I should like to acknowledge my thanks to Mr. W. H. Heck for his service of transcription in the British Museum Library and to Miss M. P. Conant for a similar kindness in research work in the Harvard College Library. To Professor George Edward Woodberry I am most deeply grateful for innumerable suggestions and invaluable advice. The work was undertaken at his suggestion, and throughout the past two years has progressed under his kindly criticism. But the help and inspiration which I have received from him antedate the inception of the essay, extending back to the earlier days of undergraduate life. The work is thus inseparably connected with the training in the study of literature which he has given, and his help in its completion is only an episode in a long series of kindnesses which he has been ever willing to show.
Orange, N.J.,
June 1, 1903.
CONTENTS
| CHAPTER I | |
| PAGE | |
| Ideals of Christian Virtues | [1] |
| I. Holiness | [1] |
| II. Temperance | [12] |
| III. Chastity | [30] |
| CHAPTER II | |
| Theory of Love | [67] |
| I. Heavenly Love | [67] |
| II. Earthly Love | [104] |
| CHAPTER III | |
| God and the Soul | [167] |
| I. Nature of God | [167] |
| II. Nature of the Soul | [186] |
| III. Eternity of the Soul and of Matter | [202] |
| Bibliography | [223] |
| Index | [229] |
PLATONISM IN ENGLISH POETRY
CHAPTER I
Ideals of Christian Virtues
I. HOLINESS
The fundamental doctrine of Platonism as it was understood throughout the period of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was the reality of a heavenly beauty known in and by the soul, as contrasted with an earthly beauty known only to the sense. In this the Christian philosophic mind found the basis for its conception of holiness. Christian discipline and Platonic idealism blended in the “Faerie Queene” in the legend of the Red Cross Knight.
The underlying idea taught by Spenser in the first book is that holiness is a state of the soul in which wisdom or truth can be seen and loved in and for its beauty. In the allegorical scheme of his work Una stands for the Platonic wisdom, σοφία, or ἀρετή, and a sight of her in her native beauty constitutes the happy ending of the many struggles and perplexities that the Red Cross Knight experiences in his pursuit of holiness. The identification of Una with the Platonic idea of truth or wisdom is not merely a matter of inference left for the reader to draw; for Spenser himself is careful to inform us of the true nature of the part she plays in his allegory. Una is presented as teaching the satyrs truth and “trew sacred lore.” (I. vi. 19; I. vi. 30.) When the lion, amazed at her sight, forgets his fierceness, Spenser comments: