses Lucretius of
having
boasted more than once in his
"poems"
of his achievements in over-
throwing
all
religion,
in
debauching mankind,
in
consuming
and eat-
ing
out
any good principle
left in the human conscience. Yet even
Worthington, though
he could evade first-hand
knowledge
of Lucre-
tius,
is forced to admit that the modern
Epicureans
around him are not
monsters of vice. He
justifies
his harsh
charges, however, by
contend-
ing
that "their failure to
accept
the
right principles
vitiates
any
merit
they may
seem to have." As a more direct antidote than Smith's to
the revived
Epicureanism, Worthington
recommends
Henry
More's
Treatise
of
the
Immortality of
the Soul.
Smith himself is not
always
rational in his casual references to
Epi-
cureanism;
it is to be remembered that he antedates the new conven-
tion of
accuracy
in the discussion of
Epicurean
morals.
Immediately
after
admitting
that
Epicurus
took notice of the bounds of virtue and
vice,2
he can
speak
of "the
Epicurean
herd of brutish men who have
drowned all their sober reason in the
deepest
Lethe of
sensuality," 3
and of
"
those
poor
brutish
Epicureans
that have
nothing
but the mere
husks of
fleshly pleasure
to feed themselves
on."
4
When, however,
Smith settles down to his sober
critique
in the dis-
courses "Of Atheism" and "Of the
Immortality
of the
Soul,"
his
ap-
proach
is different. Here he has
constantly
in mind both the
poem
of
Lucretius,
from which he
quotes copiously,
and the criticisms of Cicero.
In the discourse "Of Atheism" Smith's first concern is to
justify
his
title:
5
"Though they (the Epicureans)
seemed to
acknowledge
a
Deity, yet
I doubt not that those that search into their
writings
will
soon embrace
Tully's
censure of
them,
'Verbis
quidem ponunt, reipsa
1
John Smith,
Select Discourses
(London,
i66o),
pp.
xx
ff.
2
Id., p. 13.
SId.,
p.
I7.
4
Id., p.
21.
5
Id., p. 45-
38
tollunt deos."' A mechanical
explanation
of natural
phenomena,
particularly
of their
cause,
constitutes
atheism,
and it is this mecha-
nism that Smith is at
pains
to refute.
For
though
a lawful
acquaintance
with the events and
phenomena
that
show themselves
upon
this mundane
stage
would contribute much to free
men's minds from the
slavery
of dull
superstition; yet
would it also breed
a sober and amiable belief in the
Deity,
as it did in the
Pythagoreans
and
Platonists.1
Smith examines Lucretius's
cosmology
in some brief
detail,
but finds
everywhere
the need for a Creator: how was the
power
of motion
lodged
in the atoms? how did the atoms come to be so
regular
in their
movements? how did
they
find their own
places
in the scheme of
things? why,
if we
grant Epicurus's
atomic
swerve,
do not all the
atoms swerve the same
way
at the same time? Smith borrows Lucre-
tius's
figure
and answers him in his own terms
-
"as if one should tell
us how so
many
letters
meeting together
in several combinations
should
beget
all the sense that is contained
therein,
without
minding
that wit that cast them all into their several ranks."
Briefly, too,
Smith turns to the
Epicurean
end of
life,
no
longer
speaking
of it as brutish
sensuality,
but
examining
the true
Epicurean
conception.
He finds the
position
as embarrassed and as
empty
with-
out a divine
meaning
as is motion without a mover. Pleasure becomes
"nothing
else but a
shady
kind of
nothing, something
that hath
a name but
nothing
else." The microcosm as well as the macro-
cosm is foolish and
negative
if it is not infused with an
all-embracing
spirituality.
The discourse "Of
Atheism,"
with its examination of the mechani-
cal
cosmology
of
Lucretius,
is little more than an introduction to the
much fuller and more elaborate discourse "Of the
Immortality
of the
Soul." It is here that Smith
approaches
the
implication
which is the
crux of his concern with natural
philosophy.
He takes
up
Lucretius's
whole
exposition
of the nature of the
soul,
and answers it with counter-
exposition
of his own.
First,2
the soul is not
corporeal:
Lucretius failed to show that mo-
1
Select
Discourses, p. 41.
2
Id., pp.
68 ff. Lucretius
3,
161-257.
39
tion, power
of
sensation, knowledge, reason, memory,
or
prevision
can
belong
to
matter;
matter is
passive
and insensitive
by
nature. In as-
signing
to masses of atoms
powers
which matter in its
simplest
form
lacks,
Lucretius made the error of
supposing
that results can rise above
their causes.
Second,1
Lucretius misunderstood the
processes
of the mind. In
referring everything
to
sense,
he failed to treat
adequately
the
problem
of
meaning.
It is true that our senses are not
deceived;
but that
which
they perceive
is without
significance
till it has been referred to
the
higher
faculties of the human
mind,
and
especially
to the ideas
which are innate. "We find such a
faculty
in our own souls as collects
and unites all the
perceptions
of our several
senses,
and is able to com-
pare
them
together; something
in which
they
all meet as in one
centre."
2
It is the function of this
faculty
to bind
past, present,
and
future
together
- a
capacity
of the soul which
clearly
shows its re-
lation to the eternal or timeless nature of God.
Third,
the freedom of our wills is
incompatible
with
any
mechanical
explanation
of human
nature;
it is evidence of the
separateness
of soul
from
body.
The
Epicurean
doctrine of declination is as
good
an ex-
planation
as materialism has
open
to
it,
but "it is of such
private
in-
terpretation
that I believe no man is able to
expound
it."
Any
ra-
tional belief in freedom of the will is inconsistent with
Epicureanism.3
Lucretius failed thus
signally
to
prove
his
thesis, says Smith,
who
shows that the
contrary
thesis
-
"the
highest
sense of
immortality,
"
of which Plotinus and Proclus write - is
proved by
the human soul's
ideal
conceptions
of
mathematics, knowledge
of
truth, and, beyond
everything,
true
goodness
and virtue.4
Although
Lucretius dwells at
length
on the close
sympathy
between
soul and
body,
Smith treats this
problem
without reference to Lucre-
tius.5
The
sympathy
of
things
is no sufficient
argument
to
prove
their
identity. And,
in the
present instance,
the
only thing proved
is God's
extreme care for the
well-being
of man.
The other two
crusading Platonists, Henry
More and
Ralph
Cud-
worth,
have a double
importance
in
my study. They represent
the
I
Select
Discourses, pp. 76
ff. Lucretius
4, 379-521.
2
Select
Discourses, p.
82.
Id., p. 9o.
4
Id., p.
Ioi. 5 Id., pp. I12
ff.
40
Charles
Trawick
Harrison
extreme
degree
of the
theological antagonism
to the ancient
Atomists;
and
they
furnish at the same time the best available
example
of the
extent to which the ideas of the
despised
Atomists had modified the
thinking
of the latter
part
of the seventeenth
century.
Even their
bitterest enemies were
profoundly
indebted to them. As Samuel Parker
puts it,
"None have more
professedly
disclaimed the Platonic
phys-
iology
than
they
that stickle most for his other whimsies."
I
The
"physiology"
of the Platonists was
Boyle's Epicureanism.
There can
be, however,
no serious doubt as to whether More and
Cudworth should be
grouped
with the friends or with the foes of the
Atomists. In his
preface
to
Antipsychopannychia,
More thus sums
up
the
purpose
which underlies his
poems: "My
drift is one in them all:
which is to raise a certain number of well-ordered
phantasms, fitly
shaped
out and
warily contrived,
which I set to skirmish and conflict
with all the furious fancies of
Epicurism
and
atheism."
2 The drift
of his
prose writings is, indeed,
the
same;
he is
everywhere
concerned
to overthrow the doctrines of
materialism,
and to establish
necessity
for belief in the immaterial divine.
As in the cases of Smith and
Cudworth,
More uses the term
"Epi-
curism" in two
ways:
both the
scholarly
and the
popular.
He blames
the Atomists for their own
doctrines,
and for all the
vaguely
material-
istic
implications
of late seventeenth
century
science. Like
Cudworth,
he lived to feel that the
system expounded by
Lucretius was be-
come a
widespread danger
to idealistic
theology.
He calls Lucretius's
teachings
that foul lore
That
crept
from dismal shades of
night,
and
quill
Steeped
in sad
Styx,
and fed with
stinking gore
Sucked from
corrupted corse,
that God and men abhor.
Such is
thy putid muse, Lucretius,
That fain would teach that souls all mortal be:
The
dusty
atoms of Democritus
Certes have fallen into
thy
feeble
eye,
And thee bereft of
perspicacityY.
1
A Free and
Impartial
Censure
of
the Platonic
Philosophy (Oxford,
i666),
p.
44.
2
Henry More, Complete Poems,
ed. Grosart
(Edinburgh, 1878), p.
102.
3 Id., p. 43.
The
Ancient A
tomists 41
This
hostility
of More's is not directed
singly against
the
Atomists;
he condemns all
thinkers, including Aristotle,
who have had
nothing
of the Platonic affection for
immateriality.'
But More did
not, any
more than
Cudworth,
find it
possible
to cast
the Atomists aside without
reservation;
scientific
opinion
had
already
become too articulate and too well disseminated to
permit any
such
course to other than a
thoroughgoing
obscurantist.
"Though
I de-
test the sect for its manners
vile,"
writes
More, "yet
what is true
I
may
not well
reject."
2 In
one
of his most
interesting poems,
the De-
mocritus
Platonissans,
he commits himself to a
conception
of the ma-
terial cosmos which is
frankly
borrowed from "the
ancients, Epicurus,
Democritus, Lucretius," and,
for once
strangely reversing
his usual
epithets,
he
speaks
of theirs as a "noble
patronage."
3
More here
sings
of infinite
time,
infinite
space,
and an
infinity
of worlds. Needless to
say,
the
spirit
of the
piece
is indicated
by
the
"Platonissans"; only
the mechanical framework is from Democritus. Matter is a manifesta-
tion of
spirit;
each world is a "knot" in the infinite
garment
of the
Psyche
or universal soul.
In the Divine
Dialogues (1668), especially through
the
speeches
of
Philotheus,
who is More's
mouthpiece,
we learn that More's
acceptance
of
Epicurean physics goes beyond
the
poetic
declaration of various
infinities. In
Dialogue I,
Philotheus shows that the essence of matter
lies in its
self-disunity,
its
self-impenetrability,
its
self-inactivity.
As
the third of these characteristics is asserted to
oppose
the
philosophy
of Democritus and the
Epicureans,
so the first two are a conscious
partisanism
for their views as
opposed
to those of Hobbes and Des-
cartes.
Bathynous
admits that
body
means a
congregation
of
atoms,
and
his definition is
generally accepted by
the
disputants.4 Philotheus,
or
More, hastens, however,
to
deny
the
possibility
of
intelligence
to a
mere
"congeries
of atomes."
5
And in his Antidote
against Atheism,
he
sets out to assume "the
plain shape
of a
naturalist,"
in order that he
may
examine the foundation and limitations of materialistic atomism.
First,
he
opposes
the
Epicurean epistemology;
he denies the
pos-
1
Complete Poems, p. 45.
2
Id., p. 93-
3 Preface to Democritus Platonissans.
4
Divine
Dialogues (London, I713), p. 46.
6
Id., p. 47.
42
sibility
of
building
a
philosophy
on sense evidence. "The
proposition
'That which exists without the
help
of
another,
is
necessary
and eter-
nal'
hypostasizes necessity
and
eternity,
which are not sensible
quali-
ties." The business of atoms themselves falls far from out the domain
of sense.'
The Atomists'
assumption, therefore,
that
they
can
explain
such
conceptions
as wisdom or counsel
by
theories derived from the sensuous
knowledge
of matter is
stupid,
however successful such theories
may
be in the delineation of
hard, soft, rigid,
and fluid. It is like the
Gothamite's
assumption
that inasmuch as his three-footed trivet could
stand,
it could also
walk,
or that since his cheese would roll down-
hill,
it would also roll itself home and into the
pantry.2
As More
accepts
the Atomists'
description
of matter but differs in
his
conception
of its
potentialities,
so he
accepts
their doctrine of
void but
departs
from them in
interpreting
its
implications:
it is
important
to him as an assertion of belief in the immaterial. Here
he
opposes
himself
specifically
to
Descartes,
and invokes the ancient
Atomists in
support
of his view. He denounces the belief that matter
and extension are
reciprocally
the
same,
"as well
every
extended
thing
matter,
as all matter extended." "This is but an
upstart
conceit of
the
present age.
