breast," fails, he thinks, to disclose any such ideas; all knowledge originates primarily through the senses. Reason, in the complete sense of the term, is both a light which discerns eternal law, and a subject which obeys that law. The eternal law discerned by reason is God himself, who embraces in a single great order both matter and spirit. Law originates in reason and is for reason, is essentially moral in character (as Hooker had already taught). What the law of reason is, we may learn not only by introspection, but from the consensus gentium, or the universal consent of men. "When you see so many rays from the same light shooting themselves into the several corners of the world, you presently look up to the sun as the glorious original of them all. . . . Certainly it is some transcendent beauty that so many nations are enamoured withal. It is some powerful music that sets the whole world advancing."

§ 56.

Ralph Cudworth (1617-1688).- Cudworth graduated at Cambridge, was fellow and tutor in Emmanuel College there, and was also regius professor of Hebrew, and master, or principal, of Clare Hall and of Christ's College. During an interval between different periods at which he was connected with the university he preached in one of the English parishes, winning a name for pulpit-eloquence. "Even at the early age of twenty-three " Cudworth had "mastered all the main sources of philosophy, medieval as well as classical," and was particularly familiar with the Neo-Platonic and Jewish schools of thought. He is noted for his great learning.

Works.- Cudworth's principal works are: "The Intellectual System of the Universe" (1678), a reply to Hobbes's "Leviathan, a Treatise concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality" (published 1731), "Liberty and Necessity" (published 1838).

Philosophy: Problems. "These three things," says Cudworth, "are the fundamentals or essentials of true religion:

that all things do not float without a head and governor, but there is an omnipresent understanding being presiding over all; that God hath an essential goodness and justice, the differences of good and evil, moral, honest and dishonest, are not by mere will and law, and consequently the Deity cannot act, influence, and necessitate men to such things as are in their own nature evil; and lastly, that necessity is not intrinsical to the nature of everything, but men have such a liberty or power over their own actions as may render them accountable for the same and blameworthy when they do amiss, and consequently there is justice distributive of rewards and punishments running throughout the world." To establish by rational proof the three foregoing thesesviz., the existence of God, of the truth of moral conceptions as such, and the fact of liberty of will is the proposed general object of Cudworth's philosophizing.

The Existence of God. Cudworth's proof of the thesis of the existence of God is largely merely a disproof of the contradictory. He defines atheism as "corporealism," the "putting of matter in place of mind;" theism, on the contrary, "making the first original of all things universally to be a consciously understanding nature, or perfect mind." He classes as "imperfect theists" those who hold to the eternity of matter as well as mind. Atheistic were, actually, though not necessarily, the ancient doctrines of atomism and hylozoism. Purely atheistic is the "corporealism" of Hobbes. The logical origin of Hobbes's atheism lies in his doctrine of knowledge. If the Hobbean doctrine of knowledge, which is, fundamentally, that all knowledge is limited by mere sense, be true, we do not know that we know," since one sense cannot judge of another or correct the error of it, all sense as such (that is, as fancy and apparition) being alike true." Sense itself is unknown, since "neither fancy nor sense falls under sense, but only the objects of them; we neither seeing vision nor feeling taction, nor hearing audition, much the less hearing sight or seeing taste or the like." To deny the existence of whatever may not

be an object of corporeal sense is to deny the existence of mind and soul in ourselves and others, since we can neither feel nor see any such things. Nevertheless, we are certain from inward consciousness, from "reason," - since "nothing" cannot act, - and from our observation of the actions of others, that soul and mind really exist in ourselves and others. And the atheist has as little reason to deny the existence of a perfect mind presiding over the universe as that of mind and soul in ourselves and others. To derive mind from a "supposed senseless, stupid, and inconscious life of nature in matter" is equivalent to deriving something from nothing. "If matter as such had life, perception, and understanding to it, then of necessity must every action or smallest particle thereof be a distinct percipient by itself: from which it will follow that there could not possibly be any such men and animals as now are compounded out of them; but every man and animal would be a heap of innumerable perceptions and intellections; whereas it is plain that there is but one life and understanding, one soul or mind, one thinker in every one." Similarly, there must be assumed in the universe as one universe a single mind ruling it. Further, were all movement in the universe merely mechanical, communicated, or passive, movement, motion would primarily proceed from nothing; hence there must be a self-moving, unmoved first mover. Again, matter could never have created mind; but a perfect mind could have created matter. Another proof of the existence of God (or perfect being) is as follows: Something must eternally have existed, and must consequently have existed naturally and necessarily, including necessarily eternal existence in its own nature; hence have been absolutely perfect. Still another proof may be given thus: "Knowledge is possible only through ideas, which must have their source in an eternal reason. Sense is not only not the whole of knowledge, but is in itself not at all knowledge: it is in itself wholly relative and individual, and not universal until the mind adds to it what is absolute and universal. Knowl

