Henry More (1614-1687), the most interesting member of that group traditionally known as the Cambridge Platonists, lived conscientiously and well. Having early set out on one course, he never thought to change it; he devoted his whole life to the joy of celebrating, again and again, “a firm and unshaken Belief of the Existence of GOD . . . , a God infinitely Good, as well as infinitely Great . . . .”[1] Such faith was for More the starting point of his rational understanding: “with the most fervent Prayers” he beseeched God, in his autobiographical “Praefatio Generalissima,” “to set me free from the dark Chains, and this so sordid Captivity of my own Will.” More offered to faith all which his reason could know, and so it happened that he “was got into a most Joyous and Lucid State of Mind,” something quite ineffable; to preserve these “Sensations and Experiences of my own Soul,” he wrote “a pretty full Poem call’d Psychozoia” (or A Christiano-Platonicall display of Life), an exercise begun about 1640 and designed for no audience but himself. There were times, More continued in his autobiographical remarks, when he thought of destroying Psychozoia because its style is rough and its language filled with archaisms. His principal purpose in that poem was to demonstrate in detail the spiritual foundation of all existence; Psyche, his heroine, is the daughter of the Absolute, the general Soul who holds together the metaphysical universe, against whom he sees reflected his own soul’s mystical progress. More must, nevertheless, have been pleased with his labor, for he next wrote Psychathanasia Platonica: or Platonicall Poem of the Immortality of Souls, especially Mans Soul, in which he attempts to demonstrate the immortality of the soul as a corrective to his age. Then, he joined to that Antipsychopannychia, or A Confutation of the sleep of the Soul
after death, and Antimonopsychia, or That all Souls are not one; at the urging of friends, he published the poems in 1642—his first literary work—as Psychodia Platonica.
In his argument for the soul’s immortality toward the end of Psychathanasia (III.4), More had urged that there was no need to plead for any extension of the infinite (“a contradiction,” and also, it would seem, a fruitless inquiry); but he soon changed his mind. The preface to Democritus Platonissans reproduces those stanzas of the earlier poem which deny infinity (34 to the end of the canto) with a new (formerly concluding) stanza 39 and three further stanzas “for a more easie and naturall leading to the present Canto,” i.e., Democritus Platonissans, which More clearly intended to be an addition, a fifth canto to Psychathanasia (Book III); and although Democritus Platonissans first appeared separately, More appended it to Psychathanasia in the second edition of his collected poems, this time with English titles, the whole being called A Platonick Song of the Soul (1647).
There is little relationship between Democritus Platonissans and the rest of More’s poetry; even the main work to which it supposedly forms a final and conclusive canto provides only the slightest excuse for such a continuation. Certainly, in Psychathanasia, More is excited by the new astronomy; he praises the Copernican system throughout Book III, giving an account of it according to the lessons of his study of Galileo’s Dialogo, which he may have been reading even as he wrote.[2] Indeed, More tries to harmonize the two poems—his habit was always to look for unity. But even though Democritus Platonissans explores an astronomical subject, just as the third part of Psychathanasia also does, its attitude and theme are quite different; for More had meanwhile been reading Descartes.
More’s theory of the infinity of worlds and God’s plenitude evidently owed a great deal to Descartes’ recent example; More responds exuberantly to him, especially to his Principes de la Philosophie (1644); for in him he fancied having found a true ally. Steeped in Platonic and neo-Platonic thought, and determined
to reconcile Spirit with the rational mind of man, More thought he had discovered in Cartesian ‘intuition’ what was not necessarily there. Descartes had enjoyed an ecstatic illumination, and so had Plotinus; but this was not enough, as More may have wanted to imagine, to make Descartes a neo-Platonist.[3] But the Platonic element implicit in Descartes, his theory of innate ideas, and his proof of the existence of God from the idea of God, all helped to make More so receptive to him. Nevertheless, More did not really need Descartes, nor, as he himself was later to discover, had he even understood him properly, for More had looked at him only to find his own reflection.
But there was nothing really new about the idea of infinite worlds which More described in Democritus Platonissans; it surely was not a conception unique to Descartes. The theory was a common one in Greek and Renaissance thought. Democritus and the Epicureans, of course, advocated the theme of infinite worlds in an infinite universe which More accepted; but at the same time, he rejected their view of a mechanistic and fortuitous creation. Although Plato specifically rejects the idea of infinite worlds (in Timaeus), More imagines, as the title of his poem implies, a Platonic universe, by which he really means neo-Platonic, combined with a Democritean plurality of worlds. More filled space, not with the infinite void of the Atomists, but with the Divine, ever active immanence. More, in fact, in an early philosophic work, An Antidote against Atheisme (1652), and again in Divine Dialogues (1668), refutes Lucretius by asserting the usefulness of all created things in God’s Providence and the essential design in Nature. His reference in Democritus Platonissans (st. 20) is typical: “though I detest the sect/ of Epicurus for their manners vile,/ Yet what is true I may not well reject.” In bringing together Democritus’ theories and neo-Platonic thought, More obviously has attempted reconciliation of two exclusive world views, but with dubious success.
While More stands firmly before a familiar tradition, his belief in an infinity of worlds evidently has little immediate
connection with any predecessors. Even Bruno’s work, or Thomas Digges,’ which could have occupied an important place, seems to have had little, if any, direct influence on More. It was Descartes who stimulated his thought at the most receptive moment: in 1642 to have denied a theory which in 1646 he proclaimed with such force evidently argues in favor of a most powerful attachment. More responded enthusiastically to what he deemed a congenial metaphysical system; as a champion of Descartes, he was first to make him known in England and first in England to praise the infinity of worlds, yet Descartes’ system could give to him little real solace. More embraces God’s plenitude and infinity of worlds, he rejoices in the variety and grandeur of the universe, and he worships it as he might God Himself; but Descartes was fundamentally uninterested in such enthusiasms and found them even repellant—as well as unnecessary—to his thought. For More the doctrine of infinity was a proper corollary of Copernican astronomy and neo-Platonism (as well as Cabbalistic mysticism) and therefore a necessity to his whole elaborate and eclectic view of the world.
In introducing Cartesian thought into England, More emphasized particular physical doctrines mainly described in The Principles of Philosophy; he shows little interest in the Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting the Reason (1637), or in the Meditations (1641), both of which were also available to him when he wrote Democritus Platonissans. In the preface to his poem, he refers to Descartes whom he seems to have read hopefully: surely “infinitude” is the same as the Cartesian “indefinite.” “For what is his mundus indefinitè extensus, but extensus infinitè? Else it sounds onely infinitus quoad nos, but simpliciter finitus,” for there can be no space “unstuffd with Atoms.” More thinks that Descartes seems “to mince it,” that difficulty lies in the interpretation of a word, not in an essential idea. He is referring to Part II, xxi, of The Principles, but he quotes, with tacit approval, from Part III, i and ii, in the motto to the poem. More undoubtedly knows the specific discussion of ‘infinity’ in Part I, xxvi-xxviii, where he must first