The ancient atomical
philosophers
were as much for
a vacuum as for atoms. And
certainly
the world has hitherto been
very
idle,
that have made so
many
and tried so
many experiments
whether
there be
any
vacuum or
no,
as Descartes would bear us in hand that it
implies
a contradiction there should be
any.
The
ground
of the demon-
stration lies so shallow and is so obvious that none could have
thought
there had been
any
force in
it."
If More
departs
wide from the Atomists even in his
acceptance
of
their basic doctrines of
infinity, atoms,
and
void,
he is
unmitigatedly
hostile to their treatment of the ultimate
implications
of their
system.
He devotes the second of the Divine
Dialogues
and almost all of Book
III of the Antidote
against
Atheism to
refuting arguments
which are
paraphrased
from Lucretius. His attack on Lucretius centers around
two
points:
the denial of a benevolent
Providence,
and the anti-
teleological
view of creation.
1
Antidote
against
Atheism
(London, 1653), pp. 23-24.
2
Id., p. 52.
Divine
Dialogues, pp. 49-53.
43
Euistor,
the
philologist
and critic of the
Dialogues,
cites the
following
arguments against
Providence. I indicate
briefly
Philotheus's answer
to each: 1
i. Rain falls
promiscuously,
thunder-bolts strike without discrimi-
nation.2 - This is the
ignorance
and
immorality
of
Lucretius, who,
out of a
straight-laced self-love,
fancies all the world so made for man
that
nothing
else should have
any
share in it.
2. Thorns and thistles tear human flesh.3 - These are trials to test
man's faith.
3.
Most of the earth is
unhabitable.4
-
Lucretius was mistaken:
most of the earth is inhabited
by
one kind of creature or another.
4.
Rocks and mountains render useless a
large part
of the earth's
surface.5
-
It is
necessary
to have
space
for animals and
spirits.
5.
Wild animals
prey
on human
beings.6- They
furnish exercise
for man's wit and
courage.
6. Infants are
helpless.'
-
This illustrates the
goodness
of Provi-
dence;
the care of infants is a task
pleasant
to
parents.
7.
Life is
blighted by disease, war, famine, pestilence,
and
death.8
-
Disease is a
just scourge
of the
wicked,
and its existence
gives
well
people
an occasion for
gratitude
to
God; war, famine,
and
pestilence
are the fault of man
himself;
death is no
curse,
but rather a
blessing,
for it makes
possible
a succession of mankind.
More's defense of
teleology against
the element of chance in natural
history
is
presented
as an answer to the
position
which he states as
follows,
in a
summary
which he
gives
without reference to Lucretius:
9
Nature did at first
bring
forth ill-favored and
ill-appointed
monsters as
well as those that were of more
perfect
frame. But those that were more
perfect
fell
upon
those others and killed them and devoured
them, they
being
not so well
provided
of either limbs or senses as the
other,
and so were
never able to
hop
fast
enough
from
them,
or
maturely
to discover the
ap-
proaching dangers
that ever and anon were
coming upon
them.
More answers that nature never does
anything ineptly:
it
always
achieves its
purpose through perfected
means. To
prove this,
and to
Id., pp. 94
ff.
2 Lucretius
6, 379-422-
Id., 5, 206-209.
*
Id., 5, 204-205.
5
Id., 5, 200-203.
* Id., 5,
218-220.
Id., 5, 222-234.
*
Antidote
against Atheism, pp.
156
ff. Lucretius
5,
837-854.
44
Charles
Trawick
Harrison
convict of falsehood the "audacious
calumny
cast
upon
God and
nature,"
More
gives
two
arguments:
I. Plants are
perfect,
even
though
they
can not move to
destroy
each
other;
II. Creatures born of
putre-
faction, furnishing
an endless series of new
creations,
are
perfect.
Not
only mice, frogs, grasshoppers, flies,
and
spiders,
but such loftier and
more
complex
creatures as Scotch barnacles and tree
geese, spring
spontaneously
and
perfect
from
decayed
matter.
("Since
these fowls
do also
propagate themselves,
the foolishness of some
people
has led
them to
deny
their
generation
from rotten
trees, etc.")
A final and minor
objection
of More to the
Epicureans
is occasioned
by
their denial of miracle and
apparition.'
The same
problem
is
argued
with Hobbes in the treatise on
The
Immortality of
the
Soul.2
The last-
named
writing
also
repeats
much examination of the
potentialities
of
matter which More has
given
elsewhere. Here he directs the whole
specifically
at
Hobbes,
who seemed to
More,
as to
Cudworth,
akin to
the Atomists in
blaspheming
the
reality
of the immaterial. But it
may
be said to the credit of More that he is never
guilty
of the abso-
lute confusion of Hobbes with Lucretius.
Among
all the criticisms of Hobbes and his
system, among
all the
refutations of atheism which the
English
seventeenth
century pro-
duced,
Cudworth's True Intellectual
System of
the
Universe, published
in
1678,
is the most elaborate. This intricate work was called forth
by
Cudworth's consciousness of the conditions referred to in
Worthing-
ton's
preface
to the Discourses of
John
Smith. In Cudworth's words:
Atheism,
in this latter
age
of
ours,
hath been
impudently
asserted and
most
industriously promoted;
that
very
atomic form which was first intro-
duced a little before Plato's time
by Leucippus, Protagoras,
and Democri-
tus, having
also been revived
amongst us,
and that with no small
pomp
and
ostentation of wisdom and
philosophy."
The whole of Cudworth's work makes it
amply
evident that he is re-
ferring
here to
Hobbes,
and that Cudworth like Tenison and Clarendon
I
Antidote against Atheism, final chapter. Lucretius 6, 43-95.
2
Book I, Chapter
IX
(in Philosophic Writings
of
Henry More,
ed. Flora
I.
Mac-
kinnon, Oxford, 1925).
3 Ralph Cudworth, The
True Intellectual
System of
the Universe,
edited with
Mosheim's notes
(London, 1845), 1,
p.
274.
45
considered Hobbes a direct
disciple
and
propagator
of the atomism
of
Democritus, Epicurus,
and Lucretius.
The True Intellectual
System
is
only
a third
part
of Cudworth's
great projected
work
against
the three kinds of fatalism
(atheism,
be-
lief in divine fate
immoral,
and belief in divine fate
moral),
and is
designed specifically
to combat "Democritic" or atheistic fatalism.'
Its
thesis, then,
is
that all
things
in the world do not float without a head and
governor,
but
that there is a
God,
an
omnipotent understanding Being presiding
over
all;
that this God is
essentially good
and
just,
there is
crTEL
K
aXlv
Kal
6lK
Uov;
that there is
something
4'P' Z'iv,
or that we are so far forth
principles
or masters of our own actions as to be accountable for
them.2
In
spite
of his
hostility
to the
philosophy
of Democritus and
Epi-
curus,
Cudworth
was,
like
More,
too conversant with the best scien-
tific
thought
of his time to
reject
atomic
physics.
He was an atomist
himself,
and one of his chief
purposes
was to show that a belief in the
atomic structure of matter was
quite separable
from the moral and
religious teachings
of those whom he called atheists.
In order to facilitate this
demonstration,
Cudworth
begins by
de-
priving
Democritus and
Epicurus
of all credit in the
working
out of
an atomistic natural
philosophy.
He
accepts
without
question
the
vague
tradition that atomism derives from a Phoenician
Moschus,
and
unhesitatingly
identifies Moschus with Moses: atomism then is
a Mosaic
doctrine,
with
something
of the divine
authority
of the Ten
Commandments.
Furthermore,
it
is
a mistake to credit
Leucippus
and Democritus with
having
introduced atomism to Greek
thought.
According
to Cudworth's
interpretation, Pythagoras, Empedocles,
Ecphantus, Protagoras, Xenocrates, Heraclides, Diodorus,
were atom-
ists;
Aristotle's statement that
Leucippus
and Democritus were the
founders
merely
means that
they
were the first to atheize
it,
the first
"to
make it a
complete
and entire
philosophy by itself,
so as to derive
the
original
of all
things
in the whole universe from senseless atoms."
3
This, too,
is "Laertius's true
meaning (though
it be not
commonly
understood)
when he recordeth of them that
they
were the first to make
1 d., I, p. xxxiii.
2
Id., I, p.
xxxiv.
S
Id., I, p.
33.
46
unqualified
atoms the
principles
of all
things
in the universe without
exception;
that
is,
not
only
of inanimate
bodies,
but also of soul and
mind." 1 The
great
difference between the earlier atomists and the
later, then,
is that the former were
religious;
their
physics
was sub-
ordinated to
theology
and
metaphysics.2
Cudworth's
understanding
of
early
Greek natural
philosophy
is so
fantastic that one
might
well be
prepared
to find that he had no real
conception
of the
meaning
of
physical
atomism. It is somewhat as-
tonishing, then,
to find that he
gives
one of the best short summaries
of the doctrines to be found in
any
of the seventeenth
century Eng-
lish
writers,
and that his own atomism derives
essentially
from the
tradition of Democritus -
though
not without drastic modifications.
The atomical
philosophy supposes
that
body
is
nothing
else but extended
bulk;
and resolves therefore that
nothing
is to be attributed to it but what
is included in the nature and idea of
it,
viz. more or less
magnitude,
with
divisibility
into
parts, figure,
and
position, together
with motion or
rest,
but
so as that no
part
of
body
can ever move
itself,
but is
always
moved
by
some-
thing
else. And
consequently
it
supposes
that there is no need of
anything
else besides the
simple
elements of
magnitude, figure, site,
and notion
(which
are all
clearly intelligible
as different modes of extended
substance)
to solve
corporeal phenomena by;
and therefore not of
any
substantial forms dis-
tinct from the
matter;
nor of
any
other
qualities really existing
in the bodies
without,
besides the results or
aggregates
of those
simple elements,
and the
disposition
of the insensible
parts
of bodies in
respect
of
figure, site,
and
motion;
nor of
any
intentional
species
or
shows, propagated
from the ob-
jects
to our
senses; nor, lastly,
of
any
other kind of action or motion dis-
tinct from local motion (such
as
generation
or
alteration), they being
neither
intelligible
as modes of extended
substance,
nor
any ways necessary.
For-
asmuch as the forms and
qualities
of bodies
may
well be conceived to be
nothing
but the result of those
simple
elements of
and
motion, variously compounded together,
in the same manner as
sylla-
bles and words in
great variety
result from the different combinations and
conjunctions
of a few
letters,
or the
simple
elements of
speech;
and the
corporeal part
of
sensation,
and
particularly
that of
vision, may
be solved
only by
local motion of
bodies,
that is either
by corporeal
effluvia
streaming
continually
from the surface of the
objects,
or
rather,
as the later and more
refined atomists
conceive, by pressure
made from the
object
to the
eye by
means of
light
in the medium.
Again, generation
and
corruption may
be
1 True Intellectual
System, I, p.
xxxviii.
2
Id., I, p.
34.
47
sufficiently explained by
concretion and
secretion,
or local
motion,
without
substantial forms and
qualities.
And
lastly,
those sensible ideas of
light
and
colours,
heat and
cold,
sweet and
bitter,
as
they
are distinct from the
figure,
site,
and motion of the insensible
parts
of
bodies,
seem
plainly
to be
nothing
else but our own
fancies, passions,
and
sensations,
however
they
be
vulgarly
mistaken for
qualities
in the bodies without
us.1
Cudworth
accepts
this "atomic
physiology"
as
unquestionably
true
in its
essentials;
that
is,
in its reduction of the
principles
of matter to
and motion. He is
willing
to
grant
that this
conception sufficiently explains
the
qualities
and forms of inanimate
bodies.2
The two
great advantages
of atomism are that it renders the
corporeal
world
intelligible
to
us,3
and that it
prepares
"an
easy
and
clear
way
for the demonstration of
incorporeal
substances."
4 For,
when we have limited the realm of matter so
exactly,
we can see at once
where the realm of
spirit
must
intervene.5
Thus the
reasoning
of
Democritus, Epicurus,
and Lucretius fell down:
they
failed to
ap-
preciate
the true
implications
of atomic
physics.
Since the
properties
of matter cannot be made to
explain
the existence of consciousness and
reason,
it is
necessary
to conceive a mode of
being
which is immaterial.6
No matter how
many
details Cudworth
may
borrow from "Demo-
critic"
atomism, though denying
their
source,
he is as remote as
possi-
ble from the
spirit
of the ancient naturalists. "With
regard
to the
deity, intelligence, genii, ideas,
and in short the
principles
of human
knowledge,
he followed the latter
Platonists,"
'
says
Birch in his ac-
count of Cudworth's life and
writings;
and indeed Cudworth found
the tradition which derived from Plato's Timaeus far more
congenial
to him than
any genuine
naturalism could be. So his
cosmology
takes
its character
primarily
from "a
plastic
nature" or "soul of the world" 8
which Cudworth adds to his atoms and
void,
and which
pervades
all
things
so as to make it
unnecessary
for God to act
constantly
and di-
1 Id., I, pp.
II-13.
