Henry More's Space and the Spirit of Nature

Henry More's Space and the Spirit of Nature MICHAEL BOYLAN THIs PAPERWILLANALYZErelationships between three entities in Henry More's cosmological account: God, the spirit of nature, and space. The problem which prompted him to create his account will first be sketched. Each of the entities will then be separately examined followed by an examination of questions arising from More's synoptical employment of them. How should the relation of the corporeal and the incorporeal, of bodies and spirits, be conceived? If a dualistic account such as Descartes's were to be accepted, there would be numerous difficulties for a man wishing to affirm the existence of an immanent God. If one accepted that all physical phenomena could be explained by mechanical means alone, there then seemed no need for God's presence (except perhaps to have started the machine).l Such acceptance seemed to exclude God from the daily affairs and operations of the world, or at least to remove him from active maintenance of the physical order. Was the new science excluding God? In the face of mechanical explanation, what role remained for God to play? More saw Hobbes as attempting to exclude God by reducing all motion to mechanical laws. Against this, More favored Descartes's effort to maintain an efficacy of spiritual substance within his sytem, but contended that Descartes's division between the corporeal and the incorporeal was too radical. Unless, More argued, one admits a physical tie between God and the physical world, God will remain excluded from that world. More accepted the classical distinction between "soul" and "matter" (apvX~ and ~.rl). 2 This distinction, according with scholastic precedent, was not seen to be problematic. Even though the "new science" made a similar distinction (for example, in Descartes), it was the mutually exclusive way in which the division was asserted that More rejected. He couches his definitions of spirit and body as follows: I will define therefore a Spirit in generall thus: A substance penetrable and Indiscerpible. The fitness ofwhich definition will be better understood ifwe divide Substance in generall into these first Kmdes, viz., Body and Spirit and then define Body A Substance impenetrable and discerpible. Whence the contrary Kind to this is fitly defined, A Substance penetrable and indiscerpible.3 1Oeuvres de Descartes, ed. C. Adam and P Tannery, 12 vols (Paris: Cerf, 1897-1910), vol. 6. Discourse on Method, pt. 5. 2 Artstotle, De anima 2, 3; cf. De partzbus anzmahum 640623-64ta32. 3 The Immortality of the Soul, So Farre Forth as it is Dernonstrablefrom the Knowledge ofNature and the Light ofReason, mA Collection of Several Philosophical Wrmngs (London, 1712), bk. 1, chap 3, p. 1 (hereafter cited as IM). [395] 396 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY The significant difference between the two is that the corporeal is impenetrable and the incorporeal is penetrable. Also, the incorporeal can expand and contract at will, whereas the corporeal cannot (this latter point being an area of agreement with Descartes against earlier theories which cited such examples as sponges to claim that physical bodies could also expand). But for mine own part I think that the nature of anything else .... [It] consists of these severall powers or properties, viz., Self-Penetration, Self-Motion, Self-Contraction and Dilatation, and Indivisibility .... These are those that 1reckon.., is plainly dlstlngmshed from a Body.4 Now these spirits could be divided into three classes. In the first class are spirits which are "regular": "four kinds of spirits viz. the k6yot o~t~O~tc~,t• or Seminal forms, the Souls of Brutes, the Humane Soul and the Soul or Spirit which activates informs the vehicles of Angels" (IM, 1, 8, 1).5 These regular spirits reinforce the world order as mechanical. Thus, these spirits regulate the world, making it possible that the phenomena we observe as mechanical necessity actually continue. An important contrast can be seen here with Aristotle. For Aristotle, psuch~ marked the difference between the animate and the inanimate. The various grades of nutritive, sensitive, and rational soul acted as a principle along with matter. They were one, just as form was one with matter. 6The soul was the arch( of the thing, being prior in being...