Page:Philosophical Review Volume 6.djvu/609



URING the seventeenth century the current of philosophical thinking in England was directed mainly against Hobbes. A writer of less genius might have advanced theories even more shocking to the moral sense of the time, and have met merely with the disapproval of a few theologians; but in the philosophy of Hobbes there was something that compelled attention. The coherence of his system, its simplicity, and its recognition of the recent discoveries in physical science made it attractive to many minds, and gave it an unrecognized influence even with the men who most widely disagreed with its postulates.

The opposition in his own generation centred in a group of Cambridge divines. These men, although they did not form a school in the strict sense of the word, were closely united in the main tendencies of their thought and in their primary object. To all of them the name of Hobbes was a synonym for much that was base in morality and untenable in speculation. He furnished the animus for all their work. It is true that some degree of philosophical activity was stirring in Cambridge before Hobbes began to publish; but he gave it a great impulse, and without him it would hardly have reached whatever coherence it afterwards attained. The name, 'Cambridge Platonists,' which was given to these philosophers, indicates with sufficient clearness their general attitude. All their ideas were colored by the Platonic philosophy, especially as it appeared in the writings of the Alexandrian Neo-Platonists. They believed that all those portions of Greek philosophy which are consistent with Christianity, were obtained directly from a Jewish source. This supposition lent an air of infallibility to the writings in question, and brought them within the