other influences are at work, and on others besides Milton. It becomes necessary to trace a whole stream of semioccult ideas, flowing through the whole of modern literature and taking in much of Goethe, Wagner, and Nietzsche, much of Lamartine and Hugo.* 48 48 See on this point my article in the Revue de littérature comparée, III (1923), 337-68. A CHAPTER II ROBERT FLUDD (1574-1637) STUDY of Fludd is indispensable to a proper understanding of the evolution of ideas in the seventeenth century in England. His contemporaries held him in high esteem. Selden is known to have thought highly of him. Gassendi devoted two treatises to a courteous refutation of his ideas. His works are an encyclopedia of Kabbalism, Neo-Platonism, Hermetism, and of all sciences and arts of his time, from astrology and even astronomy, to the construction of musical instruments. His system is extremely complicated, and it can be said at once that Milton has not adopted it, nor even probably been influenced by it except on some particular points which I shall examine in detail. That Milton knew Fludd I take for granted; every educated man of the time knew Fludd; to his great reputation as a philosopher he added celebrity as a medical practitioner and a somewhat scandalous notoriety for his independence towards the medical authorities, who, on several occasions, had to admonish him severely. Of his general system of ideas, it is enough to say that practically all the kabbalistic conceptions which we went over in our last chapter are found in his works. It is therefore needless to prove the general similarly between Milton's philosophy and Fludd's. There is, however, one particular doctrine which must be investigated more closely, because it can be said not to exist explicitly in the Kabbalah (though many kabbalists derive it from their principles) and it is common to Milton and Fludd: the doctrine of materialism. Both derive their materialism from a pantheism: God is everything; the original matter from which everything is made is part of God. Fludd also knows of the retraction.1 But Milton's use of pantheism to justify physical passion is not paralleled in Fludd, who despises the body. Also of Milton's use of the retraction theory to prove man's liberty and therefore to justify the ways of God, I find no traces in Fludd, who seems to be disturbed by no doubts or questionings relative to the justice of God. Thus Milton's chief preoccupations are foreign to Fludd. But in the cosmology there are more precise analogies. For Fludd, the original matter, part of God, from which everything has been made, is light, of which fire is a grosser form. There might seem to be an influence of Stoicism here, and probably the Neo-Stoicism of the Renaissance has left traces in Fludd; but the only authorities Fludd quotes in support of the theory, so far as I have seen, are Zoroaster and the Kabbalists. However that may be, one passage of Fludd must be compared with Milton's hymn to light at the beginning of Book III of Paradise Lost: Concludimus igitur, lucem esse vel increatam, scilicet Deum omnia naturantem (nam in ipso Deo Patre est vera lux, deinde in Filio ejus illustrans splendor et uberans, et in Spiritu Sancto ardens fulgor superans omnen intelligentiam) vel ab ea increata creatam.2 1 Though I have not been able to find in Fludd the passage of the Tikuně Zohar I quote in the previous chapter, I will not go so far as to say it is not there, as Fludd's complete works are a real cosmos, in which it seems to me impossible to say that something is not to be found. 2 Fludd, De macrocosmi historia, I, I, Caput VI, p. 28. And Fludd examines at length the authorities for either hypothesis and will come to no precise conclusion. Now, it is a peculiar fact that Milton also oscillates between the two opinions; and a poet who, in a lyrical effusion, stops to put in alternative saving clauses, must have been impressed by some considerable authority that the matter is not decided: " 3 Hail, holy light, offspring of Heav'n firstborn! OR OF THE ETERNAL COETERNAL BEAM. AND NEVER BUT IN UNAPPROACHED LIGHT MAY I EXPRESS THEE UNBLAM'D. SINCE GOD IS LIGHT DWELT FROM ETERNITY · DWELL THEN IN THEE Offspring of Heav'n first born" is certainly a designation of the Son, from whom all things are made, and therefore of the divine matter out of which they are made. So Milton seems to adopt the Fluddian theory of light as a materia prima, at least poetically, for the moment. And he emphasizes the point by adding And we know that all things are of God. "Offspring of Heav'n first born" goes well with "ab ea increata creatam," but Milton adds at once: "Or of the Eternal Co-eternal beam," which recalls "vel increatam lucem": Bright effluence of bright essence increate! And again, Milton hesitates and goes back to 3 I-italicize one hypothesis and set the other in capitals. 4 "Unblam'd" because none should express the Eternal in the first hypothesis - hence the "hear'st thou rather "; in the second, it is permissible. 5 Cf. Fludd: "est vera lux." pure ethereal stream Whose fountain who shall tell? " This extreme caution of the poet, in view of the contemporary philosopher's hesitation, is certainly worth noting. And it is all the more remarkable that the poet should stumble where the philosopher has been tripped, because the poet ought not to have stumbled here. He was quite definitely committed to the doctrine that the Son was not co-eternal; therefore the original matter, light, could not be. The fact points to strong external influence, which made the poet forget at the time the inner coherence of his own system. He obviously did not care to contradict Fludd on the subject of light, and as he does not make a particular point of light being the materia prima, he let Fludd have it his own way. Even the end of the hymn, So much the rather, thou Celestial Light Shine inward, and the mind through all her powers is all the better for a little Fluddian commentary. It might seem to us that Milton is unduly passing from the physical to the spiritual meaning of the word "light"; but Fludd explains in his Tome II' that the human mind is also made of that same material light, only of subtler variety, because it is received directly from God, whereas external light is received from God through the intermediary of the world. The "shine inward" is then no figure of speech, but expresses a true physical reality; 6 Cf. Fludd: "ab ea increata [who shall tell] creatam." 7 Tome II, tractatus I, section I, p. 167, and passim. The difference is the same as that between the souls of the brute creation (external light) and that of man (internal). |