Is circumscrib’d, whose Centre’s each where set,
But the low Cusp’s a figure circular,
Whose compasse is ybound, but centre’s every where. (st. 8)
Every point on the circumference, or base of the cone, relates to the single point at the top. The world, More wants to say, has no limits, no center, yet there are bounds in its not having any. More recognizes the contradiction when he fancies “some strong arm’d Archer” at the wide world’s edge (st. 37). Where shall he send his shafts? Into “mere vacuity”? But More hardly seems aware of the inappropriateness of the cone: he uses a geometrical figure to locate space, time, and numberless worlds within the universal sight of God, but matter is infinite, “distinct/ And yet proceeding from the Deitie” (st. 68). Obviously, the archer must forever be sending his arrows through an infinitely expanding surface. Nevertheless, the cone has great value as a metaphor, as a richly suggestive and fascinating conception. More, however, does not want to speak metaphorically; he is attempting to disclose truths, literal and plain, where pretty words and metaphors have no place. Even as he is writing his most effective poetry, we are aware that More is denying his poetic office; for he is pleading a reasoned case where the words crack and strain, where poetic meaning gathers, only to be denied.
But these objections momentarily disappear when More forgets himself enough to let us feel his imagination and does not worry that we might miss the proofs of his philosophy. Democritus Platonissans concludes with an apocalyptic vision wherein the poet imagines the reconciliation of infinite worlds and time within God’s immensity. He is also attempting to harmonize
Psychathanasia, where he rejected infinitude, with its sequel Democritus Platonissans, where he has everywhere been declaring it; thus we should think of endless worlds as we should think of Nature and the Phoenix, dying yet ever regenerative, sustained by a “centrall power/ Of hid spermatick life” which sucks “sweet heavenly juice” from above (st. 101). More closes his poem on a vision of harmony and ceaseless energy, a most fit ending for one who dared to believe that the new philosophy sustained the old, that all coherence had not gone out of the world, but was always there, only waiting to be discovered afresh in this latter age.
The University of British Columbia
[ NOTES TO THE INTRODUCTION]
[1.] The quotations from More’s Latin autobiography occur in the Opera Omnia (London, 1675-79), portions of which Richard Ward translated in The Life of . . . Henry More (London, 1710). Cf. the modern edition of this work, ed. M. F. Howard (London, 1911), pp. 61, 67-68, the text followed here. There is a recent reprint of the Opera Omnia in 3 volumes (Hildesheim, 1966) with an introduction by Serge Hutin. The “Praefatio Generalissima” begins vol. II. 1. One passage in it which Ward did not translate describes the genesis of Democritus Platonissans. More writes that after finishing Psychathanasia, he felt a change of heart: “Postea vero mutata sententia furore nescio quo Poetico incitatus supra dictum Poema scripsi, ea potissimum innixus ratione quod liquido constaret extensionem spacii dari infinitam, nec majores absurditates pluresve contingere posse in Materia infinita, infinitaque; Mundi duratione, quam in infinita Extensione spacii” (p. ix).
[2.] Cf. Lee Haring’s unpub. diss., “Henry More’s Psychathanasia and Democritus Platonissans: A Critical Edition,” (Columbia Univ., 1961), pp. 33-57.