## 1. Early Life and Writings



Born in Grantham, Lincolnshire, on 12 October 1614, More was the
seventh son of Alexander More, sometime alderman and mayor of
Grantham, and his wife, Anne (*nee* Lacy). After initial
schooling at Grantham grammar school, he was sent to Eton College in
1628. In 1631, his uncle, Gabriel More, who was a fellow at
Christ's College, Cambridge, arranged for Henry to enter his
college. This was to be the setting for the rest of More's life.
He took a BA in 1636, the MA in 1639, and was made a fellow of the
college in 1641. More had already begun to familiarise himself with
Neoplatonic philosophy during his undergraduate years, and began to
develop his own dualistic ideas, emphasising the immateriality of the
soul, in philosophical poems approximating to the mode of Edmund
Spenser's *Faerie Queen* (1590), which he wrote in 1639
and 1640. He ventured into print with the first of these, the
*Psychodia Platonica* ("Platonic Song of the Soul")
in 1642 (Crocker 2003).



It seems clear that from very early on More developed ambitions to
promote his own understanding of true Christianity. Indeed, if his
autobiographical memoir, written as a preface to his *Opera
omnia* of 1679, is to be believed, More began to develop his own
ideas as a result of a schoolboy rejection of the Calvinist doctrine
of predestination, which he saw as a morally indefensible position for
God to uphold, and therefore could not be part of true religion
(translated into English in Ward 2000, 15-16; for a later
example of More's anti-Calvinism, see More 1668, 71-78).
This recollection is certainly revealing, not only about More's
beliefs, but also about his whole approach to religion. Like Calvin
himself, More wanted to establish a system of belief which conformed
to what he saw as the dictates of reason. But reasoning from different
starting points can lead to very different conclusions. Calvin wanted
a God who was immutable and so the concept of predestination seemed to
follow as a rational requirement. More, by contrast, wanted a God who
was, above all, morally perfect and unimpeachable. His different
starting point from that of Calvin led him to a very different
rational theology. More's was a theology in which God was
obliged by his goodness to conform to absolute standards of morality,
and therefore to create a world which was, as Voltaire's
(1694-1778) Dr Pangloss would have said, the best of all
possible worlds (Voltaire [1759] 1966, 2). More's motive in
promoting this theology was not to solve the so-called "problem
of evil" (why God allows so much suffering in the world), as it
was later for Leibniz (and Dr Pangloss), but to ensure that God
created a world which was (according to More at least) most capable of
establishing the Creator's own existence. More believed that the
best of all possible worlds was one which demonstrated its dependence
upon God and thereby made atheism an untenable position. In his
*Immortality of the Soul* (1659), for example, More wrote that
God "ordering the natures of things infallibly according to what
is *best*, must of necessity ordain that the Souls of men live
and act after death" (More 1662, *Immortality of the
Soul*, separately paginated, 144). Similarly, in *Divine
Dialogues* (1668), he wrote that the design in nature showed that
God always acted for the best (More 1668, 24). It was the effort to
demonstrate that God had indeed created the world this way which
dictated all the various idiosyncrasies of More's philosophical
theology.



The earliest aspect of this was the attempt in his philosophical poems
to establish a strict categorical separation between body and the
incorporeal soul. The *Psychodia platonica* consisted of four
parts, the first two, on the life of the soul (*Psychozoia*)
and on its immortality (*Pyschathanasia*), presented
More's views. The third and fourth parts were refutations of
contemporary views of the soul which threatened More's strict
dualistic ontology. *Antipsychopannychia* was concerned to
reject the belief of the so-called mortalists that the soul sleeps in
the grave after death, only to be awoken at the same time as the
resurrection of the body. *Antimonopsychia* rejected the
notion, usually attributed to the Arabic commentator on Aristotle know
to the Latin West as Averroes (Ibn-Rushd), that the only tenable
notion of the soul in Aristotle was not a personal soul, but a single
general soul of humanity. Originally introduced into the West by a
number of anti-Scholastic Aristotelian naturalists (from Siger of
Brabant in the thirteenth century to Pietro Pomponazzi in the
sixteenth) this idea was again becoming current among atheistic
contemporaries of More (Leech 2013).



More followed this up with what he called an essay, but which was
still written in sub-Spenserian stanzas, on "the Infinity of
Worlds out of Platonick Principles". *Democritus
Platonissans* (1646), accordingly, is the part of More's
philosophical poem cycle which deals with the material side of the
dualist dichotomy. He may have been inspired here by the *Two
Treatises* of Sir Kenelm Digby (1603-1665) which had just
appeared (1644), and which he mentions in the notes to his poem. Digby
developed a version of atomistic natural philosophy and argued that
all change is nothing more or less than a re-arrangement of the
material atoms comprising all bodies. Consequently, Digby went on to
argue, immaterial souls cannot change, and must therefore be immutable
and immortal (Digby 1644, 350). More used the same general stratagem
with regard to the relationship between body and soul in his poem, and
it was presumably during the writing of *Democritus
Platonissans* that More first became interested in the latest
developments in natural philosophy (Thomson 2008, 94). In particular,
it was at this time that More began to study the philosophy of
Descartes (1596-1650) (Gabbey 1982). Clearly, More was
sufficiently aware of developments in natural philosophy to know that
Digby's atomistic system was derivative from, and by no means as
powerful as, the *Principia philosophiae* published in the same
year as Digby's *Two Treatises* by the great French
mathematician turned metaphysician and physicist.



At around this time, More also began to embrace another Platonic idea,
and one which had been introduced into Christian thought in the third
century by Origen (though never accepted as orthodox), namely the
pre-existence of the individual soul before its incarnation (Reid
2012, Hengstermann 2017). He devoted another poem to his first
exposition of this, *The Praeexistency of the Soul*, which was
included in his collected *Philosophical Poems* of 1647. This
is a clear example of how More's pursuit of a rational theology
led him to unusual, if not entirely idiosyncratic, positions. His
Platonic insistence on the immortality of the soul led him to reject
the notion that every individual human soul was created at its
conception, in favour of the Origenian position that all intellectual
natures were created equal and alike from the beginning of eternity
(Scott 1991). This was also bound up with More's concern for the
perfect goodness of God--More did not want to involve God in
colluding with the illicit sexual acts of sinners by intervening in
their acts to create souls for their illegitimate progeny. As More
later put it in the notes to his edition of George Rust's
Origenian *Discourse of Truth* (1682), God must not be made to
"bear a part amongst Pimps and Bawds, and pocky whores and
Whoremasters, to rise out of his Seat for them, and by a free Act of
Creation of a Soul, to set his seal of connivance to their
Villanies" (More 1682, 9). Although More adopted the
pre-existence of souls, he did not embrace Origen's belief in
universal salvation --the idea that all souls would eventually be
saved and rewarded with heavenly bliss. Evidently, More took this
doctrine to undermine God's justice, and affirmed eternal
punishment for sinners (Hengstermann 2017).



The decision to present and to defend what purported to be a
rationally-based pneumatology in poetic form is certainly puzzling to
the modern reader, but it was also rather unusual in More's own
day. Although there were clear ancient precedents, such as the epic
presentation of Epicurean atomism in the *De rerum natura* of
Lucretius, the poetical presentation of philosophical ideas seemed to
be most common in alchemical, astrological, and other magical works,
such as the *Compound of Alchymy* by George Ripley (*c*.
1471), and the *Zodiacus vitae* of Marcellus Palingenius
(*c*. 1531). It seems that More's determination to
present his ideas in verse is a manifestation of an undeniable
tendency in him towards emotional rapture, particularly where matters
of religion are concerned. Although intellectually committed to
rationalism in religion, More's personal religious feelings were
obviously deep-seated and could easily become highly emotional, and
even close to what was decried at the time as a dangerous tendency in
religion, namely "enthusiasm". This was noted by
More's earliest biographer, Richard Ward:



> 
> He hath indeed confess'd in a certain Place; That he had a
> Natural touch of Enthusiasme in his Complexion; but such as (he thanks
> God) was ever governable enough; and which he had found at length
> perfectly Subduable. So that no Person better understood the Extent of
> Phansy, and Nature of Enthusiasme, than he himself did (Ward [1710]
> 2000, 35).
> 



For the most part, More did manage to subdue these potentially
dangerous tendencies, but he often walked a razor's edge
(Crocker 1990, 2003). It seems clear that More was torn between what
he saw as the need for a rational theology on the one hand and a much
more emotional submission to religious sensibilities. As Ward wrote
approvingly:



> 
> such is the Nature of his Noble Principles and Theories, such the
> Frame of his Conceptions; that they cannot fail (where embraced) of
> more than ordinarily moving, and even enravishing, at times, the Mind
> of Man; and Carrying it away Captive into All the Highest Joy,
> Admiration, and Affection, that the Humane Nature is capable of. They
> will either find or make Enthusiasts of this kind... He himself,
> with the Holy Psalmist, and others of the Divine Writers, shews a
> frequent Enthusiasme in this way... (Ward 2000, 36).
> 



This aspect of More's mental life must be borne in mind in any
attempt to assess the coherence of his philosophy, and his
significance as a philosopher. It was surely the demands of
More's religious concerns which account for those places (some
of which will be discussed below) where his philosophical acuity
seemed to desert him.



More can be seen to be walking along a narrow ledge above a precipice
of religious enthusiasm in his polemic against the alchemist Thomas
Vaughan (1621-1666). Writing as Alazonomastix Philalethes, More
launched an attack against Vaughan's recently published
Neoplatonic and alchemically inspired views of man and nature. These
were More's first publications after finishing his cycle of
poems. More felt obliged to attack Vaughan in print precisely because,
to the undiscerning eye, their philosophies might seem to be
congruent. As More wrote:



> 
> I was afraid that men judging that this affectation of Platonisme in
> you, might well proceed from some intemperies of bloud and spirit; and
> that, there [being] no body else besides us two dealing with these
> kinds of notions, they might yoke me with so disordered a companion as
> yourself: Reasoning thus with themselves; Vaughan of Jesus in Oxenford
> holds the pre-existence of the Soul, and other Platonick Paradoxes,
> and we see what a pickle he is in: What think you of More of
> Christ's that wrote the Platonicall Poems? (More 1651, 36)
> 



Although More professes to subscribe to a philosophy which is
significantly distinct from that of Vaughan, it is by no means clear
that contemporary readers would have been able to see what the
differences were. With hindsight, it can be seen that in these two
polemical works More was trying to protect the concept which he had
very briefly introduced in his poetical works and which was to prove
so important in his subsequent philosophy, namely the Spirit of Nature
(discussed fully below). What is most obvious here, however, is not
how More conceived of this universal spirit, but that he did not see
it in the same way that Vaughan did in his *Anima magica
abscondita: Or, A Discourse of the universall Spirit of Nature*
(1650). He objects unequivocally, for example, to the fact that
Vaughan seems to imply (on More's reading, anyway) that a
universal world spirit or soul is divided and parcelled up into all
creatures, to give them life. More objects not only to Vaughan's
suggestion that the whole world is "an Animal", but also
to the idea that the world soul can be "either barrel'd up
or bottled up, or tied up in a bag, as a pig in a poke!" (More
1650, 51). More's objection, reflecting his strict dualism, is
that an immaterial soul could not be trapped inside body. When More
subsequently develops his own concept of the Spirit of Nature into its
mature form it is to be a continuous and all pervasive immaterial (but
extended) substance which is capable of operating within bodies by
virtue of its ubiquity, but is not confined by them. The contemporary
reader, however, could not have gleaned from More's
*Observations upon Anthroposophia Theomagica* (1650), or his
*Second Lash of Alazonomastix* (1651), anything other than his
objections to Vaughan's views; there was little or no intimation
of More's own still developing ideas.



