the authors, who were among his friends, and absorbed the very substance of it. It is impossible to believe that men who were acquainted, who brought their whole spirit into propaganda work, and who held in common so many ideas that were anathema, should not have worked together. The analysis of the 1655 edition confirms this hypothesis.

II. THE 1655 (LONDON) EDITION.

We have seen how little the first pamphlet insisted on resurrection. Now, Milton, while adopting the ideas of the Mortalists, kept his own intensely religious spirit, and particularly his absorbing thirst for justice. To him, to his whole scheme of thought, for abstract and for sentimental reasons, immortality was necessary. In 1655 he was completely liberated from dogma, and accepted all his friends' ideas; but as compensation — and can we imagine Milton having no influence over any group he was connected with? -he lifted their whole conception into a more religious atmosphere. He gives to the second pamphlet the elevated tone that was somewhat lacking in the first.

As a consequence, Chapter III of 1644 becomes Chapter I of 1655, and eight pages (20 to 27) are added on the subject:

That which is finite and mortal ceaseth from the time of the grave till the time of the resurrection.

Page 27 has it:

Therefore, well saies Tertullian, in his book de Anima, that the Soul and the Body of man are both one; which, saith Saint Jerome, in his Epistle to Marcellina, and Anapsychia, was the opinion of the

greatest part of the western Churches. And Saint Augustine, in his four books of the Original of Souls, leaves the question undecided; neither dares he rashly determine anything.

The same collection of authorities, in the same order -Tertullian, Jerome, the Western Church, and Augustine in a doubting mood—is found in Chapter VII of the De doctrina, to prove the similar doctrine that the soul goes from father to son at generation because the soul is one with the body:

was considered as the more probable opinion by Tertullian and Apollinarius, as well as by Augustine, and the whole western church in the time of Jerome, as he himself testifies, Tom. 11, Epist. 82... Augustine was led to confess that he could neither discover by study, nor prayer, nor any process of reasoning, how the doctrine of original sin could be defended on the supposition of the creation of souls.33

This Miltonic passage, in an addition which is in the Miltonic spirit, seems to me to leave no room for doubt. Milton's knowledge and intelligence have left a mark here. Perhaps his style also, for the phrase "neither dares he rashly determine anything" at the end of the sentence, and a purely rhetorical repetition, is an example of a peculiarly Miltonic trick of composition.

On page 40, another addition is a quotation from Ames, whom we know to have been a favorite theologian of Milton's orthodox times.**

As a Post-Script, we find an amusing trait which may well be Miltonic also. I have shown that there was much of the nationalist in Milton; he claimed Druidic sources for English civilization, and even for universal

33 Prose Works, IV, 189-90, 193. The reference is to the epistle to Marcellina and Anapsychia which is quoted in the pamphlet.

34 Cf. Sumner in his preface to the De doctrina, in Prose Works, IV, xviii.

35

civilization (in a humorous mood, let us hope). Here, he claims further (if it be he) the honors for Great Britain of having invented the theory of immortality. He explains that in ancient chronicles (he was reading them at the time for his History) it is recorded that "King Druis [hence the name druids] to encourage his subjects to fight, invented immortality of the soul." And yet Milton's patriotism does not go so far as to adopt the theory.

The small volume ends on the ingenious couplet (and can this be another Miltonic addition?):

Qualis in novissimo vitæ die quisque moritur,
Talis in novissimo mundi die judicabitur.

Our last three chapters have placed Milton in his own times and among his countrymen. We cannot undertake here to trace further back the origin of his ideas, of the ideas of the group and tradition he belonged to. We have seen the development of certain sixteenth-century conceptions that originated partly in the Kabbalah, were further developed by Fludd into a immensely complicated but more coherent system, were brought back to earth and plain common-sense by the Mortalists, and finally this being the goal we wanted to reach - were elevated by Milton into the permanent sphere of supreme artistic beauty.

35 Prose Works, II, 90. There have, however, been many who held the opinion seriously.

CONCLUSION

T is of interest to note that the next great step taken

I

by European thought, the pantheism of Spinoza, only

marks a further stage of evolution of the ideas we have been studying in England. There has been a good deal of controversy as to whether or not Spinoza derived his ideas from the Kabbalah. There are intellectual worlds between the two; but when the history of European thought in the seventeenth century is properly investigated, it will be seen that throughout Europe there was in progress an evolution of thought of which the English line from Fludd to Milton is only one manifestation.' And there is no doubt that Spinoza takes his proper place-one of the very highest-at the end of that evolution. The froth of the Renaissance was being analyzed and the results confronted with the findings of a scientific century; but a kernel of great ideas remained alive and fruitful.

It is possible, and even probable, that Milton had occasion in his later life to discuss Spinoza's ideas. They had a common friend, Oldenburg, a frequent correspondent of both. In 1661, Oldenburg had a memorable conversation with Spinoza on God, thought and extension, and the nature of the union of body and soul. Spinoza sent Oldenburg a long letter on the subject-probably

1 In France, Jean d'Espagnet, a Bordeaux magistrate (Enchiridion, 1647), represents Fludd's stage of evolution in a much more concise and literary form.

2 Oldenburg to Spinoza, Aug. 26, 1661. See The Chief Works of ... Spinoza (London, 1912), II, 275.

the most interesting letter of his that has survived. He explains therein his conception of the One Substance, which cannot have been created and is infinite and perfect.' It seems to me probable that Oldenburg, who was then in London and visited Milton, showed the poet this interesting letter; if so, Milton must certainly have been struck by the resemblances between his conception of substance and Spinoza's.

Milton had but little of the scientific spirit: he was essentially a great rhetorician in the service of a great moralist; but he was deeply interested in science; he admired Bacon; Galileo was one of his heroes. Through Oldenburg, he was in connection with Boyle and the founders of the Royal Society.

But Milton has a greater value than that of a representative of his own time; his thinking occasionally reaches a depth that makes it permanently valid. What do we mean by that word "depth"? It seems to me that we apply it to whatever, in works that are now antiquated in thought and feeling, strikes us, men of today, as new and original, as carrying still a revelation for us. In the middle of Plato's theosophy, which seems to us so puerile; of the Hindoo mythology, which seems to us so artificial; of Pascal's religion-whatever may be our own religious opinions -we come upon phrases and ideas that still bring to us the sensation of a superior power of thought, and shreds of truth otherwise hidden from us. Above all systems and modes of thought, such ideas remain eternally true, new, and surprising for mankind. They give life to books which, without them, would have been forgotten long ago, even as, for instance, Fludd is forgotten because that power is not in him. But that power is in 3 Ibid., II, 276-79.