Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 6.djvu/724

Rh 690 CUDWOKTH and to the third the freedom and responsibility of man. The proof of these three truths with the refutation of the opposite errors seemed to him to be the establishment of a system of the universe entitled to be called, in opposi tion to those refuted, true, and, in distinction from physical systems, like the Ptolemaic, Tychonic, and Copernican, intellectual. The first of these forms of fatalism is the only one with which his principal work deals. It includes four species of materialistic atheism, namely, the atomic, adopt ed by Democritus, Epicurus, and Hobbes, which recognizes no other substances than material atoms and no other forces than their movements ; the hylopathic, maintained by Anaximander, which makes infinite matter, devoid of understanding and life, form all things by &quot; a secretion or segregation &quot; which takes place according to inherent law ; the hylozoic, asserted by Strato of Lampsacus, which explains everything by the supposition of an inward, self- organizing, plastic life in matter ; and the cosmoplastic, perhaps held by Seneca and the younger Pliny, which represents the universe as an organized being, like a plant, with a spontaneous and necessary but unconscious and un- refbctive development. They are, however, reducible to two the atomic and hylozoic, the one best represented by Democritus, the other by Strato ; the one explaining everything by matter and movement, the other everything by matter endowed with life; the one mechanical, the other dynamical. The history of the atomic philosophy is narrated by Cudworth at great length and with vast erudition, but no one will now be found to accept the view which he gives of its development as even in the main accurate. Like his friend, Henry More, he derives the atomic theory, in so far as it is a purely physical speculation, from Moses, and his conclusions as to its transmission are in many respects not less untrustworthy. He would make it out to have been taught by Pythagoras, Empedocles, and, in fact, nearly all the ancient philosophers, and only to have been mutilated and perverted by Leucippus and Democritus. He had the merit, however, of seeing very clearly that the atomic theory in itself, or what he calls the atomic physiology, had no natural or even necessary connection with the atomic atheism. He contends that &quot; so far from being either the mother or nurse of atheism, or any ways favourable thereto (as is vulgarly supposed), it is indeed the most opposite to it of any, and the greatest defence against the same.&quot; He states with great fulness and fairness the arguments which have been urged in support both of the atomic and hylozoic atheism. He refutes them, although in a cumbrous and discursive manner, with &quot;great strength of reason. It is in connection with the refutation of hylozoic atheism that he brings forward the celebrated hypothesis, which he held in common with More, of a plastic nature, a substance intermediate between matter and spirit, a power which prosecutes certain ends but not freely or intelligently,: an instrument by which laws are able to act without the immediate agency of God. He argues that to refer the life and motion of the universe immediately to God renders Divine Providence &quot; operose, solicitous, and distractious,&quot; implies that all things are done miraculously and none of them by an inward principle of their own, and is incon sistent with the slow and gradual development of nature and with its &quot; errors and bungles.&quot; It is not wonderful that few should have been convinced by such arguments. Nothing can be toilsome to omnipotence or perplexing to omniscience. It is not more difficult to believe the life and motions of the universe due to the immediate action of God than the life and motions of the secondary agent which Cudworth imagined to animate nature and &quot; drudg ingly to execute a part of the work of Providence.&quot; An unconscious and &quot;necessitated plastic power&quot; cannot remove from the creator of it the blame of any &quot; errors or bungles &quot; it may commit. Cudworth s hypothesis became in 1703-4 the subject of an interesting controversy between Bayle and Leclerc, the former maintaining, and the latter denying, that it was favourable to the atheistical inference. It has been recently reproduced by Joseph John Murphy in his work on Habit and Intelligence. What Cudworth designated &quot; plastic nature&quot; is almost identical with what Murphy calls &quot; unconscious intelligence.&quot; It was descended 1 rom the anima mundi of Plato, and is still represented in the Unbewusste of Von Hartmann. After the three chapters which describe and refute atomic and hylozoic atheism, there comes a fourth which &quot; swells,&quot; as Cudworth himself says, &quot; into a disproportionate bigness.&quot; Its aim is to prove that the belief in one supreme God has been generally entertained even throughout the pagan world ; that only a few men, darkened in mind and depraved in heart, have discarded and denied it ; and that polytheism was the worship of many gods subordinate to the One God, of the One God under many names, and of the One God and subordinate gods in images and symbols, but not the exclusion of the worship of &quot; one sovereign and omnipotent Deity from which all their other gods were generated or created.&quot; Nowhere does our author show more learning nor more elevation and breadth of thought than in the survey of religions which this discussion involves. He carefully searches in the heathen religious which he reviews for features of truth, traces of the presence of God, evidences of His having never left himself without a witness in human hearts. At the same time, his reason ing is, on the whole, far from satisfactory. It is at many points perverted by the unconscious desire to establish a foregone conclusion ; and the testimonies brought forward have as often meanings imposed on them as educed frcm them. The lengthened discussion of the Platonic and Christian Trinities contained in this chapter gave great dissatisfaction to various persons. Cudworth was accused by some, in consequence of it, with being a Tritheist, and by others of being an Arian. He could not possibly be both ; he undoubtedly meant to be neither. He wished to be orthodox, and believed that he was so. He erred chiefly by representing Plato as having come far nearer to the Christian doctrine than he really did. What is of most interest, perhaps, in the last chapter is the attempt at a positive demonstration of the existence of God. This, he explains, cannot be accomplished a priori, as if from anything antecedent to the Divine exist ence, but may nevertheless be necessarily inferred from undeniable principles of reason. He refutes the assertion of Descartes that we can be certain of nothing, not even of mathematical reasoning and truth, till certain that there is a God, good and holy, who cannot and will not deceive us. He shows that although this hypothesis bears a resemblance of piety it really leads to universal scepticism. He then adduces three metaphysical proofs of the Divine existence. The first is substantially that of Anselrn and Descartes, drawn from the idea of an absolutely perfect being. Cudworth modifies it, however, in the same way which Leibnitz soon afterwards also did. He does not, that is to say, conclude at once the Divine existence from the idea of a perfect being, but shows before doing so that this idea is accordant with reason, i.e., involves in it no contradiction. The second proof, instead of thus proceed ing from the idea of perfection to that of necessary existence, proceeds from the idea of existence to that of perfection. Thcists and atheists, materialists and spiritual ists, agree that something certainly existed of itself from all eternity. They differ only as to whether that something be a perfect or an imperfect Being. But that which existed from all eternity must have done so naturally and