Furthermore, even here, while vigorously decrying Vaughan's
"enthusiasm", More cannot prevent himself from revealing
his own tendencies in the same direction (Crocker 1990, 2003,
Guinsberg 1980). The real nature of the union between soul and body,
More at one point unwisely declared, is "more Theomagicall then
our Theomagician himself is aware of" (More 1650, 52). It is a
sign of the tension between More's rationalism and his need to
express his religious devotion that he persisted in writing
enthusiastically even when he was aware of so doing. His apologetic
attempts to defend himself were hardly convincing: "Nor am I at
all, Philalethes, Enthusiastical. For God doth not ride me as a Horse,
and guide me I know not whither my self; but converseth with me as a
Friend; and speaks to me in such a Dialect as I
understand..." (More 1651, 178).


## 2. Cartesianism and Natural Theology



More read Descartes's *Principia philosophiae* in 1646,
and it had a very profound effect upon him and upon the subsequent
development of his own philosophy. "All that have attempted
anything in naturall Philosophy hitherto are mere shrimps and fumblers
in comparison of him", More wrote in 1648 (Letter to Hartlib, 11
December 1648, Webster 1969, 365). Accordingly, he began to teach
Descartes's mechanical philosophy to interested students in
Cambridge, and so became one of the earliest conduits for the
dissemination of Cartesianism in Britain. More is credited with
inventing the word, Cartesianism, and has been said to be behind the
strangely Platonic reading of Descartes's methodology in the
anonymous preface to the first English translation of the
*Discourse of a Method* (1649) (Cristofolini 1974). In his
later writings, however, More is much more critical of this new
philosophy. It used to be assumed that More began as a follower of
Descartes and became more critical of his philosophy as his own
philosophy matured. It is now recognised, however, that More was
always critical of certain aspects of Cartesianism, and that the
increasingly negative attitude towards Cartesianism reflects a growing
realisation that Descartes's errors (as More saw them) were not
simply infelicities, which might be corrected by philosophical
negotiation, but were defining characteristics of Cartesianism,
particularly as the philosophy was developed by his followers, after
Descartes's own untimely death (Gabbey 1982, 1990; Reid 2012,
2018; Leech 2013).



There is an interesting contrast here with More's response to
Vaughan. More was immediately aware that, although he and Vaughan
might seem to be fellow-travellers, their philosophies--and their
underlying beliefs--were in fact very different. In the case of
Descartes, however, More seems to have genuinely believed they were
fellow-travellers, both committed to the establishment of a dualism of
body and soul in the service of religion, even though they might seem
to onlookers to have been very different. More expressed this in 1662
in the Preface to his *Collection of Philosophical
Writings*:



> 
> We both setting out from the same Lists, though taking several ways,
> the one travelling in the lower rode of Democritism, amidst the thick
> dust of Atoms, and flying particles of Matter, the other tracing
> o'er the high and aiery hills of Platonism, in that more thin
> and subtle Region of immateriality, meet together notwithstanding at
> last (and certainly not without a Providence) at the same Goal, namely
> the Entrance to the holy Bible, dedicating our joint labours to the
> use and glory of the Christian Church... (More 1662, Preface
> General, xii)
> 



Right from his first acquaintance with Descartes's philosophy,
therefore, More believed that, like him, Descartes supposed that
explanations of physical phenomena in terms of material principles
could only take us so far, and beyond that point it was necessary to
acknowledge the role of incorporeal active principles. In so far as
Descartes did believe this, for him the boundary demarcating what
could be explained in material terms and what could not, was a long
way beyond where More would want to place it.



More's interest in Descartes's philosophy was so profound
that his acquaintance, Samuel Hartlib (*c.*1600-1662), an
assiduous "intelligencer" who keenly promoted (and
facilitated) philosophical correspondence, persuaded More to write to
Descartes in December 1648. More wrote four letters in all, but only
received replies to the first two before Descartes's death in
1650. He received an unfinished third reply from Claude Clerselier in
1655, while Clerselier was preparing his edition of Descartes's
*Lettres* (1657), which prompted More's *Responsio ad
fragmentum Cartesii*. It is clear from these letters that
More's differences with Descartes were (as we might expect)
considerable and more serious than More realised.



More had some detailed criticisms of Cartesian physics, including his
account of refraction, and his vortex theory of celestial motions
(which, More pointed out, ought to have given rise to celestial
cylinders, rather than spheres, because the vortexes were held to be
rotating in a plane around the equators of celestial bodies) (see, for
example, More 1662, in *Antidote Against Atheism*, separately
paginated, 39; see also the Preface General, xv), but the more
philosophical criticisms revealed the most significant differences
between them. More's belief in an absolute space and time, which
was going to play a major role in his subsequent philosophy, was
foreshadowed here in his critique of the Cartesian concepts. He
rejected not only Descartes's distinction between a universe
which is indefinite in extent and one which can be concluded to be
infinite, but also Descartes's definition of body as extension,
and the concomitant impossibility of void space (Koyre 1957,
Grobet 2010, Agostini 2017). More began to develop here one of his
most idiosyncratic beliefs, that everything had to exist in space. For
Descartes bodies were extended things, but immaterial entities, such
as God, angels, and souls, were not extended and could not be said to
occupy space (to do so was a category mistake). For More, by contrast,
immaterial entities had to exist in space, and had to be extended.
What did not exist in space, according to More, did not exist at all
(Koyre 1957, Grant 1981, Reid 2012). Another group of
criticisms derived from More's dissatisfaction with
Descartes's version of mind-body dualism, including aspects of
the union and interaction of body and soul, the denial of souls in
animals, and major differences about what can be achieved by matter in
motion, and what for More required a more active principle. More
agreed with Descartes that matter was inert and therefore could only
be moved in passive response to an external mover. Where Descartes
assumed the only such external movers were other moving bodies
(initially, matter had been put into motion by God at the Creation and
subsequently motion was transferred from one body to another in
accordance with the three laws of nature Descartes had devised), More
insisted that bodies could be moved by self-active, self-moving,
immaterial entities, such as souls and even God himself (Henry 1986,
1989; Reid 2012, 2018).



The Cartesian claim that animals were more splendid versions of
artificial automata, "which move without thought" (Letter
to More, February 1649; Descartes 1991, 366), for example, was seen by
More as providing hostages to atheists. In the scholastic tradition
the ability to move oneself was seen as evidence of the presence of a
soul, and therefore of life. Descartes, pointing out that clocks and
other automata are capable of moving themselves, denied this
traditional view and held the soul to be responsible only for
thinking; movement was exclusively a feature of bodies. In the
Cartesian system, consequently, plants and animals were living
creatures without souls. Evidently, More regarded this position as
likely to lead to the conclusion that humans could also be counted as
living creatures without souls (it is not clear whether there were
contemporary Cartesians who held this, but it certainly became at
least a minority view in the period of the Enlightenment) (Cohen 1936,
Henry 1989, Thomson 2008, Muratori 2017, Reid 2018).



Anxious to defend the concept of immaterial souls from all atheist
threats, More insisted that the soul was necessary for life. He was
therefore opposed not only to Descartes, but also to traditional
scholastic views. The motions of plants and animals (plants being
capable of internal motions associated with nutrition, reproduction,
and growth), according to scholastics, proved the existence only of
vegetative and animal souls respectively. Both of these kinds of souls
were regarded as material, however, being composed of subtle fluids or
tenuous but nonetheless material spirits in the body. Descartes simply
absorbed the functions of these material souls into his mechanistic
theory of creature-as-automaton. By contrast, More, pursuing his
overriding concern to deny atheists any footholds, ran counter to both
Aristotelians and Cartesians and insisted on the immateriality of
animal souls (and presumably vegetative souls, though he does not seem
to discuss them). In More's version of dualism only immaterial
entities are self-active and capable of initiating movement in other
entities, and so the fact that plants and animals can move themselves
is taken to prove that they must have immaterial souls (Henry 1986,
1989; Reid 2012). It should be noted, therefore, that underlying
More's argumentation is a commitment to the belief that matter
is essentially passive (capable only of inertial motions), and that
only immaterial entities are active. This commitment, however, is not
based on any original philosophical arguments developed by More
himself. It is simply based on what More sees as a fundamental premise
of Cartesianism, namely, that matter or body is completely inert and
passive. This is why More seized upon Cartesianism so keenly. If
matter is inert then the activity we see all around us must have
another source, which must be immaterial. Underlying this, of course,
was a desire to deny the claims of contemporary materialist (and
therefore atheist) philosophers (Henry 1986, Leech 2013). 



More also took issue with Descartes's account of colliding
bodies. In Descartes's system the amount of motion was always
maintained at a constant level (guaranteed by God) and this was made
manifest in collisions, where motions could be seen to be transferred
from one body to another. For More, this seemed too materialistic an
explanation, and failed to pay due attention to the role of
immateriality. The nub of the matter was that, as More saw it, matter
in motion was allowed to explain too much by Descartes. The system
could be (as indeed it was) appropriated by atheists, who would simply
dismiss God's role and turn it into an entirely materialist
philosophy. Early in his career, More accepted the basic principles of
Descartes's mechanical philosophy, and accepted that
"Matter it self, once moved, can move other Matter" (More
1662, in *Immortality of the Soul*, separately paginated, 21).
At this time, More's immaterial principle of activity, the
Spirit of Nature (discussed more fully below), was only introduced to
explain phenomena which More believed could not be explained
mechanically, such as gravity (More 1662, in *Immortality of the
Soul*, separately paginated, 11). In More's mature natural
philosophy, however, matter was going to be held to be not merely
passive but absolutely inert. That is to say, where once More would
have accepted that passive matter might be held to carry on moving
after being given an initial push (indeed it must do so because it
could not stop itself), More later developed the view that matter was
completely incapable of moving by itself. Consequently, all activity
in any system (even what might otherwise look like merely passive
inertial motion) was to be introduced by, or was the result of, the
working of immaterial spirit, because immaterial entities were the
only entities capable of acting. In the Preface to his *Divine
Dialogues* (1668), for example, More insisted "that there is
no purely Mechanicall Phaenomenon in the whole Universe" (More
1668, sig. A6*v*). By this time, More did not want anything to
blur the distinction between non-active matter and active spirit, and
so he could not allow that matter might be set in motion and continue
to move of its own accord, or by its own nature; this looked too much
like matter having activity of its own.



