It is only in the silence of seclusion that we should open the awful
tome of "The True Intellectual System of the Universe" of RALPH
CUDWORTH.[1] The history and the fate of this extraordinary result of
human knowledge and of sublime metaphysics, are not the least remarkable
in the philosophy of bibliography.
The first intention of the author of this elaborate and singular work,
was a simple inquisition into the nature of that metaphysical necessity,
or destiny, which has been introduced into the systems both of
philosophy and religion, wherein man is left an irresponsible agent in
his actions, and is nothing more than the blind instrument of inevitable
events over which he holds no control.
This system of "necessity," or fate, our inquirer traced to three
different systems, maintained on distinct principles. The ancient
Democritic or atomical physiology endows inert matter with a motive
power. It views a creation, and a continued creation, without a creator.
The disciple of this system is as one who cannot read, who would only
perceive lines and scratches in the fairest volume, while the more
learned comprehend its large and legible characters; in the mighty
volume of nature, the _mind_ discovers what the _sense_ may not, and
reads "those sensible delineations by its own inward activity," which
wisdom and power have with their divinity written on every page. The
absurd system of the atomist or the mere materialist, Cudworth names the
atheistic.
The second system of "necessity" is that of the theists, who conceive
that the will of the Deity, producing in us good or evil, is determined
by no immutability of goodness and justice, but an arbitrary will
omnipotent; and therefore all qualities, good and evil, are merely so by
our own conventional notions, having no reality in nature. And this
Cudworth calls _the divine fate_, or _immoral theism_, being a religion
divesting the Creator of the intellectual and moral government of the
universe; all just and unjust, according to this hypothesis, being mere
factitious things. This "necessity" seems the predestination of
Calvinism, with the immorality of antinomianism.
The third sort of fatalists do not deny the moral attributes of the
Deity, in his nature essentially benevolent and just; therefore there is
an immutability in natural justice and morality, distinct from any law
or arbitrary custom; but as these theists are necessarians, the human
being is incapacitated to receive praise or blame, rewards or
punishments, or to become the object of retributive justice; whence they
deduce their axiom that nothing could possibly have been otherwise than
it is.
To confute these three fatalisms, or false hypotheses of the system of
the universe, Cudworth designed to dedicate three great works; one
against atheism, another against immoral theism, and the third against
the theism whose doctrine was the inevitable "necessity" which
determined all actions and events, and deprived man of his free agency.
These licentious systems were alike destructive of social virtues; and
our ethical metaphysician sought to trace the Deity as an omnipotent
understanding Being, a supreme intelligence, presiding over all, in his
own nature unchangeable and eternal, but granting to his creatures their
choice of good and evil by an immutable morality. In the system of the
visible and corporeal world the sage contemplated on the mind which
everywhere pervaded it; and his genius launched forth into the immensity
of "The Intellectual System of the Universe."
In this comprehensive design he maintains that the ancients had ever
preserved the idea of one Supreme Being, distinct from all other gods.
That multitude of pagan deities, poetical and political, were but the
polyonomy, or the many names or attributes, of one God, in which the
unity of the Divine Being was recognised. In the deified natures of
things, the intelligent worshipped God; the creator in the created. The
pagan religion, however erroneous, was not altogether nonsensical, as
the atheists would represent it.
In this folio of near a thousand pages, Cudworth opens the occult
sources of remote antiquity; and all the knowledge which the most
recondite records have transmitted are here largely dispersed. There is
no theogony and no cosmogony which remains unexplored; the Chaldean
oracles, and the Hermaic hooks, and the Trismegistic writings, are laid
open for us; the arcane theology of the Egyptians is unveiled; and we
may consult the Persian Zoroaster, the Grecian Orpheus, the mystical
Pythagoras, and the allegorising Plato. No poet was too imaginative, no
sophist was too obscure, to be allowed to rest in the graves of their
oblivion. All are here summoned to meet together, as at the last
tribunal of their judgment-day. And they come with their own words on
their lips, and they commune with us with their own voices; for this
great magician of mind, who had penetrated into the recesses of mythic
antiquity to descry its dim and uncertain truths, has recorded their own
words with the reverence of a votary to their faiths. "The sweetness of
philology allays the severity of philosophy; the main thing, in the
meantime, being the philosophy of religion.[2] But for our parts, we
neither call Philology nor yet Philosophy our mistress, but serve
ourselves of either as occasion requireth." Such are the words of the
historian of "The Intellectual System of the Universe."
