Page:The Journal of English and Germanic Philology Volume 18.djvu/492

 488 Bailey certain suspicion which rested upon its members, and so strongly that at one time when they talked of reorganization, it was announced that they would not concern themselves with matters of state or religion (p. 28). Also striking discrepancies in the ms. lists of members are discussed. Here Dr. Steeves makes the suggestion that, if the longer list, including some of the most distinguished names of the period, is not vulnerable, "the society is vastly more significant from every aspect . . . than merely a gathering of quiet scholars" (p. 34). We wish that Dr. Steeves had been able to go much more deeply into the significance of this first recognized English society. In the seventeenth century the spread of Neoplatonic thought in England was very marked, on the side of traditional learning, in the universities. The Cambridge (Neo)Platonists, for example, studied Plotinus and Proclus, doubtless Porphyry, Origen and St. Augustine also, and as we know, the mystics Dionysius the Arcopagite, Thomas a Kempis, and the beautiful little anonymous mystical treatise Theologia Germanica. This, however, represents only one side of Neoplatonism. The belief in the oneness of the universe, the starting point of the mystics, was the starting point as well for another type of mind. This one-piece universe must have laws; what are they? Men like Paracelsus, van Helmont, Francis Bacon, Robert Boyle, Isaac Newton, tried to find the answer. In the seven- teenth century there was organization to this end. Samuel Hartlib, Evelyn, Cowley, Wren, Sir William Petty, Boyle and Bishop Wilkins are men whom Dr. Steeves mentions in connec- tion with the Royal Society and similar projects. With them were closely associated also John Dury and Theodor Haak, the latter of whom had a large share in the establishment of the Philosophical Society, the Oxford parent branch of the Royal Society. These two, with Hartlib, were friends of Comenius, and all four were men of known Neoplatonic interests and sym- pathies. Thus the working out of the Neoplatonic belief gave added impulse, if not the real impulse, to the rise of the natural sciences. One other characteristic of the seventeenth century life claims our attention at this point. The period has been des- cribed as a welter of sects. There was an amazing wealth of religious life outside of the established church, characterized by a rejection of all church rites and observances which, having ceased to be understood, had become lifeless. This had resulted partly from an ever increasing belief, pouring into England from the new sects on the continent, strengthened by students of Neoplatonic and mystical writings and by those who were taking up alchemy or astrology, a belief, namely, in the "Inner Light," in that principle inborn within all men through which they can know God, and all things as well. It is a mystical