to a contemplation of the beauty of God. In this union, which is shared
by those

                     “whose souls _deiform_ summitie
                 Is waken’d in this life, and so to God
                 Are nearly joynd in a firm Unitie,”

                 (III. i. 30.)

the true believers grow incorporate with Christ.

      “Christ is the sunne that by his chearing might
      Awakes our higher rayes to joyn with his pure light.

      “And when he hath that life elicited,
      He gives his own dear body and his bloud
      To drink and eat. Thus dayly we are fed
      Unto eternall life. Thus do we bud,
      True heavenly plants, suck in our lasting food
      From the first spring of life, incorporate
      Into the higher world (as erst I show’d
      Our lower rayes the soul to subjugate
      To this low world) we fearlesse sit above all fate,

      “Safely that kingdomes glory contemplate,
      O’erflow with joy by a full sympathie
      With that worlds spright, and blesse our own estate,
      Praising the fount of all felicitie,
      The lovely light of the blest Deitie.
      Vain mortals think on this, and raise your mind
      Above the bodies life; strike through the skie
      With piercing throbs and sighs, that you may find
      His face. Base fleshly fumes your drowsie eyes thus blind.”

      (III. i. 31–33.)

In Giles Fletcher’s “Christ’s Triumph after Death” the most elaborate
attempt is made to convey the idea of the blessedness of the union of
the soul with God through the pleasure of mere sense and at the same
time to show how the object with which the soul is joined is in every
respect a super-sensible entity. At first the blessedness of the soul’s
life in heaven is presented both as a pleasurable enjoyment of the sense
of sight, of hearing, and even that of smell, and as a more spiritual
pleasure in the exercise of the faculties of understanding and will.
Speaking of the joy of those souls that ever hold

         “Their eyes on Him, whose graces manifold
         The more they doe behold, the more they would behold,”

Fletcher says:

         “Their sight drinkes lovely fires in at their eyes,
         Their braine sweet incense with fine breath accloyes,
         That on God’s sweating altar burning lies;
         Their hungrie eares feede on the heav’nly noyse,
         That angels sing, to tell their untould joyes;
         Their understanding, naked truth; their wills
         The all, and selfe-sufficient Goodnesse, fills:
         That nothing here is wanting, but the want of ills.”

         (Stz. 34.)

Here the progression in the scale of pleasures is from those of the
senses to those of the mind.

But Fletcher presents this union as even a more intimate experience of
the soul. His is the most elaborate attempt in English poetry to
describe the nature of the participation of the soul in the beauty of
the ultimate reality, according to the Platonic notion of the
participation of an object in its idea. After three stanzas descriptive
of the state of absolute freedom from cares of life which reigns in
heaven (stz. 35–37), Fletcher passes on to a description of God—the
“Idea Beatificall,” as he names Him—in accordance with the Platonic
notion of the highest principle, The One:

         “In midst of this citie cælestiall,
         Whear the Eternall Temple should have rose,
         Light’ned the Idea Beatificall:
         End, and beginning of each thing that growes;
         Whose selfe no end, nor yet beginning knowes;
         That hath no eyes to see, nor ears to heare;
         Yet sees, and heares, and is all-eye, all-eare;
         That nowhear is contain’d, and yet is every whear:

         “Changer of all things, yet immutable;
         Before and after all, the first and last;
         That, mooving all, is yet immoveable;
         Great without quantitie: in Whose forecast
         Things past are present, things to come are past;
         Swift without motion; to Whose open eye
         The hearts of wicked men unbrested lie;
         At once absent and present to them, farre, and nigh.”

         (Stz. 39–40.)

He then goes on to explain what the Idea is not. It is nothing that can
be known by sense. It is no flaming lustre, no harmony of sounds, no
ambrosial feast for the appetite, no odor, no soft embrace, nor any
sensual pleasure. And yet within the soul of the beholder it is known as
an inward feast, a harmony, a light, a sound, a sweet perfume, and
entire embrace. Thus he writes:

        “It is no flaming lustre, made of light;
        No sweet concent, as well-tim’d harmonie;
        Ambrosia, for to feast the appetite,
        Or flowrie odour, mixt with spicerie;
        No soft embrace, or pleasure bodily;
        And yet it is a kinde of inward feast,
        A harmony, that sounds within the brest,
        An odour, light, embrace, in which the soule doth rest.

        “A heav’nly feast, no hunger can consume;
        A light unseene, yet shines in every place;
        A sound, no time can steale; a sweet perfume
        No winds can scatter; an intire embrace
        That no satietie can ere unlace.”

        (Stz. 41–42.)

Such was the powerful hold of the doctrines of Platonism upon the minds
of these religious poets. Strong as were the forces leading them into a
degenerate form of Christian love, these were overcome by the one
fundamental conception of Platonism that the highest love the soul can
know is the love of a purely intellectual principle of beauty and
goodness; and that this love is one in which passion and reason are
wedded into the one supreme desire of the seeker after wisdom and
beauty. Such a conception saved a large body of English poetry from
degenerating into that form of erotic mysticism which Crashaw’s later
poems reveal; and in which there is no elevation of the mind away from
the lower range of sense enjoyment, but only an introversion of the
physical life into the intimacies of spiritual experience.

                            II. EARTHLY LOVE

The influence of Platonism upon the love poetry of the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries in England is felt in two distinct forms. In the
first place, the teachings of that philosophy were used to explain and
dignify the conception of love as a passion having its source in a
desire for the enjoyment of beauty; and in the second place, the
emphasis laid by Platonism upon the function of the soul as opposed to
the senses resulted in a tendency to treat love as a purely spiritual
passion devoid of all sensuous pleasure. In the first phase the
teachings of Platonic theory were made to render service according to
the conventional love theory known as Petrarchism; and in its second
phase Platonism contributed its share in keeping alive the so-called
metaphysical mood of the seventeenth-century lyric.

According to the conventional method of Petrarchism, the object of the
poet’s love was always a lady of great beauty and spotless virtue, and
of a correspondingly great cruelty. Hence the subjects of the
Petrarchian love poem were either the praise of the mistress’s beauty or
an account of the torment of soul caused by her heartless indifference.
By applying the doctrines of Platonism to this conventional manner, a
way was found to explain upon a seemingly philosophic basis the power of
the lover’s passion and of beauty as its exciting cause. The best
example in English of this application of Platonic theory is Spenser’s
two hymns,—“An Hymne in Honour of Love” and “An Hymne in Honour of
Beautie.”

The professed aim of Spenser in these hymns differs in no wise from the
purpose of the Petrarchian lover. Both are written to ease the torments
of an unrequited passion. In the “Hymne in Honour of Love” he addresses
love in his invocation:

            “Love, that long since hast to thy mighty powre,
            Perforce subdude my poore captived hart,
            And raging now therein with restlesse stowre,
            Doest tyrannize in everie weaker part;
            Faine would I seeke to ease my bitter smart,
            By any service I might do to thee,
            Or ought that else might to thee pleasing bee.”

            (ll. 4–10.)

In his closing stanzas he expresses the wish of coming at last to the
object of his desire. (ll. 298–300.) In the “Hymne in Honour of
Beautie,” he openly confesses a desire that through his hymn

           “It may so please that she at length will streame
           Some deaw of grace, into my withered hart,
           After long sorrow and consuming smart.”

           (ll. 29–31.)

The only respect in which these hymns differ from the mass of love
poetry of their time is in the method by which Spenser treated the
common subject of the poetical amorists of the Renaissance. In singing
the praises of love and beauty he drew upon the doctrines of Italian
Platonism, and by the power of his own genius blended the purely
expository and lyrical strains so that at times it is difficult to
separate them. The presence of Platonic doctrine, however, is felt in
the dignified treatment of the passion of love and of beauty.

In the “Hymne in Honour of Love” love is described as no merely cruel
passion inflicted by the tyrannical Cupid of the amorist, but as the
manifestation in man of the great informing power which brought the
universe out of chaos and which now maintains it in order and concord.
According to Ficino, the greatest representative of Italian Platonism
during the Renaissance, one truth established by the speech of
Eryximachus in the “Symposium” is that love is the creator and preserver
of all things. “Through this,” Ficino says in his “Commentarium in
Convivium,” “fire moves air by sharing its heat; the air moves the
water, the water moves the earth; and _vice versa_ the earth draws the
water to itself; water, the air; and the air, the fire. Plants and trees
also beget their like because of a desire of propagating their seed.
Animals, brutes, and men are allured by the same desire to beget
offspring.” (III. 2.) And in summing up his discussion he says,
“Therefore all parts of the universe, since they are the work of one
artificer and are members of the same mechanism like to one another both
in being and in life, are linked together by a certain mutual love, so
that love may be rightly declared the perpetual bond of the universe and
the unmoving support of its parts and the firm basis of the whole
mechanism.” (III. 3.) Holding to this conception of love Spenser comes
to a praise of the

            “Great god of might, that reignest in the mynd,
            And all the bodie to thy hest doest frame,”

            (ll. 46–47.)

with an explanation of His power as the creating and sustaining spirit
of the universe. Before the world was created love moved over the
warring elements of chaos and arranged them in the order they now obey.

           “Then through the world his way he gan to take,
           The world that was not till he did it make;
           Whose sundrie parts he from them selves did sever,
           The which before had lyen confused ever,

           “The earth, the ayre, the water, and the fyre,
           Then gan to raunge them selves in huge array,
           And with contrary forces to conspyre
           Each against other, by all meanes they may,
           Threatning their owne confusion and decay:
           Ayre hated earth, and water hated fyre,
           Till Love relented their rebellious yre.

           “He then them tooke, and tempering goodly well
           Their contrary dislikes with loved meanes,
           Did place them all in order, and compell
           To keepe them selves within their sundrie raines,
           Together linkt with Adamantine chaines.”

           (ll. 77–92.)

The second subject which was treated in the light of Platonism was that
of beauty. In the “Hymne in Honour of Beautie” the topic is treated from
three points of view. First, the “Hymne” outlines a general theory of
æsthetics to account for the presence of beauty in the universe lying
without us (ll. 32–87); second, it explains the ground of reason for the
beauty to be found in the human body (ll. 88–164); and third, it
accounts for the exaggerated notion which the lover has of his beloved’s
physical perfections. (ll. 214–270.)

Spenser’s general theory of æsthetics is a blending of two suggestions
he found in his study of Platonism. According to Ficino, beauty is a
spiritual thing, the splendor of God’s light shining in all things. (II.
5; V. 4.) This conception is based upon the idea that the universe is an
emanation of God’s spirit, and that beauty is the lively grace of the
divine light of God shining in matter. (V. 6.) But according to another
view, the universe is conceived as the objective work of an artificer,
working according to a pattern. “The work of the creator,” says Plato in
the “Timæus” (28, 29), “whenever he looks to the unchangeable and
fashions the form and the nature of his work after an unchangeable
pattern, must necessarily be made fair and perfect.... If the world be
indeed fair and the artificer good, it is manifest that he must have
looked to that which is eternal ... for the world is the fairest of
creations and he is the best of causes.” By blending these ideas Spenser
was able to conceive of God as creating the world after a pattern of
ideal beauty, which, by virtue of its infusion into matter, is the
source of that lively grace which the objects called beautiful possess.
At first he presents the view of creation which is more in accordance
with the Mosaic account,

           “What time this worlds great workmaister did cast
           To make al things, such as we now behold:
           It seemes that he before his eyes had plast
           A goodly Paterne to whose perfect mould,
           He fashioned them as comely as he could,
           That now so faire and seemely they appeare,
           As nought may be amended any wheare.

           “That wondrous Paterne

                  ·       ·       ·       ·       ·

           Is perfect Beautie, which all men adore,
           Whose face and feature doth so much excell
           All mortall sence, that none the same may tell.”

           (ll. 32–45.)

Spenser now passes on to the theory of the infusion of beauty in matter,
by which its grossness is refined and quickened, as it were, into life.

          “Thereof as every earthly thing partakes,
          Or more or lesse by influence divine,
          So it more faire accordingly it makes,
          And the grosse matter of this earthly myne,
          Which clotheth it, thereafter doth refyne,
          Doing away the drosse which dims the light
          Of that faire beame, which therein is empight.

          “For through infusion of celestiall powre,
          The duller earth it quickneth with delight
          And life-full spirits privily doth powre
          Through all the parts, that to the looker’s sight
          They seeme to please. That is thy soveraine might,
          O _Cyprian_ Queene, which flowing from the beame
          Of thy bright starre, then into them doest streame.”

          (ll. 46–59.)

At this point of his “Hymne” Spenser pauses to refute the idea that
beauty is

             “An outward shew of things, that onely seeme”

             (l. 94.)

His pausing to overthrow such an idea of beauty is quite in the manner
of the scientific expositor in the Italian treatises and dialogues
written throughout the Renaissance. Ficino, for instance, combats the
idea, which he says some hold, that beauty is nothing but the proportion
of the various parts of an object with a certain sweetness of color. (V.
3.) In like manner Spenser says it is the idle wit that identifies
beauty with proportion and color, both of which pass away.

