About the middle of the seventeenth century, Hobbes and Descartes,
clear-headed and unprejudiced thinkers, caused a kind of panic in the
devotional world: they resolved that they would not take anything for
granted. Starting from a Socratic ignorance, they determined to verify,
to try (and it was time) if they could not find a little firm ground
among the vast and bewildering mass of rash dogmas and unsupported
assertions that lumbered the scene of thought. Such an attempt cut very
hard at Revelation. The religious fabric was so perilously
elaborate--the removal of a brick was likely to set so much
tumbling--its defenders felt themselves bound to believe that the part
was as important, if not more so, than the whole; and they had pledged
themselves so widely and rashly that they made no attempt at organised
rational resistance, but attempted to overwhelm the rough intruders with
torrents of solemn imprecations.
But there were in many places earnest-minded, faithful thinkers,
profoundly attached to the revealed truths, who saw another way open.
Authorities and ancient names were being called into court; philosophers
who had written from a Christian point of view were supposed to speak
professionally; a daring thought struck them: what if they could trace a
connection between the earlier sources of Revelation and the noblest
name that philosophy had ever enrolled? What if they could show that
Plato himself owed his highest ideas to the transient influence of that
teaching--the Law of Moses--which they themselves possessed in the
entirety of a broad development? Pythagoras was said to have sojourned
on Carmel and interviewed the priests of Jehovah; the Cabbala--the Law
embroidered by metaphysical and mystical minds--was in their hands, and
even their adversaries would "allow to Plato the spiritual insight that
they denied to St. Paul."
At Cambridge this idea took shape in four remarkable minds: Dr.
Cudworth, Master of Clare and afterwards of Christ's, Dr. Whichcote,
Provost of King's, John Smith, Fellow of Queen's, and Dr. Henry More,
Fellow of Christ's, applied themselves to the solution of the problem.
The interest of the situation lies in the fact that these men were pure
and devoted beyond measure in life as well as in thought. Smith did more
by direct influence and personal weight than even by his "Select
Discourses." Dr. Patrick at his death preached on the cry of Elisha,
"My father, my father, the chariot of Israel and the horses thereof:" he
said that a light had been extinguished in Israel. Cudworth had perhaps
the most logical mind. He wrote an "Intellectual System" that was
supposed to give Hobbes a death-blow. Whichcote wrote discourses
delivered at St. Laurence, Jewry, and originated an immense mass of
aphorisms, afterwards published.
But, of the four, More was the man of genius: he was divinely gifted in
body and mind; with passionate earnestness he combined humour and
delicacy of thought, a trick of suggestive style, and a personality at
once genial and commanding. The following pages profess to give a slight
account of him.
The movement had unhappily no coherence. We class the four together as
Cambridge Platonists because they were possessed by the same idea and
worked it out on individual lines; but they did not write or think in
concert. They were acquaintances--More and Cudworth close friends, and
Whichcote died in Cudworth's house--but it can never have occurred to
them that their names would have been connected in later times, because
they had no scheme of concerted action,--they originated no movement.
Their unique interest lies in this--that, in an age when both religion
and philosophy were making huge strides into materialism, they
discerned and strove to indicate this truth,--that the capacity in the
human soul of conceiving ideals, and in part transfusing them into life,
is at once its highest boast and the most potent factor of its eternal
quest.
Henry More was the son of a gentleman who lived near Grantham on a small
estate of his own. The principles of the family were those of the
straitest Calvinism, though sufficiently cultivated for the father to
read the "Faerie Queene" aloud in the evenings; and the boy, after being
carefully trained in a private school, kept by a master of this
persuasion, was sent to Eton, with strict injunctions from his father
and uncle to hold to the faith delivered by Calvin to the Saints.
But the boy's instinct for philosophy was greater than his loyalty to
family principles. He had, moreover, none of that gloomy and
business-like habit of mind that demanded an accurate and severe
disposal of the future of the entire human race as the basis for a
creed. Though melancholy as a boy, he had the beginnings of that serene
and even temperament, that afterwards was so conspicuous. He was
immaturely an optimist: the beauty and kindliness of the world occupied
a large share in his thoughts; and, when his elder brother came down to
see him at Eton, he maintained the brutal inadequacy of
Predestinarianism so strongly, that his uncle, to whom this scandalous
position was reported, fell back upon threats of personal chastisement.