It is this mine of recondite quotations in their original languages,
most accurately translated, which has imparted such an enduring value to
this treasure of the ancient theology, philosophy, and literature;[3]
for however subtle and logical was the master-mind which carried on his
trains of reasoning, its abstract and abstruse nature could not fail to
prove repulsive to the superficial, for few could follow the genius who
led them into "the very darkest recesses of antiquity," while his
passionless sincerity was often repugnant to the narrow creed of the
orthodox. What, therefore, could the consequence of this elaborate
volume when given to the world be, but neglect or hatred? And long was
"The Intellectual System" lost among a thoughtless or incurious race of
readers. It appeared in 1678. It was nearly thirty years afterwards,
when the neglected author was no more, in 1703, that Le Clerc, a great
reader of English writers, furnished copious extracts in his
"Bibliotheque Choisie," which introduced it to the knowledge of
foreigners, and provoked a keen controversy with Bayle. This last great
critic, who could only decide by the translated extracts, proved to be a
formidable antagonist of Cudworth. At length, in 1733, more than half a
century subsequent to its publication, Mosheim gave a Latin version,
with learned illustrations. The translation was not made without great
difficulty; and a French one, which had been begun, was abandoned.
Cudworth has invented many terms, compound or obscure; and though these
may be traced to their sources, yet when a single novel term may allude
to metaphysical notions or to recondite knowledge, the learning is less
to be admired than the defective perspicacity is to be regretted. It
was, however, this edition of a foreigner which awakened the literary
ardour of the author's countrymen towards their neglected treasure, and
in 1743 "The True Intellectual System" at length reached a second
edition, republished by Birch.[4]
The seed of immortal thoughts are not sown to perish, even in the loose
soil where they have long lain disregarded. "The Intellectual System"
has furnished many writers with their secondary erudition, and possibly
may have given rise to that portion of "The Divine Legation" of
Warburton, whose ancient learning we admire for its ingenuity, while we
retreat from its paradoxes; for there is this difference between this
solid and that fanciful erudition, that Warburton has proudly made his
subject full of himself, while Cudworth was earnest only to be full of
his subject. The glittering edifice of Paradox was raised on moveable
sands; but the more awful temple has been hewn out of rocks which time
can never displace. Even in our own days, Dugald Stewart has noticed
that some German systems, stripped of their deep neological disguise,
have borrowed from Cudworth their most valuable materials. The critical
decision of Leibnitz must not, however, be rejected; for if there is
some severity in its truth, there is truth in its severity. "Dans 'Le
Systeme Intellectuel' je trouve beaucoup de savoir, mais non pas assez
de meditation."
Such is the great work of a great mind! We have already shown its hard
fate in the neglect of the contemporaries of the author--that
thoughtless and thankless world many a great writer is doomed to
address; and we must now touch on those human infirmities to which all
systems of artificial theology and speculative notions are unhappily
obnoxious.
In stating the arguments of the atheists at full, and opposing those of
their adversaries, this true inquirer suffered the odium of Atheism
itself! "It is pleasant enough," says Lord Shaftesbury, "that the pious
Cudworth was accused of giving the upper hand to the atheist for having
only stated their reasons and those of their adversaries fairly
together." The truth seems, that our learned and profound author was not
orthodox in his notions. To explain the difficulty of the Resurrection
of bodies which in death resolve themselves into their separate
elements, Cudworth assumed that they would not appear in their substance
as a body of flesh, but in some ethereal form. In his researches he
discovered the Trinity of Plato, of Pythagoras, and of Parmenides, and
that of the Persian Mithra of three Hypostases, numerically distinct, in
the unity of the Godhead; this spread an alarm among his brothers the
clergy, and Cudworth was perpetually referred to as an unquestionable
authority by the heterodox writers on the mystery of the Christian
Trinity. Even his great principle, that the Unity of the Deity was known
to the polytheists, was impugned by a catholic divine as derogatory of
revelation, he insisting that the Pagan divinities were only a
commemoration of human beings. Yet the notion of Cudworth, so amply
illustrated, was not peculiar to him, for it had already been
promulgated by Lord Herbert, and by the ancients themselves.