Another striking indication of the development of More's
thinking on this issue can be seen by comparing his early vitalistic
concept of matter to his later insistence that matter is completely
inert. In his early philosophical poems and in his correspondence with
Descartes, More evidently felt he could dismiss mechanistic
materialism by indicating that even supposedly inanimate bodies were
alive in some way (Reid 2012, 2018). We can see this, for example, in
his objection to Descartes's claim that motion could be
transferred from one moving body to another:



> 
> I feel more disposed to believe that motion is not communicated, but
> that from the impulse of one body another body is so to speak roused
> into motion, like the mind to a thought on this or that occasion, and
> that body does not take as much motion as it needs for movement, being
> reminded of the matter by the other body. And as I said a short while
> ago, motion bears the same relation to a body as a thought does to the
> mind: neither is received into the subject, in fact, but both arise
> from the subject in which they are found. And everything that is
> called body I hold to be alive in a sottish and drunken way...
> (More, letter to Descartes, 23 July 1649, Descartes 1966, V: 383).
> 



Evidently, More saw this as sufficient to refute atheistic
materialism, declaring in the same letter that although a body can
neither feel nor think, "it constitutes the last and faintest
shadow and image of the divine essence, which I take to be the most
perfect life" (Descartes 1966, V: 383). It soon became apparent
to More, however, that the shortcomings of the mechanical philosophy
might be avoided simply by supposing that matter was alive and
therefore capable of self-movement. This might be assumed without
recourse to God, and would lead to what More called hylozoic atheism
(Reid 2018). More quickly dropped all traces of vitalism from his
concept of body, therefore, and insisted ever afterwards on the strict
dichotomy between inactive matter, and active immaterial spirit.
Subsequently, when he discerned hylozoism in later thinkers, such as
Spinoza and Francis Glisson (about which more later), he opposed them
as vigorously as he did mechanistic materialists, such as Thomas
Hobbes and the Cartesians (Henry 1987, Sytsma 2017). It is important
to note, therefore, that there are clear signs of development in
More's works, from vaguely formed starting points to more
carefully wrought and internally consistent mature positions (Reid
2003, 2007). 



Be that as it may, Descartes's initial response to More's
account of what happens in collisions between bodies (end of August
1649), which he never managed to send before his death, was that More
was inventing principles which were surplus to requirements, and
therefore detrimental to philosophy:



> 
> I will say here once and for all that nothing diverts us more from
> discovering the truth than when we declare to be true something of
> which we are persuaded for no positive reason, but only by our will.
> That is, when we have fancied or invented something, and then
> afterwards our fabrication pleases us, as in your case, with corporeal
> Angels, the shadow of the divine essence, and such like, none of which
> ought to be adopted by anyone, because this is the very thing that
> bars us from the road to truth (quoted from Gabbey 1982, 212).
> 



This was an extremely perceptive comment. More was going to go on to
develop his concept of the Spirit of Nature (alluded to here as
"the shadow of the divine essence", but which More later
referred to as "the vicarious power of God") which would
draw similar criticisms from the leading natural philosophers, Robert
Boyle (1627-1691) and Robert Hooke (1635-1703). For them
it was merely a fabrication which explained nothing that could not be
explained more simply without it; and "Truth", as Boyle
was later to say (1672), "ought to be pleaded for only by
Truth" (Boyle 1999, 184; Henry 1990). Descartes called
More's Angels "corporeal" simply because More
declared them to be extended entities. More did not see
Descartes's comment until 1655, by which time it was too late.
By then, More was already committed to his Spirit of Nature, which he
saw as an indispensable feature of the world system (enabling him, for
example, to move away from his earlier vitalist materialism, which he
now saw as dangerous to religion). It is doubtful, however, that More
would have been diverted from this course by Descartes's words,
even if he had seen them in time. The Spirit of Nature was not just
pleasing to More; he made it an indispensable feature of his
philosophical theology (see next section, and Reid 2012, Leech
2013).



One of More's students at Cambridge, who was clearly impressed
by his account of Cartesianism, was John Finch (1626-1682), son
of Heneage Finch (1580-1631), Speaker of the House of Commons.
Finch introduced More to his half-sister, Anne, who later became
Vicountess Conway and Killultagh (1631-1679). Anne had a passion
for learning and More tutored her in philosophy, and particularly in
Cartesianism, but their relationship soon developed into one of
friendship. Although they remained friends to the last, the
relationship of tutor and pupil eventually gave way to one of equals,
and Anne developed sufficiently to produce a philosophical theology
that was very much her own, and was effectively a rejection of
More's (Nicolson 1992, Conway 1996, Hutton 2004). The Cambridge
Platonist did not just benefit from the delights of Anne's
company, however; the Conway family was to prove a powerful patron and
supporter for More after the Restoration, when his former allegiance
to the Protectorate drew potentially dangerous criticism. Indeed,
Edward, Lord Conway (*c*. 1623-1683) even arranged a
bishopric in Ireland for More, and an appointment as prebend of
Worcester, but More preferred to remain in Cambridge.



It was during the Protectorate that More produced a remarkable group
of philosophical writings. There is a sense in which the four works
which he published throughout the 1650s can be seen as a summation of
More's philosophical system. This is perhaps evident from the
fact that, shortly after the appearance of the last of them, *The
Immortality of the Soul* of 1659, he re-issued them all together
in his *Collection of Philosophical Writings* (1662). The
essentially pragmatic aim of More's philosophy was made plain in
the title of the first of these, *An Antidote Against Atheism*
(1653)--the collection as a whole might well have been called an
antidote against contemporary threats to religion: atheism, and
enthusiasm.



The *Antidote* deserves to be better known as one of the
earliest contributions to what later became a vigorous tradition in
British natural philosophy, namely natural theology. Although there is
a sense in which natural theology, or the attempt to establish the
existence and attributes of God by studying nature, can be found among
Thomas Aquinas's five proofs of the existence of God, it was
only in the seventeenth century that this enterprise began to be
worked out in detail, usually alongside the promotion of the new
atomistic philosophies which seemed to offer the best alternative to
the traditional "hand-maiden" to Christian theology,
Aristotelianism. The very first contributions to natural theology,
published long before the tradition's Newtonian heyday, were
Walter Charleton's *Darknes of Atheism dispelled by the Light
of Nature* (1652), and More's *Antidote* (Leech
2013). More even prefigured the much later argument of William Paley
that depended upon finding a watch in an uninhabited place: 



> 
> if so brief a treatise as that of *Archimedes de Sphaera et
> Cylindro* had been found by chance, with the delineations of all
> the figures suitable for the design... could you or anyone else
> imagine that the delineating and fitting these things together was by
> chance, and not from a knowing and designing principle, I mean from a
> power intellectual? (More 1668, 20-21)
> 



The *Antidote* begins by borrowing Descartes's
ontological proof of the existence of God, but he went on from there
to consider other aspects of the fact that we have an
"indelible" idea of God and, as Descartes showed, other
innate ideas. This led him to consider, for example, the final cause
of our idea of God, which in turn led him to consider our innate
knowledge of good and evil. The first book is also concerned with the
nature of the soul itself, in which More takes pains to persuade his
reader that it is distinct from the substance of the body, and that
the body is completely incapable not only of thought, without the
incorporeal soul, but also of movement. The second book develops the
argument from design to oppose atheism, and the third introduces a
favourite stratagem of More's, the rehearsal of well-known or
well-attested stories of witchcraft, snake-charming, raising of
tempests by the power of words, and other "spiritual"
phenomena as evidence for the existence of an immaterial realm
(Coudert 1990, Crocker 2003). Throughout More builds up a picture of
immaterial spirit as the only substance capable of spontaneous
activity, and insists that inert matter is incapable of explaining all
physical phenomena on its own.



More's next work, the *Conjectura Cabbalistica: Or, A
conjectural Essay of interpreting the minde of Moses according to a
threefold Cabbala, viz., literal, philosophical, mystical, or divinely
moral*, published in the same year as the *Antidote*, is a
strange exercise, supposedly based on the premise that the first three
chapters of Genesis contain a summation of all wisdom but hidden under
a veil. It can be seen as an attempt not just to link natural
philosophy with religion (which could result in a merely deistic
natural theology), but to link it with *revealed* religion, as
taught in Scripture. Written at the request of Anne Conway, it is an
exercise in imaginative scholarship, seeking to show, for example,
that ancient Pythagoreanism, which gave rise to Platonism, was in fact
derived from an earlier Mosaical philosophy, and can now be seen,
thanks to More, as tantamount to Cartesianism:



> 
> The Cartesian Philosophy being in a manner the same with that of
> Democritus; and that of Democritus the same with the Physiological
> part of Pythagoras his Philosophy; and Pythagoras his Philosophy, the
> same with the Sidonian, as also the Sidonian, with the Mosaical; it
> will necessarily follow, that the Mosaical Philosophy in the
> Physiological part thereof is the same with the Cartesian. And how
> fitly the Cartesian Philosophy suits with Moses his Text, I have again
> and again taken notice (More 1712, 114; see also Crocker 2003, 70).
> 



One of the ways in which More tries to establish the link between
Cartesianism and the teachings of Moses is by arguing for a close
parallel between the three types of matter, or three elements,
discerned by Descartes, and the three successively rarefied
"vehicles" of the soul in Platonised versions of Christian
doctrine, the terrestrial, the aerial, and the aetherial. It is
perhaps worth pointing out that this work owes little or nothing to
the Jewish tradition of Kabbalah, but should be seen as a late
contribution to the Renaissance tradition of Christian cabbala first
introduced by Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463-1494) (Coudert
1992, Crocker 2003; but see below, and Laerke 2017, for developments
later in More's career).



