CAMBRIDGE PLATONISTS

A group of 17th-century English Protestant thinkers, so named because of their connection with Cambridge University and the presence of certain Platonic elements in their teaching. In religion they were "latitudemen," standing, as Matthew Arnold says, "between the sacerdotal religion of the Laudian clergy … and the notional religion of the Puritans," and in their theology they emphasized conduct rather than doctrine. Since some of them continued to hold office at the university during the time of the Commonwealth, they were considered suspect after the return of the Stuarts in 1660. However, as a contemporary account given by "P.S." (Symon Patrick?) puts it, "they were glad to conform to the Church after the Restoration." The same author also defends their attitude toward rites and ceremonies since "they do highly approve that virtuous mediocrity which our Churches observe between the meretricious gaudiness of the Church of Rome, and the squalid sluttery of fanatic Conventicles," adding that they subscribed to the Thirty-nine Articles, were attacked by both Papists and Presbyterians and were unjustly accused of "liberty of conscience," that is, licentiousness in their private lives. "But there is another crime, which cannot be denied, that they have introduced a new philosophy; Aristotle and the schoolmen are out of request with them," since they had taken up with the atomical or Cartesian doctrine.

The principal representatives of the school are Benjamin Whichcote, who is generally regarded as its founder, John Smith, Henry More and Ralph Cudworth.

Benjamin Whichcote. Whichcote (1609–1683) entered Emmanuel College, a Puritan foundation, in 1626, was ordained as an Anglican priest and held high places in the university under the Puritans. After he was deprived of the provostship of King's College in 1660, he spent his remaining years as a rector, first in country places and later in London. His Select Sermons were published with a notable introduction by Shaftesbury in 1698 and Several Discourses by John Jeffrey (4 vols., 1701–07). In "The Malignity of Popery" he gives the essence of "the reformed religion" by way of contrast to asserted doctrines and practices of the Church of Rome. In various other sermons he presents what may be called a theory of natural religion, writing that "the State of Religion lyes, in short, in this; A good Mind, and a good Life. All else is about Religion, and hath but the place of Means or an Instrument." He advances the teleological and moral arguments for God's existence and shows in various ways that "it is more Knowable that there is a God, than any thing else is knowable." For Whichcote "the great Rights" are: (1) God is to be worshiped and adored; (2) there is a difference between good and evil; and (3) good is to be done, evil avoided. Elements of scholasticism are plentiful in his work, as evidenced by many particular terms, ideas and axioms and his theories of truth, objective morality, faith and reason, intellect and will and freedom.

John Smith. A philosophically more important and appealing figure is John Smith (1616–52), a student of Whichcote's at Emmanuel and later dean of Queens' College. His full development as a thinker and writer was cut off by an early death, but his posthumous Select Discourses (1659) show him to have been a man of wide learning, considerable intellectual power, originality of thought and expression, genuine spiritual perception and great sincerity. He stands apart from Whichcote, More and Cudworth because of the absence of bigotry and intolerance from his writing and especially from More because of his sane and rational attitude toward superstitious beliefs and practices. More truly Platonic than others in the group, Smith's cast of mind may also be described as Plotinian and Augustinian. Accordingly, he gives particular attention to the soul and advances four arguments for its immortality, namely, (1) from its incorporeity, indivisibility, powers and operations; (2) from the distinction between man's free and "automatical" actions; (3) from mathematical notions, which are "the true characters of some immaterial being, seeing that they were never buried in matter, nor extracted out of it: and yet these are transcendently more certain and infallible principles of demonstration than any sensible thing can be"; and (4) from man's clear and stable ideas of truth.

On the existence and nature of God, Smith's doctrine is both ambitious and original, since he holds that he would "not so much demonstrate that He is, as what He is." From a study of his own being man can arrive at conceptions of "the most perfect mind and understanding," and God's omnipotence, "almighty love," eternity, omnipresence and absolute freedom. Smith has many fine passages on God's nature and relations to the universe and man and on "the Excellency and Nobleness of True Religion." One of the best of these is on man's true happiness as found in God. He has, or should have, a place in the history of English prose; his works are filled with memorable phrases and he may be regarded as a pioneer in the aphoristic style of writing and preaching that has been popular in more recent times. In addition to Scripture, he cites innumerable authors—Greek, Roman, patristic and medieval, as well as contemporary—and the influence of others, for example, of St. francis de sales, is apparent.