As all such results contradicted received opinions, this pious and
learned man was condemned by some as "an Arian, a Socinian, or at best a
deist." Some praised his prudence, while others intimated his
dissimulation; on several dogmas he delivers himself with great reserve,
and even so ambiguously, that his own opinions are not easily
ascertained, and are sometimes even contradictory. There have been more
recent philosophers, who, from their prejudices, have hardly done
justice to the search for truth of Cudworth; he is depreciated by Lord
Bolingbroke, who, judging the philosopher by the colour of his coat, has
treated the divine with his keenest severity, as "one who read too much
to think enough, and admired too much to think freely." Bolingbroke
might envy the learning which he could not rival, and borrow from those
recondite stores the knowledge which otherwise might not have reached
him.
Our great author had indeed the heel of Achilles. Exercising the most
nervous logic, and the most subtle metaphysics, he was also deeply
imbued with Platonic reveries. Ambitious, in his inquiries, to discuss
subjects placed far beyond the reach of human faculties, he delighted,
with his eager imagination, to hover about those impassable precincts
which Providence and Nature have eternally closed against the human
footstep. It was this disposition of his mind which gave birth to the
wild hypothesis of _the plastic life of Nature_, to unfold the
inscrutable operations of Providence in the changeless forms of
existence. There is nothing more embarrassing to atheism, in deriving
the uninterrupted phenomena of nature from a fortuitous mechanism of
inert matter, than to be compelled to ascribe the unvaried formation of
animals to a cause which has no idea of what it performs, although its
end denotes an intention; executing an undeviating system without any
intelligence of the laws which govern it. We cannot indeed conceive
every mite, or gnat, or fly, to be the immediate handwork of the
ceaseless labours of the Deity, though so perfectly artificial is even
its wing or its leg that the Divine Artificer seems visible in the
minutest production. Cudworth, to solve the enigma, fancifully concluded
that the Deity had given a plastic faculty to matter--"A vital and
spiritual, but unintelligent and necessary, agent to execute its
purposes." He raised up a sort of middle substance between matter and
spirit--it seemed both or neither; and our philosopher, roving through
the whole creation, sometimes describes it as an inferior subordinate
agent of the Deity, doing the drudgery, without consciousness; lower
than animal life; a kind of drowsy unawakened mind, not knowing, but
only doing, according to commands and laws impressed upon it.
The consequence deduced by the subtle Bayle from this fanciful system
was, that, had the Deity ever given such a plastic faculty, it was an
evidence that it is not repugnant to the nature of things, that
unintelligent and necessary agents should operate, and therefore a
motive power might be essential to matter, and things thus might exist
of themselves.[5] It weakened the great objection against atheism.
Philosophers, to extricate themselves from occult phenomena, have too
often flung over the gaping chasms which they cannot fill up, the slight
plank of a vague conjecture, or have constructed the temporary bridge of
an artificial hypothesis; and thus they have hazarded what yields no
sure footing. Of this "folly of the wise," the inexplicable ether of
Newton, the whirling worlds or vortices of Descartes, and the vibrations
and the vibratiuncles of Hartley, among so many similar fancies of other
philosophers, furnish a memorable evidence. The _plastic life of
Nature_, as explained by Cudworth, only substituted a novel term for a
blind, unintelligent agent, and could neither endure the ridicule of
Bolingbroke nor the logic of Bayle, and is thrown aside among the
deceitful fancies of scholastic dreamers.
There was indeed from his earliest days a tinge of Platonic refinement
in the capacious understanding of this great metaphysician. The theses
he maintained at college were the dawn of the genius of his future
works. One was on "The Eternal Differences between Good and Evil," which
probably led long after to his treatise on "Eternal and Immutable
Morality"--an exposition of the dangerous doctrines of Hobbes and the
Antinomians.[6] The other question he disputed was, that "there are
incorporeal substances immortal in their own nature"--a topic he
afterwards investigated in "The True Intellectual System of the
Universe"--against the principles of the Epicurean philosophy. These
scholastic exercises are an evidence that the youthful student was
already shaping in his mind the matters and the subjects of his future
great work. Beautiful is this unity of mind which we discover in every
master-genius! Even into his divinity he seems to have carried the same
fanciful refinement; he maintained that "the Lord's Supper was a feast
upon a sacrifice;" and such was the charm of this mysterious doctrine,
that it was adopted by some of the greatest divines and scholars. It is
not therefore surprising that Cudworth was held in the highest
estimation by the Platonic Dr. MORE, of which I give a remarkable
instance. Cudworth, as other divines, wrote on Daniel's prophecy of the
seventy weeks, which, he says in a letter, is "A Defence of Christianity
against Judaism, the seventy weeks never having yet been sufficiently
cleared and improved." Since the days of Cudworth others have "cleared
and improved," and his "demonstration" is not even noticed among
subsequent "demonstrations;" but Judaism still remains. Yet on this
theological reverie, Dr. More has used this forcible language:--"Mr.
