SECTION II CONTEMPORARY SOURCES AND M INFLUENCES ILTON'S relationship to movements of his own time may be summed up thus: roughly speaking, the whole of Milton's philosophy is found in the Kabbalah,' except his materialism; his materialism is found in Fludd, except his mortalism; and his mortalism is connected with the ideas of the contemporary English Mortalist group. The three stages are connected and form developments, one from the other: Fludd starts from the Kabbalah, and the Mortalists have their general principles in common with Fludd, and probably derived them from him. 1 Renaissance Neo-Platonism may be counted as a parallel influence; in popular exposition of theories, the two practically coincide; only many things in Milton are in the Kabbalah and not in Neo-Platonism proper. Besides, I agree with those who maintain that the chief differences between Renaissance Neo-Platonism and ancient Neo-Platonism are mostly due to the influence of the Kabbalah. For instance, the new theory that matter, the flesh, and nature are good, not a degradation but an expression of the Divinity, is first brought forward properly by Pico della Mirandola, in his Heptaplus, as derived from the Kabbalah. T CHAPTER I THE ZOHAR AND THE KABBALAH HE Zohar was put together in Spain in the thirteenth century as a compendium of all the non-orthodox Jewish traditions. Some of the material used probably goes back centuries earlier. From the beginning of the Renaissance, its influence on European thought was considerable. It was printed at Mantua and Cremona in 1559-60, another edition coming out at Lublin in 1623. The most celebrated commentators of the Zohar, Cordovero and Loria, belong to the middle of the sixteenth century. Pico della Mirandola, Reuchlin, and Agrippa had, during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, prepared the scholars of Europe to receive kabbalistic ideas and had made known many of the principles of the Kabbalah. In 1635 Joseph Voysin published in Paris a Latin translation of some passages of the Zohar. Father Kircher published his study of the Kabbalah in Rome from 1652 to 1654. In England, Robert Fludd (1574-1637) gave to the public the most interesting among the kabbalistic conceptions, and, as we shall see, there are many striking resemblances between Fludd's and Milton's ideas. Last of all Henry More, who belonged to the same Cambridge college as Milton, published in 1654, in London, his work on the Kabbalah. Such facts must here suffice to show that Milton could not be ignorant of the existence of the Kabbalah. Unani mous tradition and even the statement of the poet himself leave us no doubt that he was able to read the Aramean text of the Zohar;1 and we know Milton sufficiently well to be sure that, if once he became interested in the Kabbalah, he would go straight to the main text with his usual contempt for commentators, since the text was accessible. In such circumstances the proof that Milton knew the Zohar and derived ideas from it must come from a comparison of the two systems of thought and a precise investigation of texts. I do not mean to maintain that Milton was a kabbalist in the sense that he accepted the Zohar as a revealed book in any other way than any other great book. His mind was much too clear and exacting for that. Besides, the Zohar is full of contradictions, owing to the way it was put together or transmitted. Milton evidently took only what suited him from that chaos of ideas. But Milton used the Zohar, found there abundant confirmation of his general ideas, and drew thence many of the ideas whch seem at first sight most particularly his own. Many of his general conceptions belong to a traditional stock, common to the Zohar and to other Jewish or Christian lines of development. But some of Milton's most original notions are found only in the Zohar; and the most striking fact of all is that in the Zohar can be found all Milton's ideas, whether apparently peculiar to himself or not. With one reservation only, it can be stated 1 Cf. Apology for Smectymnuus (Prose Works, III, 131), where Milton quotes the targoumists; Of Education (III, 473), where he recommends the study of Aramean; and Phillip's statement (quoted in Johnson's Lives of the Poets, ed. G. B. Hill, Oxford, 1905, I, 145). 2 The idea of the non-existence of the soul; and even in this case all the ideas on which Milton bases this notion are in the Zohar: pantheism, matter as a divine substance, transformation of matter into spirit, unity between matter and spirit, vindication of sex-passion, etc. Milton only that Milton's philosophy is in the Zohar, and Milton had only to disentangle it from extraneous matter. Inversely, although Milton took from the Zohar only a very small part of its contents, there is really but one great idea of the Zohar which is not in Milton: the idea of reincarnation. Even in this case, however, there is a parallel conception in the poet. The basis of the theories of reincarnation is that the future life must take place on earth and debts contracted either by us or towards us must be paid in kind. This idea of justice as rendered in this world and not in another world is what drove Milton to adopt the notion of the Millenarians and Fifth Monarchy men: it is on this earth that Christ will come and reign and settle all accounts.3 Let us first see what Milton owes to the mythology of the Zohar. It is comparatively little. So reasonable a mind could not be much influenced by the extravagant development and complication of myths in which the kabbalists indulge. Yet a few traits are very interesting. In Paradise Lost Eve, after eating the apple, and before giving it to Adam (she had thought it better perhaps to keep superior science to herself), soliloquizes thus: But what if God have seen And death ensue? then I shall be no more, So dear I love him, that with him all deaths drew the conclusion, and was probably helped to it by an out-and-out kabbalist, Robert Fludd. See below, pp. 301 ff. 3 See above, pp. 196–97. • Milton follows the normal Christian tradition as to myth; see above, pp. 249 ff. 5 6 IX, 826-33. Splendid psychology, in splendid language. The Zohar says: The woman touched the tree. Then she saw the Angel of Death coming towards her, and thought: Perhaps I shall die, and the Holy One (Blessed be He) will make another woman and give her to Adam. That must not happen. Let us live together or let us die together. And then she gave the fruit to her husband that he should eat it also." There is perfect correspondence in the sequence of ideas: But what if God have seen, And death ensue? then I shall be no more, And Adam wedded to another Perhaps I shall die, and the Holy will make another woman Shall live with her enjoying, I and give her to Adam extinct; A death to think. Confirmed That must not happen. then I resolve Adam shall share with me with him all deaths I could endure, without him live no life. Let us live together or let us die together. A second trait seems more important still. The allegory of the second book of Paradise Lost, in which Satan commits incest with his daughter Sin, issued from himself, and thus produces Death, has revolted many minds since Voltaire; the more so because the repulsive idea of incest 6 Zohar I, 209b. (de Pauly, II, 637). Eleazer of Worms has a similar passage derived from Midrash, Genesis rabba XIX. But Eleazer of Worms or the Zohar is all one for my thesis, Eleazer being one of the most celebrated kabbalists. I use the French translation of the Zohar by de Pauly (Paris, Leroux, 1906-1911), which is acknowledged to be sound. |