Henry More. More (1614–87) ranks with Cudworth as the most famous of the Cambridge Platonists. Although raised a Calvinist, he rebelled against predestinarianism while a student at Eton. At Christ's College he was a fellow student of John Milton and became a master of arts and fellow in 1639. His studies of Aristotle, Julius Scaliger, G. Cardano and others ended, he says, in "mere scepticism" and he turned to "the Platonic writers, Marsilius Ficinus, Plotinus himself, Mercurius Trismegistus and the Mystical Divines." After taking Anglican orders, he received two benefices but gave them to friends; later he declined two bishoprics and the deanery of St. Patrick's and provostship of Trinity College, Dublin, preferring to spend his life in Cambridge. He had a wide circle of friends and many correspondents, among them Descartes, the younger Van Helmont, William Penn, John Norris, Baron Knorr and Joseph Glanvill. He was a voluminous writer on philosophy and theology and produced some verse.

Philosophy. To a basic philosophy derived from Aristotle and the scholastics More added elements drawn from Plato, the Neoplatonists and other sources. Making an early acquaintance with Descartes, he first had an extravagant admiration for his doctrine, but later showed himself to be anti-Cartesian in metaphysics and finally doubted that there is anything mechanical in nature. Incorporeal substance is for him the object of metaphysics; the universe is "one huge Animal," or if it lacks sense, which lack is not proved, "one monstrous Plant"; all nature, he says, is pervaded by "the spirit of nature," or "a plastical power"; space is an objective reality endowed with divine attributes. At the same time, he advances a doctrine of monads: bodies are composed of indivisible physical monads, and can be dissolved back into them by God's power, while spiritual substance is a "metaphysical monad."

In psychology and epistemology More labors to refute Hobbes and other materialists and to establish the reality of the soul, which has both preexistence and immortality. At death the soul leaves its "terrestrial vehicle," "glides into the free air," and enters first into an "aereal" and later into an "aethereal or celestial vehicle." The mind is never a tabula rasa but possesses innate ideas; the secondary qualities of bodies are in the perceiver rather than in things. In ethics More develops a doctrine of conscience under the name of "the boniform faculty," which he says is "the best and divinest part … the celestial particle of the soul," but here as elsewhere in his ethics he has nothing new that is of value.

Theology. More's theodicy is elaborate but unreliable. Leaving undeveloped the basic proofs for God's existence, he gives first place to his statement of the ratio Anselmi and advances so extravagant a statement of the proof from order as to discredit teleology. Further arguments are adduced from man's innate idea of God, the nature of the soul, morality, "miracles," namely, accounts of ghosts, witchcraft, demonism and the like, and man's religious instincts. In religion More is important chiefly for his strong Protestantism, in which he holds that treason against any Protestant prince or opposition to Protestantism is both civil treason and religious heresy. The Church of Rome is the kingdom of anti-Christ and "the mystery of iniquity." In his attack More spares nothing: the Church's doctrine, history, claims, morals, ceremonial, members, leaders and head were all assailed. So savage is his hatred that he was found extreme even in an age when like attacks were common among such diverse groups as Anglicans, dissenters and freethinkers.

More must be rated low both as a philosopher and a theologian. His work is marred by such intense bigotry and superstition as to bring injury on various valid doctrines, especially in theodicy and rational psychology. His attempts at novelty are abortive and his work must be characterized as a mélange of doctrines taken from the Greeks, the scholastics, Jewish cabalists, Protestant theology, Sacred Scripture and contemporary science. His books were read in colonial New England and helped to prepare the way for the sordid events at Salem.