Cudworth has demonstrated the manifestation of the Messiah to have
fallen out at the end of the sixty-ninth week, and his passion in the
midst of the seventieth. This demonstration is of as much price and
worth in theology, as either the circulation of the blood in physic, or
the motion of the earth in natural philosophy." This is not only a
curious instance of the argumentative theology of that period, but of
the fascination of a most refining genius influencing kindred
imaginations.
We now come to record the melancholy fate of this great work, in
connexion with its great author. He had arranged it into three elaborate
volumes; but we possess only the first--the refutation of atheism; that
subject, however, is of itself complete. Although I know not any private
correspondence of Cudworth, after the publication of "The Intellectual
System," which might more positively reveal the state of his feelings,
and the cause of the suppression of his work, in which he had made
considerable progress, yet we are acquainted with circumstances which
too clearly describe its unhappy fate. We learn from Warburton that this
pious and learned scholar was the victim of calumny, and that, too
sensitive to his injuries, he grew disgusted with his work; his ardour
slackened, and the mass of his papers lay in cold neglect. The
philosophical divine participated in the fate of the few who, like him,
searched for truth freed from the manacles of received opinions.
Cudworth left his manuscripts to the care of his daughter, Lady Masham,
the friend of Locke, who passed his latter days in her house at Oates.
Her ladyship was literary, but the reverse of a Platonical genius; she
wrote against the Platonic Norris' "Love of God," and admitted in her
religion no principles which were not practicable in morals, and seems
to have been rather the disciple of the author of "The Human
Understanding," than the daughter of the author of "The Intellectual
System." For the good sense of Lady Masham erudition lost its curiosity,
and imagination its charm; and she probably with some had certain
misgivings of the tendency of her father's writings! He had himself been
careless of them, for we know of no testamentary direction for their
preservation. By her these unvalued manuscripts were not placed in a
cabinet, but thrown in a heap into the dark corner of some neglected
shelf in the library at Oates. And from thence, after the lapse of half
a century, they were turned out, with some old books, by the last Lord
Masham, to make room for a fashionable library for his second lady. A
bookseller purchased them with a notion that this waste paper contained
the writings of Locke, and printing a Bible under the editorship of the
famous Dr. Dodd, introduced the scripture notes, found among the heap,
in the commentary, under the name of Locke. The papers were accidentally
discovered to be parts of "The Intellectual System," and after having
suffered mutilation and much confusion in the various mischances which
they passed through, they finally repose among our national collections;
fragments on fragments which may yet be inspected by those whose
intrepidity would patiently venture on the discoveries which lie amid
this mass of theological metaphysics. They are thus described in
Ayscough's "Catalogue," 4983:--"Collection of Confused Thoughts,
Memorandums, &c., relating to the Eternity of Torments--Thoughts on
Pleasure--Commonplace Book of Motives to Moral Duties, two volumes; and
five volumes on Free-will." This description is imperfect; and many
other subjects, the groundwork of his future inquiries, will be found in
these voluminous manuscripts. One volume, still highly valued, was
snatched from the wreck, Cudworth's "Treatise Concerning Eternal and
Immutable Morality," which was edited by Dr. Chandler many years after
the death of the author.
After all, we possess a mighty volume, subject no longer to neglect nor
to mischance. "The True Intellectual System of the Universe" exists
without a parallel for its matter, its subject, and its manner. Its
matter furnishes the unsunned treasures of ancient knowledge, the
history of the thoughts, the imaginations, and the creeds of the
profoundest intellects of mankind on the Deity. Its subject, though
veiled in metaphysics more sublime than human reasoning can pierce, yet
shows enough for us to adore. And its manner, brightened by a subdued
Platonism, inculcates the immutability of moral distinctions, and
vindicates the free agency of the human being against the impious tenets
which deliver him over a blind captive to an inexorable "necessity."