Having directly attacked atheism, and shown the close relationship
between the Bible and the latest philosophical ideas, More then turned
his attention to what was widely perceived as the other contemporary
threat to sound religion, enthusiasm. The *Enthusiasmus
Triumphatus* of 1656 is concerned with the different kinds of
religious fanaticism, their causes, and how to cure them. Among the
specific writers singled out by More are the founders of the so-called
Family of Love, David George (*fl*. 1550?), and Henry Nicholas
(*c*. 1501- *c*. 1580), the alchemist and
"Luther of medicine", Paracelsus (1493-1541), and
the German mystic, Jacob Boehme (1575-1624). The cure prescribed
by Dr More required temperance, humility, and reason. Here again,
however, we can see More's overriding concern with a failure to
distinguish between matter and spirit:



> 
> Our exorbitant Enthusiasts professe that everything is God in love and
> wrath: Which if I understand anything is no better then Atheisme. For
> it implies that God is nothing else but the Universall Matter of the
> World, dressed up in severall shapes and forms, in sundry properties
> and qualities... But to slice God into so many parts is to wound
> him and kill him, and to make no God at all (More 1656, 48).
> 



The final book in this series, and for the time being the culmination
of More's philosophical ambitions, was the *Immortality of
the Soul, So farre forth as it is demonstrable from the Knowledge of
Nature and the Light of Reason* (1659). As is evident from the
title, the book marks a return to natural theology, but it also
returns to other earlier themes, including the parallel between
Cartesian matter theory and the three "vehicles" of the
soul, and the reality of spiritual phenomena as revealed in accounts
of witchcraft, apparitions, and the like. A major new focus of concern
is the philosophy of Thomas Hobbes, whose *Leviathan* had
appeared in 1651. More decries Hobbes for his materialism, his
determinism, and his mortalism (emphasising the resurrection of the
body on a far distant Day of Judgment, with no interim *post
mortem* punishment, or reward), all of which, of course, are seen
by More as incompatible with Christian theism.



Perhaps as a result of the perceived atheism of Hobbes, and
More's increasing awareness that the philosophy of Descartes had
also been appropriated by atheists and twisted to serve their
purposes, More presents his own would-be cure for atheism in its most
cogent and most powerful form in *The Immortality of the Soul*.
The main focus of the three books are the establishment of dualism and
the nature of incorporeal substance, the relationship of the soul to
the body, and the life of the separated soul in the after-life; but
along the way More deals with many associated phenomena, such as the
souls of animals, and the pre-existence of the human soul. In
particular, it is in this work that he develops most fully his concept
of the Spirit of Nature. Although the Spirit of Nature is More's
most characteristic contribution to the history of natural philosophy,
his pronouncements about it have only very recently been properly
examined (Henry 1990, Reid 2012, Leech 2013). It is not hard to see
why this is so. The concept was vigorously opposed by contemporary
natural philosophers, from leading figures such as Boyle and Hooke,
down to a dilettante virtuoso such as Sir Matthew Hale
(1609-1676). The concept had very little influence, therefore,
beyond More's own circle of devoted followers. The only other
philosopher to take it seriously was More's close friend and
colleague, the Master of Christ's College, Ralph Cudworth
(1617-1688). Since our immediate concern here is the philosophy
of Henry More, irrespective of its influence, we must look closely at
his most distinctive contribution to natural philosophy.


## 3. The Spirit of Nature



We have already seen that More admired the philosophy of Descartes
precisely because he felt that it showed that matter alone cannot
explain all phenomena. He reiterated this in the *Immortality*,
recommending that the French philosophy should be taught in all the
universities of Europe,



> 
> That the Students of Philosophy may be thoroughly exercised in the
> just extent of the Mechanical Powers of Matter, how farre they will
> reach, and where they fall short. Which will be the best assistance to
> Religion that Reason and the Knowledge of Nature can afford (More
> 1662, *Immortality of the Soul*, separately paginated, 13).
> 



The perceived short-fall would be helpful to religion, according to
More, precisely because the deficit could only be made good by
acknowledging the role of an immaterial, active principle. This
principle was the Spirit of Nature.



In the *Immortality of the Soul* (1659) More accepts the
fundamental precepts of the mechanical philosophy, and acknowledges
the Cartesian claim that "Matter it self once moved can move
other Matter" (More 1662, in *Immortality of the Soul*,
separately paginated, 21), but insists that it cannot move itself. So
far, Descartes would agree. Unlike Descartes, however, More refuses to
accept that all the phenomena of the universe can follow from an
original push by God, setting in train an endless cosmic chain
reaction of colliding particles. Even though Descartes talks of the
continued action of God in preserving the same quantity of motion in
the world, as far as More is concerned the Cartesian account concedes
too much to the mechanical interactions of material entities. Although
both More and Descartes agree that God, the primary cause of all
things, operates in the world by means of delegated secondary causes,
they differ radically about the correct secondary causes. For
Descartes, bodies in motion, acting in conformity with his laws of
nature and rules of collision, are the secondary causes; but More
cannot accept that bodies can perform all that is required. More
recognises that Descartes's view could undermine his own prior
commitment to his dualistic theology, because it could be made to lead
to a monistic materialist system of mechanical philosophy (in which
God's role is simply written out). In an attempt to avoid this,
More says that the fact that matter can be brought to rest "is
an Argument not only that Self activity belongs to a Spirit, but that
there is such a thing as Spirit in the world". Presumably the
point is that if matter was self-active it could not stop its own
activity, and therefore could never come to rest. Anyone who denies
this, More insists, "must of necessity (as I have intimated
already) confess that this Matter moves it self, though it be very
incongruous so to affirm" (More 1662, *Immortality of the
Soul*, separately paginated, 31).



Accordingly, More concludes that there must be an active principle at
work to take care of those things which cannot be accomplished by the
"Mechanical Powers of Matter":



> 
> I ask... if there be not in nature an incorporeal substance
> which, while it can impress on any body all the qualities of body, or
> at least most of them, such as motion, figure, position of parts,
> etc... would be further able, since it is almost certain that
> this substance removes and stops bodies, to add whatever is involved
> in such motion, that is it can unite, divide, scatter, bind, form the
> small parts, order the forms, set in circular motion those which are
> disposed for it, or move them in any way whatever, arrest their
> circular motion and do such similar things with them as are necessary
> to produce... light, colours and the other objects of the
> senses... (More, letter to Descartes, 5 March 1649, in More 1662,
> *Epistolae quatuor ad Renatum Des-Cartes*, separately
> paginated, 79-80).
> 



But how is it that this incorporeal substance can "actuate grand
proportions of matter"? Here More draws on Neoplatonic
emanationism. The Spirit of Nature, he says, actuates matter as it
emanates outward in a "sphere of life and activity" (More
1662, *Immortality of the Soul*, separately paginated, 27). It
does so because it is axiomatic that an "Emanative Cause"
is "such a cause as merely by Being, no other activity or
causality interposed, produces an Effect." An example of an
emanative cause is light from a candle. When a candle is lit it emits
light and cannot fail to do so. There must be such a cause in the
world, he says, because "something must move itself" (More
1662, *Immortality of the Soul*, separately paginated, 27).



It should be noted that More's Spirit of Nature must be extended
in space, if it can be said to emanate spherically. This marks
More's notion of spirit out from Descartes's *res
cogitans*. For Descartes, matter is extended and souls are not;
strictly speaking (although there was some room for manoeuvre, Reid
2008), souls are non-spatial entities and do not exist in space. For
More, this is an idea of existence which makes no sense. For something
to exist, it must exist somewhere; it must occupy space. The same is
true of God, no less than the Spirit of Nature, and individual souls
(Reid 2003, Leech 2013).



More has a ready answer to those for whom extension implies
divisibility, and who therefore object that, if More were right, God
and souls would be divisible. More concedes that extended things can
be divided conceptually, but immaterial spirits, such as God and
souls, cannot be physically divided in any way. Moving away from the
concept of divisibility, More introduces the notion of what he calls
"discerpibility", deriving from the Latin word for tearing
in pieces. He draws on the long-standing exemplar of Neoplatonic
emanation theory to make his point--light. A luminous orb of
light, he says, "does very much resemble the nature of a Spirit,
which is diffus'd and extended, and yet indivisible" (More
1662, *Antidote Against Atheism*, separately paginated, 150).
No engine or art could separate one luminous ray from another, and



> 
> The parts of a Spirit can be no more separated, though they be
> dilated, than you can cut off the Rayes of the Sun by a pair of
> Scissors made of pellucid Crystall (More 1662, *Antidote Against
> Atheism*, separately paginated, 16).
> 

 Accordingly, it is not possible to separate any part of
an extended soul from the rest, or to tear off a piece of God.


In Ancient emanation theory, of course, the ultimate source from which
all things emanated was God, and it seems clear that More follows suit
here as well. The Spirit of Nature is "the first step to the
abstrusest mysteries in Natural Theologie", More writes, because
it is "the Vicarious Power of God upon the Matter" (More
1662, *Immortality of the Soul*, separately paginated, 13). But
this seems to open More up to another charge, namely that he has
abandoned any pretence to a natural philosophy, seeking to explain
phenomena in terms of secondary causation, and instead simply defers
all things to the direct action of God.



But More is adamant that the Spirit of Nature is a "Secondary or
Emanatory Substance" (More 1662, *Immortality of the
Soul*, separately paginated, 28), and should correctly be seen as
a secondary cause. Responding to the charge that he has
"introduced an obscure Principle for ignorance and Sloth to take
sanctuary in... and hinder that expected progress that may be
made in the Mechanick Philosophy" (More 1662, *Immortality of
the Soul*, separately paginated, 11), More insisted that the
Spirit of Nature was a help, not a hindrance. Speaking of this
instrument of the "Vicarious Power of God", he wrote:



> 
> Nor needs the acknowledgment of this Principle to damp our endeavours
> in the search of the Mechanical causes of the Phaenomena of Nature,
> but rather make us more circumspect to distinguish what is the result
> of the more mechanical powers of Matter and Motion, and what of an
> Higher Principle (More 1662, *Immortality of the Soul*,
> separately paginated, 12-13).
> 



One of the ways in which More supported this claim was to repeatedly
insist that the Spirit of Nature operated blindly, without perception
or intelligence (and so was not in any sense the manifestation of the
direct action of God). He illustrates this by reference to the new
experiments with an air-pump conducted by Robert Boyle. If the
air-pump is fitted with a valve, the air beating against the valve
will not only close the valve against itself, but "will bear up
with it a ten-pound weight" (More 1662, *Antidote Against
Atheism*, separately paginated, 44). This kind of
"self-thwarting" activity (since the air really
"intends" to fill up the vacuum in the chamber of the
pump) shows not only that the air has "no Power, Knowledge, and
liberty of will", but also that there are no "Divine
particles interspersed in the Aire that have". More concludes at
this point,



> 
> that the Impetus of Motion in all matter is blinde and necessary, and
> that there is no Matter at all that is free and knowing but moves and
> acts of it self... according to the mere Mechanical laws of
> Motion (More 1662, *Antidote*, separately paginated, 44).
> 



Elsewhere More says,



> 
> That no matter whatsoever of its own Nature has any active Principle
> of Motion, though it be receptive thereof; but that when God created
> it, he superadded an impress of Motion upon it, such a measure and
> proportion to all of it, which remains still much-what the same for
> quantity in the whole, though the parts of Matter in their various
> occursion of one to another have not always the same proportion of
> it... (More 1662, *Immortality of the Soul*, separately
> paginated, 47-8).
> 



Here, then, More fully accepts the precepts of the mechanical
philosophy, but he refuses to accept that Cartesianism can account for
all phenomena. As in his letters to Descartes, for example, he points
out that the mechanical vortex theory should result in cylindrical
heavenly bodies, so it must be the action of the Spirit of Nature that
makes them spherical (see, for example, More 1662, in *Antidote
Against Atheism*, separately paginated, 39; see also the Preface
General, xv). He also points to magnetism and gravity as phenomena
which are not convincingly explained by Descartes, as well as
condensation and rarefaction. He also points to the Achilles heel of
the mechanical philosophy, the generation and development of plants
and animals, as well as the instinctive behaviour of animals. Later on
in his career, however, More's concern to establish the
existence of immaterial spirit beyond all doubt, leads him to deny
that bodies are capable even of mechanical interactions: "there
is no Phaenomenon of Nature purely Mechanicall" (More 1668, 31).
All phenomena, he says, are "not carried according to
Mechanicall Necessity, but that there is a Principle that has a
Prospection for the best, that rules all" (More 1686, 34).