2
Id., I, p.
xxxix.
3 Id., I, p. 85.
4
Id., 1, p. 87.
6 Id., I, p. 89.
6 Id., I, p.
68.
7
Id., I, p.
xxiii.
8 See the
Timaeus, 3ob:
bta b6 rv
XoyLaCP,
6vbe vOiv
l,

CX, 'rvXv B i
ow/LartL
UvvLa7sT
T5
Ct 'V
VETEKTatve-TO,
OwS
OTL KLXXWTOav
EOE
KaTC7
-
a'
oLv &pLwT6r Te
gp'yov bretLpyaac/Avos. oiurws o ,
e7) Ka0'0 X.yov Tv, E'K6Ta El ?.'yeL, Tr6,e V, K6opoP
Sov EI.UXO YOV
b'voUvv
Te Tp &XELL 6L& 77V
7
TON OEO y yEveaOaiL 7rp6voLav.
48
Charles Trawick
Harrison
rectly
in the affairs of the
world.'
Cudworth values this
conception
very highly
and
develops
it at
length.
In
substituting
the effect of the
world-soul for the immediate control of
God,
Cudworth tries to link
his scheme with that of Descartes.
Thus,
at heart devoted to Platonic
mysticism,
he would associate himself with the leaders of the new
philosophy.
He
always praises Descartes,
and does him the honor of
comparing
him with
Moschus.2
Hobbes,
on the other
hand,
Cudworth
compares
to Democritus
-
"the
blundering Democritus," "depraver
and adulterator of the
atomical
philosophy,"
"at the bottom of whose
system
lies nonsense."
3
The
great objection
to these thinkers is their atheism. That Democ-
ritus, Epicurus,
and Lucretius were atheists at heart Cudworth has
no
doubt;
their
description
of the
gods
was so absurd as to show
clearly
that it was
merely
a
disguise
to avoid the common odium.4
It is the chief business of Cudworth's book to summarize the Atomists'
arguments
for atheism and to answer them.
The most
interesting
feature of this extended
summary
5
is Cud-
worth's
complete
failure to
distinguish
between the
arguments
which
he takes from Lucretius and those which he takes from Hobbes. Where
it is
possible,
he
quotes
the
appropriate
illustrative
passages
from
Lucretius;
elsewhere he does not cite his
source, though
sometimes
quoting directly
from Hobbes.
The Lucretian
arguments
which Cudworth treats
may
be
briefly
indicated as
follows;
in each instance Cudworth
quotes
several verses:
Creation is
impossible;
nihil
ex
nihilo/. Only
matter and void
exist;
everything
in the realm of
being
has the
properties
of matter.
Matter,
in its first
principles,
is devoid of sense and
mind.s
Mind and sense can
not be shown to exist
apart
from matter.9 God could have had no
pattern according
to which he could create a
world.1'
The world is too
faulty
to be the work of an
omnipotent
creator." Human affairs are
too
imperfect
to
permit
of belief in
Providence.12
It would be incon-
1
True Intellectual
System, I, p.
218 ff.
2 Id., I, pp. 275-276.
Id., I, pp. go,
92-
*
Id., I, pp.
IoI-Io6.
SId.,
1, pp, o108-140.
I
Lucretius
I, 146-264.
Id., I,
265-417-
Id., 1, 418-482.
9
Id., 3, 548-623-
10 Id., 5,
i8i-186.
11
Id., 5,
195-217-
L2
Id., 5, 218-234.
The
Ancient A
tomists
49
sistent with the
happiness
of the
gods
for them to be concerned
with
the fates of men. The
impartiality
of nature is
incompatible
with a
belief in divine beneficence.'
Interspersed
with these
expositions
of
passages
from
Lucretius,
there
are five
arguments
based on
Hobbes, though
Cudworth
implies
that
he is
dealing everywhere
with Democritean or
Epicurean
atheism. In
Mosheim's
notes, given
on the
pages cited,
there are indicated the
specific passages
of Hobbes which Cudworth has in mind in each in-
stance. The Hobbesian
arguments
are: The term " God " has no com-
prehensible meaning.2
Our belief in immaterial
beings
is based on the
objectification
of
abstractions.3
If God were not a
substance,
he would
have to be an accident.4 An "unmoved mover" is an
illogical concep-
tion.
Though quoting Hobbes,
Cudworth
specifically
attributes this
argument
to Democritus.5 There can be no
knowledge
without a
cause;
a
primal
mind could not know.6
In addition to the confused list of
arguments
from Lucretius and
Hobbes,
Cudworth
gives
a number of
"slight arguments"
used
by
Velleius,7
still
implying
that he is
directly representing
Democritus
and
Epicurus.
His conclusion is that the whole
position
of the atheis-
tic Atomists is based on their conviction that it is to the interest of
persons
8 and of states
9
that there be no God.
The bulk of Cudworth's work is devoted to a refutation of these
arguments. Chapter IV,
a mere introduction to his
refutation,
con-
tains a far more ambitious discussion of
comparative religion
than
Lord
Cherbury's.
Cudworth undertakes to
prove
the naturalness and
universality
of the idea of
God,
one of his main ends
being
to contro-
vert
Cherbury's
thesis that
paganism normally
conceived a horde of
minor
gods, existing
of
themselves,
from
eternity
unmade.'0 Cudworth
contends that all
good
minds believed in one
God, Epicurus being
the
only exception."
I
Id., 6,
43-95-
2 True
Int.
Syst., I, p.
i
Io.
3
Id., I, p. I16.
4
Id., I, p. II7.
Id.,
I, p. I26.
6 Id., I, p. I27.
7 Id., I, pp. 132-134 (Cicero,
De
Natura Deorum,
Book
I).
s
True Int.
Syst., I, pp. 134-136 (Lucretius quoted).
9 Id., I, pp. 136-138 (Hobbes
quoted).
10
See
Cherbury, Religion of
the
Gentiles, Chapter
XIV.
" True Int.
Syst., II, pp.
i-3.
50
Chapter V, occupying
a
large
volume and a
half,
answers the atheis-
tic Atomists. The idea of God as existent from
eternity
is
universal,
and is
necessary
to account for the first and final causes which a knowl-
edge
of nature
demands.'
Whereas the atheistic Atomists
suppose
sense to be the
only
source of
knowledge, sense,
as
such,
is neither
knowledge
nor
understanding.
Democritus confesses some
skepticism
as to the
sufficiency
of
sense,
and even
Epicurus
has to
go beyond
sense for his most
elementary conceptions.2
The
incomprehensible
can and must exist." Even the Atomists conceived of
infinity,
and
infinity
is
essentially
an attribute of
God.4
There is no contradiction
or
inconsistency
in the nature of
God,
but
only
in our
conception
of
him.5
The contention that God is the
product
of human fear is based
on the false
concept
of him which atheists set
up.6
In
imputing
motion
to matter itself the Atomists show themselves
ignorant
of the nature
of matter.7 The world is not ill-made. Cudworth cites
Boyle's argu-
ments from
anatomy
to
prove
that
organs
are well
adapted
to their
purposes.8
Lucretius shows himself
ignorant
of natural
history.9
His
argument
that if
eyes
were made for
seeing, seeing
must have existed
before
eyes,
is false
logic;
he does not
grasp
the
philosophic importance
of intention and of final cause.'0 Cudworth makes use of his
fairly
ex-
tensive
knowledge
of science to
prove
that a mechanical
system
falls
short. It
particularly
fails to account for freedom of
will, Epicurus's
explanation being
no
explanation
at all."
Finally,
there is the whole
series of
supernatural manifestations,
which evidence
powers
incom-
prehensible
to us:
witches, demoniacs, miracles, prophecy. Any per-
1
True
Int.
Syst., II, pp. 487, 609.
2
Id., II, pp. 510-513.
Democritus
B, fragments 6-9; Epicurus I, 1;
Lucretius
4,
379-521.
-
True Int.
Syst., II, pp. 516
ff.
4
Id., II, pp. 528-529.
Lucretius
I, 921-1117.
'
True
Int.
Syst., II, pp. 532-560.
6
Id., II, pp. 562-584.
Lucretius
2, 55-61; Leviathan, Chapter
XII.
7 True Int.
Syst., I, pp. 585 ff.
Democritus
A, fragment I, xlv; fragment 64;
Epicurus I, xliii-xlv;
Lucretius
2, 62-332.
8 True Int.
Syst., II, pp. 590-593.
Robert
Boyle, Works,
ed. Birch
(London,
1744), V, pp. 398, 426.
9
True Int. Syst., II, pp. 594-602.
10
Id., II, pp.
602-611. Lucretius
4, 823-857.
11 True Int. Syst., II, pp. 612-639.
Lucretius
2, 216-293.
51
son who denies the
possibility
of
witchcraft,
which is
proved by Scrip-
ture,
should be
suspected
of
atheism.'
Epicurus's argument
that
divination,
if
possible,
would
destroy
the
liberty
of the will is
false;
divination
merely proves
the existence of an
all-knowing
God.2
In order to
destroy utterly
the
position
of the
Atomists,
Cudworth
examines, ridicules,
and refutes their
interpretation
of the ex nihilo
nihil
principle.3
Here he
places
himself under the
patronage
of Saint
Paul and of the
neo-Platonists,4
and borrows their
exposition
of the
power
of
motion.5
He
brings
his work to a close with a demonstration
of the
power
of
Providence.6
Cudworth's True Intellectual
System
is the most ambitious treat-
ment of the ancient Atomists ever
attempted by
an
English
writer.
Yet,
in
spite
of what with its thousand inaccuracies is still an
amazing
erudition,
Cudworth is of a
spirit
so
unsympathetic
to
pure
Greek
naturalism that the Atomists fared as
badly
with him as with the vul-
gar
traducers of
Epicurus
who knew him
only by hearsay.
The work of Cudworth
may
be taken as the climax of the
fray
which
the
theologians
of the
age
of
Dryden waged against
the
Atomists;
hos-
tilities waned
during
the
closing years
of the
century.
But
they
did
not
cease,
and there were reverberations even after
1700. Although
I have no intention of
tracing
all the later
manifestations,
there are
two more men whose contributions are such as to
justify
their brief
consideration. Both Richard
Bentley
and Sir Richard Blackmore
present departures
from the conventional diatribe.
In the case of
Bentley,
the
departure
is in
quality
of
scholarship.
His is the first
important
work in textual criticism of Lucretius to be
performed by any Englishman,
the
marginal
notes written
by
him in
1713 being
used in Wakefield's famous edition of a
half-century
later.
Munro
points
out that if
Bentley
had
succeeded,
in
169o,
in his at-
tempt
to
acquire
Isaac Vossius's
library
for the
Bodleian,
the modern
study
of Lucretius would
thereby
have been
greatly
accelerated. It is
not
only
Lucretius
among
the Atomists who is indebted to the scholar-
1
True
Int. Syst., II, pp. 642-659.
2 Id., III, I-30. For the
Epicurean
condemnation of
rp6voLa,
see Hermann
Usener, Epicurea (Leipzig, 1887), pp. 246 ff.
3 True
Int.
Syst., III, pp. 79-132.
*
Id., III, pp. 221-409. 6 Id., III, pp. 4I0-457. 6 Id., III, pp. 457-516.
52
Charles Trawick
Harrison
ship
of
Bentley:
in the Dissertation
upon Phalaris, Bentley
inciden-
tally
furnishes the first
English
criticism on the
authenticity
of the
fragments
of
Democritus.1
Another
respect
in which
Bentley's
criticism of the Atomists differs
from that of his
predecessors
is that whereas their scientific back-
ground,
at
best,
is
adopted
from
Boyle, Bentley
had the
advantage
of
knowing
Newton. Before
publishing
the latter discourses in his
series of
Boyle Sermons, Bentley
received letters from Newton
(1692-
1693)
which made use of the
workings
of
gravity
in
proving
the exist-
ence of God."
Gravity
became then to
Bentley
a
powerful example
of
immaterial
force,
and he made
copious
use of it.
Aside from differences in
instruments, however,
there is little to
distinguish Bentley's Boyle
sermons from the traditional assault on
the cosmic
system
which Lucretius
expounded.
The
very purpose
of
the
Boyle
Foundation was to
perpetuate
the
polemics against
atheism
-
and that had come to
mean, primarily, Epicureanism.