He gives us a strange picture of himself at Eton, walking slowly in the
Playing Fields while his comrades were at their games, with his head on
one side, kicking the stones with his feet, while he murmured to himself
the lines of Claudian:
Saepe mihi dubiam traxit sententia mentem;
Curarent Superi terras; an nullus inesset
Rector, et incerto fluerent mortalia casu.
Such a precocious, anxious childhood is generally, alas! only a sign of
deficient vitality--a disposition to embrace a religious life and die
early; but the event proved a singular contradiction to this.
More was, it seems, a lovable lad--very simple-minded and sweet;
resolving that, should the horrid phantom of inevitable destruction be
true, should he be destined to that bitter place, yet that he would even
there behave himself with such submissive patience that God should not
have the heart to keep him there. In his studies he made great progress,
troubled more than elated by success, because he was too diffident to
believe anything in his triumphs but that he would break down next time.
The Provost of Eton at that time was Sir Henry Wotton--ambassador,
courtier, poet, and philosopher. It was an encouraging and stimulating
time to be at the school, for Sir Henry, with his romantic past and his
courtly, affectionate manners, must have been a fascinating figure for
the boys; and he was, moreover, fond of their society; had constantly
one or two about him; put up pictures of great orators and statesmen in
their schoolroom; and used frequently to walk in to their lessons, never
leaving the room without dropping some aphorism or epigram worthy of a
place in the memory of a growing scholar.
At the age of seventeen More went up to Christ's College, Cambridge,
just at the time when Milton was leaving it; and at his earnest desire
was entered under a tutor that was not a Calvinist. On getting
established at Cambridge he found himself in an atmosphere, which then,
at least, teemed with inducements to study, for the studious. There was
little of the social life of a modern university--hours were longer,
earlier, and more regularly kept; there was no prejudice in favour of
bodily exercise as a means of improving health: for the more absorbed
students a turn in the cloisters as a remedy for cold feet was deemed
sufficient--the fen invaded Cambridge on every side; the wild birds
screamed in the pools, and snipe were snared where Downing now stands.
The high-road to Ely was fenced from the marsh by a few farms, and the
ruins--still ugly--of a religious house; beyond Ely lay the
interminable lagoons, with here and there an island farm.
In going to Cambridge, a scholar who meant to use the place, did not go
with any idea of enjoying life in ordinary ways, of finding society, of
amusing himself: no, he went where there were honest, silent,
like-minded men, too intent on study to do more than occasionally
discuss the subjects with which they were grappling, or give the young
student a word of encouragement--_alere flammam_; and besides this, a
plain but adequate living, food and shelter, books and lectures--and all
not without a certain severe grace and dignity--grace thrown over life
by the stately courts of grey stone, retired gardens full of grassy
butts and old standard trees, grave parlours and venerable halls, talks
in galleries or cloisters; and for the young hearts that gathered there
the unvarying march of the seasons: the orchards whitening and blushing
over the stately stone walls of college gardens; the plunge of the water
in the fountain, the snow on the ground throwing up mysterious light on
to the ceilings of studious chambers, and choking the familiar street
sounds; or there was some great preacher to hear; my lord of Ely
travelling post-haste through the town with his long train of servants
and gentlemen, and just stopping for compliments and refreshment at a
Lodge, or the grave figures of the doctors, passing through the street,
to be watched with bated breath and whispered names; some scholar, with
worn spiritual aspect, stealing from his rooms, some nobleman with his
flourishing following; or, best of all, the quiet services in the dark
chapel, the droning bell ceasing high in the roof, the growing thunder
of the organ, the flickering lights, and the master moving to his stall,
accompanied by some scholar or writer of mighty name; and then the
liturgy, the reviving in prayer and meditation of the old ideals, the
thankful consciousness that God could so easily be sought and found.
Into this quiet society More was lovingly received, and it gave him deep
content. He plunged into his studies with a kind of fury, like a man
transported, digging for treasure; and one day it happened that his
father came upon him unexpectedly as he sat with all his books about
him, and, being rapturously delighted with the serious intentness of the
young man, used a curious phrase about him, suggested no doubt by a
certain glory, hardly human, transfiguring the boy's face, "That he
spent his time in an angelical way," and then this old Puritan, to mark
his sense of satisfaction by some practical testimony, went home and
wrote the lad down for a handsome legacy in his will, in token of
complete reconciliation: and this legacy was never revoked; but it moved
Henry's heart when he discovered it, as the surest sign that he had
been forgiven, knowing his father's concrete mode of thought as he did.