In all these cases the Spirit of Nature is required to intervene,
although More is vague upon precisely how it intervenes. Later on More
develops the idea that the Spirit of Nature can "unite and as it
were cohere" (*uniatur & quasi cohaerescat*) with
body in order to move it (More 1671, 398; translated in More 1682,
174). In the *Immortality of the soul*, however, he seems to
imply that it simply communicates the laws of nature to the relevant
systems, since he describes it as "a mute copy of the eternal
Word (that is, of that Divine Wisedome that is entirely
everywhere)" which



> 
> is in every part naturally appointed to do all the best services that
> Matter is capable of... according to that Platform of which it is
> the Transcript, I mean according to the comprehension and Purpose of
> those Idea's [*sic*] of things which are in the eternal
> Intellect of God.
> 



Accordingly, the Spirit of Nature "is the lowest Substantial
Activity from the all-wise God, containing in it certain general Modes
and Lawes of Nature" (More 1662, Preface General, xvi).
Similarly, in his defence of the concept of the Spirit of Nature
against the criticisms of Sir Mathew Hale, More declares:



> 
> it is manifest that there is a more noble and divine Being in the
> world that gave this inferiour immaterial Being its existence and
> allotted to it in measure, or limited out to it these general Laws of
> vital activity, which we discover in it in the Phaenomena of Nature
> (More 1676, 190).
> 



But More is less concerned about the details of how the Spirit of
Nature fulfils its functions, than he is with establishing that it
must exist. As he goes on to say immediately after the last
quotation:



> 
> this certainty of the existence of the Spirit of Nature demolisheth
> the strongest bulwark that ordinarily the Atheist has, namely his
> confidence that there is no such thing as a Spirit or Immaterial Being
> in the World. Whence he securely hugs himself in that fond and foul
> Conclusion, That there is no God (More 1676, 190).
> 



Having pointed to phenomena in nature which cannot be explained in
terms of the mechanical philosophy, More can introduce the concept of
an active Spirit of Nature to fill in the lacunae. He therefore has
provided, according to his own lights, a rational, philosophical,
basis for the necessary existence of the Spirit of Nature, and by
extension of spirit, or incorporeal substance more generally. This is
crucial, of course, for More's dualistic theology. It seems
clear to us, as it must have for many contemporary readers, that the
Spirit of Nature did not emerge from More's understanding of the
natural world, but from the demands of his rational dualist ontology.
Preoccupied as he was with the need to establish a categorical dualism
between inert matter and active incorporeal spirit, he was quick to
see those parts of Descartes's natural philosophy which were
least plausible, or completely unconvincing, as providing what he took
to be evidence for the necessary existence of the Spirit of
Nature.


## 4. Restoration Cambridge and Latitudinarianism



The year after the appearance of the *Immortality* *of the
Soul*, More published his *Explanation of the Grand Mystery of
Godliness* (1660). Although Richard Ward tells us that More vowed
to write this book during a "dangerous fit of Sickness, if it
should please God to recover him from it" (Ward 2000, 335),
there is every reason to suppose that, after the *Immortality*,
More felt he had said enough about the philosophical background to his
beliefs, and fully intended to turn to an explication of his faith.
Furthermore, the decision to write an exposition of his religious
ideas may have been influenced by the political upheaval following the
death of Oliver Cromwell in 1659, and the restoration of the monarchy.
More had taken the Engagement late in 1650 (engaging to be true and
faithful to the Commonwealth of England) (Gabbey 1992, 113-4)
and was therefore in a precarious position on the reinstatement of the
exiled and ejected fellows who had refused the Engagement.



By this time More's anti-Calvinism and his emphasis upon
rational theology ensured that he was branded as a
"Latitude-man" by more conservative divines, and with the
return of the exiles to Cambridge the Latitudinarians came to be seen
as potentially subversive in both politics and religion (Crocker
2003). If More did write his *Grand Mystery of Godliness*
partially as a response to his precarious situation in Cambridge he
did not engage in dissimulation of his beliefs. Evidently More
believed that his position was so reasonable that a clear statement of
his beliefs would win over his critics and result in his complete
rehabilitation. More's chief purpose in the book was to persuade
believers that there are only a few essential doctrines of the Church,
all other details of one's faith being indifferent to
one's salvation, and that all that was required of a good
Christian was to recognise and adhere to these essentials (which was
the hallmark of Latitudinarianism).



Unfortunately, but perhaps predictably, More's stratagem did not
win over all his readers. For one thing, there were too many people at
Cambridge who had a vested interest in bringing him down (as a leading
Latitudinarian), and for another, More, typically, could not prevent
himself from introducing more theological niceties into his discussion
than were compatible with his irenic purposes. In particular, while
discussing the dual nature of Christ, as both human and divine, More
could not forebear from bringing in the doctrine of the pre-existence
of souls, and suggested that Christ's human soul had been in
perpetual union with the Father for all eternity (and was in this
respect uniquely different from other human souls). More also went on
to use his own theory of the three "vehicles" of the soul,
aetherial, aerial, and terrestrial (which he had introduced in
*Conjectura Cabbalistica* and developed more fully in the
*Immortality of the Soul*), as a way of persuading doubters of
the reasonableness of accounts of Christ's resurrection and
ascension.



Joseph Beaumont (1616-1699), who had been established as Master
of Jesus College after the Restoration but had just moved to become
Master of Peterhouse, privately circulated a manuscript raising ten
major objections against More's *Grand Mystery of
Godliness* in 1663. More was evidently beleaguered by more
widespread opposition in Cambridge at this time, and Edward, Lord
Conway, at the urging of his wife, Anne, arranged a preferment for
More in Ireland. More weathered the storm, however, even after his
*Apology of Dr Henry More* (1664), a response to Beaumont and
other critics, elicited *Some Observations on the Apologie of Dr.
Henry More* (1665) from an unconvinced Beaumont. More's
ideas drew further implicit criticism the following year from Samuel
Parker (1640-1688), later to become Bishop of Oxford (1686), in
his *A Free and Impartial Censure of the Platonick Philosophie*
(1666).



More's position improved as Latitudinarianism came to be seen
more sympathetically in Restoration England. Where it was once a
disparaging term for someone with a "broad swallow", who
would accept anything, and so was taken to be insincere in everything,
it later came to be seen as a genuinely irenic position, and perhaps
the best hope for reconciling all factions. It has to be said,
however, that as Latitudinarianism came to be seen in this more
positive light, More was increasingly exposed, ironically, as too
idiosyncratic, too much committed to rather outlandish theological
positions, such as his Origenianism, to count as a typical
Latitudinarian, who would insist only on a very few fundamental
doctrines, all of which were (supposedly) immediately acceptable to
all Christians.



One aspect of this can be seen in More's attempts to offer the
correct interpretation of the Revelation to St John, which must have
reminded some contemporaries of the importance of prophecy and
chiliastic claims to many of the radical sectarian groups of the
Interregnum period. Perhaps this was another case of More's own
tendency towards religious enthusiasm resurfacing. He pursued his
interpretation of prophecy in his *Synopsis prophetica* of 1664
and the *Exposition of the Seven Epistles to the Seven
Churches* of 1669 (and revisited these studies towards the end of
his life with a verse by verse analysis of the Revelation in
*Apocalypsis apocalypseos*, 1680, and other apocalyptic works)
(Almond 1993, Hutton 1994). In keeping with his dualistic theology,
More rejected chiliastic or millenarian expectations of a Day of
Judgement which would see a general resurrection of all the bodies of
past ages, and argued instead for a more spiritual Second Coming and
resurrection. Here again, More drew on his ideas about the aetherial
and aerial vehicles of the soul, which he was able to link to the
resurrection in heavenly and incorruptible form as conceived by St
Paul (1 Corinthians 15, 45-55).



If More's apocalypticism was taking him away from the more
conciliatory and irenic concerns of the increasing community of
Latitudinarian thinkers in England, he showed no regrets. Indeed, from
now on More's theology was to develop along increasingly
idiosyncratic, and dogmatic lines.


## 5. Absolutist Ethics and Necessitarian Theology



Since the Restoration More had concentrated exclusively on religious
writings, some of which were demanded by the writings of his critics.
In 1667, however, he produced a work on moral philosophy, the
*Enchiridion ethicum*. It is known that More wrote Latin with
difficulty, and it is not clear why he did not publish this in
English. It is possible that he hoped to reach a wider, European
audience--certainly this would be the motivation, a few years
later, for translating his earlier works into a Latin *Opera
omnia* (1675-79)--but this seems an unlikely book with
which to introduce oneself to a European readership. There is another
possible explanation, with much more restricted local concerns: More
published it in Latin to leave room for his friend and colleague Ralph
Cudworth to publish his very similar system of ethics in English.



The fact is, as with so many other aspects of their thinking, More and
Cudworth shared essentially the same moral philosophy. Cudworth had
been preparing his own book on ethics for a number of years but in the
event he never published anything in this area. It seems that he
abandoned the project when he heard that More was also working on a
book on ethics. Cudworth's system was posthumously published
under the title, *A Treatise Concerning Eternal and Immutable
Morality* (1731), but it is a title that More might also have
used. One of the main aims of More's *Manual of Ethics*
was to leave the reader in no doubt that there are absolute values of
good and evil which are co-eternal with God. That is to say, More
wished to refute the Calvinist theological position that whatever God
decrees to be good is good, in favour of the alternative theological
position, that God wills what is good (and he does so necessarily
because He himself conforms to an absolute standard of goodness).