In the last
three sermons
3
of the
series, Bentley
shows that his central intention
is to refute four atheistic tenets.4 Of these
four,
three are
Epicurean;
the other is a
point
in the new "Aristotelian"
atheism,
which was
(now
that the scholastic Aristotle had been overthrown and the Greek
Aristotle
began
to
appear
in a new
light) coming
to be
coupled
with
the
Epicurean.
The three
anti-Epicurean
theses maintained
by
Bent-
ley
are: Matter has not existed
eternally, or,
if it
has,
motion can not
have coexisted with it as an inherent and eternal
property
of
matter;
the universe could not have been
produced by
chance
motion;
the
organization
of the cosmos
proves
the existence of God.
Though
the mere statement of these
propositions
has become weari-
some
by
the time one reaches
Bentley,
there is much freshness in his
development
of them.
Bentley accepts
atomic
physics
as the best in
the
world,5
but shows that there are
many
weaknesses in its ancient
form. In the first
perfectly explicit
treatment of an ultimate material-
ism,
he
shows, largely by arguments
and illustrations drawn from the
laws of
gravitation,
that atomism does not
necessarily
mean material-
1
Bentley,
Works
(London, I836-38), I, pp. 242
ft.
2
Id., III, pp. 203
ff.
3
Sermons
VI-VII.
4 Works, ITI, pp. 132
ft.
5
Id., III, p.
74.
53
ism.' "I will
give
a true notion and idea of
matter,"
he
says,
"
which is
part
of the
Epicurean
and Democritean
philosophy."
2
Recog-
nizing
the
genius
of
Epicurus's construction, Bentley
shows that it
fails because
Epicurus
did not
acknowledge
the limitations of an atom.
It should have been
endowed,
not with
motion,
but with the
capacity
for motion.
And,
with or without
motion,
atoms can not account for
sensation; although
sensation
depends
on the action of external
objects,
it is itself a
subjective,
immaterial
phenomenon.' Bentley subjects
Lucretian
psychology
to a
genuinely
modern
criticism,
which seems
to reflect the influence of Locke. As a reduction to
absurdity, Bentley
insists that
attributing
sensation to matter would mean that
"every
single
atom of our bodies would be a distinct
animal,
endued with
self-consciousness and
personal
sensation of its own."
4
Incidentally
in his examination of the Lucretian
exposition
of
matter,
Bentley
shows the
illogicality
of
having
atoms
fall
in infinite
space.
He demolishes the swerve thus: "I
say
this declination of atoms in
their descent was either
voluntary
or
necessary.
If it was
necessary,
how then could that
necessity
ever
beget liberty?
If it was
voluntary,
then atoms had that
power
of volition before."
5
With less claim to
originality,
he shows the
absurdity
of
Epicurean astronomy.
The
third, fourth,
and fifth sermons deal
largely
with the Lucretian
chance. Here
Bentley
adheres
closely
to the
customary arguments,
developing Boyle's
treatment from
biology,
and
adding
little that is
new. He
mercilessly
ridicules Lucretius's account of the
origin
of
human
life,
and sees
ample proof
of God's beneficent
purposefulness
in the structure of the human
body.6
Most
important
of
all,
the consideration of human
phenomena
leads
Bentley
to the conclusion which he announced as his
goal early
in his
discourses: "There is an immaterial substance in
us,
which we call
soul and
spirit, essentially
distinct from our
bodies;
and this
spirit
doth
necessarily
evince the existence of a
supreme
and
spiritual being."7
The whole intention of the
Boyle
sermons is to demonstrate the utter
incompleteness
and
inadequacy
of the otherwise remarkable
system
which refuses to avail itself of this doctrine.
1 Sermon IV.
2
Works, III, p. 37. Id., III, p. 38.
4
This
position has,
of
course,
been defended since the time of
Bentley.
5
Works, III, p. 48.
6
Id., III, pp. 54-55.
7
Id., III, p. 34-
54
Sir Richard Blackmore was the
author,
in
1712,
of Creation: a
Philosophical
Poem in Seven Books. The work invites
comparison
with
Du Bartas's Divine
Days,'
in that it sets out
explicitly
to
present
in
poetic
form an
interpretation
of nature which will discountenance
Lucretius. It
is,
I
believe,
the
only
extended
English poem
devoted to
that
anti-Epicurean description
of the world which had
been,
at the
time Blackmore used
it,
a
staple
of
thought
for more than
fifty years.
Henry
More's
poems
are on a more esoteric
plane,
and contain no such
systematic
and concrete
counter-exposition.
Blackmore's contribu-
tion to the
crusade, then,
was the form of his work.
Aside from the
form,
there is little that is new in Blackmore's
achievement. His
preface charges
that
Leucippus, Democritus, Epi-
curus,
and Lucretius were the world's
greatest
asserters of
impiety.
Their atheistic
doctrines,
Blackmore
regrets
to
say,
have been revived
by
modern
philosophers, especially
Hobbes and
Spinoza.
"The
design
of this
poem
is to demonstrate the self existence of an eternal mind
from the created mind and
dependent
existence of the
universe,
and to
confute the
hypothesis
of the
Epicureans."
2
The real motive of Blackmore's
undertaking
is indicated in his
crediting
the
surviving
and renewed influence of
Epicureanism
to
Lucretius's
poetic
excellence. One
gathers
that he means to cast the
opposed
view into a
shape
of like attractiveness. To make sure of
this,
Blackmore
simply appropriates
the
design,
the
method,
and the
poetic
details of Lucretius. The result is not
bad;
Creation was most favor-
ably
received in its own
day,
and continued to be
reprinted long
there-
after.
To show all of Blackmore's indebtedness to
Lucretius,
it would be
necessary
to
put
the two whole
poems
side
by
side. Of the seven books
of Blackmore's
work, only one,
Book V which deals with
fatalism,
is
concerned
primarily
with other than Lucretian materials. Book I
proves
the existence of God from
design.
Book II refutes Lucretius's
account of celestial bodies and motions. Book III is a detailed
reply
1 And with Cardinal de
Polignac's
Anti-Lucretius. The
Anti-Lucretius
belongs
to a later
stage
of the
quarrel
between
religion
and
science, but,
because of its atti-
tude toward Lucretius and its
form,
it is akin in
many ways
to the works discussed
in this
chapter.
It was translated into
English by
William Dobson in
1757.
2
Blackmore,
Creation
(Philadelphia, I8o6),
Preface, p. xliii.
The Ancient A
tomists 55
to the evidence
against
divine creation. Book IV is a
critique
of
atomistic
physics.
It
accepts
atoms and void as
very reasonable,
but
shows
how,
in such details as the
swerve,
Lucretius's
conception
was
inadequate.
Book VI treats of the creation of man. "The assertion of
Epicurus
and his followers that our first
parents
were the
spontaneous
production
of the earth is most absurd and incredible." Book VII
deals with the
shortcomings
of Lucretius's
psychology.
To Black-
more,
as to the other critics of
Epicureanism,
Lucretius's
biology
and
his
astronomy
were a
godsend;
it was
always possible
to
regard
them
with
enough
confident
superiority
to make
up
for such
lapses
in
logic
as occurred in the criticism of other doctrines.
The
quality
of Blackmore's
reasoning
is not remarkable. To
give
only
one
example,
he deduces much from the cool
assumption
that the
earth
occupies
the most favored
place
in the universe and
among
the
host of worlds
-
both of
which,
he is
willing
to
believe,
are infinite.
If,
as
Epicurus taught,
the atoms
range
the void without conscious
direction,
how did the earth-atoms
happen
to hit
upon
this best of
possible spots
in the cosmos?
I
An outline of Blackmore's
poem by
books does not indicate his main
debt to Lucretius. This lies in his rhetorical
devices,
in his
phraseology,
and in his
poetic
illustrations. He declares his intention thus:
I meditate to soar above the
skies;
To
heights unknown, through ways
untried to rise.2
To trace dark nature and detect her
ways.3
Like
Lucretius,
he
indulges
in bits of illustrative natural
description;
he writes of "noxious
streams," "effulgent emanations,"
"of tides and
seas
tempestuous."
To offset the
story
of
Iphigenia,4
he recounts the
histories of
Joseph
and Moses. Instead of
praising
Athens for
produc-
ing
"the
bright
star of the Greek
race,"
he writes:
Be
this,
O Greece, thy everlasting shame,
That
thoughtless Epicurus
raised a name
Who built
by
artless chance this
mighty
frame.5
1
Id., p. 58.
2
Id., p. 56.
Id., p. 63.
Cf. Lucretius
I, 921-930.
Lucretius
I,
8o-Ior. 5 Creation, p. 141.
Cf. Lucretius
6, 1-42.
56
Charles
Trawick
Harrison
Nowhere, though,
does Blackmore use the
advantage
of Lucretius's
example
more
strikingly
than in the introductions to his various books.
Book IV
begins
with reflections on the fear of death. No
man, says
the
poet,
can be
happy
who is not free from this
supreme
fear.' It is not
magnificence
which
brings happiness,
not the
painted roof,
not rich
arras,
nor busts of
gold.2 Only
he who stands firm in
religious faith,
who sees God in the
designs
of heaven and earth and in his own
soul,
has found the secret of a
happy
and
tranquil
life.
III.
THE EMERGENCE OF LUCRETIUS
It has been
impossible
to discuss even the utmost
hostility
of the
late seventeenth
century
toward the ancient Atomists without show-
ing
how
solidly they
had affected its
thought.
That
Boyle's
modi-
fied form of
Epicureanism
came to be so
quickly
and almost uni-
versally
looked
upon
as an official
physics
was due both to the
attractive
simplicity
of the scheme and to the
prestige
of the
newly
founded
Royal Society
of which
Boyle
was the first
leading spirit.
"That
many
of the
phenomena
of the universe are far more
intelligibly
explained by
matter and motion than
by
substantial forms and real
qualities,
few
unprejudiced
minds do now
scruple
to
admit," says
Bishop Stillingfleet.3
Aside from such
prejudiced
and
reactionary
minds as
Tenison, Stubbe,
and
Parker,
all the
figures
who were
treated in
my
last section
agreed
with
Stillingfleet
on this
point.
At a time when
practically
all writers whose
speculations
led them
near the
precincts
of natural
philosophy
found themselves at
grips
with
the Atomists in one fashion or
another,
Dr. Thomas Burnet formed
a
striking exception.
Both of his
important
works dealt with themes
which,
it
seems,
would
inevitably
have invited him to consider the
contributions of the
Epicureans.
Both The Sacred
Theory of
the Earth
and the
Inquiry
into the Doctrines
of
the
Philosophers of
All
Nations,
however, virtually ignore
such invitation. In the
first,
his main use
for the Atomists is to cite them in confirmation of his belief that the
earth will
ultimately
be
destroyed; *
in the
other,
he
casually praises
1
Cf. Lucretius
3, 83o-1o94.
2 Cf. Lucretius
2, 20-33. 3 Works, II, p.
282.
Sacred
Theory (London, 1719), II, p.
12.
57
Democritus and
Leucippus, passes
over
Epicurus
with a
slight
refer-
ence, and,
on the
whole,
dismisses the atomical
hypothesis
as false
and
ungrounded.'
On the other
hand,
there were
many
ministers who went further
than
Stillingfleet
in their
acceptance
of the revived atomism.
Bishop
Wilkins,
for
instance,
had
published
astronomical
speculations
as
early
as
1638,
and his enthusiastic
membership
in the
Royal Society
insured
his careful
study
of the atomical
philosophy
both ancient and modern.
Whereas Wilkins's
knowledge
of Lucretius was used
primarily
as a
basis for
disagreeing
with
him,2
there were other divines whose
only
utterances about atomism and the Atomists were
eulogistic.
None
was more liberal toward the new science and its
philosophy
than
Joseph
Glanvil. The most ambitious of his
Essays
is "A Continua-
tion of the New
Atlantis,"
a
Utopia
whose
spirit
does not belie the
title. The citizens of Glanvil's Bensalem are
governed according
to an
enlightened naturalism,
which is based
directly
on Gassendi's
version of atomism.
They accept
the
system
because of its
antiquity
and its
easy intelligibility.
It was Glanvil's
essay
on "Modern Im-
provements
in Useful
Knowledge"
which
especially
aroused the ire of
Stubbe,
and called forth that
pugnacious
Aristotelian's defense of the
Stagirite
as
opposed
to the
upstart Epicurus.
The new
allegiance
is
indicated in Thomas
Sprat's History of
the
Royal Society,
and in the
various Lectures and Collections
published by
Robert
Hooke, Secretary
of the
Society.3
John Ray,
the
botanist,
sums
up
his
physical
creed in a
passage
which is
typical
of scientific
opinion
for a
generation
after
166o0:
I attribute the various
species
of inanimate bodies to the divers
figures
of the minute
particles
of which
they
are made
up.