He tells us that his tutor, when he first arrived, received him kindly,
and asked him, after some talk, observing the boy's melancholy and
thoughtful disposition, whether he had a discernment of things good and
evil, to which he replied in a low voice, "I hope I have." He says that
as he uttered this he was all the time conscious of being the possessor
of a singularly sensitive discrimination in these matters, and besides
of an insatiable and burning curiosity after all kinds of knowledge.
This, however, his diffidence did not allow him to confess. The tutor
seems to have watched him carefully, for not long after, seeing his
intense and unflagging zeal in study, he asked him rather brusquely why
he was so intent on his work, hinting that mere ambition, if that were
the motive, was too low an end. On this he confessed that his only aim
was knowledge, an aim in itself. The mere consciousness of knowledge was
exquisitely pleasurable to him.
Until he took his B.A. in 1635 he occupied himself chiefly in the works
of the natural philosophers--Aristotle, Cardan, and Julius Scaliger; but
they were a bitter disappointment to him. Their acute and solid
observations pleased him, but they seemed to make hasty and obscure
assertions on very trivial grounds; and he became a complete sceptic.
Not, says Tulloch, as he carefully tells us, regarding the existence of
God, or the duties of morality--"for of these he never had the least
doubt"--but regarding the origin and end of life. This step he recorded,
as his habit was, in a double quatrain of elegiacs, a metre to which he
more than once resorted to summarise the turning-points of his career.
Being now able to please himself, he attacked the Platonists--not only
Plato himself, but Plotinus and his followers--and gradually he was led
to doubt the serious value of mere knowledge. Down into the valley of
humiliation he stept; in the bitterness of the fruit of the intellect he
could presume to believe, for he had tasted of it and strenuously
bruised the savour from it,--and he came to see that it is not the
origin and method of life, but life itself that it behoves the true man
to know.
That was the point at which so many of his contemporaries were stopping
all round him; they, too, had penetrated the secrets of the mind. A few
of them, more enthusiastic, continued to pursue it: the others,
mistaking the sensuous region for the higher way, fell back on life in
its grosser forms; they ate and drank, they buried themselves in local
politics and temporary interests. Such things had no charm for More; he
pushed through and out into a purer air.
The mysterious and fascinating doctrine of the divine illumination
opened before him--uncleanness of spirit, not distance of place, he
said, divide men from God: to purge the mind from vice and impurity and
the subtle temptations of sense, so as to leave the spiritual eye clear
and undimmed--this holy art of life became his dream.
There fell into his hands Tauler's "Theologia Germanica," that precious
treatise that, through similitudes, spoke so clearly of God; the work
that had been so beloved of Luther. It spoke of the surrender of the
will to God--the loosing it from selfish impulses to sail like a ship
upon the free sea--the nameless but unerring instinct that falls upon
the soul if such a course is faithfully pursued.
He awoke like a man out of sleep, and the conflict began. The old man,
which, like Proteus, assumes so many and so bewildering shapes, stood
revealed: but the struggle was a matter of time, though sharp at first,
so clearly was the truth grasped; and this growing purity and simplicity
of mind which he discovered, together with a superhuman assurance, which
began to stir and rise within him, constitute what may be called his
conversion. Another quatrain records this:
I come from Heaven, am an immortal ray
Of God; O joy! and back to God shall go.
And here sweet love on wings me up doth stay.
I live, I'm sure; and joy this life to know.
Night and vain dreams begone--Father of lights,
We live, as Thou, clad with eternal day.
Faith, wisdom, love, fixed joy, free winged might--
This is true life: all else death and decay.
He wrote also to record this a long mystical poem, called _Psychozoia_
(Life of the Soul), in 1640, at the age of twenty-six. He was flooded
with a perpetual content.
In the pursuit of mysticism there are often several painful facts to
record. In the first place, it is common to find a mystical temperament
in those whose physical nature is not very strong or passionate. It
seems as if certain natures, by the very fact that the ties which hold
them to the earth are more than half-loosened already, have a strong
affinity to the world of abstractions--as if the very weakness of their
corporeal organisation held open a door through which strange shapes are
seen moving, and airy voices heard to call; and again the mystical life
is, more than any other, subject to deep depressions of spirit, dumb
insensibilities, and heavy overshadowings from the towers of death. In
the history of More's life no trace of either of these failings can be
even faintly discovered. In the first place, he was of a strong and
sound constitution; he did not know what it was to be languid or out of
health; he was gifted with an extraordinary spring and plenty of pure
animal spirits--"a rich ethereal sort of body, for what was inward," to
use his own Pythagorean phrase; he says of himself that his body seemed
built for a hundred years; that he had a high warmth and activity of
thought that never flagged--notably too, that, after a long day of
incessant thought, when he came to sleep he had a strange sort of
narcotic power; and he was no sooner in a manner laid on his bed, that
the falling of a house would scarce wake him, and that he woke in the
morning to an inexpressible life and vigour, so that his thoughts and
notions "rayed" about him.