This marks a new phase in More's life-long opposition to
Calvinism. The theology of Calvinism is known as voluntaristic
theology because it emphasises God's will in the Creation. God
could, and did, create the world freely by the power of his omnipotent
will. His choices in the Creation could not be held to have been
constrained by pre-existing notions of good or evil, or by
pre-existing essences or natures of things, because there were no such
pre-existing notions before the Creation. The opposing view,
represented by More, is known as necessitarian, or intellectualist, or
even rationalist theology, and is most familiar to modern readers
through the satirical representation of it in Voltaire's
*Candide* (1759). In this theology, God cannot create a world
arbitrarily, with no constraints upon his creativity. God has to
conform to pre-existing, co-eternal, moral and conceptual principles.
God must conform to principles of goodness and justice. Similarly, he
must create matter that embodies the principles of materiality,
namely, inertness and passivity. Because God is supremely good he must
create the best of all possible worlds. The clear implication of this
is that what makes a good world, or a better one, and what makes the
best one possible, can be specified independently of God. More
believed the concepts of good and evil were absolute terms, presumably
co-eternal with God, and must necessarily guide, and indeed restrain,
God's creative omnipotence (Henry 1990, Taliaferro 2005).



More's necessitarian theology is very much to the fore in the
*Divine Dialogues* of 1668. Although this is intended to
present the main features of his philosophical theology to a much
wider audience, it is presented, as the extended title makes plain, in
the context of a discussion about the nature of God's
Providence. At one point More tells us that "all the Orders of
the Creation in the whole Universe" issue from God's
"infinite Goodness, Wisdome and Power", and that His
goodness is



> 
> So perfect, immutable and permanent, as never... to be carried
> otherwise than to what is the best, and his wisdome never at a loss to
> discern, nor his power to execute it...
> 



It is repugnant to reason, More insists, that God "should ever
will any thing but what is absolutely for the best" (More 1668,
II, 24-25). More even discusses in this connection the existence
of animals which do not seem to be beneficial to mankind; arguing that
they must serve some purpose in the whole system of this best of all
possible worlds (Muratori 2017).



More's new theological emphasis is also evident in the rather
different attempt to reach a wider audience, this time a learned
Latinate audience across Europe, which he published in 1671, his
*Enchiridion metaphysicum*. The *Manual of Metaphysics*
is a major re-statement of More's views on incorporeal
substance, or spirit. The main claims are familiar from his earlier
philosophical works, therefore, but there are two new, and highly
significant, features. Firstly, More fully develops his ideas on
absolute infinite space and presents it as a major exemplar of
incorporeal spirit (Koyre 1957, Reid 2007, 2012). Secondly,
while drawing on contemporary experimental natural philosophy to
provide him with examples of phenomena which cannot be explained
solely in terms of matter and motion, More explicitly draws upon a
specific experiment performed by Robert Boyle, and published by him in
his *New Experiments Physico-mechanicall touching the Spring of the
Air* (1660). If Boyle knew of More's *Immortality of the
Soul* (and it is almost certain that he did), he never troubled to
comment publicly upon it. Once his own experiments, and his own name,
were deliberately invoked to support More's philosophical
theology, however, Boyle could not let it pass (Henry 1990).


## 6. More's Manual of Metaphysics: Space, Duration, and God



After opening discussions on the nature of metaphysics, on
distinctions, and on the divisions of being, More argues that the
proper subject of metaphysics is incorporeal being, or spiritual
substance. Each of the next twenty chapters (Chapters 6-25)
focus on a single "method of proving the existence of immaterial
substance" (More 1671, 42). These are drawn from natural
philosophy, rather than from metaphysics: "From gravity",
"From pneumatic experiments", "From vortices and
comets", and so forth. The most significant addition to
More's earlier work appears in Chapter 8 where More uses his
concept of space as the perfect example of immaterial spirit. He
dismisses Aristotle's and Descartes's concepts of place
before presenting his own views on a real, self-existing space in some
detail. More's concept will be familiar to modern readers who
are acquainted with Newton's notion of absolute space. It is
essentially a three-dimensional Euclidean space which is infinite in
extent, completely isomorphous, and void except where it is occupied
by body. For More, however, it is also the best example of
immaterial--and therefore spiritual--reality in the world.
What makes it the best example for More is that it is completely
undeniable. As one of the characters in More's *Divine
Dialogues* (1668) is made to say, referring to the scholastic
tradition of calling the supposed infinite space beyond the sphere of
the fixed stars, "imaginary space": space is "so
imaginary that it cannot be dis-imagined by human understanding"
(More 1668, 54).



Previously, More had relied upon the Spirit of Nature as the supreme
example of immaterial substance in the world, but of course, he could
only insist upon the reality of this Spirit indirectly; arguing that
it must exist to explain gravity, magnetism, generation, and other
phenomena that presented real problems for the mechanical philosophy
(Henry 1986, 1990). The advantage of using *space* to
demonstrate the main features of immaterial substance was precisely
because (at least, according to More, disregarding Aristotle,
Descartes, and others) nobody could deny that space existed. The
beauty, and the forcefulness, of using space as the exemplar of spirit
is that its existence cannot be denied. It cannot be denied not just
because everyone is aware of space by virtue of everyday experience,
but also because, according to More, it is inconceivable that the
world could exist without a space for it to occupy. "For we must
either acknowledge", More wrote, "that there is a certain
extended [entity] besides matter, or that God could not create finite
matter" (More 1671, 42).



More was evidently so excited by his realisation that space could
represent immaterial substance that he went on to draw close parallels
between absolute space and God. He demonstrated this by enumerating
"about twenty titles which the metaphysicians attribute to God
and which fit the immobile extended [entity] or internal place".
It is worth quoting in full:



> 
> 
> When we shall have enumerated those names and titles appropriate to
> it, this infinite immobile, extended [entity] will appear to be not
> only something real (as we have just pointed out) but even something
> Divine (which so certainly is found in nature); this will give us
> further assurance that it cannot be nothing since that to which so
> many and such magnificent attributes pertain cannot be nothing. Of
> this kind are the following, which metaphysicians attribute
> particularly to the First Being, such as: *One, Simple, Immobile,
> External, complete, Independent, Existing in itself, Subsisting by
> itself, Incorruptible, Necessary, Immense, Uncreated, Uncircumscribed,
> Incomprehensible, Omnipresent, Incorporeal, All-penetrating,
> All-embracing, Being by its essence, Actual Being, Pure Act*.
> 
> 
> 
> There are not less than twenty titles by which the Divine Numen is
> wont to be designated, and which perfectly fit this infinite internal
> place (locus) the existence of which in nature we have demonstrated;
> omitting moreover that the very Divine Numen is called, by the
> Cabbalists, MAKOM, that is, Place (locus) (More 1671, 69-70; see
> also Copenhaver 1980, Grant 1981, Reid 2012, Leech 2013).
> 
> 
> 



More goes through each of the divine attributes in turn to show how
they apply to space. He even contrives to apply the final notion,
"Pure Act", to space: "it is aptly called *being
in act* as it cannot but be conceived as existing outside of its
causes. And, finally, pure Act, since it exists from itself
necessarily, nor is it affected by any other thing, by which it can be
completed or acted on in some way" (More 1671, 72).



It is difficult to be sure precisely how closely More wants us to take
the analogy between God and space. Clearly space and God are not one
and the same, but More at the very least regards space as an
instrument, or organ, through which God creates and maintains the
world, and without which He could not have created it. It is this last
point which is crucial. More insisted that for something to exist, it
must exist in space. This included God himself, and More was the first
theologian or philosopher to propose that God must be an extended
infinite being (Grant 1981, 223). Given the intimate connection
between God and space and the supposition that nothing could exist
unless space existed, God did not have to will space into existence.
Space was held to be an emanative effect of God. Accordingly, just as
light spontaneously emanates from a lit candle, so space emanates from
God. The world is necessarily dualistic, therefore. There cannot be a
monistic world, comprised solely of matter. Matter requires space to
accommodate its extended nature, but space is immaterial substance,
and so the world must be dualist in nature (Grant 1981, 226-27;
Reid 2012, 138; Leech 2013; Thomas 2018, 51-2).



More's concept of space is crucially important, therefore, for
making the truth of his dualistic world picture undeniable, or so he
believes. To reinforce the truth of his concept of space More also
dismisses what he calls *nullibism*, the Cartesian view that
souls can exist nowhere, or not in space. Clearly, this view
completely undermines More's position, and so he dismisses it as
nonsensical--for something to exist, More insists, it must exist
in space (Leech 2013). He also dismisses the view (having previously
held it himself, Reid 2003), which he calls *holenmerianism*,
that the immortal soul exists in its entirety in every part of the
human body. This is the traditional view in Christian theology, which
holds that the soul is in all parts of the body (since all parts are
alive), but as the soul is indivisible it cannot be extended through
the body (otherwise a severed arm might contain part of the soul,
separated from the rest of the soul), but must exist everywhere as a
whole (and evidently immediately abandons a severed limb). Again, this
is a notion of physical presence which clouds More's claims
about the straightforward relationship between existence and space,
and so must also be dismissed (Henry 1986; Reid 2003, 2012; Leech
2013). Indeed, More's objection to holenmerianism, as with
nullibism, was that it is nonsensical and merely likely to make the
common reader dismiss it out of hand, and by extension, dismiss the
concept of soul (Henry 1986, 191-92).



In More's mature philosophy, then, there was a strict dichotomy
between matter and spirit but that dichotomy was *not* defined,
as it was in Cartesianism, in terms of extension and non-extension.
Because More was committed to the idea that all real entities must
exist in space, spirit, no less than body, was extended. Accordingly,
body was defined as "A Substance impenetrable and
discerpible", and spirit as "A Substance penetrable and
indiscerpible". Discerpible and indiscerpible, neologisms of
More's, mean capable of being physically separated into parts,
and incapable of being separated into parts, respectively. Presumably
More preferred his new terms because, for those readers who knew
Latin, it conveyed a notion of tearing a piece off. More perhaps
wanted to avoid objections to the indivisibility of extended spirits
of the kind levelled against the concept of atoms: if an atom has
dimensions, however small, it is *conceptually* divisible, even
if atomists wish to claim it is physically indivisible. More conceded
that an extended spirit could be conceptually divided, but his point
was that it is impossible (even in thought) to grab hold of a spirit
and tear a piece off it. If you are thinking in those terms, you are
not thinking properly about the nature of spirit. The other major
distinguishing feature of body and spirit, of course, as we have seen,
was that bodies were inert and passive, and immaterial spirits were
naturally active, and indeed increasingly responsible, throughout
More's career, for any activity in the world (Henry 1986; Reid
2003, 2012; Leech 2013). 



As well as believing that everything must exist in space, More also
believed that everything must exist in time. Furthermore, time, like
space, is a real absolute thing which cannot possibly not exist.
Assuming the world to be not much over 5,000 years old (in accordance
with the standard view), More insisted that if God annihilated the
world after 1000 years and then had recreated it a thousand years ago,
there must have been a gap "of above three thousand yeare"
(Nicolson 1992, 487). Just as the existence of space cannot be
"dis-imagined", so the existence of time cannot be
dis-imagined. Accordingly, like space, time is conceived of as an
attribute of God: God's existence entails the existence of
space, and the existence of time (Thomas 2018, 51). Infinite space and
infinite duration are said to be "certain adulterated
representations of the divine eternity and immensity"
(*adulterinas quasdam esse Aeternitatis Immensitatisque Divinae
Repraesentationes*) (More 1675-79, 172; Thomas 2018,
54).