And the reason
why
there is a set and constant number of them in the
world,
none
destroyed
nor
any
new ones
produced,
I take to be because the sum of the
figures
of those
minute bodies into which matter was at first divided is determinate and
fixed. Because those minute
parts
are
indivisible,
not
absolutely,
but
by
any
natural
force;
so that there neither is nor can be more or fewer of them:
For were
they
divisible into small and
diversely figured parts by
fire or
any
other natural
agent,
the
species
of Nature must be
confounded,
some
might
1
Inquiry,
etc.
(London, 1736), p. 209.
2
Op. cit.
3
See, e.g.,
edition of
1678.
58
be lost and
destroyed,
but new ones would
certainly
be
produced,
unless we
could
suppose
these new diminutive
particles
should
again
assemble them-
selves into
corpuscles
of such
figures
as
they compounded before;
which I
see no
possibility
for them to do.'
This was written
by Ray
near the end of the seventeenth
century,
after the first flush of enthusiasm and debate about the new natural
philosophy
had
passed,
and after the Newtonian revolution had
begun.
Ray
was a
scientist, though
not a
physicist,
and not much of a
philoso-
pher.
It is
significant
that both his
description
of matter and his
logic
are
distinctly Lucretian,
not Cartesian. His
credo,
as
given here,
was
essentially
the same as that of the scientific realists for two centuries to
come.
I do not mean to
say
that science had not become far more
subtle,
more
chary,
and more detailed even in the lifetime of
Ray.
The
greatest
of
English
scientists
was, however,
an atomist. That Isaac
Newton was
directly
attracted and influenced
by
the ancient
system
is
unquestionable.
But Newton has no real
place
in this
study,
for the
method and the
quality
of his
thought
set him
apart
from
synoptic
speculators
like Lucretius and
Boyle.
His attachment of
gravity
to
every particle
of
matter,
his
thinking
in terms of
mathematically
de-
scribable
forces,
mark the
beginning
of modern molecular
physics;
his
achievements meant the end of the
Renaissance,
whose
tendency
to
facile
philosophic synopsis
was an inheritance from
antiquity.
New-
ton's
contemporaries
were
largely exemplars
of the elder manner of
thought,
wherein science and
philosophy
were still conceived to be one
thing,
and that
thing
not so remote from
poetry. Boyle,
for all his
devotion to
experiment, belongs essentially
to the same
category
as
the
early
Greek
naturalists;
he was concerned with the
why
and how
of
things,
and he
attempted
in his
writings
to work out a
complete
system
of the cosmos.
Roger Cotes,
in his
preface
to the second edition of Newton's
Principia,
makes clear the contrast between the Newtonian natural
philosophy
and all that had
gone
before. After
dismissing
scholastic
thought
as
entirely worthless,
Cotes
proceeds
to attack such
systems
as those of
Hobbes, Boyle, Descartes,
and Gassendi:
1
The Wisdom
of God, p. 60.
59
Those who
suppose
all matter
homogeneous,
and that the
variety
of forms
which is seen in bodies arise from some
very plain
and
simple
affections of the
component particles,
and
by going
on from
simple things
to those which are
more
compounded, they certainly proceed right
if
they
attribute no more
properties
to those
primary
affections of the
particles
than nature has done.
But when
they
take a
liberty
of
imagining
at
pleasure
unknown
figures
and
magnitudes,
and uncertain situations and motions of the
parts,
and moreover
of
supposing
occult fluids endued with occult
motions, they
now run out
into dream
chimeras,
and
neglect
the true constitution of
things,
which is
certainly
not to be
expected
from fallacious
conjectures,
when we can
scarcely
reach it
by
the most certain observations. Those who fetch from
hypothesis
the foundation on which
they
build their
speculations may form, indeed,
an
ingenious romance,
but a romance it will still be.'
Newton, according
to
Cotes,
was the first to rest his conclusions on
measured
experiment.
As his work came to be
comprehended,
it de-
stroyed
the kind of
indulgence
in
poetic cosmologizing which,
even
throughout
his own
lifetime, enjoyed
a considerable
vogue.
If
science,
in the modern
sense,
removed itself with Newton from
the immediate realm on which the ancient Atomists could have further
effect, philosophy
did the same
thing
with Locke. His concern with
the nature of
knowledge,
and the earnestness of his effort to avoid
presupposition
about matter and
mind, separate him, according
to the
terms of Cotes's
preface,
no less
clearly
than Newton from the
romancers.
Outside the fields of
science, philosophy,
and
religious
contro-
versy,
there were more
genial spirits
to whom the re-discovered
Epi-
curus beckoned
attractively.
The
prevailing
French influence on taste
had its effect
here,
combined with the force of the new naturalism.
Both Saint Evremond's defense and Rondel's life of
Epicurus
were
circulated in
England,
and were used
by John Digby
as
prefatory
matter for his
translation, Epicurus's Morals,
a
generation
after their
composition.
The centenarian Richard
Bulstrode,
who had
spent
so varied and
active an
existence,
devoted the leisure of his old
age
to
writing
lov-
ingly
of the
joys
of
contemplative
retirement. He found
spiritual
companions among
the
Epicureans
who "did bereave themselves
of all sensual
delights,
and contemned the
glory
and
pomp
of all
1
Newton, Principles of
Mathematical
Philosophy,
Cotes's Preface
(1713).
worldly
wealth and
greatness,
for the
only pleasure
of contem-
plation." 1
Sir William
Temple, champion
of the
ancients,
ranks none
higher
than Democritus in either
physics
or
morals.2
He chooses a line from
Lucretius for a
caption
to his
"Essay upon
Ancient and Modern Learn-
ing,"
-
"Juvat antiquos
accedere
fontes,"
I
writes
Temple, altering
the
passage
to suit his
purpose,
- and he calls Lucretius a master of
"deepest
natural
philosophy." 4
He
accepts
Lucretius's view of
Epi-
curus's
greatness.5
His
essay "Upon
the Gardens of
Epicurus"
is a
mellow and
charming
discussion of
gardens,
the first
part
of which
resolves itself into
praise
of the
Epicureans
and reflections on their
morals. It is clear that
they appealed
to
Temple
more than
any
other
ancient sect. He was
warmly
attracted
by
the
personality
of the
founder of the
school,
and
appreciated
his frank
understanding
of
the relation of
physical well-being
to
spiritual tranquillity.
He treats
Caesar, Atticus, Maecenas, Lucretius, Virgil,
and Horace as
Epicu-
reans,
and
praises
the last three as at once the best
philosophers
and
the
supreme poets
of Rome.6
Even if a
generally
increased
accuracy
in references to
Epicurus
and
a more amiable
judgment
of his morals had been the chief
literary
re-
sults of the
Epicurean revival, English
criticism would have been some-
what benefited
thereby.
But there was another result of
greater
im-
portance:
Lucretius came to take more
nearly
his
proper place among
the Roman
poets.
Whereas at the
height
of the Renaissance Lucretius
had ranked in the minds of most
English
men of letters as little better
than a
literary curiosity,
the Restoration found him a
popular
and in-
fluential writer.
The last half of the seventeenth
century produced
four extended
English
translations and
many
brief
poetic paraphrases
of Lucretius.
Few of its
poets
fail to reflect some
degree
of interest in his
poem
and
its account of the nature of
things.
1 Miscellaneous
Essays (London, 1715),
p.
93.
2
Temple,
Works
(London, 1814), III,
p.
495.
Lucretius
2, 927:
"iuvat
integros
accedere fontis."
4Works, III, p. 423-
Id., III, p. 462.
6
Id., III, pp.
202
ff.
The Ancient Atomists 61
Two of the more ambitious versions of Lucretius have never been
published.
That
by
Sir Edward
Sherburne,
a considerable
portion
of Book
I,
is in closed heroic
couplets
which are almost
illegible.'
That of Mrs.
Lucy
Hutchinson is the first
complete
translation of
Lucretius into
English.2
Mrs. Hutchinson's translation of the six
books, 1657,
is a left-
handed
compliment
to the
poet's
new
prominence. Such,
she
says
in
her dedication to the Earl of
Anglesey,
is her
opinion
of the material
over which she has
labored,
that
("though
a masculine wit hath
thought
it worth
printing
his head in a laurel crown for the version of
one of these
books")
had she not
unfortunately
lost a
copy
she would
consign
the whole work to the flames. She had heard so much dis-
course of the
things
it contained that she translated it out of
curiosity,
only
to find that she abhorred it for its atheisms and
impieties.
Lucre-
tius was a
"lunatic, who,
not able to dive into the true
original
and
cause of
beings
and
accidents,
admires them who devised this
casual,
irrational,
dance of atoms."
Each of the six books of the translation is
preceded by
an
"argu-
ment." The
argument
of Book I
begins:
The
poet
Venus invocates and
sings
To Memmius the
original
of
things;
To
gods
untroubled
quiet attributes;
To
superstition
heinous crimes
imputes;
Then shows that
nothing
without seed can
rise;
That the immortal matter never
dies;
That unseen bodies and
vacuity
The two first
principles
of all
things
be.
The dedication and Book VI are in Mrs. Hutchinson's own
hand;
Books I-V are in a more
polished script;
Mrs. Hutchinson seems to
have valued her achievement at least to the extent of
having
a scribe
copy
it. The text is
complete, except
for such
passages
as would seem
coarse to a
Puritan;
in such
instances,
Mrs. Hutchinson
paraphrases
or omits. She
is,
in the
main, very
faithful to the
Latin;
but in
marginal
notes
throughout,
written in her
hand,
she comments on the text.
The word
"impious"
occurs
frequently;
and in several instances
1
British
Museum,
Sloane MS.
837,
fol. 6.
2
British
Museum,
Additional MS.
19333.
Lucretius's
thought
is such as to convince his translator that the
legend
of his madness is well founded:
1
"Poor deluded bewitched mad
wretch,"
Mrs. Hutchinson annotates the latter
part
of Book III. I
quote
her version of the
opening
lines of Book II.
Pleasant it
is,
when
rough
winds seas
deforme,
On shore to see men labour in the
storme;
Not that our
pleasure springs
from their
distresse,
But from the safetie we our selues
possesse.
Pleasant,
when without
danger
tis
beheld,
To see
engag'd
armies in the
feild;
But
nothing
a more
pleasant prospect yeilds,
Then that
high
tower which wise mens
learning builds,
Where well
secur'd,
we
wandring troopes survey,
Who in a maze of error search their
way,
For witt and
glorie earnestly contend,
Both
day
and
night
in vaine endeavors
spend,
To hord
vp wealth,
and swim in full
delights.
O
wretched soules whom
ignorance benights!
To what vast
perills
are
yr
lives
exposd,
With what darke mists is
your
whole
age
enclosd:
See
you
not nature
only
seeks to
find,
Within a
body
free from
payne,
a mind
Full of
content, exempt
from feare or
care,
Learne then from
hence,
that humane natures are
With little
pleasd,
and best themselues
enioy,
When
payne
doth not
torment,
nor
pleasure cloy.2
It was the head of
John Evelyn
which was
printed
in a laurel crown.
His translation antedates Mrs. Hutchinson's
by
one
year,
and was
prompted by
a less
equivocal purpose. Only
one book of his version
was
published;
he was
apparently
deterred from further
publication
by
both his moral and his
literary
scruples.3
Of his admiration for
1
Saint
Jerome, Chronici
Canones, entry
on Lucretius under the
year 94
B.C.:
"
...
postea
amatorio
poculo
in furorem
versus...."
2
In this
quotation
I
keep
the
original spelling
and
punctuation; they may
be
of
interest,
inasmuch
as,
so far as I
know,
no
portion
of Mrs. Hutchinson's transla-
tion has
appeared
in
print
before.
3 The first are
expressed
in his
correspondence
with
Jeremy Taylor (see, below,
section on
Taylor),
and the second in his Preface: An
Essay
on
the
First Book
of
T. Lucretius Carus De Rerum Natura
Interpreted
and Made
English
Verse
(London,
1656).
63
Lucretius there can be no
doubt;
it is
expressed directly
in his
pref-
ace,
"The
Interpreter
to Him That
Reads,"
and
indirectly by
the
amount of
study displayed
in the "Animadversions" or notes.
If Professor Munro dismisses
Evelyn's
notes as
trivial,
it should be
remembered that
they
were
published, according
to the stationer's
note,
without
Evelyn's permission. They comprise
the first extended
commentary
on Lucretius to be written in
English,
and furnish a learned
list of
analogues
and contrasts to the chief doctrines. The criticism is
always sympathetic,
and it ranks as one of the best defenses of the
philosophers
who were
being
at the moment
widely
attacked.
Evelyn
refers his readers not to Cicero or
Plutarch,
but to
Diogenes Laertius,
for the facts about "our
great Epicurus,"
"who
expressed
such an
admirable
patience
and
tranquillity
of
spirit,
and
gave
so
many
in-
comparable precepts
to those which were about him."
1
In his discus-
sion of Lucretius's denial of
immortality, Evelyn
declares that Lucre-
tius was better than those who
accepted
the
superstitions
of Greek
mythology
for
religion.2
It is in the
preface
that
Evelyn gives
his full
appreciation
of Lucre-
tius as a
poet.
He endorses the
opinion
of
Gisanus,
who
thought,
"with
pure
commiseration of such as
neglected
this
author,"
that no
man who
neglected
Lucretius "was ever
capable
of
becoming
either a
good philosopher
or a tolerable
poet."
It was because of the excellence
of Lucretius's
philosophy
that
Evelyn
undertook the translation:
"my
design
hath been no other than to make men admirers of the rites of
philosophy."
It was because of Lucretius's
poetic
excellence that he
abandoned his
attempt
after
completing
the first book: "it is
impos-
sible for
any
traduction to reach the
poetic elegance
of the
original."
Of this
poetic
excellence
Evelyn
contributes the first
English
eulogy:
But to render a
perfect
and
lively image
of this excellent
piece,
and
speak
of its colours in the
original,
cannot be better
accomplished
then in the
resembling
it to the
surprising
artifice of some various
scene,
curious land-
skip,
or delicious
prospect;
where sometimes from the
cragginess
of in-
accessible
rocks,
uneven and horrid
precipices (such
as are to be
found,
respecting
those admirable
plains
of
Lombardy)
there breaks and divides (as
the
wandring
traveller
approaches)
a
passage
to his
eyes
down into some
1
Id., p.
IIo. 2
Id., pp. I
12 ff.
64
Charles Trawick
Harrison
goodly
and luxurious
valley;
where the
trembling serpenting
of some
chrystal rivolet, fringed
with the curious
diaper
of the softer
meadows,
the
umbrage
and harmonious
warbling
of the cooler
groves,
the
frisking
and
lowing
of the
wandring cattle,
the exuberant festoons of a bountiful
autumn,
the
smiling crops
of a
hopeful harvest,
and all the
youth
and
pride
of a cheerful
spring, conspire
to create a new
paradise,
and
recompense
him
the
pains
of so
many
difficult accesses. For our
poet
seems here to have been
of counsel with nature
herself,
when she
disposed
the
principles
of
things
(to
speak
in the dialect of those
times)
and framed that beautiful machine which
we
daily contemplate
with so much
variety
and admiration.... Never had
man a more rich and luxurious
fancy,
more keen and
sagacious
instruments
to
square
the most stubborn and rude of materials.
The
closing
section of
Evelyn's preface
is addressed to the
"scrupu-
lous" readers who fear the influence of Lucretius.
Evelyn
insists that
it is
folly
to discard a thousand
parts
of
honey
for one of
poison,
and
denies that Lucretius's views are more unchristian than those of other
Greek and Roman thinkers.
Since
Evelyn's
Lucretius has never been
reprinted,
it is
perhaps
not
amiss to
say
that it is in
open
heroic
couplets,
and that its
phraseology
is,
in
my opinion, frequently pleasanter
and more
appropriate
than
that of Creech's more familiar version. In his
"flaming
limits of the
universe,"
1
for
instance,
he is about as
happy
as
any
of the subse-
quent
translators. It is
true,
on the other
hand,
that
Evelyn
smooths
over awkward or blank
spots
in the text in a somewhat
high-handed
manner. Nor does he
always
understand the Latin
clearly;
he renders
"sed naturae
species, ratioque,"
2
But
by
such
species
as from nature
flow,
And what from
right
informed reason
grow.
Thomas Creech's version of Titus Lucretius
Carus,
His Six Books
of Epicurean Philosophy
was first
printed
in
I683.
It was issued fre-
quently thereafter,
three
reprints being
called for before
1700,
and
remained the standard version for more than a
century.
Creech's
preface
contains a brief
history
of atomism and life of
Lucretius,
not
very sympathetically
written. The notes are hostile and
unintelligent,
displaying
far less
understanding
of Lucretius than
Evelyn's
notes do:
Creech
actually
takes the invocation to Venus as an
example
of
Epicu-
1
"flammantia
moenia
mundi,"
Lucretius
i,
73. 2 Id., I, 148.
The Ancient
Atomists
65
rean licentiousness. Nahum Tate's chief
praise
of Creech is for his
correction of Lucretius's
errors, thereby turning
the
garden
of
Epi-
curus into a
paradise.
Both introduction and notes are emended and
greatly enlarged
in the edition of
1714,
which is the result of revisions
after Creech's
death,
and which advertises itself as a
complete system
of the
Epicurean philosophy.
Further service to the
study
of Lucre-
tius was done
by
Creech in his edition of
1695,
the first edition of the
Latin text to be
prepared by
an
Englishman.
This is criticized
by
Pro-
fessor Munro as an
unoriginal
achievement: the notes are but
abridg-
ments of those in the earlier editions of Lambinus and Faber.'
Some idea of Lucretius's new
position among poets may
be
got
from
the
commendatory
verses on the translations of
Evelyn
and Creech.
Edmund
Waller, pioneer among
Restoration
poets,
contributes to
both. He characterizes the
genius
of Lucretius thus:
His boundless and
unruly
wit
To nature does no bounds
permit;
But
boldly
has removed those bars
Of heaven and earth and seas and stars.2
Richard Brown calls Lucretius "nature's
great
code and
digest too,"
and attributes to him
knowledge
of
everything
since discovered
by
science.
Inspired
Lucretius alone
Is the oracle of all that can be known.3
Notable
among
the commenders of Creech are Mrs.
Aphra Behn,
Thomas
Otway,
and Richard Duke. Mrs. Behn calls Lucretius
divine,
and
professes
that
through
Creech's version he has
taught
her more
than all the
mighty
bards that went before.
Otway
marvels that the
"fiery
Muse
"
of "the
great
Lucretius" can be rendered into
English
at all. Duke
compares
Creech's achievement to that of Lucretius him-
self,
who
complained
of the
difficulty
of
putting
Greek
thought
into
Latin.4
Among
the friends of
Evelyn
who were
appreciative
of his efforts in
translating Lucretius,
none was more notable than
Jeremy Taylor.
1
Munro,
op.
cit., I, p. 17.
2 Evelyn's
Lucretius.
3 Loc. cit.
SLucretius
I, 136-145.
Taylor
is
hardly
more remarkable for his skill in
casuistry
and the
richness of his
prose
than for the
comparative liberality
of his views
and of his
learning.
The liberalism of his
thought
is
especially
evident
in the Ductor Dubitantium and the
Liberty of Prophesying;
that of his
knowledge pervades
all his
writings.
His
acquaintance
with the
classics,
and most
particularly
with the Greek
philosophers,
is reflected
in countless details of his work.
It is not
strange
that Lucretius
should
have had a
special appeal
for
Taylor;
for
they
were men of
markedly
similar
temperaments.
Each
chose to
present
an intricate
system
of
thought
in the most sonorous
language;
each was convinced of the
vanity
of human
ambition,
of the
negativity
of
joy;
each was in his richest vein when
dwelling
on
thoughts
of death and the
dying. Although
both of them
ostensibly
sought
to
deprive
death of its
horror,
both tend to
plunge
their readers
into
melancholy.
Evelyn
was one of
Taylor's
warmest
friends,
and we
get
some notion
of
Taylor's
fondness for Lucretius
through
his letters to
Evelyn.
In
a letter of
April 16, 1656,
the
translation, already
under
way,
is first
referred to.'
Taylor
mentions that Lucretius was far from
being
a
Christian,
but thinks
translating
him a task
worthy
of a Christian
gentleman.
"Since
you
are
engaged
in
it,
do not
neglect
to adorn
it,
and take what care of it it can
require."
Three months later 2
Taylor
acknowledges
the
copy
which
Evelyn
has sent
him,
but which he has
not
yet received,
and wishes he
might already
have
got it;
for "in
my
letter to the Countess of
Devonshire,
I
quote
some
things
out of Lucre-
tius,
which for her sake I was forced to
English
in
very
bad
verse,
be-
cause I had not
your
version
by
me to make use of it."
3
1
Taylor,
The Whole Works
(London, 1847-54), I, p.
li.
2
July 19, 1656; Works, I, p.
lii.
3
This is the translation at the end of Deus
Justificatus (Works, VII, p. 537):
"Fear not to own what's said because it's
new;
Weigh
well and
wisely
if the
thing
be true.
Truth and not
conquest
is the best
reward;
'Gainst falsehood
only
stand
upon thy guard."
(Lucretius 2, 1039 ff.)
Taylor
uses two lines from Lucretius
(2,
1087-1o88)
on
the title
page
of this treatise.
67
After another month
I
the translation has been received and read:
At last I have
got possession
of that favor
you long
since
designed
to me:
your
Lucretius.
Sir,
shall I tell
you really
how I am
surprised?
I did be-
lieve (and
you
will
say
I had some
reason)
that Lucretius could not be well
translated. I
thought you
would do it as well as
anyone,
but I knew the
difficulty,
ex
parte rei,
was almost
insuperable. But, Sir,
I
rejoice
that I
find
myself deceived,
and am
pleased you
have so
wittily reproved my
too
hasty
censure. Methinks now Lucretius is an
easy
and smooth
poet.
We learn from
Taylor's
letter of November
15
that
Evelyn
has be-
gun
to feel
compunction
about the
advisability
of
making
the material-
ist
poet
more
available,
and considers
discontinuing
the task.
Taylor
strongly
advises him to
go
on with his "rich
version." 2
Taylor's
interest in scientific
cosmology
was
slight.
There is no
reference in his
writings
to the Baconian advance
3
in method which
took
place during
his lifetime and which was
causing
so much
debate,
with the Atomists
involved, during
his most
productive years.
Con-
sequently
the
quality
of his interest in the Atomists was different from
that of most other
mid-century
divines. He saw them as commenta-
tors on life and
morals,
and
regarded
them as a source of
practical
wisdom. Nowhere does he undertake to refute
any
of their
teachings,
but refers to them
always
either to defend or to endorse them.
Democritus,
known
primarily
as a
metaphysical theorist, appealed
to
Taylor
less than
Epicurus
and Lucretius. But he found
something
of Democritus's moral views in
Stobaeus,
and
occasionally
availed
himself of them.4
Taylor
considered much of
Epicurus's
moral
philosophy penetrat-
ing
and
well-founded,
and
repeatedly
refers to
Epicurus's
view as to
the
practical folly
of
committing
crime:
Epicurus
affirmed it to be
impossible
for a man to be concealed
always.
Upon
the mistake of which he was accused
by
Plutarch and others to have
supposed
it lawful to do
injustice secretly;
whereas his
design
was to ob-
struct that
gate
of
iniquity,
and to make men believe that even that sin
which was committed most
secretly
would some time or other be discovered
1
August 23, 1656; Works, 1, p.
liv.
2
Id., I, p.
Iv.
3
But he had read Bacon's De
Augmentis
Scientiarum
(see Works, I, p. xv).
4 Works, X, pp. 133, 577-
and
brought
to
punishment;
all which is to be done
by
the
extra-regular
events of
providence,
and the certain accusations and discoveries of con-
science.'
Taylor gives
the same
argument
as a reason for
living justly: "They
that live
unjustly always
live
unjustly
and
fearfully; because, although
their crime be
secret, yet they
can not be confident that it shall be
so."
2
The theme recurs in the Sermons.3
There are two other doctrines of some
importance
in
Taylor's
thought
for which he
gives
credit to
Epicurus.
The first is the defini-
tion of
pleasure:
"The limit of our
joy
is the absence of some
degree
of sorrow." There
is, however,
a considerable difference here between
Taylor's meaning
and that of
Epicurus:
while
Epicurus's emphasis
is
on the
positive desirability
of
tranquillity, Taylor's
is on the trials of
human life. "The
prosperity
of this world is so
infinitely
soured with
the
overflowing
of
evil,
that he is counted most
happy
who hath the
fewest;
all conditions
being
evil and
miserable, they
are
only
dis-
tinguished by
the number of calamities."