             “How vainely then doe ydle wits invent,
             That beautie is nought else, but mixture made
             Of colours faire, and goodly temp’rament,
             Of pure complexions, that shall quickly fade
             And passe away, like to a sommers shade,
             Or that it is but comely composition
             Of parts well measurd, with meet disposition.”

             (ll. 67–73.)

Spenser overthrows this contention by doubting the power of mere color
and superficial proportion to stir the soul of man. (ll. 74–87.) He has
proved the power of beauty only too well to maintain such a theory. He
thus seeks for the source of its power in the soul.

The Platonic theory of beauty teaches that the beauty of the body is a
result of the formative energy of the soul. According to Ficino, the
soul has descended from heaven and has framed a body in which to dwell.
Before its descent it conceives a certain plan for the forming of a
body; and if on earth it finds material favorable for its work and
sufficiently plastic, its earthly body is very similar to its celestial
one, hence it is beautiful. (VI. 6.) In Spenser this conception
underlies his account of the descent of the soul from God to earth.

           “For when the soule, the which derived was
           At first, out of that great immortall Spright,
           By whom all live to love, whilome did pas
           Downe from the top of purest heavens hight,
           To be embodied here, it then tooke light
           And lively spirits from that fayrest starre,
           Which lights the world forth from his firie carre.

           “Which powre retayning still or more or lesse,
           When she in fleshly seede is eft enraced,
           Through every part she doth the same impresse,
           According as the heavens have her graced,
           And frames her house, in which she will be placed,
           Fit for her selfe, adorning it with spoyle
           Of th’ heavenly riches, which she robd erewhyle.

                  ·       ·       ·       ·       ·

           “So every spirit, as it is most pure,
           And hath in it the more of heavenly light,
           So it the fairer bodie doth procure
           To habit in, and it more fairely dight
           With chearefull grace and amiable sight.
           For of the soule the bodie forme doth take:
           For soul is forme, and doth the bodie make.”

           (ll. 109–136.)

The obvious objection which one might make to this theory, that it does
not cover the whole ground inasmuch as it could never account for the
fact of the existence of a good soul in any but a beautiful form, was
answered by the further explanation that when the matter of which the
soul makes its body is unyielding, the soul must content itself with a
less beautiful form. (Ficino, VI. 6.) Thus Spenser adds:

            “Yet oft it falles, that many a gentle mynd
            Dwels in deformed tabernacle drownd,
            Either by chaunce, against the course of kynd,
            Or through unaptnesse in the substance sownd,
            Which it assumed of some stubborne grownd,
            That will not yield unto her formes direction,
            But is perform’d with some foule imperfection.”

            (ll. 144–150.)

After an exhortation to the “faire Dames” to keep their souls unspotted
(ll. 165–200), Spenser outlines the true manner of love and in the
course of his poem he accounts for that manifestation of power which the
beloved’s beauty has over the mind of the lover. According to Ficino,
true lovers are those whose souls have departed from heaven under the
same astral influences and who, accordingly, are informed with the same
idea in imitation of which they frame their earthly bodies. (VI. 6.)
Thus Spenser writes that love is not a matter of chance, but a union of
souls ordained by heaven.

           “For Love is a celestiall harmonie,
           Of likely harts composd of starres concent,
           Which joyne together in sweet sympathie,
           To work ech others joy and true content,
           Which they have harbourd since their first descent
           Out of their heavenly bowres, where they did see
           And know ech other here belov’d to bee.

           “Then wrong it were that any other twaine
           Should in loves gentle band combyned bee,
           But those whom heaven did at first ordaine,
           And made out of one mould the more t’ agree:
           For all that like the beautie which they see,
           Streight do not love: for love is not so light,
           As straight to burne at first beholders sight.”

           (ll. 200–213.)

He then explains the Platonist’s views of love as a passion. Ficino had
stated that the lover is not satisfied with the mere visual image of the
beloved, but refashions it in accordance with the idea of the beloved
which he has; for the two souls departing from heaven at the same time
were informed with the same idea. The lover, then, when he beholds the
person of the beloved, sees a form which has been made more in
conformity with the idea than his own body has; consequently he loves
it, and by refining the visual image of the beloved from all the
grossness of sense, he beholds in it the idea of his own soul and that
of the beloved; and in the light of this idea he praises the beloved’s
beauty. (VI. 6.) So Spenser:

             “But they which love indeede, looke otherwise,
             With pure regard and spotlesse true intent,
             Drawing out of the object of their eyes,
             A more refyned forme, which they present
             Unto their mind, voide of all blemishment;
             Which it reducing to her first perfection,
             Beholdeth free from fleshes frayle infection.”

             (ll. 214–220.)

Here there is no distinction of lover and beloved; but soon Spenser
passes on to consider the subject from the lover’s standpoint:

           “And then conforming it unto the light,
           Which in it selfe it hath remaining still
           Of that first Sunne, yet sparckling in his sight,
           Thereof he fashions in his higher skill,
           An heavenly beautie to his fancies will,
           And it embracing in his mind entyre,
           The mirrour of his owne thought doth admyre.

           “Which seeing now so inly faire to be,
           As outward it appeareth to the eye,
           And with his spirits proportion to agree,
           He thereon fixeth all his fantasie,
           And fully setteth his felicitie,
           Counting it fairer, then it is indeede,
           And yet indeede her fairenesse doth exceede.”

           (ll. 221–234.)

With a description of the many beauties the lover sees in the
beloved—the thousands of graces that make delight on her forehead—the
poem ends. (ll. 235–270.)

The feature in this theory of Platonism which appealed to Spenser was
the high nature of the beauty seen in comeliness of form, as explained
by its doctrine of æsthetics. A sense of beauty as a spiritual quality
spreading its divine radiance over the objects of the outward world
envelops the poem in a golden haze of softened feeling characteristic of
Spenser’s poetic manner. The scientific terms of the Platonic theorist
melt away into the gentle flow of his verse. The soul being informed
with its idea, as Ficino had put it, has become in his “Hymne in Honour
of Beautie” that “faire lampe” which has “resemblence of that heavenly
light” of beauty (ll. 102, 124); or the idea of beauty in the soul is
spoken of as

                            “the light
              Which in it selfe it hath remaining still;”

              (ll. 221–222.)

or, as the lover’s “spirits proportion.”

In accordance with the same sense of beauty Spenser in the “Hymne in
Honour of Love” stops to explain away the cruelty which love seems to
show in afflicting him, an innocent sufferer, by calling attention to
the fact that such suffering is necessary to try the lover’s sincerity
in his worship of so high a thing as the beauty of his beloved. Love is
not physical desire, but a soaring of the mind to a sight of that high
beauty,

            “For love is Lord of truth and loialtie,
            Lifting himselfe out of the lowly dust,
            On golden plumes up to the purest skie,
            Above the reach of loathly sinfull lust,

                   ·       ·       ·       ·       ·

            “Such is the powre of that sweet passion,
            That it all sordid basenesse doth expell,
            And the refyned mynd doth newly fashion
            Unto a fairer forme which now doth dwell
            In his high thought, that would it selfe excell;
            Which he beholding still with constant sight,
            Admires the mirrour of so heavenly light.”

            (ll. 179–199.)

And even though the lover may not win the good graces of his lady, he is
happy in the sight of her beauty.

            “And though he do not win his wish to end,
            Yet thus farre happie he him selfe doth weene,
            That heavens such happie grace did to him lend,
            No thing on earth so heavenly, to have seene,
            His harts enshrined saint, his heavens queene,
            Fairer then fairest, in his fayning eye,
            Whose sole aspect he counts felicitye.”

            (ll. 214–220.)

Because of this love of beauty, Spenser was able to find more material
in the Renaissance criticism of Platonic æsthetics for his “Hymne in
Honour of Beautie” than in the corresponding hymn on love. Besides the
conception of the creative power of love, his “Hymne in Honour of Love”
draws upon a few suggestions which could dignify the power of the
passion. The saying of Diotima to Socrates in the “Symposium,”—“Marvel
not then at the love which all men have of their offspring; for that
universal love and interest is for the sake of immortality” (208)—is
made to do service in differentiating the passion of love in men from
that in beasts. By satisfying physical desire beasts

                  “all do live, and moved are
            To multiply the likenesse of their kynd,
            Whilest they seeke onely, without further care,
            To quench the flame, which they in burning fynd:
            But man, that breathes a more immortal mynd,
            Not for lusts sake, but for eternitie,
            Seekes to enlarge his lasting progenie.”

            (ll. 102–109.)

Further, to add a sense of mystery to the nativity of the god of love,
Spenser refers to the myth of Penia and Poros, and also in the manner of
the Platonist tries to reconcile two contrary assertions about the
mysterious nature of love’s birth. In Diotima’s account of “the lesser
mysteries of love,” she says that love is the offspring of the god Poros
or Plenty, and of Penia or Poverty. (“Symposium,” 203.) In Phædrus’s
oration on love he began by affirming that “Love is a mighty god, and
wonderful among gods and men, but especially wonderful in his birth. For
he is the eldest of the gods.” (“Symposium,” 178.) Agathon, however,
differs from his friend Phædrus in saying that love is the youngest of
the gods. (“Symposium,” 195.) This disagreement was a source of
perplexity to the Platonist of the Renaissance; thus Ficino gives a
division of his commentary to a reconciliation of these statements. (V.
10.) He solves the difficulty by stating that when the Creator conceived
the order of angels, with whom Ficino identifies the gods of ancient
mythology, the love guiding God was before the angels, hence is the most
ancient of the gods; but when the created angelic intelligences turned
in their love to the Creator, the impelling love was the youngest,
coming after the creation of the angels. According to these notions of
the nativity of the god of love, Spenser opens his “Hymne.”

            “Great god of might, that reignest in the mynd,
            And all the bodie to thy hest doest frame,
            Victor of gods, subduer of mankynd,
            That doest the Lions and fell Tigers tame,
            Making their cruell rage thy scornefull game,
            And in their roring taking great delight;
            Who can expresse the glorie of thy might?

            “Or who alive can perfectly declare,
            The wondrous cradle of thine infancie?
            When thy great mother _Venus_ first thee bare,
            Begot of Plentie and of Penurie,
            Though elder then thine owne nativitie:
            And yet a chyld, renewing still thy yeares;
            And yet the eldest of the heavenly Peares.”

            (ll. 46–59.)

Spenser’s “Hymnes” are the most comprehensive exposition of love in the
light of Platonic theory in English. The attempt, however, which he made
to place love upon a basis of philosophic fact is imitated in a much
less prominent way in other poets. Spenser himself refers to the subject
in “Colin Clouts Come Home Againe.” In that poem Colin unfolds to Cuddy
the high nature of love’s perfection. At the court, he says, love is the
all-engrossing topic (ll. 778–786); but it is love so shamefully
licentious that its “mightie mysteries” are profaned. (l. 790.) Love,
however, is a religious thing and should be so conceived. To support
this statement Colin explains the creative power of love manifest
throughout the wide range of nature (ll. 843–868) and points out that in
man it is a love of beauty. (ll. 869–880).

In a few of Jonson’s masques there are slight attempts to dignify the
subject of love in the manner of Spenser’s “Hymnes.” In “The Masque of
Beauty” love is described as the creator of the universe, and beauty is
mentioned as that for which the world was created. In one of the hymns
occurs this stanza:

          “When Love at first, did move
          From out of Chaos, brightned
          So was the world, and lightned
          As now.
                  _1. Echo._ As now!
                                      _2. Echo._ As now!
          Yield Night, then to the light,
          As Blackness hath to Beauty:
          Which is but the same duty.
          It was for Beauty that the world was made,
          And where she reigns, Love’s lights admit no shade.”

In a second song a reference is made to the mysterious nativity of love.

              “So Beauty on the waters stood,
              When Love had sever’d earth from flood!
              So when he parted air from fire,
              He did with concord all inspire!
              And then a motion he them taught,
              That elder than himself was thought.
              Which thought was, yet, the child of earth,
              For Love is elder than his birth.”

In “Love’s Triumph Through Callipolis” the same ideas appear. In this
masque, after the band of sensual lovers has been driven from the
suburbs of the City of Beauty (Callipolis), and a lustration of the
place has followed, Euclia, or “a fair glory, appears in the heavens,
singing an applausive Song, or Pæan of the whole.”

          “So love emergent out of chaos brought
                  The world to light!
          And gently moving on the waters, wrought
                  All form to sight!
                  Love’s appetite
                  Did beauty first excite:
              And left imprinted in the air
              These signatures of good and fair,
          Which since have flow’d, flow’d forth upon the sense
          To wonder first, and then to excellence,
          By virtue of divine intelligence!”

In the same masque love is defined in accordance with the myth of Penia
and Poros:

              “Love is the right affection of the mind,
                The noble appetite of what is best:
              Desire of union with the thing design’d,
                But in fruition of it cannot rest.