edge does not begin with what is universal: the individual is known by being brought under a universal: the universal is not gathered from a multitude of individuals. And the universals, vonuara, or ideas, which underlie all knowledge of men, which originate it, and do not originate in it, have existed eternally in the only mode in which truth can be said to be eternally existent, i. e., in an eternal mind." Another proof offered by Cudworth of the existence of God is that of Anselm, slightly modified.1

God in Relation to Matter: The "Plastic Nature." To suppose that "God himself doth all immediately, and, as it were, with his own hands, forms the body of every gnat and fly, insect and mite, is to render divine providence operose, solicitous, and distractious." And, apart from this, the slowness and imperfection of actual nature confute such an idea. There must exist between God and matter a third nature, which may be termed the "plastic nature." "It is a certain lower life than the animal, which acts regularly and artificially according to the directions of mind and understanding, reason and wisdom, for ends, in order to good, though itself do not know the reason for what it does, nor is master of that wisdom according to which it acts, but only a servant to it, and drudging executioner of the same, it operating fatally and sympathetically according to law and commands prescribed to it by a perfect intellect, and impressed upon it; and which is either a lower faculty of some conscious soul, or else an inferior kind of life or soul by itself, but essentially depending upon an higher intellect."2 To suppose that "every plant, herb, and pile of grass has a plastic or vegetative soul of its own were unreasonable, but there may possibly be one plastic unconscious nature in the whole terraqueous globe, by which vegetables may be generally organized and framed, and all things performed which transcend the power of fortuitous mechanism.”

1 See Professor Flint's article on Cudworth in the " Britannica," on these proofs.

Encyclopædia

2 See "Intellectual System of the Universe," book i., ch. iii.

Eternal and Immutable Morality. - Cudworth's theory of the foundation of morality, intended as answer to Hobbes's mechanico-sensational theory, is summed up in the following propositions: (1) Things are what they are by nature, not by mere will; (2) Things are immutably and necessarily what they are, there is no such thing as an "arbitrarious essence, mode, or relation that may be made indifferently anything at pleasure; even when a divine or human command makes a thing before indifferent obligatory or unlawful, the real element of morality depends upon the right or authority of the one who gives the command, which right or authority is founded on natural justice and equity or on antecedent obligation to obedience in the subjects; the moral quality of acts does not depend on the mere will or pleasure that enjoins them. Cudworth's doctrine of morality rests immediately on the epistemological doctrine that knowledge, in the proper sense of the term, is not born of sense, which is merely receptive and mutable, like the things of which alone it takes cognizance, but of intellect, and is as such true and eternal. The mind, characteristically, acts by an inherent power of its own, and has not only fleeting "sensations" and "phantasms," but also noëmata, or pure conceptions, to the essence of which, as the objects of pure actuality or self-determination, it pertains to endure. Among such conceptions are those of right, justice, and the like.1

Liberty and Necessity.- - Cudworth admits free will in man in so far as man, because of an imperfect nature, may at times be unable to make an intellectual choice or distinction between objects. Otherwise man is not "free," as God is not, in any sense.

§ 57.

Henry More (1614-1687). More went from Eton College (Grammar School at Eton) to Christ's College,

1 The student may profitably consult the monograph by C. E. Lowrey, Ph. D., entitled, "The Philosophy of Ralph Cudworth," etc. (N. Y., 1884).