4
Far more remarkable than his use of the
negative
definition of
pleas-
ure is
Taylor's
use of
Epicurus's conception
of the social
contract,
particularly
in that it is
applied
to
religion.
In his Law
of Nature,5
as he seeks to
explain
the
origin
of
organized religion,
he endorses the
Epicurean
account of men's
conspiring
for the common
good, giving
symbols
and sacraments to each
other,
that none should do or receive
injury.
He
quotes
Lucretius's version in his effort to establish certain
details as to the nature of the contract.6
In one
astonishing
connection does
Taylor
make use of
Epicurean
physical dogma,
and here his
eye
is
steadily
on Lucretius: the refuta-
tion of the
papist
doctrine of Transubstantiation. In several
pivotal
arguments
he invokes
Epicurean
naturalism
against
scholastic meta-
1
Works, IX, p.
ig. Lucretius
3, IOI
I-I023.
2
Works, IX, p.
20.
Taylor
draws on Lucretius
(5, 1154-I 157)
for the same
point.
Lucretius
goes
on to
say
that
many people
have
betrayed
themselves while
asleep
or
raving
with
fever.
Taylor
refers to this
possibility
in one of his sermons
(Works, IV, p. 264).
See also Lucretius
4,
ioli ft.
4 Works, III, p.
228. See
Epicurus
III
(Epistle
to
Menoeceus).
5
Id., IX, p. 300.
See
Epicurus
IV
(Principal Doctrines), 31-38.
6
Taylor, Works, IX, p.
281. Lucretius
5,
IOI9-1020.
The Ancient
Atomnists
69
physics.
In his treatment of the
argument
"Transubstantiation is
against
sense" 1 he commits himself to the first canon of
Epicurean
epistemology:
And
by
what means can an assent be
naturally produced
but
by
those in-
struments
by
which God
conveys
all notices to
us;
that
is, by seeing
and
hearing?
Faith comes
by hearing
and evidence comes
by seeing;
and if a
man in his wits and in his health can be deceived in these
things,
how can
we come to believe?
"Corpus
enim
per
se communis dedicat esse
sensus;
cui nisi
prima
fides fundata
valebit,
haud erit occultis de rebus
quo
referentes
confirmare animi
quicquam
ratione
queamus." 2
Not
only
does
Taylor
thus
adopt
the first
premise
of the Atomists'
but,
in his further
argument
that one
body may
not be in two
places
nor two bodies in one
place,
he
accepts
the fundamental division of
physical reality
into matter and
void.3
After
selecting
and
quoting
pointed
verses of Lucretius which bear on the
topic,
and
developing
the
explanation
of all natural
phenomena through
the
supposition
of
indivisible, impenetrable
bits of matter in the
void, Taylor actually
examines Biblical miracle in the
light
of the doctrine. Here he em-
ploys
Lucretius's
exposition
of
density
and
rarity.
When
Jesus ap-
peared
before his
disciples
who were behind the closed
door,
did
he in
any
unnatural manner
pass through
the door in order to reach
them? No.
The door
might
be made to
yield
to his creator as
easily
as water which
is fluid be made firm under his feet. For consistence or
lability
are not
essential to wood or
water;
for water can
naturally
be made
consistent,
as
when turned to
ice;
and wood that can
naturally
be
petrified can, upon
the
efficiency
of an
equal agent,
be made
thin,
or
labile,
or inconsistent.
Again Taylor
indicates the source of his
argument
with a
quotation
from
Lucretius,4
and
goes
on to
explain
the Israelites'
crossing
the Red
Sea in the
light
of the same
conception.
1
Works, VI, pp. 85 ff.
Lucretius
I, 422-425.
He endorses Lucretius
I, 343-345,
and
356-357.
Lucretius
I, 565-569.
70
The third
part
of the Lucretian scheme which
Taylor poses against
Saint Thomas is the relation of accident to substance.' He maintains
with the Atomists that the existence of accidents is a
genuine
and
objective
characteristic of
bodies,
and that the relation between ac-
cident and substance can be accounted for
only
in terms of natural
law.
How can we be said to touch Christ's
body,
when we
only
touch and
taste the accidents of bread without the
substance,
so to do
being impossi-
ble in nature?
"Tangere
enim et
tangi,
nisi
corpus,
nulla
potest
res."
2
Though Taylor
was
capable
of
making
so technical a use of Lucre-
tius,
Lucretius's real
appeal lay
in his comments on the conduct of
life,
the
vanity
of its
pursuits,
the
pangs
of
repentance
and
fear, and,
above
all,
the
ever-present
human consciousness that death is in-
escapable.
Man's
understanding,
writes
Taylor,
is born
along
with his
body;
we
grow
in our use of reason and
power
of deliberation not less than
in limbs and
physical strength:
Nam
velut infirmo
pueri teneroque vagantur
corpore,
sic animi
sequitur
sententia tenvis.
inde ubi robustis adolevit viribus
aetas,
consilium
quoque
maius et auctior est animi
vis."
Yet reason does not come to function in
purity.
"We
usually
be-
lieve what we have a mind
to;
our
understanding,
if a crime be
lodged
in the
will, being
like icterical
eyes, transmitting
the
species
to the
soul with
prejudice, disaffection,
and colors of their own
framing."
4
Thus
perverted
are we in
using
our brief
grant
of
earthly existence,
since we
stay
not
here, being people
of a
day's
abode. Our
age
is like that of
a
fly
and
contemporary
with a
gourd.
"Hoc etiam faciunt ubi discubuere
tenentque
pocula saepe
homines et inumbrant ora
coronis,
1 Works, VI, p. 130.
Lucretius
I, 438-481-
2
Lucretius
1,
304-
3
Lucretius
3, 447-450o; quoted
and
paraphrased by Taylor, Works, III, p. 448.
4Works, II, pp. 342-343;
Lucretius
4, 332-336.
71
ex animo ut dicant 'brevis hic est fructus
homullis;
iam fuerit
neque post umquam
revocare licebit."'
1
Men live in their courses and
by turns;
their
light
burns a
while,
and then
it burns blue and
faint,
and men
go
to converse with
spirits.
" . .
.
inter se mortales mutua vivunt.
augescunt
aliae gentes,
aliae minuuntur,
inque
brevi
spatio
mutantur saecla animantum
et
quasi
cursores vitai
lampada
tradunt."
2
Man,
smitten with consciousness of his inevitable
end,
is tormented
by
the fear of
punishment
after death. His horror of
earthly punish-
ment - the
dungeon,
the
rack, scourgings,
the torch - causes his
imagination
to foresee the same
things grown
worse after death.
"Here after all on earth the life of fools becomes a hell." 3
In
describing
the
spiritual
rebirth which can be
brought
about
through repentance, Taylor quotes
Lucretius's
nam
quodcumque
suis mutatum finibus
exit,
continuo hoc mors est illius
quod
fuit
ante,4
applying it,
of
course,
in a
very
different sense from that which Lucre-
tius
gives
it.
The
amassing
of
earthly goods
is but
vanity:
"'misero misere' aiunt
'
omnia ademit
una dies infesta tibi tot
praemia
vitae."'
"
What fruit had
ye
then in those
things
whereof
ye
are now ashamed? for
the end of those
things
is death.
"
. .
.
eripitur persona,
manet res." 6
Indeed
they
can not
longer
dwell on the
estate,
but it remains
unrifled
and
descends upon the next
heir.
?
The theme is one which
Taylor
loves to dwell
upon.
It
habitually
calls to his mind the Lucretian line
which, by
virtue of his mistrans-
1
Works, III, p. 276; Lucretius 3, 912-915.
2
Works, VIII, p. 433;
Lucretius
2, 76-79.
3 Works, IX, pp. 25-26;
Lucretius
3, 1023.
4
Lucretius
I, 670-671.
6
Id., 3, 898-899; misquoted by Taylor, Works, III, p. 911.
6
Lucretius
3, 58. STaylor, Works, IV, p. 233.
72
Charles
Trawick
Harrison
lation,
was his
special
favorite: "We take
pains
to
heap up things
useful to our
life,
and
get
our death in the
purchase,
and the
person
is snatched
away
and the
goods
remain."'
It was not
only
in
commending
the translations of
Evelyn
and
Creech that the
poets
of the Restoration
period
reflected a
changed
attitude toward Lucretius.
Though
it would be
impossible
to claim
that Lucretius came into
recognition
as
great
as that accorded to old
favorites like
Virgil, Ovid,
and
Horace,
it is not too much to
say
that
he
passed
within a few
years
from
being quite generally despised
or
ignored
to
being
studied and esteemed
by
a
comparatively
wide
group
of readers.
Early
in the
century
Lucretius had touched
English poetry chiefly
as a
point
of attack for the reflective
Spenserians.
It is
appropriate,
then,
to mention that a belated
disciple
of
Spenser,
Mrs. Katherine
Philips,
saw the
Epicurean teachings
in a new
light.
Like her
prede-
cessors,
Mrs.
Philips
wrote
meditatively
of the
world,
the
soul, happi-
ness,
and death. For
her, however,
it is the "innocent
Epicure"
who
has mastered the secret of
happiness;
his
single
breast can furnish him
with a continual feast.
All the several
passions
men
express
Are but for pleasure in a different
dress.2
Milton too
may
be treated as a successor to the
Spenserians.
His
promise
that his "adventurous
song"
With no middle
flight
intends to soar
Above the Aonian
mount,
while it
pursues
Things unattempted yet
in
prose
or
rhyme,
furnishes at once an echo of Lucretius and a link with Du Bartas.3
I
Taylor, Works, III, p. 270.
2
Saintsbury,
Minor Caroline
Poets, I, p. 573.
Lucretius
I, 922-930:
nec me animi fallit
quam
sint
obscura;
sed acri
percussit thyrso
laudis
spes magna
meum cor
et simul incussit suavem mi in
pectus
amorem
musarum, quo
nunc instinctus mente
vigenti
avia Pieridum
peragro
loca nullius ante
trita solo. iuvat
integros
accedere fontis
73
That Milton was
thoroughly acquainted
with Lucretius
is,
I
believe,
generally acknowledged.
Munro
says,
"Lucretius has often been imi-
tated
by
him in the Paradise Lost." 1
Milton used Lucretius as a school
text,
and was
adversely
criticized
therefor a hundred and
fifty years
later.2 In the
Areopagitica,
he refers
to both Lucretius and
Epicurus
a number of
times,
and in one instance
accepts
the tradition that Cicero edited the De Rerum
Natura.3 In
Paradise
Regained
the
Epicureans
are
among
the sects called
up
in
the vision of Athens.
As for the imitations of Lucretius in Paradise
Lost,
it is easier to be
convinced that the influence is there than to
pick
out
specific
instances
of it. The Lucretian cosmos is
simply
one of the elements of Milton's
cosmos,
and one is conscious of its contribution to "the void
profound
of unessential
night":
this wild
abyss,
The womb of nature and
perhaps
her
grave,
Of neither
sea,
nor
shore,
nor
air,
nor
fire,
But all those in their
pregnant
causes mix't
Confus'dly,
and which thus must ever
fight,
Unless th'
Almighty
Maker them ordain
His dark materials to create more worlds.4
Not
only
do the confusion of the elements and the succession of
worlds
suggest
Lucretius. These
elements,
Aristotelian in their
large
classification,
are Lucretian in their conformation and their behavior:
For
hot, cold, moist,
and
dry,
four
champions
fierce
Strive here for
maistrie,
and to battle
bring
Their
embryon atoms; they
around the
flag
Of each his
faction,
in their several clans
Light-armed
or
heavy, sharp, smooth,
swift or
slow,
Swarm
populous,
unnumbered as the sands
Of Barca or
Cyrene's
torrid
soil,
atque haurire, iuvatque
novos
decerpere
flores
insignemque
meo
capiti petere
inde coronam
unde
prius
nulli velarint
tempora
musae.
1 Munro, op. cit., II, p.
20.
2 See Charles
Symmons, Life of
Milton
(London, 18o6), p. 158.
3
John Milton, Works,
ed. Milford
(London, 1851), IV, p. 403.
Saint
Jerome,
Chronici
Canones,
loc.
cit.
4
Paradise
Lost, II,
11.
9io-i96.
74
Levied to side with
warring winds,
and
poise
Their lighter wings.'
Milton's mind was the
only
one
among
the transitional
poets
which
had so
digested
the ideas of Lucretius as to make
proper imaginative
use of them.
Waller, Denham,
and
Cowley represent very
different
attitudes. For all Waller's lavish
praise
of the translations of
Evelyn
and
Creech,
with the incidental
praise
of Lucretius
himself,
his
only
indebtedness to
Epicurean conceptions
is a
slight employment
of the
theology
in his Divine
Poems.2
The same
group
of
poems
is
brought
to a close with a
quotation
from Lucretius. Denham is
exceptional
among
the court
poets
in that he takes the
anti-Epicurean part.
He
is
suspicious
of natural
philosophy, feeling
that
"sublunary
science is
but a
guess,"
3
and
offers,
in his
Cato
Major,
a version of Cicero on
immortality
to "our atheistical
sophisters."
4
Cowley,
on the other
hand,
was a friend to
science,
as is attested
by
his Pindaric ode "To Mr. Hobbes" and his
eulogy
of Bacon and
philosophy
in the
poem
"To the
Royal Society":
Philosophy
the
great
and
only
heir
Of all that human
knowledge
which has been
Unforfeited
by
man's rebellious
sin.5
In the
"Hymn
to
Light"
the
figures
take on a Lucretian
tinge
as the
busy
swarm of antic atoms are seen to break to various clusters
beneath the
eye
of
light.6
Cowley's
friendliness to
Epicurus
is
explicit
in the
Essays.
He
dwells at some
length
on the
delights
of
Epicurus's garden
in "Of
Obscurity,"
and in "The Garden" he illustrates his
pastoral
motive
with a further
apology
for the
Epicurean
scheme of life:
When
Epicurus
to the world had
taught
That
pleasure
was the chiefest
good,
(And
was, perhaps,
i' the
right,
if
rightly understood),
1
Paradise
Lost, II,
11.
898-906.
2
Edmund
Waller, Poems,
ed. Muses'
Library (London, 1904),
II,
p.
120.
John Denham,
The Poetical
Works,
ed. Banks
(New Haven, 1928), p.
120.
4
Id., p. 203.
5
Abraham
Cowley, Poems,
ed.
Waller (Cambridge, 1905),
p.
448.
I6
d., p. 445.
75
His life he to his doctrine
brought,
And in a
garden's
shade that
soverign pleasure sought.
Whoever a true
Epicure
would be
May
there find cheap and virtuous luxury.'
Part of
Epicurus's
new
appeal,
as to
Cowley
and
Temple, lay
in his
sophisticated picturesqueness.
Though Cowley's
advanced
point
of view led him to
study
Lucre-
tius,
and
undoubtedly
owed
something
to that
study,
he was less
sym-
pathetic
to Lucretius as a
person
than to
Epicurus: "Lucretius, by
his
favor, though
a
good poet,
was but an ill-natured man when he said
it was
delightful
to see other men in a
great
storm. And no less ill-
natured should I think
Democritus,
who
laughed
at the world." 2
There was no
poet
of the
generation
who was more devoted to natu-
ral
philosophy
than the
Lady Margaret,
Duchess of Newcastle. Her
treatise on The Grounds
of
Natural
Philosophy displays many
advanced
views about matter and
motion,
but seems in no wise indebted to
Lucretius. It is rather
astonishing, then,
to find that her most ambi-
tious
poem
3
(which
is unnamed but
might
have been called "Of the
Nature of
Things")
is filled with Lucretian notions. That is to
say,
she builds her universe of atoms and
void,
the former
being ignored
in
her
essay
and the existence of the latter denied. The bulk of the
poem
is devoted to
showing
how various kinds of atoms
may
combine to
make various substances. Even
here, however,
there is no
sign
of
direct indebtedness to
Lucretius;
she
may
well have
got
all her ideas
from current discussions of atomism. I see no reason for
doubting
that she was honest in her declaration that she had not studied
any
of
the
philosophers,
and that she read no
language
but
English.4
Samuel
Butler,
like
Denham,
disliked
metaphysics;
he never lost
an
opportunity
to
poke
fun at the
speculations
of his
contemporaries.5
In the character of "A
Philosopher"
he accuses the
metaphysician
of
making
nature fit his
hypotheses
whether
they
fit nature or
not,
and
1
Cowley, Essays, Plays, etc.,
ed.
Waller
(Cambridge, 19o6), p.
424.
2
Sir Thomas
Browne, sympathetic
to
Epicurus, repeatedly
criticized Democritus
on these
grounds.
3 Poems,
or Several Fancies
(London,
i668),
first
poem.
4
Id., introductory epistle
"To Natural
Philosophers."
6
Butler,
Genuine Remains
(London, 1759), I, p. 233.
76
takes a
special dig
at revived atomism as it is
exemplified
in the
Phy-
siologia-Epicuro-Gassendo-Charltoniana
of Walter
Charleton.1 Dry-
den, by contrast,
admired Dr. Charleton
enough
to address a
poem
to
him. Butler's absurd
Sidrophel
in Hudibras has a brain made
up
of
"justling
atoms." 2
The
greatest service,
both in elucidation and in
praise,
done to Lucre-
tius
by any poet
of the Restoration
period
was
by Dryden.
For the
first
time, parts
of Lucretius were turned into
worthy English
verse:
verse somewhat too
urbane, perhaps,
to be
entirely appropriate,
but
verse which is in its own
way masterly,
which avoids a too faultless
flow
by
the occasional Alexandrine
substitutions,
and which
gives
ample
evidence of
springing
from
genuine poetic appreciation.
Dryden's appreciation
of Lucretius was of
long standing.
He
says
in his Preface to
Sylvae
that his translations of
1685
but fulfilled an in-
tention conceived
twenty years before.3
His criticism of Lucretius
in the Preface shows careful
study
and
ripe judgment.
I wish I could
agree
with Mr. Mark Van Doren that
Dryden
had
adopted
Lucretius's
world,4
but I can not.
Dryden's
closest
sympa-
thies and relations were with the more urbane
Augustans
and the silver
satirists. He turned most
frequently
to
Virgil,
and to
Horace, Ovid,
and
Juvenal
more than to Lucretius. The Lucretian
passages
he chose
to translate are the invocation to
Venus,
the
"Suave,
mari
magno,"
the nature of
love,
the fear of
death,
and the "Tum
porro puer
"
from
Book V
-
none of them
directly treating
of
cosmology.
In
cosmology
he turned with more interest to
Pythagoras:
Ovid's version of the
Pythagorean philosophy
seemed to him the most beautiful
part
of the
Metamorphoses,
and he translated it at
length.
Of the Lucretian
pas-
sages,
it is "On the Fear of Death" which is most
feelingly done,
as
well as most considerable in
length:
here
Dryden
finds Lucretius's
arguments "strong enough
to make a reasonable man less in love with
life,
and
consequently
in less
apprehensions
of death."
5
1
Butler,
Genuine
Remains, II, p. 128.
2
Hudibras,
ed.
Milnes (London, 1883), II, p.
88.
3 John Dryden,
Poetical
Works, Cambridge
edition
(Boston, igog), p.
i8o.
4
The
Poetry of
John
Dryden (New York, 1920).
Comments
passim
on Lucre-
tius's influence.
6 Poetical
Works, p. I79-
77
But
Dryden
was an eclectic
poet:
he was
keenly
interested in the
scientific
progress
of his
day,
and he
rejoiced
that Bacon and
Boyle
had broken the servitude to Aristotle.' He
repeatedly
refers in his
prose
to
Hobbes,2
whom he
compares
to Lucretius on better
grounds
- his
dogmatic
tone 3
-
than were
usually given
for
grouping
the two
together.
The Lucretian
conception
which was
proving
so
provoca-
tive to natural
philosophers
finds
frequent imaginative place
in
Dry-
den's
poetry.
The
religious
meditation in
"Religio
Laici"
plays
with
the
hypothesis
of how
various atoms'
interfering
dance
Leapt into form (the noble work of chance).*
The
Pythagorean
and
Epicurean conceptions
are fused in the first
stanza of "Saint Cecilia's
Day":
From
harmony,
from
heavenly harmony
This universal frame
began:
When nature underneath a
heap
Of
jarring
atoms
lay,
And could not heave her
head,
The tuneful voice was heard from
high,
"Arise, ye
more than dead."
5
(To
make the fusion more
catholic, Dryden
has hot and cold and
moist and
dry leaping
to their stations in the
following stanza.) When,
in "Threnodia
Augustalis,"
the universe seems to fall about the heads
of faithful
subjects
at the death of
King Charles,
it is a universe of
"flaming
walls."
Dryden
was like Milton in his
mixing
of various
philosophic
ac-
counts of the nature of
things, and,
as in the case of
Milton,
he
recog-
nized and took
advantage
of the
peculiarly
useful contribution of
Lucretius. But there was less of the
large
Lucretian
imagination
in
Dryden
than in Milton.
The new
importance
of Lucretius to the Restoration
poets
meant
that his
poem
had become a storehouse of
passages
which invited
paraphrase. Although
the achievement of
Dryden
here is much more
1
Id., p. 17 ("
To Charleton
").
2
See, e.g.,
Preface to
Fables, passim.
Poetical
Works, p. 178 (Preface
to
Sylvae).
4
Id., p.
162.
5 Id., p. 252.
78
notable than that of
any
other
poet,
it was not
Dryden
who set the
example.
It was rather the
general change
in attitude which made
inevitable the use of Lucretius
by
a
generation
whose favorite
poetic
exercise was the translation of Latin verse. The
variety
of selections
chosen for
paraphrase
is
proof
that
poets
were
generally going
to Lucre-
tius's own
work,
and not
availing
themselves of
only
the sections
which were made
conspicuous by controversy.
Stepney's
"Nature of Dreams " is a
compendious imitation,
in
thirty-two lines,
of Lucretius
4, 962-1057.
The
poem begins
with a
definition of dreams as
"airy phantasms,"
and describes dreams of
the
hunt,
of
battle,
etc. The selection ends with an account of erotic
dreams.
It was the Lucretian
theology
which
especially
attracted Lord
Rochester,
inasmuch
as, according
to Dr.
Johnson,
he needed to as-
sume
infidelity
in order to
justify
his wickedness. Rochester renders
a few lines
describing
the carelessness of the
gods.2
We
gather
that
Rochester was a student of
Evelyn's translation,
since he
writes,
in
his "Satire
against
Mankind":
Reason, by
whose
aspiring influence,
We take a
flight beyond
material
sense,
Dive into
mysteries,
then
soaring pierce
The
flaming
limits of the
universe.3
The last line is lifted
bodily
from
Evelyn.
Thomas Flatman
expands
three lines
4
of Lucretius thus:
When thou shalt leave this miserable
life,
Farewell
thy house,
farewell
thy charming wife,
Farewell forever to
thy
soul's
delight,
Quite
blotted out in
everlasting night!
1
Alexander
Chalmers,
The Works
of
the
English
Poets
(London,
8iro),
VIII,
P. 356.
2
John Wilmot,
Lord
Rochester,
Collected
Works,
ed.
Hayward (London, 1926),
p. 45-
3 Id., p. 37-
4
iam
iam
non domus
accipiet
te
laeta,
nec uxor
optima
nec dulces occurrent oscula nati
praeripere
et tacita
pectus
dulcedine
tangent.
Lucretius
3, 894-896.
79
No more
thy pretty darling
babes shall
greet
thee
By thy
kind
name,
nor strive who first shall meet thee.
Their kisses with a secret
pleasure
shall not move thee!
For who shall
say
to
thy
dead
clay,
I love
thee?'
Much more ambitious than
any
of these brief bits is the Pindaric
ode in which Thomas
Sprat
writes of the Athenian
plague.
In his
preface
to the
poem, Sprat acknowledges
his indebtedness to both
Thucydides
and
Lucretius,2
but values
Thucydides
more
highly
as the
source of first-hand
knowledge.3 Sprat's
version is
very free, however,
and resembles Lucretius more than
Thucydides
because of its incor-
poration
of the vividness of detail with which Lucretius embellished
the earlier account.
Sprat
attributes the
plague
to
"putrid air";
disease is the
product
of "fatal seed." He imitates Lucretius in elab-
orating Thucydides's suggestion
that the vultures avoided the
carrion,
and borrows the
heightening
of Lucretius in
picturing parents
and
children
falling
dead on each other's bodies.
Sprat
was a
poor poet,
and none of his
attempts
in the ode form was
very successful;
it is a
specially
bad form for an account of the Athe-
nian
plague.
But it is
appropriate
that the historian of the
Royal
Society
should have
gone
to Lucretius for the
subject
of his most
elaborate venture into verse.
It is in these
writings
of the later seventeenth
century,
the frail
imitations
along
with the more solid
homage
of
Dryden
and
Temple,
that Lucretius first enters the stream of modern
English
literature.
1
Saintsbury,
Minor Caroline
Poets, III, p. 362.
2
Thucydides 2, 47-54;
Lucretius
6, 1138-1286.
3
Chalmers, English Poets, IX, p. 318.

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