There would seem to be little of the visionary here; and yet he
confesses to a consciousness of what he calls "Enthusiasm"--which we
should almost call madness: he could summon up a material object with
such distinctness--visualise it, as it is now called--that it produced
on him all the sensations of being seen with the outward eye: that is,
he could at any moment, with his eyes open, command a scene or a person,
so that the vision passed before and effaced the furniture of his room
or the page of his book: and he says that all his life he could, with an
almost inconsiderable effort of the will, fix his mind so intently on
any subject or line of thought that he could spend as much as three
hours in an intent uninterrupted reverie.
Such a man would be sure to fling himself with rapture into ascetic and
mortifying practices--and so he did: the result was a prolonged
exaltation of soul, apparently unaccompanied by any symptoms of
exhaustion and depression, which is almost miraculous. One reverie,
which he records, lasted for fifteen days, during which he slept and
rose, ate and drank, went about his ordinary business, without, he
asserts, any one suspecting that he was all the time occupied in a
serene and rapturous contemplation. In this "lazy activity," he said,
"he passed from notion to notion without any perceptible images or words
in the mind;" as he walked in the street he could have fallen, he said,
and kissed the stones for joy; when playing the theorbo, for he had
considerable musical talent, he says that he sometimes became almost mad
with pleasure--so overcome that he was forced to desist.
"I am not out of my wits [as he writes in a touching passage in one of
his mystical dialogues] in this divine freedom, for God does not ride me
as a horse, and guide me I know not whither, but converseth with me as a
friend: I sport with the beasts of the earth; the lion licks my hand
like a spaniel; the serpent sleeps upon my lap and stings me not. I play
with the fowls of heaven, and the birds of air sit singing upon my fist.
Thou canst call down the moon so near thee by thy magic charm that thou
mayst kiss her, as she is said to have kissed Endymion--or control and
stop the course of the sun; or, with one stamp of thy foot, stay the
motion of the earth.
"He that is come hither, God hath taken him to be His own familiar
friend; and though He speaks to others aloof off, in outward religions
and parables, yet He leads this man by the hand, teaching him
intelligible documents upon all the objects of His providence: speaks to
him plainly in His own language, sweetly insinuates Himself and
possesseth all his faculties, understanding, reason, and memory. This is
the darling of God, and a prince among men, far above the dispensation
of either miracle or prophet."
There is no figure in literature that comes very close to this, except
the solemn form of Prospero in the enchanted land:
The isle is full of noises.
Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.
Henry More's life was a very simple one. His private means were large;
we hear of his possessing the advowson of a living in Lincolnshire,
Ingoldsby, to which he presented Mr. Ward, who wrote his life, and a
large farm in the same county; he had also other sources of income. Thus
he had no temptation to seek for wealth, or for preferment for the sake
of wealth, since his tastes were extraordinarily simple. He did, as a
matter of fact, give very largely in charity; his door, it was said,
was like the door of an hospital; indeed, he was so liberal with his
money, that in later life he made over to a nephew, Gabriel More, who
had fallen into misfortunes through no fault of his own, not only his
Lincolnshire estates, but a large legacy which he received from Lady
Conway.
He was elected a Fellow of Christ's soon after taking his M.A. degree:
his solitary and contemplative habits, his ascetic practices--for these,
though not marked, were sure to be discussed in so small and intimate a
society as a college--and the slight suspicion of fanaticism that he
incurred, led some to doubt whether he would not be a melancholy
addition to the Combination Room; but those who knew him better assured
the authorities that, though he was studious and serious, yet he was a
very pleasant companion, and in his way one of the merriest Greeks they
were acquainted with.
He was offered several important posts. Great efforts were made to get
him over to Ireland. On one occasion he was offered the Deanery of
Christ Church, Dublin, and on another occasion the Provostship of
Trinity College combined with the Deanery of St. Patrick's; as he never
even considered these for a moment, he was offered two Irish Bishoprics
in succession, the Lord-Lieutenant writing to him to press his
acceptance of the latter. "Pray be not so morose or humoursome," he
wrote, "as to refuse all things you have not known so long as Christ's
College."