              “The father Plenty is, the mother Want,
                Plenty the beauty which it wanteth draws;
              Want yields itself: affording what is scant:
                So both affections are the union’s cause.”

In “Love Freed From Ignorance and Folly” the sustaining power of love in
keeping the parts of the universe in concord is used to combat the
accusation that love is mere cruelty. Love, who is represented as a
captive of the Sphynx, thus replies to the charge:

                     “Cruel Sphynx, I rather strive
                     How to keep the world alive,
                     And uphold it; without me,
                     All again would chaos be.”

In “The Barriers” where Truth and Opinion—a division of the state of
knowing according to its degree of certainty common in Plato as
knowledge and opinion (“Republic,” V. 476–478)—hold a discussion on
marriage, an angel declares that

             “Eternal Unity behind her [i.e. Truth] shines,
             That fire and water, earth and air combines.”

Here under the name of Unity the true nature of love is indicated.

In Drayton’s seventh eclogue Batte replies to a charge of cruelty
against love which is made by his fellow-shepherd, Borril, with the

                          “substancyall ryme
              that to thy teeth sufficiently shall proove
              there is no power to be compard to love.”

His argument is that love is the great bond of the universe.

                 “What is Love but the desire
                   of the thing that fancy pleaseth?
                 A holy and resistlesse fiere
                   weake and strong alike that ceaseth,
                   which not heaven hath power to let
                 Nor wise nature cannot smother,
                   whereby Phœbus doth begette
                   on the universal mother.
                   that the everlasting chaine
                   which together al things tied,
                   and unmooved them retayne
                   and by which they shall abide;
                   that concent we cleerely find
                   all things doth together drawe,
                   and so strong in every kinde
                   subjects them to natures law.
                   whose hie virtue number teaches
                   in which every thing dooth moove,
                   from the lowest depth that reaches
                   to the height of heaven above.”

                 (ll. 165–184.)

A more common appropriation of the teachings of Platonism was made in
the love lyrics—chiefly the sonnet—written in the Petrarchian manner.
Petrarchism was as much a manner of writing sonnets as it was a method
of making love. On its stylistic side it was characterized by the use of
antitheses, puns, and especially of conceits. In the Platonic theory of
love and beauty a certain amount of material was offered which could be
reworked into a form suited for the compact brevity of the sonnet.
Sidney, Spenser, and Shakespeare are the three chief sonnet writers of
the last decade of the sixteenth century in whose work this phase of
Platonism is to be found; but its presence, though faint, can be felt in
others.

One way in which this theory was applied is found in the manner in which
these poets speak of the beauty of their beloved. Plato has stated that
wisdom is the most lovely of all ideas, and that, were there a visible
image of her, she would be transporting. (“Phædrus,” 250.) Sidney seizes
upon this suggestion, and by identifying his Stella with wisdom he can
frame a sonnet ending in a couplet that shall have the required
epigrammatic point. He writes:

          “The wisest scholler of the wight most wise,
          By _Phœbus_ doome, with sugred sentence sayes:
          That vertue if it once meete with our eyes,
          Strange flames of love it in our soules would rayse.
            But for that man with paine this truth discries,
            While he each thing in sences ballances wayes,
          And so, nor will nor can behold these skyes,
          Which inward Sunne to heroicke mindes displaies.
            Vertue of late with vertuous care to stir
          Love of himselfe, takes _Stellas_ shape, that hee
          To mortal eyes might sweetly shine in her.
          It is most true, for since I did her see,
            Vertues great beautie in her face I prove,
            And finde defect; for I doe burne in love.”

          (xxv.)

Shakespeare is able to praise the beauty of the subject of his sonnets
by identifying him with the absolute beauty of the Platonic philosophy,
and by describing him in accordance with this notion. Thus he confesses
that his argument is simply the fair, kind, and true, back of which
statement may be inferred the theory upheld by Platonism that the good,
the beautiful, and the true are but different phases of one reality. His
love, he says, cannot be called idolatry because his songs are directed
to this theme, for only in his friend are these three themes united into
one.

           “Let not my love be call’d idolatry,
           Nor my belovéd as an idol show,
           Since all alike my songs and praises be
           To one, of one, still such, and ever so.
           Kind is my love to-day, to-morrow kind,
           Still constant in a wondrous excellence;
           Therefore my verse to constancy confined,
           One thing expressing, leaves out difference.
           ‘Fair, kind, and true’ is all my argument,
           ‘Fair, kind, and true’ varying to other words;
           And in this change is my invention spent,
           Three themes in one, which wondrous scope affords.
           ‘Fair, kind, and true,’ have often liv’d alone,
           Which three, till now, never kept seat in one.”

           (cv.)

In another sonnet one phase of this argument is given a detailed
treatment, and the poet’s object is to praise the beauty of his friend
by describing its contrast with the beauty of earth, just as if he were
speaking of absolute beauty. In this sonnet he uses the Platonic
phraseology of the substance and the shadow, by which he means first,
the reality that makes a thing what it is, the substance, not the matter
or stuff of which it is made; and second, the reflection of that reality
in the objective world, the shadow of the substance, not the obscuration
of light.[10] He thus writes of his friend’s beauty as if it were the
substance of beauty, beauty absolute, of which all other beauty is but a
reflection.

           “What is your substance, whereof are you made,
           That millions of strange shadows on you tend?
           Since every one hath, every one, one shade,
           And you, but one, can every shadow lend.
           Describe _Adonis_, and the counterfeit
           Is poorly imitated after you;
           On _Helen’s_ cheek all art of beauty set,
           And you in _Grecian_ tires are painted new:
           Speak of the spring and foison of the year,
           The one doth shadow of your beauty show,
           The other as your bounty doth appear;
           And you in every blesséd shape we know,
           In all external grace you have some part,
           But you like none, none you, for constant heart.”

           (liii.)

Spenser, too, praises his beloved by conceiving her as absolute beauty,
of which all other objects are but shadows. In the light of her beauty
all the glory of the world appears but a vain show.

         “My hungry eyes through greedy covetize,
           still to behold the object of their paine:
           with no contentment can themselves suffize.
           but having pine and having not complaine.
         For lacking it they cannot lyfe sustayne,
           and having it they gaze on it the more:
           in their amazement lyke _Narcissus_ vaine
           whose eyes him starv’d: so plenty makes me poore.
         Yet are mine eyes so filled with the store
           of that faire sight, that nothing else they brooke,
           but lothe the things which they did like before,
           and can no more endure on them to looke.
         All this worlds glory seemeth vayne to me,
           and all their showes but shadowes saving she.”

         (xxxv.)

In George Daniel the idea of the substance and shadow again occurs. He
says that it is enough for him if he may behold his mistress’s face,
although others may boast of her favors; for in contemplating her
glories he sees how all other forms are but empty shadows of her
perfection.

              “It is Enough to me,
              If I her Face may see;
            Let others boast her Favours, and pretend
              Huge Interests; whilst I
              Adore her Modestie;
            Which Tongues cannot deprave, nor Swords defend.

                   ·       ·       ·       ·       ·

              “But while I bring
              My verse to Sing
            Her Glories, I am strucke with wonder, more;
              And all the Formes I see,
              But Emptie Shadowes bee,
            Of that Perfection which I adore.

              “Be silent then,
              All Tongues of Men,
            To Celebrate the Sex: for if you fall
              To other Faces, you
              Wander, and but pursue
            Inferior objects, weake and partiall.”

            (Ode xxiv.)

A second tenet of Platonism which was reworked into English love poetry
was its conception of love. As Spenser had explained in his “Hymne in
Honour of Beautie,” true love has its source in the life of two souls in
heaven. (ll. 200–213.) Drummond uses the idea to explain the purity of
his love.

         “That learned Grecian, who did so excel
         In knowledge passing sense, that he is nam’d
         Of all the after-worlds divine, doth tell,
         That at the time when first our souls are fram’d,
         Ere in these mansions blind they come to dwell,
         They live bright rays of that eternal light,
         And others see, know, love, in heaven’s great height,
         Not toil’d with aught to reason doth rebel.
         Most true it is, for straight at the first sight
         My mind me told, that in some other place
         It elsewhere saw the idea of that face,
         And lov’d a love of heavenly pure delight;
         No wonder now I feel so fair a flame,
         Sith I her lov’d ere on this earth she came.”

         (“Poems.” First Pt., S. vii.)

In Vaughan the same theory of love is again referred to as a proof of
the poet’s lofty passion. In “To Amoret. Walking in a Starry Evening,”
he says that even were her face a distant star shining upon him, he
would be sure of a sympathy between it and himself, because their minds
were united in love by no accident or chance of sight, but were designed
for one another.

                  “But, Amoret, such is my fate,
                    That if thy face a star
                    Had shin’d from far,
                  I am persuaded in that state,
                    ’Twixt thee and me,
                    Of some predestin’d sympathy.

                  “For sure such two conspiring minds,
                    Which no accident, or sight,
                    Did thus unite;
                  Whom no distance can confine
                    Start, or decline,
                  One for another were design’d.”

                  (Stzs. 3, 4.)

In a second lyric, “A Song to Amoret,” he describes his love as superior
to that which a “mighty amorist” could give, because it is a love that
was born with his soul in heaven.

                  “For all these arts I’d not believe,
                    —No, though he should be thine—
                  The mighty amorist could give
                    So rich a heart as mine.

                  “Fortune and beauty thou might find,
                    And greater men than I:
                  By my true resolvèd mind
                    They never shall come nigh.

                  “For I not for an hour did love,
                    Or for a day desire,
                  But with my soul had from above
                    This endless, holy fire.”

                  (Stzs. 4–6.)

Thus far the tenets of Platonic theory have been used in a more or less
direct way; but in several instances the Platonic idea is present only
in the writer’s mind, and the reader is left to unravel it by his own
ingenuity. Thus Shakespeare urges his friend to marry because in his
death truth and beauty will both end—a possible inference being that his
friend is ideal beauty.

            “Not from the stars do I my judgment pluck;
            And yet methinks I have Astronomy,
            But not to tell of good, or evil luck,
            Of plagues, of dearths, or seasons’ quality;
            Nor can I fortune to brief minutes tell,
            Pointing to each his thunder, rain and wind,
            Or say with Princes if it shall go well,
            By oft predict that I in heaven find:
            But from thine eyes my knowledge I derive,
            And, constant stars, in them I read such art
            As truth and beauty shall together thrive,
            If from thyself to store thou wouldst convert;
            Or else of thee this I prognosticate:
            Thy end is Truth’s and Beauty’s doom and date.”

            (xiv.)

In another sonnet Shakespeare plays with words in an attempt to excuse
his truant muse for not praising his friend’s beauty. His muse may say
that since his friend is true beauty he needs no praise.

             “O truant Muse, what shall be thy amends
             For thy neglect of truth in beauty dyed?
             Both truth and beauty on my love depends;
             So dost thou too, and therein dignified.
             Make answer, Muse; wilt thou not haply say
             ‘Truth needs no colour with his colour fix’d;
             Beauty no pencil, beauty’s truth to lay;
             But best is best, if never intermix’d?’”

But so closely identified is the praise of his friend’s beauty with the
immortality conferred by poetry that Shakespeare cannot justly excuse
the silence of his muse

            “Because he needs no praise, wilt thou be dumb?
            Excuse not silence so; for’t lies in thee
            To make him much outlive a gilded tomb,
            And to be praised of ages yet to be.”

            (ci.)

Again, Shakespeare describes how, when absent from his friend, he is
able to play with the flowers as shadows of his friend’s beauty.

             “They were but sweet, but figures of delight,
             Drawn after you, you pattern of all those.
             Yet seem’d it Winter still, and, you away,
             As with your shadow I with these did play.”

             (xcviii.)

In Spenser the lover is able to make an appeal for pity by reference to
the Platonic conception of the idea of the beloved which the lover is
supposed to behold in his soul.

      “Leave lady in your glasse of christall clene,
        your goodly selfe for evermore to vew;
        and in my selfe, my inward selfe, I meane,
        most lively lyke behold your semblant trew.
      Within my hart, though hardly it can shew,
        thing so divine to vew of earthly eye:
        the fayre Idea of your celestiall hew,
        and every part remaines immortally:
      And were it not that, through your cruelty,
        with sorrow dimmed and deformed it were:
        the goodly ymage of your visnomy,
        clearer than christall would therein appere.
        But if your selfe in me ye playne will see,
        remove the cause by which your fayre beames darkened be.”

      (xlv.)

The end which this conception of making love after the manner of the
Platonist served was thought to be found in a purification of love. By
praising the beauty of the beloved in such lofty terms the poet was able
to set off the purity of his love from any connection with mere sensual
desire. Thus Spenser testifies to the ennobling power of the beauty of
his beloved’s eyes.

          “More then most faire, full of the living fire
            Kindled above unto the maker neere:
            no eies but joyes, in which al powers conspire,
            that to the world naught else be counted deare.
          Thrugh your bright beams doth not y^e blinded guest,
            shoot out his harts to base affections wound;
            but Angels come to lead fraile mindes to rest
            in chast desires on heavenly beauty bound.
          You frame my thoughts and fashion me within,
            you stop my toung, and teach my hart to speake,
            you calme the storme that passion did begin,
            strong thrugh your cause, but by your vertue weak,
          Dark is the world, where your light shined never:
            well is he borne that may behold you ever.”

          (viii.)

In Sidney there is a direct reference to the power of Plato’s thought to
lead the mind from the desire with which he is struggling.

          “Your words, my freends me causelesly doe blame,
          My young minde marde whom love doth menace so:

                 ·       ·       ·       ·       ·

          That _Plato_ I have reade for nought, but if he tame
          Such coltish yeeres; that to my birth I owe
          Nobler desires:”

          (xxi.)

The application of the tenets of Platonic theory to the writing of love
lyrics in the Petrarchian manner, however, was never anything more than
a courtly way of making love through exaggerated conceit and fine
writing. Fulke Greville saw clearly the relation between the love of
woman and the love of the idea of her beauty. In the tenth sonnet of his
“Cælica” he asks what can love find in a mind where all is passion;
rather he says go back to

                                     “that heavenly quire
             Of Nature’s riches, in her beauties placed,
             And there in contemplation feed desire,
             Which till it wonder, is not rightly graced;
             For those sweet glories, which you do aspire,
             Must, as idea’s, only be embraced,
             Since excellence in other forme enjoyed,
             Is by descending to her saints destroyed.”

The love of the idea of beauty, however, in its absolute nature is
nowhere present in the mass of love lyrics written between 1590 and
1600. The term is used to give title to Drayton’s “Idea,” and to
denominate the object of twelve sonnets addressed by Craig to “Idea”;
and anagrams on the French word for the term L’Idée, Diella and Delia,
are used to name two series of poems by Linche and Samuel Daniel,
respectively. Crashaw’s “Wishes” is addressed to “his (supposed)
mistresse,” as an idea. No better commentary on the whole movement can
be made than these words of Spenser in which it is easily seen how the
method conduced only to feeding the lower desires of the soul in love.
Writing in 1596, in the midst of the period when sonnet writing was most
popular in England, he says, speaking of his two “Hymnes”:

“Having in the greener times of my youth, composed these former two
Hymnes in the praise of Love and beautie, and finding that the same too
much pleased those of like age and disposition, which being too
vehemently caried with that kind of affection, do rather sucke out
poyson to their strong passion, then hony to their honest delight, I was
moved ... to call in the same. But being unable so to doe, by reason
that many copies thereof were formerly scattered abroad, I resolved at
least to amend, and by way of retraction to reforme them, making in
stead of those two Hymnes of earthly or naturall love and beautie, two
others of heavenly and celestiall.”

The great representative of Platonism in English poetry thus condemns
the less vital phase of Platonic thought. The great weakness of the
theory lay in the fact that it had no moral significance; and just here
lay the great strength of Plato’s ethics. Although preaching that beauty
was a spiritual thing, this phase of Platonic æsthetics never blended
with the conception of the beauty of moral goodness. And it failed to do
this because it is a theory not of Plato but of Plotinus, who throughout
the period of the Renaissance was understood to expound the true meaning
of Plato’s thought. But Plato left no system of æsthetics; Plotinus,
however, constructed a theory to account for beauty in its strictest
sense. Now Ficino in his propaganda of Platonic theory throughout the
Renaissance interpreted Plato’s “Symposium” in the light of Plotinus and
thus in his commentary, the source of all Renaissance theorizing on
love, is found the theory reflected in the English poets. This fusion of
Plato’s ethics with the æsthetics of Plotinus was not perfect; and to
the deep moral genius of Spenser’s mind the disparity soon became
evident.

The Platonic theory of love had enabled the English poets to write about
their passion as a desire of enjoying the spiritual quality of beauty in
their beloved. In those poets in whom the Petrarchistic manner is
evident, it is the object of love on which the attention centres; only
in a slight way did they treat of the nature of love as a passion. The
result of the discussion of love, as opened by Platonism, ended,
however, in an attempt to place love upon a purely spiritual basis and
to write about it as if it were a psychological fact that was to be
known by analysis. A consideration of beauty, as the object of love, is
absent; attention is directed to the quality of the passion as one felt
in the soul rather than by the sense; and when the attraction of woman
is present in this love it is carefully differentiated from the
attraction of sex. In the body of love lyrics written in the seventeenth
century the distinctive traits of this passion are clearly explained.

The chief trait of this kind of love is that it concerns only the soul.
The union of the lover and the beloved is simply a union of their souls
which because of the high nature of the soul can triumph over time and
space. The character of this union is described in Donne’s “Ecstacy.”
The two lovers are described as sitting in silence, watching one
another. While thus engaged their souls are so mysteriously mingled that
they are mixed into one greater soul which is not subject to change.
Even when the passion descends from this height to the plane of human
affections there is no essential change in the purity of the love.

               “Where, like a pillow on a bed,
                 A pregnant bank swell’d up, to rest
               The violet’s reclining head,
                 Sat we two, one another’s best.

                      ·       ·       ·       ·       ·

               “As, ’twixt two equal armies, Fate
                 Suspends uncertain victory,
               Our souls—which to advance their state,
                 Were gone out—hung ’twixt her and me.

                      ·       ·       ·       ·       ·

               “This ecstacy doth unperplex
                 (We said), and tell us what we love;
               We see by this, it was not sex;
                 We see, we saw not, what did move:

               “But as all several souls contain
                 Mixture of things they know not what,
               Love these mix’d souls doth mix again,
                 And makes both one, each this, and that.

                      ·       ·       ·       ·       ·

               “When love with one another so
                 Interanimates two souls,
               That abler soul, which thence doth flow,
                 Defects of loneliness controls.

               “We then, who are this new soul, know,
                 Of what we are composed, and made,
               For th’ atomies of which we grow
                 Are souls, whom no change can invade.

                      ·       ·       ·       ·       ·

               “And if some lover, such as we
                 Have heard this dialogue of one,
               Let him still mark us, he shall see
                 Small change when we’re to bodies gone.”

In a like strain Randolph in “A Platonic Elegy” praises his love as that
founded on reason, not on sense. The true union in love, he says, is the
meeting of essence with essence.

          “Thus they, whose reasons love, and not their sense,
          The spirits love; thus one intelligence
          Reflects upon his like, and by chaste loves
          In the same sphere this and that angel moves.

                 ·       ·       ·       ·       ·

          “When essence meets with essence, and souls join
          In mutual knots, that’s the true nuptial twine.
          Such, lady, is my love, and such is true:
          All other love is to your sex, not you.”

          (ll. 31–34, 45–48.)

The great value which this purely spiritual love was supposed to possess
was that it was unaffected either by time or distance. The union, not
being one known to sense, could exist as well in the absence of the
lovers as in the presence of both. This thought is a great comfort and
is emphasized as the peculiarity in the lovers’ passion that sets it
apart from the vulgar kind. Thus Donne in the song, “Soul’s Joy,”
consoles his beloved with the assurance that their souls may meet though
their bodies be absent.

                  “Soul’s joy, now I am gone,
                    And you alone,
                      —Which cannot be,
                  Since I must leave myself with thee,
                    And carry thee with me—
                  Yet when unto our eyes
                      Absence denies
                      Each other’s sight,
                  And makes to us a constant night,
                    When others change to light;
                    _O give no way to grief,
                      But let belief
                      Of mutual love
                  This wonder to the vulgar prove,
                    Our bodies, not we move_.

                  “Let not thy wit beweep
                    Words but sense deep;
                    For when we miss
                  By distance our hope’s joining bliss
                    Even then our souls shall kiss;
                    Fools have no means to meet,
                    But by their feet;
                    Why should our clay
                  Over our spirits so much sway,
                    To tie us to that way?
                    _O give no way to grief, etc._”

In his “Valediction Forbidding Mourning,” Donne again recurs to the
subject of separation and explains by the figure of the compass how
their souls will be one. The love in which the mind is bent on the
objects of sense cannot admit of absence; but the love shared by Donne
and his mistress is so refined that their souls suffer only an expansion
and not separation in absence.

               “Dull sublunary lover’s love
                 —Whose soul is sense—cannot admit
               Of absence, ’cause it doth remove
                 The thing which elemented it.

               “But we by a love so far refined,
                 That ourselves know not what it is,
               Inter-assurèd of the mind,
                 Care less eyes, lips and hands to miss.

               “Our two souls therefore, which are one,
                 Though I must go, endure not yet
               A breach, but an expansion,
                 Like gold to airy thinness beat.

               “If they be two, they are two so
                 As stiff twin compasses are two;
               Thy soul, the fix’d foot, makes no show
                 To move, but doth, if th’ other do.

               “And though it in the centre sit,
                 Yet, when the other far doth roam,
               It leans, and hearkens after it,
                 And grows erect, as that comes home.”

               (Stzs. 4–8.)

Even in death this love will still live. Thus Lord Herbert explains that
his love has passed over into that of the soul, and it will be as
immortal as the soul.

            “But since I must depart, and that our love
            Springing at first but in an earthly mould
            Transplanted to our souls, now doth remove
            Earthly affects, which time and distance would,
                Nothing now can our loves allay,
                  Though as the better Spirits will,
                  That both love us and know our ill,
                We do not either all the good we may.
            Thus when our Souls that must immortal be,
              For our loves cannot die, nor we (unless
            We die not both together) shall be free
              Unto their open and eternal peace.
                Sleep, Death’s Embassador, and best
                  Image, doth yours often so show,
                  That I thereby must plainly know,
                Death unto us must be freedom and rest.”[11]

The second characteristic of this love is that it is purely
contemplative, informing the mind with knowledge rather than satisfying
the senses with pleasure. Habington has left a poem entitled “To the
World. The Perfection of Love,” in which he contrasts this love in which
the soul is engaged with thoughts with the love of sense.

             “You who are earth, and cannot rise
               Above your sence,
             Boasting the envyed wealth which lyes
             Bright in your mistris’ lips or eyes,
               Betray a pittyed eloquence.

             “That, which doth joyne our soules, so light
               And quicke doth move,
             That, like the eagle in his flight,
             It doth transcend all humane sight,
               Lost in the element of love.

             “You poets reach not this, who sing
               The praise of dust
             But kneaded, when by theft you bring
             The rose and lilly from the spring,
               Τ’ adorne the wrinckled face of lust.

             “When we speake love, nor art, nor wit
               We glosse upon:
             Our soules engender, and beget
             Ideas which you counterfeit
               In your dull propagation.

             “While time seven ages shall disperse,
               Wee’le talke of love,
             And when our tongues hold no commerse,
             Our thoughts shall mutually converse;
               And yet the blood no rebell prove.

             “And though we be of severall kind,
               Fit for offence:
             Yet are we so by love refin’d,
             From impure drosse we are all mind,
               Death could not more have conquer’d sence.”

By virtue of this contemplation in love the passion was freed from any
disturbing element due to absence, just as the restriction of love to
the soul had been thought to do. Vaughan boasts to Amoret that he can
dispense with a sight of her face or with a kiss because when absent
from her he can court the mind.

              “Just so base, sublunary lovers’ hearts
                  Fed on loose profane desires,
                      May for an eye
                      Or face comply:
              But those remov’d, they will as soon depart,
                      And show their art,
                      And painted fires.

              “Whilst I by pow’rful love, so much refin’d,
                  That my absent soul the same is,
                      Careless to miss
                      A glance or kiss,
              Can with these elements of lust and sense
                      Freely dispense,
                      And court the mind.”

In the examples thus far given, the character of the passion as shared
by lover and beloved has been merely described. There was an attempt
made in some of this poetry to define love as if it were a something to
be analyzed—a product, as it were, of psychological elaboration. Vaughan
has indicated the two traits in the love lyrist of the seventeenth
century, when he gives the following title to a lyric,—“To Amoret, of
the Difference ’Twixt Him and Other Lovers, and What True Love Is.” In
defining “What True Love Is,” the poets show that it cannot be desire,
but is rather an essence pure in itself, and in one instance it is
described as something unknowable either to sense or to mind.

Donne has left a letter in verse “To the Countess of Huntingdon,” in
which he carefully explains how love cannot be desire. Sighing and
moaning may be love, but it is love made in a weak way; love should
never cast one down, but should elevate.

            “I cannot feel the tempest of a frown;
            I may be raised by love, but not thrown down;
            Though I can pity those sigh twice a day,
            I hate that thing whispers itself away.
            Yet since all love is fever, who to trees
            Doth talk, doth yet in love’s cold ague freeze.
            ’Tis love, but with such fatal weakness made,
            That it destroys itself with its own shade.”

            (ll. 27–34.)

At first love was mere desire, ignorant of its object; but now love is a
matter of the soul, and it is profane to call rages of passion love.

           “As all things were one nothing, dull and weak,
           Until this raw disorder’d heap did break,
           And several desires led parts away,
           Water declined with earth, the air did stay,
           Fire rose, and each from other but untied,
           Themselves unprison’d were and purified;
           So was love, first in vast confusion hid,
           An unripe willingness which nothing did,
           A thirst, an appetite which had no ease,
           That found a want, but knew not what would please.
           What pretty innocence in those days moved!
           Man ignorantly walk’d by her he loved;
           Both sigh’d and interchanged a speaking eye;
           Both trembled and were sick: both knew not why.”

           (ll. 37–51.)

This state may well become this early age, but now

                 “passion is to woman’s love, about,
             Nay, farther off, than when we first set out.
             It is not love that sueth, or doth contend;
             Love either conquers, or but meets a friend;
             Man’s better part consists of purer fire,
             And finds itself allow’d, ere it desire.”

             (ll. 55–60.)

The reason for this lies in the fact that love begins in the soul, and
not in the sight.

             “He much profanes whom valiant heats do move
             To style his wandering rage of passion, Love.
             Love that imparts in everything delight,
             Is fancied in the soul, not in the sight.”

             (ll. 125–128.)

In Jonson’s “Epode” in “The Forest,” the same differentiation of love
from passion is present, and an attempt is made to define love as an
essence. The love of the present is nothing but raging passion.

            “The thing they here call Love, is blind desire,
              Arm’d with bow, shafts, and fire;
            Inconstant, like the sea, of whence ’tis born,
              Rough, swelling, like a storm.”

True love, however, is an essence, a calmness, a peace.

                              “Now, true love
              No such effects doth prove;
              That is an essence far more gentle, fine,
                Pure, perfect, nay divine;

                     ·       ·       ·       ·       ·

                          this bears no brands, nor darts,
              To murder different hearts,
              But in a calm, and godlike unity,
                Preserves community.”

In Donne in his “Love’s Growth,” there is an expression of doubt whether
his love can be as pure as he thought it was, because it seems to suffer
an increase in the spring, and is not a thing without component
elements. But if love is no quintessence, he says, it must be mixed with
alien passions and thus not be pure. He silences his doubts, however, by
explaining after the analogy of concentric rings of waves of water about
the centre of disturbance how his love is one and unelemented.

          “I scarce believe my love to be so pure
            As I had thought it was,
            Because it doth endure
          Vicissitude, and season, as the grass;
          Methinks I lied all winter, when I swore
          My love was infinite, if spring make it more.

          “But if this medicine, love, which cures all sorrow
          With more, not only be no quintessence,
          But mix’d of all stuffs, vexing soul, or sense,
          And of the sun his active vigour borrow,

          “Love’s not so pure, and abstract as they use
          To say, which have no mistress but their Muse;
          But as all else, being elemented too,
          Love sometimes would contemplate, sometimes do.

                 ·       ·       ·       ·       ·

          “If, as in water stirr’d more circles be
          Produced by one, love such additions take,
          Those like so many spheres but one heaven make,
          For they are all concentric unto thee.”

          (I. 34, 35.)

Again, in “The Dream,” he fears the strength of his beloved’s affection
if it is mingled with a sense of fear, or shame, or honor.

            “That love is weak where fear’s as strong as he;
            T’is not all spirit, pure and brave,
            If mixture it of fear, shame, honour have;”

            (I. 39.)

This refinement of the subject of love is carried to an even greater
excess. Love is such a passion that it can be defined only by negatives.
It is above apprehension, because sense and soul both can know the
object of their love. In the poem of Donne’s “Negative Love,” in which
this idea is expressed, it is probable that the poet has in mind the
description of The One which Plotinus outlines in the “Enneads.” Summing
up his discussion of The One, or The Good, in which he has pointed out
how it is above intellect, Plotinus says: “If, however, anything is
present with _the good_, it is present with it in a way transcending
knowledge and intelligence and a cosensation of itself, since it has not
anything different from itself.... On this account says Plato [in the
“Parmenides,” speaking of _the one_] that neither language can describe,
nor sense nor science apprehend it, because nothing can be predicated of
it as present with it.” (“Enneads,” VI. vii. 41.) Transferring this idea
of the transcendency of The One to his love, Donne had the form of
thought for his lyric.

                 “I never stoop’d so low, as they
                 Which on an eye, cheek, lip, can prey;
                   Seldom to them which soar no higher
                   Than virtue, or the mind to admire.
                 For sense and understanding may
                   Know what gives fuel to their fire;
                 My love, though silly, is more brave;
                 For may I miss whene’er I crave,
                 If I know yet what I would have.

                 “If that be simply perfectest,
                 Which can by no way be express’d
                   But negatives, my love is so.
                   To all, which all love, I say no.
                 If any who deciphers best,
                   What we know not—ourselves—can know,
                 Let him teach me that nothing. This
                 As yet my ease and comfort is,
                 Though I speed not, I cannot miss.”

This reference to the knowledge of self also occurs in Plotinus in the
preceding sentence to the passage already extracted. “For the mandate,”
he says, “‘know thyself,’ was delivered to those, _who, on account of
the multitude which they possess_, find it requisite to enumerate
themselves, and in order that by knowing the number and quality of the
things contained in their essence, they may perceive that they have not
a knowledge of all things, or, indeed, of anything [which they ought to
know], and who are ignorant over what they ought to rule, and what is
the characteristic of their nature.” (VI. vii. 41.)

This highly metaphysical conception of love, the character of which has
been shown in a few selected examples, became in the course of time
known as “Platonic Love.” Scattered throughout the lyric poetry of the
seventeenth century may be found certain poems labelled “Platonic Love.”
Their presence among the author’s work is no testimony whatsoever that
it is colored by any strain of Platonism, but merely signifies that at
one time in his career the poet wrote love lyrics according to the
prevailing manner of the time. For about 1634 Platonic love was a court
fad. Howell, writing under date of June 3, 1634, says: “The Court
affords little News at present, but that there is a Love call’d
Platonick Love which much sways there of late: it is a Love abstracted
from all corporeal gross Impressions and sensual Appetite, but consists
in Contemplations and Ideas of the Mind, not in any carnal Fruition.
This Love sets the Wits of the Town on work; and they say there will be
a Mask shortly of it, whereof Her Majesty and her Maids of Honour will
be part.”[12]

The masque referred to is D’Avenant’s “The Temple of Love” (1634). In
Thomas Heywood’s “Love’s Mistress or the Queen’s Masque” (1640) the myth
of Cupid and Psyche is interpreted in accordance with the notion of
Platonic love; and in D’Avenant’s “Platonick Lovers” (1636) the subject
of Platonic love is ridiculed. It is probable that the rise of this
custom at the court was due to the presence of Henrietta Maria, the
queen of Charles I. Margaret of Valois had made Platonic love known in
France; and had shown how licentiousness of conduct was compatible with
its practice. “She had a high harmonious soul,” writes Howell,[13] “much
addicted to music and the sweets of love, and oftentimes in a Platonic
way; She would have this Motto often in her mouth; _Voulez vous cesser
d’aymer? possedez la chose aymée._... She had strains of humors and
transcendencies beyond the vulgar, and delighted to be call’d _Venus
Urania_.” It is probable that the young queen wished to follow such an
example and made known to the English court this new way of love
gallantry. The practice of making love in the Platonic way grew so
popular at any rate as to become a question of serious discussion. John
Norris says, “_Platonic Love_ is a thing in every Bodies Mouth,” and
after comparing it with the love described by Plato in the “Symposium,”
he concludes, “But why this should be call’d by the name of _Platonic_
Love, the best reason that I know of, is because People will have it
so.”[14] Algernon Sidney has left an account of love as a desire of
enjoying beauty. He concludes that since man is midway between angels
and beasts, his love will share in the peculiarities of both the
celestial and the sensual passion.[15] Walter Charleton ridicules the
subject and unmasks its immorality, although his purpose is not in any
way to purify the morals of his readers.[16] Robert Boyle wrote, but did
not publish, a series of letters, “wherein [among other subjects]
Platonic love was explicated, celebrated, and wherein the cure of love
was proposed and prosecuted.”[17]

The ideas expressed in these poems on Platonic love are not essentially
different from those in the lyrics which have been already discussed. At
times, as in Stanley’s “Love’s Innocence,” the Platonic manner is
understood as one devoid of all danger. It was in this way that Vaughan
looked upon his love for Amoret. “You have here,” he says, “a flame,
bright only in its own innocence, that kindles nothing but a generous
thought, which though it may warm the blood, the fire at highest is but
Platonic; and the commotion, within these limits, excludes danger.”[18]
On the other hand, Carew’s “Song to a Lady, not yet Enjoyed by her
Husband,” shows how the stock ideas was used to cloak the immorality of
the poet’s thought. George Daniel has left a series of poems revealing
the several phases of this love ranging between the two extremes. He
writes one “To Cinthia, coying it,” in which its innocence is preached.
“To Cinthia Converted” describes the union of the two souls. “To the
Platonicke Pretender” warns the ladies from listening to this love when
taught by a libertine. “Pure Platonicke” explains the spiritual nature
of the passion by contrast with sensual love. “Court-Platonicke” shows
how at court it was used merely as a means to an improper end.
“Anti-Platonicke” recites the feelings of the sensual lover.[19] In Lord
Herbert are found two other phases of this love. The first and second of
his poems named “Platonick Love” are complimentary poems addressed to a
lady; the first, telling her how the love inspired by her refines his
soul, and the second celebrating Platonic love in general application.

              “For as you can unto that height refine
              All Loves delights, as while they do incline
              Unto no vice, they so become divine,
              We may as well attain your excellence,
              As, without help of any outward sense
              Would make us grow a pure Intelligence.”

              (Stz. 2.)

In the third “Platonicke Love” the lover is represented as wavering
between despair and hope with a slight balance in favor of the latter.
He is disconsolate because he finds no hope

               “when my matchless Mistress were inclin’d
             To pity me, ’twould scarcely make me glad,
             The discomposing of so fair a mind
             Being that which would to my Affections add.”

             (Stz. 1.)

He finds hope, however, in the thought that

                “though due merit I cannot express,
              Yet she shall know none ever lov’d for less
              Or easier reward. Let her remain
              Still great and good, and from her Happiness
              My chief contentment I will entertain.”

              (Stz. 7.)

He ends with hope still living:

           “Then, hope, sustain thy self: though thou art hid
           Thou livest still, and must till she forbid;
           For when she would my vows and love reject,
           They would a Being in themselves project,
           Since infinites as they yet never did,
           Nor could conclude without some good effect.”

           (Stz. 16.)

Platonic love, as such an example proves, was but synonymous with
hopeless love.

Platonic love, then, meant either a love devoid of all sensual desire,
an innocent or hopeless passion, or it was a form of gallantry used to
cloak immorality. Its one characteristic notion was that true love
consisted in a union of soul with soul, mind with mind, or essence with
essence. This idea of restricting love to the experience of soul as
opposed to the enjoyment of sense is the one notion which runs beneath
many of the love lyrics written in the seventeenth century; and it is
the point attacked by opponents. In John Cleveland, “To Cloris, a
Rapture,” and in Campion’s “Song”[20] the poets exhort their beloved to
enjoy this high union of soul. In Carew’s “To My Mistress in Absence,”
in Lovelace’s “To Lucasta. Going beyond the Seas,” and in Cowley’s
“Friendship in Absence,” the triumph of love over time and space is
explained by the mingling of souls in true love. In Sedley’s “The
Platonick” and in Ayres’s “Platonic Love” are found examples of the
hopelessness of the passion. In Aytoun’s “Platonic Love” which was taken
by Suckling to form a poem—the “Song,” beginning, “If you refuse me
once”—the lover modestly confesses that he cannot rise to the heights of
such a pure passion, and requests a more easy way. In Cleveland’s “The
Anti-Platonick” and “Platonick Love,” in Brome’s “Epithalamy,” in
Cowley’s “Platonick Love” and “Answer to the Platonicks,” and in
Cartwright’s “No Platonique Love,” the claims of the opponents are
expressed in all the grossness of Restoration immorality.

The atmosphere in which the metaphysical treatment of love flourished
was intensely intellectual. The poets in whom the strain is clearest
were trying to accomplish two thing: they wished to oppose the idea of
passion in love, and they endeavored to account for the attraction of
sex in the love which they themselves experienced. However much these
poets wished to exclude the notion of sex, their minds were constantly
busied in trying to solve the source of its power. In Donne, the
greatest representative of the metaphysical manner, this purpose is very
evident. He wrote his longest poem, “An Anatomy of the World,” to show
how, by reason of the death of a certain young woman, “the frailty and
the decay of this whole world is represented.” In reply to Jonson’s
criticism, that this poem was “full of blasphemies,” Donne remarked that
“he described the Idea of a Woman, and not as she was.”[21] Here lies
the secret of Donne’s treatment of woman; he was interested in her, not
as a personality, but as an idea. In solving the nature of this idea he
recurred to certain Platonic conceptions by which he thought to explain
the source of her power.

These Platonic conceptions are two. Woman is identified with virtue; she
is the source of all virtue in the world, others being virtuous only by
participating in her virtue. Thus in a letter “To the Countess of
Huntingdon” he shows how virtue has been raised from her fallen state on
earth by appearing in woman. She was once scattered among men, but now
summed up in one woman.

       “If the world’s age and death be argued well
         By the sun’s fall, which now towards earth doth bend,
       Then we might fear that virtue, since she fell
         So low as woman, should be near her end.

       “But she’s not stoop’d, but raised; exiled by men
         She fled to heaven, that’s heavenly things, that’s you;
       She was in all men thinly scatter’d then,
         But now a mass contracted in a few.

       “She gilded us, but you are gold; and she
         Informed us, but transubstantiates you.
       Soft dispositions, which ductile be,
         Elixirlike, she makes not clean, but new.

       “Though you a wife’s and mother’s name retain,
         ’Tis not as woman, for all are not so;
       But virtue, having made you virtue, is fain
         To adhere in these names, her and you to show.

       “Else, being alike pure, we should neither see;
         As, water being into air rarefied,
       Neither appear, till in one cloud they be,
         So, for our sakes, you do low names abide.”

Beneath this torture of conceits may be seen the idea that woman is that
very virtue of which Plato has spoken in his “Phædrus.” Sidney has used
the idea to compliment Stella; but Donne’s purpose is to show how woman,
as woman, is to be identified with it, and that the differentiation in
the concept resulting from the fact that she may be a wife or a mother
is due to the necessity that this virtue become visible on earth.

The second Platonic conception through which Donne conveys his idea of
woman’s nature is the universal soul. In his lyric, “A Fever,” he says,
speaking of the object of his love:

               “But yet thou canst not die, I know;
               To leave this world behind, is death;
               But when thou from this world wilt go,
               The whole world vapours with thy breath.

               “Or if, when thou, the world’s soul, go’st
               It stay, ’tis but thy carcase then.”

And in “An Anatomy of the World” this idea of the death of the world in
the death of a woman is explained at length.

Holding thus to this idea of woman, and striving to differentiate love
from passion, Donne was able to confine his notion of love to the soul;
and through the metaphysical manner of his poetic art he was able to
express this notion in the most perplexing intricacies of thought. As
Dryden has said, “he affects the metaphysics, not only in his satires,
but in his amorous verses, where nature only should reign: and perplexes
the minds of the fair sex with the speculations of philosophy, where he
should engage their hearts, and entertain them with the softness of
love.”[22] By imitating his style the other lyric poets of the
seventeenth century produced the species of love poems which have
already been analyzed. His skill and his sincerity of aim are lacking in
their verse; and the result was either a weak dilution of his thought or
a striving for his manner in praising a lower conception of love.

                            GOD AND THE SOUL

                            I. NATURE OF GOD

Platonism affected Christian theology as it appears in English poetry in
a twofold way. It provided a body of intellectual principles which were
identified with the persons of the Christian Trinity and it also trained
the minds of the poets in conceiving God rather as the object of the
mind’s speculative quest than as the dread judge of the sinful soul.
Platonism in this form is no longer the body of ethical principles
appearing in the Platonic dialogues; but is that metaphysical
after-growth of Platonism that has its source in the philosophy of
Plotinus. According to this form of speculative mysticism there were
three ultimate principles, or hypostases,—The Good, Intellect (υοῦς),
and Soul. Owing to the affinity of Platonism for Christian forms of
thought, these three hypostases were conceived as the philosophic basis
underlying the Christian teaching of the three Persons of the Trinity.
Such an interpretation is seen plainly in the work of Henry More and
William Drummond; and the speculative attitude of conceiving God and
Christ in the light of the hypostases of Plotinus is also discernible in
Spenser and Milton.

The boldest attempt to identify the three Plotinian principles with the
Christian Trinity is made in Henry More’s “Psychozoia,” the first poem
of his “Psychodia Platonica.” This poetical treatise reveals the aim of
More’s spiritual life as it was formulated on the basis of Platonic
philosophy blended with the teaching of the “Theologia Germanica.” The
strain of self-abnegation which More learned in “that _Golden little
Book_,”[23] as he names the German treatise, may be easily separated
from the Platonism, being confined to the last two books of his poem; it
may thus be dismissed. In the first book, however, the current of
thought is almost purely Platonic. There, under the figure of the
marriage rite, the first principle of Plotinus, the Good, is represented
as joining his two children—Intellect and Soul—in holy union; and under
the poetic device of a veil with several films or tissues, More
describes Soul in minute detail.

In keeping with the teachings of Platonism More defines each person of
the Trinity in the terms used by Plotinus. According to this philosopher
the highest reality is The One or The Good which is infinite and above
all comprehension, not because it is impossible to measure or count it
(since it has no magnitude and no multitude), but simply because it is
impossible to conceive its power. (“Enneads,” VI. ix. 6.) In the
beatific vision, in which The Good is known in the Soul, it is
invisible, hidden in its own rays of light. (“Enneads,” VI. vii. 35.)
More thus speaks of God, naming him Hattove:

      “Th’ Ancient of dayes, sire of _Æternitie_,
      Sprung of himself, or rather nowise sprong.
      Father of lights, and everlasting glee
      Who puts to silence every daring tongue
      And flies mans sight, shrouding himself among
      His glorious rayes, good _Hattove_, from whom came
      All good that _Penia_ [_i.e._ want] spies in thickest throng
      Of most desired things, all’s from that same.”

      (I. 5.)

                          “But first of all
      Was mighty _Hattove_, deeply covered o’re
      With unseen light. No might Imaginall
      May reach that vast profunditie.”

      (I. 16.)

The Son is identified with the second hypostasis,—universal intellect.
In this all realities are present not as created things in time or
space, but embraced as essential forms with no spatial or temporal
relation. This character of universal intellect is thus named αἰών, or
eternity. (“Enneads,” III. vii. 4.) More thus writes of Christ—

       “The youthfull _Æon_, whose fair face doth shine
       While he his Fathers glory doth espy,
       Which waters his fine flowring forms with light from high.

       “Not that his forms increase, or that they die.
       For _Æοn Land_, which men _Idea_ call,
       Is nought but life in full serenitie,
       Vigour of life is root, stock, branch, and all;
       Nought here increaseth, nought here hath its fall;
       For _Æons_ kingdomes alwaies perfect stand,
       Birds, beasts, fields, springs, plants, men and minerall,
       To perfectnesse nought added be there can.”

       (I. 13. 14.)

Psyche, or Uranore, as she is named at times, is the third person of the
Trinity. She is the soul of the universe, present in every “atom ball,”
in the creatures of earth, sea, air, the divine stars in heaven.
(“Enneads,” V. i. 2.) In her true essence she is invisible; but More
pictures her as enveloped in a fourfold garment. The outer garment is
called Physis, in which all natural objects appear as spots which grow
each according to its idea. This robe is stirred with every impulse of
life from the central power of God.

           “The first of these fair films, we _Physis_ name.
           Nothing in nature did you ever spy
           But there’s pourtraid:

                  ·       ·       ·       ·       ·

           “And all besprinkeled with centrall spots,
           Dark little spots, is this hid inward veil.

                  ·       ·       ·       ·       ·

           “When they dispread themselves, then gins to swell
           Dame _Psyches_ outward vest, as th’ inward wind
           Softly gives forth, full softly doth it well
           Forth from the centrall spot;

                  ·       ·       ·       ·       ·

               according to the imprest Art
           (That Arts impression’s from _Idea Land_)
           So drives it forth before it every part
           According to true symmetry.”

           (I. 41–44.)

The second and third folds of Psyche’s vest are very closely identified.
They are called Arachnea and Haphe, by which the life of sensation is
meant. Haphe, or touch, sits in the finely spun web of Arachnea, and is
aware of every manifestation of life resulting from the soul’s contact
with the outward world. In this life of sensation Psyche sees as in a
mirror all the stirring life within the universe. (I. 48, 49, 50.)

The fourth fold of Psyche’s garment is called Semele, by which
imagination is meant. This is the loosest of the four veils, having the
fullest play in its movements. It is universal imagination, and from it
arises the inspiration of the poet and the prophet. (I. 57.) The
individual powers of imagination are conceived as daughters of the one
great Semele.

          “She is the mother of each _Semele_:
          The daughters be divided one from one;
          But she grasps all. How can she then but see
          Each _Semels_ shadows by this union?
          She sees and swayes imagination
          As she thinks good: and it that she think good
          She lets it play by ’t self, yet looketh on,
          While she keeps in that large strong-beating flood
          That gars the Poet write, and rave as he were wood.”

          (I. 59.)

These three persons—Ahad, another name given by More to God (I. 34),
Æon, and Psyche—form, says More, “the famous Platonicall Triad; which
though they that slight the Christian Trinity do take for a figment; yet
I think it is no contemptible argument, that the Platonists, the best
and divinest of Philosophers, and the Christians, the best of all that
do professe religion, do both concur that there is a Trinity. In what
they differ, I leave to be found out, according to the safe direction of
that infallible Rule of Faith, the holy Word.”[24] To signify the union
of these persons More represents Ahad joining Æon, his son, in marriage
to Psyche, and by holding their hands in his, maintaining a perpetual
unity.

            “My first born Sonne, and thou my daughter dear,
            Look on your aged Sire, the deep abysse,
            In which and out of which you first appear;
            I _Ahad_ hight, and _Ahad_ onenesse is:
            Therefore be one; (his words do never misse)
            They one became.

            “They straight accord: then he put on the ring,
            The ring of lasting gold on _Uranure_;
            Then gan the youthful Lads aloud to sing,
            Hymen! O Hymen! O the Virgin pure!
            O holy Bride! long may this joy indure.

                   ·       ·       ·       ·       ·

            (I. 34, 35.)

           And all this time he held their hands in one;
           Then they with chearfull look one thing desired,
           That he nould break this happy union.
           I happy union break? quoth he anon:
           I _Ahad_? Father of Community?
           Then they: That you nould let your hand be gone
           Off from our hands. He grants with smiling glee.”

           (I. 38.)

In this way More has expressed his conception of the Christian Trinity.
Inasmuch as his purpose in the “Psychozoia” is to relate the experiences
of the human soul from the time of its departure from God to its return
thither, he has laid especial emphasis upon the third hypostasis of
Plotinus,—Soul.

In William Drummond’s “An Hymn of the Fairest Fair” attention is centred
upon the first person of the Trinity. Drummond is more of a poet and
less of a philosopher than More; but the philosophic conceptions which
are woven into his poetical description of the nature, attributes, and
works of God are drawn from the same system of metaphysics. In
Drummond’s “Hymn” there is a mingling of two conceptions of God. He is
described, according to the Hebraic idea, as a mighty king, the creator
of the universe, dwelling in heaven, and possessing such attributes of
personality as justice, mercy, might. Running in and out of this
description is a strain of Platonic speculation, in which the conception
of God as an essence is very prominent. Thus by means of a poetic device
picturing youth standing before God and pouring immortal nectar into His
cup, Drummond expresses the Platonic idea of absolute oneness. And this
idea is the attribute of God first set forth.

           “If so we may well say (and what we say,
           Here wrapt in flesh, led by dim reason’s ray,
           To show by earthly beauties which we see,
           That spiritual excellence that shines in thee,
           Good Lord, forgive), not far from thy right side,
           With curled locks Youth ever doth abide;
           Rose-cheeked Youth, who, garlanded with flowers
           Still blooming, ceaselessly unto thee pours
           Immortal nectar in a cup of gold,
           That by no darts of ages thou grow old,
           And, as ends and beginnings thee not claim,
           Successionless that thou be still the same.”

           (ll. 31–42.)

After a description of God’s might, Drummond passes on to consider His
truth, conceived as the Platonists conceived intellect, embracing all
reality as essential form. This attribute is pictured as a mirror in
which God beholds all things.

         “With locks in waves of gold that ebb and flow
         On ivory neck, in robes more white than snow,
         Truth steadfastly before thee holds a glass,
         Indent with gems, where shineth all that was,
         That is, or shall be. Here, ere aught was wrought,
         Thou knew all that thy pow’r with time forth brought,
         And more, things numberless which thou couldst make,
         That actually shall never being take:
         Here, thou behold’st thyself, and, strange, dost prove
         At once the beauty, lover, and the love.”

         (ll. 56–66.)

Platonic metaphysics are also present in Drummond’s account of the
essential unity persisting throughout the triplicity of Persons.
Plotinus had held that The One caused the mind or intellect, and that in
turn caused universal soul. The order, however, is not one of time
sequence, but merely a logical order of causation. In this series of
causation there is no idea of a production as an act going out of itself
and forming another; each producing cause remains in its own centre;
throughout the series runs one cause or manifestation of life. His
favorite figures by which he explains this idea are, first, that of an
overflowing spring which gives rise to a second and this to a third;
and, second, that of a sun with a central source of light with its
spreading rays. (“Enneads,” V. ii. 1, 2.) Thus intellect is an
irradiation of The One and soul is an irradiation of intellect.
(“Enneads,” V. i. 6.) Drummond, holding to the idea of the
self-sufficiency of God as expressed in Plotinus, a state in which God
is alone by Himself and not in want of the things that proceed from Him
(“Enneads,” VI. vii. 40), is thus able to unfold the mystery of the One
in Three:

         “Ineffable, all-powrfull God, all free,
         Thou only liv’st, and each thing lives by thee;
         No joy, no, nor perfection to thee came
         By the contriving of this world’s great frame;

                ·       ·       ·       ·       ·

                                 world nought to thee supplied,
         All in thyself thyself thou satisfied.
         Of good no slender shadow doth appear,
         No age-worn track, in thee which shin’d not clear;
         Perfections sum, prime cause of every cause,
         Midst, end, beginning, where all good doth pause.
         Hence of thy substance, differing in nought,
         Thou in eternity, thy Son forth brought,
         The only birth of thy unchanging mind,
         Thine image, pattern-like that ever shin’d,
         Light out of light, begotton not by will,
         But nature, all and that same essence still
         Which thou thyself....

                ·       ·       ·       ·       ·

                                     Of this light,
         Eternal, double, kindled was thy spright
         Eternally, who is with thee the same,
         All-holy gift, ambassador, knot, flame.
         Most sacred Triad! O most holy One!
         Unprocreate Father, ever procreate Son,
         Ghost breath’d from both, you were, are, aye shall be,
         Most blessed, three in one, and one in three,
         Incomprehensible by reachless height,
         And unperceived by excessive light.

                ·       ·       ·       ·       ·

         So, though unlike, the planet of the days,
         So soon as he was made, begat his rays,
         Which are his offspring, and from both was hurl’d
         The rosy light which comfort doth the world,
         And none forewent another; so the spring
         The well-head, and the stream which they forth bring,
         Are but one selfsame essence, nor in aught
         Do differ, save in order, and our thought
         No chime of time discerns in them to fall,
         But three distinctly bide one essence all.”

         (ll. 99–142.)

From this point on to the close, the “Hymn” celebrates the glory of God
in his works. Drummond possessed an imagination that delighted as
Milton’s did in the contemplation of the universe as a vast mechanical
scheme of sun and planets. (ll. 180–232.) His philosophic mind, however,
led him to conceive of nature in the manner of the Platonists. God, or
true being, according to Plotinus is a unity, everywhere present
(“Enneads,” VI. v. 4); and matter, the other extreme of his philosophy,
is an empty show, a shadow in a mirror. (“Enneads,” III. vi. 7.) In
closing the account of the works of God, Drummond thus writes:

           “Whole and entire, all in thyself thou art,
           All-where diffus’d, yet of this All no part;
           For infinite, in making this fair frame,
           Great without quantity, in all thou came,
           And filling all, how can thy state admit
           Or place or substance to be said of it?

                  ·       ·       ·       ·       ·

           Were but one hour this world disjoin’d from thee,
           It in one hour to nought reduc’d should be,
           For it thy shadow is; and can they last,
           If sever’d from the substances them cast?”

           (ll. 285–298.)

Drummond’s “Hymn” is the work of a mind in which poetical sensuousness
and philosophic abstraction are well-nigh equally balanced. In More the
philosopher had outweighed the poet. In Milton the poet asserts his full
power. To him the Plotinian scheme of the hypostases is valuable only as
they enable his love of beauty to be satisfied in conformity with his
intellectual apprehension of the relation between God and the Son in the
Trinal Godhead. Plotinus had outlined the relation between The Good and
Intellect as that of a principle of beauty by which the intellect is
invested and possesses beauty and light. (“Enneads,” VI. vii. 31.) The
Good itself is the principle of beauty, hidden in its own rays of light.
In Milton the conception of God as hidden in inaccessible light, and of
the Son as the express image of the invisible beauty of God, is
explained in conformity with the Platonic scheme, and also with those
Scriptural texts, one of which mentions God as a King of kings, who only
hath immortality, dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto
(1 Tim. vi. 16); and the other proclaims that in Christ “dwelleth all
the fulness of the Godhead bodily” (Col. ii. 9). Thus in heaven the
angels hymn their praises:

           “Thee, Father, first they sung, Omnipotent,
           Immutable, Immortal, Infinite,
           Eternal King; thee, Author of all being,
           Fountain of light, thyself invisible
           Amidst the glorious brightness where thou sitt’st
           Throned inaccessible, but when thou shad’st
           The full blaze of thy beams, and through a cloud
           Drawn round about thee like a radiant shrine
           Dark with excessive bright thy skirts appear,
           Yet dazzle Heaven, that brightest Seraphim
           Approach not, but with both wings veil their eyes.
           Thee next they sang, of all creation first,
           Begotten Son, Divine Similitude,
           In whose conspicuous countenance, without cloud
           Made visible, the Almighty Father shines,
           Whom else no creature can behold: on thee
           Impressed the effulgence of his glory abides.
           Transfused on thee his ample Spirit rests.”

           (P. L., III. 372–389.)

And the Almighty addresses the Son:

                 “‘Effulgence of my glory, Son beloved,
                 Son in whose face invisible is beheld
                 Visibly, what by Deity I am.’”

                 (VI. 680–682.)

This relation of Christ to God which in the Scripture was indicated only
as in an outline sketch has been filled in with the substance of the
Plotinian æsthetics, in which The One and The Good is beauty itself
(καλλονή) and intellect is the beautiful (τὸ καλόν). (“Enneads,” I. vi.
6.)

The attraction which this philosophical explanation had for those whose
work reveals its presence is twofold. To the religious mind in which the
metaphysical cast of thought was prominent, the idea of the transcendent
immanence of God in all things as their life, yet apart from all things
as objects in time and space came home with its wealth of suggestion of
the nearness of God to man. In Henry More this feeling is uppermost in
his “Psychozoia.” In the midst of his description of Psyche’s robe he
breaks out into a passage on the constant care which God shows toward
the world. In Psyche’s mirror of Arachnea and Haphe God is aware of all
on earth that falls under sense. The roaring of the hungry lion, the
burning thirst of the weary traveller and every movement of the little
sparrow are all known to him.

       “Do not I see? I slumber not nor sleep,
       Do not I heare? each noise by shady night
       My miroir represents: when mortals steep
       Their languid limbs in Morpheus dull delight,
       I hear such sounds as Adams brood would fright.
       The dolefull echoes from the hollow hill
       Mock houling wolves: the woods with black bedight.
       Answer rough Pan, his pipe and eke his skill,
       And all the Satyr-routs rude whoops and shoutings shrill.”

       (I. 54.)

In his second canto, where he repeats the idea of the universal life of
Psyche, he dwells on the fact of God’s immanence in the world. He is the
inmost centre of creation, from whom as rays from the sun the individual
souls are born.

             “Dependence of this All hence doth appear
             And severall degrees subordinate.
             But phansie’s so unfit such things to clear,
             That oft it makes them seem more intricate;
             And now Gods work it doth disterminate
             Too far from his own reach: But he withall
             More inward is, and far more intimate
             Then things are with themselves. His ideall
             And centrall presence is in every atom-ball.”

             (II. 10.)

In those minds less metaphysical in nature, the high speculations of
Platonic philosophy opened a way by which they could conceive God as a
principle grasped by the mind rather than as a personal judge and
punisher of sin. In Drummond this contrast in the two conceptions of
God—one feeding itself on philosophy, and the other on the imagery of
the Scripture—is strikingly brought out by a comparison of the opening
and the ending of “An Hymn of the Fairest Fair” with those of “A Prayer
for Mankind.” The “Hymn” begins with a confession of the elevating power
of his subject:

    “I feel my bosom glow with wontless fires
    Rais’d from the vulgar press my mind aspires,
    Wing’d with high thoughts, unto his praise to climb,
    From deep eternity who called forth time;
    That essence which not mov’d makes each thing move,
    Uncreate beauty, all creating love:
    But by so great an object, radiant light,
    My heart appall’d, enfeebled rests my sight,
    Thick clouds benight my labouring engine,
    And at my high attempts my wits repine.
    If thou in me this sacred rapture wrought,
    My knowledge sharpen, sarcels [_i.e._ pinions] lend my thought;
    Grant me, time’s Father, world-containing King
    A pow’r, of thee in pow’rful lays to sing,
    That as thy beauty in earth lives, heaven shines,
    So it may dawn or shadow in my lines.”

    (ll. 1–16.)

At the close he prays:

           “What wit cannot conceive, words say of thee,
           Here, where, as in a mirror, we but see
           Shadows of shadows, atoms of thy might,
           Still owly-eyed when staring on thy light,
           Grant that, released from this earthly jail,
           And freed of clouds which here our knowledge veil,
           In heaven’s high temples, where thy praises ring,
           I may in sweeter notes hear angels sing.”

           (ll. 329–335.)

“A Prayer for Mankind,” however, opens with the note of humble adoration
and a sense of sin.

        “Great God, whom we with humble thoughts adore,
        Eternal, infinite, almighty King,

               ·       ·       ·       ·       ·

        At whose command clouds dreadful thunders sound!
        Ah! spare us worms; weigh not how we, alas
        Evil to ourselves, against thy laws rebel;
        Wash off those spots which still in mind’s clear glass,
        Though we be loath to look, we see too well;
        Deserv’d revenge O do not, do not take!”

        (ll. 1–13.)

It closes similarly:

           “Grant, when at last our souls these bodies leave,
           Their loathsome shops of sin, and mansions blind,
           And doom before thy royal seat receive,
           They may a Saviour, not a judge thee find.”

           (ll. 65–68.)

In Spenser’s “Hymne of Heavenly Beautie” in the first portion of which
he sings the ascent of the mind through ever rising stages of perfection
to

                “that Highest farre beyond all telling,”

the mingling of these two ways of approach to God is very apparent.
Spenser is first a Platonist and then a Christian. How, he asks, if
God’s glory is such that the sun is dimmed by comparison, can we behold
Him?

         “The meanes therefore which unto us is lent,
         Him to behold, is on his workes to looke,
         Which he hath made in beauty excellent,
         And in the same, as in a brasen booke,
         To reade enregistred in every nooke
         His goodnesse, which his beautie doth declare,
         For all thats good, is beautifull and faire.

         “Thence gathering plumes of perfect speculation,
         To impe the wings of thy high flying mynd,
         Mount up aloft through heavenly contemplation,
         From this darke world, whose damps the soule do blynd,
         And like the native brood of Eagles kynd,
         On that bright Sunne of glorie fixe thine eyes,
         Clear’d from grosse mists of fraile infirmities.”

Then comes in the sense of sin, and he approaches God in a different
spirit. He continues:

            “Humbled with feare and awful reverence,
            Before the footestoole of his Maiestie,
            Throw thy selfe downe with trembling innocence,
            Ne dare looke up with corruptible eye,
            On the dred face of that great _Deity_,
            For feare, lest if he chaunce to looke on thee,
            Thou turne to nought, and quite confounded be.

            “But lowly fall before his mercie seate,
            Close covered with the Lambes integrity,
            From the just wrath of his avengefull threate,
            That sits upon the righteous throne on hy.”

            (ll. 130–152.)

                         II. NATURE OF THE SOUL

The nature of the soul from the standpoint of Plotinian metaphysics was
treated by Henry More in his two poetical treatises, “Pyschathanasia”
and “Anti-psychopannychia.” In the former he follows the course of the
argument set forth in the seventh book of the fourth “Ennead” of
Plotinus. In the Plotinian defence two propositions are established;
namely, that the soul is not body, and that it is not a function of
body. By demonstrating these, it followed that the soul is an immaterial
thing, a real being, and consequently eternal. This is the drift of
More’s argument in “Psychathanasia.” The first and second books are
devoted to the establishment of the definition of the soul as an
incorporeal substance, and the proof of its incorporeality is deduced
from considerations of its functions.

The soul, More holds, is an incorporeal thing because it is a
self-moving substance present in all forms of life. Plotinus had taught
that soul was everywhere. “First, then,” he says, “let every soul
consider this: how by breathing life into them soul made all animals,
the creatures of earth, sea, air, the divine stars in heaven; made the
sun, made the great firmament above us, and not only made but ordered
it, so that it swings round in due course. Yet is this soul a different
nature from what it orders, and moves, and vivifies. It must needs then
be more precious than its creations. For they are born, and when the
soul which ministers their life abandons them, they die; but the soul
ever is because it never abandons itself.” (“Enneads,” V. i. 2.) More
finds this soul present in the growth of all forms of vegetation, the
sphere spermatic (I. ii. 30), in the life of animals, sensation, and
self-directed motion; and in the intellectual life of man. (I. ii.
17–22.)

          “Thus have I trac’d the soul in all its works,
          And severall conditions have displaid,
          And show’d all places where so e’r she lurks,
          Even her own lurkings of her self bewray’d,
          In plants, in beasts, in men, while here she staid.”

          (I. ii. 23.)

He next demonstrates that this soul is a self-moving substance. It is
self-moving in plants, as the quickening power of the sun on vegetation
shows. Through the heat of the sun the hidden centre, or soul, is called
into the life of blossoming and growth.

         “Thus called out by friendly sympathie
         Their souls move of themselves on their _Centreitie_.”

         (I. ii. 31.)

In animals the self-moving soul is manifested in motion and the life of
sensation.

           “Then be the souls of beasts self-moving forms,
           Bearing their bodies as themselves think meet,
           Invited or provok’d, so they transform
           At first themselves within, then straight in sight
           Those motions come, which suddenly do light
           Upon the bodies visible, which move
           According to the will of th’ inward spright.”

           (I. ii. 36.)

In man the self-motion of the soul is present in the activity of reason,
whether as the presiding power in all of the operations of the
image-making faculty, or as the contemplative and speculative power. (I.
ii. 41–44.)

After this account of the nature of the soul as a self-moving substance,
More addresses himself to the task of showing that all life is immortal.
In a time of despondency a Nymph once came and declared to him,

           “_All life’s immortall_: though the outward trunk
           May changed be, yet life to nothing never shrunk.”

           (I. iii. 17.)

According to the theory unfolded by the Nymph there is an ever present
unity in all things which is the true source of their life. This is God.
From Him are six descending degrees of existence, called intellectual,
psychical, imaginative, sensitive, plantal, or spermatic. (I. iii. 23.)
Below all of these is matter, which is nothing but mere potentiality, or
the possibility of all created things. (I. iv. 9.) Though these various
degrees of life are distinct, they are manifestations of the one
pervading unity. (I. iii. 25.) Matter thus cannot be the prop and stay
of life. (I. iii. 26.)

The second proof of the incorporeal nature of the soul is found in the
character of its functions. After a hasty attack on the doctrine of
materialism in the form of a _reductio ad absurdum_ (II. ii. 13–25; cf.
Plotinus, IV. vii. 3), More shows, first, that the faculty within us by
which we are aware of the outward world of sense is one and individual,
yet everywhere present in the body. (II. ii. 32.) This faculty, called
“the common sense” (II. ii. 26), sits as judge over all the data of
sense knowledge (cf. Plotinus, IV. vii. 6); it decides in case of
disagreement between two senses, and distinguishes clearly between the
objects present to each sense. (II. ii. 28.) The common sense must be
one, else, being divided, it would breed confusion in consciousness (II.
ii. 31); and it must be everywhere present in the body because it shows
no partiality to any sense, but has intelligence of all equally. (II.
ii. 32.)

The rational powers of the soul are a further proof of the soul’s
incorporeal nature. The first consideration draws attention to the vast
scope of man’s will and soul. In the virtuous the soul can be so
universalized and begotten into the life of God that the will embraces
all with a tender love and is ever striving to seek God as the good.
(II. iii. 6.) If this is so, More asks whether the soul thus
universalized can ever die. (II. iii. 7.) Man’s understanding, too, can
become so broadened that it can apprehend God’s true being, not knowing
it, to be sure, in its true essence, but having such a true insight that
it can reject all narrow conceptions of His nature and welcome other
more comprehensive ideas as closer approximations to the truth. The
understanding is in a state that More calls parturient; God under
certain conditions can be born within the soul. (II. iii. 9–12.) For the
reason, then, of the vastness of the power of will and understanding
More holds that the soul cannot be a body. (II. iii. 4.)

The next argument in regard to the rational powers of the soul centres
about her power of pure abstraction. (Cf. “Enneads,” IV. vii. 8.) In
herself the soul divests matter of all time and place relations and
views the naked, simple essence of things. (II. iii. 18.) She thus
frames within herself an idea, which is indivisible and unextended; and
by this she judges outward objects. (II. iii. 18–20; cf. “Enneads,” IV.
vii. 12.) This property is not a property of body. (II. iii. 26.)

At this point More closes the first division of his argument. By
establishing the definition of the soul as a self-moving substance, and
by an account of the nature of its functions, he has defended his first
proposition, that the soul is an incorporeal thing. He then passes on to
the second part of his argument, that the soul is an incorporeal thing
because it is independent of the body.

This portion of his defence falls into four main divisions. In the first
he explains the nature of the body’s dependence upon the soul. Through
the power that the soul has by virtue of its lowest centre of life,
called the plantal, the soul frames the body in order to exercise
through it the functions of life. (III. i. 17.) The more perfect this
body is the more awake the soul is. (III. i. 17.) But after the work of
framing the body is finished, the soul dismisses it as an old thought
and begins its life of contemplation. (III. i. 16.) The main desire is
to see God. (III. ii. 11.) Next More shows how the soul can direct her
own thoughts within herself without in any way considering the body. Her
intellectual part dives within her nature in its quest for
self-knowledge and her will affects herself after this knowledge has
been gained. All this is accomplished free from any bodily assistance.
(III. ii. 25, 26.) The third division shows how the soul is so
independent of the body that she can resist its desires. Often the
sensual impulse of our nature would lead us to be content with mere
satisfaction of our bodily desires; but the soul desirous of truth and
gifted with an insight into God’s true nature enables us to resist all
such impulses. (III. ii. 38, 39.) The fourth division contrasts the
vitality of the soul with that of sense, fancy, and memory. These three
faculties are weakened by age and by disease, and also by excessive
stimulation; but the soul never fades, but grows stronger with each
contemplative act. (III. ii. 48, 49, 56.)

The attraction which the philosophy of Plotinus had for More’s mind
lay in its scheme of speculative mysticism. The metaphysical system of
Plotinus had taught that The One, which is the truly existing being,
is everywhere present and yet nowhere wholly present. (“Enneads,” VI.
iv.) It had explained also that the only way in which the individual
soul could apprehend this truly existing being was by a mystical union
with it, in which state the soul did not know in the sense of
energizing intellectually, but was one with The One. (“Enneads,” VI.
ix. 10.) These two ideas lie at the basis of More’s theosophic
mysticism. Their presence can be felt throughout his “Psychathanasia”
as its controlling idea and also in his two less important treatises,
“Anti-psychopannychia” and “Anti-monopsychia.”

The argument of the “Anti-psychopannychia” and of the “Anti-monopsychia”
centres about the doctrine of the mystic union with God. The argument in
the “Psychathanasia” is a critique of materialism rather than a positive
plea for the existence of the soul after death. It was the purpose of
More in his two pendants to his longer poem to treat of the state of the
soul after death. That it is not enveloped in eternal night he proves in
his “Anti-psychopannychia.” His argument is briefly this: Since God is a
unity everywhere present, he is infinite freedom. (II. 2.) Since the
soul’s activities of will and intellect are free from dependence upon
the body, death will be but the ushering of the soul into the life of
God’s large liberty.

         “Wherefore the soul cut off from lowly sense
         By harmlesse fate, far greater libertie
         Must gain: for when it hath departed hence
         (As all things else) should it not backward hie
         From whence it came? but such divinitie
         Is in our souls that nothing lesse than God
         Could send them forth (as Plato’s schools descrie)
         Wherefore when they retreat a free abode
         They’ll find, unlesse kept off by _Nemesis_ just rod.”

         (II. 14.)

In this life of union the soul will realize the deep fecundity of her
own nature; for in her are innate ideas. To establish this theory of
innate ideas into which Plato’s theory of reminiscence has been
transformed in Plotinus (cf. “Enneads,” IV. iii. 25), More educes four
considerations. They must exist because (1) like is known only by like
(II. 31); (2) no object or number of objects can give the soul a
universal concept (II. 36); (3) the apprehension of incorporeal things
cannot be made by sense, therefore the soul must have the measure of
such within her own nature (II. 38, 39); and (4) the process of learning
shows that it is education, or the drawing out of the mind what was in
it potentially (II. 42). Inasmuch, then, as innate ideas exist within
the mind, called out by experience in life, how much more will they be
evoked in that high union with God!

          “But sith our soul with God himself may meet,
          Inacted by his life, I cannot see
          What scruple then remains that moven might
          Least doubt but that she wakes with open eye,
          When fate her from this body doth untie.
          Wherefore her choisest forms do then arise,
          Rowz’d up by union and large sympathy
          With Gods own spright: she plainly then descries
          Such plentitude of life, as she could nere devise.”

          (III. 2.)

But this union of the soul with The One may be thought to obliterate
self-identity after death and teach only a universal absorption of all
souls into The One. To combat this idea More contends in his
“Anti-monopsychia” that by virtue of the “Deiformity” of the soul, by
which he means its ability to be joined with God, the soul in death is
so

                “quickned with near Union
          With God, that now wish’d for vitalitie
          Is so encreas’d, that infinitely sh’ has fun
          Herself, her deep’st desire unspeakably hath wonne.

          “And deep desire is the deepest act,
          The most profound and centrall energie,
          The very selfnesse of the soul, which backt
          With piercing might, she breaks out, forth doth flie
          From dark contracting death, and doth descrie
          Herself unto herself; so thus unfold
          That actual life she straightwayes saith, is I.”

          (Stz. 35, 36.)

In the “Psychathanasia” the Plotinian doctrines of the immanent unity of
The One and of the mystical union of the soul with it are not so much
present as positive arguments incorporated in the sequence of thought,
but are felt as controlling ideas in the mind of the writer. The reason
for this lies in the fact that in the argument of Plotinus (IV. vii)
these two truths of his philosophy are not specifically elaborated. To
More, however, as indeed to all students of Plotinian metaphysics, these
are the significant ideas of his system. More thus brings them in at
opportune times throughout his argument in “Psychathanasia.”

The conception of the ever present unity of The One in all things is the
fundamental idea in the first division of his thought. The tenacity with
which he clings to this doctrine is remarkable. His argument had brought
him to the point where he had shown that all life—of plants and animals,
as well as of men—was immortal. What, then, is the state of the plantal
and animal soul after death? (I. ii. 49–53.) More does not answer
directly, but replies that although men cannot know this, it is not
permitted to reason it down.

             “But it’s already clear that ’tis not right
             To reason down the firm subsistencie
             Of things from ignorance of their propertie.”

             (I. ii. 59.)

Consequently when he comes to consider man’s immortality, he says that
all the preceding argument—the general reflection on the “self-motion
and centrall stabilitie” of the soul—may be dismissed as needless.

               “Onely that vitalitie,
           That doth extend this great Universall,
           And move th’ inert Materialitie
           Of great and little worlds, that keep in memorie.”

           (II. i. 7.)

It is because of the firm conviction with which he holds to the
conception of the pervading unity of The One that he expands the idea at
length in the third and fourth cantos of the first book.

The second idea, that of the mystical union of the individual soul with
The One, is an incentive to More’s thought and feelings throughout the
course of his entire argument. From the fact that the soul can dive as
deep as matter, and rise to the height of a blissful union with God, he
derives the necessary inspiration for his “mighty task.”

      “This is the state of th’ ever-moving soul,
      Whirling about upon its circling wheel;
      Certes to sight it variously doth roll,
      And as men deem full dangerously doth reel,
      But oft when men fear most, itself doth feel
      In happiest plight conjoin’d with that great Sun
      Of lasting blisse, that doth himself reveal
      More fully then, by that close union,
      Though men, that misse her here, do think her quite undone.”

      (I. ii. 8.)

When in the course of his argument he arrives at a discussion of the
rational power of the soul, he launches out into a treatment of the vast
scope of man’s will and mind which

             “should bring forth that live Divinity
         Within ourselves, if once God would consent
         To shew his specious form and nature eminent:

         “For here it lies like colours in the night
         Unseen and unregarded, but the sunne
         Displayes the beauty and the gladsome plight
         Of the adorned earth, while he doth runne
         His upper stage. But this high prize is wonne
         By curbing sense and the self seeking life
         (True Christian mortification)
         Thus God will his own self in us revive,
         If we to mortifie our straightened selves do strive.”

         (II. iii. 12, 13.)

Again, when his argument brings him to the point at which the
independence of soul from body is to be proved, he breaks out with an
exclamation of the bliss of that union of soul with God, when

                “reason shines out bright,
            And holy love with mild serenity
            Doth hug her harmlesse self in this her purity;”

            (III. ii. 28.)

and passes on to a description of The One as seen in the vision

               “Unplac’d, unparted, one close Unity,
               Yet omnipresent; all things, yet but one;
               Not streak’d with gaudy multiplicity,
               Pure light without discolouration,
               Stable without circumvolution,
               Eternal rest, joy without passing sound.”

               (III. ii. 36.)

Finally in the last canto of his third book he testifies to the vanity
of that knowledge of the reasons for the soul’s immortality, even as he
had given them (III. ii. 11), and confesses that the only sure stay in
the storm of life is a faith in “the first Good.”

            “But yet, my Muse, still take an higher flight,
            Sing of Platonick Faith in the first Good,
            That Faith that doth our souls to God unite
            So strongly, tightly, that the rapid floud
            Of this swift flux of things, nor with foul mud
            Can stain, nor strike us off from th’ unity,
            Wherein we steadfast stand, unshak’d, unmov’d,
            Engrafted by a deep vitality