"Covetous of Truth": The Life and Work of Thomas White, 1593-1676 (review)

t76 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 33: t JANUARY 199 5 extension, size, or shape. Their only property is solidity, whose existence at a particular space and time "metaphysically excludes the intrusion of other things in it" (36~). Accordingly, the idea of solidity is the only simple one, "the complexity of all else we experience is a function of our perceptual relation to it" (288). (For Descartes, according to Lennon, individual things are a function of our perceptual relation to res extensa.) In Locke's polemic with Stillingfleet, Lennon finds evidence for his thesis that Locke's substance "does not really support qualities," but "is a category in terms of which we organize experience" (363-64). Locke's anti-Cartesianism also underlines his views on the bestial soul, innateness (which ultimately challenges Descartes's mathes/s universalis), abstraction, and essence, which "is not a concept instantiated by the individual ; the real essence just/s the individual" (349). Lennon does not conceal his sympathy for the giants. He thinks they are invincible but incapable of winning the battle against the gods, which battle is, as Plato says, perennial. In his last chapter, we learn that Lennon is a giant himself, at least to the extent that his history of philosophy is antirealist. This is offered as a justification for his view that Locke's--like Gassendi's and the other Gassendists'--philosophy "essentially includes tychistic atheism" (x). Some further discussion of the atheism attributed to the early modern giants would be welcomed. To complicate the scheme, one must only cite the case of Pascal, who criticized Descartes, was influenced by Gassendi, rejected metaphysical theistic proofs, and attacked the "God of the philosophers" in the name of the "God of Abraham, God of Isaac, and God of Jacob." Lennon's arguments to the effect that the giants' ontological, epistemoiogical, and ethical views are inconsistent with the God of the gods do not rule out their possible consistency with other Christian views in the period. Jos~ R. MAIA NZTO CNPq-Brasilia, Broail Beverley C. Southgate. "Covetous of Truth": The Life and Work of Thomas White, i593I676 . International Archives of the History of Ideas, 134. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1993. Pp. xi + 189. Cloth, $99.oo. Thomas White (1593-1676 ) was a Roman Catholic priest, philosopher, theologian and political activist. He spent much of his life on the Continent both because of his religious affiliation and because of his pro-Cromwellian stance. He was prolific and published much of his work under aliases, including 'Albius', 'Anglus', and 'Blacklo'. The last of these gave rise to the name "Blackloism," which was reviled by Catholics and non-Catholics alike for its nonstandard theology and politics. White's life and views are closely connected with those of Kenelm Digby. Each credited the other for the inspiration of his philosophy, and their intellectual relationship seems to have been symbiotic. His most famous disciple wasJohn Sergeant; his most famous Roman Catholic opponents were George Leyburn, the president of the college of Douai, and Robert Pugh, who wrote Blacklo'sCabal. He will be most familiar to scholars as the author of De Mundo, the work of which Hobbes wrote a critique that was first published in 1973. BOOK REVIEWS t77 White's connection to Hobbes is in fact strong, and he could aptly be described as the Roman Catholic Hobbes. Each had the project of synthesizing a traditional cultural element with modern science. Southgate says that White was Janus-faced. While Hobbes wanted (arguably) to reconcile the credal formulations of Christianity with modern science, White wanted to reconcile Aristotle with modern science. Since White was trying to preserve Aristotle's philosophy because of its use by the Roman Catholic Church, his similarity to Hobbes's project is all the more pronounced. It was necessary for White to transform Aristotle into an atomist. Prime matter became the undivided featureless corpuscles of which all physical reality is composed. White's physics is actually syncretic, an amalgam of Democritus, Epicurus, and Aristotle adapted to the spirit of modern science. While he retains such Aristotelian doctrines as the impossibility of a vacuum and the principle that everything moved is moved by another, White...