Once even he was offered an English Bishopric, and his friends got him
as far as Whitehall to kiss hands, but they concealed the real object of
their designs, and when he understood it, he was not on any account to
be persuaded.
Late in life he accepted a prebend at Gloucester, urgently pressed on
him by Heneage Finch, Earl of Nottingham, the Lord Chancellor, brother
of an old pupil, but he resigned it almost immediately in favour of one
of his friends; and once, too, the Fellows offered to elect him to the
Mastership of Christ's, when it fell vacant, but this also he declined.
He was tutor of the College for a time, and was brought thus into close
relations with Sir John Finch, afterwards Ambassador to Turkey, younger
brother of Lord Nottingham, then an undergraduate. Finch's sister, Lady
Conway, had been converted to the tenets of the Quakers, and Henry More,
whose interest in his pupil extended itself to his pupil's sister,
laboured to reclaim her for several years; he was thus brought into
contact with Penn and the leaders of the Quietist party.
Lady Conway, the original of Lady Cardiff in "John Inglesant," was
afflicted by mysterious and incurable pains in the head, and not only
travelled to consult physicians, but was accustomed to assemble quacks
and specialists in her house at Ragley; there More spent most of his
time, and composed several books at her ladyship's special request.
There, too, he met the faith-healer Greatrakes, a moody man who had
lived for some time in seclusion at his own ruined castle of Capperquin
in Ireland; as well as the famous Van Helmont, Baron of Austria, Quaker
and physician, son of the famous chemist of the same name. This man was
all that Greatrakes was not; he had considerable medical skill, and a
quiet pious character. To us the union of the preacher and physician is
somewhat repugnant. We take it to mean that a man supplies the gaps in
his practical knowledge by the pretensions of spiritual insight; we
believe him to be proficient in neither. Van Helmont, however, seems to
have been a genuine man, and to suffer from an undeserved contempt. As a
matter of fact the possession of keen moral insight and sympathy is one
of the most powerful instruments that a physician can claim; the
physical and mental constitution react so invariably, that without it a
man must be at a loss; the healing art need not necessarily halt at the
threshold of hypochondria.
As I have touched on Lady Conway and Van Helmont, I may as well follow
out the part that Henry More plays in that fascinating romance--_John
Inglesant_. The life and works, down even to the style and mode of
expression, of Henry More have interested and influenced Mr. Shorthouse
very strongly. I have heard the conversation between John Inglesant and
Dr. More, which is said to have taken place at Oulton, instanced as an
admirable _tour de force_ of Mr. Shorthouse's style. The fact is that
Henry More speaks there, not in character, but actually; nearly
three-quarters of the conversation being sentences and aphorisms
extracted straight from More's works. It is very ingeniously done,
though a little too elaborate to be lifelike when regarded as
conversation.
But the effects of Henry More's writings are traceable in several other
parts of _John Inglesant_. In the conversation to which I have alluded,
More is made to sketch what he considers to be Inglesant's character and
physical constitution. He says:
"There would seem to be some that by a divine sort of fate are virtuous
and good to a great and heroical degree, and fall into the drudgery of
the world rather for the good of others, or by a divine force, than
through their own fault or any necessity of Nature; as Plato says, they
descend hither to declare the being and nature of God, and for the
greater health, purity, and perfection of the lower world."
He goes on to describe the "luciform vehicle" in which such a soul as
this is apt to display itself; and the great need of scrupulous
temperance and purity to keep it undimmed.
Now these passages are, in the places where they occur in Henry More's
works, undoubtedly and in reality autobiographical: they are extracted
word for word from passages where he is obviously referring to himself.
The fact thus remains that, though Inglesant and More are represented as
holding converse together, it is in reality More talking to
himself--himself, that is, differently circumstanced and developed by
other fortunes and influences. The figure of More was not quite romantic
enough for Mr. Shorthouse, and his religious system lacked the vivid
sense of the personal presence of Christ that is so marked a feature in
Inglesant's career; but there is no reasonable doubt that Dr. More
affords in the main outlines of his character and temperament the basis
for that delicately drawn, laborious book which has made such a mark
upon our late literature.
After Lady Conway's death, More was so far identified with her family
and friends, as to write a preface, in the character of Van Helmont, for
her _Remains_. At one time he thought of abandoning his collegiate life
for his rectory of Ingoldsby in Lincolnshire; he intended to settle
there with some friend as curate, and spend his time in quiet parochial
work and study--but the scheme came to nothing. It may be doubted
whether even he would have been proof against the trials of a country
rectory; at Cambridge, indeed, he had quiet as much as he wished, but he
had stimulus too: at Ingoldsby he would have had enforced quiet without
the stimulus.