Just as God's proposed extension had to be protected from
charges that he must therefore be divisible (by introducing the
concept of indiscerpibility), so his existence in time had to be
protected from charges that his existence must be successive (and
therefore susceptible to change from moment to moment) (Thomas 2018,
38). More insisted, accordingly, that God's existence was not
successive, but that his existence somehow transcended time and was
present to all eternity all at once (Thomas 2018, 34). It has been
suggested, therefore, that with regard to time or duration, More
accepted a holenmeristic view that God could be entirely "in
every moment yet is not spread out in time" (Thomas 2018, 45).
Holenmerism with regard to space is the view that God is entirely in
the whole of space *and* entirely in every tiny part of space;
so, it cannot be equated with the view that he is entirely in every
tiny part of time, but is *not* in the whole of time. It is by
no means clear, therefore, that "whilst More rejected
holenmerism for divine spatial presence, he maintained it for divine
*temporal* presence" (Thomas 2018, 45). We should bear in
mind that "holenmerism" was a neologism coined by More and
he applied it only to claims about spatial occupation. To say that God
is everywhere in his entirety and in every part of space (be it never
so small) in his entirety is clearly an absurd claim, a "mad
Jingle", as More said (1662, *Immortality of the Soul*,
separately paginated, 43). But to say that all moments of time, past,
present, and future, are simultaneously present to an eternal God,
while certainly puzzling, does not seem so obviously contradictory.
The historical fact is, More's view of God's relationship
to time was fairly standard among contemporary theologians, and should
not be compared with his highly radical and unheard of view of
God's relationship to space (Grant 1981, 223).



Returning to the *Enchiridion metaphysicum*, as in the
*Antidote Against Atheism*, and the *Immortality of the
Soul*, More also draws upon various physical phenomena which he
believes cannot be explained in terms of the mechanical philosophy,
and can only be understood if some other factor is at work, namely the
Spirit of Nature. More included an example drawn from the series of
experiments Boyle had conducted using the newly invented air-pump, and
which he had published in 1660. It is essentially the experiment
described in the *Immortality of the Soul*, in which the piston
of the pump lifts a heavy weight (this time 100 pounds, rather than
ten), against gravity. The crucial difference is that here it is
explicitly described as Boyle did it, and explicitly named as
Boyle's experiment.



Although More clearly believed he was engaged in establishing the true
religion, and the true philosophy to support it, not everyone agreed.
As soon as the Somerset virtuoso, John Beale (1608-1683), saw
it, he wrote to Henry Oldenburg, Secretary of the Royal Society, in
strident tones:



> 
> Did not I tell yu, wt was to be expected from Dr H. M. His confidence
> is as strong as Enthusiasme; & yet yu see what he does. As if he
> had a minde to drawe a suspicion, or (at least) to rayse the style of
> Infamy agst ye R[oyal] S[ociety] & candid Experiment, as to be so
> Magicall as to call in ye ayde of Spirits & Angels. If Honble Mr
> Boyles health will bear it, He owes him a chastisement...
> (Letter, 24 June 1671, Oldenburg [1671-1672] 1971, 120).
> 



The chastisement came in Boyle's *Hydrostatical
Discourse* of 1672. Furthermore, it is evident from Boyle's
comments that he objected not only to More's bad physics, but
also to what he saw as potentially divisive theology. After all, Boyle
pointed out, even "Heathen Philosophers" were convinced by
their studies of nature of the existence of God, and they had no need
to suppose an intermediary Spirit of Nature: "taking no notice
of an immaterial *principium hylarchicum*, they believed things
to be managed in a mere physical way according to the General Laws,
settled [by God] among things Corporeal, acting upon one
another" (Boyle 1999, 184). Boyle believed in incorporeal
substance but objected to the attempt to prove its existence by
relying on a "precarious Principle" such as the Spirit of
Nature (Boyle 1999, 184).



Boyle was not alone in his criticisms. Sir Mathew Hale took time off
from his legal studies to publish two critiques, which More tried to
answer in his *Remarks upon two late ingenious Discourses*
(1676). Somehow Lady Conway heard that "Mr Boyle sayes you had
better never have printed it, for you are mistaken in all your
experiments" (Nicolson 1992, 420). The German physicist, Johann
Christoph Sturm (1635-1703) dismissed More's
interpretation of Boyle's experiments in 1676 in *Epistola ad
Virum Celeberrimum Henricum Morum de Spiritu ipsius Hylarchio*.
Robert Hooke took the opportunity to reject More's views in his
*Lampas: or, Descriptions of some Mechanical Improvements of Lamps
& Waterpoises* of 1677.



It is known that Boyle was intermittently writing a study throughout
these years of the various different concepts of Nature at use in
different discourses. When this finally appeared in print in 1686 as
the *Free Enquiry into the Vulgarly Received Notion of Nature*,
More's ideas were included as a target for Boyle's
critical barbs. But Boyle did not just attack More's views on
the Spirit of Nature, he also took the opportunity to dismiss
More's necessitarian theology, in favour of his own voluntarist
theology:



> 
> God is a free agent, and created the world, not out of necessity, but
> voluntarily, having framed it, as he pleased and thought fit, at the
> beginning of things, when there was no substance but Himself, and
> consequently no creature, to which he could be obliged, or by which he
> could be limited (Boyle 2000, 566).
> 



Boyle was not the clearest writer and often garbled his arguments but
the implication here (seen more clearly in the claim that he created
the world as he pleased than in the claim that he was not obliged to
any creature) is that God did not have to create a world in accordance
with pre-established values of goodness (Henry 1990). Certainly, he
had already denied the claim that God had been obliged to create the
best of all possible worlds:



> 
> I think it very unsafe to deny that God, who is almighty and
> omniscient, and an owner of perfections which, for ought we know, are
> participable in more different manners and degrees than we can
> comprehend, could not display... them, by creating a work more
> excellent than this world. And, his immense power and unexhausted
> wisdom considered, it will not follow either, that because this world
> of ours is an admirable piece of workmanship, the divine architect
> could not have bettered it... (Boyle 2000, 495)
> 


## 7. Kabbalism and Quakerism



In October 1670 More was visited at Cambridge by Francis Mercury van
Helmont (1614-1698), son of the famous iatrochemist, Jan
Baptista van Helmont (1579-1644), and a student of Jewish
Kabbalah. More asked van Helmont if he would visit Anne, Lady Conway,
with a view to trying to treat the incessant debilitating headache
which had troubled her for many years. As a result of meeting Anne,
van Helmont became her resident physician, living at Ragley Hall in
Warwickshire, where More himself was a frequent visitor. Van Helmont
was a friend and collaborator of the leading Christian cabbalist of
the day, Christian Knorr von Rosenroth (1631-1689), and More now
had the opportunity to learn about the Jewish Kabbalah. It should be
noted that although his own version of the cabbala, as published in
his *Conjectura Cabbalistica* (1653), was nothing more than a
method of scriptural interpretation of his own invention, More
nevertheless felt that the original Jewish Kabbalah, deriving
ultimately from Moses, was the true source of the philosophical
theology which More had managed to "reconstruct".



It came as quite a shock to More, therefore, to learn through van
Helmont and through correspondence with von Rosenroth that the
Kabbalah, as developed especially by the leading sixteenth-century
Kabbalist, Isaac Luria (1534-1572), was a long way from what he
had imagined. Its "invincible obscurity" was distasteful
to More's rationalist sensibilities, and he also discerned
monistic materialism in it, and even identification of God with
nature. More's critical writings on Lurianic Kabbalah were
included by von Rosenroth in his *Kabbala denudata* of 1677,
and included by More in his *Opera omnia* in 1679 (Coudert
1992, Crocker 2003, Laerke 2017).



Unfortunately for More, his failure to be convinced by the spiritual
worth of mystical Kabbalah contributed to an increasing distance
between him and his great friend Anne Conway. Van Helmont had become
interested in Quakerism and introduced Anne to a number of leading
Quakers, including George Fox (1624-1691), Robert Barclay
(*fl*. 1670), George Keith (1638?-1716), and William Penn
(1644-1718). Evidently the Quakers favoured the Kabbalah and
Anne, increasingly favoured the Quakers. During this time Anne was
writing her own philosophical system which was published posthumously
as *The Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy*
(1690 in Latin, 1692 in English). It is essentially a monistic system
in which all things are made of spirit, and she criticises during the
course of it not only the materialism of Hobbes and Spinoza, but also
the dualism of Descartes, and her erstwhile mentor, More (Conway 1996,
Hutton 2004). It seems clear that Anne was growing intellectually, and
spiritually, away from More, and seems to have regarded her new Quaker
friends, a number of whom evidently now colonised Ragley Hall, as
closer to her own developing beliefs. A letter from Lord Conway of
1677 even says that the Quakers in the Hall "have free access to
my wife, but I believe Dr. More, though he was in the house all the
last summer, did not see her above twice or thrice" (Nicolson
1992, 439-40). More himself during this period seems to have
been torn between trying to dissuade her from joining the Quakers, and
respect for Anne's carefully thought-out decision to embrace
their teachings. Indeed, More even showed a grudging respect for the
Quakers themselves, who were obviously serious and sincere, and in
some respects their enthusiasms matched his own tendencies in that
direction.



It is perhaps worth noting also that John Finch, More's former
student and Anne's half-brother, also moved away from
More's way of thinking at this time. During his time in Turkey
as a diplomat (1674-1681), Finch wrote a large manuscript
*Treatise* of natural philosophy which remains unpublished.
Finch's philosophy is materialist and based on an empiricist
epistemology, and is highly critical of many of More's views.
Rejecting More's dualism, Finch takes an almost Hobbesian line,
but couples it with fideism in religion: we cannot prove the existence
of God or immaterial substances by the use of reason and so must trust
in the Gospels (Crocker 2003).



If nothing else, the fact that two such close admirers of More as John
Finch and Anne Conway both came to reject his philosophy shows not
only that his philosophy was not as cogent and compelling as he
thought, but also that his attempt to use philosophy in the service of
religion was increasingly seen (as it was by Joseph Beaumont, Samuel
Parker, John Beale, Robert Boyle, and others) as not only
unconvincing, but even subversive of sound religion. Indeed it has
recently been suggested (Leech 2013) that More's determined
efforts to provide a supposedly unassailable philosophical theology
unintentionally contributed to disaffection with religion, and the
rise of secularism and even atheism. If More's vigorously
proposed philosophical theology, with its claims about souls, spirits,
space, and so forth, could be equally vigorously denied by his fellow
religionists, the contemporary onlooker could hardly be blamed for
developing a sceptical response to religion in general. The inability
of religious believers to agree among themselves as to what is the
"true" religion has been seen as a major factor in the
rise of secularism, and has been dubbed "theological
fratricide". Ironically, it was the passion and persistence with
which More promoted his own version of philosophical theology which
led to him being a prominent (though unwitting) participant in that
"fratricide" (Leech 2013, 8, 233).


