ILTON'S thought is essentially original. I mean

Mthat

that, although he has expressed only ideas which were current before him, and around him in certain circles, yet he has never accepted an idea from the outside. He has examined all the old notions of mankind, re-weighed them in his own scales, and accepted or rejected them for reasons peculiar to his own mind. I have tried to show in Part I how he acquired the ideas he held at the end of his life; that is to say, how he caught up with those ideas, so to speak, as his own personal experience progressed. In this Part IV, I wish to study what he adopted them from. Having seen the workings of his internal inspiration, let us now see his external sources. What he says of Scripture in the De doctrina applies to all his sources; we must remember that he saw no fundamental difference between the Bible and other great "inspired " books, whatever nation or creed they came from:

we possess, as it were a twofold Scripture; one external, which is the written word, and the other internal, which is the Holy Spirit... that which is internal, and the peculiar possession of each believer, is far superior to all, namely the Spirit itself.1

Through this Spirit, his own peculiar possession, he judged of the necessity of accepting external suggestions. As I see the evolution of his mind, his outlook on life changed with his own personal experience, which decided what he would adopt and what he would reject among the ideas so far brought forward by mankind.

1 Prose Works, IV, 447. See above, p. 204.

In fact, the expression " sources," which is retained here for reasons of convenience, is totally inadequate; I hold it impossible to investigate properly the sources of Milton's ideas, because that would mean writing a history of philosophy, and setting on parallel pages what Milton may or may not have borrowed from each successive phase of human thought. Milton is a unit of a whole that goes together; to take up a thread at the beginning of human culture and follow it up till it reaches Milton is a pure illusion, a mere abstract fabrication of the critical mind. Yet we must do something to situate Milton in the evolution of man's thought. In studying a man's ancestry, in order to be complete, one would have to study the whole of mankind, since the number of his ancestors increases into the infinite as one works backwards. But it is possible to study his own parents and even his grandparents with tolerable precision. Thus I shall try to see what Milton's immediate ancestry was, to study, so to speak, his parents and his grandparents, and to find the "" sources of his thought—or at least thought akin to his (it will be difficult often to fix on the precise degree of relationship, to say, if I may follow up my simile, whether we have discovered a real parent or a mere uncle) in movements of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

This applies to the ideas proper. It applies in a lesser degree to his "myths," because here Milton followed a precise tradition of dogma, at least in so far as he used Christian myth. Here, in Milton's own mind—which is the all-important fact a thread did exist which led from the beginning of the world to himself.

I shall therefore divide this part into two sections. In the first, I shall study the traditions on the Fall handed

249

down to Milton, and try to see how he used the myth; I shall stop when I reach a period at which the myth he used was fully formed, namely, at the time of Augustine. In the second section I shall study those contemporary movements which allow us most precision in our search for influences received or deliberately accepted by Milton.

I make no claim to any sort of completeness. The field is new, and many scholars are engaged upon it. Many important questions, such as the theme of Reason versus Passion in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, or the influence of Spenser on Milton's thought, for instance, I shall hardly glance at. I merely bring here my personal contribution to the search. In a bibliographical appendix, I shall give a cursory view of what others are doing at the present moment in the same field.

SECTION I

THE MYTH OF THE FALL: SOURCES
AND INTERPRETATION

English critics seem to me to have exaggerated Milton's originality in this field. Huxley complained with some bitterness that most people's idea of the origins comes from Milton and not from the Bible. Mark Pattison writes: "In Genesis it is the serpent who tempts Eve. ... In Milton it is Satan who has entered into the body of a serpent, and supplied the intelligence. Here, indeed, Milton was only adopting a gloss, as ancient at least as the Wisdom of Solomon (2:24). But it is the gloss, and not the text of Moses, which is in possession of our minds, and who has done most to lodge it there, Milton or the

commentators? "1 Sir Walter Raleigh also says: "The Miltonic account of the Fall of the Angels. . . is not borrowed from the Fathers, but corresponds rather with the later version popularised in England by the cycles of Miracle Plays." And finally, one of Milton's last biographers, Mr. John Bailey, remarks: "To this day if an ordinary man is asked to give his recollections of the story of Adam and Eve, he is sure to put Milton as well as Genesis into them. For instance, the Miltonic Satan is almost sure to take the place of the Scriptural serpent."

Now, the idea that Satan was in the serpent is a very orthodox idea, introduced into dogma, so to speak, by St. Augustine, and developed by Calvin in his commentary on the first chapters of Genesis. It is found in catechisms of the Reformation previous to Milton's time; its popularity is due to ministers and Sunday-school teachers far more than to Milton in Protestant countries; and it is part of the usual Catholic teaching in countries where Milton is practically unknown.

Milton is heir to an extremely complex tradition; his originality lies in selection and not in invention. But in his selection we find the principles that directed his whole thinking.

1 Milton, p. 185.

2 Milton, p. 99.

3 Milton (Home University Library; New York, 1915), p. 143.

T

HE probable aim of the tales on the fall of

man among the ancient Hebrews seems to have

been the investigation of the origin of suffering and not of moral evil. Why is man obliged to work hard to feed himself and his family? Why has woman to bear children in pain and why is she submitted to the slavery of marriage?

The answer seems to have been that man's misery is connected with his intelligence, with his knowledge of good and evil. This knowledge is considered as good and desirable: "for as an angel of God, so is my lord the king to discern good and bad."" Children acquire the knowledge as they grow up: your children, which in that day had no knowledge between good and evil.” Childhood is a period of happiness and play, and also a period of ignorance. But as the child grows up, knowledge comes to him; he knows good and evil. Then play and happiness are over. The girl is given a husband, who is her master, and she is doomed to child-bearing. The young man is set to work and begins a life of trouble,

1 I am indebted for guidance in this field to Professor Ad. Lods, Professor of Hebrew at the Sorbonne; and for later times to Dr. de Faye, of the École des Hautes Études and to Professor Charles Guignebert, of the Sorbonne. The Zohar texts I quote in Section II, Chapter I, have been verified in the original by Dr. Liber, of the Hautes Études.

2 II Samuel 14:17, 20; 19:35.

3 Deuteronomy 1:39, and cf. Isaiah 7:15, 16.