He was elected into the Royal Society, before its establishment by
charter, in order to add lustre to it; for, though he never aimed at it,
he had acquired long before his death a great reputation by his
writings, which, as Mr. Chishull, the eminent bookseller of the day,
said, ruled all the other booksellers in London.
He was a very laborious writer; his works fill folio volumes, and are
full of curious learning, with a strange streak of humour, descending at
times to a coarseness of expression which would not be tolerated now.
His voice, as was said, was somewhat inward, and not suited to the
pulpit; and so he determined to give the world his thoughts in writing.
The _Divine Dialogues_ are the _Mystery of Godliness_ and the _Mystery
of Iniquity_; the first of these being an exhaustive inquiry, in many
books, into the nature and spirit of heathen religions. It may be said
at once that his method of treating the subject is unjust; he is far too
anxious, in his zeal for the Truth, to attribute to them a licentious or
contemptible origin and obscene or meaningless ceremonies. The
"Mysteries of Eleusis," which, according to Socrates, had much
symbolism of a strangely exalted type, are treated by More as both
superstitious and dissolute--even Apollonius of Tyana, who, whether he
existed actually or not, at least exhibits a high type of the Stoic
ideal, is a solemn puppet in his eyes. When he has, then, to his
satisfaction demonstrated the worthless and debasing character of these
rites--which is surely to shut the eyes to the inextinguishable hunger
for the holy expression of life, in worship, that has never really
deserted the human race--he proceeds to bring the Christian faith upon
the stage, and to show how it satisfies the deepest and highest
instincts of humanity.
But More cannot be said to have been a Christian in the sense that
Thomas-a-Kempis or Francis of Assisi were Christians; he did not hunger
for the personal relation with Christ which is so profoundly essential
to the true conception of the Christian ideal. He was a devout, a
passionate Deist; he realised the in-dwelling of God's spirit in the
heart, and the divine excellence of the Son of Man. But it was as a
pattern, and not as a friend, that he gazed upon Him; the light that he
followed was the uncovenanted radiance. For it is necessary to bear in
mind that More and the Cambridge Platonists taught that the Jewish
knowledge of the mysteries of God had passed through some undiscovered
channel into the hands of Pythagoras and Plato; and that the divinity of
their teaching was directly traceable to their connection with
Revelation. They looked upon Plato and Pythagoras as predestined
vehicles of God's spirit, appointed to prepare the heathen world for the
reception of the true mysteries, though not admitted themselves to full
participation in the same.
Besides these books, which are profound and logical, and composed in a
style which is admirable by comparison to the ordinary writing of the
times. More drilled away into some rather grotesque speculations on the
subject of Apocalyptical interpretation; of this, he says, humorously,
himself, that while he was writing it "his nag was over free, and went
even faster than he desired, but he thought it was the right way"--and
there is something pathetic indeed in the mode in which the passionate
seekers after truth of those times beat their heads against the various
theories of the direct communication of God with man, such as warning
dreams and visions, and the face of the heavens by night. The idea is
beautifully presented in _John Inglesant_, where the hero says to his
brother, who has produced a false horoscope of himself: "I would have
you think no more of this, with which a wicked man has tried to make the
heavens themselves speak falsely.... Father St. Clare taught it me
among other things, and I have seen many strange answers that he has
known himself--but it is shameful that the science should be made a tool
of by designing men."
This is said so naturally, with so simple and melancholy a faith, that
it seems to me to reproduce the feeling of even the more refined and
cultivated men of the time about such things in an infinitely affecting
way.
Besides these there are published letters of Henry More's, prolix for
the general reader, but interesting enough if the man's own personality
appeals to you: some very disappointing hymns and didactic poems, stiff
and unlovely to a strange degree for so deep and graceful a writer; and
many other scattered works, such as the _Enchiridion Ethicum_, which it
is impossible to analyse here.
More had a very facile style: he used to say that his friends had been
always wanting him to go up upon a stall and speak to the people; but
that was not his way: he should not have known what to have done in the
world if he could not have preached at his fingers' ends. He said that
when he sat down to write, though his thoughts were perfectly clear, yet
they were too numerous; and that he had to cut his way through them as
through a wood. However, he would never correct: the thing must go as
he first wrote it; "if he saw any faults in the first draft, he could
correct them, though it was not easy to him--that this correction went
against the grain and seldom seemed to him so savoury as the rest." He
was not inclined to overvalue his work. "Like the ostrich," he said, "I
lay my eggs in the sand, and hope they will prove vital and prolific in
time."
Though he produced very voluminous writings, yet he sometimes manifested
a strong and healthy repugnance to the task of expressing himself: he
had none of the gloomy laboriousness that is never satisfied with its
performance, and yet never takes a lively pleasure in it. When he had
finished one of his more lengthy works, he said pleasantly to a friend,
as he threw down his pen: "Now for three months I will neither think a
wise thought, nor speak a wise word, nor do a wise thing." Once in the
middle of some troublesome work he said, with considerable irritation,
to a friend who was sitting with him, "When I once get my hands out of
the fire, I shall not very suddenly thrust them in afresh." In a letter
to Dr. Worthington, Master of Jesus, he says: "I am infinitely pleased
that I find my obligation of writing books not too fierce in me, and
myself left free to my own more private meditations. I have lived the
servant of the public hitherto: it is a great ease to me to be
manumitted thus and left to the polishing of myself, and licking myself
whole of the wounds I have received in these hot services;" adding, that
as soon as he was free from his present business, his purpose was to
recoil into that dispensation he was in before he wrote or published
anything to the world--in which he says he very sparingly so much as
read any books, but sought a more near union with a certain life and
sense (the sixth sense), "which I infinitely prefer before the dryness
of mere reason or the wantonness of the trimmest imagination."
He had no turn for dry and laborious criticism: he studied things more
than words: of his own skill in dead languages, though it was in reality
very considerable, he spoke jestingly, in that depreciating ironical way
that he always used of himself--that he was like the man that passed by
a garrison with a horseshoe hanging at his belt, when a bullet being
shot at him struck right upon it, upon which he remarked, "that a little
armour was sufficient, if well placed;"--and he often said, in writing
his books, that when he came to criticism and quotation, it was "like
going over ploughed lands."
I subjoin a few extracts from an ode by the "Ingenious and Learned" Mr.
Norris, which is prefixed to Ward's _Life of More_. The composition has
great merit; it is in Cowley's manner, but is the precursor of the art
of Gray. It serves, I think, to emphasize both the opinion which his
contemporaries deliberately held of him, as well as the points in his
life and work which seem most worthy of our attention.
Norris writes:
Truth's outer courts were trod before,
Sacred was her recess: that was reserved for More.
Thou our great catholic professor art,
All science is annexed to thy unerring chair.
Some lesser synods of the wise
The Muses kept in Universities;
But never yet till in thy soul
Had they a council oecumenical.
And again:
Strange restless curiosity!
Adam himself came short of thee:
He tasted of the fruit, thou bear'st away the tree.
And this is a well-conceived epigram:
How calm thy life, how easy, how secure
Thou intellectual epicure.
The conclusion is:
Thy stage of learning ends ere that of life be done;
There's now no work for thy accomplished mind
But to survey thy conquests, and inform mankind.
More was a tall, spare man, well-proportioned and graceful; his face was
noted for its serene and lively air. He was of ruddy complexion, which
grew pale in later life, though always clear and spirited; and "his
eye," says a friend who was often with him, "was hazel," and as vivid as
an eagle's. He had luxurious tastes in dress, and the air of a courtier:
none of the clownishness of the retired scholar was in the least
perceptible in his motions, words, or general bearing.
His portrait represents him in his later years as much such a man as we
should have imagined: he wears his hair, which was light and long, over
his shoulders, and a faint streak of moustache upon his upper lip; the
face is grave but not displeasing; it has the broad arched forehead,
strongly indented, that is characteristic of masculine intellect; very
high and prominent cheek-bones, big firm lips, and a massive chin; the
cheek is healthy and not attenuated; the eyes clear and steady, the
right eyelid being somewhat drooped, thus conveying a humorous look to
the face; he wears the black gown, with girded cassock, and a great silk
scarf--the _amussis dignitatis_--over his shoulders; the gown is tied at
the neck by strings; and the broad white bands give a precise and quiet
air to the whole.
Though temperate and abstemious in life and diet, he was not in the
least what we should call an ascetic: he tried some experiments in diet
in early life, such as vegetarianism, which he practised for a whole
year, but found it did not suit him, and came back to meat; in fact,
though he usually dined in Hall, yet he absented himself on Friday,
when fish was eaten, and dined in his own rooms, eating meat because he
found it more wholesome; and he was not an abstainer--his regular drink
was small beer, of which he uttered an enthusiastic panegyric, saying
that it was a divine drink. He loved the open air; he said he would
always be in it if possible; that he studied best in an arbour without
his hat, so that the air might play on his temples. He was very
sensitive to weather, and found that the autumn brought with it a
melancholy which distressed him.