## 8. Necessitarian Theology and New Threats



More knew, from the time he wrote his *Antidote Against
Atheism*, that Descartes's philosophy was being appropriated
by atheists for their own purposes. It must have been with some dismay
that he realised this was a rising tide which his own writings did
nothing to quell. And then, as if Cartesian atheism and Hobbesianism
were not enough, he heard in the 1670s of new threats to sound
religion. One of these was Spinozism, which appalled More as much as
it did every other devout believer. The other atheistic threat, dubbed
hylozoism by More, was represented by the much less well known English
medical writer, Francis Glisson (1597-1677), formerly Regius
professor of Physick (i.e. medicine) at Cambridge.



More wrote two short attacks on Spinoza, one against the *Tractatus
theologico-politicus* (1670), which More read in 1677, and one
against the "two pillars" of Spinoza's atheism, the
necessary existence of substance and that there is only one substance.
More, like others among his contemporaries, saw Spinoza as taking
Cartesianism to a predictably atheistic extreme. Misled by
Descartes's identification of extension with matter, Spinoza
concluded that there was only one substance, matter. More was writing
before the term pantheism became current and so he saw Spinoza's
identification of this one substance with God simply as atheism.
Spinoza confused the divine nature with the nature of created things,
according to More, and this was tantamount to atheism. In his
confutation of Spinoza More adopted Descartes's ontological
argument for the existence of God, based on God's absolute
perfection, to insist that matter cannot be an *Ens summe et
absolute perfectum*, and so cannot be identified with God.
Ironically, however, More's near identification of God with
space, and his insistence on the spatial extension of God, which many
contemporaries saw as a materialist position (Henry 1986), led a
number of Enlightenment philosophers, most notably Cristian Wolff
(1679-1754), to see him as sharing in a number of the same
errors as Spinoza (Leech 2013).



More seems to have written both of his anti-Spinozistic tracts
hurriedly, as he was preparing the Latin translations of his works for
inclusion in the second and third volumes of his *Opera omnia*
in 1679 (volume 1 had already appeared in 1675). Indeed, he told Anne
Conway that he "could not forbeare" from confuting Spinoza
while he was still in the process of reading him. Both of these
critiques of Spinoza, were included at the end of volume two and there
is little evidence that they made any impression on contemporary
readers (Hutton 1984, Henry 1987). In the attack on Spinoza's
*Tractatus*, however, More included an attempted refutation of
the claims of Francis Glisson (which More likened to Spinoza's
views) that all matter, whether animate or inanimate, is capable of
perception, is appetitive, and therefore in some sense alive. This did
attract critical attention.



Glisson had arrived at his position as a result of physiological
research on the stomach and intestines, in which he noticed that these
and other parts of the body were sensitive to touch even though there
were no nerves present. This is the phenomenon now known as
irritability, but in his efforts to explain it Glisson had developed a
general theory of matter and body and had published it in his
*Treatise on the Energetic Nature of Substance* (*Tractatus
de natura substantiae energetica, seu, de vita naturae*,
1672).



More's attack on Glisson drew a response from the leading
Presbyterian divine, Richard Baxter (1615-1691) (Henry 1987,
Sytsma 2017). Glisson had been Baxter's physician, so presumably
Baxter knew him not to be an atheist, but Baxter was not motivated to
defend Glisson merely by friendship. As a Calvinist, Baxter subscribed
to a voluntarist theology and was appalled by the implications of
More's necessitarian theology. More's rejection of
Glisson's theory depended upon his claim that matter had to be
necessarily inert and that only spirit could be
self-active--according to More, not even God could change this,
because it was inherent in the very nature of matter that it must be
inert, and definitive of spirit that it must be active. For Baxter
this was an intolerable circumscription of God's omnipotence on
the mere whim of an all too fallible thinker. In a letter to More
written in 1681, Baxter said,



> 
> I confess I am too dull to be sure that God cannot endue matter itself
> with the formal virtue of Perception... That Almighty God cannot
> make perceptive living matter... I cannot prove, or I think you:
> Where is the contradiction that makes it impossible? (Baxter 1682,
> 28-9)
> 



As Baxter made clear, he was unimpressed by More's claim that
Glisson's view might lead to a denial of the existence of God
and the immortality of the soul. For Baxter, More's claim that
"God cannot do this" was just as likely to lead to atheism
(Baxter 1682, 29).



More published Baxter's letter and his reply to it, *An
Answer to a Letter of a Learned Psychopyrist*, in his edition of
Joseph Glanvill's *Saducismus Triumphatus* of 1682.
Glanvill, one of More's most devoted followers, had died before
he could produce his response to the anti-witchcraft treatise of John
Webster (1611-1682), *The Displaying of Supposed
Witchcraft* (1677), which had attacked Glanvill's earlier
books on the reality of witchcraft (Crocker 2003). But
Glanvill's books on witchcraft were largely intended as
contributions to More's own long standing campaign for proving
the existence of a spiritual realm by anecdotal evidence, and so More
saw the work through the press. He took the opportunity, however, to
add his own most recent attempts to impress his theories on the
reading public, including his response to Baxter, an English
translation of two chapters from the *Enchiridion metaphysicum*
(chapters 27 and 28) which defined the nature of spirit, and yet more
stories of witchcraft and apparitions which More himself had
collected.



More published another work of Glanvill's at this time, his
*Lux orientalis*, a survey of early views on the pre-existence
of souls, again intended by Glanvill as a contribution to More's
own religious campaign. This was published together with George
Rust's *Discourse of Truth* in a work which More
entitled, *Two Choice and Useful Treatises* (1682). Rust had
been a student of More's in the 1650s and had remained a devoted
follower while developing his own Origenian theology. More's
annotations to Rust's *Discourse* included a lengthy
reply to Baxter's response to *An Answer to a... Learned
Psychopyrist* (Henry 1987, Hengstermann 2017).



The short pieces in these two collections represent More's final
contributions to philosophical theology. Otherwise his final years
were devoted to works on the interpretation of the prophetic books of
the Bible.


## 9. Posthumous Reputation



It seems fair to say that although More had a small number of
like-minded and devoted followers during his own lifetime, his
philosophical theology was for the most part regarded with suspicion
by his contemporaries. Even some of those who had been tutored by him,
and who admired him personally, most notably John Finch and Anne
Conway, could not go along with his claims about the necessity of a
dualistic ontology. For those who failed to share More's
necessitarian theology, such as Boyle and Baxter, More's views
were dangerous to religion. There were others, however, who believed
that More's dichotomy between passive matter and active spirit
was invaluable for combatting atheism. It was More's
anti-atheistic stratagem which lay behind the rejection of John
Locke's speculation about the possibility of thinking matter by
the Bishop of Worcester, Edward Stillingfleet (1635-1699). If
matter could think, then the dichotomy between passive matter and
active spirit did not hold, and it would be impossible (the Bishop
thought) to use the presence of activity in the world to establish the
existence of a necessarily spiritual realm. Locke, like Baxter, merely
objected that Stillingfleet's insistence that not even God could
make matter capable of thinking, undermined God's omnipotence,
and thereby was likely to undermine the faith (Henry 2011). Samuel
Clarke took More's distinction between inert matter and active
spirit even further, insisting that not even God could endow bodies
with active powers, and developing what has been called "partial
occasionalism" (Sangiacomo 2018). Effectively, therefore, where
natural phenomena were concerned, Clarke replaced More's Spirit
of Nature, "the vicarious Power of God", with the direct
action of God himself, or his angels (Henry 2020; see also Thomas
2018).



It was only really after his death that More's reputation began
to rise, at least in Britain. There was renewed interest in his
writings in the early eighteenth century, when More's
combination of rationalism with a passionate, almost enthusiastic,
faith must have proved heartening to churchmen living in an age of
deism. The natural theology which flourished in the age after Isaac
Newton led to an increased emphasis on rationalism in religion but it
was important for the clergy to avoid descending into deism, and to
combine their natural theologies with a belief in Scripture, and with
what More would have called the "Grand Mysteries" of
religion. His reputation was also helped by the fact that he was seen
as a prominent member of the early Latitudinarians, and as this
rational and liberal approach to belief became dominant, More could be
seen as one of the movement's heroes. Furthermore, while More
had been trying to promote necessitarian theology at a time when
voluntarist theology was very much in the ascendant (especially in
Calvinist countries), the eighteenth century saw a reversal, and
necessitarian theology came to the fore, as represented seriously in
Alexander Pope's *Essay on Man*, and satirically in
Voltaire's *Candide*. As the eighteenth century
progressed More's reputation as a theologian, if not as a
philosopher, became assured and it has remained high ever since
(Taliaferro 2005).



In more recent scholarship More has been seen as a significant
influence upon Isaac Newton, particularly his ideas on absolute space,
and this, together with his role in introducing Cartesianism into
England, has assured his continual inclusion in histories of science
of the period. Newton certainly knew More personally in Cambridge, and
owned and read a significant number of More's books. A
manuscript copy of the correspondence between More and Descartes,
compiled before Clerselier's edition of Descartes's
correspondence (1657), has recently been found among Newton's
personal papers (Hutton 2020). They also shared a profound interest in
the interpretation of the prophetic scriptures (Hutton 1994). It seems
undeniable that Newton read and was influenced by More's views
on space and time, as presented in the *Enchiridion
metaphysicum* (Koyre 1957, Grant 1981, Hall 1990). Like
More, Newton also believed that for something to exist it must exist
in space, and he identified the immensity of infinite space with the
extension of God (Grant 1981). Similarly, in the "General
Scholium", which he added to the second edition of his
*Principia mathematica* (1713), Newton wrote that God "by
existing always and everywhere he constitutes duration and space,
eternity, and infinity" (Newton 1999, 941; Hall 1990, Henry
1993). It seems certain that Newton took some salient ideas from More,
but he was by no means a complete disciple. It is highly unlikely that
Newton would have admired More's natural philosophy, and
certainly, like Boyle, Hooke, and other natural philosophers, he
rejected More's Spirit of Nature. Nor did they share similar
religious views. Newton disagreed with More's interpretation of
the Book of Daniel and the Revelation, and Newton was very much a
voluntarist in his theology and so would have been opposed to
More's necessitarianism (Henry 1990). Even so, the similarities
between their views of space and time, and their relationship to God,
guarantees More's place in the history of science. Moreover,
More's position in the history of philosophy, and in the history
of relations between science and religion, is secure.