Ralph Cudworth. Cudworth (1617–1688), a student and later fellow of Emmanuel College, had prestige and power under Cromwell but promptly wrote verses welcoming Charles II back home. His chief works were The True Intellectual System of the Universe, finished in 1671 but delayed in publication by opposition at court until 1678; and the posthumously published Confutation of the Reason and Philosophy of Atheism (1706); Treatise concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality (1731); and Treatise of Freewill (1838). The True Intellectual System is a vast work, itself a part of a vaster unfinished project, worthy—in conception at least—of comparison with some of the great systematic works of earlier centuries. It may be divided into five parts: (1) a refutation of atheism, (2) the true idea of God, (3) proofs for the existence of God, (4) the natural distinction between good and evil, and (5) freedom of will. First giving the arguments for atheism, he perhaps, as Dryden says, states them better than he refutes them. Although he rejects the Anselmian and Cartesian arguments, he gives one based on the idea of God and others from contingency, order and the character of knowledge.

Famous for his theory of a plastic nature, Cudworth describes it as a lower faculty of some conscious soul, or itself a kind of inferior life or soul, an immaterial, incorporeal substance that is the divine art embodied in nature, a shadowy imitation of mind and understanding, analogous to mental causality, acting for ends but unconscious of them. It is an instrument used by God and it operates according to laws imposed by him. Analogies to ancient theories of a world soul and to later doctrines like those of Schopenhauer, Bergson and E. von Hartmann are evident. Certain anticipations of Kantian doctrines in theodicy and on space and time as mental forms, the categories and the unknown "thing in itself" may also be found in Cudworth.

Cudworth is almost a great philosopher. Along with pronounced intellectual abilities and immense learning, he unites many past and contemporary strains, makes some contributions of his own and anticipates certain future developments. His purposes are good, but he fails in some of his means since his great learning is often uncritical, he overuses his authorities and is at times too severe in his judgments. Instances of these defects may be found in his account of atomistic philosophy, which he traced back to Moses. If he had advanced an extremist doctrine, as did Hobbes and Spinoza in his time, he would have been a more famous and influential, but less able, thinker. As it is, Cudworth ranks with Bacon, Hobbes and Locke in 17th-century English philosophy, and in certain respects is superior to them.

Related Thinkers and Influence. Other thinkers sometimes, but incorrectly, associated with the Cambridge Platonists are Nathaniel Culverwel (1615/18–1650/51), George Rust (d. 1670), Symon Patrick (1626–1707), Joseph Glanvill (1636–80), John Hales (1584–1656), John Norris (1657–1711) and Richard Cumberland (1631–1718). In addition to their relation to Kant and Locke, the Cambridge Platonists influenced particularly the third Earl of Shaftesbury (1671–1713). In religion the effects of their teaching were away from traditional doctrine and toward rationalism and a nondogmatic religion of morality. In philosophy they were dualists concerned with fundamental things—God, the soul, natural morality, free will and the epistemological problem. In some areas, they prepared the way for more radical doctrines of the 18th century.

See Also: british moralists; enlightenment, philosophy; platonism.

Bibliography: Sources. j. smith, Select Discourses, ed. h. g. williams (4th ed. rev. Cambridge, Eng. 1859). h. more, Opera omnia, 3 v. (London 1675–79). r. cudworth, The True Intellectual System of the Universe, tr. j. harrison, 3 v. (London 1845). Literature. f. c. copleston, History of Philosophy (Westminster, Md 1946–) 5:52–66. j. tulloch, Rational Theology and Christian Philosophy in England in the Seventeenth Century, 2 v. (2d ed. Edinburgh 1874). j. k. ryan, The Reputation of St. Thomas Aquinas Among English Protestant Thinkers of the Seventeenth Century (Washington 1948); "John Smith, 1616–1652: Platonist and Mystic," The New Scholasticism, 20 (1946) 1–25. e. cassirer, The Platonic Renaissance in England, tr. j. p. pettegrove (Austin 1953). b. willey, Seventeenth Century Background (New York 1950). j. a. passmore, Ralph Cudworth (Cambridge, Eng. 1951).

[j. k. ryan]