At the age of sixty-six he wrote his last book, and returned to the
quiet contemplative life which suited him so well, and he says that he
never had enjoyed so long a period of serene light and inward happiness;
but clouds began to gather in his mind--in reality it was the failing
body, but he attributed it to the mind, and was rather unhappy about
himself. He was then attacked by a kind of low fever, and fainted one
evening in the Combination Room after supper: however, as a healthy man
is apt to do, he paid no attention to this, but he found himself growing
weaker. Once pathetically, as he sat talking in his room, he spread out
his hands in the sun; they were thin and delicate with growing weakness.
"My body," he said, "is strangely run out." He then began to suffer from
sleeplessness; for weeks together he could get no rest. "I thought I
should have died laughing," he said to Dr. Ward, "but I find myself like
a fish out of its element, that lies tumbling in the dust of the
street." Then, after a pause: "I am but the remains of an ordinary man."
His mind began to fail him; he could no longer read or think. He said to
Dr. Davies, an old friend, that some one had said to him that this, if
known, might prejudice his writings; "but," he added, "I have read of a
person, an excellent mathematician, who at last came to dote, but none
will say that any of his former demonstrations were any the worse for
that."
At last he got very weary of the weakness and the long strain. "Never
any person," he said, "ever thirsted more after his meat and drink than
I do for a release from the body. Yet," he added, "I deserved greater
afflictions from the hand of God than those I have met with."
He dwelt much on the next world. "I am glad to think when I am gone," he
said, "that I shall still converse with this world in my writings. But
it is a greater satisfaction to me that I am going to those with whom I
shall be as well acquainted in a quarter of an hour as if I had known
them many years."
The day before he died an old friend came to see him. Henry More was
very silent, but at last broke out: "Doctor, I have marvellous things
to tell you." "Sir," said the other, "you are full, I suppose, of Divine
joy." "Full," he said, with tears in his eyes. The other saw he was so
extremely weak that he forebore to question him further. When his nephew
came to see him in the evening, he said that he should soon be gone. "I
am going to play you no tricks," he added; "I am not going to trot and
loll and hang on."
The next morning he understood that he had only a few hours to live. "O
praeclarum illum diem!" he said, quoting from Cicero. They were almost
his last words. He died as the day was dawning, so quietly that the
nurse who sat by him did not know when the passage was. He was laid to
rest in the College Chapel, having just entered upon his seventy-third
year.
The great and singular charm of such a life is its union of mystical
tendencies with such perfect sanity. For nearly half a century Henry
More lived in a light which he did not invent, but found. He cannot be
suspected of fanaticism or weakness; from the day that he found peace in
life to the day that he entered into rest, he lived in the strength of a
magnificent ideal. His great discovery burst upon him like a flash of
light--the nearness and accessibility of God, whom he had been seeking
so far off and at such a transcendent height; his realization of the
truth that the kingdom of God does not dwell in great sublimities, and,
so to speak, upon the mountain tops, but that it is within each one of
us. But this very simplicity he saw was the cause of the unpopularity of
the greatest ideals. Men prefer their own Abana and Pharpar to the
little river rushing in desolate places. A doctrine does not recommend
itself to the busy thinkers of the world unless it be huge and arduous;
and thus he made up his mind to be lonely in the world, to face and
support the isolation of greatness. "At first, indeed," he said, "the
truth appeared so very clear, as well as glorious to me, that I fancied
I should have carried all before me; but a little experience served to
cure me of this vanity. I quickly perceived that I was not likely to be
over-popular."
And yet, by facing and adopting this difficulty, he gained the very
thing on which he had turned his back. He made a success of life. He was
not for ever dying to the world; he lived in it. Though diseased and
shattered moralists may talk of the vanity of human aims and the
worthlessness of this world, life surely has its meaning. We are not
thrust into a pit from which our only duty is to escape. Something of
the greatness and glory of the higher region dwells in the grace and
beauty of the nether world. Shadows they may be of far-off transcendent
realities, but the very shadows of divine things are from their origin
divine. To gain a true standard; to trace the permanent elements; to
fight the darkness at every inch: this is to live life to the
uttermost--not to slink out of it, not to despise it, not to make light
of it. These are the resources of the cynic, the disappointed man, the
involuntary saint; but to live in the world and not be of it--this is
the secret of the light that emanates from but is not confined to
heaven.